Friday's episode. Just. GAH. I couldn't handle it, so I wrote this.
The Leviathans are still out there, in the world, but they've been pushed to the backburner in this fic.
DISCLAIMER- If I owned Supernatural, Cas would've at least gotten a better send-off.
The trenchcoat sits in the bottom of the Impala's trunk. There it has been since the day Dean picked it up out of the lake, over a year ago. There it will stay. Dean will never take it out.
Sometimes, Dean will open the false bottom and stare at the coat for a long moment. Although his face is impassive, Sam knows he's screaming for Cas in his mind, begging for him to be up there, to hear him…
Cas never comes and Dean is forced to shut the trunk and Sam is forced to pretend that he didn't see anything.
Once, Sam heard quiet crying coming from Dean's room, and tried to investigate, but he hit a creak in the floor right outside the door, so when he opened it, Dean looked to be asleep. There was no hiding the tear tracks on his cheeks.
One day, Dean returns to the lake where he last saw Cas, or at least Jimmy's body with a Leviathan inside, and he thinks he sees little ripples in the water, where there haven't been fish for a year, not since the Leviathan vanished into the murky depths.
But he blinks, and the ripples are gone, and Dean is forced to accept that maybe, probably, almost definitely, Cas isn't coming back.
Except not three seconds after he's turned his back on the lake there's a splash, much too loud to be anything but a human, and Dean's whipped around to see ripples. Real ripples. Really big ripples.
He's in the lake faster than you can say "I brought pie."
The ripples have finally faded and the lake seems to be still as Sam runs into the compound. He heard the splash and ran all the way down the hill and through the gate in time to see the ripples fade.
His call rents the air and it's barely a half a second later that a dark shape is rising from the depths of the lake. Dean breaks through, gasping for air, swimming for shore, dragging something big, dark, and drenched in water and blood and Leviathan ooze behind him.
Sam is down in half a second and they both lean over Cas. He looks so strange without his trenchcoat, so small. Dean is almost crying again, Sam can tell by glancing up at his face, because he risked everything to drag Cas back up, he gave everything, and it all seems to have been for nothing.
Suddenly Cas lets out a great gasp and chokes out water, coughing and spitting and holy fuck, he's breathing. His eyes flick open and next to Sam, Dean starts trembling and grips Cas by the wrist, asking him, over and over, Is it you? Is it really you?
Cas' huge blue eyes flick between Dean and Sam and back to Dean and he can't speak for a long moment as he tries to come to grips with the situation. Then he surges upwards, clinging to Dean, and Dean doesn't freeze, doesn't push him away, just lets out a choked half-sob and clutches him closer.
Cas knows that Dean pulled him out, that he's been searching for a way to get him back all year. Sam can see it on his face.
Sam knows it isn't over yet, and it won't be over for a long time. But as Dean helps Cas to his feet, hears him whisper I forgive you to Cas, watches Cas' eyes explode in a blaze of happiness as he presses his face into Dean's neck, Sam thinks things are a little brighter.
REVIEWS PLEASE?