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“Dean,” Castiel said, one morning over breakfast. “We need to talk.”
The years Castiel spent yearning for Dean had been agonizing, but in retrospect, he supposed there were some benefits to taking so long to begin a romantic relationship. For example: he’d spent enough time on Earth, among humans, and watching human television, that he understood certain things about human culture far better than he had before. He knew that some conversational topics needed to be introduced with delicacy, something he certainly would have been incapable of when he’d first met Dean and begun to fall for him in every sense of the word.
As a result, he now knew it was polite to ease into important conversations. “We need to talk” was a phrase he had heard a lot on television. He hoped that adopting it would help prepare Dean for what he was about to say.
Dean looked up from his plate of bacon, lines of what looked like worry creasing his forehead despite Castiel’s best efforts. “Uh, okay,” he said. “Shoot.”
Castiel cleared his throat. “I was wondering if you would be interested in having children with me.”
Dean blinked, the tension dissipating from around his eyes. “What, you mean adopt some kids?” He leaned back in his chair, so that it was balancing on two legs. “Cas, in case you haven’t noticed, our lives are kind of dangerous. I don’t want to bring some helpless kid into that.”
Castiel shook his head. “Actually, I was suggesting that you impregnate me,” he said. “Our biological offspring would be nephilim—very powerful, and far from helpless. I assure you, very little of what you hunt would be able to harm them.”
Dean sat up straight, the front legs of his chair returning to the floor with a clatter. “Impregnate you. But you’re, um. I mean. You’re. Uh.”
Thankfully, Castiel’s years of experience walking among humans once again gave him insight into Dean’s incoherent stuttering: he was confused by the fact that Jimmy Novak was male, and by human standards, not capable of producing offspring. “The sex of my vessel isn’t relevant,” he explained. “All angels are capable of carrying eggs, regardless of our current vessel’s reproductive configuration.”
Dean stared at him. “Eggs?” he repeated, the pitch of his voice growing higher. “Eggs?”
It wasn’t exactly the reaction Castiel had been hoping for. Something along the lines of, Yes, Cas, of course I want you to bear my children would have been more reassuring. “Yes, eggs,” he responded.
“Like, the kind you lay?” Dean asked. “Like a chicken?”
“I’m not a chicken,” Castiel responded. “But yes, I would lay them. What else does one do with eggs, Dean?”
Before the conversation could go any further, they were interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps, and Sam emerged into the kitchen. “Hey guys,” he said, looking between them. “What’s up?”
“Cas wants to have my egg-babies,” Dean said faintly.
Sam blinked. “Uh, congrats?”
“Egg-babies,” Dean repeated, staring off into the middle distance. “And he’d have ‘em. Like a seahorse.”
It was clear that Castiel’s attempt to ease Dean into the conversation hadn’t been as effective as he’d hoped—and worse, clear that Dean’s response lacked the enthusiasm that had been building in Castiel over the past several weeks. “I shouldn’t have brought it up,” he said quickly. “You don’t need to impregnate me. It was just…a passing thought.”
Dean’s gaze snapped back to him. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “I’m not—I’m just processing here, Cas. I mean, children are one thing. Hell, babies are one thing. But. Eggs?”
“I think what Dean is trying to say,” Sam interjected, his voice higher than usual, “is that it sounds like there’s some stuff we don’t know about angelic reproduction.” He took a seat at the table. “And maybe it would be helpful if we understood the, uh, logistics, a little better before making any decisions. I mean, I didn’t know you could, uh, be impregnated.”
“Yeah, about that,” Dean said, and the sharpness in his voice had Castiel tensing up instinctively. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you could get knocked up. We’ve been having sex for months, and I could’ve put a bun in your oven any time I—” As Castiel processed that metaphor, Dean made an obscene gesture, the pointer finger of his right hand repeatedly entering and leaving a circle formed by the fingers of his left hand.
Castiel forced himself not to respond defensively. “Of course not,” he assured Dean. “Yes, all angels are capable of bearing progeny, or fertilizing their partners, regardless of the sexes involved. But not accidentally—it requires the angel’s conscious choice.”
Strangely, Dean didn’t appear reassured. “Fertilizing their partners?” he repeated. “You’re saying I could have gotten knocked up? Any time you—” He made the same gesture as before, but reversed, each hand doing the opposite motion.
“Of course not,” Castiel said again, and this time he couldn’t help the defensiveness from creeping into his voice. “I told you, human-angel pregnancies require the intent of the angel. As you wouldn’t survive the birth of a nephilim, I would never allow it to happen.”
“I’d die?” Dean sat up straight. “Wait, what about you? Would it kill you? Cause I’m telling you right now, I’m not letting you die in childbirth just so we can have kids.” Beside him, Sam nodded in agreement.
Castiel rolled his eyes, though he was relieved the aggressiveness in Dean’s voice had given way to concern. “I would survive,” he informed them. “Nephilim are very powerful. Gestating and giving birth to one would be more than any human could survive. Even you. But it’s different for angels. If I were to become pregnant, my grace would automatically form shells around the nephilim, containing their power.”
“Eggs,” Sam said. “Huh.”
Castiel nodded. “Exactly. After I lay the eggs, the nephilim would continue drawing power from the shells until they were ready to be born. Once the grace was fully absorbed, the shells would weaken, and the nephilim would hatch. I wouldn’t be in any danger.”
“Huh,” Sam said again.
Dean said nothing, one hand fisted and pressed against his mouth as he stared down at the table. Anxious to know what he was thinking, Castiel watched him closely, examining his features for any hint of a response.
But it was Sam who again broke the silence. “Hey, so, were egg-laying species on Earth modeled off of angels, or was it just like a convergent evolution kind of thing?”
“Angels didn’t evolve,” Castiel responded automatically, not taking his eyes off of Dean.
“Yeah, I know, but—”
“Shit.” Dean’s hand fell away from his mouth as he looked up from the table. “Shit, we could actually do this, couldn’t we? I mean, we could…” Trailing off, his eyes finally locked on Castiel’s as Sam fell silent.
“Yes,” Castiel told him. “We could.” When Dean didn’t respond immediately, Castiel added, “If you want to.”
Dean ran a hand through his hair. “Uh, can you give me some time to think about it?” He huffed a breathy laugh. “Man, this was not a conversation I expected to have when I woke up this morning.”
“Of course,” Castiel said quickly. “Take as long as you need.”
It was only two days later that Dean brought it up again, late one evening after they had both retired to Dean’s room for the night. Rather than initiating sex or flopping down in an exhausted heap, as Castiel had come to expect, Dean sat down cross-legged on the bed and and patted the blanket beside him. Once Castiel had sat down, mimicking his pose, Dean turned to him: “Hey, so, this whole me-knocking-you-up thing. Can I ask some questions?”
Castiel had half-expected Dean to never mention it again. “Go ahead.”
“What would it take? I mean, you said you’d have to do it on purpose. So, uh, what would we actually have to do?” Dean, Castiel noticed, sounded less baffled and unsettled than when Castiel had first raised the idea, and more like he was gathering information for a mission or a case. Like he was creating a plan for something he was actually intending on, or at least seriously considering, doing.
“Well,” Castiel began hopefully, cautiously trying to temper his rising optimism.
“Aside from the obvious,” Dean interjected with a wink, then laughed nervously.
“We don’t have to do anything,” Castiel told him, “aside from ‘the obvious’. We would have sex. You would fuck me—”
“No problems there.” Dean winked again.
“—and I would allow your genetic material to intermingle with my grace. After the sex, I would encourage your essence within me to fertilize pockets of my grace, which would become the eggs.”
Dean snapped his fingers. “Right. About that. So. Uh. You keep saying ‘eggs’.”
“Yes,” Castiel said. In hindsight, he thought, he really should have been more prepared for Dean to get stuck on the aspects of angelic reproduction which were most different from that of humans. “Eggs. They grow in me. I lay them. They hatch. What don’t you understand?”
“No,” Dean said, shaking his head. “I mean, I get that part. It’s weird as hell, but hey. But, uh, you keep saying ‘eggs’. Egg-z. As in, plural. Does that mean there’d be a bunch of ‘em, like for birds?”
Castiel considered protesting against the bird comparison, but decided to, as humans said, pick his battles. “As I’ve said before, angel pregnancies require intent. I could allow you to fertilize as many or as few eggs as we chose.”
“Great,” Dean said, sounding relieved. “So we could just have one.”
“Well,” Castiel said slowly. “We could just have one. Theoretically. But we could also…have more than one.”
Dean eyed him suspiciously. “Like, how many?
Castiel shifted on the bedcovers. “I think five is a nice number, don’t you?” he suggested.
Dean reared back. “Five?! At once?!”
“Sam is very important to you,” Castiel pointed out quickly. “Surely you would want to give any child of yours the chance to have siblings.”
“Well, sure,” Dean said. “You know, if things go well with the first one, and we don’t turn out to be completely shitty parents, then a few years down the line, we could try for a second. Maybe even a third. But not all at once!” He shook his head.
“Why not?” Castiel crossed his arms across his chest.
Dean continued shaking his head. “Dude, do you have any idea what it takes to raise even one baby? That’s way too much fucking effort for us, and not fair to the kids if we can’t pay attention to all of them!”
“Nephilim children are far more intelligent and independent than human children,” Castiel argued. “They would be dependent on us at first, but that would change quickly. And they have fewer material needs—they don’t require as much food, or as much sleep.”
“Great,” Dean said. “Five kids who don’t sleep. Sounds peaceful.”
The sarcasm in Dean’s voice was evident even to Castiel, and he decided to switch to a different tactic. “Five really isn’t that many,” he pointed out. “My grace could easily sustain a clutch of ten, or twelve…” There had been twelve angels in his own clutch, he recalled wistfully. Of course, angels were never infants or children in the way that humans or nephilim were, but those early days of entanglement with Anna and Balthazar and the others, simply observing Heaven and Earth as they were too inexperienced to be sent off to fight, were ones he had fond memories of.
Dean’s mouth had dropped open. “Twelve?” He narrowed his eyes. “Dude, did you watch Cheaper by the Dozen recently? Is that where this is coming from?”
“I know that twelve would be impractical,” Castiel snapped. “That’s why I suggested five, which I think is very reasonable—”
Dean held up a hand. “Okay, hang on there, Quiverfull. What’s this really about?”
Dropping his gaze, Castiel smoothed his hand over the blanket beneath him. “Angels are very communal,” he said eventually. “I imagine that nephilim are the same. We…we were never created to be alone.”
Dean went silent for a moment. “Okay. I get it.” He glanced off to the side with a serious, thoughtful expression. After a moment, the side of his mouth quirked up into a small smile. “Yeah, you know what? Twins could be nice. I bet we could handle two.” He turned back to Castiel. “And like I said, if it goes okay…maybe a couple years down the line we can give ‘em another sibling or two. Sound good?”
Castiel exhaled. “Sounds good.”
“Twins,” Dean repeated, as if speaking to himself. His grin widened. “Man, I can’t wait to see the look on Sam’s face when we tell him.”
The next day, they conceived two children together. Lying on the bed next to Dean afterward, Castiel closed his vessel’s eyes and concentrated inward.
“So?” Dean asked.
“Two buns ‘in the oven’,” Castiel reported. He could feel the twin sparks of life embedded in his grace, and sent them a pulse of warmth. They weren’t conscious, not yet, but even so, he tried to send them waves of his love for them, his desire to to keep them safe and happy.
Dean reached over, splaying his hand across Castiel’s stomach. It was an imperfect approximation of where the two embryonic nephilim were located in his grace, but since Dean was only capable of moving his hand in three dimensions, Castiel decided not to mention it.
“So nine months until we have ourselves a couple of baby birds, huh?” Dean mused.
“More like five,” Castiel corrected him. “Four months for the eggs to develop within my grace, and then one more month of incubation after I lay them.”
Dean sat upright. “Just five? Crap, I gotta make a nursery, babyproof the bunker…”
“I’ve told you,” Castiel said, amused. “Nephilim aren’t fragile, even as infants. There’s little in this bunker that could harm them.”
Leaning down, Dean pressed a quick kiss to his mouth. “It’s the principle of the thing,” he said. “This is gonna be their home. Gotta make sure it’s nice and safe for them. You know?”
And Castiel thought that he did.
Over the next several months, Dean exhibited several irrational behaviors which he justified with ‘the principle of the thing’. Most of them involved jumping in to offer his help whenever Castiel did anything requiring even minor exertion, despite Castiel’s protests that he was still capable of far more physically strenuous feats than lifting boxes or moving furniture without any risk to himself or the burgeoning lives embedded in his grace.
Still, as the nephilim grew within him, drawing more and more rapidly from his grace, Castiel did find himself unusually tired—falling asleep for up to an hour at a time as he lay beside Dean at night.
But eventually, even the sleep didn’t quite seem to be enough. He needed something more, he realized one day while watching Dean insert two pieces of bacon into his mouth. He needed it.
“I’m hungry,” he announced.
Raising his eyebrows as he chewed, Dean pushed his plate across the table.
Castiel looked down at it, at the bacon and toast with butter and half-eaten eggs. “Not for that,” he declared, wrinkling his nose.
Dean exchanged a look with Sam. “Uh, want some of mine?” Sam offered, gesturing at his own breakfast: a bowl of yogurt and granola, sprinkled with berries.
Shaking his head, Castiel sat back in his chair. “I’m not hungry for that, either.”
Dean swallowed his mouthful of bacon. “Then for what?”
“I don’t know,” Castiel admitted.
Sam and Dean exchanged another look. Dean retrieved his plate, then gestured around the kitchen. “Well, pregnant guy gets dibs, so if there’s anything you want from the kitchen, go for it.”
Opening the door to the refrigerator, Castiel spent several minutes poking through the shelves and drawers, but found nothing to entice him. The food in the kitchen cupboards was next, but proved similarly unsatisfactory.
“Well, we’re getting low on milk,” Sam pointed out. “I was going to go on a grocery run anyway. Maybe Cas should come?”
And so the three of them piled into the Impala. “We should get him ice-cream,” Dean suggested, as he pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store in Lebanon. “Pregnant chicks always crave ice-cream, right?”
Castiel frowned. “I don’t think frozen dessert is what I need.” He’d tried ice-cream once, as a human. It had given him a headache.
On the past occasions when Castiel had accompanied Dean to go grocery shopping, he’d always found the process fascinating. Humans had so many types of food, so many different ways of preparing them, far beyond what was necessary for survival. More than once, Dean had needed to pull him away from examining a shelf with eight different kinds of potato chip, or twelve different kinds of cereal, studying the packaging and the ingredients out of curiosity over what made so many different variants necessary.
Today, though, he found himself too impatient for any such examinations. Every type of sustenance they walked past, from cereal and potato chips to fruit and frozen pizzas, struck him as boring at best and off-putting at worst.
“Anything?” Dean asked him, as they neared the end of the last food aisle. Eyes scanning the shelves, Castiel shook his head.
”Maybe it’s not human food he needs,” Sam suggested, turning the corner. “Maybe he needs more grace, or souls, or something.”
“I don’t need to eat souls,” Castiel responded indignantly. A few feet away, a woman pushing her cart in the opposite direction whipped her head around to stare at him.
“Maybe Sam’s right, though,” Dean mused, turning down the next aisle and glancing at the kitchen supplies lining the shelves. “Maybe you need some kind of mojo, not food. We should try the storage rooms when we get back to the bunker; see if the Men of Letters had any weird crap that could power an angel.” He looked over at Sam. “Hey, are we out of Saran wrap?”
“I think so,” Sam responded, and they walked further down the aisle as Castiel contemplated Dean’s words. On one level, it made sense that what he needed was more powerful than human calories, but at the same time, it seemed equally unlikely that every angel who had ever birthed a nephilim had needed access to magical artifacts created by humans—
He stopped in his tracks. Dean was reaching to grab a long rectangular box of plastic wrap from the shelves, but for once, Castiel found his attention drawn away from Dean, to the shelves a few feet further away. “This,” he said, grabbing Dean by the arm and pointing. “I need this.”
Dean’s eyes followed the direction of his finger. “...Aluminum foil?”
“I need it, Dean,” Castiel repeated.
Dropping the box of plastic wrap in the cart, Dean eyed him in evident confusion. “To…eat? Or to like…wrap yourself in?”
Castiel stared at him. “Why would I wrap myself in it?”
“I don’t know,” Dean said, throwing up his hands. “Why would you eat it?”
“Because I need it!” Reaching past Dean, Castiel snatched a box of the foil off the shelf.
“You know, I’m pretty sure we’ve got some of that stuff at home,” Sam interjected.
But now that he knew what he was craving, Castiel didn’t want to wait for the return trip—nor did he expect the one or two boxes of foil in the drawers of the bunker’s kitchen to be sufficient. Grabbing three more boxes, he tucked them under his arm, then reached for more.
His hand bumped into Dean’s. Pulling the cart closer, Dean swept the contents of the shelf on top of the groceries they had already accumulated. “Hey,” he said with a shrug, apparently over his earlier bewilderment. “Like I said, pregnant guy gets what he wants.”
It took all of Castiel’s self-control not to rip open any of the boxes to get at the foil within as they paid for the groceries and exited the store. Thankfully, the brothers seemed to recognize his impatience, because rather than heading for the driver’s seat once they reached the Impala, Dean simply handed him a box of aluminum foil out of one of the plastic bags and then sat down on the hood of the car as Sam began loading the trunk with the groceries.
Sitting next to Dean and ripping it open, Castiel’s mouth began to water as he caught a glimpse of the shiny material within. His fingers scrabbled over the surface of the silver tube until they caught a loose end of the foil, peeling it back. He tore off a corner and stuffed it in his mouth.
For a moment, he could only savor the metallic taste of the sheet on his tongue. It was perfect. Exactly what he needed. Though…somewhat insubstantial; the thin layer ripped to pieces in his mouth as soon as he began chewing on it, and he was forced to swallow it down.
Pulling out a much longer sheet of the aluminum, he crumpled it into a dense ball before sticking it in his mouth. This time, it was satisfyingly solid as he bit down on it.
“So, aluminum,” Sam said, circling around to the front of the car. “Huh.”
“Crap, do you think he needs any other metals?” Dean asked. “Pregnant chicks need all sorts of vitamins, right? That’s why they crave so much weird shit?”
Castiel swallowed down the mouthful of foil. “This is very satisfying,” he assured them, as he tore off another long sheet and repeated the process of crumpling it and stuffing it in his mouth.
But Dean was hopping down from the car and reaching into the driver’s seat, grabbing something that clinked and jingled in his hands as he returned to Castiel’s side. Uncupping his hands, Dean revealed a small pile of coins. Swallowing the half-chewed ball of foil, Castiel examined the offering. The larger, silver coins held little interest for him, but the smaller, bronze-colored ones…
He picked out several and popped them in his mouth, swallowing the coins without bothering to chew them. “Those are very good as well,” he said, digging through the pile in Dean’s palms to see if there were any more.
“Pennies,” Dean said, as Castiel sorted carefully through the coins. “So, copper?”
But Sam shook his head. “They’re mostly zinc, actually.” His expression turned thoughtful. “You know, they make zinc supplements. We could buy some of those?
“Nah.” Dean dumped the remaining silver coins into his pocket, as Castiel returned his attention to the roll of aluminum foil. “If Cas wants pennies, he gets pennies.”
From across the parking lot, Castiel heard the sound of several car doors closing; he glanced up to see a small child watching him curiously as she followed two adults towards the store. Her eyes widened as he devoured another sheet of foil.
“Uh, maybe you should finish that in the car,” Sam suggested. “And then…I guess we should make a trip to the bank?”
Just over three months into his pregnancy, Castiel found a shirt lying on the floor just outside the laundry room. Recognizing it as Dean’s, he raised the flannel garment to his face and sniffed it, trying to determine whether it was a worn shirt Dean had dropped on his way into the laundry room, or a clean one he’d dropped coming out.
It was clean. A human wouldn’t have been able to detect the faint traces of Dean’s scent beneath the smell of detergent.
Castiel, of course, wasn’t human.
The shirt was nice, Castiel decided. He didn’t always understand the Winchesters’ fashion choices, but at the moment, the colored plaid struck him as pleasing. And the fabric was soft against his fingers as he took another whiff of that soothing scent. It seemed wrong for the shirt to have been abandoned in the concrete hallway. Clutching it to his chest, he turned on his heel and marched down the hallway to Dean’s room.
Placing the shirt on Dean’s bed, he looked down at it, satisfied, popping a small handful of pennies from his pocket into his mouth and rolling them around on his tongue. Something niggled in the back of his mind about the sight—
He swallowed the pennies. Of course something niggled. Why had he put it there? Confused by his own actions, he picked the shirt up again and walked over to Dean’s dresser, opening the top drawer. He folded the shirt in the way he knew Dean preferred, then looked down at the open drawer, at all the rest of Dean’s shirts within it, and hesitated.
It seemed a waste, suddenly. All those shirts, carrying traces of Dean, yet tucked away, hidden and out of sight.
It didn’t take long for him to empty the drawer, dumping all of the shirts on Dean’s bed. That was better, he decided, but still not quite adequate. The rest of the drawers of the dresser yielded more of Dean’s clothing, as did the hangers in Dean’s closet, resulting in a pile that was more satisfyingly sized, but…messy. And disorganized—all those nice soft shirts were at the bottom, he realized, and it wasn’t terribly structurally stable to have a whole heap of socks and boxers on one side of the pile while more sturdy items like jeans and coats were gathered together on the other side.
And he’d neglected the bedding. Castiel tugged on the corners of the sheets and blankets until they came free from the bed, then pulled the hanging edges up on top of the mattress. Walking from one side of the bed to the other, he bunched up the edges of the bedding until it formed a vaguely oval-shaped perimeter with Dean’s clothes inside.
Better.
Next, he sorted the clothing. Picking up each garment one at a time, he assessed them: their texture, their sturdiness, their size, and most importantly, how strongly they were imbued with Dean’s scent, with his presence. The sturdiest items he used to reinforce the perimeter, weaving them together. The softer items, and the ones that he knew were Dean’s favorites, he used to line the inside of the circle.
Much better.
It could still be improved, he mused. With some of Dean’s towels, perhaps. But it was already enticing, and he wanted very badly to be inside of it. Carefully, he climbed onto the bed, careful not to disrupt the perimeter as he settled into the middle of the circle. Grabbing the pillows from where they were leaning against the headboard, he sat down on the one from his own side of the bed, and hugged the other to his chest, burying his face in it. It was soft, and Dean slept on it every night, and he felt warm and safe and comfortable and—
The door opened.
“Dude,” Dean said. “What?”
Icy clarity washed through Castiel, like he was awakening from a trance, and he jerked his head up from the pillow. What had he been doing? Mortified, he could feel himself flushing with embarrassment, made worse by the way Dean was staring at him, clearly expecting an answer. “I’m experiencing some strange impulses,” he admitted.
“Strange like…?” Dean surveyed the room. “Dude, are you nesting?”
Of course. A wave of excitement raced through Castiel, pushing away his shame and confusion at being caught stealing Dean’s clothing. “I am. Dean, I’m nesting.”
“Does that mean—?”
Castiel nodded. “It means that I’m close to laying the eggs.”
“Holy shit,” Dean said. “How close? Like, right now?” He grabbed the pillow out of Castiel’s hands. “Here, just lay down. I can build the freaking nest, don’t you worry.”
“Not right now,” Castiel told him, amused now that he understood the instincts driving his own behavior. “We still have two weeks, maybe closer to three.”
Dean exhaled an audible sigh of relief. “Good,” he said. “Cause I am going to make you the best frigging nest ever.”
They ended up moving the nest to the room they had designated as a nursery. Even with two cribs, there was enough room to lay a mattress on the floor, and true to his word, Dean spent several hours gathering blankets and pillows from around the bunker to reinforce the structure until it was large enough that they could both lay down in the middle.
Castiel took to spending time in the nest. His stomach had finally begun to bulge out from the presence of the eggs. He’d always been able to feel them with his grace, of course, but there was something soothing about sitting in a pile of Dean’s clothing and stroking his hand over the skin of his stomach, pressing down with his fingers to feel the hardness of the shells growing a few inches beneath his flesh. Curling up at the center of the nest, he reached out with tendrils of his grace to the two small lives within him. They were developed enough, now, that he could recognize their own distinct grace-signatures. Sometimes, he wished that he would never need to lay them, that he could keep them as part of him, safe and close, always within reach.
Dean’s hovering became more intense as Castiel’s pregnancy progressed towards its conclusion. He sat for hours on the edge of the nest, feeding Castiel pennies and paperclips and pieces of foil and all the other bits of metal they’d found worked to satisfy his cravings; fluffing the pillows under Castiel’s head and pressing kisses to Castiel’s stomach in a way that made his heart ache with joy.
The egg-laying process was a painful one, and perhaps better not to be spoken of.
But the results—two shiny, iridescent eggs, which Castiel immediately cradled to his chest while Dean blinked back tears and Sam watched with something approaching awe—would have made up for all the pain in the world.