Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

So you say you want a deathbed scene, the knowledge that comes 

before knowledge, 

and you want it dirty. 

And no one can ever figure out what you want,

 and you won't tell them…

Richard Siken, A Primer for the Small Weird Loves

—

The case quite literally falls across their desk in the middle of a sunny roadside breakfast place. 

Dean is hunched over the booth table, head propped up in his hands, face suspended over a steaming mug of black coffee. His eyes are half closed, fingertips idly rubbing circles into his temples, mouth hanging partially open. When a car starts out in the dusty parking lot, it feels like somebody is taking a hammer to his skull. 

“You know,” Sam says, squeezing a lemon—Dean has no idea where the hell it came from—into his ice water. “If  you took my advice for once and spent a night in, maybe you’d feel a little better.”

“Bite me,” Dean manages, his voice scratchy and dry. 

“Greasy breakfast burger between glazed donuts,” Sam reads, flapping the menu loudly in front of him. “Oh, Dean, you can get a side of hashbrowns fried in bacon grease with melted cheese on top. How’s that sound?”

Silently, Dean wishes his stupid head would explode. Not his most creative work, but it’ll do. 

He was at the bar last night, because he’s at the bar most nights. It’s sort of nice how, all across America, they’re pretty much the same. Always dimly lit and overpriced, sometimes crowded and sometimes empty, always smelling of liquor and sweat. He likes consistency. He wishes he had Advil. There’s Tylenol in the car but Sam won’t let him have it. Apparently it’ll fuck up what remains of his kidneys. 

“Eileen says Miracle is doing well,” Sam tells him, which he doesn’t care about in the slightest. Still, he pulls out his phone. “She took him for a walk.”

When he turns the screen to face Dean, Dean groans and tries to swat it out of his hands.

“Dude!” Sam reprimands, yanking it back.

Before Dean can respond, or try again, a waitress starts towards them. Sam glances up at her, then towards Dean. 

“Ready to order?” he asks, kicking him under the table a little harder than was necessary.

“One bullet to the head please,” Dean grumbles, and he hears Sam huff disapprovingly at it. “Sure. Whatever.”

With great difficulty, he pries his head away from his hands and squints out into the brightness of the diner, the people bustling about, and a waitress with long red hair starting towards them. He puts on his best smile, which he thinks might be more of a grimace based on how her face changes when she sees it. 

“Alright!” she says cheerfully. “What can I get for you two?”

“The yogurt and granola please. Side of eggs.” Sam says, and looks to Dean expectantly.

For a moment, he forgets how to speak. Then, he manages, “Breakfast burrito. Thanks.”

“You got it,” she tells them, leaning over to set napkin-wrapped silverware down. As she does, the newspaper under her arm tilts and falls, hitting the edge of the table and unfurling into Sam’s lap. “Oh, I’m sorry!”

As she reaches for it, Sam frowns. “Can I borrow this for a couple minutes?” he asks. “Just until the food gets  here?”

She pauses, looking confused. “Oh, sure, I guess. Well…I’ll get your order started.”

“Thanks,” Sam tells her with a curt nod. 

Over the table, Dean narrows his eyes. He waits until their waitress leaves to ask. 

“What is it?”

“Fort Wayne Man Wins 4.2 Million Dollar Jackpot, Gives Thanks to a ‘Magic Wishing Well’,” Sam reads, picking up the paper and turning it to Dean. “Sound familiar?”

“Fort Wayne,” Dean echoes, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “That’s about three hours away, right?”

Sam nods. “Think it’s worth checking out? I mean, it sounds like it could be our kinda thing.”

Dean shrugs. “Advil sounds better.”

He doesn’t need to see Sam to picture the frustration on his face. “This is, what? The fifth day in a row you’ve been hungover? Are you gonna be able to make the drive?”

“‘Course I am.” Dean shrugs, raising his mug of coffee to his lips. “Hair of the dog, Sam. It works.”

Before he can drink from it, Sam lunges across the table, wrestling it from his grasp. Dean curses under his breath, which Sam immediately shushes him for, making use of his long limbs and holding the cup out of his reach. He holds it to his nose gingerly, taking a sniff. 

“Really?” Sam asks, like he’s a parent telling Dean off for not turning in his homework. “When did you even have time?”

Dean shrugs. “You went to grab napkins.”

Sam sighs, motioning another waitress over and setting the cup on her circular black tray. “Can we get some water?” he asks, smiling up at her. 

“Sure thing,” she tells him, and saunters off. 

Dean stares at him. “Dude,” he says. “What the hell? You’ve never done that before.”

“Because,” Sam tells him with a deceptive type of a brightness, rearranging the silverware on his napkin. “Today we’re working a case!”

“So?” Dean asks. “I tackled that wendigo last week half a bottle in. Don’t bullshit me. What’s this really about?”

Sam watches him for a moment before sighing, glancing towards the bar seating to his right, then up at the ceiling like he wants something to come and save him from this conversation. He purses his lips, then sighs yet again, and says, “It’s about how I’m worried about you, Dean.”

Dean scoffs, his lagging brain working to catch up. “Here we go.”

 “You’re struggling,” Sam informs him, his voice dipping into that tailored wannabe-therapist bullshit that screams ‘I’m smarter than you and I know it’ that Dean has grown so familiar with over their lives. “Eileen sees it too, you know. It’s not just me. You’ve gotta get your head back in the game, Dean. And I’m not talking about hunting, I’m talking about life. I know it’s been hard, but—”

Dean groans loudly, cutting him off. “Surely this can wait until after breakfast.”

“You asked,” Sam argues, because this is clearly more about being right than being helpful. “You wanted to know what this is about? That’s it, okay? I think that getting out there, leaving your room, and being busy would…I don’t know—maybe it would make you feel better. That’s all.”

Dean raises his eyebrows. “You decided to drag me to Ohio because you don’t know if it would make me feel better? Sam, I’m only here because you said you needed backup and Eileen couldn’t do it.”

“I get it, I get it,” Sam defends. “Ohio’s far, but I think it’ll be good for us. I mean, it’s Dad’s old case, right?”

Dean sighs. “Nothing makes you feel better like a good old dose of Dad.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Come on. Does cutting some heads off really sound unappetizing to you? Who are you and what have you done with my brother?”

Dean puts his head on the table, relishing in the cool wood against his hot skin. “Mime vamps,” he recalls dryly. “Whole world at their fingertips and that’s what they choose to be. They could’ve been ninjas or something.”

“Give it a shot,” Sam begs, kicking him beneath the table. “If you hate it, then you can keep Miracle in your room when we get back to the bunker.”

At that, Dean raises his head just slightly. “Miracle always comes to my room anyways, ‘cause I’m his favorite. But whatever. Yeah, sure. But, honestly, I’m more interested in Mr, Monopoly than mute Edward.”

“Done,” Sam decides quickly, already standing. “Yeah, hang on. Let me call Garth, see if somebody else can’t take that off our hands. Flask.”

He holds out his hand expectantly. With a heavy sigh, Dean pulls out the shiny silver flask and deposits it into his palm.

“Be back in a minute,” Sam tells him, and leaves.

Dean is being difficult. He knows he’s being difficult. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. 

Six months ago, they’d left Chuck weak and defenseless on that dry and dusty shortline. Six months ago, Jack walked away with all the power in the world at his fingertips and an infinity of new life in front of him. Six months ago, everything changed. The empty world became full again. 

When Eileen rematerialized, along with the rest of the world, she’d called Sam. Dean remembers his face when he’d answered the phone, and the way he broke every traffic law to get to her. Dean rode shotgun that drive, staring aimlessly out the passengerside window. He’d stayed beside the car while Sam ran towards her, his arms outstretched like a child taking his first steps, and ended up slamming them both against the side of some poor soul’s car and setting the alarm off. When he’d kissed her, and then kept kissing her, Dean had turned around and walked straight down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of the two of them until his name had been called, and Eileen came over to hug him too. Over her shoulder, he remembers seeing Sam wiping his eyes. He remembers how, despite the tears, he had the face of a man who’d just seen the sun for the first time. 

For a moment—just a moment—Dean had hated them both. 

When Eileen rematerialized, the birds started to sing again. Children laughed in the park and cried over scraped knees. Teenagers bitched and moaned, taking up too much space on the sidewalks, and couples passed with their babies in strollers. Cats rolled over the daylight, bearing their bellies to the sunshine, and dogs barked from behind picket fences. Bees buzzed in the gardens, humming like a choir, and Cas was still dead. 

Sam drove home in her car after that. It took them a couple more hours than it should have, but he decided it was better for his own sanity not to bring it up, or to go near enough to look in the backseat of her car. Dean drove back to the bunker alone. He didn’t listen to music. He didn’t even really watch the road. The students next to him at a stoplight blasted music he’d never heard before, dangling tattooed hands out of the window and laughing, and the men at the bus stop handed a pack of cigarettes to each other. Baby shower balloons in pink and blue were tied to a mailbox he passed, and he could see people dancing through the open window. The car in front of him had Just Married! painted in white on their back window, and Cas was still dead. 

A lot changed after Chuck was out of the picture, but not that.

It took two months for Eileen to agree to move into the bunker, a decision that arguably took too long for her to make. Dean still thinks that she hadn’t—and doesn’t—want to intrude. Maybe she’d felt like her presence was unwanted or unneeded, or something like that. Maybe she just likes life on the road more than staying in one place. Sam’s a little like that, so Dean gets it. 

And Dean likes her. He really, really likes her.  She’s almost a sister to him, and she makes Sam happy, and that’s all he could ask for. She gets them. She knows the life they live; she lives it too. She knows about the stress and the fear that comes with it, and ghosts of past things that still linger where you don’t expect them to. She knows why Sam is jumpy sometimes, and why he flinches when she knocks things over or speaks more loudly than she’d intended. She’s fine with the gun on his nightstand, because he’s fine with the switchblade under her pillow. She’s good for him. Dean’s happy she’s here. 

But, there are times where he’ll spot them in the kitchen and her head will be leaning against his brother’s chest and his chin will be nestled in her hair, and they’d be swaying to music that Dean must simply be unable to hear, and there’ll be something in him that just stops. He’ll come into Sam’s room and find him asleep with his head on her lap, and she’ll be braiding his stupidly long hair and, when he waves to get her attention, she just puts a finger to her lips as if to say later so he knows better to disturb them further, and the lump in his throat swells until he turns blue. 

He’s happy that Sam is happy. He tries to leave it like that. 

But something is rotten in the bunker. For a while, Dean thought it was the air itself but now, when the stench of decay followed them across state lines, he realizes it’s just him. Something inside of him is sick and cancerous, and he can’t get it out, and he can’t escape his body. 

There’s a space in the world that nothing else fills, not laughter or weeping or screams. It creeps along the ceiling of every room, right up to the firmament arching above them. It creeps along the walls of every room he enters, black and heavy, and coats his lungs with each breath. Smoke rises; this is something Dean knows well. After the house fire, John had made sure to drill it into them. When you’re in a burning building, you crawl. Belly to the ground, you inch yourself out of the place as fast as you can because the smoke will kill you before the fire ever has the chance. 

When he was younger—maybe fifteen—they’d been hunting a poltergeist. It had knocked a candle into the ugliest green velvet curtains he’d ever seen, and the whole house had gone up in flames. It was a rickety old thing, and it was the most scared he’d ever seen his dad when he’d screamed at Dean to get out! just as the ceiling caved in and, when they’d both escaped with burns and bruises from the falling wood, John had hugged him tighter than he had in a very long time, and then berated him for not moving faster. What did I tell you? he’d snapped, covered in ash. Hands and knees, Dean. 

When he was younger—somewhere in the middle of twenty-six—he’d dragged Sam out of a burning building for the second time, pushing him to the floor as soon as Jessica’s burning body was no longer in sight. He’d remained standing, fighting through the smoke-induced dizziness to shove Sam out the apartment doors and away from the fire before puking his guts out into the bushes outside the Stanford dorm. 

When he was younger, he’d stood before a pyre. Then another one. Then another. Then another. He’s inhaled enough smoke from burning the ones he loves than he thinks his lungs might give out before his liver has the chance to. Sometimes, he stood closer than he should have, and breathed more than he was supposed to so that he could carry some part of them with him. He hates building pyres, and he’d give anything to be able to have been able to build one this last time. 

If there’d been a body, maybe it would be easier to accept that Cas is gone. If there’d been a body, he could’ve laid beside it until it had gone all the way cold. He could’ve kept his stupid coat, or his perpetually crooked tie. But there wasn’t, and he couldn’t, and there’s nothing he can do about it. 

For a while, he thought there might be a way that he could change things. He knows now just how foolish he was to hope. 

Dean doesn’t remember when he first went to Rowena for help. He was probably drunk. It was probably late at night, and he was no doubt desperate. She’d agreed, because she’s not as stone-hearted as she likes to appear, and if she doesn’t have a soft spot for him, she certainly does for Sam. 

You won’t like this, she’d told him months later, after endless searching and horrible trial and error. 

Tell me, Dean said. 

When we removed the Mark of Cain, we opened a cage. What is an afterlife if not a cage? she’d told him. I was able to create a spell derived from that one we used for the Mark. 

Great, Dean remembers saying, his throat closing up. He felt halfway outside of his body. What do we need?

She’d sighed, and he remembers wondering what ingredient could possibly be so far-fetched as to elicit that reaction. Whatever it is, he thought he’d do it. Wherever he needed to go, he’d go. 

I’m afraid it’s not possible, my dear boy. It requires your heart. 

Fine, Dean heard himself say. Fine. Take it. 

Not your literal heart, bless it, she’d told him. Something that you love, that you cherish above all else. I believe it would be your brother and I am quite certain you won’t kill him. And, as much as I loathe to admit it, I’m quite fond of the lad. I’m sorry, Dean. I really am. 

When he told Sam about it, he’d lied and said she’d given up. The Empty was too powerful and too far away, and Sam sighed like he’d known it already. He said, Do I need to be worried about you? 

Dean thinks he told him, Mind your own business, how ‘bout that?

A long time ago, after Cas had walked into that lake and been presumed dead, Bobby had told him something because he was afraid that Dean was going to be next.

Now, you find your reason to get back in the game; I don’t care if it’s love, or spite, or a ten dollar bet. I’ve been to enough funerals, I mean it. 

He glances over at Sam, still on the phone. He’s reiterated the sentiment to him a hundred times. If you don’t get your head on straight, something is going to kill you, and the unspoken I’m scared it’ll be you who does it. Dean’s given him an inch so he can feel like he has a mile each time. He just doesn’t want Sam to worry about him. 

A month ago, he’d passed out in a pool of his own vomit behind a bar in Lebanon. He’d woken up to Sam beside him, yanking him upright, and smacking him across the face. The bartender had seen him around enough that he knew who to call to bring him home, apparently. 

The hell were you thinking? Sam had muttered, while he’d practically forced water down Dean’s throat. Shut up, he’d added when Dean tried to talk. I want you to listen to me, okay? I know it’s been hard, and Cas is dead, and Mom’s dead, and basically everybody we love is dead. We can’t change that! You can’t change that. But I’m not going to lose you too. 

Dean’s grief rises. It wallows along the ceiling, painting it black. It coats the inside of his lungs, toxic and dizzying and spreading like cancer within his body. It latches along his lungs. Sometimes, it would fill the entire bunker. Other times, he can ignore it. Often, he finds himself on the floor of whatever shithole room they’re in, belly to the ground, trying and failing to find air that doesn’t taste like liquor and rot. He’s been drinking enough that, if there was a house fire, he’d be the first to go up in flames. Like a molotov cocktail, or something. 

It’s not fair to Sam, or Eileen now that she’s in the bunker. Dean knows this. It isn’t fair to the people who died to get them to a world where freedom knows no bounds. It isn’t fair to himself, when he’d sworn up and down that, if he survived Chuck, he would never go near a hunt ever again. He’d find a little house, or a nice plot of land where he could build one. He’d get a pet. He’d have a home with windows and a fresh breeze, and he’d walk around in his boxers and make two cups of coffee in the mornings. 

When he’d dare to imagine life after Chuck, he’d always imagined it coming in sets of twos. Two cups of coffee, and two pairs of shoes by the door. Two chairs on the balcony, and two closets in the bedroom. Two pillows, at least, on the two sides of the bed. A set of blue eyes, and two people—one not-person—figuring out what peace is supposed to feel like. He never dared to want it out loud. He never thought he could. 

Magic wishing wells, he muses, watching Sam talking on the phone through the window. We’re down to the reruns.

They’ve worked a case like that before. Then, it was a cursed coin and he imagines it’s something similar with this one too. A magic coin gets thrown into a fountain and wishes start coming true, but it’s never quite what you want it to be. Something always goes wrong. 

Monkey’s Paw, he’d called it all those years ago, and Sam’s eyebrows had raced to his hairline. 

You’ve read The Monkey’s Paw?

Dude. Dean tapped the side of his head. It’s not all just beers, boobs, and…guns up in here. I read!

Nice alliteration, Sam said dryly. You can work on that next. 

They were young then, and angels were the biggest and baddest thing on the block, and Chuck was just a prophet. Dean was freshly out of Hell, and Cas was nothing but a stranger. It’s hard to believe there was a time when that was so, sometimes. He wouldn’t return to it, nor would he change anything. But if he had one wish—

He can’t think about that.

“Breakfast burrito?” The plate clinks against the table top. “And yogurt parfait? Side of scrambled eggs?”

Dean looks up as the waitress sets down their orders. He flashes her a smile that feels hollow. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” she tells him. 

He picks at the soggy tortilla for a few minutes until Sam comes back, at which point he decides to put his best effort into choking the thing down. It’s still cold in the middle, and everything inside of it has the same texture. Sam squeezes more of his lemon into his water. 

“Garth says he knows a couple of hunters who can take on the vamps before they move,” he says. “So, we’re good to go on the wishing well.”

“Great,” Dean says, trying to sound enthusiastic for his brother’s sake. “Sounds great.”

—

Glenbrook mall is busier than Dean had anticipated, and louder too. 

They’d stopped at a CVS before getting on the highway because Dean needed something for his hangover. He’d made Sam go in and buy it, which Sam bitched and moaned about for a couple minutes before submitting. And thank god he did, Dean thinks as the crowd bustles around them. If he hadn’t, he would be even more miserable than he already is. 

They’re standing at the fountain in the middle of the mall. It’s a circular, shallow thing, with flowers planted along the elevated second layer of it. Dean can’t tell if they’re real or plastic just by looking at them, but they’re red as blood. Sam’s hands are in his pockets, eyebrows raised as he looks down at the clear water. Dean watches his reflection stare back at him, marred by the ripples. Beyond it, a couple pocketfuls of coins sit against the greenish tiles. 

“Brings back memories, huh?”

He remembers it vaguely; a kid with super-strength, a woman trapped in a mind-melting relationship with a man she didn’t know, a talking teddybear. The world was ending then, for the first time, and it all feels so simple to look back on. At least some things don’t change. The world is ending now too, it’s just that nobody seems to realize except him. 

There’s a splash as a girl, not more than ten years old, throws a penny into the pool from her father’s arms. Sam’s lips purse when they walk away. It’s an expression that Dean is familiar with. He sees it a lot, and they draw tighter when he looks at him, and Dean realizes he’s still waiting for a response. 

“Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat. “Yeah, it’s givin’ me deja fucking vu over here. How long’s it been?”

Sam shrugs, looking away at the crowd of shoppers around them. “Thirteen years? Something like that. Crazy.”

“Well, hey,” Dean tells him. “Crazy’s what we do.”

“You think it’s the same guy?” Sam asks, glancing at him. 

Dean shakes his head, wracking his memories. “Nah, I think he learned his lesson.”

Sam smiles at that, which means it was the right thing to say. “Right,” he replies. “We’re not gonna get much just by looking at it. Food court? We’ll get something to go and head back to the room. Turn in. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

Dean nods. “Yeah, you go right ahead. I’ve gotta hit the can.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Right,” he says again, and turns to leave. 

Dean waits until the crowd of people has swallowed him up. Though, to be fair, they never fully do. His head sticks out over the top, and the ratty jacket he’s had since they were teenagers—Dean’s pretty sure it was his first, but he can’t remember that far back—is wholly out of place amongst the hoards of college girls traveling like wolves in packs. He’s surely also out of place then, but he knows it. He hasn’t felt in place in a long time. 

Part of him thought that things would get better after Chuck. Part of him thought that it would all get easier without somebody pulling the strings. Instead, it’s just been weird. He feels like a dog out of a cage for the first time in its life, but he can’t stop pacing the same circular tracks he’s been trekking down for years. Maybe part of him thought that all of this would stop with Chuck gone. That he’d move into a place with a breeze and warm sunlight, pack away most of his guns, and go to the beach finally. Maybe he’d exchange his boots for houseslippers. He’d be able to look at the news stories about mysterious deaths and forgo them. 

He’d thought that maybe there was a happy ending in the cards somewhere, if he shuffled the deck enough. But that was a long time ago. It was before they left Chuck on that dusty lakefront. It was before he’d been beaten and bloody on the ground. Before Michael died. Before Lucifer. It was before Billie, and the dungeon, and long before the Empty ever came. 

Maybe, if he wants a happy ending, he needs to force it. Be it natural or unnatural, he can’t just leave it up to chance. 

I wish, he thinks, turning to look back out at the crowd milling about. His hand reaches into his pocket, seeking out the warm metal of the dime he’d found in the parking lot leaving the motel early that morning. Sam laughed at him for taking it, but Dean knows that no amount of money is worth passing over. They’re different like that. I wish for…I just need him back. I need him back. We need a second chance. 

The silver coin hits the water, sinking to the bottom where it quickly becomes indistinguishable from the hundreds of other shiny pennies. It’s a long shot, and he knows that it’s foolish, but he can’t help it. From the moment Sam read the article to him, just hours before, he hasn’t been able to squash the tiny, futile hope rearing its head inside his chest. 

Please, he begs silently, watching the faces blur around him. He waits for one of them to change, but none of them do. One last miracle. I’ll never ask for anything again. Just one last miracle. 

Please. 

—

Mall court Chinese food is usually terrible, but this especially so.

It’s greasy, but not in the way he usually would enjoy. The noodles are overcooked and the vegetables are somehow still raw. They didn’t give him enough sauce either, which screws the balance of the whole thing up. 

He grumbles about it while Sam pointedly ignores all his complaints after reminding him that he’d told Dean to just get the damn burger.

“I wanted to switch it up,” Dean complains, stretching back on the bed, his shoes still on. His eyes dart to every corner of the room, like he’s waiting for somebody to tumble out of the walls. 

“Since when?” Sam asks exasperatedly.

“Shut up.”

They’d thrown on some stupid indie movie that Dean doesn’t care about but Sam insists is good to fill the silence. It’s a man in a hospital bed, telling a story to a little girl about a life he never lived—grand adventures replacing messy break-ups, lost love, stealing pills, and suicides. Dean sets his cardboard container aside to take a shower after a while. He’s tired of grand adventures and big, shiny lies. 

And he knows that the coin might not work. The case is thin at best. Sam found a couple more instances of miracles in the town on the drive over—an infertile couple conceiving after years of trying, a decade long court case ending in favor of the defendant, a mom and pop shop set to close suddenly gained an anonymous donor to help cover their bills—but none mentioned the fountain. But if good luck can come without magic, Dean has yet to see it happen. 

It’s been a few hours since they rolled into the motel parking lot, and nothing has happened. Nobody has appeared at the windows, or in the corners of the room. He keeps checking his phone, as if he’s expecting a missed call or message. But Cas was never good at using a phone anyways. Dean thinks he’d just forget it was a two-way line of communication instead of something like a prayer to which he couldn’t respond immediately, especially after losing his wings. Maybe there’s a delay on the spell. Maybe he’s busy trying to figure out what busted him out. These are all the things Dean tells himself to convince himself it worked. 

He tells himself it worked because it has to. It’s a shot in the dark, but it just has to. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if it doesn’t. He can’t be let down again, like when Rowena told him the spell was impossible to perform, or when Jack left without a word about Cas’s fate. He can’t survive it. He doesn’t want to. 

“Alright,” Dean says gruffly, standing. “You want the first shower?”

Sam shakes his head, eyes glued to the TV. “Go ahead.”

“I’m using your shampoo,” Dean tells him, marching over to rifle through his bag. Sam rolls over from where he’s stretched out on his stomach across the bed, batting his hand away. “What? I forgot mine.”

“Yeah,” Sam scoffs. “‘Cause you were hungover.”

“Maybe,” Dean retorts. “But, hey, if you buy fancy shampoo on our card, I get a piece of it.”

Sam groans, like he’s realized the effort to argue is futile, and turns back to the TV. “You only need, like, a quarter-sized amount, by the way.”

“Gotcha.” Dean sifts through the bag for a moment longer, picking out a circular container. “The hell is a hair mask?”

Sam throws the remote at him. It sails over his shoulder and just narrowly misses the TV screen. Dean scoffs, shutting the bathroom door behind him.

Inside, it’s quiet. He can just barely hear the TV through the door, and Sam’s groan as he goes to retrieve the remote. He stands in front of the mirror for a while, never quite looking at it. He stares down at the sink. His face, warped in the silver faucet, stares back. 

“Fuck,” he says quietly, rubbing a hand over his bloodshot eyes. 

In a swift motion, he pulls off his t-shirt and tosses it to the floor. He runs his hands up his arms, across bruises he doesn’t remember getting and muscle, until his palm presses just beneath his shoulder. The handprint is long gone. The first time he was healed by an angel—maybe it was Cas, but he can’t remember—it disappeared. It was just scar tissue. It was superficial, but it doesn’t feel like that anymore. And he can’t think about it for too long or else he’ll talk himself into a pit from which he can’t escape, like he’s done a hundred times before. 

He’s rifling through the few towels provided by the motel, trying to determine which looks cleaner, when the television pauses. He hears Sam call his name, the bed squeaking as he stands. 

“Dean?” he says, knocking once on the bathroom door. “Someone’s outside.”

Dean straightens up, haphazardly shrugging his shirt back on, and opens the door. Sam is waiting for him, the gun he keeps at his waist now in his hands. Outside, somebody bangs on their door again, unmistakable and loud. 

“Who? Cleaning?” Dean asks, keeping his voice down. “We just got into town.”

Sam shakes his head. “Not this late.”

“Follow me,” Dean tells him. 

His gun hangs heavy in the back pocket of his jeans. Dean reaches for it, clicking the safety off and stepping towards the door. Maybe they were followed, though Dean doesn’t know who would bother to track them. Maybe it’s some monster they’d pissed off somewhere along the way, though those are rarely polite enough to knock. 

Sam follows him, positioning himself to shoot from behind as Dean undoes the deadbolt, then reaches for the second lock. It’s a practice they’ve been doing since they were kids, back when their dad would leave for weeks at a time. He glances over his shoulder, nodding at Sam to let him know to stay out of sight. He knows Sam knows that. Maybe he’s being paranoid. He’s been more paranoid lately. He can’t handle the thought of losing somebody else. 

Three, he mouths. Two—

His finger sits lightly against the trigger. 

One. 

The door swings open, cold air rushing into the room, and Dean freezes. All survival instincts, all logic, and all realism flees his mind. His weapon is still raised but his body feels disconnected from the rest of him. Behind him, he can hear Sam drawn in a sharp gasp. He can hear himself speak, but he doesn’t feel his mouth move. 

“Cas?”

It’s been six months and a handful of days since Dean has last seen his face, turned up to him and teary-eyed. Dean didn’t know what was happening until it happened. For all the years spent training and honing his observation and puzzle-solving skills, he couldn’t figure out what he was going to say next until he said it. 

I love you. 

He couldn’t understand, when they were in the dungeon, that this would be the last time they spoke. If he had, he would’ve memorized his face or he would have interrupted his speech before he could finish or he would’ve snapped a photo. Something to delay the taking. Something stronger than his mind to remember him by. He’s been so scared of forgetting anything about him. 

Cas is wet from the rain, his overgrown hair sticking to his forehead, and his clothes—different from how Dean remembers them—clinging to his body. The baggy blue top is dark with water, stained blue jeans sticking to his legs, and the green jacket that Dean is pretty sure he used to have in his closet is drenched. And he looks younger, his hair still dark and lacking the greys that Dean used to tease him about, his skin smooth. He’s unshaven, his stubble uneven like he hasn’t seen a proper razor in a while. He’s more wiry than Dean remembers too, as if food has been hard to come by—which is weird, because angels don’t eat. 

Dean stares at him. Cas stares back, mouth agape. His eyes are as wide and as blue as Dean remembers them to be. It’s been six months since the last time he’s seen them. It’s been six months since he’s stood this close. He feels like he can’t breathe. 

One last miracle, Dean recalls. Then, Monkey's paw. 

There’s something off about him, and something achingly familiar. 

Sam is the first to speak, which is good. Dean might’ve stood there in stunned silence until the sun exploded otherwise. He steps around the door, his gun still raised. 

“No. No, you’re—you’re dead.”

All at once, Cas’s demeanor changes. The gun he’d previously had strapped around his thigh is in his hands before Sam even emerges, stepping backwards out from under the thinly covered walkway and into the rain, his eyes narrowing. All at once, something in Dean’s brain clicks. 

“Hang on,” he says, stepping between Cas and his brother. He stuffs the gun back in his waistband, despite his better judgement, holding out his hands. “Hang on, it’s Sam. Full Sam, nobody else.”

Cas—not-Cas—stares at him, then at Sam, then at him again. He never lowers the gun. “Where am I?”

“Look, you know me,” Dean says slowly, eyeing it. Unfocused, behind the barrel, Cas’s face lingers in the back of Dean’s vision. Wet black hair plastered to his forehead, clothes sticking to thin arms, his wide fingers resting on the trigger. Part of him wants to laugh at the ridiculousness of this situation, and because he doesn’t know what the hell else to do. “Twenty-fourteen, right? The Apocalypse? I got sent forward in time from oh-nine? You remember that, right?”

Not-Cas moves away jerkily, stumbling off the curb into the dark parking lot. His body is coiled and tense, still puffed out like he’s trying to appear bigger than he is. “Where am I?” he asks again, voice harder and more suspicious. “When am I?”

“Twenty-twenty-one,” Dean tells him carefully. “Fort Wayne. Lucifer’s dead. You’re safe.”

Not-Cas’s eyes shift over to him, brilliant blue in the motel lights. Slowly, he lowers the gun, tucking it back in its holster. “You let Michael in,” he says slowly. 

Dean takes a deep breath, dropping his hands back to his sides and glancing over his shoulder at Sam. “It’s complicated. Probably not what you think—”

Sam interrupts him. “Do you guys know each other?”

“Twenty-twenty-one?” Not-Cas repeats, not paying him any mind.

Dean nods. “Yeah,” he says, and there’s a lump in his throat that swells and pulses each time he thinks about how this version of Cas doesn’t live long enough to see it. “World’s intact.”

“How?” He crosses his arms, shivering a little in his rain-soaked clothes. 

Dean frowns. “Look, it’s a long story. Come inside and I’ll catch you up, okay? Hell, you probably won’t believe half of it.”

“Why am I here?” Not-Cas asks, eyeing the inside of the hotel room warily. He doesn’t move. “This magic didn’t come from our side, so what did you do?”

“We don’t know,” Sam jumps in, lowering his gun just a bit at Dean’s stern glance. “We were working a case, and…”

He trails off. Dean feels his gaze burning a hole through his back. 

Shit, he thinks. 

“Are you fucking kidding—” Sam begins, exasperated. 

“Not the time!” Dean hisses, turning to swat at him. 

“How do I get home?” not-Cas asks, glancing over his shoulder like he’s expecting a portal or something to appear behind him.

The thought of sending him back to that place digs into Dean’s chest like a set of teeth. It’s been a very long time since he was thrown into that world by Zachariah, but he remembers the state of it. Dreary and deadly and disgusting. Every road ended in blood. 

He takes a breath. “Do you want to go back?”

Dean can feel Sam watching him. He can feel Cas—not-Cas—watching him too, and forces himself to meet his eye. 

Not-Cas stares at him, eyes narrowed. He tilts his head, the familiarity of it overwhelming and painful. “I need to,” he says slowly. “I have a job to do.”

“Goin’ after Lucifer?” Dean asks. “That’s your job? Cas, man, you’ve gotta know the gun won’t work.”

“Lucifer?” Sam echoes. 

Not-Cas ignores him. “I know,” he confirms. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Dean watches him questioningly, trying to understand him. Every version of Cas, it seems, is an open book in a language he doesn’t understand. He can piece together what some of it means, but he never feels like he understands as much as he hungers to. But he’s an angel, most of the time, so maybe that’s just how it goes. 

“Lucifer’s still alive for you?” Sam asks quietly. 

Cas turns to him, looking him up and down. “Yeah,” he says sourly. “Now that I think about it, you look just like him.”

“Alright,” Dean cuts in before Sam can respond. “Cas, we’ll figure something out. Come inside before you make yourself sick out there.”

Not-Cas steps through the door, his worn boots leaving mudstains on the carpet. “We’re leaving at midnight. I assume time moves the same. You need to get me back before then.”

“Can’t you just zap yourself back?” Sam asks. 

“I’m not an angel,” not-Cas tells him, at the same time as Dean says, “He’s not an angel.”

“What?” Sam asks, flabbergasted. 

Not-Cas turns to Dean. “How long will it take?”

He glances towards the clock. It’s a little past eight. He takes a breath. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” He’s beginning to move around the space like a caged animal, looking around and back towards the outside like he’s considering making a break for it. Dean steps back inside, shutting the door behind him but pointedly leaving it unlocked. “How’d you bring me here?”

He feels Sam glance towards him. 

“Cursed wishing fountain,” Dean admits, trying to be as nonchalant about it as possible. He could lie, but there’s no point in that. Sam can put two and two together, and he’s learned that the truth always comes out eventually. Sometimes, though, it’s just too late to do anything about it. “We can reverse the spell by finding whoever made the first wish. I’m guessing that’ll send you back.”

Sam sighs. Cas pauses, looking warily over his shoulder at him. He glances around the room, then back at Sam and Dean. He seems to realize something but he doesn’t say it out loud. He doesn't need to. Still, his expression softens. 

Dean takes a breath. “How long were you out there?”

Not-Cas shrugs, still ill at ease but seemingly less so. “An hour, maybe. I woke up in the bushes on the edge of the parking lot.”

“You’re shaking,” Dean observes. “Sam and I will—we’ll start looking, but let’s get you out of those clothes, alright? When’s the last time you took a shower?”

Not-Cas seems surprised by the question. “I don’t know.”

“Here.” He starts towards his duffle before he can think better of it, pulling out a t-shirt and a pair of jeans that he knows are just a little short on him. He holds them out. “Bathroom’s in there. We’ll figure this out. But first, get cleaned up. We’ll talk after.”

Not-Cas hesitates.

“Come on,” Dean coaxes, shaking the clothes at him. “You know you want to. Believe me, you’ll feel better. I probably need to catch Sam up on your whole…situation anyways.”

He still seems wary, but he takes the clothes with a swift nod and steps into the bathroom. After a minute, the water begins to run. 

Behind him, Sam’s stare drills into him. Dean turns.

“What?”

Sam shakes his head, lips pursed. “Seriously?”

“What?” Dean repeats defensively.

Sam tilts his head towards the bathroom, crossing his arms. 

“Oh, don’t give me that,” Dean snaps. “I had to try. I had to.”

Sam’s face remains stormy. “Unbelievable,” he breathes, looking away. “You’re unbelievable, you know that?”

“I’ve been told,” Dean jokes. “You know, usually when people say that they’re saying it about—”

“So, who is he?” Sam interrupts, entirely unamused. “How the hell do you two know each other?”

“It’s a long story.”

Sam narrows his eyes. “I got time.”

Dean glances back at the bathroom door. “No,” he disagrees. “No, we don’t. We need to fix this, but we can’t send him back.”

“Why the hell not?” Sam’s jaw sets. Dean curses himself for letting him turn out this damn stubborn. “What kind of mess did you get us into? You know how this ends! I mean, we’ve done this dance before, Dean! Messing with time? Trying to bring back the dead? It never goes well! He needs to go back to his world. You know this.”

“He can’t!” Dean snaps, turning towards him. He lowers his voice. “You heard me; if we send him back, he dies!”

A beat. 

Dean takes a breath. “Zachariah sent me there,” he starts. “Right after the cage opened, and when Lucifer was freed. He wanted me to say yes to Michael so he showed me a world where I didn’t. That’s where he’s from.”

He hears Sam step closer. “What was it like?”

“Bad.” He thinks back to it, the bleak grey skies. He thinks about that version of himself, so jaded that he couldn’t recognize him. “Lucifer was wearin’ you to the prom. I was a dick. Cas was…like that. We got the Colt, and we went after Lucifer.”

He turns back to Sam. 

“Like I said, everybody dies.”

Sam stares at him, frowning. “You never told me that.”

Dean shrugs. “Well, it didn’t happen, did it? Besides, you were—what was it? Bartending?”

Sam shakes his head. 

“There has to be another way,” Dean tells him. “We have to keep him here, or—or change his world. If I can go back with him, maybe I can stop it, or—”

“Or you could cause a whole new apocalypse,” Sam cuts in. “I mean, we’ve dealt with Apocalypse Michael. What if we get another version of Lucifer now? No, Dean. I mean, this is like Dad, right? We didn’t want to send him back to that awful life. We wanted to save him, didn’t we? But we can’t. We can’t mess with timelines like that.”

Part of him knows that Sam is right, that screwing with things like this causes more problems than it's ever solved for them, but he can’t. In there, in the warmth of the motel room, not-Cas is safe. He’s alive. He’s far away from the torment of his own world, and the suicide plan it has in store for him. He wished for Cas back, because that’s what he needed. The universe brought him a different one but, at the end of the day, it’s still Cas, and Dean can’t be responsible for any more of his deaths. 

He just can’t be. 

Sam takes a deep breath. “I know you want to save him, but we might not have a choice. And, if we do, shouldn’t it be his?”

“We will find another way,” Dean reiterates gruffly. “He’s not goin’ back.”

“Dean—”

Dean shakes his head, going to sit on the edge of his unmade bed. The shower isn’t running anymore, and he can hear not-Cas moving around behind the crooked door. He pointedly ignores Sam as he huffs indignantly rifling around in his bag for a bottle of water. His mind is reeling, everything that’s happened is far too complicated for him to comprehend, but it all goes quiet when the bathroom door opens and not-Cas-but-still-Cas steps out wearing his clothes. 

His hair is still wet, flattered down against his forehead, and dripping water onto the grey collar of the Metallica shirt. It’s a little baggy on him, and the sweats Dean had lent him are too long, dragging at his heels. His face is just a little flushed from the steam that drifts out after him, curling around the bottom of the door like smoke. Dean’s mouth goes all dry, his chest tightening, and his skin suddenly feels far warmer than it should.

Not-Cas glances at him, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms. He surveys the room for a moment, hardened expression slipping as he takes it all in. Dean wonders when the last time he got to be somewhere clean and warm, somewhere without impending danger hanging over the head, was. Probably a while. Years, maybe.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Not-Cas asks. It doesn’t get any less weird to see him standing in front of them. “Your Castiel. I assume that’s why I’m here.”

Dean’s throat closes up. He glances over towards Sam, praying that he’ll be able to fill in the gaps. Sam looks over at him, sighing, and rubs a hand over his face. He sits on the edge of his bed, opposite Dean. 

“He is,” Sam says, clearing his throat. “It’s been about six months.”

Not-Cas nods slowly, looking down. He takes a breath. “What happened to me—to him?”

Dean stares at the motel carpet. He can feel Sam watching him for a moment, as if waiting for him to pipe up before realizing he won’t, and then says, “He sacrificed himself to save us. He saved the world.”

Not-Cas is staring at him. Dean knows the sensation of those blue eyes well. He can practically hear the gears turning in his head. “Oh,” he says again. “I’m…sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Dean tells him gruffly, standing to get a beer from the table. They’d picked it up somewhere on the road. It’ll be warm by now. The sweat from the bottles has soaked through the cardboard packaging, leaving it wet and easy to tear. “Sam, want one?”

“Please,” Sam answers, though he doesn’t seem pleased. He didn’t want to buy them in the first place. He’s been very anti-alcohol since their Cas died, since Dean started drinking more than he ever has before. He means well, Dean knows, but it’s pretty damn annoying

There was a time, he recalls, maybe four months back, when he’d poured all the whiskey in the bunker onto the grass outside. Dean was more than pissed about it, and Sam told him that it was tough fucking luck, and hidden the car keys so he couldn’t buy more. 

“Can I have one?” Not-Cas asks. Dean turns around to eye him, raising his brows. 

“You have anything else in your system?”

Not-Cas scoffs, and motions for a beer.

Dean hesitates for a moment, then pulls a third bottle from the six-pack, because why the hell not? Getting zapped to a different universe is weird, and Dean knows that firsthand; he deserves a drink or two. Lord knows he needs a few. 

Cas takes it, twisting off the lid and slipping it into his pocket. “Thanks.”

He can feel Sam staring at him, so he avoids looking at him as he sits beside him on the bed. There’s a moment of silence, like nobody knows where to go from here. He can hear Cas drinking, but he doesn’t look at him. He thinks that, if he starts, he won’t be able to stop. 

It isn’t his Cas, he knows. This isn’t the same version of him that Dean knows, but it’s so close that it makes his chest hurt. It’s not the same stilted way of moving, or monotonous voice; it’s something deeper. Something that’s so wholly Cas that Dean doesn’t know what to do with it except stare, and he won’t let himself do that. 

He must’ve known something like this would happen when he made that wish. When things sound too good to be true, they always are. He just wonders why. Why this one? Out of every universe, every reality, the thousands of worlds Chuck created, why this Cas?

Maybe there’s no reason. Maybe it was just luck of the draw. It doesn’t matter anyways.

“So,” not-Cas says. “How do you send me home?”

Sam glances over at Dean, waiting for him to speak. He raises his eyebrows slightly. “There’s, uh—there might be a problem with that.”

“Why?” he asks suspiciously. 

Dean clears his throat. “If we send you back, you—you and everybody else—dies.”

Not-Cas nods, inhaling through his teeth. “I know.”

“You…know?” Sam asks. 

“Like I said, the gun won’t work on an Archangel,” Cas tells him, like everybody should understand that. “Dean—my Dean—knows that too. So what?”

“So,” Dean tells him, careful to keep his voice steady. “Maybe it’s better if we—”

Sam cuts him off at the same time as not-Cas opens his mouth to argue. “If we what, Dean? Leave him here? Let people keep making wishes unchecked? You know how this ends! People will die!”

“I just want to go home,” not-Cas says. “We leave in three-and-a-half hours. I need to be there.”

Dean glances at the clock. 8:19pm. He looks back at Sam, taking a deep breath. He likes to believe that, when push comes to shove, he makes the right choices. He makes the calls that save the most people, no matter the personal cost. He likes to believe that he isn’t a selfish person, but he wants to be selfish. Instead, he nods. 

“Start scoping out the papers and make a few house calls,” Dean tells him. “I’ll handle Marty McFly over here.”

He hates this. 

He’s barely had time to adjust to not-Cas being here and they’re already talking about sending him back home to his death. He still can’t stop staring at him, watching the way his eyes and mouth move, how he carries himself. He can’t seem to look away, and he can’t rationalize why they’d put him back in his world. The logical part of him understands it, but the greater and more volatile thing inside of him feels like he’d be letting him die all over again. 

Maybe, he lets himself think, there’s another way. 

He knows that it’ll be a chore to get things done tonight. They have a time limit that they probably won’t make, but it’ll make him and not-Cas feel better that they tried. It’ll give him time to figure something else out, to work out a plan to save this Cas from that fate. It won’t give him back what he’s lost, but Dean can’t let him die. He just can’t. 

Sam leaves in a hurry, huffy and clearly less than happy about the whole thing. Cas lingers by the bathroom door, still all hesitant and puffed up like a cornered animal. He waits until the door shuts to walk over, sitting on the unmade bed Sam has been seated on just moments prior. His shoulders are tense, the lines of his tanned face more pronounced than Dean remembers them being in that other world. If he were to listen close enough, he’s certain he’d hear his teeth grinding. 

“You okay?”

Not-Cas shrugs, brow furrowed. 

Dean sighs quietly, shaking his head. “Look, Cas—”

“What are the chances that I make it back in time?” Cas interrupts, glancing up at him with a frown. 

Dean hesitates. “Not good,” he says honestly. 

He nods, looking away again. “Great,” he breathes, more to himself than to Dean. “Just great.”

“You really wanna go back that bad?” Dean asks, afraid of the answer. “You know what’s coming.”

“I have to,” not-Cas tells him. “I just have to.”

“You don’t,” Dean tells him insistently. “You can—you can stay here. We’ll figure something out. A way to break the spell and keep you in this world. We can—”

“No.” Cas cuts him off. “I need to go home. Dean—” he pauses, squinting at him. “How did your Castiel die?”

Dean looks away. “Sam already said.”

“Not all of it. What happened to him?” Cas asks again. This version of him is just as stubborn as the one Dean is used to, and apparently just as good at reading him too. 

“Sam told you,” Dean repeats. 

Cas shakes his head. “I want to hear it from you.”

Dean frowns, desperately wanting to avoid the conversation. “Why?”

“I’m sensing there are things about it that I don’t know.”

Dean takes a deep breath. He’s right of course; nobody knows the full story. Nobody knows what happened in that dungeon. When Sam pressed him about it months ago, he’d lied. He’d wiped the security systems of their footage of the dungeon, though he wishes he’d kept it now. He doesn’t think he’d be able to handle watching it back but maybe he did. He blacked out the night he deleted it and woke up a few miles out in the dingy backroom of a bar the next day. The manager who’d let him stay said he’d been insistent on not going home. And maybe Jack knows, because Dean’s sure he knows everything, but he hadn’t seen him since the day he left. 

It helps to talk about it, Sam had said to him in some roadside motel in the middle of nowhere when he’d woken up screaming for the second time that night, his head still ringing with the echoes of Cas’s last words. It’ll get worse if you keep pushing it down. 

At some point in the very one-sided conversation, he’d also said, You know, he was my friend too. I want to know what happened.

Dean told him to screw off after that. When he’d insisted, Dean took the car. He drove aimlessly until morning, at which point he’d headed back to pick up Sam and continue on their route to chase down that vampire nest their dad had been tracking since they were kids. Then, though dumb luck or fate—though he doesn’t like the notion of fate one bit—he ended up here. 

Cas—not-Cas—is watching him with the intensity that every version of him has always had. He blinks more now, Dean notices. Maybe it’s the whole being human aspect of it. Did his Cas do that when he was human? Dean can’t remember. When he thinks of that time, he aches with the memories of the Gas ‘N Sip and the look on Cas’s face when he told him he couldn’t stay. It’s something he’s never forgiven himself for. 

“Wanna go for a drive?” Dean asks. “Sam’s gonna be out late. We can get some grub. I doubt you’ve eaten anything good in a while. And I’ll…I’ll tell you on the way.”

Cas nods, standing to trail behind him as he leaves the dim motel. 

The outdoor lights are flickering slightly, and the ground is still wet. It’s washed clean, the streets brand new and shiny in the night. Dean keeps looking behind him as if to check that not-Cas is still there. Each time, he half expects him to have disappeared. Every version of Cas that has known any version of him dies. Maybe he’s the curse that keeps circling back around, a bird of prey choosing a victim, but he hopes that isn’t true. He doesn’t know what he’d do if that’s true. 

Cas coos softly at the sight of the car, running his hands over the wet, black metal in awe. He looks up at Dean and beams, and Dean wants to cry. 

“You still have her.”

Dean nods. “Couldn’t give her up,” he jokes weakly. 

Cas wipes some of the water off the hood with the sleeve of Dean’s flannel. “He couldn’t either, until we had to.”

A beat. 

“Come on,” Dean says when he sees him shiver, which is a weird sight. His Cas never did that or, if he did, Dean never noticed. Maybe he did. “It’s cold out here.”

They meet in the dark interior. When Cas puts his feet up on the dash, Dean doesn’t have the heart to push them down. If he wanted to grab the wheel and take them all off a cliff, Dean is afraid he’d let him. He thinks that, whatever he wants, Dean would let him have it, but Cas is Cas in every world and he never asks for more than exactly what he thinks he needs. 

Dean wants him to ask for more. He wanted his Cas to ask for everything, just so Dean would have a reason to give it to him. He wanted his Cas to ask to be asked to stay, and he wanted his Cas to ask for Dean to love him, and he wanted his Cas to ask for the entire universe in a bottle so Dean could figure out how to best package it. But he’s dead and he can’t ask for anything, but he never would have anyways, so Dean is here with a version of him who is almost the same but not quite right, and his own hands are white around the wheel and his foot is too heavy on the gas and there’s too much of him in his own body, and he doesn’t know what to do with all of it. 

“Tell me,” not-Cas says, when they roll to an abrupt stop at a red light. 

Dean takes a breath, stomach flipping. “You really want to know?”

“It’s me,” he insists. “Wouldn’t you want to know?”

There are technicalities with that but Dean doesn’t want to get into them. The light is still red, and Dean stares into it until his eyes burn. He doesn’t want to look at Cas. He doesn’t want to catch his own reflection in the rearview. 

“Death was coming after us,” Dean begins, and is promptly interrupted. 

“The horseman?”

He shrugs. “Kinda. She just got the job. Her name was Billie, and she—anyways, she was after us. We were cornered and—”

There’s so much to explain. He doesn’t know where to begin, and he tries to make it sound logical when he says it but, despite his efforts, what comes out is, “We have a kid.”

Cas stares at him. 

“His name’s Jack,” Dean says quickly. “He’s not—obviously he’s not ours, but he might as well be. Well, we have two. Sort of. Jack and Claire. Claire Novak. She’s—”

“Jimmy Novak’s daughter,” he recalls, eyes alight with recognition. “She’s alive?”

Dean nods. 

He laughs softly at that, rubbing a hand over his face. Dean can see him shake his head in his periphery. “I always wondered what happened to her. When everything started to get really bad, like end-of-the-world bad, I wanted to find her. I never could. She’s alright?”

“Yeah,” Dean assured him. “She’s alright. I think you’d like her. She’s a good kid. But Jack is, uh—he’s Lucifer’s.”

“Lucifer?”

He nods, and the light turns green. The car rolls forward as he speaks. “He had a son. But Jack—Jack chose Cas instead. I guess he chose me too. He’s a good kid,” he adds defensively, before not-Cas can say anything of it.

“That power,” not-Cas mutters, half to himself. “An archangel’s nephilim. I can’t imagine.”

Dean laughs quietly, shaking his head. “You really can’t. But…but Lucifer killed him, and my Cas made a deal to bring him back.”

Not-Cas glances over at him. For the first time since they’d started driving, Dean looks back. “Oh,” he says. 

“Angels, when they die,” Dean tells him. “They go to a place called the Empty. I guess it’s just nothing, forever.”

Cas nods slowly, looking out towards the road. “Oh,” he repeats. “That doesn’t sound like much fun. And, that’s where your me is?”

Dean grimaces. “The Empty wanted Jack, since he’s half-angel. Cas—my Cas—made a deal to save him. His life for Jack’s, and that the Empty would come for him when he was truly happy. Like I said, Billie had us cornered, and he—”

He chokes. 

Cas doesn’t speak. He sits and he waits. 

“He told me he loves me,” Dean manages, before his throat closes up and swallows back anything else he might say to try and soften the blow. “That he was in love with me. And it came for him. And it took him. And that was—that was it. That was his happiness.”

A beat, where Cas stares at him and Dean stares at the road, and all the brilliantly glowing signs along it blur into a mesh of a thousand colors, and he tries to hold it together. He’s never said any of that out loud before. The pounding of his heart is shaking his whole body. It might be shaking the entire world. 

And then not-Cas smiles as if the story of a different Castiel’s death, as miserable as it still is for Dean, doesn’t surprise him at all. 

“Well,” he says. “I’m sure he always thought it would end that way.”

And Dean realizes the question he’s been asking himself this whole time—since the moment this Cas knocked on their door, confused and desperate to get home. Why was it him, when there are so many other versions of Cas who exist, who have existed? Why this one? 

He thinks—and maybe he’s wrong, but he doesn’t believe himself to be—that maybe it’s because this one is in love with him too.

“I’m sorry,” Cas says quietly. 

Dean looks over at him, bathed in gold as they speed under flickering streetlights. “What for?”

“You wanted him back,” Cas states, matter-of-factly. “Not me—him.”

He isn’t sure how to respond to that, so he doesn’t.

“Is there a way to get him out of there?”

Dean takes a breath. “No. I mean, yes. Yeah, there’s a spell but we can’t do it.”

Cas frowns. “Why not?”

He hesitates, but hesitating won’t do him any good because Cas will keep asking, so he sighs. “About five years ago, we did a spell to open a cage. Break a curse, I guess, actually. Rowena—then a witch, now the queen of Hell, also Crowley’s mom…it’s a long story—thought that she could tweak it a little. Make it so it can open the Empty, since it’s basically a cage. But we can’t.”

“Because?” Cas prompts. 

Dean glances out the window, at the fast food joints blurring past. He makes a left away from them, turning into a quieter residential area. “‘Cause somebody would have to die. When she did the spell to remove—to open the cage, she had to kill somebody she loved to cast it. A metaphorical heart. I can’t do that. If it was anything else, I could. But not that. All I’ve got left is my brother.”

Cas nods slowly. “And there’s no other way?”

Dean shakes his head. “Not that we’ve found, and I’ve been looking. Rowena says it's hopeless”

“The queen of Hell,” Cas muses, rolling down the window and letting his hand drift out through the wet air. “Death. You lead an interesting life, Dean.”

Dean scoffs, parking alongside the curb. “Tell me about it.”

“You know, we were going to hunt down Lucifer when you pulled me out. Our—” he sighs, “—suicide run. Whatever you want to call it.”

“And you knew the gun won’t work,” Dean says. 

Not-Cas smiles, his teeth shining. “Yeah,” he confirms, resigned. “I know. Dean—my Dean—does too.”

He’d figured as much when he was there. 

“Why are you going then?”

Not-Cas looks towards him, and Dean wants to look away but he can’t. He’s beautiful in some strange, distant way. Dean feels like he’s looking at an old polaroid from a time he can’t quite remember. The memories are fuzzy, but the feeling is there. It aches and grows in his chest, spreading outward until his hands twitch and he pulls over off to the side of a dark driveway. There’s music from one of the identical houses down the row. 

“Because the only thing we have left, my Dean and me, is each other,” Cas tells him, fingers tapping against the outside of the windowpane. “We’re dead anyway. It’s better to do it on our own terms, so if he says it’s time to go out in a blaze of glory, win or lose, so be it. And maybe that’s just how I roll.”

He smiles easily at the end of the sentence, and Dean feels the earth crumble beneath them. 

“I guess I’m more similar to your version of me than you thought, huh?” Cas says. 

Dean shakes his head. When he finds his voice, he says, “Not really. You’re exactly how I thought you’d be.”

Cas pulls his feet down from the dashboard. He looks around at the neighborhood with something like wonder. “That’s why you’ve got to send me back.”

“Sam’s working on it,” Dean assures him, a pit in his stomach. “You really want to go back?”

“No,” Cas admits, glancing at him. “This place…it’s peaceful. It’s as it should be. But I have to, don’t I? My Dean will die. I should be there.” He pauses, squinting slightly. “Wouldn’t you do the same?”

Dean nods wordlessly. 

“So you understand.”

He smiles a little at that, a mirthless and difficult motion. It doesn’t come naturally. “You want to be with him.”

Cas sighs. “For as long as I can.”

A beat. Cas watches him intently. 

“What?” Dean asks, glancing over at him with raised eyebrows. 

“You’re beautiful,” he says simply, unblinking from the passenger’s seat. “I’ll never get to see mine past thirty-five.”

Dean’s throat tightens. He looks at the houses surrounding them, taking a grounding breath before he speaks. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“If I’d said yes—”

“No,” Cas tells him firmly. “I mean, here you didn’t and things worked out. We just got the short straw.”

Dean shakes his head. “It’s not fair.”

“Not much is.” He glances at the clock on the dashboard, already loose shoulders deflating further. “He leaves in three hours.”

“Maybe he’ll wait,” Dean offers hopelessly. “Maybe Sam will find something. Maybe it’s not too late.”

Cas shakes his head. “He won’t wait.”

Dean closes his eyes. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

A beat. 

“You got cigs?” Cas asks him, clearing his throat. He looks away, raising a hand to his mouth to chew at his nails. 

Dean raises an eyebrow. “You want some?”

“They’re a rarity where I’m from.”

“Well,” Dean says, starting up the car again. “I’ll get you a pack for the road.”

—

They stop at a gas station. It’s an excursion that Dean expects to take a minute or two but ends up taking upwards of twenty. 

Cas is lost somewhere amidst the brightly colored candy aisles, picking up each package with a childish delight and turning them over like he’s never seen them before. He probably hasn’t, Dean realizes. He’s probably never tasted even half the things on the shelves, whereas Dean grew up on them. The cashier keeps eyeing them, and he can’t help but wonder what she makes of them; Cas turning to show him each new item, asking if they’re any good, Dean trailing behind him like a duckling and dutifully accepting whatever snacks he’s handed until he can barely carry them all. 

He only realizes he’s smiling like a fool at the contentment on Cas’s face as he peruses the store full of food when he sees himself in the grainy security footage on the TV behind the counter. But who can blame him? It’s good to see. 

In the end, the total is just under fifty dollars and they need a bag to bring it all back to the car. Dean thinks it’s worth it, though he grumbles when he hands over crumpled bills to the cashier. 

It’s stopped raining now, and Cas makes himself comfortable on the wet hood, wiping it off with the sleeve of Dean’s flannel before sitting back against it. He digs wordlessly around for the carton of Marlboro Reds and the neon green lighter, watching the flame flicker for a moment before bringing it to the cigarette hanging loosely between his teeth and inhaling. He closes his eyes, tilting his head back to the sky. The cold light of the gas station catches the line of his unshaven throat. Dean stares at it, then trails his gaze up to watch his eyes flutter open as he exhales a soft grey cloud. 

Cas looks back at him, tilting his head a little, and grins. “What?” he asks. “You want it?”

Dean doesn’t smoke. He has before, but it’s few and far between. Mostly if he’s drunk and in a good mood and, lately, every time he’s been drunk he’s been in a bad one. Once when he was seventeen, before he’d dropped out of high school, he came home smelling of cigarettes and something a little more green and his dad had been tired enough to settle for a lecture instead of something rougher. He hadn’t cared about the nicotine, but he’d said anything else would make him slow and dumb. Slow and dumb, Dean knows, means dead. Hunters can’t afford luxuries like that. He holds out a hand. 

Not-Cas passes him the cigarette, watching as he raises it to his mouth and inhales. It burns down his throat and he chokes, coughing into his elbow until they’re clear again, and takes another hit. 

“You don’t do this often,” not-Cas observes, amusement dripping from his voice. 

Dean shakes his head. “Not really.”

“Mine doesn’t either.” He reaches to take it back. Dean lets him. Before he puts it to his lips, he pauses. “Dean?”

Dean hums. 

“Is there…” A beat. He looks down. “Be honest. Is there any chance I’m making it back before he leaves?”

Dean exhales, looking up at the sky. The stars are clouded with light pollution. “Probably not,” he admits. 

Cas nods, like he’d been expecting that answer, and pulls out the lighter to spark up again. He exhales, blowing halos out into the night, and closes his eyes. For a moment, despite everything, he looks older and more like what Dean is used to. 

“Are you okay?” Dean asks quietly, because he doesn’t know the answer. 

Cas glances at him. “He’s going to die alone.”

“He was always going to,” Dean tells him. It’s a cold comfort at best. He wonders if he’s condemning himself by saying that. “You and the others—you were bait. You were only meant to last long enough to distract the demons while he got to Lucifer.”

“I know.” He flicks ash into the puddles on the sidewalk. “We talked about it. But I would have been there. He would’ve known I was there.”

There’s nothing to say in response to that. 

“I’m sorry about your Cas,” not-Cas says, and takes another drag. It’s still weird to hear him talking about himself like that, though they aren’t the same. “How long were you together?”

Dean’s throat closes up. He says it so casually, like he expects the answer to come easy, already packed into the chamber and ready to fire. Part of him wants to say something that isn’t true, maybe like ‘round a decade or a long time. If he’d been smarter or better or something more human and less of a time bomb, maybe that could’ve been. 

“We, uh—” he exhales, looking pointedly away, “—weren’t.”

He can feel not-Cas staring at him.

“Oh.” A beat. “Why?”

Dean shakes his head. If he knew, the answer would be much different. If the problem was simple, he would’ve solved it. Part of him knows that part of why it never happened was because of him. Maybe he doesn’t want to admit that. 

“Huh,” Cas says, flicking ash onto the concrete. “Weird.”

Dean sits back, looking out at the quiet parking lot. He glances back over at not-Cas, who’s frowning a little as he tries to relight the butt end. Not-Cas looks over at him, raising his eyebrows questioningly. Dean clears his throat, looking away again. 

“So,” he begins, uncertain. “You two were, uh, together? No offense but, last I saw, you seemed to have your hands full with women. How’d that work?”

He hears not-Cas laugh quietly. He laughs more than what Dean is used to. “Yeah,” he confirms. “It’s not complicated, Dean. I mean, you trap a bunch of people together at the end of the world and things are bound to happen. That’s just how it goes. My Dean says it’s like high school all over again, though I wouldn’t know.”

Dean frowns, listening intently. 

“We always come back to each other,” not-Cas says, a little wistfully. “Nobody else matters.”

His expression is soft in a way that makes him want to run as fast as he can in the opposite direction. There’s that same tenderness that he saw in his own Cas’s face the night he died, a fondness that glows beneath his skin and radiates outward. Fondness, tenderness, softness—all the things he’ll tell himself to avoid calling it love. He knows that’s what it is, and he knows that’s what he wants it to be, but he can’t stomach seeing it and knowing that he will never see it in his Cas’s eyes again. Trying to take comfort in knowing at least one version of them got there is a bandaid on a poorly amputated limb at best. The wound is still spewing blood. 

“Huh,” Dean manages. “Well, we’ll get you back there. I know you said he wouldn’t, but maybe he waited.”

Cas looks sideways at him. “Would you?”

And Dean thinks about purgatory, both times around. He thinks about Ramiel. He thinks about Lucifer. He nods. “Yeah, I would.”

“Well.” Not-Cas exhales a ring of smoke. It drifts up over him in a perfect mockery of a halo. “Maybe you two are more different than I gave you credit for.”

A beat. 

“So,” Cas says, louder. “That spell—how long have you known about it?”

Dean gestures for the cigarette. “A while,” he admits. The nicotine might be enough to cloud his head, distancing him from the tightness in his chest just enough that he can almost take a full breath. “Not that it matters.”

“Does your brother know?”

Dean shakes his head. He’d debated telling him for a while but there was never a point, and maybe some things are better left private. 

“For what it’s worth,” not-Cas tells him. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Dean replies, watching rain hit the puddles forming on the uneven parking lot. 

Cas sighs, sitting back and taking another puff of the cigarette. “Maybe you’ll find another way.”

“Maybe,” Dean echoes hollowly. He digs through the back of snacks, though he isn’t very hungry, and pulls out a nougat bar. He smiles at that. “You like these?”

Cas glances over, nodding. “You want it?”

Dean passes it to him. “Nah. It’s just—it’s funny. Jack likes them too.”

Not-Cas smiles. “Got it from me, huh?”

Dean sighs. “Guess so.”

“So,” not-Cas asks. “Where is he now? And Claire?”

“Claire’s with Jody,” Dean tells him. “I mean, I think she is. She’s kinda all over the place hunting. Jack’s in Heaven, I’m pretty sure.”

Cas narrows his eyes. “It’s hard to believe they’d let the son of Lucifer in Heaven.”

“Yeah? Well, he’s not much like his dad.”

“What was that like?” Cas asks. “Before Lucifer died, I mean.”

Dean nods. “They didn’t get along. Like I said, Jack chose us. He’s our kid, and he knows who his real family is.”

Not-Cas watches him, smiling slightly at the words. “You know, I always thought you’d be a great father.”

Dean’s mouth goes dry. 

“We—my Dean and I—” He glances away, his gaze distant. “We had a woman a few years back give birth. He took in the baby while she was recovering. Everything else paused until the mom was better. He was so good with that baby. I mean, I was okay at soothing her but he knew what she needed and how to get her to sleep through the night, and he was the only one who could do it. It was the happiest I’d seen him since this whole thing started.”

“Well.” Dean clears his throat, eyes stinging slightly. “It’s just technical. Learned it from Sam.”

Cas nods, sighing. “I know. But there’s something else too. He…Both of you are caring. Despite everything, you care about people, and you love everybody but especially those in your charge. That’s why you—he was so great with her.”

“I wasn’t great with Jack,” Dean admits, ignoring the tightness in his chest. “You know, things were hairy at the start. Then they got hairy towards the end. But, I don’t know. Everything just got bad. And I wish—I should’ve figured it out sooner. Me and my Cas fought a lot before he—before he died.”

“I don’t think that matters,” not-Cas tells him. 

“‘Course it matters,” Dean argues, sharper than he’d intended.

“No,” not-Cas says. “He still loved you. That’s all there is to it.”

Dean shakes his head. “Fat lotta good that does now that he’s dead.”

Cas doesn’t respond to that. He drops the butt to the ground and snubs it out with the toe of his worn boots, then reaches for another. As he’s lighting it, hand cupped around the hot end, he pauses. 

“What time is it?”

Dean checks his phone. “Quarter-to-ten.”

“No word from your brother?”

Dean shakes his head. 

Cas sighs. “So, I’m not going back before they leave.”

“Probably not,” Dean admits, again. 

“But I can’t stay here forever.”

Dean takes a breath. “We could figure out a way.”

Cas laughs softly at that. “Yeah?” he asks, dry amusement hanging from his voice. “What’s that?”

Dean frowns, looking away. “I don’t know yet,” he admits. “But we’ll look.”

“Maybe I don’t want to stay here,” Cas says thoughtfully, exhaling another dark cloud above them. 

“Why wouldn’t you?” Dean asks, unsure of how to take the statement. “I mean, when’s the last time you had a hot shower before coming here?”

Cas smiles a little, shaking his head. “No idea.”

All around them, it’s starting to rain. Dean tilts his head back, squinting up at the dark sky as water peppers his face. The plastic bag between them rustles. Beside him, Cas cups his hand around the red heat of the cig but apparently fails to protect it from the rain because, after a moment, he drops it again. Dean smiles watching him. 

“Wanna go back to the hotel?” he asks, picking up the bag of snacks and jerking his head backwards towards the car. 

Cas nods, sliding off the hood of the Impala and climbing back into the passenger’s side. He doesn’t put his feet back up on the dash, but he does relight the half-smoked cigarette. He glances at Dean as if checking to make sure it’s okay and Dean shrugs. He might as well. 

Smoke clouds the interior. Dean’s heart is hammering in his chest, and it’s sitting next to him, and it’s somewhere so far away that Dean feels the distance with every silted breath he takes. He must love Cas. There’s no way in hell he’d let him smoke in here otherwise. He starts the car. 

Rain beads down the windows as he navigates them away from the gas station and out onto the shining, empty roads. Cas rolls down the passenger’s side window to dump his ashes and the wind makes his hair stick up on one side. Dean tries to focus on driving straight, but he’s having a hard time concentrating on anything but the man next to him. 

“Hey, Cas?”

Cas glances up at him. “Yeah?”

“What happened to the baby?” he asks softly. The green light above them beams down into the car. It makes him look washed out and ghostly. He wants to touch him, just to make sure his hand doesn’t pass through, but he doesn’t. 

“Not sure,” Cas tells him. “Mom ran off to join another camp when we started getting demons around the perimeter—when you’re hunting the Devil, word spreads. Never heard from her again.”

He takes another long drag, the red end burning closer to his fingertips, before brushing the ash off on the side of his arm. Dean winces, instinctively reaching to stop him, before noticing there’s no mark. Cas glances up at him, picking grey pieces off his skin and flicking them out the window.

“I still have a little juice left in me,” he tells him with a small smile. 

Dean nods, staring at the unblemished skin. “I can see that.”

At Dean’s sideways glance, he rolls his eyes. 

“You’re so much like him.”

Dean doesn’t want to know what that means, so he doesn’t ask. He follows the white line directionlessly down the road and, by the time they get back to the motel, Cas is nodding off against the foggy glass. Dean drives in circles for fifteen extra minutes because he doesn’t know when the last time he got a good night’s sleep was. He keeps praying that Sam will text, but his phone remains silent. 

11:07pm. 

Just over fifty minutes left. 

Everything about this is too much. He can’t shake the shock of seeing not-Cas, who’s so similar but so different to the one he knows. He can’t stop thinking about Armageddon, though it’s long passed. He can’t stop thinking about himself in that world and how cruel and callous he had to become to survive, and how this Cas loved him despite it. Dean hated that version of him. He’s sure that version of him hated himself too. He’s sure that, if he’d somehow survived the confrontation with Lucifer, he’d never forgive himself for getting his Cas killed. But maybe that’s how it’s destined to be in every universe. Maybe Cas is always supposed to die because of him. 

The thought floats to the top of his mind like a body in a lake. It’s bloated and ugly and rotten, and he can’t stop himself from being consumed by it. Maybe it’s fate, or whatever remains of it. Maybe it is always his fault. One last bit of divine punishment. 

Dean leaves the car running in the parking lot for a little longer, slowly turning up the music until Cas starts to stir. He raises his head, the right side of his cheek flushed from being pressed to the cold glass. He rubs his eyes with bruised and scabbed hands. Beneath his sleeve, Dean sees the raised edges of a messily stitched gash across the top of his forearm from what he can only assume to have been some fight back in his own world. 

If they’re going to send him back to that place, Dean wants him to know comfort before they do. 

“Come on,” he says softly, shutting off the humming engine and opening the door. “Let’s go inside.”

And, like he always does, Cas follows him.

—

Dean wakes up to somebody screaming.

He’s dreaming when it happens, about Lucifer and the end of the world. About a barren wasteland of a planet, and his car growing cobwebs in some ditch, and another version of himself who he hasn’t seen in years. In his dreams, he’s sitting outside on the steps of a cabin with a pile of cigarettes at his feet, and somebody in the dark woods is wailing like a wounded fox. It takes him a moment to realize that it’s not part of his unconsciousness. 

When he bolts out of bed, the lights have already flickered on. Sam, seemingly just having returned from his mission, is standing by the bathroom door with wide eyes, and Cas is sitting up in his bed. He’s hunched over the side of the mattress, one hand digging into the soft sheets and the other covering his throat, leaving red tracks in his tanned skin. His eyes are wider than Dean’s ever seen before, mouth hanging open like he’s struggling to breathe. 

He realizes then that he’s never heard Cas scream like that before. 

And Dean abandons the gun before he can think better of it, clicking on the safety and letting it fall to the sheets. He drops to his knees on the dirty carpet, one hand finding Cas’s knee and the other reaching for his arm, dragging it away from his neck. His hands find his jaw, clutching his face. 

“Cas!”

Cas looks up at him, his face mangled with pain. 

Dean nods, watching him worriedly. “Hey, buddy. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

“No,” Cas breathes, squeezing his eyes shut. “No, no. No!”

Sam is lingering behind him. Dean can hear him shifting worriedly, not quite knowing what to do. “Cas?” he asks. “What’s going on?”

Dean waves haphazardly, ushering him away. “Look at me,” he tells him firmly, tilting his face up. “Talk to me.”

Not-Cas’s mouth trembles. He can’t seem to meet Dean’s gaze for the first time since he arrived. For the first time since Dean has known him. “He’s dead.”

Dean lets go, stepping back slightly. “What?” he asks, at the same time as Sam asks, “Who?”

“Dean.” Cas shakes his head, looking at the ceiling with glassy, wet eyes. “My Dean, from my world. Lucifer must’ve—I can feel it. He’s gone.”

Silence. 

“How can you tell?” Sam asks softly, frowning. In Dean’s peripheral, he can see him lower the gun. 

Cas stands abruptly, the blankets falling halfway off the bed and pooling at Dean’s feet. “I need air.”

“Cas!” Sam starts. “Wait—”

Dean follows, pausing for a moment to turn to Sam. “Did you find anything?” he asks desperately. 

Sam shakes his head. “Not yet.”

“Keep looking!”

Before Sam can respond, he rushes out after him. 

Outside, not-Cas is bent over in the bushes, retching up what looks to be mostly beer with a side of a few gummy candies. Dean hurries over to him but, when he reaches for his shoulder, not-Cas flinches away. Dean recoils like he’s been burned. He wants to apologize but the words are stuck in his throat. Instead, he sits on the wet curb and waits for Cas to finish. He crumples to his knees and puts his head in his hands, his back still turned to Dean. Inside, behind them, he can hear Sam making phone calls. 

There’s very little to do but watch the lonely cars on the distant road and pretend like he doesn’t know that Cas is crying. 

He just sits there, and he waits, and Cas slowly gets his breathing under control. He tries not to look when he wipes his eyes, or when he straightens up, or when he turns to face Dean. 

“You okay?” Dean asks gruffly, staring at his own shoes. 

“I couldn’t get back in time.” His voice is hollow. 

Dean can’t look at him. 

“If you send me there,” Cas says in that same empty tone. “What will I be coming back to except blood and death?”

He doesn't answer, but Cas does. 

“Nothing. There’s nothing left.”

Dean clears his throat. “Maybe you can stay,” he suggests weakly. “You can stay here. With us.”

Cas sighs, rubbing his face. “We’ve been over this, Dean.”

He knows that. He just wants a different answer. After a moment, he says, “I’m really sorry.”

Cas pauses, his hand pressed to his eyes. He takes in a deep, shaky breath. “I know.”

“How do you know he’s dead?” Dean asks quietly, his gaze searching. “Maybe…”

Not-Cas shakes his head. “He’s dead. When I pulled him—you—out of Hell, I left pieces of my grace inside your soul. It’s gone. I can’t feel it anymore.”

Dean stares at him, chest tightening. “You what?”

“You didn’t know?” Cas squints at him, tilting his head. 

Dean shakes his head. “No,” he says softly, his voice breaking. “No, he—he never told me that.”

“Oh.” Not-Cas frowns. “I wonder why.”

Dean thinks that, if he had the opportunity to ask, his Cas would simply say something like it wasn’t relevant or it never came up. Between that and his parting words, Dean can’t help but wonder what else was left unsaid. If he thinks about it too much, it starts to feel like he’s the one with his head on the chopping block. 

At the very least, if he was, he’d deserve it. 

“You okay?” Dean asks softly, stupidly.

Not-Cas looks over at him, his face pinched and stretched into something mask-like and pained. He gives a strange, silted smile. 

“Not particularly,” he says. 

“I’m sorry,” Dean tells him. “If there was something I could do—“

Cas shrugs. “It’s not your fault. You’ve always blamed yourself too much. I’m sure that your me thought the same.”

Dean wants to say something, but he doesn’t know what and his voice isn’t feeling particularly steady right now. He glances at the Impala, parked right in front of them, and stands. The keys jingle loudly in his hands as he unlocks the trunk and pulls out a bottle of gin he’d picked up while Sam was getting food a few days back. He hands it to Cas, who smiles wetly down at it.

“Thanks.”

Dean sits beside him. “Don’t mention it.”

He watches as Cas takes a long drink, his Adam’s apple moving smoothly beneath the scarred skin of his throat. There’s a bruise on the side of his neck, and another just beneath the collar of his borrowed shirt. Dean stares at them, and imagines how they got there. Despite himself, he thinks that if he placed his own mouth over the marks, it would fit them perfectly. The idea of it ignites a wholly inappropriate fire in the pit of his stomach, so he tries to focus on the slope of his strong shoulders instead which does little to stop the smoke. 

They sit in silence for a while. Cas drinks. Maybe he’s still got a little angelic tolerance because he swallows it down like water, not flinching at the afterburn or coughing even once. He hunkers over the bottle, placing his hands on top of the lid and resting his chin on top of them. 

After a while, Dean says, “Goin’ a little heavy on that stuff, don’t you think?” 

Cas turns to him with glazed and distant eyes. He’s seen Cas drunk enough times to know that he isn’t now, that the redness and the clumsiness of his voice come only from a grief that Dean knows all too well. “What else is it here for?”

Dean gestures for it. “Good point,” he says, and wonders if he learned that attitude from his own version of Dean. The dead one.

Cas passes it to him, and lays back against the wet concrete. He closes his eyes, resting his hands against his chest. Dean wonders what the absence feels like, if there’s a new space behind his ribs that’s cold and hollow. That’s how it is for him, but maybe it’s different for angels. He’s spent a long time trying to understand the way they feel. For a short period of time, he thought they didn’t feel at all. He thought that whatever was there was muted and defined by the same code as their faith, though he never really knew what that meant. He still doesn’t understand it, but this Cas is human now, mostly, so maybe feelings are the same beast that lives in Dean. He lays down beside Cas and looks up at the moths flickering around the cage on the motel light. The dead ones hang off the chipped green metal while the living ones batter against the glass. Little lightseekers, chasing an artificial sun because the real thing is too far away to reach in a million lifetimes. In a nearby spiderweb spanning long across the corner of the overhang, a moth flaps desperately as it tries to free itself. He can’t help but feel sorry for it, coming so close to the heat only to die inches from it. To be so close to having everything you’ve ever wanted only for it to be ripped away from you. 

Not long ago, he took off in the middle of the night to visit Pontiac without a word of it to anybody. He wanted to go to that old barn only to find that it had been torn down, so he screamed and wailed at the rotten pile of wood, black spray paint still visible on some of the panels, and cursed out the sky until he lost his voice. He then started a fight at the nearest bar, got kicked out, and woke up hours later still drunk with close to thirty missed calls from Sam and a dozen more from Garth. When he got back to the bunker, Sam was sitting at the table like a parent about to scold their child for being out past curfew. Instead of screaming or reprimanding or abject disappointment, all he’d said was, Remember that case you and Dad worked while I was at college? The Grand Prix skater who killed herself after winning gold?

What about it? Dean had asked, so tired he still felt drunk. His eye was swollen shut so the room looked funny. He kept checking his blind spots like something would appear despite the warding. 

It’s pretty common, Sam said far too calmly, standing and gesturing for him to follow him to the kitchen where he retrieved a bag of frozen corn and forced it into Dean’s curled hands. You know, once you do the thing you’ve been set on doing for so long, what’s left? Some people can’t bear it. Feels pointless. They don’t know how to do anything else. 

He put the bag on his eye, watching Sam with a frown. Okay. 

Okay, Sam said simply, clapping him on his incredibly sore shoulder before turning to leave. Glad you’re back. 

There’s a soft metallic sound as not-Cas sparks up the lighter, bringing it to a cigarette that’s seemingly appeared between his teeth. Dean watches him. He can’t seem to stop doing that. He watches the smoke pool above them, and Cas sighs quietly and pulls it away from his mouth, mumbling something about needing something stronger. Dean thinks that makes two of them. 

A car passes by, headlights washing out the parking lot. Dean wonders what they make of the two of them, a pair of grown men lying unmoving halfway off the sidewalk like roadkill. Not-Cas looks sideways at him, and offers the cigarette. Dean shakes his head. 

“Suit yourself,” not-Cas tells him, and takes another puff. 

It’s quiet. Dean wants to say something but not-Cas beats him to the punch. 

“What did it feel like?” he asks. “When your Cas died?”

Dean squeezes his eyes shut. He takes a breath. He could lie and say it gets better, though he doesn’t think that not-Cas would believe him. He’s probably similar enough to his version that he’d see right through it. Instead, he tells him, “I thought it would kill me.”

Not-Cas laughs mirthlessly at that, strangled and so soft that it’s practically a sigh. “Yeah?”

He sighs. “Still think it might.”

Cas sighs, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. He’s quiet for a moment, but then he says, “I just hope it was fast.”

Dean keeps his mouth shut. He remembers, vividly, the sight of Lucifer in Sam’s body with his foot on other-Dean’s neck. It was fast, but he doesn’t think that Cas would find comfort in knowing how it went down. When he looks over, not-Cas is watching him. 

“Sorry,” he says, looking away. “It’s…weird, seeing you.”

Dean scoffs at that, his chest caving beneath the weight of the words. “I know the feeling.”

Not-Cas rolls his head towards him, watching him. “Does it get better?”

“Which part?” he asks. 

Not-Cas makes a grand, all encompassing gesture at nothing in particular. 

Dean shakes his head. “Not that I’ve found.”

“Well,” Cas says. “Maybe it takes time.”

Both of them sigh at that. Neither believe it. 

Next to him, Dean’s phone buzzes and the screen lights up blue. He reaches for it, squinting against the screen light to read a text from his brother. 

Nothing yet. How is he?

Dean sets it to the side. If Sam wants to know, he can look out the window. A moment later; the curtains move aside and then close again. Cas stares at the grimy overhang, cobwebs collecting in the corners. The rain drops down the edges of the roof and darkens the concrete. Little rivers run down the Impala’s windshield and drip down the front of her. 

“I can’t live without him,” Cas says from beside him. “I could barely do it with him.”

Dean sighs. He doesn’t say anything in agreement, but he doesn’t need to. 

“I can’t imagine what your life has been like,” Cas tells him. “But I’d have given anything for another six years.”

You did, Dean wants to say, so he does. “You gave everything.”

Cas sits up, looking down at him. His damp hair sticks up in the downy way and his nose is pink with cold. “I’d like to do it again. Not for…not for us. That ship has sailed and sunk. I want to do it for you and yours. That spell you mentioned…the one that needs your heart. Would I work?”

Dean stares at him. “What?”

“Your heart,” he repeats, “You said one of the ingredients has to be your heart, right? You have to kill something you love. You love him. I’m him.”

It’s not a question, more along the lines of an observation as simple as it’s raining or the sky is blue. He says it plainly, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. But Dean can barely focus on that part of it. He’s shaking his head before he can fully process what Cas is asking of him, pushing himself up. 

“No.”

“Dean—”

“No!” Dean snaps, standing. “No. Don’t—”

Not-Cas hurries up after him and grabs his arm, the cigarette dangling forgotten from his other hand. He’s not an angel, Dean knows, and he could easily break free from his grasp but he can’t bring himself to. He stays still, looking down as Not-Cas stares up at him. 

“Think about it,” he insists stubbornly. There’s a hint of desperation to his voice. “Dean, I am going to die in my world. You send me back and nothing changes. We might be doomed, but you don’t have to be.” 

Dean pushes him off, stepping out into the wet parking lot. “I’m not listening to you,” he says, voice low. Icy panic is running through his veins at the suggestion. “You aren’t yourself.”

Cas sighs, leaning back against one of the pillars a few feet from him. He crosses his arms, eyes narrowed. His jaw is set.  “Isn’t that the point?”

Dean shakes his head. “Stop.”

“But would it work?”

“Stop,” he repeats, his stomach twisting so violently he thinks he might be sick at the thought of it. “I won’t. I can’t.”

Cas crosses his arms, eyes narrowed and hardset. “So it wouldn’t work?”

Dean pauses, staring at him. He takes a breath, trying to calm his racing mind. “Of course it would,” he says slowly, unable to deny it. “But I can’t. You get that, right? I just—I can’t hurt you.”

And not-Cas reaches out to him, and he takes his hand, and with the saddest smile Dean’s ever seen says, “This is mercy, Dean.”

“Stay here,” Dean begs. Not-Cas’s hand is cold and damp and clammy in his, the tendons flexing beneath the leather of his calloused skin. He must do this a lot with his own Dean to be so comfortable. The thought sends him into a frantic spiral. “Stay here with me. I know it’s not the same, but—”

“Sweetheart,” Cas says. Sweetheart. Dean feels his breath come to a standstill in his throat. He doesn’t have to ask where he learned that name from. His cold fingers wrap around the back of Dean’s hand; turning it over and tracing down his sweating palm. “You don’t want that. You know you don’t. I’m not him. You can’t pretend I am.”

“Did he call you that?” Dean whispers, a lump in his throat. 

Cas smiles tightly. “He’s never in a good enough mood.”

Dean laughs at that. He doesn’t intend to but it bursts out all wet and chocked up, battering against the inside of his throat. “Yeah, sounds like me.”

A moment passes, where not-Cas doesn’t let go of his hand and Dean hopes he never does. He doesn’t trust these hands. He watches the moths when he can’t look at Cas anymore without his chest starting to collapse in on itself. He watches them beat themselves to death against the wire frame around the flickering bulb, desperately trying to get to a heat that will kill them. Sometimes, things are dead long before it’s their time to go. At least the ones who burn get the mercy of seeing the light. Cas follows the lines of his palm with his own thumb, humming Stairway to Heaven off-key as he does. The moths fall one by one to the concrete. 

“Look at that,” not-Cas muses, pausing. “Your heart line. It’s long and sturdy. It’s a good sign.”

“My what?”

“Heart line,” Cas repeats. “Supposedly a signifier of love and relationships. The longer and deeper the more intensely they come to you.”

Dean stares at him, confused. “What?”

“Back in my world, we raided a library,” Cas tells him, waving him off and releasing his hand. Dean instantly mourns the touch. “Lots to learn about medicine. That was one of the books they’d grabbed, I’d guess by accident. Anyways, it was a good way to impress the ladies.”

An uninvited jealousy ignites in the pit of his stomach. There’s an edge to his voice that feels wildly inappropriate as he replies, “Not the man?”

Not-Cas makes a face. “He said it was bullshit. He’s right, of course, but I needed something to pass the time while he was away. Picked it up when I said I’d get sober.”

“Did you?” Dean asks curiously.

Cas laughs softly, reaching for the bottle on the curb and taking a long drink. It was a dumb question, he supposes, and remembers all those years ago when Van Nyce had drained his Cas of his powers and he’d ended up briefly comatose states away while the rest of them presumed him dead. He’d been scared then, because he’d seen the version of Cas sitting before him. He hadn’t asked—he still hasn’t asked—how it started, but he probably doesn’t want to know the answer. Part of him believes it would’ve started there, with whatever they pumped him full of to stop the pain. That alternate universe version of him must’ve been terrified constantly. The humanness oozes off of this Cas, and Dean becomes painfully aware of his fragility for the hundredth time since he walked through that door as he cups one hand around the butt of a new cigarette and lights it with the other. The lighter flame dances in the wind, illuminating the goosebumps in his forearms.

“You wanna go inside?” Dean asks. “It’s cold.”

Cas shrugs, taking another drink. “Not really.”

“Why not? You’re shivering,” Dean observes, frowning. “And your nails are blue.”

“Well,” Cas says. “Guess I’m not your brother’s biggest fan.”

If circumstances were any different, Dean would jump to defend Sam but he doesn’t feel like fighting and he doesn’t think Cas will want to hear it. Not after his Dean was just murdered by Lucifer wrapped in Sam’s body. Instead, he just motions for the liquor. 

“Fair enough,” he says. “But let me get you a dry jacket, okay?”

Cas looks at him, bright blue eyes shining with a grief so painful that Dean feels like a voyeur looking at them. “Okay,” he says softly. 

When he enters the motel room, Sam looks up from his laptop. The lights are off, except for the bathroom streaming flickering white onto the dirty carpet. The laptop is harsh against Sam’s face, making him look haggard and tired. When Dean approaches, he wrinkles his nose.

“Have you been smoking?” 

Dean shrugs, crossing over to where his duffle has been left on the floor and rooting through it. “Bought him a pack,” he says and, before Sam can launch into the inevitable condescending crusade about how bad cigarettes are, he adds, “Cut him some slack. He’s been through hell. God knows getting some cigs is the least I can do.”

It must be something in his tone that conveys the severity of the situation, because Sam shuts his mouth instantly and turns back to his laptop.  

“Any luck?” Dean asks. 

Sam shakes his head. “Must’ve been a minor miracle that started it. I don’t think it made the papers.”

“Shit.”

“Shit,” Sam echoes. “He doing alright?”

Dean scoffs. “Would you be?”

“Guess not,” Sam says slowly, running a hand through his hair. “Anything I can do?”

Dean shakes his head. “Lucifer’s wearing your face, man. The best thing you can do is keep your distance. No offense.”

Sam raises his hands in a none taken gesture, then resumes typing without another word. 

When he goes back outside, Cas is wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. He’s sitting back on the wet concrete, one arm tucked around his knees. Dean pretends not to see, instead approaching from behind and laying the coat over his shoulders before resuming his initial seat beside him. 

“Nothing from Sam?” Cas asks, his voice a dead giveaway that he’s been crying. He will never get used to the sight of him like this, any version of him. 

Dean recounts what Sam told him. Cas tucks his knees into his chest and rests his chin on top of them. He watches the water dribble down the Impala’s headlights and pool beneath her until a wobbly reflection begins to form. When he finishes talking, Cas remains silent. They stay like that for a long time. Down the road, sirens sound and Cas jumps at the sound  before settling back and staring blankly at the parking lot. 

After his Cas died, Dean would pretend that he was being haunted. He didn’t want Cas to be a ghost—though he would’ve preferred that because at least it would mean he had a soul, which meant he could’ve gone to Heaven—but he liked the idea of him being around. He choked in that dungeon. He was too scared and everything was too fast, and what he should have said never even formed on his tongue until he was sitting with his back to the brick screaming himself hoarse. He’d pretend Cas was haunting him because he wanted Cas to see how ruined he had left him, because maybe—maybe—it would make up for what he couldn’t say then. He sat outside of motels like these and he talked to the night. He wanted to believe Cas could hear him. Now some version of him can, and Dean can’t think of a damn thing to say because not-Cas was right; he’s not the one Dean needs. They both know that. 

So, when Cas says, “I think you should consider your options,” it surprises neither of them. 

“I can’t,” Dean tells him quietly. “You don’t deserve that. You don’t deserve to die that way.”

Not-Cas smiles sadly. “Since when do we get what we deserve?”

Dean wishes he knew. 

“It’s over for me.” Cas turns to him, crossing his legs and leaning forward with a wild glint in his eyes. “I’m already dead, Dean. It’s just a matter of who’s hand it’s by, and if it’s not you then it’ll be my own. But it won’t be Lucifer, I can promise you that. And you and your Castiel…you can get the life you want. The life you deserve. It’s not too late. I want you to have it.”

“No,” Dean whispers. “Not like this.”

Cas’s hand plays at this throat, pressing into the tan skin like he’s feeling for his pulse. Dean watches it move. Cas watches him watch it. His bright blue eyes are wide and pleading. For a long moment, neither of them speak. 

Then, Cas says, “Give me your gun.”

“What?”

He swallows. “Give me your gun.”

Dean narrows his eyes. “Why?”

Not-Cas’s lips purse. “I told you. You do it, or I do it myself.”

Four months ago, Dean drove himself home from a bar just outside of Lawrence where his childhood home still stands. It was late, and raining, and the roads were slick and wet. He doesn’t remember what speed he was going, but the wheels spun and slid beneath him. He remembers closing his eyes, letting the car drift down the dark road. He remembers thinking to himself that he could jerk the wheel. He remembers thinking about how it wouldn’t matter if he did, because his afterlife is a separate thing from Cas’s, and nothing can change that, so there would be no point. But he kept his eyes closed for a moment longer, and he’d pushed his foot down as hard as it could go, and he’d dared the universe to do it for him. At least in Heaven he could get a good night’s sleep.

When he’d gotten back to the bunker, Sam was terrified and furious, so much so that he refused to show his face. Eileen spoke to him on Sam’s behalf and because they’re friends. Her insistence that Dean never do that again hadn’t mattered, and he’d played the song on repeat for the next week. 

He knows what this feels like. Cas knows that he knows what this feels like. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t ask this of him. 

“I…” He takes a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, Cas. I don’t know if I can.”

Cas nods his gaze, not speaking. He doesn’t need to.

Dean scrutinizes him for a moment, taking in the set of his jaw and the fire in his otherwise dead eyes. “Do you really want this?” he hardly dares to ask. “I mean, is it…is it really mercy?”

Cas nods. “You know it is.”

He does. Still, he says, “There has to be another way,” even as he knows there isn’t. 

Cas smiles at that, all strained and sad. “I’d rather you pull the trigger than anybody else.”

And Dean takes a deep breath. When he makes his decision, he tries to believe it’s a kindness. 

“Here.” The keys jingle as they drop into Cas’s outstretched hand. Dean nods towards the car. “Get in. I need to talk to Rowena.”

The pleading vanishes from not-Cas’s face, replaced by realization, and then steadfast determination. He stands, taking the bottle of alcohol with him, and climbs into the passenger’s seat. Dean tries, just for a moment, to talk himself out of this. He tries to wish the words back, but there’s no magic coin that can make what he’s decided crawl back into his throat. He can’t shake the feeling of being torn in two. 

He pulls out his phone, squinting against the bright white shining out from the screen, and texts Rowena. 

Glenbrook Mall, Indiana. Twenty minutes. Bring ingredients for the spell. 

The read receipt pops up almost instantly. 

When the hotel door closes behind him, Sam is sitting at the small table by the window. He’s hunched over his laptop, articles and Facebook pages filling the screen. Dean doesn’t speak as he passes him, shoving the gun still laying abandoned on the edge of the bed into the back of his jeans. He grabs his bag, rifling through it until his fingers brush the hard, cold metal of the angel blade at the bottle, wrapped within an old green jacket. Its shoulder is still stained with a bloody handprint. He tries not to think about it, but it looks a hell of a lot like the one not-Cas is wearing right now. It’s probably dirty with his blood too.

“What are you doing?” Sam asks exasperatedly at the noise, looking away from his screen.

Dean slings the duffle over his shoulder. “Cas asked me to kill him.”

“What?”

He glances over at Sam. “And I’m gonna.”

“What?”

Dean starts towards the door. “Keep digging. Figure this magic coin crap out while I’m gone.”

Sam stands, the chair squeaking as it’s pushed back. “Dean, wait—what the hell are you talking about?”

He doesn’t have time for this. His mind could change at any instant. His resolve could break at the slightest nudge. He can’t explain this without talking himself out of it. When Sam places himself firmly between Dean and the door, Dean has half a mind to punch him. 

“Talk to me,” Sam demands, raising his arms slightly in some pointless, worried gesture. 

Dean tries to step around him, only to find himself blocked once again. “Move.”

“What are you doing?”

Dean stares up at him, setting his jaw. “There’s a spell. To open the Empty. Rowena found a way, but—”

“When?” Sam interrupts. 

He hesitates. 

“Three months ago.”

“Three months?” Sam repeats, staring at him. “Why didn’t you tell me? What are you talking about, killing Cas?”

“We couldn’t do it,” Dean tells him, eyeing the door. If he moved fast enough, he could slip past his brother. “I needed to kill something I…it needed my heart. Rowena told me she killed that boy, Oscar, I think, to remove the Mark from my arm. This spell needs me to do that. It’s the only way. And it was impossible, until now.”

Sam’s mouth hangs open, and Dean would give anything not to have this conversation right now. “And you think Cas…you think he’ll work? Does he know?”

“Of course he knows!” Dean snaps. “I’m not just gonna…he wants me to.”

“Why?”

Dean shrugs. “Better than goin’ back to that place.”

Sam doesn’t seem convinced. 

“It was his idea,” Dean admits quietly. “I don’t want to.”

“You think it’ll work?” Sam asks, lowering his voice slightly. “And there’s no—no soul trade or fine print?”

“It has to.” Dean tries to shoulder past him again. “Rowena’s on her way. We’ll be at the mall. Find whoever made that first wish. Meet us there by morning.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Sam asks. “Then what?“

Dean can’t let himself think of that. “It will.”

“Are you sure?” Sam insists. “Because, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the spell is pretty damn specific. I mean, I know you care about Cas—I do too—but this isn’t really him. He isn’t going to work. You have to know that.”

Dean glares at him. “You done?”

Sam stares back. “You can’t be serious about this.”

“Deadly. Move.”

“Dean—”

“Move.”

“You can’t just—”

Dean pushes him aside, wedging himself between his shoulder and the door to yank it open. Sam reaches out to try and stop him but he shuts it before he can and, by the kindness of whatever higher power remains, he doesn’t follow him outside. 

The keys are already in the ignition, and the headlights of the Impala all but blind him when he steps outside. He walks around to the driver’s side and gets in, taking a moment to stuff the duffle down at his feet before looking over at Cas. 

He takes a breath. “Let’s do this.”

And Cas, stone-faced, nods. 

—

The drive to the mall is very quiet. 

There’s no music. Dean wants to speak but worries that, if he starts, he’ll say something to convince himself out of this. Cas is silent too, knees pulled to his chest, bottle of gin abandoned and rolling around on the floor, unblinking blue eyes fixed on the road. 

It’s about twenty minutes from the motel. Dean keeps the speed limit to prolong it, though the roads are empty and he’s yet to see any cops. He’s never cared much for the speed limits before, but he’s dreading the destination. 

When not-Cas pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and takes a deep inhale, Dean gestures for it. He thinks of asking for the bottle, but he’s sloppy when he’s drunk and if he’s going to do this, he doesn’t want to be sloppy. If he’s going to do this—which he is—he should be sober. He should feel every second for this decision. 

He thinks about turning back. He thinks about jerking the wheel, making a U-turn at each intersection, and heading back. He thinks about texting Rowena, telling her not to show so there’s somebody to blame for things not working out other than him but Cas is Cas no matter what universe he’s put in, and he knows Dean too well to believe that. 

“Why the mall?” Not-Cas asks out of the blue, about fifteen minutes into the silence. 

Dean shrugs. “Dunno. It’s big. Probably better for a spell than the motel.”

“Aren’t there cameras?”

“Sam will take care of it.” He glances over, motioning again for the cig. When Cas passes it to him, he hesitates a moment before taking it to his lips. “You don’t have to do this, you know that?”

Cas smiles at that. “I know.”

“And?”

He shakes his head. 

Dean stares out at the road, and smoke fills the car. 

Cas wants him to kill him. Cas—not his Cas—wants him to do the unthinkable. Not-Cas dies because not-Dean asks him to. His Cas died because Dean needed to live. There’s a pattern here. There’s a cycle that repeats itself over and over again, the snake swallowing its tail, the sun rising and setting, and Dean is at both the beginning and the end. Cas falls because of Dean. Cas dies because of Dean. It happens in every universe, it seems. Not-Cas is begging for it to happen again, across lines that should never have merged.

Dean loves people. He loves people and he loves things enough to let them kill him. He’d be a hypocrite if he said that he doesn’t understand why every version of Cas lets love be the thing that digs his grave, but he thinks that there are so many better things in the world to love than him. He doesn’t understand why it has to be like this, why Cas loves him when there are so many other places to put that love, and why Dean can never save him when he’s saved so many other, less important things. He’s thought this a thousand times over. He screamed it to the sky. He’s cried it into his pillows. He’s drunk down the feelings so often that he’s certain it’s been carved into his liver. 

“Do you think there’s a world where you don’t die because of me?”

Not-Cas smiles at that, looking down. “Maybe one that isn’t worthwhile. If it helps, I knew what I was getting myself into.”

“It doesn’t,” Dean says shortly. 

Cas sighs. “I don’t know if this will help,” he says quietly. “But I want it to be you. And I want it to be this.”

Dean shakes his head. “No, you don’t. You know you don’t. It should’ve been—it should’ve been different for you. You and your Dean. It should’ve been…I don’t know. Just, different.”

“Well, it isn’t,” Cas tells him bluntly. “Not for us. But for you and your Cas, this is a second chance. You can make it different.”

The thought makes his chest clench into itself, like his heart is some great vacuum pulling the rest of him inward. He clears his throat, passing the cigarette back to not-Cas. 

“Yeah,” he tries to believe. “Maybe.”

They don’t speak for the remaining ten minutes of the drive. 

The security system is disabled by the time they reach the mall, thanks to Rowena. The front doors are unlocked, the building looming over them in the night like a fortress or a prison. Dean steps into the space, now empty and dark and quiet. Cas follows him silently, walking in his shadow like he always had. Dean keeps looking over his shoulder at him as if checking to make sure he’s still there. 

Dean has walked into certain death many times in his life. He remembers strolling through that garden to Amara, the bomb in his chest ticking and hot beneath his skin. He remembers the Leviathans, the odds stacked at twenty to one. He remembers the field where Michael and Lucifer stood in the bodies of his brothers. He thinks of running into that room the night his deal ran out, closing the doors against beasts certain to break them down, and he remembers the crossroads where he bargained away his soul. He remembers being in the hospital on the search for their dad, and the look on Sam’s face every time he’d joke about his heart giving out. He was terrified then, of course. He just tried to hide it for his brother’s sake. Sam was barely more than a kid then. Looking back, so was he.

Still, none of that has felt quite like this. 

“Rowena?” His voice bounces off the high walls. 

And, somewhere in the darkness, he can hear the clicking of heels. 

“I have to tell you, Dean,” she says as she emerges. “If your brother has agreed to—oh.”

The first thing he sees of her is her fiery red hair and the shimmer of the maroon dress she’s draped in. Her eyes widen as she looks them over, sticking on not-Cas.

“Oh,” she repeats, slinking towards them with her eyes alight. “My, my, my. What have we here? Hello, angel.”

Dean takes a breath. “Rowena, this is Cas. From a different timeline. Cas, this is Rowena.”

“Oh, look at you.” Rowena steps towards him, reaching out to run her hands down his arms. She tilts her head, looking him up and down. “It’s not every day I see something like this, is it now? You're just as handsome as the real thing.”

Not-Cas smiles slightly at that, and Dean bristles. “Dean tells me you’re Crowley’s mother,” Cas says.

“Oh, please.” She reaches up, touching his chin. “I’m much more than that, Dear.”

“Rowena,” Dean cuts in firmly, his hackles rising more than they should. “Keep it in your pants, will you?”

Over the top of her fiery head, not-Cas catches his eye and smiles. 

“So,” Rowena says, hurrying over the bowls balancing on the side of the fountain. Her dress, a deep shade of red, glitters behind her. “I assume you’ve been…made aware of what this spell entails?”

Not-Cas’s face drops just slightly. “I’m aware.”

She turns, raising her eyebrows. “And you’re comfortable with it?”

He laughs, running a hand over his scruff. “Comfortable is pushing us. But, yes, I am willing.”

“Will he even work?” Dean asks, clearing his throat. Part of him hopes not. Rowena looks away from not-Cas over at him. 

“Well, dear,” she says. “You’ll have to tell me, won’t you? He’s a substitution, though not an unseemly one.”

Dean looks over at not-Cas. The familiar lines of his face, the glint of his eyes, the way his mouth is so prone to being parted. He thinks about his devotion to the Dean in his world, how desperately he wants to see him again. He tells himself that this is a mercy for both of them. He closes his eyes. 

“Yes.”

“Perfect!” Rowena announces, clapping her hands. “Alright, let’s get to work!”

—

Let’s get to work, Dean learns, actually means get out of the way and let Rowena work or else she’ll release a swarm of flying bugs on you. 

Guess how he knows that. 

She’s somewhere off in the dark now, hunkered down a little ways away on the opposite side of the fountain. Over the walls, he sees her red hair move in and out of shadows cast by the skylights high above them. The water is shut off for the night, the only ripples in the fountain where Cas, who sits on the edge of it, draws his fingers though the clear depth. 

Look at that, he’d mused only minutes ago. Clean water. 

As Dean paces, he repeats the word mercy until it stops sounding like a real thing. 

He’s restless and anxious and the mosquito bites on his arms are already starting to swell. He wants this to be over before he can summon the strength to call it off. Confusingly, he’s also desperate to gather the strength to do so. The cruel anticipation makes him feel like a shark in wait, needing to move, thirsting for blood. The blade itches in his bag like it’s one of his limbs. He wants to reach for it to remind himself it’s still there, that this is real, that this is what he agreed to. His choice. He also wants to run from this feeling until his feet wear to stumps and he’s somewhere so far from not-Cas that he will never have to even consider this again. 

“Sit down,” not-Cas tells him for the eighth time. He’s been counting. 

Despite himself, Dean does this time. He walks over to the fountain and rests on the edge, bouncing his leg relentlessly. He doesn’t know how he could keep refusing, though he’d wanted to. Cas is going to die for him, again, and Dean wants to give him everything he requests before what has to be done is done. Nobody knows how to wear him down like Cas does. 

“Are you okay?” Cas asks him softly.

Dean cracks a smile at that. “Shouldn’t I be askin’ you that?”

“Are you?” Cas repeats.

He shakes his head. 

“Yeah,” Cas says quietly, and his hand fidgets at the scruff in his throat. “Me neither.”

The heel of his anxious boot hits the floor like a heartbeat, a steady, fast-paced metronome as he shakes his leg absentmindedly. He wonders how many more beats are left until it’s time for him to stand again, and for how much longer not-Cas’s heart has to keep pumping before he becomes the one who‘ll stop it. Again. Dean tries to keep reminding himself that this isn’t his Cas, but it does little to relieve the feeling of everything inside him—heart and all—being scooped out like a Halloween pumpkin, like he’s being ripped apart.

Which, he supposes, is kind of the whole point. If it wasn’t, the spell wouldn’t work and it would all be for nothing. 

It could still all be for nothing, he reminds himself. Sam thinks it is, but Sam doesn’t know the bottom one-percent of it.

He should’ve sharpened the blade before they came. He could do it here; he always has the tools. But angel blades are strange like that, in how they never seem to grow dull, and he’d feel too much like an executioner whetting his axe. If he were to do it, he wonders if not-Cas would recognize it as an act of love, not eagerness.

“We’re done,” Rowena announces, standing and brushing off her gown. ”Whenever you two are ready.”

Dean’s foot stills. He looks over at Cas. He looks over at his duffle, abandoned on the floor a few feet away. He wants to speak, but he doesn’t know how. 

Cas takes a breath. “Okay,” he says, setting his jaw. “I’m ready.”

”Can we have a minute?” Dean croaks, and Rowena’s gaze snaps towards him. He resents the pity in her face, the way her eyes are soft and sad. He doesn’t deserve that pity. He wants somebody to be as angry at him as he is at himself for agreeing to this. 

Then, swiftly, she leaves. 

Dean stands, crossing over towards his bag. From the bottom, he pulls out the angel blade. The silver glitters in the dim light, catching the gleam of the skylight above the fountain. Behind him, he hears Not-Cas draw in a sharp inhale. The sound makes him flinch. 

“Is that it?” he asks.

Dean nods, turning back to him slowly. “Figured it’s better to be safe,” he explains weakly. “You’ve still got some angel left in you, after all.”

Cas smiles slightly at that. “Guess that’s true.”

When Dean sits back down beside him, he takes the blade from his hands, running his fingers along the sharp edge. Cas holds it up to the light, tilting his head as he watches it gleam off the silver edges, and bounces it slightly in his palm as if testing the weight of it. In the pale brightness seeping in through the high skylights, he looks very young. Dean knows enough about angels to know that’s not how it works, but he can’t help but feel choked up by it. He supposes he never realized how much his Cas has aged until he saw this one 

“You know, I lost my blade in my world,” not-his-Cas says quietly. “We were raiding a grocery store in Missouri and we got jumped by another camp of survivors. Barely made it out. One of them took it. I didn’t have time to go back. It’s been a while since I’ve held one.”

Dean watches him, trying his best to breathe through the tightness in his chest. “Were you human?”

Cas nods. “Freshly. I hadn’t told my Dean yet.”

“Why not?”

He shrugs. It’s such an easy motion for him, loose-limbed and careless in a way that the Cas he knows never mastered. Dean’s Cas was always a little stiff, like he’d still been learning how to settle into a human body. When he looks back at Dean, there are pieces of his Cas peeking through. He can’t place what it is exactly, and how they can wear the same face and still be two different people. 

“I didn’t want to burden him.”

Dean thinks about that version of himself, all hardened edges and desolation. He isn’t sure if it’s true, or if it’ll make this Cas feel any better, but he says, “I don’t think you ever could.”

Cas smiles at that, looking down at the tile with a fondness that chokes him.

“How’d he find out?”

“The bloody way.” Cas hands the knife back to him. “I got stabbed. I don’t remember much of it, but it was pretty bad. It got infected. When I woke up, he was so angry you’d think I’d teamed up with Lucifer or something.”

Dean nods, looking down at the floor. “He was probably terrified.”

“Probably,” Cas echoes mournfully. “But now he’s dead.”

Dean sighs. “Yeah,” he confirms. “Yeah, he is.”

“I knew the moment he died,” Cas says, voice hollow. “Even now, I can feel it. The grace that was in him is trying to come back to me, but it can’t cross over. It can’t leave its universe.”

Dean watches him closely, trying to memorize each part of his face. He imagines the pale blue, almost liquid strands of grace battering at some invisible wall, trying desperately to get back to a home that’s about to burn down, that’s already on fire. 

“Do you—” Cas looks up at the skylights like he’s searching for something. He takes a deep breath and begins again. “Do you think there are separate Heavens for every world?”

“Shouldn’t you know that?” Dean asks. 

He shakes his head. “I don’t know what I know anymore.”

“I’m not sure,” Dean tells him quietly, and he knows what Cas is thinking before he says it. “But I believe that, wherever you go, he’ll be along sooner or later. He’s a tougher son of bitch than I am. I’m sure he’ll knock down a few walls upstairs to get back to you.”

Cas doesn’t respond to that. There’s a long moment of silence. Dean wonders if, by doing this, he’s condemning them to separate afterlives. If, even though this Cas will die human, they’ll be kept apart still. So, maybe they’re just trading places. If he dies right now, he’ll go to Heaven or maybe Hell, and Cas will still be in the Empty. Maybe this Cas will go to a different Heaven from his Dean. Maybe all of this is for nothing. 

Dean clears his throat. “He loved you too. You know that?”

Cas glances over at him, face shadowed. He makes a slight motion with his head, and Dean’s unsure if it’s a nod or a simple acknowledgement. He doesn’t speak. 

“He did,” Dean tells him again. “Human or angel, or anything in between. And—and I think he knew that you love him too.”

Cas laughs softly, rubbing a hand over his face. “I hope he does,” he says. “Though hope is pretty scarce where I’m from. And, your Cas—do I—did he know?”

Dean takes a breath. “Hopefully,” he echoes.

Cas glances over at him. “Don’t you have kids?”

“Jack and Claire,” Dean tells him, smiling at the thought of them. They never met. He wonders if they’d get along, though Claire has trouble getting along with most people. But, under it all, she’s a sweet kid. She reminds him too much of himself. “But it’s—the last year was…complicated, I guess.”

“Then, do me a favor,” Cas says plainly. “After you get him home, tell him.”

Dean nods. He wants to say something but he can’t find the words. He doesn’t know what the right thing to say would be. He doesn’t know if he should apologize again for what he’s about to do. He needs to say something, so he says, “You don’t have to do this.”

Cas shakes his head. “It’s the right thing to do.”

“You always try to do the right thing,” Dean tells him quietly. He used to resent that, because doing the right thing rarely gets you the right outcome. “I know that. But, I also know that I’m asking a lot of you and—”

Cas laughs softly at that, looking back up towards the ceiling. “He said the same thing, Dean. My Dean. When he told me we were going to die going up against the Devil, before he ever got a lead on the gun, he told me the exact same thing. And I’m going to tell you what I told him, which is that I’ll go wherever he tells me to go.”

“I’m giving you an out,” Dean says, almost desperate for him to take it. 

“And I’m saying I don’t care.” Cas touches his hand like he’s sure if he’s allowed to do it. Dean doesn’t pull away. “I just want to know that we get to be happy in at least one world. So, promise me you’ll be.”

Dean closes his eyes, taking a deep, shuddering breath. He feels like he’s going to cry but he doesn’t want this Cas, who has given everything for him so many times over, and who he’s asking so much from, to know how scared he is. 

“I can’t kill you.”

Not-Cas squeezes his hand. “You aren’t,” he assures him, like he’s speaking to a child. “I’m already dead. You know that.”

Dean shakes his head. 

“Dean.”

He looks up. 

“You do it, or I will,” Cas tells him slowly, like he has before. “If you use me for the spell, at least something good will come of it.”

He feels frozen. He feels like he’s burning, like everything inside of him is licking flames and the entire mall is timber. He thinks his skin will burn away at any moment, and no matter how close to the ground he is, it will not save him. He’s going to have to burn the body when this is all said and done. He’s done that before. 

“I can’t,” Dean chokes, leaning over his knees. “Cas, I just can’t.”

An arm descends over his shoulders, tucking him beneath a broad shoulder. He feels the brush of not-Cas’s chin on the back of his head. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmurs, and the words are cool water on his blistering flesh. “It’s okay.”

Dean shakes his head, his trembling hands clenching each other. “I can’t,” he repeats, ragged. “Not again.”

Cas smiles. It’s sad, and there’s something there that makes him feel like he’s back in that dungeon. The thunder outside is Billie’s fist on the door, the end looming behind them, and there’s nowhere to run. This is it, he knows. It’s now or never. 

“The only person I have is dead,” Cas tells him, softer, and his voice shakes with grief. “What’s left of us—we’ll lose against Lucifer. Something will kill me anyways, and it’ll probably be myself. Maybe this way my death can mean something.”

Dean turns back at him, hoping he doesn’t look half as scared as he feels. “It always meant something.”

Now or never.

“I’m ready,” not-Cas murmurs, his mouth close to Dean’s ear. “Get Rowena.”

Dean takes a deep breath. 

Now or never. 

“Rowena?” he calls. 

From the dark, he hears the sound of heels tapping, growing louder as she approaches. He sees the glitter of her gown first, then the rest of her. She crosses the shiny floor, and Cas rises to meet her. 

“Alright, my dear,” Rowena coos, running her hands down his arms. “Right this way.”

Mercy, he reminds himself. Mercy. Mercy. Mercy.

Cas glances backwards as he follows her. Dean sits on the edge of the fountain and tries to remember how to breathe. When they stop, standing beside the empty bowl, he knows it’s his cue. Rowena waits for him, her hands folded in front of her, her chin raised in the same regal way it always is. Cas looks up at the sky, his mouth moving briefly and silently. Maybe he’s praying, but Dean’s Cas didn’t pray—at least, as far as Dean ever knew—and he can’t fathom that this one is any different, at least in that regard. 

He should ask, he thinks. He knows better than to remain silent anymore, but Cas is scared. Dean can tell that much. His hands are shaking and his face is twitching as Dean approaches. He’s pale, and he keeps eyeing the blade hanging limply at Dean’s side like he’s anticipating its bite. The way the light glints off the silver edges keeps making him flinch. It grounds him for some reason: Cas is scared, so he can’t be. It’s his job to make him feel at ease. It’s the least he can do. 

“One last chance,” Dean tells him softly. “You can say no.”

Cas shakes his head. “Enough foreplay,” he jokes weakly. “Get to it.”

Dean takes a deep breath. He readies himself, the pauses. “I’m gonna stay with you,” he says, not realizing it’s a promise until the words leave his mouth. “Until—”

He doesn’t want to finish it. 

Cas smiles at that, tight and tense. “Don’t stick around too long,” he says. “You’ve got a job to do, remember?”

Dean exhales. He reminds himself of what it's all for. “Yeah,” he confirms, looking sideways at Rowena who’s waiting off to the side. “Yeah, I do.”

“And, Dean?”

He glances back. In the dim light, not-Cas’s teeth shine when he grins. For a moment, he looks like the predator that he once was: wolfish and powerful and righteous straight to his core. His posture is straight and strong, chin lifted. The wobble of it barely registers in Dean’s mind until he takes a second look, and the whole illusion of regalia comes crashing to the dirty mall tile. 

“Don’t waste more time,” Cas says. 

Dean nods, unable to speak. He hopes it’s enough. 

He tilts his head back, baring the long, tanned line of his throat. He closes his eyes, then seems to change his mind. He kneels, looking up at Dean unblinkingly. Slowly, almost invisibly, he nods. A little ways away, Rowena echoes the gesture.

Dean squeezes his eyes shut. He steadies his hand. He tries to remember all his father taught him about cutting throats, the quickest and most effective ways. The most painless. It takes all of thirty seconds to a minute to bleed out when your throat is slit. It’s not instant but it’s close to it. If there’s any angel left in Cas at all, it’ll take longer. Dean prays that there isn’t, that it’ll be quick. He deserves for it to be quick. 

He tries to think of monsters and not the man kneeling in front of him, hands clasped on his lap like he’s sitting in a church pew. When that doesn’t work, he tries to think of his Cas, who’s older than the one before him, who’s got crow’s feet and threaded greys through his black hair, and a love that put him in his nameless grave. His Cas, who’s on the other side of a door that, for the first time, they’ve got a shot at opening. A horrible, guilty calmness washes through him. He inhales slowly, raising the blade, and looks over at Rowena, who’s moved to sit at not-Cas’s side with the wide-rimmed bowl held out to collect. 

Her lips are pursed, and she nods. It’s his cue. 

And Cas doesn’t look away from him. He exhales slowly, some of the tension leaving his body as he prepares himself. His eyes remain fixed on Dean even as he lurches forward, as the edge of the blade slices through flesh and vein and tendon, and as that sharp, cut-off cry of pain leaves his mouth, and as the bowl fills with dark red blood. When there’s enough in there, Rowena dashes back towards the circle of herbs, and the reality of what Dean’s just done hits him square in the chest. 

The angel blade clatters to the floor as Dean drops to his knees, opening his arms as Cas—not his Cas, but still Cas—slumps forward. He can feel the warm wetness of his blood, the shudder of his chest as he tries to breathe, and the horrible, grating noise whistling through his cut windpipe as he tries to inhale and exhale. Dean shifts him as gently as he can with his shaking arms, angling him slightly so he can look up at his face, and up through the skylights towards the heavens. 

For a moment—just for a moment—Dean swears his eyes glow blue. 

“It’s okay,” Dean soothes, letting his head rest against his chest. He presses his lips to his hair, one hand wrapped around his shoulder, his arm supporting his back, and the other quickly captured by Cas’s. He’s squeezing so tightly that it hurts but Dean refuses to flinch. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

He’s rocking slightly, like he’s trying to put a baby to sleep. Cas’s eyes shift away from the skylights to fix on his face, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. He tries to look anywhere but at the blood, black in the moonlight, but it's everywhere. It’s on his throat, his face, his clothes, the spray of it mixing with his tears and running in little red rivers down from his jaw. It’s on Dean’s hands, on his clothes, on the floor. He feels it grow cold on his body, making him shiver. 

In the midst of all of this, soft white tendrils float out of the wound on his neck, billowing upwards as whatever last pieces of grace remain take their leave. They dissipate like smoke, vanishing as they climb up towards the dark ceiling. Cas’s eyes, now blurry and unfocused, track them until they’re gone, then snap back in the direction of Dean. 

“He loved you,” Dean breathes leaning down as one of Cas’s hands reach for his face and falls back against his chest, the steadiness of his own voice surprising him. “He loved you so much, and he’d want you to know that, and he’s going to be waiting for you. Wherever you end up, he’ll be there. I promise.”

Cas stares up at him, mouth moving slightly like he’s trying to smile. Dean smiles back, because he thinks it might make him feel better. 

“Thank you,” he whispers, leaning down to rest his forehead against Cas’s. “Thank you.”

He doesn't know when Cas dies. What he does know is that, at some point, his hand goes lax around Dean’s and, at some point, the blood flow slows. At some point, his body stops twitching, but Dean isn’t sure when that happened. He’s still squeezing Cas’s hand but there’s no return of the motion anymore, and he’s still rocking back and forth, and keeps thinking that he can feel his heartbeat but, when he concentrates on the feeling, he realizes it's just his own. 

Rowena is gone, disappeared into the dark to give them space. He’s alone here, and not-Cas-but-still-Cas’s body is cradled against his chest, and maybe it’s been a minute or maybe it’s been a year. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. He keeps talking but he doesn’t know what he’s saying and, eventually, his mouth is too dry to keep speaking so it’s all just quiet. Then, he buries his face in Cas's hair and he smells like Dean's shampoo and the detergent they keep at the bunker. 

It takes a very long time for Dean to find the strength to let him go.

—

“Dean.”

He’s sitting on the side of the fountain when Rowena reenters, ducking out of some dark store to walk towards him. The bowl of blood—Cas’s blood—is carefully balanced between her pale hands. She sets it on the floor, not far from where the body still lays. Dean had wrapped him in his own jacket when he’d finally stepped away, covering the gaping wound on his neck as best he could so it could almost appear that he was sleeping. 

“Dean,” Rowena says again, beckoning him over. “It’s time, my boy.”

Dean stands. His body feels disconnected from the rest of him, moving forward of its own volition. He kneels beside her, eyes still fixed on the corpse. They’ll need to burn him once this is all over, he knows. A proper funeral. A hunter’s funeral. He’ll need to explain to his Cas, when they get him back, what it all means. What happened here. He’ll need to hold up his end of the promise he’d made to not-his-Cas and say what he should’ve said a long time ago. And there’s still so much blood on the floor. They’ll need to clean it up before dawn when the mall reopens. Sam will take care of the security footage—he knows that—but the case isn’t solved yet. The coin still needs to be lifted. 

There’s so much left to do but all he can focus on is the blood drying  on his hands. 

“You have to concentrate,” Rowena tells him, her voice softening. “We only have one shot at this unless, of course, you’ve got another angel up your sleeve?”

He shakes his head.  

“Then repeat after me,” Rowena tells him, handing him a fistful of herbs. “And throw this in after. Ab manu hominis—”

“Ab manu hominis,” Dean echoes, releasing the dried plants into the bowl. They float atop the blood—and there’s so much of it—like tiny ships in a great red ocean. 

“Ab cruore cordis mei—”

“Ab cruore cordis mei—”

“—afursuro in aeternum.”

“Afursuro in aeternum!”

Rowena’s voice grows louder as the bowl begins to rattle. She hands him rosemary, nodding at the mixture. “Tolle maledictionem tuam ab hoc viro. Now, Dean!”

“Tolle maledictionem tuam ab hoc viro!” 

He tosses the herb in, and the white light shines out of the bowl, smoking clouding up from the top of it. It glows brighter and brighter, the light beginning to circle like a whirlpool, chasing itself in the centre of it. Dean covers his eyes, squeezing them shut as it fills the mall. He hears Rowena moving, grabbing it, and blinks to see her tilting it to the side and aiming it at one of the walls beside a crookedly hanging sign for the men’s bathroom. 

Like a firework, the light rockets off the surface of the blood, beginning to drip out of the wide mouth and dribble across the tile. When it hits the floor, it sizzles and turns into thick, red goo that melts into the grout. And, where the light meets the blue-painted walls, it splits down the centre into a dark, black doorway. 

The Empty sits in front of him, cracked open at long last. Dean stands, stepping cautiously towards it. The room feels cold now, like it's sucking all the warmth from the entire mall. For a moment, he’s completely paralyzed. For a moment, he’s back in the dungeon watching as dark tendrils like groping hands rocket out and expand until he can no longer see the flutter of the old trench coat. But Rowena moves beside him, her hair fluttering around her face, and her hand on his arm snaps him back into the present. 

“Go!” she tells him, raising her voice above the whoosh of the portal. “I can maintain the door for just two hours!”

Dean hesitates, turning foolishly to look back at Cas’s body lying still amidst the red pool on the floor. He looks for longer than he should at the shape of him, before Rowena shoves him forward and he stumbles on the slick mall tile. In front of him, the gaping maw of the Empty spreads uneasily over the wall, the edges churning as if alive. He takes a deep breath. He reminds himself of what he’s doing this for. 

In one universe, in one life, maybe he can get his happy ending.

“Wait!”

He turns back. “What is it?”

Rowena looks away, taking in a deep breath. “If you see my son…” she begins, but doesn’t finish. 

Dean understands. He nods, and she gives him a tight-lipped smile before flapping her hand in his direction as if shooing him away.

As the blackness engulfs him, all Dean can think about is how warm it is. Part of him is relieved at that. He isn’t exactly sure how temperature and angles work, but he’s glad Cas didn’t die cold. The thought cuts less deep than usual as if, as he nears his goal, his grief is subsiding but he thinks it’s just the adrenaline. Beneath him, the floor feels like flesh, giving and rocking beneath him. Cautiously, he takes an uneasy step forward and, behind him, the Empty oozes over the patch of light shining in from the mall. 

The ground shakes. Somewhere, as if from deep in the stomach of some beast, he hears something rustle. 

Dean waits until the quake subsides, cold sweats breaking out across the back of his neck, to continue on. Pleading with his racing heart to slow, as if whatever else is in here could hear the echo off of unseen walls, he moves forward quickly, deciding speed trumps stealth. 

There’s just nothing. He can see in front of himself—it’s not dark, but rather pitch black—but there’s nothing to see. Dean looks around, turning in a slow circle and praying something out there in the vast nothingness will give him some sort of sign. 

Shit. 

“Cas?” he calls. It echoes off the unseen walls. 

Cas, Cas, Cas, Cas. 

“Shit.” Dean breathes to himself, looking around. “Might as well pick a direction.”

His hands are still shaking as he turns slowly, then heads out into the dark. His shirt is still damp with blood, growing stiff and sticking to his chest uncomfortably as he creeps through the seemingly growing blackness. He knows he’s running on determination alone, and that crashing is imminent. He tries to focus on where he’s meant to go, but he doesn’t know where to start. 

He walks forward. His feet sink into the blackness beneath him with a soft, strange feeling like he’s walking atop the stomach of a sleeping giant. He swears the floor moves beneath him. No matter how far he walks, the scenery doesn’t change. It’s all nothing. 

About fifteen minutes in—which he can only guesstimate because the second he stepped through that door, his watch froze—his foot hits something solid.

Instantly, Dean freezes. 

He can’t even see where his body ends, like he’s wading through the waters of some murky swap. He kneels, bringing himself down until he can see the blueish-grey jacket of a young man. He was probably a vessel, the poor bastard. He steps over the body and continues on. 

There are more bodies along the way. He recognizes some of them but most are strangers. A few, he feels like he’s seen before. Uriel is one of them, though it took him a moment to remember the name. Ruby is another. He’d kick her if he weren’t afraid it would wake her somehow. The last thing he needs is to have her on his ass. Even Meg would be better, though the idea of hauling her along on a mission to find Cas makes him feel a type of jealousy he understands but doesn’t have time to dwell on. And he keeps checking his watch out of habit but it’s frozen at the exact second he’d stepped through that portal. By his best estimate, it’s been thirty minutes. Nearly a fourth of his time. 

Occasionally, the Empty grumbles and groans like a disturbed child. He half expects something from the depths to wake in his presence, but it doesn’t. Thank fuck it doesn’t. 

Close to an hour in, his panic starts to skyrocket. He thinks about not-Cas and his Dean, and the look on his face when he’d realize his Dean had died. What does it feel like for an angel, past or present, to have grace ripped from them? It must hurt. It must’ve been agony. 

And then he pauses. 

It’s a shot in the crushingly literal dark, but he doesn’t have a choice. He doesn’t know what else can do, if there’s anything else to do. His hand drops to the angel blade hooked through his belt, the metal cold to the touch. He wonders where grace is stored. For angels, he knows it concentrates the throat of their vessel. Cas told him that a long time ago, about how it was something to do with Adam and Eve. Maybe—

It will always try and find its way home, he said. 

Slowly, Dean raises the blade to his own neck. He feels the metal press into the tender skin for a moment before the blood starts to flow, dribbling down his front and soaking his collar. And, somewhere within him, something begins to move. 

He feels it from somewhere behind his throat, closer to his spine than anywhere else. It crawls beneath his skin like bugs, pushing forward until it bursts forth in a shot of light so fast that Dean barely has time to register what’s happening, and then hangs in the air a few feet in front of him. Cas’s grace twists and turns in the darkness, lingering above him for a moment. Dean feels his eyes widen as he watches it, the delicate glow somehow lighting up all the space around him enough that, for the first time, he can see the tips of his bloodied boots. Then, it begins to move.

And Dean tears after it, first just walking and then beginning to run as it picks up its pace.  His footsteps echo off the unseen walls and he cringes with each footfall. It’s loud. Beneath him, the Empty shivers and he nearly loses balance. He keeps running, even as his lungs begin to burn and the fingers of some has-been vessel crunch beneath his feet. He keeps an eye out for the dark shape of Crowley, but the bulk of his focus is only on finding Cas.

When he does, he’s gonna—

Dean’s replayed this moment a thousand times over, but now he has no idea. Some part of him is terrified that, for whatever reason, Cas won’t want to come back. He pushes the thought out of his mind. 

Above him, the shining matter of his grace flutters and hums like a bird. The air is all electric like it is right before a lightning strike. Dean wonders if, somehow, it understands what it’s being used for. He doesn’t really know what grace is. He never asked. It never occurred to him to ask. It’s something like the light of God, he’s sure, but he could swear it’s waiting for him when he needs to breathe or when he stumbles. The curling white edges of it dissipate into the Empty as it bobs in front of him, letting him catch up, and then shoots off into the darkness once again. And then, after what he can only estimate to be about twenty minutes of running, it stops.

On the ground, several feet in front of him, he sees a tan mound of fabric and a hand stretching out from the shape of it, and Dean feels himself freeze. 

“Cas?”

The body remains motionless. The grace hangs in the air above him, then descends. Dean can’t see what exactly happens but, when the light nears him, it goes out and the Empty returns to its state of impossible darkness. Dean hurries forward, glancing anxiously around at the nothingness surrounding him, and drops to his knees on the disconcertingly soft surface until he’s low enough to make Cas out. 

Just barely, Dean sees his hand twitch where it stretches out across the floor. It’s so subtle that he’s not entirely sure he isn’t imagining it, but he can’t think about it. He doesn’t have time to be imagining it.

“Hey,” he hisses, heart pounding so loudly it must be echoing throughout the entirety of the Empty. “Hey, hey, Cas? Can you hear me?”

Cas’s back is to him, his face hidden behind in the dark. Dean pauses for a moment, hesitant to touch him, and then rolls him onto his back. The sight of his face, the familiar lines and the sharp curve of his nose, chokes Dean. He’s asleep still, his features relaxed and calm in a way Dean hasn’t seen in years. He tries not to let himself dwell on it for too long because time is moving fast and he doesn’t know how much longer they’ve got left before Rowena can no longer hold the door. Once they’re out of here safely, he can linger as much as he wants. Even forever. 

How close he is to the finish line hits him right then, and not-Cas’s words echo once again in his head. 

Don’t waste more time. 

“Cas?” he whispers again, cupping his face. His thumb draws across cool, familiar skin. “Come on. Can you hear me? It’s—it’s Dean.”

That seems to get a response from him. Dean watches his baited breath as Cas’s face scrunches up, his forehead wrinkling, and then brilliant blue eyes blink up at him. They’re unclear and confused, like he’s still more asleep than awake, but they focus on Dean. 

“Hey,” Dean breathes, his throat tightening. “You know where you are?”

Maybe that’s a dumb question. 

“Dean?” Cas’s voice is hoarse from disuse. He sounds confused. Dean can’t blame him.

“Yeah,” Dean confirms, leaning down to him. “Yeah, hey.”

Cas blinks a few times, eyes narrowing as they slide over him. “What’s going on?”

Dean sits back as Cas pushes himself up slightly, squinting at the emptiness surrounding them and then looking back towards Dean. “I’m coming to rescue you,” Dean tells him dumbly. It’s the truth, but he wishes he could make it sound wittier. 

Slowly, Cas shakes his head. “No, you’re not,” he says simply, unphased. “You aren’t real.”

“What?” Dean stares at him, stomach falling through his body. 

When Cas smiles humorlessly, it’s all wrong. He’s stiff and strange, already lowering himself back to the floor like he plans to resume his sleep. He rolls onto his other side, his back to Dean, and cushions his head with his arm. Dean’s mind races. He doesn’t know what to make of this. It makes sense, but he doesn't want to think about why. Every afterlife is its own form of torture, he’s long thought. The monotony of Heaven, the endless hunt of Purgatory, and everything about Hell. The Empty employs its own tactics. Around them, the darkness seems to sigh pleasantly.

Shit. 

“Cas!” Dean hisses, glancing around nervously. “Hey, buddy, you still with me?”

Cas doesn’t respond, though Dean sees his head twitch slightly towards him. 

“Come on,” Dean pleads, shaking him. “We don’t have a lot of time!”

Cas sighs heavily. His eyes flicker open. He watches Dean for a moment, pushing himself back up. He’s guarded and tense, backed up into himself like a wild animal. As Dean stares at him, confused, he sees something in those eyes that makes his breath stop. He can’t put a name to it; it’s dark and stormy and flat, like a tornado over the plains, but there’s something else beneath it as if the sun is coming up through the clouds. Dean clings to that light, pushing forward. 

“You need to trust me,” he begs, his voice wavering in spite of his efforts. “You don’t know what I had to do to get here. To get you, Cas. We need you to come back.”

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Cas shakes his head. 

Time has to be running out. The door has to be close to closing by now. If Dean leaves now, and if he runs, he might be able to find his way back in time. And, yeah, he’d come home empty handed but he’d be alive. Sam would probably try and kill him, and then they’d have to bury not-Cas, because he can never lose Cas just once. Then, he’d get drunk. Then, he’d probably put a gun in his mouth. It’s messy but it’s quick. Afterlives aren’t the only places with their own special torture methods. At least in Heaven he can see his mom. 

He thinks about not-Cas, body growing cold on the mall floor, his blood staining the grout. They were never as different as Dean wanted to pretend they were. Too much of his Dean must’ve rubbed off on him, exactly how it was in his own universe. Why else would Cas be so desperate to sacrifice himself for somebody he loves? 

“That’s not an option,” Dean tells him, heart hammering in his throat. He can practically hear Rowena’s desperate plea for them to get back in time, if only so she doesn’t have to deal with Sam’s reaction. “You don’t get to stay here. I couldn’t stop you from coming but I sure as hell can make you go. Look at me, Cas.”

Cas stares at the silky black floor. 

“Look at me!” Dean snaps, grabbing his face between his hands and shaking it even as Cas continues to avert his gaze. His skin is unnaturally cold to the touch. “You feel this? This is real, Cas. This is real, and we’re really going to be stuck here if we don’t haul ass to the doorway! I don’t know what the hell this place has been doing to you, but this is our chance to get you out! You know me, Cas. You know I’m real.”

Cas stares past him, unblinking, like he isn’t hearing a word he’s saying, but with an intensity that makes him uneasy.

“You’ve just gotta trust me, man,” Dean begs. “This is our only shot, you hear me?”

Cas doesn’t respond. 

“Jack’s out there,” Dean tries, struggling to remain calm. “Claire too. I’m sure they miss you like hell. Even Sam. And so do I, Cas, and I…I need another chance to get things right. I think you want that too, but we have to move now, okay? We’ve got to get going. It’s my turn to save your ass.”

Please, he silently begs, shifting so he’s in Cas’s line of sight again. His eyes are starting to burn as frustration and anxiety builds inside of him until he feels like it’ll burst through his skin, but he fights it back. He doesn’t want to cry. Please. 

Cas’s eyes slip shut. His brow furrows for a moment like he’s thinking, eyes moving rapidly beneath the lids. His lip peels back to show teeth as his face twitches, as if there’s some great internal war being waged that Dean’s not privy to. Then, slowly, his eyes slide open again. He blinks rapidly, taking in a long, sharp breath. 

“Dean?”

It’s softer than it was the first time he said it, overflowing with recognition and confusion. He raises his head, and his eyes seem clearer now. Maybe Dean’s desperate enough to be imagining it, but he doesn’t think so. Dean feels his heart finally slow down, no longer threatening to burst through his ribs. He nods, smiling. He can feel his mouth trembling as he does. 

“Hey, Cas,” he breathes. 

“You’re hurt.”

“No,” Dean soothes, suddenly overly aware of the blood that’s dried stiff on the fabric of his shirt. He sits back, running his hands over it. He can’t see it in the dark, but he can feel it flake off onto his fingers. “It’s not mine.”

A beat. 

“You’re coming to save me,” Cas says slowly, like he’s just now realizing that. “How are you here?”

Dean exhales, relief seeping in through the cracks. “Long story,” he explains weakly. “Convuluted as hell, too. I’ll tell you everything once we’re out. I promise. But, right now, we’ve just got to go. Can you walk?”

He nods. 

“Good,” Dean breathes, relieved. He draws a hand across his face, his other still stuck to the side of Cas’s face. It feels weird and glass-like, distorted by the place they’re in. “Okay, let’s get you up. Come on. Come on.”

When Cas stands, he’s wobbly and unsure of himself like he’s forgotten how to pioneer a human body. He keeps looking around and Dean wonders if he can see something that humans can’t. In Hell, he could see the souls stretched out beside him on the Rack. Maybe here, Cas can see all the other angels. Maybe they glow like beacons. Maybe he knows something Dean doesn’t. Then, he looks back at Dean like there’s nothing more interesting to see. 

“I’m real,” Dean says quietly, before he can ask. He keeps a hand locked around Cas’s arm.  

Cas’s forehead wrinkles. “I believe you.”

“Good.” He looks around the vast emptiness around them. He’s lost track of time. There might be twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes left before that door closes. He doesn’t know which direction is out but, as if reading his mind, Cas nods into the darkness. 

“That way.”

“How do you know?”

He shrugs. “I just do.”

And, honestly, that’s good enough for Dean to reach out and grab his arm. Staggering against the unforgiving, unnatural weight of Cas behind him, he pulls them both forward into the darkness.

— 

Five-hundred-thirty-six. 

Five-hundred-thirty-seven. 

Dean can’t see his own feet beneath him. He feels the bunched up fabric of Cas’s sleeve, rough against his palm, but he can’t make out his shape when he turns. Two-hundred steps ago, he’d staggered. Dean had paused. 

Did you trip over someone?

A beat. 

Cas? he’d called, stepping forward. 

Then, there’d been an inhale like a first breath. What? Yeah, I must’ve. 

Something is wrong and Dean can feel it in every fibre of his being. They’re running out of time, whether it’s that door sliding shut or something from the deep coming to reclaim its property, and they need to get out of here fast. He shakes his head, trying in vain to clear it but the darkness is unyielding. 

“You picking up on anything?” Dean asks, shaking Cas’s arm to get his attention. “No pressure, but we’re on the clock here. And it would be a piss poor rescue mission if we got stuck here.”

“We’re getting closer,” Cas says from somewhere behind him. “How much longer until the door closes?”

Dean pauses. “I thought you were supposed to have a knack for time.”

He feels Cas bump against him, unaware that he’d stopped. “Everything is…dampened in here. It doesn’t want me to leave.”

Cold rushes over Dean’s body at that. He turns blindly, feeling Cas take a step back as Dean’s shoulder brushes his. Even inches away, he can’t make out Cas’s face. He can’t read his expression—not that Cas ever gave him much to work with. 

“Tough luck,” Dean decides, shaking his head. “It doesn’t get to make that call.”

Beneath his feet, the floor rocks slightly, shaking like a full-belly laugh. He staggers slightly, his balance askew. Dean hears Cas move as well, stumbling a little. He hears the sharp inhale of breath. 

“I don’t think it wants you to make that decision, Dean,” Cas tells him, voice low. “We need to go.”

That much is obvious. 

There are a thousand eyes on them as they run through the deep, his hand tight around Cas’s wrist. He swears he hears breathing, hears movement and footfall from somewhere in the darkness, and maybe he’s imagining it but he doesn't want to find out. Cas drags behind him and every part of his body is screaming to him that something is wrong. Something is here, with them, and time is running out. And whatever it is, it wants Cas, and Dean will die before that happens. 

The toe of his boot hits something that echoes, a dull thudding echo in the dark, and Dean is sent sprawling out over a jagged upward surface. He barely has the wherewithal to process what’s happening enough to let go of Cas’s hand so he doesn’t bring him down with him. The sound of his body hitting the surface echoes loudly throughout the Empty. 

For a moment, Dean just lays there, stunned. He tries for a moment to regain his breath, then pushes himself up. He squints down at whatever is beneath him but can’t make it out. Beneath his hands, it’s all just black. He feels out the flat plane and sharp drop blindly, then moves his hand upward to feel the pattern repeat. Just like—

“Stairs,” he realizes, breathless. “Cas, stairs. This is it, right? This has to be the exit!”

Dean stands, staggering as he struggles to find his footing on the uneven floor. He starts forward slowly, carefully probing at each step with his toes before mounting it. He’s a few steps in when he realizes that nobody is following him. 

“Cas?”

Somewhere, a little ways below him, he hears somebody—or something—move. 

“Something’s wrong,” Cas breathes from the darkness, his voice slow and sleepy. “I told you, Dean; it doesn't want me to leave.”

Dean’s stomach drops. 

He’s back down the stairs in an instant, feeling around in the black for Cas until he finds him hunched over on the floor. He hadn’t heard him drop. He’d thought he was paying attention, especially because he’d known something was wrong. He should’ve gotten them here faster, and he should get out of this guilt cycle before it paralyzes him and he gets them both killed. 

“Put your arm over my shoulders,” Dean instructs, shaking him. “Hey! Stay awake! You aren’t giving up! Not when we’re this close. Not after all of this shit.”

Together, they stagger unevenly up the stairs.  Mind racing with the few options they’ve got, Dean grits his teeth and sets forward again. He hears Cas’s shoes—stupidly nice things that they honestly should’ve teased him for more often—bump against each step as Dean drags him over them. The back of his neck prickles like he’s being stalked but he can’t look back. There’s nothing to see in the depths of the Empty anyways. He just has to keep climbing. 

Cas’s weight grows heavier and heavier against him. He slumps down against Dean’s side, apparently failing his attempts to fight off the Empty’s hold on him. The muscles in Dean’s shoulders are starting to burn as he tightens his arm around Cas’s waist, desperate to hold him up. 

“Stay with me,” he pants. “We’re almost there. Look—look at me, okay? Focus on me.”

The edges of the invisible stairs are sharp and slippery, as if made of glass. Dean keeps climbing until his thighs burn with the strain of carrying himself and Cas. He keeps climbing until he feels something solid brush against the top of his head. He stops, pressing a hand up against it. He takes another step, and another, and another, until he’s crouching and there’s barely enough space for even that. He puts his hand to it again, and he heaves. 

Light spills into the Empty, and Dean is falling. He’s tumbling into pure white, screwing his eyes shut against the brightness and bringing his hands up to cover his head. For a moment, through the confusion and disorientation, he becomes acutely aware of the fact that he’s no longer holding onto Cas. 

When he hits concrete, everything goes black. 

—

He’s surrounded by blue. 

It’s a deep blue, like dark water shimmering above him. It’s bright in a way that burns Dean’s eyes even through his lids in a way that takes a moment for him to adjust to. Every bit of light is sharp and blinding. The floor is solid beneath him, no longer giving like flesh beneath his body. His shoulder aches from where he fell on it and so does his hip, but nothing echoes from within the deep. He’s out. He reaches a hand blindly across the tile. It’s cold and empty. He pries his sticky eyes open to see Rowena hovering above him.

“There you are,” she says, face pale. There’s sweat beading along her brow. “Just in time.”

His head is pounding like he’s undergone a strange and sudden altitude shift. His heartbeat hammers in his ears as he pushes himself up, blinking rapidly as he tries to adjust to the brightness of the early morning mall. 

“Cas?” he manages, throat dry. 

At first, he doesn’t see him. At first, all he can imagine is that door closing just before Cas had time to get through. He couldn’t feel him when he fell. Maybe he left him there, just like Purgatory. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe the Empty, like Billie, wanted to give him what he wanted most before tearing it away from him again. Maybe—

Rowena’s hand finds his face. He can’t parse her expression in the time between her raising his head and her turning it to face the now sealed wall. And Cas is there, pushing himself up off the floor with a low groan, and Dean is frozen to the bloodslick tile. Some part of him relaxes at the sight of him, safe and alive in the real world, exactly where he should be. Some greater part of him awakens like a raid beast, like he won’t be satiated until Dean can look him over and over and over until he can convince himself that this is real. That they’ve made it out. 

In front of him, Cas is staring at his hands on the tile like he can’t remember if he’d had them previously. Then, his entire body convulses and he vomits out what looks to be thick, black liquid with a sound that sets Dean’s teeth on edge. Rowena is on her feet instantly, hurrying over to bim. She kneels beside him and takes his face in her hands. Dean sees her mouth moving, maybe casting another spell or simply talking to herself. He can’t hear over the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears and the growing panic that something went wrong, that they waited too long, that the Empty wasn’t going to let him go without a fight. 

“Cas?” he asks when he reaches them, grabbing his shoulder as he continues to retch, “What’s wrong with him?”

Rowena purses her lips, eyes narrowing as she takes Cas in, lifting his head in her hands for a moment and giving him a once over. After a moment, she says, “Well, dear, my best guess is that we were a little slow on the rescue mission.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Dean asks, sounding far more afraid that he’d wanted to let on. Every worst-case scenario is playing out in his head right now, threatening to send him into a spiral of panic. 

“Relax,” Rowena tells him, rolling her eyes. “He just needs to expel it. He’ll be fine. But, if he isn’t, call me. I’ll see what I can do.”

On the floor, Cas curls in on himself and a thin line of black spit dribbles from his open mouth. Dean grips his shoulder, not knowing what else to do. He rubs his arm soothingly as Cas regains his breath, his body going limp as he relaxes. 

“Easy,” Dean murmurs, moving around his legs to sit at his front. He leans down, wiping the black from the side of his face with his sleeve, then lifts his head slightly so that when Cas opens his eyes, he’s looking right at him. “Easy, you okay?”

Cas stares at him, forehead wrinkling. His tongue darts out to moisten dry lips. “You’re real?”

Dean feels all the air leave his lungs. He nods. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah, I’m real. We got you out. I got you out.”

He closes his eyes again. “You’re here.” The words are drenched in relief.

“Hey,” Dean breathes, a little panicked. “Hey, hey, look at me. Keep your eyes open, Cas. You’ve gotta stay awake, okay? We can’t stay here.”

Somebody is running to his left, heavy footfalls barely registering in his mind as he pulls Cas up into a sitting position, letting him lean forward onto Dean’s shoulder to keep him from keeling over. When he finally looks to the side, he sees Sam frozen there with his mouth hanging open and thinks he would’ve preferred a cop.

“Holy—” 

Immediately, Dean’s head whips around to Rowena. “You called him?” 

Rowena shrugs nonchalantly. “Dear, I figured you could use all the help you could get.”

Sam stares at him. Realization dawns on his face, chased swiftly by indignant rage and something like fear. “What the hell—”

“We need to go,” Dean interrupts, cradling the back of Cas’s head against him. He can feel him breathing, which brings him enough peace that he remembers how to speak even though whatever logic is left in him knows that angels don’t need to breathe. “Gotta get him someplace safe.”

“Safe?” Sam repeats. “Is something coming?”

A beat. Dean looks back at Rowena, who shrugs. Then, with gusto, he says, “I’m pretty sure we’re in the clear.”

“You’re pretty sure?”

“Can we just go?” Dean snaps, getting impatient.

Against him, Cas croaks out, “I’m fine.”

“Shut up,” Dean snaps, but he leans his head against Cas’s for a moment, closing his eyes and basking in the life thrumming though his body before pulling away. He feels like he’s unraveling as the events of the last twelve hours crash over him. Knowing that Cas is alive and safe is the only thing keeping him from crumbling. “Can you stand?”

He feels Cas nod, which is good enough for him. Sam hurries over, looping one of Cas’s arms over his shoulder and nodding at Dean to do the same. The floor is still slick with blood when they stand, the dried parts flaking off as they haul Cas up and hurry unsteadily towards the emergency exit. Sam has to stay crouched down or else risk pulling Cas’s feet fully off the ground, which Dean would find funny if he had the capacity to find anything funny right now. He keeps looking back at the wall, half expecting some strange hand of darkness to claw its way through the white paint and drag Cas—or maybe all of them—back into the Empty. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees three shadowy figures appear beside Rowena and freezes. 

“Relax,” she says, hurrying after them. “They’re mine. Just cleaning up the mess you made, unless you’d rather leave it.”

“Thanks, Rowena,” Sam says, but Dean pauses, dragging them all to a stop. “What?”

Dean hesitates, looking over to the body still lying on the floor. He nods towards it, throat dry. “Bring him to the hotel,” he says, and he feels Sam staring at him. A little defensively, he adds, “He deserves a proper funeral.”

Between them, Cas doubles over and vomits again. Sam jumps back, halfway releasing him as he does and leaving Dean to bear the brunt of Cas’s weight. He hunkers closer, putting a hand on his chest to keep him from keeling over. Beneath the stained once white button-up, he can feel the hammer of his heartbeat. He isn’t sure if he’s ever felt it before. He must’ve, but he never paid attention. The only thing powering the body he’s wearing is his grace, Dean knows. But, right now, it’s the best feeling in the world. He doesn’t even care about the black sick splattering his arm and clothes. 

“Okay,” he murmurs. “Is it all out?”

Cas is trembling when he answers. “I think so.”

“Good.” He readjusts his grip, sliding the hand that was in his chest around his waist instead. “Come on. Sam?”

Sam hurries over to his other side, cringing at the vomit in the floor but angling himself around it. He helps Cas pull his arm over his shoulder, though Cas seems to favor Dean’s side, leaning into him despite it. Dean doesn’t mind. He keeps his other arm wrapped tightly around Cas’s waist, keeping him secured against his body. He can feel Sam glancing over intermittently but all he can focus on is getting them to the fresh outside air and the wide open sky. 

“You okay?” Dean murmurs as they stagger like a six-legged monster down the wide walkway towards the double doors. 

“Yes,” Cas says, eyes glued ahead. 

“If you need a break—”

“I’m fine, Dean.”

Dean scoffs, adjusting his arm. “Well, fuck me for caring, huh?”

Cas doesn’t respond. 

“Want me to drive?” Sam offers, watching him over the top of Cas’s bowed head. At Dean’s indignant stare, he adds defensively, “You’re distracted.”

“Fine,” Dean gives in, shaking his head. He doesn’t have the energy to argue. “Yeah, good idea.”

Sam frowns. He tilts his head slightly in an unspoken, You okay?

Dean looks away, ducking his head down towards Cas’s as it lolls forward. His bright blue eyes are focused on the light streaming in from the outside. The strange, cold smell of the Empty is stuck to him. He’s still moving like he’s half asleep, or drunk. Dean tightens his grip around his waist, feeling skin give beneath his fingers and the firmness of muscle beneath, like any living thing has. Cas leans into him a little more. It’s so slight that Dean doesn’t know if he’s even aware he’s doing it. He tries not to let it matter. He tries to focus on one step at a time. 

When they finally stumble out through the cool morning air and into the Impala, it still smells like cigarettes. 

—

The ugly blue clock on the motel wall is ticking, and Dean is waiting for the right thing to say to occur to him. 

He’s pacing, and Cas is sitting on the bed staring at the ugly carpet, and Sam is at the table staring between both of them, and the air is as thick and inflexible as plaster. 

Dean ended up being grateful that Sam insisted on driving. He sat in the back with Cas on the way home and tried to ignore the waves of confused pissiness rolling off his brother. He watched the speedometer on the dash and didn’t think about how most car accidents happen ten minutes from home—something Sam told him when they’d been speeding back from a hunt a few months ago, and repeated every time he drove himself home from the bar. He expected the impact at every intersection then, and he’d expected the same on the way back from the mall. He still thinks something is bound to go wrong, for there to be a catch of some sort. Something always goes wrong. He never gets to keep a good thing. Monkey’s paw. 

None of them talked on the ride back. Cas leaned his head against the window and slept, or sat silently and contemplated. Dean doesn’t know. He didn’t ask. He’d studied his hands. He’d kept his eyes on the stoplights. He’d tried to breathe. There’s a lot he’d wanted—he still wants—to say, but Sam doesn’t need to be there for it. There’s too much to explain, anyways. Sam stared at the road, knuckles white as the rising sun spilled red across the wet hood of the car, reflecting in every drop of water like spilled blood. Occasionally, he’d catch Dean’s eye and look like he was holding himself back from saying something, but he never did and Dean didn’t care to find out what it would’ve been anyways. 

Outside, morning sun shines new and bright, pouring out from beneath the wrinkled curtains. Dean’s getting a headache, so he tries not to look at it. He tries not to look at Sam either, and he especially tries not to look at Cas, but he can’t help himself. If he doesn’t keep checking, how will he know that this is real? How will he keep him safe?

There’s still blood under his nails and caked into the lines of his palm when he glances down at them. The heart line, he recalls Cas—not Cas, still Cas, whatever—saying. He digs at it with the uneven edge of his chewed nails, picking rusty specks off his skin. He rubs his hands along the sides of his jeans, glancing awkwardly around the very still, very silent room. Cas doesn’t look away from the carpet, though his head twitches to the side like he can tell he’s being watched. Sam’s gaze flicks between them for a good several seconds more before he clears his throat. 

“Okay!” he announces, awkwardly banging his thighs into the edge of the table as he stands. The chair makes a horrible, grating noise against the vinyl in the foyer as it's pushed back. “I’m gonna—” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder at the window. “There’s a, uh, vending machine around the side. You want anything?”

Dean shakes his head. “Nah,” he says. It’s the first word he’s said in a long time. Cas’s head jerks a little when he speaks but he doesn’t look away from the floor. 

“Cool,” Sam says, quickly grabbing his jacket from the other bed. He doesn’t even bother to put it on before he leaves, or to hide his phone which has been laying up facing on the table for the last fifteen minutes on his texts to Eileen. “Be back soon, I guess. Unless you want something, Cas?”

Silence. 

“Right!” he says slowly, and Dean’s pretty sure he’s talking for the sake of talking at this point, which is irritating. “Bye.”

“Bye,” Dean repeats, watching him hurry out at the door. It slams shut behind him like he’d yanked it harder than he needed to. Once Sam’s shadow passes across the floor beneath the window, he looks over at Cas and finds that he still doesn’t know what he’s meant to say. The feeling, strangely, is relieving. 

He’s in uncharted waters. Nothing is made for them anymore. They’re not in a story. There’s no big picture plot line, no more fate, no more manipulation. The things he wants to say hang back nervously in his throat like his mouth wasn’t made to deliver them. It wasn’t, he’s sure. This was never part of the plan. They’ve spent a very large part of their lives trying to avoid following the plan.  

So, before he can speak, Cas asks, still not looking at him, “Why did you do that?”

And, before he can dwell on the answer, Dean says, “Why do you think?”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why?” Dean asks again. 

For the first time since they left the mall, Cas looks at him. The sweep of his head as he turns it to face him, the curve of his neck under the motel lights, and the neat edges of his hair, silver threading along his temples makes Dean feel like he’s looking at him for the first time despite all the years between now and then. He doesn’t know what to make of all of it. He can hardly make something of himself.

“You could’ve gotten killed,” Cas tells him harshly, brow furrowed.

“You could still be dead,” Dean bites back, defensive despite himself. 

“It wasn’t—” he takes a deep breath, hands balling in the fabric of his slacks. “I chose that.”

Dean shrugs, plopping down on the other bed. “Well, tough luck. I didn’t.”

Cas shakes his head, turning to stare at the empty wall between the beds. The paint is chipped where it meets the floorboards. Dean only notices because he’s staring at it too. 

“Do you just not want to talk about it?” Dean asks slowly. He thinks of Sam, imagining him on his way back from the vending machine. There isn’t enough time to say everything he wants to say. “‘Cause the elephant’s pretty big, Cas.”

Cas stiffens. “Talk about what?” he asks, but he’s always been a bad liar. 

“Maybe that I killed you,” Dean says, gathering his courage. He tries to hold his voice steady. “Or that you—you said what you said before the Empty came. Take your pick.”

Abruptly, Cas stands. The crinkle of his coat and seeing him in motion makes Dean’s chest seize in on itself. The sight of him turning towards the door makes his stomach drop.

“I should see Jack,” he says, a tremor that Dean has rarely heard before in his voice. “Where is he?”

Dean exhales. “Heaven. He’s fine, Cas. Believe me, he’s more than fine. Look, just sit—”

“I need to go.”

“What?” He shoots up, taking a step forward. “Seriously?”

Cas looks back at him briefly, then pulls his gaze away like he doesn’t know how to look at Dean for too long anymore. Dean watches him, wide-eyed and confused, as he steps past him towards the door. Before he can think better of it, Dean grabs his arm. 

It should be like trying to stop a semi truck with one hand. Cas is stronger than he is by an immeasurably long shot. He could barrel right over Dean if he wanted to. He could bring the building to the ground if he desired. Sometimes, Dean forgets that, because Cas never feels dangerous to him. He’s grown used to a softness that took too long to put a name to. Cas freezes—Dean knew he would—though he doesn’t let himself be pulled back yet. He just stands there, shoulders tensed and head bowed. 

“Don’t you leave,” Dean tells him, his voice low and strained. It sounds like he’s begging. He might be. “Not again. Not after everything. Please.”

Slowly, Cas looks back at him. 

“Sit down,” he coaxes, releasing his arm and stepping back. “Five minutes, then you can go if you want to. Just—let me say some things first.”

After a moment of deliberation, he does. Dean sits beside him. Cas stares at the other bed and Dean watches him do so. He needs to say something, but Cas is jumpy like a kicked dog and Dean has been feeling like he’s thirty seconds from blacking out or throwing up since they got out of the Empty, and they’ve only got so long before Sam heads back. 

“So I, uh—,” Dean begins, swallowing back the budding lump in his throat. “Guess we’re even now, huh?”

Cas’s head jerks in his direction, but he doesn’t raise his gaze. “What?”

“You pulled me out of Hell. I dragged you out of the Empty.” He shrugs, trying to grin but feeling like it must look more like a grimace. “Got your ass out of perdition this time.”

Slowly, Cas looks over at him. His expression is so soft that Dean feels compelled to look away. He holds his gaze instead. Outside, car lights beam in through the curtains and fall over the floor. They hit Cas’s back, washing out his hair and leaving his face shadowed. Dean narrows his eyes against them, still unwilling to look away. 

“There’s, uh—” Dean exhales. He feels like he’s walking on eggshells, like if he says the wrong thing one or both of them will spook. He’s been over this in his head a million times. He had a thousand iterations of the script ready off the press, but he can’t seem to remember them. This is different than he’d anticipated because it’s real. “There’s a lot that I want to say to you.”

Slowly, Cas nods. 

“It’s been about six months since—since everything.” He picks some of the blood out from his nails. “I wanted to get you out sooner, but the spell we used…you were there, weren’t you? When Rowena released Amara?”

Again, he nods. “Oscar,” he recalls. 

“Oscar,” Dean repeats. His hands are starting to sweat. He feels restless and trapped, but this is what he wanted. This is why he asked Cas to stay. He can’t back down. “We used a similar one to open the Empty. Rowena changed some of the ingredients, but it still needed…it needed a heart.”

He should look at Cas, he thinks. He should look at him and just say what he’s trying to say, but he can’t. He doesn’t know why. It sticks in his throat like loose teeth, tearing up the fragile tissue inside. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say, if there’s a better way to lay it all out for him. He’s gone over this a thousand times in his head but it’s different now. It’s real now. There are no do-overs. There’s just the blood on his hands and Cas sitting beside him on the unmade bed. 

“It, uh…it couldn’t be Sam,” Dean continues, stalling. “Or Claire, or Jack. I couldn’t do that, you know? I’m sorry, but I couldn’t.”

Slowly, Cas shakes his head. “Why would you apologize?”

Dean exhales, rubbing his temple. “I don’t know,” he says softly. “I don’t know.”

“I didn’t ask you to save me, Dean.”

Dean looks up at him. “Neither did I. See? Even.”

Cas purses his lips. He stares at the ceiling like he wants to peel it back and escape into the slow morning. “Who was he? The one you killed?”

Dean exhales. “Long story.”

Cas waits. 

Shit, Dean thinks. He must’ve known there was no way around this. He must’ve, because he wants to tell Cas everything but the words are lodged sideways in his throat. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say, or how to say it. It feels too delicate for him to hold without crushing. He has to say something now, but he’s scared it’ll be the wrong thing. He’s done so many wrong things. All he wants is something that feels right.

Killing not-Cas felt right. In the moment, he could’ve sworn that the world was falling out from under him but now, looking at his Cas, he knows all the agony was worth it. Some part of him knew that the first time he saw him, drenched in the doorway and long before either of them had brought it up. Some part of him must’ve known that this was how it would always end up. He just wanted to ignore it. 

“Cursed wishing well,” Dean says quietly. “The one at the mall. We were investigating and I…I guess I wanted to see if it worked. He’s from another universe, the one Zachariah sent me ten years ago. His Lucifer won.”

Cas’s head jerks up towards him, blue eyes narrowed. 

“His…the Dean from his universe was dead. Sam’s possessed. He had nothing to go back to, and I’d told him about the spell, and he offered—he offered himself. So I did it.”

“Your heart,” Cas recalls quietly, glancing away again. “Him?”

Dean takes a very deep breath. He draws it in slowly. “No,” he says softly. “You.”

A beat. Cas clams up, folding in on himself, his gaze purposefully directed away from Dean. His hands are unmoving in his lap, body so still that Dean can tell he’s not breathing just by his shoulders. This Cas doesn’t need to breathe, he knows. He’s not human, though he looks it. His life will stretch on forever, long after Dean finds himself in Heaven.

He thinks about heavens. He thinks about not-Cas and not-Dean. He thinks about how little time there is in a human life, and how vast infinity seems. He’s always loved the little things, and apparently the grand, unimaginable things too, but he’s nothing more than an ant to something like Cas. He’ll never be able to fathom it.

“Oh,” Cas says slowly. 

Dean watches him. “That’s it?”

He shrugs, eyes locked on the old, patterned carpet. 

A beat. 

“It’s been six months,” Dean says quietly, looking away. “In case you were wondering. Since you died.”

“I assume Chuck is…?”

Dean nods. “He’s out of commission. I’ll fill you in some other time, alright? Not now.”

He hears Cas exhale. “Okay. Good.”

The silence that follows is awkward and thick. Dean watches the door. Cas watches the wall. Nobody moves. 

“Do you remember what you said in the Empty?” Dean asks. “About…not believing I was real. Why?”

Cas looks over at him briefly, then away again. He thinks for a moment, lips parted as he mulls over his response. “It’s one of the oldest entities created. It’s extremely powerful. It can…make you see all kinds of things. It can make you believe whatever it wants to believe. I think it wanted to punish me for waking it, give me false hope.”

Dean frowns. “It showed you me?”

Cas stares at the floor. 

“You know, I had these dreams,” Dean begins slowly. His heartbeat pounds in his ears, his own voice barely audible above it. “After you died. I’d be walking down the hall in the bunker, right past the dungeon, and I’d hear banging on the stone. Must’ve had them every night that I was sober for months. Every time, I went at it with hammers and axes and whatever I could find trying to tear it down. It never even chipped, but I could hear it right on the other side. Your voice, begging me to get you out. Blew the room apart one morning after I woke up. It didn’t stop the nightmares, just kept me from thinking I heard you when I was awake too.”

He can’t bring himself to look at Cas, but he can feel the familiar weight of his gaze.

“I should’ve gotten you out sooner,” Dean breathes. It feels like an admittance of guilt.  

He feels the bed shift as Cas moves closer to him. “How?”

“I don’t know.”

“You got me out,” Cas says quietly. “You couldn’t have done it sooner.”

He knows that’s true but he doesn’t want to believe it. It’s easier to blame his own failings than to think the world is cruel enough to leave Cas locked in that place for so long without any hope of escape. But he knows, and now Cas knows as well, that there was no other way. Once, he considered asking Sam to perform the spell and to use him to open the door but he knew there wasn’t a shot in hell that Sam would agree to it, so he just gave up. He didn’t remember that earlier. Maybe he should’ve told not-Cas because he’d understand but, then again, so does this one. He thinks about why the universe, or Jack, or whatever higher power, or plain old coincidence brought him that other Cas, of all the timelines and worlds that exist. Not-Cas knew the answer. They all do. 

“Dean?”

He looks over at Cas. “Yeah?”

“Thank you,” he says quietly, looking at the floor. “It was foolish and dangerous, but thank you. You didn’t have to.”

“I had to,” Dean disagrees gruffly. “You know that.”

A beat. 

“Do you still…” Dean takes a deep breath, heart hammering behind his ribs. “What you said before Billie came…is that still real?”

Somehow, Cas gets even more still. He doesn’t even breathe. He just stares at the wall like he wants to burn a hole through the paint and into the plaster beneath. 

“I’m just wondering,” Dean adds quickly, unsure of what he’s supposed to say but unable to stop himself from filling the overwhelming silence. “Doesn’t change anything. I mean, I would’ve done what I did regardless. I guess I just want to know if…”

He doesn’t finish. 

Cas’s mouth presses into a thin line. Dean’s always been fascinated by the shape of it. A long time ago, when he’d first taken the vessel, his mouth moved at the wrong times at the sound leaving it. It was disconnected and strange. Over time, everything about him got more human. The curl of his lip, the way his tongue darts out to wet them, could only be unconscious. Dean stares at the shiny white planes of his teeth as he waits in the silence. 

“I wish circumstances had been different,” Cas says finally. Slowly, like the words are being dragged out of him bit by dreadful bit. “But it was the truth.”

Dean doesn’t know what he’d expected. Maybe he’d thought a bubble of relief would pop and that all of the residual stress and ache of the last six months would be washed away. Maybe he thought something would slide into place, that the last piece of the puzzle was finally on the table and he’d be able to make sense of everything now, like all his prayers had been heard. Instead, nothing changes. He loves Cas horribly, the way he did before any of this, before the wishing well and not-Cas, before Billie opened that door, before Cas said anything at all. For a long time, he thought it would be the death of him.

Sam has been gone for a while now, which means he’s either on his way back or it’ll be another twenty minutes because he knows he’s not wanted here. Dean steadies himself. He tries to digest everything that’s happened. He tries to ignore the brown blood on his hands. He looks at Cas, and everything else fades into the background. 

And Cas watches him, his eyes dark in the dim hotel light. His face is all carved up by the shadows, clinging to the rough lines of his skin and the crag of his nose. His eyelashes beat like butterfly wings as his gaze drags down from Dean’s eyes to his mouth. His lips part, canine teeth pressing down against his still tongue. Dean wants to press his fingers into his jaw until the muscle loosens, until his heavy mouth falls open all pliant and waiting, and he wants so badly that he thinks there’s nothing more to him than this hunger swallowing up everything else like a black hole.

Inches away from him, Cas’s face softens. “You’re praying.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Dean tells him, defensive in a way he can’t make sense of. He doesn’t want to be defensive. There’s nothing to protect himself from but satiation. Maybe that’s what he’s so afraid of.

There’s a small smile. “I know.”

“You know what for?” Dean asks, voice hushed. He’s burning out from the pit of his stomach, growing nerves making him feel as weak and as wobbly as jello. 

Cas nods wordlessly, gaze scanning Dean’s face like he’s waiting. He is waiting, Dean reminds himself. He’s been waiting. They both have. 

Don’t waste more time. 

And Cas closes his eyes expectantly, pink tongue resting between relaxed teeth for a moment longer before it retreats back into the open cavern. Dean feels his own heartbeat shake the bed beneath them. It shakes plaster from the ceiling. Cas sits still beside him patiently, and Dean has never been more scared of any monster than he is of this. 

What he realizes—and maybe he’s known it for a while—is that the only thing he fears more is doing nothing. Is wasting time he doesn’t know if they have. Too many good things have been taken from him. He knows not to let an opportunity pass by without trying desperately to grab hold of it. 

So he kisses him.

And Cas kisses him back, so hard that he’s flat on his back before he realizes he’s falling. And there are messy sheets all around him, tangling around his limbs as he pushes himself back up against Cas’s sturdy body . He feels for the sides of his face, the broad stretch of his cheekbones and the angled planes of his jaw, where stubble breaks through skin. He kisses Cas so hard that he forgets to breathe, which he finds is unsurprisingly easy to do. Only one of them needs to breathe after all, and the other has been starving for this maybe forever. Maybe this is the first time in Dean’s entire life that he’s felt satiated. 

When he drags himself away, he’s half drunk on the feeling and hungers for it like he’s never hungered for anything before. He lays back against the bed, feeling himself sink deep into the soft mattress. Cas stares down at him, lips parted, looking like he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do now. Dean doesn’t either. Maybe that’s the secret to it all; that there is nothing they’re supposed to do. No more duty, just more desire than he knows what to do with. So, naturally, Dean kisses him again. 

This time, he reaches up and pulls Cas down towards him. His hands snare in Cas’s untucked collar, guiding his face down towards him. Cas lets himself be dragged along, eyes half-lidded, bearing down until his knees are planted on either side of Dean’s thighs and his hands find his face. His nose pokes into Dean’s cheek and he wants to laugh at the sensation and he wants to laugh because he’s so damn elated in a way that scares the shit out of him. He swallows it back, letting himself sink so far into the kiss that he’s certain he’ll never resurface. They’ve slid into a rhythm that, quite frankly, Dean’s impressed by. He can count on one hand the number of times Cas has kissed somebody, as far as he’s aware. But this feels natural. He could do this forever. He’d be more than happy to do this forever. 

“Fuck,” he hears himself whisper, word echoing around the cavern of Cas’s mouth.

Then, Cas draws back with a slow, shuddering sigh. He stares at Dean for a moment, unblinking and so close that his eyes eclipse into one in front of Dean’s face. Then, he sits back, tilting his head like he’s listening for something. “Your brother’s coming back.”

Dean closes his eyes, rubbing his hands over his face. “Fuck,” he says again.

Behind them, the doorhandle juggles as Sam fiddles with the lock. At the sound, Cas stands abruptly. He looks around and takes a breath. “I’m going outside.”

“Outside?” Dean repeats blankly, staring at the curve of his jaw from below. His head buzzes with static as he tries to catch his brain up to what his body’s been doing. 

“I should try and speak with Jack.” He frowns, glancing back at Dean. “I’ll be back.”

Dean blinks. “Okay,” he says simply. “Can’t argue with that. Invite him in if he shows.”

Cas shoots him a fond look that sends Dean’s heart jolting into his throat. He can’t remember if he could picture it so clearly before he got Cas back. If he hadn’t—if the spell hadn’t worked or if they’d never taken this case—he could’ve lived the rest of his life on just a memory. The thought curdles in his stomach. Dean thinks it would’ve been short, as if that’s any comfort. Just as Cas turns to leave, Dean catches the sleeve of his coat. 

“We’re good, right?” he asks. 

Almost imperceptibly, Cas nods. Dean could swear he’s smiling. 

The hotel door swings open. Dean starts slightly at the sound, releasing Cas’s arm. Cas swiftly lowers his gaze and moves quickly towards the other side of the room, in Sam’s direction. Dean’s gaze follows him as he brushes past Sam on his way out. Sam watches him go, forehead wrinkling a little as he sets a bulging plastic bag down on the table and does his best to act casual.

“You rob the vending machine or something?” he asks. 

“Corner store about ten minutes from here,” he says. “We were running low on toiletries and I figured you actually were hungry and just too stubborn to tell me. Where’s he going?”

Now that he mentions it, Dean’s starving. 

“No,” he says, because he’s also stubborn and can feel the pissiness roll off of Sam in waves. “To talk to Jack.”

Sam rolls his eyes, ignoring his words, and tosses a Snickers with a little more force than necessary. He looks disappointed when Dean catches it, then nods towards the door. “How is he?”

Dean shrugs, concentrating on peeling the candy. “He’s Cas. How’s Eileen?” 

Sam pauses in the middle of shrugging off his coat, looking like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Good.” A beat. “How’d you know I was talking to her?”

“Who else would it be?” Dean asks, taking a bite. “Everybody else you know is in this room.”

Sam scoffs at that, as if to unhappily say fair enough. “Well, she’s glad to know Cas is back.”

“Aren’t we all?” Dean says. “Happen to call Jody while you were out there? Let her know the good news?”

“Not yet.” He sits down at the table, pulling out a bag of almonds and pointedly ignoring Dean’s disgusted expression. “Eileen thinks Cas should call.”

At that, Dean raises his eyebrows. “What else’d you guys talk about?”

Again, Sam shrugs. 

“Come on, man,” Dean complains. He stretches out on the bed and begins to tear into the candy bar. “Give me something. You were gone for, like, an hour.”

“Wasn’t an hour,” Sam corrects. “What did you tell Cas?”

Dean pauses. “About what?”

Sam makes an aimless, wide motion at the room around them. “Everything, dude! Or did you forget you wished an alternate universe clone of him into reality and then killed it.”

“He wasn’t a clone,” Dean defends sharply, then takes a breath. “And, yeah, I gave him the rundown.”

“He tell you you’re a moron?”

With a sigh, Dean nods. “Yeah. Satisfied?”

Sam, to his credit, has the nerve to look pleased. His expression fades slightly as he observes Dean’s face, crossing his arms and glancing back towards the door. “How’d he take it?” he asks, lowering his voice. 

Dean shrugs. “He was angry.”

“Was?” Sam repeats.

Again, he shrugs. 

“You okay?” Sam asks hesitantly. 

Dean glares at him, sitting up to pull off his flannel and toss it towards the foot of the bed. “Don’t press your luck.”

Sam shoots him an exasperated glare. “You’re insane, you know that?”

Dean shrugs, crossing his arms behind his head and settling back into the pillows. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It is.”

“Not right now,” Dean tells him, nodding to the window where Cas’s silhouette is dark through the curtains, daylight framing him perfectly. 

Sam tracks his gaze and sighs. He opens his bag of nuts. “Well, don’t do that again.”

Dean scoffs. “Tell him that.”

Sam doesn’t seem to find that funny. He scowls into his snack, brow furrowed. Dean sighs, deciding to do something more interesting than try and fail to get a raise out of his brother. He stands, stretching his arms up towards the ceiling with a groan loud enough that Sam shoots him a flare that makes him thankful looks can’t kill. 

“The hell are you off to?” Sam asks. 

“Air,” Dean tells him curtly, slipping his shoes halfway on before he steps out the door. Behind him, Sam starts to say something but it’s cut off by the sound of the door slamming before he can discern it. 

Outside, Cas is standing beneath the overhang. His head is tilted up, watching rainwater collect along the rusted green edge and drip into a dent in the parking lot concrete. He tilts his head slightly when Dean exists, but doesn’t look at him. 

“Hello, Dean.”

“Hey,” Dean says simply, trying to be casual. “Anything from Jack?”

Cas shakes his head. 

“Sorry,” Dean offers awkwardly. “He’s probably just busy.”

Cas makes a small, nondescript movement with his shoulders. It’s not quite a shrug. “Yeah, probably.”

“You alright?” Dean asks, coming to stand beside him. 

Cas glances at him. “Are you?”

Dean shrugs, going to shove his hands into his pockets only to remember he left his jacket back at the mall. “Better.”

There’s a beat. Neither of them seem to know how to settle into this new type of existence. So much has changed since the last time Dean was beside him, and there’s so much that’s happened in the meantime. He wants to tell Cas about all of it, more than what he's already said. About every night he spent drunk and pathetic and alone, and about all the times his brother had to drag him out of some rundown dive bar and pull over on the way home so he could puke. It’s messy and ugly, but he’s always been that way. Cas knows that and for some unfathomable, incomprehensible reason, he loves him anyways. 

“I’m glad you’re back,” Dean says quietly, fixing his gaze on the ripples of an evergrowing puddle beside the curb. It’s a start. “Could probably fill a book with all the stuff you missed though.”

“It feels different,” Cas replies, squinting at something that Dean can’t see. 

“What does?”

He looks over at Dean. “Everything. Chuck isn’t here anymore, but something else is. This is…good.”

Dean smiles at that. “Yeah,” he agrees. “It is.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Cas pause. He drops his gaze, brow furrowing. Then, he fixes Dean with his stare again. “It’s Jack?”

Dean nods. 

His eyes narrow. “What happened?”

Dean sighs, looking away. “It’s a long story. Some other time.”

 It’s a weak excuse at best. When they first realized what they had to do to defeat Chuck, Dean was a different animal. He was rabid with grief, and terrified, and willing to burn down anyone and anything if it meant his freedom. Now, with a distance to it, he wishes there had been another way. Jack was a Nephelim but he was also a child, and Dean will never feel quite right about letting him take the burden, and he will never feel like he could justify it to Cas, though he thinks Cas would understand. If he could do it all again, he wouldn’t change a thing. So maybe he still is that same animal after all. 

“Dean,” Cas pushes. 

“It’s a long story,” Dean reiterates. “You’re exhausted. I can tell.”

He shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

“And so’s Jack,” Dean tells him firmly, clapping him on the back. “That’s what matters. I’ll give you the rundown later. Right now, I’m about to fall asleep standing. Alright?”

Cas’s eyes gleam in the flickering light. He looks up at the moths around the rusted lightbulbs cage above them. “Alright,” he agrees. “Later.”

—

There are kids laughing somewhere out in the parking lot. Dean barely registers the sound, his eyes heavy and his head dropping towards the mattress like it wants to fall off his shoulders. The kitchen table chair he’d dragged over into the narrow strip between the bed and the wall is uncomfortable. In front of him, Cas sleeps half buried beneath the thin sheets. 

It’s been a good few hours now. Dean tried to sleep for a while, but he gave up sometime past three in the afternoon. The adrenaline of the rescue, and of the things that happened after, has faded and left him a tied husk of what he was before but he can’t bring himself to sleep. Maybe some part of him is terrified that if he isn’t here to keep an eye on things, they’ll fall apart again. With a sigh, he shifts his stiff body in the chair and leans forward, dropping his elbows onto his knees and tenting his hands. His head swims with every movement. When he lets his eyes slide shut, he feels his mind floating and drifting away from him, slipping downward towards sleep.

“You’re still awake?”

Dean jumps a little at the sudden voice, head jerking up to see Sam sitting up in bed, his hair a rat’s nest half in his face. He squints across the room, his voice thick with sleep as he climbs out of bed. 

Dean shrugs. “Yeah. Why are you?”

With a muffled groan, Sam stretches his long arms up towards the ceiling. He rubs his hands over his face, letting them hide it for a long moment. “Bathroom.”

Dean doesn’t respond to that. Instead, he settles back in his chair and resumes his watch. 

He hears Sam shuffle closer. “You okay?”

He nods. “Fine.”

“Cas okay?”

Again, he nods. 

“Why are you up?”

“Don’t you have to piss or something?” Dean asks, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t let me hold you up.”

Sam frowns. He doesn’t budge. “What’s going on?”

Dean exhales, running a hand over his face. “I was worried,” he caves after a moment. “I don’t know. I felt like I should. If anyone deserves to be looked after, the guy who just busted out of the Empty seems like he’d be pretty high up on the list. Besides, he’s probably gonna have nightmares anyways. Might as well get ahead of ‘em.”

Sam pauses, dropping his hand. He crosses his arms, a knowing look in his eye. “The Empty isn’t Hell, Dean,” he reminds him softly. “And, besides, he’s an angel.”

“And?”

“Does he dream?” Sam asks. 

Dean shrugs. “He might.”

Sam sighs. “Get some rest,” he says softly. “You look like shit. I can stay up if you really want. You busted out of the Empty too, you know. And only one of you needs to sleep.”

Dean frowns, tenting his hands as he leans forward, elbows on his knees. “He might right now. Seems like he does.”

“So?”

Again, Dean shrugs. “Go back to bed, Sam.”

Sam’s lips are pursed when Dean glances back at him, arms still crossed. He shifts from foot to foot, frowning as he watches Cas sleep. “I think we should burn him tomorrow night,” he says after a moment. “Rowena’s keeping his body for the time being. She, uh, preserved it. Just for now. I didn’t really ask questions. She’ll bring it when we’re ready.”

“We should go out whenever we wake up then,” Dean tells him, clearing his throat. The thought of building the pyre makes a pit open in the bottom of his stomach. It sucks the air of his lungs. “There’s a forest a few miles outside of town. We gotta get wood.”

“Grab us some food if you’re gonna be up all night,” Sam yawns, pressing his hand to his mouth. “But, if you change your mind, I can watch him.”

Dean nods, resting his chin on his hands again. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Sam linger for a little longer before turning to go to the bathroom. The light flicks on, spilling out beneath the crooked door. Cas stirs slightly, then settles back down. Dean wonders what the hell he’s doing. Maybe he’s overreacting and Sam was right; he does need to sleep. But he knows a thing or two about being rescued from the afterlife and he knows it sucks. Maybe it sucked for him more because he’s human, but he can’t help but think he owes it to Cas. To every version of him that spent the last parts of their lives standing by him, watching over him. It’s a debt that feels crushing sometimes, immeasurable weight bearing down on his shoulders until his collarbones crack beneath it. Maybe he’ll never fully be able to repair it, but he can try. 

He’s trying. 

When Sam exits the bathroom, he walks over to the coat closet by the door and pulls out the extra sheet. Wordlessly, he offers it to Dean. Wordlessly, Dean takes it. He hears Sam settle back into bed, and he hears the cars on the road, and he can hear Cas breathing. That’s all that matters. 

The teenagers in the parking lot are quiet now. Either they’ve run out of conversation or they left and he’d just missed the sound of the engine. Dean closes his eyes, resting his head on the edge of the bed in a way that’ll leave his back sore tomorrow. Getting older is weird like that. He never thought he’d make it here and he’d certainly never imagined that, if he did, he wouldn’t be alone. When Dean cracks open his eyes, he sees Cas’s hand inches from his face. His fingers twitch slightly at random as he sleeps. The knowledge that he’s here and he’s real and he’s alive is so overwhelmingly peaceful that Dean feels himself drifting off despite his protests. 

And, for the first time in a long time, he isn’t scared of what tomorrow brings. Something tells him it’ll be alright. 

—

The wall cracks open. 

Kaleidoscope glass hangs above him, fractured moon blinking a thousand eyes down into the dark swell of the empty room. It reflects off the wet floor. The wet floor. 

Dean tries to raise his hand but it stays stuck to whatever’s beneath him. He’s on his stomach looking up at the skylights. He’s shivering but he doesn't think he’s cold, and there’s this smell that’s everywhere. Coppery and fresh, sharp to his nose. It squelches beneath him. Slowly, Dean lowers his gaze back to the floor to see oceans of thick, clotted blood stretching out on all sides of him. He tries to scramble back, his stomach dropping and his breath suddenly restricted and tight, but he’s stuck to the floor, pinned on his belly like an animal in a net. 

To his right, he sees a shape in the darkness. It rocks atop the red waves like a ship, drawing closer and closer until he recognizes Cas’s trench coat. When he tries to speak, the only thing that comes out is a horrible, breathless sound. And, like a great mouth in front of him, the wall yawns open. 

From deep inside, there’s a thumping like a heartbeat. Like whatever he’d heard while he was in there. Like running, growing louder and louder and louder as it seems to draw near to him. And the tides change. The dark sea beneath him begins to lap towards the opening in the wall, splashing as it pours into what sounds like a basin within it.

Dean rallies against the invisible bonds keeping him elbow deep in the rising liquid. He jerks forward with all his strength, feeling what he can only describe to be a sensation not unlike barbed wire bite into his skin like his bones are trying to break through from beneath it. He imagines tearing out of his flesh and wading through the ocean growing around him until he reaches Cas. He just needs to get to Cas, but the river is beginning to swell up to his biceps, then to his shoulders, and he knows he’ll be choking on it soon. 

Cas! he hears himself cry out. Castiel! Cas!

Then, from within the deep swell of the sea surrounding him, there’s a voice. And there’s a weight. He feels it on his head as the blood laps against his chin, not shoving him down beneath the waves but instead resting lightly as if it’s not there at all. 

And the voice says, It’s not real.

Dean opens his mouth and immediately hot, coppery, thick blood gushes down his throat. He chokes, panic billowing up from his stomach as he lurches as far forward as his frozen body will allow. Each time he attempts to spit it up, he swallows more down. 

You can breathe. 

No, he wants to scream. I can’t, I can’t—

Try, Cas’s voice says from somewhere far away. Trust me. 

Dean hesitates. 

I trusted you, Cas points out. You’re dreaming. It isn’t real. It’s just a nightmare. 

Slowly, Dean draws in a deep breath. This time, where the blood hits his tongue it turns into something thin and sweet, like fresh spring air. He gulps it down greedily, his lungs no longer burning from holding his breath and his panic dissipating and he relaxes into the warm pool around him. As long as he doesn’t open his eyes, he doesn’t have to see what it is. It isn’t real, anyways.

Good, Cas says.  

Why are you here? Dean asks. 

I thought you might need me. 

He feels himself go loose as his strength fades into soft, peaceful bliss, sinking into the warmth around him. He feels the weight on his head move slightly, feels it stroke through his hair. Everything is heavy and slow and sluggish, like he’s half asleep. When he pries his eyes open, there’s nothing but darkness around him like the Empty stretching vast and endless all around him, but something is different. Something feels safe, calm. He wonders if this is what the endless sleep of death feels like for angels. It would be comforting if true. 

Cas? he asks, just to make sure. 

Mm. It’s a soft hum, like a lullaby. I’m here. 

You were right, Dean tells him. I needed you to come get me. 

Cas didn’t respond to that or, if he does, Dean is too far gone to hear him. All that 's left of his conscious mind cares about is that Cas is here, with him, alive and safe and in love with him. He doesn’t know how it happened—his memory fuzzes out around the time they drove to the mall—but he doesn’t care. If he’s honest, he could consider it the biggest win of his life. Not that there’s all too much competition. Even if there was, even if Dean had handcrafted the world, this would still be it. Right now and maybe forever, that’s all that matters.

When he wakes up to the metallic sound of Sam sharpening their twin set of axes at the table, a half-drunk coffee sitting to his right, he realizes he’d fallen forward in the night. His arms cushion his head where it rests on the edge of the bed in an awkward way that causes pain to radiate down the back of his neck. In front of him, Cas is still asleep, turned towards him with his hand resting gently atop the crown of his head. 

 — 

“Fuck,” Dean mumbles, picking a rather large splinter out of his thump. He presses the calloused pad to his mouth, tasting iron, then turns and glances back at Sam who’s stood lingering by the open trunk of the Impala on the edge of the gravel road. “We got anymore of those gloves?”

Sam makes a show of looking around, then gives him a thumbs down. His own pair of gloves, which he’d bought a few years back at a hardware store, make a toe-curling squeak as the blue rubber presses against itself. “I offered to buy you a pair,” he reminds him, like he always does. “You said men don’t wear them.”

“Offered to buy you a pair, my ass,” Dean mutters, picking up his axe again and rolling his eyes. “With the money I earned from pool. I bought you those!”

Behind him, Sam laughs, and the trunk of the car shuts. Sam crosses over to the growing pile of wood by the side of the quiet road, stacking a few stray pieces on the top before taking a step back to look at it. “How much more do you think we need?” he asks. 

Dean looks it over, trying to forget what they’re going to use it for. “Probably double what we have,” he says, groaning. “Fuck.”

“Tired?” Sam asks edgily. 

Dean shrugs, dropping his axe and reaching for his duffle, which is sitting atop the dewy grass, to pull out his crumpled plastic water bottle. “A little.”

As Sam turns his back to him, he mumbles something that Dean can’t quite make out but he catches, Yeah, wonder why. 

“Wanna share with the class?”

“What the hell were you thinking?” Sam snaps, slamming the axe down through the fallen tree. The wood splinters beneath the blade. “I mean, sure, a spell is one thing but going into the Empty? Fuck, do you have a death wish?”

Dean undoes the lid of his water, sitting heavily down on one of the stumps. “I did what I had to,“ he says, trying to mask his defensiveness. He does so poorly. “Sam, he saved my life. It’s the least I could do.”

“‘Cause the best way to honor his memory is to get yourself killed,” Sam says dryly. 

“Wasn’t trying to honor anything,” Dean corrects gruffly. “I had a shot at saving him so I took it. That’s the job.”

Sam turns to look at him, eyebrows raised. “Oh, so this—this was just a job?”

Dean shrugs. “What else?”

“You killed someone.”

He scoffs. “It was his idea. Hell, half the time we lose someone on hunts anyways.”

“We could’ve found another way,” Sam argues. “We could’ve sent him back!”

Dean shakes his head. “He didn’t want to go back.”

“So, what? He’s grieving so you let him make the call? That’s suicide!”

“He would’ve done it anyways,” Dean mumbles, swinging the axe haphazardly at the ground. It squelches against the wet mulch.

Sam stares at him. “And that makes it okay?”

“You weren’t there!” Dean snaps. “You never saw that place! I did! This is better for him, I guarantee it.”

“You’re telling me it was mercy?” Sam challenges.

“Yes!” Dean insists. He’s angry and he feels too warm and he feels stuck. He’d anticipated something like this. He just wasn’t prepared for it. “Yes.”

Sam drops the axe, sighing. He shrugs, then crosses his arms. “Tell me what it was like. That place. Why couldn’t he go back? I mean, I get the suicide mission, but he avoided that, right? The rest of them already fought.”

Dean shakes his head, staring at the wet soil. “It doesn’t end there. Because the plan fails, and Lucifer destroys the world. Everything. Would you want to go back to that?”

Sam is silent, his brow furrowing. Then, he shakes his head. He never quite looks at Dean as he does. 

“Exactly,” Dean says quietly. “Look, you may not like it—and I get it, believe me. I didn’t like it either. But it was Cas. We take care of our own even if we don’t like it, and even if they aren’t from our world. It’s what he wanted.”

Sam sighs quietly, moving across the clearing to collect the pieces of firewood splintered across the ground. “Right.”

“I didn’t want to,” Dean adds, like it’ll somehow force him to understand. 

Sam’s back is facing him. “Figured.”

“He wanted our Cas to come back. He…” Dean trails off. He looks up at the grey sky, peeking through the scraggly tree tops. “He begged me to do it.”

“So you did,” Sam says testily. “Because you also wanted our Cas to come back. I mean, that’s what you wished for, right?”

Dean is silent. 

“There’s something you aren’t telling me.”

He shrugs. “There are things you don’t need to know.”

Sam’s eyes narrow. “Yeah?”

Dean nods. “Yeah,” he says simply, and stands, picking his axe up from where he’d left it leaning against the tree. “Come on. Wood’s not gonna chop itself.”

Sam remains rooted to the spot, not looking at him but no longer collecting logs. “When I told Eileen that he was back, do you know what she said?” he asks slowly. 

Dean turns to look back at him, exasperated. “How the hell should I know, Sam? I think you’d know by now if I was a mindreader.”

“She said that I must be so relieved,” Sam tells him, stepping towards him. “Because I could finally stop worrying about you…doing something stupid and reckless, and I…I realized how much I was…holding my breath before this. Since Chuck died. Since Cas. You’ve been on the edge for a long time, man. It’s nice to see you step down from it. Even if I…I don’t get it, I guess. It was reckless and stupid and suicidal, but it worked. I’ve gotta give you that. You’re an idiot, but it worked.”

Dean raises his eyebrows, crossing his arms. He leaves the axe’s handle leaning up against his leg. “Thanks,” he says suspiciously. “Why are you being like this?”

Sam shrugs. “No reason,” he says simply. “I’m just glad you’re…happier now.”

“Well,” Dean replies, glancing around at the felled trees around them. “I’ll be fuckin’ thrilled once this damn wood is chopped, so get to work.”

At that, Sam laughs. 

“Yeah,” he says, shaking his head. “Whatever, dude.”

—

They decide to burn the body at nightfall. 

It’s already late evening by the time they get back to the motel from setting up the pyre. Cas is awake, sitting in the chair Dean had slept in and reading the bedside table Bible. Sam went to shower, which Dean thought was stupid because he’s gonna have to shower after the funeral anyway so the car doesn’t reek of smoke the whole way back to Kansas. The smell of cigarettes still clings to the interior even though he’d driven the whole way back with the windows down because Sam complained about it giving him a headache. 

“Think of it like this,” Dean says, sprawling out on the unmade bed to watch Cas read. “How many times do you get to see your own funeral?”

“Normally?” Cas replies, not looking up at him. “Never.”

“Exactly,” Dean points out. “Come with us.”

Cas raises his eyebrows. “Do you want me to?”

Dean shrugs. “Might lighten the mood.” He nods at the thick book. “Anything interesting in there?”

“It’s remarkable just how much you get wrong,” Cas says, setting it aside. “My favorite iteration is Ethiopian, one of the predecessors to your oldest complete Bible. It was intentionally destroyed.”

“Fascinating,” Dean tells him, rolling onto his stomach and grabbing a pillow to rest his chin on. “Will you come with us?”

At that, Cas sighs dramatically and for a moment—just for a moment—he looks so much like not-Cas that something inside of Dean lurches at the sight. “Fine,” he decides. “When?”

Dean shrugs, reaching for the half empty bottle of water on Sam’s nightstand to wet his dry mouth. He nods towards the bathroom door. “Whenever he’s done.”

“Okay,” Cas says simply. He watches Dean closely for a moment. “You look rested.”

Dean looks away. He clears his throat. “Guess I needed some sleep. You did too. Your batteries recharge yet?”

He doesn’t mention the nightmare and neither does Cas. Only part of him is relieved at that. 

Cas looks down at himself. “Not quite,” he tells him. “I think it’ll take some time. That place is powerful.”

“Well, not that powerful,” Dean says with a grin. “We broke it.”

Cas scoffs quietly at that, picking the book back up. He doesn’t speak. 

Dean watches him read for a few seconds, and he wonders about the Empty. He wonders what it must be like to encounter something so much greater than an angel for the first time. He wonders what it felt like carrying that deal in silence for so long and he thinks about his own deal and the horrible, horrible weight of it. In some morbid way, he’s curious about what the Empty was like, what it showed him, what it did, but the greater part of him doesn’t want to know. The guilt would kill him. 

Sam takes his sweet time getting ready for some reason. In Dean’s opinion, it’s because he’d hoped they’d leave without him so he could call Eileen or jerk off or something stupid. He debates going ahead and leaving but he needs some cushion between him and Cas. There’s too much there, and he doesn’t know how to address any of it. He wants to, but he needs to ruminate on it a little. Besides, a funeral might not be the best time to hit him with the what are we? 

Damn, he thinks. He’s never been on that side of the conversation before. 

When Sam finally does come out of the bathroom, a trail of billowing sandalwood-scented steam behind him, Dean’s patience is stretched thin. He’s anxious to get out of here, to escape the weird silence that he can’t figure out how to break. Mercifully, Sam seems to realize that Dean’s chomping at his bit and hurries to grab his shoes as Dean shepherds Cas out to the Impala. As he exits the motel room and turns to lock it, Dean hears him on the phone with Rowena. 

“Yeah,” he says, pocketing the key. “Not too long. We’re leaving now.”

The gravity doesn’t really hit him until the passenger’s side door slams shut and Sam hangs up. 

“Ready?” Sam asks, frowning as Dean stalls for a moment. 

“Yeah,” Dean says quietly, twisting the key in the ignition. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“Okay,” Sam tells him simply. “Good.”

For the first time in a very long time, Dean actually thinks they both believe it.

—

The drive there is strange. 

It’s the first time Sam’s been in the same space as a conscious Cas for more than five minutes since his return, and Dean knows that he’s still harboring an anxious resentment about the choice to get him out. It’s the first time that Dean’s been with both of them and he tries to focus on the road instead of the stilted small talk Sam is unsuccessfully trying to make. In the rear view mirror, Cas keeps catching his eye and it’s making Dean want to swerve off the road into the gravelly ditch. 

He doesn’t know how to exist around Cas anymore. He doesn’t know what he’d expected when he brought him back. Maybe he’d thought it would be different, like he’d finally drink from the well of opportunity he’s dug out for them. It’s been a day, he tries to remind himself. Not even. Nothing changes in a day. 

He’s only trying to placate himself; he’s seen the entire world shift in less than a second. When Cas died—

Very deliberately, he does not think about that.  

“Take this next left,” Sam says, motioning towards the road. 

Dean shoots him a glare. “I know how to get there.”

Sam shrugs innocently. “Better safe than sorry.”

It’s like he’s trying to get under Dean’s skin, or maybe Dean is just more on edge than he’d like to admit. He can’t kick the feeling that this should be different. He owes not-Cas more than a hunter’s funeral, even though it’s better than anything he’d get in his own world. Maybe Dean should build him a fucking mausoleum. He thinks that he thanked him before it happened but his memory is fuzzy. He should’ve thanked him more, no doubt. The unpaid debt festers under his skin, sticking beneath his nails along with the last bits of blood he couldn’t scrub out. 

The Impala rolls unevenly over the loose gravel as Dean runs down the narrow road into the woods. Trees close in above them, bowing their leafed heads like a funeral procession. It’s not long before the gravel turns to thick, wet mud. Dean makes a small noise of distress at the knowledge he’s going to have to make a pit stop at a car wash later, just as the road opens into the small clearing they’d been to earlier. There, off to the side, sits the pyre they’d built. 

It’s no longer shrouded by the old green tarp they’d laid over it to keep it dry. Instead, the tarp is strewn off to the side next to a tree stump, atop of which sits Rowena. Dean barely registers her presence, his eyes drawn to the white-wrapped figure atop the pyre. The Impala slows to a stop and Dean turns off the ignition. Sam exits quickly, getting out to greet her. Dean lingers in the driver’s seat, unable to move. 

Behind him, Cas says, gently, “We should go too.”

Mutely, Dean nods. He feels like he’s made of stone as he exits the car, his body clunky and heavy and foreign to him. Cas walks ahead of him, and the way the grey light comes through the clearing hits the silvers at the nape of his neck. He thinks about what not-Cas said, about how he never got to see his own Dean at the age Dean is now. He wants to savor everything they never got but he’s already so full of grief and love that he doesn’t have room for anything else. 

He follows Cas like a duckling to the pyre, the toes of his dragging boots kicking up mud. Sam approaches them, bounding across the wet grass easily. He’s still smiling from whatever he and Rowena were talking about, and Dean could almost resent him for it if he had the energy to bother trying. 

Dean takes a few steps forward, until he’s toe-to-toe with the wood. Up on top of the pile, his body is wrapped in clean white sheets. They’re slightly sheer and, through them, he can see the bloodstains still in his clothes. He can see the shape of not-Cas’s hands crossed over his stomach. The sight makes him feel nauseous. The look Sam gives him is sympathetic and pitiful as he passes him the silver lighter. 

“Do you…” Sam hesitates. “Should we say something?”

Dean shakes his head. Behind him, his Cas steps up to his shoulder. 

“I will,” he says simply. “Thank you.”

Thank you, Dean thinks, gathering himself. I hope you’re with him. 

With that, he throws the lighter, hearing the soft whoosh as the pyre goes up in flames and feeling the blast of heat. The pungent gasoline isn’t masked by the smell of smoke yet, even as it curls thick and black up into the sky. He takes a step back, watching as the flames lapping hungrily towards the wrapped body. They haven’t reached it yet. He doesn’t want to be here when they do but he can’t look away. 

Behind him, Sam sighs quietly and turns to walk back towards the car where Rowena sits perched on the hood with her demons at her side. Cas steps closer to him, a hand lowering onto his shoulder. 

“Are you alright?”

When Dean tries to speak, he realizes that he’s choked up. He nods, shifting closer to Cas before he notices what he’s doing. He basks in the feeling of Cas’s hip pressed against his own, the warmth of his body beneath the old coat. Cas drops his hand, letting their shoulders press together. 

“Thank you,” Cas says quietly. When Dean looks at him, he realizes he’s talking to the fire. Somewhere behind them, Rowena laughs at something Sam said. 

“I owe him everything,” Dean murmurs. 

“He probably feels the same,” Cas tells him, looking up towards the sky. “I should speak to Jack. See where he ended up. Maybe he can pull a few strings.” 

Dean turns to him. “Do you think they’re together?”

Cas sighs. “I don’t know. I’d like to believe they are.”

“Me too,” Dean agrees softly. The smoke is starting to make his eyes burn, and he blinks rapidly. 

Beside him, Cas watches the fire patiently and unblinkingly. He seems interested in the way the sheet chars. “What was I like as a human?”

Dean draws in a deep breath through his teeth. “Not too bad. But I like you better like this,” he tells him simply. “Let’s just say that. Always have.”

Cas smiles at that, looking down at where a spark is choking in the dirt. He presses the toe of his shoe to it, snuffing it out. In front of them, the smell of burning flesh rises until it coats the inside of Dean’s lungs and makes him feel like he’s suffocating in it. As if able to tell, Cas shifts closer to him. It’s a tiny, hesitant movement, but Dean feels himself calm as soon as the flap of his coat brushes his hip. All around them, the smoke dispersed into the air is making his eyes water. Not bothering to hide it, he wipes them. 

“Are you alright?” Cas asks, watching him. 

Dean takes in a sharp, shaky inhale. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “No,” he admits. “Fuck, it’s been a long six months. It’s been a long twenty-four hours.”

Cas smiles, ducking his head. 

“Hey.”

He looks up. 

Dean hesitates. He inhales. Smoke fills his nose, coats his lungs, chokes him out. He watches it gather in the canopy of leaves, pushed into the trees by the gentle wind. All around them, the grass bays and whispers. He thinks about fire. He watches the body burn. There’s a peace in that that he doesn’t know how to explain. 

“Dean?” Cas prompts softly, stepping closer to him with a frown and a tilt of his head. 

Don’t waste more time. 

“I love you,” Dean breathes, like a release. He drops his head forward, half expecting it to fall off his shoulders and roll into the mud. When he looks up, Cas is staring at him. “You know that, right?”

Cas closes his eyes, and his mouth opens just a little bit like he’s trying to inhale the words, and the pink slip of his tongue is just visible beneath his teeth, and Dean wonders how long he’s been wishing to hear Dean say it—he should have asked not-Cas, but it’s too late now—and Dean can’t stop wondering why the hell it’s taken him so long. 

“I love you,” Cas tells him. Not I love you too, not like he’s returning the sentiment but like it’s a statement that stands alone, regardless of if Dean had ever mustered up the courage to say it in the first place. “What do we do now?”

Dean thinks for a moment. The smoke is still filling the air, and the flesh is just starting to burn, and maybe he should turn around and look back one last time before there’s nothing but coal, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t think that not-Cas would want him to linger, to turn away from what’s right in front of him even for an instant. So, instead, he holds out his hand. His Cas eyes it, as if unsure what he’s being asked to do, so Dean reaches forward and intertwines their fingers. 

“We live,” he says simply. “What else?”