Chapter 84.

Dean had parked in front of a liquor store. The shopping had been a welcome distraction, but Dean's headache from the explosion of Cas's pain and fear and his own frantic attempts to reopen the link was only getting worse.

He knew Sarah was right that Cas had good reason not to want witnesses in his head as he talked things through with Jules, or maybe tried to communicate on a more physical level, but the initial slamming shut of Cas's mind had not been for that. It had been a reaction to the pain he had caused Dean, a confused and frightened child, dropping the knife with which he had unintentionally cut his brother. He wanted to tell him it was okay. He wanted to take away some of the guilt the angel wore like that coat, or at least not add to it.

He had felt Cas's firm "Nope!" often enough that morning to know he should not try to communicate again. It hurt every time, both worsening his headache and making him feel once more the savage rejection that he could not resent, because only love drove it, a wish to do him no more harm. He had hated all his life the attempts by those who loved him to protect him by pushing him away.

He knew they hated him doing it too, but that should make them know they shouldn't do it to him and Cas, above all, who knew him better than anyone, who saw inside his head, knew how much it hurt.

He smiled at his own irrational anger. He knew what it did to his own loved ones and he still did it. Poor Cas, in that moment, had only been able to think of one thing, that he had hurt Dean and needed to stop. Dean was equally single-minded when it came to protecting Sam and the very reason why he wanted to force the link open again was that he needed, with every atom of his being, to protect Cas, to get him out of his confusion and fear and self-loathing and make him see that he had every right to want love.

Cas hated himself for no reason. Any time he made a mistake, it was engraved on some slab of stone in his mind, to be remembered and regretted forever. He forgave himself nothing, excused nothing. Dean's errors or Sam's, he could forgive and understand and explain away. His own mistakes were unacceptable.

Dean knew, especially after all his time with Sarah, that his own attitude to mistakes was much the same and at times could even admit to himself that it was as foolish, but Cas was the one he cared about. Dean's own issues made his life harder, but Cas was currently sabotaging his best chance for an actual relationship with a woman who loved him. Dean had never ...

Well, okay, he probably had done that, or similarly stupid things. He still thought Cas took it further and was more messed up. Sometimes he felt it had been an illusion that Cas had pulled him out of Hell. Sometimes he felt he had pulled Cas in.

He looked at the worn front of the liquor store. Some whisky would be good just now. It would soften the pounding in his head and slow down his racing thoughts.

He was oddly haunted by the image of Jack from Cas's dream the night before, dead and lying in state, looking like a young officer, killed before his boots got muddy. However much they knew him to be their best weapon, all three of them saw Jack as an idealistic child. who would march into Heaven or Hell at their command ... at their request. Hell, on their whim.

The sight of that corpse had paralysed Cas and those accusations from the sky had been his punishment for failing Jack. A good friend would tell him Jack would not die like that, but Dean knew he could not say that with any confidence.

Although he truly believed that Jack was the only one with a chance of defeating Michael, Dean also knew that one mistake could lead to exactly that ending, the gentlest and purest of superhuman, interdimensional killing machines, dead, lost forever. Cas would never recover from that loss. He would never accept or understand it. He would blame himself, even though Dean knew it would be his fault.

That terrible loss, which had not yet happened, felt as if it had, to Cas. Already, he was preparing the anger and hatred he would unleash on himself for letting Jack down. With all the other things for which he blamed himself, he kept that hypothetical barb as sharp as all the others. It was as much Jack's death as the loss of Sam's soul that kept Cas from believing he had a right to happiness with Jules.

A better friend would be back at the farmhouse, waiting to talk to him, begging him to listen, battering at the shutters on his mind, if necessary, to make him hear. He had taken the offered excuse to leave, to run away, but it had been Sarah's idea to offer the excuse and she had not seemed disappointed in him when he took it. Maybe she felt, as he had, that he was too involved, too troubled, to offer Cas the unconditional, unconfused support he needed.

He still felt like a poor sort of friend. He pondered again the allure of a nice, unquestioning bottle of whisky.

He almost tried to contact Cas again, but the thought of those shutters slamming down again stopped him. Cas was very much in control of the link, which was good, except that he shouldn't have needed to be. All he had to do was put on the talisman and no mental traffic could transfer. Was Castiel determined to learn total control of the link or was there some other reason for his decision not to be protected by the talisman?

He was also beginning to wonder why he was even thinking about that. Maybe he had taken too long a break. Deprived of the challenge of hunting, his mind was making its own entertainment by giving him a whole heap of new anxieties to play with. He dismissed the thought. Whatever his time with Sarah might be, it was never unchallenging.

His hand reached for the car door. He thought he probably needed that whisky.