Chapter Text
When Cas wakes up, he doesn’t know where he is.
The walls are too close, and everything feels sideways. His vision is an unfocused blur of dishwater-coloured darkness. There’s a low rumbling all around him, distantly familiar but mostly disorienting.
He whimpers without choosing to, vaguely aware of his own body as he squirms awake. He starts to peel his cheek off the sticky, sideways ground, but becomes dizzy and has to collapse again. Eyes closed, mouth open. He only exists in his head; everything else his consciousness is still unaware of.
Movement somewhere ahead of him. Garbled noise and commotion and rustling and voices and..?
“He’s awake.”
Cas opens his eyes again - no, one eye - no, a hand is opening his eye.
“Castiel? Can you hear me? He won’t look at me,” the voice says.
Jesus. Everything’s blurry. Everything’s underwater. He tries to respond, but it sounds like slurring. His vocal cords feel starchy and underused. Beneath the confusion he feels is fear, always fear. Always caution. There’s something important… something Cas is forgetting, right on the edge of his memory… where is he?
“It’s okay, kid. Go slow.”
Time to sit up-- wake up? Is he awake? Yes-- he can feel drool coming out of his mouth and it wets his cheek and helps him peel his face off the leather… the leather seat. A leather seat.
The back seat of a smooth black car that he’s been in once before. Windows open and music turned down low and Cas sitting on his front porch and Dean Winchester, the handsome stranger, flashing perfect teeth from behind the wheel. Cas smells leather and the forest and something metallic, and it makes him feel nauseous. He remembers that night.
He lurches forward suddenly, a wave of dizziness ripping through him. He holds his stomach, head hanging off the seat, face close to the floor.
“Cas? Talk to me, buddy. You’re okay.”
A hand on his back, meant to be soothing, and Cas flinches hard. The hand disappears. Cas breathes heavy through his mouth, saliva pooling under his tongue. He lets it drip past his lips. He’s more awake now, but there’s still something in the back of his mind that he can’t quite access. It has something to do with the car and the voice talking to him and the hand opening his eye and touching his back and…
He’s not in the bunker. Jesus Christ, this is not the bunker. And what’s worse: the voice Cas has been hearing is not Dean’s. Panic sets in as Cas wakes up completely, dread pushing the dizziness and blurriness out of his brain. The last time he left the bunker, he got shot. Dean doesn’t want him to leave, he’s not allowed, and oh jesus he’s going to be in so much trouble and Dean’s gonna kill him and--
“Dean?” He moans, an apology already forming on his trembling lips. “Dean?”
He pushes himself up fully, ignoring the ache in his slowly-waking limbs. When he’s upright, he can see into the front seat. Pitch-black night looms outside the windows, pushing in from all sides. Headlights illuminate a dusty highway, dotted yellow lines speeding by so fast they look continuous. Two silhouettes in the front seat, sitting side by side. Sam and Dean Winchester.
Sam reaches for Cas, trying to calm him down. He’s speaking calmly, rationally, turned in his seat to face the back, but Cas doesn’t care. He jolts forward, hands gripping the back of the bench seat, ducking away from Sam’s reach.
“Dean?” Cas begs. His voice is a question. “Dean, please? I didn’t mean to leave. I-I… I didn’t… please don’t punish me, Dean, I promise I’ve been… I’ve been…”
He starts to hyperventilate. It’s the most Cas has spoken at once in days. His throat is scratchy and hoarse, but it doesn’t matter.
“Relax, Castiel,” Dean says from the driver’s seat, voice low. Eyes on the road. It’s the first time he’s spoken since Cas came to, and it is a test. Cas can’t afford to fail anymore tests.
He starts to reach for Dean, grabbing at his jacket collar, pulling himself closer to the front seat. Practically clambering over it. He’s desperate to prove himself. Prove that he wasn’t trying to escape. Prove that Dean doesn’t have to shoot him again.
Sam’s got his hands on Cas’s shoulders and he’s pushing him back, gentle but firm. Cas is frantic, clawing at Sam’s wrists, and they’re both raising their voices and now Dean’s chiming in too, telling Cas to sit down and shut up and everything’s gonna be fine, but it’s a fucking trick and they all know it. Cas knows it.
“I promise,” he cries, resisting the younger Winchester’s strong hands. “I promise, Dean! I-- no, no! Stop!”
Sam’s hands are still on Cas and now they’re grabbing at wrists and elbows and trying to force Cas back.
“Please,” Cas cries, hysteria in his voice and his face and his movements-- everywhere. “ Please don’t be mad, I - get off me - I have to see Dean, I have to see Dean!”
“Dean, maybe you’d better--” Sam starts to warn, and that’s when Cas swipes hard at the man’s face, fingernails scraping skin. Sam hisses, lets go of Cas, and lurches back.
“Jesus fuck!” He sneers, a hand flying up to his face. “For fuck’s sake, he’s - Castiel - he’s freaking out.”
“Shit,” Dean mumbles, irritated, and finally he pulls the car over to the side of the road.
Sitting still on the shoulder of the highway with both Winchester brothers staring sternly back at him (one with a squeezed-shut, bleeding eyelid), Castiel casts his eyes downward. Their gaze is scrutinizing, and instantly he feels like a child being reprimanded for a supermarket outburst. He huffs, trying to regain control over his breathing. He realizes he’d started crying in his panic, as small hiccups now interrupt the silence.
“Cas,” Dean says, his voice in full disappointed-parent mode.
Cas sniffs. Hiccups. Glances up at Dean and shoots a look at Sam, utterly confused and scared and needing a hug. Needing Dean.
“I… I’m not supposed to leave,” Cas explains slowly. Hands fidgeting in his lap. He truly believes that he still must explain himself; that Dean is still testing him and that a sincere apology may grant him grace. The gnarled scar in his side twinges with phantom pain. “I didn’t… Dean, I didn’t leave, I swear --”
“I know you didn’t,” Dean says, and he sounds exhausted. “You’re not in trouble. Okay? Sam and I took you out to the car ourselves. I know you didn’t leave on purpose.”
Cas sighs in relief. He lets his head hang, running two hands down his face as the panic settles. Then he smells the blood underneath his fingernails. His stomach tightens, and in his head he kicks himself because this is yet another thing to apologize for. Dean’s probably so disappointed.
He looks up again, his face turned to Sam but his approval-seeking eyes flitting toward Dean. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry. I was… I was scared.”
The brothers look at each other, and it’s almost comical how obvious it is that they’re somehow sharing a conversation in just a glance.
“It’s alright,” Sam says. “We knew you’d probably be confused when you woke up, but we didn’t know how much.”
There’s a bit of a laugh to Sam’s voice, as if Castiel's outburst is amusing, and Dean smirks.
“You got ‘im good,” Dean teases. Cas feels his cheeks flush as the brothers watch for his reaction, but then they both start laughing. Almost giggling. It’s strange to see a grown man giggle, let alone two of them; it’s even more strange when the two men giggling are your captors who’ve just recently drugged you and dumped you in the back seat of their car.
“He really did,” Sam says, touching the torn corner of his eyelid, and that sends them off all over again. Cas lets out a hesitant, uncertain puff of laughter. It’s disconcerting that he doesn’t know the right move here-- the Winchester brothers are an enigma.
“Okay, okay,” Dean finally says, suppressing another chuckle. “We gotta get going. You good, Cas?”
Cas starts to ask where they’re going, but Dean shoots him a look that tells him he doesn’t have the right to ask that question. Sam hands him back a water bottle and a jacket that looks like Dean’s. Cas assures them he isn’t dizzy anymore, and he doesn’t have a headache. Despite some sluggishness, confusion, and shot nerves, he feels no lasting effects from the drug. He still doesn’t know what Dean injected him with to get him in the car, and part of him still feels like he’s gonna get in trouble for leaving the bunker. But he squashes that fear as best he can; Dean seems to be in somewhat of a good mood, and Cas doesn’t want to spoil it by whining.
Before they pull off the shoulder, Dean turns toward the back seat and holds a piece of fabric out to Cas. Taking it, Cas realizes it’s a pillowcase. Black. Not quite opaque, but solid enough that he won’t be able to see through it. He frowns, looking up at Dean like do I have to?
Dean just raises an eyebrow, tilting his head, and there’s the answer. Wordlessly, Cas takes another swallow of water, sighs, and pulls the hood over his head.
Dean makes him lay down on the floor. Cas tosses Dean’s jacket down and then shimmies onto the floor, curling up as much as possible in the limited space. Sam doesn’t stand up for him, and Cas doesn’t expect him to. Castiel’s face has undoubtedly been plastered on the news for long enough by now that passersby might recognize him. Dean isn’t going to take that risk.
As always, there’s a slight ache in Castiel’s body. His throat burns, his scars itch, the fingers on his right hand are still twisted. He lays in near silence, listening to the highway rush by through the floor of the car. Listening to the Winchester brothers speak low in the front seat. Wondering where he's going, and why, and how long it’s going to take to get there. Distantly, Cas remembers that statistically, a kidnapping is easiest to escape when you’re in a car. Going from point A to point B. There are stop lights and gas stations and other cars on the road, and no way Dean would shoot him in a crowd full of people.
No-- that wouldn’t happen. What would happen is that Dean would shoot him , and then shoot the crowd. Massacre anybody standing between him and Cas. No doubt about it.
Innocent people are not going to get hurt at Castiel’s expense. He’s not worth that, anymore. May not ever have been worth that. Cas is broken; hopelessly scarred and twisted and empty. If his brothers could see him now, they’d be horrified at the mindless shell he’s become.
Cas belongs with Dean. he doesn’t want to burden the outside world with his presence anymore. Dean made sure that the last time Cas tried his hand at freedom would be the last.
He closes his eyes, letting the drone of the car lull him to half-sleep. Thinking of his brothers causes a twinge of pain in his heart, so he grits his teeth and thinks about the bunker instead. He imagines the highway as the winding halls of that place; imagines the hard floor of the car as the thin mattress in the basement. The wind rushing by outside is the low buzz of a dim light bulb, the darkness of the hood over his head is a pitch-black walk-in freezer. The scent of Dean’s jacket under him reminds him of laying his head on the man’s chest, a quiet moment in Dean’s bed where he’s being held, not hurt, and the thought brings him the most peace he’s felt in days.
//
Whenever Cas wants water, he has to ask Dean if he’s allowed to sit up. He stays on the floor, but is granted the opportunity to unfold himself, sit, stretch a little-- as long as there are no other cars on the road He’s thirsty, and the water feels good on his underused throat. He gets to lift the hood past his mouth, but must keep it over his eyes.
Dean says they’ve been driving for a couple hours. Cas isn’t sure exactly what time it is, but he thinks they’re driving through the night. No sunlight has permeated the pillowcase over his head yet. For the most part, Cas is in and out of wakefulness, but then he feels a nagging in his bladder and suppresses a groan.
“Dean?”
It’s been quiet for a while in the car. Cas thinks Sam might be asleep.
“What,” comes the reply, more of a statement than a question.
“I… I have to pee?” Cas says, uncertain, not wanting to cause any problems. He hears Dean sigh, and there’s a moment before he responds.
“I’m not taking you into a gas station.”
“I know,” Cas says. He expected as much. “Just... the side of the road?”
“I don’t have to tell you not to run, right?”
“Right.”
Dean pulls over, waits to make sure there are no approaching vehicles, then gets out of the car. He opens Castiel’s door, which the boy is leaning against, causing him to teeter a bit. Dean grabs his upper arm and hoists him up, and Cas yelps. A combination of problems factor into his tumble to the ground: the hood’s still over his head, and Cas can’t see shit. Not only that, but his legs have been scrunched up for so long that his knees feel weak. When Dean hoists him off the floor and out of the car, Castiel trips over the ground, Dean’s boots, his own feet. He lands on his knees on pebble-ridden asphalt, one hand on the road and the other hanging in the air where Dean’s still holding his arm up.
“The hood,” he says, a slight whine to his voice.
“Leave it on.”
“But I can’t--”
“I said leave it on, Castiel!”
“Dean,” interrupts a new voice. Sam has woken up, apparently, and his voice gets closer, along with his footsteps, as he speaks. “Let him take it off.”
There’s a moment of quiet, Cas guesses the brothers are communicating through glances again, and then the hood is ripped unceremoniously off his head. He can’t help himself but to immediately look around. The highway is forested on both sides, no light but for the car’s headlights shining forward. They must be quite the sight: Cas on his knees, the Winchester brothers standing before him like a bad omen.
“Go if you’re gonna go,” Dean says.
Cas manages to stand. He brushes dirt off the knees of his sweatpants (Dean must have dressed him when he was unconscious), and heads toward the shallow ditch between asphalt and bramble. With the car, headlights, and brothers off to his left, Cas allows himself to take in a deep breath. The air is fresh and slightly humid. This is the first time he’s gotten to appreciate a breath of fresh air since Dean first took him-- except for the infamous escape. The difference is that this time, he isn’t running for his life or staring down the barrel of a gun.
He stands, bare toes spread out in the prickly grass. Need new shoes, Cas thinks, then laughs quietly to himself because he hasn’t worn a pair for six months. He takes the moment to appreciate being outside. The stars. Out here, no streetlights, they’re brilliant.
And then he has to piss into a ditch while his kidnappers stand ten feet to the left.
When he’s tying the strings of his sweatpants back up, a low wooshing sound begins down the road. A split second after Cas hears it, the road to his right starts to light up. Cas turns toward the approaching headlights at the same time Dean starts heading toward him. The car’s still far away - the road is flat - and the headlights haven’t reached them yet. But they’re bright, especially in the middle of a dark, forested highway, and Cas brings a hand up to shield his eyes from the brightness of it.
Dean tackles him to the ground from behind, just seconds before the wash of the approaching headlights envelope them. The car passes in seconds.
Down in the grass, Cas is choking. He’s had the wind knocked out of him.
“What the fuck was that?” Dean hisses into Castiel’s ear, his entire body weight pinning Cas to the ground. Down here, everything is impossibly darker.
Cas gasps for air, wincing as he realizes that one of his arms is trapped underneath him. His chin stings; he smacked it on the ground when Dean tackled him. Pain radiates up his jaw from the impact. He’s trying to speak, but his seizing lungs won’t allow it. All that comes out are strained, reedy gasping noises.
Dean grabs a fistful of hair, wrenches Castiel’s head back. “Did you not hear me, bitch? Because I asked you a question.”
“I-I he-eard you,” Cas cries, his disfigured right hand supporting him on the ground while the left one clutches at Dean’s wrist. “I wa-asn’t… they came out of nowhere!”
Dean scoffs, shoving Cas back to the ground and standing up. Cas lies there, breathing ragged breaths into the damp grass. The man takes a few steps away, and Castiel hears the Winchesters conversing. Dean’s voice is harder than his brother’s.
Lying there in the damp darkness, his cheek pressed against hard, cool ground, Cas gazes out into the shallow ditch he’s found himself in. It’s strange to lie down outside. He hasn’t for so long. He is reminded once more of the night he was taken: Dean lifting a faceless blonde girl out of the trunk, the eerie thud as her body hit the ditch. Under the dim moonlight, the waving grass three feet from Cas’s face could be hair blowing in the breeze. After a few breaths, Cas is lifted onto his feet by the collar of his shirt, fabric twisted in a tightened fist, and pushed against Dean’s idling car.
“That was a stupid mistake, Castiel.”
Cas glances to Sam, then back at Dean’s downturned brow. “I didn’t do anything,” he pleads, sounding pitiful and feeling desperate. Dean’s lifting him up just enough that he’s on his tiptoes, bare feet scraping the road. “Please, I just--”
“You tried to fucking flag them down, Cas. I’m not an idiot.”
Realization dawns and Castiel’s eyes grow wide. “No,” he says. “No, Dean, please! You misunderstood, I was--”
Dean draws the boy forward and slams him back against the frame of the vehicle. Cas groans, tasting blood as the movement causes him to bite his lip.
“Don’t tell me I misunderstood,” Dean seethes, his tone dark. He’s getting the look on his face where he’s about to hit something.
Cas speaks past the blood coating his tongue. “I was covering my eyes,” he whispers. Sinuses stinging with fresh tears. “It was too bright.”
Dean scrutinizes him, eyes searching for the lie. Sneering. “I don’t believe you,” he spits. “I think you saw a chance to get recognized and pulled what you thought was a real smart stunt. Think you'd get rescued, Cas? Think a stranger would take one look at you and decide you're worth saving?"
The boy shakes his head.
Sam Winchester, the silent observer, chooses this moment to speak up. “Maybe he’s telling the truth,” he suggests. Cas gasps out a whimper.
“I don’t think so,” Dean says. “I think he’s forgotten what happens when he tries to get away from me.”
Oh, god. Please, god, no.
Gunshot.
Collapsing into Dean’s arms.
Waking up strapped to a cold table, pliers tearing him apart.
Cas begins to cry. He knew he didn’t apologize enough for waking up in the backseat. He knew Dean was testing him again, waiting for him to right the wrong of leaving the bunker. It doesn’t matter that Dean himself was the one to drug Cas and drag him out to the car; Cas should’ve known better no matter what. Now everything’s going downhill and Dean is angry and maybe he’s right, maybe Cas was trying to flag the driver down and just didn’t realize it. Because Dean is always right.
Castiel does not want to get shot again, or worse. He needs to apologize. He needs to say the right thing-- what’s the right thing? What does Dean want? He wants not to be defied; not to be lied to. But what happens when the truth isn’t an acceptable answer, either?
“Please believe me,” he sobs. “I wa-asn’t trying to get away-y! I was co-overing my eyes!”
A sobbing, hiccuping mess. That’s what Cas is.
He can never catch a fucking break. It isn’t fair. It isn’t. Fucking. Fair.
While Cas is crying, in the length of a single wavering sob, Dean lifts the boy’s hand, wraps a fist around his pinky finger, and wrenches it back. All three of them hear it break.
Castiel screams.
His knees buckle and he falls to the ground, cradling his shaking hand against his chest. He leans his weight against Dean’s leg; Dean, who is standing there like nothing’s wrong, watching the boy beneath him shriek in pain and clutch his snapped finger with a passive, undisturbed face.
Dean shoves the black hood back over Castiel’s head. In an instant, he’s enveloped in darkness. Strong arms pick him up, a car door opens, and he’s deposited once more into the back seat. Someone crawls in beside him, guiding his head down into their lap. Sam.
Cas is still moaning, whimpering behind his hood as he grits his teeth and cradles his hand. Sam is careful not to touch the area, instead stroking Castiel’s hair through the pillowcase. The boy curls up on the seat, too shocked to cry anymore. His shoulders and hands are shaking, and he rakes in deliberate, laboured breaths. Wordlessly, Dean gets behind the wheel, slams the door shut, and shifts into drive.
Sam suggests that the four hours they have left to travel is too long for Cas’s pain to go untreated. Dean rebukes that, stating that Cas knew what he was getting himself into, and should have known there’d be consequences. Not too long after, though, they stop at what Cas assumes is a gas station, and Dean tosses a plastic bag into the back seat. Sam helps him take a few over-the-counter painkillers, which, if Cas is lucky, might work about fifty percent.
Cas feels hopeless. Scared, lost, and hopeless . For a couple weeks after his birthday - the night he was terrorized and raped and shot - Dean layed off, for the most part. Cas retreated into himself: became the mute, unresponsive, depressed zombie that Dean hated so much. He was allowed, mercifully, to rest. Lounge in bed, stay under the covers, sleep his days away. Allowed to recover. And although Cas is so incredibly used to the ordeal of living at Dean’s will by now, there was still a small part of him that couldn’t help but to latch onto that period of relative safety-- the immunity granted to him for two blessed weeks.
It’s all over, now. Cas should have known that Dean was never, ever going to leave him in peace for much longer than this. Because that’s Castiel’s life, now. It’s what he knows; what he’s known. Suffer at Dean’s hands, feel sorry for himself, feel angry at Dean, submit to Dean, say the right things to Dean, love Dean. Get your fingers broken, Castiel, and deal with it. Get your face slapped and spit on and your ribs kicked and your throat strangled and fucking live with it. Don’t kill yourself, don’t run away, don’t whine. You can cry but only if you cry pretty. Good boy.
“It’s never gonna end,” he whispers, so quiet that even Sam doesn’t hear him. “It’s never gonna end, it’s never gonna end, it’s never gonna... Gonna...”
He has to stop, has to make himself stop. It won’t be pretty if he sends himself into another panic.
God, Cas is so tired. He’s fucking exhausted. Tired of being in pain and of fighting to be treated with civility. He wishes somebody would inject him with more of whatever Dean gave him when they left the bunker for the last time.
The thought startles Cas: is it truly the last time? Will he see the bunker again? Is the certain doom of that place better than the confusion and uncertainty of this demented road trip? Like everything else in his life, the answer does not come easy.
“I want my brother,” he moans. This time, Sam hears him.
“I know,” the man whispers back. Dean can’t hear them over the engine droning. Sam strokes Cas’s hair again and, despite everything else, it feels nice. Then, silently, carefully, hidden in the dark of the backseat, the youngest Winchester removes the pillowcase from over Castiel’s head.
The boy looks up at him, too scared to speak, a question in his eyes.
Sam winks at him. Smiles warmly. Cas sees the cuts at the side of Sam's eye crinkle as the man smiles, and feels a twinge of guilt. Sam tugs Cas closer to him and keeps petting him and I’m not a fucking dog, Cas thinks, but goddamn it, he’s sad and hurting and it feels nice.
He smiles back, as much as he can manage. Falls asleep like that, head in Sam’s lap, broken finger burning and bent and held close to his chest.
He dreams of a girl in a ditch. She’s reaching out to him, but when their hands touch, his fingers crumble into dirt. He watches as her blonde whips in the wind, wraps around her throat, and strangles her until she’s not screaming anymore. On the road just past the ditch, headlights flash past.