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Sam didn’t really expect a heartfelt, grownup conversation about this—having Mom back has made kids out of both of them—but he’d also hoped that Dean would at least say something. No such luck. As soon as the door clangs shut behind Mom, Dean darts for his room without a word.
Great. Sam sinks into the nearest chair, massaging his temples. Too good to be true has always been too good for the Winchesters.
As much as it hurts, though, he gets it. Why Mom had to go. He understands the itch to escape, the conviction that there is something better out there somewhere. Mom is chasing a pipe dream, a mirage. He’s going to let her, because he chased the same one a long time ago.
She deserves that, at least.
He knows Dean is going to take this hard, though. His brother has a way of taking each and every blow and stacking them on his shoulders, refusing to let anyone else take the weight even though everyone can see how his frame is shaking. By the time he reaches his room, Sam knows, he’ll have constructed a million different reasons why this is his fault.
He did the same thing when Sam left for school, but there’s someone who wasn’t around when that happened.
He picks up on the third ring. “Sam. Is everything all right?”
Sam could have prayed, but frankly, he’s done with his prayers being intercepted. The last thing he needs right now is for Lucifer to find out that his vulnerable, totally possess-able mother is alive and kicking.
“Yeah, we—we’re fine. No missing limbs or anything.”
Cas’s sigh of relief is audible through the phone. “Then what is it?”
“Mom. She, uh. She left. I’m okay, I think, but Dean…Dean’s taking it a little hard.”
Okay, understatement, but this isn’t really a conversation he wants to have over the phone. Sam has always been the kind of guy that can read a room, but he finds it distinctly harder when he can’t see the other person’s face, even when they’re as inscrutable as Cas tends to be.
“Of course. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
Sam opens his mouth to say that all he wants Cas to do is spam Dean’s cell until he picks up, but the line goes dead before he can. He putters off to the kitchen, resigned to making himself a cup of tea and gearing up for a very awkward conversation.
Several hours later, just as Sam is considering screwing it and going to bed, the metallic clanking of the stairs alerts him to Cas. He rises out of his chair, shaking the lethargy out of his limbs as he walks to meet him.
“So she hasn’t come back,” Cas observes by way of greeting.
“No. I would have called you otherwise. I know it was a long trip back.”
Cas waves away the concern. Sam figures that for a creature that’s been alive since dinosaurs were the latest and greatest, a few hours in a car aren’t really much of anything at all.
Sam clears his throat once it becomes apparent that Cas isn’t leaving. “Dean’s in his room.”
Cas gives him that look he gets sometimes, like everyone around him is an absolute moron. Which, okay, fair, there’s a reason hunters don’t have very long lifespans, but for the life of him, Sam can’t work out why he’s getting that look now.
“Are you all right?”
Sam blinks. Of all the things that could have come out of Castiel’s mouth, he wasn’t expecting that.
“Yes?”
Cas stares him down.
“No, really.” He sighs as Cas folds his arms, surveying with him a look that—if Cas ever perfected it for his FBI persona—would make a witness crack in an instant. “I’ve been there, done that, gotten the t-shirt. I know why she left. This isn’t like Dad just disappearing.”
Which he knows is a wound that Dean hasn’t quite healed from yet. Dad and Sam, they were never all that close. As a kid, Sam thought that it was because they were so different, but looking back, they were too similar for their own good.
Cas scrutinizes him for a few more careful moments, just to make sure. “And you think she’ll be back?”
Something tightens in Sam’s throat. “I don’t know her.”
And he doesn’t. Mom is someone in one of Dean’s stories, late at night under the covers once Dad was deep enough asleep that he wouldn’t reprimand him. She’s the centerpiece of a picture frame, the very first angel he’d ever prayed to. She’s not a real person.
Something in Cas’s face softens. “I think she will. She just needs adjustment time.”
“Jet lag,” Sam says.
Cas nods, though Sam doubts he really knows what that has to do with anything.
“You should go talk to Dean.”
He looks as if he’s going to go in for a hug, than thinks better of it. Sam decides for them and pulls him in for a quick squeeze.
“Thanks, Cas.”
The thing is, intellectually, Dean knows this isn’t permanent. Because even if he’s never been a parent, he practically raised Sam and he knows what empty nest syndrome feels like. Mom’s out there looking for her kids. Once she realizes that the only place she’ll ever find them is this bunker, she’ll be back. Or, at least, he hopes so.
But the emotionally raw side of him, the part that feels like the four-year-old Mary is so desperately searching for, has completely taken over. He sits in the middle of his bed clutching a pillow, fighting the lost-in-the-mall feeling in his chest with all his might.
Cas left. Mom left. He can’t even keep his family together for more than two damn days.
“Dean?”
For a moment, he thinks it’s Sam standing outside his door until his brain registers the baritone.
“Cas?”
The door creaks open—Dean’s been meaning to oil the hinges—and Cas steps into the room. His trench coat is rumpled like it’s been folded into the same position for several hours, and it likely has been, if he’s been driving from Ohio all this time.
“Sam told me what happened.”
Cas takes a few uncertain steps into the room and then wavers, teetering back and forth on the tips of his toes as he tries to decide whether he’s welcome another few steps to the bed.
Dean’s eyes sting. “Yeah.”
Leave it to Sam to drag someone else into Dean’s problems. A few more hours of moping, a few beers and an hour or two of sleep and he’ll be in tip-top shape. A patented Dean Winchester recovery. He doesn’t need Cas for that.
“How’s the Lucifer thing coming?”
Cas shakes his head. “He’d taken Rowena hostage, but by the time we got there, she’d gotten free and banished him. Bottom of the ocean.”
Dean is about to comment on Rowena being smarter than she looks when he realizes what’s been said.
“We?”
Cas looks away. “Crowley—he had some pertinent information that he wasn’t willing to share unless he got a “ride along.” I didn’t have much of a choice.”
He actually makes finger quotes at “ride along.” Dean has to stifle the first smile he’s had on his face in several hours.
“I don’t have any room to talk about being buddy-buddy with Crowley,” Dean says, remembering one or two Flickr albums that Wikihow has confirmed he’s never going to be able to get off the internet.
The dull ache in his chest returns. Maybe Cas can sense it, because he finally stops wobbling and sits beside Dean on the bed. It’s a respectable distance, maybe half a foot.
“She’ll come back.”
Dean swallows hard. “What makes you think?”
“Because there was a time where I didn’t think there was anywhere I fit,” Cas says slowly, “so I picked the closest thing and tried my best. And little by little, I did.”
It’s a far cry from the shell that had said yes to Lucifer. Dean’s eyes sting again, but for a completely different reason this time.
“You do fit, Cas.”
He smiles, not the barely-there smile that Dean has grown accustomed to, but something gummy and soft. He likes it better.
“And so will your mother. You just need to give her time.”
Something loosens in Dean’s chest as Cas bridges the gap between them at nudges his knee against his.
“You came back.”
Another nod. “You needed me.” A teasing raised eyebrow. “You usually do.”
Dean rolls his eyes and moves his head the fraction of an inch that it needs to move to rest on Cas’s shoulder. “Yeah, I guess I do.”