A/N: Set sometime after s10e10: The Hunter Games.

Dean Winchester is the absolute last person Claire wants to call. The man is a monster, no matter what the guy playing her make-believe dad says.

But the thing is, said make-believe dad is missing. And she's kind of worried about him.

He was supposed to meet her for coffee in this run down excuse for a town in the middle of nowhere Indiana like a day ago. But there's no sign of him or his crappy car anywhere in a five mile radius.

She's checked.

She wants to say screw it - this guy, who's already messed up so much of her life, is a no show - so she can just try, again, to forget about him and what he did and the fact that he's still hanging around looking just like her actual father.

But the thing is, Castiel cares. He just seeps caring. And regret. And this whole dorky kicked puppy thing that makes her want to let him try - and fail miserably - to fix the errors of his past.

He can't fix what he broke, and she knows it. God, he knows it too.

And maybe it's dumb - probably it's incredibly dumb - but she feels bad for him and how much he wants to try anyway.

But, at the moment, it doesn't matter because he can't even attempt to try because he's not actually here.

Which, again, has her worried. Because he's an entire day late, and he hasn't responded to any of her texts, which is odd - the guy has the weirdest affinity for them (as well as overusing facial expressions she doesn't think she's actually seen him crack).

And when she calls him, his phone is going straight to voicemail.

So, because she's pretty confident that Castiel is a punctual guy, and she doesn't know anyone else that might share her concern for this possible angel-in-distress situation, she's dialing Dean's number.

She's more than a little relieved, when he doesn't answer, that she doesn't have to actually talk to him. At least, not yet.

"Hey, Dexter, it's Claire. I'd tell you to go screw yourself, but I'm calling for Castiel. He was supposed to meet me in New Castle, Indiana. But he's a no show. So unless I'm giving him too much credit here, and he's with you, you should check up on him."

Not two minutes later, Dean's calling her back, and he cuts right to the chase. "When's the last you heard from him?"

"Sent me a text yesterday saying he stopped at a farm in Ohio a few hours before we were supposed to meet. Something about me having something healthier than ketchup to eat."

"He...? You know what, nevermind," Dean mutters. "Well, looks like he left Ohio. GPS on his phone puts him outside Batesville."

"You track his GPS?" Claire raises her eyes, because, uh, possessive much? "What are you? His keeper?"

"Hey, this ain't the first time the guy's been kidnapped or tricked or whatever. Color me concerned," Dean says. "You got a way to get there?"

Castiel, the angelic warrior, has been kidnapped before? Really?

"Think I can hitch a ride. It'll probably take a few hours."

"It'll take me a little over ten to get to you. Look for his car, call me when you find it, or him, and, Claire?"

"Yeah?"

"Be careful."

Claire huffs. "Like you give a crap."

"Yeah, well, maybe I don't. But Cas does. And he'll kill me if I let something happen to you," Dean says. "So, you find trouble, you wait until I get there to deal with it. Got it?"

Claire just snorts and hangs the phone up. Because find trouble? Really?

If this whole asking the guy who killed Randy, and a house full of other people, to help her rescue the guy who killed her dad isn't running headlong into trouble she doesn't know what is.

God is her life incredibly screwed up.

XXX

A hand gently shaking his shoulder rouses Cas from a terrible dream in which he'd followed the sounds of a screaming man into an abandoned warehouse and been unable to find any trace of him.

The hand, he's startled to find, belongs to Dean. Dean, who is lying next to him in a very comfortable king sized bed, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers.

"Dean... why...why are we sleeping together?" Cas asks.

"Uh, because we always sleep together? Kind of what married people tend to do," Dean says before flashing the silver band wrapped around his left ring finger at him. "So now that we've covered your temporary amnesia, you going to wake Claire? You know you get her moving better than I do. Ask her if she finished that English thing she was suppose to do. I'll tackle breakfast."

Married? Claire? English thing? Breakfast?

This..this is not his reality.

"Dean, let me see your arm," Cas says.

"Okay," Dean says tentatively, raising his eyes, but still holding his arm out. "What for?"

"I...I need to see something," Cas says as he tugs the requested limb towards him. As suspected, the Mark of Cain is not to be found.

This...this is not Dean.

Unfortunately, that leaves Cas with more questions than answers, and, he assumes, letting this Dean know he's on to that will not be helpful. "Yes...I will wake Claire."

As he wanders into the hall, with Dean yelling after him that he still didn't say what he wanted his arm for, he realizes that the house mirrors the one that Jimmy Novak had in Pontiac, down to the smallest domestic touches.

He finds, though, that the photos that would have once been of Jimmy, Amelia, and Claire are now of him, Dean, and Claire and their respective families - a wedding photo with him smashing cake into Dean's face while Sam stands nearby laughing. A photo of him sitting in a rocking chair holding a tiny Claire, for what he would imagine was the first time, as Dean and Bobby lean over him, admiring the small bundle in his arms. A photo of him dangling his feet off a dock with Anna, Gabriel, Hannah, and Balthazar sitting alongside him.

He imagines that, in this reality, his brothers and sisters are all still alive.

He tries not to think too hard about this as he scans the hall for Claire's door.

He decides that the one with the giant "Do Not Enter" sign is the most promising before knocking.

He's not certain that playing along is the best course of action here, but he's still thinking through the alternatives.

XXX

"Stop!"

Claire sees the Lincoln Continental out of the corner of her eye when they're almost past it. If she'd blinked, she would have missed it.

"This where...you live?" Molly, the college girl that Claire thinks has never picked up a hitchhiker before in her life and clearly just wants to be rid of her, asks.

Claire's pretty sure no one lives here, and Molly knows it.

"Yep. My dad's office is right around the corner," Claire grins. "I'm meeting him at work. Thanks so much for helping me out."

"Uh, sure thing," Molly says. Claire watches her shoulders untense as she slams the Civic's door and rolls her eyes.

As Molly's car disappears into the distance, Claire looks down the alley and sees that Cas' car is parked crookedly behind an abandoned looking warehouse, like he'd abruptly and urgently decided he needed to go into it.

She can't imagine why. It looks gross, creepy, and like it came straight out of a horror movie.

As she inches closer to it, she figures she might as well call Dean to see if he can shed some light on Castiel's weird motives.

Once she's explained the situation, Dean goes eerily quiet for a full two minutes.

"I've seen this before, Claire. It's a Djinn. It's got to be. It's probably feeding off of Cas. And you don't get away from that warehouse, it's going to get the drop on you too."

"What the hell is a Djinn?"

"Evil wish granting genie. Puts you in a good dream while it sucks the life out of you. Tell you more when I get there. I'm getting close. But you, you stay out of there. Promise me you'll stay out of there."

"What about Castiel?" Claire asks.

"He...it can take days for them to feed off a human. And he's not even human. So, we'll just have to hope it's taking its sweet time with Cas' mojo. And you and Cas, you're both just going to have to wait for me."

With that, the line goes dead, and Claire rubs away the grime that's built up on one of the warehouse's few windows. Inside she sees Castiel's hands bound together and hung from the ceiling with a bag of blood hanging next to him as well as another man strung up the same way dangling a few feet away.

She wants to scream, but instead she claps her hand to her mouth and prays that Castiel is still alive in there.

Then, ignoring every last word Dean told her, she runs into the warehouse and reaches up for Castiel's wrist, feeling for his pulse. She's not even sure he's suppose to have one, since he's an angel, but he does. It's slow and uneven, but it's there.

She relaxes, ever so slightly.

As she lowers herself down, her phone buzzes.

She pulls it out to find a text from Dean. Know you won't listen because, hell, I know wouldn't have. So tell him it's not real. Keep your eyes peeled. Any sign of the Djinn, you get the hell out.

Followed shortly by You die, I'll kill you.