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Sam jerked awake to a dimly lit room, disoriented and filled with a vague unexplained sense of panic.
A song, abruptly, unpleasantly familiar, was coming from the alarm clock next to his bed. It was a dusty vintage clock that had been residing in that same place since the 40s. It needed wound every night. It had no plug.
It was playing Asia.
“It was the heat of the moment-“
Scrambling amongst the twisted blankets, Sam slapped at the clock like he did every morning, and surprisingly, the music cut off. He'd expected it to keep playing, but silence hung in the room, anticipatory and unsettling. Frowning, he inspected the clock, uneasy but not sure what to look for. A Bluetooth speaker hidden somewhere? Dean pulling a prank? That seemed unlikely. Even Dean wouldn't have done something with so much trauma behind it, especially not these days. His older brother barely took time away from his research to cook, let alone screw with Sam with petty jokes anymore.
A mystery. Sam hated mysteries.
Sighing heavily and rubbing his face, Sam checked the time, (on his phone, not that possibly cursed clock) and squinted at the screen. Early, but not early enough that it'd be unusual for him to be up. Standing, he glanced once more at the clock, innocuous and silent, and left the room.
Padding quietly down the hall on socked feet, Sam headed for the kitchen and started the coffee, then went to the library to make sure Dean hadn't passed out on the table again. He found it empty, of his brother at least. It was still a wreak, coved in numerous books and papers and several objects of witch craft, half of which were Sam's. Carefully removing a half empty mug from beside his handwritten copy of a Celtic grimoire (courtesy of Rowena) he briefly scanned the papers in the immediate vicinity of the chair Dean had occupied last night.
Without much context, a lot of it didn't make sense, but he picked up bits and pieces. A Nordic spell for recovery, scraps of literature from different countries about black voids or the space between death and the living. One thing in particular caught his eye. A large print of an X-ray, revealing a rib cage engraved with runes. Sam didn't have to guess what language they were written in, though he did wonder who's ribs he was looking at, his own or Dean's. Intrigued, he leaned in to study the ruins closer. It'd been years since he'd seen them, and now he had at least a rudimentary understanding of enochian. All he could make out was single words though, and that it was in fact Dean's because he helped tape the three broken ribs on the left side a few months back. He looked over the words.
Protection. Concealment. Heaven. Angel. Humanity. Glancing down, Sam ran his eyes over the papers and found the same words on the page of an open yellow dollar store notebook. Lowering the X-ray, Sam raised his eyebrows.
A translation. A full translation, written in his brother's hand, of the ruins on Dean's bones that Cas had carved there years ago.
Sam carefully raised the notebook, but as he was just reading the first line, "I, Castiel, Angel of the lord," He heard the bang of the door slamming open.
Alarmed, Sam let the paper drift from his fingers and rushed from the library. He wasn't aware Dean had gone out, and to be getting back at such an hour in the morning meant he probably hadn't slept, and given what Sam had found on the table, the possibility that his brother was out for a drive or breakfast was unlikely.
Coming to a halt in the middle of the room, Sam saw the spiked mess of Dean's hair and the shoulder of a green flannel. Oddly, no jacket. There was someone else beside him, both of them stumbling down the stairs, but Dean's body blocked the other person from Sam's sight until they reached the floor.
When they did, and they both faced him, Sam gaped.
Cas stood beside Dean.
Disheveled, baffled, but alive, stood Cas, hair as much of wreak as Dean's, the both of them covered in smears of what resembled black tar. Dean, grinning like a wild thing, black streaking his flushed face, gripped the back of Cas' trench coat like he was little kid, and when he met Sam's eyes, he smile widened impossibly and he jostled a wide eyed Cas a little bit.
"Well," Dean started breathlessly. "Cas is back."
Struck silent, Sam watched dark viscous fluid drip to the floor. Dean noticed, shaking black off his free hand, speaking again.
"And The Empty is gone."
For a moment, there was silence save for the drip drip drip of tar, then Sam choked out, "Gone?"
Nodding vigorously, Dean swiped blackened hair back out of his face. He was still smiling, and Sam could see black staining the creases between his teeth.
"Yeah, I exploded it." He said, matter of fact.
Cas was looking at Dean, face set in a familiar expression of varied emotions; disbelief, anger, love. Dean glanced at him, eyes lingering over the angel’s face. He laughed, strained, incredulous, a little hysterical. He added, with all the seriousness of commenting on a tv commercial,
"And all the demons and angels are free, back on earth."
Feeling like the world was tilting a little, Sam finally met Cas's eyes.
Sam smiled despite himself.
"Welcome back Cas."