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To say the bond that they have is fragile is an understatement. It's brand new—only weeks old—and flimsy at best, not yet strengthened by battles fought and won together or any common experiences to relate with or talk about. But it's important that he at least try to strengthen it or else he'll be left all alone, hated by his own kind and unable to properly fit in with his new chosen flock.
Castiel doesn't regret helping Dean escape to attempt to avert the Apocalypse so many other angels had so desperately craved, but he can't deny that the decision does have its downsides. His waning grace, for example. His aching wings, his lack of allies willing to assist, his lack of a safe-haven to go to and recover, his lack of angels to go to that he can count on to heal him, his name painted black all throughout Heaven as 'the new Lucifer' even though he's siding with the humans instead of against them…
He's sure this tentative new bond has its upsides, too. Surely. He's just…having trouble coming up with them from where he's currently suspended by his wrists and wings in an abandoned warehouse, grace exhausted and motionless except for its useless writhing deep within his core, attempting to heal some of the internal damage. He blames the blood loss for his sluggish thoughts, and tries to divert as much grace as he can to the eyes that have been carved from their socket and the heart and liver that he's currently missing.
It was supposed to be easy—nothing more than simple scouting to develop a sense for the lay of the land and get an idea of what they were up against so that Sam and Dean could be prepared for what they suspected was a werewolf. It was one of the first missions they'd sent him on, so he was eager to get results. Too eager. He was reckless and arrogant and didn't think the pair—the two humans—would be a serious threat, even if they'd caught the Winchesters' attention through the gruesome condition their victims' bodies had ended up in.
Turns out that the bodies were actually those of monsters, not humans. He didn't realize until he'd charged in, hand prepared to smite, only to discover they've been watching him since he first arrived and had planned a trap for him. An ancient, powerful trap that had bound his grace completely, effectively leaving him powerless. They made quick work of stringing him up by his wrists and, one painful incantation done weeks later, his wings, hooks and chains digging into his flesh and keeping him dangling slightly above the ground.
The humans, as it turns out, are organ donors…only they don't donate their own. No, they capture monsters—things no one will miss, surely—and divest them of all their organs and all the blood in their bodies before dumping them somewhere like the scum that everyone views them as. Well, monsters or not, nothing deserves to suffer; it's why Castiel always kills quickly and efficiently, attempting to minimize the amount of time something has to be in pain.
These two humans have no such reservations. They were beyond delighted to discover angels can regenerate their body parts and their blood supply, once the bindings on his grace were taken away, and go in every evening to take something else from him, their procedures quick with practiced ease yet merciless. Their latest fixation is on his eyes, though he suspects that's more to torture him and quite literally keep him in the dark than anything. When he'd helpfully suggested a blindfold, since the Winchesters are that bad of an influence on him already, they'd cut his tongue out.
That was sixteen days ago. Since then, they've discovered a spell to pull his wings into their plane of existence, granting them access to his feathers and new patches of flesh and bone. That had been five days ago. He's given up on the idea of Sam and Dean ever finding him, as it's been a total of twenty-three days now. He's been contemplating the idea of broadcasting a message on 'angel radio' to beg for a Rit Zien to come down and end it already. But he hasn't, because angels are beings of hope, even when they're being naive and they know it.
They don't give him anything to eat or drink, and he hasn't been standing on his own feet for as long as they've had him. His grace is forced to repair things faster than it can regenerate, leaving him weaker and weaker every day. The IV they've connected is constantly sapping the blood from his body, since type O negative blood is apparently worth more to hospitals.
Castiel wonders absently, as he watches his own blood race through the tube and drip into a bucket with barely-reformed eyes, how people haven't grown suspicious of the pair yet. Before he can think about it any further, the metal door screeches open. He doesn't bother looking up, and the two humans step inside.
"All right, Subject #514," the shorter one with the dark hair says eagerly; he's never heard either of them give any indication as to their names or even codenames. "How are we doing today?"
A week ago, he would've lifted his head up to spit a big glob of blood at them, hoping it lands on their cheeks instead of their shoes. As is, he doesn't say anything, doesn't even react. The humans don't seem to mind as they fuss over his vitals and poke and prod at his still-exposed organs (they'd put some type of substance around the wound of the Y-incision that keeps the gaping hole in his torso and abdomen from closing and had bound the flaps of skins to his sides to keep them out of the way).
"I'm thinking…lungs," the taller one with no hair tells the other, and Castiel barely contains a groan. The lungs always leave him gasping for air for hours on end until they slowly grow back… "They look good and healthy."
The shorter one murmurs in agreement, bringing a pen through his cracked yet remarkably intact rib cage to poke at a lung. A panic sets in. They're harvesting far earlier than they ever have before. Are they getting more greedy, more reckless? Are they just planning on killing him soon, realizing that his recoveries are taking longer and longer?
Noticing his panic, the bald one laughs, patting his cheek patronizingly. "Don't worry, Subject #514, you still have a few more hours to enjoy your lungs. After all, we wouldn't want to kill the golden goose while it's still producing."
"This bucket's almost full," the shorter one remarks. "Should we disconnect the IV line?"
The bald one waves a dismissive hand and continues surveying the printed-out results of the EKG, glasses pushed down to the end of his nose. "Its heart is still beating. It'll be fine for a couple more hours, I think."
Castiel shutters out a shaky breath, willing his heart to slow down in hopes the bald one will reconsider. His efforts quickly earn him a slap on the cheek that makes his entire face tingle. He remembers a time where the action could have broken all the bones in someone's hand, if he wanted it to…
"Don't do that," he's reprimanded quickly. "Just remember, you're saving many people. You angels are all about protecting humanity, right? You're doing a lot of people good."
Castiel lets out a single huff of amusement at the man's disillusioned view, but can't find the energy to say anything, sluggish tongue not exactly planning on moving anytime soon. Besides, the less he resists, the sooner they'll leave again.
"I have everything. Let's go," the shorter one says, quickly circling something on the clipboard on the table before standing up abruptly.
On their way out, the taller one says, "We'll be back in about three hours. Don't go away!"
The door shuts with a harsh slam, and Castiel slumps over further in his bindings. The clipboard on the table catches his eye, and he raises his blurry, unfocused eyes to look at it, noticing that his lungs and wings are both circled in the rough diagram they'd made of him. At the top of the chart in thick, bold writing are the words 'SUBJECT #514, ANGEL,' and there are notes along the sides that he can't focus his eye enough to read.
He lets out a shaky sigh and turns his attention back to the blood still steadily being taken from him, attempting to gauge how much longer it'll be until his grace finally dies out and he'll be left human for his organs to be harvested one last time before he's finally allowed to rest.
-
The door creaks open again, more slowly than he's used to—perhaps they're holding something? Nevertheless, Castiel jolts awake, anyway, though he wishes he could go right back to sleep when he realizes what the door opening means. He's never been able to go unconscious through an operation, and he knows he's not about to start now as panic and dread seeps in again.
His eyes squeeze shut, as if that can stop the pair from coming in. For a long moment, it's silent, blood slowly dripping into the sterile bucket as shuddering breaths rattle his entire body. He tries to stay calm, despite knowing what's coming.
Then—
"Cas?" Castiel's head snaps up instantly, and he meets the wide eyes of Sam and Dean. Dean's mouth drops in a silent statement before closing again, no words coming out in the meantime. Finally, he says eloquently, "Son of a bitch."
"Have you been here this whole time?" Sam asks quietly, eyes lingering on his exposed chest cavity, and Castiel's too tired to even manage a nod, instead just allowing the side of his head to rest against the arm still fixed above him. "Dean," Sam quietly urges, disconnecting the tube that's been draining his blood as Dean starts working on the hooks driven into his wings. "Cas, what is all this? Why…"
Castiel's wings suddenly drop as Dean removes the last hook, dragging his entire body down to the floor and making it even harder for his likely broken wrists to hold him up. He groans and tries to lift his wings again, but they're heavy and sore, and he's very weak at the moment, so he can't lift them more than a couple inches before they drop again.
"Easy, Cas, we gotcha," Dean mumbles, and a moment later, his wrists are freed and Sam and Dean are carefully helping him to the floor. Castiel can't help but wonder if they'd be this amiable knowing his captors were humans and not the werewolves they'd suspected… "All right. How the hell do we close you up?"
"It's—" he clears his throat with a frown, having not spoken in…some amount of time, "—spell. Powder."
Luckily, the stunted phrase seems to be enough to draw Sam and Dean's attention to the white powdery substance lining the skin surrounding his exposed innards and to the flaps of skin rolled up and held tight against his sides with a few stitches. Dean even tries to brush it away, only to discover it's glued on with layer after layer of dried blood from the few days they'd cut him apart before discovering the spell. He sucks in a sharp breath, and Dean stops with a quiet curse.
"We gotta get him out of here," Sam says, and Dean quickly goes to the other side of him so they can swing an arm over each of their shoulders, hauling him to the door. "C'mon, almost there…"
Naturally, this is when the door opens with a jovial hum that's cut short the instant his two human captors take in the scene in front of them. For a moment, no one moves, though Castiel's exposed heart begins beating faster, making him wish yet again for some article of clothing or something to hide his vulnerabilities.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the taller one screeches, digging through his pockets until he comes up with a tiny scalpel that seems unthreatening when Castiel isn't bound with no ability to move. "That's my test subject! Get your own!"
"'Test subject'?" Dean growls, ducking out from under his arm to pull out a gun, pointing it at the man. "And what kind of subject is he?"
"Mine!" the man reaffirms, swinging the scalpel aimlessly as the shorter man darts towards Dean, only to be shot in the head and instantly killed. The taller man falters, sweat dripping down the side of his bald head and onto the top of his pristine dress shoe. "Uh…"
"Let's try that again," Dean all but snarls as Sam adjusts his hold to continue keeping Castiel upright. "What kind of subject?"
"Organ donation," the taller man hesitantly replies, taking a weary step back at whatever new look Dean must have on his face. "It's saved many people's lives. Hey, I'll even be willing to share—"
At this, Dean shoots him, and his body drops quickly. "Anymore of these bastards?" he asks, and Castiel mutedly shakes his head. Dean nods once and returns to his other side to continue pulling him outside. "We're gonna get you all patched up, Cas," he's saying, "don't worry, you're gonna be fine…"
As Castiel slumps in their hold, wings dragging heavily and uselessly behind him on the dirty ground, he can't help but think Dean might be right.
-
He wakes up in a motel room that smells vaguely of cheese. This is a massive improvement from the scent of antiseptic and blood he's been inhaling for weeks, as is the fact that the skin on his torso and abdomen is actually closed up, the flaps of skin finally reunited and stitched together tightly. The only clue there's been an incision there at all is the slightly inflamed, bright red scar running along the rejoined skin where the stitches are keeping it together, though he suspects he'll soon heal enough for them to be removed.
His wings are partially if sloppily tucked on either side of the bed underneath him, though each is hanging off a little. He stretches them and flaps them once, glad to be able to finally move them again even if the action sends a lone lamp hurtling towards the ground. He moves to stretch his arms, only for something to tug on one of them.
A quick glance makes him freeze as his eyes trace an IV line going into his arm. Upon closer inspection, however, he realizes this is bringing blood into his body and not out of it. Besides, as far as he can tell, it's his own blood, so Sam and Dean must've taken notice of the bucket of blood on the ground and taken it with them.
The light flies on, taking the room from nicely dim to way-too-bright—especially for someone who's been trapped in a lightless warehouse for weeks on end. Castiel hisses at the sudden brightness as a wing flies up to cover his face and sensitive, reddened eyes.
"Hey, Cas," a voice greets, and he squints over the excessive brightness to see Dean standing there awkwardly with a bag in his hand. "How're ya feeling, buddy?"
"Sore," he croaks, taking a second to stretch his toes beneath the bed he's been tucked into, just because he can. "How long was I…out?" That's the phrase, right?
"About four days," Dean replies, finally closing the door behind him. "Sammy's getting more bandages. Ran out." The man's eyes trace his bare chest for a moment, roving over the thick, forming scar tissue and the line of stitches before snapping back up to return his gaze. "You hungry?"
Castiel is surprised to hear his stomach rumble at the mention of food, and he nods quickly, sitting upright in the bed. Dean just chuckles and reveals he has burgers hiding within his bag, and Castiel hastily accepts one. Dean watches him eat for a moment before sitting on the bed beside him, drawing his attention away from his burger for all of three seconds.
"Look, we should've come sooner when we realized you weren't taking calls or anything," Dean starts with a sigh. "I was trying not to hover or anything, let the angel have some space, y'know. But then days turned into weeks and you still weren't getting in touch or anything, and…"
Castiel mumbles noncommittally to show he's still listening even as he begins fantasizing about a second burger, his malnourished body starved of the subsistence he usually doesn't require. As if reading his mind, Dean pulls out another and hands it to him, probably suspecting he'd need to eat and rest to regain his strength.
"I prayed to you, a couple times." Castiel simply nods, having heard the…less than polite prayers echoing through his mind. "They weren't pretty, huh?"
"They were distracting," the angel replies, his voice cracking on the last word, causing him to frown. Dean wordlessly hands him a water bottle, and if this is the kind of camaraderie he can expect from the Winchesters, he's regretting his decision to side with them less and less. "Thank you."
Dean scrapes a hand down his face. "Don't thank me for being a decent human being." The man shakes his head as the door to the motel opens and Sam steps inside. "Seriously, though. You're okay?"
"My grace is recovering slowly, and with it, so are my injuries. I'm fine, Dean," he assures.
"What about mentally, Cas?" Sam asks, setting a bag of medical supplies on the bedside table so he can go over and check Castiel's IV. The angel tries not to shudder as he thinks of his human captors doing the exact same thing… "No one can go through something like…like that and come out fine on the other end."
"Angels can," Castiel says, trying to convince himself. "Mental well-being is not a concern in Heaven because it doesn't affect angels. Psychological torture is not unheard of, but it does not have any lasting affects."
Castiel has a few millennia worth of memories of being locked up in total solitude and being brought for Heaven's traumatic brand of reeducation that directly contradicts this, but he tries to push those thoughts away. The last thing he needs is to worry Sam and Dean with something so…frivolous. Besides, Lucifer is currently walking the earth. There are much greater concerns lurking on the horizon for them to deal with. He'll…he'll tell them later, maybe—when it won't be as much of an issue, as much of a burden. After all, this bond is new and delicate, and he doesn't want to weigh it down while it's still so…fragile…
Sam and Dean look at him skeptically, but accept the information, perhaps not wanting to put this new bond to the test, either. Instead, they start layering his wings and torso in bandages to keep the blood from leaking through and soiling the bed sheets and their security deposit alike. Castiel remains stoic through it all, though he silently wonders just what is waiting for him if he continues to follow the Winchesters.
He can likely expect to be tortured, but can he also expect them to show up? For them to care for him afterwards? No one's ever really done that before on a personal level, but if they're asking about his mental well-being as well as his physical health—which is only important in Heaven if it affects his performance in battle—that must mean they care for him as an individual at least a little.
After all, his injuries hadn't been fatal, and they certainly aren't now. And yet, Sam and Dean continue to tend to him and help him recover even further than Heaven would; he couldn't count the number of times he's gone into a new battle still recovering from the last one, as he'd been when retrieving Dean's soul from Hell. The time when the seals were breaking was the worst in that regard, as he rarely got more than a few hours to recover before he was rushing to try to save another seal.
But still, this is…different. Personal. They're tending to him and not just to the injury, and that's more than he's ever had, and certainly more than he has the right to ask for. But he didn't ask for it, and they're still giving it. Ask and you shall receive, but he hadn't asked—wouldn't have thought to ask for something like this, to ask for something unless he absolutely required it—and he finds this is far better than anything he even could've asked for.
He shifts further into the mattress below as a new wave of exhaustion hits, and Dean helps him lay back down and even fluffs his pillow before turning off the light. He then moves to the other side of the room to talk quietly with Sam and allow Castiel to rest. Castiel feels tears come to his eyes that he determinedly doesn't let fall.
Neither human comments on the lamp he's broken with his wing, or the fact that he's been captured and subdued for weeks by humans instead of monsters in his 'weight class,' or the fact that he may never recover enough to fully escape the burden of eating and drinking and sleeping (especially now that he's slowly Falling), or even the fact that he's taken one of the two beds in the room and forcing one of them to go on the couch.
All Sam and Dean seem to care about is if he's okay and how he's recovering—and not to send him into the next battle, but to ensure he's not hurt for his own sake—and if this is what the Winchesters have to offer, as tender and fragile as this new bond is, he wonders why he hadn't sided with them years ago.