(the new chapter is actually Chapter 16, somehow I missed it in my latest post)

*sntl*spn*

Dean and Lisa watched from the high school football bleachers as Sam and Ben stood in the end zone. Sam was running an enthusiastic Ben through sense exercise after exercise. Ben was doing an excellent job and with every compliment from his father and uncle, tried all the harder the next time.

"What do you want outta… all this," Dean asked bluntly.

Lisa jerked, her focus on her son, "but can't her…"

"Sam's working on smell right now. Ben had no idea how to use two senses at the same time. We probably could have this conversation close enough for Sam to hear us and still, Ben wouldn't."

Lisa bit her lip. "What I want is inconsequential. What I need is a week with him out of the house so that I can do all the laundry and scrub the house, ceiling to floor."

"We're here to do that. That's why I brought Stretch, for the ceilings," Dean said light-heartedly.

"No," Lisa shook her head. "After Ben had the spikes while we were cleaning his room, I want him out of the house." She smirked a tiny bit. "I'll have myself a part and light all of my 'smelly' candles that you and he turn your nose up at."

"They don't smell anything like what you say they do," Dean complained. "Apple pie smell should make my stomach rumble not lurch."

Lisa ignored his comment. "Maybe have sex in my own bed and… mourn the normal childhood he should have had."

"Normal is boring," Dean scoffed. "Yes, the Sentinel thing is a lot to handle."

"But normal is safe," Lisa argued.

Dean bit his tongue and Lisa smiled at the restraint. "Yes, the changlings could have been more deadly if not for your non-normal training but how often does that happen to regular people?" Lisa sighed. "Ben is going to go looking for the supernatural now."

"He's not going to have to look hard," Dean muttered. He saw a figure across the field, its facial feature's obscured by a bright inner light. "Stay here," he ordered Lisa.

He charged across the field toward the strange being, Dean had never seen its like, not before hell and certainly not after becoming a Sentinel. "What are you?" he demanded of it.

"I am an angel of the Lord."

Dean snorted. "Yeah, right."

The creature shoed Dean his wings, that were well outside of the normal human's visible range. Might be an angel after all.

"Cool!" he heard Ben declare. Dean also heard Sam send the pre-teen (with no self-preservation instincts) to his mother and felt Sam hurry to step behind his left shoulder.

"No, really," Dean asked. The thing (angel?) wasn't trying to kill him yet and that might have been the best evidence to its species. "What are you?"

"I am Castiel. An angel of the Lord. I am he who raised you from Perdition."

Dean took a step back and grounded himself in his brother's presence, overcome by the memory of smell. Burning feathers. He remembered that now. Yes. This creature, as he now presented himself, have been there at the very end of Dean's… tenure in Hell. "Why are you here now?"

"I've been waiting for you to gain control, Hawk. With such, you can see my true visage and hear my true voice."

Dean glanced at Sam and realized that he had his eyes closed and his hands pressed against his ears. Whatever Dean was hearing, Sam was not. "Why are you here, now, near Ben?"

"Because the truest measure of one's understanding is how well one teaches."

"Did he activate because of you?" Dean knew it had to be a supernatural beginning.

"No." Castiel looked aghast at Dean's ignorance.

"A young Hawk will activate in stages. It may take years, but the first sense happens when it is needed. Benjamin needed to hear you during the interaction with the… you call them changlings… and so he did. The other senses have been increasing since then."

Dean floundered. He could have been left in Hell and then what would have happened to Ben? No one else, none of the parade of specialists Lisa had taken the boy to had been able to improve the situation. How long would have Ben lasted before going crazy?

"Why did you rescue me?" Dean asked. "For Ben?"

"The whole Winchester Line had much to do. I will communicate more." And then it disappeared! Completely off the senses, gone.

Dean expressed his displeasure with a string of swears that delighted Ben.

*sntl*spn*