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Most of the times that Castiel has died, Dean got to shake his head in fond frustration, soured by the first faint twinges of grief, and chastise the angel for letting himself be cannon fodder.
Even that first time, when he held Raphael at bay in the hopes that Dean could prevent Sam from breaking the final seal. Standing in Chuck’s (God’s?) gore-streaked apartment, watching him pick one of Cas’s teeth out of his hair, he could at least acknowledge the waste for what it was. The byproduct of misplaced heroics. The stupid bastard got himself vaporized, as if he’d be of more use to them dead than alive.
The second time, much the same, except then, of course, he had to watch Castiel be destroyed, viscera spraying out in every direction, at Lucifer’s cruel behest. Not even sacrificing himself to advance their position, not really. Just to buy them a few minutes – to buy Dean a few minutes, if he’s being totally honest with himself.
After Sam’s descent into the cage, while Bobby was still dead, while Cas was still dead, while his despair was a living thing, done gestating under his sternum, ready to rip clean through on its way to the surface, he’d somehow had the presence of mind to silently admonish Cas for calling Michael an “ass-butt”, like that was anything. He also had time to feel shame of his own, for allowing his last word to Castiel be that same ridiculous expletive, spoken with open derision. It was particularly bitter, to think that the last experience that Cas would have had of Dean amounted to little more than common mockery.
His death in the clutches of the Leviathan could be fully attributed as a consequence of Castiel’s own actions, the logical extreme of his own myriad hubristic mistakes. Dean had wished – desperately, embarrassingly – that somehow, Castiel would survive the ordeal, and when it seemed like he had not, his disappointment molted into anger. He stood there, barely able to look at his ruined body, and damned him, called him a child, as if his disobedience of Dean had been the gravest of his sins. And as though devised to punish him specifically, Castiel awakened, only to be ravaged from within before his very eyes. Dean, incapable or unwilling to learn this particular lesson, let those bitter criticisms (“Dumb son of a bitch.”) fall from his lips again not ten minutes later, when Cas’s body disappeared into the reservoir, his jacket drifting out to land practically at his feet. As if God were poking at Dean with a stick, to see how much it would take to make him snap. Hell, knowing what he knows about God now? Maybe he was.
When April killed him, the exhaustion of the same choreography, playing out yet again, had him forgetting at first any emotion besides raw panic, and it was honestly a welcome change. All these years, skating around on the surface of grief, only to at last break through a weak spot in the ice, to be overcome by the frigid crush of it on all sides. But it was temporary – a taste of what awaits him when all his defenses will eventually fail.
Ezekiel healed Castiel, and the whole time, Dean kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the sudden miracle to be ripped away again. It seemed that good things only ever happened to Dean as a means of facilitating the immediate onslaught of further bad things. The adrenaline flushing through his system, making his hands numb and his tongue heavy, had him practically vibrating with the need to touch Cas, to confirm that he was warm and breathing and restored, but he kept that impulse at bay. And when he was certain that Cas was okay, the familiar specter of his anger flared brightly back into existence, to haunt him once more. He scolded Cas like a child (“Never do that again!”), as if Cas had any say in the matter (at least in this particular instance).
Dean was unsurprised to find that unleashing his frustration on Cas did nothing to ease the clenching ache of vestigial fear wrapped tight around his lungs. At least the arctic shock of sorrow was gone, not even a memory anymore, just a flash of winter in his veins, so brief and intense that he could almost convince himself it wasn’t cold at all, that it was the kind of heat that prickles and fries your nerve endings, tricks them into sending the wrong kind of pain signal to the brain in their clumsy haste.
Now that Cas is dead (again), killed by Lucifer (again), Dean finds himself reaching for that familiar heat inside himself, the magma slithering around his heart like a moat, but it eludes him. His anger is just gone, drained, leaving only cold empty caverns in its wake, a labyrinthine complex that even he cannot navigate. Cas is dead on the ground, and Dean knows he’s angry with him, but he can’t feel the anger anymore. Or perhaps, he just can’t feel it yet. In any case, he’s finally finding out what the anger’s been hiding, all these years, what it’s been protecting him from. Anguish, ice cold and clear blue. Nothing is obscured, anymore. There’s no smoke in the way, no fire to feed. There’s just glacial clarity, the smooth and endless sea of it, in every direction.
There isn’t even any way to avenge him, because Lucifer himself is sealed away in that wasteland, out of Dean’s reach. There’s nothing left for Dean to cling to. He’s adrift in his own disconsolation, and he’s going to drown in it.
And then, he remembers.
The kid. The nephil. The monster.
It’s his fault. Cas bought his utopia pitch, and it got him killed.
His anger is back, and bright, and a welcome distraction.
Even when the kid gets away, it doesn’t gutter or wane, not even a fraction.
Even when they catch up to him at the police station, he’s warmed by the hate that’s growing bright and hungry in his heart.
Even when he dresses Cas for cremation, when they stand and bear witness to the smoke of his body rising up to Heaven, his resentment flickers and crackles beneath his skin, a twin flame to the funeral pyre.
Even when they bring him home, drag him along on a shifter case, the condemnation is comfortable, cozy. He gets inklings that Jack isn’t the threat he’s pegged him for, and he feeds those doubts to the furnace that powers him.
The fire finally sputters out when Jack’s powers save him and Sam, because there’s just nothing left to burn. It isn’t Jack’s fault, and Dean can’t pretend any longer that it is, even to himself. There’s just no one around to blame, not even Cas. He’s back to the serene and inescapable numbness of loss, and this time he knows better than to fight it. It’s hard to even breathe, with the weight of it, how it gums up his lungs in apneic fits. He expects it to keep hurting, for the pressure to build and build until it crushes him.
Dean does not expect the stillness, the calm that overtakes him. It happens slow, so slow he almost misses it. They’re on some convoluted ghost case, and Sam’s been babying him, treating him like a dog who’s about to be euthanized. He isn’t sure if Sam understands how close to the truth he really is. The kid he’s been busting his ass trying to save dies anyway, and he didn’t know he was waiting for one final failure to push him over the edge, but he must have been, because it’s just too easy, too clean, to push that needle in and stop his own heart. Euphoric, almost. He’s heard that, about drowning, that sometimes those final seconds before you lose consciousness, you feel light, free.
Standing in Billie’s library, coming clean about it all, Dean feels free. He’s glad, perversely, for only a fraction of a second, that Castiel is dead, so he doesn’t have to be here to see Dean give up. A very long time ago, Castiel made himself into a bomb, easily could have died, just to give Dean the opportunity to rescue Adam from Zachariah, from Michael. Carved a sigil into his chest with a box cutter in a warehouse parking lot. Dean admonished him, even then, the anger protecting him from his fear. Isn’t that suicide? He had asked, and Castiel regarded him as coolly as he ever had – Maybe it is. But then I won’t have to watch you fail.
It should have been obvious, even then. It should always have been obvious, that Castiel was only ever on Dean’s side. That even when he fucked up, even when he made universe-shattering mistakes, he made them because he was doing what he believed would be best for Dean. Had it really been so hard for him to see that? Had it really taken him five deaths to grasp that Cas wasn’t stupid, or childish, or malintentioned, that he was only too willing to suffer, to die, for humanity – for Dean?
He'd cracked the case, after all these years, and it had never mattered less than it did right now, because he would never have the opportunity to put this new perspective to good use. No, the best thing Dean could do now was die. Stop dragging more innocent people into his messes. Stop weighing his brother down. Besides, if there was any kindness left in the universe earmarked for Dean Winchester, maybe he'd have the good fortune to end up wherever Castiel had gone. It's a nice thought. Warm. Not scalding like anger, just warm, like a blush across your cheeks.
It's a good feeling. Dean thinks that he could drown in it.