Chapter One - Gollum and the Evil One

Leaves are falling all around

It's time I was on my way

Thanks to you I'm much obliged

For such a pleasant stay

But now it's time for me to go

The autumn moon lights my way

For now I smell the rain

And with it pain

And it's headed my way

Ah, sometimes I grow so tired

But I know I've got one thing I got to do

Ramble on

And now's the time, the time is now

To sing my song

I'm goin' 'round the world, I got to find my girl

On my way

I've been this way ten years to the day

Ramble on

Gotta find the queen of all my dreams

Got no time for spreadin' roots

The time has come to be gone

And tho' our health we drank a thousand times

It's time to ramble on

Ramble on

And now's the time, the time is now

To sing my song

I'm going 'round the world, I got to find my girl

on my way

I've been this way ten years to the day

I gotta ramble on

I gotta find the queen of all my dreams

I ain't tellin' no lie

Mine's a tale that can't be told

My freedom I hold dear

How years ago in days of old

When magic filled the air

T'was in the darkest depths of Mordor

I met a girl so fair

But Gollum, and the evil one

crept up and slipped away with her

Her, her, yeah

Ain't nothing I can do, no

I guess I keep on rambling

I'm gonna, yeah, yeah, yeah

Sing my song (I gotta find my baby)

I'm going 'round the world (I gotta ramble on sing my song, gotta work my way around the world baby, baby)

Ramble on, yeah

Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, my baby

Doo, doo, doo, doo, doodoo doodoo doodoo doodoo doodoo

I gotta keep searching for my baby (baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby)

I gotta keep-a-searchin' for my baby (my, my, my, my, my, my, my baby)

Dean Winchester

Dean fell to his knees upon the sand. No, this can't be happening, he thought as he looked into the still face of his friend and companion. No, not Cas.

He looked up to the sky and wondered where Chuck was. Why was the bastard allowing this? After all Dean did for him. How could he simply not care?

Dean sank further to the ground, not caring that the sand was wet beneath the seat of his jeans. No no no no no, he thought as the first tear slipped down his face. Not Cas.

He let a hand reach towards the tan fabric of his coat and gripped at the angel's arm as more tears clouded his vision. "No," he rasped out as he leaned forward instinctively. "Cas, please…"

His other hand found it's way to the angel's cheek and Dean felt how cold it was beneath is palm. "I need you, dammit! Please Cas… Please don't leave me," he said as he began to shake. "I need you."

"Dean…" came his Sam's voice from behind him. He hadn't heard him approach. He ignored the younger Winchester and simply continued to stare into the lifeless face of his dead companion. "Dean!" his brother said again, more forcefully, yet Dean continued to disregard him.

Only when Dean felt a hand grasp his shoulder did he look up. "He can't be gone, Sammy. He just can't," the hunter cried, unable to make eye contact with the man crouching beside him. He couldn't have stopped the tears if he had wanted to.

"Dean, I-"

"No, I don't think you understand," Dean managed to choke out through trembling lips. "He's gone! He was the best man I ever knew and now he's…" He couldn't make himself say it. Hell, he could barely think it. He turned his attention back to his angel, noticing the wing marks seared into the sand. Dean lightly traced a finger along the imprint of a feather and wished it were him. He wished he were the one lying on the ground instead of Cas.

Sam sighed. "Dean, I'm… I'm so sorry. I know what he meant to you…" he said softly.

Dean didn't bother arguing. What was the point? "I never got to say it back…" he murmured, moving his hand to grip the angel's coat below his lapel.

Both brothers were quiet for some time as Sam allowed Dean to mourn a while longer before he spoke. "The nephilim disappeared," Sam informed him.

"Huh," was all Dean managed to say. His attention still glued to the face of the lifeless body in front of him.

"Yeah, um… I went inside and found Kelly… She's… gone," Sam explained even though he knew Dean wasn't really listening. "Jack killed her." When his brother didn't say anything, Sam continued. "There were these… footprints burnt into the floor and I followed them to the nursery. And there he was, in the corner of the room, fully grown and naked."

This caught Dean's attention. "Fully grown?" he asked, still not taking his eyes off the angel.

"Yeah… And then he looked up at me and smiled. It was fucking creepy, dude. His eyes glowed gold."

"And then what?"

"And then he disappeared, like I told you."

"Weird," Dean observed. "So how do we even find him?"

"I don't know," Sam admitted.

Dean tore his eyes away from Cas and looked at this brother. "So we don't know where Rosemary's not-baby went, we don't know how to reopen the portal to get Mom back, and we don't know where angels go when they die… But we're sure as shit gonna find out," he said matter-of-factly.

"Excuse me?" Sam asked and Dean gave him a hard look.

"I said we're gonna figure it out. We're finding Satan's hell-spawn, we're reopening the portal to Bizzaro World, and we're getting Cas back," Dean said with such determination all Sam could do was nod.

They wrapped Cas's body in a white sheet they found in the house and carefully carried him to the Impala.

"He belongs at the bunker not on some beach," Dean said as they laid him in the backseat. "It always should have been his home."

"Are you sure you don't want to give him a hunter's funeral?" Sam asked as they closed the doors and began walking back towards the beach.

"He'll need a body to come back to," Dean shrugged as if were just that simple. "Besides, you didn't burn me. Cas is family. He deserves Winchester treatment."

"Okay, but he's an angel, he could always find another body," Sam explained.

Dean stopped mid-stride and turned to look at his brother. "Not one that's unoccupied. Sam, that's his body. He don't need another one." Having made his point, Dean strutted off towards the pyre they had set up for Kelly.

The boys were silent as they salted and burned Kelly, watching the fire licked away at the white sheet covering her body, turning it black as the flames consumed her.

"She didn't deserve this," Sam said solemnly as he watched the pyre.

Dean laughed, his chuckle deprived of all humor. "People rarely get what they deserve, Sam."

"No, I guess not," Sam admitted. "I just know this isn't what they wanted."

"People don't really know what they want," Dean said quietly. "Not until it's too late."

"Don't tell me you're giving up on him," Sam said, turning to his brother, his face scrunched up in concern.

"Never."

The brothers were quiet as they drove the twenty-seven hours down I-90. Dean refused to turn on the radio so they drove in silence, only stopping for gas or food. Although, Dean didn't eat and he barely slept - taking one three hour nap once they hit Montana - and insisted on taking the lion's share of the trip. His bloodshot eyes kept looking back at Cas's body in the rear-view, as if the angel were going to wake up somehow. As if his gaze could somehow will him awake.

Behind the bunker, in a clearing, they held an angelic funeral. Dean didn't say a word as he dug Cas's grave and lowered his lifeless body into it, alone. When he finished, he stayed by the small dirt mound and cross made out of sticks long after Sam decided it was time to go back inside. He'd begged Dean to go with him, saying that it was cold outside and that Dean needed his rest, but his stubborn brother refused. He just kept staring at Cas's name etched into the wood.

As he sat there, at dawn, in the damp dew-covered grass, he thought of everything he and his angel experienced together over the past nine years. He remembered meeting Cas in the barn and how magnificently terrifying his wings were, though they were just shadows on a wall. He remembered all the times Cas had died and all the times he had come back to him... and how surprised he was each and every time. He remembered Purgatory and how relieved he was to find Cas crouched beside the stream when he'dfinally found him. He remembered how hard he fought to get Cas out, and how he'd chosen to stay. How he thought he deserved it. He remembered Cas's face when he asked him to leave the bunker and how it felt when he finally saw him again at that Gas-n-Sip months later. He remembered the Mark of Cain and Cas being possessed by Lucifer and just how happy the angel had been when he showed up alive back at the bunker. Most of all, he remembered the past year. All of it, in agonizing detail. Cas stabbing Billie because he… they meant too much to him. Castiel, an angel of the lord, told him… them he loved them as he thought he was dying.

'I love you… I love all of you…' he'd said. Dean was pretty sure the first one was meant for him. He was more than sure. He knew it. The way Cas had made eye contact with him…

Dean's throat constricted and he felt the tears well in his eyes for the hundredth time. "Cas… I'm so sorry. I… I never got to say it back…" he cried.

He'd thought the mix tape he'd given Cas might let him know how he felt, but the idiot had tried to give it back. 'It's a gift. You keep those,' he'd told him, thinking there'd be time. But he was all out of time. Castiel was dead. But he'd be damned if he let him stay that way.

"Cas… I don't know where you are or if you can even hear me but… I'm coming for you. I swear it."

Castiel

He opens his eyes but all he can see is whiteness. He can no longer feel his body nor does he know what is up or down. All there is is nothing. It's eerily empty.

But then he remembers dying. He remembers the pain shooting through his body as the blade pierced his chest. But most of all, he remembers Dean's face. It was the last thing he saw before waking up to nothingness.

He doesn't know how long he's been here. It could have been centuries or only a few seconds, there's no way of knowing. All he can do is float. And think. He thinks of Dean.

Dean Winchester. The Righteous Man. The man who ended the apocalypse and survived Purgatory at his side. The man who has been more of a family to him than his own ever was. The man he loved despite the fact that he could never love him back. His Dean.

And then, suddenly, he can feel him. He can feel his longing. "No.. Cas, please… I need you, dammit! Please Cas… Please don't leave me… I NEED you," Dean voice says inside his head.

"Dean!" Cas tries to shout but nothing comes out. His words have no air to carry them. There is only empty. If he could still cry he would, but he can't. So he simply floats. For hours or maybe seconds. There is no time.

"Cas… I'm so sorry. I… I never got to say it back…" Dean's voice says after some time. Say what back? Cas wonders. He can't mean… "Cas… I don't know where you are or if you can even hear me but… I'm coming for you. I swear it."

And because it's all he has left, Cas allows himself to hope. He allows himself to believe that his human will come for him and that maybe just maybe he might just love him back.

To be continued...