"My Cas." Dean stroked the hair on a small, wool doll made to look like Castiel. A nurse had made it for him in an attempt to soothe the screaming at night when Dean was trying to sleep. "I'm sorry, Cas!" he would say, and "You were MY angel! Mine!"
It never stopped for Dean. The nightmares didn't go away.
But if anything, the small figure was somewhat a comfort... a reminder that it wasn't all just a dream. Cas had been in his life.
"Dean, sweetie, it's time for your meds." This was one of Dean's nurses in the Sioux Falls mental asylum. She was rather good looking with flowing blond hair and blue eyes, and... oh... blue eyes. Dean smiled – he hadn't touched one women in the last year. Had never so much as really blinked an eye at one. If he ever did smile at a pretty girl, she would always have blue eyes.
'Cause Cas had blue eyes.
"Thanks. Hey, uh... can I call my brother?" Sam lived in a home he built right where Bobby's old house was. He was the one who checked Dean into the asylum with a sad expression, and who now hunted only what came in the state.
Screw hunting. They had tried. They had fucking tried to save it, and look where it landed them.
"He called in yesterday and said he'd be gone for a week. He wanted me to reassure you though that he'd bring back some cherry pie for you."
"Great." Dean smiled, returning to stroking 'Cas's' hair. The nurse just smiled and walked away, leaving Dean to his thoughts.
But Dean didn't want to think. Thinking only brought on pain, and Dean was done with pain. He had long since given up the hope that Castiel would rise out of the lake he had disappeared into, and continue to be in Dean and Sam's life like it was no big deal.
But he never came back. And Dean was never the same again. He drank, he had nightmares... god, he had almost gone insane pleading to the sky for anything. Any angel to hear his cries.
The angels never answered. If Dean hadn't still gone on hunting, he might have thought they weren't real.
Dean still called out to the sky every night. He'd pray to God to stop abandoning him and come back. When no one behind him said, "Hello, Dean." he would grab Cas's trenchcoat and the small doll, and squeeze them tightly against his chest as he lay in bed because it was all he had left. Bobby was gone; Cas was gone; Sam could barely keep his marbles together; and now Dean was in an insane asylum with the only occasional visit from his brother.
It wasn't that Sam didn't care. Sam wanted to bring his brother back home and go on hunts together again, but Dean was just too far gone.
So he cooed at the small figure of the man he had called his best friend, and curled up against the couch in the small gathering room, smiling up at the sky.
"I know you can hear me."
I just wish there was something to be celebrated about.