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They get back to the bunker at two o'clock in the morning. Sam had offered to drive, citing the fact that Dean's head had been bashed in for what seems like the thousandth time this month, but his brother had taken to the wheel with white knuckles and a death stare.
Cas's ugly champagne-colored Continental is parked outside. Sam silently thanks the universe (not God, not this time). While there are times that Cas serves to heighten Winchester family drama, most of the time he lessens it.
He's in the kitchen reading when they walk inside. For once, it's not some translation of an ancient text or a dissertation on the mating cycles of werewolves. (Which Sam dearly wishes he'd never found). It's a dog-eared copy of one of Vonnegut's. Sam recognizes it from Dean's bedside table.
Cas must have heard them come in, but his face lights up in that weird half smile of his when he spots them. He stands up, but Dean blows straight past him on his way to his room.
"Rough hunt?"
Sam shakes his head. "Something like that."
He flops down at the table. Dean's been meaning to swap out the ridiculous bench for something better, but given recent events, Sam can't really blame him for not getting around to it.
"What're you doing?"
Cas--who Sam knows forgets the humans have to eat on a regular basis--is bustling around the kitchen.
"Tea," he replies, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Dean likes it when he's upset."
There's only one kind of drink Sam has ever known his brother to turn to when he's upset, and it's certainly not tea.
“He lets you in?”
In Sam’s experience, there’s nothing that can pry Dean out of his room when he’s in a mood. Cas shakes his head.
“I put it down outside the door. He gets it eventually.”
Completely unaware of Sam’s confused staring at his back, Cas sets the kettle to boiling and sits back down across from him, hands folded. He has that soul searching look in his eyes that he usually directs at Dean. Sam shifts uncomfortably.
“Something’s troubling you.”
And, okay, maybe that is a little bit creepy. He can’t really blame Dean for being weirded out sometimes.
“I’ve—uh—” He’s not sure how to put it, not after Dean’s reaction. “I’ve been having visions again.”
Which is probably the sixth or seventh time he’s had to say that sentence. You’d think once was enough.
“Of what?”
Cas leans forward, the tip of his tie dragging across the smooth surface of the table.
“The Cage.”
He sucks in a breath, despite the fact that he once told Sam that he didn’t need to breathe. Sam knows he’s remembering his own time dealing with the hallucinations it had brought on. A part of him is bitter—Purgatory, in its own way, healed Cas, while he still has to deal with the memories.
“I think they’re messages from God.”
He’d known from the get-go that Dean would be skeptical, but he’d expected understanding from Cas of all people.
“Why would God be sending you visions of the Cage?” he says instead.
Sam swallows past the tightness of his throat. “I think he wants me to go back in.”
It’s no easier to say the third time around. Sam doesn’t know why he thought it would be. Cas just stares at him for a few seconds as he processes.
“Sam, why would he want that?”
He’s all earnest eyes and concerned. In a way, that’s worse than Sully’s lighthearted subject change or Dean’s anger.
“I mean, ever since I got out, I’ve been doing nothing except make things worse. I opened Purgatory and the Leviathans got out—”
“Actually,” Cas corrects delicately, “that was me.”
“—And then I didn’t even manage to close the gates of Hell—”
“—That was your brother.”
“The Darkness,” Sam finishes, because there’s no way that can’t be pinned on him.
Everyone had warned him. Dean had wanted the Book of the Damned destroyed. Charlie—God, he can’t even think about Charlie—had urged caution. Cas had wanted to stay out of it all. And after all that, he hadn’t listened and they all had paid the price. Dean in knowing the cost of his freedom, Charlie with her life, and Cas with his autonomy. Not to mention all the souls Amara had eaten and all the monsters that had been converted to fight her.
“I think he wants to prevent me from doing worse.”
That was the part he hadn’t said out loud yet.
“Has it ever occurred to you how much good you’ve done?”
When Sam doesn’t answer, he continues.
“You’ve fixed each and every one of your mistakes, Sam Winchester,” he says seriously, catching Sam’s eye and holding it. “Not many people can say the same. My Father loves his creations. He wouldn’t ask you to do that.”
Sam shakes his head, dropping his gaze to the tabletop and Castiel’s wayward tie. “He asked Abraham to kill Isaac.”
“And then recanted,” Cas reminds him. “You’re a good man. He knows that. He won’t ask anything of you that you cannot deliver.”
It’s probably a good thing that the tea kettle begins to whistle, because Sam’s eyes are beginning to sting and he doesn’t want to have that conversation with Cas right now.
“Cas—”
Cas shakes his head, effectively silencing him as he gets up. He walks over to the stovetop and fills three mugs with the hot water. Sam manages a smile at his disgusted expression when Cas realizes they only have tea bags and not tea leaves.
“Drink up,” he says at last when he puts one of the mugs down in front of Sam. His eyes do that squinty thing. “I’ll be back in a minute and I want to see some of it gone.”
He must have adopted at least some of those mother hen tendencies from Dean. Sam watches him wander back out of the room, both steaming mugs still in hand.
Sam doesn’t know when it happens, but when he wakes up, he’s in his bed with an empty mug of tea beside him and not a single nightmare to remember.