TW: Discussions of rape.

It is a witch and the boiling in Dean's blood is placated when they tie her up the chair and tears run down her face. Dean might've felt sorry for her, but he didn't have it in him. Witches were people, but they were horrible people who stuck their fingers in dark, dirty stuff that needed to remain alone. She brought this upon herself.

"What's all the goat blood for, Maleficent?" he says, sticking the tip of his demon blade underneath her chin. To her credit, she looks him right in the eye when she tells him to go fuck himself.

"Rude," Dean says in a snort. "I'm gonna ask again real nice now, but if you don't answer me this time, I'm gonna get angry. And trust me lady, you won't like me angry."

"I don't like you very much right now," she says.

"Well then you really won't like me."

"Stop," Sam says. He forces Dean back and Sam steps up, kneeling down to be eye level with the witch.

"What are you planning?"

"Nothing," she spits. "I was running low on my reserves. I needed to stock up. I got a little carried away, but I'm not planning anything and I haven't hurt nobody!"

"Tell that to the farmer; you killed half his herd, that's half his livelihood gone."

"He should've invested in a better lock on his gate if he was so concerned."

Dean cuts her on her forearm. Not deep enough to kill, but it will hurt and she cries in pain and blood seeps out the wound.

"Dean," Sam says, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Dean?" the witch repeats. "As in, Dean Winchester? The Righteous Man?" Her eyes flare up in glee and it makes Dean's stomach do somersaults. "Is it true, Winchester? Did you really fall in love with the angel? Was he as good a fuck as the demons say?"

Dean's pulling the knife out of her heart before he even realizes he'd plunged it in. He stares down at the red tinted blade—suddenly the knife feels so much heavier in his hands and Sam's looking at him with those eyes again and Dean feels like he's going to puke. He needs a drink; he needs a smoke and he needs his pills and he needs to get away from those eyes. They're stabbing him, digging into his most sensitive flesh. It makes him hurt in a way he's never hurt before; not even when he was in Hell and Alastair asked him every day for thirty years.

It's not fair that Cas can still make him hurt when he's been dead for two years.

They go back to Bobby's and Dean splits the soonest he can. He finds himself back at a familiar crossroads and this time it only takes him ten minutes to set up the devil's trap and summoning box.

"I told you, Winchester, I can't bring Castiel back! There is nothing to bring back!" Crowley shouts.

"I need an archangel blade."

Crowley looks like he's been slapped. "Are you bloody nuts? How the bloody hell am I supposed to get you an archangel blade?"

"I have archangel blood. I just need you to make the rest. Please, Crowley." He was actually begging; to Crowley.

"You do know what one needs to make an angel blade, right? This little pesky, minute detail called being an angel! I seem to be lacking that one particular requirement, Squirrel, so, once again, I can't help you. Now let me go—I'm this close to luring Drew Barrymore into a deal where she never has to work with Adam Sandler again. Poor bird's desperate enough to sell her soul to get out of that contract."

Dean can't speak. In reality, he had expected this, but it doesn't make the pain go away.

"Then I want at the demons."

Crowley stares at him, sucks on his lower lip for fifteen seconds—Dean knows because he counts—and he then he pops his lips and looks to the dirt. "All right, Squirrel, listen up because you only get a deal like this once in a lifetime. My lifetime, I mean. I'll let you at the demons, free of charge, for twenty four hours. But I want them back. I don't care what condition, but if you kill them, I will be taking your soul."

"What makes you think I still have a soul left to sell?"

"I'm the King of Hell, darling. I've seen it all; you best get off your high horse while you still can, because I'm going to break it to you. There are souls sutured to the racks, more mangled than you can comprehend—and really, you of all people should be able to comprehend, shouldn't you?—You're not the one percent, Dean. Your hurt isn't any more valuable than any other pathetic snail. It's average. You think you're the only person to have had your precious little heart ripped out your chest?"

Dean takes a step forward. "The demons, Crowley."

"Right." Crowley snaps his fingers. "You'll find them in a little barn that's quite familiar to you, I'm sure; I was even nice enough wrap them all up in pretty bowed devil's traps for you. Don't break them, darling. Like I said, I want them back."

Dean breaks the devil's trap and was heading back towards the car before Crowley disappeared.

8888

There's a weight added to the bed, soft and subtle, that Dean barely notices it except for the heaviness that latches onto the atmosphere. It's sitting on his chest, compressing his lungs and Dean has no choice but to wake up and examine and by the time he's sitting up, his Glock in his hand, safety half off.

As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he sees Cas's silhouette sitting on the far corner of the bed, facing away from him, bent over his knees. Dean flicks the safety off and stashes his gun back underneath his pillow.

"Cas?" He says, reaching a tender hand out.

"Go back to sleep, Dean," Cas says and there's…something in his voice, something dark, malicious and foreign; it's wrong, whatever it is and Dean turns on the night side lamp.

"You okay, buddy?" Dean asks, wincing as the light penetrates his eyes. Cas still won't face him.

"Where is Sam?"

"We had to split up; they were out of double rooms."

"Oh."

Now that Dean can see more clearly, having adjusted, he can see a tremble in Cas's form, shivers that run up and down his spin and a hasty sound that escapes past his lips, breathy and broken.

"Are you…" Dean frowns, the sound is so unfamiliar from Cas, "are you crying?"

"No," Cas spits out, too quickly and it hits Dean in the face. Holy shit, he thinks, Cas is crying.

He's out of bed and in front of Cas in an instant, but Cas won't look him in the eye and Dean feels like a knife has been plunged into his heart because of it. Cas always looks at him, straight into soul, with his icy daggers of eyes that could dissect Dean from soul to skin.

"Are you hurt?" Dean's hands are on Cas then, ignoring the startled flinching, and he pulls off Cas's coat to examine him for wounds. If Raphael hurt Cas, Dean was going—he didn't care about anything except seeing that Cas was okay; there was no blood or bruising, but Dean still couldn't shake the fact that something was terribly wrong because Cas still wouldn't look at him, and as Dean got closer, something bitter made his nostrils twitch, a pungent, sour stank that now was blindingly obvious. Dean tasted it with every inhale—it was a familiar smell, but unfamiliar, because this was Cas and—

"Dude," Dean said, tossing aside the coat to the floor far away, "you smell like—" sex was left on his lips as a whisper.

And then it all fell into place. And a bomb went off inside Dean, and he thought for a moment his blood vessels might explode and he fell into the pit the explosion left. Anger was safety, anger was a tool and was a familiar comfort. He grabbed Cas firmly by the shoulders, imagined himself searing a brand into Cas's shoulder, a hazard warning to anything that even dared to look at this out of reach thing that would read Property of Dean Winchester DO NOT TOUCH and he lowered his voice, tried to be gentle, but it was hard because the anger was threatening to drown him, "Cas, look at me," he says in a voice that leaves no room for argument. Free will or not, Cas still has trouble disobeying Dean's orders.

And there was all the confirmation Dean needed buried in those eyes, red rimmed and glossy. Dean turns around and kicked the wall, attacks the desk and throws off the lamp, letting it shatter on the floor in dozens of pieces.

And then Castiel is sobbing behind him, broken, haggard breaths that sounds like there's ice in his chest and Dean's heart freezes. He's going to Hell, he knows it. It doesn't matter what Joshua told him, or what Cas will tell him; none of his previous sins matter, not the drinking, or swearing, or womanizing, or stealing, because none of them can ever compare to making an angel cry.

If God wasn't such a deadbeat, Dean was sure He would strike him down.

Dean puts his hands back on Cas's shoulders and pulls him into the fiercest hug he's ever given. Cas falls into it and buries his face into the safety of Dean's shoulder, wracked by sobs and spasms. They stay like that for a long time, until Cas quiets down and his sobs die down into pained hiccups.

"Raphael?" Dean ventures cautiously.

Cas shakes his head violently against Dean's shoulder. "Demons," he spits out like a vile curse.

Demons, Dean thinks. Demons. Plural. And it's so much worse than what Dean had allowed himself to imagine. He tries to imagine Cas's fear and pain, what it must have felt like to be touched and violated by damnation when he carried the breath of God in his lungs.

"And Balthazar?" because damnit, Cas said he wouldn't go without backup.

"Dead."

Dean sighs and pulls Cas closer to him, trying to fool himself into thinking that maybe he can swallow this precious, alien thing into his chest to protect it.

"They made him watch," Cas says slowly, like he's tripping over his words, "and then they killed him."

What would Dean have done if he were Balthazar and Cas was Sam? If he were forced to witness his brother being torn and violated and there wasn't a damn fucking thing he could do about it? Death, maybe, was a mercy to Balthazar; Dean knows he wouldn't want to live with himself if he lived in those shoes.

Suddenly Cas is pulling away from him, pushing against his chest, struggling to get free. "I shouldn't be here," he says and looks towards the sky, forlorn and teary.

"Wait," Dean yells and grabs a tight hold of Cas's wrist, pulling it to his chest. "Stay here. Please, Cas."

"I shouldn't be here," Cas says and shakes his head. "They need me."

"I need you too," Dean says. He regrets it instantly—not because of the vulnerability he's placed upon himself by admitting it, but because he's asking Cas to choose between him and his family. Again.

Dean scoots forward. "Look at me, buddy?"

Cas complies, but his gaze is weak. What once made Deans shiver under now is mute and lukewarm, non-penetrating. Cas was looking only at him and not into him like he used to.

"They can take care themselves for one night," Dean tries to reason. "Just…lay with me. C'mon, buddy." Dean coaxes Cas up the bed and onto his side—his back facing Dean. Dean rubs circles in between Cas's shoulder blades, counts the breaths that crawl in and out of his lungs.

"He asked me what Father wanted him to do with his free will," Cas says after several moments of silence. Dean waits with bated breaths, presses his palm deeper into his skin. "I said, 'Free will is a piece of rope. Go hang yourself with it'."

Dean can't help but smile, bitter and broken, but he holds back a chuckle. His angel is a freaking badass.

"I'm sorry, Dean."

"For what?"

Cas is silent for a while. "I'm sorry."

Dean blinks and runs his hand through Cas's hair. He resists the urge to kiss the top of Cas's head—it's not right, not appropriate; Cas was scared, crying and depressed and such an act would only worsen all of those conditions. Dean resisted, telling himself one day. Maybe one day, when Cas won his war, they could be like this. It was so easy to picture Cas with him and Sam, sitting in the back of the Impala, coming on hunts with them. With all his freaky ten thousand years of knowledge about history and lore and religion, he was a walking search engine. And he was terrifying with a blade and a pair of fists.

If Dean even allowed himself to think about it, he could fool himself into believing that it was supposed to be this way, Cas with them. He could believe that God, wherever the hell He was, wanted them to have Cas. Cas had always been a Winchester at heart.

He certainly had the self-loathing to be one.

There's a lot he could say to Cas in this moment; most of them angry, profane responses directed completely towards Raphael and not Cas in the slightest, but he held back because….

Because he doesn't want to admit to himself that he failed yet another friend.

And because he didn't want to force Cas to talking about something he obviously wasn't comfortable with. He was still suffering from the immediacy, and he was hurt and tired and Dean wasn't going to hurt him anymore than he already was.

He wishes he could kiss Cas and take away the pain, but that would have to wait for later; a slow, painful journey.

Instead he continues to rub at Cas's back with just one hand, careful to stay close to the shoulders and says, "Go to sleep, Cas."

"I do not require sleep."

"Yeah," Dean says with a sigh. "But it'll make you feel better. Just to get a couple hours."

"I fail to see how several hours of total unconsciousness can make one feel better. Sleep requires relaxation, but how can one relax when they know that in their sleep they are unprotected, vulnerable? How do you know that your eyes will open in the morning after you've closed them for the night? Dean, did you know that nearly ten percent of your American population dies in their sleep? How can you possibly bear it?"

"Because," Dean fumbles for the right words, but damnit, this is Sam's area of expertise; this whole, feeling and comfort thing. And even worse, Cas is using science and logic—how is Dean supposed to argue with that, much less make Cas see any differently?

"Because," Dean says, stronger, "you just gotta have faith that you'll wake up. You gotta have faith that everything will be okay while you sleep, and you gotta have faith that you'll wake up in the morning. Where's your faith, bud?"

"I do not know."

"Nothing's gonna happen, I promise. You're safe with me, remember? I'm not gonna let anything happen to you."

"I trust you, Dean."

"Then go the fuck to sleep."

Cas stops talking and Dean keeps rubbing circles in his back as his breathing evens and the tension in his body slightly lessens.

Dean falls asleep eventually too and when he wakes up, he's surprised to see that Cas is still there. Never in all the years they've known each other has Cas still been there when he's woken up.

Cas is sitting up on the edge of the bed, staring straight ahead at the wall. Dean rubs the sleep out of his eyes and carefully reaches forward. He ignores the surprised flinch Cas gives at Dean's touch because Cas doesn't acknowledge it, either. In fact, he seems to be trying a valiant effort to pretend it hadn't happened, immediately returning to his tense, straight, warrior of God posture.

"Hey," Dean says, "how long have you been up?"

"Not long," Cas says. After a moment he adds, "I shouldn't be here."

"I say that's crap."

Cas turns to look at Dean—pained and stressed and he looks like he's been crying again, but his mouth is straight, "They need me. They are counting on me to lead them."

"Well, maybe they should start to figure it out for themselves. Free will is great and all, but they're only following you. They're not really making their own choices."

"Which is why I have to win this war. They are confused. They don't know whether to follow me or Raphael. And…"

"And?"

"Raphael no longer wishes to re-start the Apocalypse."

"Okay," Dean swallows. "Then what does he want with this war?"

"He wants to be God." Cas says it with such a broken voice, like he's punched in the guts and for a brief moment, Dean worries he'll start crying again. Cas doesn't, but he still won't met Dean's eyes.

Dean knows his father messed up a lot with him and Sam. He was a shitty dad, but he was a good man and that's what mattered. God, Dean figures, is a lot like John Winchester. Maybe not a good dad per se, but He brought Cas back twice—that counts for something in Dean's book, even if the guy is a total deadbeat.

And Cas—Cas adores his Father, has placed every ounce of faith in his blood in God and now someone wants to replace Him. Dean can't imagine anyone other than John Winchester as his dad, and frankly he doesn't want to imagine it. He wouldn't have it any other way and Cas must think the same thing about his dad, surely?

Cas stands up suddenly, looking to the ceiling. "I shouldn't be here," he says again and looks Dean in the eyes this time. "I have to go."

Dean reaches out to grab at Cas's coattails or arms or something, screams, "Wait!" but Cas is gone in a flutter of wings and Dean's left alone in the motel room

AN: If anyone's interested, I'm looking for a beta. For the remainder of this story and for a few other SPN stuff I have planned. Shoot me a PM if you're interested and much love.