my specialty is living said a man [2/2]
back.
(twelve). NOW
His footsteps echo around the empty walls of the church. No one steps inside the doors except for Sunday service and Dean doesn't mind the silence on these between days, that no one can find comfort in this place for long, not even him.
He stops by the entrance, dipping his fingers into the basin of holy water; he pauses, his heart beating, thrashing, against his chest, staring down at his hand, the water trailing down his palm, over his bare arm. His mouth is cotton-thick and weak and the incense burns his lungs when he breathes in too deep.
His fingers are dry when he marks the cross on his chest.
He lights the candles, one by one, hand cupped against the flame, the wicks curled into the bubbled edges. He picks at the white candles by the altar with his nails, peeling off the hardened rivulets of wax. He stands by them, dropping the wasted matchsticks into a bowl, and watches a few quiver feebly before they dim and wane.
Beside the altar, on a table carrying a crucifix and incense, his Bible sits, open to Revelations. None of the passages are marked. He moves around the altar, his back turned to the table, taking out hymnals from the back cupboard, moving the packets of incense from the drawers, walking towards his office, hand hovering on the doorknob. He hasn't been in there in months.
When he walks to the display of layered red candles, he passes by his Bible. Runs his hands along the leather covered edges, finger twisting in the blue bookmark. He closes it, the pages folding under the sudden movement. The candles flare when he walks by.
“It's just a story,” Dean says to no one.
He stands by the short red candles, a matchstick in his hands. He stands and waits and wonders who he could light these candles for. But he's starting to forget.
Outside, the wind is screaming and it howls through the boarded up windows, through the cracks in the wall and all the doors Dean never seems to close. Something is always getting back, always getting through and he can't rise in the face of the invisible, in the face of things unseen and unknown anymore. He's thrown out the taste of gunpowder and a sky he could never reach but wanted to burn.
Suddenly, gradually, so clear and hesitant, he feels something like pure white heat in his skin, something like being forgotten and wanting to be left behind, like he can hear things singing, crying, in the distance; like deep spaces and blue roads and disjointed dreams that lead to a face he can't recognize, a name he used to say, to something he can't hold in his hands, can't restrain, that is too full of grace, too much like power, for him to keep.
He falls against the wall, his hands over his eyes, his head filled with incense and darkness, and now, for now, he won't breathe, won't think, the acrid smell of burning wax on his tongue.
And he won't think, he won't breathe, he won't know, because he can't live this again.
∴
(thirteen). THEN
Dean is awake, his body heavy and his heart wild. Castiel is sitting at the motel room table, his head resting against the wall, a book open in his hands.
“Have you slept?”
Castiel looks up, still and calm, like vacant control and rushing misplacement of lives not their own.
“I don't sleep, Dean. You know that.”
Dean runs a hand over his face, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “Yeah, I know,” he sighs. “I didn't know what else to say.”
Castiel shrugs and turns back to his book.
“Look-”
Castiel doesn't look.
“I'm sorry, okay?” Dean says a little louder than he means to, but he's sorry, he's scared, he's desperate and responsible, and wound so tight, spinning spinning, he can feel the fire in his lungs burn, he's undone. “I didn't mean to freak out on you last night.”
“I know,” Castiel says.
It's not what Dean was expecting.
“That's it?” Dean prompts.
Castiel angles his head down, chin against his chest. He sets his book down. “I accept your apology.”
“You're not mad at me?” Dean can't figure out why it really matters to him-but, oh, yeah. Bruises and aches on his bones.
“I think it's possible to still be mad at you and forgive you simultaneously,” Castiel says slowly.
Dean lies back down in his bed. “I'm sorry, Cas. I just don't know what to do with all this.”
“Neither do I,” Castiel replies. “Which is why I forgive you for your thoughts. Not your actions.”
Dean turns his head to look at Castiel. He's looking out the window.
“I guess it's what makes me human,” Castiel says quietly. He smiles and Dean's heart aches.
-
They're going to drive to North Dakota. Sam says he hasn't been there in years and he almost looks excited.
“Yeah, well, we've got a possible job up there,” Dean says. “Bobby says a friend of his called and his neighbour was found with his throat slashed, bled out in his bed. All doors and windows locked, no finger prints, no signs of disturbance.” He throws his bag over his shoulder. “You in?”
Sam shrugs, grabbing his shirts from the bed and folding them into his bag. “Sounds good to me.”
Castiel moves in front of them, his hands out, stopping Dean before he can get to the door. “You're going on a hunt?”
Dean backs away, pushing Castiel's hand away. “Yeah, Cas, it's our job.”
“It's the Apocalypse, Dean.” Castiel looks behind Dean at Sam, his hands still raised. “We have more important matters to attend to.”
It's the look in his eyes-always those fucking eyes that Dean can never get away from-that is Castiel's tell. It's the naked and harmful honesty, the misery that's always behind the maddening cringe, the giant dwarfed by the things that should just be moments. It's the way that Castiel can't say it, can never say it outright, but Dean can read it and it cripples him.
“Do we?” Dean asks, his voice high and bound. “Well, by all means, tell me where Lucifer is. Or God.” He leans in; Castiel's eyes shift, looking down at Dean's hand. “How is that going by the way? Found him yet?”
“Dean, stop it,” Sam says and no one should sound that tired.
“We've got nothing, Cas, okay?” Dean raises his hands, copying Castiel, palms out. “So, in the mean time, we are going to kill as many evil things as we can because it's all we can do.”
Dean shoulders past Castiel, walking out into the parking lot, into the flat, grey world. Castiel stumbles back into the door frame, his head down, breathing lightly, startled and nowhere.
“We should be looking for Lucifer,” Castiel says.
“Yeah, we should,” Dean calls out and he doesn't mean to sound so abrupt, so blunt, “but we're not.”
-
They make it up to North Dakota late. Dean wants to check out the house before they turn in, but a storm is rolling in and the skies are so black-thick, Dean thinks they're demons. Sam tells him they should stay in for the night; Castiel sits in the corner of the room, silent, a book in his hands.
Sam's had those sad, small eyes for days and Dean's not worried, he's not. He doesn't have time to be. So, now, Sam's staring off at the wall, his hand over his mouth, and he seems distracted, frantic.
Dean moves from his bed. Pauses by Castiel, who looks at him briefly before shivering and opening his book. Dean sits down beside Sam, the bed creaking with his weight.
“Hey.”
Sam startles. He looks over at Dean, smiling weakly. “Hey, what's up?”
“Not much.” Dean chews on his bottom lip. He sighs and thunder shakes the windows. “Something wrong?”
“No,” Sam says briskly, all hard corners and sharp disaster. “No, why?”
Dean looks at Sam for a minute, not moving. Sam shifts uncomfortably, casting furtive glances at Dean. “You don't seem like yourself lately,” Dean says.
Sam laughs, nervous and unsure. He rubs both of his hands across his eyes. “Can you really expect me to be?”
Dean notices him looking at Castiel and wonders if that should mean anything.
“I dunno,” Dean mutters and finds himself smiling, but he can't see what's funny. “I'm just wanting to know if I should take you to see a shrink or not. Can't have you slowing me down, little brother.”
Sam stands up, stretching his hands over his head. “I'm fine, Dean.” He chances a smile and it's unnatural, experienced in deception, curling too far on the left, too close to falling.
“Are you sure?” Dean thinks about standing up, but he catches Castiel looking at him and something tells him, stay, just stay here.
“Yeah.” Sam nods. Looks over his shoulder at Dean. “Yeah, I'm good. Just-tired, you know?” (His eyes are electric-live, dark and copper bright and Dean remembers those eyes, remembers what happened the last time he saw them and shattered glass and Sam's back turning on him, leaving.)
“Well, the end of the world does take a toll on you,” Dean says, watching Sam move to the table, shaking his coat off the back of the chair.
Sam pauses and he moves slower, drowsy and scattering. “Heh, yeah,” he says and it doesn't sound like Sam-too distant, too listless and running with overtones (but maybe, maybe this is just what Sam sounds like and Dean doesn't want to think, yeah, it does sound like him). “It does.”
Now, Dean's standing. “Where're you going?”
“Just-for a walk.” Sam yanks open the door, holds up his hand and smiles. “I'll be back in a bit, okay?”
∴
(fourteen). NOW
They rebuilt the town here because of the lake. They hope it will clean out the streets, soak up the ash, drain the death out of everything. But it's beautiful there. Dean doesn't want people to ruin it, poison it, dirty it with everything they are trying to forget.
He sits on the edge where the ground is still burnt black. They want to plant flowers here when the grass grows back. They want the world to be normal and Dean wants that for them.
I'm scared, Sam, and I don't know what I should do. This isn't a lonely place but I don't know anyone. Where are you? Do you remember when we were kids-You probably do. It doesn't matter. I hate writing it down because I realize that you're really not around. Where are you, Sam? I'm worried about you. I think it's getting harder to do this. I have so much time to sit and wish I had done things different. What could I do different? Sam, where are you?
But he knows he writes:
It's great here. You should come visit. There's running water. Hot water. It's nice to take a shower again. Take care of yourself, Sammy.
He folds it, addresses it to nowhere (somewhere they used to be, actually-Sam will drive across country one day and stop in all the towns they had been to before, check the mailboxes, knowing the letters will be there; and he will drive for days, weeks, and find them all; find him) and puts it in the box with the others.
From here, he can't see the sun set like he can from the watch post.
∴
(fifteen). THEN
It's the drinking that keeps Dean awake and Castiel by his side.
“Where's Sam?”
“Asleep,” Castiel answers.
Dean can hear the alcohol in his head. It's laughing.
“Good,” Dean slurs. “Good.”
Castiel glances at him. Dean can't read him through the smoke in his eyes.
“I hope he never wakes up,” Dean murmurs. He takes Castiel's hand in his and it's soft and cold. “He'll be the lucky one.”
-
Dean drives sober. He drives hung over. He drives drunk. No one seems to mind.
He likes it. It's dangerous enough for him. Makes him feel like he's a kid, like this is still the worst thing he could do, like he's stolen the keys from John again and he sneaked a few beers out of the fridge for him and Sam. It feels like the summer in Wyoming, when they had the house with the brown trim, the wrap around porch, colour TV and separate bedrooms. All the walls were painted blue and, sometimes, they would pretend they were living in a icicle even though the sun dripped in the seamless blue sky outside. He remembers the neighbours staring at him and wondering and he wondered back. It's like that, exactly like that, when he could be reckless and uncaring and wild and Sam would be too.
He thinks about telling Castiel about the summer in Wyoming, when he got to first base with the girl who bagged groceries downtown; when Sam read through half the books in the public library and the librarian, so loud and so concerned and so in love with Sam, would invite them over for supper when they were tired of eating pizza from a cardboard box; the last summer he was young, before he got his first real shotgun that John bought for him, before John pulled him out to a meadow during a bright, cool day and made him shoot beer cans off a fence post (he shot a rabbit, a skinny white one, a month later on some back road on the edge of Kentucky and he can still see it's blood in the grass). It was minutes after this that stretched into years and decades and he knew he was a man because John said he was and he had to do what his dad said; that was their rule. He never wanted to be a kid after that, hungry for things that shouldn't have made him ache, second-hand fury that he claimed his own which was only shaken by a sun he hadn't seen in four months (forty years) and the dark, lifeless eyes of an angel, a man. It wasn't until then that he remembered he was a kid once and how much he wished he could get it back.
He doesn't know how many years after that that Sam realized he wasn't a kid anymore either. Sometimes he thought about asking him, but there was never a right time to bring it up. He was almost scared to.
Dean wants to tell Castiel, but maybe he wouldn't get it. It's just too different.
-
The end is nowhere near.
(New York is flooding; Jerusalem is burning; Canada is freezing. Somewhere, a young girl says she saw an angel, but she still has eyes.)
Sam still gets radio reception sometimes. The TVs in the motel rooms never really worked well anyway. People aren't noticing. Maybe it's all in their heads. But then Dean has the Colt in his hands and Castiel is telling him that Lucifer is hiding in Sam's dreams, so it's real. It has to be because everyone is telling him it is. He could just pretend, just feel it like you can feel the change in the wind, but never know it, never see it, let him pretend, let me pretend it's not here, he thinks.
(Dean saw an angel and he still has his eyes, but he doesn't think he can see.)
There is madness in his veins and he tries not to let Castiel see. But the angel manages to coax it out in words between words, in the brush of their hands, in the electricity at night that no one sees but them. But madness is consuming and soon it's in his bones, in his skin, in his head.
There's madness in his heart and he's madness himself.
“Dean?”
Dean leans across the bed. “Come here,” he murmurs. He places his hands on Castiel's face; rests his forehead on Castiel's. “C'mere,” he says, again, and kisses Castiel lightly, softly softly, warm on the lips.
Dean lets the madness in him, that is him, breathe.
-
When they wake up, Sam is gone.
∴
(sixteen). NOW
They hear about a town, almost like theirs, exactly like theirs, in the next state over. It takes them months, but they get an old Ford truck running, parts taken from cars on the roads, cars in garages (a car not Dean's, parked in a tangle of trees, in the blank space between the town and out there; he never wants them finding his car). They're sending people up there with pictures, letters and signs. People are dreaming again, dreaming of families and friends and they smile when the sun rises.
Dean stands in line with his box tucked underneath his arm. He's taped it shut, covered it in brown paper and written Sam's name on the top, along the side, inside the taped down flaps in case they miss his name the first time, just like they told everyone to. He sees his parish in front of him, behind him: they smile and wave.
He looks down at the box. There's madness in him.
He walks back to his house, the box still under his arm. He walks to his study, opens the drawer and pushes the box to the back. He closes it and keeps his secrets there.
-
“Do you come here to pray often, Father?”
Dean looks over his shoulder. He grins passively. He looks back to his folded hands.
“The girl from the picnic,” he says. “I remember you.”
She shuffles to the pew and sits down beside him. Her legs are pale white, thin and bony, sticking out from her shorts, and she's trembling.
“I'm not praying,” Dean tells her.
She snorts. “Yeah, okay.”
“Are you?” Dean asks.
She shrugs, shaking her head. “Nothing to pray for. I'm alive. That's all that matters, right?”
Dean nods curtly. “Well, that's what they'll tell you out there. But I think you need a little more in your life.”
She looks at him. “What do you have?”
Dean laughs. “You have no respect for personal privacy, do you?”
“If it wasn't a problem, you would have told me.”
Dean doesn't look at her.
“So, are you going to tell me why you're here?” she asks, leaning back in the pew.
“It's quiet here,” Dean says. “And, sometimes, I need to think.”
He thinks that's truth enough. He learned he shouldn't lie.
-
The generator hums in the next room.
Dean tells himself to breathe.
He pulls open the drawer, reaches back for the box. There's nothing there. (There's madness in him.)
He's pulling off bed sheets, ripping down wallpaper, tearing down shelves and nothing nothing nothing. He's disgusted with himself, he hates himself and he's still pushing back chairs and opening cupboards, but nothing nothing nothing.
∴
(seventeen). THEN
Castiel disappears two days after Sam does and Dean's okay with that, he's okay.
He drives from nowhere to somewhere and finds nothing but empty towns and the world falling apart in his rear view. He holes up in a motel room for a week, running through his contacts, only getting half of them, and coming up with nothing. He's haunted by riots of years and years ago, by the possibility of what if and maybe and one day, it'll be over, by thinking that Sam's so lost, he can't be found.
It's a week and four days after Sam disappears (and Dean's wasted the rubber on his tires to washboard grid roads and hot black tar smeared across the highway for miles) when Castiel comes back.
He comes back with such tired, child eyes, with his face drawn flat, his hands in his coat pockets, his legs locked straight and cowering in the corner. Dean expects blood, expects some disarming, tricking smile, angels and protection and anger.
He gets nothing.
Dean thinks of asking where he was, but he realizes it doesn't matter because Castiel has nothing to bring back for it. He thinks of asking why he left, but Dean knows why-it came from the bitter rule, the way the world isn't working and how Dean decided to blame him for everything.
It's a week and five days after Sam disappears that Castiel finally talks to Dean again and Dean decides he doesn't care.
-
Dean slams his fist down on the table. Castiel doesn't move.
“I'm gonna call Bobby.”
“Dean,” Castiel says and it sounds like a warning.
Dean is dialling the phone. “Maybe he's heard something.” He paces beside the bed. “From Rufus or, uh-I dunno.” He trembles and puts the phone to his ear.
“Dean, please.” And now it sounds more like pleading.
“What, Cas?” Dean yells, shutting the phone and Castiel looks smaller, now. “We're not going to stop looking for him! Something's happened and we have to-” He turns to the window, waits. Looks back at Castiel and waves his hand. “He's not going to die.”
Castiel stands up, his hands at his sides, twisting and untwisting. “He left, Dean, you know that.”
Dean makes a too human sound, so wretched and strung-out, something that shouldn't even be a sound, and drags his knuckles across his eyes. “He wouldn't just leave!”
“It's been four weeks and we haven't found anything!” Because now Castiel is just as wretched as him, just as angry and hideous and desperate as every other human. “He doesn't want to be found.”
Dean shakes his head. “No, whatever took Sam is good at hiding. Good at hiding Sam.” He sets his phone down on the table, running his hand over the back of his neck and his skin is too hot, too cold. “We're going to find him.”
Castiel grabs Dean by the shoulders. Dean tries to look away, avoids him, but Castiel's hands frame the side of Dean's face, makes him look and Dean doesn't like the look in Castiel's eyes. “Will you listen to yourself?” Castiel begs and it sounds so weak, so alone. “Four weeks, Dean. We have nothing. He's gone.”
For a minute, Dean thinks he could stay here, the calming warmth of Castiel against him, the chance to lie down and never get up, the choice to let danger take him. Maybe I don't have to anymore, he thinks, and I'm just so tired.
Castiel's fingers brush against Dean's temples, small, light circles, his eyes flickering, his lips moving with no sound and Dean can't find enough air to breathe. “I know you are, Dean,” Castiel says and everything's broken.
(Dean hates it.)
“Get out of my head,” Dean murmurs. He wraps his fingers around Castiel's wrists, tugging them away. “Get out.”
Castiel moves back and he's getting smaller, his body moving in on itself, and he looks so tired, just as tired as Dean feels, his eyes bruised and pale. “I'm sorry.”
“Don't,” Dean says, turning back to the window. Last week, something changed in the air and Dean could smell it everywhere and he thinks he knows what it is, but no, no, he'll never admit it. “Just-look at the papers again, okay?”
-
The world is nowhere near the end but Castiel tells Dean it is. Castiel never lies, never lies, so Dean listens.
There's softness in the blankets, in the pillows, in the need that they wear on their skin. There's softness in Dean's hands, on Castiel's lips, and they want to stay here forever. They feel like they're losing something, that they should be out, yelling and razing the world to its core, but there's something here they are so frightened of, so compelled by and they stay.
Dean sees day break (destroy, murder, thunder) through the window. He wonders how the world can still turn.
∴
(eighteen). NOW
Dean is continually waking from horrible nightmares.
He knows he will never forget but, fuck, he's trying. He's really trying to fix it. (He knows he made too many mistakes and that it will never be okay, but he needs to try. It has to count for something, it has to.)
∴
(nineteen). THEN
“Dean,” Castiel warns.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” (He's scared, he's fucking scared.)
“Well, I'm Michael, the Archangel.” Michael steps towards them, his hands in his pockets. “And I'm going to do what I need to so we may fix this.”
“You can't do something like that!” (He's angry, he's fucking angry.)
“I think I can,” Michael says sternly. “I can see how much he means to you. But I also see how much your ill-advised moral stand means to you as well.”
“You're a bastard.” (He's disgusted, he's fucking disgusted.)
Michael tips his chin up, licking his lips, sighing. “I would have offered to kill Sam, but we need him around anyway.”
“You're a sick fuck.” (He's frantic, he's fucking afraid.)
“Name calling isn't going to make me go away, Dean.” Michael sighs. Dean can hear Castiel whispering, nothing, everything and Dean won't listen. “You need to make a decision.”
Dean doesn't think he can.
∴
(twenty). NOW
He's lost the letters, he knows this.
So, he's walking again, and his legs hurt before he even leaves his house, but he keeps walking.
Usually, he stops a mile out of town, by the first mile-marker, the next road that runs west, off into the distance where he can't see.
Past this dirt-lane road, Dean thinks he feels the wind shift. His feet crunch against the gravel. He sees colour for the first time in what seems months. It's ugly.
Out here, the world is too big for him and he thinks, out here, the monsters are going to come back. And monsters aren't just the things he dreams of, the things he's starting to remember, but something he once was, something he was trying to fix for him. For people he never wanted to love so much.
He trips. The world stutter-stops and everything blurs. Numb and he can't see, blinding and rage and regret tearing through his head, and the world splinters in vain and turns so quick and absolute that colour is thrown out and everything turns white-black-grey.
And it blurs so fast, so much, that Dean can't see and he's pushing back along the road, listening for the naked sound of life.
Out here, life ends and Dean knows why, now, he never came this far.
∴
(twenty-two). THEN
“I won't say yes.” And Dean believes it, knows it, because there's a difference (an angel once told him).
“Yes, you will.” Michael steps closer. “I do not want to play games.”
Castiel moves behind Dean, touches the back of Dean's hand. “Dean,” he warns.
“I'm not saying yes,” Dean whispers.
Michael's face darkens. “I will kill him. He's nothing to us.” His eyes glint madly in the dark, a slice of the moon wavering through the broken window panes, striking against the floor, the side of Michael's face. “But he's something to you. Are you about to let someone you care for die because of your incompetent selfishness?”
∴
(twenty-three). NOW
A young boy finds him just before the one mile-marker, quiet and sleeping. He showed his mother, they tell Dean, and it was sort of endearing, how he thought Dean was just playing.
Luckily, the mother was able to drag him back and the doctor able to help him into a bed, ease him awake with a cold cloth and calming words.
He doesn't tell anyone how the world warps and blurs so close to the edge.
They keep him in the hospital for the night and Dean doesn't sleep at all. He tells him, “Just send me home. I'll be better there.” And they're unsure and they hesitate at the door, but they let him go.
-
Dean falls asleep in the living room chair. He hasn't slept anywhere but in his bed since he first found this town (a bed all his own, something he could claim besides highways and guns and divided air). When he wakes the room is cold and his arms sore. He dreamt of nothing; it was worse than the nightmares.
When he stands, he feels something slip beneath his feet. He looks down: a letter.
He picks it up, turns it over.
Cas.
He fumbles for the lighter in his pocket. Sets the note on fire and throws it into the fireplace. He knows that name, he knows it and he can't let this happen again.
Smoke fills the house for the rest of the day as the fire burns and burns. He never thinks to open a window.
∴
(twenty-four). THEN
Dean rubs his mouth, nodding. “Go fuck yourself, angel.”
The lights flicker: Michael is standing in front of Dean, hand held tight onto his wrist, keeping him there. “I can make it easy for you, Dean, in here,” he mutters. “You won't even notice, you won't even see the years pass.” He pauses, looks at Dean, unconcerned. “You won't miss anyone.”
Dean doesn't think about, doesn't think about it, because Michael is lying. “You're going to kill everyone.”
“And your plan is so much better, Dean?” Michael's smile glares, white-hot, like coal and it burns Dean to look too long. “Have you even been paying attention to the destruction ravaging the world? The world is burning anyway and it will continue until there is nothing left.”
“No,” Dean says, grinding his teeth.
“Yes, people will die-” (Michael says this around a smile, playing with the sounds of shattering words) “-but we can stop it, lessen it. We can stop Lucifer." He stops. Tilts his head. "Sam has already said yes.”
Dean has been losing air everywhere they go and now, now, it's taken from him, ripped from his lungs and he's falling back, pushing back, soft, sweet hands catching him and he's falling. “What?”
“He left, right?” Michael asks. He makes a relieved sound, a human sound, something that shouldn't fit with him and it doesn't because it sounds too grateful, too happy. “Weeks ago. He was tired, Dean. Tired of running and fighting and not winning. He felt guilty-” Michael tips his head down, catching Dean's gaze, “-as guilty as you do, I'm sure. He wants to end it.”
“He didn't-he wouldn't.” Dean stumbles over his words and he stumbles back and Castiel catches him, calms him, tries to soothe him, lips by the hollow of his ear, whispering, murmuring, it's okay, Dean, it's okay.
“It's amazing the decisions he can make when you don't have him on a leash, Dean.”
Dean wrenches himself from Castiel's grip, lunges at Michael. “Stop lying to me!”
“I am not lying, Dean, I'm telling the truth!” Michael throws Dean back and his voice, so loud and terrible, echoes around the warehouse and shatters the walls and makes Dean hollow and Castiel fall to his knees. “Now accept it and accept your destiny!”
∴
(twenty-five). NOW
It's the night before Sunday mass and Dean's never ready, always sleeping in too late, always running with his Bible slipping between his hands, up the church steps, loud and frightened, eyes that never stop staring.
He always forgets to say good morning on these days.
He has the young minister helping him: straightening the hymnals, refilling the incense, shaving the candles down to the wicks. It's late and the church is dark, Dean walking around with a candle in a holder, shining it on the rows of chairs and oak pews.
“Father?” The young minister is standing at the back of the church, a thin paper book open in his hands.
“Yeah?” Dean says from the altar. He sets the candle down and the room is thrown back into soft, welcoming darkness.
The young minister walks down the middle of the pews, holding out the book. “Michael, the Archangel,” he says and Dean's hand slips on the Bible. “He's missing from the pictures. Where is he?”
“What are you looking at?” Dean motions for the man to give him the book. He stays beside the first row, looking carefully through the book.
“It's been ripped out,” he says. “Did you do this, Father?”
“I don't know.” Dean moves suddenly, running down the steps, rushing past the young minister.
When he opens the doors and runs out onto the steps, there is light and nothing, nothing makes sense.
∴
(twenty-six). THEN
Castiel side steps Dean. Pushes him back, lightly lightly softly softly, with his hands.
“Kill me, Michael,” Castiel says. He's looking right at Michael, right at him, because he can look at angels and still see. “Kill me.”
“No.” Dean pulls on Castiel's hand. Castiel doesn't turn to him; Dean feels the madness in him scream. “No, Cas.”
∴
(twenty-seven). NOW
He rewrites the letters to Sam. Rewrites them all and tries to remember the words so he can mimic what he never tried to say. He writes because his hands are tired and the pen ink is running out and his words mean nothing.
He writes for days but they all sound like letters to God.
He writes for days and SamSamSam turns to CasCasCas.
He lets the letters burn on the front lawn and waves at his neighbours when they wake in the morning and watch him from their windows.
∴
(twenty-eight). THEN
Michael takes Castiel's hand. Castiel is shaking. Dean doesn't know what to do.
“It won't hurt, Castiel,” Michael murmurs, kindly, sweetly. “I promise.”
∴
(twenty-nine). NOW
“We were supposed to get married before,” she says.
They are young. Both so young. They're holding hands and laughing.
“We want to do it now. We know it's a weird time but-” He's shrugging, chuckling, soft and low.
Dean looks at her. Yes, God, yes there is love in their eyes and he knows that look, he knows it, because he saw it in his own eyes once.
She looks at him. He looks at her and says, “I guess we realized that life is too short, right?”
Dean smiles and smiles, nods and nods. “Yes, it is.”
-
He gets to wear the other father's robes. They smell like smoke and dirt. He remembers that his blood used to pump with oil and gun powder. His hand hovers over his Bible and he sighs.
The air is familiar, warm and inviting. They're having the wedding outside, in the brutal light of day, in front of the town; she wears a sun dress with yellow roses and he wears a blue button up shirt, jeans, sneakers. They look like heroes, like gods, like angels in the sun. Maybe someone will paint their faces and put them in stained glass windows.
Dean smiles and the air is soft soft soft.
∴
(thirty). THEN
They're sitting on the bed, facing each other. They have their hands tangled in each other and they are counting how many times they can hold their breath. (It's never long: Dean doesn't like drowning and Castiel never wants to see him drown.)
“You'll always be around, right?” Dean asks because he's scared, so scared of what comes next.
“Yes,” Castiel says because he doesn't lie. “I will.”
“You don't have to worry, Cas,” Dean says.
“I'm not.”
Dean shrugs. “I know you are.”
Castiel's eyes flicker, shift; he looks sideways at Dean, his face black and white, settling colour clarity, strange and imperfect. He says nothing at all, but he's screaming in arrested cries: you were never supposed to know. It's cruel, it's shattering, how human Castiel has become.
“Hey,” Dean whispers. He touches the side of Castiel's face and he feels ugly, savage, dark and disastrous. “I'll take care of you. I'll make sure you're okay.”
(And it's true, it's true because it's beautiful and it hurts and he sees that Castiel believes it and it's all that matters. So, it's true, it's true and Dean isn't lying because Castiel needs it to be true. Dean knows he does, too.)
“Can you do me a favour, Dean?” Castiel asks.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Can you just-trust God?”
Dean sighs. He takes Castiel's hands in his own, folding his fingers around Castiel's knuckles. He presses his lips against the back of Castiel's hands. “Cas-”
“For me?” Castiel asks. “Just trust that, after all of this, He will protect you. He will take care of you.”
“I don't know if I can,” he says.
“He loves you, Dean.” Castiel smiles and there's something about it that Dean finds himself wanting and, now, he feels so fucking ashamed for everything he's ever done wrong and he just wants to take it back. “And He will see the good you have done.”
-
Bobby calls the next morning, his voice almost drown out by static and background noise.
“I think I've found Sam.”
Dean sits up, throwing the covers off his legs. “Where?”
“Sheldon, Missouri.”
Dean almost leaves before Castiel wakes.
∴
(thirty-one). NOW
Dean wakes from another nightmare. He wakes to silence and colours having shifted in the night. He reaches to his night stand. His Bible is gone.
-
Outside, the town is burning. It's just like he remembers it, before they accelerated the healing, forced the ground to grow, before he knew God, before he knew angels, when he was in Hell and it's so sickeningly familiar and safe. Now, the sky is dripping to red, flaking and peeling and giving way to white nothingness and he feels his skin curling in the heat.
A man is standing on his front lawn. He's tall, unassuming and overwhelming against the fire that burns. Dean walks up to him; he doesn't recognize him, but there is something so ordinary, so familiar to Dean-the trusting glance in his eyes and how it lingers. Dean wonders if he had been hiding here all this time, waiting for Dean to finally realize-
“Why do you believe in God?” the man asks. “I did, once, and you laughed at me.”
Dean looks at him. The man mimics him. There's a strangeness in the smile he wears.
“I don't,” Dean answers. (He's stopped lying.) “I don't believe in God.”
“Then why are you here?” he asks.
Dean remembers. He looks to the church: the steeple is alight with flames. “I promised someone.”
∴
(thirty-two). THEN
Castiel's eyes are closed. It looks like he's praying. Maybe he is.
He holds his hands out for Michael.
“Kill me, Michael,” he says.
∴
(thirty-three). NOW
When Dean turns his head to speak to the man, he's gone.
-
(He walks over the place he collapsed when he first found this town; walks past the place where he married the young girl, the young boy, so madly, frighteningly in love; walks around where he thought he had found God and realized that He hadn't been there all along.)
-
He wanders past the borders of the town where it's cooler. He walks until he reaches those skyline fields and lays down in the charred soil. He spreads out his legs, his arms, his fingers; grabs handfuls of dirt and feels home, feels right, feels not so alone (he laughs because this is what it was always meant to be). He can hear the town crackling under its weight.
He's going to wait here; he doesn't know what for, but he has nowhere else to go.
∴
(thirty-four). THEN
“Kill me, Michael. Kill me.”
-
Michael brushes Castiel's hair back with the side of his hand, tugs him close, places a loving hand on the Castiel's cheek. And Castiel still looks like he's praying, but there's acceptance where there shouldn't be.
Dean doesn't know-doesn't know-doesn't know what to do. (No, he knows exactly, he's knows what to do, he's always known, always will know and, no, it doesn't hurt, it doesn't hurt.)
“Wait!” Dean yells. “Wait-”
Michael looks at him.
“Yes.” (His voice shakes when he says it, finds the words for it. His heart stops beating.) “I'm saying yes.”
Michael's hand falls to Castiel's shoulder. Castiel's wild eyes glance at Dean, screaming no no no let me make it me. He pushes Castiel back. Weak, Castiel falls to his knees.
“You're giving me your consent?”
“I'm saying yes,” Dean repeats. It's all he can say as he wants to cry a thousand other things.
“Okay,” Michael says. He smiles. “Okay.”
(“Dean-” Castiel mutters, but Dean doesn't hear him.)
Michael lays a hand on Dean's shoulder. Dean tries not to flinch away. He tries to think of something to say, tries to think if there is something to say and he hopes he told Castiel everything he ever wanted to, that Sam is okay, will be okay, that it won't hurt, it won't hurt, not like Hell. And it's like fires and it's like crashing and it's like the end because it is and it's all too fast, too at once and Dean can't breathe.
“Thank you, Dean,” Michael whispers.
Dean trembles beneath Michael's touch and he won't, he won't look at Castiel, not now. “It's not for you.”
“I know.” Michael smiles like he does.
Sudden, simple warmth and-nothing hurts.
∴
(thirty-five). NOW
Dean smells the dirt first when he wakes, his head turned to the side. When he opens his eyes, everything is white.
He feels him near.
“You said you would make me forget,” Dean says, and maybe it sounds like an accusation, but Dean's not sure anymore.
“I did. For awhile. I underestimated your-will and your strength.” He sounds his impressed, his voice light and human, so beautiful and sure.
He's just bright light, but Dean knows who he is, knows the feel of this power, this light, on his fingertips. He's been sleeping for years, he knows this now.
“What happened?” The air is so clean here and he can breathe it forever. “Where's Sam? Where's Cas?”
“It's over.” A hand, cool and solid, grips his shoulder and pulls him to his feet. “A place awaits you in my Father's house.”
“Take me to see them,” Dean demands, but he's so tired. “Are they alive?”
“Sleep, Dean. It's over.”
And, so, he sleeps.
fin.
(twelve). NOW
His footsteps echo around the empty walls of the church. No one steps inside the doors except for Sunday service and Dean doesn't mind the silence on these between days, that no one can find comfort in this place for long, not even him.
He stops by the entrance, dipping his fingers into the basin of holy water; he pauses, his heart beating, thrashing, against his chest, staring down at his hand, the water trailing down his palm, over his bare arm. His mouth is cotton-thick and weak and the incense burns his lungs when he breathes in too deep.
His fingers are dry when he marks the cross on his chest.
He lights the candles, one by one, hand cupped against the flame, the wicks curled into the bubbled edges. He picks at the white candles by the altar with his nails, peeling off the hardened rivulets of wax. He stands by them, dropping the wasted matchsticks into a bowl, and watches a few quiver feebly before they dim and wane.
Beside the altar, on a table carrying a crucifix and incense, his Bible sits, open to Revelations. None of the passages are marked. He moves around the altar, his back turned to the table, taking out hymnals from the back cupboard, moving the packets of incense from the drawers, walking towards his office, hand hovering on the doorknob. He hasn't been in there in months.
When he walks to the display of layered red candles, he passes by his Bible. Runs his hands along the leather covered edges, finger twisting in the blue bookmark. He closes it, the pages folding under the sudden movement. The candles flare when he walks by.
“It's just a story,” Dean says to no one.
He stands by the short red candles, a matchstick in his hands. He stands and waits and wonders who he could light these candles for. But he's starting to forget.
Outside, the wind is screaming and it howls through the boarded up windows, through the cracks in the wall and all the doors Dean never seems to close. Something is always getting back, always getting through and he can't rise in the face of the invisible, in the face of things unseen and unknown anymore. He's thrown out the taste of gunpowder and a sky he could never reach but wanted to burn.
Suddenly, gradually, so clear and hesitant, he feels something like pure white heat in his skin, something like being forgotten and wanting to be left behind, like he can hear things singing, crying, in the distance; like deep spaces and blue roads and disjointed dreams that lead to a face he can't recognize, a name he used to say, to something he can't hold in his hands, can't restrain, that is too full of grace, too much like power, for him to keep.
He falls against the wall, his hands over his eyes, his head filled with incense and darkness, and now, for now, he won't breathe, won't think, the acrid smell of burning wax on his tongue.
And he won't think, he won't breathe, he won't know, because he can't live this again.
∴
(thirteen). THEN
Dean is awake, his body heavy and his heart wild. Castiel is sitting at the motel room table, his head resting against the wall, a book open in his hands.
“Have you slept?”
Castiel looks up, still and calm, like vacant control and rushing misplacement of lives not their own.
“I don't sleep, Dean. You know that.”
Dean runs a hand over his face, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “Yeah, I know,” he sighs. “I didn't know what else to say.”
Castiel shrugs and turns back to his book.
“Look-”
Castiel doesn't look.
“I'm sorry, okay?” Dean says a little louder than he means to, but he's sorry, he's scared, he's desperate and responsible, and wound so tight, spinning spinning, he can feel the fire in his lungs burn, he's undone. “I didn't mean to freak out on you last night.”
“I know,” Castiel says.
It's not what Dean was expecting.
“That's it?” Dean prompts.
Castiel angles his head down, chin against his chest. He sets his book down. “I accept your apology.”
“You're not mad at me?” Dean can't figure out why it really matters to him-but, oh, yeah. Bruises and aches on his bones.
“I think it's possible to still be mad at you and forgive you simultaneously,” Castiel says slowly.
Dean lies back down in his bed. “I'm sorry, Cas. I just don't know what to do with all this.”
“Neither do I,” Castiel replies. “Which is why I forgive you for your thoughts. Not your actions.”
Dean turns his head to look at Castiel. He's looking out the window.
“I guess it's what makes me human,” Castiel says quietly. He smiles and Dean's heart aches.
-
They're going to drive to North Dakota. Sam says he hasn't been there in years and he almost looks excited.
“Yeah, well, we've got a possible job up there,” Dean says. “Bobby says a friend of his called and his neighbour was found with his throat slashed, bled out in his bed. All doors and windows locked, no finger prints, no signs of disturbance.” He throws his bag over his shoulder. “You in?”
Sam shrugs, grabbing his shirts from the bed and folding them into his bag. “Sounds good to me.”
Castiel moves in front of them, his hands out, stopping Dean before he can get to the door. “You're going on a hunt?”
Dean backs away, pushing Castiel's hand away. “Yeah, Cas, it's our job.”
“It's the Apocalypse, Dean.” Castiel looks behind Dean at Sam, his hands still raised. “We have more important matters to attend to.”
It's the look in his eyes-always those fucking eyes that Dean can never get away from-that is Castiel's tell. It's the naked and harmful honesty, the misery that's always behind the maddening cringe, the giant dwarfed by the things that should just be moments. It's the way that Castiel can't say it, can never say it outright, but Dean can read it and it cripples him.
“Do we?” Dean asks, his voice high and bound. “Well, by all means, tell me where Lucifer is. Or God.” He leans in; Castiel's eyes shift, looking down at Dean's hand. “How is that going by the way? Found him yet?”
“Dean, stop it,” Sam says and no one should sound that tired.
“We've got nothing, Cas, okay?” Dean raises his hands, copying Castiel, palms out. “So, in the mean time, we are going to kill as many evil things as we can because it's all we can do.”
Dean shoulders past Castiel, walking out into the parking lot, into the flat, grey world. Castiel stumbles back into the door frame, his head down, breathing lightly, startled and nowhere.
“We should be looking for Lucifer,” Castiel says.
“Yeah, we should,” Dean calls out and he doesn't mean to sound so abrupt, so blunt, “but we're not.”
-
They make it up to North Dakota late. Dean wants to check out the house before they turn in, but a storm is rolling in and the skies are so black-thick, Dean thinks they're demons. Sam tells him they should stay in for the night; Castiel sits in the corner of the room, silent, a book in his hands.
Sam's had those sad, small eyes for days and Dean's not worried, he's not. He doesn't have time to be. So, now, Sam's staring off at the wall, his hand over his mouth, and he seems distracted, frantic.
Dean moves from his bed. Pauses by Castiel, who looks at him briefly before shivering and opening his book. Dean sits down beside Sam, the bed creaking with his weight.
“Hey.”
Sam startles. He looks over at Dean, smiling weakly. “Hey, what's up?”
“Not much.” Dean chews on his bottom lip. He sighs and thunder shakes the windows. “Something wrong?”
“No,” Sam says briskly, all hard corners and sharp disaster. “No, why?”
Dean looks at Sam for a minute, not moving. Sam shifts uncomfortably, casting furtive glances at Dean. “You don't seem like yourself lately,” Dean says.
Sam laughs, nervous and unsure. He rubs both of his hands across his eyes. “Can you really expect me to be?”
Dean notices him looking at Castiel and wonders if that should mean anything.
“I dunno,” Dean mutters and finds himself smiling, but he can't see what's funny. “I'm just wanting to know if I should take you to see a shrink or not. Can't have you slowing me down, little brother.”
Sam stands up, stretching his hands over his head. “I'm fine, Dean.” He chances a smile and it's unnatural, experienced in deception, curling too far on the left, too close to falling.
“Are you sure?” Dean thinks about standing up, but he catches Castiel looking at him and something tells him, stay, just stay here.
“Yeah.” Sam nods. Looks over his shoulder at Dean. “Yeah, I'm good. Just-tired, you know?” (His eyes are electric-live, dark and copper bright and Dean remembers those eyes, remembers what happened the last time he saw them and shattered glass and Sam's back turning on him, leaving.)
“Well, the end of the world does take a toll on you,” Dean says, watching Sam move to the table, shaking his coat off the back of the chair.
Sam pauses and he moves slower, drowsy and scattering. “Heh, yeah,” he says and it doesn't sound like Sam-too distant, too listless and running with overtones (but maybe, maybe this is just what Sam sounds like and Dean doesn't want to think, yeah, it does sound like him). “It does.”
Now, Dean's standing. “Where're you going?”
“Just-for a walk.” Sam yanks open the door, holds up his hand and smiles. “I'll be back in a bit, okay?”
∴
(fourteen). NOW
They rebuilt the town here because of the lake. They hope it will clean out the streets, soak up the ash, drain the death out of everything. But it's beautiful there. Dean doesn't want people to ruin it, poison it, dirty it with everything they are trying to forget.
He sits on the edge where the ground is still burnt black. They want to plant flowers here when the grass grows back. They want the world to be normal and Dean wants that for them.
I'm scared, Sam, and I don't know what I should do. This isn't a lonely place but I don't know anyone. Where are you? Do you remember when we were kids-You probably do. It doesn't matter. I hate writing it down because I realize that you're really not around. Where are you, Sam? I'm worried about you. I think it's getting harder to do this. I have so much time to sit and wish I had done things different. What could I do different? Sam, where are you?
But he knows he writes:
It's great here. You should come visit. There's running water. Hot water. It's nice to take a shower again. Take care of yourself, Sammy.
He folds it, addresses it to nowhere (somewhere they used to be, actually-Sam will drive across country one day and stop in all the towns they had been to before, check the mailboxes, knowing the letters will be there; and he will drive for days, weeks, and find them all; find him) and puts it in the box with the others.
From here, he can't see the sun set like he can from the watch post.
∴
(fifteen). THEN
It's the drinking that keeps Dean awake and Castiel by his side.
“Where's Sam?”
“Asleep,” Castiel answers.
Dean can hear the alcohol in his head. It's laughing.
“Good,” Dean slurs. “Good.”
Castiel glances at him. Dean can't read him through the smoke in his eyes.
“I hope he never wakes up,” Dean murmurs. He takes Castiel's hand in his and it's soft and cold. “He'll be the lucky one.”
-
Dean drives sober. He drives hung over. He drives drunk. No one seems to mind.
He likes it. It's dangerous enough for him. Makes him feel like he's a kid, like this is still the worst thing he could do, like he's stolen the keys from John again and he sneaked a few beers out of the fridge for him and Sam. It feels like the summer in Wyoming, when they had the house with the brown trim, the wrap around porch, colour TV and separate bedrooms. All the walls were painted blue and, sometimes, they would pretend they were living in a icicle even though the sun dripped in the seamless blue sky outside. He remembers the neighbours staring at him and wondering and he wondered back. It's like that, exactly like that, when he could be reckless and uncaring and wild and Sam would be too.
He thinks about telling Castiel about the summer in Wyoming, when he got to first base with the girl who bagged groceries downtown; when Sam read through half the books in the public library and the librarian, so loud and so concerned and so in love with Sam, would invite them over for supper when they were tired of eating pizza from a cardboard box; the last summer he was young, before he got his first real shotgun that John bought for him, before John pulled him out to a meadow during a bright, cool day and made him shoot beer cans off a fence post (he shot a rabbit, a skinny white one, a month later on some back road on the edge of Kentucky and he can still see it's blood in the grass). It was minutes after this that stretched into years and decades and he knew he was a man because John said he was and he had to do what his dad said; that was their rule. He never wanted to be a kid after that, hungry for things that shouldn't have made him ache, second-hand fury that he claimed his own which was only shaken by a sun he hadn't seen in four months (forty years) and the dark, lifeless eyes of an angel, a man. It wasn't until then that he remembered he was a kid once and how much he wished he could get it back.
He doesn't know how many years after that that Sam realized he wasn't a kid anymore either. Sometimes he thought about asking him, but there was never a right time to bring it up. He was almost scared to.
Dean wants to tell Castiel, but maybe he wouldn't get it. It's just too different.
-
The end is nowhere near.
(New York is flooding; Jerusalem is burning; Canada is freezing. Somewhere, a young girl says she saw an angel, but she still has eyes.)
Sam still gets radio reception sometimes. The TVs in the motel rooms never really worked well anyway. People aren't noticing. Maybe it's all in their heads. But then Dean has the Colt in his hands and Castiel is telling him that Lucifer is hiding in Sam's dreams, so it's real. It has to be because everyone is telling him it is. He could just pretend, just feel it like you can feel the change in the wind, but never know it, never see it, let him pretend, let me pretend it's not here, he thinks.
(Dean saw an angel and he still has his eyes, but he doesn't think he can see.)
There is madness in his veins and he tries not to let Castiel see. But the angel manages to coax it out in words between words, in the brush of their hands, in the electricity at night that no one sees but them. But madness is consuming and soon it's in his bones, in his skin, in his head.
There's madness in his heart and he's madness himself.
“Dean?”
Dean leans across the bed. “Come here,” he murmurs. He places his hands on Castiel's face; rests his forehead on Castiel's. “C'mere,” he says, again, and kisses Castiel lightly, softly softly, warm on the lips.
Dean lets the madness in him, that is him, breathe.
-
When they wake up, Sam is gone.
∴
(sixteen). NOW
They hear about a town, almost like theirs, exactly like theirs, in the next state over. It takes them months, but they get an old Ford truck running, parts taken from cars on the roads, cars in garages (a car not Dean's, parked in a tangle of trees, in the blank space between the town and out there; he never wants them finding his car). They're sending people up there with pictures, letters and signs. People are dreaming again, dreaming of families and friends and they smile when the sun rises.
Dean stands in line with his box tucked underneath his arm. He's taped it shut, covered it in brown paper and written Sam's name on the top, along the side, inside the taped down flaps in case they miss his name the first time, just like they told everyone to. He sees his parish in front of him, behind him: they smile and wave.
He looks down at the box. There's madness in him.
He walks back to his house, the box still under his arm. He walks to his study, opens the drawer and pushes the box to the back. He closes it and keeps his secrets there.
-
“Do you come here to pray often, Father?”
Dean looks over his shoulder. He grins passively. He looks back to his folded hands.
“The girl from the picnic,” he says. “I remember you.”
She shuffles to the pew and sits down beside him. Her legs are pale white, thin and bony, sticking out from her shorts, and she's trembling.
“I'm not praying,” Dean tells her.
She snorts. “Yeah, okay.”
“Are you?” Dean asks.
She shrugs, shaking her head. “Nothing to pray for. I'm alive. That's all that matters, right?”
Dean nods curtly. “Well, that's what they'll tell you out there. But I think you need a little more in your life.”
She looks at him. “What do you have?”
Dean laughs. “You have no respect for personal privacy, do you?”
“If it wasn't a problem, you would have told me.”
Dean doesn't look at her.
“So, are you going to tell me why you're here?” she asks, leaning back in the pew.
“It's quiet here,” Dean says. “And, sometimes, I need to think.”
He thinks that's truth enough. He learned he shouldn't lie.
-
The generator hums in the next room.
Dean tells himself to breathe.
He pulls open the drawer, reaches back for the box. There's nothing there. (There's madness in him.)
He's pulling off bed sheets, ripping down wallpaper, tearing down shelves and nothing nothing nothing. He's disgusted with himself, he hates himself and he's still pushing back chairs and opening cupboards, but nothing nothing nothing.
∴
(seventeen). THEN
Castiel disappears two days after Sam does and Dean's okay with that, he's okay.
He drives from nowhere to somewhere and finds nothing but empty towns and the world falling apart in his rear view. He holes up in a motel room for a week, running through his contacts, only getting half of them, and coming up with nothing. He's haunted by riots of years and years ago, by the possibility of what if and maybe and one day, it'll be over, by thinking that Sam's so lost, he can't be found.
It's a week and four days after Sam disappears (and Dean's wasted the rubber on his tires to washboard grid roads and hot black tar smeared across the highway for miles) when Castiel comes back.
He comes back with such tired, child eyes, with his face drawn flat, his hands in his coat pockets, his legs locked straight and cowering in the corner. Dean expects blood, expects some disarming, tricking smile, angels and protection and anger.
He gets nothing.
Dean thinks of asking where he was, but he realizes it doesn't matter because Castiel has nothing to bring back for it. He thinks of asking why he left, but Dean knows why-it came from the bitter rule, the way the world isn't working and how Dean decided to blame him for everything.
It's a week and five days after Sam disappears that Castiel finally talks to Dean again and Dean decides he doesn't care.
-
Dean slams his fist down on the table. Castiel doesn't move.
“I'm gonna call Bobby.”
“Dean,” Castiel says and it sounds like a warning.
Dean is dialling the phone. “Maybe he's heard something.” He paces beside the bed. “From Rufus or, uh-I dunno.” He trembles and puts the phone to his ear.
“Dean, please.” And now it sounds more like pleading.
“What, Cas?” Dean yells, shutting the phone and Castiel looks smaller, now. “We're not going to stop looking for him! Something's happened and we have to-” He turns to the window, waits. Looks back at Castiel and waves his hand. “He's not going to die.”
Castiel stands up, his hands at his sides, twisting and untwisting. “He left, Dean, you know that.”
Dean makes a too human sound, so wretched and strung-out, something that shouldn't even be a sound, and drags his knuckles across his eyes. “He wouldn't just leave!”
“It's been four weeks and we haven't found anything!” Because now Castiel is just as wretched as him, just as angry and hideous and desperate as every other human. “He doesn't want to be found.”
Dean shakes his head. “No, whatever took Sam is good at hiding. Good at hiding Sam.” He sets his phone down on the table, running his hand over the back of his neck and his skin is too hot, too cold. “We're going to find him.”
Castiel grabs Dean by the shoulders. Dean tries to look away, avoids him, but Castiel's hands frame the side of Dean's face, makes him look and Dean doesn't like the look in Castiel's eyes. “Will you listen to yourself?” Castiel begs and it sounds so weak, so alone. “Four weeks, Dean. We have nothing. He's gone.”
For a minute, Dean thinks he could stay here, the calming warmth of Castiel against him, the chance to lie down and never get up, the choice to let danger take him. Maybe I don't have to anymore, he thinks, and I'm just so tired.
Castiel's fingers brush against Dean's temples, small, light circles, his eyes flickering, his lips moving with no sound and Dean can't find enough air to breathe. “I know you are, Dean,” Castiel says and everything's broken.
(Dean hates it.)
“Get out of my head,” Dean murmurs. He wraps his fingers around Castiel's wrists, tugging them away. “Get out.”
Castiel moves back and he's getting smaller, his body moving in on itself, and he looks so tired, just as tired as Dean feels, his eyes bruised and pale. “I'm sorry.”
“Don't,” Dean says, turning back to the window. Last week, something changed in the air and Dean could smell it everywhere and he thinks he knows what it is, but no, no, he'll never admit it. “Just-look at the papers again, okay?”
-
The world is nowhere near the end but Castiel tells Dean it is. Castiel never lies, never lies, so Dean listens.
There's softness in the blankets, in the pillows, in the need that they wear on their skin. There's softness in Dean's hands, on Castiel's lips, and they want to stay here forever. They feel like they're losing something, that they should be out, yelling and razing the world to its core, but there's something here they are so frightened of, so compelled by and they stay.
Dean sees day break (destroy, murder, thunder) through the window. He wonders how the world can still turn.
∴
(eighteen). NOW
Dean is continually waking from horrible nightmares.
He knows he will never forget but, fuck, he's trying. He's really trying to fix it. (He knows he made too many mistakes and that it will never be okay, but he needs to try. It has to count for something, it has to.)
∴
(nineteen). THEN
“Dean,” Castiel warns.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” (He's scared, he's fucking scared.)
“Well, I'm Michael, the Archangel.” Michael steps towards them, his hands in his pockets. “And I'm going to do what I need to so we may fix this.”
“You can't do something like that!” (He's angry, he's fucking angry.)
“I think I can,” Michael says sternly. “I can see how much he means to you. But I also see how much your ill-advised moral stand means to you as well.”
“You're a bastard.” (He's disgusted, he's fucking disgusted.)
Michael tips his chin up, licking his lips, sighing. “I would have offered to kill Sam, but we need him around anyway.”
“You're a sick fuck.” (He's frantic, he's fucking afraid.)
“Name calling isn't going to make me go away, Dean.” Michael sighs. Dean can hear Castiel whispering, nothing, everything and Dean won't listen. “You need to make a decision.”
Dean doesn't think he can.
∴
(twenty). NOW
He's lost the letters, he knows this.
So, he's walking again, and his legs hurt before he even leaves his house, but he keeps walking.
Usually, he stops a mile out of town, by the first mile-marker, the next road that runs west, off into the distance where he can't see.
Past this dirt-lane road, Dean thinks he feels the wind shift. His feet crunch against the gravel. He sees colour for the first time in what seems months. It's ugly.
Out here, the world is too big for him and he thinks, out here, the monsters are going to come back. And monsters aren't just the things he dreams of, the things he's starting to remember, but something he once was, something he was trying to fix for him. For people he never wanted to love so much.
He trips. The world stutter-stops and everything blurs. Numb and he can't see, blinding and rage and regret tearing through his head, and the world splinters in vain and turns so quick and absolute that colour is thrown out and everything turns white-black-grey.
And it blurs so fast, so much, that Dean can't see and he's pushing back along the road, listening for the naked sound of life.
Out here, life ends and Dean knows why, now, he never came this far.
∴
(twenty-two). THEN
“I won't say yes.” And Dean believes it, knows it, because there's a difference (an angel once told him).
“Yes, you will.” Michael steps closer. “I do not want to play games.”
Castiel moves behind Dean, touches the back of Dean's hand. “Dean,” he warns.
“I'm not saying yes,” Dean whispers.
Michael's face darkens. “I will kill him. He's nothing to us.” His eyes glint madly in the dark, a slice of the moon wavering through the broken window panes, striking against the floor, the side of Michael's face. “But he's something to you. Are you about to let someone you care for die because of your incompetent selfishness?”
∴
(twenty-three). NOW
A young boy finds him just before the one mile-marker, quiet and sleeping. He showed his mother, they tell Dean, and it was sort of endearing, how he thought Dean was just playing.
Luckily, the mother was able to drag him back and the doctor able to help him into a bed, ease him awake with a cold cloth and calming words.
He doesn't tell anyone how the world warps and blurs so close to the edge.
They keep him in the hospital for the night and Dean doesn't sleep at all. He tells him, “Just send me home. I'll be better there.” And they're unsure and they hesitate at the door, but they let him go.
-
Dean falls asleep in the living room chair. He hasn't slept anywhere but in his bed since he first found this town (a bed all his own, something he could claim besides highways and guns and divided air). When he wakes the room is cold and his arms sore. He dreamt of nothing; it was worse than the nightmares.
When he stands, he feels something slip beneath his feet. He looks down: a letter.
He picks it up, turns it over.
Cas.
He fumbles for the lighter in his pocket. Sets the note on fire and throws it into the fireplace. He knows that name, he knows it and he can't let this happen again.
Smoke fills the house for the rest of the day as the fire burns and burns. He never thinks to open a window.
∴
(twenty-four). THEN
Dean rubs his mouth, nodding. “Go fuck yourself, angel.”
The lights flicker: Michael is standing in front of Dean, hand held tight onto his wrist, keeping him there. “I can make it easy for you, Dean, in here,” he mutters. “You won't even notice, you won't even see the years pass.” He pauses, looks at Dean, unconcerned. “You won't miss anyone.”
Dean doesn't think about, doesn't think about it, because Michael is lying. “You're going to kill everyone.”
“And your plan is so much better, Dean?” Michael's smile glares, white-hot, like coal and it burns Dean to look too long. “Have you even been paying attention to the destruction ravaging the world? The world is burning anyway and it will continue until there is nothing left.”
“No,” Dean says, grinding his teeth.
“Yes, people will die-” (Michael says this around a smile, playing with the sounds of shattering words) “-but we can stop it, lessen it. We can stop Lucifer." He stops. Tilts his head. "Sam has already said yes.”
Dean has been losing air everywhere they go and now, now, it's taken from him, ripped from his lungs and he's falling back, pushing back, soft, sweet hands catching him and he's falling. “What?”
“He left, right?” Michael asks. He makes a relieved sound, a human sound, something that shouldn't fit with him and it doesn't because it sounds too grateful, too happy. “Weeks ago. He was tired, Dean. Tired of running and fighting and not winning. He felt guilty-” Michael tips his head down, catching Dean's gaze, “-as guilty as you do, I'm sure. He wants to end it.”
“He didn't-he wouldn't.” Dean stumbles over his words and he stumbles back and Castiel catches him, calms him, tries to soothe him, lips by the hollow of his ear, whispering, murmuring, it's okay, Dean, it's okay.
“It's amazing the decisions he can make when you don't have him on a leash, Dean.”
Dean wrenches himself from Castiel's grip, lunges at Michael. “Stop lying to me!”
“I am not lying, Dean, I'm telling the truth!” Michael throws Dean back and his voice, so loud and terrible, echoes around the warehouse and shatters the walls and makes Dean hollow and Castiel fall to his knees. “Now accept it and accept your destiny!”
∴
(twenty-five). NOW
It's the night before Sunday mass and Dean's never ready, always sleeping in too late, always running with his Bible slipping between his hands, up the church steps, loud and frightened, eyes that never stop staring.
He always forgets to say good morning on these days.
He has the young minister helping him: straightening the hymnals, refilling the incense, shaving the candles down to the wicks. It's late and the church is dark, Dean walking around with a candle in a holder, shining it on the rows of chairs and oak pews.
“Father?” The young minister is standing at the back of the church, a thin paper book open in his hands.
“Yeah?” Dean says from the altar. He sets the candle down and the room is thrown back into soft, welcoming darkness.
The young minister walks down the middle of the pews, holding out the book. “Michael, the Archangel,” he says and Dean's hand slips on the Bible. “He's missing from the pictures. Where is he?”
“What are you looking at?” Dean motions for the man to give him the book. He stays beside the first row, looking carefully through the book.
“It's been ripped out,” he says. “Did you do this, Father?”
“I don't know.” Dean moves suddenly, running down the steps, rushing past the young minister.
When he opens the doors and runs out onto the steps, there is light and nothing, nothing makes sense.
∴
(twenty-six). THEN
Castiel side steps Dean. Pushes him back, lightly lightly softly softly, with his hands.
“Kill me, Michael,” Castiel says. He's looking right at Michael, right at him, because he can look at angels and still see. “Kill me.”
“No.” Dean pulls on Castiel's hand. Castiel doesn't turn to him; Dean feels the madness in him scream. “No, Cas.”
∴
(twenty-seven). NOW
He rewrites the letters to Sam. Rewrites them all and tries to remember the words so he can mimic what he never tried to say. He writes because his hands are tired and the pen ink is running out and his words mean nothing.
He writes for days but they all sound like letters to God.
He writes for days and SamSamSam turns to CasCasCas.
He lets the letters burn on the front lawn and waves at his neighbours when they wake in the morning and watch him from their windows.
∴
(twenty-eight). THEN
Michael takes Castiel's hand. Castiel is shaking. Dean doesn't know what to do.
“It won't hurt, Castiel,” Michael murmurs, kindly, sweetly. “I promise.”
∴
(twenty-nine). NOW
“We were supposed to get married before,” she says.
They are young. Both so young. They're holding hands and laughing.
“We want to do it now. We know it's a weird time but-” He's shrugging, chuckling, soft and low.
Dean looks at her. Yes, God, yes there is love in their eyes and he knows that look, he knows it, because he saw it in his own eyes once.
She looks at him. He looks at her and says, “I guess we realized that life is too short, right?”
Dean smiles and smiles, nods and nods. “Yes, it is.”
-
He gets to wear the other father's robes. They smell like smoke and dirt. He remembers that his blood used to pump with oil and gun powder. His hand hovers over his Bible and he sighs.
The air is familiar, warm and inviting. They're having the wedding outside, in the brutal light of day, in front of the town; she wears a sun dress with yellow roses and he wears a blue button up shirt, jeans, sneakers. They look like heroes, like gods, like angels in the sun. Maybe someone will paint their faces and put them in stained glass windows.
Dean smiles and the air is soft soft soft.
∴
(thirty). THEN
They're sitting on the bed, facing each other. They have their hands tangled in each other and they are counting how many times they can hold their breath. (It's never long: Dean doesn't like drowning and Castiel never wants to see him drown.)
“You'll always be around, right?” Dean asks because he's scared, so scared of what comes next.
“Yes,” Castiel says because he doesn't lie. “I will.”
“You don't have to worry, Cas,” Dean says.
“I'm not.”
Dean shrugs. “I know you are.”
Castiel's eyes flicker, shift; he looks sideways at Dean, his face black and white, settling colour clarity, strange and imperfect. He says nothing at all, but he's screaming in arrested cries: you were never supposed to know. It's cruel, it's shattering, how human Castiel has become.
“Hey,” Dean whispers. He touches the side of Castiel's face and he feels ugly, savage, dark and disastrous. “I'll take care of you. I'll make sure you're okay.”
(And it's true, it's true because it's beautiful and it hurts and he sees that Castiel believes it and it's all that matters. So, it's true, it's true and Dean isn't lying because Castiel needs it to be true. Dean knows he does, too.)
“Can you do me a favour, Dean?” Castiel asks.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Can you just-trust God?”
Dean sighs. He takes Castiel's hands in his own, folding his fingers around Castiel's knuckles. He presses his lips against the back of Castiel's hands. “Cas-”
“For me?” Castiel asks. “Just trust that, after all of this, He will protect you. He will take care of you.”
“I don't know if I can,” he says.
“He loves you, Dean.” Castiel smiles and there's something about it that Dean finds himself wanting and, now, he feels so fucking ashamed for everything he's ever done wrong and he just wants to take it back. “And He will see the good you have done.”
-
Bobby calls the next morning, his voice almost drown out by static and background noise.
“I think I've found Sam.”
Dean sits up, throwing the covers off his legs. “Where?”
“Sheldon, Missouri.”
Dean almost leaves before Castiel wakes.
∴
(thirty-one). NOW
Dean wakes from another nightmare. He wakes to silence and colours having shifted in the night. He reaches to his night stand. His Bible is gone.
-
Outside, the town is burning. It's just like he remembers it, before they accelerated the healing, forced the ground to grow, before he knew God, before he knew angels, when he was in Hell and it's so sickeningly familiar and safe. Now, the sky is dripping to red, flaking and peeling and giving way to white nothingness and he feels his skin curling in the heat.
A man is standing on his front lawn. He's tall, unassuming and overwhelming against the fire that burns. Dean walks up to him; he doesn't recognize him, but there is something so ordinary, so familiar to Dean-the trusting glance in his eyes and how it lingers. Dean wonders if he had been hiding here all this time, waiting for Dean to finally realize-
“Why do you believe in God?” the man asks. “I did, once, and you laughed at me.”
Dean looks at him. The man mimics him. There's a strangeness in the smile he wears.
“I don't,” Dean answers. (He's stopped lying.) “I don't believe in God.”
“Then why are you here?” he asks.
Dean remembers. He looks to the church: the steeple is alight with flames. “I promised someone.”
∴
(thirty-two). THEN
Castiel's eyes are closed. It looks like he's praying. Maybe he is.
He holds his hands out for Michael.
“Kill me, Michael,” he says.
∴
(thirty-three). NOW
When Dean turns his head to speak to the man, he's gone.
-
(He walks over the place he collapsed when he first found this town; walks past the place where he married the young girl, the young boy, so madly, frighteningly in love; walks around where he thought he had found God and realized that He hadn't been there all along.)
-
He wanders past the borders of the town where it's cooler. He walks until he reaches those skyline fields and lays down in the charred soil. He spreads out his legs, his arms, his fingers; grabs handfuls of dirt and feels home, feels right, feels not so alone (he laughs because this is what it was always meant to be). He can hear the town crackling under its weight.
He's going to wait here; he doesn't know what for, but he has nowhere else to go.
∴
(thirty-four). THEN
“Kill me, Michael. Kill me.”
-
Michael brushes Castiel's hair back with the side of his hand, tugs him close, places a loving hand on the Castiel's cheek. And Castiel still looks like he's praying, but there's acceptance where there shouldn't be.
Dean doesn't know-doesn't know-doesn't know what to do. (No, he knows exactly, he's knows what to do, he's always known, always will know and, no, it doesn't hurt, it doesn't hurt.)
“Wait!” Dean yells. “Wait-”
Michael looks at him.
“Yes.” (His voice shakes when he says it, finds the words for it. His heart stops beating.) “I'm saying yes.”
Michael's hand falls to Castiel's shoulder. Castiel's wild eyes glance at Dean, screaming no no no let me make it me. He pushes Castiel back. Weak, Castiel falls to his knees.
“You're giving me your consent?”
“I'm saying yes,” Dean repeats. It's all he can say as he wants to cry a thousand other things.
“Okay,” Michael says. He smiles. “Okay.”
(“Dean-” Castiel mutters, but Dean doesn't hear him.)
Michael lays a hand on Dean's shoulder. Dean tries not to flinch away. He tries to think of something to say, tries to think if there is something to say and he hopes he told Castiel everything he ever wanted to, that Sam is okay, will be okay, that it won't hurt, it won't hurt, not like Hell. And it's like fires and it's like crashing and it's like the end because it is and it's all too fast, too at once and Dean can't breathe.
“Thank you, Dean,” Michael whispers.
Dean trembles beneath Michael's touch and he won't, he won't look at Castiel, not now. “It's not for you.”
“I know.” Michael smiles like he does.
Sudden, simple warmth and-nothing hurts.
∴
(thirty-five). NOW
Dean smells the dirt first when he wakes, his head turned to the side. When he opens his eyes, everything is white.
He feels him near.
“You said you would make me forget,” Dean says, and maybe it sounds like an accusation, but Dean's not sure anymore.
“I did. For awhile. I underestimated your-will and your strength.” He sounds his impressed, his voice light and human, so beautiful and sure.
He's just bright light, but Dean knows who he is, knows the feel of this power, this light, on his fingertips. He's been sleeping for years, he knows this now.
“What happened?” The air is so clean here and he can breathe it forever. “Where's Sam? Where's Cas?”
“It's over.” A hand, cool and solid, grips his shoulder and pulls him to his feet. “A place awaits you in my Father's house.”
“Take me to see them,” Dean demands, but he's so tired. “Are they alive?”
“Sleep, Dean. It's over.”
And, so, he sleeps.
fin.