Chapter 36.
Dean heard someone approaching and went further into the trees, wasting a little holy water to wash his face as he went. He wasn't trying to evade them, just to face Sam or Jack with a trace of dignity.
He froze as he heard the voice of his pursuer. "Dean, I'm not here to argue."
"Go back to the fire, Cas." he said, not turning around. He tried desperately to think of Cas as a friend, so he didn't say something cruel.
"I will." said Cas, "Could we just talk for a moment?"
"Not a good idea." said Dean, "I'm not at my best."
"Neither am I. We could try to figure it out together."
He remembered the funeral pyre again. No anger or revulsion seemed to be taking over, but he thought of every single time Cas had been hurt or killed for them. He turned to face him, hoping he looked at least semi-sane to the angel's excellent night vision. "I just need some space." he said, "Please, go back."
"I thought ... I thought maybe if I gave you back the lighter ... "
Dean nodded. "I understand. You don't want it anymore."
Cas looked at him, but his expression was hidden in the darkness. "I thought maybe you wouldn't want me to have it, now that the words have no meaning for you."
"Oh. Okay. No."
"No, you don't want it back or no, the words have no meaning?"
"Leave me alone." said Dean, aware that nothing he said would ever make sense to him or to Cas. He turned and started walking again.
"Dean! I'm sorry."
Dean stopped and turned again, "Will you stop apologising for everything, you anaemic, half-witted ... " He stopped. He struggled to form an apology and failed. "Just go back! There's nothing here for you or the others."
"Sam too?" said Cas.
"Especially Sam. I never should have come back. One bullet to the brain and I'd have posed no threat to anyone."
"And all that shame and guilt would be gone?" said Cas.
"I hope so."
"Because you still think you did this, don't you?" said Cas. He stepped closer. Dean instinctively stepped back. "I won't hurt you." said Cas.
"We hurt each other, all of us." said Dean.
"How much do you hate me, Dean?" said Cas.
"At this moment, I don't, but I will again."
"Then, in this brief time of truce, answer one question for me. If Michael had never possessed you, would that anger and hatred still be there?"
"Cas, don't." said Dean. What had he done to his friend that there was doubt on that point?
"It doesn't matter. You have your reasons. I just want to know."
An angel would ask that, bringing up old resentments, making him doubt himself. He shook his head, trying to lose the groundless suspicion, trying to remember if it existed before that ... before Michael ... And now he hated Cas for making him remember that violation and degradation.
"Get away from me!" he said. He turned and ran, stumbling over tree roots in the dark. It felt as if he ran from Michael, not Cas. He knew he could never outrun what really scared him, his failure to fight, his surrender.
Cas could find him easily, he knew. The dark was not dark to him and every sound came to his ears. He found a large tree and crouched behind it, pointlessly trying to avoid the inevitable.
When he heard Cas approaching, hus own response surprised him. There was a tension and fear, but also a feeling he hadn't felt in a long time, the feeling that someone cared enough to come looking for him, even when he was being stupid. He would have to move on when Cas found him. He might even have to make a sigil and blow Cas away, because there was no way he could face him again. But, just when he expected Cas to lean around the trunk of the tree, he instead heard something on the other side of the tree, something like the sound of an angel in a trenchcoat, sitting down. He tried not to breathe.
"Listen," whispered Cas, "We can spend all night playing hide and seek like this or we can sit here, with this 207 year old tree between us and talk."
"Option one sounds good to me." said Dean.
"I knew I shouldn't give you a choice." said Cas.
Dean laughed. For the first time all night, he felt like himself. He didn't think he had laughed much since he got back. He couldn't remember laughing at all. He had thought things could never be as they were, but Cas had come to find him and he was sitting behind a tree to make him feel safer. "I don't know why you're here." he said, then, knowing how that would be taken, he added, "I'm not worth the effort."
"It seems we don't agree on anything, these days." said Cas.
Dean wished he could see his face to know how he meant that, but it was too dark to see, even if he had the courage to go around the tree.
It was hard to say it, but he had to. In a rough, unsteady voice he said, "I don't want the lighter back."
"Do you want me to keep it?" said Cas.
"The words on it ... I meant them then. What's left of me means them now. But I know it may not feel that way and if you don't want it, give it to Jack. I'll understand if you'd rather not have it."
"I treasure it." said Cas.
"Then why offer to give it back?"
"I saw your face when you saw it in my hand. It caused you pain. There is nothing I wouldn't give up to spare you pain, except Jack."
"It caused me guilt." said Dean, "Because I've been a lousy friend to you and I can't blame all of it on Michael." He thought of the question that had made him bolt before and said, "But to answer your question, the hate ... the anger ... That's Michael and my reaction to Michael. It's not me and it definitely isn't you."
There was silence. Dean wondered if he'd said the wrong thing. "I'm no good at this." he said, "This or anything else." There was still no reply and he added, "Maybe there really is nothing left of who I was." He chuckled sadly, "Like I was ever good at this. I'm sorry I dragged you into all this."
"You didn't. Tonight was Sam's idea."
"I mean all of it." said Dean.
"All of it? You're sorry I got to be part of a family, that I broke free of a corrupt and dangerous Heaven, that we saved the world, that we keep saving the world?"
"You spin it all a lot better than I do."
"Before I met you, I saw all archangels but one as so far above me I could not comprehend their perfection. You showed me they were all fallen or falling. You made sense of the confusion. You helped me to save Heaven from all of them."
"Except Gabriel."
"Gabriel was fallen, in his own way, but he was also the one who got up again." Very quietly, Cas said, "You and Sam are the only ones who know how little I want to talk about this. You are the only ones who know how it feels to be defiled by their presence, to submit your will to theirs or, like Sam, to have control wrested away. I don't want thoughts in my head about this. Speaking it is all but impossible."
"Then say nothing." said Dean, "Nothing we say can ever make it any easier for any of us."
"You used to ask Sam to talk about it."
"Yeah, but now I get it." said Dean, talking fast, desperate not to hear anything of archangel possession and not to make Cas revisit his own miserable experience of being ridden by Lucifer.
"Their power is near absolute. Their vessels are generally crushed and broken. I have never known a non-Winchester to fight them in his own body and win. I am an angel and I had to be saved by Amara, because I could not fight Lucifer."
"Stop talking. Please, Cas, just shut up!"
"Sam beat Lucifer and I know you think you're weaker because you couldn't cast Michael out, but Sam had you beside him and his victory lasted seconds. Long enough to consign Lucifer and Michael to the pit, but not permanent."
"Don't diminish his victory to make me feel better." said Dean. Just thinking about Lucifer invading Sam, then later Cas, was making him nauseous.
"I'm not. I'm saying none of us are as powerful as archangels. I'm saying you leapt from a cliff edge to save the others. You knew you could destroy yourself by doing it. You had little hope of breaking free if it went wrong and it did go wrong. I still don't know how he got past the consent thing, but you sacrificed yourself, as you always do and I think you'd do the same again."
"Yes." said Dean, "Because I'm dumb."
"Because you won't let Sam and Jack die while there is anything you can do to prevent it. The hardest part of all this is seeing you, hating yourself, hurting yourself, because you think everything is your fault. You think Michael wiped out Dean Winchester. You think the person you were is gone. The rest of us see more clearly. Who but the true Dean would come out of that fight a hero and be consumed with guilt because he didn't win it faster?"
"I didn't win it at all. Michael left."
"Michael left his perfect vessel? Why would he do that?"
"I wish I knew." said Dean.
"I'm fairly sure it wasn't because the vessel was weak and compliant."
"Everything in me was corrupted by his presence." said Dean.
Cas didn't answer for a moment. When he did, he sounded close to tears. "Yes." he said, "That's what archangels do. I was corrupted by Lucifer. The shame is overwhelming. I wish I could tell you how to get rid of it, or how to live with it, but I'm still working on that."
"Your shame makes no sense."
"Neither does yours, to me, but I know the weight of it and the bitter taste and I know how it feels to pass a mirror and see the face of your enemy." Another long silence and then he said, "And I know how it feels when a friend is able to see past all the shame and self-loathing and know who you really are and always will be."
"And how it feels when a friend hates you, even against his will."
"Yes." said Cas.
"My friendship isn't worth that."
"It is to me." said Cas.