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Dean woke up to agonised screaming, the disturbance ambushing the silence that set around his brain like a transient fog.
It only took him a stutter of a heartbeat to realise what had happened. He had just arrived at the bunker after convincing God’s literal sister to not deface the universe—which is of course, an everyday experience that happens to everybody.
Dean could not really remember if the rest of his family was there due to a particularly rude interference he would like to call a blow to the back of his head the moment he stepped into his home.
His head snaps instinctively towards the monotonous scraping of metal against what he guessed to be a blade sharpener. It was too dark to make out any of the faces in the room. Dean did take note of their British accents, though. He found their voices grating. Maybe that was just a side effect of being kidnapped.
Snarky muttering made his ears perk up. For a moment, Dean had thought that they were speaking to him, but they weren’t.
He did not even begin to consider that they could have somebody else chained up in here with him. Nevertheless, where else could the scream that had woken him up come from?
“I'm asking you again, angel,” one of the Brits snarled. Dean felt his blood run cold. “Give us a list of all the most competent hunters in the country. What are their names?”
“I don't know,” a familiar voice said through gritted teeth.
Dean let a few choice words go unheard beneath his breath. “Cas?” he called out, needing that confirmation. He needed to know, he needed to be proven wrong.
“Jolly good, he's awake!” another Brit cheered, footsteps approaching him slower than a butcher does a pig.
“Dean.” Cas had responded back to him. Dean wanted so much to bury his face in his hands. But his wrists were in thick shackles hung high on a sharp hook emerging from the low ceiling.
The sound of his best friend's voice was enough for Dean to start thrashing. His skin did not take kindly to the iron cuffs around it.
A figure stood tall in front of him, their head cocked to the side in pure curiosity. “Dean Winchester. What an honour.”
A hand was held in the air, outstretched, mockingly. “Who the hell are you?” Dean spat.
“We are from the British Men of Letters,” dodgy Brit stated. “Now, if you and your angel both answer our questions without any unnecessary difficulties, you will be free to go. With a few precautions, of course. I will say that your friend has not been cooperating much, though.”
“British Men of Letters?” Dean scoffed. “Aren't you supposed to be, I don't know, on our side?”
The douche simply snickered. “Are you not aware of how much trouble you've caused?” they started. “Whatever, what's done is done. You are not here for a lecture. Now, tell me, Dean, how did you kill The Darkness?”
Dean raised an eyebrow. “Kill her? I didn't kill her. I told her what she needed to hear, then she ran off with her brother to- to god knows where.” Dean smirked at his own witty joke. God knows where.
“Liar,” the Brit grabbed his chin harshly. “It couldn't have been that simple. You are lying, Dean.”
“Believe what you want to believe, asshole,” Dean snapped. “I told you the truth. Now let us go.”
Mr. Suck-ass Accent let out the most ear-splitting, airy laugh. “Not until you tell the truth.”
“I'm only gonna say this once. Let us go,” Dean glared into an obscure face overshadowed by the abyss. He could discern a suit and tie, at least, the arrogant bastard.
“The truth, Dean.”
“No.”
“You will do as we say.”
“I said no.”
“And I said, you will.”
Another person in the room grunted. Nodded. Grinned. It really was too dark to see what was happening exactly. But Dean couldn't mistake the glint of a blade for anything else.
“You're making a big mistake,” he heard Cas say grimly.
“Why? Do you really believe there to be even a single soul out there willing to save you?” one of the men taunted. “An angel repudiated by Heaven, loathed by Hell. Worthless to the Winchesters until you are, perforce, frustratingly needed.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Dean clenched his jaw. “Cas, don't you even think about listening to that bullshit.”
Somebody snorts. “If you can't think it, feel it.”
There was a sickening sound of blood sputtering, and then there was Cas screaming, tarnishing the air around Dean. Dammit. Dammit.
“What the hell are you doing?” Dean yelled, forcibly tugging at his bonds.
“Getting the answers we need, Winchester,” one of the men replied calmly.
Dean’s lips twitched into a scowl.
“How did you eliminate The Darkness?”
Dean ignored the question. “Cas, can you hear me?”
“It’s fine, Dean,” Cas responded, too faintly. “I'm fine.”
“Where have you imprisoned Amara?”
“I'm getting us out of here,” Dean promised, though he himself had no clue how.
“How did you incapacitate God's sister?”
The questions kept flooding in. Dean refused to answer every single one of them. All he did was make the same oath over and over again, that they'll get out of here no matter what—the same oath over and over and over again, and he did not even know if he could keep it.
“You better begin answering our questions, Dean,” one of the Brits, tone dangerously cold, warned.
The hunter heard shuffling opposite to him. Time stretched like a death march. Dean wanted to say something, anything. Instead, the room was filled with his own heavy breathing. Until eventually, a pained cry.
The only source of light in the room was a lengthy, deep gash against Cas’s torso, illuminating his broken state. His grace was being skinned raw, vulnerable under the only weapon that could bring an angel excruciating pain. He let out a shaky breath when they were done with him.
“You will not hear what you want to hear.” Cas groaned. “What Dean said is the truth.”
“We moved on from asking you the questions, did we not?” one of the Men of Letters—woman, to be precise, said in a god-awful posh voice. She dragged the angel blade across Cas’s cheek, the gash leaking blood and grace in one vigorous drift.
“You understand that with this weapon,” the woman slowly said, softening her unnatural smile. “Humans, angels, you'll all bleed alike. Yes?”
“I can- I will rip you apart,” Cas threatened, his restless fetters rattling the rusted chains attached to them as the carved Enochian sigils brushed past each other briefly.
“Trust me. I know,” the woman beamed at him sadistically before she plunged the angel blade into his shoulder. It slipped in between bone and bone, marking through the marrow of his vessel in ways his sanctitude cannot salvage him from.
Cas had to bite down a plea for mercy. He can't do it—can’t give in, not now, not like this, not when Dean is watching.
“You son of a bitch!” Dean’s voice echoed. “I'm gonna friggin’ kill you. I'm gonna kill all of you!”
“Now, do you want to talk, Dean?” said the haughty lady. She retrieved the blade prodding through Cas’s shoulder. The angel's head lolled back, blood staining the dress shirt that stuck to the open wounds on his skin. His grace was burning up his insides from straining itself in its final attempts to hold him together. Dean did not know it, but they have been working him over for hours now. The earliest of his injuries, they have barely begun to fade away. The hunter did not have to know that. Cas is only grateful that he was the one to drift into consciousness first. Rather him than Dean, he tells himself always.
The woman marched towards Dean, pointing the same blade at his throat, slick with the blood of his best friend.
Dean spat on her face.
“Not very nice,” she claimed, wiping her forehead on the sleeve of her coat. “Give me the locations of the best American hunters.”
Dean shot daggers at her.
“Alright, let's start with a simple question. Where is your brother?”
“Bite me.”
She grabbed a fistful of his hair, forcing him to look her straight in the eye. “What monstrosity have you and your brother unleashed upon this world to take down The Darkness? To clean up the mess you made?”
Dean attempted to shake off her tight grip. “I told you what happened.”
“Is that so?” She faced her peers, giving them a quick nod of her head. They all surround the angel; Dean could not see what they were doing.
“You leave him alone,” Dean bellowed. “I’m giving you what you want, I'm telling you the truth, you dicks! Leave him alone!”
His hands struggled where they were held impotent, his nails digging into the iron and scratching and scraping uselessly. He would tear down the entire ceiling if he could.
Something clattered. They were all blocking the way. And then a body thumped onto the floor, and was dragged across the room.
“And there we go. I want you to see the consequences of your own stubbornness. Contemplate. Your inability to cooperate—was it really worth it, Dean?” the lady teased, something bestial playing along the curve of her lips.
Cas was at Dean's feet now. A half-conscious heap on the floor covered in blood. His chest was in ribbons, bones sticking out where they should not even be visible. Dean wanted to gag. He wished he hadn't noticed any of it. He closed his eyes—this could all just be a terrible nightmare. This could all just be a terrible nightmare. God, please let this all just be a terrible nightmare.
Cas had a loose grasp on Dean’s ankle, the contact being the only thing anchoring him and keeping him somewhat steady.
“It's okay,” Dean whispered. “It's gonna be alright.” His hands itched to hold his angel. Instead, he was racked with guilt, unable to do anything but flinch at the fingers that rested on his foot and stayed there for what felt like an eternity. “Cas, look at me. I need you to look at me, please.”
“Dean,” Cas mumbled, tilting his head upwards though it hurt to even move. He could almost recognise the wetness on his cheek. It wasn't his own, most of it wasn't. The tears dripping down Dean’s chin had ended up falling unto him and washing away the blood on his face.
“Any minute now. Sammy and the others will come for us,” Dean said like a wretched prayer. “You know they will. Any time now.”
Cas had prayed too. Even if it was quite ironic that he, an angel, laid crippled at the feet of his mortal best friend. He reached deep inside the chambers of which his grace had turned into its homestead. And if there was any left to keep him breathing, perhaps there could be enough for him to get Dean out of here.
The Brits’ first mistake was kidnapping a Winchester. Their second mistake was freeing a goddamn angel from the chains that bound him.
Cas’s only mistake was putting Dean above everything else. Even himself. No, especially himself.
“When I tell you to look away, you have to look away,” he murmured, just enough to get a choked sob out of the hunter. Cas knelt on the ground with murder in his eyes. His nails dug into the rough concrete, the residue of his power dripping, dripping, dripping.
“No!” the Brit lady exclaimed once she caught a glimpse of a faint glow, silently commanding the rest of her punkass goons to retrieve the cuffs incised with Enochian symbols.
Cas glowers at them angrily. He can feel his grace sizzling mercilessly within his ribcage, shooting up his veins until it pulsated throughout his entire ethereal being—begging to be ejected, or laid to eternal waste, or worse. He held a palm up. Scars formed on his wrists where skin was left abraded. Then, an impalpable force rippled the air. And everything went radio silent.
There were nine of them, yes. Technically. Him, Dean, and the other seven people from the British Men of Letters, all in this room. But right now, there was only one living being here that mattered. The man he had saved all those years ago, the man he had died for and more. And he would do it again. Over and over, if he could.
Dean did not know what was happening. Between Cas turning into a fucking radiator beside him to the point where the angel simply touching him anomalously burned his skin, and the Brits suddenly turning into a bunch of idle puppets and freezing in place right before they were about to jump his best friend and have him strung up again, he really hadn't a single stupid idea what the hell was happening.
Cas was rising from the ground, relying heavily on Dean's tied-up, rocking body for support. “What the hell, man?” the hunter finally decided to say.
Cas further leaned against him, his arm still drawn-out like a longsword. He's holding the purse strings of these people, Dean realised. But how long can he keep it up?
“Wait. Your mojo..?” Dean trailed off when the paralysed bodies started to twitch. Their mouths were moving. No sound was coming out. His stomach lurched in ways he did not understand. But that means that they're getting out of here, both of them, alive. Right? ..Fuck.
“Cas, please,” he croaked out.
“Shut your eyes, Dean.”
If it wasn't one last act of desperation, what else would it be?
Dean could only do as he was told a split second before a blinding white light reached every crook and corner of the room. It was the purest thing that has ever grazed an unholy man like him. All the cold toppling over like dominoes. Replacing it with a dissonance so distant. But it was safe. Yes, it made his head throb like a bitch. Yes, he knew that the ringing was starting to make his ears bleed. But it was safe. He was safe.
Dean lingered in a short dream for a while. Today was almost a decade ago, for the most part. Time has not moved at all. He was digging out of his own grave like he was in some sort of dark comedy witching hour show. He was trying to calm himself down by ignoring the problem, as he always does, in a convenience store buying..well, what he would call the most basic of necessities when the most raucous noise interrupted him. Windows were exploding. The wind started howling like a hellhound. And he dropped to the ground. Seriously, angels need to learn how to communicate better.
Angels?
Dean woke up with a gasp. And he was falling. Falling. The shackles holding his hands high above his head had miraculously unlocked by themselves, just as the rest of the ceiling had mostly caved in. Right before he lost his balance, right before his knees buckled and gave in, a body brushed past his.
Dean only figured that he still had his eyes closed when he realised that he was not going to like what he was about to see.
He was on the concrete floor now, bleary eyes squinting at what was in front of him.
“No,” Dean breathed out. “Please.”
Cas laid motionless in front of him, curled into himself in a way that made Dean so desperate to grab him and shake him by the shoulders.
Corpses surrounded the both of them, eyes burned out of their skulls. He seriously has never cared less.
“Dammit, Cas,” Dean grumbled as he crawled towards the unmoving angel. His hands trembled as he heaved Cas into his lap.
A pulse. That's good. A shallow breath, one between the other. That's good. That's good.
Dean chose to ignore the tears of blood streaming down Cas’s cheek, leaking from his open eyes. Dean did not know if he'd much rather they were closed. It was as if he was sailing on an ocean devoid of waves—unsettling, daunting. His eyes were so, so still. That gaze felt like an attempt on Dean's life itself. But Cas wasn't dead. Because he couldn't be, because Dean refuses to believe it, because Dean refuses him to be.
And so, as fate would allow it, Castiel wasn't dead.
“Talk to me,” the hunter begged. “Anything. Cause I swear- I friggin’ swear, man-”
“Dean,” Cas finally rasped, fingers making their way onto Dean’s sweat-soaked shirt. His eyes were no longer kept frozen. They lingered across the room, across his faltering grace, across the face of the man he loves.
“Oh, thank god,” Dean breathed out, putting his hand over the angel’s gently. “Never do that again, or I’ll kill you.”
“What, save you from our abductors?” Cas joked, softly smiling.
“It was stupid,” Dean accused. “Stupid, man.”
“But, you were right, Dean,” Cas attempted to comfort him. “You promised we would get out. Well, we did.”
Dean clenched his jaw. “No, not yet.”
He hauls Cas into his arms, the angel’s head tipping stubbornly onto his chest. “This is unnecessary,” Cas said.
“Don’t even think about complaining,” Dean shook his head. “I mean, have you seen you?”
Cas gave him that same tender gaze that would always make the hunter scoff. Though this time, it was returned to him undisputedly.
And when his dwindling, jaded grace had mercifully let his tired eyes flutter shut at last—failing to mend the things that will be fixed later—Dean still continued to hold Cas in his arms for a long while.