A/N: Okay so I'm going to leave it here for the night, simply because we're now exactly halfway through - oh yeah, there's a hell of a lot left to come, believe me! But hopefully you'll like it, and it's full of hurt!Cas, conflicted! and caring!Dean, bamf!Sammy, bamf!Bobby, bamf!everybody (including some familiar faces but shhhh I can't tell you yet!). So yes, I shall leave you here for tonight. Enjoy this chapter, and tune in again soon =]

"Okay, so either of you chuckleheads feel like explaining what the hell that just was?" Dean growls because seriously, this has gone far enough and he's still pissed because he still hasn't goddamn eaten.

Gabriel ignores him and makes as if to follow Castiel, but Dean's having none of that.

"Hey! What's up with Cas?"

Gabriel's face twists bitterly, and dammit, that's not an expression Dean ever expected to see on this joker's face. "His name is Dmitri. And he's my little brother. And I haven't seen him in over ten years, so I'm going to go and talk to him now, if that's okay with you."

Castiel. Is Gabriel's brother. Long-lost brother. Really long-lost brother.

It says something about how pissed he currently is that this doesn't confuse him more. As it is, he pretty much takes it in his stride. He can worry about the implications of all this shit later. Right now, he needs to know what's going on and whether they need to get the hell out of dodge tonight or what.

"No, it isn't. I think Cas made himself pretty clear when he left, okay? You're just going to wait here for him to come back and do some explaining while you're at it."

"Hey, Dean, can I have a word?" asks Sam, and Dean knows that tone of voice. He nods and they step away a little. It's only a semblance of privacy, but it'll do.

"Someone had better go after Cas," Sam says in a lowered tone. "Y'know ... Before the police find him."

"Fuck," growls Dean, because he hadn't thought of that. "He won't have gone far. You go, I'll deal with these two sons of bitches.

"Uh, no, you can deal with Cas and I'll stay."

"What?"

"C'mon, man, you know you've been ... bonding with Cas lately. And I'm less likely to shoot these two."

"Bonding? What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

Sam gives him one of his best bitch faces, and Dean sighs. "Look, whatever, I don't care. There's no way I'm going out there. I don't do all that touchy-feely crap, okay? That's your scene. End of story."

Dean Winchester: always with the scissors. Damn.

Sam was right - Castiel hasn't gone far. In fact, he's sitting right outside, leaning on the bonnet of the Impala, hunched forwards with his head lowered. Dean runs a hand over his face and it takes him a moment to work out just what's so wrong about this picture.

Castiel looks defeated. And that's just weird.

He never looks defeated. Even when Dean was being a real dick to him, even then he looked more angry than about to give up. And now this guy, Castiel's long-lost brother or some shit like that, he turns up and what? Castiel should be, well, happy? Pleased, at least. But instead he just looks … empty.

And Dean's not worried (he's not, okay?) because he doesn't worry about anyone but Sammy, but still. It's … It feels wrong, somehow.

"Hey," he says, and his voice is sodden with indecision and awkwardness. Dammit, he's not cut out for this. He should've stayed inside and let Sam handle this. The half-assed words he has sort-of planned stick in his throat, his tongue is heavy and his mouth feels like sandpaper, and seriously, he must be going down with something, because he hasn't felt this hot or shaky since he asked Masie Thompson to Prom Night.

Get yourself together, man. Act natural. It's natural to join Castiel on the Impala, right? That's a natural enough move. That's okay. That's what he'll do, then. Naturally.

He moves slowly, not wanting to startle the other man (the memory of Castiel's unexpected strength is still fresh) but as he approaches, Castiel doesn't look up, doesn't even move. He looks like a statue, with lines of some indefinable emotion carved into his face. Dean always does find it difficult to tell what Castiel is thinking, what he's feeling. But he doesn't move away and he doesn't attack him, so Dean takes this as a sign of at least partial acceptance and so eases himself onto the hood of the car.

"You... uh... want to tell me what that was back there?"

Castiel says nothing, and Dean studies his face for a moment. But then he has to stop, because if he looks for too long, he'll start noticing all the beautiful things about this man, and then ...

So he looks at the sky, instead, at the dense blackness peppered with pinpricks of light, and neither of them speaks. It should be uncomfortable, or at least awkward, especially when you consider the whole master/slave dynamic, but it's not. Somehow, as it stretches on, familiar and easy, it manages to unstick Dean's tongue from the roof of his mouth, and he then finds himself talking even before he's realised that he's drawn breath.

"Sammy used to know all their names," he says. "He tried to teach me, this one summer, but I was so useless he gave up. Tried to teach me chess, too, but that ended the same way. He always was a clever bastard." He chuckles at the memory. That was the single golden summer they spent with Bobby, long and hot and carefree, when he was nine, back before any of this shit landed on their doorstep. It's one of those memories that he keeps in a special, hallowed box labelled 'Good'. The box is small and tucked away in a shadowy corner of his brain, but sometimes he gets it out, dusts off the memories inside, and looks at them, snapshots of better times.

"The stars look different where I come from," Castiel says, so quietly Dean almost misses it. "I used to watch them through my window when I couldn't sleep. The sky was darker there. Like velvet."

Dean looks at him, and for a moment, just a breath, he can see the other man's thoughts. Castiel is hurt, he realizes, he's afraid, but he's gloriously happy beneath it all. Relieved. There's relief on his face. Relief and pain.

"Hey," Dean says, and his voice is soft. Castiel looks at him now, his eyes tired but still wary, and Dean may not know what's wrong but he wants to make it right all the same. He doesn't want Castiel to look at him so distrustingly. Hell, he knows he's done nothing to earn Castiel's trust - the very opposite, in fact - but still. It makes him feel ...

He breaks off that thought before it's much more than a fledgling. He's not here to get all sentimental over a slave. He's here to work out what the fuck is going on.

"Hey," he begins again, more businesslike this time. "Cas. I know you don't trust me, but I need to know what's going on. Gabriel said that you're his brother - and you obviously recognized him - and we've got some nasty sons of bitches on our tail - and we just need to know, okay?"

Castiel looks away again, and Dean could curse himself, because he's blown it now, hasn't he? "I'm sorry, Dean," he says, and his voice is heavy, flat. "I can't tell you."

Dean pushes on, relentless. "Can't or won't?"

No reply.

"I thought so." He really didn't want to have to play this card, but it seems he'll have to, so Dean squares his jaw and gets it over with. "Castiel, I am your master, and I am ordering you to explain what is going on."

Castiel flinches noticeably at Dean's tone, and Dean almost feels bad. Almost. But then Castiel starts talking, his voice resigned and emotionless, and what he says makes Dean forget to care.

"Gabriel is telling the truth. He is my brother. I haven't seen him in almost twelve years, but he's my brother. I'm sure of that."

"Wait, hold up. Was he freed or something? Or does he come from, what, Canada, or someplace else where they don't have to collar slaves? 'Cause an un-collared slave is illegal here, and I didn't notice anything around his neck."

Castiel doesn't reply, and this time Dean can't see beyond the passive mask he's got locked firmly in place to tell what he's thinking.

"Hey. I asked you a question. Answer me."

When he begins speaking again, there's a tenseness in his voice that makes it sound like he could shatter at any minute, and Dean is once again reminded of how fragile he is, beneath it all.

"Gavriil is not a slave. He never was a slave."

"Now I know you're lying. The truth, dammit!"

"That is the truth. I am the only slave in our family."

"But that's ridiculous. If a child is born to even one slave parent, then it's a slave. So how come you, and not Gabriel? Or Gavreel, or whatever you called him."

"Gavriil. It's Russian."

"Okay, whatever."

Castiel sighs and looks back up at the sky, his face horribly world-weary. "Dean, I wasn't born a slave. I was born in Russia, and I was born free, to two free parents. I only became a slave when I came here. When I said I didn't know anything about the enslaving of free people. .. I lied. It happens all the time. And I know, because they did it to me."

"WHAT?!"

Under any other circumstances, the look on Sam's face would have boundless comedy value, but right now Dean's far too preoccupied with today's latest bombshell to focus on the ridiculous arrangement of his brother's facial features.

"I know, man, that's what I said when he told me." More or less, anyway. What Dean had actually said had been more along the lines of a constant string of expletives, but hey. You can't have it all, right? "I mean, it's probably a lie, but …"

He knows he's right. Everyone knows that angels and demons lie if they think there's something in it for them, and Dean can imagine Castiel lying to protect Gabriel, but still. It would be a relatively plausible explanation for why Gabriel and Crowley just showed up with no signs of an owner in tow.

"But what if it's not?" Sam finishes for him, and Dean thinks he looks like he's enjoying this far too much. "Don't you see? This is proof, Dean. This is … Wow. This is big. This goes beyond … If this is true, then we have proof of Divinity illegally enslaving people."

Dean's on the same page in an instant. "We could use this information to get them off our tails," he says, and for a moment the brothers grin at each other in perfect understanding, before Dean remembers just what the hell they're saying and how shaky their position is. "Hang on. We need to slow down here, man. We're making too many assumptions here. If this is true, Sam. If."

"Sorry to interrupt, but now that this charming family reunion is over I'd really like to get going, if it's all the same to you."

Sam turns to face Crowley, and Dean suddenly remembers a far more urgent matter.

"Hey - Crowley. How did you say you found us, again?"

Sam pales and Dean could throttle them both for not having realized this earlier: if Gabriel and Crowley could find them, then the police probably can too.

"Gabriel saw the news," Crowley states. "You two goons have your mugshots plastered all over every news program going - it's the first major robbery of a slave in this area for years. It's not as if you've been particularly subtle about it, either."

They knew about the news program. Bobby told them to take a look, and yeah, their faces are all over a couple of channels, but nothing that could compromise their position. Nothing that could lead the police to them.

But it led Gabriel and Crowley to them.

So if the police are half as good - which they're not, but they're not far behind, either - then they could be hot on their heels.

Oh, they are screwed all right.

"Dean, we should really get going-"

"If you just give me my brother then we'll be out of your hair-"

"Oh, sure, we're just going to hand over the only thing of worth we own-"

"You don't own him, you bastard, he's a fucking person-"

"We're being hunted here!"

"Well boo-hoo, cry me a river-"

"This is serious!"

"And so am I - he's my brother!"

"So what happened to 'you don't own him' huh?"

"Everybody, just shut the hell up."
Sam stops yelling at Gabriel for just long enough to look at his brother, whose own eyes are fixed
determinedly on the TV screen which he flicked on a moment ago ("Which channel were you watching?"), where a news anchor in a tight black skirt and billowing blouse is interviewing a large, businesslike man in a pinstripe suit that Sam recognizes - but from where?

"… must be very traumatic for you," the anchor is saying, smiling a wide, fake smile through shiny lips that are too red.

"Of course," the man says, somewhat slimily.

"What are you doing to try and get it back?"

"Well, I expect that the thieves will try to sell it, so I've got my contacts keeping an eye on the trading markets up and down the country. And obviously, the police have assured me they are doing all they can. I don't expect that I shall have to go for too long before it is returned to me, but the very fact that the thieves could get in right under my nose shows that America isn't as safe as we have been led to believe in recent years-"

Gabriel swears under his breath, and even Sam feels a little mortified at how offhand the two people onscreen are about this whole thing. It's sick.

And then the slimy man in the pinstripe suit smiles, and Sam remembers where he knows him from at the exact same moment as Dean makes a similar discovery.

"Goddammit! I knew I recognized his voice," Dean yells, making Sam jump slightly.

"What is it?"

Dean turns to face them, and Sam can practically see the cogs whirring in his brain. '"he man on the phone. The man who warned me about the Roadhouse - that's him."

"Wh- are you sure, Dean?"

'Ninety-nine percent.'

"Only … Uh, Dean? That's Zachariah Adler, Executive Director of Divinity Inc.."

That shuts Dean up, and they both turn back to the TV, where the news anchor is just signing off. The news program theme starts playing, jarring the solemn of the room. Dean switches the TV off, and no one says anything in the silence that follows.

So when Dean's mobile starts ringing, it makes nearly everyone jump.