Rescue

"Dean, shhh," Sam said, turning off the radio. He heard a faint, feminine scream. Dean heard it too. They had had the windows down in the Impala because they were searching for their friends and the shapeshifters. The brothers looked at each other and Dean pointed the Impala in the direction of the sound, a dirt road coming up on their right, and drove slowly, listening. At the end of the dirt road was a house and a barn. The screaming had stopped a while ago and now they just needed to wait. Suddenly, a much louder and much more piercing scream hit their ears and threatened to break the glass in the car. The radio turned on, tuned to static.

"Cas," Dean said, horrified. They both jumped out of the car and ran to the trunk, each grabbing a gun loaded with silver bullets, some salt, holy water, and a knife. They burst through the door of the house to find mirror images of themselves staring back at them.

"Take your doppelgänger," Sam said to Dean who nodded.

The 'doppelgängers' were shapeshifters who were possessed. They were the shapeshifters that the brothers had been chasing, but somewhere between upstate New York and Fall River, they had been possessed. That was a new one for both Sam and Dean. They quickly killed the demons and, in the process, killed the shapeshifters. They knew they didn't have to kill the shapeshifters, but were so angry that they didn't care. They ran into the basement and turned on the light. The sight that they saw was enough to make any normal person sick to their stomach. Castiel was tied up, sitting, to a pole closest to the basement stairs. There were black feathers and bits of bloody skin around him and he appeared to be unconscious. His usually white shirt was crimson, not to mention burned in several places and practically shredded. Dean walked over to Cas and the angel growled, a low warning sound.

"Cas, it's me," Dean pleaded. "Look, I know you don't trust me and you have no reason to. Just-"

"Shit," Sam gasped, running over to Erela. Her back was covered in blood and the pool of blood that she was laying in was disconcertingly large. However, Sam couldn't figure out where the blood had come from. Not-Sam had cut her wings so close to her back that, in all that blood and ripped fabric, he probably wouldn't even have seen the stumps if they were visible to the mortal eye. Sam pressed his fingers to her neck and felt a faint pulse. She was also breathing slightly and shaking. She wasn't conscious, at least not until Sam tried to pick her up and she yelped and curled into herself.

"Erela, it's me," Sam said gently. She groaned weakly and curled into a tighter ball, keeping her eyes closed. Sam noticed fresh tears running down her face. "Look, I know you don't trust me, but it really is me."

"Don't hurt me anymore," Erela pleaded, focusing only on the pain and not on what Sam had been saying.

"Don't worry, Erela. It really is them," Castiel said gently. Dean had finally gotten through to him and untied him. "I sent Dean upstairs to find your..." he trailed off, seeing that Erela was shaking again. He put his fingers to her forehead and made her sleep.

Sam turned to Cas. "What did they do to her? Why is there so much blood?"

"They cut off her wings," Cas explained simply as Sam untied her. "Go and bring her to the car. I have one thing to do down here first." Sam picked the girl up and brought her up the stairs. Castiel knew Sam couldn't always see Erela's wings unless she wanted him to. The angel felt that that was a good thing at the moment because the stumps where her wings had been were quite grotesque. Cas picked up a clean jar off of one of the shelves and gathered Erela's spilt grace into the jar. He capped it and limped up the stairs to follow the Winchesters.

When Castiel got out to the car, he found Sam and Dean sitting in the front seat, silent and in shock. Erela was lying across the backseat, on her side. Dean had found her wings in a walk-in freezer, and, not knowing what to do with them, had slid them next to her on the seat. Cas picked up the silver wings gently and sat down in the backseat. He placed the wings on his lap and noticed, numbly that they were cold. Dean started driving and Cas got to work on reattaching Erela's wings. If he was lucky, the blood vessels and nerves wouldn't be dead yet. He gently rolled Erela onto her stomach and lifted up the back of her shirt. Cas lined her right wing up with the bloody stump on her shoulder blade. He placed his hand on her back and pushed some of his grace into her, despite how much it hurt him to do so. He started knitting blood vessels, tendons, and nerves back together and prayed to his siblings that he needed a miracle. Suddenly, he felt a faint swirling of energy and a faint heartbeat in Erela's wing. Her wings were much more corporeal than his could ever be, at least in this form. His wings didn't have a heartbeat when he was in a vessel; they were pure energy.

Castiel made quick work of reattaching Erela's left wing and was finished before they got back to her house. He carried her up to her room and laid her on her bed for the second time in a week. He made sure that she was comfortable and there was no pressure on her wings. He now set to the task of putting her grace back into her so that she could heal herself because he was feeling weaker and weaker every second. He pushed it back into her body by her mouth, like one would do with a soul. She groaned when he did and her wings twitched. Castiel stroked her hair and went downstairs.

As he entered the living room, Sam and Dean were watching him.

"She should be fine," he said, leaning against the nearest wall due to his sudden inability to stand. "Her wings are reattached and moving and her grace is back in her. I healed most of her physical wounds, but her mental ones… She's broken. It's going to take her a while to get back to normal." He tried to walk to the couch, but his legs gave out and Dean caught him and led him the rest of the way to the couch. When Cas sat down, Dean sat down next to him and put his arm around the angel's shoulders. Cas tried to pull away from Dean's grasp, but then remembered where he was and that he was safe and he relaxed. Castiel just sighed, releasing all of the pain and the stress of the last few days. Or was it hours? Or weeks?

"How long were we gone?" Cas asked no one in particular.

"About three days," Sam replied.

"It felt much longer than that," Cas mumbled.

"What exactly did they do to you?" Dean asked, looking into Castiel's eyes. Cas looked away.

"They cut us and burned us until we blacked out." He shivered at the memory and Dean pulled him closer. Cas flinched away slightly and then sighed. "I don't know why they didn't cut off my wings. I can grow them back. I don't think Erela can. She was screaming, Dean," Cas muttered. "I've heard suffering before. Even a million souls crying out at once sounds less jarring than that. I screamed when you... Not you pulled out a few feathers and burned me with holy fire. I can only imagine..." He trailed off, staring at his reflection in the black T.V.

"Sammy, why don't you go get some sleep? There's not much we can do now," Dean reasoned, noticing that his brother was practically falling asleep leaning against the wall. Neither of them had slept since Cas and Erela had disappeared. Sam just nodded and headed upstairs. "Cas, I'm gonna stay down here with you tonight," Dean said, stroking Castiel's hair. The angel simply nodded, too exhausted to respond. It didn't take him long to pass out due to sheer exhaustion and, when he did, Dean laid down on the couch and put Cas' head on his chest. Dean thought that angels didn't need sleep, but he figured that after the ordeal that Cas had just gone through, anyone would need to rest. Dean soon fell asleep as well.