Chapter Text
It had been a long ride. Since Sam Winchester got to heaven, the brothers had seen every corner of heaven. They had visited their parents, who finally lived together happily again and all the amazing people they lost over so many years of hunting. Or let us say, nearly all of them. Two people or more an Angel and a former Nephilim, the so now called God, them they still didn’t met till now. While Jack was busy trying to fix every single of the worlds the former God had destroyed, Castiel had been on earth looking for whatever was missing from before. People, landscapes, animals, knowledge, history. Jack had wanted to make sure, that everything was like before and nobody would miss anything they had before, with the small difference, that free will now truly would be free will.
Dean had wished, that at least one of them would have called them, but apparently, cell service from heaven to earth or to another dimension was more than lousy. Even that Sam had declared him the chaos it would create, if every dead person in heaven or hell would call their living loved ones on earth, he had times when he just wanted to pound.
“Is this about the call again?” Sam asked, leaning back against the Impala with a beer.
“No.” It came way to fast from his brother. Dean took a sip of his own, brooding for another moment before he answered truly.
“Okay, not completely. What shall I say, I miss the guy and the boy.”
“Yeah, me too, me too.” Sam signed, letting his gaze wander to the deep woods on both sides of the street.
“But that’s not all.” Dean pushed himself away from his car and turned to his brother.
“I am bored.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I mean, yeah, I love to drive around in my baby, don’t get me wrong. And it was great to see nearly all of our friends and so, but doing that for the rest of our live, or worse our existence? That is just boring.”
“So, what do you say? Do you miss becoming a punching ball for monsters, sleeping in dirty motel rooms and fighting against the end of the world?”
“No, I miss saving people. Okay, and I even miss the rest too. I mean, having the opportunity to chill and to have fun is fine for a while, but it feels meaningless. We just waver around since felt years without having a goal, man, I am starting to hate it. I need to fight, stretch my legs a bit or do something that makes a change. Just once in a while. But there are no monsters in heaven, no threat, nothing to fight against.”
“And no saving people because every soul here is as happy as possible. I get what you are saying. It’s like living an old childhood dream you gave up ages ago as a grown up, but you can’t escape.”
“Uhm, yeah, sort of, I guess.” Dean still didn’t understand why Sam sometimes needed to say everything in such complicated ways, but mostly he got what he wanted to say, mostly.
“I think I understand, I mean I lived my live and it was a good live. But it was different without you and there always was a part of me, that missed what we had. It didn’t feel meaningless, but it always felt like there could be something more. It had potential.”
“That’s what I mean. Something is missing because there is no goal and nobody to protect. Maybe we should talk to god.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know… monsters in heaven?”
“Seriously?”
“A little action can’t be bad.”
“Maybe. But we didn’t talk to Jack for who knows how long, and he might be the only one who can manage to do this. And you said praying doesn’t work in heaven.”
“At least I truly believe it doesn’t. I mean do you know how often I prayed to my little bastard of an angel. All I wanted was to have a beer with Cas, but did he answer? No. So if he had heard me, and that is a big if, he either didn’t want to have anything to do with me anymore, or he was too busy to care. Either way, he will have to answer a lot of question if I ever get to lay my hands on him again.”
“Still, we can try to reach him, or Jack directly.”
Dean nodded emptying the bottle and signing. He was bored yes, but he didn’t think that there was any way to get out of it.
“Wait.” A thought came to him when he inspected his brother intensely. “We. You mean as in both of us?”
“Yes?” Sam was confused by the surprised reaction of his brother.
“You would go with me? I mean both of us, hunting monsters again, together?”
“Sure. That was what I meant with; something was missing. You know I always liked helping people. Don’t you want me to come?”
“Oh, hell, I do. I really would love that, man.”
Sam shrugged his shoulders.
“Guess we have to call god to make it happen then.”
“That sounds really strange.”
“We are Winchesters. Strange is kinda our thing, isn’t it?”
Dean smirked, before a wide smile appeared on his lips.
“Let’s call god and finally kick some asses.”
A soft smile appeared at the angel’s lips, when he heard the prayers of the Winchesters. Especially Dean’s. He knew that the hunter nearly never prayed. Dean only prayed in emergencies or if he was drunk and wanted to have a beer with him. Castiel had declined all the prayers of him since years, in earth years and around one year of heaven. He really would have loved to answer, because every inch of his self-wanted to fly over to Dean, and even if it was for a hello only. But he had been busy. At least in the first time, he had showed his son Jack everything. Helped him out where he could and fixed what he had been able to fix. He had buried the urge to make earth, heaven and even purgatory and hell a ‘better’ place. He had given his all to prepare Jack for his journey to the other worlds, that god had destroyed in the end. Now his son had decided to be on his own and try to do his work alone. Jack had grown into a good man or god as some would call him. For Castiel he was and had always been his son, a man he would miss and never as he felt would have learned enough to leave. But he knew from his own experience how important it was to let someone go and let them find their own way of doing things. That was what free will was about, wasn’t it?
Castiel had been on a mountain somewhere in the far east when he heard a well-known voice on angel radio. Dean prayed and he was seemingly not drunk. Since emergencies didn’t happen in heaven, it was one of the rare times, he had ever heard him pray. But the prayers weren’t for him. Both of the Winchesters prayed to Jack.
Sitting down at the cold stone of the at least not snowy mountain, Castiel just listened. He would send the wish further to Jack, to let him decide, because he was sure, his son would do the right decision. Monsters couldn’t come to heaven and there was a reason for it. Jack would surely answer that. Castiel was curious which other way Jack would find to please the Winchester’s who still were his other dads and who surely should have their wishes in some ways as heaven was there to make wishes and dreams come true.
Lowering his head, he looked down to the valley. He couldn’t see a single human being from up here, but he knew they were there. It was the same with Dean. He knew he was there, but he couldn’t see him and after all this time, he was sure, Dean wouldn’t really want to see him. Sure, he still prayed to him, when he was drunk, but the words he said had gone nasty over the years. He had missed the time frame and now it felt to be too late to go back.
Castiel signed. All he ever wanted after the old god had been dead was to go and see him. Talk to him, hug him and live in the good old days, where they had been friends. But that was also one of the problems. Dean had become more than a friend to him. And as sure as he knew that, as sure was he, that he would never be more to him as a friend. A good friend, surely, but not more. He never had figured out how he should be able to handle it and be near him, so he had buried himself in work. Until he was too afraid to go back. Dean hadn’t liked it, given his drunken prayers. He had heard how upset he had got with him over time. But that exactly had been the last drop for him to decide to never go back to him. He wouldn’t be able to bare it. Because the last he had wanted was to upset Dean and get pushed away completely. If it stayed like this, he at least would have his dreams.
“Do you think he heard us? Or will listen to us?” Dean asked, while driving on the road with still mostly wood around them.
“He is a Winchester, so if we reached him, he would at least understand.”
“I hope you are right.”
They had passed a sign with directions to a campsite and some ways for hiking. There were not many villages or cities around here, because most of the souls in heaven now had their dream live and their dream house. This world was different to their world down on earth. Nearly nobody worked up here. Some people were creative, and even science was a thing. But all the paperwork, every work that included saving people, there were just nothing to do for them. Enjoy live and what you love, was what this new heaven’s motto was. And most of the people truly deserved nothing less.
Sam had opened his Laptop he had found at the back seat of the car this morning and looked through something he would call heavens wide web. On his morning run he even had the idea to hack into different sequences to maybe able to call earth or someone in another dimension. Since Metatron they had learned that even angel radio only laid on a different sequence so maybe this heavens wi-fi also used only on a different kind of internet. If he could connect it to the world wide web on earth, they would be able to do the same for their phones and maybe would be able to call earth or especially Castiel. Sam would never call his wife or his son from up here and destroy their life with confusion. But he had seen his brother drunk, this one time and the way he prayed to Castiel had broke his heart. That he couldn’t reach him with prayers was one thing, if he could make this happen, it would surely help both of them. He just hoped that Castiel really couldn’t hear him.
Deciding to make a call to Ash and Charlie soon, a ping on his Laptop got him out of his thoughts. Opening up the software they once created, which scanned every inch of the world wide web to give them a note if something supernatural happened, he starred at it for a moment. Despite the fact that this version now seemed to scan the heaven wide web, it truly showed him that something had happened.
“Uhm, we have a case.” Sam still in disbelieve told his brother, who wasn’t less surprised.
“Really. Wow! Seems prayers get heard everywhere, at least by Jack.”
“Yeah, seems like it.”
“Okay, what do we got?”
“Dead soul found in a bigger village, which must be ahead of the road. Maybe an hour away from where we are. The victim didn’t have any essence left and got bitten. There is a local police officer, Pearson, who made the report. They say it’s an animal attack.”
“They always think that don’t they?”
“True. So, what do you think?”
“Finally.”
Sam inspected his brother, whose mood had become over the top. He liked seeing him like this and he really had missed it.
“Okay, let’s go.”
Dean turned the music louder and let the Impala speed up. Tapping along the beat on the wheel to ‘On the road again’. The Winchesters were back.