No Refuge in Waking
Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Castiel
Rating: Teen
Pairing(s): Dean/Castiel
Warnings: Somewhat graphic descriptions of violence/torture
Word count: 5090
Summary: Castiel got his grace back, but the nightmares never stopped.
Notes: Set in the interim between episodes 11x03 and 11x04. Follow-up piece to Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On.
Castiel loses track of the blows he lands on Dean's upturned face. Dean doesn't fight back; he just hangs on to Castiel's sleeve, gripping the fabric as if for dear life. Castiel doesn't care. Rowena's curse washes everything in red rage; all his thoughts are tainted by the color. He can't seem to stop, nor does he want to-it's all fear fear fear and again again and the scarlet tide of berserk fury.
"Cas," says Dean, the word coming out clotted, garbled through a thick mouthful of blood. Castiel's next blow breaks his nose.
Castiel hears and feels it simultaneously, the awful crunch of cartilage giving way before his curled fingers, and still he doesn't stop, just draws his hand back for another punch.
"Cas," Dean gets out again, the last word he will ever say, for Castiel strikes him again, in the side of the head, full-strength, crunching through the side of Dean's skull, feeling all the soft vital components within go pulping into mush under the immense power of the blow.
Dean's hold on his sleeve slackens. He topples over backwards, hitting the floor with a solid thump, lifeless, boneless.
Cas stands for a moment, staring at his friend's body, the red slowly draining out of his vision.
"Dean?" he says. His voice echoes in the dim and silent warehouse. His voice sounds so small.
"Sam," he says hoarsely, looking around. Surely Sam should be here, Sam is supposed to be here, Dean and Sam together were supposed to be safe, they were supposed to keep Castiel from hurting anyone-else.
"Dean," he says again, a black mist of horror rising up inside him. What have I done what have I done what have I done. He takes a step forward and falls to his knees beside Dean, reaching out to grip his shoulder, shaking him desperately. He slides one palm under his friend's lolling head, lifting it off the floor, trying not to look at the fist-sized crater of caved-in bone just above Dean's ear. "Dean," he babbles. "Dean, wake up, wake up, wake up-" Wake up wake up wake up.
There is the sound of a switch flicking, and harsh white light floods the warehouse. Castiel looks up, squinting in the sudden glow, as an auburn-haired woman in an exquisitely tailored pantsuit strides out from behind a stack of pallets.
"Naomi?" says Castiel, staring.
Naomi stops a few feet away and rests her hands on her hips, pursing her lips as she looks down at Dean's body. "Not bad," she remarks.
Words fail Castiel. Dean is a sinking weight in his arms. "I...you...I..." he sputters.
Naomi keeps talking. "And that punch at the end, excellent. Like a jackhammer to his skull. I used to think you were just weak, but you must have been holding back all that time. We just needed the right impetus." She frowns. "Though I admit I wasn't expecting a witch to be the key."
"Wait," says Cas, trembling with sudden, desperate hope. "If you're here...then this isn't the real Dean. This isn't him, this is...just one of those copies. You're making me practice. You're making me practice." He repeats himself with increasing volume, staring up at Naomi. Of course. Dean is a copy, and none of this is real. And yet he can't bring himself to let go of the fake Dean.
Naomi raises her eyebrows. "No, Castiel. This is the real Dean. Obviously."
Castiel hears himself make a low, wrecked sound. He shakes his head, as if denying Naomi will negate her words. He is gripping Dean's shoulder so tightly that he is afraid it will break.
"Trying to get you to kill him outside of a controlled environment was such a disaster," Naomi is saying. "This worked out so much better-"
"No. No. You're dead," says Castiel with sudden ferocity, glaring at the female angel. "I saw you, you were dead."
Naomi waves a graceful hand. "Let's not quibble over details." She snaps her fingers, and Castiel blinks. Dean's body is gone, as is the warehouse. The lights around him are closer, even brighter. He tugs at the cuffs which have appeared around his wrists, locking them to the padded arms of a half-reclined chair. A chair. He's back in Naomi's chair.
"You never left, Castiel," Naomi corrects, pushing up the sleeves of her jacket.
"I don't understand. I already killed Dean." Castiel's voice fractures on the last word. "What else do you want me to do?"
Naomi takes his chin in her hand. "I want you to kill him again," she says, voice hard. "And then I want you to kill him again. And again. And again." She cocks her head, thinking. "And maybe Sam too, while you're at it. We want everything to be neat."
Castiel shakes his head mutely, or at least, he tries to. Naomi's grip is like iron. I won't, he thinks. I won't hurt him, I won't, I won't-
"You already have. You will again. You always will." She holds him in place effortlessly. "You'll do as I say. You'll kill Dean. You'll kill Sam. You'll do it over and over and over again." She lets go of his chin, strokes the side of his face gently as he tries to pull away. "You never had any choice in the matter, Castiel. But even if you did, I think you'd-"
Castiel jerks awake with a wordless gasp, rising half out of his chair, surveying his surroundings wildly. The bunker is quiet and still, the warm yellow lamplight a bewildering contrast to the harsh white radiance of his nightmare. Naomi's cold blue eyes still hover in his mind's eye, refusing to fade. His angel blade slips out of his sleeve without conscious thought, falling into his open hand. The cool sting of the metal haft slapping his palm gives him a point of focus. He squeezes his fingers around the weapon and tries to slow his frantic thoughts.
It was a dream. Just a dream. He slowly slides the angel blade back into his sleeve and buries his face in his hands. He can still feel Dean's temporal bone crumpling beneath his fist. It was just a dream. Dean is alive. You didn't hurt him. But of course, that last part isn't true. Sam might have arrived in time to save his brother, but Castiel can remember striking Dean across the face again and again, can remember the red fog of fury, the tunnel vision, the adrenaline urging him on. That much of it hadn't been a dream.
He scrubs the heels of his palms over his eyes, a gesture he picked up as a human and still uses on occasion, and looks around again.
He's in his room, or at least, he's in the spare room that Dean and Sam made up for him, in which he has spent the last couple of nights, ever since he dragged himself, ragged and bloody, down the bunker stairs. He isn't sure whether his extended habitation makes the room his, but he doubts it. None of the places he spent his nights when he was human were his to claim. And he had spent millennia in Heaven, and even that turned out not to be his.
Still, the room has been a comfort, although it is sparsely furnished as most of the bunker's living quarters are. There's a bed and a desk and a chair and a lamp, and not much else. Castiel doesn't mind the spareness-it's how the Winchesters seem to prefer life, and other accoutrements would be unnecessary anyway, now that he has his grace. He hasn't needed to sleep in the bed since Rowena removed her attack dog spell, though he knows his prolonged exposure to the witch's magic weakened him. He assumes that's why he finally dozed off tonight.
Castiel looks down at the desk, which is covered in papers and old scraps of parchment, somewhat in disarray now after his startled awakening. He picks up the top sheet, a wrinkled sheaf covered in old Sumerian cuneiform. He had been searching ancient texts for mentions of the Darkness when he fell asleep, hoping for some way to fight it, some kernel of information that could germinate into a plan. In some small way, he'd also hoped to have something to bring to the Winchesters in the morning. He's accepted so much from them, received their help in so many ways, and yet he still has nothing to offer. Nothing except harm, he thinks, reflexively curling and uncurling his fingers as he feels, again, the crunch of bone beneath them.
***
Castiel tries to keep reading, but the text is discouragingly convoluted and seems to have no real references to the Darkness anyway. He sets the parchment down with a sigh. He's tired. His skin feels puckered and thin, as if the weakened grace beneath might spill out at any moment, as if he might come apart at the seams and dissipate, formless, drained, empty.
He eyes the bed. Perhaps it would be good to lie down for a while, and a rest could restore his concentration enough to finish the text. He wants to be thorough, no matter how slim the possibility of finding useful information. But the thought of dreaming again is...distasteful. The earlier nightmare lingers insidiously in the back of his mind, peppering his thoughts with visions of Dean's limp body. He knows it was a dream, he knows what dreams are, and yet a faint repetitive noise keeps catching at the edge of his awareness, and when he looks down he realizes that it's his right hand, trembling against the edge of the table.
Castiel sits for a moment longer, and then he rises and walks out of the room.
***
He reaches Sam's bedroom first. The door is ajar, a thin bar of light slanting into the room. Castiel hesitates briefly, then pokes his head in. Sam sleeps on his side, one arm slung beneath the pillow, the blanket tangled around his legs. His face looks peaceful, relaxed in repose. Castiel watches for a few seconds, suffused in a warm feeling that he identifies as gratitude. If Sam hadn't shown up when he did, would Castiel have killed Dean? He wants to think that Dean would have fought back, would have managed to overpower Castiel. That they wouldn't have wound up the way he and the unfortunate girl had: Dean pressed up against a wall, Castiel's hands choking the life out of him. He shivers, gripping the doorframe.You didn't have to find out, he tells himself. Because of Sam. Sam had saved them both-Sam and his quick thinking, his resolve.
Castiel wants to cross the room, wants to shake Sam awake, wants to kneel before him and say, thank you. He wants to say, I'm sorry I ever believed you unworthy. He wants to say, it took me far too long to realize how much goodness there was in you, how much strength. How much better you were-are-than I.
He suspects Sam could use the sleep more than Castiel's belated sentiments, though. So he simply watches for another moment, assuring himself that the younger Winchester's sleep is deep and undisturbed, then withdraws and continues down the hallway.
Dean's door is closed, but the knob turns in Castiel's hand. He pushes it open and stands in the doorway. Unlike Sam, Dean sleeps on his back. His arms are folded over his midriff, the sheet tucked under them, moving gently with the rise and fall of his chest. He is sound asleep, and utterly and completely alive. A slow and soothing relief steals over Castiel, and he slowly loosens the fist he hadn't realized he'd been clenching.
Castiel had only intended to check, to reassure himself that Dean still breathed, that his nightmare was only that and nothing more. Now, however, without really consciously deciding to, he finds himself moving silently into the room. Dean twitches a little as Castiel's shadow slides over his face, and a faint furrow appears on his forehead, but he doesn't wake.
Castiel stands over Dean, studying his face, the ugly bruising that has begun to fade through variegated shades of purple and blue as it heals. The mottled colors mark the blows he landed on Dean, standing out like beacons, a map of his transgressions. The sight sends a stab of mingled guilt and pain through the base of Castiel's chest, and his hand is outstretched and halfway to Dean's face before he realizes what he's doing.
He freezes, two fingers raised, hovering in the air. He wants to do it-wants to press his fingers against Dean's temple, send out a surge of grace, wipe away the bruises, the half-healed split on Dean's lower lip, the swollen lump at the side of his jaw. He wants to erase the evidence of the damage he's done, but more than that, he wants Dean to be healed, whole. He has always wanted Dean to be whole, whatever it took.
But he remembers Dean's sharp denials of his offers of healing. Once in the warehouse, as Castiel, barely able to stand, sick with horror at what he had just done, had stumbled to his feet, stretching out his hand. Too ashamed to say anything more than Dean, trying to put everything into that word, trying, without knowing how, to fix what he had just done. And Dean, blood trickling from his mouth and cheekbone, holding him up. Cas, you can barely stand, let's just get back to the Bunker. Dean holding him up, still not wise to the fact that Castiel would always hurt him, in the end.
And then again in the war room, turning away, raising his hand to ward off Castiel's, as if it were poison. I had it coming.
Had it coming, Dean? Cas thinks sadly, staring at his hand where it hovers, suspended in the space between him and the sleeping Winchester. He still doesn't understand Dean's logic, his comparison of the two situations-doesn't understand how Dean can equate finally succumbing to the Mark of Cain, the evil that had been gnawing at his soul for months, to Castiel's failure to resist Rowena's spell. How Dean can believe his efficient, emotionless incapacitation of Castiel in the Bunker is anywhere near as unforgiveable as Castiel's brutal beating of Dean in the warehouse. How Dean can overlook Castiel's blind adrenaline, his weakness, his rage, the loss of control that would have eventually led him to-Castiel doesn't let himself think the words, doesn't let himself feel the crack of Dean's skull.
Dean. He slowly pulls back his fingers and curls his hand into a loose fist. There are so few things I can do to help, and so many of them make things worse anyway, but this? This is healing, this is healing, how can it-
He lets the thought go and slowly lowers his hand to his side. He thinks ruefully that the old Castiel would have found this whole situation nonsensical. The old Castiel would have reached forward without hesitation, jabbed two fingers into the center of Dean's forehead, and rebuilt every damaged cell from the inside out. And that course of action would have made the most sense; it still makes the most sense.
So why doesn't he follow it now? Castiel asks himself the question silently, posing it as a philosophical problem, but it's a feeble ploy, because he knows why. He studies Dean's bruised face and this time his hand doesn't even twitch. He studies the discolored skin and does not move to heal it, because Dean Winchester has asked this of him. Because if he can do this, if he can do what Dean asks of him this one time, if he can watch Dean's faint winces of pain day by day and try to ignore the clenching feeling in his chest, he can come one step closer to earning Dean's trust, to proving himself worthy of it.
As to mock the futility of that hope, Dean suddenly hisses, "No."
Castiel jerks in surprise, but Dean's eyes are closed-he's asleep. But as Castiel watches, Dean shifts again, back arching. "No," he grunts again. His jaw has gone rigid, his arms slipping from their folded position and tensing against the sheets.
Of course-he's having a nightmare. Castiel chides himself for being so caught up in his own thoughts that he failed to notice. He watches, conflicted, as the nightmare seems to strengthen; a bead of sweat coalesces at Dean's temple, and his breathing becomes harsher, more uneven.
Castiel considers waking Dean, but that would involve explaining what Castiel was doing in his bedroom, and he doesn't feel up to describing his own earlier nightmare, nor is he sure how to craft an adequate account that avoids mentioning that fact.
He should just go, but as he starts to turn away Dean gasps out something, a mangled, unintelligible syllable, something that could be Sam or maybe Mom or maybe even Cas, the last a possibility which Castiel lets himself think for a moment even though he knows better. Whatever the word, the sound is so filled with pain that Castiel pivots back to face the man and reaches out for a second time. Dean hasn't forbidden this. He can do this small thing.
Continued here (AO3)
Rating: Teen
Pairing(s): Dean/Castiel
Warnings: Somewhat graphic descriptions of violence/torture
Word count: 5090
Summary: Castiel got his grace back, but the nightmares never stopped.
Notes: Set in the interim between episodes 11x03 and 11x04. Follow-up piece to Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On.
Castiel loses track of the blows he lands on Dean's upturned face. Dean doesn't fight back; he just hangs on to Castiel's sleeve, gripping the fabric as if for dear life. Castiel doesn't care. Rowena's curse washes everything in red rage; all his thoughts are tainted by the color. He can't seem to stop, nor does he want to-it's all fear fear fear and again again and the scarlet tide of berserk fury.
"Cas," says Dean, the word coming out clotted, garbled through a thick mouthful of blood. Castiel's next blow breaks his nose.
Castiel hears and feels it simultaneously, the awful crunch of cartilage giving way before his curled fingers, and still he doesn't stop, just draws his hand back for another punch.
"Cas," Dean gets out again, the last word he will ever say, for Castiel strikes him again, in the side of the head, full-strength, crunching through the side of Dean's skull, feeling all the soft vital components within go pulping into mush under the immense power of the blow.
Dean's hold on his sleeve slackens. He topples over backwards, hitting the floor with a solid thump, lifeless, boneless.
Cas stands for a moment, staring at his friend's body, the red slowly draining out of his vision.
"Dean?" he says. His voice echoes in the dim and silent warehouse. His voice sounds so small.
"Sam," he says hoarsely, looking around. Surely Sam should be here, Sam is supposed to be here, Dean and Sam together were supposed to be safe, they were supposed to keep Castiel from hurting anyone-else.
"Dean," he says again, a black mist of horror rising up inside him. What have I done what have I done what have I done. He takes a step forward and falls to his knees beside Dean, reaching out to grip his shoulder, shaking him desperately. He slides one palm under his friend's lolling head, lifting it off the floor, trying not to look at the fist-sized crater of caved-in bone just above Dean's ear. "Dean," he babbles. "Dean, wake up, wake up, wake up-" Wake up wake up wake up.
There is the sound of a switch flicking, and harsh white light floods the warehouse. Castiel looks up, squinting in the sudden glow, as an auburn-haired woman in an exquisitely tailored pantsuit strides out from behind a stack of pallets.
"Naomi?" says Castiel, staring.
Naomi stops a few feet away and rests her hands on her hips, pursing her lips as she looks down at Dean's body. "Not bad," she remarks.
Words fail Castiel. Dean is a sinking weight in his arms. "I...you...I..." he sputters.
Naomi keeps talking. "And that punch at the end, excellent. Like a jackhammer to his skull. I used to think you were just weak, but you must have been holding back all that time. We just needed the right impetus." She frowns. "Though I admit I wasn't expecting a witch to be the key."
"Wait," says Cas, trembling with sudden, desperate hope. "If you're here...then this isn't the real Dean. This isn't him, this is...just one of those copies. You're making me practice. You're making me practice." He repeats himself with increasing volume, staring up at Naomi. Of course. Dean is a copy, and none of this is real. And yet he can't bring himself to let go of the fake Dean.
Naomi raises her eyebrows. "No, Castiel. This is the real Dean. Obviously."
Castiel hears himself make a low, wrecked sound. He shakes his head, as if denying Naomi will negate her words. He is gripping Dean's shoulder so tightly that he is afraid it will break.
"Trying to get you to kill him outside of a controlled environment was such a disaster," Naomi is saying. "This worked out so much better-"
"No. No. You're dead," says Castiel with sudden ferocity, glaring at the female angel. "I saw you, you were dead."
Naomi waves a graceful hand. "Let's not quibble over details." She snaps her fingers, and Castiel blinks. Dean's body is gone, as is the warehouse. The lights around him are closer, even brighter. He tugs at the cuffs which have appeared around his wrists, locking them to the padded arms of a half-reclined chair. A chair. He's back in Naomi's chair.
"You never left, Castiel," Naomi corrects, pushing up the sleeves of her jacket.
"I don't understand. I already killed Dean." Castiel's voice fractures on the last word. "What else do you want me to do?"
Naomi takes his chin in her hand. "I want you to kill him again," she says, voice hard. "And then I want you to kill him again. And again. And again." She cocks her head, thinking. "And maybe Sam too, while you're at it. We want everything to be neat."
Castiel shakes his head mutely, or at least, he tries to. Naomi's grip is like iron. I won't, he thinks. I won't hurt him, I won't, I won't-
"You already have. You will again. You always will." She holds him in place effortlessly. "You'll do as I say. You'll kill Dean. You'll kill Sam. You'll do it over and over and over again." She lets go of his chin, strokes the side of his face gently as he tries to pull away. "You never had any choice in the matter, Castiel. But even if you did, I think you'd-"
Castiel jerks awake with a wordless gasp, rising half out of his chair, surveying his surroundings wildly. The bunker is quiet and still, the warm yellow lamplight a bewildering contrast to the harsh white radiance of his nightmare. Naomi's cold blue eyes still hover in his mind's eye, refusing to fade. His angel blade slips out of his sleeve without conscious thought, falling into his open hand. The cool sting of the metal haft slapping his palm gives him a point of focus. He squeezes his fingers around the weapon and tries to slow his frantic thoughts.
It was a dream. Just a dream. He slowly slides the angel blade back into his sleeve and buries his face in his hands. He can still feel Dean's temporal bone crumpling beneath his fist. It was just a dream. Dean is alive. You didn't hurt him. But of course, that last part isn't true. Sam might have arrived in time to save his brother, but Castiel can remember striking Dean across the face again and again, can remember the red fog of fury, the tunnel vision, the adrenaline urging him on. That much of it hadn't been a dream.
He scrubs the heels of his palms over his eyes, a gesture he picked up as a human and still uses on occasion, and looks around again.
He's in his room, or at least, he's in the spare room that Dean and Sam made up for him, in which he has spent the last couple of nights, ever since he dragged himself, ragged and bloody, down the bunker stairs. He isn't sure whether his extended habitation makes the room his, but he doubts it. None of the places he spent his nights when he was human were his to claim. And he had spent millennia in Heaven, and even that turned out not to be his.
Still, the room has been a comfort, although it is sparsely furnished as most of the bunker's living quarters are. There's a bed and a desk and a chair and a lamp, and not much else. Castiel doesn't mind the spareness-it's how the Winchesters seem to prefer life, and other accoutrements would be unnecessary anyway, now that he has his grace. He hasn't needed to sleep in the bed since Rowena removed her attack dog spell, though he knows his prolonged exposure to the witch's magic weakened him. He assumes that's why he finally dozed off tonight.
Castiel looks down at the desk, which is covered in papers and old scraps of parchment, somewhat in disarray now after his startled awakening. He picks up the top sheet, a wrinkled sheaf covered in old Sumerian cuneiform. He had been searching ancient texts for mentions of the Darkness when he fell asleep, hoping for some way to fight it, some kernel of information that could germinate into a plan. In some small way, he'd also hoped to have something to bring to the Winchesters in the morning. He's accepted so much from them, received their help in so many ways, and yet he still has nothing to offer. Nothing except harm, he thinks, reflexively curling and uncurling his fingers as he feels, again, the crunch of bone beneath them.
***
Castiel tries to keep reading, but the text is discouragingly convoluted and seems to have no real references to the Darkness anyway. He sets the parchment down with a sigh. He's tired. His skin feels puckered and thin, as if the weakened grace beneath might spill out at any moment, as if he might come apart at the seams and dissipate, formless, drained, empty.
He eyes the bed. Perhaps it would be good to lie down for a while, and a rest could restore his concentration enough to finish the text. He wants to be thorough, no matter how slim the possibility of finding useful information. But the thought of dreaming again is...distasteful. The earlier nightmare lingers insidiously in the back of his mind, peppering his thoughts with visions of Dean's limp body. He knows it was a dream, he knows what dreams are, and yet a faint repetitive noise keeps catching at the edge of his awareness, and when he looks down he realizes that it's his right hand, trembling against the edge of the table.
Castiel sits for a moment longer, and then he rises and walks out of the room.
***
He reaches Sam's bedroom first. The door is ajar, a thin bar of light slanting into the room. Castiel hesitates briefly, then pokes his head in. Sam sleeps on his side, one arm slung beneath the pillow, the blanket tangled around his legs. His face looks peaceful, relaxed in repose. Castiel watches for a few seconds, suffused in a warm feeling that he identifies as gratitude. If Sam hadn't shown up when he did, would Castiel have killed Dean? He wants to think that Dean would have fought back, would have managed to overpower Castiel. That they wouldn't have wound up the way he and the unfortunate girl had: Dean pressed up against a wall, Castiel's hands choking the life out of him. He shivers, gripping the doorframe.You didn't have to find out, he tells himself. Because of Sam. Sam had saved them both-Sam and his quick thinking, his resolve.
Castiel wants to cross the room, wants to shake Sam awake, wants to kneel before him and say, thank you. He wants to say, I'm sorry I ever believed you unworthy. He wants to say, it took me far too long to realize how much goodness there was in you, how much strength. How much better you were-are-than I.
He suspects Sam could use the sleep more than Castiel's belated sentiments, though. So he simply watches for another moment, assuring himself that the younger Winchester's sleep is deep and undisturbed, then withdraws and continues down the hallway.
Dean's door is closed, but the knob turns in Castiel's hand. He pushes it open and stands in the doorway. Unlike Sam, Dean sleeps on his back. His arms are folded over his midriff, the sheet tucked under them, moving gently with the rise and fall of his chest. He is sound asleep, and utterly and completely alive. A slow and soothing relief steals over Castiel, and he slowly loosens the fist he hadn't realized he'd been clenching.
Castiel had only intended to check, to reassure himself that Dean still breathed, that his nightmare was only that and nothing more. Now, however, without really consciously deciding to, he finds himself moving silently into the room. Dean twitches a little as Castiel's shadow slides over his face, and a faint furrow appears on his forehead, but he doesn't wake.
Castiel stands over Dean, studying his face, the ugly bruising that has begun to fade through variegated shades of purple and blue as it heals. The mottled colors mark the blows he landed on Dean, standing out like beacons, a map of his transgressions. The sight sends a stab of mingled guilt and pain through the base of Castiel's chest, and his hand is outstretched and halfway to Dean's face before he realizes what he's doing.
He freezes, two fingers raised, hovering in the air. He wants to do it-wants to press his fingers against Dean's temple, send out a surge of grace, wipe away the bruises, the half-healed split on Dean's lower lip, the swollen lump at the side of his jaw. He wants to erase the evidence of the damage he's done, but more than that, he wants Dean to be healed, whole. He has always wanted Dean to be whole, whatever it took.
But he remembers Dean's sharp denials of his offers of healing. Once in the warehouse, as Castiel, barely able to stand, sick with horror at what he had just done, had stumbled to his feet, stretching out his hand. Too ashamed to say anything more than Dean, trying to put everything into that word, trying, without knowing how, to fix what he had just done. And Dean, blood trickling from his mouth and cheekbone, holding him up. Cas, you can barely stand, let's just get back to the Bunker. Dean holding him up, still not wise to the fact that Castiel would always hurt him, in the end.
And then again in the war room, turning away, raising his hand to ward off Castiel's, as if it were poison. I had it coming.
Had it coming, Dean? Cas thinks sadly, staring at his hand where it hovers, suspended in the space between him and the sleeping Winchester. He still doesn't understand Dean's logic, his comparison of the two situations-doesn't understand how Dean can equate finally succumbing to the Mark of Cain, the evil that had been gnawing at his soul for months, to Castiel's failure to resist Rowena's spell. How Dean can believe his efficient, emotionless incapacitation of Castiel in the Bunker is anywhere near as unforgiveable as Castiel's brutal beating of Dean in the warehouse. How Dean can overlook Castiel's blind adrenaline, his weakness, his rage, the loss of control that would have eventually led him to-Castiel doesn't let himself think the words, doesn't let himself feel the crack of Dean's skull.
Dean. He slowly pulls back his fingers and curls his hand into a loose fist. There are so few things I can do to help, and so many of them make things worse anyway, but this? This is healing, this is healing, how can it-
He lets the thought go and slowly lowers his hand to his side. He thinks ruefully that the old Castiel would have found this whole situation nonsensical. The old Castiel would have reached forward without hesitation, jabbed two fingers into the center of Dean's forehead, and rebuilt every damaged cell from the inside out. And that course of action would have made the most sense; it still makes the most sense.
So why doesn't he follow it now? Castiel asks himself the question silently, posing it as a philosophical problem, but it's a feeble ploy, because he knows why. He studies Dean's bruised face and this time his hand doesn't even twitch. He studies the discolored skin and does not move to heal it, because Dean Winchester has asked this of him. Because if he can do this, if he can do what Dean asks of him this one time, if he can watch Dean's faint winces of pain day by day and try to ignore the clenching feeling in his chest, he can come one step closer to earning Dean's trust, to proving himself worthy of it.
As to mock the futility of that hope, Dean suddenly hisses, "No."
Castiel jerks in surprise, but Dean's eyes are closed-he's asleep. But as Castiel watches, Dean shifts again, back arching. "No," he grunts again. His jaw has gone rigid, his arms slipping from their folded position and tensing against the sheets.
Of course-he's having a nightmare. Castiel chides himself for being so caught up in his own thoughts that he failed to notice. He watches, conflicted, as the nightmare seems to strengthen; a bead of sweat coalesces at Dean's temple, and his breathing becomes harsher, more uneven.
Castiel considers waking Dean, but that would involve explaining what Castiel was doing in his bedroom, and he doesn't feel up to describing his own earlier nightmare, nor is he sure how to craft an adequate account that avoids mentioning that fact.
He should just go, but as he starts to turn away Dean gasps out something, a mangled, unintelligible syllable, something that could be Sam or maybe Mom or maybe even Cas, the last a possibility which Castiel lets himself think for a moment even though he knows better. Whatever the word, the sound is so filled with pain that Castiel pivots back to face the man and reaches out for a second time. Dean hasn't forbidden this. He can do this small thing.
Continued here (AO3)