CHAPTER 23

Ten minutes to noon, and they were as prepared as they could ever be.

Cas sat at the end of one of the beds, clutching his iron knife tight in one hand, clenched too tightly to be of actual use. He knew that when a battle came, he would have to relax his grip, or else his body would be too stiff to accurately swing the weapon. For now, though, it comforted him to hold the knife as tightly as he could. It was one of the longest ones that the Winchesters owned, which would give him an extra reach that would be useful.

Sam and Dean had already explained everything that they knew about hunting demons. Harming the bodies would do nothing to stop them, but it would damage the victim that the demon possessed. If the vessel was harmed too greatly, then the demon would survive, but the human would die as soon as it was exorcised. Cas had listened gravely, then nodded to show that he understood, though he still didn't let go of the knife. It would be useful against the Hellhounds that came for Dean, at the very least.

In his other hand, he held a bottle of holy water, which could be sprayed across the faces of any demons who approached. He hoped that it would be enough.

Sam and Dean had pulled the chairs away from the table and set them in the center of the room. Now, they both sat, with Dean facing the doors and Sam facing the windows. The perimeter of their entire motel room – including the bathroom – was laid with salt lines. Demon traps were placed in front of all the doors and windows, and Sam had pulled a permanent marker out of one of the bags and carefully drawn an anti-possession sigil on the back of Cas' hand. "Just in case," he said, and again, Cas had nodded.

"When do you think that the demons will come?" Sam asked, voice tight. "It doesn't look like there's any set time. We might be sitting here for hours."

"I think it will be sooner than that," Cas said, glancing at the clock. Seven minutes.

"We don't know for sure, though," Sam said, as Dean shot Cas a look, clearly implying that he shouldn't say anything more.

"That is true," Cas admitted after a minute. "We don't know when they will come for Sam." The hellhounds would arrive for Dean in – he checked again – six minutes now, but that didn't necessarily mean that that would be when Sam was attacked. Azazel might wait until later to steal Sam. They had no idea what he was planning.

"Yeah," Sam agreed, though he frowned at Cas, clearly picking up on the emphasis that Cas had used. Dean was shaking his head furiously at Cas now, and Cas decided that perhaps he should do as Dean wanted this time, and said nothing more.

They waited in silence, tense. The minutes ticked away.

Cas was suddenly struck by the thought that this might be the last time that he ever saw either of the Winchesters, if Azazel succeeded in both killing Dean and taking Sam. He couldn't even imagine it, both of the people that he cared about most suddenly being gone, taken with one blow. He took a deep breath, and thought that he should say something, just in case. He didn't particularly like the idea of last words, though. And anyway, he couldn't think of anything good to say.

They waited.

One minute until noon. There was no longer time for last words, if Cas had wanted to say them. That was likely for the best.

The clock struck noon.

Dean and Cas instantly stood, knowing that it would only be a matter of time before the Hellhounds arrived, and wanting to be ready to face them when they did. Sam followed suit a moment behind them, lifting his gun and holding it as if he was ready to shoot at any moment. "What?" he demanded. "Did you hear anything?"

Dean shook his head, but otherwise, neither of them responded. Instead, they were back to waiting. This time, though, each second that passed was a relief instead of agony. The longer that they remained here without the Hellhounds arriving meant that there was a greater chance that the bags would keep them safe, and that the demons wouldn't be able to find them.

Then they heard the growls.

"Shit," Dean shouted, and lifted his gun, holding it steady and pointing it at the door.

"They can't get in," Cas said, or started to say. He only made it halfway through the sentence when he froze.

The salt lines were gone. He spun around, scanning the entire room, but they were gone, all of them. As were the devil's traps. Simply vanished, as if Dean hadn't spent twenty minutes crawling around on his hands and knees, carefully ensuring that every line was exactly right.

The growling grew louder.

"What the hell?" Sam asked, though none of them had an answer.

That was when the door exploded open, blown backward by an invisible force.

The hellhounds. Cas couldn't see them as they rushed into the room, but he knew that they had to be there.

A second later, the window cracked, pieces exploding inward and covering the room. All three of them instinctively ducked – they had to – but Dean and Sam didn't even wait until the broken glass had hit the floor before they were shooting their guns, sending bullets flying toward the invisible hounds in the hopes of killing them through pure luck.

Cas didn't allow himself to hesitate, either. He threw himself forward, running toward the mass of hounds with his blade raised high above his head, ready to stab downward as soon as he came close enough to sense the hounds' locations.

Then a hand closed around his shoulder.

Instinctively, Cas jerked free and whipped around, tossing the contents of the holy water bottle at whoever had grabbed him.

It was a man, middle-aged, dressed in an impeccable black suit. He didn't even flinch when the holy water struck him, just frowned. Then he blinked, and just like that, he was dry again.

Cas' mind whirled, but he forced himself to focus on the facts. This man wasn't a demon. Somehow, he had gotten into their motel. And he was trying to keep Cas from going to the Winchesters' aid.

An enemy, then. Kill him.

Cas rushed forward, and sunk the blade into the man's stomach, all the way up to the handle.

As he did, the man touched Cas' shoulder.

It happened in the middle of Cas' blink. One moment, they stood in the middle of the motel room. But during the millisecond that he had to close his eyes, the motel disappeared. Or maybe the motel had stayed where it was, and they had been the ones to vanish. Either way, they now stood in the center of an all-white room.

Cas jumped back from the man, gripping his knife tighter. The man rubbed the front of his shirt as if brushing away dust, a disapproving look on his face. And Cas knew that he had stabbed into the man's flesh, but he seemed unwounded, despite the hole in the shirt's fabric. The blade wasn't even bloody. A second later, even the cut in the fabric had disappeared.

"Now, really," the man said. "That was completely unnecessary. Not to mention completely useless."

"Who are you?" Cas demanded. He took care to ensure that his voice was completely steady, so that no sign of fear showed in any move that made. He would not allow them to realize that he was frightened.

"Oh, we'll get to that soon enough," the man said. "For now, I don't think that I'm the one that you want to worry about."

Cas shifted his grip on the knife – a pointless tactic, an intimidation technique that would fail to work against a man who couldn't be harmed with a knife. "Then who?" he demanded.

"Castiel," a feminine voice said from behind him. Cas spun around, facing the woman now. She stood behind a large desk, her hands flat against the top of the desk, leaning forward and glaring at him with obvious hatred in her eyes. "I have to admit, I never imagined that I would have you in this office again."

Again. So he had been here before, then, wherever this was. That would explain the feeling it gave him, as though his very flesh were crawling. He would expect to be frightened of any room that he had been transported into without warning by two not-demons who seemed to know who he was, but this feeling went beyond that. It was as though the sight of the walls triggered a response in his body even though he didn't know why, making his heart beat faster and his hands tremble slightly, no matter how he tried to force them still.

"You know me," he said slowly. And she had called him Castiel, which meant that she either had been spying on him over the past few days, or Castiel was his real name, and they had met before he had lost him memories.

The latter was looking to be more and more likely, particularly as she straightened and said, "Yes." Slowly, she began to circle the desk, slowly running her hand over the wood as she did so. "We have quite the history, Castiel. Most of the angels never see me nearly as often as you had to. You never were good at doing what you were told."

Cas blinked. "Angels," he said slowly. Understanding dawned, and he glanced from her, back to the man who stood behind him. "You two are angels."

She studied him, her eyes slightly narrowed, a wondering expression appearing on her face. "You really don't remember, do you?" she asked. "This isn't a ploy."

Cas narrowed his eyes right back at her, not sure what the correct thing to do in this situation was. He could tell the truth, and demand answers, in the hopes that he received them. But then, his every instinct screamed at him not to trust this woman or her companion, that he couldn't trust what they said, even if they were angels, and even if it had been their voices that he had been listening to for the past months.

"Well," the woman – the angel – said after a moment. "I suppose that this will make this a far easier."

"Make what easier," Cas demanded. He still had the blade poised to strike, turning himself and backing away, trying to watch both people – angels – at once. Neither of them responded. "Why exactly did you bring me here?" he practically shouted.

"Zachariah," she said, and inclined her head slightly.

The man once more touched Cas' shoulder, and Cas moved to jerk back-

Then he was flat on his back, lying on a long chair, his wrists cuffed to the arm rests and his ankles cuffed to the end of the chair. They were still in the same office, even though he knew that the chair hadn't been here a moment earlier. Instantly he began to struggle, but the cuffs held him firmly, to the point where he couldn't even squirm.

"There's one thing that I do have to admire about you, Castiel," the woman said slowly, and patted him on the shoulder. He flinched, but couldn't move his shoulder from beneath her fingertips, even though her touch made him feel as though something was crawling under his skin. "You never do what is expected. Every time we have tried to make you obey, and you always manage to elude us somehow. And just when we think that you can be of no more use and decide to dispose of you, you do the one thing that makes you absolutely invaluable."

"And what is that?" he asked, practically spitting the words.

She just smiled, and patted his shoulder again, drawing another flinch no matter how he tried to suppress it. "You befriended the Winchesters."

At the sound of their name, Cas suddenly stiffens, remembering the chaos of the motel room before he had taken. "Listen to me," he said, lifting his head as much as he could, trying to get as close to the woman as possibly, forcing her to look at him. "Dean and Sam Winchester are currently being attacked by demons. Dean is about to have his soul ripped from his body and dragged down to Hell. If they are important to them, then you have to go save them now."

"All in good time," she said, then finally removed her hand from Cas' shoulder, crossing the room toward Zachariah. "You know what we need, don't you?" she asked. He nodded once, and she added, "Would you go get it, then?"

Zachariah didn't answer, but a moment later, he vanished, and Naomi returned to stand above Cas again.

"What are you fetching?" Cas demanded. She didn't say a word.

A second later, Zachariah returned, holding a small bottle in one hand. Something silvery swirled inside it, looking to be liquid one moment and gas another, always changing. Whatever it was, it caught Cas' eye, and he couldn't make himself look away from it as the bottle was passed into the woman's hands.

"We found this about two weeks ago," she said, tapping the bottle, her fingernail clinking against the glass. "Before then, we really had believed that you were dead. And by that point, there was no way to be sure of where you had gone. You could have been anywhere, anyone."

The questions were overflowing in Cas' mind, until he wasn't sure what he should ask first – what the contents of the jar were, for one. Why they believed him to be dead, how they even knew of him in the first place, why the angels would even care about the obedience of someone like him. What he did ask, though, was, "How did you find me, then?"

She paused, then shook her head. "There really is no point to telling you any of this, is there?" she asked. "You'll remember most of it in a moment, and after that- Well, it won't matter to you any longer."

She took a step closer to him, slowly unscrewing the top to the bottle. Cas tensed, watching her close, and for the first time, the fear that he felt leaked into his voice as he asked, "What are you doing?"

In response, she removed the top from the bottle, and held it forward.

The substance surged forward, flying out of the mouth of the bottle and swirling through the air above their heads for a moment before suddenly racing downward, straight for Cas. In only a second it was surrounding him, rushing around and floating against his skin. And he still didn't know what it was, but he wasn't afraid. Not of the substance, at least.

Then he convulsed, body going stiff, surging upward as far as the bonds would allow. His head was thrown back, completely without his intentions, his mouth falling open as the substance flowed down his throat, filling him, choking him, and for a moment, he panicked, thinking that he couldn't breath, he was going to die. He could feel is spreading through his body, doing something to him, and he didn't understand any of the sensations that filled his body, but it didn't matter, because he couldn't breath. Whatever it was, it suffocated him, and he thrashed, panicked, trying to break free, trying to breath-

It was over.

He looked around, slowly. The office was the same as it had been before, but at the same time, completely different. There were shadows and lights that he hadn't been able to see before, and layers of power overlapping throughout the office. And when he looked at Naomi – he knew the woman's name now – he could see her human vessel, yes, and the small-but-still-glowing part that made up the soul of the woman that Naomi had possessed for at least the last century, if not longer. But over that image, he saw the true Naomi, her wings stretched high and tall behind her, three heads – all of various animals – with all of their heads staring down at him.

He still was not breathing. Now, it did not bother him.

"I take it that you remember now," Naomi said. Only her vessel's mouth moved. The mouths of her true forms all remained closed so tightly that they looked to be nothing more than thin lines carved into the animals' forms.

"Yes," he said slowly, and tilted his head down to look at his hands, at himself, visible to him for the first time in weeks.

He was an angel. Not just able to hear them, but a part of them.

Or, he had been, before the rebellion.

He closed his eyes, a human gesture that nevertheless helped him to concentrate. It was only for a moment. That was all the time that he needed in order to watch as the memories flashed before his eyes.

"I remember it all," he said, eyes still closed.

He remembered rebelling. He hadn't had a vessel then – it had been decades since he had been to Earth, so he hadn't needed one. That may have been a mistake. He had underestimated his strength. One word from him, and Sam Winchester had fallen to their knees, hands over his ears and his body trembling. Machines had exploded in a rush of glass and smoke, the energy that his unvesseled form radiated too much for them to handle, setting off warning alarms all through the hospital. The people had been frightened; some of them could have been harmed, either in his explosions or in the panic that had followed.

But one task had been completed correctly, because as he had begun his ascent back to Heaven, he had seen the righteous man's eyes fly open.

Dean Winchester had been saved.

He opened his eyes, only to narrow them, glaring upwards at Naomi. "I remember it all," he repeated.

He remembered the way that he had been attacked at once by Hester, a member of his own garrison turned against him. She had summoned Zachariah, and he had brought Naomi's other henchmen to subdue Castiel and dragged into this office, dumped to his knees in front of Naomi's desk. And Castiel had known that he would be punished for his disobedience, and the thought of the kinds of punishments that Naomi gave was enough to make him tremble from fear, but he had looked her in the eyes and refused to back down or act as though he had done something wrong, no matter the pain that she offered him. He remembered the way that she had turned slowly to face the other angels. "He can't be redeemed," she said. "Kill him."

Castiel had run then, managed to draw his blade and fight his way through the crowd. But even as he had been flying through Heaven, there had been two thoughts reverberating through his mind. He had thought about how there was no escape, that he would never be able to make it to Earth, and even if he did, he would be tracked down and killed no matter what he did. But his other thought had been that, when the inevitable outcome came to pass, he would not have any regrets.

Cas remembered all of that. And he remembered why he had made the choice in the first place.

"The demons did not actually kill Sam Winchester to force his brother into selling his soul," Cas said, almost testing the strength of the newfound knowledge more than he was speaking to her, though the hatred in his voice would suggest otherwise. "The angels did."

She raised one eyebrow, not bothering to respond.

"You have been working with the demons," he spat, and jerked against his bonds, even though he already knew from experience that they would not give.

"Distasteful, but necessary," Naomi said. "Your problem, Castiel, is that you are far too righteous. You have never understood that sometimes, bad must be done in order for good to come of it."

"I would not consider the Apocalypse to be a good consequence," he said, practically spitting the words.

It was all clear now. The angels had needed Dean to be taken to Hell, so that he could be tortured and broken, forced into breaking the first seal. Then he would be saved, but not until after he had broken the first seal to begin Lucifer's rise. That was why no angel had raised their hands to aid the Winchesters, even when Dean had been dying. Because the deal wasn't due yet, but that didn't matter. If he died on his own while his soul was in Azazel's grasp, then it would just mean that he was taken to Hell all the sooner.

"Yes," Naomi said, her hand on his shoulder again, nails digging into his flesh. The pain did not bother him, but he still winced. "You would consider this to be good – the greatest good – if your mind worked the way that it should."

Cas had heard those words before. Or, not those words exactly, but similar words, close enough that he immediately knew what was going to happen.

He pulled in a deep breath through his teeth, instinctively trying to calm himself and his vessel in the way that had worked as a human. Then he looked down at himself, at the straps and cuffs that held him down and stilled his movement, carved with Enochian seals so that he could not even flee his vessel to make his escape. Honestly, he had known what would happen to him the moment that his grace and memory had been returned to him. There was only one thing that this chair was used for, and Cas had far too much experience with it. How much experience, exactly, was impossible to say, but it was still far more than he would ever wish on anyone. And more than that, there was no reason for them to return his powers to him, unless it was for a singular purpose.

"You plan to rewrite my mind," Cas said, not making it a question. They needed him as an angel, or else the rewriting process would destroy him. Human minds were not made to be dug into in the way that she intended. They weren't strong enough to handle it.

She didn't answer, but gave his shoulder one more pat before turning away, walking to the table that had appeared a few feet away. The machine – Cas knew no other name for it, or even whether it had a name – sat on the top, its metal sides gleaming slightly in the white light from above. Naomi picked it up slowly, then returned to Cas' side.

"Let me guess," he said, mainly speaking now to try to delay the inevitable, while his mind spun wildly, looking for a way out. "You plan on bringing me under your control now, then sending me back to the Winchesters' sides. Using me to manipulate them into agreeing to your plan for the Apocalypse?"

It worked, to some extent. Naomi did pause, and said, "Well, you won't be returning to them yet," she said. "You can be reunited with them once our plan has been completed, after Dean has been saved from Hell." She smiled. "From what I've heard, Azazel has a servant waiting to be sent to Sam Winchester, to bring him under control. It only makes sense that we should have one as well, and since they already trust you so well..."

Her voice trailed off. She did not need to say anything more, and so she didn't. Instead, she took one more step closer, closing the last bit of distance between the two of them. One hand gripped his hair tight, forcing his head back and holding him still. The other hand poised the machine above his head, the pointed spike held carefully above his eye.

He stared up at him, his vessel trembling now as the memories overpowered his mind. All of them were vague, things that he had not been supposed to remember. But somehow, he did, and he knew how painful the rewriting process was. But more than that, he knew that by the end of it, he would no longer be himself. All of his beliefs would vanish, his personality and sense of self dissipated into the far corners of his thoughts where he could not reassemble them into a coherent whole.

He thought about saying something threatening, telling her that even rewriting his mind would not work, reminding her that he always managed to break free of her control no matter what she did. At the very least, it might compel her to kill him, which would be a better fate than being forced into becoming a pawn for her to use against the Winchesters. But he remained silent. Even the least-effective rewritings had always held him for at least a few decades, if not centuries. No matter how quickly he broke himself free, he would still be under her control long enough for her to use him for what she wished.

He had to find a way to break free.

The machine clicked on, and the point began spinning, faster and faster, until even his angelic eyes could hardly make out the rotation. She lowered it slowly, precisely, bringing it closer and closer to the exact center of his eye.

He tried to move his head, to at least throw off her aim in the hopes of making it difficult for her to accurately bring him under control, but she held him tight. He could not move.

His angel blade was in his pocket now. It had returned to him along with his grace, and he could feel the weight of it pressing against his leg. But his hands were bound to the arms of the machine. He could not move his arms at all, let alone reach for his blade. Fighting was not an option.

He had to find something else.

In all the times that he had been here, in this position, he had never managed to break himself free. There was no reason to think that this would be any different.

But then, he had never been in this exact position before. Because now, he had a reason to escape, more than he ever had before. If he did not succeed in getting away, then he would be turned against Dean and Sam, the two people that he cared about the most. Just thinking about Dean in Hell made his stomach churn, as though he was still a slave to his vessel's bodily functions and were about to be sick. And Sam... Cas could not allow the younger Winchester to be harmed, either, or to be used in this plan to free Lucifer.

The last time that he was in this chair, he had considered taking drastic measures to avoid being rewritten. The procedure itself was a blur in his mind, but the part that came before was suddenly, starkly clear. He had thought of a way out, but never taken it, for fear that using this method to get away would be worse for him than allowing her to control him again. So he had debated, and never done it, and then her blade had reached his brain and it had been too late to make any decisions at all.

Now, though, he didn't have a choice.

He sucked in another deep breath, then dug his thumbnail into the pad of his forefinger, pushing harder until his nail broke the surface and drew blood.

Naomi lowered the point of the machine into the corner of his eye. He could feel drops of blood begin to roll down his cheek.

His body jerked, his hands twitching, though she still held his head utterly still. This should not harm an angel. Angels could deal with any amount of damage without experiencing pain, so long as their central programming was not harmed and an angel blade was not used. Cutting into his eye should not cause him any pain.

And yet, this was agonizing.

He forced himself to focus, to ignore as the machine dug deeper and deeper into his skull. Instead, he tried to force his mind to think only about the sigils he was drawing as he rubbed his bloody finger along the top of the armrest.

Any second, he expected Naomi or Zachariah to notice his movements, and to stop him. They did not. It was likely that they thought that not even he was capable of this insanity.

They underestimated him.

The blade must be nearly to his brain by now. The pain was drowning out all other thoughts, but even so, Cas was certain that he had made the sigils correctly, despite not being able to see them.

There was a reason that angels never made the angel-banishing sigils, not even as a last resort, and definitely not with their own blood. Cas didn't think that anyone had been crazy enough to do so before, which would explain why Naomi and Zachariah didn't expect it. Cas wasn't even sure what the effects would be, whether it would hurt him worse than anything Naomi had done, or whether it would kill him outright.

One thing was certain, though. At the very least, it would keep Naomi from turning him against Dean and Sam. And that would be worth it.

He didn't even hesitate before slamming his still-bloody finger into the center of the sigils.