Suicide is not an option when what you fear most is death. Loneliness is a death in itself but it is cold and numbing and Dean can warm his bluing lips with whiskey from the singed and blackened flask that never leaves his pocket, it's weight a constant anchor to the Earth and when he gets low on alcohol, the small bottle seems Worlds lighter and Dean finds a way to fill it again quickly before he floats away.
The Impala is a shrine of meaningless items, meant in remembrance of those passed on but their own souls have departed long ago, leaving the old car on its last legs and full of garbage. Dean's hand finds the door handle and pulls it open with such conviction his heart pounds with the adrenaline of practice and routine, but nothing is chasing him and the car serves as safety only from the dispassionate and indifferent Weather, that cares not how you feel and functions with unsympathetic devotion to the rotation of the Earth.
He drives a total of sixty-six feet before succumbing to intoxication and deciding to park behind the bar for the night.
There is no flapping of wings when Castiel joins him; no cool breeze on his face announcing the angel's arrival. There is just a still, stale desperation in the car, a loneliness that inspires Dean to turn in his seat and face the passenger seat fully so that he may take in Castiel's appearance, fearful that his peripheral may turn Castiel into something else, lingering in the side of his vision like in the back of his mind, dark shapes and breathing patterns that are inhuman and threatening. But there he is, cleaner and crisper than Dean has seen him in a while. The angel is pensive and contemplative and Dean studies the the folds at the corners of his eyes like the folds in Cas's trench coat, there because weight hangs heavy and there is a great deal of fabric both on his body and in his mind that Dean has always wished he could spread out on the Earth like an ancient tapestry, spanning centuries that Dean longs to understand and participate in. His coat is clean, recently washed it seems, and his tie is snug around a collar that is aligned to such a dividing center that Dean knows it must have been divinely preformed, creating an equator around the Angel's neck. Dean used to fix those things for Castiel, caring for him like a child, like Sammy, like another abandoned son, but Castiel seems to have a grip on his appearance now, so Dean keeps his hands to himself, motionless in his lap, appendages that no longer belong to himself.
"Hey Cas."
"Hello Dean."
"I went to see Sammy today," Dean tells him.
"That is why I came to see you."
Dean is thankful when Castiel finally turns to face him, grateful that they are going to have an actual conversation and not the fleeting hello goodbyes that Dean is graced with more often. Castiel's gaze falls to Dean and Dean is opened wide for him, transparent, fragmented glass that spills forth it's sand- abandoning time, and Dean has to fight to keep his eyes open against a sudden desire to fall asleep, give into that clarity that Castiel offers him, that peaceful serenity that Dean only knows in these moments.
"Tell me what happened."
"Who are you here to visit?"
"Sam Winchester," Dean answers. He watches the line her lips make when she hears the name and Dean is unable to interpret it, but the receptionist is walking away telling him that she must check if he is allowed any visitors today.
When she returns, she hands Dean a form to fill out and asks for his ID. He hands her a fake, naming himself John Novak and asking as casually as his sobriety will allow him, "why wouldn't he be allowed any visitors today?"
"He broke a wall down last night," she says, laughing despite the gravity of the statement.
Dean stops writing for a second to add, "yeah, not the first time he's done that."
Dean is led through several sets of doors into rooms that serve no purpose but allowing there to be another heavy, metal, locking door. He begins to sweat, such overwhelming security only alerting him that there is no way to escape this place. The last room as a solitary bench, cold painted wood that is bolted to the ground and the receptionist tells him he may sit- they will call him when Sam is ready.
He sits only because time has given him a bad back, but his mind is pacing the ten by ten box, slamming against the walls, desperate for an escape. He has no gun, no holy water, no salt, no phone. Everything was left in the car or they wouldn't allow him inside so his absolute inability to defend himself makes this place even more hostile and the room starts to spin by the time the last dead bolt is pulled from the door.
Maybe the nurse is speaking, but her voice is lost among the crashing waves in the turbulent sea of Dean's mind and he needs no direction to find his brother, who is seated at the end of his tunneling vision, handcuffed to a chair that is as much a part of the wall as Sam is of this establishment. His ankles are bound, his hair unbrushed and his face hollow and gaunt. Dean is not surprised to find his brother like this, but it doesn't make the sight any less disturbing, and rage growls dully in his gut like a hound that is both hungry for retribution but too weak from starvation. Dean grabs a chair that has not been bolted to the wall and pulls it so he may sit in front of his little brother, who despite his size, looks smaller than he ever has before.
"Hi Sammy."
"Who are you?"
The words sting, and while this isn't the first time Dean has heard them directed towards himself from the mouth of a child he nursed, diapered, taught, and protected, it stings more than it did the first time and Dean can feel his body sink towards the ground, earth worms reaching towards his disintegrating flesh, begging to take him.
"I'm Dean. I'm your brother."
"They said you were John."
"Fake name," Dean explains. "You used to use them all the time too. Know why you're strapped to the wall? Because now they know your real name and Sam Winchester killed a lot of people."
"It's because I broke down a wall."
"That too, Sammy."
"Who's Sammy?"
"You're Sammy."
"I thought I was John?"
"No, John was our father."
"We both had fathers named John?"
Dean is at a loss for words, all collection leaving him as he begins to cry. Sam is nothing of what he was. Words like Bobby and Castiel and Jessica mean nothing to him but when "God Damn It," leaves Dean's frustrated lips, Sam surges in his chair, suddenly fighting against his shackles and screaming desperately for water.
Jumping away and knocking his own chair to the floor, Dean scrambles for level terrain. Sam is howling, eyes thin and neck quivering with the strain of pleading and Dean is falling himself, on his knees on the linoleum that seems to be parting beneath him and that's when Sam says his name, like a bullet to the brain, like a promise- always carried through when Hell is your dealer.
"Dean! DEAN, PLEASE. Save me, it's so fucking hot down here. Dean, please, Dean please, Dean where are you? What is taking you so long, Dean don't forget me. Don't leave me here."
There are nurses on him like vultures and they do not step away until Sam is asleep and a needle is being removed from his thigh. Dean's mouth falls open, swallowing the tears that stream down his face, baptizing him in his fear, a religion of Reality, a painful reminder that it was easier to talk to Samuel the stranger rather than Sam, his brother- Lucifer and Michael's punching bag, a sad tormented shell of what was once the boy that round shotgun to his misguided and unfortunate life.
Dean takes flight, running out of the hospital as fast as the mechanically locking doors and apologetic caretaker will allow him. His feet are foreigners, owned by some other being that can shift shapes and understand the ground, which seems to alter and deform beneath him and Dean is falling again, this time onto asphalt that leaves his knees and hands bleeding a glorious and righteous red- a color he never tires of seeing. The jarring collision of his body back to the Earth seems to calm him just enough so that he may breathe, and cough, and spit and confirm that he is, in fact, alive.
"I drove to the nearest bar, and now I am here, with you."
"I am sorry that was hard for you to handle emotionally. I imagine it is hard to lose a brother."
"Cut the bullshit, Cas. I know you can feel. You've lost plenty of brothers and that made you sad. I know you are sorry Sam is fucked up. I know you miss him and Bobby."
"If you say so."
Dean stares at him hard through the dim light of the car, aching to reach out and grab the bastard by his collar so he can shake the grace right out of him until it falls to the ground like a weak and flickering ember that accepts its fate to be darkened and remain unrecognizable in the dirt and Dean would step on it with the toe of his boot to force him to stay here- to breathe and sleep like a human, not an Angel, not a ghost, not a diseased and cancerous soul, but the car is silent as answered prayers and Dean sits still, obeying some truth in his mind that the rest of his being denies- that he cannot touch Castiel anymore.
"Do you love me?" Dean asks him and Castiel sighs, unable to answer a question that Dean can truly never know the answer to. There seems to be true remorse from within Castiel, regret at having not spoken up before, frustration that he did not say it when they still had a chance to change their paths, but there is nothing to do now but gaze back at the map of Dean's wayward life, undulating across a Godless nation, a crooked, indirect, tortuous journey that led him to be drunk and alone in a car that is parked behind a slumbering bar in a distant town.
"You are tired, Dean," he says instead. "Go to sleep."
When Dean awakes in the morning, the sun is a headache, streaming in through the hazy windshield of the Impala, trying hard to pierce through years of scratches, layers of dirt and years of indifference to the condition of the car, but all the Holy sun finds there waiting is a middle aged man with greying hair and a dirty tench coat, folded in the passenger seat, unmoved for the past twenty years.