(A/N)- You guys are so awesome, I really love each and every single one of you that read (and especially review) this little fanfic here. I know last chapter was depressing, to say the least, but again, thanks for sticking with me, guys. I don't own anything except Lydia-you all should know that by now-and here is Chapter 11. Oh yeah, and to lpwriter4life-Thanks for your review! Yes, poor Bobby never catches a break. And yeah, Lydia and Cas are together. For now. In a way. And this is for all of you…DID YOU SEE THAT SEASON 7 PREMIERE! Holy shit, Misha was amazing! But Cas was…no words. I'm still in shock. Okay, I'm done for real. Shutting up now.

"I think she's waking up." Castiel's voice suddenly emerged from the nothingness of Lydia's mind. Lydia, her eyes still shut, shifted a little bit as a natural reaction, almost like instinct. She had heard his voice, clear as a bell, and she sensed his presence.

"Cas?" Her words came out garbled and confused. She felt a hand smooth her hair down and opened her eyes to see the angel himself standing over her, clearly worried.

"Lydia," Cas seemed grateful that she was awake. "Are you alright?"

Lydia didn't answer him right away, she just stared up towards him, but not looking quite at him. The memories from before were coming back to her at an alarming rate, much too fast for her to process. She only stared and started breathing quicker than usual, but eventually the memories became too much and painful for her to deal. Lydia turned away from Castiel and buried her head in her arms. She wasn't crying, she was just too numb to move, to speak, to do anything.

"Lydia…" Cas sat down next to her on the hotel bed and looked up at Dean Winchester, who was staring at the girl with a mixture of pity and awkwardness. It was clear to Cas that Dean had no idea what to do. Of course, neither did he. Cas' first reaction was to kill Sam Winchester. When he saw exactly what Sam had done to her, his only thought was to kill him. But Cas couldn't. Sam was his friend, as was Dean. As much as he wanted to, Cas couldn't kill him.

Sam Winchester himself was tied to a chair, blood still running down his face from the beating that Cas had given him. When Cas had brought Sam back to Dean in the hotel room, Dean had nearly torn off the angel's head off. But when Dean heard exactly what Sam had done to Lydia, he looked at his brother with pure disgust, a look Cas hadn't seen the elder Winchester give his brother since Sam's demon blood-drinking days, and tied Sam to the chair. Dean confessed to Castiel that he had been worried about Sam since that vampire hunt gone wrong, but that this was just so unlike Sam, something was obviously seriously wrong with him.

Cas, however, was much more concerned about Lydia's well-being than Sam's. He had a very limited knowledge of rape and how exactly this would affect Lydia, but from what he did know, it wasn't gong to be pretty. He was almost having flashbacks to Lydia's withdrawal almost two years before, and if her suffering was anything close to the hell she had went through then, he didn't know how he was going to handle that. On one hand, he was incredibly furious at Lydia; she had kissed Sam back and was willingly going to have sex with him, only to change her mind at the last second. It went without saying that he was so upset with Sam, he could've killed him on the spot. Castiel was at a total lost of what to. It seemed that he felt that way an awful lot lately.

Cas leaned over and started whispering into Lydia's ear so neither Dean or Sam, if he woke up, could hear. "Lydia, I am so sorry for what happened to you. I tried to stop it, but I failed you. I'm sorry."

Lydia felt tears well up in the back of her eyes, but determinedly, Lydia blinked them back, bit her lip, and (barely) managed to pull herself together. She slowly turned her head towards Cas and looked up at him with her eyes as wide as could be. "It's not your fault."

"Yes it is." Cas murmered gently.
Lydia, despite still being shocked, terrified, and disbelieving all at the same time, simply closed her eyes and snuggled closer to Cas, so her forehead was touching his leg. "S'not and you know it."
"Cas!" Dean hissed from his corner. He tried his best to be quiet and not to startle the poor girl, but the damage was done, and Lydia jumped up, eyes snapped open, and let out a scream.
"Lyd! It's fine, it's just Dean." Castiel gripped her shoulders tight and tried reassuring her, but he could literally feel the shaking of her shoulders. She was more frightened and more vulnerable than he had ever seen her before.

Lydia stared between the angel and Dean, nodding slowly before she narrowed her eyes at the Winchester. "Dean?" Dean nodded back at her, glad that she was alright, before Lydia opened her mouth and began screaming at him.

"Do you have any idea what your brother just fucking did to me?" Lydia attempted to get off the bed, probably to go up to Dean and, in all likeliness, attack him, but Cas held her back with a strong arm. It didn't stop the furious words directed at him. "He just raped me inside his car, and you're…" Lydia could barely get the words out. "You're just standing there and staring at me like I'm a freaking movie?"

"Lydia, that's enough!" Cas growled.

"Did you know?" Lydia stopped yelling at Dean and just looked at him, her eyes and her voice pleading. "Did you know he was going to do that?"

"God no!" Dean held his hands up to defend himself. "Lydia, I would never, alright? I know you're pissed, but just think for a second…"

"Wow, Mr. GED wants to think?" Lydia snarled, venom practically dripping from the words. "Don't strain yourself, sugar."

At first, Dean looked surprised-Lydia could be a sarcastic bitch, but she wasn't usually so outwardly nasty to him- but then he looked as equally as angry as her. "Lydia, I get your pissed, but you don't need to…"

"Need to what?" Lydia asked rudely when Dean didn't finish his sentence.

"Need to act like a bitch!"

"I think I have a reason to act like one!" Lydia howled.

Dean was now shouting at the top of his lungs, just like Lydia was. "No, you really don't! Now I'm sorry for what Sam did to you, I am! But you can't go around lashing out at me and Cas, because we're all you've got."

As much as she wanted to kill him for it, Lydia knew Dean was right. She folded her across her chest and sighed. "So where's Sam now?"

Cas and Dean shared a look with each other that Lydia barely caught out of the corner of her eye. "What?"

"He's…over there." Dean pointed to the corner of the room. Lydia took one look in that direction, and her stomach clenched. She hadn't even see Sam there, probably because Cas' body had blocked her view of him. He was unconscious and tied to a chair, not to mention covered in blood from the beating Cas had given him. He didn't look anything like the monster from earlier that night, but just being in the same room as him made Lydia's skin crawl. Her ears started ringing and Lydia felt vile rise up in her throat.

Unfortunately, just then, Sam started shifting around and he opened his eyes. They were totally unfocused, however, and seemed to be looking at nothing in particular. Cas walked over towards Sam and studied him carefully.

"He looks terrible." Castiel commented dryly.

"Well, maybe that's because you kicked the crap out of him." Dean replied sarcastically.

"Cas?" Sam groaned painfully, but the mere sound of his voice was enough to send chills down Lydia's spine. "What's…" Sam grunted and shifted around some more when he realized he was tied to the chair. "Let me go."

Cas looked towards Dean, completely ignoring Sam. "Has he been feverish?"

"Have you?" Dean directed his question at Sam. Lydia noticed how cold Dean sounded towards his brother-she had never heard him speak to Sam like that.

"No. Why?"

"Is he speaking in tongues?" Cas glared at Sam again. "Are you speaking in tongues?"

"No!" Sam protested. "What are you…" Sam drew back, seemingly offended. "Are you…are you diagnosing me?"

Lydia barely heard the rest of the conversation, she was in her own little world. The memories from before her were replaying over and over and over again in her mind, and she felt ready to break down screaming and crying hysterically at any moment. But she couldn't, and she wouldn't. She needed to be the tough little hunter, just like always. And besides, she was still in shock. She wasn't even sure if her mind had grasped the full realization of what had happened. Then, suddenly, she snapped out of her fog when she heard Sam start screaming and his whole body turn bright red, his veins flaring against his skin.

"What the hell?" Lydia pulled her jacket even tighter against her chest and slowly stood up, watching as the scene unfolded before her. Cas, who had put his hand in Sam's torso, pulled it out, leaving Sam to gasp for breath in the chair.

"Did you find anything?" Dean asked.

Cas shook his head. "No."

"So that's good news?"

"I'm afraid not," Cas explained. "Physically, he's perfectly healthy."

Lydia actually joined the conversation for the first time. "So then what's wrong with him?"

Slowly, with a sigh, Cas answered her. "It's his soul. It's gone."

"What?" Dean and Lydia both stammered at the same time.

"His soul is gone. I can't find it."

Lydia blinked slowly. "You wanna elaborate a bit?"

Cas sighed. "Somehow, when Sam was resurrected, it was without his soul."

"So where is it?" Dean demanded.

"My guess is…still in the Cage with Michael and Lucifer." Cas seemed hesitant to answer the elder Winchester.

"So is he even still Sam?"

Cas shrugged. "You pose an interesting philosophical question."

"I slept with somebody without a soul?" Lydia was horrified.

"Don't act like you didn't like it." Sam smirked at her.

Finally, after all she had been through, Lydia snapped. "Why you son of a…" Lydia marched over to Sam and, before Cas or Dean could stop her, was repeatedly slapping, scratching, punching, and all-out attacking his face. Finally, Cas dragged her away from Sam, but not before Sam had scratch marks and blood running down his face and even more blood coming out his nose.

"I'll kill you, you bastard!" Lydia snarled at the man in the chair, hating him with every fiber of her being.

Dean, quickly as possible, grabbed Lydia by the shoulder and dragged her into the bathroom. "C'mere, we need to talk."

Finally, when they were inside the bathroom, Lydia shook herself loose from Dean's grasp and glared at him. "What?"

"We need to talk." Dean told her.

"About…?"

"About Sam." Dean said.

"What about him?" Lydia asked coldly.

Dean sighed, rubbing his eyelids. "Lydia, that's not my brother out there. That's some soulless freak wearing his face."

"Yeah, and that soulless freak raped me, in case you forgot that!" Lydia was so mad, she was seeing red.

Dean sighed again. "Okay, listen. I know you're mad and you're scared and you want revenge, and you have every right, I know that. But I am begging you, don't hold it against Sam."

"Don't hold it against him!" Lydia nearly screamed. "Dean, he doesn't have a

soul!"

"And how is that his fault?"

Lydia was so frustrated right then, she could've screamed. "I'm not saying it's his fault, Dean! But soulless or not, he's still Sam."

"No he's not!" Dean had to stop and cool down for a second. "Lydia, you don't know Sammy. My Sammy. He would never do that to anyone, I swear."

"But how do you know that?" Lydia insisted.

"Because I know him better than anyone else, always have and always will." Dean didn't sound angry right then; he sounded almost proud. "And he wouldn't ever do something like that. That thing wearing Sam's face isn't him. That guy out there has no moral compass, he doesn't know what's right or wrong, all right? So just…"

"Just what, Dean?" Lydia was exhausted.

"Listen, we're going to get Sam's soul back, alright?" Dean nodded slowly. "The old Sam, the one that you and I knew before he jumped into the Cage. The one that would never hurt you, not in a million years. But when we get that Sam back, don't hold what his soulless self did against the real Sam."

Lydia felt tears well up in her eyes, but she blinked them away. "But you don't know how much of a person in made up of their soul. What if that is Sam. Bobby's told me about the things he's done, the demon blood, everything. What if…"

"Lydia, stop it right now, I am warning you." Dean growled dangerously.

Lydia just glared back at him, tears now freely streaming down her face. "Fine." She thought for a second, wiping the tears off her face. "This really sucks, Dean."

Dean snorted sarcastically. "I'll agree with you on that, at least." Then, he walked out of the bathroom, back to Sam and Cas, leaving her standing in a crappy hotel room, all alone.