Work Text:
The first three days he hadn’t done anything but drive. Not with any particular destination in mind, even, he simply hadn’t known what else to do than to pack Jack into his truck and drive both of them away.
After the first couple of hours, when he’d just been sitting in wakeful silence, Jack had mostly dozed in the passenger seat beside him. Cas knew that when Sam hadn’t had his soul, he hadn’t slept at all, but for Jack – at least now – it seemed to be the opposite. His face was so soft and peaceful in sleep, that looking at him Cas could almost forget about what he had gone through. Then it would hit him, that the so innocent looking child beside him had experienced all of that, and it was all he could do to keep the truck on the road.
His phone had kept ringing intermittently the first three hundred or so miles, until it had finally become too much and he had thrown it out the window. For one thing, Jack was starting to stir, and he couldn’t have that. Some of the calls – he had seen, as his phone screen had lit up every so often where it rested in his lap – had been from Sam in fact, and to Sam he might even have been able to find something to say, but still. It was better without. He almost wanted to erase the memorised numbers from his head too. Cut ties with the fact that they had been treasured knowledge, for years and years.
Jack had surfaced from sleep intermittently as they drove – the first time with great heaving gasps of breath that made Cas pull over.
“You’re okay,” he’d said softly, his thumb stroking in a comforting rhythm on Jack’s shoulder, as he kept his own vessel’s heartrate from rocketing to match Jack’s. “You’re okay. We – he –” Jack had looked up at him attentively at that and he’d felt his words falter. “You’re safe. We’re okay.”
Something had registered on Jack’s face, but Cas wasn’t sure what. He would like to think it was relief, maybe – that he could take comfort in the fact that Jack seemed to at least still trust him to protect him.
They start to run low on gas just after they’ve crossed the border into Indiana for about the third time. Jack had stirred only a handful more times – just briefly, and much less agitated now, in a way Cas tried to find reassuring. Of course medically, so much sleep from a normal child would still be alarming, but each time that he tries to check Jack over with his grace, there is still nothing unexpectedly wrong. Mostly, he is just grateful for Jack to have the respite, and physically at least, in theory nothing can really hurt him now. Almost nothing.
Cas pulls into the next gas station. As Cas was afraid he would, Jack starts to wake up just as they come to a stop and Cas reaches out to smooth a stray lock of hair back from his forehead.
“How are you feeling?” Cas says softly, as Jack’s eyes start to flutter open.
“I’m not sure.” He blinks around the cabin of the truck. “How long was I asleep?”
“A while,” Cas says quietly, scanning Jack’s face. He looks almost as peaceful as he had done when he was asleep, only a little more sombre. “How long did it feel to you?”
“Not long. I don’t know.” He starts to straighten in his seat a little as he comes more fully to wakefulness, face increasingly alert. Cas strokes a hand through Jack’s hair again to try and soothe him, and feels a small harsh twinge of relief as Jack seems to calm.
“Did you sleep okay?”
“I think so? I don’t remember.”
Cas lets out a small puff of breath. It almost makes him want to start driving again straightaway, to push the fuel tank just a little bit further, just so the motion of the truck can rock Jack back to sleep, so he can be cushioned in it.
“That’s – I’m glad.”
He brings his hand to rest on Jack’s shoulder, and Jack looks up at him. “Where are we?”
“A gas station.” Cas makes his voice as gentle as possible. “I’ll just be five minutes, and you’re going to stay right here.” He gives Jack’s shoulder a comforting squeeze as he gets out of the truck, and tells himself that the tiny expression that passes Jack’s face means that Jack at least got the message.
He’s the only customer in the shop when he goes in to pay for the gas. The woman behind the counter looks almost excited at the prospect of interaction, and he wishes she didn’t. He doesn’t need anything to delay him getting back to Jack.
“Oh, sweet tooth,” says the woman as he places the handfuls of candy bars he’s gathered for Jack on the counter, but there’s no disparagement in her voice. “I understand, you need something to keep you going on these long drives.”
“Oh, they’re for my –” he starts to say automatically. He glances out of the gas station window to where he’s left Jack in the truck, fiddling with the cuffs of his jacket. Cas needs to buy him a new one. “– my son,” he finishes awkwardly, hoping the pause wasn’t too long. “He’s the… ‘sweet tooth’.”
The woman smiles as she finishes ringing him up. “So it’s a father-son road trip? Any fun destinations in mind?”
Cas looks down. “…yes. And no. Not really. We just…” – he searches for an appropriate phrase – “‘needed to get away’.”
“I hear you.” She finishes ringing up the last candy bar, and pushes the pile towards him. “That’ll be $15.87.”
Cas makes sure to pull his face into something amiable as he passes his card across. Card payments can be tracked, can’t they? Could his be? He’ll need to think about that.
Cas walks back to the car as quickly as possible, and feels an odd spike to see Jack sit up a little straighter as he registers Cas and the candy bars coming into view.
“I tried to get your favourites. We can stop again later if you like, and if you need anything –”
“Thank you,” Jack says, and almost jumps at his own interruption. “I’m… I’m okay, though.”
“Of course. No problem. They’ll just be here when you want them.” Cas swallows and places the candy bars on the dashboard as casually as he can manage.
Long journeys on the road with Jack are nothing new to Cas. Back when Jack was human, they’d gone on several hunts together, and developed a comfortable rhythm of how to keep themselves entertained. The truck did have a tape deck, and they were often waved off with strong strictures as to what to play in it, but usually they ignored these in favour of listening to podcasts on Jack’s phone. In particular, they had liked to listen to one on evolutionary biology – nothing new to Cas, of course, but there was something about getting to share sometimes some of his early experiences with Jack like that that warmed him. “Well –” he would be forced to say occasionally “–that’s not really how…”, and the awe in Jack’s eyes as he pressed pause and urged Cas to explain had almost made him want to cut in more often – almost want to invent whole different backstories for swathes of genera if it meant getting to bask in that innocent admiration.
Now, there is just empty silence. For now, Jack is still conscious, and Cas keeps sneaking him sidelong glances to try and divine anything from his face, as he just gazes fixedly out of the window.
He wishes Jack were asleep again. It’s been years since he slept himself, but he remembers the respite of it, when he was waiting to die from Theo’s grace eating away at him – remembers longing for it when he’d been recovering in the bunker from Rowena’s attack dog spell, having to fill the void with mindless television instead. Missing the safety of oblivion. He supposes at least the loss of Jack’s soul probably means that he’s less scathed by everything than he would have been otherwise.
This time, when he looks across to Jack, Jack is looking back. He tries not to seem startled.
“Do you… want to listen to anything? I think I’m going to need to get us both new phones –” he lets out what he’d hoped would be a wry chuckle, but it just sounds flat and sad “– but um, we could put the radio on. What do you think?”
Jack eyes him thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” he says steadily.
Cas nods and squeezes out a small reassuring smile. “Well, you can tell me later if you decide.”
Jack just nods.
“How are you feeling?” Cas asks again, tentatively. His eyes flick down to the neglected pile of candy bars between them.
“I don’t know.”
Cas’s thumbs stroke the seam on the inside of the steering wheel. He fights to keep the catch out of his voice as he says very calmly: “Well, you let me know.”
Jack gives another tiny nod in response. Cas can’t do anything but trust him.
A small sigh escapes Cas as he turns his attention fully back to the road. He can feel Jack’s eyes resting on something in his face, and then suddenly he hears rustling beside him, as Jack moves to start eating some of the chocolate.
“You don’t – I can put them away… for later,” Cas starts saying.
“No…” Jack looks at him thoughtfully. “You’d… like me to.”
Cas’s grip on the steering wheel tightens while he tries to drag up something to say.
Jack’s eyes are scanning his face, as though trying to unravel a mystery. “It’s okay,” he says with a half-echo of his old brightness that makes Cas feel cold. “I don’t mind.”
His hands start unwrapping one of the bars, and it’s all Cas can do to keep from wrenching them away from him. Instead, he reaches out and gently places one hand on top of Jack’s, stilling them. Jack looks up at him.
Keeping his eyes on the road makes this easier. “I only want you to do things that you want to,” Cas says very deliberately. “Okay?”
Jack’s hands go limp with what almost seems like relief. “Okay,” he repeats back, sounding less certain than Cas would like.
Cas squeezes the tangle of Jack fingers he has in his, still not looking at him.
“I love you,” he says, very quietly.
The truck’s tyres rumble against the road’s surface.
“I –” Jack starts to say. “You do. I – I’m sorry...”
“No.” He’d thought he sounded measured, but feels a ripple of shock through Jack’s body that makes him want to curl in on himself. “No,” he says again, so carefully gently, smoothing his thumb along Jack’s knuckles until he feels him relax. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I just… I just love you.”
He gives Jack’s fingers a final squeeze and then lets go. His point might be strengthened if he could look at him, but this will have to do.
“Okay,” says Jack, and he does sound a little surer. He picks up the candy bar he’s started unwrapping, at places it back between them. “Thank you.” Cas inhales sharply, but doesn’t say anything. A pause hangs in the air between them where Cas wonders if Jack is going to keep talking, but then Jack turns his attention back to the window, and Cas can let his breath go.
Candy bars had been an important staple of their hunts together when Jack was human. They tasted of nothing to Cas, but they brought Jack so much joy that he wanted to share in it.
It had been difficult for Jack, adjusting to human nutritional requirements, and candy bars had helped – had bridged gaps where “not hungry enough to eat” had turned into “so hungry he was nauseous” seemingly with no warning. Of course, Cas had tried to make sure these incidents were as infrequent as possible. He knew what it was like to suffer from a deficit of food, and he had been determined to spare Jack from experiencing the same, to the best of his ability. In the bunker, mealtimes were frequently irregular, especially with all of the chaos of the apocalypse world hunters constantly coming and going, but this would not be the case for Jack if Cas was going to have any say in the matter. He had pored over literature on balanced diets and the amount of energy needed by growing humans of Jack’s approximate physical age, and although the options that were available on the road often stymied him in terms of giving Jack the correct amount of vegetables, he was determined that Jack have a healthy, consistent, suitably varied intake of food. But when the whims of the human digestive system conspired to thwart this goal, candy bars were always there as a reliable fall-back.
And now there are some just sitting forlornly between the two of them.
If he just focusses on driving he doesn’t have to think about it. There had often been silences between them when they’d gone on hunts together when Jack was human. Companionable silences, that had almost reminded Cas of communion with his siblings, even though Jack was now unable to receive any thoughts Cas would want to send to him through the ether. It was still a similar type of closeness, even if not quite the same as what he’d been looking forward to, when he’d first started getting to know Jack in the motel in Dodge City. Even without the metaphysical connection, there was an ease he’d grown unaccustomed to, and it wasn’t the same as having his family back, but maybe it could do.
Though perhaps he’d been self-indulgent to imagine they had anything close to that type of connection. If he’d truly known and understood Jack then him burning off his soul wouldn’t have caught him so off-guard – he’d have known what to say to stop it. The fulfilment he got from having Jack in his life had been a distraction to what Jack needed from him. In the absence of the emotional skills human parents have, and when his failure to protect Jack had meant the angelic link was lost too…
Even in the face of all the joy Jack had brought him he had fallen short.
His eyes skirt over Jack’s face as he looks around to change lanes. Jack’s gaze doesn’t appear to have moved from the window, and it’s hard to tell from his eyes if he’s even looking at anything at all. They turn onto a small road, and the branches filter the light to cast patterns on Jack’s face. That sort of thing used to intrigue him. The differences between the leaves or needles on different species of trees, and the way Cas could tell him about how each and every one of them had come to be.
Cas coughs a little. “What trees are those, Jack?” he asks softly. The seam of the steering wheel digs into his palms.
“Pinus Ponderosa,” Jack says, after a small hesitation.
“Yes. And what else are they called?”
“Several other things. Like with lots of common plants.” He’s still looking out of the window, but Cas can hear that his fingers have also started gently drumming against the glass.
“Like the blackjack pine,” Cas says, almost inaudibly. Or, nowhere near inaudibly to a being as powerful as Jack, but it’s close to as quiet an utterance as his vessel’s vocal tract can be induced to produce.
“Yes,” says Jack, and Cas’s eyes are intently on the road. “Though it’s only an apt name when they’re young.”
Cas exhales. “Do you… do you remember when I first told you that?” The drumming on the window cuts off abruptly.
“Of course I do. I was… pleased. I –” He cuts himself off, and a strange, twisty part of Cas’s vessel’s stomach is relieved.
“Yes,” says Cas softly. There’s no need to say any more than that. They don’t need to go back over how Jack had spent the rest of their journey staring rapt out of the window, trying to spot trees young enough that their dark bark had make them rhyming namesakes of his. How he’d found the rules of the corresponding card game on his phone and insisted on them playing it all evening in the motel with the corn-themed souvenir playing cards that were the best they’d managed to find at a gas station, even long after Jack had eaten the whole bag of candy they were using for betting. The consternation Jack had felt upon learning about the trees being restricted into bonsai forms, that Cas hadn’t known how to comfort him about. How often had Jack felt distress like that unseen to Cas? “Yes,” he says again.
“I’m sorry,” Jack says quietly beside him.
Cas’s vessel’s head snaps to his right, and he sees an anxious crease in Jack’s forehead, as Jack looks across at him intently. Jack’s fingers are twisting together in his lap.
The road is clear ahead. “Jack, no...” is all Cas can force out.
“I’m sorry that I…” His eyes scan Cas’s face for a moment. “You know. I’m sorry.”
Cas experiences the disconcerting sensation of needing his vessel’s lungs.
“Jack, please don’t –” He inserts his hand into the tangle of fingers in Jack’s lap, and feels Jack grip onto them. “I love you. And I’m not going to stop. What matters is that you’re safe, okay?”
Jack meets his eyes briefly and looks away again. Cas lets him.
The road keeps rolling on beneath them. Now that Jack is awake, Cas supposes they can’t keep driving forever. A life in a truck cabin is no real life for a child. However soothing it is to have Jack safe and solid beside him like this, just contained in their own little world where everything else is scenery. Where he can’t see the dent in the top of the truck from his punch of frustration when he’d thought he was losing Jack forever.
There’s nothing wrong with keeping driving for a few more hours. They have the gas for it. There’s no reason to disrupt the little bubble they have for now – to force Jack into the outside world, where it’s loud, and busy, and there are so many logistics Cas hasn’t thought of, and they could run into anyone…
He stops. All that matters is that despite everything, Jack is with him. He had been so close to losing Jack entirely, with every attempt he had made to prevent it apparently doomed to failure. Regardless of how hard he’d tried to impress upon Jack the importance of not burning off his soul, Jack had done it anyway. The fact that it hadn’t killed him outright was already a reprieve Cas should be massively grateful for. And then the moment he’d seen what had happened with the snake he had set out to find a solution, but perhaps he should have just taken Jack with him right then and then none of the rest of it would have happened with… with Mary and… afterwards. Of course anyone could see that Jack had never meant to hurt anyone, but Cas hadn’t been there. He’ll always have to live with the fact that he hadn’t been there.
Jack’s eyes look on the verge of slipping closed again, and Cas lets out a small sigh. He’s almost lost track of what state they’re in. It’s perfectly reasonable not to have much of a destination in mind other than away. Just the two of them now.
But it does all leave such a big gap in Jack’s life that Cas hadn’t ever thought he’d have to fill – or at least, not since Jack had been born. Not for the Jack that he knows, rather than just the abstract concept of a nephil child who would need his care, which is not the same thing at all. And he’d been prepared for that, of course, prepared to make a home for just the two of them in Kelly’s cabin, away from everyone and everything else, but he doesn’t know how to do that anymore. For one thing, the cabin would be such an obvious place for them to go, and he’s not that foolish. The safe, isolated life by the lake isn’t available to them anymore.
And besides, it wouldn’t be enough for Jack anyway. Or, maybe it would be enough for this Jack, so depleted, but he’s used to such a wider world, and a home base with people in it, and Cas doesn’t know how to give that to him on his own. He lost his ability to be Jack’s whole world when he died and came back to a fully grown Jack in the bunker. A Jack who had missed him, but who had survived without him. A child who could give him joy beyond his expectations, but one who needs a home from Cas now, in a way he doesn’t know how to provide.
He sees a sign for a motel and turns off the road. Motels were a home for… Motels can be a home.
Jack stands closely behind Cas as they wait at the check-in desk. There’s a minor altercation happening between the receptionist and one of the guests, and he can feel Jack tensing up a little at it. Perhaps he should have kept driving – not just turned off at the next motel he saw. The point was to get Jack safely sequestered somewhere comfortable, not to have to stand waiting for an indefinite amount of time while voices rise.
“We can, um, we can go somewhere else, if you want,” he says to Jack quietly. “We don’t have to stay here.”
“Here’s okay,” Jack responds, with a sort of forced note in his voice, as though he’s trying to reassure Cas. “It’s like the motel I stayed in with Sam and Dean, when I helped them kill the shapeshifter and Dean was pr–”
Something in Cas’s face seems to make Jack break off. “I’m glad you like it,” he manages to say. Jack nods slightly uncertainly, but doesn’t say anything else.
It’s not an unpleasant room, he supposes. The walls are a gentle cream, and they’re dotted with bright seascapes, which do well to lift the room’s atmosphere, even if they’re somewhat incongruous with the local geography.
Cas’s eyes rest on a particularly striking picture of blue and green waves crashing on a rocky shore late at night. Under it, a woman is sat drinking a coffee, with her baby in a stroller beside her. She’s facing away from Cas: sandy hair falling over her face, with one hand wrapped around her mug, and the other protectively stroking the stroller’s handle. The movement is absentminded – instinctive – but it still rocks the stroller ever so slightly, the mother lulling her baby without even meaning to, Cas thinks.
The stroller is facing both the mother and Cas, so Cas can just see the way the baby’s face peeks out of the blanket it’s nestled in. Crocheted – someone has to have made that. The baby’s eyes are softly closed in sleep, its face painfully peaceful.
Cas understands the cuteness mechanism that exists in humans – the way physical characteristics associated with youth such as large eyes and high foreheads elicit an increased caregiving response. He’s never found it to have any particular effect on him. He sees himself as having a respect for infants, rather than the unthinking draw humans seem to feel – a respect garnered by virtue of the way they combine intense vulnerability with untold potential as growing mortal individuals. The bald fact of their need for protection is enough motivation for him without any need for something so superficial as aesthetic concerns.
An elderly male guest with a toddling grandson hanging off his arm walks past and peers into the stroller.
“Beautiful baby,” he says wonderingly, when the mother looks up at him. His grandson reaches into the stroller with eager hands, and gentle wrinkled fingers come down to still them. “No, sweetheart, you need to be careful. She’s only small.”
Both of them are only small. No one would dream of sending either of them into danger – of not doing all they could to protect them from harm.
By all rights, Jack should be just as small as the little boy. Without the visual reminder, it’s easy to forget that in chronological terms he’s only two.
The baby makes a little stirring noise and its mother’s attention flies to it immediately. It’s still fast asleep. Its mother readjusts its blankets a little, and then pats them in satisfaction, then slowly bringing one finger to its cheek. She remains transfixed even as it stays unmoving aside from the gentle rise and fall of its breathing. Perhaps even by its breathing. There’s nothing like looking at the evidence that your child is alive.
Cas had never really thought before to be pained by Jack’s decision to grow up fast – he had been too busy revelling in the connection it had given him. But the sway the infant form holds over humans is powerful – sometimes frustratingly so, in fact. He remembers seeing the lives of two children chosen over a virus threatening millions – all rational thought disarmed in favour of protecting a display of childlike innocence. Not that he would want for such a situation to arise concerning Jack, but it’s hard to be unmoved by the thought of Jack having anything resembling that protection, instead of all the burdens placed on him right from the beginning.
Burdens that Jack had simply absorbed. Cas’s inclination was always to be proud of him and the way he’s prepared to rise to every challenge – of course – but the fact that he would use his own soul… Cas supposes perhaps he had been led astray by Jack’s physical form into forgetting that he was just a child. His intention was to be as clear and as firm as the situation required, but perhaps he hadn’t been firm enough. He had tried though. If Jack just had listened to him, like he should…
The child in the stroller makes a small snuffling noise in its sleep. Infants can just be sheltered from the world; it is expected, in fact. Cas imagines returning from the Empty not to an adolescent boy so eager to be useful with his powers that he would kill a civilian, but instead to a baby kept safely away from all of that. Loved – he hopes – in his absence, and not going to Apocalypse World in an attempt to prove himself, or having his grace stolen by Lucifer, or dying, or burning his soul off, or…
He feels Jack’s hand grip onto the belt of his trenchcoat. Perhaps if he hadn’t died, Jack could have had that. A little selfish part of him is still grateful for the time he’s had with this Jack, however much it’s cost him. He supposes that’s another way he’s failed him – being misled by the joy that could be found with this nephil child he’d been blessed with rather than focussing on protecting them.
“Sir?” Cas looks up suddenly, to see the receptionist trying to get his attention.
“Um, I’m sorry, I –”
She smiles. “It’s okay, I get it.” She cocks her head towards Jack. “You must have been thinking about when he was that age.”
Cas looks back at Jack, whose forehead crinkles slightly in confusion. He swallows, and manages to plaster a fake smile onto his face.
“Something like that.”
The room they’re given a key to could almost be one from any of the motels Cas has been in over the last decade: slightly dirty cream painted walls; generic landscape prints hanging up hoping to brighten the place a little; two identical beds with neatly laid, but slightly stiff-looking dark blue bedclothes. They could be anywhere. It’s not a home – it’s just a resting point.
Cas switches the TV on to a nature documentary. A platypus swims over rocks at the bottom of a river, while the narrator’s voice rumbles over the top of it.
Normally, watching something like this would facilitate conversation between them, but now it just barely covers the silence. Cas should have thought. They have no structure anymore. No goals. He’s just doing a gap-filling exercise trying to make up for the life Jack has lost.
The image on the television transitions to the outback. Kangaroos hop across an arid landscape. Jack is just sitting perched on the very edge of his bed, as though ready to leave at the slightest reason.
Their lack of bags becomes suddenly pitiful to Cas. Duffles heaped on beds to unpack is how you begin to make these places feel inhabited, but neither of them has anything other than the clothes they’re wearing. Cas had been in such a hurry to leave to find Jack that he hadn’t even thought to bring anything with him. Jack’s still wearing that same jacket – it sitting tensely over his frame as he keeps his gaze directed towards the TV. He wants to be able to pull all of that tension out of him – he wrap Jack up in a small ball and keep him somewhere safe, where none of that can hurt him anymore. This motel room isn’t that. Cas’s truck wasn’t that.
A mother kangaroo anxiously searches for her missing joey and Cas snaps the TV off without thinking.
“Do you… want to… We could go for a walk?” he suggests helplessly.
“How long are we staying here?”
Cas’s heart sinks. He doesn’t look at Jack.
“I can find us somewhere else, if you would prefer I just… didn’t want to keep you cooped up in the truck. But we can… we could leave as soon as you like. There isn’t really anything to pack…”
“Oh, no it’s fine here. I just wondered how long we were staying.”
Cas lets his eyes skirt across to Jack. There’s an extra tightness to his posture that puts Cas on edge.
“As long as you like.”
“But when are we going to… Are we going back to Sam and Dean?”
“What.” Remembering how to vary the rate of vibration of his vessel’s vocal folds in order to produce a rising intonation is too effortful.
“They… didn’t want us to leave. Are we going to go back to them?”
“Why… why would you think we’d go back to them? After D– after he…”
“You mean after Dean tried to kill me.” Jack sounds so calm. It’s like a knife.
“Yes,” Cas eventually manages. He barely hears himself say it. “After… that. I had to take you away.”
“But are we going to go back?”
“No.” Cas still can’t bring himself to look at Jack’s face. It’s bad enough to hear Jack ask that, as though it’s not a question that makes Cas want to shut the two of them away in that room forever, or even better – find some pocket of his trueform to sequester Jack in, where no one could ever get to him again.
“Why?”
Cas blinks. “‘Why’?!”
“It’s not…” He pulls the cuffs of his jacket down over his hands. “I always knew he would do that. If he needed to.”
Something goes awry with the temperature regulation of Cas’s vessel. “What do you mean?” he says, very slowly.
“Oh,” says Jack, as though it’s just occurring to him that this is something in need of explanation. “He told me. When… when you were dead. That if I…” Cas can feel a slight flicker in Jack’s trueform – a tugging that evens itself out. “If it was necessary. Which he thought it would be." Jack's gaze is directed firmly towards the corner of the room, away from Cas. "That he’d do it.”
Cas feels the limbs of his vessel go weak. He’s relieved he’s still sitting down.
“I… You never told me.” It sounds feeble. To self-indulgently think of himself as Jack’s father, and then need to be told something like that. To not just see it, the way a human parent would. When Cas had come back from the dead, Jack had seemed so light, and full of life, when the whole time he had had this burden hanging over him. A burden that Dean had…
“No,” says Jack, and the casualness of it wraps itself around Cas’s vessel’s lungs. “Things were so nice, I wouldn’t have wanted…” Cas can hear Jack rubbing the sides of his shoes against each other – the gentle grating of the ridged rubber. “And besides, I showed him he didn’t have to. I mean, I don’t think he can always have been sure, but I tried – like Sam said –, and it was enough.”
“Sam…?”
Jack nods. “Sam was very kind to me. He said he wouldn’t let it happen. Of course now, it’s understandable that… the box…” Jack’s voice quickens nervously.
“Yes,” Cas manages to say quietly. “The box, exactly, we’re not going to…” He thinks of Jack running away after the accident with the security guard in Dodge City. He thinks of Jack’s guilt and despair, and the anxious search to find him, and the fact that not once had Sam let on that Jack might be afraid that Dean would kill him. He remembers Dean pulling a gun on Jack; remembers Dean shooting Jack in the back; remembers Dean not lowering the equaliser until Jack was kneeling. Remembers watching helplessly from where he had been flung on the ground as Jack chose to kneel. “We’re not going to go back to them.”
“If Dean had, though…” Jack begins again, unsteadily. “Then none of this… Then Mary…” He looks across at Cas. “I am sorry.”
Cas rushes to his side. “No, no, no. It wasn’t your fault.” Jack starts twisting the cord of Cas’s trenchcoat in his hands, but doesn’t look at him. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for, okay?”
Jack takes a small breath. “I do… I do wish he hadn’t been right. Or at least that I hadn’t persuaded him he wasn’t.”
“No…” Cas grasps Jack’s shoulders, and hopes Jack registers it as an attempt to comfort, rather than a desperate search for an anchor. He hopes the firmness of his grip covers up the shaking in his vessel’s hands.
Dean had taken Jack fishing, and comforted him after nightmares, and told him he would kill him. And Jack doesn’t think that was wrong.
“Jack, no… please don’t think that.”
If Dean had… would it have happened before Jack resurrected him, or after? He would rather rotted on the floor of the Empty forever, than come back to a bunker where Dean had… Or would they even have told him? Perhaps they would have considered it easier to just tell him that the nephil hadn’t survived the birth, and he would never truly have known of Jack at all – aside from as this force that had existed within Kelly – never would have known the child and anything he’d experienced in his short, painful life.
I begged for him to come back rings coolly in his head.
“You can’t think that. Cas doesn’t remember choosing to bury Jack in his arms, but he’s got Jack’s face smushed against his chest and he can feel Jack’s heartbeat against him – an almost blindsiding comfort – and he’s not sure he’s ever going to let go. “Please don’t think that – he wasn’t right.” Water falling from his vessel’s tear ducts are getting the back of Jack’s jacket damp.
Jack is stood stiffly, letting himself be held but not hugging back. Maybe it’s selfish to even think to want the comfort of an embrace from his child in a situation like this. The one thing Cas can do for Jack is carry the whole burden of this for him now – or try to.
“You needed…” He needs Jack to believe him. “You just needed guidance, and training, and support, and I should have been there to give it to you, and you should never have…” The rate of expenditure of his vessel’s breath is making him almost lightheaded.
“You should never have had to hear that.” He gives Jack another squeeze, though he’s not sure which of them it’s to bolster. “Dean was wrong.”
“Do you really mean it?” Jack’s voice sounds so small that Cas could almost think he imagined it.
“Yes,” he breathes out, as he feels droplets leave his chin and land on Jack’s collar. “Yes of course I mean it and I’m sorry – I’m so, so sorry. He’s never… nothing like that’s ever going to happen to you again.” He presses a kiss to the top of Jack’s head. “I’m sorry. No one should ever have made you feel like that. He was wrong – do you understand?”
“I understand that you think it.” It almost makes Cas want to scream, but suddenly there’s a small movement, as he relaxes in Cas’s arms, and snakes his hands to meet each other behind Cas. Still limp, and lost-feeling, but he’s holding Cas back. There’s nothing Cas can do for him now but cling to him tighter.