Don't you leave me.
A comforting pool of warmth, fuzzy against Castiel's skin, painted splotches of rose and gold against his eyelids. His heart raced and his eyes flinched. He wanted to keep them shut, squeezed tighter against the light. If he opened them, the pits of fire that had awaited him the second his wings were clipped would greet him. Maybe his fallen brother would be there, applauding his failure. Or maybe, just maybe it was all an even greater falsehood and when he opened his eyes, he would see the desolation of nothing.
Who knew where angels went to die, and who knew where the fallen ones went to perish.
"Cas, I get that you're concentrating but you look ready to shit your pants," a voice called to him from close behind; Inviting, sunlit kisses from heated breathe rained down on his neck. There was the untrue promise of a body behind him, sincere and tempting.
And then there were burning hands on his own human hands; everything led him to believe he was in his vessel, that he was holding something. But he almost let it slip from his grasp. As his hands jolted at the touch so did his eyes. They sprung open and landed on the striking, fiery sunlit face of Dean Winchester.
"Look, it's not hard to do," Dean continued with an amused smile; his carefree laugh lines spread out like wings around his eyes and mouth. Breathless at the sight, Castiel felt, for the first time, the literal, dizzying effects of foregoing oxygen. That blithe grin stood stark against the array of scowls he was so used to seeing. It was so bare, so at home that Castiel looked away, turned bashful at seeing the hidden bits of Dean's light when it wasn't his to see. Not anymore.
As Dean went about manhandling Castiel's fingers around a fishing pole, he tried to figure out where he was. It all felt eerily familiar, from the crystalline river waters that pulsed downstream around his submerged trousers, to the particular angle of the sun in the sky that smeared the sky and treetops in a blanket of auburn. Dean wore a brown plaid shirt he'd worn out ages ago, torn through by a vengeful spirit sometime between his rise from Hell and Lucifer's escape.
He could hear Sam downstream, cursing at a rebellious fish that was flapping around on his line. He knew exactly what was going to happen: Sam would try to take the fish off the line and it would slap him in the face as he tried, before jumping back into the river.
And then Dean's laughter would fill his ears, distracted from his task of teaching Castiel how to fish. They were taking a break between towns, and Castiel had popped in to tell them about another endangered seal only to be pulled in for some relaxation since "you're lookin' like a stiff. And besides, me and Sammy are in the middle of grabbing dinner. Well, at least I am."
Dean wouldn't let Castiel say no. It had warmed him, a sensation that had started in his cheeks and toes and sprawled out to fill his chest and make him whole.
He tuned in just in time to hear the throaty roar of Dean's laughter as Sam cursed and bellowed that he was going to find a convenience store for some "real food".
"Bring me pie," Dean howled between chuckles though, from the obscenity Sam displayed with his fingers, Castiel assumed there was no pie to be brought. He didn't have to assume, however, because he knew quite well that Sam would bring an empty pie box and get rewarded for his efforts with a shove off the Impala's hood.
He knew all this, because this was undoubtedly a memory.
"Cas, you have something on your line," Dean managed to say after he'd composed himself and Sam had disappeared beyond the tree-line. It was only after Dean brought attention to it that Castiel felt the tug inside his enclosed palms, and looked to see the pole bending forward, the stern string diving further into the stream. Dean was already grabbing at the reel for Cas, human hands comfortably gloving his own and guiding him through the motion of pulling in a fish.
Callouses on Dean's hands, rough against Jimmy Novak's unworked skin, sent fireworks within Castiel. There was a strain from inside; a bursting wild that warned him, screamed that Novak's body was no longer able to contain him. It happened this way, sometimes, when Dean entered brief moments of intimacy or Castiel chanced one of his own. His bones rattled, and flickers of fantastic and senseless thoughts would rush through him and funnel into his grace, make his wings irritable, his chemicals imbalanced, his essence ecstatic. And in moments like these, what was now a ghost of his grace broke out insubordinately, calling out. He remembered worrying if Dean had detected the brief, eager glow beneath Castiel's skin, the strange static in the small spaces between their hands and bodies. Dean hadn't.
"Hook, line, and look at that sucker," the hunter breathed, musky with satisfaction, the words dancing across Castiel's flesh and making him jittery and tense and confused all over again. It had been Dean who taught Castiel about personal space, and yet he was the one that failed to maintain it. Of course, he was too wrapped up in his imagined victory at teaching an angel something of equally imagined import. Castiel remembered vividly now how Dean wouldn't allow anyone in their group to forget that fact, try as he might to inform Dean that, as an angel, he had no use for fishing.
He'd only decided to let Dean teach him as an excuse to linger, resisting returning to Heaven like a child refusing to go to school, in favor of staying in the comfort of home.
So was this his Heaven, then? He scanned the ground behind him, past the parked Impala, tried to find a road he was supposed to follow in order to visit his other memories and discovered nothing of the kind. Everything was picture-perfect, exactly how it had been the day he'd went fishing with Dean. If this was it, he wasn't at all disappointed. But he was perplexed. This wasn't the Heaven he knew, and he knew of no other place to go.
"Dean," he tried at interaction, and watched as Dean's broad back stiffened at the sound of his name. But he didn't turn from the cooler, where he'd placed Castiel's fish.
"Dean," he tried again, more insistent. A mistake.
The sun's heat faltered and the waters grew quiet in the wake of the disruption. And Castiel could feel the edges of the memory begin to fray and everything around Dean, outside Castiel's focus, blurred and wilted into black. There was a murmured static in the background, a channel losing its signal.
"Don't you leave me." But Dean's solemn utterance was defeated, as if he knew Castiel was already slipping away. The lines in his plaid shirt were starting to meld together and grow hazy, and then Dean was the one leaving him.
The absence was only just settling in his blood when the water beneath him rushed away, the blurred scenery around him speeding off with it in fast forward. The golds and rustic oranges melded together, slurred and shifted to bleaker roadsides enclosed behind grey frames and glass. The hum of chatter and the cranky motor of an automobile filled his ears and he was slapped with the reality of a bus, one he'd ridden only days ago. But he wasn't sitting, he was still standing, and before him and in front of the rushing country was the old woman he'd spoken with, and himself poised forward in the seat across her, rigid and awkward.
He'd never really seen Jimmy Novak when he was hosting the man's body, never really gotten to study the strangeness of being a human if only in the physical, possessed sense. Ever since he'd fallen, he'd avoided mirrors and now he was staring right at himself. Porcelain skin had grown ragged, yanked through Hell and Heaven and back. Bags were sinking into his face around his eyes. The blue eyes were his now, or were before he'd died. They were filled with anxiety and irritation, dodging the steady gaze of his interrogator.
"So, disowned, huh? What happened?" Because naturally, she wouldn't ask questions Dean had prepared him for like "how was your day" or "fine weather we're having". The last wasn't exactly a question, but Dean seemed adamant about Castiel learning "filler talk" since "people don't really give two craps, Cas, they just hate the silence" for reasons Dean wouldn't tell him.
He watched himself clutch at his knees, knuckles blanched and straining to jump out of his tiresome skin. "I," he'd fumbled for a moment, chapped lips floundering open. "I strayed."
There was a huff from his acquaintance, and she was leaning into her seat with shrugged shoulders.
"Oh, well I hope it was for love and not something flimsy," she puffed and, as she shook her head, the small wrinkles moved as if to frown along with her lips. And though her astonishment and judgment didn't make any sense given what little she really knew about him, her response had resonated with him. Still did.
"Me too," he'd said, unable to hold in his honesty as Dean had warned him to do.
Her sharp eyes were on him again. He remembered wondering if she was a journalist, or just a nosey old lady.
"How don't you know?"
"It's...," Castiel's body sagged, and he could see the stress building in him. "It's complicated."
She laughed lightly. "Love is the least complicated aspect of life, if you let it be. Trust me, I've lived long enough to know."
He was biting his lip. "Well, he-"
"Oh," she blurted, eyes wide. He was quick to correct her.
"No, that's not the complicated part, I don't think. I mean, I don't know how these things work," he sighed, frustration swarming out.
She gave a sympathetic smile, sprinkled with humor as she patted him on the knee, holding his hand comfortingly. "I'm sure you can find out how those specifics work through the internet, if you know what I mean."
He still didn't know what she meant. Nowhere had he found interspecies relationship tutorials or advice on Sam's computer, only a handful of pornographic, bestiality images.
"Besides, love is love. You have the rest of your life to put the pieces together, just make sure not to take too long or you'll never enjoy the end product."
He didn't want to be in this memory anymore, not wanting to be surrounded by the bus as the A.C began to break down and the children began to whine. He tested his abilities by walking straight through the bus, and found he could do just that.
His body leaned sideways, still moving with the bus as he stepped through the frame and into the brown fields he'd seen breezing past him. It was continuously rewinding, brushing past his trousers as if it was a 3-d image on an infinite treadmill. But he stayed motionless in the fragment of his memory, squinted eyes staring up at the imagined sun and skin letting in the fake rays of warmth.
There was a silence here, outside but still inside the memory, that allowed Castiel to be absent from himself. There was nothing for him to truly look at, because it was the same, repeated rustle of grass and wall of trees. He felt more constant here than he did within the moments in which he knew what was going to happen. He was freed from the images that had led him to being here, stuck in those scenes of confusion and humanity he wasn't supposed to feel anymore. For reasons other than those Dean had once ranted about, Castiel didn't like this Heaven. It was just a reminder of everything he couldn't have, now or even when he was still alive. He let himself just be there, interrupting a piece of his Heaven, or whatever it was, that he wasn't supposed to be in. He was allowed to forget himself within the hum of this blimp of time that existed just outside of what was important.
But it wouldn't last long. The rules of this place caught up to him. The twisted grass snapped, disassembling, bending backwards and crumbling into dirt. The sun stirred, sneaking into a new position in the sky to mark evening and the trees shrank away as cars began to fall from above. They landed with a clash to form Bobby's junk car lot. The gravel to his left complained as feet and wheels approached. When he looked over, he recognized himself and Bobby, still resigned to his wheelchair. And they appeared to be looking straight at him, his own face constrained with that same anxiety that had followed him out of the hospital. Bobby's stoic expression was crumbling and for a moment Castiel wondered if they were, indeed, looking at him.
"They're fighting. I believe it isn't the first time, either. Is it?" He heard himself say, and it verified that he was invisible. He followed the two's gaze past where he stood and saw that further to his right, in the same spot he'd died, stood the two boys with only the Impala keeping them apart. Dean's tense arms were, at the moment, resting against his car. Sam's feet paced, he wanted to go into the house but he was too heated, frustrated responses rushing out of him as Dean ranted.
And Castiel knew where and when he was.
"They were like this before they left, and now they're right back at it even though they just got back from that damn Serenity hell hole," Bobby grunted. "N' I'm sure I know exactly what it's about. Pains in my ass."
There was a silence on their part, but there was the rumble of Sam and Dean right there, an infinite battle of wills.
"Do you think Sam..." Bobby coughed, and both Castiels looked at him, saw a fatherly weight sink into the man's eyes and shoulders.
"... will manage to subdue Lucifer?" He'd filled in and Bobby's shoulders collapsed.
"So he told you, then."
"Sam told me, yes, as we were getting into the car. I don't know if he'll manage but I hope so. I believe he's strong enough given his drive to prove himself, to Dean. He doesn't want to let him down." And he feared what would happen if Sam wasn't able to fight the archangel off, what would happen to Dean especially now that Castiel was no longer there. He could almost scold himself for worrying more for Dean than he did for the world. If his Heaven was showing him anything, it was Dean's heavy weight on Castiel's mind, enveloping every memory he could call his. Two thousand years of being, and he'd only truly felt alive in the past two.
"Almost as bad as you," Bobby scoffed with a twitch of his mustache. When Castiel gave him a mixed look of confusion and shock, the old man huffed in frustration.
"Oh, please. Both of you're hell bent when it comes to Dean, but at least Sam understands Dean's the same way 'bout him," he continued. Castiel was shaking his head, looking away towards the cars and in the process, staring at dead-Castiel. He could see himself screaming for Bobby to stop. "Look, we all know you'd fly to the moon n' back if Dean asked you to and he knows. Even if both of you pretend to think that all the loyalty is one-sided. His stubborn ass knows n' he's just too stupid to show it."
Both past and present Castiel knew where this conversation was going and one of them had the choice to leave. So he did, he left the two to discuss bygones and moved towards the boys. The memory was growing tight around him, like he was pressing against a screen, but it didn't tear. He stood near Dean; he watched him furrow his definite brows, his eyes glint with anger and fear because his little brother was choosing to take the big plunge.
"Thank you, but it's not a matter of him knowing anything," he heard himself say from behind. When he glanced over at Sam, the details of his face were out of focus; hard to make out compared to Dean's. But he could see the hopelessness of Sam's situation painted in the features Castiel could detect, and he remembered how urgent Sam had been when he'd pulled Castiel aside outside of Serenity Valley.
"You'll make sure he's okay, right? When it happens?" Suddenly, there was another Sam, in the same clothes but right in front of Castiel, a hand on his shoulder as if to hold him back from getting into an imaginary car. Two memories blurred together, piled on top of him.
He was staring into Sam's fervent eyes, a lit fire inside of them that echoed harshly of his future if he was to succeed. Under the pressure, Castiel had agreed. Of course he would, he would try to make sure Dean was okay, but he knew how Sam's fate would make being "okay" extremely difficult. Castiel being there to mend the pain was like putting a Band-Aid on an amputated leg. Dean was still going to bleed out, still be unable to get back on his feet.
"He cares about you, Cas. Don't you go thinkin' otherwise." Concern, earnest concern; he could hear it in Bobby's voice. To avoid Sam's stare, Castiel glanced back at Bobby, remembered feeling just as uncomfortable under his gaze as he did under Sam's. Like they knew something he didn't or, rather, knew something he didn't want them to.
When he braved looking back, Sam-from-Serenity was gone. And instead, he was gazing at Dean's face, and it was veering towards defeat. So many lines on his face. Castiel could read between those lines: Dean was tired. He was tired of fighting: of fighting his brother, of fighting fate, of fighting all his life. And Castiel wanted to be there to make it stop, to help in some way but he was endlessly useless. Especially here, standing next to a reimagined Dean in a place where all he could do was repeat useless, fragmented memories.
"You're important, wings or no wings. Take it from a man who's lost his own."
Castiel had wanted to believe Bobby then, and believe now. But, as Dean walked right through him, he knew that those words were just comforting lies and that, unfortunately for him, Castiel wasn't human enough to buy into them.
He decided, with increasing nervousness, to linger beside the silent Impala as the group moved into the house. He waited for the transition, wondered what would come next, but instead he felt a tug on his spine that urged him backwards before snapping him inside the house. It wasn't a new memory, but a continuation, and one he hadn't wanted to reenact.
Dean had just entered, smashing the door behind him. He barreled towards Castiel and this time, it was towards him. There was no imagined, memory-Castiel. No, he was grabbing him, dead-Castiel, and pulling him into the hallway while Sam and Bobby nervously looked on. Stunned, Castiel could only be tugged along. He wasn't sure if it was a replication of his initial shock that day, or a reignited feeling at being touched, the roughness of Dean's hand on his forearm a missed explosion of nerves.
They came to a stop near the staircase and for a while, Dean was silent. He rubbed at his stubble, pulling at his chin, trying to coax out the necessary words. Finally, he tore his gaze away from the floor and pinned Castiel.
"What if I said yes to Michael-"
"Dean," Castiel sighed, more so just to say his name than anything. It made him feel alive, no longer a suffocating mute in his own memory.
"Hear me out. What if I said yes, and I managed to fight him off long enough to push Lucifer into the cage. I'm gonna get Death's ring, and then we could do that, right? Whaddya think?" Dean puffed out, eager, nervous, falling to pieces. He didn't know that Sam had already told Castiel his own version of this plan.
Castiel felt lost, unable to fight against Dean's bulldozing train of thought, unable to stop what had already happened.
Dean was shaking his head as if Castiel had said something, which Castiel contended he had. Just not this time around.
"No, no. Michael wouldn't want to use Adam. They said I was the only true vessel, and he's a stickler for tradition. If I called, he'd bite," he tried to reason, shifting feet.
"He'd destroy you. I'd lose you," Castiel murmured, would go unheard in this one-sided recording.
Dean scowled, swallowed down a foul taste. "So what if I'm human for a few minutes? It's the surprise of the attack. He'd think I'm Michael or something, and then I'd just shove him in- Don't talk to me about how long it would take to open the port. It could work. Maybe I'd still have the strength of an archangel, maybe I could hold him down or something. We can figure something out. We could do something, something. Can't you do some of your angel voodoo?"
And then he stopped, because he'd slapped Castiel with a question they both knew the answer to. And he hadn't meant to remind Castiel of what he'd lost, but he did. Over, and over again. And what he'd lost wasn't just his wings, but his purpose.
If you clipped the wings off a bird, was it really still a bird?
Sure it would, but it would die from heartbreak, and extreme blood loss.
"Cas, come on, don't look at me like that." Dean's face buckled under everything, and Castiel knew he was genuinely worried. But it didn't matter now. "Look, I just. I just need someone to be on my side right now. I need to make a good plan, because right now we got nothing but a shitload of an apocalypse and I need help."
He watched Dean go on trying to bandage the wound he'd unknowingly opened. And all he could think of was how much he was going to miss seeing Dean get all frazzled over what to do, face red and flustered over trying to say what he felt without really saying it. Because he never said "I need you" the whole time he tried to get Castiel to agree with his plan. He always danced around the bullet with Castiel's name on it. He tried to find millions of words to substitute for those three simple ones. And that's what made it so hard for Castiel to believe Bobby. Because his human was too afraid to say it, too ashamed to bare the truth. And Castiel hadn't been strong enough to make him say it while he still could.
"Fine. If you'd rather have a fucking pity party instead of helping me, fine. Angels don't like to get involved in human matters, I forgot 'bout that. This would probably be the part where you flap your wings and disappear, leaving me to figure this shit out on my own. Always leaving, too bad you can't do that now. That must be real hard, not being able to feed that habit," Dean finally shot out in a flurry of frustration, storming off and leaving Castiel to digest his words for a second time.
Yeah, he was having a damn hard time believing Dean needed him.
So, Castiel was alone again, kicked to the curb by his own memory and standing there by the staircase with the edges of the scene frayed and sounding with static again. But it wasn't changing. It continued to linger, tormenting Castiel and provoking questions about this place he'd been dropped into. What was a Heaven that provided negative memories? It was supposed to be euphoric, if not repetitive. He was becoming just as tattered and befuddled as his fading recollections.
It was then, as if on cue, that he began to feel the workings of an earthquake that he didn't remember being part of. The walls began to crumble around him as he tried to steady himself against it, chunks cracking off and tearing down the whole house with it. The ground shook beneath him, erratically and furiously. Quickly, he realized it wasn't the wooden floors because they were no longer there. He saw panels falling, toppling downward in an endless black absence, and he was somehow hovering within it, and it was his body that was shaking. Yet, his feet were steady. He was being shaken.
"Cas!" Loud, abrupt, and directly in his face.
He looked up from the bottom and saw Dean's face again, and rising quickly and swarming around him were the walls of Bobby's house again and, behind the freckles, the ceiling. Castiel was lying on something soft and springy. The couch, he reasoned as he came to. He placed a hand to his head as Dean gruffly helped him sit up, Castiel's head still swerving and his eyes still pierced with black and freckles, and his ears ringing with whispered words he felt he needed to remember.
"Hey, earth to Cas," Dean grunted and gave a rough pat to his back, making him wince. He glanced down at his stomach, saw a bandage stained red, wondered how he was alive, marveled at the feeling, no matter how brief, of Dean's balancing hand. "You good?"
"I think so," Castiel breathed, fearful that even thinking positive would send him back to limbo.
"Good, 'cause we don't need a corpse on our hands. You were out for a while." It was after the initial shock of waking up that Castiel realized how curt Dean's attitude was. When he ventured a look at Dean's face, he saw impassivity. And the hunter was already moving away from the couch, rubbing a towel against his blood stained hands.
"Thanks for the concern," Castiel snapped, annoyed and muzzling the hurt he felt stinging his lower abdomen. He wasn't so sure it was from the physical wound.
"You're the dumb ass that got in the way. You shouldn't have been fighting, it was a nuisance." Dean casually leaned against the opposite wall, looking right through Castiel with hardened eyes. And it was like that night all over again, and he was filled with nausea and frustration.
Castiel fought the urge to shoot up from the couch. He was certain that, in his condition, he'd collapse and just prove Dean's point. "If I remember correctly, I was trying to protect your ass," he hissed in reply.
Dean shrugged, tossing the towel onto the desk beside him. Castiel's eyes took in the rest of the room and, once again, they were alone.
"Where are the others?"
"Out."
"Very informative," Castiel grumbled.
"Coming from you, that's priceless."
"What the hell, Dean?" He roared, and though he expected a headache to rush forth- it thankfully did not.
"What? Expected a welcome back hug or something?" Dean scoffed, a strange grin surfacing that wasn't his own. His laugh lines didn't reach his eyes, were shallow and false. Castiel felt eerily uncomfortable, more irritable than usual, not at all at home where he usually felt so natural and invited, even on Dean's worst days. He couldn't look at Dean, or the cruelty that was hiding somewhere beneath the green. Even his freckles seemed off, drained of life. His posture was too stiff, too proper. Everything felt off, even the air between them.
Even if Dean didn't need him, he wouldn't be this way. Not when he'd gripped Castiel and held him as he bled out. He could still recall the safety that had enveloped him as Dean tried so hard to keep him there. This wasn't right.
"Did she get a knock at your head, too? Cas, wake up. We need to talk about Sam's valiant plan, and how much it won't work."
"You're not Dean," Castiel blurted, his gaze hardening on the imposter. A cold silence followed, Dean's face frozen in its stern sneer. Slowly, as Castiel's verdict hung heavy between them, the confidence fell from its place and smoldering disdain took over.
"I do find this simpleton's mannerisms exhausting, so I'd applaud you just for letting me drop the act. If only you weren't just as irritable," Dean's voice replied harshly.
Castiel's eyes narrowed, his stomach growing hollow. "Michael. What did you do to him?"
Dean's body shrugged, and Castiel couldn't help the shudder that curdled through his body at the thought of Michael using Dean as a vessel. "You heard him, twice actually, propose this idea of using me to push Lucifer into the cage. What an imbecile, thinking himself above my power. As you can see, it didn't work out in his favor."
"You're lying," Castiel seethed, glaring and raging enough to stand up from the security of the couch.
"How could you possibly know that," he scoffed.
Castiel's hand pressed roughly against his bandaged wound, and was relieved to receive nothing but the dull throb of pressing too tightly against his stomach. There was no searing pain of a stab wound. Dean's eyes narrowed as Castiel's lips thinned into a hardened line of determination.
"This is still part of whatever platform of torture you've conjured for me. It was you, wasn't it?"
"Don't regard yourself so highly. I simply took advantage of your time of dying to manipulate your memories and send a message. It simply seemed more suiting to use this body, it was my true vessel despite the idiot it encases," Michael muttered, and Castiel fought hard not to lunge at him because it was still Dean's voice, Dean's body. Even if it was within some twisted midpoint between living and dying.
"And what message was that?" Castiel grit out, trying to look past the cruelty Dean's eyes displayed, to Michael's true form.
Now, Dean's lips were smiling again. And again, it was all wrong. "That you fell in vain."
"What are you talking about?"
"Castiel, dearest Castiel, my brother. You know what I speak of. You've been coveting things beyond your grasp. You fight against me, against Heaven, for a delusion. But you don't need to. We would welcome you back, we need all the angels we can save, Castiel," he sighed, broad arms opening in assurance, but Castiel's skin crawled at the idea of proximity with those arms. "We would grant you access to Heaven if only you abandoned these illusions of yours and allowed my fight with Lucifer to go uninterrupted by these foolish men."
"Freewill is a delusion now, is it?" Castiel ridiculed, his body tensing. "It's blasphemous to want freewill, to want it for them, as God designed?"
Suddenly, Dean- Michael was detached from the wall and moving towards him, with the slow pace of a predator. Castiel froze, unsure as Dean's body inched closer and closer to him. When Michael spoke in Dean's voice, the familiar smell of beer, aftershave, leather and gasoline crashed over him, made it hard for him to think coherently, made a rope between his ribs constrict around his heart.
"You and I both know that was not all you desired for them. For him. From him," He breathed, manipulating Castiel's suffering and conflicting emotions and thoughts. They jumbled in a hurricane of resistance and need. He shut his eyes tight, forced himself to forget the proximity Michael was allowing him to Dean's arms and chest and face, his lips inches away from Castiel's ears. "This is why you fell, brother. You've grown too close, you've grown greedy. And for nothing, because the desire is unrequited. Why continue this?"
Castiel flinched, his body reeling backwards from the gunshot to his chest those words provided. He couldn't get far enough away from Michael, from Dean. From the things he didn't want to hear.
"Don't you dare assume anything about me or him," he retorted weakly.
"I'm not assuming. If I said it in this body, would it make it any more obvious? Here: I don't need you," he spelled out. And it was digging into Castiel's stab wound, burning it and making it more real than any pain he'd felt.
"I don't want you. You're useless," he continued, the words rolling off his tongue so easily, a list he was checking off point by point.
"You're not Dean," Castiel fought meekly. He balled his fists, felt a strange warm tingling around his left hand, tried to ignore it but it grew in intensity.
"I'm as good as. He's an easy creature to interpret. You've simply been playing blind. You don't want to see, and so you don't. But you must see the mockery he's made of you. I could stop all of this and bring you home." Dean's eyes watched him through that cold layer of Michael, and Castiel was losing his grip. And that intense force was burning his hand, compressing it beyond his own clenching.
When he glanced down, however, there was nothing visible to attach to the feeling. It simply ghosted there, rough and calloused and determined.
"Go away," he heaved.
"I'm not that easy to get rid of, Castiel. You're human now, if only for a small while before you finally pass on. I can stay in your mind for as long as I please, or until you say yes," Michael commented, the confidence in it almost Dean-like. But not enough to deter Castiel.
He made for the door of the house, opened it, stumbled into another memory.
Castiel was being led towards the back rooms of a strip club. Dean was rooting him on. Castiel remembered this, remembered eying Dean as he was pulled away with sheer horror coursing through him because he didn't feel that human impulse of lust. He only felt that rope tightening between them two, his chest creaking the further he was pulled from Dean.
Dean gave a laugh, looked right at him with that cold smile that never reached joy.
"He voluntarily gave you up to a woman you didn't even know, a harlot. He spent the little time before you were kicked out looking at other women, lusting after them."
Castiel shook his head, fought the iron hold of Chastity, the prostitute, and ran out the exit door. His heart was lurching into his throat, and he was trying to escape his own mind, his Hell.
Instead of funneling into an empty alleyway, he stumbled into another slab of Dean. He was beaten, and Castiel was raging with pent up distress because Dean was trying to say yes to Michael, he was giving up. And Castiel had given up everything for him, everything, and there was nothing to show for it but a broken man on the ground without a care for what would happen to Castiel. He just wanted it to end, he wasn't missing Castiel. He was too full of himself, so selfish.
Dean spat out blood and gave a sinister laugh. "He is selfish, Cas. Very selfish, and the only person he gives a damn about is dear Sammy. It doesn't matter how many fistfuls of anger you pound into him."
"Stop it," Castiel groaned, his insides churning and that tingling sensation on his hand tuning up to a boil. Distraught, he felt his body cave and crumple to the floor. He was heaving, and he figured if he was dying he should at least not need to breathe here.
He didn't look up when he heard footsteps approach him, even when Dean's engulfing hands gripped his shoulders. He was being pulled up from all fours, and his knees dug into the concrete.
"I'll stop now, brother, because I know you see now. Dean Winchester was a means to an end, and since he could not fulfill that you must banish him from your thoughts. It's unhealthy to be this devoted." He was trying to be gentle, but Dean's voice made Castiel's stomach reel. He was staring at the ground, refusing to look at the falsehood in front of him.
"But we were meant to love man," he sighed, resigned.
"We were meant to stay at a distance, you were meant to be an angel, Castiel. You serve a purpose in Heaven, not on earth. And you can again."
"How," Castiel croaked.
"Simple. Promise me you'll leave, forget this fallacy of free will he's filled you with to string you along. I will heal you and when I have defeated Lucifer, you can come home."
A weak, humorless smile. "And if I refuse?"
"You will die, Castiel." The grip on his shoulders became fierce and he knew without looking, that the face Michael wore was hardened.
Castiel smiled, a small laugh filling his throat but never managing to make it all the way out through the tightened pipes. He allowed Michael to wait just a little longer, before finally mustering up the strength to speak.
"In that case, I'll just have to see where angels go to die."
Silence.
The stern hands that sunk his shoulders slowly began to dissipate, the concrete beneath him cascading away in chunks as a wave of relief fell over him. The confrontation receded until he was fully submerged in dark silence again. And he let himself collapse, face down until the blank world reoriented and he was facing upwards.
For a while, he could only hear his own heavy breathing and the echo of Michael's words. There in the isolation, his words seemed to bear heavier on Castiel's mind. They lay above him in script, repeating over and over. Had he just refused an offer to return to grace?
"Kind of a bleak night, huh? No stars or nothin'. Not even grass. What the hell kind of Heaven is this, Cas?"
Castiel didn't even jump. He was getting used to the obscure, blunt nature of his mind. And he was growing so tired.
Turning his head, he spotted the real Dean, or as real as it could get for an illusion. He was confident it was him, and not Michael's rag doll. Dean was relaxed in the dismal light Castiel's mind provided them in that abyss, the lines of his face just right as his smile settled peacefully amongst his dotted features, his chest rising and falling at a hypnotic, easy pace. He smelled of home, he felt like home.
"It's not Heaven, yet... Why are you here, Dean?"
"Because your subconscious wanted me to be. It's kind of creepy, but hey I don't mind," he replied casually, a small shrug of his shoulders as he continued to glance up, or down. There was no real sense of direction on this plane.
"Is that because you really don't or because you're not real?" Castiel muttered, though he didn't really care. He was enjoying the shared solitude.
"Ouch, Cas, way to hurt my feelings. Of course I'm real, in your head. Besides, since you don't want me to mind, I don't. I'm obligated to bend to your will." He was teasing now, amusement prancing in those green eyes. He finally met Castiel's gaze.
"Are you also obligated to be an ass?" A glimmer of a smile on his own face.
"You want me to be as true to myself as possible, so yeah."
They shared in the silence that followed; a calm synchronicity falling between them. They breathed in and out as one, because they were.
"Will you miss me?" Castiel suddenly asked, quiet and afraid to disturb the sanctity of their rest. He'd been prodded by the return of warmth in his hand, pressing and familiar. He could feel Dean holding his hand, but he assumed it was his subconscious wishing it so. He dismissed the thought.
Dean's eyes melted into troubled seas. "You don't want me to, 'cause it'll hurt. For me, and you. But, you want me to miss you all the same. You really don't know what you want, do you?"
"I guess not," Castiel mustered, his throat constricting.
"Well, buddy, you need to figure that out soon."
"What for? I'm dead, no point in doing anything anymore."
"Technically: dying, but I don't think you will die. I hope not. And that means you hope not, too," Dean shrugged as he turned to look above him. One star had popped up, distant and bright. It made Dean smile, and the urgency of his hand around Castiel's strengthened.
"Michael said I was going to die. Besides, Meg stabbed me, in the intestines. Humans die that way, if memory serves me right."
"Yeah but," Dean shook his head, "it missed the important stuff. Meg sure as hell doesn't know how to kill an angel." A curt laugh.
"But I'm not an angel, Dean. Not anymore." And then he could see the crinkles around Dean's eyes in such crisp detail that it made his imagined heart stutter. Dean penetrated through Novak's shell, into Castiel with his searching gaze and Castiel imagined Dean could see semblances of grace sparkling there like star droplets.
"You are to me."
"You're just saying what I want to hear," Castiel sighed in frustration, tearing his eyes away from Dean's because looking into them was yet another falsehood. As true as they seemed, they would never be authentic. The mind always failed to perceive all the small, astounding aspects of a human being. And even Castiel's botched it, never fully grasping the essence of Dean. If he'd counted right, this Dean was missing two freckles just to the side of each eye.
"Duh, but sometimes what you want to hear and what I say and do are the same thing. You just don't get it sometimes. Take it from your subconscious, dude."
"Dean?" His voice was fervent, desperate as he grasped at the hand he'd thought was holding his. When he looked down, there was nothing. Dean's hands were at his sides. When he looked up, the star was glowing brighter. The larger and livelier it grew, the more it dawned on Castiel that it wasn't exactly a star.
"Yeah?" Dean whispered, sounding drained, far away. When Castiel peeked over, he saw that Dean's eyes were falling closed. But there was a playful, secretive smile on his face that managed to sooth the storm in Castiel's gut, if only for a moment.
"Wherever I'm going, I'm going to need you so don't you leave me," he heaved. It was getting harder to breathe, his side was burning, and that ghost of a hand on his gripped tighter as if to pull him away from the small peace he'd managed to create in his mind. There was no reaper coming for him, but he could feel an end to this approaching.
"Of course not," Dean scoffed, but his smile was warm as he turned to watch Castiel, memorizing the fallen angel as Castiel often did to Dean when he wasn't looking. "Besides, it's your brain. I'm kinda just here."
"Dean," Castiel begged, exhausted.
"I'm here, whenever you need me. But you won't, because you're going somewhere better than this piece of crap." But that didn't still Castiel. It caused a storm inside his heart, and then everything was pacing and throbbing. Dean was shuddering rapidly, the light from the star above bleaching him out, searing away the darkness that surrounded him and finally he remembered the words he'd been trying to cling to since an angel blade had buried itself inside him. Because it was blaring loud, simultaneously reaching him as the beam of burning white and the screeching pain in his side did.
"Don't you leave me, Cas."