A/N UPDATE: Hello, all! This was the first fic I posted in this fandom initially, but I'm going back through now and cleaning it up one chapter at a time, so welcome to the 2nd edition ^_^

Trigger warnings apply here for abuse and emotional aftermath. This is a dark themed fic. Please tread carefully.

How had Zachariah managed to get the jump on them like this? In the old warehouse – because wasn't it always an old warehouse? – Dean struggled furiously against the two angels who held him trapped in between them. There was no point, though, and he knew it. He wasn't nearly strong enough to break their hold. Beside him, Sam was grunting with the exertion of his own struggle to fight free, but he wasn't any more likely than Dean to escape.

They were trapped, along with their angel friend.

"Cas!" Dean shouted as he watched his friend take another blow to the stomach, doubling over in agony. Dean growled, struggling harder. "You sons of bitches! Leave him alone!"

"Dean, Dean, Dean."

Dean froze, not moving as he felt another body walking around from behind him. Zachariah gave him the creeps, and the way he was smiling, like this was the most fun he'd had all millennium, only made it worse.

"Let him go," Dean growled as soon as Zachariah came into view; in front of them, the two angels holding Cas had stopped the beating at least, but they were holding his arms tightly. One of them reached up to set his hand on Cas's head, his fingers clenching through the angel's hair and jerking his head back.

"Dean," Cas rasped out, sounding a bit rough as he breathed heavily. The blood smearing his face and the bruises were already starting to heal themselves, and that was something. At least he could keep healing, Dean thought, but if they pulled out the angel blades…

There was a warning look in Cas's eyes, though. He seemed to be trying to tell the two brothers not to interfere, but how were they supposed to just stand there and watch Zach torture their best friend?

"What do you want, Zachariah?" Dean demanded, trying to take the other angel's attention off of Cas. He didn't like how Sam and himself had been dragged towards the sidelines, leaving Cas in the center with the other two on him. He didn't know what they might do to Cas – or them – but he knew it couldn't be good.

Zachariah turned towards him, a disbelieving look on his face.

"What do I want?" he repeated. "What I want, you stupid monkey, is paradise! It's all we've ever wanted, and we're going to get it! But you've refused to cooperate, and Castiel here? Well, he's just completely forgotten where his loyalties belong, so…" Zachariah laughed slightly, which only served to make him sound more sinister. "I guess this is mostly just a bit of… punishment."

Dean hadn't stopped trying to struggle out of the angels' grips, but he shot Zachariah a furious look now. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?" he snarled, before his eyes darted over to Cas.

Castiel swallowed hard, licking his lips slightly in open apprehension. Somehow, this only made Dean panic more. For Cas to show any signs of fear could only spell bad things.

"Zach? What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, Dean, that there's some lessons to be learned here," Zachariah explained in his far too chipper voice. He strolled over towards Cas, making both Sam and Dean growl in warning again, but what could they do?

Nothing, they could do nothing as Zachariah settled a hand on Cas's shoulder. They could do nothing as they saw Cas instantly tense up and try to pull away, and they could do nothing as Zachariah shoved, the force of his stronger grace sending Cas down onto his knees on the dirty warehouse floor.

"Stop it!" shouted Sam, as Dean swore in fury. "Wait! What are you doing!?"

"At the moment?" Zachariah asked, eyebrows raising. "Teaching Castiel his lesson."

On the floor, Cas tensed again, then swallowed. "Zachariah…" he began, but said nothing more when the angel's hand – still on his shoulder – clenched tightly in what had to be a bone crushing grip. Cas didn't make a sound, but Dean swore again.

"So, what, this is what you've come to?" he snarled in anger. "What, you torture Cas to make us say yes? We've played this game before, ugly. The answer's no!" How many times now had Zachariah tried to force the brothers into the role of their vessels by threatening them, hurting them, torturing them? They had managed to escape every single time.

Hurting Sam was the dumbest thing Zachariah could have done, the easiest way to assure that Dean would never cooperate with him… the fastest way onto Dean's hit list. Zachariah was at the top of that list already, because of what he'd done to Sam. If he added this on, now? If he damaged one hair of Cas's head, then Dean would only have double the incentive to kill him.

Zachariah, though, turned back to Dean with a part mocking, part incredulous look and laughed once. "What, you think this is all about you? Of course you do… you arrogant worm. He's not here because I'm interested in you. Believe me, it's exactly the opposite."

"What?" Sam snapped in confusion as Dean tried to meet Cas's eyes, trying to give him a silent reassurance that they would find a way out of this. Cas, though, wasn't looking at either of them. He'd been far too quiet this entire time, and his struggles had stopped. He already looked defeated, and that was bad.

"What do you mean, it's the opposite?" Dean asked, seething. Zachariah's hand hadn't loosened on Cas yet, and the two angels who had his arms pinned weren't looking particularly gentle, either.

"I mean," Zachariah answered in a patronizingly slow voice, "I'm not going to use Castiel against you."

"You're… not?" Sam asked. As if either of them believed Zachariah didn't have something evil planned.

"Nope," was the cheerful reply. Then, Zachariah's face darkened, and Cas groaned softly in pain as the other angel's knuckles whitened with how tightly he was gripping him. "No… just the opposite. You're here to make Castiel's punishment all the worse for him."

That didn't sound good, and Dean instantly tried to lunge forward only to be dragged back again by the iron hands holding him. "What's that mean!? Zach, you bastard-"

Castiel seemed to already know what was going on, because his head had dropped even lower, eyes tightly closed, as Zachariah began chanting something over him. It looked to Dean as though Cas was actually shaking, which made his heart beat even faster with panic. This seemed bad, so bad. What was Zachariah doing to him, what was the chanting? What did it mean, that they were there to make Cas's punishment even worse? What could be so terrifying to the angel that the mere threat could make even him tremble in fear?

Dean yelled at Zachariah again, but the angels were ignoring the two humans entirely now as a bright light suddenly began to blot out all vision. It burned whiter and whiter, until the Winchesters had to close their eyes with pained shouts. Dean gritted his teeth, praying he wouldn't go blind from the sheer force of it.

When the light faded, Dean pried his eyes open, and instantly gasped.

"What the-"

Zachariah was still standing behind Cas, who was still kneeling on the floor… but now bare from the waist up.

And with the minor addition of two massive wings.

Neither Sam nor Dean could speak. They had never seen actual wings on any of the angels. Shadows on the wall behind them, occasionally… or burned into the ground where an angel died. But the actual wings themselves?

"Cas…." Sam whispered, openly staring.

Dean couldn't speak. He was blown away, mouth open slightly as he gaped. The wings were enormous, extending several feet to either side of Castiel though the angel quickly tucked them in close to his body. They were a soft white color, but with brown and smoky grey flecks streaking through here and there, like the wings of a snowy owl. Either there was a trick of the light, or the wings were… glowing?

Not glowing in the full sense, but there seemed to be at least a soft sheen emitting from the wings, just enough to brighten the air ever so slightly around Castiel. They were so… pure. They were beautiful. All the humans could do was stare, but Cas was shrinking even more as he tried harder to pull his wings in more tightly against his body.

"Zachariah," he whispered, voice hoarse and tense. "Please… brother… do not do this. Please, don't."

"Don't what?" demanded Dean, giving himself a shake and trying to focus on the situation instead of the two incredible wings. He wasn't expecting an answer, and he didn't get one. Beside him, though, one of the angels holding him suddenly turned his head, looking away from the scene before them.

"Zachariah…" the angel murmured, and Zach's angry eyes snapped up to him.

"Yes?"

The threat was barely hidden: don't interrupt, unless you want to be punished, too. The angel apparently wasn't going to risk that, because he fell silent without another word. Zachariah, however, seemed to decide this had opened up the perfect opportunity for a monologue.

Strutting out from behind Castiel, who tensed when he heard the footsteps, Zach shook his head and squatted down beside his kneeling prisoner. He reached out, grabbing Cas's chin and jerking it up so that Cas had no choice but to meet his eyes.

"You deserve this, Castiel," he quietly informed the angel. "I tried, I really did. I gave you some gentle nudges-"

"This is not a gentle nudge, Zachariah," Cas interrupted. There was pleading in his voice, which filled Dean with even more dread. Castiel was a proud angel, and he'd survived more than the hunter liked to consider. If he was this afraid….

"I thought I'd cured you of this," Zach went on as though Cas hadn't spoken. "I thought you'd learned your lesson after the last time you insisted on throwing your lot in with these vermin. You were such a good boy, for a while. What happened?"

"A good- You ass-hat!" Dean indignantly exploded, while Sam's eyes narrowed with hatred. "Stay away from him!"

Zachariah was still acting as though he couldn't hear any of the interruptions around him, though, pulling Cas's face closer to him as he said in an even quieter, deadlier voice, "So, we're going to try this, again. But this time, you get an audience."

Keeping Cas's chin in an iron grip, Zach moved aside so that Cas's eyes met Dean and Sam's for the first time. It was only the swiftest second, before Cas's gaze immediately turned down. It was enough, though, for Dean to catch the burning shame that filled those blue eyes. It startled him, enough to make him freeze in his struggles, and watch their friend.

"Cas?" Sam asked quietly, but there was no answer. Cas, and the majestic wings that Zach seemed to have revealed to them, drooped in the angels' holds. Zachariah straightened up, tugging his suit jacket straight, but didn't yet move back behind Cas.

Instead, he asked in a stony voice, "Whom do you serve, Castiel? Us, or them?"

All eyes were on the kneeling angel, who was staring at the floor. Dean could see Castiel take a deep breath, seeming to steel himself, before his gravelly voice echoed through the warehouse,

"We weremeant to serve and protect humanity, Zachariah. Our Father created them, and it was always our duty-"

"Wrong answer."

"Zachariah, please…"

"Hold your wings out, Castiel."

There was a sharp intake of breath as the kneeling angel looked up at Zachariah in horror and mutely shook his head. Zach only sighed, looking heavenward as though seeking patience and then nodded to the angels holding Sam and Dean. Both the brothers grunted in pain as the grips holding them tightened all the more, and the cold metal of angel blades snaked their way up to touch the bare skin of their throats threateningly.

"Alright, hold your wings out, or… your two favorite pets take the punishment."

"No!" Castiel growled, looking desperate. "You need them! You wouldn't kill them!"

"True. Doesn't mean we can't break them and put 'em back together a million times over," threatened Zachariah. His eyes had hardened to twin chips of ice. "Wings. Now. You know I can make you, so why don't we make this easier, hmmm? Spare the humans a world of pain."

"Cas, whatever this is, don't!" Dean pleaded, not at all liking the sick looking defeat on his angel friend's face. He had no idea what Zach was trying to do here, but he knew it was something horrible. This was Zach, after all, and the son of a bitch was evil, angel or no.

Castiel, though, seemed to know Zachariah wasn't bluffing about the amount of pain he could inflict on the Winchesters without losing them as vessels. Slowly, hesitantly, fearfully, he unfurled the wings that he'd pulled in tight towards himself. As he did so, his head immediately tilted down, and away from Zachariah, with a wince of humiliation.

Once again, Dean realized that the angel on his right was also looking away, jaw tight with unmistakable discomfort and disapproval. Before Dean had time to ponder what that meant, Zachariah was already raising his empty hand… and settling it down on Cas's now outstretched wing.

"Castiel," he murmured again, voice low and deceptively soothing. "Whom do you serve?"