The boat left and he wasn't on it. It's the only explanation, because Dean has no idea what the fuck is going on.
Sam shifts uneasily at his side, staring at the place where Lucifer (and wow, Sam doesn't do things by halves) was supposed to pop out of the floor and do a vaudeville number, but so far he's been a no-show. Took his all-powerful exploding light back into the ground and refused to come out. Unless the exploding light was a diversion, which wouldn't surprise Dean in the least. He and Sam would be the dumb fucks staring at the pretty light while the Devil waltzes out the front door.
Most days, he feels like it's just by the grace of God that he can actually wipe himself.
"Dean," Sam hisses, and Dean tilts his head in Sam's direction to let him know he's listening, but there is no way he's taking his eyes off the floor. "Dean, what the fuck just happened? Where's -"
"It tickles me that you think I know," he snaps. C'mon, Lucy, you bastard. Whenever you're ready. "If anyone would know, it'd be you."
"I said I was sorry!" Sam shouts hoarsely. "What more do you want from me? A formal apology written in blood?"
It'd be a start. "I don't want your demon blood, Sam."
"I didn't know! Ruby said -"
His jaw clenches of its own volition. "Okay, new rule: we're never mentioning that bitch's name ever again."
He hates this part. The waiting. On his good days (which is an oxymoron, because Winchesters don't have good days, just days when they don't need to switch up fabric softener with holy water) he's incredibly impatient, so dealing with anticipation has never been his strong point. In fact, next to sharing his feelings, it's his weak point. Waiting to face down the Devil just might be the one thing that does him in.
"Dean," Sam murmurs, his hulking frame moving to stand closer to him, and Dean takes a perverse pleasure in the fact that Sam has to step over Ruby's dead body to do it. "I don't think he's coming."
He snorts. "Did he call you up on the hotline and ask to reschedule?"
But Sam, like any small and annoying dog, won't let it go. "No, I mean… maybe something went wrong. Maybe Lilith wasn't the final seal after all."
If that's the case, then he just spent a whole day in a green room with no entertainment for no reason, and that just isn't going to fly.
"Or, maybe the angels managed to hold Lucifer off? I don't know."
I'll hold him off! I'll hold them all off!
The angels. Like the one he left to die in a drunk writer's shitty little kitchen. His mother would be so proud.
When she told him that angels were watching over him, he's pretty sure she meant the kind found in renaissance paintings and kids' movies; the same shit forced down everyone's throats since birth. Angels aren't beautiful women dressed in white gowns, with golden wings, haloes, and harps. Kind-hearted people with voices like church bells in the spring, who want nothing more than to guide humanity through its own failings.
They don't perch on your shoulder, or protect you from harm. They don't rebel. They don't die. Except, of course, when they do.
There are only a few things Dean has trusted over his long, long hunting career. The Impala, for example, is a safe haven. Has always been, from the moment he sat in the driver's seat. That bitch's knife (his, now), the symbols still as perfect as they were when he stole it from her, is security. Sammy is his back-up, his better half, his brother. Bobby is his surrogate father, his compatriot, the one to go to when the getting's rough, or good, or both.
That had been it and he had been fine with it. Less is more, or whatever.
Until a night in a barn. Until he started equating trust with the smell of displaced winter air. Until the sound of a million wings flapping meant help had arrived, whether he wanted it or not. Until an ill-fitted tan coat meant confidant. Friend. Savior. Something indefinable, no matter how much Mary Winchester thought she knew.
"Dean?" Sam grabs him by the shoulder and shakes him once, startling him out of his mind (a dangerous place to be) and back into the game. A very, very one-sided game.
"Here I am, all dressed up with no one to take me to prom." Something bubbles up his throat, tasting strongly of vomit and malt, and he doesn't have the time to take a step back and examine it for what it is: worry. So he buries it. It's one of the things he does best. It's more than easy to shove it into a shoebox to be forgotten in the back of his mind, thrown under witty one-liners and a carefully-crafted bravado. After this? He deserves a fucking Oscar.
"So…" Sam rocks back on his feet nervously, something he only does when he's completely worn out. "Do we go?"
"Go where, Sammy?" What does one do when the Apocalypse is kind of up in the air and Satan's turned out to be a fucking flatleaver? He's pretty sure that they'll be ambushed - by the Devil or his number one fans, the angels - the second they step out the door.
Sam rakes a hand through his hair with a frown, eying the floor. Dean snorts, unable to help himself.
"Dude, you need a haircut. You look like you're in a VO5 commercial." Finding funny in a dark place has always been his coping mechanism. It's what keeps him from screaming bloody murder, most days. "Okay, first things first: we high-tail it to Chuck's."
"Why Chuck's?" Sam asks, surprised.
"Because I left Cas there to square off against a fucking archangel - don't you want to see the look on their faces when I tell them that Lucifer's a no-show?" Because maybe, if they get there in time, he can lend a hand. He's only human, but he's also Heaven's buttboy and that's got to count for something. It's probably not the best idea to bank on the possibility that they won't kill him, but it's really the only option he has right now. "So, let's get out of here before Lucifer pops out of the floor and proves me wrong."
With one last glance at the congealed spiral of blood, Dean turns on his heel and takes a few steps to the door. Except his footsteps are the only ones echoing in the place. He looks over his shoulder to see Sam hasn't moved an inch. Rage simmers in his belly. What part of 'Cas is going to explode everywhere' didn't Sam get?
"Sam," Dean barks, snapping his fingers once. If Sam wants to keep playing the kicked dog routine, Dean's going to treat him like one. "Get your ass in gear."
The haunted look in Sam's eyes tells Dean that they're not going anywhere, not until Sam's had his emotional breakdown for the week.
"That's all you have to say to me? That's it?"
He nods. "Yeah, Sam. That's all I got. Now move your ass -"
"I almost started the Apocalypse," Sam says, eyes wide with guilt and the words skirting the edge of desperate. It's all Dean can do not to flinch. "I… God, Dean! The things I did, the things I said … I hit you, Dean. I almost killed you."
Yeah, time to cauterize this conversation, now. "It's done with, Sam. It's over. Forgotten, forgiven, and all that shit."
More like buried. After Sam and his demon whore made their grand exit, he'd spent days digging up every flowerbed, every seed of trust and love Sam had ever planted and sown, until only a crater remained. Then he took everything, shoved it another shoebox, and covered it with dirt, gravel, cement, brick and insulation. And for good measure? He poured an ocean on top.
"No," Sam says, shoulders back and chin up, holding his ground. For one ridiculous moment, Dean wishes that Lucifer would make his entrance and knock Sam right on his ass. "No, Dean, it's not done with. I need you to acknowledge the fact that I fucked up royally. I need you to tell me so we can move on, or else this is going to come up again and - Dean, just tell me. Yell at me. Hit me. Just - Come on!"
It's getting to the point where he'll be pissed enough to dig up all that shit and tell Sam exactly how hurt, how betrayed he felt. And, well, no. "Sam, I will leave you here if you don't shut the fuck up. We need to go. Now."
"Dean -"
Okay. That is fucking it.
Dean stalks forward, fist drawn back. He really, really wants this. Maybe he should have dropped a desert on top of that ocean, or maybe his adrenaline is still pumping even after Lucifer turned out to be a no-show, or maybe it's because this is how he solves things. Whatever it is, he really wants to beat the shit out of something and Sam's as good a target as anything. The promise of a fight sings through him.
Except Sam doesn't move to defend himself. He just stands there and braces himself.
Dean drops his fist and stops. That is not fair. "Oh, come on! Don't puss out on me, Sam!"
Sam ducks his head, the way he used to when he was six and getting ripped a new asshole by Dad for touching a crossbow without supervision. For being fourteen and running ahead of them on a hunt. For being twenty and leaving them for the bright promise of college and normal. For betraying him for a demon.
For being six and not knowing just how ugly the world really is.
He sighs, the fight leaving him. "Sam."
"I'm sorry, Dean. I'm… I don't know what else to say, but I'm sorry," Sam says miserably, and Dean recognizes the tone, knows that if he were to look closer he would find Sam's eyes rimmed in red. And if there's one thing he can't stand, it's seeing a fucking grown man weep.
"C'mon, Sam, it's okay."
"It's not," Sam protests. Dean heaves another sigh, shoulders dropping.
"Fine," he relents, something in his chest loosening. "It's not. Actually, I don't think you could have fucked up any worse. But I'm giving you a pass. You fucked up - don't do it again."
There. Never let it be said that he's totally heartless.
Sam lifts his head, a watery smile breaking over his face, and Dean relaxes. It's okay. They're okay. He glances down at dark hair spilling over stone like mud, at the dim glint of a silver charm that never belonged to her, and resists the urge to shout "Hah!" at a corpse. Bros before hos, bitch. You, especially.
"Right," Sam agrees, blinking quickly.
Satisfied, Dean heads for the door, more than ready to leave this place forever, when he remembers that he doesn't have the Impala. Castiel bamfed him here. Shit. That means he not only has to hotwire a car (because there ain't no way he's riding around in that bitch's highlighter on wheels), but none of his shit is with him. No weapons, no holy oil, nothing. Just his knife, which had done so much damage to Cas that first night; he can only imagine how hurt an archangel will be if he stabs it.
Fuck it. He'll improvise. He's good at that sort of thing.
He looks back at Sam to make sure he's coming and his eyes are drawn to the man standing just beyond Sam. The American Medical Association doesn't know why people have aneurysms - he knows. It's because of creepy shit like people appearing where the Devil's supposed to be.
He moves to grab his knife, but he catches sight of a familiar tan coat and the killkillkill! instinct relaxes into relief with a pleased rumble. "Holy shit, Cas!"
Castiel doesn't react to the sound of his name or the blaspheme, just stares at Ruby's body like it's the most interesting thing since Creation. Dean exchanges confused glances with Sam, because weird, even for Castiel. Sam shrugs.
"So, Lucifer called," Dean announces, throwing his arms wide with a shit-eating grin. "Apparently his agent double-booked him and he won't be able to make your fam's shindig. He said he was really sorry about the mix up and promised to send a fruit basket."
Nothing. He tastes vomit and malt again.
"Cas?" Sam tries, eyes all concerned and earnest, and doesn't get as much as a twitch.
"Hey, Cas," Dean says softly, taking a step closer. The line of Castiel's shoulders is board straight, as if drawn with the help of a leveler, the kind of tense that sets off about ten million warning bells. Dean approaches him slowly. He can recognize the slow meandering spark of a lighted fuse when he sees one; he's been there enough, suffered through the wait and prayed for the explosion in the hopes he might finally achieve the eternal peace he's always wished for.
Castiel isn't supposed to know that feeling, though; he's not supposed to plumb the depths of that kind of low.
"Cas," Dean says again, trying to keep his muscles as loose as possible, to appear as non-threatening as he can. No need to spook the poor bastard and wind up with a dislocated head. "Cas, you hurt?"
Another step, a quick survey of the tense and trembling outline of tan-clad shoulders, and he knows. Fuck. The archangel didn't kill him but might as well have. Dean doesn't know jack shit about the Super Secret Angel Club, but he can guess what being kicked out means, and Castiel is out. Cas is out because of him.
He reaches out and clasps Castiel's shoulder. "Cas -"
Castiel jerks up and away, startled, leaving Dean's hand suspended in mid-air and Dean too shocked to move. It's like Castiel didn't even know he'd been there. Castiel knows. He always seems to know.
Dean throws up his other hand, both held in front of him in his best 'don't upset the crazy angel' pose. "Easy."
Castiel's eyes dart around the room, taking in the old walls, the awkward frame of Sam's gigantic body, before landing on Dean and then skittering away again. Spooked. Flustered. Human.
"I am here to take you home," Castiel says, voice hoarse and stretched too thin, like a rubber band ready to snap.
Dean waits for him to ask about Lucifer, to ask if he and Sam are all right, to tell them that he kicked some major archangel ass and is standing before them the victor. But nothing follows. Something's fishy in the land of Mary.
"Cas, did you hear me? Lucifer never showed up. I mean, Lilith bit it, but something went wrong. I think we're in the green." Dean can hear his own voice rising with hysteria, with the overwhelming need to snap Castiel the fuck out of whatever this is. It's freaking him out.
And then he sees it in the barely there light of the window, a sliver of too-bright in this tomb. It cuts a downward path without a sound before plunging to its death on the stone floor.
"It no longer matters. It's over," Castiel says, lips tightening around a quiver, nostrils flaring. Another follows the first one to the ground, then another, then another.
"Jesus Christ," Sam breathes as Castiel lifts his tear-stained face to them, and Dean reads the end of the world in the eyes of a truly devastated angel of God.
"Is dead," Castiel whispers. "The Son is dead."