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The Winchesters had been worried about Castiel for quite a while, that was even before they found a small toddler in a trench coat which made their worries tenfold.
It had all started on a beautiful summer's day a few weeks ago –the worrying that is. A beautiful, relaxing summer's day. Well, for everyone else anyway, the Winchester boys didn't seem to comprehend the term 'relaxing' and so were hunting a vengeful spirit. It was your average salt and burn hunt, but as usual with the Winchester's luck, it was not all going to plan. The body of who they thought was the ghost was said to have been cremated. That was problem number one.
Problem number two came around when they had finally found the 'said to be cremated' body of the spirit which was in fact buried. The spirit was a middle aged man, who had gone on a rampage and murdered six local people in one night. The last thing the spirit said before it was destroyed was "you should take better care of your angel".
Although there was a bit of arguing between Sam and Dean –
"Cas is not my angel!"
"Who else could he have meant Dean? We're not exactly on a good level with any other angels."
-they eventually agreed on calling Cas just to check that he was okay.
A female voice answered on the fifth ring, "Hello, who is this?"
"Who are you and why do you have this phone?" Dean said, straight to the point.
"I'm afraid I can't give out information for the sake of the children's safety," she replied.
"…What?" was all Dean could think to reply.
There were children shouting in the background which caused the woman to apologise to Dean before promptly hanging up the phone.
"She's charming," Sam said breaking the uncomfortable silence which had arouse.
"What if she's got Cas?" Dean replied. "What if she's playing us?"
"She didn't exactly seem bad…" Sam trailed off.
"Yeah, but Lillith can play some sweet little girl, that doesn't exactly seem bad but then she goes murder crazy." Dean reasoned. "I have no problem with ganking the little hell's bitch and getting Cas back."
"You don't even know that she has Cas, Dean," Sam replied.
"She has his phone!" Dean stated.
"Look I'm not trying to argue, I'm just saying that maybe we should research into this first, atleast know what we're up against if she is some crazy demon or spirit or something."
Dean once again picked up his phone and ran through to the phones network service. "Hello, I've lost my phone and was wondering if you could turn on the GPS for me?"
Sam went to grab his laptop and Dean carried on talking to the person before hanging up.
That's where we are now. Sam and Dean were stood outside what appeared to be a children's home. They'd had enough run-ins with CPS in their childhood to know what one looked like –it's not like five year old Sam could tell his teacher that a wendigo had hurt his arm. That always prompted a quick move and a new school for the boys.
"This the place?" Dean said.
"Yeah, this is where the GPS said the phone is," Sam answered back.
"Okay then," Dean said. "Lets rescue Cas."
With guns concealed in their jackets and Ruby's knife in Sam's belt they opened the door and walked into the building. A woman stumbled and frowned as she saw them.
"Look you can't just walk in here! You have to fill in a form first!" The Winchester's looked at each other in confusion and then back to her. "Look, I'm not trying to be rude but we have regulations here. We're only looking out for the children's safety."
Sam muttered 'Christo' in which nothing happened expect an odd look from the woman a few seconds after.
"Don't pull my hair!" Came a childlike shout from another room. Quickly followed by more shouting to which the woman rubbed her forehead with frustration.
"Anyway, what did you come here for?" She said putting down the stack of papers she was carrying to stare at them.
"Umm… we rang and you picked up the phone but we never got to talk…" Sam muttered.
"Ah yes, you rang little Cas' phone," she said with a small glint of hope in her eye. "I'm sorry but we don't allow children to have phones in here. I'm not even going into the discussion on why a two year old would have a phone in the first place."
"What?" Was Dean's intelligent reply.
"Are you a family member?" She said, still with that hopeful look in her eye. "I love it when we get kids back with their families."
"…Yeah," Sam replied.
She lead them down the hallway to a room full of children all of them running around madly and throwing toys around. Well, all except one, a tiny boy with vibrant blue eyes, messy hair and a tan trench coat. He was sitting alone in the corner with a book, which looked ginormous when layed open over the tiny boy's lap. The look of concentration the boy was giving the book looked completely out of place on a two year old and was seemingly making the woman as uncomfortable as Dean felt about the whole situation.
"He doesn't talk much, he just likes to sit on his own and look at the Bible. It's almost like he can actually read it. I've never seen a two year old who stays as focused on something as he does," she said whilst looking over to him before calling, "Cas!"
The little boy stuck his head up and when Dean got a proper look at him there was no doubt in his mind that the two year old, contently reading the bible, was in-fact Castiel.
The boy beamed as he caught site of Sam and Dean with a smile so wide it looked impossible on his face. "Dean!"
The kid ran –as well as a two year old can run over to Sam and Dean, only stumbling over once or twice. His little arms wrapped around Dean's leg and gripped on tight.
The woman cooed slightly but her eyes were wide with amazement. "We could only ever get his to tell us his name, I'll take this as confirmation that you're family."
Five minutes later and Sam and Dean were both seated on a sofa in the woman's office with Cas sitting between them kicking his legs in a bored fashion. They had been telling her a story they made up on the spot, which included them as Cas' uncles.
"So let me get this straight," the woman –now known to be Jane, said. "The mother is dead?"
Castiel, who had up until now been sitting silently was getting impatient. He didn't really understand the story Dean and Sam were saying. He didn't have a mother, God his father, was his creator. He came to the conclusion that they were talking about mother in general and not his mother and so butted in to hurry the story up. "Eve is dead."
Jane's eyes then turned sympathetic as she glanced down at Cas.
"How did Cas end up here?" Sam asked.
"I found him sitting by the roadside mumbling to himself about mean witches or something. I tried to ask about his parents but he just started to cry when I brought it up. We called the police and he didn't match any missing person reports so we were just keeping him here until we found out about his family," Jane told them.
"Well Eve's death was very tragic, if we were told about it sooner we would have come straight for Cas," Sam informed her. "You see, we were only told yesterday and that's when we rang Cas' phone."
About an hour later the Winchester's had finally finished filling out the necessary forms and picking Cas up to sit on his hip, Dean went to leave.
"Hope he was good for you," Sam said to Jane.
She smiled back, "He's been a little angel, nothing like the little devils we got here that run around screaming and breaking everything in sight."
They all bid farewell before lowering Cas into the back of the impala, to which he started crying and gripping onto Dean. The journey ended up being a smirking Sam in the driver's seat while Dean sat with a sleeping two year old on his lap.