#blueecp

Someone is wearing a leather mask that only shows his bearded mouth and standing left corner, axe in hand. The executioner. The man with bound hands kneels without protest and presses his cheek to the bloodied stump.

Dean darts forward, heels skidding as he throws up both hands to stop the axe before it falls.

The man kneeling looks up at him. No. Cas looks up at him, eyes wide with the kind of surprise you might have when someone hasn’t rsvp’ed to a party but you’re sure they might drop by anyways because they always show up, even if they’re late, and then there’s the sound of their car in the driveway and you tell your friends see I told you he’d be here what did I say I was right all along.

Cas’ eyes shine with a wet terror. “Dean.”

The axe falls through his fingers. Cas’ head is separated from his neck like two orange slices being pulled apart.

And then Dean is back in the Impala.

“Fucked up dream, huh,” he says aloud. Trying to affirm his status; trying to cement his words in the roughness under his tongue. He checks the rear-view mirror-no masked executioner in sight-and then pulls out his phone to study the map again. Sam was supposed to meet him here an hour ago. The family of ghouls they’re hunting seems to be hiding out in the woods nearby. There's no reply from Sam to Dean's last messages.

“Slowpoke,” Dean mutters and turns the key in the engine. He lets the radio play at full blast while he drives. After about a mile or two he sees something in the middle of the road and swerves sharply to avoid hitting it. It looks like some kids’ soccer ball, or a dead rabbit. Nothing worth stopping for.

He gets out of the car anyways.

It’s a head. A human head.

Dean puts one hand on the gun in the back of his belt, his quickening heartbeat anticipating an attack. Like he’s some forest bunny about to get pulled in by a hunter’s bait. After he scans the empty highway around him he looks back at the head by his feet. It’s half rotted; ants and flies are swarming thick around the neck, so many that the base looks black and alive. The eyes are swollen and oozing and blue. As if the sky is hemorrhaging.

Cas. The word burns along the side of his gums. He can’t work his jaw to open it and speak.

Someone grabs the scruff his neck and he’s yanked backwards too fast to whip out his weapon and defend himself.

He’s in a halfway, long and white. Murder-white. The kind of color that is begging to be splattered in blood. The kind of clean that you know is only that way because of all the guts that had to wiped off. He whirls around at the sound of incoming footsteps and feels around his chest and waistband for any blade or gun or half-decent throwing star, but there’s nothing. In fact his clothes are even wrong. He’s wearing something Sam would call a tunic, and Dean has no idea what a tunic is except for the fact he’s undoubtedly wearing one right now.

“I’m dreaming,” he says out loud. “Fuck.”

“Yes and no.” Cas is standing at his right side. Head on his neck and everything.

“You-I-what’s going on here?” Dean narrows his eyes. “Are you even real?”

“Yes and no.” Cas isn’t looking at him. His eyes are fixed straight ahead, like he can see through the corridor wall. His Adam’s apple bobs faintly. Then he closes his eyes and slowly puts his arms behind his back.

“Cas, what’s happening?” Dean rounds on him, reaching out to touch his shoulder just as the soldiers appear again. They bind Cas’ wrists with rope and pull him down the hall, oblivious to Dean’s attempts to get through.

“Cas! Cas! Don’t let them do this to you!” Dean glances around for a way to get ahead of them and sees a side hall on his left. He sprints down it and out the exit and ends up on the cobblestone road again. He’s in front of the executioner’s platform once more, but this time he’s not alone. There’s a crowd gathered all around, pressed as tight as sweaty clothes to his skin.

“For his treachery to Heaven and its commands,” someone reads from a scroll. “For his disregard for life, both human and celestial. For releasing the abomination that our Father locked away.”

The crowd murmurs their assent after each line. He’s standing at a trial. No, it’s not a trial because Cas isn’t getting a chance to defend himself. He’s just standing there between the grip of the soldiers, head lowered in anticipation.

This is a public execution.

And these aren’t soldiers. They’re angels.

Sam grabs a water bottle and a towel and Dean skims his hands over Cas’ body, looking for open wounds or infected lesions. He’s so severely underweight that Dean is afraid to press on his protruding bones and hurt him. Dean exhales slightly when he finds no noticeable injuries (bruises litter his body like weeds in a garden, but he’s not bleeding anywhere). They can skip a stop at the hospital and take him straight back to the Bunker. Back home.

Charlie sits in the backseat and unwraps a piece of cold French toast from the diner that morning and rips off small pieces to give Cas. Something Sam said about not letting him eat or drink too much at first or it’ll be a shock to his system. Cas figures each morsel of bread between his dirty fingertips before slowly pushing it between his teeth.

The angels who did this are nowhere to be seen. Dean temporarily puts out the fire in his chest that’s burning for justice. They’ll find the bastards when Cas is strong enough to eviscerate them with his own two hands.

+

Charlie makes chicken soup from scratch, with a whole real chicken. Dean is almost fascinated to watch her pull the rubbery skin off the bulb-shaped legs and crack the ribcage open with a knife. Sam adds cilantro, diced potatoes, carrots and celery to the stock. Dean gazes at the magical process for a few moments longer before going to see if Cas is finished his shower.

Cas is sitting on the edge of the bed in the infirmary, wearing just his boxers, elbows on his knees.

Dean tries hard not to react visibly to the sight of his emaciated body. Cas’ ribs stick out from under his skin like metal wires. His toes look more like a Halloween costume fixture than actual toes. There’s no amount of loose fabric from oversized t shirts and sweat pants that can hide the way his collarbone juts out or the sunken hollows around his eyes.

He feels so small when Dean helps him pull a sweater over his head. Like Dean could move too brusquely and his entire skeleton would collapse. “I’m sorry,” Dean murmurs over the swish of knitted strands.

Cas pulls the sweater sleeves over his wrists and then leans into Dean. His elbows burrow into Dean’s belly like the hilt of a sword ramming into his gut. (It’s hard to breathe.) Dean hugs him closer anyways.

They all sit and watch him try the chicken soup. Like it’s some potion that will cure all, the way storybook grandmothers always promised it would.

Cas grimaces and holds his nose while slurping the first spoonful. Charlie laughs softly and tells him its just smoke from the heat. It won’t hurt him. He doesn’t look very appeased but he lowers his hand for the next sip. His expression relaxes slightly and he says he likes the smell of the cilantro. Sam smiles hopefully.

Then Cas’ lips suddenly curl upwards and his eyes wide in horror. Before Dean can ask why he’s shoving back the chair and spitting something out on the table before stumbling backwards. His knees are knocking into each other hard, hands fumbling frantically against the wall he’s sliding down.

The three of them jump up at the same time. Charlie grabs the bowl, exclaiming how there’s nothing wrong with it. Sam goes to Cas’ side to help steady him and Dean stares at the offending thing sitting in a pool of thick saliva next to the spoon.

It’s just a chicken bone.

+

Cas keeps biting his lower lip. Dean doesn’t know if it’s a new habit or not (he never got see Cas as human before the torture). He tells Cas to stop whenever he sees it, but it clearly happens when he’s not around, and frequently, because Cas’ lip is starting to look like a discolored strip of raw meat and dark blood stains.

Charlie buys different flavors of lip balm online and has Cas try each one to find the kind he likes.

“Put it on whenever you want to bite it,” she says, buying several extra tubes of Burt’s Bees so he can put one in each pocket of his clothes.

She keeps buying things for him. She tells Dean she doesn’t know what it’s like to be human for the first time, but it’s gotta require lots of things you never needed before. Dean doesn’t think miniature hand sanitizers, waterproof phone covers, or a matching pillowcase and duvet set is going to help Cas forget that he was tortured for weeks by his own siblings, but he lets her do it anyways.

Sam reads books on dieting and How to Help Your Ex-Angel With a Very Picky Appetite Gain Weight.

Foods Cas refuses to eat include chicken wings, hamburgers, hamburgers, hot dogs, and hamburgers.

Dean tries not to be frustrated with Cas. It’s only been a few weeks. A few weeks of watching at Cas’ haunted figure wobbling around the Bunker and knowing there’s nothing he can do to fix it. He can’t even cook for him, which is normally his winning move in mother-henning the infirm back to life.

Foods Cas likes to eat includes cereal, milk, and bread. Chocolate bars and French fries were soundly rejected.

Dean wonders if part of the angel’s torture was to give Cas the best fast food ever so he’d develop an aversion to it for the rest of his life.

It’s almost six weeks after that hospital phone call that Dean finally sees Cas again. He’s been mentally preparing himself that Cas isn’t going to look the same: he’s human now (as if the body will be physically warped from the enormity of that transition), but he’s also been held captive by angels. Dean has tried hard to stop himself from picturing what they might be doing to him. He’s kept the predominant vision in his mind of a Cas who is alive.

And he isn’t wrong.

Cas stares up at him and Sam and Charlie (who’s breathing heavily, shakily, right by his ear). His blue eyes are a washed out hue, not even brightened by the contrast of the dull iron bars he’s peering through. The ex-angel is crouched in what looks like a huge kennel for one of those short-haired, bad-tempered type dogs. A Rottweiler or Great Dane. There’s a plastic water bottle with a small tube tied with wire to the top of the cage. Something a hamster or parrot would sip from. Patches of beige trench coat and white shirt fabric are stuck so tightly with the grime all over Cas’ body that it looks like his clothes have melted into his skin.

Dean almost topples the cage over in his frantic attempt to get Cas out of there.

Charlie is trying her best not to cry when she slips an arm around Cas’ waist to steady him as he crawls out. Dean figures he probably hasn’t walked in weeks; he’s trying to stand as firm and proud as he can, but his ankles are protesting the reality of the situation.

All three of them end up supporting him in a strange sideways gait back to the car, like some fucked-up three-legged race.

Sam grabs a water bottle and a towel and Dean skims his hands over Cas’ body, looking for open wounds or infected lesions. He’s so severely underweight that Dean is afraid to press on his protruding bones and hurt him. Dean exhales slightly when he finds no noticeable injuries (bruises litter his body like weeds in a garden, but he’s not bleeding anywhere). They can skip a stop at the hospital and take him straight back to the Bunker. Back home.

Charlie sits in the backseat and unwraps a piece of cold French toast from the diner that morning and rips off small pieces to give Cas. Something Sam said about not letting him eat or drink too much at first or it’ll be a shock to his system. Cas figures each morsel of bread between his dirty fingertips before slowly pushing it between his teeth.

The angels who did this are nowhere to be seen. Dean temporarily puts out the fire in his chest that’s burning for justice. They’ll find the bastards when Cas is strong enough to eviscerate them with his own two hands.

+

Charlie makes chicken soup from scratch, with a whole real chicken. Dean is almost fascinated to watch her pull the rubbery skin off the bulb-shaped legs and crack the ribcage open with a knife. Sam adds cilantro, diced potatoes, carrots and celery to the stock. Dean gazes at the magical process for a few moments longer before going to see if Cas is finished his shower.

Cas is sitting on the edge of the bed in the infirmary, wearing just his boxers, elbows on his knees.

Dean tries hard not to react visibly to the sight of his emaciated body. Cas’ ribs stick out from under his skin like metal wires. His toes look more like a Halloween costume fixture than actual toes. There’s no amount of loose fabric from oversized t shirts and sweat pants that can hide the way his collarbone juts out or the sunken hollows around his eyes.

He feels so small when Dean helps him pull a sweater over his head. Like Dean could move too brusquely and his entire skeleton would collapse. “I’m sorry,” Dean murmurs over the swish of knitted strands.

Cas pulls the sweater sleeves over his wrists and then leans into Dean. His elbows burrow into Dean’s belly like the hilt of a sword ramming into his gut. (It’s hard to breathe.) Dean hugs him closer anyways.

They all sit and watch him try the chicken soup. Like it’s some potion that will cure all, the way storybook grandmothers always promised it would.

Cas grimaces and holds his nose while slurping the first spoonful. Charlie laughs softly and tells him its just smoke from the heat. It won’t hurt him. He doesn’t look very appeased but he lowers his hand for the next sip. His expression relaxes slightly and he says he likes the smell of the cilantro. Sam smiles hopefully.

Then Cas’ lips suddenly curl upwards and his eyes wide in horror. Before Dean can ask why he’s shoving back the chair and spitting something out on the table before stumbling backwards. His knees are knocking into each other hard, hands fumbling frantically against the wall he’s sliding down.

The three of them jump up at the same time. Charlie grabs the bowl, exclaiming how there’s nothing wrong with it. Sam goes to Cas’ side to help steady him and Dean stares at the offending thing sitting in a pool of thick saliva next to the spoon.

It’s just a chicken bone.

+

Cas keeps biting his lower lip. Dean doesn’t know if it’s a new habit or not (he never got to see human Cas before the weeks of torture). He tells Cas to stop whenever he sees it, but it clearly happens when he’s not around, and frequently, because Cas’ lip is starting to look like a discolored strip of raw meat and dark blood stains.

Charlie buys different flavors of lip balm online and has Cas try each one to find the kind he likes.

“Put it on whenever you feel like biting your lips,” she says, buying several extra tubes of Burt’s Bees so he can put one in each pocket of his clothes.

She keeps buying things for him. She tells Dean she doesn’t know what it’s like to be human for the first time, but it’s gotta require lots of things you never needed before. Dean doesn’t think miniature hand sanitizers, waterproof phone covers, or a matching pillowcase and duvet set is going to help Cas forget that he was tortured for weeks by his own siblings, but he lets her do it anyways.

Sam reads books on dieting and How to Help Your Ex-Angel With a Very Picky Appetite Gain Weight.

Foods Cas refuses to eat include chicken wings, hamburgers, hamburgers, hot dogs, and hamburgers.

Dean tries not to be frustrated with Cas. It’s only been a few weeks. A few weeks of watching at Cas’ haunted figure wobbling around the Bunker and knowing there’s nothing he can do to fix it. He can’t even cook for him, which is normally his winning move in mother-henning the infirm back to life.

Foods Cas likes to eat includes cereal, milk, and bread. Chocolate bars and French fries were soundly rejected.

Dean wonders if part of the angel’s torture was to give Cas the best fast food ever so he’d develop an aversion to it for the rest of his life.