When he began to break, the first thing you noticed is that he didn't smile any more.
Not that there was a lot to smile about those days, but for so long, he would smile at little things even in the bad times. Pie. An old favorite song on the radio. Endless miles of asphalt from behind the wheel of his Baby. Sam's little quirks. Human nuances you didn't understand.
But now Sam is gone and pie is just food and music is just background noise and long drives are just what keep him from getting the job done as quickly as he would like and your lack of comprehension seems to annoy him more than anything.
He doesn't know it, but you actually study pop culture references. You try to understand the passing references he makes unthinkingly, because he has enough difficulty in his life right now without you adding to it by making him explain things he says.
The demon warfare escalates. They're picking off hunters at an alarming rate. The surviving hunters establish a safe haven at Camp Chitaqua, a place once operated as a summer camp for wealthy children by Garth's parents. A few hunters live there year round, but it becomes a base camp for the remaining warriors to hide, to rest, to collect or exchange information, or just to draw strength from the fact that others like them were still alive and fighting.
Rufus stayed a few days at the camp once, then left on a hunt and was never heard from again. A check of all of his safe houses and hideouts turned up no clue to his whereabouts and all of his cell phones were disconnected over the next few months for non-payment. Everyone presumed he was dead, but no one spoke the words aloud.
Dean becomes more like a machine and less like a man. He hunts and kills demons without thought or feeling for the humans who may still be trapped inside.
What bothers you is that it doesn't bother him. He's locked away the part of himself that misses his brother so desperately, and along with it, so much of what makes him human.
You stay by his side as much as you can, no matter how much trouble it gets you into with Heaven, because when he's alone, he spends way too much time drinking and staring at the empty bed where Sam should be.
You've handed him a phone a dozen times, pleading "Just call him." A dozen times Dean refused, sometimes sadly laying the phone on the bed beside him, sometimes flinging it across the room to shatter against the wall and spray plastic shrapnel at you. His argument is always the same. "If we're together, those feathered dicks will find a way to use us against each other."
You just nod and think to yourself that Dean and Sam are being used against each other even more effectively apart, but you never say it because you know he won't believe you.
You pray for Sam's strength. You pray that he will find a way to defeat Lucifer, or at least to keep saying no. You pray for him because he's the brother you've chosen for yourself, the brother you chose over your heavenly brothers. But even more so, you pray for him so that you don't have to hold Dean together when Sam falls.
Because Dean is more than your brother. Dean is everything.
You lost Jo and Ellen and Roger the week before Thanksgiving 2010. They took down a band of demons in Texas, and then died when their motel exploded that night. The authorities said it was a gas leak and didn't find anything odd about all the sulfur all over the wreckage.
You help Dean steal the bodies from the morgue and bring them back to South Dakota in Bobby's truck. You can only hope they were tagged correctly, because Dean refuses to open the body bags to make sure you got the right corpses. Dean builds the pyre alone, and when he turns to you for the lighter you see in his eyes another piece of his heart has broken. The three of you give them a proper hunters' sendoff and then go in the house and drink silently. Bobby goes to bed around midnight. You haul Dean upstairs while he's still able to walk with your help. You put him on the bed, helping him strip off his shoes and jeans because his hands are too uncoordinated to do it himself.
He lays facedown, and just when you think he's asleep and start to move away, he speaks.
"Don't die, Cas."
You smile in the darkness, having just burned and buried three of the very few friends you have, knowing that everything around you is going to get worse before it gets better, because he has come as close as he ever will to telling you he loves you.
"I won't." you answer as you sit and watch him sleep.
It's the spring of 2011 when the call comes from Bobby. "They're here." You and Dean are only just arrived in town, having gone for supplies, but you know in that moment the demons have been watching, just waiting for the two of you to leave and leave Bobby alone. There's no time to drive back to the house, so you tell Dean to pull over and you touch his forehead as soon as the car is in park and the two of you are flashed back to the house in a heartbeat.
It's already too late. The demons are gone, but so is Bobby. Only a bullet-riddled empty vessel remains, sprawled in the floor where his wheelchair overturned. Dean screams for his father figure, begging the man to wake up, pressing his hands against the wounds in a vain effort to stop the blood that is no longer flowing.
He looks up at you, and you see something else has broken behind his eyes. The color hasn't changed, they're still the same soft green of the garden ferns in that perpetual Tuesday afternoon in Heaven, but somehow they're still more fractured, more damaged than they were this morning.
You reach out your hand, intending to resurrect the man you've come to care for, as you've come to care for all of Dean's ragtag family. You want Bobby healthy and whole, because it will mean that Dean is a step closer to whole as well.
"No." He whispers and you look at him, perplexed. "He's better off now. He hated being in that chair. He's not in any more pain. And he's not waiting for Sammy to come home any more."
You nod, understanding what Dean is saying without words, that he won't take peace from Bobby, the kind of peace Dean has long despaired of ever finding for himself. That part of Dean wishes he wasn't in pain and waiting for Sammy to come home. You respect his request in the matter, and help build the funeral pyre in the back yard.
Neither of you can bring yourselves to stay in the house any longer, so you pack a bag for each of you while he watches the fire. You take an old car from Bobby's back into town and find a motel for the night. You try to get him to eat, but he only wants to drink, only wants to dull the pain and forget the horror and numb the raw nerves and quiet the voices in his head that condemn him for Bobby's death.
Just when you think he's nearly drunken himself into oblivion, he looks up at you with haunted eyes.
"I'm all alone now." he whispers, and you know that to him, being alone is the most horrible thing he can imagine.
"No, you've still got me." you assure him.
"I've still got you for now." he nods.
"I won't leave." you promise, and even though he nods again, you know he doesn't believe you, because everyone leaves him.
You kneel down to take off his boots, and then press him down onto the bed. You lay beside him, both of you fully clothed except for your shoes. You wrap your arms around him and hold him close. He buries his face in your shirt and you pretend you don't feel the tears soaking through to your skin. He doesn't make a sound, but his body shudders and shakes and you hold him closer as if you can hold the broken pieces together and keep him from shattering completely from the inside out.
You know it's only because he's drunk that he allows you to soothe him, but you'll take whatever scraps you can get. He finally cries himself to sleep, and you continue to hold him tightly, hoping that subconsciously he can take comfort from your nearness as you are taking from his.
The next morning, he shoves you away and stomps to the shower, slamming the door hard enough to shake the whole room. When he comes out half an hour later, he doesn't look you in the eye, just asks if you're ready to go. He hands you the keys to the Dodge he drove last night, telling you that he will follow you to take it back to Bobby's house. You don't question why he thinks he needs to return a car he borrowed from a dead man, you just accept that he does because it's just the way Dean is and nod and watch him get into Baby.
The two of you drive all day and into the night to get back to Camp Chitaqua. Garth approaches sadly and tries to hug Dean, who punches him. You carry the two duffles into a vacant cabin while Dean chugs bourbon from the bottle next to the rear fender of the car.
You return to find him on the hood of the car, staring at the stars. You sit beside him for a few moments, until he tells you that he really just wants to be alone right now.
You ask if he'll be all right, and he says he will, so you go back in the cabin and leave him to his thoughts.
Half an hour later, the door of the cabin opens and someone crashes into the chair near the door. You yank open the bedroom door in time to see Dean and that woman Donna who had arrived last week with Jackson and Pruitt attached at the lips, drunkenly stumbling into the other bedroom. They close their door, and you close yours, but it's not enough to block the sounds of their mating. You realize that Dean didn't really want to be alone, he just didn't want your company, and you lie on the bed, staring at the ceiling, and pretend that your heart isn't breaking.
The next day, he asks if you're ready to return to hunting. Of course you are, you're ready to do anything that involves being with him, and especially if the two of you can be alone in the car. You don't have to talk, you don't have to think, you can just be, and that's the best you can probably hope for with him, so you'll take it.
The two of you go back on the road, ganking demons and searching for the Colt or a way to stop Lucifer. Chitaqua is your home base now, as Dean refuses to set foot in Bobby's house again. Garth and Yager go there to get some of Bobby's research material and bring it back to the camp. Dean only reads those books when he's drinking, the ones that still smell faintly of whiskey and Old Spice.
The others in the camp begin to look more and more to Dean as their leader. He doesn't want to be. He still sees himself as the grunt rather than the general, but even he has to admit he is the best hunter of the group. He spends more time at base training the others and planning raids to rescue survivors, and less on the road on his own missions.
It's a little over two years after Sam left before the inevitable finally happens. Sam says yes to Lucifer in Detroit on November 2, 2011. Some might have thought the date ironic, but you know it wasn't. You know Lucifer engineered the timing just to twist the knife in Dean's heart one extra turn.
Part of you is now thankful that Bobby has been gone seven months. If he had still been alive, you fear that Sam's fall may have killed the old man, and that would leave Dean dealing with both losses at once.
Dean drinks to the point he throws up. You didn't even realize alcohol could affect him that much any more. You watch him from the shadows, desperately trying to listen to the condemnation he heaps on himself, how he believes he has failed, over the constant buzzing in your head of angels shouting at one another. They're begging you to come home, but you can't leave him, especially not like this.
He looks at you, tears falling from his eyes like pieces of his broken heart. "I was supposed to protect him. Or I was supposed to kill him." he says. "I couldn't do it. The world is ending and it's all my fault."
"It's not." You tell him, the words sounding hollow to both of you. "You're one man. The burden should never have been placed on you. Not by your father, and not by my father."
"But it was." He argues, taking another swig of scotch from the bottle. "It was all on me, and I screwed up, Cas."
You reach out and touch his forehead, and then have to move quickly to catch him as he slumps forward into your arms. You lift him up easily, and carry him to the bed. You lay him down, tuck a pillow under his head, and pull up a blanket to cover him. Then you lie beside him and watch him sleep.
You wish that you could heal the pain in his heart, but all you can do is to give him this one night of peaceful sleep.
Because the war is begun in earnest now and you don't know when he will get another one.
The buzzing in your head increases to a roar. Your brothers and sisters are pleading with you to come home. You choose not to listen to them. You won't leave his side. You can't leave him, can't chance the possibility that he will wake alone after the night he's had.
The following morning when you wake up, there is only silence in your head. There are no more angel voices. You realize what has happened a fraction of a second after you realize that you've been asleep. They've given up the fight, decided to let Lucifer have Earth and lock themselves away in Heaven. They begged you to come to them, and because you didn't come when they asked, now you can never go back. You're cut off from your home and your family, but the consolation is that you still have Dean.
You're human now. Your powers evaporated the moment the gates of Heaven closed. You have to eat, sleep, and use the bathroom. You can't even summon enough mojo to slam the door from across the room.
If there's any consolation to losing your grace, it's the fact that the very last time you used your power was for Dean.
He is more upset than you are that you've been cut off from Heaven. You lie to him, telling him that you were thrown away as much as the human race. If he knew the truth, that you could have gone home but you chose to stay with him, he would blame himself for that too.
He's taken on enough failures as it is. You refuse to let him drown himself with any more.
Dean teaches you to shoot and hand to hand combat. Somewhere along the line, the thought of taking a human life, of banishing a soul to Hell, loses the horror value it once held.
When the word comes three months later that the town of Cicero, Indiana has been overrun with demons, you know what's happened. Lucifer and his army have unleashed the Croatoan virus.
And you know they've chosen that location to begin just to hurt Dean.
The two of you take off alone because he won't wait long enough to assemble a team. You help him load the trunk of the Impala with all the shotguns and salt you can round up on a moment's notice, and ride nearly 700 miles trying not to look at the speedometer, because the one time you did it was pegged at 120. The trip should have taken eleven hours, but you made it to Lisa's front door in just under eight.
This would have been so much easier if you still had your grace, if you could have just touched Dean and sent him to Indiana. You wouldn't have had to deal with Dean grinding his jaw the whole trip.
You might have arrived in time to save Lisa.
Instead you found her already turned. She had her son cornered in the living room, advancing on him with a knife, blood caked on her face, her eyes solid black.
The child whimpered, shouting to his mother to please snap out of it, please don't hurt me, Mom I love you.
You took one look at the boy and you saw the truth.
You knew instantly that this woman had lied to Dean when she said Ben was not his child. You saw the smaller version of Dean's mouth, his full lips, his nose except not crooked like Dean's because Ben's has never been broken. Anyone could have seen those things, but you weren't anyone.
You used to be an angel and now you're cut off from Heaven and don't have your powers any more, but you still know things and see things that mortals cannot process.
You can see the traces of Dean's soul in this boy.
His son.
In the space of a blink of an eye, less than a heartbeat, you love this child. He is part of the man you went to Hell for. The man you would die for without hesitation.
You used to be an angel and now you're cut off from Heaven, but the millenia of angel instincts take over in an instant. You dive across the room with a roar, throwing yourself between the woman and the boy, covering him with your body and look up at her, unafraid of what she is or what she can do. You wait for her to be close enough to smite her, even if you can't do it with you bare hands any more.
Dean shouts her name and she turns toward him, raising the knife above her head in preparation to kill the man who was once her lover, now someone she doesn't even remember.
Dean raises the gun and no one but you would have realized that he held it just a split second too long before firing. He hesitated to kill her, but he did, a clean shot between the eyes that splattered blood and brain matter onto your coat.
You look up at Dean and see him looking at Lisa's fallen form, and you realize that something else has just broken in him. His heart has shattered yet again, and you wonder how much more he can take before he loses himself completely.
In the next moment he's kneeling front of you, gently moving you aside to get to the boy who is still screaming.
"Ben," he says softly. "Ben, it's me, Dean. I've got you. I won't let anyone hurt you."
The child nods and pitches forward into Dean's chest, and suddenly there's a gun in your hands and while Dean lifts the boy to his feet you pause to look down into her sightless brown eyes, and then you're covering Dean as he half-carries, half-drags his son to the car.
For the first time, Dean hands you the keys to his Baby, and you drive them away with Dean and Ben huddled in the back seat. You make it as far as Missouri before you have to stop to rest. Dean's not in any shape to drive either, so the three of you end up in a motel room, barely able to keep your eyes open long enough to choke down lukewarm burgers and soggy fries, not that anyone tasted the food anyway.
Ben is still blank-eyed and pale, so after an internal monologue that you can almost hear just because you know him so well, Dean hands him a shot of bourbon. He coughs and splutters but he manages to choke it down and looks to Dean for approval.
Within minutes he's yawning so Dean directs him to one of the beds. After he falls asleep, Dean looks at you and simply says "Thank you."
You smile and say "That's why I'm here."
There's so much more behind his eyes that he'll never say. But you see it, you know it's there, and for you, it's enough. The two of you sit there for an awkward moment before you both agree that you need to sleep because it's a long drive tomorrow.
You burn the trenchcoat in the dumpster behind the motel the following morning because you're never going to get the stains out and neither Dean nor Ben needs the reminder.
You get back to camp and move the man-child into the cabin with the two of you. You and Dean wall off part of the main room to make a third bedroom. Ben is hurt and afraid and angry, and all of those things mean he needs Dean. Dean needs him just as much, takes care of him as he once took care of Sam, and at some moments, it almost seems as if Ben has healed a few of the cracks in Dean's shattered heart.
Dean smiled one day at something funny Ben said, and you feel as if maybe one or two of the cracks in your heart has sealed as well. Dean has spent so many years feeling as if he didn't deserve anyone's love that seeing him accept love from anyone is like sunshine on your soul.
You just wish he would accept love from you as well.
Weeks go by and the Croatoan virus spreads across the country. The media reports "pockets of activity" but both of you know they're trying to prevent a widespread public panic.
When you hear that the town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri has been infested, you realize where the demons are headed next.
"They're after Chuck." You tell Dean. "With the archangels, all of the angels gone, he has no one to protect him."
You load up a group of six and head out, thankful that Chuck is less than 250 miles away. The prophet is still safe when you arrive, and agrees to come along without a fuss.
But fifty miles away, your convoy of three vehicles runs into an ambush. The Crotes cut down a tree to fall across the road, and before you could turn around, dropped another behind you. There were eleven of them and seven of you, not withstanding the fact Chuck barely knew which end of the gun to aim.
All eleven Crotes are dispatched within minutes, but the cost is high. Reggie was killed outright. One of the trucks was destroyed. And Garth was wounded.
You hook chains to one of the enormous trees and between Baby and Jackson's truck you manage to pull it enough to clear the road. Chuck and Garth get loaded up in the backseat of the car and Yager into the front seat of the truck with Jackson and Tim, Reggie's body in the back.
Fifty miles before you get back to camp, Garth asks Dean to stop the car. The four of you get out, and stare at the scrawny man who is now panting and shaking.
"I'm infected." He announces, and hands his gun to Dean. "45 hollow point between the eyes. I won't feel a thing."
Dean shook his head.
"Either you do it, or I'll have to." Garth smiled sadly.
Chuck walks around behind Dean and places his hand on the leader's shoulder, murmuring words of encouragement. Garth hugs each of you, and asks you to tell Ben goodbye for him.
Dean shakes his head again, with a sidelong look at you. "I really wish you had some mojo right now." he mutters.
You do too.
He raises the gun and fires. Garth falls to the ground still smiling.
Dean didn't smile again for a very, very long time. Something else broke behind his eyes that day.
You return to the camp and Ben is the first one out to meet the group. He hugs Dean and you, then looks around and realizes two are missing.
Dean goes into machine mode, and informs Chuck he is now in charge of inventorying supplies, which before today was Garth's job. He walks away calling orders over his shoulder.
You see the same fractures begin behind Ben's eyes, and your heart hurts for both of your Winchester men.
That was the night you were first introduced to drugs, ironically, by Dean. Reggie and Tim had been known to smoke weed from time to time, and had taken to cultivating the plant on the camp's vast acreage. After putting Ben to bed, Dean drank about half a dozen shots, then wandered out the door, calling over his shoulder that he would be back.
He returns half an hour later with something you'd never seen but somehow recognize immediately. He lights the joint, takes a long drag, and offers it to you. You aren't really sure about this, but you are sure that whatever he's into, whatever cliff he's about to jump off, you're right there with him. You take the joint from his hand and imitate the action he just performed. He attempts a smile, but it comes out as an awkward, painful looking grimace.
"To Reggie." He offers.
"And Garth." You answer, gently touching the bourbon bottle you're somehow still holding to the blunt in his hand.
"Yeah," he nods, taking another drag, then swapping off, handing you the weed while he takes another swig of the Jim Beam.
By the time the lopsided little cigarette has been smoked down as far as possible, you feel free. It's not the same feeling as when you were celestial, but somehow you feel that you are outside your human form, this confining mortal body. You look over at Dean, who's more relaxed than you've seen him since long before Sam left.
"You need to get some sleep." You nag.
He shakes his head, believing sleep won't come. So you sit beside him on the couch as he continues to drink, and eventually his movements become uncoordinated and his eyes bleary.
You tug his head toward your shoulder. "Rest." You tell him. "I've got you."
"Angels watching over me." He slurs. "It was always you, wasn't it?"
"It always will be." You promise as you tuck his head against your neck and press your lips to his hair.
The boy turns thirteen and his voice cracks and he becomes all knees and elbows in a lanky form that he doesn't quite fit yet. But you know one day he's going to be tall and strong like his father. As much as he wishes he didn't have to do this, that Ben could just be a normal kid and worry about his math test and whether he's going to make the baseball team, Dean trains him to be a hunter. Within months, the kid is easily one of the best there.
It's in his blood.
You somehow never got around to telling Dean, but he knew anyway. One day as the two of you watched Ben hit the bullseye with every bullet in the gun, Dean looks at you and says "He's mine."
You just nod, because you already knew, but even if he hadn't been, if the child wasn't biologically Dean's son, you would have loved him anyway.
The three of you become a family, Ben and his two fathers. He starts to call Dean Dad and calls you Cas, but that's fine because in your heart he's as much yours as he is Dean's child. It's a far cry from the family any of you should have, but it holds the three of you together when the Croatoan virus continues to spread and Lucifer continues to make more demons and the world crumbles outside the walls of your little camp.
The only hitch is that Dean continues to fuck his way through the female population of the camp. He doesn't bring them home anymore. He won't have them in front of Ben.
But late at night he slips out of the cabin and you know where he's going. You try to sleep but mostly you lie awake and watch the clock. Sometimes he comes home in a couple hours, but sometimes he creeps in at dawn. You don't say anything because you know he doesn't see you in that way, and you're really not sure whether you see him that way, or if you're just thinking you do because you don't want him going to those women.
Either way it hurts, and you're not familiar with this human emotion of jealousy and don't quite know what to do with it. So you start doing what you've seen Dean do when he has emotions he can't or won't deal with. You drink. And sometimes you smoke pot, and it makes you not quite hurt so much that Dean has left you alone again, that he doesn't love you the way you love him.
Dean lets Ben come for a hunt for the first time that summer. The three of you go together, and Ben kills his first demon. At first, when you see Ben grab the demon and stab her with what Dean still calls Ruby's knife, you find it ironic that his fighting style is more like Sam than Dean. But the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. Dean did train them both.
Ben comes along on most hunts after that, but not all, not the more dangerous ones, and sometimes when he does come, you see the worry in Dean's eyes as he says yes.
Summer turns to autumn and autumn turns to winter and Christmas comes and goes and Dean's birthday is coming soon.
Tim and Yager trap a demon who gives them some information about the last known whereabouts of Crowley, who as far as anyone knows, still has the Colt.
But the intel came from a demon and demons are not to be trusted, so the three of you go on a reconnaissance mission. The tip turns out to be a bust, as the hideout is abandoned at least a week before you get there. Dean is disappointed, and Ben is disappointed because of the fact Dean is disappointed. So even though it's accepted that you ride shotgun and Ben gets the backseat, you offer to let him sit up front and he plunders through the shoebox of cassette tapes looking for AC/DC. He and Dean sing along with the music and Dean smiles at him and then looks in the rearview and smiles at you and for that one instant, it was a perfect moment, just your little family of three riding in Baby. When he looks forward again suddenly Sam is standing in the middle of the road. Dean instinctively slams on brakes so hard he would later find that he had fractured his leg and yanked the wheel to the left desperately trying to avoid hitting his brother. You scream out no, it's a trap, it's a trick, it's not really Sam, but your voice is drowned out by the squeal of brakes and the scream of tires against asphalt and then the groan of metal as the old car leaves the ground and begins to roll across the roadway.
Everything seems to happen in slow motion as the windshield shatters and the steering column snaps and cassette tapes go everywhere and Ben's Coke flies past your head. You hear Dean shout Ben's name as his son disappears through the window that you're not sure whether it was open or broken.
Finally everything stops and the car is upside down but not laying flat on the roof and you're coughing on dust and tire smoke and the pain in your shoulder tells you that something is broken or at least dislocated. You look over at Dean and find that he's pretty much in the same shape you are. You're both lying on the roof of the car and Dean is trying to open the driver's door but it's stuck. You scoot over there and kick the door with both feet as he pulls the handle and it comes off the hinges to rock back and forth on the pavement. The two of you manage to crawl out and stumble to your feet. Dean shouts for Ben but is met by silence. You walk around the back bumper and you find why the car is not laying flat.
Because it's lying on Ben.
Your heart stops for a moment, because you know Ben's has. His brown eyes are wide and sightless, reminding you of the same eyes in his mother less than a year ago. Dean limps around the front end of the car and sees his son and your eyes meet his and you know that he knows. He's seen death too many times, and he knows Ben is beyond help.
For the first time, you regret the loss of your grace. You would give anything to be able to fix this. You would sell your soul, or whatever your grace has become, to bring Ben back.
Because he's your son just like he's Dean's and he's part of Dean and you can't imagine life without him.
But even more so, because you know what this loss is going to do to Dean.
You lean your weight against the car as much as you can, and it's enough for Dean to pull your child's broken body out from beneath.
Dean kneels in the roadway and cradles Ben in his arms and cries. You kneel beside him and put your arms around both of them and are surprised to realize that you are crying too. It's the first time your human form has ever done this.
The three of you are on the road leading to the camp and there's no traffic because the only cars that would pass would be going to or from the camp. You're glad of that fact, glad that you and Dean can be here with Ben without strangers coming and trying to take your boy from your arms. Dean might kill someone if they tried to take Ben from him.
He cries until he has no tears left, and then he looks to the sky and shouts.
"Yes, Michael!" He screams, his voice hoarse. "YES! You can have me! Bring Ben back and leave him with Castiel, and you can have me!"
The ache in your heart intensifies in that moment, because you know he means it. That he would sacrifice himself to bring his beloved child back to life, and that he trusts you with the most important person in his world.
And you hurt because you know the angels aren't listening. They've given up on Earth and the humans and they're not coming back. There will never be a showdown between Michael and Lucifer, because Michael decided it wasn't worth his effort.
He shouts until his voice is exhausted and can barely be heard.
No one ever answers.
You finally pull out the walkie-talkie and call Chuck. Two vehicles of help arrive, and Ben is taken back to the camp cradled in Dean's arms as if he were just asleep. Chuck cries. Even Tim and Yager are biting their lips and dabbing surreptitiously at their eyes. Dean carries him in and lays him on his bed. He gently washes away all the dirt and the blood, and dresses Ben in clean clothes. He sits by the bed all night, drinking beer at first and whiskey later, several times shouting for Michael, or Zachariah, or Gabriel, or Balthazar, or even Lucifer himself once.
None of the angels answer.
You realize for the first time that you have no idea what's become of any of your brothers other than Lucifer. You don't know if Gabriel or Balthazar heeded the call to return home, or if they have been cut off as well. You decide you kind of hope that they rebelled and did not return to Heaven. Even if they aren't with you, it's still a comforting thought that they're out in this world somewhere.
That you're not the only fallen angel on Earth.
You sit with Dean all night, because you can't leave him, and because this is the last time the two of you will ever have with Ben. You hold the hand that is cold now, and try to memorize his face, trying to remember it this morning, because he looks so much younger now, like when he first came here eleven months ago before he had to grow up so fast, and because there's an ugly purple knot on the side of his head to remind you that he's not sleeping. He will never wake up. You tell Ben how much you love him, all the things he did that made your proud, how much you're going to miss him, and how honored you were to be part of his life. Dean just continues to drink.
Yager and Chuck come to check on you in the morning, the only two souls in camp brave enough to come into that cabin. Dean just tells them to leave. You walk them out, promising that the two of you will be fine.
You come back and kneel beside Dean, wrapping your arms around him. The tears start again, despite the fact you were sure you didn't have any left.
"It's time to let him go." You whisper.
He nods, not angry at you, because he knows how much you love Ben too.
Dean breaks protocol. He refuses to burn his son's body. You help him as best you can with your bandaged shoulder that's been put back in place to build a casket from the lumber you can find, line it with the blanket from his bed, and gently place Ben inside. He's buried behind the cabin, in the shade of the old oak tree with the rope swing where he would play during the rare moments he got to be a kid.
Dean hikes out into the wilderness alone afterwards. You leave him be for a few hours, and then walk out to find him sitting on a boulder, shouting again to the angels yes, take me, give my son back.
You gently tell him that the angels are gone. They're not listening any more. You take his hand and lead him back to the cabin as the sun begins to set.
He polishes off an entire bottle of scotch in less than two hours. You have a few drinks yourself from an open bottle of whiskey that was in the kitchen.
He suddenly turns to you and says "It should have been you."
You know he doesn't mean it, that it's the grief and the alcohol talking, but hearing the words breaks your heart anyway.
"You always rode shotgun, but you put Ben in the front seat this time. You should have been the one who went out the window! You should be the one who's dead, not him!"
"Dean."
You stand and he does as well. Before you know what has happened, he's slammed you against the wall. His fist connects with your jaw.
"I hate you." he growls.
You don't know why it happened later. Maybe it was your human body's unconscious reaction to being attacked. Maybe your subconscious was trying to snap him out of his rage. You hit him back, sending him sprawling on the floor on his ass.
He lunges forward immediately, knocking your legs from under you. You both roll around in the floor for a few minutes, throwing punches that didn't always connect where you intended. You finally break apart, pulling yourself up on the table while he pulls himself to his feet against the frame of your bedroom door.
Both of you stare at one another, chests heaving, wariness in Dean's eyes. Your lip is bleeding as is his nose, which is probably broken again.
"I wish it was me!" You shout. "I wish I could trade places and give Ben back to you! I wish I still had mojo and could raise him! But I can't, and I don't, and you're a son of a bitch for not realizing you're not the only one hurting here!"
Dean's mouth dropped open for a minute, and then he was shaking his head and the light caught and reflected all the broken pieces of his heart and the tears shimmering in his eyes and you were staggering forward, cupping his face in your hands.
"I'm not your enemy, Dean." You rasp out. "I don't deserve this. Ben was my child too."
His eyes harden as he swiftly and efficiently suppresses his emotions as he always does. Your anger swells again, and your hands move down from his cheeks to his shoulders and you shove him backwards against the door. Your forearm is across his throat, pinning him in place, as your other arm reaches back, hand curling into a fist to sink into his cold, hard face.
Then suddenly his lips are against yours and you're not sure which one of you moved toward the other, but mouths are grinding and teeth are clashing and his tongue is in your mouth and instead of your fist finding his mouth, it bunches in the front of his shirt. His hands are in your hair and he pushes you backwards but he's moving with you and a moment later you're both on the bed, lying sideways across. Your hands manage to shove his unbuttoned shirt aside and pull up his tee shirt as his hands, more impatient, yank the front of your shirt, sending buttons raining across the room. He hisses the first time your bare skin meets and you're starting to feel lightheaded and wonder if you are lacking oxygen, if you should stop and breathe properly for a moment, but when you move your head back, his mouth moves to your throat and you lose the ability to breathe properly all over again. His name leaves your lips as something between a prayer and a groan and your hands which seem to have developed their own free will are cupping his ass and pressing his groin against yours and he growls and pushes you back enough to get his hands between you and fumble with his belt. You reach to help him and as soon as his jeans are unfastened, his pushes your hands toward your own waistband. You struggle to get your jeans off as quickly as possible while he crawls over and grabs the gun oil off the nightstand.
Losing your virginity is rough and painful, and as you would learn later, could have been handled much better if either of you had known what you were doing, how you should have been prepared properly. But at the moment, both the pain and the physical pleasure are simply footnotes to the love in your heart as you give yourself to him. Afterwards he lays on his back with his arm over his eyes as if he can't bear to face what you've done.
So you draw on what you saw the babysitter do to the pizza man, and slide down to pleasure him with your hands and your mouth until his hips are moving of their own accord and he's whining your name so you pause long enough to slick both of you with the gun oil again and take him inside you. You ride him and watch his face and a moment before he throws his head back and groans out his release, his eyes meet yours and at that instant it's as if your souls touch and you understand the difference between sex and making love and you know that if you were to die tonight, this moment made everything worth it.
You fall asleep spooned against his back but wake up alone. Not only is Dean not in the bed, he's not even in the cabin. You find him with Yager and Tim and Brody planning a raid to round up survivors in Oklahoma City. He barely glances at you when you walk in. He proceeds to spend the rest of the day avoiding you. You're not surprised. You put in a few appearances during the day, but spend most of it alone in the cabin because walking is uncomfortable and sitting normally in public is downright painful.
Someone, you aren't even sure who, tows Baby back to Chitaqua. You cover it with a tarp, not wanting Dean to have to see it, but that night after dark you find yourself laying on the blue plastic covered hood, thinking of miles and years spent with Dean and sometimes Sam and sometimes Ben in this car, and mourning for the fact you know that this time, Dean won't fix her.
He doesn't come back to the cabin that night. He stays with Tammy.
Again, you're not surprised.
You look at the clock and it's 11:11 and even though you know it's a silly human superstition, you make a wish. You wish that one day, he will see that at the same moment you put your handprint on his shoulder when you gripped him tight and raised him from Perdition, he placed his own handprint on your heart. You wish that one day he would see what's right in front of him, that you will never leave him. That you will always be by his side, in whatever capacity he needs - friend, brother, protector, lover, follower, or companion - for the rest of his life. You wish that it would matter to him. You wish that you would matter to him as much as he matters to you.
The next morning when everyone is loading up to go to Oklahoma City, he takes one look at you not walking right and looks away.
"Cas, you're staying here."
Everyone turns to him in surprise, you more than anyone. He's never been a mission without you by his side since the two of you arrived at camp.
"He hurt his shoulder in the wreck and he hurt his back digging the grave." Dean lies to the others. "He's still hurting. I'm not taking a man who's not 100 percent into a hot zone to get killed."
Everyone else nods, satisfied with his explanation.
"Dean."
You hope he hears the plea in your voice to look at him. Even if he does, he doesn't do it.
"I'll talk to you later, Cas. Got work to do now."
You go back to the cabin, knowing you're dismissed.
You don't come out when the expedition returns. You know you're being childish, but you heard Dean's voice and peeked out the window to see that he wasn't hurt, and that everyone else seemed to be accounted for, so you stay in the cabin and wait for him to come. You know there is actually little to no chance of the two of you talking about what's gone on or is going on, but you stay put anyway.
He shocks you, though, by coming to the cabin and actually talking. Even more by what he had to say. You had expected denial and for him to bury his head in the sand. You never expected this.
"Look, we picked up a family of survivors today. Husband, wife, and four kids. They need this cabin. It's the only one big enough for them. I'll move into the one next to Tammy, and you can have the one beside it."
It took a moment for your brain to catch up with what he was saying.
"You don't want to live together any more?"
"There's no reason for it." Dean shrugged, but he didn't meet your eyes. "It's not like we have Ben who needs two parent figures any more. And what happened with us the other night, that's not going to happen again. I'm not gay. That was ... a mistake."
"Dean ... "
"Just don't, Cas." He holds up a hand and walks out of the cabin.
You strip your bed and gather your few possessions and walk down to the cabin two doors down from Tammy. At dinner that night you ask Tim for a joint, and he's happy to oblige. You smoke it alone in your cabin in the dark, with a few shots of cheap whiskey on the side. There's a knock at the door, and your curiosity is peaked, but you don't dare hope that it's Dean.
It's not. It's Kristy-with-a-K, Pruitt's niece or cousin or something. She comes in and asks how you're feeling, if your back is still bothering you. You tell her it's okay, still a bit sore but no big deal.
She sits down beside you, takes the joint from your hand, pulls a long drag, then leans over, presses her lips against yours, and breathes the smoke out into your mouth. You choke a little because that was different, but she thinks it's cute.
"I'm glad you finally got your own cabin." She whispers as she pulls her shirt over her head.
You discover that sex with a woman when you're high will never touch your heart like the experience you had with Dean, but it makes your body feel pretty damn good.
The next afternoon you're surprised to hear from Chuck that Dean had captured a demon in OK City. An actual black eyes, not a human infected with Croatoan.
And Dean didn't even mention it.
You make your way down to the building that's used for a repair shop, which is where Chuck says they have the demon. You push the door open to find Dean, back to you, twisting a knife in the torso of a demon who's already bloody and battered. He pulls away the knife and flicks a hand dipped in holy water at the wound, the droplets making a hissing sound that is drowned out almost immediately by the demon's shrieks.
"Dean." Your voice is low and calm, and you're not sure if he was expecting you or if he's just trained his mind to listen for your voice, because he hears you immediately despite the noise going on.
He turns to face you, and his face is completely impassive.
"What are you doing?" You ask, tilting your head.
"Gathering information." He shrugs, looking down briefly before he glares at you again. "I'm gonna find that son of a bitch. He took Sam and he killed Ben and I'm gonna find him and kill him. With or without Michael."
"Dean, let me help you." You plead.
"You wanna help me?" He scoffs. "Go find one of your angel buddies. Tell them I'll say yes if they'll just put things back right."
"You know it's not going to work that way." You step closer, reaching out to put a hand on his arm.
He shrugs it off.
"Even if you kill Lucifer, you're not going to get Sam or Ben back."
Damn the human emotions, there are tears in your eyes again.
"Yeah, well at least they won't have died in vain." Dean turns away, back to the worktable where he has spread out his tools.
"Don't do this. Torture. You're only ... "
"What?" he whirls to face you. "Hurting myself? Sending myself to Hell? I think it's a little to late for that. I think I'm bound for Hell, no matter what happens, so the least I can do is take a few black eyed motherfuckers with me."
He lunges toward the demon, and a heartbeat later an inhuman scream fills the air.
You turn and head back to your cabin, where you proceed to get stoned again.
Kristy comes around a couple times that week, and her sister Kyla once.
Dean scowls and growls and snaps at you for no apparent reason. And crazily enough, that makes you happy.
The following week, Dean organizes a supply run into Oklahoma City. Or at least that's what he calls it. When a Croatoan outbreak hits nearby, he gives it a couple weeks until most of the infected have killed one another. Then the expedition party loots the town for whatever they can get as far as food, clothing, medicine, generators, hygiene supplies, fuel, whatever the camp needs.
You approach Dean alone and ask if you can go on the trip. He tells you that if you're healed enough to fuck half the women in the camp, then he reckons you're healed enough to fight mooks.
You smirk and shake your head and make a comment about pots and kettles as you walk away.
He surprises you, though, by handing you the keys to one of the trucks and telling you that you're going with Brody and Yager is riding with Dean.
As expected, the northeastern part of the city is fairly deserted. You and Brody load up anything useful you can find in the back of your truck, then venture around the corner to help Tim and Pruitt load.
The second truck is just about full when Tim decides to check a car that has plowed into the front of a building. You warn him to be careful. He doesn't see anything useful inside the car, and the building is probably too unstable to go inside, but the gas tank appears to be nearly full. Pruitt brings him a five gallon can from the back of the truck and they start the pump to siphon out the fuel.
The can is about half full when the four of you hear footsteps. You instinctively raise your gun to your shoulder, looking around. There's a Crote on the roof of the building next to the one with the car.
"Get back!" Brody shouts.
Pruitt takes a shot at the Crote, and you can't tell if he actually hits him or not, but the Crote falls onto the roof of the building Tim is still standing in front of. And the building collapses as Tim tries to grab the fuel can and run.
When the smoke and the dust settle, Tim is on the ground, his legs pinned under a pile of debris. You run over and begin digging him out with your hands. Pruitt rushes to help while Brody is covering the two of you with the rifle. Dean and Yager round the corner in the Jeep and you shout for them to help. There's a sound from the other end of the street, and you all turn to look.
The commotion has alerted the rest of the Crotes. They're coming. You look at Dean, and see what you already know reflected in his eyes.
There are too many of them. Way too many. You can never hold them off or get Tim out in time.
"Back to the trucks!" Dean shouts, and as the rest of you back away, he pulls his gun and shoots Tim in the head. The other five of you make it back to the trucks safely and roll away.
When you get back to camp, you look at Dean. You don't notice any difference in his eyes from when you left camp. There are no more broken pieces. There's really not anything there at all.
It dawns on you that there's nothing left of his heart to break.
You try to talk to him that night, but he blows you off to go to Tammy's cabin.
Kyla came to yours that night, with her friend Allison. The three of you drink a toast and smoke most of Tim's stash that you've swiped from his cabin. And then you learn that sex with two women at once leads to all sorts of interesting sensations.
Somehow, you slip into a routine that you never intended. You get drunk or stoned or both every night. Most nights, you have at least one female there. Dean gives you dirty looks at breakfast in the morning and you just smirk at him.
Time to start drinking starts getting earlier every day until one day Dean bumps you from a mission because you've already started drinking.
The two of you argue about it later, and you call him a fucking hypocrite because you know he probably had more to drink than you did before setting out. He tells you that he can handle it, because he's been drinking since he was nine years old. You chug a fourth of a bottle of Wild Turkey, then walk outside and proceed to hit the bullseye on the target with four out of six shots from the old .38 revolver that used to belong to Bobby.
"It's not like I'm going to get out of this alive anyway." You throw up your hands and glower right back at him.
He shakes his head and walks away, but he never bumps you from a mission again.
You almost wish he would, that he would get concerned again and yell at you and care enough to worry about you. But that would mean he would have to have feelings, and Dean Winchester doesn't have those any more.
On the nights when you are alone, which become more and more rare as more female refugees are brought to the camp, you wish you could turn it all back. You don't know what you would do differently, exactly, but you want to try. You have actually considered selling your soul to get the old Dean back, going to a crossroads, burying a box and summoning a red eyed demon, but you can't. Not while there's still a chance that one day, the angels could decide the world is worth fighting for and return. You have to keep your grace-turned-soul intact just in case, because if your powers were ever restored, you would need it to help him.
So instead you and Dean glower at each other and make snide comments and have been known to punch anyone who has anything to say about the other in front of you. You overhear Christy-with-a-C tell one of the newcomers that you and Dean are like a divorced couple who are still in love but too stubborn to admit it to one another, and you don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Life keeps rolling on, and before you know it, it's spring. The first time you drink yourself into unconsciousness is on Ben's birthday, sitting beside the cross with his name carved on it, behind the old cabin. You tell him everything that's happened since he's been gone, how much you miss him, and how you hope his Heaven is beautiful and that maybe he got to see his mother again. You tell him how his last day was the perfect moment before the accident, how much you loved seeing him interact with Dean and how happy the three of you were for those few minutes and how you'll always be thankful for it. The last thing you remember telling him is how much you miss Dean, and then you apologize for saying it, tell him that he shouldn't have to worry about what's going on with the two of you now. You lay down in the grass beside his grave because you just don't want to move, and you think you'll just rest here with Ben for a little while. You wake up the next morning in your bed, to find Dean snoring on your couch. When he wakes up you hand him a cup of coffee and the two of you look at each other for a moment. Something passes through his eyes so quickly you can't get a handle on it, sadness mixed with something else but you don't know if it's for Ben or for you or for him or for the two of you. Then he mutters something you can't catch and walks out with the coffee.
Spring turns to summer, which turns to fall, and eventually to winter. The anniversary of the wreck is approaching, and Dean is planning one of the biggest survivor rescue attempts ever for that date.
It's a coping mechanism, a way for him to keep himself busy and occupied and not have to think, but by this point, you're the last person to condemn someone for their dysfunctional self psychiatry.
The plans get bigger as they go, so everyone in camp able to fight is going to Texas. Once in town, they're going to split up into three missions. One group will try to round up survivors. The second will gather supplies. The third is going to hunt down at least a couple of the demons who are supposed to be hanging around town. You and Dean are going to be the third group with Yager, Brody, Pruitt and JD.
The six of you are in two vehicles, and for once you're with Dean, because he put Yager, who's become his unofficial second in command, in charge of the other truck. Intel says the demons are using an old funeral home for their headquarters, which for some reason gives you the giggles. Dean just keeps glaring at you, which makes you laugh even harder, because there's just something about having Dean's attention focused on you, even if he's angry, that you crave.
You find the funeral home, and just as reported, it's crawling with actual black-eyes, which means there's something special going on here. The four demon sentries are quickly dispatched and then Dean counts quietly to three and the six of you kick in the door and storm the building. Only a couple of the demons try to fight. The rest all run, mostly heading toward the stairs leading down to the basement. Dean shouts for JD and Brody to take care of the demons upstairs, while the other four of you race off after the ones fleeing. Dean runs halfway down the stairs, then vaults over the handrail to land on his feet and keep running. Pruitt does the same, and you try to. But somehow, you don't land right. Something snaps in your foot as it twists underneath you and you're falling way too fast and your head smacks the concrete floor and everything goes dark.
You wake up laying on the backseat of Yager's truck with JD sitting in the floorboard beside you.
"He's awake." JD announces over his shoulder.
You look up to see Dean glance back over his shoulder from where he's driving. "Good."
The motion of the car is making you nauseous, a sensation you've gradually come to recognize over the two years of being human.
"Stop the truck." You wince at the pain in your head at the sound of your own voice. "I'm going to throw up."
"We can't stop now, Cas." Dean says, and you struggle to look at him because his voice wasn't cold and heartless for a moment. Or maybe it was just the head injury talking, because he tells JD to give you a plastic bag and roll you onto your side.
You get sick several times on the way back, and by the time you make it back to camp, you aren't sure whether your head or your side or your foot hurts worse.
Dean and JD carry you on a makeshift stretcher to your old cabin, because the father of that family of six who lives there now is a doctor and his wife is a nurse. Yes, he used to be a cardiologist and she worked in labor and delivery but over the past year they've become quite adept at stitching wounds and setting broken bones. He checks you over, diagnoses a concussion and a broken foot and deep tissue bruising on your ribcage.
"You're lucky." He announces as he sets and splints your foot the best he can with what he has to work with. "I was in the supply party yesterday. We found a whole drugstore abandoned that hadn't been looted yet. We were able to get a truckload of antibiotics, pain pills, bandages, vitamins, you name it."
He hands you an old peppermint tin full of narcotic pain pills, and warns you to not drink when you take them. You nod and thank him, knowing that you can never stop drinking now. Your hands shake if you go more than eight hours without some form of alcohol in your system.
One of the children is writing something on an old prescription pad. You think it's cute, that she's doing something that she's doubtless seen her father do many times. The child just doesn't understand there isn't anywhere left to get a prescription filled. Not around here, anyway.
"What's your name?" she asks, looking up at you with big dark eyes.
"Castiel." You reply, and spell it for her.
"What's your other name?" she continues.
You start to tell her you don't have one, but from behind you a deep voice answers "Winchester."
You look over your shoulder, but Dean is looking at the doctor rather than you, and his face is locked and cold again. The little girl tears off your prescription and hands it to you.
"I'll let you write it in." she says, and flounces off to what used to be your room.
Dean thanks the doctor and leaves. Yager is there, holding a pair of crutches saved from whoever broke their leg last. Mrs. M helps him to adjust them to the proper height for you, and then Yager walks you back to your cabin. He helps you get settled on the bed, and sits a glass of water on the nightstand, telling you that one of the women will be by later to bring some food.
"Thanks for getting me out back there." You tell him, somehow knowing he was the one.
He snorts. "Yeah, well Dean handed me his third gun and told me I better not let you get killed."
You stare for a moment, not quite sure how to handle that information.
"Yeah, call if you need anything." Yager points to the walkie-talkie on the nightstand and heads out the door.
You open the tin and pop two pain pills in your mouth, washing them down with a swig from the bottle of Wild Turkey you keep on the floor beside the bed. You fold your pillows over double, propping yourself up the best you can, and stare into nothingness. You take another sip from the bottle every few minutes, and a soothing numbness begins to spread through your system, until your arms and legs and eyelids begin to feel heavy.
"Are you trying to fucking kill yourself?" The voice you would recognize anywhere asks.
You look up, and Dean is standing at the end of the bed.
"Would you care if I did?" You ask, because the alcohol has lowered your inhibitions, and you're really fucking tired of these stupid games the two of you play.
"If you want to off yourself, that's your choice." He scoffs. "But you better tell me now, so I know whether I'm sending good men on a suicide mission by partnering them with you."
You put the bottle down and scramble to the end of the bed and stand on one foot in front of him. "After every fucking thing we've been through, that's all you care about?"
"Actually, I don't care about anything at all." He shrugs. "But I have a responsibility to keep these people alive, and if that means you're a danger to them, so be it."
You shove him backwards and his back hits the doorframe and you hobble over to pin him there, the narcotics fueling your anger and suppressing the pain in your leg to the point you're actually standing on both feet.
"You're a fucking liar and a coward, Dean." You growl into his face.
"Don't call me a coward." He snarled. "Fuck you."
"You already have," You smirk. "And you liked it."
You shove your hand into his hair and roughly tug his head forward until his lips meet yours and your teeth bang together and your whole bodies surge toward one another and time stops until the two of you finally break and come up for air, your foreheads leaning together.
You reach a hand down between you and cup the bulge in his jeans. "No, you're not gay, but you have no trouble getting it up for me, do you?" You snicker.
He shoves you away with both hands against your chest and you sprawl backwards, landing with the small of your back against the edge of the bed.
"Don't ever touch me again." he snaps and starts to turn away.
"Go ahead and run." You call after him. "Run like the little coward you are, Dean. But that's my handprint on your shoulder, and we've marked each other in places where even we can't see. You can run as far away as you can, or you can throw me out of this camp if you want, but we'll never be free of each other."
He stopped while you were speaking, and now he half turns to face you. "Yeah, you're such an expert on human relations and psychology." He gives you a venomous look. "Did you ever stop to consider that the only thing you were in my life was a substitute for Sam?"
He shakes his head and walks out.
You pull yourself back up onto the bed again, your bad foot no longer able to support your weight as the adrenaline subsides. You scoot back to the pillows and reach for the bottle again and drink yourself into nothingness so you won't think about what he said, so you won't think about what he's doing with Allison right now.
The ladies of the camp take turns waiting on you, and since you don't have much else to do, you spend a lot of the next two months reading, stoned, or having sex with the ladies of the camp who coddle the poor wounded hero, not necessarily in that order. You finish off the pain pills so you ask Dr. M for more. He give them to you but the second time you ask for more, he tells you that you should be better now. You shouldn't need them.
You play it off and you make do with some of the other mind-altering substances circulating through the camp. It's the natural order of things. When you bring together a bunch of people who have lived through unspeakable horrors, most of them are going to chose to deal by not dealing, which means most of the camp are alcoholics or drug addicts or both.
When your foot is finally healed enough to allow you to go on missions again, you find your own drugs. In the American midwest there are lots of veterinary clinics, and for some reason looters don't think to strike there very often, which means they're usually a treasure trove of medical supplies and useful medications.
By that summer, you're pretty much staying drunk or high all the time. Dean still gives you hateful looks about it.
You just wish he cared enough to confront you about it again.
Another year goes by, in which the camp slowly starts to fill with survivors, so a second camp is established, run by some of the long-term refugees of Chitaqua. Dean still hunts Lucifer and the Colt. You always go with him, because the day he falls in battle, you're going to lay down beside him, and if anyone survives, they'll bring home at least two bodies.
The tarp covering Baby is rotting away, but you don't mention it to Dean, and he ignores it, because if he acknowledged it, he would remember the last few minutes in the car, how happy the three of you were and how it all went to hell in a heartbeat and some shred of feeling might find its way out of the locked iron strongbox where he keeps his heart, and Dean won't allow that. Not now.
It's the fall of 2014 when the strangest thing of your human life happens. You're getting ready to have an orgy with with four lovely young ladies when Dean walks into your cabin. It surprises you a little, because Dean hasn't been alone with you since the last time you kissed him.
But when you look up into his eyes, you fall all over again.
There's life in his eyes. Life and warmth and worry and all the things that haven't been there since Ben died.
And the creases at the corners of his eyes and mouth aren't as sharp.
You realize instantly that this isn't Dean. Not your Dean, at least.
He confirms your suspicions. He's a version of Dean from the past. The thought skitters through your mind of using him to get to Zachariah. Or Michael, even. To try to get your grace back.
But in the next minute he's outside confronting himself, or your version of Dean at least for shooting Yager. You're so busy watching him that it doesn't even register to you until later that Yager is dead. He's strong and brave and believes in right and is absorbing all this information around him and thinking of strategy and he's just so much the old Dean.
You can't take your eyes off of him. He makes you smile.
And he makes your Dean give you those looks again. The looks you haven't seen in such a long, long time. The looks that mean he cares about something, and in this case, the attention you're paying to the past version of himself.
It's so ridiculous it's funny. He's jealous of the attention you're giving him.
You know it can't last, that the past version of Dean can't stay here forever. That you can't go back with him. That you're going to stay here and you and your version of Dean are going to continue to hurt each other, because you don't know how to do anything else.
But your version of the Dean has the Colt now. And he's going to kill the devil. The devil who took away his Sammy and his Bobby and his Ben.
It's beyond reckless. There is no word strong enough to describe how bad this plan is. It's a suicide mission, not just for him, but for all of you.
When he asks if you're coming, you smile and say "Of course." with one more look over your shoulder at the past version of Dean.
You know you and your Dean are both probably going to die.
But at this point, dying couldn't hurt either of you as much as living does.