[fic] hell or high water (4/5)
Warnings, notes & summary in full here.
(III.)
Given that his last memory was of falling asleep in a no-star motel in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska, Dean was understandably confused when he opened his eyes to be greeted by the sight of the ugly-ass fan on the ceiling of Bobby’s panic room.
He felt -- strange, was the only word for it, as though he’d been asleep for an unreasonably long amount of time and re-acclimatizing to the land of consciousness was far more effort than it should have been. Kind of like the jetlag after that time they’d gone to Scotland to dig up Crowley’s bones, except ten times more pronounced.
“You gonna stay awake this time, Sleeping Beauty?” A gruff voice demanded -- Bobby’s.
Dean mentally assessed himself; he didn’t feel right, by any stretch of the imagination, and he was struck by the unsettling notion that his body felt too big for him, but he didn’t think he was in danger of falling back to sleep any time soon.
“I think so,” he grunted, wincing at the thickness of his tongue. Just how long has it been, anyway? “Where’s Sam?”
“Right here.” Sam’s voice came from the right, a low groan that sounded about as healthy as Dean felt. Dean turned instinctively to face him, trained from the age of four to respond to Sam’s every word and gesture. His brother was picking himself up off the ground -- and why the hell were they on the floor, anyway? -- like the movement physically hurt, pushing too-long hair out of his eyes and looking around in blatant confusion.
Dean could sympathize. He took a leaf out of Sam’s book and struggled to his feet; his muscles ached like he hadn’t moved them in hours, and seriously, what the hell? He instantly forgot the discomfort, however, when he got his first good look at Bobby’s face. The old man was worn and pale, eyes red-rimmed in a way that suggested he’d been crying, and Bobby didn’t do that shit for no reason.
“Bobby, what the hell happened?”
Bobby shook his head, seemingly at a loss for words, which did exactly nothing to quell the rising sense of foreboding in the pit of Dean’s stomach.
“If you boys die on me one more time, you’ll be sending me into an early grave.”
“We died?” Sam echoed incredulously. The look Bobby gave him in reply said it all.
“Great,” Dean groused, with more bravado than he was feeling. He couldn’t shake the notion that there was more to all this than Bobby was letting on. He’d died before, plenty of times, and he’d never felt like this in the aftermath. “So, who was it this time? Eve? Meg? Some trigger-happy hunter with a chip on their shoulder over the end of the world?”
“Try none of the above,” Bobby supplied, clearly getting over his apparent shock in record timing. “It was the angels. Specifically a character by the name of Raphael.”
“Raphael? Seriously?” Sam asked, eyebrows furrowing in that way that meant he was trying to piece something together but didn’t yet have all the necessary information. “But -- why? I mean, we’re hardly a threat.”
“Oh, come on, Sam,” Dean said, suspicion beginning to take root, “it wasn’t about us; it was about Cas. Am I right, Bobby?”
“Got it one,” Bobby sighed, removing his trucker’s cap and running his fingers through what little hair he had left. The gesture made him look alarmingly older, and Dean couldn’t decide if it was just the stress of the last few years, or whether the age had snuck up on him without any of them noticing, catching them all unawares. “Apparently Raphael got it into his head that he’d hold your souls for ransom, force Castiel into surrendering that way. ‘Course, he should have known better; that damn angel gives the two of you a run for your money as far as stubbornness goes, and that’s sayin’ something.”
Dean listened, rapt, as Bobby proceeded to explain everything that had gone down while he and Sam had apparently been floating around disembodied in Raphael’s clutches. Which -- weird, but somehow it made sense. It certainly explained the bizarre, out-of-body feeling he was still getting. He felt a warm swelling of pride somewhere in his chest as Bobby recounted the lengths Castiel had gone to for them; no matter how fraught with tension their relationship had been lately, Dean had always known, on that kind of bone-deep, instinctual level he rarely thought about, that Cas would come through for them when it really counted. No matter what other shitty decisions he might make, Cas always came through for them at the eleventh hour -- by this point, it was pretty much in his job description.
“Wait, hold on,” Sam interjected, a step ahead as usual. “So you’re saying the civil war’s over? Just like that? And Cas won?”
“Well… Raphael’s dead, yeah,” Bobby said somewhat uneasily. “I would know; I had to get rid of the damn body. But Cas didn’t come out of it looking too hot, either.”
Dean felt his stomach drop out at the words, a nauseating hollow left behind. He didn’t even want to think about what Bobby could mean by that, what could have happened to Cas in this apparently epic battle that had gone on while he’d been dead. But he had to ask. Had to, because he owed Cas at least that much.
“What -- what do you mean? Bobby, what happened?”
Bobby looked away awkwardly, but was saved from answering by the quiet rushing of wings and Balthazar’s sudden appearance in the room. His usual look of boredom and vague amusement was gone, but the air of superiority still hung over him like a shroud, and Dean felt his day get just that little bit worse.
“Oh good, the Wonder Twins are back with us,” Balthazar snarked upon seeing Dean and Sam awake. For once, Dean chose not rise to the bait.
“Where’s Cas?” He demanded, taking an aggressive step towards Balthazar and not caring in the slightest how little a threat he posed. No matter how much Dean despised the guy, Balthazar obviously felt some kind of fondness towards Castiel, and if he was going to kill them he would have done it long before now.
“I took him to one of the guest bedrooms after he shoved your soul back into that incredibly buff meatsuit. If you want to say your tearful goodbyes, I suggest you get on with it. I don’t know how much longer he can hold on for.”
Oh, Jesus.
“What are you talking about?” That was not a tremor in his voice. No way.
Balthazar rolled his eyes, but even Dean had to admit it looked half-hearted. “Raphael got him good, that’s for sure. It was a fatal blow; his Grace is shriveling up inside him as we speak.”
“So that’s it? There’s no chance he could pull through?” Dean asked weakly. He was clutching at straws, but he was no way he could just accept what Balthazar was telling him, what Bobby was telling him. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair that Cas should die now, like this, when the war was finally over and they weren’t all looking at him to save the whole damn world.
“Under any normal circumstances, I’d say there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance,” Balthazar sighed, and in spite of his best efforts Dean felt his hopes lift, just a little, “but Castiel is… different. That body he walks around in is one hundred percent his, now; theoretically, he could survive without his Grace, if he chose to let it go.”
“But he’d be human,” Sam concluded.
“Better than being dead.”
“Some of us might disagree with you there,” Balthazar murmured, and this time Dean couldn’t have held back the glare even if he’d wanted to.
“Yeah, well, not Cas. He’s got more sense than that. You know what, screw this; I’m gonna go talk to him.”
He fairly tore out of the panic room, took the creaking steps two at a time; he found Castiel in his own room, or at least the one he used whenever he and Sam stayed over -- and of course Cas was there, where the hell else would he be? -- but when he got to the open doorway, he just kind of… froze, suspended in stasis, no idea what to say or do or even think next.
Because Bobby had been right: Castiel didn’t look good, not even close. He was curled on his side on the narrow bed, eyes closed and shaking minutely, covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Dean had never seen him looking so weak, not even during that long, slow slide into humanity, and it caused something in his heart to clench painfully. The other times Cas had died had been quick, messy affairs when all other kinds of shit had been going down, and both times he’d been back before Dean had really been able to process that he was ever gone.
This… this was different, and it wasn’t something Dean ever wanted to see -- and not just because he owed Cas, or because they were running low on allies. Fact was, Castiel had been a part of his life for some time now, and Dean couldn’t remember when exactly the angel had managed to insinuate himself on the list of People Who Mattered, but he knew that he had long ago passed the point where he absolutely couldn’t picture his existence without Castiel in it.
“Dean.” As if sensing his presence -- and, God, maybe he had -- Castiel’s head rolled to face him, eyes opening to weary blue. One corner of his mouth twitched in what may have been an attempted smile, though it came off more like a pained grimace. “How are you?”
“Dude,” Dean hovered uncomfortably, rocking back on his heels. “You’re the guy in the bed.”
Castiel looked down at himself briefly, as though this fact had escaped his notice before now. Dean edged further into the room, sat down on a spare corner of mattress -- gingerly, as though any sudden movement might cause Castiel to shatter, and wasn’t that a crazy notion? If there was one person in his life Dean had assumed he would never have to be careful around, it was Cas.
From this close, though, Dean could tell that Castiel’s face was flushed, fever-bright, and his eyes glinted with the look of the not-altogether sane. Every so often, Dean would swear he caught sight of random strobes of light passing beneath Castiel’s skin, but each time, they disappeared before he could tell one way or the other. Tentatively, not even sure if he was allowed, he reached out and laid a hand against the angel’s forehead, the way he would do when Sam got sick as a kid -- and then jerked it back again with a hiss, wincing at the searing heat he found there. If Castiel was anything like human, his insides would have cooked by now.
“Dean,” Castiel said again. He coughed weakly, straining for breath; a single line of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. “Dean, I’m dying.”
He sounded so matter-of-fact about it, like the prospect of his own death meant nothing to him. Dean felt his mouth go dry; he shook his head rapidly, unwilling to accept it.
“No. No you’re not, Cas. You can get through this, Balthazar said --”
“The only hope I have of surviving is to become human again,” Castiel said flatly, and he still worked that intense stare, even horizontal and halfway to unconscious. “I’m not sure that’s what I’d call a preferable alternative.”
“Oh, come on,” Dean aimed for levity, and missed by several feet, “it isn’t all bad.”
This time Castiel did smile, a sad ghost of the expression flickering briefly across his features. “You forget, I was human once before. I didn’t much care for it.”
Dean stared at him, suddenly angry. Beyond angry. “So you’re just giving up then, is that it?”
“Dean.” He had no idea how Castiel’s voice still managed to command so much power when Castiel himself painted such a pitiful picture, but the tone wasn’t so very different to one he’d used when he threatened to throw Dean back into Hell. “Do you have any idea how old I am? How many wars I’ve fought, how much blood I’ve spilled over the millennia? I witnessed the formation of the universe, I have seen stars collapse and civilizations turn to dust. I am more than your human mind can ever comprehend, Dean Winchester; I have done things you couldn’t even imagine, and I am -- tired.”
Dean couldn’t be sure if Cas had meant to get so personal or if he was just being his usual blunt self, but the words still stung. Perhaps more than they should have, given that Dean was fairly used to having all of his shortcomings listed; but then, he never could handle hearing them from Castiel. Castiel, who apparently had a death wish now.
“You know, Cas, you’re a lot of things, but it’s been a long time since I had you down as a coward.”
Castiel’s eyes widened, and Dean felt momentarily bad about seeing such naked hurt on his face -- but he figured it would be worth it, if it meant Cas would still be alive later for him to apologize to.
“Dean, that’s not --”
“Fair? Nothing about this situation is fair, Cas. It sucks that this is happening, but you can’t just stop fighting. And my human mind might not be able to understand the workings of the cosmos or whatever you were going on about before, but I understand about running away, and that’s what you’re doing right now. It’s easy when you’re busy fighting a war, not to think about everything that makes you scared, and hopeless, and angry -- I know, man, I’ve been there. I threw myself into Hell because I couldn’t live without Sam, and I almost gave myself to Michael just so the end of the world wouldn’t be my responsibility anymore. But it isn’t the answer, Cas; it’s not the easy way out, and it’s damn selfish to everyone who gets left behind.”
Dean measured the stretch of time Castiel stared at him for in his own heartbeats, the sound of them thudding in his ears. He felt as though he’d just split himself right open, shown Cas a glimpse of the deepest, darkest part of himself that no-one else got to see, and now he was waiting to find out what Castiel would do with it. They were teetering on the brink of something, of Castiel choosing either life or death, and Dean was terrified even to breathe.
Then Castiel closed his eyes and the moment splintered, shattered into a thousand pieces, each one jagged-edged and cruel. He knew what was going to happen next, and he didn’t need to hear Castiel confirm it; standing from the bed on legs that were suddenly shaking, he beat a hasty retreat, leaning against the hard wood of the door once it was closed behind him and sinking down to the floor.
If Castiel was determined to commit slow suicide, there was really nothing Dean could do to stop him.
But that didn’t mean he was going to hang around to watch.
+
The park was exactly as Castiel remembered it, save for the fact that there was not a child in sight this time. But the grass was the same, green except for a few sparse patches where it was parched and yellowing, and the wood of the bench against his back and thighs was as hard and unyielding as before. Castiel leaned back against it and thought of the conversation he had had with Dean in this very place -- can I tell you something if you promise not to tell another soul? -- the first of many that would redefine his whole existence, though he hadn’t known it then.
He wondered, sometimes, if this was what was always supposed to happen. God did work in mysterious ways, after all.
A woman sat down beside him, and he startled because he hadn’t sensed her approach; an unusual occurrence, to say the least. When he looked at her, the situation made even less sense, because he knew her -- he knew the owner of that vivid red hair, those dark eyes that looked at him with such compassion, but her very existence was an impossibility.
“Anna,” he greeted uncertainly, and his voice sounded faint to his own mind. “You can’t be here. You’re dead.” And that was his fault too, at least in part.
A hint of a smile lifted her features. “You’re dreaming, Cas.”
“Angels don’t dream.”
“No,” Anna agreed, “they don’t. But you and me -- were we ever really angels?”
Castiel didn’t follow, and something of it must have shown on his face, because Anna’s smile got wider. “You need to stop being so literal.”
“I don’t know how to be anything else,” Castiel confessed. He didn’t know why he was engaging what he now knew to be a figment of his imagination, but he couldn’t simply will himself to wake up -- if, indeed, he was asleep -- and it seemed the polite thing to do.
Also, possibly, he had missed having a confidant outside of Dean, another angel who understood a little of the things he had to face. There was Balthazar, but he had an infuriating inability to take things seriously.
“I know you don’t,” Anna said, and she wasn’t smiling anymore. “That’s why we need to talk. What do you want, Cas?”
Castiel thought -- no, he knew -- that nobody had ever asked him that question before. It was still a strange thing, to want after millennia of servitude, and yet he didn’t even have to think about the answer before it was tripping off his tongue.
“I want Dean to be happy.” Then, because it felt incomplete out there on its own: “Sam too.”
Anna smiled again, but this time there was something sad in the curvature of her lips.
“Don’t tell me you still haven’t figured out how to ask for things for yourself.”
Castiel considered this for a long moment, turning it over in his mind. Wanting for himself was even more foreign than wanting for others, but Castiel was not unaccustomed to selfish desires. On the contrary: he suspected he had wanted many things over time, but with no frame of reference had been unable to identify the feeling for what it was.
“There was one time,” he told Anna finally, something which he had never confessed to anyone, “when I watched you kiss Dean. I wanted it for myself; I think it was the first time I ever wanted anything. I saw what you had together, what you’d shared, and I felt envy.”
“It’s a start,” Anna told him, “but you’re still all about Dean. What else?”
“I visited a beach in Fiji once,” Castiel started slowly without really knowing what he was going to say, rolling the syllables carefully around his mouth, testing the shapes of them. “I didn’t find God there, but I remember thinking that I would have liked to stay, just a while longer. I think I would still like to go back, if it was at all possible.”
She had triggered something in his mind now, flipped some kind of switch that had him thinking of all the things he had ever wanted, without even realizing it. He wanted to read books -- as many books as he could find, and then when he’d finished with them he’d read them over and over again, until the spines cracked and the pages got torn. He wanted to eat cherry pie, just to see if it could ever possibly live up to his expectations after hearing Dean talk of it so rapturously on so many occasions. He wanted -- so many things, it seemed. The realization hit him hard, and suddenly, leaving him wondering why he hadn’t seen it before.
“Anna, I don’t want to die.”
“Then you know what you have to do.”
“Will it hurt?” Castiel started to ask, but the park was already sliding away, colors fading, shapes twisting and losing their definition.
He woke up in a cold sweat in Bobby’s spare room, feeling as though he’d been doused in holy oil and set alight. He could see the light of his true self more clearly than ever now, could feel it trying to burst through his skin and scatter him across the universe, back to stardust. If he was going to do something, it would have to be now or never.
Being careful to make as little noise as possible, he rolled out of bed and crept out through the house to Bobby’s yard, forcing himself to keep going when all he wanted to do was collapse into a fetal ball and try to ride out the pain.
Once out there, he took in a deep lungful of night air, looked at the world as an angel for what would be the last time, one way or another, listened to the chatter of his brothers and sisters on the brink of a revolution he had started but would never get to be a part of.
And then he let go.
+
If asked at some point in the future, Dean wouldn’t have been able to say exactly what made him go out into the yard when he did. Maybe he needed some air, maybe he was out to look at the goddamn scenery, who the fuck knew?
Whatever the reason, he couldn’t help thinking that it was no accident he should choose to come out; that he’d been drawn here, if he believed in such things. He’d barely gotten five feet away from the house when he heard a quiet but unmistakable groan from nearby. Cas. Heart in his throat, Dean searched for the source of the noise, feeling his breath catch when he finally did.
Castiel was on his knees in a space between the cars, illuminated -- Dean wanted to say it was from the moonlight, but cloud cover was thick enough that there wasn’t much of it filtering down to earth. It took him a second longer to realize that the light was coming from within, something that was inside Castiel himself, growing brighter and more tangible the longer he looked. It made Cas look ethereal, beautiful even, and Dean felt guilty for having the thought because his friend was so obviously in pain.
Dean wasn’t sure what gave him away, but in the next instant Castiel’s eyes opened and fixed on him, unblinking. Dean stared right back, mesmerized by the glow of Castiel’s irises, an almost strobe-like effect that flared and then faded in cycles, as though Castiel was battling to keep it inside himself.
“Dean, you shouldn’t be here,” Castiel gasped, and his voice was so thin that Dean had to strain to hear it.
“What, so you came out here to die alone? Sorry, but that’s not gonna fly with me.”
Castiel shook his head rapidly. “Not to die.”
Oh. The implication of it hit Dean then, everything Cas wasn’t saying. Castiel wasn’t going to die -- he was going to Fall. Because Dean had asked him to; because Castiel might not be the creature of unshakeable faith he had once been, but he had always, always believed in Dean.
“You’re still not doing it alone,” Dean told him. He went to take a step closer, but Castiel held out a hand to ward him off. That death-glare Dean had so often been on the receiving end of was even more effective while Castiel’s eyes were brimming with holy light.
“Don’t come any closer,” Castiel ordered. “Close your eyes, put your hands over your ears, and don’t move until it’s over.”
“How will I know when it’s over?”
“Dean.” Castiel was incandescent now, like he couldn’t hold it in much longer. He pitched forward, one hand splaying in the dirt to stop him from faceplanting onto the ground. Dean held his hands up in surrender before making a deliberate show of placing them over his ears.
“I hope you’re right about this,” Castiel said. The last thing Dean saw before closing his eyes was the look of utter despair on his face. Then there was an awful wrenching noise, like the fabric of the universe tearing itself in two, and Dean could feel the light surging outwards even if he couldn’t see it, a strange pressure against his eyelids, and it took every bit of resolve he had not to open them and look.
And then the screaming began. Harsh, desperate sounds that were worse than anything Dean had heard in Hell, and he was glad when Castiel’s angelic voice superseded his human one -- even as his eardrums threatened to split apart and he felt warm liquid leaking out onto his hands -- because hearing Castiel crying out in agony like that in the smoke-and-whisky voice that had become as familiar to Dean as Sam’s was more than he could handle.
He could feel the light growing brighter, oddly warm against his skin where it surged past him; but it didn’t feel like his eyeballs were in danger of melting, and he was possessed by the need to see, to understand what was happening. He remembered Zachariah, finally killing that bastard and watching as the fucker died -- and for the first time in his life, Dean took a leap of faith.
It looked as though Castiel had gone supernova, light ripping out from his body in all directions, arcing towards the sky in shapes and patterns that Dean thought looked like wings. Looking at him was uncomfortable, like looking at the sun on a clear day, but it didn’t really hurt. On the contrary: Dean felt embarrassingly like he was on the receiving end of some kind of religious experience. For the first time in a long time, he found himself looking at Castiel and thinking, holy shit, this is an angel.
It was somewhat ironic that he was having this particular revelation just as Castiel was ripping that part of himself out to avoid certain death, but Dean had never been renowned for his punctuality.
The screaming built to a crescendo; the light pulsed outwards with such searing intensity that Dean had no choice but to slam his eyes shut again. He was starting to think it would never end when everything just stopped, as suddenly as if a switch had been flipped. The darkness of the night seemed like a totality; the silence absolute save for his own breathing and the ringing in his ears.
Dean opened his eyes and gingerly pried his hands away from where they’d been clamped to the sides of his face, grimacing at the blood on them. Castiel was slumped facedown on the ground, completely still, and for a moment Dean couldn’t move, thinking that Balthazar had been wrong, that Cas had died anyway -- then Castiel groaned faintly and shifted, pushing himself up to sitting with slow, labored movements that looked as though they cost more effort than he had to spare.
Dean didn’t even think -- he rushed forwards, falling to his knees beside Castiel, uncaring that the impact send shockwaves of pain jolting up through both his kneecaps. He fitted his hand to the curve of Castiel’s neck, beneath the collar of his shirt: the skin there was too hot, and Castiel was shaking uncontrollably, but Dean could feel his pulse thrumming underneath; erratic, human, but most of all alive.
“Cas, hey. You okay?” He asked, well aware of the idiocy of the question even as it passed his lips. Castiel looked back at him dazedly, breaths coming slightly more harshly than was necessary, a newborn adapting to the need for oxygen.
“Dean,” Castiel breathed, and it seemed fitting that it should be his first word.
“Yeah, I’m here. I got you, you’re okay,” Dean babbled nonsensically, barely aware of what he was saying. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
He snaked his free arm around Castiel’s waist, pulled him closer. Castiel went willingly, leaning his forehead against Dean’s shoulder, clinging to him weakly.
“I gotta tell you, man, that was some light show.”
“I told you not to look,” Castiel slurred into the side of his neck, and the note of disapproval was unmistakable even now. Dean couldn’t help it: he laughed, and if it sounded a little on the hysterical side, well, no-one had to know.
He pressed a kiss to the top of Castiel’s head before he could stop himself, before it occurred to him that that wasn’t something he usually did.
Castiel didn’t seem to have any objections.
Dean wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, but eventually he began to feel the chill of the night air, and the ache in his knees became more pronounced. He half-supported, half-carried Castiel back to the house, and if Sam and Bobby thought anything of it when he dragged them both upstairs to the same room, they kept it to themselves.
(IV.)
(III.)
Given that his last memory was of falling asleep in a no-star motel in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska, Dean was understandably confused when he opened his eyes to be greeted by the sight of the ugly-ass fan on the ceiling of Bobby’s panic room.
He felt -- strange, was the only word for it, as though he’d been asleep for an unreasonably long amount of time and re-acclimatizing to the land of consciousness was far more effort than it should have been. Kind of like the jetlag after that time they’d gone to Scotland to dig up Crowley’s bones, except ten times more pronounced.
“You gonna stay awake this time, Sleeping Beauty?” A gruff voice demanded -- Bobby’s.
Dean mentally assessed himself; he didn’t feel right, by any stretch of the imagination, and he was struck by the unsettling notion that his body felt too big for him, but he didn’t think he was in danger of falling back to sleep any time soon.
“I think so,” he grunted, wincing at the thickness of his tongue. Just how long has it been, anyway? “Where’s Sam?”
“Right here.” Sam’s voice came from the right, a low groan that sounded about as healthy as Dean felt. Dean turned instinctively to face him, trained from the age of four to respond to Sam’s every word and gesture. His brother was picking himself up off the ground -- and why the hell were they on the floor, anyway? -- like the movement physically hurt, pushing too-long hair out of his eyes and looking around in blatant confusion.
Dean could sympathize. He took a leaf out of Sam’s book and struggled to his feet; his muscles ached like he hadn’t moved them in hours, and seriously, what the hell? He instantly forgot the discomfort, however, when he got his first good look at Bobby’s face. The old man was worn and pale, eyes red-rimmed in a way that suggested he’d been crying, and Bobby didn’t do that shit for no reason.
“Bobby, what the hell happened?”
Bobby shook his head, seemingly at a loss for words, which did exactly nothing to quell the rising sense of foreboding in the pit of Dean’s stomach.
“If you boys die on me one more time, you’ll be sending me into an early grave.”
“We died?” Sam echoed incredulously. The look Bobby gave him in reply said it all.
“Great,” Dean groused, with more bravado than he was feeling. He couldn’t shake the notion that there was more to all this than Bobby was letting on. He’d died before, plenty of times, and he’d never felt like this in the aftermath. “So, who was it this time? Eve? Meg? Some trigger-happy hunter with a chip on their shoulder over the end of the world?”
“Try none of the above,” Bobby supplied, clearly getting over his apparent shock in record timing. “It was the angels. Specifically a character by the name of Raphael.”
“Raphael? Seriously?” Sam asked, eyebrows furrowing in that way that meant he was trying to piece something together but didn’t yet have all the necessary information. “But -- why? I mean, we’re hardly a threat.”
“Oh, come on, Sam,” Dean said, suspicion beginning to take root, “it wasn’t about us; it was about Cas. Am I right, Bobby?”
“Got it one,” Bobby sighed, removing his trucker’s cap and running his fingers through what little hair he had left. The gesture made him look alarmingly older, and Dean couldn’t decide if it was just the stress of the last few years, or whether the age had snuck up on him without any of them noticing, catching them all unawares. “Apparently Raphael got it into his head that he’d hold your souls for ransom, force Castiel into surrendering that way. ‘Course, he should have known better; that damn angel gives the two of you a run for your money as far as stubbornness goes, and that’s sayin’ something.”
Dean listened, rapt, as Bobby proceeded to explain everything that had gone down while he and Sam had apparently been floating around disembodied in Raphael’s clutches. Which -- weird, but somehow it made sense. It certainly explained the bizarre, out-of-body feeling he was still getting. He felt a warm swelling of pride somewhere in his chest as Bobby recounted the lengths Castiel had gone to for them; no matter how fraught with tension their relationship had been lately, Dean had always known, on that kind of bone-deep, instinctual level he rarely thought about, that Cas would come through for them when it really counted. No matter what other shitty decisions he might make, Cas always came through for them at the eleventh hour -- by this point, it was pretty much in his job description.
“Wait, hold on,” Sam interjected, a step ahead as usual. “So you’re saying the civil war’s over? Just like that? And Cas won?”
“Well… Raphael’s dead, yeah,” Bobby said somewhat uneasily. “I would know; I had to get rid of the damn body. But Cas didn’t come out of it looking too hot, either.”
Dean felt his stomach drop out at the words, a nauseating hollow left behind. He didn’t even want to think about what Bobby could mean by that, what could have happened to Cas in this apparently epic battle that had gone on while he’d been dead. But he had to ask. Had to, because he owed Cas at least that much.
“What -- what do you mean? Bobby, what happened?”
Bobby looked away awkwardly, but was saved from answering by the quiet rushing of wings and Balthazar’s sudden appearance in the room. His usual look of boredom and vague amusement was gone, but the air of superiority still hung over him like a shroud, and Dean felt his day get just that little bit worse.
“Oh good, the Wonder Twins are back with us,” Balthazar snarked upon seeing Dean and Sam awake. For once, Dean chose not rise to the bait.
“Where’s Cas?” He demanded, taking an aggressive step towards Balthazar and not caring in the slightest how little a threat he posed. No matter how much Dean despised the guy, Balthazar obviously felt some kind of fondness towards Castiel, and if he was going to kill them he would have done it long before now.
“I took him to one of the guest bedrooms after he shoved your soul back into that incredibly buff meatsuit. If you want to say your tearful goodbyes, I suggest you get on with it. I don’t know how much longer he can hold on for.”
Oh, Jesus.
“What are you talking about?” That was not a tremor in his voice. No way.
Balthazar rolled his eyes, but even Dean had to admit it looked half-hearted. “Raphael got him good, that’s for sure. It was a fatal blow; his Grace is shriveling up inside him as we speak.”
“So that’s it? There’s no chance he could pull through?” Dean asked weakly. He was clutching at straws, but he was no way he could just accept what Balthazar was telling him, what Bobby was telling him. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair that Cas should die now, like this, when the war was finally over and they weren’t all looking at him to save the whole damn world.
“Under any normal circumstances, I’d say there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance,” Balthazar sighed, and in spite of his best efforts Dean felt his hopes lift, just a little, “but Castiel is… different. That body he walks around in is one hundred percent his, now; theoretically, he could survive without his Grace, if he chose to let it go.”
“But he’d be human,” Sam concluded.
“Better than being dead.”
“Some of us might disagree with you there,” Balthazar murmured, and this time Dean couldn’t have held back the glare even if he’d wanted to.
“Yeah, well, not Cas. He’s got more sense than that. You know what, screw this; I’m gonna go talk to him.”
He fairly tore out of the panic room, took the creaking steps two at a time; he found Castiel in his own room, or at least the one he used whenever he and Sam stayed over -- and of course Cas was there, where the hell else would he be? -- but when he got to the open doorway, he just kind of… froze, suspended in stasis, no idea what to say or do or even think next.
Because Bobby had been right: Castiel didn’t look good, not even close. He was curled on his side on the narrow bed, eyes closed and shaking minutely, covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Dean had never seen him looking so weak, not even during that long, slow slide into humanity, and it caused something in his heart to clench painfully. The other times Cas had died had been quick, messy affairs when all other kinds of shit had been going down, and both times he’d been back before Dean had really been able to process that he was ever gone.
This… this was different, and it wasn’t something Dean ever wanted to see -- and not just because he owed Cas, or because they were running low on allies. Fact was, Castiel had been a part of his life for some time now, and Dean couldn’t remember when exactly the angel had managed to insinuate himself on the list of People Who Mattered, but he knew that he had long ago passed the point where he absolutely couldn’t picture his existence without Castiel in it.
“Dean.” As if sensing his presence -- and, God, maybe he had -- Castiel’s head rolled to face him, eyes opening to weary blue. One corner of his mouth twitched in what may have been an attempted smile, though it came off more like a pained grimace. “How are you?”
“Dude,” Dean hovered uncomfortably, rocking back on his heels. “You’re the guy in the bed.”
Castiel looked down at himself briefly, as though this fact had escaped his notice before now. Dean edged further into the room, sat down on a spare corner of mattress -- gingerly, as though any sudden movement might cause Castiel to shatter, and wasn’t that a crazy notion? If there was one person in his life Dean had assumed he would never have to be careful around, it was Cas.
From this close, though, Dean could tell that Castiel’s face was flushed, fever-bright, and his eyes glinted with the look of the not-altogether sane. Every so often, Dean would swear he caught sight of random strobes of light passing beneath Castiel’s skin, but each time, they disappeared before he could tell one way or the other. Tentatively, not even sure if he was allowed, he reached out and laid a hand against the angel’s forehead, the way he would do when Sam got sick as a kid -- and then jerked it back again with a hiss, wincing at the searing heat he found there. If Castiel was anything like human, his insides would have cooked by now.
“Dean,” Castiel said again. He coughed weakly, straining for breath; a single line of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. “Dean, I’m dying.”
He sounded so matter-of-fact about it, like the prospect of his own death meant nothing to him. Dean felt his mouth go dry; he shook his head rapidly, unwilling to accept it.
“No. No you’re not, Cas. You can get through this, Balthazar said --”
“The only hope I have of surviving is to become human again,” Castiel said flatly, and he still worked that intense stare, even horizontal and halfway to unconscious. “I’m not sure that’s what I’d call a preferable alternative.”
“Oh, come on,” Dean aimed for levity, and missed by several feet, “it isn’t all bad.”
This time Castiel did smile, a sad ghost of the expression flickering briefly across his features. “You forget, I was human once before. I didn’t much care for it.”
Dean stared at him, suddenly angry. Beyond angry. “So you’re just giving up then, is that it?”
“Dean.” He had no idea how Castiel’s voice still managed to command so much power when Castiel himself painted such a pitiful picture, but the tone wasn’t so very different to one he’d used when he threatened to throw Dean back into Hell. “Do you have any idea how old I am? How many wars I’ve fought, how much blood I’ve spilled over the millennia? I witnessed the formation of the universe, I have seen stars collapse and civilizations turn to dust. I am more than your human mind can ever comprehend, Dean Winchester; I have done things you couldn’t even imagine, and I am -- tired.”
Dean couldn’t be sure if Cas had meant to get so personal or if he was just being his usual blunt self, but the words still stung. Perhaps more than they should have, given that Dean was fairly used to having all of his shortcomings listed; but then, he never could handle hearing them from Castiel. Castiel, who apparently had a death wish now.
“You know, Cas, you’re a lot of things, but it’s been a long time since I had you down as a coward.”
Castiel’s eyes widened, and Dean felt momentarily bad about seeing such naked hurt on his face -- but he figured it would be worth it, if it meant Cas would still be alive later for him to apologize to.
“Dean, that’s not --”
“Fair? Nothing about this situation is fair, Cas. It sucks that this is happening, but you can’t just stop fighting. And my human mind might not be able to understand the workings of the cosmos or whatever you were going on about before, but I understand about running away, and that’s what you’re doing right now. It’s easy when you’re busy fighting a war, not to think about everything that makes you scared, and hopeless, and angry -- I know, man, I’ve been there. I threw myself into Hell because I couldn’t live without Sam, and I almost gave myself to Michael just so the end of the world wouldn’t be my responsibility anymore. But it isn’t the answer, Cas; it’s not the easy way out, and it’s damn selfish to everyone who gets left behind.”
Dean measured the stretch of time Castiel stared at him for in his own heartbeats, the sound of them thudding in his ears. He felt as though he’d just split himself right open, shown Cas a glimpse of the deepest, darkest part of himself that no-one else got to see, and now he was waiting to find out what Castiel would do with it. They were teetering on the brink of something, of Castiel choosing either life or death, and Dean was terrified even to breathe.
Then Castiel closed his eyes and the moment splintered, shattered into a thousand pieces, each one jagged-edged and cruel. He knew what was going to happen next, and he didn’t need to hear Castiel confirm it; standing from the bed on legs that were suddenly shaking, he beat a hasty retreat, leaning against the hard wood of the door once it was closed behind him and sinking down to the floor.
If Castiel was determined to commit slow suicide, there was really nothing Dean could do to stop him.
But that didn’t mean he was going to hang around to watch.
+
The park was exactly as Castiel remembered it, save for the fact that there was not a child in sight this time. But the grass was the same, green except for a few sparse patches where it was parched and yellowing, and the wood of the bench against his back and thighs was as hard and unyielding as before. Castiel leaned back against it and thought of the conversation he had had with Dean in this very place -- can I tell you something if you promise not to tell another soul? -- the first of many that would redefine his whole existence, though he hadn’t known it then.
He wondered, sometimes, if this was what was always supposed to happen. God did work in mysterious ways, after all.
A woman sat down beside him, and he startled because he hadn’t sensed her approach; an unusual occurrence, to say the least. When he looked at her, the situation made even less sense, because he knew her -- he knew the owner of that vivid red hair, those dark eyes that looked at him with such compassion, but her very existence was an impossibility.
“Anna,” he greeted uncertainly, and his voice sounded faint to his own mind. “You can’t be here. You’re dead.” And that was his fault too, at least in part.
A hint of a smile lifted her features. “You’re dreaming, Cas.”
“Angels don’t dream.”
“No,” Anna agreed, “they don’t. But you and me -- were we ever really angels?”
Castiel didn’t follow, and something of it must have shown on his face, because Anna’s smile got wider. “You need to stop being so literal.”
“I don’t know how to be anything else,” Castiel confessed. He didn’t know why he was engaging what he now knew to be a figment of his imagination, but he couldn’t simply will himself to wake up -- if, indeed, he was asleep -- and it seemed the polite thing to do.
Also, possibly, he had missed having a confidant outside of Dean, another angel who understood a little of the things he had to face. There was Balthazar, but he had an infuriating inability to take things seriously.
“I know you don’t,” Anna said, and she wasn’t smiling anymore. “That’s why we need to talk. What do you want, Cas?”
Castiel thought -- no, he knew -- that nobody had ever asked him that question before. It was still a strange thing, to want after millennia of servitude, and yet he didn’t even have to think about the answer before it was tripping off his tongue.
“I want Dean to be happy.” Then, because it felt incomplete out there on its own: “Sam too.”
Anna smiled again, but this time there was something sad in the curvature of her lips.
“Don’t tell me you still haven’t figured out how to ask for things for yourself.”
Castiel considered this for a long moment, turning it over in his mind. Wanting for himself was even more foreign than wanting for others, but Castiel was not unaccustomed to selfish desires. On the contrary: he suspected he had wanted many things over time, but with no frame of reference had been unable to identify the feeling for what it was.
“There was one time,” he told Anna finally, something which he had never confessed to anyone, “when I watched you kiss Dean. I wanted it for myself; I think it was the first time I ever wanted anything. I saw what you had together, what you’d shared, and I felt envy.”
“It’s a start,” Anna told him, “but you’re still all about Dean. What else?”
“I visited a beach in Fiji once,” Castiel started slowly without really knowing what he was going to say, rolling the syllables carefully around his mouth, testing the shapes of them. “I didn’t find God there, but I remember thinking that I would have liked to stay, just a while longer. I think I would still like to go back, if it was at all possible.”
She had triggered something in his mind now, flipped some kind of switch that had him thinking of all the things he had ever wanted, without even realizing it. He wanted to read books -- as many books as he could find, and then when he’d finished with them he’d read them over and over again, until the spines cracked and the pages got torn. He wanted to eat cherry pie, just to see if it could ever possibly live up to his expectations after hearing Dean talk of it so rapturously on so many occasions. He wanted -- so many things, it seemed. The realization hit him hard, and suddenly, leaving him wondering why he hadn’t seen it before.
“Anna, I don’t want to die.”
“Then you know what you have to do.”
“Will it hurt?” Castiel started to ask, but the park was already sliding away, colors fading, shapes twisting and losing their definition.
He woke up in a cold sweat in Bobby’s spare room, feeling as though he’d been doused in holy oil and set alight. He could see the light of his true self more clearly than ever now, could feel it trying to burst through his skin and scatter him across the universe, back to stardust. If he was going to do something, it would have to be now or never.
Being careful to make as little noise as possible, he rolled out of bed and crept out through the house to Bobby’s yard, forcing himself to keep going when all he wanted to do was collapse into a fetal ball and try to ride out the pain.
Once out there, he took in a deep lungful of night air, looked at the world as an angel for what would be the last time, one way or another, listened to the chatter of his brothers and sisters on the brink of a revolution he had started but would never get to be a part of.
And then he let go.
+
If asked at some point in the future, Dean wouldn’t have been able to say exactly what made him go out into the yard when he did. Maybe he needed some air, maybe he was out to look at the goddamn scenery, who the fuck knew?
Whatever the reason, he couldn’t help thinking that it was no accident he should choose to come out; that he’d been drawn here, if he believed in such things. He’d barely gotten five feet away from the house when he heard a quiet but unmistakable groan from nearby. Cas. Heart in his throat, Dean searched for the source of the noise, feeling his breath catch when he finally did.
Castiel was on his knees in a space between the cars, illuminated -- Dean wanted to say it was from the moonlight, but cloud cover was thick enough that there wasn’t much of it filtering down to earth. It took him a second longer to realize that the light was coming from within, something that was inside Castiel himself, growing brighter and more tangible the longer he looked. It made Cas look ethereal, beautiful even, and Dean felt guilty for having the thought because his friend was so obviously in pain.
Dean wasn’t sure what gave him away, but in the next instant Castiel’s eyes opened and fixed on him, unblinking. Dean stared right back, mesmerized by the glow of Castiel’s irises, an almost strobe-like effect that flared and then faded in cycles, as though Castiel was battling to keep it inside himself.
“Dean, you shouldn’t be here,” Castiel gasped, and his voice was so thin that Dean had to strain to hear it.
“What, so you came out here to die alone? Sorry, but that’s not gonna fly with me.”
Castiel shook his head rapidly. “Not to die.”
Oh. The implication of it hit Dean then, everything Cas wasn’t saying. Castiel wasn’t going to die -- he was going to Fall. Because Dean had asked him to; because Castiel might not be the creature of unshakeable faith he had once been, but he had always, always believed in Dean.
“You’re still not doing it alone,” Dean told him. He went to take a step closer, but Castiel held out a hand to ward him off. That death-glare Dean had so often been on the receiving end of was even more effective while Castiel’s eyes were brimming with holy light.
“Don’t come any closer,” Castiel ordered. “Close your eyes, put your hands over your ears, and don’t move until it’s over.”
“How will I know when it’s over?”
“Dean.” Castiel was incandescent now, like he couldn’t hold it in much longer. He pitched forward, one hand splaying in the dirt to stop him from faceplanting onto the ground. Dean held his hands up in surrender before making a deliberate show of placing them over his ears.
“I hope you’re right about this,” Castiel said. The last thing Dean saw before closing his eyes was the look of utter despair on his face. Then there was an awful wrenching noise, like the fabric of the universe tearing itself in two, and Dean could feel the light surging outwards even if he couldn’t see it, a strange pressure against his eyelids, and it took every bit of resolve he had not to open them and look.
And then the screaming began. Harsh, desperate sounds that were worse than anything Dean had heard in Hell, and he was glad when Castiel’s angelic voice superseded his human one -- even as his eardrums threatened to split apart and he felt warm liquid leaking out onto his hands -- because hearing Castiel crying out in agony like that in the smoke-and-whisky voice that had become as familiar to Dean as Sam’s was more than he could handle.
He could feel the light growing brighter, oddly warm against his skin where it surged past him; but it didn’t feel like his eyeballs were in danger of melting, and he was possessed by the need to see, to understand what was happening. He remembered Zachariah, finally killing that bastard and watching as the fucker died -- and for the first time in his life, Dean took a leap of faith.
It looked as though Castiel had gone supernova, light ripping out from his body in all directions, arcing towards the sky in shapes and patterns that Dean thought looked like wings. Looking at him was uncomfortable, like looking at the sun on a clear day, but it didn’t really hurt. On the contrary: Dean felt embarrassingly like he was on the receiving end of some kind of religious experience. For the first time in a long time, he found himself looking at Castiel and thinking, holy shit, this is an angel.
It was somewhat ironic that he was having this particular revelation just as Castiel was ripping that part of himself out to avoid certain death, but Dean had never been renowned for his punctuality.
The screaming built to a crescendo; the light pulsed outwards with such searing intensity that Dean had no choice but to slam his eyes shut again. He was starting to think it would never end when everything just stopped, as suddenly as if a switch had been flipped. The darkness of the night seemed like a totality; the silence absolute save for his own breathing and the ringing in his ears.
Dean opened his eyes and gingerly pried his hands away from where they’d been clamped to the sides of his face, grimacing at the blood on them. Castiel was slumped facedown on the ground, completely still, and for a moment Dean couldn’t move, thinking that Balthazar had been wrong, that Cas had died anyway -- then Castiel groaned faintly and shifted, pushing himself up to sitting with slow, labored movements that looked as though they cost more effort than he had to spare.
Dean didn’t even think -- he rushed forwards, falling to his knees beside Castiel, uncaring that the impact send shockwaves of pain jolting up through both his kneecaps. He fitted his hand to the curve of Castiel’s neck, beneath the collar of his shirt: the skin there was too hot, and Castiel was shaking uncontrollably, but Dean could feel his pulse thrumming underneath; erratic, human, but most of all alive.
“Cas, hey. You okay?” He asked, well aware of the idiocy of the question even as it passed his lips. Castiel looked back at him dazedly, breaths coming slightly more harshly than was necessary, a newborn adapting to the need for oxygen.
“Dean,” Castiel breathed, and it seemed fitting that it should be his first word.
“Yeah, I’m here. I got you, you’re okay,” Dean babbled nonsensically, barely aware of what he was saying. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
He snaked his free arm around Castiel’s waist, pulled him closer. Castiel went willingly, leaning his forehead against Dean’s shoulder, clinging to him weakly.
“I gotta tell you, man, that was some light show.”
“I told you not to look,” Castiel slurred into the side of his neck, and the note of disapproval was unmistakable even now. Dean couldn’t help it: he laughed, and if it sounded a little on the hysterical side, well, no-one had to know.
He pressed a kiss to the top of Castiel’s head before he could stop himself, before it occurred to him that that wasn’t something he usually did.
Castiel didn’t seem to have any objections.
Dean wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, but eventually he began to feel the chill of the night air, and the ache in his knees became more pronounced. He half-supported, half-carried Castiel back to the house, and if Sam and Bobby thought anything of it when he dragged them both upstairs to the same room, they kept it to themselves.
(IV.)