Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You could be my silver spring,

Blue green colors flashin’. 

I would be your only dream,

Your shining autumn, ocean crashing…

~ Silver Springs || 1977 ~ 

☽𖤐☾

DECEMBER 25, 2009 || 09:47 AM || 1684 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Dean can’t hear anything other than the deafening ring and roar of blood in his ears. His eyes are open, and he’s staring at something, but he can’t see beyond the splatters of red and towers of rubble and heaps of lifeless limbs burned into his mind’s eye. He feels frigid, and like he’s boiling from the inside-out, and like he’s not even there at all—all at the same time. 

His chest shudders, frantic and shallow, heart a relentless, bruising hammer to the drum of his sternum, nerves trembling from the root of his spine down to the tips of his fingers and toes. There’s a touch to his shoulder, faraway. It barely registers. He squeezes his eyes shut, and he’s still there, in among the bodies and rubble. He opens his eyes again—and he’s still there. Only not. It’s distant, like staring down an impossibly deep well, but he sees tall grass where he’s kneeling. He sees his shaking hands; they’re caked in a muddy blend of concrete gray and syrupy crimson. 

He blinks, and just in the span of a brief flash, his hands are buried in an ocean of blood spilled from a chest crushed to dust beneath a metal support beam, only feet away. 

Where is he? What happened? He grasps desperately within himself for answers, but they seem to vanish every time he reaches to pluck them out of memory. It’s vacant and black in his head, yet so very vivid. He remembers. He knows he does. It just happened, didn’t it? 

Where is he? What happened? What were their names? 

The touch on his shoulder is suddenly front-and-center of his awareness, painful in the way it clings to him. 

Who’s there? Where is he? What happened? What were their names? 

“-ean.” The faintest utterance breaks through, a mere echo among the scattered noise. 

He blinks. His chest heaves. His hands shake. His nerves jitter. 

Who’s there? Where is he? What happened? What were their names? Why can’t he breathe? 

“Dean.” His name. Stark and clear. 

He blinks again. A flash of piercing blue. Then darkness. Then grass and dirty hands. Cold air stings his lungs. His heart thunders. His nerves are on fire. 

Who’s there? Where is he? What happened? What were their names? Why can’t he breathe? Why can’t he remember? 

“Dean!” 

His eyes flutter shut, heavy. His head spins. Bodies, rubble, blood, blank. 

Who’s there? Where is he? What happened? What were their names? Why can’t he breathe? Why can’t he remember? 

The noise dies. 

What have you done?  

☽𖤐☾

JULY 28, 2009 || 07:03 PM || 1834 DAYS UNTIL THE END

The Horsemen have been the biggest pain in Dean’s ass for months. First, there was War in River Pass. Dean managed to uncover his identity with Sam’s help, but though they were able to catch him off-guard by aiming to steal his ring instead of making a futile attempt to kill him, the fucker reacted too fast—saw what was coming—and wrestled his way out of Dean’s grasp before the cut could be made. He fled and has been keeping a low-profile ever since. 

Famine was the first Horseman Dean went after without Sam. Damn good thing, too, since the guy makes people insatiably hungry for their darkest vices, and Dean just knew the demon blood would’ve become a big fucking problem all over again had Sam been there. Cas was there, and Dean had thought that would give the good guys an all-star advantage. But he was so, very wrong, and the defeat Famine handed them was made infinitely more pitiful with the image of Castiel, Angel of the Lord shoveling handfuls of raw ground beef into his mouth on the floor in the background of a scummy diner. 

Pestilence was a further miserable defeat. Dean stood no fucking chance, and neither did a well-Fallen Cas. He supposes he should count himself lucky that Pestilence only made them deathly ill for as long as it took for him to get the hell out of dodge. Apparently, Dean and Cas were so beneath him that he couldn’t even be bothered to finish the job. 

Dean is o-for-three. He’s failed every major trial he’s faced on the steady march toward full-blown Armageddon while he, Cas, and Bobby work to find another way around a showdown between Michael and Lucifer. He figured that stopping the Horsemen would at least slow things down, which was a good idea in theory, but in practice, all it’s done is repeatedly bite him in the ass. 

And yet, here he is. Standing in the middle of a pizza parlor, surrounded by bodies perished without a cause, staring Death in the face. 

It’s strange. Death, with an aura so piercing and monumentally imposing that Dean can feel it reaching through the front of his chest and gripping his heart in frigid, skeletal fingers, hasn’t made any threats against his or Cas’ life. He’s just… Sitting there, in the middle of the parlor, cutting his slice of pizza into neat little bites with a fork and knife, and largely ignoring that he has company. 

Outside, the violent storm he’s brought with him rages on, pouring oceans of rain, stirring up howling winds, igniting explosive veins of lightning in the sky. Bobby had clued Dean into the forecast a little over twelve hours ago—reports calling it an impending meteorological disaster of biblical proportions with strong mass casualty potential. That’s all the convincing Dean needed to grab Cas and have him fly them over to Chicago. Lucky for them, Death was neither hiding nor all that discreet about the flock of reapers he had convened around his location—practically a beacon for Cas’ angelic eyes. 

Now that they’re here, though, Dean finds himself stuck. Unable to decide what his next move should be, or if he should even move at all. Given that Cas has gone stock-still and silent beside him, he thinks he’s not alone in the feeling. He glances around, once more taking inventory of the limp corpses strewn about the restaurant; there are no wounds, no blood. They’re just dead. An unpleasant chill rolls down his spine, a lump lodging itself in his throat. He gulps, and he’s certain it’s the loudest sound in the room. 

“Dean Winchester,” Death says, tone eerily level. It’s not a greeting. Just an acknowledgement. 

Dean straightens like a soldier at attention. He holds his breath. 

“Come. Sit.” 

Death is watching him impassively. His face is unrevealing, subdued, but Dean feels every ounce of his command under the weight of his hawkish gaze. 

Haltingly, Dean approaches, tossing a wary look Cas’ way as he does. 

“Your pet angel is free to stay, but do know: he is just as vulnerable to me as he is to the other Horsemen. His function to you here amounts to little more than that of a security blanket.” 

It’s not a threat, but it is. A perfectly polite way of saying that Cas can be dropped as easily as Dean. Neither is safe. Neither can save the other. Their breaths continue to draw because Death allows it. 

No sudden moves. Comply to the letter. Maybe they make it out alive in the end. 

Dean sits across from Death, movements stiff. His heart is a frantic, fluttery bird in the cage of his ribs. 

Death doesn’t say anything. He continues to eat his pizza, unfazed. Dean casts another sideways look at Cas, not particularly sure why since it’s been firmly established that Cas is useless here. Shit, maybe he really is Dean’s security blanket… 

Cas gives him a subtle nod. Probably an attempt at encouragement. Dean, in spite of his present position, has to suppress the urge to roll his eyes. Yeah, big help, buddy. Thanks. 

Dean clears his throat, intending to speak, but Death beats him to it.

“It took you long enough to find me. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.” 

Dean doesn’t know how that makes him feel. He says as much. “Kinda got mixed feelings about that.” He’s aiming for nonchalance, but he misses the mark entirely. All he’s done is gone and made things exponentially more tense just by opening his stupid mouth. He’s not one to learn his own lessons, though. When he’s met with nothing but silence, he adds with a pathetic crack in his voice, “so is this the part where you kill me?” 

Death regards him with a flat glance. “You have an inflated sense of your importance. To a thing like me, a thing like you…” He pauses to take a sip of his drink. “Well, think how you would feel if a bacterium sat at your table and started to get snarky.” 

Dean doesn’t respond. He stays sitting rigid and upright with his eyes not quite able to meet Death’s gaze as he’s regaled with all the ways in which he’s found to be utterly and pitifully insignificant. Death is old. That’s about as much as Dean can grasp at this point. The rest is less than comprehensible. Dean’s faced monsters and demons and angels with powers beyond imagining, and he’s still never come close to feeling quite this rattled before. Hell, even the other Horsemen never threw him this badly. 

Death ends his monologue with an invitation for Dean to eat, which doesn’t feel much like an invitation at all when he’s taken the liberty of serving Dean a slice and sitting back to watch him until Dean picks up the knife and fork and takes a slow bite. The hand he has holding the fork trembles ever-so-faintly. 

“Good, isn’t it?” Death asks. 

All Dean is willing to manage in reply is a diffident head tilt that only somewhat passes well as an affirmative. 

Another bout of suffocating silence dangles between them. 

Dean’s finding that he’s not much a fan of silence. 

“I gotta ask,” he says before he can think better of it. “How old are you?” 

As it turns out, Death is at least as old as God, possibly older, and one day, God will die and Death will reap Him, too. Not that Dean didn’t already know it, but Death is clearly miles and miles above his three other apocalyptic counterparts in terms of cosmic prowess. 

“Well, this is way above my paygrade,” Dean says. 

“Just a bit.” 

“So then why am I still breathing? Sitting here with you… What do you want?” 

“The leash around my neck off.” It’s the first of anything Death’s said that’s had any kind of identifiable inflection to it. Anger. Disdain. Resentment. “Lucifer has me bound to him—some unseemly little spell. He has me where he wants, when he wants. That’s why I couldn’t go to you. I had to wait for you to catch up.” 

Dean actually finds himself on the verge of apologizing, but Death is plowing on before he can get the chance. He rants about how Lucifer’s made him his personal weapon, how all the mass casualty events since Lucifer’s been released were far from Death’s idea. 

“I’m more powerful than you can process, and I’m enslaved to a bratty child having a tantrum.” 

Dean can imagine why that would be frustrating. “And you think I can unbind you?” 

“There’s your ridiculous bravado again—of course you can’t.” 

Stings a bit. Dean’s not being egotistical; he’s just trying to follow the logic here, of which there seems to be comically little. 

“But you can help me take the bullets out of Lucifer’s gun.” 

Sounds like a plan. Except Dean still can’t puzzle out the logic of this. All he’s been doing to avert the Apocalypse since the day Lucifer was released is falling flat on his fucking face over and over and over again. War slipped through his fingers. Famine and Pestilence wiped the floor with him. The Whore of Babylon was his only win, and he still maintains that he just got lucky there considering his angelic backup was epically sloshed after his days-long ‘God abandoned us all’ bender, and the guy that was supposed to be able to kill her was put down almost as soon as they entered the room to confront her; Dean had nothing left to lose by picking up that little stick of destiny and taking a stab at the Whore himself. 

Needless to say, Death’s faith feels more than slightly misplaced. 

Death fixes Dean with a heavy stare, grimly serious. He presents the ring on his finger—large with a pearl-white accent in the middle. “I understand you came for this.” 

Dean eyes the ring, swallows roughly. He can’t tell if there’s a right or wrong answer to that, so he just says honestly, “yeah.” It comes out sounding more like a question than a sturdy confirmation. 

“I’m inclined to give it to you.” 

“To give it to me—?”

“That’s what I said.” 

Dean is powerless to do anything other than gawk. Looking dumb as all hell, he’s sure. He glances back at Cas, and he has that deep, pinched expression on his face that implicates how colossally confused he is. Whatever it is either of them was expecting in a conversation with Death, this sure as shit ain’t it. 

Dean returns his attention to Death just in time to see him remove his ring. 

“There are conditions,” he says. 

Apprehension sinks like a lead weight in Dean’s chest. Nothing’s ever easy, is it? “Okay. Like?” 

“You have to do whatever it takes to put Lucifer back in his cell.” 

Just like that, relief releases the weight. Shit, if that’s all Death wants him to do, then they’re definitely on the same page. 

“Of course,” Dean says.

“Whatever it takes,” Death repeats. 

Brow furrowing, Dean affirms, “that’s the plan.” 

“No—no plan. Not yet.” Okay. Whatever that means. Death doesn’t actually change the way he’s looking at Dean, and yet his gaze feels astronomically more dour than it did only seconds ago. “Your brother. He’s the one who can stop Lucifer—the only one.” 

Dean’s heart promptly lurches up to his throat. Sam’s been kept out of this, and for damn-good reason. Not only has he shown himself to be untrustworthy where demons and their blood are concerned, but his nature as Lucifer’s one true vessel was just a catastrophe waiting to happen. How in the world could Sam be the answer? 

“Wait, you think—?” 

“I know,” Death insists, and leaves no room for argument. Not that Dean would dare in the first place. “This ring is more than a symbol of my power. There’s a reason the Horsemen are released at the same time the final seal is broken and Lucifer is freed from the Cage.” 

It takes a moment, but it eventually dawns on Dean—the suggestion underlying Death’s words. “The rings form a key.” 

“Of sorts,” says Death. “If I give you this, Dean, it’s because you’ve promised you’re going to let your brother say ‘yes’ to Lucifer and jump right into that fiery pit.” 

Dean’s lungs seize in his chest like a reflex, heart squeezing so tight it may very-well have imploded in on itself. There’s a blinding flash of lightning, and a crash of thunder that rattles the foundations of the parlor, and no one in the room moves an inch. 

Looking Dean straight in the eyes, Death offers his ring across the table. “So, do I have your word?” 

Dean’s gut instinct is to shout no, loud and proud and a hint of enraged; he and Sam may be estranged (and that’s putting things nicely), but Sam is still his little brother and nothing could ever convince Dean to sacrifice him to the fucking pit. And screw anybody, impossibly powerful entity or not, who thinks otherwise. 

But Dean doesn’t say no. Instead, he does something enormously more stupid. He says, “okay, yeah—yes,” and reaches his hand out to accept the ring, because he has this absurd notion ingrained in his head that he can lie right to Death’s face and get away with it scot-free. He’s just saying what he needs to in order to get the ring; that’s all. Given that he also needs to acquire the other three, it’ll be some time before Death will be expecting him to make good on his promise. He has time. 

…Right? 

Two things happen at once, then. The first of which is that Death goes still— hauntingly still—holding his ring mere inches from Dean’s grasp. The second of which is a commotion nearby as Cas suddenly stumbles and braces himself against the back of Dean’s chair, his head cradled in his hand with a pained scrunch in his face. 

“Cas? Hey—” Dean leaps up from his seat, grabbing Cas’ arm to stabilize him. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?” 

Death answers for him. “The angels are clamoring.” He stands, slipping his ring back onto his finger. “I fear, Dean, that it has taken you much too long to find me.” 

“What? What do you mean?” Dean demands, something like the sensation of barbed wire gripping him by the throat—panic, but he swallows it down. 

Death’s stare is grave as he says, “Lucifer has found his vessel.” 

It’s nothing but chaos around Dean—the storm swelling ferociously outside, Cas near to buckling under the intensity of Angel Radio’s bellowing voices, the flicker of faltering electricity in the overhead lights—but all of it crumbles away. His vision goes black around the edges, tunneling in on Death. The beat of his heart goes thready and erratic. His head spins wildly. His blood runs cold, down to the marrow of his bones. 

Lucifer has found his vessel. But Lucifer ‘found’ his vessel months ago; Sam had called Dean to tell him so. And of course Dean was unnerved by the news, unsurprised though he ultimately was. He was convinced, however, that he and Sam were better off apart, in part because he wasn’t sure he could trust Sam after the whole Ruby debacle, but primarily because he thought it would make them less manipulable to the whims of Heaven and Hell. Sam could handle Lucifer’s nagging to be let in as long as Dean wasn’t there for leverage, and Dean could handle Heaven’s guilt-tripping bullshit as long as Sam wasn’t there to be dangled in front of him like bait. It was working. Just fine. It was… 

So why…? 

Dean knows better than to think Death is overblowing something as small as Lucifer making another pass at Sam. When it comes down to it, Lucifer finding his vessel is only an urgent issue if… 

If Sam said ‘yes.’ 

But that’s ludicrous. Sam would never— could never. Surely, this has to be a false alarm. It has to be. There’s no way it isn’t. 

“I don’t—” Dean shakes his head, a sick roiling feeling in his stomach. “I don’t understand.”

“You know perfectly well what I mean,” Death says, and then vanishes. Not a trace of him left behind save for his half-eaten pizza and the hollow bodies of souls senselessly reaped. 

Bolts of lightning strike the ground outside, the explosive clap of thunder shattering the glass windows at the front of the restaurant. The lights extinguish. Floodwaters from the street seep in from the cracks under the front and back doors. 

Dean whips his head every which way, disoriented, thrown off his axis. He’s never even set foot on a boat at sea, but this feels a lot like having a dozen holes blown in the hull and not knowing which ones to plug to keep the whole damn thing from capsizing. What is he supposed to do? Who does he help? How does he help? Three million people can’t just die. 

“Dean—” 

He barely processes that Cas is addressing him until he’s already gripped tight by the shoulder and hurtled through space. The pizza parlor disappears in the blink of an eye, and in one awful second of violent, dizzying spinning of the world around him, he’s suddenly back in Bobby’s kitchen. 

Dean teeters on his feet a bit; Cas balances him with a firm grasp on his arms. “Dean, are you—?” 

“We have to go back.” It slips out, unbidden. Dean doesn’t even realize he says it out-loud. 

“What?” Cas squints at him, looking painfully confused. 

“We have to go back,” Dean says again, and this time, he says it with purpose. He shrugs Cas’ hands off of him, pinning him under a steely glare, panic utterly forgotten. “All those people are gonna die if we don’t go back there and help them, Cas. Take us back. Now.” 

“It’s hopeless, Dean. We can’t help them.” 

“We don’t give up just because shit gets hard, man. We have to try. What the hell is the matter with you?” 

“We did try. We failed. We were too late.” 

“Bullshit! There’s always something we can do.” There’s a sting behind Dean’s eyes. He doesn’t get it. He’s angry, invigorated, up to the impossible fucking task, and yet the usual fire that burns hot and bright in his chest is nowhere to be felt. It’s cold and hollow and dark, and his eyes burn instead. It makes no sense. 

Cas gives him a sullen look that feels a lot like pity, and Dean resents it immediately. “Not this time, Dean.” 

Bobby wheels in then. 

Before he can say anything, Dean pinches the bridge of his nose and mutters, “not now, Bobby. Whatever it is, it can wait—” 

“It can’t,” says Bobby. 

Dean turns to face him and falters. He’s known Bobby nearly all his life; not once has he seen him scared. Sure, he knows Bobby must’ve been scared plenty of times, but the man’s never let anyone see it. 

Right now, there’s no pretense. No curmudgeonly old-man bluster to cover the trepidation in his gaze, the terror carved into the deep lines of his face. 

Dean sees it clear as day: Bobby is shit-scared. And the coldness in Dean’s chest only grows more icy. Something like dread. Something like foreboding. 

“You boys ought to see this.” With that, Bobby wheels himself back out to the living room. 

Only then does Dean pick up on the tinny voice of a news presenter filtering through the TV. He looks to Cas, Cas looks to him, and Dean gets the sense that both of them are wearing the same wary faces. They follow Bobby and park themselves beside him in front of the TV. 

There’s a red banner scrolling by on the bottom. ‘Breaking News’ in all-caps. The usually-peppy young anchor looks visibly distraught as she speaks. 

“In an unprecedented event meteorologists are calling downright impossible, a violent storm has destroyed large sprawls of Chicago and neighboring areas. Aerial footage shot from local news choppers shows the city submerged under several meters of floodwater pushed inland from Lake Michigan by hurricane-force winds never before seen in the region’s history. We don’t yet have an estimate on the number of casualties, but we do know that Chicago is home to nearly three-million people, none of which were given enough warning to evacuate before the storm hit. The losses will be unimaginable.” 

Dean breathes a heavy exhale, dragging his hand down his face. “Yeah, we knew this was coming, Bobby—didn’t need you to rub salt in the wound. Which is very fresh, I might add.” Sardonic quips are probably the least appropriate reaction in this situation, but Dean already feels snuffed-out and disturbingly cold, and his stupid eyes still sting, and it’s easier to wrap it all up, stuff it down tight, and keep on keeping on. There’s something big and stifling silently, invisibly occupying the room with them, too, but Dean doesn’t address that either. Within himself or outwardly. One damn thing at a time. Though he can’t stop the terrible, haunting thought from striking him like a sharp lance through the chest: the fact that—in the past however many months, he hasn’t felt the deep-cutting ache of Sam’s absence quite as much as does now. 

God, his eyes fucking sting. He wishes they’d just stop. 

“There’s more,” Bobby says. The words waver on their way out. 

He plucks the remote from the arm of the sofa and turns up the volume a few notches. 

“If you’re just joining us now, we’ve received word that Detroit has suffered a sudden citywide total blackout, the source of which remains unclear. We have caught reports of what appears to be a large, bright explosion that could be observed from cities as far as fifty miles outside of Detroit. Cities as far as a hundred miles away, as well, have reported seismic disturbances up to 4.5 in magnitude around the same time. Additionally, we have just begun to hear from authorities in Ann Arbor about residents developing mysterious symptoms of an unknown illness soon after the blackout. We’re still unable to recover the live feed from Detroit at this time.” 

“What’re the odds this is nuclear in nature?” Bobby asks, seemingly to no one in particular—open to anyone for comment. 

Dean slides a tense glance in his direction. “What, like War decided to make his comeback with the biggest bang he could manage?”

Bobby shrugs, listless. “I’d believe anything at this rate.” 

“It isn’t nuclear,” says Cas matter-of-factly. “The cacophony over Angel Radio some minutes ago was a rallying call. Michael was summoning the angels to band together for a collective effort to smite Lucifer where he stood—in Detroit. The destruction is similar to that of a nuclear explosion; that much is true. The city’s likely been leveled or close to it, and the effects of smiting sickness will be felt by all humans within tens of miles from ground-zero. The chances of anyone still left alive in Detroit are exceptionally low.”

Dean’s breath snags in his throat, nearly choking him. That same horrible feeling from the pizza parlor starts to creep back in, crawling through his skin, clawing its way into him—the sense of total, abject helplessness blended with the insatiable urge to do something. Jump in and fix the broken thing before him. Only it’s not the world rapidly deteriorating around him that he’s desperate to fix. 

Since he and Sam went their separate ways after River Pass, Dean’s wondered on more than one occasion if he did the right thing by leaving Sam out of all of it. By taking on the fight himself. Moments of weakness late at night when no one could hear his thoughts, yet his thoughts were all he could hear. He told himself Sam was better off. Dean was better off. The whole world was better off with them apart. 

Fuck—Dean wants to undo it. He wants to go back, call Sam, tell him to meet up, set bygones aside and be a united front again. So badly, what he wants to fix most is something he can never erase and rewrite. 

Lucifer found his vessel. His vessel is Sam. And now here Cas is, announcing in not so many words, that Heaven has just obliterated an entire city to neutralize Lucifer and almost assuredly taken Sam with it. 

It’s as close to a sure thing as possible, but Dean still has to ask, “what about Sam?” His own voice sounds foreign to his ears. Quiet and verging on broken. 

“What’s Sam gotta do with this?” says Bobby. 

All Dean has to do is look him in the eyes, and in a matter of seconds, appallment and grief are warring with each other on Bobby’s face. 

“No.” He shakes his head vigorously. “No—” 

“Sam let him in, Bobby,” Dean says. 

“My ass!” 

“He did.” 

“You expect me to believe there’s an ice cube’s chance in hell he’d ever do something so stupid?” Bobby sounds about as angry as Dean wants to be. 

Dean squeezes his eyes shut and ducks his head. “What do you want me to say, Bobby?” 

“‘Just kidding’ would be a great start.”

“I’m not kidding, Bobby.” Dean’s throat feels taut, strangled. 

“Why would he—?” 

Something snaps. Dean’s not remotely sure what it is or why, but like a burst dam, everything comes spilling out of him at once. “Jesus—I don’t fucking know! You think if I had the answers to anything, we’d be where we are right now? I thought I was right when I told Sam to stay the hell away from this, and I was wrong. I thought I was right when I decided to take on the Horsemen with a fallen angel as my only backup, and I failed every step of the way. I haven’t had the answer to one goddamn thing this entire time, so what the fuck makes you think I have it now? I don’t know why Sam said yes, but I think it’s pretty damn clear that it was my fault.” 

Suddenly, his eyes don’t sting anymore, but there’s a chill of tacky, wet tracks on his cheeks, and it feels miles worse than the sting ever did. It hits him then, that that harrowing cold bored deep into his chest is not a sign of emptiness or hollowness, as though his will to fight has been excavated out of him. It’s guilt. The icy herald of which extinguishes fire and oppresses vigor. 

Sam said yes. And that’s on Dean. 

Gritting his teeth, Dean scrubs the tears roughly out of his eyes and addresses Cas. “Well? Could he be alive or not?” 

Cas hesitates, eyes flicking cautiously between Dean and Bobby. “It’s… Possible,” he says. “But even if Lucifer still occupies his vessel, it’s more likely that his soul was burned out by the smiting.” 

Dean wilts with dejection, and he can feel himself going weak at the knees, but then he’s reeling, because— “wait, what do you mean if Lucifer still occupies his vessel?” 

Cas opens his mouth to answer, but his further moment of hesitation is all the answer Dean needs. 

“You’re saying Heaven just nuked Detroit, and the bastard could still be alive?” 

“It’s not just that he could be alive. It’s most probable,” Cas says. “Lucifer is second only to Michael in terms of raw power under average circumstances, but with him tapped into the powers of the Horsemen, occupying his one true vessel, and Michael left without his vessel, not even the full brunt of Heaven’s joint wrath is likely to have scathed him in any meaningful way.” 

Flashpoint. That’s what those words amount to. A match to tinder, a violent conflagration to chase away the insufferable cold. Dean is seething, all blazing wildfire for blood and dry roots for veins. The anger he’s been desperately searching for within himself announces its resurgence in one big, flashy eruption from the core-outwards. It’s all-consuming, all the air he needs to breathe. 

So, if he’s got this straight, not only has Sam let the devil in, but now the devil might be parading his vacant vessel around like it’s been his all along. It’s sick. It’s twisted. Dean wants to throw up. 

He laughs instead. Utterly humorless and every bit as indecorous as it is maniacal. 

His whole life, it’s been a never-ending stream of ‘take care of your brother, Dean’, ‘don’t let anything happen to your brother, Dean’, ‘your baby brother’s your responsibility, Dean’, ‘you have to watch over your brother, Dean’, ‘keep your brother safe, Dean’—and none of that gave rise to a single thing worthwhile. The one purpose Dean had in his laughably miserable existence was to take care of Sam, and he fucking blew it in the end. He screwed the whole world. Because— what?— he took his role as the biblical ‘Righteous Man’ a little too seriously and couldn’t look past his self- righteous indignation enough to put his faith in Sam again? He distanced himself from Sam and isolated him under the guise of protecting him, like a coward? 

What a pathetic conclusion to an already shit story. 

Dean doesn’t accept it for one damn second. He can’t. Sam was his purpose, and if his purpose ceases to be, then so does he. Sam can’t be gone; Dean won’t allow it. He forbids it. 

By the time he’s reached a verdict on his next grand endeavor bound to turn misadventure, he’s keeled over, hands braced on his knees, stomach aching with the force of his thready laughter. He pulls in a deep breath, straightens back up, and finds Cas and Bobby watching him carefully, befuddled concern shining in their eyes. 

Bobby looks him up and down, a deep wrinkle in his brow. “Dean, are you—?” 

“Fine,” Dean cuts in, running his hands back through his hair. “Yeah, I’m doing—just fantastic.” 

Bobby narrows his eyes skeptically. “You’re losin’ it, boy.” 

“Maybe.” Dean pulls a lopsided grin that probably passes better as a scowl. He digs in his pocket to find his keys. “Anyway, I’m heading out. Don’t wait up for me.” He turns and makes for the door without another word. 

“Hey, where the hell do you think you’re going?” Bobby calls after him. 

“I’m getting Sam back—whatever it takes.” 

“What—you think you’re just gonna waltz your foolhardy ass up to the devil’s front door and get him to turn over Sam’s body and restore his soul as a treat?” 

“Sam ain’t dead, so I’ll settle just fine to have Lucifer kindly return his body,” Dean says, dry and facetious. He reaches for the doorknob, only for Cas to abruptly materialize in front of him and block his access, the beat of invisible wings kicking up a flurry of loose papers. 

“Don’t be stupid, Dean,” he says, all pointed disapproval and flat, gravelly affect. 

“Nice, Cas. You use that persuasive charm of yours on all the girls, or am I special?” Dean makes a bid for the doorknob again. 

Cas snatches his wrist, eyes so very blue and bright in the low light of the foyer, thinned into a stern glare. 

Dean would be lying if he were to say it didn’t throw him for a brief moment—Cas has an absolutely infuriating knack for doing that—but he just as quickly doubles down and glares right back. “Let go.” 

“No.” Cas’ grip flexes around Dean’s wrist, not enough to hurt, but enough to get the point across that he can easily be hurt if necessary. “Your brother is gone, Dean. I know how hard that is for you to accept, but I won’t have you going out and getting yourself killed for no good reason just because you refuse to process your grief.” 

“There’s nothing to grieve,” argues Dean, though it falls woefully flat when his words come out more like a diffident murmur than a staunch proclamation. 

Cas searches his face, an odd and out-of-place softness sneaking in to ease the harshness of his gaze. “Okay,” he says. “Even so, you gain nothing by offering yourself up to Lucifer on a silver platter. You want your brother back? Then come up with a plan that doesn’t involve throwing yourself away like common trash.” 

It’s obvious he’s only indulging Dean; he doesn’t actually believe there’s even the minutest chance that Sam’s still alive. But he’s saying what he has to to get Dean to fall in step. Or, perhaps it’s a little less detached and unsympathetic than that. Cas has never been one to have much faith in the certifiably insane plans Dean enacts, but he’s always followed him into the line of fire anyway. Maybe it’s no different this time either. 

Dean stares him down, indignance simmering. He jerks himself out of Cas’ grasp, but he doesn’t reach again for the doorknob. Objectively, it’s a submission, and they both know it, but at least Dean gets to feel like he’s still rebelling. 

There’s an uneasy stillness between them. Slowly, Bobby wheels up to them, and he camps long enough in Dean’s periphery that Dean can’t help but finally pay him the mind he’s obviously seeking. He turns to Bobby, sees that he has his arm outstretched, palm-up—an expectant gesture. 

Dean sighs, rolls his eyes, and drops his keys into his hand. 

“You’re doing the right thing, Dean,” Bobby tells him. 

Dean scoffs. He gets the eerie sense there’s no such thing in the new world order. “Yeah. Sure.” 

Just as the room seems to be gearing up to take a collective breath of relief—at least on Bobby’s part, and metaphorically on Cas’—there’s a raucous boom of a noise. Something like the strike of a meteor to Earth. The ground shakes, and the structure of the house clatters, releasing tendrils of dust from the ceiling. 

Dean shoots a hand out to steady himself on the nearest wall. “What the hell was that?” 

“Beats the fuck outta me, but I’m sure it ain’t good news,” says Bobby. 

Dean pushes off the wall, aiming for the door once more. He’s halted in his tracks, however, upon seeing Cas, who hasn’t moved an inch despite the tremors still juddering everything around them. There’s a glint in his eyes—something dark, something despairing, something like betrayal. 

For as long as Dean’s known him, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Cas be anything but annoyingly self-restrained, moderately bitchy, or, on occasion, spitefully sanctimonious. Right now, wearing a face Dean can only liken to that of a man fractured, he looks wholly unrecognizable. It’s sudden. Out of the blue. Nothing seems to have brought it on. 

“Cas?” Dean touches a hand to his shoulder, shaking him lightly to rouse him from his trance; Cas blinks, brow scrunching with his typical look of perpetual pensiveness. “You good?” 

“I don’t…” Cas shakes his head, less-so an answer and more like he’s trying to dismiss a thought plaguing his mind. “I’m not sure. Something doesn’t feel right.” 

“Uh, yeah, no shit, buddy. The Apocalypse is literally upon us, and from the sound of it, the sky just fell.” 

“That’s not—” 

Another deafening crash quakes the ground beneath them, knocking over stacks of books, toppling lamps, blowing fuses in the light fixtures. Dean stumbles, but Cas catches him before his knees meet the floor, hauling him back up with sturdy hands. 

Dean mutters an absentminded ‘thanks’ before nudging Cas aside to finally get at the door. Outside, towering plumes of smoke and embers rise up from massive, splintered slabs of flaming marble, scattered about for as far as the eye can see and beyond. Through the smoke and clouds, more slabs continue to plummet to the ground in the distance. 

In a daze, Dean’s feet carry him beyond the threshold of the house, out into the open. He twists and turns and swivels, trying to decipher the scene before him. At some point, his ears must’ve tuned out the mayhem surrounding him, because all he can hear is dull thuds from nearby collisions in place of explosive, earth-shattering roars. He hardly thinks he’s breathing anymore, but it doesn’t seem to matter. He can’t feel it. 

Slowly, he kneels down to pluck a chunk of hot marble out of the wreckage, sweeps the dirt off of it. Etched into every inch of its surface are glowing white symbols, most of which he doesn’t recognize. The few he does recognize he immediately identifies as Enochian sigils. 

“The Foundations of Heaven.” Cas’ voice cuts through the dim static in Dean’s ears, gloomy and somber. “They’re crumbling.” 

Dean peers up at him, and he thinks there’s a poetically morbid sort of irony in the way Cas’ form is framed by the setting sun. Halo-like yet not heavenly. An angel in among the rubble of the pearly gates he fell from and brought down with him. At least—that’s how Dean’s sure Cas sees it. The grim lack of light in his eyes and the heavy frown weighing on his lips paints that exact picture with uncanny clarity. 

“What does that mean?” Dean dares to ask. He didn’t even know the ‘Foundations of Heaven’ existed, much less in a physical, tangible form that can crash to Earth, but somehow, that seems beside the point. 

“It’s what happens when the angels have abandoned their post. Heaven can no longer sustain itself and the very fabric of it decomposes.” Cas tips his face up to the sky—probably a trick of the light, but Dean could swear there’s the subtlest glassy sheen in his eyes as he tracks yet another marble slab’s descent to the ground. “The angels threw everything they had at Lucifer, and he’s still standing. They’re leaving before he can retaliate and eradicate them all.” 

That gives Dean pause. Bewildered, he rises back to a stand. “What about Michael? He’s just gonna hand Lucifer the world? No muss, no fuss?” 

“Michael’s not one to bet on losing battles, Dean. The time to beat Lucifer has passed, and he knows it.” Cas shakes his head and meets Dean’s gaze solemnly. “It’s too late now.” 

Dean’s struck with the urge to burst into another fit of laughter—easier than screaming, much easier than crying. And really, it is funny, isn’t it? Everything that could possibly have gone wrong has gone wrong, and still, there are more and more ways for things to go wrong that none of them could’ve ever conceived of. Every step of the way—wrong, wrong, wrong, and it just keeps going. 

Now the angels are abandoning the world to ruin. Michael’s taking his army and damning all of humanity to hell. In fact, he’s determined Dean to be such a fruitless and worthless ‘Plan Z’ that he’s not even going to bother contacting him one last time to drag a ‘yes’ out of him. The hilarity is in the faithlessness. Dean can’t even be mad; God knows he sure as shit doesn’t have any faith in him either. 

Dean doesn’t laugh, ultimately. If for no other reason than the fact that he’s tired. The wildfire in his veins burns eternally, but he can’t even act on it. 

He regards Cas, takes in the total upheaval of his usually well-tempered demeanor—the dilemma in his eyes, the distress he carries in his stance without knowing it. He looks human. More than that, he looks terrified to feel like one. 

It occurs to Dean then: if the angels are leaving, wouldn’t Cas want to follow, fallen though he is? 

Something about the mere thought of that makes Dean’s heart drop and his stomach churn, an acid-burn rising in his throat. He tamps it down, feeling silly, foolish. Of course he’d like for Cas to stick around, but he’s not about to cruelly ask him to stay in a dying world just because Dean feels some type of way about the idea of him making the smart choice and getting out while he still can. He’s not about to ask an angel to rough it with the plight of humanity. 

Modulating his tone carefully, forcing it level as can be, he asks, “what about you?” 

Cas tilts his head, blinking owlishly. “What about me?” 

“Well, the angels are booking it—last chopper out of ‘Nam. Ain’t that your cue to fly your ass out with them?” 

Cas actually manages to look confused and even mildly offended on top of all his distress and dismay. “My place is here, Dean. It has been for a while,” he asserts, so sincere it hurts. 

Dean tries not to let the overwhelming relief that sparks to life in his chest and quells the awful sick feeling in his stomach show on his face. It’s a little disconcerting; he never noticed how much he wanted Cas around until now. He obviously likes the guy, values him as a good friend, but… This relief and the immediacy with which calmness settles over him at the assurance that Cas has no intention of leaving—it’s visceral. The sort of feeling that only comes with a depth of connection beyond plain comrades in arms. 

It makes him wonder: when exactly did Cas graduate from wanted to needed in Dean’s mind? 

Dean doesn’t let himself linger on the thought for long. He doesn’t think he’d ever be able to pin down the answer. 

He quirks an incredulous brow at Cas, because grateful as Dean is that he’s electing to stay, the choice is no less perplexing from a survival instinct standpoint. “You’re that eager to die bloody?” 

Cas inhales, long, slow, exhales; Dean instantly hones in on the expansion and contraction of his chest. Cas doesn’t have a need to breathe, but he breathes now. Dean doesn’t know what to make of it, or if he should make anything of it at all. There’s something nebulously unsettling about it, though—like the niggling sense of discomposure brought forth by an omen. 

“I’m willing to fight bloody,” Cas says. “I can do without the dying.” 

Dean snorts, the beginnings of an inspirited smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth. When it comes down to it, with the heavens literally lying broken at their feet and the forces of Armageddon rising up as they speak, he doesn’t think he could’ve said it any better. Just humanity and a singular angel against the embodiment of unfathomable evil. The hubris to think death isn’t inevitable makes the stains their hands will earn feel worth the trouble of fighting. 

Dean nods to himself, looks to Bobby where he’s sat on the front porch, then looks again to Cas. Resolute, he declares, “then we fight bloody.” 

☽𖤐☾

07.28.09 [11:37 PM]

The kid said yes. And I wasn’t there. Better late than never though, right? I don’t know how yet, but I’m gonna get him back. I’m gonna make this right. Somehow, someway, someday. 

☽𖤐☾

AUGUST 16, 2009 || 02:13 AM || 1815 DAYS UNTIL THE END

With a weary sigh, Dean sinks deeper into the pew where he’s tucked himself at the far back corner of the church. Ironically, or maybe the exact opposite of ironically—it’s one of the only structures left in Sioux Falls that came away from Heaven’s crumbling unharmed. 

He has the butt of his shotgun propped on the floor between his feet, his forehead resting on the tip of the double barrel. Not exactly proper gun safety etiquette, but he’s shit outta salt rounds, so it’s not like it’s loaded. His body aches with fatigue, and his head is still pounding from a demon knocking it against a concrete wall a little less than an hour ago. There’s dried blood crusted on his temple, baked onto his hands. It’s starting to itch on his skin. The fact that light hurts his eyes and there’s an irritating foggy dizziness swimming around in his brain isn’t an inspiring sign; he’s had his head cracked enough times to know what he’s in for with symptoms like that. 

Not for the first time in the past couple weeks, the town was invaded by a horde of demons. It just happens to be the first time anyone ‘important’ has died in the fight. There’ve been a few deaths every time, but for the most part, recorded exorcisms Dean and Bobby rigged up through the town’s tornado siren were effective at limiting casualties. Unfortunately, the demons have caught on, and they made sure to tear down the siren this time before coming in to wreak their havoc. 

Something like a couple dozen people died. Another twenty or so were injured, but they’ll live. 

Sheriff Mills didn’t make it, which is a bitch and a half because that woman was single-handedly keeping Sioux Falls from descending into a zoo of hysterics. 

The only reason there’s anything left of the town is because Dean and Cas, by the skin of their teeth, managed to reach the fire engine full of holy water they like to keep on standby. 

Now the whole town’s convened in the church to devise strategy in the fresh absence of Sheriff Mills, and Dean, quite frankly, can’t be assed to tune into the yammering and hollering. It’s all religious zealotry and platitudes about faith and finger-pointing at those who aren’t letting the word of God guide them. It’s horseshit, is what it is. And Dean hasn’t one iota of patience for it. 

He feels a little bad about it. Bobby’s trying to get it through everyone’s thick skulls that no amount of prayer will save them—that God and the angels have fucked off forever and left everyone to die. But Bobby’s infamously well-known for his copious alcohol consumption, and no one cares what he has to say. Cas tries to pipe up, but he’s been far too honest about what he is and how that qualifies his knowledge, so everyone thinks he’s crazy. 

Ever since the first bit of suspicion was roused that his stores of grace have turned finite in the wake of Heaven’s abandonment, he has nothing to show for his claims that he’s an angel. His efforts to conserve what he has are strict—emergency use only. He’s not about to waste precious grace on a performative miracle just to validate himself. 

Thus, Bobby is nothing more than a disreputable drunk, and Cas is nothing more than a headcase. Their words fall on deaf ears. 

And Dean—well, it’s not like he has anything to say that Cas and Bobby haven’t already tried to make people understand. Besides, what would be the end goal? From the bits and pieces Dean vaguely bothers to listen to, it sounds like the town’s trying to elect a new leader—someone who will ‘guide them to the light’ or whatever; at least, that’s what the preachy pastor up at the front is saying. Dean sure as hell ain’t gonna make a bid for that. Not only is there no light to guide anyone to, but he’s no leader either; plus, he’s still trying to come up with a plan to get Sam back without it being a totally worthless suicide mission. His hands are full. 

Cas plops down beside him with an exasperated huff. Dean musters just enough energy to toss him a sidelong glance and scoffs, amused. Cas looks ruffled, peeved, like a parent who’s just suffered the longest day surrounded by screaming toddlers. In a sense, that’s probably what it feels like to be an eons-old angel in the midst of frenzied humans who don’t listen to reason. 

“Had enough of human daycare?” Dean quips, sporting an obnoxious grin when Cas sends him a withering glare. “Bet you’re real glad you stayed to fight the good fight now.” 

“It beats being a punching bag for my traitorous family,” Cas mutters bitterly. 

“Sure.” Dean dips his gaze lower and purses his lips disapprovingly at the state of Cas’ wardrobe; his dress shirt’s in tatters, tie completely askew around his neck, one sleeve of his trenchcoat is missing entirely, and there are bloodstains, old and new, blotched all over him. “You should really change out of those rags, man. No wonder the townspeople think you’re crazy.” 

“I like these clothes, Dean.” 

“Yeah, but at some point, they cease to be clothes anymore, and you passed that milemarker about two-and-a-half demon incursions ago.” 

Cas doesn’t dignify that with a response. He stares at Dean for a moment, not subtle at all in the way he takes inventory of him. He fixates on one specific part of Dean’s face—the side of his head where it’s all bloody and blooming with bruises—and concern slowly etches itself into Cas’ features. 

Dean knows what he’s thinking. Without missing a beat, he says firmly, “no, Cas.” 

“I should heal you.” 

“No.” 

“You’re concussed.” 

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” 

Cas’ lips press into a thin, tense line. He breathes out curtly. “I don’t like it.” 

“Tough.” Dean pauses, studies the blatant disgruntlement in the set of Cas’ jaw, the stroppiness of his posture—and sighs. “I’ll take a trip down to the clinic later. Don’t worry about it.” It’s an assurance only for Cas’ benefit. Dean knows there’s nothing to do about a concussion aside from waiting it out. But if it gives Cas some peace of mind and gets him to stop looking like a kicked puppy about his inability to help, then fine. 

A gentle warmth shimmers in Cas’ eyes, smoothing the rough edges of his vexation. “Thank you.” 

Dean waves him off. “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” 

He turns his attention to the debate toiling on at the front of the church. It’s grown markedly more heated since Dean last tuned in. Bobby’s given up; he’s just sitting off to the side with his head in his hand, massaging away what’s probably a wicked annoyance headache. Meanwhile, the pastor and a handful of cops are locked in a ridiculous pissing contest to determine who gets to be dumbass-in-chief. It’s all very dramatic, and, in Dean’s humble opinion, rather pathetic. Leave it to humanity to capitalize on the first opportunity amid chaos to grab power. 

None of these assholes know what the hell they’re talking about, and yet they all claim to know what’s best. The truth of the matter is, every single person currently vying for the leader’s mantle would run this town into the ground within a week. 

“I don’t see this ending in any way other than disaster,” Cas grumbles under his breath. 

Dean hums in agreement. “Yeah, no kidding.” 

They go quiet for a time, and then Cas says, “they might listen to you.” 

Dean’s jaw tenses, eyes narrowing in preparation to cast a warning glance Cas’ way. This isn’t the first time Cas has brought it up. Or Bobby. When the heavens fell and the first horde of demons stormed the town, it was Dean that coordinated directly with Sheriff Mills to relay the right information to keep people safe. Nobody questioned him because they didn’t know him. The first impression most people were getting of him was him swooping in and saving their asses. As it stands, when Dean has something to say, he’s usually heard and respected. 

But Dean’s been keeping a stubborn distance between himself and anyone’s perceived idea that he’s a leader. The second it feels like people are starting to follow him outside of a fight too, he shuts it down swiftly and decisively. He retreats. Not because he’s afraid, but because he just doesn’t have the bandwidth to be caring for a couple hundred people on top of his aims to find Lucifer and cast the son of a bitch back into the pit. 

He can’t find Sam and bring him home if he’s stuck playing everybody else’s big brother. 

Cas knows that. Bobby knows that. Somehow, it doesn’t stop them from making pointed suggestions that Dean step up to the plate anyway. 

Dean breathes steadily out his nose. “Cas, you know I—” 

“And how’s that going so far?”

“What?” 

“I understand you want to find your brother, Dean. But unless you’ve made any headway on a plan to actually confront Lucifer, what good is laboring away day in and day out, pouring over nationwide radio communications in the hopes that somebody somewhere might have spotted him?” 

As per usual, Cas lacks the decorum that comes with decades of living entrenched in human social customs to deliver his stance on things in a way that’s not blunt and more than a little affronting. Normally, Dean extends him the grace of understanding he’s not being malicious—but this is Sam they’re talking about. 

Dean glowers at him, face twisting up with ire. “I’m not wasting my time by searching for my brother, Cas.” 

“I’m not saying you are.” Cas meets his scornful gaze, and his expression is staggeringly soft, imploring. “I’m saying it might not be a bad idea to expand your resources. These people do listen to you more often than not. Would it not be an asset to let that work in your favor?” 

Reluctantly, Dean considers this. Sometimes he forgets that Cas was once a commander in Heaven. In fairness, since Cas fell to Earth, it hasn’t really come up or been relevant in any capacity. Actually, Cas has seemed much more content to follow on Dean’s heels than to try and establish himself as an authority on their missions. But on occasion, like now, Dean is reminded that Cas does, in fact, know a thing or two about leading a flock. He knows the value in being the one in charge, even if he prefers not to be. 

What’s pissing Dean off is how quickly he’s realizing Cas has a fucking point. If Dean steps up, becomes an effective leader people can consistently rely on, then he can fairly ask for their help in exchange. His people become a resource in themselves. That’s the self-serving side of it anyway. The more altruistic side of it is that Dean is presently watching three bozos with the combined IQ of a McChicken duke it out for the chance to be called king, and if no one else intervenes, one of them is going to see to Sioux Falls’ demise in a matter of days. Try as Dean might, much as he’s occupied with finding his brother, that shit’s impossible to ignore. 

He shakes his head at himself, acutely aware that the righteous knight in shining armor in him has already made up its mind. God damn it. 

He gives Cas an unimpressed look. “You’re a real pain in my ass sometimes, you know that?” 

Cas’ brow furrows, head tilting faintly. “I don’t see how that sensation correlates with me, but—” 

Dean rolls his eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ—get up, will you?” He stands, bullies Cas up from the pew, and grabs his hand to lead him to the front of the church. 

Row by row, he can feel every pair of eyes in the room latch onto him and track his movements as he passes by with Cas in tow. Whispers and curious murmurings filter through the raucous argument by the church podium. 

Dean halts just short of the squabbling men. Only once does he bother to grab their attention politely—a simple “hey, fellas” that goes entirely ignored. And that’s all the civility Dean has the mental bandwidth for. 

He finds Bobby and tosses his shotgun over to him; Bobby catches it with a shocking level of ease given his limited mobility. Then Dean pulls his Colt M1911 from the back of his waistband, cocks it, and raises his arm straight up to fire off a couple rounds at the ceiling. 

The men in front of him flinch, ducking their heads with their hands flying to cover their ears. The ensuing silence is tense, thick enough to cut with a knife. Dean, for one, finds it blissful. He didn’t realize how irritated he was by the ceaseless petty bickering until it finally stopped. Though, the gunshots definitely didn’t do his concussed brain any favors. His already raging headache flares fiercely, digging in right behind his eyes. Great. 

He wrestles his way past the pain, tucking his pistol back into his waistband and giving the cops and pastor a derisive smirk. “Hi. You done yet?” 

The older deputy has the audacity to look offended. “Who the hell do you think you are, discharging a firearm like that in front of law enforcement officers?” 

“You know damn-well who I am, deputy, so you can put away the virtuous cop act. We both know you’re not gonna throw the guy who’s been pulling everyone’s bacon out of the fire since day one in a cell.” 

“You overestimate your value, boy.” 

“Do I? That’s funny, ‘cause I seem to remember being the one to exorcise that demon out of your wife a week ago while everyone else floundered for the right Latin. I could’ve just dealt away with her using my fancy demon-killing knife—would’ve been faster and safer. Oh, and speaking of…” Dean turns to face the crowd, fishing Ruby’s dagger from its sheath at his hip and presenting it for everyone to get a good look. “You’ve all seen me use this at least once, right? Puts demons down real quick.” 

He sees a few nods of heads, hears some confused mutterings of agreement, and decides that’ll have to do. “Good. Watch this, then.” He turns to Cas, and, with a comical lack of ceremony, thrusts the dagger straight into his chest. 

Cas staggers, just so, but only because he wasn’t expecting to be stabbed. He’s not hurt if the plain, unenthused glare he directs at Dean is any indication. He raises his eyebrows, the perfect picture of mirthless judgment. “Really, Dean?” 

Dean just shrugs and focuses back on the crowd, which is looking considerably more lively now, a room full of eyes blown wide-open and stunned chatter. “Notice how my friend here didn’t fizzle out and croak like a demon, but he’s obviously not wounded like a human? That can only mean he is…” 

He makes an expectant, prompting gesture with his hand until, finally, a voice behind him answers with no small amount of stupefaction, “an angel.” 

Dean snaps his fingers and points back at the pastor. “Gold star for the good pastor!” Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows he’s being a bit of a prick, but he can’t be bothered to care. It’s two in the morning after a grueling battle with a horde of demons that Dean wasn’t sure he was going to make it out alive from, and frankly, the last thing he wants is anything other than an ice-cold beer, a bottle of max-strength Tylenol, and a warm bed—much less to be a referee in a cage match over leadership. Sue him if he’s feeling a little grumpy and discourteous. 

“So… What he said—about God and the angels…” The pastor’s voice is muted, a stark contrast to his earlier fervor. “It’s all true?” 

Silence, again, falls like a heavy blanket over the church. This time, Dean doesn’t revel in it. 

Daunting, isn’t it? The precise moment in which a room packed to the brim with obstinate, unshakable faith erodes into a wasteland of disillusionment. Dean scans the faces in the room, all turned to him, none with the light of hope in their eyes, and his heart squeezes painfully in his chest. No matter how maddening it’s been to contend with the town’s desperate latch onto God (despite the Foundations of Heaven lying in busted heaps in the streets, mind you), Dean is only human, and he understands better than anyone what it’s like to have his faith shattered. What these people are going through now, Dean went through similarly when he learned that it was Heaven’s intention all along to set the Apocalypse in motion. He’s had all the time in the world to adjust and become further jaded by the shit Heaven’s pulled. These people are just getting started. 

“The angels really left? We’re all alone?” A young girl in the front row, no older than fourteen, peers sorrowfully up at Dean. Her mother and father, flanking her on either side, tuck her close, doling reassurances that come out shaky and unconvincing. They’re scared. Just as, or maybe more than their daughter. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean can see Cas opening his mouth to respond, but he apparently thinks better of whatever he was going to say, and then he, like everyone else in the room, is looking at Dean, too. 

Dean frowns, something between solemn and resigned. He’s not exactly a posterboy for optimism; if anything, it’s his cynicism that gets him through the day-to-day slog of things. Can’t be disappointed if he’s not hoping to begin with. But now he’s forced to don a mindset he doesn’t believe in; he has to try, for the sake of the town. Maybe for his own sake as well… 

With a long, self-composing breath, he begins, “look, I’ve been where you are. It ain’t easy—hell, it ain’t even fair. Not by a long shot. But I’ve been doing this a long time, and if there’s anything I could always count on, it’s people. My people. Bobby, Cas, my brother Sam…” He trails off, feeling the strength of his voice waver around Sam’s name. Another breath, a moment to recenter himself—then he clears his throat and continues on: “point is, there’s no such thing as ‘alone’ here. Just ‘cause God’s left the building doesn’t mean there’s no one you can turn to. You have each other. And you have me. Now, I’m no miracle worker; I can’t promise you absolute salvation. I wish I could. But I can promise to use what I know to keep everyone here as safe as possible and teach you how to do the same so we can all have each other’s backs. It ain’t a guarantee of paradise or anything, but I figure it’s gotta beat waiting around to die faithless.” 

Not the rallying speech everyone was looking for, Dean’s sure. But it’s honest. It’s true. It’s not devoid of hope—not colored with it either. He doesn’t profess himself to be a savior, because he isn’t. People have died on his watch, and people will die again. All he can pledge is that he’ll do his damn best. That’ll have to be good enough. 

At the end of this long night, he has hundreds of people looking to him, seeking him in the dark, and he’s soberingly aware of who he’s committed himself to be to them. He’s in it now, irrevocably—for better or worse. 

He glances Cas’ way, and Cas smiles—a faint, mild little thing. Dean breathes, and it feels easier than it probably should. 

☽𖤐☾

08.16.09 [04:51 AM]

Just a brief detour… I couldn’t sit back and do nothing—not when I have the knowledge and skills that I do. I haven’t given up on Sam, though. No matter what. I won’t. 

☽𖤐☾

DECEMBER 24, 2009 || 05:35 PM || 1685 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Dean’s miscalculated shit before. Gotten himself into deep trouble and dragged anyone who just so happened to be around him at the time along for the ride. He’s done it countless times to Sam, a fair few to Bobby, plenty to Cas. Vampires, werewolves, angry spirits, demons, angels—you name it; he’s fucked up and flailed to improvise a way to escape and/or kill it at least once. 

The kind of trouble he’s gotten himself into this time and roped Cas in with him? Well, it’s a new one. That’s for damn sure. 

Steel handcuffs gnaw and pinch at his wrists, his knees protest where they’re pressed into the cold, cement floor, and he’s got fifteen Carbine rifles aimed at his head—well, eight, actually. The other seven are aimed at Cas, who’s knelt beside him in a similarly unfortunate pickle. 

They’re in a bunker of some kind, he thinks. He counted the floors as he and Cas were hooded and hauled down several flights of stairs. The room they’re in now has an utter lack of windows, dank, overhead fluorescent lighting that makes Dean’s eyes sore, and a suspicious drain in the center of the floor rusted over with the distinct hue of old blood. It probably wasn’t always a torture chamber; Dean’s willing to bet that’s a newer development, since the start of the demon incursions months ago. He imagines the military would make a grueling attempt at extracting any information they can from whatever unholy things they manage to trap and interrogate. 

Along that vein, he can’t say he’s terribly thrilled that he and Cas have been taken here, too. 

Truthfully, Dean thinks this is a bit overkill. So two civilians pop into the middle of a highly secure military base out of nowhere; it’s not like these soldiers haven’t faced worse threats before. This situation warrants, like… Three privates with some M18s, tops. 

Cas sighs next to him—like this is the right time to be fucking sighing. “Captured in record time. Bang up job, Dean.” 

Dean whips his head around to level him with an affronted glare. “Alright, you know what? I’m really not a fan of this new attitude of yours.”

“I’m merely emulating your own attitude.” 

“Well, quit it. There’s only room for one snide dick in this duo.” Cas rolls his eyes, and Dean can hardly believe it. “Hey, don’t roll your eyes at me. If you really wanna assign blame here, you’re the one whose heavenly geolocator software crapped out and got us dumped in the middle of the fucking base instead of two klicks out.” 

“I told you that might happen, Dean.” 

“You said it was unlikely!” 

Cas huffs, making an exaggerated show of his irritability. “I didn’t want to come here in the first place.” 

“Oh, well excuse-the-fuck-me, princess. Lemme play a song on the world’s tiniest violin just for you.” 

“You don’t have to be mean,” Cas mutters flatly.

Ever the indignant pest, Dean rebuts, “you started it.” 

There’s a lull in their heated exchange. Cas turns his attention back to the soldiers still silently, unflinchingly gunning them down. “We can leave,” he offers, voice hushed. “Just say the word.” 

“What, and have you accidentally beam us to the surface of Mars? Pass,” Dean grumbles. He takes a breath, a moment to close his eyes and get ahold of his head again; bickering’s cute and all, but it ain’t getting them out of this mess. “There’s a reason they’re all standing there without interrogating us or anything. Let’s just wait it out and see what happens.” 

“We can’t wait too long, Dean.” 

Dean frowns. “I know.” 

They’re on a major time crunch. He’s known it since the night before, when he managed to intercept a radio communication regarding the sudden, inexplicable incitement of riots all over Manhattan—orders transmitted to the West Point garrison to gear up for the possibility of deployment within the next forty-eight hours. Rapid, disproportionate escalation of suspiciously groundless chaos. If that doesn’t sound like War’s MO, Dean doesn’t know what does. And Cas agrees. 

Where they don’t quite see eye-to-eye is on how they should go about handling this knowledge. Cas wanted to head straight to Manhattan, use the cover of pre-existing mayhem to slip in under War’s radar, take a more clandestine approach to subdue him. Dean, on the other hand, has argued that they’re far more likely to get caught up in the riots and become victims of War’s influence doing it Cas’ way, and they should instead take their concern directly to the garrison that’s about to be deployed and used as an instrument to fan the riots’ flames. 

The world at large is already aware it’s the biblical End of Days, at least on a surface level; the existence of demons, impossible natural disasters, and the like is relatively common knowledge at this point. That much is certain, given that the first thing the soldiers did when they bound Dean and Cas up was blast them with a garden hose full of holy water. Dean has reason to believe it isn’t a totally insane longshot that he and Cas can just explain the situation and prevent the garrison from playing right into War’s hands. 

So far, evidently, things aren’t going quite according to plan. 

They sit in tense, uncomfortable silence for what feels like an eternity, gunned down so strictly that even Dean’s restless fidgeting has the aim of the rifles pointed at him shifting around as he does. God forbid a man has to scratch an itch while handcuffed. Technically, Dean could wriggle himself out of the cuffs—easy. Just a matter of a little pop of the thumb joints. But he doesn’t think the soldiers babysitting him would appreciate that very much. He’s trying to make it out of this without being pumped full of lead. 

Finally, the heavy metal door to the right of him swings open, and in walks a sturdy, stern-looking man with salt-and-pepper hair and deep frown lines. His uniform is a dark, muted green, left breast decorated with numerous distinguishment pins. Atop both shoulders is a row of three stars. Same goes for either side of the collar. 

If Dean didn’t think this situation was already massively overblown by the presence of fifteen mid-ranking officers pointing guns at him and Cas, he sure as shit thinks so now with a fucking lieutenant general in the room. 

Fucking hell… 

“Dean Winchester,” the man says. He’s got a mess of papers in his hands, deft fingers flipping through them as he saunters toward the center of the room. “I put in a call to a friend at the FBI, and he told me the strangest thing about you.” 

Dean casts a sideways glance at Cas. To most people, the look Cas gives him in return would appear extremely passive, but Dean knows it to be the kind of look Cas reserves for when he thinks someone’s done something royally idiotic. 

Okay, so maybe Cas had a point when he told Dean not to identify himself with his real name as they were being detained. Sue him, alright? He thought honesty would make them seem more trustworthy. It was a good idea in theory. 

“You came up dead, son. And before that came a lengthy and disturbing criminal record,” the lieutenant general continues, and looks up from his papers to regard Dean. “You wanna tell me exactly how we’re standing face-to-face right now?” 

Dean should definitely just tell it to him straight, but all the guns in the room and the overwhelming sense that he may have slightly shit the bed on this one have him feeling a little fucking on-edge—and it’s only his most baser instinct to try and lighten the mood for his own damn sake. After all, he’s not particularly keen on letting his nerves show in the face of danger. It’s like inviting to be taken advantage of. 

“Well…” he begins, clearing his throat and allowing a tentative smirk to tip the corners of his mouth. “Technically, you’re the only one of us standing, sir.” 

Predictably, he earns nothing but a stony glare in reply, and he can practically feel the ridicule radiating off of Cas beside him. 

Message received: don’t test the guy who can order ‘death by fifteen semi-automatic rifles’ at a moment’s notice. 

Dean’s smirk falls. He draws in a breath, meets the lieutenant general’s harsh gaze. “You’re gonna have a hard time believing this, but all this demon business you’ve been dealing with lately—my family’s been in it a long time. The job ain’t glamorous, and it goes well beyond just demons. Sometimes shit goes sideways and a guy like me gets framed for murder and robbery by a monster and winds up with the FBI on his ass. Eventually, the special agent on my case came to see the truth of the matter and helped me and my brother fake our deaths. Among a whole laundry list of other shit we don’t have time to get into, I’ve been out trying to help people where I can ever since. My friend and I came to help you, too.” 

“Uh-huh,” says the lieutenant general, blatantly unconvinced. His eyes flick toward Cas. “And your friend is?” 

“His name’s Castiel. He’s an angel.” 

The lieutenant general cocks a brow at that—a remarkably subdued reaction. “Do all angels wear cheap denim and flannel, or is it just the ones you’re friends with?” 

“If you think I’m lying, just have one of your guys shoot him.” 

“Dean!” Cas hisses in protest. Dean ignores him. 

“Angels can’t be killed by anything but their own heavenly weapons, and you’ve already confirmed we’re not demons, so go ahead—take a shot.” 

“Dean!” 

“Don’t let his whining deter you. He just gets grumpy when I make him do this party trick without consulting him first.” 

Somehow, despite his bound hands, Cas manages to elbow Dean in the ribs. Quite roughly too. Dean has to suppress a wince and a groan at the sharp ache that sets into his flank. 

The lieutenant general glances between them, wholly devoid of amusement. “Mr. Winchester, I’m not in the business of having civilians shot unprovoked.” 

Dean makes a sweeping perusal of the squad of soldiers still very much pinning them under the aim of their rifles. “My mistake. I should’ve known the guns pointed at our heads were just for funsies.” 

Oddly enough, that gets the lieutenant general to crack a smile. “Funny kid.” He approaches, gets close enough that, when he crouches down in front of Dean, the nametag on his right breast can be read clear as day: Gage, it says. “I’m gonna level with you here, Dean. I’m inclined to hear you out. God knows why, since all you’ve done since I walked in is handwave your way through your bid to persuade me of your innocence, make a ludicrous claim that your friend here is an angel, ask me to shoot said friend, and throw in a few cute little quips along the way.” 

“It’s part of my charm. What can I say?” 

“Don’t push it.” 

Dean ducks his head with a swiftness. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” 

It’s not very often that obedience can be commanded of him. It’s generally not in his nature. But he’ll be compliant if it gets him farther than defiance will. A little trick he picked up from his many years on the road with his father.

“You took a huge risk coming here, Dean. What is it you think you, as a civilian, can do to help us?” 

Dean tosses another brief glance at Cas. He’s not entirely sure why. A subconscious verification that his ‘security blanket’ is still present, perhaps. 

He inhales, deep and deliberately steady, and says, “my father, Corporal John Winchester—he served in the Marine Corps, Echo 2/1. Taught me everything I know about hunting and killing demons, and a few other things he arguably shouldn’t have, like how to build radio decoders to intercept police and military communications—ones that aren’t anywhere near as encrypted as they should be, anyway. All this to say: I heard the chatter last night. Talk of riots with no discernible cause in Manhattan. The President’s planning to deploy your garrison, and since you just said you’re not in the business of shooting civilians unprovoked, I can’t imagine you or your guys are terribly happy about an escalation like that.” 

Gage stares at him, steel-faced and unrevealing of his thoughts. “You’re not doing yourself any favors here. All you’ve done is confess to a federal crime.” 

Dean valiantly curbs the urge to roll his eyes. What the hell even is a federal crime in a world fucked by Armageddon? “Look, what I’m saying is: deploying this garrison would be a huge mistake. Those riots with no discernible cause? I know what’s causing them. And you have to believe me when I say that mobilizing military forces will only play right into the hands of Lucifer himself.”

Gage’s face pinches with disbelief. “Lucifer?” 

“Yes, sir. I don’t doubt you’ve heard the demons talking about him.” Dean pointedly eyes the blood-rusted drain in the middle of the room. “Messy interrogations and all.” 

“You’re saying he’s real and not just some demonic boogeyman?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

Gage scoffs. “Bullshit.” 

“I’m afraid he’s very real,” Cas says. “He used to be sealed in a cage in Hell, but the Heavenly Host had the bright idea of having him set free so the Archangel Michael could defeat him with the promise of paradise on Earth. But Michael lost and left with the other angels months ago; we’ve been living in the Apocalypse ever since.” 

Gage squints at him, and Dean can’t quite tell if it’s out of bewilderment or irritation at the perception that his time is being wasted. “Sounds absurdly convoluted.” 

“I’d invite you to take your complaints up with God, but He abandoned this world long before the angels did.” 

Gage nods slowly. He looks Cas up and down, presses his tongue into his cheek, deliberating. “If you’re an angel like Dean says, why didn’t you join this supposed Heavenly exodus?” 

“I didn’t rebel just to fall to my knees and beg to be taken back by a family that would rather doom humanity to ruin than stay to clean up the mess they made.” Cas looks to Dean, then. “I didn’t rebel just to let my friend die in the end either.” 

Dean blinks at him, then has to look away, because that ridiculous intensity Cas gets in his gaze way too often for comfort has made an inevitable reappearance, and Dean doesn’t think it’s the time or the place for that kind of sentimentality. 

“Noble of you,” Gage comments evenly; it’s really starting to get frustrating not being able to tell what the hell the guy’s thinking or if he’s so much as remotely buying what they’re selling. He’s a virtually impenetrable wall of stoic manner—completely unreadable. “Well—Castiel, was it?” 

“Yes. That’s correct.” 

“You understand this—you being an angel, I mean—is very difficult to believe without some level of evidence, right?” 

“I understand,” Cas says mildly. “And rest assured, contrary to Dean’s overly brazen insistence—” his tone inflects with faint notes of annoyance— “shooting me is not necessary for proof.” 

“Cas!” Now it’s Dean’s turn to protest. And it’s Cas’ turn to ignore him, opening his mouth to forge on without sparing him any acknowledgment. Only Dean doesn’t just roll over and let him do it; he’s nothing if not an effective nuisance. “You stupid bastard—don’t waste your grace on petty shit like this. You already can’t fly straight.” 

There’s a piqued set in Cas’ jaw, but he otherwise doesn’t react to Dean’s objection. He juts his chin toward Gage’s left leg, which Dean’s only now realizing he’s positioned in such a way to keep a good deal of his weight off of it. “You’ve got a bad knee, full of scar tissue and bone spurs from a traumatic injury that happened—maybe ten years ago? You hide it well, but I still noticed the way you tend to favor that side when you walked in. It causes you a fair bit of pain. I can heal it.” 

Gage’s brows lift straight up toward his hairline. “Heal it,” he repeats, doubtful. 

“Yes.” 

Dean shakes his head disapprovingly, but doesn’t make any further remarks. He can bitch and whine all he wants; it doesn’t change the fact that Cas has already made up his mind.

Gage turns his attention to Dean. For once, his face actually has a real, identifiable expression on it. Something between skeptical and positively perplexed. “He’s gotta be shittin’ me here.” 

“Much as I’m on team ‘shoot him and see what happens,’ I won’t lie and say he can’t heal your bum knee,” Dean admits reluctantly. He looks Cas’ way and finds him glowering. Unable to help himself, Dean gives him a mockingly sweet smile. “Go on then, angel. Show the lieutenant general your magic hands.” 

Cas puffs a short breath out his nose, lip twitching irritably. “Irksome pest,” he mutters. 

For some reason, that has Dean’s smile turning a little more genuine. Something about getting under Cas’ skin… Call it a guilty pleasure. It wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying if Cas didn’t have the ambient temperament of a prissy cat. 

There’s a soft clatter of metal against the floor, and then Cas is bringing his hands out from behind his back, which sets off a chain reaction of defensive shuffling—from soldiers advancing a step with their fingers itching at the triggers of their rifles, to Gage tensing warily and leaning back on his heels. 

“Woah, woah, easy now,” Dean says, attemptively placating. His voice wavers a tinge.

Cas is frozen with his hands lifted up, fingers splayed, yielding. He waits. Stifling silence lingers in the air. Gage watches him distrustfully for as long as it takes him to realize that Cas isn’t moving without his say-so. 

With no small amount of begrudging caution, Gage nods his head, gaze glued hawkishly to Cas as Cas slowly reaches a hand out, hovers it a couple inches above Gage’s knee. A soft white-orange glow emanates from Cas’ palm. Seconds tick by, a few too many not to strike Dean as strange. 

He shifts focus up to Cas’ face, sees a tight frown there. A knit between his brows. Features plagued with labored concentration. It becomes concerningly clear in that moment: healing something as simple as an arthritic knee ain’t nearly as effortless for him as it used to be. 

Diplomacy has its price. Dean very much maintains that Cas should’ve just let himself be shot. Now the poor fool’s going to be even more wobbly than usual, and it can only get worse from here. 

Nevertheless, when Cas is done, he retracts his hand, lets it fall to his lap, and Gage tests the integrity of his newly-rebuilt knee. Hesitant, he shifts his weight onto his left leg, pausing with wide, stunned eyes as he comes to the conclusion that whatever pain and stiffness he’s endured forever has vanished without a trace. 

He gawks at Cas, almost comically animated given the stolid Army-bred composure he seems to typically conduct himself with. “How did you do that?” 

“With great effort, unfortunately,” Cas says. A little too honestly, in Dean’s opinion; they are trying to appear indisputably useful here. No reason to plant any more seeds of doubt. 

“Miracles don’t come cheap, I can imagine.” 

“Well, true miracles, sure. But I wouldn’t call—” 

“Yep! That’s right,” Dean cuts in with a chipper tone, because Gage being this impressed is as good a win as they’re gonna get, and Dean’s not about to let Cas talk him out of his admiration. “Miracles—truly the stuff of great, saintly cost. That’s why they’re so rare, right, Cas?” 

Cas’ eyes thin into a scrutinizing glare. He tips his head, just a smidge, like he’s weighing whether or not he should follow Dean’s lead. Luckily, he sees reason and says, “yes. That’s right.” 

Gage, still visibly reeling with how… Frankly dazzled he seems by Cas’ charity, accepts this with no further questions. He stands, turns back to his soldiers, tells them to lower their weapons. Cas stands too, albeit with halting uncertainty. But once he affirms to himself that he won’t be barked at to get back down on the ground, he stoops to help Dean up to his feet, a sturdy grasp under his arms. He slips the handcuffs off Dean’s wrists with the ease of a gentle tug. 

“Thanks,” Dean mumbles. He massages the skin where the cuffs have rubbed it red and raw, grimacing. 

Cas reaches for him, hand readied to mend. “Here. Let me—”

“Don’t even think about it, Cas. If I’m not letting you heal my concussions and broken ribs, I’m sure as hell not letting you heal some superficial boo-boos.” 

Cas sighs, hand flopping back to his side. Truly, Dean doesn’t know where his head’s at sometimes. He himself emphasizes the importance of conserving his grace every chance he gets, and yet any time Dean has a bump or scratch or winds up a little shaken, Cas is right there in a heartbeat, offering to blow his grace on something trivial. 

“So, Dean,” Gage says; in no time at all, he’s reverted back to his stoic, no-nonsense self. He meets Dean’s eyes. “What is it you were saying about Manhattan?” 

Dean’s chest deflates with a breath of relief. They’ve done it. Not that he’ll ever tell Cas this, but there was definitely a part of him that was not at all confident that this plan would work out. 

“Well, sir…” He swallows, dons a sheepish smile. “How do you feel about learning that Lucifer and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are real on the same day?” 

☽𖤐☾

SEPTEMBER 21, 2009 || 09:28 PM || 1779 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Most nights are like this now—Dean hunched over a map of the local area, bouncing questions from one end of the police station conference room to the other and dispensing swift, decisive instruction in return. 

“Where are we on perimeter warding?” he asks to no one in particular. 

Chief Deputy John Ambrose answers, “something like ninety percent, give or take a bit. Still got some chinks in the armor around eastside, but the lower deputies are working on fixing it up. Everything should be covered by morning.” 

“And they know the right combination of Devil’s Trap symbols for ward weaving, right? I don’t want another repeat performance of last week’s slip-up.” 

‘Last week’s slip-up’ being some boneheaded rookie officer painting sigils in the incorrect order on the northern perimeter even after Cas, following weeks of grueling study and experimentation with the hypothetical concept of demon warding that doesn’t involve incalculable amounts of hexbags, salt, and iron, had explicitly stated the importance of proper symbol orientation. The town was up all night chasing down rogue demons that broke through and lit up Main Street. It’s astounding that no one died. 

“Yes, sir. They’ve been briefed thoroughly. Your angel made sure of that.” 

Dean scowls into his glass of whiskey as he lifts it to his lips. “Don’t call me ‘sir,’ Johnny. You know I hate it.” 

John grins, all wry and a hint shit-eating. “Of course, sir. Very well, sir.” 

Dean rolls his eyes, shakes his head, sets his glass aside. He may have been made whatever the apocalyptic analogue for ‘sheriff’ is, but he’s not much a fan of being addressed like it. This ain’t the fucking military, for Christ’s sake. 

He averts his attention back to the map. To most, it’d look like an unintelligible amalgamation of messy scribbles, but it reads like a vivid story to Dean. Red X’s for known demon hotspots. Blue outlines for nearby municipalities with established and continued contact. Black asterisks for areas of lost contact. Orange borders for weak perimeters; green for secured perimeters. Bold, purple blocks where roads have been cut off. Looks like a goddamn mess because it is a goddamn mess. 

Dean glimpses an area out east. It’s surrounded by red X’s, and the stretch of interstate west and east of it is blocked out in purple. “Bobby, you get any word back from Valley Springs about establishing a resource channel yet?” 

“Not yet.” Bobby wheels himself closer to get a look at the map and grimaces in a way that makes Dean think they’re noticing the same grim thing. 

Despite the obvious, Dean asks, “any reason they might be held up?” 

“Other than the very real possibility the demons might’ve burned ‘em to the ground already? Not that I can think of.” 

“Alright.” Dean straightens and pinches the bridge of his nose. “We’ll try them again in the morning. If all we get is crickets, do we have people who’re ready and willing to go scout it out?” 

“You mean, like… A reconnaissance mission?” 

Dean shifts his gaze to the young deputy loitering by the door. Rick Barlowe. Nice kid, not the sharpest. Good with Latin, though. That’s the Catholic in him. 

“Something like that,” says Dean. 

“Is that really a good idea? I mean—don’t we have our hands full as it is?” 

Dean’s not opposed to being challenged; it keeps him sharp, alert, more self-assured if he can explain his reasoning for a decision without tripping over a gnarly branch of clouded judgment or recklessness. 

“I’m only talking about a small team of three-to-four, Rick; I hardly think that’ll put us in dire straits.” 

“Still. Why bother, you know? If Valley Springs has been overrun by demons, there’s not much we can do about it. Nor am I convinced it’s worth the trouble. What do they have resource-wise that we don’t have already?” 

And that’s where Dean loses his will to be challenged on the matter. Not just because the lack of consideration for neighboring towns enduring the same shit as Sioux Falls leaves a sour taste in his mouth, but also because it doesn’t take a genius to know resources are finite. Even if the kid wasn’t thinking as far ahead as Dean is with these resource channels, he should still be able to see the value in building a rapport with other communities. 

But one can’t ‘sternly scold’ empathy and basic understanding of cause and effect into someone, so Dean doesn’t bother. He does still have to defend his stance, though. 

“Not that this is the point, but it ain’t about what they have,” Dean says. “Tell me, what’s the next major city you hit if you travel eastbound from here on I-90? I’m talking population of a hundred-thousand or more.”  

Rick tentatively shuffles closer, taking a quick peek at the map. “Rochester.” 

“And Rochester has?” Dean prompts, only to be met with a confused stare and an overall gawky face. Sighing, Dean says, “answer’s a massive, well-endowed hospital system, Rick.” 

“Oh… Yeah. ‘Course.” 

Dean stifles the urge to parrot him in a mocking tone. He’s been trying to be less of a dick lately. Armageddon really does change a man. “Right now, we’re running low on supplies at the hospital, but with demons hunkering down in nearby towns, like Valley Springs, and cutting off major highways, we’re too isolated where we are to get an inventory restock.” 

“Right…” Rick murmurs, ducking his head slightly. At least he has the decency to look apologetic. 

“So we need an open channel between here and Rochester, but in order to do that—” 

“The towns along I-90 need to be cleared of demon presence and fortified.” 

Dean smiles and he tries not to be patronizing about it. “There you go.” 

“Well—” Rick clears his throat awkwardly, squares his shoulders— “I think Clark Matheson, Risa Tyler, and Nate Gilroy might be up to the task of a reconnaissance trip to Valley Springs if necessary. They’re junior officers, newly appointed back in June, but they seem to have really taken to all this demon hunting stuff.” 

Dean nods. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.” Then he addresses the room at-large. “If no one has anything else to report, that’ll be a wrap for tonight. Just make sure to tag the south watchers out and rotate in the next team before you all head home and get cozy. They’ve been bitching and moaning at me over radio since six this evening; I don’t need people staging a coup or going on strike just because a few slackers can’t stay on schedule.” 

A chipper chorus of “you got it, boss” and “yes, sir” serenades him as the couple dozen officers file out of the room. 

Dean wilts with exasperation. “And quit calling me that!” 

“‘Boss’ or ‘sir’?” comes a muffled reply from down the hall. 

“Both!” 

All that earns him is a distant slew of boisterous laughter. Dean puffs out a curt breath. What-the-fuck-ever. 

As Bobby wheels over to the door, Dean says, “you good getting home on your own?” 

Bobby pauses to turn and fix him with a crotchety glare. “Do I look like a damsel in distress to you?” 

Dean snorts. “Not now, but you sure did when Cas and I found you beached in the mud a couple nights ago.” 

“Oh, piss right off.” 

Dean throws his head back with a hearty laugh. “I’m just teasing. Seriously, though, you’re good to go? I know you said your shoulder’s been bugging you recently.” 

Despite his grouchy mood, Bobby softens at the integrity of Dean’s concern. “I’ll be fine, ya idjit. Quit your fussing.” 

Dean lifts his hands up in surrender. “Alright, alright. I’ll see you back home then. Late, probably.” 

“Definitely, you mean,” Bobby corrects, and Dean huffs amusedly, doesn’t counter the notion; he knows it’s true. 

When Bobby leaves, Dean’s not alone. It’s just that the singular other presence in the room has been an exceptionally adept embodiment of a fly on the wall since the start of debrief. 

“You were quiet.” Dean finds Cas standing in the far corner, partially obscured by shadow. 

He’s finally done away with his old, ripped-up clothes, traded in his distinctive ‘holy tax accountant’ look for Dean’s ‘monsterhunter chic.’ He wears denim and flannel a hell of a lot better than Dean thought he would—not that he really had any particular expectations. 

Cas’ arms are folded over his chest, one leg crossed in front of the other. Sometime between the church election and the town’s umpteenth demon attack, the angelic stiffness he always carried himself with started to erode. He almost passes for human at first glance these days. 

“I didn’t have anything to say,” he says. 

Dean hums and plucks his whiskey glass up. He downs a sizable swig, propping his hip against the edge of the table with a wince. The deep ache of a hematoma prickles under the skin of his upper thigh where a demon whacked him good with a rusty pipe a little less than a week ago. 

He looks over at Cas again, fully anticipating that he’d be fixed with a scrutinizing, overly-discerning gaze, but instead, he sees Cas smiling—that same faint, mild little thing he’s been caught wearing on staggeringly many an occasion since Dean’s speech at the church. If Dean didn’t know any better, he’d think it’s simply what Cas looks like when he’s proud. But that would be ridiculous. 

Dean eyes him skeptically. “What?” 

“I find your ability to command respect and facilitate such an organized operation in so little time admirable,” Cas tells him, like it’s nothing. “There was once a time when I thought you too haughty and reckless to lead.” 

Dean stares at him for a handful of seconds, not sure whether to feel insulted or complimented. He settles on neither and chooses to be playfully accusatory. “You were the one that got me into this mess.” 

“I seem to recall you entering the mess willingly. I merely made a compelling argument in support of it.” 

Cas did a little more than that; they both know it. But as much as Dean grouses about being in charge, he’s secretly willing to admit it does seem to suit him, so he’s not terribly inclined to point fingers in earnest. 

Still—the title of ‘leader’ and its associate terms make his skin itch. 

“Yeah, well, I’m not a leader. Not really,” he says. “I was just the loudest meathead in the room at a time when people were desperate to hear answers. Not my fault they keep listening.” Maybe it’s just his propensity for self-deprecation talking; all he knows is that he doesn’t feel like he’s earned the position he’s in. How many people can say that they’ve failed in epic, disastrous proportion everywhere it counts as much as Dean has and still wind up with the king’s crown in the end? 

“Awfully reductive,” Cas chides lightly. He pushes off the wall and strides closer, coming into the light where Dean can see the intense sincerity in his eyes as he adds, “you wouldn’t have an angel who commanded a heavenly garrison for millennia following you if you weren’t a real leader, Dean.” 

Floundering, unsure what to do with the excessive flattery, Dean looks away and scoffs, brushes off the strange stirring feeling in his chest. For whatever reason, Cas has always been able to do that to him: throw him off, uproot his carefully-curated air of nonchalance. It’s annoying, really.

“You were following me long before this whole leader business,” Dean points out. 

“That was less an angel who commanded a heavenly garrison following you, and more a curious observer serving the role of begrudging babysitter for an infuriatingly impulsive maniac.” Cas says it in the same way he usually says anything: blunt, flat, and with zero embellishment to soften the blow of a remark most would find distastefully candid. 

Luckily, Dean’s learned how to speak ‘Cas’ decently well in the year or so he’s known him, so he knows when an attempt at a joke is being made. 

“Just a curious observer, huh?” Dean grins, sips again from his glass. “Well fuck you, too, man. I thought we were friends.” 

“We are. I only jest, of course.” Cas retrieves the whiskey decanter from its place atop the cabinet by the table, pulls the stopper, and refills Dean’s glass. 

Dean quirks an inquisitive brow but doesn’t question it. He lifts his glass slightly in a wordless gesture of thanks and takes another sip. He watches as Cas goes to return the decanter to its rightful place then pauses, appearing to contemplate its contents, of which very little remain. Dean makes a mental note to quietly raid the bar downtown for a refill later. 

Finally, Cas pours what’s left of the whiskey into a glass of his own, much to Dean’s combined surprise and delight. 

“Really?” Dean intones, grinning wider. “Who are you, and what have you done with that ol’ stick-in-the-mud Castiel?” 

“I require a smaller volume of alcohol to experience its effects now. Figured I might as well take advantage of it.” Cas samples the whiskey and wrinkles his nose at it. He goes in for another taste not two seconds later. 

Dean nods faintly. If he squints, maybe tilts his head a bit, it almost looks like there’s a glum little glint in Cas’ eyes. A trick of the light, perhaps. “What’s your fuel tank looking like these days?” 

“I’m fine, Dean.” It’s a clipped response, strangely guarded. A nerve’s been struck. 

Dean inhales steadily, lowering his chin to catch Cas’ downcast gaze; works like a charm every time. Cas’ eyes flick up, locking with Dean’s. 

All Dean has to do from there is raise his eyebrows, and Cas’ defenses wither. “The drainage is slow. It should be years before I feel the brunt of it. The need to breathe, occasional urge to sleep, lowered alcohol tolerance… They’re all only minor impediments as far as dwindling grace reserves are concerned.” 

“But?” 

Cas frowns at his glass where he has it nursed in both hands like a mug of cocoa. “Have you ever had a crisis of self, Dean?” 

Dean blinks, taken aback. It’s hardly what he expected Cas to say. Nevertheless, he doesn’t have to ponder the question long before answering, “nah, not really. Then again, I’ve never given myself enough thought to even have a solid definition of who I am. Between Sam, my dad, hunting…” He shrugs, scratching an itch on his nose that doesn’t exist; it’s a tell of self-consciousness that he doesn’t think Cas has picked up on yet. “Anyway, why do you ask?” 

“Intrigue, I suppose.” Cas runs the pad of his thumb along the rim of his glass—back and forth, back and forth. Such a small movement but restless all the same. “Angels aren’t meant to have a sense of self. At our core, we’re nothing more than drones created to serve a hive.” 

“This you saying you miss the hive?” 

There’s a lull of silence. Then: “would you be upset if I said yes?” 

“No,” Dean says, easily and without hesitation. “Gotta say I’m a little confused, though. You’re not exactly Heaven’s biggest fan, and they weren’t very keen on you either.” 

“It’s… Complicated. I don’t miss the domineering demand for obedience, nor do I especially miss my siblings.” Cas slumps back against the cabinet with a laborious sigh. “But I miss knowing my purpose. My function… What am I if not a weapon?” 

Dean whistles and puts on a nonplussed smile. “Jesus, that’s bleak.” 

Cas stares at him blankly, not shaken at all from his self-effacing stupor. Tough crowd. 

Tempering his humor, Dean offers, “okay, look, if nothing else, you’re my friend, and that means something all on its own. You don’t need to be some celestial weapon of mass destruction to have value.” He goes quiet for a moment, then as an afterthought, adds, “you technically don’t have to be my friend either, but I’d prefer it.” 

That manages to draw a small puff of laughter out of Cas—not really a laugh or even a chuckle, but his lips tick upwards, and the corners of his eyes crinkle, and he makes the softest noise low in his throat that sounds enough like an expression of mirth for Dean to comfortably ease back into a more relaxed demeanor. 

“I’ll tell you one thing, though: the minute your tank’s empty, I’m putting a damn gun in your hand,” he declares, equal parts promise and lighthearted threat. 

Cas’ face creases with something Dean can only liken to disgust. “Such barbaric instruments.” 

Dean rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t care to fight the smirk playing at his lips. He raises his glass up toward Cas. And, when Cas studies it like he’s meant to derive some complex math equation from it, Dean says by way of explanation, “cheers, man.” 

Uncertain, and not without a marked air of awkwardness, Cas raises his own glass to clink gently against Dean’s. Then he observes Dean closely for further cues. Feeling impish, Dean winks and knocks his drink all the way back. He’s well-accustomed to the burn of whiskey in his throat and nose—doesn’t react beyond the slightest wince. 

Cas unwittingly follows suit, grimacing, and promptly scowling while Dean snorts in amusement at him. “That was vile,” he mutters, no doubt referencing both the gulp of whiskey itself as well as Dean’s roguery. 

“You get used to it,” Dean tells him flimsily. 

Cas grunts, unconvinced. He sets his empty glass aside. “I do mean it, you know,” he says after a beat, returning his attention to Dean. His eyes are strikingly blue in that charged way they only get when his ordinary aura of stoicism gives way, like he’s got marbled threads of grace stirring in his irises that only reveal themselves in the presence of powerful emotion. In this case: that same intense sincerity from earlier, brimming with admiration. “What you’re doing here is quite remarkable, Dean. You should give yourself more credit.” 

Dean’s train of thought flails into a tailspin. Once again, he’s reduced to a dumbstruck fool, mentally grasping for something, anything to say in response that feels both right and grounded. 

Praise in itself is a rare commodity in Dean’s life. He grew up drilled and berated, came into his own self-drilling and self-berating, and has had generally few encounters with the concept of a job well-done since picking up where his father left off that genuine commendations from someone whose judgment he holds in high esteem feel massively misplaced. Yeah, his father did the best he could with the shit hand he was dealt, and Dean knows that. But hindsight’s twenty-twenty, and Dean can’t say it doesn’t leave a bit of a bitter taste in his mouth that it took until minutes before John Winchester dropped dead in that hospital three years ago, knowing he was going to croak, for him to openly acknowledge the labor of Dean’s role in their fucked up little family.  

Cas, on the other hand, praises freely, in a manner no one in Dean’s thirty years ever has—like it takes him no effort to do it. And fuck, if Dean doesn’t know what the hell he’s supposed to do with that. He’s half-inclined to let Cas know that most humans don’t just come out and say shit like that out of the blue, much less with the vigor of a thousand suns burning in their eyes as they say it. 

But Dean doesn’t tell Cas that. After a lengthy, internal deliberation, he only offers a stilted smile and says, “thanks, Cas.” It feels like a lame return for what he was given in the first place. 

Cas doesn’t appear to mind. He just nods and smiles back—that same faint, mild little thing… 

☽𖤐☾

09.22.09 [01:13 AM]

People believe in me. A lot. I’m not really sure how I should feel about that. If I’m telling the truth, it kinda makes me nauseous sometimes, when no one’s around to see me feel it. But it’s not all bad, I guess. Cas says the craziest shit sometimes, I’ll tell ya. He told me he finds my efforts here ‘admirable’ and ‘remarkable,’ all while giving me that look (you know the one). Man, if Dad could see me now—he’d probably think he was dreaming. At first, anyway. 

Something tells me you’d be able to believe it, though. You wouldn’t doubt it for a second, would you, Sammy? 

☽𖤐☾

NOVEMBER 01, 2009 || 06:19 AM || 1738 DAYS UNTIL THE END

The first time Dean dug up a grave housing the bones of a vengeful spirit, he was thirteen. His father sat on the sidelines and watched, not as a means of punishment but as a means of instruction. “If you’re gonna be joining me more on these hunts, Dean, you ought to learn how to do these things and do ‘em well,” he’d said. 

It took Dean and his lanky arms nearly until sunrise—nine hours after his shovel first hit dirt—to burrow deep enough to reach the pine box, another five minutes to bust it up properly and get at the bones, and another three to clamber his way out of the hole, salt the remains, douse them in gasoline, and toss in the match. 

To this day, he remembers the shock he felt standing over that burning grave; his dad had never told him how hot it was—how the rising smoke chokes the back of the throat, or how a body decades-deceased, reduced to nothing but bones, still carries echoes of charred flesh in its stench. 

Dean’s dug up countless graves since, long desensitized to the objective sacrilege of it. 

Putting bodies in the ground—ones not belonging to the monster of the week… That’s something he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to. 

Halloween night. It was chilly. Dean thinks there’s a special brand of sick irony in the demons choosing that night to do their most wicked yet. The worst of it is the fact that it wasn’t demons at all. It was a single demon. A lone rogue the town had grown too complacent in the relative comfort of its fortified borders to notice until it was too late. 

Dean put it down fast and easy, but the incalculable damage had already been done. 

First on scene, last one out. He stayed to oversee the transport of all sixty-seven bodies from the elementary school gym to the Sioux Falls cemetery, because no one else could. And no one else should. 

A community Halloween party. It was supposed to be a respite from the day-to-day of war—simple, innocent fun between battles, turned just another nightmare to be haunted by. Dean was tortured for forty years in Hell, and he’d take forty more over the massacre that he walked into just hours ago. 

The only reason he’s managed to hold onto the contents of his violently roiling stomach this whole time is because there are too many terrified, grief-stricken eyes seeking his guidance for him to be unraveling at the seams like that. 

He’s not a person; he’s a leader. He can’t afford such weakness. 

And so he stands at the edge of a grave sprawling wide in the previously empty lawn at the back of the cemetery, matchbook clutched tight in a knuckle-blanched fist, and he watches. One after another, bodies bathed in blood—some mutilated beyond recognition—are laid inside, ordered in neat, clinical rows. Salt is tossed over them from a half-dozen or so directions, and gasoline is spritzed on top from another handful. 

Among the crowd, there are wailing cries, hollow words of consolation, mothers sobbing in each other’s arms, fathers fallen to their knees. Across the way, a child weeps, crying out the name of his younger brother, and Officer Matheson has to hold him back so he doesn’t jump in to join the rest of his family. 

Dean’s chest seems to cave in on itself. He gulps harshly, working in a desperate effort to thwart the acid-burn rising in his throat as his stomach heaves. His hands tremble, fighting with the match to strike it aflame, all while eyes continue to pry into him from every direction. One pair of eyes, in particular, he can feel piercing deeper into him than the rest. 

“Dean…” 

“I’ve got it, Cas,” he mutters, more snappishly than intended. Defensive. Wound-taut. 

Beside him, Cas just stares. Dean can’t see him do it, but he knows. He fumbles and fails to strike the match for the nth time. The matchbook tumbles out of his hands and lands in the grass. 

“Damn it!” He doesn’t shout. He wants to, but he doesn’t. The curse is nothing more than a feeble whisper, and he’s struck with horror at the sudden realization that his eyes are stinging. Fuck— not here, not now. Not ever, but especially not now. 

He crouches down quick to swipe the matchbook off the ground, and when he straightens back up, Cas catches him by the shoulder. “Dean,” he says, tone even and firm, yet gentle, too. 

Dean turns to him, expecting to be met with another one of Cas’ overly intense gazes and a dash of pity to add insult to injury. But it’s not threads of grace Dean finds glittering in his irises—rather, only moonlight. He looks undeniably human, all tormented and sorrowful with the understanding of the gravity of loss lying in a bloodstained heap at their feet—and somehow that’s worse than heavenly indifference. Once an impenetrable fortress of angelic stoicism, Cas now feels what it truly means to suffer, and he wears it so visibly on his face, in his posture. Dean wouldn’t wish it on anyone. 

Cas lays his hand over the one Dean has clutching onto the matchbook, gaze not straying even an inch. All it takes is a slight nod of the head, almost imperceptible—a gesture of assurance—and Dean yields completely. He lets Cas take the matchbook from him. Watches, vacant and numb, while he lights the match on the first try. Tracks the path of the flame as it’s tossed into the grave and erupts into a whirlwind of fire. 

Dean shakes his head at himself, chewing hard enough on his lower lip to draw a metallic tang onto the tip of his tongue. He curls his trembling hands into fists, stuffs them in his pockets. His nails bite into his palms. 

All these people are dead because of him, and he couldn’t even light the stupid match in this sorry excuse for a funeral. 

“This ain’t your fault, Dean.” Bobby rolls up on his other side. He says it like he’s read Dean’s mind. 

Maybe Dean’s just that predictable. 

He grits his teeth, physically biting back the film of tears starting to blur his vision. “Yeah, bullshit it isn’t.” 

“Did you, or did you not tell everyone to get the anti-possession tattoo done weeks ago?” 

“I did, but—”

“No ‘but’s. Wyatt didn’t do what he was told, and the price was paid in blood. That ain’t on you, son. That’s all him.” 

Dean itches to refute that notion—the idea that, just because he wasn’t the one who went out beyond the perimeter, got himself possessed, and brought a demon home to slaughter unsuspecting families, he’s absolved of all responsibility in the matter. Dean is liable for what happens to these people. Everything that happens in this town is either a result of his success as a leader or his abject failure. 

He keeps running it through, over and over in his head. What could he have done differently that would’ve prevented this? Has he been too lenient with the enforcement of his suggestions? Are his suggestions in themselves too lenient on principle? Should suggestion be made command? Should constant reminder be made firm warning followed by the threat of punishment to compel compliance?

All questions, no answers. He’s lost in the dark like everyone else, except he’s expected to be the wayfinder. No one’s going to step in and take the wheel when he falters. He has to take accountability, because somebody has to, and nobody else can. 

Whatever happens on his watch… That is on him. It comes with the job. No matter what Bobby says. 

But Dean doesn’t want to argue. Least of all standing over a mass grave packed with the bodies of people he’s failed, and before the families that grieve in the wake of it. 

So Dean spares a halfhearted nod, stares absently into the flames, and murmurs, “okay.” 

Rising smoke chokes the back of his throat, and the odor of burning flesh is thick and heavy in the air. His stomach pitches viciously, but he clenches his jaw and swallows down what rises up. There’s a dull throb where his nails have broken the skin of his palms. 

The child across the blazing pit shrieks in dismay. Again and again, the name of his younger brother is bellowed into the night. It’s all Dean can hear. Each time that name reaches his ears is another shot of ice through his veins. A tear streaks hot down his cheek; Dean can’t move to dash it away. Frozen still. Paralyzed. More and more ice flooding into him until the world around him falls unnaturally quiet, and he no longer feels like he’s standing where he is, like he’s drifting away from himself. 

Some time passes, or maybe none passes at all. He doesn’t know. But when he comes back to himself, Cas has shifted close enough for his entire right arm to be plastered to Dean’s left, in such a way that it can’t be mistaken for anything but intentional. And Dean feels warm, calm, steady, the ice seeping deep into his core banished without a trace. 

He’s felt this same warmth—the same calmness and steadiness that immediately follows—enough times by now to know what’s just been done. 

Of all the things Cas could expend his precious, dwindling grace on—what the hell is he thinking wasting it on something like this? 

Dean doesn’t ask. And Cas makes no mention of it. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder in silent understanding, watching the fire rage on before them. 

Dean breathes in and out, slow and deliberate, and if he leans into Cas’ side just the slightest bit in search of more of his warmth, that’s only for them to know. 

☽𖤐☾

11.01.09 [08:41 PM]

I can’t stop thinking about it. It just keeps replaying in my head. That kid… In a sick turn of events, his brother’s name was Sammy, too. 

☽𖤐☾

DECEMBER 24, 2009 || 10:57 PM || 1685 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Dean chuckles from where he’s sat at the desk in the spare dorm Gage graciously offered them. He’s been hunched over his journal for some time, drafting up his entry for the day. But with Cas five feet away, barely choking down the beef stew MRE he was given, Dean’s finding that staying on task is a little difficult. 

Cas hasn’t reached the point in his grace depletion of needing to eat to sustain himself yet, but he has made a habit of testing a few foods here and there, just to get a sense of their taste. Not that his ability to detect each molecule of flavor in everything he tries really allows for any true enjoyment of food as a concept. He claims it’s too overwhelming. Too stimulating. 

“You don’t have to eat that shit, man. It’s almost painful to watch you try.” 

“I don’t want to waste perfectly good food, Dean,” Cas says virtuously, even as he damn-near retches with the next bite he shovels into his mouth. 

Dean snorts. “Food is right. ‘Perfectly good,’ not so much. Though I guess we better get used to it now, ‘cause food-adjacent slop is definitely in our future with the catastrophic collapse of the agriculture sector looming on the horizon.” He twirls his pen around between his fingers, scanning through the lines he’s written on the page in front of him. “Hey, you got a good synonym for ‘bad’? I feel like I’ve already used it too many times here.” 

“That the journal you’re writing for Sam?” 

Dean flinches and twists around in his chair to face Cas directly. “Who says it’s for Sam?” 

Cas shrugs. “You wouldn’t write it for anyone else. Least of all, yourself.” 

Alright, true. But ouch. And actually, it’s not entirely true; Dean did start out writing it for himself, but somewhere along the way, it pivoted to an address to Sam. Became a way of keeping Sam with him, like he’s still around for Dean to talk to and bounce ideas off of. So really—Cas could afford at least a little tact when taking jabs at someone’s character. He’s a discerning motherfucker, but rarely does he see the whole picture without someone else filling in the gaps for him.

Finally seeming to have given up on his ‘food,’ Cas sets his MRE packet aside and wipes his hands awkwardly on his jeans. “What do you tell him?” 

“What?” 

“What do you tell Sam?” 

Dean makes a face. “Why do you care? You don’t even think he’s alive.” 

“But you do. And I’ve been wrong before.” Cas peers at him, all earnest and sincere. “So what do you tell him?” 

Dean looks him up and down, puzzled. Cas hasn’t expressed much interest in anything pertaining to Sam since the day he let Lucifer in. Arguably, he didn’t express much interest even then. The few times Sam’s come up, Cas didn’t linger on the matter long. Now he’s going out of his way to ask. Why? 

Deciding it’s not worth interrogating him over, Dean says, “little bit of everything, I guess.” He taps the ball of his pen on the corner of the page, dappling blue dots. “Sometimes it feels like I’m writing the same shit multiple days in a row and I wonder if it’s worth the energy. But then I remember Sam actually likes reading tedious crap, so I even make sure to throw in my extra detailed perimeter watch rotations as a treat.” 

Cas huffs a laugh. He grins, lopsided and fond. “That might be a little too tedious.”

Dean laughs too. “Yeah, maybe. But it’s the sorta familiar leg-pulling he expects from me—don’t want him to think I’ve become someone he doesn’t recognize or anything.” His smile falters, a sudden, dull ache settling in behind his ribs as a passive thought occurs to him. “You and Sam never got a chance to get super close, did you?” 

“No, I suppose not.” Cas actually sounds solemn about it, contrite. “I wish we did, though. I do regret my initial attitude toward your brother. He seemed to admire me, and I often only gave him ridicule in return.” 

Dean nods, the smart in his chest flaring, spreading, wrapping itself snug around his lungs and wringing them of air. “Funny,” he murmurs, and he can hear the strain in his voice. “I’ve been thinking about how I did a lot of the same to him.” He tries for a breath, but it shakes, barely gets past his lips. “The kid looked up to me, you know? And I tossed him out on his ass over shit I can’t even remember being mad about in the first place. It seems so stupid looking back on it now.” 

Cas’ eyes are on him. Dean can always tell. Sometimes, he can also tell how Cas is looking at him, despite his own attention being cast elsewhere. Right now, Cas is patient, attentive but not expectant. 

Dean swallows around the tightness in his throat. “Fact of the matter is: he said ‘yes,’ because I made it so he couldn’t turn to the people he trusts the most for help. He was scared and alone, and I somehow convinced myself that that was okay.” He presses the point of his pen into the corner of the page, hard enough to pierce through to the next. “I think a part of me’s writing this thing because I know he’s still all alone. Still scared. I want him to be able to look back on what he missed and see that I was fighting for him the whole time. Making up for all the time I spent not fighting for him like I should’ve…”  

Cas breathes an audible sigh, not out of annoyance or discontent. Dean doesn’t know precisely what kind of sigh it is, but the least he knows is that Cas isn’t denigrating him with it. 

“I’m unsure what to say that would help ease your grief,” he admits. He sounds remorseful. 

Dean doesn’t like it. Something about Cas thinking it’s his responsibility to make Dean feel good about himself makes his skin crawl. Makes invisible hives bloom on his flesh. “You don’t need to say anything.” His grip on the pen is convulsive, knuckles blanching. 

For a while, Cas doesn’t speak, though that sense that he’s watching Dean, studying him, inventorying his every tense and twitch—it’s still there. Unmoving. Unrelenting. 

Finally, he says, “I’d like to.” 

And Dean nods, attention fixed hazily on the chipping, off-white paint of the wall behind the desk. His face aches with the hefty weight of a grim frown. Cas has always thought Dean deserves more comfort and assurance than he really does. Never once has Dean been able to convince him otherwise, and he’s long-past the effort of trying. 

“That’s because you’re a good friend.” Dean plasters on a smile he’s sure looks as forced as it feels and looks at Cas. “Don’t sweat it though, man. Really. I’m good.” 

Cas narrows his eyes at him. He’s far from convinced, clearly, but he doesn’t attempt to lean any harder into Dean. He lets it go with a little nod of his own. Dean capitalizes on the opportunity to change the subject entirely while he’s got the chance. 

“So, you feel ready for tomorrow?” 

“Is there any such thing as ‘ready’ to face a Horseman?” 

Dean snorts. “Nah, I guess not.” Then, because he can’t seem to escape the heaviness that’s hooked its claws into him and dug in deep regardless of the topic he chooses to discuss, he frowns again. Setting his pen down and flexing the ache out of his fingers, he asks, “can I be honest with you?” 

“Of course, Dean.” 

He gnaws at his lower lip. It’s chapped, so it bleeds a little. “I’m not really liking our odds,” he confesses. “I put on a brave face for Gage and his men, but… To tell you the truth, I’m terrified. Things are so much more complicated than we thought, and these guys are putting a hell of a lot of faith and trust in me; I can’t afford to let them down. Especially since letting them down in a situation like this almost definitely means getting them killed. I just—” He puffs out a weary exhale, lifting a hand to massage the worry lines out of his forehead. “I don’t think I can handle another Halloween night.” 

Cas’ response is immediate and predictable. “Halloween night wasn’t your—” 

“If you say it wasn’t my fault one more time, I will hurl this journal at you.” 

Cas clenches his jaw, looking like he wants to argue, but he ultimately surrenders with a halfhearted wave of the hands. Some gesture that says ‘fine, whatever.’ “I think it’s normal to be scared,” is what he actually says. “The reward is great if we win, but the consequences are dire if we lose.” 

Dean tries not to bark out a humorless laugh at that. Cas sure does love presenting ‘understatements of the year.’ “I don’t really think there are words in the English language that can describe how royally fucked we are if we lose, Cas.” 

Some might think Dean’s exaggerating. Being dramatic. Reading too much fine print between the lines. But he’s lived through enough unthinkable bullshit to know when he should expect the worst—when he doesn’t have the full picture of a situation and won’t get to have it until it’s too late. 

War’s a heavy hitter. The President sicking the military on civilians is a spectacle, sure, but it realistically won’t spark any greater conflict beyond Manhattan. If War wants war— widespread, violent unrest that’s self-sustaining and self-inflaming—something much, much bigger has to be put into play. A weighty enough domino must be placed in exactly the right position, toppled at exactly the right angle, in exactly the right moment, to ignite a cascade failure that can’t be thwarted once it’s begun.

Dean doesn’t know what that domino could possibly look like. He’s about as blind as Gage and his men are. And yet he’s expected to have all the answers. It’s a disturbing running theme at this point. 

In all fairness to those who always end up following him, he does a pretty crap job of dissuading the notion that he knows what the fuck he’s doing. That, too, however, is just another thing he feels cornered into promising. In a room full of people who don’t know what to do, he’ll always feel compelled to step forward and throw himself onto the sacrificial sword. Be the voice that knows. 

To his credit, he’d originally come to West Point with the goal in-mind to prevent Gage and his men from marching on Manhattan altogether. Unfortunately for him, a lieutenant general is unlikely to heed the warning of a mere civilian, no matter how capable or knowledgeable that civilian is. 

“I’m not letting you go this alone, Winchester. Lone wolves never win wars.” And Dean wasn’t about to contest against that. How could he? Not only could he use the backup, but it’s not like he can tell a lieutenant general in the Army no. 

And so he’s stuck, again, with the weight of too many lives on his shoulders in a circumstance where he can’t hope to guarantee their safety. All he knows is that he doesn’t know enough, and that’s what’s so terrifying about this. It’s one thing to die trying; it’s another entirely to get others killed trying. 

“I can accurately describe how, um… Fucked we are in Enochian, but I’m certain that would be meaningless to you,” Cas says. 

One glance up at him, and Dean knows instantly by the hesitant, crooked smile he’s wearing that it’s his attempt at a joke—a quip to lift spirits. 

Dean feels the corners of his mouth tick upwards, just a hair. 

“Oh, and—fucked, by the way,” Cas adds after a beat. 

Dean blinks, bemused. “What?” 

“You asked for a synonym for ‘bad.’ Depending on what you’re trying to convey, I believe ‘fucked’ is a vulgar but otherwise accurate descriptor.” 

Just like that, there’s a full-blown grin playing on Dean’s lips. He laughs, which appears to confuse Cas. No doubt, he has no idea why his earnest offer is being laughed at, or that he’s actually not even being laughed at at all. His head is tipped to the side, ocean blues squinted studiously. 

Before Cas strains himself too much trying to decipher the meaning of Dean’s reaction, Dean tempers his laughter and says, “never change, Cas.” 

Cas takes well to this, if the way he tucks a little, secretive smile into the shadows as he looks down at his hands is any indication. His fingers fidget in his lap. He looks human, and for once, not totally distraught at the same time. 

Dean returns to his journal entry, plucking his pen back up and putting it to paper. 

☽𖤐☾

12.24.09 [11:12 PM]

We’re going after War again tomorrow, and I’ve got a pretty bad feeling about it—not that I’d ever say it out-loud to anyone but Cas. Everything about this smells like shit, but I can’t, for the life of me, pin down exactly what it could be. It’s all just so… Fucked (as Cas would put it. I’ve got him swearing now. It’s pretty funny. You should hear it sometime). 

In other news, I’ve got a lieutenant general following me on this one. Can you believe it? I sure as hell can’t. And honestly, I don’t really like it either. Too many uncontrolled variables, too many things that can go wrong, too many people that can get killed. But hey, I guess I gotta make do with what I’ve got. Here’s hoping things go our way. Maybe I’m a boneheaded fool for even bothering to hope anymore, but it’s what you would do, isn’t it? Dad always did say I should be more like you in that way… 

☽𖤐☾

DECEMBER 25, 2009 || 09:42 AM || 1684 DAYS UNTIL THE END

It comes out of nowhere. One moment, Dean is nestled in among Gage’s soldiers as they trek through the streets of Manhattan, passing by graffitied walls, broken store windows, and charred vehicles. Rioters surround them on all sides, wreaking havoc but, suspiciously, paying the garrison no mind. There are reporters everywhere, capturing the scene of military forces ‘intervening’ with civilian affairs. War is nowhere to be found. 

The next, there’s a distant whistle in the air, growing louder and louder, approaching ever-closer with an unsettling swiftness—and Cas suddenly yanks Dean close, tucking him under the shadowy cover of his wings just in time for a deafening blast to rattle their bones and shake the Earth beneath them. 

Dean’s ears throb sharply, church bells blaring. Absently, he’s aware of a faint trickling sensation sliding down the back edge of his jaw on either side—blood. He’s had his eardrums blown out by angel voices and gunshots enough times to recognize the feeling. 

Cas has Dean’s head tucked low, clutched to his chest. Dean can’t so much as grasp a peek beyond the ground under his feet. Explosions continue to erupt around them, each detonation more muted and distant than the last, as though carving a path of destruction down the city’s main thoroughfare. All the while, Cas keeps Dean close, shielded. Dean doesn’t realize he’s thrown an arm over Cas’ head to shelter him in kind until the air falls still, quiet, and they’re unfolding themselves warily out from under the wispy, translucent shade of Cas’ wings. 

In the lull, Dean thinks they look a little wispier than they should, like silhouettes of tattered feathers—sparse, bent, broken. He doesn’t get a chance to ponder it for long. Cas’ wings pleat themselves back into whatever invisible pocket dimension he keeps them hidden in, and the scene before them strikes vivid with clarity. 

All down Broadway, for as far as the eye can see, buildings are leveled, reduced to indiscernible heaps of rubble. The ones still standing are nothing more than hollowed skeletons, windows shattered, gaping holes blown into the outer walls. Cars lay crushed under towers of debris. The road is cracked and pitted and impassable. 

“Help.” It’s a hoarse, feeble little utterance. 

Dean can barely hear it over the ringing in his ears, but he does. He hears it. And finally, his attention is torn away from the miles-long stretch of rubble and called toward the wreckage right in front of him. 

There, Gage lies, pinned beneath a rusty support beam, chest caved in, blood spilling from his mouth. Under his back, a pool of red swells into a sea, seeping into the denim covering Dean’s knees. Gage’s eyes are glassy, unmoving on Dean, all while he gasps and gurgles for breath. His arm is outstretched, like he’s reaching for Dean. Or perhaps Cas, and his healing hands. There’s terror in his gaze as he makes his final, desperate bid for oxygen and the light dies on his face. He goes slack and lifeless, just like that. 

Dean’s stomach drops. His heart lurches up to his throat, so violently he nearly chokes on it. His hands feel warm while every other part of him shivers with the bite of cold. Hazily, he glances down to find them swimming in Gage’s blood where he’s got them braced on the ground. In his periphery, bodies clad in combat uniform lay eviscerated, torn apart, obliterated. Limbs are strewn about. Blood paints concrete and metal. 

It’s quiet. 

Dean’s ears ring, vision blackening around the edges. A tremor sets into his chest, crawls through his ribs, bores into his arms, legs, fingers, toes… 

He blinks, and the world spins around him. Nausea grips his stomach, but the sensation dulls. If he throws up, he doesn’t feel it. 

He hears nothing. His ears are fucking ringing, and his blood howls. He can’t escape the clamor of his own head in the silence. 

His eyes are wide-open, drying in the frigid, winter air. He stares, and still, there’s blood and rubble and bodies. He could’ve sworn the world spun just moments ago, in the way it always does when Cas whisks him off someplace. He’s trembling. He’s cold, and hot, and numb. All at once. 

The more he thinks, tries to get a handle on his mind and his surroundings, the farther away he feels. 

Where is he? What happened?... 

☽𖤐☾

DECEMBER 25, 2009 || 02:19 PM || 1684 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Time is lost. That’s the only explanation. Dean can’t remember where he was last. As far as he’s concerned, he just appears in the passenger seat of some nondescript sedan with Cas behind the wheel and nothing but snow and brown cornfields out the windows. His head is pounding, splitting, and though his vision is clear, it still seems fuzzy somehow. He blinks in rapid succession; it only helps a little. 

He strains his memory, but all he draws is one big blank. A cavernous void where the entire middle of his day belongs. 

What the hell…? 

“How are you feeling, Dean?” Cas asks. He sounds excessively gentle, careful, as if any note out of place could summon forth something cataclysmic. His eyes are focused on the road ahead, but Dean can tell he wants to look at him; it’s taking him monumental effort not to. 

“I’m… Fine. I guess,” Dean answers distractedly. He squints at Cas, looks him up and down. He’s covered in dusky cement dust, hair mussed and wild. The first question Dean should probably be asking is ‘what the fuck happened?’, but the image of Cas driving is so objectively ridiculous that it manages to overshadow the big fat blank presently plaguing his mind. “Why are we in a car?” 

Cas is silent for a long while. His face is pinched, jaw set, lips bowed into a deep frown. Eventually, tone measured, he says, “my wings were badly injured when the blast hit. The damage appears to be… Irreversible.” 

Dean’s brow furrows. He retreats inward, once again rifling around in his head’s storage vault and still hauling out a whole sack of nothing. Blast— what blast? Whatever happened, perhaps he’s been concussed. He’s never gotten it bad enough to demolish his memory like this before, but it wouldn’t be the strangest thing that’s ever happened. It would explain the headache and the incessant ringing in his ears. 

“I called Bobby,” Cas tells him with a weary sigh. He still sounds careful for some reason. Deliberately unprovoking. “He suspects War only wanted the garrison marching on Manhattan so the news could report on it—frame it in such a way that the civilian population would know, without a doubt, that the ensuing airstrike wasn’t the work of some overseas adversary, but rather, the U.S. Military itself. The intent was likely to ignite a civil war.” 

Dean makes a face, painfully perplexed. “Airstrike? What’re you…?” He trails off. Somehow, the word coming from Cas triggered nothing, but the second it floats off Dean’s lips, an image flickers in his mind’s eye. 

Him and Cas ducked under his wings, the Earth rumbling, a sharp lance to the ears, rubble for miles, the briefest hint of red. Back to snow and cornfields. Sedan. Cas in the driver’s seat. 

Dean shakes his head, wincing as it pounds harder, heavier. 

“There are already small pockets of conflict igniting along the Eastern Seaboard,” Cas continues, but Dean’s hardly paying any attention. 

He digs deep. Wings, rumbling, ears, rubble, red— red. The knees of his jeans are caked with scarlet, his hands similarly encrusted.

He squeezes his eyes shut. Blood, limbs, bodies. Hot and cold seize him, yanking him in opposing directions, cracking him open. All he is, organ by organ, cell by cell, emptied. Vacant save for his heart, which weighs like lead in his chest and pumps frigid paralysis through his vessels. 

A mantra, familiar yet paradoxically foreign, echoes on repeat within the confines of his skull. 

Who’s there? Where am I? What happened? What were their names? Why can’t I breathe? Why can’t I remember?  

“At this point, it’ll be near-impossible to pin down War’s location. He could be anywhere, embedded in any one of the rapidly-growing battlefronts—” 

Who’s there? Where am I? What happened? What were their names? Why can’t I breathe? Why can’t I remember?  

“Dean?” 

Who’s there? Where am I? What happened? What were their names? Why can’t I breathe? Why can’t I remember?  

“Dean.” 

Cas’ voice pierces through, but it sounds like it carries down a boundless tunnel, a distant hush. Dean tries to focus, tries to break out of the loop. The grip is too tight. He’s faraway. He can’t climb back. 

Who’s there? Where am I? What happened? What were their names? Why can’t I breathe? Why can’t I remember?  

Blood, limbs, bodies—

What have you done?

—Pleading eyes, caved chest, arm outstretched— Gage. 

Everything stops. 

Gage, Smith, Brown, Jones, Rodriguez, Taylor, Martin, Davis, Garcia, Jackson, Anderson, Thomas, Lopez, Williams, Myers, Wilson, Finley. 

Those were their names. The West Point soldiers that followed him into Manhattan. Dean remembers, an icy revelation that strikes fast and hard and deadly. 

What has he done? 

“Dean.” 

He killed them. 

“Dean.” 

He killed them all. 

“Hold on—”

Static fills his head all of a sudden. His nerves simmer with numbness. His lungs are stiff and still. There’s a sudden flood of warmth, a golden drop in the abyssal void. Noble but unable to banish the cold gloom. It fizzles, feeble. 

Time is lost. 

One big blank. 

☽𖤐☾

12.25.09 [11:59 PM]

[No Entry]

Chapter Text

MARCH 07, 2010 || 03:41 PM || 1612 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Castiel was on the opposite end of the front outside town when it happened. He didn’t hear about it until well after the demons fell back. Worse still, he had to hear it from some deputy he’s never cared to learn the name of because no one on Dean’s team could be bothered to check in with a status update. Frankly, he has half a mind to pin the blame on Dean himself. 

How hard is it, really, to pick up a damn radio and let your right hand know you had to be carried off the battlefield with a disastrous leg injury? 

If Dean weren’t presently lying in a hospital bed, sweating in obvious agony with his mangled, gauze-wrapped knee propped on a stack of pillows, Castiel would, as the humans so eloquently put it, be tearing him a new hole right about now. 

Castiel’s already nearing that threshold as it is, infuriated with Dean’s dismissive hand-waving and shoddy attempts at placation. He shouldn’t be surprised. Truly, he shouldn’t. When has he ever known Dean Winchester to spare the remotest modicum of courtesy toward himself? Still, it never becomes any less maddening. 

“I’m fine, Cas,” Dean tries to say, even as his face twists with a grimace. 

“Your powers of persuasion are a force to be reckoned with,” Castiel mutters flatly, unimpressed. “Would you quit being a fool about this and let me heal you already?” 

“It’s fine, Cas. Just let it heal on its own.” Predictable. 

Castiel pins him with a disapproving look. “Dean, your knee was shot out. An injury like that is permanently disabling if it’s left to heal with no intervention. None of the doctors here have the expertise necessary to repair the damage themselves.” 

“Then I’ll have a limp. Whatever.” 

“It’ll be more than just a limp. It’ll be debilitating pain and struggles to do the most basic everyday tasks. And you sure as hell won’t be able to lead or even be part of a mission anymore. Please, just let me—”

“I said no, Cas.” Dean slides a stern glare his way. These days, his eyes only look their most vivid green when he’s like this—stubborn and pigheaded, impossible to sway. “Your grace is burning out, and we need to reserve whatever’s left of it for life-threatening emergencies. This ain’t life-threatening. It’s just an inconvenience.” 

“It’s more than mere inconvenience—”

“I said no,” Dean repeats, tone harsh, emphatic. He holds Castiel’s gaze with unyielding, merciless austerity. He’s an impenetrable wall, unwilling and unable to be argued with. 

He’s incapacitated. Castiel could very easily act against his wishes and heal him without much trouble. It’s tempting, too. Dean’s made a bothersome habit of recklessness over the past month or so; he’s always been brazen, but rarely has Castiel seen him hold quite this little regard for himself before. 

On numerous occasions as of late, Castiel’s had to tediously coax Dean into caring for his wellbeing, and force him when gentle hands fail. No doubt, this is just one more item to add to the list of circumstances in which Castiel plays the villain in Dean’s one-man self-destruction show. 

But Castiel ultimately refrains, for now. He often finds it’s better to let Dean’s nuclear-hot temperament cool to a tepid simmer before making any decisions on his behalf. He’s not looking to burn their companionship to the ground while he’s at it. 

And so, reluctantly, he huffs a short sigh and concedes, “fine.” 

He gets up and leaves to let Dean stew. 

☽𖤐☾

03.07.10 [07:09 PM]

He just doesn’t get it. All he does is meddle and poke and pry, thinking he’s doing me a favor. It drives me up a wall, but a part of me is glad he doesn’t know what it’s like to feel this way… 

☽𖤐☾

FEBRUARY 03, 2010 || 11:04 AM || 1644 DAYS UNTIL THE END

It’s not the first time since Christmas Day that Castiel has been hounded by the Sioux Falls residents on the topic of Dean’s condition. Early on, he learned to say whatever it is they needed to hear so they’d leave him alone, but that only worked for so long. Nowadays, the townspeople are restless, verging dangerously on hysteria and panic. Their fears are slowly being allowed to rule them, and Castiel is hardly in any position to quell them. 

Dean likes to pretend he has no value beyond strategy and combat. The truth of the matter is: his propensity for intensely-felt emotion and his iron sense of justice make him uniquely equipped to assure those around him of their safety. It’s the elder brother in him, Castiel thinks. More than that, it’s the parent in him. His roots in sacrifice and caretaking. 

Castiel, alternately, is only just beginning to learn the intricacies of human connection. Being a beacon of reassurance for hundreds of terrified humans is beyond the scope of his capability. And yet, a beacon he’s been made. Or, more accurately, a beacon the town has been desperately attempting to seek in him in Dean’s absence. 

More often than not, Castiel believes it pays well to be a friend of Dean Winchester’s. In this specific way, however—being presumed a sufficient stand-in for Dean on the basis of their friendship—not so much. 

Needless to say, he’s grown weary of dispensing hollow platitudes to scared people and scuttling off before he can be caught up in another inquisition. In this moment, especially, he’s vexed by it. Anything that prevents him from tending to Dean has a special aptitude for ruffling the few feathers he has left. 

“It’s just—there are new demon hordes encroaching on city limits, and we won’t be able to withstand it if they all attack at once.” John Ambrose is hot on Castiel’s heels, rattling off his concerns with no end in sight as he follows him down Main Street. “Dean said he had a plan for a situation like this, but that was before he became—well…” 

“Before he became what?” Castiel halts in his tracks and whirls around to face him, eyebrows raised in challenge, daring him to speak the bold implication sitting unvoiced on the tip of his tongue—the one that would paint Dean as weak, lesser, something piteous in the wake of horror. 

Wisely, John does not take Castiel up on the challenge. Clearing his throat and avoiding direct contact with Castiel’s gaze, he says, “all I’m saying is that we’re too close to drowning for comfort. Too many deputies have been lost trying to fight the growing hordes of demons, and the recruits we do have are too green to be good for anything but cannon fodder. Dean knew exactly how to use everyone to maximize our defenses and minimize our losses; without him, we’re dead in the water.” 

Castiel knows that. He’s painfully aware of it, actually. He was the one that encouraged Dean to take up the mantle of leadership in this town, and not a day’s gone by since what happened in Manhattan that he hasn’t deeply regretted it. It’s not that he thinks Dean wouldn’t have gone to confront War if he weren’t the shepherd of Sioux Falls, but Castiel’s sure he at least wouldn’t have taken the loss of Gage’s soldiers so hard. Dean spent months shouldering hundreds of lives and taking accountability for the dozens massacred on his watch. It wore on him. And when he and Castiel were the last ones standing on Broadway, it was the final straw that broke him. 

Halloween night was a sign of what was prowling on the horizon—a sign that Castiel should’ve taken note of and internalized better than he did. It was the first time he ever saw Dean slip away from himself. The first time he had to watch Dean just… Disappear, even as he stayed standing right by Castiel’s side.. 

Back then, it was easy enough to guide Dean out of his head as soon as Castiel noticed something was off. A simple matter of reaching his grace delicately into Dean and unchaining his psyche from the windowless prison it’d erected around itself. 

But Manhattan… 

Manhattan was a different monster altogether. Castiel tried more than once to banish the darkness infecting Dean’s mind and barring him from the outside world, but it was no use. He was powerless to do anything more than wait for the darkness to release its hold of its own volition. It only took a handful of hours the first time, and Dean initially came out of it without any memory of the mission into the city or the airstrike that cut it short. The second time, Dean was out for days, and while he didn’t remember what happened while he was out, he seemed to remember every solitary detail from Manhattan—an unfortunate complication that only made it that much harder for him to break free. Neither Castiel nor Bobby had any hope of getting through to him. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t eat. He didn’t speak. All he did was stare and shuffle around listlessly. 

Weeks later, Dean is still in no shape to lead. And Castiel doesn’t want him to anyway. Not if it’ll break him like that ever again. 

So one can imagine why Castiel would find the constant barrage of demands for Dean’s leadership from the townspeople obscenely exasperating. 

“I understand the mission in New York shook him up, and I don’t blame him,” John continues. “But it’s been over a month. I hate to say it, but we need him to pull it together.” 

“Or perhaps you need to grow a spine,” Castiel snaps, before he can think better of it. “Quit wasting your time pestering me and start making better use of it thinking for yourself. Has it ever occurred to you that the reason you’ve begun to lose against the demon hordes is because you’ve come to rely on Dean as a crutch instead of doing your due diligence to learn from his expertise?” 

He’s been awfully patient with these humans for a good long while, but he’s reached the end of his rope. In general, Castiel manages himself well; he tolerates a greater deal than most—especially for an angel. It just so happens to be that the one thing he’s yet to figure out how to tolerate is blatant dismissal of Dean’s sacrifices and the toll they take on him. 

Doubt was the first emotion Castiel began to express that he was able to properly identify, and he owes that all to Dean Winchester. The human that made him see. The one that presented him with the cold reality of blind obedience. The one whose staunch rebellion against unjust cause reshaped destiny to give the world a fighting chance—nevermind where the world ultimately ended up. 

Dean fights for what he wholeheartedly believes is right, no matter the cost to himself. Sometimes, Castiel feels like he’s the only one who sees it. 

John gawks, mouth working open and closed uselessly until he manages a stammered, half-baked: “I, um—well…” 

Castiel plows on, affording him no latitude to complete his thought. “You wasted a perfectly good opportunity, and now you’re blaming him for it. Tell me, where do you find the gall for such a pathetic—” 

“That’s enough, Cas. I don’t need you to defend my honor.” 

Castiel freezes, eyes wide. He turns, and there, standing behind him, is Dean—dressed in fresh denim, flannel, and canvas, clean-shaven, hair no longer flattened to his head with grease but done up neatly. 

He’s smirking, as though he finds Castiel’s righteous monologue amusing. As though he hasn’t just spent the last six weeks not smiling at all and slowly withering away before Castiel’s eyes. As though, just some hours ago, he wasn’t found ambling into Bobby’s kitchen in week-old clothes, reeking of alcohol, and snatching up a bottle of scotch for breakfast. As though, only the night prior, Castiel didn’t have to pluck him up from where he’d passed out drunk in the snow and put him to bed before he succumbed to hypothermia. 

It’s like Manhattan never even happened. Like everything Castiel’s witnessed of Dean since Christmas has been nothing more than a hauntingly vivid fever dream. 

Castiel is at a loss for words. Dumbfounded, he tracks Dean’s movements closely as he saunters over, searching for something— anything that would make this turn of events make sense. The only thing Castiel can discern that doesn’t fit Dean’s sudden picture of suave nonchalance is his eyes. They’re just as dull in hue as they’ve been since Castiel flew him to that deserted field in West Virginia before the next round of bombs could be dropped on their heads. 

Dean’s eyes were once a brilliant green. Castiel remembers being momentarily staggered by them as he was stitching Dean back together atom-by-atom and reuniting his Hell-torn soul with his Earthbound body. 

They’re dim now, lacking the striking vibrance that, at one time, succeeded in shaking Castiel’s steadfast focus from his God-given mission. No matter the broadness of Dean’s smile or the casual swagger of his demeanor, his eyes remain without luster. 

Castiel frowns, brows drawing up with concern. 

Whatever this is—whatever’s driven Dean to toss himself gleefully back into the thick of his station without preamble—it’s all pretense. Through-and-through. 

“Dean,” John says, blinking in surprise. “You look good.” 

“I feel good.” Dean walks right past Castiel, though he at least does him the courtesy of acknowledging his presence with one of his ludic winks. He throws an arm over John’s shoulders, steering him off down the street. “So talk to me, Johnny. What fresh hell are we looking at these days?” 

Castiel watches them go, hanging back to ruminate. Try as Dean might, there’s no negating the reality that he is not yet fit to lead or fight. But what’s Castiel meant to do? If there’s anything he’s learned about Dean Winchester since making his acquaintance, it’s the fact that, once he’s put his mind to something, there’s absolutely no dissuading him. Castiel’s convinced that Dean could have all his limbs severed in pursuit of a goal he aims to achieve, and the obstinate fool would start rolling. 

“I don’t know what happened.” Bobby wheels up beside Castiel then. “I tried to ask him where his sudden sunny outlook on life came from, but all he said was that he’s wallowed long enough; he’s gotta be okay sometime.” 

And Castiel, while more than certain that Dean’s state of mind is hardly what it should be, is left wondering if he’s reading too far into things. If he’s misread Dean’s recovery entirely. Surely, Bobby knows Dean better than Castiel does. After all, Castiel is still learning how to decipher the infinitely complex lexicon of human expression, reaction, motive, even when it comes to Dean. Maybe especially when it comes to Dean. 

Perhaps it’s worth consulting a better-versed set of eyes and ears. 

“Do you think he’s okay?” Castiel asks. 

Bobby scoffs. “Not one bit. The kinda rut he found himself in…” He shakes his head, face souring with worry. “Mark my words, he’s fakin’ it. And it’s gonna catch up to him sooner or later.” 

Castiel nods. He feared as much, even as he was sincerely hoping otherwise. “What do we do?” 

“Be there when it does, and hope it ain’t too late.” 

“That sounds like a terrible plan.” 

“It is.” Bobby sighs, visibly resigned. “But, much as I hate sayin’ it, that boy is ten pounds of John Winchester in a five-pound bag when it comes to things like this. What do you reckon’ll happen if we try and pry into him while he’s so hellbent on being fine?” 

Castiel doesn’t need more than a split-second to consider the consequences. Dean can be fiery and gruff on the best of days, but if his psyche is teetering on the edge of catastrophe as precariously as Castiel thinks it is, even the gentlest nudge toward getting him to slow down and confront his darkness could spell disaster. The luckiest outcome would be an outburst of indiscriminate rage, like a cornered animal. Frightened with only his bite as a means of defense. 

“Nothing good,” is Castiel’s answer, loath though he is to admit it. 

☽𖤐☾

02.03.10 [10:33 PM]

They think I don’t see them worrying. I wish they wouldn’t. I’m tired of seeing them waste their energy. 

☽𖤐☾

MARCH 10, 2010 || 08:05 AM || 1609 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Dean’s skin, ordinarily golden, radiant, and dappled with constellations of freckles, has gone pale and sickly gray. His hair is plastered to his forehead in a sheen of sweat, and the hospital gown the nurse practically had to wrestle him into when he was admitted is just about soaked-through and clinging to his shallow-heaving chest. Lower down, where his leg lay supported on pillows that have gone too flat to serve their use effectively, his knee is wrapped in bandages soiled with stains of brown and yellow. Creeping up his thigh and down his shin is a blotchy, angry-red rash. Most troubling: a stark vein of pink, which stretches far enough up the length of his leg that it disappears under the hem of his gown. 

Castiel would be terrorizing the doctor for what appears to be fatal negligence if not for his earlier proactive glance-over of Dean’s chart. For all intents and purposes, the medical staff caring for Dean are doing everything they’re supposed to. He’s being dosed heavily with antibiotics, and the most recent dressing change was only an hour ago; the fester of his wound really is just that advanced. 

Actually, correction: Dean has let it become that advanced. Castiel has pleaded with him, more than once, to allow himself to be healed. Back when it wasn’t yet a matter of infection, then when it was only mild, skin-deep, then when he first spiked a low-grade fever, then when the pain grew to be untouchable by narcotics. Dean refused each and every time and offered the same flimsy, bullshit excuse. 

“You need to conserve your grace, Cas.” 

In the beginning, Castiel tried to be patient with him. Now, he’s livid. Not only because he’s more than a little fed-up with his waning grace being the grand topic of every discussion, but also because Dean is essentially asking Castiel to sit back and watch him die. No— not asking. Commanding. Since, apparently, somewhere along the way, he’s forgotten that Castiel isn’t just another one of his ‘soldiers.’ 

“Dean, this is absurd,” Castiel says, bracing a hand near the head of the bed and leaning over Dean in a way that makes it impossible for him to easily cast his attention elsewhere. If he’s going to force Castiel to listen to another baseless refusal to be healed, he’s going to look him in the eyes when he says it. 

“It’s just an infection, Cas. It takes a while for the antibiotics to kick in,” Dean grits out through clenched teeth. His voice is weak, hoarse, bordering on pitiful. 

“This isn’t just anything. This can kill you.” 

“Don’t be so dramatic. I ain’t delirious. We’ve got time before it becomes even a little reasonable to panic.” 

“Well, somebody has to panic on your behalf, because clearly you’re incapable of seeing the bigger picture here. For the love of all that is holy, Dean, please just let me heal you—” 

“No.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I fucking said so. End of discussion.” 

Well. At least it’s a change from using Castiel’s grace as an excuse. Even so, it’s no less flimsy, and about ten times the amount of bullshit. 

Castiel shakes his head. “I don’t understand—why are you doing this to yourself, Dean?” 

“I’m not doing anything to myself,” Dean insists. “I’m just thinking about all the people here who might have a real need for your healing abilities in the future. I’m seeing the bigger picture, Cas. You’re the one with tunnel vision.” 

Castiel’s face contorts into a bitter scowl. If Dean is so determined to spare no regard for himself, then fine. Castiel can begrudgingly but just as well appeal to his irritating sense of duty to everyone but himself. “The only reason these people are alive is because of you. What do you think will happen to them if you’re not here to protect them?”

Dean scoffs—a frail thing. Somehow, despite Castiel’s efforts, he does manage to look away, avoid Castiel’s scrutinizing gaze. “Yeah, like I’ve been doing a great job of that lately.” 

And just like that, what’s been making no sense at all suddenly makes all the sense in the world. How Castiel never saw it before is beyond him. 

He should’ve known. He should’ve known. 

“So that’s what this is about,” Castiel murmurs, face pinched with a blend of disbelief and ire. “Your noble charade to preserve my grace in the event of some theoretical life-threatening emergency is nothing more than a ruse to conceal your boneheaded inclination to self-flagellate. You’re just using your injury as an excuse to punish yourself. And for what, exactly? You weren’t the one who ordered that airstrike, Dean. It wasn’t your fa—” 

“I think you should leave,” Dean cuts in. He jerks his head to glare up at Castiel. His eyes are filmy with fever and exhaustion, but the venom in them shines bright, clear as day. Still, it fails to fully obscure the visceral fear that’s sparked to life beneath it all, the vulnerability so potent he can’t possibly smother it under spite and indignation like he’s always learned to do. 

Perhaps dredging up the memory of Manhattan in the way Castiel did was unwise, but it had to be addressed at some point. The revelation of Dean aiming to die over it seemed as good an occasion as any. 

So Castiel says, “no.” Firm and unrelenting. He’s not letting this go easily. 

“Cas.” Dean says it as a warning. 

Castiel decidedly does not heed it. “Why do you think I’ve stuck around this long?” 

Dean falters at that, blinking, brow furrowing. “What?” 

“The angels left. I could’ve gone with them, could’ve groveled for them to take me back and damned this world to Lucifer’s whims. When I still had my wings, I could’ve gone to any time, universe, or planet I wanted, and yet, all this time, I chose to stay here and fight alongside you. So I’m asking you now, Dean: why the hell do you think I stayed? It surely wasn’t to watch you die because you subscribe to some ludicrous notion that everything that goes wrong around you is your responsibility to atone for.”

Dean is quiet. For a long, long time, he’s quiet. His eyes shimmer with a layer of mist, reddening around the edges as they flicker over Castiel’s face. Finally, he turns his head away again, a hard set in his jaw. There’s the faintest quiver in his lower lip. Suppressed, subdued. 

“You made the wrong choice then,” he says, voice straining around the words, like the delicate hairs of a violin bow poised to snap. 

There’s a jabbing sensation in Castiel’s chest that he’s come recently to understand is the human body’s natural response to disillusionment, heartbreak. He doesn’t like it. The few times he’s felt it, he can’t say he’s ever recovered fully from it; it’s a feeling that leaves scars, ghosts of past blades belonging to misery herself. He never forgets the cuts that make him bleed. 

“Dean,” he says—a hushed, supplicative little utterance. 

“Just go, Cas.” And there it is. Dean’s shut him out. Boarded up his windows and hunkered down within himself in wait for the storm of his own devising to take him. His mind is made. 

Slowly, Castiel straightens and retracts his hand from the bed. He stays peering at Dean for a lingering few seconds—takes in the sorry state of him. He looks small, utterly defeated. And that jabbing sensation in Castiel’s chest only intensifies as the sobering realization sinks in that he has no shot at coaxing Dean down the right path this time. Dean has made his intent transparently clear. 

Castiel has no choice. He knows what he must do. 

He makes to leave the room, then pauses in the doorway. “You know, we used to be friends, you and I.” He glances over his shoulder at Dean, but it’s as though Dean had anticipated his bid for eye-contact, because he’s now looking in the opposite direction, away from Castiel. “Since when did I become nothing more than a subordinate to you?” 

Dean doesn’t answer, and Castiel doesn’t expect him to. With that, Castiel takes his leave. 

He only makes it a few paces down the hall before he encounters Bobby, who’s heading back to Dean’s room after his break for lunch. 

Bobby stops in front of Castiel, looking up at him with tentative hope in his eyes. “Well?” he asks. 

In reply, Castiel can only offer a grim frown and a shake of the head. 

The fickle hope in Bobby’s eyes is promptly snuffed, but it’s not despair that takes its place. Rather, invigoration. “His head just ain’t right. We have to do something, even if he don’t like it.” 

“Believe me, I have no intention of honoring his will,” Castiel says. “Let me know when the delirium has set in. I’ll take care of it then.” 

“Ain’t that cuttin’ it a little close?” 

“I’m not thrilled about it either. But as long as he has his wits about him, he’s not letting me anywhere near him with a healing hand.” 

Bobby makes a face, incredulous. “He’s weak and bedridden. You’re telling me you can’t pin him down and heal him right now?” 

Castiel resents that suggestion, though he can’t piece together a logical reason why. It’d be pathetic of him to confess that so blatantly violating Dean’s boundaries while he still has enough of his head to voice ‘no’ and mean it makes him feel… Sick. Even if doing so would save Dean’s life. It’s a matter of principle. Frustrated as Castiel is with Dean at the moment, he finds he respects him too much to disregard his autonomy in such a way. 

At least, if he’s near to knocking on Death’s door, Castiel can act behind the shield of the condition Dean originally gave to justify any use of his healing grace: a life-threatening emergency. Dean doesn’t yet consider his current state of illness urgent. Castiel knows him well enough to understand that he’d have to be standing face-to-face with a reaper before he’d concede to the idea that his situation constitutes an emergency. 

Regardless, Dean will come out on the other side of this scorned and steeped in the fires of wrath. There’s no avoiding that. Castiel’s already accepted it as the consequence for his soon-to-be transgression. But as long as Castiel waits—waits until he has Dean’s own bullshit excuse to defend himself with—the only ammunition Dean will have to lodge against him is something that will backfire on himself. 

To condemn Castiel, he will first have to admit that his effort to die never had anything to do with saving others and everything to do with the will to end the suffering he’s been staunchly pretending not to endure. 

Dean hates using himself as a reason for anything he does. He’s so selfless, he can’t even make his pursuit of suicide about his own longstanding agony. It has to be about honor and sacrifice, always. If nothing else, Castiel earnestly hopes this will force Dean to recognize himself for a change. Even if it ultimately costs Castiel their friendship… 

Castiel knows he can’t say all of that to Bobby. He suspects it only sounds logical in his own mind. Thus, he doesn’t answer Bobby’s question at all. 

Instead, he squares his shoulders, says, “the deputies have asked me to help coordinate the watch rotations while Dean’s out of commission, so I’ll be at the police station in the meantime,” and walks off before he can be interrogated further. 

☽𖤐☾

03.10.10 [02:22 PM]

My head feels fuzzy as hell. Everything hurts. I can’t really feel my knee anymore though, which is a plus. Not that I think it’s a good sign or anything. The nurses keep coming in to dose me with something every time the damn monitor goes off—low blood pressure, I think. Bobby won’t leave me alone, but I’ll give him a pass. I ain’t stupid. I know he thinks you’ve bit it and I’m the only kid he has left. I hate that I’m doing this to him, but I just… I’m tired, Sammy. I’m tired of everyone following me into the fire and somehow, I’m the only one that ever makes it out alive. I’m trying to do what’s right. 

I thought Cas would get it. He’s got those creepy, perceptive angel eyes, you know? He sees things for what they are. But honestly—he’s been on my case even worse than Bobby. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s desperate. Cas doesn’t get desperate. 

He said something to me, though. He thinks I haven’t been treating him like a friend lately, and he’s right about that. If I let him in like a friend, I know he’ll be able to crack me. Make me step down from the ledge, or whatever. And I can’t afford that. It’s easier to keep him at a distance. My head is clearer that way. Doesn’t mean I don’t also hate that I’m hurting him, too.

☽𖤐☾

DECEMBER 31, 2009 || 11:00 PM || 1678 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Despite the general, dire reality of things, the town wanted to throw a celebratory block party on Main to usher in the New Year. Castiel didn’t feel one way or the other about it, and Bobby downright despised the idea, griping that there was nothing good worth celebrating anymore. Dean—well… 

Dean also had no opinion, but that’s because he’s been stuck in a disturbing veil between present and absent for a week now. He’s physically all there. Mentally, he’s somewhere else entirely. He doesn’t respond when his name is called. He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t eat when food is offered—not even the greasiest burger. He does drink, but even that is an occasion few and far between. For the most part, he only sleeps, and in the rare event that he’s awake, he walks himself from room to room, all the while staring into the middle-distance. 

Castiel has tried to venture into his mind, but all he’s ever met with is endless emptiness, infinite black in all directions. Wherever Dean is—his thoughts, his vivid, colorful spirit, his identity… He’s tightly locked away. And neither Castiel nor Bobby has the faintest clue how to free him. 

“I couldn’t care less about that block party thing, but—I don’t know—maybe it’d be good for him,” Bobby had suggested earlier, around four in the afternoon. “With any luck, a change of scenery might do him nice.” 

Castiel found the logic dubious initially, but he took the time to consider it anyway. It is true that Dean’s been cooped-up in the house since they returned from Manhattan, stewing in the dour aftermath, confined to stuffy hallways, poor lighting, and clutter. He could certainly benefit from some fresh air and open space—perhaps a little festivity as well. 

“Okay,” Castiel said. “I’ll take him.”

And so, he set about making Dean presentable enough to face the outside world. A few things he used his grace for—cleaning Dean up without needing to undress him, brushing his teeth without having to pick up a toothbrush for him. Little things, low expenditure. A part of Castiel was actually hoping for Dean to suddenly snap out of it and nag at him for such a ‘waste of grace.’ But Dean did no such thing. He sat and stared, as he had for the days preceding.

Castiel decided to leave the slight scruff of Dean’s facial hair alone. It hadn’t yet grown to be egregious; if anything, it suited him well. Then, because it had begun to snow outside, he took care to bundle Dean up in a hat, gloves, and scarf, and made sure to double the flannel under his canvas jacket for good measure before grabbing his hand and leading him out the door. 

So far, their going’s been slow on the way down to Main Street, but Castiel doesn’t mind. The night is beautiful. Quiet. Fluffy flakes of snow drift down to form blankets on the ground. The moon is full, bright even through the sheet of clouds rolling by in the sky. It’s a little chilly, but nothing Castiel’s mostly angelic nature can’t handle; he’s not even wearing a jacket. Just a plain tee and one of Dean’s plaid overshirts. 

Dean shuffles along beside him, silent like always. But Castiel thinks, from the occasional glances he’s been stealing, there might be the tiniest glimmer attempting to kindle alight in Dean’s dull eyes—small but determined. 

He sticks close enough to Castiel that their shoulders brush; Castiel has no way of knowing whether or not it’s a deliberate choice on Dean’s part. He doesn’t ask, nor does he point it out. Whatever Dean needs, he’s allowed to have. Whatever he wants, if there’s even the minutest capacity in him to want anything right now, it’s his. Castiel is happy to oblige. 

As they near the north end of Main, the tune of some classic rock song or another rings merrily into the air. Christmas lights decorate the entrances of store fronts that either managed to survive the collapse of Heaven’s foundations or rebuild in the aftermath. Food stands line the sidewalks. And droves of Sioux Falls residents mill about the thoroughfare, mingling and laughing cheerfully amongst themselves. 

Dean slows to a stop, and Castiel follows in kind, turning to assess him. Cautious, curious. 

For once, his stare isn’t blank and distant. He’s scanning over the joyous scene before him, lips parted just so, the uneasy crease that seems to have taken up permanent residence in his brow smoothed into something softer. The technicolor lighting of the street reflects strikingly off the green in his irises. 

Castiel finds his attention lingering there, on Dean’s eyes. Not for the first time, he’s certain they’re some of the greatest marvels he’s ever seen in this world, regardless of the pain and neglect and brokenness roiling within them. 

Tentatively, Castiel reaches a thin thread of his grace into Dean’s head, feeling around in the desolate abyss—except, it’s not desolate anymore. It’s still dark and black, but no longer is it empty. There, at the center: a small spark of light where the laughter of children echoes and the image of winged figures embedded in the snow shines under rainbow roof lights. 

A memory. Something happy in Dean’s past that the block party reminds him of. 

An odd flutter-like feeling settles in behind Castiel’s sternum. He’s unfamiliar with it, but if he had to take a guess, it seems to be in connection to the overwhelming relief currently manifesting itself in a smile on his face. 

Castiel knows not to let hope take him and run away with him. It is, however, an encouraging sign that the vice-grip of Dean’s previously unshakable trance is wavering—if even just by way of a solitary drop of sentimentality in a sea of affliction. 

Dean has hardly looked like himself in days. Reduced to a shell that wears his face but not his soul. Dean Winchester isn’t Dean Winchester without his soul. The beauty of him is almost entirely contingent upon it—blazing hot with tenacity and eternally persevering. Castiel has seen it with his own eyes; it’s mottled with colors humanity doesn’t even know exist. 

Right now, in this moment, Dean looks a little like himself again. He emanates a color Castiel can only name in Enochian. 

“Come on.” He curls a hand around Dean’s elbow and guides him into a nearby alleyway branching off the street. Dean goes willingly and without question. 

There’s a fire escape built into the sidewall of an apartment building a short ways down the alley. Castiel leads Dean up to the wraparound balcony on the top floor, where the view of the street below is both vast and secluded. 

“This is a favored place of mine in town. I come here often to think,” he says, though he doesn’t expect Dean to respond. 

And Dean doesn’t. He leans over the railing, elbows propped on the flat metal overbar. His gaze scans over the party from above. Upon closer inspection, Castiel would say he’s surveying the street, vigilant, alert. 

In many ways, it’s a step up from his prior lack of alertness—the days he spent not seeming to grasp his surroundings or the passage of time. But Castiel would be remiss not to acknowledge that excessive vigilance in relative safety is a problem all on its own. He doesn’t call attention to it. Dean will do what he needs to do to reattain equilibrium. 

“Not that I should be endorsing your substance abuse problem,” Castiel begins after some time—a play at being tongue-in-cheek, “but would you like me to get you a beer?” 

Again, he doesn’t necessarily expect an answer from Dean, but he thought he’d ask anyway. For several seconds, Dean doesn’t give so much as an indication that he heard Castiel to begin with. Then—he makes a quiet, indistinct noise low in his throat and shakes his head. 

It’s just a faint movement, and an even fainter noise. If Castiel were human, he might not have noticed the response at all. But he saw it, and he heard it. 

An answer. The first of its kind in nearly eight days. 

It’s not an answer he would’ve anticipated—Dean Winchester, denying the offer of a beer? Unlikely. Nonetheless, Castiel accepts and moves on, simply thrilled to have earned a reply at all.

He mimics Dean’s position, leaning himself over the railing and following Dean’s gaze down to the street. There are children playing in the snow, giggling. Parents hover nearby, wearing doting smiles. The music—which Castiel has determined is being played through the outdoor speakers at Hawk’s Bar half a block down the road—has shifted in tone. No longer classic rock. Something folksy, with more swing. Bluegrass, Castiel is inclined to guess, but he doesn’t profess to be an expert on popular music genres. 

He aims a sideways glance at Dean. Even with distance, the colorful lights from the street set his eyes aglow. Pools of green, stirring with life and gentle vigor. Dean, overall, has a stony, tough appearance—but his eyes have always served well to soften the jagged edges carved into him from years of abuse, self-inflicted or otherwise. 

Doubtless, Castiel’s favorite features of Dean’s to look at are his eyes. Even now. Even when their brilliance has been dimmed. 

Truthfully, he doesn’t think Dean appreciates it very much—having his eyes revered. He has a suspicious habit of pretending walls and floor tiles are exceptionally fascinating whenever Castiel dares to make eye-contact for an extended period of time. Sometimes, he’ll even scratch at his nose as he tosses his gaze elsewhere, and Castiel’s rarely ever convinced it’s because there’s an actual itch there.

This time, Castiel doesn’t try to force direct eye-contact; he’s content with the glimpse he has. Dean is busy with another bout of quiet reminiscence as he observes the scene below, and Castiel’s not particularly keen on distracting him from it for his own personal gain. 

“You and Sam once stayed here with Bobby for the holidays when you were kids, right?” Castiel prods delicately. “You made snow angels and had snowball fights?” 

Dean turns his head and gives Castiel a strange look; it’s not the same flinty sort of glare he likes to don when he’s unamused by something, but it’s in that general realm. 

Castiel adds, by way of explanation, “I may have taken the liberty of poking around your head a bit earlier.” 

Dean makes a face, then rolls his eyes and goes back to peering over the railing. 

“You can’t fault me for monitoring your mental wellbeing, Dean. I’ve been worried.” 

Dean is unresponsive long enough that Castiel assumes that’s the end of… What he supposes fulfills the requirements to be classified as a conversation, given the circumstances. But then Dean is lifting his arm up to sling across Castiel’s shoulders and pulling him into his side. 

Castiel is thrown, blinking at the side of Dean’s head as he attempts to grasp the nature of the sudden show of affection. Dean’s not an awfully touchy person. He’ll gladly use his whole body to support the weight of a wounded ally in a fight or hold someone close to guard them from an imminent threat. But Castiel can’t recall a time that he’s ever seen Dean hug anyone other than Sam, and even then, the occasion was sparse. Once or twice, perhaps. 

This, of course, doesn’t constitute a hug, per se, but it’s most assuredly the closest he and Castiel have ever gotten to one. 

It’s… Pleasant. Dean is warm through his layers, and his arm fits over Castiel’s frame nicely. Castiel’s not confident in his working knowledge of the social contract in cases like this; he doesn’t know if some manner of reciprocation is expected. Presumably, it’s safer to just let himself be held rather than risk overstepping some unspoken boundary. And so, he does exactly that—lets himself be held. 

He assumes this is only a gesture of gratitude in the absence of Dean’s voice. Nothing especially deep or heartfelt. It’s not like Castiel is rejecting some sort of advance by not returning the favor. 

Together, they watch the party. The children have graduated from their game of tag to pelting each other with snow; one child slips on a slick patch of road, and an older child comes to scoop him back up and dust him off. Right across the street, the deputies have congregated for a drinking game Castiel can’t quite discern the rules of. Farther down, a chorus of happy, drunken voices rings out around a bonfire, carrying the same tune as the one playing from Hawk’s Bar. 

Castiel’s resided in this town for a handful of months; in spite of his less-than-stellar ability to connect with the townspeople, he has grown much more familiar with the concept of community and kinship—something that Heaven sorely lacked. He’s not terribly bothered by how much he tends to stick out. Dean and Bobby have made a home for him, and the people hold his skills in high enough regard to overlook his more glaring flaws with smiles on their faces, and that’s always been enough. Still, he wonders what it might be like to truly assimilate with the flock. To partake in that flock’s frivolity without being immediately identifiable as ‘the thing that doesn’t quite fit.’ 

It’s been a topic of discussion before. One late night a month or so ago, when Dean was busy checking over, and re-checking, and then verifying his upcoming reconnaissance mission plan, Castiel had mentioned that people seem to struggle with knowing how to interact with him, even when he tries to appeal to their interests. And Dean had said, in absolutely no more than a split second: “fitting in is overrated, Cas. Don’t bend yourself out of shape over it.” 

Since then, Castiel hasn’t cared to spare more energy than necessary toward assimilating. Wonder as he may about the flock’s frivolity, he’s more than happy partaking in Dean’s—which usually consists of any combination of drinking in excess, humorous storytelling, weapons cleaning, and car maintenance. He once tried to sit Castiel and Bobby down for a game of Blackjack, but it ended in an argument that Castiel maintains, to this day, was ridiculous—all over him counting cards to gain an advantage. How was he supposed to know that wasn’t allowed? It’s not like anyone told him ahead of time. 

Regardless, Castiel’s been banned from the poker table for the foreseeable future. 

Oddly enough, what he and Dean are doing right now—it feels more true to Dean than others would typically be led to believe. On the surface, he seems like a decently outgoing person, someone who would thrive in the organized chaos of a party. And he can definitely blend in in such a scene. But Castiel’s always seen him at his most comfortable when he’s removed from the thick of a crowd. He’s more observant and introspective than most would think. 

Sure, in this particular instance, there’s a strong element of avoidance going on; Castiel knew well not to bother trying to lure Dean into the party. The last thing Dean would want is for everyone to see him weak. But even if Dean’s mental fortitude were what it should be, Castiel would wager that he’d still prefer to be up on this fire escape, watching from afar. In fact, imagining Dean mingling and making trivial small-talk almost strikes Castiel as amusing. 

Castiel would never say it to his face, but it hasn’t escaped his notice that Dean is actually a remarkably awkward communicator in a low-stakes conversation with people he’s not especially close to. He can play the part of leader, tactician, federal agent, monster bait, haughty warrior, or cocky flirt in front of strangers with flawless ease, but the second he’s expected to play the part of himself and nothing but himself, all of a sudden, he can’t string together a single sentence without fumbling in some way. 

(For the record, Castiel does find it worth mentioning that Dean’s not really that great of a flirt either; as far as he can tell, women are just quick to forgive his corny, overtired pickup lines on account of his looks. Which is another thing Castiel would never dare say to Dean’s face, though he entertains himself with the thought frequently. If nothing else, it adds depth to his exercise in keeping a straight face when he’s asked to accompany Dean on his weekly Friday-night bar ventures.)

It’s not a matter of vain self-importance that Castiel knows Dean is about as content and grounded as he can be at the moment—being here with Castiel, both of them sharing mutual, quiet enjoyment in spectating others’ boisterous merriment. It’s merely a matter of fact. 

In this small, mundane way, Dean is happy. And Castiel is glad. So much so that he suspects the warmth he feels isn’t just a feature of Dean’s body pressed to his, but rather, something of his own body’s making. An usher of fondness, the seed of which was planted long ago and has only now made itself known—roots tangled all throughout his chest, sprouting into his veins, undeniable, irrevocable. 

Castiel is so very fond of Dean Winchester. 

It’s not quite a grand revelation. Castiel has felt strong, inexplicable things about Dean since before their friendship was forged. It is, however, the first time he’s been able to pin down the precise nature of those strong things. 

More often than not, Castiel is greatly perturbed by his ever-increasing ability to experience human emotion. In a world deteriorating at the hands of the Apocalypse, positive feelings are a dismal rarity, and adverse feelings are ceaseless, overwhelming, unprocessable, and nearly impossible to identify with solid clarity. The only thing Castiel knows for certain is that his body reacts very negatively to them, and if he doesn’t wrestle them off the foreground of his mind as soon as they crop up there, he tends to feel rather ill. Restless, palms clammy, heart pounding, stomach rolling, breaths shallow… 

Fondness is unequivocally a positive feeling, though. And the hearth-like warmth in Castiel’s chest is a welcome change from despair’s cold havoc. 

Without thinking, he curls his arm around Dean, hand finding a place somewhere near his lower ribs—too high to be his waist, too low to be considered proper etiquette between male friends. Some manner of limbo that even Castiel can’t comprehend. 

Once he’s caught himself, he almost retracts his arm and steps out of Dean’s hold, but he pauses. Considers. Because, looking at Dean—the sharp edges of his jaw, nose, and brow, the soft curves of his eyes, cheeks, and lips—Castiel sees there’s not the slightest indication that he’s even a little disturbed by the added physical contact. In fact, he hasn’t reacted at all beyond a brief glance in Castiel’s direction and a subtle flicker of a smile—the kind that shows more at the outer corners of the eyes than on the lips. 

Castiel relaxes, arm remaining firmly around Dean. Seconds tick by into minutes, and minutes lead back into seconds when the crowd on Main starts counting down from ten in unison. 

“Ten… Nine… Eight…” 

Castiel recites the sequence with them silently in his head; it’s the extent he’s willing to go to partake in the flock’s frivolity. 

“Three… Two… One…” 

When they all erupt into a cheer of, “Happy New Year!”, Castiel finds himself smiling. The ability of humans to make small things into big celebrations is endearing. 

Two things happen at once, then:

A deafening explosion cracks through the blissful night, causing Castiel to flinch, heart lurching, hair standing on end—and suddenly, Dean is gone, no longer fit snugly against his side. 

Castiel whirls around, not caring one bit to determine what the explosion was or where it came from. He searches frantically for Dean. Around the bend of the balcony, under the lone patio table—God forbid, over the railing and down fifty feet. Nothing. He’s nowhere. 

Another explosion rings out, and another; Castiel feels it in his ribs. He can hardly breathe, but that doesn’t matter. He bolts down the fire escape, throat burning with each pull of dry winter air. 

The instant his feet hit pavement in the alley and carry him under the cover of rusted metal stairs, he finds Dean. Crouched low, back sunken into the wall, chin tucked toward his chest, hands clutched over his ears. 

Castiel rushes over, kneeling down in front of him. “Dean, hey—” he reaches out to grab the sides of Dean’s face and lifts his head up just enough to get a better look at him. 

His eyes are wide-open, fraught, haunted. Yet they don’t see. Dean doesn’t seem to register that Castiel is there at all, staring right through him. His chest shudders with quick, uneven breaths. Castiel can feel the relentless surge of adrenaline in the fine tremors all under Dean’s skin. 

It’s exactly as Castiel saw of him a week ago in that middle-of-nowhere field, both of them smothered in concrete dust and blood fresh enough to still be warm where it’d soaked through their clothes. 

Back then, it took hours for Dean to come back to him. After that, it took days, and even then, not fully. What of this time? Weeks? Months? Never? 

Castiel feels his throat collapse in on itself. His heart still feels inexplicably erratic behind his sternum. Some unruly coldness tears up and down his spine. His hands shake. 

He’s felt uneasy before, but never like this. Never so untamably. 

Another explosion goes off, and he flinches again. Dean shrinks deeper into himself. 

Castiel looks out through the mouth of the alleyway, and there he spots it—the next explosion. A burst of sparkly blue in the sky, followed by red, followed by green in the shape of a smiley face. 

Fireworks. 

Not bombs. Not a threat. No danger. 

Puffing out a trembling breath, Castiel returns his attention to Dean, who’s clearly not in any position to arrive at the same conclusion that Castiel has. He’s lost. Too far gone. Deeply buried in his own head. Drowning in terror.

It’s strange. Castiel once had the power to pull Dean out of Hell, but this—this, he is much too weak for. Helplessness is a foreign concept to an angel, but it’s excruciating to something other like Castiel. By far, it’s the feeling that makes him feel the sickest when he can’t temper it. 

Frowning, chest aching, he touches two fingertips gently to Dean’s forehead, channels his grace into him, and Dean goes still and lax against Castiel, consciousness drained. It’s the only thing Castiel can do for him. 

As fireworks continue to paint the sky in festive color, Castiel gathers Dean into his arms and carries him away, retreating back to where it’s quiet, dim, and cluttered. 

☽𖤐☾

12.31.09 [11:59 PM]

[No Entry]

☽𖤐☾

MARCH 11, 2010 || 01:41 PM || 1608 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Castiel arrives at the hospital within minutes of Bobby’s call, lungs starving for air as he weaves through dense thickets of patients and nurses and doctors loitering in the hallway outside Dean’s room. 

A fool is something Castiel calls Dean Winchester nearly on a daily basis. There’s always something foolish that Dean is doing. Sometimes he’s minimizing his importance. Sometimes he’s leaping into the flames of peril because he thinks himself expendable. Sometimes he’s stubborn and unwilling to bend on a matter he really ought to. Sometimes he takes responsibility for the failings of others when they can’t bring themselves to admit their own faults. The list goes on. And on. And on. All of it is always foolish, and Castiel tells him so. 

But Dean’s never been any greater a fool than Castiel has been in the days he’s spent pleading with and indulging the delusional martyrdom of a sick, stupid man. 

In a way, Castiel, too, is unwilling to bend on matters he really ought to. The only difference is that he moves with more subtlety. 

He refused to compromise his principles—sacrifice his moral standing on autonomy for the objective greater good of saving Dean’s life. And where has that stubbornness led him? 

Not to the convenient shield of septic delirium, as he’d anticipated. No, no. Dean is perfectly lucid. 

Rather, it led him to a clot lodged in Dean’s lung and the sight of him lying in a hospital bed with a hand clutched desperately to his chest, gasping for breath while his lips grow increasingly blue with each passing second. Nurses rush around him, injecting substances into his IV, scrambling to get an oxygen mask situated over his mouth and nose. 

Bobby’s tucked into the far back corner of the room, out of the way, panic written into every solitary feature of his face. The second he catches a glimpse of Castiel stunned and hovering in the doorway, his panic morphs into something weirdly akin to paternal austerity, like he’s scolding Castiel with just a look. 

“Took you long enough. What the hell’re you waiting for? Lay your damn hands on and get healing,” he snaps; if Castiel thinks too much about it, he almost detects a tinge of blame coloring Bobby’s stern tone. 

Castiel blinks, shakes himself of his uncharacteristic wobbliness, and marches into the room. “Move,” he commands to the floundering nurses.

In an instant, they drop what they’re doing and step away from Dean. Castiel may be destitute as far as angels go, but the only human that’s ever dared to stand in his way in any meaningful capacity is presently in the middle of dying. 

When he steps up to Dean’s bedside, he wastes no time at all reaching a hand out to him, grace at the ready. He gets within inches of Dean before he’s snatched by the wrist. The grip is extraordinarily bruising for Dean being as frail as he is. 

Castiel flicks his gaze up to meet Dean’s. His eyes are bright and green like they only can be when he’s stubborn, even as he struggles painfully for every ounce of air he can get. It’s amusing in a morbid, paradoxically mirthless sort of way: Dean is daring Castiel to betray him. The funny thing about that is that Dean thinks Castiel’s loyalty somehow applies to him when he’s the danger Castiel’s sworn to protect him from. 

Castiel actually smiles—a little quirk of the lips—as he tells him, “not this time, Dean.” Watches the realization dawn on Dean’s pale, sickly face—his revelation that a wall is only as immovable as its matching force is willing to yield. “Not ever again.” 

Castiel breaks out of Dean’s grasp with ease, and despite further efforts from Dean to thwart him, he gets his palm planted on the center of his chest with no trouble at all. Still, Dean claws at his hand to pry it away, to no avail. Castiel pays him no mind.

It takes work to channel his grace now. What used to be as simple as thinking a desired reality into existence has become a tedious exercise in concentration and willpower. As soon as his grace floods into Dean, his focus very nearly wavers. The amount of damage the infection has done as it’s ravaged Dean’s body is staggering. 

Organs failing, vessels in tatters, knee a mangled, suppurating mess—his blood, even, may as well be nothing more than infectious poison at this rate. 

Castiel works in order of highest priority to lowest. Clot in lung, then failing liver, then failing kidneys, then shredded vessels. Clearing the disease from Dean’s blood is a more delicate operation, but with some added elbow grease, Castiel gets the job done. By the time he can finally turn his attention to Dean’s knee, he feels… Weary. The sort of lethargy that sets in just before he has no choice but to succumb to sleep. It’s rare; Castiel still doesn’t generally suffer a need to sleep. But when he does, it’s after he’s used more grace than he was able to organically replenish in a given frame of time. 

Before Heaven toppled, Castiel never gave much thought to the function and flow of angelic grace. He never had a need to. He’s since learned that the depletion of it is nowhere near as linear as he expected—that it can, to some degree, replenish by drawing on the energy of nature—God’s creations. But replenishment in itself takes the energy of grace to fuel; exceeding a certain threshold all at once ultimately serves to limit how much can be replenished in the first place. 

This right now? This far exceeds Castiel’s capabilities. He pushes himself anyway. It serves him right for obliging Dean’s absurd deathwish-laden demands—a natural consequence for Castiel’s foolishness. 

Gritting his teeth, he funnels more of his grace into Dean, directing it to the heap of obliterated ligaments, shattered bone, and decayed flesh that’s become of his knee. Castiel’s vision blackens a bit around the edges, and his head feels a little harder to hold up, but he persists, just to put things back together. It’s not perfect or fully right, but it should hold Dean over until Castiel can amass enough of his grace again to heal the finer damages—however long that may take… 

By the time Castiel is done, it takes an embarrassing amount of effort to straighten himself back up and pretend his legs aren’t about ready to buckle underneath him. A part of him wonders if he’s just feeling normal human weakness for the first time or if it’s true weakness. 

He meets Dean’s eyes again, and they’re still just as green and bright as before—perhaps more now that the healthy color has returned to his face. Dean stares back at him like he simply can’t believe Castiel’s audacity; the bitter hostility written into his face is unmistakable. 

But he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t curse. He doesn’t tear into Castiel like he obviously wants to. 

Because he can’t. 

Because his will to die was a secret meant to perish with him. No one else was supposed to know. Even Castiel wasn’t supposed to know; Dean just forgot that Castiel is a being that sees. One way or another, he eventually comes to grasp what others refuse to in favor of their own peace. 

Castiel knows him. Dean can’t speak his mind freely in this moment, because he’s being watched by dozens of people that he was about to abandon to the cold in his passing. A passing that he would’ve orchestrated himself. Castiel doesn’t see death, even that set into motion by one’s own urge for it, as abandonment; seeking mercy for oneself in times of utter helplessness is understandable. But it doesn’t matter what Castiel thinks. It matters what Dean thinks. And in Dean’s eyes, he was prepared to die wracked with the guilt of leaving the people that have come to depend on him behind. His desperation for mercy was more persuasive than the shame of letting his people down. 

Guilt is the fuel upon which Dean Winchester runs. And now that his excuse to die has been eliminated, guilt has once again taken the reins and resumed the steering of his conscience. It was guilt that drove him to such misery to begin with, and it’s guilt that’s silencing him now. 

Silencing… Save for a muttered whisper that, “you defied a direct order.” 

All pretense has evaporated; to Dean, Castiel is his soldier, but Castiel sees right through it, like he should have from the very start. 

Dean’s been pushing him off to the side, because he knows Castiel is the only one who’s able to sway him.

So again, Castiel smiles—can’t help it. And he says, “because I’m your friend, Dean. Not your subordinate. It was my mistake letting you decide that for me, and I won’t be making it again.” 

He turns to leave, and as the crowd of nurses and doctors parts to let him walk past, he feels Dean’s bright green eyes burning resentment and enmity into him from behind.

Truly, what did Dean expect from an angel that turned his back on God and the Heavenly Host for him? If guilt is Dean’s vice, then rebellion is Castiel’s. It’s woven into the fabric of who they are. They were forged in the fires of equivalent opposition, made to push and pull against each other—immovable versus unstoppable. The greatest source of their dysfunction and their synergy. 

Somehow, Castiel had let himself forget it. 

As he passes through the crowd, he wills his face and body to reveal nothing of the weakness he feels inside—the trembling of his knees, the spinning of his head, the shortness of his breaths. The blackness around the edges of his vision creeps closer to center. Still, it isn’t until he’s rounded several corners and found a quiet, out-of-the-way storage closet that he allows his consciousness to finally deplete. 

Grace drained, he collapses right on the floor of that storage closet, and he doesn’t rouse again for nearly fourteen hours. 

No one comes looking, because he’s an angel, and angels can handle themselves. That’s what humans are primed to believe. 

Dean doesn’t come looking for a wholly different reason…

☽𖤐☾

03.11.10 [09:16 PM]

I wanna hate him. He fucking deserves it after the shit he pulled on me today. But doesn’t it just figure that I can’t hate him no matter how hard I try? 

This must’ve been what it was like for you too, huh, Sammy? Having decisions made on your behalf all the time by the people that care about you? I always laughed it off, because—I mean, come on. God forbid your friends and family give enough of a shit to look out for you. 

I understand now though. How fucking infuriating it is. And it’s made even worse by the fact that he knows why I was doing what I was doing. He took one look at the shit in my head, weighed it against his own interests, and his interests won. The selfish prick. I hate him. 

Except I don’t. And I can’t. Ain’t that a bitch.

☽𖤐☾

JANUARY 01, 2010 || 12:15 AM || 1677 DAYS UNTIL THE END

By the time Castiel has put Dean to bed, he’s still battling some unruly shakiness and a restive urge to pace until his heart steadies itself and his breaths stop coming short. He can’t explain it—what it is or why it’s happening. He’s just been persistently on-edge, ever since the first firework went off. 

Finding himself unable to stay rooted in one place for too long, he leaves Dean lying on his bed to retreat out to the hallway. Castiel will return to take Dean’s outdoor wear off and get him properly tucked in momentarily, but for now—he needs to catch his breath. Slow himself down. Reacquire his center of gravity. 

Just across from Dean’s room, he slumps back against the wall, scrubbing his hands down his face. His palms are sweaty. He grimaces at them. 

Angels don’t sweat, but Castiel does. 

“You alright?” 

Castiel jolts at the abrupt sound of Bobby’s voice; it doesn’t do his erratic heart any favors. 

“I don’t know,” he admits as Bobby wheels himself closer. Castiel assesses the tremor in his hands with a furrowed brow. “I feel… Off.” 

“The fireworks do you in, too?” 

“No. They surprised me, but I still have my wits. I’m just…” He shakes his head—a minute movement, troubled. 

Bobby makes some indistinct noise that sounds like knowing. “Is your heart racing? You feel like you can’t catch a good breath?” 

Castiel nods. 

“You’re having a panic attack,” Bobby tells him, definitive and without ceremony. “Or whatever the equivalent is for a mortalizing angel, since you’re not completely losin’ your marbles.” 

That gives Castiel pause.

A panic attack? Surely not. Right? He’s seen humans have panic attacks before; he’s even healed Dean of them more than once, but Dean doesn’t remember because Castiel didn’t want him to. It was soon after he was raised from Hell. Nightmares plagued him, would have him jolting awake in a fit of dismay in the middle of the night. Dean often accused Castiel of being creepy for watching him sleep, and Castiel let him think it. At the time, it was easier than admitting to himself that the Righteous Man who broke the first seal commanded more of his attention than his Heavenly duty to detach coldly and obey. 

Suffice to say, Castiel knows panic attacks, though he doesn’t know them within himself. He never had to. 

Not until now. 

Not until humanity has seeped far enough into him that such an irrational feeling has the ability to rattle him like this… 

“His daddy used to get ‘em too,” Bobby says, jutting his chin toward Dean’s slumbering form through the open bedroom door. “Not that John Winchester would ever be caught dead fessin’ up to it. He was a prideful ass.” 

Despite himself, Castiel snorts. He never knew John Winchester as Dean knew him, but from what he’s heard, he thinks what Bobby’s saying tracks well. 

“You ask me, I don’t think he got so obsessed with hunting just because of what Azazel did to Mary,” Bobby continues. “I think the only way he could feel sane was if he had a ‘real reason’ to be afraid. Something to channel his restlessness into. Killing monsters, becoming so fixated on the idea that it’s his responsibility to stick his neck out to save others, always being in some kinda danger—he didn’t have to do all of that to hunt down Azazel. That was all him tryin’ to make his fear make sense.”

Castiel tips his head faintly, eyes squinting. “Dean always talks about his father like he never feared anything.” 

“That’s because Dean didn’t know what to look for.” Bobby’s expression suddenly steels, darkens. “It ain’t my place, but I’ll just say this: a kid don’t know how to spot the difference between a man panicking himself crazy and a man drinking himself angry.” 

Castiel frowns, and the uncomfortable restless feeling in his chest takes yet another shape he struggles to identify. It’s dull, like the prod of a blunt edge. The only thing he can liken it to is sympathy, but he knows Dean would resent him for it. Dean has never been terribly adept at distinguishing between someone caring enough to point out how he’s been wronged and someone looking down on him from a place of superiority. 

Once upon a time, Castiel was utterly indifferent to John Winchester and how he raised his boys. To an angel fulfilling the will of God, the only thing Castiel cared to know about him was that he delivered a soldier worthy of the Host’s faith. But the more Castiel learns about him, even just from vague allusions steeped in euphemism, the more he’s steered toward a staunchly negative sentiment. 

Castiel holds his tongue whenever Dean sings his father’s praises; after all, why speak ill of someone a good friend deeply loves and admires? It seems cruel to strip a man of the memory of his father. 

Still, it gets more and more difficult as time wears on for Castiel to simply let Dean go on clinging to the false idol he’s found in his father, pretending he was ‘raised right’ when he wasn’t raised by anyone but himself and only took on the identity his father prescribed out of desperation to be seen. 

Now Castiel just feels sick thinking about it. Another irrational response—to feel ill on behalf of someone who’d most assuredly despise it. He wonders if these awful physical manifestations of human emotion will ever go away… 

“I don’t think Dean ever learned how to properly be afraid of things. It ain’t like he had a good role model for it, and hell, I ain’t even sayin’ I’m much better...” Bobby sighs, chest expanding and contracting heavily. “Either way, it’s biting him in the ass now. What happened in Manhattan is just too big for him to handle. Hunters are real familiar with getting shot at, strung up, tortured, mauled half to death—that’s just an average Tuesday for us. But bein’ on the business end of a B2 bomber dropping its payload right on top of your head? Nothing we do in our job could’ve prepared him for something like that. He has no idea how to process it, especially when the poor idjit has himself convinced it’s his fault.” 

“How do you know that?” asks Castiel. “That he thinks it’s his fault?” 

Dean hasn’t spoken to either of them since the day Manhattan was bombed, but Bobby talks like Dean’s said something to him. 

Bobby scoffs, though it doesn’t appear to come from a place of genuine derision. “Now, I know you can miss things sometimes, son, but you ain’t stupid. You know that boy better than you know yourself,” he says, and for whatever unseemly reason, it makes Castiel look down and shift his weight around on his feet—as though he’s been caught in the act of something incriminating. “You’re really gonna tell me you don’t think the same guy who believes everyone else’s wrongs are his to make right won’t take the burden of the blame on something like this?” 

Castiel’s frown deepens alongside the somber crease in his brow. Just last year, Dean was taking the fall for a rookie deputy named Wyatt after the massacre on Halloween Night. Dean had done his job exactly right; his leadership had been exemplary from the very beginning, and to his knowledge, everyone in the town had complied with his suggestion to get themselves an anti-possession tattoo. There was no way he could’ve known that one of his own deputies would defy him and get dozens killed in the process. And yet he was deadset on being the one to take responsibility anyway. 

It wasn’t his fault; he did everything right. Dean didn’t see it that way, and he never has. 

“No,” Castiel says, a low murmur, “I’m not going to tell you that.” Because taking the blame is all Dean ever does. In his mind, everything is always his fault. Castiel sees that now. He saw it before, too, but he really sees it now. 

In the dark circles around dim green eyes, in the gaunt edges of a face starved of its healthy appetite, in the shallow, trembling puffs of air through lungs seized by panic, in the silence of a voice once loud and brazen—Castiel sees the consequence of one shouldering blame that doesn’t belong to them. 

He sees what’s become of Dean Winchester—notorious for his intrepid resolve and headstrong heroics—after he’s finally collapsed under the weight of everyone else’s illdoings that he’s adopted as his own. 

Manhattan wasn’t Dean’s fault. Just as Halloween night wasn’t Dean’s fault. Just as the Apocalypse wasn’t Dean’s fault. Just as the uprooting of Sam’s cozy Stanford life wasn’t Dean’s fault. Nearly everything Dean atones for is a misdeed committed by an incarnate of evil. Just because he finds himself at the scene of the crime doesn’t mean the bullet was shot from his gun. 

“I hate to ask this of you, Cas, but…” Bobby hesitates, long enough to draw Castiel’s gaze back to him with a curious tilt of the head. “Can’t you do something to put his head back to rights again? I know it’d probably be a hefty tax on your mojo; it’s just…” He trails off, lips pressed into a grim line. As he watches Dean through the doorway, his face is fretful, pinched with worry. 

Another dull pang prods at Castiel’s heart. Regret. That emotion, he’s grown quite accustomed to. “You’re worried he’ll never recover.” 

Bobby nods. 

Castiel casts his attention through the doorway to watch Dean, too—the slow, steady rise-and-fall of his chest, the subtle wrinkle in his brow that betrays the fact that, even asleep, he’s not at peace. 

It’s terrifying. How delicate and fragile humans can be at times. How easily breakable they are because they feel so much. It gives Castiel some nebulous sense of unease—like the perception of an impending storm. He feels as though he’s being confronted with the future even as he stands in the present. 

His future. 

Dean feels things more acutely than most humans Castiel has encountered, but if it was Dean who first seeded Castiel’s ability to experience and express human emotion to begin with, is this what Castiel has to look forward to? This intense, suffocating emotional pain that never ends and only threatens to destroy? If a human who’s only ever known emotion can shatter this badly, what of an angel who’s only known emotion for an infinitesimally short period of his millennia-long lifetime? 

Castiel swallows, and he makes a willful decision to push down the dread clawing up his spine. There’s no sense in entertaining an avenue of thought that only produces dead-ends.

“If I could heal him of this,” he says, tone apologetic, “I would’ve done it days ago.” 

“Yeah. I figured. Wouldn’t have forgiven myself if I didn’t ask, though.” 

Castiel hums. He understands. 

Before he rebelled, he could’ve healed anything, no matter the severity. He even had the power to resurrect. The devastation of Dean’s mind would’ve warranted a laughably simple fix. Now, Castiel tires healing a stab wound. He can’t even dream of healing Dean. Something like this is just too complex and easy to make worse. One waver of grace out of place, and Dean’s mind could be gone for good. 

All Castiel’s grace does these days is waver, wax, and wane. 

So often, he disparages Dean’s tendency to take on blame that’s not his, but equally as often, Castiel neglects to acknowledge that same tendency in himself. This moment would not be the first instance in which he’s found himself questioning if his rebellion did more harm than good. If he hadn’t rebelled, he’d never have been shunned by Heaven and he could still heal anything and anyone he wanted.

Each time the thought presents itself, however, he only has to remind himself of this plain fact: Dean Winchester would not be alive at all had Heaven gotten its way. He’s not sure the world would be here either. Castiel’s learned much since becoming estranged from Heaven; his mind has run clearer, his eyes sobered of their holy-hued haze. Even if Michael had taken Dean as his vessel and defeated Lucifer, Castiel is removed enough from his days of unquestioningly revering his eldest brother to understand just how flawed he is—how desperate for God’s witness. Just like Lucifer, he, too, would’ve torched the world seeking their father’s attention. It would only have been a matter of time. 

There never was any prospect of paradise on Earth. There’s unfathomable suffering in a world plagued by the hordes of Hell, but at least there’s a world to suffer in. And at least the lone angel with broken wings and failing grace left inhabiting it still has a purpose worth pursuing—a friend to protect. 

“You’ll keep an eye on him?” 

Castiel, hauled from the reaches of his thoughts, looks at Bobby, who, on the surface, appears his usual brand of calm. A little stern. A little brusque. At first, Castiel was wary of him because of it; he’d thought Bobby didn’t like him much. He’s since become endeared to it. 

But, as Castiel peers at him now, he sees that the brusqueness and the sternness only run skin-deep. Bobby’s eyes are dark, gloomy pools that glint with a silent plea. 

He worries for Dean; he’s stricken with that awful sense of helplessness that Castiel can hardly ever breathe himself through.

So Castiel straightens and tells him, “of course,” because watching over Dean has always been his charge, and he’s not about to let despair stop him now. It’s perhaps the easiest promise he’s ever made.

Later, after Bobby’s drunk his nightly beer and passed out on the couch in the living room, and Castiel’s managed to ground himself with the help of a meditation technique he found in one of Bobby’s old lore books, Castiel finally returns to Dean’s bedroom.

Dean’s still asleep, though the knit in his brow has deepened. He’s even less at-peace than he was less than an hour ago, and Castiel, for his own sake, has to pretend that it doesn’t kill him inside to see. He can’t stand helplessness… 

Ordinarily, Castiel would leave Dean be after a certain point in the night. He’s been told more than once that his propensity for vigilance can be overbearing. Castiel tends to disagree; surely, it makes perfect sense for a being that has only a rare need to sleep to stand watch while his allies are left vulnerable in their slumber. But he ultimately never argues. 

Dean is a self-sufficient man. Someone fussing over him in such a way seems to read to him as an accusation of weakness. 

And so, despite the extenuating circumstances, and against everything in Castiel urging him to stay and stand guard, he resolves only to ensure Dean is stripped of his outdoor wear, tucked properly under the covers, and that the lamp on the nightstand is turned off before he makes to leave again. 

He doesn’t get far, however. Only a pace and the start of another toward the door, and then he feels warm fingers curl around his hand, grip insistent, convulsive. 

Castiel sucks in a sharp breath, startled. He twists back around—and there he finds Dean, only a pair of glittering green eyes in the low light filtering in from the hallway. They don’t shine with luster of their own—just that of the glassy mist lying in an unshed film over top of them. 

Castiel’s about to ask Dean if he’s alright—if he needs anything—when the quietest, most feeble little whisper cuts through the tense silence. 

“Don’t.” So very quiet, yet crystal clear, carried along by a voice roughened by days of disuse. 

Perhaps a different man would be confused by it. ‘Don’t’ what? Don’t turn the light off? Don’t close the door on the way out? Don’t leave the space heater in the corner of the room running? 

Castiel, for once, is not confused. He knows what Dean’s saying; moreover, he knows the astronomical effort it’s taken him to say it. 

‘Don’t go.’ Difficult, because it’s an implicit admission of fear.

‘Don’t go.’ Near-impossible, because it’s an explicit admission of weakness.

Not that Castiel views it that way, but that’s hardly the point. 

Dean is afraid, and he’s making himself weak—perhaps because he knows Castiel doesn’t view it that way. 

Castiel may be less than half the angel he once was, but his intuition and shrewd discernment remain intact. Somehow, he doesn’t think Dean would ask this of anyone else. 

Somehow, he thinks Dean has come to trust him enough to handle him with dignity in his weakness. 

It shouldn’t elicit any particularly strong reaction from Castiel, and yet it does. It sends an odd sort of thrill that doesn’t quite feel appropriate for the situation down his spine. He has no choice but to attribute it to the exhilaration that comes with being needed. Useful in a way he hasn’t felt in months. 

If Dean is asking him to stay now, then Castiel must not be nearly as helpless as his most miserable streams of consciousness have trained him to feel. 

Inhaling deeply, steeling his resolve, Castiel squeezes Dean’s hand tight, looks him right in the eyes, and vows, “I’m not going anywhere.” 

It’s the correct answer; Dean takes to it like a dessicated desert flower meeting water, the fear in his gaze waning, the tremor in his hand receding. 

For a while, neither one of them moves, but the whole time, Dean is staring at Castiel like he expects him to do something. Finally, after Castiel glances around the room, then gives Dean a confused look, Dean puffs out a short, impatient sigh and shifts himself back toward the opposite side of the bed. 

Castiel understands now—doesn’t even need Dean’s added emphasis of pointing at the empty space he’s left on the bed to grasp his meaning. It’s not enough for Castiel to simply exist in the room with Dean, quite literally standing guard over him. Dean wants him to sit, solidify his promise to stay. And since there are no spare chairs lying around, the bed is Castiel’s only option. 

Again, his heart flip-flops in his chest, but though he can’t pin down what brought it along, he’s sure it’s not born of panic or anxiety. 

Castiel sits. He’s stiff about it, a little awkward. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, or his feet, or his eyes, electing to keep all of them to himself just in case. His stares down at his lap, and he pretends to find the twiddling of his thumbs incredibly interesting. His legs are outstretched in front of him, one ankle hooked neatly over the other. 

All the while, Dean watches. Castiel can tell. Stripped of their light and vigor as they are, Dean’s eyes can never be snuffed completely of their intensity. He doesn’t think Dean knows it, but sometimes a single look from that impossibly green gaze of his has the power to shake something within Castiel—leave him vulnerable and searching. 

Dean probably believes it was his defiant words that led Castiel to follow him in the end. The truth of the matter is: it takes a great deal of might to persuade an angel—even one predisposed to worldly curiosity as Castiel is—against the philosophies of Heaven. And Dean did it not with his words, but with his eyes. 

Such a power… Castiel trusts Dean to possess it, implicitly, undeniably. But that doesn’t mean he’s always prepared to behold it. In this moment, he finds himself fearing what unknown, drastic thing he may do if their eyes meet. Even when he’s not looking at Dean, he can feel the power of his gaze, piercing his armored exterior and reaching in to wrap around the soft, delicate core of his being that he once resented so. 

Some millennia ago, the other angels would call him mild, meek, excessively merciful in the face of human shortcomings. There was always something different about him, but he didn’t want to be different. He wanted the brotherhood of his fellow angels. So he willed himself cold, calculated, harsh—the perfect soldier of Heaven. And it worked; he was well-respected by his brothers and sisters. 

For thousands upon thousands of years, it worked. 

He’s a far cry now from what he’d forced himself to become back then. Once again, he is softened for humanity, except this time, it only took the spirit of one human to make him see that Heaven isn’t a flock worth bending, breaking, and shattering oneself over just to claim belonging. 

For the first time in much too long, Castiel is sure of himself and his place. 

It’s right here, by Dean’s side, as God made it so when He commanded Castiel to raise the Righteous Man from Hell, and as Castiel’s made it so every day since of his own free will. If ever there was a doubt, it’s no more. 

Minutes tick silently by, and Castiel still feels Dean’s eyes on him. So against his better judgment, he braves a glance. Almost immediately, he tumbles down into two cavernous pools of forest green. He feels the tribulations they reflect—the desperate search for home from where they’ve fallen adrift. They dig deep into Castiel, lost, seeking.

He realizes, then, that it’s not enough either to sit, passive and quiet, in Dean’s presence. It’s not enough to remain politely detached. Dean doesn’t seek out comfort often—in fact, he tends to recoil from it when it’s offered without his asking—but he’s seeking it out now. 

Castiel blinks at him, frozen still. These are terribly uncharted waters. He’s not great with words in a manner humans would typically find reassuring, and the extent of his knowledge regarding physical comforts is limited to what little he’s been able to grasp from the romantic comedies Dean and Bobby like to feign disinterest in but encourage Castiel to watch anyway. 

Plain, friendly comfort, especially in such a fragile situation, is something there simply exists no handbook on. 

Tentatively, Castiel offers a hand over, but Dean doesn’t accept it in the way he expects. Instead of grabbing onto Castiel’s hand, he grips higher up, around his forearm—and it’s like a jigsaw piece snapping into place. Castiel can practically see the bombs exploding overhead, hear the deafening blasts in his ears; even now, even when it’s so quiet and sheltered and safe, Dean’s reliving that moment over and over without reprieve. 

The way he’s holding onto Castiel—it’s no different than it was back in Manhattan, when Castiel had swept him close, ducked him low to the ground, and shielded him with his wings. Dean had thrown an arm over Castiel’s head—a protective gesture that wasn’t necessary, but Castiel appreciated the sentiment regardless—and he’d clutched onto the forearm Castiel had braced around him. 

Perhaps Castiel is overthinking this, but… Is it a similar sense of unwavering security that Dean is after? Is that what he truly seeks here? 

As Castiel muses on it, he catches himself worrying his lower lip—a subconscious expression of nerves so human of him that he almost doesn’t believe he’s doing it at all. He shakes his head faintly to clear the thought from his mind; the last thing he needs is another reminder of his descent into mortality to fixate on. 

Dean’s still watching him, clinging onto him. Waiting, it seems. For what? Even he doesn’t appear to know. Just… Something. 

The only thing Castiel can think to do—if it really is a parallel sense of security that Dean’s looking for—is lend a shield for fictitious bombs that, to Dean, remain hauntingly real. 

Castiel’s wings are hardly what they used to be. They’re battered and broken, with bent feathers and sprawling holes where there are no feathers anymore at all. Most of the time, he can put them out of his mind, but at times like this, when his attention is called directly to them, their presence borders on agonizing. He can feel the dead weight of them on his back—such useless, worthless limbs that decay a little bit more with each passing day. 

He hasn’t so much as glimpsed them since Manhattan, and frankly, he hasn’t had much of a will to. But for this—for Dean… Surely, he can confront the sight of them. Just their hazy visage. 

Pulling in a slow, deep breath, he coaxes his wings into view, shadowy silhouettes folding out from their hiding place in adjacent reality to form a shelter around him and Dean—a canopy over their heads. They’re in glaringly visible tatters, so sparse that they couldn’t even successfully block the trajectory of a single bullet. Feathers which used to be full and bountiful, and sharp enough to cut through the fabric of space and time have been reduced to blunt edges that’d be so serendipitous to manage a slice through room-temperature butter. Grand, sturdy arches those feathers once proudly dressed are nothing more than skeletal frames, fractured in some places, snapped completely in others. 

They hurt. His wings. Not physically or emotionally, but in some angelic way Castiel no longer has the ability to actually feel or understand, as though he’s been severed from celestial familiarity, as though his mind has been stripped of its capacity to comprehend empyrean nature and experience. 

In the same way a human cannot spy on an angel’s true form without incurring dire consequences, it appears Castiel’s ever-increasing distance from Heaven has begun to manifest in the loss of understanding how an angel can suffer. A manner of protective amnesia. Castiel can remember the times he’s been injured as a full-powered angel—when a demon twisted the root of his left wing in Hell on his mission to rescue Dean, when he caught a nick from an angel blade across his vessel’s chest a little less than a year ago, and his grace threatened to escape. But he can’t remember what those things felt like. He can’t remember how they hurt, though he knows that they had to. Those feelings are reserved for angels, and Castiel is something else… Something neither here nor there, human nor angel. 

There’s a squeeze around his forearm, and he’s abruptly shaken from his thoughts. Concerned, he looks down at Dean, only to see that his eyes are closed—not screwed shut like he’s cowering in terror, but gently closed. The anguished knit between his brows isn’t entirely gone, but it’s scant, merely a trace of what it was before. His breaths are steady, and the tension wound up in his muscles has bled away. 

It becomes apparent, then, that Dean isn’t gripping Castiel tighter because he’s still crippled with fear; he’s gripping him tighter to extend his gratitude—to say: “you’ve got me, and I’ve got you, too.” 

Castiel breathes, in when Dean does, out when Dean does, until he can look again at his broken wings and see them for the good they can still give. Until he can see their wiry skeletons and not mourn what he can no longer feel, but take pride in what they’ve been able to endure—in the symbol of safety they’ve become. 

When it comes down to it, he may not be angel enough for himself, but he’s angel enough for Dean. And for now, for some reason, that feels okay. 

☽𖤐☾

01.01.10 [11:59 PM]

[No Entry]

☽𖤐☾

MARCH 15, 2010 || 07:04 AM || 1604 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Dean limping around town like he’s not in incalculable agony has become something of an eyesore for Castiel. To anyone who asks, Dean tosses over one of his annoyingly charming grins and brushes off the pain, dismisses it as nothing but stiffness. 

“It just aches a bit. Don’t worry about it,” he’ll say. 

“Of course I’m good for the recon mission. Why wouldn’t I be?” he’ll say. 

“A little beer and a shot of Jack, and I’ll be good to go,” he’ll say. 

Really, it gets to a point where Castiel can’t help but scoff from whatever distance he’s hovering around at the time. Like the old days, he’s taken to watching Dean from afar, monitoring his day-by-day self-destruction. Castiel’s tried to get in close a few times, but he’s only ever been met with the proverbial flyswatter. 

It’s not exactly a secret that Dean Winchester has a penchant for juvenility when he’s feeling slighted; it is, however, somewhat uncharacteristic of him to be sporting a handicap on purpose when he leaves town on his recon and extraction missions. He’s a soldier at-heart, and no soldier looking to survive a battle willingly invites danger on themselves with such a glaring physical disadvantage. 

But that’s just the thing, isn’t it? Dean’s not a soldier looking to survive. It’s obvious to anyone willing to see it: he’s a soldier looking to die like a dog. Even after Castiel saved him from certain death, he refuses to take this second chance to find the worth of his life. 

If Castiel were a lesser person, he may have come to feel bitter about it. It frustrates him to no end, but not because he’s bitter. Rather, because it saddens him that there seems to be nothing in the world that could ever convince Dean of his worth. Nothing that Castiel could ever do either. Not now that he’s betrayed Dean’s wish to needlessly perish sick and frail in a hospital bed. Not now that he’s about as dead to Dean as Dean yearns to be himself. 

“You’re hovering, Cas. What do you want?” 

Today, Castiel chose to loiter a bit closer than he usually would. In all honestly, he wasn’t expecting that Dean would take the initiative to acknowledge him—figured he’d have to make Dean pay attention in some way. Figured he’d have to dodge the flyswatter at least once.

It catches him off-guard. He glances around in search of an intelligible response to pull out of thin air, but ultimately, all he manages is a lame statement that, “I always hover.” 

“I’ve noticed,” Dean mutters. He’s not looking at Castiel. He’s busied himself with loading crates of weapons into the bed of a truck he favors for recon missions he anticipates to be especially lengthy or perilous. “Spit it out. I have to get on the road.” 

Castiel’s gaze tracks him as he stoops to heave a crate up from the ground, grimaces in obvious pain, staggers slightly as he stands, and unceremoniously dumps the crate into the truck. “You look awful,” Castiel tells him bluntly. 

Dean purses his lips in that way he does when he’s offended but too stubborn to let it show that it gets to him. “Yeah, well, you’re not my type either.” He hobbles over to collect the next crate, and Castiel follows. This time, a groan strains its way out of his throat, almost verging on a whimper. He covers it with a snappish, “are we done here?” 

“No. Quit moving.” 

“No-can-do. Truck’s gotta get loaded up right.” Dean slinks off to the opposite end of the truck, aiming for yet another crate. 

Castiel clicks his tongue, fed up, and captures him by the wrist. 

Dean hisses through his teeth as he’s forced to bear added weight on his injured leg to turn and face Castiel. “Damn it, Cas—what the hell do you want?” 

“Talk to me.” Castiel intends to sound equally as terse as he has so far, but it nearly throws him when he hears his voice come out pleading. 

There’s the briefest lull in their exchange, with Castiel looking at Dean, and Dean looking at Castiel, the subtlest flicker of softness in seas of green—and it almost feels like Dean’s about to cave. 

Then, all of a sudden, his gaze hardens again, and he says flatly, “the weather sucks. I wish it were sunnier.” 

Small talk. His malicious idea of compliance with Castiel’s request. 

Castiel pins him with a stern look. “You know what I mean, Dean.” 

Dean rolls his eyes. “Fine.” Yanking his wrist out of Castiel’s grasp and turning to shove the tailgate shut, he says, “knee hurts like a bitch. Guess you can only heal shit halfway now, huh?” 

It stings. Of course it does. It’s a direct jab at Castiel’s dissolving grace, which Dean has previously taken great care to avoid dragging into the limelight for any reason other than expressing his sincere concerns about it. He’s never weaponized it against Castiel—never loaded it into a gun and aimed it straight at the center of Castiel’s chest like this. 

Castiel knows Dean can resort to brutal deflections to evade the prospect of having to bear his own soul; that doesn’t make it any easier to recover and recenter from. Part of him wonders if Dean would’ve taken that brutal aim in the first place if he knew Castiel’s efforts to save his life came at such a great cost that the small paper cut he got while sifting through lore books yesterday hasn’t healed itself yet… 

Nevertheless, Castiel manages to put the snide comment out of mind, squaring his shoulders and declaring calmly, “I was more concerned with saving your life and clearing the infection, Dean. The reconstruction of your knee was comparatively crude. If you want, I can—” 

“Oh, would you look at the time,” Dean interjects, glancing down at his wrist as though to check his watch—except he knows Castiel knows his watch was broken beyond repair in a demon attack some weeks ago. “Gotta go, Cas. Don’t wait up for me.” 

Like he can’t get away fast enough, he limps over to the passenger side door, chucks it open, and hauls himself inside. 

Castiel’s hot on his tail, eyes thinned into a glare that’s equal parts suspicion and befuddlement. “What do you mean don’t wait up for you?” 

“Means I’m gonna be out for a while, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.” Dean reaches for the handle on the inside of the door, and Castiel only narrowly dodges it when Dean carelessly tugs it shut. Through the open window, he adds, “do me a favor and hold down the fort while I’m gone, will you?” 

Castiel opens his mouth—to protest or to scold Dean for nearly closing him in the damn door, he doesn’t quite know. But it doesn’t matter because Dean’s already speaking again.

With a serrated, vindictive edge to his voice, he says, “unless it’s too much for you to do what I ask without screwing me over again.” 

Castiel could laugh. Really, he could. Bark out something raucous and ironically humorless. More often than not, he has a great deal of sympathy and leniency reserved for Dean, but Dean seems to be making a deliberate effort to drain all of it in as little time as possible. 

He is the single most challenging human—the most challenging being— Castiel has ever met. Truly. 

He coaches himself through a self-composing breath, then gives Dean a disapproving shake of the head. “Believe what you want if it makes you feel better to blame me, but you and I both know that what you were asking me to do was cruel. If it’s an apology you’re looking for, you’re not getting it, because I could never be sorry with even the remotest level of sincerity for saving your life, Dean. Ever.” 

There’s a tic in Dean’s expression, a mild scrunch of the brow, a barely-perceptible twitch of the lip. He’s not unaffected, but evidently, he’s also not affected enough to concede his stance. 

Without another word to Castiel, he turns to the deputy behind the wheel and orders him to drive. 

As the truck speeds off, however, Castiel isn’t left feeling like he lost another battle. In fact, he knows he’s won when he sees the eyes of Dean’s reflection in the side-door mirror glued unwaveringly to Castiel, right up until neither of them can see the other anymore. 

Castiel has carved a crack in Dean Winchester, after days of failure to level with him. He can only hope Dean doesn’t wind up dead before Castiel gets the chance to save him from himself yet again. 

☽𖤐☾

03.15.10 [10:37 PM]

God—the crazy bastard just won’t leave me alone. How the hell am I supposed to do this with him looking at me and saying shit like that? Where does he get the nerve calling me cruel when he’s the one that forced me into this fucking corner? Sometimes he seems so human that I forget—he isn’t human. He doesn’t understand. He never will. He has no idea what it’s like to live like this. 

Part of me wishes I could make him understand, but the better part of me really is glad he can’t. Shit like this… It never leaves you. The guy may have royally fucked me over, but he doesn’t deserve that. Hell, he doesn’t deserve half the shit I put him through. But what the fuck else am I supposed to do when he won’t let this go? He’s forcing my hand, and I hate that he’s doing it. He can never leave well enough alone. It used to be endearing. Now it’s just a pain in my ass.

☽𖤐☾

MARCH 19, 2010 || 09:18 PM || 1600 DAYS UNTIL THE END

“Are you out of your fucking mind?!” Castiel slams the door damn-near on some rookie deputy’s ass as soon as he’s shooed Dean’s recon team out of the conference room.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” grouses Dean. He plops down in the chair behind his desk with a wince, hands already occupied with pouring himself a hefty glass of whiskey. 

Castiel narrows his eyes at him, fingers curled into blanch-knuckled fists at his sides. “What the hell were you thinking?” 

“Right now, I’m thinking this is exactly why I didn’t tell you.” Dean scowls at his whiskey like it’s personally insulted him when he goes to take a sip and it stings the bruised split in his lip. 

He looks like an absolute disaster. Half his face is mottled with black and blue, the other half streaked with dried scarlet from a deep gash over his brow. His clothes are stained with mud, blood, and God knows what else. There’s a hole in the shoulder of his shirt that looks suspiciously bullet-shaped, and before Castiel barked at the deputies to leave, Dean was practically using a man as a personal crutch for his wrecked knee. 

It’d be one thing if this was just a recon mission gone wrong. But that’s not what happened. Dean knew from the very start that where he was going and what he was doing would be this risky, and he elected not to tell Castiel or Bobby anyway. Now he’s trying to spin it like Castiel’s being ridiculous about it, but he knows the truth of the matter. He knows precisely what went through Dean’s mind when he left without saying a damn thing about his intentions. 

“You didn’t tell me, because you were afraid I’d stand in the way of your absurd suicide mission,” accuses Castiel.

“If it were a suicide mission, I’d be dead, Cas.” 

“If it weren’t a suicide mission, you would’ve said something. You would’ve brought me with you. You would’ve spent weeks drafting a strategy instead of deciding on a whim that you’re going to take all the most inexperienced deputies you have at your disposal on a trip to confront a Horseman, of all things. Seriously, Dean— Famine? Have you gone completely insane?” 

Dean doesn’t say anything. He continues to sip from his glass. 

“For days, you were radio-silent. For days, I spent every waking hour trying to get ahold of you. I thought you were dead. Bobby was about ready to drink himself to death worrying about you. What is wrong with you?” 

“What do you want from me, Cas?” Dean asks audaciously. “Nobody died. I’m sitting here, well and alive enough to listen to you bitch me out. What point are you trying to make?” 

As if you don’t know— Castiel drags his hands down his face in a fit of exasperation. “I’m trying to make you see that you have people who give a damn about you, you insufferable, infuriating ass! That your path of self-destruction isn’t just destroying you.” 

Dean peers at him blankly, almost bored-looking. Castiel sees right through it like he always does. He’s spent countless seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, musing upon the eyes of Dean Winchester; they can’t hide a single thing from Castiel, least of all, their agony. 

It’s an opening as good as any, and Castiel takes aim just as Dean did at him days prior. “What about Sam?” he says, a murmur in comparison to the loud, frantic desperation infecting his voice only moments before. 

When Dean falters at the mention of his brother’s name—when his eyelashes flutter in a series of stunned blinks and his lips part around a stifled, inaudible gasp—Castiel knows he’s got his attention. 

“What?” Dean says, an uncharacteristically meek utterance. 

“It was only months ago that you were talking about saving Sam from Lucifer. You would really leave him to suffer an eternity in Lucifer’s hands just because you can’t see far enough beyond your own guilt and lack of self-worth to remember who it is depending on your survival?” 

Dean is silent for a long time. His eyes don’t move from their rigid fixation on Castiel; nothing of his moves. Not even an inch. The only thing that can be heard in the still air of the room is the tick of the clock on the wall by the door. 

Finally, when Dean does move, it’s to nod his head—a sort of slow, vacant motion. He pushes his tongue into the inside of his cheek and huffs a curt breath that vaguely resembles an expression of amusement, though he hardly looks anything close to amused. The light is dim in the room, but Castiel’s doesn’t fail to spot how it shifts over Dean’s eyes as he casts his gaze downward: unshed pain. Always unshed, since the bombs. 

With no small amount of struggle, Dean pushes himself up to his feet, bracing heavily on the desk as he hobbles around the corner of it to stop mere inches from Castiel. It’s been a good while since Castiel’s even noticed their difference in height, not that it’s particularly extreme—a matter of a handful of centimeters at most. But right now, somehow, it feels imposing, as though Dean towers over him. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Castiel catches the movement of Dean’s hand delving into his jacket pocket and unearthing something with a metallic glint. Just as he chances a glance down, Dean sets the small object on the desk, slow and pointed. 

Castiel’s eyes widen, his heart kicking strangely in his chest, because there he sees a thick silver band adorned with a black jewel—a ring so unmistakable that Castiel can’t even bring himself to question its authenticity. No doubt, it’s Famine’s ring that Dean has just placed down in front of him. 

“It wasn’t a suicide mission,” Dean states, tone eerily level. He leans in, encroaching on Castiel’s space—close enough that his breath fans hot over Castiel’s face as he adds, “if you ever try to use my brother against me again, we’re done. Do I make myself clear— Castiel?” 

Castiel actually flinches. Not out of fear, but out of pure stupefaction. The sound of his name being used in such a way—like a soldier called by his rank—and having it delivered to his ears wrapped up in Dean’s voice no less… He doesn’t know what to make of it. 

Castiel’s never felt one way or the other about Dean’s longstanding nickname for him—or, more accurately, he never realized he felt any particular way about it until this very moment. 

‘Cas’ is a name. It’s an endearment. It’s emblematic of familiarity and camaraderie. It’s said with care, invoked with fondness.

‘Castiel’ was once a name, too. But Dean’s just made it jarringly clear that it’s a name no longer. Rather, it’s a designation, a duty. It’s a line drawn in the sand, a thing that separates friend from asset. 

It’s invoked with distance. 

Castiel knew this could happen; he knew his friendship with Dean would be put at risk when he chose to heal him of his fatal illness. He was prepared for exactly this. 

Or so he thought. 

In the end, when Dean turns his back and leaves him alone with himself in the suffocating emptiness of that conference room, Castiel is struck with the nauseating reality that he was wrong. That it’s not Dean’s fortified foundations that he’s been cracking and chipping away at, but his own. 

This whole time, he’s been chasing after Dean, hovering over him, slinging unearned ‘gotchas’ at him, all while his seams have been unraveling and sloughing him of his cool defenses. He stands now, in this conference room, all by himself, his ribs cracked open, the core of him exposed and raw in the open air. And he has no armor left. Nothing to protect him from the awful, chilling epiphany that—

He is irrevocably, in his whole entirety, terrified of losing Dean Winchester. He always has been. 

Worse yet is the fact that his fear has only served to drive Dean farther away from him. The desperation motivating his every word and action to keep Dean safe has led him to say and do the most selfish things. He’s forgotten how to understand Dean, blinded by his own dread of having to weather the merciless onslaught of mortalization alone. 

He has to fix this. Somehow, someway. He can’t do it for his own sake, but he also can’t just sit back and watch Dean tempt fate with his recklessness over and over again until it finally kills him. 

He has to make Dean see the value in living for himself. How is he meant to do such a thing when he’s fumbled the situation so spectacularly already that he’s lost the right to his name? How is he supposed to meet Dean on level ground now that he’s no longer his close, trusted friend, Cas, but his nameless soldier of the rank ‘Castiel’? 

Ever the opportunist, a familiar, frigid gloom grips him then, strangling the soft, vulnerable core of him. It cinches his throat, infects his heart, fills his lungs in place of air. His eyes burn like they never have before. 

Paralyzed, standing in the silent emptiness, a warm, thin rivulet of wetness rolls down his cheek. Afraid, lost.

So, so very human… 

☽𖤐☾

03.19.10 [11:28 PM]

I caught a win for the first time in forever, but it feels dull with him looking at me like that all the damn time. The poor stupid bastard doesn’t seem to have any idea just how desperate and afraid he looks. I feel bad. Really, I do. He’s pissing me off to no end, but I hate seeing him so… Small, I guess. Defeated, but pretending not to be. 

I don’t know—maybe I’m going about this all wrong, Sammy. Maybe he’s too human now to expect him to stay unemotional and coolheaded about things like he used to. I just didn’t think he was capable of getting so attached, you know? It kinda scares me, actually. He’s always been strong on his own, and I don’t want him forgetting that over me of all people. 

I fucked up when I told him not to heal my knee when it first got blown to hell—when I let it get so bad that it would’ve killed me if not for him. I know that. My head wasn’t right. It still isn’t. I don’t think it ever will be again. But it’s not like that anymore. I can see far enough past my own guilt to remember the people depending on me. I just didn’t factor in the possibility that Cas was one of them. 

What the hell do I even do with that, Sammy? How do I make an angel remember that he’s an angel? That he doesn’t need to depend on someone like me?

Chapter Text

So I'll begin not to love you,

Turn around, see me runnin'. 

I'll say I loved you years ago,

Tell myself you never loved me, no…

~ Silver Springs || 1977 ~ 

☽𖤐☾

MARCH 26, 2010 || 05:12 PM || 1593 DAYS UNTIL THE END

According to the anarchist rule of the Apocalypse, things rarely ever occur as planned. Missions go sideways. Warding fails. Civil war erupts. Good people die. Again and again until, eventually, nothing remains. 

But the masses habitually plan anyway. It’s a comfort, hindered though it is by the law of diminishing returns. To produce an image of success in one’s head means thwarting the unendurable despair of futility. It is a sign of faith to plan. 

Castiel had a plan. He took a week to himself to carefully devise and revise it. He made a concerted effort to separate himself from Dean, look inward, search for some much-needed clarity. He came to an understanding: it’s okay to be afraid of losing his closest friend, but he can’t let that fear color the reality of things. 

Have faith in Dean, he told himself, like always. Dean’s aim to die was a one-time, momentary lapse in judgment. Sometimes a bold venture to defeat a Horseman on a whim is just that—a bold venture. Too reckless for comfort and surely in need of discussion—but nothing more. 

Castiel had every intention of conceding this and begging forgiveness. 

In the end, though, a plan is only as good as its mastermind. As a plan’s existence signals faith, the abandonment of one before it can even be set into motion signals abject desperation. 

The image of success Castiel had produced in his head looked nothing like this. 

It didn’t feature a torrential downpour, or Dean pinned against an alley wall with Castiel’s hands wadded up in the front of his shirt, or a bloody nick in the shell of Dean’s ear from the graze of a bullet Castiel himself shot. 

“I knew it.” Castiel’s a hair’s breadth from Dean’s face, words spat through gritted teeth. “I knew my eyes weren’t deceiving me. You lied to me, made me out to be some hysterical lunatic for seeing it all exactly for what it was. And if you didn’t lie to me, then you’ve been lying to yourself. Either way, you’re deluded if you think I’m going to stand for this any longer.” 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dean paws at Castiel’s hand, trying to get a good enough grip to shove it away from him, but the rain has made their skin too slick; all he does is slip, over and over. “Get off me—” 

“You’re punishing yourself.” Castiel pins him harder against the wall, leveling him with a fiery glare. “You’re walking around with a decimated knee, taking every opportunity to volunteer yourself for needlessly risky missions, practically inviting any demon, monster, or otherwise crooked entity you encounter—no, seek out— to take its best shot.” 

“Like that’s something new. I’ve been doing that shit all my life.” 

“Not with the active hope that the shot taken at you actually puts you down, you haven’t.” 

“Oh, for the love of—” Dean rolls his eyes. “You’re still on this? When will you let it go?” 

“When you do.” 

Dean scoffs and jerks his head to the side to avoid Castiel’s gaze.

“You had me convinced, you know,” Castiel says. “You actually had me thinking I was seeing it all wrong. You made me believe that I was making baseless accusations from a place of fear. I was even going to apologize. Today, I was going to do it.” 

There’s a tense in Dean’s jaw—the only indication that he’s listening. He’s hearing Castiel’s words, and he’s not impervious to them. 

Castiel’s fist tightens in his shirt, voice pitching low as he adds, “and then you went and outright dared a man to shoot you point-blank in the head for no good reason.” 

“He was gonna shoot that girl.” 

“I’ve seen you shoot faster than an enemy can blink. You had a perfectly good gun strapped to your thigh and a clear shot you could’ve taken yourself.” 

“Guy had an itchy trigger finger. I wasn’t about to risk him shooting her as a death reflex.” 

“He was outnumbered dozens to one, and you still told everyone to stand down the second he aimed at you.” 

“Maybe I knew there was someone around with an annoying habit of defying basic orders.” Dean’s looking at him again, brows raised pointedly in challenge. 

“Strange how that concern over a reflexive trigger finger disappeared when the gun was pointed at you, then.” Castiel tilts his head, catches Dean’s flinty glare with deadly precision. “Unless, of course, there was a part of you hoping it’d work in your favor.” 

Dean narrows his eyes, yet he doesn’t say anything. There’s the faintest wrinkle in his nose, the beginnings of a scowl curling his upper lip, but it says just as little as his voice. Arguing, kicking, thrashing, and shouting until his throat has scrubbed itself raw—that’s a Dean Winchester who fights, who sees the worth in doing so. 

This Dean Winchester—the one staring Castiel down and succumbing to the force plastering his back to a wall—is one that’s given up. That sees no value in the fight. 

Truthfully, Castiel would rather catch a punch to the face or a knee to the stomach than bear witness to this; at least then, he’d know Dean still had some manner of fight left in him. Something resembling spirit. 

“Admit it,” Castiel says. 

“Admit what?” 

“You know what.” 

“Seems to me like you’ve had it all figured out for a while.” 

“Then you won’t have trouble admitting it, will you?” 

“Why do you wanna hear me say it? Do you need the satisfaction that badly?” 

“There’s nothing I take satisfaction in less than this, Dean. Believe me.” 

Dean’s lips press into a tight, fine line, eyes flitting between Castiel’s. Once more, he looks away—somewhere over Castiel’s shoulder. Droplets of rain cling to his lashes, drip onto his freckled cheeks. He emanates ineffable colors. 

Breathing in, then breathing out, he says, “I don’t hope a shot puts me down. I just wouldn’t be mad if it did.” 

It’s about as close to an admission as Castiel’s going to get. But it’s something. It’s everything. 

Dean has let him in. Extended the world’s most fragile olive branch. 

Castiel grabs hold of it with delicate fingers. 

“Why?” he asks, nearly startled by how hushed he sounds. Too gentle. 

It sets Dean immediately on the defensive. “Why?” His head falls back against the wall as he lets out a harsh, humorless laugh. His fight returns to him all at once then; in one swift motion, he wrenches himself out of Castiel’s grip and shoves him back a pace. “Jesus—I wanna make shit right, you stupid bastard. How are you not getting that?” 

Oh, Castiel gets it alright. He got it a good while ago. He just doesn’t accept it. “By rolling over and welcoming death without resistance? In what world does that make anything right?” 

“One where good people die more often than the ones that get them killed.” There’s a frayed edge to Dean’s voice, verging on frantic. His eyes are bright, but not like they get with stubbornness; they’re swimming with turmoil, fear, confusion, rage, grief. All powerful shades that compose the brilliant green of his irises. 

Castiel shakes his head and dares a step closer; Dean slinks around him—clumsily, on account of his knee—putting Castiel between himself and the wall. A cornered animal seeking room to breathe. 

Castiel turns to face him, but doesn’t attempt to approach, allowing the distance for now. “You didn’t get anyone killed, Dean. Halloween night was a tragedy you never could’ve foreseen. And Manhattan? Gage and his soldiers knew the risk, and they took it anyway. That’s not on you.” 

“They took the risk because they had faith in me to succeed! Faith that I practically told them to put in me, and I didn’t even get close. They all died for nothing. That is on me, for promising something I had no goddamn right promising.” Dean rakes his hands roughly back through his hair, slicking the wet strands against his head. His chest heaves, and his eyes are wild; he looks like he wants to run, but he’s rooted in place with only one good leg to stand on. Nowhere to go, he plows on—his only escape from the bedlam of emotion boiling up within him: “when are people gonna wake the fuck up and realize I’m not worth putting their faith into? When are you gonna wake the fuck up? Time and time again, all I’ve done is fail, because I was so arrogant as to believe I could throw a middle finger up at God and fate and Heaven, and take on Armageddon myself. I was wrong, Cas. I was wrong, and the entire world is suffering for it!” 

“If you were arrogant, then so was I.” Castiel takes a cautious step, and when Dean doesn’t move to flee, he takes another. “Only it wasn’t just faith in you I had; it was faith in us. We failed. The blame doesn’t fall solely on you, Dean. It doesn’t even fall on you at all, but if you so insist on bearing it, then please— let me shoulder some so I don’t have to watch you lie down and die under the weight of it.” 

He doesn’t mean for it to slip out like that—doesn’t mean to frame it from the perspective of his own pain and fear. But in the lull, Dean is looking at him with a softness—an attentiveness that wasn’t there before, like he’s only just now realizing the extent of importance he wields in Castiel’s life. Like he’s only just come to understand what he is to Castiel. 

And Castiel thinks— of course. Dean would never listen to an appeal toward his own intrinsic value, because he defines himself purely by the change he’s able to affect in the lives of others. Castiel was never going to make him listen to some excessively preachy speech about living for the sake of living. He was never going to get through to Dean that way. 

So Castiel tells him earnestly, “I wanted so badly to give you a compelling reason to fight and live for your own sake, but the truth of the matter is, I can’t determine that reason for you. I can only attest to your value from my point of view.” One more step, and he’s close enough to reach out and touch—so he does, hand to shoulder, grasp firm, imploring. “You mean more to me than I could ever make you see, Dean, but in words you may understand: I need you. Call me selfish, but I can’t do this without you. I won’t.” 

Air shudders visibly out of Dean, confliction written into every line and bend of his face. A flash of lightning strobes overhead, and a shrill crack of thunder follows. The rain pours heavier. 

Neither one of them moves. As long as Dean stares at Castiel, Castiel stares right back, unwavering, steadfast. Dean doesn’t try to avoid his gaze again, which feels more profound than it probably should. But Dean hasn’t ever looked into Castiel’s eyes for such an extended period of time before. It feels… Like yielding. Like trust. 

The next flicker of lightning illuminates the glassy sheen over Dean’s eyes, only it’s not constructed of unshed anguish. This time, it’s shed, released in streams nearly indistinguishable from the rain. Castiel sees the streams, though; he sees the surrender. 

In a broken murmur, Dean confesses, “I don’t know how to fix it, Cas.” 

Castiel nods and takes Dean’s other shoulder in his hand, grounding him on both sides. Something strange sits on the tip of his tongue—the words, “you don’t need fixing.” Narrowly, knowing Dean’s not in the right frame of mind to accept a proclamation like that, Castiel evades the threat of letting those words tumble out into the open. 

Instead, he says, “how about we start with your knee? You’re obviously in agony.” 

There’s a brief second in which Dean stiffens and appears to retreat into himself—no doubt, an instinct to resist. But the moment comes and goes in no time at all, and he ultimately gives a nod of agreement. He looks down, scratches an itch on his nose that Castiel knows doesn’t exist. As is tradition, Castiel pretends not to notice. 

It takes some cumbersome shifting and a bit of careful maneuvering, but eventually, he’s able to sit Dean under the awning overhanging the rear entrance stoop of Hawk’s bar, at the very back of the alley. It’s dry here, safe from the downpour. 

Dean’s shivering; Castiel can feel it in the fine tremors all throughout his body under his soaked clothing. If Dean finds it uncomfortable, he doesn’t let it show; or, perhaps it’s simply that the pain in his knee overshadows the discomfort of the cold. Dean is tense, hissing through his teeth, grimacing, and gnawing on his knuckles the instant Castiel kneels down in front of him and unclips the holster from around his thigh to properly roll up the leg of his jeans. Clearly, the pain is more than enough to be distracting. 

“Cas—come on, man. Is that shit really necessary? Just hover your hand over it or something,” Dean protests, squirming restlessly. 

“Can’t,” Castiel says. “It takes an immense amount of precision and channeling power, which I no longer have, to do that. I need to be physically touching an injury to heal it.” 

“Then maybe you shouldn’t—”

“If I have to listen to you badger me about my grace one more time, you’re not going to like finding out where I can shove it to shut you up.” 

There’s a long pause. Castiel’s so startled by his own colorful threat that he doesn’t dare look up at Dean’s face, fearing he’s overstepped. Miscalculated. Blundered. Whatever term best describes that series of words coming out in that order out of nowhere. 

Castiel is usually much less crass, more poised. Then again, he has developed an especially strong sensitivity to commentary on his grace since the reality set in that his angelic identity is eroding faster than he can adapt, so really—it shouldn’t be all that surprising that Dean preparing to fuss over his grace wound up striking a nerve. 

When Dean finally speaks again, Castiel thinks he was a fool for worrying in the first place. This is Dean; half the time, the man couldn’t take a damn thing seriously if he tried. Doesn’t matter the gravity of the conversation they just got done having. 

Dean says, “Christ, Cas—didn’t I ever tell you you should take a girl out to dinner first before you start talking about shoving things in places?” 

And Castiel decidedly does not dignify that with a response. Part of him wants to ask why Dean does it so often: makes sardonic quips with flirtatious undertones—and he never seems to aim them at anyone but Castiel. But he hardly thinks that would be a worthwhile topic of discussion; he suspects he’d just be met with another joke to yank his chain. 

Holding his attention on Dean’s knee, he begins to assess. The joint is severely swollen, bruised around the raised scars of the entrance and exit wounds from the bullet that had torn through it. Castiel remembers having to leave some tendons and ligaments unfortified; he could loosely pull them back together, but they were still weak, easy to tear again. Frankly, if Dean had taken the time to relax and recover, his knee could’ve healed the rest of the way relatively well on its own. All Castiel would’ve had to do is spot-treat some of the weaker tissues. 

Now, Castiel’s not sure he can return the joint’s functionality to anything greater than eighty percent. Dean’s definitely inflicted more damage than what Castiel had originally left him with. 

Carefully, Castiel prods the edges of the kneecap—which had previously been shattered into half a dozen fragments—and Dean jolts violently, swatting Castiel’s hand away. 

“Damn it, Cas! Don’t do that.”

Castiel sits back on his heels with a sigh, frowning. “It’s astounding that you’ve even been able to stand, much less walk and execute missions on this.” 

Dean huffs, scrubbing the rainwater out of his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “Yeah, well—no pain, no gain, right?” 

Castiel tosses him a withering glare as he reaches out again to tend to his knee, this time with gentler hands. “You’re not funny.” 

“Lying’s a sin, you know.” 

“God is dead.” 

Dean snorts, then after a beat—after Castiel’s begun to guide his grace to the tips of his fingers and restore the disfigured fibers of ligament, tendon, and bone—he laughs. A low, muted sound, as though to himself. 

Castiel looks up at him curiously, brow furrowed. “What?” 

“Nothing. Just—” Dean puffs out another short bout of laughter; he sounds a little weary, but genuinely light of heart. “I can’t believe you actually stole Barlowe’s gun and fired at that raider without a clear shot—you crazy jackass.” 

Oh. That. 

Castiel gives a lazy shrug. “I’m notoriously defiant, Dean. I was never going to heed your ridiculous orders. Although, I do maintain my stance on firearms: they truly are barbaric instruments.”

He will admit that he’d been a bit impulsive. He’d never shot a gun in his life, but everyone else in Sioux Falls is so married to Dean’s leadership that they were willing to obey his order to stand down without question. Castiel was the only one willing to break ranks to put down the last-standing raider. All the other raiders either retreated when they saw how outmatched they were or were killed in their efforts to loot the town’s medical and food supply. 

It’s become a pervasive problem as of late—the raider factions. Flocks of humans desperate enough to ransack established communes instead of asking sanctuary. Castiel is inclined to assume their attitudes stem from the fear of having to abandon their freedoms to integrate into communities like Sioux Falls; to them, it’s easier to steal, destroy, and ‘be free’ than it is to assimilate for survival. 

Nonetheless, they’re a nuisance. Humans can’t be warded against, and everyone’s already got enough on their plate keeping the demon hordes at bay. Dean, especially, could use a break. After everything… 

“You could’ve taken my damn head off,” Dean accuses. There’s enough levity in his voice for Castiel to be certain he’s not actually angry. 

“That wouldn’t have happened. I have excellent eyesight and coordination.” 

“Still took a chunk outta my ear.” 

Castiel lifts his head to eye the bloody notch in the tip of Dean’s right ear, considers it a moment—then says sincerely, “the scar will suit you.” 

Dean makes a face—some cross between incredulity and amusement. “How do you figure?” 

“It’s a custom of yours to wear reminders of those that care about you. Your father’s jacket, your brother’s amulet—most recently, Bobby’s old drop-leg holster.” There’s a slight tug of a smile at the corner of Castiel’s mouth as he passes another fleeting glance at the wound in Dean’s ear. “Consider that my contribution.” 

Dean hums, then turns his head to look out toward the street, at the opposite end of the alley. Almost everyone has retreated indoors since the storm started, but a few stragglers can be seen scuttling through the rain, jackets held over their heads for makeshift shelter. A pensive glint shines in Dean’s eyes, and Castiel doesn’t doubt for a single second that he’s already preparing a strategy in his head to handle the potential of flooding. The inner workings of his mind are complex—certainly more than Castiel can comprehend. It’s paradoxical, really: for a man who couldn’t care less whether he lives or dies, he does a great deal to lead his people as best he can. 

How can two starkly opposing forces coexist in one mind? How is it that Dean would stop at nothing to save his brother and the people that depend on him, but also succumb so easily to death if the opportunity presented itself? 

Maybe Castiel should count himself lucky that he doesn’t understand how such an insidious network of thinking comes to be—but he wants to understand. For Dean’s sake, he does. 

It occurs to him, then… 

Sam. On the day Lucifer rose beyond the capabilities of Michael to vanquish, and the Foundations of Heaven crumbled, Dean was so obstinately fixated on finding a way to save Sam. And for months after, he was still just as fixated. Just as committed. 

As Castiel watched Dean descend into reckless apathy, he mistook his actions as a sign that he’d forgotten his ultimate mission—the mission that sat squarely above all others. But now Castiel knows that directly conflicting sentiments have their talons hooked into Dean with equal vigor, and that just makes his crude mention of Sam during their argument last week that much more insulting than he’d originally come to realize. 

Frowning, head ducking low, Castiel says, “I’m sorry, by the way.” 

Dean makes an indistinct, puzzled noise, and Castiel can feel him staring. “For what? My ear’s fine, Cas—”

“Not about your ear.” Castiel breathes, slow and deliberate, and picks his head back up. “I’m sorry for bringing Sam up in the way I did after you returned from your mission to defeat Famine. It was misguided and manipulative.” 

Dean blinks, scans over Castiel’s face, searching—though, for what, Castiel’s not sure. Sincerity, perhaps. Whatever it is, Dean must find it, because soon he’s nodding and donning his trademark mask of laid-back nonchalance, saying, “classic case of doing the wrong thing for the right reason. I get it. Ain’t no thang.” 

Castiel regards him skeptically. Is that truly the conclusion Dean’s drawn about the situation? As memory serves, their exchange was a little too heated to warrant such casual forgiveness. Dean had threatened to dissolve their friendship over it. Castiel had crossed a line that never should’ve been crossed, and he doesn’t quite have a good grasp on everything that led him to do it, but he knows it wasn’t just some good-natured mistake. It was more visceral than that. More sinister. 

He shakes his head insistently. “But that’s the thing, Dean: I don’t think I did it for the right reason. I was afraid of losing you, and I thought using Sam to get to you would make you reconsider the path you were on. It was…” He digs deep, tries to unearth the right words. The only way he can describe it is, “purely self-serving.” 

Dean arches a brow at him. He doesn’t look upset or disgusted. If anything, he looks unsurprised, like Castiel’s just told him the most mundane, normal thing ever. “Are you more disturbed about the shitty thing you did, or the fact that you’re starting to feel motivated by your own personal interests for the first time after millions of years spent serving some holy higher purpose?” 

Castiel’s ashamed to say he goes legitimately slack-jawed in that moment, gawking dumbly. Because, for once, it’s not him reading Dean; it’s Dean reading him. And with mere seconds to mull it over, Castiel realizes Dean’s assessment is correct. Something that Castiel couldn’t piece together within himself in the span of a week became obvious to Dean in no time at all. 

Castiel is a being that sees, but apparently so is Dean when he feels like it. How, though, does he see? Castiel’s intuition is rooted in the millennia of wisdom he’s accrued and his innate angelic senses—neither of which Dean possesses. How is it that he could see the exact nature of Castiel’s internal conflict so easily? 

Dean sports a lopsided grin, like he can hear Castiel’s scrambling thoughts. “Just a lucky guess,” he says, by way of answer to a question unasked. “Anyway, don’t beat yourself up over it, Cas. Self-serving acts are par for the course where humanity’s concerned. Just try not to be an asshole, and you’re golden.” 

He doesn’t mean it—Castiel knows he doesn’t—but the explicit association between self-servitude and humanity stings, breeds a niggling smart in Castiel’s chest. 

He doesn’t disparage humanity; on the contrary, he finds humanity beautiful in all its blemished image. But if there’s anything he has been able to identify about himself with absolute clarity since Heaven collapsed and his grace began to falter, it’s the fact that humanity—the quality of being human—petrifies him. Which poetically, in itself, is indisputably human of him.  

Castiel stares down at his fingertips—the soft, golden glow as they channel grace into Dean’s battered knee—and he chooses, then, to take the sight as a staunch affirmation to himself. “I’m not human,” he mumbles under his breath. 

He doesn’t expect a response; he’s not saying it to Dean, and surely, the deluge of rain would smother the quiet notes of his voice anyway. 

But then he hears, crisp over the storm: “I know you’re not.” A staggeringly gentle assurance uttered like a secret meant only for Castiel’s ears. 

Of course Dean considers Castiel a dear friend; that’s not what’s so shocking about his immediate and genuine effort to allay Castiel’s fears. What’s so shocking is that—

Dean Winchester, a human who’s spent his entire life villainizing the worst of supernatural creatures and begrudgingly tolerating the existence of the best of them, and who took nearly eight months from the day he was raised from Hell to fully warm up to the idea of having an angel around as a permanent installation in his life—is actually extending sympathy to an inhuman entity grieving the progressive loss of what makes him inhuman. 

He’s effectively setting aside his deeply-ingrained ideology surrounding the discordance between the supernatural and humanity to… Offer solace to a thing he doesn’t and can never fully understand. 

Castiel could never describe to him in words why mortalization is so frightening, and yet here Dean is, seeing and, without question, indulging Castiel’s desire to cling onto anything he can grab ahold of that enshrines his celestial identity. 

“I’m sorry, too,” Dean says suddenly. 

Castiel flinches, head whipping up with brows raised, lips parted—the perfect picture of befuddlement, he’s sure. 

Dean’s looking down at his lap, picking at the rough skin around his fingernails. “I never thought you…” His face pinches, then he shakes his head. “Look, it was shitty of me to expect you to just sit back and watch me die. I wasn’t—I’m not…” He breathes out shakily. “My head’s just—” 

“Dean,” Castiel cuts in softly. Wrapping his free hand around Dean’s forearm in a gesture of warm comfort. “I understand.” 

And he does. At least enough to know Dean didn’t want to hurt Castiel any more than Castiel wanted to hurt him; they were both victims of their own respective afflictions. 

Dean nods, sniffs, looks anywhere but at Castiel as he scratches another phantom itch on his nose. “I really don’t know how to fix it, Cas. I don’t see it ever just— going away.” 

Once more, Castiel is confronted with words he knows he shouldn’t say parking themselves right on the tip of his tongue—words he knows Dean would either clam up against and scoff dismissively at, or deny with furious contempt. 

Dean is suffering immense adversity, but that doesn’t mean he needs to be fixed. It’s not a reflection of his character or moral standing. It’s not his fault that he suffers in the way that he does. 

But he won’t hear reason of that nature. Not in such a precarious state. 

Castiel chooses his next words carefully, thoughtfully. 

“Perhaps it doesn’t need to,” he says. “People learn to make peace with their troubles and live fulfilling lives given the right circumstances.” 

“Right,” Dean scoffs. “Like Armageddon is the right circumstance.” 

Castiel clicks his tongue and rolls his eyes. “I’m talking about support, Dean. Fellowship. Camaraderie. The things that make humanity as resilient as it is in even its darkest ages.” He tightens his grip on Dean’s arm. “You’re a man of great self-sufficiency, and I respect it; it’s helped you survive decades on your own, holding your family together, keeping the people you love safe. But it’ll kill you if you don’t release the stranglehold it has on you. You have to let people in. You have to trust that they’ll care for you while you can’t see the point in doing it for yourself.” 

Dean’s face twists with a cross between disbelief and mockery. “What are you, a shrink?” 

Castiel looks him dead in the eyes and replies bluntly, “it’s just me here, Dean. Who exactly are you posturing for?” 

Dean looks positively baffled at the question, rendered speechless. Whether at the dry delivery or the question itself, Castiel can’t tell. It’s entertaining to watch Dean internally flounder for a response, though. 

Ultimately, when Dean concedes the idea of meeting Castiel wit-for-wit, he just breathes a laugh and says, “God—you really are such a pain in the ass sometimes.” 

It’s a simple thing—playful ribbing. Considering the unstable ground on which they stood with each other only minutes ago, Castiel is thoroughly relieved by the friendly familiarity. 

So he smiles, broad and a tinge sportive. “I’ve been told.” 

Dean grins and slips his arm out from under Castiel’s grasp to lean back on his hands. He watches Castiel, eyes bright like they haven’t been in far too long—not out of stubbornness or indignation or anger, but of their own vibrant spirit. 

It’s likely only a matter of a single lingering second, but Castiel feels suspended in the moment, a warm, swelling sensation spreading through the cavity of his chest as he takes in the radiance of those green eyes. They remind him of better days—still entrenched in the Apocalypse, but days with no threat, nothing but leisure. Days spent telling hunting stories over beers around the rusty, metal trash can Bobby repurposed as a firepit. Days spent playing poker (until Castiel was banned from it). Days spent living in the mundane here-and-now with worries forgotten. 

Days like that don’t exist anymore. Not since Manhattan. But in a peculiar turn of events, on a day where raiders invaded Sioux Falls, and Dean had to be rescued from certain death which he invited upon himself, Castiel sees bright green eyes stirring with the fires of life. 

Perhaps, then, it won’t be days that define a worthwhile life to live anymore; it’ll be moments, like this one. Small slivers of time more invaluable than any good day, because they’re fleeting and buried in among the larger expanses of time spent fighting for the chance to meet the next precious memory. 

“Boy, Cas, I know my dashing good looks can be distracting, but my knee’s still killing me. Focus on your work, will ya?” 

Castiel would like to say the cherished moment effectively ends with Dean’s infernal witticism, but it doesn’t, and even more strangely, Castiel doesn’t find it nearly as infernal as he usually would. 

Still, he brings his attention back down to Dean’s knee and makes a show of breathing a long, laborious sigh. “Figures you’ve already forgotten the unpalatable places my grace can reach should you elect to be a nuisance.” 

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, angel,” Dean says, and Castiel can hear the smarmy wink in his voice. 

Dean’s messing with him. Castiel knows he is, and he’s perfectly well-accustomed to Dean’s habit for it. 

Somehow, though, just this once, Castiel can’t move past the comment with the ease he ordinarily does. As he hones his focus in on healing Dean’s knee, he feels his face run hot against the cold, stormy air. 

Just another novel bodily response to some unknowable human emotion. 

A fluke. Because Castiel’s not a human. He’s an angel. Dean’s assured him of such. 

Castiel smiles to himself. 

☽𖤐☾

03.27.10 [01:11 AM]

I guess we were both just a couple of idiots, huh? You know me—I don’t do all that ooey-gooey feelings crap very often, but I’ll admit that if I had , things wouldn’t have gotten so screwed up in the first place. 

I’m not, like… Magically cured or some bullshit like that. But talking things out a bit—I hate to say it, but I do feel a little lighter. And hey, it only took Cas shooting me in the fucking ear and getting all up in my face afterwards for us to work it out. 

When I got home, Bobby was about to rip me a new one over my self-sacrificing theatrics, but he noticed my limp was gone and it’s like he entirely forgot he was pissed off. The guy was so thrilled he yanked me damn-near into his lap to hug me. Practically squeezed the life out of me. 

And I couldn’t help but think—where the hell would I be without Cas? 

Breaking Bobby’s fucking heart, for one. That’s for sure.

☽𖤐☾

MAY 02, 2010 || 09:54 PM || 1556 DAYS UNTIL THE END

It’s been one of those rare ‘calm’ days. Only twice did the town face a potential demon threat, but with the most recent fortifications made to the perimeter warding, invasion attempts were quashed before they could get out of hand. Hardly anyone has had to lift a finger all day. 

For the past several hours, Castiel’s been catching up on his literary deep-dive into angel lore; he’s taken it upon himself to pore over Bobby’s old, dusty books, tagging and annotating any inaccuracies he encounters. 

A few weeks ago, Dean had asked him why he was even bothering. “It’s not like anyone’s gonna need it in a world with no Heaven,” he’d pointed out. 

Although, Castiel was astute enough to translate the words into a more defeatist meaning that he was sure Dean actually wanted to convey: “it’s not like anyone’s gonna be around in the end to read your edits.” 

Castiel had said, then: “we can never know what the future holds, Dean. If the world still exists after the End of Days, who knows what it might need to rebuild? Accurate accounts of lore are likely to be crucial.” 

And Dean had replied with a warmhearted grin, “carrying the optimism for the both of us as always—you’re gonna have a bad back soon.” 

Castiel is smiling absentmindedly at the memory when Dean suddenly barges into the den where he’s set up shop on the floor with his pile of Enochian lore books. 

Paused in the doorway, he comments, “Jesus—on your day off, Cas? Really?” As if it’s even the slightest bit surprising. 

Castiel tips his head to the side—a tic of concentration as he pens a note in the margin next to an incorrectly-constructed sigil. “When else would I find the time, Dean?” 

“Alright, well, you’re done with homework for the night. Come on.” 

Without looking up, Castiel asks, “where are we going?” 

“Just get your ass up, man. Let’s go!” 

With that, Dean’s hauling him up off the floor despite his protests, then five minutes later, they’re out on Bobby’s back porch. Dean’s presenting a thin roll of marijuana he apparently procured on a recon mission some days ago and enthusiastically instructing Castiel on so-called ‘joint etiquette.’ And Castiel is cautious but intrigued. 

“You seem very happy to have come into possession of this,” he says, rolling the ‘joint’ studiously between his fingertips. “One would think you’d have made use of it by now.” 

“I was saving it for the right occasion.” Dean plucks it out of Castiel’s hand, lifts the narrow end up to his lips and ignites the other with the ridiculous bullet-motifed lighter he won in a game of pool at Hawk’s last month. “I haven’t had one of these since I was twenty. Lucky my dad never found out; he would’ve skinned me alive.” 

He pulls in a deep breath, holds it until his eyes just begin to water, and releases it in a big, billowing cloud of smoke. He coughs—a few suppressed spasms of the lungs that he chuckles at like it’s somehow a thing to delight in. 

“Right…” Castiel wrinkles his nose and waves his hand to disperse the smoke. “And what exactly is the occasion?” 

Dean pauses, gives him a strange look, then snorts. “Shit, Cas, never let anyone tell you you don’t have a favorite Winchester brother.” He raises the joint back to his lips as he adds, “it’s Sam’s birthday, ding-dong.” 

Castiel stares. “Oh,” he says lamely. 

Maybe he should’ve known that; he did manage to remember Dean’s birthday earlier in the year. Then again, given that Dean was severely compromised at the time, nothing came of it—and of course he’s more likely to remember important dates related to Dean than he is to remember those related to Sam. He’s known Dean longer; he’s always been much more connected to Dean. He’d never say it aloud (he doesn’t think Dean would appreciate the candor), but is it that unbelievable that Castiel would favor Dean over Sam? 

“Hey—” Dean nudges Castiel in the ribs with his elbow— “relax, man. I’m just fucking with you.” 

Castiel’s brow knits with confusion. “It’s not Sam’s birthday?” 

“No—” Dean tosses his head back with a laugh. “It is. I’m saying it’s fine that you forgot. You didn’t know him well; I don’t expect you to remember every little detail.” 

Castiel nods. “I see.” A coil of tension he wasn’t aware had taken up residence in his shoulders releases as the knowledge that Dean isn’t insulted in any way by Castiel’s forgetfulness settles with him.

“Here.” Dean offers the joint over to Castiel. “Try some of this. It’ll help you pull that stick out of your ass.” 

Castiel squints dubiously at it. The smoke rolling off the end carries an odor he’s not awfully fond of, and he’s not quite sure what it would do for him anyway. It still takes a fair quantity of alcohol to even mildly inebriate him; what is the likelihood this so much as buzzes him? 

He supposes it can’t hurt to try. 

Tentatively, he takes the joint from Dean, puts it to his lips, and pulls in a slow, deep breath. Almost instantly, the hot smoke embeds itself densely in the lowest reaches of his lungs and sends him into a spluttering fit of coughs. His throat itches and burns, and tears prick at the edges of his eyes—and Dean’s cackling at him like it’s the most hilarious thing he’s ever seen. 

As long as it takes for the sensitive twitchiness in his lungs to calm, Castiel is strongly questioning why in the world humans would ever come to revere such a disagreeable activity. But by the time he’s able to straighten himself and draw normal breaths again, he’s suddenly wobbly on his feet, blinking haze out of his vision as a bizarre floatiness that reminds him of flying bores into his every fiber and atom—and he thinks he gets it. 

Dean grabs onto his arm to stabilize him, a blend of subtle concern and mirth in his eyes when he asks, “you good?” 

“Yeah—yes.” It’s true. More than true. “I just wasn’t expecting it to actually affect me.” 

Dean absolutely beams at the news. “Well, there’s a perk of mortalization for ya.” He slings an arm over Castiel’s shoulders and cheers, “mazel tov!” 

Typically, the mention of mortalization has an unpleasant way of sinking into Castiel, ensconcing itself heavy in his chest like lead. Oddly, however, in this moment, he finds himself laughing with Dean, as though the gloomy reality of things can’t reach him like it normally can. 

It’s decided: marijuana is about as close to magic as the ordinary and mundane gets. 

Caution abandoned to the wind, Castiel goes for a second hit off the joint. 

“Woah, alright—pace yourself, buddy,” Dean warns, though he makes no move to confiscate the joint from Castiel. “Too much too fast might have you talking to trees and running naked through the streets ‘cause you think your clothes are out to get you.” 

Castiel just laughs again, devolving into yet another coughing fit that only results in more laughter. He doesn’t think he’s ever laughed this much, or this hard, or this freely. The muscles in his abdomen ache with fatigue. 

Grinning ear-to-ear, Dean says, “okay, giggles—that’s enough for you,” and steals the joint back to take another drag for himself. 

Once Castiel’s able to collect himself—acclimate to the warm hum of a high swimming around in his head and loosening his limbs—he drapes himself lazily over the porch railing, making himself comfortable. Elbow propped on splintered wood, chin perched in the palm of his hand, he settles in to listen as Dean begins regaling him with stories from his upbringing. 

“You know, Sam—his eleventh birthday, he fell out of a tree trying to return a baby bird he found on the ground to its nest. Poor kid didn’t know mom and the siblings that passed flight school had already up and fucked off, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him. Didn’t wanna add insult to injury—which was a disgustingly broken arm, by the way.” Dean chuckles—a low, smooth purr of a sound; Castiel smiles. “Anyway, Dad was off on a hunt like always, so I had to take Sam to the ER myself. The triage nurse asked me where our parents were, and I told her it didn’t matter; I look after him. Handed her a fake ID that said I was eighteen, she seemed to take my word for it, and Sammy was admitted for some X-rays and a cast. I thought we were in the clear, but it turned out she was just buying time to get CPS involved. So I took Sam and ran as fast as I could. Dad was pissed when I told him. Absolutely reamed me for not looking out for Sam as much as I should’ve—for taking him to the ER before calling and working out a ‘plan of attack’ first.” 

“What, like you were soldiers in the Army?” Castiel thinks he feels himself making a face at the mention of John Winchester and his domineering iron fist, but he’s too reposed to care. If Dean sees him disapproving of his father’s conduct, so be it.

Dean huffs, a little amused, a little sheepish. “Exactly like that.” Another drag off the joint—then he shakes his head. There’s a soft curl to his lips, content, but there’s a faint, solemn glister in his eyes, too. “You wanna know what his idea of a birthday present was for my seventeenth?” 

“Hmm?” 

“A hunt. First solo. Sent me off to bumfuck Wyoming on a salt-and-burn mission while he hung back to spend quality time with Sam.” Dean scoffs. “Not that Sam was especially impressed with the sudden attention. He thought it was mean of Dad to send me off on my own to work a job for my birthday.” 

The words, “it was,” form a tempting response, but Castiel narrowly manages to exercise his restraint and keep them to himself. He asks, “and what did you think?” 

Dean hesitates, a near-imperceptible falter in his expression. He turns to look out at the salvage yard, where relics of the Foundations of Heaven still lie in heaps among old cars and scrap metal. “That he was trying to teach me an important lesson. Something I needed to learn before it had a chance to blindside me later.” 

“What lesson was that?” 

“That life ain’t fair…” He inhales steadily through his nose, the beginnings of a frown bowing at the corners of his mouth. “The job and the world will always come before me, in the same way the happiness of those nuns’ spirits he had me deal with was always doomed to come second to a life that was cruel to them.” 

Castiel picks himself up from his lounging position on the railing, interest piqued. A closer look at Dean yields the sight of new colors—hues Castiel only last saw when he met Dean’s soul in Hell, vulnerable and torn and cut wide-open, unable to hide. At the time, though Castiel could see the full array of colors that fashioned the fabric of Dean’s soul, he couldn’t attribute them to any one trait or emotion. These days, even with an improved sense for human experience, Castiel still can’t put a name to the meaning behind the specific colors he sees flaring now. 

Whatever they are—whatever they signify… Dean seems to expend a great deal of effort to smother them under normal circumstances. 

“How do you mean?” Castiel asks. 

There’s another beat of hesitation, and then Dean’s shaking his head. “Nah, nothing.” His ensuing laughter sounds forced. “I’m higher than I thought, I guess.” 

If Castiel had access to all his stiff inhibitions, he may very well have accepted that answer and moved on. As it stands, though, he’s feeling lax, and light, and floaty, and generally unimpeded by excessive thought—and so he smirks, takes the joint from Dean, and awards himself a third hit. “You’re lying,” he says knowingly, because he does know. Colors like the ones Dean’s exuding right now don’t just come out of hiding for no reason. 

Dean sighs, but he doesn’t seem annoyed. He’s watching Castiel with a fondness. “Guilty,” he cedes. For several seconds, he retreats inward, contemplation written into his features, gaze cast off to the side, teeth sunken into his lower lip. Finally, he confesses, “the nuns were in love with each other. The church and its community didn’t like that very much, so they killed themselves to escape it all.” 

Castiel tilts his head, observes the way Dean’s colors appear to cower and reach for deliverance at the same time. Fearful yet yearning. 

It’s ludicrous for Castiel to even entertain the idea, but perhaps… 

“Do you think the lesson your father was attempting to teach you was simply rooted in you having to work on your birthday, or in the nature of that particular job itself?” 

The colors burst abruptly into a vibrant blaze, resembling the chaos of panic, startling at the realization that they’re being spied on. 

The colors of Dean’s soul are loose, running amok, but the green of his eyes reflects nothing but guarded resistance. 

“The hell’re you trying to say, man?” he says, not quite snappish but teetering close to it. 

And his instantaneous leap to defensiveness just about confirms Castiel’s suspicions. Against all odds, against all reason and what he thought he knew to be true about Dean Winchester— that’s what those colors symbolize? It doesn’t make sense; and yet what Castiel’s seeing is irrefutable. 

Reining in his surprise, he says mildly, “nothing you should feel the need to discuss further if you don’t want to.” 

It’s an aim to soothe Dean’s obvious alarm at being perceived in such a way, but all it does is succeed in inflaming it even more. 

“I’m not—I’ve never…” He grits his teeth, body wound taut as a wire. “Look, it ain’t like that—” 

“Dean,” Castiel interjects, once again intending to calm his worries—except the next thing that comes blundering out of his mouth is even worse than what he’s already said: “don’t dig a hole you’re not prepared to jump into.” 

Which—great, now it just sounds like Castiel is threatening him. He’s starting to think indulging in marijuana was a huge mistake. Clearly, he can’t be trusted to keep his thoughts in proper order while under its influence. 

He briefly debates attempting to explain himself, but he figures he should take his own advice. He’s determined not to dig his own hole any deeper. 

So he goes quiet, still, rigid. Apprehensively, he watches Dean, takes careful inventory of him to assess just how vastly he, in human terms, has shit the bed. 

Dean stands in place, back unnaturally straight. His eyes flit about, from feature to feature on Castiel’s face, from ground to porch roof, from salvage yard to the door, then again, from feature to feature on Castiel’s face. Flighty. Like a skittish animal. 

But he doesn’t flee. He doesn’t make for the nearest possible escape route. He stares at Castiel, eyes wide, brow creased with a concoction of confusion, vexation, fluster. Somehow, room is made for something new to spark to life in his irises alongside every other conflicting emotion already burning there—something like intrigue. Like… Temptation. 

He blinks, as if to snuff it out, but it’s there to stay, equally as stubborn as he is. When he opens his mouth, presumably to either argue with Castiel or tell him off, he just as quickly snaps it shut again, disabused of whatever he had in mind to say. 

Finally, he whips his head around to glue his gaze to the distant nighttime horizon. There’s a strong set in his jaw. 

At a loss, Castiel occupies himself with the joint still smoldering between his fingers. Considering how they wound up in this predicament, another hit is the last thing he should be treating himself to. 

He takes another anyway; it works to smooth the prickly edges of his nerves. 

It’s then that Dean’s eyes gravitate back toward him, flicking unmistakably down to Castiel’s lips as he exhales the smoke from his lungs. 

That gives Castiel pause. Surely not, he thinks. Surely that’s not where this is going. Castiel would have to have an astronomically inflated ego to genuinely dignify the possibility that Dean’s looking at him like that. 

He’s too high. That’s all. Imagining things like Dean said he might. 

Dean’s throat bobs with the harshness of his swallow, and suddenly he’s snatching the joint back from Castiel, hand trembling as he, too, takes another hit. His eyes flutter shut; he savors the smoke before he breathes out, stiffness in his body waning. 

When he opens his eyes again, he finds Castiel without so much as a waver. Castiel feels the snag of air in his throat at the intensity of Dean’s stare. So green. So piercing. The colors twirling all around him have lost their erratic temperament, glowing stable and constant, and Castiel doesn’t know how to process the sudden stirring sensation in his chest. It’s something wholly separate from the floatiness of his high, something akin to the frantic flutter of a bird’s wings yet bearing notes of warmth like the fondness he’s felt before. 

He can’t make sense of it. It’s utterly incomprehensible. Scarily so. It borders on uncomfortably uncertain. But above all, it’s intoxicating. The allure of Dean’s colors, the fondness, the fear, the uncertainty, the thrill—all of it. Castiel can’t bring himself to consider the objective insanity that pervades it. 

Innumerable seconds tick by, both of them staring at and into and through each other, both of them waiting, both of them daring. All the while, Castiel can see the inferno of determination stoking hotter and brighter in Dean’s eyes, right up until the last line of defense shatters—the final dam holding Dean’s impulses at bay. His colors erupt into a burdenless flurry. 

Under his breath, he mutters, “fuck it,” flicks the butt of the joint off to the ground, and reaches out to drag Castiel in by the shoulders, sealing their lips together in a kiss. 

Castiel is thrown completely off his axis, fumbling for purchase around the backsides of Dean’s arms. He hasn’t the foggiest idea what to do with himself, with his hands, his mouth, anything—because he didn’t know where this was going, but he sure as hell wasn’t expecting this. 

He’s never kissed or been kissed, nor has he ever particularly understood the appeal. But Dean’s lips are on his, soft, and warm, and insistent, and Castiel’s heart is thudding hard and fast behind his sternum, and he feels like he’s burning up inside with the scorch of holyfire. Pure. Powerful. All-consuming. And suddenly Castiel understands perfectly well. 

He lowers his hands to Dean’s hips and tilts his head to kiss him back, as best he can. He follows Dean’s lead because he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing—only knows that this feels impossibly good and he doesn’t want it to stop. 

Dean frames his face in warm, calloused palms, sweeps his thumbs over Castiel’s cheeks, grazes along the stubbled edge of his jaw. And Castiel doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that, in that precise instant, Dean abruptly plants a hand on the center of his chest and pushes him back, holding them apart. 

Castiel’s head spins violently, whiplashed from fiery nirvana back to frigid reality, where he’s reminded that there’s a reason this is only the second time ever that he’s seeing this distinct assemblage of colors in Dean’s soul. Where he’s confronted with the fact that this is unbelievably more complicated than plain indulgence in what feels good. 

There’s a war raging on in Dean’s eyes, face wrought with bewilderment and indecision, as if he can’t believe his own actions. 

If Castiel were sober and clear-headed, he’d probably step away, give Dean room to breathe. But as it stands, he’s high and wanting, and all he does is peer at Dean, waiting, eyes hooded, chest expanding and contracting heavily. 

Dean’s gaze lingers on Castiel’s parted lips, pupils huge and black and somehow growing blacker with each passing second. His jaw tightens, throat bobs. Then finally, he’s reaching for Castiel once more, this time hooking his fingers into his belt loops and spinning him around to pin him up against the wall. 

They kiss harder and hotter than before, falling into a heady rhythm of push and pull, give and take, ebb and flow. Dean’s body is solid against Castiel’s, and Castiel can feel the thundering of Dean’s heart through the crushing contact of their chests, through the supple skin of his neck as Castiel drags his fingertips admiringly down the sculpted column of his throat. 

They breathe into each other, sharing air, neither willing to separate for fresh oxygen. Dean’s fingers tangle into Castiel’s hair while his other hand skates up the length of his spine, and Castiel gasps, shivers, knees nearly buckling underneath him. He latches onto Dean’s waist to keep his balance. 

From there, he abandons himself to the whims of the universe. He doesn’t think about the absurdities that led him here. He doesn’t worry about the implications. He doesn’t question the desire guiding his hands. He succumbs to the bliss of Dean’s warmth, his want, his practiced touch, the beauty of his colors. 

Amid his pleasant stupor, his hands roam, mapping the bends and curves of Dean’s body over his layers. He’s lean in his shoulders, chest, and abdomen, slight in the waist, but there’s an all-over softness to him that strict rationing has yet to touch. Castiel wonders how warm and soft he must feel under his layers—and before he knows it, his fingers are slipping beneath the hem of Dean’s shirt. 

They just scarcely manage to land upon his skin before Dean tears hastily away from Castiel, leaving him cold and unpleasantly exposed to the night air. Yet again, Castiel is held at a distance with Dean’s hand pressed to his chest—only now, Dean’s curled a fist into the front of Castiel’s shirt, the firm press of knuckles against his breastbone making him wince. 

Hesitantly, Castiel meets Dean’s eyes, and it’s not uninhibited fervor or want in them, but rather, steely restraint—hostility, even. A staggering, unnerving clarity in the wake of euphoria’s hazy pollution. His colors no longer fly free either; they’re still present, still there, but they’re retreating. Crawling back to safety. 

Whatever it was about bare skin on bare skin, it effectively shocked Dean out of the daze that led him to make this outrageous leap with Castiel to begin with. 

Now, when Castiel looks at Dean, there’s little more than dismay on his face. Shame, repulsion. Dean blinks furiously and retracts his hand like Castiel’s chest has burned it, taking a pace backwards. Only a single pace, but it feels like a mile-wide rift has been drawn between them. 

Castiel tries not to feel offended by it, but try as he may, the sting of rejection barrels into him with all the mercy of a runaway city bus, kicking the wind out of him and practically leaving him gasping for breath.

“What the hell was that?” Dean demands, and Castiel hates the way he’s looking at him. Such wariness, such distrust. 

Panic grips Castiel, twisting in his gut, seizing him by the heart. He has to fix this, make it right. He only just got Dean back. After months of watching Dean struggle and suffer—months of being unable to reach him no matter how hard Castiel tried—he’s finally met Dean on level ground, and now Dean is looking at him like that all over again. Like Castiel is just a soldier crossing a line. 

“I-I’m sorry, Dean,” Castiel stammers, voice rough and unsteady. “I don’t know why—I never meant to overstep—” 

“Just—” Dean closes his eyes, rubbing hard at his temples as he takes a long, measured breath of self-composure. The last of his colors vanish beyond the bounds of Castiel’s sight. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” 

“Are you sure? Because—” 

“I said it’s fine, Cas.” For a second time that night, he doesn’t quite snap, but he’s certainly curt in tone. “Look, I had a few too many after debrief earlier, and the weed clearly didn’t help anything. So just…” He waves his hand vaguely, adamant in his avoidance of Castiel’s gaze as he starts to back away, toward the door. “I’m gonna turn in for the night. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

He wastes no time in throwing the door open and scuttling inside. 

Alone, Castiel sobers, and the more he sobers, the more he frets. The more he runs it through his head again and again, turns it over every which way, analyzes it top-to-bottom, left-to-right. Only to come up empty-handed. 

How it came to be—why those colors started to show themselves, why they only grew bolder in Castiel’s presence, why Dean kissed him, why Castiel reciprocated like he’d been awaiting the opportunity for eons, why one slip of a finger out of place drove Dean away so urgently, why Castiel fucking feels like this… 

It doesn’t make sense. 

Castiel touches trembling fingertips to his lips, which still simmer with the heat of Dean’s kiss, and his heart hurts. His eyes sting. And he feels cold. And he wants to scream. And—

Oh… 

Castiel sees it now. 

He isn’t just fond of Dean Winchester. 

He’s completely, undeniably, overwhelmingly enamored with him. 

That’s when it all makes sense, though he wishes the realization never occurred to him. Not when it hurts this badly.  

(They won’t talk about that night the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. It’ll be like it never happened to begin with—an unvoiced, mutual agreement for the greater good. It’s better that way.)

☽𖤐☾

05.02.10 [11:46 PM]

I’m definitely too high for this, and there’ll probably be a fuckton of things I come back later to scribble out when my head’s screwed on straight, so if all you get for this entry is a wall of censored nonsense, sorry. Anyway, I’ll start off by saying Happy Birthday, Sammy. Cas says so, too. I’m sure you’ll be glad to know we toked it up on Bobby’s porch in your honor. Reminisced a little. 

I told Cas about that time you broke your arm on your eleventh birthday, and how pissed Dad was back then. Just between you and me, I don’t think Cas likes Dad very much. He gets all scowly and frowny whenever I bring him up. It’s kinda █████, not gonna lie. I also told Cas about the job Dad sent me on for my seventeenth birthday. You remember, right? Those two nuns that killed themselves ‘cause ██████████████████████████████████ . You thought Dad was just being his typical Dad self, trying to instill that whole ‘the job comes first, always’ thing in me, and sure, there definitely was a bit of that going on. But the truth is, he thought I ██████████, and he wanted to show me what happens to ████████ . 

It wasn’t a threat or nothin’ heavy like that. I think, in his own fucked-up way, he was looking out for me. Making sure I knew the consequences. And it worked, for better or worse. So much so that I forgot I ever █████████████████████████. Cas, though, man… I didn’t even say anything to him. Nothing like what I’m saying right now. And I swear to God, he saw right fucking through me. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking, but I █████████████████████████████████████
█████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████. 

Whatever. I was drunk, and high, and stupid, and I don’t even ███████████████. It doesn’t mean anything. Enough about me, though. My head hurts thinking so much about myself. Again, Happy Birthday, Sam. Sorry this mess is what you have to read as a gift.

☽𖤐☾

AUGUST 08, 2010 || 01:24 PM || 1458 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Once word spread of a commune leader in South Dakota who’s rescued neighboring towns from demon hordes and raiders, established resource chains for trade, and defeated the hellish force of starvation cursing the Montana foothills, SOS radio messages began to flood in from all over the Midwest. 

The population of Sioux Falls boomed as Dean undertook the challenge of extracting innocents from endangered cities when and where he could; some lone survivalists even made the journey to Sioux Falls of their own volition to offer their skills. In a matter of months, Dean became a beacon of salvation to any and all who knew his name. 

At first, he detested it, once again saddled with the burden of far too many people’s unshakeable faith. But he’s not a man who ignores a call to action; it’s not in his nature. So, reluctantly, he embraced the burden, and ever since, Castiel has watched the confidence and surety that he’d previously lost soar back to life. The more people Dean saves, the more content he is with himself, his station. 

He hasn’t suffered a major loss since December, though. And as much as Castiel would like to believe Dean can keep up the momentum indefinitely, there’s been a sense of unease looming in the back of his mind for a while now. He can’t help but think… What will happen when Dean is inevitably hit with another loss? How badly will he crumble? Will he crumble at all? Will he suddenly decide his life isn’t worth anything again? 

So far, all the rescue and extraction missions Dean has completed have been relatively small-scale—a hundred-person town here, a minor raider faction there, an occasional demon horde beat back with recorded exorcisms and powerwashers full of holy water. 

It wasn’t until Sioux Falls received an SOS from Iowa City that a rescue mission had shaped up to be precarious and implausible enough on paper for Castiel to truly worry about the outcome that lay ahead. 

He was right to worry. 

Somewhere on the outskirts, the demon hordes have the strike team pinned down. Castiel lost sight of Dean several minutes ago. The whipping winds and vicious downpour kicked up by an unnaturally brutal storm has reduced visibility to mere feet in any given direction. He has no way of knowing the status of the rest of the team, whether anyone is still alive—no way of knowing if the retrieval squad has succeeded in rescuing the civilians trapped downtown so they can all retreat to safety. 

The only thing he can do is fight, and hope that somehow, someway, the odds will shift again in his favor. 

His movements are graceless, inelegant, feet slipping in the mud with every pivot to plunge his angel blade into the assailing demons before they can get ahold of him. They come at him from all sides, neverending, giving him no time to breathe. Rainwater seeps into his eyes, hindering his vision. The chill of the wind drills deep into his hands, stiffening the joints of his blanched knuckles; he struggles to keep a solid grasp on the hilt of his blade. 

He thrusts the point of it blindly forward, landing it squarely in the center of a demon’s chest. Just as soon, there are arms seizing him from behind, wrenching his head back, and crushing his throat in the crook of an elbow. 

Gasping raggedly for air, he scrabbles at any part of his attacker that he can reach. His hand slips on his blade, and his heart lurches sickeningly in the split-second that he thinks he’ll lose it. Narrowly, he manages to catch it by the tips of his fingers, curls his fist tight around it, slashes it down the demon’s forearm. 

With a yelp, the demon unhands Castiel and staggers backwards; Castiel swivels to drive his blade into its neck. After the demon collapses to a lifeless heap in the mud, a beat passes—a lull in the onslaught. Castiel heaves for breath, scrubbing the water out of his eyes. His head jerks every which way, searching for someone, anyone he can possibly find. 

He thinks he can see the distant, indistinct silhouette of someone fending off demons of their own through the briefest break in the downpour, but he’s afforded no opportunity to confirm. A sudden force knocks him in the back, stunning his spine, stinging his ribs. He stumbles forward. 

He tries to regain his bearings, but his feet slide awkwardly in the mud, and he only gets a quarter-turn around before there’s a hand squeezed around his windpipe, reeling him in to bring him nose-to-nose with pitch-black eyes and an ugly, wicked grin smeared with lipstick. 

“Hey there, little angel. Mind if I borrow this?” the demon says, and Castiel is powerless to stop her from plucking his blade out of his hand. 

His heart plummets to the pit of his stomach as she wedges the point of the blade in the notch beneath his sternum. Frantically, he claws at the hand clamped around his throat, scratches until he’s drawn blood. 

The demon only smiles. “Aw, now you’re making me sad, angel. What’s the matter? Cat got your wings?” 

Castiel glares, gritting his teeth against the torturous pressure under his jaw. He can’t hope to produce so much as a growl, much less a retaliatory retort. 

The demon is monologuing, droning on and on about how weak Castiel is, crowing victory. Castiel’s paying her no attention; the weight of a loose salt round sits heavy in his pants pocket, and he makes a point of holding his gaze on the demon to evade suspicion as he slides a hand downward. 

Deft fingers find the round, work to unscrew the metal cap—some of the salt is lost to the depths of his pocket, but he fits his thumb over the open end swiftly enough to salvage most of the round’s contents. 

By the time he tunes back into the demon’s ramblings, the tip of his blade is being pressed harder into him, readied to deal its sentence. He wastes not a second more, yanking the round up from his pocket, pulling his thumb away, and loosing the salt straight into the demon’s face. 

The demon shrieks as her skin burns, and Castiel capitalizes on the distraction to twist himself out of capture. For good measure, he propels his foot into her stomach, sending her floundering backwards. 

She still has his blade—something that only registers after he’s done keeling over and hacking around the air-starved roughness in his throat. He hauls himself back upright just in time to throw himself out of the path of his blade—a lumbering swing of it at his head. 

He lands hard on his side in the mud, rolls onto his back to catch the demon’s wrist as she lunges down on top of him. She leans all her weight into him, blade poised to pierce his chest, and Castiel’s arms tremble with fatigue against the force of it. 

Legs free, he hikes a knee up between them, gets the ball of his foot planted firmly against her hip, and kicks her over his head. She falls on her back behind him in a deep puddle that splatters, impeding Castiel from stealing his blade back, thwarted by yet another slip of his grip. 

Damn it! 

He stands, roots himself solidly to the ground in preparation for the next assault. 

For what feels like an eternity, he dodges slashes, blocks jabs, fits in a punch or two to put distance between himself and the demon. Each time he tries to reacquire his blade, he fails; his grip slips, or he knocks it to the ground and the demon reaches it first, or the demon manages to land a bruising blow to his outstretched arm. 

The storm isn’t letting up, and he can feel himself tiring, muscles shaking, burning, aching, chest laboring for breath. Still, there’s not a soul from his team in sight. He may very well be the last one standing. 

The demon comes at him again, and he uses her own momentum against her, pulling her blade-wielding arm past himself then shoving her on her way. He’s weakened, though, and she doesn’t stumble like he expects. She recovers quickly, whirls around, thrusts the blade out again—

And that’s that. 

Everything falls deathly silent around Castiel as white-hot pain spears through his abdomen, delicate tissues tearing, shredding, and burning around the forceful intrusion of holy metal. He inhales sharply, gulping in air that doesn’t seem to reach his lungs at all; the pain overwhelms all other sensation. Only pain, nothing but. 

This is it, he thinks, cold resignation curling up around him, suffocating him. 

He looks down. There’s a cascade of blood down the front of his shirt, and there’s his blade, sunken to the hilt in his upper-left side. It burns, deep inside, like the heat of a star on the verge of supernova—like the heat of a dying angel’s grace preparing to release back to the universe. 

Castiel watches the beginnings of a solar glow emanate from within, around the blade; he watches, and he waits for the inevitable. Waits and waits, as the glow flares ever-brighter, hotter—until it stops, sputters, and disappears. 

Castiel blinks, stares in bewilderment. And all at once, his senses rush back to him. His heart is pounding wildly, ears roaring with the pump of blood, lungs twitching for oxygen, legs near to buckling—and his every nerve is ablaze with adrenaline. 

He’s not dead. The angel blade didn’t kill him. 

Distantly, over the loud bombardment of rain, he thinks he can hear the call of his name, but he’s hardly able to pay it any mind. He lifts his head, meets the demon’s eyes, watches the smug self-satisfaction evaporate from them. Amid her confusion, he grabs her wrist, jerking the blade out of his body with a snarl. He cranks her hand back toward her face—then punches the blade into her eye socket. 

The demon screams, a strident, wounded noise, and crumples to the ground, the fires of Hell strobing from within her vessel as she convulses to death. 

For a moment, Castiel just stands over her, tries to breathe. His abdomen throbs, but it doesn’t burn like it did with the blade torn into it. He thinks he can deal—find his way to the rendezvous point. 

“Cas!” It’s Dean, shouting over the storm. It’s probably been him all along calling Castiel’s name. 

Castiel turns, squinting against the wind and the rain, and from behind the storm’s veil, he sees Dean emerge.

Relief instantly washes over Castiel. Dean’s alive. Dean’s okay. 

He takes a trudging step through the mud, but as soon as he does, his head pulses with a wave of dizziness; suddenly, left is right, up is down, and he’s toppling onto his hands and knees before he’s even aware of it. 

His vision goes blurry, a dark vignette tunneling the edges. The throbbing in his abdomen graduates to a steady, sharp ache that has him groaning and hunching over himself, arms wrapping around his middle. His sleeves are already soaked through with rain, but the syrupy spread of heat over his forearms through flannel fabric lets him know that he’s still bleeding—badly. 

“Cas—hey!” There’s the distinct slap of Dean’s boots in soggy puddles as he sprints the distance to him—the slick slide of his knees through mud when he goes to kneel urgently in front of Castiel. “Lemme see, come on.” He tugs insistently at Castiel’s arms, coaxing them to unravel from their protective stance around his stomach. 

As soon as Castiel’s arms fall away, blood spurts from the puncture under his ribs, spilling hot down his shirt, pooling on his pants. 

“Jesus—” Dean flails to fit his palms over the wound, eyes wide and distraught. “Okay,” he murmurs, clearly to himself. He wets his lips. “Okay.” His gaze flicks up to Castiel’s, but Castiel feels himself fading too much to meet it properly. “Hey— no. Cas, look at me. Keep your eyes open.” 

Castiel feels a wet hand on the side of his neck, shaking him to rouse his consciousness. He tries to open his eyes; he didn’t know he’d closed them. They’re heavy, won’t cooperate. He feels cold. 

“Fucking— God damn it,” Dean curses, and his voice sounds like it carries from down a deep well. 

Castiel fades and wakes in strange, cyclical bursts. One moment, he’s sitting slouched over himself, the next, he’s lying on his back in the mud, staring up at the storm clouds churning in the sky. Dean’s next to him, ripping a large chunk out of his undershirt. Only seconds must’ve passed. 

Castiel swallows, and his throat feels scraped raw. “Dean,” he rasps.

“Don’t talk,” Dean says, then leans over him, stern conviction written on his face. “Listen to me: this is gonna hurt like a bitch, but I gotta do it or you’ll bleed out.” 

“What are you— ah!” Castiel casts his head back with a cry, eyes screwed shut as Dean pushes the wadded-up chunk of fabric into the wound, hard, bearing down on Castiel’s abdomen with both hands and just about all of his weight. Pain shoots through Castiel like a lance, so blindingly intense he feels it in his teeth. 

“I know. I know, buddy—I’m sorry.” Dean sounds earnest, pained in his own right. 

As Castiel fights to get a handle on his shallow breaths, he peels his eyes back open, searching blearily for Dean’s face. Mud, blood, and rain form a murky paste on his freckled skin. There’s a superficial gash on his cheek. A pinkish sliver of scar tissue notches his right ear. His eyes are green. 

Castiel holds his focus on Dean’s eyes. They’re pretty and soft against the harsh shadows of his troubled face. Always soft. Always true. 

Castiel fades again. 

When he returns, Dean has removed a hand from Castiel’s abdomen to unhitch the radio from his belt and call for the mission medic. 

“Norton, what’s your ETA to get to the county farm off West Melrose?” There’s a staticky response Castiel can’t make out through the dizzy haze clouding his head. “Ten fucking minutes? What, are you planning to army crawl here?” Another indistinct response; Dean looks angry, impatient. “No-no-no, fuck that—I don’t care if the truck arrangements get fucked up. Hitch a ride with Matheson and haul ass. Cas is in bad shape.” The next response yields an exaggerated eyeroll. “Yes, Cas—Castiel. He’s been stabbed.” And the next response has Dean looking positively murderous. “I know he’s an angel, you fucking—look, I’m not playing twenty questions with you. Get your ass over here and do your damn job, now.”

Castiel fades once more, but not before he catches the redness around the edges of Dean’s eyes—the wet glint at his waterlines… 

The next time Castiel wakes, they’re not in the stormy, muddy field anymore. He feels the familiar rumble of an engine under his back, hears the hum of tires on the road. When he blinks his eyes open, he’s staring at the ceiling of one of Dean’s tactical trucks. Dean is in his periphery, towering above him. It takes several confused seconds for it to finally click that he’s lying across the truck’s back seat with his head propped in Dean’s lap. 

There’s a persistent, pulsating pain deep in Castiel’s belly, though his attempt to retrieve the memory of how that came to be turns up dry. His head is fuzzy, and he feels a little nauseous. He thinks he might be shivering, but it’s tolerable. 

His first try at words fails him—nothing but a pitiful wheeze through sandpaper cords. He grimaces, swallows, tries again. “Dean?” he manages. 

And Dean, who’s been peering silently out the window, whips his head around to look down at Castiel. His face splits with a broad, lopsided grin. “Well, look who finally decided to rejoin the land of the living.” 

Castiel’s brow furrows. “What happened?” Witlessly, he goes to push himself up, and the pain in his stomach flares, punching a strained whimper out of him. 

“Woah—easy there, cowboy.” Dean flies to help Castiel ease himself back down, one hand supporting under his head. “You’ve been put through the fuckin’ wringer; getting up and about ain’t in the cards for you right now.” 

Castiel opens his mouth to ask for an elaboration, but an abrupt, violent jostle of the truck has him forgetting his aim entirely. His face twists up at the unforgiving spasm of nerves in his abdomen; this time, he bites his lip to smother the whimper rising from his chest. 

“Hey!” Dean snaps, gaze icy as he pins it on the driver in front of him. “Watch the damn potholes, Matheson. If Cas starts bleeding again, I’ll have your head mounted on my wall.” 

“Sorry, boss. Will-do!” 

If Castiel were a little less indisposed, he might’ve had it in him to snort at the exchange; Dean’s always been fiercely protective of him—always defended his inhuman quirks when the deputies poked fun, always sung his praises when others expressed doubts. Even when they weren’t on the best terms, Dean never demeaned him in front of an audience. With a few emotionally-charged exceptions, he took great care to preserve the town’s respect for Castiel, because, despite their disagreements, he wouldn’t have anyone else as his right hand. 

However, as it stands, Castiel is indisposed. And he’s still unbearably confused. 

“Dean,” he says, drawing Dean’s attention back to him, “what happened?” 

Something about Castiel repeating the question sparks concern in Dean’s eyes. 

“You can’t remember?” 

Castiel shakes his head faintly. 

“Demon stabbed you with your own angel blade. Norton patched you up, but it was touch-and-go for a while.” 

With that, it all comes back to Castiel: the desperate skirmish in the mud to get his blade back after letting it slip into the she-demon’s hands, the plunge of it into his abdomen—a killing blow, except he lived. 

He lived. 

Perhaps he should feel grateful that he did, but his mind is consumed with nothing but frigid, hollow dread. Angel blades kill angels; what should’ve killed him left him alive, bleeding, and fragile. 

If he were an angel, he’d be dead. 

His stomach pitches and churns, nausea slithering up his throat; agonizingly, he gulps it back down. It doesn’t make him feel any less sick; it only concentrates the feeling in his chest, a sensation like stone taking the place of his heart, heavy, jagged. 

“He says you’re incredibly lucky,” Dean says. “A lot of people don’t survive an injury like this. I guess you just clot real well or something.” 

Occupied though he is, Castiel has enough mind about him to make a soft noise of disagreement. “It was the blade.” He remembers—the burn, like flesh boiling and charring within him. “It singed the deep internal tissues—prevented exsanguination. I felt it…” 

He felt his vessel react to the blade—felt the metal kindle the threads of his grace woven into muscle, organ, and bone. He felt the catalysis of angel death ignite. But it fizzled in the absence of enough fuel to burn. 

No longer does he have the grace to rival the stars. His own weapon doesn’t recognize him. 

“The thing designed to kill you actually saved your life?” 

Castiel frowns, staring blankly at the truck ceiling. “So it seems,” he murmurs. 

He wouldn’t call a celestial being failing to meet the requirements to die by a Heaven-forged weapon ‘saving his life,’ but he’s in no mood to play semantics.

It’s quiet for a second, two, three. Then Dean asks, “you okay?” 

Because of course he can’t just let Castiel be tired and hurt and in mourning. 

“Fine,” is Castiel’s clipped, non-specific answer. 

“That’s a crock of shit.” 

Castiel shoots a warning glare up at Dean, and his vision is inexplicably blurred, watery, eyes stinging. “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

Understanding flickers over Dean’s features; he’s doing that thing again where he sees Castiel without supernatural intuition or angelic senses—only the keen perceptiveness he reserves exclusively for his closest companions. Like a dagger straight to Castiel’s stone-heavy heart, he says, “you’re still an angel, Cas. The only way that can be taken away from you is if you let it.” 

Castiel huffs, brings a fist up to scrub roughly at his eyes until they don’t sting anymore. “Angels die when they’re struck with an angel blade, Dean.” 

Dean sighs, face sullen. He lifts a hand—stained with Castiel’s blood—to rub wearily at the worry lines carved into his forehead. “Look—you’re alive, man. That’s a good thing.” 

“Sure…” Castiel mutters, flat and without color. 

Dean freezes, squints at him, and something shifts; his eyes go steely, and the set of his jaw harshens. He tosses a glance to Matheson, as though to check if he’s tuned into their conversation. Then, when he pulls his focus back down to Castiel, he says in a voice lowered to a secretive hush, “don’t fall into this pit with me, Cas.” There’s fire in his gaze, a sort of dour gravity; his lower lip quivers ever-so-faintly. “Don’t you dare. So help me—I will kick your ass if you do.” 

Castiel startles, taken aback by the jarring contrast of austerity and supplication in Dean’s words. It’s the first time since March that he’s so explicitly acknowledged the darkness besetting him; even back then, he wasn’t so clear about his experience of it. 

It may sound more vague: ‘don’t fall into this pit with me.’ But it tells infinitely more of Dean’s burdens than the admission that he’s apathetic toward death ever did. It says that he isn’t actually apathetic at all—that he actively endures the torment of living without feeling worthy of it. Every day. All the time. 

Humans often colloquially refer to Hell as ‘the pit.’ Castiel doesn’t think it’s an accident that Dean’s using the same phrase here in allusion to his darkness. 

It makes Castiel realize just how dangerously his psyche has veered toward unrecoverable misery, and it happened so quickly, so seamlessly, that he didn’t notice it had happened until Dean was staring him down and saying those words to him. 

Castiel swallows down the lump that’s lodged itself in his throat. The chill of horror rakes through him; how can such a feeling—the sense of uselessness, despondency, utter desolation—infect the mind so easily? And how is it that, once it’s there, if just for a fleeting moment, it can’t be forgotten? 

Castiel looks into Dean’s eyes. They’re striking in the way they get when he’s unwaveringly resolved to save someone—when he’s desperate for it. 

And all Castiel can summon the mind to say is, “okay.” 

It’s not the promise he wants it to be, but it is a commitment. He doesn’t know what the future holds for him, but if there’s anything he does know for certain, it’s that he never wants to hurt Dean. The prospect of making him worry when it’s always been Castiel’s charge to worry for Dean is unacceptable. 

Dean’s gaze lingers on him for what feels like eternity, then he turns to look back out the window. He doesn’t say anything more, and he appears to have withdrawn into himself, but Castiel feels the warmth and weight of a hand on the crown of his head, and he takes it as an assurance that Dean is still there with him. 

☽𖤐☾

08.08.10 [08:21 PM]

I wasn’t really sure how to write this one. I don’t wanna get wound up all over again, but I feel like I have to tell fucking somebody or I’ll explode. Who better than you to keep a secret, right? 

Cas almost died today. I don’t blame myself—really, I don’t. In almost every other regard, the mission in Iowa City was a success. My extraction team was able to shuttle all the demon attack survivors out of town. My strike team took some heavy hits, though. We confronted the hordes on the west side of the city to keep the path clear for extraction to get through, but we got caught up in a freak storm, and the less experienced guys couldn’t adjust in those conditions. 

We lost Ryan, Linden, Stark, and Krantz. Them, I do blame myself for. I shouldn’t have let them come in the first place. I knew Ambrose, Gilroy, Dickson, and Quinn were a better fit for this mission, but I brought the greener guys because they practically begged me for it. I thought—what the hell?—you know? They needed to be booted outta the nest at some point. What better time than now? In hindsight, I can’t believe I was so stupid. 

But all of that pales in comparison to what happened with Cas. I saw it, man. Even through all the rain and chaos, I saw the moment that demon got him with his own angel blade. I screamed—can you believe it? Like some pathetic damsel in distress. I abandoned everything I was doing, didn’t give a shit anymore about the stragglers I left standing. I tried to get to Cas as fast as I could, ‘cause if he was gonna die, I didn’t want him to do it alone. I couldn’t bear the thought of it. But there was no blinding explosion, nothing that usually happens when an angel meets the business end of one of their blades. Cas was fucking alive, and he ripped the blade out of himself to stab the demon right through the eye. It was objectively awesome, but such a ridiculous, boneheaded move. The second he did that, the dumb fucker started bleeding out. 

I got to him in time to slow the bleeding and call our medic, but it was by the skin of my damn teeth, Sammy. I don’t think I’ve ever been so terrified in my life. I couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking or my eyes to stop tearing up. The bombs in Manhattan were one thing, but this? This was Cas. I’ve practically been holding myself together with packing tape and office staples this whole time, and without him—Jesus, I don’t even know what I would do. 

When he came to, I was beyond relieved. But then he went and got that awful, hollow look in his eyes, and he started saying shit that didn’t make sense—shit that made him out to be something worthless without his grace. And I almost fucking lost it, man. I really did. This feeling I’ve been dealing with for God knows how long at this rate is the one thing I never wanted him to understand—the one damn thing I thought I could actually protect him from. And it blindsided me. It came at me so fast I had no way of stopping it before it was already there. 

Now Cas knows something he never should’ve had to, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do, Sammy, and it’s killing me. 

☽𖤐☾

DECEMBER 29, 2010 || 10:02 AM || 1315 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Castiel’s sprawled out on the floor of the upstairs den, a lazy star nestled in a bed of forgotten papers and lore books, staring up at the cracked, mildewed ceiling. There’s a special sort of irony in it—the way he’s always staring up these days, to a Heaven that no longer exists, to a God that no longer cares. 

The nub of a joint lay smoldering between his thumb and forefinger. He raises it to his lips, pulls the last of what it has to offer into his lungs, then flicks it carelessly out the open window some feet away. He breathes out, wrinkles his nose, still not a fan of the smell. His mind is quiet. 

“Jesus, Cas, it smells like a fucking frat house in here.” Dean’s voice carries from somewhere near the door. As per usual, he’s invited himself in without knocking. 

“I wouldn’t know,” Castiel says to the ceiling. 

“Where’d you even get the weed? I thought you ran out a few days ago.” 

“Darren.” 

“Figures.” There’s a judgmental edge to Dean’s tone that Castiel would probably find unsavory if he weren’t as blissed as he is. “If I’d known the kid would make himself Grow Master-in-Chief instead of putting his military experience to good use, I might’ve just left him to fend for himself with the raiders.” 

“I like Darren.” 

“You like Darren’s dope.” 

Castiel sighs. “What do you want, Dean?” 

“For you to take a shower, for one. What’s it been—a week?” 

Castiel snaps his fingers, letting the dregs of his grace run free through him; the greasy film clinging to his skin and the oil caked in his hair vaporize without a trace, leaving him more-or-less fresh. “Done.” 

There are footsteps approaching, irregular like one side is being favored over the other; Dean must’ve overstressed his knee again. 

A second later, Dean’s standing over Castiel, arms folded over his chest. He’s wearing an unimpressed face. “Good waste of grace.” 

Castiel scoffs. “I don’t see why that matters to you anymore. It’s not like I can use it for anything worthwhile.” 

“It matters to me, because the more you lose, the less you act like yourself.” 

That has a bout of humorous laughter bubbling out of Castiel. “I’m turning over a new leaf, Dean. Being so uptight was exhausting.” 

Dean rolls his eyes. “Come on. Get up.” He crouches down, grabs Castiel’s arms, and hauls him up to a sit. 

Castiel’s head spins with the change of position, but it’s oddly pleasant. It doesn’t make him feel sick. Hardly anything makes him feel sick when he has bliss. 

He lays a hand on Dean’s shoulder, looks him in his pretty green eyes, and says, “you’re a good friend, Dean.” 

“Uh…” Dean’s brow knits, visibly befuddled by the sudden declaration as his attention flits from Castiel’s face, to the hand on his shoulder, and back to Castiel’s face again. “Sure. Yeah, whatever, man.” 

Castiel tilts his head and squints at him. “Why do you always do that?” 

“Do what?” 

“That— thing.” Castiel gestures vaguely at him, in no manner from which any meaning can be gleaned. “Getting all weird and cagey when someone compliments you—actually now that I think about it, you kind of only seem to do that with me. Is it because we kissed once? Sometimes I wonder—” 

“Holy shit, Cas— stop fucking talking.” Dean clamps a hand over Castiel’s mouth, eyes round and thoroughly mortified. The tips of his ears are pink. “What the hell is wrong with you?” 

Castiel’s answer is muffled by Dean’s hand; Dean huffs and pulls his hand away. 

Castiel repeats, “probably the Ritalin.” 

Dean makes a flummoxed face. “Where the fuck did you get Ritalin?” 

“The hospital. Where else?” 

Dean groans exasperatedly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Alright, you know what? I have to head out soon on recon; I was gonna ask if you wanted to come with me, but you’re obviously too fucked up for that.” He stands, and his bad knee audibly cracks as he does. “You just stay here and sober up. Don’t go outside. Don’t fucking talk to anyone—not even Bobby. Especially Bobby.” 

“Are you afraid I’ll tell him we—” 

“Don’t.” Dean levels him with a blistering glare, not quite a threat but nearing the edge of it. 

Somewhere in Castiel’s head—whatever sliver of it remains untouched by intoxication—he’s aware of how indecorous he’s being. In almost eight months, not once has he brought up what happened between them the night of Sam’s birthday. Neither has Dean. As long as they weren’t talking about it or acknowledging it in any capacity, nothing changed between them. They were just Dean and Cas, close friends, closer confidants. 

And here Castiel is sundering the very fabric of that unspoken contract, because he’s lost too much of himself to the allure of manufactured bliss to remember that that contract even existed to begin with. 

Dean’s eyes can never hide anything; whatever Castiel finds in them, he knows unfailingly to be the truth. Looking up at Dean’s eyes now, Castiel sees hurt, a tinge of betrayal, but above all—worry. 

“Look, Cas…” Dean drags a hand down his face. “Buddy, I’m trying here. Really hard. I’m not saying you have to be some perfect, viceless saint. Fuck knows I ain’t. But I’ll be the first one to tell you that giving up looks like shit on you. Pick up a book, go for a walk, volunteer at the clinic, get some target practice in at the range, join a recon mission, attend briefings and debriefings again, have dinner with me and Bobby every once in a while. Just, please, do something other than—whatever this bullshit is.” 

Like déjà vu, Castiel finds himself confronted with Dean’s pleas and a complete inability to produce any words beyond, “okay.” Because hurting Dean enough to make him resort to pleading is a pain worse than death, and somehow, Castiel’s let it happen twice now. 

Dean nods, accepting Castiel’s sorry excuse for an answer, though worry still has his lips bowed into a frown. “Sober up first, though. I mean it. Don’t—” 

“Talk to anyone.” Castiel gives a weak, sullen smile. “I know.” 

Dean turns and heads for the door. His limp is worse than Castiel had anticipated; absently, he wonders if Dean’s been pushing himself beyond his limits because Castiel’s no longer there to ensure he’s resting enough. Dean has a way of forgetting himself when people aren’t looking out for him… 

“Dean,” Castiel says, halting him in his tracks; Dean looks back at him over his shoulder. “I’m sorry. For…” He trails off, swallows. He doesn’t think he should say it out-loud. “Sorry…” 

Given the way Dean’s gaze slides off to the floor and his shoulders hike up with the slightest bit of unease, it’s clear that he grasps Castiel’s meaning perfectly well. “It’s fine. Never happened, right?” 

Castiel’s heart squeezes with an ache. The fact that he feels the ache at all through the euphoria of the drugs is a haunting reminder of how badly it hurts when his head is clear.

He gives another halfhearted smile. “Right.”

Dean leaves, and it’s not lost on Castiel that he seems to do it like he can’t get out of the room fast enough. 

In the silence, Castiel sits in the middle of the den floor with slumped shoulders and a heavy pit in his stomach. He scans over his surroundings, taking in the piles of disheveled papers, the old tomes lying askew. Everything around him is a piece of literature related to angels and Heaven, and for months, he’s been allowing it to slowly kill him, quite literally lying down and waiting for it to swallow him whole. 

He and Dean are kindred spirits like that—sitting with the things that continuously punish them without mercy. 

He eyes a diagram of so-called ‘angel anatomy’ inked onto a worn sheet of parchment lying beside his foot. It’s irked him ever since he first unearthed it from Bobby’s stash of Enochian lore. A little ways back, he had every intention of eventually annotating the page with notes and corrections to the diagram. He never got around to it—was stripped of his celestiality before he could spare it the attention it deserved. 

Puffing out a short breath, he reaches out to pluck the parchment out of the pile. The wings are all wrong, the body incorrectly resembles the visage of humanity, and the halo is too literal. Castiel knows these things to be true, but with his ever-mortalizing mind, he can no longer retrieve a proper picture of an angel. Months ago, he forgot what it was like to hurt as an angel would. Today, he forgets what an angel looks like. He’s too human to see. Like any other mortal, his eyes would burn in the face of an angel’s true form. 

He doesn’t even have the privilege of remembering what his true form looked like. 

And he could despair over it. He could descend straight to the abyss of misery, and make no mistake, it’s certainly a tempting prospect. 

But he won’t. It’ll hurt Dean if he did. 

So instead, with an infuriating sting behind his eyes, he rifles through the mess to find his pen and begins to write in the left margin. 

He can’t offer everything he once could, but he can offer this now: 

Angels don’t look like this.

And he thinks Dean would tell him there’s value in that. 

☽𖤐☾

12.29.10 [09:19 PM]

He’ll be okay. I’m sure of it. Really. He just needs a little more time to come to grips with things. 

I just wish there was more I could do for him…  

Chapter Text

NOVEMBER 30, 2011 || 11:30 PM || 979 DAYS UNTIL THE END

“Intel out of St. Louis places swine flu outbreak zones here, here, and here.” Dean points from marker to marker on the map he’s hunched over as he talks. “That means our guy’s holed up somewhere in the middle; my money’s on Soulard. It’s a high-traffic area, lots of people passing through—” 

“And military,” Cas says from his lazy perch opposite of Dean. He’s commandeered Dean’s chair, and his feet are kicked up onto the surface of the desk. His fingers fidget mindlessly with a pen as he squints at the map. “St. Louis is a little uncomfortably close to the conflict out east, don’t you think? There’s gonna be a lot of War-addled soldiers around there looking for reasons to pull the trigger.” 

Dean huffs a curt sigh. “Pestilence is there. I know it.” 

“Well, I’m not denying that your intel’s good, Dean. I am, however, saying that the last time we waltzed into a sizable city centre on the hunt for a Horseman and the military got involved, we got blown to hell.” 

“Nice, Cas. What a classy way of bringing up such a fond memory.” 

Dean’s long past the days of flinching at the mention of Manhattan. The nightmares are an expected feature of his sleep routine, the total numbness that overtakes him in reaction to sharp, loud noises is a welcome change from his old reflex to duck and cover, and he hasn’t had a prolonged hole in memory in over a year. It’s not that Manhattan no longer affects him; he’s simply adapted to its haunting presence. He had to. He’d never survive otherwise. Still—he’d rather the echo of it not be invoked so casually. 

“You asked for my perspective, and that’s my perspective,” Cas says with a shrug. 

“So—what?” Dean stands, folding his arms over his chest. “Are you saying I should scrap the plan? Pass up this opportunity and hope the bastard shows up somewhere more convenient next time?” 

“Hardly.” Cas looks up and smiles, crooked and especially roguish with his days-unshaven face. “My favorite pastime is getting stuck in life-threatening situations with you, Dean. I thought you knew that.” 

Dean gives him a flat, no-nonsense stare. If Cas had said this earlier in the year, Dean could’ve easily dismissed it as part of his identity overhaul in the wake of Iowa City—just a witty remark to lighten the mood. Albeit, a remark that carries just enough of a flirtatious undertone to make Dean’s skin itch, but a harmless remark nonetheless. He knows better now than to assume any such thing. Cas’ behavior has become far too unpredictable as of late to afford himself the luxury. 

Coolly, he ignores Cas’ comment and resumes his strategy recital: “we’re gonna have to take it slow—follow as many county roads as possible to avoid the military waypoints along the interstates. 

“And hope we don’t get ambushed by demons and raiders in the meantime. Joy.” 

Dean pauses, narrows his eyes. Cas is still twirling the pen between his fingers, looking blasé as ever, unconcerned. 

Taking a steady, measured breath through his nose, Dean asks, “you sure you’re up for this?” 

Cas’ pen-twirling slows to a stop. “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

Dean could laugh at the absurdity of that question, but he doesn’t. Mostly because it’s not funny at all that Cas is making him address it out-loud. “You haven’t exactly been all there lately.” 

Cas has the audacity to snort at that. “What, are you worried I’ll find another almost-live grenade to throw myself on top of?” 

The memory burns hot and bright and awful in the eye of Dean’s mind. His jaw tenses. “That, or something equally stupid, yeah.” 

“I’d never jeopardize a mission on purpose, Dean. Especially not one with stakes like this.” 

Dean feels his face twist up with a scowl. “To hell with the mission, Cas. I’m talking about your life. No unnecessary risks, you hear me? In fact, be a fucking coward. That’s an order.” 

“Oh, you’re giving me orders again, Captain?” Cas aims an impish grin at him, and Dean’s lip twitches. 

“Don’t make me repeat myself—” 

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll tuck tail and run the second things get hairy. You have my word.” 

Dean exhales—an attempt at releasing the ire and worry that’d bound itself up in his chest. He almost shakes his head, because he frankly can’t believe how they ended up here: roles reversed, Dean hovering over Cas while Cas does crazy shit with a complete disregard for his life and safety. 

It started happening after Cas lost his wings— really lost them. Before, he was at least somewhat mindful of himself, drugs and casual rendezvouses notwithstanding. He’d join Dean on missions, and they’d have each other’s backs; he’d partake in banter over dinner, and things weren’t colored with shades of darkness no one dares to touch. 

Dean’s instinct is to blame himself, but an uglier part of him wants to blame Cas for asking him to do what he did to him in the first place. He won’t do that; he can’t. It needed to be done, and both of them knew it. 

That doesn’t change how it feels, though. The guilt… 

“Now give me yours,” Cas says. 

Dean blinks himself out of his thoughts. “What?” 

“Promise me you’re not gonna do something stupid. No unnecessary heroics.” Cas is watching him, and he’s not grinning. His gaze is blue and bears revenants of the intensity it once had—a drop of silvery marbled grace in deep oceans. 

Right now—this very moment… It’s one of maybe only two times Dean has seen him look serious about anything in months. 

And it dawns on Dean, then, that their roles haven’t totally reversed. Cas may have adopted a newfound indifference to his own existence, but he still cares to keep Dean safe. It’s the one constant. The singular thing that never changes while everything else does. 

In retrospect, Dean should’ve known. The same guy who sacrificed his cherished wings to shield one measly man from bombs raining out of the sky wouldn’t throw himself on top of an explosive device threatening that same man’s life for the hell of it—not even as an act to save himself the perceived indignity of mortality.  

When it comes down to it, Cas is still looking out for Dean. Just… Not in the calculated, risk-assessing ways he once did.

Dean sighs. “You realize this entire mission is arguably ‘unnecessarily heroic.’” 

Cas hums, nodding with a face that’s exaggeratedly studious. “I’m detecting notes of hypocrisy here. The Good Book says that’s a sin.” 

“God is dead.” 

Cas smirks at the callback to his own words, uttered under the cramped shelter of a stoop awning as he knelt before Dean to heal him one last time. His eyes continue to shine with celestial intensity; Dean doesn’t think Cas knows they still can. “Promise me, Dean,” he says, voice gravelled with gentle fondness.

And Dean, reluctant though he is to commit to such a promise given the dangers the mission inherently presents, can’t refuse Cas’ request. It seems all they do is plead with each other to stay safe—an endless back-and-forth from one self-sacrificial idiot to another. Some might file it under the definition of insanity, but truthfully, Dean thinks it’s probably the only thing that keeps his head screwed on straight. It really is the one thing that never changes. 

So he says, “sure, Cas. I promise.” And he means it, even if he knows it’ll almost assuredly fall apart in the end. 

☽𖤐☾

11.30.11 [10:51 PM]

I’m in a position where so-called ‘heroics’ is part and parcel of the job, but I promised him anyway. I don’t think I would’ve made that promise for anyone else. 

☽𖤐☾

FEBRUARY 14, 2011 || 09:34 PM || 1268 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Hawk’s is bustling with business by nightfall, some residents passing through to exchange clothes, ammo, and cigarettes for beer and liquor, others sticking around to mingle amongst themselves, chatting, laughing, dancing. A few can be found getting overly handsy with each other in the faraway corners of the bar, and there’s at least one or two other couples nearing that threshold themselves. There’s a ramshackle poker table shoved off to the side where Dean’s already wiped the floor with Gilroy, Barlowe, Matheson, and Tyler and scored a carton-and-a-half’s worth of cigarettes, which he immediately traded for some top-shelf whiskey. 

“Chief Deputy Ambrose tells me you took down an entire horde of demons yourself on recon in Minnesota last week.” Wendy—the bartender—has been cozied up to Dean’s side at the counter for a while, big, brown eyes practically devouring him as she twirls her tongue around a cherry lollipop that stains her soft, plush lips red. 

She’s caught Dean’s attention before, but he’s only ever cast glances her way from afar, usually too occupied with his responsibilities to spare her anything more. Objectively, she’s gorgeous—dark, radiant skin, long, braided hair, lovely hourglass figure. The edges of her anti-possession tattoo, inked on her right hip, peek out under the hem of her shirt every time she leans over or stretches up to grab something off a high shelf. 

Given the occasion and the free time he’s come into the privilege of beholding, he’s more than happy to indulge her obvious endeavor to get him into bed. 

Smirking over his glass of Johnnie Walker Black, he responds coyly, “does he now?” 

“Mhmm.” Wendy puckers her lips against her lollipop, then grins, eyes not straying from Dean’s. She’s hardly being subtle. 

“Well, I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but it was definitely a team effort.” Not a lie, but not the whole truth either. He did deal all the killing blows to a horde of thirty-or-so demons himself in Minnesota last week, but it was only because his team was able to corral all of them into a Devil’s Trap first. 

“Oh, heroic and humble,” Wendy intones. “Today may just be my lucky day.” 

“May be,” Dean concurs with a smile, the familiar thrill of being so blatantly wanted sparking heat down his spine. 

Just then, in the transition between Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama and Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer over the tinny speakers and the rotation of bargoers on and off the makeshift dancefloor in the middle of the room, Dean catches sight of Cas in his periphery. Cas—who slinked his way out of debrief early that evening, presumably to secure his next fix. 

He doesn’t often make a habit of showing his face around crowded venues. Frankly, he never did, typically preferring to keep to himself or share in the company of Dean or Bobby. But especially since he’s found a new hobby in all things smokable, poppable, snortable, and drinkable, he’s become something of a recluse—in better shape than he was a handful of weeks ago, but certainly not resembling the clean-cut, uptight angel Dean’s come to know. 

Tonight’s actually the first time in several days that Cas bothered to attend a debrief. Dean honestly assumed he must’ve just been bored loafing around at home. He used to have a higher tolerance for boredom. 

Looking at Cas now, from across the bar, Dean can immediately tell he’s at least some combination of drunk and stoned; he’s got the sort of careless, ruggedly disheveled look about him that usually serves to signal as much. 

He’s laughing, flashing that lazy, crooked smile of his that’s more charming than it has any right to be—and he’s aiming that laughter and smile at Anthony: a new addition to the town, Iraq War vet, has promise as a member of Dean’s strike team. 

Dean squints, gaze flitting back and forth between the pair of them. Mindlessly, his leg begins to bounce, finger tapping on the rim of his glass, restless. He watches as Cas plants an elbow on the table he’s sitting at and props his chin in his hand, leaning himself closer to Anthony, still smiling. 

Even from here—even at such a distance in the dim lighting and crowded bustle of the bar—Dean swears he can see the kindling of grace in Cas’ eyes. Just a flash, ever-so-faint. But pairing that with the arch body language and the smile and the laughter? Not just from Cas but Anthony as well—maybe even more from Anthony… 

They’re flirting. Plain and simple. No two dudes look like that in casual, friendly conversation. 

Something hot and burning crackles in the confines of Dean’s chest—a whole other sensation separate from the heat of exhilaration that’d wound itself around his spine only moments ago. Exhilaration, for that matter, which has all but snuffed out since his focus drifted Cas’ way. 

Dean doesn’t think about it. If he does, he’ll question it. If he questions it, he’ll question himself. And if he questions himself, then… 

Whatever. It’s not important. 

Which is what he’d like to believe, but in practice, he’s already muttering some hasty excuse to Wendy and getting up to weave his way through the crowd toward Cas and Anthony’s secluded little corner table before he has the good sense to realize what the fuck he’s doing. 

“Heya, Captain!” Anthony says cheerily, beaming upon Dean’s approach. He’s astoundingly merry for a veteran; Dean supposes his only other solid point of reference is his father, though, so what does he know, really? 

“Not a captain, Tony. You know better than to call me one.” 

Anthony scoffs into his pint of beer. “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I fear it’s probably a duck, Captain.” 

Dean rolls his eyes and stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets, lending the remark no credence. 

“What brings you over here, Dean?” Cas asks. He’s looking up at Dean, but he’s still leaned close to Anthony. 

Dean feels the tense of his jaw all the way up into his temples. He clears his throat and lies, “I, uh—came to steal you for a sec. Won’t take long,” because he actually has no discernible reason to be over here at all but he’s not about to let anyone become privy to that fact. 

Cas tilts his head in the same way he used to whenever he was terribly confused by something, though these days it’s more frequently a sign that his suspicions have been roused. Still, he lets Anthony know he’ll be back in a bit and follows Dean outside to the bar’s front porch. 

There’s a handful of teenagers huddled off to the side that scatter when they see Dean, leaving the scent of weed dangling in the air behind them—not that Dean particularly cares; he’s not a cop, and truthfully, the law has become pretty damn obsolete since the world was plunged into Armageddon, but he’s also not above reporting them to their parents if they piss him off. 

Which they would have if they hadn’t fled the scene all on their own; Dean doesn’t even know what he’s about to say to Cas, but regardless, he’s decently certain it’s meant for his ears only. 

“So what do you need?” Cas lazes back against the wall, looking Dean up and down like he’s seeing something in him that Dean can’t; it’s unsettling, and it’s not the first time. “Can’t say I’m much in the right frame of mind for logistics or strategy at the moment, but I can—” 

“This ain’t about that,” Dean cuts in swiftly, to-the-point despite not yet knowing the point. It’ll come to him eventually. 

“Then what is it?” 

“I just…” Dean internally scavenges for any manner of sound, logical basis for whatever this is; he’s not awfully successful. “I mean, I noticed…” 

Cas raises his eyebrows. “Take your time.” 

“Fuck off,” Dean grumbles, and Cas smirks amusedly, self-pleased. He rakes a hand back through his hair and finally, he manages to say, “look, you know Tony was putting the moves on you, right?” 

Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. That’s the driving force behind the hot, urgent feeling in his chest that prompted him to drop his exceptionally promising prospects with Wendy and steer in Cas’ direction instead. He’s just trying to protect his friend. Cas is drunk, stoned, and not very well-versed in human anything; the fool probably didn’t even know he was flirting and being flirted with. 

Cas gasps, slapping a hand dramatically over his heart. “Gosh, I hadn’t noticed. You mean to tell me a young, single man was looking to pick up a date in a bar full of singles on Valentine’s Day? If only I were as perceptive as you, Dean—the ground I could break, the heights I could reach—” 

Dean stiffens, very nearly cringes. The embarrassment of his miscalculation just adds to the uncomfortable heat spreading through his body, prickling at the back of his neck, in the tips of his ears. 

“Christ, fine. Sue me for trying to look out for you.” 

Cas tosses his head back with a laugh. “You really thought I didn’t know?” 

“Well, you’re not exactly known for understanding human social customs. ‘Specially not ones like this.” 

That just gets Cas laughing even harder—hearty with intoxication. 

“What?” snaps Dean. “What the hell’s so funny about that?” 

Cas stays laughing. For a good, long while, he laughs like he’s just heard the funniest thing in existence, much to Dean’s combined dismay and annoyance. 

With no small amount of theatrics—fanning himself with one hand and clutching his belly with the other—he reins himself in.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, Dean,” he says, and there’s a twinkle in his eyes, all mirth and mischief. “Drugs and casual sex are extremely educational.” 

Dean’s brain promptly skids to a halt, short-circuited; it could be melting out of his ears and he’d be none the wiser. His eyes are wide, jaw slackened in utter bemusement. He must look absolutely stupid, and Cas just stares at him, waits patiently—albeit with a great amount of amusement—for Dean to connect dots that he’s apparently been missing all this time. 

The drugs he’s known about from the very start. Pot, Ritalin, Oxy, at least three different variants of substances ending in ‘-barbitol.’ Dean knows them all—has had to make excuses for Cas on more than one occasion when the doctors and nurses running the hospital came complaining. 

The drugs are nothing new. 

The casual sex, on the other hand… That is certainly news to Dean. All the times Cas has vanished overnight and then turned up again the next day—Dean assumed he was just out procuring his ever-growing inventory of pills and alcohol; he never bothered to ask where Cas was or what he was doing, because he didn’t want to be made an unwitting accomplice when the grievances inevitably came rolling in. 

“Cas is a big boy; I’m not his handler. Whoever he pisses off should take it up with him personally.” That’s what Dean would tell people. And without fail, whatever they were complaining about got resolved without any further upset. In fact… Dean’s actually seen the same people who’ve complained about Cas’ nonsense being all buddy-buddy with him days later. 

Really buddy-buddy. Almost cozy. Dean never thought much of it; Cas, at his core, is a likeable guy. Dean’s always thought so, anyway. 

But now he’s reached the deeply unwanted epiphany that Cas’ definition of diplomatic resolution has undergone a wildly drastic shift from stiff apologies and heavenly penance to fucking people happy. 

Keyword: people. Men. Women. Inbetweeners that Dean doesn’t really understand, but they’re good with guns and medicine, so he tries his best. Cas has bedded people all across the spectrum, and he’s never once seemed the least bit distraught about it. Just another day, another lay. Like it’s fucking easy. 

“I see the realization’s sunken in,” Cas says, pushing off the wall and turning to head back inside. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—” 

“Wait!” Dean snatches his hand, and he’s not entirely sure why he does. His thoughts are nowhere near organized enough for a deeper conversation about this. But he still feels like he’s burning from the inside-out with something that, at this rate, feels uncomfortably close to insecurity, and he’s restless, and thrown-off, and just… Confused. 

Cas blinks down at their hands—Dean’s clutching onto him with a faint but tangible tremor—and looks back up again. “What?” 

“Well, it’s just…” Dean steals his hand back, returns it to the safe retreat of his pocket. He doesn’t quite meet Cas’ eyes. “Aren’t you kinda—I don’t know—leading Anthony on?” 

He winces again the second the words slip past his lips; he’s grasping at straws now. He knows he is. But nothing is fitting together right. Nothing’s making proper sense. How can Cas just… Be fine with this? How can he be so unconcerned with the consequences?

Dean can pull a handful of residents’ names off the top of his head right this very second that would have more than just a few choice words to say about Cas’ extracurricular activities. 

Maybe it’s one thing to use sex as a tool to resolve a dispute; Dean’s sure as hell done it a few times himself. But this thing with Anthony clearly isn’t that, so Dean has no choice but to believe that Cas simply doesn’t know what he’s doing. 

If he did, then it’d mean he’s willingly inviting the consequences. Practically enticing them to take a good swing at him. 

Surely he’s not actually interested… 

Cas makes an incredulous face. “How do you figure?” 

“He’s a guy.” Christ—Dean’s starting to sound stupid even to his own ears now. 

Cas goes and tilts his head again, like he always fucking does when he’s seeing shit no one else can. Dean feels his throat implode on itself, insides positively boiling as Cas looks him over—up and down, side-to-side. 

Dean’s dressed in all the same layers he usually is, and yet he’s never felt quite so naked. It reminds him of those dreams he used to get as a kid—the ones where he was wearing nothing but his underwear in front of an audience of cackling monsters. Dreams that started soon after his dad had him take up the role of ‘roadside bait’ on one of their hunts together. He’ll never forget the way that werewolf looked at him. Like he was a piteous little thing with tender flesh to ravish. 

Cas is in no way looking at him like that, but the horrible effect of feeling clawed into and exposed and seen in a light Dean really rather wouldn’t is all the same. He doesn’t even know what Cas can see, but he can’t stand it. 

Cas’ gaze holds steady on him, vivid blue and discerning. There’s a whisper of a frown bowing his lips, something akin to sympathy creased into the lines of his face. Finally, he says, “so were you.” 

And Dean can only stand, paralyzed and stricken with more confusion than he began with, as Cas turns and leaves him with those parting words. 

So were you. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? And what the fuck did Cas just see in Dean that prompted such a cryptic response? 

“He’s a guy,” Dean had said, and Cas answered, “so were you.” 

Were. Not ‘are.’ 

Cas had to be referring to something specific that happened in the past, and with an awful, queasy feeling seating itself low in Dean’s stomach, he realizes there’s only one relevant thing Cas could have possibly been alluding to. The one thing Dean’s been desperately trying to stuff down and forget since the night it happened, because it didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t mean anything. There’s no world in which he’d ever be allowed to let it mean anything. 

“So were you,” Cas had said, and left “when you kissed me” unspoken. A firm declaration that he saw Dean’s intervention between him and Anthony exactly for what it was: an expression of self-doubt and a projection of fear and shame.

“So were you,” Cas had said, and left “when I kissed you back” unspoken. An equally firm declaration that he knows what he’s doing, and he’s not burdened by the same aversions that pervade Dean’s every waking hour. 

So were you, Dean thinks to himself, watching through the grimy window as Cas dons his crooked smile and brushes his fingertips over Anthony’s hand where it lies atop their tucked-away table— when you were brave enough to do what you’ve been too much of a coward to acknowledge that you did ever since. 

☽𖤐☾

02.15.11 [01:47 AM]

He read me like a fucking book, Sammy. What am I supposed to do with that? 

You’d probably tell me to talk it out, but this shit… It ain’t something you just talk about. 

Dad made sure I knew that… 

☽𖤐☾

MAY 22, 2011 || 10:08 PM || 1171 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Humanity has a way of keeping love and festivity alive in times of crisis, much as Dean’s shriveled, cynical heart generally recoils from such habits of optimism. He’s seen it with his own two eyes: every major holiday that’s come and gone since Lucifer won Prom King and put Heaven to shame has been celebrated in some way or another by the residents of Sioux Falls. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Fourth of July, Valentine’s Day—you name it. 

Dean doesn’t usually participate. He’s, more often than not, either off on a mission, or busy drawing up the plans for the next one. Valentine’s Day was… A rarity. Not that it wound up working in his favor at all. 

But this time, he couldn’t handwave his way through an excuse not to engage in the ceremonious occasion. 

A wedding—ridiculous as it sounds. Who the fuck would be deluded enough to bother with formal commitment to love for the rest of their life when, realistically speaking, the ‘rest of their life’ is unlikely to be any longer than a handful of years? 

Alas, Dean’s opinion on the matter was hardly recognized. In fact, he was even made the (begrudging) best man in the ceremony. He supposes that’s just what he gets for saving the couple’s lives a few months back. 

He found Kimmy and Logan as the sole survivors in a demon-ravaged town in rural Western Wisconsin, on the verge of starvation and too traumatized to leave their hiding place under the floorboards of the high school gymnasium; they were young, freshly into their twenties, and just as inseparable back then as they are today. Dean had personally spent hours coaxing them out of hiding, fed them his own rations, cleaned and stitched their wounds. Neither of them are fighters, but Kimmy’s an excellent seamstress and Logan’s good with kids; they do well helping to take care of the town’s dozens of orphans. 

Though Dean finds their hope for a worthwhile future more than a little naïve, he’s had the common decency not to let it show. He also can’t deny that, looking at them now—as they share their first dance to the ever-cliché Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley in the middle of Main Street—they seem really happy. And in a world where happiness has become such a scarce commodity, he ain’t about to shit all over their parade. He’ll let them have it, knowing they may not ever get it again. 

While the town’s been cheerfully indulging in the occasion, Dean’s kept mostly to himself, loitering by Tini’s abandoned diner with a lukewarm beer in-hand and scanning over the joyous crowd. To an outside observer, he probably just looks like he’s people-watching, but in actuality, he’s surveying his surroundings, planning evac routes, mentally charting the locations of his nearby weapon caches, all in case of unexpected emergency. 

It’s his default, really. Given the amount of massacres and invasions committed as a direct result of comfortable complacence, it’s only his most reasonable instinct to be as cautious as possible. 

“Ever the vigilant soldier, I see.” 

Dean startles at the sudden voice in his ear. He whips his head around, finds Cas sidled up next to him, chest pressed warm against his shoulder—and he’s grinning, clearly proud to have disturbed Dean’s cool, poised demeanor. His clothes are rumpled to hell, hair mussed, and his pupils are giant black saucers with only the thinnest rims of blue curled around them. 

Dean hasn’t seen him since he snuck off after the ceremony at the church an hour or so ago; it comes as no surprise whatsoever that he’s returned considerably more high and fucked-out than he was before. 

Resolutely ignoring the familiar burning sensation taking root in his chest, Dean clears his throat and responds evenly, “who says I’m being vigilant?” 

“The beer you’re holding that clearly hasn’t been touched since you got it.” 

Dean glances down at the bottle in his hand, noting how full it is, and nods—a silent concession. “Well, what about you?” he asks. “You look like you’ve been having an eventful night.” He doesn’t intend to sound judgmental, but he hears it in the pointed inflections of his voice, forming a serrated edge. 

Cas either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, because all he does is shrug and say, “no more eventful than any other night.” 

Dean hums absently, doing another scan-over of the crowd—force of habit. “So who was the lucky winner this time?” 

He doesn’t actually want to know. They both know he doesn’t. But they’ve been doing this thing for a while now, where Cas pretends he didn’t see what he saw in Dean three months ago, Dean pretends he’s completely fine with what Cas saw while also not acknowledging that there was anything to see in the first place, and they both pretend like nothing’s changed between them. 

“Oh, you’d consider it a win to have a drugged-out roll in the sheets with me, would you?” Cas gives an obnoxious wink and plucks Dean’s beer out of his hand to take a swig for himself. 

All jokes. Cas says shit like this all the time nowadays just to get under Dean’s skin. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Every time. 

Dean’s learned to not let it outwardly show, though. He meets Cas’ impish gaze with a glare, steals his beer back, and drinks down a sizable gulp. He tries not to think about the fact that Cas’ lips were just there, on the rim of the bottle, only seconds ago. 

“You know,” Cas begins coyly, “I believe it was you who once accused me of having a stick up my ass.” 

“What’s your point?” 

“Mmm… Something about pots, kettles, and the state of being black.” 

Dean rolls his eyes but can’t help the smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth. No matter how screwy and weird things have gotten between them lately, they’re still best friends at the end of the day. “You tellin’ me I have a stick up my ass?” 

“I envy your powers of deduction, Dean.” 

Dean scoffs, watches as Kimmy and Logan’s first dance ends and they invite the crowd to join them in the middle of the street. Everyone pairs up to smile and sway to the tune of Kiss from a Rose, and it has a dull pang of nostalgia sowing itself into the cavity of Dean’s chest. 

Dean was sixteen, preparing to attend his first ever school dance with a nice girl he really liked—Robin was her name—and Kiss from a Rose was playing through the crackly static of the radio in his room at Sonny’s boys’ home. He never got to go. Never got to share that inevitably awkward dance to a slow, corny love song with her. His dad had shown up and told him he had a job to do, and that was that. 

Just another item to add to the long list of disappointments he was subjected to in pursuit of pleasing the likes of John Winchester. He was never good enough; he knew that. He caused his dad a hell of a lot more trouble than he was worth. But he always tried. He always fought to make himself what he wasn’t so he didn’t have to be a burden anymore… 

But his dad’s not here anymore, and maybe… Maybe Cas is right. 

Maybe he’s being too stiff and stern and unadventurous, and he can afford, if only for a short time, to let loose a little. Like he could never get away with growing up. Like he hasn’t properly let himself get away with ever since. 

Who will it hurt? 

Famous last words, comes the predictable interjection from his conscience—a voice he’s always thought sounds eerily like his father’s. 

For once, he doesn’t listen. 

He takes one last hefty drink of his beer, sets it on the nearby window ledge, then wordlessly offers his hand over to Cas. 

Cas eyes the gesture suspiciously. “What, pray tell, is this?” 

“Consider the stick removed from my ass for the next few minutes. Come on.” Dean makes an impatient grabby motion with his hand. 

Cas gives him a look that’s equal parts incredulity and pleasant surprise and lays his hand in Dean’s awaiting palm, allows himself to be led out to the street where damn-near the whole town is dancing. 

Dean still keeps them off to the side, out of the way. The mere idea of becoming the center of attention in this respect makes him nauseous. This is as bold as he’s willing to be.

When Cas steps close—a tentative shuffle into Dean’s space—and is totally silent with an unusual inability to look him in the eyes as they begin to sway, Dean says, “what—all that shameless flirting you do, and you’re telling me this is what makes you shy?” 

“Not shy,” Cas says, glancing around at all the other pairs happily dancing together. “Curious.” 

“About?” 

“You wouldn’t appreciate the answer.” 

Which is more than answer enough. Dean knows exactly what Cas is thinking: you’ve done everything in your power to pretend for over a year that what happened between us never happened, and suddenly you’re bringing it out into the open—what gives? 

And Dean doesn’t have a good explanation for that. Mostly because he’s just pigheaded enough to convince himself that nothing is being brought out into the open at all. This is just a silly dance with a friend because they both missed out on their chance to pair up with anyone else. Because that is all it is. Nothing more. 

Cas’ one-off flirtations are just jokes designed to peeve Dean off. Dean’s lingering stares at Cas in any given event where they’re not standing right beside each other are merely out of concern for his wellbeing. And this dance is a meaningless engagement for the sake of festivity. 

“Yeah, well…” Dean takes a measured breath in, deep through his nose, and winds his arm loosely around Cas, palm pressed to the lower arch of his spine. “No reason to think too hard about a good thing anyway.” 

Cas’ eyes find Dean’s. “You really believe that?” 

“I want to,” Dean says, and it’s admittedly more honest than he was aiming to be. 

Not that lying to Cas is a productive use of his time; the bastard can tell every damn time he tries. 

Thankfully, Cas doesn’t call attention to it. If he’s surprised or pleased or confused or feels any other type of way about Dean’s candor, he doesn’t let it show. 

For a bit, all they do is rock in silence, only the melodies of the music and the soft, ambient chatter of the crowd fitting in the space between them. Dean doesn’t think about the warmth of Cas’ hand on the nape of his neck, nor does he think about the lofty, fluttering sensation like a flock of birds taking flight in his stomach—nor does he think about the beat of his heart, strong and fast and borderline dizzying behind the shield of his sternum. 

He just… Doesn’t think. And it’s peaceful. 

As the song swings into its chorus, he lifts their joined hands up and spins Cas around. Cas very nearly trips over his feet, but he’s impressively graceful about it, retaining his balance without a fuss—though he does shoot Dean an accusatory look. 

“Heavyhanded much?” he quips, slotting himself back into Dean’s hold. 

Dean grins sheepishly, face and neck hot with… Not quite embarrassment; it’s too pleasant a feeling for it to be that. But something like it. Shit—maybe he’s shy. “I’ve never done this before, man. What do you want from me?” 

“Never?” Cas tips his head to the side, searching Dean’s face. Up this close, Dean can see the individual threads of white, heavenly light swirling in the thin rings of his irises—angelic in spite of everything. 

Dean shakes his head distractedly. “Never.”

“Well, neither have I, so I guess we’ll just have to make it up as we go.” 

Dean’s lips tick upwards. “Where’ve I heard that one before?” 

“If you’re referring to what I said to Chuck after I helped you escape the Green Room and I wound up getting torched for my disobedience by Raphael, I can’t say I look back on that occasion nearly as fondly as you.” 

Dean snorts. “I knew you still had to have that old ‘Huggy Bear’ charm buried somewhere in you,” he comments cheekily. “I’m saying I appreciate the sentiment, Cas. That’s all.” 

“Oh.” 

Dean spins him around again—more elegantly this time—and the beginnings of Cas’ lazy, crooked smile make a welcome appearance. 

“Better,” Cas praises. His hand doesn’t return to its place on Dean’s neck. Instead, it falls to his waist, slowly glides to the small of his back. 

Dean falters, and at the mischievous glint that sparks to life in Cas’ eyes, he warns, “dip me, and you die—”

“Too late.” Cas topples Dean into the cradle of his arms—and it’s perfectly sturdy; Dean’s at no risk of being dropped. But that doesn’t stop him from sucking in a sharp breath and scrabbling to cling onto Cas with all the delicate finesse of a cow on ice. 

Cas bursts into a fit of laughter, taking mercy on Dean and letting him up to regain his bearings. 

“You’re a fucking dick,” grouses Dean, wiping his clammy palms self-consciously on his pants. 

“Oops,” is all Cas has to say for himself, not apologetic in the slightest. He reaches out to reel Dean back in. 

Dean goes willingly, hands on Cas’ waist, Cas’ arms looped around his neck. Their chests meet in the middle, and Dean thinks Cas must be able feel the rapid pound of his heart in the contact. He’s got this look in his eyes—not the unsettling discernment he usually does, but something else. Something… Soft. As though, rather than him prying into Dean, he’s just admiring what’s readily in front of him. Content with what he’s able to see without trying. 

He pulls himself closer, until his chin is resting on Dean’s shoulder, and Dean’s breath hitches low in his throat, warmth cascading over him like a waterfall. There’s a prickle of nerves, too, raising the fine hairs on the back of his neck. Reflexively, his gaze darts about, surveying his surroundings like he’s conditioned himself to do—always watching, always wary. 

He studies the other dancing duos in their vicinity, flitting his attention from face to face. No one’s looking. No one’s paying them any mind. Everyone’s too absorbed in their own merriment to care. 

Dean breathes, shaky until the sense of relief evens the push and pull of air. He dips his head slowly to hook his chin over Cas’ shoulder in-kind. For now—for just this moment… He can have this. 

They sway idly to the twilight seconds of the song; it’s hardly even dancing anymore—just a rhythmic shift of weight—but Dean doesn’t much care. Dancing was never the point. Not really. 

He didn’t know this was the point either, but it is. It always has been. Underneath all the shame and anger and denial and fear and repression—this is what he really feels, isn’t it? What he wants… 

As the song slows to its tender conclusion and fades into the next tune—some upbeat country track Dean can’t be bothered to identify—Cas steps back, slipping out of Dean’s grasp. 

Dean almost goes to catch him, but the crowd is stirring around them, no longer enraptured enough by their own ministrations to be wonderfully oblivious to his and Cas’, and reality sinks itself over top of Dean with a familiar, dour weight. 

Cas meets his gaze calmly, a gentle smile of perfect understanding curling his lips. He’s seen Dean; he knows him, better than anyone. He just… Knows. It’s why he stepped away first. 

And why he says politely, “until next time, Dean,” before he turns and disappears into the thick of the crowd. 

Dean frowns to himself, puffing out a heavy sigh and scrubbing a hand down his face. He spins on his heels, hoping to return to his lukewarm beer and his unassuming guardpost—and then he goes impossibly still. 

Because, where he was standing guard minutes ago, Bobby’s now parked in his place, and he’s staring at Dean—eyes wide and brow furrowed like he’s been watching for a damn good while. 

Dean’s heart stops and drops. His stomach pitches with a terror he hasn’t felt since he was days from seventeen, shrunken into the passenger seat of the Impala and freshly torn into with the threat of abandonment—the promise of a future with no savior if he dared to stray. 

He pivots and makes for the nearest escape—the alley between the church and the diner. His footfalls are heavy, breaths even heavier, blood roaring in his ears, glacial rime flooding his veins, slithering down his spine. 

Bobby calls out to him. Dean can’t bring himself to stop. Can’t bring himself to turn around and face whatever look Bobby must have reserved for him. His dad was one thing, but Bobby? Fuck, Dean can’t handle it. It’ll kill him. 

“Damn it, boy! Listen to me.” 

Dean freezes, chest seized up so tight he feels strangled with it. Maybe he can stop, but he still can’t turn around. He won’t. History can’t repeat itself if he doesn’t make the mistake of looking like he did all those years ago. 

“I ain’t your daddy, son. I’m not like him.” 

Dean grits his teeth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

He hears the squeak of Bobby’s wheelchair as he approaches behind him. “Don’t play dumb, Dean. It don’t suit you one bit.” 

Dean has nothing to say to that. No rebuttal. No excuse. He’s been caught, and he knows it. 

“Look, if something’s goin’ on between you and—”

“Nothing’s going on,” Dean insists, the words tasting bitter like poison in his mouth. 

“Which is why I’m saying: if something’s goin’ on…” Bobby pauses. Then, voice softened like Dean’s never heard before, he adds, “you gotta know that it wouldn’t make a lick of difference in how I see you. Ever.” 

Dean is quiet. For a long, long time, he’s quiet. All he ever fucking does is think, and yet he can’t seem to reach his own thoughts, grasping blindly into the void for anything to say. He wants to believe Bobby— God, he wants to. And at his core, he’s pretty sure he does; Bobby would have no reason to lie. But when Dean considers if it changes anything—anything at all… 

He finds that it doesn’t matter. Bobby’s just one man belonging to a network of hundreds that Dean’s embedded in the middle of. What good is one man’s approval weighed against dozens of others that probably don’t share the same sentiment? 

What point would there be to change anything when doing so could plant seeds of doubt in his leadership and bring about the cascade failure of his community? The operation he built with his own two hands to save as many lives as he can like his dad always taught him to do? 

Happiness is secondary, always. That’s the truth of the matter. 

So when he does speak again, it’s with a chest full of jaded resignation and a weary voice. He says, “thanks, Bobby. But nothing’s going on, so…”

“Just a dance between friends, then?” 

Bobby doesn’t ask it to confirm the nature of what he saw between Dean and Cas. Dean can tell by the subtle ups and downs of his tone—the sort that he uses when he’s indulging someone else’s bullshit to be kind. And Dean is grateful for it. 

He exhales, relief rolling through him. Bobby understands. He gets it. 

Dean finally braves a look back over his shoulder, finds Bobby’s forebearing gaze, and forces a smile. “Just a dance between friends,” he affirms. 

And that’s that. 

☽𖤐☾

05.23.11 [03:13 AM]

Jesus, I feel like I’m losing my fucking mind here. It should be easy—to shove my own shit aside for the sake of the job like Dad taught us. It’s never been this difficult before. 

Honestly, it was only ever difficult for a short time, years and years ago. But I grew up, and it stopped mattering to me. So why, of all times, does this have to be happening now? 

I’d wonder why I can’t just turn it off like I used to, but I ain’t stupid enough to waste my energy on that. I already know the reason why. 

It has fluffy wings, a shiny halo, and a fucking drug problem. 

☽𖤐☾

INTERLUDE || JANUARY 25, 1996

Dean trudges through the door of his seedy motel room and flops down onto the bed, springs screaming under him, his face pressed a little too close to a suspicious stain on the comforter. There’s a couple arguing in the next room over, their voices muffled but carrying clear enough through the paper-thin wall. He listens to them for a while, eventually comes to gather that the guy’s been having an affair with a prostitute, and the wife’s just found out. It’s a dime-a-dozen sort of story that Dean’s heard a million times over growing up on the road.

He stares at the phone on the nightstand for an eternity, and continues to stare for an eternity more. He needs to check in soon, or his dad’s going to come looking. Or not, musing more deeply on it—Dean’s not really sure anymore. 

Taking in a long breath that makes his ribs stretch and creak, he pushes himself upright, reaches for the phone, and dials the number for his dad’s motel room of the week. 

It rings exactly three times, and there’s no direct answer, but Dean knows the call’s connected. 

His grip flexes on the handle of the phone. “Dad?” 

“Is it done?” No greetings. No niceties. 

Dean’s used to it.

“Yeah,” Dean says, all-too-conscious of the sullen sound of his voice. He clears his throat. “Their spirits were attached to the suicide note, so—easy-peasy…” 

He’s met with a stretch of silence miles-wide. His chest tightens, and his throat burns. 

Then: 

“Do you understand now, Dean?” 

Dean’s grasp on the phone grows convulsive, sweaty. The burning in his throat migrates up to his eyes, blurring the edges of his vision. He bites it all back, casts it out of his awareness, steeling himself. 

“Yes, sir,” he says, like it doesn’t hurt at all. 

“Good.” There’s a crackling sound on the other end of the line, popping dully in the speaker—a sigh. “You know I only want you to be safe, right?” 

His nails dig hard into the palm of his free hand, enough to bruise. “Yes, sir.” 

He remembers what his father said before he sent him away—in the minutes after finding him sitting on the porch of a rural Mississippi home they’d just cleansed of a poltergeist, receiving a kiss from the boy who lived there. 

Dad was driving him back to the motel where Sam was holed-up studying for the next day’s history test, and for a long, long time, neither of them spoke, the air between them thick like tar. 

Finally, foolishly, in an effort to remedy the sense of drowning, Dean tried, “I was only being polite. You know—people are grateful when we save them, so I wasn’t gonna refuse—” 

And his father cut him off right then and there. “Cut the shit, and listen to me closely, Dean.” 

Dean shrank into himself, head dropping low, hands wringing together in his lap. “Yes, sir.” 

“I didn’t spend all these years teaching you how to survive just for you to go and throw it all away for something like this. I taught you to be smarter than this. Being a target for monsters is a hell of a lot safer than being a target for humans. Monsters are easy, predictable; you know exactly what to expect from them. But humans?” Dad scoffed, a cruel blend of derisive and furious. “Do you have any idea the lengths that some people would go to see someone like you dead?” 

“Yes…” Dean mumbled, because he did know. All his life, he saw it everywhere: the hatred, the vitriol, the venom. But Dean wasn’t just some helpless child. He could fight. He could defend himself—give back as good as he got. He could bear this burden and survive just as well.

“No, I don’t think you do,” his father insisted. “If you did, I wouldn’t have just caught you sucking face with the son of a bumfuck Bible Belt reverend in broad fucking daylight.” 

“ He kissed me. ” 

“I don’t fucking care. The picture looks the same regardless.” 

Dean chanced a glance up then, and even though his father’s attention was fixed forward, on the road, the disappointment was clear in the hard set of his jaw, in the harshness of his frown. The exasperation was palpable, like he simply couldn’t believe that, of all things, this was what his son was putting him through. 

Dean’s body ran hot with shame, heart lurching with the distinct desperation that had always guided him to stay on the right side of his father’s good graces. “I-I’m sorry. I’ll be better.” 

Dad laughed, but it didn’t sound humorous—rather, doubtful. “I sure hope so, ‘cause I have better things to be doing than dropping everything to come to your rescue if this ever gets you into deep shit. You understand? No one is gonna save you.” 

Dean stared back down at his lap, where his hands had been hard at work picking the skin around his fingernails until they bled. It hurt, stung—the least of what he deserved. 

“Yes, sir…” 

Only once his dad’s hung up, and Dean’s set the phone back in its rightful place on the nightstand, does he break. Tears forge hot, angry trails down his cheeks, and no matter how quiet—how suppressed his sobs are, they’re loud in the empty silence of the room. Loud over the couple’s argument nextdoor. His only company.

His head falls into his hands, fingers gripping tight fistfuls of his hair as his breaths shudder out of him. 

The night’s events replay again and again in the theatre of his mind. Breaking into the church, sneaking into the basement, sifting through bibles and rosaries and clothing and paintings, happening upon a journal and sitting down to read it cover-to-cover… The secrets etched therein, the sorrows of persecution, the abandonment and shunning from a previously-cherished community, the final entry written not in ink, but in the blended blood of two lovers cursed—a farewell steeped in betrayal and resentment, giving rise to vengeance after death. 

Dean saw his future that night. It was cold and lonely and unforgiving. All along, the real danger was never in the threat of harassment or assault or murder—but in the desertion.

He’s cold and lonely now, too, but there’s time to make it right. 

He’ll make it right… 

☽𖤐☾

SEPTEMBER 02, 2011 || 11:28 PM || 1068 DAYS UNTIL THE END

“They’re plotting something. I can feel it.” Dean glares at the map on his desk like it’s personally offended him—and truthfully, it has. 

Surveillance teams have been pouring back into town with news of their findings, and Dean is none-too-pleased. On the map, red X’s litter the entire perimeter of Sioux Falls, forming a perfect circle that barricades any and all roads, any and all paths in or out. Demon hordes. And for once, they’re being brutally strategic—a disturbing shift from their usual modus operandi of raising chaos and mayhem in any way they can. What they’re doing now is uncharacteristically patient, calculated, tactical. 

It’s a big fucking problem is what it is. 

“Well, you didn’t expect ‘em to lie down and play nice when you started going out and thinning their numbers, did you?” Bobby says, taking a swig of whiskey from his flask. 

Dean’s face scrunches with disgruntlement. “Demons usually go on the offensive. You know—fires, mass shootings, possession-suicides. This?” He slaps his palm down on the map. “This is a textbook siege formation. That’s the sorta thing you use when you wanna force your enemy to surrender. But why would they want us to surrender? What’s their angle?” 

“The sheer satisfaction they’d get from seeing the Dean Winchester take a knee?” Bobby suggests with a shrug. “They’re demons, Dean. Their thinking ain’t all that complicated.” 

Dean’s not convinced, but at a loss for any alternative explanation, he sighs and slumps back in his chair. “Yeah, I guess,” he mumbles. “Either way, this ain’t good. We rely on all these routes for trade with nearby communes. We might be able to transition to a stricter ration regimen, but we’ll still be starved out within a month. Not to mention, the hospital’s already in short supply of basically everything after our resource caravan got hijacked by raiders last week.” 

“We’ve been surrounded before; we got through it,” Bobby offers in an attempt at reassurance. 

“Not like this, we haven’t.” Dean worries his lip, digs his fingertips into the tension settling into his temples. “This is well-organized, well-planned, and their numbers are at least triple what we’ve dealt with in the past. Our usual methods won’t work this time.” 

Bobby frowns, and Dean thinks he’s probably not the remotest bit aware of how much pity he has shining in his eyes right now. “Why don’t you turn in for the night? The siege’ll still be there in the morning. You can start chippin’ away at it tomorrow.” 

Dean’s instinct is to refuse, but he knows just as well as Bobby does that there’s no point in losing sleep over something that won’t change overnight. 

He exhales and reluctantly agrees, “yeah, alright.” 

The apprehension doesn’t leave him one bit as he locks up the police station and heads home with Bobby, nor when his head hits his pillow twenty minutes later. 

The point was to sleep and start with fresh eyes come morning, but he doesn’t sleep, and his perspective only stales further with visceral unease. 

☽𖤐☾

09.03.11 [07:12 AM]

These people trust me, so I can’t admit it out-loud, but honestly? I feel stuck. I don’t know what to do. I can’t afford to be stuck though. If I can’t break that siege, everyone here’s as good as dead. 

Fuck—it’s days like this when I miss you the most, Sam. You’d probably know exactly what to do. 

☽𖤐☾

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011 || 08:45 PM || 1053 DAYS UNTIL THE END

Dean hasn’t seen Cas all day. It wouldn’t be of any particular concern under ordinary circumstances; Cas will do what Cas does, and Dean tries to not have anything to do with it. But he’s been acting strange for the better part of a week—more strange than his normal baseline level of strange, that is. 

Dean’s caught him staring into the middle distance on numerous occasions, not like he does when he’s on one of his psychedelic trips, but like he’s just… Detached from everything happening around him. Like he’s turned all his focus inward, and whatever he finds there is something unknowable yet harrowing. And any time he’s not staring into space, he’s overall scattered and not well-rooted in the present. Distracted. Perturbed. Dean’s also seen him rolling his shoulders and shifting about frequently, as though no position is comfortable. As though he’s trying to shrug something off of him, except there’s nothing on him but his clothes. 

Naturally, when he’s been acting like that for days on end and then suddenly vanishes with no warning, Dean reserves the right to be more than a little concerned. 

All day, he’s been busy coordinating ration restrictions amid the demons’ siege, but the second he’s able to get a moment to himself, he’s off hunting for Cas. He hasn’t eaten since mid-morning the previous day, and his stomach feels like it’s begun to gnaw on itself, but he’s been hungrier before, and finding Cas is a far more pressing matter. He can deal. 

He heads back to Bobby’s first, figuring that he should at least check the den before establishing a wider search perimeter. In all fairness, Dean fell asleep at the police station last night and didn’t bother going home after he woke up, electing to jump right back into work instead. So it’s entirely possible that Cas may not have exactly ‘vanished,’ so much as simply squirreled himself away. 

Dean skips every other step as he trots up the stairs, his knee twinging intermittently as he goes. It’s not too bad, but after a full day of loading and unloading and shuttling crates of rations around, his knee’s not in the best shape it can be. 

Sometimes he forgets it’ll never quite be the same again—courtesy of his own idiocy, of course. If he’d just let Cas heal him when he first got injured… 

Whatever. That’s all in the past now. 

When he reaches the apex of the stairs, he pauses to shift his weight onto his left leg—the good one—and shake out the other, flexing and bending until the achy stiffness wanes. Temporary relief. It creeps back in again about halfway down the hall toward the den. 

He can’t be assed to lend it any more attention. 

He also can’t be assed to knock on the door before he shoves it open; it’s not like he’s ever bothered before anyway. Cas has always just let him barge right in and occupy his space without complaint. 

This one time, however, Dean thinks he really should’ve knocked. Because, as the door swings open, he does in fact find Cas inside, but he’s turned away, sat in the center of the room—and all Dean catches is the briefest glimpse of bare skin and wings before he rushes out an apology and nearly trips over himself as he fumbles to close the door again. 

Whatever Cas is doing—whatever angel business he’s clearly dealing with—it’s not Dean’s to know. 

And yet…

“Don’t go.”

Dean goes still, breath snagging low in his throat, his hand frozen on the doorknob. Warily, with the muffled cadence of Cas’ voice echoing in his ears, he pushes the door back open and takes a hesitant step into the room. 

Something about the tone laced around the words— don’t go —has his heart feeling heavy with unease. He can’t place it exactly; all he knows is that Cas sounds odd and wrong in a some eerie way he really doesn’t like. 

He closes the door behind him with a soft click and, for a long while, stands at a distance, assessing the state of the room. 

Flames flicker in the fireplace, casting steep shadows across the floor and walls. There are pill bottles strewn about, some empty, abandoned, some half-full, one tipped over with its contents of white tablets Dean’s mostly certain are narcotic of some denomination spilled across the slovenly bed of Enochian lore in the center of the room. Drained bottles of beer and whiskey line the windowsill and lie tipped over on the old, mahogany workdesk, and sat beside Cas is a container of unnaturally green liquid that Dean can only assume is the absinthe that mysteriously went missing from Hawk’s bar the day before last. 

And then there’s Cas himself. Kneeling on the floor in front of the fireplace, stripped bare from the waist up, with his broken wings pulled out from the adjacent reality in which they’re ordinarily hidden. 

Dean swallows roughly and approaches, tentative, halting. The decrepit state of Cas’ wings becomes clearer the closer he gets. Dull, black feathers bent, snapped, eroded, and missing, dimly-glowing white veins of grace shining through cracks in skeletal foundations. They lay listless on either side of Cas, as though lacking the strength to hold themselves up. Soberingly, the thought dawns on Dean that, if Cas had all his power, he wouldn’t be able to set his human gaze upon his wings at all. 

This is the first time he’s seeing Cas’ wings—not the shadowy silhouettes he’s become accustomed to, but his actual, physical wings. 

They’re on the verge of shattering, split down to their core—but there’s still something about them—striking, haunting in their brokenness yet… Breathtaking. 

Dean can’t help but stare. 

“I thought I could do it myself,” Cas murmurs—a quiet, feeble utterance. “But I’ve been sitting here all day, and I just… Can’t.” 

Dean blinks himself out of his trance, his sense of unease inflaming, manifesting in chills and goosebumps. “Do what?” he asks, and promptly falters to a stop as he comes close enough to spot the glint of the angel blade perched in Cas’ hands; his heart, already heavy, drops to the pit of his stomach. “Cas, you—“ 

“It’s not what it looks like, though I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind the longer I sat here.” 

Dean draws a shuddering breath, ice filling his lungs in place of air. He crouches down in front of Cas to catch his eyes—dark and hollow and hazy with inebriation. “What were you gonna do?” 

Cas inhales shakily, casts his gaze down at the angel blade in his hands. “My wings—they’re…” He shakes his head, just the minutest movement. “I can’t stand it anymore.” 

Dean’s brow furrows with concern, confusion, but he suppresses the urge to interrogate him; he waits for Cas to continue on his own. 

“I could deal with it at first—the deadweight of them. The drugs and booze numbed the feeling of it until… They didn’t anymore.” 

Realization strikes Dean like a cold spear thrust down the length of his spine. All those times he saw Cas rolling his shoulders like he was trying to rid himself of the weight of something invisible— “You were gonna cut them off…” 

Cas nods, then sniffs, breathing a weak, mirthless laugh. “Stupid, right? They cause me nothing but agony; it should be the easiest thing in the world to get rid of them, and yet here I am trying to find any excuse not to do it.” The edges of his eyes redden with the threat of tears. “I have no reason to spare them, but I can’t do it.” 

Dean’s face creases with a deep frown that he feels the ache of down to bone. Cas can’t do what he feels needs to be done, and he’s requested for Dean to stay. It doesn’t take a genius to know what’s being asked. What’s being begged. 

With a sick, churning feeling in his stomach, he silently proffers out his hand, palm up. 

Cas meets Dean’s solemn gaze, eyes misty and glittering with the orange light emanating from the fireplace. There’s a morbid sort of gratitude written into his features as he places the angel blade in Dean’s hand. 

Dean looks down at the blade, contemplates its razor-sharp edges forged from metal crafted to destroy the holy and vindicate the profane, and rubs his other hand down his face—to erase the awful heft of his frown or simply out of ill disbelief, he doesn’t know for certain. 

“Will it hurt?” he dares to ask. 

“Not in any way I can access. As long as you don’t nick my vess—“ Cas pauses, throat bobbing— “my body… I won’t feel anything.” 

Dean sweeps a broad look over the expanse of Cas’ wings, beautiful but so very frail; a withered feather sheds to the floor and crumbles to shimmery ash. “Are you sure this is what you want?” 

“Nobody wants to amputate their own limbs, Dean,” Cas says vacantly. “But I want the pain of bearing them less.” 

A part of Dean wants to question him further, talk him down from the ledge, save him from something he’ll regret. But he can’t justify it. He can’t justify convincing Cas to endure pain that he himself can’t possibly comprehend; he can’t and won’t ask him to suffer. 

Wordlessly, he moves himself behind Cas, twirls the angel blade around in his hands, gnaws on his lower lip until the metallic tang of blood spreads over his tongue. He’s hesitating and he can’t help it, though he wishes he could. He has to ask, “you really don’t wanna give yourself more time to think it over? Make the decision when you’re sober?” 

Which is an absurd question on principle, because when is Cas ever fully sober these days?

“If I wait any longer, I’ll miss the chance to do this entirely. I won’t have enough grace to pull my wings out from their natural plane—won’t be able to see or touch them, but I’ll continue to feel them decay on my back for the rest of my life—however long that may be—and that’s something—” Cas’ head ducks low as he shrinks in on himself— “something I won’t survive…” 

Dean’s stomach flips hard enough for acid to rise in his throat. It burns fiercely as he forces it back down. 

The implication in Cas’ words sounds dangerously near to a promise, and just the thought of him making good on that promise— fuck, Dean can’t bear it.  

“Please, Dean?” Cas whispers. “You’re the only one I can trust with this.” 

Dean exhales, long and wavering and resigning. A lingering moment’s hesitation comes and goes, and then he’s lifting the edge of the blade up to the root of Cas’ right wing. His hand trembles, but he forces it steady. Bracing his other hand between Cas’ shoulder blades and firming his grip on the hilt, he holds his breath—and cuts with a single swift updraw, opening a gaping wound weeping with the bright light of grace.  

Cas flinches, tension winding up in his every muscle, but he doesn’t make a sound; he stays hunched over, chin tucked toward his chest. His hands curl into fists where they lay atop his thighs. 

His wing, severed from his body, doesn’t even fall all the way to the floor before it disintegrates into glittery, coal-colored ash that just as quickly vanishes into thin air—like it was never there to begin with. 

Dean’s mouth runs dry, chest stiff and tight. He squints against the near-blinding light shining from Cas’ back until the wound he opened has sealed itself back up—it, too, vanishing and leaving not a trace of its existence in its wake. 

Dean releases his breath, voice cracking around the beginnings of a question: “are you—?” 

“Keep going,” Cas interjects, tone just as flat and void of life as it’s been since the plea of “don’t go” left his mouth. 

Dean gulps around the jagged lump in his throat and nods, even though Cas can’t see him. 

He moves his hand from Cas’ mid-back to his left flank, fingers fitting in the subtle valleys between ribs. He readies the blade against the root of Cas’ remaining wing, wilts with preemptive regret—and cuts. 

The limb dissolves, the wound closes, and there’s silence, stifling, dour, and unbreathable. 

With a tremor bullying its way back into his hand and a frigid chill spreading under his skin, he sets the blade aside and crawls back around in front of Cas. 

Cas’ head is still ducked, shoulders slumped. His fists are curled up so tight his knuckles have bleached white. 

“Cas?” Dean prods gently. 

And that’s when he sees it: the droplet falling from Cas’ hidden face and plashing onto his pants, staining the fabric dark. 

Dean feels gravity double on top of him, a threat to sink him straight through the old, creaky floorboards. “Hey—” he reaches out to lift Cas’ head up, cradling his face in both hands. 

Cas just stares at him, tears rolling down his cheeks, and he looks so tired and broken and utterly destroyed that Dean doesn’t think—can’t think. His mind against his will, his body of its own volition—he surges forward and wraps Cas up in his arms, clutching his fragile form to his chest. 

When he finally catches up to what he’s doing, he still stubbornly refuses his own thoughts—worries suffused with misery that have no place here. Now isn’t the time to ruminate on the implications of him holding Cas like this, of him with his hands on bare, vulnerable sprawls of Cas’ skin, of him with his heart thudding so heavy and somber against the cage of his chest that it borders on real pain. 

Cas is suffering and grieving in ways Dean can’t begin to fathom, and he needs his friend—not the neglected, nameless figure that loiters in the darkest corners of Dean’s soul like a haunting shadow. Not the thing that Dean pretends he doesn’t see hurting Cas when it flinches at unexpected familiar touch and says shit like “never happened, right?”. 

“Dean.” His name—a soft, rumbling sound that he feels through Cas’ chest more than he hears in his gravelled voice. 

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

Dean winces, lips pressing into a grim, fine line. What is he supposed to say to that? How is he supposed to respond to Cas thanking him for mutilating his body? 

He feels sick. So, very sick. Powerless to do anything but hug Cas tighter to him, one hand cupping the back of his head. 

Cas raises his arms weakly, draping them around Dean and tucking his face into the crook of his neck. The tip of his nose is cold, and his skin is damp with salty tracks. Dean doesn’t care.

Time stretches on, Dean lost for words, lost for action, and all the while Cas is leaning on him like he’s the light in the dark that leads the lost. Dean can hardly stand it. He wants to do something. Anything to make it right. He has to. 

He sits back to look at Cas’ face. Blue eyes misty, dark, cheeks stained with the staling paths carved by tears. He’s peering at Dean with such unguarded vulnerability, such intensity—like all he wants to do is fall into Dean and never return. 

And Dean, against his better judgment, takes Cas’ face once again in two hands and asks, “what do you need, angel?” 

Angel. Endearment or statement of fact—that’s only for the universe to know, because Dean sure as hell doesn’t. 

Cas’ eyes suddenly flare with something molten hot and bright and brimming with a quiet, scorching fury—something like resentment. Something like conviction. 

He declares with not a note out of place, “to forget.” 

And Dean knows a crossed line when he’s stepped over one—especially when the line was drawn with his own finger. But he can’t take it back. Can’t retreat. Doesn’t want to, at his very core. Not now. Not with Cas sitting cleaved open, bare, and bleeding out before him. 

He breathes in and out steadily, though with a nervous edge he can’t shake. His heart is pounding, and he feels hot all over, and like his throat has been cinched closed, but he says anyway, “okay.” 

A commitment. 

He leans in closer, stiltedly, faltering when the tips of their noses brush. 

Taking another breath—wavering and shallow this time—his eyes flutter shut in release, surrender; he whispers again into the inches between them, “okay,” and captures Cas’ lips in a kiss. 

It stays careful and unsure for no more than a few seconds. Because, evidently, for every solitary ounce of Dean’s uncertainty, there’s at least ten times the amount of hunger and desperation in Cas’ response. 

He grabs at Dean, hands bunching up in his shirt and hauling him in as close as he possibly can, short of carving himself open and tucking Dean into his cracked chest. His mouth is a hot, slick force against Dean’s, unyielding, merciless, and Dean has no choice but to meet it with equal, bruising fervor, for fear that he’ll be devoured otherwise. 

He tangles his fingers into Cas’ hair, gives it a firm tug, and when Cas’ mouth falls open around a startled gasp, Dean pushes his tongue in, drinking down the licorice taste of absinthe and the low, airy groan that tumbles out from Cas’ throat. Cas shivers against him, relinquishing his iron-grip on Dean’s shirt to claw at his back instead, nails biting into skin through thin fabric. 

Dean hisses at the dull sting of pain and nips roughly at Cas’ lower lip in retaliation, even though the sting is good. The pain. It has scorching magma coursing through his veins in place of blood, wildfire tearing up his nerves, dizzy delirium filling his head—all that burning that’s been simmering in his chest for months and months on end bursting past the dam containing it and rushing free down to the core of his bones, the last atoms in the tips of his fingers. 

The pain is good because it’s real. It’s raw. It’s unadulterated. It’s uninhibited. It’s born of boundless want and desire and starvation. For the first time, nothing is being held back, and Dean can get drunk on that feeling alone. 

Fuck, he wants. And with the way Cas just keeps pulling at him, like close is never close enough, and kissing him like all the oxygen he needs is stored in Dean’s lungs—Jesus, Cas wants Dean to want. 

Dean’s hands slide down to the sides of Cas’ neck, his thumbs running along the unshaven edges of his jaw. The kiss somehow deepens and falls apart at the same time; their lips are still close enough to touch, but that’s about the only thing that still qualifies it as a kiss. They’re panting, mouths hung open and breathing into each other. 

It’s a lull that happens naturally—no less desperate but strangely reposed. Dean’s eyes open, and he sees that Cas is already watching him, blue gaze fierce and intense as always, but softened around the edges with supplication. 

Dean swallows, focus flitting over each minute detail of Cas’ face—the tan complexion of his skin, the sharp angles and delicate bends and slight asymmetries that only add to his rugged allure, the barely-perceptible freckles dusting his cheeks that Dean would’ve gone his whole life not knowing were there had he never dared to get this close. 

Cas moves one of his hands to Dean’s cheek, jarringly gentle for all the damage it’d just been inflicting on his back. His fingertips hover over Dean’s skin, the tip of his thumb grazing his lips, tactile and admiring. 

And Dean thought he surrendered before, but now he really does, melting into Cas until they’ve both sunken to the floor—Cas sprawled beneath him and waiting for him to fall that last little bit. Dean goes without another wasted second, fitting himself over top of Cas with one hand splayed on his naked waist and the other mapping the smooth planes of his chest, his shoulders, his abdomen. 

He trails open-mouthed kisses down the curve of Cas’ jaw, savors the rough scratch of stubble under his lips, sucks at the supple skin under Cas’ ear, laves his tongue over the thready, erratic pulsepoint stretched up the length of Cas’ neck. 

Cas arches up against him, head bent back as he breathes, heavy and hitching. When Dean scrapes his teeth over the apple of his throat, Cas jolts, a strangled noise somewhere between a whimper and a growl tearing out of him. His fingers flutter frantically at the hem of Dean’s shirt, and somewhere in the back of Dean’s mind, he recalls this being about the point at which he shoved Cas away from him over a year ago; resolutely, he casts the memory aside, sits back just enough to yank his shirt over his head, and descends on Cas again without missing a beat, sucking a mark into the hollow of his collar bone. 

Cas’ hands are hot everywhere they touch, sweeping up Dean’s back, down his chest, settling at his ribs, raising gooseflesh in their wake as cool air kisses their fiery trails. 

Dean kisses down the centerline of Cas’ chest, tasting the salt of sweat clinging to his skin as he goes. He drags his lips to the crux at the bottom of Cas’ breastbone, where his ribs meet in the middle, fingertips finding the raised, triangle-shaped scar some inches lower and to the left. Cas’ muscles twitch at the touch, and flutter when Dean brushes a kiss over the scar—just the lightest press of lips, just to feel how alive Cas is despite it all. 

He feels Cas’ thumb trace the subtle contours of the notch in his right ear—the little semicircular indentation sculpted by the passage of a bullet. And he realizes that they’re doing the same thing. In this very moment, they’re both relishing the aliveness of the other, committing to memory the things that once threatened to break them, to take them away… 

Dean decidedly doesn’t dwell on it. It’s too tender, like a bruise prodded and sore. 

He brings his hand down between them, finds Cas half-hard in his jeans, and digs the heel of his palm into him. Cas inhales sharply, utters something so rushed and breathy and unintelligible that Dean’s mostly certain it’s Enochian; what he is able to make out from Cas’ words, though, is his name— “Dean—” and an ever-eloquent “fuck.” 

It’s a pleasant shock to the system—the rough throatiness of Cas’ voice coiled around Dean’s name, pitched low enough to resonate in Dean’s bones like a struck tuning fork. Dean smirks against Cas’ abdomen, digs the heel of his palm in again and again until Cas is writhing restlessly beneath him, pawing at his shoulders for purchase, chanting even more strings of words that Dean doesn’t understand but sound indubitably like prayer. 

Molten heat ripples up and down Dean’s spine, curls around each and every vertebra, condenses in its greatest intensity low in the core of him. His head spins with the daze of sensitivity, every touch and shift and knead of Cas’ hands against the stretches of skin he manages to reach electric, scintillating. 

Before he knows it, Dean’s popped the button of Cas’ jeans open, dragged the zipper down—and now he’s hovering mere centimeters from the bulge of Cas’ cock tucked within the confines of his briefs. 

And Dean doesn’t move, frozen still; it probably only lasts a split second, but it’s long enough for the thought to occur to him—to break through the cloud of white noise in his head—that he’s never done this before. That he’s flying absolutely blind. That he has no idea what he’s doing. 

But by sheer force of willpower, he banishes the thought entirely, knowing that, if he were to let it occupy space in his mind any longer, it would only fester and seize him up. 

Right now—this moment… It’s too good to lose to the very corruption that’s cost him so many tears, so much energy, so much of his fucking life for as long as he can remember. He’s done. He’s over it. 

He sees the risk, and it’s laid out beautifully before him, all warm skin, reverent hands, and grace-blazing eyes—and it’s worth it all, Dean thinks. Simply put. Cas is worth it. 

Dean doesn’t think. It’s his newfound saving grace. He hooks his fingers into the waistbands of Cas’ jeans and underwear and draws them both down at once; Cas’ cock—hard and flushed and weeping at the tip—springs free to lie heavy against his lower belly. 

Dean gulps. Jesus… 

Before he gets the chance to feel intimidated or second-guess himself, he decides no preamble is necessary—no curious or awkward touches; just straight to the point. He stoops to swipe his tongue up the length of Cas’ dick, root to tip, fits his lips around the head of him, and sinks his mouth down as far as it’ll go, right to the edge of gagging. Because, fuck it, he’s already committed. No reason to pussyfoot around now. 

He doesn’t choke or gag, but he comes damn close, eyes watering, throat constricting, jaw straining. Cas doesn’t seem to mind the excessively bold venture, though—not one bit, if the way his hands fly to root themselves in Dean’s hair and his lips spill a litany of curses and moans out into the open is any indication. 

Cas’ hips are wriggling restlessly, urgent and frantic as if just this—just having Dean’s mouth on him—is enough to crest him. His fingers flex against Dean’s scalp, sending tingles prickling through his every axon. And Dean graduates from deliberately choosing not to think to becoming utterly unable to think. Every fiber of his being is on fire, alight with the pride of being wanted so desperately and the selfish liberation of reveling in what’s gone suppressed and neglected for far, far too long. 

Dean closes his eyes, takes Cas’ hips in firm, sturdy hands, relishes the hot weight of Cas’ cock in his mouth as he bobs his head. He can’t quite breathe—hasn’t bothered to learn how to balance inhalations and exhalations through his nose with the pace he’s set—but it doesn’t matter. He couldn’t care less, content to be starved of air, to be inebriated by the deprivation of it. 

It takes little time at all for the ache of fatigue to set into his jaw, but that’s good, too. As is the near-uncomfortable stretch of his lips around Cas, the soreness in his cheeks as he hollows them, the trigger-happy reflex at the back of his throat that flinches each time he dares to press just that little bit farther. 

It’s good because Cas is whimpering and shivering and urging Dean on with a sort of reckless enthusiasm Dean’s never once seen from him before—because, for the first time in fuck knows how long, Cas’ burdens are forgotten. Because, for once, Dean has made it so. 

Dean moves a hand from Cas’ hip to wrap it around the base of his dick instead; tempting though it is to test how far he can really push it, he’s not looking to let overzealous hubris ruin the good thing he’s got going. Whatever his mouth can’t reasonably reach, his hand works with practiced ease from a lifetime of knowing himself and what makes him tick. 

Cas, no longer pinned down by the relentless grip on his hips, bucks against Dean, ankles hooking around the backs of Dean’s thighs. And when Dean pulls up, twists his wrist just right, dips the tip of his tongue into the slit to sample the bitter fluid beading there, Cas cries out, loud and unfettered, fingers tightening sharply enough in Dean’s hair to drag a rough groan out of him in kind. 

“Hah— Dean, I—” Cas whines as Dean glides his lips back down over him, and whatever he was going to say gets lost. He never completes his thought. Just breathes, “please,” into the open air and lets one hand fall away to cling onto the one Dean still has on his hip. 

Dean doesn’t stop. He keeps his pace, the suction of his cheeks, the finesse of his wrist, right up to the point that Cas tenses from head-to-toe, jaw slackened around a silent scream, and rattles apart. His cock pulses in Dean’s mouth, spilling hot across his tongue. 

It sobers Dean a little; he’d been too abandoned to the pleasure and the want of it all that he never considered what he’d do with… This. 

In all truth and honesty, it’s not the most pleasant flavor in the world, but it’s also not like he hasn’t tasted himself on the tongues and cunts of at least three-dozen women in the past, so he resolves to just swallow it down without a fuss. He also figures that he might as well wring Cas of every last drop while he’s here; he’s not one to leave a job half-done. 

When Cas starts hissing through his teeth and stirring in a way that signals the stimulation has grown too much to bear, he uses the grip he still has on Dean’s hair to pry his mouth away from him. Dean doesn’t resist, lets Cas’ softening cock fall from his lips and drops his forehead to the peak of Cas’ hipbone, laboring for breath and honing his focus on the ragged effort of Cas’ breaths, too. 

He still feels hot all over, still feels absolutely wired, and it’s then that he finally becomes attuned to the insistent, throbbing ache of his own cock in his pants. He shifts slightly in search of a more comfortable position, but all that accomplishes is a surge of coarse friction against brutally sensitive skin. Grimacing, he settles himself back how he was, elbows braced on the floor and bracketing Cas’ waist on either side, head propped against Cas’ hip just to breathe and keep breathing. Fucking hell… 

It’s not long before he feels Cas’ hands in his hair again, sliding down to the sides of his face, then hauling him all the way up into a kiss—slow, languid, a little sloppy, but Dean submits to it easily. Their tongues tangle together, teeth snagging on swollen lips, airy moans passed from one to the other and back again.

Distantly, Dean’s aware of Cas’ foot unhooking from its place behind his thigh, making a gradual descent, and rehooking behind his knee. A beat passes, Dean still distracted by the smooth slide of their kiss—then suddenly, he’s flipped onto his back, and Cas has insinuated himself above him. 

Dean blinks, stunned. Cas’ eyes meet his, deep pools of ocean blue, heady with lust, not even the faintest trace of the tears they’d cried minutes ago. He grins—and it’s that same lazy, crooked smile that haunts Dean’s dreams and never fails to send his heart aflutter and ignite fire in his chest. 

Cas’ fingers dance over the bare flesh of Dean’s chest, down his abdomen, teasing until they reach the waistband of his jeans. When he goes to sit back on his heels, Dean stiffens and catches Cas by the shoulders, holding him in place. 

Cas’ gaze flies back up to Dean’s face, smile wavering. Wariness glints in his pretty irises. And Dean hates it. Truly. He does. It’s not like he wants to bar Cas from getting what he clearly, enthusiastically wants, but… 

Damn it— is Dean really about to admit this? 

“‘M a little too far gone for that, Cas,” he mutters. And it’s true. Miserably so. With how sensitive he is just to the friction of his underwear? Not happening. “I ain’t in the business of busting a nut the second someone gets their mouth on me.” 

Cas tilts his head, brow pinched into a deep furrow. He looks so much like he did before—before the Apocalypse, before the drugs, before his wings… 

“I don’t want to leave you like this, Dean.” 

“I know—I know you don’t. You don’t have to. Just…” Dean pauses, wets his lips. “Here—” 

He pulls Cas close, grabs his hand, and guides it down to the prominent tent in the front of his jeans, breathing out harshly at the press of Cas’ scorching palm against him. 

Cas gets the idea fast, grinding his hand into Dean’s dick with slow, rolling motions of the wrist. A long, drawn-out groan sounds from the depths of Dean’s chest. His head falls back, diaphragm spasming with shallow breaths as the arousal embedded in his core flares out into a dizzying flurry of heat. 

“Yeah, just—just like that, Cas. Fuck—” Dean chokes, whimpers and whines rising in place of words in his throat. He’s not exactly sure what possessed him to think coming in his pants like a teenager was somehow less embarrassing than coming seconds after Cas gets his mouth on him, but he’s in it now. He’s in it and he wouldn’t dream of making it stop. 

God, it’s good. Everything about all of this has been so, so good. 

Cas tucks his face into the crook of Dean’s neck, breath fluttering over sweat-sheened skin. His hand works Dean like he’s done it a million times before—like, somehow, he knows precisely what Dean needs in rhythm and pressure. And Dean has only the wherewithal to latch onto Cas, leave crescent-shaped indentations in his back with blunt fingernails as Cas did to him. 

The building pressure in his groin approaches its peak, Dean’s toes curling in his boots, hips lifting to meet every push of Cas’ hand into his cock. His lip stings as he clamps it between his teeth, smothering his moans—which he probably should’ve been doing from the very beginning, because the instant his ears catch the wavering, pitchy notes of his voice pouring, completely unchecked, out of his mouth, he knows he sounds absurdly pathetic. 

No more pathetic, however, than he does when Cas suddenly stops everything he’s doing out of nowhere. 

Dean lets out a positively wounded noise, head snapping back up to fix Cas with a sharp glare. “What’re you—” 

Cas shuts him up real quick when he wedges his knee between Dean’s legs, right up to the apex. Dean’s chest stutters at the rush of heat that wrests through him. And once Cas has slid his arm under the arch of Dean’s lower back, drawing him firmly into the solid pillar of his thigh, Dean sees the vision—shivers at the wordless suggestion of it. He’s rutting against Cas’ leg like a fucking animal before he knows it, Cas helping him along with the grasp he has around his waist. 

Cas skates his other hand up to Dean’s neck, thumb and forefinger pressing just firm enough into the frantic pulse on either side of his throat for Dean to know it’s not by accident. Not a commitment, though, either. More like a question. 

Dean holds Cas’ gaze, eyelids fluttering, heavy, dazed. Cas is peering right back with all the intensity of a supernova, but also, confoundingly, the calm and level patience of a man who wouldn’t rather be doing anything else. Of someone who’d wait forever without the expectation of any promise. He won’t dare move a millimeter—not until Dean allows it. 

And— shit, of course Dean allows it. Cas is a being that fucking sees, and he’s seeing Dean right now. Everything that he is. His deepest, most hidden desires. 

Heart pounding with a delirious thrill, Dean gives a jerky nod of the head and clutches Cas closer to him. 

The grip around his throat tightens, just so, just to make his head spin with floaty euphoria. His eyes roll toward the backs of their sockets, chest rattling with haggard breaths. All the while, his hips are rutting, harder, rougher, more desperate, against Cas’ thigh. 

He loses track of time, streams of pleasure invading his every sense and thought. His head grows farther and farther away from him, and he doesn’t care. All he can properly discern is that the heat at the base of his spine and the pressure in his core are hiking to new heights, new potencies, and the prospect of the impending eruption is about as exhilarating as it is terrifying.

Jesus—it’s been forever since he’s felt like this. Maybe he’s never felt quite like this. Quite this unraveled, unbridled.

The only coherent thought he can piece together, then, is: is this what it’s supposed to feel like? 

It’s on that note—that revelation— that Dean comes, so hard he has stars bursting behind his eyelids, the fires of his arousal exploding in a savage rampage all throughout his body. His head swims with rapture, ears ringing with the rapid, heavy thud of his heart. The rhythm of his hips stalls, but in jerky, frenetic movements, he continues to grind himself against Cas until it’s nearly agonizing. Until he’s fallen far enough back to Earth and regained the necessary faculties to feel at least a little mortified about his utter lack of restraint. 

Cas’ hand is still on his throat, but it’s not squeezing. It lays there gently, thumb brushing back and forth slowly over Dean’s skin—a gesture meant to soothe Dean as he trembles through the tail-end of his high. 

Dean’s eyes are closed, so he doesn’t see it coming, but he feels Cas’ lips slot against his, warm and just as gentle as his hand. And Dean doesn’t hesitate to return the favor, cupping Cas’ jaw in both hands and tipping his head to get the exact right angle—to perfect the slow glide of their lips, the smooth slide of their tongues. 

They kiss like this for seconds, minutes— hours, maybe. Dean doesn’t know. All he knows is that they kiss for so long that Cas doesn’t taste of absinthe anymore, but of Dean. 

Finally, after their movements have grown lazy and weary, they part, and for a while, Cas just stays hovering over Dean, forehead propped against his. They breathe together, steady, synchronized, eyes shut to simply exist in one another’s presence—and then Cas rolls off to the side, chest plastered to Dean’s shoulder, arm slung across Dean’s abdomen. Lower down, one of his legs is entwined loosely with Dean’s. 

The message is crystal-clear: stay. 

And Dean does. He stays and lets Cas burrow into his side like he’s never belonged anywhere else—lets Cas trace delicate, aimless circles into the bare skin of his chest until he’s too weary to do even that—lets Cas doze off so close to his face and neck that he can feel the soft puffs of air Cas breathes skittering across his skin. 

Dean stays, and it’s quiet. He stares straight up, watches the shadows projected by the flickering flames in the fireplace dance on the ceiling. And for the first time, in that silence, he thinks.

He thinks about Cas and how he’s hurt him time and time again since that damn kiss on the porch, though Cas never voices his obvious pain out-loud. He thinks about his father and the echoes of his voice that invade his mind unbidden. He thinks about Bobby and what he said all those months ago—that if he and Cas were, or were ever to become, him and Cas, whatever that may mean, Bobby wouldn’t see Dean any differently. He thinks about the town and all the people he’s responsible for—the people who would care as little as Bobby does, and the people who would, conversely, care an immense deal. 

How many of those people would leave? How many of them would choose the risk of certain death on their own as long as they’re not being led by someone like Dean? 

It’s like a shot of ice-water through his veins. Frigid reality grips him by the heart and leaves his chest tight and hollow. 

Fuck. He deflates, shaking his head at the ceiling. What the hell were you thinking, Winchester? 

And—oh. That’s right. He wasn’t.

He forgot he didn’t have such a luxury—to not think. 

Now look at the mess you’ve made… 

In the silence, he lay paralyzed, unable to breathe. 

Cruelly, the only thing that’s keeping him tethered to the here-and-now: 

Cas, tucked in beside him, warm and alive and blissfully unaware of what he’s set to wake to. 

(The next morning, Dean will wake up, groggy and disoriented in a bed of Enochian lore with Cas’ warm, naked body curled into his side. He’ll slip away while Cas stays sleeping, burning from the inside-out with shame and loathing and confusion. A frustrated fury will brew behind his ribs at the fact that he couldn’t find an excuse that would’ve made it okay for him to stay, and he’ll hate himself for pretending it never happened, like he always does. 

It won’t feel any better when Cas follows his lead with flawless ease and pretends, too—like a trained soldier heeding an unvoiced command. 

Later, Dean will overhear from a distance as John Ambrose calls out the name “Castiel,” only to be met with an insistence that, “it’s just Cas, now.” 

And Dean will hurt, terribly and sickeningly, as he comes to the horrific realization that it wasn’t just his wings that Cas had asked to have taken away from him the previous night; it was the remnants of his angelhood.)

☽𖤐☾

09.17.11 [11:59 PM]

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