Trying to help Castiel was like trying to navigate a minefield, blindfolded and with a busted leg. It's not that at times he didn't seem genuinely grateful for assistance, for the gentle pointers on how to do everyday things like make coffee and load a gun. But other times, the help wasn't welcomed, and the brothers had to thank their lucky stars that Castiel didn't have his Grace anymore, because his wrath was still something terrible to behold.

Sam remembered one instance in particular, muffled but angry-as-all-hell yelling coming from the bathroom, before Dean stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

"…What?" Sam asked, and maybe it was a bad idea, because Dean looked like he wanted to throw something, but it was early morning, Sam had been awake for all of ten minutes, and he was still suffering from the aftereffects of the migraine he'd had the night before. And the night before that. Not to mention the sleeplessness brought on by Castiel's continuing, and unfailingly noisy nightmares.

Dean jabbed a finger in the direction of the bathroom. "Don't go in there, Sammy," he warned. "He's shaving. And God forbid someone try to help him do it right."

Sam's Mitigation Alert was going off like crazy, so he decided to intercede before Dean went back in and started demonstrating other uses for razors. "He's just frustrated, Dean. He probably feels like we're coddling him." There. Even half brain-dead, Sam could be Insightful.

"He's stubborn and idiotic, you mean," Dean huffed, but the murderous glint in his eyes had dimmed somewhat, and that meant Success. You mean like you? Sam wanted to say it, he really did, but he couldn't. Not before he was armed.

And Dean was right in a sense, because when Castiel returned downstairs, sullen, two hours later, his face was covered with shallow cuts, and it was definitely the Smiting Glare he was aiming at all of them. There was no mistaking it.

The surprising thing was that it was Sam that Castiel gave the most leeway, the one he allowed to help the most. Maybe it was partly because they were both hurting, but Sam knew they bonded primarily over their mutual lack of appreciation for Dean's mother-henning. Because while there were some things, like Dean popping up out of nowhere to massage Castiel's shoulders, muttering about kneading a granite block and trying to prevent rigor mortis while Castiel smiled into his coffee, or like Dean materializing with a plate of spicy food for Sam, too hot to really be edible because somehow their father had instilled a belief in him that spice was medicine and the only way to recover from illness was to purge the system, repeatedly…

Well. Even for that, most of the time his over-concern for the pair of them was just plain suffocating. Which was one of the reasons why Sam was itching for a case, instead of holing himself up to complete the research they were, presumably, doing. He had the sense they were really just hiding, staked out in a sort of five-star bomb shelter while the first reports of fallen-angels-turned-killers filtered into the news. It was strange, or perhaps it wasn't, that while Castiel had been the first to suggest the possibility, he was somehow the last to believe it. When convinced, he'd only said My family, before disappearing for hours on the deserted streets around their home. They'd put a tracker on his phone after that.

"Looks like there's a vamp nest in Missouri," Sam announced one day, flipping off their newly-installed T.V. There were gruesome deaths all over the news, and he knew they wouldn't normally be sitting on their asses watching it happen. He wanted to do something, even a small something, if only to blow off some steam. Nest-cleaning? Good way to do that, and it was a very Dean-like sentiment. He expected his brother to leap at the suggestion.

He didn't. He folded the ancient newspaper he was reading deliberately, looked him up and down in that annoying way he had, as if checking for further health symptoms. "Sam. Vamps are kind of the least of our concerns."

"I get that. But I don't think we can ask Cas to help us fight his own family—" Sam ignored Dean's wince "—especially when we're not even sure how we're gonna handle them. He hasn't been on a real hunt, and I think it would be good to give him a trial run, while we're still. Still figuring this out." He left out that he was feeling desperate to get out himself. It was easiest to make the issue about something other than him.

"He's been on a hunt before," Dean re-unfolded the newspaper, as if he'd lost interest in the conversation. It ticked Sam off. "Cartoons, remember?"

"You know what I mean. Since he fell. I've been taking him to the shooting range, training with him, but Dean. He's feeling claustrophobic." Here Sam decided to ditch the Castiel angle. "Hell, Dean, I'm getting cabin fever, and I know you can hardly stand to go two weeks without stabbing something. The Men of Letters have nothing on what's going on now and you know it. We should be out there saving people, instead of sitting here pretending we're making any headway."

"Sam." Apparently Sam's tirade was enough to merit a glance up from the oh-so-interesting yellowed newspaper. "We're not ready yet. Cas, he's being hunted by beings a hell of a lot more powerful than he is right now, and for all we know, he's going to be targeted the minute he's more than five miles away from here. You can't fool me into thinking that you're up for hunting again, either. You're doing just as badly as you were with the Trials, and if you're going anywhere, it should be to a hospital." He sighed. "We're just not ready."

There it was again. The cloying concern. Sam wondered if it would be immature to start a fistfight right then. Probably, but if he whipped Dean he could at least convince him he was cleared for fighting. "We'll never be ready, if it's up to you," he snarled instead. "That's it. I'm tired of you pulling this crap, I'll take Cas and we'll leave you to organize your garden parties, or whatever it is that you're doing."

Dean watched his brother walk away, an angry retort on his lips, that remained unspoken because Sam was right, he'd saved his ass more than once even when he was delirious and fever-stricken, and Dean really didn't doubt that he could handle himself in a fight if it came down to it. Especially if he had Dean covering him. And he knew it was impossible to keep Sam and Castiel there, safe as it was, but he couldn't shake the feeling that this borrowed almost-peace with his family was the only one he was going to get.

"Alright!" he finally called out. "But I'm coming with, dammit." His heart sank even as he said it.

oOo

Crowley could see what was going to happen. It was like Karma had come back from the dead and decided to give him the biggest bitch-slap of all time, because if his situation didn't just mirror Meg's perfectly… well, then he wasn't Crowley. So he did exactly what Meg had so wisely done, when he'd wrested power from her and the Lucifer-loyalists. He ran like heaven from Abbadon with his tail between his legs.

Which left him, not only unemployed, but confronted with the type of existential crisis no self-respecting demon should ever have to endure. Namely, was he even still a demon? It was getting difficult to quash his sympathetic impulses, which were growing ever more annoyingly persistent. He had, for instance, felt inclined to give change to a beggar earlier that evening. He'd managed to give him a swift kick to the head instead, but it was a close scrape. If he didn't watch himself, he might become altruistic. And his recent demotion to Hell's Most Wanted begged the question: should he even be fighting it? The idea of redemption, so strong a few weeks before, still niggled at the back of his head.

A few dozen shots of bourbon at a dirt-encrusted bar in Cincinnati, (because bourbon is a sure-fire way to cure oneself of existential crises) and he felt like he was coming close to a solution. He'd watched enough cable television to know the nuances of the Anti-Hero trope. If he wanted to, he could be Good. But he didn't start having to act Good, not all the time. Problem solved.

Feeling significantly better about things, he walked out of the bar, leaving his sizable tab unpaid. Kevin Tran was the next step. Kevin Tran would have his Quest.

To the night air, he made a fateful declaration. "You're not Batman, Winchester. I am."

oOo

Abbadon's coronation was a much-celebrated affair. The fact that she had literally just walked out of the past made her only more popular in the polls, because demons are naturally the reactionary sort and have vehemently opposed Progress since the invention of the wheel. A celebration the likes of which Hell had (luckily) never seen was had when she abolished the Line System Crowley had instituted for the damned. The cheering when she removed the air conditioning in the Ninth Circle was enough to make a soul's ears bleed, and in fact several souls did find their brains melting because of it.

Still, Abbadon wasn't stupid, and she hired a trustworthy demon to tutor her on the Internet and give her the Spark Notes on the past few decades, while she struggled with the various methods of surveillance Crowley had dreamed up during his time at the helm. Modernity is complicated, was her frequent complaint, and the more time passed, the more she actually found herself respecting the traveling-salesman's creativity. It was almost too bad that she had to have him hunted down and destroyed. He would have been a priceless addition to that R&D team he'd left for her.

Her priority though, wasn't Crowley. It was the fallen angels, who were showing, her advisors told her, the first signs of mobilization. Not to say that most of them weren't running around like chickens with their heads cut off, but there was also the nebulous beginnings of a coherent organization forming, and that was Not Good. Soon, they'd be trying to break back into Heaven, and if Hell wanted to keep a monopoly on the Reaper business, along with the souls they gathered, they had to prevent that from happening.

The solution was, thankfully, one of those timeless strategies Abbadon had no need to study up on. Massacre.

oOo

During that first hunt, they learned several things. First, that even as a human, Castiel killed like a goddamn machine, downing one bloodsucker after another, utilizing his machete like a weedwhacker, and with just about the same amount of emotion. He'd been training obsessively since his return, and this particular manifestation of it was frankly a little frightening. Angel strength might be gone, but his human strength was nothing to shake a fist at.

"Cas," Dean called, in the middle of the fight. Castiel grunted in response, but Dean didn't follow up on his thought. What could he say? Cas, could you maybe be a little less efficient? It's creeping me the fuck out. No. That wouldn't fly, especially not when there were half a dozen blood-crazed monsters lunging at their throats.

They also learned that the new hunter still had little sense of his own mortality, because he wouldn't dodge hits he could have dodged, he'd just take them, one after another. Sam watched, horrified, as the man was thrown off of a rafter, but he just got up again, kept whacking, whacking, whacking.

He'd broken his foot in the fall, and they only found out about it after the fight was over. The adrenaline wore off of Castiel in a rush, and he collapsed, gasping.

Sorry, he'd said to Dean, when the yelling started, and they began wrestling him to the car. I hadn't noticed.

A/N: After some reflection, I found that I actually don't mind begging for reviews at all. I'm actually quite shameless about it. Reviews are like diamonds. A few of them, precious, but a lot of them? The makings of a multi-billionaire. Which is better? You tell me.