Castiel felt something pulling at the back of his mind, but at the moment he couldn't be bothered to place it, his heart was still racing too fast for him to concentrate on anything else.
Ophelia came out of the bathroom, and he was relieved to see she was no longer covered in blood, but he could feel his face pulling down into an expression he wasn't sure how to classify when he saw her torn shirt in her hand, and claw marks marring her neck. The raw-red scratches still bubbled with small pinpricks of blood that he could trace past her collar bone, but they dipped and were obscured by the white expanse of his shirt.
Another feeling pulled at him, he was sure it was a feeling. This one didn't make his heart race like the last one, but made it more, flop, that seemed an appropriate word choice.
Looking at her covered by his shirt made it flip one more time before he was able to get it under control. She had the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and he could see scrapes along her left arm, where she had hit the door to the hotel as she attempted to drag Dean in after her; and while the shirt was long on her, it wasn't near long enough to justify her wearing a pair of pajama boxers with them.
He felt his throat forget how to swallow, and considered telling her of the virtues of modest clothing, but looking at her again, he could see just how tired and scared she was.
Seeing her scared seemed to flip a switch in him, and he was suddenly able to label his emotion: he had been scared, too.
Only, it wasn't just scared, it had felt like more. Like… Like being terrified.
She had rammed the door open with her shoulder, Dean practically lying on her back, and he'd lost his breath at the sight.
There had been so much blood that he wasn't sure how much was hers and how much was Dean's, and her shirt hadn't really been a shirt at that point- it was more a piece of string holding up a ripped cloth; it hadn't been enough to hide the scratch marks along her stomach, nor the way her stomach had heaved when her legs tried to give out on her.
She had to place Dean on the ground to drag him through the doorway, and the blood that had soaked her back was enough to snap Castiel out of his stupor. He took Dean's weight from her after her first attempt to get him into the room had resulted in scrapes along her left arm.
He had wanted to go to her first, he was sure it wasn't a good sign when she had collapsed just inside the entrance, dry heaves making her back arch and almost-scabbed wounds crack open; but Dean was clearly the worse of the two, and Castiel always went where he was needed most.
Dean had been stabbed in the gut, just below his rib cage, and the paleness of his skin made the freckles on his face stand out like violent jabs of ink. He shook from cold and shock and fear, but his jaw clenched down in determination, and even when Castiel jabbed at the wound a little too hard Dean hadn't yelled out; merely flared his nostrils and gulped in air through tight teeth.
He had made quick work of healing Dean, and if he was a little sloppy in the deliverance it was merely because his hands shook slightly and he could still hear Ophelia heaving behind him, the door still open next to her.
The bright day outside played unnervingly with her skin, highlighting just how gruesome a sight she truly was, and the sun that wove through her hair wavered as she shook, even with her arms wrapped around her middle in a move he knew was meant to hold herself together.
Kneeling down in front of her, he placed a hand on her back, "Where is Sam?"
"He took the Impala to Bobby's yesterday morning; there was something wrong, and he went to go check it out," she said in a voice that didn't waver, and he momentarily marveled at how strong humans could be, knowing that this was the reason she was so important in the war.
"Alright. Where are your clothes?" She shook her head at him, which he took to mean that they were still in the Impala.
"I've got a pair of boxers I wore to bed last night, but this shirt's been doing double-duty as pajama and day clothing," he could hear the unshed tears in her voice, "is Dean going to be ok?"
"Yes. He will sleep for a while more, but he will be fine by tomorrow," Castiel looked at her closer, trying to see if there were any large wounds that would need attending to. With a slight hand movement, he went to cover a cut in her side that was sluggishly bleeding.
"Don't you dare," she coughed, sending a small spasm of pain through her stomach. "I can do this myself, I just," she sighed, relaxing her body, "I think I'm going to go take a shower."
The effort it took her to stand made Castiel hover next to her, but he knew that if she wouldn't accept him healing her wounds, she wouldn't accept his help in the simple matter of standing. The sight of her shirt sent another spasm through his heart, and had him pulling his tie over his head so he could pull his shirt off (he still hadn't quite mastered buttons, and this was no time to try and figure them out).
"Here, it is cleaner than your current shirt," he held it out to her, and she paused at the bathroom door, her boxers and a clean towel in her left hand.
"Thank you," she smiled at him, and he felt that thing tugging at his mind again; he didn't know how to classify it, but it always made him want to keep her smiling.