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It’s darker than he’d thought it’d be.
Dean’s standing in a corner of nothing while looking into its center, unable to tell the difference. The pitch black around him feels suffocating in a way he’s never experienced before, like the lack of color is proof of the lack of air available.
He can’t see anything except his body, which seems to be strikingly contradicting to the void around him. Whatever he’s made of and whatever the Empty is made of is so vastly dissimilar, that he almost glows in its presence.
He takes a deep breath, though there is no oxygen, and he calls, “Cas?”
There’s a deep rumble below him—no, above him—or, shit—there’s a rumble coming from everywhere and nowhere at all. The sky shakes, though there is no sky, and a voice booms from every (none) of the corners, it says, “You’ve come for the angel.”
It says it like a fact. As if the idea of Dean coming for Cas has been echoing across the atoms of the universe for centuries—it’s become molecular gossip that has rippled in waves across dimensions until somehow reaching here. Here, the land outside the universe, the land where there is no land or universe.
“We can skip the introductions, then.” Dean replies, sounding confident though he feels small against the Empty. Feels like an ant in the sea.
“We had a deal, him and I.” It says, its voice carrying and somehow not moving at all, “What makes you think I’ll allow you to break it?”
“I don’t give a fuck about what you allow. I’m not leaving without him.”
The Empty raises an eyebrow, though there are no eyebrows or face or body, Dean knows it raises an eyebrow, “You’re quite confident for a mere mortal.”
“I need him.” Dean says back. He meant it to sound threatening, but it comes out honest. Too honest a thing to say to a creature who deals and steals happiness. He exhales, tries to sound rougher, “I’m takin’ him. So, how do you wanna do this?”
The Empty laughs, though it is incapable of laughter and emotion, it laughs and shakes the invisible ground, “I’ll give him to you.”
“You’ll—what?” Dean asks, his heart rising to his throat. “You’ll give him to me?”
And the Empty smiles as a response. There’s no figure capable of a smile, but Dean can hear it smile, can feel it in the molecules around him, when it says, "On one condition.”
“Anything.” The response comes far too quick for a man negotiating with creation’s opposite.
“I will place him behind you,” the Empty instructs as Dean’s heart picks up to an impossible speed, “Do not look back.”
A small light appears at the end of nothing. It is so minuscule, it looks like a grain of rice. The Empty points it out, commands, "Go."
Dean doesn't move. The grain of rice is so small and it is so quiet around him. "Go?"
"Yes, go."
The Empty is nothing. It is nothing in nothing. A black hole sucking up another black hole—that is what the empty is. And Dean’s inside it, inside the hole inside another hole, looking for a guy who shines brighter than the sun on a cloudless day. He’s incandescent on the most dull of days and the area around Dean is impossibly dark.
Dean shakes his head, “I don’t—”
“You don’t trust me to tell you the truth?” The empty snarls, groans, and festers from each of the rounded nonexistent corners, “You don’t trust that he’ll follow you?”
The first step he takes is heavy. It weighs and does not sound across the great expanse of hollowness. It’s also not followed by another immediate step. He is the only thing breathing, the only noise rising, and he asks, because he has to know, “Cas? You there?”
There is no reply.
“He’s there.” The empty assures. There’s a tilt to its voice like it might be lying. Or maybe it’s amused. Dean can’t tell, he’s not used to lifeless creatures forming sentences at him.
The second, third, and fourth steps are just as earth quaking as the first. He walks—drags his feet below him, closer to the blinding light leading them home, still so far away, still the size of a flame. There’s no indication that Cas is walking alongside him, but Dean hopes he is.
“It was really fucked up. What you did.” Dean says, because he can’t look, and he can’t hear, but he can still talk. “What kind of an asshole does that? What kind of a—” He swallows, keeps a steady rhythm of foot after foot, “You said. The thing you said. Why’d you say it?”
He’s practiced this in his room a few times. What he’d say if he ever saw Cas again. At least then, the walls would hum back. Stare back and hold him up if he couldn’t keep his knees from buckling. But here, in this vacuum, what is there to rely on?
“Thought I was dyin’.” Dean confesses, the light has turned into the size of a dime, and he keeps staring it down, determined, “Watchin’ you get taken, I mean. Felt like—felt like you took my heart with you, y’know?”
There aren’t any footsteps behind him. There’s no flutter of wings or exhale or exasperated sigh. He’s—he feels alone.
“Couldn’t go on without you, man. S’why I’m here.” Why is it so fucking quiet? Dean wasn’t this quiet when Cas said his piece. He’d been frozen, maybe, but not quiet. Never quiet. “I—I need you to be there. I can’t—don’t know how I’m supposed to go on if you aren't there.”
The empty’s stopped replying, too. The rice turned into dime and now it’s the size of a baseball and it’s so fucking. Hollow. It is overwhelmingly vacant around him and the Empty likes to play games doesn’t it? Likes to trick poor schmucks like Dean who are desperate hopeful bastards.
Dean remembers how each room felt with Cas there. There’d be a sort of electricity around them. A spark of something. But now, fuck, now, there isn’t—the atmosphere’s so fucking stiff and desolate.
Dean swallows, reaches an arm back, still walking, “Gimme your hand.”
No one touches him.
“Empty didn’t say nothin’ about skin on skin, man. C’mon.” His steps stutter and his hand shakes, “C’mon.”
The light is the size of a window. He’s getting closer—no, no, no they’re getting closer. Both of them. ‘Cause Cas is there. The empty said he’s right there. He’s—
“I just wanna know you’re okay.” He looks at the ground, tries to cheat, tries to find another set of feet with his peripheral vision. “M’not leavin’ without you, you dick. So you better—you better gimme a fuckn’ sign or I’ll stay here. Forever if I gotta.”
His voice doesn’t even bounce off the fucking walls. There are no walls. Or feet or breaths or hands touching his own. There is no answer to any of his questions. And he stretches his arm as far as it can go behind him, as far as his unused muscles can, he begs, “Please, Cas.”
The light has grown to the size of a door and it’s too quiet. Too barren and null. So unlike Cas at the end of everything. And Dean can’t leave—he can’t just—he came here for someone and if he’s not—if this is a trick then, then—
“Please.”
One more step. That’s all he needs. He’s one step away, just one step, but Cas isn’t answering—he isn’t answering or touching Dean’s hand and the Empty lies.
Fuck. Fuck, it’s too quiet, the Empty lies, and Dean can’t leave without him, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t, and the door is right there, it’s right there but Dean can’t leave, he can’t leave because Cas isn’t behind him, he was never behind him, and he turns, oh God, Dean turns around and—
Cas smiles, that deep soft smile of his that edges on a little sad, looks at Dean with something that looks a lot like love, and says, with no ache or grudge, “I forgive you.”
And then he’s ripped away. One more time.