Dean woke up disoriented with the distinct feeling of a warm body pressed against his own. Stretching a little and rolling his back, he groggily moved closer to the heat and the pleasure found in encompassing it. It took a whole of 45 seconds for his brain to realize that his wings were gone and the only person he could currently be spooning was Castiel. His eyes snapped open as he harshly propelled himself away from his sleep partner, effectively throwing himself tangled in all of the blankets onto the floor.

There was a strangely feminine groan, a shifting on the bed above him and a sudden light that attacked his senses. As his eyes adjusted he froze, horror and awe washing over him in equal parts.

"Lisa?"

This wasn't right, it couldn't be happening. Lisa was dead, she was…

"Dean, baby, what's wrong? Was it another bad dream?"

"B-but you…and I was…"

"What are you talking about? Sweetie, come back to bed, it's freezing."

Trying to stand and put as much distance between himself and this horrible delusion, Dean slipped on the blankets before landing heavily on his ass for the second time that morning. The sound of a baby crying out resonated from the far corner of the room – his old room, he came to realize. As if it was completely mundane, Lisa yanked the blankets back onto the bed with another groan before curling into her own warm impression.

"Ugh, you woke up Ben – you get to get him back to sleep."

"…Ben?"

It must have been the tone that caught her, his previously dead bed warmer turning to him with annoyance and concern in her sleep deprived eyes.

"Yeah, Ben; you know, our son? Are you okay?"

It was like working on autopilot, his body moving of its own accord as he rose from his position on the floor to the crib. There, nestled between blankets and plush animals, lied his son. When Ben's tiny, blue-green eyes met his, the cry died in his infant throat as his face melted into a smile.

With trepidation he reached his shaking hand into the crib and ran his fingers through the child's black peach fuzz – his child's peach fuzz. There was a soft coo before the boy closed his eyes and the magic of the moment ended with an almost pained exhale on Dean's part. Something had a vice grip on his chest and he needed to escape. As quietly as he could, he rummaged through the drawers in the nearby dresser before throwing on the first complete outfit he found followed closely by the dusted leather jacket that he found over the back of a nearby chair. Somehow finding that rather than the trench coat that he had grown accustomed to made the tightness even worse.

He crept past the now sleeping Lisa, apparently having decided Dean was just being stupid, making a move to the door before remembering what Castiel and he had been hunting before this whole Twilight Zone episode began. As silently as he could he searched through the kitchen until he found the old silver set his mother had owned when they were children. Memories of failed scolding about the dangers of the dinner knives in the set resurfaced as Dean located and pocketed two. He knew it was a long shot, but he vaguely remembered Lisa loving lamb so he checked the fridge for thawing lamb chops.

For possibly the first time in a long time, luck appeared to be on his side. Pouring the vague amount of blood and melted fat into a water bottle, Dean hoped it would suffice as he replaced the lamb and went to leave the apartment. One key ring hanging next to the door stopped him in his tracks, somehow ridiculously familiar despite never having owned a car in his life.

"There's no way…"

Upon reaching the previously unused parking structure he found himself face to face with Castiel's baby. It was slowly becoming some kind of Inception bullshit – his life until waking suddenly seeming like a nightmare and the sweetest dream by comparison. Swallowing his fears, he knew he needed to get answers, he needed to find Cass.

It was strange how easy it was to recall the location of the destitute church, like going home despite the lack of a lasting connection. Pulling onto the road, his stomach dropped. What was once a sleazy, red light district now stood fresh developments waiting for their apple pie owners to make a home of them. His only chance of making sense of it all was gone as surely as he had thought of it. Dean was beginning to suspect that he was well and truly alone.

Making a mental list of the people he met with Castiel, he soon realized with a shocking clarity that he had never acquired the one thing that would make any of them useful – a last name. Reluctantly, he turned the car around and tried to remember the way as he drove to Pastor Jim's church. The eight hour drive seemed more like days as the sun made its way across the horizon.

Within the first hour his phone began going off, startling him when he could not recall when he had grabbed it in the first place. At the first and only rest stop he bothered with, only after filling up and checking his tire pressure he scrolled through his missed calls. Three from Lisa, two from Sam –no shock there – and one from… His finger stilled on the directional button. There was no way that could be right - their mother had died in a house fire when they were kids. She couldn't possibly…

God help him, he couldn't bring himself to dial the number. Instead, he shut off and pocketed the device before sliding into the driver's seat and pulling away. He barely recognized the church as he pulled in, his gut twisting further into knots as he tried to make sense of it all. The building was abandoned, weather worn and boarded from the public. Where he remembered flowers and fruit bearing trees now stood weeds and petrified Joshuas.

Despite the outward appearance he couldn't bring himself to believe it to be true, he had to see it from within with his own eyes. He cautiously approached the building, keeping one hand on the handle of one of the silver knives as he vaguely remembered reading somewhere about coyotes being native to Ohio. What had originally made him nervous now set a deep fear in his belly as he used his elbow to break in the kitchen window.

Hoisting himself in through the window he knocked a cup over, sending it crashing to the ground. The instant he saw it he knew he wasn't crazy. There, in pieces on the floor, was the cup he had used two mornings prior – the mug with the joke that wasn't funny, something about Enochian and goats. He would have recognized the bizarre symbol typography anywhere.

"Cass, man, where are you?"

Dean wasn't sure if he should be worried or frustrated so he stuck with both as he made his way through the destitute halls to where he remembered Castiel's room to be, hoping for a clue of any kind as to know how to get back. Upon reaching his destination, he found the door ajar as it had been the morning prior to this one, it was hard for him to keep the hopeful feeling inside of him in check. Despite the dust and debris, it was as he remembered. There, on the nightstand, was the note Castiel had insisted they leave with the address of the warehouse they suspected to be inhabited with the Djinn. Once again Dean fought with his memory for the slightest clue as to what happened. He remembered the ride in the Impala in vague impressions and the idea that it was enjoyable…

Something shifted in his periphery, making him tense up and spin around with the blade drawn only to find a light behind the closet door. Cautiously, he approached while a pit in his gut threatened to swallow him whole before he threw caution to the wind and almost yanked the door off its hinges in his eagerness to end the suspense. There, in the insect addled space, hung two dilapidated human bodies on the verge of mummification. They almost resembled morbid versions of those Kool-Aid juice packets that he drank as a kid only to re-inflate them and blow air and small droplets of the liquid onto his younger brother. He felt the food in his stomach curdle at the comparison, the feeling only becoming more acidic as he went to back away and ran into something.

As he turned to face the body between him and the room, he found a sickly thin girl no older than fifteen, bags under her eyes and dirt spread unevenly across her frame. Like a weakened television signal she flickered out, leaving him alone in the now pitch black room.

"They are tricky creatures – crafty and sly. It would be unwise to accept a wish from one."

Castiel's words wrung in his head, realization dawning on him as his eyes fixed on the rumpled sheets of the abandoned bed. Was this all a result of something Dean had wished? But what could it have been? Certainly not Lisa keeping the child; he regretted the whole mess, yeah, but he had never loved her in a way that was necessary for him to want this kind of future. He would rather have Castiel, damned or not. Then he remembered his mother's number on his Caller ID. Surely it couldn't have…Deep in his heart he knew the truth, yet the idea that one person could change the outcome of his entire life so drastically was daunting. His mother surviving that freak fire, a loving childhood and possibly a normal life.

Sam's life probably, by comparison, changed very little having never witnessed his father's drunken abuse and was given the closest thing to a normal childhood already – Dean having taken on both parental roles to spare him the pain. He vaguely wondered how their mother surviving had changed their relationship. Were they close at all? Dismissing those thoughts, he clutched the paper in his hand as made his way back to the car. He couldn't afford to think about Sam, not now, not when Castiel might be out there somewhere hurt or alone.

The thought alone unsettled him. Sure, he hardly knew the guy from Adam but he's saved his sorry ass, taken him in when no one else would have and continued to treat him like a human being – granted, a celebrity. Castiel didn't deserve whatever this wish had done to him. Starting the Impala and putting her in drive, he didn't dare touch the dial as he raced off to find the fucker that screwed up his mess of a life seven ways to Sunday.