Author's notes: Updating sooner than I'd planned because I felt really bad about the cliffhanger and I love you guys a lot. Also, holy neglecting-everything-in-my-entire-life-except-this-fic, Batman! I think I've forgotten the meanings of words like "schoolwork," "cleaning," and "original fiction."

Chapter Eleven

Everything hurt, but mostly it was the hole in his heart.

Humans were fond of using such expressions to describe the loss of a boyfriend or girlfriend, a friend, a lover, but no – Castiel literally felt as if someone had taken a blunt knife and carved a ragged hole into the organ and then left the instrument there. With every beat, the invisible hand holding it applied a merciless twist.

Blowing out the last of his grace on their failed mission to rescue Adam Milligan did not feel the same as having it ripped out while he was still occupying Jimmy Novak.

Castiel dragged his eyelids apart. He was lying on a bed in an uncomfortable gown, staring up at the ceiling. There was water damage forming a brown, ugly stain, and the tiles sagged towards the foot of his bed. He turned his head towards the door, grimacing as his neck protested with a couple of loud cracks, to see Sam dozing in the chair beside his hospital bed, his long legs crossed, his face resting on his fist.

Something was strange about that.

"Sam." The sound of his own voice shocked him; it came out in a croak, and a very strained and weak croak, at that, but it did the job. Sam opened his eyes.

"Cas!" he cried, absolutely beaming. "Thank god you're awake. How do you feel?"

Castiel shut his eyes. "I'm going to spare myself having to answer that question."

"Right – yeah – sorry I asked. Listen, I have to get the nurse, they made me promise I would when you woke up." "Sam." Sam paused. "Where is Dean?"

"We're taking it in shifts," he explained. "I made him go back to the motel to get some sleep."

"Taking what in shifts?"

Sam blinked. "Sitting up with you and N– um – just, you know. He's been in here every single day."

"Every single… how long have I-"

"It's been almost a week, Cas. They thought you were brain dead, but, you know, they thought the same thing last time…"

"Right…" Castiel tried to sit up, but Sam put his hands on his shoulders.

"At least wait for a nurse, seriously."

Castiel paused for a few seconds. "You seem…"

"Like I have my soul back. Yeah. Dean will explain. I'll call him while I'm getting the nurse, okay?"

"All right… and – Sam!" he added before Sam could leave. He turned around just before the door. "Where is Noelle?"

His face darkened. "She hasn't woken up yet."

#

The obnoxiously perky nurse had just finished ordering Sam to make sure the now heavily medicated Castiel ate the tray of food she'd left with them when Dean entered the room, his face stricken with worry.

"Thank god," he said, dragging up a chair beside Sam's. He paused, hand hovering over Castiel's shoulder like he wanted to clap it as he usually did, but the bandages wrapped around his entire chest seemed to make him reconsider and he ruffled Castiel's hair instead. Castiel wasn't sure how he felt about that. It felt like a somewhat patronizing gesture, but it also felt kind of nice.

"Hello, Dean."

"Hello yourself. Son-of-a-bitch have we been worried about you. You all right?"

"Can you two please refrain from asking me such stupid questions?" he muttered. The morphine made his brain feel sluggish.

"Sorry, sorry. We're just glad to see you alive, Cas. You wanna tell us what happened?"

Castiel looked at Dean. He seemed concerned, not demanding, and it was for that reason alone that Castiel didn't ask both of them to leave. But neither did he offer any description of what had elapsed in the week between his arrest and his judgement. "An angel named Ithuriel ripped out my grace and apparently threw me from Heaven. What else do you need to know?"

The brothers both seemed to comprehend. "Nothing you don't want to tell us," said Sam gently.

Even given the circumstances, Castiel could not help but smile at the return of the Sam who had leapt into Hell for them, the Sam who had only broken the final Seal because he believed he was saving the world. "How did this happen?" he asked, nodding towards Sam and immediately wishing he hadn't. His head swam.

"Quit moving," said Sam. "You're really hurt, Cas."

"I arrived at the same conclusion without your input, now someone please explain just how you managed to extract Sam's soul from the Cage." He looked expectantly at Dean, who shifted.

"Called in a favor."

"To who?"

"To Death."

Castiel raised his eyebrows. "To the Horseman Death?"

"No, to the beet farmer Death. Don't give me that look, it was a dumb question. And he gave me his ring pretty willingly, don't forget," said Dean. "He's not evil… okay, at least not the way the other Horsemen were evil. Anyway, long story short, I was Death for a day and Sam has a soul again."

"What do you remember?" Castiel asked Sam, choosing to ignore the fact that Dean had spent a day acting as Death, mostly because he felt that he was happier not knowing exactly how Dean had managed to screw it up (he could tell by Dean's face that that was exactly what had happened). He had tried to ignore the knowledge thus far, but Michael and Lucifer had definitely not shown Sam's soul much kindness while it had been trapped in the Cage with them. This outcome was far better than he'd hoped; he hadn't expected the old Sam back, not this soon, not this healthy.

Sam spread his hands. "Nothing. Death put up a 'wall' between my memories of Hell and the rest of my mind. And my memories of everything since I got topside."

"I had a lot of fun explaining the pooka to him," said Dean.

"Wait, so… you have no memories of Noelle?" Castiel asked.

"No. I don't. I mean, I've sat up with her a couple times-"

"After I spent two hours bullying him into doing it," Dean interrupted. "He felt all awkward about it."

"-and when I see her, I feel like I know her, but… no, I don't remember her at all."

Castiel again struggled to sit up. This time, it was Dean who pushed him back down. "Seriously. Don't move that much, dude."

"No, I'm not in pain," he insisted. Dean did not look convinced.

"Morphine," explained Sam.

The shock that followed seemed rather unwarranted. "Morphine? They gave him morphine? Dammit, I told them no narcotics."

"Why on earth did you do that?" asked Castiel, who could not begin to fathom why someone with a shattered leg, a fractured arm, a concussion, lacerations to most of the chest, and severe bruising absolutely everywhere would ever be refused pain medication.

"You'll thank me in 2014."

"What?"

"Nothing, nevermind."

Castiel changed the subject. "Has Noelle been unconscious this entire time?"

"Yeah," said Dean, his face falling. "She broke her arm, but that was it. She got lucky. We think she fell on you, actually. They can't figure out why she won't wake up."

"What exactly happened?" Castiel asked. "Why is she hurt in the first place?"

The boys glanced at each other. "You don't remember?"

"No, the last thing I remember is…" Ithuriel tearing my grace from my body "…the trial."

"Oh," said Dean. "Well, we were actually hoping you could explain something to us. Sam here doesn't remember it, obviously, but when, uh… when you fell, she suddenly woke up, crying blood and babbling your name. She up and vanished and the next thing we knew, both of you were falling out of the sky and, I shit you not, she had wings."

"She had wings," repeated Castiel. "I'm really too medicated to joke with you, Dean."

"I'm not joking," he said. "It was like the tattoos came off her back. They weren't like normal wings, it looked like someone drew them right in the air. But the only reason either of you survived was because she flew upwards just a little and you fell about fifteen feet instead of thousands."

Castiel blinked. None of what Dean had just said seemed in the least bit possible, but he'd been wondering how he survived as well. Stranger things had happened, he supposed. So the tattooed wings had served a purpose after all. And Noelle had saved his life.

Dean settled the tray containing Castiel's food on his lap and surveyed it, politely changing the subject, probably for Castiel's own sake. "Kind of sucks that your first meal of your second time as a human has to be hospital food."

"Is hospital food any different from any other kind of food?" he inquired dully. The reality of everything was just now beginning to settle in like his veins were filling with lead. He had lost the war, he had let down Camael and the other angels who had put all their faith in him, and now all of them were going to be subjected to weeks or years in Prison. Some of them, like Xaphan, were so stubborn they might not submit to Raphael at all, and then what would happen to them? It was all his fault, all of it. He focused on the food balanced on Dean's legs because all of this filled him with a terrible pain that the morphine couldn't touch.

"Yeah. Way different. Once you're up and about, we'll get you some real food."

"Dean, we exist solely on diner food and takeout," snorted Sam. "We don't eat real food."

"Sammy, that is the only real food. Everything else is a lie. Including these pancakes." Dean was opening a small container that held some kind of viscious brown liquid, which he poured over the large golden cakes on the paper plate. He cut a wedge out of the stack and held it up to Castiel, who stared in disbelief.

"I really hope the implication that you plan on feeding me is a mistake in my own judgement, Dean."

"Okay then, tough guy, move your arms."

Castiel's right arm had a hairline fracture, and the sling didn't lend itself to much movement, but even moving his left arm sent arrows of sharp pain through the haze of morphine. Refusing to succumb to it, he reached for the fork in Dean's hand, but the pain grew in intensity until, defeated and quite unhappy about it, he let his arm fall to his lap, closing his eyes. He could not believe this at all.

"You know what, I'll just go sit with Noelle for awhile," said Sam hastily, making his way out of the room. Castiel was glad for it, though even he could tell that Sam really lacked subtlety.

"We will never speak of this again," Castiel told Dean once the door closed behind his brother, looking straight at him. "Ever."

"You're the only guy I know who thinks he can be scary in a hospital gown," said Dean cheerily. "This never happened, Cas. Now open wide."

Grudgingly, Castiel obeyed, wincing as he chewed. It tasted almost pleasant, teasingly close to being enjoyable but just not there, but he had a feeling it would be much better if it were hot throughout, rather than startlingly cold at one end and far too hot at the other, and the syrup must have been in a refrigerator. Dean grinned.

"I told you it was bad."

"Why they serve this to hospitalized people is beyond me. Don't they think patients have suffered enough?"

"Yeah, I know, adding insult to injury."

Castiel would gladly have suffered the bad meal if he had been able to eat it without assistance; this was degrading. The only reason he did not complain more (like he really, really wanted to) was because Dean just seemed at peace in a way that Castiel had never really seen.

"Sam is… better than I hoped," he said between bites.

"Did you think this was going to end in disaster or something?"

"It's just that his soul has been stuck in the Cage with Michael and Lucifer for a year. I was expecting… honestly, I was expecting Sam to need a long time to recover. How stable is this wall Death put in his mind?"

"If he doesn't scratch at it, he should be fine," Dean replied.

Knowing Sam, though… Castiel shook the thought away. Hopefully, he would leave well enough alone. Sam wasn't dumb, he just didn't always listen to reason. Or his conscience. Or… well, anything. He choked down another bite of pancakes, grimacing; this time, it was ice cold throughout.

"I'd like to see Noelle," he said.

"You're on bed rest until at least tomorrow, doc's orders. I'll take you to her first thing, okay?"

"All right," Castiel agreed reluctantly.

"Oh, and you've had another visitor, too, besides just me and Sam."

"What – who? Bobby came all the way from South Dakota?" Somehow, Castiel couldn't quite picture that, not if he were the one injured and not one of the boys.

"No, not Bobby. But we're going to his place once Noelle wakes up so you two can get some rest."

"I don't need rest."

"Bullshit. You look like the guy from A Clockwork Orange after he jumps out the fucking window. Anyway, no, it was Gabriel who came to see you."

"What… Gabriel?" Castiel asked, hardly believing it. "Gabriel is dead."

"Gabriel was dead," Dean corrected. "All that vampire shit? That was Samuel luring us in. It was all a trap, even that vampire attacking Noelle the night we almost got wrecked by a semi. Samuel kidnapped her and was about to summon Raphael, but Gabriel got there first and saved her."

"How did he come back?"

"We're assuming the same way you did. Twice."

"You think God resurrected him?"

"Why not?" Dean shrugged. "Anyway, yeah, he came by. He might come back, he said he would."

Castiel nodded. The thought filled him with a strange mix of contentment and dread. The last time he had seen Gabriel, the archangel had effectively handed him his ass, to use what Castiel had come to consider a "Winchesterism," then trapped him in some kind of bunker at least two continents away while he played mind games with the boys. But then again, it was Gabriel, and Gabriel's sense of humor had always been… twisted.

#

Gabriel did come back.

Sam and Dean had left once visiting hours were over, and it was now well past midnight and Castiel was trying to sleep (vainly attempting to suppress the racing thoughts that filled his mind alternatingly with images of his garrison being tortured for their loyalty, of Noelle never waking up, of Raphael freeing Michael and Lucifer) when the blinds on his window blew in a fierce gust that made his sheet whip halfway off his bed. He opened his eyes.

"Gabriel," he said, sitting up.

The older angel grinned from where he had perched himself on Castiel's bedside table. "Hey, little brother," he said. "Feeling all right?"

Castiel only glared in response.

"I didn't think so."

"Thank you for rescuing Noelle," he said, instead of encouraging Gabriel. "Dean told me what happened. Gabriel, how did you survive? They told me Lucifer killed you."

"Yeah, Lucifer killed me all right." Gabriel shrugged. "I guess Dad came through for me after all. I dunno, though, going to one soccer game doesn't exactly make you father of the year, does it?"

Castiel fell silent once more, looking to the side. Gabriel heaved a sigh, and Castiel didn't have to look at him to know that he was rolling his eyes.

"Look, whatever variation of 'I failed my Father' is running through your head right now, don't sweat it. Anyone else with your gig would have given up long before this. So can we skip the pep talk?"

"Yes, Gabriel," Castiel said wearily. "We can skip the pep talk. I don't want to hear it." He rubbed his forehead, feeling extremely small, even smaller than he had felt after falling to his hands and knees before Pestilence, coughing up blood as his lungs crumpled inside his chest. Heaven was doomed. He tried to put it out of his mind. "I don't suppose you plan on going home, Gabriel."

"Not on your life," the archangel replied cheerfully. "But I did go visit the kids and let them know that Raphael was on his way."

"What?"

"Your, uh, foot soldiers," said Gabriel, shrugging. "The little ones – well, the littler ones. Muriel, Nisroc, and Xaphan. They've gone into hiding so Raph doesn't throw them in Prison, and they warned a bunch of other anti-apocalypticos. The resistance is still there, just underground now. They're not gonna let all your work go to waste, Cas."

Relief washed over him. Maybe Heaven wasn't doomed after all. Maybe Muriel, Nisroc, and Xaphan would somehow be able to help Camael escape Prison. Maybe Balthazar would even show his cowardly face and help as well.

"I am… glad to hear that," Castiel said, guarding his voice carefully. "But why did Raphael not just kill me? Why rip out my grace? Where is my grace?"

"Nowhere on Earth," said Gabriel immediately. "I checked. Most likely they've locked it up in Heaven. I don't know what Raphael's endgame was with this stunt, but if he went through all the trouble to get it out of you, he's not going to let it out of his sight. So don't ask me to go get it for you."

"I wasn't going to," Castiel replied. It was a lie, but Gabriel didn't have to know that. "What about Noelle?" he asked instead.

"What about her?"

"Is… Dean told me that the doctors don't know why she won't wake. There's no medical reason for her not to. Do you know anything about it?"

Gabriel shrugged again. "My guess is that in order to catch you, she used a little more juice than she actually had. Her grace probably hijacked some of her soul to do it and tore it up a little. I'm going to assume that when her soul recovers, she'll wake up."

"How long will that take? Will the damage be permanent? Will she – still be Noelle?"

"I don't know," Gabriel said nonchalantly. "I'm not really an expert on human souls. And now I'm out of here. Sorry I didn't bring you a get-well card, but—"

"Wait!" Castiel cried. "Gabriel, you're just going to go back into hiding? After you helped Sam and Dean defeat Lucifer?"

Gabriel turned a rather icy glare onto him. "I didn't say that. I just finished telling you that the resistance isn't gone, kid. It's just switching tactics. They tried it your way, and it didn't work. Full-frontal assault is only a fair fight when the other side is just as strong – or weak – as yours, so we're going to be doing more sneak attacks and ambushes and infiltration. So relax. I'm going to help out. When I feel like it. And I wasn't going to bring it up, but since you did, I'm a little pissed off about how the whole 'defeating Lucifer' thing ended."

Castiel didn't reply to that. He had known Gabriel very well when he was a child, despite their coolness towards one another now. It was Gabriel who had tried to teach him that it was all right to love humans, when he had first failed as a watcher and been reassigned to Anna's garrison of avengers. It was Gabriel who had insisted that humans were designed to be loved. Because Gabriel felt love like no other angel, for both humanity and for his brothers. Watching Michael and Lucifer fight nearly to the death had been too much for him. Castiel knew that giving Sam and Dean the keys to his brother's cage had been difficult enough; he could understand Gabriel's anger that not only had Lucifer been damned back to Hell, but Michael had as well.

He considered informing Gabriel that the boys also had a brother in Hell, but decided against it.

"We did not forsee that outcome," he said instead. "But if Raphael has his way, Michael and Lucifer will both be free before long."

"And I'm going to fight to keep it from happening," Gabriel replied. "Just don't expect me to like it, Castiel. And by the way, you're probably not going to be too happy about it, but I carved the Enochian sigil on your ribs like you did to Heckle and Jeckle. Figured we didn't need anyone going after you. The only thing is that the kids can't answer you if you pray to them; we think Raphael is going to catch onto us before long and you can bet he'll be keeping an eye out for any of them going down to Earth."

"I understand," said Castiel grimly, "but there must be another way - that leaves me unable to help, Gabriel."

"Exactly." Gabriel held up a hand to silence Castiel's protest. He spoke without derision. "No, listen to me, little brother. It's the end of the line for you. This is an angels' war and you're not an angel anymore."

Castiel knew this. He had known since regaining consciousness hours ago. Having become human before, he recalled perfectly the empty, hollow feeling where his grace should be, the overwhelming weakness, the sense that suddenly the world was very big, and he was very, very tiny. It was all just the same – made worse, even, because the last time, he had matyred his grace, he had become human through actions of his own. He had fully expected to die, then. But this time, it had been taken from him by force, and Castiel felt more powerless than he ever had in his long life. And hearing it from his brother's mouth cemented it in reality.

Gabriel looked at him sadly. "I'm sorry, Cas." Then he flew off, folding space with the wings he still had, the grace he had not lost.

Okay, I skipped over Dean getting Sam's soul because it's essentially the same thing that happened in the show, just much, much, much later. A little behind-the-scenes intel that I tried to work into the story but it was just awkward to cram in: Dean did try to lie and keep Sam from realizing that he was Sambot for a million years, but he soon realized that even he wouldn't be able to keep his story straight, since ninety-eight percent of it was bullshit and he didn't think he could count on Noelle and Cas to stick to the same story, and told Sam the truth. Crowley hasn't shown up since, but the boys are pretty sure he knows Sammy's got his soul back, which means he has no leverage. They're hoping to never see him again. And everyone knows that the Winchesters' lives ALWAYS work out the way they hope.

And no one seems angry about Noelle shacking up with a canon character, yay. Special thanks to DemonUntilDeath, who gave me some lovely and wise advice. Did I mention that I have fantastic readers and you're all frigging wonderful? Seriously, the amount of encouragement I'm getting from you guys makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. I'm not too upset about the small number of reviews - quality over quantity and all that. You guys rock.

Also, a note about Exit Seraphim to those of you reading it: I'm hoping to get Bitter or Sweet done in one fell swoop. The amount I have been working on it is a little surreal. If I were this zealous with my original work, I would literally have finished three novels by now. Once I've finished Bitter or Sweet, I'll have more time to work on Exit Seraphim (and hopefully my novel, but hey, who needs to get paid when there's fanfiction). I'm still going to work on it while Bitter or Sweet is still being written, but once this monstrosity of a fic is over, I'm going to put much more time and effort into Exit Seraphim. I know I haven't updated it in weeks, but I have no plans of abandoning it.

SORRY ABOUT THE EPICALLY LONG NOTES. THIS HAS BEEN A LONG-WINDED RAMBLE.