Chapter Text
“What?” Dean asked, shocked fucking stupid. They were all gathered in the study, Bobby, Sam and Castiel. “Why would he go after Lucifer on his own?
Castiel sighed in exasperation. “He’s not going after Lucifer, Dean. I think his plan is to offer himself as a vessel to Lucifer in Sam’s place.” He let his words sink in for a few seconds before he added, “There’s no other reason that could explain why he took the rings.”
Vehemently, Dean shook his head, “No. He wouldn’t—he can’t. How is that even possible? Why the hell would Lucifer even agree to that?”
Like he was explaining it to a little kid, Castiel patiently said, “His vessel is stronger than most, if Lucifer is impatient enough, he'll accept the deal. As far as why Cas would do this, are you genuinely confused by his actions? He watched Sam kill you once, Dean, it’s fairly easy to see that he’s unwilling to risk the same outcome once more.”
And fuck, that made sense. He didn’t like it, but it rang with truth.
Sam’s eyebrows were raised when he spoke, “Okay, but how did he know where Lucifer would be?”
Double goddamn fuck. Dean frowned, memory springing up like a jack-in-the-box to the forefront of his mind, “Detroit. It happens in Detroit.”
So they drove like hell for the place Bobby found in Detroit that was crawling with demon signs. Cas had a huge head start on them though. Near as Dean could figure, he’d taken off not long after he and Castiel’d passed out.
Cas was gone by the time they got to Detroit. They found some dead demons in an abandoned house and no sign of Cas or the devil, but he’d been there. Dean could feel it in the room.
He held it together until they got back to the alley that they’d parked the car in, anguish and despair were welling up uncontrollably in his chest and he was fuckin’ losing it. Tears stung at his eyes and throat. He was pissed the hell off—rage that boiled in his veins. His fist slammed into a dumpster and he didn’t even register the pain in his hand. In desperation he pulled at his hair. “Son of bitch! Cas, you son of a goddamn bitch. What the hell!”
Why had he ever thought—even for a second—that he could have this? That he’d be allowed to have both of them. His lungs burned in his chest and he collapsed back against the side of the Impala with a pained grunt. He squeezed his eyes shut against the pitying, concerned gazes he felt on him as he fought back tears.
Sam was the first to speak up. “What do we do now?”
Listlessly, Castiel replied, “I suggest copious quantities of alcohol.… Just wait for the inevitable blastwave.”
Dean opened his eyes to glare at him. “Yeah, swell. Thank you, Bukowski. H-how do we stop it?”
Castiel looked every bit as torn up as Dean felt. His voice broke, and his eyes were watering, “We don’t. Lucifer will meet Michael on the chosen field, and the battle of Armageddon begins.”
Desperately, Dean’s mind searched for some way to fix this. “Okay, well where’s this chosen field?”
He was breaking, cracking apart into little pieces, but he couldn’t let this go, couldn’t let Cas go—let alone let the planet go to hell. This was on him, he needed to stop it.
“I don’t know,” Castiel reluctantly admitted.
No. This … this couldn’t be it. There had to be— “Well there’s gotta be something we can do!”
“I’m sorry, Dean,” Castiel said, stepping forward and gripping Dean’s shoulder, tears rolling down from eyes that had no damn right to look that sad. Wetting a face that was never meant to hold that much hurt. “This is over.”
“No,” Dean denied flatly, “No you listen to me: we’re not letting him go like this. You hear me? It can’t be for nothing, ” his voice sounded hysterical even to his own ears. “We are not giving up.” Dean’s gaze flew wildly to land on Bobby. “Bobby,” he pleaded, “Bobby?”
Bobby’s face was pained, and Dean wanted to scream, because Bobby was supposed to have the answer here, he always had the answer. “There was never much hope to begin with.” Dean shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”
Woodenly, Dean stared into the distance, seeing nothing until an errant thought struck him and his heart thudded painfully hard against his ribcage. They didn’t know where the field was—but someone they knew might.
One phone call to Chuck and they had the time and place. Stull Cemetery, high noon, tomorrow. Dean’s pulse raced. He had no fuckin’ clue what he was gonna do to stop it, to save Cas, but he for damn sure wasn’t gonna just leave him to face this alone. Wasn’t gonna happen.
---
Cas tried to blink, but his eyes didn’t so much as twitch. One moment there was nothingness—no awareness, no light. Lucifer had him locked up tight. And then, everything was blinding as Cas’s consciousness flooded with color. Lucifer wanted to rub it in … his victory. He really wanted Cas to suffer, that was apparent. More than that: he wanted Dean to know that Cas was suffering.
So he let Cas see. A rush of images, and sensations that tore at him like so many knives and claws and teeth. His hands. Hurting Dean. Punching him. Over and over. Snapshots of sound—the bones breaking in that perfect face that Cas loved so much. His chest clenched, grief and rage, Lucifer was going back on his word, and had he ever expected less?
There was a bright flare of light that blinded Cas and then he was flashing back to all of these moments with Castiel and Dean. The look in Dean’s eyes that first night when he was on his knees in his cabin, that fondness in them like a physical caress. The way Dean’d sounded the first time he said he loved him. Castiel’s hands on his arm, slipping hotly over his back. His warm, curious blue eyes, always glad to see him.
Back further to his Dean. A field of wildflowers on a late spring night, and the end of the world was already starting around them but Dean kissed him that day while the sun faded orange-pink in the sky. A shy press of lips that grew bolder.
Dean’s orbital socket cracked beneath his fist, the sound of it crystal clear, and Cas saw his Dean’s green eyes losing their light. NO. He shoved and fought and kicked his way to the surface, every part of him screaming out to stop this. No. He wouldn’t let this happen. Not ever again and not with his hands. And then he surfaced, gasping for air. Lucifer clawed at him every second, but it was easy now. Because he needed to protect Dean. He needed to save him.
Cas's eyes were full of tears—they dripped down his face and he didn’t try to stop them. Heart breaking in a million different ways as Dean stared at him with fear and waited for a killing blow that Cas would never allow to come.
“I’m so sorry, Dean.” He sucked in a harsh breath, sound rushing in his ears. “I’ve got him. I—Dean, I’m sorry. I love you so much. I … couldn’t let Sam die and I couldn’t watch him kill you again. Forgive me,” he begged. There were tears on Dean’s swollen face, a wet gurgle bubbled up in Dean's throat; his lips too swollen to talk, and Cas spared the brief thought that he wished he could heal him. Something creeping at the back of his mind urged him to, but he couldn’t risk it. “I’m sorry,”
He walked backward toward the pit, eyes closed and already leaning back to make the drop into the dark when Michael’s furious, “No!” reached him. He grabbed onto Michael’s shirt and pushed off from the edge of the earth with all the force in his body—plunged them both into the darkness of the cage. And as the earth above them swallowed up the hole while they were still plummeting, satisfaction beat in his heart. Dean was worth it. Falling. He always would be.
---
Dean’s existence was made up of agony—everything was anguish and torment, and the physical part was the least of it. He couldn’t see out of one eye, and he was pretty goddamn sure that a ton of his bones were broken. His lungs were barely pulling in air, but he didn’t care. They were dead. Cas and Castiel both. Everything he’d been fighting to save was gone, and he was too numb to do anything but kneel in the dirt and wish that he was dead, too.
Spit and blood dripped onto his shirt from his swollen mouth and he oughta get up somehow and check on Sam. God, Bobby was dead, too. What if they all were? What if it was just Dean left?
Terror clutched at his already struggling lungs and he couldn’t breathe. For a moment, he thought he was gonna die and the only thing that he felt at the prospect was relief. All of this, and he was gonna get to die now, too.
He blinked watery eyes open as much as he could at the grief-stricken sound of his name in Castiel’s voice and he had to be dead, ‘cause that was Castiel standing right there, not exploded all over the cemetery like Dean knew he was. Gently his hand cupped Dean’s face. This was it. He was dying, and this was Heaven.
A familiar twinge slithered through his body and he blinked hard. His eyes opened fully and he he could see everything clearly again, including Castiel softly smiling down at him. All the pain that’d wracked his body was gone—save for the hollow in his chest where his heart was supposed to be, that was still a throbbing empty ache that didn’t ease all that much. “Cas,” he breathed, God, at least he was there. At least he got to keep him.
Castiel shot him a half-smile, “Good as new,” he said, and then he was walking over and kneeling next to Bobby. A gasp wrenched from Bobby’s chest and then he was heaving in breaths, color returning to his body. “Maybe a little better than new,” he allowed as he revived Sam too.
Sam’s eyes met his across the field, pity and curiosity in them and Dean nodded as a tear tracked down his cheek. He blew out a breath and wiped it away. Misery curling up hot in his chest alongside his relief and guilt.
Some unspoken agreement happened while Dean was staring at the place where Cas’d been swallowed up by the earth. Sam and Bobby had taken Bobby’s van and left him behind with Baby and Castiel. When he got tired of staring at dead grass and unmarked ground, Dean numbly walked to his car. New fears sprouting up in his chest when he looked at Castiel, all angel-d up again.
It was dark out by the time he found enough courage to ask the question that’d been haunting him the whole drive. “What’re you gonna do now?”
Castiel smiled at him, face peaceful, “Return to Heaven, I suppose.”
Dean’s gut twisted. Of course he was. Of course he wasn’t gonna stay with Dean. He’d probably never been planning to. It didn’t matter that Dean had lost Cas, because losing one of them wasn’t bad enough—he was gonna lose Castiel, too. To this.
“Heaven?” his voice wavered.
“With Michael in the cage, I’m sure it’s total anarchy up there,” Castiel pointed out.
“So what? You’re the new sheriff in town?” he asked, already feeling himself starting to go numb again.
“I like that. Yeah, I suppose I am.”
“Wow. God gives you a brand new shiny set of wings and suddenly you’re his bitch again,” Dean said acerbically, eyes glued to the road so Castiel couldn’t see the hurt in them.
“Dean, I don’t know what God wants,” he said, “I don’t know if he’ll even return. It just—seems like the right thing to do.”
Fury coalesced boiling hot in Dean’s chest and he glared. “Well if you do see him, you tell him I’m coming for him next.”
“He helped,” Castiel said gently, “maybe even more than we realize.”
Dean scoffed. “Oh, yeah, that’s easy for you to say. He brought you back. What about Cas—huh? What’d you just forget about him? He’s stuck in that goddamn cage and they’re probably—” Dean cut off with a shake of his head.
He couldn’t say it—couldn’t think it. He was already coming apart at the seams, and he had too much pride left to beg Castiel to stay. To beg him to think even a little, about staying with him. “He doesn’t get to come back, and I gotta live with that. So you—” Dean shook his head harshly, “you do whatever it is you think is right. Because God wants you to. And I—” Dean shrugged. “I’ll find a goddamn way to live with it.”
“I didn’t choose this,” Castiel said, clipped. “I didn’t want this. Dean, I’m no happier with this turn of events than you are but if I don’t discover a purpose—a meaning in this,” he cut himself off, and Dean thought for a moment he saw a flash of pain across his features before his expression closed off. “This is how I find a way to live with it.”
Dean shook his head, a hollow denial on his lips. His eyes closed momentarily and when he glanced at the passenger seat again, Cas was gone. He glared at the road in front of him. “Well, you really suck at goodbyes, you know that?” he mumbled.
---
He picked Sam up at Bobby's. They could've stayed. Hell, Bobby invited them to but Dean couldn’t be there right now. He couldn’t lie down in the bed where he'd made love to Cas, to Castiel. He couldn't look around Bobby's house right now without finding traces of them. If he stopped, if he stayed, he’d fall apart, and he wouldn't give himself that luxury.
So they drove. They cruised blacktop roads until Dean could barely see straight and the lines on the highway started blurring. And they ended up in some two-bit motel that’d seen better days with a bottle of Jack that didn’t feel like a celebration at all.
Sure, they beat the devil and the world was safe, Sam was safe. And that wasn’t nothin’, Dean was grateful that his kid brother stayed out of the cage with Lucifer and Michael. But everytime that he thought about Cas there, he wanted to throw up—bile rising in the back of his throat and panic crushing his chest.
It wasn’t goddamn fair that Cas was gone, and Castiel had bailed, and the world just decided it was gonna keep on going without Dean's permission. He didn’t know how to do this anymore. He didn't remember how the hell he did this before them.
All on his own again, the shitstorm that was his fucking life seemed so much bleeker. Maybe for everyone else it wasn't the end of the world—but it sure as hell was the end of Dean’s.
Epilogue
A month had gone by. A whole month and not a damn word from Castiel in all that time. Not one. No calls, no texts, no goddamn wings rustling. Nothing. Just silence, and emptiness, and hunt after hunt after hunt just so that he could feel something other than the crushing heartbreak that was steadily consuming him.
Day by day it was getting harder to keep slogging through it. Sam was trying to keep him afloat, guilt in nearly everything he did for Dean like he somehow thought that Dean would be better off if he'd been the one to swan dive into the cage instead of Cas. It wasn't true. He'd be just as broken if his baby brother was cellmates with Satan for eternity. But Dean never told him that. He didn't have the capacity to hold emotionally fraught conversations. Not without the risk of letting out the feelings he'd bottled up tight.
They were at a gas station in Topeka when his phone rang in his pocket. He didn’t check the screen before he answered. It didn’t much matter who it was. Sam was hitting the can, and Dean was gassing up the car. Chances were pretty good that it was Bobby calling him with another lead on a hunt.
“Yeah?” he answered.
“Hello, Dean.” His heart stopped cold before it stutter-skipped in his chest.
“Cas?” he breathed, heart pounding, now in his chest because fuck, he'd missed Castiel’s voice.
There was a smile in Castiel's tone, “Yes. Where are you?”
“Well, gee, nice to hear from you, Cas. I’m great. How’re you?” he replied sarcastically—apparently still pissed beneath his joy.
“I’m fine, Dean. Your location?”
Dean rattled off the address of the Gas & Sip they were filling up at. His lips pulled up into an involuntary smile at the sound of soft rustling behind him, and he spun around, eyes widening and lips falling open in shock.
Castiel and Cas were feet away from him. Dean blinked. Still there. Cas had a wide, bright grin on his face, and Castiel was wearing this little proud smile … and Dean was—he had to be dreaming, right? That had to be what this was. He shoved the nozzle back into its place on the gas pump.
“You—Are you? How did you?” Dean asked as he stumbled forward. Castiel opened his mouth like he was about to explain it, but he didn't get the chance. Dean's lips were on his before he got a single word out and Cas laughed. Dean's chest was gonna fucking burst for the way that sound made it swell.
He released Castiel just to repeat the whole process with Cas, and he didn't care if they were probably getting some dirty looks—because fuck it, how often did the loves of your life defy death and Heaven to come back to you?
Details would come later, and Dean would find out about how Castiel'd left that night in the car and marshalled enough power in Heaven to go after Cas. But right then, he was too busy finally being able to breathe again to really question how it happened.
Right then, Cas was smiling against his mouth, and mumbling that he loved Dean. Dean kissed the sentiment right back into his mouth. And then he pulled Castiel closer, into a weird, perfect, three-way hug. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't've—I could’ve—”
“It's alright,” Castiel cut him off, eyes crinkled at the corners and bluer than the afternoon sky. “We're here now.”
A throat cleared nearby, familiar and amused. Dean finally tore his gaze from Castiel's face, though he didn't make so much as a twitch to pull away. “Take it we're getting separate rooms tonight,” Sam said, then chuckled. “Hell, maybe you oughta drop me off at a different motel entirely.”
Dean cracked up, laughter bubbling up out of his chest like a pop bottle that’d been shaken too much before opening. Everything felt lighter, felt right again like it hadn't for over a month and this time—this time the world wasn't ending. This time, there wasn't a damn thing standing between them. Thank, fuck.
“Yeah, Sam,” he called over. “Maybe even a different city if you really don't wanna hear us.”
Every single person he loved most in the world simultaneously rolled their eyes and laughed at him and Dean—he was pretty damn okay with that.