Cheap Venetian Blinds

by Schmuzz

A young gangster named Dean Winchester meets the Russian immigrant Kastyiyel Krushnic - oh wait, sorry, Castiel Novak - and as it turns out, having romantic relations with another man in 1929 isn't the worst of their problems.

21. Goodbye, Friend

Dean made Castiel drink the rest of the bottle of spirits he had stored in the first aid kit before the other could explain any further. He pushed him down in the arm chair, watching Castiel's hands curl and uncurl against the now empty glass, his eyes flicking back and forth. The lamp light in their apartment was low; it was just about black outside – this felt like a horror story, a nightmare, some place far away and unreal. Dean could sense the shadows around the room grow against the walls, pricking his skin, and he opened his mouth to speak when Castiel shut his eyes particularly tight and gasped, as if in shock, and Dean hastily moved towards the door and turned on the ceiling lamp, banishing the darkness into corners and under the furniture, away from them both.

"Okay," he muttered, pulling out one of the wooden chairs and putting it in front of Castiel's seat; their knees almost touched. "Now, tell me what happened. About… all that." He waved his hand, not wanting to say Balthazar's name again. The situation was too grotesque to do much but operate on autopilot.

"I…" Castiel licked his lips. "I was working late, like I said I would. We all got out about nine or so. Most of the trains were out and – and the only ones running were still about a mile or so away from here, more around Brighton," Dean nodded.

"And I walked to the shop," he said, voice cracking and cutting short. He fizzled out for a moment, wiped his fingers across the spot on his lips his tongue had wet. "I figured since I was around, I've been busy lately with factory work anyway, hadn't seen Gabriel or Anna in a few days – hadn't seen… Balthazar in a week or so, and I wanted to at least call on them. I mean, I was tired; I thought a quick talk with them would help me get through the last mile home. I didn't want to stay long because you were –" Castiel stopped again, eyes flickering over into Dean's face. "You were waiting for me.

"They, um, Gabriel and Anna were up already. The kitchen light was on, someone was there."

Dean forced his features to relax as Castiel spoke. He was concerned in wanting to know every angle of the story, but he couldn't bring himself to ask questions. Castiel had never seemed so out of sorts; maybe when he had been talking about life before he came to America, but that was old, buried trauma. This was fresh; so new that you weren't sure what to do with it. Dean was surprised the numbness hadn't set in – unless it had already worn off by the time Castiel arrived here.

"The man's name was – is – Dmitry Woden, a, uh, associate of Balthazar's. I'd met him a few times; he and his family live a few blocks away from the store. They all were surprised to see me there, and Anna was nudging Dmitry, trying to get him to stop talking, but he saw me and he asked if I was over because I had already found out what happened. He was in some state, I could hardly understand him." Castiel peered into his empty cup, then up at Dean. "He told me Balthazar had been shot, over in Bergen, on some job."

Dean felt something in his chest seize up and clutch frantically inside him. His hand unconsciously reached up, as if to steady himself. He had half expected that had been the case but – hearing Castiel tell him the truth of it was as if he had turned a bad idea into fact, just with his words. "Shit," he mumbled, out of want for anything else to say. "Cas…"

"I – I ran, I guess. He told me he had died, some other people got shot up, too, but – Balthazar," He took a heaving breath. "I just backed out of the door and went down the street and – and I wouldn't be surprised if Anna or someone came right up here after me, but," Castiel shook his head. "I – well you had to know."

Dean hesitantly put his hand on Castiel's wrist. "You didn't need to do that for me,"

Castiel looked at Dean's hand, then into his eyes. "I couldn't stay there. I couldn't just sit in the same chair he sat in; go around the apartment he spent so much time at. This place is different. Away from all that." He glanced down at the floor, off to the right, finding something interesting in the swirling patterns of the carpet. "But you did need to know tonight. If not for the fact that you'd have gotten worried, then, well, I know that I have to go back anyway. Stay there for a while."

"The shop?"

"We're his family. Anna, Gabriel, and me, we're the only family he… we're in charge of the funeral, a will, if he has one. We need to go through whatever he has and, and… there'll be the entire neighborhood coming by, talking to us, trying to make us feel better." He sniffed. "However all that goes. By tomorrow everyone will know about this." He paused a moment, blinked, gaze still on the ground. "You know it was some of Crowley's guys who were up there, tonight, too. You didn't do anything, I know. Anna and Gabriel are aware of the same – you're fine in that respect. But do you think everyone else we know is going to understand that? Understand us?"

"No, I get it. If they see me with you, at best they'll take it like it was all a planned thing," Castiel winced at the words, and Dean worried his lip in an unspoken apology. He wanted to tell him about his own run in with Balthazar but – how would that play out? If it was him, all he would be able to think of would be how he could have saved Balthazar if he had known – everything was fixable if you looked with hindsight, and Dean was sure that Castiel would suffer from it soon enough. Dean just couldn't bear to do so here and now.

"What are you going to do now?" Dean asked, tone as calm as he could make it.

"I don't know," Castiel whispered, and Dean didn't have to make any attempts to find more than one meaning behind that line. "Can't sleep, can't relax. You don't need to hear me shuffling about all night, I know that. Wouldn't look good anyway, if I just waltzed back there tomorrow. It might be better if I just headed back."

"I can walk you," Dean said, watching Castiel get up.

"Someone might see us,"

"At least partway," he offered again as he stood, though he already knew he wouldn't be coming along, from the pulled, resolute look on Castiel's face. His steps were heavy now, tired and burdened and hollow sounding. He put the cup on the edge of the kitchen counter, right next to a small pile of books he had stacked there. "How long?" Dean asked, quietly.

"A week." Castiel said, strained, face turned so Dean could still look at him. "A week or so is usually enough to sort these things out, from what I've heard. I've never had to… take care of this sort of thing. When I came here I thought," He abruptly stopped again. Dean saw that his hands were shaking. "Give me a week and I'll come back to you, and, and things will…"

"No," Dean said gently, stepping closer to Castiel. "You don't have to tell me that you'll suddenly feel fine in a week. You don't have to give me any of that. Just – do what you have to. If something more comes up you can always write." Writing to someone not two miles away – the idea could have been funny in a hundred different settings, but not this one. "And that's all you can ask someone, Cas."

Castiel let his eyes go up Dean's body again, this time like he was trying to memorize it. "Okay," he whispered. "Okay. Thank-you for understanding, Dean. Thanks for everything." Dean desperately wanted to reach out, make Castiel feel even marginally better, but he already knew that wasn't going to work. Nothing he could come up with could shed light on someone who had just lost a best friend, a brother by circumstance if not by blood. He couldn't even grab Castiel's hand; the two of them were going to be away for a week or more, in any case – it was best to not do anything that would make them miss the other more than they already were going to.

Another few moments passed, and Dean tried to offer a precarious, encouraging smile. Castiel nodded back, and he unlocked the door, revealed the black hallway of the apartment, and slipped away as a ghost would.

Even though Castiel wasn't there to make disturbances, it took Dean a very, very long time to fall asleep.

xxxx

Balthazar was buried three days after Castiel told him the news. The weather was bitter for the first Saturday of September. It had rained the night before; wind churned through the morning until most of the ground had dried up to a brittleness again; everything was cold to the touch.

Dean had heard murmurs of the Bergen massacre the days following; people from work, some of whom lived close enough by that they swore they heard the gunshots. Dean hadn't known anyone involved, besides the one obvious man; he tried to ignore the looks of a few knowing persons that eyed him up and down on the street. He also stayed away from any place that had Russian lettering on it.

Castiel was absent, as he had promised. Dean kept the door to his room unlocked before he went to work, just in case Castiel needed something and managed to get into the building. But nothing moved from its usual spot, every object of Castiel's kept in a casual pause. It was eerie, in a word. So Dean had started walking again – it was better than sitting up in a lonely apartment; it was better than thinking about the things he'd have to do in the coming week.

On Saturday he made it up to Midwood with the intention to turn around soon after; the place was a mixed enough neighborhood. He wouldn't find too many people who knew of him, here. It was late afternoon – still cold.

The street he was walking down was car-heady; turning his head either way displayed a long, dismal view of Washington Cemetery. Dean knew the place well enough, some acquaintances had been laid there over the years he was in the city; if you weren't stuck in cement shoes or given a back wood, shallow burial, you were somewhere in there, amoung the crowded row of tombstones. They all stretched so far that you couldn't quite tell when you hit normal buildings again on the other side. Besides some of the larger parks in New York, this was the only place you could find some flat land.

There was a procession going on in the newer section; it was coming up on Dean's side of the street. Thirty or more people in the distance, dressed up in black suits and slacks; skirts and hats, like a stretched out murder of crows. He was too far away and the rustle of wind was too loud for him to hear anything from the group. He was almost beyond them when he sensed more than saw something from the corner of his eye.

It was red.

Amoung the black and occasional peeks of pale skin, he swore he saw red, and turned his head back enough to curiously scrutinize the group.

For a moment he thought he had imagined it all until a figure moved back – no more than a foot from the mass of the people – and the red sheen of their hair tugged at his vision again.

Short, shoulder length scarlet hair. Dean's steps slowed, and a hand subconsciously grasped at the pikes in the surrounding fence. There were, of course, hundreds of red-headed women with shoulder length hair in the city. But, he felt his mind stutter, if it was her…

The person folded back into the black mesh of other mourners and Dean scanned along the edge of the cemetery, catching an opening in the gate not fifty feet away.

Dean ducked inside, eyed the squat stones around him; rounded or squared off from a dull, sandy stone. He felt a wave of apprehension, though he knew it wasn't from the dead bodies.

Even if that was Anna he had glimpsed; even if he had managed to stumble across Balthazar's ceremony at the right time – though this was most likely going to be the right place, considering it was one of the largest and closest burial sites in the city – Castiel had asked for a week; he couldn't join in the proceedings, he certainly couldn't stop by and try to cheer his friend up. There was no point to it. He really should go, he thought furiously, even as his feet remained rooted in front of the small grave digger's house situated at the main entrance. He spotted a few lone attendees situated to their own headstones, and decided that maybe an inconspicuous view might be safe enough.

He went casually over the widened, dirt paths in the field; past markers and stones, eyes focused on the few lonely crypts versus what had drawn him in the first place. He put himself a few rows ahead of the group, plus a respectable leftward distance, so even if someone had noticed him come in, they could only watch the back of his head as he crouched in front of one of the graves.

This particular one read Josephine Montague. Born April 7th, 1876, died January 29th, 1930. It was an odd age to have died, Dean thought to himself. A woman, most likely French, passing away in her fifties – too late for childbirth, still not quite old enough for her body to fail on her. It could have been polio, tuberculosis, some sort of ravaging disease; he blanched at that thought – but there was no mention to it. He tilted his head at the name, contemplated it for a few more moments, before reaching up and tracing his finger around the design at the top; a skull with angel wings framing it. A bit old fashioned, he'd always wondered why that sort of image was carved into stone. A regular angel, or some weeping statue, or a Virgin Mary were normal enough, but this design seemed to combine two very different things; a little too Gothic for his tastes, anyway. No one he had known had that sort of crest on their tombstones. John hadn't gotten anything with his cheaply funded funeral, just a shallow inscription on a ground tile. It might have even worn away by now. And he had never seen his Mother's grave, either – had no clue where it was, except that it was someplace in Kansas, in a lonely green plane of rocks surrounded by wheat – but he figured it would've had a real angel along the stone's face, if it could have been afforded at the time. Out of the few dozen things Dean had retained about Mary: Homemade soup, blonde hair, soothing touches across his forehead and cheeks, angels stuck out in his mind, maybe to go along with her appearance; if she had been religious he never knew, had never asked, and John didn't waste the effort to indulge him or Sam about her. Like so many other things, all those facts and memories had died along with the last half of their parents.

He hadn't thought about the two of them, together, for a long time. Dean slowly pulled his fingers away from the rock, though he continued to stare. His stomach was tight, and to distract himself he attempted to listen to the sounds of whatever the minister might have been telling the crowd.

There were words alright – warbled and falling in and out as the wind came through, and they never sounded like English, or any Romance language, for that matter, but he heard the tone of it if not the content: Some voice instructing the others, leading them into a prayer; ashes to ashes, dust to dust, returning to the Earth, that sort of thing, probably – whatever got told at a funeral. Dean never stuck around for the duration of most burials, anyway. Hadn't understood how the reading from some ancient book was supposed to make the sting of a loved one being a corpse better.

People died – so far Dean hadn't encountered a more universal truth out there. People died, usually for nothing, and usually they went kicking and screaming the entire way through because they couldn't imagine such an indignity happening to them; as if dying had never truly entered their minds before that moment. Meanwhile someone was hosting a party the next house over, and a good part of the world was having the time of their lives as someone bled out and breathed their last and realized that all that talk about being saved at the last moment were completely worthless. Dean wasn't sure when he had figured out that ugly truth. It might have been when he was four, the faint memories of a house going up in smoke; or maybe some time a few years later in a sickbed, or when he was twenty-one standing over John's grave, or maybe it was in some nondescript, warped time in a dirty basement with only Alastair and a knife between them. Who knew? Dying certainly didn't scare him. Maybe being alone while he was face down in the pavement, maybe that got to him; his entire encompassed thoughts and emotions nothing but a blip on the radar before he became nothing himself. If he died he at least wanted a few things to say to someone who would care, he felt that would help at least, before he became nothing more than a plaque stuck into the dirt, like the hundreds of lives surrounding him, silent burrows, immortalized as nothing more than a name and a date – everything after start and before finish, however, was guesswork.

So maybe that was why he avoided cemeteries like the plague.

He tossed a glance over his shoulder – he might have been stationary there for nearly an hour, judging by the pain in his shins. But he couldn't see a casket, and he couldn't see a minister's robes. If the pastor had left, chances were the ceremony was just about over.

Just like that a few people began to trickle away.

Dean watched the procession. A couple, a family, a few lone, single men that had probably been comrades of Balthazar – if it was Balthazar there. Twenty minutes later there were only three people left: A short man, a woman with bobbed, crimson hair, and a man standing between them, their faces angled down.

Dean turned back to Elizabeth Montague. He didn't need to see that. He shouldn't have come, not that he knew for certain who was there.

He still didn't move, instead entertaining the notion of putting his hands in his pockets and retreating, head down, back to where he had come from – they wouldn't notice. He could pretend he hadn't seen a thing, offer, perhaps, to come to the grave with Castiel later on, after this thing had somewhat settled. He ran through the thought until he imagined the entire process of leaving, going home, right up until he hit the stairs of the flat, though in reality he hadn't done more than shifted, trying to get blood flow back into his legs.

It took even longer before he bothered to stand; glancing around at the morbid setting like it was so much different at a different height. He pivoted on his heel, hammering it into his brain that he would merely have to walk down this row, cross the dirt path, and –

Castiel was alone, still staring at the grave. And for the life of him Dean couldn't even remember which way his own house was.

But Castiel was there, right there, and even if he was too far away to see his face, everything in the scene before him hurt.

He walked slowly, went down the main path and down into the row Balthazar had been put in. Most of the stones here were markers; pits covered with dirt, too cold for grass to poke through yet. Balthazar's hole would remain dark until the spring – the lack of vegetation would betray the earliness of his passing before a person could even read the date, and for some reason Dean kept that thought in his mind for longer than he should have.

He was right behind Castiel, now. There wasn't a tombstone, either, and the gravediggers had yet to arrive. In reality Castiel was merely observing a white, wooden cross with a small serial number painted on the face of it – probably so the stone could be matched properly for later – and a gaping pit with a casket at the bottom, a wreath of pale flowers crowded on top. If the other man noticed his presence, he didn't say anything, and Dean didn't announce it.

It was getting even colder; the sinking sun turned the low-hanging clouds around it red, its color bleeding into them as if it was going out in its very own Harlem sunset. Dean buttoned his coat further, rubbed a hand to his throat to warm it. It wasn't a particularly loud motion, and Castiel didn't stir – physically at least. But words came out anyway. Dry, tired.

"I told you not to come by." Which was a true point, and Dean had no ill feelings about it, either.

"You did," he admitted easily. "I was walking, saw the procession… I thought I saw Anna. I wondered if it really was…" he meant to say Balthazar's funeral, but still couldn't bear to say the dead man's name. "I'm sorry," he said, as a second thought. "I kept telling myself the whole way I shouldn't have stopped; if you're mad about it I don't blame you."

"Did anyone see you?"

"Just the back of my head. I was up, over on the left side from you all. No one would have noticed." Castiel didn't say anything in response.

For a moment, Dean wanted to apologize, say he was sorry, about the whole mess – because he was, really. Even if he and Balthazar bared their teeth at one another, neither of them would have wanted to see Castiel where he was right now.

But he couldn't; too many people had told them sorry in the past. It didn't do anything – it certainly didn't make him feel better. So he remained quiet, his chest still tight.

"I saw him," Dean muttered after a few more minutes. "The day he got shot. He found me on the way to work." Castiel's head inched up from the ground, just slightly.

"Really?"

"Grabbed me and pulled me into a side alley. We talked." Castiel didn't respond. "He said not to go up to Bergen. It'd be bloody over there for a while. He told me to tell you, as well – he would've said something himself, but he hadn't seen you. Scheduling conflicts. I said you were up in the factory, far away, safe, and that I'd tell you about it when you got home, but… well, everything else happened and it was too late for that."

"…Did he say anything else?" Castiel sounded oddly congested against the cold air. He coughed once, twice, trying to hide it or get over it, perhaps. Dean still couldn't see his face.

"He said he warned me for your sake; I asked if he was going to be alright… we mentioned you, again, as usual for the two of us, since I said you'd be concerned about him anyway, and he said that's the type of guy you are – caring, he meant, the kind of friend a person would really want." He swallowed, wondered what Castiel's face looked like. "It comes back to you, between us talking. It's the only thing we can talk about, really. Well, could, rather." Dean took note of how Castiel's shoulders had bunched up before glancing back at the ground. "I think… we could've gotten along, though. After some point we would have realized it wasn't worth it – I bet he would have come with us, too, all things considered." Castiel still hadn't moved. "It's not my business and it's mostly my guessing but, but he only had the best intentions for you – which is what you'd want with a friend, I suppose."

"Well," Castiel said, voice especially low, "he came across the Atlantic with me," He paused despite being in the middle of his sentence, and slowly picked up again, "…I guess that, I guess that some little train ride would be e-ease," Castiel brought a hand up to his face and bent over. He looked like he was coughing, like he was sick, but Dean knew better, the way he had cut himself off like he couldn't speak at all, the way his throat cracked like someone cut off his air.

He walked forward and wrapped an arm around Castiel's shoulders, doubled over next to him. He stared at their shoes, the ground, even the dark wood of the casket. Castiel's back quivered slightly, and a few moments later Dean swore he saw something small hit the ground and sink into the grass forever.

He reached for a handkerchief – a dull one he had bought – and passed it over to Castiel, who took his hand off his mouth just long enough to set a few stray tears free, a short gasp of breath, and a cracked note that was like a wounded animal, before he pressed the cotton against his face and drowned it out from everyone, even Dean, tilting his face so that he was pointed away from him.

Belatedly, Dean realized that he had never seen Castiel cry before. Not once. The man could betray emotion when he needed, though he had always gotten the impression that Castiel was a person totally in control of his feelings – someone who could at least choose what to show, when, and to whom.

But Castiel didn't plan this. He didn't have control over this.

In Bulgaria, in the past, there was a person named Castiel – one much different from this being pressed to his side. That Castiel was a teenager; a scared, desperate, half starved creature. An animalistic, devoted thing that cared too much, loved his family so dearly, and watched them all waste into nothing. He had cried then – probably a lot. And after that… after all that, how could anything in New York do the same thing?

Another sound came out of Castiel; muffled through the fabric, and Dean felt the other man's knees bending – he was sinking to the ground, and Dean went with him, like he was afraid Castiel would go into the Earth with Balthazar, otherwise. Follow him; follow the rest of his family.

And that's when it hit him – that's when Dean understood.

For Castiel, Balthazar dying was Bulgaria all over again. And nothing he could do, nothing he could say or offer would change that, would make it better. Castiel could die an old man, but he would still recall this moment, staring down a six foot deep pit, cold, dried dirt staining his slacks, city traffic and skyscrapers surrounding him, and all he would remember would be the cold, ashen remnants of burnt out cities; makeshift graves and broken bones and base undignified cruelty. He would remember his brothers, his family, he would remember Raphael and Uriel. And now, when he thought of his friend – the one who had dragged him through Greece, the one person who kept him going for so long – he would think of everything else he had never been able to run away from.

Dean reached his free hand up, rubbed at his eye, just once. His forefinger came back wet, but he wasn't surprised. It was difficult to say whether he pulled Castiel closer for some aborted effort to calm the other, or just to make himself feel better.

They knelt there until Dean couldn't feel his fingers, until he couldn't uncurl his hand from where it grasped Castiel's shoulder. His eyes had long since been dried out by a chilling wind that swept in front of them, and he stared out on the horizon until the sun had snuffed itself out.

He was prepared to stay there all night when Castiel, handkerchief still pressed to his mouth, eyes pink and wet said, "I'd like some time alone."

If a dead man could talk, its voice would've sounded a lot like Castiel Novak's did.

At the same time it was yet another command that only had one solution. He dragged himself away, stumbled home, shivering and perhaps a bit scared for the man he'd left behind.

It was yet another night Dean couldn't go to sleep.

xxxx

Crowley had ordered Arturi's heart on a platter in the form of a faux suicide – and that meant a trip up to eastern Greenpoint, and a visit to an old friend.

Benny Laffite lived and worked in a place a lot nicer than what his job description would suggest. Against the frigid air, modern brownstones stood out in rounded, cylinder like shapes. Their colors went through shades of white, brick red, dirt brown – identical against one another, and yet still singular in the scope of the borough. Autumn descended harshly around the city, and Dean's mood hadn't faired any better. His eyes felt raw, he knew they were pink, wrinkles under them betrayed his lack of rest over the days.

Dean tried not to think about how Castiel was faring.

He didn't do the right thing, leaving him in front of his best friend's grave – it was a damn stupid idea, in all truth. But watching Castiel crumble in front of him, fall to the ground like that, it was a terrible reality – it wasn't right – and Dean couldn't bring himself to stay beside such a twisted image. So he was a coward, but Castiel's grief was a personal kind, and even if his method of thought was dull beyond belief, Castiel wasn't. He wouldn't have done anything drastic.

And if something had happened… Anna and Gabriel knew his address.

Dean forced that part of life into the undercurrent of his thoughts, and marched on. He had work to do, after all.

Benny's apartment was in an attractive auburn building with arched windows and white borders along the doorways. He climbed the staircase and rang the bell that corresponded to a particular second floor room. The cold stayed with him, more potent now that he stood still; he tried to glimpse into the lobby, but the frosted glass on the door merely betrayed bleak shapes, and nothing he could pin as a person in any case.

Soon, however, he saw a dark shadow appear and move towards him; it was a figure larger than Dean's, a bit bulky. It paused for a moment just behind the entrance, perhaps trying to recognize Dean's own shape from the other side of the glass.

The door unlatched, and Benny stood in the threshold, a small smile on his face.

"You look like a half drowned cat," he said, cocking his head one way. His smile grew wider. "It's good to see you."

Dean ducked his head, felt a low laugh go through his chest, up his throat. "Same here, Benny. You going to invite me in or what?"

"Come on up, sure. Before the wind knocks you down." And he turned on his heel, leisurely walking back up the staircase. Dean watched him curiously, not because the other was unfamiliar, but because he truly hadn't visited Benny in a while. If Dean's schedule was erratic, though, Benny's was infinitely worse – he might not have even been in the city till last week, for all Dean knew at the moment.

The room he was in was larger than Dean's apartment, and much more elaborately furnished. If the room had a theme of decoration –a compelling case could be made for it being chaotically coincidental – it was a nautical one. The wallpaper was blue, and the drapes crossing the domed windows were white and clean. Most of the furniture was old in a visible way; chipped and dinged, yet the detailing on the corners of tables and the backs of the chairs revealed that they had been around long enough to earn those mark ups from various owners. It had a subtle hint of elegance to it that matched the tenant well.

A stranger might not expect someone of Benny's oppressive stature to act partway the pinnacle of a gentleman come up from the South, part a separate animal all impartial to societal expectations, and that was probably why Dean liked him – one of the reasons, at least.

Still, to people in the know, Benny was the choice talker a mob man would dream about – he heard everything, knew everyone, and managed to keep apathetic to it all. When things got too harsh, his visitors too demanding, he had special ways to disappear; a small fleet of anonymous ships he kept in port, though they also got their fair use by way of smuggling, fishing, and even maintaining some passengers as a inconspicuous transport from state to state. Dean could think of a few others who were neutral parties that worked for high bidders – he had thought Ruby's motive had been the same, early on, before Dean caught scent of her real colors. The only other person who was similar in scope and infamy had to be a thief named Bela Talbot. But while Bela made Dean's teeth clench and his hand protectively stray to anything valuable on his person, he was hardly Benny's customer, and this was one of the first visits that was mostly business.

"Can I get you anything?" Benny asked as he walked further into the room, his head casually turned so that he could look at Dean's face. "Water? Wine? Something stronger?"

"I'm off till tomorrow; what sort of shipment's have you got?"

"The only fine class moonshine you'll ever get your hands on." He walked over to a large bookcase and bent over, picking up a small rug laid to the left of it. There were two sets of grooves in the wood, parallel to each other, and Benny edged what seemed to be a few hundred pounds of wood and paper several feet over, revealing a window-sized bar cut into the alcove.

"You added another one?" Dean asked, nodding to the mantelpiece in the center of the wall. The apartments had long since been heated by standing radiators, and the last time he had been by – admittedly not since before Sam left – Benny had kept a rather extensively foreign and impressively illegal stash of booze behind a painting above the fireplace – a large cubby having been installed where the smoke chute would have been.

"Some fella in black was poking around here a few months ago," Benny said, picking up this bottle or that before settling on one with dark blue glass. He shut the bar back up into the wall. "Guess he's been around, seen the usual spots to put 'em."

"See any time?"

"Me? Nah, gave him some drinks, some cash, a few pointers to a couple low class guys he'd been looking for, and he told me to get rid of the fire hazard. Headed down to Jersey till everyone got over it. That was – June, I think. This June. Got back not a month ago. Not that you'd know or anything."

"I was busy," Dean offered passively, watching as Benny disappeared through a wide threshold, into a brightly lit kitchen. "Anyways, how was Jersey?"

"Same as usual – prisons and speakeasies overflowing, plenty of customers and sellers." He wandered back into the front room, carrying two squat glasses with one hand, the newly opened bottle with another. He settled the cups on a small side table and poured the liquor into them. If Benny happened to host a few friends over, it would have been around this bench – four armchairs were next to it, and Dean sat in one so that his back was to the fireplace. He could glance up and out the window. Benny sat on the right of him, in front of a sea man's desk and the other half of the room, facing the entrance to his apartment. "Other than that life's been as usual; boring, predictable, how it usually is for us."

"Of course." Benny reached for his glass first and reclined with it. Dean broke his usual habit and didn't bother waiting for Benny to sample his portion before taking a small pull to taste. It was slightly cooler than room temperature from the storage, made his mouth warm; the flavor was hard to distinguish at the moment. "Where's this from?"

"Some little place in the Vieux Carré," Benny said, two different accents coinciding in that one phrase. "Don't give me that look. You think I'd give you something that'd make you go blind? It's high quality stuff from a high quality neighborhood."

"Most of my memories from New Orleans are just crap weather and street performers." Dean muttered, holding the cup up to the dim light coming from the window; it was like the thin syrup that formed in congealed jars of honey, and it seemed to move with a slow measure of viscousness. Dean took a bigger drink of it, and Benny was right – it didn't make him want to do a spit take like Crowley's drink did weeks ago. This stuff was on the cusp of southern sweetness, and the flavor was full and sparking – maybe too much. Dean let out a cough despite himself and Benny looked as if he was trying not to laugh.

"Don't tell me you can't stomach that?" he asked, draining about half of his glass, as if to show him up.

"No, no, it's good – it's more than that. Just haven't been in the bars much, recently. Haven't had much of anything for a while."

"Now, really? Dean Winchester not drinking like a fish? What have you been up to these past months?" Dean bit the inside of his mouth and contemplated his answer for some time. He took another drink of the moonshine and managed to keep it down like he should have.

"A bit of this –"

"–A bit of that?" Benny finished, raising an eyebrow.

"Let's just say I've been trying to stay out of trouble. For Sam's sake. Since he's not exactly around anymore."

"Yeah, I know." Benny said, softly. Sam had never liked Benny all that much – he had probably put him in the same boat as Ruby; a guy waiting to stab him in the back, and Dean supposed he couldn't blame him, no matter how much he wished both of them could have been friends. Benny was nice, or smart enough, to not touch upon the subject. "So, how's that been going for you?" Dean contemplated the glass again.

"About as well as you'd think. Which is kind of why I'm here." He glanced up at Benny again and shifted in his seat; expecting some sort of impatient behavior that never came. In times like this he wasn't too sure why the other man was so fond of him; maybe it was the typical lack of loyalty to whoever he worked for, or maybe it was because they had met at a party first off, years ago, when his Father was hardly cold in the ground and he couldn't be sure whether he'd like Brooklyn or not. That had been before Adam had taken Sam and him over to Alastair, even. At that point he hadn't known Benny as anything more important than the seat filler next to him, a sociable one, at least. His Southern accent in New York was one of the most alien sights he'd been privy to, and it reminded him of a few rotten memories and plenty of lazy, hot seasons spent from Georgia through Texas, so something like nostalgia might have made him return his jabs at conversation with more than one word answers. They had talked about things that were a lot less serious and a lot more entertaining than forged notes and secret deaths and the duties of a man linked to the mob, back then. The next time they met Dean had been set through the wringer with Alastair, was just starting with Lucifer, and needed some information for a case; the two of them recognized each other and talk flowed just as easily as the first time half a year before, and that had been that.

Their visits were still far more sporadic than what constituted a regular friendship, but it was never hard for one to converse with the other. Benny leaned forward slightly in the chair, waiting good-naturedly, as always, for Dean to continue, as if the two of them had all the time in the world. "Are you familiar with Joe Arturi, the business-guy?" Dean asked.

"Is the Pope Catholic? What do you need to know about him?"

"Nothing really," Dean said. His mind flashed to Doctor Romano – and how little he needed to know about him before shooting him down. In the back of his mind he wondered if Arturi deserved what Crowley ordered; to be fair, he had been in with Crowley's lot anyway, and hadn't done anything to endear himself to Dean when they met briefly last summer, but still, even if he found out Arturi had sold his fortune and given all of it away to convents and charities, Dean was in too deep to decline. Certain jobs were avoidable; Romano's had been, this wasn't, and it didn't necessarily make things better, except Dean used it as fuel to resolve any second guesses he had about the whole situation. "Crowley wants him dead."

"Oh, is that all?"

"He suggested a made up suicide. He's still too important for a lone gunman to go around and blow his head off – people would want a culprit."

"You want me to write the note, then?" Dean's eyes moved towards the bookshelves in the back of the room; several of them were on the subject of calligraphy and graphology, as he had found out a few years ago from idle exploration of the man's flat.

"It's a specialty of yours, isn't it?"
"Well, I'd say I'm a specialist in a few things, but if that's what you want this time around. Don't suppose you have an example of the body-to-be's handwriting, do you?" Dean slipped his hand into one of the inside pockets of his suit. He had rifled around the city hall for a few hours the other day, looking at some business records. For the most part he had only managed to 'accidentally' walk off with a compilation of Arturi's signatures, but on occasion he had seen short, partial notes attached to the rough drafts of business plans and legal contracts. One of them was even a blue print of the Capitol Hotel's basement; a few different pieces of handwriting lingered around the edges, arrows made in pen and pencil, but Dean had figured out which one belonged to the man he needed. It was odd to see that one, he remembered. Standing around the cluttered shelves and dusty folders filled with technical jargon and pictures and things that weren't quite old enough to fit into a museum yet.

He had even wondered, briefly, if Arturi and Crowley had once been friends – he had seen his boss's writing there, too. But of course being someone's friend didn't save them much trouble – he had killed Doctor Romano, after all.

Dean handed the bundle of papers over to Benny. He took a few minutes to look them over, slip one sheaf over another, brows drawn together in consideration. "Writing's slanted left," he said, after a moment. "Sharp angles – big letters. Doesn't dot the I's. Not too difficult to imitate. Is there anything specific you need to have him say?" he asked, getting up from his seat and moving behind the desk.

"Anything convincing. I figured losing most of your fortune in the stock crash and not being able to get it back up after months of wringing your hands would be enough to drive a guy into the dust."

Benny took a key out of his pocket and unlocked the top of the desk, sliding the covering up with a shudder. The high back of it prevented Dean from seeing the work his friend was doing, though this hadn't been the first time Benny had to mock a person's penmanship. He mostly did official papers; got certain people the necessary citizenship documents, certificates of authenticity, personal letters, even some simple identification of who wrote what – there had been a college kid in here, once when Dean had stopped by, trying to not get flunked out of his university for cheating on some term paper. It was all unbiased work, based on price more than anything else. Dean had never been forced to pay over a service charge, though. Most of the time Benny dressed up his help like an afterthought, or some quick favor he didn't mind doing. Dean had caught onto that quick, so Benny had tried to persuade him with exchanging information – Benny lived off of facts and theories, after all. Sometimes Dean would put up a fight about it, try to get Benny to accept a check or a service, and sometimes Benny managed to get him to take the favors with a polite nod and a smile – this seemed to be one of the latter occasions.

In the quiet room, he heard some pieces of paper rustling again, the sound of metal and glass – expensive pens – clinking around together. Benny bent over in his seat until he almost disappeared behind the desk, and he didn't resurface until about ten minutes later.

"His wife divorced him in, what was it? December, 1929, I think. No kids, no business – though he wasn't a huge fan of the world, so I just put it down as: 'This is only partly my problem; it's not my fault I tried and failed too many times if everyone else failed me first. I just wanted to do something, make something, the money was nice but my personal life wasn't. When the money ran out I did, too. This is the last time anyone will ever listen to me, so thanks for nothing, goodbye.'" Benny paused for a moment. "Too melodramatic, do you think?"

"Guy used to own millions, he's allowed to be melodramatic in a fake suicide note, I suppose. Grant him that."

"Fair enough," He bent back down again, and Dean heard the hard press of a pen moving in a flourish – Arturi's validating signature, probably. "So, now I have to ask, how are you going to deliver this to Arturi's doorstep?"

"He's holed up in the Hotel Pennsylvania on 7th avenue at the moment. Twentieth floor, number 2017. A bit between houses."

"Not the worst place to off yourself in, right? But it doesn't explain how you're going to get there."

"That place is huge – it has over two thousand rooms, has its own mail room and everything, too, for crying out loud – personal couriers." Still, Benny's look was a doubtful one.

"So you're going to walk in dressed as a newsboy? Little old for that, don't you think?"

"I don't know, Bugsy managed just fine and he's got a couple of years on me." Dean managed to smirk, pulled a similar reaction out of Benny. "All I have to do is say that he ordered something particular – which just happens to be a pistol he got from a hunting shop. Not two seconds after I supposedly leave the guy, he blows his brains out. I'm just some poor, unwitting accomplice in the whole mess, gone before anybody knows where the gunshot even came from."

"Alright, alright. You know what you're doing. Let me just wipe the finger prints off and I'll get you a bag to hold this. Make sure you don't crease it." He pulled open a drawer in the desk and rifled around in it for a thin cloth; briefly Dean saw that it looked similar to a jeweler's shining rag. He continued to watch the cut off form of his friend at work, and there was no doubt in his mind that, job-related as it was, this was world's better than Crowley's place.

He let Crowley flicker in his mind again, and wondered if Benny knew something that his boss wouldn't want him to know.

Most of the time Dean sought Benny out for decent company; though more than once they'd been talking and something surprising had slipped out of the other man's mouth; he wasn't too afraid of sharing his findings with Dean, and Crowley's own risen guard from days prior made him resentful and hungry for all the wrong reasons – so he said, after a minute, "Can I ask something?"

"Sure," Dean hesitated, and covered it up by finishing his glass. It wasn't because he wanted to be kept in the dark so much as he didn't know what he wanted to illuminate first.

"It's about Alastair." Benny glanced up; his eyes shone a bit in interest.

"What about him?"

"Do you know who killed him?"

Benny stood up again, wandered further back into the apartment, and opened up a cabinet underneath the shelf of books that didn't hide a bar – so far as Dean knew. "When I first got the news I thought you'd done it, to be honest."

"Well, I didn't – just wish I had." Dean reached over and gave himself a refill. On second thought, he topped off Benny's glass, too, which sat abandoned next to the partially empty bottle. With part of the liquid out of it, the glass had gone lighter, less navy, more like the darkened petals of a forget-me-not, or maybe, well – Dean pointedly turned his head just in time to see Benny straighten up again with a quality looking, black velvet bag, about the size of a sheet of stationary. "Reporters are thinking it was an inside job."

"I know you didn't," Benny said, and he slid the faux letter into the bag with the tip of his finger. "But I doubt Alastair got that kind of treatment from his own."

"Yeah, Crowley told me the same thing."

"You've spoken with Crowley?"

"A few days back."

"About what?"

"This work,"

"Surely he could've just sent you a letter. He's not a fan of the personal calls unless it's something drastic." Dean didn't make a move to open his mouth. "Alright, harder work too, right? Some secret I don't already know."

"You might not," Dean muttered, after a moment. "Crowley said his guys were responsible, but he didn't have any kind words to say about them, and he didn't tell me who actually did it."

"And you're willing to believe what he tells you?" A chill went up Dean's spine at that thought, but he tried to force it away.

"I'm asking you, aren't I? I know I can't trust him for telling me important things any more than he can trust me, but it's an understanding between us." He sighed, sinking more into his seat and cradling his drink partially in his lap. "It's nothing new though, I guess. Feels like I can't trust hardly anyone these days."

"That's how I've felt for a good fifteen years." Benny sat down, and settled the bag in the empty armchair next to him. "Alright, if it was Crowley's guys, it sounds more right than anyone else. I'm mostly sure it wasn't an inside job, no matter what the police reports are saying."

"But why?"

"Alastair's into the illegal arms trade – he sells things like semi-automatics, Winchesters and other Tommys – things with casings as long as the barrels on some other guns. Not, well, not your Model 30. If his guys were to go against him, you'd think they'd do more than shoot him with a .44 caliber on a revolver. That's more your style, which might've been why I thought you were the guilty one. Besides the more obvious reasons."

"It's a good aim," Dean grunted, recalling a refurbished Smith and Wesson model he had since given to Castiel for protection; a weapon he knew the other man kept and stored in the deep pockets of his trench coat, trying to ignore and keep as far away from his skin as he could. If he was walking with Dean the first thing he did was take it out and put it in one of the kitchen cabinets, so that when he wanted a smoke he wouldn't have to brush cold metal that didn't belong to his cigarette case. "And anyway, it's not with me for the moment. I lent it to someone." Benny opened his mouth, and Dean already knew he was going to ask who had managed to wrestle his precious handgun out of his pockets, but he beat him to the chase and said, "So if it ain't Alastair, then why not Lucifer?"

"Because Crowley seems like the most interested don in Brooklyn when it comes to getting rid of anyone with guns and guys to pull the triggers. I mean, Arturi now? He was a business partner in a sense – a couple weeks ago there was another guy he had relations with, Toce, I think. Shot in the street. It could've been anyone but," He shrugged, Dean's brain worked to remember how he knew that name as well. "I don't know who did beat the hell out of your guy and put a round of bullets into him, but your best bet is someone on the same payroll as you. Someone else who really, really didn't like him much."

"You think it was a personal thing? Like, revenge motivated?"

"I don't know, how many strangers have you stuffed into fire places to rot for a week?" Dean hummed, more to answer without giving up anything else. "But there have been a few strange deaths around here; a little moreso than usual, and a lot of them seem to be suggesting Crowley's group."

"Like the Bergen incident a few days back," Dean supplied.

"Yeah, like that. Ten Russian guys dead, two missing. Probably nowhere good, if they're even alive. Only four of Crowley's men went down – there's blood still stuck on the concrete down there, you know that? A couple of officer friends of mine let me look at the case notes."

"They're that desperate?" Benny shrugged.

"Curious, more like. I told them the gangs but, Crowley's in too deep for cops to do more than scare him off to Miami for a month's vacation and lock up a few of his guys – and you weren't in that, right?"

Dean shook his head. "No, no – though one of the guys, um, Balthazar, Russian?"

"Right,"

"He told me the morning of on my way to work, warned me about staying out of there."

Benny stared at him as if he hadn't heard what Dean said. "One of the Russian guys… warned you?"

"He had a friend he wanted to keep peace with, so he figured passing a warning onto me to give to him would have been the best way to do that."

"Another red, then?" Benny smirked.

"He's not red," Dean said, more exasperated than annoyed. Benny had a grin slowly emerge on his face, teeth white and sharp at Dean's defensive answer.

"Involved in a bit of this, a bit of that, huh? You really weren't kidding." Dean rubbed the back of his neck, and tried not to guess if there was a euphemism hiding away in the other's comment. "So, how's the friend doing, since Balthazar took the big one and everything?"

"He's…" Dean let out a short gust of air, and stared out the windows, onto the gray sky and stout buildings, skyscrapers placed a few blocks further into the clouds. "He's not doing too great. He'll pull through, I'm sure. He's a strong guy, capable. Just doesn't put him in a great place, you know? It was like losing his brother."

Benny was silent for a moment, following Dean's gaze until he was staring into the distance himself. "My condolences to him, then. Balthazar was second hand knowledge for me but, from what I know of him, he seemed like a decent man. Never bit off more than he could chew, tended to keep things more on the business side, you know, good – as good as you can be with a job like this."

"Yeah, that's what I told him that morning. One of the worst moments of hindsight I've ever had. Can't imagine how bad his friend must feel; getting Balthazar's last words through me."

"At least he has you," Benny supplied, after a moment. Dean looked back to him and flexed his fingers, relishing in the feel of blood running through them; muscles bending and skin pulling in the reaffirmation that yes, he was alive, even if everyone else seemed like dust, or on their way.

"So, what did you find about the Bergen massacre, in those files the officers gave you?"

"Just a list of the dead, the two guys gone, and the basic series of events. So far as they could tell, sometime around nine thirty a talking head from both parties waltzed into the meeting spot, something about which docks to use and when for all their imports, if I'm remembering right," Benny almost always was, of course. "And not fifteen minutes later things aren't going so swell anymore, one side brought back up, the other side did, too, and sometime before ten thirty the men inside were dead, cops driving up to the warehouse, all the living suspects cleared out.

"They found a few pieces of evidence; some of the corpses had bits of clothes or buttons in their hands from where the fighting got too close for guns; most of them had been bashed in the head before getting shot, it seemed. An awful, bloody jumble there; none of them died well – oh, three of the guys seemed to just get it in the chest and go down easy, Balthazar was one of them. Probably the first to go. He had somebody's bloody handkerchief over his face when we got in. It might have been some friendly fire on the wrong side or someone feeling remorse, since no one else got the same treatment. They got the shell casings, too. Listed some of the guns that the shells came from; some signet rings and teeth were found lying around, too – the pictures of that the police took were too bad to put in the newspaper, and you know the sort of stuff that gets through these days."

Dean was nodding absently at the bizarre, grotesque findings. "A handkerchief?" he inquired, filing away all the information he had just been told. "Like a woman's handkerchief? A favor or something?"

"No, well, it was embroidered, white with trim, according to the pictures; good quality, might have been imported. It had D.W. inscribed on it, but there was a confirmed Dmitry Woden that had been there, too, so it had to have been his."

Dean slowly turned his head to the side. "Did you say Dmitry Woden?"

"Yes, they found a ring that belonged to him – so even if everyone who had been there that night is being quiet, we knew he'd been there – we put him down as one of the missing. It worked out fine, since a few days later his wife had come into the office to file a missing person's report."

"Any idea where he went?"

"Some open ground in Queens or into the east side bay, if I had to guess." Dean nodded, slowly. "Why? Did you know him, too?"

"No, no, I just… heard about him once. Thought I did at least. I could've been mistaken."

"You don't look like you are."

Dean bit the inside of his cheek for a moment, to distract his mind from going to unwanted places. He'd always said that most Russian guys got the same sort of names, anyway – a Dmitry? Sure. The Woden was an odd instance, but the city was big enough – or could Castiel have been mistaken when he told him about the man who delivered the news? Or had he simply misheard? He felt something inside him shift, pieces falling through mental cracks, and he shoved the thought to the side; this wasn't the time. "But you said this thing, that handkerchief Balthazar had on him, it was fancy, right? Like a high class thing?"

"Well, yeah,"

"And the Woden guy was gone anyway, too. So what person takes a dead man's handkerchief and puts it on another dead guy; one who probably has some cloth of his own to use?" Benny shrugged.

"It's all just the facts – or, at least, what the police said were the facts. It's all a bit strange but –"

"What color was the trim did you say? White and what?" Benny blinked at the interruption; their conversation hadn't been anywhere near light hearted, but neither of them adopted a rushed air around the other, either. Dean supposed they were used to rushing around in other places, here, well, here they could afford to go slow. He felt his face sharpen as he leaned forward in the chair, waiting for an answer.

"The report didn't say – it didn't seem important or anything. Black or red, probably, that's how it usually goes with white handkerchiefs. Does it matter?"

"That's a good question," Dean said. "I don't know." He drained his glass once more and slapped it on the table with little finesse. The chair sank as he did, taking his weight and cradling him; he could fall asleep like this, except his stomach was on fire and his mind wouldn't close in on any one subject. He shut his eyes, pressing the heel of his hands into the sockets. He wouldn't think about it – he couldn't even dream… it was most likely an accident, bad aim – through the heart, but still. Dean let out a breath through his mouth and the scent of the liquor, warm and sweet, sent his mind reeling back to stained shirts, lilac rosewater, tousled sheets and the blue of the bottled moonshine and blue of that woman at Sam's wedding forever ago who he never remembered except for momentary guilt and the most important blue he'd ever known and he couldn't quite tell if he wanted to drain the rest of that damned jug next to him or send it crashing down into his skull – whichever one would get him to stop thinking what he was the fastest though. Just – please , he thought to himself, running his hands up, off his face and through his hair.

"Dean?" Benny said, his tone was concerned enough to make him wonder if this was the other's first time calling his name since the sense of anxiety rolled down on him like some sickening wave.

"I'm here," he said, eyes still shut. "I'm just… just – haven't been staying out of as much trouble as I thought."

"Need a refill?"

"How much longer till I won't feel my legs?"

"Well if you've been dry for as long as I think, not too much more." He heard the sound of liquid filling his cup. "So, this trouble you're in? Is it the personal or professional stuff?"

"Both, but –" Or maybe just one, he figured, mind lurching at the thought. "But the personal one's too much of a skeleton in the closet for even my brother right now, and the professional one doesn't seem that much better."

"Yeah?" Benny said, neutrally. But Dean already knew he was disappointed. Not enough to coerce Dean into sharing, but apparent so that he could tell, even with his eyes closed and his head swimming.

"But when's that stopped either of us before, right?" Dean said, forcing himself to sit up again so that he could look Benny in the eye. "How many visitors from Lucifer do you get? His workers, I mean."
"Oh, not too many. Although if we're on that subject Adam came by not long after I got back, your half brother. You two still talk, right?"

"Yeah, we do." Even if he hadn't seen Adam for months, that was on his own instruction. "What did he want?"

"Some pertinent gossip; has to impress his boss or something," He shrugged. "I just gave him some names of a couple of smugglers I know that switched over to Crowley, or were planning to. I didn't want things getting too close to your line of work."

"Thanks. Appreciate it," Dean muttered, wondering if he could afford to ask Benny to stay silent on someone else – but he had already made fun of him for knowing Balthazar; not harshly, of course, he was hardly the sort to judge things subjective as race – he was too worldly, Dean figured. Benny was one more for facts and usefulness, and if he had some close comrades that were literally comrades, well, he'd be shocked if he didn't. But any connection with the Novak family – that wouldn't lead to anything good. It's not like they did anything besides get their own neighborhood rumors around, and maybe Castiel had always known a bit more than he should have, from attentive observation of passersby and maybe conversing with Balthazar and his friends and watching multiple newspapers at once, but he wasn't nearly as wise to it all like Benny was; he could make some connections, of course, see things that Dean might not always, but Benny knew how to connect all the crime of the city like they were pieces of thread to a cloth; compared to what he could dig up for Adam, Castiel was nothing, he was an unknown. He was safe – wasn't he? Dean clenched his jaw tight at the thought until he swore his teeth cracked and squeaked from the pressure.

"And, look," he started again, "I can't tell you everything. Don't make me; I already know how bad of an idea this is."

"Alright, you have my word."

Dean sucked in a breath, held it until his chest went taut. "Remember that you said how Crowley's been offing a lot of men in the past few months?"

"Yeah,"

"Well, he has this target. A pretty notorious one," He glanced up at the others slanted, almost saddened eyes, like his friend already knew what was coming; could already smell the bad news. "And I'm the gunman."

"Is it safe?"
"Hell knows it's not safe. If I don't end up bleeding on the sidewalk or gutted like a fish it'll be the miracle of the century – but don't worry about me. I already struck a deal up and you know Crowley,"

"Can't go back on a deal," Benny said, eyes darting to the side. "Yeah, we're all familiar with his mode of work. So you can't tell me who's on the list?"

"Someone important," Dean supplied. "Someone hard to kill."

"That's more than a few people I know of. Do you have any idea when? Or can you not tell me that, either?"

"No, it's…" Dean wondered, briefly, who Crowley might want killed after Lucifer was gone – he had said once, when he first delivered the news to Dean, that he had plans for expansion – grand ones, it'd seem. Things that would take place after he had left; things he wouldn't need to 'worry about', which was fair – either he'd end up dead or in California, and no one really sent business out that far. "What's your opinion on Crowley?" he said abruptly.

"He's what I'd call a bastard if I weren't in such polite company." Dean just managed to not roll his eyes.

"No but, as someone who runs the business he does."

"Still a bastard – a controlling one; wants his hands on everything, which isn't the best for me. He'd have eyes and ears everywhere if he could, don't you think?"

"Oh, you're right." He was; Crowley wanted control, organized chaos with the reins firmly in his hands. "Look, Benny," He rolled his glass between his palms. "I hate to keep you in the dark, after everything you've done for me –"

"Hey, Dean, you don't owe me anything; you don't have to tell me if you don't, or if you can't."

"I know, I know – just, this is a warning, I guess. The thing I have to do, it'll be around March, April. I can't tell you what's going on but it'll be big. Nothing except for another Great War or the second coming or another stock failure is going to keep this from front page news when it hits, alright? They might even get my real name in the papers," Dean smirked, half heartedly imagining his profile amoung columns of raging yellow journalist rants and narrow sized letters. "But, when it does happen, if I do it, things are going to start changing – big things, I mean, all of it to do with Crowley." He met Benny's gaze again. "So, if that storm hits, it'd be best if you saw yourself out of this city and never looked back. Everyone knows who you are and you're untouchable like that. But if Crowley suddenly becomes the only game in town…"

"I might find myself up the river without a paddle," Benny said lightly. "Or a boat, and maybe my head for good measure, I get it." He nodded. "When or if that time comes, you'll see me cleared out, then. And what about you?"

"I'll be with my brother again in Venice. And we might not have any more decent talks like this."

"Oh, I wouldn't say never – the Panama Canal's still in use last time I checked. Though they've been getting rid of the waterways in that town; damn shame." Dean smiled again, swallowing down the rest of his drink and welcoming in the slow burn it left. "Do you think you'll stop in before all that, though?"

"I owe it to you, don't I?"

"I told you that you don't owe me a thing like that."

"Well, I'll pencil you in anyways. At least one more time, before everything changes for the worse." Dean glanced out the window, saw the overcast sky was getting a navy tint to it, and he rose up onto his feet again so he could get himself out of Benny's flat, back into the cold, and catch a train to Coney Island – except, once he was standing tall, he felt his legs shake a bit, black fuzz coming up against his eyesight. He stumbled slightly, and it was like Benny was chuckling from a mile away and right in his ear all at once.

"Maybe you want some aspirin before you head down."

"Yeah, yeah that might help," Dean said, holding his hands on the arm of the chair. "Trying to kill me."

"No, that's more your hobby. Not my fault you were wrapped up on someone else – or however that story goes – that you turned into an abolitionist on me. Here." Benny's fist was pressed under Dean's chin, and he moved one of his hands up so two white tablets could fall into his palm. "I'll get you some water."

"Thanks," Dean was left staring at the pair of aspirin, and while his head was pounding he scarcely thought that was because of what was in his stomach at the moment, churning unpleasantly through his blood. No, no, it wasn't that, it was the irregularity of the whole thing. Of course Castiel hadn't killed Balthazar – that'd be like him going over, into the kitchen, and shooting Benny through the back of the skull while he got him a drink; people, sane people, didn't do a thing like that. If he couldn't trust Castiel about being faithful he could at least trust him about not being a disloyal murderer. That is, if Castiel had ever cheated in the first place – hadn't he settled that weeks ago, when he had demanded where Castiel had gone to and he had looked so frightened, like Dean had suddenly become a different person before him? He glanced up as a high ball full of tap was passed over to him, stray droplets slipping down the surface and getting his fingers wet. He let the liquid wash his mouth out and carry the drugs down. "I needed that."

"Not a problem. So, heading home now? To that friend of yours?"

"No. Well, yes and no. He's not in at the moment; funeral business to attend and everything. I haven't seen him since…" The vision of Castiel kneeling over a hole in the ground came back and it was almost as hard to shake off as the idea of the handkerchief, or the stained shirt he had found months ago. Much too personal for Benny or Sam, anywhere outside his own head. "…He told me that Balthazar got killed." He drained the rest of the water as an afterthought, tasting what was probably the imagined bitter residue of the tablets. "You know, before that big thing I have to do, Crowley's got one more job for me."

"Besides Arturi?"

"He wants it done before the week is out. Arturi's tomorrow, and this is for Thursday." And then what? That would mark a week from Balthazar's death, and Castiel might be home, and it was a terrifying idea to toy with.

"Not another murder? I know Crowley's a bit goal oriented but he's wasting your potential if he's just sending you off to shoot at things." Dean tilted his head at the compliment – it was a compliment, coming from Benny.

"Just a little trick – the pills reminded me – do you know anyone who can lend me some ounces of Nitroglycerin?"

"I'm guessing this isn't for medical purposes?" Dean raised his eyebrows, silently prompting further comment. "Yeah, know a business man in Canadian Industries Limited up north. They made tons of that stuff during the War, still do, a bit – I think I can get him to send me a package. It's a trek of course, but you don't send a boat up to the border every day; I'm sure I can think up a few other people to telegraph in half a week's time to make it worth my wild."

"I'd appreciate that, if you could. Let me know if that doesn't work, I'll think of something else." Dean straightened up and didn't feel his muscles quiver this time, luckily enough.

"Mind telling me what all this is for? If you can, of course." Benny handed Dean the dark bag, which he took gingerly and held with both hands.

"Crowley figured out where Meg Masters set up camp," Dean said with a turn of his shoulder, glad that he could at least divulge this to his friend. "She's doing pretty well at the moment, and he's not too fond of this new car she has."

xxxx

Dean had learned that you could be anywhere at any time, if you convinced everyone else that it was where you belonged.

The lobby of the Hotel Pennsylvania touched back on that brightly-lit era of prosperity he had prattled around in for a few years and was then forced to leave. Coming inside was like sneaking back into the Garden of Eden; white globes of light were strung around Roman-style pillars, circles of couches and chairs were set up on carpets, the tiles reflected his face every time he glanced down, and it took him a moment to decipher which direction of the sprawling dimensions of the lobby he should head in to get to the proper front desk. In a place like this, the Depression didn't exist.

"Package for a Mr. Arturi, room twenty-seventeen?" he said, leaning against a counter where a similarly dressed man was talking to a receptionist. The newsboy cap tugged just above Dean's forehead, leaving his eyes clear but still adding an innocent shadow over his face. He had picked up a herringbone patterned vest along with the matching hat – it was what he might have worn regularly, if he was simultaneously poorer and younger, though he had used a straight-razor that morning and didn't have a hard time looking around twenty-three. He had even fetched a sack to walk around with, bursting with what everyone else assumed was mail.

"He ordered something?" the second, open receptionist asked. He was much older and far better dressed than Dean at the moment. He slid a short, rectangular box across the polished countertops. The parcel had been tied in twine; its return address marked an undistinguished hunting shop not far from Dean's flat that had been closed for three months.

"Mr. Arturi had requested it be hand delivered, sir." He unconsciously tightened his lips at the added suffix, and readjusted the tan messenger bag slung across his chest.

"Alright, take the service elevator." He was handed the box back, and waved to the far left of the lobby. The newsboy he passed gave him an empathetic nod in greeting, which he returned with a smirk. In reality, Arturi's box didn't contain anything except a tightly wrapped paper weight, roughly the same measure of the snub-nosed handgun he stashed in his bag. On top of the decoy item was Benny's forged note.

Arturi's room was nearly the top floor and on the right side of the hallway, almost opposite of where the elevator dropped him off. Dean caught sight of a staircase in the middle of the corridor, between rooms 2010 and 2011. He nudged it open with his hand and, finding that it hadn't been locked, strode on by. He saw no one else in the hallway, and none of the rooms made any noise through the thick, sheetrock-lined walls. But if he had to guess most visitors were here on business or vacation, and in either case they wouldn't be holed up in their rooms in the middle of the afternoon, having plans to attend to and all that jazz. His man didn't have much of anything, though.

He knocked on room 2017 three times, parcel still tucked under his arm.

About half a minute later there was a metallic clicking as the door unlocked and swung open. It was Joseph Arturi, alright, and he was in bad shape.

When Dean had seen him last, over a year ago, he was a thin, blonde man. Not quite in his middle ages, though he had the sort of structure that suggested an early physical decomposition as he got older. Dean just figured that wouldn't happen as fast as it did.

His hair, which had been a rather light yellow if he remembered right, had gone into a silvery mess; it had gotten longer too, not in a deliberate way like his brother's, but like he couldn't force himself down to a barber for the past two months. He'd gotten fatter, more like a stress-related bulge on his stomach than one that came with food, his limbs remaining stick like. He slouched in the doorway in wrinkled lounging clothes, tobacco powder dusting a spot on the suit fabric on his sternum.

"What is it?" he said, eyeing Dean's shadowed face, then the box in his hand. "I don't want whatever you're selling."

Dean smiled, or tried to. His mouth moved into a wide bow but his eyes, he felt, didn't change at all, though under the brim of his hat it'd be hard to tell. "No, this is a delivery for you. Everything's been taken care of, no selling necessary." Dean handed over the box, though Arturi hadn't moved from the doorway, and didn't raise his hands up. "It just has to be signed for."

The other man glared down at the package – the small writing of the address just close enough to make out. "How the hell did a hunting store get my address?"
Dean shrugged. "Beats me, sir. I'm just the messenger."

"Deliverer, you mean," Arturi grumbled, like he was talking to himself. Dean tried to hold off a scowl.

"Do you want it or not?"

"…You said it's been paid for?" Arturi's blurry eyes went wide and expectant; hungry, almost.

"You just have to sign for it." Of course, it didn't matter if Arturi took the box or not, but it'd be easier if the façade played out for as long as possible.

Finally the other man took the parcel from Dean's hand. Pulling it into himself, he slouched forward, like a deflated balloon. "Got a form?"

"Yes, right in here…" Dean rifled around in his bag, started to show a paper with text on it, while his other hand went to the shell of his ear. "Oh, shit, sorry. I think I lost my pen you, uh," He rose up on the front of his feet to peer over Arturi's head in mock curiosity. "You wouldn't happen to have one?" Arturi wrinkled his nose a bit, disgusted that he'd let a run of the mill courier into his rooms. Still, he turned around and grunted towards something in the affirmative. Dean shut the door as he walked inside.

While Arturi stalked further into the room Dean slowly turned the door's bolt into place, locking them inside.

Another lavish setting awaited him there. Dean thought it was funny that this was what a rich man's poor looked like – crystal tumblers on a small wet bar and a suite as big as a house – the carpet was a dark olive, plush enough that the soles of his shoes seemed to sink downward as he went over the threshold. The furniture was a pure white, some arm chairs and drop sofas lining the edges of the main room – city view all the way in the back, and a hallway stretching off to the right, presumably where a bedroom and bathroom would be. On one side of the front room there was a large desk Arturi was carting the package over to. It overlooked a wood-paneled wall; cherry from the color of it. Dean knew better than to sit, but he wandered forward a few paces, watching Arturi dig around his drawers for a pen.

"Now, who'd you say sent me this?"

"I already said I don't know,"

Arturi looked surprised for a moment, glanced up at Dean, and then nodded, slowly. "Right, right, I must have… forgotten."

"Did you forget maybe that you ordered something?"

"Only one way to find out," Arturi slid the pen over to Dean's side of the desk while he fiddled with the twine and small bit of sealing tape around the address post. Dean watched him open it. His hands moved slowly, might have shook a bit if Dean was close enough to tell that sort of detail. It was quite a tell, he thought, trying not to twist his mouth up.

Arturi seemed to have forgotten Dean was even standing in the room with him. It wasn't until he was sliding the box's top open and running the fingers around the envelope that Dean snapped to attention; even if Arturi was treating him as an invisible servant or was that quick to forget, Dean's eyes tracked his movements as he grasped at a letter opener on his desk and got the stationary free with a quick tear.

Artrui's eyes scanned over the page, and Dean felt a thrum of twisted adrenaline work its way up his spine, down into his fingers and calves, heating up his face. His target's forehead crumpled low in an aggravated stare, his jowls conjuring as a scowl formed.

"What is this?" he asked, scanning the note, his lips dragged down in an open mouth snarl. He glanced up, around, and his eyes caught on Dean once more; his shoulders jerked, and he waved the paper out at Dean. "What the hell is this, kid? Some sort of joke?"

"No, I don't think so, sir," Dean said casually, opening his bag up. It fell to the ground, as an aside thought, that small gun now in his hand. Arturi's gaze locked on it.

He sputtered for a moment before getting out; "Who sent you?" his voice still gruff and demanding even as he scrambled backwards, Dean following in a prowling saunter just a few feet away. Arturi caught sight of the phone on his desk, lunged for it, and managed to get it off the receiver before Dean barreled into him from the front, sliding against the desk and nearly denting his hip into the corner of the wood. His hat flew off somewhere in the rush and he pushed Arturi onto the other side of the barrier until he flopped down ungracefully onto the stationary chair there. It spun and tipped at the sudden shove of weight, and the disorientation allowed Dean the chance to hop the rest of the way across the desk and up against Artui's form, one knee hauled up between his legs for leverage.

Arturi floundered this way and that in a panic. "Don't touch me, you son of a bitch – help! Somebody get him – help!" While Dean was faster, Arturi's size made it easier for him to thrash forward and backwards, nearly worming his way out of the chair with every motion. Dean had to be careful about this: He couldn't knock the guy out or choke him, or any of the usual stuff; it would make it obvious that his cause of death wasn't by his own hand. Dean worked his fist below the waist and punched, as hard as he could with the limited momentum. From the pained squawk Arturi let forth, he guessed that he had hit the kidneys fine. He worked in another hit that sent the two of them jolting violently in the chair, and Dean scrabbled for his right leg to stand him steady while he worked the pistol along the side of Arturi's face.

The man started thrashing again – nearly knocked the goddamn gun out of Dean's hand twice before Dean could pin one of his arms down. Arturi's other hand was stuck tight around his wrist, pulling the revolver down and away as Dean urged it right under Arturi's throat.

"Name your price," he gasped out, desperation taking hold as the butt of the gun nicked Arturi's jaw line and sent his body wriggling again – Dean could feel his stomach move against his thigh, he could smell the sweat coming from the back of his neck. "Who–whoever's got you, I can pay you more."

"You don't have anything," Dean growled.

"No, no, I have a house – down in the Outer Banks. Under a different name that no one knows – it's still mine. I still have stocks now –"

"Yeah, yeah," Dean drawled, pressing the weapon forward. "I'll let Crowley know."

Arturi's eyes gleamed with something other than fear for a moment, and he shoved the hand he still had on the pistol not down in surrender, but forward, towards Dean's throat.

Dean swallowed hard, pushed back towards Arturi – he didn't think he was about to do a muscle test to save his own life, but, he moved his shoulder, glad that it was easier for him to lean down than for Arturi to go at him.

"That bastard sent you?" he asked, gun nearly at angle with Dean's nose, and he heaved a breath and jolted the hold, so the barrel was eyeing up the ceiling instead of either of them. For a moment, just a moment, Arturi seemed to hesitate, possibly in remembrance of a man that he had worked with – someone allegedly close enough to get introduced to Lucifer's killer last summer. "He wants me gone after everything I –" He stopped, stared up at Dean's face. Without his hat he was the same man that Arturi had seen in the Capitol Hotel a long time ago. "You're Dean Winchester," he said, and Dean pressed the gun into the underside of Arturi's mouth, hard enough to bruise.

"The one and only," he said, ignoring the way Arturi's limbs began to flail again with newfound energy, the way his arm was trying to tug Dean's hand away with the strength of a madman.

He pulled the trigger and the struggling stopped.

Dean stepped awkwardly away from the chair, Arturi's legs slipping down after him, his arms banging to lie at their sides. He walked back to the messenger bag, pulled out a cloth, and wiped the gun down. He briefly wrapped Artrui's fingers around the hand of the gun before setting it just below Arturi's right hand, the dead man's digits so close Dean half expected him to pick the pistol up and shoot him while his back was turned, but he pushed past that and began to clear up the stray papers around the desk that had gotten shuffled and thrown to the floor during the fight; he wiped down a surface or two he might have touched, and, removing the paper weight from its box, he used it to hold down Arturi's suicide note, nicely framed in the middle of his desk.

As a precaution, he checked some the table's drawers to make sure Arturi wasn't already hiding a weapon. Other than his footfalls on the carpet – careful to remain clear of the blood drops lest some stray flashbulb catch his shoe print – there wasn't a sound. No worried neighbors shouting for help, no police sirens at the window, nothing but Dean and a corpse.

The first thing you noticed about death was the silence. Dean blinked down at Arturi, cloth still wrung in his hands. The bullet hole in the front oozed small trickles of blood down his thick neck, onto his collar, and while the caliber wasn't especially high it left enough of a hole in his skull to splatter part of the floor and most of the chair in red – he even though he saw a miniscule chunk of discolored bone sitting in his whitened hair. Arturi's eyes were still fixed right at him, mouth slack and sitting half out of the seat. Dean could imagine the reporters coming by in an hour, a week, snapping up pictures and crying garbled directions towards one another about the man's death, or what his death represented in their papers, their stories – but the man himself was silent, just like a painting or a piece of clothing; strictly a conversation piece like any other dead person.

He hated it – Arturi needed to die, a lot of people needed to die – but the silence afterwards always got to him, the way that absence followed the dead from now to the ground to the end of time; it hung in the air, foreboding and scary. There was no better place – no peacefulness in death. Everything was vacated, and tranquility was just a pretty way of saying there was no damn thing left to anything anymore. If he was a killer, evil to some, at least the tribute of reluctant could be applied, and Dean had to take solace in the idea that most of the time, he regretted his work. He did it well and got it over with and he would hold out until he left the East Coast forever, and then he could stop, and then he could rest, but for now that thought was the best thing holding him up.

Dean wiped his hand across his forehead and turned away from Arturi's body, going back to the front door.

Before passing out he scrutinized his reflection in the mirror – a dot of blood had smeared down his cheek and against his chin, which he quickly wiped off, copper and sweat sticking to him anyway. A few dots hit his sleeve so he rolled them up, though other than that he had gotten off rather presentable.

He couldn't quite think of another occasion he'd wear the vest out; he could ask Castiel if he wanted it, the next time he saw him.

Dean shuttered, shoulders shaking as he bent down to put his newsboy cap back in place and his bag across his shoulders again. He wiped down the doorknobs on the entrance before relocking the door and sealing the room up, tucking his cloth in to his back pocket. He didn't want to think of Castiel wearing the clothes he'd killed a man in – maybe he ought to just burn the whole ensemble.

Never mind that he had no problem making Castiel fix the clothes he had killed Doctor Romano in, because that was eons ago, even if that man's name kept coming up, guilt soon after clinging to him just as strongly as he had to the doctor when he was alive. He coughed into his hand at the idea of the man.

But in all honesty he was trying not to think about Castiel – not because he didn't want to, but placing him so soon after a murder seemed like a pollutant; Castiel wasn't some innocent bystander, he probably wouldn't have cared too much about Arturi anyway, but somehow, putting him in the context of this work, it was asking for trouble.

Dean went past the stairs, deciding he didn't need them after all, and took the elevator down.

The desk clerk eyed him as he left, and he gave a polite wave, a bright smile – the man still couldn't get a clear look of his face with his hat on, anyway. He walked back out of the hotel with one hand on the bag strap, another in the back pocket of his trousers, touching the dirtied cloth there.

As the cold street air hit him, he thought about handkerchiefs. Of course having a man named Woden go missing and have a cloth that nice, and whoever had thought to put that on Balthazar's face? It seemed like a rather systematic gesture, more dressed up than closing their eyes or anything, though he imagined that everyone who had been in the warehouse that night had some odd cultural traditions to maintain.

It didn't mean that it all made perfect sense, though.

He settled it in his mind – the one thing he had to do to confirm its truth was to find his own handkerchief that Castiel had given him. He half envisioned it on his trip home, where it would be folded up safely in one of his drawers, like every other time he had needed it to dress up.

Because of course it would be there, he told himself, spotting his apartment building and unlocking the front door, bounding up the stairs – those cloths were always there and he hardly knew why he was bothering looking for them now since he had staved off it when Benny had told him and he had managed just fine through the morning but here he was, getting into his unlocked flat and pulling open his dresser drawer and pushing past paired up socks, mixing up his and Castiel's in his search as he worked his way past a box of cuff links and tie pins and of course it would be there because it was always –

Except that it wasn't.

Dean flipped through the folded material once, twice, three times for good measure. He saw the faded, not-so-white anymore handkerchiefs he used and a few nicer ones he had gotten, plus the red one, and the blue Castiel had given him for his birthday, stuffed at the very bottom as if to keep them safe.

But the white one was missing.

Dean slowly pushed the drawer closed again, resolving to himself that it didn't matter, not really. Of course it was just some odd coincidence and he might have misplaced the damn thing anyway, and while his mind was completely on track with that thought his pulse got heavy enough to drag him down and push the air out of his lungs. It was like all the times someone had threatened him and he thought he might have trouble on his hands – real trouble, fatal trouble – he felt scared, that was it. Fear – even if, at the moment, he didn't know why.

xxxx

It was seven thirty-five on a Thursday and Dean was trying especially hard not to think about Castiel. Really he was always trying to avoid thinking about Castiel, ever since he had visited Benny a few days ago, ever since he couldn't find a stupid piece of cloth. He tried and tried and sometimes he could make it half a day but something would happen and his mind would wander back like a simpering child who couldn't function on its own, and he hated it.

Because the more he thought about Castiel, the more questions he had – none of which the other was there to answer.

He actually had gotten to the point where crossing off Crowley's penultimate job for him was excitable; relieving, almost. The early evening was dark and this part of Queens that Meg had stolen away to only acted like a wind tunnel. She had managed to find a lavish enough housing complex to have its own parking garage, making the building protrude upwards on massive, concrete stilts. The barrier to the weather made it easier to start fires, at least. He ducked into the alcove and let the ramp lead him underground, out of the wind.

According to a few of the residents Dean managed to catch walking by, a chauffeur was sent for a 1931 Ford model A car, its exterior the same scarlet as the porter's suit, not much before eight o' clock most nights, who let the car start for several minutes so that the interior was warm enough for passengers.

The cold cement of the garage combined with the windy temperatures of a fast arriving winter made it a nice opportunity. Dean had gotten a packet in the mail that morning along with his newspaper, one with a small glass vial labeled with six grams of Trinitroxypropane – a white, loose powder similar to talcum or… something else an officer wouldn't like to see him carrying around. The bottle had rested on the kitchen counter through the morning, and after working his shift at the garage, he had slipped on a dinner jacket, hidden the chemical in his pocket, and caught an evening train that bridged the boroughs. He managed to find the address Crowley had given him, sense of direction better than most, and he had given the young, lone security guard a twenty dollar bill if he would forget he had seen him wandering inside.

The garage had about forty cars – and yet only thirty rooms above him. He hadn't kept a very serious eye on Meg Masters; she had been a presence, but only that, most of the time. No doubt she was dangerous – would probably stab his eyes out if she could – but their steps never really crossed; the pair of them were too smart to actively seek the other out.

It was possible that Ruby was still with Meg – that boy James had mentioned his faux girlfriend dashing off with a sister. Somewhere in between then and now they might have just made something of a fortune and moved here together. Dean stalked up the rows of cars, all of them large and bright, shining under the low light chandeliers above his head. On one occasion he even saw an occupied back seat – some young couple, both blonde and tan, who might have been about to go out somewhere, or had twitchy, rich parents upstairs. He hurried by them, and hoped they'd peel out or go upstairs soon enough.

Meg's car was almost offensively red. Long, sleek, definitely a new model Ford. He ran his knuckles down the hood of it before popping it open. For a moment, the scent of oil and metal permeated the air and he swore this was just another garage shop – except no one would bring in a car this nice, and this unused. He flipped open his pocket watch and reminded himself to hurry – in ten minutes or less someone on Meg's payroll would be coming by, and he couldn't count on everyone hating their bosses.

The machinery under the hood appeared like metallic gibberish to most people – tight fitting pipes and nozzles that carried liquid or exposed the ending of wires. He uncorked the small vial and sprinkled the powder around the rubberized hoses leading out the top of the engine; some smeared oil helping the flakes to get stuck into the creases there and fuse hard to the metal surface of the engine block. He stepped back, twisting his head in consideration; it was probably no later than 7:45 at this point. He didn't have much nitroglycerin, but you didn't need a lot if you knew where to put it; he knew some guys who had tried to just stuff up a tail pipe like a car was nothing more complicated than a teapot, and while the last time he had done this sort of thing he had just gotten a Molotov together, this method was a bit more dramatic.

Dean glanced around, shut the hood, and put the bottle back into his pocket, feeling the arch of the bottle bump against his ribs as it settled into place. He checked his watch – just 7: 49.

Behind him, he heard a heavy door open, and without thinking his hand plunged further inside his jacket, hands clasping around the handle of a gun.

"Can I help you?" someone, a man said to Dean's back. He opened his mouth slightly, letting a breath deflate out of him, and put his hand back down to his side.

"No, I," he turned his head to the side, back still to whoever had come in, and the other could only see a sliver of his profile as he looked down at Meg's car. "I was just checking this out."

"It's a nice piece of work, isn't it, sir?" Dean glanced back until his eyes strained, and he saw a mix of red and gold – and that sir line? Definitely a chauffeur, though if it was Meg's, he didn't seem hostile.

"Yeah, yeah, completely. I don't mean to uh, breathe too much on it,"

"Luckily I'm not the owner."

"Yeah," Dean huffed. "Luckily. I was just stretching my legs."

"Your legs, sir?" He sounded doubtful, and Dean mentally grasped at something to say.

"I came here to meet with two friends of mine," he said, speaking on autopilot. He pointed to the other end of the lot. "They're in that blue Tudor there."

"The one with the fogged up windows?"

"That's the one. We had reservations for half an hour ago – I think I'd rather take my chances as a walk-in somewhere. Couples, you know?"

"Oh, well, that's a shame. Timing's awfully important, if I say so myself. I'm always sent down here ten to eight for instance, warm up the car. Some people are sensitive to that, I guess." Dean heard him shifting on his feet – or was he drawing a weapon, moving his arm up to shoot him while he was forced to stand facing the other way, or risk being seen later? He was thankful for the hat he was wearing, the Italian cut of his suit that made his shoulders broad and his stance wide; no one would know who he was from the angle the other man was in. If he could just leave, then… "I'm sorry; I was called down to start a car – the very car you were looking at. You understand?"

"Sure, sure," He waved his hand, and made one small step forward. The other didn't say anything, so he took another, and went, "Thanks for listening to me gripe, then. Have a good night!" There were three cars separating them now. Four.

"You too, sir," the other said, Meg's car door opened with a creak that sent Dean almost into a run. Sweat beaded against the brim of his hat but he dared not make a move to wipe it off. His arms were rigid, then on second thought his fingers started to curl and uncurl into fists, before finally he pinned one arm against his side with the other, as if he had been shot right above the elbow and was strutting home despite it. Behind him, a car engine roared.

When he passed by the occupied car, now a little fogged up – he didn't hear anything worse than the usual smacks of mouths together, thank god – he thumped his fist hard against the back window until the girl wiped her hand down the glass, staring crudely at him. He waved, made a pointed gesture to the exit of the garage, and partly it was for show, the other part being the hope that the two of them would actually get going to somewhere a lot safer than here.

When Dean made it outside he sucked in a lungful of crisp, wild air that turned his cheeks pink and made his skin glacial on impact – but he was beyond thankful for it, treated it as if he had a fever and had just gotten a bucket of ice water to dunk into. He turned right, and made his way back to the train station – 7: 56 now. If he was lucky the reports might come out in time for the later evening radio programs – and Crowley would know before he went to bed that Dean had almost finished his business with him. He got a cigarette out to celebrate that things had gone as well as they could, lighting up with some measure of irony. He hoped that the driver would realize before something too terrible happened to him; but Meg was a vengeful sort of girl, used to bidding her time for months on end until she could strike just right – the guy might be dead either way, even if he hadn't done a thing except what he was told. It was undecided if Meg would figure out who the guilty party was before he managed to leave the city – timing was everything, after all – or whatever that worker had said.

Timing was everything.

Dean felt himself slow to a stop on the sidewalk, fuming cigarette partway to his mouth.

With no more to distract him, his mind snapped back to Castiel with a force that almost made him sway on his feet. He started rushing through the crowd again – was it his imagination, or did he hear some alarmed shouts sounding far away from him; did he get the sense of smoke beyond that from his own? But he pressed on without looking back, as he was supposed to do.

His thoughts ran backwards, though, trying to remember.

Because timing was everything, wasn't it? Balthazar had died last Thursday night, and Castiel had come to him and promised a week. Well, wasn't this the seventh day? Would the other man return? Could he finally ask all the things that had been attacking his consciousness whenever he had a moment alone – before he went to bed at night and the moments before he dragged himself out from the blankets every morning, and too many desperate periods in between?

And what, exactly would he ask him? Who Dmitry Woden was, perhaps – that was the thing that stuck out as a glaring flaw; everything else could have been his paranoia or his jealousy – but still, that shirt? What was the meaning of that goddamned white shirt? – but that didn't make a lick of sense. Or the handkerchief that was left behind, for that matter; someone of Castiel's class didn't waltz around with something of an 'imported' level, not unless they were talented enough to make it themselves. Castiel was, but Castiel was exceptional in his job, and while Dean had never made a habit of inspecting where everyone in Brighton Beach got their finer materials worked on, he had a pretty good idea that most of those types didn't have finer materials to begin with – not ones that they would carry to a surprise massacre. The only working man he knew who would have something like that just happened to be the only tailor he knew, as well.

And the only way Castiel could get his hands on a handkerchief with a D and a W sewn on it, well… He shuttered, sucking hard until the fumes were pulled too deep into his lungs and he hacked into his fist for a few seconds, the cigarette falling to the pavement while he rubbed at his throat instead.

He righted himself after a few moments, eyeing a pair of women who had stopped in their own stride, perhaps wondering if he was about to collapse. He gave them a watery smile, but this wasn't a tragic plot point in a love story – his heart wasn't about to give out and he wasn't going to succumb to consumption just yet. He lit another smoke and hurried along, trying to pick up his train of thought in a less shocking manner.

Castiel had spoken to him that night – he had ran over at about a quarter to midnight – he remembered the bewitching, perilous hour and the even more horrific news, coinciding too well for his tastes. Castiel had said that the factory let him out at no later than ten. If he had walked the whole way, then not coming home until nearly midnight might have worked – but he had mentioned a train, hadn't he? One that stopped off closer to his house than Dean's flat.

Dean had to take a train back to Brooklyn anyway, and he was tempted to try and find a schedule to see if that really was true. It was about two miles between the tailor shop and his own place, so it almost seemed to fit. But if Castiel had gotten home by train, well, it wouldn't even been eleven o' clock yet – Castiel had left, right after the Woden – or perhaps not– told him the news. No longer than five minutes, probably. So even if Castiel had taken all his time with walking and listening to other people talk, there was still a good forty minutes of nothing really happening.

And Dean could think of a pretty large amount of things that a guy with a gun could do in forty minutes.

He didn't want to think about this – he honestly would have been much happier if Castiel had hidden that shirt away, if he had never gotten curious – if he hadn't ever let Castiel hear about Crowley's plan, even! If he kept Castiel ignorant then he wouldn't have to wish for a similar dumbness to strike him now. Dean could, he argued, still pretend that nothing was wrong – things would get swept away in time, eventually. He could force himself to look at Castiel the same way. He could avoid the entire thing.

But writing off all the deeds he had done, all the blood he might have dipped his hands in… well, Dean supposed that Balthazar had been ignorant of that, too; unsuspecting, trusting, Castiel's very own beloved childhood friend.

And look where all that had landed him.

Dean ground his teeth tight; no, no, Castiel surely wouldn't think to kill him – well, maybe even that was too much to hope for. Crowley's months old sentiment about Castiel's wit and superior knowledge making him a spy crept in with all his other theories, and that was something straight from a piece of pulp fiction wasn't it? But still, he had to wonder – he had the right to wonder, at least – didn't he? If Castiel had treated all of this as a farce; for money or gain or, well, something.

No, he thought, he couldn't ignore something like this. He should have intervened back in the summer, and maybe then things would have just ended between them on the grounds of the typical domestic cheats. Versus, well, a handful of dead men and a fear of his life. Castiel, for all his gentle appearances, wasn't a sheltered man. There were people he met who were too squeamish, too reserved to hurt another human being. And Castiel was nice, but nice people could do a hell of a lot worse than you'd think.

Dean forced himself into a cross-borough train, huddled into a seat and into terrible, once-hidden suspicions. Just like those reflections after a particular case, this was something he had to do – maybe for his own sake.

But the more he thought on everything the more perturbed he became. Suddenly the most innocuous memories of Castiel became warnings and hazardous foreshadowing in his mind. Even his association with Crowley – his cryptic warnings, Alastair's mysterious death – was that another fault of Castiel's or was that too strange? He recalled the one occasion he had seen the other shoot – a white tree splattered with bog water, a mark in the bleached wood at the height of a man's head – and Castiel had never shown him that newspaper, either, did he? Had never told him of Alastair's demise. He learned it all second hand from his boss for god's sake. Castiel clearly had the ability – in Alastair's case, he even had a motive. An evident one.

By the time Dean had gotten into his own neighborhood he had mentally blamed Castiel for another half dozen crimes; and some seemed too extravagant, too impossible, but Castiel was a man who had always defied usual expectations, wasn't he?

Dean just wished it wasn't in such a terrible way.

The steps of the apartment creaked worryingly with his heavy, angry steps. Nothing short of a personal, revenge-fueled attack could stop him from tracking the other man down himself, just to get a straight answer from the guy for once in his goddamned life, and if it wasn't for the sensitivity of Balthazar's death he would have ridden the extra stops over to the tailor shop himself. Hell, maybe all of the Novaks were in on this jumble – they had seen enough stuff, and killing someone for insurance money wasn't unheard of these days.

The door was unlocked, as usual. Dean shuttered as he turned the handle; what if Castiel really did want to kill him? He was leaving the door open for a murderer the entire time.

Like right now.

Castiel sat in one of the wooden chairs like a magic trick. He was smoking a cigarette, reading a book; it was hardly a singular thing for Dean to see – it hadn't been, at least. But now – now it seemed twisted and sick, and as he closed the door he felt out against his coat for the comforting bump of his pistol.

He wondered, fleetingly, as Castiel looked over to him, what the other had been doing with the revolver he had given over for 'protection'.

Not its assigned purpose, he bet with grim scrutiny.

"I was wondering when you'd show up," Dean offered, as Castiel rose from his seat, sticking the smoke in a small ashtray on the table. He was in Dean's personal space a second later, pressing forward, arms around Dean's middle and nose against the top of his shoulder.

"I said I'd come back – I'm sorry,"

For what? Dean's mind couldn't help but think. "Well," Dean let Castiel hold on for a moment before he nudged him back a few feet. "Good to see you home, I suppose." He swallowed. "So, it's finished then? All that, that memorial business."

"Most of it got taken care of, rather quickly. Balthazar – he didn't have a whole lot." Except for his life – his heart and blood and memories, nothing besides those vital requirements. Dean squinted at Castiel; someone who had seemed full of life in the past, though right now his eyes were flattened and dark. He had remembered the other correctly, hadn't he? And he never seemed the type to snuff out someone else's lights.

Except for Uriel and Raphael, of course. "Must be nice to get all of your belongings back, huh?" The room's possessions were part his, part Castiel's – the other's objects collecting dust for the week he was gone.

"I'm glad you didn't shove everything off to one side," Castiel said, some off-kilter smile on his mouth. Maybe he was playing at being sad.

"You were coming back, weren't you?" Dean asked, stepping some paces past Castiel, towards his bureau. He drew in a breath, long and loud to him. "All your stuff's like you left it." He waved a hand to some indiscriminate area; every crevice was filled with the other's belongings at this point, anyway. "It's funny, some of my stuff's gone missing in the week."

"Oh, really?" He heard Castiel step closer to him, and Dean eased the top drawer open, staring at a mix of argyle socks and crumpled odds and ends.

"It was my fault I guess, left the door unlocked in case you wandered back." He glanced over his shoulder where Castiel was lurking at a polite distance, not as observant as Dean was but not completely settled, either. His eyes swept from the drawer to Dean's face. "Whatever happened to class, you know? Can't trust anybody these days."

"What did they take?"

"Nothing much, one of the handkerchiefs you gave me, the white one? But nothing I'd care about, nothing I'll miss." Castiel's face was impassive. "Or, I don't know," he said, trying to change the angle. "I've been out a lot – you know that."

"Where else?"

"A friend of mind. Informant type. Crowley had some work for me that I needed help for."

"And how'd that turn out?" Dean leaned back against the dresser, sliding the drawer closed as his back moved into it.

"Oh, everything went off as fine as it could. Benny, he's a decent guy, knows a little about everyone, everything. No matter how recent or how… little of it shows in the papers." He tilted his head, squinting, and Castiel nearly mirrored the expression, playing dumb to an impressive extent – it almost made Dean want to turn back and be normal but, no, the only way to do this thing was to go through it, he'd decided that a thousand times over in his head, and he was speaking before he hardly registered the noise from his own mouth: "Funniest thing, that guy you told me about last week, Dmitry Woden? He was reported at Bergen just like you said – except he went missing, and his wife followed up with a police report a few days afterward."

Castiel's face was a slow transformation. He pursed his lips, as if puzzled, tempted to say what Dean was talking about, but maybe he realized that Dean wasn't stupid – not like anyone else he had fooled. So his eyes grew wide again and his mouth drew flat along with his brows; a paled, grave expression painted on his face. He started backward for a moment, like he couldn't risk being so close to Dean.

"What?" he finally sputtered out.

"You heard me," Dean said, pushing himself off from the dresser. "And he told me some other things, peculiar things. Like how one of the dead guys in the warehouse had a handkerchief over his face – or how Alastair's death wasn't an inside job like everyone's saying. A lot of real funny stuff, Cas."

"And you're saying…" Castiel licked his lips, struggling to gain purchase on such tumultuous grounds. "You're saying that I – I had a part in this? That I lied about, about Bergen – that I was the one who got Alastair –?"

"And that's just the small of it. I can think of some other things you did."

"I did? As in you're sure? Like you can prove it?" Castiel spoke cautiously, still teetering on the edge of if Dean was telling the truth.

"I think I have more than just a hunch, if that's what you're suggesting." Dean took one pace, than another, until he had walked part of the way around the other, stationary man, wondering how hard it was for Castiel to not twist his shaking hands together to his chest. He leaned closer, almost like he was going to whisper in Castiel's ear. His voice dragged low, but not in volume. "Like, a few months ago – I found this shirt on the floor. It was real nice, too. Maybe nicer than one you could afford – or one that you'd wear and leave on the ground. It smelt like some sort of flower and it just happened to have this lipstick mark on the collar." He eyed Castiel's profile. "You know if you just wanted to take an easy way out, you didn't have to leave the goddamn hints laying around for me."

"Dean, I –"

"What? Got forced by Crowley into this mess, or did a doll come by and sweep you off your feet? You're not a victim type, Cas. You're too dangerous for that, so you shouldn't pin it down like this was some damn accident. Because you knew, didn't you?" A single blue eye shifted over to him, widened. "You knew when you fished that calling card out of the garbage and crawled over to Crowley, and you knew when you had pinned some girl down and gotten off with her, one way or another."

Castiel inhaled sharply, coming back to himself, he turned and stared at Dean. "You thought I… you thought I was with someone else?"

Dean crossed his arms. "All those times you've said you've been working late – how much of that is playing cops and robbers, and how much is getting someone on their back?"

"You really think I would do that to you?" He squinted a bit, voice going just a tiny bit higher than usual. He reached forward, trying to lay a hand on Dean's shoulder, or against his neck, framed around his cheek, like he'd done a hundred other times. But all Dean saw was a hand reaching for his throat, and he scowled, ducking away until Castiel's hand retreated slowly back down to his side.

"I didn't want to," Dean admitted, voice still rough. "Didn't want to think that you've done a lot of other stuff. But the casing shells at Bergen, the bullets found in Alastair? How much use have you been getting out of that gun I gave you, Cas? One of those weapons you hate so much?" Castiel stiffened at that, enough to make it seem like he wasn't even breathing, as if he himself had died. Somewhere, deep down, Dean might have thought that was a step too far. But still – Castiel had done that. "Do you even feel bad?"

"How can you ask that?" Castiel whispered. He wasn't looking at Dean anymore, but into a blank, empty space in the wall. "Do you think I'm some sort of monster? Do you think I did any of this because I wanted to?"

"We all have our hobbies."

"No, no," Castiel shook his head. "You wish it was that way. It'd be easier, wouldn't it? If I was just crazy – if I was just some, someone who murdered in cold blood." He looked down at Dean's outfit, right around his hip. "If you were going to shoot me through, it'd be easier, wouldn't it? That's what you were thinking, right – why you can't touch me. You think I'll kill you." His eyes briefly moved up to look into Dean's; it was hard to grasp in the spare moment he saw them head on, but he was torn up on the inside, the blue of his eyes had gone shimmery and pale; in the lamp light, it was almost as if they were filled with tears, but Dean doubted Castiel had the ability to cry at this. "Don't you get it? I didn't seek out Crowley because I wanted to – because I wanted to… to get rid of Alastair or anything like that."

"So you're admitting that, then. Was I right about everything else, too? The girl, Bergen, Woden?"

Castiel hesitated a moment, but carried on like Dean hadn't said anything. "You have to know I did this for you. All of it. Every horrible moment."

Dean felt a wash of embarrassment boil through him. "Last time I checked, I was the last guy who needed help."

Castiel twisted his mouth up, and he touched his fingers to his lips, as if hardly believing such an ugly expression could fall onto his face. "You know Balthazar used to say that to me a lot. When I warned him to be careful."

"You're not going to shoot me, too, are you?" Dean grumbled as an afterthought, surprised he had avoided the other's name for so long.

"I did all of this because of you!" Castiel ground out, words biting against his mouth as he spit them out. "I went to Crowley and said that I wanted to work at your debt. I lied, I went behind your back on that because you would've gotten mad either way." He sucked in a breath, and stared at Dean again. This time he had steeled himself, and he looked angry. "But Balthazar was never supposed to get hurt – and I would never kill you, or cheat on you, or hurt you like that. Not even if I was forced to. It goes against everything else we've done. So why can't you believe me? Why can't you believe me when I tell you that?"

"Maybe because you've spent the last couple of months lying to my face." Castiel admitted it, reason and motive shot to hell. Because now he knew – he knew he was right, and every other critical thought poured out without hesitation. "You know I could've sent you out when Crowley came here? He wanted you gone, but I made you stay because I thought you deserved to hear it all firsthand – I said that you wouldn't do anything you weren't supposed to. Now look what's happened."

Castiel held his reply for a few seconds. "Most of it wasn't even that bad," he murmured, defeated in tone.

"Have you read the papers – have you seen the reports, about the massacre in Bergen, about how they found a gang leader mutilated and stuffed in a house?"

"You think I haven't? You think I've thought about anything else? As if I haven't spent every spare moment flipping through the papers or wondering if someone was going to realize… It wasn't just me who was at that warehouse, you know. I wasn't the only one pulling the trigger. And – and Alastair… it wasn't like I was pushing syringes off to school children, Dean. Alastair was, Alastair was…"

"Don't think you have the right to tell me how that bastard was."

Castiel nodded slightly in concession. He reeled himself in again, just enough to make Dean wonder if he had forced himself to cry at Balthazar's grave. "Are you upset you weren't the one to kill him? That you couldn't settle things? You've said you'd do him in if you could."

"I'm upset that you killed someone. I thought you didn't want to do that sort of thing anymore."

"They were bad people," Castiel said. Dean wondered who they were – had Castiel gotten others that even Dean was unaware of? Or was it other things he had been up to, not just murders, but scams and smuggling, perhaps. He might have done a lot of things, for much too long – things Dean couldn't even fathom, and Castiel had the nerve to mock up his innocence, his empathetic nature to him when not twenty minutes later he could have been shoving an ice pick through the back of some screamer's neck, and it made his hands cramp up, his legs twitch so bad he wanted Castiel angry and physical again so that maybe he could actually show him what it was like to be in this sort of life. But Castiel carried on, as oblivious to Dean as Dean had been to him. "The things I did weren't decent or humane but, well, if anyone deserved the type of ending they got, wouldn't it be them?"

"Did Doctor Romano deserve what he got?" Dean blurted out, almost regretful he had said that. It had been a dirty secret, one that wasn't deemed as awful as Castiel's because it had happened ages ago, and no one but him had full extent of the guilt, not even his brother got more of a hint. But he said his name for the first time in ages, instead of just in his mind, and it was a tangible thing, so much so that Dean felt his back prickle and he swiped a hand down the side of his neck to dispel the feeling that at any moment a set of rotten, water-logged fingers would make their way around his throat and drag him under like a nightmare. "Do you think he should've been shot in the heart and dumped into the bay – was he a bad person?"

Castiel blinked, staring at him with confusion. "You told me he wasn't paying his debts to Lucifer,"

"Yeah, that's what I thought, too. That's what everybody thought. It helped me sleep at night until Crowley had the decency to tell me that he was the best guy to get the drugs and bandages from." Dean worried the inside of his cheek, letting the revelation fall into reality instead of rattling in his own head as it had for the past week. "Doctor Romano was as clean as he seemed. Lucifer just wanted to see if I'd do it. Kill a good guy, I mean. Romano helped your sister and Misha do fine? If it wasn't for him you would've never met me, and I'm the one who tied an eighty pound weight to his feet." Dean was tired of only glancing sideways at Castiel, as close and personal as it was, he had to see, had to get an impact, so her rounded forward again until he was a breadth away from the other man's face. Castiel, still processing the cryptic information, had his lips tight and kept silent; perfect for listening.

"You think you're a decent guy? You think that when you start this sort of thing you're only going to be killing people who deserve it? Where the hell do you get off, thinking you're being a hero in all of this shit? I know – I know the things I do are sick and twisted, and I know the only reason why I'm not another Lucifer or Alastair or Crowley waiting to happen is because I resent them too much and I have my own brother to keep me grounded." He flicked his eyes up and down Castiel's stiff body. "Thought I had you, too, you know. I thought, living how you did? Maybe you'd understand how ugly people are, if I couldn't stop you from liking me for a minute then you'd at least be sharp enough to not get involved in this work. But you couldn't keep your fucking hands off, could you? Now you've gone and ruined yourself more than before – how much innocent blood's on your hands now, Castiel? Uriel, Raphael, Balthazar, bet there's more, isn't there? Way more, even if you won't tell me."

Castiel's mouth moved slightly; tongue over teeth, lips opening and closing, no words, not even noises commenced, and his eyes were distant and blank, too hurt to know what had been struck, and he wandered, lost, for some moments.

"I'm sorry," he said to the floorboards; a note of finality in his voice.

Dean glared at the other man, stepping away. "You think I care? Whether you're sorry or not? Do you think that even matters now that you've gone and ruined everything? We had a plan," Dean ground out.

"You had a plan," Castiel muttered, almost inaudible.

Dean paused, trying to make sure he heard that little protest, and he had. "That you agreed to,"

"Because I knew I wouldn't get another option – you don't let people get in other options; it's all or nothing with you." Castiel sounded strange as he spoke, the way he framed his words was unfamiliar, though not alien entirely. His expression had turned angry, irritated, once more, and Dean suddenly realized that Castiel was being accusatory. Castiel was rarely, if ever, willing to give someone else the blame for an action – fury could be invoked, but if it wasn't Castiel's fault, then there was a strong reason to believe, in his mind, that it wasn't anyone's. The observation was strange enough to Dean that it took him a bit to find his ground.

"Because my idea would've worked," he continued. "Then you stepped in, screwed up as you did, you're best friend's gone and I've got half a mind that you want me dead and why's that – because you wanted to help me? Because you thought that I needed protection?"

"No." Castiel moved forward until there wasn't a foot of space between them. Dean thought for a moment that Castiel was going to hit him – instead he surged his fists forward and held them tight in the material of Dean's shirt, eyes alighted with some sort insulted righteousness, some mangled thought that he was still right. "You're not helpless, Dean. You never were. But you're not invincible. I did all this because you think you are, because you'd never say yes if you knew. Because…" His face grew into a snarl. "Because for once in your goddamn life just accept the fact that someone cares enough that they're willing to fight for you, kill for you, die for you – because they couldn't imagine themselves alive if you weren't. I can't speak for your brother but I can damn sure speak for myself, and there is nothing you can say or do that'll let me just sit by and do nothing, except pray that the next time you walk out that door won't be the last chance I have to see you."

"Sam knew better than to mess with a boss's contract – he wouldn't have done this to me."

"Are you sure? If there was no other way out if this, if it was Sam –"

"Don't you dare," Dean cut in. "What gives you the right to compare my brother to you?" Castiel winced. "And don't even think about saying that we're family, because the last time you threw that word around, you said it meant that you don't hide things from one another. You let them help you."

"I was trying to help you." Castiel insisted.

Dean squinted. "Well, fine job with that, then." He struggled a moment before shoving Castiel's hands off him, and he stepped back for space. "Now you're going to have to find your own connection out west."

"What?"

"I'm saying get out of here, Castiel. Leave." The words were almost unconscious, but not so much that Dean didn't try to stop them. Knowing what he did – he wanted Castiel gone, wanted to erase the mar of his creation from his memories, wanted to delete every second before Doctor Romano's death – sick guilt gone, sick bastard, too, just perfect, just right. If he could do it all over maybe he could trade in Sam and California for the immigrant standing a few feet away from him, some sad look in his eye like he was too stupid to understand right from wrong. "If you want to get out of this place, you're not coming with me." He drew in a breath. "I don't want to see you again." The expression on Castiel's face was almost funny – like he couldn't speak English and was trying to translate Dean's words. "Did you hear me?" he said, voice slightly louder than before. "I don't want you around anymore. I think I've made it pretty clear that I'm trying to get rid of all the worthless, lying bastards in my life." Still Castiel said nothing, did nothing, like he was suspended.

Right before Dean considered throwing a punch his way, Castiel nodded. Just one rough jerk of his head, awkward and disconnected. "Okay," he said, and his voice had gone quiet again – like he was whispering some comment to Dean in the middle of the night, figures pressed together in bed – the thought made him sick. "Okay," Castiel repeated, "I… won't bother you anymore," He stalled a moment, swaying on his feet. He stared up at Dean again, like he was wondering if this was all happening, and, seeing that it was, he slowly turned on his heel, and walked back out of the apartment.

The last thought Dean had before the other man left was that – if dead men walked, they would look exactly like Castiel Novak.

xxxx

A/N: Notes in order: While coincidental meetings are great, there aren't as many large, public cemeteries in New York City as you'd think – at least in Brooklyn. Some churches might have ones on their property, but the closest one to Coney Island that is also a large-scale one is The Washington Cemetery, where Balthazar is buried in. The Vieux Carré is better known as the French Quarter, the oldest neighborhood in New Orleans; it was and is a popular center of the city, and a good place to get homemade booze during Prohibition. Also, guns. Guns are a thing – almost as boring to write about as weddings, matter of fact. While Dean owns a Winchester brand shotgun, that arms company doesn't specialize in small handguns; for that it's more of the Colt Company or Smith and Wesson. The model Dean uses to kill Arturi, and one he keeps on his person, would be the Smith and Wesson Model 30, which is a short, snub-nosed revolver, perfect for hiding in one's suit jackets or pants pocket. The model he had given to Castiel was a Smith and Wesson Model 3, also known as the Russian Model as it was used in great numbers during the Russian revolution. Another revolver, it's a bit bigger and, while out of commission for several years before the start of this story, many fans of the model were able to get the gun specially refurbished and checked into working order, which Dean did.

When Dean mentions Bugsy when telling Benny his plan to dress up as a courier to get into Arturi's room, he's referring to Bugsy Seigel, an infamous mafia member who committed a murder when he was younger, in the 1920s, by dressing up as a newsboy in order to get into a tenement complex. Lastly, nitroglycerin is a chemical that tends to be used with explosives as well as heart medication. Its chemical name is Trinitroxypropane, and it sets on fire 122 degrees Fahrenheit, at which it also explodes. This chapter required a lot of research of how exactly to make a car combust – explosions are more movie magic than reality, but a temperamental chemical on a piece of machinery such as your engine block (which can go up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit in several minutes with the engine running) would be enough to start a fire. Interior heating was also a component of cars created during the 1920's using hot coils which were effective to some extent, if not advanced. Granted, I didn't Mythbust this method, though it seems to have a decent chance of working, but I'd discourage anyone from trying to prove me wrong. Also, Benny mentions Canadian Industries Limited – which made large amount of explosives for World War One that used Nitroglycerin. And the Pennsylvania Hotel where Arturi is murdered is a still operating hotel in Manhattan.

I'd apologize for the extreme gap between updates but, well, that calls for drawing out boring excuses, and no one needs that. Take solace in the lengthiness of the chapter and, uh, Benny and Dean broing out? Because as you can tell nothing else is redeeming in this chapter it's all just… horrible misery and tears.