Cas gets whumped really bad in this one o_0

16. Bedridden

Dean took a steadying breath as he washed his hands in the sink, scrubbing them until he had gotten all the blood off. A few doors down, Sam got Cas situated in his room, trying to make him as comfortable as possible now that they had tended his minor wounds.

He had to fight the urge to vomit as his mind flashed back to the harrowing hunt for the umpteenth time.

Dirt ground into his face as he launched himself away from the wendigo's clawed hands. He gave a screech of anger and Dean hurriedly spun over onto his back, scrambling for his flare gun.

"Sammy!" he cried. "Shoot!"

His younger brother ran up the path and took the shot. Dean ducked, hiding his face, expecting a burst of flames, but the wendigo was too fast. The flare slammed into a tree trunk nearby and the wendigo spun around, lashing out at Sam.

"Sam!"

Cas was suddenly between the thing and Sam, and the wendigo's claws raked across his chest. Cas gasped, but struck out with his angel blade, managing to score a deep wound across the wendigo's ribs.

It didn't like that at all. It reached for the angel, grabbed him by an arm and slammed his back against the trunk of a tree nearby.

After that it was all a blur. The sickening crack that sounded out when Cas hit, Dean finally getting a hold of his damned flare gun and scrambling to his feet to end the thing; and finally him and Sam both running over to Cas' crumpled figure once the thing had burnt to a crisp.

"Cas!" Dean cried, crouching next to the angel, Sam right beside him.

Cas' eyes were closed and his breaths were shaky. Dean wasn't sure he had ever seen the angel this pale before, and then finally his eyes opened.

"I—I can't feel my legs," he whispered.

Dean realized the water was still on and angrily twisted the tap, gripping the sink to take some steadying breaths.

The wendigo had broken Cas' friggin' back. Dean still almost couldn't believe it. This was one of the moments he was damned grateful Cas was an angel because otherwise he would probably be dead or at least permanently paralyzed.

But of course that also meant they couldn't take him to the hospital. He'd insisted he would heal, of course, but that didn't change the fact that he was in obvious agony, and that getting him back to the bunker had probably only caused more damage his already weakened grace was going to have to repair. But they'd done what they could, tried to make him as comfortable as possible.

Dean again fought back to urge to vomit, remembering Cas' screams of pain when they had lifted him onto a makeshift sled to carry him through the woods. But they were home now, and Cas could finally start healing. Cas needed them right now, he was going to be bedridden until he healed and Dean didn't know how long this was going to take, though hopefully, now that they didn't have to move him again, it wouldn't take too long.

He took a steadying breath and left the bathroom, heading back down to Cas' room where the door was open. Sam was cleaning up the first aid things. They'd tended Cas' other injuries since they didn't want him to expend even more energy to heal those, and there had been a ton of stitches to patch up the wounds from the wendigo's claws. Sam looked up at Dean with a worried expression as he passed him on his way into the room.

"I'll be right back," he said as he went to throw away the bloodstained bandages.

Dean swallowed hard as he looked at Cas. The angel was pale and rigid. They had given him a back brace in the hopes that it would aid his healing if he couldn't move his spine out of place.

Dean picked up a blanket from the foot of the bed and draped it gently over Cas. The angel stirred and turned his head toward Dean, eyes slitting open. The usual vibrant blue was clouded with pain, almost grey.

"Hello Dean," he murmured.

"Hey, Cas," Dean said, pulling a chair over to the bedside and sitting down. "Are you, uh…you comfortable?"

"I'm okay," Cas replied, even though the lines of pain told Dean another story. "Thank you, for helping as much as you can."

"No problem, man," Dean said. "You have any idea how long it will take to heal?"

Cas' face got a distressed look that he tried to hide quickly. "I don't know. If I get enough rest then maybe not long."

Sam came back in then, with a glass of water and a straw. "Here, Cas, thought you might be thirsty."

Dean helped to raise his head while he drank and then watched as Cas closed his eyes and rested back against the pillow, looking exhausted.

"Is there anything else we can get you, Cas?" Sam asked.

"No," the angel said softly. "I—I just—I don't like not being able to feel my legs. It feels so…vulnerable."

Dean could see the emotions Cas was holding in. He was on the verge of desperation and that was just going to make this worse. He shared a glance with Sam before he reached out and squeezed Cas' shoulder. "Hey, you're not vulnerable. You're safe here, remember? And if anything does get in, it's not getting past Sam and me."

As if to prove Dean's point, Sam pulled Cas' reading chair from the corner of the room and sat down on the opposite side of the bed from Dean.

"That's right, Cas," he said with a reassuring smile, reaching out and gripping Cas' wrist. "And Dean and I are going to stay right here until you heal. We're not going to leave you alone, okay?"

Cas took a shuddering breath, a thousand emotions washing over his face as his eyes got wet. "Th-thank you," he managed to whisper, obviously grateful.

Dean smiled. "That's what family's for, Cas."

"Can I read to you to take your mind off of it?" Sam asked, looking through the books stacked on Cas' bedside table.

Cas blinked wetness from his eyes. "That would be nice."

So they settled down to wait with their injured brother, Sam reading softly and Dean keeping one arm resting on the bed so whenever the pain got too much for Cas, he could reach out and squeeze his wrist.

Cas' healing might take a while, but they weren't going to let him go through it alone either.

Because that was what family was for.