The cage is nothing like the Hell Dean described and nothing like the Hell he expected.
Its bright and its loud or its dark and its silent. He isn't sure which only that there's nothing that he can see and nothing that he can hear.
He thinks there are walls because he sometimes finds himself leaning back against something smooth and solid but he can't be sure because there's no sense of direction, no way to tell up from down and only the blinding screaming silent Nothing for company.
Its minutes or days or years of only this and he stops expecting to wake up on the racks and starts to wish for it. For anything to break the Nothing. Anything at all.
Which is when he starts to dream.
Dean is sitting on stone steps and staring at nothing with a look on his face that is pain and regret and fear. Its a look he remembers from long nights in the year following Hell and the nightmares that woke Dean too early in the morning and stayed haunting him until the sun finally forced them away with the light. Back into the dark to wait for sleep.
The look haunts him back into the Nothing of the cage and he studies its memory over and over and over and over. Shadowed eyes and tight lips and pale skin. And maybe this is what his hell is, to dream he's condemned Dean to the nightmares.
Outside of the Nothing he thinks he can imagine screaming.
He knows when he sees Dean that he isn't really watching. There are no eyes to watch with and no ears to hear but he can see him and sometimes hear him and he studies every moment as Dean walks through the life he's asked him to live. Every step is tense and hard won and every breath rattles with something painful and dead. There are other people sometimes but he can't hear them, can barely sense they're there at all.
In between the dreams he might cry or he might scream or he might beg but the Nothing blocks it all out and holds it all in.
One dream he thinks he can see the sky, tiny lights that flicker from millions of light years away mapping the past or the future or something bigger than the lives they live and loose so easily. Something that means something and makes all the little failures and big wins seem small and far away. Beside him he dreams a warm presence and slow breath. For seconds or years he has this slice of perfect, and then the warm leaves and he falls back into the Nothing and everything freezes and burns and he wants to die wants it so Stop but there's nothing... nothing....
Sometimes the Nothing is cold and sometimes the Nothing is hot. Maybe its both and neither. He tries to wonder about that because there is texture sometimes and temperature but its not really here and he wonders if Lucifer has let go of his meat or if he has lost his own flesh to the blinding darkness.
He wonders if meat can survive in Hell and thinks he's probably already dead.
The Impala shines in the afternoon sun, her black paint shining wetly... a glowing beacon in the drab echoes of things he can't fully see around her.
"You can't be here." A voice calls him away from the sight and it should be Dean but its not because Dean is scrubbing imaginary dust from the Impala's rims and can't see him.
Serious blue eyes and a face he half remembers instead. He tries to frown or speak but fails and the walls of the cage are pulling him back again.
The Nothing grips him tightly, holding him down and still and silent and blind and he shakes and flutters against the shackles and tries to grab at the dream.
"I wasn't sure how you were doing it." Castiel feels tall and cold beside him and he can't look at the angel too hard because the blue eyes and the familiar face weaken under the scrutiny and he doesn't want to see what's beneath them.
Also Dean is eating dinner across the street and he has to watch. Has to remember. Has to have something to hold onto against the Nothing.
The angel reaches out, maybe with a hand, and traces something he hasn't looked at before.
There is a thread, fine as a single hair. Its red or gold or white and it pulls taunt as it trails off across the street. Castiel plucks it and he feels the echo shiver along nerves he doesn't have anymore. It hums as the ripple trails off into the distance and Dean freezes and looks up for just a second and he thinks...
The angel is saying something but his hearing is fading and the Nothing pulls again, roaring silence blocking out words he needs to hear. There is something else holding him. Dark sticky threads and when the angel plucks one and the walls suck him back in and down he wants a voice so he can scream or beg or pray.
He can feel the threads that bind him here but not here now. He tries to pull them away but they always snap back tighter than before. He tries to detach the one that pulls him to dream but it Hurts and shreds at his edges and he gives up before he even really starts.
Its seconds or days or years and the Nothing claws at him, the sticky chains that pull tighter and tighter and keep him from moving or breathing. He wants to dream but the web blocks out everything and holds him in. He plucks the thread that leads out of the cage. It hurts and burns and tears at the fragile bits of him that are left but its all there is now.
The pain feels like green eyes and everything.
"I'm Sorry" says a voice that isn't a voice. Its hot like the Nothing when the Nothing is hot and when it whispers against him the words burn. There is something sharp and scalding and it cuts at the web of bad-dark-cold-wrong that holds him. He breathes and tries to remember when he stopped. "Go." says the heat and then oddly. "Thank You."
With nothing to hold him against it the thread that pulls snaps him away.
"Sam." Says a familiar voice and he thinks 'Sam. That's me.' And frowns and blinks and tries to resolve the light that blinds him and the identity that he lost for a moment. But he blinks again and there is a street lamp flickering behind a familiar mop of messy hair and blue eyes and anyway he knows who he is, its not like he could forget.
He tries to speak but there's no voice and Cas reaches down at the same time he realizes this and just like that he's coughing violently and trying to remember how to breathe air and there is cold rough pavement at his back and clawing into his palms and the air is humid and heavy and cold and he's left staring up at a broken light alone.
Across the street there's a black Impala parked in the driveway.
NOTES: Right. Okay that's seriously it for me. I'm done. I just needed that last piece. It feels kinda sappy but I don't care. They all lived happily ever after or whatever (someone who can carry a plot can go there, me I am just happy to be over the bawling at random things point). Uneverythinged because I'm just lazy this time.
Follows "Temporary Loan" and "All That's Allowed"