Author's/Underhill's Note: Okay, so this chapter is a little short... but I'm already partway through chapter 9 which will be longer so hopefully that will make up for it. I've been trying to update this every four or five days, but every once in a while work (oh god retail) will get in the way.

Also: I'm kind of weird about timelines, like, I like to nail down months and days and so forth though probably no one else thinks it's important. So, my timeline: Abandon All Hope (episode 10) is going to have been been early December. Sam, Interrupted (eppy 11) happens late December, and Dean and Bela get back shortly after on January 2nd. January 5th Cas finds out Dean is 'gone' and on the 11th Lugosi and Steele Antiquities is created. Yes, now it is very, very apparent I am kind of (really) crazy.

Chapter 8

January 17, Housatonic, Massachusetts

"Yeah. My answer is yeah."

"Do you think it was too soon to leave Cas alone?" Sam asks Bobby. They've already identified the ghost as a witch named Maggie Briggs, but other than that, nothing. All Sam's got now is a vague feeling of unease at the thought of a too-still too quiet Cas alone in Bobby's house.

"Not like we had much of a choice, Sam," Bobby responds. "We can't watch 'im forever."

"But twelve days? He's still barely speaking."

"No one else to cover this one," Bobby says gruffly. Secretly he agrees with Sam. They've had Cas on suicide watch ("Can angels even do that?") since he crash landed in the salvage yard. Essentially, they have a near-comatose angel on their hands.

After three days they ended up lying to make him start talking again.

"We'll find, Dean. We'll bring him back."

"What's done can be undone, boy."

"We don't even know if it's true."

"If there's a way out of the Pit, we'll find it. We just gotta keep lookin'."

Cas watched them with hopeless eyes and Bobby's heart had broke a little. The angel obviously felt responsible, God knows why. Cas is like Dean that way: the whole weight of the world on his shoulders.

"I just wish we could have brought him along," Sam says. "I don't like the idea of him unsupervised."

"He's as old as time, Sam. He don't need a sitter."

"You know what I mean." Sam takes another bite of his salad and thinks how Dean would be making fun of him if he were here. Dean would be sitting across from him, eating - - what was it - - a Bacon Burger Turbo, and judging him with his eyes. Sam misses his brother on a level he can't voice, not even to Bobby, like a piece of something physical has been torn out of him.

Sam is distracted as he walks later that night, wondering how the hell his brother could have caved after only a month in the Pit. He hadn't buckled for thirty years, and now…

A sharp sting strikes him in the neck.

"What?"

He passes out.

It's the first time he's been left alone, Cas observes. It's relieving. No Bobby giving him awkward looks, no more Sam looking like he might give him a hug. Cas suddenly has a keen sense of exactly how Dean must have felt growing up with his brother.

They are gone because Sam and Bobby have a job in Massachusetts so Cas is staying at Bobby's to run the phones. Bobby'd given him a brief rundown, quizzed him a few times, and given him a self-written manual on what to expect from each phone, how to respond, and the usual aliases from the Hunters Bobby fields calls for. "Don't screw up," was the last instruction he gave before he and Sam drive off.

Now Cas is staring blankly between the bank of phones and the books open in front of him. "The Afterworld," "Styx," and a stack of relatively unknown volumes written in a dead dialect of ancient Greek; Bobby was excited to find Cas could read (and speak) it.

Cas yawns.

That's another thing he has to worry about that he doesn't want Sam and Bobby to know the full gravity of. He's falling. Flying is getting more and more exhausting. He sleeps sometimes. Sam'd asked earlier if Jimmy's soul will move on if Cas falls and Cas told him yes, even though Jimmy died when his body was blasted apart by Chuck's archangel. Cas's vessel is his own.

Deep down Cas is frightened by the prospect of mortality. There's nothing for him to live for - - his home is off limits, his family will not take him back even if he did want to return, and the only person he ever wanted is gone.

But he'll stay because of Sam and Bobby, because Dean would want him to look out for them and help end the Apocalypse. And he'll keep looking for a way to save Dean because he can't find it in himself to give up completely. He owes Dean more than that. He…

A phone rings.

There's nothing for it. He picks up the phone and says, "Yes?"