Title: Under the Influence of Djinn
Chapter: Eleven
Summary: AU: The Djinn siblings created a terrible detailed nightmare for Dean out of revenge, nearly killing him, Lisa, and Ben. With Sam alive, Castiel missing, and Campbell cousins in tow, he tries to pull himself back together.
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Supernatural was created by Eric Kripke. No disrespect in intended with this work of fan fiction.

Samandriel had been thinking a lot the past couple days, about duty and sacrifice, and family. He'd considered how those three things could intertwine. He'd perused the history of the Winchester brothers and studied the two in an attempt to see how human brothers behaved. The conclusion he came to was that perhaps the angels should have the sort of devotion to each other as Sam and Dean Winchester had displayed.

When he had a moment alone with Rachel, he stepped close to her. "We have to help Castiel."

She glanced around and put the face of her vessel close to his. "How do you propose we do that? If we help him both Raphael and Naomi will know about it. I don't know about you, Samandriel, but I can't afford to be on Naomi's bad side, not with Raphael looking to kill all of us who sided with Castiel. She could hand us over at any time."

"We said we were allies, but what have we done? When trouble came, we ran. We were too afraid of Raphael to stand up for what we believe in, for what Castiel was trying to accomplish. We asked Naomi for asylum instead of standing with Castiel when he needed us. We let him end up where he is, Rachel. We abandoned him."

"We tried -"

"No, we didn't. Not really. We called ourselves friends and family and we practically handed him over without a fight at all. We may as well have done this to him ourselves."

She looked away and he saw the struggle on her face before she nodded. "What do you want to do? And how do you expect to pull it off?"

"We arrange a distraction and help Castiel and the woman escape. We hide them long enough for Raphael to lose sight of them. Castiel is as good as human now. Once the two are in a crowd, away from sight, and surrounded by humans, the guards won't be able to pinpoint them quickly. It'll take time and give them time to escape, put some distance between them and the guards."

"Because that'll be so easy." Her sarcasm was almost palpable. "You make it sound like nothing. You sound a lot like Castiel did."

"Does, Rachel. He's not dead. Next, we find Dean Winchester and hide him so he can't be used against them."

"Again, easy."

"Rachel."

She sighed. "I'll attempt to locate Dean Winchester and if I find him, will hide him as Castiel hid both he and his brother once before."

"Thank you."

"If he has others with him? People he keeps company with?"

"Use your best judgment. I'll work on finding some sort of distraction that can't be traced to us."

"You're going to get yourself killed."

"Maybe, but at least I'll die trying to do the right thing. I'll die being the sort of angel I should have been before."

He watched her go and tried to think of a distraction of some kind, but he was at a loss as to what would work the best. This wasn't his specialty, but he forced himself to think the way the Winchester brothers and Castiel did.

Bits and pieces.

Dean laid in bed in a motel room and thought about the Djinn dream and the things that had been in it. It was fading now, those bits and pieces that had been the strongest when he'd woken. He found he could barely remember the little parts, like the alpha creatures.

Were there such things in reality? The Djinn would know if there was an alpha creature for themselves and it wasn't far-fetched to think they'd mix that in for a little bit of realism. The more realism added to it, the more he'd believe it was real. The same with the Mother of All. Had he dreamed of her? He couldn't quite bring it back into focus. Something about dragons….

The things that stayed with him were those betraying moments. Sam soulless. Castiel lying to him. Bobby never telling him Sam was topside. Lisa implying his bond with Sam was a terrible thing.

He sighed, listening to the sound of the shower. Sam had just come back from an early morning run with Christian. They'd driven seven hours from Bobby's for a case and spent a few hours the previous evening working on it. Today would show them all how well they worked together.

Rolling over, Dean reached for his phone and looked at his email. Some of the little things they could check, those things he thought were real that the Djinn had included to give that dose of realism. Alpha creatures. Mother of All. Dragons. Was there really a Dr. Visyak? Purgatory? Maybe when they finally heard from Castiel he'd ask him some of those questions.

The longer without some sort of word from Castiel, the more Dean found himself worrying about him. He hoped that nerdy little angel was okay.

The bathroom door opened, Sam coming out fully dressed. "I thought you and I could talk to the cops, let Gwen and Christian take the victims' families and witnesses, and Mark can coordinate the information."

"Coordinate?"

"Keep a running board of details. Let us all know when new information comes in."

"Why not have him out with Christian and Gwen? Or us?"

"He likes putting the pieces together. Not that he can't do the other stuff, it's just what he's good at."

"How about we mix it up? You and Christian take the cops, I go with Gwen on the victims' families and witnesses." He sat up, smothering a yawn.

When Sam replied, it was with a dry tone. "If you really want to mix things up, then you should work with Christian today. You and Gwen seem to get along already."

"True, but I need to see how we work as a team."

"Dean, you need to work with Christian some time."

"Next case. Promise. Let me get used to Gwen. If she has my back the entire way today and however long this takes, I'll move on to Mark or Christian." He got out of bed and began gathering his clothes for the day. "I was thinking…. Do you think that all the monsters came from one source? Like a single mother created them?"

"A single mother? You mean a counterpart to Lucifer as the father of all demons only a mother of all monsters?"

"Yeah." He stepped laid his clothes on the end of the bed.

"Maybe?" Sam shrugged. "I never thought about it. I think there may have been one in mythology somewhere. Greek? Roman?"

"Might be worth looking into." He watched Sam gather a few things together: cell phone, notebook, pen. Whenever he looked at Sam, he saw Sam and though he searched, there was no sign of that Djinn creation.

Sam looked up and saw him watching him. "You okay?"

"I'm good. Breakfast in twenty?"

"We'll be at Denny's."

"Again?" He was getting sick of Denny's. It was the one place Mark always wanted to go.

"It's close."

"Yeah, whatever." He closed the door and started the shower, then looked at himself in the mirror. Dean didn't feel as off-kilter as he had, but he didn't feel completely like hunting either. Maybe he'd let Gwen take the lead, see how she did.

He nodded to himself. It was a plan.

They were ready. As ready as Jo could make them, that is. Her plan was iffy if the angels were on the ball, but from what Castiel had said, she suspected they weren't on the ball. She was pretty sure they were arrogant enough to think she and Castiel wouldn't try what they were going to shortly.

Jo wasn't worried. Not really. What was the worst that could happen? Raphael could give her a lobotomy and she wouldn't be herself again? But that could happen only if they got caught and she didn't plan on getting caught. At the very least, she'd sacrifice herself to get Castiel free. He was fully capable of searching for Dean on his own, whether he realized it or not. At best, they'd both be free from the angels and would carry on searching together. For awhile anyway.

She shoved the last of her toiletries into her bag and checked to make sure they had everything before dragging a chair in front of Castiel, sitting, and saying, "Okay, let's blow this place."

He stared at her a moment, then said in an earnest tone, "Jo, we have no explosives or supplies to make them. Not to mention there are innocent people on the premises. Blowing it up is not advisable."

She couldn't hold back a small smile at that comment because it was so him. Reaching out, she cupped his face with both hands. "You are annoyingly adorable…and adorably annoying."

"Is that a compliment?"

She laughed. "Sure. What I mean is let's leave. Find another motel." Jo released him and stood.

"Our guards will follow. You're aware of that?"

"I'd rather be somewhere on our dime than Raphael's. We've had enough of her brand hospitality I think. Get your things. I found a great motel while I was out the other day."

'Great' was stretching it, but it got Castiel moving.

"Is there a pool?"

"A pool?" Why on earth was he asking that? He'd never shown any interest in pools before.

He shouldered his bag and nodded. "I'd like to see if I can swim. Jimmy knew how and enjoyed swimming when he had a chance."

"No, no pool. It's pretty rare that I find a cheap enough motel that has a pool and if they do, you seriously don't want to actually go in it."

"Oh. Dean and Sam rarely stayed at motels with pools either. I'd like to if we can. Swimming is an excellent exercise." His gaze slid down her, then away, a dark flush spreading across his cheeks. "You could swim as well."

She had to wonder if he was imagining her in a swimsuit. "Maybe."

He chatted on the walk, his conversation focused on a show they'd watched the previous evening, the weather, how difficult shaving was, and the fact that he thought the underwear she'd bought him was too small.

She didn't comment on the underwear topic since he was the one who'd given her the sizes. Jo was glad when their new motel came into view, even though she had to prod Castiel forward once he got a good look at it. He didn't say anything and she was sort of looking forward to his reaction once they got inside a room.

The motel she'd chosen was one that might have the angels scratching their heads and likely deciding she was simply a stupid human who didn't understand how much better Raphael's arrangements were. Still, she didn't think they'd forcefully move them back.

They'd see very soon just what the angels were going to do.

While Castiel had to admit that he was easily distracted since waking back on earth, nothing could distract him from their new motel.

Jo's 'great motel' was roach infested, with a smell in the air that Castiel couldn't identify, a carpet that was so sticky that his shoes made crunching noises as he walked, and a water spot that indicated the ceiling was about a day from caving in. It rented by the hour and to checkout, one left the key on the dresser and the door open.

Her criteria for motels appeared to be far lower than Dean's. Had something been damaged in her brain aside from the loss of a few names, addresses, and phone numbers? How was this better than the other motel? Castiel felt like he should know what her plan was; that he was missing a crucial thing.

"Jo?"

As soon as she shut the door, she grabbed his arm. "Don't set anything on the bed or go near it. Pretty sure there are bedbugs. Set everything on the dresser and don't open anything or we'll get roaches in our stuff."

"I don't understand why we're here." He eyed one corner by the ceiling. Was that a bat on the wall?

"You will. Anything we can use to keep the angels from hearing us? Maybe something to keep them from barging in?" She pulled a can of spray paint from her bag and held it out to him.

"There are a few things we can use." He painted the symbols in various places, pleased that knowledge remained intact. Then, he turned back to Jo. "Explain."

"Now that we have privacy, I will. We need to shake off our angel guards because I'm not wandering the country with them on our tail. How do we do that? There's got to be something. I vaguely remember Dean talking about a symbol back at Bobby's before Carthage, but that's all I remember. What was he talking about? You do know, right, because if you don't, we're totally screwed and coming here was for nothing."

She wanted information and he was happy to oblige her and to be able to oblige her. It seemed odd that Raphael hadn't had this knowledge taken from his mind along with the other things. What was Raphael's game? Why take some information and leave what was far more important? "The banishing sigil. We use it to send them back to heaven and while they're gone, we leave."

"Yup. What do we need? Tell me." After he'd finished his explanation, she nodded. "Good. Now, how sure are you that you're not an angel anymore?"

The casual attitude from earlier was gone and she was focused and almost brisk in manner. "Completely. None of my angelic abilities work. I'm stripped of them all."

"You think you've become human. You're sure? On a scale of one to ten, with ten being full on angel of the Lord and zero being totally human, where would you rate yourself?"

Castiel thought about it a moment since she seemed to want him to. "I've said I believe I'm human. I'm sleeping, eating, experiencing emotions. Those are human things. Angels do none of those, experience only slight emotions. I'd say perhaps a one at highest."

"Huh. A one." Her teeth grazed her lower lip. "Why a one?"

"Because I'm uncertain if losing abilities is temporary or if I have some sort of latent ability remaining. One is a caution." One was a hope.

"What if you're becoming some sort of hybrid? A new sort of angel and this is a chrysalis period like a caterpillar goes through?"

Did she miss where he said he had no angelic abilities? "I'm fairly certain Raphael wouldn't leave me with anything faintly angelic to work with."

"He left you these symbols and it hasn't even been a full week. You don't know what's happening to you for sure and screw Raphael. Like he -"

"She. She burned through her male vessel beyond even an archangel's ability to repair. She broke him too far to maintain him as a vessel. He died the second she left him."

"Fine. She. The point I'm getting at is that we don't know for sure what part of angel you have left in you, if anything. I'm hesitant to have you do what's necessary if it could send you right back up there because Raphael might decide to simply kill you instead of sending you back down here and if she did send you back, it'd be with a further scrubbing of your mind and of mine."

"I still don't understand why we came here to this," he glanced around the shabby room, "establishment. We could have done this at the other motel."

"No, sweetheart, we couldn't." She pointed at the window along the back wall. "I spent the past couple days scouting motels for one that had windows at the front and back of the rooms. You have to find the really old, crappy, about to be torn down places to get that. You're going out the back window with our things and to the bus station several blocks down. Wait for me there, but no longer than an hour. I'm going to draw them in through the front, get rid of them, and follow you."

"We'll take the bus somewhere."

"No. Don't worry, I have it planned."

"But you're not going to tell me."

"Not until I'm sure we can get out alone. If they've thought to have someone at the back too, we're in trouble. We have one shot at this because if they catch us, we won't be escaping again. You know that."

"I'm aware that the odds are against us, but as Dean and Sam repeatedly beat the odds, I believe we have a shot." Dean had used that phrase 'have a shot' several times.

She pulled a roll of bills from her pocket and pressed it into his hand. "Here. This is half of what we have. If we get separated, you'll have something to spend for food and shelter for a short while."

Castiel pocketed the money. "We won't become separated."

"If we do -"

"No. You will send them away and meet me long before the hour is up. We will prevail." He swallowed hard, not liking the way his stomach had begun churning, but knowing it was normal in a situation like this because he'd felt it before. It was fear. Fear he was wrong. Fear Jo would be caught and hurt. Just plain fear. "I'm ready when you are."

With a sigh, she took a knife out of her bag. "For the record, I really hate blood spells of any kind."

When the symbol was drawn and Jo knew what to do, Castiel set the timer on his phone and headed out the window. Every stranger he came into contact with on the way to the bus station was a potential angel, every shadow a spy, yet he made it without incident. Setting their bags down, he drew out his phone and watched the minutes tick by with dread like a blanket about him.

Accepting this assignment to head the guard on Castiel and Jo had been stupid. Laurel knew it and yet she'd gone ahead and done it. She'd helped kick Castiel out of heaven, laid him in that motel room with the woman, and let herself be promoted when she'd known full well that nothing good would come of it.

She hurried to Naomi's domain, having merely a minute to give her a report before Raphael arrived to view the motel room. As she made her way towards Naomi's office, the heart of her vessel pounding hard in her chest, she found Samandriel and grabbed him. "I need you to take a report to Naomi. I can't be gone long."

"Wait -"

"No. I can't. I messed up! Samandriel, tell her that Castiel and Jo Harvelle are gone."

Surprise glinted in his eyes. "Gone? You mean -"

"They lured the guards close and worked a banishing sigil. By the time we got back there, they were gone and we can't find them. They've disappeared."

A frown appeared on his vessel's face. "How? Didn't Raphael have Castiel's memories cleared of his angelic knowledge?"

She hesitated long enough that she was sure he saw her guilt. "It was ordered, never completed."

"Laurel, you can't go back down there."

"I have to. I can't give Raphael any excuse to look into who I've associated with in the past. She'll see all of you and Naomi and she'll know I was working for Naomi instead of her. She'll tear heaven apart to kill Naomi. We can't let that happen." She'd been trained to protect Naomi's office at all costs, even personal. With only Raphael remaining, it was important that Naomi's office be kept hidden and safe. "Tell her, please."

Returning to the scene, she found Raphael already there, pacing and angry. With a wave of Raphael's hand, the seven angels standing there flew away, panic in their movements. "You let them leave the first motel, the one we chose for them."

"We didn't see the harm in them having some freedom of movement. We were watching them."

Glass from the half-shattered window sprinkled the pavement and the door to the room hung on one hinge.

"Not well enough."

"We were never told to keep them in one place. It was never said they couldn't have a choice of motel."

Raphael's lips pursed.

"I personally followed Jo whenever she left the motel." She winced, understanding that the admission didn't help her case with Raphael. "She walked. It never looked like she was doing anything but walking. I had no idea -"

Raphael stood near the open door, hand raising and pointing. "They talked and made plans and you let them. You let them keep you out."

"The symbols -"

"A well-placed rock through that window would have broken the hold on this wall."

"There are other symbols below the window, painted on the wall itself," she protested, her hands shaking. Her vessel had often had panic attacks in her life and she realized she was on the verge of having one now. There was no way she was going to survive this, was there? "You can see them from the back window."

"You let them check in to a motel with windows along two sides and then didn't post guards on both sides. It's almost as if you wanted them to escape."

"Of course not! I'd never -"

Raphael moved to stand beside her. "You're not the angel I thought you were. I'd had such high hopes that you were up to this task, as you'd performed admirably to this point, but I see I was mistaken. Your incompetence astounds me. Tell me how it happened. How did they escape us?"

"Apparently, Castiel went out the back window while Jo lured the two guards over by claiming you'd told her to have them help her if she had trouble with Castiel. She claimed she needed their assistance. They believed her and were sent back to heaven where they found me. We returned here to discover them gone. We have no idea where they went."

"You failed me, Laurel. You let Castiel get away."

"I'm sorry. I am. It won't happen again."

For a moment, she thought Raphael might let her live, but then she saw the glint of the blade in her hand and both thought and life ceased. Laurel died, splayed out on the ground before the open motel room door.