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And lo, when even the great icy heart of Hades had melted under the sorrow of Orpheus, they summoned Eurydice before them. Hades bade Orpheus to walk out to the light of the sun from the caves of the Underworld, but he warned Orpheus not to lay eyes upon her before the light of the sun fell upon her or else he would lose her forever.
And Orpheus was delighted, and he thanked the gods, and he turned to ascend to the world above.
As he climbed towards the light, though, he strained to hear the footsteps of his beloved Eurydice but perceived only silence, and he began to believe that the gods had tricked him. Only steps from the light of the sun, Orpheus lost his faith. He forgot the words of Hades and turned to see, and to his great joy there was Eurydice.
But Eurydice was only a shadow, for the light of the sun had not yet fallen upon her, and no sooner had Orpheus laid eyes upon her than her shadow was whisked back down to the depths of the Underworld.
No man can enter the realm of Hades twice, and so thus was Eurydice lost to Orpheus forever.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?”
“You can’t – it’s not – One does not simply walk into the Empty and demand their boyfriend back!” the thing wearing Castiel’s face splutters.
Dean crosses his arms and glares at the doppelgänger. It’s a little disconcerting, to say the least; Dean had just gotten used to the featureless darkness that stretched in every direction around him when parts of the darkness had started moving, tentacles writhing and flowing together to coalesce into a humanoid figure. He’d been duly impressed – until colors had rippled across the blackness and resolved themselves into Castiel, blue eyes and tan trench coat and dark hair.
“Watch me. Also, he’s not my boyfriend,” Dean says. “He’s Cas. And I want him back.”
“That’s a non-starter if I’ve ever heard one,” the Shadow snorts. Then it tilts its head, so reminiscent of Castiel but somehow even more alien, because it has none of Castiel’s curiosity or confusion. Just ancient malice, looking for a new bug to tear the legs off of.
“I didn’t walk all the here to make a deal,” Dean tells it.
That ancient malice intensifies. “Speaking of walking . . . How the hell did you even get in here?” it demands, prowling around him. Each step is military precise, the exact same distance, the exact same movement, perfect and inhuman, like it watched a documentary and copied it. Even Castiel didn’t walk like that, not even when he was brand new to his vessel.
Dean shrugs casually. “Oh, you know. Bit of blood, bit of magic, bit of celestial energy. No biggie.”
The Shadow laughs. The sound echoes, which is weird, because when Dean had arrived and yelled out for Castiel, his voice hadn’t carried at all, like the darkness had absorbed everything. Now, though, the laughter reverberates all around them, like a dozen church bells going off right next to his ear, harsh and grating and loud.
“Oh, Dean,” the Shadow says, “I know bravado is your style, but that won’t work on me. Do you even know what I am?”
“A moron wearing Castiel’s face?”
The Shadow’s entire body ripples. It points its hands at the floor – or whatever the eternal darkness below their feet is – and more shadowy tendrils bubble up from the floor. The ooze spreads and spreads, until the floor around Dean is shifting and undulating like the sea at night. More figures climb out of the ooze, one by one, until Dean is utterly surrounded on all sides by Castiel doppelgängers, each bearing malicious grins and blank eyes.
“I am the Shadow,” comes the cacophony of voices. “I am the Empty. I came before God, and before the Darkness, and before Creation. I am older than life and I am older than death. Every celestial being you have ever fought, I have forced into eternal slumber, and you think I should bow to you?”
And this, this is exactly why Dean argued that it should be him – not Sam, not Jack, not anyone else. Because Dean knows that when he raises his chin and stares in defiance and says “Yep” it really pisses people off.
Surprisingly, though, the Shadow does not fly into a rage, like the archangels did, or reel back in shock, like the princes of hell did. A smile curves the lips of the one Dean is looking at, revealing perfect black teeth, and it says, “My, my, you really are a brave one. Castiel’s memories did not do you justice.”
The words are like sparks on dry wood; Dean is leaping forward before he even registers the movement. “What did you do to him?” he snarls.
The Shadow easily evades his grip. Dean’s not sure whether it moves or it moves him, but he blinks and it’s exactly the same distance away as it was before he jumped. The many doppelgängers stick their hands in their pockets, lax and slouched in a way Castiel never was, and the Shadow’s voice echoes from a new doppelgänger at Dean’s back.
“Oh, nothing much. Just tore into his mind and laid open every little juicy wound,” Shadow says casually. “Every single morsel of regret, every single bite of fear, every little drop of sadness – ah, they were delicious. I do think Castiel has been my favorite, to be honest. I could feed off of him, well, forever.”
Dean has no idea what it would be like to punch the embodiment of the Empty. Perhaps it would be like punching Castiel, unyielding steel and diamond, or maybe it give way, squishy and formless. He kind of wants to find out.
“Hmm, you were always kind of volatile in his memories,” the Shadow notes, staring pointedly at his clenched fists. “Dean Winchester, the Righteous Man, he who stopped the apocalypse in its tracks. Or started it? I was never quite clear. Not that it matters. There’s no seals that can unlock my domain, Dean. I will make no deal with you. Castiel has been mine a hundred times over, and now, thanks to you, he’ll be mine until the end of time itself.”
It’s what Dean expected to hear. It’s still a blow.
He had thought, just for once, maybe, he’d get a lucky break. Sam had gotten his – Jack had just snapped his fingers, and Eileen had barreled out of the bunker and slammed full tilt into Sam and there had been kissing and crying and a lot of yelling. But then Jack had turned sorrowful eyes on Dean, and Dean had known there would be no such easy fix for Castiel.
Then again, the only thing harder than getting into the Empty would be leaving it without what he came here for.
Dean raises his chin. “I’m not asking for a deal. It’s not like you can take my soul anyways.”
“I can’t,” the Shadow agrees cheerfully. “This is a celestial being only hangout only, kiddo.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“I’ll call you whatever I want,” the Shadow says, and abruptly its face is full of rage, like a switch has been flipped. It leans forward, menace in every line of its being, and its outline blurs at the edges like it can barely keep itself contained in Castiel’s form. “You dared to invade my home, and disturb my slumber, and demand that I break the deal Castiel willingly made. I’m well within my rights to kill you here and now.”
“So do it,” Dean challenges, because at this point, he has nothing left to lose. Jack had warned him that he might not be able to bring Dean back out and they had had no idea what would happen to a human soul in the Empty, and Dean had walked in regardless. He spreads his arms and legs wide, bares his throat, opens himself to any attack. “Kill me, then, for your precious sleep.”
The Shadow rolls its eyes. A throne oozes into existence and one of the doppelgängers hops into it, sprawling sideways, as the rest shift to form a sort of honor guard around it.
“Don’t be silly,” it chides, suddenly back to cheerful condescension, not a hint of the rage from earlier. “If I was going to kill you, I’d have to wake Castiel up so he could watch as I slowly flayed your body and soul and mind apart! And with my luck he’d never fall asleep again.”
“Or how about you wake him up and let him come back to Earth and we never bother you again,” Dean says. “That seems way more reasonable to me. And less effort.”
“You really have no idea what it takes to resurrect someone, do you?” the Shadow drawls. It lifts a hand and starts examining it, turning it to and fro, picking at its nail, poking at its skin. “It’s not just a body, Dean. Don’t you remember when Castiel resurrected you? I mean, sure, he gave you a shiny new virgin body, but he also had to reassemble your soul and reconstruct your mind. And Castiel is – how did he say it – a ‘multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent’. He’s a far more complicated puzzle piece than, well, you.”
“I’m not leaving without him.”
The Shadow yawns and slumps further into its throne. “Yes, you will. Human souls don’t belong here; your kind goes to Heaven or Hell. Eventually, a tiny little portal will open and you’ll be sucked through it like dust up a vacuum cleaner. One of God’s little loopholes, to make sure every realm functions perfectly.”
It’s not really what Dean wanted to hear, because it sounds an awful lot like what happened when Dean fought his way out of purgatory and being squeezed through that portal had really, really sucked.
But Dean left Castiel behind once. He won’t be doing it again.
“Then I’ll come back,” Dean tells the Shadow simply. “Again, and again, and again. I’ll wake you up a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times. I’ll wake up every damn celestial being in this entire godforsaken place until you hand Castiel over.”
The Shadow laughs – for a moment. Then it looks at him. Sits up. Frowns. “You’re serious.”
Dean cups his hands around his mouth, takes a deep breath, and yells, “CAS!”
Before the syllable even leaves his mouth, the Shadow is off its throne. The doppelgängers and the throne melt away, blurring back together into the one Shadow form that marches up to him and punches him straight in the gut. It’s like being hit by a truck.
“Shut up!” the Shadow roars, and hits him again so he goes sprawling on his back. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Each words is punctuated by a kick, each more brutal than the last, raining down all over Dean’s body like the Shadow has more limbs than the two it’s currently appearing with.
Dean grins through bloodied teeth. “Is that all you got?” he taunts. “CASTIEL!”
The Shadow shrieks in rage. Its outline goes blurry again, dark tendrils and black ooze, and this time when it reassembles, it pounces onto Dean’s chest and locks its hands around his throat.
It starts to say something in a language Dean doesn’t know, but then it screams, high-pitched and agonized. Dean yells too, because this hurts more than all the kicks and punches combined, like Castiel’s true voice but amped up to a thousand, at once too high and too low, tearing through the very fiber of his being like shockwaves on the level of his soul.
The Shadow leaps off of him, staring at its hands. “What have you done?” it spits. “What are you?”
Dean stares.
“WHAT ARE YOU?” the Shadow bellows, and the entire Empty shakes around them, ooze falling from above like dust shaken off of old shelves. “HOW HAVE YOU HURT ME?”
And, well, Dean does the reasonable thing after that: he gets up, he readjusts his clothes, and he charges straight at the Shadow.
The Shadow screams and screams and screams, and each scream hurts Dean, but Dean’s touch seems to hurt the Shadow more, so Dean grits his teeth and tightens his hands and puts everything he has to holding on. It’s probably the hardest thing he’s ever done, but if Castiel is in reach, if Castiel’s life is stake, if Dean can get Castiel back – it’s all worth it.
Dean leans close, batting away one of the Shadow’s flailing limbs. “Give Cas back,” he says, “or not only will I come back until I wake every single being here, I will tackle you until you can’t even remember what sleep feels like.”
The Shadow snarls, “You wouldn’t dare.”
Dean musters up all his strength – the strength that carried him against Azazel and against Lucifer and against God himself – and says, “Watch me.”
And just like that, the Shadow turns to ooze again, melting into the floor so rapidly and Dean hits the ground with a jolt that hurts his probably-bruised ribs. He reaches out tentatively, but there is no more screaming, no more taunting, and no more inky tendrils, just a solid unending floor of darkness.
Dean tilts his head up. “I’m not giving up!” he yells.
“Oh, shut it,” comes the Shadow’s voice from behind him.
Dean turns around. The Shadow is standing behind him, still wearing Castiel’s face, but now instead of malice, wariness lines every inch of its alien form. It looks at Dean like a lion who has bitten a mouse only to find out that the mouse’s whiskers are razorblades. And there is black ooze all over its hands, like it’s trying to reform itself but can’t quite.
“Castiel really went all out when he remade you,” the Shadow continues in an aggrieved tone. “Angel elbow grease to the extreme.”
“What – ”
“Your soul, you moron,” the Shadow snaps. “Your soul burns.”
Dean looks at the Shadow. Looks at his hands. Looks at the Shadow again. “ . . . Okay?”
“No wonder God wanted to wipe you out.” The Shadow sighs. “Normally, this is when I would fling you out of the nearest portal powered by your soul. But nooooooooooooo. Castiel had to go above and beyond when he rebuilt you. Stitched you up with pieces of himself, the crazy little – ”
“He what?”
The Shadow makes a motion like threading a needle. “He stitched your soul together,” it repeats. “Carved off slices of his own grace to do it. You’re too human for me to lay hands on, Dean Winchester, but the veins of your soul? That’s all Castiel, through and through.”
Dean thinks about it for about two seconds, and then has to stop because just – no. He can slap Castiel for that when he has Castiel safely on earth again.
“So, no portal?”
“No portal,” the Shadow agrees tiredly. “For a while, anyways. His grace shields you.”
There is a moment of silence. Dean stares at the Shadow. The Shadow stares at Dean.
“So should I start yelling again, or . . . ?”
The Shadow presses still-black fingers to its temples and rubs like it has a migraine. It mutters something under its breath, still in a language Dean doesn’t know, and heaves a deep sigh. “Fine,” it says, “fine, fine, fine! All I wanted was some peace and quiet and sleep, but I guess that’s too much to ask, because the second I try, someone barges in and makes rude demands! First Death, and then Castiel, and now you – what am I, a walking doormat that says come in, make yourself at home?”
Still muttering, the Shadow turns away and raises its hand. It snaps its fingers and Dean flinches, because that sound never usually bodes well, but nothing happens beyond a weird reverberation in the darkness around them. It kind of sounds like a huge something in the distance has fallen.
The Shadow turns back to Dean. “Now, then,” it says, obnoxiously pleasant, “I have some ground rules.”
“Now who’s coming to the table with non-starters?”
“The ground rules are for you, not me. Unless you want to be atomized?”
Dean subsides.
“Good boy,” the Shadow says. It tilts his head and grins, sly and sneaky like a fox. “Firstly, you’ll have to find your own way out of here. Even if I wanted to help you – and I don’t – I can’t, because you need to end up on Earth, and I can only go if I’m summoned. Secondly, you will not wake up anything else you find between now and leaving, because if you split my attention, you might pop out with half a Castiel instead of the full-fledged model. Are we clear?’
“Sure thing,” Dean says, because he has no desire to wake up anything or anyone else. “Anything else?”
“Only the most important one.” The Shadow pauses dramatically and its grin gets even bigger, if that’s possible. It actually stretches from ear to earth, black teeth making up half of its face. “You can’t look at Castiel until you’re back on Earth.”
“Why the hell – ”
“I’m sure you know what happens when a human looks at an angel’s true form,” the Shadow interrupts casually. “If you look at your boyfriend before he’s on earth in a vessel, you’ll be a melted puddle of atoms on the ground. And, you know, Castiel will be stuck here, awake forever, with only your sad little pile of atoms for company. So, no pressure.”
“And I’m just supposed to, what, trust you?” Dean sneers.
“Yep,” the Shadow says, in the exact same tone Dean had first used. “Good bye, Dean Winchester. May we never, ever meet again.”
The Shadow unravels, tendrils falling to the floor and dissolving, and then Dean is alone.
“Damn it,” Dean says.
No matter what Dean does – stomping his feet, yelling at the top of his lungs, clapping his hands – the Shadow does not re-emerge. Even worse, the feeling of being watched ratchets up. It was already bad when the Shadow was prowling around him; now the hairs on the back of his head are really standing up, and it’s even worse when Dean remembers just how many powerful, ancient, dead celestial beings are probably all around, trapped in eternal slumber, probably just out of Dean’s eyesight.
Dean turns, just to make sure that the Shadow is stalking him from behind, but he doesn’t see any ooze or tendrils. The feeling of being watched doesn’t go away, either.
Then again, the Shadow did snap its fingers.
Dean clears his throat. “Cas? Is that you?”
There’s no answer. His words don’t echo. But the feeling of a thousand eyes shifts somewhat; Dean can still feel that edge of malice, which is probably the Shadow, but he can also feel . . . something else. He has no words to describe it, but it’s there and a part of him knows it, recognizes it, delights in it. It’s like getting a whiff of fresh outside air in a deep, dark, winding cave; he can’t say what makes it special, but his body knows it is.
“Hey, Cas,” Dean says quietly. “I guess that’s my cue to go, then.”
Just because he can, Dean raises a hand and waves obnoxiously, because he’s sure the Shadow is still watching. Then he turns around and starts walking before the Shadow decides to go back on its word and flay him alive anyways.
He’s not sure what direction he picks or why, but he just concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other. It’s what he did in purgatory, and if the Shadow speaks the truth and a portal will eventually form to spit him out, the closer he gets to the veil at the end of the Empty, the faster the portal will manifest.
That’s the theory, anyways. Jack had tried to explain the difference between purgatory and the Empty about five times before they’d given up and just gotten the ingredients for the spell.
About five minutes later, Dean gets bored of the silence. He really wishes he could hear or see Castiel, but the Empty seems to swallow all sound and he doesn’t actually want his eyes to burn out of his skull Pamela-style, so Dean does what he does best: he opens his mouth and fills the echoing nothingness with his own voice.
“So, I guess you might want an update,” Dean says. “Uh, so, important stuff first: we defeated God. The old God, anyways. Chuck’s human now – Jack sucked all of his power out. It was kinda awesome. Chuck did blow up Michael, though. So now I guess we have no more archangels. And Jack brought everyone back that Chuck poofed. Because Jack is God now. Kinda. He likes to drop by for movie night and eat that really terrible sugary cereal. Oh, and Eileen and Sam . . .”
Dean rambles about Sam and Eileen, because he’s happy for them. They’ve turned the bunker into a new Hunter HQ, complete with a team of dedicated researchers, rotating shifts in the classroom for hunters to learn basic skills, and a fully staffed medical wing. Sam and Eileen are also disgustingly gross and in love, and if Dean walks in them one more time kissing while making breakfast, he will start throwing eggs at them.
Then Dean shifts to talking about the bunker. Sam did . . . something to help them get back to full power after Jack restored to the cosmic level warding, so they keep finding new cool rooms. There’s a fully functional greenhouse, a forge and workshop, and, of course, more rooms with ten thousand books.
“I guess it wouldn’t be the Men of Letters if they didn’t have more books,” Dean says tiredly. “But, man, am I tired of cataloging everything. I suppose we could let some of the newbies handle it, but the last time they released a limerick curse, and I can only take so much poetry. And, uh, you’re probably tired of me talking about the bunker so . . . um . . .”
Dean had made a list, before. Before they had defeated God. Before Jack had become the new God. Before Dean had lit the match to start the spell. He had things to tell Castiel. Lots of them.
If only he had brought it with him.
He goes over their family in his head again. Updates on Sam, check. Updates on Eileen, check. Updates on Jack? Whoops.
“Guess I can talk about Jack. Not much to say, honestly, cuz I didn’t really ask much questions. He sucked the power out of God and merged it with himself. He said he was gonna fix Heaven too, but I, uh, didn’t really ask about that either. He can probably tell you more when we get home.”
The feeling of being watched shifts, a little bit. It’s like a tiny tug in his gut. It feels a bit like sadness.
“Hey, don’t pull those puppy dog eyes on me,” Dean says. “Heaven was a wreck long before we happened to it, buddy, and you know it. And Jack said he could fix it. Plus he can probably give you your wings back. Although that is not permission to flap off the second we get home, you hear me? We have stuff to talk about.”
Castiel doesn’t answer. Typical.
“You know, the Shadow only said I couldn’t look at you. Pretty sure you can talk to me.”
Silence.
“Ugh, fine,” Dean groans. “This is revenge for every time I tried to make you talk about purgatory, isn’t it? Fine. Well, we covered Jack. Uh, so Rowena is queen of hell now. Yeah. She whipped them into shape fast. No more demon deals.”
Dean wastes a bit more time talking about Rowena and the new state of hell. It’s a relief to stop having to watch over their shoulders for demons trying to gank them at every opportunity, for sure, and it sure makes Dean breathe a bit easier when he sends hunters into the field. There are still rogues, of course, but nowadays they encounter a lot more human monsters than demonic ones.
After that, Dean moves onto the rest of their family. He covers Claire and Kaia, Jody and Donna, Garth and his kids. Charlie and Bobby and all the other hunters from the other world. With each subsequent name, the feeling of Castiel grows a little brighter, a little stronger, a little more real. Dean doesn’t dare look, but he imagines himself being followed by a tiny ball of light, growing bigger and bigger as Castiel begins to reassemble.
Then again, Dean hasn’t lived this long relying on just his imagination and feelings. That’s how he ends up betrayed or stabbed.
He clears his throat. “Cas, buddy. Mind saying something? Giving me a sign? I can only talk so much, you know. And that Shadow thing is pretty shady. Even by our standards. Can you, uh, let me know it’s you and not, I don’t know, some really old and angry being I killed that wants to eat me?”
Castiel doesn’t reply.
It’s strange. Castiel isn’t exactly very talkative, and even after they got him a phone he didn’t always answer, but Dean finds it weird to not get some kind of response from Castiel. He’s relied on Castiel’s body language for so long that without it, he feels like he’s flailing in the darkness, both literally and figuratively. Even when he reaches up to his shoulder, he feels nothing, not even a twinge from the place where Castiel once seared his claim into Dean’s body.
The last time it twinged was when Castiel shoved him to the cold, hard floor. It’s not a happy memory.
Then again, Dean’s not really ready to talk about that.
Dean casts about for a safe topic. It’s a hard ask, because they’ve been through so much together that a lot of things are tied up in old memories, but then Dean thinks about their last day together before everything went to hell, and he remembers Castiel hovering the kitchen while Dean cooked. They hadn’t been talking, just hanging out, both of them content to just exist in the same place.
And hey, if there’s one thing Dean can ramble about, it’s food.
“I, uh, saw an advertisement for a pie festival. Assuming that we get out of this place and ten thousand years haven’t passed, I think we need to go. I’ve bet Sam that I can eat at least ten slices. And hey, even if I lose, that just means more pie to bring home. Plus, you haven’t had some of these varieties yet, Cas, and that’s totally something we need to fix one you are, uh, you know. In possession of a body again. Hey, you did have a vessel again when the Shadow spat you out last time, right? Like you didn’t make your vessel? You popped up fully formed?”
No answer.
Dean sighs. “Come on, man, work with me. I didn’t really tell Jack you needed a body, and I don’t feel like being blinded. I mean, I guess Jack could fix that, but I don’t fancy the pain.”
His shoulder twinges hard, then. Like he’s being grabbed, but not from the outside; it’s more like an all-around, all-encompassing grip. Like Castiel but unfettered from the limitations of a human vessel with human hands. It is reassurance, it is strength, it is protection. A promise.
Dean touches his shoulder again. It’s still weird, feeling the pressure of his own hand and the possibly-Castiel-pressure, but it’s better than silence.
“Hey, Cas,” he says, quieter this time. “Took you long enough.”
He walks in silence for a little bit, after all. Silence with Castiel is never really silence, after all. Castiel can be still as stone, but he’s been around humans long enough to pick up their ticks; he blinks, sometimes, he shuffles his hands and feet, he leans forward or moves back. And he can pack a whole insult in a single glare.
Still, he wishes so much that he could just hear something.
“Sam misses you,” Dean finally offers up. It’s safer than the alternative. “Jack too. And Claire. And Jody. Even Rowena. And I – ”
I’ve been counting the hours since you left.
I’ve been counting the minutes since you left.
I’ve been counting the seconds since you left.
“And I’ve missed you too,” Dean says, lamely. “It’s not the same. Without you. I’ve had to drive that ugly car of yours, for starters. We are so getting you a better car. We’ve got like seven dozen in the garage, one of them must – ”
Dean’s jacket moves, like a whiff of wind had tugged on it.
Dean stops. “Cas. Was that you? I swear to god if you’ve had the ability to do that this whole time and haven’t talked to me – ”
And then Dean smells it: that undefinable, indescribable, undeniable scent of fresh air. Sun and wind and grass. Pies and burgers and fries. Life.
“Guess the Empty finally decided to make a portal and spit me out,” Dean says, grinning. He sets off again, whistling to himself. He can’t see anything yet, but that doesn’t matter; they had walked for weeks, following the trail of the wind, before they’d found the portal out of purgatory. “And don’t get any ideas, Cas. I will drag you out. You aren’t staying behind. There will be no penance, you hear me?”
There’s no acknowledgement, but the memory of purgatory still sits heavily in Dean’s gut. Castiel showed him the truth – touched his mind and accessed his real memories – but sometimes when Dean dreams, he sees both: Castiel ripping his arm away, bitter regret on his face, and Castiel falling out of his hands, screaming his name, panic all over his features.
He’s not sure which makes him more scared.
“I guess at least we aren’t caked in filth and blood this time,” Dean muses. “I had to shower so much, even the second time. Hey, maybe you can angel mojo us both clean this time. I’ve got stuff to say to you.”
He doesn’t even realize he’s said it until the feeling of Castiel shrinks, going from a little point of pressure to nothingness. Dean stops dead, patting frantically at his shoulder and his gut, but the pressure doesn’t return. His shoulder doesn’t twinge, either, not even when he swings it.
“Cas,” he says. “Cas! Don’t you dare.”
When there’s no response, Dean comes to a stop. He can just make out the faintest glimmer of something in the distance, something that sparks blue and gold, but two can play this game, and Dean’s won just as many battles with Castiel over stubbornness as Castiel has won. Dean plants his feet, raises his hands, and yells, “CASTIEL!”
This time, the sound echoes. Dean isn’t sure what changed, but now his yell carries, rumbling through the Empty, and the feeling of a thousand eyes on Dean’s back returns. It’s not Castiel; this is surprise, confusion, malice, anger, hunger. This is other things, probably starting to wake up.
Dean has approximately two seconds to think about what might happen if he pisses off the Shadow and wakes something else up before he decides he doesn’t care. He came for Castiel, and he isn’t leaving without him.
“If you stay, I stay,” Dean calls out. “We aren’t doing this again.” He swallows hard, the memory of that ticking clock flashing in front of his eyes. “I would’ve stayed. In purgatory. If I hadn’t found you. Did you know that? I was gonna stay. I didn’t – I couldn’t leave you behind. Not again. And I – I never told you. What I had to say down there. I know you said you heard my prayer but that – that wasn’t all of it, Cas. Not by a long shot.”
Dean raises his hand and grips his shoulder again. He’s aware that it’s about as reassuring as hugging himself, but he can’t stop. He needs something.
“You owe me, Cas!” he shouts, because he’s on a roll now. “You can’t say drop that kind of bomb on a guy and just – just die! You owe me and god damn it, I will say it right here and now and let every sleeping monster in this place hear me if you don’t get back here right now.”
Castiel doesn’t come back.
“Have it your way, then,” Dean starts to say, but then the feeling of watched morphs into a distinct feeling of being hunted. Dean whips out the angel blade from his coat pocket, spinning to face whatever threat is charging at him, but to his shock, the blade simply melts, pouring down his arm like it’s just liquid silver and not pure angelic power manifested into a weapon. Cursing, he digs out his knife, but that melts too, dissolving into nothingness on the floor.
The Empty rumbles around him, like the sounds of something huge lumbering forward, but just as Dean flinches, certain he’s about to be eaten, a new sound enters the area. It’s a single high note, like a bell being rung, and as it echoes, it rises in pitch to an ear-splitting whine instead of falling like a normal bell.
Silence falls again, and Dean no longer feels like he’s being hunted.
His shoulder twitches. It’s clumsy and inelegant, like someone tiredly slapping his arm. It’s amazing.
Dean grins. “Thanks, Cas,” he says, and manfully doesn’t point out that Dean wouldn’t have shouted if Castiel hadn’t just left.
Dean sets off again towards the portal. He can see it now, a glowing, rippling circle of light in the distance, throwing off blue and gold sparks. It looks about the size of his arm, but that could just be because it’s too far away or it’s not at full size yet.
“There’s our ticket out,” Dean announces, pointing like Castiel doesn’t have eyes because, hey, maybe he doesn’t yet. “You and me, we’re almost home.”
Castiel doesn’t say anything back – nothing stupid about Heaven being his home or wanting to strike out from the bunker or even going to check on Claire and the rest – and that is when it dawns upon Dean that perhaps this is the perfect time to have their little chat. He’s not sure how Castiel will respond, after all, and what better place than somewhere like the Empty where no one, not even Jack, can eavesdrop?
What better time, too, than when Castiel can’t crush Dean’s hopes and dreams?
“So,” Dean says, “I got some stuff to say, Cas. You better put your listening ears on. Or listening wings, whatever.”
He takes a deep breath. Sam had tried to have a heart to heart with Dean, after he’d looked up from their dinner with Eileen and the rest and saw Dean’s face, but Dean had brushed him off. There are some things a man can only say to their . . . well, whatever the hell Castiel is to him.
“I uh. I made a list. After we won. Stuff I wanted to say. I didn’t bring it with me because most of it was useless crap, but I think I should probably say item number one now. While you’re here and not flying off to Heaven. Which, you know, you can, afterwards. But. Well. I need to say it. Because you didn’t let me, in purgatory. And you didn’t let me when you died for me, you assbutt.”
With each word and step, Dean gets closer to the portal. It’s grown in size now, tall and slender, just enough for an adult human man to squeeze through. Dean knows without being told that it will suck, but also that it will bring them home.
He stops, right in front of it, and takes another fortifying breath. Now or never.
“Right before the Empty came for you, you said that knowing me changed you, that it made you care,” Dean says, because he knows every single word Castiel said, because they are seared into his mind and pressed into his soul. “You said. You said that you loved me. And I think – I know that there are things you need to know too.
“You’re not a hammer, Cas. You tried to fix Heaven, and yeah, you messed up, but hey, I started the apocalypse, I’m not one to talk. And you – you changed me too. You had faith, and because of that I did too. I believed we could win. I believed we could fix the world. I believed we could find you again and bring you home. And I believed – ”
The words catch in Dean’s throat. He digs his fingers into his shoulder, until it’s painful, and tries again.
“I believed that I’d be able to tell you,” Dean whispers, “that I love you too.”
He doesn’t wait for Castiel’s reaction, however small it might be. He doesn’t let himself even blink, because he knows if he stops and pauses and blinks he’ll look back, he’ll turn around and open his eyes and do everything the Shadow warned himself not to do.
So Dean jumps into the portal and prays, and the words in his mind are all for Castiel.
The first thing Dean sees when he lands on earth is the ceiling of the bunker, because he lands hard on his back.
The second thing Dean sees is Sam and his shaggy hair flopping all over his face as he leans over Dean.
And the third thing Dean sees is a flash of light, angel-bright and too-painful, and when it fades, Castiel is standing there, trench coat and tie and all, gloriously and beautifully whole and alive.
“You idiot,” Castiel snarls, and then he stomps forward and grabs Dean by the lapel and lifts him clear off the floor, clearly mostly recovered from their little foray into what passes as death for angels. “How could you do something so dangerous, you could have died, you nearly were incinerated by a – ”
“Hey, I saved your life,” Dean retorts, kicking at the air until Castiel lowers him an inch or two and he can feel solid ground again. “And it worked, so don’t yell at me.”
Castiel’s face contorts with rage. His eyes go bright with power, his fingers go hot where they’re wrapped into Dean’s collar, and Dean sees the sweeping shadow of great arcing wings in his back. He looks like he’s about two seconds from incinerating Dean himself.
Dean kisses him. Because he can.
Castiel kisses him back.
Later that night, Dean is just changing into his comfortable dead guy robe when he hears the distinct flapping of feathers that comes with angel express, and he grins and looks up to see Castiel standing at the end of his bed.
“Hey, Cas,” Dean says, and lifts his face asking for a kiss. Perhaps he’s greedy, and certainly Sam has actually pelted them with a tomato when they got carried away in the kitchen, but this is still too shiny and new for Dean not to be greedy. He’ll take everything of Castiel he can get, everything and anything, until the sun burns out and the stars fall and the earth crumbles to ash.
“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says, smiling faintly. He rounds the bed and answers that ask, kissing Dean like they’ve been parted for centuries and not, at best, thirty minutes.
“I see you got your wings back,” Dean notes.
“Yes, Jack has given us all our wings back. He has also reopened Heaven. I suspect within time he may need to make new angels, but for now at least, Heaven has stabilized.”
“He’s a good kid.”
“Yes, he is.”
Castiel leans down again, probably to kiss Dean again, but he stops abruptly when an alarm sounds. They both check their pockets, but Dean’s robe is empty and Castiel’s phone has no alerts. It takes a bit of digging, but Dean eventually finds his phone, abandoned on the nightstand and plugged into the charger. It had come out of the Empty with only 1% of battery left even though it was fully charged before he went in, and Dean’s pretty sure it’s a lost cause now.
Maximum timer reached, the phone informs Dean, and he opens the alert on auto-pilot before he remembers just what, exactly, he had set a timer for.
Castiel’s eyebrow goes up when he sees the flashing numbers. “How long have you had that timer going, and for what?”
Dean shuts the phone and slides it in his drawer. It’s not his phone drawer, but Dean needs to have it out of sight right now. “Uh, can’t remember,” he lies. “It’s so old anyways – ”
“You just got that phone recently,” Castiel points out, because he knows Dean too well.
“It’s a little messed up. I took it with me into the Empty and I think it’s broken.”
Too late, Dean realizes that he’s said too much. Castiel still sucks at sarcasm and pop culture references, but math and logic? Castiel knows the very fabric of the universe; he can solve a problem like nobody’s business. It’s what made him the kind of tactician that Heaven would send down to Hell to rescue the righteous man.
Castiel says, “You set that timer for how long I had been gone.”
Dean closes his eyes.
“The Empty warped it, but you – you were tracking how long. You wanted to know exactly, down to the second, the amount of time that I had been dead.”
Put that way, it sounds – well. “I made some dumb decisions after you died,” Dean mutters. He doesn’t even remember setting the timer, but he does remember each time he looked at it, and how every time seeing a bigger number had been like a gut punch.
Castiel cups his face with one hand. The other finds Dean’s shoulder, firm and steady. It’s good, it’s right, it’s grounding and it’s what Dean needs, because it means Castiel isn’t leaving.
“Six weeks, four days, fifteen hours, and twelve seconds.”
That is not what Dean had expected Castiel to say. “What?”
“Six weeks, four days, fifteen hours, and twelve seconds,” Castiel repeats. “I counted.”
Dean opens his eyes. He doesn’t really want to meet Castiel’s eyes, but he does anyways, because he thinks he knows what Castiel means, but . . . “When we got stuffed in the top secret prison?”
“Yes.” Castiel strokes his thumb against Dean’s shoulder, like he’s reassuring himself. “Every second we were apart, I counted. I had to know.”
It shouldn’t help, this reminder of how gone they are for each other, but it does, somehow. It gives Dean the strength to turn his face into Castiel’s palm and plant a tiny kiss on the skin there, a silent I am here. Castiel trembles against him.
“I guess we’re both kinda dumb when we’re apart,” Dean says finally, when he finds his voice again.
“Yes. That’s why I won’t be going back to Heaven.”
“Cas – ”
“My place is with you,” Castiel interrupts. “Heaven is stable, now. If they need me, they know where to find me.”
“I don’t want to keep you from your home.”
“My home is here. With you.”
And, well, Dean has to kiss him for that. He pulls on Castiel’s arms and Castiel comes, like he always done, answering Dean with an open heart and matching him beat for beat, like they are two puzzle pieces fitting perfectly together, two birds in perfect flight, two notes in perfect harmony. They kiss until Dean is dizzy and breathless, as much from the lack of air as from the sheer wonder that is having Castiel.
“Hey,” Dean says, after a long while. “Does that mean you’re moving in with me?”
“Your bed has your beloved memory foam,” Castiel answers, which is fair enough.
Dean would totally give up his memory foam for Castiel, but Castiel doesn’t need to know it. Instead he just grins and says, “Second nightstand is all yours, then.”
“How gracious,” Castiel says dryly.
Then he stands, as if he means to leave right then and now. And sure, Castiel has accumulated possessions that Dean knows he treasures, but still, that can all wait until morning. Maybe even until after breakfast, since Castiel doesn’t eat.
“Where are you going?” Dean demands.
“Nowhere. But you need to sleep.”
“Like hell do I – ”
“And after you sleep and are sufficiently rested,” Castiel continues, blithely ignoring him, “I think I would like to have sex.”
Dean about falls off the bed.
“With you,” Castiel clarifies.
Dean stares at him for a long moment.
Castiel stares right back.
“Cas,” Dean says.
“Yes, Dean?”
“Take off your clothes.”
“Why would I need to disrobe to – ”
“Take off your clothes, goddamn it, we’re having sex right now.”
“But you need rest,” Castiel objects. “The spell to resurrect me took a lot of energy – ”
“And you know what will rejuvenate me? Sex.”
“That’s not how sex works.”
“Oh, yeah? And who’s the expert on human sex? You or me?”
Castiel takes his clothes off.
And lo, when even the great resolve of the Shadow had been cracked, it summoned the angel of Thursday before them. The Shadow bade the Righteous Man to walk out to the light of the Earth from the depths of the Empty, but it warned the Righteous Man not to lay eyes upon the angel before the light of the Earth fell upon him or else he would lose his beloved forever.
And the Righteous Man was delighted, and he waved at the Shadow, and he turned to ascend to the portal back to Earth.
As he climbed towards the portal, though, he strained to hear the footsteps of his beloved Castiel but perceived only silence, and he began to believe that the Shadow had tricked him. Only steps from the light of the Earth, the Righteous Man nearly lost his faith. He nearly forgot the words of the Shadow, and he nearly turned to see, and he nearly doomed them both forever.
But the Righteous Man knew that no human soul can enter the realm of the Empty twice. So instead the Righteous Man confessed his love, stepped into the light of the Earth, and brought his beloved Castiel with him back to life.
And thus did the Righteous Man rescue the angel of Thursday from the depths of the Empty, and a great cry went up through the heavens: Castiel is saved.
FINIS