The high beams of the Impala wash out the entire scene before Dean as he rubs his hands together before the rattling air vents of his beloved car, working circulation back into his fingers and taking a moment to get his head together before things go down. Outside of the car, he watches as his brother throws another can of spray paint to Castiel, who catches it deftly before tossing his spent can into the pile in the corner, retracing old and damaged symbols on weather-beaten wood, refreshing traps and sigils that Bobby Singer had placed there long before.

Years before, in fact.

It's burned into his memory, crystal clear. He remembers sitting on the table Cas is balanced on now, waiting for a monster and being confronted instead with the most perplexing creature he'd ever encountered.

Satisfied with his work, Cas hops down from the table and surveys the sigils done in fluorescent orange traffic paint, procured from Jody's house, and exchanges a few unheard words with his little brother. Sam's teeth flash white in the headlights, his shoulders shaking in laughter, and Dean steps out of the car and looks in the wide-open doors of the barn, resting his arm along the top of the car and looking at the two men before him, an eyebrow raised. "Why do I get the feeling it's me you're laughing at?"

"Cas was telling me 'bout the night you two met here." Sam flashes Dean another grin, and it's probably a sign of how screwed up they are, that everything can seem funny right before they go and do something suicidal. They've had one too many last nights on Earth. "And how it's his fault none of the lights work now."

"I needed to make an impression." There's a faint, rueful quirk to Castiel's lips as he drags his trench coat back on now that he's done painting and won't inadvertently ruin the gift Dean had given him, and he shoves his hands deeply into the pockets to warm them, hunched into the coat. "I believe it worked."

"Yeah, yeah. You're very impressive. We done playing arts-and-crafts now?" Dean deflects, because if he dwells on that too long they're going to end up remembering just how well trying to trap an angel in this barn had gone last time. Stabbing and shooting Cas on first sight, the flare of light that shadowed wings onto the wall behind him, all of it only underscores that Cas doesn't have that kind of mojo now. . . and Asmodeus does. Meanwhile, Cas is a master at traps, sigils and rituals, but Dean can't help but remember the first time Cas built up an 'unbreakable' trap for him, and Alistair broke it to kick their asses. Spray paint instead of chalk took care of the whole 'drip water on it' trick, but even Cas has slipped an angel trap before, and Asmodeus has all his memories.

They're fighting a creature with all of Cas's old powers, all of his memories, but without any of Cas's compunctions about outright killing them all.

Castiel's eyes seem to glow in the Impala's headlights, too-bright, unblinking despite the glare, and Dean knows he must just appear as a shadow on the other side of that light to Castiel, and yet he's meeting Dean's stare. "We're done. And this will work, Dean."

"Says the guy who didn't even want us here." Dean reminds him, and Cas raises and drops his shoulders in a faint shrug, unfazed by the reminder.

"Yeah, but we're Team Free Will." Sam interjects, and the guy couldn't look more hopeful and earnest, head swiveling back and forth between them, perpetually trying to mend fences that didn't actually need it. "So we're doing this together."

Dean doesn't respond, ducking back into the car and snatching up the supplies he'd been pulling together. Handing off two old fashioned hurricanes lamp to Sam, he carries the bag to Cas, and as the fallen angel reaches to take it he snags him by the wrist, drags him in close, and kisses him. The move is abrupt, without warning and nearly violent in force, but Castiel fists his free hand into Dean's jacket, yanking him closer still without hesitation, kissing him like it's the main event.

"You know, still in the room." Sam grouses, and then sighs in exasperation when his words do nothing to separate them. He meanders the table, lights the lamp, perches on the edge with one foot still planted on the floor, and makes a show of checking his watch. Repeatedly. With annoyed sighs each time. "If you two wanted to make out, you could have let me have another hour's sleep before waking me up for this. I wouldn't have minded."

Sam is bitching just to be a bitch, and they all know it. Still, Cas breaks the kiss, breathing hard, and holds an admonishing finger up between himself and Dean. "That. . . was not a goodbye."

"Damn right it wasn't." Dean growls, and then holds up Cas's hex bag, snatched from his pocket without him noticing. "That was work. I've got my head in the game. You're the one forgetting steps."

"If you ever use that distraction method to pickpocket anyone else, Dean Winchester. . ."

"Someone's jealous. And distractible."

". . . Why did I think hunting with a married couple was a good idea?"

Dean smirks and raises a middle finger at his brother without turning, considering it a small revenge for all the times his moose brother had interrupted in the past, and for Sam being the one who'd been plotting a damned shotgun wedding (literally—with shotguns) with Bobby for half a year.

"Because you cherish your brother's happiness, despite complaining about it recreationally." Castiel responds to Sam primly, and presses a quick, chaste kiss to the corner of Dean's mouth, not giving him the chance to return it. Stepping back, he drops the bag onto the table, pulling out a silver bowl and his supplies as he arranges them for his use. "Park the car, Dean. I'll wait until you're back to begin."

"Wouldn't it be easier to just keep the car here?" Sam pushes his hair back from his face, and accepts the journal from Castiel, familiar enough with it as a reference and written as it was for an audience, so that he flips to the correct page nearly as quickly as he would have John Winchester's familiar journal.

"Asmodeus has made a point of destroying places of particular significance to me, based upon my memories. Dean's car is the single most consistent environment I have experienced outside of Heaven. I would prefer it remain safe, and not to have to linger to repair it."

"She." Dean corrects, already opening the car door.

"I refuse to accept gender qualifications for inanimate objects."

"He's just jealous of our relationship, Baby." Dean pets his car and Cas raises his head, narrowing his eyes at Dean across the span of the barn.

"It's bad enough that you talk to the car. Please stop fondling it."

"That's a battle you've already lost, man." Sam snorts, and at this point Dean's not even sure which of them is trying to raise the spirits of the other. They're all in on it, giving the conversation an air of strained levity and grim humor.

Dean pulls the car away from the barn, preparing to park her in the weeds and tree line to keep their escape method safe and nearby, and Castiel immediately shucks off his coat again and his shirts, baring his torso to the freezing air and pulling a startled interjection from Sam. "What the fuck . . .?"

Paper thin cuts, shallow and precise: he does not wish to scar once again, and he has learned in his humanity now how inconvenient the many injuries he has collected can be during healing. The bite out of his shoulder is bad enough, he doesn't want to disable himself before the fight. He has very little time before Dean will return, and this is not something he wants him to witness.

In fact, it was part of why he had originally decided to do this alone. Even now, Sam wants to intervene nearly as much as Dean would. "Blood, Sam. My attempt to contact Claire in St. Louis failed, but I believe I know now what will work. It's the blood that made her a suitable vessel for Asmodeus, and gave Ba'el a tie to the bloodline as well. And through blood, I was tied to Asmodeus's grace."

"And you wanted Dean gone for this because. . .?" Sam's anger in defense of Dean, on his brother's behalf, is comforting to Castiel. He doesn't become defensive in response: rather, he keeps dragging the knife along the inside of his forearm, before switching hands and doing the same to the other arm. "Because I am recreating in miniature what was carved into my flesh in Utah to free Asmodeus and Ba'el. Considering his recent foray back into torture, I would rather not remind Dean of my hours with Meg and add to his nightmares. I have been very careful not to make reference to it or to indicate that the torture had any long-term psychological effect."

". . . You're trying to protect him." Sam drags a hand down his face but shifts posture, no longer looming and prepared to wrench the knife away from Castiel's hands.

"Of course. It's what we all try to offer each other." The knife point slips, leaving a deeper furrow than he intended as he works to steady it in his off hand, and Castiel blinks as Sam reaches out and catches his hand, taking the knife away. Before he can protest, remind Sam that he had agreed with the purpose, the younger Winchester stretches his arm out and focuses on his lacerated skin. "If you scar yourself up doing this, Dean'll never forgive me. Just sound out the ones you need and stop me if I start doing it wrong, or better yet, write them down. This'll be faster, so you can get your clothes back on before I get my ass kicked for this by Dean."

True to his words, Cas is shrugging his coat back into place when Dean rejoins them in the barn, blowing on his hands to warm them and nodding at the table. "We ready to start this show?"

Castiel answers by throwing a pinch of myrrh into the bowl before him, taking a last long look at Dean and Sam falling in around him, and he begins chanting, Enochian flowing smoothly, guttural and deep. The light flares from the bowl, bright and blinding, and before they have time to blink away the illumination her words reach them in a voice sweet and saccharine as honey.

"Hello, Castiel."

Clothed as she is in a pristine white dress, her feet bare, Claire Novak is the willowy, slender and innocent portrait of youthful beauty.
Vibrant blue eyes, rounded cheeks and honey blonde hair, Asmodeus's intensity seems out of place on that face as she slings a hand out violently and slams both Winchesters to the floor, her eyes fixed on Castiel standing flat-footed and loose before her. Still chanting quietly, trusting in Sam and Dean's skill to keep them alive for now, his unblinking stare remains fixed on the creature who ripped his psyche apart.

"Did you like my gifts, brother?" Asmodeus asks, each step towards him making her skirts sway gently, with a ballerina's grace and form. "I see you're still playing with the humans. . ." Dean, rising to a knee with the Colt aimed at her head, slams hard into the wall of the barn, and she flicks her eyes towards him without stopping her slow approach, her voice dangerous.

"What gifts. . ." Dean gasps out, and Asmodeus tuts.

"Are you speaking for him, now, too? My gifts. Poor, deluded Castiel believes himself a human, he has allowed you to leash him. He was willing to follow you, like a pet, accepting whatever scraps you threw his way." She steps past Castiel to cup her hand to Dean's jaw, raising him up from the floor, watching Castiel out of the corner of her eyes as she does, her other hand fisted to keep the fallen angel in place. "I have ripped away those leashes, so that he can be as he was intended again."

"Leave him alone." Castiel is drawing her attention now, his chanting complete, but Asmodeus ignores him, leaving him immobilized as she leans towards Dean, her small chin level with his chest as she holds him up against the wall.

"What is it about you that a Seraph, a hero like Castiel, a man who stood in our Father's shoes and meted out justice to you mud monkeys, that would have him so debase himself for you."

"I like to think it's because of my. . . hrrrk." Her hand tightens around his throat the moment he opens his mouth, and he slides an inch farther up the wall. "Yes, the sarcasm. I had enough of that in his memories. And it is a distraction. For the other brother, I think."

Asmodeus disappears, letting Dean crash to the floor, and reappears behind Sam; with a single breath, she blows out the flame of his Zippo like the candles on a child's birthday cake. Resting a hand on his shoulder, her strength presses him to his knees. "Holy fire. Yes, I have memories of this trick. Hello, Sam. I will be with you in a moment. Lucifer would like a word with you. First, however, I have business to attend to with your brother. He is the last thing holding Castiel back."

Her fingers brush against Sam's hairline, and his lanky frame folds forward as he slumps into unconsciousness: she knows how they work, how they plan, how they think. With Castiel's memories, she has hunted alongside them nearly a year.

The angelic blade slices across the meat of her bicep, staining the white dress in blood and the faint glow of Grace, and Asmodeus turns to look up at Castiel. "Barely a glancing blow. You're not willing to kill this vessel." She admonishes. "How very human. And behaving like an obedient dog, again, immediately coming to the defense of your master." Castiel has planted himself between Asmodeus and Dean as the hunter pushes himself to his feet against the wall, keeping her from reaching her intended target. "Did I touch a nerve?"

"No." Castiel runs the flat of his hand down the angelic blade, holding up a palm stained in her blood and his, mingled together: blood to blood. The circuit begun in Utah, refreshed in his blood and his ritual, completes. "But I did."

The movement is inhumanly fast. The strength behind it astounding and unexpected.

And Castiel slams Asmodeus to the ground by her throat, pinning her there, his breathing harsh and ragged, his blue eyes lit with gold by the light of the hurricane lamps. "Light it."

No. Not gold. . . amber. Yellow. Displaying a demonic strength, Castiel raises eyes straight from Dean Winchester's worst nightmares, nightmares that dated back to the night his mother burned to death on the ceiling of his childhood home, and grinds out the command again. "Dean, now. I can't hold her."

Dean lashes out a hand, knocking the hurricane lamp off of the table, and fire chases itself across the floor, a perfect circle spanning the space between the two tables, with the angel trapped within, and Castiel right beside her; separated from the Winchesters by flame once more. He only barely manages to keep himself from being tossed into those flames, as Asmodeus flings her arms, throwing him off of her. "You fool."

"Yes." Castiel agrees, flexing his grip on the angelic blade in his hand, and he circles as she moves, trying to keep space between them.

"Cas, get out of there." Dean calls, helping Sam to his feet now that the mojo-whammy was wearing off with her cut off from the outside, and Asmodeus answers in a laugh like ringing churchbells. "He can't. Don't you understand, you imbecile? He's tied himself to my Grace: while I am here, he is stuck here. Was this your plan, brother? Tap into the fires of hell through me again, to save your boyfriend?"

. . . Castiel has stolen the Hells Angels power that Asmodeus had once offered him like a drug, and staged a goddamned cage match.

"Husband." Castiel corrects automatically, and there's strain in his voice: his eyes are blue again, if they'd ever changed, and his steps are slow and predatory, his center of gravity kept low to allow him to dodge quickly. "Sam, the exorcism."

These were the very worst words for him to say. Asmodeus lunges, and metal clangs against metal as her own blade appears suddenly in her hand. Castiel twists out of her reach fluidly, keeping himself from being thrown back into the flames, making a bridge over the trap with his flesh as he had done to Meg. Cas is fighting like an angel, power crackling off of him, but in the light of the flames Asmodeus's wings are spread wide in shadows: Castiel's own shadow is long, narrow, and decidedly human in appearance. "It feels good, doesn't it brother? To have power back, to be something again? So close to what we could make you again. Whole. No more slow death following along in his footsteps."

Dean must make a sound because Asmodeus's eyes slide towards him, and Cas launches himself in a counter, recapturing her attention again when he should retreat, drawing it out knowing all he needs is to stall her long enough to allow Sam time to finish.

"Omni potentas Dei potestatum invoco. . ."

"Oh, yes, Dean. He knows he is dying. He knew when he ripped his Grace out what he had done to himself." With a lazy flick of her wrist, Asmodeus counters Castiel's hasty attack, and her blade draws blood in a line across his neck as he wrenches himself back. He is keeping her from slitting his throat, but as the creature she is, one of the originators of sin and temptation, it is her words that are the most potent weapon. "He could have chosen to do it correctly, to be reborn as Anael did, or to simply survive in a half-life as he had been, but he ripped everything out to prove himself to you. He ripped it out, but kept the memories, millions of years in a human mind not meant to hold it, because he couldn't risk forgetting you."

"Shut up." Castiel hisses, blue eyes narrowed, but he doesn't go for the killing blow: he cannot. When Dean raises the Colt, prepared to put a bullet in Asmodeus's skull to protect Cas and end it, Castiel reaches out and wrenches her to the side with borrowed strength, towards the flame, locking them into combat again and interposing himself between the body of Claire Novak and the bullet intended to murder the creature inside of her.

He has to save her.

"Hoc angelorum in obsequentum. . ."

"Little Castiel. Brother. Father's warrior, his weapon for so long. No sense of self-worth because he has no sense of self outside of you, Dean. He fell for all the wrong reasons and he is still falling, free fall at terminal velocity and all that's left is the sudden stop at the end. The most elaborate, excruciating, drawn-out suicide for infatuation in history. . ."

"I am not suicidal." Castiel's protest ends on a choked gasp, as Asmodeus quits toying with him at last. Leaning close to his face, her unnaturally glowing eyes boring into Castiel's as the exorcism threatens her control on her vessel, her words are a carrying whisper and Dean is scrambling to the edge of the circle of Holy Fire prepared to break it.

"Then prove it. Take the power permanently and call off your hunters, brother, or I am taking you with me." Her arm is thrust into Castiel, buried deep into him as she digs claws into the tattered remains of his Grace, just as he had once reached into Sam's body to find his soul, just as he had once borrowed the strength of Bobby's, a direct and deliberate reminder of those stolen images. "You can exorcise me from this vessel, but you will not dash me against Heaven's walls and kill me. I will rip this mangled Grace apart, brother. We are not Souls. We can be destroyed. And. . . blood to blood, Castiel. This meat you are wearing, it is a compatible vessel for me as well. And with you gone, I will not need your consent."

Castiel's answer is not particularly eloquent, but it is unquestionable in meaning. The sword in his hand slams down, spearing through Claire's forearm just above the glowing line of her presence within him and lodging there through her flesh, a wound that pours forth grace and has her wrenching her hand back out, but the damage is done.

Sam, clutching Castiel's journal, has a look of desperation on his face as he rattles out the rest of the exorcism rite in a crescendo punctuated in the scream of an angel and a man at once. Dean yells out for Castiel, throwing an arm over his eyes to block out the blinding light.

And within a circle that snuffs out as the angelic presence within it does, Castiel Winchester crumples to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, his breath rattling in his chest, as Claire Novak curls into a quivering ball on the floor, clutching her injured arm to herself and sobbing, herself again for the first time in months.