All that we have, whether costly or meek/
Because we believe.
-How Many Kings? (Downhere)

"Abite!"

It had not surprised Mary that the apartment which had caught their interest was inhabited by the witch they were looking for. It would have been a crazy coincidence for someone unrelated to the defeathering project but living within six blocks of the motel where the Winchesters were staying to somehow have come into possession of Angel feathers, especially as Mary was given to understand that Angels were extremely rare, particularly on Earth.

But she had not been fully ready for the witch's quick response time, or being flung backwards into the hall from which she and Sam had come. However, Sam was apparently more prepared than she, because he got a shot off even as he was thrown back and slammed against the wall. From where she slid to, Mary couldn't see if he'd succeeded in hitting the witch or not, but he'd certainly given it a fair try, which was better than she'd been able to manage.

For whatever reason, the witch did not pin them after flinging them, and Mary was free to get back up almost as soon as her breath returned after having been knocked out of her. Running past Sam without stopping to check on him, Mary entered the apartment, gun still in hand, dropping and rolling on the way in anticipation of another attack from the witch.

However, within the room, Mary became aware of a painfully familiar sound in addition to the light flung outward blindingly from mason jars stacked all over the apartment. She put her free hand to her ear, and looked around for Harrow, but didn't immediately see the witch despite the incredible light flooding every corner of the one-room apartment.

There were only two places to hide that Mary could see. There was a door leading to a bathroom off to the left. Nearby, there was a queen-sized bed, behind which one could theoretically take cover. Mary chose the bed first. If the witch was in the bathroom, there would be nowhere for her to go that Mary wouldn't be able to see her. But if Mary went to the bathroom, anyone hiding behind the bed might flee through the apartment door. Sam might get them, and he might not. Mary didn't know if Sam was mobile or not, but this was no time to find out. Seconds counted here, she could feel it.

Even though Mary expected trouble, Harrow was faster than she anticipated, and she wasn't entirely prepared for the witch to try and take her head on, as that wasn't the typical style of witches. But as she rounded the bed, the witch threw herself upward and slammed into Mary's chest with her shoulder, driving her backward. Mary struggled to keep her feet, as the witch fought to knock her to the ground, at the same time vying for control of the gun.

Harrow seemed to be screaming, but Mary couldn't actually hear above the sound emanating from all corners of the room, a sound which had dramatically increased in volume, almost as though it was responding in fury to this latest development, and drowning out any attempt the witch might be making to cast a spell. The tremendous -and growing- noise served to disorient both women, which actually worked out in Mary's favor, because Harrow got hold of the gun and pushed away from her, but then staggered and blinked instead of taking aim, and that gave Mary time to spin and land a kick to Harrow's midsection, driving her to the floor.

Rolling the instant she was down, Harrow fired blindly and Mary ducked back. Behind her, glass shattered as a bullet found its way into a mason jar. Light flared more brilliantly from that spot, as if the bullet had somehow sparked off a flame. The pitch of the sound managed to ratchet up higher, and the mason jars began to shake and rattle against each other.

Involuntarily, Mary found herself covering her ears, struggling to resist the impulse to close her eyes in order to shut out the light. Mary didn't know if she was screaming or not, was having a bit of trouble telling up from down; at this point she was in no shape to finish Harrow off.

Covering her ears, red streaks of blood marring the beauty of her blond hair, Harrow got up and bolted for the door.

She never made it.

A bullet filled with witch killing brew found its way into her skull before she hit the threshold, and she dropped to the floor on the instant, blood running from the hole even as she died. In less than a heart beat, the sound and light faded, and the world seemed to be suddenly filled with darkness and silence.

As suddenly as the fit had begun, it ended.

With an exhausted but relieved sounding sigh that was almost a whimper, Cass relaxed against the wall behind him, and let go of Dean. The pressure in the room dropped, and the walls quit shaking. Dean's ears popped again.

Cautiously, Dean opened his eyes, not even noticing that the feathers on the nightstand had been brightly aglow, for the light was already fading. His ears were ringing, but that was simply in complaint to the earlier auditory abuse they had endured. He was pretty sure his forearms were bruised where Cass had held tight to him, but he had no intention of mentioning that either now or in future.

Cass had closed his eyes and was breathing more deeply, though in a still somewhat labored manner. There was evidence of strain in his face, but the sort that indicated expended effort, not ongoing struggle. Whatever it was he'd been fighting with on the inside, it was apparently over now.

Dean sat back in the chair he had earlier vacated, aware of being out of breath even though he'd done very little. Wiping a hand across his face, he was startled to find he was soaked with sweat. He had the feeling that he'd somehow put a lot of energy into doing... something, but he wasn't sure what it had been, and that scared him a little bit, as did the fact that Cass appeared to be unconscious again.

He jumped half out of his skin in shock when his phone rang, but still managed to snatch it off the table and answer it, recognizing the number on sight, "Sam!"

"We got her, Dean," Sam said, a slight tremor in his voice, "Lisa Harrow is dead."

Even though Sam didn't say as much, Dean knew something more than a simple witch kill had happened. Something that had Sam puzzled, a little excited, maybe even scared.

It took Dean a second to ask, because his mouth had suddenly gone dry as his subconscious understood what his conscious mind had not yet figured out how to accept. He'd known it was over the second Cass let him go. He'd known before Sam called that the witch was dead. He knew somehow that her death was what had allowed Cass to finally let go of him.

"What happened?"

Sam made a noise to indicate his confusion, then said, "You're not gonna believe it."

"Tell me," Dean insisted.

"Later," Sam promised, "When we get back to the motel."

"So you're saying these were lit up like Christmas lights?" Dean said, skeptically picking up one of the mason jars full of feathers Mom and Sam had brought back.

In light of the dramatic way they had been glowing earlier, the feathers now looked dreadfully ordinary. Actually, they mostly looked dreadful, bent and twisted to cram them into the container, still sheathed in the blood that had covered them when they were ripped out. But, in comparison to earlier, they looked utterly typical feathers, hardly of celestial origin at all.

"That's the only place the light could've come from," Mom answered matter-of-factly, nursing a split lip with some ice wrapped in a towel, "Though that doesn't explain the noise."

Cass was not equipped to weigh in on the discussion, having been unconscious since before Sam and Mom returned, which had Sam worried that they hadn't found and killed Harrow soon enough, despite the tremendous luck that had guided them to her door.

Or was it something more than luck?

Was it really possible that it was a coincidence that those feathers had lit up just as he and Mom were passing the apartment? Feathers that -as Sam had observed the night before- didn't even glow the way naturally shed Angel feathers did? And was it also coincidence that the light and noise had faded the second Sam dropped Harrow with a bullet to the brain? Dean had related what happened at the motel, and the timing of it made coincidence seem thoroughly unlikely.

"It had to have been Cass... somehow," Sam said, "Right? I mean, they are his feathers. Maybe he retained some kind of... link to them or something."

"Well that's an unsettling thought," Dean remarked, clearly having some difficulty trying to imagine being scattered in several hundred... or perhaps thousand... pieces, and being able to sense them all, "But it hardly seems likely. If Angels knew where their feathers went after they dropped 'em, wouldn't they have moved to stop some people from using their feathers for purposes they didn't like?"

"Who says they haven't?" Sam replied, "Cass never talks about Angel feathers," he added for emphasis, "Ever. Everything we know about them, we learned from the lore, and we all know that even the lore doesn't know all there is to know about Angels."

"Yeah, but... come on," Dean objected, though he couldn't seem to come up with words to express all the reasons that the explanation didn't make sense to him.

He didn't need to. In truth, Sam didn't find it terribly satisfactory himself. There was too much unusual in the situation. Something exceptional had happened here, beginning with the psychic impressions (Sam could think of nothing else to call them) that had plagued Dean at the start and going from there.

"I don't know," Sam admitted with some frustration, "There's something different about feathers that get taken from an Angel against the Angel's will, just like there's a difference between a naturally shed feather and a freely given one. We know that much anyway. Maybe there's more different about them than what we already know. Or maybe somehow the spell severed them physically but they stayed tied to Cass in some kind of... non-physical way?"

Dean was shaking his head, but Sam could tell it was because he didn't want to believe instead of because he found the explanation inherently unbelievable. Sam had the same trouble, in part because it was impossible for him to imagine being able to feel all those detached pieces, to sense where they were and what was happening around them. The way that might fragment Cass's ability to focus alone was more than Sam could begin to get his head around.

"Just look at them," Sam said, gesturing to the feathers on the nightstand, one of which had been naturally shed, whereas the others had been forced off their wing, "You can see the difference in them. Maybe there's more that we can't see."

Dean scowled at the feathers as if they offended him.

"Well, whatever the case," Mom said decisively, "We might never have found Harrow if she hadn't put that feather angel in her window. And I'm not sure we would've won if not for the light and sound distracting her," Mom did not say, but implied, that either her or Sam or both might have been killed.

"Yeah, why did she do that?" Dean wondered, though of course he had to know none of them had the answer to that question, "You'd think anybody who knew enough to avoid all of the traffic cams around the farmhouse so we wouldn't find them would be smart enough not to hang freakin' Angel feathers in their window. Seems kinda crazy to me."

Sam shrugged helplessly. He didn't have any answers, only questions.

"Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again," Dean said, setting down the jar, "Demons and monsters I get; people are just crazy," after a thoughtful pause, he inquired, "Anybody else startin' to find this town a little too creepy?"

"I've been driving all day, and you haven't had any sleep either," Sam pointed out, objecting to Dean's indirect but emphatically clear suggestion.

"And I might never sleep again if I spend another minute in this burg," Dean countered.

Sam didn't really want to argue. He didn't like all the questions they'd been faced with here any more than Dean did. And he didn't like the thought that something further weird might happen even though they'd killed the witch and The Demon. And they really didn't want to wait around for the cops who had doubtless been called to the apartment a few blocks away in response to the shots fired to expand their search to include this motel. They were all exhausted, and they all just wanted to go home.

He sighed, "You want to pick Cass up, or should I?"

"You take care of the rest of it, I'll deal with Mr. Comatose," Dean replied.

There wasn't a whole lot of 'the rest of it' to take care of. As per usual, they'd kept most of their belongings bagged up, ready to leave at a moment's notice. But Sam didn't argue. He was too tired to argue. And he could tell that Dean was tired enough that he was willing to argue about anything.

It felt damn good to leave the city behind, even though they were practically buried in questions that were sure to follow them home. Right now, Dean didn't care about the questions.

He just wanted to get his family -all of them- home safely. The questions could wait... or go straight to Hell for all he cared. He didn't need an explanation for any of it, so long as nothing about this little rescue adventure came back later to bite them in the ass. He didn't need answers for everything. It was enough to know the bad things were dead, and that they had Cass back.

Even though the Angel hadn't stirred, not even to so much as heal his vessel, he still looked better somehow now that Harrow was dead. Still sick and bloody and worn out, but no longer fading, not getting worse. Dean could live with it taking Cass time to recover, just so long as he did eventually recover, something Dean now felt confident about. But it wasn't just that the witch was dead. There was more to Dean's improved outlook than that.

Dean had felt like there was a weight around his neck ever since Cass had gone missing, a weight that had been lifted probably the second Lisa Harrow was dead, which served as confirmation in his own mind that the witch's spell had the unintended side effect of establishing or strengthening some kind of empathic connection between himself and Cass for reasons he didn't want to dwell on.

Even when he hadn't been actively getting pinged anymore because the witch wasn't setting her spell off every few hours, Dean still hadn't felt quite right inside, like he was sensing something he shouldn't be able to. That feeling was gone now, and it came as a tremendous relief.

After a few hours of driving, Dean pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store. Mom woke with a jerk when Dean cut the Impala's engine, though it didn't disturb either Cass or Sam a bit.

Without discussing it, Dean and Mom went inside, Dean with the primary intention of buying some sort of snack to chew on and help keep him awake. Eventually Sam would have to take over, but Dean wanted to let his brother sleep for awhile longer. He'd earned the rest.

There was no line at this time of night, so the stop didn't take long.

As they were walking back to the Impala, Mom spoke up, "Do you think Cass will be okay?"

"Sure," Dean replied, "He's as tough a son-of-a-bitch as they come. You've seen that already."

"Yeah," Mom agreed quietly, "I suppose I have."

She hesitated near the back of the Impala, so Dean stopped and waited.

"I used to be scared of him, you know," Mom said.

Actually, that came as news, and it took Dean a second to respond.

Of course, there was more than surprise at work, but also a certain... shameful reluctance. His mother knew how Castiel had met Dean, pulling him out of Hell. But Dean hadn't told her what meeting the Angel on Earth had really been like. If she hadn't known before, she now knew what the true voice of an Angel sounded like, though she would not be able to even imagine the sort of terror it had inflicted on the unknowing Dean... who had never believed in Heaven or Angels or God until it became unavoidable. There was no shame in that, or at least Dean didn't feel any. It was what had happened after Cass had his vessel that gave Dean pause now.

"You know the first thing Bobby and I did when we met Cass face to face?" Dean asked, but didn't wait for an answer before confessing, "We filled him with salt rounds and stabbed him with the Demon knife," he felt a little embarrassed that he'd ever been so thoroughly ignorant as to try and take out an Angel that way.

"Really?" Mom's eyebrows climbed, "What'd he do?"

"Knocked Bobby out cold with a touch, pulled the knife out of his shoulder and told me Heaven had work for me," Dean replied, then added, only half-joking, "I think for awhile he thought that shooting and stabbing were the traditional Hunter's greetings," Dean shook his head, "But he scared the crap outta me. I didn't know what he was, what he wanted or what he was capable of. Hell, I don't think he really knew either. Not back then," after taking a deep breath, Dean concluded, "But believe what you've seen. When all the chips are down and everything's at stake, Cass is always there to stand with us, no matter what it costs. You can trust that. I know I do."

Mom was quiet for a long moment before she finally said, "I know I can. And... I do."

"Good," Dean nodded curtly, "Good talk. Now let's get in the car and get outta here before Sammy wakes up and notices we didn't buy any snacks for him."