So I've decided how this story is going to end and it's all written out and now all I have to do is actually write the thing. I think it's going to be somewhere around 35 chapters which means that there's not a lot left and we'll most likely be done by the end of the summer, and then I'm going to start working on two more destiel fics heavily that have been brewing for a long time and bc I'm writing this at 3am and I'm excited I'll just explain those really quickly.
So one is called Phillip (that's not its actual name, it's an inside joke bc the acronym is almost Phillip [I think it's FALLGTPA {and actually that looks nothing like Phillip what was I thinking}]) and it's basically a "Fuck you season 9 I'm going to erase you and fix you" bc what even was season 9
And the other is right now just called Boggart!Cas and it originates from a thing I had to do in class where I was given like half of this weird story and I had to like finish it and so I went crazy and basically it turned into a full-fledged spn AU universe and it's going to be half told from the perspective of a little girl named Maya and half told from a 3rd person omniscient (I think omniscient but I can't remember the other type of 3rd person and I can't be bothered to look it up) view of mostly Dean.
And basically they're both pretty cool so if you're sad about this fic ending then just remember: You can continue to deal with my horribly under-edited writing with a complete and utter lack of a schedule for years to come.
Also if anyone wants to ask me questions about any future writings/this writing/generally talk to me about writing, spn, or literally anything bc I love talking to people and you people are awesome: my tumblr is casdeansam or something I don't really remember so I'd consult a previous chapter to see what my actual tumblr is bc I don't remember but most likely it's casdeansam?
Also, spn spoilers for 10x21 or 22 or something:
I'm not killing off Charlie. In fact I'm bringing her in. Because fuck the stupid asshole spn writers Charlie was great and I'm not going to get into this rant here bc I've ranted so much about the subject of Charlie's death already
ALSO WHAT THE FUCK THIS STORY IS 4 MONTHS AWAY FROM BEING A YEAR OLD I HAVE NO RECOLLECTION OF WORKING ON THIS SHIT FOR NEARLY A YEAR
Cas let out a long, empty sigh.
May 2, 2008. 11:23 p.m.
Cas had his eyes on the clock. Balthazar was pouring goofer dust around all the walls of the room of the little house a bit outside Sioux Falls that they were in. This was the house he would die in. They would burn him at Bobby's. It wasn't discussed, but it was just a fact.
He was afraid. He was shaking and he kept seeing his brothers' faces morph into twisted images, into horrible, horrible things. Ruby was with him. Ruby and her demon-killing knife. They had an angel blade. At some point after 11:12, he started to see Ruby's true form. She was disgusting.
He found if he thought detachedly, he shook less and it was less likely that he'd break down.
He gripped his angel blade and watched as Balthazar finished with the goofer dust and Gabriel went around the room with salt for good measure. He wanted them to leave until it was over in case the hellhounds decided to take a few bites out of them too, but they refused.
Cas's heart was thu-thu-thumping rapidly and he waited in anticipation for any sight of Dean, Adam, or Sam. Any one of them would've been welcomed.
He gave up on them by 11:27.
"You okay?" Balthazar said quietly, pulling Cas over to the corner of the room as Ruby talked to Gabriel about what was going to happen, as if he needed it explained anymore.
"No, not really," he said, shaking his head. "But considering the circumstances, I'm relatively better than I could be."
Balthazar paused for a second before nodding. "Well, that's definitely better than being worse than you could be."
Cas nodded in agreement, clutching his angel blade and looking around the room. "I'd really feel much more comfortable if you and Gabe would leave."
He shook his head. "No way, Cas," he said. He crossed his arms, gun drooping downward out of his hand. "We're staying here with you."
Cas sighed heavily and leaned back against a wall, wanting to slump down, but he'd break the salt and goofer dust lines if he did. "You guys are too stubborn."
By 11:43 he was starting to hear things that weren't there. He would hear Azazel whisper to him, and he'd jerk around to find nothing there. He felt someone grab his shoulder but everyone else was across the room at that point.
At 12:00 exactly—he watched the clock change—he heard hellhounds barking and growling. He froze for a moment before standing up tall and bracing himself for the fight.
It didn't take them nearly as long as he hoped for them to break in. By then he, Balthazar, and Gabriel had all hugged, had said nearly tearful goodbyes, and then the faced the door waiting, anticipating, Ruby nearby and closest to Gabriel.
They burst in with a loud noise. They were disgusting, bigger than any dog he'd ever seen. They were black and bony, their skin hanging loosely over their bodies like thin blankets draped across their forms. A reddish-yellowish substance oozed from their skin, and their eyes were a perfect crimson. Their mouthed foamed gray, and their short, stubby, thick tails wagged impatiently as Balthazar and Gabriel attempted to fight them. He and Ruby did the best, what with them being able to see them.
Of course it was to no avail. And for a moment as he collapsed, claws pushing into his skin and knocking him down, he felt empty. Numb. And then pain ripped through him, followed by fear. He shouted and screamed and vaguely he thought he saw Ruby holding Gabriel and Balthazar back, but he was too terrified, too in pain to react. He felt everything—watched everything—on his body being torn to shreds. He watched himself die.
And then there was a long, sloping tunnel, and at the end was hellfire.
The hellhounds shredded Cas's body but they left him be after he was dead. Gabriel was appalled, and he felt something huge building up in his chest, threatening to explode and shatter him so entirely that he would be irreparable.
They carried his body outside and into the Impala, laying him over a sheet in the backseat. Gabriel walked away and threw up. Ruby left.
Balthazar got in the driver's seat and Gabriel curled up in the passenger's, shaking and shutting his eyes, pretending that it was Cas over there in the driver's seat and Balthazar was sleeping in the back. He still felt sick to his stomach, but he knew that Cas wouldn't want him to throw up in the car.
"We've got to burn him," Balthazar said at one point on the way back. It was about an hour until they were at Bobby's. They shouldn't have gone so far away.
"We're not burning him." There was no indignity in his voice. His voice was dead, monotonous. But they weren't going to. The idea of burning Cas made him feel sick to his stomach, and he had to take a second to try not to throw up again.
"We can't bury him," Balthazar said, frowning slightly over at him. "He deserves a hunter's funeral."
He looked over at him and shook his head, looking down at his lap and breathing slowly. It was hard to think of anything but the crushing pain in his chest and the intense throbbing in his head that was appearing. He had never felt tinier, and all of the pain he was feeling felt twice as big as him. He was overwhelmed.
"I'm going to bring him back," he told his brother resolvedly, and he looked out the window. He was determined. His mind wasn't going to be changed, and he knew that Balthazar knew that as well as he did.
He watched and yet didn't as the world passed by them, and soon they turned music on, blaring classic rock, and Gabriel bit hard down on his cheek until he tasted blood. It didn't stop the tears from coming. Once he felt the first one slide down his cheek, like the first drop of water on a rainy day that leads way to a downpour, he was done with. He leaned his head against the window even though the rattle hurt and shook slightly.
"Gabe," Balthazar murmured, voice shaky. They were finally pulling into Bobby's driveway. He shook his head and got out as soon as the Impala was parked, not wanting to be around the car anymore. He would talk to Balthazar inside, would hug him and cry with him inside, but he needed to be inside.
Bobby was there waiting for him when he came in. Gabriel felt stupidly tiny, stupidly young.
"He in the car?" he asked quietly.
Gabriel nodded, wiping at his eyes. Tears were still flowing.
"Where's Balthazar?" Bobby asked him, his voice gentle and fatherly.
"Outside," he said. He looked up at him. "I don't want to burn him, Bobby. We can't burn him."
"Don't you think he deserves a proper hunter's funeral, though?" he said. "It's safer that way too."
Gabriel shook his head. "No. He's coming back. We'll find a way to save him," he said. "I can't burn him."
Bobby watched him for a long time before nodding. "Okay."
The question was where to bury him. They couldn't very well bury him in a cemetery because how would anyone deal with a body showing up in the ground out of nowhere in a cemetery? They decided to just do it in the middle of nowhere, about an hour away from Sioux Falls. The hour drive from Bobby's to the place was horrible, but they took two cars—no one wanted to sit in the back with Cas's dead body—and Bobby drove the Impala. Gabriel curled up in his seat in one of Bobby's trucks as Balthazar drove.
They buried him almost silently, until at the very end Balthazar said, "Fuck the angels' apocalypse. What kind of angel would let someone like Cas die for their sake?"
They went back to Bobby's after a while and Gabriel cleaned up what blood got on the backseat of the Impala. He went up to his room and waited until nightfall. He grabbed everything in the room and left while Bobby and Balthazar were sleeping. He took the Impala.
By that time next week, he had a new phone, new fake IDs, and a new thirst for revenge.
For the first time since May 3, 2008, at 12:10 a.m., Castiel Novak would take a breath.
It was labored and felt like fire was being forced through his lungs instead of oxygen, but once he got used to it, felt around where he was, he realized that he was alive. This was real. This wasn't something from hell. Things in hell always felt too real, so real that he knew they weren't dreams. What he was feeling then had the quality of a dream, the potential for not being real. Either he was alive and was dreaming, or he was alive and it was too surreal for it to feel like it.
But he wasn't dead.
He pulled a lighter out of his pocket without thinking, fumbling to flick it on. He touched the top of the dark, enclosed space he was in. This was a coffin.
Shit, this was a coffin.
He swallowed down the fear that was rising to the surface. Having a panic attack would help nothing.
"Help!" he shouted—or tried to shout. His croaky voice was no more than a whisper. It almost hurt to try to speak.
He let out a little shaky breath and pulled his jacket off with effort. Taking a big gulp of breath, he wrapped it around his head and then hit the top of the box repeatedly until it broke and the massive pressure of the dirt above him falling down on him hit. He didn't waste any time starting to dig his way up. When his hands finally reached the surface he dug faster, and gasped for breath once he was up. He pulled himself completely out of the ground and took the jacket off his head. He lay on the ground when he was finally out.
After a few minutes he painstakingly pulled himself to his feet and looked around. Everything—the grass, the trees, everything—was flattened outward around his gravesite.
He walked over to the fallen trees and climbed over them. There was no use standing there speculating about them. He needed to get to Bobby and his brothers. He walked for what felt like forever, walking and walking and walking, the shirt tied around his waist sliding down a lot and getting really annoying. It was hot as hell.
He finally managed to make his way to a road, and after walking for about twenty minutes on down he found a gas station with a couple cars. Speeding up his pace, he made it to there soon and peered in the window, calling out in his still croaky, airy voice, "Hello?" No one answered so he wrapped his shirt around his hand and busted the window, breaking into the gas station.
The first thing he did was grab a bottle of water and chug in, taking a gasp of breath when it was gone. He crumpled it and tossed it, and then went over to a stack of newspapers to see the date.
September 18, 2008. September?
He washed his dirt-caked face off and checked in the mirror for any scars from the horrible attack on the night he died. His shoulder, which had been hurting since he came up, stung a little suddenly, and he lifted up the shirtsleeve. A bright, vividly red handprint was raised on his arm. What the hell?
He grabbed more water and some food and put it in a bag. He couldn't do anything about any of his problems until he found Bobby and his brothers so there was no use dwelling on the shoulder mark thing yet. He stole some money as an afterthought and as he was pulling some out of the cash register, the TV started to play static and the radio turned on. He frowned and looked around before grabbing salt and starting to line the windows. An intense ringing suddenly started to grow in volume until there was nothing he could do but cover his ears. The windows broke all around him and it finally stopped. He pulled himself to his feet, grabbed his bag, and went out to the telephone booth outside. Nothing he could do without Bobby, Gabe, and Balthazar.
The first person he thought to call was Bobby. He knew they'd all be there. They had to be, and if they weren't they'd be on a case, but Bobby would be home. "Hey, Bobby, it's me," he said when Bobby's voice came over the phone.
"Who's me?" he answered gruffly.
"Cas," he said.
Bobby immediately hung up. Cas tried to call back but Bobby wasn't having any of it. He went out, stole one of the cars, and drove the way back to Bobby's, eating granola bars and chugging more water. He pulled up and got out, not surprised when Balthazar opened the door and looked terrified.
"What the hell," he breathed out, stepping forward, before regaining his senses and stepping back. He looked behind him quickly, grabbing a knife off the table and coming at him.
"Shit, Balth!" he said, managing not to get stabbed. He grabbed the knife from him quickly. "I'm not a fucking shapeshifter or something!" He cut the back of his arm slightly, wincing a little bit. "See?"
Balthazar stared at him for a long time, until Bobby came to see what was going on. He seemed to have heard Cas's voice because he was holding holy water, anticipating. He splashed it on Cas's face. "I'm not a demon either," he muttered as he stepped in.
They both stared at him for a second before coming in for a hug at the same time, which resulted in an awkward group hug that quickly split up into separate hugs. Bobby grasped the back of his shirt and patted his back, squeezing Cas close. "Shit, you fucking idjit."
He hugged Balthazar next, and Balthazar held tightly to him as well.
"Where's Gabe?" he asked first, before they could go into the whole how-is-this-possible talk.
Bobby and Balthazar looked at each other, which was never a good sign. "You explained what happened to you when you came topside and we'll fill in the last four months you're missing when you're done," Balthazar said. They pulled out beers and sat in the living room, and Cas explained what happened to him quickly.
"It's angels. Gotta be," Balthazar said, taking a drink of his beer. "Can't be Sam, though. We haven't heard from him since—well, you were here last time we heard from him."
"So Dean," Cas said. "No other angel would do this. So what happened while I was gone?"
They explained to him how Gabriel left almost immediately after Cas died and hadn't been heard from since. As far as they knew, he was dead, but they were pretty sure he just went off with Ruby to find the demon deal–holder, Lilith. Since then they'd been going on cases or finding cases to give to other people. They looked constantly for weeks after his disappearance and still had a ton of eyes out for him, but the best they could do was hunt and hope.
"So we've got to look for him," Cas said, frowning and looking between them.
"Maybe if Dean comes back," Balthazar said warily, looking over at Bobby, who nodded in agreement. "It's getting pretty sketchy out there. Demons are everywhere."
"So we have to! Gabe can't be out there with a ton of demons," Cas said, incredulous by the notion that the two of them would let Gabriel out there with just Ruby and himself as protection. He was a good hunter, but he was too young and too iffy alone to deal with all of that without them. Cas was suddenly worried out of his mind for his little brother.
"We can—"
The lights flickered out and the wind howled outside as a storm started up, the heavy rain pattering down on Bobby's rooftop. Thunder and lighting crackled across the sky and the out-of-nowhere storm blew out of proportions. Bobby's front doors swung open quickly and then shut, and in walked a powerful-looking Dean, the shadows of his wings revealed as lighting flashed and thunder clapped.
Cas stared up at him for a second, remembering the last time he truly saw Dean, even before the djinn dream, before the horrible delusions of him in hell, before that final dream of him before he died. He couldn't even remember it clearly, but he wanted to get up and hug the angel, but he stayed sitting on the couch, clutching his beer tightly.
The lights turned back on and the raging thunderstorm outside turned into a light shower. Cas was still staring reverently up at Dean as he smiled sheepishly at them.
"I'm sorry for being gone for so long," Dean said. He was looking directly at Cas.
Cas was pretty sure he wouldn't know what to do in this situation if it was expressly spelled out to him and he stared at it for an hour trying to remember the direct route to success. Instead of finding something intelligent or witty to say, he really just wanted to sit with Dean and talk for hours. He wasn't so blindsided by how cute Dean's vessel was to excuse everything he'd done just to be near him. He wanted to relearn Dean before he did anything else with him.
"How long can you stay?" Balthazar said, finally seeming annoyed with how little Cas was saying to Dean. "Five minutes?"
Dean shook his head. "I… I'm giving up on my grace," he said. "It's not worth it anymore. They can strip me of it, I don't care. I'll still be closer to my Father's mission than most of my siblings."
Cas knew even less and he was slightly annoyed with how little he knew what to do, although he was overwhelmed by how happy he was to hear that Dean was done with the crap that was corrupting the angels. It was selfish. He knew it was, but he almost didn't care about selfishness or selflessness. He had just gotten out of literal hell, and it was indeed literal hell.He deserved a little dose of selfishness.
"You're going to fall?" Cas asked. "You're going to stay with us?"
He nodded. "I was going to do it sooner, but I knew they were going to raise you from hell and I wanted to be the one to piece you back together," he said, so matter-of-factly that it made Cas almost smile. Cas looked over at Bobby and Balthazar who seem just as lost for words as he was. "So… I'm doing this for you. I'm falling for you."
"In what way?" Cas blurted out, and felt his face heat up because that was the most ridiculous thing he could ever say.
But what else could he expect from Dean but the most straightforward answer? "I fell in love with you the first time I saw your soul. You're the Righteous Man, Castiel, and you have the most beautiful soul I've ever seen. It's just taken some time to fall in love with you because you tend to be annoying."
Cas really wished Bobby and Balthazar weren't right there. So much so that he left. He didn't know what else to do. For some reason all he could think of was hell, all those horrible, terrible things that were done to him in hell. He felt sick to his stomach. He went into the bathroom, hanging over the toilet, remembering his flesh flayed in so many ways, eyes gauged out in endless creative styles, limbs ripped or sawed or burned off, never-ending pain and screams and hallucinations. He wanted to be home but he didn't think he'd ever really leave hell. He would always come back to it.
He threw up and then went back to his room, curling up in his bed, still feeling rather sick. He managed to fall asleep, and despite how long he slept, it was one of the most restless sleeps of his life.
When he woke up, Dean was in his room, looking out the window. He turned around when Cas at up. "Hi," he said. "I wanted to talk to you when you woke up so Balthazar told me to just come up here. I hope you don't mind."
Cas shook his head. "It's fine," he said. He patted the end of his bed and Dean came over, sitting down at it. "What's up?"
Dean sighed slightly. "There are many things I want to talk about. First of all, I want to be completely honest with you from now on, and I will tell you that all I know is that you are the Righteous Man, which means the apocalypse is coming. But they need you for the apocalypse and a number of Seals need to be broken to raise Lucifer, so I don't know if that's what they're planning," he said.
"Hang on, raise Lucifer?" Cas said, raising his eyebrows.
He nodded. "Yes," Dean said. "That's not our biggest concern. As long as Seals aren't breaking, we're okay. Second of all, I will make sure I help you find Gabriel before my grace is gone. Adam should be coming soon, but there were a few more things he needed to do before he fell. Thirdly, I'm falling. I've decided and I can't go back. I will lose my grace, and I… well, I just want to restart, I believe. That feels very human, so I think you and I should pretend we've never known each other as closely as we have, and we should redo everything. And you can help me with my new humanity. And I can help you with your memories of hell, if you'll allow me."
Cas smiled at him slowly. He didn't think he would like help with his memories of hell, but maybe Dean could open him up. "Okay," he said. "Yeah, restarting sounds perfect, man."
Dean smiled back happily. "Okay," he said as well, quietly, relieved. He held a hand out to him and put it over Cas's. He almost told him how that was considered romantic so they probably shouldn't hold hands if they were restarting, but he didn't care enough to. "How do we restart?"
"If you're staying with us, we can just get to know each other all over again," Cas said, smiling at him.
"Castiel!" Bobby called loudly from downstairs. He stood up, looking over at Dean. They went downstairs together and Gabriel was there next to Bobby.
"Cas," Gabriel said, going over to him and hugging him tightly. "You're alive."
He hugged him back. "Damn it, Gabriel, you don't just go off without telling Bobby and Balthazar," he said as they pulled away, frowning at him with all the frustration he felt. "I know that must've been a difficult time but you just don't, no matter what. You stay in touch at least."
He shook his head. "I'm nineteen, Cas. I'm not a kid anymore."
"I'm not saying you are," he told him calmly. "That's something we all shouldn't do, not just you. It's just something you don't do."
"Well, never mind," Gabriel said, shaking his head. "I don't feel like arguing, do you?"
"What have you been up to, you idjit?" Bobby said, clearly half-furious with him, but also obviously really relieved. "And how're you holding up, Cas?"
Cas nodded and looked back at where Dean was, motioning for him to come forward. Balthazar took his turn hugging Gabriel.
"I've just been working," he said. "With Ruby, which is part of the reason I didn't call at first, and I was angry, so I just… never did."
Though everyone was frustrated with Gabriel and concerned for Cas, they quickly came up with the decision to just let Gabriel do what he wanted—although under no circumstances was he to do it in the Impala because that was Cas's—as long as he stayed in touch, visited a lot, and didn't do anything extremely dangerous. Cas was sure, to some extent, all of those rules would be broken.
He'd keep his eye out on Ruby.
Adam showed up finally one day with a small, unhappy smile on his face, coming in like he'd never left, falsely cheery as ever. Dean greeted him with a hug that seemed like the beginning of their fall.
Cas had been out of hell for a week and was slowly drawing further away from the people around him, the nightmares becoming more severe every night. While Dean still had his grace they frequently went on nearby cases and tried to contact Sam, tried to get some idea of what was going on. A rhythm was growing within the occupants of Bobby's house but it was an empty rhythm, one that only acted to make them worse off than before, more frustrated and lost.
Balthazar desperately tried to reach out to Cas as he went up to his room to escape having a panic attack in front of everyone, the flashbacks too horrible, or as he went to the bar to drink away his problems and pass out in a motel room. Dean seemed like he wanted to help but didn't understand the humanness of the situation well enough to get what help he needed to give. Cas was glad he didn't try. He didn't want Balthazar to, either.
Adam and Balthazar spent a lot of time together, and despite the fact that he knew that Bobby was barely holding it together better than any of them, he pretended like he was levelheaded. It would've helped if Cas didn't see straight through the act. He had played his part in it too much. It was job as big brother, as the one who stood in for their mom when she was off.
Things kept happening, but nothing left any mark on any of them. Everything was empty.
Power.
It scorched his mind, rendering it blank except for the need.
It literally flowed through his veins, pumping and pulsing with his heart and strengthening him.
It coursed through the bodies of innocents taken captive by the most evil beings, and he drank the power like a vampire, straight from their veins and straight into his.
Power came in the form of money, of well-known names, of countless weapons—but to Gabriel, power was blood, and he kept drinking. He could've been a monster but he wouldn't have known it. He drank, and he slept with Ruby because that felt good, and he searched for Lilith and more demons to exorcise and some to suck dry. And it all felt so good. He was running on a high of feeling so good, so strong, so full and fearless and ready to take down anything. He was powerful. He drank it in like the beer his brothers drank to keep thoughts from entering their minds. He drank it down and wiped his face like he had chugged water after getting tremendously thirsty.
He was strong, getting stronger, getting ready. He was mighty. He was better. He wasn't little Gabriel Novak, little brother of the Novaks. He was strong, he was big. He was better. He was best.
He was powerful.
Drink it down, suck them dry, keep drinking. He was frantic for more and he begged Ruby and mourned for the lack of blood while she was gone. He stopped feeling remorse. He called Cas or Balthazar or Bobby and feigned the old, dead Gabriel, and when he hung up, he drank and he reveled in it.
Maybe he was sick, maybe he was as evil as the blood he sucked down, but it felt so good, and what was life but seeking the next time you felt good? Nothing to him. Nothing because he only felt good when he was strong.
Power.