Castiel had spent a lot of time thinking over these past months. He thought about the decline of Heaven, the struggle of the last handful of angels, and the fact that he had survived every tragedy that had befallen his brethren. He thought about every apocalypse he had survived with Sam and Dean, every death that he had returned from, and even his long, intense conversation with an image of himself in The Empty. He thought about Sam, struggling to cope without his brother, to hold together this loose collection of their allies in an attempt to find Michael and chase him out of Dean. He thought about Jack, slowly regaining his grace as he learned to fight without it, learning as much about physical combat from his father and uncle as he could. He thought about the problems Michael had caused and their inability to find him, the three remaining members of Team Free Will 2.0 trying not to give up hope of retrieving the fourth member of their family.
Cas tried not to think about himself, about his own feelings and that deep, empty void in his grace where his bond with Dean used to live. He couldn't feel him anymore, not since the instant that Michael had taken over, and sometimes he just wanted to curl into a ball and cry. Angels didn't cry, and he knew if he let himself start that he would never be able to stop. Sam saw what he was going through, of course, and he tried to help, but what could he really say? The younger Winchester still partially blamed himself for losing Dean, and Jack shouldered even more of that destructive self-blame. Mary tried to remind all of them that at least Lucifer was finally dead, and Dean could be saved. They would save him. Cas clung to that, because he didn't have anything left.
And, at times like this, he dreamed of being able to greet his hunter again. He already knew what he would say if he looked at Dean and only saw his soul shining there, if Michael was well and truly gone. Angel blade clenched tightly in one hand, the other held before him in a familiar defensive stance, Cas thought back to the first time he said it.
Dean had only known him for a short while. There wasn't much humanity to Cas back then, just that battle-hardened warrior of God who had spent a decade fighting through Hell to grab one twisted, broken soul before rebuilding it and returning it to Earth. He had seen Dean as a tool, a weapon in the war to stop the Apocalypse, and his superiors had ordered him to teach the hunter that his destiny was unavoidable. Cas had been given permission to send the man back in time, so he appeared next to his bed and watched Dean sleep for a few minutes.
It had been years since Cas invaded Dean's dreams without asking, but back then he hadn't cared about permission. He watched Dean's dreams of Hell, listened to the screams of tortured souls, and something inside him cringed away from that pain. He watched as the hunter woke, green eyes wide as he met the angel's cold gaze. "Hello, Dean. What were you dreaming about?" His voice was hard, emotionless, as he had trained it to be. Back then, whatever affection he felt for the tall human was buried deep under eleven billion years of Heaven's violent conditioning.
"What, do you get your freak on by watching other people sleep? What do you want?"
Cas replied earnestly, passing on the words that his superiors had given him to say. "Listen to me. You have to stop it."
Dean gave the angel his patented "what the Hell?" face. "Stop what?" Cas reached out and placed two fingers on Dean's forehead, throwing him thirty-five years into the past.
The second time Cas said it, he had tried to rebel, struggled with emotions and whatever Anna was trying to awaken in him, but he had been punished severely for his transgressions. Back then, he never remembered the reprogramming, but he had been torn violently from his vessel, other angels burning the edges of his grace as they delivered him to Heaven. He could still feel the burn of that punishment, and some of what Michael had done to him after, so he stared at Dean, determined to obey Heaven at all costs. He didn't think he would survive another round of punishment.
Cas reached out with his power, easily locating Dean and pulling him to a white-walled waiting room, statues and paintings of angels covering the walls, golden accents everywhere. Dean looked around in shock, not having expected to be grabbed, but he almost seemed to relax when his eyes found Cas. "Hello, Dean. It's almost time."
The third time he said it, Cas had broken free of Heaven's control, choosing to stand with the boys against the Apocalypse. He had actually already died once in service to that cause, but something brought him back and returned him to Dean's side. He hadn't known then, but when he stood beside Chuck in an effort to protect him from Raphael, his own Father had watched his bravery with pride. Chuck brought him back, putting Sam and Dean on an airplane and curing Sam's demon blood addiction, which apparently was more than he had interfered in millennia.
But now Castiel was a fallen angel, cut off from much of his power with grace that would slowly fade the longer he was gone. Back then, he had just been a common angel, a far cry from the powerful seraph Chuck had reformed him into after Lucifer killed him. Thankfully, for most of that year, he still had the ability to teleport, and he had learned to enjoy the look on Dean's face when he appeared out of nowhere.
Dean had been cleaning blood from his jacket in the motel sink, completely focused on his task as the angel silently appeared behind him. The hunter looked up and caught a glimpse of Castiel in the mirror, jumping slightly in shock. The angel stood there, silent, and watched the human react, still in the phase where he was trying to understand humanity.
"God," Dean growled, slamming his hand on the sink. "Don't do that."
"Hello, Dean," the angel greeted, not entirely sure what he was being told to stop doing.
Dean turned around, his face inches from the angel as he glanced down once before meeting his eyes, looking away again as he realized how close they were standing. "Cas, we've talked about this. Personal space?" He wouldn't meet Cas's eyes, waiting patiently for the angel to move back and leave his imaginary bubble of space that belonged only to him. Cas still had trouble with the concept, especially since Dean had invaded his own "personal space" so many times over the last decade that the words had lost their meaning. Back then, Dean had certainly been visibly uncomfortable when Cas stood too close or stared too long, but somehow that had all just vanished. If Cas had to pin down the moment when personal space no longer seemed to matter to the hunter, it was probably after their time in Purgatory.
The fourth time he said it, things had been much more uncomfortable between the two. Cas had pulled Sam out of The Cage with his newly amped-up seraph power, but he left something behind. Sam didn't have a soul, not that Cas had known back then, but he did know that Sam was broken because of him. So, he avoided Dean at all costs. It wasn't hard, of course, since he was in the middle of a civil war and desperately trying to track down a number of stolen weapons that would help him win this impossible struggle against the last archangel in Heaven. So, when Dean called him about a possible weapon active on Earth, he had to leave his troops and answer.
Dean was staring at a picture of Gabriel's Horn on his laptop, one of the many weapons that had been named after an angel who had never seen it or cared about its use. He drained a glass of whiskey and stared at the picture, his voice gravelly as he began to pray. "Castiel? Hello? Possible loose nuke down here, angelic weapon. Kinda your department." He closed the laptop and dropped it on the bed. "You hear that, Cas?" As he stood and walked around the bed, he found himself face-to-face with the seraph, who was looking a little worse for the wear after a yearlong war in Heaven that he was currently losing.
"Hello, Dean." He said it faster than usual, some of his urgency spurned by the voices of his generals on angel radio, giving him a play-by-play of their current battle. He hadn't wanted to leave them, but a weapon was important.
Dean was not pleased. "Are you kidding me? I have been on red alert about Sam, and you come for some stupid horn?!"
Cas hated when Dean yelled at him. He knew that it was because he did so many things wrong, because he messed up time and again, but he had been at war that year. He had been on year two of a war, one that lasted much longer in Heaven than it did on Earth. Cas tried to stay calm, to explain himself, not wanting to see such anger in those green eyes he had come to care about so deeply. "You asked me to be here, and I came. I—"
Dean didn't let him finish, already good and angry and ready to take it out on someone. "I've been asking you to be here for days, you dick!"
Cas felt something go cold inside him. Dicks with wings. That's what Dean thought of angels, of him. How could he have ever assumed that he was different, that he maybe had earned some small amount of affection from the hunter? Of course he hadn't; he was just an angel, a monster, and Dean Winchester hated monsters. He held the hunter's eyes for a moment, but the darkness there was too much for him to handle, so he averted his gaze, abashed. "I didn't come about Sam because I have nothing to offer about Sam." The explanation had not pleased the hunter.
The fifth time he said it, Cas had tried to change the course of fate in a desperate attempt to gain enough power to win the war. His alliance with Crowley had still been a secret at the time, but the demon was not having any luck finding the entrance to Purgatory, and Cas had been forced to try something else. He had enlisted Balthazar's aid and unsunk the Titanic, laying claim to the souls that otherwise would have died. It was an ambitious plan, but Fate had other ideas.
When she set her sights on Dean and Sam, Cas had yanked them halfway across the world to a dark forest in Russia. They were startled by the teleport, but Dean caught his eye at once, a shock of relief passing through the hunter. "Cas!"
"Hello, Dean. Sam." He had almost been too late, and a part of him worried that he had made a terrible mistake trying to change the past. If he won the war, but lost Dean and Sam, nothing he had done, nothing he planned to do, would be worth it.
"Hey, thanks man," Sam managed, his voice still a bit shaky. It was understandable; he had been mere seconds from death. "Where are we?"
"White Russia," the angel replied, looking around, making sure that no one had followed his teleport. It seemed that Atropos had not noticed his interference yet.
"What?!" Cas had no idea why Sam was surprised. He had teleported the boys many place before that, usually to protect them, and he had just saved their lives.
Dean moved from surprise and relief to anger much more quickly than his younger brother did. "Are you aware of what your frat bro did?" Well, of course he knew. Balthazar had done it under Cas's orders. His only concern at that point was to deflect the blame from himself to his fellow angel and find a way to stop Atropos from killing the souls that he needed to fight Raphael and stop the next apocalypse.
The sixth time he said it, Cas had been struggling to hide his extracurricular activities from the boys, but working with Crowley had become a problem. The demon was not as discrete as he needed to be, and word got out that he was alive. Cas had to pretend to hunt him down, even though he was working with him to find the location of Purgatory. He hadn't know it at the time, but the boys and Bobby already suspected that he was lying. Looking back, he truly wished that he had listened to Dean, trusted him, and not opened Purgatory.
Castiel appeared in the passenger seat of Dean's car with his usual fluttering of wings. He could have appeared in perfect silence, as he did when he was watching the boys invisibly, but he had learned long before that Dean wanted an audible warning when he teleported. "Hello, Dean. Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm . . . I'm fine. How are you?" At the time, Cas thought that Dean sounded tired, but he couldn't hear the strain in his voice, the despair. The hunter had argued with Sam and Bobby when they suspected Cas, had defended the angel to his family, but he had been wrong.
The seventh time was very soon after that, the night after his terrible secret was revealed. His deal with Crowley was breaking down, but Cas was still determined to destroy Raphael and save the boys from becoming pawns in a second apocalypse. Bobby had angel-proofed the house, but not well, and the seraph had been able to slip in through a crack. He appeared beside the old couch Dean had fallen asleep on, watching as the hunter wiped his eyes and sat up.
"Hello, Dean." He said it too fast, he knew. He was worried about how the hunter would react to his presence, especially after their argument not long before.
"How'd you get in here?" Dean's voice was just a little sharper than usual, faintly accusatory.
"The angel-proofing Bobby put up on the house, he got a few things wrong."
"Well, it's too bad we got to angel-proof in the first place, isn't it?" Dean pushed himself to his feet, determined to look the seraph in the eye. "Why are you here?"
"I want you to understand."
"Oh, believe me, I get it," Dean replied harshly, the venom in his voice almost forcing Cas back. "Blah, blah, Raphael, right?"
"I'm doing this for you, Dean. I'm doing this because of you." Dean had refused to understand then, and he often ignored it now, but every choice Cas had made since he Fell was to save the hunter. Nothing else mattered.
It was a long time and another death before Cas had the chance to say it for the eighth time. He had gone somewhat crazy, even catatonic for a while, from taking on Sam's pain, and he had reveled in the simplicity of that insanity. When Kevin awoke as a prophet, something inside the angel had snapped, bringing him back to a measure of sanity. Meg had called the hunters, as she had agreed to do, and led them into Cas's room at the asylum.
"Hey, Cas," Dean called, cautiously entering the room with his brother by his side and the dark-haired demon in tow. Cas had been staring out the window at the time, but he turned around at the voice, blue eyes finding the hunter's green and holding them.
"Hello, Dean," he greeted, his voice clear and steady but somehow lighter than it had been before. Sam shifted at the greeting, shocked to see the angel coherent and happy to have him back. Dean couldn't do anything but stare as Cas glanced over toward his younger brother and offered him a greeting. "Sam."
"Hey, Castiel," Sam returned.
Dean smiled as the seraph closed the distance between them. "Look at you, walkin' and talkin'. That's – that's great, right?"
It had been wonderful to be with Dean again, even if Cas was incredibly broken. He had fallen so far, now he was just a terrified man with angelic powers, no use to the boys at all. He had managed to help, in the end, showing Dean which Leviathan was the real leader and helping him kill the creature. His bravery had landed him in Purgatory and on the run from every monster and Leviathan in the place. It was what he deserved after decimating the Heavenly Host and betraying Sam and Dean.
Appropriately, the ninth time he said it was after Naomi ordered him freed from that terrible place. Cas had wanted to stay, to atone for his sins, but the current leader of the many angelic factions had wanted him as a weapon against the Winchesters. He hadn't known at the time, of course, he was just happy to see Dean again.
"So, we going to Rome? Wouldn't be too shabby." He appeared behind the hunter while he was washing his face in the motel bathroom sink, catching the end of the conversation that Dean was apparently having with Sam in the other room.
The last time Cas had appeared behind Dean in a motel bathroom, the hunter had read him the riot act. This time, dirty, unkempt, and unshaven, Cas met Dean's eyes in the mirror and waited silently for the hunter to turn around. He had been trying to zero in on the brothers for a while, spotting the Impala on the road, tracking it to a motel, then waiting for the right moment to return to the hunter. Part of him hadn't wanted to, the part that had wanted to stay in Purgatory, but Dean's longing for him was too strong to ignore. Dean wanted him back.
When Dean caught sight of him in the mirror and spun around, Cas said the first thing that came to mind. "Hello, Dean."
It was years before he said it again. In that time, he was manipulated by Naomi, almost killed Dean, and tricked by Metatron into kicking the angels out of Heaven. He had lived as a human and been killed for his efforts, finally regaining his grace and some level of usefulness to the brothers. When the Darkness rose and Lucifer offered himself to help defeat her, Cas had agreed to become the archangel's vessel. The tenth time he said it, Lucifer was speaking with his voice, grabbing the words from his memory and offering them to the hunter, but it hadn't really been Cas talking. He hadn't been hosting the Devil for very long yet, so he still peeked out from time to time to make sure the disguise would hold. He knew that Dean and Sam wouldn't like what he had done, but it had been the best choice at the time.
Lucifer had been digging through one of the storage rooms at the bunker, Cas offering it as the best place to look for a spell or a weapon that would work against Amara. Dean had come back from his case surprisingly early, slamming into the room with his gun drawn, ready to kill the intruder in his home. "Hey!"
Lucifer looked up at the interruption, surprised that he hadn't been paying better attention to his surroundings. He turned his attention inward for a moment, the conversation between himself and his current vessel over in less than a second. "Why didn't you warn me that he would be here? I thought he was on a case."
"He was," Cas answered. "Normally he wouldn't be back. I sensed when he entered the bunker but the warding here sometimes messes with my detection ability."
"I'm an archangel," Lucifer sneered. "That shouldn't matter to me. Geez, is this longing a constant thing with him?" The Devil's voice had taken on a curious tone.
"Yeah, I guess so. Sometimes it's louder than this. He may be able to help with The Darkness."
"Cas? What the hell are you doing, man?"
"Hello, Dean." Lucifer imitated Cas's voice pretty well, but the words sounded forced, stilted, to the angel inside. Still, Dean seemed fooled as Lucifer started to rise, focusing on keeping his voice in the lower register that the seraph had always used.
"Right, yeah." Dean lowered his gun as he realized that there was no threat. "We don't hear from you for days, you show up, you start wrecking the joint."
"He doesn't sound happy to see you."
"He's not yelling. That means he's happy."
Lucifer offered an exaggerated sigh. "I'm sorry." Inside the vessel, Cas cringed, knowing that the tone was wrong, the timbre was off, but he wasn't surprised when Dean didn't recognize the wrongness of it. The hunter never noticed when something was wrong; why should today be the first time?
"Okay. W-what are you doing?"
Lucifer turned around, still holding papers in both hands, looking disheveled and disheartened. Lucifer had removed his trench coat and suit jacket some time ago, which Cas would never do, but Dean didn't comment on the change. Cas looked at Dean through his usurped eyes, letting himself fade into the background as Lucifer began to answer. "Well, I'm . . . looking for a spell, something to draw Amara out, but there's . . ." He trailed off for a second, looking around the room as Dean pointedly closed one of the drawers near him. "There's nothing. I had her in my sights. She was hurt. I should have ended it."
Cas stayed in a private little corner of his mind for much of the time after that. It was easier, not watching Dean interact with Lucifer whom he believed was Cas. After a time, he no longer felt that constant undercurrent of longing from the hunter, no longer noticed when Lucifer used his body to torture or kill, and no longer cared what happened as long as they had a chance to stop Amara. He could be a useful weapon as long as he stopped watching.
Because of his self-enforced hands-off policy, the eleventh time took him by surprise. He felt a sudden flare of longing from Dean, undercut by a smug joy, and he knew that the hunter needed him. He looked up from his private room, stretching out to touch senses he hadn't bothered with in a while, and he heard when his phone rang. Lucifer had been speaking with Crowley, the demon having been beaten into almost-submission, though the Devil know that the demon was not truly cowed.
Lucifer glanced at the phone screen, grimacing at the name showing there, even as Cas's grace sang with joy. Dean. Dean wouldn't be calling unless the hunters needed him, and he wanted so desperately to be useful. Lucifer turned to Crowley and whispered, "No barking. It's Showtime." He pressed the answer button and raised the phone to his ear, calling on his "Cas voice" as he answered. "Hello, Dean."
The twelfth time it was all him again. He and Dean were closer after the whole Amara thing, but he had still needed to find a way to be useful. Teaming up with Crowley to hunt hadn't been his first plan, but he found himself sitting at a bar with the demon when he found news on Lucifer that the boys needed to hear. Pulling out his phone, he dialed the first name in his contacts list, almost-smiling as the hunter answered almost immediately. "Hey, Cas."
"Hello, Dean."
"You still living out an '80s buddy comedy with Crowley?"
Cas grimaced, turning to watch the demon eating some sort of French fry next to him. The King of Hell had developed a taste for bar food, often trying to encourage the angel to join in the fun. "Unfortunately."
It had been more than two years since that conversation. Cas often longed for the simpler days of hunting monsters or chasing Lucifer from vessel to vessel. These last few months had been torture, ever since Dean said "yes" to Michael and the archangel rode him into the sunset. Cas had been left behind in the bunker at Dean's insistence, but he knew the instant Michael broke he deal. He felt the snap of their bond breaking, the constant whisper of Dean's soul in his mind snuffed out. There had only been Michael's overwhelming, suffocating light, and Cas had almost not survived the loss.
Today, though, all of that changed. Cas stared across the empty field, trees and earth blasted by the angelic battle that had raged over the past hour, an angel blade in one hand as the other held him up in a half-crouch. Jack was crumbled in a heap nearby, his own barely-regenerated grace drained and his powers stretched to the limit, the gold shine of the Archangel Blade in his hand, blood staining the tip. Mary leaned against the remains of a tree near Jack, having dropped her angel blade some time ago as she cataloged her wounds and decided that she would live. Sam knelt nearby, hazel eyes watching the heap between them warily, but Cas knew that there was no reason to worry anymore. Wiping the blood out of his eyes, the seraph stowed his blade and crawled toward the middle of the battlefield.
He rolled Dean onto his side, azure eyes searching for any injuries as his grace probed the man's soul for a trace of the intruding Archangel's grace. Michael was completely gone, having fled at last, and only the hunter's brilliant soul shone from his body now. Groaning, Dean struggled back to consciousness, in control of himself for the first time since he killed Lucifer.
Vibrant green eyes shot open, shock gradually fading as memories of the past hour sluggishly filtered into his mind. He sat up slowly, reaching out with one hand and placing it on Cas's shoulder, watching it move under his command once more. Tears streamed down his face, relief pulsing through their suddenly-returned bond as Cas smiled at him, truly smiled in a way that he had rarely been able to. "Hello, Dean," he whispered, his voice breaking on the words. And this time, the thirteenth time, he could finally see his own devotion mirrored in those eyes he loved so much as the hunter pulled him in for a kiss.
It was brief, both of them exhausted and bleeding, but Cas could feel everything the hunter had wanted to say for years in his embrace, in the gentle movement of Dean's lips against his. He felt Dean's arms wrap around him, and Cas ignored the pain in his ribs in favor of enjoying the embrace. Dean pulled away, and Cas didn't see any regret, and concern in the hunter's green eyes or feel any across their bond. Dean wanted this, wanted him, and Cas was all too happy to say yes. He raised his hand to Dean's cheek, pulling him in for a repeat of the first kiss, trying to keep it gentle and pour all of his pent-up love into that simple action. He had told Dean, once, that he loved him, but the hunter hadn't believed it at the time. Now, clearly, he did.
Cas pulled away, letting the human breathe, as Sam, Mary, and Jack finally recovered enough strength to join them. He heard them welcoming Dean back, a smug comment from Sam about it being "about time", but he only had ears for the hunter. And, when Dean finally spoke, using his voice for the first time in months, the words were for Cas alone, words that the angel had long ago learned were an expression of love.
"Morning, sunshine."