Archive of Our Own

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— W.B. Yeats

***

August 24 ^th , 2018 – Hurleyville, New York

It's not quite Vermont, though it's true that now it is only a state away, and it's not quite a bed & breakfast either, though Dean likes to think they do treat their boarders pretty well, at least as good as any cheap hotel. So Sonny's Home For Boys, now under Winchester administration, may not quite be the idyllic retirement retreat Dean had once joked to Cas about way back when, but he likes to think that what they actually got turned out a good deal better than anyone could have hoped for. Until a few years ago, Dean never thought he'd ever get a chance at something like this at all to begin with, an honest to God (or maybe not Him, on second thought, the deadbeat that He is) second chance .

But here it was, all two stories of farm house and a modest hundred acres, with a gaggle of kids colouring the halls, and Cas' kind hands to hold him to the earth at night. Dean never did get around to fix up the place like he'd wanted to, when Sonny handed him the keys, nor was he able to convince Sam to stay with them (a battle, to be sure, only fought half-heartedly, now that Dean understood his brother more since they first started out together), but all in all it was a good place to settle. Quiet, if you discount the kids running about at most hours, and clean, if you forgave the dirt they scuffed in, and peaceful, if you forgot how still, after all these years, Dean and Castiel in close quarters were less like a firecracker and more like a bonfire.

Truthfully, Dean wouldn't have it any other way.

Even still, on a good day, Dean can hardly believe that this is his life now—hell, that he has a life to begin with. Even during his year with Lisa, he still had always operated as though he would never live to see the world past 35. Technically, he supposes, that assumption was right: he not only actually did die on several occasions, but the last time, even despite all his hard won hunter's doubt, he had really thought that it was for good .

And in a way, maybe, it was. Maybe something did die that night forever, for nothing was ever the same since.

It wasn't just the darkness that came immediately after, the smell of sulphur and smoke and the wrenching twist of hate and guilt that broiled and burned his body from the inside out—no.

It was also the hope that impossibly bore itself out of that darkness. That lingering, flicker of something, that behind all the rage and resentment, held on through the hurricane.

It took a long time for that part to grow, of course, even after Sam “cured” Dean of his demonic curse, there was still something unsettled in his soul, something anxious and scared and desperate to pull itself apart. Dean still doesn't know if that part of him will ever be unbroken. But something did happen that night that Dean's eyes went back to green from black: he may not have reached the light at the end of his tunnel, but he saw it. Dean still struggles to forgive himself, but now it no longer seems impossible .

He always did have a way of defying destiny, didn't he?

“I'm proud of us,” he had said, struggling to breathe through the blood welling up in this throat, as he died in his brother's arms.

Those words still reverberate in Dean's chest, and he tries not to think of the pain stinging them when he holds tight to them as a trophy. Because at least he had that , at the end of everything, his brother whole and alive and for the first time, in a long time, he was proud , of Sam, of them both, of himself . With everything else stripped away after, he still had that, and still does to this day. After all, it was that impossible pride that the foundations of the rest were built on, all this hope and peace.

For a moment on the brink of death, Dean believed in himself, and that he will never take back.

He wonders if it doesn't make a strange sort of sense, then, that he ended up here, here at Sonny's home for lost boys that he'd once stayed in long ago. After all this wandering all these years, back ever burdened by the weight of nightmares seen in daylight, Dean wound up at the same doorstep, and, in that same home for lost boys, he was found.

***

“Uh, what happened here?” Dean asks, brow raised in surprise as enters the kitchen and surveys what looks a lot like a scene of a crime, what with all the mess and smears of red on the two young boys present. “A massacre?”

The eldest of them, a boy of 13 named Mo, has the good sense to look at least a bit guilty at making such a mess, but of course like any smart kid, is quick to defer blame. “Cas is teaching us how to make jam,” he explains in a totally unhelpful way, as Cas is nowhere in sight.

Dean raises an eyebrow, skeptical as he considers the wiry dark skinned boy. “Is he? Or is this a cover up for killing him?”

Tristan, the younger of the two, rolls his eyes. “It's raspberry, ” he explains of the blood-red colour, then picks up one of the open jars on the counter, only half full with decanted jam from the large pot on the stove, and hands it up to Dean. “Try!”

Dean dips a finger in to scoop up a generous dollop, and then plops into his mouth.

“Shit that's good,” he says appreciatively when he swallows. “You guys made this all on your own?”

Mo shrugs, looking down at the floor in self-deprecation. Dean knows the look, he's a familiar sporter of it, too. “Cas did most of it,” he says, avoiding anyone's gaze as he ducks his head to hide a small, proud smile.

“You did most of it,” a voice comes from behind Dean, who turns to great the bearer. Cas stands in the open doorway leading to the backyard, evening sun lighting him up from behind in such a stupidly perfect way that it makes Dean want to write Hallmark poetry, or some shit. Cas always was a beautiful bastard, but Dean has the liberty now of noticing it more and more. He smiles in greeting, and then turns back to the boys.

“I merely gave you the tools to get you started,” Cas says pointedly, coming to stand beside Dean, and looking at the boys with a discerning stare, as if to warn them not to sell themselves short again.

“Although I hate to inform you that you will also do most of the clean up, too,” he adds, just to make his role of pseudo-parent well rounded.

The boys, expectedly, bemoan this decree. “Aw, come on!” they whine in unison.

“Hey, the faster this gets cleaned up the faster I can set up to start dinner,” Dean says, hoping to coax some enthusiasm back into them. “And it's fajita night.”

This seems to do the trick of lifting the boys' spirits, and they grin at each other before racing to the bathroom to wash themselves off.

Cas steps into the kitchen quietly, as is his way (Dean, for all his intelligence, still can not figure out for the life of him how he manage to keep that stealthy silent thing going on even as a human). “Who's on dinner tonight?” he asks, as he turns towards the counter to begin aiding the boys in their clean up.

“Ah, Oliver,” Dean answers, saddling up next to Cas to lean with his back against the counter as Cas works. “Jason got a freebie,” he explains, for it is an odd, hasty change of schedule.

Normally, every kid has their own day for helping Dean cook dinner, as a way to both get them used to being responsible for house hold chores, but Dean also hopes they'll actually pick up some practical skills to live on when they age out of the system and have to kick it on their own, like he did. Plus, it's a good way to give Dean some one on one time with each kid, especially as the distraction of the work often leads to frank, honest conversation.

It helps them both, he thinks.

“Is this for Sunday?” Castiel asks without looking at him, eyes focused on washing out the giant pot they had used for the jam. The sleeves of his light blue linen shirt are rolled up above his elbows, a distracting sight. Dean hesitates for a moment before his mind gets back on track.

“Yeah,” he says, thinking back to the even a few days ago when their newest border, a 15 year old kid named Oliver, blew up at him and tried to land a good punch. Despite all of Dean's worry over the kid in the days since, he can't deny that the kid threw a good one. “I made mandatory bonding time his punishment,” he explains with a tone of humour, though he's not really joking.

Oliver's case has to be one of the more interesting ones Dean has seen in the three years since he took over Sonny's Home For Boys. Not that any of the lives of these kids could be described as normal , not when they'd had all chance of that stolen away from them, like Dean himself had, when he was young, no—none of their stories fell into the annals of the American dream. But even for the bunch of misfits that they were, even Oliver was a new one.

For the tragic truth about all of them here on the farm in Hurleyville, though perhaps the one thing that binds them all together, is that all of them are a little bit lost, in need of a home. A trans kid from an even smaller town than this one, Oliver was just 14 when his parents kicked him out of their house, and with no other family nor friends to take him in, he skipped out to fend off the wide world and their prejudices all on his own. Caught pickpocketing at a gas station in town, the Sheriff, who, if not a friend of Dean's, was at least an ally in these matters, dropped him off here instead of booking him. A favour Dean was grateful for, for who knows what would have happened to him if put into the system proper. Dean can only imagine the amount of gender base discrimination he would have faced, and he shudders to think it would probably have been no different from what Oliver had already face from his own family.

“He has a lot of pent up anger,” Cas says. “Understandably.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Dean agrees. “But, well. I figured... cooking always helped me relax, 'specially when things got... difficult with my dad or Sam.” Dean shrugs. “Maybe it'll help the same for him.”

Castiel nods in understanding. “If it gets too stressful, let me know. I can always take over.”

“We'll be fine. Plus, give up my free ticket out of dish duty?” Dean grins cheekily. “Hell no. Never.”

Castiel smiles back. “You do like when I have to roll my sleeves up,” he observes, eyeing Dean with playful suspicion.

Dean puts his hands up in mock defence. “I promise you, I have nothing but innocent thoughts.”

“Don't make promises you have no intention of keeping, Dean Winchester,” Castiel warns in the same tone of mischief.

“Hey,” Dean says as he leans in closer to leer in Cas ear, “I can always keep my thoughts innocent and my hands dirty.”

Castiel, however, the bastard, remains stoic despite Dean's best efforts. He raises a brow. “Hmm, I'd like to see you try.”

His attempts at goading Cas into kissing him failed, Dean elects to take the initiative, and full advantage of Cas' otherwise occupied hands, to kiss him himself. He makes sure it is wet, tantalising, and entirely thorough.

After a good few, luxurious moments of making out, a disgusted voice sounds from behind them, breaking them apart.

“Ew, gross guys! This is a public space!”

Mo, newly returned from the bathroom down the hall, stands in the door way with a pinched face that only a child completely and utterly done with all adults could master.

“You've been spending too much time around Sam!” Dean defends, as he steps back, giving Cas space to finish the dishes.

“Because he's way cooler than you!” Mo objects, and with an excellent timing for the dramatic, strides back out again to go find his missing jam companion.

Dean gasps in feigned horror. “Mutiny!” he yells, hoping both Mo and Tristan can hear him down the hall.

Privately to Cas, however, he's a little more sincere. “He doesn't really think Sam's cooler than me, does he?” he asks, looking somewhat helpless. There's nothing quite like feeling superseded in affection by a sibling, even at his age.

Cas looks at him with sympathy, but rather like Dean has missed something completely obvious.

“You're effectively his father figure,” he tells him. “He loves you, but of course he thinks Sam's cooler than you.” He may not have ever been a human child himself, in the strictest sense (though existentially that dose pose an interesting query that he mulls over still), but Castiel has been around children long enough to know how easily children of a certain age are embarrassed by their parents.

“You think I'm cool though, right? Even though I'm getting old?” Dean asks, searching for a little consolation.

“It think, as you'd say, I don't have much basis for judgement, having not grown up with and therefore internalised such social cues and norms. But yes,” he says, completely deadpan. “I do think you're very 'cool'.”

“I hope that was an intentional misuse of air quotes, buddy,” Dean calls after him as Cas turns to leave, but Cas remains suspiciously quiet.

“Cas?" Dean shouts after him. "Cas!”

***

If not smoothly, dinner and its preparation go at least as expected. Oliver puts up the prophecised protest at being requested to help Dean in the kitchen, but as Dean suspected, he ends up enjoying the routine of cooking and the reward of creating something delicious. Dish duty is met by the kids with the appropriate groans, but completed quickly. When everyone is shuffled upstairs to their rooms or to finish other chores and homework that they'd avoided during the day's good weather, Castiel is glad to have the peace and quiet again, if only for a moment.

Placing the last of the plates in the drying rack, Castiel leans against the counter, sleeves of his shirt still rolled up to his elbows, and hands still red from the hot water of the sink. He doesn't hear Dean come up to him until he speaks.

“Not bad, huh?” Dean smiles, standing next to Cas with his hands in the pockets of his well-worn jeans.

Castiel, though his eyes betray his tiredness, looks up and offers a soft smile back. “It was very delicious, Dean, as always.”

“Ah, you're biased,” Dean shrugs the compliment off, almost out of habit, but he's still smiling.

There is something about that smile that always inspires something in Castiel, even at his most exhausted. The wide, pink curve of it easily entrances, Castiel had long known, but it took him awhile to understand what it meant, the way his heart fluttered at it, the way his lungs felt lighter, full of air that as an angel he did not need to breath but soared on anyway. Though his back aches and his body yearns for bed, Castiel can only meet that smile as encouragement. He reaches for Dean.

“I wouldn't pretend to be otherwise, but I'm also being honest,” Castiel points out, as he pulls their bodies close, hands on Dean's waist.

“Yeah, you are a shitty liar,” Dean chuckles, wrapping his own arms around Cas, smile lilting into a smirk.

Castiel frowns. “I am in fact a very good liar, I'll have you know,” he objects, though it's half-hearted. It's not like he has any thought of pulling away. It's almost strange, how lightly they can talk of this now, their mistakes and their betrayals and everything dark and dangerous they've been through, and not collapse under the weight of it. Perhaps they'd emerged out of the ashes stronger, after all. “The problem is—or had been—that I never actually want to lie to you,” he admits quietly, and does not wait for a response before closing the distance between their lips, and kissing him.

It's not a deep kiss, not a long one, but it is sincere. Castiel can feel Dean lean into it, and hum in pleasure. Cas pulls away though to make his way across Dean's cheek, kissing the underside of Dean's stubbled jaw, tasting the sweat of the day as he nuzzles into Dean's hair and breathes in. He both hears and feels Dean let out a heavy breath, too, as the melt into each other, there, in the kitchen, in their strange but welcome home.

The all-too-brief moment, is shattered, however, by the ring of the door bell, echoing artificially loud in the quiet house.

Dean's face scrunches first in surprised then in confusion as they peel apart. “Who the hell is out her at this time of night?” he wonders aloud, before moving to go answer it. Castiel stops him with a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“I'll get it,” he says with a nod, imagining it's probably some ill timed mail courier or a concerned parent who's child goes to school with their boys. It's happened often enough, those kind of complaints, that they've learned well how to deal with them. Trying his best not to look too flustered, like he'd just been caught making out with someone (which, well, he had), Castiel straightens his shirt and opens the door, “Hello,” already on his lips.

Any other words he was about to say, however, die in his throat when he sees who it is.

Standing on the porch is none other than Claire Novak.

***

“Surprise! Bet you'd thought you'd seen the last of me,” Claire grins, as if laughing at her own joke. Castiel scarcely knows what on Earth it must be about, but even if he did, it wouldn't have mattered, for any and all thoughts are wiped from his mind when he perceives the face of someone he'd never thought he'd see again but will remember forever.

“Claire,” he breathes out, half dazed, half wondering if he's not actually dreaming.

She's changed, of course she has. At about 5'8” with stylishly cut hair and a self-consciously cool leather jacker over a pink t-shirt, she's clearly grown up. But yet Castiel knows unmistakably that it's her , as he'd known the sight of Dean's soul through the blackest fires of Hell. He no longer has any Grace left in him, but he swear he can feel a tug of something between them, a beckoning who's sound is dangerously enticing.

The humour is gone from Claire's eyes as she levels the former angel with a steady, serious look. Her eyes are as fierce as he remembers, all fire, all defiance.

“Castiel,” is all she says blankly, with a bare amount of movement as her eyes stay laser focused on his. Castiel feels frozen on the spot, caught between the threshold of two worlds. Behind him, he can hear Dean approach the door with curiosity, but he does not react, he can't.

“Cas, what—“ Dean begins to asking as he comes up from behind, but then too stops short when he sees who is on the other side of the open door.

“Claire? What the hell're you doing here?” he blurts out. Dean was never very skilled at masking his surprise, though in this moment, Castiel wonders if that if not an advantage.

Claire huffs out an aborted laugh as her gaze shifts to Dean. “Nice to see you too, Dean,” she drawls. “Now will someone invite me in?”

It's then that Castiel notices she has a bag with her, a nondescript blue duffel sitting by her feet.

Dean collects himself from his surprise far quicker and more adeptly than Cas. “Oh, yeah, yeah,”he says, standing aside to give her a path. “Sorry, come on in. We, uh, just finished dinner, but we still got some left overs if you're hungry.”

“Nah, I'm good, thanks,” Claire tells him, ignoring Cas as she passes by him to arrive inside. “I stopped in at the diner up the road first. Collect my courage, settle my stomach, you know. They had great burgers.”

“Ha, yeah they're—” Dean begins to say, but realises about halfway through the implications of it. “... Cas' favourite,” he concludes awkwardly. Not Jimmy's favourite. Cas'.

Unfortunately, Claire is quick to pick up on his tactlessness. “My dad always loved a good burger,” she says with a flat expression.

Dean flounders, unsure of what to say to that, but is saved from having to respond when Castiel finds his voice again. His face is gaunt when he replies, “He did,” with a rough, regretful voice.

Claire's gaze rounds on him again with an offended glare. Dean jumps in before anything escalates. “Um, why don't I make sure the kids aren't up to mischief and make up a bed for you, Claire?” he offers. “You gonna stay the night?”

Claire shrugs. “If it's on offer.”

“Yeah, of course,” Dean nods, taking her bag from her to take upstairs. Dean shoots Cas a look that says please don't hate me for running away from this but I sense she kinda just wants to talk to you before heading upstairs to drop her stuff in the spare room and update the boys on the new arrival of their guest.

***

They sit across from each other on the living room's old, saggy couches, but manage to avoid the other's eye for a strange, tension filled few minutes before Castiel breaks the silence.

“Where are you travelling from?”

“Ah, no, see, I'm gonna need to get what I came to know first before I give anything else up to you,” Claire snaps, unimpressed.

Castiel is visibly taken aback, and sits up straighter, but at the same time, he cannot blame her for her rancour. “What do you want to know?” he asks, willing to answer her anything he can. It is the least he can do, after everything. He wishes so badly he could do more.

Clearly Claire's been sitting on her answer for many years, for she's fast to burst out with, “Where the fuck have you been? ”

Castiel swallows thickly, unsure of where to begin. “That's a rather long answer.”

“Well, I've got time,” Claire challenges with a raise of her chin. “I'm staying over aren't I? It'll be my bedtime story. To, you know, make up for all the ones my dad didn't get to tell me.”

“Claire, I'm—” Castiel starts, but cuts himself off just as quickly, admonishing himself with a shake of his head. He begins again with a renewed raw ache in his voice: “I suppose saying I'm sorry will sound too hollow to you now, but I am. I am sorry.”

A strained silence follows, the both of them unsure of what to say next. Castiel's heart beat thrums through his ear in anxious anticipation of rejection. He cannot say he doesn't deserve it. But again, Claire surprises him.

Her brow is knitted, thoughtful, a sharp change from the potent resentment just moments before.

“At first I hated my mom, for dad's death,” she begins, slowly. “As if her doubt, her silence was what pushed him away, that maybe if she had only believed him from the start he wouldn't've...”

“That would not have made a difference in the face of heaven's designs,” Castiel tells her with regret.

“I know, I know that now. But I was 8. I was angry. And sad, and I missed my dad. And I missed—” she cuts herself off, shaking her head.

“What?” Castiel prompts, curious despite the unyielding anxiety still straining his chest.

“Then I blamed my dad,” Claire continues, as if she hadn't faltered at all, ignoring Castiel's question. “You know, angry teenage angst phase, everything annoyed me. I blamed my dad for saying yes, for leaving us. I hate myself to think about it, but no, for awhile there... I kind of hated him,” she admits, head hanging low, not meeting Castiel's eye. He cannot blame her, for all the talk of blame.

It all lies with him , he knows.

“That's understandable,” he says. “But he truly did only want the best for you. He thought he was doing the right thing.” He pauses, thinking back to how full of mission he'd been, how naïve and foolish he'd been to trust that faith in ghosts would lead to a better life. “We both did.”

Her mouth betrays a smile, as she raises her gaze back to him. The corner of her mouth quirks up, almost despite herself, Castiel thinks.

“But you know what the worst part is?” she says after a moment, looking at him thoughtfully. Castiel has no idea. What could be worse than losing everything you'd thought was true?

She stares at him, blue eyes meet blue. “Is that I can't hate you .”

“I mean, I should—I should hate you. I could—at least, I'd be within my rights to.” “But I don't. I never did.”

“Why?” Castiel asks in shock and disbelief.

“Because I knew you,” she says. “I—I saw you, I was you. And I knew, I knew the reason I said 'yes' was the same reason why you asked me. That the love I felt for my dad was the same you felt for Dean.”

She says it like a fact, like some sort of universal Truth everyone is just born knowing, how and who he fell for. Castiel has been human long enough now that he flushes on reflex. He's hardly used to others speaking of his and Dean's relationship so frankly, least of all the daughter of the man whose life he stole in order to have his own. He averts his gaze to collect himself.

Claire, though, interprets his bashfulness somewhat differently, and is quick to clarify: “Or, I mean, not the same, not like that, but... just as powerful,” she smiles briefly down at her hands nestled in her lap. “I can't hate you because we both did what we did for love,” she says, “and for a second, we were the same.”

“I didn't even know I was in love with Dean back then,” Castiel says quietly, finally finding his voice. “Howcouldyou?”

“You forget that I've been human longer than you,” Claire points out with a gentle look. “Not that love is restricted to humans, I mean...” she waves her hand around awkwardly, as if fishing for words out of the air. “You know. We have a habit of noticing it better, since we get fucked up by it so much.”

“You do write an awful lot of songs about it,” Castiel deadpans, despite himself. He's afraid he's picked up on some of Dean's habits of breaking seriousness with humour. He's both ashamed and oddly proud of himself.

“Yeah, I'm sure that you've listened sappily to while thinking about Dean,” Claire returns, rolling her eyes.

At the same time, they both realise how quickly such a loaded conversation has swung around to being about Castiel's love life. Castiel ducks his head, hiding his grimace at his impropriety. “This is weird, isn't it,” Castiel says flatly. It isn't a question.

“Yeah.”

“I'm sorry.” Castiel's beginning to resent that word himself for how much he's said it, but he still means it. He still means it with everything he has.

“It's okay—well,” she catches herself. “No, it's not okay, but,”she shrugs. “He's gone. My dad is gone and I'm still here because of it. That's something.”

“It is something.” Castiel is vehement. He longs to reach across the distance between their seats, and put his arms around her. She looks so small, somehow, and so wonderful. “He loved you very much.”

Claire's eyes are shiny, on the brink of tears. “I know,” she half-chokes out. “I loved him right back.”

Castiel hesitates for a second, but finally abandons his corn to stand up and shift over to Claire couch. He sits down slowly next to her, careful to gauge whether he presence is unwelcome, but Claire leans into him as soot as he's seated. He puts his arms around her, in an awkwardly angled but desperately needed hug. Her short sobs are muffled by his shirt, and he holds her tighter.

When she pulls away, wiping her eyes and blushing in slight embarrassment, she looks at him as if for the first time again. “I missed you, too, you know,” she says quietly. “Not just my dad, not just how things used to be with my mom and everything. But I missed you.”

Castiel blinks. That was the last thing he expected to hear.

“Why?”

Claire bites her lip. “With you I felt...” she searches. “ Massive . Unlimited. Weightless and powerful all at once. It felt like I could feel the turn of the universe and not fall down under the centripetal force.”

Her words are full of unspoiled awe, and for a brief moment, Castiel lets himself marvel in it, such untainted innocent wonder. But it's a sentiment for him that sours quickly into worry. To be in awe of angels can lead one down dangerous paths.

“Is that—” Castiel starts. “Is that why you came to find me? To be my vessel again?” His face falls, his chest feels tight. “I'm not an angel anymore, Claire,” he tells her, face earnest and sad. “Even if I was, I couldn't—” He wouldn't.

“No, I know that,” Claire says quickly. “Even before I knew I suspected... There're these books, you know, called Supernatural? They're some weird, creepy, physic insight into your lives, and they have my dad in there, and me, and you. And everything that came after Dean and Sam left us.”

Ah, yes, the Gospels, Castiel thinks. He Dean's mentioned them on occasion since their first encounter with Chuck, but always with bitterness. Castiel, thought, privately has a soft spot for them (and less privately, a soft spot for Dean).

“The books are flawed, but mostly accurate in terms of events,” he nods.

“So is that when you fell, became human?”

“Somewhat,” Castiel replies, knowing Carver Edlund's oeuvre stopped just after they sent Lucifer and Michael to the Cage. He had practically fallen, before his miraculous death and resurrection that day. “More like almost. It was an incomplete venture, as I imagine Edlund's books describe. How you see me now is the result of a different plot line, if you will,” he explains, and quirks his mouth up in an awkward smile at his own literary joke.

Claire considers him. “You've changed.”

“A bit,” Castiel says. Perhaps not enough, he thinks. “So have you, I see. You've grown up.”

Claire ducks her head bashfully. “Well, I like to pretend I have at least.”

“No, you've done well,” he insists, placing an encouraging hand on her knee. “Your father would be proud.”

“Yeah, yeah I hope,” she shallows thickly. And then a new thought occurs to her. “You got, um... kids? You and Dean? He was talking about them earlier...” she nods back towards the hall where she'd come in.

“They're not our children,” Castiel says, before titling his head thoughtfully. “Well, I suppose in a sense they are, but not in the way you mean. This is a boys' home, for children in the foster system, or delinquents without a place to go.”

“Holy shit,” Claire laughs. “So you guys run some sort of... juvy halfway house?”

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose.” Castiel folds his hands into his lap. “It had been under the management of a friend of Dean's from his own teenage years, when he himself spent some time here. He retired, and we retired from hunting, more or less, and came here.”

It feels strange to sum up the last few years of his life so simply, when none of it felt simple, but perhaps it's a good thing that he doesn't have to load it with caveats and conditions. Maybe their peace will be lasting, after all.

“Retired from hunting, huh?” Claire looks impressed. “That must have been... big.”

“It both was and it wasn't, in a way,” Castiel says, because that's the only way he can really describe it. It wasn't an easy choice by any means, especially for Dean, who had never known anything else, but it was the right one.

“Is that before or after you guys finally got together?” Claire then asks, trying to sound casual and innocent, but her refusal to meet Cas' eyes betrays her motives. Castiel has no desire to hide from her, though, and she deserves his utmost honesty if he can give it.

“After,” he replies. “Though not that long after, in all honesty.”

“And how long after your fall?”

Castiel has to pause and think for a moment. “About a year and some months. Dean and I...”—he doesn't exactly know how to be delicate about beginning intimate relations between him an Dean, so he tries to be as oblique as possible—“Well, when my fall was finally... final , we were able to come to some revelations about each other. About how... we felt.”

“About time,” Claire snorts.

It makes Castiel's mouth quirk up. “Yes, it was indeed,” he says warmly, but feels like that's about as far as this area of conversation can go. “I don't know how I feel talking about this with you,” he admits for both of their sakes.

But Claire is both stubborn by nature and a teenager. “What, you and Dean?” she laughs. “There was a moment when I was prepared to be your vessel forever. I think I can handle a little weirdness.”

She looks at him, blue eyes far too old and wise for someone her age. They are the eyes of someone who has seen too much that they cannot forget.

“You look like my dad,” she says. “But I'm probably the only one who knows how much you aren't.”

This, Castiel cannot deny, is true.

***

September, 2015 — Hurleyville, New York

It's only been four years since Dean saw the house last, instead of the previous eighteen, but it still feels like a lifetime has passed. In a way, it has. He's died and come alive, been a demon and become human again. He's lost so many good people but also gained new friends. He's a different man now, from the last time he paid a visit to Sonny's Home for Boys, and he's strangely... good with that.

He just doesn't know if he's entirely good with what's gonna come next. But ready or not, he's going to have to face it, 'cause when asked by Sonny if he wouldn't mind taking over the boys home for a few months while Sonny found a permanent replacement after an accident put him off his feet, Dean agreed .

The memory of the conversation is hazy even though it only happened yesterday, as it it was a dream, something only half-experienced. But it was real . Which is why Dean finds himself this morning sitting at the kitchen table ( his kitchen table now?), frozen in fear as he stares blankly at the opposite wall. And this is how Cas also finds him, as he wanders into the kitchen to get himself a coffee.

Despite the ordeal of it, one of the greatest advantages to becoming human again for Cas has been his renewed interest in exploring flavours of food. His favourite still remains coffee, poured as black and dark as possible.

Once he makes himself a nice warm mug, he takes the seat at the small, linoleum kitchen table that hasn't really been in style since the early 70s, and waits for Dean to speak. He can tell by the tight set of Dean's shoulders that something is on his mind, waiting to burst out.

As expected, Dean sighs, before he blurts out, “Maybe this was all too much too soon, I don't know.”

Castiel doesn't have to ask what this is. He knows Dean too well.

“More than hunting?” Castiel asks, a little incredulously. He understands it's an adjustment, to be sure, but children are hardly an easy task in looking after, and indeed if anyone was up to it, it would be Dean.

“I'm used to hunting,” Dean explains. “But this...” He shakes his head. “I haven't got a fucking clue.”

“You're very natural with children,” Castiel tells him earnestly. “You've already earned everyone's respect.”

Dean huffs, frustrated at himself. “Yeah, but I can't...” he searches for the words, but falls short, scowling down at his hands. After a moment, he looks up again, eyes wide and weary. “What if I fuck up, Cas?”

Though he wants to immediately deny it to be true, Castiel considers Dean's words carefully, for he knows they were revealed to him with trust. “Well,” he begins slowly, “That wouldn't be the first time a human has done so. I hardly have much experience in the realm of childcare either, but I'd say it was normal.”

Dean lets out self-deprecating huff. “Yeah, but my track record isn't exactly normal .”

“No,” Castiel agrees, turning his head to glance out the window, to the boys kicking a soccer ball around the yard. He looks at Dean out of the corner of his eye. “It's quite exceptional.”

“Keep talkin' like that, I'll have to keep you around,” Dean jokes self-effacingly. It's not an uncommon thing, but this is one instant where Castiel cannot afford to let it slide.

“That wouldn't be a bad thing,” he says, with the full force of his meaning in his tone. I want to stay, his eyes plead. Please ask me.

Dean shifts self-consciously in his chair. “No? You weren't thinkin' of...”

“What?”

“Jetting off with Sam? When he bails back to Kansas?”

“It hadn't occurred to me,” Castiel admits honestly. He had wondered if Dean wanted him to stay with him, but he hadn't made any contingency plans yet. He's enjoyed himself too much here, these past few weeks of adjustment. Castiel never thought he'd enjoy standing still, but in the recent days... he has.

Perhaps because being here isn't really standing still at all, at least not in the soul deep sense of being stagnant, static, feeling trapped and alone. Castiel does not feel that here, among the tall grasses and gentle breezes and Dean's smile that comes easier and easier with each passing day.

“So you're not leaving.”

“Not as long as I'm welcome to stay.”

“You're always welcome, Cas,” Dean says softly, though voice slightly shaky, betraying the vulnerable nature of such an admission. For when he says always, he means both in the past, and in the future. He means always for every time Dean did not ask and Cas did not come. For every opportunity they missed, for every mistake they made. He means always, for he'd rather have him, cursed or not.

“Always?” Castiel asks, with open wonder.

“Always,” Dean re-affirms, and then seems to come to some new decision. Before Castiel could ask, however, Dean is already responding with his answer, with his lips upon Castiel's mouth.

It's a light touch, for all of Dean's boldness, maybe even hesitant, but it needn't be. For with the first touch of Dean's finger's at his cheek, and his lips upon his lips, Castiel's soul feels lit on fire, and lifted up like a hot air balloon, above the clouds to disappear into the sky. He kisses back with far more earnestness than Dean's initial overture, tinged with a bit of inexperience too, and this enthusiasm prompts Dean to pick up in kind.

***

August 24 ^th , 2018 – Hurleyville, New York

“So?” Dean asked when Cas finally joined him in bed, lifting up the covers (light during the summer months, though Cas often insists on more sheets than necessary to feel coddled, as it were; Dean has since given up on objecting after too many nights of the same endless argument) and sliding in next to Dean.

Dean could be asking after any number of things, so as he settles into the warm folds of their bed, Castiel asks for clarification. “What?”

“Claire,” Dean explains, knowing full and well Cas was just evading the question. “How is she? How are you?”

Castiel looks down at his hands, clasped loosely in his lap. “I don't know if I have answers to either of those questions,” he says sombrely.

“So not okay, then,” Dean finishes astutely.

“I don't think this is an issue on a 'fine/not fine' spectrum, Dean,” Castiel returns indignantly, in that uptight way of his that Dean actually kind of finds adorable despite often being annoyed by it. “It's far too complicated for that.”

“Yeah, no kidding. But I know complicated. Try me.”

“She is...” Castiel searches for the right words. He is so very tired. “Much more mature than I would have thought.”

“Yeah, traumatic childhoods will do that to you,” Dean comments wryly, though not unkindly. He feels for Claire, having been through what she did and still come out of it not only alive but in one piece in more ways than one. He envies her a bit, if he's honest. For him, it never was that easy, even if it was the hardest thing she had ever done.

Cas seems to agree. “Indeed.”

“It's weird, you know,” Dean says after a silence. “I mean, I know Claire isn't your kid, but it's weird to see a kid that looks like you.”

Though they are effectively the guardians of ten kids at the moment, Dean has wondered (more often now than before ) what it would be like to raise a child with Cas. Not that they really have the biological means to do so, or the time, but standing still for three years has done funny things to Dean's head—he thinks about things like this sometimes, about seeing Cas' eyes in some kids face. He guess he doesn't really have to imagine anymore, though.

“It's like you're her long lost uncle, or something,” he tries for levity instead. 

Cas actually ponders this thought seriously. Dean should never doubt his ability to turn any conversation into an existential exercise. “Genetically speaking we are related. Even if this body— my body—is removed enough in its destruction and reconstruction to be Jimmy's any more, the DNA is all the same. It's a bit like I was a clone, or an identical twin. We are the same man, in a biological sense.”

“But not in the actual sense,” Dean clarifies.

“No,” Castiel concedes. “But that's what makes it complicated. She must see me and see her father and her father's killer all at once.”

Dean's face falls. “Hey, you didn't—”

But Castiel cannot hear his platitudes in this moment, fuelled with self-directed bitterness.

“I as good as killed Jimmy myself, Dean,” he bites out, mood shifting from contemplative to inwardly aimed contempt in the span of a breath. “His possession was always going to be a death sentence, wether the apocalypse was derailed or not. If heaven had succeeded in its plans, we were not to keep our vessels. Jimmy would have been left to suffer in the destruction of the Earth.”

“That wasn't your fault,” Dean persists, but then tilts his head, not ready to completely ignore their shared history either. “Not alone anyway,” he corrects. “You were a dick back then, but it wasn't all up to you.”

Dean still doesn't know everything of Castiel's relationship to heaven, and the history of his service to it. When it came down to it, not even Castiel knew everything, as too much of it had been stolen from him, wrenched out of his mind like a petty thief mining copper wire. One day, Castiel will tell him everything, but they are still in the process of learning each other. Castiel is still in the process of learning himself.

“I was complicit,” he says, for despite all of Naomi's interference, there were times when he still willingly ignored his doubts. Perhaps he was being manipulated then too, but Castiel cannot afford to believe he never had his own thoughts, his own feelings. If he can own his doubts he can also own his actions with regards to them. Though he did make the break when it really counted, there were so many times in that year...

Castiel shakes his head.

“Still, though,” he continues into more happy territory, “the more difficult thing is knowing that as much as I blame myself, I also do not regret my path.”

Dean frowns. “How so?”

The blankets rustle quietly as Cas twists to lay a hand over Dean's own. “It brought me to you.”

Beneath his, Castiel can feel Dean's hand curl into the sheets. “Cas—” Dean chokes out, unable to say anything more than the one name he would know even in the deepest darkness. The name he would remember at the end of the world.

“And that,” Castiel concludes firmly, “despite all our troubles, I can never regret.”

“Shit,” Dean finally coughs out, “you're a hopeless romantic, you know that, right?”

“Romantic, perhaps. But not hopeless,” Castiel says with a bit of a playful, mischievous smile. He then threads Dean's fingers into his own, and holds their palms against each other, solid and warm. “I have too good company for that.”

Dean can't help but smile back. “You're something else, you fucking sap,” he accuses, but there's no force to it, except one of fierce gratitude .

“The same could be said of you,” Castiel points out.

“You're damn right,” Dean says proudly, and then, unable to help himself, leans over and kisses Cas for punctuating effect.

Castiel returns the wet press of lips against lips with an unyielding earnestness. There's no foreplay to it, it's not a kiss asking for any more that what it is, just a meeting of mouths for the sake of itself, for the sake of thanking Cas wordlessly for everything he's ever been and done, and Castiel thanking Dean for the same. It's a kiss that's just a kiss, and in a way, that's everything .

When they pull apart, they both feel a little gooey-eyed and dazed, because after 8 years of dancing around this thing between them, Dean thinks they've damn well earned a 3 year honeymoon. He's glad that giddy feeling of newness never left them, not really, for all their comfortable domesticity.

But the real world can't be kept out of their bubble for long. Castiel's brow slowly creases into a frown again as he looks down at their still clasped hands. “I don't know what to do, Dean. I don't know how to fix this.”

“Not everything can be fixed, Cas,” Dean informs him sadly. He still has to tell himself that, because he's not always so good about remembering it either, so he knows how much his friend needs to hear it, too. Not everything has to be fixed, either.

“Maybe. But doesn't this deserve a try?” Castiel asks, eyes wide and hopeful despite all his melancholy.

“Yeah. Yeah it does,” Dean squeezes Cas' hand before letting it go to pull the comforter further up on them both as he scoots down to lay his head against his pillow. “But wait until tomorrow. Get some sleep. Let the shock wear off a bit for her. Give her some time, breathing space.”

Castiel lays down with him. “At least we do have ample amounts of that. Space.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe she'll like the garden,” Cas says through a giant yawn, as his body starts relaxing out, eyes already shut, limbs heavy. Dean wouldn't be surprised if he was asleep by the time the last syllable was sighed out.

“She'll love it,” Dean whispers in the dark, and hopes to the fucking void cosmos that that hope comes true. Cas needs this. They all need this.

***

August 25 ^th , 2018 – Hurleyville, New York

Claire's ultimate reaction ends up falling somewhere in the middle, neither entirely enthused at the prospect at being outside alone all day with Cas, but she doesn't reject it either, which Dean counts as a good sign as he gives Cas a giddy and goofy thumbs up. She never had any plans beyond her arrival and confrontation with Castiel, but she supposed she shouldn't trespass upon their hospitality and refuse all overtures, especially when they do come in the convenient guise of chores that could make conversation unnecessary at best.

After a good hour of weeding though, Claire really can't stand the silence (save for a few suggestions and directions) any longer. She shuffles down the flower bed, careful not to trample anything, and leans back against her feet as she kneels in the dirt in front of Cas, plopping her bucket of discarded weeds destined for the compost at her side.

“Not to sound cruel, but... how do you live with yourself?” she asks bluntly. She doesn't exactly mean to sound accusative, she is truly just curious, but well, old habits also die hard. Castiel's hand, curled around a trowel, freezes in mid air. She continues, “If I had done all that stuff, gone through it... I wouldn't know what to do. Hell, I was your vessel for a couple of hours and everything I knew changed in an instant.”

Castiel hardly knows how to answer that. He's asked the question, and many others like it, to himself many times. How can he be alive at all? How is he alive? How was he returned to life so many times and others, so many others, were not? How can he look the daughter of the man who's life her stole in the eye and say something to make it right?”

“Gardening helps, truthfully,” is what he replies with eventually, looking down at the pots of poppies at his right that he intends to give a new home to in the garden. “Tending to the soil, watching flowers grow. It helps to create something beautiful, cherish something delicate, to remind myself of all that I've destroyed.”

Castiel thinks back to the garden he knew in heaven, the one that belonged to an autistic man who died in a bathtub in 1953. He thinks of its beautiful, saturated fields, and the crisp air of the man's memory. It must have been a happy day for him, calmly flying his kite. Castiel liked to watch that kite, its colourful dance in the sky that soothed away the clouds in his mind.

The thing about kites, however, is that they inevitably must come crashing to the ground.

“These are nice, the red ones,” Claire comments, pulling Cas out of his depressing train of thought as she points to the still unplanted pots. Her blue eyes are full of understanding as she catches his gaze. She's giving him an out. He is coward enough to take it.

“Ah yes, the poppies,” Castiel smiles, taking a deep breath. “Dean likes those, too.”

Gently, Claire thumbs the petals of the flower closest to her with a reverent sort of awe that creates an indescribable feeling soar through his chest. “I've only ever seen fake poppies during memorial stuff,” she says. “In real life they look a lot... happier?”

“They are very vibrant,” Castiel agrees.

“Can I pick one?” she asks, looking up at him. Castiel cannot deny her, even if he wanted to.

“Go ahead,” he motions. “You can make a bouquet if you want, with the other flowers. We have a nice vase in the dining room.”

“I think I'll keep the poppy for myself,” she says, and then tucks the stem behind her ear, the flower blooming next to her eyes, posing as if for a picture. Castiel suddenly wishes he had his phone with him.

“How do I look?”

“Beautiful” Castiel says, and means it with every fibre of his being.

***

“That seemed friendly,” Dean comments when Castiel comes in from the yard by the back door of the kitchen. Dean tries to sound innocent in his observation, but failing entirely. He notices that Claire doesn't accompany Cas, by by a quick glance out the back window above the sink, Dean can see that she's been called away by some of the younger boys to play with them.

Cas takes off his dirty garden gloves and throws them on the counter. Dean tries his hardest not to wrinkle his nose at the flecks of dirt now skittering across counters he'd just cleaned (a week ago, granted, but so what; Dean liked cleanliness).

“It was.”

“How long's she gonna stay?” Dean asks, not that he's necessarily concerned about whether they can keep her or not. He's happy to accommodate, and they certainly have the space. It's just that he's been that angry teenager before, and he knows there has to be more to her motive. It's never this simple.

“I didn't ask,” Castiel admits, a little guiltily.

“Cas,” Dean sighs, but he guesses he also can't really blame him for wanting to remain in the land of 'ignorance is bliss'.

“Dean,” Castiel replies evenly.

“Not that I hate to have her here, cause I don't,” he says, “but we do need to look out for everyone here. I need to know where you're both at.” It's not that Dean is concerned about Claire's affect on the boys, exactly, but they do have a routine here, and if they need to incorporate Claire into that more fully, he needs to know.

“As she hasn't indicated any differently, I'll assume she means to stay for at least tonight,” Castiel offers at the very least.

“Okay,” Dean sighs, picking up Cas' discarded gloves from the counter. He'll throw them in the laundry, later. “Okay, that's fine.”

Cas looks at him then, considering. “Are you okay?” he asks, repeating Dean's question to him from the night before. This can't be only a shock for Castiel, with all the memories Claire carries with her, dropped freshly at their door.

For a moment Dean's thrown off balance at having the conversation and concern turned back on him.

“What?”

“You look...” Castiel's eyes rake across his face, “Tired.”

Dean snorts. “Hardly unusual for me, Cas.”

“Tired like... you used to be,” he says, hoping Dean understands what he means. Dean does.

“Yeah,” his voice breaks as he looks away. “I—” he gulps,, and then shakes his head. “It's nothing.”

“Dean,” Castiel pushes gently. It's all the prompting Dean needs.

“Just—“ he takes a deep breath. “Claire being here... seeing you with her, just...” he looks away, avoiding Cas' intent gaze. He's unable to stymie the barrage of memories that flicker through his mind, of every loss, every failure. Seeing Claire turn up so suddenly and so alone has really hit it home. “Made me remember how much I fucked up. How many people I left behind. That maybe I don't deserve any of this.”

“Dean—”

“How many people like Claire are out there, searching for answers they never got because of me? That never leads anywhere good, Cas,” Dean looks at him sadly before shifting his gaze back to the wall again, unable to hold the intensity of Cas' eyes for too long. Not when they're so full of forgiveness, and he is so repelled by it.

“Look at what happened to my dad. Got...” he trails off to laugh bitterly. “—eaten up by vengeance. Hell, I...” he swallows thickly, “the same happened to me.”

“You are not your father, Dean,” Cas tells him, voice quiet but firm, steady. But despite Castiel's efforts, it's then that Dean's face completely breaks, watery eyes meeting Cas' again, completely defeated.

“No, I'm worse than dad, remember?” Dean croaks, voice rough as if the past four years hadn't happened at all—as if nothing had changed since the night he died and was reborn.

“It was me that broke,” he says, and by that he means more than just his time in hell, but his time with the Mark, too. They were both a sort of captivity. They were both so full of darkness he forgot what it even was to see the light.

“You were made to break,” Cas says, voice laced with a resolve, a vehemence, that Dean should not blame himself. And this has been their game for years, hasn't it? Encourage the other not to suffer in self-hate and self-doubt, but never heed their own advice? It always seems easier, in the moment, and maybe that is the greatest tragedy of them all.

“It was my choice to sell my soul, Cas,” Dean says, defeated. He may have retired from hunting, but lifetimes of guilt and horror do not leave a person easily. “My choice to take the Mark.”

“They were choices made of desperation, out of the desire to protect,” Cas impresses. “It was not your choice that you were thrown into this life at four years old, Dean.”

But Dean's heard this before. From Sam, from Bobby. From , Cas too, more than once in the last few years. It doesn't get easier to hear so much as it gets easier to forget. “No,” he says, closing his eyes, “but my choices after don't become meaningless either because of that.”

A warm hand touches Dean's shoulder while his eyes remain shut. “I didn't say they were meaningless,” the warm, rough voice attached to it says. “I'm saying that what happened to you in hell was not your fault. What you did under the Mark was not your fault.”

A pause. Dean holds his breath, and when no more words come, he opens his eyes. Cas' stare back at him, so achingly blue and depthless. So impossibly trusting, believing . Dean feels his shoulders sag into Cas' touch.

“You are many things, Dean” Cas says quietly, now that he has Dean's gaze. “But you are not a demon.”

Dean scoffs. “That's a little retconny, Cas,” he says bitterly. “I don't know if you remember, but I was .”

Cas shakes his head. “No, because at the end of it all, it was your choice to be cured. It was your choice to declare your humanity once and for all.”

“Anyone can say they're human, Cas,” Dean's voice breaks for the thousandth time. “It doesn't make it true.”

But Castiel is dauntless. “It does if you want it to be,” he states with purpose. “Am I not human? Did not I not choose to give up my grace?”

“Yeah, but—”

“That was my choice, Dean. To become human again. I chose this. My sins before don't negate that.” Cas' hand squeezes Dean's shoulder tighter one last time before loosening and letting go, arm dropping gracelessly to Cas' side. “I will never be human in the same way most are, it's true. There's too much of an angel in me. But I chose to live like this. And I chose to die like this, when I do.”

With Cas' face so honest , so horribly forgiving, Dean can't refuse him any longer. He shakes his head and chuckles, smiling despite himself. “Did anyone ever tell you you'd make a hell of a lawyer?” he asks, trying to joke his way out of his funk.

Thankfully, Cas is happy to play along, give Dean a knowing look before he returns evenly, “Are we counting times I've impersonated one...?”

“No, no,” Dean laughs, and then rubs his neck, deflecting again. “No, I mean, you make one hell of a case for stuff I never thought I'd believe in.”

Castiel peers at him. “And what's that?”

Dean would think the answer obvious. He smiles sadly when he says, “Myself.”

“That's your own victory, not mine,” Cas says softly, and raises his hand gently to cup Dean's face.

Dean lets out a shuddering, shaky breath. “Jesus, Cas ,” he mutters, barely above a whisper, voice cracked with both a temporal and age old exhaustion.

Castiel rubs a thumb across Dean's cheek, over the gentle curve of his lightly freckled skin. He has had great delight cataloguing all those freckles in recent years, a privilege he never thought he would have bestowed upon him, but has taken full advantaged of it since. Dean's skin has always been beautiful to him, of course, for he remade it of grace that had flowed as feathers in his wings, but still, it is something else to  touch his skin with fingers made of the same flesh and bone and the same flawed human nature.

“Yes,” he whispers back in answer, though to what question, he does not quite know. Maybe to all of them, every hesitation Dean has ever had about him, about them, about all his mistakes and their mutual fallacies and false assumptions about what the other wanted. But it was always Dean, if there was a choice. It was always the soul of Dean he wanted to be possessed by.

It was always yes .

Dean leans in to Cas' touch. “You're something, you know that?” he whispers after a generous moment of indulgence in the way Cas' calloused palm feels against his needy skin.

“In the literal sense, of course. The figurative sense, however, could have a multitude of meanings that I'm unqualified to guess for,” Castiel replies, tone dry. But he, too, is smiling.

No longer can Dean look upon that wry mouth without kissing it, so that's what he does, pulling Cas in by the back of his neck and claiming his lips in a kiss that sends all thoughts flying from his head that aren't Cas and thank you and home. They linger in the sense of each other for too-brief a moment, having lives and chores and kids to get back too, but they relish each second. When they break apart, Dean leans his forehead against Cas' while he catches his breath and steadies his racing heart.

“Fuck, I love you,” Dean surprises them both with a laugh. He's learned how to say those words in recent years, even if sometimes they feel strange in his mouth. They've always felt familiar in his heart though, overwhelmingly so. And Dean knows that Cas knows that that's what counts.

Dean can feel Cas' smile against his cheek more than he sees it. Can feel the rumble in Cas' chest, so close to his own. “I know.”

“Hey!” Dean straightens up all of a sudden, nearly headbutting Cas in the process. “You can't pull a me on me.”

Cas squints at him, unimpressed. “I believe that line is Han Solo's, not yours.”

“Yeah, but I'm obviously Han Solo, come on. I got the looks, the wookie brother, the hot ride...”

Cas raises an eyebrow. “Does that make me Leia?”

“I think I'd look better in that bikini than you, but sure,” Dena laughs, indulging his imagination for a second, and humming approvingly at the image he conjures. Charlie would be proud. “You are an intergalactic, babe.”

“Forgetting common romantic tropes,” Castiel comments, “I feel like I actually have more affiliation to Lando Calrissian.”

“I always did think Han and him had something going on,” Dean nods approvingly.

Cas tilts his head, considering. “Charlie would have to be Leia.”

“Yeah, I always did wanna marry her instead,” Dean drawls sarcastically, and then swallows thickly when he realises just what he accidentally insinuated. Sure, Cas and him are as good as married as one can get, really, with all the dying and resurrection they've been through together, and for one another, but that doesn't stop the anxious thrill zipping through his blood. Someday, he thinks, some time...

“I'm sorry you had to settle for a simple traitor to the empire,” Castiel deadpans, breaking him out of his reverie.

“Hey, what's better than a couple of scoundrels coming together, right?” Dean jokes back, making sure to lay the innuendo on thickly, too, but it's not a joke, really. And the end of it all, it'll be what he clings to. If he can never forgive himself, Dean thinks, then at least Cas always will. Always has. And it works both ways; Dean has long forgiven Cas for everything, too. They might be sad lost souls, the two of them, but at least they found each other.

The question was entirely rhetorical, but Castiel chooses to answer it anyway, as if he can hear Dean's thoughts.

“I can't fathom it.”

***

Later, when Dean and Cas have collapsed in bed, wrung out and exhausted from the days activities, Castiel is already half asleep by the time he hits the mattress on his side of the bed. But Dean is not finished with him yet. He nudges him.

“Yo, spoon me to sleep,” Dean whispers, hand at Cas' shoulder, shaking him lightly to make sure he doesn't actually fall asleep on him.

“Ugh,” Cas grunts, pulling his mind back from the dreamy webs of sleep. “That requires so much movement,” he protests, rough voice half muffled by his pillow. He complies anyway, of course, rolling over with a few more grunts for his effort, and presses himself up against Dean, flinging an arm over him to gather him close.

“You love it,” Dean chuckles as he relaxes back into Cas' warmth, thoroughly content.

Castiel, despite being already on his way to that glorious land of slumber, smiles against the back of Dean's neck. “Indeed.”

***

August 26 ^th , 2018 – Hurleyville, New York

As always, Dean wakes far earlier than Cas, who, if not required to be up at a certain tom, will sleep into the afternoon, regardless of what time he actually went to sleep. Dean doesn't often let him, but the few times he's indulged Cas, he never fails to be amazed at how much the guy can sleep, like he actually is making up for literally millions of years of lost rest. He never really chastises Cas for it though, except jokingly, for Dean does love getting to turn the tables and watch Cas sleep. He knows it's sappy as shit, but he likes to watch that little perpetual crease in his forehead smooth out, to marvel at the way his hair sticks up in all directions on his pillow, and fail in his restraint in ruffling it further, running his fingers through those dark locks just for the sake of it, revelling in its surprising softness.

He also will admit to finding a special delight in how groggy Cas gets when he does wake up, being essentially still incapacitated until he's had coffee. Though Dean would not usually call Cas an overly inhibited creature, the mornings are always when Dean finds Cas at his most shameless. Especially in the shower. Oh, yes , Dean thinks to himself as he pours himself a mug of freshly brewed dark roast. He's looking forward to the shower later.

Now, though, at 6:30 in the morning on a Sunday, he gets to enjoy the house to himself. Sunday is everyone's unofficial sleep in day, and though Dean seems to be unable to shake his sleep habits from a lifetime of being constantly on the road, he would never begrudge anyone the respite. Which is why he's surprised when, halfway through his caffeinated breakfast, Claire walks into the room.

She looks likewise taken aback to see Dean awake, leaning back in his seat at the small kitchen table. “Hey,” she offers, feeling a bit useless.

But Dean's response is welcoming, as he pushes out a chair next to him with his foot.. “Mornin'” he says, and then nods at the counter where the coffee pot sits. “Coffee's fresh if you want some. Milk and food and stuff's in the fridge. I assume you know how the toaster works if you want to fix yourself something,” he tells her, apologetic. “I don't usually make breakfast proper until later.”

“Um, coffee's good, thanks,” Claire says awkwardly, and goes to pour herself a cup. Hands curled around her steaming mug, she sits down a bit stiffly in the kicked out chair.

Dean assumes by the way she sits and the way her tired eyes linger on the table, that they're arrived on some sort of mutually agreed silence, but then suddenly, she speaks. “Just FYI,” she says, “You guys are pretty easy to track down now, if that's a problem.”

Dean had figured she'd probably been able to look them up now, now that they actually have leases and tax records . “Yeah, one of the down sides to going legit,” he grimaces, because that is one thing that still bugs him, even though he doesn't regret his choice. He tries not to think about it.

He fishes for a different line of conversation, not wanting to dwell on his poor security net quite this early in the day.

“So, how's your mom?” he asks, hoping that it'll be a simple, safe topic, considering she didn't exactly seem like she was a runaway, yesterday. Dean thinks Cas would have said, otherwise.

But 'safe' turns out not to be the word that should be used. Claire bites her lip as she looks down at her hands, still curled around her untouched coffee. “She's... good,” she says, with a detachment that sounds too forced. “She got married last year. To a guy named Ron.”

“You don't seem that enthused about 'a guy named Ron',” Dean observes gently.

Claire spares him a quick glance. “No, he's nice,” she's fast to amend. “He's good for my mom.”

Of course, Dean knows that's not the whole story. “But?”

Claire sighs, and closes her eyes briefly, as if gathering both the words and the courage to know how to talk about what Dean suspects she rarely has to anyone. “Things got better when she started seeing Ron only because it gave her less time to micromanage me.”

“Oh, so it's you and your mom who aren't getting on.”

Claire shifts awkwardly, embarrassed that Dean can read her so well. “We're okay now, I guess. But for awhile...” she trails off, “ after , she didn't really know what to do with herself, I think. She wasn't a bad mom, or anything, but... She didn't know how to deal with it. She became really antsy all of the time, over whatever I was doing, but then would be really distant at other times, as if...” She pauses, unsure.

“As if what?” Dean prompts, sitting up straighter to show her he's listening.

She raises her head finally to look Dean straight in the eye, her face drawn. “She was scared she was still possessed and would hurt me,” she admits, voice wavering slightly.

“Ah,” Dean sits back in his chair as he soaks in the familiarity of this scene. God, how fucked up are both their lives that he's relating to a kid over demonic possession? But it's no joke. It's so, so far from a joke.

“Yeah, we're a cheery family,” Claire huffs out.

Dean smiles at her sadly. “I know what you mean, kid,” he tries to sound consoling, but he also knows from being that 18 year old thrown into this kind of life that sometimes no words will help. There's just getting through it. Dean wonders if the best thing he can do is just to make sure she doesn't feel alone.

Claire sighs. “I don't know. I'm happy for her, I am. It took her awhile to move on, but... she seems to have, and that's good.”

“And you?” Dean asks.

Claire blinks, so strangely similar to Cas in expression that Dean feels as off-balance as her for a second. “Me what?”

“Have you moved on?”

She lets out a mirthless laugh. “I'm here , aren't I?” she says, and it takes second for Dean to catch up with her meaning, but when he does, he immediately longs to reach out to her. He sets his own coffee mug aside and reach across the table to cover her smaller hand with his own.

“Touché,” he jokes, smiling encouragingly. She offers a weak but grateful smile back.

When Claire straightens up, shoulders squared and determined, Dean removes his hand, but leans in closer.

Claire stares down at her coffee as it it's a mystical object. “My mom my have accepted that she will never get answers, but I haven't,” she states.

“And what answers are you after?”

She turns to look at him, eyes bold and so eager, so young.

“What else is out there.”

Dean sighs. “That's a long conversation, kid.”

“I'm not a kid, you know,” Claire points out defensively, in the way all teenagers are when you reference their age. “I'm eighteen.”

“Yeah, and I'm forty and then some,” Dean snorts. “So that still makes you a kid.”

Claire's gaze is steely and piercing. “I can handle it.”

But Dean's not being patronising, it has nothing to do with her age, really. He's seen grown ass men cower worse than her at the sight of angels, for example. It's not that he thinks she's weak, or not mature, or whatever. It's that no one is ready for this, because this life, the life this kind of knowledge leads to, it's entirely unforgiving.

“Everyone thinks they can,” Dean says, shaking his head. “No one ever does.”

“You did,” Claire accuses.

“No,” Dean says, the truth of it rubbing his throat raw. He thinks he'll still spend the rest of his life trying to reconcile everything he did, everything he saw. “I didn't.”

***

October, 2014 – Hastings, Nebraska

Castiel doesn't know why Dean summoned him here, only that after weeks of searching for Dean and being constantly and frustratingly one step behind, he's more than a little suspicious of the invitation.

He looks up at the vaguely familiar light of the bar sign, flickering overhead, and steals himself before he opens the door. He sees him in the corner, half cloaked in shadow, half alit by the dusty bar room light. How appropriate , Castiel thinks ruefully, as he approaches.

“Hello, Dean," he says, in his usual greeting, in hopes it will win him some good will. For old time's sake, at least, as a normal man might say. Of course, neither of them are normal, as far as most of society is concerned. And Castiel, well, hardly really a man at all.

Dean looks up at him, eyes dark even in the orange glow of the overhead light. "Grab a seat, Cas," he says with a smile, but it's a hollow sort of thing, Castiel can tell, an easy smile reserved for strangers and fools. It has been a long time since it has been directed at Castiel, and the sight sends an acidic twist writhing through his gut that he knows has nothing to do with the spoiling grace inside him.

“Long time, no see, huh?” Dean begins when Cas takes a seat to the right of him along the bar.

“Not by my own volition," Castiel feels the (perhaps petulant) need to say.

Dean smirks, a sharp, mocking thing. "Yeah, and how does that feel, huh? Being on the other side of the vanishing act.”

“Frustrating,” Cas admits, rising to Dean's bait. Dean smirks again, satisfied. “Though I find it hard to believe this whole chase was just to teach me a lesson about manners.”

“Oh no, nothing so serious as a lesson,” Dean denies, voice light and irreverent, “just a bit of fun.” After a beat he adds, “at your expense instead of mine.”

“Well, you achieved your goal,” Castiel comments stoically, stealing himself from being visibly irritated. He fears, however, that even Dean as he is now can read him too well.

His eyes flicker down to his hands, gripped too tight around his beer. The bottle is cold and clammy, but not unpleasant, for the coolness at the surface of his skin distracts in small part from the burning within himself. He wonders, with all of Dean's new power, if he can actually see all the cracks at the core of him.

“Looking a little rough there, Cas,” Dean says, after taking a long swig of his own beer. “Not that you're usually cleaned up or anythin', rockin' the whole overworked accountant vibe,” Dean laughs at his own joke.

“Yes, well,” Castiel shrugs with his tone more than his shoulders, back still wound tight, half from being in the presence of Dean after so long, and half from the strain of the rotting grace threatening ever more to pull his body apart. “We all have our battle scars.”

“You don't die from scars,” Dean says. “And I should know, having rocked too many of them.” He laughs, but it's a broken, strained sound. “And having died so many times.” Dean lowers and shakes his head. “Never once from a scar, though. No, you're dying from the spiritual equivalent of gangrene in an open wound.”

He raise his haze back to Cas. “Better amputate.”

Castile's mouth is tight when he replies, "I don't have the luxury.” He can feel the rotting grace well up in his chest, churning like sickly bile, but as always, he presses it down.

There is a flash of something that looks like concern in Dean's eyes, and Castiel heart skips a beat. " Don't you? Can't you just cut your grace out like Anna did, or something?”

Castiel smiles sadly then, the truth of it revealed. "If I do that," he says, "I risk not having the strength to save you.”

What kindness had been in Dean's eyes shutter closed. He clenches his jaw, takes a bitter sip of his beer. "I don't need no savin'," he finally spits out, as if the word disgusts him.

Because Castiel is nothing if not entirely tactless, he feels compelled to state the obvious: "You're a demon.”

That makes Dean bark out a laugh. "Thanks, Captain Obvious. I hadn't noticed.”

Castiel shakes his head. "This isn't you, Dean," he impresses, a desperate edge to his voice that he cannot mask.

“Isn't it? How can I be more 'Dean?'" Dean spits back. "Got my car, got my charm, what else do I need?”

He looks down again, a sour twist to his mouth, that is not entirely directed at his companion anymore. "What makes being human so much better?" he wonders, voice cracked and raw. It makes Castile's own throat ache. "Just so I can go die again? So I can be so weak I let other people die?”

Castiel leans in closer on instinct, lowering his voice as he says softly, "Vulnerability doesn't make you weak . It simply makes you care.”

“Well if that ain't the most hypocritical thing I've ever heard you say," Dean scoffs, shaking his head and peering up at him, eyes scrutinising. "Take your own advice first, buddy.”

“I know, I'm a poor example. I'm not asking you to follow it.”

“Then what are you asking, Cas?” 

Castiel swallows. Does he himself even know? What does he want to come of this, other than Dean's soul saved? With everything so broken still, how are any of them to know what salvation even is? He's far more familiar with the sins of heaven over hell, too, when it comes down to it. So he says what little he knows is true anymore: "To come home.”

“Home?” Dean says the word like it's in a strange language he's trying to figure out. “Yeah, and where's that?” Dean doesn't look angry anymore, just tired, resigned.

“With Sam,” Castiel says. “With me. If it's not a place that yet exists we could all figure it out, together.”

Dean sighs, and tips back the remaining dregs of his whiskey. The glass clatters back onto the bar top gracelessly. “I been tryin' to figure that one out for a long time, Cas,” he half-whispers, “and I'm tired .”

He says the last word as if it were a literal weight on his tongue, lugging it over his lips with olympian effort. The sound of it rattles through Castiel's bones, making his own body feel heavier than it already does, sluggish and useless as it slowly rots apart.

“So am I,” he admits, just as intimately.

“Guess you and I ain't so different after all, even with my goth makeover?” Dean tries to joke.

“Perhaps not.”

***

August 26 ^th , 2018 – Hurleyville, New York

By Sunday afternoon, Claire finds that she has exhausted all the new places to discover on the small farm, and so by way of consolation, she finds yet again offering her services to Castiel.

“So why here, though?” Claire asks in the afternoon, as the sun spills in from the front windows.

They sit in the living room, Cas and her, shucking ears of corn for a corn on the cob filled dinner. Dean has his hands full with some of the boys out back, showing them the ins and outs of car repair. Most of the kids have a certain reverence for the infamous Impala, but none of course matches Dean's own, and he loves to share in it.

“I mean, I get that Dean knew a guy or whatever," she continues, "and that you're grounded for good, but you guys have to know people everywhere who'd put you up and get you started.”

It's a fair question, Castiel has to concede. They'd been hunting less and less already before they settled here, and could have just as well stayed with Charlie, or back in the bunker which had already become somewhat like a home.

"Dean's always liked children," he answers finally, after a moment of mulling. It's perhaps the most honest answer he can give, without getting in too deep about their private histories. It's true that in a strange way Dean felt immediately at home here, even though they had sort of accepted the bunker as their makeshift home already. It wasn't even simply the childhood attachment he had to it, Castiel thinks, but a genuine longing to take care of people again. A longing to be, in whatever form, a father.

“And not you?” Claire asks, pausing only momentarily from her shucking to look at him curiously.

“Oh, I like kids," Castiel replies. If Castiel fell for the love of humanity, he certainly wouldn't exclude the most innocent chunk of it. "I love the children here," he adds. He dumps his last fully shucked ear in the metal pot at his feet. "But for me... it was more about the farm. This is going to sound a bit contrived and silly, but I liked the idea of a home where Dean and I..." he trails off, looking down at the pile of fresh corn.

He smiles. "We could grow.”

“That doesn't sound silly," Claire says softly, feeling a bit like she'd intruded onto something too intimate in Cas' mind. Castiel gives her a twitch of his mouth in gratitude, enough to say he appreciates her words but does not quite believe them.

“It also helped that it was removed from everything,” Castiel admits further, picking up another ear of corn to begin stripping down. “Not for the sake of our peace, so much as the peace of everyone else.”

Claire frowns. "What do you mean?”

Castiel pauses to look up again. “I think you know what I mean, Claire. The world is... a broken place. I will only break it further,” he says, shaking his head wearily.

“So what, we should just give up on the world cause it's too fucked to be saved?” Claire blurts out, her own ear of corn, half shucked on her lap, forgotten. “I'll give you that the world has gone to shit a hundred times over, but...”

“Maybe the world isn't worth saving. But I don't know if that's even the right question. Humans... we're only a small part of what the world is made up of,” Castiel says, surprising himself when he doesn't trip up on the we. He feels oddly proud. “We shouldn't punish the earth for our trespasses against it, and against ourselves. If humanity fails it has nothing to do with the world, it has to do with what we did to it. Is humanity worth saving, then? Of course. Everything is worth saving, if saving means healing, if healing means change, if change means loving tomorrow what we hated yesterday.”

Castiel looks down at his hands, the hands that once belonged to the father of the girl sitting across from him. But they are his now, with callouses he won, with scars he earned. They are hands that have destroyed and rebuilt, that have known Dean in indescribable ways. They are his, and isn't that the strangest thing of all.

“I don't know if I'm worth saving, maybe I'm too old to change now,” Castiel says quietly, before looking up at the enraptured teenager on the other couch. “But you are. You're young, and full of... so much. You'll change the world, Claire, no matter what. If you live and love as well as you do now, and never stop.”

Claire ducks her head in a surprised blush, and Castiel lets her have her moment, returning to the corn in his bowl. He expects her to drop the subject, after his impromptu speech, but is surprised when she breaks the ensuing silence with an unexpectedly assured statement:

“You're not too old to change.”

Castiel offers her a grateful smile for her kindness. “Thank you,” he says genuinely, though of course, like all absolving advice, it is hard for him to believe it.

“No, I mean it!” Claire is fiery, unyielding. “Look at you, you're running a foster home now! Do you know how different that is from when I saw you last? The last time I knew you, you were heaven's soldier in a war that would have seen humanity wiped out. I don't know about you, but I'd say a lot of changes had to happen between now and then.”

Castiel grimaces. “Not all of them for the better.”

“That you can even say that says that at least the last of them was, right?” Claire asks, more rhetorically than anything, for she does not wait for a reply. She considers him thoughtfully with a tilt of her head. “You're old, but you're not always wise, Castiel. At least not when it comes to yourself.”

Castiel huffs out through his nose in a a half-laugh. “Well, there is one bad habit I can't change, then,” he acknowledges. Claire has grown up into an awfully wise eighteen year old.

“Well, even saints have their faults,” she concedes playfully.

Castiel shakes his head. “I'm no saint,” he says, firm. That, no matter what kind of redemption he ever achieves, he knows .

“No,” she replies, with a sly smile. “You're an angel.”

***

December, 2014 – Hastings, Nebraska

The dungeon of the bunker as a unique smell to it that the other rooms don't. The rest of the place just generally smells dusty , like the forgotten stacks at the back of an old library, but the dungeon as a unique, acrid, metallic smell, that's probably the result of decades of dried blood, mold, and grit ground into each other and left to putrefy. It's that unpleasant stench that Dean tries to focus on, rather than the way the bindings holding him to the steel chair he sits on chafe at his already raw and wired skin, rather than look his brother and best friend in the eye as they prepare to do something monumentally stupid.

He doesn't remember exactly what they said, when they dragged him down here, having caught him in a moment of weakness. He was too hopped up on anger at the time, on a rage that the Mark burned into his skin thirsted for, so badly that it overwhelmed his other senses. He remembers the looks of aching pity , though, and they make him just want to fall asleep and black out forever.

“Crowley said there was no way back from this,” Dean croaks out, throat dry and hoarse from misuse. “I can't be saved, Sam.” It's partly the self-defensive nature of the demon speaking, of course, but it's also a bone-deep resignation to the fact that he just cannot be fixed. Not before he became a Dean, not after. The bitter taste in his mouth has nothing to do with the flavour of the blood still dripping from his split lip.

Sam clenches his jaw as he finishes his preparations, sparing Dean a quick glance out of the corner of his eye. “No, he was right about that,” he says, as he aligns the last of the syringes needed for the completion of the trial on a sterile tray.

“You can't be saved, in the passive sense,” he says, and then looks up, his tired, weary eyes filled with determination. “But you can save yourself.”

They both know from their experience with Crowley that when you begin to want it, to want the cure, that's when the trial truly begins to take effect. Dean's not really all demon, but he's fallen enough under the pull and tow of the Mark that they suspect this will count. It has to. They're out of any other options. At least Cas thinks he can make sure Sam survives this too, this time.

“I don't know how. I don't—” Dean's laugh is sharp and hollow. “I can't, Sam.”

“You can,” Sam bites out with desperate conviction, clenching his hands into fists. “Just remember what you said, hmm? The night you—” died “The night you killed Metatron. You said something to me.” Sam pauses, looking at his brother with such sad love, such hope. “What was it?”

The agitation on Dean's face falls away in favour of a haunted looking expression, as he struggles to remember the hours before his death. “I—” he swallows thickly. “I said I was proud of us.”

Sam's eyes widen, as if he did not expect his brother to remember. But now that he has, Sam has the assurance that he needs to step forward. “ Yes . And now I'm saying it to you,” he says, making sure Dean is looking him in the eye, hearing him, when he echoes, “I'm proud of you, Dean.”

Something in Dean breaks . “Sam—”

But Sam ploughs on, needing to say this for himself as much as he needs Dean to hear it. “I'm proud of you. And I love you.”

Dean's garbled, rough chuckle is half disbelief half denial. At the back of the room, Castiel looks on silently, knowing that Dean and Sam needs this moment to themselves. “And what, if I say 'I love you' back, it'll free me somehow?” Dean grinds out.

“No, Dean,” Sam shakes his head. This cannot come with any conditions. “You can say whatever you want, and I'll still love you. I'll still be proud of you.”

Which is both exactly what Dean needed to hear and exactly what he can't bear to. “Fuck, I—” he chokes out brokenly, hands clenched around the arm of the chair he is bound too. He holds himself to it tighter than the cuffs.

“Dean,” Sam says gently. Too gently. Dean shakes his head.

“I don't know what to do, Sammy,” he admits finally, defeated eyes flicking to Cas' across the room briefly before landing on Sam's pleading face.

Sam's ensuing smile is small, but sincere. “Just be my brother.”

“Sam—”

“Not my caretaker, not my avenger, just... my brother. And I'll be yours. And—Cas,” Sam turns to look around for the angel. “He'll be there, too, won't you, Cas?”

Stepping forth from the shadow, Cas nods his head solemnly, eyes sliding from Sam to Dean's with assurance. “Of course.”

Dean looks at Cas with an expression of bare, overwhelmed disbelief. “And what'll you be, huh?” he asks, voice wrecked from the wealth of conflicted emotions he's swarmed with every second.

Cas tilts his head in that half-smile of his, that's always more in his than his mouth, and that he knows Dean has always been able to read perfectly. “Just Castiel, I think,” he says simply. “Just as you'll be Dean.”

“You said before that I wasn't myself anymore,” Dean accuses. “How do you know I even still exist? Even if I—” become human, he doesn't say, but it hangs above their heads nonetheless. “Even if this works, I'll still remember everything. I can't change that.”

This kind of guilt is not unfamiliar to any of them, but Sam and Cas understand intimately that that never makes it easier. “That's part of being human,” Cas says, voice heavy with regret.

“Which you do pretty well not being,” Dean has to point out a pit petulantly. He tries to keep the resentment out of his voice, but in such a small room, at such emotional heights, he feels. Castiel grimaces.

“Not well enough,” he mutters, before setting his shoulders and straightening out of this characteristic slump. He raises his chin to present a strong, immovable front when he reveals the crux of their plan to Dean: “I'm giving my grace up.”

Dean blinks in astonishment. “What?” he snaps.

“The only chance Sam has to survive the third trial is if I give him what I have left,” Cas explains, glancing at Sam briefly for support. He's not unsettled with doubt over this, he understands the risks and is willing to take them, he just needs Dean willing to be.

“Cas, you can't—”

“I can,” Castiel impresses. “And I will. As much as you have always been everything, this isn't just for you. It's for everyone. With hell closed, the whole world will breathe happier, and you especially, with your brother still at your side.”

“And so that's your plan, risk death to cure me?” Dean scoffs, shaking his head. “No.”

“Dean, we have a way to do it—” Sam tries to make Dean understand, but he brushes him off just as swiftly.

“Yeah, by using Cas' toxic mojo!” Dean growls. “No offence, Cas, but your juice is rancid, you said so yourself.”

“None taken,” Cas replies. “And it's not untrue,” he feels compelled to agree. His stolen graces is a constant throb at the core of him, with each heartbeat ripping the seems of his self further and further apart. “For me, it's like trying to substitute water for blood. But for Sam, it'll not be in him in the same way.” It won't be a masquerade, a poisoned hairshirt. “I have taught him how to access it, the threads of what's left still of Gadreel, and use it as a tool more than a fuel. It's not a replacement for oxygen so to be able to breath under water, but hopefully it'll help him float so he does not have to.”

“Well, that was a long winded metaphor,” Dean leans back in his chair, releasing his hands from their iron grip and stretching his fingers. He closes his eyes to take a deep breath, and when he opens them again, he levels Cas with a wary but thankfully not dismissing gaze. “So, you're saying your grace is gonna act as a life jacket?”

“Yes.”

“You hope,” Dean corrects.

“I hope.”

“Dean, this is our best chance, not just for you, but for everyone,” Sam steps in, hoping to pound the point home. “This is our shot.”

“That's what I'm afraid of.”

“That's good,” Castiel says, as Sam shifts back to the table behind them to fetch the instruments they need to the ritual now that they have Dean's assent. “Fear is part of being human.”

Dean peers at him curiously. “And what are you afraid of?”

It's not an accusing question, simply thoughtful, in their last moments before it's do or die. Castiel feels like he owes it to Dean to be honest. “I'm afraid of falling,” he answers, not knowing how else to put it. It's not the humanity he fears, no, but falling as in failing , as in having no strength or use left to save what he loves the most.

“The ground ain't so bad,” Dean cracks a stilted smile.

Castiel offers one back. “No, it isn't.”

The awkward expression breaks out into a full out grin on Dean's face. “I can hold your hand on the way down, if you want,” he jokes. Castiel remembers vaguely him saying something similar once, so long ago.

“So you'll jump with me?”

“Hell why not? 'Hold hands and ride off this cliff together,' huh?” he drawls, and it's then that Castiel remembers. He remembers a motel room and a house, lighting and beer and the smell of smoke and sex. And he remembers Dean, his hand on his shoulder, as he laughed and laughed and laughed.

For Castiel, Dean will always be the Righteous Man, but righteous beyond heaven, beyond fate, beyond destiny. H e is righteous because he Is , purely and simply is with all his soul and sweat and tears and broken bones. He is passion and heart and human .

He's the righteous man because to love him is the most righteous thing Castiel has ever done.

“Ready?” Sam asks, coming back holding holy water in his hand, ready to get started.

Dean sets his jaw.

“Do it.”

***

August 28 ^th , 2018 – Hurleyville, New York

On her last day with them, Dean finds Claire hiding away from the general excitement and overstimulation of the house up in her room, slowly packing up her things. He pauses for a moment, wondering if he shouldn't leave her to her moment of routine solace, but she catches his eye, and smiles briefly in invitation.

“Hey,” she nods at him, as she folds her clothes into her duffle bag.

“Getting ready to get on, then?” Dean nods to her packing.

“Oh,” Claire pauses, as if just noticing her bag of clothes herself. She frowns. “Uh, yeah. I guess,” she says, staring at the t-shirt in her hands for a second, before stuffing it in the bag.

“What are you gonna do?” Dean asks, without judgment. He's already reigning in his instinct to coddle her as it is, insist she stay here, out of trouble. But he knows she's not his kid, and that she's legally an adult now. She kind of reminds Dean fondly of Krissy, which means he thinks she'll be okay.

“What? So you can talk me out of it?” Claire scoffs accusingly without looking up, but when she does at Dean's responding silence, she sees the sincerity in his face. She bites her lip before admitting, “I have a spot at NYU lined up in the fall.” Which is impressive, Dean immediately thinks, but doesn't miss the fact that she doesn't exactly sound enthused about it.

Dean leans casually against the wood of the door frame. “You're in the right neck of the woods, if you're thinkin' to take 'em up on it,” he points out.

“Yeah,” she agrees, but still sounds ambivalent.

“But you're still not sure,” Dean guesses with a look of sympathy. His teenage years were harder than most, but that time of life is never easy, never comfortable, as you're trying to figure out how to live in your own skin.

“There's just...” she sighs, “sinking down into the mattress next to her half-packed luggage, “so much I don't know.”

Dean sways back upright from the door frame to step into the room, taking a seat next to Claire on the bed. “Well, I think that's sort of the point of school, if you're lookin' to find out.”

He tries to sound casual, joking even, but he winces when he hears himself. God, he's become such a dad .

“But what about the stuff school can't teach me?”

“It'll wait for you to graduate,” Dean responds in kind.

Claire huffs out through her nose. “You sound like my step-dad.”

Ah, there it is. “Yeah? Well, you may not be a huge fan of Ron , but the guy can give some decent advice,” Dean feels compelled to say. For all he knows, Ron is a douchebag, but he'll chance the momentary comparison for the sake of helping Claire figure herself out. “What are you second guessing yourself for anyway? Isn't that why you brought all this stuff with you, to go on to college?” He waves at her bag, overflowing with far too many clothes for one long-weekend at her long-lost not-dad's house.

“I sort of packed what I needed to do anything,” Claire admits a bit sheepishly. “My mom paid for my ticket into Albany 'cause she thought I was meeting up with a friend's family who was gonna drive me down to the city. She didn't want me getting lost in Manhattan alone.”

“Well, if you want, me 'n' Cas can take you into the city,” Dean offers, even ready to drop the 'Cas' part if she brings it up for the sake of getting her to school safely.

Claire finally turns to look at him fully then, eyes wide and sad, more then anything. They are such familiar a sight it makes Dean's heart ache. “But you won't let me stay here,” she states rather than asks, not with accusation, but rather deep resignation.

“I didn't say that,” Dean says gently.

“But you want me to go,” Claire fishes.

Dean sighs. “I want you to do what you want, but I think you might not know what you want. Am I right about that?”

The young girl tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear absently, shifting in her seat. “Maybe.”

Dean nudges her with his elbow playfully. “I hear college is a good enough place for figuring that stuff out.”

“You didn't go to college, did you?”

“No,” Dean concedes, “but to be fair, it was never really an option for me.” He honestly has no idea if he would've gone even if it had been, but then again... the only scenario he can think of where it would have been an option was if mom had never died. Everything would have been different then.

“Did Sam?” Claire asks, curious.

Dean nods and cracks a lop-sided grin. “Sam did. He went to Stanford on a full ride, the little genius.”

“Not so little, if I remember right,” Claire chuckles.

“Ha, yeah,” Dean joins her, soaring on the swoop of pride that blooms in his chest. His kid brother grew up big and smart as Hell, and by some miracle, Dean is still alive to see it.

“Did he like it? College, I mean?” Claire brings him back to the conversation.

“Well, you'd have to ask him, but I think so. It's my fault he never stayed to go to law school like he was gonna.”

“Really?” Claire asks skeptically, knowing full well from the Supernatural books she read that Dean hardly could be blamed for being abandoned by their dad and needing help. She looks at him, then, as if daring him to keep on that self-deprecating path and face her wrath.

“Jesus,” Dean breathes out, both amazed and amused, “you look like Cas when you do that. Not your dad, I mean,” he amends, when he realises how that could be mistaken, “but Cas. You do the same staring thing with the eyes. Jimmy never did that.”

For a moment, Dean expects her to take offence to that, being compared to Cas instead o her dad, who Dean really never knew, but he can see her try to hide a smile.

“Force of habit of a vessel, I guess,” she tires to sound nonchalant. Teenagers.

Of course, Dean can't exactly blame her for feeling conflicted about it, for wanting to feel close to Cas and wanting to run away from him as fast as possible at the same time. Hell, Dean's been there himself , albeit for entirely different reasons. But he's happy for the both of them that they're getting a little closer to the happy end of that spectrum. Cas can never replace her dad, of course, be he could still be... something.

“That's got to be weird, hasn't it?” Dean wonders aloud, “Being Cas' vessel?”

“It'd be weirder if he'd stayed with me,” Claire jokes.

That makes Dean bark out a full-fledged laugh. “Yeah, no kidding.”

The sober up quickly though, when Claire continues on thoughtfully, “It's... It is weird. No matter what Castiel did to my family, in a way...” she pauses, as if wondering if she dare take the next leap. She does.

“He's family, too.”

Dean smiles knowingly. “I know what you mean, kid.”

***

December 24 ^th , 2014 – Lebanon, Kansas

The day before Christmas in Lebanon, Kansas is surprisingly warm, despite the season. Though there is snow on the ground, it's light and wet, and the breeze is soft, and indeed welcome, again Castiel's skin. There isn't much of a view, from his perch on the cold metal railing above the bunker's unassuming entrance, but Castiel is soothed by it nonetheless.

“So, what's the word, Cas?” Dean calls from below, as he walks up up to take a seat at Castiel's right side. He mutters a, “Jesus, it's cold,” beneath his breath as he gets his balance.

“Besides a shortened version of my name?” Castiel jokes dryly, echoing a throwaway line from what feels like lifetimes ago. “Perhaps now it is more appropriate than ever, with the godly suffix gone,” he muses ruefully.

Dean's brow scrunches in confusion at having lost the thread of the conversation so fast. “What?”

“Did you never wonder what my name meant? Castiel. Shield of God. Now I am no more than a shield.” He doesn't mean to sound so self-pitying, but he supposed it can't be helped. He does not regret his choice, but it still stings a bit, to remember all that he has lost, not just during the last trial, but over all the years in the battle for his hard-won freedom.

“Naw, you're more than that. Not a hammer, not a shield, right?” Dean smiles. “You're human, free will and all that. You can do anything you want, Cas.” “So, what do you wanna be when you grow up, huh?”

Castiel frowns slightly. “I don't know what you mean.”

He's familiar with the idiom, of course, but he hardly thinks Dean expects him to make a career change this late in life. His only job experience is as a sales clerk, anyway, he muses.

“What are you gonna do?” Dean asks, a question he has asked Cas more than once before. What, indeed, Castiel wonders, standing at the familiar crossroads. He knows, or he thinks he knows what he wants, but it will depend on Dean.

“I hadn't thought about it,” Castiel answers with a white lie.

Dean sighs as he smiles. “Me neither.”

“Perhaps...” Castiel trails off with a tilt of his head, eyes straying to the line of trees across the road.

“What?”

Castiel's gaze returns to Dean, to his fresh, open face. His cheeks are rosy from the frost, and it makes his freckles even more pronounced. The corners of Castiel's mouth quirk up. “Perhaps we can figure it out together.”

Dean struggles and fails to maintain an even expression. “Make it up as we go,” he muses with a grin.

Castiel smiles, small but warmly, like the first brief flicker of a match.

“Yes.”

***

The End