Pairing: Dean/Cas, pre-Tom Hanniger/Cas
Summary: After going missing for a year, Dean returns. Except it's not really Dean any more, is it?
Spoilers: Through to 6.22 and for the movie 'My Bloody Valentine'.
Disclaimer: This is for fun, not profit. Everything belongs to Kripke et al and Lionsgate, not me.
It was foolish of Castiel to have ever let himself believe that the worse had passed. That what with the apocalypse diverted, civil war won and the nuclear souls firmly locked up back into the belly of purgatory, that they had weathered the storm, that though they were frayed and eroding, they were still ultimately whole. Together.
Dean had coaxed Castiel back from the edge with guileless words of regret and guilt and barely audible, strangled confessions of love. And Castiel, looking through the eyes of a feigned deity saw the sincerity glimmer in Dean's soul, permeating the coldness he wore like armour across his breastplate and leaving him with no alternative but to let go. To come home. And despite everything that had happened, Sam and Dean had welcomed him back into their misfit unit with declarations of forgiveness and new beginnings and they found themselves a family once more.
The brothers took to the endless road, hunting with a brand of simplicity and ease that they hadn't experienced in years and Castiel had departed for heaven to repair the damage of war, returning to earth as often as possible, coming to the boys whenever he could. He and Dean gradually mended the wounds between them with words spoken through the press of lips on slicked skin, the careful touch of a meandering hand, painting apologies on the curve of a trembling back. They were rebuilding, learning to trust, to believe in each other again. For the first time in his existence, Castiel fell true peace. Not the artificial kind inflicted upon him as a disposable tool of heaven, or the severed, detached peace of burying himself amongst the lifeforce of thousands of creatures, but honest, candid contentedness. For a while, he believed they were okay, that everything would actually be okay now.
And then came a frantic call from Sam, a desperate, choked prayer shattering the calm of the endless Tuesday he was visiting with hysterical cries of "Dean" and "gone" and something vile fiddled in the ether. His feet felt heavy as they crashed onto the Earth, panic settling like bile in his grace, all stoicism lost as he listened to Sam's recounting of Dean's disappearance and the promise of hell falling from the forked tongue of the only captured demon Sam had. Guilt, horror and disbelief slithered and concocted in his stomach at the words. Dean could not be in hell. Castiel had promised Dean, promised himself, that no matter what he would never allow the hunter to be pulled into the clutches of Hades, that he would give anything to prevent that from ever happening again. And the bitter, hollow taste of failure propelled him into action, determined to bring Dean back to his brother.
But hell, he found, had been blocked off from him, unreachable, as though wards had been carved into the gates, keeping him far away from any chance of saving his charge and it became apparent that Castiel was helpless to do anything but search the Earth for answers and prevent Sam from making ill advised deals and following his brother into the pit. His days became fragile, quivering things, waxing together and butchered of any sense of hope or happiness, leaving Castiel as hollow as the Impala, who had been sitting empty for six months, seven and the winds whispered that this time they would not win. That Dean would not return. That Castiel could not come to the rescue again.
That they had, finally, lost.
It was a year, two months and seventeen days after Dean's disappearance that Castiel- still searching, always searching for a even a fragment of news- heard a faint, hissed cry of his name in the guise of a voice he never imagined he would hear again. Without pausing to consider the possibility of hallucination, he traced the source of the call to a ramshackle house in Western Pennsylvania. A sense of hope like he hadn't felt in over a year fluttered nervously through his grace as he walked through the rotting door, the ageing wooden floor groaning loudly under his weight.
He slowly made his way into the heart of the building, brows furrowing at the thick odour of something rotten, of flesh and meat and decaying carcasses. Of Hell. Fear mingling with his failing optimism, he pushed open the door to what was perhaps once a living room and stepped inside with caution. His entire body froze as his gaze fell upon a hooded figure sat cross legged on the floor in the middle of the dark room, a pile of red containers in front of him, drumming his fingers against the floor in a fragmented rhythm.
"...Dean" he gasped, voice quivering as he edged forward, fighting against all instincts to run to his side, barely trusting his vision. Gradually, Dean's head twisted upwards, his flesh smeared with a crusted, dry red substance that Castiel only hoped wasn't his own blood and his eyes locked with the angels'. They were dead, muted things, glazed with a sheen of malice, anchoring Castiel's apprehension as Dean began to shake his head in answer to Castiel's cry, mouth twisting into a parody of a smile.
Castiel felt his heart sink as he stared into those clouded gangrenous orbs, taking in the pick axe resting against a bookshelf near to where Dean sat, the wet smears coating the edges of the boxes, the stench of slaughter snaking off his filthy, blood saturated clothes. The mangled curve of a meaningless smirk where there should be the soft, boyish smile of a reunited loved one. He pieced the image together mentally, absorbing the familiar picture of the new animal Alastair had carved out all those years ago, the one Castiel had pushed down and battled against himself.
The one he had squashed back deep into Dean's psyche and stitched over when he raised him the first time, making sure to keep as much of it as possible hidden from Dean. The one he never, ever wanted to see haunting those features again. But here he was, the fabricated backstory, the false name- a string of excuses for the creature that had oozed its way out of the pustules of Dean's fermenting soul. Castiel's eyes were wide, fearful as he watched the half demon thing wearing his lover's face rise to his feet, face grim, the menacing grin still in place. He held out a butcher's hand, gaze unwavering, finally opening dry lips.
"Hey, Cas" he said, his voice low and drawn out. Castiel swallowed, sliding his fingers out to meet the proffered handshake, very human fear his grasping at his form. He stepped forward.
"Hello, Tom".
A/N: I've had this stored on my laptop for like forever and I keep forgetting to finish it, so I decided to post this part as chapter one while I'm working on the next instalments. This is a little different to the hannstiel most of you are familiar with- that though Tom and Dean are essentially of the same soul, they are separate entities. Here, I wanted to explore the idea that Tom is who Dean became in hell, he's another persona created within Dean but he isn't separate from him.
In this fic, Tom is Dean. Just a very dark, very fucked up version of him and it's possible to bring Dean back from that. However, that is way too simple so in the rest of this fic, Dean/Tom's gonna be so fucked up that he's gonna start bringing Cas down with him. And then there will be porn and blood, which jfc, this is hannstiel. This shit is built on porn and blood.