Chapter Text
There are tears in Cas's eyes.
"I love you." It's everything Dean's ever wanted to hear, but not here, not now, not like this.
"Don't do this, Cas," he pleads.
"Goodbye, Dean."
Cas's shove sends him sprawling to the concrete floor, and Dean can only watch in horror as the wall explodes in black, tar-like goop, engulfing Cas in it's oil-slick embrace — Billie too, who has just broken through the door, but Dean barely notices, eyes locked on Cas's beaming, tear-streaked face as the Empty creeps across it.
"Me too," he wants to say, wants to at least give Cas that, but he can't make his mouth move.
The black goo swallows Cas and then lights up like a beacon, the blinding blue-white light of Cas's grace illuminating the storeroom dungeon with the intensity of a small sun. Still, Dean doesn't — can't — look away. He owes Cas that much, a silent witness to his last moments on earth.
When the light retreats at last, Dean has to blink rapidly to clear his vision. He lurches forward before he can fully see, expecting to find the print of charred wings across the brick and concrete. Instead, a figure stands there, swaying on it's feet.
Before Dean can react, Cas — because it is Cas — collapses, going down in a heap like a marionette with cut strings, landing with a heavy thud.
"Cas!" Dean scrambles forward now, going down on his knees before Cas's sprawled form, one hand grasping instinctively at his shoulder and one cupping a roughly-stubbled cheek. "Cas, are you in there?"
To Dean's relief, those familiar, beloved blue eyes flutter open a crack, squinting even against the dim light of the bunker's basement.
"Dean?" Cas groans. His brow furrows.
"Hey," Dean breathes, something loosening in his chest. "There you are." He attempts a shaky smile.
Cas doesn't return it. He closes his eyes again instead, wincing almost imperceptibly as he does. "Yes, it does seem that I'm… here."
Dean's too attuned to him to not notice the wince, or the laboured breathing. "You okay? All in one piece?" He's already sliding his hands over Cas's arm and chest, checking for injuries.
Cas catches the hand on his chest by the wrist, his grip weak, far weaker than an angel's should be. Dean stops anyway, his palm resting over the thrum of Cas's heart. It's racing.
"That was some speech you made," Dean jokes feebly, not knowing quite what to say, but desperate to say something, to acknowledge his feelings in kind. "You know I'm not one for words, and all, but, uh, I guess I owe you a ring, huh?" He tries to smile at Cas and ignore his alarm at the sickly pallor that has swept over him. He hadn't meant to jump straight to marriage, but here he is. Though, in hindsight, as proposals go, Dean could've chosen a better moment.
Or maybe, he realizes with a lurch, no moment would be good, and he's misjudged the sutuation entirely. Far from looking like a man in love, Cas just looks horrified. He breathes out a low, but surprisingly firm rejection, "Dean, no," before promptly passing out.
"Well, shit," Dean curses, still holding Cas's supine form. "Guess that answers that." For a brief moment there, he'd really let himself believe that Cas's words meant that Cas really did love him the way he loves — is in love with — Cas.
But that doesn't — can't — matter now, not while Cas is hurt and the world is ending.
Dean shoves his feelings back down his throat, climbs to his feet, a little stiff from the cold of the dungeon, and gathers Cas's unconscious form up into a princess carry. Right now, Dean needs to get Cas to the bunker's infirmary. He can nurse his broken heart later, thank you very much.
Cas is heavier than Dean expected as he carries him towards the door, somehow more solid, and at the same time, passed out limp like this, absolute dead weight. Step by painstaking step, Dean carries the would-be, unreciprocated, love of his life out of the dungeon and through the corridors to the bunker's medical room.
Left behind, forgotten, on the concrete floor of the now-empty room, Dean's cell phone begins to ring.
~
Castiel dreams of a concrete floor, a calloused hand, concerned green eyes. A voice, speaking low and rough, is saying something, but the chill of the floor is seeping into him and all that exists is darkness.
~
When Castiel awakens, he's alone in a dimly lit room, dizzy and disoriented. His mouth is bone-dry and his skin feels strangely oversensitized, like there's a thousand tiny needles poking into it. He's cold and his limbs ache. Slowly, the room resolves itself around him, revealing the bunker's infirmary.
He's not sure how he got there. Not sure of anything, really, past the moment he'd summoned the Empty, sure he was living his final moments on the Earth, sure that it was all worth it if it preserved Dean's life. He looks inward for answers and finds none, then inwards some more and finds only emptiness where his grace should be, not even the pale flicker of it running on fumes as it had been increasingly for the past few years. Nothing.
Just as he begins to panic, the door to the informary swings open, and it's with a rush of relief that he recognizes the figure silhouetted in the doorway as Dean, even before Dean flips on the lights. Now Castiel can see that he's got a phone pressed between his shoulder and his ear, and a deep, worried furrow in his brow, though his expression lightens as he meets Castiel's eyes.
"Oh good, you're awake," Dean breathes, shifting the phone away from his mouth so his voice won't carry to the listener on the other side, already crossing to Castiel's bedside and placing down the glass of water he's holding before pressing a blessedly cool hand to Castiel's forehead. Castiel lets his eyes flutter briefly closed, reveling in the touch. When he opens them again, Dean is frowing, though he uses his hands to help Castiel sit up and even hold the glass of water to his lips.
"It's no good," he hears Dean say into the phone, as Castiel takes a sip. The water is wonderfully cool, soothing the sandpaper-roughness of his throat. "Cas is in no shape to travel. You'll have to come to us. We can regroup here."
The person on the other end says something and Dean's face darkens. "Look, I know," he says, frustration evident in his voice, "but Cas has a fever — no, he's burning up" — he isn't, if anything, he's too cold, the chill from his dream still lingering.
"Something's wrong," Dean goes on. "I'm telling you, the Empty did something to him. I'm not putting him in a car like this and hauling him over half the country. Just get your asses here and we'll figure it out. Keep me posted." He hangs up and turns his attention fully on to Castiel. "How are you feeling?"
Castiel feels like death warmed over, but considering the recent fate of the actual Death, the turn of phrase doesn't quite seem appropriate. Instead, he ignores all but the most pressing problem, rasping out, "Dean, my grace, it's gone."
Dean's mouth presses into a grim, resigned line. "I'd wondered," he admits. "When the Empty grabbed you, you lit up like a Christmas tree. I thought it was curtains for you for sure."
That's what I thought, too, Castiel wants to say, but doesn't. It's what he had intended. Cas remembers the confession he made right before summoning the Empty, and his heart sinks. He'd made that confession expecting he would never need to face Dean again once the truth lay before them. And yet, here he is, and Dean is being kind, so kind, but he doesn't mention Castiel's confession, and Castiel knows well enough to take his cues from Dean, so he doesn't bring it up either.
Dean must mistake the reason for Castiel's long silence as mere upset about the loss of his grace. He reaches out, as if to lay a hand on Castiel's shoulder, maybe even give it a comforting squeeze if Castiel is lucky, but seems to think better of it, his hand hovering awkwardly in midair before he lets it fall back to his side.
Castiel's heart sinks further. So this is it, then, the start of the awkwardness between them and the beginning of the end, the very thing he thought he could avoid by keeping quiet until his deathbed. He swallows down a profound sadness.
Dean clears his throat. "Are you — that is, are you gonna be okay?" Without your grace, Castiel hears.
"Of course," Castiel says. Of course. He always is.
~
Dean doesn't take Cas's word for it that he's going to be okay. After all, Cas is, one, notoriously careless with his own wellbeing — case in point, the little stunt he pulled down in the dungeon, trying to throw himself as bait to an ancient cosmic entity with a grudge — and b, a lying liar who lies. Dean does eventually allow himself to be convinced to wait for Jack and let him look over Cas with his nephilim powers, to make sure this fever is just a natural reaction to losing his grace, as Cas swears, and not a harbinger of something worse.
While they wait, Dean relates what Sam had told him on the phone, perversely grateful they have this to focus on, rather than having to sit in the pervasive awkwardness of their mutual knowledge of what Cas had said and what Dean had — wrongly, stupidly, hopefully — thought he had meant, and the ill-advised leap to an unwanted marriage proposal that had followed. In between strategizing, he plies Cas with extra strength Tylenol and cool cloths on his forehead to keep his fever down.
At last, when Cas's fever is finally reliably hovering somewhere that can safely be called mild, there comes the distant sound of the bunker's heavy, round front door clanging open and Sam's booted footfalls, followed by Jack's lighter ones, on the wrought iron stairs.
"We're in here," Dean hollers down the corridor, trusting Sam's instincts to lead him to Dean and Cas in the infirmary.
A minute later, and there they all are, gathered in the dim, white-walled room: Dean, Cas, and a grim-faced Sam and Jack, the last four beings on Chuck's empty Earth — five, if you count the shaggy, surprisingly easy-going given the state of the world dog Sam and Jack have inexplicably brought home with them.
Dean raises an eyebrow at his brother. "Explain." He waves a hand in the general direction of the dog, who helpfully hurries over and buries its wet nose in his palm. He wiped his hand on its fur and then scratches it behind the ears.
"We found her," Jack pipes up. "She was all alone. We couldn't abandon her." His eyes are big and round and pleading, a look he no doubt learned from Sam.
It's the end of the world and Dean's tired of being an asshole. "Yeah, alright," he says, voice gruff. "But if we get the world back, you've got to at least look for her people. Alright?"
"I promise," Jack intones solemnly. Dean catches Cas's eye and looks away before he can see his reaction.
"Alright, now that that's settled." Dean claps his hands together and gets down to business. "We're boned. What do we do next?"
~