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There's a weird, stinging sensation in Castiel's chest.
It is out of place here in the vast and feelingless space he's been brought to. He has kept his eyes wide open until he could, trying to sear into his mind that last image, that last memory of happiness. He knows his dreams here will be filled only with regrets, as the ruler of this barren domain wills, and he has so many of those. But the light of that moment is something he wants to hold as close as he can, for as long as he can, before inevitably succumbing to the lethargy that has already begun to obscure his mind.
A lethargy through which this new sensation is somehow nagging enough to cut. Its physicality conjures other memories, still vivid images of things happened long before, phantom feelings of sharper things.
Almost as a last attempt to resist the numbness that's about to claim him forever, Castiel lets his mind wander, following their trail.
-/-/-/-/-/-/-
The pit is shaped by its inhabitants, by the fears and obsessions of the torturers and the tortured alike, and the Righteous Man's own corner of Hell makes no exception. It's cold and secluded, and while there as everywhere the souls of the damned scream in pain, their voices are made hollow, distant.
It's where Castiel finds that sharpened wreck that has lost almost all resemblance to human shape. Scrapped metal and fractured glass tear the flesh, warped metal sheets dragging behind like twisted wings. It smells of burnt rubber and gasoline, it smells of a car crash. It hurts, because Dean Winchester might have picked up the knife to end his own eleven thousand days of torture, but still has grabbed onto the blade as he did so, still wills himself to bleed and suffer with every single cut he inflicts upon the doomed souls.
In a reaction Castiel doesn't understand at the time, but that he much later will recognize as the first time his charge has given him shape, the angel takes a more human form while approaching. The part that reaches out to Dean, to the light seeping out through the tears and cracks of him, makes itself a hand, laying down on his shoulder as Dean turns to face the new presence, a new light catching on the glass shards piercing the side of his face.
It's a call for attention far gentler than the urgency of the moment requires. There's still a battle going on, the legions of Heaven have descended in arms to face those of Hell, almost a rehearsal of the greater Apocalypse to come, in order to gain these precious few seconds necessary to retrieve the sword.
Castiel doesn't know what of an angel's form the Righteous Man perceives here in the dark. Whatever it is, it's enough for Dean to narrow his eyes, tighten his grip on the broken blade, and plunge it into the angel with all his fury.
Bright hot light melts the metal, and a small part of Castiel thinks something that would sound better in the voice of his future vessel. Something like, “Really?”
Dean bares his teeth to the angel.
Castiel grips Dean's arm tight, burning grace leaving the only mark that will remain on his body as it is rebuilt new and right, and raises him up.
-/-/-/-/-/-
So when Dean, upon meeting again, as first thing stabs Castiel's new vessel in the chest it's a sort of deja vu. An echo. A strange familiarity.
That doesn't explain the flicker of warmth that Castiel feels when it happens, nor the way the edges of his borrowed lips seem to want to curl up just a little more. It doesn't feel important, at the time. He's still measuring himself in this vessel after all, careful not to stretch too wide, and some of the body's reactions he still hasn't had occasion, or desire, to analyze, to understand, to make his own. He thinks, at the time, that it's something he won't have any need to.
-/-/-/-/-
The sensation is growing more acute now, a needling impossible to ignore and yet not unbearable enough to make him move to remove it. He's in one of those frustrating situations he so often found himself after he had fallen, where the simplest course of action would easily remove the issue and yet a specially human form of inertia prevents him from doing something about the matter.
He's not aware enough to realize how this situation should be an impossibility in itself, here in this place.
Instead, he remembers, and once again the keen pressure against his chest gives his mind direction.
-/-/-/-
The angel's blade is sticking out of his chest, his own hand still gripping its hilt. Castiel's standing in a warehouse, long shadows on the walls and floor, and Dean is in front of him, but his eyes are unseeing, the mannequin's drained of life as soon as Castiel abruptly changed the trajectory of the blow to bury the blade into himself instead of Dean. Refusing his orders. Refusing the compulsion.
“Castiel.” There's so much disappointment in the way Naomi says his name. As if those syllables contain a whole speech, enumerating the many ways in which Castiel has failed (her, his siblings, Heaven itself) time and time again. The many ways in which she has had to cut and stitch and dig and fix him who won't allow himself to be fixed, who won't make himself stop wanting something different.
Naomi shakes her head. Despite the dissatisfaction there's no impatience in her voice, not yet. She will do that again. And again, and again, for as many times as it takes to put things back in their rightful order.
The angel's blade is in Castiel's hand and his hand is raised up, ready to strike. His chest still hurts. Dean calls to him. Castiel strikes down.
-/-/-
“Cas... I know you can hear me...”
-/-
A dull shouting, too far away to make out the words in it. It resonates in time with the pulsing pain in his chest. Castiel frowns. The voice is familiar, it's like it came out of his mind, of his memory, it's making him fight the drowsiness with renewed energy, it's...
Something is right there, behind him. A warm, solid presence in the place where nothing should be.
Castiel opens his eyes, and it's not to the endless, sickening tar of the Empty. There is something covering them, a different, a softer darkness. He blinks, lashes brushing against it—and he opens his mouth to—he doesn't know what to—then pain flares up from his chest in a white blaze and everything gets caught in his throat, and now he hears...
“--ld on, just hold on Cas, I got you, I got you, Sam, pull us back, pull us b--”
Reality rips out under them and they fall down into flooding light, in the distance the Shadow screams in fury—and then the sound is suffocated, sealed away.
Castiel is half-sitting, half-lying down. His chest hurts something fierce and his back is pressed against something, someone—the hand falls down from his eyes, and Castiel finds himself looking at Sam's face, his frantic gaze moving from Castiel down to the tome he's clutching into his hands, a cascade of words from his lips, as the litany stitches up the tear that has been ripped in the fabric of the world.
Castiel tries to turn and the person behind him shouts in pain, and he realizes they are not just pressed against each other, they are pinned together. He looks down at the thin hilt sticking out of his chest, another echo of his memory. It's an angel blade, thinned down to a rapier width, going through his body, out his back and into...
“Dean,” he breathes out, and behind him, pressed against his hair, he feels more than hears a breathless laugh that dissolves into a groan of pain.
“Hey there. I think I--” Dean winces. “I think I need your help getting unstuck.”
Dean reaches up around Castiel's body and grabs onto the hilt, attempting to pull it out, but his grasp slips. Castiel puts his hand over Dean's, steadying him, and together they pull. As soon as the blade is out of Dean's body Castiel is turning around to heal him—Dude, it's still sticking out of you Dean groans—reaching with an arm around his shoulder to support him.
“It worked!” Sam is kneeling next to them now, the spell complete and the way into the Empty closed hopefully for good. “Dean, are you all right? Are you both alright?”
“Peachy,” Dean grumbles. Castiel keeps his eyes on the ripped cotton of Dean's shirt, on the blood seeping into it. His grace feels weak, a kindling that needs to be gently blown on, and he needs to focus in order to mend Dean's wound.
He doesn't look up. Not even as he feels Dean pull the blade completely out of him and uncerimoniously toss it aside, muttering something--Like a chicken skewer. He hurts, blood is trickling down his chest and back, the smell of it mingling with the acrid one of the herbs that must have been burnt for the spell, and the old, familiar air of the Bunker's library underneath it all. The floor is hard under his knees. Next to them, he hears Sam's voice, he's talking about the spell they just used, unable to stop in the exhilaration of this desperate attempt working out against all odds.
His chest still aches, even as it heals, like it did during his visions in the emptiness.
He feels Dean's hands, one on his shoulder, the other pressing over the healing wound on his chest, right over where he got stabbed through his heart again and again.
“Cas...”
“Is this real?” Castiel's voice is hoarse, catching into his throat. Sam falls silent, and Castiel can feel his gaze on him. He can feel Dean's too. All this feels real and solid, but he knows the Shadow's games of mirrors and smoke. He has been a victim of those when it had claimed him for the first time. He can't let himself believe this if... if...
“Cas.” Dean's voice is a rough whisper, held tight, like he's fighting to keep it in check.
“It is real. I... we are real,” he says, his voice breaking, and Castiel looks up, finally. Dean looks exhausted, stubble on his cheeks and dark shadows under his eyes but he's smiling. As tired as he looks, his smile still warms Castiel like the midday sun in a meadow.
Castiel's hand moves without his conscious thought. He traces Dean's jaw, his lips, as if seeking confirmation of his words by touch alone.
“We are,” Dean says again, breathing the words under Castiel's fingers.
Both their wounds are healed now, and the ache in Castiel's chest has turned sweet, a gentle pulse of grace, shining in time with Dean's heartbeat.
Dean reaches up to cover Castiel's hand with his own, pressing it against his cheek, then he turns just a little, and places a kiss on the palm. It's light, almost reverent. It makes Castiel shiver and wake up completely into his body, it makes him smile in breathless relief. It makes him feel like he's on the verge of falling again, like he has been doing since that first soft, that first so very sharp, touch.
Dean doesn't let him go, and when he speaks again, they fall together.