The television show "Supernatural" is copyrighted by Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc. This chapter contains dialogue excerpts from the episode "Lucifer Rising."

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Dean moved over to his recliner. "Come on, let's watch the show."

"I must – I have other matters to attend to. I'm sorry. Can I get you anything before I go?"

Dean considered. "Pez? Maybe a dispenser with a wookie head? I always wanted one of those."

Castiel gave him two, and left.

.

As Dean watched television, Sam and Ruby circled the outskirts of Chesapeake, West Virginia, apparently looking over vacant buildings. When they found one – according to Zachariah's agent who was watching from a distance – they rigged a cot in the basement with shackles; then Ruby went to find a fast-food place that was open late while Sam looked over several websites on his laptop.

Alerted by Dean's determined energy well after he'd darkened the room, Castiel followed Dean invisibly as he slipped quietly out the door and tried all of the other doors in the corridor outside. Each looked promising, but simply led to a maze that inevitably took Dean back to the green room. Castiel had to admire Dean's persistence; he tried everything from tapping the walls for hidden passages to staring at a wall with intense focus to speaking Latin to trying to throw himself against unyielding French doors.

Finally he grumbled, "Cas, I know you're there. Excuse the hell out of me for wanting to take a walk. I'm going back to bed." With which he dropped, fully clothed, onto the bed and was asleep in minutes.

While Dean slept, Sam and Ruby drove to a nearby hospital and appeared to stake out a neonatal ward. They seemed to be watching the nurses on the graveyard shift, but it wasn't until several hours later, when one of the nurses tried to wheel a baby out of an isolated back exit, that they had the chance to approach their target without onlookers. Sam held the demon-possessed nurse against the wall with his mind while Ruby hastily returned the baby to the nearest hospital corridor, and then the two of them bundled the demon out to Ruby's car. Sam sat with her in the back seat while Ruby drove to the house; the two of them shackled the demon and began asking for Lilith's location.

During this whole time, Zachariah's agent reported with some concern – nervousness? – Sam needed no talisman and no devil's trap to overpower the demon and keep it imprisoned in the nurse's body. When he began to torture her, he did it as with Alastair – focus and an occasional gesture, nothing more. The demon was more frightened of Lilith than agonized by the pain Sam was inflicting on her, but that didn't last very long.

The demon broke about the time that Dean woke up. Ruby and Sam had breakfast, then Sam slept while Ruby guarded their prisoner. Zachariah told Castiel that much, but apparently didn't want to burden him – or didn't trust him – with the knowledge of Lilith's location Sam now had.

Castiel, listening to Dean leave a gruffly apologetic, touching message on Sam's cell phone, really didn't care where Lilith was. He only wondered if Sam was too far gone to care about Dean's call.

He gave Dean privacy for the call, then appeared in the room where Dean was munching on more of the burgers, still heaped on the tray, and drinking a beer. Castiel's appearance didn't startle him. "You know these burgers are still hot? And fresh? And the ice in the bucket hasn't melted? Pretty amazing."

"I could get you a more conventional breakfast."

"Why? I'm going to be stark raving insane in a few hours, so what the hell, might as well enjoy sanity." Dean actually sounded pretty relaxed at the prospect. "After I go around the bend they're gonna be feeding me nothing but creamed spinach and Jell-O."

"At least we know when something will happen. Midnight tonight."

"And in the meantime we sit here."

"Perhaps you will need to be well rested. Or perhaps pent-up anger and impatience are what will be needed."

Dean shook his head. "You know, there are plenty of times as a hunter when you have to sit around waiting for something to happen. It always helps me to work with my hands – packing bullets, cleaning weapons, working on the car. I'm all caught up with that stuff, and – "

He broke off, smiled crookedly, then shook his head and said, "Nah."

"No to what?" Castiel asked. Oddly, he was seeing an image from Dean's childhood in Dean's mind.

Dean laughed. "It's pretty stupid. But you know, I was good at this as a kid. Arts and crafts. You know, you just get a table heaped up with colored paper, scissors, colored pencils, modeling clay, paint, you know, staples, glue, crayons, that kind of stuff, and just make whatever you feel like. But it's a dumb – "

The table was there, loaded with everything Dean had suggested and more. He looked at it and laughed. "Well, what the hell. Also, when I was in school, I never got the chance to see how beer affects creativity."

He grabbed a beer, pulled one of the chairs over to the crafts table, and began squashing clay between his hands lustily.

Zachariah kept Castiel busy for the next few hours checking with the commander of each garrison to see if they had made preparations for war "in case" the final seal should break. Almost all of them blamed themselves for the loss of at least one of the seals, and apologized to Castiel personally with stone-faced but bitter regret. He felt like the worst kind of user, promising to pass along their remorse, and never saying that they hadn't been given the information or tools they needed by Heaven's greater angels.

Only two commanders offered no apology. Castiel knew that both of them suspected that Heaven's soldiers had been set up for failure; he had talked to them about leading the revolt he'd planned. Both of them knew that Castiel had served time in the Chamber since then. Their talks were businesslike and brief.

But the last commander he spoke to had just resigned her command in her guilt and had joined the lowest-ranking soldiers. Castiel had to talk the commander's replacement out of joining her.

He went to Mexico and sat by himself in a quiet small-town church that was one of his favorites.

He was trying very hard to justify Heaven's treatment of its best warriors. Failing, he was growing angry. Anger would lead him back to rebellion and the Chamber.

He swallowed hard, remembering the cruel isolation, the realization of his own foul nature and how good and tolerant the Host had been to put up with him for so long.

Anna had already been in the Chamber two and a half times as long as he had been, and she had so much more time to go. He tried in every way he could to reach out to her, but couldn't sense her energy anywhere. He knew she would be angry at him, but he also knew that at this point she would have welcomed any outside contact, anything real.

He wondered what horrific revelations she was having. He tried not to think about Dean.

Then suddenly, he thought about Dean. It had been six hours since he'd eaten a very poor breakfast. This was not the way to keep him content.

And at that moment he heard, "Cas? Are you there? I need something."

It was as though they were tuned in to each other. Castiel put up every guard he had and went.

Dean must have dozed off or abandoned the crafts table; it was gone, and the room was as before (including the beer and burgers). Contentment was nowhere in Dean's energy; indeed, as Castiel appeared, Dean was taking great satisfaction in tipping a white china angel off of its shelf and watching it smash on the floor.

"You asked to see me," Castiel said.

Dean wanted to see Sam. Castiel had known that couldn't be put off forever, but it couldn't have come at a worse time. Castiel could tell that Sam was asleep, but even in sleep his energy was troubled, guilt-ridden. If Dean went to him now, there might be another fight and Sam might leave twice as determined on his course of action; or Dean might actually be able to persuade Sam to stop. Castiel knew without asking: This was not a risk the greater angels would be willing to take. He refused.

"What do you mean, no? Are you saying that I'm trapped here?"

"You can go wherever you want."

"Super. I want to go see Sam."

"Except there."

"I want to take a walk."

"Fine," Castiel said, "I'll go with you."

"Alone."

"No."

"You know what, screw this noise. I'm outta here."

Dean headed for the door, which Castiel and he both knew was pointless. The maze of corridors hadn't changed. But Dean had to understand, once and for all, that Heaven was in charge. "Through what door?"

Dean looked back over his shoulder at Castiel, baffled, then looked at the door – which was now a solid wall with a knick-knack table in front of it. "Damn it!"

Castiel absented himself for awhile. Dean would probably want to vent his feelings on the furniture.

But when Castiel returned with two dishes and silverware, Dean was sitting quietly on the floor, his back against the wall, staring at the chandelier almost dreamily. His energy, though, was no less intense.

Castiel put the dishes and silverware on the table and looked at Dean. He'd been trying to make a call – his cell phone was on the floor beside him – and must have realized that Zachariah had decided to render the phone useless.

"OK," Dean said, "I give. But I've got to get out of here, Cas. I'm going nuts. How about Omaha? You've got to see the zoo to believe it."

Not with Dean's energy like that. Castiel had no desire to collar Dean in a public place and have to erase the memories of hundreds of witnesses. "It's too close to midnight, Dean. It would be very unwise for me to take the chance of removing you when you could be needed at any moment."

In the tone of one making a friendly promise, "I'm going to get out of here, you son of a bitch. You know I am."

"You should eat lunch. It's late afternoon."

"What is it with you and Zach keeping me fattened up?" Dean said, then looked disconcerted. "Is that it? You're gonna poison me and feed me to Lilith?"

Castiel almost smiled. "I don't know what part you play, Dean, but I'm willing to guarantee that's not it."

"What'd they do to you, Cas?"

Castiel averted his gaze.

"One torture victim to another. You know what they did to me in Hell. You've gotta know I'm going to understand."

"Heaven doesn't torture," Castiel said sharply.

Dean raised his eyebrows. "That what they told you to say?"

"Angels who have been corrected aren't allowed to discuss it."

"'Corrected.' Nice." Dean rose easily and walked toward him. "Try brainwashed. Try zombified."

"They are the Heavenly Host, the agents of fate throughout eternity, the holiest creations of God."

"They're going to keep me sitting here while my brother drinks enough demon blood to destroy himself. And then supposedly I'm going to kill Lilith, and Sam will be dead, or a monster, for no reason. How holy can they be?"

Castiel took a step back, took a deep breath, met Dean's gaze. "Would you like to bring the television back? Or the – the crafts?"

Dean chuckled, a frightening sound coupled with the look in his eyes. "No. But you want to see what I made?"

He pulled out of his pocket a thick booklet of small squares of paper stapled together. It was a flipbook – a series of sequential drawings that turned into elementary animation when the pages were flipped. An angel – recognizable by its triangular robe, wings, and halo over its circle head – flew past a cloud and then directly into a wall. Dean snickered.

"It's good that you have this creative way of venting your feelings."

Dean looked over Cas' shoulder. "What's that?"

"A Cobb salad with extra bacon, and an apple pie."

Dean nodded, went to the table, uncapped a beer, and poured it deliberately into the salad bowl.

He set the bottle down. "Somewhere along the line, Cas, you're going to realize that you should have been helping me, not your bosses. I just hope it won't be too late."

It was too much like Rachel's calm assertion that Castiel would seek her out eventually. Something roiled within him. He clenched his fists, saw that Dean had seen him do that, and fled.

He knew that Sam was driving, that Sam's desperate determination was overwhelming feelings of guilt and despair. Sam knew this would kill him, or worse, and he was determined anyway.

Castiel could have found him. But the temptation to stop him would be too strong. He tried to pray, but all he could hear was Jimmy's voice. Just two words, over and over, as though Jimmy were calling out in a nightmare.

Amelia. Claire. Amelia. Claire.

I will protect them from Lucifer, Castiel thought. They will not experience the horror, they will only experience Paradise. And no, they won't be exactly the same, but they'll be happier. Don't you want that for them?

Amelia. Claire.

"Castiel."

Castiel looked up at Zachariah, whose energy was unmasked fury. "Your charge is spraying rage and plaster chips all over the green room. I'm going to explain a few home truths to him."

Castiel began to stand, and Zachariah waved him back down. "He doesn't need a friend right now, he needs an instructor. He wants to know what's going on, fine, I'll tell him, but he won't get any sweet talk from me. I want you to be available, though, just in case he tries to kill himself or something melodramatic after I'm gone."

He vanished.

The fulfillment of prophecy, Castiel thought. Paradise.

Amelia. Claire.

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He listened and watched from a distance as Zachariah told Dean almost everything. He told Dean that "senior management" had allowed 65 seals to break, that they had only put up a show of saving them for the benefit of the lower-level angels. He told Dean that the greater angels wished to let the Apocalypse happen, that they were going to win, and that Dean would be able to enjoy Paradise on Earth. He admitted, a little ruefully, that many people would die before Paradise was achieved.

Zachariah did not tell Dean that Lilith was the final seal and that Sam was Heaven's Plan A for breaking it. Castiel didn't know why Zachariah withheld that – he certainly didn't mind the hatred, terror, and revulsion that Dean was directing at him for everything else.

"Uh – no, Dean," Zachariah said, suddenly, calmly, "probably shouldn't try to bash my skull in with that thing. Wouldn't end up too pleasant for you."

Now Castiel understood why Zachariah wasn't telling Dean about Sam. Nothing would have stopped Dean from physically attacking Zachariah with the heavy bust he was eyeing, Zachariah would have defended himself, and then he would have had the hassle of explaining to Michael why Dean had got dented.

But Zachariah did tell Dean that – whatever Dean's part was in the Apocalypse – it didn't involve stopping Lilith; it involved stopping Lucifer after Lucifer's rise.

Castiel felt even more baffled than Dean. Only God, Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel had the kind of power required to stop Lucifer. What could Zachariah possibly mean?

"Tell me something," Dean said, his voice rough with emotion. "Where's God in all this?"

"God?" There was slight contempt in Zachariah's tone. "God has left the building."

And he left Dean alone.

Half an hour later, Castiel went to the green room. Dean was sitting on the floor again, and there were so many aspects to his energy – none of them good – that Cas found him hard to read. Outwardly, he looked as if he were in shock.

"Dean?"

Dean looked up. His voice was quiet. "You knew all along, didn't you? Telling me I had to stop it, pretending you might kill off that whole town to save a seal, being so happy when the seal in Greybull got saved. That was all – "

"No, Dean. I was only recently made aware of the plan for Paradise."

"The plan for Paradise? Does it really make you feel better to call it that?"

"That's – what it is. The Apocalypse is simply a tribulation we must all endure – "

"Skip it." Dean made an impatient gesture, then covered his face.

Castiel stood still, watching him. If Dean was on the verge of tears, it was so rare for him that Castiel didn't know how to react.

"Look," Dean said, bringing his hand down. "You said you'd let me go anywhere except to meet up with Sam, then I guess you reconsidered that. Any chance you could re-reconsider?"

"Where do you want to go?"

"There's a couple places Dad took Sam and me when we were kids. I always wanted to see 'em again, because of the memories and, you know, just because they're interesting. I have the feeling they're not going to be around much longer."

"You're thinking of one specifically. A cave with large lighted limestone formations, your father holding Sam in a – kind of wagon, by his belt, because Sam was curious about something and hanging over the side."

"Yeah." Dean smiled faintly. "Fantastic Caverns. That was great. You ride through in a tram, in between those huge stalactites and whatever, there's a waterfall that runs down a rock wall and you have to duck under rocks projecting out from the walls in the narrow parts. Anyway, Dad had to. Sam and me just looked up at the underside as we passed beneath." The smile fell away. "But you said it was late afternoon awhile ago. My watch stopped yesterday, but I'm guessing they're not running the trams now."

"Perhaps we could arrange for a private tour."

"A little angel mojo? I don't get it, Cas. Sometimes I swear you're one of the good guys and sometimes you're the coldest bastard I've ever known."

"I simply have to do my job, Dean. I wish you no ill. I wish humanity no ill. Quite the contrary."

"Sure." Dean rose as though he were exhausted or had been beaten. "Well, let's go to Fantastic Caverns. Maybe we'll follow it up with Epcot Center." He swallowed hard. Then his gaze drifted from Castiel, he made a small sound in his throat, and he pointed at the angel. "Give me a moment. Think I might barf."

Castiel allowed him his privacy in the restroom, but continuously read Dean's energy. The human was frightened, angry, feeling physically weakened. Perhaps Zachariah had been correct in thinking that Dean might do "something melodramatic."

When he came back out, it was a matter of minutes until they'd gone to Fantastic Caverns, found a tram driver who was washing down the tram cars, and caused him to decide that he wanted to take these two latecomers through the cave. Castiel had seen more spectacular caverns, but this one was wonderful in its own way, and of course he didn't have Dean's memories of the place. Dean's energy was surging with a 10-year-old's excitement.

"I'm sorry the lady who takes pictures and runs them through the developer has gone home," the tram driver said as they set out.

"Damn," Dean said. "Hey Cas, would you even show up in a photo?"

"Of course I would show up in a photo, Dean. This is a physical body."

The tram driver, who may have been under the influence of angel mojo but still knew a weird conversation when he heard it, glanced back over his shoulder before continuing his spiel.

They learned the colorful names of some of the limestone formations and part of the history of the place, which had been used for everything from planting mushrooms to exploration to a speakeasy to concerts.

"We carry eight different sources of light with us on the tram," the driver said as he pulled to a stop, "and this is why."

He threw a switch that turned out the artificial lighting installed in the cave, and the tram was plunged into utter, blinding blackness.

"You can see what it was like for the first explorers of the cave, who came in carrying torches. Imagine what it would be like – "

Dean's energy had spiked, and there was rustling in the tram seat opposite Castiel's. With a gesture, Castiel turned on the light, and the driver broke off speaking, startled.

The soy sauce bottle from the Chinese restaurant, a thin film of blood inside, lay next to Dean. Dean had just finished smearing blood with a paintbrush over a construction paper stencil on the seat next to him. As the lights came up, he was lifting the stencil and dropping the brush, opening his palm.

Castiel seized Dean's wrist in an unbreakable grip. With his other hand, he lashed the belt of his trench coat across the blood sigil, smearing it into uselessness.

Then he looked at the tram driver. "It's a good thing you decided to take this tram on a run by yourself after hours to check it out. No one else has noticed this graffito."

Then he took Dean back to the green room.

Dean said a couple of four-letter words as Castiel caught his breath. That had been entirely too close. "Where did you learn how to make an angel-banishing sigil?"

Dean sighed disgustedly. "From Anna. Remember, she used it on you and Uriel the day before she got her grace back? Sam and I got her to teach it to us before the big hoedown."

"And you took the soy sauce bottle to keep your blood in. How long have you been planning this?"

"Well – planning – I just knew I might want to use the sigil sometime. But then after my exciting trip to nowhere last night I knew I was going to have to get out of here before I could banish you guys, or what would be the point?"

"Why that place?"

"I remembered that moment where they let the cave go completely dark. I mean, I realize your senses aren't the same as ours, but I figured it was the best chance I had. Cas, listen to me – "

"The aspirin. To thin your blood."

Dean gave a flick of a smile. "Made it fill the bottle good and fast. I probably looked pretty sick when I left the bathroom. You probably thought I really was barfing."

"With what did you cut yourself?"

Dean shrugged. "We always keep something sharp up our sleeves. In case we get tied up or whatever."

Castiel looked down into his own hand, at the long thin blade still sticky with Dean's blood, and Dean swore again. He was still clutching the gory paper stencil, and Castiel took it from him. The symbols were correctly cut into the paper, and smearing blood over the round border of the stencil created the needed outer circle. This would have worked. Another two seconds and Castiel would have been thrown through distance and time while Dean made a mojo bag to hide himself from angels and started calling Sam.

"Cas," Dean said earnestly. "I can't just sit here and let the Apocalypse happen. You can't just sit here and – "

Castiel destroyed the stencil in a flash of flame. "You look exhausted, Dean. You need some sleep."

"Are you cra – "

Castiel touched Dean's forehead with two fingers and Dean was asleep before he could finish the word. The recliner materialized under him as he fell.

Castiel lifted Dean's feet onto the footrest and reclined the chair. He found the wound on Dean's arm, bound with a strip of cloth probably cut from Dean's T-shirt but still trickling blood, and healed it. Then he left.