Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

POV: Dean

The fog was thick enough to cut with a knife, clinging to everything like it had nothing better to do. Dean worked by feel more than sight, muscle memory kicking in while the world still slept. Pre-dawn, cold, quiet. Perfect time to go monster-hunting.

Baby stood steady, black coat already damp with mist. Dean had raised her from a foal. She was strong, smart, stubborn, and easily top three on the list of creatures Dean trusted not to get him killed. More than that, she knew every damn road between here and Celestia like she'd walked them in her sleep. Dad's training, passed down through her bloodline. Warhorses that could find their way home even if you dropped them blindfolded in the middle of nowhere. Baby had dragged his sorry ass back to safety more times than he liked to admit. Honestly, he liked her better than most people.

"Easy, girl," he muttered, checking her girth strap one more time. Her breath steamed in the cold air, mixing with his own as he worked. The leather was stiff and cold under his fingers, but it smelled right: horse and oil and home. 

Dean packed light: iron bell wrapped in cloth (because mimicras hated the stuff), healing salve that smelled of goldenroot, his Dad’s silver-edged dagger, water, and enough dried meat to last a couple days if things went sideways. His sword hung at his side, familiar weight that had kept him breathing this long.

"Leaving without telling the council?"

Ellen's voice cut through the quiet. Dean didn't look up from Baby's bridle. Course she'd show up. Woman had a sixth sense for when he was about to do something stupid.

"The council would spend three hours debating whose problem this officially is while more kids disappear," he said. "I'd rather skip the discussion and go kill the damn thing.”

Ellen stepped into the stable, and Dean caught the scent of fresh bread clinging to her clothes. She'd ridden from her inn in the pre-dawn darkness just to catch him. Probably figured he'd try to sneak out like a teenager. She wasn't wrong.

"You could take a patrol," she said. It was a formality. They both knew he wouldn’t.

"Adam thinks going alone is smarter." Dean adjusted Baby's stirrups, the leather creaking softly. "Says a patrol might look like provocation to Celestia. Last thing we need is them thinking we're planning an invasion over one creature."

Ellen's expression went tight. "And you agree with him?"

Dean paused. It made sense, politically. Adam got the diplomatic crap, had been handling the supply runs and border relations for months now. Which had been weird, honestly. His half-brother had always thought the aid shipments were a waste of resources, called them weakness. But last year, Adam had come to him with what seemed like genuine understanding. "You're right," he'd said. "It's about showing them we're not monsters." Dean had wanted to believe it.

"It's not a bad point," Dean said, more to convince himself than Ellen. "One guy tracking a creature doesn’t start a war. A squad of armed riders? Could be read wrong."

Ellen didn’t argue. Instead, she handed him something wrapped in cloth. "Here," she said. "From Jo. She said you're an idiot, but you shouldn't starve while you're being one."

Dean took it. Still warm. Bread, cheese, probably dried apples…Jo’s idea of battlefield rations.

He cleared his throat and gave a little nod like that was all it deserved. “Tell her thanks,” he said. “And… yeah. She’s probably not wrong about the idiot part.”

Ellen's mouth almost smiled. Almost. "I've read the reports from Adam," she continued, voice careful now. "This thing sounds dangerous."

That much Dean believed. Adam might be cold and calculating, but he wasn't squeamish. If he said the monster needed stopping, it needed stopping.

"All the more reason to handle it quietly," Dean said, swinging into the saddle. Baby shifted beneath him, eager to move. "Quick, clean, no international incidents."

The last war had been inevitable. Hell, most wars were when you had two sides who couldn't agree on the color of the sky. Their ancestors couldn't figure out how to run things, so they'd split the kingdom like kids dividing up toys. Celestia wanted magic for everything—spell the crops, wave your hands and build cities, why work when you can just make stuff happen? Earden had seen where that led. Fields that turned to ash, cities that crumbled when the spells failed. Magic always had a price, and someone else always paid it.

Now Celestia's magic was eating their fields alive, and instead of admitting they'd screwed up, they figured conquest was easier. Typical.

Ellen crossed her arms. "Or maybe someone wants you thinking that."

Dean's jaw tightened. The thought had crossed his mind more than once. But what was the alternative? Assume his own brother was setting him up? He and Adam had never been close, they were more like cautious allies than family, but that didn't make him a traitor.

"His logic tracks," Dean said, mostly to himself. "Better safe than dragged into another war."

The fog had thickened, curling in close. Dean could taste it, feel it creeping under his collar. Baby flicked her ears, listening to things he couldn’t hear.

"You still think it’s a mimicra?" Ellen asked.

"Fits the profile." Dean adjusted his grip on the reins. "People hear voices in the woods, always someone they trust. Thing's got caves to hide in near the mountains. And the disappearances..." He shrugged, but it felt heavier than it should. "Kids just gone. No bodies, no traces. That's mimicra work."

Mimicras were nasty. Dean had only seen one before, years ago near the Celestian border, and that had been enough. The damn thing had used his Dad's voice to try to lure him into an ambush. Still gave him nightmares.

Ellen's face was grim. "Mimicras don’t just appear out of thin air.”

"No, they don't." Dean gathered the reins, leather warm under his palms now. "Dark magic creates them. Someone sent it. Question is whether it's Michael testing our defenses, or something worse."  

More magical solutions to political problems. Because when had that ever gone wrong for Celestia?

Ellen stepped closer, worry written all over her face. "You don't have to do this alone, Dean. You're the king. There are people who'd follow you into hell without question."

"I know." And he did. Problem was, those were the same people who'd die following him, and Dean had seen enough good men die for his choices. Ten years on the throne, and he still remembered every face, every name of the men who'd fallen because a sixteen-year-old boy had to become a king overnight.

Sam had been twelve when he vanished. Twelve, still small enough that Dean could ruffle his hair, still young enough to hero-worship his screw-up older brother. Now Dean had an entire kingdom looking to him for protection, and all he could think about was how he'd failed the one person who'd mattered most. 

"But this makes sense," he said, shoving that thought down where it belonged. "One rider, in and out, no fuss. Adam's right about avoiding provocations."

"Just... be careful." Ellen's voice carried years of worry, of watching him ride out into danger too many times to count.

"Always am." Dean grinned, sharp and tired. "And Baby’s got better instincts than I do. She’ll drag me back if I get stupid."

Baby snorted, like she was agreeing with that assessment.

Dean clicked his tongue and they stepped forward into the gray nothing. His sword bumped against his leg, familiar and reassuring. Ellen's food filled his saddlebag with the promise of something better than dried meat.

The castle vanished behind them in the fog. Baby's hooves went from stone to dirt as they hit the forest path. Her steps were sure. Dean let her lead.

Somewhere out there, a mimicra was calling to kids in the voices of people they loved while Dean sat through council meetings and listened to old men argue about grain shipments.

No more.

Trees appeared through the fog, marking where civilization ended and the real world began. Dean had been hunting monsters in these woods since he was six, first with his father, then alone after the crown landed on his shoulders. Back when he was a kid, it had been training. Now it was the only time he felt like himself instead of a king. 

Still, mimicras were different. Smarter. They screwed with your head before they killed you, used the voices you loved most as weapons. 

And if someone had set it loose on purpose, well... that was a whole different kind of hunt.

He rode deeper into the trees, hand resting on his sword, fog swallowing the world around him.

Behind him, the last trace of home disappeared into the mist.

Chapter Text

POV: Castiel

The forest felt wrong.

Castiel couldn't shake the sensation as he followed his squad deeper into the borderlands, his boots sinking into moss that squelched wetly beneath each step. Moisture pooled at his collarbone, unnoticed until it trickled cold down his spine. Above, storm clouds had swallowed the sun whole, turning midday into something closer to dusk.

The injury from yesterday's training session with Raphael restricted his breathing. The pain was manageable, but it would impair his combat effectiveness.

The old scar beneath ran deeper, though. That one came from training years ago, when he'd been just another war orphan shaped into a weapon by Celestia's war machine. They'd told him his parents died in an Earden raid. He had spent years channeling that grief into perfecting his swordwork.

Castiel shifted his grip on his weapon's hilt, trying to find a position that didn't send sharp twinges through his torso. The familiar weight of steel at his side should have been comforting, but today it felt heavier than usual—much like the tension radiating from Uriel ahead of him, who moved with the focused intensity of a hunting hound.

His commander's shoulders were rigid beneath his mail, every line of his body screaming tension. That alone set Castiel's nerves on edge. 

Castiel had learned to read his superiors over the years, a skill that came naturally to war orphans who'd been shaped into weapons since childhood. Most found brotherhood in their shared trauma, bonded over mutual hatred of their enemies. He'd always held himself apart from that camaraderie, and now that distance served him well. He could see what others missed.

In the five years he'd served under Uriel, he'd never seen the man this wound up over a routine patrol.

Routine. The word tasted bitter in Castiel's mouth. Nothing about this mission felt routine.

The orders had been frustratingly vague: investigate reports of strange activity near the Earden border. No specifics about what kind of activity. No intelligence about potential threats. Just pack light, move fast, and report back. 

Usually, even routine patrols came with detailed briefings, maps, contingency plans. This felt different. Deliberately sparse, as if someone wanted to avoid uncomfortable questions.

Gabriel, King Michael's younger brother, might have questioned orders like these, but Gabriel was never involved in military operations. He preferred books to battlefields, negotiation to conquest. Sometimes Castiel wondered if Gabriel even knew about missions like this one. 

Still, Uriel had accepted the mission with an eagerness that made Castiel's stomach churn. Like he'd been waiting for exactly this opportunity.

The silence around them was absolute. No rustling of small animals in the undergrowth. No birdsong filtering down from the canopy. Even the wind had died, leaving the forest trapped in an unnatural stillness that made the hair on the back of Castiel's neck stand on end. It was the kind of quiet that preceded violence. A moment when even nature held its breath.

Loran stumbled slightly on a root to Castiel's left, the soft scrape of his boot against bark unnaturally loud in the hush. Naomi shot him a sharp look from her position near the front, but said nothing. They'd all felt it—that creeping sense that something was watching them from the shadows between the trees.

A branch snapped somewhere ahead.

The squad froze as one, hands moving instinctively to weapons. Castiel's pulse kicked up a notch, adrenaline beginning to flood his system. His ribs protested as he straightened, but he ignored the pain, focusing instead on the space between the trees where the sound had come from.

Movement. Deliberate. Too large to be a deer.

A figure emerged from the mist like something conjured from shadow—broad shoulders wrapped in a dark cloak, seated atop a black horse that stood with the patient stillness of a trained warhorse. The rider made no move to flee or attack, simply watched them with an alertness that spoke of experience and calculation.

Castiel's trained eye catalogued details automatically: no visible crest or banner, but the cut of the man's armor was unmistakably Earden. Quality steel, well-maintained leather, the kind of gear that belonged to someone with rank and resources. His sword hung at his hip with the easy familiarity of long practice, and his posture in the saddle spoke of a lifetime spent on horseback.

More importantly, he was barely over the border. A few steps at most. Close enough to Celestia that it could have been an accident, a momentary confusion about where the boundary lay. He hadn't drawn steel. Hadn't made any threatening moves. If anything, he looked more wary than aggressive.

"He crossed the border," Uriel said, his voice carrying a note of satisfaction that made Castiel's blood run cold.

"Barely," Castiel replied carefully, not taking his eyes off the stranger. "A few steps. He hasn't drawn a weapon."

"Doesn't matter." Uriel's hand was already sliding toward his sword hilt, fingers wrapping around the grip with predatory intent.

Castiel felt ice settle in his stomach. This wasn't right. One man, clearly outnumbered, showing no signs of aggression. Standard protocol would indicate dialogue before engagement. Drawing steel should be a last resort, not the opening move. They should be talking, not preparing for battle.

"We're not at war," Castiel murmured, pitched low enough that only Uriel could hear. Castiel's head tilted slightly as he studied the lone rider, something about the man's posture not matching the threat Uriel claimed to see.

Uriel's smile didn’t reach his eyes. "Not yet."

It sounded more like a promise than a warning.

Then the voice came, soft and achingly familiar, drifting through the trees—quiet, but impossible to miss

"Castiel?"

The sound knocked the breath from his lungs. Sam. It was Sam's voice, carrying that particular cadence that came from years of whispered conversations in dark tunnels. The voice that had become as familiar to him as his own heartbeat over the long years of their secret friendship.

"Please—Castiel, I'm here—"

Every rational thought screamed that it was impossible. Sam was in Celestia, hidden in the depths of the castle where no one could find him. He was nowhere near this gods-forsaken forest, nowhere near the border where violence waited like a crouched predator. But the voice was perfect : every intonation exactly right, every subtle accent precisely as Castiel remembered.

Unless something had happened. Unless someone had discovered their friendship, had dragged Sam from his hiding place and brought him here as bait or leverage or worse.

Panic clawed at Castiel's chest as he spun toward the sound, abandoning his position and his training in favor of the desperate need to find his friend. Sam was here, somewhere in the mist, calling for him with a voice edged in fear and hope.

That's when the mimicra struck.

It erupted from the fog like a nightmare given form, too tall, too thin, limbs that bent at angles that hurt to look at. Its skin was the black of burnt oil, drinking in light without reflecting any back. Where its face should have been, there was only smooth darkness and the terrible sound of Sam's voice calling Castiel's name with increasing desperation.

The first to die was Loran. Castiel caught only a glimpse—a blur of inhuman motion, a cut-off scream, and then Loran was gone, his body snapped backward into the trees with the wet sound of breaking bones. Blood sprayed across the ferns like spilled wine, just before the darkness swallowed him whole.

Naomi managed half a step before claws longer than daggers punched through her chest plate like it was made of parchment. Her eyes went wide with shock and pain, mouth opening on a word that would never come. The mimicra lifted her off her feet with casual ease, and she crumpled like a broken doll when it let her fall.

"Form up!" Uriel's shout cut through the chaos, but his eyes weren't on the creature that was methodically butchering his squad. They were locked on the Earden rider, as if he were the real threat here.

The stranger had dismounted with fluid grace, his sword singing as it cleared its sheath. But instead of moving to help against the monster, Uriel charged him with the single-minded determination of a man following orders that had nothing to do with the situation at hand.

Steel rang against steel as the two men clashed, sparks flying in the dim light. The stranger fought with the easy competence of someone who'd been holding a sword since childhood, each parry and riposte executed with minimal wasted motion. But his attention was divided. Castiel could see him trying to keep track of both Uriel's attacks and the mimicra's rampage.

"Target the Earden rider!" Uriel bellowed, and with those words, any pretense of this being a defensive action crumbled. 

Castiel found himself frozen in a moment of horrifying clarity. His commander was trying to murder an innocent man while a monster slaughtered what remained of their squad. His orders said to follow Uriel's lead. His conscience said something very different.

The mimicra settled the debate for him by turning those empty sockets in his direction.

It moved like liquid shadow, covering the ground between them in heartbeats. Castiel stumbled backward, his injured ribs screaming in protest as he tried to bring his sword up in time. His boots slipped on the wet undergrowth, and he went down hard just as the creature's claws raked across his torso.

White-hot agony tore through him as razor-sharp talons shredded through leather and mail like they were made of silk. He could feel the warmth of his own blood spreading across his chest, soaking into his shirt with alarming speed. The metallic taste of it filled his mouth as he gasped for air that suddenly seemed too thin.

"Castiel," the mimicra whispered in Sam's voice, leaning over him with that featureless void where a face should be. "Castiel, help me. I'm scared."

"Castiel." The name was wrong, all wrong. To Sam, he was Jimmy, had been Jimmy for ten years of whispered conversations in dark corners. Sam didn't know his real name, had never known it. Castiel had kept that secret to protect them both. How could he have let the monster get to him? It didn’t even use the right name… Still, the sound of Sam's fear, perfectly captured and perverted, nearly broke something inside Castiel's chest. Even knowing it was a lie, even understanding that the creature was using his deepest affection as a weapon against him, hearing that beloved voice beg for help made him want to reach out, to comfort, to protect.

Then a bell chimed.

The sound was pure and clean, cutting through the mimicra's illusion like a blade through silk. The creature reeled back, its stolen voice dissolving into an inhuman shriek of confusion and rage. Castiel turned his head, vision blurring with pain and blood loss, to see the Earden stranger holding a small iron bell in his free hand while somehow still keeping Uriel at bay with his sword.

The bell's tone hung in the air like a benediction, and for a moment the mimicra seemed lost, its connection to its vocal prey disrupted by the sacred metal's resonance. In that moment of hesitation, Uriel made his final, fatal mistake.

Blinded by his fixation on the stranger, the commander never saw the mimicra recover. Never saw it turn toward him with predatory focus. The creature's claws took him in the back, punching through armor and flesh with wet finality. Uriel's scream was brief and sharp before it cut off in a gurgle of blood.

The mimicra dragged him into the shadows between the trees, and Castiel heard the sounds that followed—the crack of breaking bones, the wet tearing of flesh, the final silence that meant another of his squad mates was gone.

Then the creature was back, moving toward the stranger with renewed purpose. But the Earden rider had used the reprieve well. His sword was ready, his stance balanced, and when the mimicra lunged, he was waiting.

Steel met supernatural flesh with a sound like thunder. The stranger's blade, blessed or enchanted or simply wielded with perfect skill, slid deep into the creature's chest. The mimicra's shriek rose to a pitch that made Castiel's teeth ache, a sound that seemed to come from somewhere beyond the natural world.

"Castiel—!" it cried in Sam's voice one last time, the word stretched thin with pain and betrayal that cut straight to Castiel's heart even though he knew it was false.

Then the creature collapsed, its form dissolving into ash and shadow that scattered on a wind that hadn't been there moments before. Then everything went still.

Castiel lay on his back among the ferns, chest burning with each shallow breath, watching the stranger approach through a haze of pain and shock. Blood was still seeping from the claw marks across his ribs, warm and sticky against his skin. His head felt light, disconnected, as if he were watching events unfold from a great distance.

The man stopped beside him, sword still in hand but no longer raised in threat. Up close, Castiel could see details that had been lost in the chaos of combat. The steadiness of his green eyes, alert but not cruel. The way he looked down at Castiel not with the satisfaction of a victor, but with something that might have been regret.

Their eyes met, and for a moment that stretched like eternity, neither moved. The stranger's sword rose slowly, point aimed at Castiel's throat, and Castiel found all he could think about was Sam. Somewhere in the distance, Sam's voice still echoed in his memory, twisted into a weapon and used against him.

The sword paused at the apex of its rise. The stranger's face contorted silently, as if he were fighting some internal battle. Then, instead of the killing blow Castiel expected, the pommel of the sword came down.

The blow caught him hard. His vision went white, then black.

Chapter Text

POV: Dean

The storm broke just as Dean hauled the unconscious Celestian into the cave's mouth.

Thunder cracked overhead loud enough to wake the dead, and rain came down like someone had overturned a bucket the size of a castle. He grabbed Baby's reins with his free hand, water already soaking through his cloak and running in cold rivulets down his back.

"Come on, girl," he muttered, tugging gently. Baby snorted her displeasure at the weather but followed him into the darkness, her hooves echoing off stone as they left the chaos of the storm behind.

The cave was bigger than he'd figured. And it stank. Old stone, damp air, and something that made his skin crawl. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light filtering in from the entrance, details began to emerge that made his stomach turn.

Bones. Scattered along the walls like discarded toys, picked clean. Some were small—rabbit, maybe bird. Others were disturbingly larger. A rotting boot, child-sized, lay half-buried in moss near what looked like the remains of a campfire.

Scratches marred the stone walls.

The mimicra's lair. Had to be.

Dean gritted his teeth as he dragged his prisoner deeper into the cave, away from the storm but closer to the evidence of the creature's feeding habits. The Celestian's dead weight was heavier than it looked, all lean muscle and armor that caught on every irregularity in the stone floor. Dean's shoulder protested, still sore from the fight, but he ignored it, hauling the man to a relatively dry spot near the back wall.

The soldier hit the ground with a solid thud that echoed through the cavern. His head lolled to one side, dark hair matted with rain and blood from where Dean's sword hilt had connected. In the dim light, he looked younger than Dean had first thought. Mid-twenties, maybe. Clean-shaven jaw clenched even in unconsciousness. Long eyelashes that belonged on a noble's son, not a border guard.

Dean stood over him for a moment, breathing hard from the exertion and adrenaline crash. His hands were shaking slightly—aftereffects of the fight, of watching men die, of hearing that voice that had stopped his heart for one terrible moment. 

Only one. Of all the men who'd died today, he'd managed to save only one.

And what a strange choice fate had made. Of all the Celestians who could have survived, it was the one who'd hesitated when ordered to attack, the one who'd looked torn between duty and conscience when his commander charged an unarmed man. The one the mimicra had called by name.

Castiel.

Dean shook his head and turned away, busying himself with Baby's care. The mare was still agitated from the storm, ears flicking nervously at each rumble of thunder, but she settled under his familiar touch. Her coat was soaked, rain dripping steadily onto the cave floor.

"Easy, girl," Dean murmured, running his hands along her neck and flanks, checking for injuries. "We're safe now. Just another mess to clean up."

Baby huffed against his shoulder, a sound that might have been agreement or complaint. Dean couldn't blame her either way. This whole situation was a disaster from start to finish.

He unsaddled her methodically, the familiar routine helping to calm his nerves. Saddle, bridle, saddlebags—everything laid out neatly on a dry patch of stone. Baby immediately moved to explore their temporary shelter, nose twitching as she investigated the various scents. She gave the scattered bones a wide berth, smart enough to recognize the signs of a predator's den.

Dean built a small fire in a natural depression along the cave wall, using kindling from his pack and shielding it from the wind that howled through the entrance. The flames caught quickly, sending smoke curling up toward the ceiling where it dissipated into the darkness above. The warmth was weak but steady, pushing back the cave's chill by precious degrees.

Only then did he turn his attention back to his prisoner.

The Celestian was still unconscious, but his breathing was steady and his color wasn't too pale. Dean knelt beside him and pulled his knife, cutting through the leather ties that held the man's armor in place. The chest piece came away with a soft scrape of metal on stone, revealing the blood-soaked tunic beneath.

Three parallel gashes raked across the man's torso, just below his ribs. Deep enough to be serious, but not immediately life-threatening if treated properly. The mimicra's claws had shredded through leather and mail like they were made of parchment, leaving wounds that oozed blood in slow, steady rivulets.

"Could be worse," Dean muttered, though he wasn't sure who he was trying to convince.

He pulled supplies from his pack—clean cloth, water, the healing salve he’d started carrying after too many close calls. The wounds needed cleaning first. Dean poured water over the gashes, washing away blood and debris while the unconscious man flinched and made soft sounds of pain. Even unconscious, his body reacted to the pain.

Dean had seen plenty of injuries, but mimicra wounds were different. Nastier. The thing hadn't been trying for a quick kill. It had been playing with its food.

Dean worked quickly, applying the herbal paste that would help prevent infection and wrapping the wounds with strips of clean linen. His hands moved with practiced efficiency, muscle memory taking over where conscious thought might have faltered. When he finished, he sat back on his heels and studied his handiwork.

Then he pulled out a length of rope.

The Celestian might be injured, but he was still the enemy. Still someone who'd been part of whatever trap had been laid for Dean at the border. Unconscious or not, wounded or not, Dean wasn't stupid enough to leave him unrestrained.

He bound the man's wrists in front of him, checking the rope to ensure it was secure but not cutting off circulation. No point in saving the bastard's life just to let him lose his hands to poor circulation.

Once his prisoner was secured and not about to stab anyone, Dean allowed himself a closer look.

His gaze dragged over the guy’s face—sharp, serious, the kind that didn’t belong on a border grunt. Defined jaw, stubble that looked like it grew in on purpose, dark lashes shadowing bruised skin. Even half-dead, the guy looked intense. Dean clicked his tongue and turned away. “Ridiculous cheekbones for someone who just tried to kill me,” he muttered.

But the joke didn't land, even in his own head. Because now that he was looking, really looking, the guy's face looked different somehow. Not just the injuries. It was in the way he lay there, slack-jawed and bleeding, the tension gone from his features.

He looked... young. Too young for all this

Don't, Dean warned himself. Don't get soft now, Winchester.

But it was too late. The thought was already there, burrowing into his brain like a splinter. This wasn't just some faceless enemy soldier. This was a man, a man who'd hesitated when ordered to attack, who'd been called by name by a creature that fed on emotional connections, who'd been injured trying to defend himself rather than pursuing the attack on Dean.

A man who might have answers to questions Dean desperately needed answered.

Dean fed more kindling to the fire and settled back against the cave wall, pulling his own cloak around him for warmth. The storm showed no signs of letting up. If anything, the thunder was getting closer, the rain harder. They'd be stuck here for hours, possibly until morning.

Which gave him plenty of time to think about what had happened at the border. About the mimicra's presence so close to Earden territory, feeding on children from Earden. About the way the Celestian squad had moved like they'd known exactly what they were looking for.

And about that voice. 

Dean shut his eyes. Just for a second.

God. That voice.

It had frozen him in place. 

Sam. It sounded older, more mature, but it was so close… 

For one awful moment, Dean had believed it. Had felt something break loose in his chest. As if his little brother might be alive, out here in the dark, calling his name with that old mixture of fear and trust.

It wasn’t real. Of course it wasn’t real.

The mimicra had used the Celestian’s connections against him—someone that guy cared about. That was how they worked. Latch onto a memory, mimic the voice, make it feel real enough to lower your guard.

So why had Dean felt it? Why had it cut him ?

He opened his eyes again, fixing them on the fire like it owed him answers.

Ten damn years, and all it took was one echo to pull the rug out from under him.

A low groan broke the quiet, sharp and out of place.

Dean’s hand went to his sword instantly, body tense before his brain caught up. The Celestian was stirring. Barely, but it was enough to put him on alert. Eyes half-lidded at first, unfocused. Then they sharpened, the way a soldier's do when they remember where they are and why it sucks.

They locked eyes across the fire. Dean watched the flicker of awareness cross the man's face. Pain, confusion, then wariness. The kind of look that said I know I lost, but I'm still keeping track of the exits.

“You gonna kill me?” the man asked, voice raw and low. Not afraid, just tired. Maybe thirsty. Definitely calculating.

Dean didn’t answer right away. He studied him. The cuts, the bruises, the ropes. Still breathing, still dangerous. Just slightly less annoying while unconscious.

He leaned back against the wall, arms folded across his chest. Let the firelight do its job and cast some drama on the moment.

“Thought about it,” he said. “Still might.”

The Celestian tested the rope, a flick of the wrists, like he thought Dean might not notice. Cute. He gave up after a second, realizing the knots weren’t going anywhere. Smart guy.

His eyes moved next. Taking in the cave, the gear, the fire, the bones—especially the bones. Guy didn’t flinch, but Dean saw the way he flinched when he spotted the boot half-buried in moss.

"Nice place you picked," the man said, voice dry as sandpaper.

Dean almost smiled. Almost. Hell of a time to crack jokes. “I wasn’t the one squatting here,” Dean shot back.

That earned him a look. Not hostile, more like... reluctantly impressed. Like the guy hadn’t expected a response with bite. “Fair point,” the Celestian said.

They stared at each other for a beat. No talking, no blinking. Just two tired warriors trying to size each other up while a storm tore the world apart outside.

Dean watched him work through it: scanning, measuring, filing things away. Not panicking. Not pleading. Just calculating. Soldier stuff. Dean knew the routine. He’d done the same thing a dozen times himself, back when the odds were worse and the bleeding was heavier.

The guy was thinking three moves ahead and Dean didn’t like how familiar that felt.

"You've got a name, right?" Dean asked, voice low, casual in the way a blade can be casual just before it slips between ribs.

Silence.

Dean gave a half-shrug. “Right. Castiel it is, then. Your monster buddy seemed real fond of that one.”

He wasn’t trying to dig (okay, maybe a little) but the hit landed anyway. The guy didn’t flinch, didn’t twitch, but something behind the eyes pulled tight. Like a wire stretched a little too far.

"It wasn't my friend," Castiel said. Quiet. Controlled. But not cold.

Dean cocked his head. “No? You sounded real cozy with each other back there.”

"It killed my entire squad."

Said like it was just the weather. Just a fact. But Dean heard the edge. Not clean grief. Something messier. Closer to guilt.

"And yet here you are," Dean said, voice quiet but sharp. "Breathing. Talking. While they’re rotting in pieces."

The words landed like a knife laid flat—not stabbing, but promising it could. Dean watched for the flinch, the drop of the gaze, the telltale twitch of someone caught in a lie.

Nothing.

Just silence. Not defiance. Not shame. Something worse. Like the guy had already made peace with the worst version of the story.

Dean exhaled slowly, crouching in front of him. Close enough to catch any hint of guilt or bullshit in those too-honest eyes. Far enough that if the bastard tried anything, he’d eat a knee to the throat.

“You set me up,” Dean said, voice low, steady. “Walked me right into that thing’s nest.”

"I didn't know." No hesitation. No blinking. Just the words.

Which either meant he was a top-tier liar... or maybe not lying at all. Dean let out a bitter half-laugh. “Of course. Just following orders, huh?”

"I was told we were investigating strange activity. That's all."

Dean tilted his head. “Strange like what? Creatures snacking on kids, or armed squads marching toward another kingdom’s border with zero explanation?”

Castiel didn’t blink. “I thought it was Celestia being cautious.”

Dean snorted. “Celestia’s about as cautious as a drunk with a sword.” That got a reaction. Not much—just a slight shift in the jaw, a blink that came half a second too late. But it was enough. He’d doubted it. The mission. The orders. The whole setup.

And that made things messier.

Because now Dean wasn’t sure if he was looking at a traitor, a pawn, or just another poor bastard getting jerked around by people in power.

“So,” Dean said, settling back on his heels, arms crossed. “Either you’re lying to save your ass… or you got played like a rookie.”

That got a reaction. Blue eyes snapped to his, sharp, offended. “I’m not a fool.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “Then you’re lying.”

The words came out sharp, automatic. But even as he said them,  he found himself doubting his own words. He didn’t buy it, not all the way. Something didn’t track. The guy hadn’t fought like someone trying to trap him. He’d hesitated. Looked confused. Hell, he’d looked surprised when his own commander had charged past the monster to go after Dean.

Didn’t exactly scream co-conspirator.

Dean’s fingers twitched toward his sword hilt. Frustration simmered under his skin, building with every unanswered question. He needed someone to blame for the setup, the ambush, the goddamn mimicra whispering in a voice so close to Sam’s, like it knew exactly where to stab.

And here sat the perfect target. Neatly tied. Bleeding. Vague as hell.

So why the hell wasn’t it enough?

Dean pushed off his knees and stood abruptly, boots scuffing hard against stone. “You know what? Doesn’t matter.”

The guy tilted his head. Still calm. Still watching. “Doesn’t matter if I’m lying?”

"I've got bigger fish to fry than figuring out if some Celestian's feeding me bullshit."
Dean turned his back on the fire and the soldier still tied beside it, heading toward the mouth of the cave where the storm howled just beyond reach.

Baby lifted her head as he approached, ears flicking toward him like she was relieved he was finally doing something that made sense. He rubbed her neck with one hand, letting the feel of her work the edge off his thoughts. Eight years together, and she was still the only living creature he trusted without conditions. She never promised anything she couldn’t give. Never looked him in the eye and fed him half-truths wrapped in loyalty.

People should’ve taken notes.

He could feel Castiel watching him. Probably sizing him up, breaking him down, or trying to. Dean muttered something low to Baby just to fill the silence, but it didn’t stop the weight of those blue eyes from digging into his back.

Then the bastard spoke. "Funny," Castiel said, voice clear over the sound of rain.

Dean didn’t turn. Just kept rubbing Baby’s flank. "Yeah? What’s funny?"

"That you think I’m the one lying."

Dean stilled. Just for a second. Then he let out a quiet breath, slow and sharp, and turned to face him fully.

Castiel hadn’t moved. His expression was calm, like he wasn’t the one at a tactical disadvantage here. Hell, he looked almost sorry for Dean. Like he pitied him. That pissed Dean off more than he wanted to admit.

"You calling me something else?" Dean asked, voice low and flat.

"I'm saying Earden built its throne on lies." Castiel's voice was level, almost casual—but Dean could hear the blade behind it. "Everyone in Celestia knows how your king left his own brother to die. How he chose a crown over blood."

Dean didn’t move. Not right away. But the words landed like punches, each one dead center. His shoulders went stiff. His hands curled into fists, slow and tight, like they were remembering a fight his brain hadn’t signed off on yet.

Sam. The son of a bitch was talking about Sam.

Dean’s voice, when it came, was low. Controlled. Laced with enough threat to make Baby toss her head behind him. “Careful. You're swinging around stories like facts, and you weren't there to see a damn thing."

Castiel met his gaze evenly. No flinch. No gloating. Just belief. And that somehow made it worse.

Dean took a slow step forward. Then another. His boots scuffed against the stone, deliberate. He didn’t stop until he was close enough to see the faint gold in those blue eyes, close enough to watch for the flinch that never came.

Just his luck.

“Let me give you a little advice,” Dean said, voice low and almost lazy. The kind of lazy that usually came right before a blade got drawn. “Since this is your first time enjoying Earden hospitality.”

He crouched, slow and steady, until they were eye to eye. Castiel didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just watched him like he was figuring out how many bones he could break before Dean got the upper hand.

Dean didn’t mind.

“Careful how you talk about the king,” he said. “Or his brother.”

Silence stretched between them. The fire crackled. Rain hammered the stone outside.

Then Castiel smiled. Just a little. Not amused, more like he’d expected this exact reaction and catalogued it for later.

“You're awfully protective of a man you serve,” he said.

Dean didn’t answer right away. His jaw ticked, like it was thinking over whether to crack. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I guess I am.”

And that should’ve been the end of it. A warning delivered, a line drawn. But something in his gut twisted anyway. Because the bastard didn’t know. Not really. He wasn’t attacking Dean Winchester, King of Earden. He was just parroting the kind of history they probably spoon-fed back in Celestia. Half-truths wrapped in outrage, delivered like gospel.

So either Celestia had a damn good storyteller on staff, or… Or they weren’t wrong. The thought sat in his gut like a stone. Heavy. Sour.

Dean stood fast enough to make Baby flick her ears behind him. He didn’t look back. Just grabbed a torch, lit it from the fire, and walked.

He needed space. Shadows. Stone. Anything that wasn’t blue eyes and inconvenient truths.

The back of the cave was cooler, the kind of damp that clung to your bones. Darkness pooled thick around the edges. His torch lit up claw marks and bones and gods-knew-what else, but that was fine. Monsters made more sense than people.

At least in here, he didn’t have to see his own reflection staring back at him through a stranger’s mouth.

Chapter Text

The fire held.

The storm was trying to tear the world apart. Rain assaulted the mountainside in waves, each drop hitting stone like a hammer. Wind tore at the cave’s mouth, shrieking with the voice of something old and angry. Thunder echoed through the rock like the mountain itself was growling.

But the fire held.

Castiel sat within its modest circle of light, back braced against stone, wrists bound in front of him. 

His ribs throbbed where the mimicra had clawed him. The bandages were tight, already stained with blood seepage. Movement hurt. Breathing hurt. But he was breathing, which was more than he'd expected when that sword had risen toward his throat.

The rope around his wrists was professionally tied. Secure but not cruel. The knots avoided pressure points. Someone who knew what they were doing. Someone who understood the difference between restraint and unnecessary pain.

This raised questions.

Why spare him? Why tend his wounds at all? Standard military protocol would suggest immediate execution of enemy combatants. Instead, the stranger had chosen medical treatment and careful imprisonment.

Castiel shifted against the wall, testing his range of motion. Limited but functional. The bleeding had stopped. His muscles responded to commands, though slowly. The stranger had been efficient in his care.

A log cracked in the fire. Sparks rose into darkness above.

The man could have killed him. Should have killed him. Castiel was Celestian military, part of whatever operation had targeted the stranger at the border. There was no logical reason to show mercy.

Yet here he sat. Injured, restrained, but alive.

Uriel had drawn steel first. One glimpse of the stranger and he’d gone for his blade like it had been planned all along. And maybe it had. The mimicra hadn’t come out of nowhere. The timing had been too clean. The orders too vague.

This wasn’t a routine patrol. It wasn’t even provocation. It was assassination.

And Castiel had laid the ground for it.

He shifted slightly, wincing at the sting it brought to his side. The pain was good. Grounding. Better than the churn in his gut when he thought of what he’d seen and what he’d heard.

That voice. 

“Castiel?”

Not Jimmy , the name Sam always used. No, the mimicra had called him Castiel. Which meant it had never heard Sam speak to him. It had only heard Sam's voice. 

But it meant it had been near Sam. Mimicras required source material. They couldn't create sounds from nothing. If this one knew Sam's voice, it meant that the creature had been summoned in Celestia. Possibly in the dungeons, where Sam was hidden from the world. 

Castiel's hands curled slightly, fingers brushing the coarse rope. He  felt the nausea crawl up the back of his throat. He forced it down. Sam was alive. That much he still believed. Michael wouldn’t throw away that kind of leverage. Not with a war still quietly waiting to happen.

But alive didn’t mean safe.

He turned his face toward the fire. Watched the embers pulse and shift. Tried to find a center in the flicker of light and shadow.

The wind changed. There was something else now. A quality that made Castiel's skin react with recognition.

Magic. Old, directed, malevolent.

The storm wasn't natural. The rhythm was wrong, the pressure deliberate. Someone was controlling this weather, using it as a weapon against whoever sheltered in this cave.

A third attack attempt. The mimicra had failed. Uriel's squad had failed. Now the storm itself was being weaponized.

Celestia had come to kill, and they weren't stopping.

Which meant Castiel had been part of an assassination plot without his knowledge. The vague orders, Uriel's eagerness, the timing...it all connected now.

He'd been complicit in attempted murder. Unwittingly, but still complicit.

And yet the enemy had saved him.

When the mimicra attacked, when Uriel abandoned the real threat to pursue his target, the stranger had acted to protect Castiel. Had used that bell to disrupt the creature's vocal hold.

The man fought with instinctive skill. Not just trained, but natural. Every movement was economical, precise. No wasted energy on unnecessary flourishes. He simply ended threats.

But there'd been no cruelty in it. No satisfaction. Just necessity and, afterward, something that resembled regret.

Who was he? Why would Celestia invest this level of resources to eliminate him?

The black mare stood near the fire, coat still damp but posture relaxed. The stranger had spoken to her with genuine affection. Years of partnership, evident in their interaction. She watched Castiel now with intelligent assessment, determining whether he posed a threat to her rider.

Footsteps approached. The stranger emerged from the cave's depths, torch in hand. His shadow moved across the walls as he walked.

Castiel observed him: controlled movement, alert shoulders, careful distance maintained even now. This was someone accustomed to danger. To sleeping with weapons ready.

But more than that. This was someone who cared.

Castiel had observed the reaction when he'd mentioned Earden's king—the shadow that crossed the stranger's expression at accusations of choosing power over family. Personal pain, not merely patriotic offense.

This presented a contradiction.

The King of Earden was described as cold, calculating. A ruler who would sacrifice anything for power. The man before Castiel displayed none of those traits. He possessed intensity, but it served protection rather than conquest. Duty rather than ambition.

So not the king. But someone close enough to him that royal accusations inflicted personal wounds. A friend, perhaps. A trusted advisor. A general. Someone significant enough to warrant this level of assassination effort, yet with emotional investment in the crown's reputation.

This would explain the resources Celestia had committed. The elaborate planning. The magical storm still raging outside.

"Who are you?" Castiel asked, keeping his voice neutral. He tilted his head slightly, studying the stranger's face. Waiting for confirmation of his theory.

The man paused, torch at shoulder height. Those green eyes regarded Castiel steadily. For a moment, neither spoke. Then the stranger set his torch aside and settled against the cave wall. Close enough for conversation, far enough to react if necessary.

He said nothing. Just maintained eye contact with calm confidence.

The silence stretched between them. Storm fury continued outside. The fire consumed wood with soft whispers. Lightning flashed, briefly illuminating the cave entrance before returning them to warm glow.

Whoever this man was, whatever his role in the conflict between their kingdoms, he'd affected something in Castiel. Not fear. Not anger. Just uncomfortable awareness that some of his beliefs might require examination.

The feeling was familiar. Sam had posed similar questions before, the kind Castiel had no adequate answers for. He'd dismissed them then, citing loyalty or duty. But now those questions were present with him in the darkness. 

And they weren't remaining quiet.

Chapter Text

POV: Dean

"Who are you?"

There were a hundred ways to answer. None of them safe.

Dean stayed quiet, keeping to the edge of the firelight. The storm was slamming the mountainside like it meant to bring the whole damn place down. Wind howled through cracks in the rock, and rain hit the entrance in sharp bursts, hard as thrown stones. Thunder rolled overhead, deep and close, shaking the ground under his boots.

He could feel Castiel watching him. Not with fear. Not with hate.
Worse.
The guy was studying him. Like he was figuring out a puzzle no one else could solve. Except this time, Dean was the damn puzzle.

Dean was used to being watched. Nobles. Generals. Liars in expensive coats. Everyone looking to weigh him, pin him down, figure out if he was useful or dangerous. But this? This felt different. Slower. Sharper. Personal. Like Castiel wasn’t just sizing him up. Like he was looking past the armor, straight at the parts Dean didn’t show.

And that made Dean itch.

Dean turned away from that stare and knelt by his pack, more to keep his hands busy than because he didn’t know what was inside. He dug through it until he found the cloth bundle Ellen had handed him before he left.

It wasn’t warm anymore, but it still smelled good. He’d take the win. And judging by the way his stomach growled, it was long overdue.

He cut the bread, slow and even, and looked at the second piece like it might answer something for him.

He was tired. Bone-deep. And the last thing he needed was more reasons not to sleep at night.

Maybe the guy had helped set the whole thing up. Maybe not. Either way, Dean wasn’t here to play judge. Just to get through the night without turning into someone he wouldn’t recognize.

He walked over and dropped the bread into Castiel’s lap.

The guy looked at it, then at his tied hands.

“Yeah, well. Life’s not fair,” Dean muttered, and walked away.

He settled back by the fire and bit into his share. The crust cracked between his teeth, the cheese sharp, the apples still sweet somehow, even cold. Way better than it had any right to be.

It figured. Ellen and Jo didn’t half-ass anything. Even when they were pissed at him.

The thought hit harder than expected. They’d packed this like they believed he’d come back. Like they still trusted him to crawl out of whatever mess he was walking into.

If he didn’t… would they even know what happened? Or would Adam just clean it up with some polished lie about duty and sacrifice?

Across the fire, Castiel struggled to maneuver the bread to his mouth with bound hands, his movements careful and controlled despite the obvious difficulty. Dean caught the brief tightening around his eyes when the motion pulled at his injured ribs, saw the way he held his breath until the pain passed.

The man didn't complain. Didn't ask for help or ease of his bonds. Just adapted to his circumstances with the kind of quiet dignity that spoke of experience with hardship.

Dean found himself watching despite his better judgment, cataloguing details his tactical mind insisted were important. The way Castiel favored his left side. The slight tremor in his hands that might have been pain or exhaustion or shock. The methodical way he broke the bread into smaller pieces, making it easier to eat while restrained.

Professional observations. Nothing more.

"This is... good. Thank you."

The voice was rough, low. Tired. But honest. Dean looked up, half expecting some angle, some trick in the guy’s face.

Nothing. Just gratitude.

He nodded once, sharp and economical, then returned his attention to his own meal. The silence that followed was comfortable in a way that shouldn't have been possible between captor and prisoner, between enemies separated by years of war and mistrust.

The cave felt tighter than before, the fire throwing out just enough heat to remind him how cold it was everywhere else. 

The storm hadn’t stopped. Just paused, maybe catching its breath.

For a moment, it was almost easy to pretend this was just a temporary shelter. Just two travelers stuck in the same storm, not a king and his bound enemy.

Then Baby shifted restlessly near the cave wall, her hooves scraping against stone as she turned toward the entrance. Her ears pricked forward, nostrils flaring as she tested the air. Dean knew that posture—alert, unsettled, sensing something beyond human perception.

He rose smoothly and moved to her side, running a calming hand along her neck. "Easy, girl."

The mare leaned into his touch but remained tense, muscles coiled with nervous energy. Her dark eyes reflected the firelight as she stared toward the storm, and Dean felt his own unease ratchet higher. Baby had carried him through countless dangers over the years. When she was worried, he listened.

“It’s not natural.” The words came low, but sure. Enough to make Dean’s spine stiffen.

He turned, one hand still on Baby’s flank. “Come again?”

"The storm." Castiel's blue eyes met his across the fire, steady and knowing. "You feel it, don't you? It's too sudden. Too focused. It's like it wants in."

The storm was wrong. Too violent, too precisely directed, too conveniently timed. Natural weather didn't behave with such deliberate malice.

He’d brushed off the weird details. Now they were all shouting at once. The mimicra waiting at the border. Like it had been dropped there on purpose. The Celestian patrol showing up ready to fight, not talk. Adam suggesting he go alone…

His fingers curled tighter into Baby’s mane. Yeah. This wasn’t just bad luck.

This was a goddamn execution.

The worst part wasn’t that everything had gone sideways.

It was that someone had set the board that way.

His own damn brother. The one person he wasn’t supposed to have to watch his back around.

Dean stepped back from Baby, lungs tight, hands clenched. The cave felt like it was closing in.

Lightning flashed through the cracks in the stone, bright enough to sting.

"You knew." His voice came low, sharp. No time for games. "The mimicra. The patrol. The storm. You knew."

Castiel looked up slowly. There was no flinch, no guilt. Just something tired and dark in his eyes. "No.”

“But you knew something,” Dean pressed.

Castiel’s eyes didn’t drop. He just sat there, weighing his answer like it mattered. “I knew Uriel, my commander, was more… driven than usual. He didn’t tell us what we were looking for. Just said to eliminate anything we found near the border.”

A quiet execution, dressed up like patrol duty.

His voice dropped to a sharper edge. “And that didn’t raise any red flags?”

Castiel looked at him, tired. “Of course it did. But I followed orders. What else was I supposed to do?”

Dean didn’t answer right away.

He hadn’t followed an order in years. Not really.

He gave them. Wrote the damn rules. Sometimes you had time to weigh every option. Sometimes you just picked the least awful one and hoped no one would bleed too much for it.

But Castiel hadn’t had that choice.

…Must be nice, having someone else to blame.

Dean looked away first. Couldn’t keep staring into those steady blue eyes while everything he thought he knew kept slipping.
Outside, the storm was going from bad to worse. The wind had a voice now, high and sharp, like something hurt. The air was so heavy his teeth ached.

“It’s getting worse,” he muttered, not really talking to Castiel.

“It’s a failsafe.”

Dean froze. He turned back, and Castiel was watching him with something that looked too much like pity.

“If the mimicra failed,” Castiel went on, voice low, “and the squad failed… this would be next. Something to finish the job. Clean up what’s left.”

Dean just stared, letting it sink in. 

This wasn’t about killing some random trespasser. Or spooking Earden with a show of force. This was layered. Planned. Backup plans for the backup plans. The kind of operation you burned through favors and resources to make happen.

They knew exactly who they wanted dead.

Which meant Adam hadn’t just tossed him into danger and hoped for the worst. He’d drawn a goddamn map to Dean’s grave and handed it to the enemy gift-wrapped.

His brother had planned his murder down to the last detail.

That's when the mountain decided to join the party.

A crack split the air overhead—not thunder, but something worse. Stone groaning, shifting, making the deep bass sound that meant everything was about to come down. Dean's head snapped up just in time to see the cave mouth start to fracture.

"Shit—!"

Training kicked in. Dean moved before his brain caught up, muscle memory taking over. Baby was too close to the entrance, right in the kill zone if the ceiling came down. He lunged for her reins and yanked hard, dragging the spooked mare toward the back of the cave while chunks of rock started falling like deadly hail. “Move, girl—now!”

She balked, tossing her head toward the open air like instinct said run for daylight , like any sane creature would. But she trusted him more than her instincts, let him pull her into the narrow passage just as a boulder the size of a wagon smashed where she'd been standing.

Safe—for the moment—he spun back toward the firelight.

Castiel hadn’t made it far. Hell, he hadn’t made it anywhere. He was still where Dean had left him, but the strain in his body told its own story—one leg pulled under him, shoulders twisted toward the entrance, arms straining against rope that wasn't going anywhere.  Blood was already blooming dark against his bandages, fresh from trying to move too fast on wounds that weren’t ready for it.

Too slow. Too hurt. Too tied up to have a chance.

And the rest of the ceiling was about to go.

Dean didn’t stop to think about choices, or about what this man might have done to put him here. He just ran.

Two strides and he was there. Dean fisted the front of Castiel’s coat and hauled, putting everything he had into the drag. Momentum did the rest, slamming them both behind a slab of rock just as the ceiling let go.

The world went to hell.

Stone and dust blasted the air, choking, blinding. The noise wasn’t just loud, it hit like a weapon, rattling his skull and slamming into his chest hard enough to steal breath. Dean stayed down, half sprawled over Castiel, one arm braced over the guy’s head while shards of rock bounced off his back.

Then it stopped.

Not real silence, but the hollow kind that comes after an explosion. Just the hiss of settling debris and the rasp of their own breathing. Dust curled in the firelight, gritty on his tongue. His ears rang like someone was still screaming right next to him.

“You good?” His own voice sounded far away, off-balance.

Castiel coughed, rough and short. “Alive.”

Dean pushed himself up, taking inventory. His shoulder felt like someone had hit it with a hammer, but nothing seemed broken. Under him, Castiel was breathing steady despite the dust and chaos.

"Yeah," Dean said, leaning back just enough to make it look easy. "Not sure what your escape strategy was, but it sucked."

He stood up slow, every joint protesting. When he turned toward what had been the cave mouth, his gut sank.

The entrance wasn’t blocked: it was gone. Obliterated. A wall of jagged stone sealed them in, still radiating heat like the mountain had decided to cauterize the wound it just made. Lightning flickered through hairline cracks, quick flashes of a world they weren’t getting back to anytime soon.

“Perfect,” Dean muttered.

Behind him, Castiel was trying to sit up, looking like he'd been rolled in flour. The escape attempt had cost him, and fresh blood was soaking through his bandages. His face had gone the color of old parchment.

Dean’s gaze snagged on the rope burns around his wrists. Raw and angry from where he'd tried to break free when the ceiling came down. Not smart, but stubborn. Dean could relate.

"Could've given me a heads up you weren't planning to move," Dean said, more to break the silence than because he was actually pissed. "Thought you military types were supposed to be quick."

“I had a rockslide and no hands,” Castiel rasped. “Forgive me if I lacked coordination.”

Dean’s mouth twitched before he could stop it. “Sarcastic bastard for someone who almost got flattened.”

“No one’s ever died from sarcasm.”

Dean huffed a laugh through his nose, small and humorless. The guy had nearly been buried alive, and he was still tossing out dry one-liners. Hell, maybe Dean just liked him better when he was talking than when he was quiet.

“No,” Dean said quietly. “But people have died for a lot less than bad timing and secrets.”

He turned back to the fire, feeding it kindling from his pack. The flames jumped up eager, pushing back dust and shadows. Outside their stone tomb, the storm kept doing its thing. Muffled now, but still there. Still hunting.

Dean slid down against the cave wall, close enough to the fire for warmth but with a clear line of sight to both Castiel and the blocked entrance. The full weight of their situation was starting to hit him. Trapped underground, supplies light, stuck with an injured prisoner who might be playing him. And a magical storm outside that wanted to finish what it started.

Great. Just fucking great.

“Just so we’re clear,” he said, not bothering to look up. His tone was calm, but it carried the weight of a man used to being listened to. “You try anything—lie, run, blink wrong—and I won’t wait for the cave to finish the job.”

Maybe it was overkill. The guy could barely sit upright, and even if he did get loose, there was nowhere to go. But Dean needed the words out there. Ground rules for whatever this was turning into.

"Understood," came the quiet reply.

Dean gave a single nod. Sharp. Final. “Good. Saves us both some time.”

Chapter Text

POV: Castiel

Dust was everywhere.

It clung to his lashes. Made each blink scrape grit against his eyes. It dried his mouth, turning every swallow into ground stone. The air itself felt thick, heavy with pulverized stone. The mountain had tried to bury them. Nearly succeeded.

He sat with his back to the cold wall, arms bound in his lap. The rope wasn't cutting off circulation, but it was undeniable. A constant reminder of his status here.

His ribs ached with each breath. The mimicra's claws had found their mark, and the wounds beneath his bandages throbbed steadily. The dried blood had turned his shirt stiff and uncomfortable. Each sensation was catalogued, assessed, filed away as relevant data.

He was alive. That was the primary fact. Everything else was secondary.

His breathing stayed shallow. Anything more sent heat knifing up his side. He shifted, slow, and felt the bindings drag against skin rubbed raw. The wound pulsed with each heartbeat, dull and steady. Healing, but not quickly.

The bandages were well-applied. Clean linen, expertly wrapped. Not magical healing—no warmth of runes, no golden glow. Just competent medical care from someone who knew what they were doing.

Across the cave, the stranger stood at the wall where the entrance had been, one hand pressed against it. Testing for weakness, maybe. Or just grounding himself in the weight of it. Rock had sealed them completely, jagged stone still radiating heat from the violence of the collapse. Moss and splintered stone filled the cracks. The air carried the sharp smell of shattered earth.

Castiel watched him with professional attention. Survival demanded it. His life might depend on reading every sign of intent. The man moved differently now. A shift so small most would miss it. His left arm held closer to his body, shoulder riding higher. Protecting an injury.

The shoulder. Something wrong there. The injury wasn’t from before. It had happened in the collapse. When the stranger had thrown himself across an enemy’s body to shield it from falling stone.

The man was hurt because he'd saved Castiel's life.

And he hadn't mentioned it. Hadn't complained or asked for acknowledgment. Just adapted to the limitation and kept moving. 

This presented another contradiction. Why save an enemy at personal cost?

A change in sound drew Castiel's attention. Or rather, the absence of sound.

The storm had stopped. 

Not easing, not fading into calm, as natural weather would. One moment there had been supernatural wind and rain, the next nothing but their breathing and settling stone.

That meant control. Someone had called it off. Either believing the target was dead… or deciding there were other plans.

Neither possibility was encouraging.

Footsteps approached. The stranger walked toward him, moving with careful economy that suggested ongoing discomfort. He stopped within arm's reach and crouched, pulling a waterskin from his belt.

He held it out.

Castiel hesitated.

The stranger's expression darkened. "Seriously?" The word came flat, tired. "You think I dragged your half-dead ass out of a rockslide just to poison you now?"

Logical point. Castiel said nothing.

The man made a sharp sound of exasperation and drank from the waterskin himself, deliberate and obvious. Then he held it out again, eyebrows raised.

This time Castiel took it. His wrists made the grip awkward, but he managed. The first mouthful was warm, metallic. The second was better. It washed the grit from his throat and he could breathe easier. His head cleared.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

The stranger nodded once and turned to his pack, pulling out what looked like medical supplies.

“What is that?” Castiel asked.

The man glanced up. "For the wound."

Something in his tone raised caution. "What kind of—"

"Would you like me to chant over it instead?" The interruption was delivered with deadpan seriousness, but Castiel caught humor beneath it.

Despite everything, his mouth almost twitched. "That won't be necessary."

The scent of the salve reached him before the words: goldenroot, angelica. He knew the smell without knowing why. It was familiar, and something in it felt… safe.

“This will sting,” the man said.

He didn't wait for permission. His hands moved to Castiel's bandages, peeling back linen with careful precision. He began working herbal paste into the wound with clinical thoroughness.

Cold at first, then burning. Fire along his nerve endings. Castiel concentrated on not pulling away.

“Breathe,” the man said, not looking up.

Castiel did, forcing steady rhythm while pain crested and ebbed. The man's hands were competent. Not gentle, exactly, but steady. He worked like someone who understood exactly how much discomfort a body could tolerate.

It was nothing like Celestian healing. No bright rush of magic, no invisible cost to be paid later. This was human work. Herbs. Knowledge. Time.

Sam had said once, ‘ All magic comes with a price. Someone always pays’.

This, this was purely human. Slow, methodical, relying on knowledge rather than supernatural force.

The stranger finished and began wrapping fresh bandages, movements quick and efficient. When done, he stood and stretched slightly. His hand drifted unconsciously toward his left shoulder again.

Still hurting. Still compensating. Still saying nothing.

"We need to move," the man said, slinging his pack over his right shoulder.

Castiel looked up. "Move where?"

"You'll breathe easier away from all this dust," the stranger explained, gesturing at the debris-filled air. "And if another rockslide hits, I'm not pulling you out twice."

The threat was matter-of-fact. "Where does it go?" Castiel asked.

The man shrugged carefully. "Downhill. Might lead to a side exit. I know these ridges. We can find our way back to Earden territory."

Earden territory. Away from Celestia. Away from Sam, still trapped in the dungeons, still waiting for visits that would never come, still unaware his only friend was now a prisoner in enemy hands.

Castiel tried to keep his expression neutral. Something must have shown.

The stranger's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Nothing," Castiel said. Too quickly.

"You were hoping for Celestia." Not really a question. An observation delivered with flat certainty. The man was better at reading people than Castiel had credited.

What could he say? How could he explain someone was depending on him? Someone whose existence was a secret that could start wars?

Castiel said nothing. He caught a flash of hurt in the stranger's expression, quickly buried beneath practiced indifference. As if the idea that his prisoner would prefer his own people was somehow personally wounding rather than entirely predictable.

The moment stretched uncomfortably. Then the stranger turned away, moving toward his horse with deliberate purpose.

The mare stood patiently near the far wall. Tall, elegant, radiating calm intelligence. The stranger checked her tack with careful attention, unconscious competence of someone who'd been caring for horses his entire life.

From his pack, he pulled a torch and lit it from their fire. Flame sprang to life, golden glow pushing back oppressive darkness. Light danced across stone walls, making the tunnel ahead seem both inviting and ominous.

Then he stamped out the fire. Sparks hissed and died. Suddenly the torch was their only light in a world gone black.

He glanced back, torchlight carving harsh angles across his face. "Get up."

Not a request.

Castiel stood slowly, muscles protesting after hours in one position. His injured side pulled painfully. He braced against the wall until discomfort passed. But he managed it, rising with as much dignity as circumstances allowed.

The stranger was already moving deeper into the cave, torch held high. His horse followed with patient obedience.

Castiel fell into step behind them, dust still settling around them. The path ahead disappeared into darkness that seemed to swallow light.

He was walking away from everything that mattered. Away from Sam, away from any chance of explaining what had happened, away from the one relationship that had made life in Celestia bearable.

But he was walking. He was alive.

Sometimes that had to be enough.

The tunnel stretched ahead, leading down into the mountain's heart. Castiel followed the flickering torch deeper into the unknown.

Chapter Text

POV: Dean

The tunnel squeezed in around them like it was trying to crush them to death.

Dean kept the torch out front, flame throwing twitchy light over wet stone that seemed to lean in closer with every step. Somewhere up ahead, water dripped in slow, steady beats, like the place had its own pulse. The air was stale enough to chew, carrying the smell of dirt that hadn’t seen daylight in centuries.

Behind him, Castiel’s breathing was starting to hitch. Not obvious, but Dean could hear it in the gaps between their boots hitting stone—short, measured breaths, like the guy was trying to hide the effort. The occasional scuff of a boot against rock. A sharper breath when the walls closed in and he had to twist past some jagged bit of stone.

Still moving. Still keeping up. But yeah, struggling.

Dean eased the pace a fraction, made it look like nothing. Lifted the torch a little higher so the light caught the uneven ground. Castiel probably wouldn’t take kindly to anything that looked like help, but Dean wasn’t about to let him face-plant out of stubborn pride.

Behind them, Baby’s hooves clicked along, steady as a clock. At least somebody was handling this underground crawl without turning it into a production.

Dean’s shoulder was still throbbing, a steady pulse of pain that reminded him exactly how close they’d come to getting buried alive. The joint felt loose, unreliable when he moved wrong. Probably strained it when he’d thrown himself over Castiel during the collapse. Nothing fatal. Just the kind of pain that made sure you didn’t forget it was there.

They’d been walking for over an hour, winding deeper into the mountain. His gut told him they were angling northeast. If he was right, that meant foothills eventually, maybe a way back to civilization. If the mountain didn’t decide to kill them first.

“Back in the woods,” Dean said, voice rougher than he meant it to be. “The mimicra. It used a voice to call to you.”

He’d been chewing on that since the forest, the thought getting heavier with every step. He didn’t look back, kept his eyes on the slick stone ahead, but he heard the shift, Castiel’s breath hitching, his steps pausing just enough to register.

“It said your name,” Dean added when the silence stretched.

“It used my best friend’s voice,” Castiel said after a moment.

Dean heard something underneath those words. Grief, maybe. Or guilt.

"You knew it wasn't real?"

"I knew." No hesitation, but pain under it. "That doesn't mean it didn't hurt."

Dean gave a short nod. He got it. More than he wanted to. He remembered his own second of doubt in the forest, the way the mimicra’s voice had been just close enough to Sam’s to punch a hole through ten years of hard walls. Ten years, and he was still hearing ghosts.

“They only use voices they’ve heard,” Castiel went on, thoughtful now. “Voices that matter. The emotional connection is what gives them power.”

Dean didn’t like how neatly that fit, but it made sense. Uncomfortable sense. If the mimicra had been created for this job, someone had fed it the right voices. Which meant Castiel's friend was either dead or in deep shit.

Dean let his pace creep up, then reeled it back in when he caught the faint hitch in Castiel’s breathing. No sense in pushing him past the edge. Dragging a half-conscious prisoner through a mountain wasn’t high on his list of fun ways to die.

The tunnel finally started to widen, the press of stone easing off his shoulders. The air changed too. Still damp, but with the heavy, flat scent of standing water. A few more steps and the passage spat them into a cavern that made him slow to a stop.

A lake spread out in front of him, black and still as glass. His torch painted a shaky reflection on the surface, and near the edge he could see straight through to the bottom. Overhead, a jagged tear in the ceiling framed a strip of twilight and a scatter of early stars.

Dean stopped at the water’s edge, letting his lungs stretch a little deeper for the first time since the collapse. Behind him, Castiel’s footsteps slowed, then went quiet.

“You alright?” Dean asked, keeping his eyes on the lake. He already knew the answer.

“Fine,” came the expected lie, tight around the edges, like it was holding something in.

He glanced back. Castiel was leaning on the wall like it was holding him up, and judging by the color in his face, it probably was. His bandages had picked up some new stains, not bad enough to panic over, but enough to say the trip had been rough on him.

Dean stopped, tossing it out like an afterthought. “We’ll take a minute. I need to check the lay of the land.”

Before Castiel could get a word in (and Dean could see him winding up for it) the lake’s surface rippled.

That tiny shift was all the warning he got before the water exploded.

Something big came out—too much fur, limbs too long, twice Dean’s height and built like it had been carved out of pure bad news. Its roar hit the cavern walls hard enough to rattle teeth.

Dean’s sword was in his hand before his brain caught up. No time for “what the hell is that”, except his brain did catch up just enough to slap a name on it. Kindralh. Lake-dwelling, mountain-bred. Big, fast, and mean enough to make most hunters retire early.

Step forward, swing, make it bleed. His blade bit into its shoulder—shallow, but enough to make it stumble. The kindralh spun, claws flashing past his head with a sound like ripping metal. Dean pivoted, slashed again, left another shallow groove in hide that felt like it could’ve stopped an axe.

Behind him, Baby reared, hooves striking sparks off the stone. Still listening, still giving him room to work. Smart girl.

Then movement flickered at the edge of his vision—wrong place, wrong time.

The Celestian. 

The guy was crouched against the cavern wall, face tight with pain, wrists grinding against a jag of stone. Rope fibers snapped one by one, blood streaking the rock where he’d been sawing at it.

Of course. Perfect sense. Enemy soldier, big distraction, chance to run…why wouldn’t he try?

The kindralh lunged, and that split-second glance cost him.The massive paw came in faster than it had any right to. Dean shifted to dodge, but the wall at his back killed any chance of escape. The blow clipped his side, enough force to rip him off his feet and spin him into the rock. His bad shoulder flared white-hot in protest, but it was the back of his head cracking against stone that stole everything else.

His sword spun away across the cavern floor, steel singing against rock, the sound of the odds turning ugly.

Stars popped behind his eyes, the world tilting sideways. Then the back of his head cracked against the wall with a wet thud, and the lights went out.

He came to in pieces.

First thing he registered was warmth. Something big, solid, breathing slow against his back. Then smell. Horse, leather, damp stone, and smoke.

Sound was last. The low crackle of a fire, the quiet drip of water somewhere, and breathing that wasn’t his.

He groaned, and it felt like the noise came from someone else. His head was pounding slow and deep, like someone had stuck a hammer in there and was testing the weight.

When he cracked his eyes open, the firelight stabbed at him hard enough to make him blink a few times before things stopped swimming.

He was lying on his side, pressed up against Baby. The mare had parked herself close, like she’d decided he was too stupid to keep himself warm.

“Hey, girl,” he muttered.

She flicked an ear at him and snorted, equal parts relief and judgment.

Dean pushed himself up a little straighter and instantly wished he hadn’t. The cavern tilted hard, his stomach threatening mutiny, and for a second his vision went white around the edges. He stayed still, breathing slow until the floor stopped trying to slide out from under him.

Everything hurt in a dull, full-body kind of way, like he’d been used as a battering ram and then left out in the rain to swell. His shoulder was a special kind of misery, sending sharp reminders every time he so much as twitched it.

His hand dropped to his hip without thinking.

Empty leather.

That cut through the fog fast. His dagger was gone too. The familiar weight he’d carried for years—just not there. The hit of panic was sharp and clean, like ice water down his spine.

And just like that, the rest came rushing back.

The lake.

That kindralh roaring out of it like the world’s worst welcome party.

Steel in his hand, claws in his face.

And off to the side, the Celestian, sawing at his ropes.

Dean’s eyes scanned the cavern, quick and automatic. Firelight. Shadows. The dark surface of the lake, still as glass. The smell of blood. No kindralh in sight.

The guy looked like he’d been dragged backwards through a warzone: pale, drawn, sweat sticking his hair to his forehead, fresh stains bleeding through his bandages. His wrists were raw where the ropes had been.

Dean’s sword lay across his knees like it belonged there.

“You always make a habit of looting unconscious men?" Dean asked. It came out harder than he meant, sharp with suspicion and the kind of irritation that had teeth.

Castiel looked up slowly. "You were unconscious. And the monster wasn't dead yet."

Dean’s eyes stayed on the sword like it was the only real thing in the room, already mapping the distance between them, the angle, how many steps it would take to close it. The math wasn’t great.

"Sounds pretty dead now," he said.

"It is." Castiel’s hands shifted on the grip, and Dean felt his body react before his brain caught up, muscles tensing, ready for a fight. But instead of swinging it or trying something stupid, Castiel seemed to realize exactly what Dean was seeing.

"I used your blade to kill it," he said, voice quieter now. "Couldn’t do it barehanded. And I couldn’t help you while tied up."

Reasonable. Logical. All the things Dean usually didn’t buy without proof. He’d met enough reasonable liars to fill a graveyard.

Then, without another word, Castiel lifted the sword by the hilt and set it down between them, blade pointed away, grip angled toward Dean. A clean surrender, or the most patient setup he’d ever seen.

"If I meant to kill you," Castiel added, steady and matter-of-fact, "I wouldn’t have waited.”

Dean studied his face in the flicker of the fire, looking for the twitch, the shift, the tell that would give the game away. All he found was exhaustion, and maybe a little of that bone-deep honesty soldiers sometimes got after a fight they shouldn’t have survived.

He leaned forward and took the sword back. The weight in his hand was a gut-deep relief, like finding your footing after nearly going over a cliff.

He didn’t sheath it. Not yet.

Castiel leaned back against the wall, not slouched, not squared up…just… waiting. Not threat, not surrender. More like someone too worn out to keep a mask on, letting Dean make the next move because he’d already played his hand.

Dean kept the sword in his grip and let his eyes do the work, taking in the details. The lines in his face carved deeper by exhaustion. The shadows under his eyes dark enough to pass for bruises. The way he held himself like every movement cost him. 

Something  was different since the kindralh. Not trust—Dean wasn’t that easy. But the heat was gone. That edge of “first chance I get, you’re dead” wasn’t there anymore.

“The kindralh,” Dean said finally, curiosity elbowing past his caution. “How’d you kill it?”

Castiel’s mouth twitched,almost a smile, but not quite. “Very carefully. And with a great deal of luck.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah. Figures.”

Vague as hell, but Dean figured he hadn’t earned the play-by-play. The only thing that mattered was that they were both still breathing. For now.

Chapter Text

POV: Castiel

He could have left.

The opportunity had been there. When the stranger had been unconscious, defenseless, slumped against his horse. Castiel could have taken the weapons. Maybe the horse. Disappeared into the tunnels that threaded through these mountains. He knew enough about cave systems to find his way back to Celestia.

Instead, he’d built a fire.

Flames crackled between them now, shadows shifting across the damp stone walls. Heat reached his face in uneven waves while the cavern’s chill clung to his back. Each breath carried a sharp ache through his ribs—the mimicra’s claws reminding him he was still alive.

Across the flames, the man sat propped against the mare’s flank. She was calm, breathing deep. His sword rested in his hands, fingers loose but ready. Eyes alert. Still calculating threats even in this moment of relative peace.

Castiel followed his gaze and felt his stomach drop.

The dagger lay near his feet, half-hidden in shadow. Silver blade catching firelight, the metal still clean despite everything it had done tonight. He remembered now, grabbing it during the chaos when the kindralh attacked, the weight foreign in his hand as he'd fought for his life. In the aftermath, he'd set it down without thinking, muscle memory placing steel within reach.

Now it lay there like an accusation.

The stranger had noticed. Those green eyes missed nothing.

"You keeping that?" The question came quietly, but with an edge that made the cavern feel smaller.

Castiel looked from the blade to the man's face, reading the tension there. The careful stillness that preceded violence. He could see the stranger calculating. How quickly Castiel could reach the dagger. Which of them would move faster despite their injuries.

"I forgot it was there," Castiel said, and the truth came easier than any lie he might have crafted. "I took it during the fight. When the creature attacked..." He paused, remembering the moment of pure desperation when survival had mattered more than protocol. "I needed a weapon."

The stranger's fingers shifted almost imperceptibly on his sword hilt. Not drawing, but reminding them both that he could. The message was clear enough.

Moving slowly, deliberately, Castiel reached for the dagger. The stranger tensed, ready to react, but Castiel lifted it carefully, grip loose, blade angled away from both of them. He held it flat across his palm, extending it handle-first toward the fire.

"Here," he said simply.

For a moment, the man didn't move. Didn't speak. Just watched Castiel with those unsettling green eyes, as if trying to read his intentions in the steadiness of his hands or the set of his shoulders.

Castiel waited. The blade was heavy on his palm, its weight a reminder of what it could do in the right hands. Or the wrong ones. He could feel his pulse in his throat, aware that this moment balanced on a knife's edge. Literally. One wrong move, one misread signal, and everything could go sideways fast.

Then the stranger exhaled, and some of the tension leaked out of his posture like air from a punctured waterskin.

"Keep it," he said, the words rough. 

Castiel blinked, caught off guard. "What?"

"Keep it. For now." The stranger's voice carried something unexpected—not trust, but something adjacent to it. "I'm not giving you the benefit of the doubt," he added quickly, as if he needed to clarify the terms. "Just figuring it's smarter if we both stay alive until we're out of this hole."

Castiel stared at him, trying to process what had just happened. The man had every reason to disarm him, every tactical justification for keeping weapons away from an enemy prisoner. Instead, he was choosing to arm him.

"Why?" Castiel asked, genuinely curious now. The tactical logic escaped him entirely.

The stranger shrugged, wincing slightly as the movement pulled at his injured shoulder. "You could've let that thing eat me and taken my stuff after," he said matter-of-factly. "Didn't. That's something."

Simple. Direct. No flowery speeches about honor or gratitude, just acknowledgment of a choice made in a moment of crisis. It was more honest than anything Castiel had heard from his own commanders in years.

But there was more to it than that, Castiel realized. Something in the way the man looked at him, not as Celestian or enemy or prisoner, but as a person capable of making choices. Someone whose word might actually mean something.

Castiel lowered the dagger carefully, placing it beside his hip. Close enough to reach if needed, far enough away to avoid appearing threatening. The metal was warm from his palm, and he found himself staring at it with something that might have been wonder.

"Thank you," he said quietly, meaning it.

The stranger nodded once, sharp and economical, then returned his attention to settling back against his horse's side. 

The silence that followed was comfortable. The stranger broke it, his voice carrying bone-deep exhaustion. "You want to sleep? I'll take first watch."

Castiel studied him in the firelight. Shoulders held too tight. Dark circles under his eyes. Still recovering from the head injury, still favoring that shoulder. Still pushing past reasonable limits.

"I'm fine," Castiel said. His body disagreed, but the man needed rest more than he did. “You should sleep. I’ve got enough adrenaline left to last a while.” Not entirely true. The crash was coming. But the man needed rest more. Head injuries were tricky. Pushing too hard could turn a manageable concussion into something fatal.

The stranger didn't argue, but he didn't surrender either. He shifted lower against his horse's side, sword still within reach. Suspicion still in his eyes but less sharp now.

Castiel turned his attention to the fire. He added another piece of wood to the fire, watching the flames take hold. The light made the stone walls almost warm, almost safe.

But safety was an illusion he'd been living with too long. Ever since the mission began, he'd been carrying this weight, the realization that his loyalty might have been a tool in someone else's hand. That orders he’d obeyed without question could have been part of a deception.

The flames flickered lower. Castiel fed them another piece of wood. On the other side, the man had gone still, breathing evening into sleep rhythm but not quite reaching it. Still guarding the space between them.

Castiel watched him. This man who remained more mystery than flesh despite everything they'd shared.

There was damage there. Not broken beyond repair, but bent by years of pressure that would have shattered others. Castiel recognized it because he'd been shaped by similar forces. Duty, expectation, responsibility that wore at you until only determination remained. They were not the same, but their fractures seemed to match.

And maybe that was the strangest thing: that sitting across from his supposed enemy, firelight flickering between them, he felt safer than he had in months. More himself than he'd been since the last time he'd sat with Sam in those tunnels beneath Celestia.

Here, there were no orders barked down from above. No demands for blind obedience. Only the necessities of survival. Breath. Blood. The unspoken understanding that came when two people faced death together and survived.

His thoughts drifted to Sam. By now, Sam would know something was wrong. Would he be waiting? Listening for footsteps that would never come? Or worse…would he think Castiel had abandoned him? That after ten years of friendship, he had chosen loyalty to the system over loyalty to him?

The thought made his chest tight. Sam was still down there, still alone. And Castiel was here, warming his hands by an enemy's fire, further from rescue than ever.

But there was no clear choice. He was injured, weakened, traveling with someone who had reason to want him dead. Turning back toward Celestia might be suicide. Even if he made it, what then? Walk into Michael’s throne room and demand Sam’s freedom? That would end one way.

Across the fire, the man shifted in his sleep. Castiel found himself studying the man's face. Strong features, weathered by responsibility. Lines around his eyes that spoke of better times, though they were buried under whatever burden he carried.

Who was he? Someone important enough that Celestia had committed resources to killing him, but humble enough to share food with a prisoner. Someone who spoke of kings with personal knowledge but carried himself like a common soldier. Someone who risked his life to save an enemy. A contradiction, wrapped in leather and steel.

The contradictions didn't fit standard profiles.

What would happen if he explained about Sam? About how the real war had never been fought across borders but it had always been inside the walls, between those who served power and those who remembered what power was supposed to serve.

Would this stranger believe him? Or assume it was another enemy deception?

The fire crackled lower. Castiel fed the flames another branch. Sparks curled upward, fading into darkness. He hoped that someday, this stranger would understand the world was more complicated than simple divisions of us and them.

Chapter Text

POV: Dean

The fire had burned down to a stubborn nest of glowing coals, barely enough light to see by but throwing decent heat. Dean crouched beside it, prodding at the remains with a stick while their breakfast, if you could call it that, sizzled on the hot stone. Waterlogged rations and a couple of Jo’s apples, soft and brown around the edges. Still, it smelled like real food, and that had to count for something.

The torch he’d wedged between two rocks threw a thin ring of orange light that didn’t even bother reaching the cavern walls. Outside that bubble, the dark pressed in, heavy, silent, like the mountain was just waiting for an excuse to finish what it started in the cave-in.

Behind him, Castiel’s breathing had finally evened out into the deep rhythm of actual sleep. About damn time. Dean had listened to the guy fight it for hours, shifting around, trying to find a position that didn’t pull at his injuries, catching his breath every time he failed.

Too damn quiet, that one. Not just his voice, but everything about him. Dean knew the type. He’d pulled the same stunt at sixteen, trying to convince the whole damn kingdom the crown wasn’t crushing him. That kind of quiet said: Don’t look at me like I’m broken. Don’t ask if I need help. I’ve got this.

Problem was, Castiel didn’t have this. Bandages showing spots of red. Skin the color of old parchment. Every step yesterday looked like a back-room bargain with pain. And not a word of complaint. Not even a token request for rest or water.

So Dean had let him sleep. And stayed up to make sure nothing decided to snack on them in the meantime.

The meat was as ready as travel rations ever got. He flipped it, shoving down thoughts of Ellen’s cooking and the fact he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten something that hadn’t come out of a pack.

A rustle of fabric behind him broke the quiet. Dean didn’t turn, just kept poking at their sorry excuse for breakfast.

“You snore,” Dean said, like they were just two guys having coffee instead of freezing their asses off in a cave.

Silence. Then: “No, I don’t.”

Dean’s mouth twitched toward a smile he wasn’t about to let fully happen. “Not loud. Just… weird. Like you learned to breathe by watching fish.”

That earned him a quiet exhale. Could’ve been a laugh, could’ve been irritation. With that guy, it was a coin toss.

Dean tore the meat in half and flicked one portion toward where Cas was propped against the wall, tossed a few apple slices after it. “Eat. We’re moving soon.”

No argument. Just the faint scrape of cloth as Castiel dragged the food closer and started eating slow, careful, like every bite came with a list of instructions on how not to make his ribs worse. Dean watched him sideways, the guy was still trying to look fine. Still not pulling it off, but hell, points for effort.

They ate without talking, the quiet broken only by the crackle of dying coals and the steady drip of water somewhere deep in the stone. Dean kept his hands busy, breaking down camp with the muscle memory of someone who’d done it in worse places under worse conditions. By the time Cas was finished, the fire was down to nothing but embers, painting the cavern in red and gold.

Dean pushed himself to his feet and rolled his shoulder. The joint popped loud enough to echo, sending a sharp streak of pain down his back and pulling a hiss from between his teeth. Cave-in bruises still ached like hell, and the dull throb in his skull was a steady reminder that head injuries weren’t something you just walked off.

Didn’t matter. He could move. He could fight if it came to it. He could drag them both out of this rock pile if luck and sheer bullheadedness held.

He turned—and stopped cold. Castiel’s hand was buried under his cloak, and steel caught the leftover firelight in a sharp glint. Dean’s palm was on his sword hilt before he’d even thought about it.

Reflex. Years of training. The kind of move that came from somewhere deeper than conscious thought.

Castiel froze too. Not a flinch, not a step back…just… still. His shoulders angled the tiniest bit, the kind of shift that said he’d read Dean’s reaction and was doing his own quick math. Uncertainty crossed his face. Maybe the realization that he might've just made a wrong move.

Dean’s eyes swept him in a heartbeat. No aggressive stance. Weight still on the wrong foot for an attack. The moment stretched. Dean’s knuckles stayed white on the hilt a second longer than they needed to, but his brain was already catching up to his body. Cas wasn’t lunging. Wasn’t even tensing to strike. He was just holding the blade like someone checking it was still there.

Dean let out a slow breath, made himself ease off. Not dropping his guard, just… adjusting it. He loosened his grip. Not all the way, though, he wasn’t an idiot. He tipped his chin toward the dagger still mostly hidden. “Keep it. At least until we’re out of this mountain.”

The faint crease between Castiel’s brows deepened. “Why?”

Dean’s smile was quick, one corner of his mouth pulling up without humor. “Because you’ve already proved you can put it to work. And I’m not throwing away a good fighter just to make myself feel better.”

Something in Castiel’s shoulders eased, not much, just a fraction, but Dean noticed it anyway. Old habits die hard. Some just die slower than others.

Dean gestured toward the narrow passage that led deeper into the mountain. “Come on. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

The tunnel beyond was a different kind of pain, tight in all the wrong places, slick where it shouldn’t be, and with a floor that seemed built specifically to trip the unwary. Dean took point, torch held low so the light caught the uneven rock. Every shift of air made the flame gutter, shadows jumping on the walls like they were trying to get free.

Baby’s hooves clicked steady behind him, each sound a little anchor in the dark. The mare didn’t care about tight quarters or dripping ceilings. She handled underground travel with typical horse logic: this was where they were going, so this was where they'd go. Dean envied that kind of uncomplicated logic.

Castiel came last, moving with the measured care of someone guarding what strength he had left. Dean could hear it in his breathing, steady enough most of the time, but catching every so often when a twist in the path pulled at whatever was hurting worst. Guy was hurting, but he was keeping up.

The slope underfoot changed, and with it, the air. Less stale, with a faint bite of freshness that hadn’t been there before. Somewhere ahead, there was an exit.

“You know where we’re going,” Castiel said. Not quite a question.

Dean didn’t look back. “Recognized the lake. Only one like it in this range, deep basin, hole in the ceiling big enough to see the stars. Once you know that landmark, you can figure the rest.”

“You’ve been here before.”

“Long time ago.” Dean ducked under a low stretch of ceiling, adjusting his grip on the torch. “Been hunting monsters in these woods since I was six. But down here? Different game. Got to know some of the tunnels during a mining rescue. Didn’t think I’d ever be grateful for that particular hell.”

Behind him, Castiel stayed quiet, the kind of quiet that said he was filing the info away.

“Earden stopped sending anyone down here after the war,” Dean went on. “Too close to the border. Too many unknowns in what’s past it.” He glanced at the walls, their color and shape as familiar as an old scar. “Rock doesn’t change much, though. Not in a few years.”

They walked in silence for a while, the kind that didn’t feel hostile but wasn’t exactly friendly either. The tunnel widened as they went, air getting fresher with each step, and Dean let himself believe, just for a second, that they might actually make it out of this mountain.

“What happens to me when we get out?” Castiel’s voice came from behind him, even but edged with something Dean couldn’t quite name.

Dean didn’t answer right away. He could’ve lied, thrown out something easy like we’ll figure it out . But Castiel wasn’t the kind of man you fed comfortable lies to. 

Truth was, Dean had no damn idea what they’d find when they reached Earden. If Adam had already consolidated power. If the kingdom believed their king was dead. If the throne Dean had never wanted was still waiting for him.

And then there was Castiel himself. Enemy soldier, unwilling piece in an assassination plot, and the man who’d saved Dean’s life. What exactly did you do with someone like that?

“I don’t expect leniency,” Castiel said when the silence stretched too long. “I just want to know if I’ll make it out of Earden alive.”

Dean rubbed his jaw, feeling the rough scrape of several days’ growth. He was tired. His shoulder ached. His head throbbed.  But none of that weighed half as much as the responsibility that had been sitting on his chest for ten years.

“I don’t want another damn prisoner,” he muttered. “Didn’t come down here to make that kind of decision.”

He glanced back over his shoulder, met Castiel’s eyes in the torchlight. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Except get born on the wrong side of a line.”

It wasn’t a promise. But it wasn’t a threat either. It was the best he could give right now.

“Not sure it matters what you think anyway,” Castiel said after a beat, his tone careful. “It’ll be the king’s call, won’t it?”

Dean’s teeth ground together, but he kept walking.

“From what I’ve heard,” Castiel went on, apparently missing the way Dean’s shoulders went rigid, “mercy’s not really his thing. The war started because Earden wouldn’t share its resources. Because your king closed the borders and let half the continent starve.”

Dean didn’t answer, but his grip on the torch tightened until his knuckles ached.

“And when his brother disappeared,” Castiel added, quieter now, “he didn’t even look. Just took the throne.”

That landed like a punch. Dean’s stride faltered for half a heartbeat before training forced him forward again.

“You think someone like that cares whether I drew a weapon or not?”

When Dean spoke, his voice was lower, rougher than he meant. “You ever wonder if the story they told you wasn’t the truth?”

The footsteps behind him slowed, then stopped. Dean went a few more paces before turning, torch held high to throw light across Castiel’s face.

"Celestia started that war," Dean said, voice even but laced with heat. "Built their marble citadel with magic. Forced quick harvests with more magic. And magic always has a price. Their soil died. When their people started starving, they decided it was easier to take what we grew than admit they’d wrecked their own land. We didn’t ask for it."

"That’s not—" Castiel began.

"Every month for the last five years," Dean cut him off, "the king of Earden’s sent aid to the border. Not scraps. Real food. Grain. Dried fruit. Medicine. Enough to feed thousands."

That got his attention. Dean could see the doubt flicker, the way certainty started to shift.

“There’s an outpost just past the ridge," Dean went on. "Regular hand-offs to Michael’s people. Official channels. Paperwork. Everything clean. We’ve done what we can to keep the peace."

Castiel’s answer came slow, deliberate. "I’ve never seen any of it."

Dean stopped breathing for half a beat. "Never?" His voice turned sharp. "No shipments? No medicine? Nothing reaching the people who need it?"

And that silence landed like a punch. 

Five years, and he’d kept that lifeline alive by sheer stubbornness. Risked the council’s trust. Risked looking weak. Believed (foolishly, apparently) that it meant something. That it could shave just one reason off the long list of why the two sides might start killing again.

If Castiel was telling the truth, then Michael hadn’t just let it fail—he’d buried it. Buried it and let people starve so the war’s story stayed neat.

Dean didn’t let any of that reach his face. Didn’t give Castiel a thing. Just shifted the torch in his hand and squinted against the smoke like it was the only reason his eyes burned.

"I’m so damn tired of this war," he said, low, mostly to himself.

"You say that like Earden hasn’t been fueling it," Castiel said, but there was less conviction now, like he wanted to believe his own words, but wasn’t sure they’d hold.

“Still holding onto that?"

"It’s what we’ve been told," Castiel admitted after a pause. "That Earden keeps it going. That your side lets us starve to prove a point."

Dean turned to face him fully. "You think I’m tired because we’re winning?" He swept a hand at the tunnel, at their sorry state, at the whole impossible mess. "I’m tired because people like you bleed for a fight you didn’t start. Because towns go hungry while kings give speeches. Because I’ve watched too many good men die cleaning up a mess made by people who’ll never set foot on a battlefield."

A memory rose unbidden. "Met someone once—Celestian woman. I was six, burning up with fever when she found me. She patched me up, taught my father which herbs to use. Same ones I used on you. There was a boy with her, three, maybe four, watching me with these serious blue eyes."

The torch crackled in the quiet.

"She told me something I’ve never forgotten: ‘It’s always the ones who never go hungry who send others off to die.’”

Castiel's expression changed, maybe showing the first hairline crack in the wall he'd built around what he believed.

"She didn’t want the war either," Dean said softly. "Most people don’t. It’s the ones in power who can’t figure out how to stop."

He turned and kept walking. A moment later, footsteps followed. Slower, heavier.

Chapter Text

POV: Castiel

The torchlight ahead wavered, casting shadows that stretched and twisted before dissolving back into darkness. Castiel followed in silence, one hand trailing along the rough stone wall. The cold texture grounded him in the middle of the storm tearing through everything he thought he knew.

The man ahead hadn't said much since their last conversation. Since he'd laid out the truth about aid shipments like evidence in a trial Castiel hadn't known he was attending.

The damage was already done.

Every month for five years. Grain, dried fruit, medicine. Aid from Earden that had never reached the people who needed it.

Castiel knew that outpost. Had seen the supply teams returning with sealed crates and explanations about "strategic materials" and "classified trade agreements." Too important for common soldiers to understand, too sensitive for questions.

He'd believed it. Or at least, never questioned it deeply enough to matter.

Now the pieces were rearranging themselves. The villages he'd passed during service, still struggling, still hungry. Clinics running dry while families fled the valleys looking for food that never came. But the capital always had what it needed. The court never lacked.

He'd wondered sometimes where it all came from. What Michael was trading to maintain such abundance while outer territories suffered.

Now he was beginning to understand.

Those crates hadn't been trade goods. They'd been aid. Resources meant for people, diverted elsewhere. Stockpiled for war, sold for profit, or hoarded while children starved. Michael hadn't just failed to help. He'd actively stolen help that was offered.

The realization sat cold and heavy in Castiel's stomach.

He shifted as they walked, motion tugging at bandages around his ribs. The pain had dulled overnight. Not gone, but manageable. As he adjusted his cloak, a scent reached him. Earthy, familiar.

The salve used on his wounds.

Yesterday when it was applied, something had tugged at memory without connecting. Now, with thoughts already stirred by revelations, the connection came clear.

It was the same blend his mother used to make. Exactly the same. Goldenroot and angelica, mixed with oils he couldn't name but recognized. No magic involved, just knowledge passed from healer to healer. Practical medicine requiring skill rather than power.

This man had said it came from someone in Celestia. A woman. Long ago.

The unease in Castiel's chest sharpened. He weighed the wisdom of asking questions that might lead to answers he wasn't ready for.

But silence had served him poorly. Maybe it was time for truth.

"That woman who helped you," he said quietly, careful to keep his voice steady. "Did you ever see her again?"

The man ahead didn't answer immediately. His torch moved steadily through the darkness, flame dancing off the uneven walls, and for a moment Castiel thought he might not respond at all.

"Went back once," came the eventual reply, distant. "House was gone. Burned out. Nothing left."

The words hung heavy between them. Castiel felt his throat tighten.

"I couldn't find any trace of the kid either," the man continued, voice growing heavy with old guilt.

Castiel's heart began to pound, recognition creeping up his spine like ice water.

A faint sound that might have been the ghost of laughter. "I think he liked me, actually. Followed me around for days while I was recovering. Kept trying to trade me this little wooden bird he carried for my dagger.”

No. It couldn’t be. Not him.

Another pause, longer this time.

"I didn't take the bird. Gave him an apple instead. Figured it was the better deal for a kid his age."

Castiel's breath caught. The world tilted sideways, reality reshaping around a buried memory.

Small hands clutching something round and red. A stranger's voice, kind and patient. The way his mother had laughed when he'd insisted on keeping the fruit by his bed until it went soft. He'd treasured that apple like it was made of gold, convinced it was the most valuable thing he'd ever owned.

The wooden bird his father had carved for him, clutched in desperate fingers as he'd tried to trade it for something sharp and dangerous because the stranger had seemed so capable, so safe.

This man, this enemy walking ahead of him, had been there. Had been in Castiel's house, had eaten at their table, had slept in their guest room while his wounds healed. Had given a frightened child an apple and refused a treasured toy because he'd understood that some things were too precious to take.

His throat closed. He wanted to speak, but words wouldn't come. How do you tell someone they're carrying a ghost who's walking behind them? How do you reveal the dead child in their memory is grown and scarred and fighting for the other side?

How do you explain their kindness had been the one bright moment in a childhood that ended in fire?

"I'm sorry," Castiel managed finally, the words scraping past the tightness in his throat.

"No." The man's voice came back firm, immediate. "I am."

Another step, another flicker of torchlight against stone.

"They were kind," he said, softer now. "That was their mistake. They died because they believed people were more than sides," the man continued, and there was something raw in his voice now, something that spoke of old wounds that had never properly healed.

Castiel wanted desperately to tell him the truth. To say: I'm here. I'm alive. Your kindness wasn't wasted. But fear held him back. Fear of how this stranger might react to learning that the boy he remembered was now his prisoner, his enemy, living proof that mercy could come back to bite you when you least expected it.

What if knowing the truth made everything worse? What if it poisoned the memory of his parents, turned this man's grief into anger? What if it destroyed the fragile trust they'd begun to build?

Instead, he cleared his throat carefully and asked the question that had been weighing on his mind.

"Do you think... could it have been Earden? The fire that killed them?"

The man ahead stopped walking entirely. For a moment, the only sound was the hiss and crackle of the torch flame.

"No," he said finally, and the certainty in his voice was absolute. "Earden doesn't target civilians. Never has, not even during the worst of the fighting."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure." A pause, then quieter: "There was magic in that fire. I could smell it in the ash, see it in the way the wood had burned. Too clean, too controlled. That's not how houses burn by accident."

He shifted the torch to his other hand, and in the brief flare of light Castiel caught a glimpse of his profile—hard lines etched by years of carrying burdens that should have been shared.

"My mother died the same way," the man said, so quietly Castiel almost missed it. "Same signature. Same careful precision. Same magical burn pattern that leaves nothing behind but questions and ash. She never wanted the war either."

The pieces clicked into place with horrible clarity. It reminded him of Azazel’s work. The precision, the fire too controlled to be chance. They were too familiar to dismiss.  If it was true, then his parents had died because they'd helped this stranger, and the stranger’s mother had suffered the same fate. A systematic elimination of anyone who might bridge the gap between enemies, who might make it harder to sustain the necessary hatred for war.

Years of training, of believing Earden had killed his family. The lies ran deeper than he'd imagined. Celestia hadn't just stolen his parents, they'd stolen his grief, shaped it into a weapon against the wrong enemy.

He wanted to tell him. But the words stuck in his throat, trapped by uncertainty and fear. So instead, he walked in silence, while the man who'd given him an apple twenty years ago led him toward whatever waited in the daylight beyond these tunnels.

Chapter Text

POV: Dean

The damn tunnel just wouldn’t end.

Dean had counted at least five turns too many, scraped his bad shoulder on jutting stone more often than he cared to admit, and if one more slick patch of moss tried to pass itself off as solid ground, he was going to start yelling at the geological gods about their piss-poor design choices.

The torch had burned down to a sad little stump, coughing out just enough light to keep him from kissing the wall.

Behind him, Baby kept her steady rhythm, hooves clicking on rock with the patient determination of a warhorse who had decided this was simply another strange human errand to endure. Dean could swear she was judging his route-finding, silently, but with the kind of equine certainty that said she’d have been at the exit hours ago if anyone had thought to ask her.

And then there was Castiel.

Still breathing, still following, still quiet, but the kind of quiet that had weight. Since that conversation about aid shipments, burned houses, and the tangled math of who’s to blame in a war, something had changed. Not colder. Not warmer either. Just… heavier. Like they were hauling the weight of a few ghosts between them, and the ghosts were opinionated.

Dean didn’t hold the quiet against him. Hell, he figured he was responsible for at least half of those ghosts.

His shoulder made itself known every time he moved it wrong. Not agony, just that deep, loose ache that promised trouble later. Probably torn to hell when he’d thrown himself over Castiel during the cave-in. Not that he’d admit it. Kings didn’t limp around complaining about old injuries, even when they were stuck underground with the guy who was technically still an enemy but had also kept them both alive.

Finally, finally, the air started to change.

It wasn’t much at first. Just a thread of something fresher sneaking in, like the mountain was grudgingly letting them know there was an outside world. The stale stone smell thinned, and Dean could almost taste weather on his tongue.

Then he saw it: a thin crack ahead spilling daylight across the rock, the real kind, not torchlight pretending to be the sun.

“About damn time,” he muttered, picking up his pace despite the chorus of complaints from muscles that had been through too much lately.

The tunnel made one last curve, climbed over loose scree, and then—

They were out.

Dean stepped out like a man being dug up, blinking hard against the glare, shoulders loose for the first time in hours, every inch of skin suddenly aware of sun and wind.

The clearing hit him all at once: grass so green it almost hurt to look at, air that actually moved, and the kind of light that didn’t need fire to make it happen. He’d never been great at the whole “indoor” thing anyway, and right now the sky felt like a personal apology from whatever higher power handled this sort of miracle.

He just stood there for a second, letting sunlight soak in, neck tilted back like he might actually be able to drink the stuff. Eyes watered—brightness, obviously. Not for any other reason.

Behind him, Baby snorted loud enough to be insulting and walked right past like he was blocking her view. She picked a sunny patch, dropped her head, and started mowing the grass with the slow, methodical satisfaction of someone deleting bad memories one bite at a time.

Castiel followed slower, blinking against the light. Pale in the daylight, pale in the tunnels, didn’t make much difference. He moved like a man quietly sorting injuries into categories: “ignore,” “deal with later,” and “not dead yet.”

Dean gave him a glance, expecting… something. Relief, maybe. The obligatory “hell of a thing, surviving that.” Instead, Castiel just looked at the place, face unreadable, like he was weighing whether the world above really wanted him back.

Dean rubbed at the beard scruff on his jaw. “Well,” he said. “We made it.”

One nod from Castiel. That was it. The silence that followed wasn’t hostile, but it had weight, like they’d both packed too much into it to bother unpacking now.

Dean’s eyes did a lazy sweep of the clearing, habit, not paranoia. Grass, rocks warmed by the afternoon, a handful of old trees that had been here before kingdoms had names. Light told him they had three, maybe four hours before dusk. Enough time to figure out their next move before the dark showed up again. The smart move would’ve been to keep walking, put more distance between them and the tunnels before nightfall. But his legs had that post-adrenaline heaviness, and Castiel… well, the guy was standing like he’d figured out the exact number of steps left before his body staged a mutiny.

Yeah. They needed a break. Not the quick, catch-your-breath-and-move kind, but the kind where you actually let the weight slide off your shoulders for a while. Dean told himself it was tactical: recovery now meant fewer mistakes later. And maybe that was true. But it was also that the grass looked soft and the sun felt honest, and after hours of damp stone and bad air, walking past that would’ve been a damn crime.

Right on cue, his stomach weighed in with a low, unhappy growl. The food situation had gone from “low” to “embarrassing” somewhere under the mountain, and a quick check of the pack confirmed it: two sad slices of apple that looked like they’d been through a war of their own.

“Barely enough food for a sparrow,” he muttered, wandering over to Baby with the scraps. “Here you go, girl. At least one of us should eat like royalty.” She took them with her usual dignified crunching, tail flicking in what Dean decided was smug approval.

Something red caught his eye: a low bush, tight clusters of berries. He crouched for a closer look. Nervetongues. Tart as vinegar, ugly as sin, but safe enough. Ellen used to boil them into tea for Sam when the kid got cranky.

He picked a decent handful and walked back to where Castiel had parked himself near Baby, looking like stubbornness and sheer spite were the only things keeping him vertical. Dean tipped half the berries into his palm before lowering himself onto the grass with a groan that came from somewhere deep in his bones.

Castiel’s brow lifted a fraction at the noise.

“What?” Dean tossed a berry into his mouth—and instantly regretted it when the sour hit. “I’m old, injured, and emotionally scarred. Let me sit down without judgment.”

The silence stretched, long enough for Dean to wonder if he’d just embarrassed himself, until he caught it: the faint twitch at the corner of Castiel’s mouth. Not much, but enough to register. Could’ve been the ghost of a smile. Could’ve been a muscle spasm. Dean decided to count it as the first one. Small victories mattered when the rest of the scoreboard looked like hell.

Dean didn’t call it out, but yeah… he noticed.

Castiel waited a heartbeat longer, then sat beside him. Not too close, not quite distant either. The kind of space that left Dean very aware of him.

They stayed like that for a while, not talking, not trying to fill the quiet with anything that would make it heavier. Just… breathing free air and letting the wind work over the bruises like it had all the time in the world. The sun was warm without smothering, the grass had enough give to almost forget it was still the ground, and for once, Dean couldn’t feel mortal peril breathing down his neck.

He eased back until he was flat on the grass, one arm tucked behind his head. Eyes half-closed, letting the warmth sink deep enough to pry tension out of his muscles. Somewhere close, Castiel shifted, the wind moved through the grass, and Baby’s steady breathing carried across the clearing like she’d been born here instead of dragged through hell and stone to get to it.

It was the closest Dean had come to peace in months. Maybe years.

“You ever think about it?” he asked finally, voice low enough that it almost got lost in the breeze. “Just… walking away from all of it. No kingdoms, no politics, no borders some bastard drew before we were born. Just sunlight, horses, and whatever the hell these berries are.”

Castiel didn’t answer right away, but Dean could feel the weight of him considering it—seriously, not like he was humoring him.

"Sometimes," came the eventual response, quiet enough that Dean almost had to convince himself he’d actually heard it.

He turned his head. Castiel was looking past him, out over the hills that spilled away from the clearing, hands loose on his knees. His face had that closed-off look Dean recognized, the kind that meant the thoughts in there weren’t the kind you could tidy up and put into words without breaking something in the process.

"I don't think I belong anywhere anymore," Castiel said, and there was a weight in it. Not self-pity. Just the kind of tired that got into your bones and stayed there after you’d lost too many things you’d thought were permanent.

Dean felt that like a punch under the ribs. He’d been there. After Dad died, after Sam vanished, after the crown landed on his head like a bad joke and refused to come off. That feeling that the map had shifted under you, and even if you found where you were, you weren’t sure you’d want to stay there.

"Yeah," he said, softer than he meant to. "Join the club."

The quiet that followed wasn’t awkward. More like the opposite. Two people who’d stumbled into the same stretch of no man’s land and decided not to shoot at each other for once. Dean didn’t want to ruin it with talk about next steps, or reality, or the mess waiting for them.

For a few minutes, lying in the grass, it was easy to pretend the world was simple. That the good guys were obvious, the bad guys wore signs, and doing the right thing didn’t come with a body count.

Eventually, though, the sun's angle reminded him that time was still moving forward whether they acknowledged it or not. Dean pushed himself upright with a grunt that was only partly for show, and caught Castiel’s eyes on him. The guy had noticed the wince he hadn’t meant to let slip.

"You alright?" Dean asked, nudging Castiel's shoulder gently with his elbow.

Castiel nodded, the movement economical and probably more optimistic than accurate. "You?"

Dean rolled his shoulder experimentally. “Still breathing. That’s usually a good sign.”

That got him a soft huff of air, not quite a laugh, but close enough to count, and for half a second, Castiel’s face lost the fortress walls he usually kept in place.

Dean found himself looking longer than he meant to. Afternoon light caught on the angles of his face, the set of his jaw, the way he held himself just so to keep from aggravating wounds he probably shouldn’t even be walking on. And for a heartbeat, the urge to just lay it all out was right there: crowns, kingdoms, all the ugly truths and heavier-than-they-look decisions he’d been carrying since forever.

But then he remembered the tone Castiel had used when he’d talked about Earden’s king: cold, certain, like he’d already passed sentence. Remembered that right now, Castiel looked at him like he was just a man. Not a ruler, not a title. Someone worth talking to.

Dean wasn’t ready to wreck that. Maybe he never would be.

So he pushed to his feet instead, stretching out the stiffness. Baby’s head came up, ears forward, ready if he was.

He offered a hand. Castiel studied it like there might be strings attached, then took it.

Dean pulled him up, felt the careful way he moved, heard the quiet hitch in his breath when healing ribs protested. For a moment they were close enough for Dean to see the flecks of gold in those ridiculous blue eyes, close enough to map the scars that came from living for something bigger than yourself.

Their eyes caught and held just a little too long. Something passed between them. Recognition, maybe. Or the start of something he didn’t dare name.

Then Castiel looked away, Dean let go, and the moment slipped past like it never happened.

The warmth stayed, though. Sat somewhere behind his ribs where he could keep it for later, when the road got ugly again and the world remembered it owed them nothing.

For now, it was enough.

Chapter Text

POV: Castiel

Baby was stronger than she looked.

The black mare carried them both without complaint, her gait smooth and steady despite the double burden. Castiel sat behind the stranger, every point of contact mapped with unshakable precision: knees brushing, his injured ribs grazing the man’s back with each sway of the saddle, the shared warmth seeping through layers of leather and cloth.

The irony was impossible to ignore. A Celestian soldier riding double with an Earden warrior whose name he still didn’t know, and whose steady breathing against his chest made it harder to remember why that should matter. The intimacy of it should have been uncomfortable, even dangerous. Instead, it felt strangely natural, as though they’d been riding this way for years rather than hours.

They hadn’t spoken much since leaving the clearing. The silence between them was not empty, it was taut, carrying a pressure neither seemed ready to release. Like both were bracing for the moment when whatever bound them together would snap.

Castiel was not used to such proximity. In the military, closeness meant threat, meant knowing the exact reach of an opponent’s blade, the angle of their draw. Yet here, the tension was different. Not hostile. Something else he couldn’t name without risking too much.

The sun dropped lower, its light turning the world into a painting, soft gold spilling across slopes and trees, making even the scars of old battles look almost gentle. The forest thinned as they descended toward a valley. Below, land unfurled in layered greens, cradling a building that seemed untouched by the war.

Low stone walls weathered smooth. A roof built to outlast storms. Smoke curling lazily from a chimney as though time had slowed here.

An inn. The kind of place where soldiers from opposite banners might sit at adjacent tables without reaching for their weapons, if they could forget who they were for long enough.

“You know it?” Castiel asked.

The man’s nod was clipped but certain. “Yeah.”

The tone held history. Not the kind of recognition that came from maps or reports, but something personal. Castiel let it go, pressing would only close the door further.

At the valley’s crest, the stranger slowed Baby, then stopped entirely. The change in his posture was immediate: shoulders squaring, jaw setting as he studied the scene below.

He dismounted with practiced ease, boots meeting the earth in silence. Castiel followed, landing heavier, his ribs and legs both protesting the shift from saddle to ground.

“We’ll walk the rest of the way,” the man said. There was tension in his voice now. Thin, stretched.

Castiel’s gaze tracked the same line down the slope. Horses. Five, maybe six. Broad-backed, battle-ready. The tack carried colors and insignia he knew too well: Earden’s royal guard.

His pulse stuttered. He’d studied those markings in war rooms, tracing them with a finger over maps while commanders discussed strategies. Royal escorts didn’t travel without someone worth guarding.

A figure emerged from the inn, tall, blond, moving with the deliberate authority of someone used to being obeyed. Young, younger than the role suggested. He mounted in one smooth motion and rode out toward the road that would lead back to Earden’s capital.

Beside him, the man went still. Not with fear. This was recognition, sharp and unguarded.

“Adam,” he said, barely audible. But the sound was heavy. Not just a name, but a wound given voice. Like it was the final piece of a puzzle that made perfect, terrible sense.

They didn't move until the hoofbeats had faded completely. Only then did the stranger seem to remember how to breathe.

"We can go," he said finally.

But Castiel lingered. The air here felt altered, charged. The stranger’s attention kept darting toward the inn’s windows, the roofline, as though reading for signs of change since his last visit.

They reached the door in silence. The man’s knock was sharp, deliberate: two raps with the certainty of someone who knew exactly how this threshold would answer.

It opened almost instantly.

The woman who appeared didn’t waste a second on politeness. She looked the man over once and her expression transformed: first blank shock, then a flood of emotions crossing her weathered face like storm clouds racing across open sky.

"Dean Winchester," she breathed, her voice cracking between relief and fury, “you absolute son of a bitch!”

Castiel's lungs seized mid-breath. His vision narrowed to a tunnel.

Dean Winchester.

For a moment, it was just sound, syllables without meaning. Then understanding surged in, rearranging everything Castiel thought he knew.

Dean Winchester. King of Earden.

The name that sat at the center of every Celestian military briefing. The focal point of every hypothetical siege plan. The man Celestia wanted to contain, to corner, to kill if the opportunity arose.

His blood chilled. Their mission. The vague orders about “unusual activity” near the border. Uriel’s eagerness. The mimicra placed like bait.

He had been sent to kill the King of Earden. Without knowing it. And instead—

—he’d saved his life.

His muscles locked, breath shallow. Across from him, Dean's shoulders drew back an inch, his weight shifting to the balls of his feet, eyes never leaving Castiel's face, watching for the telltale shift that would signal whether this moment would end in words or bloodshed.

The woman stepped forward and caught Dean in a fierce embrace. “He came here,” she said, voice breaking. “Adam. He told me you were gone. That it was confirmed.”

She pulled back to slap his chest. “And now you just show up like some stray dog!”

Dean’s arms didn’t move at first. But over her shoulder, his attention never wavered from Castiel, measuring him again. Not as a stranger, not as a prisoner, but as someone holding a blade at his back without lifting it.

Slowly, Dean returned the embrace. “I didn’t mean to scare you, Ellen.”

Ellen. Castiel filed the name away.

She turned to him with an unguarded smile. “Oh, I’m sorry, are you traveling with Dean? Poor thing, did he talk your ear off?”

She didn’t see the truth hanging between them like a blade.

“I didn’t know,” Castiel said, his voice low. His gaze didn’t leave Dean’s. “You didn’t tell me.”

Dean’s mouth opened, closed. “I wanted to—” But the words failed.

The silence swelled.

Ellen shifted her attention back to Dean, softening slightly. “When Adam told me you were dead…” She hesitated. “He was wearing the crown, Dean.”

Dean’s jaw tightened. “I figured as much.”

The crown. The betrayal wrapped in gold.

“You did?” she asked.

Dean’s exhale was long, deliberate. “It was a setup from the start. Adam pushed for me to go alone. I found the mimicra, then a Celestian squad. They weren’t hunting it, they were waiting for me.” His eyes flicked toward Castiel, then away. “In case the creature failed.”

Castiel's lungs constricted, each breath shallower than the last, as if an invisible hand were slowly tightening around his ribs. Uriel’s strange urgency. The wrongness in every step of the mission. He’d been a weapon placed in Dean’s path without realizing it.

“The storm?” Ellen asked. “I saw it from here, with black clouds pouring over the ridge, lightning that didn’t belong to any season. Looked like the mountain was coming apart.”

“Magic,” Dean said flatly. “Too strong to be natural. Hit right after we killed the mimicra. Left nothing behind.”

Castiel swallowed against the grit in his throat. No wonder Dean had kept him at arm’s length.

“You think Adam—?”

“Worked with them?” Dean’s voice was iron. “Yes.”

Ellen didn’t argue.

“I don’t know if Michael’s directing him, or if Adam’s just being used. But my half-brother tried to have me killed.”

Half-brother. Blood betraying blood. A wound no battle plan could prepare for.

Ellen’s expression softened. “You need food. And rest. Both of you.” She disappeared down the hall.

Dean stood there a moment longer, gaze on the floor. “I need to take care of Baby,” he said abruptly, and was gone before Castiel could speak, like a man already convinced the truth had cost him whatever fragile trust they’d built. The conversation they needed to have remained hanging in the air, unspoken.

Alone, Castiel let the reality sink in. King of Earden. The man he had apparently been sent to end. The man who had hauled him out of stone and treated wounds like a friend would, who had rung a bell to break a monster’s voice and refused to put a blade through a fallen enemy’s throat. The man who, years ago, had slept beneath the roof of Castiel’s childhood home and pressed an apple into small hands in exchange for a wooden bird he would not take.

Ellen returned with a lantern and a key, breathless with purpose rather than haste. “Upstairs,” she said, holding both out. “First door on the right.”

“Thank you,” Castiel said. His voice came back steady, which was its own kind of surprise, and he climbed the stairs slowly. 

The room was simple. Narrow bed, chair by the window, washbasin with clean water. Everything a traveler needed and nothing they didn't.

He closed the door and leaned against it, letting the quiet settle around him. But instead of comfort, the silence felt oppressive, heavy with implications he wasn't ready to face.

Dean Winchester. The King of Earden.

For years, Castiel had carried an image of Earden's king: cold, calculating, a man who would sacrifice anyone for power. The reports had painted Dean Winchester as a tyrant who had seized his throne while his brother died, who had closed borders and let people starve. But that man didn't exist. The person who had shared meager rations in a cave, who had pulled him from falling stone at the cost of his own injury—that was real. The contradiction should have been impossible, yet here he was, forced to choose between everything he’d been taught and everything he’d witnessed.

He crossed to the window and pushed it open. Night air hit his face, sharp and cold enough to keep his thoughts moving. Rolling hills stretched into the dark, edges softened by distance. It looked peaceful. It wasn’t.

He sat on the edge of the mattress, elbows to knees, hands clasped.

If someone else wore the crown now, and Michael had set up Dean’s death, the arrangement that had kept Sam alive for the last ten years no longer mattered. Sam had been leverage; as long as Dean was king, he was useful.

But if Dean was presumed dead and his half-brother sat on the throne, Sam was nothing but another mouth to feed. Another secret. Another loose end.

Cold seeped into his chest, slow and solid. Michael had never cared about Sam beyond the advantage he provided. Kept him alive but locked away, fed but isolated.

If the balance had shifted, Sam’s survival wasn’t strategy anymore. It was a risk Michael might decide to cut away.

He stood abruptly and crossed back to the window, fists tight. He couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t sit in a warm room while Sam faced whatever threat Michael’s shifting priorities might bring.

But the reality was there, cold and immovable…He was in Earden, miles from Celestia, traveling with the enemy king he’d been sent to kill without even knowing it. Even if he made it back, even if he reached Sam… what then?

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Too many lies. Too many missing pieces. Too many people he cared about caught in traps they hadn’t built.

One certainty cut through the rest, sharp enough to hold onto: Sam was in danger.

He had to find a way back before Michael decided loose ends weren’t worth keeping. Even if it meant breaking the one friendship he had found outside of Sam.

Chapter Text

POV: Dean

The bed was too soft.

After sleeping on rock and dirt and whatever passed for “support” in mountain tunnels, the mattress at Ellen’s felt like sinking into a cloud. Clean sheets, dry walls, quiet that didn’t come with the threat of the ceiling falling in—civilization, basically. It should’ve been heaven. Instead, it felt wrong, like his muscles couldn’t remember how to unclench unless there was something trying to kill him.

He lay on his back and watched the ceiling beams turn from gray to pale gold as dawn threaded in. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw it again: Castiel’s face when Ellen had said his name. Not just surprise. That deeper shift. The precise second when “stranger” became “lie.” Dean could practically see the pieces clicking together.

He rolled onto his side and his shoulder objected with a sharp pinch, then a dull, familiar throb. Yeah, still there. He sat up slow, palms on knees, eyes gritty from not-sleep. Ellen’s inn smelled like it always did in the mornings: yeast, woodsmoke, a hint of coffee strong enough to banish ghosts.

His clothes (yesterday’s blood-and-dust special) were folded on the chair. Fresh ones waited beside them. Ellen must’ve slipped in while he was out and done what she’d been doing since he was six: patch the holes he pretended didn’t exist.

He pulled the clean shirt over his head and caught himself in the little mirror above the washbasin. Twenty-six going on forty. Green eyes ringed in bruised shadows. Beard coming in uneven because he never seemed to make time for a full shave anymore. Whatever. He needed caffeine more than vanity.

The hallway was quiet. Castiel’s door was shut. Dean paused, listening. Nothing. Either still asleep or stubbornly pretending to be; with him it was a coin toss. Good. Let him rest. The man had bled enough for two.

Downstairs, Ellen was hauling a pie out of the oven like she fully intended to solve three wars and a famine with butter and apples. She looked up when his boots touched the bottom step.

"Well, look who's finally moving," she said, that familiar edge of concern threading through.

"Ellen," he said, his smile gaining some genuine ground. "That's either the best thing I've smelled in weeks, or I'm having a very pleasant concussion."

“Figured you could use real food.” She slid a generous slice onto a chipped plate and pushed it across. “When’s the last time you ate something that didn’t fight you back?”

He took a bite and had to close his eyes for a second. Cinnamon, soft apples, a crust that shattered and melted at the same time. The kind of thing that made you remember you had a body and it was worth keeping alive. “Hell,” he muttered around a second forkful. “I forgot how things are supposed to taste.”

Ellen poured coffee—black, mean, perfect. He wrapped both hands around the mug, let the heat work on stiff knuckles.

“Your friend still sleeping?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron.

Dean nodded. “He’s been through hell. I figured I’d… give him a minute.”

Her mouth softened. “He looked… rattled, last night. After I said your name.”

His shoulder tightened before he could stop it. “Yeah. I hadn’t told him.”

“Why not?”

He stared into the coffee like it might give him a better answer than the truth. How could he explain that for a moment he’d gotten to be just a man, no crown, no council, no expectations, and that Castiel had treated him like that man mattered? That admitting the truth would’ve slammed the door on that faster than any enemy blade?

“Complicated,” he said finally.

“Always is,” Ellen said, and didn’t push. That was her gift: knowing when to pry and when to keep the world stitched together with silence.

He finished the pie in the kind of quiet that didn’t need apology. Ellen moved around her kitchen with the easy precision of someone who’d done this while the world burned and would keep doing it when it stopped. Refuge was a choice, not an accident.

“I should check on Baby,” he said, rolling the stiffness out of his neck.

“In the back stable,” Ellen said. “Gave her the good stall. She’s earned it twice over.”

Outside, the morning had that sharp clarity that promised good weather, if the world cooperated. Sunlight pulled the last wisps of mist from the hills. A church bell marked the hour.

He rounded the inn. The stable door hung open. Good stall on the left—

Empty.

He stopped. Then checked the next stall. And the next. The plow horse blinked at him. Ellen’s supply mare flicked an ear. Baby’s stall held clean straw, fresh water, and a very specific amount of nothing.

“Baby?” he called, voice coming out wrong. “Baby, c’mon, girl—”

Nothing answered but the soft sway of a halter peg bumping the wall.

The cold hit him low and mean. He was moving before he knew he’d decided to, cutting back through the yard, through the kitchen door so fast Ellen dropped her spoon.

“Baby’s gone,” he said. “She’s not in the stable.”

“That’s impossible,” Ellen said, going pale. “I checked her before dawn—she was—”

But he was already taking the stairs two at a time, hand sliding on the banister because his palm was suddenly sweat-slick. Castiel’s door. He knocked, hard.

“Castiel. Open up.”

Silence.

He tried the latch. Unlocked.

The room was tidy in that military way that put everything back where it started so nobody could accuse you of leaving a mark. Bed made. Window cracked for air. Washbasin clean. And on the little table by it, a scrap of paper torn from something bigger.

Two words. Careful handwriting.

I’m sorry.

Dean stared at it until the letters swam, then crumpled it in his fist. Sorry. Right. That and a horse would—well. Apparently that and his horse would get him all the way out of town.

Ellen filled the doorway, breath short from the climb. She didn’t have to ask. His face told the story.

“He’s gone,” Dean said, flat enough to tilt the room. “Took Baby. Left.”

“Why would he—”

“Because he played me.” Heat surged up, ugly and familiar. “Of course he did. Survives when everyone else dies, needs my help, says the right things—” He caught himself grinding his teeth and forced his jaw to unlock. “I walked right into it.”

“Dean,” Ellen said, stepping inside and closing the door with a quiet click. “You don’t really believe that.”

“Don’t I?” He laughed once; even he didn’t like the sound. “He’s Celestian. Enemy. And I sat across a fire from him and—” He cut the sentence in half before it said more than he wanted. “He got what he wanted.”

“What did he want,” Ellen asked, calm as a whetstone. “Your horse?”

“Information,” Dean snapped, pacing a tight line between the window and the bed. “Anything he could take back. Patrol routes, supply contacts—” Dean began pacing the small room like a caged animal. 

Ellen watched him wear a path in the floorboards, her expression unreadable.

"You done?" she asked finally.

Dean stopped pacing. "What?"

"Wearing a hole in my floor."

“This isn’t funny,” he said.

“Didn’t say it was.” Ellen folded her arms. “A Celestian soldier making off with your horse, that’s a problem. And it’s my problem too, seeing as I’m fond of both of you. But that boy last night?” She shook her head. “Didn’t read like a spy.”

“What did he read like?”

“Like someone walking with a weight he didn’t pick up and can’t put down.” Her eyes cut to the scrap of paper, then back to him. “Like someone who didn’t want to do what he was about to do.”

Dean’s grip loosened around the note. He hated how much he wanted to believe that. Hated it because wanting made him stupid.

“Or maybe,” Ellen added, even, “I’m wrong and you’re right. Maybe he played you from hello.”

She turned toward the hall.

“Either way,” she said over her shoulder, “it doesn’t change what we have to do next.”

That pulled him up short, like a hand to the chest. He turned to the window. The empty stall sat like a missing tooth in a smile. There were a dozen things he wanted to break and none of them would fix a damn thing.

“Doesn’t matter now,” he said, and the steel slid back into his voice where it belonged. “He’s gone. She’s gone. I’ve got bigger problems.”

“Adam,” Ellen said.

“Yeah.” He scrubbed at the back of his neck. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” she said, coming to claim the room’s single chair like it owed her rent. “But not as bad as it could be.”

“Explain.”

“The guards who came with him yesterday?” She tilted her head. “They weren’t happy. You can tell, if you know where to look. Sergeant Morrison especially, that man’s carried your father’s standard and yours for twenty years. He kept his mouth shut, but his eyes were loud.”

A small, treacherous thread of hope uncoiled in Dean’s chest. “Go on.”

“Adam’s wearing the crown,” she said, “but it doesn’t fit. He’s got the word, not the weight. Men are following because they think you’re dead. That’s a thin rope. The second they learn otherwise…” She let the sentence trail off, sympathy cutting briefly through her practical edge. “Wanting power isn’t the same as carrying it. He’s getting an education.”

“And the people?”

“Asking questions.” Her mouth flattened. “He announced your death, but there’s no body, no funeral. Just his say-so. People remember what happened to your father. They remember who kept grain moving, who kept the borders calm, who rode out when it was ugly. It wasn’t Adam.”

Dean nodded slowly as the edges of a path presented themselves. “So I’ve got support. If I can get back to the capital.”

“If you can show up breathing, yes.” She hesitated. “But Adam’s not stupid.”

“What do you mean?”

“He came here full of questions,” she said. “About you. About who you’d trust. Safe houses. Supply routes.” Her mouth compressed into a thin line. “He’s been laying track for this a while.”

That one hurt worse than the shoulder. Dean swallowed around it. His brother. His blood. All that careful patience turned into a blade at his back.

“So,” he said, and his voice came out quiet in the way that meant danger, “what do I do?”

“First?” Ellen pushed up out of the chair. “You stop looking like a man who just lost his horse and start looking like a king again.”

He arched a brow.

“And you let me arm you properly,” she added. “That pretty sword’s fine for ceremony. You’ll need blades that don’t care how things look when they get messy.”

“You still keeping contraband under the flour bin, Ellen?”

She gave him a look. “Please. I graduated from flour bins a decade ago.”

He couldn’t help it; the corner of his mouth twitched.

“We’ll get you home without your fool head ending up on a spike,” she said, moving for the door. Then paused, hand on the frame. “Dean?”

He didn’t turn, just tilted his head.

“For what it’s worth,” she said, softer, “I don’t think that boy betrayed you. Not the way you’re thinking.”

Silence laid down between them. He could feel the truth of it trying to get in through the cracks. He didn’t let it. Not yet.

Ellen nodded once, accepting his non-answer, and left.

Dean stood there a long beat after the door shut, listening to the inn settle, boards creaking, kettle hissing, the ordinary morning sounds of a life he’d never really had time to live. He opened his fist. The note had wrinkled into a little white stone. He set it on the table next to the basin like it might behave if he pretended not to care.

Dean turned toward the door, shoulders squaring. It didn’t matter what he thought about Castiel. Didn’t matter what he felt.

He had a horse to reclaim.

A kingdom to take back.

And a half-brother to face.

Chapter Text

POV: Castiel

When he’d slipped through Ellen’s yard at graylight and whispered her name, Baby had lifted her head, pricked one ear, and come. No snort of refusal. No dance on the lead. She’d just stepped into his space like a decision already made.

It wasn’t what he’d expected from Dean Winchester’s horse. She was trained to follow one voice, one rider. And yet when he’d swung into the saddle, she’d stood steady, waiting only for the faintest shift of his weight before moving. No testing him, no sidestepping. She matched his cues as though she’d been carrying him for years instead of seconds.

Now, under the cover of pines, he guided her into a narrow grove he’d used before. Two large boulders blocked most of the wind and hid the space from casual view. Thick oaks along the edge made it harder to spot from a distance. A spring cut through one side with clean water, no stagnant smell. The grass was lush enough to keep a horse thinking kindly of humans.

“This is where we part,” he said, palm running the warm line of her neck. “For now.”

Baby turned her head, met his eyes. Listening. Assessing. Horses did that. They weighed you.

He pulled the last of the carrots from his pack, taken from Ellen’s kitchen while she’d been in the other room. Not his proudest moment. The guilt gnawed at him, tangled up with the heavier guilt of leaving Dean without explanation. He held the carrots out, and Baby took them with gentle teeth, careful even now.

“You’ll be safe here,” he told her. He wasn’t certain. He said it anyway. “When this is over—”

He didn’t finish. Promises, in his experience, were a kind of magic that always cost more than they advertised.

She blew a soft breath against his shoulder and moved off to test the spring. Trusting him. Trusting he’d return.

That weight almost sent him to his knees.

He tied the lead in a slip knot he could open with one tug and checked the lay of the grove the way a soldier checks a room: lines of approach, noise that didn’t belong, places wind caught leaves wrong. Clean. He put his palm once more to the mare’s cheek. Then he turned toward Celestia and began to run.

The miles blurred beneath his feet, each step carrying him further from the first real peace he'd known in years. His ribs burned where the mimicra had clawed him, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the hollow ache spreading through his chest. The moment Ellen had spoken Dean's name, the way everything had changed, how every conversation suddenly meant something different. The note he'd left felt pathetic now, two words that explained nothing and justified less.

But Sam was in danger, and that knowledge drove everything else from his mind.

By the time Celestia's walls rose before him, the night watch would be changing. Seven minutes of vulnerability at the southeast postern while guards rotated, a gap he'd memorized during restless nights when sleep eluded him.

The hidden entrance lay beneath a section of collapsed outer wall, camouflaged by decades of ivy. Castiel slipped through the gap like a ghost returning home.

The tunnels beneath Celestia predated the castle above, some carved by magic, others by hands long dead. Castiel knew them better than anyone, not through ordered patrol but because they'd become his sanctuary. The only place in the kingdom where he could breathe without observation.

These passages were his secret, discovered years ago when grief and isolation had driven him to explore every corner of his quarters. The builders had been cleverer than they'd realized—the orphans' barracks sat directly above the old dungeon levels, and time had opened cracks between them. What had begun as escape from the suffocating atmosphere of military life had become something else entirely when he'd heard a voice echoing from the depths. A young voice, alone and afraid, speaking to himself just to hear human sound.

Sam.

His boots whispered against worn stone as he navigated passages so narrow his shoulders nearly brushed both walls. The air was cold, stale, heavy with centuries of accumulated silence. No torches illuminated these depths. He moved by memory and instinct, fingers trailing familiar grooves in the rock.

The passage curved sharply left, then descended. Here, the stone grew damp, weeping moisture with nowhere else to go. And here, if he listened carefully, voices sometimes drifted through hairline cracks from the council chamber above.

Castiel pressed his ear to the wall and held his breath.

"—went exactly as planned." Michael's voice, smooth and satisfied.  "Adam's coronation should be concluded by now."

Castiel's body tensed.

Another voice responded, rougher, carrying the rasp of old smoke and older cruelty: "The people accepted the news?" 

Azazel.

The air in his lungs went thin. He had seen the man once across a long hall—tall, built like a blade, eyes like burnt coals. Michael's knife when the crown wanted deniability.

"They had little choice. When a king dies in the field, the crown passes to the next in line." Michael's tone carried cruel satisfaction. "The storm ensured no one would question the details."

"The magical storm was inspired," Azazel said with approval. "Though I confess disappointment about the soldier. I was looking forward to finishing what I started with his family twenty years ago."

Heat hit Castiel's face like he'd stepped too near the forge. The soldier. Him. He pressed harder into the seam until stone bit cheek and ear.

"The mimicra served its purpose," Michael replied dismissively. "If it took the boy with the king, so much the better. Saves us the trouble later. Besides, there's poetry in it. The family that harbored our enemy, eliminated together."

"That fire was some of my finest work," Azazel mused, voice warming with memory. "You should have seen how quickly their little hovel caught. Magic makes everything so much more... thorough."

For a heartbeat the world narrowed to a single point. His mother's hands, steady, stained by herbs. His father's thumb smoothing a splinter from a wooden bird. The red of an apple cupped in small fingers like a treasure. The house after. The black. The nothing.

He bit his tongue to stop the sound in his throat. Blood came copper and hot. His vision grayed at the edges. Castiel pressed his palms flat against the wall, fighting the urge to either collapse or explode through the stone. Twenty years. Twenty years he'd carried their deaths like a blade in his chest, aimed at the wrong throat.

The bastard was still talking, still savoring the memory like wine. Castiel forced himself to focus on the present.

"Speaking of loose ends," Azazel continued. "What about the spare?"

Castiel's heart ceased beating. Sam.

"Ah yes." Michael's voice shifted, became businesslike. "With the Winchester line... simplified... he's outlived his usefulness. No point keeping him now."

"The dungeons have grown quite dull," Azazel purred. "When shall I pay him a visit?"

"Tonight. Quietly. We can't have any complications with Adam's transition."

"Winchester blood," Azazel mused. "I've always wondered about the taste."

Footsteps approached. Someone else was entering the chamber.

"My apologies, brother." Gabriel's voice, carefully neutral. "I wasn't aware you were in private council."

"We were just finishing," Michael said, his tone shifting to dismissal. "Nothing that concerns you."

"Of course." But Castiel detected something in Gabriel's tone when he replied, careful politeness that didn't quite conceal what might have been unease. "I'll leave you to it."

The voices began fading as the speakers moved away from the wall. Castiel heard chairs scraping, robes rustling, the heavy thud of council chamber doors closing.

Then silence.

Castiel slumped against stone, breathing hard. His hands trembled. With rage, with grief, with terrible clarity of understanding. All of it. The war, the suffering, his parents' death, the trap that had nearly killed Dean. All orchestrated by the man he'd sworn to serve.

But Sam remained alive.

For now.

Castiel ran through tunnels like a man pursued by demons. Perhaps he was. Passages blurred past—left turn, down, right, down again, deeper into the castle's belly where the worst secrets were kept.

His ribs burned where the mimicra had clawed him, but he ignored the pain. There wasn't time for weakness. Not now.

The dungeon level differed from upper tunnels. Cruder. Carved with less care and more haste, as if builders had wanted to forget this place existed even as they created it. The air here was thick with old fear and newer despair.

Castiel slowed approaching the hidden panel that led to Sam's cell. His breathing was too loud, too ragged. If Azazel was already present...

He pressed his ear to stone.

Voices. Two of them.

"—quite comfortable here, haven't you?" Azazel's voice, mocking. "Ten years of royal hospitality. But I'm afraid your reservation has been canceled."

"I don't understand." Sam's voice, confused but not afraid. Not yet. "Where's Jimmy?"

"No one's coming for you." Azazel's voice was cold, matter-of-fact. "Michael's orders. You've outlived your usefulness."

The sound of steel being drawn rang clear through stone.

"Wait, what? I don't—"

"Nothing personal. Just politics."

That was Castiel's cue.

The hidden panel slid open with barely a whisper. Castiel stepped into the cell like death given form, Dean's dagger already in his hand.

Azazel spun, black eyes wide with surprise. "Who—"

The blade took him in the throat before he could complete the sentence, steel parting flesh with surgical precision. Azazel's hands flew to his neck, black blood darker than it should be spilling between his fingers. He attempted to speak, tried to summon his magic, but steel and surprise had stolen both voice and power.

Castiel kept the pressure, twisted the wrist the way he’d been taught—small turn, more damage—until the sound in Azazel’s throat broke from promise into failure.

“This is for my parents," Castiel whispered, twisting the blade deeper. "And for every innocent you've burned."

Azazel collapsed, blood pooling on stone floor like spilled ink. The shadows that always clung to him began dissipating, leaving behind only a man. Cruel and empty, but still merely human.

Dead.

Castiel withdrew the blade and turned to Sam, who stood pressed against the far wall, eyes wide with shock.

"Jimmy?" Sam breathed.

The name caused an internal flinch, but there wasn't time for explanations. About names and lies and the weight of deception. Not now.

Castiel knelt beside Azazel's body, searching quickly through his robes. His fingers closed around cold metal: a ring of keys, heavy and old. After years of secret visits, of sitting on the wrong side of iron bars, unable to do more than talk and share stolen moments...

"Finally," he breathed.

Castiel moved to the cell door, hands steady despite everything. The key slid home with a grinding click, and the ancient lock surrendered. The door swung open on rusted hinges, sound echoing through stone corridors like a bell tolling freedom.

Sam stared at the open doorway as if it might vanish. Then his eyes found Castiel's face.

Castiel stepped through the threshold and actually entered Sam's cell for the first time in ten years of friendship. The space felt impossibly small, cramped, suffocating. How had Sam survived a decade in this stone box?

Sam was thinner than Castiel had realized, all sharp angles and restrained strength, but his eyes were clear. Alert. Alive.

"Jimmy, what's happening? Who was that man? Why did he want to kill me?"

"Because Michael ordered it." Castiel gripped Sam's shoulders, the first time in ten years he'd been able to touch his friend without iron bars between them. The contact was electric, real, proof this wasn't a dream. "Your brother's throne has been stolen. They consider you a liability now."

“Dean?” Sam’s face drained. “Is he—”

"Alive, I believe. Adam claimed the crown and declared him dead." Castiel's hands tightened on Sam's shoulders, grounding them both. "But Sam, we must move. Now. More guards could arrive."

For a moment, neither moved. Ten years of whispered conversations through prison bars, and now they were face to face, no barriers between them. Castiel could observe every emotion crossing Sam's features: hope, fear, disbelief, determination.

Then Sam stepped forward and pulled him into a fierce embrace.

It was awkward initially. Sam was taller, and Castiel wasn't prepared for sudden contact. But then his arms came up around his friend, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Sam was warm, solid, real. After years of only seeing him through bars, of reaching through but never touching...

"I'm here," Castiel said, voice rough. "And I’m getting you out.”

He forced himself to withdraw, though every instinct demanded he hold on. There would be time for reunions later, if they survived.

"Here." Castiel unfastened his dark cloak and held it out. "Put this on. Pull the hood up. If anyone observes you, you're just another guard moving through the tunnels."

Sam took the cloak with unsteady hands, wrapping it around his shoulders. The dark fabric swallowed his pale prison clothes, and the hood cast his face in shadow.

"Where am I going?" he asked.

"First, out of the castle. From here, take two rights, then left at every junction until you reach the old postern gate." Castiel pressed his remaining supplies into Sam's hands: water, what little food remained. "There's a loose stone at the gate's base. You can squeeze through."

“And after that?” Sam asked. Fast learner. Always had been.

"Three miles northwest, there's a grove hidden between two large stones. There's a spring there, and a horse, a black mare called Baby. She's intelligent, Sam, and she knows these lands like her own heartbeat. She'll know where to take you."

Sam nodded, absorbing the instructions. "What about you?"

Castiel looked back toward the tunnel that led to the castle proper, where Michael slept believing himself safe and victorious.

"Someone must stop Michael before he initiates a war that will destroy both kingdoms,” he said. “Someone has to tell the truth loud enough that people hear it over the lies.”

"Jimmy..." Sam's voice was quiet, uncertain. "Will I see you again?"

He wanted to say yes so badly it hurt. He had taught himself not to lie where it mattered.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll try.”

Sam nodded, jaw setting in a shape Castiel had seen in another face. He adjusted the hood, his face disappearing into shadow. He looked back once at the cell that had been his world for ten years, then at the body of his would-be executioner.

"Thank you," he said simply. "For everything. For all these years."

Castiel nodded, throat tight. "Go. And Sam? Don't look back."

Sam hesitated at the threshold of his cell. Then he straightened his shoulders and walked through the doorway, disappearing into tunnel darkness like a ghost seeking freedom.

Castiel watched until Sam's silhouette vanished entirely into the darkness. Then he turned back toward the upper levels of the castle, toward the sleeping quarters where Michael lay believing himself victorious.

But stopping Michael wouldn't be sufficient. Not anymore. The people of Celestia deserved to know the truth. About the stolen aid, about the manufactured war, about the blood on their king's hands. If he could turn them against their own crown...

Perhaps he could prevent the war that would destroy both kingdoms.

Castiel adjusted his grip on the bloodied dagger and began to climb.

Chapter Text

POV: Dean

The ale tasted like ash. 

Dean gripped the mug harder than it deserved, staring into amber liquid like it might magically produce answers to problems that kept multiplying. The foam had died hours ago, leaving only the bitter smell of hops and his own bad choices.

Around him, Ellen's main room buzzed with the kind of urgent, low voices that meant war. Plans, arguments, half-baked strategies that all sounded like different ways to get good people killed. The kind of talk that should have had him planted right in the middle, making the calls that would haunt him later. Instead, it washed over him like noise through water, distant and muffled, like the whole damn world had wrapped itself in cotton.

Two days since Castiel had taken off with Baby. Two days of Ellen giving him that look, half worry, half you shouldn’t have gone after that damn mimicra alone. Two days of trying to wash the taste of betrayal out of his mouth, only to find it had soaked into his bones like poison.

"—need to move fast," Benny was saying, his drawl cutting through the haze. "Every day Adam sits on that throne, he gets more comfortable. More dangerous."

Dean's old friend leaned against the far wall with his arms crossed. Benny carried himself like a predator who'd learned to walk among sheep. Useful. Loyal. The kind of man who'd follow Dean into hell and crack jokes on the way down.

"Agreed," rumbled Garth from his seat by the fire. The man looked like he should be holding a loaf of bread, not a war hammer, but Dean had seen him swing that thing through an enemy line and leave nothing but splinters and regret. “The longer we wait, the more legitimacy Adam gains.”

Ellen bustled between them, refilling mugs and plates with the efficiency of someone who'd been feeding revolutionaries for decades. Her inn had always been neutral ground, but neutrality had limits. And Adam Winchester had crossed them.

“So what’s the play?” Charlie asked, leaning over the maps she’d spread across the main table. Bright hair catching the firelight, eyes sharp. Once his court scholar, now disguised as a merchant with a knack for staying one step ahead of the wrong people. “We can’t just march up to the gates and shout ‘surprise,’” she added. “He’s got the royal guard.”

“Not all of ’em,” Benny said. “Jody’s still got her regiment outside the capital. Officially ‘patrolling the borders.’ Unofficially, waiting to see if you’re really breathing.”

Dean took another sip of ale. Shoulder still ached if he moved wrong, but he’d had worse. Clothes were clean, Ellen’s food was in his belly. He looked like a king again.

Too bad looking the part and feeling it were two different animals entirely.

“Dean?” Garth’s voice was careful. “You with us?”

Dean dragged his attention back to the room, to the maps and worried faces and all the people counting on him to have answers he didn't possess. His kingdom was being carved up by his own blood while he sat here drowning in ale and self-pity.

“Yeah,” Dean rasped, voice coming out rougher than he intended. “I’m here.”

"Good," Charlie said, turning back to her maps. "Because we need to talk about messaging. The people don't know what to believe. Adam's claiming you died fighting monsters on the border, but there's been no funeral, no body—"

"Because there is no body," Ellen interrupted sharply. "Boy's not even trying to sell the lie properly. You'd think after all these years watching his betters, he'd have learned how to sell a story that doesn't fall apart the second someone asks questions."

Benny smirked. “Which works for us. People are asking questions. Starting to wonder if maybe their king isn’t as dead as advertised.”

Dean stared into his ale. Hearing his own death discussed like a political problem felt surreal as hell.

Though he had to admit, Adam really was doing a piss-poor job of it. Their father would've had a state funeral planned, a tomb carved, and half the kingdom weeping in the streets by now. 

Dean pushed his mug away, the scrape harsh against the table. The sound made everyone look his way, conversations trailing off as they waited for their king to speak. 

"And what about Celestia?" he asked. "Adam's not just playing king, he's talking war. Michael’s been planning this. The mimicra, the trap, it was all to get me dead. Adam gave him the opening.”

“You think they’re working together?” Benny asked.

Dean’s hands clenched. "I think Adam didn't give a damn who handed him the crown, as long as he got to wear it." His voice turned bitter. "Hell, he probably would've shaken hands with the devil himself if it meant getting me out of the way."

Ellen’s voice was grim. “And when Michael’s done using him—”

“He’ll cut him loose,” Dean finished. “Then Celestia gets to walk in and pick up the pieces.” He looked around the room at faces he'd known since childhood. People who'd bleed for him. Die for him if he asked. "We're not just reclaiming a throne. We're stopping a war."

Charlie opened her mouth to respond, then went statue-still. "Hoofbeats."

The room fell silent so fast Dean could hear his own heartbeat. 

Ellen was at the window first. “Single rider. From the east.”

“Celestia,” Benny muttered, already reaching for his blade.

Dean joined Ellen, pulse kicking hard. The rider was still a blur down the valley road. But something in the shape, the way they moved—it clawed at him.

Black horse. Tall rider. 

For one wild, desperate moment, his heart slammed against his ribs. Castiel. Coming back, maybe with answers that didn't taste like betrayal. Maybe with an explanation that wouldn't leave Dean feeling like a fool.

But as the shape closed distance, reality crashed down on him. The details were wrong. Broader shoulders. Longer hair, light brown and whipping in the wind. The seat in the saddle was less soldier, more desperate.

Dean's jaw clenched. Not Castiel. Of course not. 

“Could be a trap,” Charlie said from behind them, voice tight.

“Could be,” Dean said. But his gut disagreed. Whoever it was, they were running from something, not toward him with bad intentions.

The hoofbeats pounded closer, each impact hitting him like a fist to the ribs. And then Dean saw the horse properly.

"That's Baby," he said, the words coming out rough. His horse. His girl.

Benny leaned in. “You sure?”

“It’s my damn horse, Benny.” Dean was already pushing past chairs, heading for the door.

Ellen's hand clamped around his arm like iron. “If that’s your horse, where’s the man who took her?”

Before Dean could answer, the rider dismounted in the yard. Slow, unsteady, like someone who'd been pushed past his limits. He stood next to Baby, one hand resting on her neck, and just looked at the inn. Not moving closer. Not running. Just standing there like he was trying to work up the courage to find out what waited for him inside.

Dean's breath caught in his throat.

The man was tall. Broad shoulders. Lean frame. And when he looked up toward the inn, Dean saw past all of that to something he'd never stopped looking for. 

Those eyes. Hazel-green, uncertain, but unmistakable. 

"Sam."

The name tore out of him like a prayer he'd been holding back for ten years.

Sam's head jerked up, and for a heartbeat neither of them moved. Then Sam's face cracked open with recognition and relief and joy so raw it hurt to witness.

"Dean!"

And then Dean was moving, shoving past everyone, hitting the door so hard it banged the wall. He didn't remember crossing the yard—just that suddenly Sam was right there and they were crashing together, Dean's arms locking around his brother like he could hold him to earth through will alone. Sam's hands fisted in Dean's jacket, face pressed into his shoulder, and Dean could feel him shaking.

Sam was taller—way taller—but Dean crushed him close anyway, refusing to let go like the world might take him again. “Sammy,” he choked, the word breaking apart in his throat. “God, Sammy.”

Sam lifted his head from Dean's shoulder, eyes bright. “You’re alive. You’re actually—” His voice cracked. “I thought—”

Dean pulled back enough to see him, both hands gripping his shoulders. Taking in the man in front of him. Older, leaner, eyes carrying weight they never should have. But still Sam. “Look at you. You’re—”

“Old?” Sam tried, the ghost of a smile twitching.

Dean huffed something between a laugh and a sob. “Alive. That’s all I care about.” He shook his head. “After the battle, I looked everywhere—”

“I was captured,” Sam said, simple and brutal. “Celestia.”

The rage hit fast and deep. “For ten years?”

Sam nodded, then, oddly, his face softened. “I had help. Jimmy. He’s… he’s the reason I’m still breathing. Visited me almost every day. Brought food, books. Yesterday—” His voice tightened. “Michael ordered my execution. Jimmy got me out.”

Dean blinked. “Jimmy?”

“A soldier. But not like the others.” Sam’s tone warmed with something close to reverence. “He said he had work left to do. Something about stopping Michael before he destroys both kingdoms.”

Dean's throat went tight. Some stranger had done what Dean couldn't. Kept Sam alive, kept him safe. For ten damn years. He should be grateful. He was grateful. But it burned like hell knowing he'd failed where someone else had succeeded. “So how’d you get here?”

“Found a black mare grazing near a spring a few miles out. Smart one, like she just decided I was coming with her. I barely had to guide her. She knew shortcuts I'd never seen, paths that avoided the main roads but led straight toward Earden territory. It was like she'd made this journey a hundred times before.” Sam ran a hand along Baby’s neck, and the mare leaned into him.

Dean pressed his forehead to her dark coat. “Good girl,” he murmured. She’d brought Sam home. Find family, bring them home safe. Baby had never failed that test.

Ellen’s voice cut gently into the moment. “Not to break up the miracle reunion, but maybe get the boy fed before he falls over?”

Dean actually laughed. The sound felt foreign in his own mouth. He slung an arm around Sam, steering him toward the inn. Sam leaned into him, just enough to make Dean realize how long he'd been holding his breath. Ten years of it, maybe.

Inside, his people took in the scene with the quiet intensity of those witnessing a miracle they didn't dare believe. Dean ignored them.

“Come on, Sammy,” he said. “Let’s get you something that doesn’t taste like prison.”

And as they crossed the threshold together, Dean felt something he'd almost forgotten how to name. Not the desperate, clawing hope that had driven him for ten years. Something quieter. Something that felt like it might actually last.

Chapter Text

POV: Castiel

The market square should have been a wall of sound by now. By midmorning, the air was usually a mix of bargaining voices, cartwheels on stone, the bark of stallholders protecting their best wares from wandering hands. Instead, the place lay under a heavy silence, conversations reduced to whispers and worried glances.

Castiel lingered at the edge of the cobblestones, hood drawn low, watching the people of Celestia move like ghosts through their own city. It wasn’t the quiet of peace. It was the quiet of people who’d been taught that speaking too loudly might get them noticed.

A thin woman passed in front of him, one arm wrapped around a boy who couldn’t have been more than five. His head lolled against her shoulder, eyes unfocused. They paused near the baker’s stall but there was nothing behind the glass but a scatter of flour like pale dust over bare shelves. She just kept walking.

An old man sat by the dry fountain in the square’s center, staring at nothing. He had the look of someone who’d been waiting for something for so long he’d forgotten what it was.

Castiel let the scene settle into him, not to wallow in pity, but to burn it into his memory. This was Michael’s kingdom. This was what the years of stolen aid had bought: mothers carrying children who should be walking, traders with nothing to trade, and a city where hunger was as common as stone.

Azazel’s blood still seemed to cling to his skin, no matter how long he’d scrubbed in the lower chambers before leaving the castle. The killing had been quick, necessary. But this, standing here with truth heavy in his pack, knowing it might fall on ears trained to reject it, this felt heavier.

He adjusted the strap of the bundle slung across his shoulder. Inside, there was a case built with purpose. Letters bearing Michael’s signature. Manifests of grain convoys matched against empty market records. Testimonies, some anonymous, some signed even by officers, confirming deliveries that vanished into the royal stores. Every piece sealed or marked in a way no loyal subject could dismiss.

He hadn’t taken them to convince himself. He’d taken them because proof is ammunition, and a war for truth needs its weapons ready.

Movement to his left drew his eye. A young mother stumbled past, face gaunt, baby crying against her chest. The sound was thin, without the full force of a healthy child’s lungs.

Before he thought about it, Castiel was reaching into his pack. His fingers closed on the small bundle of food meant to keep him alive during whatever came next, a bread he’d taken from the castle and a handful of dried fruit. He stepped into her path and held it out.

“Here.”

She looked at him, startled, eyes darting from the food to his shadowed face. “I… I can’t pay—”

“You don’t need to.” His voice was low but certain. “You need this more than I do.”

For a moment she didn’t move, then she took it with hands that trembled from more than fatigue. Tears blurred her gaze. “Thank you. Bless you.”

She hurried away, clutching the bundle like gold. Castiel watched her disappear into the thin crowd and felt the weight of it all pressing down on him. One woman. One child. A drop in an ocean Michael had poisoned.

How many had died while Dean sent aid that never came? How many had been told the lie that Earden wanted them starved?

All those years Castiel had believed Dean was heartless, Dean had been trying to save these very people. The irony stung. He wondered if Adam had been exposed yet, if Dean still had a throne to fight for. Wondered if Dean thought, even for a moment, about the firelight and the quiet talks when they’d almost begun to understand each other. Probably not. Dean had more pressing concerns.

But Sam was free, and Dean…Dean had never been the heartless king Castiel had believed him to be. He'd been a brother searching for ten years, carrying guilt that wasn't his to bear. He deserved this happiness.

So, Castiel let himself imagine, just for a heartbeat, Sam safe beside Dean, the reunion he'd never thought to want for them both. That image was worth what he was about to risk.

His pulse hammered in his throat. He knew what would follow—arrest, maybe execution—but fear had stopped mattering the moment Sam walked free. If he was to fall, better here, in the open, with the truth shouted loud enough to outlive him.

He stepped into the center of the square and lowered his hood.

“People of Celestia,” he called, voice cutting through the dull murmur. “You need to hear this.”

The movement in the square slowed. Heads turned. Some feet began to shuffle away, gatherings were dangerous, and survival here meant knowing when to vanish.

“My name is Castiel,” he said, pitching his voice to reach the edges of the square. “I have served in the royal guard for years, believing I fought for justice.” His voice cracked slightly. "I was wrong. I have seen proof that will change everything you believe about this kingdom.”

Curiosity was creeping into the wariness. A man with an empty cart stopped rearranging nothing and looked up.

“For years,” Castiel continued, unshouldering the bundle, “our neighbors in Earden have sent aid to Celestia. Grain, medicines, supplies. Enough to feed children, to heal the sick.”

“That’s a lie,” a woman near the fountain said sharply. “Earden keeps their food. Always has.”

“Earden sends aid,” Castiel said evenly, “and King Michael steals it.” He pulled free a manifest, holding it high so the royal seal caught the light. “Three hundred bushels of grain, received from Earden last month. Signed by Michael himself. Marked for redistribution to the outer villages.”

His gaze swept the faces before him. “Tell me: has anyone here, anyone in those villages, seen this grain? Your hunger is not an accident. It’s a choice Michael made for you.”

Silence. Then the first ripple of murmurs.

“Where did it go?” a man called from the edge of the gathering.

“To the royal stores,” Castiel said. “To feed Michael’s court. To fill the bellies of the men who guard him, while the rest of you starve. But also to be sold, at a profit, to merchants and kingdoms far from here. Grain and medicine sent from Earden, turned into coin in Michael’s vaults while your children starved.” His voice was steady but hard now, trained to carry. “Every month, for five years. Every shipment stolen. He starved you, then told you to blame Earden.”

The murmurs turned sharper. People leaned in, the way they do when something long suspected begins to take shape.

“That’s impossible,” someone shouted. “They’re our enemies!”

“Are they?” Castiel countered. “Or has Michael told you that so you’ll hate them? So you’ll believe war is the only answer?”

He took out the final paper, Michael’s invasion plan, and held it high. “Here is the truth. Michael’s invasion plan. His handwriting. His seal. The strategy to provoke Earden into retaliation, then march to take their land while both kingdoms bleed.”

The crowd swelled tighter. Some faces were hard with anger, others pale with fear.

“Lies!” a voice called, but there was no conviction in it.

“Then read for yourselves,” Castiel said, moving among them. He let them see the dates, the signatures, the royal seal burned into the parchment.

An old woman reached out and touched the edge of a page with reverence and dread. “My grandson died last winter,” she said, voice low but clear. “Fever. No medicine.” Her gaze lifted to his. “You’re telling me this could have saved him?”

“Yes,” Castiel said.

Her face twisted, grief sharpening into something harder. “Murderer,” she whispered. Then louder, her voice cracking, “MURDERER!”

The word spread, taken up by others until the square was a knot of shouts and reaching hands. The proof was passing from palm to palm, the fire catching. Castiel didn’t need to fan it, the fuel had been there for years.

Then came the sound he’d been expecting: the ring of armored boots on stone. Two dozen royal guards pushing through the crowd, weapons already drawn.

“Castiel Novak of Celestia,” the captain barked, “you are under arrest for treason and sedition.”

The crowd surged between him and the guards. Some tried to block their way; others were simply caught in the press. For a moment, Castiel thought they might hold them off. Then steel flashed, and the front line of citizens fell back in fear.

He didn’t move. Let them see. Let them watch Michael’s justice at work.

“Your possessions are confiscated as evidence of your crimes,” the captain declared, but the damage was done, the documents were already scattered through the crowd.

“Citizens of Celestia,” the captain said, loud enough for the square to hear, “this man spreads lies to weaken our kingdom.”

“Then prove it in open court!” someone shouted. “If he lies, show us!”

The captain's voice turned sharp. “The accused will be judged tomorrow at dawn.”

The words rolled through the crowd, and Castiel recognized the phrasing for what it was: not a promise of trial, but a schedule for a foregone execution. 

As they dragged him toward the waiting ranks, Castiel caught sight of the woman from earlier, clutching her baby at the square’s edge. Her cheeks were wet, but in her eyes burned something fierce and unyielding.

Hope and fury.

If this was the price of truth, so be it.

Chapter Text

POV: Dean

Two days since Sam’s return, and Dean could already see the difference. Color was back in his cheeks. Ellen’s cooking had started filling in the hard lines of hunger on his face. His shoulders had lost that constant, wary stiffness. But there were shadows that didn’t vanish in two days, and Dean could still see them if he looked too long. Right now, Sam sat at the table in Ellen’s back parlor, supposedly studying the maps Charlie had spread across the worn wood, but his eyes kept drifting toward the eastern window. Toward Celestia. Toward Jimmy.

Benny was leaning over the table, tapping a finger at the sketch of the capital’s defenses. “Servant’s gate is still our best option. Morrison gets word to the loyal guards, they leave it unlocked during the shift change, we’re in.”

Dean forced his gaze away from Sam and onto the plan. “How many men does Morrison have we can actually trust?”

“Thirty, maybe forty,” Garth said from his seat. “Enough to open the gates once we’re inside the walls.”

“Adam’s got two hundred total,” Charlie added without looking up. “But they’re spread out—gates, walls, the keep. Morrison says half of ’em are already whispering about your ‘death’ not adding up.”

“Good,” Dean muttered. “Doubt’s a weapon we can use.”

“I know a trader who can get a message to Morrison,” Garth offered. “Neutral, reliable.”

“Do it. Tell him to wait for my signal.”

Ellen moved between them, refilling mugs, clearing plates with the same quiet efficiency she’d used to feed soldiers, mercenaries, and exiles for decades. She stopped by Sam, resting a hand on his shoulder. “You eating enough, honey? You’ve barely touched your bread.”

Sam’s mouth twisted into a distracted smile. “Sorry, Ellen. Just thinking.”

“About Jimmy?” Dean asked, already knowing.

The smile faded. “He should’ve sent something by now. A sign. Anything to let me know he’s safe…” Sam’s gaze drifted again to the window, like he might see an answer in the pale sky. “It’s been nearly three days.”

Dean didn’t miss the strain in his voice. Ten years of survival because of this man’s help. Ten years Dean couldn’t give him.

Benny, softer than usual, said, “Jimmy knew the risks. Sounds like he’s smart enough to keep his head down.”

Worry crept into Sam's voice. “And if Michael already knows? If they found out he helped me—” He cut himself off, but the meaning was clear.

The room went still. They all knew what that would mean.

Dean kept his tone even. “We’ll deal with that later. Right now, we need to—”

“Boys,” Ellen said quietly from the window. “You might want to see this.”

Dean was across the room in seconds, shoulder to shoulder with her. Out past the hills that marked Celestia’s edge, a column of thick, black smoke curled into the morning sky.

“What the hell,” Benny muttered, stepping up beside them.

“Too much for a hearth fire,” Charlie said, already reaching for her maps. “Direction’s dead on for the capital.”

Sam joined them, face going pale as he stared at the rising smoke. “Something’s wrong,” he whispered.

Dean knew fires that size didn't happen by accident. Either the people had finally snapped, or Michael was making sure they wouldn't.

“Could be unrest,” Garth said. “Maybe the people finally pushed back.”

“Or Michael’s making an example,” Sam said, his voice like a stone hitting water, flat, sinking deep.

Dean hated the cold knot that formed in his gut. After Castiel, after the mimicra trap, Celestia was the last place he wanted to set foot in again. “We stick to the plan. Take back Earden first.”

“No.” Sam turned sharply, eyes bright with something between fear and defiance. “Dean, you don’t understand. Without Jimmy, I’d be dead. Ten years in that cell, and he was the only one who—” His voice broke, then steadied. “He fed me when I was starving. Brought books so I wouldn’t lose my mind. Sat with me through the nightmares.” Sam’s hand found Dean’s arm, his grip tight. “He did what you would have done. He kept me alive when you couldn’t be there.”

The words weren't meant to hurt, Dean knew that. Sam's voice carried gratitude, not blame. But Christ, they landed hard anyway.

He looked at Sam. At the fierce loyalty in his eyes, the desperate need to protect the man who'd protected him. And knew there was no talking him out of this.

He turned back to the smoke. “Damn it.”

The smart play would be to ignore it. Stick to the plan, take back Earden, deal with Celestia later when he had an army at his back instead of just a sword and bad memories.

But Sam was looking at him with those eyes, the ones that said you're my big brother, you fix things.

His hand found the back of his neck, rubbing at the tension there. Walking back into enemy territory alone after barely escaping with his life the first time wasn't smart. It was suicidal. But if Jimmy died because Dean played it safe…

Benny read the change in his posture instantly. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking—”

“I am.”

“Dean, after what happened with that Celestian soldier? He set you up, stole your horse—”

“This isn’t the same.”

Charlie frowned. “And how is it different?”

Because Jimmy spent ten years proving himself. Because Castiel had walked away without a word, and that still burned like a fresh wound every time Dean let himself think about it. Because one of them had earned trust and the other had stolen it. 

Except they were both Celestian soldiers. Both had risked their necks. And Dean had no way to know if he was walking into another setup or actual rescue.

"Jimmy kept Sam alive," Dean said finally. "That earns more than doubt."

Charlie frowned. "Or you're trying to prove you're not the guy who gets fooled twice."

Dean's jaw tightened. Maybe she was right. Maybe he was riding into Celestia because some part of him needed to know he hadn't been that wrong about trusting a Celestian soldier. That his instincts weren't completely shot.

"Either way," he said, voice rough, "I owe him a debt I can't pay by sitting here."

Garth started, “Then we all go—”

“No.” Dean shook his head. “If that smoke’s what I think it is, we don’t have time for a full rescue. I’ll be faster alone.”

Benny stepped in front of him. “Not happening. You’re not riding into enemy territory by yourself again.”

“Main road straight through,” Dean said. “fastest route between the kingdoms.”

“That’s not the point—”

“The point is,” Dean cut him off, “he risked everything to save my brother. The least I can do is return the favor."

“I’m coming with you,” Sam said immediately.

“Not a chance.” Dean’s voice brooked no argument. “You just got out of their prison. You’re not walking back into it.”

"Dean—"

"I said no." Dean couldn't look at him. If he looked at Sam right now, he'd see the twelve-year-old who'd vanished on a battlefield, and that kid was never supposed to walk back into Celestia. Ever. "You think I'm letting you anywhere near that place after what they did to you?"

"It's been ten years—"

"Exactly." Dean's voice cracked. "Ten years I didn't know if you were breathing. I'm not spending another ten wondering if this time they'll actually finish the job."

“But I know Jimmy—”

“And I can get in and out without being seen.” Dean was already moving for his pack. “Not up for debate, Sammy.”

Ellen caught him at the door. “You sure about this?”

He looked at her, then swept his gaze across the room. Benny, Charlie, Garth. All wearing the same expression they'd had right before every other stupid decision that should've gotten him killed. “Sam's standing here because of Jimmy. I'm not gonna let that man die now.”

Benny swore under his breath. “Twenty-four hours. If you’re not back by then—”

“I’ll be back.” Dean slung his sword over his shoulder. “Quick and quiet. Just like old times.”

“Old times nearly killed you,” Charlie muttered.

Dean didn't answer. He headed for the door, but Ellen's hand caught his wrist.

"Dean Winchester." She'd called him that since he was six years old. Through his father's death, Sam's disappearance, a crown he'd never wanted. Every time, it meant the same thing: don't you dare die on me. 

He met her eyes. "I know."

"Do you?" Her grip tightened. "Because every time you ride out that door, I wonder if you're coming back."

"I always do.”

"So far." She released him, but her gaze held. "Make sure this isn't the exception."

He nodded once, throat too tight for words, and walked out.

In the stable, Baby snorted as if she'd been listening. As he tightened the girth, doubt whispered in the back of his mind. Was it another trap, another knife in the back? But then he saw Sam in the doorway, worry and trust mixed in his eyes. A decade of debt in that look alone.

Two days. He'd had his brother back for two days, and here he was, saddling up to save a stranger. A Celestian stranger. Just like the last one who'd— No. Not the same.

Except maybe it was. Maybe Dean was the idiot who kept trusting the wrong people, kept believing that doing the right thing would somehow stop biting him in the ass. Castiel's face flickered through his mind. Blue eyes that had looked honest right up until they weren't.

But Jimmy had kept Sam breathing all this time. That counted for something. Had to.

Dean pulled the strap tight and swung into the saddle before he could second-guess himself into staying.

Some risks you didn’t measure. You just took them.

“Bring him back safe,” Sam said quietly.

Dean held his brother's gaze for a long moment, then turned Baby toward the road. Her ears flicked forward, ready.

Another kingdom. Another rescue. Another chance to prove he was either the hero everyone needed or the fool who kept walking into the knife.

Baby knew the way. He let her take him.

Chapter Text

POV: Castiel

Sleep was impossible.

The cell was small enough that he could feel the chill radiating from every stone, a slow seep into his bones. He sat on the narrow bench, back to the wall, counting the seconds between each echo of footsteps above. Not because he expected rescue—he didn’t—but because keeping track of guard rotations, of the way voices rose and fell in the corridor, was the only map he had left.

His head throbbed with a dull, persistent ache that made thought difficult.

He’d counted the hours since his arrest by the rhythm of footsteps above and the slow shift of light through the high window. Dawn had come and gone. It was closer to midday now. 

Dawn should have meant the end. He’d prepared himself for it, calm, clean, ready to meet the blade as a soldier does.

The fact that he was still breathing meant something had changed, but what?

The air tasted wrong. Not just the damp of the dungeon, but acrid, edged. Smoke.

He stood and crossed to the window, pulling himself up by the rusted bars. His vantage point was narrow, a slice of the inner courtyard, the line of the outer wall, but the flicker on the stones wasn’t torchlight. This was wilder, uncontained. Smoke curled upward past his view in slow, greedy spirals.

Fire. Somewhere within the city, something was burning with uncontrolled intensity.

The sound of approaching footsteps caused him to drop back to floor level. Multiple sets, deliberate and urgent, not the lazy patrol rhythm he had catalogued over previous hours. Keys clinked in the distance, growing progressively closer.

Castiel settled back onto the bench, forcing his breathing to steady. Whatever approached, he would face it with dignity intact. He’d chosen this path.

A voice broke the silence, light and amused. “Well, well. Still breathing. Guess the king’s schedule isn’t what it used to be.”

Gabriel.

Castiel looked up to find Michael's younger brother standing outside his cell, a ring of keys dangling from one finger, looking mildly curious. As if discovering political prisoners in the dungeon was simply another routine Tuesday morning activity.

"Gabriel," Castiel said with measured caution. "What brings you here?"

"Oh, you know. The usual. Family drama, civic unrest, a light bit of treason." Gabriel selected a key and began working at the lock. "Just another day in paradise."

The cell door swung open with a rusty protest, but Castiel remained motionless. Trust was a luxury he could not afford, even with Gabriel's established reputation for being... divergent from his older brother's methods.

"I can see those wheels turning," Gabriel said with characteristic cheerfulness. “Is this a trap? Did big brother send me down here to mess with your head before he has you drawn and quartered?”

"The thought had occurred to me," Castiel admitted with complete honesty.

"It would be exactly the sort of psychological manipulation he'd devise," Gabriel agreed with apparent satisfaction. "Fortunately for you, Michael is currently far too occupied dealing with other pressing matters to waste resources on psychological torture."

"What kind of ‘pressing matters’?"

Gabriel's expression sharpened like a blade. "The kind that involve angry citizens, burning administrative buildings, and a rather spectacular loss of governmental control.”

Understanding struck Castiel with the force of a physical blow. "The people."

"Rose up precisely as you hoped they would," Gabriel confirmed with obvious approval. “Turns out arresting the guy who told everyone the king was stealing their food wasn’t the smartest move. Who could’ve guessed?”

“The city’s in revolt,” Castiel murmured.

"Significant portions of it," Gabriel said with unmistakable satisfaction. “The lower quarters, mostly. The ones who’ve watched their children starve while the castle kept feasting.”

"And Michael's current status?"

"Barricaded in the keep with his personal guard, attempting very earnestly to pretend this is merely a minor disagreement that will resolve itself by teatime." Gabriel stepped aside and gestured toward the open doorway. "Which makes this an excellent opportunity for your tactical withdrawal. While everyone remains distracted by the lovely symphony of social transformation.”

Castiel stood slowly, every muscle protesting after hours on cold stone. "Why are you helping me?”

"Because I'm sentimental? Because I maintain belief in justice? Because I've always considered Michael an insufferable ass?" Gabriel's expression darkened. "Or perhaps because I've spent years observing him transform our kingdom into a tomb while I performed the role of harmless younger brother. Someone had to establish boundaries eventually." He shrugged with deliberate casualness. "Take your pick. They're all accurate assessments.”

They moved through corridors that carried the scent of smoke and fear like a physical presence. Twice, they ducked into alcoves as groups of guards rushed past, armor clattering, faces tight with panic. The sounds of active combat echoed from somewhere above: shouts, the clash of steel against steel, the splintering of wood under force.

"How severe is the situation out there?" Castiel inquired as they reached the old kitchen area.

"Depends entirely on your perspective," Gabriel replied, typically matter-of-fact. "If you're Michael or one of his administrative cronies, it represents a complete disaster. If you're someone who has been eating grass soup for the past several years while observing the nobility feast on imported delicacies, it's probably the best day of your life.”

Gabriel pressed something into his hands. A bundle. Dark fabric, the slosh of water, the smell of dried meat. Escape supplies. Gabriel had actually planned this. "There's a passage that leads to the postern gate. You remember the route?”

Castiel nodded. He had used it years previous, when Michael's suspicions had first begun to focus on anyone who demonstrated independence of thought or action.

"The guards abandoned that section hours ago," Gabriel continued. "You can slip out, circle to the north road, and be far away before anyone notices you’re gone.”

"What about your own situation?”

"Oh, I'll be perfectly fine. Someone needs to remain here and assist Michael in understanding his new circumstances." Gabriel's smile revealed all teeth. "I do so enjoy family conversations."

The passage was narrow and damp, hewn from the rock itself. Castiel moved through it with efficient speed, Gabriel's words echoing in his consciousness.The city was burning, perhaps for the right reasons at last. The people were free. If this was the cost, he could live with it.

But there was only one objective that truly mattered now.

The Winchesters.

The postern gate stood open, abandoned. Beyond it lay the road north, winding through hills and farmland toward the border. Toward Earden. Toward the two people who had come to define everything important in his world. 

He needed speed more than stealth now. The main road would be fastest, even if it meant greater risk of being seen.

If Sam had made it safely. If Baby had been as intelligent as she had seemed. If Dean...

Castiel's thoughts lingered on Dean longer than tactical necessity required. The man who had shared warmth by a dying fire, who had treated an enemy's wounds with gentle competence, who had spoken with such raw pain that it had cracked something fundamental in Castiel's chest. Dean, who deserved happiness more than anyone Castiel had ever known.

He hoped Dean hadn't been too wounded by his departure. That the note, those inadequate two words, "I'm sorry", had somehow conveyed what Castiel couldn't say aloud. How could he have explained that Sam was alive without revealing the ten years of captivity? How could he tell Dean his brother existed without admitting he had been within reach all this time?

The truth would have destroyed Dean. To know that Sam had been alive, suffering, waiting for rescue that came so late... Dean would have blamed himself. Or he would have demanded to know why Castiel hadn't acted sooner, why he had allowed ten years to pass. Would have carried that guilt like a weight on his shoulders for the rest of his life.

Better to carry the burden alone than to share it and watch it crush someone who’d already carried enough.

Castiel pushed the doubt away. Sam was alive. Dean was probably reunited with his brother by now. Everything else was politics and bloodshed. The Winchesters were proof that hope still breathed, and he couldn’t afford to lose that.

The countryside felt unnaturally calm after the chaos of the city. Castiel had been walking for perhaps an hour when he detected hoofbeats, approaching at high speed from the direction of Earden.

He stepped off the road, keeping to the shadow of an oak. The rider came into view moments later, bent low over the neck of a black horse that moved like flowing water.

Baby.

Castiel's heart stopped.

The horse was unmistakable, but more significantly, she was here. Which meant she had completed her journey, delivered her precious cargo, and was now returning with...

The rider lifted his head, and Castiel's breath caught.

Dean.

Alive. Whole. Riding hard toward Celestia with his jaw set and eyes forward like a man on a mission. 

Relief hit first, pure and overwhelming. Whatever chaos had followed Castiel's departure, whatever dangers lurked between kingdoms, Dean was still breathing.

But then the relief curdled into something colder.

Dean was alone. 

Castiel scanned the road behind him, looking for a second rider, a cart, anyone. Nothing. Just Dean and Baby, moving fast toward Celestia like the devil himself was on their heels. 

Which meant...

No. Wait. Think.

He was exhausted. Hadn't slept properly in days. His ribs still ached from the mimicra's claws, his head throbbed from lack of food and water. Maybe he was seeing threats where none existed, jumping to conclusions because his mind was too wrung out to think clearly.

But the evidence was there, unavoidable. Dean. Alone. Riding hard toward Celestia instead of staying with the brother he'd spent ten years searching for.

Maybe Sam had stayed in Earden. Maybe Dean had left him somewhere safe while he—what? Came to Celestia for supplies? For information? That made no sense. Not after ten years apart. Not when Dean had just gotten his brother back. 

Unless…. Unless Sam hadn't made it to Earden at all.

The thought dropped into Castiel's mind like a stone into still water, sending ripples of cold dread through his chest.

If Sam had reached Dean safely, if Baby had delivered him as she was meant to, Dean would be there. Would be holding his brother, making up for ten years of loss. He wouldn't be here, riding alone into enemy territory with that look on his face.

That look.

This was a man with nothing left to lose.

The pieces fell into place with terrible clarity.

Baby had made the journey—she was here, after all. But Sam wasn't with Dean. Which meant somewhere between the castle and Earden, something had gone wrong. A fall from the saddle. Exposure. Weakness from ten years of captivity catching up to him on the road. Michael's men finding him before he reached safety.

The method didn't matter.

Sam was gone.

The knowledge spread through Castiel like poison, slow and absolute. Ten years. Ten years of whispered conversations through iron bars. Ten years of smuggled food and hidden books. Ten years of keeping Sam alive, keeping him sane, keeping him hoping.

And in the end, it hadn't been enough.

He had gotten Sam out of that cell only to lose him on the road to freedom.

His throat closed. His hands went numb.

The boy who had called him Jimmy. Who had smiled whenever Castiel appeared in the darkness. Who had trusted him completely, without question, for a decade.

Dead.

The pain was physical, a tearing in his chest as if something vital had been ripped free. Sam had been more than a friend. He had been purpose, his one bright thing. And now—

Castiel had failed. Failed Sam. Failed Dean. Failed everyone who had ever trusted him to do one damn thing right.

Dean's eyes found him across the distance, and recognition flared in those green depths. Recognition, and pure fury. 

"You," Dean snarled, yanking Baby to an abrupt halt.

The word carried the weight of betrayal, of rage held in check for too long. Dean dismounted in one fluid motion, steel singing as he drew his blade with deadly efficiency.

"I should have known you'd be here," Dean said, voice low and sharp. "Michael's lapdog, come to clean up the mess."

Castiel stepped out from behind the tree, hands raised but empty. He could fight. Should fight. His sword was positioned at his hip, Dean's dagger as well, and he had the skill to use them effectively.

But what was the point? Sam was dead. The revolution would survive without Castiel. And Dean...

Dean was alive, and that was something. Not much, but something. At least one of the Winchester brothers would continue to exist. At least Dean would live to rebuild his kingdom, perhaps even find some peace.

It was a pathetic consolation because Dean would have to do that alone, but it was all Castiel had left.

"I'm not going to fight you," Castiel said, drained.

"No?" Dean began to circle him, blade held with the ease of someone who wanted an excuse to use it. "Why not? Finally ready to admit what you are?"

"I'm tired," Castiel said, and it was absolute truth. A weariness carved into bone and soul alike. "I'm tired, and I've lost everything that mattered.”

Everything. Sam was dead, and with him had died the last remnant of Castiel's purpose. What was the point of survival when everyone he had ever cared about was gone?

"Good," Dean snapped with vicious satisfaction. "Because you cost me everything too.”

The words should have caused pain. Would have, if Castiel had anything remaining to feel. But the hollow space where his heart used to be could not hold additional pain anymore. Only the gray certainty of absolute failure.

He had wanted to give Dean happiness. Had imagined what it might be like to see Dean smile when he was reunited with Sam. Had pictured the joy in those green eyes when he held his brother again. Had even allowed himself, in weak moments, to imagine Dean looking at him with something warmer than suspicion, something that might have been... 

But it didn't matter now.

Dean would never know. Would never understand that Sam had been alive, had been waiting, had been saved only to die somewhere on the road home. Some truths were too cruel to share.

Dean attacked without warning, the strike fast and brutal. Castiel deflected it almost by instinct, muscle memory taking over where will had failed. But his heart wasn't invested in survival. His heart was buried somewhere on the road between Celestia and Earden, alongside the boy he had failed to save.

"Fight me!" Dean roared, pressing his attack harder, faster.

Castiel gave ground, parrying when necessary, dodging when possible. Not to win. Not even to survive. Just because some stubborn part of him refused to make it easy, even now. 

"Is this how it ends?" Dean demanded, blade ringing against Castiel's with metallic fury. "The great betrayer, too cowardly to face the consequences of his actions?”

"I didn't betray you," Castiel said, weary, more to himself than to Dean. The truth felt important, even if it changed nothing. "I tried to save him."

Dean's blade hesitated for a fraction of a second. "Save who?" His voice was rougher now, anger fraying into uncertainty. "What the hell are you talking about?”

But Castiel couldn't answer. Couldn't tell Dean that his brother had been alive, that for ten years Sam had been waiting in a cell for rescue that had come too late. Couldn't break Dean's heart with the knowledge that hope had existed and been lost.

Some cruelties were too great to inflict, even in the name of truth.

"It doesn't matter," Castiel said, letting his sword drop to the ground with a dull clatter. "Nothing matters anymore.”

Dean's expression changed, hesitation flickering where rage had been. Castiel saw the moment when Dean registered that his opponent had surrendered, that this was no longer a fight but an execution.

"What's wrong with you?" Dean demanded. "Why aren't you fighting?"

Castiel looked at him, this man he had shared a fire with, who had shown him kindness in a cave beneath the mountain, who had trusted him just enough to let his guard down. This man whose brother Castiel had failed to save. This man who looked at him with nothing but fury and betrayal in his green eyes.

This man who deserved so much better than the world had given him.

Sam was gone. Dean would go on, somehow. Castiel was all alone now. 

“Because there’s nothing left to fight for.”

Dean's blade wavered, uncertainty crossing his features. But then his jaw hardened, and Castiel saw the moment when mercy lost to justice in those green eyes.

"Then this ends here," Dean said.

The hilt of his sword caught Castiel across the temple. Pain exploded through his skull, white-hot and absolute.

Then there was nothing but darkness.

Chapter Text

POV: Dean

The unconscious man slumped against Dean’s shoulder, limp and awkward, and Baby shifted under the uneven weight. Dean tightened his grip around Castiel's waist, feeling the steady rise and fall of breath against his arm.

Alive. Still breathing. Still warm.

Dean tried to tell himself that it was just practical thinking: dead captives were useless, and he needed answers about what Castiel had been doing in Celestia, what intelligence he might be carrying back to Michael. But the truth was, the first wave of relief that had hit when he’d found that steady pulse at Castiel’s throat had nothing to do with strategy. It had been personal. And Dean hated that.

Damn it.

Dean remembered the cluster of oaks he'd passed maybe ten minutes back, a few hundred yards off the road, dense enough to hide a man but not so deep he'd get lost finding it again. He'd automatically catalogued it as good shelter on his ride in. Now it was exactly what he needed.

He steered Baby off the main track. Branches clawed at his cloak, scratching skin through the fabric, but the grove swallowed them quick, the road disappearing behind a wall of trunks. It was quiet here, the air still and damp, the kind of quiet that made your own heartbeat sound loud.

Dean swung down, taking Castiel’s weight as he slid off the saddle. The guy was all lean muscle and sharp angles, heavier than his frame suggested. Blood had dried in a ragged streak at his temple where Dean’s sword hilt had connected, ugly against skin that was too pale. Dean propped him against the biggest oak and dug out rope from his saddlebags.

The knots came easy. Old habits. Benny had taught him the kind you could trust to hold a man, but that wouldn’t turn his hands black if you left him a few hours. Dean checked them twice. He wasn’t a monster. Not to someone unconscious. Not to… not to him.

He hated that it still mattered. That he still cared enough to hate it.

In the half-light, Castiel’s face had lost all its usual sharpness. No wary glances, no lines of suspicion or stubbornness. He looked younger like this. Almost vulnerable. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Dean had wanted to believe in him. In the guy who’d shared firelight in the cave, who’d watched over Dean after he was attacked by a kindralh, who’d seemed like maybe he wasn’t just another one of Michael’s loyal hounds.

"Why," Dean muttered, testing a knot, "couldn’t you just be what you seemed?"

The trees didn’t have an answer, and Castiel sure as hell wasn’t giving one.

Dean didn't have time to sit here wrestling with what-ifs. Jimmy was somewhere in that burning city, possibly already dead if Michael had decided to make examples.

He stood, brushing dirt from his knees. "I'll be back," he said to the unconscious figure. "Try not to go anywhere."

The bitter humor left a sour taste in his mouth. Here he was, talking to a man who'd betrayed him, making sure he was comfortable and safe. The contradiction felt wrong in ways Dean didn't want to examine.

Baby flicked an ear toward Castiel as Dean mounted up, snorting softly. “I know, girl,” Dean murmured, running a hand along her neck. “Not a fan of this part either.”

He made better time going back toward Celestia, but every minute felt like an hour. Smoke was rising thicker now, visible even through the trees. Whatever was happening in the city, it was getting worse.

The outer walls came into view as Dean crested the last hill, and what he saw made his blood run cold.

Half the lower quarter was on fire. Not the kind of fire you controlled but the kind you ran from. People swarmed the streets: some hauling buckets toward the flames, others clutching whatever they could carry, most just running. Dean had seen riots before, but this… this was a kingdom tearing itself apart.

He scanned faces automatically even though he had no idea what he was looking for. Jimmy could be anyone in this chaos, he could walk right past him and he'd never know. 

But hell, how many soldiers named Jimmy could there be in Celestia? It wasn't a name you heard every day and that had to count for something.

The main gates stood open, abandoned by guards who'd apparently decided their wages weren't worth dying for. Dean rode through unopposed, Baby's hooves clattering on cobblestones slick with water and debris.

A woman ran past carrying a crying child, her dress singed, face streaked with soot. An old man sat in a doorway, staring at nothing while flames consumed the building across from him. The air was thick with smoke.

"Hell," Dean breathed.

The castle still stood, its walls blackened in places where someone had tried and failed to set them alight. Dean could see figures moving on the battlements. Guards, probably, though their armor looked more for show than protection.

He left Baby in the courtyard, her reins looped around a mounting post that had somehow survived whatever chaos had swept through here. The great doors were barred, but a smaller entrance stood open nearby. Only one guard was posted there—fancy armor, nervous eyes—and the guy looked like he'd rather be anywhere else.

"I need to speak with someone in charge," Dean said as he approached.

The guard looked him over, taking in the travel-stained cloak and the sword at his hip. "And you are?"

"Someone who's having a very long day," Dean replied. "Is there anyone left in charge here, or has the whole government gone up in smoke?"

Before the guard could answer, a voice drifted down from the stairs behind him, warm with amusement.

"Oh, I wouldn't say the whole government. Just the corrupt parts."

Dean turned to see a man descending the stone steps with casual confidence that said he belonged here. Medium height, golden hair catching torchlight, and a smile that managed to be both friendly and dangerous.

"Gabriel," the guard said, looking relieved. "This man wants someone in authority."

"Does he now?" Gabriel's eyes fixed on Dean with sharp curiosity, and Dean saw the exact moment recognition hit. Gabriel's eyebrows rose slightly. 

For a heartbeat, Dean thought the guy might tell the guard to draw his blade. 

But instead, that grin appeared—slow and knowing, like a man who'd just stumbled onto a better kind of trouble. His voice stayed casual. "How refreshing. Most people who come calling these days want to burn something down or steal something valuable. And here I thought all the Winchester kings were supposed to be dead."

"Yeah, well, turns out I'm harder to kill than advertised," Dean said carefully.

Gabriel's smile widened into something genuinely amused. "Well, that's awkward for my brother. He's been telling everyone you died fighting a squad of Celestians." He gestured toward the stairs. "Shall we? I think this conversation just got much more interesting."

Dean followed him up winding stone steps. Gabriel moved like a man without a care in the world, as if the revolution outside was just an amusing show.

"So," Gabriel said over his shoulder, "what brings the supposedly dead King of Earden to our little slice of paradise? Here to watch the revolution? Survey the damage? Or just making sure we're properly distracted while you reclaim your own throne?"

"I'm looking for someone," Dean said.

"Aren't we all? Though the people worth looking for are usually smart enough to be somewhere else when the city's burning." Gabriel paused at a heavy wooden door. "Anyone in particular, or just browsing the prisoner selection?"

Dean's pulse quickened. "Prisoners? You still have people locked up?"

"Oh, a few. Political undesirables, mostly. Though I have to say, the definition of 'undesirable' has shifted rather dramatically in the past few hours." Gabriel pushed open the door to reveal a solar with tall windows overlooking the burning city. “Wine? Makes treason sound almost reasonable.”

"I'm looking for a man named Jimmy," Dean said, ignoring the offer. "He might have been arrested recently for helping someone escape."

He had no face for the name. Just Jimmy. A needle in a haystack that was currently on fire.

Gabriel paused in the act of pouring and eyes narrowed, the easy humor dimming for a beat. "You expect me to believe the dead King of Earden just walked into my city looking for a man named Jimmy?"

"Believe what you want," Dean said. "I'm not here for politics."

Gabriel’s eyebrows rose, curiosity back in place. "Jimmy? That's... specific. What makes you think we'd have someone by that name?"

"Because he helped my brother get out of Celestia three days ago. If your people figured out what he'd done..." 

Not every Celestian had sold their soul to Michael. Lucky break.

"Ah." Gabriel set down the wine and turned to face Dean fully. His eyebrows shot up. "Your brother?"

Dean's voice turned hard. "Sam's been locked in your dungeons for ten years."

Gabriel went completely still. The casual humor drained from his face. "Ten years?" His voice was barely above a whisper. "Are you telling me Michael has been holding Sam Winchester prisoner for a decade, and I never knew?"

"You really didn't know," Dean said, reading the shock in Gabriel's expression.

"Well, that's... awkward." Gabriel rubbed the back of his neck. "I genuinely didn't know. Michael's always been secretive about his pet projects, but holding a Winchester prince for a decade? That's impressive even for him."

"Where is Jimmy?" Dean demanded. "The man who helped Sam escape?"

Gabriel was quiet for a moment, studying Dean's face. "I'm afraid I can't help you there. We haven't arrested anyone by that name recently. Or ever, for that matter."

Dean felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. "That's impossible. He had to have been caught. There's no way Michael would let something like that slide."

"Oh, I'm sure he'd love to get his hands on whoever embarrassed him like that," Gabriel agreed. "But the thing is, my brother's been a bit... preoccupied lately. Something about peasants with pitchforks tends to refocus one's priorities."

"You're saying he's free? That Jimmy got away?"

"I'm saying there's no Jimmy in our dungeons," Gabriel said, tilting his head. "And trust me, I’d remember that name. Not exactly the kind that blends in with the usual names around here. No mention of him among the dead, either. Which, given the week we’re having, makes him one of the lucky few."

Something about it itched. Two Celestian soldiers helping Winchesters in the same damned week. Coincidence, maybe. He shoved the thought away before it could go anywhere. He was tired of chasing ghosts.

He dropped into a chair, bone-weary. Jimmy was alive. Sam's friend, the man who'd kept his brother sane for ten years, was alive and free.

"Speaking of the state of things," Gabriel continued, settling across from him, "you might want to start thinking about your own kingdom. Word is that someone calling himself King Adam has been making some very interesting proclamations about Earden's future."

"Adam," Dean said grimly. "Yeah, that's a problem I need to deal with."

"Family," Gabriel said with obvious sympathy. "Can't live with them, can't feed them to the revolutionaries no matter how tempting."

Despite everything, Dean felt his mouth twitch toward a smile. "You speak from experience?"

"Oh, extensively. Though in my case, the brother in question is currently locked in his own bedroom, writing very angry letters to nobles who are far too busy not being murdered by angry peasants to read them." Gabriel sipped his wine thoughtfully. "It's really quite therapeutic."

"And what happens now? To Celestia, I mean."

Gabriel shrugged. "We pick up the pieces. Try to avoid too much bloodshed. Maybe institute some revolutionary concepts like 'not stealing food from starving people' and 'not starting wars for personal amusement.'"

"You're talking about peace."

"I'm talking about survival," Gabriel corrected. "Both kingdoms have been bleeding for years. Seems to me it's time to try something different."

Dean nodded slowly. The idea of peace, real peace, not just the careful balance of threats they'd been maintaining, felt almost too good to be true.

"What about Jimmy?" he asked. "If he's out there somewhere, I need to find him. Bring him back to Earden. Sam would want to know he's safe."

Gabriel's expression grew thoughtful. "Tell you what. Give me a few days to sort through this mess, and I'll put out word that we're looking for him. If he's alive and in Celestia, I'll find him. Send him to you with a proper escort."

"You'd do that?"

"Consider it a gesture of good faith between kingdoms. Though I have to say, searching for one man in a city that's currently eating itself might take some time."

Dean stood, extending his hand. "I appreciate it. More than you know."

Gabriel clasped his hand firmly. "Just do me a favor and go deal with your usurper brother before he does something really stupid. The last thing either kingdom needs is another succession crisis."

The ride back was too quiet. Left him alone with his thoughts, which was never good. Jimmy was alive but missing. Sam would want answers. And Dean? He’d be coming back empty-handed, unless you counted the man he’d tied to an oak like a dangerous animal.

Dean found Castiel exactly where he'd left him but now conscious and alert. Dark hair falling across his forehead, blue eyes tracking Dean's every move. The ropes were still secure, but his wrists were raw from testing them.

"You're back," Castiel said. His voice scraped like gravel, and his gaze flicked over Dean, cautious, unreadable.

"Told you I would be." Dean kept his tone even, though part of him hated how good it felt to see the bastard breathing. He checked the bonds again, more from habit than necessity. "How long have you been awake?"

"Long enough." Castiel's voice was hoarse, whether from thirst or getting knocked unconscious, Dean couldn't tell. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"No," Dean said finally. "I didn't."

He saw something cross Castiel's face, maybe relief or resignation. Gone too quickly to read.

Dean untied the ropes from the tree but left Castiel's hands bound. Didn't matter how broken Castiel looked. Dean wasn't that stupid twice.

"Come on," Dean said, helping him to his feet. "We're going home."

As they rode back toward Earden, Castiel silent and secured behind him, Dean tried not to think too hard about the conversation waiting for him. Sam would ask about Jimmy, and Dean would have to admit he'd failed. That Jimmy was out there somewhere, free but unreachable, while Dean brought back nothing but a Celestian soldier who'd betrayed him.

He thought about leaving him there. Maybe he should have. But answers were in short supply, and Castiel had plenty buried under that quiet. Dean could drag him back, ask his questions, pretend that was the point.

The irony wasn't lost on him. He'd gone to save a friend and come back with an enemy. Sam would be disappointed. Dean was disappointed in himself.

But at least Castiel was alive. That had to count for something, even if Dean couldn't figure out what. The guy had looked so defeated back in that grove, so completely broken that Dean had almost felt sorry for him.

Almost. Because no matter how lost Castiel looked, no matter how his shoulders had sagged when Dean said he hadn't found what he was looking for, the fact remained: Castiel had betrayed him. Had stolen Baby and ridden straight back to Michael.

That was the reality Dean had to hold onto, even when every instinct told him something didn't add up. Even when the way Castiel had given up fighting suggested a man with nothing left to lose rather than a confident spy.

Figures.
The only thing Dean ever managed to rescue lately was regret.