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Dean Winchester sits on a park bench, waiting. It's two pm on a Saturday afternoon, a time when the park should be bursting with laughing kids and tired parents giving each other pep talks. Grey clouds cover the sky but don't threaten rain or darkness, and while the breeze adds a slight chill to the air, there's no bite to it, and even Dean's beat-up leather jacket is able to keep it at bay. Dean isn't a parent but he's pretty sure that these are the best outdoors playing conditions that can be expected from Kansas in April.
And yet, the park is almost empty. If not for the two other people in the park with him - a middle-aged woman sitting on another bench, occasionally throwing crusts to the pigeons, and a homeless man systematically making his way around the perimeter, rummaging through the bins - Dean might have thought that he was still alone in the world, with everyone else having been wiped by Chuck. But really, he guesses he shouldn't be surprised that people are choosing to stay at home, safe, with their loved ones around them: being blinked in and out of existence must have left some sort of mental scar, even if they're not sure exactly what happened to them.
He sighs and stretches his arms out across the back of bench, carefully avoiding a wad of chewing gum, and leans his head back, closing his eyes.
Sam's worried. Dean knows he is. But Eileen is back now, and Dean is damned if he's going to be the one to rain on Sam's parade. Besides, someone needs to look after Adam, who is understandably a little shaken after everything he's been through, and god knows, Dean's struggling to look after himself these days.
If he's honest with himself – and he rarely is – a small part of him is a little resentful, certain that there's no way Sam can understand what he's going through because his love came back. No one can, for that matter. Everyone came back - everyone except one. And that missing one means that even though Dean is surrounded by more family than he knows what to do with, he feels lonelier than he has done in a long time.
He doesn't know how long he would've stayed in his own solitary circle, slowly spiralling into despair, had Sam not found him that morning, asleep on the floor with a half-empty bottle of whisky for a pillow. This had hardly been an unusual way for Dean to sleep recently, but it must have been the last nail in the coffin of Sam's concern, as this time he hadn't just bitten his lip and helped him to his bed before taking the whisky and trying to hide it in a better place than he had done the last time.
"Please talk to someone," he had begged him. "Even if it's not me - just someone." Dean had brushed him off with the same vague assurances, but deep down, he had known that Sam was right. So, hungover from a bad night of cheap booze and nightmares, he had reached for his phone and finally called the one person he had thought might understand. Then he had downed a cup of cold coffee, grabbed his jacket and headed out to the park bench. Where he's waiting now.
She had said "10 minutes" on the phone. Lebanon, Kansas is approximately a twenty-one-hour drive away, but Dean's fairly sure that she's not driving. In fact, if she's travelling the way he suspects, he could be in Antarctica and she would still be able to meet him 10 minutes or less.
So far, it's only been about five minutes, but sure enough, he hears footsteps approach and a shadow falls across his face. Dean doesn't have to open his eyes to know who it is.
"About a month ago, I watched my entire family disappear before my eyes," she says by way of greeting. "I was the last one to go. Then suddenly, everyone's back again but it's somehow months later." He opens one eye to see her standing directly in front of him, looking him up and down with a faintly disapproving expression on her face. "I should've known a Winchester would be involved somehow."
"And I should've known a Halliwell would rag on my ass instead of saying thank you," Dean shoots back. Piper folds her arms and raises a sceptical eyebrow in a smooth, well-practised motion.
"So it was you then," she says. "You got things back to normal?" Dean smiles weakly.
"Just doing my job." He knows that clairvoyance is not one of Piper's powers as a witch, but she clearly sees through his bravado anyway, as she sits down next to him on the bench, her eyes boring into his. Dean makes space for her and meets her gaze head on.
"What was the cost?" she asks, soft but direct. Unavoidable. As much as Dean appreciates her not skating around the topic, her abruptness still catches him off guard.
"Cas," he says, the name raw and sticky in his throat. "We lost Cas." Piper nods.
"What happened?"
"We were trapped in the Bunker, running from Death. Cas summoned the Empty. It took Death and saved my life - but it took him too," Dean pauses. "I don't know what to do Pip," he admits, and it's a mark of the sincerity of the conversation that Piper doesn't object to the nickname as she normally would do. "He's gone. Jack's gone. And I'm still here and... I don't know what to do. It's like there's this damn knife in my chest, twisting, and I can't get it out." A tear escapes from his eye before he can stop it, racing down his cheek. He sniffs and quickly goes to wipe it away, but Piper catches his hand, stopping him.
"I'll tell you what you do," she says, gently brushing his tear away with her thumb. "You wait. And while you wait, you look for him. And while you look for him, you live your life as best you can. The way that Castiel would've wanted you to."
Dean snorts; he can only imagine what Cas would have to say about his recent behaviour. But Dean would gladly take all the disapproving looks and exasperated sighs if it meant Cas was here to give them. Then again, Cas doesn't really have a right to pass judgement on anything Dean is doing to cope. He's the one who left.
Sensing his conflict, Piper drops her hand from his cheek to his shoulder.
"Hey," she says, shaking him slightly, drawing his attention back to her. "You'll get through this."
"How?" Dean demands. His voice is rougher than he means it to be, and he pauses, taking a deep breath before continuing. "How do you do it?" Piper runs her hand through her long hair, pulling it over one shoulder.
"I don't know," she says. "Sometimes we have to lose people to save them. It sucks - but Leo's not gone. Neither is Castiel."
Dean's not sure why he decides in that moment that he's going to tell Piper the thing that's been keeping him up at night. The real reason that he keeps reaching for the whisky bottle. The memory that he just can't shake, no matter how many times he replays it in his mind, willing for it to be different.
Maybe it's because, despite not knowing how, he's desperate to tell someone what happened. Maybe it's Piper's lack of hesitation to equate Leo and Cas. Maybe it's because even big brothers need older siblings once in a while. Whatever the reason, Dean's mouth opens almost of its own accord and the words fall out.
"Right before he was taken," he starts. "Cas - he told me... He said that he... loved me."
"Huh," Piper says, sounding faintly impressed. "So he actually did it. I was wondering if he ever would."
"You knew?"
"Sweetie, the whole of creation knew," Piper tells him with fond exasperation.
"Yeah, well, thanks for the memo," Dean says, gruffly. Piper snorts.
"Oh please. It's not my fault that one of you has to be dying before you'll talk about your feelings."
"Yeah, well..." Dean looks at his hand, still clasped in hers, her wedding band cold against his warm skin. "I didn't... I didn't get to say it back." Immediately, Piper's sympathetic again.
"I'm sure he knows," she murmurs.
"But what if he doesn't?" Dean asks, the panic bubbling with him, clogging up his throat, cutting off the air. He has to force himself to continue, pushing through the blockade, ignoring the subsequent ache in his chest. "I wanted to tell him, Pip. I really did. But I just couldn't get the damn words out... maybe it would've been easier if I'd said it in Spanish or something."
"Do you even speak Spanish?" Piper asks.
"No - but you get the point," Dean says.
"I do," Piper nods. They lapse into silence, Dean trying desperately to keep his head above the swell of emotions that threaten to overwhelm him, Piper's hand his sole lifeline to the surface. They've been in literal life-and-death situations together before, but he's fairly sure he's never held onto her as tightly as this. For her part, Piper merely strokes the back of his hand reassuringly with her thumb, as if she doesn't care at all that her bones are being crushed in his vice-like grip.
"You know," she says after a while. "I have two sons and a sister who are technically half angel." She looks at him wryly. "If you ever need a lift?"
Hope immediately blazes through him, hotter than the dull ache of despair but just as painful. He forces it down again.
"I appreciate the offer," he says, his voice strained from the effort of it all. "But I can't ask you to do that. It's dangerous. Hella dangerous."
"Because our lives are so safe otherwise," Piper says dryly. "Besides you're not asking me. I'm volunteering."
"No," Dean says, more firmly. "They're your family -"
"What is it you and your brothers are always saying?" she cuts across him. Before Dean can reply, she screws up her face in an exaggerated pout. "Family don't end in blood," she says as gruffly as she can.
"Alright, I don't sound like that," Dean protests, even as the corners of his mouth twitch. Piper grins, her features smoothing out from their mock Winchester imitation into a smile that becomes more sincere as she leans in closer.
"Dean, I lost my angel. Let me help you find yours." He doesn't know what to say to that. So he says nothing at all - just untangles his hand from hers to hook it around her shoulders, pulling her close and kissing the top of her head. Piper huffs in protest at being jostled, but she doesn't pull away.
An alliance between witches and hunters would be unthinkable to most hunters, let alone a friendship. Even a young Dean would've laughed if someone had told him that he would one day consider the most powerful witches of this age to be the sisters he never had. And yet, considering how much the Halliwells and Winchesters had in common, they should have realised from the start that a friendship was inevitable. Both being the eldest siblings, Dean has always felt particularly close to Piper - but never as close as he does now, united by the two angels they had both lost.
Something moves out of the corner of his eye. It's a small movement that most people wouldn't even register, but Dean's hunter instincts hone in on it immediately.
"Hey, is it me or is that guy kinda... scaley?" he asks, nodding at the homeless dude, who has stopped rummaging through the bins and is instead edging his way slowly but surely towards them. Piper glances over and sighs, irritated.
"Oh for god's sake," she mutters, flicking out a hand. The thing masquerading as a man freezes instantly. Dean automatically looks around to see if anyone's watching - but aside from the three of them, the park is now completely empty, even the woman with her bread having vanished, taking her flock of pigeons with her. The coast clear, he reaches in his jacket for the demon-killing knife.
"No, no, don't worry, I got this," Piper says, standing and eyeing the knife distastefully, as if being stabbed was somehow a more brutal fate than being blown to pieces.
"What and let you steal all the fun?" Dean demands, standing too. "Besides, if that's a demon then when you yank him, there's one place he's going. And I got a message for him to pass on."