REVIVE ▸ d. winchester [2] ✔

Chapter 16

Dean's POV

"Castiel? Cas is alive?"

Gabriel nods his head and quickly leans forward. "Yes, for now."

Sam and I look incredulously at each other. "Well, where is he? How'd you find him?" Sam eagerly asks before I can.

"A few days ago I heard word of him being held in heaven with the other angels that Azrael had captured," Gabe starts. "I tried finding you boys, but you were obviously not to be found in here." He gestures to the space around us then plants his hands on the table in front of him. "But, anyways, there's good news and bad. I'll start with the good if you don't mind."

Crossing my arms in front of me, I lean back uncomfortably in my chair. Whatever good he has to say, it couldn't ever be good enough. Not in our situation.

"Good news: He's alive. I've made sure myself that him being alive isn't just a rumor."

"And how exactly did you confirm this?" I ask skeptically. I wasn't about to get my hopes up for nothing. "Did you actually see him?"

For a moment, Gabriel ponders over his response. Slowly, he says, "Yes, I... saw him."

"Okay, so if you saw him, then why didn't you bring him back with you?" Sam counters. At that, I turn my suspicions back to the archangel in front of us.

"And now for the bad part," Gabriel says quietly, just loud enough for us to hear. "Castiel is alive, but I wouldn't exactly qualify him as 'alive and well.' He's in heaven, and we all know how heaven is these days, don't we?"

We sure do.

"In short, Azrael is using him for information. There are techniques that can be used to extract information from angels against their own will, as I'm sure you've seen before."

My mind conjures up images of angels screaming in pain, pieces of metal sticking out of their heads from restraining head sets. I was familiar with how this technology worked, how you could tune an angel's thoughts and brain waves to the point where you could have them telling you whatever you wanted them to. It was a form of torture I wanted to forget about ever since I was introduced to it, but it never seemed to leave the depths of my mind. Now, it seemed it was right back out in the open.

"I don't know what all Azrael has gotten out of him so far, but Castiel is strong and useful. He knows things Azrael would die to know. If I'm correct, he won't kill Castiel," he reassures in a failed effort to make the situation seem less distasteful. "As for the other angels that are weaker and of less importance, Azrael gets what he can, then, well... disposes of them."

"You were in heaven, and you saw all of this happening? Just like that?" Sam asks in a disheartened voice.

"I wasn't exactly in the position to help, if that's what you're asking." Gabriel gives us both a look, telling us that if he could have, he would have helped every angel in heaven escape Azrael. "I wasn't up there for five minutes before I had angels on my ass. And in case you forgot, Azrael is fully capable of destroying an archangel. I had to get out of there before I was turned into a pile of ash myself."

"Castiel might be important to Azrael, but he's important to us, too. We need him back. There's got to be something we can do," I argue desperately. In this moment, I wouldn't accept anything less than our full efforts to get the angel back. "We can't lose him, too."

Heaviness sits in the air as we sit silently, pondering the stakes and everything we had already lost. Gabe stays quiet, and even though he doesn't say anything, I know he knows I'm right.

Sam speaks up from next to me. "I agree. We get Castiel back. We don't do anything else without him."

We look to Gabriel for his own agreement, and instead of a simple 'yes' or 'no,' he throws his hands in the air and sits back. "Alright, I have no objections. We get Castiel back." He says nothing more, only sits there with a look on his face. Whatever he was thinking, he wasn't going to share with us.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I question.

"Nothing."

Sam and I both raise our eyebrows in disbelief of the man in front of us. With his downcast eyes and hands grasped confidently on the table in front of him, he surely knew more than nothing.

"Okay, fine." He finally looks up at us. From the look in his eyes- one of slight confidence and a sliver of hope- I knew he could possibly have something worth listening to. "I was just thinking, what if we didn't need Castiel? What if we just... left him there," he trails off, lost in his thoughts.

My eyes immediately lock with Sam's. Is he being for real?

"What do you mean we don't need Cas?" I ask. "Of course we do."

"We're not leaving him there," Sam adds quickly.

"No, no." Gabriel suddenly jumps back into reality from the deep thoughts he had been buried in for the last few moments. "I mean, what if we kill two birds with one stone, as you humans say?"

"What do you mean?"

"Azrael," he elaborates. "If we take him out, we wouldn't need to worry about helping Castiel escape. Without Azrael, his followers will fall. Castiel and any other angels would be free to go."

"Alright," I say, trying to wrap the idea around my head. The plan sounded plausible, but I was still at a loss of how exactly all of this would play out. "And how do you suppose we do that?"

"Yeah, the point of getting Castiel back was so that he could help us take Azrael down," Sam points out.

At first, Gabriel doesn't give us an answer. He seemed to be stuck back in his mind, a place he seemed to visit a lot more than usual lately. "I think I have an idea," he finally says with hesitance.

"Why do I have the feeling we're not going to like this plan?" Sam asks with a hesitant laugh of his own. When he gets no answer, his small smile immediately drops.

"Oh, its not the plan you won't like. The plan, I believe, could actually work."

"Okay. So, what's the issue, then?" I ask.

"I should probably tell you about something, something that I haven't told anybody because no one is supposed to know." If in any other situation, I would have thought Gabriel was joking. But I knew he wasn't. The mixed expressions on his face confirmed this for me.

"Alright, what is it?"

With one last swig from the beer in his hand, Gabriel leans forward and looks us both in the eyes.

"I should probably tell you boys how I'm alive."