Sam raced the Impala straight south on Route 83 toward Kansas. Route 83 was one of the old "blue highways", the ones that pre-dated the interstate system and that were drawn in little blue lines on the old maps. It was what Dean thought of as a "good old road" — straight as a ruler, clean long stretches of blacktop cutting through flat fields on either side, passing through classic rural-America small towns every so often. Route 83 was a relic of an older time, where the Impala seemed to fit right in.

And Route 83 happened to cut right through Nebraska straight down to Kansas. They crossed the Kansas border surprisingly soon, and Sam reported, "We're making really good time! Good ol' 83. Only about an hour and a half to the bunker, Dean!"

"That's great," said Dean, trying to summon up some enthusiasm.

What he didn't mention to Sam was that Cas had still not moved, at all, and seemed as cold as ever. Dean was getting progressively more spooked about the possibility that Cas might actually not be...

He couldn't even complete the thought in his own head. He knew he should just check Cas's pulse again, but kept putting it off, justifying it by thinking, I'm crap at finding pulses anyway.

So instead he just kept whispering, "Cas, please be alive."

Sam had been checking them periodically in the mirror, and suddenly he said "Oh, sorry. We're way past time to switch. My turn." He pulled the Impala over.

Sam jumped out and opened Dean's door. Dean had been leaning heavily against the door and he almost fell out; Sam had to catch him and ease him out from under Cas. Once outside the Impala, Dean was shocked to discover how stiff and chilled he was, and how hard he was shivering. A burst of brutal prairie wind came raking across the fields and seemed to claw right over his bare skin, and Dean shuddered so strongly that his knees almost buckled. He actually had to lean against the Impala to stay upright.

"Whoa there, Dean. Don't tell me I have to warm you up too," said Sam. He swung the back door shut temporarily to keep the wind off Cas, and steadied Dean against the Impala. "I don't think I have enough body heat for both of you."

"Sorry," said Dean, his teeth chattering. "Frosty in there is kind of a bottomless heat sink."

"Frosty the Snow Angel, huh?" said Sam with a small smile, shucking off his own jacket. He rapidly unbuttoned his shirt and pulled that off too, and shoved the shirt and jacket into Dean's hands. "Here. Put these on." He helped Dean pull them on and get the jacket zipped up, and then Sam swung the back door open again and wedged himself into the back seat next to Cas.

Dean leaned in to try to help pull the still-completely-limp-and-icy Castiel on top of Sam. Sam was being, or at least was acting, remarkably professional and unfazed about the whole skin-to-skin-with-naked-Castiel aspect, but as soon as Sam got Cas in place and got his arms around him, Sam said "JEEZ," his eyes widening. And then "YOW. Holy frozen angels, Batman."

"Does he seem any warmer to you than when we started?" said Dean hopefully.

Sam just looked at him.

Dean's heart sank.

Dean helped tuck Cas's blanket back in place, wrapping it around both of them so that Sam and Cas were bundled up together, and with Cas's arms and legs still outside the blanket. Then Dean tottered into the front seat. He checked the mirror and saw Sam tucking a few folds of blanket in place around Cas's shoulders. "All set?" asked Dean.

"Go," said Sam, and Dean gunned the Impala down Route 83.

Sam said, "Oh man. Dean." He sounded grim.

"Yeah?"

"He's still so cold. Did you ever feel him move? At all?"

Dean drove on a moment before answering.

"No," he said at last.

Dean heard Sam mutter, very quietly, "Shit." Dean glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Sam tuck his face down against Cas's shoulder, exactly as Dean had earlier. It had felt almost instinctive to do that, just to try to give Cas just that tiny bit more extra heat.

"Shit," whispered Sam again, his voice muffled.

"Don't give up," said Dean.

"I'm not," said Sam.

Dean added, "Oh, and, be sure he can breathe. I mean, make sure his mouth isn't blocked — you gotta just sort of believe that he's breathing. Also — see if you can get his hips up on your lap a bit, so he's sort of sitting on your lap." He thought of something else. "Oh — try and cover as much of his back as you can with your arms and hands. Oh and — make sure the hat doesn't slip off — it tends to work its way off." He thought of one more thing. "Also — you can sort of lean your head against the side of his head, give him a bit of warmth that way."

"Got it," said Sam quietly. Dean saw him rearrange things a bit, hauling Cas around and rewrapping the blanket, and saw him check the hat.

"I sound like such a mom, huh?" said Dean, trying, and failing, to laugh. "If I start telling you how to spoon-feed him, feel free to just punch me."

Sam did manage a weak laugh. A second later he said, "To be honest I will be thrilled if we can get him to that point."

"Yeah, me too," said Dean quietly.

Sam shuffled around a little more, repositioning, and then fell silent.

Dean turned the mirror a bit so he could see them better. Once again he found himself automatically lining up some potential jokes, and once again the impulse to joke completely drained away as he took in the reality of it. It was the expression on Sam's face that really did it, Sam looking so grim and solemn, his face bent down over Cas's shoulder, his eyes dark. Cas seemed just a bundle of blanket, his head only a lump on Sam's shoulder, a tuft of dark hair just visible sticking out from under Sam's hat. Sam had one hand on the back of Cas's neck, his fingers spread, trying simultaneously to hold the edge of the hat in place while also keeping a fold of blanket up around Cas's neck.

Sam was biting his lip. He glanced up at the mirror, and Dean met his eyes.

Dean actually did want to come up with a joke then, just to try to cheer Sam up, but for once his joking instincts failed him and he couldn't think of a single funny thing to say.

Dean cleared his throat. "I bet it'll take a while," he said. "I bet he's not gonna move for a while. I'm shivering because I went from, like, ninety-nine degrees to ninety-eight, right? So I figure, that means he probably went from, like, ninety or whatever to ninety-one. Right? He's probably already much warmer. It's just that ninety-one, or whatever he's at, still feels cold to us. It'll just take a while. But he's coming out of it."

"Yeah," said Sam, swallowing, "That makes sense. Might be a couple hours?"

"Yeah. Couple hours at least. I bet this is normal."

Sam nodded, but the haunted look did not leave his eyes.

"Maybe I should I check for a pulse?" offered Sam. They both knew that Sam (unlike Dean) always knew exactly where to feel for a pulse at the neck.

Dean looked at him. Sam looked even more worried than before.

"How about you wait fifteen minutes and then check for a pulse," suggested Dean.

"Okay," said Sam, his voice muffled.

Dean checked his phone and noted the time. There was no reason at all to wait fifteen minutes, of course. They were just putting off the inevitable. But Dean found he wanted just a bit more time. Just fifteen more minutes. Fifteen more minutes before they had to accept for sure that...

Just fifteen more minutes, that's all.

And now suddenly Dean found himself checking his phone obsessively, glancing at it almost every couple of seconds to see how many minutes were left. The little fifteen-minute deadline that he'd just proposed seemed to loom ahead like a cliff, like a death sentence for Castiel.

Dean checked his phone. Fourteen minutes.

Dean heard Sam muttering something softly, and gradually realized that Sam was talking to Cas. It was very soft, and it sounded rather private, but Dean couldn't help himself from straining to make out the words. He turned his head slightly to angle one ear toward the back seat, and heard Sam saying:

"You gotta have a pulse, Cas, okay? ... You just keep that heart beating. You gotta keep that heart beating, okay? None of that after-whatever. Afterdrop. None of that now. You just warm up now, warm on up, okay? " A pause, and Sam went on, "We're taking you to the bunker, Cas ... it'll be nice and warm ... Dean's got a room all made up for you.. He's had it ready for months, you didn't know that, huh? And he's been protecting it like a goddam Rottweiller. He almost tore my head off when I took your pillow ..." Sam gave a tiny little huff of laughter, paused, and said "You know... I took the pillow because I was looking for something in that room... I wanted something that was supposed to be in that room. I just didn't know what it was I was looking for, you know?"

A long pause.

" ... Cas... we missed you, did you know that? ... You probably didn't know that, huh?"

Then Sam returned to, " ...Cas... you gotta have a pulse... okay?"

Sam sounded almost on the verge of tears.

Yeah... this was really not funny at all.

The fifteen minutes had passed. Dean cleared his throat, glancing at his phone, and Sam instantly said "Is it time?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Here goes," said Sam, shuffling around. Dean saw him pull back from Cas slightly, turning to study Cas's face closely. Sam put his fingers on Cas's neck. Dean had to remind himself to keep his eyes on the road.

"Stop the car," Sam said, and Dean immediately screeched the Impala to a halt.

Dean twisted around in his seat to look at them, his stomach clenching. He couldn't even say anything. But Sam just said, "There was too much vibration to feel anything. Gimme a sec."

Sam was absolutely still for a very long moment, watching Cas's face, his hand on Cas's neck. Dean just stared at them.

Dean held his breath.

"Got it, got it!" said Sam, his face suddenly bright with relief. "Slow but it's there, Dean, it's there, his heart's beating!" Dean let his breath out in a sharp sigh. Sam kept his hand on Cas's neck a moment longer and then nodded, turning back to Dean. "Definite. A definite pulse, for sure. Slow though, really slow, but it's there. And Dean," Sam paused a moment and put one hand in front of Cas's mouth. "He's breathing, he definitely is, I can feel it now that the car's stopped. Really shallow but I'm sure. I'm sure."

He looked up at Dean, smiling. Dean beamed back at him.

"He's alive," said Dean.

"He's alive," confirmed Sam.

They grinned at each other a moment. Sam pulled Cas back into place and tucked the blanket tightly all around him.

Dean finally remembered that he needed to keep driving, and he turned forward and put the Impala back in gear, and got going again. "Jesus," said Dean after a moment, "I feel like we just had a baby or something. Should we send out an announcement?"

"He's still damn cold, we gotta remember," said Sam. "There's still the afterdrop and all that. And, the blood loss and all. And he's still not shivering. We gotta stay on guard."

"Still though, his chances suddenly seem a lot better now that we know he's actually alive, wouldn't you say?" said Dean, feeling almost bubbly with relief. "In general, you know, chances of survival are definitely better when you're alive than when you are not alive."

Sam laughed, a real laugh this time. And Dean called loudly to the back seat, "Cas, good job there, knew you had it in you, now you just keep that heart beating, you got it? You keep that heart beating, and you keep breathing. And that is an order."

They finally peeled off "good ol' 83" and hung a left onto Route 36, the little state route that actually went right to Lebanon. Route 36 was a smaller road but they were still making decent time. As they passed the tiny town of Norton they drove briefly through a speck of cell service, and Dean managed to reach Sarah (who turned out to be approaching Cheyenne, herself). When she heard Cas still wasn't shivering, she told them to leave his arms and legs uncovered for a while longer. The call didn't last long (as soon as they drove over the hill out of Norton, the call died) but Dean and Sam both felt much better after talking with her. She'd just sounded so businesslike and routine, just calmly telling him how they'd need to put Cas in a warm-water bath, how it shouldn't be too shockingly hot at first, how to make sure they kept his head above water, all the little things they'd need to do. They both felt rather reassured just to have a plan laid out for them.

As Sam's "Frosty Shift", as they'd started to call it, finished up, Sam started to shiver just as Dean had earlier. It was remarkable how fast Cas seemed to drain the heat right out of them. Dean was feeling much warmer himself, so they pulled over and switched again.

Dean got Cas settled against him again. Did he seem ever-so-slightly warmer now? There was still that icy shock of the first skin-against-skin contact, yes, but Cas seemed not quite as cold as he had before. And it seemed almost routine now for Dean to pull Castiel tight against him, to have Castiel all pressed up against his chest. Dean found he was even relishing the feeling of trying to get the maximum area-of-contact, of wrapping his arms right around Cas's thin frame, relishing even the chilly sensation of feeling the heat being sucked right out of him. If he feels cold to me, then I feel warm to him, he kept thinking.

And then Dean suddenly realized he could feel Cas breathing. Yes, definitely; Cas's back was slowly shifting under Dean's fingers, expanding and contracting ever-so-slightly, ever-so-slowly, the ribs sliding ever so slightly. As Sam drove on, Dean even started to feel a gentle puff of air on his shoulder now and then, faint and soft, and he realized it was Cas's breath.

He's really alive, he thought. It was one thing to hear Sam say it, but another entirely to feel it for himself. Cas felt alive now, a real living person in his arms, that spark of life simply unmistakable now.

A bit later, Dean thought he felt a fluttering tension run through Cas's body. He thought he'd imagined it, but then it happened a second time. He felt the blanket quivering on one side, and looked down to see Cas's arm twitching slightly. It took him a moment to realize what was happening.

"He's shivering! He's shivering, Sam!"

"Really?"

"His arms for sure. And I can feel it kind of running through him."

The shivering was very faint at first, just little bursts of soft quivers that seemed to hit just one area at a time and then fade away: a hand, an arm, his legs, his chin. But gradually it seemed to lock in, spreading all over Cas's body, till he was shivering lightly but steadily all over. "Really shivering now, Sam. I'm pulling his arms and legs in," announced Dean. And Sam replied, "We're almost at the bunker."

The shivering got stronger. And stronger. And stronger, till Cas was truly shuddering, his arms and legs really shaking. Dean heard his teeth begin to chatter. By the time they pulled up at the bunker, Cas was shaking so violently that Dean was actually having trouble hanging onto him.

"I'm going to run and start the hot water and I'll be right back," said Sam. He pulled the Impala into the garage, dashed out the driver's side and disappeared. He reappeared just a minute later and together they struggled to get Cas out of the car, sliding him in a sort of shuddering bundle of blanket out of the back seat and onto the ground. There they discovered that Cas was shaking so hard now that Dean had to take Cas's head in both hands just to keep him from battering his head against the floor.

"Dean..." said Sam, looking down in worry, "... is he having convulsions or something? Is that really just shivering?"

"Hell if I know," said Dean. Sam had a point; Cas was almost spasming now, curling up into a erratically thrashing, vibrating ball, and it actually didn't look very good at all. "C'mon, Cas," said Dean, frustrated and worried again, "First you're not moving at all and then you're moving too much. Can't you just settle down in the middle and give us a breather?"

"Let's just get him into the tub," suggested Sam, and Dean nodded.

It turned out to be kind of difficult to carry somebody who was thrashing around so much. Sam finally hit on the idea of rolling Cas up in the blanket, just to try to keep his limbs still enough to carry him. He got Cas rolled up pretty well ("It's like an angel-burrito," said Dean), and then slung the entire Cas-blanket bundle over his shoulders in an impromptu fireman's-carry and hauled him to the bathroom, saying over his shoulder to Dean, "You know what else we should worry about?"

"What, we don't have enough to worry about?"

"Apparently not, because here's one more thing I just noticed, he's way too light. I shouldn't be able to carry him this easy. He must've been starving, the last couple weeks."

They got him into the bathroom and into the tub. And then Dean spent the next hour crouching at the end of the bunker's old claw-foot tub, one hand on each side of Cas's head. Dean's job was to hold Cas's face above the waterline, trying to keep him from accidentally drowning himself. Sam's job was initially to try to keep Cas's arms and legs out of the hot water (this did not last long — Cas was just shuddering too much, and kept kicking Sam in the face, and finally pulled free entirely) and, later, Sam began checking over all his other injuries, trying to figure out what else to prioritize. For as soon as they'd gotten the light on they'd realized that poor Cas was virtually covered with dozens of angel-blade lacerations, all over his torso, arms and thighs. His feet, too, had turned out to be very battered; they were covered with bruises, cuts, and terrible-looking blisters, and a lot of the skin of both soles seem to have been scraped clean off. "He must have been running a long time barefoot," commented Sam. And, as Sam had suspected, Cas was frighteningly thin.

But the most worrying thing was just that Cas still wouldn't wake. Dean and Sam both kept calling his name, and slapping his face, and talking to him, but Cas remained deeply unconscious.

Sam managed to reach Sarah for another consultation (she had got as far as North Platte). He reported to Dean a few minutes later, "She's thinking blood loss. She says, get some fluids into him if he can swallow. She's insisting we really should take him to a hospital, but, Dean, I really don't think we can risk moving him — it's still hours to a hospital and he'll just get chilled all over again."

"Agreed," said Dean, still hanging on to Cas's head, "Go warm up some canned soup or something."

Sam went tottering off, looking rather unsteady on his feet, and Dean waited for Sam to return. Dean realized he was starting to have real trouble staying awake. He had to keep shifting position to keep himself from nodding off, and he was actually having trouble keeping his eyes focused. It was really only the feel of Cas's jaw chattering in Dean's hands that was keeping Dean awake at all.

The thought struck Dean that he might fall asleep accidentally and let go of Cas's head and then Cas might drown. This new worry snapped him awake again temporarily, and when Sam finally showed back up, Dean was in a peculiar state of feeling both wide-awake with nervousness, while also being completely unable to focus his eyes. The whole room seemed to be doubling.

"I'm kinda dying here," he confessed at last to Sam. "Can't see straight."

"I walked straight into the wall in the kitchen," said Sam. "Dropped the first bowl of soup and had to make another."

They hung on for another half hour, and Sam did manage to get a bit of soup into Cas (it was hard to tell; a large percentage went into the bathwater). But brothers were virtually staggering with fatigue now - they'd been up all night, driving across the country, fighting angels, panicking about Cas, and of course, they had actually been in comas themselves just the day before. They agreed at last they had to pull Cas out of the tub, even though he was still shivering, simply for fear that both Sam and Dean might actually just collapse right there by the tub and accidentally let Cas drown.

"Blind leading the blind here," Dean muttered, as they drained the water out of the tub and re-wrapped Cas in a huge towel, back into the angel-burrito configuration. "Coma patients trying to take care of coma patients. Probably not advisable."

"Comas for everybody!" said Sam. "Everybody's in a coma!"

"All the cool kids are doing it," said Dean. He laughed. "Get it? Cool?"

"You are definitely getting delirious," said Sam, "because that wasn't remotely worth laughing at."

"Let's get him to his room," said Dean, trying to stop laughing. They both were getting dizzy now and ended up having to drag Cas on another blanket, sliding him down the hall to his room, where they somehow managed to get him hauled him up on the bed. And they still weren't done; there was still more to do; antibiotic ointment quickly slathered all over Cas's wounds (suturing them would have to wait), gauze on top of that; then towels padded all over him to keep the gauze temporarily in place; more towels packed around his hips as an impromptu diaper; layers and layers of blankets on top of everything. They needed to do something about his feet, they needed to get his hair dry and get the hat back on his head... It was all taking a while, but they both felt determined to take care of every single detail.

Dean suddenly woke. Sam was shaking him by the shoulders, saying, "Other sock, Dean. Other sock. Put the other sock on too..." Dean realized he had actually fallen asleep sitting on Cas's bed, leaning against the wall with both Cas's shivering feet in his lap. There was antibiotic ointment all over his hand, a pile of gauze half-wrapped around one of Cas's feet and one sock halfway onto the other foot.

Sam was saying, "Here, swallow." He reached over with a big soup spoon, tilted it into Dean's mouth and Dean swallowed some automatically. It was soup, and it was good. And it was a mark of how exhausted Dean was that he actually let Sam spoon-feed him for three whole spoonfuls before he realized what Sam was doing. He jerked awake, sitting up and saying, "Wait... what're you doing... isn't that for Cas?"

"I already gave him some. You looked like you needed some too."

"I... am... seriously... out of it," said Dean muddily.

"Yeah," said Sam slowly, now taking a spoonful himself. "Me too."

Dean forced himself to focus enough to finish up dealing with Cas's bloody feet. First foot: Antibiotic cream, gauze, sock carefully put on over the gauze, foot tucked under the blanket, one foot done, check. Other foot: antibiotic cream, gauze, sock, under the blanket. Check. Sam was gazing wide-eyed at Cas's feet as Dean did this, as if it were utterly fascinating.

"Nice... job," said Sam slowly.

"You are at least as out of it as I am," said Dean, and Sam nodded dully.

But they couldn't both go to bed. It was clear Cas couldn't be left alone - he was still shivering too much, and both brothers felt that Cas still couldn't be trusted to not suffocate himself accidentally against a pillow. So they arranged to take shifts watching him till Sarah arrived. After a short, fierce argument about who would take first shift, Dean won a rock-paper-scissors battle and triumphantly sent Sam off to bed.

It was ten in the morning by now. It'd be hours still till Sarah arrived. Dean felt so deeply exhausted he felt almost as if his bones were burning. The soup had helped a little, but he felt so terrifically weary that he didn't dare sit down, for fear he'd fall asleep instantly. So he stood instead, his arms folded, watching Cas.

Dean had been in this room so many times over the past six months. He'd sat here so many times, looking at that empty bed. The unused pillows. The untouched blankets.

Now the room was no longer empty. Now, at last, there was Castiel.

Dean stood there a while and just looked. Cas was curled up in the little bed, on his side, still shivering. His head was nestled on one of those very pillows that Dean had readied for him so long ago (in fact, it was the pillow that Sam had walked off with briefly, Dean realized). The blankets that had been waiting for him there for so long were tucked tightly around him, pulled up to his chin.

Dean studied his face. Cas... Buddy. The wounds he'd gotten a few weeks ago in the Tetons were still faintly visible; the whip marks had not yet fully healed, the bruises were still shading his skin under the uneven stubble on his cheeks. He still looked very pale, and he was terribly thin.

But he was breathing. He was alive.

We found him, Dean thought, almost in disbelief. We actually found him.

Dean noticed that Cas's damp hair was sticking to his face along his forehead and temples, so Dean reached down and brushed it off of his face, trying to tuck it back under the hat.

Dean's whole body was vibrating now with exhaustion, his hands shaking as he tucked Cas's hair back under the hat. But he tucked the hair back carefully; and he did not let himself sit down, and he could not take his eyes off Castiel's face.

His long-lost angel.

At last found.

Home.

A very long time later the doorbell rang.

Dean jerked awake and discovered he'd somehow passed out face-down on the bed, right across Cas's legs. Through some miracle Cas seemed to have not suffocated himself just yet, and Dean had managed not to suffocate either. Dean stood and staggered to the front door. He was a little surprised to find he had to lean on the walls as he made his way to the door. He was further surprised to realize that he felt, in, fact, really really awful. He had a pounding headache and was so exhausted that he seemed unable even to walk correctly; he kept misjudging and veering into the wall.

Normally Dean would have taken some pains to hide certain details about the bunker from a visitor, to try to explain away some of the puzzling features, but he was far too exhausted to remember any of that and just swung the door wide open. And there was Sarah, carrying a large old-fashioned satchel in one hand, and a strangely shaped cardboard box in her other hand.

She stepped inside and took a long look at Dean. Then she said, "Show me where Buddy is and then you need to go to bed immediately."

Dean stumbled back to Cas's room, Sarah trailing after him. Dean gestured vaguely at Cas. Sarah seemed to click into some kind of crisis-triage-mode immediately, zipping over to Cas and checking him over rapidly, then demanding to know where Sam was and disappearing to check on him, and then making Dean sit down and checking him too. Finally she circled back to Cas to do some actual treatment. Dean slumped down on the little chair watching Sarah's flurry of activity in a fuzzy-headed haze. He almost nodded off right there, but woke up when Sarah stuck her hand down the front of her bulky sweater and magically pulled out an entire IV bag. Dean blinked.

"It was in my bra," she explained, seeing Dean's expression. "I knew he'd need it warm."

"How do you get an entire IV bag in your bra?"

"Professional secret," she said briefly, turning back to Cas and focusing on starting his IV. She did not respond to any of the rest of Dean's questions till she had the IV going smoothly, and till she seemed satisfied with Cas's breathing and his position.

Finally she turned to Dean, took him by the arm and pulled him to his feet. "Off you go to bed," she said, "Where's your bedroom?"

Dean started to head out of the room obediently, but suddenly found he couldn't bear to walk through Cas's door out into the hallway. He staggered in a little circle and attempted to get back to the chair, but Sarah blocked him.

"Bed, Dean."

"I can't leave him," he said to Sarah. "I can't leave him."

"Dean, I'll watch over him. I promise."

"No," said Dean, veering stubbornly around her and sitting back down in the chair. "I can't leave him. I can't abandon him again. I can't. "

Sarah tried a few more times to get Dean to leave the room, but Dean simply refused. Dean had been gripped by an intense worry that if he left the little bedroom, Cas would somehow disappear entirely, vanishing never to be seen again. He knew, in theory, that Cas could not "go poof" anymore, but could not shake the fear that the next time he walked into the room it would again be empty — the bed neatly made, the blankets lying tidy and flat, the two pillows untouched.

Dean could not be budged, and at last Sarah sighed and walked out the door. She reappeared a few minutes later dragging the entire mattress from Dean's bed, still with all its bedding on it. She plopped it on the floor two feet away from Cas's bed, straightened out the bedding, and said, "Lie down."

"Oh, that works, okay," said Dean, collapsing down on the mattress.

"This is what I did for Buddy when he wouldn't leave you and Sam, in the ICU, you know," said Sarah, kneeling by Dean's side and pressing her fingers into his arms for some reason. "I set up a mattress in the corner of your room and made him lie down on it. And now... I think you also need an IV. Dean, you're badly dehydrated."

"You got another one in your bra?" he said hopefully.

"Sorry, kiddo, only the hypothermia patients get the ones out of the bra," she said drily, opening her satchel.

"I could go jump in a cold shower or something," offered Dean.

She snorted, pulled another IV bag out of her little satchel, and straightened his arm. "Just hold still." She swabbed his arm and got the IV in so quickly he barely even felt the bite of the needle. Then she taped it in place and fiddled with the bag for a minute, rigging it up somehow on the little desk. "Dean," she said, "did you and Sam both somehow forget you were in intensive care not even twenty-four hours ago? I told you that you both needed to drink a lot of fluids, didn't I?"

"We got kind of busy," said Dean.

"I told you to eat small frequent meals? And to stay warm? And take it easy?"

Dean muttered. "We had... stuff to do... Y'know? Angels... and stuff..."

He saw her raise an eyebrow, but she said nothing. She pulled a blanket over him and it seemed impossible now to keep his eyes open. But there were still some things Dean had to tell her, and he hauled himself back from the precipice of sleep, dragging his eyes open, in order to say, "Make sure his hat stays on."

"Don't worry, Dean. Go to sleep."

"His feet are all torn up. He's too thin..."

"I'll check him all over, don't worry."

"He won't wake up, Sarah."

"Very likely it's the low blood pressure. I'll take care of him, I promise."

"He—"

"Dean. I'll take care of him. And Sam too. Close your eyes."

Sarah was adjusting the lights now, turning on the little desk lamp and putting it by Cas's bed, shielding it so it wouldn't shine into Dean's eyes.

Dean had almost nodded off when he heard an odd sound coming from the hallway, where Sarah had put down the cardboard container. It was a faint, tiny little squeaky sound.

It happened again. It sounded rather like a tiny, frightened... meow?

"You brought... your cat?" he asked blearily.

Sarah was standing by the doorway now, her hand on the light switch. "It's not my cat," she said. "Go to sleep, Dean." She flicked off the overhead light, and Dean fell asleep instantly.