Chapter 1

When the doors of the hospital close behind him, it is as if the outside world is instantly cut off.

The low hum of distant traffic, rustle of leaves in the soft wind and chatter of people walking the streets is instantly silenced by the thick layer of glass, and the biting chill of the winter air that sends shivers down his spine is replaced by the uncomfortable, prickling warmth of air-conditioning. The smells and tastes of the outside are smothered by the skulking cloud of antiseptic-scented air that fills the building like a choking blanket, barely managing to disguise the sense of illness and disease that clings to every surface.

The flickering lights illuminate the walls and floor, all painted the same shade of very slightly off-white intended to make the space seem clean and welcoming but managing to make it seem clinical, almost sinister. Walking through the hallways is reminiscent of walking through a cemetery; harmless, innocent, but there is always that feeling of death and sadness, the impression that if he really tried he could see the ghosts of the patients that have walked this tiled floor, decades of the injured and diseased.

Some of them got out; led long lives, found love, comfort, happiness. Others didn't. It doesn't matter their story. They each leave their imprints, their memory, something that no amount of soap and scrubbing can get rid of.

Nobody has a good experience of hospitals. They're not there for you to spend time in, to enjoy being there. They're there for you to get out of as quickly as possible, whether you're the sick child clasping her beloved soft toy as she tries to get some sleep or the anxious father pacing up and down outside the maternity wards while the seconds drag by like hours.

All this he takes in, all these thoughts cross his mind, within moments of entering the building. Around him people move, dozens of people each with their own stories, their own reasons for being there. None of those people matter at the moment. All that matters to him is that they don't get between him and his destination, for their sake. None of them do. It is as if, unconsciously, they move to let him pass, some part of their brains telling them that this man, striding down the corridor, coat flapping behind him, has a place to be, a place to go, and they don't want to get in the way.

Nurses pushing hospital beds and wheelchairs swerve around him, anxious adults awaiting news absentmindedly reach out a hand to pull their children towards them. Like Moses parting the Red Sea, these people move around him, clearing a path for him, such is the strength of the aura of determination and focus that surrounds him.

At the end of this path lies a white painted desk, a bored girl in her mid twenties sat behind it, tilting on her chair and examining the chipped pink polish on her nails. He quickly closes the distance between the two of them, but she doesn't see him until his shadow falls across her face. She glances up, and recoils slightly when she sees how he's gripping the counter with white knuckles, leaning over until his face is far closer to hers than she is comfortable with.

"Dean Winchester?" he demands.

She stares for a second, taken aback, then remembers herself.

"Sorry?" she asks.

"I'm looking for Dean Winchester," he repeats slowly, urgently. "He was admitted earlier today."

Flustered, she grabs at pieces of scattered paper, sweeping them into a rough pile to clear them off the computer keyboard before beginning to punch keys, her eyes flickering between the buttons and the screen. The whole process seems agonizingly slow to him, and impatiently he drums his fingers on the desk. It's a surprisingly human gesture, something that still lingers in his vessel's mind, long after Jimmy Novak's consciousness has been silenced.

"Here," she says after what seem like an age. "Dean Winchester," the girl pauses, and the look in her eyes tells him that she's trying to think of how to say the next part without seeming insensitive. It still amazes him, sometimes, that while angels possess the power to read a human's thoughts at any given time, humans can do the same themselves by watching the twitches and changes in a face. And it amazes him that, eventually, he has come to be able to do this too.

"Are you family?" she asks hesitantly.

He has to think about this. How could he describe the relationship between him and Dean?

Are they family? Not in the strictest sense; they are not related by blood, although he did once say Castiel was like a brother to him.

Friends, then? But that word doesn't seem to convey the magnitude, the depth of their feelings for each other. He pulled him out of hell and pieced him back together, and in return Dean taught him what it meant to be human, taught him the real meanings of the words loyalty and courage and sacrifice.

A thousand words run through his head, each discarded when it doesn't seem to fit the two of them. At the end, he decides to settle for family.

"Of a sort."

"Okay, it's just, it says here-" she stops talking, sucks in her cheeks, looks up to meet his gaze. "It's pretty bad."

"Please. I need to see him," he begs, and he's not sure whether it's the earnestness in his voice or the way he leans forward or one of a thousand other tiny signals he sends off that eventually cause her to nod, biting her lower lip.

"Room 23, just down the hallway. It's the fourth on the left-" the girl begins but he's already gone, almost running now, shoes squeaking on the tiled floor. It's been too long already; almost twenty-four hours since he first heard about the accident. Twenty-four hours of searching, visiting hospital after hospital until finally he found it, found him. Dean had been taken to a specialist hospital in the next state, which was why his search was fruitless for so long. They didn't have the facilities, the training, to treat injuries as bad as his in any of the local hospitals. And so he searched, gradually becoming more and more desperate.

He reaches the door, and without even hesitating, without stopping for a moment, pushes it open and strides into the room. It was slightly ajar already, and swings back to crash into the wall violently with a loud bang. He doesn't even notice the noise. He's too busy staring at the sight in front of him to care about anything going on around him.

It's Dean Winchester, no doubt about that. He'd recognise that face anywhere. Or at least, the parts of it he can see. Dean's nose is unobscured, peppered with light brown freckles, slightly crooked where it's been broken and not quite healed straight. His eyes, a deep emerald green flecked with liquid gold and framed by long eyelashes. Those, at least, are undamaged. Other parts of his face, though, are cloaked in bandages, a mummy's shroud. From beneath the fresh white cotton, he can see the edges of puckered, burnt skin, and as his eyes trail down the length of his body he takes in his arms, the top of his chest peeking over the pastel green hospital gown, his legs. Bandages are wrapped around these too; not completely covering them but in areas, and he can only guess the horrors that are hidden behind the dressings, the burns and wounds that decorate his friend's body.

Against the sheets he looks frail, thin. It's hard to believe that this is the same man he saw only yesterday. He was laughing then, reaching to take a sip of his beer, tossing friendly insults at Sam over his shoulder. Looking up to meet the angel's eyes, noticing him staring, cracking a joke with a hint of playful suggestion, accompanied by a flirty eyebrow raise that Castiel has come to associate with him being relaxed, comfortable around him, not to be taken seriously. He was healthy, happy, all white teeth and tanned face and muscles. Now, he looks about ten years older.

The bed has been adjusted so it leans upwards, allowing him to sit up and look out the window, which has been left slightly open, the breeze ruffling his hair slightly. He is half-lying, half-sitting; slumped against the sheets, his shoulders sagging and his arms drooping limply by his side. His eyes are only half open, the lids tremble slightly as he gazes listlessly out of the window but by now he knows him well enough to be able to tell that he's not really seeing what's there, that his mind is a million miles away, and he doesn't turn at his entrance.

Instead, they both stay there for a few seconds that seem like days, unmoving, one frozen to the spot and the other unable or unwilling to summon the energy to move or even acknowledge his presence. For a moment Castiel hovers there, uncertain of what to do next, unsure whether he had even noticed his arrival.

"Dean?" he takes a step forward, slowly.

The moment of silence between them stretches on and on, taking an eternity, until finally-

"Cas?" he stirs at his voice, and turns his head slightly to face him. When he sees him he smiles, but not like his normal smile. It is forced, stretched. It doesn't quite reach his eyes. It is the smile of a tired, injured, broken man.

He know it's his turn to say something, but instead he just stands there, stupidly.

"I know, I know. I look like a mess, right?"

"You've looked better, I'll admit."

He laughs at that, only slightly, a small puff of air through his nostrils, but it's enough.

"How do you feel?"

"Honestly?" he looks his friend in the eyes. "I feel like crap, Cas. I nearly died a little while ago, and half my body's still numb from whatever painkillers they've been injecting me with, and the half that's not, I wish it was. My head is killing me and when I move it feels like my entire body's on fire."

He takes an involuntarily step backwards. He knows that this is just Dean's way of letting off steam, of coping with what's happened; he likes to shout, get angry, and soon everything will be okay again, but the words still ring in his ears like an accusation. He should have stopped this. He should have been there. he should have protected him.

Looking at him, Dean's eyes soften.

"Sorry, I'm just... you might've noticed I'm having a really bad day."

When Castiel doesn't respond, his brow furrows.

"Hey, Cas- look at me- Cas, you're not blaming yourself for this?"

The accuracy with which he guesses the thoughts running through his head surprise him. He knows him better than he thought.

"This wasn't your fault."

"I know that."

"I mean it. Things like this happen. It was just our bad luck we were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

The truth of his words are undeniable, but they do nothing to comfort him. He swallows, giving himself time to decide what to say.

"I'm supposed to protect you from harm. That's my job. I had one job, and I... I failed."

"Bullshit."

The angel's eyes shoot upwards from the floor to stare at him. He has sat forwards, the pain this movement causes him evident in his face and posture, and his hands are clenched into fists.

"Nobody's expecting you to be perfect, Cas. What the hell do you think you should've done? Huh?" He stares at Castiel, a little smugly, as he searches for an answer and comes up with nothing. "Come on! It was a hunt gone wrong, that's all! If anything, it was my fault. I shoulda known it was a trap from the start. Demons are tricky bastards and it was too easy to track them down."

"You couldn't have known-" he begins.

"And neither could you!" he interrupts, and they both fall silent again. Dean's ragged breathing tells him that little outburst took a lot out of him. The clock on the wall fills the quiet with an echoey, regular tick, and for a little while he listens to that, letting it calm him down. When he opens his mouth to speak again, he looks at his friend and his eyes are closed, his head resting on the pillow and his mouth slightly open, chest rising and falling slowly. A small smile flits across his lips, and he turns to leave, closing the door behind him.

Outside, he nearly bumps into a young woman. She's small, with mousy brown curls bouncing around her face, and looks flustered, arms full of files and loose sheets of paper.

"Sorry," he mutters, attempting to move past her.

"How is he?"

The question takes him by surprise, and she laughs at his obvious confusion, indicating the silver name badge on the white coat he now notices she's wearing.

"I'm Dr. Morten. I'm just checking up on him."

"Oh. He's asleep at the moment. He seemed okay. Normal."

"He was awake?"

"Yes. Why wouldn't he be?"

She bites her lower lip, looking around until she spies a small waiting area, empty.

"Would you like to sit down?"

He does as she asks, and she sits opposite him, crossing one leg over the other and opening one of her files, flicking through pages until she finds the one she's looking for.

"You're family?"

That question again. The answer comes quicker to him this time.

"As close as."

"Okay. The thing is, Mr..." she trails off and it takes him a moment to realise this is a prompt for him to tell her his name. It would be so much simpler if she'd just ask.

"Castiel. Castiel-" he pauses for a split second. "Novak."

"Mr. Novak. The thing is, Dean has sustained some serious damage. You're aware of what happened, right? The police think it might have been a severed gas line, and maybe an electrical fault, or something like that. The explosion leveled the building, he was lucky to get out of there alive. Still, there was shrapnel, and he sustained a serious head injury. To be honest with you, we weren't sure he was going to wake up. Was he talking?"

He nods.

"And he seemed lucid? He was acting normally?"

Nod.

"That's good. Means there's no obvious cranial trauma. We'll give him a while, let him get some rest. Of course, I'll have to examine him when he wakes up again. Until then, could you help me with this? There's just a few forms that need to be filled out. He didn't have any identification on him. We got a name out of him, but that's it."

He spends the next few minutes answering the questions she throws at him. Date of birth, next of kin, et cetera et cetera. Some of the facts are true; others not so much. Then she suggests he leave a phone number so the hospital can contact him if Dean's condition changes. The question throws him off balance for a second. He hadn't really thought about it until now, but on reflection the hospital probably wouldn't let him stay with him until he was ready to leave. That could take weeks, and although he doesn't need to sleep or eat it wouldn't be wise to draw attention to this fact, so after a moment's pause he jots down a phone number and announce that he's leaving to get some sleep, but she shouldn't hesitate to get in touch if needed. Every instinct in his body screams out at him not to leave, to stay, keep an eye on him, make sure nothing else happens, but people would get suspicious when they noticed that he seemed different to other people.

As soon as he is out of sight of the hospital he disappears, in search of something to occupy himself with until Dean wakes up.