Cover art isn't mine. Original by anobviousaside on tumblr. Post is /46778628599, but I did edit it a little. Thank you for reading!

His friend hadn't always exactly been reliable in the past. Not like it was his fault, though. Dean knew he tried, that the angel did care. Even though it was kind of hard to remember that sometimes.

Like now, for instance.

His throat was close to being scrubbed raw for screaming his name. His full name, his true name.

"Castiel!" He tried for what felt like the five hundredth time. "Please," He rasped, finally slumping against the shiny black car, Sam tucked into his arms.

It was wet. And cold. And people were screaming- no, take that back, ex-angels were screaming and falling in flames and for all he knew they were dying. He didn't know, and right now, he couldn't find it in him to care.

All he cared about was keeping the broad-shouldered, heavy and gigantic little brother in his arms from dying, just keeping him breathing and his heart pumping. That was all that mattered.

"Dean." Sam coughed, little wet spots of blood flicking onto his brown leather jacket. "De."

God, he hadn't heard that little nickname since Sam had been around five.

"It's okay, Sammy. It's okay. I'm here, I'm gonna take you to the hospital."

"De," Sam squeezed the syllable from his lungs. "Cas...can't hear..y..'nymore." He rasped, a slightly curled finger tracing the path of a flaming, streak of fire as it fell in a line toward the Earth.

Dean wrenched open the car door, wheezing as he lifted (or attempted to lift) Sam into the backseat. Sam coughed and tried to speak up again. "Falling...C-Cas.."

"Shhh. I gotcha, Sammy. Take it easy. Take it easy, okay?" He managed to get him into the back and slammed the door, pulling open the door and zooming out of the empty parking lot. It was cold, rainy, his clothes were plastered to his skin, his chilled hands were shaking as he gripped the wheel so hard if it were alive he would be strangling it.

It was ironic that the person who's name he'd been screaming nonstop was completely out of his mind as he tore up the rainy roads.

Silence.

No "angel radio" as Dean had nicknamed it.

Before the stifling silence it had been screams and cries for help and tears and begs for mercy and forgiveness. Then, it all cut off, clean, just like the slice across his neck. And it hurt, like a knife had carved that ability straight out of him, and the invisible appendage was still bleeding.

The crisp, scrubbed-clean, fresh-from-the-rain air lilted and combed through the hair on his head, and chilled the water that was brimming on the edge of his lower eyelids, making his eyeballs feel like tiny balls of ice in his skull.

Everything was quiet, inside in head. Stifling and unnatural and lonely. His gracless body ached from the loss, newfangled pain squeezing through his veins, his body screaming just from the sensation of blood pumping through his body.

Flaming stars were falling. All of us are Lucifers now.

Cassttiieeelll...

Vessels were not only for the human's sake. It was dangerous for angels to come to Earth vessel-less, and if there was prolonged exposure, impossible to survive.

Earth was poisonous. The atmosphere was chock-full of sins and evil and tainted molecules, unlike the pure, gentle, saline atmosphere of Heaven. Earth was filthy. And to try and survive unsheltered, in an atmosphere like Earth's, grace would die quickly. Within the hour, Cas estimated.

And not every angel in heaven was matched with a human vessel.

His newly aware muscles screamed with every step. Damp leaves made strange, muffled and moist attempts at crunches underneath his shoes. The cold, humid air was stinging his skin and biting his nose and knuckles.

She must have been one of the first to fall. Her grace had already dimmed enough from exposure to Earth for him to view it with his new human eyes, only leaving splotches of neon green behind his eyelids when he blinked.

"Sister," He spoke, the wind from his lungs ticking his windpipe, his breath felt sharp and wispy on the back of his throat and he was so aware of absolutely everything all at once. He felt hair on his face, he felt his tongue in his mouth, he felt the cloth on his body, the shoes squeezing his feet. And he felt a bleeding hole somewhere vaguely in his chest area, gaping wounds that ripped down his back, the loss of what made him an angel.

Cassttieell...the glowing mass of dying, fading grace was calling to him without lips to speak with, a tendril of grace reaching out to him weakly.

"Sister Naarai," He breathed, feeling the tears spill out from the brim of his eyelids and he was hyperactively aware of the cold and wet that smoothed down his cheek. Naarai, the angel of children.

"חיים חדשים" She breathed in Hebrew, the only human language she knew since coming to Earth a long, long time ago, the angel of children was one of the few graced with preparing for Mother Mary's birth.

"New life?" Castiel asked, his vocal chords humming in his neck unpleasantly. "I don't understand-"

The light was fading, like a glowing coal, throbbing in and out of light. He held out his hands, and she slipped a tendril over his palms. A weight came into existence, and he held the object that she'd given him securely to his chest, the object surprising fitting perfectly to the curve of his human body.

"I will protect it with my life." He didn't like how everything was so new, his voice vibrating his throat and humming behind his ears.

The egg was basketball-sized but obviously egg-shaped, a pure, heavenly white shell that contained something that was possibly the most valuable thing in the universe as of now, the untouched grace of an angel child.

The grace, which was white and throbbing, on the dark brown soil like the splatter of a teardrop, faded and died.

It was only three days later that Dean finally found his angel- ex-angel - in his same holy tax accountant clothes, sitting outside of a Wal-mart with a cup in one hand, begging for any change, with the egg tucked under a coat lapel in the other arm. His face was scruffy and grimy.

Hell, Dean's hygiene probably wasn't that much better than his, after living for his brother and his brother only during his painstakingly slow and rocky recovery.

"Change? Change? Change for our last hope?" Cas was muttering, shaking an empty bean can, a few quarters clinking along the tin sides.

"Cas?" Dean felt his breath catch in his throat as he sprinted and crouched to his knees. "Dude! I found you!" He smiled and a pent-up breath he didn't know he was holding. He was met with a blank, blue-eyed expression.

"C'mon, you're coming home with me." Dean smiled for once in days and extended a hand to help him up.

Cas was completely silent, as if stunned, as Dean dragged the fallen angel and the mysterious egg home.