The Question

'This is Dean. Leave your name, number and nightmare at the tone.'

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'De-?'

There is a click and a clunk and droning discordant note that blares into his ears. Castiel blinks in the morning light and watches his own shaking hand as it carefully returns the receiver to its holster. The sound of the plastic clacking on plastic is sharp.

What doesn't return to him, however, is the coin. Castiel breathes and listens to the sound of air rushing through his airways and into his lungs. He distantly remembers a soothing female requesting more money, but its faded and washed-out against the flooding colour of Dean's voice.

His shaking hand is reaching for the door now, ruptured flesh pushing slowly against cold metal. The door creaks as it swings, an ancient mouth croaking out forgotten voices. He hears them all. Outside is a city waking up. The noise is deafening as Castiel fumbles free from the booth, and, finding its rhythm, Castiel begins to wake up too, awareness growing with the days fresh light.

He finds more water, washes his hands and drinks. Theres only a little blood now, still trapped under his fingernails, and if he's not careful the tender cuts and grazes will start to bleed again. One of them already is, blood creaking along the lines of his hands. Castiel blinks at it and feels cold. Which, when he finally gets his brain to catch up, he realises is a good thing. Feeling cold is better than the strange numbness that engulfed him before.

He listens to the street-thrum of cars and people, is aware of his injuries, stubborn and unsealing; he feels cold and hungry and so bone-achingly tired it nearly makes him collapse again. He does all these things. But then he can also move a coin without touch.

What does that make him now?

A strange mixture of clarity and caution hang heavy above him. He is coming back, but back to a world where answers are light and shadow, as untouchable as a whisper. He doesn't know what to do, a mockingly familiar feeling. And so, unsure and unwilling, he settles for doing nothing.

The day creeps on.

It's bad for him, he knows, to just sit and think. But thinking helps, and he can feel the pieces of himself knitting together again. Because he is here and it is real and this is real and he is real. The missing voices were Dean and Sam. The same ones that vanished. Sam and Dean. He couldn't hear them, couldn't hear their prayers, because emptiness has consumed him until he was nothing but ash and dust-stop. Stop. It will be okay, a good lie to believe. It will all be okay because the voice on the phone had been Dean. Dean and Sam. Sam and Dean.

The sky begins to bleed a sickly pink and orange as Castiel pinches the bridge of his nose. Everything burns. Everything aches. He may be able to move and coin a few inches, but he is cold to the point of sickness. He could move a coin a few inches, but he cannot heal. In fact he's almost catatonic with blood-loss.

What does that make him now?

As the dark settles into the city like snow-fall, Castiel finally stands up. He needs to find another coin, needs to find their voices again, their absence pains him more than anything else. So be begins to walk, each stab of pain resolutely making him ignore the wounds on his back, and the tickle of blood creeping sluggishly over his skin.

Several hours later he wishes he didn't remember the concept of time, almost wishes for the numb oblivion again because now he knows pain and cold and they smother their heavy burden over him. The city has slunk back into its sharp neon glare, pockets of shadow nestling like crevasses amongst the light. Castiel sticks to the empty backstreets, less people, less confusion, less noise, although he still glad of the noise.

Walls become his friends, offering a solidity to his twisting, shifting world. He grips them, runs tattered fingers along their rough stone, and when he collapses again and again he soaks against their coldness. And then they're always there to help him stand once more, so he walks alongside them, a ghost of his own.

stopstopstopstop

He pauses at the entrance to a side-alley, unsteady and trembling. There is something sloshing in the base of his skull, a once pure impulse turned murky and polluted - something of his other self, or maybe his current self, or broken self, Castiel isn't sure. His view of the sidewalk lurches, so he tightens his grip and trains his eyes into the darkness of the alley, trying to see what the broken impulse is picking up.

In the middle of the high walls stands a human. It raises its head, picking up Castiel's heavy breathing, and turns to look at him, still and tense and angry.

'Keep walking,' it says.

Castiel blinks and his body coils. The impulse is a pitching torrent that nearly drowns him from the inside out. demondemondemonitsademon. It towers before him and he can see it for all its tainted rot. The human it's stolen is barely noticeable under the black-stained coil of malice and evil. It makes his heart bleed into his ribs.

'Buddy, piss off,' the demon snarls though human lips.

Around the far corner of the alley suddenly come three others. Two are like the first, twisting and pulsating as they fester inside their hosts. The third is a woman, a flurry of brown hair and terrified eyes, who is flung carelessly against a wall and collapses with a panicked scream. She is fear and noise as the demons approach.

For less than a pulse, Castiel is something more than himself once again, weight and gravity and force and light. He steps forward, framed boldly in the light of the entrance. A challenge that will not be ignored. The lights around him flicker and twitch.

'Don't.'

All three twist towards him, malice glinting in their lightless eyes like black diamonds. He feels himself instantly fade. The woman still screams, little panicked gasps that Castiel is glad he can hear - they are his only fuel now. The raw power is already gone, the impulse corroded into nothingness, the lights are steady and sedate. Castiel shivers in his emptiness.

The demons move.

One runs, disappearing into the maze of the city, lost from the world in a thrumming of hurried footsteps. The second slings the woman upright, twisting her limpness like a rag-doll until it has her standing. The woman whimpers as it clutches her tightly, a knife pressed close into her neck. The third is fixed on Castiel.

It glowers with a furious concoction of impulses and thoughts as it tries to understand just what the hell he is. For less than a heartbeat, Castiel flashes sympathy. If he knew what he was he'd tell it. But then the creature lunges at him, its stolen face twisting with anger and petty pride. It throws its hand, long and low, and Castiel feels the force of the demon pulsing through his blood.

It's base and corrupt, a wrenching force that no human should posses. Castiel staggers and nearly collapses; his heart rises in his chest, clogs his throat, chokes his lungs. The demon snarls a smile, hand still outstretched, but its face begins to fall as Castiel fights back. He grits his teeth, tenses and braces, and manages, impossibly, not to move.

Any relief he felt is short lived, as the next second the demon cannons into him. A double handed fist hammers into his face. Pain as a flower blossoms deep and rich as the already bruised flesh is impacted hard. Another something hammers into his ribs, once, twice, three times.

Castiel drops.

The demon follows him down, fists still flying.

Somewhere in the distance the woman still screams.

Blinded by flecks of blood and roiling pain as sharp as anger, Castiels ruined hands manage to scrabble closed around the demons throat. He clenches with all the strength he has, the demon gurgles and claws flesh from his arms. Castiel hears a hiss of pain and realises it comes from his own throat. Gathering his strength, he wrenches his body to the side; the demon is twisted off him, gaging and spitting as they both scramble to their feet.

The demon spins, Castiel ducks. The demon strikes, Castiel deflects. Every movement is stone grinding on stone, rumbles running as deep as the centre of the earth. And with each one comes a torrent of fire and ice. The demons sulphuric core burns his nose, coats his eyes with thick, unyielding grease.

He's dimly aware of a cold wall slamming into his back, his head snaps backwards with the force and his skull meets sharp brickwork with a crack. Acid hands clamp down over his throat. He can't even struggle anymore. A hulking, twisted face is breathing heavily inches from his. Teeth and muscle and bone dripping like tar swarm through his vision, engulf him, chew him, swallow him whole and spit him out again.

Castiel reaches inside for release, digging to a place he knows is withered and dead, but he goes anyway with faint lingering hope. He chokes. Acid bites his lungs. Blood pounds his ears. The demons face begins to sink in faint light. His vision begins to fade, pooling into white blood that hums and whines.

The world takes a breath.

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Everything becomes nothing.

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And then the world explodes.

All along the street, blaring lights splinter into a thousand pieces. Shattered glass shimmers through the air like rain-fall; sparks flare and plummet like falling stars and the road is granted a new skin of silver fire. Castiel heaves thick air through his ruined throat, gutters and coughs wretchedly. The wall is solid behind him where he slumps, pressing him firmly back into reality.

When his eyes finally drift back into tainted focus he tries to understand what happened. His arms don't work anymore, hang limply by his side. Opposite him in the alley-way is a gaping hole in the heavy wall. Powdered dust drifts like fog in the air, and even as Castiel looks a few more bricks clatter to the floor. Somewhere deep inside the hole, Castiel knows is the demon. Dead.

The stale night echoes with harmonies of his struggling breath and a woman quietly sobbing.

Castiel slowly lifts his head to the heavens and gasps the question he knows he'll get no answer to.

'What did you do to me?'

Originally this chapter had more, but I cut it up as otherwise it'd be a chapter and a half.
Enjoy some strange mixture of hurt!bamf!Cas, cos I like it when he throws things through walls.

Thank you so so much for your reviews and kind words!