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In a blast of white light, Cas kills Sam and Bobby.
It happens so quickly Dean can only instinctively shut his eyes, shielding himself from the hot burst of energy. When it's over, and he can no longer feel white-hot grace licking at his skin, he squints through his eyelashes, feeling his last tendrils of fight slip away at what he sees.
Dean watches as his brother's body topples to the ground next to Bobby's equally unmoving corpse, the pair of them lying silent and unseeing.
Dean can't move. He can't even breathe – his lungs fill with air until they are just about to burst, and even then he doesn't gasp, he just accepts the oxygen as quietly as he can. It's as if his body has finally given up after a lifetime of desperately struggling to stay alive. He can't look into the empty eyes of his brother again, and then lift his own to meet Cas' equally vacant stare. Instead he remains rooted to the spot, every muscle frozen in horror and grief and why me?
He thinks about Alastair's knife cutting into his flesh and realizes he'd rather be in Hell than in this moment, watching as Cas impersonally kills nearly everyone he loves. He'd even torture again, smoothly bury his pain by carving it into somebody else's skin.
The blood would run in streams down indistinguishable flesh and everything would be okay.
"Dean," Cas says coldly, trying to get the hunter's attention. He breaks Dean out of his trance, the images of shadows and hellfire slipping from his mind, but Dean refuses to look at him. Normally, ignoring Cas causes him to fly away in a huff, but Dean isn't sure that this is even Cas anymore.
"Look at me," the god commands, a disgustingly thick aura of calm surrounding him that makes Dean want to retch, vomit all of his insides onto the grimy concrete until there is nothing left of him but skin.
Instead, the ex-angel barely flicks his wrist and Dean is forced to look away from the tiny fleck of blood he is staring at - does it belong to Cas? Sam? One of Crowley's unfortunate victims? - and into the unnaturally bright eyes of the creature that meant as much to him as family.
"Don't you want to know why I didn't kill you?"
Dean tries to shake his head, but the muscles in his neck don't want to cooperate. He wishes he could disappear, leave this room and its stench of blood and monster shit. But even if he could simply vanish, he can't leave Sam and Bobby. He can't leave Sam to rot in this horrible place.
He can't do anything, so he stands there, his eyes desperately trying to resist the unnatural pull they have to Cas'. The god looms over him, his mouth a straight line as he scans Dean's face, uncaring and methodical.
"Don't you want to know? You must be curious," the god asks. Cas' gravelly voice echoes across the room, the sound ringing in Dean's ears, painfully reminding him of a nerdy angel in a trench coat, one that tilted his head in curiosity as he studied the hunter, wondering aloud why Dean didn't think he deserved to be saved.
To twist the knife in deeper, this Cas tilts his head in a similar fashion, a flicker of confusion passing across his face, and Dean can tell that the god has just glimpsed the memory from inside Dean's mind.
I wish you had never saved me, he thinks.
To Dean's surprise, Cas jerks away as though the hunter had just slapped him in the face, his expression twisting into something angry. "Do you want to know or not?" the god snaps, a hidden command in his words.
If the myriad of emotions flickering across Cas' face is anything to go by, the angel is still stuck inside there somewhere, trapped beneath hordes of twisted souls, utterly corrupted by their evil. But he still knows who Dean is. He can still be hurt by the hunter's words, if only a little.
This doesn't make Dean feel any better. In fact, it only serves to make him feel worse, knowing Cas isn't gone completely. Because there is no coming back from this.
Against his will, Dean replies to Cas' command. "No," he chokes out. The word feels like lead on his tongue, heavy and unwelcome.
Silence fills for the room for a couple of seconds, and Dean revels in the quiet while he can.
He glances at the floor, and at Sam, and wants to brush a stray lock of hair from his brother's face. The kid had needed a haircut.
He remembers taking Sam to a barber once when he was little, an old man with a gait and unsteady hands. He gave Sam the worst haircut of his life, and it took Dean two hours and an exorbitantly expensive sundae to calm him down.
Sam had only ever asked Dean to cut his hair after that.
Cas' fingers curling around his sleeve jolt him back into reality. The god is closer than before, yanking on the fabric of Dean's jacket in an almost childlike way.
"Why not?" Cas demands. "Tell me. I killed Sam and Bobby, but spared you. You should want to know why."
"It doesn't matter. You've killed them. It's over. Now, either kill me, or leave," Dean replies, deadpan. He silently hopes the god changes his mind and uses his stolen power to blow Dean off the map. A white light and it's over, just like with Sam and Bobby.
Where would he go? With Cas in control of Heaven, and probably Hell and Purgatory, what else is there? What exists beyond pearly gates and hellfire and monsterland? Where is Sam?
"I am not killing you, Dean Winchester," Cas hisses.
Dean looks up. "Then we're done."
He notices the figure behind Cas, but the hunter remains straight-faced and inexpressive. This doesn't surprise him, not really. He remembers, after all:
Oh yes. God will die, too, Dean.
And Dean is painfully reminded about how nothing is ever just chance. From his parents' first meeting to the events unfolding in front of his eyes, everything is carefully constructed by a higher power that Dean doesn't care to know or understand.
Cas' hold on Dean tightens in a threatening gesture, and he shakes the hunter violently, as though he can knock away everything that he hates about the older Winchester. It hurts – Cas' hands sear through Dean's jacket and leave blisters in their wake – but Dean doesn't do anything. He's a statue, cold and unresponsive.
"Why?" Cas repeats angrily. "Why do you always have to be so difficult?" Cas is screaming at him now, his voice so ear-splittingly loud the floor begins to rumble and Dean has to fight the urge to cover his ears.
Dean watches the god, in this body that never truly belonged to him but somehow always belonged to him, and commits to memory all of the things that make Cas who he really is - from his quirky, constantly furrowed eyebrows to his ridiculously chapped lips - and whispers an unintelligible goodbye.
Cas hears it anyway and stops yelling, tilting his head again in that perplexed way that breaks Dean's heart a little. The hunter takes a deep breath, and looks into the god's eyes, which fill with a sudden horrifying realization as he reads Dean's mind.
Death stands behind Cas, sparing an expressionless glance at his surroundings. He gives Dean a short, polite nod, and delicately curls his fingers, pale and freckled with age spots, over the god's shoulder. Cas instantly pales.
For the first time since he has known him, Dean recognizes true fear in Cas' eyes.
Small holes begin to appear all over Cas' vessel, and the room is filled with rays of light as they multiple over the ex-angel's skin. He panics, thrashing frantically. Although it looks as though Death is barely touching him, the grip is vice-like, and Cas is unable to break it.
"Dean," he exclaims, his voice breaking. "Dean, please…"
His fingers scrabble for any bit of Dean that he can reach, and Dean lets him. He looks intently into the bright blue eyes of his former friend, never leaving Cas' gaze as the ex-angel furiously clutches at his clothing, trying to escape Death.
The room is agonizingly bright with grace, souls, and all of what makes Cas truly Cas, as the stuff breaks through his vessel's skin like sunlight, but neither of them looks away, the ex-angel's eyes wide and pleading.
"Please…" he whispers, his hands slacking on Dean's sleeve. Dean reaches out and clasps Cas' hands in his own, readying himself for the scorching pain. He feels nothing but clammy palms, however, so he grips tighter, opening his mouth to speak.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry for whatever I did to you that made you think you needed to do this, Cas. It's my fault. It's always my fault. But it's okay now. It's okay."
"But, but…Dean, it's…" Cas gasps, coughing up grace as he struggles to speak. His eyes are glowing vividly blue, thicker streams of light bursting from his vessel as his true form rapidly shatters it. The room is so unbearably bright; Dean has to fight his eyes from closing. It's so bright that he can't even see Death or Sam or Bobby. He's in the midst of an enormous, dazzlingly white blur.
For an instant, it's just him and Cas, who is sobbing into his shoulder.
"We're okay, Cas. Shh…" he says quietly, soothingly rubbing his fingers over Cas' knuckles. "We're okay."
Cas raises his head weakly, and leans toward Dean, so close he can feel the ex-angel's hair tickling his neck, and whispers something into the hunter's ear. Dean's eyes widen slightly.
In the next second, Cas explodes in an intense blaze of light, and Dean has just enough sense to fall to the ground and cover his eyes before they burst into flames. Nonetheless, he can see the endless white from beneath his eyelids, and it burns.
The floor shakes menacingly, and he hears the concrete crack, over and over again. Dean wonders if he is finally going to be the cause of the end of the world. He's thrown across the floor during a particularly violent tremble, and he lurches back and forth, trying to keep his balance, digging the heel of his palms into his eyes, nails cutting into his forehead to keep his hands from moving. The blast is deafeningly loud and seems to go on for an eternity, and he knows the ringing in his ears will probably never end. But, although it feels to Dean like hellfire, the grace and souls don't flay his skin and he somehow, miraculously, remains whole.
After what feels like forever, silence finally breaks over the room, and possibly the entire earth, and Dean deems it safe to open his eyes. Death is nowhere to be seen, and without Cas' presence permeating the room, it feels large and empty. He's gone.
Jimmy's body, burnt and blackened, is surrounded by immense wings, but they are twisted and broken and made of black ash. They stretch from one side of the room to the other, dark and sinister, but remarkably beautiful. Dean runs a finger through the cinders surrounding him, examining the black smudge they leave on his finger.
I'm an Angel of the Lord.
Dean's face feels wet and he suddenly realizes he's crying.
He does the only thing he can.
He crawls toward Sam's body and smooths his brother's hair. "You were so brave today, Sammy. I'm so proud of you."
Somehow Dean knows that Sam isn't coming back this time. None of them are. Wherever they reside, he hopes that they're alright. That they're happy.
Even Cas.
Dean stays there for a long while, propped against the closest wall, with nothing but the buzz of cicadas outside to keep him company and the knowledge that he's utterly alone. He rests his head against the cool plaster and doesn't sleep, staring at the ceiling like a mannequin with glass eyes.
He hears Cas' words play over and over inside his head, a soundtrack to accompany his all-encompassing misery, and he bites his lip until blood runs down his chin, mixing with his tears, dripping onto the concrete.
I love you.