Dean woke with a sharp inhale. Darkness leaked in through the corners of his eyes, pitch-black. The blinds were closed. He held his breath, waiting, listening, there. Sammy's snuffling from the next bed over, sleeping like a baby. Well, a baby who'd wake up at the slightest sound and immediately reach for a weapon.
Dean'd had a part in training the kid to be able to do that. Drills at all hours, loud bangs, startled, groggy, reaching tiredly for a weapon, getting smacked down. Slow. Dean, sneaking up, a stick held to a sleeping Sam's bared throat, pretending to be knife. Scared eyes flashing open just before the struggling began. Seeing Dean, relaxing. "Too late, Sammy, too late," Dean'd say, moving away, taking threat and warning with him. Sam frowning, disappointed in himself, irritated with Dean.
A long time ago. Not even training anymore, just instinct. Hunter down to the bones, the blood.
Dean closed his eyes, gritty with sleep. He'd caught his three hours, good enough, but he couldn't get out of bed, not without waking Sammy. They'd had a rough few days, let 'im rest. As for Dean, he still felt exhausted, but that wasn't something sleep could fix.
Images, flashes, from his nightmare tried to fight their way to his thoughts. Crazed, brilliant eyes, a crooked smile of white teeth. The blood.
'Cas, Cas, Cas,' Dean heard in his head. Not pleasant, this nightmare.
"I tried doing the whole God thing, Dean, and that didn't work out so well. So, maybe, this time, I'll do it differently." Cas' voice but not Cas' eyes, not his smile. Cas as Lucifer, Lucifer inside Cas, working through him, tearing up the world. Fire and death, reflected in gleeful blue eyes.
Is that what Dean was afraid of? He didn't know. Damn it all, he felt like he didn't know anything anymore. The image of Castiel, angel of the lord, but mostly, Cas, his once friend, sitting on that bed with his face wiped blank, noggin stuffed full of Sam's lucifer-mania.
Dean didn't have to remind himself that that wasn't the nightmare, that was real life. That was now. He choked it down, whatever he was feeling. His throat itched. This close to saying fuck it and getting up to take a swig from Bobby's flask.
Bobby killed by Dick, a Leviathan. Only here 'cause of Cas. 'Major fuck up, dude. Major. I warned you and now Bobby's dead. Not to mention all the other people those creeps are busy munching on like snacks.'
But Sam rolled over and grunted into his pillow. Dean's eyelids flickered, an almost smile quirking his cracked lips. Okay, sure, Sammy. I'll wait a bit more. The nightmare resurfaced, Dean pushed it down. He was good at that, pushing things aside. Making them so small and compact inside of himself that they were nothing.
'Cas.
Yeah, even Cas. 'You betrayed me, man. You betrayed us all, yeah, but Cas, you. You should've just listened to me. You-'
'Okay, look, I know you were just trying to do your best. What you thought was best. And I know it went wrong. I know it, you know it. Doing what you did to Sam...' Dean stopped, feeling as though someone'd just dunked his whole body in ice. What the hell did he think he was doing?
No, he knew what he was doing, but things were different. Now that Cas was alive, crazy as a barrel of monkeys, but alive. It was one thing, talking to him in his head when the angel had been 'dead', Dean had gotten into the habit of thinking to him as if he'd hear it. Or maybe, maybe, as if he wouldn't. Curses, recriminations, sure.
And a lot of other stuff.
But now? No, not good. Hard habit to break though, even with the chance that Cas might be getting the signal. Or had 'Emmanuel' sometimes heard Dean's thoughts then, too, but never clearly, never with understanding.
Oh, man, Dean really didn't want that to be true. There was some stuff that Dean hadn't even known he'd thought until he was thinking it. No, screaming it. At Cas, not at Emmanuel. Not at anyone else but Castiel, his once-brother. He frowned, wondering. Maybe. Maybe...
Tentatively, like poking at a wound, Dean continued. He spoke slowly in his mind, imagining forming the words. Careful, careful. Words were so easily misunderstood. Tangled, full of double meanings and undercurrents that no one ever fully intends.
'I know you're suffering, Cas. I know what you took from Sam back there and I know, I know, why you did it. It was right, it was the right thing to do. You're not so bad, at being human. Not like some robot angeltron anymore. You're a waaaaay better human than a god, that's for damn sure.'
'And what you're going through... I guess, yeah, Cas. Yeah. That's redemption. We all have debts and they always come around. Then we pay 'em. We pay 'em and we go through hell, sometimes literally, and then we move on. Then we're okay and even if we're not, we're still alive. We survive. Usually to fuck up again, in a bigger way.' Dean allowed himself a smile at that, bitter, tight, but still a smile. Gallows' humor. Oh yeah, hunter down to the funny bone.
But then he pictured Cas, blank-faced, not understanding how this could be a joke. Maybe he'd say something oblivious back, maybe he'd just stare and then ten minutes later, like a wondering child, say: 'I see now. That was a joke. But why is 'fucking up',' (and he would tiptoe over the swear words like they might trip him, like they were wild animals) 'in a larger manner amusing? It seems like a serious situation.' And he wouldn't understand why Dean and Sam'd look at each other and laugh.
Dean's chest ached like he'd just been sucker-punched by a demon. Castiel, tweaked sense of humor and all, was like a missing limb sometimes. When Dean got tired of his anger towards the wayward angel, he just felt lost. Like he'd been left behind, like he'd left someone behind.
Like something vital were missing.
Dean pressed a hand to his face, pushing down on his eyeballs. More flashes of his nightmare, now spinning together with these pointless, melodramatic thoughts. Fuck, man. All this bullshit is gonna make me sick. Can't afford that right now. Too much to do.
Cas, Cas, Cas. Yeah, Cas. So much weight in such a short sound.
He was rotting away, alone in that ward, unaware of anything or anyone but whatever twisted torture Lucifer wanted him to see. Or that Cas' mind thought Lucifer would want him to see, maybe. Who knew what was going on in there now? Once Dean had known Cas' mind, if he'd thought about it, known it like he knew Sam's. Now, it was blocked to him.
The image of Cas, sitting still and empty, locked up tight in his brain with a stir-crazy Lucifer, made Dean pick back up where he'd left off. Yeah, talking to yourself is gonna help, sure. Still gotta try. Always gotta try.
'You're paying your debts. We'll clean up the Leviathans, wipe 'em off the face of the earth, scrub 'em out like the trash they are with that borax junk. And we'll fix you. We'll clean up your head, too. You'll come out of this, come out the other side, and you'll be clean, Cas.'
'Your hands'll be clean.' Dean stopped again. A heartbeat, another, another. Sam snorted, but Dean's attention wasn't on him, not at this moment. Dean knew, better than anyone, that some stains never come out. Some things can't be fixed or restarted. There's never really the option of 'going back'. Time to change track.
'You were trying to do what was right. You tried, you fucked up, shit happened, people got killed. That's how it goes. We've all fucked up. All of us.' Dean knew what he was gonna say, think, pray, whatever, next. He knew it but it felt like suddenly puking up a bowling ball just the same.
'But I forgive you, Cas. I do, I really, really do. You gave Sam back to me, you saved his life, giving up the new one you'd made for yourself. You did that, and that's something. God dammit, Cas, that's something. So hang in there. We are gonna fix this.' Dean felt lighter saying that, not emptier, but lighter.
He waited for a few minutes in silence, as if this were a telephone conversation, as if he expected a response. Obviously there wouldn't be one, so why the hell was the silence ringing like that, buzzing at him, and why did he feel like he was anticipating Castiel's sudden arrival? Cas was a drooling mess of a zombie angel and in no fit state to travel.
Dean rolled his eyes at himself, ignoring the way his heart became stone. He got out of his covers, responded to Sam's quiet "Dean?" with an "All okay." and got to his flask. Took a swig. It felt familiar, comfortable in his hand, liquor burning his throat. "New day," he murmured, staring through the darkness down at the shimmer of the metal. "A new frickin' day."
Castiel, far away, rolled over on his narrow hospital bed. The barred window in his room had curtains, but they'd been left open. He watched the sun's rising, the tears in his vacant blue eyes reflecting the light.
"A new day," he whispered, reverently, Dean's prayers drifting like the ashes of feathers in his tattered mind.
And then Lucifer's walls closed around him again, tight, shutting out the world.
Only the words remained, a lifeline, delicate but not frail:
'This is redemption. I forgive you, Cas.'
Castiel would hang on, until the very end of time. For Dean.