It was Dean's raised voice, the heated rumble of it, that finally broke through the trance of Kevin's concentration. He blinked hard against the gritty feeling under his eyelids and shook his head, swallowing the dryness that had built at the back of his throat. As though paying notice to it suddenly made it more real, his stomach yawned in hunger, a flash of dizziness that made him take a shaky breath.

Right. Yes. Eating. Eating was good. He should go do that. And maybe find out why Dean was shouting, too.

As he followed the sound of Dean's voice into the library, however, he was greeted with a perplexing sight: Sam slumped in one of the chairs, pale to the point of appearing wan, and Dean bracing himself against the backs of one of the other chairs, as though he had just been presented with terrible news. Both of them looked up as Kevin ventured slowly into the library, their eyes widening.

"Kevin." Dean said it with such a tone of disbelief that Kevin was fairly certain they had both forgotten he was here.

Kevin's eyes darted back and forth between them. "Am I interrupting something?"

"You were here the whole time?" Sam asked.

"I've been here for hours," Kevin replied slowly. "Upstairs."

"And the angel never even..." Dean let out a forced exhalation. "So they are after Cas."

"Or didn't know Kevin was here," Sam interjected.

"Wait." Kevin held up a hand. "There was an angel here?"

"Couldn't have been for long." Dean rubbed at his eyes with one hand. "I don't imagine he'd have left you alive, if he'd had time to investigate. We got here at just the right time." He looked up with an odd expression. "You didn't hear the gunshots?"

But Kevin's mind was focused on something entirely different. "Isn't this place warded against angels?"

Dean shook his head.

Closing his eyes, Kevin took a deep breath. "The angels know I'm a Prophet. By now, they know I have the angel tablet. You're telling me it's safer here than anywhere else, but it's not warded against angels?"

"Warding it against angels means warding it against Cas," Dean said flatly. "That's not an option."

"Cas isn't an -" Kevin began, but Dean shot him such a stern look that it stilled his tongue.

"We don't know that," he said, his tone simmering. "The guy's had memory things before. He's worse than a bad soap opera. For all we know he'll snap out of it and come peacocking in any second now."

Sharing a quick glance with Sam, Kevin decided to let it lie. Dean saw the look pass between them and his brow furrowed, but instead of saying anything, he turned to Sam. "Did he give you any other clues?"

Sam shook his head wearily. "I've told you the whole conversation. He's out of the cage. He needs a vessel. The angels are pissed at Cas, and they're not powerless - not completely, anyway." He licked his lips and brought the heels of his hands up to press against his eyes. "You woke me up before he could really get into anything else."

"Who is 'he?'" Kevin interjected.

"Lucifer," Dean replied shortly.

"Lucifer? As in Satan, Lucifer?" Kevin's eyes darted between Sam and Dean, who suddenly didn't seem to want to look at him.

"It's a long story," Dean finally said, and then something clearly occurred to him, his face going blank. "That means Michael's out, too."

Somehow, Sam managed to look even more stricken. "And he already has a vessel."

Swearing, Dean started to pace. "Great. So we've got two archangels on the loose, and one has a vessel and a really good reason to be pissed at Cas. We've got who knows how many other angels pissed off at Cas for breaking the world, some of them have vessels, and they somehow know about this place. We've got Cas on angel sabbatical in the hospital with no idea what's going on. We've got you on three percent battery and Lucifer in your head. Am I forgetting anything?"

"Crowley in the dungeon and Abaddon MIA?" Sam suggested.

"Angel tablet?" Kevin added. "Also, Crowley? Dungeon? What?"

"Cas is exposed in that hospital," Sam pointed out. "And he doesn't know enough to protect himself. Go get him. I'll bring Kevin up to speed."

"He's probably safer there than here," Dean argued. "If the angels know we're here, then they'll assume Cas is here, and this place is going to be an angel magnet. He's hidden in plain sight there."

"Are you willing to bet his life on that?" Sam asked. "If he's here, we can at least banish the angels. If he's there, and they find him..."

"Shit," Dean muttered, rubbing his eyes. "Fine. I'll be back in an hour." Still grumbling under his breath, Dean swiped the car keys from the table and stalked out of the room.

"Visiting hours were over at eight," the floor nurse called in a bored tone of voice as Dean passed the nurse's station.

"I know," Dean said, slowing and flashing her the best smile he could manage. It wasn't up to his usual standard. She didn't seem fazed. "I'm just - I'm here to see Cas. Uh, Castiel Novak? Room 8C?"

"It's ten past nine," the nurse said pointedly.

Sighing inwardly, Dean decided that the convenient fiction might work faster than trying to sweet talk his way past. "I know, I just -" he lowered his voice and leaned closer toward her. "I'm not used to sleeping alone."

All at once, the nurse's expression changed. "Oh, so you're Dean."

The flush at the back of his neck blazing, Dean nodded, dropping his eyes. "Yeah. I'm Dean."

"According to him, you hung the moon and the stars." The nurse glanced around. "I'm off in ten minutes. If anyone gives you trouble, tell them Wanda said you could be here. Just don't bother any of the other patients."

"Thanks. I won't." Trying not to think too hard about what Castiel might have said about him, Dean adjusted the strap of his duffel and strode quickly towards the room.

Castiel was asleep, mouth slightly open, messy hair dark against the pillowcase. Dean didn't turn on the room lights as he closed the door quietly and laid the duffel at the foot of the bed.

"Cas," he whispered, reaching out to tap Castiel on the shoulder. "Hey. Wake up." He wondered if Castiel was just a deep sleeper, or if they'd given him something that made him sleep. "Cas," he tried again, grabbing the shoulder and shaking it. He leaned down until his mouth was at Castiel's ear. "Cas. Wake up. We gotta get out of here. I'll explain on the way, but you have to get up and get dressed."

Castiel stirred, and his cheek brushed Dean's before Dean pulled back hastily. "Dean?" Castiel asked, voice thick with sleep.

"Yeah. Here." Dean reached under Castiel's shoulders and helped him sit up, in the hopes that if Castiel was more or less vertical, he may wake up faster. Castiel didn't fight him, and reached up to rub at his eyes.

"We have to go? Go where?"

"Anywhere but here," Dean hedged, contemplating the IV in Castiel's right arm. "This'll hurt," he warned as he started working at the tape holding the tubing to Castiel's arm.

"Um, I think I need that," Castiel said hesitantly.

"Well, it can't come with us," Dean replied briskly. The tape peeled away, leaving a livid red mark in its wake, and Dean winced. "Brace yourself." Gripping the tubing near the needle, Dean waited for Castiel's cringing nod before he yanked.

The electrodes on Castiel's chest were going to be a problem all of their own; Dean was fairly sure alarms would start sounding on the machines around Castiel's bed if he removed them, and that would tell whoever was at the nurse's station to come running. Absently, he reached over and slipped the clip off Castiel's finger. Sure enough, the monitor started to ping. He reclipped the device to his own finger to shut it up and thought on the problem for a moment, watching as Castiel pressed his thumb against the bleeding wound that had once been his IV. "What do you do if you have to go to the bathroom?" Dean asked.

"I ring a nurse and they unhook me."

That wouldn't work. Best to do this as quickly as possible, then. "All right." Dean reached into the duffel and tossed Castiel a handful of clothes. "Put those on as best you can around the wires. We'll take 'em off last and make a run for it. Can you walk?"

Castiel paused from unbundling the shirt from the jeans and shot Dean a look. "It was my spleen they removed, not my knees."

"Just checking." Dean resisted the urge to pop his head into the hallway to test the landscape. "Hurry. I think it's a shift change right now. We can take advantage of that."

"And why are we sneaking out of the hospital in the middle of the night?" Castiel asked pointedly, wincing as he reached back to undo the ties of the hospital gown at his neck. "I can't get that. My entire chest is stiff."

"Here." Dean reached back and plucked at the knot, loosening it. He looked away hurriedly as Castiel pulled at the front of the gown and it fell away from his torso. "It's not safe here. We need to get you back to the bunker."

"Ah." Castiel made a soft pained noise. "The shirt's not happening. A little help?"

Dean set his jaw and looked back to Castiel, who had managed to get one arm into a sleeve and not much else. Nearly half his left torso was covered in a white gauze pad, and Dean blinked. "Damn. They really did slice you open, didn't they?"

"You noticed." Castiel winced again as Dean pulled the shirt around his back, and he wrenched his good arm around into the other sleeve and shrugged the shirt the rest of the way on. "Thanks. Yeah, I don't look forward to taking the dressing off and seeing what it looks like."

"Neither am I." Dean grabbed at Castiel's hand and clipped the monitor back onto Castiel's finger. Freed from the wire, he stood and walked to the door, risking a look out the window as Castiel pulled on the jeans. The corridor was still clear, and when Dean turned back around, Castiel was balling up the hospital gown.

"No shoes?" Castiel asked, looking down at his bare feet.

"Didn't know what size you wore. You'll be fine." It was now or never. Dean shouldered the duffel bag. "Fix your hair. It looks like a haystack. Then unhook yourself and let's get going."

Sure enough, the monitors began complaining loudly as soon as Castiel removed the first wire. After a gesture for haste from Dean, Castiel peeled the rest of the electrodes off hurriedly and fell into step beside Dean as they made good their escape.

Dean had prepared no fewer than three explanations for why he was escorting a barefoot man out of the post-surgery unit, but to his vague disappointment, they were not challenged by any of the hospital staff in the hallways. One of them even smiled at them. He wasn't sure whether to be relieved or grumble - they hadn't been watertight stories, to be sure, but he'd been kind of proud of them. Now he'd never be able to use them.

Castiel nearly collapsed into the passenger seat, eyes closed tightly. "You all right?" Dean asked, pausing with the key floating next to the ignition.

With a dismissive wave, Castiel opened his eyes. "Fine. I'm fine. Just go."

They were on the freeway before Castiel spoke again. "I take it we're out of immediate danger?"

"Driving into the teeth of it, actually," Dean responded, glancing over at the passenger seat. The grim expression on Castiel's face could have been pain, but his next words made it clear that it was definitely annoyance.

"Are you going to tell me what's happening, or are you going to continue being cryptic?" he demanded. "Because it's getting old."

Dean felt a sour twist at the bottom of his stomach as he glanced over again. "Cas," he said, then realized he had no idea where to begin.

Castiel's expression softened; perhaps he sensed the difficulty. "Just - start with why we had to leave," he suggested.

"That's the thing. I can't - there's background that you need. Background that you don't have." Dean let out a long sigh as he studied the road in front of them. "You don't remember what happened before you blacked out."

"No."

Swallowing, Dean nodded. "You said you knew there weren't any angels anymore. How do you know that?"

The silence next to Dean was a living thing; he could almost feel the frustrated confusion rolling off Castiel in waves. "I don't know," Castiel admitted.

"It's because - you did something. A series of things." The words tasted bitter on Dean's tongue. "It made every single angel in Heaven fall." He tore his eyes from the road for a moment to look squarely into Castiel's disbelieving face. "Including you."

Castiel blinked. "But - I'm not a..."

Dean had to look away; the road was as straight and empty as ever and the car didn't need supervision, but he couldn't bear to watch the struggle on Castiel's face.

"I'm just Cas. Just me." The words sounded almost pleading.

"You're you," Dean confirmed, setting his jaw. "And you're an angel. And you slammed Heaven shut. And there are - hundreds? Maybe more? An assload of other fallen angels who aren't happy about it." He nodded at the road ahead of them. "We've already met one tonight. That's why we have to get you to the bunker. It's not safe, but it's safer than where you were."

"I don't believe you."

Dean chanced another glance over at Castiel, and something in his chest ached at how lost he looked. How oddly small, slumped back against the seat, staring unseeing into the middle distance.

"Cas," he said quietly, "have I ever lied to you?" Too late, he realized the question was useless.

"No," Castiel responded, without hesitation. Dean clenched his jaw. Whether fueled by instinct or hazy memory, Castiel's unwavering trust in Dean was as unsettling as it was comforting.

"Now would be a really shitty time to start." Dean swallowed. "You're not James Castiel Novak. You look like a guy named Jimmy Novak, because a couple years back you chose him as your vessel." Castiel looked as though he was made of stone. "Your name is Castiel. You're an angel. You've helped Sam and I through two or three ends of the world, and it looks like we're about to get caught up in another one."

"That I caused."

Dean hesitated. "Yes," he said finally.

"Why would I do that?" Castiel looked to Dean, anguish plain on his face. "Why would I...I'm just Cas. I woke up a day and a half ago and I'm just trying to make sense of everything, and you're saying that I..."

Dean licked his lips, his mind forcibly recalling Kevin's words. He's rewriting himself into who he wants to be. "Maybe you wouldn't," he said slowly. "Castiel would, and did. But..." Suddenly feeling every single hour of delayed sleep, Dean ran a hand over his face. "You don't remember anything. Even with me telling you."

"No."

Dean took a deep breath and shook his head. This wasn't how this conversation was supposed to go. He'd been prepared to deal with Castiel's guilt, with the endless apologies that he wasn't even sure the angel knew how to make work. He'd been prepared for Castiel to snap back to himself as he'd done before, once his actual identity had been revealed to him.

He hadn't been prepared for Cas to stay Cas.

"Cas," Dean said slowly. "I need you to believe me. That's who you were, and that's what you did. Who you are and what you do now..." he shrugged. "Like it or not, you're tied up in Castiel's mess, and you're going to have to deal with it."

Nodding, Cas took a deep breath. "That's easier to swallow, somehow."

Miles rolled away before Cas broke the uneasy silence. "What else aren't you telling me?" He paused, then blurted, "Do you and...and who I used to be...have a history I don't know about? Is that why you're pretending you're not angry with me?"

"I'm not angry with you," Dean replied automatically, wooden as it sounded. He let out a frustrated sound. "Honestly? Yes. This is just the latest of the shit that Cas - Castiel - has pulled. If it was anyone else, I'd have called it quits years ago."

"It?" Cas asked quickly.

"Our friendship," Dean clarified. He glanced quickly to the side. "That's real. And..." He shook his head. "Let's not get into how weird that dynamic is."

Cas nodded, but the silence that followed was thick and expectant. Dean licked his lips and found himself wanting to explain.

"I'd tie myself to a hurricane if he asked me to," he said suddenly. "Never mind how impossible it is. I'd find a way. There're too many people I've let down for me to let him down, too." A long look out of the corner of his eye showed him that Cas was listening intently, once again letting his eyes drift out of focus. "It's partly my fault," he admitted, speaking the entire truth for the first time in the hours that had followed that one pivotal night. "I helped him. He asked, and - he doesn't ask much. I had to. He was...I don't think he knew what he was doing. That's the only reason he roped me into it." He swallowed, his own eyes unfocusing slightly with memory. "He thought he was doing the right thing. Just like he always is."

"How is making the angels fall the right thing?" Cas asked haltingly.

Dean blinked. He'd almost forgotten that he wasn't alone in the car - and not only was he not alone, but it was Cas in the passenger seat. Cas, who wasn't the Cas he knew at all - who was just different enough from the angel Dean remembered to be someone else entirely, and yet, from the corner of his eye, Dean couldn't see anyone else but Castiel sitting there. He took a breath as his mind struggled to reconcile the two. "Castiel was so noble it made my teeth hurt. He...was a genuinely good person. It made him very easy to manipulate."

Dean shook his head, a wry, bitter smile twisting his mouth. "It didn't take much. Mention 'fixing Heaven' and you had his undivided attention. And once he had the bit in his teeth, it didn't matter who you were - if you tried to stand in his way..." He trailed off. "It's not so much that he was always up to his elbows in the shit he caused. It was more that...he never learned."

After a long moment, during which Dean turned off the freeway toward the gravel road that would lead them to the bunker, Cas cleared his throat.

"Did you ever try mentioning this to him...to me...back when it would have made a difference?"

Startled, Dean shook his head forcefully. "You and I were never much for heart-to-hearts." Something occurred to him as he downshifted. "We've probably talked more in the last day than all our other conversations combined. Hell, in the last half hour."

Cas's head snapped to one side to look intently at Dean. "So we've never actually sat down to talk about...about us."

Something squeezed in Dean's chest at the barely concealed hopeful undertone in Cas's voice. "Cas. There is no us. I..." He looked to the side. He could feel his brows turning downwards in response to the dismay that blossomed across Cas's face like an inkblot. "I know you want there to be. But whatever you remember...it isn't real."

The quiet, broken only by the crunch of gravel beneath the tires, was an ugly thing, waxen and oppressive. Dean cast about for something to say to banish it, but came up empty each time.

"You said that I used to leave all the time." Cas wasn't looking at him; he was very studiously staring at a scratch on the dashboard in front of him. "If I didn't...if I had stayed...would things have been different?"

Dean yanked at the gear shift a great deal more forcefully than was necessary, lurching the car into park. "Yes," he said shortly. "Maybe even the way you think. Maybe we wouldn't even be in this mess, and you'd still have your halo and we wouldn't have a demon in our basement. And maybe Sam would have gotten a puppy and I'd have taken up painting. It's useless to go down that road. You're here. I'm here. Let's deal with the monsters we've got right now, and leave the what-ifs at the door, all right?"

Startled by Dean's sudden vehemence, Cas nodded.

"Right." Suddenly ashamed of his outburst, Dean shouldered open the driver's side door. "Welcome home. You don't have a bed yet. Or clothes. But there's food - kind of - and showers."

"Showers," Cas said, with relish. "I smell like hospital." He looked down at his chest. "I don't think I'm supposed to get this wet, though. Any bathtubs?"

Dean looked back over his shoulder as he pulled open the door to the bunker. "This place was built and inhabited by dudes. No. No bathtubs." He jerked a thumb in the direction of town. "If you really need one, we can also pick up some moscato and a Yanni CD on the way to the nearest motel."

Cas looked as though he very much wanted to smile as he stepped through the doorway, but was holding back. "We need to work on your tendency of being horribly insulting whenever the concept of your masculinity is challenged."

Before Dean could reply to that and fall into an easy banter, Sam stepped from around the corner, a look of exhausted resignation on his face. "What?" Dean asked.

Sighing, Sam pointed above the door they'd just walked through. "We know one thing for sure now."

Dean turned. In the dim light, it didn't look like much of anything, but his eyes sought out the pattern, and the recognition made his jaw clench.

"What is it?" Cas asked, also peering at the lintel above the door.

Dean let out an explosive exhalation. "It's an angel ward." The bag on his shoulder seemed heavier than it had a moment ago. "You shouldn't have been able to come in."