They could've headed back to the Bunker. But it was a seven hour drive, and the day had been half over by the time they found Mom and dealt with the Demon. It was well past dark by the time they exhausted the list of obvious Yes or No questions. Besides which, Sam quietly pointed out to Dean that, while Cass had gotten up and consented to talk to them, his attention lapses were frequent and he looked tired. Not only that, there was some argument to be made that they should be heading in the opposite direction. Mom had picked Cass up in Verdi, which suggested that whatever had gone down must have happened in that vicinity. Of course, there was also the matter of the man who'd been chasing him.
Questioning revealed that the man was human, and had nothing to do with what had happened to Cass. When and how Cass had gotten tangled up with him proved harder to work out and overall seemed less relevant to Dean, though Mom spent a good half hour trying to figure out why the man had thought Cass worth ten thousand dollars, why he'd seen fit to try and choke the life out of what he'd thought was a dog and why Cass had allowed it to happen. She didn't achieve any satisfactory answers, and Dean was somewhat convinced that Cass was purposely evasive, but it was hard to tell with only Yes and No questions to work with.
Finally, Dean called for a dinner break. The place they'd gone for lunch was closed at this hour, as were most places with outdoor seating, so it was agreed they'd get takeout rather than leave Cass alone in the motel. Dean couldn't say for sure why he didn't want to leave Cass, it wasn't anything he could really explain, but Sam and Mom seemed to feel the same as he did, so he decided not to wonder about it. Mom went for the food, and Sam went with her. Dean elected to stay with Cass, ostensibly to continue trying to pry information out of him in the slow, clumsy fashion they'd come up with. But in the end Dean didn't ask any further questions, because it was plain Cass didn't have the energy for it, though he made as if he were game to keep going.
A thought crossed Dean's mind after they left, so he sent a text to Sam about it. Angels didn't need to eat. But they didn't drink either. And Cass had seemed pretty keen on that bacon earlier. Maybe it had been because he'd been trying to ingratiate himself with them, knowing how they felt about stray paranormal monsters, but Dean suspected differently. He initially recommended a burger with everything, but Sam went on a text tangent about how onions were poisonous to dogs, and reminded Dean that Crowley had indicated that Cass was getting more dog by the second. On the basis of this argument, Sam said they should get food meant for dogs. Dean's response was to vehemently reject the idea of presenting Cass with a bowl of brown kibble. They compromised by Sam agreeing to inconvenience the diner by ordering something special, specifically hamburger without anything on it, not even the seasoning or bun. It was the only thing that satisfied both Sam's insistence on proper dog food and Dean's objection to the same. After that, there wasn't much to do but wait.
Dean had never been all that fond of waiting around, doing nothing. It gave him too much time to think, to remember, to relive a past haunted by blood and darkness and Hell. In order to avoid thinking too hard about things he preferred not to without further harassing the already beleaguered Cass, he decided to kill time by asking the internet just what the hell Crowley had been on about with that 'betwixt him and his mood' business.
It turned out to be a poem called 'Llewellyn' by some guy named Walter Cassels, though it had more the length of a short story and the format of a play script (which still left it more palatable than any number of lore books Dean had been forced to read over the years). The tedious bit of prose was in essence a conversation between two people concerning the nobility of the hound Gelert, and the love of Llewellyn for his son and lengthy descriptions of the dog's tolerance for the boy. A seemingly unnecessary number of words were spent on arguing over whether or not the child was actually dead (which seemed easy enough to determine to Dean, so he wasn't sure what was up with that), followed by a brief intermission involving a meandering description of... something. Dean had lost interest by that point. In fact, there were several poems about the slain Gelert, most of which inspired the same sense of profound disinterest.
Leave it to Crowley to quote something insufferable. Dean closed his laptop.
Eventually, Sam and Mom returned, bags of food in hand.
When the smell hit him, Cass let out an involuntary moan, which he then looked apologetic about, and Dean knew he'd guessed right. He dug around in the bag until he came up with a Styrofoam box containing hamburger patties. For want of a better idea, Dean opened the container and put it on the floor. It seemed derogatory, but it wasn't like Cass was physically constructed to eat while sitting in a chair at the table just now, and it didn't seem right to make life harder for him just to spare Dean's feelings on the matter.
Immediately, almost reflexively it seemed, Cass got up and started for the food. Partway to it, he stopped, the hair along his back bristling and fear plain in his eyes. He whined indecisively, but was evidently unaware of it, his tail lowering. He sat down, gazing longingly at the meat, nose twitching, ears turned back.
Dean exchanged a 'what the hell now?' look with Sam, who shrugged.
"It's dead, I swear," Dean assured Cass, making a try for levity, "It can't bite you."
Cass quivered and stood up, then promptly sat down again, looking increasingly miserable. Cass had taken the bacon happily enough earlier, what was so different about this? Dean of course knew nothing about the RV park where Cass had stolen a meal, a meal that had made him grievously ill, and sent him into the hands of Jaxon Corven. And he didn't know that the difference was that Castiel trusted the food Dean offered, simply because Dean was the one who offered it.
Castiel himself was rather startled by his paralyzing fear.
It was his subconscious that saw the container on the floor, and remembered the bag next to the tent. The white interior of both, the food inside, the pain and weakness that had followed, all were connected by a dog's reasoning, the same reasoning that had allowed men for centuries to train dogs not to eat stray food (and thus spare themselves the potential grief of a dog killed by poisoned bait meant for a fox or coyote) by concealing hot peppers in hunks of meat left lying on the ground for the dog to find. Between one and three experiences with the burning peppers typically cured a dog of picking up meat found unattended on the ground.
For Cass, the severity of the single experience, combined with its freshness in his memory, was sufficient to halt him without conscious thought ever entering into the matter. If he had been thinking about it, he would not have thought the food in the container was dangerous. It had obviously been put down for him, and he did not believe for a moment that the Winchesters intended to harm him.
Mary understood. She had made so many attempts to feed what she had thought was a dog, all to no avail, and had been surprised almost to speechlessness when Dean's tossed bit of bacon had been downed without hesitation and followed by a hopeful look for more. She didn't know the reasons why, but the why didn't really matter, because she recognized what the difference had been. That difference, she knew, was Dean.
"Try throwing it to him," Mary suggested, "Like you did with the bacon."
Dean frowned at her, wanting to say that was the stupidest, most nonsensical idea he'd ever heard, but refraining because… well… she was his mother. And anyway, it couldn't hurt anything. He leaned down and picked up the container while Cass watched with intent hunger, his eyes following the container up off the floor, and then rising to meet Dean's own rather embarrassed gaze.
"I feel like an idiot," Dean said to no one in particular, and tossed one of the patties like a Frisbee.
Cass caught it in the air and wolfed it down in a matter of seconds, then sniffed around at the floor to make sure not even a single, solitary nibble had escaped.
"Well what the Hell," Dean muttered aloud, more puzzled than impressed.
Of course, Cass couldn't tell them. He couldn't entirely understand it himself, in part because it was not a hangup that had to do with anything logical or rational, or even emotional. It was more like… instinct, only it was experience-based. It was just… food in the container felt alarming and taking food offered to him by Dean didn't. That was all.
Dean started to pick up another hamburger, but Sam grabbed his arm gently, "Dean, he hasn't eaten in… we don't even know when. Better give him a minute."
That, at least, made sense to Dean.
Cass lay down on the floor to wait while Dean turned to the important business of eating. It didn't bother him that he'd had a burger for lunch and was eating another burger now. This was a different burger, from a different place, and that was enough for him. Mom and Sam passed no comment on his intake of grease, though Sam raised the usual eyebrow as he bit into his dinner. While Dean took his burger one huge chunk at a time, Mom and Sam were slower. Slow enough to carry on a conversation.
"So you said Cass showed up in Verdi," Sam opened, "Do you have any idea which direction he came from? If we could figure out where this happened, maybe going there would give us some sort of clue about what happened. And then maybe we could figure out how to fix it."
They had been over this already, and undoubtedly would go over it again. They didn't have much to work with, and going over and over the same ground had a way of eventually turning up something new, or making something click, or… something.
"I wasn't really paying attention," Mom said patiently, as if she had not answered this exact question in this exact way a half dozen times already, "And even I could remember, I don't think that would help us. There's no telling where that man picked him up or how long Cass was held before he got away."
"Okay," Sam said, coming up with a new question, "When was the last time any of us talked to Cass?" If they couldn't find the where, maybe they could find the when, which might help at least narrow down the possibilities about the where of it all. Since Dean had just taken half his burger in a single bite, Sam turned and inquired, "Mom?"
Mom looked uncomfortable for a moment, "Not..." she hesitated, "Not since Ramiel."
Sam and Dean both assumed she was uncomfortable simply because she wasn't keeping in regular contact with Cass, though neither of them could see why she would. She barely knew them, much less Cass. Besides, they both knew that Cass had a tendency to go dark for long periods, though it had gradually crossed their minds that long periods to them were probably not long periods to the Angel. A few weeks or months was nothing in terms of what essentially amounted to eternity.
"Same here," Sam admitted, then turned to Dean.
"Ditto," Dean managed to spit around his mouthful of burger.
Sam sighed, not surprised but disappointed, "Well that's not much help. He could have been anywhere in the country since then."
There was silence except chewing for awhile, then Mom spoke, "Cass could probably tell us."
"How?" Dean had swallowed some of what was in his mouth, but he still made a rude noise.
"Show him a map and a calendar," Mom answered reasonably, "Just because he can't talk doesn't mean he can't point, right?"
Dean looked thoughtful, then nodded. Sam jumped for his laptop.
"No, Sam," Mom said, gently amused, "A real map and calendar. He doesn't have a finger to point with. Your screen's too small for him to do it with his nose or a paw."
Quiet descended again after that. They all knew that the two pieces of information they were pursuing were not very promising, even if Cass could give those answers. They didn't really need to know when this had happened, they needed to know how long it would be before Cass wasn't Cass anymore. They didn't need to know where he'd been dogged, they needed to know where his assailant was now, and where said assailant was going, what they were doing and who they were. But, aside from picking names out of a hat and getting lucky, they didn't seem likely to get those answers, so it only made sense to look for the answers they had some means of trying to find.
Finishing his burger, Dean returned his attention to Cass. Cass sat up again, and caught the rest of his own dinner just as he'd caught the first part of it, eating it in the same distinctly gulping canine fashion. Dean was suddenly and uncomfortably reminded of the time Cass's vessel had been touched by the hunger of Famine; the way Cass, a lower order of Angel then, and cut off from Heaven to boot, had been helpless against the pull of a hunger previously unknown to him in his years of existence.
Dean blinked rapidly, banishing the memory.
"Okay," Dean said, getting up from the table and throwing the empty Styrofoam container into the nearest takeout bag, "You two finish eating. I'm gonna go get us a calendar and a really big map."
Cass scrambled to his feet as if he would follow Dean.
"No," Dean told him, "You stay," he flinched when he realized the Master Commanding Dog sound of that, so he amended more softly, "Rest. Keep Mom and Sam outta trouble. I'll be back."
The dog sat down, looking somewhat hurt and disappointed. Dean paused, uncertain what to do. Reluctantly, he recalled to mind the Want To Go Too feeling that dogs had whenever one among their group went somewhere. He had taken the Colonel practically everywhere because of that. Leaving the big shepherd behind had seemed unjust and inhumane. Not to mention how the shelter dogs had made him feel. .
Finally, Dean relented.
"Okay, but I'm bettin' the store won't let you in, so you'll have to stay in the car," at least it was night, and not hot out, so that part shouldn't be too bad.
Immediately, Cass was on his feet, tail waving wildly. He seemed about ready to bark with enthusiasm, but caught himself just in time and settled for following Dean out of the motel. The effusive display hurt Dean just to look at, because it wasn't native to men or Angels to be so unrestrained in their displays of disappointment or pleasure, especially about something so small, and it told him more than he really wanted to know about how far gone Cass actually was.
As they went together to the waiting Impala, Dean suddenly stopped and turned. Cass halted as well, puzzlement in his eyes, lowered tail tentatively waving. Under the parking lot light, with no one there but him and Cass, Dean took stock of the situation in a way he had avoided doing earlier, and couldn't in front of Mom and Sam.
Back in the early days, Dean had prayed often, more often than he would ever admit. And he knew Cass had heard him, every time, even when the Angel hadn't answered. The Angel couldn't help but hear him. Cass had heard things from Dean that he'd never dared speak to another living soul, and Cass had never repeated them to anyone. Knowing this had made it easier to talk to Cass in later years, after Dean had pretty much stopped praying, because he already had so much practice talking when he thought nobody was listening that he knew Cass would hear him, would take every word and just... just hold it, without having to say or do anything about it. Somehow, that was worth more to Dean than anything else Cass had ever said or done.
Dean knelt so that he was closer to Cass's level, and put a hand on Cass's shoulder. Cass stood and waited, watching him. In his eyes there was no longer any confusion or unease. As if he knew already what it was that Dean intended to say. But he didn't try to rush Dean, simply stood with that unbearable sympathy and gentle understanding in his eyes, seemingly knowing that saying it would hurt. It was Cass's look, the one he reserved for moments such as this, so different from his public face. He knew Dean was vulnerable in these moments, and never abused the privilege of the older Winchester brother taking a moment to be fully honest with him.
"I'm not gonna abandon you again," Dean promised, "You hear? It don't matter how this plays out. We fix you or we don't, and you know we'll do everything we can to fix you. But if…" his voice broke, "If we can't..." he stopped, cleared his throat, angry with his emotions for getting in the way of what he needed to say, "If this becomes permanent… you're still family. You get that?"
Cass just gazed back at him steadily. No need for a paw tap this time. This time, Dean could read the answer in his eyes.
Taking a sobering breath, Dean straightened and abruptly stood up.
"Now come on," he said gruffly, "We've got some shopping to do."