Heart Skipped A Beat.

1.

"Heart skipped a beat
And when I caught it you were out of reach
But I'm sure, I'm sure
You've heard if before."

It was the most graceful and chaotic thing Dean had ever seen. It was horrifyingly beautiful, demanding attention as it ripped and teared through the fading dark clouds of the night. Whatever it was, was devouring the air around it in a blur of piercing white light, with swirls of gold and red licking away at the night sky as it fell.

Dean had to blink twice just to make sure he wasn't imagining it. His toe inched off the gas of the impala as his stare was glued to the sky instead of the road ahead. "Are you seeing this?" he snorted torn between awe and disbelief.

The hunter knew things like this didn't just fall from the sky unless they were supernatural, and judging by the way Sam's mouth was gaping he guessed this meant trouble.

"This can't be good," Sam shrugged shaking his head. "You better step on it if we're going to meet this thing when it lands," he continued stroking his chin thoughtfully.

Dean grunted, ignoring the obvious assumption that was floating around in the impala. He knew what his brother was so deep in thought with, and he couldn't help but let his traitorous mind flicker to the same idea for just a brief moment.

"Angels," Sam deadpanned, turning his burning gaze at Dean.

There was no other explanation for something so extraordinary to be littering the skies that hung above the small town of Milwaukee. That was the whole reason Bobby had sent them this way, excessive meteor showers that defied the laws of normalcy. Something unnatural that needed to be solved Bobby had claimed, and now Dean believed him.

Dean's grip on the steering wheel tightened until his knuckles turned a bitter white. He clenched his teeth within his mouth, and counted to ten before speaking, "It can't be angels Sam, you know that." He glared out the front windshield of the impala watching empty road and forest zip past him.

"We haven't seen a single damn angel since the Apocalypse," Dean grumbled, not making eye contact with his brother.

Sam sighed in a defeated manner, and returned his gaze to his window.

Neither of them had said it, but Dean was sure as hell that both of them had thought it to themselves.

Not a damn angel, not even Castiel.

If Dean had known what he was going to find upon arriving at the point of impact, he would have skipped the town altogether. He would have brushed the thing off and never thought of it again. But it was already too late, and here he was staring at something he had hoped he would never have to see.

He cursed and paced back and forth trying to make some sense of what was happening. But no matter how many times his brain would concoct a reasonable explanation, all it took was a fleeting sideways glance to send him back into shambles again. This was too much too soon, and Dean was on the verge of just losing it completely.

The place looked like the set of a Hollywood horror movie, just a little ways off the highway in the middle of a barren desert like patch of earth that spread along the freeway. A massive crater was deep set into the ground, ashes and debris sprinkled around the jagged circle like an almost like an afterthought. Deep in the middle of the hole lay a crumpled naked body, dirty and bloody, but breathing peacefully nonetheless.

"I've called an ambulance," Sam whispered, placing a tentative hand on his brothers shoulders. "This, this is out of our hands now."

Dean whipped his face to look up at Sam, his hand shot out to point at the gargantuan crater to the side of them and exasperated he yelled, "Sam, do you see what's in that hole over there?"

Sam's eyebrows knitted in a tight expression, and he as calmly as he could he stood his brother down.

"Dean," He warned carefully just as the disorienting sirens and flashes of light overtook the scene and forced the brothers in a tight spot.

The older hunter took one last look at the crater now preoccupied with paramedics and the town police officers before squeezing his eyes shut.

"Fuck," He cursed, turning his back on the commotion behind him. "Just fuck it."

He wasn't quite sure how he had been convinced to come to the hospital, but here he was just another face in the crowd of people waiting for bad news.

Dean fidgeted in his plastic chair; his legs bounced restlessly against the pale tiled floor and he glared at the blank yellow walls of the waiting room. Nurses busied themselves around the main desk, and an endless amount of people streamed through the main entrance, not a single person had a smile of their face.

"It smells like piss," Dean muttered to Sam, who was too engrossed in a magazine beside him to be bother in responding.

Dean breathed hard through his nose and tried to relax.

He almost scoffed at the very idea, there was no way he could relax, not anytime soon at least. He wasn't just on edge, he was nervous, scared even. He wouldn't be caught dead admitting it, but he wasn't prepared for what had just happened and now he would have to deal with the mess left behind. The more he thought about it, the more tempted he was just to haul ass and run away - let someone else deal with the consequences.

Dean Winchester was good at that.

"It'll be alright Dean, stop worrying," Sam chuckled beside him, causing the older hunter to jump in his seat. "This is good news, you should be glad things played out the way they did."

"I hardly call this good news," Dean spat, scoffing his shoes against the floor in annoyance.

"I know nether of us expected this, and I know you're still holding a grudge and shit, but seriously Dean you could try being a little happy," Sam chided him in his bitch voice of reasoning.

Dean stared at Sam feeling exposed and naked, as if a dam of truth had just split and Dean was caught drowning somewhere. "I don't hold grudges," he spat in an attempt to defend himself.

"Bullshit," Sam said smiling, flipping to the next page in his magazine and dropping the subject.

Suddenly an attractive dark nurse appeared before Dean, her hands were placed on either side of her wide hips in defiance. "Me and Dr. Trenton would like to have a word with you two boys" she said sweetly albeit her accent made her speech hard to understand. Her name tag read Daisy and guessing by her long dread locked hair and full lips Dean was guessing she was Jamacian.

"Yes Ma'am." Dean answered, rising a little too quickly to his feet and following the nurse down a series of corridors until the ended up in the recovery ward,stopping just outside a closed door.

"It don't make a lick of sense" The nurse said to Sam as Dean's eyes flickered to the glass of the door, which gave hints to a distorted image within. "His injuries don't add up to the crime scene, I saw the pictures of how he be found..." She trailed off quietly squinting her eyes at Deans hollow expression.

She turned her back to Dean and leaned up towards Sam's ear as if that way what she whispered wouldn't affect Dean. "He should be dead, wiped from existenc,e" She murmured hurriedly, and Sam nodded encouraging her to continue to spill any useful information. "It's a god sent miracle that he be still alive."

Dean visibly tensed his muscles the sinews becoming tense underneath his skin. He focused on breathing, just being able to psychically stand up right until his satirical nightmare was over with.

"Don't get me wrong Sugar, I said he was alive, not well," The nurse continued making eye contact with Dean before pulling a key from her scrubs and pushing the door open. "So brace yourselves alright boys, I'll be back with the Docter in a few."

The nurse gave one last look at the brothers before turning away, "Don't do anything stupid you hear?"

Sam hesitated in the doorway, blocking Deans view from the room within. "Maybe you were right, maybe we shouldn't stay."

"Too fucking late," Dean hissed pushing the moose of a man in front of him through the door frame before he stumbled into the room. To be honest the hunter was unsure of what he was expecting to see but he would never be ready for the sight that he did get.

Dean felt his heart seize up inside him and bile rise in his throat.

"Cas."

The first night had been the longest and most tiring for sure. Countless pocking and probing at Castiel's unresponsive and limp body and far too many viles of blood and syringes in Dean's professional opinion. Still the hunter had stayed coped up on the hard plastic chair by the angels bed until the wee hours of the night, until Sam had came in from the motel down the street and dragged him kicking and screaming out of the hospital.

Dean had given everyone hell that night.

Daisy was Castiel's personal day time nurse, and since Jimmy's insurance covered the cost of a private room Cas was taken care of every second of the day. The night shift nurse was a young ginger lad who was still only in school, and with his obvious lack of experience Dean paid him no attention; remembering only that his name may or may not have been Jack.

"Since he's unstable this machine here will monitor his heart beat per minute along with his -"

Dean tuned out the male nurse and turned his head out back towards the open window, he watched the stars twinkle above the hospitals smudged skyline vaguley thinking that Cas belonged up there behind the silvery clouds and not cramped in a dirty old hospital bed.

The hunter expelled an annoyed breath of air out as the room filled with the steady beep that was Castiel's heart beat played back through a machine. He listened intently counting out the exact seconds the sloppy lines on the monitor spiked up and down signaling with a muted beep another heartbeat.

"I'm just going to step outside and take my break now," Jack said leaving the room without another word.

"Yeah, whatever Jack," Dean called out behind the retreating scrub-clad back.

Dean turned his full attention back to the angel, studying the familiar face behind the bruises, tape and gauze. He swallowed hard, an awful feeling of nostalgia flooding over him suddenly. He placed one of his hands on Cas's shoulder in a friendly gesture, before practically begging, "Wake up Cas."

The machine beside him beeped once and went silent. Dean jolted up whipping his head towards the screen, he watched in delayed horror as the line spiked once and flat linned. The hunter felt hot blood pulse beneath his ears, and his own chest tighten and ache in agony. But all too suddenly the machine grudgingly pinged again with the hills and valleys representing the angels heartbeat returning to their regular intervals on the led monitor.

"Son of a bitch!" Dean announced to the the world in bewilderment, collapsing back into his chair from when he had jumped up when he believed Cas to be dead or dying.

"His heart skipped a beat," Dean repeated hysterically to himself over and over again until the words chased and bled into each other, becoming a jumbled mantra of seemingly meaningless words.