A/N: Oops, I accidentally Destiel'd. Not even sorry.

In a moment of indecision, Castiel goes back in time to the moment he and Dean first met to remind himself what he's fighting for.

Also: absolutely no connection to the Prince of Egypt despite the title. *shakes head*

Deliver Us

The barn shudders under the force of the wind, the black sigils swaying with the trembling walls. Castiel smiles softly, wistfully, at the symbols all around him, useless and hastily painted, and at the pair of humans in the middle, shoulders tensed and eyes wide, and Castiel's smile slips when he realizes how young Dean looks here, how much he has aged since.

He doesn't (does) know what impulse drew him to come back here, to relive this king of moments, but he stands there in the shadows, searching Dean's face as though it holds the answers to his every question (and he has many).

"Oh, Dean," he murmurs, but Dean can neither see nor hear this version of him. The angel approaches him anyway, mentally traces the smoother lines of the face he knows so well.

Time is fluid. As an angel, Castiel understands this, has learned this. Time can change, can bend, can weave and warp: a supple vine curving this way and that, a stream that slithers through the trees.

But, as an angel, Castiel understands that individual moments in time are fixed, static and unyielding: the wrought-iron fence around which the vine twists, the banks that shape and funnel the stream. These moments are cosmic, fated, destined.

As Castiel watches this particular moment for the second (third, fourth) time, as he watches Dean's eyes meet his vessel's for the first time, he knows that this is one such moment. In every incarnation, in every altered lifetime, this moment is the same.

A mortal meets an angel, and the world falls apart.

Cosmic.

And, watching this, it's then that Castiel realizes that he was doomed from the beginning.

The barn doors fly open, and Castiel's gaze flits to the vessel of his younger self, to blue eyes wide and guileless. Innocent.

This Castiel still believes. In God, in his brothers, in everything. He wonders what would happen if he killed his younger self, if he throttled some sense into him before putting Dean and the world through so much misery.

Castiel watches as bullet after bullet sinks into, through his vessel. He watches as Dean stabs him in the heart, and a more perfect metaphor for their relationship, he cannot imagine. The abject fear in Dean's eyes is something he'd forgotten, however, and Castiel finds himself staring at this precious mortal as he bristles like a wolf pup, all wide skittery eyes, tense shoulders, and legs bent and ready to run. A spooked animal caught by a potential predator.

Cas finds himself reaching for Dean's shoulder, only to hesitate, to keep his hand hovering there, stalled.

I would never hurt you, he thinks but knows better than to say. Saying it aloud would be speaking a lie.

His hand lowers back to his side.

Love has always been God's greatest gift, to man, to angels. Something to be treasured, to aspire to.

But love like this, he thinks, is something no angel was meant to feel. Love that burns, that consumes, that obsesses and possesses, that narrows Castiel's world – no, his universe – to a pair of green eyes and a gritty voice.

But love like this, he thinks, is something he could not have avoided after meeting Dean. And meeting Dean is something he cannot avoid no matter what he, in his anger, in his hurt, in his desperation, has tried to do, in this lifetime and all others.

Because this moment, when green eyes meet blue, is cosmic and unyielding.

My charge, he used to think proudly when he'd look at Dean. My soul, he thinks now, and he doesn't understand how something so beautiful can hurt so.

"There is no limit to how much I love you," he says to Dean now, in the silence and its safety, where Dean can't hear him. "No words in any language on earth or in heaven to quantify how much you mean to me."

The way Dean looks at him now (then) like Castiel is a monster, some supernatural thing he is meant to "gank", reminds Cas why this was not meant to work from the beginning.

All that he knows is that life means nothing now without Dean, and he is willing to suffer in silence if it keeps Dean safe and by his side. He's willing to do a great many things, dangerous, blasphemous things, and that frightens him.

"Lead us not into temptation," he murmurs, and he stares at Dean for one more lingering moment before he turns and flies back to the present and to Crowley.