A/Ns: Welcome to part two of our back-to-back chapters! You guys earned it :D

Chapter Reference – Dean and Chest!Cas Heart To Heart: After making a tentative deal with Crowley to share information to help avert the Apocalypse, Dean slept and dreamt of Cas. They had a real chat about how he sent Dean back in time, what it cost him, and why he was just a shadow – a sliver – in Dean's chest, inconsistent in his help and ability to respond to Dean's requests. For a refresher, see Chapter 51: Season 2, Chapter 18

Chapter Warnings: Uriel may be out of this fight, but Gordon sure isn't. He's got a couple tricks up his sleeves, including a certain photo he took of a dead hunter. Cas and Dean are trying to undo that damage, but they might not make it in time if Cas keeps passing out and Dean's gotta choose between his body and Cas's, uh...wavelength of celestial intent. Yeah, sure. That.

Actual Chapter Warnings: There is a brief description of the kind of damage that comes with being a victim of a sniper rifle. Heads up to anyone who's not a big fan of depictions of gore, particularly of a main character. (Don't worry, Cas is gonna fix it all up in a jiffy. If he doesn't pass out, first.)

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The Road So Far (This Time Around)

Season 2: Chapter 62

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Uriel stared at the tip of his own blade, protruding through his mass in what he knew was a death blow. Grace was igniting around the edges of the celestial metal, flickering and sparking in miniaturized, bright bursts. The angel groaned, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. "H-how?"

Castiel's eyes fell to his as Uriel's grip on his wrist faltered, freeing the smaller angel's sword. Uriel's gaze, his grace, spitting and churning in shock and pain, locked onto the blue that his brother always seemed to be. Such a sad shade of blue, Uriel thought. His arm fell from Castiel's and instead reached forward to curl around the back of the angel's neck. His brother tensed, blade ready to defend, but his movement faltered as Uriel's grace merely curled against his own. Not an attack but a seeking of solace in its final moments.

Castiel lowered his sword, staring at his brother as Uriel's grace began to surge, the last thing they both knew it would ever do.

"For-Forgive me, brother," the larger angel whispered, but Castiel did not know what specifically his brother asked for. He knew Uriel did not regret his loyalties; Castiel could see that in his eyes. Perhaps, the angel reasoned, it was his brother's actions in following those loyalties for which he wished forgiveness. He knew that, even now, even after everything, Uriel still cared for him as a brother. A twisted care, perhaps. Castiel could see that now. But bringing him harm had hurt Uriel as well, and for that the larger angel was sorry. Castiel could see that, too.

"Close your eyes, Dean," Cas whispered as Uriel's grace began to churn and stutter in rapid succession.

The hunter perceived that death-surge as pure light, glowing from the angel's eyes, overflowing beneath the skin until it reached his nose and mouth. It spilled out with growing intensity until that blue-white brilliance encompassed the rest of his face. Dean staggered back, leaving Uriel's sword still buried between thick shoulders.

The angel threw his head back with a scream of pure light. Uriel went up before Dean could fully comply with Castiel's soft demand; the hunter caught a glimpse of wings among the blinding brilliance. Wings that stretched a story high, flecked with a thousand colors, some Dean couldn't even name. It was almost beautiful. Would have been, if it wasn't also a douchebag and the death of a brother Castiel had cared about.

The hunter slammed his eyes shut and turned away. A weight hit the ground a moment later and, when Dean dared look back in the darkness, (expecting to blink spots out of his vision but finding it perfectly clear) there was no body. Only the burnt shadow of an explosion across the dirt and a pair of wings etched out from the center of the blast, stretching a dozen feet in either direction. In the middle of them lay an angel blade, soaked to the hilt in red blood.

Beside it, Cas knelt in the scorched earth, one hand on his knee, the other flat against the burnt and blackened ground. His blue eyes were wide and grim.

"I forgive you, brother."

-o-o-o-

"Drop the gun."

Gordon hummed in response to Sam's demand, something like amusement playing at his lips as he started to turn his head. But Sammy's weight leaned into the weapon pressed flush to his skull and the hunter stopped, the warning clear.

"You know," he said casually, almost conversationally, "you shouldn't take your shoes off around here. Might get Tetanus."

"Put it down, now-"

Gordon didn't let him finish. He did drop the rifle, but he also spun around, one hand striking the kid's forearm, pushing the gun to the side before it could fire, the other coming from below to force the barrel of the gun up, twisting it out of the Winchester's grip. An old army trick his pop had taught him, way back in the day.

Sam's expression was completely taken off guard as the weapon clattered to the ground and Gordon used his momentum to continue forward, tackling the man who had a good half foot on him.

The thing with a man like Sam Winchester – a man who thought he was good, who tried to be good, who wanted to be good even though he wasn't – was that he didn't use those six and a half feet and some two hundred pounds to his advantage. Sammy was the kind of man who hunched his shoulders to look smaller, who curved his back and dipped his head to be less looming.

Body like that, Gordon would have let everyone around know who was in charge. Sam Winchester had no practice at putting his full weight into anything.

Gordon delivered a swift uppercut to the kid's jaw, following with a one-two punch to his lip and forehead. Not what he'd been aiming for, but the kid had turned into the punch, slanting Gordon's knuckles right off the sweet spots and saving himself from two far more devastating blows.

He might not be good at using that intimidating frame, but he sure knew how to take a punch. Gordon wondered if Sammy's daddy had also been a mean drunk, beating up on his kids like Gordon's had. With the reputation John Winchester had, he wouldn't have been all that surprised to hear it.

The kid got a good swing in, twisting Gordon's head to the side and sending him staggering back a couple feet. He had a lot of muscle on him and good weight behind the punch. But Sam went down hard when Walker lifted one booted foot and slammed it into the kid's stomach. The younger Winchester bounced off the kitchen cabinets, taking one clear off its hinges, and hit the floor on his stomach, groaning and trying to shake off the hits.

Gordon raised the back of his hand to his mouth, wiping at the blood pooling on his lip. He spat the remainder out on the floor before starting towards Sam. Eyes locked on his prey, he drew his hunting knife from his belt, intending to finish this. It was bloodier than a gun, sure, but Gordon wasn't squeamish.

Sam picked his head up from the floor, one hand curled under his chest. There was the kind of glare on his face that immediately drew Gordon up short. A promise of violence a man like Gordon had seen before, on other hunters and other things before they tore into their prey and ripped away lives. The younger Winchester curled his upper lip in a sneer, pulling his arm out from under him, hand wrapped tight around something silver.

His gun. The kid's gun. Sam had hit the ground right on top of his gun.

With wide eyes and a surprised intake of breath, Gordon turned one-eighty. He dove out of the kitchen, throwing himself into the living room as the other hunter fired three shots off.

-o-o-o-

Dean was still staring at the nuclear shadow burnt into the ground when he saw Cas start to list to the left. The hunter was by the angel's side, dropping to his knees, in time to catch his friend before he hit the ground.

"Cas!" The angel was not quite dead wait in his arms, but he wasn't much better than it. "Shit, I thought you said that douchebag was going to heal you."

Cas struggled to get back to his knees without the human's assistance, but only half managed it. The angel found much of his weight still leaning against Dean, much to his chagrin. "His betrayal came before the healing was complete."

"Yeah, that figures." Dean maneuvered one of Cas's arms up and over his shoulders, latching onto the floppy wrist with his other hand. "You gonna be okay?"

It was almost a redundant question, at this point. Dean knew his friend wasn't bullet proof, but Cas was damn near close. And persistent as hell.

"I will manage," the angel answered predictably, though Dean could hear the exhaustion in his voice.

Before he could get them back on their feet, though, Castiel reached over with his free hand, latching onto Dean's shirt. The hunter paused, understanding instinctually that Cas was asking him to wait. He met those intense, captivating blue eyes, and waited. There was a lot in that silence exchange, some that Dean most definitely got and more that he didn't. Then the angel lowered his gaze back to the last of his brother. A permanent scar across the earth and that bloodied angel blade.

Proof of what he'd done.

(What Dean had done, not Cas. The human would defend that decision until he was blue in the face, right along with Cas's lack of blame in any of it.)

Realizing that blade was a resource they absolutely couldn't afford to waste, Dean bent at the waist to pick it up. Cas watched him with those wide eyes that were so easily mistaken for naïve. Dean had to fight back the surge of insecurity and self-consciousness at the intensity of that gaze, which did not diminish as he straightened back up and wrapped his arm, sword in hand, around Cas's waist once more.

Maybe taking the sword of a murdered angel was a serious faux-pas in angelic culture? Not that the Cas Dean knew had ever complained before. Of course, that Cas had been through two celestial wars before they really got to that point. There'd been as many discarded angel blades lying around as there had been angels still trying to kill them.

"How did you do that?" Cas finally asked, voice filled with astonishment, confusion, and exhaustion, but not so much anger.

"Sleight of hand," Dean answered with a weak smile, hauling the angel up to his feet. How the hell were they gonna get out of here and back to the Impala – back to Sam – when Dean didn't even know where they were and their usual ride could barely stand upright? "I picked his pocket, Cas."

The angel continued to stare. As that feeling of self-consciousness kept right on increasing, Dean shrugged awkwardly. "I saw it in a movie once."

Castiel recognized the defensive tone, the way that this particular human spoke when he was deflecting. But that was not what the angel was concerned about. His gaze dropped to Uriel's blade, tucked into his side by Dean's supportive hand around his waist.

"That is an angel blade," he clarified, though he knew from the absorption of some of that grace in Dean's chest that the hunter was familiar with the weapon. Perhaps not enough to understand Castiel's astonishment, or concern, though. "It is a manifestation of grace, tied to the specific angel who summoned it. You should not even be able to hold it in this form, let alone have removed it from Uriel's person."

No human soul should have been capable of wielding an angelic blade. The fact that Dean had been able to 'pick his pocket' without Uriel even realizing his blade had been removed from the ether and taken off of him…

"Yeah, well, you know," Dean's shoulders lifted up again in a shrug, Cas's arm going with them as they started hobbling towards what Dean thought was a road in the distance. It was an edge of the field, at least, though whether or not there was pavement at that edge was something to be determined in a minute. "It's like what you said, in Heaven when I broke Uriel's weak-ass grace-rope. It's the- that sliver- it's Chest Cas. Or something."

When those ridiculously wide blue eyes just kept right on staring, Dean started getting more than just defensive.

"You're the one that said it," he grumble darkly, but Cas was already shaking his head.

"If that is true, it's very alarming."

Dean glared at his best friend, who had a blank look on his face. That one that old Cas (pre-Apocalypse Cas) used to get. The one of numb shock. It was the face he'd worn when he'd come back from their 1973 weekend, 'surprised' to be alive.

"Yeah, well, it's saved your skin twice now, so just-"

"Drop it. Yes, I know," Cas finished for him, nodding his head tiredly. He gave Dean the side-eye, but didn't push any further. "For now, we have more important concerns."

Dean knew that tone right along with that face. That was the tone that Sam had, and Ellen and Bobby and Jody, too, when they were taking his forced attempt at a subject change with grace and a grain of salt. It was the tone that said, we're not done talking about this. In fact, almost everyone Dean had ever interacted with for more than a day in his life seemed to possess that tone.

It was like they all thought avoiding conversation was a habit of his, or something.

"Yeah, sure," Dean agreed, knowing he might have to revisit this discussion later but still happy to be done talking about it right now. He didn't know why he got defensive anytime anyone brought up Chest Cas like he was a bad thing. Okay, he absolutely knew why; that was the last of his best friend and he'd be damned before anyone took that sliver of angel away from him. But that was serious chick-flick territory and Dean didn't venture into that territory unless he was dragged kicking and screaming. So, for now, he'd just stick with the defensiveness.

(The world could suck it up and deal for all he cared.)

In the meantime, Cas had a point. They had other problems. Plenty of them, in fact. Dean hefted the angel a little tighter to his side, taking on a little more of his weight as he looked around, still eyeing the edge of the field and possible road. The middle of absolute friggin' nowhere.

"We gotta get out of here."

They needed to get back to civilization, back to Dean's body, back to Sam who was most definitely in danger. Whoever it was who'd taken him out had some serious skill. Dean hadn't even seen them coming. And if they were targeting both Winchesters, then Sam was gonna need all the heads-up Dean could get him.

If they weren't already too late, of course. In which case, Sam would need the backup.

(His little brother had better not be dead already, damnit. They'd just gotten free from Heaven. There was no way they were going back for a second rescue mission.)

(Unless, of course, Sam was dead. Which was why he better friggin' not be.)

"Yes. We were not discrete in our exit from Heaven." Cas sounded repentant about that and Dean wanted to roll his eyes. Like they'd had the luxury of stealth or forethought while they'd been running for their lives. "Now an angel is dead. Heaven will be coming for me."

The hunter pulled up, realizing what his friend was saying.

'I'm hunted, Dean. I rebelled and I did it, all of it, for you.'

Dean stared at Cas, halfway through a swallow that was now very much stuck in the rough, raw lump in his throat. He stared at his friend, who was caught between despondency and resolve, and something in Dean's chest twinged for him. He'd never been good at sympathizing with Cas's loss of home and family, because Dean always figured he'd gotten a better home, a better family, in exchange. But he'd also forgotten what that loss looked like, up close, on Cas's face.

The reminder of it kinda sucked ass. Dean looked away, adjusting his grip and getting them moving again. "Rachel will back you up. She'll explain what happened, Cas."

Cas shook his head, the weight of it hanging in exhaustion. He still only barely understood his third in command's role in all of this, but he knew what it would lead to. Re-education by Zachariah's hand or reprogramming by Naomi's. Neither of which he would ever wish on his friend and kin. Knowing Rachel as he did, she had likely been attempting to fulfill what she believed to be her duty.

"If she does, Zachariah will only hold her responsible for my transgressions. No… It would be best if she were not involved any further." Cas hesitated for a moment and Dean unconsciously tightened his grip on the angel's wrist, eyes still on that possible road. "I believe my time as a 'spy' in Heaven has ended. My ship has 'sunk', as you said."

It took Dean a moment to recall the memory. Partially because he was distracted by the angel – weak, struggling to stay upright on his own – still using his dwindling energy to make damn air quotes. Dean was gonna have to have a serious talk with Angela about what kind of shit she kept putting in his head. But the memory of Sam trying to convince Cas that returning to Heaven was a ship that had sailed (and Dean grumpily snarking that it was just about sunk in his opinion), did eventually come to him. The hunter winced.

He wanted it to be true, he couldn't deny that, but Dean knew Heaven was still this Cas's home. To hear the angel give up on it…. Well, it was apparently a reminder he didn't get to ignore.

He'd seen Cas abandon his home once before. He'd seen the angel chose Dean over Heaven, and struggle with the pain that choice brought him. The weight of it on his shoulders, carried alone, because Dean was no good at sharing weight, be it his or anyone else's.

And he knew where it had led, too. To an angel, drunk on one hell of a bender, telling Dean to all but fuck off because he and his brother broke the world, and Cas had lost everything for nothing.

Dean wanted things to be different this time. He was trying. Damnit, he was giving it everything he had, but that still might not be enough, and he knew it. Dean knew, from experience now (plenty of it) that he couldn't promise any of those changes. He couldn't promise Cas they wouldn't break the world anew, again, maybe even worse this time.

'Of everything that has happened or will happen…meeting you and Sam is not one that I, or any version of me, will ever regret.'

Green eyes slipped closed at the memory. The voice of an angel in his head and in his chest, sitting on a picnic table with him at a kid's birthday party, their knees knocking, sharing a beer and a talk so long overdue.

'Not for all of Heaven would I take back what rebelling brought me, Dean.'

Family. Cas had said it brought him family. All that pain, the loss and anger and despair, had given him what he'd always wanted in the end. A family that loved him. Dean had to trust – he had to – that Chest Cas wasn't wrong. Wouldn't be wrong. That the Cas in his arms wouldn't live to regret this any more than the past version of himself.

"I'm sorry, Cas," the hunter said quietly. Even though he wasn't sorry to get his angel away from that toxic place filled with winged dicks, he was sorry for what it cost his friend. What it still might.

"It was inevitable," was the angel's hollow reply, and Dean didn't like the monotone drag of it one bit. Or his friend being back to that inevitable destiny crap. But, he supposed, Cas was allowed his time to grieve and Dean had to get better about giving that to him.

"How bad are you hurt?" Dean asked, deciding to change the topic for now. They needed to get out of there and Cas was their fastest option, if that option was even available. "Can you get us out of here?"

They needed to get back to his body. If they could do that, then Cas could rest and Dean would take care of the rest. Figure out which son of a bitch pulled one over on him and where Sam was. Though, at this point, the hunter was seriously worried Cas might not have it in him to bring him back to life, which he'd sort of been counting on since this little misadventure began.

"Yes," Cas replied, but his weak voice wasn't installing much confidence in the human. He remembered more than once when Cas announced he was perfectly fine when he absolutely was not. "Where is your body?"

Deciding the angel was – hopefully – being honest about his capabilities, Dean rattled off directions the best he could. An approximate location, a gas station on the southwestern edge of Lafayette, Indiana, and before he could go into any further detail – like asking Cas if he even had it in him to bring Dean back – they were whisking away on Angel Air.

-o-o-o-

As he hit the ground in the living room, bullets from Sam Winchester's gun flying right by his ear and head, Gordon rolled. It took three turns to the side, across debris-strewn ground, but the hunter didn't stop until he was out of Sam's line of fire. He scrambled to his butt once he was clear, shuffling backwards in a rapid crabwalk until his back hit the wall between him and the younger Winchester. Once there, he kept carefully pressed to the wall, legs coiled into his torso, ready to spring back up. His fingers itched to wrap around a weapon longer-range than his knife.

His rifle was still in the kitchen. With Sam. He wondered if the kid would try to take him out through the wall. There wasn't much left to this old house, but Winchester's handgun wasn't the type of caliber to make it through the dual layers of wood (probably). His rifle, on the other hand…

Gordon eyed the table six feet away, two handguns sitting on top, just waiting. Waiting, of course, in perfect line of sight of the kitchen. The hunter leaned his head back against the wall with a breath of laughter, loud enough for Sam to surely hear him. He doubted the kid had it in him to use that rifle. With a chuckle, Gordon decided to roll the dice on that bet. Letting his head loll to the side, he eyed the doorway into the kitchen, smoke and dust still lingering in the air. "Not bad, Sammy."

"It's Sam," the Winchester barked back from the kitchen, moving away from the doorway cautiously, kicking the rifle back against the far wall and well out of reach. He stuck to his trusted .45 handgun, raised in both hands, just waiting for a target to shoot.

As he moved cautiously – quietly – towards the other end of the room, putting as much distance between himself and Gordon as possible, Sam marked potential exits. (Back door, window over the sink, window on the far wall, partially blocked by junk leaning against it from the outside.) He triple checked for any other traps Gordon might have rigged. As he got to the end of the galley kitchen, Sam realized the far end of the wall between the living room and kitchen, the wall Gordon was obviously pressed to the other side of, had been partially taken down. Probably by some teens and a sledgehammer during a drunken night, given the discord of the deconstruction. By the grace of those drunken kids, though, there was a four foot gap beside the exterior wall, leaving a clear path to the living room. To Gordon.

Sam checked back towards the doorway, but he couldn't see the hunter from his current spot. He thought he might know where Gordon was against the wall, given a lack of light coming through sections of the deteriorating wall, but he wasn't sure. Maybe he could sneak up on him through the gap, get into the living room without the other hunter seeing it coming. As long as Gordon didn't manage to round the corner into the kitchen and target him first, assuming he had a backup weapon on hand (he was a hunter. He had a backup, the only question was what kind?). The younger Winchester kept himself pressed to the exterior wall beside the hole, gun up, keeping his eyes trained between the far doorway and the man-made gap.

"Where the hell is my brother, Gordon?" he called out, hoping to get a read on Gordon's location as long as he could keep him talking. And a location on his brother, damn it.

"Dean?" Gordon let out another low chuckle that set Sam's teeth on edge. "Oh, Dean's dead."

Sam, who had been stepping over what was left of the wall – a low-lying foot or so of boards, broken studs, and plaster – froze. He almost put his foot down on the other side, but pulled back at the last second, both feet firmly in the kitchen. Sam found his gun down by his side before he realized he'd lowered it.

Then the anger hit. And with it, the buzzing just beneath his skin.

"You're lying," he spat out instead through clenched teeth. His fingers curled into fists, ever tightening, until his joints ached, his fingernails cut through skin, and his knuckles turned white. The hand wrapped around his gun started shaking.

Gordon was lying. He was.

"I'm not," came the honest reply. Too damn honest.

Then something was sliding across the ground. Sam could hear it. The hunter tensed, eyes immediately going to the hole in the wall he stood next too, expecting a grenade to roll right into view. Only it wasn't the sound of something rolling, but sliding. A phone, bumping along the uneven ground, skidded into view, stopping a few feet short of Sam but well within grabbing distance.

(So much for the element of surprise. Sam should have known. No hunter chose a location for a meet without knowing every inch of it. Like a four-foot hole into the kitchen.)

It wasn't Dean's phone, so it must be Gordon's. It was on, screen lit with a picture Sam couldn't make out from the distance or angle. But he wasn't stupid enough to stick his head out right where Gordon could shoot it.

"Go on," Gordon drawled, a chuckle in his tone that had Sam clenching his free fist. "I won't shoot. Scout's honor. All I've got on me's a knife, Sammy."

Sam's face twisted in indecision, in frustration. But his brother was worth the risk. Dean would always be worth the risk and the younger Winchester had to know.

He stepped through the gap in the wall, gun up and immediately trained on Gordon, who was watching him with those dark, intense eyes of his. The hunter was crouched in a squat over by the kitchen entrance, knees up and ready to spring, but hands raised out by his sides. There was nothing but a knife in one of them, just like he'd said. Gordon kept that arm – his far arm – purposefully loose and lower, no indication that he planned to throw that blade.

Sam lowered himself to one knee beside the phone, gun and eyes never leaving the other hunter. He grabbed the phone off the ground and stood immediately, weapon gripped so tightly that it was only seconds away from shaking. He thought about asking Gordon why he shouldn't just shoot him now. But he knew the answer, both the one he'd get and the one he knew for himself. So he crossed back into the kitchen, out of sight once more, and looked down at the phone.

He should have shot him. He should have shot the son of a bitch.

It was Dean. The photo on Gordon's phone was of his brother, lying on the ground in a pool of blood, the aftermath of a rifle round obscuring half his face in blood and damage.

Oh god.

Sam lowered the phone, looking away, then back, then away again. His eyes shot to the rifle, a dozen feet away and capable of getting through that wall, easy. He thought of taking Gordon's head right off his shoulders. Then Sam could take a fucking picture of that. The hunter shook his head, teeth clenched so tight his jaw shook in pain. His eyes dropped to his hands, to his own body as it shook, at his fist wrapped around a gun that openly trembled in rage.

That buzz was growing. Like bees in his ears, he almost couldn't hear anything else. The younger Winchester (could he be the younger if there was no longer an older?) slammed his eyes shut as it became overwhelming. Kill. It wanted to kill. It wanted to tear and rip and revenge. It wanted blood.

His eyes shot open and Sam was lucky Gordon was on the other side of the room. Not only because there was no question the younger hunter would tear him to shreds if he so much as caught a glimpse of him right now, but also because, unbeknownst to Sam, his eyes had gone pitch black.

-o-o-o-

When they landed, they landed hard, but Dean hadn't been expecting much better. He managed to keep on his feet, just barely. Unfortunately, Cas staggering to the side took them both down to their knees.

"Shit, Cas," Dean muttered, no heat in the words and far more concern. They were at the gas station Dean last remembered, kneeling on the dirty, oil stained pavement between the pumps. The roof above them was dark, lights still off.

At least it was still night. They hadn't been gone that long.

Dean craned his neck to the left and right, back going rigid when he found what he was looking for. His body, twenty feet away, lying cold and lifeless on the ground a half dozen feet from his untouched Baby. Thank god for that, at least. There was a lot of blood, but it looked like the Impala had escaped most of it. Not that Dean could really tell from so far away. The blood splattering his dead, grey skin, pooling on the ground, thick and congealed, was so dark it looked black anyway. Dean shivered, tightening his grip on Cas's waist without realizing he was doing it. The angel was breathing heavy, leaning against him, and Dean swore again.

"Are you even gonna be able to bring me back?"

"Yes," the angel replied, voice firm even if the volume was weak the word a bit breathless. Then, after a beat, he conceded, "I will try."

Yeah, that sounded more like it. Not that Castiel, Angel of the Lord, knew how to do anything half-assed. Dean knew too well that his friend was more likely to get himself killed trying than to stand on the sidelines when there was work to be done.

"It's not gonna kill you, right? Cuz I'm not cool with that, just so you know." Dean tightened his hand around the angel's wrist, readjusted his grip around Cas's waist, and hauled them both back to their feet. The angel next to him tried and failed to hide a groan. "And don't tell me you'll be 'greatly weakened' when what you mean is, 'yes, Dean, this will damn near kill me.'"

The lack of immediate response was telling, and Dean resisted the urge to roll his eyes for about the tenth time that night. Ya know, he didn't usually hate being right, but when it came to the angel currently in his arms, he almost always did end up hating it. The price of knowing someone too well, he supposed.

"It will greatly weaken me," Cas insisted, resisting the air quotes and managing a very reserved amount of sarcasm, something he was still learning how to apply in the first place. "But I do not believe it will kill me. I am not as damaged as I was in Rivergrove."

Dean arced a very skeptical eyebrow as he started them, one step at a time, towards his corpse. "You sure about that? Cuz you sure as hell look just as bad."

The angel was leaning heavily on the hunter as he shuffled one foot at a time alongside him. Dean supposed the guy's color was better than it had been after that trap, after he'd- she'd exorcised the shit out of Azazel. But Dean also knew from his chat with Rachel that he wasn't actually seeing a human body right now. How he was supporting Cas, his hand very clearly fisted in the angel's stupid trench coat when he wasn't even wearing one – wasn't even physical, apparently – the hunter didn't have a clue.

Too much for his limited human brain, apparently.

Well, fuck that, Dean thought, hauling the angel ever closer to his body. The hunter glanced around surreptitiously as they got out from under the roof of the gas station. Whoever had iced him had done it with a high powered rifle. That much was clear from the damage his skull had taken (and 'damage' was not a descriptive enough word. God damn, was that a mess. A mess Dean had not needed permanently implanted in his psyche, thank you very much). Rifle meant sniper, though, and if it had been Dean doing the shooting, he'd have taken the shot from the gas station roof. The guy (or girl. Dean was totally an equal opportunity victim of murder) was likely long gone, but there was no reason to be stupidly oblivious twice in one night.

The length of the roof was dark and empty against the starry sky. Not that Dean had really been expecting anything else.

The older Winchester bit back a dozen curses he wanted to let loose as they moved into the open space and his corpse just beyond that. Dean was friggin' annoyed with himself for making such an amateur mistake. 2006 Dean might not have been able to spot a sniper or been prepared for someone trying to take him out, but 2016 Dean sure as hell had a lot more experience with that shit. He shouldn't have let his guard down so damn much.

"Who did this to you?" Cas asked, voice quiet and grave as they got to his body. Dean helped the angel down to his knees, Cas immediately reaching out to press a hand to Dean's forehead. Well, the corpse's forehead. Dead Dean's forehead. Whatever.

"Don't know. But whoever they are, they're gonna be dead once I catch up to 'em." The hunter shook his head and looked away, not really needing the image of his own corpse stuck in his head, or Cas kneeling beside it, either. The bullet had clearly entered above his right ear and taken a baseball sized chunk of his head with it, but the angel didn't seem to care that he was getting covered in half-coagulated blood and what was most definitely brains. Dean was trying really, really hard not to think about it.

Looking away was totally helping. A hundred percent. Abso-fucking-lutely.

He scanned the roof again, but came up empty. Given that congealing blood and the color of his skin (likely the temperature too, though only Cas could confirm that and Dean wasn't asking), he'd been dead for a couple hours. No sniper was going to hang out waiting for a dead body to wake up. Well, no normal sniper, anyway. Dean itched to get up on that roof, to look for clues as to who the hell had the balls to take Dean Winchester out and not do it to his face.

Something was poking at the back of his brain, the very beginnings of his Timey Senses tingling, but Dean couldn't pinpoint the cause yet. It was pissing him off, almost as much as being murdered.

He turned back to the kneeling angel and Dead Dean. Cas's hunched posture and the barest tremble in his fingertips gave the hunter immediate pause. As did the fact he wasn't already re-alive. The angel wasn't usually one to waste time. Like, at all.

"You sure you got this in you, Cas?"

"Yes," the angel confirmed, sounding more confident this time. Cas shifted, blue eyes looking up to meet Dean's. The graveness in those watery pools was achingly familiar to the hunter. "But it will weaken me. The demonic trap caused damage to my core. Uriel began the healing process, but the fight has undone some of that. The cracks are…mended, but still-"

"Tender," Dean completed almost instinctually. Like a freshly closed wound. Pulling at it still hurt like hell.

"Yes. And it is…incredibly draining. Continuing to heal them on my own is taking up a lot of my grace." That explained the dark circles under Jimmy Novak's eyes and the breathlessness of his words. Like the guy had just run a marathon, stopped for a break to bring a dude back from the dead, then went on to run another. "I am more tired than I am in pain."

Dean crouched down beside him, eyeing his own body as Cas withdrew the hand from his forehead. The angel had dragged his fingers over the hunter's eyes, closing them. What a…human thing to do, Dean thought absently, and wondered where Castiel had learned that. He turned away from the trails of blood, two near identical ones, left on his eyelids from Cas's fingers and looked at the angel, instead.

"You'll recover, though. Right?"

"With rest, yes." Castiel met his gaze, the seriousness in his expression was as much a warning as his next words. "This may be all I am able to do for a time, Dean."

"Got it," the hunter answered firmly, with as much confidence as he could muster. What was he always telling Sam? He was a friggin' competent hunter, he didn't need an angel to do everything for him. Just…literally save his life, first. "You get me back in my body and I'll take care of the rest, alright?"

Cas nodded and turned back to the body beneath them.

"Um, here," Dean said suddenly, voice both uncertain and rushed. Cas looked back over at him, only to drop his eyes to the angelic blade at the end of Dean's extended arm. "You should take this."

Because Dean was pretty sure he wouldn't wake up with it magically in his hand once he got back in his body. (And he didn't want to think about where it would be if it didn't go along with him when he woke up. He knew Cas pulled his blade from the 'ether', whatever the hell that was, and Dean really wasn't comfortable with the idea of a magic floating sword hanging out next to his soul somewhere in 'magic space'. If that's even what would happen. Dean was pretty sure upon re-entry, he'd just drop the dumb thing and it would sit, invisible, in a gas station parking lot for the rest of all eternity. Wouldn't that be a waste.)

Cas stared at the weapon, his face unreadable. Dean had to tell himself – twice – to give his friend the minute he clearly needed, before Cas silently reached out and took the blade from Dean. He stowed it in the sleeve of his coat and turned back to the corpse below them. Cas reached out again, pressing two fingers to the cold, dead skin of his charge. Dean sucked in a breath of air, eyes closing against his will as he expected to feel…something. Maybe a pull back into his body, or just a surge of energy or…something.

He kind of expected to jerk upward and find himself in a freshly healed body sitting in a pool of his own blood.

Instead, he heard a thud and his eyes shot back open.

Cas was unconscious, sprawled on his side beside Dean's corpse, which was…no longer a corpse. His first fear that Cas had totally miscalculated what he had left and had passed out before bringing Dean back was completely negated by the breathing, fleshy, pink-cheeked, glowing body beside it. The hunter blinked at it, temporarily stalled in his usual, instinctual need to check on Cas by the glowy-ness. The not-corpse was emitting a faint, golden light and, as Dean realized he could almost feel it, the hunter took a much slower, measured breath in.

It was like a faint pull. No, not even a pull, an enticement.

Come to me.

Oh, Dean wanted to. He even shuffled towards that goal, unconsciously reaching out for his body, before he remembered his unconscious best friend passed the hell out beside his not-corpse.

"Shit, Cas." The hunter turned away from the glowing body, disturbed by how difficult that was to do, and instead knelt beside the collapsed angel. He reached out, shaking the guy's shoulder, but Cas didn't so much as move, let alone wake. "Cas, come on, buddy!"

Dean glanced at his body again. Okay. He could totally handle this. Just…uh…climb inside, wake up, get Cas in the car, and figure out who had killed him, was probably after Sam right now, and oh, yeah, Sam's location. No problem. He totally had all that. Totally.

The hunter stood back up, ready to do just that, when he faltered for a second time. Dean glanced back at Cas's body, then his own, eyes growing wide with pained realization.

Oh shit. Shit!

Cas wasn't in a vessel right now, no matter what it looked like to Dean's limited human perception (still a sore point, clearly). The angel was pure grace beyond that trench coat and tie. Celestial wavelengths of intent or some shit like that. Point was, the angel wasn't actually an unconscious body lying on the ground. Whatever he actually was, it was something Dean wouldn't be able to see once he was back in his body, let alone pick up and carry to the car.

"Son of a bitch," Dean cursed, glancing between the glowing, soulless body beckoning him like a sweet, sweet siren, and the pile of limp, unmoving angel on the ground. They didn't have time for this, damnit. He needed to get to Sam, to warn him something was coming. But it wasn't like he could leave Cas behind, either. "You couldn't have passed out after I got back in my body, Cas?"

The lone hunter looked around the gas station, wondering what the hell he was going to do now.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

A/Ns: It's not…entirely a cliffhanger? It's like…a crumbling edge of a cliff, and you're standing a couple feet back but there's also a wall at your back (don't ask) and you've got nowhere to go and that crumbling cliff is coming your way!

…Yeah, sure, that analogy totally checks out. Let's go with that.

Reviews: I am slowly trying to get through at least some of your awesome, spectacular reviews! I've started over on ff dot net, but I'll move to AO3 by end of week hopefully! Thanks again for all your awesomeness, guys!

Up Next: Cas needs to lay off the fries, Dean needs to work out more, Sam's doing scary shit, Gordon's realizing he's in deep shit (serves him frickin' right), and Angela Garrett wakes up at Bobby's with a tube down her throat and distinct lack of angel in the driver's seat.