Map of the World: August 7

So, what’s it gonna be?

—Day 4—

“Cas?”

Jerked awake at the unexpected noise, Castiel fights down the instinctive panic, blinking uncertainly into the gloom of the room, barely lightened by the weak grey light beginning to spill through the window. Which means it’s less than an hour before dawn, a time he didn’t expect to ever see again.

Far more unsettling, he’s beginning to suspect there’s been more than one of them.

“You awake?” the same voice asks with a ripple of amused annoyance, adding a discordant rap of knuckles against wood. Still frowning, he follows it to the doorway, where a familiar body slumps against the wall, idly looping a beaded string around one wrist.

“No,” he answers deliberately, tempted to bury himself in the couch cushions and refuse to emerge until she goes away. It won’t work, but he can’t think of a reason not to at least try. “Go away, Vera.”

“And good morning to you, Cas,” Vera answers brightly, letting the beads drop and crossing to perch on the arm of the couch, boots knocking his feet out of her way. Resting an elbow on her knees, she smiles down at him. “Long night?”

“What are you doing here?” Sitting up, he’s almost painfully aware of the fact that despite his best efforts to the contrary, he’s somehow managed to achieve perfect sobriety, and he’s not sure how he allowed that to happen. There’s also something wrong with the room, though he can’t make himself focus enough to work out what with Vera staring at him. Peering up at her, he takes in the twists of hair piled into a messy knot away from a tired-looking face, the dark skin, like her unbuttoned jacket, jeans, and boots, liberally sprinkled with dirt and dust. Distracted, his gaze drops to the worn grey t-shirt, noting her sidearm in its shoulder holster, and flickers a glance at the doorway, where her rifle leans against the wall. “You’re on patrol?”

“Just got back.” She reaches up to push a stray twist back into the loose knot of locked hair before fixing him with cool brown eyes. “You don’t remember?”

“I remember everything.” It’s true, even if at this moment he’s not quite able to retrieve the specific memory. As far as he knows, she wasn’t assigned to any patrols this week. And what is wrong with the room? Scanning it, he tries and fails to identify the discrepancy. “Is there something—”

“I’ll give you this,” she interrupts casually, crossing her legs. “I probably wouldn’t have noticed if you weren’t so shitty at covering your tracks. What the hell are you doing?”

Castiel keeps his expression neutral as he frantically attempts to recall the last one—two?—three days of memories, searching for some kind of context.

“Let’s make this easy on us both,” Vera continues flatly. “Hour after dusk to an hour before dawn, you’re stealth searching the entire goddamn city for Dean. I get it, you want to find him, everyone does, but going alone to Kansas City every night—Jesus Christ, even you’re not usually that stupid!”

“Why would you think—”

“Jeep’s still warm,” she says flatly. “I checked before I got here. Wanna try again?”

Castiel doesn’t flicker a glance in search of his pants. They could, quite literally, be anywhere in this camp, and in any case, their location is now apparently separate from that of his keys. Vera waits for a few pregnant moments before finally saying with an unmistakable quaver in her voice, “Cas, tell me—here, you can lie to me—that you aren’t going to the city while you’re fucked up—”

“Unless you wish to count speed, no.” The faint unease blossoms into panic between one breath and the next as the last three days begin to fall into place with an almost audible click. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Because three days of no sleep, that’s good for you,” she says acidly, but the relief in her voice strips the words of any heat. “Cas, why—I mean, I get it, it’s Dean, but come on. I know you can take care of yourself, but—look, right now, we can’t afford you—” She hesitates so briefly that he almost misses it, “—anyone taking that kind of risk right now. You know Dean’s orders as well as I do.”

“And I’m famous for my obedience.” The jeep is in the garage, she checked, but he’s going to need more than that. “Has anyone else noticed—”

“You being more than normally crazy?” Vera asks, rolling her eyes. “Protip: subtle is not telling everyone to leave you alone because you want to spend some time praying for your various sins in alphabetical order. Or was it by severity?”

“That would require far more than three days to accomplish.” He can guess who might have thought that was funny, and he must have been very high to have actually said it. “Has anyone been to Dean’s cabin?”

“Of course not. I told everyone, it’s fine.” He blinks slowly at that, focusing on her serious expression. “Cas, he’s alive. I know that, you know that, everyone knows that. I get it’s hard to wait, but—”

“We can’t afford for me to leave the camp.” Vera nods distractedly, glancing toward the door, and he notes the darkening circles beneath her eyes that he missed earlier, the weary slump of her shoulders beneath the oversized olive Army jacket, the barely-there tremble of hands locked together to hide it, but while bloodshot, the brown eyes are unnaturally alert for this early in the morning. “You look tired. Is patrol more active than usual?”

No, it’s fine,” she answers dismissively, turning to face him with a quick smile, though one leg begins to bounce impatiently. “Pretty quiet, actually, Amanda and Mel say day’s about the same, though, so no idea.
Look, I need to—”

“Give me a minute.” Tossing the blanket aside, he ignores her annoyed sigh as he tugs a pair of jeans from under the couch that on brief examination may even be his own. “When did Mel join the local patrol?”

“A couple of days ago,” she answers impatiently, then winces before adding, “We had to keep patrol going. She volunteered.”

“Excellent idea,” he tells her, standing up to pull on the jeans and make his way across the almost obstruction-free floor to the kitchen to count the number of bottles piled neatly by the trash can, then in the sink and the floor beside it before taking in the entire kitchen, feeling vaguely unsettled by the amount of visible floorspace. “Whose was it again?”

“What?” Vera asks from the living room, sounding strained; a glance shows her frowning toward the doorway again. “I gotta go, so can we—”

“Indulge me.” Three days, what was he doing, why would Dean be going to the city; he can be stupid, but it usually involves some form of logic, however incomprehensible it might be to anyone but himself. Opening the door to the small utility closet where he keeps his books, he notes the six missing on a glance, reviewing their subject matter and finding the common theme before he closes it. Turning around, he sees Vera standing by the couch, eyes nervously darting between him and the doorway. “You’re expecting someone?”

“No, why would I—” She shifts in place, rubbing her hands along her thighs nervously as Castiel takes in the room again and finally realizes what’s bothering him about it. “Just tired. Uh—”

“Has it been this clean every morning?” Dropping his gaze to the rug, he wonders uneasily if it’s always been that color. Or for that matter, if he’s always had a rug.

“Yeah, I was wondering about that,” she answers, looking around with a baffled expression. “Are you drunk cleaning or something? You do that?”

“That’s really the only explanation.” Concentration is so difficult when there’s so much to deal with at once. “Did you say the jeep was still warm?”

Vera shifts her weight uncomfortably, but she nods. “Yeah, that’s why—”

“Yes, why you went to find out. Because every morning I was here an hour before dawn, you knew that, because every morning you checked. And apparently right before dusk, though that must be a guess, since night shift goes on duty at dusk.”

She stills, brown eyes widening briefly, before she nods again, raising her chin. “I was worried. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“You could have asked Amanda to watch me,” he says, leaning his shoulder against the kitchen door. “She would have been happy to oblige.”

“You said—” She grimaces. “Look, she was respecting your privacy, okay? Whatever happened in Kansas City—I get you don’t want to talk about it yet, fine.”

“The camp is running smoothly?” he asks, never looking away from her face. “No panic, worry, belated realization that with Dean missing and all of

his lieutenants dead we lack even a rudimentary command structure…” He closes his eyes at the way she stares at the wall just over his shoulder. “Please tell me I should be congratulating you on carrying out a successful coup on Chitaqua and you wish to be referred to as ‘Your Dread Majesty’.”

“It wasn’t a coup,” she says deliberately. “More a re-organization based on our existing resources, which I don’t know if you noticed, don’t include four of Dean’s lieutenants and there’s some uncertainty on the exact location of our leader. You had a better idea, you should have voted.”

“There was a vote—you were being facetious, thank you, that helps.” Spying a t-shirt by the closed bedroom door, he snatches it from the floor, tugging it impatiently over his head. “I don’t have time for this, so if you would, please explain who is currently in charge of Chitaqua since all of Dean’s lieutenants are dead in Kansas City?”

“Four of them are dead,” she corrects him. “One of them came back.”

She glances toward the door, expression melting into resignation, and following her gaze, he sees the four people—presumably the day shift—standing outside, milling nervously near the sagging steps of the porch in the sullen grey light of morning. Biting her lip, Vera goes to the door, leaning out to shout, “Five minutes!” before glancing at him, expression the familiar mixture of resignation and disappointment he’s seen it on Dean’s face more times than he can count.

Taking a deep breath, she crosses the room, coming to a stop only a few feet away.

“They think I’m getting orders from you,” she says simply. “Now, you got a choice.”

Amanda, blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, glances toward the cabin, and for a moment, the blue-green eyes meet his; he looks away. “The answer is no.”

“You get your goddamn gun, walk outside, and give them their orders,” she continues flatly. “Or tell them I lied, you’re opting out, and good luck with that survival thing, because I’m sure as fuck not doing this for you.”

Castiel jerks his gaze back to Vera. “Why not? You’ve done an excellent job so far.”

“Fuck you,” she answers, brown eyes hardening. “Playtime’s over, Castiel; time to deal. What are you gonna do?”

Outside, Mel and David are talking, flickering nervous glances toward the cabin, expressions tight with growing worry as the sun begins its ascent into the sky, and beyond them are the walls of Chitaqua and the hum of the wards that protect them. It doesn’t matter, he wants to tell her; the world’s already over and they’re already dead. All they’re doing now is marking time until the end.

“You said the local patrols have been unusually quiet?”

Vera starts. “Yeah. We checked twenty-five miles out, and there’s nothing.”

What would Dean do, he thinks, ignoring the slice of pain for later; what Dean would do would know what he’s doing. What would he ask, what would he need to know, what would he do—

“Patrol is suspended until further notice,” he says. “I need a full report of everything—and I do mean everything—that’s happened since we left for Kansas City. Everyone who was on patrol is to meet me here at noon and be ready to answer for every moment of their shifts.”

She frowns. “Why—”

“The camp will be locked down for the next forty-eight hours,” he continues, trying to think of anything he might be missing. He’s lived here all his mortal life; he should know this. “The watch will be informed that anyone trying to enter or leave should be shot on sight.” Vera sucks in a shocked breath, which reminds him of what she said about the jeep. “Wake up Sheila and tell her to temporarily disable all the vehicles, and she and Frederick are to find and confiscate every set of keys we have and bring them here by dusk. I know how many we should have and if a set is missing, I’ll want to know why.”

In the silence that follows, he sees his belt, coiled neatly on a nearby chair, and picks it up, threading it through the belt loops before pulling his gun from under a cushion of the couch. Checking it automatically, he pauses, remembering the first time Dean handed him a gun and told him it was time he learned how to use it.

“Cas,” Vera says slowly, “what happened in Kansas City?”

Dean said: Cas, it’s just you and me now. If we’re gonna do this, you have to learn everything you can.

“The team leaders were killed,” he tells her, sliding it into the holster before retrieving his knife from under a pillow. “Dean’s orders were for anyone who survived the confrontation to secure the camp until he was able to make contact.”

“He survived?” Vera licks her lips nervously. “You’re sure?”

Otherwise, you’re useless to me. So, what’s it gonna be?

“He’s alive,” Castiel answers, meeting her eyes. “Until he returns, his last order will be obeyed.”

Vera closes her eyes, shoulders slumping in visible relief. “Okay. Anything else?”

“I need to check the wards this morning, so I’ll be unavailable until noon,” he starts, then remembers the day shift is waiting outside for his orders. He doesn’t know anything—what he might have missed, what will need clarification, what he’s forgotten, what he doesn’t even know to tell them.

Closing his eyes, he thinks: I can’t do this.

“Cas?” Vera says quietly, and he feels a nudge against his arm. “You ready?”

Opening his eyes, he looks at the doorway to this tiny world within the protection of the wards. He has to be ready, because all they have is now. He has to be ready, he has to be, because the world is over and Dean’s dead, but asleep in his cabin is a man who doesn’t have anyone else.

So, what’s it gonna be?

“Yes,” he breathes. “I am.”

---

The maintenance of the camp’s wards is one of the few duties he never relinquished, a routine so ingrained that he could do it in his sleep. Making a clean cut across his palm over the half-healed wound from Kansas City, he mechanically swipes his fingers across the key before stepping back, but finds himself staring at the bright streak of crimson, glistening in the thin grey light of early morning.

Distantly, he hears the thud of the knife dropping from fingers gone numb, but all he can think is that Dean’s been dead three days and he’s still checking the wards as if he’s not.

Abruptly, he finds himself seated on the rocky ground, unable to draw a full breath; the world’s over and Dean’s dead, but he’s not.

Pressing his forehead to his knees, a choked sound claws itself free of his throat and spills into the air; another follows, and another, and he can’t stop it or even control it, vomiting jagged-edged sobs it hurts to make and even more to hear.

It’s obscene, that he can possibly be alive in a world where Dean isn’t; it’s impossible, that he can live when most of him died three day ago and burned to ash before his eyes. Whatever this is can’t possibly be called living.

He can’t do this, he can’t survive this, no one could expect it of him. He can’t. He can’t.

---

Castiel quietly opens the unlocked door of Dean Winchester’s cabin and slips inside, bone-deep exhaustion making every passing second feel like forever. It’s only been three hours since dawn, but years have passed since he woke up in a world that should have already been dead.

Tiredly, he forces himself to recall what he needs to tell this man, to make him understand; even through the numbness, he feels a flicker of hatred for whoever sent him here after winning his own Apocalypse, forcing him to experience the slow death of a world that lost.

Taking a deep breath, he turns around to see him exactly where he was when he checked this morning on his way to the wards. Slumped over the scarred table, head pillowed on the open pages of one of the books that Castiel so helpfully provided him between equally helpful joints, he seems every minute on the verge of tumbling from the chair and onto the floor. From the quantity of drool and the soft sounds that he’s certain Dean would deny could be anything like snores, it’s possible his only reaction would be to go back to sleep.

Despite the sleep-flushed cheeks, he looks paler than he did three days ago, faint blue circles growing beneath red-rimmed eyes. It’s not a surprise, now that he considers what kind of schedule Dean’s keeping; spending his days reading in this cabin or engaged in trading vodka and whiskey for answers to his endless questions, and his nights searching Kansas City with a stolen jeep doesn’t leave much time for something as mundane as sleep.

Castiel pauses, the room blurring unexpectedly as he takes in what this Dean’s wearing, eyes dropping to the sagging waist of his jeans he arrived in, t-shirt rucked up to reveal a narrow strip of pale skin, then down to the dingy white socks emerging beneath the frayed hem. A quick scan of the table reveals nothing, and before he realizes what he’s doing, he’s opening the closet door to stare at the pristine collection of Dean’s weapons; the only ones that are missing are the ones he took to Kansas City three days ago.

There’s an arsenal in the jeep, he reminds himself, but he doesn’t think that during that drive to Kansas City that it came up in conversation.

Returning to the front room, Castiel watches blankly as Dean—this is Dean, not the same, no, but Dean—mumbles wordlessly into the pages of the book, smacking his lips before sinking back into sleep with a wet sigh; he was in Kansas City for three nights, unarmed and alone, in the same place that one Dean Winchester already died and Lucifer would choose to begin the dawn of his reign.

Dean could have died at any time in the last three days, and he might have awoken this morning to Vera telling him a jeep is missing and an empty cabin; Vera might not have told him anything, and he never would have known that Dean was dead at all.

Castiel could have died in Kansas City that night and never knew this Dean was even here.

Pushing the table back, he kicks the chair out from under Dean, watching as the green eyes slit open in belated alarm before he hits the floor hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Disoriented, Dean doesn’t move for a moment, trying to catch his breath, before he slowly sits up, scanning the room in bewilderment until he sees Castiel leaning against the edge of the table. “Cas? What—”

“Shut up,” Castiel answers, lazily retrieving the chair before planting a foot in Dean’s chest and shoving him back to the floor. Ignoring his grunt of pain, he sets the chair on top of him, the legs pinning his arms to his sides. Before Dean can gather himself to throw it off—he isn’t used to living in a warzone, Castiel reflects—he sits down and crosses his arms over the back to peer down at Dean’s reddened, outraged face, eyes still wide in almost comical surprise. “Good morning, Dean. How are you this morning?”

“What the fuck—” Dean shouts, shoulders just coming off the floor in belated reaction and hitting the metal slats with a hollow sound before thumping back onto the floor. Castiel watches Dean struggle for a few moments before planting a foot in his shoulder and pushing him back to the floor. Blinking, Dean stares up at him, the furious green eyes wary: good. “Cas? Why—”

“I already knew you were far slower than he was,” Castiel says conversationally, “but I thought I could use the practice. I didn’t realize how optimistic it was to assume you were capable of being even that.”

“Let me go,” Dean grates out, voice trailing off into a groan when Castiel increases the pressure on his shoulder. “Cas—!”

“You’re stupider than he was as well: imagine my surprise.” Drawing his knife, Castiel leans farther down, ignoring the audible gasp as he shifts his foot enough to slit Dean’s left sleeve to the shoulder, taking in the familiar symbols, almost impressed with himself considering how drunk he was when he came up with that. The black ink from the marker that Castiel vaguely remembers using to draw the sigils on his arm is faded enough that it probably won’t last until sunset. “Dean,” he says, straightening, “this is possibly the most important question I will ask you, so pay careful attention. What are you willing to risk to test which of you is better at lying to me?”

Dean seems to also lack the ability to control his expression, which might make this somewhat easier. “I’m not gonna lie. Now you gonna tell me what the fuck you’re doing?”

“I was visited by a very annoying revelation this morning,” Castiel answers. “I wasn’t so drunk that I don’t remember how many times you asked me to help you, but my impaired judgment meant that I didn’t realize what you were actually doing. Unfortunately, sobriety assaulted me at dawn, and you’ll pay the price for it. The books and that symbol I understand, but what exactly did you think you were going to accomplish going into the city alone for the last three nights?”

“What the fuck do you think?” Dean asks incredulously. “I was trying to find the place where I appeared so I could figure out how to get back!”

While he guessed the reason Dean was going into the city, it hadn’t occurred to him that Dean might not even know where it was he had appeared.

“—you weren’t really all that helpful when it came to research.
What the hell was I supposed to do?”

“I was apparently extremely helpful with your research,” he says numbly, trying to think. “I remember answering every one of your increasingly inane questions.” Dean glares up at him. “In fact, I remember being very specific when you asked me how you could get back.”

“You told me to try prayer,” Dean answers bitterly. “That was a lot of help, thanks.”

“That’s because prayer is your most likely source of assistance, which is saying something.” Dean starts to answer, but he cuts him off. “I thought I explained this to you.”

“You were kind of busy doing lines of shots,” Dean answers contemptuously, and one knee comes up hard against the seat of the chair; Castiel shifts his balance automatically and considers kicking him somewhere non-damaging but very, very painful before he injures himself. “So if you don’t mind—”

Castiel savagely increases the pressure on Dean’s shoulder, waiting for the stifled gasp before easing.

“If you move again, I’ll dislocate your shoulder. Do you believe me?” Panting as Castiel slowly eases the pressure, Dean nods; he isn’t, at this moment, lying. “I told you it couldn’t be done. Did you bother listening to the entire explanation or were you too busy lining up more shots for me?”

“Fuck you,” Dean says, looking away, but not before Castiel sees the trace of guilt in his eyes. “Let me up!”

“I’ll try again,” Castiel says. “This time, pay attention. Your arrival was caused by a deliberate manipulation of spacetime by someone who has the ability to both see and control it. You’re human, and your mind isn’t designed to even comprehend the multiplicity of time in its entirety, much less hope to manipulate it with any degree of success.” He flickers a glance at the books, guessing by number in each stack which ones Dean managed to read. “You’ve read enough by now to know what I’m telling you is true.”

Dean licks his lips, looking marginally less certain. “Then I need to find out who did this, or somebody else who can fix it.”

“That would be useful,” Castiel agrees. “However, there is a problem with that plan, such as it is. There is no one left who can.”

“Bullshit,” Dean breathes, face the color of chalk “There’s gotta be a way, someone—something—”

“The gods were slaughtered,” he interrupts, surprised by the effort it takes to keep his voice steady. “Lucifer was thorough; those who could leave did so, and the rest were hunted down and killed when they were found. When the Host left—” he pauses, horrified by the break in his voice and forces himself to continue, “—when the Host left, those that still lived destroyed themselves rather than face what he would do to them. Only an angel or a god would have the power to do this, and here, there are none left.”

“How do you know?”

Castiel fights a brief, bitter battle for control of his voice before he answers. “I know.”

“But—”

“Your lack of faith is devastating,” Castiel interrupts. “It’s also irrelevant. You went alone and unarmed into a city that’s populated almost entirely by not just Croatoans and demons, but a variety of supernatural entities without any idea of where it was that you manifested—”

“I was careful,” Dean snaps defensively. “Not that it mattered, there was nothing around.” He rolls his eyes at Castiel’s expression. “I’m a hunter, Cas. I know what I’m doing.”

Dean would think that. “If you’re attacked,” he asks, tilting his head, “how does this story end?”

“I just told you—”

“Humor me. If you’re attacked, what do you think happens next?”

“You care if I’m killed?” Dean responds bitterly. “Seriously?”

“Lucifer’s minions have tried for some time to breach the defenses that were designed to protect this camp and failed. The lack of success has been a constant source of frustration, not least because of the simplicity.”

“What does that have to do with—”

“The only way to do it was simple,” Castiel continues, resting his elbows on his knees again and looking into Dean’s eyes. “Ironically enough, the key only requires one thing: Dean Winchester’s blood, freely given.”

Dean’s expression melts into a frown. “I don’t—”

“When you go alone into the city,” Castiel says softly, “being killed would be the preferable option but it is extremely unlikely. Anyone who found you would have no reason not to curry favor with the one who won the war. Now tell me, Dean, how this story ends.”

“They’ll give me to Lucifer.” Dean stares up at Castiel with growing incredulity. “You think I—”

“Your tolerance for pain, not to mention your experience with torture, would be a challenge even for him,” he admits, ignoring Dean’s flinch. “Especially considering ‘freely given’ is subject to interpretation. But I doubt he’d need to resort to such time-consuming measures when there’s a much easier option available.”

Dean mouth shuts with a click.

“I lied to you.” Castiel watches as the color drains from Dean’s face. “There is someone left who has both the ability and the power to manipulate space and time. All that would be required is meeting the price he would set in payment for the favor. How does this story end, Dean?”

“You think I’d deal with him?” Dean says, voice blank with disbelief. “Cas, you can’t think I’d ever—”

“Make a deal with Hell?” Castiel tilts his head. “Of course you would. You’ve done it before, and this time, it won’t even cost you your soul to do it. Just those of everyone here, as we don’t have the good fortune of being your brother.”

Dean’s mouth works soundlessly for a moment. “You son of a bitch! I—”

“After all that we have given,” Castiel says softly, implacably, “and all that we have lost, I will not permit you to shorten what little time that remains to us. He will not breach the boundaries of this camp until there is no one and nothing left for him to take. Do you understand me, Dean?”

Dean doesn’t answer, eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. Finally, he takes a long breath, looking at Castiel with an expression that he doesn’t think he will ever be able to forget.

“Yeah,” he answers, meeting Castiel’s eyes. “I do.”

“I don’t trust you, and that’s a problem. I can’t let you leave the camp without assuring our immediate and messy deaths at Lucifer’s leisure, but if anyone in the camp were to discover that you were here…” He glances at Dean’s arm, almost painfully grateful that Dean had both thought of the need for concealment and approached Castiel at a time when he was least likely to wonder if what Dean wanted was even possible. “I can’t predict what the response would be to your presence now, and I don’t intend to test it.”

Dean doesn’t move, green eyes fixed on him. “Are you gonna kill me?”

“There are advantages to being an addict,” he says quietly, watching the color drain from Dean’s face. “I have a great deal of experience with narcotics.”

“Accidental overdose to keep your conscience clear?”

“Nothing so final. I can promise you it will be a very pleasant way to live whatever time we have left. Far better than that of anyone else in this world.”

“Why the hell are you even asking? So you’ll feel better about it? You think I don’t get—” Dean stills, head falling back against the floor. “Fuck you, Cas,” he breathes, staring at the ceiling. “He wouldn’t have to deal. All he’d have to do is show up at the gate with me and every fucking person here would walk out of their own free will. Right?”

Castiel nods slowly. “You understand now why you are a problem.”

“I didn’t think…” Dean closes his eyes and abruptly stops fighting. “I didn’t think I was risking anything but myself.”

“Now you know differently.” Castiel takes a careful breath; he can’t afford to make a mistake now. “So are you ready to negotiate the terms of your residence here?”

Dean blinks, surprised and wary. “What?”

“They are simple. First, you will remain within the confines of the camp at all times and make no attempt to leave. Before full dark, you will return to my cabin for the night,” he answers, watching him carefully. “Don’t look so horrified; I assure you I won’t be there when you are. Otherwise, your time is your own to do with as you please. As long as you wear those sigils and avoid egregious errors, you should remain undetected in the camp. No one can know you are here, Dean; when you are not within the confines of this cabin or mine, you must be careful. Do you agree to these terms?”

“Or you’ll drug me to death?”

“Or I may as well kill everyone here immediately; it’s a kinder fate than what Lucifer has prepared for us. Your choice.”

Dean’s jaw locks for a minute, and Castiel fondly hopes that Dean will take that literally. “Okay.”

“Then we have a deal.” Standing up, Castiel removes the chair and steps back, watching Dean sit up warily, hands deceptively loose at his sides. “There are seven hours left in the day. What you do—” As expected, Dean’s on his feet before he finishes the sentence; catching the punch easily, Castiel turns him before shoving him into the wall hard enough to knock the breath out of him. “That was incredibly stupid.”

Before Dean regains his balance, Castiel pins his hips and twists his arm up and behind his back, ignoring the grunt of pain. Even relatively immobilized, Dean continues to struggle for several long seconds before Castiel feels him go still.

“I told you that you weren’t as fast as he was,” Castiel tells him. “What I didn’t tell you is that neither of you will ever be as fast as I am. He was very good, and he could compensate for that. You aren’t, and you can’t.” Freeing his wrist, Castiel turns him, holding him there effortlessly with one hand against his chest. “Are you done?”

Dean blows out a breath, mouth a rigid line, then nods shortly, and Castiel lets him go. Stepping back, he watches Dean straighten, aware of the way the green eyes tracking him with the cool evaluation of a hunter.

After a few long seconds, Dean says, “What the hell are you?”

“I Fell,” he answers. “It didn’t make me human.”

“Not even close.” Dean crosses his arms. “I mean, I get why you decided to hide it. I liked you better as a junkie, too.”

Dean’s aim has never been less than flawless, cutting into the raw edges of an open wound that even time could not bother itself to heal. He doesn’t understand how after all this time it can still hurt like this. “Is there anything else?”

“You know that the deal we made isn’t binding,” Dean says. “Contracts require I know what I’m dealing with, and I thought you were human.”

Of course Dean would see it that way, of course he would. “For my purposes, your word is sufficient.”

“Why the hell should I keep it?”

Turning around, Castiel forces himself to meet Dean’s eyes. “Because you know the danger it would be to everyone in this camp should you break it, and I trust you to protect them the way you wouldn’t bother to protect yourself.”

“That’s not what I meant!” Dean almost looks uncomfortable. “Cas, look, I didn’t—”

“I know the value of a hunter’s word,” Castiel says, choosing each word for maximum impact. “That’s why I will not be at the cabin when you are there.”

“What?”

“Eventually I have to sleep, and I would prefer to do so with some assurance I’ll wake up.”

“You think…” Dean stares at him. “I’m not gonna kill you, Cas, Jesus!”

“Do you give your word?” Castiel asks, smiling slowly at Dean’s horror. “Unless I take your soul as collateral, why on earth should you keep it?”

Opening the door, Castiel goes out, just avoiding slamming it closed behind him and cutting off whatever Dean might say to that. He’s halfway to his cabin when he realizes that his day has just begun, and somehow, he has to get through the rest of it.