Chapter Text
Sam
“Let’s make it a good show, Sammy.”
The gun, sweat-slick in Sam’s hand, drops to the ground. There’s a slow clap, loud as cymbals. He winces at the sound of the gun clattering onto the pavement. His ears ring, he feels dizzy. He looks up to see Chuck smiling, applauding as if he is giving a standing ovation for an excellent performance.
“Let’s give him what he wants.”
Dean’s words echo in Sam’s ears, louder than Lucifer ever managed to be when he was in his head. He wants to clap his hands over them, wants to scoop out his own brains. He never wants to hear anything, ever again. Not the gunshot that’s just been fired. Not Chuck, clapping for the show that’s just concluded. And not the echo of his brother’s voice.
“Right between the eyes, Sammy.”
But the world is cruel, its ruler even worse, and so Sam hears it loud and clear when Chuck says, “Bravo,” and steps toward him. The fight’s gone out of him; Sam doesn’t step back, doesn’t do anything, just stands, stock-still.
There’s something on the ground.
“This was… this was a good finale, I’ll admit,” Chuck says with a laugh and a shake of his head. “I didn’t think you had it in you, but… I guess our old demon boy’s still got it, huh?”
There’s someone on the ground.
“Of the two of you… I’m not surprised you were the one with the guts to do it. To pull the trigger.” Chuck makes a gun with his fingers, fires it up into the air. “Bang!”
Sam startles, but keeps his gaze steadfastly on Chuck. He can’t look at what lies between them, can only stare into the eyes of the man who calls himself God.
Only this can’t possibly be God. No, the creator of the universe could not allow it all to end like this. Not after everything.
“Please,” Sam says, his voice shaking more than it had when he’d said yes to Lucifer, because then, he’d had people behind him. He’d had Dean. Now, there’s a body on the ground, and Sam can’t look at it or think about it. “Put everyone back, Chuck. We — I did what you wanted. I gave you a show. Now just. Just put everyone back.”
Chuck kneels down on the ground and Sam’s vision blurs around what he’s doing. He reaches out a hand and touches something, but Sam can’t quite let himself see what that something is. “Interesting,” Chuck says, and stands up slowly, examining his hand. There’s blood on it — blood from whatever he’d touched, what had he touched , what is the body, where is the body, why is the body there—
Sam feels like he’s fracturing, his whole self splitting into too many pieces to count, certainly too many pieces to ever be put back together. “Put everyone back,” he hisses at the creator and destroyer of universes. Make this worth it, he wants to beg.
The creator and destroyer of universes sighs. “Fine. I was getting bored of you anyway. But how about one last game for the road? You boys just love to mess with well-laid plans, don’t you?” He raises his fingers and — snap.
Castiel
When Castiel arrives back into a body with a gasp, he senses that some time has elapsed, but he cannot tell how much.
Some time: since he kissed Dean Winchester for the last time. Since he brushed a tear from his cheek. Since he allowed the blackness to swallow him whole.
Since everything went dark, his atoms scattered into confusion, the Empty’s proper welcome greeting him as it hadn’t before: there was nothing in this place, certainly nothing of Castiel’s mind or body or memories. He had felt only emotion: despair, hopelessness, anger. That is, when he felt anything at all.
Most of the time, all he felt was empty.
This was a fine exchange for the moment of happiness that he’d held himself back from having for so long. Ever since he’d made the deal with the Empty, it hadn’t been too hard to hold everything at an arm’s length. To doubt Dean’s love for him was not difficult. Much harder was that final moment, Death pounding on the door, where Castiel had allowed himself to finally revel in it: that Dean Winchester loved him back.
But that was then. How long ago? He has no idea. Hadn’t thought he’d ever feel the particular aches and strains of being bound within a body again. And even more surprising: the Empty is gone, or he is gone from it.
There are too many sensations. Those that remind him of being human — though he cannot tell if he is entirely human now, cast down — or up? — into a mortal body, or if he has simply spent all the grace he’d had. Has he been drained by the long years of fighting? By surrendering to the Empty? The rough pavement beneath his fingers, the discomfort of his limbs. He’s been tilting toward being a human for so long now that he can no longer tell where he is on the continuum.
Dean would say it didn’t matter; he’d call him angel anyway, with a loving swat to his ass as they passed one another in the bunker’s kitchen as long as they’re alone, or he’d say that he could feel Cas’s grace through his bare chest as Dean nipped his teeth into his skin, biting him and reminding him what feeling was. Angel or human, feeling was, in the presence of Dean Winchester, everything.
Now, he is lying on the pavement beneath a neon sign that flashes VACANCY. He’s wearing the outfit he’d died in — his trenchcoat, at least, is familiar, even if his surroundings aren’t. It’s the Americana he’s grown used to, of course, but it isn’t Lebanon. How far from where he’d been sucked in has he been spat back out?
He sits up slowly, testing his limbs. He is in the mostly empty parking lot of a motel. The main road is not busy, though every now and then a car drives by, cutting through the night’s darkness.
As he scans the parking lot, he sees something familiar: the Impala. Relief floods him. Though its sleek black body paint reminds him now of the dark coolness of the Empty, it’s a comfort to see it.
The Impala means the Winchesters. This may not be Lebanon, but he is still home, because home is wherever Dean is.
He pulls himself up to standing, though his body feels stiff, as if it has been hastily thrown back together and tossed into the world without much care. He feels, suddenly, every bit as old as he really is. Millennia and the memories associated with all of it tear at his mind.
This is how it returns to him that, last he’d known, the world was ending. Universes had disappeared. And Death — Death was banging down the door.
Those final, terrifying moments were such a contrast to where he is now, the quiet that surrounds him. Had they won against Chuck somehow, despite the insurmountable odds? Have Sam and Dean come up with a way to bring him back? Cas hadn’t thought such a thing would be possible, not without Chuck’s approval, and that would be impossible to win.
Urgency takes over, and he goes to the car. It looks just a bit different from the car he’s come to know so well, but he can’t put his finger on why at first. Perhaps it’s him who’s changed in his time in the Empty — however long it may have been.
He leans down to peer through the windows, as if this will give him an idea of what’s happened while he’s been gone. In the backseat is a cooler and a couple of magazines, mostly featuring naked women, and then in the front, tucked beneath a leather jacket that Castiel hasn’t seen in a decade, is—
The barrel of a gun replaces his view before he can get a good look. Castiel holds up his hands in innocence, in surrender, stumbling back with the shock of it. The driver door opens and out steps Dean Winchester, except he is not the Dean Winchester that Castiel left in the bunker.
This Dean is wearing a faded and torn Iron Maiden t-shirt, his hair is more unkempt than Cas has ever seen it, he’s got a leather bracelet around his wrist, a thick silver ring on his finger, and most shockingly, that old gold amulet around his neck. When Castiel last saw it, he’d declared it useless and Dean had thrown it away. That had been over ten years ago.
“You tryin’ to steal my fuckin’ car with me in it, dumbass?” Dean demands, in a voice pitched slightly higher than Cas is used to. “You got a death wish?”
And while Dean speaks to him like this sometimes these days — if he’s particularly annoyed or overwhelmed — it never has the edge that it has now. There is always, buried in his tone, affection. The love that he has hesitantly allowed to begin to blossom. The years of shared experience, the ups and downs of the world threatening to end, failing to, and then threatening it once again — all of that sits in Dean’s voice, in the way he addresses Cas, the way he looks at him. A decade of life, together.
Now, there is none of that. No love, affection, or friendship; there’s no recognition at all.
“Dean—” Cas starts.
“Okay, new question,” Dean says, flicking off the safety with some flair, to make sure Cas hears and sees it. “How the fuck d’you know my name, you son of a bitch?”
Cas’s body may be lacking in angelic powers at the moment, but he doesn’t need them to understand what he’s seeing. All of the evidence — Dean’s clothes, his attitude — aren’t nearly as potent as what stares him in the eyes, devoid of recognition. It is a much, much younger Dean; perhaps two decades younger. Closer to what he’d been when Castiel had pulled him from Hell, when he’d remade his body from scratch with attention to each detail, each freckle put back into place. Special care for the Michael sword.
And all of that care before he’d loved him.
There’s a strong contrast between the man before him and the more confident, more haunted man that Castiel knows and loves now.
And yet, this Dean, this young and inexperienced man, is within the Dean that Cas knows. He comes out in bad moments, moments where the nightmares are more potent than usual and Dean allows Cas to soothe him by pushing a bit of grace into him, calming him down and allowing him to fall back to sleep. Or when Dean is overwhelmed, pushing 40 hours of no sleep, and things seem hopeless; Cas had once found him on the kitchen floor, breathing hard, sweating as if he’d been chased there by a monster, but there was nothing in pursuit but Dean’s own mind, his own memories.
This Dean is not yet that Dean. Castiel isn’t sure he could pinpoint the year, or the distance from his present time — the time he should be in — but it will all come clear.
The important thing is to avoid being shot, not something he’s had to worry about since he was fully human, but which he’s not sure he’d be able to survive at this point with such waning grace. “Bobby sent me,” Castiel says, his hands still in the air, palms facing Dean.
“Like hell.” Dean scoffs. His mannerisms remain the same, which is eerie. Like Cas is watching someone do a very convincing impression of Dean.
“It’s true. I’m a hunter.”
“Your name?”
“Castiel.”
Dean’s lip curls meanly. “ Castiel ?” He says his name like he’s never said it before. Even when they’d first met, when Castiel had first introduced himself, Dean had some fear, some reverence. Now there is nothing there but scorn. A natural defense to a stranger.
“Yes.”
“Bobby sent you? How d’you know Bobby?”
“Like I said, I am a hunter. Please put the gun down, Dean.”
“Don’t fucking say my name like you know me!” The gun, held out in the air between them, shakes just slightly as Dean speaks.
The Dean Cas knows holds his weapon as steadily as he holds a fork, as steadily as he holds Cas’s hand, in the quiet moments when they are alone together and it is dark and no one can see. The moments that are just for the two of them; where they can be whatever they want without worrying about how Heaven or Hell or Earth’s interference will change things.
“I don’t intend to suggest I know you,” Cas replies, taking great pains to keep the irony from his voice. In fact he has never known anyone as well as he knows Dean.
“So what did he send you for, huh? Why didn’t he tell us?”
Cas glances back to the car and then Dean. He knows he should answer the question, but instead he digs into that us . “Where is Sam?”
Dean barks a laugh in which is held so little humor, so much pain. Castiel knows it very well. It is an old mechanism of Dean’s, time-worn. “Fuck if I know. Probably in the library studying for his Nerd 101 exam.”
Library. Studying. So Sam is at Stanford. And that means… that when Dean says us …
One of the motel’s doors opens and there is John Winchester, in the flesh. Castiel has never had the displeasure of meeting the man, and he’s always been grateful. From what Dean’s told him, Cas doesn’t care for him at all. Of course, Dean insists that he was always doing his best, that he thought it was the right thing to raise Sam and Dean the way he did, that he was just heartbroken over the loss of Mary and trying to get revenge and protect them at the same time.
But to Cas, this doesn’t excuse anything. It doesn’t excuse the stories Dean’s told him, often when it’s late and he’s drunk and he’s feeling looser than usual. When he forgets that he’s supposed to be defending the man. When he relieves himself, just for a bit, of that oldest job of his — the dutiful son. The soldier. When he’s honest with himself.
Standing in front of Cas now, though, is that soldier, fully intact, and Dean snaps to attention as John gruffs out from across the parking lot, “The fuck is going on?” Dean lowers his gun and faces his father, as if he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t.
John, too, has a gun, though he is not yet pointing it at Castiel, which is a small blessing. “Who the hell are you?” he demands, crossing the lot. He wears sweatpants and a t-shirt with MARINES printed across the front. He seems to have hastily put on boots, and if his unkempt hair is any indication, he’s just woken up. There’s deep suspicion in his voice.
“I’m Castiel,” Cas says, turning to John now with his hands still in the air in surrender. “Bobby sent me.”
“Bobby Singer ?” John frowns. “Nah. He knows I work alone.”
Cas glances at Dean and is surprised to see that Dean is looking at him. His expression is guarded; he seems to be watching Cas for something.
“Well, not alone,” Castiel can’t help but say.
John scoffs. “May as well be alone, for all the help he is.” He gestures toward Dean with his gun. “Kid almost got both our asses killed today.”
Dean’s posture droops but he doesn’t say anything. This is unlike the Dean Cas knows — the one who won’t take a hit from anybody except himself. He’s his own harshest critic, but to anyone else, he defends his actions like he believes in them, even when he doesn’t.
“Bobby said that you were on a hunt, and I was in the area,” Castiel says. He doesn’t know what he’s doing here or what’s happening, but he also knows that getting shot by a Winchester over a decade in the past will not help him get back to 2020, to Dean, his Dean, and Jack, and Sam, and the fight against Chuck.
“Bobby doesn’t believe in me, huh?” John shakes his head. “Alright, well, Dean, give him the usual.” He folds his arms over his chest, still holding the gun, and waits.
Dean springs into action, following orders easily, and pops open the trunk. “C’mere, Castiel ,” he says, and the way he speaks Cas’s name is so foreign and strange. This is nothing like the way Cas rolls off Dean’s tongue now — in the now that Cas is used to. Cas has become an easy word, a filler word for Dean, familiar as and or if or yes . It burns, this new pronunciation, and he fights the urge to run from this stranger who is so capable of hurting him without realizing it.
Instead, Cas goes to him, and he patiently allows himself to be subjected to a variety of tests. When Dean cuts him with a silver knife, Cas pretends that the contact of Dean’s hand to his means nothing to him. When Dean splashes holy water in his face, Cas closes his eyes and mouth and breathes out, hearing Dean’s — his own Dean’s — voice in his head: behave.
Cas eyes the trunk as Dean puts him through the tests. It’s somewhat more empty than it had been (or will be, in the future), and the devil’s trap is not there.
“He’s clean,” Dean announces once he’s satisfied.
“Okay, well, let him in then,” John says with a wave of his hand, and he disappears back into the motel room.
Castiel doesn’t want to follow. He wants to figure out what’s going on here and return to the present. The future. Whatever it is. He doesn’t want to play nice, pretend to be a hunter, come up with lies that will placate them and keep a bullet out of his chest. He could simply leave. Walk away and solve the problem on his own. If he’s been thrown out of the Empty and into the past, that means that this is before so many things happened. He could try summoning an angel, a friend. Anna, perhaps.
And yet, how much explaining would that require? He would most likely be dragged off to Heaven to answer for how he’d ended up on earth in a body that has aged beyond its vessel’s current years, for one thing. Jimmy Novak is at this very moment probably sleeping soundly in his house, looking far younger than Castiel looks just now. Claire is one room over, tucked into her childhood bed, still safe within the life that Cas took from her—
And then he looks at Dean, and all thoughts of leaving melt away. Dean’s worrying at his bottom lip, a nervous habit of his that Cas hasn’t seen in years, and his eyes scan their surroundings, moving quickly back and forth. Hunter’s instincts, fear instincts. Only there’s nothing to be afraid of except John, not here in this quiet parking lot. He looks impossibly young, must be somewhere around 25, and here he’s been sleeping under a jacket in his car while John sleeps in a motel room ten yards away.
Castiel remembers something Dean had mentioned once, about being punished when he’d done something stupid on a hunt. “Dad would have me keep watch for whole nights, just me, and if he caught me drifting off, there’d be hell to pay. He’d leave me out there, dusk to dawn. Thing is, we hardly ever did that – keeping watch. He just wanted me to be alone, to be awake. To think about whatever I did.”
And so when Dean nods his head toward the door, as if to say after you , Castiel goes willingly, so that Dean doesn’t have to go in alone.
The moment he steps into the motel room, John grabs him and slaps a pair of handcuffs on him. It’s almost funny, these simple metal cuffs — typically they would do nothing to Castiel, who’s spent the majority of his long lifetime being far more powerful than John Winchester could imagine. But right now, he’s powered way, way down. His battery’s at 1%, as Dean might say. And even if he could fight, he doesn’t want to.
He’s too damn tired. He misses Dean, Sam, Jack. He has no fight left in him. Not now.
“Tell me what you know about Bobby,” John says, pushing Cas onto the bed and pointing his gun at him. Dean closes and locks the door behind him and leans against it, watching.
Cas allows himself to be subjected to the humiliation of interrogation by John, only for the sake of peace. “Bobby Singer. We’ve known each other for a few years. We met doing a ruguru case in Washington state in ‘99.”
“And why’ve I never heard of you?”
“He may never have found me worth mentioning.”
“And how do I know you ain’t part of what’s going on here?” John gestures around them, indicating the town, whatever case they’re on right now.
Cas’s eyes scan the room quickly. On the wall are taped photos, newspaper articles, the whole nine yards. John’s typical method for solving a case, as Sam and Dean have described it. Cas spots the word ‘tulpa?’ written on a blurry photograph. He takes it in with the speed it takes John to blink; powered down, yes, but Cas is still an angel.
“Why would I be?” he asks, looking John in the eye without fear. “It seems like we’re dealing with a tulpa here. If I were a tulpa, why would I come in, why would I sit here, why would I speak with you at all?”
“Could be a shapeshifter,” Dean says from the door, where he’s watching the scene with attentive eyes.
“You cut me with the silver blade,” Cas reminds him. “Which also rules out wraith, werewolf, revenant, skinwalker—”
“Fine,” John snaps. “So if you are a hunter, you should know a couple things. First, I’m in charge on this case. If you want to help, fine. But you’re following my lead.”
“Of course,” Cas says, obedient, though it’s the last thing he wants to be.
“Fine.” John repeats the word and sets the gun on the table. He uses the key to remove the cuffs. Once they’re off, John roughly turns Cas’s wrists this way and that, examining them as if to see if he’s hurt him.
Over the years, John has become something of a monster himself in Cas’s mind, one who deserves its own entry in a bestiary. It’s strange to be here with him now and to find him living, breathing, feeling.
“We’ve almost got this thing, I can feel it,” John says. “You want to help, you come back at dawn. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” Cas says, standing up, giving him the respect he’d have given to a higher-up angel in the days he respected his superiors. John turns away then, dismissing both him and Dean, and Dean leads the way out the door.
Once it’s closed behind them, Dean fixes Cas with a long stare. Cas stares back, undaunted, searching Dean’s eyes with interest. This Dean is certainly different, but he’s no less difficult to read than the one Cas knows. He’s got all the bravado and swagger of the Dean Cas pulled out of Hell, anyway, and yet Cas will never forget those first moments in the barn, when Dean had hardly believed himself worth saving.
Cas fights the urge to touch him, to pull him into a hug, to kiss him, to tell him how much he’s missed him. This Dean would not take that well; honestly, his Dean hardly even takes it well half the time, dodging Cas’s affection if he’s had a particularly rough go of it lately. So Cas has learned to be subtle in the way he cares for Dean. Now, this comes in handy.
Still, he aches at the impassibility of the distance between them.
“Well, guess you’re on the roster,” Dean says after a moment. He’s the first to break the eye contact. “Welcome, old man.” He slaps his hand onto Cas’s shoulder and leaves it there for a moment, a moment in which many things happen in Cas’s brain and in his body — longing for Dean, though not this Dean; sadness at the separation; fear at whatever has brought him here and whether he’ll be able to get back.
Dean removes his hand a beat too late and asks, “You got a car?”
“My car broke down. I took the bus here,” Cas says.
Dean raises an eyebrow. “Fine. Well, see you at dawn, I guess.” He opens the driver’s side door and slides into the Impala. Cas wants to say something else, but Dean closes the door firmly and settles himself back down how Cas had found him.
Castiel stands there for a moment before walking toward the motel. He needs to get some things straight before dawn, needs to make all of this believable. His grace is so low, he’ll have to do things the human way — the Winchester way, in other words. Lie through his teeth.
The motel’s office is dark, but he has enough grace to pick the lock — so, he’s doing things mostly the human way. He lets himself inside and looks around for a few moments, searching for anything that might help his case. When he spots a large box labeled ‘lost and found,’ he smiles.
Inside, he finds a dirty, but empty, duffel bag and a few pairs of clothes that look like they might fit. He shoves them into the bag and settles himself onto the worn, stained couch that sits opposite the front desk.
It’s quiet, eerily so, with hardly any road noise. It’s also hot and stuffy, could use an A/C, and Cas’s vessel is tired and hot and he desperately wants to return to the bunker.
He’s never felt so far from home; has never had somewhere to call home before the bunker, before the Winchesters.
He closes his eyes and pictures Dean in the Impala doing the same. It’s not exactly his Dean, but it’ll do, for now, as far as comfort goes. He’s not so far away, and if Cas is quiet, he can almost imagine he hears him breathing.
He wishes he could go to the car, let himself in. Slide into the backseat. He’d tell Dean he belongs there, that he’s spent his own share of nights riding in the backseat of the Impala while Sam and Dean sit up front. He wants to tell him that he’s spent long hours and longer days on those leather seats. That the Impala had stood watch that late night that he and Dean had sat on a rock outside the bunker’s entrance, home from their hunt in Tombstone but not wanting to go inside. Dean had been frayed, his nerves all over the place. He said he was itching to be under the stars, and so he’d pulled Cas out of the car and they’d sat there. It was that quiet night when Dean had told Cas that he had feelings for him, you know, more than just friends , using the strange human turn of phrase that didn’t feel quite right. He said that it was fucked, and he was sorry to put that on him, but that he’d promised himself if Cas ended up topside again, he’d say something.
To say that Cas had feelings for Dean was to say far too little. It was to understate it. And yet, he knew that it was all Dean would allow. So he told him that he felt the same; had for awhile. That had shocked Dean, had shut him up. He’d gone quiet, and after awhile he’d gotten up and headed inside. Cas had followed him, thinking that perhaps that was the end of everything, that it was all over. A few days had passed and Dean had avoided him, doing what he did best and overthinking it. Cas figured that the last thing Dean had expected was for him to feel the same way, though, of course, it’s always been obvious. Dean had to readjust, figure out what to do with that — or more accurately, what he’d let himself do with that.
But then Dean had come to find him, late one night, in the library. Cas had been using Sam’s laptop to scour all the same sites he’d been on plenty of times before, desperately searching for Jack.
Dean had sat down across from him with a beer in his hand and had said, “I won’t say I’ll be any good at this. I’m fucked up in every possible way. And I figured… I never thought you’d say you wanted me back, that’s crazy. I thought it’d just be somethin’ to get off my chest before you disappear on me again. But when I lost you, Cas… fuck. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m willing to give it a try if you are.”
Things had lurched slowly forward from there. Tentative and hesitant, Dean flighty, easily scared. But he was there. And Cas was there. That was what was important.
Now, Cas drifts into a state of half-sleep, one that will hopefully restore his energy, that will help bring him one step closer to Dean. His Dean.
Sam
Sam thinks it’s him screaming. He’s in the middle of the street with something awful and dark on the ground beside him. There is no one else here, it’s been days of silence, eerie emptiness. And now someone is screaming. Chuck had snapped his fingers and disappeared and now someone is screaming.
But it isn’t Sam. It’s a woman. A stranger. Miraculously, a person. It’s been so many days of quiet and emptiness, save for him and Jack, that he’s startled to see her. She’s standing not ten feet away from him.
Him and—
“Is he dead?” the woman gasps, rushing to the thing on the ground, the body, the thing, the body, the person—
Dean.
Sam stumbles backward. “I— I don’t know—” he stammers, because his brain has short circuited, refuses to process the last few moments, everything momentous and terrible that’s just happened.
“You gotta do it, Sammy,” comes Dean’s voice in his head, “please. I can’t live like this, you know I can’t. Next dumb son of a bitch we run into, I’ll let its ugly ass ice me, you know I will. Cas is— Cas is gone, man. Everything is fucked up. Everyone is… gone. You have to kill me, Sam, and let’s make it a good show. Let me die for a cause, Sammy. Chuck brings everybody back. Then you get a happily ever after, you and Jack and everyone.”
And so Sam had done it. His loyalty hasn’t always been absolute; it’s faltered sometimes when it mattered most. He’s been selfish and stupid, but so has Dean. He’s been hard-headed. So has Dean. In the end, they both knew that only one of them would be able to pull the trigger. And he had. And Dean had fallen to the ground. And Chuck had been — dissatisfied. Bored.
It’s over now.
The woman’s voice pushes its way through his thoughts, crashing, loud: “He’s breathing. Call 911!”