The Guardian :: Chapter 1

1. His charge is very young when Castiel realizes that being this child's Whitelighter will not be the vacation that it was made to sound like to him.

Take now, for instance. The boy is only four, and here he is trying to climb into a stranger's car while his mother is distracted with their groceries.

Castiel frets. He's new at this, and keeps thinking, 'I am not allowed to intervene. I am not allowed to intervene.'

Oh, but the key word is 'directly', isn't it?

Glancing around the parking lot as if an Elder will appear behind him, he casts a hand forward and teases the wheels of Mary Winchester's shopping cart into motion. The young mother darts for it on reflex, and happens to notice (as Castiel hoped she would) the lack of little blonde boy at her side.

Her eyes widen fearfully, and her son's name has halfway passed her lips when she sees Dean's head peering at her from the driver's seat of the red Volvo beside her husband's Impala.

"Thank god…Dean! You get your butt back here, mister!"

Castiel watches the scolding unfold from beneath the grocery store's awning, a small smile sliding into place. Dean's shoulders are bowed submissively, his head ducked and eyes down, but he's fiddling with his pockets and biting his lip to contain his smile.

Yes, this child will be trouble.

2. Dean's powers have always been trouble. They are too well suited to him, and he is not as discrete about his healing abilities as he should be. Castiel constantly has to stop him from magicking away a classmate's scraped knee or elbow, and after four years of this he has given up on being clever about it every time.

If Dean notices that whenever he stretches out his fingers with the intent of soothing a hurt, some otherworldly force foils him, he hasn't said anything about it. Mary has noticed however, and Castiel spends more energy than ever now dodging her psychic probes. She suspects a warlock or something similar, he thinks, but with her husband unaware of her and their sons' dual nature, there isn't much she can do until she feels drastic action is called for.

He has to be more careful, doesn't he? If he doesn't stop, what will happen when the time comes for his competency review?

Castiel suddenly feels ill. He rubs a gentle hand over his stomach, where muscles have suddenly and painfully tightened. He makes a small noise of discomfort, and moves to a park bench to rest while he calms his nerves.

Dean appears at his elbow a moment later, wearing an adult's stern expression and eyeing Castiel's hand. The Whitelighter feels something like a static spark, being this close to his charge on the same plane. The boy's aura is…compelling.

"Good afternoon." He says politely.

Dean darts a green-eyed look up to his face for a moment before returning to staring down his stomach.

"I can help with that, if you want." The boy shrugs, affecting a flippant attitude that Castiel knows very well. He also knows without looking to verify that the young boy's fingers are twitching eagerly, and that the tips are subtly glowing.

He lowers his voice. "Do you think that is wise?"

Dean gives him a strange look, like he suggested something outrageous and foul.

Has Mary told him about the need for secrecy?

Castiel chews his lip anxiously, disliking Dean's sudden seeming distaste. He casts a weary eye around the park, but sees only Sam watching from beneath the slide. There are no malignant feelings nearby, and the area is only sparsely populated. Mary is not paying attention—he is safe from her suspicion, for the moment.

So, grudgingly, he allows the boy to hover a radiant hand over his stressed muscles, and sighs with relief when he feels them unclench. Relax.

He smiles his thanks. "That is much better."

There are beads of perspiration dotting Dean's forehead and cheeks now, but he returns the grin times four. "Glad to help. Take care mister."

And he runs back to his brother, who can now only be told by his mop of brown hair over the lip of the sandbox.

Castiel stays only long enough to oversee Mary pack up her children and leave the park, before he returns home for the night.

3. Castiel presides over the Winchester home the night after a warlock attempts to steal Sam from the backyard. He hovers at Dean's shoulder, dusting intangible hands through the boy's short hair as, in turn, his charge comforts a whimpering Sammy.

The poor child is shuddering with his quiet sobbing. His cheeks are red and tear-tracked, his eyes swollen as he paws at his brother's shoulders.

"H-h-he said m-mommy needed me-e…"

Dean shushes him quietly, and continues to knead his back. He throws an annoyed glance back at the bedroom door, where downstairs the voices have gotten louder.

Castiel frowns, worrying his lip. John is not taking the news very well.

He stays close to the brothers for the rest of the night, briefly blinking away to report in before returning in time for breakfast. The first meal of the day is usually a happy thing in this household, but…

John's eyes are steely, and are focused determinedly on his eggs, and Mary's movements are sharp, jerky as she pushes a serving onto Sam's plate. Castiel is sure to keep a hand on both of the boys' shoulders, though Sam is not his to care for.

He is also present when Mary teaches Dean and Sam about the people who would hurt them, given the chance. Bad people whose single-minded goal is to steal their talents for themselves.

Mary is a good mother, for all that she is young. She is able to convey the seriousness of her words without badly scaring the boys, something Castiel doubts he could do.

4. This isn't the first mistake Castiel has made—it's not even the biggest, but…

Dean is staring at him with an expression that's a mix of suspicion, resigned fear and confusion.

Castiel has allowed himself to be seen, and Dean remembers him.

As he increases up his stride, gliding past the teenager and his group of friends smoothly, he can't imagine why. It was years ago that Dean encountered him in the park.

From behind he hears, "I'll catch you guys up later." and he swears under his breath. Castiel can feel Dean's aura dogging his steps, nipping at his heels like an engaged hound. The walks aren't crowded enough for Castiel to slip away into the flow of foot traffic.

He takes a sudden right on impulse, hoping to break from Dean's line of sight long even to orb away, but— "Hey, mister!"

Castiel's feet trip over themselves at the sound of Dean's voice, immediately at his shoulder, and he turns on reflex.

Dean's expression is pinched with caution, but he stands firm all the same. Castiel can't help the flash of pride in his charge, though he knows how dangerous such reckless courage is.

"Don't I know you?"

Castiel looks around the street anxiously—but it is curisouly deserted. The buildings along either side of the cracked road feature barred windows andClosed notices.

He stammers "I-i am- I…am-"

His indecision does not work to ease Dean's nerves. The healer's shoulders draw tight and Castiel knows the exact moment Dean realizes—his powers won't help him in this kind of situation. He can't make fireballs in his hands like Sam. He doesn't have the ability to stop the brain's signals from reaching their respective destinations, as his mother does.

Castiel swallows and darts behind a parked delivery van, and orbs away in the half-second he is away from Dean's view.

5. Days later a man dressed in muddied rags watches from his cardboard home as Dean repairs the foreleg of the neighborhood stray on his way back from school. The man's eyes shine, partially from the inordinate amount of moisture they produce, but also, Castiel worries, from a perverse interest. He lingers behind after Dean resumes on his way, and is present to see the man emerge from the heap of trash and shred his disguise with a fluttering motion of his fingers.

Castiel's eyes round with horror as the warlock dusts his hands together and smiles hungrily.

He cannot directly intervene. His recent mishaps have led the Elders to pay closer attention to Castiel's doings. To fully manifest and battle a warlock is considered a last resort, and can be taken as a sign of incompetence.

He is torn. He wants to eliminate the threat to Dean and his family as quickly and efficiently as possible—but the prospect of being made to withdraw from his post, to…to leave the Winchesters, to leave Dean—who he has watched for nearly a decade, watched grow—the thought frightens him.

The fact that it frightens him, frightens him. Castiel does not want to think of how many rules he has broken because of his charge—or his illegal attachment to the boy.

He frets even as he works to arouse Mary's ever-present suspicions (which he is now helplessly grateful for), to incite her to sing spells of protection under her breath, to litter her husband's pockets with herbs that shield and make aware and to wreathe her children's necks with defensive charms, until the house hums with security and spells lent power by the love of their caster for what, and who they defend.

The warlock comes to the house in the dead quiet of night, when even the insects have settled. The dark-clad man paces the perimeter like a predator, his loping strides stirring the fear beneath Castiel's breastbone, but he seems to give up on penetrating the home's defenses.

Castiel practically attaches himself to Dean's shoulder, staying closer to the boy than he has since he was small, haunting the corners of his classrooms and following at his back as he maneuvers through the chaos of the middle school cafeteria.

Four days pass without incident. The warlock has not returned to the try the home, and he has not appeared near Dean or Sam during their time away from the house. Mary's emerging crows-feet have relaxed a bit, and John finds progressively fewer surprises in his clean laundry. Even Castiel has begun to grow weary of maintaining such high levels of awareness and fear. He breaks from his watch for sleep, and once enjoys a meal with his brothers when Dean is safe in fourth period Spanish.

It is at this time, of course, that the warlock makes his move.

Posing as a relative from John's side, he tells the school officials that there has been an accident, that Mary's car went off the road as she drove Sam to school. They have been unable to reach John—Mary and Sam have both been taking to the hospital, but the severity of their injuries is a mystery.

Later, Castiel will coolly admit, the ploy is well done. Dean loses focus upon hearing the word 'hospital', and what questions he does raise against the warlock's claim of relation are weak and half-hearted. When Castiel returns to the school, the residual warmth of Dean's aura has begun to fade.

Finding him is difficult. Fear is thick in him and Castiel struggles to calm himself enough to think. By this point, he is halfway manifested.

It will be easier to scent out Dean's aura on the physical plane, anyway, he assures himself. If he must appeal the Elders later to keep his charge—at least there will still be a charge.

Dean is unconscious on the ground when Castiel tracks his aura to the abandoned apartment building. The warlock is kneeling over him, holding elongated thumb nails—talons, bone-hard and dully shining—against the soft skin inside his wrists.

Castiel's vision bleeds red and black, and the warlock's head makes an ugly sound against the concrete. His knees hurt as he falls to them, but Castiel ignores the discomfort. Instead he snatches up Dean's gently bleeding arms—the cuts are curiously shallow—and closes his eyes, reaching into himself for the well of love that powers his own healing talents and is—

is shocked and off-balanced by the sheer depth of it, new since the last time he used his power, and the fiery intensity to the usually golden mixture that turns the heart of it a deep, thriving crimson. Unease uncurls in him like vine.

As he pulls from the well to heal Dean's wounds, Castiel resolutely ignores the tiny flare of blue in the center, and the implications of the prescience of such pure heat in the center of himself. He chest squeezes upon seeing how it thrums with life as his hands touch Dean.

This can mean nothing good.

Dean returns to himself slowly. Too late Castiel has realized that the warlock barricaded his consciousness in the farther reaches of his mind; his charge has half broken them by the time he does.

He blinks groggily, vision no doubt fuzzed, moving to sit up after a moment of confusion. Castiel almost reaches out to brush his hair, but checks himself at the last moment.

Dean squints at him.

"You're that…that guy."

Castiel feels heat rise to his cheeks. He clears his throat. "I…yes. I am."

"You're not a warlock, are you?" He asks, tone dry. Dean has spotted the unconscious villain, a few feet away. At Castiel head shake, he says, "Then what are you?"

"I am a guardian, of good witches." He answers after a moment of hesitation. "You are my charge."

Dean is quiet for minute, during which time Castiel's nerves twist and writhe with anxiety.

"What's your name?"

"…Castiel."

Taking elements from the television show Charmed. Be easy on me if I happen to get things wrong about Whitelighters and what all they do (their rules and restrictions specifically). I've seen the first season, and am currently working on the second-but that's pretty much the extent of my experience with Charmed, aside from some hazy memories of the episodes that ran when I was little :)

Please tell me what you think :) Feedback is very much appreciated!

-Oceans