A/N: Merry Christmas Day to those who celebrate it! And happy Monday to those that don't. Here's an early update for you all as a gift. ^_^

Chapter 3

Mary sat on her cot in her small quarters, elbows braced on her thighs as she held up her phone to stare at the screen. Text after text stared back at her, her own words giving multiple apologies, pleading for understanding, asking if they could just talk. All of it went unanswered.

She put the phone away, hurt and a little stung that Dean had cut her out like this. She hadn't been actively involved in what happened with the sea witch and Castiel. If she hadn't been injured and in the hospital, of course she would have helped her boys rescue Cas, and she certainly wouldn't have let Ketch just seal the angel into the cave with the sea witch to begin with. Mary didn't think she should be blamed for actions that weren't hers.

And yes, she was choosing to still work with the British Men of Letters, despite all that, but they got good results. They were systematically and efficiently ridding the country of all monsters. Didn't that balance out their flaws and imperfections? They were saving lives. And Cas was okay; it had all worked out in the end.

Except that Dean apparently wasn't going to forgive her for what he perceived to be a betrayal. Sam might have been more understanding, but he was siding with his older brother on this one. And Cas…well, Mary hadn't tried reaching out to him.

Perhaps she should have. But despite her point about having not been involved in the sea witch incident, she nevertheless felt a modicum of guilt. Castiel had come with her boys to look for her, to rescue her, and had been hurt in the process. And Mary was not oblivious to Ketch's cavalier attitude toward anything not human. He'd made plenty of condescending comments about Cas in the time she had worked with him. She had just disregarded them in favor of keeping their team running smoothly.

Because the ultimate goal in all this was to rid the United States of monsters, so her boys wouldn't have to be hunters anymore. They could have the lives she'd wanted for them, the freedom to do anything else they might want to. Her baby Sammy had gotten into Stanford.

Mary gave herself a small shake. Her boys would understand. She had to make sacrifices in the meantime so they could have a better future.

She pushed herself to her feet and decided to go for a walk, hoping to clear her head. The halls were empty as she meandered through them. The British team on the ground in America wasn't very big. Mick handled the desk stuff, there were a few lab techs, and a handful of musclemen, but Ketch—and now Mary—were the ones who primarily took down the monsters.

She was approaching a corner when she heard Ketch's voice from around the bend. Not wanting him to ask her if anything was wrong, Mary slowed to a stop and started to turn around, when a snippet of conversation gave her pause.

"Just keep the body on ice. The Old Men want to see if they can think up any experiments to perform on it."

"It is a curious situation," someone replied. Mary thought she recognized the voice of one of the techs. "An angel possessing a vessel without a human soul."

She frowned. They were talking about an angel? Why?

"Yes, well," Ketch said blandly. "That is of no interest to me, unless you can somehow come up with more fun toys from dissecting it."

The sound of retreating footsteps had Mary peeking around the corner as Ketch and the tech disappeared down another juncture. Her stomach churned slightly at the callous mention of dissection. Of an angel.

She supposed if she didn't know Castiel, she might not have cared one way or the other. From what she'd heard, angels had caused a lot of destruction to humans, and Dean had had plenty of bad things to say about them in general, Cas being the exception.

But that comment about an angel's vessel without a soul…that was niggling something in the back of her mind…

Mary crept forward, stepping lightly across the hall to the only room in this section of corridor. She didn't know what it was used for, but it wasn't locked. She pushed the door open a crack and slipped inside, then flicked the light switch. Horror stole the oxygen from her lungs at the body lying on a metal slab.

No, it couldn't be…

Mary gaped in stupefaction for a long moment, unable to fully believe what she was seeing—trying to rationalize the horrifying sight before her eyes. But nothing could explain why Castiel was in this room, laid out like a corpse.

She finally jolted herself out of her stupor and moved closer, reaching out to touch him. She recoiled sharply. He was cold. Cold as in…

No, the British Men of Letters wouldn't…

And yet Mary knew with sinking certainty that they would. They had. Anything not human was a scourge, creatures not worthy of life.

And that included angels.

She pivoted and fled, speed walking her way back to her quarters. Her chest was tight with constricted breaths as she prayed she wouldn't run into anyone. Thankfully, she made it back to her bunk without incident, and shut the door as she pulled out her phone and dialed Dean's number. It rang once before going to voicemail, like he had hit Ignore.

She pulled up the unanswered text thread and began typing. "I need to talk to you about Castiel. It's urgent."

The return call was almost immediate, and Mary briefly fumbled with the swipe to answer it.

"It was those British dicks, wasn't it?" Dean snarled. "Where did they take him?"

So they knew Castiel was missing. Except, missing didn't cover it…

"Dean," she said, throat tightening. "I swear, I didn't know. I just found—"

"Where is he?" Dean demanded, each word enunciated darkly.

"I'm sorry," Mary repeated, closing her eyes as her voice cracked. "I…I found his body. I- he's gone, Dean. I'm sorry."

Never had a sincere apology felt so hollow. She hadn't been behind this, but she'd sided with those who were. Just like with the sea witch situation.

Mary didn't think her choosing to stay with her boys would have prevented this, but she wasn't blind anymore to how wrong her choice of allegiance had been.

There was silence on the other end for a prolonged moment.

"No," Dean finally bit out. "Cas isn't dead."

Mary shook her head, hating herself with each passing second. "His body's in a British Men of Letters' storage room, Dean. Cold. I checked."

She heard muffled voices in the background, probably Sam.

"Cas is still alive," Dean reiterated a beat later. "I don't know how or where, but he is. And we're going to find him." He paused. "The only question is, are you gonna help us, or stand with the bastards we're going to mow down?"

Mary closed her eyes again. How had everything gone so wrong? How had she made such a horrible mistake?

She wanted to convince Dean not to come here, not to start a fight they probably wouldn't win. But she couldn't bring herself to try; she knew he'd never listen. As much as she hated it, Dean had to see for himself. And, well, Castiel's body didn't belong here with a group of barbarians who wanted to dissect him. So Mary would choose again.

"You."

"Great," Dean said, but it was harsh and brittle. "Where?"

Dean's knuckles were white around the steering wheel as he bore down on the gas pedal with single-minded intent. Sam was a silent, firm presence in the passenger seat.

They were going to war.

And maybe they would be outnumbered, but that had never stopped them before, not when fallen angels had been running rampant, not when Leviathan had been slowly infiltrating the corporate world, and not when all of Heaven and Hell had been after their heads. These British douches had no idea who they were messing with. But they were going to find out the hard way.

Dean's jaw tightened, and he cleared his throat. "Y-you're sure about this soul bond?" he asked. "That if Cas were…gone, we would have felt it?"

Sam didn't answer right away. "I have to believe we would have," he finally said quietly. "I mean, that has to be why we felt sick earlier."

"Mom said she found his body."

And that coiled a knot of dread in his gut like nothing else. Dean couldn't even distinguish what was his own anxiety and what might have been some echo of Cas's feelings filtering through this weird connection Sam thought they had.

"Maybe they exorcised him," Sam said carefully.

Dean tightened his grip around the wheel. Neither of them wanted to speculate on what the British Men of Letters would have wanted to do that for.

"Think he went back to Heaven, then?" Dean asked.

Sam was silent for another beat. "Maybe."

And though most of the dicks upstairs seemed to still not like Cas much, hopefully they wouldn't have imprisoned him or something. And again, they'd know if Cas had been killed…right?

"Maybe he's off looking for another vessel," Sam went on.

"Yeah, well, we're getting the old one back," Dean growled.

He had warned Ketch. And the Brit had crossed a line no one got away with—messing with Dean's family.

The small storage facility the British Men of Letters were using as their base came into view up ahead, just a handful of shipping containers set out in a tetris-like configuration, surrounded by a perimeter fence. There was a single armed guard at the gate, and then another up near the door to the compound.

Dean narrowed his steely gaze and rammed the gas. The Impala's engine gave a mighty roar as it crashed right through the flimsy chain-link fence, forcing the guard to dive out of the way. Dean then slammed on the brakes and cranked the wheel, skidding Baby around into a sideways stop. He opened his door, gun already in hand, and shot the guard running after them. Sam was out and shooting the one on his side at the same time. Both dropped, but it looked like they were wearing Kevlar.

Dean marched over to make sure his guy was out, then grabbed a set of zip-ties off the guard's own belt and secured his wrists and ankles. When he straightened, he'd found Sam had done the same to the other guy, though one of his shots had found flesh and the guy's arm was bleeding.

Dean looked around intently. That seemed it for the first line of defense.

He swept around the front of the Impala, following Sam to the security enclosure in front of the door, the gate having been left wide open when the second guard ran out to stop them.

Before they reached the inner door, it clicked and started to grate open. They whipped their weapons up, only to startle when it was their mom who stepped out. Mary flicked her gaze over the downed guards before gesturing them inside.

"I put the security cameras on a loop," she said. "But someone will figure it out eventually."

Dean's brows rose in dubious surprise. A couple of months ago, she couldn't even use a computer. And then he'd thought playing Words with Friends with her had been a big step. What else had his mom done and learned since leaving them?

Dean shoved down that train of thought and the maelstrom of emotions it evoked. "Take us to Cas," he demanded.

The sympathetic and guilty expression on her face made Dean want to punch something. Preferably Ketch. But that was second in priority to finding Cas. Or at least his vessel.

Mary led them through a series of corridors that were surprisingly empty. But from what she'd briefly told them over the phone, this wasn't a large operation. Still, someone was bound to notice something was wrong and sound the alarm.

But for the moment, they made it to a darkened room. Mary opened the doors and flipped a light switch. Dean came to an abrupt halt.

"I'm sorry," Mary said softly at his side.

Dean could only stare. She'd told them…but he hadn't exactly believed it. Now he was faced with the very tangible sight of Cas lying on a metal slab, face pale and eyes closed. What if he and Sam were wrong? That nightmare…there'd been bright light and pain, just like when angels die.

"We need to find out what happened," Sam spoke up hoarsely.

Dean gave himself a sharp shake. Right. Action; they needed to take action.

And this time, Dean wasn't going to show Ketch any mercy.

Sam stepped closer to Cas's body and started looking it over. "I don't see any wounds. He might have been exorcised after all."

"Exorcised?" Mary repeated.

"Yeah," Sam said tightly. "We know they have the tech for it."

A lump formed in Dean's throat as he thought about the last time Cas had been subjected to that, his true form reduced to a weakened puddle barely shimmering with life.

"But why?" he snapped. "Why boot Cas out of his vessel and keep the body like this?"

Sam shrugged helplessly. "We need to find Ketch and ask."

Oh, Dean was definitely on board with that.

"But if Cas was exorcised," Sam continued, "he probably escaped. Multidimensional wavelengths of celestial intent can pass through walls."

Great, so Cas was floating around out there somewhere, if he wasn't hurt like last time…

Mom's expression had shifted in the past few moments, a mixture of deep thought and dread. "Angels outside their…"

"Vessel," Sam supplied.

"Vessel…look like…pure energy?"

"I guess," Sam answered.

"Not important right now," Dean said snippily. "We need to find Ketch and beat his ass until he tells us exactly what he did to Cas."

"Oh god," Mary breathed.

Dean and Sam snapped their gazes to her. She lifted wide eyes to meet theirs.

"Ketch had this glass container, like a lantern or something. It had some kind of glowing blue energy inside."

Dean's heart leaped into his throat, and he exchanged a startled look with Sam.

Sam swallowed hard. "That sounds like grace."

So the British dickbags had exorcised Cas to capture his true form. Dean seethed with mounting fury at the thought of why they'd want to do that. But at least it sounded like Cas was, in fact, alive. Dean hadn't been wrong about that.

"Okay," Sam started, "so Cas is probably somewhere here. Mom, stay with his vessel?"

"You can't be thinking of taking everyone on by yourself," she protested. "And I know the layout of this place better than you."

"Then give us a run-down," Dean countered. "But we can't risk losing Cas's vessel."

"And if we split up, there's less chance of us all getting caught," Sam added. "They might not know you're helping us yet."

A muscle in Mary's jaw ticked, but she nevertheless proceeded to give them a quick description of the compound's setup and where Ketch's office was. "I have no idea where they'd be keeping that container, though."

"That's fine," Dean replied. "Ketch will tell us."

"Do not underestimate him," Mary warned sharply. "He's dangerous."

Dean paused long enough to give her a silent look that asked why she had chosen a man like that over her sons, compounded by the disappointment and bitterness still festering inside him because of it.

But he didn't say anything out loud, and simply turned on his heel to head back out into the corridor. Sam joined him a second later, and they started navigating their way to Ketch's office. So far the alarm still hadn't been sounded, but it was only a matter of time.

They'd only taken a few turns when Sam stopped abruptly. "Hold up. I think- I think I can sense Cas."

Dean's brows shot upward. "Seriously?" He tried to see if he was feeling anything to suggest the angel was physically nearby, but it was hard to filter out his own tempestuous emotions. "You sure?"

Sam nodded carefully. "Yeah. Let's- let's go this way."

Dean's mouth thinned into a tight line, hoping they weren't wasting precious minutes on a wild goose chase. But he went ahead and followed his brother down another corridor and to what looked like a storage room. Yet when they slipped inside, all Dean saw were crates and weapons. He exhaled loudly in disappointment and frustration. Now they'd been turned around and would have trouble finding Ketch's office.

Except…he was starting to feel a weird thrum, like a knot of despair and fear roiling in the center of his sternum.

Sam moved toward a large cabinet and flung it open. Dean blinked in dismay at the glass cylinder sitting inside on a shelf, a glowing blue sphere simmering inside.

"Oh my god, Cas," Sam uttered.

Dean stood there in stunned stupefaction. He'd seen angels' true forms before, but to see Cas's like this…stuffed into a box like he was some kind of plasma sample instead of an angel—or a sentient being…it was somehow worse than if he'd just been in a cage but still in his vessel.

The light pulsed, and Dean felt a spurt of disorientation followed by shock as the grace began to unfurl.

"Cas?" he called, even though he knew his friend couldn't answer like this. Yet he felt another wave of sheer relief that coincided with the grace giving off another vibrant surge. Dean exchanged a bewildered look with Sam. Guess that 'profound bond' or whatever had even more layers to it.

"Hang on, Cas," Sam said, reaching for the container's handle. "We're gonna get you out of here." He grimaced as he lifted the cylinder off the shelf like it was canned goods. "Mom's with your vessel," Sam assured the angel. Dean hoped Cas understood.

There was a nervous flutter in his stomach, suggesting Cas could, but Dean could tell he was worried for them.

And this bond thing was starting to weird him out, so Dean turned to the door. But the moment he and Sam stepped back out into the hall, they found armed guards rushing down from both ends of the corridor.

Shit.

Dean whipped his gun out as bullets started firing. He only managed to get one shot off before he had to duck back into the storage room.

Sam grunted and stumbled over the threshold, dropping the cylinder on the floor and catching himself on a stack of crates. He shot a hand up to clutch his shoulder, which was suddenly oozing blood out between his fingers.

Dean cursed, and spun back around to shove what he could in front of the door to block it. "Sam?"

"Fine," he heard his brother grit out.

The door gave a jolt as a heavy weight slammed into it from the other side, sending one of the crates clattering to the floor. Whatever was in them wasn't heavy enough to form a barricade. Dammit, they were pinned down and outgunned.

The doors burst open and Dean staggered back several steps as a handful of armed men rushed in and surrounded them. Then there was a bright flare of blue light from behind him, and Dean snapped his gaze to the side to see that Sam had opened the cylinder. Maybe Cas could get back to Mom and his own body. And though Dean was loathe to surrender, they didn't have much choice.

"Dean, shut your eyes!" Sam shouted.

Dean instinctively squeezed his eyes shut, having no idea what his brother was doing. There was a gust of power and blazing light that almost pierced his eyelids, and Dean threw an arm up to shield them more. Heavy thuds followed, and he risked peeking at the floor. All the guards were completely unconscious.

Dean might have been okay with Cas smiting their eyes out, but whatever.

He looked up and around for that phantasm of grace. "Cas?"

"I've got him."

Dean turned to his brother, who was standing across the room, looking wide-eyed and a little unbalanced. He narrowed his eyes sharply. "What do you mean you've got him?" Sam wasn't holding a puddle of grace like he had the last time Cas had been outside his vessel.

Sam slowly straightened and rolled his shoulder—the one that was supposed to have a bullet wound. But though there was a little blood on his shirt, his range of movement seemed perfectly fine.

"I gave Cas permission."

Dean's jaw went slack and he sputtered soundlessly for a moment. "You did what? Are you saying he's possessing you?"

"Yeah. Or, hitching a ride. He doesn't want to take control, other than dealing with those guys." Sam gestured to the guards.

Dean gaped at his brother. Cas was possessing Sam? Oh, this just got way more weirder than the soul bond thing!

"Whose idea was this?" he blurted.

Sam shot him a bitch-face. "Mine. We were trapped, and I didn't want to risk them taking Cas away again." He crossed his arms. "You can't seriously be upset about this. It's Cas."

Dean raised his palms in deference. "No, I know. And I'm glad you were thinking on your feet. I just figured you of all people would be against sharing space with an angel."

Sam pursed his mouth. "Actually, I think my experience made it easier. I knew what to expect, and like I said, this is Cas. I trust him."

Dean wanted to point out that he did, too, but he did wonder why he hadn't thought to let Cas hitch a ride with him. Maybe because, as Sam said, Dean had never been possessed by an angel before. It wasn't on his radar in the same way.

"Is Cas okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," Sam replied. "And he can hear you."

Oh, awesome…

Dean tried to shake off the weirdness. "Okay, let's get out of here before more goons show up." He moved toward the door, pausing to peek out cautiously. The hallway was clear.

Sam stepped out first and Dean took up the rear, keeping a scrutinizing eye on his brother. He really wasn't able to detect that Cas was in there at all. And it wasn't like he had a problem with Cas and Sam sharing head space if they were both willing and it saved Cas's life. As long as Cas stayed in the backseat, because Dean did not want to see Cas's mannerisms on his brother. Or hear that deeper voice…ugh, that would probably scar him for life.

They needed to get Cas back where he belonged, ASAP.

And then they needed to make sure the Brits never came after their friend again…