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For an astounding amount of time, Dean feels fine.
According to his standards, at least. Judging by the look on everyone’s faces when he tells them that, it’s probably in need of improvement. Still, it’s...good.
For maybe the first time in his entire life, he’s truly free. No catastrophe waiting to happen around the corner, no fearing that his loved ones might get hurt by the next cosmic force entering their lives. Chuck is gone, Jack is the new God, Sam is fine and looking considerably happier and relaxed with Eileen. Hell, Dean has a dog that comes to cuddle with him every morning before he gets out of bed. It’s straight up domestic.
All in all, it’s almost too good to be true, especially for the Winchesters who have been fooled into believing things are fine and evil is beaten more than once, so for the first few weeks, Dean spends most of his time trying to trust the newly found peace instead of fully adjusting to it. It’s unshakeable, the feeling of having to be on guard, to be ready for the next apocalypse, to always, even if only in the back of his head, think about what might be coming next. Which one of their enemies is gonna knock on the door next? Naomi? Ruby? Lucifer, again?
Except, even after weeks of quietly adjusting with those worries looming in the back of his mind, nothing happens.
Nothing.
It’s quiet, too quiet, but only because Dean has avoided spending too much time with himself and his own thoughts up until this point in his life, having always either been on the run, on guard or plainly drunk. The drinking still works, although Sam seems to have made it his mission to watch over his lifestyle (“We’re out of danger now, Dean. I’m not gonna let you die of a heart attack or liver failure at 45.”), so it’s gotten significantly harder to pass his time in drunken oblivion.
So he calls the people he can check up on. Jody, Claire, all the girls in fact, are doing fine, and from what he knows they all take up smaller hunts from time to time, and on rare occasions one or two of them will make their way to the bunker, either to visit or to use the bunker’s ressources. Knowing that they are safe and doing well does give him some peace, even though the reality of hunters moving on with this newly found peace just fine does touch a sore spot that Dean would rather not analyse more.
And just like that, three months pass.
No new enemies. No old ones. No news from Jack, predictably due to his hands off policy, which makes no news from him good news.
No Cas, either.
It’s not like Dean has been waiting for him to come back. He knows the angel is dead. With the way he went, there’s no way for Dean to ever forget about that, either. Dean still remembers it very vividly, sitting in the corner of that damned storage room, overwhelmed with grief and disbelief and loss. It all faded in the background for a while, it had to with the threat of Chuck still looming over them, and after that, he truly had not felt like talking about it. Not to Sam, who god knows tried his best to get something out of him, and not to Claire, who was a lot harder to shake off with her bitter anger that Dean knew too well. The kid probably deserves to know more than anyone else, too, but he can’t bring himself to talk about it.
Just another thing to feel guilty over.
And after that, Dean had eventually thought that chapter to be closed. Cas’s memory would remain, but in the back of his head and his heart, just like his mom, Charlie, Bobby, every other family member they had lost.
Which makes it so borderline ridiculous for him to flinch every time a lightbulb so much as flickers, or for his throat to constrict when he hears the flutter of a coat. It simply makes no sense, because all these things are behaviours of someone who hopes that Castiel will come back somehow, and Dean knows he won’t. He can’t.
(He probably wouldn’t want to, either.)
So, in true Winchester fashion, he decides to ignore his feelings and tackle the challenge of living, instead.
He goes out to let Miracle chase after a ball for an hour, because apparently that’s acceptable behaviour for a healthy man who has just gotten a free pass to a calmer and serene life, and he tries to enjoy the wind blowing through his hair as he jogs after the energetic dog. There is something undeniably liberating about running just for the sake of it, out of joy instead of fear, but the short burst of adrenaline never lasts quite long enough to make it back to the bunker.
He takes Baby on drives, sometimes without but most of the time with Sam, and he lets the feeling of calming nostalgia wash over him with the soothing rumbling of the Impala and the steady presence of his brother by his side. It’s by far his favourite activity.
Dean even goes as far as to listen to the stupid sleep meditation podcasts Sam recommends to him, mostly because he can’t say no to Sam when he looks at him so sincerely and willingly shares something related to how he is coping with it all. Yet the soothing music and the gentle lull of the instructor only seem to make him more restless. “Give it some time to work”, Sam said, and Dean complied, but after he wakes up during the fourth night with Chuck’s mocking voice ringing in his head, blending so absurdly well with the quiet melody of the podcast, he deletes them from his phone entirely.
So overall, it’s not like he isn’t trying.
He is.
His chest still constricts when he walks past the angel’s former room.
The notion creeps up on him continuously, spreading throughout his body and soul undisturbed and without permission, to the point where Dean, much to his irritation, has to admit to himself that however he’s trying to get over the loss of his best friend is not working.
The feeling of knowing something is wrong and being unable to do something about it makes him snappy, and he finds himself bickering with Sam more often than before, even if the bickering mostly consists of him trying to pick a fight and Sam pulling a face that lets Dean know he won’t put up with this shit before he leaves the room. He doesn’t even dare pick a fight with Eileen, because whilst he’s angry, he is not that suicidal. So it leaves Dean alone in the bunker with a bunch of anger and the need to do something, except he doesn’t know what something is.
After a long day of trying to vent his anger of the most mundane things and gaining nothing but a bruise on his hip and shin from walking into the kitchen counter, Dean finds himself in the Impala, equipped with only his wallet and a sixpack of beer, as he angrily drives down the road, handling the car so roughly that normal Dean would give him an earful about it.
He doesn’t even know where he’s driving to for the longest time, letting instinct guide him more than anything else, until he spots an eerily familiar old windmill steadily getting bigger and bigger in the field of his vision.
Damn it.
Dean’s fingers grip tightly onto the wheel of the Impala and he subconsciously eases up on the gas to slow the car down, half on his way to do a U turn and get away from here as soon as possible.
Except, when his car comes to a hold at the side of the road, he’s almost at the exact same spot he was three years ago, and suddenly he has no power to leave again. Maybe this is how he’s meant to make his peace.
His throat constricts the further he steps away from his car and into the field, sixpack of beer clutched in his clammy hands. Dean would roll his eyes at himself if he wasn’t so goddamn scared at the moment, standing at the place where he drunkenly mourned his best friend the last time. He had given him a funeral, a private one this time, and he remembers spreading the ashes and letting the breeze carry it over the fields towards the garden nearby, throat tight and filled with words he didn’t have the strength to say.
Weeks later, Castiel woke up in that field. Dean had never asked, but he had wondered how it happened. If the Empty had violently spit him out after having to let go of him, or if the very same breeze that spread him apart collected his ashes again, gently twining and reconstructing the angel’s body piece by piece.
The imagery makes him close his eyes, the wind blowing against him making him shudder. It’s almost too easy to imagine it happening again, to imagine the familiar shape of Castiel’s body pressing onto the grass, the way Castiel would sit up and tilt his head in confusion as he’d take in his surroundings.
Except, the first time he got to the Empty, the angel rebelled to get out. This time, Castiel had let himself be taken with a smile on his face.
When Dean opens his eyes, he’s alone.
The hunter lets the beer bottles fall onto the grass with a dull thud before he settles himself next to them, ignoring his aching joints and the way his back immediately complains about the uncomfortable ground.
Damn it, he’s too old for this.
Nevertheless he stays, blankly staring at the spot where Castiel’s remnants used to be, drinking one beer after the other without paying much attention to it. He stays even as the sun sets and the temperatures drop from chilly to downright freezing. Time passes, and whatever peace he was hoping to find here does not come. Instead, there’s an emptiness clawing at his insides, much colder than the freezing air numbing his limbs, and Dean cannot recall a time where he’s felt so damn use- and senseless, like even the collapse of this world would be a relief compared to this .
The sun sets completely and the last ray settles on Dean’s face, spending slight warmth that makes a mockery of the comfort he’d need. Bitterness washes over him, and Dean closes his eyes once again.
He wishes for—
He wishes for something.
When he opens his eyes again, he finds himself staring back at him.
“What the—”
Dean scrambles up, dully noting that the beer bottles he probably should be tripping over are gone, and fumbles for his gun to point it at the imposter, who more or less does the same. They both stand on guard, staring at each other with distrust, none of them willing to budge even an inch.
It’s borderline creepy to look at the person opposite of him. There’s a very unsettling feeling about watching a perfect mirror of himself, seeing his mannerisms reflected so accurately. He’s seen copies of himself quite a lot over the years, but none of them have felt quite this real and genuine, which seems like a ridiculous notion to entertain. There’s only one Dean, now.
It’s not really a perfect copy, but instead of the usual weirdness he feels upon encountering a double, there’s a different feeling about that one. Dean squints his eyes, trying to make out as much of the thing in front of him as he can in the dimming light around them. He is wearing an outfit Dean definitely knows is in his wardrobe somewhere, but it isn’t the same he himself is currently wearing. And whilst the mannerisms are undoubtedly his own, some movements seem more at ease, and despite the puffy eyes and the slight wobble that Dean recognizes as being a telltale sign of himself being relatively shitfaced, there are less wrinkles on the doppelganger's face. Funnily enough, it’s the aura of devastated grief that is most like him, but other than that, Dean would be tempted to say that whatever this is, it’s…younger than him.
Screw it, this is definitely creepy.
“What the fuck are you.” The doppelganger asks, breaking the stalemate of silence first. His voice sounds scratchy and roughened, confirming Dean’s theory that the thing in front of him too has been crying and drinking. Something about that makes him twitch, gun shaking briefly before he steadies his hand once more.
“Dean Winchester. And you? I have the feeling you’re gonna give me the same answer. Maybe not the best line of questioning, buddy.”
The double growls, and Dean can see his finger tightening on the trigger of his gun. It doesn’t unsettle him as much as it should.
“Don’t play funny with me. I’m not your buddy and I sure as fuck have no time for this right now. So what are you, and what the fuck do you want? If the next thing that you say isn’t the truth, I’m gonna shoot you, no regrets.”
Dean doesn’t reply. Rationally he should be just as on guard as the thing in front of him, if not more so, but there’s a haze settling over him like a cloud, hanging heavy on his mind and putting him into a state of eerie calmness. He isn’t relaxed, per se, but instead of shooting what should without a doubt be a threat to him, Dean takes his time to look around.
The double isn’t the only thing that’s changed.
Whilst the bottles he has been drinking before vanished, Dean can make out the familiar shape of a bigger one lying further in front of him, and even in the darkness Dean can make it out to be his favourite brand of whiskey. Out of the corner of his eye he can see the Impala, parked just slightly different than he left it. The sun is still set in the sky as it was before, but the temperature seems to have warmed up, and Dean now notices how his limbs tingle with the sensation of the cold leaving his body.
Eventually, his eyes zero in on a small makeshift urn a bit further away from the whiskey bottle, with some grey dust still sitting on the rim of it.
It’s ridiculous. He should be questioning this more. The realisation shouldn’t be as crystal clear. He should be having doubts about this. Shoot that motherfucker in front of him in the face and get the fuck out of here.
And yet.
“You’re me. From back then.”
The reply seems to throw his past self off enough to not immediately act on his promise to shoot him on the spot, though despite the confusion, he looks no less hostile.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Dean lowers his gun without thinking about it, his hand dropping slackly to his side as a hollow laugh escapes him. He can still see the urn in the corner of his vision, burning into his retinas, impossible to ignore or forget about. The hunter remembers just how unreal it felt to collect the ashes back then and stuff it into this box that was supposed to be far too small to contain an angel, a being of this magnitude. He remembers feeling disconnected for the first of seconds of spreading the ashes, even as tears ran down his face and he was choking on sobs. Now, the damn urn is the thing that seems the most real about all of this.
“You’re me. From three years ago. I time travelled. Don’t know how. You’re burying Cas here. Cas died. He’s dead.”
It’s the first time those words seem to be leaving his lips so effortlessly, almost like he has transferred all the weight, all the burden caused by this devastating fact onto his past self, who briefly collapses into himself like someone cut the strings holding him up, before a whole new layer of grief lays over him and forces him to tense.
Ah, sweet anger.
“Yeah.” Past Dean spits out, bitterness dripping from his voice. “I bet everyone knows that by now. Ain’t gonna impress me with that. Hope whoever sent you tries harder next time.”
He raises his gun further, now expertly aiming the barrel at Dean’s forehead, and there’s no mistaking the determined look in his eyes. Dean is going to die.
“You’re in love with him.”
The words ring in his ears so loud it’s deafening, and for a split second Dean thinks his past self shot him after all. Instead, the man in front of him seems disarmed by his words, figuratively and literally, because the gun now slowly lowers until it is dropped onto the grass before his past self joins it on the ground.
It’s the first time Dean has said this out loud, too.
There’s almost fear in past Dean’s eyes when their looks meet, and mutual realisation about their situation sinks in. None of this should be making sense to either of them, but there’s no doubt that this moment on the meadow, their process of grief and the heart wrenching feeling of longing for a loved one without ever being able to say it out loud is something Dean locked away in his deepest inner core, unable to be reached by anyone but himself. It does not place either of them out of danger, because there is no way Dean travelled to time by sheer will, but he’s too tired and drunk to care for the moment. Instead, he joins his other self on the ground and they both sit there in silence. Processing.
“How–how are you here? And how can you just..say that out loud? We don’t–we don’t do that, man. You know what happens when we do.”
Dean can’t help but snort at that, earning him a heated glare from his past self.
“No idea how I got here, but I sure as hell am. And as for the saying it—there’s worse than this. You wouldn’t know, not yet.”
He licks over his lips, noticing how the pleasant fog in his mind is clearing, the cold air sobering him up more quickly than he would have thought. Damn, he should have brought more alcohol. He absolutely cannot be sober for whatever the hell this conversation is going to be.
“Worse than this? Worse than C—worse than him being gone, and realising that you—and–and mom is gone, AGAIN, and having the spawn of Satan to babysit? How can it get worse than this?”
A second passes, and a look of sheer terror crosses the younger hunter’s face, body growing rigid as all of the color drains from his face.
“Sam. Sam, is he—fuck is Sam–he has to be okay. You, you’d never—”
“No, Sam’s fine, he’s good. Don’t worry. He…he’s fine, yeah.” Dean is quick to interrupt, and watches how his past self crumples in relief once more. Dean knows the terror, and no matter how fucked up he is right now, he knows that no feeling could be worse than losing Sam. He doesn’t want to think about it, no matter what time he’s in.
“Sam…shit, he’s always been the one good thing we had, right? That’s not gonna change. Things are gonna change, for you. There’s a lot more shit down the line. But hell, even now, no matter who rules the world or what not, no matter what we have and don’t have, as long as he’s there it’s…it’s a world, right? And hell, he’s happy right now. Not…normal people happy, but getting close. He has someone he loves, and plans and hopes for the future, and it’s awesome to see. And being by his side for all of it? A goddamn gift.” A small smile involuntarily spreads over his face, and he’s unable to help it at the thought of his brother, even if it feels out of place in this situation. “Sammy’s always the only thing it’s worth going on for in the end. I don’t think that’s gonna change as long as we exist, man.”
“Yeah.” His past self nods along, now looking more wistful than bitter, before he adds in to it in a whisper. “That makes sense.”
They fall into silence again, and with the fog of alcohol clearing at a faster rate, Dean comes to the conclusion that all of this is awkward as fuck. He’s always been his own worst company, and now there’s a second version of him, at one of the lowest points in his life, mirroring all of his worst traits right back at him. And hell, there are many. It’s in the way his past self eventually picks up the whiskey bottle, carelessly downing more of the liquid without even so much as flinching anymore, treating it as medicine above anything else. It’s in the clouds of misery and anger surrounding him, grief and bitterness so heavy and suffocating that Dean wonders how anyone could ever stand to be around them like this.
And god, he’s angry so often. He can hardly recall the times where he wasn’t like this.
But worst yet, Dean has no clue how to deal with it. He never quite learned to cope with his own feelings, having to always repress and redirect. And now there’s double the amount of it, burdened with a grief that is so similar to the one he is feeling at the moment, except it’s entirely different, still.
It’s not fair.
It’s not fair that he has to face himself in such a way, when all he wants to do is leave his own skin and free himself of all his nasty flaws and faults.
It’s not fair that Cas left him in this position twice .
It’s not fair that Cas left.
“I somehow doubt it’s gonna help, but are you gonna give me any life advice so I don’t keep on being this miserable? Full offence, man, you look worse than I am feeling right now. Start with telling me how to gank the son of Satan, perhaps.” The younger Dean snorts, the last sentence slurred into the bottle as he takes another sip.
The nausea at the display hits Dean instantly, face twisting into a grimace before he averts his eyes. He should have known Jack would come up. Jack, his—Cas’s son, Sam’s son, and maybe his own if he hadn’t done absolutely everything to stop deserving that title. The blatant disdain he hears in his younger self’s voice makes him recoil, and he knows that throughout the years, this very same disdain will keep coming back to be slapped into Jack’s face over and over again.
He doesn’t understand the kid like either Cas or Sam did, but hell, he knows Jack deserved better. Dean should have told him to look for another role model instead of letting the kid look up to him and secretly having his ego boosted by it under all the layers of annoyance.
“Jack is…he’s just a kid, okay? Heck, he’d eat fruit loops all day if you’d let him. He’s gonna want you to teach him how to drive. He’s not Lucifer’s son, he’s Cas’. You’ve seen it, haven’t you? How much he looks like him. Sometimes acts like him, too. You–fuck, promise me you won’t be so hard on him. Cut him some slack. He deserves that.”
The younger male scoffs. “Yeah, no way. Don’t know how he brainwashed you but I’m willing to bet that he’s gonna cause a lot more trouble. Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me that he won’t?”
Dean presses his teeth together, jaw clenching. He should have accounted for his own stubbornness.
“We all screw up though, don’t we? Hell, you more than anyone else. Don’t act all high and mighty now. Kid’s gonna need your help.”
“Kid?” His past self sits up straight, disbelief turning into anger. “He’s half Lucifer! He killed his mom just by being born! He popped onto the world looking like a teenager, for fuck’s sake! That’s no kid, that’s—that’s–”
“What?” Dean spits, instantly infected by the display of emotion. “An abomination? Like you were when you had that murder mark on your arm? You merely can’t handle the fact that Cas chose something over you for once, you selfish bastard.”
He only realises how true those words are after they left his mouth, and he instantly wishes he could take them back. He has argued with Cas a lot over the past few years, but Jack was the topic of those fights more often than not. It had always been a back and forth between Dean not understanding why Cas insists on protecting Jack when he’s a danger to the world, and Cas snapping back that he has no right to speak when he would do and has done the exact same thing for Sam. It had always rattled Dean more than anything else, because Sam is Sam and Jack isn’t, Jack is…Jack.
Except, Jack was Castiel’s family, even if Dean always thought him and Sam already filled that part.
It shouldn’t have felt like this child was taking something away from him over and over again.
It shouldn’t have been so damn convenient to blame everything bad on someone else instead of himself for once.
“So what?” His younger self snaps back, face hardening further with defiance. “Look where it got him. Dead. And now I’m supposed to raise that precious child of his? Play happy little family in the bunker? You know damn well that’s never gonna be it for us. We’re meant to kill things like him, and save actual people. If Cas wanted a son, then he should have stuck around. Shouldn’t have fucking gotten KILLED.” The empty bottle of whiskey gets tossed further into the field with brutal force, hitting the ground hard enough to crack. Dean can barely watch the wave of sadness and anger that’s wrecking the other man’s frame, and without thinking he stands up and takes a few steps back.
“He’s gonna come back, you stupid son of a bitch. Jack is gonna bring him back, and he’s gonna kick your ass for being a douche to him more than once. So spare me with the pity party.”
It’s almost revolting to watch how the anger in the other’s face evaporates instantly, replaced by disbelief and a pathetic amount of hope. He is going through emotions like a broken record, and Dean cannot stand watching it for a second longer, cannot stomach that this is him, constantly being controlled by emotion and whims that he doesn’t dare analyse further.
His past self is pathetic, and worse, he hasn’t changed a damn bit since then.
A bitter laugh escapes him against his will.
“Don’t look at me like that. Why do you think I’m here again? You’re getting three years, and you waste a least a third of that on stupid fights, and then he’s gone. For good, this time. Not even fucking god can bring him back. The grand finale is over. The end.”
Every word gets spit out with more spite, but the man on the ground does nothing but stare at Dean, face wiped clean of emotions for once. Dean wants him to hurt, so badly.
“So I get him back. We – no, you – got him back. After this. Your night here. After you realised what he is to you. And you just. Let him go again?”
Time seems to slow as the younger hunter rises on his feet, uncaring about the grass sticking to his pants or the way his jacket crumples in all the wrong spots. He moves towards Dean, eyes glinting. The older male doesn’t have the heart to move away.
The first punch is expected, a familiar pain blooming over his right cheekbone as he stumbles back. But the assault is not yet done, and the punches keep coming, slow but filled with rage and utter frustration. For a moment, the anger feels so good that Dean doesn’t only let it happen, he welcomes it.
“You fucking asshole. You coward. How the fuck could you?! You couldn’t even do the right thing after this? How many second chances do you need until you finally make the right choice? Are you THIS incapable of not fucking up?”
Dean blankly stares into the distance, and the fact that he seems to be just taking it enrages his past self further, because the next punch almost sends him tumbling to the floor and causes bright little dots to fill his vision.
“Don’t just stand there! Do something! Tell me! Did what happened here change nothing, huh?! How are you gonna stand there and tell me you let all of it happen, again! I fucking know he’s never gonna love us back, but you— because of what you feel, you shouldn’t have ever let him go again. Look at me!"
He’s never gonna love us back.
The anger slams into Dean so fast that it makes him see red, and all the passiveness leaves at an instant. He pushes back so fast that his past self has no time to react, and he falls back with a noise of surprise. Dean doesn’t waste any time in climbing over the body as it hits the ground with a loud smack. He grabs his past self’s shirt tight enough to yank him from the field, only to slam him back down when he starts landing punches on his face.
“You think I chose this?! You think I let him walk away like that?!! I didn’t get a fucking say in this! He did this to himself! He–fuck, he’s gonna pick everyone over himself, again, gonna pick you over himself again, and there’s nothing you can do about it! You think you feel awful now?! Wait until you learn that he made a deal with the entity that fucking makes him suffer for a living! Wait until he tells you that he loves you, with tears in his eyes and a smile on his face! Until he keeps smiling like your world isn’t falling apart even as the empty consumes him! Until he stops you from even attempting to stop him! You have no fucking idea how I feel! Shut up! I hate you!!”
The punches follow without any mercy, only strengthening in intensity even as his own knuckles split upon the impact and his blood mixes with the one of the other man. It’s like a gate deep inside him has been opened, and all the hate and anger he’s felt at himself finally has an outlet that is outside of his own body, and Dean feels like he might die if he doesn’t let it all out at once.
“I hate you! I hate you I hate you I hate you!! I hate you! I fucking hate you!!”
Every repetition is accompanied by another punch, and not even the way the body underneath him goes limp can make the wrath burning through his body like lava stop. He looks at his younger self, broken and bloody beneath him, eyes half lidded and puffy, filled with new tears to shed. It’s such a miserable, pathetic sight.
You're the most caring man on Earth.
Dean shakes his head wildly, still throwing punches, less coordinated now but still strong enough to cause his victim to groan softly.
“I HATE YOU.”
Everything you have ever done, the good and the bad, you have done for love.
His head is spinning, the adrenaline slowly using itself up but the anger remaining. It’s all too much, and he keeps on going.
“I HATE YOU.”
You are the most selfless, loving human being I will ever know.
“I HATE YOU.”
There’s droplets landing on the younger hunter’s face, and Dean faintly realises that it’s his own tears traitorously leaving his eyes. He looks at the man beneath him once more, takes in the aura of misery, of hate and anger and fear repressed and wrongly expressed for so many years. He looks at the way his face is split open, blood flowing freely and bruises already forming. Looks at the way the man just lays there and cries, defenceless like a fucking child. Knows that he looks just about the same now. Helpless. Hopeless. Beyond redemption.
A tilt of the head, followed by a softening of the eyes and voice that doesn’t seem to belong to a celestial being, at all.
You don’t think you deserve to be saved.
“I fucking hate you.” Dean chokes out one last time, eyes closing just before he lets himself drop to the side next to the other man. The fight drains out of his body, leaving behind a bone deep exhaustion and the aching of his vulnerability, exposed to its most ugly core. He has no shame left to care about the way he curls up on himself, cradling his burning fists and weakly sobbing like he hasn’t in ages, maybe never.
He is so, so tired.
They both stay like this for a while. Dean thinks his past self might be conscious after the beating, but he cannot bring himself to care much. He’s too raw to be dealing with this any longer, and suddenly he wishes he were home, curled up in his bed and Sam waiting outside of the door, not close enough to see his breakdown but close enough to be there .
A hand curls on his jacket, so weak that it would be easy to shake off, but he doesn’t move a muscle.
“He…loves me?”
“Yeah.” Dean replies, voice hoarse and barely above a whisper. “I have no idea why, but he does. He loves you so much that it is worth dying for with genuine happiness. That kind of love.”
There’s a beat of silence, and then the grip on his arm tightens until the hand is digging into his skin borderline painfully.
“You.” The younger’s voice trembles, almost breaking. “You have to get him back. Man, I don’t think I’m gonna remember anything about this when you go back, but you’re gonna, right? You gotta be here for a reason. If–If he loves you, and we love him, and I know we do, then—you gotta get him back. No matter what. If Sam’s alright, and safe, then for once you gotta be happy for yourself, too. You can’t—you can’t keep burdening him like this. You can’t keep burdening yourself. You gotta—you gotta let yourself have this. Please. Please .”
The plea is so sincere that even coming from himself it tears into his heart, tears deep enough to lay bare his own desire for this. He can’t deny that he wants it, he wants Cas. Chuck is gone, this is the closest they are ever going to get to peace, and there is a chance . Somewhere in the deepest darkest corners he has pictured it. Cas and him, settling down somewhere, never far from Sam, watching him and Eileen get married, have children, a proper family, whilst he and Cas can just be , comfortable and content and growing old together. It isn’t perfect, not even in his mind, but it’s scary just how realistic the possibility is that for once they’d be allowed to settle down.
The only question remaining is whether he deserves it.
Dean has always agreed with himself on that not being the case, but Castiel’s confession hadn’t left behind only grief and sadness in its wake, but a root of something.
‘See, this is not who I am.’ He had told Chuck, and for the briefest second he had meant it. There was more to him than killing and anger and drinking, even if he tended to blend that out quite successfully. What ultimately drove him had always been something else. There was Sam, always Sam, who Dean would do it for all over again without the slightest regret, and Cas was right about that being love. There was Jody and the girls, a family who found each other through the Winchesters, who are doing their best to be there for each other, whether any of them decides to hunt or not. There was Jack, their child, now God, and whilst they struggled so much with each other, Dean has no doubt at all that he’s gonna do his job well.
And then finally there was Castiel, angel of the lord, fallen from grace and right into the Winchester’s lives, Castiel who is a fierce dad and a strong soldier and a loyal friend, Cas , his best friend who is in love with him. Who looks at Dean and sees a selfless man acting out of love, who has given up on God and destiny because he saw something so significant in Dean that he had to devote himself to it.
He’s one of the many people that love him, and Dean is starting to think that somehow, somewhere within him, the thing about him that makes him worthy of this all has to be hiding. And after all these years, it should be his turn to find it.
“....yeah, okay.”
In retrospect, Dean doesn’t know if his past self heard him. When he finally turns around on his spot, puffy eyes opening to stare at the sky and the space next to him, all he sees is his scattered beer bottles, and the other Dean is gone without a trace.
Bracing himself on his shoulders, Dean hisses at the pressure on his aching body, but he forces himself up either way. He quietly collects the bottles, fetches his car keys, and drives back home.
“Dean?! Is that you? Would it have hurt you to take your phone with you? Eileen and I were so worried, I even prayed to Jack to—” Sam’s face comes into view as Dean descends down the stairs by the entrance of the bunker, and the second they make eye contact, his little brother’s demeanour shifts from annoyed and mildly angry to concerned. “What happened to your face?”
Dean shrugs it off, instead tossing the bag filled with the beer bottles on the map table, watching as they rattle over the surface.
“Just a scratch. Listen, Sammy. We gotta bring Cas back.”
The frown on Sam’s forehead eases, and Dean doesn’t even need to ask, knows that he understands, if only based on the fact that his brother doesn’t scold him for the alcohol in the slightest.
“Okay, But go to sleep first. I’ve done some preparations, if we work on this starting tomorrow we can have him back in a week, I think. Maybe more.”
“How-–you’ve been preparing this?”
Sam raises one eyebrow.
“ Dean . Cas and I might not have been like Cas and you, but he’s my best friend. Of course I want to get him back.”
“Then–then why didn’t you say so before–” Dean chokes out, surprised.
“Well.” Sam looks at him and smiles sheepishly, his hand coming to rub the back of his neck. “Something happened between you two. I felt like you needed time.”
Dean fucking loves his brother.
They manage to finish preparations in roughly one and a half weeks, mainly due to the help of Rowena, who Sam has been in frequent contact with over the year.
(“Obviously I have missed being in hell terribly.” Sam replied dryly when Dean asked him about the reasons behind staying in touch with the queen of hell. Dean doesn’t ask a second time after that.)
What his little brother is gonna be performing is somewhat between a tracking spell and a summoning spell, the specifics of which Sam had tried to explain to him at first, but went right over Dean’s head every time. He had other things to worry about.
“....what if he doesn’t want to be back with us? With…with me?” Dean whispers more to himself, but his brother stops in his tracks and takes the time to think about an answer anyway.
“Dean…” He says, pressing his lips together before shrugging. “It’s Cas . I don’t know how to explain it, but….it’s Cas, man.”
Dean swallows and nods, but the blood drains out of his face further.
Sam hesitates.
“Listen, the spell is ready. Can we...are you ready, Dean?”
Dean thinks about it. He has imagined them reuniting plenty of times over the past few weeks, letting his thoughts drift away to what he is going to say to Cas. What he is going to do. Some grande heroic gesture, or a touching speech perhaps. The courage and wit for all of that flies out of the window immediately, leaving the familiar feeling of fear behind.
It’s now or never.
“....yes.”
Castiel returns to earth the way he left it: standing upright, eyes closed and filled with partly unshed tears, and a big smile on his face. The sight makes Dean choke and stumble back a few steps.
That is when the angel seems to snap out of his trance, smile vanishing from his face and eyes opening. There’s confusion, there’s shock. And as his eyes fall on Dean, there is fear.
“How….?”
“Shut up.” Dean chokes out, stalking forward and grabbing the angel’s face with his hands. “You don’t get to talk, it’s my turn.”
Castiel, perhaps still defenceless from the surprise of having returned from the Empty, merely nods, bright blue eyes boring into Dean’s with no option to avert his gaze. The last time he looked into those eyes, they were filled with immeasurable love, and the courage of a dying man.
Dean, rendered speechless, kisses him.
It’s neither long nor very graceful, just two pairs of dry lips pressed together way too tightly, overflowing with emotions that can’t find a proper outlet in this plain touch.
It’s everything all the same .
“I love you.” Dean proclaims when he pulls away, his voice breaking halfway through the last word, and there is a lot more he wants to add to it.
Don’t do this again. I want you with me. Stay.
And fuck, even after living out the end of a romantic sob story right in front of his brother, Dean can’t bring himself to say any of it, desperation and relief restricting his throat so tightly Dean thinks he might suffocate. So he stays like this, intently staring into Castiel’s eyes, not allowing himself to back down from this even for a second. He promised himself he could do this, and he will.
His mouth opens, and closes again.
A warm hand settles on top of his, squeezing gently, and Cas breaks out in a smile that is so bright and so knowing .
“Alright, Dean.”
A few weeks later, Dean takes Cas back to the meadow.
He doesn’t tell them where they are going, and Castiel seems content enough to sit on the passenger seat and quietly look out of the window as they drive.
When the windmill comes into sight, a flash of recognition crosses his face.
Dean parks the car on the same spot as last time, and they wordlessly leave the car. Castiel follows him as he walks further into the field, and when Dean stops, he feels the angel coming to a half right next to him.
“Why did you take me here?” Castiel asks gently after they have spent some time in comfortable silence.
Dean looks over at him, a serene smile edged on his face, and reaches out to take the angel’s hand. Their fingers slot together effortlessly, and a warmth that is slowly becoming familiar spreads through his body.
A gust of wind blows over the meadow, sweeping through the grass and rustling their clothes. Dean watches the way it messes up Castiel’s hair, dark locks falling messily over his face.
He’s beautiful.
“I wanted to show this place that I won.”
My amazing friend Dai painted me this beautiful fanart of the last scene of my fic. I'm so beyond honored and happy looking at it.
If you want to, go to her twitter (@daianaxart) and leave a like or a comment there!