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1.
Dean sure knows how to compartmentalize.
Sam understands his brother better than any human being on earth—and any human being not on earth—so, on some level, he’s not buying that Dean has emerged from his cocoon of grief stronger and more resilient than before. That he’s made peace with his losses. That he’s come around to accepting the fact that he’s lost Cas to an ancient cosmic entity that wanted nothing more than to torture him to oblivion.
Dean tells Sam he wants to move forward, just as they’ve always moved forward in the past. The mission comes first. We still have work to do. Jack and Cas wouldn’t want us to quit—it’s not what they fought for. We have to keep helping people—it's gonna hurt for a while, but that's how we honor their legacy.
Sam knows these canned statements are all part of Dean’s bullshit act. He’s not over Cas. He hasn’t moved past his guilt about the way he treated Jack. But after a long winter of grieving—of sleeping for days on end and eating nothing but Campbell’s Chicken & Stars—he seems to be ready to put on a brave face. To pretend he’s over everything.
So when he suggests to Sam that they hit up the Pie Festival in Akron—a two-day drive—Sam goes with him. Of course he goes with him. And when he asks Dean, “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” he’s only half joking. Sure, he’s glad to see that Dean has an appetite again. But he also knows Dean well enough to know when he’s using bullshit bravado to hide what’s really going on. And he also knows that the more Dean pretends everything’s okay, the more likely he is to blow up later on.
But his attempt to get Dean to acknowledge his feelings gets him called a “friggin’ Eeyore,” so that’s that. And once Dean’s finished wiping away the pie that Sam lobbed at his face, he’s ready to turn the tables.
“So, are you ever going to tell me?” he says, casting a cutting glance at Sam.
Sam shrugs.
“About Eileen. What the fuck, Sammy.”
He sighs and helps himself to another slice of pie. He takes his plastic fork to dig in, but now he’s really not hungry. “It just didn’t work out.”
“No shit, Sherlock. But why the fuck not?”
Sam takes a forkful of lemon meringue but doesn’t eat it. “We just weren’t compatible.”
“I swear to God, Sam. If you fucked that up because you were too worried about your sad-sack brother—”
“It had nothing to do with that.” Sam drops the fork back onto his styrofoam dish, knowing now that he’s not going to enjoy this pie. “You know, I think it’s weird that you’re always wanting me to, I don’t know, run off and get married or something, considering that the extent of your previous relationship advice was ‘never bang a woman who knows where you find you in the morning.’”
“Because you’re not like me. So yeah, I want my brother to be happy and productive and emotionally fulfilled. And, like, self-actualized.”
“Self-actualized? Dean, what kind of self-help crap have you been reading?”
“So I wandered onto Oprah.com a couple times. So sue me. But you of all people deserve to be happy.”
And you don’t? Sam thinks. It really bothers him that after everything, after Cas and saving the world a few times, his brother thinks he’s unworthy of any happiness. He doesn’t even quite believe the dog loves him, figures it must be because he dotes on him so much. Aren’t dogs hardwired to worship the person who feeds them? He even says that to Sam one time, when Miracle brings him a toy not because he wants Dean to play fetch—but because he just wants Dean to have it.
Sam allows himself to eat a forkful of pie.
Dean continues. “I thought you guys were, I don’t know. Good together.” He looks down at the pie as though making an important decision. “Compatible.”
Sam chews. Swallows.
“You two share a history. You wouldn’t have to explain the family business. Or tell her some stupid cover story about hunting trips. And, well, she’s cute as hell. Well—I really thought, you know.” He tilts his head back. “I just don’t want to see you make the same mistakes I did.”
Sam finishes his slice of pie, even though he tastes almost nothing of it, and gets up to throw the styrofoam plate in the nearest trash bin.
When he returns to the bench, he’s hoping Dean will change the subject. But he doesn’t. Instead, his body is angled toward Sam, even though he’s still got the enormous fucking box of pie in his lap. “Tell me what really happened with Eileen.”
“Jesus, you just keep prying. This is weird, Dean.”
“So humor me. Pretend I’m … pretend I’m that therapist we went to see that time.”
“The shape-shifter? Because that ended well.” He sighs. It’s clear that Dean isn’t taking “it’s none of your business” for an answer. So he just says it: “Eileen wants kids.”
Dean leans forward. “And?”
“It wouldn’t be fair to her to go any further.”
“Because ...”
“Because she deserves someone who can give her kids. The family, the house, the whole shebang.” He pauses. “It’s what we were fighting about that time you walked in on us having it out in the kitchen.”
“Wait a minute, back up,” Dean says, still clutching the box that holds the slices of pie. “I’m still stuck on this no-kids thing. You’re telling me that you and Eileen broke up because you don’t want kids.”
“Yeah, Dean.” He’s so frustrated with this conversation he could bolt. “How else can I say it? Do you want kids? Knowing who we are, what we went through? Talk about a bad idea times twenty.”
Dean seems to reconsider him.
“I’m not passing along our godforsaken Winchester DNA, Dean. And you’re the last person I should have to explain that to.”
Dean sits back on the bench, the box of pie still in his lap. “If it’s a matter of DNA, Sam, there are other ways. You of all people know that DNA doesn’t make a family.”
Of course he knows this. And Eileen knows this. She’s suggested different possibilities. “Yes, I know,” he says, softening his voice a little.
Dean continues to stare at him. “Then what?” he says. His voice is also softer.
On one level, he can’t believe he’s having this conversation with Dean. On another level, though, he can’t imagine having it with anyone else. “I don’t—I don’t know if I can do it again.”
“Do what again? Do you mean—are we talking about Jack?”
He looks down at his lap. “I miss him so goddamn much, Dean.”
Dean slides closer to him on the bench. Puts one hand on his shoulder and squeezes.
“Like, we had a kid, Dean. Jack was our kid. And Cas’s. He was smart and funny. And considerate. And then one day he just wasn’t there anymore. And I know he’s not technically dead, but—” He pauses. “He died before. And I would tell myself every day, ‘I can’t lose this kid again. I just can’t.’ But I did.”
He hates the fact that things have gotten heavy. They’ve just endured a miserable winter of grieving and fighting and ignoring each other and long silences and crying. The last thing he wanted to do was drag all that angst to a pie festival. This is supposed to be a fun time for Dean, not a sobfest for friggin' Eeyore. And, if it's not going to be a fun time for Dean, he wants to help him address his own grief, not wrestle with Sam's.
But Dean doesn’t seem to give a thought to any of that. He’s already up from the bench, handing off his pie to a family passing by. “No, there’s nothing wrong with the pie,” he’s telling them. “It’s fantastic. Me and my brother—we just overestimated ourselves. Here, help yourselves.”
When he sits back down on the bench, he picks up where he left off, his hand on Sam’s shoulder again. “So tell me about it.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Sam says. “Giving away all the pie. Christ.”
“It’s fucking pie. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re surrounded by oceans of it. I’ll get more. So talk to me, Sammy.”
Sam fixes his gaze on a sign in the distance: Welcome to Akron, the Rubber Capital of the World! “It’s just—I can’t do it again. I can’t be a dad again.”
Dean squeezes his shoulder harder. “You were such a great dad, though. You and Cas both. Everything Jack became, and everything this whole world became … it was because of you guys.”
Sam wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “You weren’t bad either.”
“Oh, fuck off. I was awful to that poor kid. I’m just lucky he’s a forgiving God, I guess.”
“Well, yeah. You had your moments. And sometimes he deserved them. But anyway, you raised me. That took a lot of patience. No wonder you didn’t have a lot left for Jack.”
Dean laughs. “True. From sunup to sundown, you were a pain in my ass. By the time Jack came around, my reservoir was depleted.” He gives Sam’s shoulder another squeeze that’s both hard and impossibly affectionate. This is his brother at his most generous, his most unguarded. Even though he’s been through hell, literally—and is now gloriously alive and healthy, with a festival full of pie at his disposal—he’d still rather talk about Sam’s problems.
How can Sam possibly know that these are their last days together? That Dean will come home from Akron in a body bag? If he could know this, he would tell him what he really needs to say. Everything good in me, everything good in my whole life—it came from you.
2.
All winter, Dean would get drunk and fall asleep in odd places. Sam would find him on the floor in Cas’s room. In Jack’s room. And most often of all, in the crypt where Cas had conjured the Empty. The dog would be with him, curled against his side.
Sam would wonder how much he prayed, how he begged. How he wanted that portal to open back up, to take him too.
Sometimes Dean even wandered into Sam’s room in the middle of the night. Sam never asked questions. He just moved over to make room for Dean and made sure he got most of the covers. Just as Dean had done for him when they were kids and he had terrible nightmares—nightmares that turned out not to be nightmares at all, but memories.
During these nights they’d sometimes lie awake and share their own memories—funny things about Cas. Sometimes they’d even laugh. “Forget about the bees,” Sam said. “Remember the time he showed up looking like Matisyahu?”
“I thought he looked more like Cat Stevens. But "Peace Train" era Cat Stevens, before he became Yusuf Islam. But yeah. Purgatory will do that to you.”
“And bagels really confused him. I’ll never forget that. He kept wanting to know who the hell was making off with the center of the sandwich rolls.”
“He had no problem with donuts, though.”
“Thank God.”
Other nights they didn’t say anything at all. Dean would always be gone by morning—back to his own bedroom, or out walking the dog.
He would never talk about the Empty. What it looked like. What it smelled like. What it had done to Cas.
3.
In the days after Dean’s death, Sam doesn’t have time to think about any of that stuff. He needs to work quickly, preparing Dean’s body for the hunter’s sendoff. No time to fiddle-fuck around. He’ll be damned if he lets Dean get stuck in this godawful dimension.
He doesn’t call anyone. He doesn’t tell anyone. He knows the last thing Dean would want is a ceremony, a big to-do with all their friends. He hated attention in life—he’d hate it even more after death.
And frankly, Sam’s not sure he’d be able to stomach other people around. He just wants to be alone with his grief at this point. Selfish. Dean was all he had. He has no family left, not a single person on earth. He is, in this world, completely and utterly alone. So it seems fitting that he see Dean off by himself. It was always you, he thinks.
When everything is done, with Miracle at his side, he makes a series of phone calls to their friends. Some calls are more difficult than others. Some of their friends burst into tears, sobbing over the phone. He does his best to console them. He didn’t suffer. He went quickly. But we still had time to say goodbye. We were lucky in that sense. Yes, I’m fine. No, you don’t need to drive over here. Don’t worry about me.
But of course he’s lying. He’s not fine. And Dean suffered. He suffered a lot—not in the moment of his death, not when he was bleeding out—but every day and every hour after Cas died. His pain was beyond articulation.
Sam remembers the day they talked about fortune and misfortune, the story Cas told them about the 9/11 widow—about how cruel and unlucky her fate seemed to everyone else, how impossible and improbable the turn of events. That a woman who lost her husband in the World Trade Center would die in a plane crash a few years later seemed like God’s sick idea for a joke. Right on par with something Chuck would do.
But Cas pointed out that maybe the widow was relieved to be so unlucky—that in that moment she felt lucky. She felt comfort. Her last seconds must have been terrifying, but also mercifully quick.
And he wonders now if Dean didn’t feel the same way. Lucky, on some level, to die in such a routine accident. A year prior he’d been ready to lock himself in watery casket for all eternity; a rebar to the back seemed like a gift in comparison. And when the moment finally came—well, Sam could tell Dean wasn’t sad for himself. He wasn’t crying for himself. He was crying for Sam.
When Sam prepared Dean for the pyre, he dressed him in his favorite clothes. Then he went into Dean’s room and found what he needed: the jacket with Cas’s bloody handprint, balled up in his bottom drawer. Back at the table, he stood over Dean’s corpse and gently pulled back the sheet. His brother was heavy now, stiff. Rigor had set in. But he managed to drape the jacket around Dean’s shoulders.
So cold and lifeless. Sam touched his forehead to Dean’s one more time, the heat of his tears meeting the cold flesh of Dean’s face. Had anyone ever been so lonely?
The 9/11 widow got to go to her husband. But Sam isn’t a widow, he’s an orphan. And when orphans outlive their parents, they often live for a long-ass time.
4.
Now it’s Sam’s turn to spend a season in grief and denial and despair—his turn to find himself in Dean’s bedroom. In Dean’s bed. On the floor next to the bed, Miracle curled at his side, or waking him in the morning by licking his face.
He takes a few cases and solves them easily. More run-of-the-mill monsters. But no rebars for him, no unlucky lucky surprises or accidents with sharp objects. He promised Dean he’d keep fighting, so he’s doing that. But the road is empty. He remembers Dean’s favorite Steve Earle song: On the blue side of evening, when the darkness takes control, you start lookin’ for a reason to take your lonesome on down the road.
He tries his best, but his heart isn’t in it. He doesn’t realize how much he dislikes the road until he’s driving these long stretches of open highway. How had he and Dean done this so effortlessly before? How had he never noticed how tedious the landscape, how annoyingly samey the interstates?
One day he’s at a rest stop outside Poughkeepsie when he gets a call. Well, he doesn’t get a call. Dean does. He rifles through the glove compartment to find the buzzing cell. Holds it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Dean? This is Dr. Vallens. Is everything okay? I haven’t heard from you in a while.”
Dr. Vallens? It takes a second to sink in. The shape-shifting therapist. “This isn’t Dean, this is, um, his brother. Sam.”
“Sam,” Dr. Vallens says. “How are you? Is Dean all right? He missed our last appointment.”
“My brother had an appointment?”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Technically I shouldn’t be talking to you. Could you have Dean call me back when he gets a moment?”
He switches hands so he’s holding the phone to his right ear. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, Dr. Vallens. Dean, he um. He passed.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then: “Oh, Sam. Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“Can I ask how?”
“Hunting accident,” he says, trying to ignore the fact that his chest is seizing up again. “It was very sudden.” He looks through the windshield, toward the greenness of the hills. “But he’s—he’s in a better place now. And I—I was with him. In the end. I got to be with him. He didn’t die alone.”
There’s another silence. “It’s good to know that. But—how are you holding up?”
“I’ve been better lately.”
“Your brother was a remarkable person. And he talked about you all the time. If you need anything—if you just need to talk …”
“I appreciate that,” Sam says. “I think I’m okay. There was closure. All that. But—you’re all the way in Madison. How did Dean see you?”
“Most of our sessions were conducted remotely. I’d be willing to do the same thing for you. Whatever you need. I wouldn’t charge, of course. I want to make that clear. I’m not an ambulance chaser. I cared about Dean. He was a wonderful man. I’d be honored to help you through this in any way I can.”
Sam thanks her again and tells her he appreciates her offer, but he’s fine. All he needs is time.
When he hangs up the phone, he wonders if he knew his brother as well as he thought.
5.
Back in the bunker—which has never felt emptier—Sam feeds Miracle and takes him out for a walk. When he returns, he makes his way down to Dean’s room again, opening the door and wandering inside. Miracle comes too. He looks around at the books still on the shelves. Dean the autodidact, the closeted intellectual. Sam was “the smart one,” but Dean probably had enough research under his belt to earn a Ph.D. in cryptology.
He looks at Dean’s CDs and cassette tapes. (Dean: the only person in the word to still own cassettes.)
Then he sees it underneath the file on Dean’s desk—the last file Dean looked at, the file Sam still can’t bring himself to close and reshelf in the airtight vault. It’s a spiralbound notebook. He nudges it out from under the file. Picks it up, opens it.
Dean’s handwriting. A lot of it. He has to read only the first few lines to know: this is Dean’s journal. Going by the dates, it’s a journal he started last fall.
Sam sinks onto Dean’s bed, the notebook open in his hands. He knows he shouldn’t do this—it’s a violation of Dean’s privacy. But it’s just—it’s Dean. He misses his brother so much that he’ll do anything to have a piece of him. To know everything he possibly can. He needs all of Dean, and he needs him right now.
Dean’s handwriting is a loose scrawl but neat enough to read without much strain. The first entry is dated November 3.
Dear Cas,
So, the good old headshrinker gave me a homework assignment, and I’m doing it. I’m doing homework for the first time in my life. Welcome to my grief journal. She says this’ll be “cathartic,” whatever the fuck that means. That I’m supposed to tell you all the things I never got a chance to say when you were alive. But it just seems ridiculous to me. It seems stupid to write to someone who’ll never write back. And it’s not like you can even hear my prayers. Or read this from heaven. I don’t even have the luxury of imagining you as some celestial being looking over my shoulder. According to Jack, you’re so deep in the Empty you don’t even fucking exist anymore. So I guess this journal is just for me. Here goes.
I’m furious with you. I can’t even. I’m so fucking pissed, Cas. What the fuck were you thinking. You traded yourself to the Empty to save a guy who dragged your ass into one shit special after another. And all that shit you said about me in the end? What the fuck, dude. I’m the most selfish person on this planet. I kept Sam with me all these years because I was selfish and didn’t want to be alone, even though I knew he wasn’t happy with the life. I tried to force you to leave purgatory before you were ready because I wanted you with me. I never thought about what you wanted or needed. I never listened to you because I was too busy doing things my own way.
If I’d just shut up for once, things would be different now. I know they would.
And God, Sam. I wish I could convince him to leave me here, Cas. To move out. He deserves so much more. I don’t know what he’s doing here. He wasn’t built for this life, and he could be doing anything. Dude’s a fuckin’ astronaut, not a hunter.
In any case, I love you too, Cas. I always did. I hate the fact that you didn’t know that, that you didn’t feel it the way you should have. I’ll never forgive myself for not saying it when I had the chance.
Love,
Dean
November 14
Dear Cas,
Jack’s doing some cool things with sunsets these days. I like to walk Miracle at dusk and just check out the view.
You did a good job with Jack, but that goes without saying.
Love,
D
November 28
Dear Cas,
I realize my journal skills suck. I ignore this thing for weeks on end. Same as I ignored you sometimes. Am I detecting a pattern? (Something Mia would say.)
I only drank half a bottle of Jack Daniels today. You’d be proud. Of course, it’s only two in the afternoon. Give me a few hours.
Love,
D
December 5
Dear Cas,
So me and Mia have been digging into my personality a little more. Obviously I have an attachment disorder, duh. It’s not hard to figure out why. Mia thinks I might also have hypomania. I didn’t know what that meant so I had to look it up. I guess that would explain a few things—like being able to go for days on three hours of sleep, for instance.
These days all I want to do is sleep. It sucks being awake—every minute of it, knowing you’re not here and that it’s my fault. I mean, I know it’s not completely my fault. I don’t mean to sound self-aggrandizing in that regard. But—I mean, really Cas?
When I told Sam about how you summoned the Empty, he said I didn’t have to explain. Jack had already told him about the deal, about the happiness thing. So naturally Sammy figured everything out—he’s smart like that. He knew what I meant to you, that I made you happy because you loved me. And I mean, if I’m being honest, I knew you loved me too. I just didn’t know why. I figured it was just one of your quirks. (You had a lot of quirks, man. Serious.) But why me? Why did I make you so happy? I still can’t wrap my head around it.
What I hate most is that I didn’t tell you I loved you too. I didn’t say it back. When I heard you say it, my immediate response should have been, “I love you, too. I always have, Cas.” That’s how normal people do things, right?
I make excuses to myself about this. About this major failure on my part. I tell myself I couldn’t say it because to do so would have been to make you even happier, and the Empty would have taken you sooner. And maybe that’s sorta true—I was scared. I knew where you were going with all that, with all those fucking words, and I didn’t want any part of it. As I stood there watching, I didn’t want the end to come. Just to have one more minute with you, one more second. That’s all I wanted. More time.
But I was a coward, too. That’s why I couldn’t say it. I’ve spend my entire life not saying it—not saying it to Sam, to my dad, to my mom, to Bobby. And now all I have to show for that is a lot of regret.
It kills me that you think you couldn’t have me. That I was the thing you wanted the most and you thought I was off-limits or something. You could have just asked, you dumb bastard. I’d have given you whatever you wanted.
Then again, if I’d known about your deal with the Empty, I would have made it my life’s mission to make you as miserable as fucking possible.
Well, I’ve talked so much about my goddamn feelings here that I’m probably about to start menstruating soon. I need a tampon.
I love you, you fucking asshole.
Dean
December 6
Dear Cas,
Had a terrible dream last night about being in the dungeon with you in those last minutes. And about the Empty. When I woke up I had to vomit. Mia says I have the whole PTSD thing. Again: duh. She wants me to hit up my PCP for some meds, like antidepressants and shit. Lol, like that’s happening. I don’t even have a PCP. My favorite antidepressant is a six-pack followed by an Ambien.
It goes without saying, but talk therapy is a bunch of crap.
Love,
D
December 25
Dear Cas,
Merry fucking Christmas, you dickwad.
Missing you more than ever,
D
January 18
Dear Cas,
So, Sam and me are on the wagon again, solving cases and smoking monsters. It feels … okay. Almost normal. I still wish Sam would move out, go do something else. Eileen is terrific and I’m glad. He deserves someone who makes him happy. He deserves to be happy.
That reminds me—I never got to ask you what Led Zeppelin track you liked best. Motherfucker. Another missed opportunity. Yeah, my life is full of those.
Love,
D
Still sitting on Dean’s bed, Sam looks away from the pages. The dog’s head is in his lap, looking up at him plaintively. Because he’s crying. He wipes his eyes and nose with the back of his sleeve and gets up from the bed. Leaves Dean’s bedroom and goes down the hall. He’s got laundry to do.
He knows he should save Dean’s journal, reading it slowly to savor the only thing he has left of his brother—but he can’t. He can’t stop gorging himself on Dean’s words, on this modest, raw, personal record he kept of the last six months of his life. He tucks himself into a corner on the floor next to the washing machine and keeps reading.
February 4
Dear Cas,
Sam and I are on the road again, staying in cheap motels and raiding minibars. Right now we’re at a Super 8 outside Lafayette, Louisiana. It’s like old times. Why bother growing up? Neither of us expected to get this old. Can you believe I’m forty? You probably can, because you were four billion or whatever. Anyway, whenever I’m in a cheap motel, I can almost pretend that you’re going to appear in the bathroom, looking over my shoulder. Which was pervy as fuck, Cas, I’m not gonna lie. But damn I miss it.
I don’t think things are going well with Sammy and Eileen, a little trouble in paradise. But I’m too much of a coward to ask.
Sam still snores like a trucker.
Anyway. Still thinking about you, my Huckleberry.
D
February 20
Dear Cas,
Mia feels I might be ready to take our therapy sessions to “the next level.” Which means her shapeshifting into you so that I can tell you all the things I never got to, and have a proper goodbye. Closure. It seems like bullshit to me. I mean, it’s not you. It’s her. And you’re in the Empty (at best), so I’ll never see you again, and you’ll never hear what I’m telling you anyway.
I’m worried I won’t be able to just go with it. It won’t be convincing to me. I won’t be able to trick myself into believing that that’s you, not Mia. I can’t believe other people can just pretend. I guess they know how to compartmentalize better than me.
I’ve been meaning to ask you. When you pulled me out of hell, and when I summoned you that first time (and I tried to kill you a few times), you told me, “Good things do happen, Dean.” I’ll never forget those words. I wonder if you feel the same way now.
D
March 10
Dear Cas,
I’m finally going to do it. I’m going to see Mia. I lied to Sam, telling him I’m going to visit Donna for a few days. Jack would probably be pissed about that. He hated lying, and I imagine he still does. Oh well.
I don’t know if this will work, Cas. I tell myself it can’t make me feel any worse—but can it? Am I wrong about that? I’m nervous that this is a piss-poor idea.
Well, here goes nothing.
Love,
D
P.S. – I am showing her the pictures I took of you at the Not in This Lifetime tour. Hope you’re okay with that.
March 15
Dear Cas,
It felt really good to hold you. And to hear your voice again. I didn’t know how much I missed your voice. That’s all I have to say right now.
I loved you so goddamn much.
April 7
Dear Cas,
I wish grief got easier, but it doesn’t. Maybe it gets a little more manageable, I don’t know.
I try to take comfort in my smallness. I remind myself how large the universe is and how much mastery Jack has over it. That makes me feel a bit better.
Mia says that the key to accepting all this might be to come to terms with the things you said to me right before you died. To accept them as true, and not some delusion on your part. To stop hating myself so much. To trust your judgment about me—that I was selfless and loving, that I cared, that I cared so much about the world that I changed you—a mighty “angel of the lord” who’d been around for eons. To allow myself to believe that you were right. Right to love me. Even if I didn’t deserve it—because no one really deserves it—I still meant something to you in ways that were good and true. In ways that mattered. Because I mattered. We mattered.
Maybe I’m not the monster I think I am. Or the failure.
But there’s still so much failure in my life. And maybe that’s the point. You fail one person, and it teaches you how not to fail next time. How to be there for someone else, tell them what they need to hear when they need to hear it. You fail so you don’t fail again. Or fail as hard.
Maybe I don’t want to accept your death. Maybe I never will.
Love,
Dean
6.
Sam falls asleep in Dean’s room that night. Again. And sleeps for hours. When he wakes up, it’s dark and cold and Miracle is nowhere to be found. Poor fucking dog. He didn’t sign up for this.
He has to take a piss. He cracks his shoulder and reaches for his robe. Well, okay, Dean’s robe, which he can see just vaguely in the light coming in from the hallway. He starts to get up when he sees the familiar figure sitting at the end of his bed.
“Cas,” he gasps. “Cas!”
“Yes, it’s me, Sam.”
“Am I—are you real? Or is this a dream?”
“Both.” Cas walks over and sits so he’s next to Sam. “It is both real and a dream. I’m not alive anymore in the way that you knew me to be alive. I’m back to being a multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent, which means I cannot manifest physically in your waking dimension. Which is really the way it should be.” He sighs. “I learned much from humanity in ways that helped me improve heaven. But I also learned that angels shouldn’t meddle so much. Even though you’re all magnificent creatures, and I miss being among you.”
“Cas,” he says, the tears starting in his eyes. He wraps his arms around Cas, and Cas hugs him back. Then he pulls away to look at him. “How did you get out of the Empty?”
Cas keeps his hand on Sam’s arm. “It was complicated, but let’s just say that Jack found a way.”
“Jack.”
“But that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about, Sam.”
Everything is grainy and undefined, but Sam can make out Cas’s hair, his eyelashes, the shape of his nose. It really is him, even if it’s not. “My brother thought you were gone, Cas. He spent the better part of a year blaming himself for your death. Not just your death—your total nonexistence. I think it killed him.” He feels some anger, some resentment, and it’s unpleasant. It’s unpleasant to feel anger toward Cas. “You could have at least let him know you were all right. Jesus. On our last mission, he wasn’t himself. He got careless. He might still be here if not for--I mean, the rebar finished him off. But that's not what killed him, Cas. He died of a broken heart.”
Cas pulls his lips together. Smiles. “No, Sam. That’s not what happened to Dean. And I could not have intervened in his journey, his choices. Even if I'd wanted to. Dean finally gave himself permission to let go of the world and start existing with it. Just as I had to give myself permission to be happy.”
“What are you talking about?” Sam says.
“When I made my deal with the Empty, it told me it wouldn’t take me until I was happy. For a long time I misunderstood this—I believed that being in a state of true happiness would kill me. I also believed that happiness had to be achieved. I overlooked the operative word. Permission. I had to give myself permission to be happy. To love what I had already, which was your brother. I didn’t need anything from him other than to tell him how I felt about him. I needed to tell him how I saw him. Who he really was. He’d already given me everything.”
Sam says nothing.
“And Dean gave himself permission as well, in the end. He gave himself permission to stop fighting so hard. To stop shouldering the burden of saving the entire world. He was tired, Sam. He’d done enough.”
“Dean was still a young man.”
“Who was meant to be a hunter. That was who he was, Sam. Dyed in the wool. And hunters don’t live long lives. You know this.” He reaches over and touches Sam’s shoulder. “But it’s not who you are.”
“What are you talking about?”
Cas tightens his grip on Sam’s shoulder, just as Dean did that day at the festival. Then he reaches over to gently cradle the back of Sam’s head. “You’re a good hunter. Extraordinary, really. But you have many other gifts.”
He wonders if Cas is fucking with him. Or if this really is just a dream and nothing more. “Dean told me to keep fighting. I promised him I would, Cas.”
“There are other ways to fight evil.” Cas’s gaze doesn’t waver. “You’ll always be a part of this family. But you’ll be other things as well. That’s what you need to do, Sam. To let go. To give yourself permission to live a life separate from the one you led with your brother. To do all the things he wanted for you. And that you wanted for you.” Cas pulls him closer. “At the moment of my death, I was happy. I was happy because I got to tell your brother the things I knew to be true about him—things he couldn’t accept. That he was good and loving. Unwavering. A uniquely compassionate human being. After I died, your brother eventually came to believe me. It took him time, but he did. And when he finally accepted what I told him about himself, he could let go. He could let himself be.”
“Cas.”
“Your brother used his last minutes in the same way, Sam. He told you things that are right and true—things you can’t bring yourself to believe. That you’re smart. That you’re the strong one. That he admired you, that you were the one he looked up to. What he aspired to be. Look at me, Sam.”
Through his tears, Sam focuses on Cas’s eyes. “You need to give yourself permission to believe what he said. When you do that, you’ll find your way back to us.”
“And my brother—he’s happy?”
Cas smiles and releases his grip on Sam’s shoulder. “Heaven is different now. Jack saw to that. And I—I learned so much from you. We both did.”
Cas rises from the bed, and Sam knows he’s leaving now.
“I wish you wouldn’t go,” Sam says.
“I know.” Cas exhales. “This is the worst of it, Sam. This separation. This loss. But it’s quite different on the other side. When Dean sees you again, it’ll be as though you were barely apart. But I won’t lie—it’ll be harder for you. It’s what the poet said. ‘Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.’” He pauses for a moment. “I don’t know how I know that. I don’t even read poetry. But anyway.” He puts his hands in his trench coat pockets. “This is hell, Sam. This separation from your brother, from your family, from Jack. This is as bad as it gets. And you’ve been through worse. You’ll get through this.”
“I don’t know about that, Cas.” He thinks briefly about his previous experiences with hell. This hell is worse.
“You’re the strong one,” Cas says. And then he’s gone.
7.
It doesn’t take him long to store his belongings, put the books back where they belong, and pack his things. Just after dusk—on “the blue side of evening,” as Steve Earle put it—he coaxes Miracle into the car. They drive.
They drive all the way to Madison, Wisconsin. He already has an appointment.
She greets him at the door, ushers him inside. Offers him a glass of water, which he accepts. He’s tired because he’s driven all night. He’s tired because he’s been thinking—he’s had nothing to do but think for the last week.
He’s not going back to Kansas. At least not for a long time.
“How can I help you, Sam?” she asks from the chair on the other side of the coffee table. The room is as beautiful and well-lit as he remembers it. He can still remember Dean sitting next to him, and Jack sitting in the opposite chair. Poor sad, scared Jack. Jack, who’s now the steward of this wild, imperfect world and everything in it.
“I—” he begins.
“You want to see them. Your brother and your foster son. You want to say goodbye.”
He shakes his head. “I’ve done that. That’s not what I need.”
“What do you feel you need?” She leans forward.
He sets his hands on his thighs and thinks for a moment. Then he says, “I need to figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.”