Title: Just Gonna Stand There And Hear Me Cry?
Author:highermagic
Rating: PG-15
Pairings/Characters: Dean/Castiel
Spoilers: End of 6x22
Warnings: angst, dub-con, mpreg, Eve!Dean, God!Castiel, male menstruation and talk of miscarriage
Word Count:~3,600
Summary: It sucked, constantly bleeding and it took more of a toll on him than he would care to admit, but in a way, he knew he deserved it.
Notes:Unbeta'd. All mistakes are my own. And again, I don't really like this chapter :/ I don't think I'm getting Castiel quite right in my head yet, maybe. *shrugs* Oh well. And I'm sorry updates are taking so long I've been crazy-busy. Anyway, enjoy!

Dean didn't really know why he was surprised anymore – really, he shouldn't be. Castiel had said he would provide and at least the son of a bitch was living up to that promise, if nothing else. One look in the bathroom cabinet and Dean had been facing a well-stocked supply of painkillers, toiletries and – he blanched a bit – pads and tampons.

Dean had lived with Lisa for almost a year; he knew the basic operation of such things. Hell, more than once he'd had to buy them for her so his man-pride was definitely broken on that account, but he found himself staring at them – ranging from different strengths, marked by the number of drop shapes on the packaging – for a good half hour, wondering if his pride would let him accept the fact that maybe it would be a good idea to put them to use. He kind of…it kind of felt like cheating.

He wasn't sure how, but he…he felt like he needed to feel this. It sucked, constantly bleeding and it took more of a toll on him than he would care to admit, but in a way, he knew he deserved it. He had deliberately put himself in a situation where this would happen to him so it was only fair that he took the punishment without complaint.

Dean swallowed, shutting the mirrored cabinet door and staring at his reflection. He bit his lip, pressing a palm against his flat stomach, and thought of Ben, and of Sam as a child. If Ben had been the Changeling, if Sam had remained the demonic 'abomination' that Azazel had poisoned him to be, would Dean have delivered the killing blow?

He swallowed and shook his head, bracing himself against the sink. He felt sick.

No. No, he wouldn't have done it. So what gave him the fucking right to do it now? To willingly cause a child's death – even one that hadn't been born, even one that would be evil and inhuman?

He deserved this. That child's blood was on his hands and now it was staining his thighs, branding his skin with proof of his evil deeds. So he didn't want to take the easy way out – blood was on his soul now, inside of his very being he felt like he was bleeding, and he wanted the entire house to stink of his sin, to reek of blood. He wanted to exile himself to Hell once more, where it always rained blood and smelled of death.

But that wouldn't be fair to Bobby or Sam. Dean sighed, rinsing his hands and scrubbing them over his face. He then took out one of the pads and, after cleaning himself once more, gingerly placed it on the inside of his underwear and shrugged his jeans on. Aside from having the vague feeling of wearing an adult diaper, it didn't feel overly intrusive, and already Dean felt a little cleaner, not having to feel his blood leaking down his legs. He did not, however, take any painkillers, because that was still cheating.

It was dark outside when he came downstairs, and Sam was staring out of the window with one of those 'figure out the puzzle' looks on his face.

"Somethin' you wanna tell us, boy?" Bobby asked, startling Dean as he seemed to just appear in the doorway to the kitchen, and Dean looked over at him, frowning in confusion. "Entire pantry's stocked. Took a beer out and the damn thing replaced itself." Bobby raised an eyebrow expectantly and, almost as if to prove his story, handed Sam and Dean two beers.

Dean swallowed, opening Sam's before giving it to him and then his own. "Um…" He paused, not really sure how to explain that basically Castiel was laying siege to them, except there was no option to come out when they wanted to.

"What the Hell, Dean?" Sam finally snapped, getting to his feet. For some reason a sharp spike of fear ran down Dean's spine and he took a step away from his brother without realizing what he was doing. "What is going on?" He pointed outside, and Dean took another look out of the window. It was…dark. But darker than dark – they should have been able to see the light that marked Bobby's driveway, or the dark silhouettes of the cars, or even their own reflections against the starry night sky. There was nothing.

"What is that?" he whispered, going over to the window. Only there was no window – it was a wall of… Dean paused, raising his hand and pressing it against the black veil. It parted and melded over his arm like fog. "What the…?"

"It's been there ever since Crowley rescued us from the skinwalkers," Sam said, his voice right behind Dean, who spun around again, nervous once more. He stepped away so that Sam could touch it too. "Which, again – Crowley?"

"I think…" Dean swallowed, looking down, and took a swig of his beer. "He's the protector Cas assigned to us, I guess. Make sure we don't get into trouble."

"But…" Sam paused, his brow furrowing. "Crowley?"

Dean shrugged. "Dude's powerful, I guess. Cas wanted to use that." He took another long pull from the beer bottle, feeling the alcohol warm up inside of him and settle into his gut like he'd swallowed cotton wool. It didn't replace the empty feeling inside of him, though. "Only it wasn't good enough, and now he's upping the game."

"What do you mean?" Sam whispered.

Dean fixed him with a look. "I lost the kid, Sam," he said, point blank, and ignored how Sam's eyes widened in sympathy. He couldn't see that look, and dropped his gaze, finding Bobby instead who was still watching the brothers as though expecting them to pull out the smoke and mirrors and rabbit and yell 'Surprise!'. "Knew it was going to happen; only I got a scapegoat out of that one. Don't think Cas is too suspicious yet." He gestured to the smoke outside. "Got a feeling this is his new plan. He said he…He said we can't leave the house."

Sam frowned. "Why would he do that?"

"Ain't it obvious?" Bobby finally snapped, breaking from his part as audience and stepping more fully into the room, drawing the full attention of both brothers. "S'practically Angel one-oh-one, boys." At Dean and Sam's uncomprehending looks, Bobby sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, and scrubbing a hand through his beard. "Look, when Michael wanted you t' bend over what did the Angels do?" He looked to Dean. "They trapped you and made it so that you wouldn't need a single thing, until they got what they wanted from you."

"So…" Dean frowned, cocking his head to one side. "Castiel's created his own Green Room?"

Bobby nodded, pressing his lips together. "I would say so," he said. "Already tried leaving this place once. Just ended up comin' in through my own back door when I tried leavin' out the front." He rolled his shoulders, sighing again, and Dean felt a wave of guilt wash over him – this was his fight, not Sam or Bobby's, but he was just dragging them down with him.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, because he felt like it needed to be said, and Bobby just shook his head.

"No sense apologizin'," he muttered, scrubbing a hand through his beard again. "Like you said, we could have all stopped this but we didn't so now we just gotta deal." He clapped his hands together while Dean turned away, taking another huge gulp of beer until it was almost empty. "Well, since we've apparently got nothin' else to do, I'm gonna hit the books and see if the phones still work. Sam?"

Dean didn't hear what Sam said in reply, since it was said so low and his eyes were focused on the smoke wall again. It wasn't static, like an actual wall but it didn't swirl like fog or anything else sinister or Wuthering Heights-esque. It seemed to have a…pattern. It looked soft, and ruffled. Like feathers moving over a wing in flight.

He was still staring at it when he felt Sam's hand on his shoulder and just barely resisted the urge to flinch away. "Dean," Sam whispered, squeezing slightly and turning Dean around. "Listen -."

"If the next words out of your mouth have anything to do with kids, Sammy, then I will deck you," Dean whispered, not looking at his little brother and finishing the beer. He immediately wished for another. Fuck, it hadn't been this bad since Sam had died.

The thought caused another wave of sadness in him, combining with the ache in his chest and the empty feeling – he felt so alone, at that moment, even though Sam was right in front of him. He wasn't sure if he wanted to burst into tears or tear down a wall. Maybe both.

Sam hesitated, and then let his hand drop. "I heard the skinwalker call you 'Alpha'," Sam whispered, and Dean stiffened, green eyes flashing up to his brother's concerned hazel. Sam looked tired too – there were dark circles under his eyes and he looked paler from not being in the sun as much. His hair seemed lank and greasy, his clothes unwashed, his skin sallow, and Dean swallowed, realizing he wasn't the only one getting a tough break, here.

"…That so?" he asked, realizing Sam expected him to reply but not really knowing what to say.

He nodded, biting his lower lip. "Got me thinking," he said, his hands coming forward to fidget nervously in front of him, and Dean's eyes followed the actions of his fingers dragging over each other. "I think that…" He swallowed, pausing again as he tried to think of how to put what he wanted to say into the right words. "Well…I saw the wraith wound, and the vampire bite and, well, if we're going with the classic mythology then dogs and vamps have never really gotten along, you know?"

Dean gestured for him to continue.

"He called you 'dirty'," Sam finished. "And 'wrong'. I think he knew what you carried inside of you – that you carried the Alpha, or the new breed, of something that was against his nature." He paused again and Dean felt a sick knot of dread begin to form, because he thought he knew where Sam was going with this… "And I think that maybe, if we had run into a vampire nest or something else like that, we would have gotten a different…welcome."

"Sam," Dean muttered, his eyes flashed to the smoke before he stepped closer, because he didn't know what Sam was suggesting and he didn't know who was listening, or watching. "What are you saying?"

Sam hesitated again, biting his lip, and folded his arms across his chest uneasily. "You could have power here, Dean," he finally said, meeting his brother's incredulous, disbelieving eyes. "If the creatures recognized you as the Alpha, not Castiel, then this world could be yours. We could finally subdue him."

Dean gasped, taking a step back from Sam, and his eyes widened further. "So you're suggesting I go through with this?" he demanded, unable to take in the fact that Sam wanted him to birth the next generation of monsters, of killers. "Do you have any idea…?"

"It was just a thought, Dean," Sam snapped, rolling his eyes. "I'm not saying you need to keep the kids, alright? I'm just saying that…while you're pregnant, I don't know…" He shrugged. "I was just thinking out loud, I guess."

"'Thinking out loud'," Dean repeated derisively, instinctive anger and pain flaring up inside of him. "There are a lot of bad people who think out loud like that, Sammy," he growled, making up the ground he'd lost, taking a step towards his brother. The smoke wall seemed to shift and roil next to them. "So keep your Goddamn thoughts to yourself."

Sam stared at Dean for a long moment, before biting his lip and nodding. His eyes darted away and he looked down, deferring to Dean quietly. "I'll go, uh…" He coughed. "See how Bobby's comin' along with the research and…yeah." Dean didn't want to think that Sam ran from the room, but 'fled' would be the only other accurate term for it.

He sat down, pain flaring up in his abdomen – his muscles were sore, they ached so badly and Dean didn't even want to think about how much worse it would get over the next three days.

He pulled his knees up to his chest, leaning against the back of the couch, and stared at the smoke wall. It seemed to have calmed down its shifting from before, and was now still; rapt and attentive.

The power of an Alpha… No. That was bad – not only that, but… Dean swallowed. He knew, that if Castiel ever came to realize this – ever came to think that Dean and his children might be able to usurp him in some way, Dean doubted that Castiel would have any qualms about taking the children away completely, raising them as solely his, or just killing them outright like when animals kill the offspring of the Alpha that they just killed. It was a survival instinct and right now Castiel was just living off of that.

"You wanna know what I think?" Dean asked, to no one in particular, though the wall seemed to perk up and listen, if walls could do such a thing. "I think he's afraid." He chuckled, the sound bitter and hateful and so unbelievably sad as he buried his face in his knees and wrapped his arms around his head, blocking out the sound of metal in his ears and trying to ignore the feeling of his muscles crying out in pain and the blood he could still feel even though it wasn't running down his legs anymore. "I think he's fuckin' terrified but so angry he doesn't know how to deal with it."

Dean might have been imagining it, but there seemed to be a hum of agreement coming from the room itself. When he lifted his head, though, there was no one there.

He shrugged. "Dunno," he muttered. "Just a theory."

When the Angel of Death descended on Bobby Singer's household, his orders were simple – no one leaves, no one enters. Gabriel wrapped his great shadowy wings around the house, covering it with his presence and, as the Winchesters would say, 'put his feelers out'. He could hear and see everything that went on inside of the house and in the immediate vicinity, if he paid attention. Which he did. A lot.

Gabriel hummed to himself. He hadn't thought his afterlife would be like this. To be fair, he hadn't given the afterlife a big thought at all – everyone knew that Angels who died ceased to exist altogether. They scattered down to their very atoms of Grace and were spread across the universe, but slowly, very slowly, Gabriel seemed to be reconjuring some of his Grace. He wasn't sure where it was coming from, but there was no mistaking the dark grey glow inside of his chest, that gave his wings power and his sword the sharpness to cut when he swung.

His orders were to protect Dean, Sam and Bobby while Dean still bled. Gabriel could smell the scent of blood and fertility in the house, faint but definitely there, as it had been in the Before, in the good old days when he was Loki and Seraphs were Seraphs and Purgatory was one of those places that people never really talked about and never really cared about.

The Angel of Death's great wings fell in heaps of smoke around the place like a demon's soul, only greyer and less ominous, like eternal hour-before-dawn. He rested his great head on Bobby's roof and wrapped his arms around Dean and Sam's windows, giant hands pressing against the glass to block their sight, and settled down to guard.

Inside of Gabriel, the Angel of Incarnation was being reborn as well.

"Why? Why do you want him so much?"

Castiel was getting angry – worse than that, he was getting frustrated. With the loss of the vampires and wraiths inside of him, the number of souls had diminished, but that just meant that the others had more room to move, more power to collide with each other. It was greater entropy inside of the same space.

He's beautiful, they hissed in unison. We want him.

"He's mine," Castiel snarled, baring his teeth. The eternal Tuesday afternoon in Heaven no longer held peace and allure for him – the garish red kite in the sky just seemed to charmingly optimistic and happy and Castiel felt neither thing. No, instead he was on the top of a mountain, because no one heard him cursing and screaming up there.

He paused, kneeling down in the snow, his eyes swirling black as he reached down and traced patterns in it, seemingly at random, but the souls were guiding his hand and his twitching fingers, that were turning blue with cold.

When he was finished, he paused, and sat back, frowning at what he had drawn. "No," he whispered, shaking his head. The souls chanted inside of him – the same words, over and over. "No," he insisted again. "Dean wouldn't do that. Family is everything." He spoke it with scorn, like it was the man's greatest downfall – which it was – but it was almost the most admirable thing Castiel used to love about him.

Until 'family' ceased to be a word that included him as well.

He had consumed the bodies of the skinwalkers and the soul of the one that had been alive when Crowley had arrived to save Sam and Dean. The other two had already been ushered into Purgatory, out of his reach. He cradled the final one inside of him like a new child, and closed his eyes, seeking it out, one amongst the millions.

"Matthew," he whispered, knowing its name because he knew all of their names. The soul trembled in his hold, terrified inside of this vast being filled with so much Other. "Show me."

Images flashed behind his eyes – the skinwalker and his brothers, hunting, killing. The man that had turned the oldest of them first who had turned the other two; twins. The pain of the change, the exhilaration of his first kill as an animal. Castiel felt as his own the craving for human flesh, the close love and treasury of the pack, how each of the animals had loved each other as themselves. His mouth twisted briefly at the incestuous scenes, these dogs obviously taking family love a step further. He felt the dog's desire, his love, his sorrow when his brothers had died and his fear when the two men had come and he'd been the last one standing.

"There, Matthew," Castiel whispered, directing the soul's thoughts. "Show me these men."

He saw Dean and Sam through the eyes of the dog, tinted with fear and rage and blood. Dirty Alpha. Wrong! The shorter man – the pretty one, who reminded Matthew of his younger twin brother – had smelled cold, as though he were already dead but moving around. He had glowed; Castiel saw, through Matthew's eyes, the aura of death and blood that surrounded them both, but Dean most of all. Kill! Kill!

Instinctively, Castiel snarled in anger that one of the souls had tried to hurt his child; had tried to hurt Dean. But the images played on; second by second. Castiel saw Dean's lips part, his eyes grow wide and dilate in lust. He heard Dean's heartbeat fly, smelled heat flare up in his body and, just for the briefest second, he saw Dean snarl.

"Enough," Castiel whispered, opening his eyes when the soul continued to play the images of Crowley appearing, faster than the dog could register, and suddenly both men were gone, and then Castiel had shown up. Castiel knew what he had done; he didn't need to be shown again. "Enough, Matthew. Thank you." He stroked some of his weak Grace over the soul, making it tremble again, and then let it drift back into the horde.

Do you see now? the souls whispered, pressing into Castiel's vessel, trying to guide his hands or his wings to move. Do you see how beautiful he is? How…dark?

"Yes," Castiel whispered in reply. He may have felt a brief amount of sorrow at that but it was overwhelmed by the lust of the millions of creatures inside of him. He pressed his hands into the snow, wiping out what he had drawn, and swallowed. Hunger and lust were building up inside of him – he had awakened desires he'd never known before, housed in the minds and wants of creatures who knew nothing but.

He cocked his head to one side, frowning in thought for a moment. "Matthew," he whispered again, catching the soul once more. "You do not think of him as beautiful?" he asked.

The soul curled up on itself. No, it replied softly, barely audible over the other voices. He is not my Alpha.

Castiel nodded to himself, pressing his lips together, and then, almost absently, he twisted his Grace around the soul, crushing it within his power, and felt it fade away. The other creatures inside of him roiled on, caught in the swirling maelstrom inside of him without a care for their fallen.

"Pity," Castiel whispered, to no one in particular.