A/N: Sorry this update took so long.
"I want our bunker back." Dean is sitting on one of the motel beds, watching Sam heave Cas up to sitting so he can eat. He's more human than angel right now, getting better at an agonizingly slow pace.
But getting better. Even his grace is making a recovery. Or so Cas says.
It took two days just for him to wake up after the first dose of 'antidote'— an angel blood transfusion in disguise and they're lucky Bobby managed to summon the one dick that doesn't hate Cas's guts. Someone named Benjamin.
Mary left after that. Bobby too.
Sam keeps an arm at Cas's back, holding him up. "I know you do, Dean. But the bunker's gonna have to wait a while."
Cas isn't shaking anymore, thank god. Not from that demon blood crap anyway. His hand still shakes from weakness as he pulls the spoon to his mouth, glaring at the applesauce and bananas like they're an affront to his nature. They kind of are. Cas shrugs off Sam's support and slowly starts tilting toward the wall until he's propped up against it, and then he can't lift his arm because it's stuck between him and the wall and he has to switch the spoon to the other hand.
"You take your dose today?" Dean asks.
Cas nods. He doesn't have much of a voice yet. It comes out raw and strained and just as weak as the rest of him, so he avoids talking for the most part.
Dean glances at Sam. Sam nods in confirmation.
Dean turns back to Cas. "Pain?"
Cas shrugs a little, glaring at the food. "Fine," he rasps. "Better." And he brings another bite up to his mouth, swallowing hard.
Dean hums. He watches Cas for another minute. Can't stop watching. His fingers tap on his leg. "I want our bunker back."
"It'll have to wait," Sam repeats.
"Why?"
Sam's eyes roll over to Cas.
"He's fine. He can hang out in the motel for a day."
Sam shakes his head. "It can wait."
Dean sighs, form slumping a little more. He watches Cas take another bite and a grimace crawls over the angel's face. Dean frowns. "Can't we give him some soup or something? I mean anything's better than that crap."
"I told you, his stomach can't handle anything heavier."
"It can handle soup. You want soup, Cas?"
Cas doesn't respond. Just glares down at his food. He doesn't want to eat anything at all, that much is clear.
Sam gives his brother a look. "Do you want to clean the throw up, Dean?"
Dean huffs. He shoves to his feet. "I'm making him soup."
"There's no kitchen."
"I'm buying him soup," Dean amends, and grabs his jacket, wallet, and keys. "You don't have to eat that crap, Cas. I'll be back in like twenty or thirty minutes."
The music doesn't blare on when Dean starts the car. Because Cas is constantly tired, and he sleeps while they drive and Dean keeps it off. Now Dean turns it on and twists the volume up.
When he gets back, there's a car there that wasn't there before. Dean pays it no mind until he gets out of the impala and there are dark red drops leading from their motel room door to the car. Blood drops. He sets the soup down and pulls his gun, approaching cautiously.
The door is a pain and you have to really push it open because the carpet is too tall. Dean keeps his gun up and shoves against it and then he can see the intruders.
One of them is standing over Cas and another two are keeping Sam down in the corner of the room.
Sam is bleeding from a cut at his hairline. He's breathing heavily as he looks up at Dean, eyes dark. There's a gun pressed into his temple.
Dean stutters to a stop, face blank. He has the gun in his hands and aims it slow and deliberate, staring at the man over Cas because he looks like the guy in charge.
Cas is still on the bed. He's leaning back against the wall, glaring at anything and everything, carefully watching the man's hands—more specifically the gun moving around. He's running on human right now and Dean doesn't doubt the weapon could do some serious damage. Could kill him.
"I'm gonna give you one chance," Dean says. "Get out now."
"One chance." The man hums. He has an accent. A British accent. "That's cute. Here's what I'm gonna do—now keep in mind that if you shoot me, Sam dies. I'm gonna—" His hand wrenches forward and grabs a fistful of Cas's collar and yanks him off the bed. Cas hits the floor hard on his side and coughs, hands grasping at the man's arm, fighting him. The man shoves the gun in his face.
Dean's jaw sets so hard that it almost cracks. "What do you want?"
"I already have it. Feel free to leave. In fact, I'm telling you to." He pushes Cas down harder. "Leave."
"No, thanks." Dean doesn't move an inch.
The man's head turns to the corner Sam is in. "That's your cue, girls."
One of them has a Glock. They cock it.
Dean wavers, almost shifting to aim over there instead. "Don't."
The man turns back to look at him. "Drive away, Dean. We'll send you a postcard."
Sam is mouthing something.
Dean doesn't move.
The man lifts his eyebrows. "No?" He looks down at Cas. "Guess it was my cue, then." His finger tightens on the trigger.
"Don't."
"I don't want to, see, because we need him. But that's not to say I can't do some damage. I'll start by blasting his fingers off one at a time. Think his angel grace can fix that? Huh? When he's already half dead?" The man moves his knee to Cas's chest, keeping him pinned much too easily, his eyes flicking up to the corner. "Or maybe we'll start by gouging out Sammy's eyes."
Dean hisses out a breath through his teeth, trying to gage how likely the man is to follow through. Too likely. Dean shifts back toward the door a little. "I'm leaving, alright? Don't touch them."
Dean takes a careful step back, and then another, slow, looking for an opening because he can't actually leave. Not like this.
He almost gets it when Cas shoves at the gun in his face. It's not enough, though, because Sam is still dead if Dean shoots. The man hits Cas with the barrel of the gun in retaliation, sending his head cracking back into the carpet.
"Hey," Sam snaps, and he gets hit over the head too, his form jerking to the side but staying upright.
Dean stops, gun wavering because he wants to shoot so bad.
Cas is still moving—not knocked out, at least. But he's moving slower, his face a shade paler.
The man looks back up at Dean and raises an eyebrow. He shoos him toward the door. "Go on."
"Take me instead of Sam."
"What?"
Dean takes a careful step forward, gun falling just a little to point at the man's heart instead of his head. "You want Cas because he's an angel. You don't need Sam. Take me instead."
The man shakes his head. "Now, who said we don't need Sam?"
"You don't need Sam."
"Sounds like a shitty exchange to me. You're harder to handle than Sam. No, I think I'll stick with what I have. Go before I lose the last of my patience."
Dean doesn't move.
The man cracks his gun barrel into Cas's head again and Dean just stops his finger from pulling the trigger. He doesn't quite stop his feet from jolting forward.
A gunshot snaps off the walls and Sam cries out.
Dean freezes, head spinning. Shoulder. It hit the shoulder. He'll be alright.
"Go," the man says.
Dean stalks backward.
Cas starts rasping. "Dean, there's—" The gun gets pressed up against his teeth and he stops, throat moving.
Sam is mouthing words again.
Dean flicks his gaze between them. He takes another careful step back, not sure what they're warning him about. Not to leave? Maybe they know something he doesn't about this guy's plans. Maybe they know they're not gonna stay alive long enough for Dean to rescue them. Dean's steps falter.
The widening of Sam's eyes is the only warning he gets. Dean spins around just in time to pull back and lessen the blow as someone swings a fist at him. His balance is thrown enough that it knocks him off his feet, but he keeps hold of his gun and comes up shooting. He hits the guy in the leg and then the arm and then he stops, rolling onto his side to find Sam because Sam is screaming.
Sam is fighting the girls holding him, blood at his shoulder and head but Dean can't tell if he's hurt anywhere else because it's a tangle of torsos and limbs. "Sam?!"
"Cas!" Sam screams, and Dean's focus wrenches to the side and latches onto a syringe filled with red hovering over Cas's throat.
Cas is straining away from it, but he's still weak as hell and his struggling is barely affecting the man pinning him down.
"Missed your one chance, I think, Dean," the bastard says.
Dean shoots his hand. And then his head, and his form topples to the floor. Cas twists away and toward Dean while Dean starts firing toward Sam's corner. He hits one of the girls but can't get a clear shot at the other one and she's ducking behind Sam, wrapping an arm around his throat and aiming a gun toward his head.
Cas keeps crawling back toward Dean. Dean finds his feet and grabs Cas's arm and yanks him up, shoving him toward the door, "Get to the car, go!"
Cas staggers toward the door, falling into the frame and shoving back up, none too steady.
Dean flicks a glance to the man he nailed in the arm and leg, making sure he's still down before his eyes find Sam and stay there.
The girl is swearing. "Knew we should've just taken you all out when we had the chance."
"Let him go," says Dean. "I'll let you live."
"Like hell you will."
"I will. Limited time offer. Let him go in the next ten seconds and I will let you live."
It's the longest ten seconds of Dean's life.
She lets him go. Shoves him forward but keeps her gun up. Sam spins around to watch her.
"Okay, Sammy?"
Sam nods. He's clutching his shoulder but there's not too much blood.
"Get a gun and check on Cas," Dean tells him.
Sam grabs a dropped one off the floor—the leader's—and starts toward the door, grabbing the other downed man's gun while he's at it. He rams right into Cas coming back with his own gun. Cas's knees buckle as he collides with Sam and Sam keeps him from falling, guiding him over the threshold and down to sit against the wall, staying between him and the armed woman. She's aiming at Dean, anyway.
"That was good," Dean is saying. "Smart. Now we just gotta tie you up, leave you here while we make our getaway. Put the gun down, I won't kill you."
"Won't shoot me."
"Won't kill you."
"Won't shoot me."
Dean's head bobs. "Won't maim you, how's that?"
The other man moves to get up and a second later Sam is standing over him, gun aimed squarely at his head. "Gotta tie you up too, unless you plan on trying something, in which case I am all too glad to kill you."
There aren't any sirens. And it's cruel, Dean thinks, not to warn them like that.
"Police! Come out with your hands up!"
Dean swears. He moves so he's not right in front of the open door, stepping over to stand beside Cas's slumped form against the wall, keeping his gun up and pointed at the girl.
That's when the sirens start.
Sam's head turns a little, but his eyes stay on the man bleeding in front of him. "Dean?"
"Call Bobby. You got any ID?"
Sam takes a step back toward Dean and Cas, patting down his pocket. He pulls out his phone and hands it down to Cas, then pulls a wallet from his pocket. "I've got F.B.I."
"Sweet. Go, talk us out of this. Let them know we've still got one armed hostile."
"Yeah." Sam starts talking, slipping out the door with his gun in the back of his pants and his arms up—one arm up. The one with the gunshot wound stays folded against his chest, though he flares the palm out to show that it's empty. "Don't shoot, I'm coming out…"
"Call Bobby?" Cas rasps.
"Yeah, call Bobby just in case. He's gotta field the confirmation calls to the F.B.I. office anyway."
Cas starts dialing.
Dean is trying to listen to Sam's conversation but can't make out the words. "That was a fast friggin' response time," he mutters.
"Not really," the girl says. She pulls out a badge. "And I'm Interpol, so you can put your gun down. Inter-agency across the border cooperation and all that."
"Like hell."
Cas starts rasping into the phone. "Letters showed up, police came… I don't… Dean?" God, he sounds horrible. He's handing the phone up.
Dean takes it, careful to keep his eyes on the girl and his gun aimed straight. "Bobby?"
"What's goin' on?"
"We got attacked by those British dicks. Police heard the gunshots. Sam's tryin' to F.B.I. our way out this but I'm not sure if they're gonna buy it."
"You boys okay?"
"More or less. Sam took a shot to the shoulder. Just givin' you a heads up in case we need you to come down or anything."
"Yeah." Bobby sighs. "Can't turn my back for two minutes," he mutters, and then hangs up.
Dean hands the phone back to Cas. They'll need his antidote, and if the police lock them up, Dean seriously doubts they'll let them take needles full of what's mostly blood, not without a hospital visit to prove he needs the transfusions and who knows how that would go. Even if it went well, the hospital would use their own supply. So, yeah. Can't get locked up.
Dean pats down his pockets. He doesn't have his F.B.I. badge. It's probably in the car. "Put the gun down, lady. Walk out, give yourself up. Maybe your connections can get you out. maybe you can spin the Interpol angle and claim you didn't know we were F.B.I. and that your boss there wasn't your boss but a seriously bad guy. I'm thinking arms dealer."
"And what happens when they check your story, dumbass?"
"It pans out. They can't prove he wasn't an arms dealer. They'll release us back to our own offices and we'll all be home free. And you'll tell your real bosses that if they come near us again, we take the war to them and don't stop until the great U.S. of A. is cleared out of your asshole organization, even if it means we have to hunt down and kill every single one of you."
"Because two wannabe hunters and their angel pet can take us on," she sneers.
Dean's face darkens. "Put the gun down or I'll cut my losses and kill you and your friend right now."
"I don't think you will. Police wouldn't like that. You need me alive to help confirm your story."
"Great. If you're so sure, you're safe to put your gun down, right? So put it down."
"Police!" The men outside the room shout.
"Gun. Down," Dean demands.
"You have ten seconds!"
The girl slowly sets her gun down. She slides into sight of the door, arms raised. Dean lets her pass. "Cas, can you get up?" Dean stows his gun, already bending down to help. "Come on." Dean grips him by the arms and hauls him up. He pulls Cas toward the door.
Sam is by one of the police cars, watching them, scanning to make sure they're alright. There's a medic next to him.
A few policeman in Kevlar vests are between Sam and them. "Hands up!"
Dean slows to a stop. "Yeah, yeah, yeah." He puts his hands up and Cas does the same, still propped up against Dean's side, balance precarious.
The police walk over and divest them of their weapons. They pull Cas away from Dean. "He's sick," Dean says. "Go easy."
They slam Dean over the hood of a car. "Hey, we're in the F.B.I, alright? You saw my partner's badge. Mine is just in my car. Let me grab it."
Sam is shaking his head.
"You're wanted by the F.B.I," the police officer says. "Most wanted list. We got a tip that you'd be here, and here you are. With a couple bodies to boot."
"Dammit," Dean mutters. They handcuff him. And when they pull him up, he catches sight of the British lady smirking at him, handcuff free. "Son of a bitch."
She turns. Cas is propped up against one of the police cars, pale and shaky.
"Not him," she says. "He's a civilian they took hostage, I'll take him. And the rest of my team will be by shortly for the brother. Your American agency agreed to hand him over to us for his crimes in the motherland." She smirks at Dean. "You can keep that one, though."
"You son of a bitch! Don't you touch them!"
Cas is rasping something to the officers. Dean can't quite make out what.
Dean starts talking. "Don't give him to her, she's not Interpol, she'll kill him. Wait for his family to come pick him up or something, man, after you debrief him. Don't release him to her. She is not Interpol. She's part of our crew, but she turned on us. She'll kill that guy, I swear to you. She's worse than all of us."
Sam is also talking. "Hey, he doesn't get to go off free. He's the one that pulled me into this crap. He killed that guy. I swear, if he goes off free, I'm gonna…"
In the end, they shove Cas into the back of a police car and take him with them. It buys them some time.