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Castiel stands in the deserted kitchen for a full minute.
His dishes are still stacked on the draining board, the towel folded beside them, a book he was reading earlier as he brewed coffee is still open to the last page he read. It's his kitchen, scattered with the casual domestic leavings of his morning. It looks like nothing's wrong.
Castiel feels sick.
"Balthazar!" He shouts to the blank walls. He backtracks into the living room. "Balthazar!" Again there is no response. A shiver goes through him. He checks the bedroom, the bathroom. Nothing but the traces of his life, flimsy little trails of belongings that could be cleared within the hour. And no one would ever know he'd been here.
"Balthazar!"
Castiel goes back into the bedroom, tries to open the window to the fire escape. It's stuck tight, and he can see the heads of nails pounded flush to the wood. He scrabbles at them, hurting his fingers in a desperate attempt to work them loose, but a greater strength than his put them there, and they will not be moved. Castiel snatches up a heavy medical encyclopaedia and raises it over his head, breaking the window is his last option.
Two hands grab his wrists, knocking the book loose so that it crashes to the floor.
Castiel twists, catching the familiar scent of Dean and feeling a lurch of fear so intense that it jolts tears into his eyes.
"Dea..." he twists and Dean grabs him tightly as they come face to face. Dean plunges a hypodermic into Castiel's hip, flinching as Castiel whimpers and struggles against him.
"No..." Castiel's plea comes out as a helpless whine as Dean depresses the plunger, sending a cold wave of narcotic through his bloodstream. "Don't..."
"Cas...I'm sorry..." rumbles close to his ear, begging, and Castiel can't feel his legs as he begins to droop into unconsciousness, heart slowing it's rabbit like beat of terror and succumbing to the drug. "I'm so sorry."
(-*-)
Castiel wakes in stages.
The first of these is an awareness of an unpleasant smell, the scent of damp long since dried, mould and crumbling wood. An old shed smell. He can detect a faint whiff of ammonia, strong chemicals and a hospital odour, something so familiar and yet so troubling that it takes him a while to identify.
Blood.
His eyes are heavy, unresponsive, and behind his lids he can sense a light flickering over his face. It makes his head ache.
The surface under him is slightly springy, smelling of burnt dust and Castiel knows he's lying in a strange way, sprawled out when he really wants to be balled up protectively.
Because...
Because of Dean.
Castiel snaps his eyes open and flinches from the light that strikes his unprepared pupils. After a few moments of frantic blinking he realises that the room is dark, and that only a single point of light is striking his face.
The light reflecting from Balthazar's watch.
It's only now that Castiel realises that he is gagged, because his yell is swallowed by the heavy fabric, leaving him with a raw throat and the taste of dust and oil in his mouth.
Balthazar is unmoved, looking at him with one chipped ice eye, the other run over with blood, open and filled with the sticky red liquid.
Behind his gag, Castiel moans in despair, trying to move away, trying to turn over, but his wrists and ankles are bound above and below him. He jerks against the restraints and the bed he's on, for it is a bed, jangles its springs in protest, sagging under him.
On the floor Balthazar is motionless, bent up like a beaten animal, a sack of dripping offal that could never have been a living thing. To Castiel's wide and terrified eyes, another shape reveals itself, another figure in the shadows.
Again he calls out in terror and helplessness against the fabric in his mouth.
Gabriel is lying on the floor with a gaping wound in his chest, face white and stiff as a wax mask.
A panel in the wall opens, and Dean comes in, bending down to lift Gabriel easily, backing out of the room. Castiel snaps his eyes shut and tries to quell the trembling in his body.
He is going to die here.
The thought is followed by a mounting certainty that Dean murdered his sister.
That the day of her discovery had been the day he had given himself over to Dean.
Castiel retches behind the gag, shaking and trying valiantly to control the urge to vomit.
With his eyes closed he can only hear Dean's footsteps approaching, the heavy dragging sound as he moves Balthazar and leaves the room with him. Castiel opens his eyes a slit, there is only blood on the floor now. The last remnants of two men who, in their own way, had cared about him.
Dimly he hears a familiar sound, the roar of the buildings incinerator.
The appalling nature of the situation swamps him, and Castiel hunches against his bonds, protecting himself as much as he is able, knowing that when Dean returns, he will be coming for him.
Footsteps, heavy boots on the wooden floor, alert him to the presence of two people. Dean, and John he supposes, when the man speaks he knows his voice and another dart of fear goes through him. Two killers, father and son. And he had been living with them for weeks, had accepted their charity and their gifts. He had accepted Dean's love, had returned it. Now Castiel wondered what it was Dean wanted from him, what, in his skewed mind had he decided Castiel was a part of.
"Still out?" John mutters.
"Yeah." Dean replies shortly.
They shift silently, Castiel can hear their clothes rustling.
"I should have gotten to the husband sooner." John murmurs.
"It doesn't matter." Dean assures him.
"No, it does." John sighs. "If I'd taken care of him sooner, this whole mess could have been avoided. And that other guy...I should have watched him closer. I knew he was a threat, and then he came here...I was complacent. I'm sorry."
"Dad, it's ok." Dean promises. "Cas is still here. You took care of everything. It's not a problem."
There's a short, loaded silence.
"Dean..." John mutters. "You know you can't...there's no way to keep him. Not now."
Castiel feels a spasm of fear.
"Dad...please don't make me." Dean breathes.
"You have to...I'm sorry son but... it's too dangerous. I learn from my mistakes, and keeping him here is just too risky."
"But it's my risk..."
"I can't let you get caught." John says, pointedly. "You think I want them to put you away? Dean, you're too important to wither in jail." He picks something up, something metal that scrapes on the surface it was laid on. "I can do it...you don't have to see."
"Daddy...please..." And the childlike plea makes Castiel shiver, invoking as it does his memories of Dean from before. Dean, so shy and naive.
"Dean. We have to do this." John tells him sharply. "I have made allowances for you, for who it was you wanted. A lot of fathers would have cast you off for wanting a man. Not me. But now it has to end. He knows too much, and we can't risk him getting out."
"I'll be careful, I can keep him here." Dean promises.
"One mistake Dean. One mistake and..." John coughs, a long hacking, rattling cough that Castiel recognises as symptomatic of a grievous complaint.
"Dad...sit down."
From the sound of it, John does so, heavily, wheezing.
"Here, drink this."
The sound of liquid sloshing. Gasping, slurping of the drink.
Then a long silence.
"Dad...please don't leave me on my own." Dean asks quietly.
"We'll find you someone else." John croaks.
"I don't want anyone else." Dean says softly. "And you don't have a lot of time left."
"I won't leave you. I Promise." John rasps.
"But what if you do?" Dean asks, helplessly.
Silence follows, and Castiel has to will himself to stay still and not open his eyes to see what's going on.
"Dean, I loved your mother, more than anything." John murmurs. "But it wasn't enough to keep her...when I brought her here...when I made her stay, to have you...she hated me." He takes a deep breath. "Can you stand that? Having him, but having him hate you?"
"He's not mom." Dean says levelly. "I won't have to...It won't be like that...Cas won't make me hurt him."
"I really hope you're right." John sighs. "But...you can keep him here, least until I figure out what to do."
"Thank you." Dean sounds so relieved that Castiel feels sick with dread.
"Let me know when he wakes up." John mutters, standing with a scrape of chair legs. "Stay with him."
"I will."
John's boots thump away and to Castiel's dismay the mattress beside him sags as Dean sits down. His fingers, the feel of them so familiar, trace Castiel's forehead.
"Don't make me kill you." Dean whispers. "Please don't make me do that."
Castiel stays motionless, knowing that whatever his fate is, it rests in the hands of a disturbed man and his half mad father.