Chapter title is from song by Imagine Dragons.

34

Dream – Imagine Dragons

She was standing at the window looking out like the answers to life were in the backyard. He came up behind her; brushed the thick fall of her hair gently to one side, revealing the bare curve of her neck. He placed a kiss just there, smiling to himself at her surprised intake of breath. Her head tilted back against his shoulder, exposing the long line of her throat. He whispered his lips up to the sensitive spot just below her ear. Her breath hitched as her eyes drifted closed, leaning slightly against him. He slid one arm around her waist, drawing her closer, sweet heat building in the pit of his stomach.

"This isn't real." Her voice was sultry-husky, muttering half to herself and only accidentally out loud, but then she repeated more firmly, "This isn't real."

She straightened, pulling determinedly away from him, the chill of cold air all along where she had been, turning in the circle of his arms, and placed her hands flat on his chest.

It seemed pretty real to him.

She licked her lips, distracting and delicious, and he leaned forward, slanting his head, wanting just a taste. She followed his movements as if mesmerized, wetting her lips unconsciously again, her fingers splaying over his shirt. She drew a breath through barely parted lips, and he focused, focused on the anticipation, that first touch of lips, slick and electric, when she bit down on hers hard and pushed back from him with a resolute step.

"Dean."

Hmm?

He didn't know if he made that distracted hum out loud, his mind still on other things.

"Dean!"

Yeah?

His eyes were still on the sweet curve of her lips.

"DEAN! Snap out of it. I'm not Lisa."

Well, duh. He could see that.

"This isn't real!"

She kept saying that like it meant something. His hand was still around her waist, careful of the stitches and the layer of bandages on her right. She felt delicate and supple in his arms, and oh, this was going to be so good, so good he could taste it now, feel it as a tingle coursing in his veins, a hot tension winding him up. Why on earth would she think he would mistake her for Lisa? They were nothing alike. He eased forward, trying to close the air gap between them, to bask in that deliciously heady warmth again. Her hands holding him back gave a little, weakening, before firming resolutely and keeping him where he was.

"Come on, Dean. Look at me. Look for real. I'm not Lisa. Wake up."

He was looking. He was looking into those whiskey eyes, the softness of her lips, the familiar couch behind her that would be …

HOLY SHIT

He released her and jumped back like she was a hot poker, bumping into the end table behind him that he should have remembered was there. He stepped backwards again, only backwards and two automatic steps to the right, avoiding the easy chair he knew was behind him, next to that end table, next to that couch, his eyes scanning the room rapidly, looking at the familiar large screen TV and bookshelves, the pictures on the mantelpiece, Ben's trophies next to them, the collection of DVDs Lisa had given him for Christmas. Things he remembered packing away in boxes when they moved, stripping the walls clean, leaving the room bare and empty.

"What the hell? WHERE are we?" He hissed. "What are you?"

Zee's glance was sharp at his question and his tone. Are we back to that? She gave Lisa's living room a quick, cursory glance and moved to the front window, peeking out between the slats of the blinds.

"In your dream, idiot."

Her voice was curt as she looked down the street. There would be nothing but lawns and white picket fences out there, at least until he moved in.

Wait a minute.

"My dream?"

She turned away from the window to face him, her eyes snapping.

"Well, it certainly isn't mine."

He gave her a hard stare.

"How am I dreaming? I don't sleep." He said flatly.

"No shit, genius. Hence the problem."

"How are you in my dream?" He was biting off the questions rapid fire, not liking the fact she was in his head. He didn't want her in his head. Of all the places he wanted her, in his head was not one of them.

She moved to the next window and looked carefully out again, her steps swift and efficient. Hunting.

"Dream root." She replied shortly. "Sam wanted to come, but." Her lips tightened, "We weren't sure who or what was doing this to you. Someone needed to keep watch, out there, in the real world. And since I'm banged up and he's not—" she made a gesture of frustration at her patched-up side, "I drew the short straw."

He could see how that decision had gone down. He didn't care. He'd rather have Sam. What was Sam thinking, letting strangers into his head? Letting her into his head?

She crossed the room to the next window and peered out again, surveying the terrain that was his life, like she was working a case, cataloging everything around her. He knew what she would be seeing out that window; the detached garage, the door opened partway during the day so Baby could breathe, and Ben's basketball hoop.

"Quit poking around." He snapped.

She pivoted on her heel and threw him a look with daggers in it. "It's your dream, sunshine. If you don't want me in this memory, pick a different one."

And just like that, the scene shifted.

Zee grabbed onto the nearest thing for support as the carpet melted beneath her feet, reconsolidating as aged linoleum. Dean found himself standing next to a familiar fridge, a half full dish drainer beside it. The row of telephones on the kitchen wall were roughly labeled with masking tape, "FBI", "CDC", "US Marshals" and the less glamorous, "Tom's Plumbing."

Dean swallowed. He was going to have to watch what he thought about, or he was going to wind up giving her a tour of his life. And no one wanted that.

"How do I know you're real?" He asked bluntly, heading her off before she could move again, looking through his past in this diorama of it.

One shaped eyebrow quirked up. "You think you're making me up?"

Well, okay. She had a point. She was definitely not on his guest list of people he might invite to have a look around his walnut. She'd seen too much already.

"Djinn?" He asked, looking around at the cluttered room, books and papers scattered on every surface, mixed with half empty herb packets and spare parts of guns. He reached for the silver dagger that Bobby kept in the knife drawer.

"No marks. And the real you is still back in the motel room, just—sleeping."

That was a nice way of saying that he was lying there, dead as a doorknob, not breathing, still and cold.

"Why didn't you guys just leave me alone?" The demand came out harsher than he intended. But it was the perfect solution—finally dead again, properly dead and immobile and not hurting anyone.

The look she flicked at him was pointed. As if he should have known the answer to his own question.

Sam.

He blew out a frustrated breath, impatient steps taking him into Bobby's study/den/living room. There was a bottle of whiskey sitting open at the corner of the desk. Out of habit, he poured himself two fingers worth and tilted the bottle in her direction.

She shook her head.

His lips pulled taut as he set both the bottle and the glass down, looking at her narrowly again. That stitch in her side had to be hurting like a son-of-a-bitch, and all the banging around the last few days couldn't have helped, but she was just doing her zen-samurai thing again, and ignoring it. Just because he got the control thing didn't mean it should go on 24/7 without end. Did she never let her hair down?

She went back to looking at the books lying open on the kitchen table.

"Revelations?" She glanced up at him. "Mean anything to you?"

Crap. She was going to head-shrink him in his own head. Face his fears, control his dreams, whatever-he would pay whatever the price was of getting out of here without getting all mentally bare-ass-naked in front of her again.

Besides, they'd done that chapter already.

He went around the desk and headed across the room to her, ready to take the book out of her hands. He had no more than taken two steps over the knock-off Persian rug in front of Bobby's desk when his left foot stuck to the ground.

Dammit. Dammit, dammit.

He'd forgotten that was there. Well. He hadn't forgotten the devil's trap beneath the rug. He'd forgotten he needed to avoid it.

She looked up curiously when he grunted, pulling at the invisible tethers to no avail. It was futile, but that didn't stop him from trying with outraged, stubborn fury at the whole absurd situation of being trapped by a devil's trap in his own mind.

She glanced at the rug beneath his feet and then at him again, one eyebrow arching up.

"Seriously?"

He scowled.

With a flick she had her knife out, and was moving to pick up the edge of the rug to free him when an invisible shape bowled past him and knocked her back, sending her sprawling clear across the floor to slam into the kitchen cabinets.

"Zee!"

He spun around, a full 360, trying to see what was in here with them. He couldn't see anything. She shook her head as she sat up, biting down on the corner of her lip the way she did when stuff hurt like shit, and scrambled awkwardly to her feet, gun pointed at nothing, having drawn it out of pure reflex. She moved towards him cautiously, turning as she did so, looking and seeing nothing but a clear room.

This time he felt the air move, a breeze, and shouted, "Down!"

She ducked and rolled, in one smooth motion kicking up the rug and scratching through the outer circle of the trap with the butt of her Glock. Instantly he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her up, running down the hallway towards the basement door, holding the First Blade out ahead of him.

The something brushed by him, got in front of him, and materialized.

Bright light, blue light, not angel light, burning like fire.

A ghostly shape of a hand reached out, palm extended, and touched his forehead.

PAIN. Painpainpainpainpain.

He flinched and stumbled back, his eyes squeezing shut because it was so bright he couldn't see, and he was on fire, roasting from the inside out. It was still bright on the insides of his eyelids, bright in his mind, bright and inescapable, searing. A hand came around his wrist and tugged, and he went with it, needing to get away from the brightness, the unbearable burning, until suddenly blessed relief came with the sound of a door being kicked shut.

He was kneeling, trying to clench in on himself to get away from that sense of his skin being seared on a hot grill. He scrambled blindly, trying to get his bearings, knowing they were at the top of the stairs and not wanting to tumble down them but he couldn't see, his eyes welded shut by the brightness, the fear of it, that if he opened them, the light would flood in and eviscerate him, vaporize him and leave him a shell with burnt out hollows where his eyes used to be.

Gentle hands came around his cheeks, her thumbs stroking and soothing along his cheekbones, wonderfully cool.

"Hey. Hey. I got you. I got you. Easy."

His own words, repeated back to him softly, concern rounding her voice, low like a whisper, threading through the fire in his mind. The air shifted as she knelt in front of him. He put a hand on her shoulder to get his bearings, unable to see her, but knowing where she was by feel.

"Light switch behind you."

She slipped from his grip as she stood up, looking for the switch. His hand skimmed down her shoulder along her arm, and she turned her palm into his, holding onto his hand in the dark as an anchor, to keep her from falling off the narrow first step going down into Bobby's basement. He blinked furiously, trying to clear his sight, grimacing when his eyes watered.

The room swam blurrily into view as the light came on.

"We've got to move." He squeezed the last burning teardrops from his eyes and tugged on her hand, leading her down the stairs, heading to the panic room.

She balked when she saw the iron door.

"Are you nuts? You can't go in there."

"But you can. Come on."

She jerked her hand out of his grasp. "No. Forget it. You are not parking me in the safe room and running off to do…" she gestured angrily, "your noble hero crap."

He kept his jaw from dropping open, because it wanted to, but it would have only made him look stupid. Was she dense? He wasn't trying to be a hero. It was just pragmatic. The panic room was the safest place in the house, and whatever that was out there, he didn't know how to fight it. It hurt when he even looked at it.

He couldn't protect her.

"Listen, princess. If you die in here, you die out there. You get that? For real. I'm not taking any chances."

He wasn't prepared when she closed the distance between them and glared up at him, not quite nose-to-nose, although that was the idea, fire and irritation blazing bright through the ice and calm.

"Cut the self-sacrificing crap and focus. We're getting out of here together, or not at all." She held up a finger when he started to interrupt. "How long do you think it's going to be before Sam knocks back a cup of that dream root himself, huh? An hour? Two? And what's Toby going to do then? Yeah. Exactly. So stow your shit and think. What the hell was that?"

"Angel." He whispered, guilt shading his voice.

Her eyebrows shot up.

"Huh." She said skeptically. "Well, I guess. I would have chosen a more imposing vessel. Less Chucky Cheese, more Wall Street."

Chucky Cheese… "Who did you see?" He demanded.

She was picking through the tangle of stuff on Bobby's shelves, settling on an iron crowbar not unlike the one she had in the trunk of her SUV before she came back to his side.

"A young man. Twenties. Skinny. Red stripe-y uniform. Outfit short one helicopter beanie. Ghost-y looking."

He didn't know angels became ghosts. Or maybe it was just the soul of Samandriel's vessel. Maybe hanging out with all that grace nuclear-charged him somehow.

"You know him."

"Maybe."

"Friend or foe?"

"Neither. I thought…" It was a hard world, grayer than it used to be. The lines had gotten blurred somewhere along the way, he didn't know when, couldn't remember. Maybe it was the first time he'd agreed to work with Crowley. Maybe it was way back when he had sold his soul.

The iron wall of the panic room blistered his skin when his fist smacked into it. Her hand shot out and locked on his wrist, restraining his wound up arm, preventing him from hitting the wall again, looking at his raw and peeling knuckles. He caught her eye and held her gaze, his stare intent, looking meaningfully down at his hand again, the flesh on it clean and all fixed up, because he could do that now. Because he was one of those unnatural things that was supposed to stay outside the panic room, and that iron bar in her hand would burn him.

Maybe the angel-ex-vessel-ex-Alfie was right to hunt him.

If the angels couldn't fight him out there, in here was as good a place as any.

Her fingers were still wrapped around his wrist, and the expression on her face was … something thoughtful.

He yanked his arm out of her grasp. He didn't want her pity. "You should try waking up. Elm Street's not your kind of neighborhood, sweetheart."

She looked an inch away from smacking him. He'd bet she was thinking about it, the way her eyes narrowed and her hand twitched. With a deep breath, she stepped into his space again, the words clear and cuttingly precise.

"Together. Or. Not. At. All."

She polished that off with a glare that cut through him. Not gentle, not coaxing, not like Sam. Hard, with an edge of steel. The air fizzed with it.

Where had that come from?

With a snap, she turned it off and stepped away, thinking.

"We're not seeing the same thing, are we?"

All he had seen was light. A ball of it, unbelievably brilliant, kind of like…

"A soul."

"What?"

"I'm seeing his soul."

He had the First Blade in his hand when he'd encountered Alfie's ghost. He thought he'd gotten past going all eyes-of-night whenever he held it, but maybe not.

She considered that for a minute.

"Soul or spirit?"

"Soul. Spirits are more," he made an undefined gesture, "wispy."

As he said that the room rumbled, the slab floor beneath his feet undulating like a wave. He grabbed on to her as the shelves and panic room vanished and they were suddenly in the secret room of Pastor Jim's church, the white tidiness of it startling after the dark clutter of Bobby's basement.

Zee looked around quickly.

"Did you do that?"

He didn't have to answer. He was looking down at the floor around him, the lines of a devil's trap carved deep into the concrete floor.

He didn't remember that being there.

Glowing letters appeared beneath his feet, etching into the concrete with their blue light.

Enochian.

He gasped, dropping to his knees, hands going to his throat where a noose was being tightened, squeezing, choking. He didn't need air, he knew this, but he gasped blindly anyway, trying to inhale a human memory, trying to stay conscious as blackness pressed in like weights, a box closing around him, the walls moving in, awareness shrinking and shrinking until everything that was him was swallowed up by the dark.

Dean was too still. Sam resisted the cold feeling in his stomach, resisted the desire to huff and the desire to pace, trying to keep it together for the kid sitting by his side. He turned and checked Zee's pulse again, aware that Toby's eyes followed his every move.

"They'll be okay." He said reassuringly. "We've done this kind of thing before."

Just then, Zee's hand clamped hard around his, her grip painful. His heart leapt, but her eyes stayed closed, moving rapidly in a REM sleep pattern.

A sound from behind turned him around.

"Dean?"

Dean was sitting stiffly up on the bed.

Dean's eyes flicked open.

White.

Pure milky white.

The next ten seconds were a blur. Toby shot off the bed and was clear across the room under the motel table before Sam could move. The thing that used to be Dean sniffed once, his head rotating with eerie slowness in their direction like he scented food. Sam gasped as the other bed hit his butt, having stumbled backwards into it, and he couldn't find enough air in the room. His brother's arm came up, reaching for him with hands flexed like claws, wanting to tear into his flesh.

The angel blade was in his hand, a reflex, mostly.

This was not the way it was supposed to end.

As suddenly as they had opened, Dean's eyes snapped shut. Dean slumped backwards onto the bed, hands falling limply to his side, stiff and motionless again.

In between the cussing and the WTFing and pretty much every thought in the book running through his head, Sam realized he didn't see Toby anywhere.

"Toby? Toby! TOBY!"

The room door was partially open. He heard things being thrown around next door. With a last worried look at the two sleeping figures, he hurried next door to find Toby making a wreck of the other room, looking for stuff. There was a little pile forming on one bed: holy water, matches, and a can of salt.

"TOBY!" Sam barked. He didn't mean to bark, but it came out as a bark anyway. He breathed in, put the reins on his frustration, and tried again. "Toby."

The kid spared him a glance before he started rummaging again.

"Come here."

Toby shook his head mutely.

"We need to get back and keep watch. Come on."

Toby backed up, his backpack clutched tightly in one hand. Sam was well aware there was a flare gun in there. They might have taught the kid a little too well. He reached for his last shred of calm and squatted down.

"I know that looked bad back there, Toby. But Dean will come back from it. He always does."

The look Toby gave him was completely feral. Yeah, shaded truths and reassurances weren't going to cut it with this kid. Sam reached into his jacket reluctantly.

"And I've got this." He drew out the shining angel blade. "I will keep you safe, Toby. I promise."

Toby slanted him another look, piercing in a way that was a lot like Zee, cutting through his bullshit.

"You want to keep an eye on Zee, don't you?"

The kid's face twisted with indecision. From the bottom of his heart, Sam wished he didn't have to do this, use the unfair leverage of Toby's affections against him.

"Come on. Dean's back asleep now. That doesn't usually happen with zombies, does it?"

A head shake, but no movement. Toby stayed planted where he was, back carefully against the wall, watching his every little twitch intently.

"Dean will fight through it. He'll be himself again. Dean comes back." His voice cracked, and he coughed to clear it. "Dean always comes back. I promise."

Toby was quiet. The months the boy had been on his own were all there on his face, hard angles and sharp lines, nothing of the kid he had come to know left there.

Sam waited. It was time they couldn't really afford, but he waited.

At long last, Toby stepped forward, picked up the holy water and the salt, leaving the matches on the bed, and edged by him, heading to the next room. The kid laid a salt line straight down the middle of the room, between the two beds, then sat down next to Zee, holding the holy water uncapped in one hand, looking a challenge at him.

He said nothing. What could he say?

He simply stepped over the line and took up his position besides his brother again.

And he prayed.

Dean woke with a gasp, rolling over onto his stomach, fumbling to get his knees under him. He scrambled to the small bathroom adjoining the safe room, and puked up his guts.

When nothing more would come up, he splashed some water on his face, rinsed out his mouth and stood clinging on to the cold white porcelain sink, shaking. He really wanted to toss his cookies again, but he couldn't afford it. They didn't have time.

He was a frickin' zombie.

He swallowed, and swallowed again to keep the nausea at bay. When his knees stopped trembling like a girl's, he rested his forehead against the cool glass of the mirror, breathing hard.

Speaking of which…

He looked around, pushing away from the mirror in a rush, throwing himself on unsteady legs in the general direction of the doorframe, and out into the safe room. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Zee, sitting on the floor next to the devil's trap, leaning against a pick she'd manage to unearth somewhere, the crumble of concrete next to her feet.

"What the hell happened?"

They spoke at the same time.

"I'm a zombie."

"You passed out."

"What do you mean you're a zombie?"

He paused at the pure ice in her tone. She had both hands wrapped around the pick handle, her look in his direction measuring.

"I was back in the motel room. For just a second. I saw Sam."

Nausea boiled over and sent him back to the bathroom again. He leaned his head against the porcelain and considered just staying there.

Zee's clear voice came from the other room.

"You were hungry."

His head shot up and his feet moved him to lean against the doorway.

"How'd you…" His eyes fell on the sticky wet dark patch on her side. She looked around the room, examining the wall of weapons and supplies neatly stacked in the alcove below, then at the Enochian lettering in the center of the devil's trap. She made to stand, using the pick handle as a kind of lever to push herself off the ground.

Her legs gave way.

He had one arm around her, holding her up by the arm and by the waist, before either of them could think about it. His hand came away wet and warm from her side.

"Dammit." He slid his arm around her more securely. "Would it kill you to ask for help? How long has it been like that?"

She didn't answer, which he took to mean that chunk the zombie queen took had never healed properly.

"Fuck." He swore, moving to pick her up.

She pushed away from him impatiently, pulling on her arm when he didn't let go.

"It'll stop in a minute." She snapped, white-lipped. "We've got bigger problems."

She was eyeing the concrete floor, at the now dull Enochian lettering in the center of the devil's trap.

"Can you move us? Outside? Somewhere with soft ground?"

Then they were by the lake where Bobby had taken them fishing once, when Sam was six and three questions beyond his quota. He'd always suspected Bobby had taken them there for the sole purpose of shutting Sam up, but they had spent just that one glorious afternoon doing nothing but watching the lure bobbing on the water and being warmed by the sun. There was grass underneath his feet and open blue sky above, and the picnic bench just there where they had eaten their sandwiches and first curly fries.

Zee took a deep breath, taking in the grass-scented air. She looked out over the lake, eyes on the sunlit water. She didn't look at him when she spoke again.

"You need to stay in control."

He tensed, because he knew where she was going. Two souls, one body.

"You're a demon. You know how to do it."

How to seize control of a consciousness, push it aside and take over. It was his own body, his own meat suit, granted, but to do that thing that was basically possession, to take a step down the path that made him like all the others, to be the smoke that came pouring out of mouths…he stepped away from her.

"No."

She didn't move from where she stood, still looking out over the lake.

"It's our only option."

"It's too risky."

She didn't understand. Sam would have understood. Sam would have got it. The thing in him, the rage and the anger, the killer. What happened when he held the First Blade in his hand.

She was asking him to pick it up.

"It's the lesser of two evils."

"You don't get it, sister." His voice was harsh.

She turned and faced him head on.

"I'm afraid I do."

Cool. How could she be so cool? There was nothing on her face but decision. No feeling. No emotion.

"The kid will die. Is that what you want?" He ground out. "I'll kill him. I'll kill you. I'll kill…"

He stopped there.

She took one step towards him, and he was looking into amber, wondering if this was what a bug felt like when they got trapped in tree sap and 'preserved' forever. Her look was searching, reaching into his head like she could see.

"I'll take my chances."

Her voice didn't waver. What gave her the right to choose for the kid? For him? He was afraid he knew. He remembered how it had felt when one of those zombies had bit him, never mind the chunk the zombie queen had taken out of her.

It wasn't just a physical wound.

And he could feel the thing—it was easier if he thought of it as a shapeless thing, bright light, not as Alfie, with his absurd hat and stupid red shirt, his too earnest face, drafted into a war between angels and angels and demons on the side he didn't even know existed when he naively said yes—battering at the edges of this memory, trying to tear it down. Dean held the sky bright in his mind, the sun at high noon, and the edges of the bubble of thought they existed in secure from the hungry desperation that was outside it. The wrongness of it, a soul not in its own body, not resting as promised in heaven, finding itself relentlessly surrounded by rot and decay and death, darkness seeping into the light, making everything gray. Restless and angry, but not a spirit, bound by the needs of the flesh, slowly being driven insane by the hunger.

Alfie didn't deserve this.

"There's got to be another way."

She looked up at a dark cloud on the horizon line.

"We don't have time."

Her voice was even, matter-of-fact, and without give. Sam would have found another way. Sam would have understood how dangerous this was, to be the demon, to give in to the temptation.

Sam was out there, sitting right next to him.

He had to choose how Sam would die.

About five things happened at once.

Dean spun off the bed, a flurry of movement so fast Sam just narrowly ducked the First Blade sailing over his head. Dean's eyes were fully black, and he snarled, his face a sharp mask of fury, deepening when Toby doused him with the full bottle of holy water, the sizzle of skin and smoke off his arm loud. Sam stepped between the kid and his brother, his angel blade up and his heart in his throat, still thumping away in its awkward new home, getting in the way of his breathing.

This was it. This was really it.

A ball of something whitish-blue flew out from the tip of the old jawbone, whipped angrily across the room and disappeared out into the night. The demon turned on them, shaking with rage, smoke still wisping off the places where the holy water had burned him. Sam tried to make his arm not tremble, but the adrenaline rush was too strong. He wasn't prepared when the First Blade crashed into the shorter angel blade in his hand, the impact reverberating up his arm. His arm shook for real, bracing, trying to hold the First Blade back and yielding before the demon stepped back, gathering himself for another swing. Sam backed up, trying to find Toby behind him without looking, preparing to run. He couldn't take another hit like that.

Then a blur of motion blew by him, going in the wrong direction, and Zee was in front of him, catching the second swing of the bone blade with her short sword, only to have it shatter in two as the First Blade cut right through the steel and came to a bare stop at the skin of her neck. The demon looked right at her, and she met its eyes, stare for stare, dead calm and dead still.

Sam reached forward and yanked her back out of harm's way, thrusting her unceremoniously behind him while watching the Blade quiver in place.

"Dean?" He said carefully.

Slowly Dean looked at him, eyes going to green, rocking with the effort of it. He let his arm drop. Sam heard the sound of Toby's quick footsteps as the kid came running up and threw his arms around Zee, pulling her back. She turned to the kid, looped her arm around him and held him briefly to her before sitting down with a plop on the bed behind her, breathing hard.

There was a weak knock on the door.

Followed by a thud like a body falling against it.

Sam drew his Beretta before edging to the door and peeping out the peephole.

He yanked it open, just in time to catch Cas as the bloodied half-angel slid weakly down along the door frame.

Cas grabbed him by the front of his shirt on his way down, Cas' knuckles scraped and raw like his face, and got out just one gravelly word.

"Run."