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There were three ways that memories came back.
The first was the most normal, he assumed, though that word was rarely used to describe Dean Winchester or his life or the events that happened to him. But they would drop in his head like rain, while he was trying to fall asleep, little words and phrases that had slipped away from his memory, and he would have to hear them again as if for the first time. How could one man remember forty years of fights, anger, hatred, abuse, and violence, not to mention the other forty in hell? In chunks, in those raindrops that would resurface until he hated himself for forgetting in the first place.
Out of the three, this was his favorite— he could roll over in his bed and play it off. Maybe he was thinking about what he’d make for dinner the next day. The angel sitting in the chair to his right would be none the wiser. Usually.
Sometimes, if it was four or five in the morning and Dean still hadn’t managed to fall asleep, Cas would notice. If someone tosses and turns for hours and hours, their breathing never slowing— that anger could fill the room.
“Dean? Is everything alright?” He would ask, not moving toward Dean unless prompted. It was a privilege to be allowed to sit in his room, to be trusted not to hurt him at his most vulnerable and unconscious, and Cas had no intention of losing that privilege.
“Yeah, ‘s fine, Cas,” he would lie since he was a human and that’s what humans did. And that’s what he told Cas, maybe ten years before. So Cas almost expected the lies.
Cas paused, allowing his eyes to glow ever so slightly blue so Dean could see him, remember he’s there, and remember he is capable of loving him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Do you think I want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Alright then.”
And Dean would toss and turn for another two hours, trying to figure out what his dad meant when he said “guys like Lee” or how old he was when he was first used for hitchhiker bait (it was in Colorado, but that didn’t help, since he’d been going there for Sam’s birthdays since he was little. Was he underage? That was really what he was trying to remember. The math didn’t add up in his head.). And then he remembered the guy who was harassing Claire— did he say something to her or did he touch her? Dean couldn’t quite remember.
But he couldn’t sleep at all.
The second was similar, but harder to explain away. Dreams were dangerous; he knew that. Any form of a dream, be it “something you want” (wanting things is a mortifying ordeal on its own) or the place you wander when you sleep (see: Djinn). And it was worse when they were based on something real: a real want and a real place you’ve been. And he’d wake up, panting, sweating, sheets tangled around his legs, eyes wide as he remembered that he was in his room and he was as safe as he could be.
“Dean?” The low voice of his guardian angel rumbled. You can’t hide the dramatic shift between quiet slumber and the horrifying realization that you’re awake. Dean had previously told Cas not to wake him up. He needed to see how the dreams ended. “You had a—”
“A nightmare, yeah, no shit,” he said, rolling over. He was freezing, but a layer of sweat covered his skin. Could he go take a shower without waking up Sam? “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m going to worry about it,” Cas said. “What was it about?”
Dean swallowed. “Hell.”
It was never going to go away fully, it would always live under his skin, unable to be scrubbed out, even by an angel. Being on the rack, being off the rack, the faces and forms the demons would take just to make him suffer more. And he didn’t know how to talk about it. Not to Sam, who was stuck in a cage instead, or to Cas, who was an angel for heaven’s sake, or to himself, who didn’t want to talk about it at all.
And sometimes. Though he would never admit it to a soul. Cas would take off his coat, fold it on the back of the chair, sit on the bed beside Dean, his back against the headboard, and let the human lay his head on his chest until he fell back asleep. Dean wouldn’t say anything, certainly wouldn’t ask for it, but would nestle his head as close to Cas as he could, feeling his chest (not Jimmy’s— Cas’s ) rise and fall beneath him until his slumber was more peaceful.
But most of the time he just rolled over, fell back asleep, and continued the dream. Maybe this time he wouldn’t break.
The third way was the worst.
It was uncontrollable, what would trigger the memories, and it could so often be a comment or a question that would be otherwise harmless. They (‘they’ being the angel, the nephilim, the abomination, and the sword) would sit around the dining room table, and everything was fine. It was as normal as they got, with no windows around, only the sounds of their own voices and dishes clanging together and bouncing against concrete.
And then a dish falls. Jack was laughing too hard at something Sam said (a witty retort to Dean, this time) and a dish falls and shatters and without warning, John’s bellowing voice is in Dean’s ear, a ghost of a hand wrapped inside his collar and it was the closest thing to touch that Dean would get for months. He almost leaned into it.
“We don’t have the luxury to drop food, boy!” It rang, hollow. “If you want to be that reckless, that careless with the food I put on the table , then that’s all you get for the week. Buy your own shit.”
He stared at the plate on the floor, the crash ringing in his head. Jack apologized, cleaning it up, with Sam bumbling words of neutrality— “It’s fine, bud, things happen. We’ll get you some more dinner. No, seriously, these are old dishes that nobody likes anyway.”
And Cas didn’t move, staring straight ahead at Dean, who felt paralyzed, trapped inside his skin, inside his own memory. He did have to buy his food for the rest of the week. At least when he was older, he could hustle pool or turn tricks.
He was thirteen. His only option was to steal or starve.
He chose a combination of both, using only paper plates. He couldn’t risk anything worse.
“Dean?” Cas’s low voice tried to pull him out of it.
And Dean shook his head like there was just water in his ears. “Yeah, Cas?”
And Cas tilted his head. He couldn’t ask if anything was wrong. The answer would be no. The answer would be a lie. The answer would come falling out of Dean’s lips in a heartbeat.
“We need to talk about it,” he said instead.
Dean couldn’t feign ignorance, but he could deny. “No, we don’t. Sam, you’re on dish duty.”
Dean left the room.
And as he would always do, Cas followed him. Cas would always go with him.
“Dean, if we don’t talk about it—”
“Then what?” He whipped around to face the angel once they reached his room. “Then one day I’m gonna turn into the bastard? I’m gonna snap at the kid and the cycle will keep going? I know. I know how this story ends, and that’s why I didn’t think we should be raising a damn anti-christ in the first place.”
“This isn’t about Jack, so don’t pretend like it is,” Cas argued back. “This is about you and the fact that you won’t talk about anything that bothers you. You have a family now. And part of having a family, part of being human, is letting them in.”
“What do you know about being human?”
A low blow. But Dean was aiming low on purpose.
“I know that you think it’s about lying, but that deep down inside, you know that it’s about loving. It’s about saying things and meaning them and having them matter to someone,” Cas said, a hand on Dean’s shoulder. Dean doesn’t lean into this touch— he only knows how to give himself over to violence.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say, Cas,” the hunter mumbled. “Cause I don’t remember. It’s all fuzzy.”
“You don’t have to remember.”
“Yes, I do!” Dean pulled away. “Cause if I’m just jumping at sounds and shit, but I don’t remember why, that’s— that’s bullshit. And it’s not fair to Dad. What if I just forgot the good memories? I don’t know what I’ve forgotten.”
“Dean—”
“And you don’t get it. Cause you can’t forget anything. That’s what being human is about— it’s about not knowing what’s happening now and whatever happened to you in the first place. It’s about the fear that who you are isn’t what you’ve done or what you’ve said, only what you’ve chosen to remember. I don’t remember how many people I’ve killed, let alone their names. I don’t remember if my Dad loved me. I don’t remember what happened in hell, and one day, I won’t remember you.”
He was crying. How long had he been crying?
Years .
Silently, and without suggestion or pressure, Cas straightened and flattened out the top of Dean’s duvet and sat down, legs flat against the bed. He left space for Dean to sit and allowed the courtesy of denial in the silence. But after a moment, Dean sat down beside him and allowed his head to fall onto Cas’s shoulder. Cas wrapped an arm around him and rubbed Dean’s shoulder. Neither of them said anything. Neither of them had to.
“Memory is a beautiful thing,” Cas said after a long moment when Dean’s tears began to abide. “I have all of them. A billion years of them. And they all feel like they take the same amount of space in my brain. What I had for breakfast this morning is as clear in my mind as the day I met you. There’s a humanity, a gift, in forgetting. Because what stays— it holds value. It’s not your fault for forgetting.”
It doesn’t help, but it doesn’t hurt, as Dean burrows his face against Cas’s jacket and inhales the clean detergent scent. “I don’t want to forget you.”
“Then I’ll never leave. I’ll be here every day to remind you that I am here and I know who you are. And you are still someone worthy of love, even when you don’t remember why.”