Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. Here's to the holidays, and slightly more time to write than usual.

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A squeal made Dean start, and he twisted to glare up at the ceiling hiding a system of pipes that were probably a good twenty years older than he was. He and Sam had both agreed on the necessity of vacating their original motel, given that the sheriff knew where it was, but after hauling an unconscious angel through brush and woodland for seven miles, neither of them had been up for a long drive. They'd ended up in a tiny motel room fifty miles back down the highway…from the outside it had looked decent enough, but by now he was seriously starting to wonder if shooting the plumbing would help.

"Dude, we need to move to another motel," Sam said, joining him in the room with a bag of groceries in each hand. He nudged the door shut with his hip, but it was as warped as the rest of the place and didn't quite manage to latch. With disgusted sigh, he gave it a good kick.

"No shit," Dean agreed, not moving from his lounging position on the second bed. He already knew that it wasn't going to happen…for one, there wasn't another motel anywhere near here that was in any better condition—he'd looked—and for another neither of them wanted to move Cas any more unless they had to. Despite the rough flight through the woods and the hurried trip from the car into the motel room so no one would see his unconscious body, he hadn't so much as twitched an eyelid. In two days. Neither of them was taking that as a good sign.

"Here, give this a try," Sam said, pulling something from one of the plastic bags and tossing it in Dean's direction before setting the bags down on the low dresser. "Maybe it'll get a reaction."

Dean caught the bottle automatically and then shifted to sit on the edge of Cas' bed. Outwardly he looked fine, but…two days. They'd tried cold compresses, they'd tried hot compresses, they'd tried smelling salts—he still didn't know what corner of the Impala's trunk Sam had dug those out of—and they'd tried pouring water down his throat. Which was damn dangerous since they didn't have any way to ensure that it went into his stomach rather than his lungs, but he was pretty sure Cas didn't really use those lungs anyway. And still, nothing.

Of course, they didn't have any idea if any of those things were supposed to do anything to help an unconscious-and-or-comatose angel, which wasn't helping matters either. For all they knew, they should be dancing the Hokey Pokey every morning and that would make everything better. Sam had made him take a nap after he'd voiced that idea, but the fact was that they knew next to nothing about angelic injuries. And all of this was assuming that Cas was still in there somewhere, and it wasn't just whatever remained of Jimmy that they were trying to awaken. He was starting to have serious doubts on that score. Judging by the look that crossed Sam's face every time he looked at Cas' still form, he was too.

If he'd hated Zachariah before—and, yeah, he pretty much had—he really hated him now. He'd been terrified that the angel was going to use Sam to get to him, given that he didn't seem to care any more about Lucifer's shell than Lucifer's minions had cared about Michael's, and all he'd been able to think was that he'd never be able to handle the bastard torturing his brother in front of him. Never. It hadn't even occurred to him that Zachariah might go after Cas. It was true enough that Uriel had attacked Cas, sure, but Uriel never had seemed very stable. And Raphael was even less so, from what little Dean had seen. Total jackass or not, Zachariah was mostly sane, and Cas was his brother. But then Zachariah had gone after him, and Cas had become family just as Bobby and Ellen and Jo had, and listening to him scream….

He shook his head and gave the cap on the energy drink a particularly vicious twist, splashing orange whatever across the bedspread.

"Dean," Sam scolded as he took a seat in front of the computer, but Dean just rolled his eyes and set the bottle on the nightstand so he could haul Cas partially upright. They'd found that leaning him against the headboard was the easiest way to position him when they were trying to get liquid into him into him, although Dean didn't really expect this orange crap to do any more good than anything else they'd tried had. Sam had some theory about Cas' energy levels and something-olytes and who knew what else that he'd been expounding on it before leaving for the town's lone grocery store, but at this point Dean was just humoring him on the grounds that it couldn't possibly do less than anything else they'd done.

He shook his head. Maybe they should go ahead and drive Castiel down to Bobby's. At least the panic room had better defenses than a few salt lines and spray-painted sigils. And the plumbing was way better.

Pour. Give Cas a minute to breathe. Or rest. Or whatever. Pour. Give Cas a minute to breathe. Or rest. Or whatever. Pour. He continued the pattern in silence, the only sound in the room the clicking of the computer keys, and before long the bottle of orange whatever was gone.

He was reaching out to lower Cas back down when something…changed…and he froze, frowning. "Cas?"

"Dean?" Sam asked, turning away from the computer screen.

"I think he just moved. Cas?" He tapped the angel's cheek lightly. He had slapped him once, trying to wake him up, but he'd felt guilty enough about it afterwards when Cas' head had just lolled on impact that he didn't really want to try again without some promise of a better reaction. There was silence for a minute, but when the figure on the bed remained still he began to wonder if his imagination was just getting the better of him. He heard the clicking begin again behind him as Sam apparently came to the same conclusion, and with a shake of his head he once again began to move Cas back into a prone position. He was officially losing it.

Except that something definitely twitched in Cas' throat as motion resumed, and he turned to Sam. "Toss me another one of those drinks, would you?"

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"De?"

It took a minute for the sound to register—the damn pipes were creaking again, this time from Sam's shower, and they were drowning out most everything else including the game—and then he turned so fast that he almost fell off the side of the bed. "Cas?"

He caught a flash of blue as Cas' eyelids fluttered again. "'es."

A wave of relief swept through him at that rough confirmation. "Man, I didn't think you were ever going to wake up. We've been pouring energy drinks into you for two days." He still wasn't sure that that crap had actually had anything to do with Cas waking up—it had probably just been the right time—but Sam had been convinced. And annoying as hell to live with.

Cas' forehead creased, and then he managed to open his eyes. "Wa' 'a'?"

"You want water?" Dean guessed, moving over to Cas' bed and lifting him into a sitting position against the headboard. It would be the first thing that he'd request after having all those things jammed down his throat.

Cas' eyes opened a bit further, and that was definitely one of his more exasperated looks, but his second croak wasn't any more intelligible than the first.

"Well, water sounds good to me," Dean decided. Cas didn't actively object, which he took as a good sign, and before long the water bottle that had been sitting on the nightstand was empty. "I'll get you more as soon as Sam gets out of the bathroom," Dean promised.

"Wha' 'appen'?" Cas asked, his voice coming out as slightly less of a croak, although his words were slurred and sluggish.

Despite his own…experience…Dean wasn't sure what the procedure was for telling someone they'd been tortured, so he settled for, "What do you remember?"

Cas swallowed a few times, and then, slowly, "I was 'ssisting you with a hunt 'n Col' Oak, South D'kota. You were 'n a barn, an'—" His eyes widened, and his whole body lurched. "Za'ariah!"

Dean winced. "Yeah, Zachariah was there. He, uh, tried to use you to get me to say 'yes.'"

"'ou don't understan'!"

He began to struggle against the blankets—a struggle that he was losing, which, considering that there was currently only a sheet and a pathetically thin comforter over him, was a pretty good indication as to his strength levels—and Dean reached out to pin him against the headboard. "Stop that before you hurt yourself! It's okay; he's gone." Cas didn't seem to hear him, and he tried a light shake. "It's okay! Breathe. Or whatever it is angels do."

The creak of the plumbing shutting down drowned out whatever Cas said in return, but he didn't release his grip until Cas stopped fighting.

"Dean?" Sam asked, hurrying out of the bathroom. "What's wr—Cas?" A relieved grin crossed his face. "Hey. Welcome back to the land of the living."

"You 'ave to go!" Cas said, his voice stronger with agitation. "Now!"

Sam smile turned to a frown, and the knuckles gripping his towel turned white as he glanced around the motel room. "What's wrong? Go where?"

"Away. They c'n find me 'ere! M' wards aren't…. Zachariah will…." He broke off, body convulsing again.

"Hey, no more of that," Dean ordered, pushing him back against the headboard a second time. "If Zachariah coming back is what's got you so worked up, I think you can chill. That's the one thing I'm not worried about right now."

Cas' worried frown didn't waver, nor did his hands unclench, but at least he stopped fighting. "Did 'ou do something?"

"You explain; I'm getting dressed," Sam said with a shake of his head.

Dean turned back to Cas. "We didn't do anything—we tried, I swear we did, but nothing worked." He shook his head, remembering again just bouncing away from that bastard, the hole in Zachariah's head closing smoothly without so much as a drop of blood lost. "But it turns out that Gabriel is kind of badass when he's pissed."

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Kudos to everyone who figured it out. Had thought about going with Anna, but she's not as powerful and nowhere near as fun to write.

*For anyone who isn't familiar with it, the Hokey Pokey is a very annoying children's dance.