Episode 4: Lead Us Not (Part 2)

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Greybull, Wyoming
Winter Solstice, 2008

Carbondale was Pamela's hometown, where her dad still lived and where her family took her back to, and the next time he and his brother saw her, she was wearing a dress that would have matched her eyes if she'd had any.

Those bare facts keep looping around Dean's brain, and he shakes his head, and wonders if it's coming back to life - again - that has him off-kilter, or maybe it's the way his gut clenches as Pamela wearily removes her sunglasses. The off-white of her fake eyes is stark against her sallow skin, and fuck, but it still brings up a sour taste at the back of his throat to see them. He remembers her joking about them to Anna, Demony, I know, but they're just plastic…good for business, before they knew what Anna was. The joke was never funny, and the milky hue reminds him too much of Lilith, of Alastair.

Dean still remembers the awful stench as her eyes burned from their sockets, the heat from the flames and the way she'd screamed, agonized enough to trigger the first wave of Hell-memories following his resurrection. He'd stared down into charred, empty sockets, fighting back images of himself hooking her eyeballs out with his fingers. Blunt tools hurt more. He'd told her it would be okay, and she sobbed and wailed but there were no tears because there was nothing left for her to weep from.

Blood is pouring out from under her hand, dark red and viscous, almost unreal in the dim light of the motel room. More of it coats her lips, as she coughs and chokes out her final breaths.

My fault, Dean thinks. My fault she's dying, because hey, we're talking the end of the world, here, okay? No more tasseled leather pants, no more Ramones CDs, no more nothing. Cas, you remember her, you burned her eyes out…

Castiel, and the angel was just there, outside, pale under the cold moonlight, his eyes glowing bright and unearthly. "Cas," Dean stutters, and for some reason the name sends a frisson of worry and grief resonating through his core. It seems out-of-place and ridiculous because there's no reason he should be worrying about Castiel. The guy is a friggin' angel for Chrissakes, sometimes tolerable but mostly a dick, and a frustratingly cryptic one at that. Dean puts the thought out of his mind, blaming it on the weird, disconnected feeling that comes from having spent several hours wandering around as a disembodied spirit, and he focuses on Pamela, who's dying right in front of him and-

"Will he come?"

Sam is almost hollering right in Dean’s face as he pushes against Pamela's middle with a thick wad of towels under his splayed-out hand, the cloth soaked scarlet. For some reason it makes Dean think of Ellen and Jo, of blood oozing. He cinched her belt so tightly she cried out. It makes him see a flash-glimpse of a place, bright light, running, turning, and seeing it all go up-

"Dean!"

Spittle flecks his cheek, and Sam's eyes are dark and intense. "Cas - will he come if you call him? Come on, man, snap out of it."

Pamela scowls at them even though she has no eyes to do it with, and Dean will never blame her for it because God, she told them she wanted out, but they dragged her back into it. Maybe they didn't believe anything would actually happen to her, no matter that something already had, that her eyes smoked right out of her head an hour after they first knocked at her door.

"Do me a favor?" Pamela grits out. "Tell that bastard Bobby Singer to go to Hell for ever introducing me to you two in the first place."

The words hit Dean right in the center of his chest with the weight of their blame, and if anyone has just cause to hate them, she does. She starts coughing again, violent and heaving, struggling to draw breath in between hacks. Dean finds that he can't tear his gaze from her even though part of him wants nothing more than to run away, bury his head in the sand and refuse to accept responsibility for this. And beneath the grief, and the guilt that turns his stomach and rises up his throat like so much bile, there's a niggling sense of detachment and repetition at the back of his mind. It's like déjà vu. He can see himself and his brother shoveling soft, fresh-dug earth, and she was wearing a dress, a dress!, blue like her eyes used to be, and they salted and burned her at Winchester Cemetery. Winchester Cemetery, how fuckin' ironic is that?

He's losing it, worn out from the strain of everything. He's weak and broken, struggling under his memories of torturing souls in Hell. But he knows what he's supposed to say here, and the words come out dull and mechanical, as if he's reading them from a script, as if he's said them before. "If it's any consolation, you're going to a better place."

It sounds flat and empty to his own ears, because even though an angel's been holding the other end of his leash for months now, he still can't bring himself to believe that this life is anything other than random, meaningless violence and chaos, that there might be something like peace waiting for them on the other side. And yet, You told me I was going someplace better…you were right! My Heaven? It is one long show at the Meadowlands… He can see her, smiling and beautiful, her eyes dancing at him as she swatted his head, That's for getting me killed.

He blinks, pushes it away, and just what the hell is wrong with him anyway? "Stop spacing out," he breathes.

Pamela scoffs, sighs, turns her head blindly towards him, and he can tell she isn't buying his crap any more than he is. "You're lying." A bitter half-smirk curves her lips even as she struggles and wheezes, lungs straining for oxygen. "But what the hell, right? Everybody's gotta go sometime."

"True. But this isn't your time."

The words are spoken along to the rippling, tearing sound of wet cloth and feathers that's become irritatingly familiar to Dean in recent months, and he whirls to see Castiel standing there, regarding them calmly. It spikes his sense of displacement tenfold, has him feeling like they've just veered wildly off-script somewhere, though he doesn't know how or why. He just knows, with a deathly certainty that leaves him feeling sick, that Pamela is supposed to die today. There can be no dei ex machina or last-minute rescues from on high.

"Who is that?" Pamela demands, head snapping round to pinpoint the source of the new voice. At the same time, Sam rises from the bed and takes three long strides across the room to Castiel, the wariness he usually displays around the angel gone in the face of his desperation.

"Cas, thank God. Can you help…?" He trails off, as if he's remembering who he's speaking to and realizing that he's overstepping his bounds.

Castiel affords him a brief glance before zeroing in on Dean, treating him to that laser-focused attention that never fails to make Dean exceedingly uncomfortable. Dean quails under it more than he normally would, suddenly possessed by the notion that there's something off about Castiel, even more so than usual, though he's damned if he knows what it could be.

The moment passes as quickly as it arrived, broken when Castiel moves purposefully to where Pamela is propped up and bleeding into the towels. He pulls the bundled fabric away, places a hand over the gaping wound in her abdomen, and she gasps, arching back and jack-knifing on the bed. It's alarming enough that Dean shakes off his stupor and starts forward to intervene, but then her entire body relaxes on a sigh, her breathing settling into a more comfortable rhythm and color returning to her face. When Castiel removes his hand, there's nothing there but smooth, unblemished skin, a jagged rip in her shirt and drying streaks of blood.

He lifts the same hand again, up to Pamela's face, and passes it over her eyes. She groans deeply and Dean watches in fascinated revulsion as the white plastic spheres bulge like they're being pushed from behind, before popping out of the sockets, bouncing and rolling slightly where they land on the mattress, replaced by a pair of healthy, fully-functional blue eyes that seem to grow and fill the cavities left behind.

"Oh my God," Pamela breathes, waving her own hand in front of her face.

It's the first time Dean's ever seen her lost for words, and he knows he should be overjoyed, ecstatic, but he still can't shake the feeling that something is all wrong here, We just got back from Pamela's funeral…you know, psychic Pamela? You remember her? Cas, you remember her, you burned her eyes out…

Uriel was there, but it hasn't happened yet, and Cas was distant and quiet, but it hasn't happened yet, looking down at his shoes when-

"You," Pamela says suddenly, flicking her eyes up to Castiel's face. "You're the angel. Castiel."

Castiel inclines his head slightly. "My apologies for the harm I caused you…and for failing to rectify the situation sooner."

"Better late than never, I suppose," Pamela grunts reluctantly, and her voice only shakes a little.

And things aren't supposed to play out this way, Dean thinks. Castiel's presence in the room makes him uneasy in a way it never has before, not even when they first met, makes him feel like the natural order is being tipped off-balance and subverted just by the angel being here. "Why did you do that?" he demands, and he knows it's unreasonably hostile, that he should be thanking Castiel, but something about this whole situation has him seriously on edge and the fact he can't put his finger on what it is only makes it a hundred times worse.

"Uh, maybe not the best time to go looking the gift horse in the mouth, Dean," Sam hedges nervously, while Pamela glares at him like it's going out of fashion.

Dean ignores them, because if there's one thing he's sure of, it's that nothing supernatural comes without a price tag. Besides, he knows Castiel well enough by now to know the angel isn't in the business of doing favors. He doesn't do things on a whim or out of the goodness of his heart. He doesn't make exceptions. Only he does for Dean, because you're different, and Dean is still totally floored by that, has to push that entire conversation to the back of his mind because he can't even begin to unravel all the layers of meaning hidden in that one brief exchange.

Castiel sighs, all mournful regret, and when his gaze meets Dean's, his eyes are brimming liquid with sympathy. "I know what you think of me, Dean, but I'm not a…heartless son of a bitch, as you say. I can feel regret. Guilt. Remorse."

The words strike a chord in Dean, make him feel as though they've had this conversation before. And there's a coldness, an emptiness when he looks at Castiel, tangled up in his own feelings of fear, and disgust, and a bone-aching sorrow not unlike what he'd felt when Lucifer was wearing his brother's skin…only that hasn't happened yet either, has it?

Carbondale was Pamela's hometown, where her dad still lived and where her family took her back to. And Winchester Cemetery, outside of Carbondale, was where her family buried her and where he and Sam dug her up after night fell. She was wearing a dress that would have matched her eyes if she'd had any.

They aren't getting her, Bobby had snarled. And then they salted and burned her bones.

Winchester Cemetery. Dean still sometimes thinks how fuckin' ironic that was.

And now, suddenly, he knows. He stretches out a hand to touch the motel room wall and it feels real enough, solid beneath his fingers, but it's nothing more than window dressing.

"Oh, this is so wrong," he mutters under his breath. Looking at Castiel, he adds, "Again? Really?"

"Dean, what are you talking about?" Sam chips in, his forehead folding up into a bemused concertina. "Are you okay?"

Dean snorts. "No, Sam, I'm not okay. Because this isn't real. And that's not really Cas."

It's not like the last one. Time crawls to a halt in this illusion, Sam and Pamela freezing in position like store-display mannequins. They look flat and two-dimensional somehow, and now that Dean knows what's really going on here, he can't quite believe he ever mistook them for the real thing.

"How did you know?"

"Because I know him," Dean replies, and he chokes on the bitter laugh trying to claw its way up his throat. "He wouldn't have fixed her, not back then. Dick liked to pretend he didn't have a conscience."

Castiel - not-Castiel - moves forward, stands just there in front of him, silent and expectant.

"What is this, really?" Dean challenges with far more bravado than he actually feels. "This whole temptation of Christ thing - is that how you get your rocks off? I thought you were supposed to be God, not Lucifer."

Castiel doesn't move but his eyes flash with something unnamable that has Dean taking an instinctive step back. He grits his teeth and forces himself to hold his ground.

"I'm better than Lucifer," Castiel says icily. "I succeeded where he failed, after all. But we're not here to talk about me. You've had adequate time to consider my proposition since the last time we spoke, Dean. Tell me, have you changed your mind yet?"

He waves a lazy hand at Pamela, and Dean watches in horror as a thin red scar appears on the bare flesh of her stomach, widening into a chasm that splits her open all over again. Bright red blood wells up and spills from the wound in cascading rivulets, soaking the bedspread, but Pamela doesn't change or react in any way; she's a fixed point in time, frozen in stasis.

It reminds Dean of his mom, of Jess, the way that yellow-eyed bastard ripped them apart before he toasted them on the ceiling, and he has to swallow hard before forcing himself to look away. "Why her?" he chokes out, because it's something he can't wrap his head around, as awful as it sounds. He barely knew Pamela before she died, and of all the people Castiel could hold over his head to tempt him to the Dark Side, the choice seems odd. "She's in Heaven now, she's happy. I've seen her, you son of a bitch. Why did you think this would work on me?"

Castiel quirks his lips thoughtfully. "We both know your thoughts on Heaven," he points out. "Memorex, was it? And I think you know, deep down, why I chose her…"

He tilts his head, studies Dean, an assessing look, before he continues. "Because all this was your fault, wasn't it, Dean? With Ellen and Joanna Harvelle you could rationalize that guilt away, because it was their choice. It might have been your fool's errand that placed them in danger to begin with, but they ultimately exercised their free will and chose to martyr themselves for your cause. Pamela Barnes, on the other hand…" His gaze drifts over to where her bleeding carcass still lies prone on the bed. "She never wanted anything to do with this, but you just had to keep calling her back. And look where it got her."

The words hit their target with deadly accuracy, and Dean reels with the blows. Fuck it, the bastard is right: this is what comes from associating with Dean Winchester. When he thinks on all the lives he's destroyed, the list stretches to infinity. Pamela is just one of many.

"And she isn't the only one you let fall by the wayside, is she?" Castiel pushes on relentlessly, and the scene begins to shift and warp around them, the motel room falling away like a house made of cards, colors bleaching white as Sam and Pamela fade into nothing…and suddenly they're standing in a warehouse that Dean recognizes as being outside the beautiful room in Van Nuys, California. The otherwise nondescript door directly in front of them glows white-hot with what can only be celestial grace, and on the other side someone is screaming in what sounds like terror, like desperation. It's a voice Dean's only heard a handful of times in his life, but one that he has no trouble recognizing.

"Dean! Help…it won't open!"

Adam.

"You do remember your other little brother, Dean?" Castiel asks coolly. "The one who's been locked in Hell for longer than you and Sam put together, all because you refused Michael? Your father never wanted him to be a part of this life, but I think we both know he was doomed from the moment he met you."

"That's not fair," Dean protests, but it comes out weak, half-hearted, because Adam is still screaming on the other side of the door, and he knows that somewhere in there, Heaven's first archangel is eradicating the brother he never knew. "He was dead before we even knew he existed."

Castiel nods reasonably. "True. But you were given another chance, weren't you? When the angels brought him back. I would have thought you of all people could appreciate just how rare second chances are in this life, but you failed him again. How do you think John would feel if he knew you'd left his youngest son to rot in Hell for all this time?"

Dean recoils, and he'll say one thing for this so-called God: he knows how to hit him where it hurts. His dad would be heartbroken if knew what became of Adam, and livid at Dean for letting it happen in the first place.

"I tried to save him," he whispers, voice thick and dragging. "I tried to save all of them." But he doesn't know who he's trying to convince any more, and Castiel seizes on it as if he can sense Dean's uncertainty, his moment of weakness.

He lifts a hand up and rests it on Dean's shoulder, face softening into an approximation of sympathy. "I know, Dean," he soothes. "I know how hard it must be, living with all that guilt weighing you down. Let me relieve some of the burden. I can bring them all back, give them the lives they would have had if they'd never met you…and I'm not asking for much in return. It wouldn't be like making another deal. I don't want your soul, just your allegiance."

There's a brief moment - just a fraction of a second - when Dean is seriously tempted, because they didn't deserve it, any of them: not Adam, or Pamela, or any of the other countless numbers of people who are dead or worse as a direct consequence of his existence. He opens his mouth, and maybe he's about to say yes, and maybe Castiel sees his lips starting to form the word, because his fingers tighten and dig into the line of Dean's shoulder. Dean pauses at the pressure, slants his eyes down to Castiel's hand, remembers how he reached his own hand out to his friend, and how Castiel smiled back at him, his eyes gentle.

Don't ever change.

And his friend doesn't deserve his fate either, even if he did bring it on himself, and neither do the thousands of innocents who'll likely be slaughtered if the fake deity is allowed to continue his campaign. He remembers Castiel being ripped from his arms as the dock collapsed from under them in a dream that might as well have been reality, and he knows that as bad as he might feel about those who are already dead and gone, he'll never forgive himself if he doesn't do everything in his power to save the ones that are left. The ones it isn't too late for.

"I've been feeling guilty my whole life," he grates out, and his self-loathing discolors the words audibly. "Why stop now?"

Castiel moves forward, takes Dean's face between his hands, and it would almost be the same as every other time Dean's fallen into that unblinking stare if not for the fact that there isn't a trace of the angel he knows behind those eyes.

"This is simple, Dean," Castiel murmurs, murder-soft. "I have plans for you, and you'll fall into line eventually. You will weigh the souls of the righteous and the wicked, and present them to me. It's meant to be. It's your purpose. Your destiny."

"Yeah, I've never heard that speech before," Dean tells him, and something violent and ugly flashes across Castiel's features, a hint of psychosis bubbling up beneath the calm exterior.

"It's true that I'm willing to bring people back for you, but don't assume that I won't start taking them away if you refuse to cooperate. Not that there are many left to choose from…but enough to prove a point, I think. Look."

He jerks Dean's head to the side, and it becomes apparent that they're no longer in the warehouse. They're standing in an agonizingly familiar cemetery, right on the spot where Hell opened up and swallowed Dean's brothers whole.

Stull Cemetery is different from the last time he was here, though: the fields of crumbling headstones are gone, and instead Dean is confronted with a single row of four tidy graves, the earth looking freshly turned and the marble monuments immaculate. He fights back a growing sense of nausea as his eyes skim over the epitaphs inscribed on each one.

Robert Singer. Lisa Braeden. Benjamin Braeden. Sam Winchester.

"You wouldn't," he gasps, turning his head back to face Castiel once more, but even if the thing in front of him looks like Castiel, and sounds like Castiel, in reality it's a whole new animal, a haphazard patchwork of thousands upon thousands of souls, a creature for which righteousness is a fallacy and morality nothing more than a myth. There's no telling what it might do if he pushes it far enough.

Castiel smiles, and it's almost sorrowful. "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away."



"Was I gone just then?" Dean blurts out as his brother and Bobby snap back into focus, Sam still sitting opposite him less than three feet away, and Bobby still standing with his back to them in front of his bookshelves, running a finger along the tattered spines of old leather-bound books that hold secrets no one can conceive of.

Sam slants his eyes up from the volume he's studying. "No…" he says suspiciously, stretching out the word way longer than its two letters require. It takes him about a fraction of a second longer to work out what Dean means by the question, and then he tenses. "Again?"

Dean has to take a moment to regroup, to purge the horror from his head. "Again," he confirms, forcing the word out past the dryness in his throat.

"What was it this time?" Bobby asks him cautiously. "And did he say anything we can use?"

Dean shields his face with his palms. "Pamela Barnes, eyes and all. And - other stuff." He blinks hard, forces himself to backtrack, to think past the sickly dread that's making him want nothing so much as to puke up the sandwich Bobby fed him earlier and top up the space it leaves behind with the nearest bottle of Jack. And, "Wait a minute…" he breathes as he hears the new God's words again in his head. "He said something…something that rings bells." He can almost feel his brain start whirring, the mental rewind button taking him back through where he just was, scene by scene, and then even further. "He said something to me before," he races out urgently. "When he showed up before, out in the lot, remember? A couple of weeks back, the seventh day. And there was so much going on, it slipped my mind."

His heart is thudding, adrenaline flooding through him. He pushes up so fast the chair overbalances and clatters to the floor behind him, and he strides over to a column of battered books behind the couch. "I'm sure it's here somewhere," he mutters, as he starts sorting through them, casting them aside as he hunts.

A shadow falls over him, and Bobby squats down. "Anything in particular?" he asks, and he starts stacking the books tidily again as fast as Dean throws them.

"It was about Michael. I read it back when all that vessel stuff was going down." He's aware of the old man's level stare, and he shrugs. "Know thine enemy," he clarifies. "But Cas - God, whatever - he said I was important because I was the Righteous Man, because I was Michael. And then today he spouted some Chuck Heston-Ben Hur-type crap about me weighing up souls and delivering them to him."

Sam jumps into the conversation from where he's still sitting at the desk. "Michael weighed the souls of the dead…" he supplies. "He was there when souls passed."

Dean pounces on the volume he's searching for, starts flicking through it. "And I was Death's stunt double for a day," he recalls, as he skims the dense print. "No wonder that sly old bastard nominated me." He stabs a finger at the page he's scanning. "There it is. Michael weighed the souls on his holy scales, and he judged whether they were righteous or wicked. Listen to this: To you, the Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed to be led into Paradise."

Bobby frowns speculatively. "So…what? You think he wants you to deliver souls to him? For…" He throws up his hands. "Energy? Replenishment?"

Dean swipes a shaky hand across his brow as his eyes track the words. "Yeah, that’s how they work isn't it? But there's more." He finds it, the passage he remembers just vaguely, and for the first time since the shit hit the fan he feels hope swell inside him. He rises to his feet. "Fuck, this could be it," he says, and he feels breathless and excited with the possibility. He reads from the book again. "If we have been selfish and cruel, it's you who will banish us."

He looks across at his brother, and Sam's expression is still puzzled. "Michael banished them to Hell," Dean says triumphantly. "Or - get this - to Purgatory." He sees it dawn on Sam's face then, hears Bobby's sharp exhale as he goes on. "He thinks I can gather the souls for his power boost, but maybe he doesn't just want me on-side because of what I can do for him - maybe he wants me because of what I can do to him. I can get the souls out of him. I can send them back."

Sam cards a hand through his hair. "That's a bit of a reach, Dean," he concludes doubtfully. "And how would you do it? I mean - wouldn't you need grace? Michael's grace?"

It's a stark reminder of the fact they sent the vital ingredient tumbling into the cage inside their half-brother more than a year ago, and a brand-new nugget of tension suddenly starts throbbing dully between Dean's eyes. He scowls, drops his chin to his chest, rubs the spot with the heel of his hand, and tries to stay positive. "Bobby, there's got to be a spell to make up for that, hasn't there?" he asks, with an air of forced confidence he doesn't honestly feel deep down where it matters. He zips his eyes back and forth between his brother and the old man. "Come on, isn't it worth a shot?" he persists. "It's not like we have anything else to go on."

Bobby pulls at his beard distractedly for a moment, before he shuffles past Dean and drops back down into his chair. "I'll get on it," he says simply.



Dean is sitting on an all-too-familiar park bench, the wood solid and reassuring against his back and thighs. There's a slight, cool breeze picking up dead leaves from the ground and causing them to turn cartwheels, end over end, but the sun is bright where it hangs in the sky, rays washing warm against his skin. He feels…at peace.

There's something wrong with the picture, though, and it takes him a second or two to realize that the park is utterly devoid of life, not a child in sight. Two of the swings are still moving slightly, chains creaking audibly, as though recently vacated by small bodies. There's a tiny, empty shoe abandoned at the bottom of the jungle gym, looking unexpectedly forlorn. It all reminds Dean - somewhat ridiculously - of Terminator 2, and yeah, he could really do without the apocalyptic comparisons, thanks.

The unmistakable rustle of wings and trenchcoat sounds from his right, and his side is suddenly warmed by body heat where previously it had been exposed to the chill air. He doesn't need to turn his head and look to know that Castiel has appeared beside him, though if things were progressing the way they should, the angel should have beamed down onto the other bench, respectful of Dean's personal space.

When Dean glances to his right, Castiel seems uptight and nervous, exuding nothing of the self-assured confidence of the monster wearing his face. That, coupled with the fact that this was one of the few days on the job where only the bad guys died, convinces him that this is somehow the real Cas, popping in once again for another of his cryptic dream-visits. Dean feels his heart leap for the first time in weeks, and he doesn't even berate himself for reacting like a fourteen-year-old girl. "Cas, is that you?"

Castiel nods once, a short, unhappy, up-and-down jerk of his head. Dean wonders if he's scared of speaking aloud. "You okay?" he ventures tentatively.

The look Castiel directs at him in response is all exasperation, with a hint of what the hell do you think? and goddammit, but Dean's missed seeing that expression on that face. "I'm not…I can't stay long, Dean," he says softly. "They're distracted. I managed to slip away, but they'll find me eventually. They always do." He sighs. "As you know."

Dean doesn't really want to contemplate what havoc the false god is wreaking in order for it to be distracted, and he suppresses the thought with a shiver. "Yeah. I gotta tell you, Cas, your evil twin is a dick."

The angel shrugs slightly. "It wants your allegiance."

Dean huffs derisively. "Don't worry, I'm not giving in."

Castiel purses his lips, looking troubled. "Maybe you should." He must sense the outraged protests building on Dean's tongue, because he presses on. "I know how it works, Dean. It's unpredictable. It's willing to wait for now, but what happens when it runs out of patience? What if it hurts you? Or Sam?"

"What, like you hurt Sam?" Dean lashes out before he can stop himself, letting fly with all the anger and resentment that's been building up with no outlet since Castiel went and conveniently got himself possessed. He doesn't take the words back, because they're true, but he can't help feeling a little guilty about them; it wasn't his intention to hurt Castiel, not while he's trapped and weighted down beneath a million rabid souls, never mind that it's a prison of his own making.

Castiel doesn't even flinch at the barb, though, not like Dean would expect; he just tilts his head and looks at Dean calmly, his gaze even and blue. A cold finger of unease brushes down Dean's spine, but he ignores it. "Look," he sighs, trying a different tack, "I appreciate the concern, but this isn't up for discussion, okay? I wasn't going to be Michael's bitch, and I won't be some two-bit fake God's bitch either."

"Two-bit fake God?" Castiel repeats, sounding vaguely affronted. His eyes bore into Dean clinically, and there's a sudden coldness about him that makes the fine hairs at Dean's nape stand on end.

"Uh, yeah," he defends. "He ain't the real thing, Cas. Never will be."

"I see," Castiel remarks, and he's neutral again, might even be smiling just barely. "This is something that you do. Inflict demeaning names on beings with power far greater than your own in order to make them seem less threatening. It…humanizes them."

"I guess," Dean hedges, shifting uncomfortably, but after all these years he's grown used to Castiel's habit of mentally dissecting him. It's just Cas, he tells himself, and the alarm bells lower their volume a little.

"Do you remember this?" Castiel asks, gesturing at the scene before them, and Dean blinks a little at the sudden U-turn in the conversation.

"Yeah, course I do," he replies truthfully. Halloween 2008, the rising of Samhain, the destruction of another seal, but none of those events are the reason this particular day stands out like a mile marker in Dean's mind. Instead, he remembers this moment as the first time he started seeing Castiel as something approaching a friend, rather than the shadowy, untrustworthy figure who threatened to throw Dean back to the Pit and talked about a Heaven and a God that Dean couldn't - didn't want to - believe in.

They were still practically strangers at this point in their relationship, every one of their interactions still underscored by the fact that they were made from painfully different stuff. But Castiel had laughed, sort-of, at Dean's lame joke, and confided in him, confessed that he had questions and doubts. That he wasn't a hammer, daddy's blunt little instrument.

It was the first time Dean had seen the similarities between them - and he discovered a startling number, once he learned to look beneath the surface - as well as the differences. The first time he had looked at Castiel and begun to consider that maybe he wasn't just another disposable tin soldier in Heaven's infinite army; that there was an actual person hidden beneath all those layers of military conditioning. A real, living person, with opinions and fears and regret, even if he had wings made of thought and shadow, and a voice that shattered eardrums if unleashed.

It had fairly blown Dean's mind at the time. Castiel was indestructible, more powerful by far than anything he had encountered in all his years on the job, something whose existence even the mighty John Winchester couldn't have conceived of. And yet this enigmatic force of nature had chosen to reveal something of himself to Dean, of all people. Dean, who didn't even believe, who drank too much and lived for hedonistic pleasures, and was so fresh from Hell he probably still carried the reek of sulfur on his skin. Yet, Castiel had trusted Dean to safeguard his deepest and darkest secrets, not even two months into their dealings with each other.

Can I tell you something if you promise not to tell another soul?

"I was relieved that you chose to save this town," Castiel reminds him now, jarring Dean back to the present. "It was the first time I felt certain that you were truly the Righteous Man spoken of in prophecy, the one who would save us all."

Dean snorts, the familiar taste of self-loathing bitter at the back of his throat. "Yeah, except it didn't exactly pan out that way, did it? I didn't even stop Lucifer. I just sat in the grass and did fuck all."

"Perhaps the full extent of your role in all of this has yet to be revealed," Castiel murmurs, a tiny frown marring the center of his forehead like he's mulling something over.

Dean opens his mouth to tell Castiel he might be right, that his role might mean he can free him, at the same time as he allows himself a sideways glance at the angel, and quite unexpectedly he feels something lock up tight in his chest. The sky appears to be taking on the hue of late afternoon, despite the fact that they can only have been sitting here twenty minutes at most, and he views Castiel through a filter of hazy sunlight that gilds the sharpness of his friend's profile and his errant, tousled spikes of hair in burnished gold. It can't be denied that the angel is easy on the eyes; Dean's always tried his damnedest to ignore it, but Castiel makes it practically impossible when he insists on always sitting this close, when he looks at Dean like there's something between them that looks and feels a hell of a lot different than friendship.

Like now. Castiel turns to meet Dean's gaze head-on, that instantaneous connection snapping into existence between them. Dean remembers when he was unnerved by Castiel's stare, what seems like such a long time ago now, back when Castiel had still been strange and alien, something to be feared and not trusted. If asked, he wouldn't be able to pinpoint exactly when all that changed, when it became soothing, a comfort, a knee-jerk reflex as familiar as breathing. When they became as magnets or corresponding puzzle pieces drawn to each other time and time again; when all he would have to do was search out cool, steady blue, and no matter what other crazy shit was going down, he'd be able to slow down and breathe, just a little.

He doesn't remember when it changed, but now he realizes it makes him feel the same way as it did the first time, like he's being split open for inspection, every inch of him cross-examined for this divine being to pass judgment on his soul. It jars him, and suddenly he feels claustrophobic despite the wide-open skies above, like his skin wants to crawl right off his body, his nerves cringing and clamoring uncomfortably where they wrap around muscle and bone.

Then something shifts behind Castiel's eyes, an almost imperceptible softening, and the moment is gone, fading like a bad dream until Dean can't remember why he ever felt that way in the first place. It's just Castiel, familiar and reassuring as he always is, and now he's shuffling his body around on the bench to face Dean head-on, shifting even closer until all of Dean's personal space boundaries are well and truly violated. Dean can feel Castiel's breath on his cheek, and he thinks that maybe he ought to back away, but he's captivated, transfixed, held in thrall like a mouse before a striking cobra.

"Human beings truly are works of art," Castiel murmurs, echoing his words from the first time they had sat on these benches together. His gaze is no longer still, but roving ceaselessly over Dean's face, like he's committing every detail to memory. "But you more than any other."

He reaches a hand up to Dean's face, strong fingers brushing the ridge of Dean's brow, his thumb smoothing over the thin skin beneath his eye and tracing the curvature of his lips before cradling his cheek in a warm palm.



Dean blinks, feeling cast adrift, utterly thrown for a loop and having no idea of the appropriate response. Despite all of the unacknowledged things floating between them, the suffocating tension that hangs thick and cloying in the air whenever they occupy the same space, they've never been like this before, never afforded each other any touches more lingering and intimate than a clasped shoulder or a pat on the back. But still he remembers the way Castiel's devotion ached out of his eyes in the dream at Lisa's, and even if he half-wants to fling himself away and put as much space between them as possible, Dean holds himself perfectly still, wanting so badly to lean into the touch.

"It's alright, Dean," Castiel reassures, though to what end, Dean has no idea. "You don't have to pretend, not with me. I know you, right down to your cells, your atoms. There is no other being in this universe or the next who knows you better than I."

Dean swallows tightly, forcing saliva down past the hard lump that's formed in his throat. If he ever had an idea where this conversation was going, then he's lost the fucking roadmap. "Cas, I don't…what is this?"

Castiel leans in even closer, until their lips are less than an inch apart, and Dean has to pick one blue eye to focus on. "Is this what you want, Dean?" he murmurs. "Me? Us…like this?"

A million and one denials bloom on the tip of Dean's tongue, ready to mock and scorn and decry the very idea as ludicrous. But something tightens in his chest, and the rush of his blood is loud in his ears. Castiel is looking at him, waiting, his eyes dark and penetrating. He's close enough to touch, but Dean is having a hard time just making his mouth work, needing to say something but unsure what he's feeling. Unsure of what he can say to that.

"Cas...what. I don't know what…"

Some clinical part of Dean that's managed to detach from the thudding of his heart and roiling of his stomach notes how strange it is to be here in this moment with Castiel, to see his friend looking at him with something in his eyes Dean can't even begin to describe. Dean wants, but he doesn't know what he wants. And if Castiel notices that the universe is crashing down around Dean's ears, he doesn't show it. He simply smiles, and Dean feels the shape of it against his own lips, an oddly triumphant quirk that strikes him as somehow out-of-place.

"I want this, and I know you want this," Castiel whispers, voice rough and heated. "You can have this, Dean. You can take something for yourself for once." And then he closes the distance between them.

The first meeting of their mouths is a shock to Dean's system, like licking a battery or being submerged in ice-cold water. Castiel is relentless, sliding his hand from Dean's cheek to grip the back of his neck in order to lock them tighter together, teeth grazing Dean's lower lip in a manner that's just this side of painful. Dean yields, succumbs, and surrenders himself to it completely, because every molecule in his body is suddenly crying out for this so loudly that their call is a crescendo, and allowing it now is like the first draw of a breath to bring him back from the edge of hypoxia.

Castiel's tongue glides across the seam of his lips, not so much requesting permission to enter as demanding it, and Dean is helpless but to let him in. He tries to wrest back control, slow the pace, because some part of his brain is protesting that this isn't just about lust, it's so much more than that, but Castiel is insatiable, monopolizing the inside of Dean's mouth like he would enemy territory. It's an invasion, and he kisses like he's fighting a war, like he's trying to win, almost violent where he clenches his fists in Dean's jacket and shoves him back against the wood of the bench, and this - isn't right. Although they've never done this together, although Dean has never given into the hazy, half-formed urges he has suppressed and repressed and denied for years now, he somehow knows that Cas - his Cas - would never be so callous with this, for all that he can be ruthless and terrifying when the mood takes him.

Even before he has completed the train of thought, Dean is shoving Castiel away from him, breathing hard. Beneath the rapidly-fading hum of arousal he doesn't want to acknowledge, his body is awash with the acid-sharp sting of betrayal, because a fucking line has just been crossed.

"You're not Cas," he chokes out.

Castiel's head tips to the side, brow creasing in hurt and confusion. The gesture is achingly familiar, but it's nothing more than a parody. There's a vital component missing somewhere, something cold and calculating behind those blue eyes that Dean didn't follow through to the obvious conclusion when he noticed it before. Jesus, but he can't believe he's been duped again, hook, line and fucking sinker.

"Dean, what…?"

"God, just shut it," Dean snaps, feeling sick to his stomach. He can't believe he let the thing kiss him. It feels like infidelity, like he's been cheating on Cas, which is about twenty different shades of ridiculous, but he can't shake the feeling. He wipes his sleeve across his mouth viciously. "Drop the fuckin' act, okay?"

And Castiel falls away like a veil, leaving the impostor God in his place: all smug, arrogant condescension, and Dean never really understood blasphemy before but he thinks he gets it now.

"Why do you persist in this stubborn refusal to understand? I am still Castiel." He speaks slowly, as if addressing a particularly difficult child, and he couldn't sound less like Castiel if he tried. "I still have his thoughts, his memories, his passions and prejudices. The same body that you desire so amorously. I'm just…different. Upgraded." His lips tilt upwards at the corners, almost nostalgic, as if he's looking upon a fond memory. "New and improved."

"You're no more Castiel than Sam was Sam without his soul," Dean grits out, all the anger, frustration, and grief he's been keeping locked down surging up like a tidal wave, pounding away at the dam of self-preservation and good sense that keeps him fearing the abomination that claims to be a god. "And guess what? I got Sam back, and I'll damn well get Cas back, too." He feels triumph flare brightly in his gut, because if they're right, and they can find the right spell, then this monster's sell-by date is fast approaching. "That's a fuckin' promise, asshole."

Castiel exhales, a drawn-out, regretful sound, like Dean is making things so very difficult for him. "My intentions are the same as they've always been, Dean, the only difference is that now I have the power to act on them. I'm improving the world that my Father so callously abandoned, purging it of the violence and sin that's been allowed to fester away unchecked for millennia. I'm creating Paradise in your name. I'm building a utopia, the new Heaven, and all of it for you. I can bring back your loved ones. I can give you eternal life, if you so desire. You can't tell me you don't want that. You can't continue to reject my gifts, when I'm offering you everything you've ever wanted."

Dean thinks of Ellen and Jo. Pamela, Rufus, Ash. Adam, burning in Hell for longer than Sam or Dean ever did, just for having the misfortune to be John Winchester's son. He silently begs forgiveness from every one of them, wherever they are, for what he's about to say next.

"That's exactly what I'm doing," he says clearly and steadily. "I don't want utopia, I don't want Paradise, and I definitely don't want Heaven. What I want is real life, even when it's ugly, and messy, and painful, because that's what real life is. And if you were really Cas, you'd get that. Cas ripped up divine prophecy because he got that." It flashes through his mind, guilty blue eyes darting away from his as he leaned in, his voice earnest because he was begging, You can take your peace and shove it up your lily-white ass. 'Cause I'll take the pain, and the guilt. I'll even take Sam as is. "You know, all those people you promised to bring back?" he continues. "They're dead, and I mourned them. Your false miracles aren't going to fix that. But Cas?" He smiles. "It's not too late for Cas. He's not dead yet, and I am going to get him back if it's the last goddamn thing I do. So yeah, for the last time, I reject your fuckin' gifts. Final answer, douchewad."

The effect of his words is instantaneous. The instant he stops speaking dark purple thunderheads bloom on the horizon, swelling like overripe fruit fit to burst, and what had previously been a light autumn breeze turns gale force, whipping the dead leaves into a frenzied cyclone, as the swings start flying back and forth on their rusted chains as if possessed. Castiel's face hardens, for lack of a better word, his eyes going slitty and mean, the angles of his face becoming sharp and cruel as finest-cut diamond, a geometry so perfect as to be unnatural. Monstrous. Even at his most morally objectionable, even in the midst of their very worst fights - and God knows, they've had some humdingers - Dean has never seen Castiel wear an expression like this before. He resembles a demon more than an angel, so much so that Dean almost expects his eyes to flash obsidian, and if the thing in front of him shared even a single thread of commonality with the real Castiel, Dean knows he wouldn't be capable of it.

"I warned you, Dean," the new God hisses. "Unlike our Father, I am not a God of infinite patience. If you're going to change your mind, I suggest you do so quickly."

"Don't hold your breath," Dean retorts.

"As you wish."

Castiel raises a hand, starts to snap his thumb across his middle finger, and Dean flinches, expecting to be thrown back into the Pit, to explode in a starburst of red mist and gore like Raphael, for his atoms to be scattered across the cosmos, tucked away inside far-flung nebulae and the strange bacteria found at the bottom of the deepest sea-trenches-

And he's flat on his back on Bobby's couch, broken spring digging into his spine, staring up at the ceiling, drawing in great, heaving lungfuls of breath and choking on his own air. He feels like something monumental just happened, like all the rules have been changed, or maybe the whole damn game, and they're running out of time.

"Another dream?"

Sam is still hunched over the book he was reading when Dean took his break, and Bobby is sitting across from him. They're both pointing concerned eyes at him.

"Yeah," he mutters. "It's okay, I'm good."

When he's calmed down enough to stop hyperventilating, he touches contemplative fingers to his lips, lost in thought. It might have been an impostor that he kissed, but he'd thought that it was Castiel, in every second that counted. And he'll freak out about exactly what that might mean later, but right now he just hopes that if any of it filtered through to his friend, wherever he's trapped or hiding, he at least understood the care behind it.

Just a little while longer, he thinks. I'm coming for you, Cas. I'm going to find a way. Please, just hold on a little while longer.

He heaves himself up, rubs at gritty eyes. "I don't think we have much time," he declares. "I think I just pissed him off in a big way."

Bobby rolls his eyes. "Tell us something surprising," he says balefully.

Dean ignores the old man's churlishness and goes on the defensive. "It wasn't my fault, I had to-"

"Hello, Dean."

The voice is languid and bored like it always is, as it drifts out of the kitchen just off the study. It's proof things just got even more complicated and possibly even worse, and Dean swivels his head around so fast his brain takes about thirty seconds longer than his skull to make the turn, and takes the bend on two wheels.

"Oh," he says, and he swallows dryly. "Death. Uh…how are you?"



Next: Episode 5: 3:10 to Purgatory

(See also: DVD Extra: Resist)