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Dean’s pulse was pounding in his ears. He could barely register the absence of pain in his chest amid the rising panic and despair. “It’s a dead end.”
Cas was between him and the door, fresh blood dripping from his fingers. He’d managed to scrawl a sigil to keep Billy out, but the entire bunker shook under the force of her power as she struck the door. The lines of blood flared. Burned.
“Dean…” Cas was staring at him. His eyes searched the room, as though looking for some way out.
But it was hopeless. He should’ve known. There weren’t that many ways out of the bunker, and Billy had been chasing them in circles ever since she caught them out in the war room.
He leaned against the back of the chair to stare at Cas. He thought about Sammy, out there with Bobby and Charlie and everyone else. Locked in that old silo; hiding from whatever was making hunters disappear.
“Cas,” Dean shook his head, fighting to keep the tears at bay. “I’m so sorry.”
Cas’s lips tightened. He took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. His eyes never left Dean’s.
“Can you go?” Dean asked, before Cas had a chance to say a word. “Ditch the meatsuit? Fly outta here? Maybe—maybe Billy’s only after me?” he circled around the chair, close enough to grab Cas by the shoulders. “Come on, we…there’s no way out for me, man. There’s gotta be a way to get you out.”
“Dean.”
“No, Cas,” he shook his head, holding a hand up to stop him. “I am not gonna be responsible for you dying again, you got it? You’re gonna get out of here, bust through the walls, I don’t care. You leave me here and you—you go be safe, okay? Get to heaven, take care of Mom and Dad. Keep an eye on Sammy, let him know what happened. Okay?”
Cas was still shaking his head, tears in his eyes.
“Don’t do this to me,” Dean pleaded. He grabbed Cas’s shoulders, fingers tightening in the tan fabric of that ugly-ass trench coat. “I’m the one she’s after, not you.”
“No.”
His head dropped, nearly burying his face in Cas’s shoulder. “Dammit, Cas…”
“Dean,” Cas gently pushed him out to arm’s length. He was smiling. Here, in this dead-end room, with death literally knocking on the door, the angel looked the most content Dean had ever seen him. He looked…happy. “There is a way.”
“What?”
“It’ll be difficult for you, but…will you do this for me?”
Dean sucked in a breath, straightened his shoulders. “Anything, Cas.”
Cas’s smile was a little wobbly as he rested his hand on the side of Dean’s face. “The happiest years in all of my long life as an angel, have been with you.”
“No, no,” Dean tugged Cas’s hand away from his. “Not a goodbye. Not here, not ever.”
“This isn’t an ending, Dean,” Cas replied, gently pulling his hand away. He lifted Dean’s knife and dragged the blade over his palm again, so that fresh blood welled up from the healing cut. “It’s a beginning.”
He pushed Dean to the side and knelt on the floor to begin tracing out a spell circle. Dean leaned back against a table, scrubbing a hand over his eyes to dash the tears away, staring in hollow trepidation at the complicated shapes Castiel was making with his own blood.
The door shuddered in its frame. He stared at that, too, watching the sigil burn and blister under the onslaught of Billy’s power.
If he got in front of Cas, maybe she’d kill him first and he wouldn’t have to watch Cas die again.
“It’s ready,” Cas announced, standing up. He brushed his hands off, then shook one arm out like he was summoning his angel blade. Instead, four long, gleaming stakes appeared in his hand. They were thinner than the angel blades, though they looked like they were made from the same alloy. “Dean?”
“What are these for?” Dean asked numbly as Cas handed him the stakes. The angel ignored him, hunting around the room until he found a rubber-headed mallet, which he also passed to Dean. “Cas?”
Cas touched the hand holding the stakes. “Do you trust me?”
“You know I do.”
“Hands and feet, Dean.”
Cas lay down in the circle, spread eagle, his wrists and ankles crossing over the circle he’d drawn in his own blood.
Dean felt sick. “No, man, get up.” He knelt next to Cas, grabbed his shoulder to pull him up.
“Dean.”
Damn those eyes. The steady, firm faith in those eyes. “Cas. Please.”
“We don’t have much time,”
“Dammit, Cas!” Dean dropped the stakes and hammer and grabbed the front of Cas’s coat. “I am not sacrificing you!”
Cas’s hands were on his, prying him away. “No, you’re not,” he replied. “All will be well, Dean. You’ll see.”
“Cas…”
“Left hand first. Go clockwise.”
The door shook again. The sigil on it was nearly burned through. They had maybe a minute left until Billy busted through.
Until they were both dead.
Swearing, Dean crawled over to Cas’s left hand, held the stake in place over his wrist, and drove it in.
Cas screamed. The light overhead popped, sparks exploding from the dangling socket. Tears blinded Dean’s eyes as he hammered the stake in deeper, until it was biting into the concrete floor. “Cas?”
“Keep going,” Cas replied, voice rough with pain.
Dean crawled down to Cas’s ankle. The angel wasn’t even thrashing, though it had to hurt like hell. It was far too much like a crucifixion…far too much like a sacrifice. Bile rose in his throat as he lined the stake up. “I can’t….”
“Do it!”
The authority in Cas’s voice jolted him. He bit his tongue, closed his eyes, and brought the hammer down on the second stake. The door shook behind him, the walls trembled at Cas’s cries, and every blow of the hammer was another nail in his own soul.
He barely got the second stake all the way through before he was turning to the side to vomit. The smell of blood and burning ozone filled his nostrils, settled into his stomach.
“Dean, please!” Cas’s voice was broken now. Choked with pain and tears and sorrow.
The third stake. Light was sparking out of the other stakes in Cas’s body. Dean’s hands were shaking, the darkness trembling around them. He was seeing things now. Wings and eyes; fantastical, edritch shapes writhing at the corners of his vision. If he looked there was nothing there, but when he focused on Cas’s body he could barely see the hint of something else.
One stake remained. He crawled up to Cas’s side, close enough to rest an unsteady hand on the angel’s chest. “Cas?”
Cas grabbed him by the arm, his hand in the same spot where he’d left the burn all those years ago, when he’d dragged Dean from hell. “It’s time.”
He shook his head, stomach in his mouth. The door rocked again, and in the flashes of holy light leaking from Cas’s wounds, the last of the sigil began to fail.
“Now, Dean,” Cas whispered.
Shaking, nauseated, nearly blinded with tears, Dean pressed the tip of the final stake against Cas’s wrist. He paused for a second, just long enough to look up to see Cas (one last time?).
The angel was staring up into the darkness, chest heaving. As Dean readied the hammer, Cas’s lips moved as though in prayer.
Greater love has no one than this.
Then he twisted his head to look at Dean. He was smiling, though tears of pain were streaming down his cheeks. “I love you.”
Dean drove the last stake in.
Cas screamed.
Something erupted from Cas’s body. A great, streaming mass that seemed to exist in too many dimensions to be perceived. Dean had to look away as his eyes began to burn, as though he’d been staring at the sun.
The door flew open, and he looked up in horror to see Billy stride into the room. And behind her a shapeless, black mass.
The light that had been flowing out of Cas rushed toward Billy, driving her back into the darkness. She screamed, reaching forward, but light and dark collided and wrapped around her. For a second Dean thought he could see thousands of eyes, blue as the summer sky, and three pairs of raven-dark wings, before the light and darkness swirled together and twisted into nothingness with a great, deafening crack.
He sat back on his heels, staring blankly into the emptiness of the bunker’s hallway. Had he just…was that Cas? What had he meant this wasn’t an ending, then?
“Dean?”
Dean swore, spinning around to kneel next to Cas. “You crazy son of a bitch, you’re alive,” he gasped, tears rolling down his cheeks to splash onto Cas’s pale face. He started to lift Cas up, thought better about it, and moved to pull the stake out of his right arm. “Can your mojo take care of this once I…pull it….”
The stakes were gone. He shoved Cas’s sleeve up to find nothing but smooth, unblemished skin. “The hell?”
Cas groaned, and pulled his arm away from Dean enough to curl up on his side.
“Yeah, yeah, take it slow.” Dean patted his arm, rubbed his shoulders. “What the hell did we do?”
“A life…for a life.”
Dean shook his head. “But you’re alive, man.”
“Yes,” Cas grunted, grabbing Dean’s shoulder for support to pull himself up to a sitting position. He held his hands out to study them, turning them back and forth as though looking for any wound or scar from the ordeal.
That was when Dean noticed the wing prints.
Burned into the concrete beneath where Cas had been lying. He’d seen them before, on a beach, the night Jack was born. “Cas?”
“A life was given,” Cas said softly. He met Dean’s eyes, face twitching in a spasm of grief. “I’m human.”
Dean’s breath left him. He rocked back, staring. “How did…?”
“It’s the oldest magic known,” Cas explained. He tried to get his feet under him, and Dean quickly stood up to help him. “Woven into the very fabric of creation. It’s in every one of your great stories, and the only thing strong enough to re-write the foundations of the world.”
He twined his fingers through Dean’s, staring down at their linked hands. “For an angel, the sacrifice of their life is to give up the very breath our father breathed into us at our creation. The body he shaped for us with his own hands. Only one other has been willing to do that. ‘Greater love has no one than this; but that he give up his life for his friends’. That was how I knew…I knew it would work. That you….”
Dean rocked back on his heel. “Friend, huh?”
Color spread up Cas’s cheeks. “Dean, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, but—”
Dean ducked in close and kissed him.
It wasn’t the fantasy of true love’s kiss. The overhead light had long blown out, and Cas no longer had the angel mojo to make his hair stand on end or turn his insides out…but his stomach flipped and his palms got sweaty, so that was close enough.
He pulled away, pressing their foreheads together. “I, uh…love you, too, Cas.”
Cas was beaming, smile brighter and wider than Dean had ever seen.
Dean’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to see that Sam was calling. “Hey, Cas?” he asked, hesitating before answering the phone. “Did we just save the world?”
Cas looked down at the phone, then back up at Dean. He was positively glowing, beautiful in a way he’d never been before. “Maybe you should answer that.”
Dean threw his head back to laugh, wrapping an arm around Cas’s shoulders before connecting to Sammy’s call. “Heya, Sammy. We might have good news….”