Author's Note: I appreciate you all so very much. I love reading your comments and hearing what you think. Thank you, as always, for following and reading.

They fly for several minutes with Cas carrying him over his shoulder. Blood drips from his hanging fingertips to fall miles and miles down to the blurry ground. He already feels like he's going to throw up so he keeps his eyes shut and everything seems to be fading into the background. Dean only jerks back to the present when they suddenly drop several feet. After that, Cas rapidly descends, making abrupt falls and for a moment Dean absurdly thinks he's running out of pixie dust. He's not scared anymore that they're almost just falling now with only Cas trying to glide to slow them. If this is when he dies, at least his friend is with him. His angel.

Cas hits the ground hard, rolling just before impact so he cushions Dean's body. They skid a few feet, and Dean ends up on his side next to him with new scrapes down his arm and face. Groaning low, he almost gives in to the pull of sleep. It'd be so easy to just close his eyes and his body is pleading for it. But when he cracks an eye to find Cas, he's not moving. Dean forces himself to crawl the few feet over to him and lift his hand to cup his face. It's all he has energy for and even that makes him puff out air hard.

"Cas?" he rasps.

Nothing. Not even a twitch. There are bloody tears up and down his shirt and bare arms. Dean pulls up the black cloth to see the wounds on his abdomen better. With the aid of moonlight, he can tell there's more than a handful of long gashes, some like scratches other slices and one deep hole on his side. He's bleeding.. just like any human does but they're rimmed in black with angry red streaks that crawl along the skin surrounding them. Like some kind of infection.

Dean sucks in a breath and summons the energy to cock back his hand and slap him across the face.

"Cas!"

The angel jolts up and suddenly has a shining blade in his hand, while his other grips Dean's throat.

"It's me!" He coughs. "Cas!"

He releases him and drops back down instantly. "Sorry," he sighs and it sounds strained. Dean doesn't answer, just falls back too, half on Cas' arm. Exhausted. Done. Cas is okay. Now's a good time to sleep. Cas is warm beneath him. He mutters something unintelligible and turns his face into his shoulder, trying to not to touch his chest and accidentally hurt him worse.

"Dean."

"Hmm," he mutters.

"You're hurt. I am reasonably certain that if you fall asleep.." he winces as he shifts so Dean's head is fully on his shoulder and wraps his arm around him and that's even better.

"Dean. Please don't sleep. I.. I don't think I am able to heal you right now."

"Shh, Cas. Everything's gonna be okay," he says with his eyes shut, inhaling him and feeling warm for the first time in what seems like forever.

"Everything's.. okay.."

Dean thinks he whispers it again but it might not have made it to his mouth. He sinks into Cas like a pillow and just lets everything go.

Dean's woken by weak morning sun in his face. There's ice-crystals melting on the grass from the night before but oddly he's not cold. When he tries to push up, he realizes why when he feels the weight of soft feathers surrounding him. His whole body is stiff and whenever he moves, his back screams in protest as the skin pulls with movement. When he looks down, he watches Cas' chest rise rhythmically but very shallow. Cas said he didn't sleep..

Dean checks the wounds under his ripped bloody shirt. They're closed but still ringed with deep red. Most of the black is gone which has to be a good thing, right? When his chest expands suddenly, Dean looks up to see him blinking and frowning back at him.

"You.. alive?"

"Surprisingly." Cas props himself up on one arm with a pained grunt and pushes Dean's shoulder so he faces away. Poking at Dean's back until he sucks in through his teeth, Cas sighs and drops his hands.

"Well, at least you won't die."

"What'd you do?"

"I healed you as much as I was able, which was not very much. I lost consciousness before I was sure if it was enough."

"What did that to you?" He watches Cas inspect his own ugly gouges.

"Demon Blade. They're forged in Hell from the remains of broken souls. Demons use-"

"Demons. Cas! We have to go back." Dean grunts as he tries to get to a knee. "My mom.."

"Dean.I'm.. I am sorry."

"Don't say sorry. Say you'll take me back." He gets to his feet, ignoring the agony of his body and looks down at Cas, waiting. "C'mon, dammit."

Cas sits up fully but stays on the ground. "I can't take you anywhere right now. And I'm very sorry Dean, but I can't do anything for your mother either. The demon has most likely left her by now."

"But that's good! You can heal her! Hurry and- What the fuck is wrong with you? C'mon!"

"Dean." He stares up at him until the panic and denial start to war in his mind. "But she was talking. It, whatever, was talking.."

"The moment it vacated her body as a host.. she was gone before we left, Dean."

He sinks to his knees and his shoulders shake trying to wrap his head around a world with his mom broken and bleeding back at their house. When he feels a hand touch his shoulder, he knocks it away and grips what's left of Cas' bloody shirt and yells in his face. "Then what good are you?! A fucking angel and you can't fix her?" He pushes Cas away only to punch him a second later. It hurts his entire body but he just balls his fist again. Cas lets him do it again before grabbing him around the shoulders and holding him right against him. He fights and bucks and twists, trying to get free to hurt him more until finally he's too drained to jerk back anymore.

Dean silently sobs and brings his arms up to encircle Cas' waist as he gives into falling into his lap, losing his will all at once.

"You never got to try her pie." He gets out before his voice cracks. "And now you never will." It's a ridiculous thought that may have come from some sort of shock but all he can think in now is small things that will change. Like how she won't be there to sing in the mornings or make him soup when he's sick or go with Sam to get his cast off at the doctor's soon or a million other things that he'd always taken for granted.

Cas strokes his hair, high above his tore up back and lets him babble and cry until he feels numb. He's not sure what parts are in his head and what was out loud but now he's quiet and thinking about the ugly twisted things that did this to him. To his family.

"When you're okay enough, heal yourself so we can get back. Not me."

Cas hadn't answered the whole of the time he was losing it but now his hand stills and he says, "I should be able to do both soon."

"No. I want the scars."

Cas is silent at that but goes back to running fingers softly through his hair. With his head in his lap, Dean stares out at the trees feeling detached from a world with vibrant green leaves that tremble in the sunlight.

"You coulda died too. Because of me… You should have left me there." He says, voice sounding hollow.

"They would have killed you. Eventually."

"It doesn't matter now," Dean mutters with weariness.

"It matters to me."

A few hours later, Cas takes him to the edge of his woods and makes him stay out of sight while he checks the house. When he returns he says, "They're gone. A man and your father are in your house. Neither of them are demons. The one that was in your mother is gone."

For just a second, Dean gets a pathetic surge of hope but when he sees Cas' grim expression he looks back towards the house. "She's really gone then." He can't say dead yet. He walks past Cas without another word and crosses into his backyard. It looks the same with Sammy's sandbox, the swingset, their grill.. only last night there'd been a group of possessed humans standing right here.

When he gets to backdoor, it's open. He walks through to hear the cock of a shotgun. Dean slowly turns to his left to see Bobby. "Dean?"

"Yeah." He acknowledges, softly.

"Dean!" His dad walks slowly towards him, pale and ashen. He's wearing jeans under a hospital gown and unlaced boots. He touches his bloody face where the demon had rubbed the knife on him after stabbing itself. His mom.

"It's not mine. It's… hers."

For a second, John's face gets hard and he flings an open flask at him. Dean flinches but its just water. Then his dad grabs him up in his arms, even though he makes a pained noise doing it. "I thought they took you."

Past his dad's shoulder, he can see the outline of a body under a sheet. John holds him for a long time, his body shaking with sobs. This may be the first time he's ever seen his dad cry. He would cry too but he doesn't have any tears left. Now it's like there's just an awful void inside him. He hisses when his dad grips too close to one of the slices on his back. John turns him away to see all the bloody slashes on his shirt. "What happened?!"

"I'm alright."

"How'd you-"

Bobby interrupts his dad with, "Will you sit down at least before you fall on your ass? We need to get you back to the hospital."

"No! Not going back there." His dad says, putting a hand on Dean's shoulder to steady him as they walk towards the couch. "You can patch me up." He swipes a half-full bottle of whiskey off the counter on the way and takes a swig of it. "Then we're going after them."

"Yeah, because changing bandages in the army is just like patching someone up after major surgery. " They maneuver his dad down slowly with cushions to prop him up. When Bobby lifts up the hospital gown to look at the medical tape and gauze, John angrily pulls it over his head and throws it across the room. "Check Dean."

"You need to rest. And stop drinkin' on that!" he grumbles, grabbing the bottle out of his hand and gulping down a few swallows himself. Bobby sits behind Dean on the couch and lifts up his shirt to examine his cuts.

"Tell me, Son."

Dean wets his lips. "His name was Alastair," he says watching his dad clench his jaw down hard. "The one I saw before. He.. did my back. They called the little girl Lilith. There was something in mom.. it had yellow eyes."

Closing his eyes, John lays his head against the back of the couch. Bobby works in silence, cutting strips of medical tape and setting out white squares of gauze on his knee.

"I got away, ran into the woods." Dean chews his lip, not knowing how else to sum up the awful panic and violence of last night. Even now it's a jumble of cries and blood, ugly laughter and adrenaline. When his dad keeps his eyes shut and doesn't answer, Dean thinks he fell asleep or maybe passed out. His attention strays to the sheet again. There's a red stain in the middle of it. He can't pull his gaze away from it, even as his dad starts talking. "I wish to God I had told Bill Harvelle to go to Hell."

Bobby sighs loudly from behind Dean, dapping something cold over skin. "Don't do this."

"They were demons. You understand that, Dean? Demons. I-" He chokes on a sob and has to stop. "I was a Hunter.. before I met your mother. My father was too. Showed me about all the ugly shit that's hiding just outta sight. Bill and me, we'd work together sometimes. But I gave it all up for her." Tears run down his cheek and he hasn't once turned to the floor where her body.. where she was. Where Dean can't look away from.

He holds his hand out towards Bobby.

"No."

"Give me the Goddamn bottle, Bobby. Now."

Bobby reaches around Dean and shoves it at his dad. "Here! But don't come cryin' to me when yer liver shuts down!" After placing the last piece of tape on his back, Bobby gets up and stomps outside the house without another word.

Taking several more gulps, his dad sniffs and says, "Right after Sam was born, Bill comes to me for one last job. One. Last. Time." He slurs a little now when he punctuates each word. "Something big was going down and… God forgive me, I went. Wanted to. I actually missed it."

The bottle tips up again and his dad sinks a little deeper into the cushions. "She was so beautiful. White dress with her hair up.. she looked like an angel." He smiles through his tears, "They got the flowers wrong and she was so mad.."

The next half hour is like that. Random half-thoughts from his dad, trapped between happy memories and the nightmare of a night that lead to today. Through slurred curses, he mumbles about pentagrams on the floor in blood, an old church, Bill screaming and one name over and over. Azazel. He has a moment of clarity before passing out. The last thing he does is grip Dean by his collar so he drags his eyes away from his mother's body. "Dean. I shoulda told you before. I shoulda been preparing you. You gotta understand.. I didn't want this life for you. I.." He shakes his head and blinks feverish, glassy eyes, "but they took that away. Now-now I gotta teach you to fight back! To hunt them! To want these sons-a-bitches as much as I do! We've gotta take 'em out, Dean!"

"Okay. It's alright, Dad." He pats the hand that's fisted in his shirt and pushes him back so he slumps against the pillows, wincing.

"It's time to grow up, Son." He whispers with his eyes shut before his mouth slackens. Dean covers him with a blanket. Bobby comes up behind him. "I'll watch over him. Go get some sleep if you can. We'll.." He looks at the sheet covering his mom. "We'll handle everything when he wakes up."

Dean feels like he's aged a decade as climbs up the stairs. He passes the bloody smear on the second landing where Cas had slammed against the wall, pushes open his broken door with the long scratches from a knife, walks over a huge pool of blood where he had sat exhausted and.. dying. There's a trail of bloody footprints tracked through one deep red puddle all the way to the window. He sits on the edge of his bed for what seems like hours but is probably not very long. When he prays.. it's just his name, once.

He's only a few minutes, as if he was waiting. Cas sits beside him so his leg touches his and takes his hand so their fingers lace. Dean not only lets him, but squeezes him so it almost hurts.

Staring at the window, he says, "We're leaving. My dad's pretty out of it.. but I got that much."

Castiel is quiet, but squeezes back now.

"I didn't say so before.. but thanks."

"Don't thank me. I failed you. Your mother still-"

"Yeah, we're not gonna talk about her. I just.. that wasn't your fault."

"It is. Why else would demons come after you? Your family? I believed I had been so careful on my trips to you."

"It wasn't you. There's this whole fucked up story with my dad." He waits a minute, trying to think of what else to say. "He needs me. We're going after them, Cas."

"You're going to become a Hunter. Like your father before you."

Dean turns to him surprised and their eyes meet for the first time. Cas' blue ones are steady and his face is at its most stoic.. like in the early days of his first visits.

"Yep. Family Business." He laughs bitterly up at the ceiling.

"If you ever need me.."

"Yeah…" Dean sighs. "I'll miss you."

Cas smiles but it's gone before he's even sure he saw it.

"Maybe I'll see you again. Someday."

"Perhaps." Cas says, frowning at the ground and releases his hand.

"I'm not gonna say goodbye. Just.. just leave like you used to, kay?"

The angel thinks for a second then nods.

Dean clears his throat and only sniffs once. "So Cas, you gonna come back again?"

"If you would like, Dean."

Dean tries to smile but he doesn't quite pull it off. When Castiel turns away, Dean grabs his shoulders. When he lets go.. he'll be gone. Cas looks back after pausing only a moment and cups Dean's face. The kiss is chaste. Sweet and a little damp from his tears but it'll be the one Dean remembers most

"Next time, then."

Author's Note:A moment of silence for poor Mary Winchester. Promise next chapter will be less gloom and doom. Also there's going to be a time jump. I'll try not to make you wait too long for it, darlings.