The Last Guys on the Bench // Part 4

[inplayruns]

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Dean takes a mental inventory of the situation. Sam is currently hugging the life out of him, and Dean should probably tell him to stop because God knows what kind of condition his own body’s in, but all he can do is wind his arms back because at least they’re working and more importantly, it’s Sammy and the guy’s alive. Cas is already standing up, hands buried in his coat pockets, a benevolent smile across his face. A couple of people Dean thinks he actually sorta half-recognizes but can’t place right now are standing around, only, wait -

“Tessa?!” he almost yells, even though Sam’s still mostly cradling him. “Shit, are we all -”

“No.” She shakes her head, quickly. “I helped get you back, but I’m busy enough that I have to go now.” Well, that’s reassuring, that a reaper’s almost too busy to help anyone out. “Welcome back, Dean. Purgatory again, really? No one’s that lucky. Try not to run into me any time soon.”

“Will do,” he murmurs back, mostly stunned. Purgatory again? He doesn’t have time to think about that, though, because his mind’s still whirring with everything else.

Sam - oh, God, it’s really Sam, no matter how much time has passed he’s alive and he’s maybe a little older and thank God the dork got a haircut, but it’s Sam - turns, not letting his hand move off Dean’s back, and smiles at Tessa. “Thanks for having a soft spot for my brother.”

She only nods. “I’d destroy that summoning material if I were you. My boss might come poking around otherwise. And don’t think that soft spot means you’re getting out of anything if it’s your time.”

And she’s gone, practically gliding out the door of the - okay, they’re in a cabin, Dean would guess. The little crowd inside gets the fuck out of her way.

There are a few beats of silence. It’s not awkward, though, it’s anything but that. It’s like when Dean’s old crappy tapes would be skipping while they were in the Impala together, and he’d grunt and smack at the dashboard with the meat of his hand. Sam would just laugh, even if Dean didn’t actually say anything. “Sammy,” he manages to say at last, voice choked up in his throat and dry at once. “Sam, you got us out -”

“I had to.” And geez, Dean’s voice sounded wrecked, sure, but he sounded sweet as Page doing “Stairway to Heaven” when you compare him to Sam. Sam’s eyes are all watery, too, the dweeb. “I wasn’t gonna leave you there - you too, Cas -”

“It’s appreciated,” Cas chimes in, all calm like Sam told them he’d be running down to the grocery store for milk. Dean hasn’t smiled this wide in - ever, he can feel it tugging down his ears and pulling his forehead taut, it hurts and it’s good.

“And it wasn’t just me. Everyone helped me get the supplies to summon something like Tessa, who could get you out… and oh, crap, Claire was really important, you remember her?”

A college-age blonde girl wearing a red zip-up hoodie and worn jeans waves at them just once, stiff and precise. It’s not exactly friendly. Dean nods and swallows hard, because he remembers the Novaks, of course, but Claire was just a kid back then. She didn’t have the weathered look of a hunter, not like she does now. That glare’s directed at Castiel, to boot. Dean doesn’t blame her, but oh, that’s just great.

If Dean knows Sam, and he really really does, Sam is probably not actually oblivious to the tension between Claire and the angel currently wearing a suit that’s an identical twin to her dad; he’s just too happy to do anything but barrel on with his explanation. “Yeah, angels and their vessels have, like, a connection apparently?”

“Thanks for that, actually,” Claire chimes in. Her eyes are still too serious, but Dean can tell she means what she’s saying. “I was kind of - losing it - when I started to get flashes of Purgatory, and that was what led me here.” She shrugs. “Not too many safe places left, after all.”

Dean really, really wants to be unabashedly happy about being back on Earth again, but the words Claire uses are, well, worrying to say the least. “Losing it? Safe places?” He whirls around to Sam. “What - how long have I been gone?” His eyes flick to Castiel, to see if he has any idea, but he’s only looking at Dean. “What is here? Is there something I should know about?”

The ecstatic look on Sam’s face darkens. Fuck. It’s never that easy. “It’s been maybe two and a half years? It’s December 2014, and we’re all holed up in this place called Camp Chitaqua -”

At that, Dean just goes stiff. He never told Sam too many details about Zachariah’s little fucked-up guided tour in the future - the past, by now, and this is gonna hurt his brain if he thinks about it for too long - but this brings it all roaring back. It’s a momentary shock, though, because Sam is here and Cas isn’t strung-out and hopeless. It might be 2014, and they might all be stuck in a shitty world in Camp Chitaqua, but they can make it better this time. Sam looks older, but not beaten yet.

“What? Risa gave it that name, back in the beginning, she’s one of the other people who runs the camp. You’ll probably like her, Dean -”

Risa? Yeah, he already knows that he likes her, if the alternate 2014 was any indication. Dean’s gonna need one hell of an update.

*

It takes Sam a while to clear everyone out and explain.

Dick Roman - or, the head Leviathan wearing Dick Roman, whatever - was dead, but he’d left most of his horde behind. Without their leader, they could be killed now, and Dean lets one eyebrow raise up as if controlled by a string when Sam shows him the group of bright neon Super Soakers lined up neatly against one of the walls of the cabin. “Kinda badass,” Dean has to admit when Sam shows him the machetes, though. A lot of them are splattered with black blood.

Thing is, Roman might be gone, and the Leviathan scattered and unable to pull off the full-on genocide, but the corn syrup plan worked way too well. Too much of America is as good as wiped out. “Corn syrup zombies everywhere,” in Sam’s words, even if somewhere deep down there’s a little prickle of excitement inside him. Like, if they weren’t trying to fight the motherfuckers, he’d wanna study ‘em. Nerd.

“Sarah took these pictures, and this was a while ago,” Sam says, grimly now, shoving a photo album over. Almost 2015, and they’re still using these giant clunky photo albums, the edges curling and going yellow. “She likes Polaroids, I guess. Old-fashioned over some things.”

“Sarah?”

Sam totally brightens up at that, and if the moment wasn’t so serious, Dean would totally roll out the epic teasing ‘cuz Sammy likes a girl. “Sarah Blake, remember? Ran into her during that haunted painting case all those years ago.”

Funny enough, Dean does remember it, probably because he very pointedly recalls telling Sam to marry that girl. “Oh yeah,” he says, letting a little grin dare to flicker across his face.

It fades when he sees the pictures, though. Dean doesn’t even recognize some of the figures in the shots as human, at first. They’re bloated lumps of skin and ripped and ill-fitting clothing, flopped on their backs across lawns that are overgrown and choked with weeds and dead leaves. “Shit,” is all he can murmur.

“The towns are awful,” Sam explains, and it’s only because Dean knows him so well - they might’ve been separated for years, but he’s always going to know Sam better than anyone else, it’s sunk into his blood and woven into his DNA - that he notices the half-tremble in Sam’s otherwise hard tone. “You need to get your bearings back before I take you there or anything like that.”

“Anyone else there that we know?”

“Bunch of people, actually. Sarah, obviously, and you saw Claire already. Her mom’s, um, pretty gone, though. Remember Tamara, Bobby’s old friend from the case with the Seven Deadly Sins? Her, too. Jody Mills is in charge of the parts of camp that I’m not, I guess.” Dean has to smile at that; he always liked her. “Gabby cloaks us and when she’s got time she hacks all the major sites to try and warn people, but in most cases it’s already too late.”

“Gabby?”

“Oh, yeah.” Sam offers up an apologetic half-smile. “Back when you met her, she was still going by Charlie.”

“I thought she was getting away and saving her own ass. Not that I blame her.”

Sam shakes his head. “She did, for a while. But if you’re out there, and you’re not a corn syrup zombie, you either join up with the network somehow or - you’re not free for very long. Kevin made it out, too.”

“Gotta be useful to have a psychic, right?”

Sam shrugs, and God Dean had forgotten about the stupidest things he did, like the exaggerated flex of his lips when he did that. Even though he’s been dumped right back into a total shithole, gratitude twists through him. “He’s a good kid, but his psychic abilities are kinda limited. Not like he can tell us who’s gonna win in the end or anything, or if we’re all ultimately, you know, doomed.”

“Not that anyone telling you that you were doomed has stopped you in the past,” Cas chimes in, wryly.

“Cas,” Sam greets, smiling a little uneasily. “How are you? Thanks for uh, looking after Dean.”

“Can look after myself,” Dean mumbles under his breath.

Cas appears to consider this question. “I’m well,” he comes up with, eventually. “It was not an issue. Dean cared for me, too.”

Dean’s mouth is contorting itself into a weird shape trying to figure out how to respond to that, when he hears the door open and a female voice purrs, “Well isn’t that just precious. My two favorite merry wanderers!”

Dean looks up. He’s never seen this chick before, young and short with a thin face, long nose, and sharp haircut, but he sure as hell knows that wicked grin on her face and her tone. “Meg?” he asks.

“Got worried I wouldn’t see you again, Dean,” she trills, and it’s disturbing as Hell - ha, bad word choice - that she can look so different now, but have the exact same stride and quirk to her lips. “I’d gotten disturbingly attached.”

“What happened to your old body? Who the hell are you possessing now?”

She pouts. “I think hello is how people normally greet old friends. I’ll give you a free pass because it’s been a while. But while you and Clarence over there were busy playing hero and off whacking Dick, I got caught by Crowley’s men. Smoking out was the only way I escaped. Don’t worry, Allie over here was pretty much entirely doped up on corn syrup by the time I found her. Ask your brother if you doubt me.”

The whole situation reminds Dean way too much of Ruby, which makes his stomach roll even though there’s just about nothing in it, but Sam nods.

“I’m not even fighting here most of the time,” she adds. “Got my own battles in Hell to deal with. There’s a reason Crowley’s found sweet little Canada much harder to take over than he ever thought it would be.” She smirks at Dean like she’s awaiting his judgment, not that Meg of all people would give a shit what he thinks.

“God, you’re like a cockroach,” is all Dean says in return.

Meg folds her arms as her eyebrows go way up. “Real rich coming from you, Dean. At least I don’t need cute little seraphs to lend me a hand and haul me up every time I fall down. Speaking of.”

Dean’s stomach absolutely does not roll harder when Meg turns to Cas and actually beams. Her last vessel was all soft curves; this one is lean and hard, angular in her shoulders and elbows. It doesn’t make Dean feel any better.

“Heya, Cas! Bet you were lonely.”

“Dean is excellent company,” Cas responds, sounding bewildered, and if Dean has to smother a smile with the back of his hand he hopes no one notices. Ha. “I did miss my favorite lovely caretaker.” The smile absolutely does not drop off his face like someone heaved a boulder from the top of a mountain. “Some would find it funny, that I came to care for such an abomination.”

Meg glances over at Dean, pointedly. “I’d think you’d be better at your dirty talk by now, Castiel.”

“Excuse me?” At Dean’s words, Sam shuffles on his feet. Like he doesn’t want to interfere with any of this, but he will if it starts getting out of hand and all this verbal headbutting turns a bit more literal.

That doesn’t happen, though. All that does is the glance Meg is shooting Dean turns into her usual smirk. “Oh, what happens in Purgatory stays in Purgatory? I get it.”

“I don’t -”

“Okay,” Sam interrupts. “Dean, I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy at the idea of working with Meg, either -”

“Oh that’s the thanks I get, Sam -”

“But she’s been really, really helpful all these years.”

“Let him keep my old girlfriend’s knife and everything,” Meg adds. Old girlfriend’s - knife - and Dean has to be making an interesting face as he parses out that turn of phrase, because she snaps, “Oh, don’t look so shocked.”

Meg seems wearier than she ever did before, when that obnoxious little smile of hers was constantly spread out over her face. It’s still there, it’s just a tired smile now. And yet the kind of hostility that constantly crackled between Sam and Meg is gone. Even after all that shit with the possession years ago, Sam seems okay with her here. Dean’s just back from Purgatory; this is a lot of shit to get used to. “When’d you get so…”

“What, nice?” She spits the word out like someone stuffed rainbows and love down her throat.

Dean snorts out loud at that. “No,” he grunts. “Long-suffering. Yeah, that’s the word.”

Meg snorts right back at him. “Dean, I know you were having a good time making the next great homoerotic buddy comedy over in some other dimension -” What? Dean thinks, and Sam totally bites his lip like he’s trying not to laugh at that, the little bitch - “But for the last three years, I’ve been working to try and save your world in between fun little battles with demons I used to call my family, when I don’t even like it all that much. And, oh yeah, every day I get to hear it from people, even people I like, that they’d murder my ass in any other situation. Between Leviathans and humans, don’t get me wrong, I chose the lesser of two evils, but you guys are pretty shitty, too. At the best of times, I’m a demon. Not Miss Congeniality.”

She brushes off the front of her jeans, and more or less marches away. The door rattles on its hinges when she slams it. Okay. Point taken.

Dean’s pretty sure there was a time when he was outright terrified of Meg. Like, she sicced hellhounds on him and laughed about it. Now he’s pretty sure the only thing he fears from her at the moment is getting snarked to death. Maybe teased.

Times change. Angels fall. Demons rise up from the earth to help save humanity. Dean? He’s still here, or rather here again, and still pretty unsure of what the fuck he’s doing.

“Welcome home, guys,” Sam offers, weakly.

*

“It’s good to be here again,” Cas tells him, and ever since Lucifer crawled into his brain and got expelled through the power of too many questions about obnoxious pop music, at least he’s gotten better at smiling like a normal person. Not that Cas is in any way normal, or a person.

Dean whirls his head toward Cas. “You’re gonna stay?”

“Of course.” His facial expression doesn’t even change, like he doesn’t realize how gigantic, how terrifying, those words are. Dean has to practically wrench his gaze away.

Sam says there are some open cabins - “however many you guys need,” he adds, looking kind of sheepish, and Dean just wrinkles his brow at him and says two because, obviously - but they end up crashing at Sam’s because he’s got a spare cot.

“I can put up a curtain or something if you want,” Sam offers, but Dean shakes his head.

“Don’t need it. You okay, Cas?”

He nods. “I’m fine. I’ll rest here overnight, as well.”

Dean pauses at that. “You don’t need to sleep, do you? I mean, you’re still an angel -”

“Yes, Dean, I am still an angel,” Cas grumbles, with an expression on his face that suggests he might immediately take up smiting just to prove it. “But occasionally it’s good to… rest.”

“Occasionally, like…”

“Like when we’ve just escaped from Purgatory after several years there, Earth time, and I am not planning to return to Heaven.” And, you know, if not for the ever-present whip-crack of power in the air whenever Cas is around, Dean would be pretty sure Cas isn’t actually an angel any more, because otherwise he’d be a steaming pile of ash on the ground at Cas’ tone alone. “That’s a rather opportune time, I would think.”

Sam actually gets out half a laugh before he quickly - wisely - smothers it, the bitch. “Welcome back, Cas.”

If Sam and Dean’s beds are too close together, if Dean could roll over to the edge of the cot and stretch his arm out and touch Sam’s, Dean isn’t gonna complain. He keeps waking up a few times in the middle of the night and God, his eyes have to readjust to the darkness, they’re just not used to it, but Sam’s still there and so is the pillow against Dean’s own head.

Dean doesn’t know what time he wakes up for good, or how long he slept, but he thinks it’s early and it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours. The sky’s still dark, at least. In Sammy’s too-big pajama pants, drawstring cinched tight, and a t-shirt, he heads on outside.

It’s not quite sunrise, but Dean’s seen enough strange hours of the night to know the sky’s gonna start turning over to pink and gold sometime soon. He breathes out as he sits down, on the solid, real rock of the steps of the cabin; it’s cold under his ass, and when he breathes out he can see his breath, and he’s absolutely loving it. The sky is going to change.

Before it does, there’s a nudge at his elbow, and Cas is sitting next to him. He’s shed the coat for now, wearing his still-pristine scrubs under the olive overshirt Dean had pulled off and balled into a corner of Sam’s cabin. Dean is pretty sure he’s gonna burn all the shit he had with him in Purgatory, minus the fancy-ass knife, and the leather jacket that Cas hands over to him wordlessly.

“Sleeping’s weird right now, man,” Dean admits, not facing Cas as he shrugs into the jacket. “Time is weird.”

“I sympathize.”

They don’t say anything else, just shiver together and watch the sunrise. The cold of the morning is a welcome cold, even if it means another day out trying to kill evil black slime monsters and save the world. When Sam comes out, already in fatigues, he just nods at them, and the sky, going a brilliant orange.

The only color in Purgatory was all that red, eyes and the occasional patch of blood-soaked dirt. Everything else faded to black and white after a while, with a flash of tan. Dean wonders if he’s breathing too hard, because it feels like he’s never going to be able to take in anything like this again.

*

For a while, Dean’s gigantic bitch of a brother practically locks them in the cabin while he runs off on missions. “Minor missions, right?!” Dean barks, every time, because no way he just came back to watch some bastard Leviathan, or one of the demons that doesn’t listen to Meg, find Sammy and - and he forces the images out of his head, because he has to or he’ll fucking glue himself to Sam when he goes out there -

“Yes, Dean.” He’s gonna smack Sam for that eye-roll later.

It turns out Cas didn’t lose his love for board games, and Sam somehow got a whole shelf of ‘em. Dean shoves Sorry! in the back because he’s not quite ready for that; he pulls out Monopoly instead, grinning. “Did they have this, at…” He doesn’t finish his question by saying the hospital.

“No.” Cas looks at the box in his hands with open curiosity, before he returns his gaze to Dean’s face. When Dean puts the box on the table in front of him and opens it up, Cas grabs the money in his fists, crumples it up and lets it fall out onto the table. “I don’t understand this game.”

Dean rolls his eyes, though he tries to hide it best he can. This has gotta go better than playing Apples to Apples with the guy, at least. Probably wouldn’t even know Helen Keller always wins.

When Sam comes back, he brings food with him when he can find it. Dean didn’t realize how skinny he got until he actually puts on the clothes Sam gave him, which Dean recognizes as his own from before he got sucked into Purgatory; they’re uncomfortably baggy everywhere, now. He has to pull his belt as tight as it goes, and there’s still a gap of skin between his shirt and pants where his hipbones stick out when he stretches up.

“Dunno what’s good for you yet,” Sam says, wary, passing him a large plate. There’s whole wheat bread on it, spotted with butter here and there. “This should be okay.”

“Thanks, mom,” Dean grumbles, but he’s gotta look at the floor right away because he can’t meet anyone’s eyes after saying that.

Sarah comes by every now and then, and she’s got her hair in this efficient bob now as opposed to braids or the fancy updo but she still laughs hard, and the light hasn’t yet gone out of her eyes. “Sam told about all the stuff you guys went through, you know,” she tells Dean, one day. Dean’s not sure if she means all the stuff or, you know, all the stuff. There are many versions of the story Sam could’ve told. “I mean, you met me while you two were checking out haunted paintings and now…”

Dean just shrugs. He feels shitty whenever Sarah comes by, and then there’s a double punch of hard guilt. It’s that megawatt grin of hers. Sure, life sucks and she knows that, but she’s smart and resourceful and is gonna make the best of it; Dean hasn’t been living in this world for any time at all, really, and he’s the one talking in single syllables and constantly grumpy. Sometimes, he’ll reach out and flatten his palm against whatever part of Sammy or Cas he can reach, just to know they’re there. Neither of them blinks at it, honestly.

“I got used to it, I guess.” He doesn’t have it in him to smile.

*

The nightmares come back.

Not Hell, and thank God for the little things, though those weren’t so much nightmares as too-fucking-vivid memories. It’s Purgatory this time, and it makes no sense at all because he was in Purgatory and it was nothing like that, but he wakes up with his chest heaving and sweat matting his forehead anyway.

There are the dreams where every monster he’s ever sent to its bitter end, and some he hasn’t, creep out from behind the trees and rip him limb from limb. It doesn’t even hurt, it just feels like dissolving, but he still wakes up more wrecked than usual. His mom appears and holds out her hands to him, only she’s got claws that tangle inside his skin, and her smile is a wolf’s. He’s surrounded by demons, only they’re not attacking, and it takes him too many hours of plunging through the darkness to realize that’s because he’s one of them and just as thirsty to rip the whole goddamn place apart as they are.

“You’re going to have to choose,” Alastair tells him in another dream, twig-thin arms curled around the shoulders of Sammy and Mom. “Take one, or I’ll have my fun with both.”

Dean wakes up, and bolts to the bathroom. He spends a good half hour throwing up.

When he finally slumps back against the wall, Cas is standing there. “Uh,” Dean sputters. Fuck, his throat hurts. He forgot how brutal that shit was. “Did you - wanna use -” Stupid question, of course.

“No,” Cas returns, with a tone that suggests he knew just how very dumb that question was, but he’s not going to further damage Dean’s ego by saying it.

“Told you to stay out of my friggin’ head,” Dean half-snarls, because the way Alastair turned that snake grin first to his brother, then to his mom, then to him is still boiling hot inside him. Cas can’t see that and hope to understand.

“You need sleep,” Cas returns, tartly. “You told me that once yourself.”

Dean gets his ass up off the floor. Cas is intimidating enough when they’re both standing up, even if his vessel’s shorter. Dean grunts, “So let me get back to it,” as he brushes by him on the way out.

Whatever Cas does, the awful nightmares don’t return to him. It’s just blessed, blank sleep. When he wakes up the next day, the sun’s shining bright through the window, probably late afternoon.

“Thanks,” he tells Cas. A stiff nod is his only reply. The nightmares don’t come back.

part 5 >>