Work Text:
Dean sat in silence for a moment, mind racing, unbearable ache in his gut, unable to look away from the sickening sight of poor, lifeless Kevin.
"Cas!" Dean called out, finally, hoping that Cas's newly borrowed grace would allow him to hear Dean's prayers again. "Cas?! You gotta get here, man!" He choked out.
He sat, bereft, waiting for his angel to appear.
Nothing happened.
The warding. Cas wouldn't be able to hear him from within the walls of the bunker. Dean got to his feet and practically sprinted up the stairs and out the bunker door.
"Cas!" He yelled as soon as he was out, "something happened... Get here now!"
He looked around, helplessly, for a moment. Still no Cas. Dean went back inside hoping Cas's cell still worked, but no sooner had he reached the bottom of the stairs, the bunker door opened and Cas stepped in.
"Dean, what has happened?" Castiel asked as he made his way into the bunker.
Dean couldn't even speak, just wordlessly allowed Cas to follow him into the room where Kevin lay dead on the floor.
Cas knelt beside the fallen prophet, laying a hand on his forehead.
"Can you fix him?" Dean asked, softly, already knowing the answer.
Cas looked up at Dean with sorrow in his eyes, "I am sorry, Dean. I cannot heal something like this."
Dean just nodded and turned away, his tenuous grip on his emotions getting weaker by the second.
"It was Ezekiel...or rather, the angel claiming to be him?" Cas inferred.
"Yeah," Dean said, "and now he has Sam and I don't even know if Sam is still alive in there, and everything is so fucked up and I don't know what to do!"
Dean felt the despair welling up in him. Unable to stop the tide of emotions, he suddenly yelled, threw a chair across the room, then punched the stone piller next to him as hard as he could.
He cried out as several bones in his hand shattered.
Cas grabbed him and angel zapped them into Dean's room. He wanted to get Dean away from Kevin, get him somewhere he might find comforting. Cas, not unkindly, pushed Dean into a sitting position on the bed then sat down next to him.
Dean's control was slipping.
"That was not a very smart thing to do," Cas informed him as he took Dean's broken hand in his own and mended it, effortlessly.
"Yeah well, apparently smart isn't my thing," Dean replied. "It's all my fault, Cas..."
Tears were starting to fall but Dean didn't even care to try to hold them back anymore. Kevin was dead, Sam was gone - maybe for good - and it was all Dean's fault.
"You did the best you could, Dean," Castiel said, putting a hand on Dean's shoulder. "You just wanted to help your brother. You were a victim of an angel's deception, much like I was."
"But how could I have been so stupid?" Dean wailed, "I ruined everything. Again. And I don't know what to do..."
Dean could no longer speak, the tears were coming hard and fast and he couldn't stop them. Nothing mattered anyway. Everything was destroyed. He deserved this.
Castiel wrapped his arms around the weeping human, he'd gotten better at understanding grief and the need for comfort during the months when he himself had been human. And he could certainly understand the feeling of utter helplessness caused by thinking you were doing the right thing only to have everything fall apart. Though he couldn't fix everything for Dean - but how he wished he could - he could do this.
Dean clutched at Cas, sobbing brokenly, unable to see any way out of the horrible mess he had created.
"We'll figure it out, Dean," Cas assured him, softly, "I'm here and I won't leave you. I promise, I won't leave you."
As Dean sat, wrapped in the arms of the only friend he had left in the world, he desperately hoped that Cas was right.