i. Castiel isn't there when Dean leaves. Sixty minutes, maybe, but fifty at the most until his death and Castiel is nowhere to be found.

Dean doesn't blame him, necessarily. Chuck is standing behind him, close enough that Dean starts to feel nervous, starts to feel as if someone's holding a ticking atomic bomb behind him. It isn't far from the truth either, but whether it's because of the fact that God is here and angry and anxious and waiting, or whether it's because Dean is actually a walking, talking detonator on legs is beyond him.

And Chuck is saying something, but Dean is tuning him out in favor of taking glances up at the sky. Sam casts him a few worried glances from his post-as-little-brother next to Rowena, because it must be evident in his face that he's waiting for someone.

Cas isn't coming.

That much, by now, is clear. Cas isn't one to be late, not when something is at stake like it is now. And there's no signal from the sky, no answering flutter of wings as Dean calls his name out in his mind. Cas just isn't coming.

Forty-five minutes now. Rowena's head of red curls has been pinned up into a ridiculously complicated twist that probably requires magic to keep it in place, and it wobbles precariously as she shakes her head.

"Dean. Have you heard anything Chuck said to you?"

Sam's voice snaps him out of a reverie, and he blinks hard to see three sets of eyes staring at him concernedly.

"Hm? Sorry, what?"

Sam sighs. "Dean. Come on. End of the world? Ring a bell?"

Dean wants to correct him. Not "the end of the world", Sammy. More like Apocalypse Part 1,000,000. But now is not the appropriate time, not now when he is dedicating every ounce of his energy to listen for the telltale rustle behind him as Cas would approach, or waiting for the hand on his shoulder that would startle him into punching the angel again.

But there's no one there.

Chuck smiles sadly at him, lips stretching over his teeth in a grin almost grotesque on the young face he inhabits. "Dean. You gotta go now, buddy."

Perhaps one day, Dean will get used to God calling him buddy. But for now, he tries not to let his stomach plummet and his heart drop. It doesn't work. His throat clenches up painfully, tears starting to pool up behind his eyes.

"Yeah. Um, sorry. Just-"

Chuck purses his lips. If he knows, he doesn't tell. "It's okay. Uh-" He cuts a glance over to Sam, who shrugs. Sam seems irritated with him lately, and Dean doesn't know why.

Chuck clears his throat. "Dean, it's um. It's okay." He shoots Dean a look, and his stomach drops out of his chest. He knows.

But Chuck is God. Of course he knows.

"Amara is family. And I wish- I wish there was another way. But there isn't."

Sam seems to perk up a little at this, and his muscles tense in a good imitation of Zachariah, Dean thinks with a smirk. God, he misses the smug bastard sometimes.

"Family works in strange ways, doesn't it Dean?"

The orchard behind them is illuminated in an autumn glow, and Dean can't help but be reminded of Cas. If the angel were here now, the leaves would be attracted to him like he's a fucking magnet, and Dean would spend hours upon hours picking the things out of his hair.

The sun starts to dip shyly behind an oak tree by the time Dean manages to finish hugging Sam goodbye. They don't know what will come out of this encounter with Amara, and they can only begin to hope that no one other than Dean will die. It's a sad life, Dean thinks, when that's my best hope.

The hope is lost, less than five minutes later, when the Darkness blasts him so far into the sky that Dean feels his ears pop. Amara is done with him now; her voice reverberates across the corners of the heavens, echoing across the seven seas. Dean comes crashing down, souls banished from his body, into the same orchard that he had resided in so few minutes ago. He lays on his back, the sky in full view.

Perhaps Castiel is here now.

And the sky doesn't move. Castiel doesn't show. There is no trace of him at all, and as he disintegrates under Amara's will, Dean can't help but think he imagines the slow shuffling of the lapels of a trench coat amongst a blanket of fallen leaves.

He wakes up, secure in the walls of the bunker with no memory of the past week.

ii. And he is Dark, as Sam would put it. Sam has this annoying habit of labeling nouns with importance, so loudly and decisively that Dean hears them as a proper noun.

There's a ringing in his head that doesn't stop, fifteen different voices overlapping over each other, screaming into the abyss that fills his head until all that he can hear is enough for him to put a bullet through his brain.

There's Bobby, loud and proud and disappointed in him for turning out like his father. Ellen and Jo, crying and screaming as he hears the hellhounds ripping into their flesh. He sees Kevin's blank expression and noiseless scream as Gadreel smites him on the spot. He hears his father at his most drunk, his mother disappointed at a bad grade he got in school, and Sam.

You're a horrible person, Dean. I wish I had a different brother.

And Castiel's voice is somewhere in the mix too, weaving in and out of the choruses of you've failed me's and this is your fault's. But he doesn't seem disappointed. He doesn't seem upset at Dean. His voice is whispering in Dean's ear, softly and gently, words in Enochian that Dean can make out in this half-awake state.

You're okay, Dean. I've got you. You're alright. It's all over. You're safe now.

Dean covers his ears, and Castiel's voice gets louder. It's in his head now, bouncing off the walls and each word burrows itself into Dean's skin.

You're going to be okay.

But he doesn't want to be okay. He doesn't want Castiel's stupid voice telling him that he's okay. Castiel hasn't bothered to show up for over a month now, hasn't been seen by Heaven or Hell or anyone for going on four weeks now, and of course, at his strongest and most powerful has to be when Dean starts hearing voices.

But it's a dream, he realizes, as he wakes up strapped to a chair in the panic room downstairs, skin burning and red from the ropes around his wrists. Sam stands over him, tears glistening in his eyes, and Dean almost feels bad for feeling relief at realizing who he is again.

Almost.

He's as normal as he can be.

Castiel is a pride of lions, the sharpest blade in the weaponry, the iron-tang of blood on a cut, and the loudest voice in Dean's mind.

It's beginning to drive him crazy.

Sam will tell him that nothing is wrong, even as his eyes take in the shadows under Dean's own, as he glances towards Dean's mug of coffee and is sure to notice that it's the fourth one he's had this morning. Everything is fine, Dean.

It mirrors Dean's own lie. I'm fine, Sammy.

He isn't fine.

iii. He sees Castiel twice in his lifetime. He appears to Dean in Hell, enveloped in light and warmth and a happiness so pure that Dean can feel himself becoming whole again, just by being near Cas.

But he's dead at this point, deceased and rotting in the pits of the underworld. He supposes it doesn't matter.

He sees Castiel for the first time after that, two years later as they stand in a graveyard in Detroit.

Yes, Lucifer and Michael are standing there, but Dean gawks for a solid minute because Castiel doesn't seem to be a figment of his imagination. He is there, incorporeal as it may seem, but still tangible, a shimmering shape without a form, like waves of heat reflecting off of a surface, silvery gray and cold as ice.

Dean can feel him looking in his direction for a moment, before Michael goes up in flames and Lucifer explodes in a burst of light and a scream.

The waves disappear, and Dean finds himself standing in Bobby's living room, holding a cup of tea.

And the other is at Sam's funeral. Memorial. Lucifer's death took Sam with it, and Dean stands next to a coffin without a body in it, because how would you recover Sam Winchester's body when it's been scattered into the deepest depths of the universe?

He holds his hand out almost automatically, searching, for one frantic moment, for Sam's fingers. Sam has been to every funeral Dean has – their mother's, father's, every single one – and there's no one there.

Until a feather-soft touch brushes against his fingers.

And it's gone.

The coffin is lowered into the ground, a gravestone marking a spot only twenty yards away from where the real Sam died. Dean never visits the grave, because Sam isn't really there. Instead, he sits outside every night and talks to the stars.

He hears Castiel's voice replying sometimes.

Once in a while, Heaven lets Sam talk to him.

iv. Six years later, and the leaves are gone. The sun isn't out as Amara finds him. There is no poetic setting of the celestial orb as Dean disintegrates into the abyss marking the Universe.

v. Castiel looks a lot different in person.

A/N: What is this? IDK. It's like midnight and the words flew into my head. I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. But please review! It makes me so happy!