Chapter Text
"I'll meet you/Where the road meets the sky…"
"Really? What is this crap?" Dean shakes his head at the stereo where the pop music is being rendered by the Impala's particular tinny quality. For grungier bands, this is probably how the songs are intended to be played - screw vinyl. It's the sound of the road, the smell of leather and gasoline, that makes Zeppelin sink into the bones.
But the effect doesn't work on that Top Forty shit, and maybe that's why Dean has never been able to stand it. His only exposure to music was through static.
"I grabbed it the last time we hit up a thrift shop. I just needed something new. Leave it, it won't kill you." Sam feels entirely neutral about the music, but it's his brotherly duty to extend anything that annoys Dean this much. Besides, even though the lyrics are sad, the tune is upbeat.
Dean huffs out a breath and drums his fingers against the windowsill, but he leaves the stereo on as he turns back to keeping watch. Probably because the alternative is to return to painful silences they've been falling into.
"Look, Dean. Don't you think we should -"
Without looking, Dean reaches over and turns up the volume on the pop music he despises.
"Dean, come on, man."
Dean pretends not to hear him. Or maybe he can't. The tinny voice now is a groundswell of emotion.
" I'll meet you/Where the road meets the sky/Some day soon/So don’t say goodbye…"
Sam looks at his brother's profile, now nodding his head unconsciously to the music as he gazes out the driver's side window. They're both watching, waiting.
This is how it always is.
Sam sighs and lets the matter go, for the moment. What else can he do? He can't force Dean to talk, not without risking an explosion, and they can't afford that right now. But of course, Dean will just explode some other way if Sam can't get him to talk. He knows his brother. They each have their own way of dealing with the worst, their own warped survival mechanisms.
Sam stares out the opposite window and thinks about Ruby. He doesn't let himself think about the few women he's actually loved, or the couple of dogs he's kept. He doesn't think about his brief time in college, the only few years of his life when he really got to pretend to be normal, when he was learning just how different his family was from his friends' families.
It wasn't just the demons. Most people didn't have a father who abandoned them with strangers or alone in seedy motel rooms. Most of them hadn't been raised by their older brothers. A brother who, even when Sam left, was already becoming a functional alcoholic.
That's the thing.
Sam doesn't let himself dwell on the people he's loved. He looks at all those pieces, packs them up, and says goodbye. But he never loved Ruby. He only wanted her. He wanted what she could give him. He thinks about the salt-iron taste of her blood and it still makes his mouth water.
Sam is an addict. In recovery, sure, but it's ongoing, present-tense. They're all addicted to something. For him, it's the rush of power he used to feel hopped up on demon blood, the way it felt to finally have some sense of control, some weapon that was within him. It is a terrible thing to lust for, to still hold inside of him, and he knows that. But it is the darkness that is him. Deep down, it is the famine within.
And Dean? Sam looks at his brother's averted face and wishes he knew what to say, what to do for him. Dean is a functional alcoholic, and it's not good, it's not healthy, but Sam can live with that. What he's not sure Dean can live with is the guilt he's always holding onto just beneath the surface. It's been tearing him apart for years, maybe for as long as they've been on the road. All the deaths, all the losses, all the people they couldn't save. Dean has their father's voice in his head, even after all this time, John Winchester telling him to look out for his little brother, to look out for the world.
Sam can put away the people he's lost. The grief never fully leaves, but he can compartmentalize. He can put it all somewhere in that darkness where it's quiet and cool, somewhere it won't explode.
Dean's addicted to the pain, to the guilt. He can't let it go, can't stop touching the wound. He can't admit that's what he's doing either, not until it all overflows at once. His cracks are always just at the surface, held in constant tension, one more loss away from self-destruction.
Sam can't blame him. Most of the time, he can't help him either. He'll just be there, to try and pick up the pieces.
Dean ignores Sam's frequent glances. He can feel his brother's eyes on him and he wants to snap at him but the stupid pop music is too loud, and anyway, it wouldn't do any good. It could only lead to talking, and that's out of the question. Sam is too fixated on talking. He might be right, but Dean doesn't have to accept that.
There are some things Dean can't tell his kid brother. There are things he just doesn't have words for, that he's never had words for.
Dean watches the trees out the window, the impenetrable darkness between them, checking the mirror from time to time. They're waiting for Jack. Dean's not expecting him yet, but they can't afford to let their guard slip for even a moment, not now.
It's harder to be still. Dean would have given anything to be fighting something right then. To not have the words echoing over and over again in his skull.
Everyone who has ever loved him dies.
Everyone he ever cared about.
Cas is just more proof of that. More proof that somehow, something about Dean Winchester is fundamentally poisonous, destructive, fatal.
Dean can't think about it. He won't think about it.
Sam's shitty pop music switches to the next song. It's worse, but better because Dean can't make out the lyrics. Something about love, as it always is.
He can't think about it.
This is how it always is. The brothers in this car, the smell of gunpowder, leather, and whiskey wrapped around them like a home, waiting through the darkness for whatever comes next. The world always promises to end and then it doesn't , and they have to find a way to go on with themselves. Dean has to find some way to go on living with himself when he's the one who has been wrecked in all of this. Tragedy happens to the survivors.
I cared about the whole world because of you.
Dean raps his fist against the windowsill. He's not going to lose it. He can't afford to think about this, to talk about this. He tries to tap into that numbness that usually sustains him, the place where feelings never fully die, but never get to fully live either. But when he reaches for that reservoir of emptiness, all he can find is the other memories he's buried there. And there's a lot Dean Winchester has tried to numb himself to.
***
There was one man. Just one, just once. It was the year Sam left for college, Dean must have been 21, 22. He'd been working a case outside Lincoln, Nebraska and met up with another hunter tracking the same signs. Dean had heard of Mason Graves, from Bobby, maybe, so when they'd run into each other and Graves had offered to work the case together, Dean had been eager to agree. There was just no denying that Graves was… cool. A couple years older than Dean, he'd seemed like everything a hunter should be - calm, collected, a good shot, in a leather jacket and sunglasses with his black hair tousled and his grin wide and easy. He had a neck tattoo of an ace, so Dean had called him that for the three days they worked together. They'd tracked down and killed a chupacabra.
They celebrated with whiskey, passing a bottle back and forth in the parked Impala. There had been a lot of laughter. Dean remembered being tipsy and warm.
Things happened. Just hand things, in the front seats. Just mouths against each other, all hot and soaked up with Jack Daniels. Just Graves' other hand on the nape of Dean's neck and Dean's other hand up the back of his shirt, and…
Dean had been young, tipsy, flushed with the success. He'd been so lonely, was so desperate for some sort of belonging. What Graves had been offering was validation. He'd smelled like a hunter, like the road. When he'd kissed him it was like he was accepting Dean, judging him worthy enough of this attention, this touch.
Dean has just wanted to be worth something, to someone.
Eventually, Graves had written down his number on a scrap of paper and pressed it into Dean's jacket pocket.
"You give me a call next time you're near Texas, hear?" He'd said with his drawl, flashing a grin.
"You got it, Ace." Dean had fingered the scrap of paper in his pocket, trying to appear offhand. Graves had ruffled his hair before leaving the impala and getting into his own truck. Dean had listened to the sound of it fade away along the gravel road out in the middle of nowhere Nebraska, leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed.
When Dean finally got out of the car and went into the seedy motel room he'd booked at the beginning of the hunt, John Winchester was sitting on the edge of the bed.
"Dad?" Dean's heart skyrocketed even as his stomach plummeted. This wasn't an uncommon feeling for a reunion with his father. There was always the good and the bad with John.
"Dean." John stood up. He wasn't looking at Dean. There was a thin scratch across his right cheek that hadn't been there when they'd last parted a week ago.
"I thought we were meeting in Illinois. Is… everything okay?"
John walked over to the window that looked out on the motel parking lot. The sickly yellow light illuminating the walkway made the scratch on his face look black.
"I got done early, thought I'd see how you were doing with that chupacabra."
"I… It's dead. Got it boxed in today and killed it. Salted and burned the body, just to be safe."
"Good. Good to hear." There was something off in his voice.
Things had been bad since Sam left. There was a hollowness where he had been, a look to the left always expecting to find him there having their backs. Dean had gotten used to their father's abandonment, because there wasn't anything else he could do about it, but Sam… Dean would never have left Sam. Never. Not after everything they'd been through. Finding out that Sam didn't feel the same had been a low blow.
John had been explosive at first. Dean had to fight every natural instinct to duck around his father in those first few days. They'd been hunting vampires, and when they found the nest and beheaded the lot of them, John started punching up the walls of the dirty old farmhouse the vamps had been squatting in. He'd practically torn the place down with his bare hands.
Dean understood the feeling.
He'd thought, somewhere deep down and unacknowledged, that maybe at least he and his dad would be closer. Maybe if it was just the two of them, John could spare some of the love he'd had for Sam. The two of them always fought, but at least there was heat in it. Even when John had hit Dean, when he was younger, it had been disciplinary, dispassionate. With Sam, the verbal arguments were tempests. Even Dean couldn't always defuse them, no matter how hard he tried to keep the peace.
"What's next? Are we still heading out to the crop failures in Illinois?"
Dean sat down on the spot his father had vacated and pulled the bag from under the bed. He did a compulsive inventory of his weapons and supplies just to have something to do with his hands.
Holy water.
Rocksalt.
Shotgun rounds.
Steel.
Silver.
"No. No, I think it's better if we split up again. We'll cover more ground. You take Illinois, there's something I want to see in Missouri. We'll check in in a week at the crossroads outside Springfield."
Dean looked up at the back of his father's leather jacket. It shouldn't have stung after all this time, but it did.
"Sure you don't need me for Missouri? The crops could be nothing."
"I'm sure."
John was still looking out the window, his back stiff.
Dean glanced at what little of the glass his father wasn't blocking and realized with a shuddering, sinking feeling that the view from the motel was a clear shot to the Impala. The car was parked in the shadows of a big oak tree and Dean couldn't really make out the interior from the room, but he realized he didn't know where his father had parked, or how long he'd been waiting there.
Dean's voice abandoned him. He hadn't even processed what had just happened with Graves. A moment before, his stomach had been warm with whiskey and mutual admiration. Now he felt flushed with guilt and shame.
John finally turned away from the window. He still didn't look at Dean.
"I'm going to head out, get an early start on the road."
"I - dad, it can wait 'til morning. Get some sleep here at least, you drove all the way out."
There it was again, Dean practically begging his dad to stay. He should have been used to the leaving by then. But he was used to taking care of John, too, used to helping him stumble into bed drunk, used to making sure he remembered to drink water with his whiskey, used to washing off the blood and sewing up the cuts. Dean was used to reminding his father that he had to sleep, eat, take care of his injuries. Things were worse for everyone when he didn't.
"I'm good, Dean. Listen…" John kept his eyes on the floor for a moment before he looked up fixing his gaze just beyond Dean. He wouldn't look him in the eye and his voice was gruff. "You still taking care of that car, boy?"
"Yes, sir." Dean swallowed, waiting. But the blow - verbal, physical, it wouldn't have mattered - never came.
"Good. I'll see you in Springfield."
John had walked out of the motel room, and they'd never said another word about that night.
They didn't need to. Dean didn't know what his father might or might not have seen, but he'd decided it didn't matter. The thing with Graves had just been… a fluke. An experiment. A moment of loneliness and loss at the hands of a bottle of whiskey. And if it was something that him feel that much shame in the presence of his father, if his dad couldn't even look at him…
It wasn't who Dean was. Things just happened, sometimes. It hadn't happened again.
***
The trees creak in the darkness. Dean hates woods at night. Anything could be hiding anywhere. It's a setting he can't control.
Maybe everyone in this universe is gone. Maybe it's all another mind game. Maybe none of it really matters anymore.
Dean has been tired for so long.
The tape runs out and it's just aggressive static on the stereo, the volume turned up too loud. For almost a minute, neither of them touches it or says anything. Then Sam finally lets out a sigh and opens the passenger-side compartment, digging out the cassette box.
"What do you want?" he asks.
"Finally. Zeppelin, man."
Sam sighs a little louder this time, but he exchanges the tapes.
Dean acknowledges this by turning the volume back down to a pleasant level.
Except that, he can't help but feel everything in his gut clenching when he thinks about the mixtape he made for Cas of Zeppelin songs. About Cas, still not quite human after all this time, not understanding the nature of gifts. That a gift was something you gave without hope or expectation of return.
It's in just being.
Sam turns away from the passenger window at the loud thud. It seems that Dean has just punched the car door with his left hand. He's rubbing his knuckles with his right hand and Sam recognizes the look on his face. To the casual observer, maybe Dean looks blank or angry, but Sam can feel him practically falling apart in front of him.
"Dean."
"Sorry, Sammi. I'm good."
"You're not good. Look -"
"Sam, I swear, if you say we need to talk about this one more time, I will leave you to wait alone. Okay? There's nothing to talk about."
Sam gives it a beat. He takes a breath, closes his eyes, opens them again.
"Cas is dead." He lets the words hang on their own. His voice is close to catching.
"Dammit, Sam!" Dean bangs his fist against the door again. The frame rattles. "There's nothing to talk about. We're all probably going to be dead or vanished in hours, so just… What's the point? We just go on and do what we always do. Hell, we've all died so many times at this point, what is there left to say about it?"
"The point is that it still matters that he's gone. He's family, and he's gone."
"I'm not… I can't do this right now."
Dean gets out of the car, slamming the door behind him. He looks away from the Impala, into the darkness, into nothing. He feels his eyes tearing up and rubs his hand over his face.
You changed me, Dean.
Dean hears Sam getting out of the car too, and dammit, can't his brother for once just leave things alone?
Sam always needs to talk about things. He always wants to take out his emotions and lay them down in alphabetical order and look at them. Dean doesn't know where the hell he learned to do that, because it certainly wasn't from him or John. Dean had learned everything he knew about suppressing his emotions from his father. He'd tried not to be that way with Sam when they were younger. He'd just wanted Sam to be a kid. For his little brother not to feel the brunt of always waiting for their dad to come back to wherever he'd left them, not to wonder what they'd do if one day he didn't come back. Maybe shielding Sam back then had worked. If so, it really had a way of coming back to bite Dean in the ass.
"I'm grieving too." Sam's voice over the roof of the Impala is quiet. "I think we need to at least acknowledge it, or…"
Dean lets out a humorless laugh. "Or what, Sam? We get distracted from our impossible task of fighting God? I hate to break it to you, but losing Cas again doesn't change a damn thing about how hopeless this is. I mean, we're crazy! We're fighting God . That's the only goddamn thing I want to think about right now."
"This is exactly how it changes things, Dean. You lose hope. When we lose someone, when we lose Cas, you spiral. I mean, look, I do too. It feels like there's this colossal weight on my chest all the time. But at least I know why I wake up feeling like I can't breathe. I can't bottle that up or pretend like it doesn't exist, or it would kill me. The way it's killing you."
The wind sends Sam's hair into his face and when he pushes it back, Dean is staring at him with anger flashing warning signs everywhere in his face.
"So, what, are you trying to tell me I can't handle it the way you can?"
"What? No, of course not -"
"Because I've buried just as many ghosts as you, Sam, and looks like I'm still here kicking." Dean kicks at the gravel road in emphasis and rocks going flying around them.
"I'm just saying," Sam says calmly, patiently, resting his arms on top of the Impala. He's tired too. "I think you should talk to me about what happened back there."
I've always wondered, ever since I took that deal, I've wondered…
"Sam." Dean turns away and looks up at the night sky. It's cloudy, no stars to be seen. He remembers the night the angels fell, the way the sky was full of the brightest meteors earth had ever beheld. It was the first time he thought about Cas falling. Castiel's true form tumbling out of heaven, burning like a celestial death, like a cosmic event.
"I'm begging you, man - " Dean's interrupted by the sound of footsteps. He and Sam turn in unison, Sam reaching inside his jacket for an angel blade, Dean hoisting the shotgun he's been holding at his side.
It's just Jack, standing there with that slight smirk on his face like always, in spite of everything.
"Okay," he says, flexing his hands. "We're good. Let's go."
Sam catches Dean's eye before they get back into the car, his eyes pleading and soulful as only Sam Winchester's can be. Dean gets in and turns the stereo back up, gut-wrenching music or not.
There are just some things Dean can't say to Sam.
***
Except, it wasn't just the one man, really. Of course it wasn't. Not with the types of places John Winchester used to leave his kids. Not with a kid as pretty as Dean. This was easy math. The only surprising thing was that it never went farther. Take a kid and abandon him, abuse him, make him into a proxy partner for his father and parent for his little brother while he's still a child. Treat him like nothing he does will ever be enough when he can't rise to these roles. Make him feel worthless. Make him desperate for any form of love.
John would never, ever have touched Dean like that. But he'd groomed him for it all the same.
It was a handful of touches in quiet mornings in strangers' living rooms, before Sam woke up, gruff whispers telling him to be careful not to wake the baby, or being groped in the dark corner of a bar when he went out to hustle pool money, or a hunter as old as their father with tobacco on his breath whispering all the things he'd like to do to a pretty boy like Dean for a full half hour before John had come back.
Dean never said anything. When he was younger, he'd thought it was his fault, that some lack of machismo made him a target the same way it made him never quite good enough for his father. If he was just stronger, gruffer, less pretty, if he became someone you couldn't look at without cutting yourself on…
Once or twice, when he was angry and bitter, he'd wondered if John hadn't known.
Surely, he must have known the type of people he was leaving his boys with. They weren't all Bobby. How could he not have known? How could he not have cared?
All Dean could think about whenever one of the men around looked at him a little too long was making sure they never looked at Sam. That Sam could never know. He'd understood, somewhere in his illogical brain, that these sorts of things weren't supposed to happen to children. That children were supposed to be protected. He'd just never thought of himself as a child.
***
The bunker is quiet. It's always quiet, but this time it feels like a pointed silence. It's absence.
Sam gets three beers from the fridge and puts them on the table. Jack and Sam sit, and Dean stands, gripping the back of a chair with his free hand and hoping the beer numbs him soon. Now that they're not the move, now that they're back home, there's every danger of the memory catching up to Dean. It happened here, after all. Too much death had happened here, for a place that was supposed to be a home.
"To Cas," Sam says gruffly. They raise the bottles and drink. The absence fills up the room again.
"There's something I don't understand," Sam says after a minute. He says it cautiously, like he's probing the water before taking the jump.
"Yeah?" Dean's voice sinks to gravel levels as he narrows his eyes at Sam. He tries to tell him silently not in front of the kid , but of course Sam knows exactly what he's doing. He knows that Dean will work harder to control his temper with Jack around, that Dean still feels guilty for the time he spent hating Jack, resenting him for Cas' death.
"You said Cas summoned the Empty." Sam drums his fingers on the table. "How? It doesn't make sense. How could he just call it at will? And why did it take him and Death, but not you?"
Jack sits up straight, suddenly putting the pieces together. "He made a deal." Jack's face is always soft, somehow. Dean finds it hard to direct his anger toward him now, even after everything. But he wants to. God, he wants to tell him to shut up.
"Cas, he made a deal. For me. When I was dying. The Empty would take him instead. But… it would only come for him later, when he experienced a moment of true happiness. So that he would experience true loss in the moment he had the most to lose. But…" Jack looks from Dean to Sam and back.
"A moment of true happiness? What could have made Cas happy while you were being hunted by Death?" Sam's eyebrows crease together and he looks to Dean. Dean looks up at the ceiling and closes his eyes, takes a deep breath.
I wondered…
Sam's mouth opens slightly and his eyes go wide. "Oh. You didn't… did you?" He gestures vaguely, ludicrously, at around crotch height.
"What? No." Dean lets go of the chair and steps back from the table, swigging most of the bottle in one go. "Cas and I did not bone in a demon trap supply closet so he could summon his own death."
Sam holds up his hands, but his eyes are too understanding. "Okay, okay. It's just, you know, Angel."
"What?" Dean can't follow Sam's words, and it's not just because his heart is pounding in anticipation of having to explain, of having to tell anyone what Cas told him. There are some things Dean Winchester just cannot say.
Jack's frowning at Sam too. "What's being an angel got to do with it?"
Sam gives a tired little laugh. He's abandoned his own beer. "Not an angel. Angel. From Buffy the Vampire Slayer?" When both Dean and Jack tilt their heads at him, Sam sighs. "Look, it's just, in Buffy, the character named Angel is cursed to lose his soul after a moment of true happiness. And that happens when he and Buffy, you know…" Sam glances at Jack. "Uh. Make love."
"Christ, Sam." Dean turns away from them both, leans back against the edge of the table, looking away into the shadows of the room. He can't look at them and say this. He can't say this.
Dean clears his throat. "He just, uh. Cas, he said… Well, he told me… He…"
What could my true happiness even look like?
Dean is glad he turned away before the tears started. He can see Cas' face back in front of him, crying, weeping, confessing, and Dean had just stood there like a stone, like a monster, as his best friend in the world told him…
"He just told me he loved me, that's all."
In spite of himself, Dean turns around to see Sam's expression. It's less surprised than Dean would have liked. "He told me he loved me, and then he died, like everyone else who’s ever given a damn about us. Mom, dad, Jesse, Bobby, Cas, Kevin, mom again.”
“I’ve also died,” Jack offers.
Dean gestures across the table at him. “Jack. You. Me. We’re fucking cursed, man. I’m… You should never die just because you love someone. That’s not right. It’s not the kind of universe I want to live in.”
“I know.” Sam’s voice has gotten very quiet. “You’re right. Dean, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, well.” Dean passes his hands over his cheek and runs them through his hair. “Call me crazy, Sam, but you don’t seem shocked by this information.”
Sam shifts in his chair and Dean catches the look that passes between him and Jack.
“What?”
“It’s just, uh.” Sam hesitates. “We all kind of… knew?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Just, uh, the way that Cas… I mean, you know, the whole “profound bond” thing.” Sam shrugs apologetically. “The crazy comic con shippers from Chuck’s novels, the way he looks - looked at you. And, well. He fell from Heaven for you, Dean. He lost his grace, his faith, he rebelled against God before we even knew what he was rebelling against. And he did it, all of it, for you.”
“For us.” Dean can’t quite believe they’re just having this conversation, like any of it makes sense.
Sam shakes his head. “Look, I love Cas like a brother. I’m devastated that he’s gone. And I know that he loved us all like family. But, it’s not - it wasn’t… Ten thousand years of faith, Dean, and he gave that up for you. Not me, not Bobby, just you. Because he believed in you.”
I cared because you cared.
Dean can’t. He just can’t.
“And look how that turned out.”
Sam stands up and Dean takes a step back, because if Sam or anyone else touches him right now, he will fracture. There are fault lines running all along his body, pinpricks of pain waiting to collapse in on themselves or explode, Dean isn’t sure which yet. He doesn’t know if he wants to die or kill someone else. Probably both. Definitely both.
“This isn’t your fault,” Sam says.
Dean shakes his head. “Of course it is, Sammi. Of course it is.”
When he can shake Sam off, Dean retreats to his room. He doesn’t look down any corridors on the way. He can still hear Death’s scythe scraping along the walls of the bunker.
Even after the years that they’ve spent here, it still feels strange to have a bedroom. It feels weird to have anywhere to lay his head more than a couple of times a year, a place to come back to, a place to rest. The closest they’d ever come before must have been Bobby’s house, but still, they’d always been visitors.
Dean always wanted a place to hang posters.
The quiet absence is too much to take again. Dean can hear his own heartbeat in his ears. He tries turning on Guns N’ Roses but that only makes it worse somehow. Deans sits on the bed and just tries to breathe, but he can’t stand it. He slides to the floor.
It’s easier on his knees, for reasons Dean can’t explain. Maybe because this is what it looks like in the movies, maybe because it already feels like supplicating himself just to kneel, like there’s a tiny sacrifice in the act of praying.
“Cas, I don’t know if you can hear me,” he starts. He always starts that way. “I don’t know if you get a signal, down in… Well, probably not. But if you can hear me, you son of a bitch, we’re getting you back. I’m going to bring you back.”
Because the one thing I want, it’s something I know I can’t have.
“You can’t go out like this, man. You can’t. You can’t just leave like this. Cas, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Dean stops. He’s crying again. It feels like he hasn’t stopped crying since Cas was taken.
“Dammit.” Dean wipes his face. He takes deep, shuddering breaths. Miracles have happened before. Cas has heard him before, come back before.
“Look, you know I’m no good at this. Talking. Feelings. Any of it. I’m not… I don’t know, man. Something’s broken in here, and I don’t know how to fix it. I never have. You know me, it’s like my anger. I don’t know where it comes from or why there’s so much of it inside of me. I don’t know when to put it away.
“ I don’t know what love is. All I’ve ever known is this . Saving people, hunting things. The family business. And lately there hasn’t been a whole lot of saving. Sometimes I think… I think about just being somewhere on a beach or a pier. You, me, Sam, some beers. Jack’s not there because he’s off at college getting to know real kids. You’re still wearing your stupid trench coat even though it’s 80 degrees out. Sam and I are making fun of you for it, and everyone’s just… alive. Not even happy. Just… there. Present.
“But if we’re there, who’s doing the job? Who’s hunting? We can’t leave this life. I can’t leave this life. And love, in this life, it’s always been a weakness. I mean, look at me. How many times have I let some demon or whatever use you, or Sam, or Jack against me? Love in this life will just kill the people you’d die to protect. I decided a long time ago I couldn’t bring anyone into this anymore. But, if…”
Dean stops again. He’s not crying anymore, but he can’t breathe.
I love you.
“Dammit, Cas, don’t make me say it.” Dean struggles with the words, feeling like the prayer has already gotten away from him. “I need you. I need you here. We’ll work out the rest. I…”
Dean struggles for what feels like minutes, but the words aren’t coming. He clears his throat before he finishes his prayer.. “You changed me too. You saved me. Not just saved my life, you saved me. I’m not going to leave you there.
“I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Cas.”
Goodbye, Dean.