Chapter Text
There’s always a danger of dying on the job. That’s hunter (and Winchester) 101. For every awful, moronic plan the Winchesters have ever had, there was always the possibility that one of them wouldn’t make it out. That they’ve survived this long is, in and of itself, a miracle. Dean’s claimed more than once that he feels like he’s living on borrowed time, that somewhere out there, maybe some poor schmuk got hit by a bus because Dean didn’t get his head ripped off by vampires that day or whatever. That veers fairly close to the “fate and destiny” train of thought that Dean’s not a big fan of, but he’s never really been able to come up with a better explanation. Facts are facts, and he should have died a long, long time ago.
So it’s with a certain relief that the other shoe has dropped. He’s spent so long with his head on the chopping block that he’s just glad the guillotine has finally let gravity do its good work. Being bent over like that for so long is exhausting, and his knees hurt. Let them Ned Stark me, he thinks woozily, and that’s probably the blood loss talking.
Somewhere off in the distance a door clangs loudly and he thinks he hears someone shouting his name. His mouth is filled with blood, but he doesn’t think he’d be able to answer, regardless. Would he want to answer, if he could? Maybe. Maybe not.
It’s kind of peaceful, actually, despite the bodies littered around him and the cold seeping into him through the column at his back. Below him, the concrete floor is cold. It’s all cold. Of course it is. He’s in another goddamned warehouse, because it always seems to be a goddamned warehouse. Guess the supernatural baddies location department couldn’t string together much of a budget this quarter.
The Mark of Cain has helped with his fighting abilities since he took it on, but even it wasn’t a match for a bunch of pissed off angels. They’re too quick and their blades are too sharp. They managed to break up him, Sam, and Cas by driving them in different directions, but Dean’s not too worried. He got stuck with the bulk of them and Sam and Cas are both good enough to fend for themselves.
The only thing that ticks Dean off, just a little bit? This was no grand slam. This was no Lucifer, or Lilith, or Azazel. It was a bunch of terribly organized angels who fucked around enough to get people hurt, and when the three of them showed up, they were already angling for a fight. Cas tried his usual “can’t we all just get along” plea, but it’s been working less and less lately, and Dean’s told him more than once to just give it the hell up. Most angels they encounter these days aren’t exactly too pleased to see Cas, or either Winchester.
To add salt to the wound, the angel that finally got him? Got away. As if that’s not a strike to the ego.
But in the end, Dean just doesn’t care. There’s a part of him that’s grateful, actually. At least this way, he doesn’t have to do it himself if it ever came down to it. Not that he’s worried about being turned away at the Pearly Gates or anything, since he figures that option got crossed off the list a long time ago. It would be harder for Sam and Cas though, and he doesn’t want that. It’s just an occupational hazard, right? Where’s his workman’s comp?
A quiet step breaks him out of his thoughts, and then a much closer voice than before says “Dean?”
Cas stands in the doorway, his trench coat splattered with blood and his hair matted to one side of his head. His eyes are wild, blanking out momentarily when they first land on Dean. Dean blinks heavily and watches as Cas takes in the scene in front of him. His expression flits from one emotion to another faster than a flip book. From worry, to surprise, to outright horror. He sprints to Dean, immediately collapsing in front of him. He stares at the blood pulsing out of Dean’s side, and then lifts wide eyes to his face.
Dean musters up a smile, but the blood pooling at the corner of his mouth probably ruins the effect.
“Hey.”
Cas swallows hard as he brings a hand to Dean’s cheek, just barely grazing the skin, just barely trembling. He doesn’t have a lot of grace left, but he must be able to tell that this is it. The blood pool is too big, the wound too deep. Dean’s already done the math. For an almost-angel, it’s just a matter of putting two and mortal flesh wound together.
Dean wants to nestle himself deeper into Cas’ palm, but he’s tired and it hurts to move.
“Dean,” Cas whispers, a soft, desperate thing. Something Dean’s heard in hazy dreams more often than real life.
Cas has a cut above his eyebrow, and Dean reaches out, but aborts the move halfway through, exhausting himself.
“They got you too, huh?” he asks wryly.
Cas looks away for a moment, dropping his hand and using it to cover his eyes. He’s shaking his head minutely.
“Ah, c’mon, Cas, a guy can’t joke on his deathbed?”
Cas meets his expectant gaze again, eyes watery, face pale.
“Dean…” he repeats, throat working. It takes him a second. “Dean, you’re going to be okay.”
Dean purses his lips and tries to blink away the heat threatening his eyes.
“Nah,” he says simply. “I’m not. I know you can tell. You know the score.”
Cas’ bottom lip trembles, feather light. “I should… I should…” He trails off before he can even finish the thought. His gaze is continually drawn to the blood soaked patch of Dean’s shirt, and each time he sees it anew he loses focus. “Should I go find Sam?” He finally asks, fighting to keep his eyes away from the wound. “I don’t want to leave you but-”
This time Dean manages to reach out, though not without a gasp of pain. He grabs Cas’ hand in his and squeezes as tightly as possible.
“No,” Dean says firmly, “No, Sam can’t be here. He’s already seen me go like this once. Hellhounds and all.”
Cas gently squeezes back, like he’s afraid he’s going to speed up the dying process if he clings too hard.
“Sam would want to be here,” he says, but his voice has a canned, tunnelled quality to it, like he’s somewhere very far away. Steeling himself.
Dean closes his eyes.
“No,” he says. “You won’t find him in time anyway, and…” He groans in pain, dropping his free hand to his side, fingers sticky with blood. “Fuck, Cas, I don’t want you to leave me.”
Cas drops his hand.
“Cas-”
Cas holds out a palm to stop him, taking a deep breath. He closes his eyes for just a moment, and his whole face transforms. Every etch of emotion is wiped from it, every line smoothed out. When he opens his eyes, Dean may as well be staring at the stone faced angel he met in a barn all those years ago.
“I need you to keep still,” Cas orders, going full-on heaven’s wrath. “You’re going to be fine. I’m going to fix this.”
Pity washes over Dean. He knows from experience that it’s a lot easier being the one dying than the one being died on.
“You know it’s not going to work,” Dean says softly. “You don’t have enough juice.”
Cas ignores him, shrugging off his trench coat and suit jacket and rolling up his sleeves. Dean watches the grace jump behind Cas’ eyes, white blue and electric, but it’s closer to static shock than lightning.
“Don’t waste it,” Dean pleads. “Don’t waste it on me, Cas.”
That seems to steel Cas further, and his movements are all sharp lines until he actually gets near Dean, when he softens, almost unconsciously. He gently lifts Dean’s hand off his wound, holding it for a moment longer than necessary and letting his thumb linger only a too brief second across Dean’s palm.
“I told you to stay still,” he says harshly, and Dean ignores for both their sakes how his voice breaks.
Cas places gentle hands on the wound and Dean hisses.
“It needs to be concentrated physical contact,” Cas explains, only allowing a hint of an apology into his voice. “With my current… deficits… this is the most prudent way to do things.”
“Ay ay, Captain,” Dean says weakly. It won’t take long for Cas to admit that there’s nothing he can do. His stolen grace has been waning, the circles under his eyes growing more prominent. Dean saw it once, briefly, way back during the days of the apocalypse. Even if Cas refuses to admit the score, Dean’s been keeping track.
Cas focuses, closing his eyes again and adding slight pressure to the wound. Dean doesn’t bother to follow suit, leaving his eyes wide open as he stares at Cas’ hands on him. Normally any manifestation of Cas’ grace is enough to blind someone, but Dean already knows it’s not going to work. Besides, if he gets blinded who the hell cares, right? He’s just gonna die anyways.
The Mark has been pulsating softly on his arm, and that’s one more thing to take out of this whole shitshow. At least he’ll be free of that for good and whatever the fuck it was planning on doing to him. He flips his arm around so he doesn’t have to look at it.
The pressure on his wound continues, but there’s not even a spark coming from Cas. More blood pools up around his hands and overflows onto the ground, but Cas soldiers on like the soldier he is, suddenly blind to the fact that Dean was a lost cause long before he got here. Dean’s seen some futile endeavors in his life, but this one may well be the saddest.
“Cas,” he says quietly.
“Shut up, Dean.”
Dean can feel himself fading, and he’ll be damned if his last moments alive are going to be spent with Cas being a stubborn bastard.
“Cas, give it up.”
“Shut up, Dean.”
Dean musters the energy for one more act of reaching out, resting a hand over the backs of Cas’ desperate ones.
“Cas, stop,” he says softly.
Cas doesn’t look up right away, and Dean watches a tear fall into the blood pool.
Slowly, Cas brings his hands up and fists them in the front of Dean’s shirt. Still without making eye contact, he rests his forehead on Dean’s chest, back trembling.
“Please don’t leave me,” he mumbles into Dean’s shirt, and Dean feels a tear or two of his own slip out.
“Hey,” he says into Cas’ hair, joking softly, “My eyes are up here.”
Cas finally meets his gaze, his face wet.
“Y’know,” Dean says, “If I could move my arms right now, I’d do that dumb thing they do in the movies where they wipe the other person’s tears away.”
Cas sniffs.
“I’ve never seen a movie like that,” he admits, finding Dean’s hand again and intertwining their fingers.
“You should watch one,” Dean smiles weakly, “You’d probably dig the sappy shit.”
Cas makes a horrible choking sound, putting his free hand on his knee to steady himself.
“Last I checked,” he manages, “It was you who preferred those kinds of movies.”
Dean huffs a laugh, and it hurts.
“Shhh,” he stage whispers, “That’s a secret.”
With their other hands still entwined, Cas takes his hand off his knee and brings it to Dean’s face, his thumb catching the moisture dotting Dean’s bottom eyelashes. Dean can feel the streaks of blood Cas’ fingers leave behind.
“If you can’t do it for me, I can do it for you,” Cas promises, his voice trembling. He leans his forehead against Dean’s.
“Better late than never, right?” Dean mumbles, his vision starting to blur. He feels his grip loosen on Cas’ hand.
“Dean,” Cas whispers, using both hands now to cradle Dean’s face. “Dean, please.” He chokes on the words, and he catches the last of Dean’s tears.
The last thing Dean hears before the lights go out is Cas, murmuring against his lips, “Stay with me, please. I love you I love you I love you-”
***
Cas doesn't remember much after that. Everything had gone very, very quiet.
He didn't think it was possible for things to be quieter than after he got cut off from heaven, but then again, he's never had his best friend die in his arms before. There was the time he spent with Naomi, being groomed to kill Dean, but that was nothing- absolutely nothing- compared to what it felt like when the real Dean finally slipped away right in front of him.
Sam eventually found him, covered in blood and still on the floor, Dean's head in his lap. From across the room, Cas watched Sam's face completely drain of color as he stopped in his tracks.
"... Dean?" He finally asked, voice so small it didn't even echo. He was looking at Cas, though. He knew.
"I'm sorry, Sam," Cas managed to say, because he owed Sam that much at least. His words sounded far, far away. His voice wasn't connected to his body.
Cas thinks Sam had to drag him away from Dean, though he doesn’t remember putting up much of a fight. Somehow, he ended up in the back of the Impala, and Dean’s head ended up in his lap again.
Sam was driving, and he didn’t say a thing all the way back to Lebanon. The car smelled like lighter fluid, and it was only later that Cas realized Sam must have burned the other bodies. Dean always warned him about never being sloppy with the cleanup.
“You don’t want your fingerprints on file,” he had said ominously. “Trust me.”
“I do,” Cas had said, with probably a little too much sincerity for the situation at hand.
Dean had blinked a couple times, shook his head, and then continued like nothing had happened.
Cas ran his fingers through Dean’s hair on the drive home. There were dried bits of blood in it, and he made sure to get rid of it all. Sam’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel.
About halfway home, a very quiet voice broke through his own internal wall of silence and said to Cas, it’s your fault.
“I’m sorry I was sloppy,” Cas whispers, pressing his forehead to Dean’s.
***
They lie Dean out on his bed in the bunker, and stand at the foot of it. Sam stares at his brother’s corpse, face made of stone.
“Is there a way?” he asks Cas in a monotone, not taking his eyes off Dean.
“A way to what?”
“To fix it. To bring him back.”
They aren’t looking at each other. They’re speaking to each other through a dead man.
“Not that I know of,” Cas says flatly. He’s removed Dean’s plaid and thrown it somewhere in the room, and he wants to get the rest of the bloody clothes off him, but finds himself hesitating. Dean already looks so naked in just a t-shirt and jeans. His socked feet make it hard for Cas to swallow.
“And you don’t have the juice,” Sam states. “To fix it.”
“No.”
Sam nods once.
“I’m going to go dig a grave,” he says. “We’re not burning him.”
“Okay.”
Sam takes a long time to respond, and even though he’s not looking at Cas, Cas can feel his eyes on him.
“An angel brought him back before. Who knows. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
It’s mean to sting, Cas thinks, but he doesn’t feel it. He says nothing in reply, and Sam eventually leaves the room.
There’s a chair at Dean’s desk, and Cas pulls it up next to the bed, sitting close enough that he could touch Dean if he wanted. He could, but he doesn’t.
He feels numb. Immune. Sterile. This is similar to what he felt all those years ago, before he decided he was on the wrong side of the war. When Dean shoved a knife into his heart the first time they met, he felt nothing.
It’s still a knife, it’s still a heart, and he still feels nothing.
He’s closer to human than angel at the moment, but human grief is a slow, sinuous thing. It moves through him like a glacier, mobile but unwilling. He doesn’t know what to do, or how to close the gaping hole that seems to have developed somewhere around his center.
As for the guilt… well. If he’s sure about anything, he’s sure about that. It will come. He can feel it already, stirring against the confines of his ribcage.
He brushes one of his knuckles against Dean’s own, and it’s still warm. He could be sleeping. God knows Dean’s come back to the bunker more than once too tired to change out of his blood splattered clothes. That Cas or Sam would have to pull his boots off and turn off the bedroom light on their way out. If Cas was still around in the morning, Dean would inevitably stumble out of his room and into the library, blearily asking where his boots went. Cas would point silently towards the bunker entrance, and every time, there his boots were.
Now, they lie on the floor at the foot of the bed, like Dean had no one to come home to, kicking off his boots in a fit of exhaustion, not worrying where they landed.
Cas stands, and gathers the boots. He brings them to the shoe mat by the bunker’s entrance, lining them up with more care than he ever has. He looks down at his own scuffed dress shoes, and considers for a moment before taking them off and lining them up next to Dean’s. He rarely takes his shoes off when visiting, even though Dean would grumble about scuff marks. It wasn’t anything personal. He just wasn’t around often enough or long enough to bother.
Cas returns to Dean’s room, returns to his vigil.
“I don’t know what to do,” Cas says simply, as if he and Dean are sitting across the table from each other in the library, “I begged you not to die, and you died anyway.” He blinks rapidly. “Where do we go from here? I don’t… I don’t…” Cas closes his eyes and presses a palm to his forehead, letting out a shuddering sigh. “I don’t know what to do,” he repeats.
There’s always been something to do. Knowledge to gain. Tasks to be completed.
But this is nothing. There is nothing to do.
Years ago, when Sam jumped into the Cage and all that was left was a bruised and battered Dean kneeling in an empty field, Cas healed him, showed up in the Impala and exchanged some impersonal words, and then left for what he thought was forever. If Raphael had never attempted to restart the apocalypse, Cas may have never come back to earth.
He was never sure why that happened the way it did. He had worked with Bobby and the Winchesters as brothers in arms, as comrades, to stop the apocalypse. He rebelled against everything he ever knew all because he believed in Dean Winchester. He was prepared to see the battle through to the very end, and he did.
And that was the problem. It ended.
Apparently, Cas isn’t very good at endings.
It makes sense. He’s an angel, and angels aren’t supposed to end.
His very nature is to move, to be mobile. To be in more than one place at once, on more than one plane at once. He knows he always came across like he had a stick up his ass, as Dean so often put it. As still. Unmoving. But that was only to the naked eye. Before he learned about stillness, he was controlled chaos. Both the eye of the hurricane and the hurricane itself.
It was Dean who taught him. About being quiet. About silence.
A glance shared across a bed after a bad dream. A mutual silence on a park bench. A stare held under a sputtering streetlamp in the middle of a junk yard. That tiny spark of remembrance that Emmanuel pretended he never had. Nights in purgatory spent with backs against trees, Benny on watch on the other side of the camp.
After Stull, Sam was gone. Dean had promised he would go to Lisa’s. There was supposed to be a new order to things, and Cas just didn’t fit into it. It was an ending, and he was prepared to make his exit, despite the way he always found his gaze lingering on Dean.
Then there was the war in heaven. The souls. Absorbing Sam’s hell trauma. There was purgatory, and even though Dean was the one who technically left, that’s just semantics. Cas was always ready to walk to through that final door.
All these years he’s been making exits, and he’s finally stuck. There’s nowhere he can go that this won’t follow. There’s nothing he can do that will ease this ache in his chest. He’s finally realized, much too late in the game, that running away isn’t going to solve anything.
“I’m sorry,” Cas mumbles, interlocking his fingers and resting his elbows on the edge of Dean’s bed. Before he even realizes what he’s doing, he’s fallen to his knees, head bowed, praying. Not to any deity in particular, not to any angels who still may be able to hear him, but to Dean. Not for Dean. To him.
Against his will, he falls asleep with his head half on the bed, nestled in the crook of his elbow.
He dreams of strange things, of hazy limbs and dark eyes and thick fog.