Chapter Text
Dean is tired. It's probably stupid, and definitely shitty and absolutely, most certainly ungrateful where he is to be tired and bored out of his mind, but being dead -actually and continually? Continuously - is a bitch. And so is driving his beloved car down the road to friggin nowhere.
Actual friggin nowhere, because this is Heaven and even as the land starts out blurry but comes into focus as roads and trees and fields and busted up old ramshackle houses pop up in front of and around him, Dean is pretty damn certain that he is either already crashing through the edges of other people's heavens because he's hauling ass, or he will be soon.
He figures in past Heaven there'd be angels blocking the way, or the doors would be locked, or something. Can't say he wouldn't mind slamming into or through a door, with power crackling and one of those angels appearing, a particular one looking at him with squinting eyes and disapproval - he wouldn't care, long as he could see...
Sometimes he's sure he sees flares of white or blue or gold or silver, like flares of Grace light; it's so stupid and ridiculous the way his head whips around and heart thumps (what heart, it's obviously his... memory of one, or whatever, because up here he isn't a body. Doesn't have a body. Just a soul).
It makes his head hurt, brings a bitter twist to his lips as well. Because that's how it was for him in Hell too, racked up in front of Alastair for thirty years. Telling that demon bastard to stick it. Agonizing, that whole ordeal, until those last ten years were agony in a different way. Dean shudders, closes his eyes on that feeling, that memory. Opens them and time has passed, or at least the day has. He can tell the sun has moved, but he's still in the same damn position.
Time is funny here, but he'll be damned if he can even LAST forty years.
So he's driving and watching, catching sight 'a those flares and flashes like the way the sun catches on the edge of a car's side mirror or a mirage wavers in the distance in the desert (Santa Ana was a hell of a place, by the way. Those winds, like Jimi Jameson always said. They were a real mean bitch, a fire witch. Coulda been a real one). One of his memories conjured up something like it up here and he almost crashed the car from shock, but it wasn't the same.
See that's the thing. Memories are never the same. It's all based on perception and the power of suggestion and damn does he know about that; he suggested to himself that he'd left his best friend behind because he hadn't been strong enough to save him from the stupid penance he thought he needed to serve because stupid idiot had to fight a heavenly civil war without asking for help and the reason he didn't was because he asked where Dean was when he needed him...
Dean had been there, then; but they'd burned so many bridges since, he doesn't know how the hell he deserved to have as many reunions as he got. And then, of course, the sick and twisted cosmic irony of losing his status as the favorite character in God's fucked-up self-insert fanfiction story culminated in him dying and coming up here. Driving down the road, over the hills and far away
And probably never getting another lucky reunion. Not with who he wants to, never mind with someone who is still living.
Slamming on the brakes and blaring Baby's horn "get the fuck outta the way!" Suddenly there's a crowd, not packed exactly but stretching into the distance, people in pairs and groups milling around and he wonders abruptly if the soulmate thing still stands and then outta nowhere if there actually are any angelic checkpoints up here. Calling people handsome devils probably wouldn't fly, ha, but he can't even say 'fraid he doesn't swing that way anymore, because he gets a lump in his throat and loses his voice just thinking. He stopped pushing things away a couple years ago. He's the Meat Man after all, and things 've changed. They have. But obviously not enough, or it's too damn late.
But he still needs someone, damnit; and if what Bobby told him was the truth, how he knew, howEVER he knew - that Cas helped Jack make this place (or update it, whatever) then where the fuCk is he?!?
If Cas helped make Dean's heaven for him though, if he really did help Jack and Bobby wasn't just saying shit to make him feel better (but how the hell would Bobby know anyway? What makes him somebody who'd learn something like that? He doesn't know Jack; it would only be something he knew for sure if ...) Dean shuts down that thought, because no. Why the hell would he go and see Bobby and not Dean? But, screw this. Whatever.
That isn't the point.
The point is he's hanging out the window of Baby laying on the horn, and as he's driving by people, their heads snap up and it's like their eyes go clear. He must be snapping them out of their shitty dazes. Because this is crap, this... complacence. Complacency. Whatever. It may not be the 'Greatest Hits of Childhood' up here anymore, far as Dean knows; but things are also super new and Jack is probably doing his damn best, but still he's a KID and if it's just him and Cas, trying to make, or actually making changes...
He just hopes there's a check-and-balance system so it isn't like Godstiel all over again.
But he's a shit for thinking that. He's so shitty, an asshole, a shit friend. Because he couldn't even say anything useful to Cas before the guy friggin DIED for him. AGAIN. And supposedly for good this time but also evidently not?? But, again. How the hell does Bobby know?
This place is confusing as hell. It's also boring as hell. (Not Hell, there's a whole different aspect to that) no offense to Jack, but it is.
Or maybe it's just Dean that's confused. Wouldn't be the first time. Even though "You're not a grunt, Dean, you're a genius!" his brother had told him. And obviously believed it. Good ol' Sammy. Who's he gonna be a pain in the ass for now? Probably Eileen. Hopefully Eileen.
Dean now hears static, and low singing that starts fluctuating, fading in and out from the speakers in Baby. (This imprint of Baby, although he'd swear it's her soul, because she most certainly has one not in the least because of all she's been through.) He jerks his head, twists the knob of her radio from AM to FM and back again. It's been playing Kansas pretty much non-stop. And he digs them, okay, but there's more than just the ONE song.
Even if it's a good song.
He suddenly recalls Sam saying, of all things, when he was talking about his hallucinations of the devil. "He's singing Stairway to Heaven right now, Dean."
"Good song."
"Not fifty times in a row." Well, same principle holds true for this, here. He'd send an apology out to Sammy if he could. For -hell, a lotta things.
But now, now the repetitive music is fading out. And then the screeching riff turns into a chunky one, preceding that high wail of a voice he knows so well:
Let me take you to the movies
Can I take you to the show?
Let me be yours ever truly
Can I make your garden grow?
Damn right, it's a show. A heavenly show to bore the hell outta ya, Dean thinks savagely. His chest twinges because that's not really fair, but well his LIFE wasn't fair especially the end of it and if Cas knew he was gonna bite it six months after he got his deal to come due not only is Dean pretty fucking certain he'd be furious but he might give this up like it's a bad job.
Because it is. Saving him. Protecting him. Loving him most CERTAINLY is, 'cause it's never gotten Cas anywhere but dead. And he's pretty positive the Empty was, is such an asshole that it wouldn't let him sleep peacefully, for sure... And if the guy actually got out of there, kudos to Jack for saving him, but there's no way he'd want to see me, Dean scoffs at himself.
He was the dumbass who didn't say anything back to his best friend, and then he got dead.
He sees spots that remind him of Cas up here, sometimes. Calm, Zen sort of places. Not fully, because they're usually there and gone in a blink. He spots 'em from the corner of his eye, but that doesn't stop him from spinning in his seat and staring, or standing and then running, dropping a practically-full glass of beer and sprinting across a gigantic field.
There wasn't a damn thing in that field, but Dean somehow felt the hairs on back of his neck stand up (does he still have a neck? Or hair? Or is this all some crazy-ass projection of his soul, like the holograms in Star Wars? Or way more likely, a Force ghost. Hey if he was a Force ghost that's the most badass thing. So much so that he might not mind being dead).
But he isn't a Force ghost. And he hasn't seen Sam. There wasn't a way for him to be a ghost for some reason; probably because Sammy did the smart thing and salted and burned Dean's bones.
He thinks of Sammy a lot, wondering how he is. Wondering if he's with Eileen, if she's getting him in good shape again.
He's thinking of watching, or seeing them, and of all the shit that happened to Sam, Eileen is a good thing.
From the houses of the holy
We can watch the white doves go
From the door comes Satan's daughter
And it only goes to show, you know
Yeah, it goes to show, all right. That Sam may have gone down a dark road but he's still kicking and Dean...he couldn't handle it. Sam had been alone and came back, stayed strong. Fell off the wagon sure, but he got back up. Dean may be up the highest ever now but he's dead. His garden wasn't cultivated on earth so here he is in Heaven.
Sammy would say some philosophical shit. Quote Candide or some crap, which is what that saying is. About the garden. But Candide's a satire, and that's gotta be what Dean's current existence is.
A satire of his former one.
There are gardens here, in heaven. At least, he's pretty sure there are. Dean thinks about rivers and lakes to go fishing in, and he's seen hills, rocks and even some mountains beyond the trees. The road rises, the road leading away from his little bar with the crappy El Sol beer (but he thinks that, and it's gone one day, along wirh the hint of orange-gold in the air. An actual good dark beer is on tap, and then there's whiskey, and Dean has to go looking for where the good stuff could've come from because he can't get his head around the fact that anything he could want would probably appear since he IS in Heaven). But he finds more Zepp, and also mixed tapes made over the years and kept in the car, and hell, he sits out here leaning on the car and listening.
There's an angel on my shoulder
In my hand a sword of gold
Let me wander in your garden
And the seeds of love I'll sow
You know ooh oh oh oh
Love, what love? What angel? He's wandering, yeah, but wandering alone up here because of rebar to the back, piercing through his heart like everything else had done prior, and he was trying, he'd been trying, to look for a job and take care of a dog and to get up every day and put his feet on the floor with the knowledge that his best friend was dead and gone and clearly not coming back. Not this time.
So the world is spinning faster
Are you dizzy when you stall?
Let the music be your master
Will you heed the master's call?
"That's a good question," Dean mutters to himself. Is there a master anymore in God? Jack said he's staying out of it, that he's gonna be watching in everything like some great spirit or whatever. But obviously he did something up here, and with all the angels he made, and the people he brought back, he could've reached into the Empty again, since he's already done it. Right? And what if ...if he brought them all back..., Dean gets a lump in his throat.
If he brought everybody back, had that truly included Cas? Could it, somehow? And if it had, was he just - gone because Dean never said anything, and that's why he didn't come back before Dean went and died on a hunt his dad started, died as a blunt instrument on a rusty nail?
That's what I call satire, Dean thinks. Or irony. Probably too damn dark to be a comedy but hey. It's somethin'.
And the something that it REALLY is..., well. Dean knows it's his own stupidity that got him stuck up here.