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He slides into the cab of his truck and sits, the key paused in the ignition. He bows his head and rests his forehead on the steering wheel, breathing quietly. His grace feels distant, muted. He’s not cut off – not like he was when he first rebelled – but now that Heaven’s gates are shut he’s…less. Like a stream slipping through a crack in a dam.
Closer to human once more. In another time, he wouldn’t mind. In fact, he wants…
It doesn’t matter. There’s a war roiling on the horizon, and he needs to be functional. Useful.
His breath leaves him on a shudder-shake. The many-clawed thing slinks out from behind his ribs, climbs its way through his chest and coils in the back of his throat. The moment he’d heard Naomi’s voice it reawakened, his thoughts screeching to a static blur, his limbs seizing with a heavy, glacier chill. All terror, heart-stopping. Like a butterfly pinned though the middle, helpless, fluttering weakly against the callous intent of her.
He hates it, her, himself. He thought she was dead. She was dead, she was, she had to be. He was safe—
The sudden burst of sound from his phone startles him and he fumbles for it with shaking, still sandy hands, answering before he realizes that maybe he should’ve thought better of it – he’s not fine, and Dean doesn’t need to know.
He sits silent for too long. The worried timbre of Dean’s voice repeats, louder, “Cas?”
“I—” He feels so very far away from his body. He swallows, and it’s more of a challenge than it should be. “I’m here,” he manages. It feels like a lie.
There’s a pregnant pause that could mean anything. Relief. Doubt. Apathy. Castiel is too tired to decipher it. Dean asks, carefully, as if treading unsteady ground, “Everything okay?”
“Everything…” Castiel begins, and then stops. Everything ends.
“Cas, talk to me.” Dean’s voice is sharp, cutting through the fog of him. “Cas?” Dean calls again, when he doesn’t answer. He wants to. He needs to reassure Dean, but his mouth just won’t form the words. Any words. “Cas!”
He loses time. There’s a shuffle of faint noise on the other end of the line, voices, perhaps. “Dean,” Castiel says, remembering. He blinks, and suddenly there’s a white room in front of him, a blade in his hand; he’s so, so numb and Dean – Dean, no, not Dean, thousands of wounds, death, all dead, he can’t – he can’t stop himself, and she’s there, twisting like a snake beside him, inside him, everywhere—
“—with me. Talk to me, Cas—”
That’s Dean’s voice, Castiel realizes, and it brings him back to himself; Dean is still alive; he’s okay. Castiel didn’t kill him.
“Dean,” Castiel says, relief pumping through him.
Dean perks up on the other end of the line, “Cas? Cas, hey, stay with me, man. You hurt?”
Is he? He looks down at his vessel. There’s no blood, no scrape or scratch of combat. But he feels wounded. Bled out and worn, all the scraps of himself frayed.
Dean curses. Castiel realizes he failed to answer, again.
“I’m alright,” he says at last.
“You don’t sound ‘alright,’” Dean says, frank and flat with doubt.
“I am.” Castiel feels sharper, bristling around the tender-vulnerable of himself; now is the time Dean is going to notice something amiss? Not when Asmodeus had him? Not when she—
He curls into himself, physically now, a small pained sound lancing out of his chest, out from between his lips; some still-conscious part of him scolds himself – he should be stronger than this. He has to be.
“Okay, buddy. Yep. I’m coming to you, hang tight.”
It takes Castiel a sizable moment to grasp Dean’s meaning; he pieces together the sound of a familiar engine purring over the line, already on the road, and the understanding hits him. “No, that’s not necessary.” His voice sounds rough against his ears, ragged as though he’s been screaming; he’s fairly certain he hasn’t been – has he? – but would he know? She’s back. She could have him, dangling on the end of her strings like a puppet, and he wouldn’t know; anxiety prickles across his shoulder blades, pinches the back of his neck, and then: panic. Dean is coming to him, but if she is back, she could have him, and that means Dean isn’t safe—
“Dean, no!” The words burst from him on a sharp, horrified bark. His heart is a frantic drum in his chest, an earthquake, a stark contrast to the rest of him, a frozen statue, paralyzed. He nearly misses Dean’s, “Cas?” over the rush of blood in his ears, a testament to how far rocked he is, that he can’t even control his vessel’s bloodflow.
“Castiel, if you’re bleeding out and aren’t telling me, I swear, I’m gonna—”
“I’m compromised.” His mouth is all dried out, sandy, barren; he admits those words and the empty expanse of desert inside him howls, victorious and inescapable.
There’s a long beat of silence, and Castiel hangs his head in surrender. He’s not a risk they can afford to take, especially now, and he knows this. Everything ends, Castiel. Especially this.
“Com—? Cas, what the hell’s going on?”
One breath. Another. Enough for the space of the last of things, before Castiel opens his mouth. Speaks, with the feeling of pulling a knife from his chest, or of pushing one in, he can’t tell, “Naomi.”
Dean is quiet. And now that Castiel has said her name, confirmed her into existence, there’s no reason for him not to continue.
“What Metatron did, it…it didn’t kill her. Naomi is still alive. She’s in Heaven.” He doesn’t know what to say next. Lets the silence fall with gravity and stares forward, out the windshield, where the new leaves are budding on the trees. All that green. All that life. Spring has never felt so cruel.
“Cas, I’m sorry.”
Castiel bows his head. He squeezes his eyes tight, then tighter still. It doesn’t stop the tears from escaping, or prevent the ache in his heart. “I know,” he says, because he does. It twists like a knife, like it did the first time Dean told him I’m sorry, Cas. But you can’t stay. But he understands. He lets the pain wash over him until he feels like he can begin to carry it. Adjusts it and balances it amongst all the other broken parts of himself. He squares his shoulders. Fills his lungs with breath as if the air could possibly hold him up, keep him from collapsing. “I understand. I will remain in contact with you and Sam as I continue to seek out Gabriel.”
Dean says something in response, but Castiel is so weary that he doesn’t listen. His hands, still heavy with grains of sand, reach for the phone. It’s remarkably simple to tap the red circle, ending the call. It leaves him in silence. The fresh spring breeze slips in through the open windows. It’s not for him; spring wasn’t created for angels, but he sits back in the driver’s seat and closes his eyes, trying to find some last bastion of peace within himself. Enough to allow him to move forward.
The modicum he finds shatters when his door is yanked open, hands reaching, grasping – he’s got his blade out and ready in a flash, a snarl curling his lips, because no, not this time; they won’t take him easy, not without a fight. Then he focuses on his attacker. Blinks the panic from his vision.
Dean holds his empty palms out and up in surrender, his eyes wide. Castiel deflates, all the fight going out of him and leaving fatigue in its wake. He sets his blade up above the dashboard and rubs at his temples.
“You good?” Dean asks. There’s an edge of wariness in his voice that Castiel can’t fault him for.
“I told you it wasn’t necessary for you to come.”
“Yeah, well.” Dean shrugs. “You hung up on me.” There isn’t, surprisingly, any bite of accusation or rebuke in his tone. Castiel doesn’t know what to bristle against, and he can feel his defenses falling, one cascading after the other. The tension crumbles apart to weariness, as Dean walks around the front to the passenger door. Dean pulls the handle to no avail, and taps on the glass with his knuckles before pointing to the lock depressed inside.
Castiel reaches over and lifts it up. Dean climbs into the passenger seat. For the moment, he’s quiet; he leans forward and trails a finger along the dashboard, collecting dust.
“Oughta let me give this a proper tune-up when we get back home,” Dean says. “Surprised when she made the drive all the way back to Kansas. Tough little truck. Dependable.” Dean sits back, settling on the balding fuzz of the truck’s seats. He seems at ease, as if he doesn’t remember the crunch of bone and the hot wet of blood under Castiel’s relentless fist, as if he doesn’t remember being wrought to his knees with his death gleaming moments away and cold above him in Castiel’s hand.
Castiel grips the steering wheel beneath white-knuckles; if he attacks, at least Dean will have some time to react. To save himself from Castiel. The blade is close enough that Dean could grab it.
Still, Castiel would prefer it if Dean would just go. Distance is the safest protection from something like Castiel.
“Dean,” Castiel grits out between clenched teeth.
“What did you mean you ‘understand’?” Dean interrupts. He sounds angrier now; there’s a pressure plied to his words, shortening them. “And that you’d ‘keep in touch’?”
Castiel blinks at him, confused. He doesn’t allow his grip on the wheel to slacken. “Obviously it is important that I keep you informed about—”
“No, that’s not what you meant.” Dean pins him with a look and it’s nothing like Naomi and her clinical, sterile terror; it’s like being butterflied open, all his insides bared and warm to those green eyes. And it shouldn’t make sense – it doesn’t, it makes no sense, that Dean can flay him open again and again, and yet there’s no place Castiel would rather be, vulnerable and shocked to honesty under that gaze. “Because,” Dean continues. “It sounded like you were leaving.”
“You want me to leave.” The words fall out of his mouth before he can catch them, and he tears his eyes away before he can see the truth waiting in Dean’s. What that truth would be, Castiel doesn’t know. Whatever is there, it will surely shatter him.
“I never want you to leave.” Dean’s voice is so quiet Castiel might’ve mistaken it for the rustle of the wind. An illusion, a dream. A fantasy. Castiel can pretend he never heard it. He can pretend he did.
“Dean, Naomi is back. For your own safety, you shouldn’t be here. I’m co—”
“Compromised,” Dean finishes. “Yeah, I heard you the first time.”
Castiel clenches his jaw. Two apocalypses under his belt makes Dean’s flippancy admirable, but for Dean to be so casual about this is nothing short of frustrating. “Then you should listen—”
“When you start making a lick of goddamn sense, I might,” Dean interrupts, his words clipped, frustrated. “Cas, look at me.”
Castiel shakes his head. Naomi must already know that he is with Dean. He has a feeling that she’ll make him look into Dean’s eyes as she makes Castiel kill him again, slowly, excruciating, while Castiel, locked and helpless in his body, will be able to do nothing but watch.
A hand, alive and steadying, finds his thigh. Curls right around the slope of his leg, just above the joint of his knee. Dean’s hand is warm through the fabric of his slacks. It radiates through him, curling and fluttering in all the vacant spaces between his organs, in all the lonely ragged parts of him. Still, he does not meet Dean’s eyes.
“She’s back, but you’re not compromised,” Dean says. Stubborn to the last. “Okay? And even if you are, we’ll figure it out.”
“I could hurt you,” Castiel pleads; Dean isn’t understanding the severity of this, the threat, the danger Castiel poses. “She could make me hurt you. Last time, I nearly killed you—”
“But you didn’t. You beat her. You kicked her smarmy, mind-controlling ass.” Dean leans forward, trying to catch Castiel’s eye, and Castiel can feel his resolve breaking. “And now, we have an edge. We know she’s here. And we’ll kick her ass again, together.” Castiel closes his eyes for just a moment. “I trust you, Castiel.”
That breaks down the last of it. Castiel opens his eyes, sees the green of the spring before meeting Dean’s eyes. There’s more for him there than in the green of all the world. Of course there is. He never fell for earth, for humanity. He fell for Dean.
“Dean,” he says. Softly, but rough around the edges. He doesn’t know what to say next.
Dean smiles at him, bittersweet and understanding, and Castiel can’t look away, but he can’t look away because it’s his choice; he’s still free – free to choose this, humanity, Dean. “I’d rather have you,” Dean says, voice bled through with something Castiel can’t put a name to; an echo of every barn they’ve ever been in; a sound Castiel has only heard dripping from the tongues of congregations of the faithful. “Cas.”
It’s the name that does it, that convinces him to come home. His name. The name not given to him by God; the name given to him by a man. A name truer than any other name he’s ever been called. In another story, he reaches across the space between them, hands finding Dean’s face, turning his lips to his, indulging, seeking. In another story, Dean meets him there, and that hand on Castiel’s knee finds its way to everywhere Castiel has ever wanted to be touched, like this, by Dean. Embracing the heat simmering until the kindling strikes, flames ablaze, burning the script that says they can be brothers and nothing more, until they’re entwined and inseparable and consummated.
But in this story (and perhaps, maybe, it is the same story, maybe it’s all a different, nascent part of it – but oh, Castiel knows, he is ever the fool of hearts), Dean pulls his hand away. He doesn’t do it as if burned, or as if startled, but he does it before Castiel can reach for it; he lets go of the wheel just a little too late, moves a little too slowly, and he wonders if Dean notices the way his eyes follow the retreat of Dean’s hand to where it goes to rest in the space between them. A distance Castiel doesn’t know how to cross. All of his fallings, and he can’t take this last and final leap.
“You good to drive?” Dean asks, soft with concern.
“Yes.” Castiel says. “I’ll be okay.” The words – he’s not sure if they’re the truth. But the smile he offers Dean, one of reassurance…that, he means.
“Good.” The concern hasn’t faded from Dean’s eyes, but at least it seems like he believes Castiel. Or is willing to try to believe him. “I’ll see you at home then.” Dean reaches over, pats Castiel on the shoulder, but the gesture feels stunted, somehow. Like Dean meant to do something else.
Then Dean is sliding out of the truck, closing the door behind him.
Home. Castiel watches Dean climb back into the Impala. Baby’s engine purrs to life, easier than the stutter that Castiel’s truck coughs before turning over, and then there’s the crunch of tires on dirt as Dean pulls forward, turning onto the road that will lead back to the bunker. Trusting Castiel to follow him.
It can't last; it will come to an end, as everything must, and always sooner than expected.
But of course Castiel puts his truck into gear. Of course he follows Dean down the road.
Heaven is dying. And Castiel knows, in this moment, that he will return. Not out of loyalty, not out of duty. Certainly not out of love – not for Heaven. Never for Heaven. Heaven demanded servitude, compliance; soil too acidic for love to bloom in.
The Impala shines darkly in front of him. The landscape rustles softly with the green of life, the sun warm, the breeze gentle. And through the cloud of grace and the cosmos Castiel can feel his own heart beating.
Everything ends, Castiel.
Yes, Castiel agrees. But not, first, without a fight. Not this – not Earth, not humanity, not the Winchesters, not Dean – not yet.
If it takes one more angel to keep the lights on in Heaven, so that everyone he loves can live, then Castiel will make that sacrifice. Always, again, without hesitation.
Until then, Castiel keeps on driving towards home.