Steampunk verse. Because everything's cool when you Steampunk it. 'Cept I found it's a little easier to draw Steampunk than to write it…and this would have been fifty times longer, I think…

Song: "To the Apocalypse in Daddy's Sidecar" by Abney Park

The Days of Steam and Featherless Wings

Most of his brothers disapproved but pleasing his garrison and his superiors interested Castiel very little anymore.

The wings of angels were invisible to humans, so glorious and powerful that they were beyong mankind's perception. But hunting with the Winchesters, acting as their guardian angel, Castiel had learned the hard way that unless the brothers could see them his wings often did more harm than good.

So with the help of his closest brothers, Balthazar and Gabriel, he had created a manifestation of his wings. Using his Grace, the Grace of his brothers, and the mechanized knowledge and steam power of the humans, he had created a pair of wings just a beautiful and just as deadly as his old ones.

And they were extremely useful.

The target of their current hunt was a nest of vampires they had tracked to an abandoned warehouse a few miles outside of town. They were uncertain of the number of blood suckers but Dean had been tired of waiting. And of course Castiel almost always sided with Dean so it was two against one and Sam had had no choice but to concede. There was no point in arguing with an angry Dean and his stubborn angel.

So there they were, carefully approaching the old warehouse, sneaking in through the rusted back door into the dark interior. Dean gently pulled back the catch on his sawed-off and sent the gears humming into motion, a hiss of steam pouring out of the pipe running along the barrel. Sam cocked his own gun and lifted a knife from his side. Castiel, armed with his own angelic powers, simply followed quietly.

"Where are they?" Dean whispered as they moved deeper into the warehouse.

"Maybe they packed up and—Dean, look out!" Sam's shout came a second too late and the vampire bearing down on them slammed Dean to the floor. The oldest Winchester lost his grip on his steam-gun and it spun off into the shadows. Dean cursed; that happened to be his favorite gun, he'd built it himself.

Castiel launched himself at the vampire but another lurched from the shadows and snagged the back of the angel's trench coat, hauling him backwards with terrible strength and hurtling him into the nearest wall. Sam leveled his gun and fired. Silver pierced through the air and slammed into the vampire's shoulder. It hissed at him and darted away. Sam then turned to aid his brother, swinging up the knife, but another vampire grabbed him from behind and yanked his arms back until he cried out in pain and dropped both weapons. He felt ice cold breath score across his neck and iron sharp teeth brush his skin when something else plowed into both of them and sent them slamming into the floor.

The vampire let out a scream and there was furious burst of light. Castiel dropped the smoking corpse of the dead vampire and spun away to deal with the other vampires rising from the shadows. Sam scooped up his gun, aimed, and fired. The vampire that had been pinning Dean to the floor screeched and jerked back, giving Dean enough time yank out his own knife and jam it up under the thing's chin. It wasn't a killing blow but it was enough to ruin the vampire's day.

The oldest Winchester brother rolled to his feet, locating his sawed-off, which was still hissing steam, and swore loudly.

They were surrounded by vampires.

There had to be at least ten, fifteen at the most. And they all looked extremely pissed.

"I hate to say it out loud but I don't think we have enough silver bullets for these guys." Sam muttered, stepping backwards so that his shoulders brushed with Dean's.

"Yeah, think we bit off more than we could chew."

"Not funny, Dean."

"You just have no sense of humor."

"Now is not the time for joking, Dean." Castiel said flatly, a seriousness on his face that said he meant business. Well, that was something, "Sam is right; you do not have enough silver bullets to take care of this nest." The angel straightened up, his shoulders tense, "You may want to stand back."

Dean shared a glance with Sam, knew what was coming, and opted for dropping to the floor instead of moving away. Mostly because moving away would mean moving towards the vampires. And besides, with what Cas was about to pull, the floor was probably the safest place to be.

The fingers of Castiel's right hand twitched and a sword dropped down from his coat sleeve, hilt catching easily on his palm. He hefted it once as if it was nothing but paper and the gold-silver glimmer caught what little light there was. Dean watched him from the floor, waiting for it. The vampire's hesitated at the sight of the sword and then growled and hissed anew and prepared to attack.

Cas tilted his head to the side and then unfurled his wings.

Tucked away into "angel space", as Dean referred to it, wings had not affect on the physical plane. Manifested, they were a glorious sight to behold and Dean loved to watch them come into being.

They uncurled from Castiel's back, right between his shoulder blades, with a series of sharp snk snk snks, gears unwinding, the clicks of mechanical parts sliding into place, the ring of thin plates of metal sliding against one another sending a shiver through the air. Burnished metal the color of copper unfolded into long feathers, the tips folded with bright blades of silver, further up the metallic feathers went from copper to bronze and finally became thin curls of gold. Thin bars of silver connected the feathers and wings together, meeting together at his back in a complicated pattern of gears and delicate cogs, smaller gears winding their way through the entirety of the wings. If one were to look close enough, it was possible to see shreds of golden-white-blue Grace weaving between the feathers, turning the gears, keeping everything together.

The sight of the wings seemed to simply infuriate the vampires. They screeched wordlessly and threw themselves at Cas. And then the angel moved. He spread his wings and spun, using the silver on the tips of his wings and his sword as weapons. They sliced with hissing whistles through the air, an amazing dance that was beautiful and deadly.

But as Castiel was spinning to finish off the last of them, heads rolling and blood splattered across metal and cement, one dropped down from the ceiling. It landed right between those mechanical wings, grabbed a fistful Castiel's hair, and yanked the angel's head back.

Dean snarled and before he knew what he was doing he was on his feet and running towards Cas. He heard Sam shouting at him to stop but he ignored it. He ducked under the flaring wings as Castiel struggled to dislodge the vampire, and lunged at the vampire. He managed to snagged the sleeve of the vampire's shirt and tugged sharply, pulling all of them down to the floor with a resounding crash. Castiel's flailing wings raised sparks against the cement and Dean, trapped beneath a writhing vampire and a struggling angel, suddenly feared for his safety.

Then Castiel somehow managed to flip around and raise his sword. Dean caught the full force of an angel's furious, blue-eyed fire glare and knew why it was that angels were feared more than any other creature and why he owed Castiel his respect. That sword looked a whole lot bigger when you were pinned beneath a screaming vampire. That sword swung down and pierced the vampire on top of Dean right through the skull.

Everything froze for a second and then the Castiel rose slowly, pulled the vampire up, and sliced off its head. The body collapsed and Cas shook his sword as if dislodging water from it. It vanished and he held his now empty hand out to Dean. The oldest Winchester grasped it gratefully and hauled himself to his feet. It was then, when he was dusting himself off and pointedly ignoring Sam's condescending lecture, that he noticed that one of Castiel's wings was crooked and the usual smooth sound of the gears was crunched and clicking with effort.

"Dude, Cas, turn around." Dean ordered. The angel hesitated, looking wary and—Dean swore—too proud to do so. Then he slowly turned, one wing folded tight against his back, the other half open.

Dean stepped forward to inspect the wings and, sure enough, found that a handful of the gears on the angel's back had been broken. Grace was tangled in the teeth of the gears, a shaft of silver that supported the arc of the wing had splintered, causing the wing to droop, and several of the remaining cogs were cracked or knocked out of alignment, making it impossible for them to turn properly. Sam made a hissing noise between his teeth when he saw the damage and Dean waved a hand at him, telling him to shut up.

"We gotta get this fixed up," Dean muttered, leaning closer to get a better look at the damage, "But you are so not getting in my baby with those wings out. Can you zap back to the house and we'll meet you there?"

"I can call my brothers—." Cas began.

"No fucking way am I having Balthazar and Gabriel in the same room as me—."

"You do not have to be there—."

"Guys, later, okay." Sam cut in, throwing a hand out, "Cas, just go back to the house, we don't need to bother your brothers. Dean's good with his hands, he can fix your wings easy."

"Had to phrase it like that…" Dean muttered, rolling his eyes. But he turned to Castiel and met the angel's solid blue gaze, "Just promise to meet us back at the mote, okay?"

Castiel stared at him for a long moment and then, without a word, vanished.

Dean glared at the spot where the angel had been, "I hate it when he does that."

Sam just laughed.

"Does this hurt you? Like, can you feel it?"

Castiel twisted slightly on the carpeted floor so that he could turn his head and look at Dean and simply said, "Yes."

"Yes to what?"

"To both."

Dean grunted, somewhat frustrated by the angel's lack of response, and bent over his tools again.

The two were in a spare bedroom on the second floor of Bobby Singer's house, a room generally used for storage with the bed removed and piles of boxes pressed against the walls. But it was the only room where Cas could let his wings stretch out enough for Dean to work on them so it would have to do. The place smelled a little dusty, a little oily, but it was better than nothing.

Dean had dragged his box of tools from the back seat of his precious, steam-modified Impala into the house and had taken the liberty of procuring some of Bobby's tools as well. He sat on the floor with the box of tools on one side a pile of other essentials on the other, wearing only a pair of jeans and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. There were a pair of magnifying goggles dangling around his neck but he wouldn't need them until it came to the finely detailed stuff. For now, it was just his regular human eyes.

He chewed on his lip a moment, green eyes switching between the broken gears on the wing to the pile of cogs and bits and pieces beside him. Then he carefully selected on from the pile, polished it with chemicals and oil and set it aside on a clean towel. He did this with several other gears and cogs, nuts, bolts, odds and ends, until he had a large collection spread out across the towel, all polished and carefully cleaned. The air clung thick with the smell of the chemicals and Dean stood up, walked across the room, and cracked the old window open, letting a breeze waft through and clear the air out through the open door. When he turned back around, he found that Castiel had closed his eyes.

"Hey, you better not go to sleep. I need you to help me do this."

Blue flashed towards him, "I do not need to sleep, Dean."

"Whatever." Dean stepped back over to his spot and dropped down to the floor. He picked up his tools and bent of the wing, freezing just short of touching the gears, "I need your help with this, Cas. The majority of this is held together and kept moving by your Grace. If you don't do exactly as I say it's gonna royally fuck up your wings."

"I understand. I will do as you say."

"And I don't have parts that match these ones exactly so I have to improvise. Which means you won't have pretty, perfect, symmetrical wings anymore."

"That is all right. I know they will work if you rebuild them. I have all the confidence in you."

For some reason, that meant a lot coming from Castiel. Dean brushed it off, though, and set to work.

It was hard, long, and difficult. They couldn't stop for very long because with pieces out of place, Castiel's Grace didn't know which direction to flow in through the gears and ended up tangled, spitting sparks and steam into the air like the Impala after getting ruptured in her steam pipes. Even then, there were times when the Grace built up and tangled anyway and Dean had to stop working and wait for Castiel to sort it out before he could continue again. But he was patient, never rushed the angel, and treated the wings with as much delicate care as he did his car.

For a while, the only sounds were the clink and clatter of tools, the little tinkle of metal against metal, and, occasionally, Dean's voice murmuring orders to Castiel to which the angel silently responded. But after a couple of hours, Dean realized that Cas was singing. It was a soft song and he almost didn't catch it. But, under the pretext of cleaning grease and oil off one of his tools, he paused long enough to catch some of the words.

It surprised him to recognize a very human song, not Enochian at all like he'd expected,

"Got shotgun shells, twelve cans of beans, and an old stuffed toy comin' apart at the seams, a little lace dress you've worn for too far as you watch the apocalypse in Daddy's side car…"

Dean couldn't help the smile that crept over his face as he knelt back to his work.

Perhaps Castiel wasn't as unaffected by the steam and steel of the modern age as he liked to pretend he was.

And that, as far as Dean was concerned, was a five star victory.

Maybe later he'd take the angel out and try to get him drunk.