This is a purely speculative piece based on parts of 13x19. Spoilers for that episode and ALL aired episodes of season 13. This story is quite strange and random and written in a few hours and most certainly (hopefully) goes against everything that will happen in the show/finale, and I'm cool with it :).

WILTED AIR, HEAVY TONGUES

DAY 1

They do not fall from the sky like angels who have lost their wings.

They simply appear one day.

Castiel screams when they come, a celestial sound that cracks open the walls of his room in the bunker. Sam is in the library, Dean in the garage, but they feel the shaking of the angel's vocal chords with equal intensity, and they find him nestled into the corner of his now broken room, knees pulled into his chest, blue eyes flickering and flickering and flickering in a million different directions. They land on the brothers, finally, after far too much coaxing and far too many inquiries as to what's wrong.

Castiel pulls in sharp, frightened breaths he doesn't need. His eyes are dry, pupils blown too wide.

"Cas, come on man," Dean urges once more. "What is it? Please. What is it?"

The angel lowers his head, fingers grasping at his hair. And then he finds Dean's eyes again, and Dean almost wishes he hadn't.

"Heaven," Castiel whispers, voice breaking the way it never does. "Heaven is dead."

The air leaves the room. Or at least, that's what it feels like. That's what it feels like everywhere, suddenly. Dean draws a breath, maybe to ask what Cas means, but he can't seem to finish the inhale, lungs catching on something; invisible fingers pressed against his diaphragm.

"Dean?" Sam asks. He reaches for his brother, just a few inches away, and hits resistance. Can barely connect hand to shoulder. It takes too long, too much effort. Sam flips his hand over, stares at the empty spaces between his fingers.

"C...Cas?" he asks.

Castiel closes his eyes. "They're here. They're all here now."

"Who?" Dean asks. Coughs roughly.

"Everyone," Castiel croaks. "Every soul who has ever walked this earth and made it into Heaven. They own this world now."

"H...how do we fix it?" Sam asks, voice shaking. Dean coughs again, choking, mouth moving without words. Castiel answers, and it sounds like he's choking, too.

"I don't think we can."

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DAY 16

Sam Winchester gives up.

It takes him thirteen days and nine hours longer than it takes his big brother.

He's in the library, though he knows there are no books for this. Still, it's what he can do, so he does it for as long as he can. But there is a weight pressing against his chest, at his fingertips, nestled at the backs of his eyes. His energy wanes to nothing, sucked from his center by the endless trail of ghosts who wander the bunker's halls.

Sam has felt his lungs collapse. Sam has felt death. But this is new. This is cosmic, and it does not leave room for research or solutions or any of the options he has always had. It leaves nothing but a fathomless exhaustion, the sensation of his skin slowly, delicately pulling itself apart, molecule by molecule until he fears he will be nothing but a collection of atoms, floating solemnly through the halls. Substanceless.

It takes him a long time to summon the energy to move from the table covered in useless books, but eventually he gets up and finds Dean in the kitchen, slumped against the fridge with a twelve pack resting beside his knee. Dean's chest is heaving, too fast. Same as the last few weeks.

"It hits everybody differently," Cas had said before he'd disappeared. Before he'd gone to try to find answers. "So many lost souls, so many hosts without a place to truly exist. Everybody feels it, but some only have a sense of overwhelming wrongness, the knowledge that the world cannot go on as it did before. Some only lose their energy, find it difficult to push themselves through all the wandering souls."

"And others?" Sam had asked, eyes never leaving his brother's face. Dean hadn't been paying attention. He'd been trying to breathe.

Castiel had sighed, and he had sounded so very, very old. "Others feel the impact of each and every soul. They feel everything."

Sam had begged the angel to stay. Dean had choked on his tongue and done the same. Cas had left anyway, remorse in his eyes.

"If I don't go. If I don't try," he'd said, "then we are all dead. And I cannot let that happen." A pause, and then he'd rolled his tongue over his teeth. "If I cannot find a way to fix this, I promise I will come back. I will come back for the end."

Dean's breathing was already uneven, so it had taken Sam longer than it should have to notice the wetness on his brother's cheeks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ooOoOoOoo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DAY 34

"Dad," Dean rasps. He doesn't speak anymore so much as expel words. They all need to have a purpose now. No more room for the dumb jokes or pointless reassurances Sam has grown accustomed to hearing his whole life. Which is why he's startled by this particular word as it slides around the whiskey bottle resting against his brother's lips.

Helps me feel less of the ghost-y shit, Dean had scribbled on a post-it twelve days ago when Sam had finally commented on Dean's blatant increase in alcohol consumption. Sam hadn't brought it up again. He still doesn't understand quite what Dean's feeling, cannot comprehend an exhaustion deeper or more chilling than his own, and yet he knows that somehow, Dean has it far worse.

Somehow, Dean always seems to have it worse.

"What about Dad?" Sam asks, not sure of his brother's lucidity. Dean's thoughts are constantly muddled and twisted by the invasion of the souls who own the world now, their stories and minds and dreams and nightmares spilling into Dean's ears and falling from his skin and dribbling from his mouth like the overlapping instruments in an orchestra that never learned to play together.

"Could find him," Dean answers. They are sitting on Dean's bed, Dean hunched against the headboard and Sam tucked close near his brother's hip. There is a deck of cards between them, a half-started game they didn't get very far into. Simple things take too much energy now. Too much thought. Sam figured maybe the card game could at least help them find a bit of mental energy. As with most of his theories these days, he was wrong. He blinks at Dean's words, not sure what to make of them. Still not sure if they are actually coming from his brother or from one of the strangers that fill up the spare inches of their world now.

"Ellen, Jo, Ash. Rufus, Kevin, Charlie. Bobby. Could find Bobby," Dean says. He smiles around the name, but there is a heaviness to everything about him now, a weight that seems to pull the corners of his mouth, the edges of his eyes down.

"Dean," Sam whispers, scattering the forgotten card game when he reaches for his brother's wrist. "There are billions of souls wandering the earth. We can't tell them apart, much less seek out the ones we know. We just have to wait for…"

"For what?" Dean growls, suddenly angry. He pulls away from Sam, flattening himself against the headboard. The movement saps his energy and a moment later he droops back down, breathing hard.

"Dean…" Sam tries, reaching again and hitting something that isn't his brother. He sucks in a breath, feels a little of his own energy drain away when whatever...whoever it is brushes against his forearm. He pulls his hand back into his own chest, shivering a little.

"Cas isn't coming back," Dean interrupts, watching Sam carefully. There is resignation in his stare, but also an undercurrent of old determination, a grit that hasn't waned away, even as his energy and appetite have over the past few weeks. "Mom's not coming back from that other...world. Jack is...We can't just. Sit here. Waiting."

"Dean, I've looked for a way to stop this, believe me, man," Sam says, shifting against the edge of Dean's bed. He closes his eyes, trying not to think about Mary. About her decision to leave them again, to stay behind and pick up the pieces, even with the war over. "There's nothing. There's no way to restore Heaven. We don't even have the option of opening another rift and shoving all the lost souls through it. Lucifer is dead. Gabriel and Jack are…" he runs a hand down along his face, pushing the grief back. "We don't have an archangel. We don't have anything."

"S'not what I'm saying," Dean says, shaking his head. He seems to regret the tiny motion, has to close his eyes for a moment, too. "Saying we find Dad. Just be with him. With everyone."

Sam sucks in a breath, feels a cold draft of not-air move straight through his left shoulder. "You know you won't make it. You're not strong enough to leave," he says when he's found the space to take in air again. Dean grimaces, almost growls, but Sam ignores him. "And like I said, there's no way to find anybody. They're just impressions. Just faded half-spirits."

Dean's eyes shift to the nightstand beside his bed. "Sally Richfield," he says. Sam raises an eyebrow.

"Standing right there," Dean says, tilting his head. "Born 1941. Guy behind you's named Vic...Victor Carragold. Greta...Greta Garbo came through. Moved on, but she came through. Could keep going…"

Sam shakes his head in almost-amusement. He'd forgotten what that felt like. "The actress, Greta Garbo?"

Dean nods, a little smug beneath the exhaustion.

Sam bites the inside of his cheek, trying to process. "You can see them?"

"Yeah. S' faint pictures, but I s..see," Dean explains. A pause and then, almost a whine: "Sammy. I wanna find Dad."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ooOoOoOoo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DAY 77

They're in California.

Took them over three weeks of sifting through wandering souls (that Dean's begun to refer to as "Wifts" for a reason Sam can't fathom) and driving over mostly empty highways, but they made it. Sam doesn't know why Dean insisted they drive west, but Dean led and Sam is following, because everything in this world has changed, but that one thing has not. Sam will always follow after, wherever his brother goes. Hell. Heaven. Purgatory. And now San Diego.

The coastline is gray, as are most things now. The Wifts have sucked the color from the earth, a slow and melancholy leaching. Sam was the first to notice it. He'd seen it in the clouded ash of his brother's once-green eyes.

They exit the Impala slowly, each nursing their own aches, each feeling the cool, draining remnants of souls that belong nowhere and inhabit everywhere. Sam pulls Dean from the passenger seat and onto the beach, out along the sand. Dean leans regretfully into him, coughing small globs of blood into his shirt. He hopes that the fact that the blood comes out gray means Sammy doesn't see it.

The waves move differently than they used to. There is no rhythmic ebb and flow. Instead, each wave seems separated from the one beside it, crashing onto the sand at random intervals and sometimes staying where they land, never making their way back out to sea, frozen as a half-rolled, foaming lip of white.

A man stands on the beach, his long, tan coat swirling around his ankles in a breeze not created by wind, but by Wifts.

There is no room for the wind anymore.

Sam stiffens and pauses several feet away from the lone figure, wary. His gun is tucked inside his jeans, same as it has always been, but he doesn't know if he'll have the strength or the speed to pull the trigger in time. In time for what, he doesn't know.

"He's real?" Dean asks quietly, fingers reaching timidly towards the man. Sam nods, transfixed by the first human they've seen outside in a long time. Most people choose to remain indoors. They move only for food and other necessities, otherwise locked inside the smallest spaces they can find, the spaces that might hold the least amount of Wifts or bad energy or whatever explanation the world has given itself for the sudden impossibility of everyday routine, the inability to move more than thirty paces without keeling over, lungs screaming for air. There were all kinds of theories at first: Smog. Biological warfare. Alien interference.

The theories don't matter anymore. Only the consequences.

"Cas," Dean says, suddenly extracting himself from Sam's hold and heading straight for the man.

"Dean!" Sam yells, voice warbling as it catches inside a pocket of air occupied by a Wift. He goes after Dean, shoes filling with sand as his feet drag over it, pulling himself painstakingly through soul after soul. The man turns to face them.

It isn't Cas.

Dean freezes for a moment, then stumbles, makes an ugly noise when he goes down. The man reaches for him and can't connect, his hand apparently caught inside a soul. Sam gets there second, dropping to his knees and pulling his brother away from the stranger and into his lap, puffs of sand scattering all around them.

"Is he alright?" the man asks. A long, thick scar stretches from down the left side of his face to his chin, marring a pale, angular face. His left eye is clouded over, completely unseeing. Sam thinks the man's hair is lighter than Cas's, maybe blonde once, but it is graying along the edges now so he isn't sure. The man kneels in the sand beside Sam, leaving a bit of space between them, hands resting on his legs.

"M'fine," Dean gasps, pulling at Sam's shirtsleeve until he finds his air again. "S'fine."

"Sorry," Sam says, attention back on the stranger once he knows Dean can breathe. He helps Dean so that he's sitting upright not because he thinks it's a good idea, but because he knows Dean can't stand to be vulnerable. "Strange to see someone walking about. You caught us off guard."

The man smiles grimly. Nods. "Yes, it's a strange, dark new world we live in, isn't it?"

"Yes," Sam agrees.

"Empath, I see?" the man asks, gesturing to Dean. Dean wrinkles his nose in a question, and the man chuckles in response. "Means you're more susceptible to them. Easier for them to float around and pull you apart from the inside."

"You know about them?" Sam asks, gaze drifting along the empty beach that he knows is brimming with ghosts. "You can see them, too?"

The man nods, and Sam feels a spark of something ugly and angry in his chest. Something that isn't a Wift. He knows it's ridiculous, knows it's unfair and horrible, but the idea of Dean sharing something with this man makes him almost...jealous. Sam knows he's got it easy. Dean struggling for air, struggling to create words that are truly his? It's been a nightmare to watch. He can't imagine the energy it takes just for Dean to stay upright, the effort for him to still be sitting up in the sand right now, watching the scarred man with curious, searching gray eyes.

"I know you," Dean says. "I mean...kind of. Heard of you."

The man smirks at him, rubbing absently at his pant legs. "Oh, is that so?"

Sam eyes Dean questioningly, but Dean doesn't answer him. He answers the stranger. "Easier to see real p...people now, too. To see through."

"Alright," the man says, almost teasingly. It seems to take him very little effort to get his words out. "Who am I then?"

Dean tries to answer, then stops suddenly. His eyes glaze over, lips moving soundlessly as he falls back against Sam's chest. "Dean!" Sam yells, though he knows there's no point. Knows that Dean's mind is struggling for purchase as another Wift attempts to take control, to speak through his brother. He's seen it too many times.

"The sun was so bright," Dean mutters after a long moment, voice quivering and too low and not his own. "It used to be so bright. Now we…. now we…. now we…. can't. Can't. No light. Can't see the edges..."

"Dean," Sam urges, shaking Dean's shoulders, pulling him closer against his chest. "Come back. Come back, man."

The stranger watches with passive interest, and Sam hates him for it. Thinks about telling him to get the hell away from them, but before he can, Dean gasps a mouthful of his own, real air, as if he is emerging from those aimless, crashing waves.

"Sam?" he asks, trembling slightly. Sam finds his brother's eyes and nods, jaw clenched tight with worry.

"Poor soul," says the man with the scar, forehead wrinkling with what might be worry or pity. "Must be difficult to feel so much."

"How do you not?" Sam asks curiosity verging on anger again. Sometimes Sam feels as though anger is all he has left. He's angry with Heaven for letting itself crumble. Angry with the Wifts for the unassuming way they've spread across the earth. Angry with Cas for leaving them. Angry with Dean for being so damn affected by all of it. And angry with the man who still kneels in front of them on the gray San Diego shoreline, his movements light and unweighted in a way Sam can barely remember anymore. He bites at the inside of his cheek, staring at the man. "It seems like you don't feel them at all," he continues. "But you can still see them? How does that work?"

The man nods sheepishly, but Dean answers first.

"Narcis...Narcissus," he rasps. Sam stares down at him, half expecting his brother's eyes to be glazed over again. But Dean is looking right at the man in front of them, is already struggling to get to his feet. Sam grunts his surprise, immediately trying to help. The man reaches out to help, too, and the three of them make their way to their feet, clothes covered in a fine layer of white-gray sand. Sam shakes it from his pant legs. Dean just keeps staring at the man.

"Narcissus like...Greek myth Narcissus?" Sam asks. Dean nods. He is still shivering a little, but he is standing on his own and Sam lets him.

"Hardly a myth," the man says, raising the eyebrow not twisted by his scar.

"I don't understand," Sam says. A Wift shudders along his torso and the man, Narcissus, winces in practiced sympathy. He shrugs in response.

"I assume you know my story?" he asks.

Sam nods. "You fell in love with your own reflection. You sat by the edge of a spring and watched your own face for so long, you grew roots."

The man smiles, but there is a snarl to his lip. "Quite an oversimplification, but yes, I supposed that is the gist." He sighs, letting his gaze drift over the brothers and out to the beach beyond. "The part you do not know is that eventually, things changed. After a while, I grew restless. I could not stand to stare at my own face any longer, to feel nothing but empty, baseless love. So I ruined that reflection. And finally, I was able to turn away from it." The stranger runs a finger along the length of his scar and smiles wistfully, caught up in the past.

"I still don't understand," Sam says after a moment. "Why are you here? Can you...do you know how to fix this?" he gestures to the beach around them.

Narcissus wrinkles his nose, turning his attention unwillingly back to Sam. "I am here because there is nowhere else to be," he answers simply. "Here is the same as everywhere, now. I was born of the gods, so these souls are not strangers to me. I see them, but I cannot feel them. For so long, I only knew the love I had for myself. It seems that old habits are hard to break."

There is sadness in the man's gaze. He turns his attention to the water, watching the waves crash spastically onto the shore. "Your suffering now is a reflection of the very product of your souls, Sam and Dean Winchester. There is purity in a pain like that. We build walls around our hearts, but they cannot last forever. The higher those walls, the more you'll feel when they inevitably crash down around you."

"Don't…" Dean says, suddenly, reaching for the man's coat sleeve. But Narcissus is gone before the word has fully passed Dean's lips, dissipating into the cool, unmoving air around them. The brothers stare at each other for a long moment, and Sam shivers as another Wift brushes against his hair.

"Could he have helped?" Sam says, finally.

Dean shakes his head. "No. We should go."

"What about…?"

"Dad's not here. No one's here, Sammy."

The drive back to what used to be home takes even longer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ooOoOoOoo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DAY 243

Dean barely exists.

There are moments of clarity, moments where he can speak with a tongue all his own, but those moments are fewer and fewer as the days pass. Sam watches him with growing helplessness, sees him slipping through the cracks of himself, falling into the lives of so many hundreds of thousands of people who float and drift and glide along the walls of the bunker they can barely afford to leave anymore. Dean had insisted, for as long as he still could. Had made them move through the world of Wifts, searching for anyone they might know amongst the billions. Dean says he'd seen Genghis Khan from a distance, once, but Sam isn't sure of Dean's mind anymore. His words are sporadic, sentences held together by the thin strings of ghostly thoughts.

"I once held the H...H...Hope Diamond," he whispers. "It was only for a moment but my god! What a jewel. What a fine, fine, fine, fine thing to h...hold in this lifetime."

"Dean…" Sam says, trying to pull Dean up from where he's sagged against the kitchen cabinets, a half-drunk bottle of rum gripped in his right hand like it's the only thing that still matters. Sam knows it has to be close to the last bottle of liquor they have left. He doesn't want to know how much worse it will get when Dean can feel everything without even the slight numbing effects. This is bad enough. This is worse than Sam could ever picture already.

"I used to w...watch the stars," Dean mutters, taking another long pull from the bottle like an afterthought. "I thought I could see the future in their blinking little lights. I never. I never. I never saw a future like this."

"Dean…" Sam begs. He gives up on trying to move his brother, just slides down onto the floor beside him, pushing his way violently through a Wift so that their shoulders can touch.

"There's a dumpster in the...back of the a...alley where the rain doesn't reach," Dean says. There are tears glistening in his eyes, suddenly. They match the ones already falling from Sam's. "It's where I left her. I wasn't r...ready to be a m..m...mom…"

"Come back," Sam whispers, leaning closer into Dean, reaching for him and getting stuck with his hand halfway to Dean's cheek. He lets it drop, sighing with bone-deep exhaustion. "Come on back now, brother."

"Cas," Dean cries out suddenly, stiffening against his little brother. Sam jerks in surprise, breathing hard. He almost asks what Dean means, but then he sees the angel. Castiel stands just outside the kitchen, mouth set in a hard line. His clothes are ragged, his face etched with a human feebleness that Sam had never believed possible for a being like Cas. He shuffles toward them slowly, each step seeming to take more energy than he is capable of holding onto.

"Never thought I'd see home again," Dean says, eyes gone glassy again. "But I did. I m...made it back to my wife, my two sons, all grown up. Still, not sure I ever shook the w...war inside my h...head, though. Not sure I...not sure I ever really stopped seeing their faces, the hot sand, the ex…explosions that split you wide open, ear to ear like a gr...like a grin." He frowns, afraid now, hot tears finally leaking from his eyes. All Sam can do is watch, chin quivering. He barely notices when the angel finally crumples to the floor on Dean's other side, puffing out weak gasps. Dean is still talking, a million voices pouring out, one after the other.

"They took us in the night. They…. they took us in the night. I never saw my sister again."

"Three-hundred and forty-one. Saved three-hundred and forty-one lives in that OR. Not enough…"

"I painted ghosts. I painted horses and trees and sometimes ghosts, and now I am one…"

"I think I've forgotten my husband's face. I think it's getting blurry now…"

"How long until the mountains crumble? How much longer must we be here, doomed and wandering...?"

"Dean," Castiel says, pushing his own shoulder into Dean's the same way Sam is. "Dean, come back."

"Sometimes he doesn't," Sam whispers. "Sometimes it takes days."

He feels Dean shift against him again, glances back at his brother just in time to see the older man's eyes clear.

"Sam," Dean whispers, and suddenly he is smiling his own smile, an ancient, childlike wonderment shining out from his gray, gray eyes.

"Yeah Dean," Sam answers. "I'm here."

"Sammy…" says Dean, voice brimming with something.

"What is it? What is it, Dean?" Sam asks, pulling himself even closer against his brother's side.

"Cas did it."

There is a moment where Sam feels his heart stutter and stop inside his chest. Cas did it? Cas found a way to save them? But then reality catches up to hope. His eyes find the angel, slumped in defeat half against Dean, half against the kitchen cabinet at his back. And Castiel shakes his head, agonizingly slow. But the message is clear. The angel has saved no one. He has simply come back for the end, just as he said he would after he'd tried all he could. The pain in the angel's eyes is almost poignant, his failure seeping out from his skin like a perfume gone stale, coloring the air around it.

"It's okay, Cas," Sam whispers, suddenly out of breath and so, so tired. The weight against his chest that has become a constant since Heaven's demolition seems to increase tenfold, pushing deep into his ribs, pressing into every vein and blocking up his heart. "You...you said yourself there was no fixing this."

"But he did, Sammy," Dean says, still smiling too wide. "He fixed it." Sam watches his brother's gaze as it slides to a space beyond Castiel's head, a point on the wall that doesn't exist. Dean nods once, like a salute, at whatever it is he sees. And then his eyes slide closed, the whisper of a smile still pulling at his drooping mouth.

"Dean?" Sam says, trying to shift and move as much as he can against Dean, trying to keep him here. It takes considerable effort, but Dean finally opens his eyes again and finds his little brother's face, latches onto it with a determination born of nothing but sheer will. His eyes are full again, tears glistening at the edges of his eyelashes.

"Sammy," he says, the word like a sigh. "Cas found him. He's here. Dad's here."

Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts if you have a moment. I couldn't create a version of this story that made sense with Jack's survival (unless of course I wanted a happy ending...but who wants that, right?), and I kind of hate myself for it lol. Anyway, hope everybody's gearing up for the finale! I'll be posting a multi-chapter story after we've all recovered from it (so...never? haha. Just kidding, I'll probably post chapter 1 the week following the finale). Happy Monday!