Archive of Our Own

“You sure you can do it Jack?” Dean said hoarsely, still unsure of his victory. He kept fighting in the face of adversity. He would not give up, Cas was gone, this was no time to give up. But he didn’t kill Chuck. Somehow, someway, to Dean, that showed Cas was still alive. Cas believed he was more than a killer. Cas believed he would always do right, that he was the most caring man in the world, even when Dean couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that himself. By not killing Chuck, Cas was in every action of Dean’s callused hands. Though he hadn’t let himself breath, not yet. The world was still silent, as though everyone of God’s creatures were holding their breath. In fact, they were, vanished somewhere he couldn’t save them.
Jack smiled and that was enough. The Earth roared to life around the righteous man and his little brother. Birds chirped in a nest overhead, cars raced by, Miracle ran out to meet them, sniffing at Dean shoes. They overheard phone conversations and diners nearby. Everyone was back thanks to Jack. Dean let out his breath for the first time in what felt like a continuum of failure after failure.
Suddenly Sam’s phone rang, loud, blaring, enough for him to hesitate. His hope welled in his eyes. He lifted it and a tear escaped as Eileen behind a facetime call, signed and spoke
“Hello Sam”.
Sam hadn't smiled that wide in fifteen years, maybe not ever. He immediately signed back to her
“I love you”. He had her back. That was a win. The best win in a long time. She was his happy ending. In that moment he knew she made him happier than anyone in his entire life.

Jack was still standing in front of them, admiring the Earth once again alive. Dean stopped looking at Sam. His tears caught in his eyes, unwilling to fall. Everyone was back. Everyone that Chuck made vanish. That’s important, everyone Chuck vanished was back. This meant, someone was still gone. Not because of Chuck, but because of Dean. He didn’t want to ask. He didn’t want the answer. If he’d known about the deal… If he’d known how Cas felt…
It was all his fault. He was always so good at hiding his feelings, but Cas was always different. He’d never understood what he felt about Cas. He was the man who ran to the door immediately, without thinking, knowing full well that Lucifer’s greatest deception was appearing as his target's lost love. He wanted to see Cas more than his fears and reservations. Though he knew he was gone because of him.
Looking down at his hands now, wringing them together as though by holding his own hand, he would keep himself from falling apart.
“Jack?”
Jack looked at him, eyes bright, knowing smile, head to the side,
“Dean?”
“Can you… Is he?..” Suddenly regaining his composer, his militant unfeeling voice barked
“Cas…” but his facade cracked. What would he even say? He hadn’t had time to think of a response then, and still, he didn’t know. Cas was family. A brother… Or at least that was what he told himself. He was family, of course. He needed him… but not like he needed Sammy. No, Cas wasn’t a brother. That was just what he said, what he had to say. If he wasn’t a brother, what was he? The closest word he knew was a brother. Cas said that everything he ever did was for love, but Dean didn’t really know what love felt like. Or at least what he felt he never named because he didn’t know whether it was love or not.
Love was never said on the road. Not by his father at least. Dean still believed in it. Of course, he did, love is what drove his father to hunting in the first place wasn’t ? John loved Mary, and John was driven to madness. That was what Dean knew love to be. The obsessive, destruction of oneself, and others for the sweet reward of love. Love was ugly. Love was ruthless, “Love” was John Winchester. Dean was not John Winchester. That’s why he could never, would never, and will never, be able to say, “I love you”. What Dean felt may be what love looks like to everyone else, but the word and the title and the idea of love was too tainted for him to ever recognize it.
A million questions buzzed in Dean’s head from the moment Cas said it. He said, “I love you”. And then he was gone. Gone like everyone, like how everyone leaves him. Like how his mother left him, twice. Like how his father left him, left him in anger, left him in neglect, left him to rot. Like how Sammy left him, left him for school, left him in the dark. Everyone even close to love, leaves eventually, so of course Cas left.
A million questions. When…? How…? And the worst of all, why? Even after Cas’ grand speech. Dean’s most burning question was still, why. He wondered “how could Heaven’s best and worst angel love him? He, the killer, the monster, “Daddy’s blunt instrument.” Cas told him. Told him he was the most selfless man he’d ever met, the most caring human he’d ever met. Though Dean could not believe those words. Cas was gone, it was a goodbye. It wasn’t meant to ponder. He wasn’t meant to dwell. He had to move on, he had to get drunk, he had to. If for a moment he stopped to think, it would be over, it would all be over. That moment is here.

Standing in front of Jack, Chuck was defeated. Humanity, life, restored. Sam with Eileen, Charlie with Stevie. Everyone, but Dean, gets a happy ending. Though, he always knew that was the case, that was the job. He signed up for this, live fast, die young. Saving People, hunting things, the family business. Was this freedom? Was this him escaping Chuck’s writing, finally escaping the work of overbearing fathers? At least Sam gets his happy ending, right?

He couldn’t form his words, and he couldn’t move. Jack was saying goodbye, moving on, that he’d be everywhere and nowhere in every rock in every tree. It didn’t matter to Dean. He was happy that Jack was happy, he was proud even, but his heart and his head were clouded, he couldn’t listen. Everyone gets a happy ending. Everyone, except Dean. It was always a sick game. He wasn't even sure what was Chuck and what was reality. He asked Cas once, and he’d said, “You asked what was real, Dean, we are.” He’d even almost let himself hope. He saw Adam, not their brother, but the Adam, the Adam of Adam and Eve, but there was no Eve. Adam was happy, happy as a human in love with an Angel. So, it was possible, but Dean hadn’t consciously favored it. He noted it, and he smiled, but he pushed it down, and moved on, but kept a little hope, a little joy. Maybe it wasn’t for romance, maybe it was just togetherness. He didn’t know what he wanted, and he never would. If Adam could disrupt Chuck's initial plan for him, why couldn't Dean? From one solution to the next, he just kept moving like a machine. He had to; his father taught him that emotions were weakness. His father taught him that because he felt everything, he would never be tough enough, good enough. His father taught him how not to love and it went against every fiber of Dean’s being. Cas was right, Dean was made of love. Everything he ever did was for love.

Dean was a vortex, swirling out of control, delving into despair, longing to delve into emptiness. Maybe if he felt nothing, he’d find Cas there, sitting in the empty.

Dean was always looking for his death. He always had; he ran into danger with no other thoughts. He’d kill himself for Sammy, for Cas, for Charlie, for Bobby, for Jody, for Donna, for Jack, for Claire, the list goes on, but he would kill himself for the world. When he was young, and Sam no longer needed him, that was when Dean was ready to die for the first time.
Though, Cas made Dean want to live. A hard thing to do for a man who viewed his life as a pawn to keep his family safe. So, from the moment Cas was taken by the empty, Dean’s mind was made up. Upon his next opportunity, after they saved the world again, he would die.
So, with all of that swirling within Dean, swirling in his head, when Jack snapped his fingers, it was like removing Billie’s fist from his heart again.
Before him stood the angel. His angel. Castiel the angel of Humanity, no longer an angel of the lord, an angel of Humanity. (and we all know what Metatron meant by "Humanity"). He was perfect, well he was Dean’s kind of perfect. Messy, righteous, and a little bit too unlucky, perfection. He was crying, just like the last time they saw each other. Dean was frozen. He couldn’t sink to his knees; he couldn’t do anything. His emotions welled and expanded. He didn’t understand them, he couldn’t understand them, so when Cas stepped closer...
“Hello Dean” he said, the same way he always said it.
Dean did the only thing he knew how to do, he punched him square in the jaw. Cas just laughed. Dean brushed off Cas’ shoulders and pointed right in his face.

“Don’t you ever do that again!” he screamed because he didn’t know what else to say.
“Don’t you ever make another deal without me. You tell me when things get bad. You tell me! I'll always be here!”
“Okay” Cas’ gruff voice, a comfort as ever as he looked around only a little confused.
Dean let himself fall apart then. He crumpled into the embrace of his angel. Dean tried to speak, tried to put into words what he thought Cas needed, wanted, but he couldn’t. It didn't matter what he felt, or how long he’d felt it, or how long he’d pushed it away, thinking it was never a possibility, there was never a chance. He can’t have a happy ending, that’s not how his story goes, but isn’t Cas responsible for the change in the story? Isn’t Cas the one being in all of Chuck’s storylines that didn’t do what he was told?

“You don’t have to say it, Dean.” Cas said, his head resting on Dean’s shoulder in their embrace. Dean smiled as his tears fell because he understood now. What Cas said back in purgatory, only a few weeks ago when they were separated in search of the leviathan blossom. Cas wasn’t talking about his apology prayer, yes, he heard it, but what Cas heard was Dean’s “I love you.”

Finally, after eleven years, after Cas gripped Dean tight and raised him from perdition, after Dean’s very touch corrupted him, eleven years of running, hiding, fighting, fleeing, building, reshaping, growing, learning, the man who would be king and the righteous man, were free. Free for Dean to experience feelings differently than he had before, like he’d said he wanted once in confession. Free for Cas to be happy, happy in just being.
They were free to live out Dean’s happy ending. His happy ending Dean told Sam all about. Cas and Dean, Sam and Eileen, swimsuits, beers, cocktails with tiny umbrellas, a case of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at hand, while they all sat, quietly on a sandy beach somewhere.

And of course, Dean’s gun was tucked under his towel, just in case.