And i will walk on water

Chapter one

Dean had spent the past three months thinking the archangels had killed Castiel, and now he found himself almost wishing he'd been right. Then again, he had no way of knowing if that bruised and bloodied figure in the corner of the cell really was Castiel, because Castiel didn't bruise or bleed, and he certainly didn't curl into himself on cold stone floors, naked and shivering and completely oblivious to everything around him. Castiel was an angel, after all.

The demon said it was Castiel, but demons lied, and it had been such an unlikely series of coincidences that had led them here in the first place. It was a coincidence that they'd been passing through this random town in Indiana, a coincidence that a woman had been stabbed by a demon just down the hall from the room Sam and Dean had been staying in, and a coincidence that the cops had shown up just in time to see Sam standing over the bodies of a man and a woman who had just been stabbed to death, catching his breath and still clutching Ruby's blood-covered knife in one hand.

Dean wasn't sure if it was a coincidence that the cops had turned out to be demons, because that kind of thing wasn't exactly rare these days, what with the world about to end and all, but he still thought it was too unlikely that so many coincidences could lead them straight to Castiel, who was supposed to be dead. What were the chances, right?

Something in his gut told Dean the demon wasn't lying this time, though, and Dean knew to trust his gut. It would also explain the strange markings they'd seen spray-painted on the outside of the abandoned police station they'd been taken to, demonic symbols that Dean hadn't recognized but had nevertheless tipped him off that something was wrong. He'd met Sam's eyes for a brief instant and known his brother was having the same thoughts, but they'd been cuffed at the time and unable to do anything but let themselves be ushered into the building.

Now they were still cuffed and unable to do anything, but Dean thought maybe those sigils were meant to contain an angel, and the fact that it could be his angel stirred something black and dangerous inside him, something that terrified him sometimes but now lent him strength and wrath and heightened his senses.

The demons weren't helping. "What do you think of my handiwork, Dean?" one of them drawled, the one who'd told them that the pitiful bastard Dean could see through the bars was Castiel. The demon wore a tall, meaty police officer who looked like he could pound Dean to a pulp, and all Dean wanted to do was dig into his chest and crumple up his lungs so he couldn't talk anymore.

"Go to Hell," he spat, trying not to look at the telltale streaks of blood caked around Castiel's bottom and all over the insides of his thighs. He looked anyway, and it was almost enough to make him sick, regardless of whether or not it was actually Castiel.

"Already been there," the demon replied, with a hard edge to its voice that hadn't been there a moment before. "And I learned from one of the best." He gestured to Castiel again, and Dean gritted his teeth against the thought of Castiel spending three months at the mercy of someone who had taken pointers from Alastair. He knew what kind of damage Alastair's students could inflict all too well, and quashed his sudden urge to feel sorry for the demon because he couldn't afford the distraction.

And it was a demon, for fuck's sake, and it made sure whatever fucked up sense of kinship Dean was feeling toward it was short-lived by continuing conversationally, "He prayed to you, you know, up until about a month ago. An angel of the Lord, praying to you instead of to God, can you imagine that? And then he stopped screaming your name and just started screaming, and begging us to kill him," the demon added wistfully, while Dean ground his teeth. "Didn't last very long at all, did he? Who knew angels broke so easily? Then again, I suspect they're not so used to getting fucked -- he was tight, that one, but I think we've managed to loosen him up a little, between the three of us." It turned its head to give Castiel a leering grin, and that was all Dean needed.