Chapter Text

Anemoia:

(Noun) the desire to go back to a time you were never a part of

“When I lost you, I lost a part of me too. You left a hole in me no one will be able to fill, because it will always belong to you.”

—S.S.W

The pendulum always swung both ways. The other shoe always dropped. The world always ended one way or another. In the life of Dean Winchester, the end of the world was sometimes literal. But most of the time it was simply a crushing weight on his shoulders, a blurry line of sight, and an aching hole in his chest he never could fix—it did not matter how much beer he shoved in the cavity or blood he spilled in its wake.

No case could fix this. No amount of depressants could dull the pain as it plunged him into sleep. And no heart-to-heart with his brother could rectify what had happened. No matter how hard Sam had been trying.

Dean turned over in bed, shoving himself further into his memory foam mattress and paper flat pillow. He didn’t remember feeling tired, but the necessity of going to bed was unrelated to rest. He just needed a break. So with whisky on his breath, he stripped to his boxers, laid in bed, and crept to the verge of black out.

He replayed the moment over and over again—as the antichrist's footsteps clicked through the hallway, obviously pacing, just like he did every fucking night—forcing himself not to cry. He failed, of course. The stiffness of Cas’s corpse (Or, well, Jimmy Novak's technically—no, wait fuck that. Cas’s body. It was Cas.) still replayed on his fingertips. He obsessed over what it was like to tie his best friend's legs together with a yellow curtain. To place the body next to Kelley’s and let it burn. To give his one and only friend a hunter's funeral. 

Dean did not cry into his pillow. Instead, he clutched his fist close to his side, fingernails digging into his skin, eventually drawing blood. Not that he cared or felt it anymore. Not that he felt much of anything—other than grief, maybe rage—anymore.

Castiel was dead.

Again.

And his (inadvertent) murderer was pacing in the god damn hallway for the third night in a row.

“Lucifer killed me, Dean,” that gravely voice whispered in the back of his mind. “Don’t blame Jack. It’s not fair to him or to you or Sam… or me—”

“Shut up, shut up!” Dean yelled, not knowing better. 

That voice is too loud, too hard, too gentle. He couldn’t stomach it.

So instead, another voice took over. “Just lying here like a dumb son of a bitch.” 

Damn it, Dad, he thought. 

“Just layin’ here crying about you dead ‘best friend’ like a damn fa—”

There was a soft tap on his door—not a knock, this was too quiet—and Sam pushed it open, beams of warm light flooding into his dark room. “Dean?” Sam whispered.

“Fuck off, Sammy!” he yelled, immediately regretting it.

It wasn’t that Dean wanted to be an ass. 

“Yes, you do,” John whispered.

“No, you don’t,” Cas argued. “You’re grieving, Dean, it’s okay.”

Sam sighed, breaking up Dean's internal argument. Sammy didn't even try to stay tonight. He simply shut the door behind him and walked away. That’s a first, but it was for the best, Dean knew. Every night for the past week, Sam had tried to ‘talk it out.’ And every night for the past week, Dean had yelled. He didn't know why Sam bothered coming back. He didn’t know why anyone bothered coming back to him. Then again, some people never would. Not anymore.

“Is he okay?” the kid—Jack, the voice in his head reminded him—asked Sam on the other side of the door.

“No, he’s not.”

“Can I do anything?”

“No, I don’t think so, Jack.”

“Shut up,” Dean groaned, throwing his pillow over his ears, drowning out his family’s voices (as if the spawn of satan could ever be family, no matter what Cas would say).

“Damn broken fool,” John said.

“Shut up,” Cas responded.

Dean lingered on this thought for a long while. He obsessed over every word his brother had said to the kid, though the words were nothing special. Dean couldn’t take it. He needed to break up the thought pattern; he needed to snap the skipping record in half. And he did. This was just the only way he knew how: he downed the rest of a warm beer (rotting half finished on his side table from one of the nights before) and thought of all the ways he could, rather easily, get his hands on something a little stronger. The night consumed him before he could set any of his plans in motion. For a few mere hours after that, he finally didn't think. 

****

When he woke up, he could feel the chokehold on his heart. And he knew that when he would go back to sleep in twenty or so hours, he'd feel it then too. Hell, there was not a time when he didn't feel the weight of his thoughts anymore. It’s only been a week—fuck, how could it only be seven days—yet for some reason, the day the world stole one person from him, the world stole the color from life with it. Everything felt gray, bland, and pointless to an end. Part of Dean wondered why he bothered to keep going. 

But every time, almost without fail, when these thoughts became too much, his brother would text—probably about dinner or something futile and unrelated to Dean’s momentary well-being—and he would be reminded what he owed. Dean Winchester did not save the world over and over again just to leave it willingly. Plus, who else would step up and do the job? That’s right, no one. Dean could not die; he had too much to do.

Down the hallway, the echoes of conversation and a hit of laughter—who can laugh at a time like this?—stifled into his room. He groaned, turning over again. 

The idiot, Dean thought, the complete and utter fucking idiot. 

“I may be an ‘idiot’, Dean,” he could practically feel the air quotes in his tone, “but you’re broken.”

“Damn straight he is,” John added unnecessarily.

Of course, real-life Cas wouldn't say anything of the sort—John would—but the voice that lived in Dan's head took some creative liberties. It jumped from warm to cold depending on Dean's mood and what was floating through his broken system. A swinging pendulum of self-pity.

“I know, Cas…” he muttered, dragging himself upright. Castiel did not die for Dean to rot in his room. 

He placed one bare foot onto the cold flooring of his room in the bunker, a chill running up his leg. Slowly, he got up, pulling on sweatpants and his robe. He wandered into the bathroom, forcing a brush through his hair, cleaning his teeth, staring at his sunken expression in the bathroom mirror. He quickly decided a shower would take too much energy, so he left his room and did his best to not be a complete dick.

“Morning,” he said, entering the kitchen. Coffee and pancake batter lingered in the air, Sam and Jack at the small metal table, their conversation coming to a halt.

“Hello, Dean,” Jack said.

Sam shot Dean a look. Dean bit back a comment. He wandered over to the coffee machine, nausea taking over his former appetite. Hello, Dean. For the first time in his life, Dean was not hungry. 

“How're you doing?” Sam asked instead, a knowingness to his voice.

“Fine,” he brushed him off. “Find a case yet?” 

One sip of coffee at a time, the knot in his throat loosened.

“Not yet,” Jack told him. “But we've been looking into something–”

Dean nearly choked on his coffee. “We?”

Sam cleared his throat, shooting Jack a sideways glance. “I've been teaching Jack a thing or two. How to find cases, basic monster knollage—”

“You sure that's the best move?”

“Dean—” Sam groaned.

“What?” he snapped back.

“Don't talk about Jack like he's not here.” 

This wasn't the first time they've had this argument, nor one like it. 

“It's fine, Sam,” Jack whispered. The look in his eye was far too reminiscent of a lost puppy (or Cas, at times). 

"Pfft. See? It's fine.” Dean downed the rest of his coffee, knowing it was not fine. “So you've been looking into somethin’?”

Jack grinned, a wide-eyed, child-like grin. Something so pure for a being so obviously evil.  “Resurrection spells.”

“But, er, nothing has come up that'd work on Angels,” Sam added. “Not yet.”

Of course not. 

Dean nodded. “Right.”

It’s been nothing but a week of dead ends. They were all sick of it, but, simultaneously, none of them were quite willing to throw in the towel yet. But that’s just the Winchester way, wasn’t it? A family of damn fools. Mostly dead fools at this point.

Just as Dean took the first few steps out of the kitchen, mug in hand, feeling out of his skin, Jack spoke up. “But I have a few questions.”

Dean, reluctantly, turns back. “About what?”

“My father.”

“Lusifer?!”

Jack sighed. “Castiel.”

Sam's eyes widened. “Jack, maybe another time would be better—”

“No, Sam. It's fine. You wanna know about Cas.” Dean chuckled, a bitter laugh from a tired, grieving man. The kind of laugh to come from the bits of despair taking root in Dean’s stomach. “Well, it's simple. He is… was…” as he tried to find the proper words, his imaginary conversation from a moment ago came to mind, “an idiot.”

Somewhere in the corner of his eye—in a place normally blinded by whisky—the ghost of a trenchcoat glimmered. He should have mixed something into his coffee. He hated saying this kind of thing; he hated how it made him feel. He hated knowing how it would make Cas feel every time he said something like it to his face.

 But he was an amazing idiot, a part of Dean thought, but didn't say, who somehow always found the best in me even when I didn't. Someone who fought and believed with every part of himself. Someone who was just trying his best and would always try his best. Sure, he was a little misguided, but fuck it, aren’t we all? And I never told him how great he was. 

“He messed up everything he tried,” a different part of Dean carried on bitterly, “was a blind fool, and had a stick so far up his ass—”

“That's enough, Dean,” Sam snapped. Sometimes Dean forgot he wasn’t Cas’s only friend; he and Sam were close after all, but as Cas once said, Sam and he lacked a certain ‘profound bond.’ 

Whatever that meant.

“And worse than that, he's a dead idiot. A dead idiot who's never coming back—”

He dropped his coffee mug, ceramic shards glazing the tile floor. 

To me, he thinks. He's never coming back to me.

Something like this was bound to happen in hindsight; they were all just lucky he dropped the mug instead of throwing it.

Jack stared back at him, a glint of fear or panic or maybe worry in his eye. Sam let out a disappointed wince. And Dean just gawked at the broken ceramic around his bare feet. He was lucky he didn’t get cut. Maybe—

“We all miss him, Dean,” Jack muttered, “I'm sorry.”

Dean just shook his head, looking down, trying desperately to hide the redness in his eyes. Not tears… never tears. “No,” he breathlessly told him. “You don't get to miss someone you never met, kid! You don't have the right, not after—”

“Dean!” Sam yells. “Hallway! Now!”

“Sam…”

His brother pushed him out of the kitchen and away from Jack. Dirty dishes were left untouched in the sink, broken mug shards abandoned on the floor, all left for Jack to clean up. Not that he minded. The week-old nephilum didn’t know anything else.

“No. You know exactly what you're doing, and I need you to cut this shit out,” Sam hissed once they found a place down the hallway. With his mojo, Jack could probably still hear them, but that didn’t cross Dean's or Sam’s minds.

Dean bit down, clutching his jaw until it ached. For a moment, he hated his brother. “What am I doing then, Sam? Huh?”

“I can’t believe I have to have this conversation with you again.”

He scuffed. “Sammy—”

“Have you even tried to sit down and talk to the kid!? Because… God, Dean, he’s funny! He loves Star Wars movies, and he tries, and he looks at the world with this optimism, which we can only aspire to. But you choose not to see it. You choose to project all your bullshit onto him because it’s easy. Because it’s what Dad did to us.”

“Now hold on a sec.”

“No. This is the last time I will talk to you about this. That kid—kid—is desperate for someone to care about him. He lost his dads and his mom before he even met them. That's a shitty hand. Be nice to him for a minute—just try it! See what you find. He's not all evil, Dean.”

Dean shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, well, he ain't all good either.” 

“I could say the same about you. Or mom. Or Cas. Or me. You're angry. Sure. Hell, you may even have the right to be. But Castiel’s death was not Jack's fault. And you know it.”

The ghost emerged from the corner of his eye, not tucked away for a second. His eyes were bluer than he remembered, but maybe that’s just Dean's imagination. From behind Sam, imaginary Castiel leaned on the wall, a small, barely there smile on his lips. For a moment, Dean could breathe again. Trench coat. Blue tie. Smile lines under his eyes. Cas.

“Fine,” he said, “I'll play nice. Now get off my ass.”

But Sam just couldn’t resist one last gut punch. “And stop acting like you are the only one in pain. You always do this. You did it with Bobby and Dad and—”

“Sammy!” Dean's voice cracked; he briefly wondered if Sam had ever heard such a thing. “I get it. Just…” Dean's gaze is locked on the ghost in the corner of the hallway. “Just stop.”

“Fine.”

Sam shoved past him, brushing his shoulder slightly, sending the bottom of his robe airborne. Dean stood there, frozen over. He was going to be sick, he knew it. Still, he chose to ignore it for just a moment longer. He wandered closer to the figment of a ghost; he wanted to run to it, but chose not to. 

Imaginary Cas smiled more. Real Cas only rarely smiled—Dean could only really remember seeing him once. Maybe twice.

None of it mattered, though.

The second Dean was in touching distance of the ghost the nasha became too much. Dean bolted past the ghost, just making it to the toilet in time before he puked what little he had in his stomach out. Once the coffee, a little bit of dinner from the night before, and whisky, and maybe some beer, were out, dry heaving took over. By the time he had nothing left to puke, his head was light, stomach in knots. 

When Dean finally got around to eating something, it was a handful of dry cornflakes, drowned in something alcoholic that burned his throat on the way down.

****

Later that day, as Dean walked past the library, a tan coat caught his eye. For a moment, his heart skipped a beat, and he doubled back on his step. Hello, Dean, that little voice whispers. 

“Oh, Hello, Dean,” Jack beamed from the end of the table, wearing a tan windbreaker and a navy t-shirt.

“Remember, Dean,” the voice says, “just be nice. That's it.”

“Hey, kid. Eh.” He awkwardly cleared his throat, wandering into the room, wondering if he'd be welcomed. “Whatcha working on?”

That was nice, right? Yes, definitely nice. But what was even the point? Dean wouldn’t be surprised if the next time Jack blinked his eyes were black. Hell, the kid was probably going to end the world all over again, no matter what Cas thought.

Jack squinted, looking down at the large book open in front of him. “Sam wanted me to learn about angel powers. Specifically, time travel and things of that nature. He thinks it’d be good for me to control my powers if I knew how they worked.”

Dean hesitated. “How’d he come to time travel?”

Jack shrugged, still staring at the huge book. “Sam said if I could understand the complicated stuff, the everyday stuff would be easier.”

Dean took a few steps closer, draping his arms on the back of a chair near Jack. Sam had been standing next to the kid 24/7 for the past week; being within six feet of the thing couldn’t be too dangerous. 

“Sounds like Sam to think of it like that. In my experience, the big stuff was always too big, ya know? Plus, time travel is fucked up.”

Jack tilted his head to the side, looking over to Dean wide-eyed. “Really?”

Too much, way too much.

Just be nice. Just try it.

“Yeah, er, almost got my parents and my grandparents ganked, met a Phoenix. Met future me in a zombie apocalypse. Not great times.”

“How many times have you done it?”

Dean chuckled. “Too damn many.” 

And for a moment, a brief moment, he forgot who he was talking to. God, the kid looked like Cas. How fucked is that? The kid may think of Cas as his father, but he wasn’t. The damn devil was. But that smile? That wasn’t the kind of thing one gets from someone evil. 

Fuck. 

“Anyways, I'll, uh, let you get back to it,” Dean says after a moment, patting the back of the chair.

Just be nice.

He was nice, as nice as he could be. He did everything he needed to do. There you go. Check. Done. Cas’s memory was honored or whatever, his brother pleased. Dean could be done now.

“Wait! Um. Dean…” Jack called out, half standing.

“Save it. ‘Kay?” Dean’s eyes stung. He refused to cry, though. Not in front of this freak. Dean couldn’t afford to seem so weak. 

Jack held something back, Dean could tell. He made the same scrunched-up face, all the eyebrows, as Cas did. Eventually, though, all Jack said was, “Alright.”

“Alright,” Dean repeated, trending backwards out of the room. 

“The other shoe will drop,” John said. “You know it.”

“I know,” Dean muttered to himself, finding the whisky decanter in the next room. The easy way out.

“He’s just a kid,” Cas reminded him.

“I know that too,” he whispers as the first amber drop falls to his tongue.

****

Dean spent most of his day in his room again, surfing through porn and newspaper articles on his laptop. He didn't find satisfaction in either. Dean didn't end up coming down for dinner, no matter how many texts from Sam (three) blew up his phone. At some point, he plugged in a pair of crappy wire earbuds to his phone and turned on his liked-songs.

“Now here I go again

I see the crystal visions

I keep my visions to myself

It's only me who wants to wrap around your dreams

And have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

Dreams of loneliness

 

Like a heartbeat drives you mad

In the stillness of remembering what you had

And what you lost

And what you had

Ooh, what you lost”

Dean did not cry. He simply let the music keep on playing, waiting for sleep to take him—finally—from himself. Plus, the pill from his go-bag’s first aid kit (a grocery bag full of a needle, thread, and painkillers) was supposed to help. It was no real surprise when it didn’t.

Dean couldn’t tell if imaginary Cas wandered over to him or vice versa, but for a moment, he just didn’t seem to care. 

“You’re going crazy,” he could hear his father say.

“I don’t care,” he whispered back.

Because for a brief moment, Cas was in front of him again. Not his damn kid—kinda—just a figment of his imagination running off fumes. 

Castiel—in his trench coat, that tie, those sensible shoes—wandered over to his bed, sitting on its edge like he used to when curing Dean from his nightmares. He supposed the Angel was doing the same now, as life had turned into its own kind of nightmare.

“He’s right, you know," Cas told him, the bottom of his coat almost, just almost, brushing Dean's foot. 

“Oh, not you too,” Dean groaned, weakly grinning for the first time in a week. He relaxed into his headboard. 

Cas shrugged. He fidgeted with the sheets, unable to meet Dean’s eye. 

Dean wanted nothing more than to run over and wrap his arms around his friend again, but he knew that’d only break the illusion. And part of him just needed the dream for a moment.

“I need a fucking drink.”

“You need a ‘fucking’ hug.” 

Oh, the air quotes. Those stupid fucking (amazing) air quotes, he thought.

“I do not.”

“Don't argue with me, I'm in your head. You're arguing with yourself. And only crazy people do that,” Cas teased.

Dean snorted. “Then maybe I'm crazy.”

“You're not exactly sane.”

“Your people skills are just amazing from ‘cross the veil.”

“Sarcasm,” Cas hummed.

“Yeah, Cas, sarcasm.”

Castiel seemed to relax then, his eyes meeting Dean’s blurry ones. Even through the haze of his vision, he could see Cas lean back on the shallow footboard. 

“You need to eat, especially after mixing substances, the effects of which will only increase and worsen on an empty stomach.”

“I don’t wanna eat, Cas. Please.”

“Hm. Well, you don’t have to go far. I know there’s a box of Cheez-its in your closet.”

“How did you—”

“Eat, Dean. I can wait.”

Dean grumbled something close to, “Fine.”  He dragged himself to his feet, the journey to his closet much more difficult than it should have been. He stumbled on shaky legs, knocking over multiple items from his desk. Almost falling flat on his face, tripping over a spare pair of boots. 

Soon enough, he did get the Cheez-its, and he found his way back to the bed. By the time he made it back to bed, Cas had moved. Now the Angel took up half the mattress, his shoes off, tossed to the floor, his tie loosened, leaning on the headboard. Dean laid next to him, almost touching, but he never did.

“Eat,” imaginary Cas commanded, so Dean did.

The artificial cheese was not as repulsive as he’d expected. The nausea he’d felt for days eased the more he ate and was virtually gone by the time the box was gone. 

“You need to sleep this off.”

“No, I don't.”

“Now look who’s being a baby.”

The laughter rolled off the tongue and then, on the very next breath, his stomach sank. 

“This isn’t real,” he could hear his father hiss. “You're dead.”

This time, Cas chuckled, that low growly snicker that rested with the dust in the air. "And now you've just remembered. I prefer it when you don't do that.”

“Yeah, says the dead guy." He couldn’t tell whether there was an edge of humor or resentment to his statement. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

The longer he stared at the ghost lying next to him (Not even a real ghost, he’s dealt with that before. He’s survived that. He doesn't know if he can live with the voice in his head staring back at him in corporal form), the more he thought he’d be sick. He needed a drink, oh fuck did he need a drink. He needed to dull this; he needed it to stop. He knew better than to take anything else. Then again, drinking—and some other stuff—was what got him in this mess.

“You drink too much," Cas pointed out the moment the thought crossed Dean’s head.

“I know that, Sherlock…”

“Hm. I'm not here to heal your liver anymore; you shouldn't do it as much."

“Fuck off, Cas…” 

He lifted his chin up slightly, just to get a better view of his long-gone friend. Cas was always something else entirely, even from the moment they met, and Dean thought he was just some dick Angel; he was always something. But everyone thought that about Castiel—because who wouldn’t?

“Will you be here when I wake up?”

Dean could almost feel his friend's hands fall into his hair, running his hands through the greasy mess without complaint. He could almost feel himself lean into the false touch as he awaited a response. 

“No.”

“M’kay.”

Dean shuffled closer to imaginary Cas, and Cas, in turn, moved closer to him as well. Real-life Cas would never do that, Dean knew. Sobar Dean would never do this either. Sobar Dean would also never feel his eyes flutter shut, the invisible touch comforting in a surrealist way. 

When Dean drifted into sleep, he did not dream. He did not stir. He was all but dead to the world. And the second he was, imaginary Cas was too.

Sam texted him again.

He didn't answer.

****

He woke up around midnight, the outro to some Beatles song running through the earbuds abandoned on his mattress. Dean groaned, his head a wreck. He looked over, Castiel was gone. Normally, this would have sent Dean into a spiral, but it became apparent very quickly that he had other problems. 

Outside his door, there was a golden glow, illuminating the sliver between his doorframe and the door. Not the glow from the bunkers' hallway lights. Something more.

A glow that beat with his pulse. Pulled him, drew him in. An angelic glow.

Oh, fuck.

Dean leapt out of bed. He didn't put on his robe, or brush his teeth, or do any of the basic maintenance one normally does after they get up. In his sweatpants, an AC/DC t-shirt with a hole in the color, and a pair of slippers, he shot down the hallway. 

The glow came from the library, a powerhouse flame inside. 

“Jack!” he yelled, covering his eyes poorly with his hand. God, it was too bright. 

Jack turned around, catching the hunter’s eye. Green meeting glowing. 

“Dean?”

Power swarmed around Jack, small beams of his grace flooding around him like a star going full supernova. Every step he took towards the kid felt like he was fighting a wind tunnel. 

“He’s just a kid,” the Cas-like voice says, “Dean. Help him. Please.”

And before he knew it, Dean caught onto Jack's glowing arm, whispers of golden light swelling around them. Still, as it burned, Dean held on, gripping the kids' damn tan jacket tighter. 

And he held on to the child swimming in power until a district pop rang throughout the room. 

The library was empty. There are no traces of light or Jack's mojo to be found. Then again, there is no Jack to be found either. Or Dean. 

Sam wanders down the hallway just then calling out, “Dean?” in a spell-torn voice. “Jack?”

But there's no one left in the bunker to answer his calls.