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Dean tore through the desolated warehouse, brushing aside the mildewed furniture and sketchy stains scattered all over the cement floor.
After finally managing to (perhaps forcibly) interrogate a rogue angel for his best friend's whereabouts, he had gotten his hands on an obscure location of some shady town in Missouri.
Dean had prayed to Cas so many times, he could practically pass as a saint. But he never came, no matter how much the hunter pleaded. For a single sign, at least, just to know if he was okay and not dead in a ditch somewhere. Cas should have come after the first thirty invocations—profound bond and all—but he was completely and utterly AWOL and Dean found himself worrying more than he allowed himself to.
Dean swung open every door to the wretched place. “Cas!” he yelled, pushing himself into one of the dampened rooms. “Cas!” he tried again, louder. “Where are you?”
He heard the scratching before the low rumbling, like a rabid dog lurking right around the corner. It could be a trap, of course, it wouldn't make sense if it wasn't. But Dean would take his chances, no matter his neverending suspicion. He owed Cas that much and more. And he knew, deep down, the angel would do the same for him.
Dean softened his steps. Turning to a darkened hallway felt like walking on pins and needles, wallpaper peeling across molded walls.
Another scratch. He was suddenly very aware of the gun invariably tucked in his jeans’ back pocket. He tightened his grip on his angel blade, flashlight on his offhand.
Dean crept into the room where the noises bounced off the walls.
A figure was tucked into the corner, murmuring incoherent things. Dean could have sworn he heard his own name amongst the nonsensical ramblings. He shone his flashlight on the moving silhouette, tense and trembling. Dean's shoulders dropped immediately. There was his trenchcoated friend, knelt against the wall, staring at his hands, darkened by..by something. His face was slick with blood, fingers bent in all the wrong angles. Simply breathing audibly rustled his ribs. Dean could tell something terrible happened.
“Cas? Hey, buddy, what..what are you doing here?” he approached slowly, shoving his weapon deep into his pocket.
Cas tilted his head up, gazing into his very soul with wild eyes. In some other situation, Dean would have felt horridly uncomfortable with the way his best friend was looking at him right now.
The angel stood on wobbling knees, limping towards him. Dean had his arms stretched out, hands offering costless support as he cautiously moved closer, but Cas didn't accept his help. Instead, he let his angel blade slip out of his sleeve, pale knuckles clutching onto the handle in such a clammy manner, that if he were an enemy, Dean would've knocked it out of his hands forever ago.
“What are you doing, man?” Dean asked, confused.
Cas glared at him as if he'd slaughtered his entire bloodline. “Dean Winchester is not my friend. Dean Winchester deserves to die by my hand.”
“Um,” Dean started, taking a step back. “Alright, I thought we were way past that point,” he chuckled anxiously. “Anyways, I think we should, uh, leave this place and forget whatever the hell happened here. What about that, hm? Sounds good?”
Cas hobbled over, dragging his fractured leg behind him like weights tied to a thread. “Dean Winchester is not my friend,” he repeated. “Dean Winchester deserves to die by my hand.”
“Cas, whatever they did to you-”
“Dean Winchester has never loved me. Dean Winchester’s fate is foreordained and he is destined to perish by my hand,” the angel continued darkly, threatening the hunter with his weapon.
“I'm not gonna fight you,” Dean shook his head, palms raised not to surrender, but as an invitation. That they can fight this—whatever it may be—together. “You don't have to do this. Nobody's forcing you to, okay?” Even Dean himself was unsure of his own words.
“I will never and have never ceased to serve Heaven. If Dean Winchester must be killed, I will not acquiesce. I will not ask questions. There will be no interventions. And I most certainly will not interfere.”
Dean's eyes went wide as Cas made a leap for it, hands high above his head as his angel blade glimmered underneath the moonlight that seeped through the cracks of the boarded windows.
Dean threw his arms over his head to shield himself. Right now, he was a pathetic excuse of what his outlandish reputation claimed him to be. But he couldn't, wouldn't engage in a fight like this, not with his angel, not when he can barely lay his eyes on Cas’s battered form, much less humour a one-to-one combat.
The blow, however, never came.
Dean squinted, adjusted his sight. For a brief second, he had thought Cas had fled, flapped his wings away from here for some discreet reason. But there the angel was, collapsed into a heap on the floor—his left leg entering a frightening fit of spasms as he glared at it like it was the greatest betrayal done to his name.
Dean scurried to his aid. “Let me help. You're hurt, man. Please.”
Cas had an unyielding grasp on his weapon. He scowled at the hunter's shoes as if it were his oldest adversary. Dean staggered back as his friend went on all fours, chasing his feet, trying to pin them down with his blade.
“Stop,” Dean groaned after the sharp weapon narrowly missed butchering his toes. “You can fight this. Cas, fight this!”
Cas growled, managing to nick Dean's exposed ankle, the tip of his angel blade coated in red. The hunter gritted his teeth before kicking the weapon out of Cas’s fist with his heel.
The angel's eyes enlarged, alarmed ghastly blues trailing on the shadow of the blade that had clattered uselessly to the side. A quavery breath escaped his throat before he crawled to retrieve it.
Dean propelled it further into darkness. Cas looked so much like a kicked puppy at the loss of his weapon, he almost regretted doing it. “There's no point, man,” Dean sighed as he stooped down beside his friend. “Look at you, you're a wreck. You don't even have a grip on yourself.”
Cas continued to frown at him. The anger had began to melt from his eyes. Now it was mostly just empty, a dull grey. Far from his usual bright blues. Dean wondered if that had anything to do with the whole brainwashing pickle he's been slammed into.
“Come on,” Dean said, resting his hands on Cas’s shoulders, pulling him upright. “Let's get a good look at you.”
“Dean Winchester is not my friend,” Cas mumbled, more to himself than anything.
“Yes, Cas, I am,” Dean attempted to argue with him, get it through his thick skull just how much he meant to him.
The angel shot daggers at the hands sitting on his shoulders. “No,” he growled before elbowing the hunter square in the nose.
Dean held his face, feeling the slight trickle of blood start to drip. Begrudgingly, he released his hold on Cas who instantaneously tried to scramble away to search for his blade.
Dean stumbled after him, getting ahold of the rim of his shredded trenchcoat. He relentlessly tugged Cas away from the weapon, and he was surprisingly weightless as he fell back into Dean's arms, crumbling completely.
“I got you, I got you,” Dean assured, his hold tightening around the angel like restraints. Cas fought hard against it, scratching at the hunter's forearm angrily, no matter how many consolations were grumbled into his ear.
“Dean Winchester must die by my hand,” he croaked out, tone hushed compared to his usual gravelly one. Cas threw weak punches at Dean's chest, striking harder by the minute, but it wasn't enough for the shackles—dressed as a warm, taut body—to come loose.
“Shhh,” Dean said, rubbing a palm on his back in a circular motion. “Whatever, whoever you're hearing in your head, screw them, alright? Ignore them. I know it's hard, but try your best to, until we figure out who's doing this to you.”
“I can't– I have to,” Cas choked out. “I..have to. She's making me.”
Dean drew his eyebrows together, suddenly aware of the chains and manacles nailed to the walls, the claw marks on the plywood, the bloody fingerprints on devices that made him sick thinking of what they could possibly be used for. “She? Who's ‘she’, Cas? Who's making you do this, huh?”
“No. No. No no no no–” Cas winced, shielding his eyes as if to protect them from an invisible, brutish force. “I won't tell him. Please– please. Yes. You are correct. You are correct. Dean Winchester is not my friend. Dean Winchester is not family,” he said, over and over again until he was breathless against the hunter's ribs.
“Hey, hey, look at me,” Dean cushioned the back of his head. “They're wrong, dead wrong. I know you know this. If the you that I know is still in there, then you know this. Even if they force you to listen to this bullshit, you don't have to believe any of it. Team Free Will, remember? You don't have to do anything you don't want to do.”
Cas buried his head into Dean's shirt, still muttering muted, robotic remarks that simply weren't true. “Dean Winchester’s fate is foreordained,” he hiccuped, voice breaking. Dean could feel tears soaking his flannel. “..And he is destined to perish by my hand.”
Dean prayed and prayed to God—if he is still out there, listening—that his best friend would snap out of it.
Cas balled his hand over a fistful of Dean's jacket, lugging it thoughtlessly and pretending it was skin he was trying to rip apart instead. (But not his friend's, no. Hers.)
He isn't as vehement as earlier, Dean noted. He was calmer, even as he swore in his Father's name that the hunter is fated to play into his doom. But his clothes were still torn, his hair a mess of tangles and matted from blood.
Quiet sobs escaped Cas’s throat, raw and unlike anything Dean had heard from him before. “Dean Winchester does not, and will never love me,” he told himself, biting his tongue. Unbeknownst to him, Dean released a shaky exhale at the assertion before wiping violently at his own face.
“That's not true. I do, y’know,” Dean cleared his throat. “Love you.”
The angel's breath hitched. He wanted to say something, but he can't. And so he shut his eyes instead, with the machinelike statements leaving his body, though he knew they would come back later to strangle him again, to strip him off everything he desired to have. Control, freedom, friends, family. Dean.
Dean still sat on the ground with Cas’s head on his lap. He began untangling his hair, right when the ramblings slowed down and came to a stop.
Cas drifted off into an uneasy sleep, and his body went lax at last. And when he finally managed to break himself free of the restless nightmares, Dean gently gathered him closer and carried him out.