Archive of Our Own

0.      Time, Curious Time

The first time Cas puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder, Dean doesn’t even remember it.

He catches flashes of it, sometimes. But they’re always dreams, so he can’t even be sure if they’re memories or something his twisted brain has made up, especially as the years go by and the Mark of Cain and all the people he’s lost climb up the back of his neck and twist their way around his brain.

He remembers the feeling more than anything. The kind of dark washed red that fills your vision when you try to look at the back of your eyelids, and grief and anger and so much pain it cut him up. Until he was bled dry and it started all over again, until that pain became relief, a craving, something he could give to others. A gift he was good at giving.

He would have gone on like that forever if a bright light hadn’t seared his eyeballs and his ears. If there hadn’t been a white hot hand on his shoulder, or what would have been his shoulder if he had a body. A brand, flashing through his arm and into his core, washing over his cuts and bruises and even doing its best to bleach his mottled soul.

Too bad Cas could never do that one right.

And then he’d woken up in Pontiac, Illinois, six feet under, dehydrated as all hell and with a stranger’s bright red handprint on his left shoulder.

1.       Were There Clues I Didn’t See?

Dean basically forgets about the handprint after Pamela lays her own hand on it and tells him the creature who gave it to him is named Castiel. It’s just another scar, and Dean has millions of them, some even more impressive, some not visible on his body.

Besides, the result of that little experiment was Pamela losing her fucking eyes. Cas’d always purse his lips when he or Sam stumbled upon that part of their story. “Guy doesn’t even know his own strength,” Dean would joke, and that would make it a little better, comfortable enough for them to mourn their friend in peace.

The apocalypse was no picnic either. Sam didn’t like how blasé Dean got about it at the end. “Me or Michael, doesn’t matter so long as the world doesn’t miss out on this face,” he’d grin at Sam, shoving fries in his mouth because what the heck, the world was ending.

Thinking back on it, there’s no way Cas wasn’t clearing his arteries every other week, during that endless, hopeless trek across the country to stop Lucifer. But Cas wasn’t supposed to like him then, so he never said, and Dean never asked.

‘Course as hard as he and Sam tried, as much as he was tempted to power through, to keep Sam from saying yes and risking that alternate 2014 future, Sam did say yes. Cas beat Dean almost to death in an alley, he wasn’t even allowed to try, but Sam got to say yes.

You’re too weak he’d thought when Cas dragged him back to Sam, bloody and bruised. They don’t trust you. You screw everything up.

So it’s no surprise to him when he finds himself kneeled on the ground, battered and barely able to see through the swelling and blood clouding his eyes. His brother is in the Cage, unreachable. And Dean is alone.

Until he’s not.

Cas appears at his left shoulder like he belongs there, and for a brief moment Dean can almost believe he does. That the angel his mom had sworn was watching over him was real. He feels his presence before anything else, has to squint to make out his face through the haze of sun haloing his head.

He asks him if he’s alive (duh) and Cas answers in that cryptic, holier than thou bullshit way he used to have before Heaven knocked him down one too many times.

“I’m better than that,” he says, reaching for Dean. Dean stupidly, for a split second, thinks Cas is going for his shoulder. He doesn’t know why. It’s a belief that’s instinctual, bone deep, that if Cas places his hand there everything will be alright. Grief would be washed away, the heaviness in his gut would lift. Sammy wouldn’t be stuck in Hell for all eternity, tortured to insanity. Dean supposes maybe in time he can find comfort in the fact that his brother will never be asked to pick up a knife. It’s a wishful, desperate sort of thinking.

But of course Cas doesn’t go for his shoulder, has never been that familiar with Dean, and heals him with two fingers to his forehead like he always does. Dean feels bereft.

He stands as soon as he can see again and his knee has straightened out. “Cas, are you God?” he asks quietly, because really, what else is there to say? Sam is gone, Bobby is dead, and somehow Cas is still here, even though Dean saw him get blown to bits.

Cas is quietly amused, and then Bobby isn’t dead anymore, and the distraction of explaining what happened while he was out, convincing him that Dean’ll be just fine and sending him on his way makes it easy to ignore the fact that the hollowness in his chest is eating him alive.

He thinks it’s all due to Sam. It has to be. He raised the kid, was some of the only family he had. And he got Sam dead. Worse than dead. He got Sam a million lifetimes of agony.

Cas stands quietly by the car after Bobby’s driven off and Dean wonders why he hasn’t disappeared yet as he pulls his duffel out of the trunk. He carefully doesn’t look at the second one shoved beside it. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with a bag full of Sam’s giant clothes, the entirety of his earthly belongings. So instead he focuses on changing out of the goddamn shirt he killed his brother in.

Cas is still there, placidly squinting out over the cemetery, when Dean fails to catch the familiar flash of pink-red on his shoulder.

He’s so taken aback that he abruptly stops what he’s doing, his overshirt hanging off his other arm as he stares at the smooth, unblemished skin of his shoulder.

“Hey,” he barks out, and then pauses. The hollow feeling in his chest is rising, climbing up the back of his throat, and he can’t understand what he was even going to say. So the giant ugly brand on his arm is gone, so what? Sure makes his sex life easier.

Cas, who’s been staring at him expectantly since the sudden outburst of noise, doesn’t need a question. “I healed you,” he says simply, and now that Dean is paying more attention through his fog of grief, he sees that Cas has. His bum knee feels fine, there’s no sign of the stitch he’d get in his side when his arm raised, ever since some low grade demon put him through a wall.

He’s fine. He’s healed. Physically, at least. And it bothers him. His chest is empty. He can’t feel his heartbeat.

He can’t figure out why. Not when he climbs into the car and Cas, inexplicably, follows him into the passenger seat (Sam’s seat). Not when he starts driving, he doesn’t know where, and the sun sets, and neither he nor Cas has said a word as the dark sky begins to blend with the black pavement of the highway. Not when he asks Cas what he’s going to do next, and Cas spouts some Richard Siken sounding crap about peace or freedom and fucks right off.

It’s not until he finally pulls over to the side of the road somewhere in Iowa at four in the morning and lays down in the front seat of the impala that he realizes he’s never going to fucking see Castiel again, and his shoulder pangs.

2.       Cutting Me Open, Then Healing Me Fine

Cas is a goddamned idiot. Dean could have forgiven the Purgatory thing. He really could have. He was so fucking relieved to see Cas again, to have both him and Sam back. Team Free Will, on the road together again. He never even minded that Cas hadn’t managed to haul out Sam’s soul. They got it back eventually, the fact that Cas even went to grab Sam at all –

No one’s ever done anything like that for Dean before.

He knew, on some level, as Bobby and Sam pleaded for him to see reason, what Cas was doing. The guy wasn’t a good liar. But Dean figured he deserved some level of blind trust, some faith that his plan, as dumb and dangerous as it was, would work out. Dean was no stranger to shielding others from his suicidal save the world stunts. The least he could do was let Cas have his moment, even as his heart cracked in two and he choked out, “I was there, where were you?” over the white-hot fire of an angel trap.

He could even forgive Cas breaking Sam’s wall. It was harder, but he could do it. Cas was his best friend. He was Sam’s friend too, but Dean knew, deep down, there was more for him, something just for him. He’d struggled to keep the appropriate level of amused disgust on his face when Cas had declared to Sam that he and Dean shared “a more profound bond.”

But maybe it was only ever just a handprint, and Cas took that away.

He can’t forgive Cas for dying.

He’s angry at Cas for a long time, even as he fishes his trench coat out of the reservoir and swears softly at it.

Selfish, is what it is. Cas healed that handprint expecting to never see Dean again. He was just going to die without even saying goodbye. But Dean went and ruined it like always.

No handprint. No profound bond. No Cas.

So Dean lugged a dirty, smelly trench coat all around the country like it was the flag that was folded atop Cas’ coffin, and he does his best to ignore what Sam thinks are covert worried looks and not so covert suggestions that he slow down on the drinking.

Bobby dies again. This time Cas isn’t there to wake him up.

He can’t help feeling that it’s unfair, that he and Sam sacrificed so much for this stupid rock and all the people on it and none of the angels or God or even some backwater goddess can find it in themselves to give their father figure back to them. He gets angry at Cas for that too, that the last time Bobby ever saw Cas, Cas was being a colossal dick.

Like Cas was some girl he was taking home to meet the parents, looking for their approval.

They’re stupid thoughts, and Dean can only blame it on the booze and the semi-manic haze that’s overtaken his body.

Just kill the Leviathan, and then he can be done.

He’s losing Sam again, his wall not holding up against all those thousands of years in the Cage with Michael and Lucifer. He could kill Cas for this too, if he wasn’t already at the point of trying not to think of him ever again, the trench coat relegated to the very back of the trunk instead of where Dean had been keeping it in his duffle. He’s barely able to hold thoughts in his head long enough to focus on finding someone who can help Sam, doesn’t even blink when he’s directed to some faith healer in Colorado the hunter he speaks to on the phone swears is the real deal.

He doesn’t handle seeing Cas again well. Especially when it’s not Cas.

Dean doesn’t know what to make of the whole thing. He introduces himself as Emmanuel, and he has a wife named Daphne. He’s wearing khakis, and a blue knitted sweater, and Dean stands in their pristine living room with its china cabinet in his grubby boots and unwashed jeans and stares, and stares.

It could just be Jimmy with amnesia. It could be something else, inside the vessel, something that slithered in after the Leviathan had choked Cas out and drained him dry, making a home here in suburbia.

Or it could be Cas.

Daphne, Dean can tell, is one of those floaty pure faith religious types, so whoever this is in Cas’ body, he’s lucked out there. She praises Emmanuel’s healing like he’s Jesus walking on water, and looks at him with such adoration that Dean has a hard time focusing on her face.

Is this the kind of thing that Cas likes?

Not Cas. Emmanuel.

Dean’d almost feel bad he’s definitely dragging Emmanuel towards some more demon shit ‘cept that he’s wearing Cas’ face, and Dean has spent the past year being furious with Cas’ face, and his brain is all twisted up over whether he actually wants this to be Cas.

He tells himself a million times as he bundles Cas into the car that this can’t be about him. It has to be about Sam. And isn’t this all Cas’ fault anyway?

He owes this to Dean.

“What if you were some kind of bad guy?” he asks Emmanuel, driving once again through the pitch black, Cas at his shoulder.

“Oh,” Emmanuel says. A beat. “I don’t feel like a bad person.”

Dean’s heart cracks.

He has this crazy idea that there has to be some way to make Cas remember who he is again. Not a general idea, like they could find a potion or a spell or hit him over the head or something. A gut instinct, like he’s the one who’s gotta do it, him with the so-called profound bond.

He wildly, stupidly, wonders if he could get Emmanuel to place his hand on his shoulder.

Life isn’t some magical fairy tale, especially not Dean’s life, and luckily Meg debases him of any idiotic ideas by popping up in the backseat of his baby and irritating the fuck out of him.

Because she’s an asshole, not because she’s flirting with Cas.

It’s the trench coat, in the end. Dean finds himself steering around Emmanuel carefully, never reaching out a hand, never brushing his shoulder. He hates to admit it, but he’s afraid. Afraid that Cas will lay a hand on him and there will be nothing, because there never was. Dean isn’t special, and it was just a stupid, superficial burn.

He shies away from the idea that he may also be afraid that touching Cas may bring back everything.

They’re too broken. Dean is too furious.

He gives Cas back his trench coat, and Cas remembers.

This time, Dean leaves him.

3.       Isn’t it Just So Pretty to Think

Dean’s not proud of it, but he spends a lot of time running away from Cas. Leaving before Cas can leave him. It’s not like he has his wings anymore and can disappear while Dean is mid-sentence like he used to, but some habits are hard to break. Dean just expects everyone to ditch him anyway, and Cas has never done much to prove otherwise.

He liked Purgatory, as much as that appalled Sam. Had enjoyed the raw, unfiltered drive behind life there. Kill monsters, find Cas, get home to Sam. That’s all there was to it, no bullshit, no mess, no innocents that had to take the brunt of the consequences of Dean’s own actions, his failure to keep them alive.

Purgatory was probably the closest to Hell he’d been since working on the rack, hopefully the closest he’d ever be to it again, and he swears he could have found Cas there without Benny’s help. He could feel him, thrumming just beneath his skin, waiting for that saving grasp, contact, snapping back together like two ends of a rubber band.

When he learns Cas was just running from him again, didn’t want to be found, he ignores the feelings that threaten to take over his body. This is Purgatory after all, and things are uncomplicated here. He’s found Cas, so only one objective remains – get back home to Sam.

“I’m not leaving here without you,” he threatens, and Cas, he is gratified to see, agrees to go home with him.

Dean supposes he should have learned by now that you can’t force people to want to stay with you. He couldn’t convince Dad, has only held onto Sam through his brother’s misguided attempt at keeping him alive. Cas may enjoy hunting with him, but that doesn’t mean he likes Dean. It doesn’t mean he wants to stay.

In the months that he’s topside again, Dean truly believes that he let go of Cas, trying to get through the portal. That he hadn’t been strong enough. That he’d failed. Let down someone who had depended on him for their survival once again.

The truth his fucked-up mind is trying to hide from him is more painful. Cas just didn’t want to go with him.

“You can’t save everyone, my friend,” Cas tells him, clean shaven and back in his suit and alive , no thanks to Dean. “Though you try.”

I can though Dean had wanted to say. I can save you, if you let me.

He wants to reach out, put a hand on Cas’ shoulder, a mirror image. He wants to tell him they can save each other, because surely Cas can feel it too, won’t be able to deny it once the physical connection is made.

He doesn’t touch him. He doesn’t say it. Cas goes back to heaven.

He should have realized Naomi had her claws sunk into Cas. He really should have known. Sam always admonishes, when Dean has to drink to be able to sleep and he’s pouring him into his bed, “How could you possibly have known?” But. Dean should have known. He’d have felt it. He just wasn’t paying attention.

And Cas, brainwashed, killed more of his family, just like he had to do to keep Raphael from restarting the apocalypse, and that was Dean’s fault, too.

He’s almost grateful when Cas starts beating the ever-living crap out of him in Lucifer’s crypt. Some distant part of his brain thinks he deserves it, for all he’s put Cas through, for alienating him from Heaven, for forcing him to be with Dean when he clearly doesn’t want to be. But the humming under his skin becomes a buzz by the time his cheek bone has been fractured, and with barely any control over himself, Dean’s hand is hovering in the space between himself and Cas, not touching.

Never touching.

“Cas,” he says, a tumble of words he’s not even conscious of, following the rhythm of that buzz. “Please stop this. This isn’t you. We’re family. I need you.” I love you.

Dean thinks he’s going to die with Cas touching his face. And he thinks that might be okay. But Cas heals him instead, a caress that is somehow aggressive, fierce.

It’s not two fingers to the forehead. It rarely ever is again.

Dean finds himself, once again, standing when he shouldn’t be, whole when he should be broken and bloody.

“What broke the connection?” he asks, not even allowing himself to hope.

Cas purses his lips, and there’s a brief flash in Dean’s chest before he replies. “I don’t know.”

Dean doesn’t know either. He’s afraid to ask.

The next time Dean leaves Cas high and dry, the worst time, it’s not his fault. He tries to tell himself that, anyway. He has to, or the guilt he feels would eat him alive.

But Sammy is sick, and he needs Ezekiel.

Here was Cas, his very sense of being ripped from his body, violated. Responsible for the destruction of his home because he was trying to do the right thing. And here was Dean, ever his partner in the destroying everything you love club, checking one more person off the list.

“You can’t stay with us.”

Cas was human and helpless. He wanted to stay. And Dean turned him away.

Perched on the table in the library of the bunker, Dean silently urges Cas to figure it out. For him to realize that this wasn’t Dean’s choice, and that he’d never turn him away if it weren’t for Sam. Always for Sam, that was Dean’s job. Surely Cas could see that.

He didn’t. So much for that profound bond.

He didn’t think Cas was ever going to try to stay again.

Dean flip flopped between trying to forget Cas even existed and obsessively searching through obituaries and police records, trying to have some sense of where he was and if he was okay. The image of Cas slumped in a chair, an angel blade through his stomach, is seared into his brain.

He’d unthinkingly touched Cas’ cheek then too, cradled his face, begged for him to be okay.

The obsessive, anxious worry is something he’d have hid from Sam anyway, but knowing that Zeke was watching, waiting for Dean to make one wrong move and rip open Sam’s body from the inside –

So his concern for Cas becomes some kind of dirty secret.

Still, Zeke doesn’t stop him from going to Rexford, no matter how much Dean tries to convince himself that it’s a dumb move, that Cas doesn’t actually want to see him, he was just alerting them of a case, probably expecting Dean to call in a favor with another hunter.

Dean isn’t really even convinced it’s a case at all, but he feeds Sam the stupid excuse of needing a break from the angel tablet and hightails it out of there anyway, before Ezekiel can make an appearance and ask him where exactly he’s going.

It’s not the first time Dean is grateful all the angels have lost their wings.

It can’t be that much of a coincidence. Rexford is not a large town, there can’t be more than three gas stations here. But Dean can’t help but grin when he stops to fill his baby up and catches sight of him through the window. Purple striped shirt, blue vest. That’s Cas.

He can’t help but be delighted by the novelty of it when he strolls into the convenience store, little bell ringing cheerfully to announce his arrival. Like he’s just another schmuck from town, stopping by after work every day to pick up a Red Bull and smile at the cute guy who works the register.

Cas is not so delighted when Dean saunters up and pastes a wide smile on his face. “What’s a guy gotta do to get some service around here?” he asks, and Cas glares.

His humor at the situation wears thin very quickly when it’s clear Cas isn’t going to be charmed out of the hurt Dean has heaped on him. Dean gets it. He put Cas here after all. Well not here here – Cas is so much more than a gas station clerk.

“Cas, what happened to the money I gave you?”

“I gave it to a homeless woman,” Cas says shortly. “And it’s Steve now.” He points to the bright red Gas N’ Sip nametag on his vest.

Dean notes this is the second time Cas has changed his name in an attempt to get away from him.

“So, heavenly battles to this, huh?” he asks and immediately regrets it. He has no right to this information. He did this to Cas, took him from angel to retail assistant in Idaho.

Frankly, Dean can’t believe Cas hasn’t turned him away yet. He knows if their positions were reversed his hurt wouldn’t show itself well. He’d be bitter and angry. There’d be yelling.

Maybe Cas doesn’t feel all that strongly about it.

His mood sours when he learns Cas has a date, someone else working at the station – Nora.

“Going on dates, that’s something humans do, isn’t it?” he asks Dean pointedly.

Dean at least gets Cas to himself for the case, Cas doubting himself every step of the way. All because of something Dean had said to him that he didn’t really mean, had purposely been meant to keep Cas away. Needlessly tearing people apart, that was Dean.

Cas tells him about the Rit Zien, some kind of freaky angel that vaporizes you if you so much as get a papercut. “To them, pain is pain,” Cas explains, always ready to explain his weird family’s murderous tendencies. Dean thinks it can’t be too long until the damn thing comes after him, so maybe it’s a good time to ditch Cas.

He drops him off at Nora’s house. Because Cas has no car, and as much as he wants to let it go, he stops Cas from going in there looking like a dork. Hell, maybe this can be Cas’ second chance, and doesn’t he deserve that? So Dean makes him take off his vest, unbutton a button or two. Cas has always had the rugged look going for him. No one’d ever call him pretty.

His hand hovers over Cas the entire time he’s fixing his clothes, and at the very last second he pats him on the chest. It’s quick – Dean means it as a blessing. It weighs him down.

The Rit Zien goes after Cas, and Dean shows up just in time to help kill the thing, and save the baby, because apparently Cas is babysitting, not on a date.

You’ve chosen death the Rit Zien had said to Cas, and Dean is helpless as Cas gets the baby to stop crying, puts her back in her room. Dean convinces him to sit down and to let him bandage the cut on his palm before they begin the work of making Nora’s house look less like a crime scene.

He’s kneeling on the floor, Cas’ hand cradled in his own, his eyes absently focused on the work Dean is doing.

Dean clears his throat. Says quietly, “you’ll be alright?”

Cas’ gaze lifts to his and his mouth quirks. “I have to be.”

Dean tapes off the bandage. “I’m sorry.” He doesn’t know what for.

Cas lifts his injured hand and places it on Dean’s left shoulder. “Me too.”

4. Chains Around My Demons

Dean finds the Mark of Cain much harder to bury in the back of his subconscious than his time in Hell. Hell, at least, he could pretend to pile justifications on top of. He was tortured, he was a wayward soul, he was dead. He was separated from everybody he loved.

The Mark of Cain? That was all just Dean. Just Dean and the rotted, twisted, savage part of him that thrived in Purgatory and Hell and had finally made it topside.

It didn’t even matter when Sam and Cas managed to bring him back from demonhood in a matter of weeks. It didn’t change a goddamn thing. He was the same exact person, being human just weighed him down with the guilt of it all.

Sam called him ridiculous. Cas looked at him with those stupid, sad eyes. But Dean knew even what they weren’t willing to admit.

He was worse than a monster.

Without the benefit of fucking dying, he makes it almost a year before snapping like Cain said he would.

And then you’d kill the angel, Castiel. Now that one…that I expect would hurt something awful.

Charlie dies alone in the bathroom of a motel in Massachusetts, trying to decode the Book of the Damned for them. Trying to save Dean.

For the first time in his life, Dean blames Sam for something.

He knows he can’t be saved. Charlie shouldn’t have been left alone with Rowena and Cas. She shouldn’t have been doing this at all.

They give her a hunter’s funeral on a Wednesday, and before her body is burned to ash, before Dean tells Sam he wishes it was him who had died instead, he knows what he has to do.

Dean kills every single member of the Styne family brutally, with no remorse. He doesn’t even remember returning to the bunker, but he must have, because there he is, a pile of the only things he’s ever been able to call his own on one side of him, three bodies at his feet.

And Cas, because it’s always Cas.

Dean’s not worth the price of the crap Cas is peddling, this magic, make-everything-better spell that’s supposed to get the Mark of Cain off his arm. Whatever the Book of the Damned says, whatever problem it’s pretending to solve, there will be another behind it. And Dean’s just not worth it.

Cas isn’t getting it.

So Dean walks away. He walks away from Cas’ earnest, “I’m your friend , Dean,” and he walks away from this man who somehow thinks Dean – broken, fuck up, murderer Dean – without the Mark of Cain to poison him anymore, is worth another world ending event. Even though the Mark doesn’t change a fucking thing. He walks away.

Cas yanks him around by his left shoulder, and Dean is in Hell all over again.

Cas’ eyes are burning into his own, and the ghost of his palm burns through Dean’s shirt to his skin.

“You cannot fight the Mark forever, Dean,” Cas tells him, his voice low and urgent, the edge of desperation cutting at his words. “And when you turn – and you will turn – Sam and everyone else you love may be long dead. Everyone except me. I’m the one who will have to watch you murder the world. If there’s even a small chance we can save you, I won’t let you walk out of this room.”

Dean can feel Cas’ hurt. He can feel it in the air between them and in the memory of the hand still digging into his shoulder. He can feel it in the way Cas had scraped out the word love, in the hard set of his jaw now as he waits for Dean’s response.

Pain. It’s pain.

The Mark of Cain sings.

Cas touches his shoulder again.

Dean punches him in the face.

Dean supposes at some point during his beating Cas to a bloody pulp he realizes that Cas isn’t fighting back at all. He finds it hard to care. The Mark of Cain certainly doesn’t, and it begins pulsing to the beat of Dean’s adrenaline shot heart, with excitement, when Dean has Cas pinned to the floor, his face smeared with blood, his angel blade in Dean’s hand.

Cas raised him from perdition. Here he is again, trying to pull Dean up from the filth that he so clearly thrives in. Where he belongs.

“No, Dean – please.” Cas clutches his hand around Dean’s wrist. It’s not a restraining grip. It’s gentle. He won’t stop him.

Dean brings the knife down.

And stabs the book directly next to Cas’ head.

“Don’t come after me again. Next time, I won’t miss.”

Of course Dean never gets what he wants, but always what he deserves, so their third – or is it fourth? – apocalypse arrives in the form of the Darkness.

Amara is scary, and borderline To Catch a Predator, and Dean still can’t help being drawn to her. It’s because of his connection to the Mark, Sam theorizes, and Cas agrees, but Dean doesn’t care what it is, or that there might be a logical explanation. He just wants it to stop.

The best he can describe it is as the exact opposite of how his connection with Cas makes him feel. Cas, when Dean lets himself acknowledge it, shoots a warmth through his chest so strong it’s like burning, like thousands of miniature flames licking at him from the inside out.

Amara is…absence. When she gets close to Dean. It’s an absolute nothingness right in his heart, threatening to swallow him whole. And Dean can’t pull himself away from it.

He’s not really convinced he’s drawn to her because of the Mark. Maybe this is just what his soul is. Dark, rotted absence.

“Is my soul ok looking?” Dean asks Cas, sometime after Cas decided not to kill Metatron but before Donna calls them up with that freakish bunny head situation. He doesn’t like the reason for it, but Cas has been more agreeable lately to sitting still for more than a few minutes at a time to watch TV, and Dean has slowly but steadily been walking him through a new show called Schitt’s Creek.

Cas laughs sometimes, even when Dean doesn’t. It’s endearing.

“Is your soul…” Cas trails off, looking away from the scene and frowning at Dean almost critically. Dean freezes under the scrutiny, like that will somehow make it easier for Cas to see, less likely for him to say what Dean’s afraid he’ll say.

“Your soul is the brightest I’ve ever seen,” Cas says firmly, and that, apparently, is the end of discussion.

Dean’s not so sure, but it’s not like he has a chance to ask Cas again.

Sam gets it in his head that these visions he’s having are coming directly from God. Dean scoffs at his faith – it’s not like the bastard has paid any attention to them before, But Cas, of course, is on the same faith train as well, and the visions are telling Sam that Lucifer is the only one who can help defeat the Darkness again.

So they go back to Hell. Or more specifically, they go to the Cage.  

Hell is different than Dean’s limited memory allows him to remember. The point of entry has changed, of course, this time he walks in, and he comes armed with a witch collar for Rowena, given to him by the reaper Billie. He’s stumbling down right after a chilling encounter with the now fully grown Amara, where she promised to rule the world and to make everyone feel the same absence of anything that Dean feels when he’s around her.

She calls it bliss.

Being here, in Hell, is not as bad as Dean remembers. For one shameful moment, he wonders if it wasn’t as bad as he thinks it was, if this all could have easily been avoided if he had just continued to say “no.”

But then he, Sam and Cas are being beaten to death by Lucifer inside the Cage, and it’s his nightmares all over again.

He truly can’t believe they make it out of there alive, and it’s a gratefulness he chalks up to pure dumb luck. He knows his cards will be played soon, he’s just thankful the time hasn’t come before he can fix this whole thing with Amara, an end of the world scenario he once again is solely responsible for.

He has Sam to worry about over the next few weeks too. Sam, who has been carrying a tremendous amount of guilt over things Dean hadn’t even realized his brother contemplated, over not realizing the visions were from Lucifer and not God, over not coming after Dean in Purgatory.

Dean had forgiven him a long time ago, and Sam seems to feel better after he lets it all out.

Dean is left with the feeling that this is just another way he’s let someone down.

He breaks and tells Cas, right in the middle of a case. It’s a banshee only fifteen minutes from home, so Dean heads back to the bunker to do some research and catches Cas there for the first time since the Cage, disheveled and not himself. He explains he’s been blaming himself for Amara’s continued existence too, and Dean cracks wide open.

“Is it attraction?” Cas asks quietly. “Oh, Dean…”

Dean recoils at the simple word, at the sympathy in Cas’ voice. As far as his meager brain can analyze emotions, it is attraction. It’s a longing for everything Amara promises and embodies, no feeling, no pain, no joy. Just being. Barely being.

“We’ll figure it out,” Cas tells him, and lays a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

Sam calls Dean back to the nursing home at that point, and Dean leaves Cas at the bunker, feeling off-kilter.

They help Eileen finish the case, and they say their goodbyes. Mildred’s parting words echo in his head for days.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all my time on the road, it’s when somebody’s pining for somebody else.

There are two people Dean could be pining for, someone old and someone new. He is afraid of both of them.

He moves through their next few cases in a fog, mentioning to Sam that something seems off about Cas. “Something always seems off about Cas,” Sam says, and Dean dutifully laughs, but it still doesn’t feel right.

Then the whole thing with the Hand of God comes up, and Cas sends Dean back in time to that World War II submarine. But when Dean returns it isn’t Cas. It’s Lucifer inside of Cas, has been since the Cage.

They manage to banish Lucifer, but the damage is done. They’ve as good as lost Cas, and Dean vows they’ll get Lucifer out of him if it’s the last thing they do.

He wakes up in a cold sweat a few weeks later, the memory of Cas’ hand on his shoulder in that random storeroom deep in the bowels of the bunker, and realizes it was his right shoulder. The wrong shoulder.

He should have known then.

Dean has never been possessed by an angel, but sometimes, when they’re sleep drunk and exhausted driving home from a case, Sam will talk about it. About the total loss of control, the utter fear and despair of watching your body do things you aren’t telling it to do. He talks about how he would find pockets in his mind, spaces Lucifer hadn’t touched, and fold himself into them to fit, to hide, to get away from it all.

Dean hasn’t seen Cas in weeks, and he’s losing his mind.

Crowley finds the Horn of Joshua, another Hand of God, and while Crowley and Sam use it to bait Lucifer in an attempt to help them kill Amara, Dean sees it as nothing but a rescue mission for Cas. He refuses to agree to any plan regarding Amara until he’s promised Cas will be freed first and then, and only then, does he help set the trap.

Lucifer looks exactly like Cas. But Dean can tell, just as he could tell when it was Jimmy Novak, when it was the Leviathan, that his friend isn’t driving the wheel. He screams and screams Cas’ name, and although the spell does its job and Cas appears for a second, it’s not nearly long enough.

“Cas!” Lucifer mocks, his voice high and thin and so desperately raw that Dean’s mouth clicks shut and he takes a step back.

Crowley tries to go in there to drag Cas out, but it doesn’t work. Cas isn’t strong enough, or he doesn’t want to come back.

Amara shows up and snatches Lucifer from them, and Dean’s yells for Cas echo through the warehouse.

Chuck shows his face, and Dean cannot give one single shit that God has showed up to stay at their home. He watches Chuck reconcile with Lucifer in a way that Cas never got to with his father, after saving the world, losing his family, and searching for the man for an entire fucking year. Not one word of acknowledgement, or thanks, for what Castiel had done for all of them. For what he had done for Dean and Sam, who are apparently the main characters to Chuck’s precious story.

Dean didn’t like how Chuck made him feel. It was the Heaven manipulated apocalypse all over again, giving Dean the vague sense that every move he made was somehow pleasing to Chuck, an uneasy feeling he couldn’t shake that made him doubt his actions.

He does lose it on Chuck, just once, for abandoning them all to this shitty situation. Chuck thinks Dean is channeling his grief at his own father, and at least he doesn’t smite him.

Dean thinks the armchair therapy is bullcrap.

He wishes he could talk to Cas.

They get Cas back right before the finale of this entire shit show of a year, when the only solution to Amara killing the sun is Dean swallowing a soulbomb and basically hugging her to death. But somehow, by some miracle (more that Dean doesn’t deserve) Chuck and Amara resolve their differences and Amara heals Chuck.

Amara, before she and Chuck disappear in a shimmering light, smiles at Dean.

And promises him the thing he needs most.

Dean knows what he hopes to find, stumbling through the woods in an attempt to get back home. He was not expecting Mary Winchester.

5. Gave Me No Compasses, Gave Me No Signs

The next year passes in a ridiculous blur of family drama and the discovery of the British Men of Letters.

Dean cannot keep track of the emotions that crash into him daily. Mary Winchester is not the mother his four-year-old self has immortalized. She is not good at cooking, she does not bake him pies. She chops off her hair and swears with the best of them and can’t seem to come to terms with the fact that Dean and Sam, Dean now almost a decade older than her, are her sons.

She does not smooth Dean’s hair back from his brow and tell him angels are watching over him. She hardly touches him at all.

Dean knows it’s all a learning curve. He was only dead for four months in earth time, and it still took so much adjusting when he got back, punching his way through a lack of acceptance over the way Sam’s life had gone on without him. Mary had been dead for more than 30 years. He knows this can’t be easy for her.

Selfishly, it is not easy for him to have his mom, standing right in front of him, and not have her at all.

Sam falls harder and doesn’t understand, having never really known Mary. He is ecstatic to have their mom back in any form, for the guilt of being the cause of her death to be replaced with new, happier memories, even if the moments are still difficult.

Cas likes Mary as well.

Dean struggles to come to terms with these two versions of his mother, the real one standing before him and the one he’d ached for for the past twenty-five years. He tries not to make it obvious to Mary, that his faulty memories are creating a hesitance, a push so strong to have what he wants but the resistant pull that if he asks for it, he will not get it, because that’s not who she is now. They’ve missed their chance.

He knows Mary is uncomfortable in the bunker, and so when she goes, he doesn’t object. Everybody will always want to leave. Dean has to let them, has to be satisfied with the moments they allow him.

Lucifer is still out there, because they’re nothing if not consistent in chasing one catastrophe with another. Cas up and disappears with Crowley to smoke him out, which is a buddy cop pairing Dean would pay good money to see, But it works, because they find Lucifer in the body of rockstar Vince Vincente. Just when they think they’ve made progress there, Lucifer goes and grabs himself the most powerful vessel in the world.

Knocking up some chick with Satan’s spawn while in the president’s body is just the icing on the cake.

Kelly becomes Cas’ responsibility when Dean and Sam get arrested by the FBI, which is a speedbump more than anything else. Dean sleeps better than he has in weeks, knowing that Cas is looking for them, but starts getting anxious the more time passes.

It’s easy to make a deal with Billie.

Cas killing her sends him right back into that state of anxiety.

Billie has promised cosmic consequences, that Cas has now shouldered, and Dean is so furious he can barely grit the words expressing his stupidity out between his teeth. Cas is furious too, about Dean’s casual attitude towards his life, about the Winchester’s lack of acceptance of their importance to the world, to him.

The drive home is not pleasant.

Some of Cas’ angel buddies drop by, which just pisses Dean off even more. Cas’ family never treats him like family, and Dean spends the entire time in their presence dying to rip into them about how they don’t deserve Cas, which only upsets Cas, which only pisses Dean off even more. But Cas is gung-ho about going to save this Benjamin guy, so Dean insists that he and Sam go with him.

He’s not sure what Benjamin has ever done to deserve Cas’ beck and call, but whatever.

Ishim proves to be a real dick in record time, much to Dean’s relief. He’s always been more comfortable with just stabbing his problems in the face. He feels like maybe he should be upset with Cas like he used to be when he heard stories about how angels bulldozed their way through everything. Cas had part in murdering an innocent kid.

Dean’s sure he’s done much worse.

He and Cas are cut from the same cloth. He still gets angry at him sure, but it’s never the same anymore. It used to be incredulity, Dean never able to understand the choices Cas was making, the pain he was putting himself and others through.

Dean thinks he was in denial. He thinks he still has a lot of denial to work through. He understands Cas perfectly.

Ishim dies with some final words. I’m gonna cure you of your human weakness…

Dean wonders about that too.

Next case they’re on, Mary screws them all. Cas very nearly dies. He tells Dean I love you.

He tells them he loves them all, but Dean feels it in his gut.

He kicks Mary out of the bunker.

Working with the British Men of Letters is not something Dean enjoys. In fact, he hates it. But he does it for Sam, because Sam so desperately wants a relationship with Mary. Dean gave up on having his mother back a long time ago, but he tells her he forgives her. For Sam.

He realizes he should have paid more attention to Cas and what he was going through. He’d thought Cas had given up on Heaven, just like he’d given up on Mary. But Cas always had a larger capacity for faith than him, a belief in reciprocal treatment from those he loved that Dean envied.

Dean tells himself it’s Cas’ naiveté that’s pissing him off. His refusal to believe the clear threat Kelly Kline’s child poses to the world. But in moments of solitude, he can admit that it’s jealousy.

Cas and this kid have a bond. It’s something that Cas searched for, something that he needed, because Dean wasn’t enough. Cas trusts the Nephilim and the lies it’s feeding him completely and wholly. He is protecting the Nephilim from Dean.

It is something Dean cannot touch, and Dean takes that realization hard. Cas was never his, and now he never will be.

He knows it when they step through the rip in the universe into the dreary gray of the Apocalypse World. He knows it when Cas appears out of nowhere and Sam drags Dean, screaming Cas’ name, back into their own universe. He knows it even for the brief second that Cas appears in the backyard of the cabin, healthy and whole, the brief beginnings of a smile on his face, before an angel blade spears him through his gut.

It is all he knows as he kneels on the ground next to Cas’ lifeless body for what seems like hours, too numb to cry, too defeated to be angry.

The child is named Jack, and he is the reason Cas is dead.

Dean has never hated someone so completely in his entire life.

At first, Dean doesn’t pay him any attention. He lets loose in the parking lot of Pirate Pete, demanding Chuck get his ass back to earth. Dean deserves anything, any punishment but this. He cannot let the people he loves bear the brunt of his mistakes anymore, from breaking in Hell to giving into the Mark of Cain to agreeing to let Lucifer out of the Cage. Mom shouldn’t be stuck in Apocalypse World. Cas sure as shit shouldn’t be dead.

You’ve done it before he screams in his head just as much as he screams it to the sky. Bring him back again.

Cas does not magically appear at his shoulder.

Dean spares Jack a second thought when he sees him stabbed in the chest with an angel blade and nothing happens. The demon-of-the-week ferrets his hope out instantly and crushes it under her high heel just as fast. “Think the Nephilim can bring your angel back?” she asks, her meatsuit’s pretty face turned up in a mocking sneer. “He can’t.”

Sam is convinced that Jack isn’t inherently evil, that his future is his own choice. Dean knows what’s going on here – Sam sees himself in Jack. He sees a kid who never knew his mom, someone who by all logic should be destined for evil. Sam says Jack considers Cas his father, not Lucifer. He says all he needs is to learn control, to have a guiding influence, like Dean was for Sam.

Dean thinks it’s laughable. Jack is the devil’s fucking son. He convinced Castiel paradise was on the horizon. He’s nothing at all like Sam. He needs to be killed.

“Dad told you to kill me once too,” Sam says quietly.

Dean doesn’t care. He’s seen Jack hurt too many people, and it’s the kid’s own bad luck that they’re people Dean holds dear. Sam is convinced Jack can help them get mom back, but clearly that ain’t happening, and it becomes too much for Dean to bear, to have Jack sitting in the bunker, in a seat that should be Castiel’s.

He ends up arguing with Sam, his only family left alive once again, and it’s Sam picking this murderous strange freak over Dean, just like Cas, that sends him over the edge.

“He manipulated him, he made him promises, said ‘paradise on earth’ and Cas bought it and you know what it got him? It got him dead! Now you might be able to forget about that but I CAN’T.”

Sam’s response to that is to trick him into fucking family therapy, and Dean vows never to share his feelings again.

It becomes harder to ignore Jack. Kid is earnest as all hell and promises that he can get Mary back from Apocalypse World. Sam is eager for Dean to embrace him as well and Dean is…tired. He’s just tired. If all that’s left is the hope that mom is still alive, then that’s what he’ll have to cling to.

Finding out Billie is the new Death really puts things into perspective as well, especially as she’s showing Dean the thousands of books that each spell out a different permanent end to his life. “You and Sam have work to do,” she tells him.

Dean is really, really tired.

“I just need a win.” He says it to Sam, but it’s a plea to the universe. He remembers Cas, what seems like lifetimes ago. Good things do happen, Dean. He wishes that were true.

Dean hugs Castiel hello under the neon lit cross of a 24/7 chapel. They’re in a filthy alley bordered by a chain-link fence that is housing probably the only working pay phone left in America. Dean has never been happier in his life.

From that point on, Jack is okay in his book.

It is clear how much Cas adores Jack the second the two of them meet, and though jealousy tugs at Dean once again he doesn’t let himself dwell in it. He asked for a win, and Jack helped him get one, the biggest one. That’s all there is to it.

Their version of domestic bliss, what Dean so graciously names Team Free Will 2.0, is short-lived. Demons and angels are both after Jack, and Jack is no closer to opening an interdimensional rift. Worse than that, he can’t seem to gain any control over his powers. When Jack runs, Dean aches alongside Cas.

Dean had clocked the similarities between Sam and Jack early on, so he shouldn’t be surprised, but he finds himself amazed at how quickly and thoroughly his protective instincts have expanded to cover this kid. Sam may technically be his brother, but Dean is no stranger to surrogate parenting, and he falls into the role easily with Jack, Sam and Cas at his side.

More than that, he knows Cas will do anything to get Jack back, so Dean will be there, making sure Cas doesn’t end up dead again.

He sees how quietly terrified Cas is when it turns out Naomi isn’t dead. How he begins flinching at small, sudden sounds, how he sometimes stares at Dean, not in the usual way, but like he’s not quite sure he’s actually there. Dean has always been the tactile initiator between the two of them, and even that has been dampened by the voice in his head that warns too much, too much, his own personal alarm. Touches initiated by Cas Dean can count practically on one hand, and he can certainly remember them all.

Now Cas reaches out more frequently, a brush over his arm, a bump of the shoulder. Dean lets him do what he needs to do without saying a word and endures the warmth that takes up residence in his veins.

Can Cas feel this too?

Dean carefully does not freak out over the Apocalypse World version of Cas, but that alternate future terrifies him, almost as thoroughly as the burned out husk of a human Castiel that Zachariah once showed him. This Cas’ eyes are a clouded milky white, and he twitches constantly, his mouth a permanent sneer. This Cas has never had anybody tell him family are the people you choose, that orders can be questioned. This Cas doesn’t have support from anybody. He’s never had anyone tell him they love him.

Dean has never told Cas he loves him.

Cas kills his alternate ego with ease, and Dean doesn’t bring it up. They don’t mention it at all.

When Jack goes off with Lucifer, Dean knows Cas will do anything to get him back. He’s seen firsthand what Castiel does for the people he loves, what he thinks his own life is worth in comparison.

Dean knows what his life is worth. He remembers Billie’s rows and rows of little black books. He remembers that Other Castiel, the wrong one, who never had anyone to love him.

When Dean finally gets to say yes to Michael, he knows exactly what he’s doing it for.

The time he spends with Michael inside his head is more of a haze than Sam prepared him for. Michael doesn’t seem particularly interested in torturing or mocking him, or even acknowledging that he exists. Dean’s never mastered the art of keeping his mouth shut though, and it’s not long until Michael starts burying him under memories he’d rather not relive again.

It’s a mistake, showing him Sam’s death, Cas’ death, Bobby’s death and all Dean’s weaknesses in between. The grief keeps him sharp, the guilt keeps him awake, and he digs himself out, again and again, as methodically as he dug himself out of his own unmarked grave.

Michael ditches the joint, and Dean can’t blame him, can do nothing but be grateful his head and soul are too fucked beyond repair for even a psychotic archangel to take up residence with.

He thinks they’ve finally caught a break, that all they have to focus on is finding Michael and kicking his ass back into the other universe – or killing him, whatever comes first.

But then Jack starts coughing up blood.

The kid, weirdly enough, starts taking on a Dean Winchester attitude. An ‘I may be dying but damn if I won’t enjoy the ride’ approach. Dean finds himself spending more time with Jack, taking him on cases, bringing him to the river to fish, letting him drive the impala. He’s happy to be developing a relationship with Jack outside of Cas’ love for him, outside Dean viewing him as a carbon copy of preteen Sam.

Rowena says that Jack can’t be fixed, and when he dies, Dean is genuinely devastated. That devastation is magnified by the heavy sorrow that hangs over Sam and Cas.

They give Jack a proper send off, drinking alcohol and eating chocolate nougat deep into the night. Sam is the first to retire around two in the morning, and Dean sits across the table from Cas, a silent pillar of support, letting him remember Jack.

“I’ll never have children,” Cas says quietly. “But he was like a son to me.”

Dean nods. He understands. “That’s why I loved him,” he says, very quietly, so quietly he’s not sure he says it at all.

In the morning they get to work.

Dean and Sam find Lily Sunder, Cas travels to Heaven. It takes some convincing to get Lily to help them, and hell knows what Cas has to promise Naomi, but they make it happen in the end. They always do. Jack is back, and as long as the kid doesn’t use his powers, he’ll have his soul. He’ll be alive.

Cas is different after that, and Dean struggles to figure out what he did wrong. The subtle touches gradually taper off again. He finds it hard to get Cas in a room alone, without Sam or Jack there. He’s never around if Dean gets the urge to fire up a Spaghetti Western. If they do happen to be part of the same conversation together, Cas barely waits for him to finish speaking before he starts up his own sentence, or he looks zoned out, like he’s not listening to Dean at all.

“Naomi do something to Cas?” Dean manages to ask Jack one day.

Jack freezes, a deer in the headlights, and very carefully says, “no,” before bolting to the library and Sam.

They’re making good progress against Michael, finding the spear and his location. Dean’s starting to feel like they may actually finish this.

He doesn’t remember being stuck in his own head, or creating a looping reality where he owned his own bar with Pamela. But he knows Michael is trapped in that supply closet inside his mind now.

And he knows the only solution is the Ma’lak Box.

For some reason, Sam and Cas aren’t thrilled with the idea of him locking himself in a box with Michael and throwing himself into the ocean for all eternity. He gets the thing built but they convince him to at least wait just a little bit longer, to see if there’s another way.

The other way comes at the expense of Jack killing Michael and getting his powers back, but Dean’s pretty sure the kid’s soul is kaput.

Sam and Cas don’t seem as concerned – to the contrary, they only seem relieved that Michael is gone and Dean won’t be throwing himself over the side of a boat in a locked coffin anytime soon. But Dean remembers soulless Sam and how as hard as Sam tried, he couldn’t grasp that you can’t hurt people, especially the people you love. Hell, they only just recently saw Donatello turn into a sociopath without his soul.

So Jack becomes Dean’s worry and burden to carry alone.

He loves Jack. He really does. Worse than that, hurting Jack would hurt Cas. But Dean has a responsibility to this world, to his people, and that responsibility includes not letting the most powerful being in the universe run around soulless.

He’s relieved when Jack declares him and Sam his moral guiding light. Not that they’re top of the class (well, Sam might be) but at least Dean can show him you can’t just go around murdering anyone who upsets you. Cas assures Dean that he’s talked to Jack as well, about death, about losing people. He has faith that Jack will be fine.

Dean trusts Cas, and Cas trusts Jack.

In retrospect, this probably adds to Cas’ grief when Mary is obliterated. Feeling you’re the cause of an unnecessary death, especially the death of a loved one, puts an awful taste in the back of your mouth and a heavy weight in your stomach. Dean should know. And Cas really did love Mary, as a friend and as Dean’s mom.

But Dean can’t see through his own loss.

Cas tells Dean that Mary is in Heaven with John now, that she’s happy, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s not here with Dean. That her life was once again ended too short. He stands alone at her funeral. Sam doesn’t speak to him. Cas doesn’t touch him. And Dean knows he’s the only one who’s going to have the strength to make sure Jack never hurts anyone again.

The Ma’lak box is a fuck up. It just pisses Jack off, loses Dean the element of surprise. He broke the kid’s trust, but he can’t let himself be upset about that, be distracted from what needs to be done. Chuck, the dramatic asshole, shows up at the final hour strumming his dumbass guitar, and Dean takes pleasure in smashing it to the floor, even if Chuck’s reaction is the first time he’s ever been scared by the neurotic little guy.

Chuck agrees that Jack is a threat, and that he needs to be killed. He gives them a gun to do it.

Dean tells Cas, “you can get on board with the plan or you can walk away.”

Cas walks away.

It’s the old jealousy from when Jack first appeared rearing its ugly head again, but this time it’s worse. This time, Dean gave Cas the choice, and Cas didn’t choose him. He’s lost Cas to a half angel kid who, with Heaven’s help, is enslaving the planet. Dean’s logic says Jack needs to be gotten rid of. Cas’ love says that he can still be reasoned with. Their bond is breaking.

Dean figures, if it’s already breaking, he may as well snap it quick.

He really intends to shoot Jack, dead in the center of his forehead. To finally put a period to all this shit he’s endured his whole life. To lose Cas forever. It’s an act sanctioned by God himself, and Dean is ready for his life to end.

But he can’t do it.

It’s not out of any sense of self-preservation. He knows the end is very near, it makes no difference to him if it’s from using a cosmic powered gun or because he can’t run fast enough to stop a werewolf from taking a chunk out of his chest. As long as Dean is able to go out swinging, fighting with the ones he loves, he doesn’t care.

Jack kneels in front of him, accepting his fate, and Dean can’t do it. He can’t shoot this kid who’s been as close to a son as he’s ever gonna get, even if he did kill mom. He can’t shoot this kid and die and leave the earth with Cas furious and heartbroken and resenting that first moment he placed a hand on Dean’s shoulder and yanked him out of Hell. He can’t do it.

Plus, something about how much Chuck is enjoying all this seems hinky.

So Dean flips on the safety and drops the gun, and does what he wishes he’d been strong enough to keep doing in Hell.

He says, “no.”

And the story as they know it is over.

6. One Single Thread of Gold Tied Me to You

Dean used to joke when he was very young and very stupid, when he’d just gotten Sam back from Stanford and had thought maybe life was worth paying attention to again, that someone up there must have it out for them.

He knows if someone had told that younger version of himself that God was controlling every single thing he said, he’d have punched them in the face.

They have bigger fish to fry, since Chuck in his narcissistic temper tantrum has cracked Hell wide open, spilling out all kinds of evil wretched souls who’d like nothing more than to terrorize and kill everyone left alive.

All that work that he and Sam and every other hunter have been doing for years. All those people they’ve saved. All their sacrifices and lives lost. Wasted. And that’s all on Dean.

Cas, Dean knows, is grieving. Chuck killed Jack anyway, and Sam’s got a giant, nasty looking bullet wound in his shoulder. Dean can’t afford to have any sympathy for his friend, not when Cas had refused that sympathy, that closure to him.

He doesn’t even know if that’s on Cas anymore. Was Chuck making Cas choose Jack over him? Did Cas even like Dean at all? He remembers learning, years ago, that it was cupids who made John and Mary fall in love, not Led Zeppelin, not fate. Dean had preached free will to Cas, had tried to show him that the preplanned apocalypse didn’t have to be. And he thought he’d succeeded. But maybe that was all a crock of shit. Maybe that’s what Chuck intended all along.

And if that were true, everything Dean feels for Cas, this bond that only grows stronger with time, this invisible string tying them together…

It’s all a lie.

If it’s a lie Dean wants it destroyed. Now.

It’s not Cas’ fault, but it kind of is. Because if Cas could have just left them alone, none of this would have happened.

Chuck knew Dean wasn’t strong enough. But Cas could have been.

He’s as cold to Cas as possible during the case. He doesn’t care if Cas goes down to Hell and doesn’t come back. He doesn’t care if Cas is sorry Mary is dead. He doesn’t care Jack is gone, and Cas is hurting. None of this matters, none of this is real.

Cas catches him alone, his eyes flinty and his voice rough. “You asked what about this is real?” he growls at Dean. “We are.”

Dean can’t believe him.

Rowena ends up sacrificing herself to close the Hell rift, and all Dean can think is that it’s another friend they’ve lost for no goddamn good reason. Sam is real cut up about it, and if everything had just gone to plan, they could have been alright.

Cas tries, one last time, to talk to him. Dean knows it will be the last time, because he knows what he’s going to say. Cas corners him in the library, explains what went wrong, something always goes wrong…

“Yeah?” It’s almost an out of body experience, the way that Dean has completely separated himself from that constant buzzing under his skin when Cas is near. “Why does that something always seem to be you?”

He doesn’t look at Cas’ face. He can’t or he’ll lose it. He’ll break. He’ll beg Cas to forgive him, tell him he didn’t mean it. And he’s sure that’s probably what Chuck wants.

The buzzing is in his ears and has reached a deafening crescendo, so he misses most of Cas’ reply. But when he sees him turn to leave, his heart gives a sickening lurch, and it’s pathetic how quickly he asks, “Where are you going?”

Cas looks tired. Defeated. But there’s a hard set to his jaw when he answers. “Jack’s dead. Chuck’s gone. You and Sam have each other. It’s time for me to move on.”

And he leaves.

Beating Chuck at his own game, Dean thinks hollowly, but even the preliminary thought doesn’t stop the other, more corrosive ones from scraping across his thoughts. If he can’t realize you don’t mean it, it must not be real and he really couldn’t wait to get away from you.

Dean does not leave the library until every whiskey decanter is drunk dry.

Sam is slipping away in his visions again, and it’s a cruel irony that they can’t be relieved that these ones actually are sent by God. Rowena’s death hit him hard and Dean’s so concerned, so wrapped in his anxiety as distraction, that he feels himself physically sag in relief when Eileen turns up again, and Sam is able to save her.

Cas isn’t gone long. He comes back to help Sam, which is about the only way he could have returned to silent Dean’s protests before they could begin. Chuck is getting nervous, threatening them again, and Sam is certain that the connection they share through his bullet wound is some sort of weakness. “If we can kill him, we have to take the chance,” he says.

Turns out Michael knows how to trap God, and Rowena isn’t suffering in Hell as much as they’d thought she was.

Michael isn’t in the Cage, so they head back upstairs, but not before Rowena manages to pick up on the tension between him and Cas. Dean knows he’s not as subtle as he desperately wants to believe he is, not if the pile of comments made by enemies and allies alike over the past decade are anything to go by. Rowena had knowingly smirked at him more than once at times when he’d caught himself in a staring match with Cas, and Dean had always dreaded slightly that she’s probably read his mind more than once.

“Fix it,” she tells both of them. But Dean won’t, and this isn’t Cas’ to fix, because in Dean’s more quiet moments, he knows Cas has done nothing wrong.

Dean has been forcing Cas to be at his side for nearly a decade, and maybe Chuck had too. If Cas wants to leave, Dean will push him away.

He’d never really known Adam, and it’s not as strange as he thought it might be to see his half brother again, to see Michael sharing his half brother’s body. He spares a wry thought to how easy this all would have been if Apocalypse World Michael had kept his deal in the same way.

To trap Chuck, they need a Leviathan blossom from Purgatory. Sam is off with Eileen. Michael isn’t going with them.

“Have fun,” he tells them, a small smirk to his lips as he opens the rift.

It’s their first time alone together since Cas left the bunker.

They fall easily into the pattern they’d so readily established the last time they were here. Dean taking point, Cas in the rear. Cas tapping his wrist once for being followed, twice for up ahead.

Dean’s emotions climb, unbidden and raw, to the surface as well. He thought maybe he’d romanticized how easy it was to just be in Purgatory, but here it all was again, greeting him like an old friend.

They chase off a couple of vamps and a rugaru before they let the leviathan overtake them. He’s sullen at being caught, but agrees to lead them to the blossoms over having his chest shot through with Borax.

Dean thinks maybe he panics. Once they get the flower,, they’ll head back out through the rift, and there will be no reason to ever come here again. No more purity or ease of primal, base emotion. No more of this place where he first let his connection with Cas consume him.

Maybe it’s because Benny is dead, well and truly dead, and Dean knows this whole thing with Chuck means he can’t be too far behind.

When Cas talks, Dean listens.

“This place will bring that out in you,” he says quietly. “Guilt. It was my fault the Leviathan got out, it was my fault we were here the first time. I carry that guilt every day.”

Dean has almost forgotten this footnote in their history, has not blamed Cas for anything that had happened back then since the night he appeared, filthy and dejected, in his and Sam’s motel room, spit out of Purgatory.

The idea that Cas still carries guilt about it, still considers it as something he may have to make up for, startles him.

“I know you’re sorry Cas,” Dean tells him. “About that, about mom…”

“I was talking about Jack,” Cas cuts across his words. “I’ve tried apologizing to you, you just refuse to hear it.”

Dean snorts. Jack is still something he blames Cas for. “Sorry I brought it up. Maybe if you didn’t just up and leave us.”

Cas shoots him an incredulous look. “You didn’t give me a choice Dean. You couldn’t forgive me and you couldn’t move on. I left, but you didn’t stop me.”

Ahead of them, the Leviathan they’re following laughs.

It’s a trap, and Dean comes to in a field of dead Leviathan, no Cas in sight. He experiences a sense of profound déjà vu when he stumbles to his feet, his head throbbing. His body is singing too – where’s Cas? Where’s the angel?

No monsters come near him. Dean wonders if there’s still a memory in this place, caught in the trees, of him cutting through one monster’s soul after the other, all the while snarling for Cas.

He knows there are only a few hours left to find him and get to the rift before it closes. He knows he’s not leaving without him.

The thought that Cas might be experiencing this same sense of déjà vu is sobering. Last time they were here, Cas deliberately hid from Dean, drawing the Leviathan away from him. Cas’ words make Dean understand a little better, if the guilt his friend still feels now is any indication, what he must have felt back then. To believe it was his fault that Dean was trapped here. His only friend in the entirety of Purgatory, and Cas worked so desperately to stay away, all for Dean.

And now here they were in this place again, separated. Cas came here with him even though Dean told him he was dead to him. That everything bad that has ever happened to him is because of Cas. That he will never, ever forgive him.

He remembers Cas, indignant. I always come when you call . Cas, admitting to Dean after they’d returned from Purgatory that he was considering suicide, but when he’d thought Dean was afraid of sleeping – I’ll watch over you.

When he and Benny had finally caught up to Cas here, at the edge of the stream, he’d been so angry, so self-righteous. I prayed to you Cas, every night!

I know.

He thinks he’s been yelling Cas’ name. His skin is burning, burning, white hot, and he braces himself against a tree. “Cas,” he chokes out, he thinks it’s out loud. Maybe this is all in his head. He can’t see. His blood feels like molten lava and his chest aches. “Cas, I hope you can hear me, that wherever you are it’s not too late. I should have stopped you. You’re my best friend and I just let you go…’cause that was easier than admitting I was wrong.”

He finds himself kneeling. He’s never kneeled for a prayer before in his life but then he’s never done anything as important as apologizing to Cas before in his life.

“I don’t know why I get so angry. I just know that it’s always been there, and when things get bad it just comes out and I – I can’t stop it no matter how, how bad I want to I just can’t stop it.” He can feel the fire rising up his throat and his breath stutters. “And I – I forgive you, of course I forgive you! I’m sorry it took me so long…I’m sorry it took me ‘til now to say it. Cas. I’m so sorry.”

He can feel tears, wet and hot, pooling in his eyes and running down his face. Maybe that’s why he can’t see. His ears are ringing with how hard he is pushing his words, this feeling, this hot, insistent buzzing, out into the world.

He hopes Cas can hear him.

This isn’t Chuck making him feel this. Dean should have known it all along. He knows his mind. He knows right from wrong. If this is what Chuck wants, it’s a coincidence that Dean wants it too, but that will never stop him again.

He doesn’t linger long. He scrubs his face and stands up, and he heads back to the rift. If Cas isn’t there, he’s staying.

There’s a pile of dirty trench coat slumped against a tree just beside the jagged glowing rip in the world, and Dean nearly stumbles in his haste to reach it.

Cas hugs him, and he feels complete. Whole.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” Dean says, because they’re still in Purgatory, he can still do this. Cas deserves to hear.

“You don’t have to,” Cas crooks a smile at him. “I heard your prayer.”

They make the spell to capture Chuck and set off to meet Sam. Dean doesn’t think about how Cas is going to take on the Mark of Cain for this. Cas is much stronger than he ever was. Cas will be fine.

His body has settled into the comfortable rhythmic hum it adopts when Cas is nearby, and they’re in his Baby, on the road, off to save the world. It’s a familiar, comfortable space, and maybe that’s why Dean opens his mouth.

“So you always hear my prayers?”

“Hmm?” Cas says. He’s staring down at the weird ass glowing orb they’ve made, twisting it in his hands.

“My prayers,” Dean repeats. “You said you heard everything I said.” His cheeks warm slightly, and he doesn’t look at Cas.

“Yes,” Cas says carefully. “It’s something I’ve always retained, except when I was human. You could say I’ve become especially attuned to your voice.”

“Like a radio?”

“If you like.” Dean can hear the smile in his voice.

“What, uh,” he suddenly panics. “What if I’m thinkin’ about you but not, you know, praying?”

Cas is silent for a long moment, and Dean is momentarily terrified this has opened the door to a conversation he’s not ready to have.

“It’s hard to explain,” he finally says. “I don’t hear words, like you’re speaking to me over the phone. It’s much more basic than that. Almost like I’m hearing your intentions.”

“So, uh,” Dean clears his throat. “Like, I need your help, so you know to pop by, and I’m groveling, so you know I’m a sorry son of a bitch.”

“More like I can feel regret and sorrow,” Cas corrects gently, “and I can feel your yearning, so it’s time to come home.”

“Yearning?”

Cas shrugs and gives the orb a little toss. Dean winces instinctually. “Yearning, longing.”

“What’s that even supposed to feel like?”

Cas thinks for a moment. “Very hot. It’s similar to how my grace feels, but instead I feel you.”

Dean stares straight ahead at the stretch of highway and doesn’t ask another question.

Sam doesn’t let them use the orb on Chuck. He doesn’t explain why, and Chuck gets away.

Dean is secretly relieved to not have to see that angry red slash on Cas’ forearm, and when he confronts Sam about it later, he does make sure to show some thanks for that. “Don’t know what I would’ve done if the guy went all killer crazy on us,” he jokes weakly.

Sam looks at him bleakly, his mouth set in a thin line. “I know.”

Dean thinks he knows.

When Dean and Sam return from Alaska, Cas is standing in the bunker next to Jack. Dean waits only long enough to spare Cas a glance and get a nod before he’s hugging the kid.

The past is the past.

Apparently, Billie’s gonna help them kill God.

She makes them go after the Occultum first, another magical object Dean’s never heard of before that turns out to have the Garden of Eden inside it. Jack swallows the damn thing, and when he pops back out, he’s got his soul back.

Billie starts playing chess with them, except they’re the pieces. She admits that one of her books explains how Chuck will die, but she doesn’t give them specifics, only tells them that all four of them are integral to what happens. Dean feels like an errand boy in a revolving door of buddy cop pair offs, rushing off to Oklahoma to collect some kind of special dirt with Sam, to the coast of Oregon with Cas, to downtown Orlando with Jack.

(“What’s Disney World?” Jack asks.

“No,” Dean says.)

Things between him and Cas are good, Real good. Jack was the final piece of the puzzle. Dean could have even lived without an apology, but the second Jack’s soul was back, he gave one, sobbing harder than Dean had ever let himself over Mary Winchester’s second death.

Their family is complete again, and Dean is so sure that’s why they’re going to win.

He’s worried about the cost though. He’s not stupid enough to think that’ll he make it out of this alive, but that’s fine, as long as Sam and Cas and Jack are okay. As long as the world is saved and people really can go about their lives, free will intact.

It gets him thinking though, remembering all the times Cas has left him with words unsaid. All those unsaid words were on Dean. They’re things he’s said a million times to Sam – when he dies, Sam will, without a shadow of a doubt, know his brother loves him.

Dean has a hard time saying these things to Cas, and he knows why. He knows it’s not the same.

But he’s tired of being a coward, and he knows that it’s all going to be different this time. It really feels like the end. And he remembers Cas, admitting he still has guilt over things that happened years ago, admitting things still weigh heavy on his mind, all because Dean is shit at communication.

He doesn’t want Cas to doubt anything.

They’re going through some boxes in one of the unorganized rooms in the bunker, looking for an old scroll Billie is insistent they need. Cas’ hair is in disarray and he’s got some dust smudged across one cheek. Dean cracked a stupid joke about getting so buried under paperwork, Chuck can’t find them, and Cas chuckled.

And Dean figured, now’s as good a time as any.

“Cas?”

“Yes?” Cas isn’t paying attention, his head shoved in a wooden box of what sounds like wind chimes.

“Question for you,” Dean says, so intensely casual it’s painful to hear. “You uh, you remember that conversation we had? About the prayers?”

Cas puts the box down and looks at him. “And yearning. Yes.”

Now that Cas is looking at him, his blue eyes focused intently on Dean, this is harder. It shouldn’t be, with all the practice he and Cas have had in this exact same position, but it is.

“Right, the yearning sure,” now he sounds too flippant, and he tries to soften his tone. “I had more to say.”

Cas is silent.

Dean does not know where the fuck he’s going with this, so the next words out of his mouth are “I get hot too.” He tracks Cas’ lack of facial expression, readjusts. “You know, kind of like grace I guess, when I’m praying, or when you’re around, or we touch, or I’m, I dunno, yearning , I guess, it’s like this buzzing,” he wiggles his fingers, “tingly feeling.”

“Dean…” Cas says warily.

“And I know I’ve told you you’re like a brother to me Cas, you’re my family,” Dean plows ahead, unwilling to stop. “You know that, but I don’t think I’ve let myself – I mean, I know it’s more than that, we have this bond,” he gestures vaguely between them, “But it’s more than that, for me.”

“Dean,” Cas says again, more insistent. His eyes are wide. “Dean please, you have to stop, we can’t –”

Dean is stubborn. He’s set to do this. It’s decided. He’s not even sure what Cas is saying. “Cas, I should have told you years ago, it’s been years. I lo—”

Cas’ hand is over his mouth, cutting off his words, and he’s pushing Dean into the hallway, slamming him through the door that leads into the dungeon.

Dean’s indignant, snapping out, “what the fuck,” the second Cas’ hand is gone, but Cas whirls around from bolting the door behind them, and his eyes are big and terrified.

“Where are Sam and Jack?”

“Out on one of Billie’s quests,” Dean answers, annoyed. “What the fuck, Cas?”

“I know what you were going to say.”

Dean’s stomach plummets.

“You don’t want me to say it.”

“Dean, no,” Cas sounds pained. “Of course I do. But you can’t. I can’t know, not for sure.”

“I think it’s a little late for that,” Dean snaps, and Cas closes his eyes.

“Please don’t say that.”

Dean takes in his tight expression and the tense set of his shoulders, looks to the bolted door of the dungeon. “What’s going on?”

Cas doesn’t want to tell him. Dean knows the look on his face. It’s a look that says I’ve partnered with Crowley, I’ve made the angels fall, I’ve stolen the Colt.

It’s a look Dean’s worn that says I’ve sold my soul.

“Cas,” he says quietly. “What did you do?”

“I made a deal.”

A year. A year is how long Cas has been keeping this quiet, his deal with the Empty to save Jack. Dean wants to be furious with Jack again but he can’t, he can’t be anymore than Cas has never resented Sam for all the times Dean died for him.

“It said it would wait until I was truly happy,” Cas says with a humorless laugh. “I haven’t had much to be happy about.”

Dean’s heart aches. “Why now?” he asks. “Why this?”

Cas shrugs. “Jack is alive. We have a good chance of defeating God. This would be…beyond what I dreamed.”

Dean’s eyes are beginning to water, and he cannot believe he is going to cry over this, a lost future with Cas because he waited too damn long. “So we can’t have that.”

“No,” Cas agrees throatily, and Dean is shocked to see that his eyes are wet too.

“We’ll figure it out,” he promises.

The lights in the bunker go out.

Dean has the pistol in his waistband, and Cas has his angel blade, but there are no other weapons in here, cleared out since Donatello occupied the space. Dean can see the red emergency lights of the hallway glowing from beneath the door, and hears the click clack of heels, something else like a staff being thudded onto the concrete floor.

“Castiel,” a voice calls.

“It’s Billie,” Dean says, out of sheer, stupid hope. Cas just shakes his head.

Dean wipes at his eyes again, because he’s still crying.

“CASTIEL,” Billie’s voice is louder this time, and there’s pounding on the dungeon door. “Open up Castiel!” it sings.

Dean knows the door isn’t going to hold back the Empty, that it’s just toying with them now, so all he can do is stand there, gun drawn, and wait for the inevitable dam to burst.

The door slams open with a loud and deafening crack against the stone wall, and the Empty in Billie’s form slides into the room, smiling eerily the whole way.

“What do you want?” Dean demands, but he’s thrown against the wall before he can say much else, his head snapping back against the wall.

“You’re too early,” Cas tells it, still standing. “It’s not time.”

The Empty laughs. “I think it is time,” it counters. “I think you’re cheating.”

“I’m not,” Cas says firmly. “I’m not happy.”

“Excuses, denial.” The Empty sighs and runs a hand up Billie’s scythe. “Remember Castiel, I know who you love.”

“If you think you’re taking him,” Dean starts, pushing himself off the floor.

“I know I’m taking him,” the Empty snaps, sudden and cold fury rushing through the room. “Do you know what it’s like to be awake, waiting, waiting, waiting, for some miserable excuse for an angel to be happy? You’re what he wanted,” it points at Dean, “I saw it . And now I’m taking him.”

“Chuck isn’t gone yet,” Cas argues. “You have a deal with Billie.”

“I don’t care,” it hisses.

Dean shoots it.

The bullet does nothing. It flies through Billie’s chest and falls out the other side, like Dean’s shot through a huge tank of water. Black oily tendrils creep out from under Billie’s cloak and wrap around his wrists, forcing him to drop the gun.

“If I’m breaking one part of the deal,” the Empty says conversationally, “I might as well have my fun killing you before Castiel and I go.”

“NO!” Cas shouts, but one of those tendrils is creeping up Dean’s chest and around his neck, squeezing, and he’s gasping for air.

He’s released seconds later and frantically tries to catch his breath. He doesn’t know what to do, how to beat an entity even older than God. They need more time. If he can punch it, he can kill it, but the Empty doesn’t bleed, and he doesn’t even know a spell to make it go away, buy them another hour.

“Dean!” Cas shouts, and Dean rockets to his feet, useless pistol back in hand. Cas is bleeding from a huge cut in his forehead, with another gash on his palm and slashed across his collarbone. The Empty doesn’t look like Billie anymore. It reminds Dean of the Leviathan, but slicker, oily, more like a black hole than a dark mass. Cas is grabbing hold of parts of it and flashing it with his grace, but the flashes aren’t that strong and for every arm that recoils another appears to wrap around him.

“Cas!” Dean rushes towards him, plunges his hands into the Empty to wrap around Cas’ waist in an attempt to haul him out. “Cas, what do I do? Should I call Jack? JACK!”

He’s pulling as hard as he can, and he can feel his eyes watering again with the effort more than anything as he strains against the black nothingness that is beginning to climb up his arms.

“Dean!” Cas’ voice is frantic, and he’s stopped using grace all together. He’s struggling now, but he’s pushing Dean away, scrabbling at his hold around him. “Dean, no, stop, you can’t, it will take you too, let go, please Dean, let go!”

“I can’t,” Dean shouts, choking on it, begging. “Cas I can’t! Not again, I can’t, please don’t.”

Cas clutches a hand to his shoulder, forcing Dean to look at him. His face is tear streaked and his eyes are a deep, brilliant blue. “I know,” he whispers. “You have to let me go.”

It’s over in a second. Dean’s hand slips, and Cas disappears into the giant, gaping maw of nothing that folds into itself.

And is gone from the bunker.

Dean stares at the spot Cas had stood just a second ago.

He catches a glimpse of a bright, blood red handprint molded over the shoulder of his jacket.

He slides down to the concrete floor of the dungeon. And he cries.

He doesn’t hear the clanging of the front door open, all the way down here. He doesn’t hear the thumping of footsteps or Sam’s calls, growing more frantic by the minute. Not until Sam’s right outside the door, and then he’s found him anyway.

“Dean?” Sam sounds alarmed. “Dean, what happened?”

Jack is close behind, and his voice is small, childlike when he speaks. “Where’s Cas?”

Dean looks up at them. The dried tears feel disgusting on his face. But they’re still coming. There’s a hole in his heart that he cannot process, cool and numb at the edges.

But the rest of him…

Dean can still feel the heat of Cas’ hand pressed into his shoulder and thrumming through his body.

Yearning , Cas called it.

He sniffs, wipes a hand roughly over his face. “Well. Let’s go get the dumb bastard back.”