Archive of Our Own ^beta

 He has made a mistake.

It is inescapable. The crimson light behind eyes that should solely have been green, hazel, and blue in particular areas (he was careful ). The mad firing of neurons in unpredictable and, for Earth, illogical ways. The stench of him.

He thinks back over the reconstruction process. He remembers muscles vining over bone, remembers blood vessels forming and inflating to feed the muscle; he remembers brain tissue folding and folding and folding again to hold the totality of a man's mind and memory. He remembers skin draping itself, pulling taut over muscle that was hard-earned when it was first built, now returned by a thought. He remembers that the man's first movement after life had been breathed back into him was to furrow his brow, as though in pain.

He does not remember making a mistake.

But he is faced with the evidence of his failure in the form of this dervish before him, a whirlwind of movement and violence and fury.

The Righteous Man has not seen him. He has not been allowed to, though Castiel has been given permission to reveal himself as he sees fit.

He has not yet seen fit.

The first creatures the Righteous Man encounters are demons. They are armed; he is not. Castiel almost intervenes.

In precisely five point seven seconds, the Righteous Man is armed, one demon is unarmed, and the other has fled a dead vessel.

So Castiel does not intervene.

His physical craftsmanship is sound, at least. Dean Winchester quickly and brutally dispatches the last demon. The Righteous Man moves in his body like he never left it. His muscles flex and contract as he expects them to: they obey him. His eyes and ears and nose and nerves transmit information accurately to his brain. His skeletal structure supports his musculature correctly and the joints respond to his commands. He has lost none of his strength, none of his prowess.

He has, however, perhaps lost his mind.

His soul is present. Castiel knows that for a fact. He cradled it against himself for the entire harrowing flight from the Pit, felt it tremble and quake, felt the taint drain from it and warmed it against the glow of his Grace. He settled it back into the body he remade.

He had murmured to the soul as they flew faster than thought that they were leaving, that he was taking Dean from that place of suffering.

Perhaps Dean had not heard him.

The Righteous Man wipes his gory blade on the denim of the pants his brother buried him in. The light in his eyes is less satisfaction than fevered glee.

"Send in the next one," he says.

He does not seem bothered when there is no response. Perhaps there is a response in his mind.

He leaves the shattered convenience store and walks.

Unseen and unsettled, Castiel follows.

Castiel follows for a week.

The intelligence he received on the Righteous Man guaranteed that he would seek out his family upon his return to Earth. His brother, Azazel's erstwhile Boy King candidate and Lucifer's true vessel, Sam Winchester, would receive his first attempt at communication. Their surrogate father, the hunter Robert Singer, would receive his second.

Castiel could concede that this might still come to pass, but the strong implication had been that it would not take a week but a matter of hours.

Dean has slaughtered twenty-one demons in the last week. He takes their weapons and has amassed an impressive collection. Most he kills perfunctorily, but three he captured and killed slowly. He would look around himself in those moments, his hands hesitating over the bloodied vessels, as though awaiting instruction.

He speaks only rarely, and then only in a series of precise and repetitive phrases. Send the next one always follows a kill. Screaming won't help is murmured in the process. Tell me what you did is the first of his voice that his prey will hear.

They are said like incantations.

They are spoken as though his tongue has forgotten how to form other words, as though these are carved into the memory of his oral musculature and there is no room for others. Castiel thinks, perhaps, that he could say a great deal using only those twelve words.

But his mind, a mind that Castiel knows with a sudden but genuine depth from their flight out of Hell and his subsequent rebuilding of Dean's physical form...it is not correct. It is not what it was. It is still the snarling, hateful, terrified, animal thing that it had had to be in Hell, despite his return.

He does not know that he has been rescued.

He curls up, now, beneath a large oak, and Castiel can see the light of his neurons firing as his brain strives to make sense of the physical sensations assailing his body. It is not the rocks driving their edges into his ribs that distress him, nor is it the cold dampness of the ground or even the weeping wound in his shoulder, a jagged, torn edge created by one of the hardier demons he fought today.

It is the lack of pain.

His mind craves the stimulus. He cannot be still without it. His body cries out to be sated, for its nervous system to be lit up by torment, and it is not, and his mind cannot rest. He shifts left and right, rocking mindlessly, seeking it.

Castiel wishes to calm him, to set his mind at ease, but he must adjust to this. To life without pain. And the only comfort Castiel could bring him now would be the same comfort the demon Alastair could bring him: agony, pure and crystalline in its simplicity.

He will not do that to the Righteous Man, much as the wretched creature seems to want it.

He sits beneath the tree beside the Righteous Man and watches as he begins to weep, and gnash his teeth in fury, and weep again.

A nearby bush bursts into flame.

Dean sits up and stares at it, the fire reflecting in his wide eyes. Castiel, too, stares.

Dean touches his temple with two trembling fingers, and Castiel knows that he is correct.

He lit that fire.

Though Castiel removed the Righteous Man from Hell, he had not removed Hell from the man.

He sends Dean to sleep with a brush of Grace. He douses the fire.

He watches the minute, pained expressions that flicker across Dean's face.

He watches through the night for more flames.

It is three weeks after Dean Winchester’s return to Earth that Castiel smells it.

He thought at first that the sulfur was still clinging to the Righteous Man’s body. It would not surprise him. His Pit-gotten pyrokinesis has only strengthened since its first appearance, and Dean does not seem to know how to control it. It has not escalated yet to the point where Castiel has had to reveal himself, but he does not think that moment is far away.

But the sulfur is not emanating from the Righteous Man. It is something else.

Dean notices it somewhat later. He recognizes it immediately.

Castiel watches as his body locks up, every muscle tight, his respiratory and cardiovascular systems speeding up. He begins to perspire.

He whispers, "Screaming won't help."

He trembles.

The hounds arrive.

There are two. It is troubling for Castiel; it is a hopeless scenario for Dean. The Righteous Man knows this. The hounds have taken his life before, and he knew the pain of their attentions in the Pit. He does not run. Running excites them.

They creep in, invisible to human eyes—to Dean's eyes, now. Castiel can see that this confuses him. In Hell, he could see them. Now, he can only smell and hear them.

"Screaming won't help," Dean says again. His voice is small, fearful.

One hound takes another step closer. Dean flinches.

One hound lets out a terrible howl.

They lunge.

Castiel unveils himself and stands between the hounds and Dean, his blade held aloft, and catches one hound in the heart with his weapon.

The other he holds back with his Grace, keeping the slavering beast at a distance with some difficulty. These are young hounds, strong and fierce.

But he is an angel of the Lord.

The first hound struggles, letting loose a gurgling scream, impaling itself further on the blade. The second surges against Castiel's power, and Castiel allows it to go forward.

Dean cringes away, covering his throat with his hands.

Castiel tears his blade from the breast of the first hound, and plunges it into its brother. The second hound seizes as the pain hits it, and Castiel is able to grip Dean’s shoulder and take them both away.

They land hard several miles from where they were. Only once they are settled does he turn to Dean.

The Righteous Man has gone to his knees, and the wide eyes that Castiel rebuilt and pigmented so meticulously are fixed on the angel blade.

"Dean Winchester," Castiel says. "Don't be afraid."

Dean swallows. Castiel can see the muscles of his throat working.

His eyes do not move from the blade.

"I am Castiel. I raised you from Perdition."

Dean's expression betrays no comprehension. Instead, the Righteous Man tips his head so that his throat is exposed.

His eyes shut. For a third time, he says, "Screaming won't help."

Dean does not speak again.

Castiel tries to reason with him for more than an hour. He hides his blade, tries to soften his voice, lowers himself physically, simplifies his language. He speaks quietly and slowly. He speaks reassurances. He speaks promises, some, in his desperation, that he cannot fulfill.

Dean does not speak at all.

His throat is bared and stays bared, even after Castiel puts away the blade. He does not look at Castiel's face. He stays on his knees.

It is not until Castiel touches him that he reacts.

When Castiel puts a hand on his shoulder to heal the weeks-old wound that is developing an infection, a tree explodes into flames thirty-one feet behind him.

He stares at Dean, and Dean, finally, stares back.

The Righteous Man expects pain. He does not say anything to indicate this, but his expression, half of fear and half of eagerness, cannot mean anything else.

Castiel removes his hand, the infection gone but the wound unhealed.

"You wish not to be touched. That is acceptable."

Dean looks disappointed.

The fire rages.

Castiel disappears again.

Dean will not move while he is there. Castiel has offered to accompany him, even suggested that they leave, but to no avail. Dean is frozen to the spot while he is in Castiel's sight.

He cannot detect Castiel beyond his human senses, though. When Castiel conceals himself, Dean stands.

Dean walks.

He leaves a trail of char and small devastation in his path. He is not wantonly destructive; he burns and kills and tortures in a microcosm of the place he left, of the place that still exists within his head. He creates his own, tiny Hell, left behind in blackened vegetation and hollowed vessels.

He eats infrequently. He drinks only when dehydration makes his eyes throb and the base of his skull sends lightning stabs of pain into his head. He sleeps sometimes three, sometimes four hours a night, and that is broken by nightmares and restlessness. He never stops seeking the pain. He rocks and twists and scratches at himself. Anything to fill the emptiness in his nerves.

He walks.

He walks until his feet ache and his calves burn. He walks until the sun has baked his skin—his skin that Castiel wove so perfectly, free of the scars and marring of his previous life, save only for the raised handprint that marked him as saved. He walks until that handprint stands bright red against the subtler pink of his skin, assaulted by the ultraviolet rays.

He walks as though drawn by magnets to groups of demons. He slaughters them efficiently, except when he does not. Roughly one in ten he tortures.

This is where the hellhounds find him.

He is studying his latest victim, head tilted, an expression of vague disappointment lacing his features.

“Send in the next one,” he says thoughtfully.

His finger trails down the ruined side of the empty vessel’s face, meditative in its slowness. There is a feral innocence about him, a kind of peace in his uncomprehending violence. The Righteous Man does not know why he fights, only that he does, and that he will again.

There is a simplicity to it that Castiel finds himself envying.

The Righteous Man’s fingers close the eyes of his victim in a reverent gesture that jars with his previous brutality. He wipes his knife against his pants and takes a step away from the corpse.

The hounds are on him in seconds.

They come quietly, creeping up without a sound, and Castiel doesn’t see them until they are already upon Dean. He rushes into the fray, struggling with the beasts, dealing one a glancing blow with his blade before finally reaching Dean and whisking him away.

The land, both sprawled, near an interstate in Texas. Dry earth lays vast around them, the sun hangs as a heavy, oppressive presence above them, and Dean has kicked his way on top of Castiel and fits his hands around his neck.

Castiel’s moment of panic is an automatic reaction from his vessel, but it happens nonetheless. He stares up at his charge, who is in turn glaring down at him with eyes full of terrified rage.

The strong fingers that he rebuilt—

( phalanges sequentially, proximal medial distal )

—tighten around his vessel’s trachea.

“Dean,” Castiel says, his voice made hoarse by the pressure.

Dean’s response is to squeeze further.

Castiel narrows his eyes and presses against Dean’s chest with his Grace, gently but firmly. A clear release me .

But this time there is no submissiveness in Dean. No baring of the throat, no lowering himself.

When Castiel abandoned him after the tree, he evidently relinquished whatever authority he had over the Righteous Man.

“ Dean ,” Castiel says again, wrapping his hands around Dean’s wrists. He closes his fingers gently, not wanting to hurt his charge.

Dean takes advantage of that reticence and shifts his grip, sliding his right arm sharply across Castiel’s throat until his forearm, close to his elbow, is pressing against Castiel’s Adam’s apple. He presses his left hand down against his right arm, increasing the weight.

“Screaming won’t help,” Dean says through gritted teeth.

Castiel narrows his eyes.

He releases his grip on Dean’s wrists and grabs the Righteous Man by the throat. Dean’s arm against his neck flies away as he attempts to parry, but for all of his impressive skill, he is neither as fast nor as strong as an angel. Castiel flips him easily, pinning him to the ground.

“Be calm,” Castiel commands.

Dean snarls .

“Dean Winchester. Be calm .”

Castiel tilts Dean’s head to the side with a thumb, and Dean snaps at his forearm, though he does not have the range of motion to successfully bite down. Castiel frowns, pressing down harder. Dean chokes and glares.

This is not what Castiel wanted.

"Tell me what you did," Dean rasps.

"I saved you."

Dean shakes his head, a tiny motion all that is allowed past Castiel's grip.

"Tell me what...you ...did."

Castiel furrows his brow.

"I rescued you, Dean. From Hell. I gripped you tight and raised you from that place."

Dean snarls again, but it is frustration this time. Castiel relaxes his hold minutely.

"Tell me what. You. Did."

Castiel tilts his head.

He does something he is unused to doing, and hazards a guess.

"An angel. What I am is an angel."

Dean looks relieved for six tenths of a second before he surges up uselessly against Castiel, snarling and spitting.

Castiel has had enough. He places a knee over Dean's chest and pins the Righteous Man's hands over his head. It is an effortless act of physical strength for him, but it pains him to see his charge so distressed. He will not, though, allow Dean to harm himself by attempting to harm an angel.

Dean continues struggling, bucking against his restraint. Castiel glowers down at him, pressing down with his knee until the Righteous Man sucks in a sharp, pained breath.

“If you understand what I am, you should understand that you cannot fight me,” he says. “I did not come to harm you. If you are calm, I will release you.”

Castiel feels the jerk of Dean’s wrists beneath his hand. Once, twice. Three times. Each attempt is stronger, more desperate than the last.

The Righteous Man is panicking. Castiel weighs his options and finds them all wanting. He will not intentionally hurt his charge, he will not alter his mind, and he cannot stay here forever, with Dean Winchester pinned to the cracked desert earth until he either acquiesces or succumbs to exhaustion or dehydration.

“Dean—” he begins.

He hears his vessel’s overcoat ignite before he feels the heat.

Dean is staring up at him in horror and wonder, and Castiel wonders what he sees.

Is it simply Castiel’s vessel, unfathomably placid as his clothes burn, Dean’s captor uncaring through the pain that would send a human to his knees, howling?

Is it some tortured version of reality, some remnant of Hell behind Dean’s eyes that twists Castiel’s form into something else?

Or is it something truer than that? Can Dean see the outline of Castiel’s wings where they do not burn, where they flex in discomfort as the flames lick at his vessel’s skin? Can Dean still see him for the angel that he is?

Castiel quenches the flames and shakes his head.

“I will find your brother,” he says, and sends Dean to sleep with two fingers against his temples.

Sam Winchester does not want to be found.

This is not a barrier to Castiel. The unique signature of his soul is easy to locate, its fierce brightness not dimmed but stained by the taint of demon blood. It mars an otherwise beautiful soul, tendrils of what could best be described in wavelengths visible to human eyes as an illuminated black-purple swirling angrily, sickly, among the diamond brilliance surrounding it.

But Sam’s companion is another story.

He almost brings Dean to them immediately. It might, he thinks, do the Righteous Man some good to be able to kill again, and it would do his brother a service, to be out of the thrall of the creature he has burdened himself with.

His superiors suddenly and firmly forbid it, and Castiel does not think of it again.

Instead he leaves Dean sleeping in an abandoned cabin he found and appears to Sam Winchester and the demon Ruby.

They are residing in a hovel of a motel, dingy green wallpaper fading and cracking off of the walls, water faucets dripping mineral-laden water into filthy receptacles. Sam Winchester’s lips are closed over Ruby’s arm, his eyes rolled back in an addict’s bliss. Ruby watches him, her hand in his hair, calculation in her eyes.

She looks up when she hears him enter, and jerks her arm away.

She shouts out and stands in front of Sam—a selfless gesture, Castiel thinks in some surprise. Perhaps she simply knows of Sam’s importance, and is willing to risk her life rather than have to report her failure to keep Lucifer’s vessel alive to her superiors.

Castiel is not allowed to kill her, though. He walks up to her and taps her on the temple, sending her several miles outside of town.

Sam has a gun raised at him when Ruby vanishes, and Castiel tilts his head.

Without preamble, he says. “Sam Winchester. I have news of your brother.”

Sam Winchester has several tells, it appears, when he is upset. The muscles in his cheek twitch, his brow furrows very slightly, and his fingers flex and tighten around his weapon. He shakes his head.

“My brother is dead,” he says.

“Was,” Castiel corrects him. “He is alive once more, and I require your assistance.”

Sam’s head continues to shake, and Castiel wonders whether he is denying assistance or denying that Dean is, in fact, alive.

“Who the hell are you?” Sam demands.

Castiel straightens, but still has to look up to meet Sam’s eye. It is a bizarre feeling, to be smaller . The sensation does not speak to his true form, of course, but it is still unsettling.

“I am Castiel,” he says. “I am an angel of the Lord.”

Sam’s reaction should not, in retrospect, have been surprising.

The hunter attacks him, and he is hesitant to defend himself too vigorously. Harming Sam Winchester will not endear him to Dean, however his mind has been twisted by Hell.

Castiel knows this: if any portion of Dean Winchester remains intact within his mind, it will be his loyalty to his brother.

So he does not hurt Sam.

He endures the shooting, the stabbing, the arm under his chin as he is pressed against the wall. He endures the interrogation, responds calmly to questions shouted at him as spittle flies against his vessel’s skin. He endures the disrespectful treatment of blessed holy water as it trickles down his neck.

It is when Sam picks up his cell phone to call the demon Ruby that Castiel decides that it is enough.

He flies in front of Sam and takes the cell phone. He crushes it in his hand.

“I advise against calling your demon,” he says quietly.

Sam looks appropriately cautious for the first time.

"Your brother will wake soon, and I do not want him to wake alone."

Sam's expression becomes strange, outside of Castiel's admittedly small repertoire of known human emotion. Dean has shown pain, anger, fear, exhaustion, bloodlust, glee, and resignation. These he would recognize on the face of his charge's brother, but Sam is displaying something else.

Perhaps it is sadness. There are tears in his eyes. But his mouth is curving, stuttering into a smile, indicating happiness. His chin trembles, lending credence to sadness or fear, but he is not touching any of his weapons, which leads Castiel to believe that Sam is not afraid. His brows pull together, but they tilt upward. Surprise? Confusion?

Sam may be a better case study in expressions of human emotion than Dean.

"He's really alive?" Sam asks. His voice is soft and hesitant.

"I have told you so," Castiel replies. It is an irritating human habit, this circuitous conversation.

"How?"

"I raised him from the Pit. I restored his body and him to it."

Castiel is stating only fact. Sam's face transforms into something much more within an angel's experience: awe.

“Thank you,” Sam says. “Thank you. Oh my god—um. I mean, just—thank you so much, I don’t—”

“You’re welcome,” Castiel interrupts. “I did not come here for gratitude. I came to retrieve you for your brother.”

“He’s all right?” Sam asks.

Castiel frowns.

“No. He is not all right. That is why I have come for you. He is...disturbed. I hope that seeing you will restore him.”

“Disturbed?” Sam echoes, and Castiel watches as fear wraps around him, dimming the joy he’d felt only moments before.

“He has been in Hell,” Castiel reminds him.

“I know,” Sam says. “For months.”

Castiel knows that Sam Winchester tried to rescue his brother. He was battling his way through the Pit for most of that duration, but since his return he was privy to the knowledge of his brethren in regards to Lucifer’s vessel. He knows that Sam tried to make deals, that he tried to find spells, that he tried everything. It is not, then, for the purpose of hurting him, but for the purpose of providing him necessary information, that Castiel corrects him.

“Months here,” he says. “Decades in Hell.”

Sam’s face pales, and Castiel feels something oddly akin to guilt.

The cabin is quiet when Castiel arrives with Sam.

It is also on fire.

“Dean!” Sam cries, wrenching his arm away from Castiel. In the interest of not breaking Sam’s arm Castiel allows it, but grips him anew.

“Dean is unharmed,” Castiel says. “This is his own doing. He is likely to hurt you if you approach him wrong now. I will retrieve him; he will find it more difficult to harm me.”

“What do you mean, this is his doing?” Sam shouts, but Castiel ignores him as he walks toward the cabin. He is gratified when Sam at least obeys him and stays behind.

Vessel of the original rebellious son he may be, but perhaps even Sam Winchester knows his limitations.

The wooden beams of the ceiling crack and shatter above him. The flames lick up around him, testing the fabric of his vessel’s coat, the tips of his fingers. It does not hurt him, but it annoys him. Dean Winchester should not have woken alone, lost and fearful. Not again. If his brother had been more cooperative, he would not have.

As it stands, Dean is huddled in a corner, the flames obediently surrounding him without touching him. His knees are against his chest and he is rocking back and forth. Once in a while he sticks his hand out and lets it be singed by the flames, pulling it back afterwards and staring at it.

He looks up at the sound of Castiel’s footsteps.

“Send in the next one,” he says, his jaw set, his brow furrowed.

Castiel quenches the flames.

“Your brother is here,” he says.

Dean stops rocking.

“Ssss,” he says with effort. “Ssssend.”

He frowns.

“He is outside.”

“Sssssendin—”

“Come with me, Dean. Come to see your brother. He is waiting for you.”

Dean shakes his head, still hissing, tears filling his eyes.

Castiel bites back an inappropriate display of frustration, and instead snaps his fingers.

Sam Winchester appears in the room.

He looks startled for a moment, nauseated for another, then finally he lifts his eyes and sees his brother.

“ Dean ,” he says, crashing to his knees. The charred floor cracks beneath him.

Dean looks up at Castiel.

“It is Sam,” Castiel assures him. “This is not a trick. You are saved, and this is Sam.”

“Tell me what you did,” Dean whispers.

“I brought you to your brother, and him to you. Here, on Earth.”

Dean looks at Sam, reaches out with tentative fingers. Sam grips his hand, too tightly at first and Dean hisses from the contact on the burns, then more gently.

“Sssssend. Send. Ssssend,” Dean says.

“What?” Sam asks. “Send what?”

“Wait,” Castiel says, and Sam looks up at him, then back at his brother.

“Sssssend,” Dean tries once more, then lurches forward and grabs his brother’s face between his hands.

He takes a deep breath, as though preparing for a mighty effort.

“ Sssssam .”

A dam breaks in both of them, and the Winchesters embrace.

The angels are quiet in Castiel’s head as the Host watches the reunion. It is the first step on the road to Apocalypse, to the end of the world and to the ruin of these men.

Castiel watches quietly as they hold one another, proving to each other that they are real, and thinks that it is a strange kind of ruin that they bring, that feels so much like hope.