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Fucking witches. It’s always the same with them, Dean thinks as he ducks behind a table, filled with ancient texts and jars of herbs and more questionable contents. One of the jars wobbles as Dean crawls around the table, the liquid in it sloshing dangerously close to the rim. If that concoction of… whatever splashes all over Dean, he’s going to burn this whole damn house to the ground.
He can hear cackling from the other room, and for a second, he panics. Cas is in that other room. But then he shakes his head, gets his bearings. Cas is capable, he’ll be fine. In the meantime, Dean reloads his gun with witch-killing bullets. They’ve gotten rid of two of the witches already, the last one shouldn’t be a problem.
After making sure that he won’t get hit with some nasty spell as soon as he leaves his hiding spot, he quickly crosses the room, still crouched, to where he can hear a scuffle in the neighbouring room. There’s a quick succession of words in a language Dean can’t understand, then there’s a high-pitched noise, eerily familiar as it rings out of the room, accompanied by a light that shines brighter and brighter by the second.
“Fuck,” Dean says as he shields his eyes and tries to withstand as the noise pitches higher and higher. And then, it suddenly stops. The house is as quiet as it was before Dean and Cas entered it. Dean opens his eyes and gets his bearings. He is leaned against the wall, back to the door that leads to the next room. He dropped his gun at some point, to clasp his hands around his ears. The gun’s on the floor, and Dean picks it up, but he gets the feeling he won’t need it anymore.
Carefully, Dean takes the last steps into the room, clutching the gun tightly. The scent of burned flesh hangs in the air. To Dean’s right, the witch lies, unmoving, black charred holes where her eyes should be, blood trailing from her ears. Dean knows that she’s dead, but he checks anyway, looking for a pulse that isn’t there.
Why the fuck did Cas decide to blast her with his true form. He hasn’t done that shit in ages.
Turning to where he assumes Cas to stand, Dean freezes. There is the trench coat. The slacks and the shirt and the jacket. The tie. In a crumpled heap on the floor. Where the fuck is Cas and why the fuck are his clothes here? If this stupid witch destroyed his vessel, Dean is going to start throwing things. Would explain the true form incident though.
Dean is about to reach out to pick up the trench coat when it moves. Or rather, there’s something under it that moves. Gun still in hand, Dean carefully lifts the trench coat and almost relaxes when he is met with blue eyes. Cas’ blue eyes, but there is something different about them. Because they’re looking out at Dean from a cat’s body.
“Cas?” Dean asks, and the cat answers with a dry meow. How the little creature manages to sound dry Dean finds curious, until it clicks and the ridiculous idea of Cas having been turned into a cat becomes reality. The small, dark grey cat sits surrounded by Cas’s clothes, small head tilted to the side, and Dean has to stop the laugh threatening to crawl up his throat.
Cause damn, Cas makes one hell of an adorable cat, and this is by far not the worst thing that’s happened to them when they’ve fought witches.
“Alright buddy, let’s go.” Dean leans down to pick up the cat that is Cas when the little rascal darts out of the way, quicker than Dean thought cats could move, and glares at him from the other side of the room.
“Seriously?” Dean asks, and the cat rolls its eyes. Any doubt that was left about who this cat is flies out of the window. That is definitely Cas. They have the same face, even though a human-shaped Cas doesn’t look anything like a cat.
The cat tilts his head again and then traipses into the room that Dean hid in earlier, leaving it to him to gather Cas’ discarded clothes and follow before Cas gets into trouble. The guy clearly still has his wits about, but who knows how effectively he can defend himself. Cats have claws though, Dean remembers, and he’s sure Cas isn’t adverse to using them.
Cas has already crossed the room when Dean makes it in, and doesn’t wait for him as he continues towards the hallway. When Dean finally catches up to him, Cas is sitting by the front door, his tail whipping from side to side. There’s something impatient about it.
“Shouldn’t we look through the books? Figure out how to turn you back? And, you know, take care of the bodies we left in here?” Dean asks with a quick look to the dead witch in the hallway. He was the first to go down, victim to Dean’s witch-killing bullets as soon as they entered the house.
Cas rolls his eyes again and scratches at the door. It’s Dean’s turn to roll his eyes. He could just not open the door. What is Cas going to do about it? But Dean still feels compelled to. There’s just something about Cas’ cat face that makes it hard to say no to him.
Leaving the house, Dean follows Cas to the Impala, where the cat patiently waits for him to unlock the doors and let them in. Or not patiently, Dean thinks, as he sees Cas ready to get his claws out and scratch at the car.
“Don’t fucking touch baby with those!” Dean yells, hurrying along. Cas looks at him, unimpressed. Dean opens the door for him and watches Cas gracefully jump onto the seat. Dean rolls his eyes and climbs into the driver’s seat, throwing Cas’ clothes in the back. “What now?”
It’s a little stupid to ask a cat for its opinion, but it’s Cas , and Dean isn’t sure what else to do. “We should call Rowena.”
Rowena always knows how to solve the witchy shit, he thinks, and he’s sure Cas wants to figure this out as soon as possible.
“Meow,” Cas says, and Dean has no idea what it’s supposed to mean, so he takes it as agreement. However, when he takes his phone out of his pocket, Cas meows again, and it sounds more aggressive this time.
“What?” Dean asks, trying to figure out what Cas is trying to say, but his little cat face isn’t giving anything away. “Rowena is going to help!”
Cas almost looks like he’s squinting, but Dean can’t be sure. Might be the cat version of a glower. Dean is slowly losing his patience. Fuck what Cas wants, he thinks, as he turns back to his phone, navigating to Rowena’s contact. Or he tries to, at least.
“Fucking hell, Cas?” He cries out when he feels small but very sharp claws dig into his hand and then just hold on. “This hurts, man!”
He tries his best to shake Cas’s paw off, but the angel is nothing if not persistent, holding on with his claws as if his life depends on it.
“Okay, okay! I’m not gonna call Rowena!”
Slowly, Cas retracts his claws, then he stands up, moves closer to Dean and sits down again, leaning against Dean’s leg, as if to provide comfort. Meanwhile, Dean curses at the small wounds on his hand, which are harmless enough, but still bleed more than he’d expected.
“What’d you do that for?” Dean asks, but Cas only snuggles closer to him. Dean sighs, then he breathes in once, deeply. He’ll just drive them back to the bunker, ask Sam if his still limited knowledge on magic can help here, and then call Rowena if all else fails. Cas is probably just overwhelmed.
Or maybe Dean’s the one who’s overwhelmed, he thinks as he starts the car and the cat doesn’t even move. The bastard looks like he’s fallen asleep. Good for him, Dean guesses.
The bunker is only one and a half hour’s drive away, but it gives Dean enough time to think and regret that he didn’t put his foot down and stay at the witches’ house. They just left the damn bodies, and they should have gone through the books to reverse whatever spell that witch threw at Cas.
When Dean parks the car, Cas is still sleeping, completely zoned out, his breaths softly pressing his body further into Dean’s leg. He sits, for a few minutes, unsure what to do. He should just wake Cas, but he hesitates. The cat looks calm, peaceful, and Dean doesn’t want to disturb him.
An idea comes to him. Carefully as to not jostle Cas, Dean reaches out for his phone. He calls Rowena.
***
Cas isn’t happy with him. He’s been letting Dean know with dissatisfied meows, and when that didn’t phase him, Cas resorted to ignoring him. Rowena, meanwhile, has somehow managed to pick Cas up without getting attacked by errant claws, and has been working on the spell to fix this whole mess while absentmindedly petting the cat.
Cas looks like he’s only begrudgingly letting her. Probably because she managed to figure out what happened with nothing more than Cas’ meows, sighs, and facial expressions, though as a cat those were minuscule. Oh, and also the book Cas clawed out of the bookshelf and almost destroyed in the process, though Rowena doesn’t tell Dean this until much later.
Turns out the spell the witch threw at Cas destroyed his body. He wasn’t turned into a cat, the cat just happened to be there and let Cas use it as a vessel. So Rowena’s been making a new body for Cas.
“Dean, would you be a dear and find something we can use to transfer Castiel’s being into his body?” Rowena asks, adding the final details to Cas’ vessel. Dean can’t help but be impressed with how she’d created a whole body from scratch.
“Why can’t he just transfer himself over?” Dean asks, and Cas rolls his eyes again.
Rowena sighs, as if the answer was obvious. “Angels need something alive to possess. Until our wee angel enters his new body, it won’t be alive.”
Which is how Dean finds himself with a syringe Sammy handed him, mumbling something about grace experiments Dean doesn’t think to ask the details of, sucking Cas’ very being out of the cat. He isn’t entirely sure how this is working, but Rowena is chanting in Latin, so that’s probably it.
Dean forces the tip of the syringe into Cas’ chest, needing to add more force than expected, and pushes the bright and swirling remnants of Cas into his new body. At first, nothing happens, and Dean almost panics, because what if he messed up, what if Cas is gone forever now. The cat wanders between Dean’s legs, only a cat now.
After a few seconds of nothing, Cas opens his eyes, and all worries fly away.
(“Why didn’t you want me to call Rowena?” Dean asks later, when things have calmed down and they’re back in their room, Cas snuggled into Dean’s side.
Cas huffs, snuggling closer. “It was embarrassing.”
Dean laughs, “I think you were cute!”
This earns him a weak hit to the chest, and Dean is glad that there aren’t any claws attached to Cas’ fingers anymore. He keeps laughing.)