Author's Note: This takes place in an AU version of the end of season 5, meaning after they put Lucifer in the box, Sam was raised immediately, everything intact, so season 6 has been rendered nonexistent. Enjoy!
The first postcard came from Beirut.
In the aftermath of banishing Lucifer to his cage for a much-needed timeout, there was a significant lull in the action. Each hunt from there on out seemed banal, and though Dean hated to admit it, he sort of missed having a greater purpose in the grand scheme of things, even if sometimes he wished he wasn't holding up the heavens on his shoulders. Neither Sam nor Dean could very well simply insert themselves into "normal" lives at this point, but it wouldn't hurt to try finding hobbies to bide their time in between exorcising demons and flushing out ghosts from all across the country.
Naturally this plan crashed and burned.
Bobby's house was forced to be their new refuge for the time being, local hunts on their plate until their so-called problem was solved, if it ever would be. Sam had long since decided that he could only put up with his brother for so many hours in a car with nothing but the same books to read before some of his sanity had chipped away and he would've liked to keep that intact, thank you very much. As crotchety as Bobby could be occasionally, he more than welcomed the Winchesters to stay as long as they'd like, given that they pulled their weight around the house.
Castiel, on the other hand, freshly risen thanks to God (even though God never seemed to help anybody else out) couldn't be expect to stay stationary for long. When asked if he was going back up to Heaven to bring order to the newly sparked chaos, he declined, instead stating that he would be elsewhere. "Looking for God still?" Sam had asked, to which Dean had derisively snorted, and Castiel shot him the obligatory smite-y glare. But no, not a search for God.
There wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell that Dean would openly admit that the prospect of Castiel going roadtripping on his own didn't sting a little bit. They won the war and he was already up for leaving, and not some place even remotely important. "Can we call you?" Again Sam was doing the asking. Castiel exchanged his phone for stiff handshakes with Bobby and Sam, and Dean got next to nothing, just the promise that he would write. Some angel he was. Still a dick, even after everything they'd been through, Dean figured.
Sam had popped out to retrieve the mail the morning the postcard came, and nearly shrieked with delight upon wielding the proof that Castiel indeed followed through on promises and that he was going somewhere entirely far more interesting than where the world's biggest ball of twine was (which the Winchesters had probably seen more times than you can count on fingers and toes). He smoothed his fingers over the glossy front side, savouring the moment before he'd read the short letter, and admired the image of Lebanon's capital city. For someone who had never gone out of the country before or even had a pen pal from another spot on the globe, he was adequately excited over foreign adventures.
There was a litany of tiny but masterfully written text on the back of the postcard, each crossed 't' seemed penned with deliberate patience and expertise, and Sam could have sworn that all of them were identical, as if crafted by a computer or typewriter rather than a steady hand. In the surge of joy he was deriving from the sheer fact that he was holding a postcard written by an angel of the Lord, his eyes did stop and his face did fall at the fact that it was addressed to Dean and Dean only. It was a federal offense to read someone else's mail, but postcards couldn't hurt if you didn't have to illegally tear them open, and what was so important that only Dean could know about it?
Sam scanned the letter, smirking at the intricate retelling of Castiel's adventures in a land that spoke a different tongue, mixups with people who found his attire peculiar, and foods that previously he had no desire to try, but were utterly divine upon his discovery. Despite the note lacking the flourishes of someone who actually felt things and enjoyed them to a certain degree, it really seemed like Castiel had the makings of someone who could do this for a living, and for that reason it felt like all this would be lost on Dean. As he walked into the library where Dean was lounging with a beer, the note had abruptly ended with some native Arabic scrawl and the romanized form of whatever it was.
"What's that?" Dean asked, tipping his bottle in the direction of the postcard. Rather than answering outright, Sam flashed the picture of Beirut in front of Dean, then continued furrowing his brow at the word. It was the last thing in the letter, save from a dash and Castiel's signature, so there was the distinct possibility that it was a form of goodbye. Dean questioned the screwed up look on Sam's face, and all that he could reply with was "Uhibbok."
"Uhibbok? Are you trying to learn another language again? I told you, that Rosetta Stone stuff-"
"Hold on for a minute, I'm trying to figure out what it means," Sam said, promptly shushing his brother. There was no doubt in his mind that Bobby's house contained a few useful dictionaries or foreign phrase books, but they all had computers, so it was only a matter of minutes before Sam commandeered the laptop on the couch and handed off what was rightfully Dean's. "Oh, thanks, real sweet of you," Dean grumbled.
It didn't take long to just google the word, but it kept Sam silent once he found out. It was pretty hard not to laugh, after all. "So what does it mean? Is Cas learning the language of his new people?"
"You could say that, though I'm sure he already knows every word in every language. Y'know except for half of the things that come out of your mouth," Sam laughed. He plucked the card straight from Dean's hands as Dean mimicked him with a tone of voice that was supposed to sound like him, though purposely skewed. Yep, it really did say "uhibbok", there was no mistaking it, not with the precision of Castiel's every letter. Hell, he even had the Arabic lettering perfectly.
"So. Uhibbok. Help me out here. Is he going to start teaching me how to say goodbye in every language?" Dean opted for prodding Sam, because physically getting the answer out of him appeared to be the only way.
"I love you," Sam replied and receieved a stunned silence. "It means 'I love you'."
"You have got to be kidding me. That bastard has some kind of sick sense of humour."
"You know he doesn't joke."
"He jokes in Enochian!"
"And nothing he says is even funny. Dean, your argument is pretty baseless here."
The two of them sat on the couch, still unsure of what to make of the card. Dean being Dean, he just shrugged it off and flipped the card onto a table, and that was the last they figured they'd ever seem to think about "uhibbok".
The second postcard came from Giverny.
If the wonder and mysticalness of Beirut was lost on Dean, then certainly all appreciation for the artwork on the new card would be impossible to attain. A well known Monet painting was spread across the 4x6 postcard and when offered to Dean, he immediately overlooked it for the writing on the back. Classic Dean, Sam thought, and sat across from his brother in the hopes that he would let him read it without grumbling this time.
"What does' 'Je t'aime' mean?" Dean stuck a finger out and poked the paper, letting it waver between his fingertips.
"Did you even read the card?" Sam asked. He quirked an eyebrow at his brother, knowing the answer already but hoping to give him the benefit of the doubt.
"No, but he left another one of those foreign goodbyes. What can I say, it caught my eye."
When given the postcard back, Sam was pleased to know that Castiel was still doing fine on his escapades around the world. Though the angel wasn't entirely an art enthusiast, he had been referred there when speaking to a local of two cities away, pieces of Monet's work shown in hopes of influencing him. This time he steered clear of the general population and focused more on the sights and the sounds, admiring the work his Father had lovingly crafted, and Sam realised that that must be what this is all about. A good portion of the angels they had met had little regard for the Earth itself, but Castiel was an exception to the rule. He was the little angel who could feel without falling.
"I think Cas likes us more than he lets on," Sam mumbled in the midst of his reverie. "I mean us in general. I think he really wants to get to know the planet that he saved."
"Well try to write back to Captain Planet and ask him what the deal is with the French. Who even likes France, anyway?"
There was little point in saying the definition out loud this time, Sam had merely stuck the laptop in his brother's lap and let the realisation bloom across his features. A glint flashed in Dean's eyes, pupils momentarily dilating from the brightness of the screen and the content of the webpage, and maybe Sam was imagining it, but one corner of his mouth had turned up in an imitation of a coy smile. A trend was forming in the closings of the postcards and neither were sure what to make of it, but neither could complain to an angel they couldn't chastise from thousands of miles away.
This postcard wasn't tossed like the last, just set down in an orderly fashion atop the other, a pile forming.
Over a week later, Dean was found sitting on the porch, bent over a postcard that already had dogeared corners and was probably scrutinized over a thousand times before Sam had shown up. Craning his neck a little higher to see over his brother's shoulder, Sam noticed that the photo this time was a different kind of photo than all the others, a stream of green light in a darkened sky. He could only get glimpses of the picture because Dean repeatedly switched to the other side, possibly to reread the card, but he would always come back to the front and a shudder of a deep breath would startle his otherwise still body.
"'Ég elska þig.'" Dean tried to pronounce the words, his mouth failing to wrap around accent marks and characters he had never encountered before. He relinquished the card and let Sam see the aurora borealis shimmering within the limitations of a still photo, undoubtedly better looking up close and personal, but they had to take what they could get. Castiel had flown to Iceland and each night he stayed, the dazzling dance of colourful phenomena blazed all around him. He did well to keep away from the cities and wished upon the auroras on his own, the gradient of light bathing the land he tread upon in a sort of other-worldly sensation.
Castiel wrote about how only personal experience could do it justice, and that despite the multitude of colours the auroras sported, green was his favourite by a mile. Dean looked up as Sam read that line and instantly he knew why. Waterfalls and long roads, glacier lagoons and the most beautiful sunrises spilling over hillocks made of snow; the angel had clearly tried his best to describe something best seen with two eyes than one mind, and his efforts were valiant. Ending with a desire to return at the winter solstice, or Christmas for the lights in the towns, and his now typical foreign line, Sam grinned.
"He makes everything sound so beautiful from a weirdly technical point of view," Sam said to clear the silence. They sat together and swapped the card back and forth, still drinking in the idea that snow could turn golden by the sun's touch and that even an abundance of grass in a long stretch of field could be infinitely more beautiful that anything the Winchesters had seen. Dean argued that America was just as gorgeous as anywhere Castiel planned to go, and his baby couldn't drive across an ocean, so there was no point in missing soil they'd never dust with their boots. Senseless jealously and deflection.
Soon their collection boasted postcards with pictures of the Swiss Alps, gondolas in Venice, and Van Gogh's "La nuit étoilée sur le Rhône" from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Like trading cards the boys handed each other the most important objects they owned at that point in time, pieces of culture and places seldom seen save for pictures on the internet, and maybe in their pipe dreams of world exploration. For as well as they knew the roads they travelled day by day, anywhere beyond the borders of the United States might as well have been shrouded in mild mystery, and there was no way in hell that Dean was going to Canada to get any sort of culture in him.
After a postcard from Jaipur was in their possession, Dean began to wonder if they would ever set their sights upon the angel ever again. "He really likes these places. He never shuts up about the food, like a guy who finally got laid and is pretty much insatiable. It's annoying," Dean said, tone that of a disgruntled old man. Truth be told, Sam suspected that with each new retelling of the same three words (less or more if the language called for it), Dean was bending and breaking. Postcard days were a mixed blessing and Dean's attitude towards them ranged greatly on a scale of mystified adoration to disappointed nostalgia, and one never wanted to be around for the slamming cabinets and foot stomps of the latter.
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder, y'know," Sam offered.
"Fonder my ass. He doesn't miss us, he just likes to gloat about how wonderful it is to be away from us," Dean snapped. He was on the edge of just tearing the postcard from Jaipur in half, words of spicy Indian cuisine almost lost forever. Sam rushed over and snagged it from his hands, delicately placing it with the rest of the postcards they'd accumulated, then made a "tsk tsk" sound.
"Cas misses you, he just has a funny way of showing it. I think you judge him too much the way you would a human, Dean, and he's anything but human. His brain, if he even has one, probably thinks differently. Cut the guy some slack."
As if their prayers were (somewhat) answered, a postcard of the Iguazu Falls arrived two days later, the only things written on it were "Eu tehno saudades de você" and "eu te amo". Sam couldn't help but laugh as Dean scrambled to decipher what he believed to be a crytpic message, and the way his face crumpled when the meaning was clear. The rest of the day was spent complaining about how angels were experts on making a guy feel bad.
The tension in the house reached its apex when they thought that there were no more interesting countries to write home about and all the wonders of the world were probably seen seven times over. Dean's theory was that Castiel had fallen and therefore no postcards in weeks was to be expected. "Maybe he got turned into a baby, whole new life, like Anna," he mumbled weakly. Scratching at his jaw, Dean sank further into the couch adorned with all the postcards, and the word "sick" was the only thing that came to mind when Sam came in to look at him.
"Doubt it," Sam said. He smiled smugly with his hands in his hoodie pockets, and glanced around the room to bait Dean into questioning further. Which of course he did. Classic Dean.
"What do you mean by that?" Dean sat up straighter, so fast that the pops in his spine could be heard all around the room.
"Just got this in the mail today. Y'know, I think this could be last one." Sam slipped his hands out of his pockets and untucked a postcard from his back pocket, and the photo on the front wasn't even from some place in the world. "Dude, is that the Enterprise?" Dean blinked
"None other," Sam laughed, handing the card over.
"What is he doing, hanging with Captain Kirk?" Dean asked, but most of it was stifled by Sam telling him to just read it. He complied and scanned it with an air of disbelief, and the ending took him by surprise faster than a Wendigo in a dark forest. "He's at a Trek convention?"
"I heard Hell was freezing over and pigs can fly."
"QamuSHa'? The fucker just told me he loved me in Klingon, didn't he?" Dean threw the card down and crossed his arms over his chest, baffled by how comical this all seemed to be, and how the joke was all on him. Sam, however, didn't hide the mirth this time around, and almost literally laughed right in Dean's face. Man, he missed that angel, clearly craftier than he ever gave him credit for, and Sam would make sure to hug him and his trenchcoat the next chance he had.
"I think I'd be more mad that he's in the States and not making you swoon with his new geeky prowess," Sam added in between fits of laughter, stomach aching with how funny the world looked to be today.
"Son of a bitch."
...
Castiel returned on a lazy Saturday, a day spent making plans for hunts in other parts of the country because South Dakota was more boring than they previously imagined. He came in through the door, his habit to appear out of nowhere tempered by the customs he'd learned over weeks of travel. "Hello," he said, voice rumbling and bouncing off the books and walls of the study and into the kitchen where Dean sat, inhaling a sandwich.
After nearly falling out his chair backwards, Dean stood up to face the angel. Still as pale as ever, hair just as messy as ever, trenchcoat wrinkled just the same. Time may change, but Castiel seemed no different than as if he'd looked at him just yesterday. "Hey, Cas," Dean choked out after swallowing his last piece of sandwich. He pivoted around to grab the stack of postcards he had beside him on the kitchen table, and waved them in his hand. "Got your letters. Have fun?"
"Yes. Where is Sam and Bobby?" Castiel asked brusquely.
Dean bristled and frowned. "At the library. Good to see you too."
Despite what customs had taught him about appearing at will, Castiel still found it handier to do it rather than take the short stride across the room and meet up with Dean in his personal space. Classic Cas. "I have missed you," he told Dean. Not that Dean had any doubt in his mind that this was true, his lips formed words that spoke otherwise.
"That why were you gone so long? You can fly and check in any time, a personal report would have been appreciated." Dean backed up a few inches and stuck his hands in his jeans pockets, though whether he was affecting an offended tone on purpose was unclear to the both of them.
"I thought you would enjoy the correspondence via postcards instead. They were in every little shop I came across, I assumed you wouldn't mind." The angel still spoke like an angel, but the influence of humanity had bled into his intonation every now and then, and words were less stiff than they were weeks upon weeks ago. To hug or not to hug, Dean was conflicted even though he was more into actions than words, and stood stock still as he chose to keep berating his friend.
"Oh I minded. Jeez, Cas, not even a phone? They've got those all over the place too. For a while I thought you had fallen and-" Dean avoided the blue stare from Castiel pointedly "-and you weren't coming back." Castiel's face softened, the dip in the light bags beneath his eyes and the cracks lingering around them all seemed to dissipate. He tried to move forward, but his steps were mirrored by Dean taking his own back. Finding the effort fruitless, he sighed, sounding humanly worn out, and brought two fingers up to Dean's head.
They were in the guest bedroom upstairs, one disoriented body lurching against the other, regaining composure. "I would never, not if you were unaware," Castiel whispered as Dean's head briefly lolled into his coat, then helped the hunter stand up properly. "Stand still next time."
"Next time?" Dean hardly had a moment to react to the shift in the ground beneath his feet, the temperature swirling into a heavy breeze around him and turning his jacket into a useless flapping piece of fabric. Fighting the urge to look down, Dean peeked out from under his eyelashes and let his breath catch in the back of his throat before losing it to the gusts that ate at the oxygen. Like unfolded paper children, Castiel held onto Dean's hand to keep him steady, his grace pulsing at Dean's backside to keep him warm in the midst of the chilly bite of unusual late August weather.
"Where the hell?" Dean raised his voice over the wind and looked at Castiel, who smiled in the face of the deep pink and purple sky, hardly blinking at the sun that hung in a bed of clouds. "Beirut," Castiel answered. "We are on the roof of the Bay Tower."
Dean gulped. Heights were fine, but the fearing of falling was a very rational fear, and here they were teetering next to the edge. Perhaps Castiel would never let him fall and the sentiment was shared, it still didn't lessen the view of the great drop that presented itself only feet before them. The Mediterranean Sea ebbed and flowed a ways away, a perfect canvas for the sky above to paint itself across below. The air was sweet and tinged with an exotic brand of warmth that had Dean shirking his jacket and handing it off to Castiel, who knew well enough to touch it and send it back to Bobby's.
"So, Beirut. Pretty place, I suppose." Dean took Castiel's hand again out of some sort of instinct, one he would blame on being influenced by the height they stood at.
"It was a poor substitute for the Impala, but a substitute nonetheless," Castiel admitted.
"What?" Dean beamed with pride. No one could resist the charms of his baby, not even angels who probably thought all cars were the same. Just modes of transport. This was probably the highest compliment she'd ever gotten, being better than a whole thriving city with bright lights and colourful shadows.
"Uhibbok." Castiel had said it so quietly and so properly that Dean almost missed it, and when he caught it he had almost forgotten what it meant or was supposed to sound like. He meant to say something, but the two of them had already left the skyscraper for some place else.
Giverny was more stunning in person, and they had arrived some time during the early morning. The angel must have been bending time again to show off his exploits at their most enjoyable hour, but who was Dean to complain? No paradoxes, no problem. "A great painter captured this," Castiel said, arm sweeping out to alert Dean to the garden before them. Their feet clattered on the bridge as they moved to get a better look at the pond and the weeping willow trees, and Dean lit up when Castiel offered him a cluster of lilacs.
"You're not really giving me flowers, are you?" Dean snickered. Castiel shook his head and gently applied them to the space beneath Dean's nose, letting him smell the aroma of the flower that held a hint of vanilla in it. "S'good," Dean breathed out and watched as Castiel sewed the flowers back from where he plucked them with his grace.
"I stood here once in this exact spot and I knew you would enjoy it, despite what your proclivities would have me believe," Cas told him, reaching out for the railing of the bridge. Dean couldn't deny him that and stood beside him, watching a kid skip a stone on the surface of the water, disturbing it and causing round ripples to echo through the lily pads. "Je t'aime."
Again, Dean could not get a word in before they settled themselves in the middle of nowhere. It was dark and only the luminescence of the night sky with the moon showed on their skin and the path before them. From a great distance away a waterfall roared, but was muffled by the lack of proximity. "Iceland?" Dean asked in a hushed tone as Castiel started walking ahead of him. Fearing that they would lose each other in the blanket of darkness, he followed after the sound of a rustling trenchcoat and grabbed onto Castiel's elbow.
"I took you to a warmer time," Castiel informed him. The area didn't seem as cold as one would believe a country with a name like Iceland could be, though Dean was still quivering and missing his jacket. "It's still early in the year, in the future, and you will exist in two places at once on this day."
"Pretty sci-fi of you," Dean uttered into the arm of the trenchcoat.
"Not fiction. It's very real." Castiel brought them up to the top of a hill damp with dew and snow, and ushered Dean into sitting beside him. It wasn't too difficult to see yards away, Dean realised when his eyes began adjusting to the dark, but the ground was hardly where he needed to be looking. The two of them pointed their heads skyward and watched large tendrils of green blossom into wide screens of of light, clear stars visible through the surges of wispy glow. In gradual arcs they spread and danced across the sky, and until they came to pass overhead and snake farther around the sky.
Dean was in awe at the brilliance slowly forming around them, and couldn't help but break away to look over at Castiel, the northern lights reflected in his eyes. Minutes passed as the light drifted and encompassed the sky, the brightness in varying degrees no matter where they looked. The same shade of the sky was in Dean's eyes, Castiel noticed, the fact making a rare smile break across his lips.
"Thanks, Cas." He never would have seen this otherwise, never in a million years, even if he wasn't afraid of planes and had the money. The thought never crossed his mind, but now there was little else in there.
"As the locals say, ég elska þig," Castiel responded. Not bothering to try this time, Dean relaxed and accepted it as what had come to pass, a thing out of his hands, and if he was bilingual or maybe smarter, he could have tried to reply. Still, it was pleasing to hear it said properly, and Dean almost was tempted to ask Castiel to say more things to him in Icelandic, any language even, even if they were just jumbles of words to him. Only when Dean closed his eyes and tried to envision the lights behind his eyelids did Castiel transport them elsewhere, to warmer climates. They followed the course of his whole journey together, seeing snow peaked mountains, taking rides along passageways made of water, and appreciating fine art.
Flying stole them away to see tapestries richer than money could buy, and at some point Dean accidentally stepped and ripped one that had skirted the floor. Flying had them laughing at the exhilaration of abruptly stopping in a sea of Chinese merchants, the confusion on their faces and the garbled words shouting after them as they took foreign treats and disappeared without a trace more than worth the food. Though they could go any time, any place, they stayed within months of the relative present, and snuck into concerts of world music with bizarre instruments but catchy beats.
Castiel knew every language under the sun, every real language that had been formed since the Tower of Babel and thereafter, dead or alive. In every language he would speak just three words, the ones that meant the same no matter how many times you translated it, the meaning intact in the tone of the angel's words. It was never tiring to hear it spoken in such a gruff tone, always best when the sun hit them just right and soaked their skin and clothes with warmth, inside and out, but even better when accompanied by a smile or a touch.
There was only one place left for Castiel to take them to, and he was more than prepared to speak his mind another time. "Qam-"
"No," Dean said. "Cas, it's cool and all that you know how to say it in a handful of languages, but I will not have you talkin' geek to me. Really, I'm good." Castiel nodded and swiped his fingers over Dean's forehead, taking them back to the correct time and place, the upstairs bedroom of Bobby's house, and watched Dean fondly as the hunter collapsed upon the bed. "Don't even tell me where you learned Klingon. If it wasn't from watching the show, I don't want to hear it."
"Alright," Castiel said softly, taking his place on the bed. Dean rolled closer to the dip in the bed made by his friend, his mind suddenly distracted by the definition of friend. "Y'know, if you want to know anything from Star Trek, the most important word is t'hy'la."
"What is t'hy'la?" Castiel asked. His head cocked to the side, genuinely interested upon hearing the words "most important".
"It's what we are," Dean answered, and fisted his hand around the bottom of the trenchcoat. He couldn't see himself making the first move, not in this situation, so he grew complacent with his head buried in the folds. Castiel grunted his approval, his thirst for knowledge creating a niggling desire in the back of his head to later look up the proper definition of such a word, and stroked a thumb across Dean's temple. "I don't get it," Dean mumbled.
"What?"
"Why you never just said it in English. All these languages, all these postcards, all these weeks away, and you couldn't just tell me. Not like I was gonna be mad at you," Dean said. He rolled out from the shelter of the coat and let his eyes wander around the room, unable to focus on much for longer than the briefest of moments.
"Your brother was right, absence does the make the heart grow fonder," Castiel admitted, though not to the fact that he listened in to conversations about him. "I had to be sure. There is a word in Portuguese, it is 'saudade'. There is no English translation for it, but it means something akin to longing when one was apart. I wanted to experience saudade, to know if you were worth feeling the detachment and sorrow and nostalgia that humans undergo."
Dean sat up and smirked. "You mean to tell me that when all this time you sounded like you were out finding yourself, or whatever, you were just coming to terms with human feelings?" He began whooping with laughter, holding his stomach at the sheer inaneness of this completely chick-flick moment, eye crinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. "Seriously, Cas?"
"The world does not revolve around you Dean. I did go for other reasons, but you were the reason I wrote, and the reason I returned. And if it's any consolation," Castiel paused. "I do love you."
In the pit of his heart, Dean felt like this was the moment where he should be scared, where he should tuck and roll out of harm's way. In the past, he would have run. Dean was tired of running. To hell with not taking the initiative, he thought, when he took ahold of Castiel's lapels and kissed him hard on the mouth. The angel worked their lips together clumsily, finding it difficult to concentrate when all he wanted was to smile. Instead of following through with a proper first kiss, they just quietly laughed into each other's mouths, glad that things, well, went a whole lot better than expected. The Apocalypse was averted, Castiel was alive and back, and Dean? Dean was just happy.
"So," Castiel began, unsure of how to broach the question. "Does this mean you love me as well?"
"Take me back to a warm night in Iceland, and I'll show you how much I love you," Dean said between nips at the angel's jaw. They vanished before Sam and Bobby returned from their trip to the library, and frankly, no one questioned Dean's absence. Somewhere, sometime, they were miles away, and the aurora borealis had nothing on them.
(AN: the Portuguese is meant to mean "I miss you")