Disclaimer: None of it is mine. It all belongs to The CW and Kripke

Author Notes: A coda to 'My Bloody Valentine.' A million thanks to rusty_ armour for her speedy beta work when I know she's snowed under. You are literally the best ever :)

THROUGH GLASS DARKLY

It was only a moment after the words escaped Dean in the quiet safety of the scrapyard that there was a voice behind him.

"Dean."

He didn't turn around. One shaking hand hastily wiped away all evidence of tears. He kept his eyes on the sky, at all the headlights of stars staring out of the darkness. All that empty space. Like that old bastard Famine had found inside of him.

"Dean." There was insistence in the word, urgency.

Dean took a harsh breath and nearly turned his head. "Sam all screamed out?"

"He is recovering. It will take several days."

Sammy, with his blood-smeared mouth, like he couldn't shovel it in fast enough. It had, for a stomach-turning second, flashed Dean to a memory of Sam as a little kid greedily sucking up spaghetti sauce. There'd been nothing kid-friendly about how Sam'd ripped Famine apart like a chew toy.

"What'd you want, Cas?"

There was a pause and then footsteps. Castiel's voice sounded closer.

"You called, so I answered."

That turned Dean around, his brow creased. Castiel's eyes were shadowed, worried or confused, like he couldn't work out what the hell was going on. Welcome to the party, pal.

"What?"

"Dean." That was softer, unbearably so. Dean almost turned away. "You were praying."

"Was not," Dean snapped and took a swig from his bottle. Anything to stop his throat feeling like razor blades were scraping their way up.

There was a pause as Castiel looked around, his eyes tracking back to Dean. "You were talking to the sky, then? Or perhaps the automobiles?"

"Hey, no, I was……" Dean narrowed his eyes, taking in Castiel's too-blank expression. "Was that a joke? Did you just….."

Castiel stared blankly back, though maybe his mouth twitched.

"Terrific. Sam's off the wagon and you're making jokes. The end really is nigh."

That got him a patented 'you mortals are vexing' look. It made something close to a smirk curl Dean's lips.

"So you heard me, huh?" Dean asked. At Castiel's nod, Dean squinted. "I thought Heaven cut you off."

"I cannot hear the multitudes," Castiel nodded towards the world outside the scrapyard. "But you were close enough."

Cas was looking at him like he expected Dean to talk. Dean stared back, his goodwill evaporating. "What?"

Cas raised his eyebrows. "You called me. What did you want?"

Dean dug his heels into the dirt, eyes focused on his discarded beer. What did he want? The end of the apocalypse, Heaven and Hell to fuck off, Lucifer back in his lockbox, Sammy to stop craving demon blood, Bobby to start walking again.

Castiel had to know all that. Today he'd craved hamburgers, or Jimmy, the poor sap, had. He was getting pulled down into the mud with the rest of them. Hell, he'd probably die like one of them. Dean kicked that thought away, hard.

Talking about shit like this was for Sammy, not Dean. But it had been a hell of a day and Dean felt shredded. Everything he usually kept stuffed down so that he could get up everyday and do his job was seeping out, and he didn't have the strength right now to stop it.

"Look at us, Sam's fallen apart, you're losing your mojo, and me - you heard Benjamin Button: I've got nothing inside."

Castiel frowned, tilting his head. "You are not empty, Dean."

"Actually, it explains a lot….." Dean scooped up the whiskey again and drank determinedly. Heaven clearly wasn't taking his calls right now, so, hey, no point in leaving a bottle half full.

"Dean."

That was the tone that demanded attention, sharp and hard. Castiel had moved closer and was staring at Dean, like he was x-raying him. No good would come of that. A shiver went through Dean. He almost dropped his whiskey.

"You are not empty, Dean." The angel reached out and, before Dean could move, firmly pressed his palm against the hand-printed shoulder and something burned pleasantly under Dean's jacket, under his skin even. It was weirdly comforting, almost like déjà vu. Woah.

"I remade you, Dean." The angel fixed his eerie stare on Dean's face, forcing him to hold his gaze.

Cas's next words froze his blood. "I saw you in Hell, what you had become, all your deeds. How do you think I found you?"

Dean closed his eyes. Flickering back there was a landscape awash with blood, all of Alistair's tools laid out and those souls on the rack. He could feel their bodies under his hands as he learned how to make them hurt and how much he'd enjoyed it, what a relief it'd been. Bile rose in his throat and the self-loathing that had been coursing through him since facing off with Famine hit him full force.

"Your soul, Dean. I could see it: all the pain and anger and loneliness that burned inside you. It was a beacon."

Sometimes, when Dean was lucky enough not to dream about Hell, he got weird fractured glimpses of flight, the smell of singed feathers, the sensation of being held, and the furious shrieks of demons. He always woke up with the copper taste of blood in his mouth and the sense that there were words spoken to him then that, to his frustration, he couldn't remember. Cas's statement brought it all up tenfold.

Cas's grip on his shoulder tightened and he looked like he wanted to shake Dean, halfway between exasperated and tender. Something caught in Dean's throat.

"It brought me to you."

Now the look was all tenderness and Dean really didn't know what to do with that. This was why he hated chick flick moments. Cas's expression shifted to fond and then edged into firm.

"You are not empty, Dean Winchester, and you are not alone."

Dean made a god-damn humiliating choked-off noise. Cas was definitely rooting around in his head to pull that out. To hear it from Cas just seemed nastily ironic. Cas, whose family wanted to kill him or force him back into Bible school. Cas, who had decided to drop down to Earth, lose his Grace, and throw in with the Winchesters when everyone else in his life kept telling him to do the opposite and who still believed his absent Father was out there somewhere.

He'd never say it, but Dean was pretty sure that Cas was the closest thing he'd ever class as a miracle.

"Cas….."

Dean couldn't finish that sentence. Too much of everything had gotten out already. Instead, he hurled the bottle as far into the scrapyard as he could. The sound of breaking glass was viscerally satisfying.

Cas still didn't let go.

-the end