Summary: This is about how Dean ends up saved instead of being the savior.

Genre/Style: Ansgt with a side of Hurt/Comfort and brother love (no wincest) because that's my favorite part of Supernatural.

Pairings: Dean/Castiel.

Characters: Team Free Will, mentions of Jo, Bobby, Ellen and other characters.

Words: 1719.

A/N: This fic was inspired by the Strength for Amy project at tumblr. Fandom is family and I'm very glad to know that you've woken up Amy.

A new beginning always starts at the end

There's enough fire on display that Castiel feels dizzy and starts to spiral out of control. He's asigned to save two human kids and leave as soon as possible of the building, so he does as he is expected to and creates with his powers a path where there's no fire in order to save Dean and young Sam. He leaves without another look.

Now

Dean felt sometimes that if he tried hard enough he would get what he had always needed, a family, one safe and complete and not one smudged with grief and murder at the edges. That's why he had never wanted to believe on angels to begin with. It all ment too much faith thrown an only way. That's why he turned his faith on his own blood, which for him ment Sam, Jo, Bobby and, sometime after, Castiel.

Losing Jo was something he would never recover from, the way in how she died didn't help either. He still had nightmares about holding her close to his chest, feeling protected and then it all banished to leaving her and Ellen to fight flames and hellhounds.

Some nights his dreams were related to blood and flames, sometimes he heard a baby crying and echoes of you have to kill him if you can not save him and sometimes they were combined with Jo and Ellen's screams and he always wakes up with a lump on his throat and the pressing need to smash everything he has close.

And then Castiel appears and he isn't sure what to make of them. Yes, at first they hated each other guts but at the middle somehow he losed the good little soldier shape and became something. What that something is he can not fathom and that makes him shifty and pensive whenever he is around him, especially if he is around Castiel and Sam. Dealing with Cas is not like dealing with Jo's stubborn love, that he reciprocated, he was just determinated to push his feelings aside, it's also different to his denial when it came to knowing he and Sam were not in the same place anymore, that his brother was not an innocent kid anymore and that the fucking demon blood had gotten to his system and was acting very fast burning pieces of the real Sam Winchester away with its darkness. He is not getting what his feelings are, why and how they're shaped and it scares him more than famine making Sam hungry of blood or than running of his house with a baby and everything stinking of fire and sulfur.

Then

There was a cold December night where he was alone with Sam when he decided they had to play a game, he was 15, Sam was 11. Sam was so miserable and sick that the only thing Dean could come up with was drawing what you want to be in a future (yes, it was not very impressive imagination-wide but he was no Vonnegut), Sam always picked bright colors and he always draw a big house and a family that always included a drawing of Dean but never had one of John. Dean preferred drawing cars and some Zeppelin lines, of all things that night represented to Dean, watching Sam being curled up by his side on the crappy motel bed while his head burned like they were on summer represented his biggest memory of being safe, because Sam's fever had gotten down fast and they had drunk some hot chocolate that an old lady had given them when he and Sam had gotten into the store that was close to the motel.

He curled up on Sam's side and slung an arm around his little brother's arms. This was the home he wanted, all he needed at the moment. He ignored the weird presence he felt around the house and what it made him feel like.

Now

Things happen in a different way to everybody, some people live long, fullfiling lives, some died young and left loved ones grieving them for years. Dean thinks Cas is part of the second group, he also finds almost ironic that Cas died in a way that no human ever had, he had sacrificed a number of things and doing so ate him and what he was. It didn't make sense to him or Sam and Dean never told a soul, not even his brother, but he prayed every night since The Leviathan took over and left them without their protector for someone, anyone, to keep Sammy in one piece and to lead them to Castiel. He was tired, very much so, even though he never really slept in years, always waking up to nightmares of his people dying and Sam had became his rock through all this time, he had held him and told him that they were safe now, The Leviathan are gone, Dean, and we're not hunting anymore, you do remember that, right? While he gathered him and tried to make them both whole. They always ended up sleeping close because of each other's nightmares.

Truth be told he would always dream of Castiel in different ways than he had with John, Jo, Ellen and Bobby, he would, for example, wake up to memories of a drunk Cas and loud music, Cas and him smiling was that little beacon of hope, him and Sam being a baby, his first steps, teaching him to put his shoes on and how to tie them. His and Sam's life were based on memories and downing alcohol every once in a while.

But with every year that passed he kept drinking more than what he should and it comes the day where he just goes.

Sam was sleeping when Dean reached the door. He was halfway through it when two things happened: one was that Sam woke up and the second was that right at that moment he felt everything got blurry and landed on the ground, it felt just like that time he had been dying of a disease and they went to that Reverend, inexplicably he hears Layla's voice saying well, there's a miracle right there as everything goes dark.

Dean wakes up to find blue eyes staring at him.

Then

I know that you're reading this sometime after I agree to work with this demon. I want you to know that I notice how you would stare at Sam at night, when you think no one is looking because he is your rock. I also want you to know that he is not the same in many ways but so am I and I think you have changed as well. You think I don't notice when you call my name at night and how you seem to be quiet when I come to you on dreams and ask you about Sam and the hunting lifestyle, you also keep pretending that I don't stare at you like the precious human soul that you are, because you prefer to think that I don't have any special bond with you, even though you know deep down that I love you.

He clearly wanted to lay it out there just how it was but he didn't have time. And now Dean just felt more lonely and tired. Sam was waking up and he knew what they got to do, hunting things was done as they were the ones that needed saving now. He emotionally pulled Sam tight to him over the years just as how he would when they were kids, he thought that maybe, aside the demon blood debacle, Sam was the one saving him all of this time.

He silently made Sam some breakfast and got ready to look for a job as a mechanic.

He worked on a mechanic shop close to Sioux Falls and he and Sam lived at Bobby's place, which his adoptive father had given to them, Sam got back to college and finished Laws, he wasn't a big game, he had lost a lot of time and there was fresh meat out there, all big names and recently graduated, but he came pretty close and he was happy to help people in a natural way, he fit there like a fish on the water. If anything, the only side of Sam that seemed forever altered was the one that involved anything remotely related to forming a relationship. He knew why that happened, it was the same reason why Dean himself didn't had sex in years, he couldn't find it on him to feel any pleasure aside the ones ofered by food and alcohol as the years passed by.

Now

Dean had been told angels where watching over him and if any of this ever made sense was at this very moment, Cas silently tend his hand to Dean and they both walked through the beach they were at, all made of their memories.

I wasn't supposed to ever let you know this Dean but, here it goes my side of the story. I waited all of this years for you and Sam to come back to me, to finally let you both know why everything happened, to redeem myself to you just as I expressed myself that day, I wanted to let you know that I always watched over you two as Mary said. I did my best for as long as no one upstairs, as you would say, noticed. Then it all became chaos when Sam ingested the demon blood and I had to stop watching over you two.

I was given two options once I came back, Father wanted me to choose between my human family and my original family, the one from Heaven, but all I wanted was to protect you, so I came back to this Heaven and not the one angels have. I think Gabriel is around here somewhere, I felt his presence the other day but I don't have any "juice" anymore.

I just want you to know that I'm here because this is home for me.

And with that Dean and Castiel went to find Sam, hand in hand. For weeks finding the others proved to be difficult but they did reunite at the end.

And all was well on human heaven and earth.