chapter one
"You don't understand, Dean, I have to do this." His voice was wrecked, cracking and painful, rough. It was possible the inside of his throat was bleeding, because honestly he was bleeding just about everywhere.
So much red, just all over, covering everything. Blood of the prophet, blood of angels and humans and just… Dean swallowed and tried not to look around at the carnage. "I do understand, and no, Cas, you don't. Okay, man? Just… please. Stop."
Castiel's hand was trembling as it held the knife up high, but his face was so set, so determined. "I can't stop. Not now."
"For me," Dean said.
Cas's hand faltered, his face just sort of… going still and quiet. Then he looked down at Dean for the first time since this whole mess started. He really looked at him, the blue eyes of his vessel meeting the green of Dean's and they locked like that. Cas's head began to shake slowly back and forth and when he spoke his voice was just so fucking broken. "But why? Why would you want me to stop, Dean? Don't you see? Don't you see everything Heaven and Hell have put you and your brother through? Everything I've put you through. Every time I've beat you within an inch of your life because I couldn't stop the control they have over me…"
Dean reached out, clinging onto Cas's free hanging wrist, and he pulled. Cas didn't budge, but Dean didn't let go. "I don't care about that."
"But you should," Cas said, and now he sounded angry.
"Why?" Dean said. "That's the whole point of this free will thing, right? Right, Cas? That's the fucking point is that it's up to me whether or not I get to care. And for the record, you son of a bitch, you did stop before you killed me. Okay? You know it, and I know it, and there's no denying that once you wanted the connection to be broken, it was."
"Until they reset me again," Cas said, and a bitter tear leaked out of his eye, though he wasn't really crying.
Dean shook his head and shoved Cas's arm away. "And then we fixed it, again. And we'll keep fixing it until they give up because I'm not giving you up. Do you understand me."
Cas blinked down at Dean, then looked up at the knife and then down at the floor where the final sacrifice lay. His fingers shook harder. "Give me one reason to stay. One valid reason, and I will put this knife down and walk away."
Dean let out a shaking laugh and shook his head. "Haven't I given you enough, man? Isn't me being here enough for you?"
Cas shook his head, knowing it was cruel, knowing it killed Dean a little, but he needed more than that. "No. It's not enough."
"I need you, Cas. We're family and nothing will ever change that. You can't just lock yourself away with those sons of bitches. You and I both know Metatron lied. It's not shutting the gates for a little while. This is for-fucking-ever. I'm not going to live without you forever." In this moment, Dean was not above begging. He was not above crying, which he was, and he just… he just needed Cas to stop. God, just… stop.
But Cas shook his head again and met Dean's eyes once more. "You've never needed me , and we both know it. I'm sorry Dean, but I have to do this. It's the only way to protect you from myself."
And Dean rose up high on his knees and reached out, grabbing for the blood-stained trench coat and he screamed, "Castiel I Lov—"
But it was too late, and Cas didn't want to hear Dean say that, because it would have changed his mind, and he would have stopped, and the cycle would go on forever. Never ending. And Cas couldn't let it. So he struck the final blow and before Dean's hand could close around the coat, he was gone. It was all gone. The bodies, the blood, the gore, the pain. It all slammed shut as every heavenly body was sucked into the portal of Heaven and the gates slammed shut. Forever.
And then there was Dean. Alive, but shredded from the inside and slowly bleeding to death. Maybe it would take years. Maybe months. Maybe just a matter of hours. The concrete under his face was ice cold as he laid there and let himself actually cry. He sobbed, into the quiet echo of the now empty room for the first time since he'd met that angel. For the first time since he realized that his heart and soul belonged to one creature, and now that thing, that winged piece of shit who took Dean's heart with him and locked it away for eternity, was gone. There was no going back.
Sam came, eventually, and picked Dean up. He took him home and cleaned him up. He fed him, and made him shower, and bought him an Xbox and every horror movie he could find. The words Angel and Thursday were banned in the house. He took Dean out to drive the Impala and they went to a few concerts. It was everything he could do and it wasn't enough. It never would be.
qp
"Enough is enough," Sam said, strolling into Dean's room almost a year to the day after the gates of Heaven slammed shut. Dean was sitting on his gamer chair with his Xbox headset on. He was tearing up zombies, a beer next to the chair, and Sam was pretty sure Dean hadn't showered in a few days. But… he looked okay. Ish. Not great, but he'd looked worse.
The anniversary of losing Cas was coming up and truthfully, Sam was scared that Dean was going to die. Maybe not take his life, but be a lot less careful with it than normal. Sam didn't understand the ache of living without Cas, but he knew the ache of living without Dean and that just… that just wasn't going to happen. End of story.
"What's enough?" Dean finally asked after he reached a point where he could pause. He looked up at Sam and rubbed his eyes. "What are you blabbering on about?"
"We have a case," Sam said.
Dean's eyebrows rose. "A case? Are you kidding me, Sammy? We don't do cases anymore. In case you forgot, we put a stop to all that shit."
"In case you forgot, it wasn't just demons and… other stuff… that existed here. The monsters didn't just disappear because their big bad daddies got locked away." Sam was feeling impatient, mostly because he knew he had to get Dean really goddamn far away from his batcave. And soon.
Dean sighed and pulled off his headset. He stood, stretched and grimaced at his own smell. "Damn. I need a shower."
"Yeah, you do," Sam said. "And you need to pack."
Dean rolled his eyes and began to rummage around his closet for a towel that didn't feel like a small animal crawled inside and died in the folds. "Pack for where, exactly?"
"Well I've found us a case, possible vengeful spirit, but it's kind of… far."
Dean stood up and glared at his younger brother. "Far? How far?"
Sam smiled, blushing a little because he knew what Dean was going to say, but he wasn't going to take the no for an answer. "The case is in London, Dean, and I've booked the tickets already. So go shower and I'll fill you in when you're done."
After a lot of swearing, more swearing than Sam had heard in a while, and a little bit of a tantrum, and about four broken glasses, Dean finally sat at the table. He was half-ready to listen, and half-ready to strangle Sam because the younger Winchester knew how he felt about planes. If he was going to die, he did not want to go out that way. No goddamn thank you.
Sam had his laptop open and he twirled it around so Dean could see. It was a blog. Something simple, blue background, a few tabs on the sides. Decent hit count for just some random guy, and his picture was in the corner, small and unobtrusive. He was a decent looking guy, too, sort of average with sandy blonde hair, round nose and he wasn't smiling.
"This guy is Dr. John Watson," Sam said.
"So?" Dean asked.
Sam rolled his eyes. "I wasn't finished. He works as a consultant for Scotland Yard in London. Now, he used to live with a man…"
"Lover?" Dean asked with an eyebrow waggle.
"Hard to say," he said, ignoring the sarcastic smirk on his brother's face. "My guess is yes, although their history was pretty complicated. Anyway, the blog of Dr. Watson had been quite for several months, but it looks like about four weeks ago, he started posting again. He's claimed that he's been seeing his former partner all over. In grocery stores, at the park, just random stuff like that."
"Okay?" Dean asked with a frown. "So he's being haunted?"
"Well get this," Sam said, and put on his very serious research face. He clicked on another browser window. "I did some research on Sherlock—the former housemate—and it looks like he was some big-shot detective about three years ago."
"Before he died," Dean said.
"Before he committed suicide," Sam corrected, his eyebrows flying up. He began to get that excited, we've found serious information look on his face that Dean both hated and loved. "It turns out, around the time that this Dr. Watson began seeing Sherlock around, people started to die. Criminal big-wigs in the UK. People that had been after Sherlock in the past, and people that Dr. Watson believes were related to his death."
Dean sat back, intrigued now, but not totally convinced. "So why did he commit suicide? Are we sure it wasn't a murder."
"Turns out that Sherlock was proven to be a fraud," Sam said ,tapping the screen with his finger. "I guess right before he jumped off a building, some media reporter came forward with evidence saying that Sherlock had actually fooled everyone. He had set up the various crimes he'd solved in order to get attention. The morning the story went live, Sherlock jumped off a building."
"Cremated?" Dean asked, now picking his teeth with the straw of an empty soda cup.
"Buried," Sam said. "It's a classic case of vengeful spirit."
"Yeah but…" Dean hesitated, giving a little shrug. "A vengeful spirit is pretty low-grade, even for us, Sammy. I mean, why the hell are we going to fly across a fucking ocean for a salt'n'burn? Don't we know some hunters over there who can take care of this? I mean, hell, they're probably on the case right now anyway if it's making the papers."
"I made a few calls," Sam said slowly, "and asked them to let us take it."
Dean's eyes went wide. "Why the hell?"
"Because you need to get out, okay?" Sam said loudly. "You need to pull yourself out of this grave you dug and do something. I'm not going to just sit here while you waste away. I know that Cas is gone, and it fucking sucks, and I can't even imagine the pain you're in. But… but you know, I'm still here. We've been to heaven, hell, purgatory and back. We saved the world from those bastards ever being able to touch it again, and damn it, Dean. I'm right here with you, and I'm not going to let you just roll over now that we're done. Okay?"
Honestly, Sam didn't know what to expect from Dean. Swearing, maybe? Even Dean just lunging across the table and beating the shit out of him. Breaking his laptop, or throwing a chair. What he didn't expect was for Dean to drop his head down onto the table and just cry.
It was awkward, to say the least, and for the first full minute Sam wasn't quite sure what to do. Sure Dean cried. He cried that one, solitary tear down his cheek when shit got really, really bad. But this was… this was actual crying. Tears, hitched breath, hands clenched into fists, trying to push away a pain that wasn't ever really going to go away.
Sam eventually got it together enough to kneel in front of his brother and hug him. Truth was, Dean loved hugs, it was how he connected to people, and when Sam wrapped his arms around his big brother, Dean really lost it. He hadn't cried like that in a year, and by the time Sam had found him in that warehouse after Cas had gone, all that had been left were a few hiccups and dry heaves.
Dean just sort of… let it out. He was muttering behind the sobs, angry words, hateful words because Cas really had just left him. He'd taken him, turned him into someone who could not only love, but be loved, and before Dean could actually do anything about it, before Dean could show Cas how much love he had in him, he went and locked himself away and it was so un-fucking-fair.
Sam just held Dean, and eventually the sobs stopped, and he sat up and his eyes were red and swollen, but dry. He looked a little embarrassed, but Sam squeezed the top of Dean's thighs to tell him that it just didn't really matter anymore, and that he got it... as much of it as he could get.
"Let's go," Dean said. "When's the flight leave?"
"Ten AM," was all Sam said, because he would revel in his triumph later. Now he just had to get Dean on the plane.
qp
He felt bad about it, but not bad enough to stop himself from drugging Dean's drink on the plane, and by the time they were half-way across the ocean, Dean was snoring and Sam was reading a book and feeling pretty proud of himself. There had only been one panic attack during take-off and once the drug had taken effect, it was smooth sailing. Or… flying. Whatever. It didn't matter because they were on their way, Dean was out of the house, and he'd actually cried.
He hadn't want to talk about Cas with Sam, and Sam doubted Dean ever would, but he'd at least showed emotion. He wasn't just sitting in front of his TV existing in a half-life while the world went by. The world, by the way they'd saved so many goddamn times that it owed them. A lot.
Dean gave a little snore and shuffled himself off to face the window and Sam smiled a little, flashing back to road trips when they were kids. Before everything went to hell. Before Angels and Demons and living without each other. Before Heaven and Hell and everything in between. It was just the boys, and the hunt, and the road, and it was… all fine. They could live like that.
Sam closed his book and stared at his brother for a long time. He was thinner than he'd ever been, dark rings under his eyes, and he was existing but he wasn't healing. He did hate Cas for all of this, because Cas could have stopped. He could have heard Dean out. He could have told Dean that goddamn it, he loved him, too and he was doing this because of that.
"Not sure if you can hear me up there," Sam said. He peered out the window as they flew above the clouds and wondered how close to Heaven they really were. "Not sure if you can do anything about it, either. I'm guessing not, because that was sort of the point. But he misses you, you know. He… he's never going to get over this. Over you. We still wonder if we go to heaven when we die. Or if that whole thing just shut it down, because I think the only thing keeping him going is that when we finally do die, when we get our reprieve, he's going to see you again up there. God damn it, Cas. If you'd just… just…" but Sam couldn't finish because there just weren't any more words to express how he felt. He could only hope Cas could hear him, that part of their penance was the Angel's having to listen to the prayers of humans as they sat trapped behind the gates that would never open again.
The flight felt longer than it should have, but the plane touched down just as Dean was coming to, and though he seemed a bit miffed that he'd been drugged, Sam knew his brother appreciated it. On some level. Currently he was swearing at Sam and attempting to shake off the groggy feeling from the drugs.
They got their bags and eventually reached their hotel, a place suspiciously close to the address where John Watson was reported to live. A 221B Baker Street. Dean was still in no mood to deal with anything or anyone, so the next morning Sam loaded him up with food and television and then went out to meet the local hunters, a man named Andrew and his wife, Fiona.
They were older, which surprised Sam as he slid across from them at the café. Andrew looked to be in his mid-fifties, and Fiona near there with their greying hair and crow's feet at the eyes. But they'd been through a lot, enough, Sam could tell from the scars on their hands and arms. They nodded to Sam and offered him a sip of holy water, which he took to be polite. So far no demons had been reported to have escaped, but one couldn't be too careful.
Andrew and Fiona did the same with the water, and then they ordered sandwiches and coffee. "So here's everything you requested," Andrew said, and he pushed a duffel bag under the table to Sam's feet. "Where's your brother, by the way?"
"He gets sick from flying," Sam lied easily. "He's at the hotel, but once he's up and about, I'll contact you."
"So you honestly flew all this way to burn the bones of some bloke who died a few years ago? Who hasn't even been killing innocent people?" Fiona asked, her eyes slightly wide. "Sounds a bit mad to me, to be honest."
Sam drank down some of the coffee and gave a little sigh. "It's a little more complicated than that. It's… it's less the hunt, and more the fact that if I didn't get my brother out of the house, he was probably going to die."
"Well we've heard the rumors about you two," Andrew said, shaking his head. "Michael, Lucifer and their lot. I mean, I reckon you're Hollywood star famous anywhere you go in the world, with our kind."
Sam shook his head, feeling a little uncomfortable about the entire situation. It was those fucking books, and the fact that hunters just couldn't keep their damn mouths shut, even when it was information that didn't matter. "Well, like I said, it's complicated."
"It's Castiel, right?" Fiona asked.
Sam's face fell. "It's probably for the best if you don't bring up Castiel to my brother."
"Right, yeah," she said and looked away, slightly embarrassed. "It's just… those books you know…"
"Yeah, we know," Sam grumbled. "Point is, it's a tender subject. I'm trying to get Dean to focus on other things right now. In fact, once we get this job taken care of, if you hear of any others, please let us know. We don't want to overstep our bounds, being that this is your territory, but the longer I can keep him away, the better."
"No problem," Andrew said. "Ever since you two took care of business with those damn demons, it's been near dead silent here. What d'you reckon, love? Eight, nine months since a real job?"
"Close to it," Fiona said with a shrug. "We owe you two a big thanks."
Sam's mouth twitched up, just a little, because it didn't really feel like he'd done anything great. He'd nearly died, they'd lost the one thing Dean really loved, and it was all for what? Only time would tell if humans were better off without the creatures above and below trying to run the show. Humans could be pretty fucked up all on their own. One of the reasons they were capable of becoming demons.
Sam took his leave of the pair with the duffel bag in hand. They hadn't been able to take anything they actually needed on the plane without arousing suspicion, so Sam had to call in that favor. They had a couple of shot guns now, salt rounds, a massive bag of kosher salt—which he thought was an interesting choice—and several liters of lighter fluid. It would be just enough to take care of this job.
"Aww Sammy, you brought me a present," Dean said, eyeing the bag as Sam walked through the door. He grabbed it and inspected the contents. "We've solved a lot worse with a lot less."
"I contacted a hunter couple and they said anything we need they can take care of," Sam replied as he flopped down on the bed. The hotel felt like any other hotel they'd ever stayed in. Musty sheets, stale air, springy mattresses. TV decades too old, stains on the ceiling, and a really loud couple next door who were probably having an affair.
"So what should we do? Just pop the grave and burn the bones tonight?" Dean asked.
"Well I thought we might want to talk to this Dr. Watson first," Sam said. "Make sure that there isn't something else this Sherlock person might be hanging on to. I don't want to assume that burning his bones is going to take care of the job."
"Yeah… good plan," Dean said. "Then we get a drink."
"Dean, it's ten in the morning," Sam said.
"Yeah, and I'm on goddamn vacation, Sammy. So first we talk to this doctor guy, and then we get a goddamn beer."
Sam was in no position to actually argue, so he gave a resigned sigh and followed his brother outside. The hotel was literally around the corner from the front door belonging to Dr. John Watson, and Dean wasted no time banging on it with a closed fist.
Sam pushed his brother out of the way, concerned about Dean's mood, and gave a warm, charming smile to the short, older woman who answered the door. "Can I help you boys?" she asked.
"Hi," Sam said, trying to do that thing that Dean said made his eyes twinkle, "we're here to see Dr. Watson?"
The woman frowned, puffing up a little in a protective manner and she crossed her arms. "Is he expecting you boys?"
Sam looked over at Dean who was messing around with his phone, and sighed. "No. Uh… we just… we wanted to drop by. There was something we wanted to discuss with him." The woman was clearly not impressed with Sam's charms, but to his delight, Sam saw a shorter man walking behind her and he said, "We read his recent blog and we know why it's happening."
The man behind the woman froze and turned. She looked concerned, but she was pushed out of the way and the person who had to be Dr. John Watson stepped in front of Sam. Sam, of course, towered over the shorter man, but somehow managed to feel cowed by Dr. Watson's intense stare. The man had been through hell, that was clear, and he wasn't about to take any shit from a couple of Americans who wanted to have a laugh at the blogging doctor who was seeing things.
"Who are you?" he asked, sizing Sam and Dean up with a firm glance.
"My name's Sam, and this is my brother Dean. We're… specialists," Sam said, for lack of a better word.
John flinched at the term, but then stepped aside to let the Winchesters enter. Sam gave a nod as he passed and before long, they went upstairs to start solving the case of the Death of Sherlock Holmes.