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He left. He had finally left. After more than a decade, Cas had left. Dean shouldn’t be surprised. Everyone leaves him in the end. He deserved it though. Mom, dad, Bobby, Charlie, Kevin, Rowena, Cas… even Sam had wised up and left him a few times. The dumb bastard hadn’t learned his lesson yet. Dean knew it was only a matter of time before Sam would leave him again.
He didn’t know how long he’d sat there staring at the bunker door waiting for Cas to come back but looking down at his glass he noticed that it had been long enough for the ice in his brandy to have melted. He twirled it on the war room table to his left. He paused his fiddling trying to remember when he had walked to the war room and taken a seat. He couldn’t. One minute he was leaning on one of the library tables, the next he was sitting at the war room table twiddling with his glass of brandy and one of the red rings that adorned the tabletop. He tossed said ring back onto the table and leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. He scrubbed his hands down his face before bringing them back up, fingers tugging at his hair.
He’d really gone and fucked things up this time. He had fucked up a lot in his lifetime, but this one might actually take the cake. Why did he have to go say that shit to Cas? Because I’m pissed and he deserves it! He killed mom! If Cas had only told him what was going on with Jack, they could have fixed it and avoided this whole situation all together. Because they are just better together.
Except when they’re not. Like earlier, if Cas had just stuck to the plan… But no, because that’s not what the angel does. The only thing he knows how to do is fuck things up.
Like you’re a saint. You’ve screwed up enough shit as it is.
He growled at his stupid conscience. His knees started bouncing, finger still clutching at his hair. He was fucking furious. It was underlined by restlessness, agitation. But there was also something else that tinged his mood, he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was though. He stood up abruptly and started pacing the length of the table. This was all a mess. He used to trust Cas, but the angel was right, he could barely look at him. Cas’ words played over in his mind.
‘You don’t care, I’m dead to you…’
‘You and Sam have each other. I think it’s time for me to move on.’
Fuck. Sam was the only person Dean had left. Everyone they had ever known and cared about was dead. They were alone. Searing pinpricks flashed up the back of Dean’s neck and shoulders. His chest started heaving and tightening. His sight blurred around the edges and his limbs began to tremble. Have the bunker’s fluorescent lights always been this bright? Dean was finding it harder and harder to breathe. He only had Sammy left. That realization caused a rush of dread to fill his body. He somehow felt like he was on fire and cold all at once. He tugged at his hair and tried taking deeper breaths. God, he’d really fucked up. But he was so freaking mad!
Dean swiped at the tabletop and the rings and his brandy glass went flying. When they crashed against the floor, he picked up the chair he had been sitting in and smashed it against the control panel to his left sending sparks flying.
“Dean?!” Sam yelled. The younger man slinked into the room brandishing his pistol, hunter instincts on high alert. He pivoted from side to side taking in his surroundings looking for danger. The only thing he saw was his older brother in destress in the middle of the trashed War Room. “Dean? Hey, hey!” He made his way to his brother, slipping his pistol into the back of his jeans. He ushered his older brother into one of the remaining chairs, going and standing in front of the older man. Dean stared off into space and tried to calm the trembling in his hands by clasping them together.
“What happened?” Sam’s voice came again after a few moments of silence. Dean finally blinked and squeezed his eyes shut. He really didn’t want to think about what had just happened, what had caused his panic attack. Sammy, as patient and persistent as ever, just stood and waited for him to speak. God, he was going to have to tell Sam everything, and he knew Sam would be pissed. He didn’t want to, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before his little brother started asking where Cas was.
“He left,” the older man whispered.
“Who left?” Sam asked in confusion. Dean didn’t know if he could even say the angel’s name out loud. It was hard enough thinking his name. “Dean?”
“Cas…he left,” the older hunter said, finally opening his eyes to look up at his younger brother.
“What do you mean he left?” Dean noticed then that his little brother had a deep furrow in his brow. God, he really didn’t want to do this. There’s not enough liquor in the world that could ever make him want to go through this.
“I mean he left… for good,” Dean breathed. Sam shook his head trying to figure out what his brother was talking about.
“Is he coming back?”
“What part of ‘for good’ do you not understand?” he snapped.
Sam took a step back and leveled him with a stare, crossing his arms over his broad chest, jaw visibly clenching. “What did you do?” It was asked with such an eerie calmness–– it was anything but. His question was laced with something chilling, deadly. If he wasn’t Sam’s brother, he was pretty sure he’d be six feet under. Sometimes Dean forgot just how intimidating his brother could be.
“We had a fight, I said… some things…” If it was possible, Sam’s glare became even deadlier.
He ended up telling Sam everything. And he looked down at the floor the entire time because he was too much of a coward to look Sammy in the eyes. It didn’t matter though because he felt his little brother’s heated stare the whole time. After he spoke his piece, they were enveloped by a tense silence; it felt quiet enough to hear dust motes crashing into each other. Waiting for Sam to break the silence was torture. Dean wiped his palms down his face before slowly looking up at his little brother. He wished he’d kept his head down.
“What the hell were you thinking?!” Sam boomed. His little brother was seething.
“I was thinking that I was mad!” he yelled back. “I was thinking about how Cas is responsible for mom getting killed! About how his stupid mistake killed Rowena! I was thinking about how FUCKING ANGRY I STILL AM!" His voice echoed throughout the bunker’s concrete walls.
“None of that was Cas’ fault, Dean! That was Jack! Jack made his own decisions-"
“Yeah, and look wh–"
“SHUT UP! God, would you just, for once, shut up!” Sam growled, cutting his brother off. The younger man’s chest heaved as he carded his fingers through his hair. Why the hell would his brother pull something like this right now? After everything Team Free Will had been through. “God, you are so fucking stupid,” Sam whispered.
And that stung. Dean looked down to the floor again and squeezed his eyes shut. He had always known Sam was the smart one. He was just the high school dropout. He was the grunt. Dean guessed being reminded constantly kept him from trying to be someone he’s not. The older man took a deep breath and looked back up at Sam. He didn’t interrupt this time because he deserved everything his little brother was doling out.
“Don’t you think we’ve lost enough people already, Dean? We’ve lost everyone! Everyone! And then you just…” Sam’s voice waivered with anger. He balled his fists at his sides as they trembled with anger. There was a dangerous itch under Sam’s skin to walk the few steps over to his older brother and punch him square in the jaw. “You’re so much like dad sometimes.” Sammy could only clench his jaw and shake his head. The younger hunter reached for his back pocket pulling out his phone. “I have to call him.”
“It’s no use, he’s not gonna answer. He left us, remember?”
“I have to at least try! He’s my best friend too, Dean! He’s my brother too!” Sam fumed as he unlocked his phone. He glared at Dean one last time before shaking his head and walking out of the room. “I can’t even look at you.”
Irony must be that bitch Karma’s twin sister.
Serves you right.
He grumbled at the warring sides of his conscience. His emotions were shot. He was angry, sad, embarrassed, ashamed, depressed… The shit had really hit the fan and it was all his damn fault. He stood up on shaky legs and walked towards the decanter of brandy. He picked up the crystal vessel and pulled out the stopper, chugging a good chunk of its contents. It burned going down, but he didn’t care because he needed to feel something other than the overwhelming emotions he was dealing with. He coughed as he picked up another mostly full decanter of liquor. He clenched both crystal decanters in his hands and stumbled down the hallway towards his room.
As soon as the door closed behind him, he slid down its smooth surface, coming to rest on his ass. This was exactly what he had looked like two years prior when he had had to burn Cas’ body. A sloppy drunk wallowing on the floor. Except this time was different. Last time Cas had left him because Lucifer had killed him. It had taken Dean days to put anything other than booze into his body. He didn’t shower, he didn’t eat, he holed up in his room... he had been a wreck. Sam had initially been patient taking care of him even though Dean had taken his anger out on him. But when Dean had taken a swing (and missed), Sam had had enough and stayed in a hotel for a few days to let Dean cool off. And how ironic that this seemed to be a repeat of two years ago… except this time it was worse because Cas had left on his own volition. Tears pricked his eyes. He clenched them shut and brought his right hand up to rub at them. He thought back on the brief period where he had been angry with Cas for dying and how irrational it had been.
After downing the rest of the liquor from the first decanter and half of the second, Dean came to the conclusion that losing people because they died was decidedly easier than losing someone who had intentionally walked out of your life– because the people who died didn’t choose to leave you, but the people who walked away, just didn’t want you anymore. They abandoned you. They threw you away like garbage. They didn’t care about you.
Unless you deserved to be left, like Dean did.
‘You don’t care…’ Dean closed his eyes sending warm tears down his face as Cas’ voice echoed in his mind. What a cruel, cruel irony. Maybe he had been wrong about irony being karma’s bitch sister, they seemed to be one in the same.
He sighed and knocked his head back against door behind him. The two most important people in his life would never forgive him. He had never hated himself more than he had then. But this was par for the course for Dean. A vicious cycle of drinking, anger, self-deprecation, and people leaving him. And when people left, he just drank harder, got angrier, and hated himself more.
Drinking was supposed to make it all stop, but this time it had made it all worse. He started thinking about everyone he’d lost. About all the people he couldn’t save. About the people he loved. He had failed them in one way or another. His mind supplied Sam’s annoying voice telling him to remember the amount of people they had saved. He growled at Sammy’s voice.
Dean brought one of the decanters up to his mouth for another swig, only to find it empty. When had that happened? He must’ve been on autopilot in his melancholy musings. He snarled and decided that his ass hurt too bad to keep sitting on the hard floor and that he should at least move his pity-party somewhere more comfortable—like his bed. He stood up on wobbly legs and had to lean against the wall to keep himself standing. He squeezed his eyes shut trying to rid himself of the dizziness. When he felt stable again, he leaned down to grab the empty decanters. When both were in hand he tried standing, only to lose his balance and topple over headfirst. He heard the decanters shatter against the floors and registered a sharp, burning pain in his right palm. The hunter brought his hand forward and looked down at a huge shard of crystal protruding from his palm.
“Fuck!" Perfect, fucking perfect. Dean grabbed the shard in his free hand, closing his eyes and taking a few fast breaths before quickly pulling the crystal from his hand. He groaned as the shard clattered to the floor, blood running down his forearm to the tile. He grabbed the second, mostly intact decanter, looked at it and stood up, throwing it across the room; it shattered against the wall into a million pieces.
His rage flared in his chest. He couldn’t take it anymore. Dean turned to the small desk to his left and swiped all the folders off the top before unceremoniously kicking it over. He looked down at the desk chair and grabbed it and smashed it into the concrete wall. It still wasn’t enough; anger was still rippling under his skin waiting to rupture. He walked two steps to the floor lamp, glass crunching under his boots, grasping it in his hands and breaking in over his knee; only the wires tethered the two halves together. The glass shade shattered as he flung it to the floor. His breathing was ragged, and rage clenched in his shoulders and neck. Dean heard his blood pumping in his ears as he stomped towards one of his bedside tables; he grabbed the lamp sitting on top of it, ripping the cord from the outlet in the process. Dean raised it above his head and smashed it at his feet. He turned back and grabbed the rotary phone in his hands before raising it, too, over his head and smashing it to the ground. The phone’s bell gave a pathetic toll as it struck the ground. He whipped around and looked at the shelf above his bed. He kicked the bedside table out of the way so he could reach the shelf and swiped its contents to the floor, leaving blood smeared across its top. A wooden cross clattered to the floor. He bent down and picked it up, splintering it across his knee before throwing the two halves across the room. He barely registered the pain in his knee from breaking both the metal floor lamp and the cross. It was getting harder to breathe and he was losing his steam, but it still wasn’t enough.
Dean stalked over to his chest of drawers and pulled it to the ground, sending yet another lamp crashing to the floor. He used his steel-toed boot to stomp down on the back of the dresser over and over until his foot finally broke through the wood. He felt the splintered wood lance at the skin around his shin and the hot blood flowing down his leg into his shoe.
Dean was gasping for air and started feeling dizzy. There didn’t seem to be enough oxygen in the room. He had to stop. He stumbled over to the corner of his bed and sat down, only to tumble off, crashing straight down onto his tailbone. Only then did Dean realize that at some point in his raging had he started crying. Hot tears poured down his face as he gulped for air. He couldn’t seem to get his lungs to cooperate.
What had he done?
He brought his knees to his chest- glass scraping under foot - and both hands up to run his fingers through his hair, unbothered by the fact that the blood from his injured hand smeared tackily through his hair. He wished he could take it back, all of it and go back to a time… maybe to two years ago to when Cas had come back from the Empty. He’d never been so happy to see his best friend. He wanted his angel back. Dean had never longed for something so much in his entire life. He sat there and sobbed, mourning what he’d just lost. All of it was his fault. He was poison, he always ruined everything.
Eventually his tears had ceased, and he passed out on the cold, hard floor like the dog that he is.
Sam never came to investigate.
Cas had lost track of how long he’d been driving, running solely on autopilot. He was numb. Eleven years of fighting by his fam– the Winchesters’– sides, and it all had just come to an end. He had left. The angel never thought he’d see the day. He had assumed he’d be with them until the hunters took their final breaths…but he had been so wrong. The situation left him disoriented. He didn’t even know where he was, only that it was a dark and lonely stretch of highway. His whole mind had just shut down, only the most basic parts were functioning.
Out of nowhere a vast surge of longing crashed through his grace, as fierce as a maelstrom. He gasped, as his tires squealed and the truck fish-tailed across the yellow line before he could bring it to an abrupt halt on the shoulder. He threw the truck in park and grasped the steering wheel with his shaking hands. He leaned his forehead against the wheel, clenched his eyes shut, and released a shuddering breath trying to calm himself. Never in his entire existence had he ever felt yearning that strong before.
With his powers failing, it wasn’t a huge surprise though. Every day he felt more and more human. He had started to notice that he had actually needed to breathe occasionally, and he even found he felt cold every so often. And the human emotions that coursed through his being, had grown more potent. It was getting harder and harder to compartmentalize and shut those things out… especially the soul/grace bond he shared with Dean.
Castiel had always known that there were still remnants of his grace bound to the hunter’s soul from when he had knitted Dean back together after Hell. That’s what had always made their bond so deep. Only when the last atom of his grace burned away would the soul/grace bond be broken. It could take a few years. Or even a century because even after Dean died, the hunter’s soul would still remain intact and consequently be tethered to Castiel’s grace.
The wall the angel had originally built between their bond– to give Dean privacy – was crumbling. The mortar that held it together was riddled with fissures, and tendrils of the bond were snaking through the crevasses like cold air slinking through a drafty window.
Cas loosened his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and took a deep calming breath. He focused his energy to patch the wall as best as he could manage with what little grace he dared to expend. But it was difficult, it would never be what it used to be. He wondered if he should just let it go, let it tumble down. There would being nothing standing in the bond’s way... Castiel didn’t think he could bare that. He would rather use his grace as long as he could to prevent the dam from breaking so he wouldn’t have to endure the bond for longer than was absolutely necessary. Because he was a coward. When the angel had lost his grace years ago, he had found it difficult to cope with the human emotions he experienced. It felt like he was on a nonstop emotional roller coaster, never knowing when the next hill, loop, or drop would come.
Becoming a human again was inevitable, and that thought frightened Castiel. He wanted his grace to last as long as possible. The downside to that though was, depending on when his grace finally burned out, he could be completely alone. Would the Winchesters still be alive when he became human? If so, would they make amends? If not, would anyone else the angel was acquainted with still be alive? Contact with Heaven was out with no grace to power Angel Radio.
His forehead was beaded with sweat by the time he had finally reinforced the wall that blocked his bond with Dean. It was weak, but it would hold. Cas let out a shuddering breath as a bout of nausea rolled over him… he noted that was yet another aspect of human life he didn’t miss. Luckily it had past just as quickly as it had come. When it had gone, he felt more himself.
As the angel emerged from his trance, he heard and felt his cell phone softly buzzing in his coat pocket. He opened his eyes, forehead still resting on the steering wheel. How long had it been going off? There was a huge part of him that wanted it to be Dean on the other end. He was scared to pick up his phone though. What if it was Dean? Did he even want to talk to Dean? Before he could work up the courage to answer, his phone stopped ringing. With a shaky hand he reached into his pocket for the device. He found notifications for 6 missed calls, 6 voicemails, and 7 unread texts… all from Sam. Cas couldn’t help the small pang that it hadn’t been Dean. Sam must know that he had left.
The phone lit up and started buzzing again in his calloused hands. Sam. Castiel’s thumb hovered over the answer button. His eyes flicked up from the screen to the moonless night sky. He debated on whether he should answer. Did he even want to talk to Sam? Yes. Sam didn’t do anything wrong. But…
The angel touched the End Call button, silencing the buzzing. It would be unwise to talk with Sam; he had quite the way with words and the angel would only have to hear the younger man’s voice for him to go running back to the Winchesters like a lost puppy. He couldn’t put himself or Sam in that situation. Dean couldn’t bear to look at the angel, and if Cas did show up, he and Sam would have hell to pay. No, it was better that Sam would be hurt by him alone and not his own brother. It was unnecessary for Sam to get the brunt of his brother’s anger when he could deal with Dean’s anger himself. He could give one of the Winchesters this last gift.
Castiel held the power button down until the phone shut down. He sniffed and cleared his throat, setting the phone face down on the passenger seat. He could do this, a clean break. No more strings. It would be better for all of them in the long run. Dean would most likely let Sam know that his mojo was failing, and the youngest man would figure out that Cas was useless to them without his powers, much like Dean had already concluded.
Cas wiped the back of his hand across his forehead and face. He took a deep breath and adjusted his mirror before pulling out onto the highway. This was what was best for everyone.