A/N:

Just wanted to thank Secretwrittenword and Black Fungus for the reviews. ;) I've replied to quite a few reviews, but FFNet doesn't notify anymore, so you'd have to check PMs separately. Beyond that... I hope everyone reading is doing well! We're down to the last two episodes of Supernatural, and I'm still recovering from the most recent one, lol. Who knows if they're tears of joy or pain. With that said, I figured I'd leave a few chapters off on lighter tones. Stay lovely, everybody.

Sam had grabbed their stuff from the motel while Dean slept in—an amazing feat by his brother's standards. The day was pleasantly bright despite how it carried in a cold breeze from the north. There was a lot of waiting around that morning, between doctors, forms, and what have you. In comparison to most of their mornings, or nights, or whenever else their attention was demanded, this was very lax. Both brothers felt antsy by the time they were making their way out. Dean because—well, God knows why. Sam just wanted to get to the bunker as fast as possible, knowing that this situation would only be resolved when they found a solution to the curse, and that their fights in the meantime would get progressively worse. He didn't want any more eruptions between them if he could help it.

But apparently Dean hadn't gotten the hint.

Utterly ignoring the fact that his knee was still wrapped up and the doctors had told him to stay away from strong stimuli, Dean practically bounced down the hospital halls, in stark contrast to the fairly sour Sam he walked alongside. They had barely exited the front doors before Dean was nudging him, asking, "Okay, so, do I get the flamethrower now?"

A shoddy hand-made thing rose to mind, and Sam's scowl deepened. They really had to add "buying an actual flamethrower" to their to-do list. "Uh, no."

Dean gave him a blank stare as they passed through the parking lot. "Dude, I was the one who made it."

"I know." He finally let out a smile, albeit of a mischievous sort, as he pulled out a ring of keys. "That's why it's an unreliable piece of shit." He swung open his door and unlocked Dean's side.

"Hey, we needed at least some kind of replacement after someone damaged the last pair." This got an eye roll from Sam as they each shut their respective doors. He watched Sam shift into reverse and tried to fight the temptation to backstreet drive, which had made Sam immediately pissy the other morning. The hospital grew distant in the side mirror as they pulled out of the parking lot. Dean couldn't say he missed it. "But seriously," he tried again, slightly less enthusiastically. "What's the game plan?"

"The plan…" Sam resorted to sighing. That was never a good sign. "I already sent out a couple calls. We're going to get enough tools to assist all those people- and, there… there were a lot. So it's a quick stop-in at the bunker, I'm picking up Cas, and then we're gonna race back here."

"'We' being me, you, and Cas?"

The small gap between question and answer begged for Dean to turn to watch Sam, who grimaced to himself and tilted away ever so slightly, trying to hide behind his obnoxiously long hair like it was a kind of barrier. "You really want to come? With your knee and concussion?"

"Of course I do!" he said, hearing his own voice jump in octaves. Dean had complained a lot already about the clothes he now had to wear, grumbled to himself about having to look so much farther up to Sam—and he'd complained about hunting, in the past and just recently, especially once the pain began settling in. But while he would throw the solid-colour shirts away in a heartbeat, there was no way he could just sit idly by while everyone else was hunting. No matter how nicely Sam tried to ease him into the idea.

His younger brother looked over from the wheel for a moment to make eye contact, but quickly turned back to gazing away, where he wouldn't see such an appalled expression. Outside of the Impala, they were still stuck in busy city streets, more of an anomaly to the brothers than was probably normal. Yet between all the angry drivers and chaotic elements to watch out for, it didn't seem nearly as much like navigating a field of landmines like it did to edge his way around the subject, wanting to be fair about it but knowing the idea would be cast down with indifference to how he presented it. "Look," he sounded tired when he spoke, "I'm just saying that it definitely wouldn't help your track record of wise choices."

Dean scoffed. "I make plenty of great calls."

"That's debatable," Sam said, with the kind of sibling voice that screamed I'm-just-realizing-now-that-this-will-definitely-get-me-beat-up.

"You can't say anything while you plan to go back out there and do it all yourself." His brother said this in a lighthearted way, but there was truth to it. "I'm not sitting back at the edge of the forest while you roast that sucker."

Sam turned solemn again. "No. And you're not going near the woods."

"You gonna stop me?"

"Maybe."

Dean glanced over to try and make out why Sam said that like it was a threat. He chuckled a little, so out of place in the passenger seat of a deadly-silent car. "Well… you're obviously not going alone, especially if there were a ton of victims."

"I'll have Cas."

"Seriously?" He paused again for a moment, and then the small amount of cheer that he'd gathered up that morning instantly went flying out the window into the rows of trees they now passed. "You're… I don't get any sorta say in this? What the hell happened to that 'he makes his own decisions' spiel you gave the old creepy lady? You gonna take all that back?"

"It's not like that, man," Sam replied in an almost disappointed way, but knowing there was a sort of leftover agitation from last night coming back to the surface.

"Oh really? Then what is it like? Because it seems to me like you're really flip-flopping lately."

"Me?" Though Sam had done his best so far to be calm about the whole thing, he seemed to finally have struck a small nerve, and Sam only got more pissed when he whipped his gaze over to see Dean silently pleased. This wasn't even to mention the fact that it felt so entirely degrading to be ridiculed by a kid, even if his mind knew that Dean was actually older. "I'm not the one staying up late to look for hunts that we don't need to be on. I'm not rushing headlong into something stupid while failing to mention, oh, I dunno. Everything?"

"We should be saving pe—"

"We should be GETTING YOU CURED!" Sam shouted, drowning out his brother's protests through sheer volume. In the heavy silence that followed, it became apparent to him how loud they'd gotten. It was hard to find his voice after his train of thought had been derailed.

For a moment, Dean seemed lost as well. He turned away to look outside to the type of familiar and boring scene that only really offered time to think. His voice was muffled from continuing to face the other way, in staunch refusal to show what might have been another crumbling of the facade he was rebuilding. "I chose to toss the witch in with her slimy hexbag. It was my choice—"

"I know why you did it. And I understand, I guess. You had to. And I know why you took on the Mark. But you have to get why I gotta fix it, too."

Finally, Dean was staring back towards the front of the car, allowing Sam to get a glimpse of his face. His brother wasn't very pleased with his attempts at reconciliation. The morning light played over the creases along his forehead, boldened by the heavy glare from the early sun, and the fact that he absolutely hated it when Sam tried to play things off nicely. "I- I really don't. I mean, I try talking with you all the time, you're a sucker for it. But it never makes any sense. You get pissy everytime something doesn't go your way and I can never keep track of what you actually want. I thought a brief solution would be great. Less desire to kill," which he stated alarmingly casually, "more time to think. But I can't catch a break because apparently, that's just not good enough for you. Can there never be a normal hunt with you anymore? I mean, just one. A single normal hunt."

"They're not normal because you're acting like an eight-year-old brat," Sam tossed in, deciding to fuck beating around the bush with what needed to happen. "And you know what? I'm tired of it. You want to act like you've got everything covered and then bring your anger out on me when you find out it's not true. And- and- not only are you not helping, you're scaring the shit out of me because everything that can go wrong, seems to go wrong. It's like you want to make things a million times more difficult because you 'want a break'. I guess you just don't see that none of us are getting a break until we actually fix this. I mean, do you think I get a break from wondering every night if you're going to slip up while hunting whole vampire nests by yourself? Do you think me and Cas get breaks from seeing shit eat you up inside?" He waited for Dean to say something, but nothing came. He'd almost missed the fact that the radio was still off, leaving the Impala to be a silent abyss, save for her soft purr that had become natural background noise since they were kids. "You were having nightmares in the hospital. That's why I didn't leave during the night—I didn't know if you'd get too loud in your sleep." The only thing that he could think of doing was to shrug. "Nothing came of it. But… we notice. Cas isn't around as much, but he worries too, you know."

Dean snickered a bit at this. "Easy to forget. Emotionless, constantly-confused-by-weird-human-stuff entity and all that."

Sam frowned. He glanced over a couple times in quick succession to see if he was missing something. "Wait, so you really don't see it?"

"See what?" his brother asked, sounding genuinely confused.

Maybe it was best left that way. Their surroundings had begun to morph into the familiarity of a more rural setting again, with houses growing smaller and more sparse, soon to be greatly outdone by the expanse of forest that would pave the way back towards the bunker. He decided to switch the subject before Dean inspected their most recent one too closely. "Will you just… at least let me try to find a cure? For the Mark, I mean."

Dean shook his head, sounding far too old for "his age". "I've got a bad feeling about this."

Cas heard the telltale signs of the bunker door being opened from where he'd been scouring through books in the library. He walked into the main room and began greeting them by name, though he got no farther than, "Sam," before Dean came into view. There was a pause between the both of them for a second—Dean in discomfort, Cas in relative shock. The Winchester avoided Cas' questioning gaze as they finished hauling their bags down to the main table. So instead, the angel geared his questions towards Sam. "It's more startling in person."

Dean made a slow turn towards his brother, and though he was now faced away from Cas, he could very easily imagine the unimpressed glare Sam must have been receiving. "You told him?!"

"He was going to find out at some point," Sam said meekly.

Dean focused his gaze onto Cas for the first time and scrutinized him and Sam for a moment before pointing a finger between the two of them, saying, "So you guys are in kahoots about…" He simply gestured to himself, seemingly at a loss for words in his disappointment. Cas was glad not to see anger in his posture, but Dean's unfiltered disappointment in both Cas and Sam almost felt more soul-crushing. The two conspirators glanced at each other briefly and earned a sigh in return. "Great. Okay. Well, I hope you know nothing's changing with this curse. I don't care what you find—or what you think." This last part was directed towards Sam, and both the brothers knew it. "Nothing. Changes."

"I might be able to remove it right now," Cas offered, but Dean didn't even honour him with a response before he draped one of their bags over his shoulder and walked out towards the bedrooms.

The angel looked to Sam, who leaned on the table and gave him a look of sympathy. It was as silent as ever within the bunker, but it felt to be a heavier kind of silence, knowing what they had to do now. Options were pretty short. It'd been that way for a while. Sometimes, they caught what looked to be a promising lead; then it ended up going nowhere, and they were left with fewer ideas, and even less morale. Recent events were weighing on everyone, not in the least on Dean. The look he shared with Sam reaffirmed the fact that they were on the same page. "He really dreads the Mark," Cas muttered, hoping the person he was talking about wasn't trying to listen in on their conversation from down the hall.

"Yeah," Sam snickered, "You could say that again." He tore a hand down his face and then preoccupied himself by going through the contents of one of his bags to check that he had everything. "How'd it go contacting some of the angels?"

"They didn't take to the idea very well." A very slight frown appeared on Cas' face. "And I can't say I blame them. The things I've wrought upon them… they have no reason to trust my intentions."

Sam glanced at him from across the table, his old look of understanding etched into as many crevices as humanly possible, though his words hardly reached listening ears. Cas knew it was difficult for humans to understand why angels weren't exactly fond of them. And he wasn't sure he could properly explain why Hanna would never allow Metatron to go free to save a single person like Dean Winchester, but how Cas himself was about to risk whatever ties he still had to his family—and possibly his life.

He pretended to have heard Sam's words of comfort and gave the best, most awkward smile possible. "No one wants Metatron locked away more than me. After what he did, it would put no weight on my conscience to know he's rotting someplace where he can't do any more damage. But if Dean is as bad as you say…"

Sam nodded solemnly, remembering how much it had affected Dean even after the Mark wasn't still burned onto his arm, twisting and pulling at him. He'd been unable to sleep or even leave the hospital room for a minute while watching Dean toss restlessly in his dreams.

"Alright," Cas conceded. "But, please. I don't want to see any of my brothers and sisters harmed."

Sam glanced down the hallway Dean had come from, then returned his attention to Cas, looking unsure of himself. "I don't want to hurt anyone, trust me. But I thought you said the other angels wouldn't even allow you into Heaven anymore once they found out what's up."

"This is true. And I doubt that Metatron will be anything beyond annoying if he stays in the cell." Cas' eyes had drifted down as if expecting reprimanding. Eventually, however, his steeled gaze met Sam's, and his old resolve was evident despite the stuff he had to go through in losing his grace. "But I can enter Heaven and haul him out, if given the chance."

"What kind of chance?" Sam asked. He was already pulling another bag closed and searching for his keys.

"I don't know. A good one."

Sam nodded. "We'll figure something out on the drive, then."

The Winchester was alrighty heading back towards the staircase before Cas got to say much else. He trailed behind, uncertain of what they were planning—or decidedly not planning—on doing, and felt for the only meaningful possession he had; the angel blade tucked against his arm. He hated the thing. They were designed to kill angels, and if some of his brothers and sisters hadn't let themselves become easily corrupted, they should have never been created in the first place. Cas mulled over the idea of fighting his way into Heaven before he stopped at the foot of the stairs. Needless bloodshed had reminded him. "Sam, I don't like the fact that Dean doesn't know, nor that we're simply supposed to leave him here."

Sam's confusion as he faced back towards Cas turned into detachment. "He has his suspicions, Cas. Besides—if it means getting stuck anywhere near me again, I don't think he'll want to come."

Cas tilted his head a bit, always struggling to understand why the brothers were at odds with each other. It'd been obvious that there were tensions yet again as Dean had stormed off towards his room, but where the emotions had sprung from, he was unable to tell. He also had no idea how they might rectify it, at least for the time being. But proper communication was always a good bet. He looked at Sam in such a way that it was easy to tell that the angel could see enough into the heart of it to be judgy about the subject. Sam didn't want to jeopardize their efforts by pissing off Dean, which was a fair thing to worry about, but also selfish. He had learned as much only a couple years ago, when he'd made the mistake of thinking it was either your friends or your duty you cared about in a single moment; never both. But it could be both. In fact, it had to be both. In the face of Cas' third-party scrutiny, Sam finally crumpled, and slumped off with a posture that made him look like a child who'd just been ridiculed.

He found Dean on his bed, toying with his headphones as if deciding whether to put them on or not, though his mind was concerned with something more. Sam knocked gently on the door and got a quick look that reminded him to keep it quick. "We're heading back out. I left a couple guns on the table." It went without saying that those would need to be cleaned—a very trivial process that seemed to take Dean's mind off things once in a while.

His meaning wasn't lost on Dean. There was a nod. Then, "How many hunters did you call in for help?" The way his brother looked at him, Sam felt like he was asking his dad for permission to leave the house.

"The usual." He shrugged, but the answer only seemed to worry Dean.

"One hunter isn't going to be enough. Even if they've got a bunch of special gear, I don't think it's such a good idea. You know why it let us go, right?"

Sam's brows pinched together. "It didn't let us go. Hell, it had you strung up in its cave."

Dean's eyes rolled pontifically, and he looked down to his fingers, still twiddling with the headphones. "It did the same thing with some of the other people who went to check out the scene. They were allowed to leave. It knows if some people get away, more will end up coming back. It doesn't seek us out—we come to it." Still faced away, Dean dropped the headphones onto his ears. "So don't do anything dumb out there."

Sam sighed and shut the door before leaving and grabbing his stuff, still wondering if it was possible for Dean to quit mothering over him like a hen. The guy he'd called was one of the best for hunting wendigo and he trusted him to handle it. Hunters usually worked alone anyways. Cas was already waiting in the front seat, and after worrying too much about Dean to get any real sleep over the past few days, Sam wasn't able to complain. He didn't even know where this mystical "gate to Heaven" was anyways. He sat back in the seat and let his eyes droop before Cas had even gotten the car moving. "Straight to the portal?"

Cas had the exact same disappointment written on his face as Dean. "This is a dumb idea."

There was nothing else to do but laugh. "I know."