Title: Wrecked on a Distant Shore
Characters/Pairings: Dean/absent!Castiel, Dean/Jimmy
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When Castiel departs with the other angels, Jimmy is left behind to deal with living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland...and Dean. A story about Dean, Castiel and the words they needed someone else to say. 5.04 AU.
Word Count: 4,612
Notes: Companion piece to 'A World Without'.
Warnings: Drug use, foul language
Castaway - goin' at it alone
Castaway - now I'm on my own
Castaway - goin' at it alone
Castaway - now I'm on my own
Lost and found, trouble bound
Castaway
- Green Day, "Castaway"
-2012-
There is glass in his throat and ears, drawing blood with every gasping, indrawn breath. He wants to spit it out, to speak - it is somehow very important that he hear his own voice. To hear any voice at all, after the heavy, stifling silence he had lain curled under for so long.
But the black sea rises again, laden with dreams; pulls him under and takes him away.
It is the low, steady murmuring that draws him gradually upward once more. At first he believes it merely part of his dream, the eternal whisper of the sea; but there is light in the corner of his eye where there had been only dark and he turns towards it instinctively, a growing thing towards the sun.
His eyes open, and he sees - a stained ceiling, a single bare bulb. It is new, but familiar, somehow. Memory is slower to return and he is content to lie there for the moment, a hollow man waiting to be filled up and made human once more. His body seems too large, too awkward to be moved; he imagines a house echoing with empty rooms, drafts in its attic but the beds are still warm, something was just here and he turns to the side, seeking that lost thing.
He is disappointed; there is no one but himself in the bed.
He hears the voices again, raised; and a longing passes through him like a physical ache to be with those that are speaking, to no longer be alone. "Hello?" he calls and it cracks in the middle, soft and broken. But there are footsteps coming, the curtain that serves as a door is flung back and then a man and a woman are staring at him in disbelief.
"Son of a bitch," the woman says softly, but she is speaking not to him but the man at her side. "He woke up."
The man ignores her, taking a step forward, and for a split second his face is horribly open, all defences flayed away to reveal the raw emotion underneath. Then like a curtain drawn over a window his eyes empty and leaves him cold, the only trace of heat the anger in the tense line of his mouth.
"Castiel, you goddamned ass," he says, infusing his words with a meaning obvious to only him. "I thought I told you to leave. Why the hell did you stay?"
"Dean - " the woman says, but he waves her away. "Give us some time alone," and it's an order, crackling with an authority that the woman accepts with visible reluctance. "He's hurt enough," she calls over her shoulder as she resets the curtain, sealing them away from the rest of the world. "Try not to make things any worse, okay?"
They stare at each other. Dean moves first, drawing up a chair and settling into it without ever once losing the rigidity in his shoulders. "What happened? If those angels were just jerking your chain, I'll -" He cuts himself off, hunching up even more. "Jesus, Cass, quit it with that stare, okay? I know you wanted to be angel'd up again, and I'm - sorry -"
"Dean - I'm not Cass."
Dean's head snaps up, and his eyes widen. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm not Castiel," he repeats. Castiel. The name twists in his head like a key in a lock and suddenly doors that were shut tight are opening, their contents spilling out into a tangled mess that he can barely begin to understand.
He does get this, though. "Remember me? I'm Jimmy Novak."
Everything has changed.
Jimmy stumbles through Camp Chitaqua with Dean's hand clamped firmly on his shoulder, stunned into silence. The sky is fish-belly white and the air touched with the chill of the coming winter, making him shiver and rub at his bare forearms. His legs still feel weak and shaky from his extended stay in bed but he knows better than to ask Dean to slow down. Men and women clad in heavy jackets bulging with firearms bustle around them, nodding with a familiarity that makes Jimmy all the more conscious that he is intruding, a stranger in a strange land.
"Cass! We heard what happened. You okay?" and it takes Jimmy a second to realize he should respond. Everyone knows about angels being dicks but not about Castiel being an angel, and Dean intends to keep it that way. Pretend you're Cass, he'd said in the privacy of Castiel's - or Jimmy supposes, his - cabin. I'll take care of the rest.
Recalling how Dean and Sam had botched up the rescue attempt of his family, Jimmy is not too comforted by this reassurance.
"Yes, I'm fine," he says more than once, and a voice in his brain, some echo of the departed Castiel, keeps up a running commentary of who's who. Melissa. Brian. Jeremy. Risa...
Her slap catches him by surprise, turning his head nearly ninety degrees to the right. "What's your problem, Cass?" she hisses, and he is shocked to see naked contempt in her eyes. "I thought you were better than that. If you try running away again, see if anyone bothers to bring you back next time."
"I..." he falters, and Risa pushes past him without a second glance. In a way, she is right. Castiel did run away, just not the way she thinks, and now Jimmy is beginning to understand the reason behind all the shocked, pitying glances, the pleasantly probing questions.
"They think you tried to off yourself with an overdose," Dean tells him candidly, when they have reached his cabin and locked the door tight. Jimmy stares, aghast, as Dean digs through the chest at the foot of his bunk. Castiel? Drugs? Try as he might, he cannot make the two words fit together. Even when his blind trust in Castiel had faded, his awe at Castiel's undeniable power had not. The angel had been cold and detached, blazing with God's might; it seemed impossible that anything, including Jimmy bleeding out on the floor, could ever bring him low.
Dean hauls out a box and dumps it on the table. He sees the expression on Jimmy's face and smirks, a bitter look that does not belong on the Dean Winchester Jimmy first met an eternity ago. That's what strikes it home, somehow, that he can't ever go back. That out of them all Jimmy is the lucky one, sleeping through the Apocalypse and the fallout afterward while Castiel steers his body and takes the hits. Jimmy stares at the piles of newspaper clippings and feels a cold tentacle of dread curl around his stomach.
"Yeah, Cass - he really got into that whole 'being human' gig at the end," Dean says, as casually as they are doing nothing more than discussing the weather. "If he hadn't taken off when he did you probably would have gotten your body defiled in a whole other way." He leers. "Hey, don't look at me like that. We all thought you were dead."
Jimmy bites his lips, holding back the angry words. Dean is the one with the answers and, most importantly, the guns right now and it won't help to antagonize him. "Well, I was as good as dead," he says. His hand twitches and he squeezes it into a tight fist under the table. "So, just what did Castiel get me hooked on?"
Dean shrugs. "You want a list?"
"God," Jimmy says with feeling. He'd spent his whole life clean and sober and given up his body for an angel and then his daughter only to wake up a goddamned crackhead. And then it's all for nothing, because the end of the world had come and gone while he was busy playing Sleeping Beauty. Somewhere someone must be laughing their head off. "Why didn't you stop him?"
Dean snorts. "Well, wasn't like he was the only one drowning himself in sex and drugs. No one could blame him. Least of all you," and his voice has gone hard, challenging Jimmy to disagree.
"Not that. Why didn't you stop him from flying off with his angel buddies?" Jimmy demands. "Remember? He made me swear I understood that he wasn't going to leave this body until it was all over! It could be a hundred, a thousand years, and turns out he can't even handle the first ten!"
"Don't talk about Cass that way," Dean says, low and threatening, and he's not a tall man but he's taller than Jimmy and hardened with years of hunting. "You have no idea what we went through. You have no right - "
"Bullshit." Jimmy stands up, defiant, and something in his face makes Dean shut up and listen. "Maybe you don't see it that way but I played my part to stop the Apocalypse and protect my family. And then your precious Cass messed it up. Where's my wife and kid, huh? You think that doesn't give me the right to be pissed, just a little?"
Dean leans against the table, eyes turned down. There's a hint of that open, flayed look on his face again as he says to the floor, "I told Cass to go."
"What?" Jimmy feels his mouth fall open. "Why?"
"You think you're the only one who's lost something?" Dean asks, one corner of his lip curling. "We all have, including Cass. I just thought he'd lost enough, that's all. He had a one-in-a-lifetime chance to be with his family, and I'll be damned if I screw that one up. Again."
Slow, awful realization blooms in Jimmy's gut, triggered by the raw grief in Dean's voice at the word family. "I'm sorry," he says, meaning it, and Dean grunts, still refusing to look at him. "Read those," he says gruffly, motioning at his collection of clippings. "You're going to be Cass from now on, and it's time you know the part. People are gonna find it strange if you don't even know what a Crote is."
Jimmy nods. His fingers twitch again and this time Dean notices. "You want me to get you something from Cass' stash?"
"What? No." Jimmy recoils and shoves his traitorous hands into his pockets.
Dean stares at him. "I don't think you quite understand," he says slowly, as though talking to an idiot. "This is a war zone, not your personal fucking rehab center. Withdrawal isn't short, nor is it fun. With all the crap Cass was taking, you'll keel over long before the Devil can get to you."
"But - " Jimmy can't get the words out past the horror welling up in his throat. Nausea fills his belly and he can't tell if it's his disgust or the withdrawal that is at work. Dean can read his expression all too easily. "I need you conscious and at least halfway functional, Jimmy," he says, some sympathy finally finding its way into his voice. "Just until this thing blows over, all right?"
"You have a plan?" Jimmy looks at him, pleading.
Dean nods. "You bet I do."
Oddly enough, he doesn't look very happy about it, but he escapes out the door before Jimmy can ask why, leaving him alone with the smell of musty newspaper and the endless litany of death, all neatly packed into one large cardboard box.
What follows is the worst week of Jimmy's life.
The craving makes itself known soon enough. Jimmy tries to fight it at first, but after the seizures and cold shakes there comes the deepest depression, almost as though he is lost in the black sea again, waters closing over his head without the benefit of being unconscious. He doesn't protest when Dean ends up practically forcing the pills down his throat and making him swallow.
Being high as a kite doesn't take away the shame afterwards, though. Jimmy curls up on his bed, knees tucked under his chin and is almost selfishly glad that Amelia and Claire aren't around to see him now. He still nurses a faint, probably deluded hope that they are alive somewhere out there, and Dean humors him by telling him that there're other camps out there that the military keeps safe from the Crotes. Jimmy appreciates it. It's the small bits of kindnesses that count and if Castiel is as close to anyone else as he is to Dean that memory has been taken away from Jimmy together with the angel.
By unspoken consensus, whether out of tact or deference to Dean, nobody else other than Risa mentions Jimmy's supposed suicide attempt to his face. More likely it isn't the first time someone had tried to take the easy way out. Jimmy watches the food patrol depart for the day and feels a stab of guilt as surely as someone had stuck a knife into his gut. Castiel had used his hands to shoot Crotes and keep the camp safe and running. Even when he'd lost his powers he'd done the best he could as a human. While Jimmy...Jimmy is a civilian among soldiers and he's useless and it's all too obvious the day Dean teaches him how to shoot and Jimmy ends up missing his first shot by miles.
"Wonderful," Dean says wearily, eyeing the menacing and completely unharmed Crote target they'd put up. "I wonder how we're going to explain this to the men."
Jimmy cringes, still shaking from the crack of the gun going off in his ear. "I'm not Castiel," he says miserably. His mouth is as dry as dust and his feet are regrettably planted firmly on earth; Dean had insisted. "I'll never be as good as he was."
And he doesn't think he can ever forget that look on Dean's face, one that wars between sadness and disappointment and eventually settles on the latter, or Dean's answer: "Believe me, I know."
Let me in, Castiel had said once, a long time ago. And because Jimmy was ordinary, because he wanted to be special, he'd said yes.
Jimmy thinks that if he had the chance he'd say yes again. Anything to take away the abrupt, punched feeling in his chest; the emotion in Dean's eyes when he sees Jimmy and finds him lacking.
"Okay, let's try again." Dean blows out a sigh and gets behind Jimmy, showing him where to put his hands for a better grip on the gun. His breath is warm on the back of Jimmy's neck and suddenly something skips in Jimmy's head, some leftover memory unlocked and unfolding itself in starts and fits - sitting back to back in some unknown dripping dark cave, it's not the weight of wings but Dean he feels but somehow that is even better -
He jerks away from Dean hastily but some specter of Castiel lingers, touching Jimmy with wonder and sadness and fierce, aching devotion. This is what goes through whatever passes for Castiel's head every time he thinks about Dean and it takes Jimmy's breath away with the its intensity. He stands between the two of them, the third man that makes the crowd, and has to struggle with a second's unwanted, unexpected jealousy.
"You can't be scared of guns forever," Dean is saying, not bothering to hide his exasperation. "Cass was one of our best shots, and Yeager is already asking whether you got swapped with a little girl when we weren't looking."
Jimmy turns away to hide the flush crawling up the sides of his neck. "Well, I'm sorry that I never took up shooting to prepare for the zombie breakout no one told me was coming. You'll have to come up with some other story, Dean. I can't do this."
"Yes, you can," Dean snarls and the surety in his voice should reassure but instead discomfits for some reason Jimmy can't quite understand.
They spend the rest of the afternoon gunning down targets until Dean is called away for some emergency and Jimmy's arms shake with exertion, but still the taste of yearning remains, cold and bitter, in the back of his mouth.
"You've been spending a lot of time with our fearless leader lately," Brian observes, sitting next to Jimmy one day at lunch and and stealing a nameless bit of gristle from his plate. Even if the drugs don't dull his appetite Jimmy wouldn't have minded the loss much.
He misses hamburgers.
"Yeah. So what?" Jimmy asks defensively. He has gotten to know the other people in the camp over the past month, but he hasn't gotten used to the easy familiarity with which they approach him. He'd slept through most of the adversity that had bound these people together and can never shake off that nagging feeling of intrusion that had plagued him from the first day.
Brian holds up his hands. "Hey! Nothing. Just that you guys kind of avoided each other before. I guess something good came out of your, uh, illness, you know? There's always a silver lining, that's how the saying goes, right."
Jimmy pauses in mid-chew. "Wait, what?"
Brian gives him an awkward smile and an even more awkward pat on the arm. "End of the world, this isn't the time to judge, you know? I'm happy for you guys, really I am."
So he's not the only one who had noticed. Jimmy doesn't bother correcting Brian, just pushes his meal away, sickened. "Excuse me," he announces, standing up. "I need to talk to Dean."
Brian raises his brows as he claims Jimmy's leftovers for himself. "Uh, go ahead. 'S not like you need my permission."
Jimmy doesn't stop until he reaches Dean's cabin and bangs hard on the door. I shouldn't be doing this, he thinks, but the pants-shitting terror he normally would feel is buried somewhere under the sudden wave of anger and pity that had swamped him at Brian's observation. This feels like...something he needs to do, almost a compulsion to finish this thing that's been left incomplete.
Fiive minutes pass before it opens and Dean pokes his head out, looking vaguely irritated and then definitely irritated when he sees who it is. "Look, I'm in the middle of something here - "
"Just a few minutes," Jimmy says. "That's all I need."
Dean studies him for a moment and then reluctantly allows him to pass. Jimmy steps in, looking at the maps stuck up on the walls covered in pins and red ink. "What's this?"
"My plan to get rid of Satan," Dean says shortly. He leans back and folds his arms. "So what's this important thing that can't wait? Don't tell me - you finally learned how to fire a gun without being knocked onto your ass by the recoil. Am I right?"
"Is this the way you talked to him?" Jimmy asks.
Dean blinked at the abrupt change in subject. "Who?"
"Cass." Jimmy gets close and narrows his eyes in an approximation of Castiel's unwavering stare. He knows it's working when Dean stiffens, just a little. "Why did you let him go?"
"We already had this conversation before," Dean snaps. "I wanted the best for him. End of story."
"How do you know what's the best for him?" Jimmy snaps right back. "Who gave you the right to decide?"
"And you think you do know?" Dean asks, forcing a smirk onto his face as though his hand isn't clenched tightly around the edge of the table, knuckles shining white under the skin. "How could you possibly know anything about Cass?"
"You don't live in someone else's head for five years without picking up a few things," Jimmy says. "He loved you, Dean. That poor bastard. All he wanted from you was to say 'stay' and he would have been so happy to stay - "
"He made a mistake," Dean says harshly, his mask cracking. "I'm not worth staying on this fucking dying planet. Cass had a ticket offworld to Heaven 2.0, what kind of person would I be if I - "
"Someone he thought he needed, maybe?" Jimmy interrupts.
Dean lets out a low, animal sound, and this really is a shitty thing to do but Jimmy's mouth just keeps on running, as though the ghost of Castiel is haunting his vocal cords and is taking this chance to get things off his chest. It's the end of the world, he wouldn't be surprised. 'You did have an actual method to off Lucifer, didn't you? So you hadn't given up on this world yet, you still had a way to win. But you made Cass give up even before the end of the race, you - "
"Shut up," Dean says, and he suits words to actions by shoving Jimmy against the wall and sticking his tongue into his mouth. Jimmy tenses, too shocked to respond to a kiss that isn't even meant for him. Not that the lack of reaction stops Dean. He kisses Jimmy like he's water in the desert, like something irredeemably precious lost and found again. When his hand slides down to the middle of Jimmy's back and Jimmy finds himself leaning into the touch, it finally galvanizes him into acting before they do something they both regret. He puts both hands against Dean's chest and shoves, hard.
Dean stumbles away, gasping and wild-eyed. Jimmy isn't too cool-headed himself, awash in stolen memories of Dean, standing or sitting close, the touch of skin on skin; a study in longing across the years compressed into a few seconds and dropped right onto him with an effect that is the exact opposite of a cold shower. He drags a hand across his mouth, trembling, and they resolutely do not look at each other.
"So," Dean says at last, sounding tired. "You got me to confess my feelings for my very own guardian angel. Congratulations. I can feel the girl parts growing already. Any more earth-shattering revelations to share?"
Jimmy bites back his first retort; this is just Dean's way of coping and they both know it. He shakes his head. "I'm sorry," he offers.
"Just go," Dean says, bowing his head.
Jimmy is at the threshold when Dean's voice comes again, stopping him. "So, what does this change? He's not going to come back. What you told me...it's worthless."
"It's the truth, Dean. That's always worth something," Jimmy says softly and shuts the door, leaving Dean to his private grief.
-2014-
"Cass!"
Jimmy almost spits out the joint when Dean comes charging in without any warning. "What's wrong?" he coughs, swatting away the wasted lungful of smoke. When no reply is forthcoming, he looks up, blinking in surprise at the shellshocked look on Dean's face. "Uh - something on my face?"
"Are you stoned?" Dean blurts out.
"Just finishing what Cass started," Jimmy shrugs, snubbing the joint out on the floor. "Well - how goes the treasure hunt?"
Dean's eyes focus on his with glaring intensity, and Jimmy rubs self-consciously at the stubble on his chin. "Jimmy," Dean pronounces as though it means anything more than it should. "You're Jimmy. Where the hell is Cass?"
"Um," Jimmy says, because while Dean has been known to go on a bender now and then he can't recall an occasion when Dean ever managed to successfully forget that he's been left behind by the love of his life. "Gone off with his family to see the universe, like a good little angel. You told me yourself. Remember?"
"Cass did that?" Dean looks as shocked and betrayed as though he's hearing this for the first time, and a niggling suspicion starts worming through the haze in Jimmy's mind. "Why would he do something like that?"
Jimmy squints and yes, he can see it, an openness of expression that is much more natural on this Dean. For one thing, he doesn't try so hard to hide his concern over Castiel. "Why don't you ask your other self?" Jimmy asks.
"Guy has his lips sealed tight." Dean hesitates only a moment before sitting down beside Jimmy on the mat. "Uh - not that I'm unhappy you got your body back - "
"No, it's fine." Jimmy assures him. He eyes Dean speculatively, tapping one finger restlessly against the wooden planks. "Where - or when - are you from, then?"
"2009," Dean admits. "An angel brought me here, so I was hoping Cass could zap me back, but no dice, huh?"
"No," Jimmy agrees. "Cass cleared everything thoroughly before he took off. No convenient angel powers left around in here. I'm as human as you are."
"Awesome." Dean tipped his head back and groaned. "I come forward and find myself a dick, Cass ditched, and you...no offense, but you seem really, uh different."
Jimmy bursts out laughing. It's not that funny, but he can't help it; the perplexed look on Dean is too amusing. He sobers up, wiping at his eyes. "We've all changed, Dean. By the time Cass left in 2012 you probably wouldn't have recognized him either. Apocalypse, you know. It leaves no stone unturned."
Dean is silent, as stunned as Jimmy was when he'd first woken up more than two years ago and been dropped right into the steaming pile of crap that was the Apocalypse. He's different, though, a traveler from the past, and where he comes from the world in which they stand is nothing more than a possibility. Jimmy feels a sudden, fierce flicker of hope come to life in his chest. "Do you have a way back?"
"Well - Zachariah promised me a return ticket, but you can't trust angels as far as you can throw 'em." Dean frowns. "He'd come back in three days, he said - one is already gone."
"Good." Jimmy sits back. "Dean - your future self - he wants to kill the Devil, I'm all for that, but this world is screwed to hell and it'll take forever to fix even if his plan works. Prevention being better than cure, here's your weekend assignment: get back, change the past, change the future. Simple."
"Right," Dean says dryly. "You seem surprisingly fine with being phased out of existence, though."
Jimmy smirks. "Dean, I was willing to give up my life to save my daughter. She's most likely dead in this world. I may have changed, but not that much."
In the silence that follows, Jimmy remembers a conversation, closed in 2012 and never revisited for fear of waking old ghosts. Yet there's a specter from the past right in front of him, and it's now or never. He might be sealing his fate to remain as a vessel forever, but having been unwittingly tangled up in the threads of Dean's and Castiel's stories and gained some insight into their heads, he thinks that he wants to help. It's all so messed up and pitiful that it would practically be immoral to just sit back.
"So, how is Castiel doing in good old '09?" he asks lightly. "You don't happen to have a picture, by any chance? I always wondered what I looked like with essence of angel inside."
Dean digs out an obviously fake ID with Castiel's bemused mug on it. Jimmy gazes at his own face, deeply entertained at the thought of himself as an FBI agent. "So, you and Cass work cases together now? That's sweet."
Dean blinks. "Not really. Cass, he's searching for God. I just helped him out as a favor, that's all. It's not much after everything he's done for me."
Jimmy hands back the card and grins. "Oh, really? You know what they say about the benefit of hindsight."
-end-
Ending Notes: My God this turned out far longer than I thought it would, both in terms of length and time taken. I just wanted to tell Dean's side of the story from A World Without but ended up going on and on and finishing up with a happy ending. Besides, this is about Jimmy as much as Dean and Cass and I wanted to do his 2014 version justice. Also my first non-crack, sort-of-serious slash. Hope you enjoyed =)