Dean hadn't missed much at the angel home base.

Bobby had announced he was going on a hunt and he'd be back in a week, at which point the surplus of angels and Sams better be out of his house.

Sleeping Beauty had woken from his whammy nap and the Sams had welcomed him into their study group with open arms and probably way too many questions. Dean could only imagine how traumatized the kid must have been, but in his imagination he kept it funny instead of horrible. The kid reminded him way too much of skittish, 3rd grade Sammy, and Dean knew in his bones that if he let the kid get comfortable around him, he'd latch onto Dean's pant leg and never let go.

They'd added the new time time, filled everything in, and labeled it Reality C. Then Fake Dean had nicknamed Cas C "C.C." which she either didn't comment on or had stopped bothering to correct by the time Dean showed up.

Fake Dean probably hadn't made the best impression on C.C., who didn't have her own Dean for comparison. Fake Dean didn't care. And Dean didn't care what any angel thought of him ever, so...there.

The Sams had written big letters on the backs of their left hands. A, B, and C. Everyone (all the Castiels, both the Deans) could tell them apart blindfolded, but that hadn't stopped them. Maybe the Sams couldn't tell each other apart? Which Sam am I?! What year is it?!

Dean preferred this theory to the more probable one where they were just taking this research and labeling thing way too far. (But at least Sam was finally doing stupid shit with friends who got Dean's stamp of approval.) Or they were just labeling themselves to try to convince the Castiels that it wouldn't hurt if they wrote letters on their hands too. Like taking a bite of a kid's vegetables to trick them into thinking they were delicious.

In all honesty, if there got to be too many more angels around, it might get difficult to tell who was who. But, unlike the Sams, he could handle not telling them apart. He knew which one was Cas, and that was what mattered.

It didn't matter anyway, because the Castiels weren't convinced. Before Thing Two could find a magic marker in Bobby's junk drawer, they all drifted away to different parts of the property to do unspecific things. No one saw much of Cas after that. When Dean asked, Sunshine told him "It's draining to jump so many times," and "He's paroling the perimeter," and "It's been difficult for him to avoid you today, so he's making up for lost time."

"That is not what she said," Sam corrected.

"Paraphrasing," Dean said.

Sam rolled his eyes.

The Deans flat out refused to be branded in magic marker because they both refused to believe they could be mistaken for each other. Only Stabby Sam was confused anyway, and Stabby Sam deserved to be inconvenienced, what with the stabbing.

Dean told him as much, which earned him a reflexive "jerk" in return. As soon as the word was loose, Stabby Sam froze. Then he made some mumbling excuse and hurried out into the salvage yard. Both angel ladies had glared identical, mighty, smite-filled glares, and Sam had groaned, "God, Dean," even though the kid's angst was in no way Dean's fault.

He went to grab a beer and then pass out on the sofa and let the day wash out of his memory, but instead he clicked on the back porch light, waited for Stabby Sam to come back, and combed through the kitchen and garage (for beer, he told himself).

When the kid reappeared, Dean tossed a half empty box of elbow macaroni and a bottle of wood glue. Stabby Sam caught them one after the other, his forehead wrinkling in confusion. "For your craft project," Dean explained. "Thought it could use a decorative border. I don't think Bobby has any sequins around, but you never know."

Stabby Sam stared at him, just long enough for him to think fuuuuuuck and almost give up on his forced smirk. But Sam huffed a painful laugh. "Macaroni art. That's—Wow."

Dean nodded and went back to his beer search. "You're welcome."

Sam shifted his hold on the box. "Yeah. Thank you." Their eyes held for a second, and then he was gone.

Tomorrow it'd be his pant leg for sure.

The Sams handled their failure to color code everyone with their usual poise (which involved sulky bitch faces), and then decided that it was fine because the girl Casses, Sunshine and C.C., had on different outfits. (Problem solved!) They immediately turned to talking Cas D (Cas Singer) into wearing Fake Dean's red FBI tie (which looked exactly like real Dean's red FBI tie). The angel fiddled with it all night, like maybe it was as weird for him to wear it as it was for Dean to see it on him.

Fake Dean went out for pizzas and came back with a packet of gold star stickers. He carefully peeled one off and made a show of sticking it in the corner of the time line graph. "Good job!" He grinned. Then he tried to put one on the back of each of the Sam's hands, before Sam A tackled him, and they wrestled over the sticker packet, slapping stars on each other wherever they could reach. Sam B clutched his pearls and bitched about their shoes leaving scuff marks on his poster. Sam C grabbed one of the boxes of pizza and got a head start.

When they calmed down enough to eat, Sam A (and who the hell decided that guy was on Team A? Utter bullshit) had a couple gold stars in his bangs and Fake Dean had a half dozen on his shirt. Dean almost snapped at him to take them all off, because they'd leave gross spots if he forgot them and ran the shirt through the wash, but stopped himself because Fake Dean probably knew that already from the terrible unicorn sticker/Sammy's favorite Batman shirt incident of 1989.

He filled his mouth with pizza so he wouldn't say something revoltingly moronic.

They had to eat in the office so the Sams could interrogate Cas Singer about his time line and fill in their chart. The angel picked at a slice of pizza, cheese running in long strands down the side of his floppy slice of pepperoni, and told them about how Bobby'd taken the Winchester boys in and they'd had a disgustingly stable upbringing. Sam played little kid soccer and was in the marching band and something called "Mathletes." Dean had had his own room with a memory foam mattress, which was apparently the pride of the guy's existence. They did a few local hunts, huge amounts of research for the hunting network, and answered the phones as soon as their voices dropped, pretending to be the CDC. Apprentice Bobbys. Then Dean left Sammy to go to UW-Madison. Sam went to Stanford, Dean went to Wash U for graduate school, and Sam started law school at Michigan until his psychic shit started acting up and they got drawn into what would become the apocalypse.

Fake Dean interrupted with a glare at Cas Singer and his stupid red tie. "Wait. He just left Sammy?" He had his arms crossed tight over his chest, sitting backwards on a chair, something dangerous in the tight set of his jaw. "Just abandoned him? Doesn't family mean anything to these people?"

Dean hadn't noticed before, but Sunshine had her hand on the guy's back, sweeping her thumb against a taught muscle to calm him. It clearly wasn't working. It took another second to realize he had the same knot building under his shoulder blade and the same set to his jaw. He dropped his eyes to his empty plate.

Cas Singer glared, then vanished with a flap of wings in what could only be described as a flounce.

Sam A threw his crust at his brother and said, "God, Dean. Don't be such a dick."

"What? I'm supposed to believe there's a universe out there where I ditched my baby brother in South Dakota so I could go to school?"

"Right, because ditching family to go to school is my thing. That what you're saying?"

"Oh, bite me. I didn't say that."

Sam C groaned a quiet, "Guys," that was ignored.

Sam A barreled on, "So you can't believe there's a universe where we had a normal life? How sad is that?"

"I can buy that. But dad had to leave for it to happen? Really? We hated him enough to change our names to give him the finger? That's not us. I wouldn't do that."

"So you can't imagine a world where you don't worship the ground dad walked on. One where you can see all the damage he did and admit he messed us up."

"Whatever. Fake Dean understands. You get it, right?"

Suddenly, all eyes were on Dean. Heat bloomed up the back of his neck, overwhelming the irritation that came with being called "Fake Dean." He'd come up with the nickname first, and this was not allowed to get more confusing.

But everyone was watching, and as much as he wanted to jump to defend his dad or himself, all he could think of was Jess and her ugly, stretched out hoodie. He swallowed. "You didn't see it. Sam was back in school, and Jess was alive, and that's really all that matters. They had the apple pie life. It's hard to get it and even harder to keep it, but they had it." On the other side of the chart, Sam brushed his fingers against the edges of the poster, dropping his eyes and failing to look busy with something else. "But..." Dean shook his head, "it was more than that. They were all still together. They were all there at the house. Maybe for the weekend or something, I don't know. So I guess there was a way to leave without cutting ties completely. We just missed it." He avoided eye contact with everyone, but everyone but Sunshine was avoiding his too. "If I had to choose between keeping dad and keeping Sam, I'd pick Sam."

In the silence that fell on them, he reached out and took Sam A's empty plate out of his hands. He gathered up everybody's dishes, and retreated to the kitchen to clean up.

The kitchen had become C.C.'s hiding spot, and she stared at him as he filled up the dish wand with liquid soap and put off running the ancient garbage disposal until the last possible second. He was so tired. So done with this. There was no way he'd get to sort through any of the jumbled mess that'd been crammed into his mind in the last 12 hours. He'd never be able to. There wasn't a point.

He could feel the piercing blue stare in the way the hairs rose on the back of his neck, could almost smell it like a chill in the air. She'd just stand there, still and silent if he let her. Maybe he should. Consider it a break where he wouldn't have to socialize. Instead, he tossed a hand towel at her with a snap. "Come on, Cas. Multi-task. Dry and ogle at the same time."

She stepped forward and did just that.

He flicked the switch on the wall and cringed as the disposal screamed out a growl.

Dean woke the next morning on the battered sofa in the living room with a crick in his neck, a B scrawled on the back of his hand sometime during the night, and an overwhelming, unaccountable urge to feed everyone. Maybe pancakes. Or eggs. Or both. He put on coffee and headed out into the yard to run the idea past Cas before the guy took off without him and left him here for his mother hen instincts to take over. They could leave after breakfast, but before Dean felt the need to run a load of laundry.

He didn't exactly know where Cas had hidden himself, but "patrolling" probably meant the property boundary. He'd heard him a couple times in the night—conversations in the study and a quiet discussion at the top of the stairs—but he hadn't made out the words and he'd been too tired to bother waking up to listen.

The was sky was the dull, matte gray of predawn, draining the color from the rusted cars. Even the wind hadn't woken yet, leaving a chill to lay heavy over the yard. He could probably pray to Cas, but then all the Casses would hear it. Not that it would really matter, but for some reason he didn't want that.

He did a meandering circuit of the yard, then gave up and headed back to the coffee.

Then slammed to a stop at the sight of Sunshine on the porch. Familiar red plaid. Hair disheveled. Legs long and bare. Flannel shirt brushing her thighs, hanging low off one shoulder. Only a handful of buttons done up the front.

He nearly dropped back behind a car to hide. To get his brain working again. To catch his breath.

Before he could move, the other Dean came out of the house, rubbing his head, his stride drowsy and easy. He'd either slept in his gray Henely and rumpled jeans or picked them up off the floor where he'd dropped them in a pile last night. While the angel's attention stayed fixed on some point on the horizon, his attention focused entirely on her. He honed in on her, drawn like a magnet, bare feet padding against the deck.

He pressed a possessive hand to her hip and swept her hair from her shoulder to murmur against her neck, his words a gentle hum of "Mornin', Casserole." She tilted her head to give him better access, but had no other response that Dean could see. He should not be watching this.

"It's strange."

He spun to find C.C. well within his personal space, squinting at the scene on the porch, hands stuffed in the pockets of her coat.

"Jesus, Cas." His heart pounded against his chest, but he refused to press his hand to it. Damn angels and their ninja skills.

Instead of apologizing, she changed the subject. "Only Balthazar calls me that."

"Balthazar's a dick."

She hummed in mild agreement.

"Sam doesn't call you Cas?"

"Sam is respectful."

"Right. All impressed with meeting an Angel of the Lord."

"He's not prone to nicknames."

Yeah, that was Dean's thing. Sam mostly used them to make Dean happy and avoid confusion.

She hadn't looked away from the scene on the porch, mesmerized, like she was at the aquarium or watching a car accident. "It's difficult to understand," she said. "I have no interest in romantic entanglements and I don't know you."

"Way to come right out and say it."

"Are we not talking about it?"

"I wasn't planning on it. But you're right. It's weird."

She narrowed her eyes even further, pressing her lips into a line. "The shirt she's wearing is not attractive."

He didn't bother to correct her, that yeah, it kinda was. "Maybe not on you, but I make it look good."

She turned to him for the first time, her eyes appraising, sweeping from his hair to his boots and back. He arched an eyebrow. A moment of consideration and, despite her stoic cover, her face melted into a look he knew so, so well.

She was imagining how he might taste.

Recognizing it on Cas sent a jolt through his system, a shock down his spine, a warming in his gut, charging all his senses to high alert, pushing him to lean in with a smirk. He licked his lips, thinking of the texture of red plaid and skin, how her mussed hair would smell like an oncoming storm, and how that look was not nearly as foreign on her as it should be.

"You seen Cas?"

"What are you doing?" Thank God. There he was.

Pissed off and giving C.C. the stink eye, but what else was new? And his sudden appearance when he was in that kind of mood shouldn't make Dean relax.

The look on C.C.'s face had vanished. Or maybe he'd imagined it. Maybe he was fucking crazy.

"We're creeping on Bonnie and Clyde over there," Dean said.

C.C. asked, "Who?" at the same time that Cas asked, "Why?"

Dean shrugged. "Same reason you read so much smut yesterday. We're bored."

"Hmm." Cas turned to C.C. to explain, "He enjoys using confusing cultural references. You get used to it." His tone was sharper than usual. Like Cas was used to it because Cas knew everything about humanity and was really fucking smug about it.

C.C. looked less than impressed. As she should, because knowing something was a pop culture reference and understanding the reference were two very different things.

Dean cleared his throat and shoved all this weirdness behind them by nudging her arm and saying, "Hey. Have Sam hook you up with the smut today. You'll like it."

Cas rolled his eyes, and Dean leered at both of them.

She blinked. "Smut?"

"Carver Edlund's smut."

"Who?"

"What?!" Dean gawked at her, then turned to Cas, who looked almost smug again, then back. "Seriously? You don't have those stupid books where you come from?" That was just unfair. "Is it because I'm not in them?"

"She probably just doesn't know about them," Cas said.

Completely unfair. Ugh.

"So where have you been?" Dean asked. "I've been looking for you."

That brought Cas down a few notches. Enough for him to stuff his hands in his pockets and look guiltily over at a Honda. "There are a lot of people here."

"Yeah. And you left me to deal with them alone." And your twin is trying to jump me. And I'm having trouble remembering the downside to that.

"Sorry." He did not look sorry.

"I was thinking we'd have breakfast before heading out. If we leave too early, we might wake up the folks in the other universes, and they won't like that."

"Alright," Cas said. "We only need three more. Hopefully it won't take long. The ritual is almost ready here."

"Good."

Good.

He didn't really have anything else to say. This felt like the first time he'd gotten a second of calm without a million knotted thoughts fucking up his head. They were all still there somewhere, but out in the quiet yard with Cas, things felt almost normal.

The door slammed up at the house, and Sam stumbled down the stairs, still half asleep. The happy couple must have gone in to visit the coffee maker. Sam headed straight for them with a stupid half-wave. "Hey, guys."

Dean snapped, "What?" as Cas said, "Good morning, Sam."

"Hi, Cas. Uh. Castiel," he nodded to C.C. "Can I talk to Dean a minute?"

Dean could sense a discussion coming a mile away, and this was definitely going to be a discussion. Sam wanted to disrupt the weird, little calm he'd found for himself. Throw some angst and a hammer and some tears into its delicate little space. But Sam wanted to do it in private, so both angels needed to stay put.

Instead, they both nodded, like complete traitors. Cas said, "I'll see you after breakfast." Then they disappeared.

Damn it. Dean glared. "What?"

"You're gonna have all day with him, you know."

"That didn't answer the question."

"Fine." Sam looked over his shoulder like someone might be listening, and like he could really keep secrets from angels if they had any desire at all to listen. When he started talking, his voice was low and secretive. "Okay, I was gonna ask last night, but you passed out before I got a chance. When you're out today, could you try to find a reality that branches from ours recently?"

What? "What?"

"Like after the apocalypse."

"I don't have any control over where we go."

"I know, but it'd be helpful."

"Oh! Well if it'll be helpful, that makes all the difference!"

"Dean—"

"Why do you want to see a universe like ours?"

"Because." He checked over his shoulder again. "In every reality so far one of us took a swan dive to trap Lucifer in the cage. Okay?"

"So? Wait. One of us?"

"Yeah. Well." Sam shifted his weight. "In the Singer universe it was—um—you? I wasn't Lucifer's vessel. Jake was. Remember Ja—"

"Yeah."

"Right. So you consented to Michael and basically did the same thing I did—took control, grabbed Lucifer, and jumped in the pit. But that's not important."

Dean blinked. That's not important. Oh. Well then.

Sam's voice dropped again. "What's important is that somebody gets trapped in the cage and then Cas goes and gets them out. Every universe so far. Except ours."

Dean raised an eyebrow in surprise, but that was all he was going to give that. "And?"

"And I'm starting to wonder. Do you...did Cas get me out?"

Dean stared. Sam couldn't be serious. "Dude. What? No. Of course not. He would have said something."

"I know but...I'm starting to wonder. It's in every other time line. And in all of them I come back without a soul. Or you did in Reality D. And ours is the only one where it doesn't get fixed right away. Maybe our Cas was embarrassed that he did such a piss poor job of it."

"So he let you walk around soulless and didn't answer your prayers? No. He wouldn't have done that. We flat out asked him. He wouldn't lie about it."

"Dean...I'm starting to wonder."

"Stop saying that."

"It's just. There's weird stuff, okay?"

"Of course there's weird stuff. It's our lives. Our lives but where everyone has an evil goatee."

"No, like weird Cas stuff. Even the other Castiels...it's like they're scared of him. Or disgusted. They were making some plans for the ritual last night, and Sunshine said that our Cas would anchor it because he's more powerful than the rest of them. And the rest of them were like 'yeah, of course he is.' That's the reason he's the one out making the trips to all the other dimensions, he's got the mojo. But that doesn't make sense. What's he got that the rest of them don't?"

"Maybe he's just awesome. We already knew he was the best."

"But where'd he get the juice?"

"The guy works hard. How would I know what he's up to?"

"That's something else. We're the only time line that doesn't know everything our Cas is up to all the time."

"Yeah, because we're not his babysitters and we're not his naggy girlfriends."

Sam threw his hands in the air. "The day before yesterday, you were bitching about this. This exact issue. Now that other people are agreeing with you, you're gonna play devil's advocate?"

Dean scowled.

"Look, I'm not saying that he's doing anything bad. But it's weird. And he could be more open with us, and we could all band together more. We all need to trust each other more."

"And suspecting him of getting up to...to what? That's trusting each other?"

"If you could just find out. Ask him about it."

"Hey, Cas. We all think you're up to something sketchy and you might have gotten Sam out of hell and then lied about it. What do you have to say for yourself? Yeah. That'll go well."

"I don't mean interrogate him. I mean ask him. Be a sympathetic ear and a decent friend for once."

"The hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means, like I said, I don't think it's all his fault."

"It's mine."

"It's all of ours. And maybe we can learn from this and start doing better."

Dean growled and paced away then back, scraping a hand through his hair, dirt crunching under his boots. "I told you they were going to try to teach us a lesson. I told you."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Yeah, Dean. You sure did."

"This is stupid. It's Cas."

"Okay. Just. When you're out there today, see if you can find a universe that follows ours until after I get out of hell. Maybe the Cas from that universe will know something and it'll apply to us. Or, you know, he might be more likely to fess up to whatever he's up to if he's confessing to guys who aren't his people."

Dean scoffed. "His people."

"You know what I mean. Just try. You don't even have to get all the details yourself. Just send him here and I'll do it when I piece together his time line."

"I still don't have any control over where we go."

Sam got on his thinking face, eyes glazing over and aiming off towards the pinks and peaches of the sunrise. "Could it be that he's going to weird places on purpose? Covering his tracks?"

"Oh my God, Sam. No! You know what? We're gonna find a universe like ours, and bring someone here to tell you how wrong you are."

"Good."

"Great."

"Okay."

"Have fake Dean make you breakfast. We're out of here."

He turned to stalk off, to shout at Cas despite who might be listening, to disappear from this universe and not have to deal with this for a few hours. But when he turned, Sunshine stood in front of him, looking respectable in her blue raincoat with her hair combed.

"So you two are teaming up on me. Is the whole gang in on it or just the two of you?"

"You're angry," she said.

"No shit."

"Are you angry at us or at yourself because you know we're right?"

He stiffened before he took a step back, muscles in his arms burning against the tightening strain. "You," he said. "I'm angry at you."

"Your Castiel has kept many things from you."

"Seems to run in the family," he snapped. "You didn't tell us we were in a freaking alternate dimension. Or that you were sucking us into running your errands."

"I thought it would be easier for you. Your Castiel trusts my judgment. Perhaps more than he trusts his own."

"How's that work?"

Cas did not like explaining things. Not in any detail. Communicating in English, simplifying thousands of years of history and a whole bunch of quantum physics—he found the whole thing tedious. Dean'd told himself that, reminded himself, clung to it to to convince himself it wasn't that his friend was just keeping things from him to be difficult. And now Sunshine had the same put-upon expression, as if this was all obvious and Dean was slow to make the connections she saw so easily. Seeing the look on her face raised his blood pressure to a throb in his ears. He clenched his jaw.

"It's simpler to follow orders than to lead," she said. "It's our base state. We are built to obey, to be soldiers. Leading is foreign, and he's uncertain and doubting, fighting against thousands of years of habit and experience, fighting against his own instincts, the very core of his being. There's the war against Raphael, and there's a war within him. It's wearing on him, and it will wear him down until he's nothing but a shell, and no one will be close enough to him to notice. My appearance grants him a reprieve. He can follow orders again, and they're orders that he can trust, since he can trust no one but himself."

Dean felt sick.

"Your Castiel is alone, and I am very concerned where his choices will lead him."

His nails bit into the palms of his hands, his knuckles white, his arms tensed from wrist to shoulder. "But you think you can handle it. Leading your side in the war plus—what?—an army of Castiels?"

She nodded. "I can handle it."

Dean snorted. "You know I'm gonna call bullshit on that."

She tilted her head in consideration, an innocent gesture betrayed by the building, the charging of her grace, pressurizing and sizzling just out of sight. "Why? Because I could only handle it with your help? Because I shouldn't have to take this on alone? Because we're stronger together? I had this argument a year ago. You'll be pleased to hear that you won. I already have the assistance you're offering. That's what makes me stronger than your Castiel."

"Think so, do ya? From what I hear, he's the one with the extra batteries."

He could practically feel Sam's displeasure. What? Was he not supposed to say anything? Maybe Sam should make a flow chart of who was supposed to know what.

"If it came to a fight," she deadpanned, "I think I could defeat him. I've been told I have very sharp elbows."

"And he's got a mean right hook."

She smiled. Dean didn't return it. "I'm not the one you should offer to help."

He let out a breath, let his arms fall slack against his sides, let the venom drain from his tone. "He's not gonna listen."

Her voice had the bite of an order, a dark, rumbling gathering of thunder.

"Make him."