Title: Spread Your Wings

Summary: In the beginning, there was Heaven, and there was Hell. Good and Evil. Now there's a war to be won, and a warrior has returned to do just that. But he hasn't exactly been himself, and someone owes him an explanation. One-shot. Spoilers for 4.01. Dean/Castiel.

Rating: T

Warning: Spoilers for 4.01. And Slash. Dean/Castiel (mild)

A/N: I'm so going to Hell for this. Dean/Castiel is my new pairing, you guys. Because, dude, there's chemistry there.

Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or it's characters. And if I did, it would have turned into a porno over the summer, for some reason.

Spread Your Wings

In the beginning, there was Heaven, and there was Hell. God created man in His own image and gave him a garden and wife. This wife, named Lilith, refused to lie beneath him, and was therefore cast out. She was replaced with Adam himself.

Lilith wandered, became a demon. Lucifer took her as his own, and together they ruled over the charges of Hell.

In the beginning, this was how it was. There were two pairings. One good, one evil.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

It felt like an odd pressure on his back, four months in Hell, weighing him down, burdening him, crushing him as he slept, as he thought, as he tried to move on. He could feel it, all the time.

Dean shrugged his shoulders, trying to adjust the weight that had settled there since he'd woken up in his coffin. In his coffin. He shuddered. He still had nightmares about that, about waking up alone in the dark, with half-formed memories of blood and sweat and fear, of hooks and chains and screams.

He could still remember the feel of the grainy wood against his knuckles, the dirt beneath his nails, the suffocating stillness of the forest. Not a noise echoing through the downed trees.

It had been like that zombie case in Ohio, only this time he had been the zombie and it hadn't been black magic to bring him back. It had been Castiel.

Castiel. And what kind of a name was that? He'd looked it up on the sly, all the time rolling his shoulders, wiggling his back, trying to escape that odd weight, that settled pressure, never quite getting used to it being there.

It was a municipality in Switzerland, or something stupid like that. Not a freakin' angel. He'd known. He'd known from the start. Demons lied.

And those wings? Freakin' trick. Trick of the light, trick of his mind. No such thing as angels. His mother had been wrong. She hadn't lied to him, just hadn't been told the truth herself, had passed down a falsehood that she'd believed. That thing in the warehouse, the one that had knocked Bobby out, it had tried to trick him. It had led him on.

Freakin' demons.

He snuck into the bathroom, late in the night, when Sam was asleep. Dean had trouble sleeping now. The weight on his shoulders was uncomfortable when he rolled onto his stomach, pulled when he laid on his side, tingled with pins and needles, like a limb heavy with sleep, when he rolled onto his back.

He had nightmares, too. He couldn't remember them in the morning, in the daylight. But he knew he had them. He could remember that much.

He looked into the mirror, and he heard screams. They were his screams, mingled with the screams of the other damned, the other dying, the other lost souls that he had joined for such a short time that it had seemed like an eternity.

Outside, a car drove past, its headlights bathing the small room in an ethereal glow. For just a moment, a split second in time, he saw them. They were curled behind him, reflected in the mirror, long and black and deadly, looking just as they had behind that thing in the warehouse.

Wings.

Shadowy, sure, but there, nonetheless. Real. He had seen them.

The car passed, the headlights fading, and they were gone.

Dean shook his head. Hallucinating. He was hallucinating. Like he hallucinated the voices and the hooks and the chains and the blood and the screams and the wings. The feathers. The way Bobby's body slumped to ground and Pam's eyes flashed and burned and Sam looked at him with that know-it-all grin and lightning stuck and it cocked its head and "we've got work for you."

"No."

No. It wasn't real. None of it. He was still there, had to be. He was still there, and they were torturing him with visions of Sam and safety and salvation. Of angels that didn't exist. Of shadowy black wings extending from his own shoulders in the passing headlights of nearby cars.

Dean was no angel, and neither was that demon.

-.-

Almost a week after Dean had been made to believe that he had come back, Sammy fell. They were up on the roof of a tall building, seven stories at least, and Dean was a little pissed because his brother had gotten ahead of him somehow, chased the demon up to the top of the warehouse and managed to exorcise it- without dad's journal? his mind questioned, but he would worry about that later.

He burst through the door to the roof in time to see the demon's counterpart, one that they'd known about but hadn't been able to find, swoop out of nowhere and literally knock Sammy off his feet and over the side of the building. Dean didn't think. He just acted.

He jumped.

The demon didn't bother going after them, figuring they were a lost cause. Sam screamed. Dean was screaming, too, his arms pulled close to his sides, body streamlined, falling faster and faster toward his brother. He held out a hand, wrapped it around Sam's shirt, and willed himself to stop falling.

He felt them unfurl. Those wings on his back, the invisible shadows that had been pressing down on him in his grave, in the motels, on his conscience, burning in his mind, through his dreams, only visible in those brief glimpses of light. They unfurled. He felt weak muscles, muscles he hadn't even known existed, strain against the weight.

They flapped. He groaned as intense pain ripped up his back, over his shoulders. Too much weight. Him and Sam, it was too much. It wasn't meant to be that much, but he wasn't letting go, wasn't letting his brother die. Not again, not like this.

They flapped again, and he felt himself rise a bit. They were falling slower now, their shadow growing smaller on the sidewalk below. Sam as looking up at him, his eyes wide, as shadowy feathers scattered around them, visible now in the sun.

Dean tried not to look at his brother.

-.-

They fell back onto the roof and Dean ran. His legs were weak, knees wobbly, but he found the strength to run. He couldn't stay, couldn't look back, couldn't look at his brother because there was something wrong with him.

He'd come back different. He sprinted down the flights of stairs, that single thought running over and over and over through his mind to the trip-hammering beat of his frantic heart. He'd come back different. With blackened wings and tarnished soul and branded body and that damned dirty demon that claimed to be different. An angel.

Sam was yelling after him, something about it being ok, about psychics and exorcisms and smoke and light and what-the-fuck-ever, Sammy. This had nothing to do with Sam and everything to do with Sam, so Dean ran. He didn't know what he was anymore, and he wanted like mad to protect his brother from that.

-.-

The park was bright and green, and Dean was nervous. What amount of light, what kind of light did there need to be for people to see those things? Just in the night? Did he have to get worked up? Why him? And had Sam seen them? Really, truly seen them?

He sighed, burying his head in his hands. Maybe Hell was better. And maybe this was Hell. Maybe he really was still there. Maybe this was a long hallucination, full of terror and fear and uncertainty. Maybe-

"Hello, Dean."

He looked up into blue eyes and a smartly cocked head. "Castiel."

The so-called angel smiled. "You remembered my name."

"I want answers."

"In time."

"Now," Dean demanded, getting to his feet to face the creature eye-to-eye.

"God has a plan."

"I don't-"

"Believe in God." Castiel nodded. "I know. Bu you will." He stepped closer, invading Dan's space, but the hunter didn't step away, never backed down from a challenge.

The angel trailed a hand through the air behind the taller man, sending a shudder down Dean's spine, exciting nerves he hadn't known he had. "What the hell did you do to me?"

"Made you what you were always meant to be. I saved you."

"I didn't ask to be saved."

Castiel smiled. "You did. You just don't remember it. Not yet."

Dean narrowed his eyes, body adjusting slowly to fingers ghosting over the seemingly unoccupied air behind him. "Why?"

"There's a war coming. Lilith is the least of your problems now. A new leader is stepping up to bat and our side needs someone to combat him. That someone is you." The blue eyes sparked to malicious life. "God has taken an interest in you, Dean Winchester. And so have I."

Without warning, he leaned forward, the hand that had been ruffling Dean's feathers suddenly clamping hard against his back, pulling the hunter to his body, their lips connecting with a softness that contrasted the pain shooting up his back as feathers matted and fragile bones broke.

He set his hands against the angel's chest, pushing with all his might, and finally got away. "What the hell was that?"

Castiel grinned. "A match made in Heaven."

"What kind of perverted angel are you?"

"The kind that saved you." That grin was still on his face, smug. Head cocked to one side, the angel took him in, eyes staring through him, into his soul.

"This isn't real." Something soft brushed against the side of Dean's face, invisible feathers, shadows in the dark.

"I can help you save your brother."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

And so began the end.

There was Heaven, and there was Hell. Two demons lay together in a bed of mistrust, lies, deception, and a power so great that even Lucifer and Lilith trembled at the mention of Samuel's name.

At the same time, in a garden not far from where the demons lie in wait, consulting this new turn of events, God's new pair, made in His own form, from Adam's own rib, began fighting the war.

The end.

So, what are your thoughts? Am I, like, the coolest person ever, or what? What are my chances of seeing Dean in Hell? Huh?