AN: Hello lovelies. I think we've reached the ante-penultimate chapter. I know, it's really sad. I've had so much fun writing this...
Castiel closed the phone gently and breathed out a long, heavy sigh. The conversation with Sam had not lasted long this time. Everything was set. Now was the time for Castiel to initiate Sam's plan. If he did this right, he wouldn't be needed hereafter. He would be able to fly far away and straighten his head, untangle his wings. Maybe, just maybe, if everything went according to plan, he would eventually be able to return to the Winchesters simply as an angelic ally again, and everyone would be happy. Life would be a series of uncomplicated relationships, and he would return to taking orders, providing information, and smiting demons that the Winchesters could not manage alone. However, until then, Castiel would spend another millennium in the autistic man's eternal Tuesday, just until he and the world calmed down.
But that would be later. Now, he had to face the thing sharing a motel room with him and all the damage it had caused.
Castiel had lost track of time long ago. As he stalled his mission, he thought back to the beginning of this mess. It could've ended easily and early, but at such a cost. Even after everything that had happened, Castiel would always make the same choice: save Dean. So even if he couldn't tell whether a day, hour, or second was passing, even if everything was excruciatingly long, whatever it was and all it entailed was worth the risk, was worth Dean. It was all Castiel cared about – justifying everything by Dean. On all other accounts, in all other situations, he was just numb. His actual feelings for the man he held most high were such an indecipherable mess, that he had no energy left to acknowledge anything less. He lamented the world, pitied the population, and feared for himself, but he didn't care enough about any of it to worry or even think about.
By now, Beelzebub had only one plague left, the Death of the Firstborns, which was why Castiel had to hustle. The angel assumed that the other plagues had each had their day: All Water to Blood had been that very first plague; the Frog Storm followed; Lice and Gnats had infested food stocks throughout the world, protected or not; Flies ruined what the lice did not; which, of course, led to the Death of All Livestock except for those poor souls that were force grown on "organic" farms – the genetic alterations to the animals spared them the fate of their pure brethren – Gabriel had quite enjoyed the Boils which followed, especially those Sam received; the Hail had simply made a mess and washed away whatever farmland the vermin and insects hadn't destroyed; the Locusts infected every living plant that had miraculously survived to that point; and, finally, the Darkness convinced the world that the apocalypse was nigh.
Now that Beelzebub had reached the final plague, the world could enjoy a short reprieve. At this very moment, Sam was summoning the Angel of Death. He had started the long process all that time ago when Balthazar and Gabriel first returned with the necessities from Heaven's arsenal. The process was purposefully long and hard, meant to frustrate and discourage anyone trying to use Heaven's worst weapon. Most demons were not known for patience or precision; as long as they corrupted and condemned souls to the Pit, their job was well done. However, Beelzebub was a special case, and it was imperative that Sam conquered the Angel of Death before Beelzebub could use him.
When Castiel had first heard Sam's plan, he was convinced it wouldn't work. Originally, Sam was only meant to harness the Angel after he had been summoned so to wrestle him from Beelzebub and send him back to Heaven before anyone died. However, the situation drastically changed with Dean's current state. If he was half-dead already yet still fighting Beelzebub, the man would never survive Beelzebub's forced ejection, whether he did it from inside his body or Castiel did it from outside. The only way for Dean to survive now was for Beelzebub to either leave peacefully or die, and even those options were risky. There was surely no way that Beelzebub would leave willingly or peacefully, and if he died, there would still be the chance that Dean could be hurt in the process.
Therefore, Sam's ramshackle plan was the only thing left, even though it was possibly the most risky alternative there was. Castiel had fought every word of Sam's plan until Gabriel said that maybe, just maybe, it was substantial. Then, when Balthazar had concurred but adjusted certain elements to be sure, Castiel begrudgingly conformed to it. After all, as Gabriel had stated, Beelzebub was older than Dean, and Dean had turned into a demon for as brief a period as that was. He had broken the first seal; he had tortured; he had killed. He had become the unwilling apprentice of Alistair before Castiel raised him from Perdition. And so, Beelzebub and Dean were technically related in the furthest of relations, making Beelzebub the eldest son within Dean's body. According to tradition, the Angel of Death had to kill the oldest son.
Castiel hated it. It was too much of a stretch. It wasn't safe. It wasn't secure. It wasn't even based on fact, only presumption and generalizations. But, it was the only thing they could do, and Castiel himself could do so very little even in this.
After a few moments of calming meditation, Castiel returned to the motel room. He braced himself before allowing the demon in his best friend's body to see him. All he had to do was provoke Beelzebub to surface. He only had to trick Beelzebub into dropping his ruse of Dean. It shouldn't be too difficult, seeing as Castiel no longer knew whether he was entertaining his friend or his enemy anymore. The demon expertly replicated Dean's speech and actions; he voiced very Dean-like thoughts and initiated very Dean-like hypocrital personal space issues. Every second now saw Castiel guessing and hoping. Where he had once been so trusting, Castiel was now so uncertain.
Once Castiel revealed himself, he loosely gripped the hilt of his angel blade to remain calm. Feeling foolishly exposed and vulnerable, Castiel opened his eyes to stare down the man he could no longer trust but instead found the mangled, lifeless form of Dean on the floor beside the bed. His face and clothes were soaked in blood. It appeared as if he had rolled off the mattress and knocked the dead-center of his forehead against the corner of the wooden bedside table. His legs were bent in odd directions, and his arms were thrown behind his back and over his side. His eyes were open, but the lids were hooded and the brows scrunched together in pain. His mouth was hanging open but also twitching as if fighting the urge to scream.
Castiel was at his side in an instant. He threw himself on the floor beside Dean, gently touching him with healing hands, one on his abdomen, the other on his forehead, but he could not tell where the majority of the blood was actually coming from. The sticky red substance was too evenly and thickly spread, and, from the amount of it, Castiel knew it couldn't be from only a head wound. Desperately, his grace thrummed from his fingertips into Dean's broken body, but he knew that his Righteous Man was too far gone to benefit from it. Only archangels could resurrect the dead, and Castiel was surely no angel.
Castiel's grace entered Dean's body gently but assertively, and the very distant feel of it made a small smile curl into Dean's lips. It was like fingers ghosting over skin or a light breeze indoors. It was the lightest and least helpful of feelings, but it gave him comfort to know his friend was still trying to help him after all that had happened. At the same time, it angered him that he was hurting his friend and still doing nothing to help, but, at this point, he could do nothing to resolve that. After the night of Beelzebub's chick flick, the demon had definitively affirmed his control. Knowing he was too weak to even tickle Beelzebub, Dean gave up. He reasoned with himself that it was more important he stayed alive than in charge – a decision that was hard to make and even more difficult to keep. Dean was painfully aware of every second that passed. For the past twenty days, Dean had been painfully aware of everything Beelzebub did to Castiel.
Ever since Beelzebub hit Castiel's weakest spot – his confusion surrounding Dean – straight on, his actions against the angel were mostly psychological. He kept the angel guessing: was it really Dean or was it Beelzebub? Every now and then, Beelzebub let Dean to the surface. He would give Dean anywhere between a moment and a day with the angel. In the beginning, Castiel had been able to tell. Castiel opened up and showed his relief whenever he was sure it was Dean. But Beelzebub used those moments; in those moments, he harvested information both from Dean and Castiel to better impersonate Dean and to better disarray Castiel's sanity.
As time went on, Dean's short reprieves became shorter and shorter. Each time Dean tried to fight his efforts became weaker and weaker, until finally, the smallest effort made blood trickle from his nose and eyes. Recently, just speaking while he had control made him feint. More than once, Dean's mouth opened to warn Castiel but his head landed suddenly in Castiel's lap with no vision. Dean was constantly feeling woozy, whether he was in control, given control, or just floating around. He knew that he couldn't have much longer to last, and all he wanted to do was tell Castiel what was going on and how he felt. He had tried the very last time he had been granted control, but for all intents and purposes, he failed. His short speech made him black out almost immediately, yet he forced himself to hold on long enough for one kiss.
"Cas. Castiel," Dean gasped. "I'm sorry. Castiel, I'm so sorry." He put all of his efforts into strengthening his voice. "At least I didn't go out as Michael!" he tried to joke, but his voice couldn't achieve the necessary inflection. "I always knew I'd die by some cloud of ash." Beelzebub caused some new spiked-walls-are-closing-in pain and Dean coughed blood. When it subsided, Dean was on all fours, looking up at his angel in earnest. "To be honest, Cas, I'm glad it's you here. God, Castiel, I'm so sorry." Then he surged forward, taking Castiel by surprise, but gaining a tiny sense of pride back when the sudden movement did not kill him. Castiel, however excited by the action, wanted to talk to his Dean again, and pushed the man away to look at him. That was when Dean's consciousness was pushed aside once again, and Beelzebub cackled in Castiel's face.
Dean cringed as he thought again about that moment. It had been two days ago, but the way Castiel looked at him now, it might as well have been two minutes ago. Castiel watched Dean with such vehemence ever since, and Dean's tiny ball of consciousness twisted uncomfortably whenever he noticed. He couldn't do this without Castiel. He had forgotten what hunting was like without the angel watching over his shoulder. Research? Killing? No rituals? Stitching himself up? And this situation wasn't even anything Castiel could help him with anyway. No one could help him here. Not Sam, not Gabriel, not Balthazar. He was alone.
This was something he had to do himself, and he failed. How was it that Sam and Bobby and Castiel could overcome possession for him, but he couldn't for them? He was a failure. There was no other way about it. Even now, Castiel was helping him. After everything, after the horrors and the vehemence, Castiel was still wasting his grace on the lost cause that was Dean – but Castiel was most likely convinced that Dean wasn't a lost cause, even after everything, because that's just how Castiel was.
Dean was jolted back to his current predicament by the small feeling he randomly gained in his toes. He tried to focus through the haze of pain on what Castiel was doing. Beelzebub was just as shocked as Dean. His maniacal cackling ceased and became violent coughing. The demon's eyes flew open wide and darted to Castiel's face. Suddenly Beelzebub couldn't focus. His eyes were heavy and his breathing was sparse. While he was happy that Beelzebub was flailing, apprehension filled Dean.
If Beelzebub was in control but not taking in the necessities, how was Dean supposed to take in the necessities? The demon didn't need the oxygen; Dean did!
As Dean regained feeling in more areas of his body, he wondered if he was wrong. Could Castiel actually help him after all? Was he pushing Beelzebub out of his body? If he was, it was pretty painful, and Dean somewhat wished the angel wasn't helping. Then again, the other three-fourths of Dean's brain reminded him that any route out of this mess would be painful so he yelled at himself, Come on, Winchester! First, you've got to move your big toe.
Slowly but surely, Dean's toe began to twitch. Feeling an insane amount of pride for such a simple action, Dean cheered himself on and tried harder. Stars formed behind his eyes, but he pushed through it. This was of the utmost important. If he could succeed in such a simple action, he could survive. With Castiel's help it would easy.
Dean flicked his eyes away from his feet for a moment to look again at Castiel. The angel's face was pulled together in concentration. His eyes were squeezed tight, his mouth was a hard line, and his nose – though Dean would never admit it out loud – was scrunched adorably. Now that Dean could see him through his own eyes and not through the haze of confinement, he could see what his best friend was doing. He still didn't understand what was different this time than the others times, but it appeared as though Castiel was simply healing him and sharing with him more of his grace. The angel wasn't doing anything fancy; he only had one hand on Dean's chest, directly above his heart.
One hand… Dean realized. His eyes swiveled in their sockets, desperate to see, while his neck strained to move. Slowly, he inched his head over his shoulder and saw Castiel drawing something on the floor in his blood.
"Seriously, man?" Dean exclaimed breathlessly. "My blood? Another sigil? What the hell?"
"Dean!" Castiel gasped. He immediately stopped and shifted his body to cover his work. His hand disappeared from Dean's chest, leaving Dean with a cold hole in the pit of his stomach.
"Cas, why'er you hidin' that from me?" Dean strained to ask. He was not fully healed yet, and without Castiel's angel mojo his stamina was depleting by the seconds.
"Because you're not Dean," he said with a disturbing edge to his voice.
"If I wasn't Dean," the man had to catch his breath, "could I tell you exactly what you said to me when we met that stupid cupid?" Castiel hesitated. "You told me, 'That's their handshake.' An' I said I didn't like it, so you said, 'Nobody likes it.' How's that?"
"That was good," Castiel admitted sadly.
"Good? Just... good?" Dean grasped for air angrily between each word. "Why you... sound so... upset?"
"Because, Dean..." Castiel trailed off. "Because now of all times you can't be here."
"What?" Dean spat. "What... the hell... you talkin' 'bout... Cas?"
"Stop fighting, Dean. Just stop fighting," Castiel ordered without looking at the man. "Why don't you ever take orders?"
And with that, Castiel gingerly took Dean's head in one hand and put him to sleep. The angel could feel the brief sense of outraged confusion as it flashed through Dean's mind, but that was all Dean knew before there was only darkness again.
Castiel stared down at him, still caressing his head, trying to express how very sorry he was with a look to an unconscious man. It was pointless, just like everything else lately. So, Castiel leaned down, kissed Dean sweetly, placed his head carefully down again, and resumed his drawing. When the body woke up, it would unquestionably be Beelzebub, and Castiel had to be ready. This was all he had to do after all, but it was the most important component.
The sigil was complicated, but with Dean asleep after losing so much blood, its construction was easy for Castiel. Wiping the blood from his hands onto his trenchcoat, the angel stood up to inspect his work. His head tilted dejectedly as he stepped away from Dean, closer to the door. He flipped Dean's phone open once more, told Sam the job was done, and curled up under a tree on his favorite Tuesday.