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“Dean… in case something goes wrong and I don’t make it back, there’s something you and Sam need to know.”
1. The key to Death’s library
Dean stares at Castiel, hard. “What do you mean, in case something goes wrong?” he asks, and Cas shakes his head.
“It’s not important,” he says, ignoring the way Dean’s gaze hardens. “What’s important is that you know about the key to Death’s library.”
Maybe it’s not the most important thing. But it’s important right now, Castiel rationalizes. He’s always been good at rationalizing when it comes to telling Dean things.
Something inscrutable passes over Dean’s face. “There’s a key?”
“Yes. Sergei, the shaman who occasionally worked with the British Men of Letters? He mentioned wanting it when I had him heal Sam from the Equalizer wound.”
Dean nods, still holding the bottle of whiskey in one hand. “What about it?”
Castiel takes a breath, looking at a point over Dean’s robe-clad shoulder. Tries to ignore the wild beating of his too-human (at this point) heart. “Apparently, it may be somewhere in the bunker. It’s black, the handle shaped like a skeleton. If you can find it and figure out how to use it, perhaps you can find a way into Death’s library.”
“Without her knowing?”
That makes Castiel shrug. “Perhaps.”
Dean chews on his bottom lip for a moment, processing this information. “Why did he want it?”
“Why else? To read his fate and, perhaps, to change it,” Castiel surmises, and he can tell the moment Dean understands what he’s really saying as a light dawns in his eyes. Something that might be sadness flashes for a moment at the very core of Castiel; once again, he has distracted Dean Winchester with more pressing matters than his own mission.
It’s for the best, though. Castiel has always known this to be true.
Dean paces back and forth in front of him, gray robe fluttering as he does. “Billie said that every individual has at least one book with their death in that library,” he says, putting the pieces together. “Do you think Chuck has a book in there?”
Castiel nods. “I would assume so. The old Death once told you he would reap God one day, right? It would be… helpful, I think, to know that Billie isn’t lying to us about killing Chuck.”
That makes Dean stop and look sharply at him. “You think she could be lying?”
“I don’t think so, but we should plan for the possibility. She has expressed her displeasure for the Winchesters on several occasions, after all. There are clearly aspects to her plan she hasn’t told us yet. Getting into her library could provide some useful intel.” Jack’s confession roils unpleasantly in his stomach, but he won’t say it. Jack had begged him not to, after all.
“Yeah,” Dean says, nodding. “Makes sense. Okay. Me and Sam’ll start looking for this key or whatever first thing.” He starts to set down the whiskey bottle still in his hand before pausing, twisting the cap off once more. “What do you say to a nightcap? Sounds like we were both pretty successful today. We should celebrate.”
Castiel considers. Having a drink means he will have less time to find a solution, but it also means Dean will be less likely to question his departure again if he’s tired, drunk, and distracted. “Yes,” he decides, “I’d like that.”
It will be, perhaps, the last celebration he will ever have with Dean. But if he can save Jack -- if he can save all of them -- it will be worth not having any more.
2. Jack’s confession
“What do you mean, in case something goes wrong?”
Castiel nearly smiles at Dean’s question, because he expected this. Dean’s eyes are flinty, jaw suddenly clenched in trepidation and the first wisps of his deep-seated anger. Something always goes wrong echoes between them, and what wouldn’t Castiel give to no longer be the bearer of terrible news to Dean; but it’s better this way, he knows, because if he can redirect Dean’s anger towards Jack’s plight, then he most likely won’t notice Castiel slipping away once more.
“Jack told me about Billie’s plan,” he explains, watching as Dean’s eyebrows fly to the top of his forehead in surprise. Nausea roils in the pit of his stomach as he spills Jack’s confession, but he forces it down. “She’s weaving a spell to… to essentially turn Jack into a bomb, one which will take out Chuck and Amara at the same time.”
He watches as understanding dawns on Dean’s face. “And it’ll take him out, too. Like it was supposed to with me, when I tried to kill Amara.”
“Yes,” Castiel says, spreading his hands before him in supplication. “So I have to find another way. I’ve already watched Jack die once; I can’t do it again.”
Dean sets the whiskey down and steps forward, and Castiel has just a moment to wonder if telling him was the right thing to do. If Dean won’t shake his head and say Maybe it’s for the best; maybe this is something Jack really does need to do. “So you think you have to do this alone?” he says instead, his voice wavering somewhere between anger and disbelief. “You decided to just slip out of the bunker and, what, disappear again? Go on a fucking quest by yourself to figure something else out or die trying?”
Castiel stares at him wide-eyed, lost for words, because this is --
“Yes,” he says, quiet, because that had been his plan. He knows his own place in the narrative; the Winchesters are the messengers of God’s destruction, preparing and protecting Jack for his confrontation with the cosmic entities who have played havoc with their lives for so long. Castiel is… superfluous. If he must trade his life for Jack’s, well. He’s done it once already, even if the bill hasn’t come quite due yet. Dean of all people should understand.
Dean drags a hand down his face, and in that moment he looks so tired that even Castiel, a being who understands the concept of exhaustion more as a metaphysical aspect of the self than as the physical sensations he felt during his brief time as a human, feels it in his bones. “Cas,” he starts, then drops off for a moment, eyes unfocused as he stares at a point over Castiel’s shoulder. He closes them, swallowing hard. “Cas,” he says again, eyes still closed, “let’s look here first. You don’t have to do this alone, and neither does Jack.” He opens his eyes, gaze locked with Castiel’s own, and there’s a deep hurt in them. Along with a deep hope. “Sam and I, we want to help. I swear.”
He shouldn’t, but Castiel feels himself begin to soften, his shoulders losing some of their rigidity in the face of Dean’s own honesty. And this will probably backfire in some way, will probably end in more pain than Castiel can bear, he should continue to shoulder this burden on his own, but…
But this reaching forward, this offering of the olive branch, it can’t only come from Dean. That prayer, that embrace among the blighted trees of Purgatory… a very long time ago, Castiel once said, “We’ve been through much together, you and I,” and those words ring more true now than they did even in that moment. Through it all, Castiel knows, their greatest triumphs have come when they’ve trusted one another, their deepest setbacks when secrets poisoned the connection between them.
“He’s convinced his death is the only way you and Sam will forgive him,” he says, pretending the sudden shock of hurt on Dean’s face doesn’t surprise him. “He… he didn’t want me to tell you about this. He’s committed. So I need to know, Dean. I need to know that you mean it when you say you want to help.”
Maybe he should feel a little bad about dropping this on Dean right here, right now, after what was no doubt a long drive and a grueling conversation with Amara. But this moment is a breaking point, Castiel knows, and he’s sick of them always breaking the wrong way.
Dean’s jaw is clenched, and Castiel can read anger and hurt on his face, two expressions he is unfortunately too familiar with seeing on Dean. And then he sees something different.
“I told Jack that I’m still angry,” Dean says, and Castiel doesn’t react because he can hear the unspoken but behind his words. “And -- and forgiveness is tough, man. It’s hard. And with the grief, it’s like… some days are nearly impossible. And other days, it feels like I’m nearly there. Maybe I’ll get there, maybe I won’t. But if I’m gonna forgive him, then I need time. Sure, I can forgive him if he’s dead, but what good will that do either of us?” He sucks in a breath. “So I mean it, Cas. I really, really do. Please, stay. Let me help.”
Castiel blinks. He’s known Dean for over ten years, has held his very soul in his hands, and yet somehow, he’s still surprised by him. Dean is looking at him with an almost desperate longing, and, well.
Castiel believes him. There’s that trust again.
He nods. “Okay,” he says, and that familiar mix of hope and despair that is so unique to his relationship with the Winchesters rises up within him. “I’ll stay.”
3. The Empty deal
There’s silence after Castiel tells him.
Even the nearly-constant low background hum of the bunker seems to fade away as Castiel stares into Dean’s eyes, regretful but unbowed.
Not that he regrets making the deal for Jack’s life. He could never regret that, not when it saved Jack from an immediate eternity in the vast nothing of the Empty. No, what Castiel regrets is that now Dean is burdened with this knowledge, too. That now Dean will look at him and see a dead man walking, and know he can do nothing about it.
“You haven’t been happy? Not since then?” Dean asks, voice scratchy as it comes from his throat, and Castiel is startled. That was… not what he was expecting as Dean’s first words after this revelation.
“I --” he starts, then closes his mouth, pondering. “There have been moments of joy, I would say. Of relief. Contentment. But nothing close to the permission that the Empty wishes me to experience before I am taken.” He spreads his hands out, a plaintive gesture. “But you deserve to know, Dean. I should have told you. So I’m telling you now. Just in case.”
He watches as Dean’s pulse thrums, rapid, in his neck, the way Dean’s brow furrows even further. There are -- there are tears in his eyes, Castiel is surprised to see. A thin sheen of them, but tears nonetheless. “Yeah?” he says roughly, twisting the bottle of whiskey in his hands before setting it back down with a rough thunk. “Just in case what? You planning on running off, finding something that makes you so fucking happy you can’t help but be snatched away? That your plan?” He takes a step forward, into Castiel’s space, closing the distance between them. “You’ve decided that if you’re gonna die, you want to do it alone? What the hell, man?” Dean’s eyes are alight with a desperate anger that Castiel has seen so many times before, but there’s something layered under that gaze, something akin to the sadness that Dean tries hard to mask in front of others, but so different at the same time.
“Dean,” Castiel says, or tries to, but Dean cuts him off with a shake of his head and another step forward, nearly chest-to-chest now, Dean’s soft gray robe open.
“I don’t know what’s going through your head right now, Cas, but please, don’t do this. Don’t leave. We’re getting there, with Chuck. We’re putting the pieces together. It’s gonna work, whatever Billie’s plan is, and then we can take of the Empty, alright? Just -- just don’t leave,” he says, and his tone slips from righteous anger to nothing but naked pain, and he puts a hand on Castiel’s shoulder.
The same shoulder that Jack had placed his hand on just a scant few hours earlier, trying to console, to guide Castiel as he’d revealed his truth.
Castiel feels sick with the knowledge that he has traded one secret for another in this moment. He has not absolved himself of anything. Nothing but a cycle of beings more powerful than himself weighing him down with duties too heavy to hold. But hold them he must.
“What do you propose,” he says instead, looking Dean square in the eye. “That I sit here in the bunker, twiddling my thumbs until Billie shows up and leads us to our final task? Or should I go solve some more human crimes, perhaps. If I leave, I can be useful. I can look for information. There are risks, but as you know now, everything I do carries an unavoidable risk. So what would you have me do?”
He is maybe being unfair in this moment to Dean, but nothing has been very fair to either of them recently.
He watches as Dean grasps for words, his eyes darting over Castiel’s face. Something steels in his gaze, and then it’s as though the universe is simultaneously moving too fast and too slow at the same time, because Dean is leaning in, erasing the final few inches between them, and then his lips are on Castiel’s, soft and a little chapped, a hint of whiskey on his breath.
It’s a short, chaste kiss, barely more than a brushing of their mouths together, but they stare at each other wide-eyed after it. Castiel can see the golden flecks in the depths of Dean’s eyes, the way his eyelashes fan out in a thick line, the smattering of freckles across his nose, persistent even in the wintery underground light of the bunker.
Castiel thinks that if they weren’t fighting God, if he didn’t know about Jack and Billie’s plan, if this was just an ordinary, nondescript day --
That kiss would have been enough to drag him to the Empty.
“Stay,” Dean says thickly, tongue darting out to moisten his lower lip. Castiel follows it for a moment. “We’ll figure it out, Cas. Once we’re done with Chuck.”
There’s a deep, hollow ache in Castiel’s heart, but he gives Dean a small smile, bringing his hand up to cup Dean’s cheek. He leans forward and kisses him again. He hopes it’s answer enough.