A/N: Thank you all for reading (and reviewing), Merry Christmas and I hope you enjoy the final chapter of this story.

There's gifts for all the family...
...It's Christmas
-Christmas in Heaven (Monty Python)

It was too damn early in the morning to be conscious, but the second Dean woke up, he knew there was zero chance of going back to sleep, so he might as well get out of bed and bumble his way into the kitchen. Coffee was the only solution to premature consciousness. In fact, the older Dean got, the more convinced he became that coffee was probably the answer to most -if not all- of life's problems.

Well, that and bacon.

Someday, he hoped to find some monster he could kill with coffee and bacon. Who knew, maybe some day he'd be reading one of the books in the Bunker and find out bacon had been invented expressly to kill some big bad that was now extinct, courtesy of an overdose of grease.

Yes, it was definitely way too early to be out of bed.

Finding the light already on in the kitchen, Dean grunted an acknowledgment of Castiel's presence and went to the counter where the currently in-use bag of coffee was kept. He picked it up and looked at it, relieved to find that it contained coffee. Whenever anyone stayed up all night reading lore, there was a fifty-fifty chance that they killed an entire bag of coffee in the process. But apparently nobody had felt the overwhelming urge to bone up on their knowledge.

Dean squinted, feeling he'd lost his train of thought somewhere.

Ah yes. Coffee.

Smug in his ability to recall the one salient topic of the morning, he turned to the coffee maker, holding the bag of grounds like a menacing weapon he planned to use on the innocent maker, which seemed to be cowering before him, begging for a couple more hours of rest before being forced to do its job. Dean had no sympathy for the coffee maker. In fact, before he'd had his morning coffee, he had sympathy for no one and no thing. If the world got screwed over some morning before he'd had his coffee, then humanity might at last be doomed for good and all.

Going through the motions of coffee prep, Dean began to get another nagging sensation. Something he was forgetting. Something important. Something... in the kitchen.

Halfway to the coffee maker with a pot of water, Dean stopped dead and rotated stiffly to look at the table in the kitchen. He blinked a couple of times to be sure of what he was seeing.

"Cass?"

Castiel was sitting at the table, frowning in apparent consternation at a bowl into which he'd put an amount of milk and cereal. He looked up from it willingly enough, an expression of calm bewilderment on his face as he registered Dean's shocked expression.

"I don't understand," Castiel said, looking back at the cereal bowl in front of him, "The description on the box says this cereal is crunchy, but when it's combined with milk, it simply disintegrates," he continued to frown at the bowl as he spoke, as if this mystery was of some deep and meaningful relevance that required intense consideration, "Why does it matter that the cereal was crunchy before it was put in the milk when it won't be by the time it is consumed? In fact, why bother with the cereal in the first place? Why not just put sugar and artificial flavoring in the milk and be done with it?"

Dean stared at Castiel for a moment longer. He didn't need this in the morning. Hell, he didn't need this ever. He tried to decide what emotion he was actually experiencing, just so he'd know what he was acting on. But who could tell before they'd had at least one cup of coffee?

"Cass," Dean repeated the name for lack of anything better to say.

Castiel looked up at him patiently, not appearing to expect an answer to his query about the cereal.

"You don't eat," Dean said finally, deciding that was as good a sentence as any.

This wasn't a hundred percent factual, but it was near enough that Dean was unwilling to put forth the qualifiers for the statement, especially this early in the morning. Cass was apparently willing to go along with the assertion without objection.

"No," Castiel agreed, his gaze falling back to the cereal bowl, "I just... enjoy pondering the process."

"You enjoy pondering the process of soaking cereal in milk?" Dean asked, for the sake of clarity.

Castiel again looked up from the bowl, and it finally registered with Dean that he looked good. Healthy, even. A little tired maybe, but no longer deathly pale, no longer visibly wounded or bloody. Most importantly, Castiel's eyes were clear when he looked at Dean, haunted only by their usual troubles and nothing more. His sentences, though oddly surreal, were coherent and achieved without evidence of struggle.

Mom had said Cass had talked to her while Sam and Dean were gone, but Dean hadn't been able to get anything out of the Angel last night when they'd returned, and had observed at the time that Cass hadn't yet bothered to heal... or even shift position since Dean had last seen him. The abruptness of the improvement after several days without apparent change was startling, especially before coffee.

"I tried it when I was human," Castiel sighed, now looking at the bowl, now at Dean, now back at the bowl, "But-" he paused regretfully, then concluded, "-I didn't understand it then either."

Dean decided to finish getting the coffee started before pursuing this conversation so much as one single step further. Castiel continued to observe the milky cereal until Dean finally sat down at the table with his coffee. Then he looked across at Dean, waiting for the man to speak again.

"So..." Dean said after he'd been working on the coffee for about ten minutes and Castiel had been staring at him in unsettling silence for almost that long, "You look better."

"I am," Castiel confirmed, as if the news was nothing to be excited over, "I healed myself."

"You healed your-" Dean broke off, realizing that wasn't the sentence he wanted to say, "Cass, you haven't even moved in three days... and... now you're just... suddenly all good?"

"It seemed like the physical damage was very upsetting to you all, so as soon as I had enough energy, I healed myself. It will be some time before my powers fully regenerate."

"Wait a minute, let me get this straight," Dean said, slowly setting down his coffee mug as he absorbed the full meaning of what Castiel had just said, "You healed yourself because we were upset?"

"It seemed like the thing do to," Castiel replied sensibly, his brow furrowing in that particular way it did when he suspected Dean's bag of marbles was missing a few, "Every time you looked at my wounds, you seemed to become very upset, so-"

"So you slowed down your Angelic healing process in order to spend energy fixing your vessel," Dean interrupted sharply.

"That is one way to look at it, yes," Castiel confirmed mildly.

"Dammit, Cass!" Dean snapped.

"Cass!" Sam's voice startled Dean and he swung around to see his brother looking surprised and relieved as he entered the kitchen, "You're up."

"Yeah," Dean grumbled sarcastically, getting up and retrieving a bacon package from the fridge, "But the dumbass redid the paint job before fixing the engine."

Sam was more of a morning person than Dean was, but even that statement was a little too much for him first thing and he blinked, "Sorry, what?"

"Apparently our expressions of concern were annoying," Dean rephrased, "So Cass decided to prioritize making himself look healthy over actually being healthy."

Sam held up a hand in the 'wait' gesture, and made a lunge for the nearest clean coffee cup while Dean continued preparing to fry bacon. Once he had his coffee, Sam sat at the table, and took a deep breath before lowering his hand.

"Okay," he sighed, "What?"

"It's not that big a deal-" Cass began, but Dean interrupted.

"The hell it's not!" Dean exclaimed irritably, then turned to Sam, "See, Cass thinks we're more concerned about the state of his vessel than we are about him."

"That's not what I-" Cass tried, but Dean was still on a roll.

"He thinks that the appearance of health is all we need to put our minds at ease, which is important because our being concerned about Cass's health is a major inconvenience to him."

"I didn't-" Cass persisted, but Dean wasn't finished.

"So he got enough energy in a pile to do something, and he decided to heal his vessel, leaving his powers -if my guess is right- on the fritz. To make us feel better."

"Well your mood has improved," Castiel commented dryly, and Dean glared at him, but the Angel was looking at the bowl of cereal again, "My cereal is extremely soggy."

"Now he's ignoring me," Dean complained, half considering throwing a strip of bacon at Cass to see if it would make a dent, but deciding that would be a waste of perfectly good bacon.

"It's too early in the morning for this," was the only thing Sam could think of to say.

For a few minutes, silence took hold of the kitchen. Aside from the delicious sound of frying bacon, that is.

"Castiel, you're up!"

Dean turned in time to observe that Mom was now entering the kitchen. She looked like she'd been up for awhile though. Or maybe she hadn't gone to bed in the first place. Who could tell?

"So I keep hearing," Cass replied, then sighed and looked up from his cereal bowl long enough to offer Mary a small smile, possibly as an apology for sounding annoyed.

It had gradually dawned on Dean that Cass treated Mom with an excess of delicacy that he had never shown Sam, Dean or anyone else. But until Mom had said as much, it had never occurred to him that his mother might be afraid of the Angel or that Cass -sensing that- went out of his way to treat her with an apparent excess of respect and kindness. Of course, it also had not occurred to him that -because she was so incredibly precious to Sam and Dean, no matter how they might feel toward her at any given moment- Mom was for all intents and purposes sacred to the Angel.

"Dean says Cass drained his powers to fix his vessel," Sam offered helpfully, looking over his shoulder at Mom, "And now he's pissed because... wait..." Sam looked at Cass, blinking and still bleary from sleep, "Why is he pissed?"

"That remains unclear," Cass answered, reluctantly pushing the cereal bowl aside.

"It's very simple," Dean cheerily explained to Cass, returning to the table with a plate of bacon, "I'm pissed because you're an idiot, and your priorities suck."

"Dean-" Sam sighed, rubbing his forehead, but Cass unexpectedly fired back before Sam could conjure up any words to go with his brother's name.

"If that's what it takes to be your friend, so be it."

Dean opened his mouth to retort, closed it again, frowned, took a breath, opened his mouth again, gave up and looked to Sam for help, but Sam just shook his head and shrugged. Cass gazed at him levelly.

"Dude, I think he's got you there," Sam informed him.

"Hey," Dean objected, "Just whose side are you on, anyway?"

"I didn't know we were choosing sides," Sam said.

"Yeah, there's my side, which is trying to encourage healthy, mentally sound life choices," Dean explained, "And then there's Cass's side, where the cereal is disgusting and gross, and it's apparently acceptable for your friends to leave you behind to die."

"Healthy life choices?" Sam queried with a laugh, looking at Dean's plate with raised eyebrows, "Says the man eating a plate of salted pork fat for breakfast."

"Hey now," Dean said, waving a strip of bacon at Sam like an accusing finger, "Bacon is a good and beautiful food, and I will not have my little brother making a mockery of it in our home."

Sam scoffed and shook his head, "You're impossible."

It was when he noticed his mother quietly smiling at him and Sam arguing that Dean realized Cass had been right. In showing the signs of improvement humans expected to see, he'd lifted some of their anxiety and fears, and in their relief they found a solace from the pain they each carried.

"You're gonna be okay eventually. Right, Cass?" Sam asked after a minute or so.

"Yes, Sam," Cass reassured him softly, "Eventually."

"Good," Sam said, not knowing how else to respond, so he repeated, "Good," and let it go at that.

"Merry Christmas, by the way," Cass said, peering again at the bowl he'd pushed aside, apparently to avoid making eye contact as he added, "I believe that's the correct phrase."

Sam smirked at the rather stunned expression on Dean's face, then covered his mouth before he could start laughing aloud. It took a few ticks for Dean to realize that Cass was right, both about the phrasing and the date on the calendar.

Mom, clearly enjoying the show, was nonetheless the first to respond to the sentiment, "Merry Christmas," which Sam and Dean then somewhat numbly echoed.

It felt weird to say. It felt weird that it was Christmas. It felt weird that they were actually celebrating the holiday. It felt weird that... well... it all just felt weird. But also good. Really good.

"Oh, wait, that reminds me," Sam muttered, hopping up from the table and exiting the kitchen.

While he was gone, Dean opened one of the lower cabinets, pushed aside the clutter he'd put in the front of it and pulled out a wrapped object, which he set on the table.

Cass leaned towards Dean and murmured, "I already got you what you asked for."

Dean was surprised Cass had even heard him at that time, but he'd let Cass off the hook earlier anyway. There was an extra case of beer Dean had purchased on his last run which was to serve in place of a gift if anyone asked what the Angel had gotten for him.

Sam returned a moment later with a wrapped object of his own, smaller than Dean's, and box-shaped. He handed the object to Mom, and she took it with a smile that seemed suddenly shy. Sam sat staring at her for a long moment, then suddenly seemed to realize he was staring, and looked at the object Dean had left on the table.

"That for me?" Sam asked.

"It is," Dean replied, sitting back in his chair while Sam took the gift and unwrapped it.

"Coffee," Sam observed, sounding neither pleased nor displeased.

"Not just any coffee," Dean pointed out, chewing on a strip of bacon even as he spoke, "It's that weird flavored garbage you like so much."

"Uh... thanks," Sam said rather uncertainly.

In the meantime, Mom had unwrapped her gift, which was contained in a small black box, which she also opened. What she saw obviously surprised her. She took it slowly out of the box. Broadly speaking, it was a necklace. More specifically, it was one with a black rope chain and a small white feather serving in place of a pendant.

"You got Mom a feather on a string?" Dean inquired, "Come on, man. At least I got you coffee."

"It's not just... any feather," Sam told his brother, explaining, "It's an Angel feather, voluntarily given before the Fall."

"You asked Cass for a feather?" Dean demanded in some shock.

"So did you," Castiel pointed out before Sam could answer.

"I remember reading about these," Mom said before the boys could get back into the swing of arguing, her eyes on the feather, specifically the way it caught the light in an almost crystalline fashion, "A freely given feather has power that isn't there in a shed one. A given feather will protect the person who carries it from light curses and certain minor spells, right?"

"Yes," Castiel answered, "But only if the person who asked for the feather didn't know what it was good for beforehand."

"You both asked Cass for feathers?" Mom asked, looking from Sam to Dean.

A little bit embarrassed, the boys looked at each other, then looked away, not saying anything.

"And you," she turned to Cass, "You gave them feathers?"

"Yes," Cass replied matter-of-factly.

"Just because they asked?" Mom persisted.

"Yes," Cass answered, clearly beginning to get a certain sense of awkwardness at the table, but not understanding why.

"And... are you going to know where this feather is?" Mom asked, evidently not entirely comfortable with the idea of wearing an Angelic tracking device.

"No," Cass replied, and his tone darkened for a moment, "When feathers are drawn out by a spell..." what a mild way to put it, "there's a... lingering connection with the Angel from which they were taken. It doesn't last, but is… well... it's very unsettling while it's there. That feather you're holding is entirely separate from me."

"That's still real weird, dude," Dean quietly told Sam, then looked at Cass, "Don't you think it's weird?"

Cass's eyes narrowed in confusion as he replied, "Why would I find Sam giving his mother something that could protect her from the kind of harm Hunters regularly encounter weird?"

Well if it was put like that... but Dean shook his head, "It's like giving somebody a lock of your hair."

"A lock of my hair wouldn't protect Mary from curses, light or otherwise," Cass replied, though Dean couldn't entirely tell if he was being serious or deliberately obtuse.

"I think it's sweet," Mom informed them, and Sam positively glowed from the praise, then started to turn red from embarrassment, so he kind of ducked his head and stared at the wall for awhile.

Dean said, "So, Mom, didn't you get Cass anything?"

There was a moment of silence, before Cass answered the question himself.

"She did. She gave me everything that mattered."

Then Mom said, "And you didn't even have to sit on the tree."

"No," Cass agreed with a nod, "I didn't."

A look passed between Mom and Castiel as they spoke that Sam and Dean didn't understand the significance of. Sam and Dean looked at each other, perplexed. Neither woman nor Angel deigned to explain themselves. Mom smiled again, and put the necklace on.

"Okay, you two are never allowed to stay by yourselves in the Bunker again," Dean remarked.

Looking uncomfortable, Sam said, "Yeah, I second that."

"Why not?" Cass asked, genuinely baffled, "We were perfectly safe."

"Gah! No! Stop talking right now!" Sam exclaimed, and Cass obeyed, his confused look deepening.

"That," Dean gestured back and forth between Mom and Cass in reference to the look that had passed between them, "That whole... I don't know what happened, and I don't want to know... but I never want it to happen again because..." he couldn't bring himself to say it, instead concluding, "Just... no."

"I don't understand," Cass admitted.

Mom, desperately trying to maintain the facade of someone proper, covered her mouth with one hand to stop her laughter as it dawned on her what Sam and Dean had just read into the exchange. But she was also flushing with embarrassment, looking from one of her boys to the other. Dean was relieved to see he and Sam had completely misread the whole exchange. The only one not embarrassed was Cass, and that was because he didn't comprehend what had just happened.

For awhile they just drank coffee and ate bacon and looked at congealing cereal in milk, and reveled in the fact that they were all here, alive, and together. For just a moment, they were able to forget all the burdens, all the cares, all the grief and guilt and shame and confusion and uncertainty, and just be together, to just be happy. To think about nothing but affectionately picking on one another, and eating together as a family. For just a little while, they were free.

Blinking back the sudden and unexpected sentimentality moisture in his eyes, Dean said, "Merry Christmas, everybody."