Angelic Big Bang, SPN, "Taking Ten Steps Home" Part 2/10
Title: Taking Ten Steps Home
Fandom: SPN
Genre: Romance/Angst/Character-centric
Characters/Pairings: Castiel, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Crowley, Bobby Singer, Leviathans; Dean/Castiel
Word Count: 10,279
Rating: R for frottage in the back of the Impala
Spoilers: 7x01, 7x02
Notes: Breaks from canon after the first few minutes of 7x02.
Beta: skylar_matthews
Summary: Castiel swore he'd find a way to redeem himself to Dean. This is how the story goes.
Two:
He wakes slowly, feeling heavy. As the world begins to come within the edges of his senses, he hears Dean’s voice: “Sammy, I - I’m goin’ out. Be careful.”
He opens his eyes to find himself on Bobby’s couch, with Sam in a kitchen chair next to him. He manages a glimpse of Dean departing, and is sure he sees anxiety in the lines of his body, and he certainly heard it in the tenor of his voice.
“Cas?” Sam says, quickly, as Castiel struggles to look out the window. “You’re awake.”
“Apparently,” Castiel bites out, frustrated that he cannot even properly sit up. He lets Sam gently tug him back down to a horizontal position on the couch.
Sam bites the inside of his cheek. “How are you?”
“In pain. Exhausted.” It is true. He hasn’t felt this tired and injured in a long time, not bone deep. “Like I might have just destroyed humanity.”
“Uh, about that,” Sam mutters. “We’re still trying to figure that out.”
Castiel closes his eyes, feeling the wave of shame flood over him. “How many?”
“We don’t know.”
Castiel wonders for a moment how it has gotten to the point where he need not even finish sentences for either Winchester to understand. He looks back at Sam, who is quiet. Something has come over his face, a light wash of something similar to fear.
“What’s wrong?”
“I…” Sam lets out a slow breath. “Cas, I think I’m losing my mind.”
Castiel tries again to sit up, and this time it works. He still leans back in the couch cushions as he turns the information over in his mind. “I’m sorry,” he finally manages.
Sam’s lips twitch ruefully.
“Why do you think you’re losing your mind?”
“Well, first of all, Lucifer is leaning against the doorway,” Sam admits. “And he’s telling me that this is all just an illusion and that I’m still in the Pit.”
Castiel chews on his lip, a very human gesture. “I believe it’s safe to say that Lucifer is lying.”
“He’s been following me around and trying to mess with my head.” Sam looked over towards the direction he’d perceived Lucifer to be. “I’m trying not to let it work.”
But it’s hard lies unsaid.
There is silence for a very long moment, and then Castiel asks the question that is truly the most important to him: “How is Dean?”
Sam breathes out sharply through his nose. “Not good.”
Castiel feels a pang of guilt. This is his fault. All of this is his fault. And his road of good intentions has not even ended in Hell - he supposes it in fact began there. “Tell me, please.”
“He’s pretending he’s okay, but it’s all getting to him.” Sam sighs for the third time. “My hallucinations, the Leviathans, you…he just can’t really deal with all of it, but he’s pretending he can.”
Castiel looks down into his own lap as the guilt turns to shame. Everything leads back to him, and his betrayal of this family. His betrayal of Dean, by becoming everything that Dean has always hunted, always killed. He has broken the world, and the Winchesters, and for what?
He looks back at Sam, remembering Sam’s prayer. “You did it for him, didn’t you?”
“A little,” Sam concedes. “Mostly because he didn’t believe me when I said you just needed help.”
There’s something soft in his voice, something sad. Castiel’s heart seems to clench, and he thinks of how “far off the reservation” he must have gone to lose Dean’s faith.
He crossed nearly every line. He lost track of what had truly been important.
He leans forward and cradles his face in his hands. Tears sting at the corners of his eyes, and he cannot even bear to imagine what he has put Dean through.
Everything he has done in the past three years has been for Dean. He has given up everything, lost his mind, lost track of everything, all for one human man - the Righteous Man, yes, but still a man - and yet he’s gotten nothing to gain from it; he’s even lost Dean, it seems.
“Hey,” Sam murmurs, taking him by the shoulders. “He’ll forgive you.”
“Will he?” Castiel asks. It seems utterly unfathomable that Dean could forgive him this.
Sam nods. “You’re his best friend. You fucked up, yeah. But I started the Apocalypse, remember? And he forgave me for that.”
“You’re his brother. He’d give up anything for you.” Castiel knows better than anyone but Sam, perhaps, that Dean is devoted to his kin, to his family. He has never had the choice to be alone, and he has grown up on the edict to protect and defend his brother - he has gone to Hell for him. “When he told me I was as close as family, I rejected that. I betrayed him.”
Sam shrugs. “But you’re not going to do it again. He’ll figure that out.” He sighs. “If anybody’s given up more for him than you have, I’ve never met them. He knows that, and I think that’s what will bring him back around.”
“I wish I could be as certain,” Castiel whispers.
“You know him as well as I do, Cas.” Sam pulls him into a hug. “You’re here, and you’re staying, and that’s all he could’ve hoped for.
Castiel bites his lip. “Thank you.”
When Sam pulls back, he says, “You know, I forgive you, for the brain thing. Mostly. I mean, it sucks, but you were kind of out of your mind at the time.”
Castiel feels a rueful smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He lets it out, and Sam smiles back, warm and welcoming. It feels a lot like a homecoming, and he feels somewhat like the prodigal brother returned home. “I am sorry for that. I should have…I should have tried for a different path.”
His voice sticks a little in his throat, but that’s from the way his soul and tattered Grace are swelling with hope. If Sam can forgive him, he decides, then maybe, maybe it is possible for Dean.