Author's note: I have a few things to say about this.

First of all, I have wanted to write a reverse!AU for a while – and I always knew that if I did I would try my best to make it as close to canon as possible. Which means I will attempt to have Cas and Dean still have their personalities instead of exchanging them.

And then there's this bigger thing: I'm starting to work tomorrow. And I mean the job I've studied for years and got my degree for. So I'll do my best to update once a week.

I'll also be super nervous and chittery the whole day and it would be super nice to come home to reviews!

Yes, I am subtly begging here.

Anyway, enjoy!

Castiel Novak was thirty years old and standing over the broken body of a nine-year-old girl when he decided to end it all.

Not by his own hand; but by doing something right for once in his life.

He had done everything his father, everything his brother had asked him to; and yet they had left him; left him to hunt alone and fail more often than not, because despite his training it was never enough, he wasn't quick enough or smart enough or strong enough and an innocent person got hurt because of it.

Sandy Millers had only turned nine a week ago.

He had known a werewolf was roaming the woods around her hometown, and yet he had moved too slowly, again, and now she was dead, dead and gone, and it was his fault.

He had failed to save so many.

But he could save her.

It wasn't difficult to find a crossroads, and he had all the ingredients necessary for the summoning; his Lincoln was always well equipped.

The demon predictably chose to possess a beautiful woman. She smiled when she saw him, her eyes filling with red.

"Castiel Novak. It's an honour".

He said nothing. He knew the sharp tongues of demons; she would stop and start talking about business when she was tired of taunting him.

"You were the last I'd ever expect to come see me... I thought Daddy taught you not to make deals? Then again, he's not here to stop you. Where is he, these days?"

He didn't give her the pleasure of acknowledging that his father had left and never come back. He didn't even know if he was alive.

Eventually she stopped, perhaps because of his lack of response and looked at him, waiting.

"Four miles from here, there's the body of a girl lying in the woods. I want her to live a long, happy life".

"Sacrificing your life for someone else? Very heroic. Alright". Her gaze was steady, cold.

"You'll have one year".

"What? It's ten years for a deal".

She smiled. "One year for you, sugar – you've caused enough trouble downstairs. Deal or no deal?"

The decision was easy. It didn't really matter to him how much longer he had to live.

"Deal".

As he kissed the demon, he felt something like hope for the first time in years.

He spent the last year of his life alone, as the seven that had gone before. He hunted and now and then succeeded in saving lives; he drove around in his faithful Lincoln, the only home he had ever known.

When the time came, his car was the only thing in the world he said goodbye to. He had driven through remote farmland, and ten minutes before midnight he parked and got out, running his hand over the hood.

He would walk deep into the empty fields until midnight.

He wasn't scared. He wasn't relieved.

He felt empty.

He didn't turn around when the hellhounds came closer. He didn't try to fight.

He had chosen his own fate and he would stand by it.

He felt every last bite, every scratch, every piece torn from him; he had hoped there would be a period of unconsciousness between that and the flames of Hell, but there wasn't, and then he was hooked on a wall and a demon was smiling at him.

"Castiel Novak" he sneered. "It is time for your training to begin".

He had hated many things in his life.

But none as much as Alastair.

Alastair was not crueller than other demons, but he enjoyed torturing more than any other.

He pulled Castiel apart until there was nothing left, and reassembled him just to do it all over again.

Eventually, he didn't know if he was even feeling pain anymore; if this all-encompassing agony could even be called pain; if there wasn't another word, any word to describe –

And every day, or whatever time span he saw fit to use, Alastair would ask him a question.

Do you want off the rack?

With his last vestige of goodness, he answered "No" every time, screamed it right into the demon's face, who smiled and began cutting again.

If only it had just been cutting. If only he had just used the knife.

The taunts and the visions were worse, so much worse, and while his body was writing under fire and blades and claws, Castiel heard and saw his father, his brother, all those he hadn't been able to save, insulting him, screaming at him, and the worst part was that everything they said was true.

He cried, screamed at them, but they only left when Alastair wanted them to because he had to ask the question.

The question Castiel refused to answer with anything other than No.

He had not been a good man, or a succesfull hunter. But he would turn into a demon through the torture inflicted on him, not through that he inflicted on others. His soul would burn, but it would burn for the longest time he could hold unto his humanity until he broke and returned to earth and a hunter exorcised him.

He was holding on to that thought, trying to say "No" again, and Alastair was angry, Alastair was piercing a needle in his right eye –

And suddenly he knew that today, he was going to break, today he would take the scalpel, today he would start –

It was night. Cas looked up at the fool moon.

He was lying in the field the hellhounds had found him in.

He waited, waited for Alastair to show up, having made him believe that he had got out. It wouldn't have been the first time.

But Alastair didn't return.

He wasn't in Hell anymore.

He was back.

And he had no idea how.

He had never heard of anything that could pull someone out of Hell – except for –

His mother had loved stories about angels. She had named him and his brother for that very reason. One of the few vague memories he had of her, before she left their father for reasons unknown and they never saw her again, was her telling him about angels, about how they were kind and good and pure, but also warriors of God like in the Bible because God needed them to protect earth, and how could they do so if they weren't strong?

As he had grown up, when his father hadn't been watching, he had read many things about angels. It had been a way of feeling closer to her.

And one of the stories he had read – he still remembered the picture that had illustrated it, an angel touching the shoulder of a man who was encased by flames – had told about men being saved by angels, raised from perdition and into Heaven.

This wasn't Heaven. This was earth.

Something had brought him back. It had to have been powerful; Alastair would not have lte him go easily.

So maybe –

No. He had never met an angel, nor someone who claimed to have met one; and since most people he knew were hunters, the only logical conclusion was that angels didn't exist.

But then what had got him out?

And how long had he been in Hell?

He remembered thirty years. Thirty years full of agony, of screams, of Alastair's laughter.

He had to go and see. He had to know what the world looked like.

He made his way back to where he had left his car and was astonished to find the old Lincoln still there – and apparently in the same condition. He shook off the absurd feeling that it had been waiting for him, that he was coming home.

It still worked though. His phone, of course, was discharged. Despite his memories of thirty years of torture, he couldn't have been very long – his car would have fallen apart if that had been the case.

Shakily, suddenly feeling tired and starving, he drove back to the town he had left he knew not how long ago to die.

The diner he remembered as being good and cheap was still there, and the waitresses looked the same.

He hadn't been dead for a long time at all.

It was summer.

He had died in spring.

When he asked the waitress who remembered him to his surprise what day it was, she smiled and told him it was August 31th.

If this was still the same year, he had been in Hell about three months.

Thirty years of torture, and it had only been three months on earth.

The good news was that his contacts were still alive and since he mostly worked alone, his silence wouldn't be surprising.

No one had known that he had to die. No one would know that he had come back unless it was necessary.

There was of course the possibility that he hadn't come back human. Maybe he was a revenant. But he had done tests on himself in the car, and he hadn't reacted to silver or salt.

He went to the toilet to wash his face. He looked tired and weary, but that was nothing new.

No one could read on his face that he had been tortured.

He lifted his shirt to inspect the torso that had been sliced open more times than he could count.

Everything was gone – every scar, every burn he had received while hunting. He looked completely healthy.

Then he raised the fabric on his arm and saw a handprint on his left shoulder.

A handprint. Not a burn, not a scar, but a red handprint.

Whatever had dragged him out had... laid claim in a way.

He shuddered and let go of the fabric, covering the handprint up.

He thought of Zachariah Adler. He was the best source of information a hunter could find, and while he was not the most pleasant man to be in a room with, Castiel had never had any problems with him.

Furthermore, he kept silent, so he could tell Adler the truth. The man had been around long enough that nothing surprised him, and being uninterested in anyone or anything besides himself and lore he would probably see it as a challenge.

He was only a three hours drive away.

When Castiel wanted to pay, the middle-aged waitress who had recognized him shook her head.

"You look like you needed it" she said softly, and Castiel, taken aback, could only thank her.

It felt good to meet a kind soul.

He drove to Adler's house quickly, past the speed limit, almost feeling the handprint on his shoulder burn.

As always, he seemed not pleased to see him, but he listened to his story, nodded, and kicked him out of the house so he could "properly research the lore".

Castiel was too used to Adler's antics to care.

And if it got him the answers he needed...

He found a motel near Adler's house with almost clear sheets – in fact, they were cleaner than most he had used in the past and it was just nice to lie down again.

He hadn't laid down to sleep for thirty long years. And even now, he couldn't find rest.

He got up and walked. In Hell, he had always been trapped; now he could go where he wanted.

Eventually, his ramblings brought him to another diner, and he went in because he had nothing better to do.

He nursed his coffee for far too long, it growing cold in the meantime without Castiel noticing.

He had so many questions and no answers. According to his experience, asking Adler if he had found anything would lead to nothing. He had to wait for the older man to call him.

He was looking out of the window, his coffee completely forgotten, when it happened.

Someone sitting across from him said, "You have to try the pie here, man. It's awesome".

Someone who clearly hadn't been there a moment ago.