Chapter Text
The weird thing about dying is that you never think you're actually going to die.
You might feel it, might even overreact and say your last goodbyes, but it's always hard to grasp the idea that your life is about to end.
In the end, everyone's scared. Some pray, some cry, some give into the fear of the unknown and go fully into panic mode. But that wasn't Dean's case, no. Dean Winchester knew very well what was waiting for him on the other side. He's been through them all, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory. He lived it. He was ready.
If anything, Dean felt more angry than scared while he took his final breaths. Angry that he died such a stupid death, angry that he wouldn't get to live the rest of his life in peace in the world he saved. Angry he wouldn't get to see his brother get married and have kids. Angry he'd die without ever trying to rescue Cas and get him out of the empty.
Cas. God. He was dying before he could ever see Cas again, before he could tell him off for dying like that, for making that deal, for sacrificing himself again.
Dean was dying before he could tell Cas how he felt.
And yeah. Dean was going to heaven — hopefully . He might just find a way to rescue Cas while he's up there. Hell, he might even meet Cas there if Jack's faster than him, but still.
Those were all things that Dean wanted to do in life. Things he wanted to do while he's alive and breathing. He wants to get Cas out of that shit hole, wants to take him to the beach, maybe some other place that was bright and sunny. He wants to teach Cas how to dance, how to cook, wants to watch his favorite movies with him again, wants to make him laugh until his stomach hurts.
Dean wanted to grow old with him. Wanted to hold his hand on the street, to kiss him whenever he felt like it. He wanted to live the rest of his life with Cas by his side.
But Dean's time had run out. There was no coming back from it, no undoing it. No bonus episodes or magically borrowed time able to save him. He's going to die.
This is it, this is finally it, he thinks.
It's the end for him.
His head falls on Sam's shoulder, a tear rolls down his cheek, and then everything goes numb.
–
When Dean opens his eyes again, he thinks he's in hell for half a second.
He's lying down on a crappy mattress, with a piece of wood poking at his lower back. He's staring at the moldy ceiling, a chunk of it gone like a meteor had passed through it. The whole place smells of trash and piss and for some reason, it feels familiar.
Why the fuck does it feel familiar?
Dean sits up in one go, hands desperately patting down the front of his torso and then his back, searching for a sign of the crater that was ripping him open not even five seconds ago. He pulls his hands back and gasps when he sees them clean. Not a single drop of blood. He lifts his shirt to assess the damage, to look for a scar, something, at least.
There's nothing. His skin is crystal clean. No rebar damage in sight.
"What the hell…" Dean murmurs, getting up slowly as if he expected a bomb to go out at any second. He takes another look around, more attentive this time. There was some graffiti on the walls, or on what's left of them.
The room’s door is missing, along with any other furniture besides the bed. There’s no sound coming from the hallway, nothing that indicates someone else besides him in the building.
He takes a few careful steps towards the window, pushing the blinders open with two of his fingers to take a look at the street. The view of the world outside was just as messy as the room he woke up in.
The roads were deserted, piled up with cars rusting away on every corner, every building he lays his eyes on looks destroyed and abandoned, like they succumbed to the test of time. The vegetation grew wild around them and on the street, as if nature was taking back what was rightfully theirs.
"What the hell," the phrase leaves Dean's mouth again, his confusion slowly being replaced by something else.
Dean couldn't shake the feeling that he knew this place, that he's been here before.
But that can't be it. It can't. It can't.
Dean crouches down next to the nearest trash pile he could find, rummaging around until he finds what looked like a very old and torn newspaper. He looks and looks until, finally, he sees it.
August 1, 2014.
"You've got to be kidding me," he mutters, raising to his feet with his poor heart racing. August 1, 2014, but not his 2014. Not in the world he lived in. This was the world Zacharias had zapped him to more than ten years ago, all the way back in 09. When Dean's biggest problem still was the Apocalypse, Round One: Michael vs. Lucifer. This world was abandoned by God and heaven, given to Lucifer in a silver plate.
He watched his other self get killed here, watched that dick version of him send his friends to the grinder to turn them into a distraction. Cas is probably dead here too.
"Oh God," he says, panic starting to settle in his stomach. What the fuck is he doing here? Why isn't he dead?! He pats down his pockets and finds nothing. Not a single knife, not his gun, his phone, nothing. He got sent to a deadbeat apocalyptic world with only the clothes of his body and nothing else. Fucking awesome.
Then it hits him. God. Jack. Surely he'd hear him if Dean prayed, right?
He walks to a wall, holding onto it with one hand and closing his eyes. "Jack… Listen, I don't know — I don't know if you can hear me, Hell I don't know if anything gets past around here but… I— I need your help. I don't know what happened, I don't know how I got here or… Or how I'm even alive but, if you could just, I don't know, help me out here?"
He opens a single eye, looking around and being met with the same messy stillness he'd seen in the room.
"C'mon kid I know— I know you said you're hands off now, I get that but— Just give me a sign at least? Please?"
Silence again. Not even a strong wisp of wind to give him hope that Jack was hearing his prayer. Either he wasn't able to hear him, or he was being dead serious about the whole hands off deal.
Dean's alone.
He scrubs his face, groaning a little and hitting the wall with his forehead, his frustration growing in his chest. So much for eternal peace after a terrible death.
"What the hell am I supposed to do here, Cas?" he prays, this time knowing for sure his words won't reach the recipient. Prayers don't reach the Empty, Dean knew that by now. He prayed for months after Cas got taken, day and night, over and over again. He screamed, begged, cried, but was always met with silence. Absolute and unchanging radio silence. But even then, he never stopped, not once.
Dean backs away from the wall, deciding to get moving. If he was really alone, then he couldn't just stand here and wait for a miracle. Being alone meant getting things done by himself, and considering the state of things he had a lot to do.
He figures he should look for the Bunker, he doubts this world's Dean found it before the Apocalypse started. Finding the Bunker is his biggest shot at getting out of this place, if he's lucky. He'd have to look for the key first, sure, but with a little luck the events wouldn't be that much different from his original world.
If he's lucky enough, he might find a spell or something, anything that could pull him out of here and then—
Well, he's not sure, actually. Technically he's dead back in his world, isn't he? Would the spell just send him to another alternate reality? Would he go straight to heaven or straight to hell?
God , this was such a mess.
He forces his feet to move, walking down the trashed hallway and making his way out of the hotel. This looked just like the hotel he woke up on back in 09. It's somehow trashier than before, but the same. Did time pass here too?
He gets outside, taking a good look at the destroyed view of Kansas city. He decides then that retracing his steps might be a good starting point. He needs a car first and foremost, needs to get out of here before he gets attacked by a hoard of infected people. Croats, as the other Dean used to call them.
With only a few minutes of walking he realizes his options of finding yet another conveniently fuelled car to hotwire are zero. If the cars back then were ass, now they're even worse.
He stops by a car that looks relatively good, opening the hood to take a look at the engine only to find no engine. Awesome.
"Fucking… God damnit" he half shouts, shutting the hood hard and scaring off some crows nearby. "Can't you just give me a god damn break, huh? Aren't you fucking tired of this game?!"
This time when Dean screams, it's not at the God he knows. Not at Jack— never at Jack. He knows the kid would never do something to hurt him after everything they've been through. Dean screams and curses at his destiny this time. He screams at this uncontrollable, messy fate that didn't want to leave him the fuck alone for five minutes. Was this his punishment for taking down an old God and betraying heaven more times than he could count?
He leans against the useless car, pressing his fingers on his temples and trying hard to think of a plan, or a plausible explanation for what's happening to him, but he gets nothing. Absolutely nothing.
If only he had someone here to help him, but everyone he knew around here was dead. Most of the people at the camp that came with them for that mission were long gone, and maybe the rest of them were gone too by now. Dean doubts they’d last too long after Dean's little encounter with Lucifer. He seriously doubts that Lucifer would waste the opportunity to end Dean's little safe haven after he killed him.
He goes for the driver's door, opening it and taking a look inside to search for a map. He finds one in the glove compartment. It's a bit old and torn apart, but it will do. He finds the place where Camp Chitaqua used to be without much trouble, and sees the spot where he and the other Dean went on that stupid kamikaze mission that got everyone killed.
Was Cas still there? Did he turn into a croat while he was fighting for his life back there?
Dean doesn't know what's the worst scenario here, him going to that place and only finding bones left of what Cas used to be, or to go there and find an infected version of Cas ready to tear him apart.
He bites his lip, weighing down his options. The Camp might be empty for all he knows, but it might have supplies. Enough to help him hit the road and get where he needs to go, at least. And the graveyard… He couldn't let Cas there. He knows for sure that no one must've come back for them after what happened, they were too worried about their own survival to care for the bodies of the fallen.
So, croat or not, Dean is going to get Cas out of that place. It's the least he could do for this Cas, considering he failed to save him last time.
Very typical of him, it seems.
He folds the map and puts it in his pocket, determined to find a way to where he needed to go.
–
Putting a functional car together takes him way more time than he had planned. Without the miracle of having a car good and ready waiting for him, Dean has to put one together piece by piece.
He finds gas in one of them, good enough tires in another, brings all to the one car he picked that had an okay engine and takes another three hours putting it all together, praying his mechanic skills would be enough to put this frankenstein machine to work. Thankfully, at least one of his prayers is heard. Dean manages to start the car and get going right as the sun starts to set on the horizon.
He doesn't see a hoard of sick humans as he takes the road, not a sign of the bunch of masses he had to face the first time he got here. Maybe they just moved somewhere else, searching for more survivors to kill. It only strengthens his theory that the chances of finding anyone alive back at the Camp are just slim to none.
Dean keeps going anyway. Less people meant less problems on his way, less people to convince he's not a shapeshifter or a demon or anything of the sort.
He just hopes he doesn't run into Lucifer again. Dean's not exactly sure of how he'd react if he had to see Satan wearing his brother's face again. Not after he'd gone so long without ever having to worry about it again.
Every minute that passes with Dean behind the wheel is one spent with endless questions crossing his mind like bullets. He felt death take over him, he felt his body going numb, the darkness taking over him. And as far as he's concerned, the view around him was far from heavenly.
The logical part of his mind screamed that he should be worried about these fucked up circumstances. That he should at the very least worry about the chances of Chuck being behind all of this again. He should think of a plan to get out, of a plan to come back to his reality or at least getting into the right side of Heaven.
The more emotional and louder part of him, had thoughts only and for Cas. His Cas, how he was still stuck in the empty for as long as Dean was aware of, how he chose to die in front of Dean but still didn’t look the slightest bit scared of death. But above all, he thought about this Cas. The one that the broken version of him sent to die with no second thoughts about it. How Cas faced it straight on with never showing an ounce of fear. How both this Cas and his Cas did it all for Dean, and were ready to trade their lives for his.
Dean holds the wheel hard between his fingers, pushing that thought away. The chances of this Cas being alive were little. Thinking about him is going to do him no good. He needs to focus on survival. On logic. On what he knows rather than what he doesn’t.
It turns out to be harder than he thought.
The deserted building still looks the same as Dean remembers. He holds the knife he found in one of the cars tight in his hand just in case he comes across an infected human. It doesn't take him too long to find one of the cars the other Dean used to get here with the rest of the team. The jeep was abandoned, windows busted open and a good amount of green growing on top of it.
Dean side steps the car and eyes the spot where he and the other Dean had their last little talk. If he thinks hard enough about it he might even remember how he woke up to multiple gun shots in the distance, the sound of Dean's team dying to give him a chance to attack Lucifer.
The sound of Cas dying.
He looks back at the building, eyeing the place where he remembered hearing the gun shots come from. It was a long shot, but might be worth checking it out. He came all this way, after all.
He passes by the abandoned graveyard and stops on his tracks. Something tugs at his chest, telling him he shouldn't go in there, but Dean ignores it. He has to see it, has to confirm for himself that what he experienced here was real.
Dean didn't know what he was expecting, really. He didn't know if he was about to find his old bones, or nothing at all, maybe he'd find clothes that could indicate that someone had died there a long time ago.
What he didn't expect was a grave.
It's not anything fancy, but it's on the same spot he remembers seeing the other Dean get murdered. There's a small lump of grass on it, a simple wooden cross placed on top of it. And hanging off it, is his old amulet. The one Sam gave him when they were kids.
Someone came back for him. Someone buried him. They went through the trouble of digging a hole on the earth and laying his body to rest. But why?
And more importantly, who ?
Dean kneels on the ground, touching the grass as if to convince himself that this is real.
"Dumbass…" he murmurs to himself, thinking about just how stupid the other Dean plan was. The trap had been so clear, the chances of them succeeding were so low, Dean had to look at it for what it was. His other self orchestrated a suicide mission, and he had succeded.
He tries not to blame him, though. Dean himself lost count of how many times he was suicidal himself after things went badly in his life. There was the time when he wanted to say yes to Michael, then briefly the time he thought Cas died after trying to become God, then Charlie, then Cas again, and again.
Cas was a frequent reason for it, actually.
He blinks and shakes his head, pushing away the thought of his past. He lifts his hand to touch the amulet hanging on the cross, a small smile crossing his lips. He'd take anything to have his own necklace with him right now.
He moves to pull it off but then stops at the sound of a shotgun clicking behind him. Monsters don't use shotguns.
"Put it down, now," the muffled voice says, and Dean frowns at the sound of it. It was just a bit familiar but — no, it couldn’t be. He was dead. Considering the gun that was probably aimed to his head, Dean follows the instructions carefully, raising his hands slowly. “Fucking demon scum.”
"Alright, just—" Dean moves to get up from the floor but stops as he feels the barrel of the shotgun pressed on the back of his skull. "Listen to me—"
"Shut the fuck up!" the man shouts, and Dean closes his eyes at the sound of it. He’s going insane. That’s the only reasonable explanation. Dean Winchester has gone insane, because why else would he be getting chills down his spine just because his brain was tricking himself into thinking this was Cas. He should be scared for his life right now, given the weapon glued to his head and the anger that sweeped in Cas— in that man’s voice, but Dean had died already. He'd been through it not six hours ago. He already had been burdened with the fear of death and what comes after it. What he didn't have was this. The sweet illusion of having Castiel's voice so close to him. “I’m not in the mood for your bullshit today, you hear me?”
Dean curses under his breath, taking some courage to look back and being met with a tall man, holding a shotgun merely a breath away from his face. He has a hood over his head and wears a makeshift mask with some old and stained fabric, hiding half his face. But the eyes.
The eyes make Dean drop all his defenses all at once, and his poor heart threatens to give away once more, because those eyes. Those blue eyes like the sky above — Dean would recognize them anywhere . Twelve years he had with them, twelve years that felt like an eternity. Dean knows him .
It’s Cas. He knows it is. Cas, standing in front of him like a miracle, but staring at him like a soldier ready to kill.
This Cas didn't look at all like the skinny, doped version he met in 2009. This Cas looks ripped . Dean can see a scar under his left eye that disappears under the mask and continues down his neck. He can see the bandages wrapped around the hand that holds the gun so firmly, he can see how his muscles show even under the thick green jacket.
It’s him, Dean has no doubt. But he looks at Dean like he’s facing just another monster, like he’s another bug he needs to crush. His blue eyes are dim now, lacking the light Dean used to see back in his world. Dean gulps and tries to put himself together before continuing. "Please, just hear me out, okay?"
Cas scoffs at him, tilting his head in such a familiar way that it burns in Dean's chest. What he does next, however, is not friendly at all.
"Do you see me as foolish, beast?" he says, his voice dragging through each word. "A whole decade and you still can't find something new to say… And here I was thinking you were getting creative."
A decade?
"Look I don't know… I don't know what you think I am, or what they've done to you, but I'm not one of them." Dean argues, seeing doubt flowing in Cas' eyes. He took the opening as an opportunity to get up to his feet with his hands still raised, only to have the barrel of the shotgun pointed directly at his chest again. Cas is hesitating, but he wouldn't hesitate for much longer. "Just ask me anything, please. I'll tell you anything you want to hear."
“Yeah, that's pretty much the problem, isn't it? You know what I want to hear," Cas says, not looking like he's willing to give up. He grips the gun tight, his eyes never leaving Dean's. "Save me from the trouble, and go back to where you belong."
"Look, look , there was another Dean, wasn't there? A long time ago. You knew he was different the moment you saw him, you knew he wasn't from here," Dean says, seeing something flick in Cas' face. Dean tries to put his hands down but Cas shoves the gun in his chest again as a warning. He takes a deep, and continues, hands still raised. "One of the last things you told him was that the last thing you and Dean had was each other. Do you remember that?"
The haunted blue eyes searched Dean’s face for a lie, a sign of betrayal, anything that could justify his finger finally pulling down the trigger. Dean, however, looked at him the same way he always did. Like he was the sun.
“How do you know that?” he asks, voice careful. He still doesn't sound like he wants to thrust Dean, and Dean is getting more and more afraid of getting shot in the very near future. “Who the fuck told you that?”
“You, Cas,” Dean says, trying hard to convince him. He saw Cas take a small step back and thinks about his next words over and over before continuing. “I’m not a demon, alright? You have to trust me here. I… I don’t know how I got here and I don’t know why but… Man, I thought you were dead.”
He watches as Castiel lowers the gun with his eyes still fixed on Dean, considering it. The former angel looks him up and down, using his free hand to pull the mask down and Dean has to hold his breath. He has to focus all he has into not freaking the fuck out because he’s not going crazy, or maybe he is. He feels like he is.
Cas.
Dean gulps when Cas straightens his back, holding the end of the gun thigh with one hand. He sees him look away and nod, as if he had finally processed what he said.
“You know what? Fine,” Cas utters at last, looking back at Dean and giving him a smile. Dean, however, could tell right away that there was no warmth behind the stretch of his lips. Oh. “I believe you.”
And then, right before Dean can do anything to work his case, Cas is twirling the gun to hold on to the opposite end just like he used to do with his angel blades. Dean knows what’s coming, but his brain is too slow to react. He’s still struggling to believe that this is really Cas, that he’s alive and breathing in front of him.
He’s too slow. And before he can blink again, Cas is using the edge of the shotgun’s stock to hit the side of Dean’s head with unimaginable strength. Dean falls to the ground next to the grave with his ears ringing from impact, dark spots swimming on his vision as he struggles to look up and face Cas.
But Cas is determined, and by the looks of it there’s little to nothing that can change his mind. He takes a step closer, raises the gun and hits him again, making Dean’s world fade to black.