Disclaimer: I don't own the boys.

Author's Note: This is my second contribution to spn_littlebro's h/c bingo. The prompt is 'Deprogramming'. The tone and mood of this fic is as different as I could make it from the first one.

Many thanks to Cheryl for the beta. :)

Summary: Cas decides to 'help' Sam. Without Dean's permission. Set anytime after S5.

Spoilers: Through to 5.22, Swan Song.

Warnings: Some irreverent comments about deprogramming techniques, if that bothers you.

Stop at Step Three

The thing that Dean always remembered about it was that it was all Castiel's fault. Which just proved that Angels couldn't be trusted, especially not when they said they were "only trying to help".

Of course Cas didn't even have the decency to check with Dean first. Oh, no. You'd think, knowing them as well as he did, he'd have remembered the drill – at least remembered the most basic part of the drill, which was to talk to Dean if you wanted to make plans involving Sam, especially plans involving Sam's mental health.

And Sammy wasn't crazy, thank you very much. Sure, he could be weird, but so could everyone. And anyway, even if Sam was weird, it was nobody's business but his and Dean's. They lived in each other's pockets; if Dean didn't mind Sam's weirdness, nobody else had any reason to interfere.

Dean didn't realize all that till later. What he did realize, when he woke up at nine on a Tuesday morning in a motel room free of both Sam and the tempting (but Dean would kill you if you ever told anyone he used that word) butterscotch aroma of the girly milkshake Sam had the nerve to call coffee, was that someone, or something, had taken his baby brother away.

Dean's procedure for handling such a situation was simple. Find the thing that took Sam, kill the thing that took Sam, and resurrect it and kill it again if Sam was hurt.

It turned out harder than expected. There were no signs of forced entry – the salt lines were unbroken, and the protective wards Sam had painstakingly chalked across the doorways and windows were unmarred. Everything was shut and locked on the inside. There was no sulphur residue. The EMF meter stayed quiet when Dean waved it over Sam's bed.

That meant it had to be an Angel that took Sam.

Dean had to take several deep breaths to calm down. The universe was full of Angels, most of whom hated Winchesters in general and Sam and Dean in particular, most of whom wouldn't hesitate to cut Sam's throat if it fit some grand plan – and some of whom would deliberately come up with a grand plan that required cutting Sam's throat just to be cussed.

Once he'd calmed down, Dean yelled for Cas. Maybe he wasn't entirely polite about it, but who had time for 'please' and 'thank you' when their little brother was missing? Well, Angels probably did, with all their talk of sacrifices necessary for the greater good and God's plan, but not Dean Winchester.

Cas didn't show up. That should've been Dean's first sign that he had something to do with it, but Cas had been so erratic lately, ignoring him and Sam on the pretext of having more important things do in Heaven – and Dean could get ignoring him, but ignoring Sam? What could Cas possibly have to do that was more important than Sammy?

Anyway, Dean didn't guess, which was stupid.

He spent the day calling everyone he could think of, but nobody had heard anything about Sam, and nobody had any idea why an Angel would want to take him.

It was close to midnight, and Dean was starving, exhausted, and close to bursting into tears from worry (though he would never have admitted that) when he heard a voice outside.

Castiel's voice.

Saying, "Remember, if Dean asks, tell him this was your idea. Your idea."

Dean frowned, went to the door, and flung it open.

And there was Sam – Sammy – all twenty-five feet of him, stumbling down the corridor behind Cas.

"You found him! Thank God." Dean didn't waste time on thank-yous – there'd be time later. He darted past Cas, grabbed Sam by the shoulders, and shook him. "Where the hell have you been? Do you have any idea how worried I've been?"

"Dean," Sam said – no, whimpered – and his eyes were too bright. Bright like –

"No, no, don't cry." Dean pulled Sam into a hug, and the hitch in his brother's breathing made his heart twist. "Hey, no, I'm not mad. I was just scared something had happened to you." He glanced at Cas over Sam's shoulder. "Where'd you find him?"

Cas looked shifty, and Dean didn't bother to push for the answer. There was a time to interrogate Angels of the Lord, and when you had a clearly terrified baby brother to take care of wasn't it.

"Come on, Sammy," Dean urged. "Let's go inside."

Sam let Dean guide him into the motel room. He was trembling – Dean could feel it through his jacket – so Dean settled him on the couch and got him a brandy. Sam swallowed it in one gulp, which alarmed Dean even more – Sam had to be really freaked to toss his drinks back like that – and then put the glass on the table and leaned forward, wrapping his arms around himself.

"Sammy, you're scaring me. What's wrong?"

Sam shook his head and reached for Dean, and Dean really needed an explanation but right then he needed to calm Sam down, so he let Sam tug him closer and rest his head on Dean's ribs. Dean knew Sam was listening to his heartbeat, and it was stupid and girly but it also made him feel warm inside that he could make Sam feel more secure just by existing. There was something to be said for being a big brother.

"You're OK," he soothed, stroking the dark head. "You just take your time and we'll talk when you're feeling better."

"I'll just leave, then," Castiel said, and Dean, who'd forgotten that he was even there, looked up in some surprise.

"Wait. Where'd you find him?"

Dean felt his shirt twist as Sam clutched it tighter. That would have distracted him, but Cas, instead of answering the question, looked even shiftier, arousing all his hunter's instincts.

"Easy," Dean said, resting his hand on the back of Sam's neck to keep him grounded. "Cas, what happened?"

"The thing you need to remember, Dean –"

"Cas!" Dean snapped. He knew from experience that when people began a sentence with The thing you need to remember, Dean, it meant they'd done something to Sam and they were hoping like hell that they were going to be able to talk themselves out of trouble. Nobody seemed able to accept that it was impossible to talk yourself out of trouble when trouble came in the form of one pissed-off big brother. "What happened?"

"Nothing in particular. I have to go. I have a divine purpose to fulfill – a five-year-old girl in Osaka needs to find a lost puppy on her way home from school today. Very important. If it doesn't happen she'll end up being a hired assassin when she's twenty-three. So I'll just –"

"You move one step and I'll summon you right back and fry your wings. What happened to my brother? Hand me my jacket."

Cas gaped at him, like he hadn't had plenty of experience of the way Dean's mind worked when Sam was in any sort of distress. "What?" he asked stupidly.

"My jacket. The thing humans wear when they're cold. It's on my bed. Give it to me."

Cas brought it, looking a little nervous, like he thought Dean planned to attack him with the jacket – and, if it came to that, why not? It wasn't a bad idea. He'd need to ask Sam to be certain, but if he sewed a rosary into the lining, it might be a pretty effective weapon.

That was for later, though.

Dean gently disengaged Sam's arms, pushing his brother back and dropping the jacket in his lap.

"You're shivering. Put that on, and we'll talk in a while. I'm going to be right here," he promised, when Sam's eyes widened in alarm. "Just a couple of feet away. I need to sort something out with Castiel, that's all."

Sam nodded acquiescence, and Dean, with a light pat to his shoulder, straightened and turned to the watching Angel.

"All right," he said, every bit of comfort and reassurance gone from his voice and replaced by a hard, threatening tone that promised retribution if he didn't get answers fast. "I'm only going to ask you this once. What happened to Sam?"

Cas sighed, looking put upon. Dean didn't know where he thought he got off. It wasn't like his baby brother had been missing for hours and returned to him in decidedly worse condition than when he was taken.

"I was in New Jersey a few days ago to keep Al Miller from eating a questionable burrito –"

"Cas," Dean warned.

"It's relevant. While I was there I saw an… advertisement. Dr. Cooper. Psychiatrist." Dean's eyes narrowed. He was sure he wasn't going to like the explanation; the only question was whether he'd dislike enough to have to kill someone. "Dr. Cooper is Mr. Miller's neighbour. She practises out of her house."

"Cas, as much as your tales of life in the suburbia fascinate me –"

"She cures phobias."

Dean looked from the Angel to his brother and back. "She cures what?"

"Phobias. Irrational fears, like –"

"I know what a phobia is. What's she got to do with Sam?"

"I thought she could help him."

"Help him? With what?"

"With his clown problem," Cas said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world and Dean was an idiot for needing to be told.

Dean took a deep breath. Then he took another, and when he finally felt like he could talk without violence, he said, in a voice of dangerous frozen calm, "What did your quack do to my little brother?"

"Dean, he's fine –"

"Fine? He's freaking out. And, wait, first things first. Who the hell gave you permission to take Sam to a psychiatrist anyway?"

"Sam was willing!" Cas protested, like he didn't know Dean was the final authority on all matters related to Sam's wellbeing. "He was, Dean, especially after I…" The Angel trailed off, as though it was suddenly striking him that he was venturing on very thin ice. It was like he didn't know Dean at all.

"Especially after you what?" Dean asked.

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Look at Sam, he's better already. I saw a bakery on the way over. Do you want pie?"

"Cas. I'm not going to ask again. Tell me exactly what happened to my baby brother." After a pause, Dean added, "And when you're done you can get that pie. And fresh fruit for Sam. He likes that better."

Castiel made a face. "Nothing happened. I just pointed out to Sam how important it was for him to be able to deal with clowns. He doesn't have the luxury of ignoring them. What if a clown ghost attacks you? Who'll back you up?"

"You guilted Sam –"

"You're implying that I manipulated him."

"I'm not implying it. I'm saying it straight. And you still haven't answered the most important question. What did the Cooper idiot do to him? Why is he so freaked out?"

"Oh, of course. I forgot to explain Dr. Cooper's method. It's a five-step plan, guaranteed to work in 95% of cases."

Sam choked a frightened little breath, and Dean scowled at Cas. He really wanted to make someone bleed, just like he always did when Sam was upset, and failing any other options he was quite willing to make Cas bleed, but…

Shaking his head, Dean went to the couch. Sam needed him, and that was the one thing that could have held Dean back from murder.

He sat down, feeling inexplicably comforted when Sam moved closer to him without being urged – though, hell, why did Dean need to be comforted?

Well, no, the why was obvious; Sam had been – not hurt, not physically, but something was wrong with Sam. And Dean felt Sam's pain even more than Sam himself did. (That wasn't girly, it was just the way things were when you had a little brother who sometimes looked at you like you hung the moon and some son of a bitch upset him.)

"Easy," Dean murmured, bumping Sam's shoulder with his companionably. After all, he wasn't angry with Sam. "No clowns here. Well, unless you count Cas, who seems to think he's hilarious. You're OK, little brother. Cas, keep talking."

"Sam didn't mind Step One - she just wanted to talk about clowns. She said she needed to identify and discredit the main source of Sam's fear. He didn't seem to want to talk about it, but Dr. Cooper insisted and he was willing, when she said it was the only way to eliminate the phobia completely."

"Said that, did she? Huh. I might want to have a word with Dr. Cooper sometime. Why don't you leave me her address? And maybe a list of her worst fears?"

"Are you going to kill her?"

"I haven't decided yet. That depends on how the rest of the story goes."

"She was only trying to –"

"Say, 'She was only trying to help,' Cas. I dare you."

Cas apparently retained enough sense not to rise to that bait. "They discussed Sam's unfortunate history with fast food outlets. I think Sam thought it was silly, more than scary. And then the second step was for Dr. Cooper to show Sam the contradictions between his ideas and the reality. For instance, it's clearly illogical for Sam to afraid of clowns when most of them are half his size. Dr. Cooper took a couple of pictures of him for reference and then had him watch a slideshow of him standing next to clowns so he could see how illogical it was."

Dean had to be hearing wrong. He had to be hearing wrong, because it sounded like the good doctor had made Sam look at pictures of his worst fear, repeatedly, to prove some lame-ass theory. What, she couldn't get enough volunteers to sit through her crap? She had to mess with Dean's baby brother? But, yeah, maybe Cas had actually said, "She had Sam watch a slideshow of his awesome big brother beating clowns up to protect him." Now that would make sense.

Maybe Dean could beat up a couple of clowns, just on principle.

"Pictures of Sam standing next to clowns?" he repeated carefully. "While I was hitting them?"

"Not you. Just Sam," Cas said. "He wasn't hitting them, either. He was standing with them. The pictures seemed to bother him."

"Of course they freaking bothered him. When I get my hands on this Dr. Cooper… You didn't kill her, did you, when you got Sam out?"

"Why would I kill her? She wasn't trying to hurt him."

Dean snorted. "Yeah, I'll be the judge of that. So she didn''t make a fuss about letting him go without finishing all her steps?" Castiel looked away. "Cas? You did bring him back after Step Two, right? As soon as you saw he was getting uncomfortable?"

"Dr. Cooper said we had to go through all five steps to see a visible change. I thought it was best."

Dean couldn't find words to express his outrage. Cas thought it was best? Yeah, because Cas always achieved such brilliant results when he did what he thought was best. Dean glared at him, before bending to murmur, "You're safe here, Sammy. Anything tries to get to you and I'll kill it."

"Dean –"

"What was step three?"

"She brought a clown." The hoarse whisper came from Sam, and Dean turned horrified eyes on his brother. Sam went on, oblivious to Dean's mounting anger. "Two clowns. I guess she was prepared. I h-had to shake hands with them."

Dean didn't ask how Sam felt about that. He didn't need to. It was there for him to read in the kid's trembling voice.

His Sammy. His Sammy had defeated Lucifer, which all those freaking Angels hadn't had any idea how to do, had faced an eternity of torture without flinching, and Cas had managed, in one day, to scare him so badly that he couldn't keep his voice steady.

"Dean?" Cas said. "He's due back tomorrow. We only got up to Step Three today. Steps Four and Five are tomorrow. In Step Four she's going to –"

"Cas, shut up."

"I thought you wanted an explanation."

"Cas, I swear I am this close to pounding on you right now, and the only reason I'm not doing it is because Sam doesn't need any more excitement today. Get out before I change my mind."

Dean didn't bother to see if Cas really left – he didn't care, honestly; he had nothing to say to Sam just then that the whole world couldn't hear. If anything, Dean thought the world would've been a better place if a lot more people had paid a lot more attention to his views about Sam.

"You're not going back tomorrow," Dean said, his voice leaving no room for argument.

"Dean, I –"

"Sam. The woman's a fake. And how the hell does it matter, anyway? Some people are scared of cats, and some people freak out when they see a spider. You… freak out when you see a clown. So we'll never go to McDonald's. Big deal. Now tell me what has you so worked up, because I know it isn't this Cooper person. You know perfectly well you don't have to go back tomorrow, and if Cas shows up and suggests it I'll kick his ass back to Heaven."

"Yeah, I know."

"What is it, then?"

The lost, desperate expression Sam wore in response made Dean want to kill something even more than he did already. It was – just – it was Sam. Sam looking like his world had ended. And Sam wasn't supposed to look like that; Sam was supposed to be happy and snickering over some geek joke and not –

"Sam, please."

Sam bit his lip. "It won't work, Dean. I can tell it won't work. No matter what Dr. Cooper does, I'll still be scared of clowns."

Dean waited for the rest of the explanation. There had to be more to it; even Sam wasn't stupid enough to get himself in a funk over whether Cas's moron doctor could cure his clown-phobia. When nothing came, he prodded, "Sam?"

"Cas is right. What if we have a case with clowns or – or some demon possesses a clown or – if – what if I can't back you up?"

"Cas pointed this out to you?"

"He and Dr. Cooper. They said I – I should think about – about what I was willing to – I mean – if one – and I couldn't –"

"Sam," Dean interrupted, because the kid was getting utterly incoherent, his voice shaking in a way that tied Dean's insides in knots and made his fingers itch for a machete.

"Cas showed me. He showed me what would happen if a clown-demon attacked you and I couldn't help and I saw you, dead, and… and I can't, Dean."

Dean didn't wait to hear more. He held out his arms. A moment later, they were full of Sammy. The kid was still talking, mumbling words that were lost in Dean's shirt, but Dean didn't need to know exactly what he was saying. What he needed to do was let Sam talk himself out and then get some food in him – because in all his descriptions of Dr. Cooper's Five Steps, Cas hadn't included a description of Sam eating a meal. He probably hadn't eaten. It wasn't Sam's fault, of course; with how much Cas and Dr. Cooper had managed to traumatize him he'd probably forgotten all about meals. But Cas should have remembered. Hadn't Dean explained to him at least a bazillion times that humans needed to eat? And Sam had all that extra muscle to fuel.

If Cas had let his baby brother starve on top of everything else, Dean was going to gut him.

Sam stuttered through his descriptions of seeing Dean's dead body. And what was it with Angels forcing Sam to live through Dean dying, anyway? Were they such horrible sadists that they got a kick out of making the kid suffer?

Dean pushed his brother's head down to his chest, knowing the sound of his heartbeat would reassure Sam more than anything he could possibly say.

But he still had to talk, because there were a couple of major misconceptions that had to be addressed.

"I think they're wrong," he told Sam when the sobs had subsided into shaky breaths. He tried to keep his voice even, for Sam's sake, but who could possibly stay calm while holding a miserable baby brother? "I think it's a good thing you're scared of clowns." Sam, shocked into silence, raised disbelieving eyes to his, and Dean went on, "It would be creepy and unnatural if you weren't scared of anything. And clowns are pretty harmless – a pretty harmless thing to be scared of, I mean. You're not scared when it comes to the things that matter. You're not scared to stand up for things – you weren't scared of Lucifer's Cage –"

"I was terrified of Lucifer's Cage." Sam says it so matter-of-factly that it makes Dean's heart skip a couple of beats. "I was just even more terrified of what would happen to you if I didn't… do it. I couldn't face the idea of…"

And Dean remembered. He remembered what it felt like, kneeling alone in the cemetery, knowing his Sammy, his baby brother, his baby brother that he'd raised and yelled at and been proud of and loved more than anything else in the entire world, was gone. Was suffering and would suffer forever, horribly, all the tortures that two twisted Archangels could dream up between them.

He clutched Sam harder.

"Sam," he said slowly, when his brain came back online enough for him to remember that Sam was probably still upset, "you do know that it would be the same if a clown attacked me, right? If I were really in danger –"

Sam's arms tightened.

"Yeah," Dean told him. "Would you ever be more scared of a clown than of me getting hurt?"

"Dean."

"So if a clown were hurting me…"

"I'd kill it," Sam said, pulling away, sitting up, and looking around like he was trying to find clowns to murder. Dean almost laughed. Anyone who thought Dean was irrationally protective hadn't seen what Sam could do to things that tried to take his big brother away from him.

"So we need Dr. Cooper's Five Steps why, exactly?" Dean asked.

"Oh. Yeah. We… don't." Sam's shoulders slumped in relief. "I don't have to go back tomorrow."

"Damn straight. Can't believe it took you so long to get to that. Sam, if you thought your clown thing was a problem, you should just have told me. We would've had this talk and we could've saved you… everything that happened today… and saved me a buttload of worrying. What the hell possessed you to run off without even telling me?"

"Cas thought it would be a nice surprise for you."

"Cas is an ass. And you're an idiot, but you get a pass because you're my little brother. Cas, on the other hand…" Struck by a sudden thought, Dean said, "He's coming back for you tomorrow morning, isn't he? To take you to the next session with Dr. Cooper?"

"Yeah."

"Awesome. You should go. We'll both go. I'll come too. I have some things to discuss with Dr. Cooper."

"Dean? What are you going to do to her?"

"Nothing, Sammy. What would I do to her? She was just trying to help. I just want to find out more about her methods. Maybe some practical experience."

"Dean?"

"Practical experience for her, I mean. If she's curing other people's fears, we need to make sure she's cured her own."

"Dean."

"Do you think she's scared of pissed-off big brothers armed with rifles? I know I would be."

"Dean!"

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