Work Text:
Dean walks onstage, smiling slightly, the smile Sam knows as the one he uses when he has to talk to people he doesn't really like all that much, but it's necessary to get the job done.
He's not surprised, really. When he had suggested this to Cas, he'd kept his request fairly simple, and apparently "musician" translated to "cello soloist." Sam leans toward Cas and says, "He doesn't look happy."
Cas doesn't say anything, so Sam asks, plainly, which is clearly what he should have done in the first place. "Why isn't he happy?"
"How should I know?" Cas asks, surprisingly petulantly.
O…kay. Sam watches Dean sit down and rest the cello between his knees, poising his bow over the strings. "You know," he says to Cas, not looking away from the complete mindfuck of Dean in a tux playing cello, "this isn't the kind of music I'd pictured."
Cas turns an exasperated look on him and sighs. He raises two fingers toward Sam's forehead and Sam squeezes his eyes shut. He hates that.
When he opens them, they're standing in a white room. "Whoa." He looks at Cas, who looks the same in his suit and trenchcoat and looks down at himself, wearing the last thing he remembers wearing before they started this and he appeared in an opera box in a tux. "Where are we right now?"
"We're in Dean's head, Sam." Cas stares at Sam expectantly.
"What? Why?"
Cas's annoyance is getting out of control, but Sam can see the moment he gets the better of it, pushing it down or away or whatever he does and Cas is back to his calm, unflappable self. "Because to actually change everything and everyone that will be necessary to make this work will take a significant amount of grace. I am performing a… test run… in Dean's brain, to see if the memory alteration will take. It seemed prudent."
"Okay," Sam agrees, feeling guilty because he knows this is going to cost Cas. "But why does it look like The Matrix?"
Cas frowns at him, the pissy little frown he gets when Sam or Dean needles him about something small and human, something they know the angel part of Cas would think unimportant.
"I thought it would comfort you to make this something familiar."
The idea boggles Sam's mind. "The Matrix?!"
Cas sighs heavily. "Would you like something else?"
The room around them shifts until it looks like Bobby's house, and Sam can feel his chest restrict with how much he misses the place, and Bobby. "No," he says quickly. "No, the white room. The white room is fine."
The white room makes a reappearance and Sam takes a deep breath to calm everything that got out of sorts with him from that short trip down memory lane.
"You said musician," Cas says. "You didn't specify."
Sam chuckles. "Seriously? I mean, this is Dean we're talking about here. How did you even get him to believe he played a cello?"
Cas frowns, but this is a more personal frown; every once in a while Sam gets the idea that he hurts Cas's feelings, but then Cas stows it away so quickly, like he's ashamed of having feelings to be hurt, that Sam's left doubting what he saw.
"It's a common story, a father pushing their son to excellence in a chosen pursuit. It was easy to change the memory of John's obsession with hunting to an obsession with practicing."
Huh. Sam can feel himself nodding. Not the way he'd thought about it, but it seemed to work. Dean didn't seem to feel out of sorts or nervous on stage, just unhappy. "What went wrong?"
Cas shrugs. "I don't know. Perhaps Dean simply does not know how to be happy."
Sam shakes his head. He knows that's untrue. Dean was happy with Lisa and Ben, and he's going to find some way for him to be happy again. Dean's confession that he expects to die bloody – just, no. They've done enough, haven't they? Dean always talks about Sam getting out, getting a life, well. It's Sam's turn. He's going to give Dean a different life, one where he can be happy, damn it.
"All right," Cas says, "perhaps it was the music. What do you suggest?"
Sam doesn't hesitate. "I guess I was figuring he'd be a rock star. Seems like Dean, doesn't it?"
"I don't know," Cas says. "To be honest, the only thing that seems like Dean to me is Dean. I don't even understand how you chose music as a career for him. I would have expected him to be a mechanic, like your father. He does seem to love his car rather inappropriately."
Sam throws his hands up. "Yeah, I know," he says. "And Dean does love his car, and might make a good mechanic. But I feel like he'd always want more than that." He takes a deep breath and decides to share. Dean probably doesn't even know he knows this. "He learned to play guitar a little when he was at that boys' home."
Cas nods in understanding.
"He used to look at guitars all the time after that," Sam says. "I remember him staring at one in a pawn shop when we hocked a watch we'd stolen." Sam can remember the longing look in Dean's eyes. It was something Sam'd felt all the time back then, but until that moment, he couldn't remember a single time Dean had so obviously wanted something he knew he couldn't have. "I just think… if he'd had the chance, maybe music would've been able to give him some direction, something other than hunting to be passionate about."
Cas thinks it over, his head starting to bob a little before it becomes a nod in earnest. "Very well," he says, and suddenly everything around them shifts until Sam's in the bleachers in some ubiquitous stadium, someone – presumably Dean – on a stage that's ridiculously tiny from where they're sitting.
As soon as the guy starts to sing, though, he knows it's Dean, and the sound of Dean's smooth tenor – higher than his voice now, by a lot – takes Sam's breath away. This is exactly what he'd hoped for for Dean, and he can't help grinning.
"Yeah, this is it," Sam says. "Listen to him, Cas – he has a beautiful voice."
He glances at Cas to see him smiling down at Dean, and Sam wishes he could see Dean as clearly as Cas obviously can – especially when, after a moment, he starts frowning.
"We need to see him alone," Cas says, and in the blink of an eye, they're on a tour bus, with Dean sprawled all over a couch, his legs spread and head lolling back.
"Dean," Sam says, and Dean raises his head with some effort. His eyes are completely dilated, and he doesn't seem like he's tracking.
"How'd'ya get in?" he asks, the syllables all slurred together. "Bus's always cleared 'fore I get on."
Sam looks Dean over more critically then, taking in just how skinny he is. It makes sense he wouldn't be as muscular as he is when he's hunting, but he looks nearly emaciated. This version of Dean puts the skinny in skinny jeans. "He's an addict," Cas says flatly.
"Who're you, anyway?" Dean asks, still sort of vaguely staring in their direction, not meeting their eyes.
Sam frowns. "Well, a lot of rock stars are like that," he says. "Maybe it's just part of his journey, he goes to rehab and writes a comeback…"
The room spins around him and then Sam's standing in the middle of a cemetery in drizzling rain. He's staring at a headstone that reads simply, "Dean Winchester, 1979 – 2015."
"Fine, Cas, I get it. Something else. Country music, maybe?"
Cas takes them through scenario after scenario, country star, musical theater, songwriter, back to classical - this time as an opera singer - but Dean is never happy.
"May I suggest something?" Cas asks.
Sam sighs and nods. "Yeah, Cas, hit me. Maybe I was just wrong about music."
Cas smiles sadly. "I don't think so," Cas says. "I can feel how much music means to him; the musical part of the memories always fits – he never questions it." Sam smiles grimly. It's good to know he was right about that much. "You know what the problem is, don't you?"
Sam blinks. Of course he doesn't know what the problem is, or he would've fixed it already.
"The problem is you." Sam shakes his head, wanting to stop Cas before he says anything more, but Cas just plows on ahead. "Dean is unhappy because you're not there, and he can sense some part of him is missing."
Sam opens his mouth to protest, but as soon as Cas said it, he knew it was the truth. "But… I'm not musically inclined. I can't sing for shit."
Cas stares at Sam in a ways that reeks of eye-rolling – something he can't quite believe Cas never picked up in his time hanging around them – and he says, flatly, "I can fix that."
Sam thinks about it for a while. He'd wanted Dean to be happy, so he'd asked Cas to erase Sam from his memories – make him an only child, get rid of always having to take care of someone else so he could take care of himself for a change. Cas had frowned at him when he'd requested it, but it was selfish, too. He wants a life. He can move on if he knows Dean is safe and happy.
But apparently Dean can't be happy without Sam, and while Sam had resigned himself to being with his brother until the end years ago, he'd never really considered that might mean something other than hunting.
"I think," Cas says, as the room shifts around them and they're back in the bunker, at the foot of Dean's bed, staring down at him in his angel-enhanced sleep, "that your lives are simply too entwined to separate. Dean cannot accept a world that does not have you in it."
Sam takes a deep breath, staring down at Dean for a long time before wrapping his arms around Cas for a last hug. "Thanks, Cas," he says, and shoves Dean over on the bed, lying down next to him and closing his eyes.
~~~
Castiel puts Sam into a dreamless sleep as well, looking down at his charges with fondness. He had not expected this; when Sam came to him requesting it, he had barely been able to contain his surprise. When Sam had told him about Dean's speech to Cole, the comment about dying at the edge of a blade or barrel of a gun, Castiel had agreed with Sam's plan, despite his misgivings about how Dean might feel about such a thing.
Shaping reality is difficult. Not quite as difficult as time traveling, but it will most certainly use up the rest of his borrowed grace and he will either fade to human or simply die. Death seems easier, really, since the Winchesters will not know him any longer and the angels will disown him for his actions. He has made his peace with death, however, which is why he is not surprised when he simply becomes human.
When he completes the task, he finds himself in a small honkytonk bar somewhere in the South, and Sam and Dean are singing beautifully harmonized folk songs they wrote themselves. Just the two of them, their guitars and voices, songs about family and faith and drinking too much and fighting for what's right.
After the show, they pack their stuff into the Impala and head out to another motel and another gig somewhere down the road, the next in a long line of motels and gigs. Castiel knows he will follow them in this life just like the other, but in this one, when he watches them from the shadows, it will be only to see them smile.
~~~