A/N: I sincerely appreciate how respectful and supportive you all are of this story. And thank you for extending your thoughts regarding Chapter 1; for now, I won't delay writing new content by taking time to revise it.

Speaking of new chapters… Cheers to 21! When the levee breaks, something good has gotta come of it, right?

Readers' Note: "Quoted italics" are characters' thoughts. Normal italics are (surprise!) normal.

( ) ( ) ( )

If Cas had to moderate one more angel/angel debate he was going to personally escort them all to Hell. Zadkiel hadn't had many devout followers but rumors ran rampant, causing more chaos than Zadkiel himself had ever instigated. Every angel was convinced they had the real scoop. (Not that any angel was calling it 'scoop,' but Cas slipped into his assimilated human vernacular every now and again.) Everywhere Cas turned it was Dean this, Zadkiel that, Winchesters, Winchesters, Winchesters… The murmurs– no, not murmurs; no angel was hiding the fact that this was heaven's most pervasive conversation. It may have been rumor, but no one was ashamed to be talking about it. Castiel had spent the better part of a week attempting to dispel falsities. Though it was slow going, he could tell that things were winding down. Fewer angels questioned him about whether Dean could be trusted not to misuse the grace, and fewer still dared suggest a mass intervention. Every angel had clocked the look Castiel gave Angelo after he'd proposed that removing the grace was the best course of action. No one was interested in being on the receiving end of Castiel's disapproval. As a result, most angels accepted the fact that Dean was unlikely a threat. With rumor and instability ebbing, curiosity began to intensify.

Angels wanted to know if this could ever happen again, or if their own grace could be at risk. Yes, Michael was an archangel, but could something similar happen on a smaller scale? Moreover, it seemed that all of Heaven wanted to be kept in the loop about Dean's state. It was uncomfortable for most angels to consider that a human had a connection to their power. They wanted Dean on a short leash, preferably under their watch, if not their control.

"If they only knew him," Cas thought. "If they could see the way he's been…" Cas did not intend to be disrespectful. He never wanted to imply that Dean was pitiful. At the same time, Cas recognized that the hoops and hurdles he was going through with the angels would be so easily resolved if they could see things first-hand. Dean was not manifesting any archangel qualities. Dean was not all-powerful. Dean was not a version of a nephilim. Angels inhabiting human vessels were at risk of nothing. Dean was not a threat to Heaven.

There was only so much assurance Cas could give. At some point, he would have to stop addressing it. The more attention angels had on Dean, the worse it was going to be for everyone. And so long as Cas remained "upstairs," he feared the drama would never fully settle. Maybe it was as good a time as any to check in with the brothers themselves. After all, Cas had been talking about them nonstop; the last thing he needed was to be caught reporting outdated information. Inadvertently lying to angels was admittedly not the best way to pacify tensions.

Cas took a moment to orient himself with Earth's timeline. He worked to internally coordinate his Heaven and Earth clocks in order to figure out how long he had been gone. "The better part of a week, certainly" he concluded. Without thinking, Cas began searching for the familiar 'channel' the Winchesters were on. Before he reached either of them, he promptly cut off his signal. "If Dean is still sensitive to radio, this is a bad idea," Cas hypothesized. "Better to meet them."

( ) ( ) ( )

Itchy. It was the first sensation Dean was conscious of. A little prick at his nose, a coarseness under his fingertips, a tickle on the inside of his elbow… it was all itchy. His eyes were still closed, he was pretty sure. All he could make out were vaguely geometric patterns in flashing colors, fading and then reappearing against an black pit. The energy required to lift his eyelids was too great; what did he need sight for anyways? The room hummed with generic ambient noise, accented with a few distinct sounds. Faint keyboard clicking, a gentle hiss of compressed air releasing, a rhythmic beep from a machine running low on power, and the sound of the thermostat intermittently kicking on and off. His fingers were as exhausting to move as his eyes, but he recognized the distinctive feel of cardboard sheets and what they meant: he was still in the hospital. More disorienting was the fact that he had no idea for how long. His sense of time was unreliable; for all he knew he'd fallen into a coma and woken four months later. He didn't believe that, though. Some instinct in him said it hadn't been very long. (That and the fact that his body still felt like lead). At most, he was predicting he'd been out for a few days. To be sure, he'd have to ask Sam when he got back.

Replaying his thoughts, Dean realized he'd simply felt that he was alone. He didn't need to see or hear to know that nobody was with him. It was one of those things that his gut promised him, and he had no reason to doubt it. Dean's gut also promised him Sam would be back; he just had to stay conscious long enough to see him. Easier said than done, as Dean recognized the heaviness of painkillers pulling him back towards sleep.

( ) ( ) ( )

Castiel arrived on Earth in Waterville, Maine. The main gate to Heaven was moved after a brief raid in search of Zadkiel's remaining supporters, though Cas thought it was what Dean would call "overkill." Cas knew the boys were on their way back to the bunker last he'd left them so he didn't think twice before transporting directly there.

It didn't take long for Cas to realize there was no sign that the hunters had ever made it back to the bunker. There was a fine layer of dust on every surface, no car outside, no unpacked bags strewn about. Cas extended a mental search party for the Winchesters and was taken aback by a pulse of strong magnetism. Not an attractive force, but a repellent one; two forms of a similar energy being thrust together, resisting a union. It was a vaguely familiar sensation, yet Cas couldn't quite place where he'd experienced it before.

Castiel pursued his mental search further, but without either of the hunters praying or calling to him, it was difficult to find their exact location. Eventually, he decided to start where he'd last seen them in Colorado. Cas was just about to travel when a concerning thought crossed his mind: he was being watched. Not likely watched in this particular moment, but he assumed plenty of angels had their eyes and ears on him; he didn't want to lead them directly where he was going, and he certainly didn't want them to know what he was thinking. He settled on circling the area, trying to pinpoint the origin of the magnetic field before going to meet Sam and Dean.

( ) ( ) ( )

Back at the hospital, Sam didn't know that he'd just missed Dean's brief lucidity on account of the fact that he was puking his guts out just down the hall. Ever since his violent outburst in the storage room, Sam had felt like crap.

His head was pounding, mouth dry, stomach in knots, sweating through his shirt, and eyes tingling from the overpowering fluorescent lights. Sam was crouched over, head hung for the past half hour. At this point, there was nothing left in his system to purge… It didn't seem to prevent him from gagging. Sam swallowed thickly and ran the cold water from the bathroom sink, splashing it onto as much of himself as he could. The water helped lessen the intensity of the hot flashes he was having but within minutes Sam was shivering from the sudden temperature change.

"What the hell?" Sam didn't have a single theory as to his sudden decline. Other than extreme stress. Which, to be fair, he'd certainly been experiencing. But Sam's entire life was extreme stress… Why would it be manifesting now?

Determined knocking reverberated off the thin bathroom walls, startling his nerves.

"One sec…" Sam's voice was raw. He was not confident he wouldn't need the bathroom again, but at the moment he was as stable as he could reasonably hope for. Sam did a quick eyeball of the room, making sure he hadn't left any biohazards behind.

Another set of knocks came. "Okay, geez…" Sam opened the door and was temporarily blinded by the bright hallway. He was aware that a hand was pushing him out of the doorway, but his eyes weren't adjusting fast enough to see what stranger was so desperate to relieve themselves. Not that it mattered.

"Dean's room is three…" Sam's head was too hot to think. He glanced at both sides of the hallway– equally unsure of either choice. "When did it get so hot?" Sam thought, still trying to get his bearings. "The room is three… three, seven… three seventy what?" Sam tried to shake off his brain fog, only succeeding in making himself immensely dizzy. Sweat poured down his face, chest, under his arms… "You have a fever, idiot," he concluded. "Go find some Tylenol." Sam circled the floor until he found a nurse's station, but no one sat behind it. Even in his current state, Sam felt that surely someone should be here. Or at least loitering about.

Sam glanced to his left, and then his right, staring down the long corridors, hoping to flag somebody down. But as Sam looked back and forth, he realized that there wasn't anyone in the hallways at all. There were distant sounds– the normal background noise everyone was accustomed to. But there were no comings and goings. No patients or visitors, doctors or nurses… It was all… empty. "Except the man waiting for the bathroom," Sam remembered. Okay, so he wasn't going completely mad.

Without warning, there was a high-pitched wail pouring out through the speakers. Instinctively, Sam raised his hands to cover his ears in an attempt to stop the pain caused by the piercing noise. As his palms reached his face, it was quiet.

Except it wasn't just quiet. It was… it….

Sam's eyes darted frantically– desperately trying to comprehend what he was seeing. Sam knew he wasn't batting a thousand, but he liked to think he still had some grasp on reality. Sam would just about stake his life on the fact that thirty seconds ago he was standing in an empty hospital hallway. A fact which now seemed improbable considering that Sam was currently staring at the fireplace of one of Bobby's old safe-houses in Imperial, Nebraska.

"What the hell?" Sam muttered under his breath, lost in disbelief. "Fever dream? Maybe I'm sicker than I thought." But just as the consideration crossed Sam's mind, he realized he didn't actually feel sick anymore. Not sick at all. The pounding headache was gone, the chills too. He wasn't nauseous– if anything, he was actually hungry.

Well, that is until he felt his heart sink into the pit of his stomach.

( ) ( ) ( )

"Dean, we have to go."

The piercing noise still rang out at the hospital, though Sam was no longer there to hear it. Castiel deliberately placed a hand on Dean's forehead, attempting to short-circuit the warped angelic conductor inside Dean. The small jolt succeeded in disrupting the frequency, and the noise cut out.

With a great deal of strength (and a sizable portion of regret) Dean cracked open his eyes. Everything was blurry and grainy, immediately his head was throbbing. He could make out a silhouette of the other body in the room, but he was nowhere close to being able to identify the person on sight alone. Luckily, the person's voice identified them instantly.

"Do you need any of this?" Cas asked, referencing the machines hooked up to Dean.

"When did Cas get here?" Dean thought, still unable to see. He opened his mouth to speak, but he only managed a groan. The drugs made it impossible to move at a pace faster than molasses in January.

"I'm taking us to the bunker. I'm sorry I wasn't here sooner."

"Why would–"

Dean wanted to ask a million questions but his voice didn't have the strength and the sound of Cas' wings told him they didn't have the time.

( ) ( ) ( )

"Hello?" Sam's hand padded his waistband for a gun that was no longer there. "Shit."

Sam took a few cautious steps, painfully aware that he had no backup.

"Bobby?" Sam knew that Bobby was long-dead, but he was in his safe-house, and he had no idea what universe this might be.

"Dean?" Sam cautiously rounded a corner into where he remembered the kitchen to be. It looked remarkably unchanged, all things considered. Even after years of hunters passing through, it had seen little damage or renovation. Sam hoped that it was as unchanged on the inside as it was on the outside. He opened a drawer to the left of the sink and triumphantly pulled a silver knife. The blade was a bit dull, but Sam was hardly complaining. Feeling some relief from being armed, Sam's mind wandered as he padded through the house. "If the move was to separate us, why take me?" Sam tried to understand what motive there was behind dumping him here. "How do they know about this place?" Most importantly, "Who's they?"

Trying to piece together what happened was the only distraction Sam had from letting his concern eat him alive. He didn't know where Dean was. He didn't know who or what was after them. Why something was after them, if it had made Sam sick, and a thousand other unknowns. Sam approached the living room window, on the back of the house, and observed a massively overgrown yard and a collapsed, rotted wooden shed. It was the first evidence Sam had as to what world he was in."Still this timeline," Sam thought. "No one's been here for a long while."

Sam's nerves flared as he sensed a movement behind him. Taking no chances, Sam whipped around, knife in hand, and stopped just short of stabbing Cas in the shoulder.

"CAS! What the HELL?!" Sam lowered his arm and took a step back, heart still racing.

"I'm sorry, I didn't have time to explain."

What did Cas have to explain? Did he know what thing– Oh. Sam put it together.

"You brought me here?!" Sam's voice broke at the tail end of his exasperated inflection.

"Yes. I needed to drop you somewhere safe. Somewhere you knew."

"I didn't see you at the hospital–" Sam abandoned his sentence in place of a new one. "Where's Dean?"

"He's at the bunker–"

"Why is he at the bunker?!" Sam interrupted.

"I need to get back to him." Cas' voice was straight and stern. "You have to stay here, Sam. I'll explain everything soon–"

"You'll explain everything NOW!" Sam's whole body emphasized his demand.

"I don't have time–"

"Make the time!"Sam's voice deepened and his stance tensed.

Cas held firmly, voice even and calm.

"Michael's grace is dying." Cas' pitch dropped. "I have to go."

Sam stood frozen as Castiel vanished.

( ) ( ) ( )

Dean was unconscious. It could have been shock from the teleportation, residual drugs in his system, or– There was no point speculating. Cas didn't have answers even though Sam damn well deserved them. It was cruel to leave him abruptly with so little information, but Cas needed to put his time into keeping a close eye on Dean. Not only for Dean's sake, but for the sake of everyone in the fallout zone.

When Cas arrived back to Earth, he'd felt it. Though at the time he hadn't yet known what the low magnetic voltage was, it was clear to him now.

Decaying archangel grace.

He was lucky he found Sam in time– that he'd found everyone in time. Hypothesizing what change caused this was a waste of time and resources. They'd never have a hard answer. Besides which, knowing why or how wouldn't change the course they were set on. Michael's grace dictated their fate now, and all there was to do was wait.

It didn't take long for other angels to feel the grace dispersing, and Castiel was their first call. Their constant chatter created an annoying buzz which left Cas irritated and simultaneously vindicated in his theory about being watched. Amidst the complaints and concerns, one voice resounded louder than the others.

"I warned you about this, Castiel. You assured us this wasn't a possibility." Angelo's voice boomed inside Cas' head; the presence was so obnoxious, Cas was beginning to understand how miserable Dean felt experiencing angel radio.

"I assured you Dean wasn't a threat to Heaven. And he's not." Cas' response was firm.

"Not yet. But what happens when Michael's grace finally burns off? What? The entire planet left in fallout? And you think there won't be celestial repercussions?"

"This is not a war, Angelo. Zadkiel tried to make it one and look where he ended up. I'm handling it. And if I so much as see your shadow, I'll be sure to make you regret voicing such vehement dissent." To punctuate his threat, Cas ended the transmission with a frequency overload. It was what Cas considered to be the equivalent of slamming a door to end an argument.

Dean stirred slightly– he was probably feeling errant waves of Cas' angelic conversations. Castiel sighed, eyes wide but weary. Heaven wouldn't be quiet anytime soon. At worst they might send a cavalry of unwanted wings. Warding was the natural defense so Cas busied himself with painting sigils in an attempt to cloak angels from watching his every move. Of course it wouldn't be long until the angels realized they'd been intentionally barred. Which in turn would only invite more suspicion and distrust. Castiel began worrying that Heaven might prove more of a direct threat than he'd ever anticipated. If Michael's grace faded quickly enough, though, maybe all conflict could be avoided.

Cas' thoughts circled endlessly without progress, and Dean's progress was equally as stagnant. Dean wasn't mumbling. He wasn't restless. He didn't seem to be in pain. If Cas hadn't felt the grace radiating, he'd never have known anything was wrong. Actually, Cas wasn't even sure anything was wrong. At least with Dean. The so-called smiting sickness epidemic didn't seem to be affecting Dean himself. Which Cas supposed was a minor victory– for as long as it lasted.

Castiel wished he'd brought some of the machines Dean had been hooked up to; some window into what was happening inside him. Admittedly, it was a vain, misleading desire. Nothing happening to Dean was something a monitor could track. Castiel circled the bedroom, contemplating whether it was safe to look inside Dean's head. It was risky, sure, but without any knowledge of what was happening inside Dean, how could the risk be weighed?

Dean's phone rang, the music jarring Castiel out of his anxious trance. Cas paced over to the phone and answered without bothering to look at the caller.

"Yes, Sam?"

"Are you with him?" Sam wanted to yell, but he managed to keep his composure.

"Yes."

"Is he awake?"

"No."

"Cas." Sam's voice hitched. "Please tell me what you know."

"Not much. Not for sure, anyways." Cas sighed and stepped away from Dean's bedside. "I left Heaven to come check in with you. And when I got down here, I felt a … magnetic field. It grew stronger as I moved closer to you. And the closer to you I got, the more I noticed people falling ill." Cas took an exasperated breath. "When I arrived at the hospital, everyone was sick. Very sick. It seemed to be almost like…"

"Smiting sickness," Sam finished. "Like what happened after Amara showed up."

"Yes." Cas stepped into the hall, rubbing his face.

"But there hasn't been any–"

"Smiting? I know." Cas sighed. "But whatever the case may be, no one can be around Dean."

"Is… the…" Sam struggled to get the words out. "It's the grace, isn't it?"

Cas heard Sam's voice falter through the phone.

"It appears that way. Michael's grace is decaying. Rapidly. A nuclear reactor leaking radiation."

"But when Gadreel left grace inside of me, you said it was harmless."

"Yes. For you it was. But Gadreel was not an archangel, and you were not his perfect vessel. Sam-" Cas took a shallow breath. "Dean is Michael's sword. I don't know what that means. For him. For you. For Earth…"

"Cas. If you're telling me that Michael's grace is finally fading… And if you're telling me you don't know what's going to happen to Dean–"

"Sam, I will get you here as soon as I know it won't kill you."

"Make it sooner than that."

( ) ( ) ( )

Back at the safe-house, Sam hung up the phone. "How is this happening?" Sam couldn't stop the question from cycling over and over in his head. They weren't ready for this. "I'm. not. ready. for. this."

Ever since that first day Dean dropped to the ground–Michael's grace wreaking havoc on his brother–Sam began imagining an infinite domino effect of pain and suffering. Intrusive thoughts were a talent of his. Sam's imagination knew no bounds when it came to weaving plots of disaster. Sam could rattle off all the ways he imagined Michael's hold on Dean might end. Imaginings that were meticulously fabricated in a mind that had known unfathomable suffering at the hands of the devil himself. But now that the day had come, Sam took no comfort in having prepared himself for the worst.

Michael's grace was disappearing from Dean, there was nothing he could do about it, and Sam was horrified that a small part of himself still clung to hope that maybe things would work out.

( ) ( ) ( )

Dean wanted to wake up. Everything in him was fighting to win consciousness over his body. The storeroom he remembered so vividly–the place where he'd tried keeping Michael for so long–was collapsing. The shelves were warping, bending and shrinking so drastically that they popped off their brackets, clunking to the floor. The floorboards themselves splintered apart, causing the heavy barrels and boxes to crack the floor and begin falling through. The drywall grew brittle, crumbling with the slightest bit of pressure.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

A support beam snapped in half, causing a wall to cave in on itself.

"Gotta tell Sam. Gotta tell Cas. Wake up, you son of a bitch!"

Dean didn't know what to do. He kept waiting for pain, or relief… any kind of feeling that would indicate whether he should let this happen, or try to fight it. But there was nothing. Just his mind, locked in an unconscious body, without a clue as to what was going on.

"C'mon, guys, I'm here. I'm here. I'm still here."

( ) ( ) ( )

Castiel physically felt the heat radiating off of Dean. It wasn't a feverish heat, though. It was pure energy. Pure grace. Cas felt his makeshift warding weakening; it was unclear whether Michael's surging grace was to blame, or a pursuit by other angels. In either case, they wouldn't stay cloaked for long. And who knew how long they needed. The grace began fading rapidly, but that didn't necessarily mean that rate would continue. Michael's grace could take years to burn off for all Castiel knew. It wasn't like many archangels left remnants of their power in their vessels. Their perfect vessels at that.

With Sam, the circumstances had been so different. Lucifer hadn't embedded his grace into Sam the same way that Michael had with Dean. Lucifer sought to break Sam entirely through mental manipulation– the devil had been in it for the long haul. Michael, on the other hand, had different tactics. Michael wanted to build Dean up, make him strong and oblivious to pain. At first.

And then, when the time was right, tear his body, mind, and soul down in one fell swoop. The shock of collapse compounding at one precise moment in time. Both possessions wreaked the same degree of havoc, but each was sickeningly tailored to devastate their respective vessels.

Michael's MO suggested that his grace would dissipate in a rapid and monumental fashion. But the grace raging inside Dean didn't belong to Michael. Not anymore.

( ) ( ) ( )

Dean's shoulders carried the heavy load of a large wooden beam as dust and debris rained down in the storeroom. Dean was choking on the thick air as he willed himself to keep the room standing.

"I'm the cage…"

Dean sounded a deep, primal roar as he straightened his back and legs, lifting the heavy wood above his head.

"It's all me…"

Dean was using so much strength, he visibly shook. He ground his teeth together, jaw tight, and used everything left inside him to force the heavy beam back into place.

With an involuntary whimper, Dean lowered his arms from above his head, shaking with exhaustion and adrenaline. The room stilled, debris settled on the ground, tremors lessened. The door– bashed in, barely attached to its hinges– hung crooked in the doorway. Dragging his feet through splintering floorboards, Dean limped towards the door. His trembling hand grabbed hold of the handle, but he was too weak to tug it open. His body vibrated with exhaustion. Sweat dripped off his elbows, the ends of his hair, and slid down the back of his neck. Dean rubbed his hand against his filthy jeans, trying to dry it. He reached for the handle again, his grasp firmer than before.

"I made it this far, fellas. Help a brother out…"

Dean closed his eyes. He let the dusty air fill his lungs. And–