I know this is a really weird time to update, but I'm back again guys, hi ;) I might come back to update/edit this one because I didn't really like how it turned out, but I wanted to get something out to you guys before next week. Let's get on with it.

"What the hell, Dean?" This felt oddly familiar for Cas, but he couldn't pinpoint why.

Hell? No, this isn't hell… this is… this is Cas… He's not in hell…not again. Cas promised, he said he wouldn't let them take him again.

He lowered the blade slowly and Cas stood to take it from his hands, never tearing his eyes away from Dean. He took a step back.

"If that was real, you would have died."

They didn't stop training.

Before they even had the chance to give Castiel the hallucinogenic, Naomi knew that this session was going to be different.

They had already started in on Castiel with the screws and a few dull knives to weaken him. The strange head contraption effectively severed his connection with his grace, and after testing on Ezekiel, one of the angels in their dungeons, they perfected it. No grace meant no healing, no refuge from the pain, and no contacting any sympathizers for aid.

Castiel's face was covered in a thin sheen of sweat as small pants made their way past his clenched teeth. He grunted as the side of his neck was bared for the needle carrying the hallucinogenic. He hummed slightly as the needle pierced his skin. The plunger was pushed down and he grinned, the rest of his face going lax as his eyes fluttered closed for a brief moment. Naomi was initially terrified that they might have accidentally killed the angel that they were trying to join to their cause, but there were no burnt wing marks. His chest rose and fell again to eradicate her fears, and she could see the faint glow of blue grace emanating from his wounds- no, he was just enjoying the drug. It did initially sever pain as it worked to sever mind from reality.

She started in on her usual routine, the hallucination disguising her voice as Dean's.

"I never cared for you, Castiel. You're just a weapon." She stopped short when she heard sluggish laughing and studied the man on the chair with renewed curiousity.

Blood trickled from his nose, a sign that his vessel was reaching it's limits with the hallucinogenic.

"I know it's not you," he said, voice suddenly serious in comparison to the hysterical laughter that still echoed in the room. He didn't open his eyes because he already knew what he would see, and he didn't care for the way the room was already spinning.

"You're not Dean," he explained, "You never were."

She glanced at the syringe she had placed on her desk, making sure that the drug had made it's way from the needle to Castiel's bloodstream. But there wasn't a drop left in the syringe.

He finally opened his eyes. "I don't know exactly who you are, because you still appear as Dean to me," his voice changed erratically in pitch as he spoke. His hand raised in what might have been a wave in her direction, but his hand was shaking so badly and his fingers were twitching from the drug that she couldn't tell. "But I know you're not him. I know Dean. You're not him," he repeated.

He snapped his fingers in realization, although his lack of strength made the motion little more than the rubbing of two fingers together.

"Naomi."

"How-?"

"Dean's never called me 'Castiel'." He chuckled, even though she could find nothing funny about the statement, ". . . It's always been Cas. My name is Cas.". He was definitely delirious, no doubt because they had upped the dosage after they realized the sessions weren't working.

A direct approach, then. "Castiel, I just want one thing from you. One thing, and all of this," she gestured towards the contraption holding the screws in place on his head, as well as the gash she'd given him under his eye, "Can be over."

She took his silence as her cue to continue.

"Tell me that you don't care about Dean. That's it."

"I'm sorry," He seemed sobered again as his eyes slid shut, but his calm facade was broken by how rapidly he was breathing. He could feel his own pulse throbbing against the handcuffs, and he found temporary relief in the fuzziness his hyperventilation gave his already muddled mind. They really should have double checked that dosage.

"I can't. I can't do that," he opened his eyes again, and they seemed clearer than before as he stared her down, "No matter what you do to me, I will never say it. I care about Dean. I care more about him than you or any of the others. Nothing you do to me can change that," bold words- she would have thought he was being courageous if not for the way his eyes were full of fear and his chin quivered ever so slightly.

His emotion already made him weak. He used to be so strong, so brave, placing all of his faith in God- but now he only trusted in a weaker human. He hadn't fallen yet, but he was already practically human in a sense.

She sighed, shaking her head regretfully. She had truly hoped that this reeducation would put him back on the right track, but Castiel had always been stubborn. "Then I fear, brother, that you are already lost."

She tightened all 6 of the screws, unheeding of the cries and pleas and screams of the younger brother that had become more human than angel. He begged to her, told her that just because she doesn't understand human emotion doesn't mean it's something to fear. She ignored his words, even as they tapered off into incoherent whimpers. Blood trickled from the holes in his head, down his temple, under his collar, along his jaw, into his eyes.

"See to it that he's gone before I come back," Naomi ordered one of the guards. He nodded sharply, and she fled the room in anger as his words turned into babbling, fuming that all her hard work had been for nothing. Months of nothing. She left the two guards at the door, both of them looking down, to the side, at the ceiling, anywhere but at the pathetic mass of agony strapped to the metal chair in the middle of the room.

She almost made it to the end of the hallway. She could hear Castiel screaming between sobs, and it disgusted her to hear his words that perforated the outbursts.

"I love humanity," he took as deep a shuddering breath as his body would allow, "and- I am not - repentant for it! I- I ca- care . . . about. . . DEAN!" The last word- a name- wasn't so much part of a statement as it was a plea for help. His rough gravelly voice shouted the name, much like how Dean himself had shouted for Cas in Perdition.

But this time, no help would come. Dean couldn't save him. He would face death at the hands of his own brother, at the hands of Naomi's guards, two angels that he had grown up with and had no reason to fear and hate, other than the fact that they feared and hated him.

Cas passes out, thinks they're trying to kill him, they are helping him, wipe his memory

Cas didn't realize that he had passed out. When he came to, most likely due to the clank of metal on metal as his cuffs were shifted, Naomi was gone. The guards were still there, to his dismay, and one of them was standing at his side. Cas wasn't able to see his face, or any mal intent that may have been etched on it, but he nevertheless struggled to get away. The angel ignored his attempts, and after a few seconds moved farther down to Castiel's ankles. He tried to lift his head to see what he was doing, but he couldn't. He felt numb and heavy, like the hallucinogens that Naomi gave him had been molten lead injected into his bloodstream. He rolled his head to the side, and was surprised to meet no stabbing pain in his head. The device was gone. He looked around the room and found it resting inconspicuously on Naomi's desk, blood from the screws dripping onto the pristine oak. The guard, meanwhile, had taken off his bonds and was now helping him sit up. The other angel stood to the side, glancing out the door every few seconds, blade poised in a white-knuckled grip.

So the torture was finally over- but shouldn't he feel just the slightest bit regretful that they were going to kill him? He couldn't bring himself to care. He just hoped they would do it quickly. They had no reason to seek revenge against him.

But rather than kill him and end his suffering, the angel replaced her blade to it's rightful place, still glancing out the door every few seconds.

"Wh-" Cas closed his eyes for a moment- his jaw shifting had even further aggravated his injuries, if that was possible. His question died in his throat when the other angel brought two cold fingers to his head, and he flinched. A slight glow emanated from his fingertips and was gone in an instant, leaving him feeling instantly and oddly fuzzy, detached. He realized that the angel was talking to him, but he could barely make himself care.

"-help you. Naomi went too far. Our orders from Father were not to kill. We couldn't do anything about it while she was here, but she's gone now." Cas nodded dumbly, trying to act as though he understood, but he couldn't pay attention with the way his grace was throbbing painfully in every muscle. He could feel it now, his waning angelic grace starting to lean ever so slightly to the side of mortality. Naomi's "reeducation" wasn't just physically painful- it tore his grace apart, too, like tomatoes in a blender set to puree.

"You won't remember any of this. Perhaps it's best that way."

Last chapter was intense, this one was too. Dean is emotionally constipated as always, so who knows when he'll confess his feelings.

P.S. before any of you medical people get mad at me, I know a normal IV injection wouldn't be done on the neck, but it's more dramatic so I did it anyway. And I actually did do (some) research on hallucinogens because I wanted to be as accurate as possible, and I made Cas have some of the symptoms.