Thanks Jenjoremy for the beta job and thank you all for the reviews and support for the story. It means more to me than I can say.

Chapter Seven

Cas knew at once where he had arrived as he hit the floor, even before he opened his eyes. It was the scent of musty books and Old Spice that told him. He opened his eyes and knew then exactly when he had come to. The Dean that he had left had been struggling to get to his brother, crawling across the floor, while this Dean was on his feet with the demon blade drawn.

"Cas!" he gasped. "What the hell happened?"

"Sam," Cas breathed. "Sam happened."

"What?"

Bobby grabbed his arm and hauled Cas to his feet. Cas swayed and cursed this weakness. It was always the same when he had been banished. His grace struggled to realign itself after the trauma. It was worse now because he had not only been blasted through space but time, too. He stumbled over to a chair and sat down. He had arrived back in the middle of a meal. Plates of half-eaten food were on the table and there were two open bottles of beer by the place settings.

Balthazar wandered into the room. In one hand he held a book and in the other a glass of whiskey that he sipped with distaste on his face. "Cas, darling, it's so good to see you." He seemed completely unconcerned by Cas's abrupt arrival or obvious disorientation. "How's things?"

Cas shook his head mutely, both in response to Balthazar's inappropriate question and in an attempt to clear his head.

"Is Sam okay?" Dean asked, wide-eyed.

"I don't know," Cas said soberly.

Dean smacked his shoulder. "What do you mean you don't know? What's going on?"

"Haven't you seen?" he asked in return.

"What? No. Last thing I remember changing was Sam telling me about his 'visions'."

Cas noted the scathing tone he used but he had bigger worries than Dean's reactions in that moment. "Alastair came," he said.

Dean cursed and his hands tightened into fists. Balthazar's expression became concerned. "And he expelled you?"

Cas turned to Dean. "You and Sam went for Anna. I arrived in time to see Alastair choking you and Sam returning. I believe he had been thrown from the window. Sam saved you and killed Alastair; that much I saw, but then something happened to him. He seemed…" He tried to find words to explain how Sam had looked, bent over and pale, his hand shaking as it reached for the sigil. "He seemed to have injured himself."

Bobby didn't look as worried as Cas would have expected given the circumstances, and as he spoke, Cas understood why. "Getting thrown out of a window will do that to ya," he said. "But if he got back in time to save Dean, he can't have been hurt that bad."

"Cas?" Dean probed in a low voice, and Cas thought he, at least, understood what Cas had been trying to say.

"He is injured physically," he said. "I could see that, but I fear the greater damage is mental."

Balthazar nodded slowly, his apparent suspicion confirmed.

Dean sucked in a breath. "The wall."

"The wall," Cas confirmed, looking at Bobby who had paled considerably. "I believe he has at least damaged it."

Dean turned away from them both; he made a circuit around the room and then struck out a fist and slammed it into the wall with a bellowed curse. "Dammit, Sam!"

Bobby's tugged off his cap and ran his fingers through his hair. He took a deep breath, seeming to calm himself, and his hands stilled at his sides. "Okay. So the wall's been kicked a few good 'uns. What does that mean for Sam?"

Cas glanced at Dean who shook his head; he hadn't told Bobby of the warning Cas had given him all those months ago. "It means Sam is at risk of losing himself completely. Those memories are destructive. They could lead to insanity among other things."

"Other things?" Bobby asked.

"He could end up a vegetable," Balthazar said emotionlessly. "He could be stuck in his head with nothing but memories of the cage. He would be a shell of a man, trapped inside himself until death."

Dean looked like he wanted to vomit.

"Shouldn't we have been warned about this before we stuffed the soul back in?" Bobby asked incredulously. "I mean, I knew the wall was there for a reason, but this…"

Cas looked at Dean and Dean swallowed hard. "I knew. Cas told me." He shook his head dolefully and Cas wondered if he was regretting his choice to go to Death now. "But it was risking that or having the soulless dick running around while Sam's soul suffered in the cage for eternity. I knew which one Sam would have wanted."

Bobby stared into his eyes, and Cas waited for the explosion to come. Bobby was not known for controlling his temper, and the look in his eyes proved his anger. He didn't speak though. He looked at Dean for a long moment then shook his head. "Okay. It's done. We can't change anything now. What's happening to Sam, Cas?"

"Cas?" Balthazar probed.

"I don't know," Cas snapped bitterly. "Sam banished me. It's my fault. I revealed myself when I realized what he had done to himself, and the moment he saw me he used the sigil. I was pulled back here. I don't know what is happening to him in that time."

He had hoped that time would have reset enough for Dean and Bobby to have new memories of that time, memories that would hold the key to what was happening to Sam. But it appeared time was still in flux, unaltered and unknown. If only he knew what was happening to Sam, he could plan, he could work out a way to help. Then an idea occurred to him, and he raced from the room.

Dean shouted after him, asking what he was doing, but he didn't stop. He flung open the door that led to the basement and pounded down the stairs. The panic room door was closed and the heavy latch was in place, but it flung open at Cas's approach and he ran into the room. He stopped dead in his tracks at the sight before him.

His hope had been that he would find Sam awake and alert beneath his chains, ready to give an explanation and hope to them. He wasn't. His eyes were closed and he was almost completely still. The only visible movement was the light rise and fall of his chest. There was a trickle of drying blood that had seeped from his nose and down his face. It stood out starkly against the pallor of his skin.

"Sam!" he said harshly, striding over to the restrained man and hitting his cheek hard. Sam's head jostled but there was no more sign of life. Cas pulled back an eyelid, opening his eye to a burgeoning amount of light that the pupil didn't react to. He muttered a curse he had heard Dean employ many times but had never tested for himself. It gave him no satisfaction.

"Is he okay?" Dean asked from the doorway.

Cas turned and saw both men standing there, hands braced on the doorjamb and eyes wide. It looked as though they were barred from entering by their fear. Balthazar swept between them and came to stand beside Cas.

"No," he said simply. "He is not."

"He wasn't like this when I left him," Balthazar said defensively. "He was awake and chatty."

"Why did you leave him at all?" Dean snarled. "You were supposed to be keeping watch over him."

"What could I have done?" Balthazar asked incredulously. "Jump between him and the memories as they came flying at him? This isn't new, Dean. This is Sam as he was almost three years ago. The damage is already done."

Cas looked down at Sam and saw the emptiness there. He wondered what was happening within his mind. Was Sam being tortured endlessly by Lucifer or was he just gone? Had the memories of the soul seeped into the mind of this soulless being, or was Sam's body just broken from what it had suffered before the soul was taken? Either way, it made Cas's hands want to fist. This was all his fault. He'd been the one to facilitate Sam's return to the past. He'd not realized what Sam was going to do. If he'd known, he could have warned him. Killing Alastair was too much strain for the wall. He would have been able to save Sam from himself if only he'd known.

Dean came slowly into the room and stopped beside Sam's cot. He looked down and a frown creased his brow. "He can't sleep," he said quietly. "He never did, for months when his soul was gone."

"I know," Cas replied. "This isn't natural sleep."

"What…? How…?" Bobby faltered.

Cas took a deep breath to center himself and then he said, "I need something from one of you. I need to touch your soul."

"Oh, clever," Balthazar breathed but was ignored.

"Will that help Sam?" Dean asked.

Cas shook his head. "Not here in the immediate present, but perhaps in time. I need to return to Sam in the past, to help him. I cannot do it alone, because of the strain of being banished through time has drained my power. If I can touch a soul, it will give me a surge of power. I should be able to return then."

Bobby nodded thoughtfully. "I can do it again. Wasn't so bad."

"No," Dean said harshly. "I'll do it. He's my… It's Sam."

Bobby looked like he wanted to argue, but Cas was already unbuttoning his cuff and rolling up his sleeve. Dean sat in the chair by the desk and braced his hands on his knees. "Let's get it done," he said.

Cas moved to Dean's side and pressed the tips of his fingers to his sternum.

"Carefully," Bobby breathed.

Cas nodded. "Always."

Dean started out trying to hide his agony, but that soon failed as the pain Cas couldn't even imagine rolled through him. He bellowed at the top of his voice as Cas's hand plunged into him, through skin, flesh and muscle to that glimmer of life beside his heart. Cas hesitated, centering himself and making sure not to rush the process despite his eagerness to move quickly back to Sam, and then he moved another millimeter to the soul. It burned bright and hot and pulsed with life. It had none of the damage Sam's had suffered—it would take more than thirty years of Hell's torture to damage this soul— so it was something pure and whole. Cas felt the power surge through him as he made contact, strengthening him and making his vessel's nerves sing, and then he pulled back just as carefully and slowly. As the tips of his fingers left Dean, the man bowed forward, panting.

"Are you okay?" Bobby asked him.

Dean didn't answer: he looked up at Cas instead and asked, "Did you do it? Did you get enough?"

Cas nodded. "I will return as soon as I can."

"Good luck, Cas," Balthazar said, even as Cas disappeared.

As soon as Cas touched back to earth in the correct time, he searched for Sam and Dean, knowing that to find one was to find the other. They were thirty miles away and he immediately spread his wings and took flight to them.

His nostrils filled with the human scents of medicine, cleaning products, and sickness at the moment of his arrival. He was in a hospital. He had visited a few during his time with the Winchesters, and they were uncomfortable places for him to be. They were all full of people who needed help, help he could give if only he were able to do so without alerting Heaven to his interference. A voice he knew at once filled his ears, murmuring quietly, and a forlorn sight met his eyes.

Sam was lying on a narrow bed with his arms at his sides. He was bare from the waist up and there were small electrodes on his chest that recorded heartbeats to a monitor beside the bed. Thin plastic tubing crept under his nose and hissed softly as oxygen passed through it. There was another tube that disappeared under the skin on the back of his hand, feeding fluids into him. His skin was paler even than the version of him that Cas had left in the future and there were dark circles under his eyes. Beside the bed sat Dean. His skin was equally as pale as his brother's and his shadowed eyes were red-rimmed. He was the one speaking soft reassurances and pleas to his brother, telling him he was there and demanding that he wake up in the same breath.

Cas hesitated for a moment, unsure of what best to do to help them. Dean couldn't know he was there, that was too risky, but he was loathe to send him into unconsciousness, as he would know it was an angel that had done it to him. At that moment, there was a soft knock on the sliding glass door to the room and Dean's gaze snapped up from his brother and a hopeful expression crept over his features.

A middle-aged man walked into the room. He wore spectacles and a somber blue suit and tie beneath his white jacket. He made no introductions, which told Cas this wasn't his first time meeting Dean.

"Doc, what've you got for me?"

"I have the results of the tests we have been running on your brother," the doctor said. "I have news."

Cas noted the fact he didn't say it was good news, and he fixed his attention on the man, too, wanting to know what he had to say about Sam.

"The scans we ran came back clear. There are no signs of a clot or bleed in the brain, which as you know, was our primary concern."

Dean nodded silently, but no look of relief crossed his face; in fact, the hope had started to fade.

"It's the brain activity that is… concerning us now," the doctor said.

"But there is activity," Dean protested. "I watched as they did the damn test. It was all over the charts."

"That is true, which is, in a way, good news, but it does not bring us any closer to a diagnosis. The activity is there; there is actually more activity than we expected. Now we are wondering why there is so much. Sam is deeply unconscious. His GCS is only three, and as I explained, that is as poor a score as is possible, but the activity doesn't correlate with that. His brain is working as if he was fully conscious and reacting to intense stimuli."

That was one question answered for Cas, at least. Sam was not merely unconscious and at peace; he was trapped inside his mind with horrors that even Cas, who had seen the cage, could barely imagine.

"What does that mean?" Dean asked.

"I do not know," the doctor admitted. "This is unlike anything I have seen before. I can't explain it. If I did not know better, if I only saw the test results, I would say your brother was awake and experiencing psychotropic drugs, but his tox screen came back clear for drugs, and, as you can see, he is not awake."

"So, basically, you're telling me you've got nothing," Dean said angrily. "I brought him here because you people are supposed to be the experts and you don't know why he's in a coma or what to do to help him?"

"I am saying that, at the moment, we're doing all we can to support him."

"That's not good enough!" Dean shouted.

"I am sorry, but until we understand what's happening to Sam, there is nothing else we can do."

Dean turned away, his lip curled in disgust. "Go," he snapped. "Get the hell out of here. I'll find someone who can actually help."

"I assure you I am more than qualified," the doctor said. "I have reached out to my colleagues for assistance, too. We are doing all we can."

Dean turned back to him, his eyes blazing with fury and his voice a low growl. "Get out."

The doctor slipped from the room at a fast walk and slid the door closed behind him. Dean yanked a cord hanging from the side of the door and fabric blinds slid shut, concealing the room from outside view. Cas wondered what he was doing, and then Dean spoke and answered his question.

"Castiel," he growled. "I know you're hanging around somewhere, screwing people over, but I need your help. Sam needs your help, and you're going to come or I'm going to—"

There was a rustle as Cas's past self appeared.

Dean rounded on him. "Took you damn long enough!"

Cas knew he was speaking in broader terms rather than the time it had taken for his past self to reply to his prayer. Dean was always impatient for assistance, but most especially when it came to his brother.

"Fix him!" Dean said, pointing at his brother.

Castiel moved to the bed and looked down, a frown creasing his brow. "What happened to him?"

"Never mind that," Dean spat. "I'll explain later. Just do it."

Castiel touched Sam's forehead with his fingertips and his frown deepened. "I don't understand."

"What don't you understand?" Dean snapped. "What's going on with him?"

"I do not know. His mind – it's chaotic. This is not a physical injury. This is something new. Something spiritual."

"What the hell do you… Never mind. I don't care if it's physical, spiritual or mineral. Just fix him already."

"I can't," Castiel said dourly. "I don't understand it."

Dean cursed. "You're a damned angel. Miracles are what you do. Now, perform one or you can forget all about me helping you. You fix Sam now or you're on your own with all the apocalypse crap."

"You don't mean that," Castiel said.

"Don't test me," Dean snarled. "I mean that and more. This is because of you. We were in that place because of you damn angels, so you will fix this."

Castiel scowled at him. "Yes, we know what you have been doing, assisting the betrayer. I assume Sam had a vision again." There was no mistaking the disgust in his voice.

"Screw you," Dean snarled. "We did what we had to do to save that girl."

"She is not a mere girl, Dean," Castiel started but Dean spoke over him.

"I don't care what she is!" He pointed at Sam again. "You really think I give a shit about anything but him right now?"

Castiel smiled grimly. "Then this should be easy for you. I will make you a deal. You tell me where to find Anna and I will seek assistance from a higher authority for Sam."

Cas had watched the confrontation between his other self and Dean, shielded and silent, for long enough. He had to act now before Dean gave up Anna for Sam's benefit, which would do nothing to help. No angel but him could understand what was happening now, as no other angel had lived through what he had. Dean would make this deal and Anna would die, and it would all be for nothing. He had to act. He glanced regretfully at the form on the bed and made a silent vow to return, and then he spread his wings and took silent flight away from them.

So… Poor Cas got blasted back to the future and Sam's not looking so hot. Don't fret, Cas is on the case now, so he'll be back to hell-tormented-guilt-ridden-man-my-head-hurts Sam soon enough ;-)

Today's a high stress day as I wait to see if I got my JDM autograph at Asylum14 — love me some Daddy Winchester — so send me some love/feedback/con-crit to make the day pass faster.

Until next time…

Clowns or Midgets xxx