Episode 24: Redemption (Part II Continued)

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He can hear them close by, snarling, barking, yelping, baying, howling.

Son, don't do this…

The hounds, it's the hounds, and he fled from them before, with the bleeding soul of the Righteous Man nestled within his grace.

He thinks he whimpers as hands clamp themselves under his arms and he is pulled. It's an almighty heave that sends pain shockwaving through him, and he sobs, tasting ash carried on scorching, stinking, brimstone air. Sulfur burns his gums and the insides of his nostrils, stings his eyes so that he blinks frantically, and his tears turn the flames that leap and dance around him into watercolor patterns of yellow, orange and crimson before the world switches off.



Flash, and his pupils contract painfully.
Cas? Cas?

A voice, fading in and out of his awareness. The radio he thinks dreamily, and he remembers how the transmission cut in and out as he drove.



Hands on him, tapping lightly at his cheek.

Cas? Come on man, you just opened your eyes…

He's lying flat, on something smooth and soft, too smooth and soft to be ridged leather upholstery. Everything is good, and he isn't compelled to scream out the horror and agony in his heart because it's gone, away into the blackness, even if his body aches all over, and heat still sizzles through his veins, and the throb of his head thuds a regular percussion against the inside of his skull.

Drumroll he thinks. Destiny's drum, a metronome counting down time. Tempus fugit.

What day is it?

He peels his lips apart with effort, runs a dry, swollen tongue along his teeth, and attempts speech. "Day…what…?"

Something cool and moist touches his chin, water like nectar dribbled into his mouth, and he swallows thickly, chokes a little.

"Easy. Easy now." The voice is louder now, because this isn't disorientation; someone is here with him.

"Date," he whispers hoarsely. "The date."

There's no answer, just the creak of swift progress across a wooden floor, the draft across his face as a door is opened, and a voice calling. Sam's voice, hailing Bobby, and then the rustle of fabric as he returns. Castiel feels his friend's fingertips, calloused but gentle at his temple, brushing hair away so that a cool, damp cloth can be placed there, and he sighs out the relief of it.

When he cracks his eyelids Sam is staring down at him, his face drawn in lines of stress, dark shadows smudged under his eyes. "Jesus, Cas," he says. "You really gave us a scare."

He's leaning over Castiel, and he moves to straighten, but Castiel lifts a heavy hand and snags Sam's shirtsleeve. "Date," he mutters, with more force now, as Sam cocks his head. "What's the date?"

After a moment Sam says, "The twenty-fourth," and his face falls.

Castiel smiles at him, and it takes some effort to rearrange his features because they feel as if they have fallen into disuse. "Dean," he croaks. "Dean's birthday."

Sam swallows and nods, and now Castiel can see that his friend's eyes are bloodshot and puffy from weeping. "No more tears," Castiel consoles him. "It's Dean's birthday."

Sam is sinking into a chair, and as he pulls it closer to Castiel's bedside the doorway is suddenly filled by Bobby. He looms up, his features as harrowed as Sam's are, his voice gruff.

"Dammit, boy, you should have told us. Your chest is a mess."

He busies himself above Castiel, and when Castiel shifts his head to follow the movement he can see a tube taped to his arm and rising up to an intravenous drip hanging from a hatstand. Bobby is attending to it, and Castiel notices that the old man's hand is bandaged, the fingers taped right up to the tips. He glances down at Castiel, and there is a vein pulsing energetically above his left eye. "We've pumped nearly all the antibiotics we have into you. It was touch and go for a while."

Castiel manages to crane his neck, sees that the sheet is pulled up to his hips, that his chest is bare and his scar is swathed in gauze, that other dressings are randomly scattered down his arms and that one of his hands is bound in a similar fashion to Bobby's. He casts his eyes up again, licks his lips so he can ask the question on the tip of his tongue. "Where is…" He lets it trail off when he sees that Bobby is glowering at him.

"What the fuck do you think you were doing?" the old man demands sharply, his annoyance only barely suppressed. "Of all the-"

"Bobby."

Sam's voice is calm but firm, and it's enough to pull Bobby up. Sam nods at him, looks back to Castiel and awards him a wan grin, but Castiel doesn't mind Bobby's ire because he knows there is love in it, and because he made it back, they made it back. Pure joy bubbles up despite his weakness, and he smiles at Sam, asks, "Where is Dean?"

Elbows planting beside Castiel on the mattress, Sam shields his face in his hands so his reply is muffled. "Don't do this."

Time freezes for a second, and when the wheels crank back into motion, unease is niggling at Castiel. He flicks his eyes back to Bobby, and tries to ignore the sudden feeling of disquiet as he studies the drip and filters what Bobby said through his mind. "How long since I got back?"

Bobby's eyebrows are tenting with what seems to be bewilderment, so Castiel tries again, husking the words out as clearly as he can. "How long since I got back?"

"You didn't go anywhere, Cas."

It's Sam who answers his question, weary and resigned; a simple phrase the weight of which makes Castiel feel suddenly unsteady and lightheaded with a wave of nauseating vertigo. It makes the room pitch and yaw crazily for a few seconds before it settles back where it should be, and he hears, "How long have I been back?" hiss out of him insistently, and then, "Dean…where is Dean?"

Sam pinches the bridge of his nose, echoes what he just said. "Don't do this, Cas, please. You know where he is. Don't do this."

But Castiel will do it and does do it, as hysteria rises inside him. "How long have I been back?" he persists. "How long since you found me? How long have I been here?"

Flustered, Sam scrubs a hand through his hair. "Here? I don't know what you-"

"The bed, how long…" The room is spinning again, spots are dancing across Castiel's eyes, and he shakes his head blindly, so that the pain inside it buffets him. It wasn't a dream, it can't have been. "How long?" he pleads again. "Where is Dean?"

Sam is still uncomprehending, his expression crumpling into sheer dismay, and it's Bobby who barks out a distressed admonishment.

"Stop this now. I found you yesterday. You're damn lucky you set the dogs off…and Dean is dead, you know that."

They don't know.

It comes to Castiel in a bright and terrible starburst of clarity: they don't know because Dean wasn't in the car with him when they found him. And it makes perfect sense, and how could he have been so stupid, and it has been a whole day, and, no-no-no.

He wants to moan, but he sucks the sound back in, gropes for Sam's sleeve again, and tugs at it. "Dean, you have to get Dean," he gasps, while Sam stares at him with hurt eyes that don't understand what Castiel is telling him. "Birthday, it's his birthday," he tries, and now Sam grips his wrist in strong, determined fingers while his vision tracks anxiously up to Bobby and back again.

"I know that, Cas," Sam soothes, "but-"

"I wrote it all down for you," Castiel cuts in. "My journal…I wrote down my plans, and I drove for years, I drove into the Lake of Fire for him…love is stronger than death." And there isn't time for this, it has been a whole day, and Castiel surges up even as Bobby makes a frustrated noise and puts a hand on his shoulder to keep him in place.

"Steady, son, you-"

But Castiel is desperate, thrashing against Bobby's hand, and his voice goes thin and jagged in his panic. "It wasn't a dream, Sam, I found a door, a door, because love is stronger than death, because…" His thoughts are speeding up now, too fast for him to speak through his slow, tired mouth, because when one door closes another one opens. It was meant, and the final puzzle piece the Dragon King gave them is right there waiting to complete the big picture. But Sam is looking up at Bobby and shaking his head, his eyes bleak and frightened and his mouth pursed into a thin line.

"The trick to finding things you've lost is to look where you last saw them," Castiel almost-shrieks, and Sam's head whips back, alight with curiosity and a glimmer of recognition.

"Fortune, it was your fortune…" Castiel sobs, as Sam's brow corrugates into a frown. "It meant something…and I went back, I wrote it all down for you…my journal…"

The book is right there on the nightstand, and Castiel waves a hand over towards it, hearing his words go faint and faraway as he speaks, but his vision is starting to tunnel, Dean, inky blackness spreading from the outside.

It means fate too, he thinks. Fortune means fate too.



The beep on the thermometer sounds, and the display tells Bobby the angel's fever has gone down even if he's still burning as hot as the car Bobby dragged him from. "Least he isn't seizing any more," he thinks aloud, as he tries and fails to flick one of his wrapped fingers against the barely full drip, wincing at the sting of his burns. "He's not out of the woods yet though. Hope Mira finds a hospital that hasn't been looted, because we only have a couple more of these."

Castiel is a mess, and it makes Bobby shudder to think he might have chosen that way to do it. He can still hear the greedy lick and slurp of the flames, and he can't get the smell of the inferno out of his nose, the acrid stench of burning rubber that had his head pounding for hours afterwards, the toxic smart of chemicals that still blurs his vision. He stares at his hand, cauterized right through to the phalanges when he gripped the door handle, and he curls his fingers in and then straightens them with difficulty. He wonders if he'll ever be able to use them properly again, and not for the first time he thanks the Maker it isn't his gun hand.

"What the fuck was he doing?" he marvels again, and his good hand falls to rest on Castiel's shoulder, grips the bone as if to anchor him, as the awful moment when he realized there was a man sitting in the car and it could only be Castiel hits him again. He shakes with the delayed shock of it. "Jesus. I still can't believe he'd do that."

"Maybe he didn't."

Sam sounds absent, and when Bobby glances across at the other man, he is indeed preoccupied. He has Castiel's journal in his hand and he's studying it intently, eyebrows drawn low, as he chews on a thumbnail.

Bobby snorts. "You're not reading anything into any of that are you? He's delirious, he-"

"Found a door," Sam cuts in softly, and he's standing up slowly, what little color he had draining from his face. "Oh my God," he whispers, and his hand floats up to cover his mouth as his eyes go huge and round with something like horror. It's alarming to say the least, but Bobby doesn't have time to press further before Sam whirls around in an explosion of windmilling arms, and skids across the room and out through the doorway.

"Balls," Bobby grates out to the unconscious man in the bed, and he doesn't spend more than a minute debating what to do before he follows Sam's thunderous progress down the stairs and up the hallway.

A crescendo of midnight barking is starting up as Bobby gets to the front door, left swinging open and unattended, and his breath is a plume of mist in the chill January air as he scans the lot. "Where the hell is he…"

He trails off as Sam sprints back around from the back of the house, knees almost hitting his chin as he runs because his legs are pumping so fast and hard. He's carrying an armload of tools and a flashlight, and he's trailed by an excited pack of dogs springing and bounding to join in the game. He swings his head around as he goes, hollers at Bobby.

"He found a door, the same door we did. It's in his journal. Fuck."

Bobby looked at the journal himself, when Castiel showed him a list of unconnected words and phrases that he claimed were significant. The memory is vivid, Castiel's eyes trusting and hopeful as Bobby scanned a spidery, haphazard scrawl of nonsensical, arbitrary ramblings and realized in that moment that he couldn't deal with the scope of Castiel's grief even if he wanted to, just like he couldn't deal with Sam's or his own after New Harmony. "It was crazy talk that made no sense," he mutters under his breath, but still he's mystified and unsettled as he stumbles after Sam.

When he sees where Sam is headed, Bobby's guts contort inside him so aggressively he thinks he might shit his pants right there. "Oh, no…no, no, no," he gasps out, and now he's running himself, lumbering along as fast as an old guy who hasn't had a square meal in six months can, running right up behind Sam and barely dodging the backward curve of the pick ax as Sam brings it around and down into the topsoil under the tree.

Before Sam has the chance to go at it again, Bobby fists a handful of his shirt, pulls him around all the way. "What the fuck are you doing?" he yells, but Sam is already slapping his hand away, turning back. Bobby can't let this happen, and he steps around Sam, throws an arm up to deflect the other man's swing, plants his good hand on Sam's chest and pushes him hard. "I can't let you-"

The blow crunches squarely into Bobby's jaw, sending red-hued pain slamming through him, and he can taste copper as he tumbles back onto his butt. There is a moment when he sees stars and the lot gyrates crazily, and he coughs, spits blood as nausea has him retching, and wipes his hand on his sleeve. In the background of it all, he can hear the solid thud of the pick ax into earth. "Please don't do this," he wheezes, but Sam is hooking up a shovel with his foot and tossing it over to land next to Bobby.

"Dig," he orders tersely. "We can't use the backhoe, it could hurt him."

Bobby can feel horrified tears pricking his eyes, doesn't want to do this, doesn't want to look at what Sam seems intent on uncovering. "You're going to listen to a madman who just tried to cremate himself? Son, please, we-"

"It was Cas's fortune," Sam interrupts, and his face is set and his mouth is grim as he slams into the ground again. "One door closes, another one opens. It's in the journal, all of it, the door, the key…we missed it, all of it. He didn't have enough grace to pass into Hell, so he found a door he had a key for." He spares Bobby a glance. "You said he was holding the Colt when you found him."

The Colt. Castiel had been holding fast to it when Bobby heaved his limp form out of the blazing car, and it slots into place. "You think he opened the Hellgate," Bobby croaks, but even if it's the most obvious conclusion it doesn't fit. "But that doesn't make sense. He can't have driven to Wyoming."

Sam grunts out confirmation as he arches his back and pounds the soil. "I know it doesn't make sense," he ekes out between pants as he works. "But dig. Because it's been a whole fucking day."

Bobby shakes his head, protests again desperately, "But there's no way, he can't have-"

"It's Dean's birthday. Now dig the fucking hole."

Sam screams it at him with such force that Bobby feels spittle fleck his cheeks, and for a moment he's caught in a memory of being roped to a chair, begging for his life while the soulless monster wearing the younger man's face studied him like he was a clinical specimen and hefted its blade. The shock has Bobby blindly complying, and he fumbles for the shovel and staggers upright.

The loam is still relatively loose-packed, gives under the blade without too much effort as he uses his foot to lever it in, and they fall into an effective if reluctant partnership, Sam reaching tall, curving his lanky body around for the swing and pistoning down with such force Bobby can feel the shockwave of it through the soles of his boots. He feels sweat break out and start to soak his shirt, can see that Sam is already drenched, his hair plastered to his face in wet hanks as he keeps up a relentless pace.

"How deep?"

Sam doesn't look at Bobby as he snaps out the question, keeps hacking at the earth to loosen it so Bobby can scoop it up and pitch it away.

"Son, please," Bobby broaches again. "You don't-"

"How deep?"

The ground had been frozen so hard even the backhoe bucket found it tough going, but Bobby had gritted his teeth through the blur of tears, had forced the edge down through the permafrost for two hours straight to dig out a trench large enough for the canoe and deep enough so that his boy could rest in peace. Mira had silently helped him maneuver the Trapper down into the grave, had pressed her cold hand to his cheek for a moment, and walked back into the house while he sank to his knees, clutched the body to him and wept.

He shakes the memory out of his head. "Five feet at least." Out the corner of his eye, he can see that a couple of the younger mutts in his pack of guard dogs have ranged closer and are joining in, paws slapping energetically at the soil. Every half-minute or so they pause to bury their noses deep in the holes they've excavated and snuffle in smells Bobby doesn't want to think about.

"There should be air pockets," Sam labors out. "Disturbed soil has air pockets that don't close up for weeks. And the Trapper was way big for him. So if he didn't panic…"

Sam is showing no signs of faltering, and large clods of earth are jouncing up every time the spear of the pick ax impacts the surface, but it doesn't seem to be enough. He curses incoherently, flings the tool to one side and snatches up the other shovel, starts ramming it into the rapidly deepening depression in the ground. They're in the grave up to their knees now, and Sam's pace is still frenetic, his eyes wild and staring, the muscles of his arms corded rigid with effort. "We need Mira back here, stat," punches out of him, and he heaves a wet, sobbing breath in before he follows up. "You'll have to get her on the CB if you can."

Bobby doesn't answer because he's weighing up the odds of serious injury if he clips Sam on the back of the skull with his shovel, and as if Sam is reading his mind he mutters out a subdued defense.

"I know you think I'm crazy, but it's all there in the journal like Cas said."

Bobby can't help an unimpressed snort as he throws earth over on the growing pile at the graveside. "It isn't possible," he snarls, and right then, he hears the dull clunk of Sam's shovel on wood, and Sam lets out a gasp. In that instant, Bobby knows he's done here. "I won't be a part of this any more," he says through clenched teeth, as he turns and clambers up the shifting sides of the hole.

"But Bobby-"

"No."

Bobby puts a shaking hand up to pull off his cap, and he presses his forearm up to his eyes to hide from it all for a moment. "This is wrong," he grinds out. "You're asking me to help you do this, and who the hell has to clear up the mess afterwards? Again." He stops for a moment while Sam stares up at him, eyes huge and inky in his pallor, and then he loses it, roars out his own anger and grief for the first time. "Near thirty years worrying about your brother and you, thirty fuckin' years of feeding you, housing you, nursing you, stitching you. I was the first person your brother spoke to after your mother burned, and he hadn't said a damn word in months. And after your dad dumped you and him here, it was me who got up to him in the night when he hollered for her, me who rocked him back to sleep. I pulled his first loose tooth, I taught him his letters and his numbers, I played catch with him when your dad wanted him out doing target practice. And you expect me to do this to him? No."

Sam is dumbstruck, mouth hanging loose, so Bobby plows on, scrubbing tears from his cheeks with his sleeve. "You think I'm going to stand here and watch you haul out a rotting corpse, and then clean up yet another fuckin' Winchester mess. But no."

He flings his shovel down to the ground, takes a few angry, stiff-legged steps before he spins back around and gestures at the house. "Him, he's still alive, even if he is so far gone he'd set the fuckin' car on fire with himself in it. That's what matters to me. Him and you. You're all the family I have left, and keeping the both of you breathing is what matters to me now. It's all there is. So when you've finished this, you clean it up. And then I'll just go on trying to keep him and you alive."

Bobby doesn't wait for Sam to respond, he's moving again, almost without realizing it, striding back through the lot, his memory taunting him with a thousand images of the child of his heart, and he won't sully them with whatever Sam disinters tonight. His dog is by the porch, and it directs disapproving liquid eyes on him as he approaches, griping out a sound that's part whine and part-sigh. "What the hell do you know?" Bobby chides it, as he stomps up the porch steps and into the house.

He clumps his way into the study, fishes in his desk drawer for a bottle of Wild Turkey, one of a case that hitched a ride back on a supply run even though Mira narrowed her sloe eyes and spat, jebena seljacina at him when she saw it in the truck. After she had a couple of shots herself she told him it meant fucking hillbilly, which he thought was appropriate. The liquor screeches across the split inside his mouth, where Sam's fist sent the skin slamming into his teeth, and he winces.

It's been…five minutes at least since he turned tail and ran from the grisly scene unfolding out in the lot, and even as he's steeling himself for the first cries Bobby hears them, rising up into the night outside the open door. His uneasy stomach rebels and folds itself inside out, and he has to fumble for the trashcan under his desk. The liquor is eighty-proof coming back up too, and has water stinging his eyes again as he hoiks up bile.

He fists his hand, rams it down on the desk so hard he wonders if the bone might have shattered. "Damn," he hears himself choke out, and he thinks that dying would have been so much easier than this. "Damn it all to Hell."



Sam is kneeling on a four-foot square patch of uncovered wood now, scrabbling away damp, stinking earth, and there is the seam between two of the lumber strips he can vaguely recall thinking would make a good cover for the Trapper. He squeezes his fingertips down into the gap, exerts as much force as he can, but nothing, they won't be budged, and he cries out in frustration and rockets upright.

"Bobby!" he yells in the direction of the house, and he hammers a fist down onto the ground at the graveside. "Dammit."

But it's his turn now, his fortune that's at stake here. And love is stronger than death, and he still has his hope and his sheer willpower.

He snatches up his shovel again, wedges the tip of the blade down into the crack, levers it back and forth and further down even as he tries to calculate how much clear maneuvering space might be under there. "Just knock on wood if you can feel this, Dean," he shouts. "I don't want to hurt you." He stamps a boot on the rough surface. "You hear that? I'm here. So hang on. Just - just hang on, Dean…"

Push against the shovel handle, and Sam is doing it with as much force as he safely can, easing the blade further, and he can hear its metal grinding, thinks maybe something shifts under him. More pressure, shove, and he can feel tears starting in his eyes. "I'm here, Dean," he mutters. "I won't let you down, I'm-"

The noise of the handle snapping is like a pistol shot in the still of the night and Sam crashes down onto his ass, pain shooting up his tailbone and spine, the impact jarring his teeth. "Fuck," he grates out as he flops forward onto his hands and knees and puts his lips to the nook between the strips of pine. "Dean," he says, and he twists his head, lays his ear to the wood. "Can you hear me? Dean?"

Nothing, and Sam bricks up the dull wave of despair that threatens, pushes up to glance around him. The space he has cleared isn't big enough, he can see, thick drifts of soil are still piled up and there is no way he can shift the cover, weighed down as it is. It will take an hour at least, probably more, to clear a big enough space and it has already been a whole day.

Sam's mouth opens and his anguish comes out of him in a harsh cry as he slams his palms down onto the wood. "No, fuck. No. I won't. No." But every instinct in him is telling him to keep doing this, and he will do it with his bare hands if he has to.

He scrapes and claws tenaciously at the loose soil, digs into the wood, feels his fingertips rip and tear, feels his nails catch and split, feels splinters stab viciously into his skin. He feels a niche, a gap, the butt end of a plank of wood, hooks his fingers under it and hears the pop of his knuckles as he closes his eyes, blows out, and grits his teeth. Dean he thinks, and suddenly he can feel it flood through him, something darkly familiar, a vigor and vitality he hasn't felt in years exploding out from some closed-off part of him. Power, and it courses through him, the brutal, inhuman strength that always made him feel invincible; and the barrier between him and his brother is suddenly so flimsy it fractures and disintegrates into matchsticks.

The thick miasma of rot and decay that buffets him makes Sam gag and cough, and he slaps his hand up against his nose for relief. He blinks away sweat and tears, peers down in the dim glow cast from above by the flashlight, puts down his other hand. There is cloth, rough to the touch; a blanket, because Bobby must have wrapped the body before he laid it to rest. "Dean?" Sam whispers, and he prods the body cocooned in the fabric.

Nothing, no sound but Sam's own breath, no movement but his own anxious tremor. There is just the stench of death, and the swift scurry of an insect across the back of Sam's hand, because insects feed on the dead. "No," Sam chokes out in painful disbelief, because he had been so oddly sure of this. "Dean. No, God, no. De-"

He is cut off by a dull, low noise, a forlorn animal whine that disorients him for a split second before the body under his hand jolts sharply and erupts out of the makeshift casket. And the sound is coming from Dean, Dean, and it's a desperate, desolate dirge, and Dean is a flopping, shaking, panic-stricken wild thing that might not even really be his brother any more. But even through the daze of shock and bewilderment, Sam is reaching for him, pulling him in, wrapping his arms around him and rocking him against his chest, while he hollers for Bobby.



The shouts are echoing in from outside, frantic, Sam calling Bobby's name, and the dogs are taking up the chorus. They howl plaintively in time with Sam's clamor, and Bobby sighs deeply, screws the cap back on the liquor bottle. Clean-up time.

His mouth is cotton-dry, a band of pressure is squeezing his temples together, and his back is already aching from digging. His legs are slow and unwilling as he makes his way back towards the tree that looms up ahead of him, and he can hear Sam sobbing in between his calls, hear the awful, guttural mantra of horror he knew he would hear at the end of all this.

At the lip of the grave he stares down, and in the moonlight he can see that Sam is cradling his dead brother in his arms, hunched over him and talking in a soft, low voice.

"It's alright, boy," Bobby soothes, and he steels himself for what he's going to see, a facsimile of the countless maggot-infested bodies he has salted and burned in three decades on the hunt. "I didn't mean what I said. I'll handle this, but you-"

Sam's head snaps up, and his features are shining wet but they are more bright and alive than Bobby has seen them in weeks. "Mira, you need to get her on the CB," he croaks. "And I think we need to get him inside to be with Cas. I don't think he knows me."

But Bobby is lost, rooted to the spot, his heart juddering to a dead stop and his voice petrified and useless on the back of his tongue, as he stares at Dean, Dean, slumped against Sam's shoulder, blinking slowly, his hands out ahead of him and scratching restlessly at thin air as he moans.

"Bobby," Sam says again, gently enough to cut through Bobby's stupefaction better than any shout would. "You need to help me. I don't want to do anything that might spook him."

Sam is already shifting to get his feet underneath himself, easing himself and his brother up. Still speechless, Bobby nods, squats and slides himself down the crumbling earth bank until he's standing next to Dean and Dean looks right through, past and beyond him. He's shivering, making a strange clicking sound that Bobby realizes is his teeth chattering violently. He looks slowly away, to Sam. "What did he do?" he whispers finally, so thinly he can barely hear himself. "What did that crazy damned fool angel do?"

There are tears glistening on Sam's cheeks, and his teeth flash white in the darkness. "Love is stronger than death, that's what he said."

Dean's legs are boneless and buckling under him and Sam groans as he braces to take the extra weight. The smell of rot is strong, and Bobby reaches out a hand, touches cold, clammy, dirt-streaked flesh as the ragged blanket he used as a shroud falls away. "This isn't right," he says, and his eyes flick up to Sam's again as his instincts grind back into motion. "This isn't right," he repeats, tense now even if he desperately wants to believe, even if the nausea twisting his guts into a reef knot is undercut by joy. "He could be a revenant. Or a demon." He can't help moving closer though, pressing a hand to Dean's chest to feel the rapid thrum of what sounds like a live, human heart doing panic-stricken overtime. "Vade, Satana," he says anyway. "Inventor et magister omnis fallaciae…"

There's no reaction except for the glower Sam directs his way. "We need to be sure," Bobby defends.

After a second of consideration, Sam concedes. "We'll do the tests. Silver, holy water."

They're moving towards the house now, slow, shambling steps as Dean shudders and lurches between them in a way that makes Bobby think of Romero zombies, his feet tripping and dragging on the soil. He loses his legs again, makes a harsh sound of distress, his head lolling forward onto his chest, and in a swift fluid move, Sam is bending and scooping him up into his arms. Bobby's breath catches in his throat at the sight, because he's looking at a mirror image of what he looked at when they materialized out of nowhere three weeks before, and it's as wrong now as it was then.

Now they're closer to the light from the house Bobby can see that Dean's eyes are vacant, unfocused and wandering aimlessly. "I don't like this," he mutters as Sam makes his way slowly up the porch steps. "He wasn't like this the last time."

"He wasn't buried alive in his own coffin for a whole day the last time," Sam grunts, turning sideways to slide them in through the door. "And Cas was stronger then. Maybe he didn't have the juice to fix him up as well this time."

That opens up a whole new can of worms for Bobby, as he maneuvers past Sam and his armload and drops to his haunches to root through his backpack for what they need. "How do we know he isn't like you were?" he pushes, even if he doesn't want to think it. "How do we know Cas didn't screw it up this time too?"

Sam blanches as Bobby rises. "I'll know. Maybe not until he's compos mentis, but believe me, I'll know."

It's all they have right now, so Bobby sidetracks to what they can do. "Holy water first."

Sam nods, braces as Bobby unscrews the cap of the flask, tilts it and drips the contents in through Dean's lax lips. Dean flinches, God, no, before Bobby knows the relief of seeing the tip of his tongue poke out to lick at the water. "Easy, son," he croons gently, as he tips the flask up again, dribbling more of the water into Dean's mouth as he gulps the liquid greedily.

"The knife now."

Bobby glances up to see that Sam's eyes are watchful, his frame taut and ready even if the first test is done and his brother passed it with flying colors. He nods, tugs his shiv out of his hip pocket. He made it himself and the blade is pure silver, the edge vicious. "Jesus," he mutters as he lays it against the flesh of Dean's arm. "He stood here three years ago and did this to prove he was clean."

Sam's reply is parched. "Just do it."

Blood springs, bright scarlet beads of it, but Dean is still oblivious, his eyes still spinning in their sockets. "It's him," Bobby manages. "Christ, it's him, I think it's him…"

Sam is already pulling away, heading for the stairs. "I think he needs Cas," he throws back over his shoulder, somehow assured and calm. "We'll get him cleaned up later."

It takes several minutes for Sam to reach the top, Dean's arm swinging languidly just ahead of Bobby's face as they climb, and Bobby dodges around and ahead once they get there, pushes open the bedroom door. Castiel is where they left him, perfectly still, and Sam groans as he bends over to lower his burden down onto the bed next to the angel.

"He's in shock. We need blankets." Sam glances back. "Bobby."

Bobby shakes himself, crosses to the closet and starts pulling out quilts as Sam starts maneuvering the jeans down Dean's legs. Once he's stripped down to his boxers, Sam tugs the bedclothes down from under his brother and covers him, Bobby spreading more bedding on top of the pair.

And it's done, and in the space of an hour everything has changed, whether for the better or not Bobby has no idea.

Sam moves to stand next to him, and he huffs out a laugh that might be horrified. "What did he do?" he says, and it's an awestruck echo of Bobby's own incredulity out at the gravesite. He puts his hand up to his mouth, his composure draining away suddenly, and he reels on his feet so that Bobby has to reach for his arm.

"Steady, boy."

Bobby hooks the chair with his other hand, drags it up behind Sam, and Sam slumps into it, his eyes still fixed to his brother in the bed. "I don't believe it," he mumbles. "I don't believe it."

A drink is what the boy needs, Bobby thinks, and they need to get fluids into Dean. But there's something he needs to do first.

He rounds the end of the bed, and treads softly up to the head end, sits on the edge of the mattress and puts his hand on Castiel's shoulder. "Cas," he whispers, giving the insensate man a gentle push, and then another, until he groans and his eyelids crack open. "Cas, you with us?"

Castiel blinks at him a couple of times, slurs, "It wasn't a dream," as pain floods his eyes and his face falls back into grief.

Bobby nods. "We know, son," he says. He doesn't know how he gets the words out past the swelling in his throat, and anxiety might be dancing a jig inside him, but he smiles through it even though he thought he had forgotten how to smile. "Look. You stupid goddamn angel, look. Look what you did."

After staring back at Bobby long and hard, and puzzled too, something seems to dawn on Castiel's face. He frowns, twists his head to his left, and freezes for an endless moment before his features relax.

He doesn't speak, starts clumsily shifting himself onto his side, and Bobby splays his hand out on his upper back to support him in the maneuver as Castiel slides his palm across Dean's chest to fit it to the handprint scar that still mars Dean's skin. He dips his face in to press his mouth to Dean's shoulder and sighs quietly, a miniscule expression of relief that sends his whole frame sagging and settling against Dean as he closes his eyes again.

Bobby isn't a sentimental man, but he finds he's blinking hard and biting the skin inside his cheeks as he stands and glances over at Sam, sees that the younger man's expression is still dumbfounded, his jaw slack.

"I guess now we wait," Bobby manages.



Episode 24: Redemption (part III)