NIGHTMARES | accepting "It’s okay. You’re okay." | @hcpewings from Sam
The angel's brow furrowed as he moved forward, one guarded step at a time, down the darkened hall. Deteriorating brick with no spark of light, save for what spilled from the room at the end. The sound of torture was in his vessel's ears as Castiel stalked closer. Ever closer. Pain. Begging. A blade through skin. Carving deeper as the voice pitched higher.
He kept walking. Head tilted and blue eyes calculating. Cas didn't know why he was there, only that he needed to witness this. Urgency wasn't felt until broken words reached his ears, and he recognized the voice at last. Sam. Trapped and howling under a torturer's knife. His feet moved no further, it was wings that carried him to the depths of that room, and behind his assailant. A callused hand wrenched the man's shoulder back, and the other prepared to meet his forehead before the angel stopped dead in his tracks. The man holding the knife? Was Dean.
"Hiya, Cas."
Never had a smile filled his vessel's veins with such ice. Dean set his blade down, and Castiel was able to get a view of Sam, bloody, unconscious and bound on the table. It seemed the pause in agony had been enough to pull him under.
"What have you done?"
"Me? Me? Cas, what have YOU done?" Dean stepped forward, and instinct alone had the angel stepping back. Retreating every inch the hunter advanced. "This ain't my fault. It's yours. Every. Last. Bloody. Messy. Inch of it." Dean's head tilted far on his shoulders, and that terrible smile returned. "There it is. That's the look I've been waiting for." Cas felt the color drain from Jimmy's face as beautiful green irises were swallowed by black. But there was no one else holding Dean's body hostage. The demon inside it was him.
"Dean, how-?"
"How!? You're asking HOW!? Because you weren't THERE, CAS!" A vicious swipe knocked the entire cart of blades and needles out of Dean's way to crash and spill across the concrete floor. "Where were YOU, when the angels THREW ME back downstairs!? Where were YOU, when they tore into me so bad, I turned into THIS!? Where the HELL were YOU, WHEN I WAS ROTTING IN HELL!"
Cas felt like he couldn't breathe, still retreating every step Dean stalked toward him.
"You did this to me. You could have stopped it. It's a damn good thing you forgave the shit I did in hell the first time around, 'cause now?" Dean's hands spread wide with a joyless smirk, " Hell is all I am. Can't unring this bell, and you know it. But you know what might make me feel better? Taking it out of YOUR ass. You worthless son of a bitch."
In the early hours of the morning at Bobby Singer's home, the lights began to flicker. Then surge. The angel was still crumpled on the couch, hands wrenched into the thin blanket hard enough to strain and tear the fabric. The lights grew bright to the point of blinding by the time Sam's hands were on his shoulder, and the bulbs nearest to Castiel shattered as an arm swung out and launched the hunter across the room and into the hall.
Cas bolted upright, eyes rounded with emotion that had not yet fled under the comfort of cold hard reality. They darted around Bobby's living room and landed on the man sprawled across the floor. "... I'm sorry." An unseen force seemed to pick Sam up and set him back in his feet while Cas leaned forward and scrubbed a hand over his face. "Where's Dean?"
