The child shifts underneath the blankets in his small bed, "Mom," he whines quietly as he tries to push the heavy blankets off of himself, "One more story?"
His mother sits on a stool next to the bed. She wears a pure white nightgown that pools around her legs. She has beautiful blond hair that flows down her shoulders and back, looking a bit tousled as it was in the late evening. Her eyes are a vivid hazel with very light laugh lines that crinkle in the corners of them, making her appear even more radiant than she usually does. Her voice is silvery as she laughs kindly, "That's the third one this evening," she says sweetly as her hands move to tuck the child back into his bed.
"I know," the child pouts in his disappointment before quickly proposing, "Just one more. Then I promise I'll go to sleep." He looks like his mother. They have the same thin, arched eyebrows, the same nose, and the same high cheekbones.
"And that's the third time you've said that." The woman smiles softly at her son as she pulls the covers back up to his chest before brushing a bit of his dirty blonde hair from his forehead. "You need to get some sleep."
The boy looks up at his mother and smiles tiredly, "Okay," he says, sinking down into his covers a bit as he relaxes, "I love you, mom."
She smiles down at her son and leans down to press a tender kiss to his forehead, "I love you too, Dean," she mutters quietly before straightening up and smiling down fondly at him. "And remember," she adds on in a sweet whisper, "angels are watching over you."
With that, the young boy's eyes are closing.
Within just a few moments of being surrounded by darkness, he starts to hear the soft crackling of a fire. It starts off low and far off but soon starts to roar with pops and sizzles. He can feel the heat of the flames against his skin, and smell the smoke that surrounds him. Through the blare of the fire he begins to hear another sound, one that will haunt him throughout the rest of his life. It starts off muffled and covered by the fire, then slowly gets louder until it is shrieking in his ears. His mother is screaming. She cries out and wails as the fire roars around her. The scent of her burning flesh mixes with that of the smoke and it wafts with the flames, making the young boy feel sick to his stomach.
"Angels are watching over you," he hears her whisper.
Dean's emerald green eyes shoot open and he straightens up in shock, resting his hands on his knees as he leans over. His chest is heaving with his erratic breaths and his neck and back are covered in a cold sweat. He runs his hands across his face, attempting to rid any drowsiness from himself. He must remind himself again that it was just a dream; that his mother died long ago, that it was over, that there was nothing he could do.
He looks around the room which is the same way he had seen it last. He sits in a chair in the corner. After having given up on waiting for the half man to awake, he had moved to the corner in favor of reading through some books on supernatural beings to try to find any hints as to what the creature could be. He must have fallen asleep while reading.
The blonde looks down at the book in his lap only to see that it is not on the page that he had stopped on. Instead, it was open on a page that Dean could not remember paying any attention to before now. There are several hand drawn sketches on the page, each showing intricate detail of men and women clad in white robes. The creatures have beautiful, grandiose wings that extend out from their shoulder blades. The wings are all different colors, some white, brown, black, or even golden. As Dean's eyes trail up toward the top of the page, he sees a heading scrawled in the top left corner, handwritten in large, faded, cursive. Angels.
His eyes look toward where the half man has been lying unconscious for the past two days, only to cause the blonde to freeze completely when he sees a set of tired bright blue eyes staring at him. He is rendered speechless as he stares at the other, simply watching him in wonder.
Dean can't tell how long their eyes have been locked upon one another. It feels as though a whole lifetime had been crammed into those few seconds of eye contact. Finally, Dean feels his throat loosen up enough for him to speak quietly, almost as if he's afraid of an answer, "You're an angel?"
The brunette stares at the ex-hunter with a pained expression. His entire body aches from the impact of the fall and he can't move his right wing without sending excruciating pain through his entire body. Nevertheless, Dean is still his priority. He nods slightly in response to the man's question before opening his mouth to speak. His throat is dry and his voice sounds hoarse and almost inaudible. "My name is Castiel," he rasps out quietly.
Dean's eyes widen and he stares at the half man in disbelief. He shakes his head slightly, trying to come to grips with the fact that this creature that he has been so wary of for the past couple of days has actually been an angel the whole time. Dean didn't think that they were real. He didn't believe in heaven, hell, god, or the devil. He certainly didn't believe in angels. Yet, here was a winged man who fell from the sky, claiming to be an angel, and Dean couldn't think of any other possibility.
The blonde hesitantly stands up and makes his way toward Castiel, waiting for a moment before sitting in the chair at his bedside. He can tell that the supposed angel seems to be in a lot of pain. He carefully moves a hand to the creature's shoulder. "You need to sit up," he mutters quietly.
Castiel doesn't put up a fight with the action, allowing the other to help him sit up against the pillows that are behind him. Searing pain courses down his wing at the movement and it takes all of the strength in him just to muffle back a scream that instead comes out as a whine of discomfort. Once he has been repositioned, the other offers him some water, helping to hold the glass as Castiel drinks from it. The angel, never having to have food or water until now, sputters slightly with the water before swallowing it thirstily.
Dean sighs quietly as he starts to change out the bandages from Castiel's arm. The silence is becoming too much for him as he finally asks, "Why are you here?"
The other is taken aback by the cold tone of Dean's voice but quickly reminds himself that it is to be expected from him. After all, this information surely comes as a surprise to the hunter. The angel looks at the man with furrowed eyebrows and eyes full of heartbreak, "I fell," he recalls in a voice that sounds as if it could break at any moment, "I fell from heaven." The severity of his situation was slowly beginning to weigh down upon him. He stares at Dean as he tells him, "This is my punishment."
The blonde's eyebrows knit together as he mulls over what Castiel is saying. He can't seem to make sense of the past few days and the angel is only seeming to leave Dean with even more questions that have yet to be answered. "Punishment for what?" he asks, then waits for a response.
The angle simply looks away from him in favor of staring hopelessly at the adjacent wall.
This causes Dean's eyes to narrow in frustration at Castiel. He sits up a bit in the chair and glares at the injured man. He moves his right hand to his left arm and proceeds to pull his shirt sleeve up over his shoulder to expose the hand shaped burn on his skin. "What is this?!" he asks angrily.
The outburst causes the angel to flinch slightly, ducking his head away from Dean at the noise before he looks back at him. His tired blue eyes look back up at the face of the other man before trailing down to his arm to lock onto the handprint that he had made there. "I'm sorry," he utters quietly, "It is the mark from where I grabbed you." Castiel reaches out with a weak and shaky hand to rest it over the red and blistered skin of Dean's burn.
Dean doesn't bother pulling away this time, instead he holds still and feels Castiel's hand slide into its place over the mark on his shoulder. Just like it had before, it sends a calm and relaxing feeling across Dean's body. It's almost enough to make him stop worrying about the things that the brunette is saying. It takes a moment, but he slowly pulls himself from the comforting trance enough to ask the angel, "What do you mean you 'grabbed me?' When?"
Castiel smiles softly at seeing the hunter relax at his touch. It's comforting to know that Dean will not think of him as a threat forever. "I could not save your life without physically intervening," he explains calmly, "When you attempted to take your own life, I had to reach out and-"
At that, the ex-hunter is pulling his arm away from Castiel. He looks at him in shock and then in anger as he stands up. "You mean that you're the reason I'm still alive?" he asked bitterly. Somewhere inside his mind a part of him was yelling to stand down, that he should get over it and that it didn't matter anymore.
The fallen angel's mouth gapes open slightly in distress as he watches Dean stand up. "Please, Dean you don't understand," he begins, "You were intoxicated and it wasn't the right choice-"
"I was ready!" Dean's voice breaks as he yells the words. His eyes burn from the newly brimming tears, causing them to go red. "I was ready and-" his voice trembles as he tries to keep himself together, "and you ruined it." He glares at the angel and walks toward the door, looking back at him for only a moment to say, "It wasn't your decision to make," before disappearing out of the room in an attempt to calm down.
And so Castiel lies there, a fallen angel with no hope for redemption, hated by the one who he was sworn to protect, trying to tell himself that he did the right thing.
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