A/n Destiel- major spoilers from 8x02. I do not own these characters and do not use them for profit.

Purgatory always felt like autumn to Dean. It wasn't just the permanent state of the half-dying trees surrounding him or the constant crunch of leaves under his bloodstained boots. Purgatory was in a permanent state between light and dark, life and death, cold and warmth, possession and loss. Everything seemed ephemeral.

Dean felt different after arriving. He was never tired or hungry. His senses were sharpened to a fine point. Nothing came to pass that he forgot. He remembered every detail of his first kill. He could tell you how many ridges were on the ax that he stole off that body. He could tell you where the tree was that he had accidentally lodged that ax into. He remembered every detail of Cas' disappearance, too, not that he wanted to remember.

Purgatory itself was peaceful, and killing things there felt natural and pure. Dean loved the adrenaline rush of sliding his knife into the body of a beast. He loved the smell of blood and dirt coating his skin and clothes. He loved how the bodies of his victims fell to the ground and crushed the leaves, making that delicate crinkling sound that was the same as it was on Earth. He felt the animalistic instinct inside of him tear it's way to the surface every time he was hunting, or being hunted in an ecstatic rush of pure vivacity. There was no time to rest, but that was what felt right, that's what felt pure, and all felt good.

But something was missing. For the first few months, after a kill, Dean would look over his shoulder and grin expectantly at the never present angel. Castiel never showed. And Dean would turn back and pretend he never looked for Cas in the first place. He pretended he didn't care, but he knew he was lying to himself.

So Dean started a mental journal, thinking of things he would say to Cas.

"You should'a seen this vamp, he was a total psycho and chased me through the forests for hours. I ganked him with one blow."

"The food here is literal piss. God, Good thing I'm never hungry."

"Sam would love to see this, I bet he'd geek out over the scenery and shit. I miss him."

"I miss you, too."

"Cas, dammit, where the fuck are you? I'm dying out here."

He never got any reply. Not a single word. But, for whatever reason, Dean didn't resent Cas for it. Instead he boiled it down to "He must have a good reason for not saying anything" and continued praying, just in case Cas could, in fact, hear him.

And Dean marched on, kicking ass with a give 'em hell attitude. With his knife and resolve, he was unbeatable the only problem was, he was achingly alone. He felt like he was going to start going crazy in his solitude. He wanted his angel back so he could tell him these things face to face, make him smile, and to have someone there that isn't trying to kill him.

So he started looking, interrogating anything who might have answers. It became a ritual before each kill to ask where the angel was. No one would give him any answers, so it was even more gratifying to see their liveliness ripped from their eyes as he slit their throats. But even with that, the primal instinct to fight, the gratification of living another day, it all started to get old. He got discouraged, and most of all, lonely.

He even cried, one night. After fleeing a pack of werewolves he'd sent to Purgatory. He ran for hours, never tiring, but never feeling particularly motivated to keep running. He hid in a tree, and when he heard the pack had moved on to their next kill, he curled into himself and started to sob. He had no particular reason to cry now rather than later or earlier, but something inside of him just… broke.

The dams overflowed and he began to shake uncontrollably. Thoughts of Cas and Sam rushed into his head. Where are they? Have they died yet? Is Sam still looking for me? Is Cas surviving out there alright? Why am I so alone? Why has everyone abandoned me? Does anyone really care about me? And Dean prayed, shouted, pleas to Cas to come back. But of course, there was no response.

Dean couldn't have slept even if he wanted to. That's the wonderful thing about sleep, you get to escape reality. You get to enter your own world where only the things you want to exist are there and brothers and best friends and adopted fathers are safe and together living an apple-pie normal life. And when you wake up, a new day has started, and you get to start anew, start taking those steps to make the dream real. In Purgatory however, everything was continuous. The sun never set and the moon never rose, so a new day never came, and Dean had to deal with everything he'd done since he gotten to this hell-hole. The emptiness Dean felt was bottomless, so the only thing that Dean Winchester felt he encompassed was a pile of mistakes, massacres that would makes you go insane, and a bottomless pit.

Benny was a surprise to Dean. He'd been looking for Cas for so long he forgot what companionship really felt like. Saving Dean's life was one thing, but taking a life as partners is something that fundamentally bound the two together. Dean never stopped looking for Cas, and Benny rarely complained about the search for the angel, but Dean felt himself missing Cas less and less as Benny moved in to take his place.

Sure, Dean couldn't confuse Benny or talk circles around him like he could with Cas, but Benny was more like Dean then Dean ever realized a vampire could be. They talked about Earth, how Benny's father was abusive and a drunk and how Dean's father was never present. Benny talked about how he was raised by his older sister and then raised his two brothers when she died, and Dean reminisced on the days when he would teach Sam how to survive life. They both were idealists, both trying to make a better world for their families. And they both went out with a bang, Dean with exploding Dick and Benny took out a wolf pack before being shot.

The camaraderie between the boys was remarkable. And as Dean began to trust Benny more and more, he stopped praying to Cas. He could take care of himself now, and the silence of isolation wasn't so crushing. But something was missing, something Benny couldn't give Dean, and Dean realized that Benny was only a placeholder for Cas.

They got lucky. That's how he found Cas, pure luck. A vague lead brought them together. And when Dean saw Cas, heard his voice say his name in disbelief, it was as if something in Dean lit up. A fire started. He was not stuck in the limbo between life and death, heat and warmth, dark and night. A storm of a thousand suns burned its way through Dean's chest. It yearned to reach out and grab Cas, and Dean would be damned if he wasn't going to do exactly that.

Cas was rigid and shaking at the same time when Dean flung his arms around his friend. Dean squeezed him so tight he was afraid he might break his angel. Mine Dean thought Mine again.

Dean could feel Benny rolling his eyes behind him, so he let go of Cas, and the fire was gone. Dean glowed in its aftermath, though, and every time he looked at Cas, he felt its spark again. And Cas glowed, too. Less prominently, but Dean could see it.

Castiel was a little hesitant to trust Benny and he never truly learned to understand him, but he respected him for what he was doing for Dean. He was getting Dean to safety and back to Sam, and that was all that Cas cared about.

Despite Dean's doubts, Cas did hear Dean's prayers. Every time Dean thought his name, prayed to him, told him stories of his day, Castiel heard, and it killed him to know that he couldn't just rush to Dean's side every time he was in danger or to listen to him talk about his day or how much he missed home. It was especially hard when Cas heard Dean's cry. It made him weep in sorrow for his friend. The heart-stabbing loneliness he felt was not only through his own feelings of abandon, but though Dean's cries as well. But it was for his protection. He must protect Dean. It was his only mission nowadays.

"Great so now we can leave?" Benny said agitatedly.

Dean smiled, "Yeah, now we go."

There are two components to escaping; planning and execution. Neither is more important than the other, but if one is not used to it's full potential, the mission will not be successful. They had one shot at leaving without being attacked by leviathan left, right, and center as the gateway to Earth was in leviathan territory, and they did not appreciate visitors.

Benny explained the ritual of opening the gate to Earth which included a small incantation and a human blood sacrifice. Nothing Dean hadn't done before. The tricky part was going to be getting to the gate without being caught by the leviathan.

Cas hated the idea of Dean carrying the soul of a vampire across dimensions, but Benny insisted, and so did Dean.

"I owe him a debt, Cas," Dean insisted.

"No you don't owe him anything, you'll just get hurt."

"Don't tell me what to do Cas. This is my decision and my debt. We couldn't get out of this piss-hole if we didn't have Benny."

Castiel glared at the both of them, but knew arguing with Dean was useless.

It was Cas that eventually bound Benny's soul to Dean's arm. Once Dean could feel the weight of Benny in his arm, it hit him how real this was. He was getting out. He was going to see Sam again. Cas would be there and it would be like they were one big family again. Saving people, hunting things, like the good old days when Purgatory was just a rumor and no one had ever seen a leviathan.

"Your turn Cas," Dean turn to Cas expecting him to use Dean's body as a vessel as well, "Hop on in."

Cas' lips twitched like they did when he was about to do one of his sort-of smiles that Dean loved. "Not this time, Dean."

"Why the fuck not?"

"Leviathan will attack, don't be so idiotically naive to think that we can just slip by them, and I know you can fight them off with one bad arm and an angel riding shotgun,"Cas' eyes were trained on Dean, piercing into his soul, "I will protect your passage out of this world, but that means i can't leave with you."

"NO!" Dean shouted, tired of Cas' sacrifices for him, "You are coming goddammit! I have waited too long to lose you now."

Cas was silent, but his stare was stolid. He would not submit this time. But the sadness of leaving Dean behind kept creeping over him.

Dean wanted so bad to hug Castiel, embrace him, engulf him, something to wipe away the drooping sadness from his face. The fire in his gut flickered as he stepped so close to Castiel Dean was almost standing on top of his ruined shoes. Cas leaned in and Dean's arms wrapped around Castiel's trembling body. Cas' hands were cold, but they blazed against the skin on Dean's waist. Castiel's wings blinked into existence and engulfed Dean in an embrace more personal than he had ever experienced with anyone else, and he loved it. He loved Dean.

Dean's shirt became wet with Cas' tears as the reality of his death in Purgatory was inevitable now that he was going to stay behind. They would never get to do all the stupid human stuff Cas had fantasized about. Dean taking him to the movies and kissing in the back of the theater. Dean and Sam and him talking a picnic on a sunny day and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Dean and Castiel in the back of the Impala when it's dark out and no one is watching. And Dean wanted it too. He wanted it so badly it physically hurt and, for a moment, Dean and Cas stood gripping each other tightly, refusing to let go of one another as their realities came crashing down around them.

Cas eventually looked up at Dean, his eyes red and puffy and his cheeks shiny from the tears. Dean brought his hand up to cup Cas' face and bring his lips softly and chasely onto his. They fitted together so well it was as if God had made two puzzle pieces that would find each other through time and space to meet at this moment and become one impossibly perfect moment the pieces came together was the moment their lives felt complete for the first time.

Chaste became hungry and hungry became ravaging as they held onto this moment, the most important moment. Neither Dean nor Cas wanted to break apart, but leviathan were coming and neither of them was safe yet.

They stole through the woods, running as fast as they could as silently as the crunching leaves would allow. Dean was gripping Cas' hand so tightly his knuckles were white. Castiel smiled knowing Dean was right beside him. When they reached the gate, so far undetected, they looked into each other's eyes, and in that moment everything they could have been, would have been if not for the leviathan, disappeared, tragically but unlamented. There was no time for tears now.

Leviathan began to appear from every angle. Castiel refused to let them touch Dean as he shouted Enochian incantations over and over again to open the gate. He rolled up the arm that didn't contain Benny and looked around for Castiel.

Their eyes locked. "Together." Castiel promised.

Dean nodded, hope daring to creep into his eyes as he cut into his wrist and poured blood on the ground. A white light erupted from the spot where his blood fell, enveloping Dean's body. Dean reached out to grab Castiel. Castiel kept a death grip on Dean's hand, but Dean was being pulled away by a force stronger than Cas. He couldn't bear to lose Dean, not again. Not treasuring every second he had with Dean was the biggest mistake he'd made in all his thousands of years of existence. He was not going to lose Dean to some stupid light now. Not this time.

And then Dean's hand slipped out of Castiel's. Castiel could hear Dean screaming for him as his voice echoed from the closing gate. Castiel lay on the ground, arm still reaching out to grab Dean. That was going to be the last time he ever saw Dean; dirty, blood stained, and damaged. Castiel would never get to fix Dean, never get to hold him and tell him everything is alright. The last thing Castiel would hear of Dean would be him calling his name.

Castiel eventually got up and started running from the leviathan. He was determined to get out and get Dean back.

Castiel would travel for what felt like years to him before he heard a familiar call. A name and a voice attached to it, calling him home. And a ray of hope finally shone on Castiel's dark life as he looked back at the scenery that had become his home; the endless forest, the stream he liked to camp by. He took everything in, closed his eyes, and shouted with all of his vigor "Adios amigos!" like the cowboys in Dean's movies.

Now it was Cas' turn to step into the white light, feeling a presence he thought he would never again. In that moment, Castiel could have never been filled with more joy. Not when he found Gabriel, not when he fished Dean out of hell, not even when Michael taught him how to dance when he was young. No, it was the moment when the promise of a life with Dean became a reality that Castiel was the happiest.

a/n this is my first fic, so I'd really appreciate it if you review and let me know what you thought!