Homecoming
Title: Homecoming
Summary: Sam breaks, Dean prays, Castiel acts, and a face from the past comes home.
Warnings/Spoilers: R for language, Spoilers through S5
Author's Note: Aftermath-verse
This is a twist for the old 'verse. I'm not sure what I think of it.
Three cars have gone by, whipping her hair around her neck and her skirt around her legs, before she understands that she’s standing by the side of a country road with no memory of how she got here. She’s gripped by a sudden penetrating terror, a gut feeling that something deeply wrong has happened.
The man in the trenchcoat (how long has he been with her? She’s not surprised to see him) doesn’t touch her and doesn’t look directly at her, and yet she’s afraid of him in a way she doesn’t understand.
“You need to find Sam Winchester,” he says.
She shakes her head. “He’s with his brother. He’ll be home tonight.” But there’s something wrong with this. It was dark when Sam called and said he’d be home in a few hours. Now the sun’s so bright in her eyes it’s nearly blinding.
“He’s home now,” says the man in the trenchcoat. “You need to find him.”
She wants to ask so many things. Where am I and where is Sam and who are you and how did I get here. She wants to run from this somber stranger back to her chocolate chip cookies and her cactus plants and the cozy apartment she shares with Sam.
The wind blows the stranger’s coat around his ankles, and she blinks and he’s gone.
She starts off along the side of the road, dust caking her bare feet, uneasy and nervy and jumping at shadows. Something is wrong, wrong, wrong.
After a while - she’s never been a good judge of time or distance, and she wants to say she’s traveled several miles, but who knows - she finds herself at an establishment that her mind identifies as a way station. It’s a couple of dilapidated old fill-up pumps and a convenience shack. She hesitates before going in - she’s confused, dirty, barefoot, indecent - but she needs help.
The man behind the counter is about her own age, and he barely glances up from his phone as she enters (and something’s not right about that phone, either.)
“Excuse me.” Her voice is dry and cracking. She clears her throat.
The guy looks up, eyes laced with boredom. “Yeah?”
“Do you have a phone book?”
He looks at her like she’s unhinged. “A phone book? What for?”
“I, um, I need to find an address.”
He gapes at her for a moment longer, then shakes his head pityingly. “What’s the name?”
“Winchester. Sam.”
The guy does something on his computer and frowns. “Dude’s not listed in the county.”
She’s feeling desperate. “Maybe it’s under Samuel?”
He fixes that half amused, half disgusted look on her again. “You think I wouldn’t have known ‘Samuel’ was Sam?”
“He should be on campus,” she says. “Stanford, class of ’06.”
He looks annoyed. “Is this supposed to be funny?”
And that’s when she sees the newspaper, headline in an unfamiliar font and a stranger under the presidential seal, dated seven years later than it should be.
She feels faint. “Do you have a phone I can use?”
There’s a pay phone in the back of the store, she knows, but he takes pity on her and reaches under the counter and plunks an old rotary down in front of her. “Dial nine for an outside line.”
She dials her and twists the cord around and around her wrist while she listens to the phone ring endlessly, six, seven, eight times. Finally a familiar voice says, “Hello?”
“Matt?” Her eyes fill with tears, involuntarily, and she paws at them and ducks her head so the guy at the counter won’t see.
Her brother’s voice fills with suspicion. “Who is this?”
“It’s Jess. I don’t…I don’t know where I am.” She hears her voice break and doesn’t care.
The line disconnects.
Jess stares at the handset for a minute, glances at the checkout guy. He’s ignoring her completely. She hangs up and redials.
Matt answers on the first ring. “I don’t know who the fuck you are, but do not fucking call here again. This is not funny.”
“Matt…” she begins, and a voice in the background calls “who is it, Matty?”
“Mom?”
“Fuck you,” Matt snarls. “It’s nobody, Mom.”
This time when he hangs up, she doesn’t call back.
She calls Sam’s phone, and it beeps at her and an automated voice informs her that this number has been disconnected. She calls Melinda, and a gruff, male voice answers, “Casa Del Taco.” She hangs up without speaking.
She remembers one more number.
***
After a year off the job, one day is much the same as the next. Except for the bad days.
The bad days are always a guessing game.
Sometimes Sam will panic viscerally and yell if you come near him. Sometimes he gets lost in hallucinations and screams for help and Dean, please while Dean sits beside him and holds his arms or rubs his back. Sometimes the hallucinations turn mean, and Dean has to watch Sam struggle to breathe when nothing at all is obstructing his lungs, has to wrestle him to the ground and hold him still as he fights to get at his increasingly scarred skin with a blade.
And sometimes, like today, like every goddamn day for the past week, Sam sinks into despair.
He’s curled up in bed, eyes squeezed shut, hugging himself, and Dean knows as soon as he enters the room that the slump isn’t over yet, Sam’s still down.
“Down” is such an inadequate word for what Sam is right now.
He sets the tray of waffles down on the table beside Sam’s bed and crawls in next to him, positioning his body partially on top of Sam because he knows the weight and pressure help. Sam doesn’t move, doesn’t speak or acknowledge Dean in any way, doesn’t whisper apologies for being so weak (there’s nothing weak about this, Sammy) or even turn to bury his face in Dean’s shoulder. This is a new low.
“Low” is also an inadequate word.
Dean, who’s known his whole life about the supernatural, isn’t equipped to describe the things that have happened to his brother, so it’s not really fair to expect Oxford’s English to cover it, you know?
Sam’s barely functional on days like this. He speaks under his breath, his voice an octave lower than usual, begging Dean for drugs to help him sleep, and what he means is help me forget. And Dean gives in, because anything to get that expression off of Sammy’s face.
Now he reaches across his brother and picks up a section of waffle. “Can you eat something?”
Sam shakes his head.
“Sam…” it’s been four days.
Sam’s voice is rough and pained. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“You feel sick?”
Sam nods a little. Dean sets the waffle down and rests his palm gently over his brother’s stomach, rubbing slow circles. “Deep breaths,” he says. “It’ll pass, Sam. There’s another side to this, I promise. We’re gonna get there.”
Sam moves his head. It might be a nod.
Dean rolls over and sits up - Sam makes an awful, bereft sound at the sudden loss of contact, and Dean’s lungs contract and he exhales hard. “Just getting meds, Sammy,” he whispers. “Be back.”
He feeds his brother four doses of NyQuil and hates himself for being cowardly, for drugging Sam through his depressions instead of helping him, but the truth is he doesn’t know what else to do and he can’t just watch Sam suffer.
The drugs take effect gradually. Sam goes limp and drowsy in his arms, his muscles relax and he cries, semi-lucid. Dean plays with the ends of his hair and says, “Do you remember the week we spent in that town in Illinois with the hot comic book shop girl?”
“Normal?”
“Normal, yeah. Fuck, you’re brilliant even when you’re stoned out of your mind, you little weirdo.”
“I just remember.”
“Crazy name for a town,” Dean chuckles a little. “Normal. And all the cop cars said ‘Normal Police,’ remember that?”
“School,” Sam mumbles.
“What?”
Stoned Sam gets talky. Depressed Sam gets silent. When the two collide, it’s anyone’s guess, but Dean likes to think the chatter is a sign that his brother’s not hurting so much. “College. Illinois State Normal University.”
Dean laughs a little. “Yeah, Normal University.”
“Means it’s a teaching school,” Sam manages to sound patiently instructive through the drugged up haze.
Fuck, Dean loves this kid. “That right?”
“Normal,” Sam says again, and sobs his way into sleep.
***
Castiel hears all prayers (he assumes - how can you be sure you’re hearing all of them? He hears a lot - but Dean Winchester’s always rise above the rest. Dean, who almost never prays, rings crystal clear in his head as though he’s summoning Castiel. He listens for Sam, of course he does, Sam prays every day and sometimes Castiel hears him. But he is tied to Dean in profound and incomprehensible ways.
It was a prayer from Dean that allowed Castiel to find him in hell, in that gruesome maze of torture. The first touch of his hand to Dean’s arm was like waking from a nightmare, and he remembers (though Dean does not) Dean’s animal cry at the sudden contact. He remembers the way Dean clung to him as they traveled upwards, quickly, away from demons and monsters and into the light, where Castiel left him to find his own way home.
It was a prayer from Dean, after a year of sleepless nights and desperate research, that sent him to the very depths of hell, to Lucifer’s cage, that drove him to break in and wrap himself around the crushed and tender thing that was all the remained of Sam Winchester and restore him to his brother.
Dean prays desperately, panicked and nonspecific, words like please and I can’t and anything all jumbled together in a submissive plea, and in those moments he is so vulnerable, so unguarded and raw, that it tugs at Castiel in a tangible and almost compulsory way. He has to respond.
Lately, all of Dean’s prayers are for Sam.
Castiel has seen Dean pray, has actually been in the room. He’s held Sam’s wrists gently but firmly in his hands to stop him from shoving and punching and striking out as Dean wrapped both arms around his chest, and he’s watched Dean’s eyes slide closed and heard his voice as clearly as if he were speaking aloud, no no Sam no please Sam Sammy hey hey please god fuck please Sam, all of which translates to make this right.
He’s tried to heal Sam, but the damage is vast and complex and probably irreparable, and he can’t be sure he wouldn’t do more harm to Sam in the long run. He explains this to Dean, and Dean says things like “what do you mean you can’t?” and throws whatever he has in his hands.
Castiel has devoted all the time he can spare to contemplation of Sam Winchester, forgotten savior, and the man who shepherds and guides him through the storm that is his life. Castiel has found the one thing that can heal them, has taken her hand and led her back to this plane and left her to find her own way home.
He hopes fervently that home is still Sam Winchester.
She came with him willingly, he reminds himself. She came as soon as she heard his name.
But heaven is done with his insubordination and willfulness and heaven is done with him.
Castiel falls to earth in a rush of heat and pain, and when he lands, he is only himself.
***
Sam gave Jess Dean’s phone number “in case of emergency,” which turned out to mean “in case I wake up unable to breathe and you drive me to the emergency room in a blind panic and need someone to reassure you that this is scarier than it looks.” While Sam lay blue and shivering on a gurney, surrounded by paramedics, Jess clung to her phone and listened to the deep, confident voice on the other end, joking and telling her this is fine, this is what you signed up for, this is something that happens to Sam.
When a doctor finally emerged and told her Sam was breathing, Sam would be fine, and she related the news to Dean, his veneer cracked and his breathing became shaky and he whispered, “thank god, thank fucking god, and she understood this panic would be part of life with Sam. And then she went into the hospital room and stood over him while he breathed medicated air and gazed up at her, grateful and trusting and brave, and knew he was worth it.
She dials Dean’s emergency number, her finger shaking on the rotary, and it seems to ring forever. She’s about to give up, hang up and go look for a city when a sleepy, grumpy, familiar voice answers. “Hello? Who the fuck is this?”
“Um,” she stammers, shaken by the abrupt greeting. “Is this, um, Dean? Winchester?”
“Who wants to know? How did you get this number?”
She’s shaking almost too hard to talk. “Um, it’s…it’s Jess.”
There’s a long pause.
Then, “Jess who?”
“Oh, uh, sorry. Moore. Jess Moore. Sam’s….” she trails off. “Are you there?”
He’s silent for a long time, but she hears him breathing, heavy and uneven.
Finally he speaks. “What do you want?”
“I…I’m sorry…”
“What do you want?”
“I’m lost,” she whispers. “I think I…I’ve been sleepwalking or…maybe I’m sick or something, I don’t know what’s going on.” Her voice breaks. “I don’t know where I am and I don’t know how I got here and I can’t…Sam’s phone…I…I don’t know who else to call.”
The checkout guy is staring at her in undisguised fascination. She puts her back to him and curls around the phone.
Dean speaks again, and there’s something different in his voice. “You’re…is this really Jess?”
“Of course,” she sniffles a little. That’s the part he doesn’t believe?
He’s quiet for a few seconds, as though trying to figure something out, and then he says, “when’s my birthday?”
“January twenty-fourth,” she says. “Same as me. We went to that place with margaritas in mason jars last year, with Sam, remember?”
“Last year.”
“I was twenty-one,” she says. “You bought my first drink.”
And then they say together, “First legal drink,” and Dean makes this choked noise she doesn’t understand and says, “Where are you, Jessie?”
She suddenly remembers that he calls her Jessie, and that he is the only person in the world allowed to do that, and feels a rush of affection, of relief, of home.
The clerk rolls his eyes at her when she asks where this place is, and Dean looks it up on a map and wants to talk to the clerk to get directions from the highway. Jess passes the phone over and studies the floor while the guy says things like “not all there” and “dirty,” she’s none of the above, just lonely and scared and confused and Dean is coming, Dean’s going to help.
The clerk passes the phone back over and she takes it in both hands and presses it to her ear like a security blanket.
“Stay there, Jessie,” he says. “Don’t let that asshole run you out. You stay right there, okay?”
“Okay,” she whispers, shaky, ashamed, but so glad he’s coming.
“I’ll be there in about half an hour,” he says, and the line goes dead.
She stands and listens to the dial tone for a long time.
***
Dean barely notices what he’s scrawling on the notepad - an errand, back soon, NyQuil in the cabinet, got my cell - he’s out the door and in the car within a minute flat of hanging up the phone. Jessica fucking Moore is twenty miles down interstate forty, and he’s going to break laws to get to her if necessary.
She’s real. She’s definitely the real thing. She remembered his birthday and the year they celebrated together. She knew his emergency phone number, she’s one of the only people in the world (she’s in the world) who know his number; she’s called him dozens of times to report on the color of Sam’s nails or the state of his appetite, the level of his stress and the rare appearance of his smile. She’s everything Jess should be, and this - this resurrection, this return from the beyond - this is something that happens.
He knows she’s real, and yet he can’t get rid of the doubt in the back of his mind. He can’t let himself believe it’s really her. He grieved when she died, quietly, in secret, never in front of Sam, excusing himself to public restrooms over lunch, stifling sobs into his fist at night. So he’s carrying holy water in his flask and his silver knife strapped to his belt, and he’s prepared to take it to her throat if she isn’t Jessica.
If she isn’t Jessica, if there’s something wrong with her, there is no doubt in his mind that she’s here to hurt Sam somehow, and that is absolutely not going to happen.
He takes the exit ramp and almost rolls right by the gas station. It’s a ramshackle trap even by his standards, small and dirty and tinwalled. A bad place for a pretty, twenty-one year old girl with a time displacement problem to wait alone for a ride.
A very good place for an ambush.
He fingers his knife.
And then she’s there, walking toward him, mop of blond hair falling in her face and getting in her eyes, Jessie, and there’s no way he’ll be able to use it on her. Not unless she attacks him first. She’s real. She is. She fucking has to be.
She’s young, so fucking young, was he ever this young? He recalls her standing next to Sam and looking like she belonged there, and the idea is ridiculous now. Sam’s face floats through his mind, lined with stress and trial and age, and she’s a child by comparison.
“Hey, Dean,” she says, looking up at him.
“Hey, Jess.” How is his voice this steady?
“I’m sorry to call you like this,” she says, all shaky.
“No, don’t worry about it. I’m glad you did.”
She has nothing, no bags, no possessions, but then, why would she? He leads her to the car and she climbs into the passenger seat (Sam’s seat) and sits there wringing her hands in her lap, looking tiny and scared. If she’s not real, she’s an amazing actress.
He doesn’t drive off right away. He’s not bringing her one inch closer to Sam until he’s sure.
Her mind seems to be running parallel to his. “Is…do you know where Sam is?”
Dean nods. “He’s with me.”
“Still?”
“Yeah,” Dean says heavily. “Still.”
“His phone is disconnected. Why is his phone disconnected?”
“That’s…long story.” He hands her the flask. “Have some water.”
She accepts it without question and takes a hearty and inconsequential swallow. “Thanks.”
And then - because there’s no easy way, no way that’s even acceptable, to do this, he takes the knife from his belt and reaches over and nicks her forearm shallowly and nothing happens. She cries out quietly and looks at him and he mutters “shit, sorry, accident” and stows the knife in the glove box like that’s what he meant to do all along, and his mind turns queasily inside out at the implications.
This is really Jess.
It’s enough to get him moving.
She’s silent until they’re on the highway, hands twisting in her skirt, bare feet scuffing on the floor mat. He glances at her out of the corner of his eye and tries to think of what to say.
But it’s Jess who speaks first. “What happened to me?”
“What do you mean?” he stalls.
She pushes her hair out of her face in a messy clump. “Do I…should I go to the hospital? I don’t understand how I got here.” Fuck, she’s scared, she’s shivering.
“You’re okay,” he says, just saying words. “Don’t worry.”
“ How do you know?”
He looks over at her. She’s gazing up at him with the same fearful expression she used to wear when Sam was sick, petrified and silently begging to be convinced that everything is fine. So he swallows his doubt - this might not be okay, this might be a harbinger of doom, this might be the absolute worst thing that could have happened - and says “trust me.”
Because she needs to hear something, and there’s nothing he can tell her that she would understand, that wouldn’t overwhelm her. He can’t tell her she’s almost certainly been dead for seven years, that he doesn’t know why she’s back, that these things always come at a cost and sometimes that price is too steep to be borne. He touches the top of her wrist gently, tries to be reassuring, reminds himself that she’s here whole alive real.
And he glances at her, her eyes wide but relaxed, her fingers curling upward to touch his, and realizes that, just like the nights he forced out laughs and held himself steady with both hands and told her Sam turning blue under the paramedics’ hands was nothing to worry about, she does trust him.
***
The first thing Castiel notices about mortality is a gaping emptiness he can’t articulate in his mind, a sense of loss so profound that it keeps him pressed to the ground and gasping. He tries for a moment to imagine what Dean’s first minutes in hell must have been like.
Definitely not this. Definitely worse than this. Hell is flame and pain and despair and this is just empty. It’s unfair to make the comparison. But just for a minute, he can’t help it.
Then he gets to his feet, and he’s flooded with a sense of release, of freedom. Humanity has been thrust upon him, but it’s exhilarating, it’s a prize, it’s a quiet retirement complete with the undeniable benefit of free will, an ideal for which he’s fought and fallen. He’s lost the way to heaven, but he’s won this intangible privilege that’s the cornerstone of humankind.
And then the other unavoidable truth about humanity smacks into him like a two-by-four, and he understands in a deep, visceral way that he is going to die, and it’s terrifying. Castiel has been watching humans live and die since the dawn of man. Now he will spend a few years - so very few - among them, and then he too will be snuffed from existence.
It’s a lot to come to grips with in ten seconds.
Dean Winchester - impossible, immutable Dean - is a blip on the radar, a flash in the pan. The fact that he’s a bright light in Castiel’s clouded mind doesn’t change the fact that he is new, and he is so, so temporary. He is to be cared for, watched after, guided, and then released. Losing Dean eventually has always been part of Castiel’s plan.
Losing himself has not.
He draws breath and his lungs fill with oxygen and life. It’s heady. Exciting. The sun beats down on his skin and he can actually feel it absorbing into his body. He is very, very alive. He remembers Dean’s utter disdain for heaven on the occasions he’s been there and thinks maybe he can understand.
How can he relate to disdain for heaven?
He’s so human. Already.
Everything is going to be different now.
But he’s tired and disoriented and he’s never felt like this before, and it’s confusing and painful. Equally painful is the gnawing in his gut that he suspects is hunger. He’s always assumed he understood hunger and exhaustion - the desire for food and rest; he’s familiar with desire - but he hadn’t anticipated that it would be this physical, that he’d be so utterly incapable of putting the need out of his mind. He needs food. He needs rest. He needs them now.
He can’t fly to Dean. He can’t even hear Dean anymore. His head is quiet.
And then he’s losing his breath suddenly, and he falls to the ground gasping and shaking, because he can’t hear Dean and Dean is his charge. He can’t get to Dean. He could be hurt.
He could die.
It’s never mattered this much before.
Dean could die, and Sam could die, and Castiel would be left here human and alone and waiting for the clock to run out. Is that selfish? He wants his friends to live. It’s not just that he’s afraid to be alone. But he is so afraid to be alone. And fear is so overwhelming and new.
Maybe this is what losing your mind feels like. Maybe insanity is the price of being cast out of heaven. Maybe maybe maybe. Everything is uncertain now.
But somewhere down this highway are the only two people who know him and the only place in creation he can call home.
Castiel walks.
***
He stops the car outside a cozy looking cabin. She likes it, and she thinks Sam probably likes it too, and that’s comforting. He’s probably right inside. He’ll hug her and scold her for getting lost and hold her until she calms down, and this is going to be fine.
But then Dean stops her hand as she reaches to unfasten her seat belt. “We need to talk.”
And did he really have to say that? Did he really have to use the four scariest words in the English language? “About what.”
Dean exhales heavily. She can actually feel him piecing together the next sentence. She waits.
“Look at me,” he says, finally. “Don’t I look different to you?”
She looks at him, really looks, for the first time since he picked her up, and oh, how did she not see it?
Dean Winchester is old. His face is a map of years, covered in unfamiliar lines and shadows. His eyes are the wrong shape. His mouth is thinner. He is unquestionably the same man, but something is different, something is wrong wrong wrong.
She has a sudden urge to flee.
“Jess,” he says (was his voice always so gravelly?) “Jess. I don’t want to tell you this. Fuck, I don’t want you to…you shouldn’t have to know this.”
“You’re scaring me,” she whispers.
And then Dean holds her shoulders, holds her face, and says, “Jessie, honey, you died,” and she fucking remembers. Fire and fear and a familiar face twisted horribly and yesyesyes she died, she burned, and the last thing she saw was Sam looking up at her and screaming and screaming, and the last thought that went through her mind was baby, no.
Dean’s turning her roughly away from him, pushing her down and out of the car, and a moment later she hears the sounds she’s making and feels the bile rise in her throat and understands why. He gathers her hair in one hand and rubs her back with the other and she heaves and heaves until her muscles relax and all that’s left is sobbing. He collects her into his arms and holds her against his chest and she cries and nothing in this world makes sense.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry. I know.”
Seconds minutes hours forever go by.
Jessica Moore is alive.
Eventually, that reality breaks through the shock and horror and she wipes her cheeks on the rough flannel of Dean’s shirt without thinking, then touches the damp spot and whispers, “sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he says, like he means everything and not just the shirt.
And then he starts talking and doesn’t stop for a long time.
At first it sounds like a fairy tale, a story of adventure and bravery and wonderful hijinks in which he and Sam are the heroes, and they always win. He talks about werewolves and ghosts and demons and creatures she’s never heard of like they’re normal, everyday things. He tells her Sam is a hero, Sam has saved so many people, Sam never really lets go of the people he’s not able to save.
Me.
He nods hard once, like he heard the thought.
The story turns nightmarish at a place Dean describes as a ghost town, and Jess pictures one of those swinging stoplights on a string, busted and dysfunctional, and definitely very much does not picture a knife sinking into her Sam’s back, Sam falling to his knees, blood trickling out of his mouth, Sam baby no.
He tells her demons are real, and angels are real, and both can return someone from death if the circumstances are right, which they almost never are, but if you are crazy enough and desperate enough you can break the rules.
Sam is alive, he says.
Sam is alive, and so is she.
“Someone wanted you back so fucking much that the universe couldn’t keep you down,” he says, and holds onto her so tightly.
I’ve been dead for seven years.
“Was I in heaven, Dean?” she asks, because she must have been somewhere, she couldn’t have stopped existing, if she didn’t exist she couldn’t have come back, right?
He smiles and takes the keys from the ignition and says “where else?”
***
And god, shit, it’s not until they’re standing right outside the door and she’s trembling in anticipation beside him that he remembers how he left Sam. How is he going to explain this?
“Are we going to go in?”
There are things Dean isn’t going to talk about. There are things Sammy gets to decide whether he wants to tell people or not.
“Just…” he sighs. “It’s been a long time, you know? He’s not exactly like you remember.”
“I know,” she says stoutly, confident in a way that just highlights her youth. Whatever’s on the other side of the door, she’s ready to face it, she’s sure. Christ, what is this going to do to her?
What is this going to do to Sam?
If there’s one thing Sammy doesn’t need, it’s an upheaval like this.
But it would be fucking criminal to keep them apart.
The best option seems to be fixing her a meal and leaving her in the kitchen while he goes up and prepares Sam to see her, but then he pushes open the door and Sam’s there. Out of bed. Making coffee.
And Dean’s first feeling is of fucking annoyance that his brother’s feeling okay again. He can’t stand himself sometimes.
Sam turns around and starts to say something and his voice turns into a stifled cry in his throat. Dean wraps an arm around Jess, maybe to reassure her. Maybe just to make sure she stays.
“Sam.” He holds his hand out hand out, palms inward, slightly upturned. Nonthreatening Inviting. “Something kind of great happened. Don’t be scared, okay?”
“This isn’t a hallucination,” he says, eyes flickering from Dean to Jess and back. “It’s not, right? Dean? This doesn’t…this isn’t a hallucination, right?” This is a check, he’s just checking. He knows.
“Hallucination?” Jess squeaks.
Dean tightens his fingers on her shoulder. “No, it isn’t, Sammy.”
His eyes are on Jess like he’s memorizing her. “What is it?”
“We aren’t sure yet. Nothing bad.”
Sam’s gaze flashes to him. “When has it ever been nothing bad?”
“This time. This time it’s nothing bad.”
“No.”
“Sammy, I checked her, I did everything, it’s really her.”
“Dean…no.” He shakes his head vigorously, denying, unaccepting. He wheezes. "No no no."
“I know, Sam,” He catches his brother’s gaze and holds it. “I fucking know, okay? But it is. It’s her.”
He doesn’t say anything. His mouth opens and closes a few times, shaky, afraid, that wheeze, and Dean can fucking see hope trying to take hold. "Breathe, Sam."
“Who does he think I am?” Jess whispers, high pitched.
Dean keeps his eyes on Sam. “It’s her, Sammy. Look at me. It’s Jess. I promise you.”
Sam nods and nods and nods and looks at her and gasps, “Jess?”
“Sam,” she gets out. Her voice is tearful, and Dean thinks of the sloppy shy kid she loved and wonders if she’s mourning that loss. Looking at the broken giant in front of them, Dean mourns a little himself.
There’s a knock on the door.
Sam startles like a deer. “Who’s that?”
The knock comes again and Dean’s hand goes reflexively to his waist before his mind catches up and informs him that he doesn’t wear a gun around the house anymore, he’s retired, nothing is trying to kill him, nothing is trying to hurt Sam. A knock on the door is -
Well.
Let’s not pretend there’s anything routine about a knock at the door.
Jess’s eyes go wide when Dean grabs his gun from the rack by the door, how long before every single thing won’t be a shock to someone? He pushes her gently back toward Sam and Sam catches her reflexively and pulls her toward the living room, but he’s on autopilot and he’s holding her like she’s a stranger.
Dean opens the door and levels the gun at nothing.
He looks around and leans out through the door frame and almost trips on the exhausted figure kneeling on the porch. Cas.
Cas doesn’t knock.
Cas isn’t exhausted.
Jessica is alive and Castiel doesn’t knock and they aren’t connected, except they must be, because things like this don’t just happen, they don’t, and then Cas looks up at Dean and there’s something missing in his eyes and there is always a price.
***
“You did this,” Dean says hoarsely.
Castiel has been holding this fact in his mind (find Dean find Sam Jessica’s alive) and nods. Yes, I did this.
“How?” Dean asks in this way that makes it sounds like he needs reminding, like this is something they’ve talked about.
“It was much easier,” he says softly. “Heaven’s not a dangerous place. I was supposed to be there. I just walked in and walked out with her.”
“Why?”
Why?
He doesn’t remember.
He was sure. He remembers he was sure. He knew this was the right thing for Sam, the right thing for Dean, there was happiness ahead and this girl was the key and he knew it, he did, but he forgot to remember.
“It’s the right thing,” he says, and looks up at Dean helplessly. “Believe me, Dean, I would explain if I could…it’s the right thing.”
He’s on his knees and it feels like forgive me.
Forgive me but trust me this is right.
“You can’t just give him his college girlfriend back,” Dean says, his jaw working. “Too much has happened. He’s not that guy now. And god, Cas, what about her? She was probably happy.”
“She wanted to come.” He isn’t sure why he knows this, but he does. She wanted to. He didn’t force her. He invited her. She chose.
“You have to put her back.”
“Dean, I can’t.”
“Why, Cas?”
He lifts his palms helplessly. “You know why.”
And then Dean’s hauling him to his feet, growling and spitting in his face like an animal, “You fucking bastard, Cas, how could you?” and he leans into it, Dean’s arms go around him, and more than food or sleep or that awful emptiness where he’s lost something important, he’s been starving for this.
“Thank you,” Dean whispers. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou. I can’t believe you. What are we going to do?”
“It’s going to be good,” Castiel says. “It really is.”
“It’s too much,” Dean isn’t letting go of him. Dean doesn’t hug this long. Dean is overwhelmed. Castiel wraps an arm around him and the hug changes and he’s holding Dean up.
They go in and sit at the breakfast table, Castiel and his charge and his charge’s charges, and Sam and Jess look at each other with alternating awe and suspicion but that ends, he knows it does, there is happiness in this. It’s just that he’s lost the map.
Dean fills a plate with food - scrambled eggs with onion and cheese, bacon, sausage, toast with butter and jam, melons and grapes - and Castiel eats everything and savors it and is happy to be human and alive and here with these people, this family.
They won’t be right for a long time. Sam is still in pieces, and Jess is confused, and Dean will worry about them too much to notice himself, and Castiel is fairly sure he’s lost part of his identity in the fall. There will be bad days. But there will be good ones.
Everything is going to be fine.