Chapter 12: How Many Angels Can Dance…

The months rolled on. Monsters were fought. Seals were broken. The angels rarely appeared in real life, and never in Eli's dreams. And then there was the Reaper situation, where a seal ended up saved, and Pamela Barnes ended up dead.

The mood was grim after that. Dean looked haggard and defeated, withdrawing into himself. Sam was helpless to stop the tide of darkness that loomed over them. And Eli just went along for the ride, moping gloomily in the back seat of the Impala and trying not to get involved as the brothers dealt with their many issues.

The mood was especially bad the day of the funeral. Most of the time was spent in morose silence, the brothers occasionally sniping at each other. At times it was like they had forgotten Eli was there. She didn't mind. She just popped in headphones to drown out their voices and stared out the window, her hair falling limp in her eyes, feeling more numb and exhausted than she had in months.

They entered the motel room in a silent, brooding line. "Home crappy home," Dean muttered, flipping on the light.

"Winchester and Winchester and…" a smug voice started, then trailed off. "Oh, how embarrassing for me."

"My last name is Grant, as you well know, you prick," Eli snapped, hunching her shoulders and crossing her arms. Uriel smiled at her with too many teeth, like a dog staring at a bone. Castiel merely stood there, looking uncomfortable. His shoulders were hunched, too.

Dean looked like he wanted to bash his own head into the wall. "Oh, come on," he groaned disbelievingly.

"You are needed," Uriel intoned.

"Needed?" Dean snapped in outrage. "We just got back from being needed."

"Mind your tone with me," Uriel said, his voice very nearly a sneer.

"No, you mind your damn tone with us!" Dean shouted aggressively, unable to contain himself.

Sam shifted in the background, trying to stay calm. "We just got back from Pamela's funeral," he explained. The reminder of this seemed to incense Dean even more.

"Pamela. You know, psychic Pamela?" He was practically spitting out his words. Eli shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and watched him explode, her eyes wary. "You remember her. Cas!" he exclaimed, turning to the blue-eyed angel, who was standing there looking, to his credit, mildly ashamed. "You remember her. You burned her eyes out. Remember that? Good times." His voice had become a snarl as he began to pace, his shoes shaking off little clumps of dirt into the old motel carpet. "Yeah, then she died saving one of your precious seals. So maybe you can stop pushing us around like chess pieces for five fucking minutes!"

Uriel was unmoved by his rant. "We raised you out of hell for our purposes," he said coldly, eyeing Dean as if he were an irritating insect. Dean got up in his face and nearly shoved him in the chest.

"Yeah, what were those again?" he shouted belligerently. "What exactly did you want from me?"

"Start with gratitude," Uriel snarled, pushing Dean with the lightest of touches. Dean stumbled backward as if he had been punched in the gut.

"Dean, we know this is difficult to understand," Castiel began quietly, but Uriel interrupted, shooting him a glare.

"And we don't care. Now." He laced his fingers in front of his stomach and began to pace the room in even strides, looking for all the world like a lawyer describing his case. "Seven angels have been murdered, all of them from our garrison. The last one was killed tonight."

"Demons?" Dean asked warily. "How're they doing it?"

That's when Eli snapped.

"I'm sorry, but does any of this matter?" she said loudly. Everyone turned to look at her, but she didn't care. It was like the rubber band that had been stretching and stretching inside of her for months had suddenly broken, and she had no more control over her actions. The words poured out of her mouth like they were a sickness, like she had to purge all of the slick dark hatred from her body or she would die. "I am sick and tired of this goddamn game-playing bullshit with you guys. Sick and fucking tired of it! We had to bury someone today. Now I know that doesn't mean anything to you but it meant something to us. So why don't you tell Dean exactly what you want him to do, or I suggest clearing the fuck out of here, because I am tired, and I am pissed, and I am goddamn sick of your sneering, spiteful face, Uriel!"

Eli finished her speech, panting, hands halfway to her guns. Uriel opened his mouth, but only a single syllable escaped before she cut him off again.

"Don't say it!" she screeched. "I mean it, you son of a bitch! Don't even think it!"

Everyone froze and stared at her, red faced, eyes crazed, hair undone and sticking up at odd angles, like she had genuinely gone insane. The silence stretched; the radiator pinged on, the metal clicking and groaning in the glacial room, and the moment broke.

"We have Alastair, but he won't talk," Castiel said in a controlled voice, and everyone's head whipped back to him. "His will is very strong. We need Dean to… break him." He spoke directly to Dean. "That's why we've come to his student. You happen to be the most qualified interrogator we've got." Something in his steady tone shifted, became imploring, almost human. "Dean, you must come with us. You are our best hope."

Dean shook his head fiercely. "No. No way. You can't ask me to do this, Cas. Not this."

Uriel walked toward Dean, but his eyes stayed glued hatefully to Eli's. Finally, a foot away, he looked down at his prey.

"Who said anything about asking?" he snarled, putting his hand on Dean's shoulder.

"No!" Eli and Sam screamed simultaneously, rushing toward him, but it was too late. They were gone.

"Damn it!" Sam groaned. Eli pounded her fist against the wall and closed her eyes. Anna had been right all along: Angels were nothing but cold-hearted bastards. She suddenly wanted to cry.

"Fuck," she said, quietly, pressing her forehead against the wall in exhaustion. "Oh, fuck it all."

The mood at the warehouse wasn't much better.

"What's going on, Cas?" Dean asked in a half-angry, half-exhausted voice. "Since when does Uriel put a leash on you?"

"My superiors have begun to question my sympathies," Castiel said quietly, looking down. He could feel Dean's stare burning into him, feel his waves of betrayal, his fear and deep-seated wounds. It was almost too much to take.

"Your sympathies?" Dean asked.

"I was getting too close to the humans in my charge. You. Your brother." His tongue seemed to stick in his throat as he said the last name. "Elijah. They feel I've begun to express emotions. The doorways to doubt. This can impair my judgment."

"So they knock you down the ladder and put Uriel in charge?" Dean asked, and it made Castiel just the tiniest bit happy to hear that he sounded outraged.

"He is a proud and able instrument of God," Castiel recited without really believing it.

"The demotion, doesn't it get your loincloth in a twist?"

Castiel glanced up; Dean was wrinkling his brow at him, unable to detect the angel's sense of resignation, his overwhelming loss and anger and doubt. She would be able to see it, a traitorous voice whispered inside of him, but he squashed that thought quickly. "It is what it is to be," he said flatly. Dean turned away, disgusted by Castiel's apparent lack of emotion.

"Well, tell Uriel, or whoever...you do not want me doing this. Trust me."

"Want it, no," Castiel said roughly. "But I have been told we need it."

Dean stepped closer to the angel, dropping his voice in shame. "Cas, the things that I did, what I became..." he trailed off, then spoke again in a harsh whisper, his voice twisted with guilt. "You ask me to open that door and walk through it, you will not like what walks back out."

Castiel knew that the hunter was telling the truth. He could smell the fear radiating off of him, acrid and bitter. He thought, briefly, what he would do if it was Eli in this position. An image floated in front of his eyes, of her standing where Dean was, that caustic fear-smell radiating from her pores, her green eyes huge and hollow… he shuddered.

"You know what we're all fighting for," he finally said in a low, resigned voice. "And dying for. What Pamela lost her life for. You know what will happen if we fail. For what it's worth, I would give anything not to have you do this."

Dean closed his eyes. He seemed very close to tears.

Finally he spoke. "I'll need a few things."

Hours later, as Alastair's screams vibrated the walls from the next room, when Castiel thought he couldn't take the sound or the knowledge of what was happening anymore, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to think of her.

Eli was sitting cross-legged on the bed, her eyes closed, trying to locate the angels, when Ruby appeared. She didn't pay any attention to the demon and Sam's whispered conversation, just squeezed her eyes tighter and pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead, trying to work through the migraine that was building. She could sense that they were near, in the same city, but they were blocking her, and nothing she did could break the barrier.

"Eli," Sam said suddenly, and she jerked out of her meditation. "You got anything yet?"

"Nothing," she said, looking down at the flowered bedspread. "I can't get through."

Sam seemed nervous. "Well look, Ruby and I are going out to see what we can find. We'll call you if anything happens. You'll be okay here, right?"

She glanced up at him, a little confused at his question. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

"Oh, okay," he said, shifting, his hand on the doorknob. "It's just that you have a little…" He motioned to his nose and Eli lifted her hand to her own, feeling the blood.

"I'll be fine," she repeated, wiping it off with a tissue. "The biggest issue is finding Dean. So just… go do whatever you need to do and call me if you find anything."

He nodded and left the room. Eli resumed her pose.

An hour later the phone rang. It was Sam. He sounded strange—almost buzzed.

"Yeah, Eli? We found him."

A slight flickering of the bulbs alerted Castiel to the fact that someone else was in the room. He closed his eyes, wanting more than anything to just be left in peace.

"Anna," he said, attempting to sound cold.

She smiled, faintly, as if she knew a secret that he didn't. "Hello, Castiel."

He turned to face her, surprised at the familiar appearance. "Your human body—" he began.

"It was destroyed, I know," she said, nodding, her red hair tucked behind her ears. "But I guess I'm sentimental. Called in some old favors and..." She gestured to herself, shrugging.

In the next room, Alastair let out a scream. Castiel paused to listen to it, surprised at how the sound ripped at him. He turned back to Anna.

"You shouldn't be here. We still have orders to kill you."

Anna smiled that secretive smile. "Somehow I don't think you'll try. Where's Uriel?"

Uriel: Castiel's superior, now, with his hatred and his violence and his blasphemy. Castiel's fists clenched almost compulsively.

His mind flashed to the motel room, to Eli shouting obscenities to an angel twice her size and 500 times her power, her face red and eyes bright, and his hands dropped out of their fists like someone had laid a cooling hand against his forehead. He realized, with a stab of something resembling fear, that he empathized with her more than his brother, that when she yelled at Uriel Castiel felt only shame that he could not do the same. "He went to receive revelation."

"Right," Anna said, a bit sarcastically. "Cas, why are you letting Dean do this?"

"He's doing God's work," Castiel insisted absently, his mind somewhere else. He could feel how Eli was pushing at the barrier they had erected, trying to find him with her mind. A flash of worry went through him at the thought of how long they had been in this warehouse, how long she had been searching. He knew for a fact that she would be bleeding by now. He wondered how long she would last before the pain became too much.

Anna frowned at him, disappointed. "Torturing? That's God's work? Stop him, Cas, please. Before you ruin the one real weapon you have."

"Who are we to question the will of God?" Castiel asked almost helplessly, pulling his attention back to the conversation.

Anna stood in front of him, close enough to touch, her eyes huge and hollow. "Unless this isn't His will."

Castiel blinked, meeting her eyes for the first time. "Then where do the orders come from?"

"I don't know. One of our superiors, maybe, but not Him." She paused, inching closer. "The Father you love. You think He wants this? You think He'd ask this of you? You think this is righteous?"

Castiel averted his eyes, stepping backward a fraction of an inch. Each question was like a punch to the gut. He had never questioned where his orders came from, he had always had such unshakable belief, such solid faith, and now…

In the other room, Alastair howled.

"What you're feeling?" Anna near-whispered, touching his hand. "It's called doubt."

She waited a second for her words to sink in, then continued in a hopeful voice. "These orders are wrong and you know it. But you can do the right thing. You're afraid, Cas. I was too. But together, we can still—"

Suddenly, as if she had splashed cold water over his face, Castiel snapped out of his reverie.

"Together?" he asked harshly, ripping his hand away and backing up. "I am nothing like you. You fell." He glared at her. "Go."

"Cas…" Anna said, taking a step toward him, but stopped when she saw the look on his face.

"Go," he said, his voice deathly quiet, and she did.

Alastair continued to scream.