The Last Guys on the Bench // Part 3
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A hideous creature approaches them. It looks like an enormous centipede, too many twitching legs under an oily black slip of a body, and a massive, gaping mouth with teeth streaked with gray and red. Dean is absolutely not afraid of something that comes up to his ankles, no sir, but he still backs up a step.
That’s when he recognizes the mouth on that thing. “Leviathan!”
Again, Dean is totally not grateful for Cas stepping in front of him, standing in between him and the evil little shit. Seeing Cas’ head-tilt from behind is kind of amusing. “He means well,” Cas tells him, twisting his neck to look at Dean. He’s closer than Dean thought, but maybe he should’ve figured that out by the way he feels Cas’ coat brush against his legs. It’s girly as shit, and the last thing he should be thinking of, but Dean hasn’t seen a sky as blue as Cas’ eyes in - time isn’t even a concept to him any more. The sky here is either light or dark, not blue.
“He’s a Leviathan.”
“They’re intelligent creatures, Dean. They don’t all mean harm; my Father gave them free will, as well. This one voluntarily returned to Purgatory with - the other souls.” There’s a hitch in his voice, and Dean feels the punch of shame and guilt and rage for just a second, before he’s too distracted by Cas crouching down and - the dude fucking clicks all gleefully at the Leviathan, like he’s the nerdy prof from Jurassic Park. He’s so goddamn weird.
Dean’s trying to stop himself from smiling stupidly at the hunched ball of trenchcoat and messy hair, when it turns back to him. “His name is Huexkull,” Cas informs. “He knows where there’s clean water, he tells me.” He stands up again, and turns to Dean, almost conspiratorially. “Leviathan are tuned to find water, of course.”
The Leviathan - okay, Huexkull - looks at Dean and nods, and that’s fucking weird with no eyes and that terrifying mouth that probably hungers for every-friggin’-thing in the universe. He’ll follow it, sure, but Cas can stay in between him and the ugly motherfucker.
He wasn’t lying, though. They only walk - in some direction, north or south or east or west it doesn’t matter, everything’s the fucking same and if there’s a magical exit out of here they’re not any closer to finding it - a short distance. But it’s a tricky path overrun with funny gnarled roots that the Leviathan just slides right over like liquid. Lucky little shit.
“I could probably carry you, if you want,” Cas murmurs from in front of him, and Dean whips around to see the guy actually smirking, gliding over the gnarled knot of roots almost as easily as Huexkull does.
“Dude. Is that a joke?”
“It depends.”
Part of him likes Cas’ newfound sense of humor, the grins like everything is some private joke, the light in his eyes when he babbles on about the lessons he’s learned from observing the flight patterns of moths. Part of him is terrified. It’d be easier to deal with if it wasn’t just them.
“I miss Sam,” serves as his only response. It’s what he fills uneasy air with, anyway.
The lake stretches in front of them, then, almost as if it popped in out of nowhere. Aren’t they nowhere themselves, really? Is any of this real? Dean snorts. Probably better not to think about it.
“It’s safe,” Cas informs him. And oh, great, the Leviathan’s actually curled along his shoulders now like a friggin’ scarf. Awesome. Cas’ll probably be opening up an arts-‘n’-crafts booth to make the guy a friendship bracelet next.
Still, Dean cups his hands and drinks deeply. He doesn’t need the water here, but it’s still sweet and cold in his mouth, and it only occurs to him to be embarrassed by the frankly gross slurping noises he makes when he feels Cas practically hovering over him.
“Uh, thanks, Cas,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He’s sure he’s just imagining the way Cas stares right at his lips, shiny and wet. He’s hallucinated way worse, and he’s kind of delirious with the water still sliding down his throat. “Tell, uh, Hooey… whatever his name was. Tell him thanks too.”
“Huexkull. He went home.”
“Home?”
“Back into the water.”
Dean sputters around some of the water that’s still in his mouth, but keeps it down.
*
Sometimes Dean looks backwards and for just a second, it’s like the tree branches are fingers attached to greedy hands, coming out to get him and pull him into Purgatory, tear him apart until the human bits are just a lost shell and he’s all demon, or vampire, or the other dark shit he’s had inside him and got too close to becoming, some time or another -
And then he looks forward at the angel with Lucifer maybe still clattering around in his skull somewhere, walking on because there is nothing else they can do, and Dean breathes because he’s gotta keep it together for more than just himself.
“You’re doing fine,” Cas assures, and Dean hopes it’s just to break the silence and not his freaky angel ESP shit again. He promised Dean once that he couldn’t actually read minds, just sense louder thoughts, as he put it, but he told Dean if he was uncomfortable, he’d try and shut that off around him and Sam.
Dean smiles anyway. The drooping branches are still there, thick and bushy and in danger of falling off the tree, and that’s all they are right now. Branches on a tree, growing out of some God-forsaken dirt and ugly in the darkness of the landscape - but only branches.
*
“Haven’t you been here before?” Dean asks, one - day, night, it’s hard to put a point on these things here. It’s always dark, except when it’s not, but even then it doesn’t feel like day any more than it feels like night when the sky’s near black.
“Here?” Castiel slashes through a massive mess of weeds. Dude looks pretty badass for a nerd, even with grass strewn across the front of his coat. “No, we have not been in this particular part of the woods before.”
“I meant, like, Purgatory itself.”
Cas’ shoulders droop. Whether it’s because of tiredness or the question, Dean isn’t sure, and he’s not gonna ask. “I don’t know, Dean. I’ve never…” He trails off. “I don’t remember. I keep coming back to existence, after all.”
“Okay. I mean, maybe you can’t answer this question, but when angels die, do they end up here? Or do you guys go somewhere else?”
He purses his lips. “I would guess dead angels come to Purgatory, yes. Occasionally I sense an echo of others. It would be good to see some of them again, especially those who fell in the first war. Mostly, though, I believe it would be wise to avoid any other angels, if we do find them.”
Dean is sorry that Cas’ big crazy angel family is full of so many dickwads, but he’s just as sorry that the guy can probably never return to them. Even losing someone like Uriel turned Cas into a morose - well, more so than usual - motherfucker for a couple of days, giving Dean his weird heavenly orders as heaviness tugged what seemed like his entire body down. Sure, Cas was usually pretty dour, but his reaction had been beyond that. Dean’s still having a hard time reconciling that guy with Cas playing God and striking down thousands of his siblings just for disagreeing with him.
That wasn’t Cas, though, not really. This Cas isn’t the same Cas either, because the Cas that tried to save him from Alastair, then sat with him in that hospital all night, certainly didn’t prattle on the entire time about nail polish and how harmful it was toward the environment and isn’t that just terrible. He’s a lot closer now, though, and getting better.
Dean’s tempted to clap him on the shoulder and say hey, thanks, man, but that doesn’t begin to approach what would be enough; besides, it’d just stop them from getting any further through the tangled branches. So he joins Cas in slashing them away, clearing the weaving path for the two of them, and enjoys the shit out of it despite the burn in his muscles.
*
“I’m so fucking tired,” Dean sighs some time later, even though he really isn’t. This place leeches all desire from him, it feels like. Yeah, sure, he’d devour a pie if you put it in front of him, but the craving doesn’t stick in the back of his throat all hot and sweet.
Cas seems to consider this for a moment. “I suppose I could use rest as well.” He actually sits down on the ground, spreading his trenchcoat out neatly under him so the dirt doesn’t get on his scrubs, but still. Dude’s sitting right on the forest floor. His legs stick out in front, and Dean realizes he doesn’t see Cas sit a whole lot.
“Can’t sleep here.”
“There’s nowhere else to sleep.”
Dean snorts at that. “There isn’t a cave here or something?”
“There is no cave,” Cas confirms.
Dean spins around a couple of times, feeling stupid as he does it. There aren’t even any big trees that he could lean against, just tangled and sprawling overgrowth. He’s not even gonna get any sleep, not unless he wants a pillow of thorns. No thanks. “Nowhere to rest, then,” he grumbles.
“I was planning on resting right here,” Cas returns snippily, like he’s being the normal one by sitting all stock-still in the creepy dirt, and Dean is just an overly picky weirdo. “If you’d like to, you can join me.”
At that, Dean wonders if maybe he’s had it wrong this whole time and it was him who ended up in the loony bin, and he’s still stuck in there. “You - what?!” he sputters, intelligently, because seriously, what else is he supposed to say to that?
“You can join me here,” Cas repeats. “Or you can wander on ahead and I will find you later.” Sure, Cas is giving him the choice, but Dean looks down at the guy and his face is set in obvious disapproval of the latter option.
So, fine. Dean cringes as he does it, but he squats then sits down on the ground. It doesn’t feel any different than other dirt, really, and that’s the strangest thing of all. “Are you my pillow?” he jokes.
“If you want,” Cas replies, completely serious.
For a few moments, Dean just goggles. He’s not gonna sleep on the angel-shaped dude, no thanks. Like, he thought Cas knew him.
But as the seconds tick on, he doesn’t feel any less awkward just sitting next to the guy, and he realizes Cas might kind of have a point. Not like there are any better options, or anyone around that’s gonna judge him. Plus, alright, Cas can be relaxing on his own at times, which is funny for a dude who’s that uptight.
“Fine,” he sighs out, because he’s still got an image to protect, even though at this point he’s pretty sure it’s only to the goddamn trees. “Don’t tell anyone about this.”
He lets his head loll against Cas’ shoulder. The warmth of him sinks right through the leather jacket; Purgatory’s cold, cold enough that Dean can feel it in his gut and sunk into his bones, and Cas’ warmth zips up his spine and tingles in his forearms and thighs and back, a sensation that Dean just flat-out forgot about. For a minute, it puts him on edge, the newness of it, until he exhales and lets it bleed deep into him.
Cas is unnaturally stiff, of course, but it’s easy to relax against him. Dean’s slept on stone floors and rotting floorboards. After that, Cas’ shoulder is nothing. It might as well be thousand-count sheets. The trenchcoat even smells like clean laundry, probably from the hospital.
Sleep’s a lot fucking better than he remembers, even though he can’t remember his dreams. Maybe he should try and find some pie next, because that’ll be even better too.
When he wakes up, the first thing he recognizes is a heavy weight propped against his thigh. He grunts a little, and puts his own hand on it, until he recognizes the shape as a human arm with a thick wrist. Blinking awake, he sees Cas’ head looming right above his, tilted in interest.
As Dean feels the sleepiness seep away from him, he realizes Cas’ arm is lying across his leg, and he’s fallen back into the guy’s lap. He would be embarrassed, if he wasn’t so blissed out from sleep. Maybe he really did need a nap.
“How long was I out for?” he mumbles, rubbing the back of his hand against his eyes.
“I don’t know,” Cas responds. “Only a few minutes and a month at once. Time doesn’t move in any way you would be used to here.”
“Of course,” Dean grunts out.
Nothing about Purgatory is what he’s used to, other than long dark nights in sketchy-ass forests. It couldn’t give him the thrill of a hunt gone well that he gets even now, or his brother’s way-too-tall form by his side, or any sort of concept of time or space he’s used to. All it gave him was a long trek, without even the burn in his legs and the sweat clinging to his forehead that gave him the feeling that this all was real, and himself sprawled out in a dude-shaped angel’s lap.
Speaking of. He practically shoves himself away from Cas; drooping against the guy’s shoulder is one thing, but being able to feel his thigh against the back of his head is a whole different can of worms, one bigger than Purgatory and smaller than the muscle that throbs in his chest all at once. “Sorry about that,” he sputters out.
“Not a problem,” Cas responds, standing up as well. There isn’t even any dirt they need to brush off their legs. “Your head fell over in sleep, and I thought it wasn’t wise to move you.”
Dean just nods. “Thanks, Cas.”
They walk on, and Dean never asks to sleep again because the urge doesn’t settle into him. But for a long time - or maybe just a few minutes, he doesn’t even know any more - he feels Cas’ warmth against his back, almost like, instead of moving Dean when he fell over like a moron, Cas sliced his back open, wove it inside, and sewed him right back up in his sleep. It’s like his leather jacket came equipped with it, now.
He doesn’t deserve it. But he’s thankful anyway.
*
“Can I talk to you about something?”
A small smile passes over his face as Cas pauses almost mid-stride. “You may talk to me about whatever you want.”
“Just not a real pleasant topic.” Dean catches up to Cas, takes a deep breath, and forces himself to ask already. “Do you - do you still see… you know.” He swallows, hard. “All that Lucifer stuff? I mean, how bad is it?”
Cas’ expression changes so quickly, it’s like a switch was flipped. The smile’s gone, replaced by a glare that’s like a steel-toed boot to the gut - and Dean knows exactly what that feels like, thanks.
It’s moments like these that Dean remembers that despite the gigantic blue eyes and constant haze of stubble across his chin and cheeks, he’s not on this fun little Purgatory adventure with another human. Castiel’s an angel, and shitty and corrupt as it was, they’re not cute fat little babies with enormous fluffy wings. If Dean ever really saw him - Cas isn’t even a him, not really - he’d be destroyed by all his glory.
“Lucifer is gone,” he absolutely snaps. Dean gets a pretty distinctive whiff of the Cas that first dragged him out of Hell and scared the shit out of him by threatening to throw him right back. This is Castiel and he wants you to know it, not Cas.
With a fury that would be comical if the situation didn’t suck so bad, Cas practically darts away from Dean, stomping through the always-dead leaves and starts growling to himself in Enochian. Dean doesn’t know a damn word of the language, but he’s like ninety-eight percent sure Cas is using some words that’d make him blush.
Get pissed was usually the advice Dean barked at anyone in trouble, because that’s how Dean dealt with it. God knows he’s told Sammy that enough times. But as he stands there and watches Cas’ back move farther and farther off, he’s forced to recognize that the way he deals with shit just sucks out loud.
*
The next time Cas fixes Dean in the eye and grunts out, “I must go,” Dean thinks, Well, this time you’ve really fuckin’ stepped in it. Still, he nods, because like he can stop an angel.
Dean doesn’t make much progress through the woods. Everything looks the same, dead leaves and sticks he keeps tripping over like a moron. That’s the only time he’s glad Cas isn’t around, because, Jesus, how embarrassing. Not that Cas would judge him, but it’s the principle of the thing.
Sammy wouldn’t judge him, either, but he’d use that to tease him, mercilessly. And fuck it, Dean gives up for - today, or whatever this is. He finds a log not too far away, and sits on it, pressing his thumbs to his temples and not thinking of anything.
When he hears the rush of wings, he’s shocked. Truthfully, he believed Cas wouldn’t return, not after that question that clearly crossed some line. And okay, he’s lost all sense of time, but he’s pretty sure it wasn’t even a day. Maybe not even twelve hours.
“Did you know cats all have unique nose prints?” Cas asks, sounding downright sunny. “They work as human fingerprints do.”
Dean shrugs. Nothing in Purgatory should be a relief, especially not any sign that the angel that’s your best hope of getting out of here is more than a little off. But he can’t help it, he’s grinning at Cas looming over him and babbling about cats. “Can’t say I did, Cas.”
He’s getting used to the feeling of Cas’ hips pressed against his own, even through the thick fabric of Dean’s jeans and Cas’ coat. Dude’s got no sense of personal space, and the little nudges remind him that hey, yeah, there is a friendly face here, so Dean doesn’t mind. Not that Dean could really complain if he did; he practically flopped into the guy’s lap that one time.
A long time passes before either of them speaks. “There was initial shock, but Lucifer went away early,” Castiel sighs. “He kept - he was trying to sing. All angels do what you would consider singing, it’s one of the things your greeting cards and Christmas celebrations get right, but his songs were…”
“What?”
Cas shakes his head. “They were strange songs, Dean. One of them involved telling a girl that the reason she was beautiful was because she didn’t know she was beautiful. I find that contradictory. If she was aware she was beautiful, would it then stop her from being beautiful?”
“Uh,” Dean says, intelligently, because he’s not sure he knows any more than Cas does what Lucifer was singing about.
“So I asked him,” Cas continues, almost proudly. “And at first he just kept singing; his songs got stranger and stranger. I had to ask, and I kept asking. Many millennia in the Cage must have changed Lucifer, but I believe he grew tired of my questioning, and left.”
Dean’s laughter sounds more like a choke, because seriously, he’s pretty sure Cas just told him a story about how he fought off hallucinations of the devil because he annoyed the shit out of him by asking far too many questions about pop music.
“That’s when the others came.” Dean doesn’t ask who. “Michael was there most of the time; I suppose Sam’s memories from the Cage absorbed parts of him too.” A frightening smile quirks up the corner of Cas’ lips. “Even as head of the garrison, I hadn’t directly communicated with Michael in millennia; I forgot how merciless my oldest brother could be.”
His lip curls up, his shoulders hunch, and Dean - oh fuck it, he lets himself clap a hand over Cas’ back. It’s the smallest amount of comfort he’s got left. Cas is all shimmering warmth even through the layers of thick clothes, and Dean physically feels it up to his elbow, like plunging his arm into a sink full of warm water in the wintertime. Odd, but comforting to him too.
“Guy didn’t even bother to write you a thank-you note after - you know - me?” Dean sputters out - smooth - because after all, Michael was supposed to ride his ass until the end of time. You’d think he’d appreciate the rescue mission to the Pit, and all.
Cas only shakes his head. Ouch. “There were many other angels that appeared to me in my hallucinations, some I knew, some I didn’t. All gone. Many due to my actions.” For all that Cas looked like an archangel full of wrath before, he looks too human now. “It’s why I have little desire to see most of my siblings again. I don’t doubt they truly meant what they said.”
“It wasn’t real, Cas.” That’s all he can come up with, pathetic as it sounds. Not that Dean wants to see too many of Cas’ megadouche brothers and sisters again either, but he deserves none of this shit.
Dean remembers the ridiculous BAMF that strode into the barn, the one who threatened throwing him back into Hell without thinking twice, and as much as Dean appreciates Cas’ - it’s weird to call it friendship, that doesn’t even begin to cover it, but it’ll do - he feels awful watching Cas twist himself into a too-thin string of self-loathing, no better than the rest of the other poor suckers on Earth. Cas was making himself family, a Winchester, in more ways than one.
When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost, Hester told him, and Dean wanted to hate her, but he mostly just agreed. Ninety percent crap, and he slogged too much of it over everyone else, too.
*
“Do you ever think about leaving?” Because Dean can’t leave well enough alone, like a wiggly tooth he’s just gotta poke his tongue at.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Leaving. Like, could you zap on out of here? I mean, you’re an angel. Where do you go when you disappear, anyway?”
Cas considers this question. “To scout ahead,” he responds, flatly at first like it’s so obvious. “And yes, I suspect I could leave Purgatory.” Hope and terror alike bubble inside Dean, threatening to come up through his throat. He’s grateful when Cas presses on. “But Dean, I’m half-fallen. My powers are not what they were.” There’s something terrifying in Cas’ breezy admission of that, like how Cas only smiled when they told him they needed the blood of a fallen angel.
“So…” Dean talks too much in Purgatory, it seems like. He didn’t think he’d ever be like that, but if he doesn’t talk, sometimes the place just starts hissing to him, filling the silence like dark water pouring into an empty cup.
“I couldn’t take you with me, not with my powers partially gone,” Cas says, simply. “So I’m not going to leave.”
Cas looks the way he did outside the Impala, when Dean asked him what? not so much to get an answer, but because he couldn’t understand why an angel would look at him the way Cas did, like Cas had seen pink bursts of coral in the ocean and the cold flare of every star coming into existence alike, he’d seen the whole fucking universe, but he hadn’t ever seen anything like Dean. He never could.
Here, Dean just nods. “Okay,” he responds, trying not to have his mouth curve up in too obvious a smile, even as his brain lashes out that there’s no way in fuck he deserves this. It’s harder than he thought with Cas’ eyes gone soft and so intent on him at once, and he’s pretty sure he fails, but he doesn’t even care.
*
“How you doin’?” Dean asks at one point, because the chattering’s too loud in his ears and because there was never time to ask on Earth. There was always some looming goddamn apocalypse, or Cas would start babbling about bees again.
Cas greets him with a look that’s both confused and grateful, somehow. “I’m fine,” he responds, the same expression on his face. It’s like he’s testing it out, unsure of what the correct response is to someone asking how are you.
They all probably needed to be hugged a lot more as kids.
“That’s good,” Dean responds, and this is totally the chat of two guys who wouldn’t know small talk unless it came up to them wearing claws and nasty teeth. And then they’d just shoot (or smite, in Cas’ case) it, anyway. “Is, uh. How’s Jimmy doing?” Where the hell did that question come from? It’s just Dean’s luck to get stuck in Purgatory with the one thing that wouldn’t be able to discuss crappy late-night movies or music or any of the important stuff like that.
“Jimmy is gone,” Cas tells him, with a hard blink, his nose lightly wrinkled up. Like he’d understand small talk any better. “Ever since Lucifer destroyed me at Stull and I was restored to this vessel, it has been mine alone.”
“Oh.” That’s all Dean can get out, right now. Something’s changed, though he’s not sure what. It’s not like he never thought about Jimmy Novak, that poor sucker latched to a comet in his own words, and holding on for dear life. Or worse, when Cas played God, Jimmy stuffed deep down by every other monster soul and screaming -
He really doesn’t like to think about that shit.
“He’s in Heaven. I checked on him.” Cas nods, gravely. “It’s what he deserves, I believe. Heaven has much improved since the last time you were there.” It should probably bother Dean more that he’s got the kinda life where he’s got frequent flyer miles to Heaven. “After my powers were restored, I made sure of that.”
A while passes, but eventually, Dean gets out a “Yeah,” because that’s about all he can say. Funny, he knows every detail of Jimmy’s face, saw Castiel take his form even in Purgatory and Heaven where the angel should’ve been a screaming Chrysler-sized beam of death light or whatever, but he doesn’t know the guy at all. His face, his every expression, stopped being his own a long time ago.
Another person gone, without even a grave to mark his passing. His wife and kid probably didn’t even know. Hunting used to give Dean the thrill of satisfaction, back when he could feel the way his eyes would light up when he told Sammy all about saving people, hunting things. The lines have gotten too blurred, and too many people who mattered - hell, even those who didn’t, not to him anyway - are gone. Dean sucks at even faking the smile.
“Not everything is your fault, Dean,” Cas tells him, and Dean flinches when Cas’ fingers curl around his elbow. Because even as he’s saying it, the clothes from the hospital are still hanging off Cas, all baggy and wrong. The motion reminds him too much of the way Jo palmed his cheek even under Osiris’ control, and Dean couldn’t stand leaning forward or away. In the end, though, just about everything feels like it.
*
Sometimes, he likes to pretend he smells hot cherry pie in the air, or the engine grease and wax that’d stick to him when he was working on or buffing the Impala. But the Purgatory air is too crisp, its coldness buried too deep inside his skin. There’s no pie, no Impala, and no Sammy.
There’s just Cas, Cas and his I’ll go with you, and Dean did nothing to deserve that but he’s got the angel’s hand on his back urging him on anyway.
Purgatory starts going blurry, and Dean keeps walking because he has to. Cas’ hand feels hot and real, like it could burn a new scar into his skin.
*
Nothing in Purgatory was what Dean would’ve been expecting, if he’d ever thought about it, but it’s still really weird when they find themselves on the edge of a goddamn cliff leading to - nowhere. One second they’re surrounded by most of the same underbrush, and the next, they’ve emerged from it. Only a skinny little piece of brown rocky outcropping separates them from nothing but dark beyond that.
“Whoah,” Dean gasps, feeling Cas’ fingers brush against his wrist as a caution to pull him back. “This looks - uh. Not good?”
“Probably not,” Cas agrees, as they both look out at the darkness, sinking to wait for them and floating up to meet them at once. Nothing good, yeah. “We should - going back into the forest is likely our best option.”
“Right.” But Dean doesn’t move. It’s something different, at least, and deep down Dean really, really doesn’t want to know what would happen if he fell off this cliff, but the temptation to just let that fall happen to him swells scary huge inside him.
Cas’ fingers are back against his wrist. Dean suspects Castiel is letting himself sense his silly human feelings, the deep maw inside him, and he’s trying to stop himself from diving into them. Cas is real and solid and always different, never what Dean expects.
The guy’s a relief. That’s why Dean tangles his fingers in Castiel’s, like he could serve as an anchor. This is solid, and it’s real. Dean has never asked him about pulling him out of Hell and never will, it’s not something he wants to remember, but he wonders if it was like this. Probably not. There had to have been more white-knuckling and finger-straining, from either one of them. Maybe both.
They stand like that for longer than Dean would ever admit, even though there’s the possibility it could only be a couple of seconds. It’s because at least this is something new, even if it’s terrifying, and part of Dean is expecting Sammy to crack open all that darkness and pull them both through. Part of him is expecting that same darkness to just swallow them all up, too, because everything tends to go to shit for him.
“Are we Thelma and Louise now?” Castiel asks after a while, examining their laced fingers.
Dean blinks. “That a - did you just drop a movie reference, Cas?” He’s seen and been through a lot of weird shit in Purgatory so far, but honestly, that might take the cake.
Cas blinks back, harder. “You were the one who suggested it, once.”
He can’t remember the conversation. It was probably in the days before things got so complicated, way back when - and okay, you know your life’s pretty fucked up when you look at the fucking Apocalypse as a simpler time. But they used to talk a lot, then. Sure, the conversations were weird; Cas merely stared at him when Dean made references to whatever shitty B-movie was on late night TV that night, or Cas tried to tell Dean stories from the creation of Earth only to get distracted by a vending machine. Company’s company, though.
(Dean’s still kind of mad he had to pay for the vending machine in that hotel in Delaware just because Cas kicked a hole in it when he found out they were all out of Raisinets. Totally Cas’ fault, not his. And who the fuck ruins a vending machine over Raisinets? Cas is a goddamn weirdo.)
It’s possible Thelma and Louise came up some time, anyway, is the point. Dean does love him some badass chicks, especially if they’re hot. And Brad Pitt circa 1990 was - okay, he wasn’t awful to look at, either. What?
Still. Purgatory is dark and shifting below and behind, and it’s just the two of them, hanging out on some rocky outcropping. They’re standing closer to each other than even usual, and Dean wasn’t expecting Cas’ palm against his to feel like what happens when you get too close to a light bulb that’s just been switched on, but it’s sort of comforting in the constant misty chill of Purgatory. Not that he’s saying that out loud, thank you.
“Yeah, that’s us,” Dean says, at last, and he’s actually smiling. They’re just gonna hold hands and sail off this cliff together, because it’s what they’ve been doing for a while now.
*
“Sometimes I saw you,” Cas says. His gaze is directed toward the ground, like he was going to launch into a rather exuberant discussion of topsoil, but he flicks it back to Dean now.
Dean looks back, confused. “Where?”
“After Lucifer went away. You, along with the other angels.” Oh, shit. Cas pauses. “You were different, though.”
Something weird and dark bubbles up in Dean at that. It’s… something, that Cas was seeing all the angels he knew for millions of years, and then his stupid human ass too. “Different how?”
Cas’ eyes are so sharp. “Lucifer was even crueler wearing your visage.” Dean doesn’t urge him to go on, because those words make his chest tighten and he can’t even begin to imagine what the angel’s thinking of, but Cas does anyway. “My brothers and sisters went away, and you’d come in, but only to tell me it had all been a show for Sam, and if I couldn’t help you then you hoped my Grace would rot in the hospital, without even Meg staying behind. You told me you’d hand me over to Crowley when it was convenient -”
“Cas.” Dean didn’t believe in much of anything; he didn’t believe in God, even after one of his kids had wormed his way into his life. But he kept on believing in Castiel while the angel was gone, that it wouldn’t take much more than Dean rounding a corner in one of the cities they were in on some stupid case and Cas would be right there, again. When Dean went through every scenario in his head, well, he’d be lying if one of them wasn’t punching the guy square in the jaw and hoping no angel mojo had stuck around, and then just walking the fuck away. It couldn’t begin to do a millionth of what Cas had done to Sam, but maybe -
But Dean knew that would never really happen. Anyone else and they probably wouldn’t have gotten a second thought, but Cas was different. He was close enough to be family, sure, but there wasn’t all that destiny sewn into their relationship. Cas saved him from Hell, but there was no obligation there. Dean couldn’t put words to it, and didn’t want to. “I - c’mon. You know that’s not true.”
“It may not have been you, but it’s true, Dean. It’s what I deserved.” Most of the time, Cas shows hardly any ill effects from the fact that Satan was camping out in his gourd for like a month and a half, and keeping him comatose on top of that. Like Dean’s said a few times, the guy was tough for a mega-nerd. Every now and then, though, there’s this flash of hurt in Cas’ eyes that Dean never saw before. “I broke the world, Dean. I could have destroyed all of it.”
“And you saved it, Cas. You helped, and it’s all anyone could ask for. All I could ask for.”
Funnily enough, it’s the latter that eases some of the visible tension out of Cas’ form. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on there, it could be gone by now -”
“It’s not, okay?” Dean just - he knows he’d be able to sense it if the Earth was gone, if Sam was gone. Surely he would have just fallen forward into the dirt and no amount of prodding or angel mojo from Cas would get him to move, ever again. “You know that. You do.” He slides his fingers over Cas’ wrist, not grabbing, just there to serve as a reassurance. He’s here, too, and he continues even with the look of surprise in Cas’ eyes.
“Look, Cas, you messed up, and it hurt, but I meant it when I said you were doing the best you could do at the time. I fucked up too!” Dean bellows. And there, it’s out there. “We all fucked up. Free will sucks sometimes, man! I didn’t help out -”
“You offered -”
“Not like I had a plan, Cas! There was another apocalypse hanging over our heads. I mean, your plan - Crowley of all people, I don’t get why, you could’ve come to - your plan sucked, okay, but it was a plan. You’re the reason we’re here, and not blinked out of friggin’ eternity. You stopped Raphael.”
Cas is quiet for a few minutes, as if considering this. “But I hurt you,” he continues, eventually. “I hurt Sam so badly.”
“You took on what could’ve been eternal torture for Sam to fix it, okay? He forgave you too. It’s -” He sputters over what to say. It’s not okay, it’s not water under the bridge. It was awful, but it’s forgiven. Dean got mad at Cas because he couldn’t stay mad at Cas, but it is what it is. “You did everything you could, Cas, and you saved him, too.” At the end of the day, at the end of what might’ve been his life on Earth, that’s what matters.
Now, Cas looks softer somehow, lighter around his eyes. He gets that look, too, since he left the hospital, and it makes him look creepily human sometimes. “When you said you forgave me, did you -”
“I meant it, Cas. I don’t forgive just anyone, and -” If you hurt my brother, I’ll kill you, I swear, Dean said, once, and at the time it nearly stuck in his throat with how much he meant it, but he also has the memory of Castiel telling him you’re different. And well, shit with him and Castiel has never been easy to figure out, exactly.
“I know.” Cas’ tone is hopeful and relieved at once, and it works like a very precise hammer set to chip away at something deep and rusted over inside Dean.
He sputters words out, so he doesn’t have to face that. “I - look. Not to go all friggin’ Britney Spears on you here, but my life kinda sucked without you.”
“That song’s by Kelly Clarkson.” Cas’ eyes are still soft, but he frowns deeply. “They are very different.”
Okay, what the fuck. Dean is gonna have to make sure there aren’t any other fun leftover traces of Lucifer inside that angel’s head later. “Uh, okay,” he sputters out. “I mean - Bobby dying, and Sam going crazy, that was all fucking awful, but - it all sucked before that.”
God knows how long ago it was at this point in Earth time, but Dean remembers what he told Castiel when they stood by the Impala. He rolls through the words in his head sometimes, and cringes because if Dean said them to anyone else, those words would’ve come off badly. They wouldn’t have sounded like anything but you’re my last resort.
It wasn’t that. It was the closest Dean’ll ever come to saying to anyone not related to him that, at the end of the world, he needs Cas there too. That he wants Cas there, even. Cas knew he meant that, too, and didn’t try to draw it out of him, just smiled back softly. Dean saw Cas snap the arm of one of his brother’s vessels before absolutely ramming the guy with an angel blade, and he saw his lips tilt up and eyes look down in outright shy gratitude.
Dean feels terrible for Jimmy Novak; even though he’s in Heaven now, fuck only knows what he might have seen and felt his body do. Being comatose most of the time while Cas was dragging his soul around was the best-case scenario for the guy.
But even though Castiel was literally inside Jimmy, sinking under his skin and putting his nerves alight, Dean’s sure Cas never dug into Jimmy the way he’s dug into him. He can’t have knocked Jimmy as off-center the way he’s done to Dean; Cas punches this feeling into him like Dean ran a marathon with a hellhound at his heels and sank into a big comfy chair, the type he never owned, at once. It can’t be.
“I always felt very lonely as Emmanuel,” Cas admits. “I appreciated Daphne’s company, and the gratitude of the people I helped, but something was missing.”
“Yeah, like, a couple of millennia worth of memories,” Dean snorts.
The sheer enormity of everything that’s Castiel blazes in his eyes, meeting Dean’s. No human should be expected to accept that. “I could remember… companionship,” Cas says, at last, and Dean’s happy that his voice interrupts the silence. “Some of it was familial. Some of it wasn’t.”
At Cas’ words, Dean wants to protest. Companionship isn’t the right term for what they are, after all. Friendship doesn’t say enough.
Cas is just - a supernatural thing that found his way into his life, when they were supposed to be nothing but a lowly foot soldier and an archangel’s vessel in Heaven and Hell’s ultimate, way-out-of-proportion dick-measuring contest, and Cas stayed there. Dean let him stay there. There was hurt, and pain, and betrayal behind whatever they were now, like a wound finally scabbing over, but it just made Castiel more like - family, he wants to say, and he’d told Cas he was like a brother to him, but family wasn’t the word for what they are, either.
All Dean knows is, his life is better with Cas in it, even when the guy’s pretty much the definition of a square peg in a round hole. Simple as that, maybe.
Hey, maybe there’s a word for it in Enochian. Dean smiles, and turns to ask, but Cas is gone.
“Cas?” Dean questions the darkness, and it’s reminding him too much of when he first got here and his heart wouldn’t stop thudding a tattoo he could feel through his teeth, the beat was so heavy. He turns around, and there’s no Cas anywhere to be seen, and it’s getting darker -
“Cas, please,” he asks the ink of the almost constant night here. He can’t even raise his voice to yell it; he’s shaking.
That’s when the ice slices into him, a sharp and bitter chill that grips his upper arms. A funny sensation burrows into his chest, spreading that cold through his whole upper body. He tries to scream, or thrash his legs to get out, but he stays silent and immobile except for the twitch of his hands. Whatever it is steals him away. His gut swoops, and this wouldn’t be so bad if it’d just take him, if he couldn’t feel it any more -
Warmth shoots through him once again, suddenly. He lands heavy on his back on a hard floor that he’s pretty sure isn’t even wood, but stone. All the breath is punched out of him, with no warning.
Just when he’s able to breathe again, as he’s about to get out a what the hell or absolutely fucking scream, he’s pulled up against the very broad shoulder of his gigantic little brother and practically suffocated by the guy’s hug.
part 4 >>