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The smoke scorches the back of Dean’s throat and tears blur in his eyes. When Sam takes a half step towards him to—well, Dean doesn’t know what he has in mind, exactly, just that it won’t help—he jerks his arm away from his brother’s touch. Sam gets with the program pretty quickly. He says something in a low murmur to Jack and leads the kid back into the house.
Dean can’t bring himself to walk away. That would be a confirmation that Cas—that Cas is—Instead of allowing himself to dwell on the thought, he tucks his hands in his pockets and watches the flames.
Once the fire has mostly burnt out, Dean sinks to sit cross-legged on the ground, staring straight ahead. The last two hours or so have not been kind to his knees—they crack horribly when he goes to bend them. Funny. He never thought he’d get to be old.
He’s not sure how much time has passed before he hears a set of footfalls behind him. He turns to snap at Sam to tell him he’s not ready to head back to the bunker just yet, not with Cas’s room and the jar of organic peanut butter he’d insisted on and the pine-scented air fresheners he kept collecting and hoarding.
“Oh,” Dean says, mostly to himself. “It’s you.”
Part of him wonders if Sam has sent Jack out here on purpose, knowing that he would be rebuffed. The other part is calculating the million ways Jack could kill him and the three or four he has to defend himself.
“Yes,” Jack says simply.
There’s something about his manner that reminds him of the angelic Castiel, the one that threatened to throw him back into Hell. For some reason, this makes a laugh bubble up in his chest. Dean forces it back down.
“What do you want?”
“You’re like my mother.”
The unexpected sentence throws Dean off track so entirely that it takes him a full thirty seconds to regain his composure. Meanwhile, Jack observes Dean carefully, as if he’s the one who could snap at any moment. There’s no malice in his gaze, just a calm curiosity. It’s almost enough to make Dean wonder if Sam is right about this, if Jack is really just another innocent after all.
“I don’t—”
It’s almost as if Jack can’t hear him. “She was like that, too. For me. So much love.”
Dean flinches minutely. “I think you’re reading a bit too much into this, pal.”
He can’t have this conversation. Especially not with someone who was literally born yesterday.
“No.”
Dean sighs. “Why are you out here?”
Jack’s steady gaze doesn’t waver for even a moment. “Tell me about him.”
Standing there, he reminds Dean of the giraffes he and Sam saw once when he snuck Sam out of the motel room to get him to a zoo. Like his gangly limbs are just too long for him and he doesn’t know what to do with the length.
“About—?”
He gestures uselessly at the pyre, unable to even form Cas’s name.
Jack nods. “My mother said he would protect me.”
Dean eyes him suspiciously. “You sure do remember a lot for being a fetus at the time, don’t you.”
“Yes.”
Okay. Clearly this guy doesn’t understand sarcasm. Once again, the reminder of Cas makes his throat close over.
“Cas. He—we met when he pulled me out of Hell.”
Dean’s hands convulse at his sides without his permission. Jack still doesn’t avert his eyes. The constant staring is beginning to unnerve him a little bit.
“I hated him at first,” he says, not entirely sure why he’s even still talking. “I never believed in angels. Not like Sam did, anyway. Mom mentioned them every night, and they never did her any good. So when I found out they were real, that they were just like any other supernatural creatures, I just…I didn’t want anything to do with him.”
He lets out a small laugh at that. If someone had told his Hell-fresh self that one day, he’d be sitting by Castiel’s funeral pyre with Lucifer’s son, he would have never believed it.
“He changed. Because he knew that it was the right thing to do.” He feels tears prick at his eyes and doesn’t bother wiping them away. It’s not like Jack will judge him. “He’s made some mistakes along the way. But he’s always tried to fix them.”
Cas, the Purgatory souls crawling up his throat, leaving himself in Purgatory to atone. Dean wonders, fleetingly, if Cas would even come back if he got the chance to. He called his constant resurrections a punishment once.
If he’d listened then, would Cas have said yes? Would he have set the events that led to his death in motion?
“He’s the best friend I’ve ever had.”
Something about Jack’s expressionless face lets him continue.
“And you—you’re right. About your mom. About me.”
He bows his head, unable to meet Jack’s eye any longer. He starts when Jack places a hand on his shoulder. It’s shockingly warm; Dean can’t tell if that’s because he actually runs hot or if he was expecting Lucifer’s chill to permeate his son.
“I’m sorry.”
He stays like that a beat longer than necessary. Dean pulls away, and Jack’s hand floats uncertainly back to his side.
They stare at the couple of still-dying coals together, silently. The quiet is broken by the sound of Jack’s stomach growing quietly beside him.
“Go talk to Sam,” Dean tells him. “He can probably get you something to eat inside.”
He’d probably enjoy the chance to play at being Jack’s father.
“He was good?” Jack asks.
Dean swallows. “Yeah. Yeah, Cas was good.”
Seemingly satisfied with the answer, Jack turns on his heel and wanders back towards the house where Dean is sure Sam will pour a glass of water for him and heat something up in the microwave, leaving Dean to stare at the ashes.