Work Text:
My misery is teeming: my heart could be stealing yours,
And I just can't shake this feeling
that we're out of luck, and nothing more—
a pound of dust, a holy war,
a photograph—I begged, and I swore,
but I still want a little more.
Dean’s aware that he’s pacing like an idiot, but he can’t stop. This room is—it’s ridiculous. Ridiculous. He stares unseeing at the pristine white-and-gold paneling, his eyes passing unaware over the gilt-riddled frames, the slick oil of the angelic paintings. It’s bright in here, the room full of a strange clear light that’s coming from nowhere. It’s making his head hurt. Something behind his eyes is strained and tight, hot.
He realizes he’s just standing there, still and tense, and forces himself to walk back the other direction. The room’s too small. He’s not quite claustrophobic yet—he’s been inside his own coffin, he’s been literally smothered by roiling bodies of smoke, he knows from claustrophobia—but he thinks he might get there if he’s trapped here much longer. Zachariah be damned, he doesn’t have enough faith in Heaven’s plan to make this bearable. Not with what he fears might be happening, somewhere out in the night where he can’t do a damn thing about it. Where he should be, no matter how pissed he is.
He props both hands on the back of one of the delicate, gleaming chairs, lets his eyes shudder closed. It’s a little respite from all that fucking light. He wants a drink. Hell, he wants ten drinks. The El Sols are glistening in their stupid antique bowl, golden against the marble table, and he’d just bet that if he cracked one open it’d be the best beer he ever drank. He doesn’t dare to. He remembers that myth, about some Greek girl who went down to the underworld, who ate the fruit of the dead and let half her soul be taken by the dark as a result. The actual underworld isn’t quite like it was in the story, but still—Dean remembers Sam telling him, all of ten years old, serious as he could be. Don’t eat any magic food, Dean. They’ll take you away from us.
He shoves off of the chair, heads straight for the door—but falters. He’s meant to wait, meant to let Heaven get their shit together so he can do… whatever it is he’s supposed to do. He shakes his head, flattens both hands against the door and lets his forehead fall against it with a thump. Screw Zachariah. Screw Cas, for that matter, and the rest of the angels, too. This isn’t exactly torture, Dean’s aware, but it hurts anyway. There’s something shifting restlessly under his skin. He needs to be out, doing something, anything, to help.
He’s well aware that this whole thing is his fault. He’s not—he hasn’t exactly come to terms with it, but that little piece of knowledge is a part of him, now. A steel shard embedded somewhere up near his heart, throbbing painfully whenever he remembers. He doesn’t often forget. He’ll be guilty for the rest of his life, and he’ll burn for it when he’s finally allowed to be done, and—fine. That’s fine. No more than he deserves. In the meantime, there’s ten years’ worth of black that’s filling him up from the inside, that has to be atoned for. He doesn’t know how he’s meant to do that with an absence at his back, with no one at his right hand, but he’ll do what he can.
He executes another circle around the room. Another. He wishes he had a gun. He finds himself staring at, or through, the harp (why on Earth would they give him a harp?). He’s turning his phone around and around in his hands.
He doesn’t have any swelling around his throat; his ribs aren’t cracked anymore, his eye’s unbruised. Seems wrong, somehow. He’d been laid out among the broken glass and fractured plaster in that awful room, had felt like the world was ending, crashing down on him, and now—well. Here he is, in a room and a body pristine and perfect, the world maybe really ending somewhere outside these walls, and he doesn’t want it to. He doesn’t want it to.
They’ll take you away from us, Sammy had said, his little hands tight around the book of myths. Dean doesn’t remember what he said back. He hopes it was reassuring; he knows it probably wasn’t. He does remember the candid, solemn expression, grave multicolored eyes pleading for him to be safe. To stay.
“Ah, screw it,” Dean mutters, aloud, and flicks open his phone. Number one on his speed dial has always been the same.