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Blankness.
Nothing but darkness...
Yet there is peace in the void. Tranquility in the absence of anything.
Time is irrelevant. A year could flash past in the blink of an eye, if eyes opened in the empty, or a second could stretch for eternity.
Every being sleeps in the dark. In the comfort of knowing that they are done.
“Cas?”
Then there’s a speck in the black. It’s a grain of sand in the infinite of space. It shouldn’t be there, it didn’t belong. But it roots firmly, growing and stubbornly refusing to be evicted from it’s trespassing in where it doesn’t belong.
It rips the vacuum, leaving it unsettled, ripples expanding ever outwards in search of their mark.
It’s familiar, but unplaceable. A echo of a deja vu.
“Cas?”
He knows it. But it’s lost all meaning.
Yet he knows it meant something, or it once had. Once it had meant everything. There is no meaning now. Not here.
“Cas?”
The fracture is growing, spewing light and warmth into the hollowness. Lighting the one being in its focus and filling that being with a feeling so monumental it unfathomable to identify.
“Cas?”
A name. His name, but not intact. It’s a fraction of the whole, but carried more weight and meaning then it did when completed.
A voice. And he knows that voice. That part-name means everything because of that voice. No. Not the voice, the owner of that voice.
“Cas, come on. Wake up Buddy.”
The Angel jolts awake for the first time in what could be centuries or milliseconds there’s no way to know, but that doesn’t matter now. Only one thing matters and that’s the face of the man staring back at him.
“Dean?”
The face of the man who taught him, an Angel, how to love. The man who had given him his true happiness, who he gave his life for.
“Hey, Sunshine, time to get up and outta here.”
“How are you - What are you doing here?” the Angel stammers. Humans shouldn’t be here. That should be impossible. Humans don’t exist in the empty.
Dean chuckled affectionately at the Angel’s confusion. “Returning the favor.”
Castiel tilted his head to the side, his eyes squinting, questioning, but Dean could do nothing but grin brightly at the familiar gesture, that he’s missed and longed for.
“I’m here to grip you tight and raise you from perdition,” Dean tells him in a mockingly deep voice, as his hand firmly grasps Castiel’s shoulder. The single point of contact, lights up profoundly, throwing chaos into the empty as it’s filled. The empty can’t exist with something. And this - this bond is everything.
“Why?” Castiel asked, as the blackness around them both starts to shift and change. They’re moving, but it doesn’t matter where they’re going. The destination is irrelevant. Wherever Dean went his Angel would go with him.
Dean pulled up close, invading Castiel’s personal space, his eyes fixing in a firm and holding stare.
“Because, dumbass, I love you, too.”