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Castiel was dying. The wound from the angel blade in his stomach told him that. Usually, people thought you had a chance at living with a stab wound or bullet wound to the stomach. That wasn’t entirely true. See, the stomach acid would spread out through the opening ripped through you, and go where it wasn’t supposed to. It would kill. Typically, dying from a stab to the gut took thirty seconds. But with Castiel being an angel, it had already been forty-five minutes.
He kept trying to heal; all the while feeling himself growing weaker and weaker.
He could barely drag himself across the ground now as he attempted to reach his phone.
After long, pain-staking seconds in which he whimpered and cried out, he came upon his victory — albeit it small.
He called Dean. He called his family.
“Hey, Cas!” Dean answered.
“Dean. Help.”
“Okay, I’m tracking your phone. Don’t hang up. What happened?”
“Stabbed.” Castiel panted, and then he let out a scream through gritted teeth. “Angel blade.”
“Shit, Sam and I’ll be right there.”
A few minutes passed, Dean just rambling about his day to keep Cas distracted. Finally, Dean got his location.
“We’ll be there, soon. Just stay with me. Can you do that? Can you stay on the phone?”
“Yes,” Cas groaned.
“Great, I’m gonna pack, and get Sammy. Just be okay. Please be okay.”
Dean took his phone with him, and Sam talked to Castiel as well. Then he could hear the purring of the Impala as Dean put the phone on speaker.
His family talked to him, and they made sure he responded back.
Castiel closed his eyes. It’d be so nice to just let the numbness where he’d felt pain earlier take him. That was what he wanted. To be utterly numb.
“Cas?”
“Cas!”
Their voices broke through his numbness, and he groaned. They were annoying. Leave me be.
“Almost there, darlin’!” Dean cried.
Then, Castiel heard the Impala pull up. Sam and Dean instantly ran through the woods to his position. Sam held his head in his lap, and Dean got to work on the injury.
“Sam, he can heal from this kind of stuff, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why isn’t he healing?”
“Maybe he thinks he can’t. It could be in his head.”
“What?”
“Psychosomatic.”
“What do I do!”
“Fix him up. Make him think he’ll heal. That he’ll be okay.”
Castiel heard the conversation, but he could barely make sense of it; just more words keeping him from the comforting dark. Then, pain was breaking through the numbness, the snow falling around him as his one true love got to work. Dean had already opened his shirt, and now he was holding bandages against the wound. It was still bleeding. Hadn’t clotted yet. Blood soaked Castiel.
Dean knelt on the wound, making Castiel grunt. Sam held him down.
Dean moved around, and he came back with something. The now-bloody bandage was removed. Sharp pain came to him through sudden awareness. Then tugging, pulling.
His love stitched him up; all the while he talked to him. Dean just kept reassuring him, calling him “baby,” “sunshine,” “darlin’,” and he tried to come up with new pet names. They weren’t very good, and a semi-coherent part of Castiel couldn’t wait to laugh at him for them.
Stitched up, Castiel breathed in.
He was okay.
He would be alright now. His family had taken care of him.
Castiel exhaled, golden light encompassing him, wound to his gut knitting itself up, stitches pushing out of the healing skin.
His family held his hands, and Dean kissed him on his forehead.
Castiel was saved.