His dreams were dark the night after Dean had left and darker still after two nights. Dean's side of the bed was empty and cold. Cas had rested his hand there in the divot that made up Dean's pillow dent. Before Dean had left they were together. Cas wanted to be sure that Dean knew what was waiting for him for when he came home. He wanted to be sure that Dean carried this moment with him as he made his way back to the city, to the dark world. Perhaps then, Dean would not be too reckless with his life. Perhaps then, Dean would remember just what his life meant to those that loved him.

Cas believed in Dean. He believed in his abilities as a man, a detective, a lover, and even a type of secondary father figure to Lil. Yes, he had thought about so much concerning their lives, their potential lives. He thought about how nice it would be to know that they could just live, not with something always lurking over their shoulders, but the way that normal people do. He had thought about what it would mean to stop being afraid all of the time. He had thought about what it would mean to Lil too. She was very attached to Dean. He worried about what it would do to her to lose yet another person that she loved. He shook with the thought. He knew that it would be the single worst thing for him next to losing Lil.

It was certain that Dean knew as they had made their way to the bed, quiet and gentle, just how scared Cas was. They didn't speak of it anymore. The time for that had passed. Cas didn't want him to add anymore to his plate of worries. There would be enough to deal with, and this fear could not be helped, not even through sharing. So, Cas set it aside as best he could. He set it aside as Dean slipped his hands under Cas' shirt and slowly slid the shirt up over Cas' head. Cas' legs ran into the mattress behind him. Cas unbuttoned Dean's shirt. Dean thumbed open the button and pulled down the zipper on Cas' pants.

Dean pressed up to Cas' chest now. He let his shirt fall to the floor beside him. Cas stepped out of his pants and underwear. Dean shucked his own off as well. Cas let himself fall back onto the bed. Dean braced his legs on either side of him and crawled up over him. "You okay?" It was the first thing that either of them had said since entering the bedroom. Dean sounded like concern and worry.

"I am. You make me feel like there is just this. It's safe here." He felt like he wasn't explaining well enough, but he raised his hands to Dean's face pulling him down to a kiss that Dean didn't fight.

Dean broke the kiss eventually, his body blanketing Cas. "I will come back to you. You believe me when I say it, don't you?"

There was only one answer that Dean needed, and Cas was prepared to give it to him. "You'll come back to me. No matter what, we always find our way back to each other, and this time will be no different." He ran his hands down Dean's sides to his hips. His body was cold. Cas reached over and pulled the blanket over them both. Dean seemed like he wanted to warm each of them up in other ways. Their bodies began a slow dance of contact that was graceful and distracting.

So, Cas pushed aside the night and the dark to linger in the glow of Dean's skin, illuminated by the moonlight that pressed into the room from outside. They did not speak of their fears anymore. Instead, the words that fell into the night around them were words of desire, moans of contentment, and the incoherent tones of affection huffed out between kisses. "I need you." And Cas hoped that this night would be powerful enough to drive away the nightmares that he felt sure would come once Dean was gone.

And the nightmares did come. It was so cold on the second night, that Cas had built up the fire early. He had wanted to be sure that he and Lil would be warm enough all night. Unfortunately, he had made the house too hot. It felt like the cabin was full, hot summer. Cas could not sleep fully. His body kept jerking awake with falling dreams and the crash of the ground slapping him into consciousness. His body was all sweat and sticky discomfort. He tossed and turned with it, casting aside the comforter, keeping only the top sheet tangled around him.

Eventually, he slept long enough for his mind to form a narrative. It was familiar. The details were all the bits and pieces that he had poured into the document that Dean now carried to the city. The bits and pieces though had married and merged with his own fears and desires. The too hot cabin warping and changing his thoughts into the more macabre.

He moved as though he was floating on a current of air. Lil guided him through the stark white hall. The brightness of it setting off even more her pale white skin marred by blood coursing from her torso. Her simple white sleeping gown drenched in red. It dripped from her as she walked on ahead of him. She reached back and took his hand. They did not speak, but she smiled at him seemingly oblivious to her bloodied state. When they reached the middle of the clean, bright white hall, they came to a stop. There was a window that looked into a lab. A man worked over a table, vials and equipment meticulously laid out all around him. The far walls were filled with cages containing bats and a few other creatures. Each cage had a sign expressing danger, the biohazard symbol emblazoned in the center in bright, bold red.

Cas entered the room and listened. The man had an old phone pressed up to his ear, the swirl of the cord gripped in his hand. "The payment is a slap in the face. It is every type of disrespect. I did not come here to be treated like this." He held the phone in place by tipping his head to the side more and pushed his work away. His hair was cut short and stood out in small, stiff peaks on the top. The fluorescent lighting gave him a ghostly pallor. "I''m going to move the test subjects tonight, and I'll be in California in three days." There was a pause, and Mirov seemed to be listening intently. "I'll come see you first. I want to see her too. The picture you sent was beautiful." He went silent again, listening. Cas let Lil pull him with her little hand move more fully into the room. He was not seen, maybe couldn't be seen since it was, after all, a dream. "I'll be careful. I always am. I just have to see the look in his eyes when I confront him. I just have to see it through myself."

The words were familiar. The actions were less so. Mirov hung up, and began sealing up the cages for transport. Faceless men came in, dressed in lab coats to take the cages away. Who they were, what they looked like did not matter to Cas' dream mind. The group of them went outside. The transport vessels were lined up and the subjects were loaded in. A man came to Mirov with a clipboard, "Sign here." He did. Then there was an explosion. Something had launched into the first transport vehicle. "Go, go, go." The man shouted at everyone. "Back to the the lab. Mirov ran and Cas followed him. The next explosion tipped the last vehicle on its side. There were bats flying from it, off and away from the fires and smoke.

Mirov yelled out to anyone that would listen. "We have to secure the test subjects." No one listened.

Cas' mind moved him to California and a boat floating languidly on the Pacific. Brady stood at the railing looking out on the little waves that slapped quietly against the sides of the ship. "You seem to think that what you want matters."

Mirov gripped the side of the boat in his hands, knuckles turning white as he did so. "Let them go. You never have to see me again. I'll be dead to you, to everyone. Just don't involve them."

Brady turned to Mirov now. "Ah, Luc. So naive. You made this happen. Too bad you have that incredibly useful brain there. I would shove you right on over, feed you to the fishies. Alas, I need to keep you handy. Lord knows that you have sent us some beautiful research. Not a lot of antidotes, though. Makes one wonder what is just swirling around in that head of yours. It would be far too risky having all of those drugs and not your skills. You know how to cure the diseases, buddy. You know a lot. Killing you seems to be short-sighted. I, for one, don't want to be caught with my pants down."

Cas watched from the sidelines as Brady stepped closer to Mirov. "I won't help you."

"I'll start with the child then. My nephews have a way with children." From the darkness toward the back of the boat, A and Al emerged; they stood near the stairway that would take one down into the galley and the underbelly of the vessel. Between them was a woman holding a toddler. The child had her head buried in the woman's shoulder.

Mirov made a move toward them. "Are you okay?"

The woman nodded. She held the child tighter. "So, you can see, that our working relationship is not really an optional one." Brady interrupted the little reunion. "I should have told you about our own little experiments back home. You see, when you sent us some of your findings, I had my boys take them down to our home town. Had them test it all out on some young people there. You know what we discovered?" He stopped, seeming to wait for an answer, but Mirov offered none. He, instead, stared longingly at the woman and child, so close yet so far away. Brady continued, "We discovered that your variant on the Alpha Strain works, and more importantly, so does the antidote. The children showed no side effects."

"You monster. Why?"

"I figure that it will prove useful one day. It still needs a bit more testing. I brought some along should the opportunity arise for more testing. Do you think that I should perform any tests here?" Brady made a point of staring long and hard at the child.

"Whatever you want. Just let them go." He tore his gaze from the woman and the child and looked at Brady.

"Now that's much better." Brady turned to A and Al and said, "Get the boat ready for the return trip. Make sure that our guests are comfortable." He waved out past them, and A and Al pulled the woman toward the lifeboat that hung at the back of the deck.

"Where are you taking them?" Mirov started to move toward them when Brady pulled out an odd gun and held it up in front of him.

"Stay." Brady raised the gun over his head and fired. The bright flash of red accompanied the flare that blazed a trail up into the night sky. "Your ride will be here in a moment."

"My ride?"

"Yes. You get to play dead for a spell. I'm going to have some of my friends take care of you, and the world as you know it will come to forget that you ever existed." He rested a hand on Mirov's shoulder. "Of course, from time to time, I will send one of my boys down to check up on you. Gotta make sure that you are doing well and all." A second boat was speeding toward them from off toward the horizon. The engine roared to a halt right next to them.

Brady put a hand on Mirov and propelled him to the ladder at the front end of the boat. "Where are you taking me?" He stopped and looked back at the spot where the woman had been. "I have to get back to Zaire. I have to take the antidote back. The bats got away. They are all infected."

"Oh, well. I guess that it is good that you won't technically be alive to deal with the many punishments that the world will want to unleash on you. I suppose that you didn't see that the news has reported that you released all of those animals. It has been only a couple of days, but news sure does travel fast. It also has a way of being molded to one's purposes. You have a nasty reputation. I suppose that your so-called freeing of the infected animals will land you on every major law enforcement officer's radar. This coupled with what we will do to your family should you become less than compliant, should be quite enough to keep you in check."

"You bastard." Mirov lunged toward him. "Those people. I've sent you all of the research, the cure. You have to send it to them before it's too late."

"No, I really don't. Better to just sit on it until it is more profitable. No one cares a bit about a few deaths in Zaire. We'll wait until it hits a little closer to home." Brady smiled. His lips stretched out wide and flat; it was a scary expression.

A head popped up over the railing and said something in Spanish, or maybe Portuguese. Cas wasn't sure of the language. Brady directed Mirov to the ladder. Cas saw the look in his eyes as Lil, still bloody, came to him and took his hand. Together, they slipped away to another place.

Next, Cas found himself in a field looking toward a fire. The intensity of the flames blew out the windows. There was a scream. A and Al stood on the lawn near the flames. They watched and laughed a little. Cas knew that this was Mary's death. He moved closer. Lil stood away from them and merely looked on. A said, "That should take care of most of the evidence."

"Ezra's gonna be mad. He doesn't like when we kill off the evidence. Says it leaves too much of a trail." Al held out his hands to the flames seeming to warm them. Another noise came from the house. "You think she got untied yet?"

"Nah, she'd be diving out a window if she had." A became silent and tipped his head to the side. "Quiet now. We can go."

"What are we going to tell Ezra?"

"The truth. He won't like it, but it hardly matters. Not like he would have us raise the dead or something." A gave a short chuckle as they headed out. "She was never going to go along with an Ezra deal anyway. You could see it in her eyes. She was a woman of moral fiber."

"Hmm. I should have tasted some of that moral fiber." Al snorted out a laugh as they rounded the building. Cas followed them. "When are we going back to check on Mirov?"

"Soon as we need more product. I took some pictures of his girl. I'll bring them to him to remind him a little about who is in charge." A got into an old van and Al rounded to the driver's side. As the van drove past his field of vision, the house and the scene behind it changed. Lil was no longer standing off to the side.

The yard was empty save only for Dean. He was holding Lil to his chest. She was bleeding and so fragile looking in his arms. Behind him was the fire, burning bright into the night sky again. He looked to Cas and spoke to him. It was the first time that he had been seen in the dream. "They will look for her. She is the only thing that will keep Mirov from hurting them."

"Why don't they just kill Mirov? They certainly have nothing against murder." Cas reached out and ran a hand over Lil's hair. The sound of a distant ambulance pierced the night.

"Maybe he is still useful. Or maybe he has gotten too powerful for them. I think the latter. He made his way to Mexico and saw M and Lil just fine. He has some freedom now. I think that they don't have much of a hold on him anymore. I wonder if he knows that A killed his only daughter." Dean leaned down and kissed Lil's head as he had when this had all been real. Cas remembered the tenderness of the gesture, the fear that coursed through him, the way that the air was so thick with smoke and terror. This conversation had not been a part of the past.

Cas said, "You must come back to me, to Lil."

"I will. I just have to see this through. I promised to protect you, and I will. Even if it takes everything that I have, you'll be safe and so will Lil." Dean leaned toward Cas, forehead pressed to his. There was a crash of glass breaking, the flames leaping from the house.

Cas' body shot up from the bed. The sound of breaking glass jarred him from his sleep. He had to shake his head to determine if the sound had come from his dream or from something in his waking life. He heard the slight creak of a footstep and leapt from the bed. His bedroom door slamming open in front of him. He heard Lil getting up and saw the source of the noise. It was too dark to see features, but he knew almost on instinct who this was. He shouted out, "Lil! Run, hide!" They had practiced enough in the early days, and he hoped that she would remember to use the trapdoor.

With that, Cas launched himself at the dark figure and slammed him back into the piano. The noise around them a cacophony in the once peaceful silence.

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AN: Thank you all for the lovely reviews. Thanks rainystv, Mummabro, and Igniting. I'm glad that you liked Cas' approach and the Lil focus. 'Til next week.