Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.
Author's Note Part One: This was in response to a request from MicheleChadwick for some more feeling in Stuck in the Middle (With You). Alternate ending.
Dean should have known that Michael would find a way to screw them again. That he'd find a way to get payback for Dean's refusal to let him in when the Apocalypse was going down.
Maybe he should have felt a bit of appreciation to Michael, too. If he hadn't ditched his lance on Earth, then they wouldn't have stood a chance against Ramiel (who still reminded Dean too much of Azazel) without the Colt and bullets for it (both of which he doubted they'd see anytime soon). But it was difficult to feel anything other than anger as he and Sam flanked either side of Cas, only able to watch as he wasted away.
The bleeding from Cas' stab wound slowed, but that brought no comfort as it was replaced by black cracks splitting apart Cas' skin and his clothes were already saturated with enough blood that they could never be salvaged. He looked like the Rabids who had been infected by Amara's fog as it swallowed entire towns, black veins weaving across pale skin. He wished that Cas was just a Rabid. Sam figured out how to cure it, so they would have been able to help him. A little bit of Holy Fire, and he would be as good as new.
But he wasn't a Rabid, so Dean did the only thing he could. He plastered on a fake grin and pretended that everything would be okay while Sam rambled about the old times and all they went through together. He talked about Heaven, Hell, Purgatory (or what he knew about it from Dean's stories), the time the angels fell, the time that Cas became human, the time they spent trying to hunt down and cure Demon Dean (and Dean pretended that he didn't see Mary's you're-going-to-explain-this look in the corner of his eye). Sam talked about it all. The good times, and the bad.
Mary stood off to the side, looking guilty and unsure. Dean hated himself for it, but he was glad that she looked guilty. It was her and her friend who dragged them all into this. It was their hunt. It was their intel. It was their fault that they ended up in a situation that they were completely unprepared for.
"I'm sorry," Cas said. A thin stream of blood slipped down his chin from the corner of his mouth. "I misjudged both of you when we met. I made so many mistakes."
"You don't gotta apologize to us, Cas," Dean said. "You know that we've been just as many mistakes. Hell, we've probably made more."
The corners of Cas' mouth turned up into the weakest smile that Dean had even seen, and it started to sink in that this might be it. Cas was stabbed by Michael's Lance. The lance that Michael held in every painting when he cast Lucifer into wasn't just a weapon, it was a weapon made by an archangel. It was designed to kill demons and angels, so what made him think that they could find a solution for the wounds it caused in time to save Cas?
Because they'd always managed to save each other just in time for every other life and death situation.
"You two were the best friends I could have asked for," Cas said. "Thank you."
"You're saying it like a goodbye, Cas. We can still figure this out. We can still…"
"Dean," Sam said, "look at him. I don't think we have enough time to figure it out."
Dean watched as Cas' skin broke apart in larger and larger sections, crumbling away like he was made of stone. His eyes weren't focused on any one thing, wandering around the area in a dull haze instead.
"You were a brother to us, Cas," Dean said. "I just hope that you're still with it enough to hear me say it. You were family."
It was silent as Cas crumbled away to dust, his eyes finally closed and his pained struggles ceased.
Just as abruptly as he entered their lives, he left them without a trace.
Sam stood up, but Dean stayed crouched, staring at where Cas had been like he would reappear perfectly healthy. Like it was some sort of elaborate prank that Dean would figuratively kill him for later.
Sam shifted his weight from foot to foot in the weird little shuffle he did when he was on the verge of tears, but didn't want to give into them. Dean had seen it enough times to know, especially after Jess' death a lifetime ago. Or when he couldn't hide that he was drinking demon blood anymore. Or after he let Lucifer out of his Cage. Or when he regained his memories and realized what an asshole not having a soul made him.
He'd seen that shuffle from Sam far too many times.
"Chuck brought him back once before," Sam said. "New and improved, right? After I… after Lucifer killed him. You think he'd do it again?"
Dean shrugged and stood up, the cracks and aches from his knees reminding him that he wasn't as young as he used to be. He ran a hand down his face. "I don't know, Sam. I don't think he's going to interrupt his divine family reunion for this."
"Then, what do we do?" Sam asked.
Dean shook his head.
There wasn't anything left to burn of Cas, but that didn't stop Sam and Dean from gathering branches and building a pyre for him near the bunker. Cas would have deserved a hunter's funeral, they figured. He'd helped them on so many cases, he couldn't not be considered a hunter.
"What happened to the lance?" Dean asked.
"Crowley took it," Sam said. "Which can't mean anything good."
"He didn't deserve to go out like that," Dean said. "He didn't deserve to go through that much agony."
"Where do you think he went? I mean, human souls get Heaven or Hell. Monsters get Purgatory. What do angels get?"
"Hopefully somewhere peaceful."
The air didn't smell like it should after a hunter's funeral. There was no thick scent of burnt flesh, just burnt wood. They stood out there until only smoldering ashes remained in place of the pyre. Even then, neither brother made any move to go back into the bunker.
"The Men of Letters might have something useful," Sam said. "We both know that death doesn't always stick."
They stood out there long after the sun set and a chill crept into the air, but Dean didn't feel any of it. He suspected that Sam didn't either.
Sam spent weeks in the library, tearing through every book that might be close to relevant that he could find. For the first few days, he'd give Dean a small report of anything interesting he found that day, but then the reports stopped coming and they both became a little more silent. A little more burrowed in a world without one of the few people they considered family.
Dean spent his weeks emptying the liquor cabinet. Then, he drove to the store, refilled the cabinet, and drank through it all again.
He helped Sam in the library only once during that time, but he found an old painting framed on one of the walls. The painting of Michael casting Lucifer into Hell, the damned lance held in both of his hands.
Dean tore the painting from the wall and took it outside, burning it in the same spot as the pyre. It couldn't bring Cas back, but it felt good to destroy something.
After two months, he found the card Mick gave them in Sam's wallet and dialed the number.
"What can I do for you, Dean?" he asked.
Dean wanted to ask how he knew it was him, but he figured the British Men of Letters were keeping close tabs on all of the Winchesters these days. Instead, he asked, "Do you know anything about resurrecting angels?"
Mick hesitated. "Well," he said, "I could take a look in our archive, but angels are often sought in order to be killed or, in Lucifer's case, sent back to his cage."
"Yeah, take a look. Let me know what you find, if anything," Dean said.
He hung up before Mick could reply. It was a long shot, and he still didn't quite trust the British Men of Letters (first impressions are a bitch), but they were running out of options to explore before they had to admit that there was no return for Cas this time.
He sat his phone on the table and spun in around and around on the lacquered wood, wishing it would light up with Mick delivering good news.
But it didn't, and he wondered how a simple demon hunt became so messed up.
A month later, Mick called back saying that he scoured every bit of information they have on angels, but none of it had to do with resurrecting them.
Six months passed before Sam gave up his obsessive search through the Men of Letters' library, turning it into a task that he only did when there wasn't anything else to do. It was pushed aside in favor of researching hunts, things they could do that felt like they were doing something.
Dean didn't complain. He took one of the articles Sam held and skimmed through it.
"Mom asked for help with this?" Dean asked. "Looks like just a simple salt and burn."
"I know," Sam said. "But I wanted to double check everything. I didn't want to go in expecting it would be easy… not again."
"We might still find something to bring him back," Dean said.
He didn't believe his own words, and Sam's nod told him that Sam didn't believe them either.
He also didn't want to voice that it was a hunt with Mom that ended with Cas dead. It was a hunt with Mom that should have been as easy as a salt and burn, given the experience Sam and Dean had with demons.
Dean traded articles with Sam and looked over it, much closer this time. "You're sure this is everything about the hunt? All the information you could find?"
Sam nodded. "This is everything I could find, short of actually going to the town and interrogating the locals."
Dean grabbed the keys to the Impala. "Guess we better head out and interrogate them, then," Dean said.
He'd be damned if he lost another family member on a hunt because they weren't properly prepared.
"Dean. Sam." Mary greeted. "Thanks for coming."
"Yeah, but why exactly did you need us as back up?" Sam asked. "I mean, we don't mind doing it, but it looks like it should be a simple salt and burn. You aren't exactly an inexperienced hunter."
"I just think there's something more to this case," Mary said. "I have a hunch."
Mary refused to meet their eyes and led them through the town to the ghost's former property—which had been abandoned for decades by then—but Dean had enough experience with lies to know she was lying to them.
Mary disappeared when they were in the dead guy's house (way too large for any one person to live in), trying to find whatever he attached himself to after the salt and burn didn't work. Dean never figured out what she was doing, he just knew that Sam was lucky to walk away from the hunt with just a concussion after he was pushed down a few flights of stairs, and that his own wrist would need an ice pack, but thankfully not a cast. He just knew that a hunt with his mother had once again ended with a member of his family hurt.
At this rate, he was going to have to take Sam and leave their mother the same way she left them after her initial return, no matter how many times she apologized and offered to buy them breakfast, or to help them patch up their injuries.
After a year passed, it was easy to fool themselves into thinking that Cas was just off searching his own case—probably one having to do with a crisis in Heaven, as they so often did. Maybe he would make a mistake or trust the wrong person and come to them for help to fix it again.
Dean wouldn't lecture Cas about who to trust or anything, he'd just be glad to know that he was alive and okay.
But he knew that wasn't going to happen, so he poured himself another drink. He slowly destroyed his liver, and there would be no angel hovering around to heal it up with a simple touch anymore.
It was so strange how before Cas came into their lives, they got along fine. They couldn't miss something they didn't know existed. But now, they couldn't remember how to function with him gone.
If Dean really thought about it, there were a lot of times he wished he treated Cas better. It was the same line of thought he visited about Sam when he was trapped in a cage with Lucifer. All the different choices he could have made. All the better choices he should have made so that Cas would know that he had an important place in the Winchester family.
"I think you should try to cut back on how much you drink," Sam said. He leaned against the door frame of the kitchen, an eyebrow raised at Dean's breakfast of eggs and bourbon.
"Don't pretend like you don't sneak out here at night to down a beer or twelve," Dean said. "I've seen you do it. Hell, I've smelled the beer on you in the mornings like you took a bath in the stuff."
Sam took the seat across from him, hands folded on the table. "We can't keep going on like this," he said.
Dean shrugged and drained his glass of bourbon in front of Sam. "You got any suggestions?" he asked.
Sam stayed silent and didn't complain when Dean poured himself another glass, and put a glass for Sam down on the table.
It was a normal hunt. One of the easier ones, especially when they've been hunters all their lives, but that didn't mean the easy ones were without risk.
This risk happened to be the fact that the vampires had a group of humans that they fed on as hostages. They weren't above using those humans as protection against hunters, holding them up as shields in front of themselves.
Dean ended up pinned by one of the vampires, and Sam was in an equally bad position, unable to help. His machete was so close, just inches away from his hand, but one vampire had their foot firmly on Dean's wrist.
"We should turn them," one vampire suggested. She was turned when she was young, her body never aging past that moment, but something about her made her seem ancient. "Make the hunters into the hunted."
Another one licked her lips. "Or we could keep them to feed off of. Make them our livestock," she said.
"I'd rather die," Dean said.
The vampire with his foot on Dean's wrist laughed and pressed his foot at just the right angle to snap the bones in his wrist and Dean let out a yell of pain and surprise.
"I'll be glad to drink you dry, boy," the vampire said.
The vampire lunged down towards him, but stopped midway and crumpled to the ground. His head slowly slid off, separated from his body by a clean cut.
Dean pushed himself away from the body and sat up, keeping his injured wrist close to his chest. "What the hell?"
"Hello, Dean."
Dean looked up, and saw the person he never expected to see again. "Cas?"
Cas stood there, looking the exact same as he always had, with a bloodied machete in one hand, and the other extended down to help Dean up.
He took the offered help, and glanced over to find Sam standing among dead vampires, looking just as shocked as he felt.
Dean pulled Cas into a hug, ignoring the waves of pain from his wrist.
"How are you back?"
Cas pulled far enough away to see Dean, who kept his good hand on Cas' shoulder, but pulled the injured one away. "I think it was God again," Cas said. "But this time, he brought me back as a human."
Dean couldn't stop himself from breaking out into a grin, over a year of sorrow and mourning wiped away in a single moment. "That's fine. We'll take you back to the bunker make you into a Man of Letters, won't we, Sammy? You can be a hunter," he said.
"Yeah," Sam said. He cleared his throat. "Yeah, of course. Cas, this could be something good. You liked peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, didn't you? Now, you can taste them again."
"I'm not a legacy," Cas said.
"Yeah, well, the original Men of Letters weren't legacies, they started legacies," Dean said. "What's wrong with starting a new one?"
Cas broke out into a grin that matched Dean's. "I'd like that," he said. "I'd like that a lot."
Author's Note Part Two: A happy ending, but an unhappy beginning and end. Let me know what you think by leaving a review before you go!