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He feels it. He's not sure how; he's not an angel anymore, and there's so much running and gunfire going on he's not even sure how he had any time to notice it. But he feels it.

The moment Dean dies.

And something inside him breaks. He didn't think there was much left to break. But it hits him behind his ribs like a twig snapping, a bullet aimed straight at him, and a train ramming into him all at once.

There are no tears, no suspenseful break in the combat that those left alive of their rag-tag little group are still engaged in, no romantic prose that wax poetic about Dean's eyes or a love long lost. He knew better than that. Besides, Dean, or the old Dean, would've laughed if he thought otherwise. It did not mean he did not love Dean, he did, more than romantically, because that had always come later. Dean had become the sliver that entered his life in a way he did not understand at first, before he got swept up and carried away like he was caught in a slow tidal wave.

Before he knew it, Dean was all that he really knew in this now broken world, and after Sam, well, things became more complicated and more simple in one of the many nights that he was sure was blurred and seared into Dean's memory just like it was in his. It was what humans called an "on again, off again" sort of thing. They took what comfort they could in each other for years, had "domestic" fights like any old married couple, but it could never go beyond that, they could never let it go beyond that, or maybe they just weren't capable of it anymore, to love like proper human beings. But Dean could love him in the small ways, the ways that counted when it mattered, when he could get himself to feel anything beyond duty, responsibility, beyond the pain of losing his purpose in life, his brother, his son, and Castiel, well..Castiel could love him like the angel part of him would always would, fully and without reserve, and a lot of the times even when he didn't want to.

He stops firing for the barest moment, a stupid mistake seeing as he gets jumped by a demon taking all the advantage it can get out if his slipped up pause. He ends up on the ground with a demon's hand around his throat, snarling with a menacing smile right in his face like he knows exactly what made Cas stop for the briefest moment, exactly why his reason for fighting left him like his pills had suddenly stopped working, which was stupid, because they were still working, he could feel it. But for a moment, just a moment, and maybe just long enough, but for one blinding moment he was Castiel again, rage and fire and fury and love burning hotter than any sun. He flipped the demon, straddled its thighs which only triggered memories that did not belong anywhere near the creature under him, belonged in a motel room, an already scouted and cleared forest, a cabin, and he fired his gun straight into its face before quickly pushing himself up and diving over to the body of one of his fallen comrades a few feet away, grabbing the explosive he knew she kept in her jacket pocket.

He always did like and dislike Rita, she reminded him so much of Dean.

He feels the demon dive onto his back, tear at his clothes and skin in an almost rabid assault, like it knows exactly what he's doing. He feels the stolen breath of the body its in before he hears the words, scratched across his ear almost seductively.

"You die here angel."

It's mocking, he hears the sarcasm, but all he can do is smirk, because for once a demon isn't lying, and for the first time in years, he is an angel; he is Castiel. He's not sure where angels go when they die, maybe they don't go anywhere, maybe they just stop existing like a light that's been extinguished, and considering he's not even that anymore he has no idea where he'll end up, but he doesn't really mind. His only regret, or maybe the only thing that niggles at him is that he won't be seeing Dean again, that's the only thing that twists his smirk down at the sides.

He pulls the pin on the grenade and watches everything go up in white, but all he sees is green.

Maybe there was some waxed poetry after all. Dean would laugh if he knew.

–

"Cas."

There's a voice somewhere, just to his right. It's soft, like the bed he can feel under him. The smell of apple-cinnamon in the air, the sounds of birds just beyond what he's sure is a ray of sunlight playing over his chest from a window that's also to his right. He can hear the vague sounds of someone puttering around down in a kitchen, probably making the pie he smells, Dean's favorite, and he can hear a sorely missed voice, Sam, laughing in the backyard with another voice lost long ago, Jessica, and the sound of a dog barking.

"Cas."

His eyes snap open. The first thing he sees as a soul, like the last thing he saw as a man, is green. And for the first time in much, much too long, there's a genuine smile on Dean's face, no longer tired, or worn, or ragged. And for the first time in maybe just as long, one just as genuine slowly spreads across his own face.

"Hello Dean."

"Welcome home, Cas."