Chapter 45.
At the farm, Dean gave the car keys to Sam and left the car without another word. He didn't look at any of his companions. He still felt bad about the things he had said.
He knocked on the door and then realised he had not considered what he was going to say. Behind him, he heard the car doors as Sam got out and went to the driver's seat.
The door opened and Sarah looked him up and down. "Come in, Dean." she said, taking his arm, "You smell of woodsmoke." He heard the car drive away.
"We were in the woods." he said, "We had a campfire. Jack loved it."
She took him into the parlour. "Sit down." she said, "I'll get some tea and cookies."
"You don't have to do that." he said, sitting down.
"You've lost your taste for cookies?" she said.
"No, I haven't."
"Good. Then that's what I'm doing. You make yourself comfortable."
She went into the kitchen and he heard her filling the kettle. "You haven't asked why I'm here." he said.
"You don't need a reason to be here." she said.
He leant back on the couch, feeling all the nervous energy and pretence drain out of him. It was too hard to keep acting like nothing was wrong and it was unnecessary, because she knew he wouldn't be there if things were fine.
Sitting there, he knew he couldn't tell her how far from fine things were. The others wanted him to be honest, with them and with her, but he needed to believe in the myth of the strong, unbreakable Dean Winchester, even though he had always known it for a lie. Maybe he needed her to believe it. He certainly wanted Sam to, but Sam, it seemed, was no longer fooled, if he ever had been.
He looked at the floor by the doorway and realised he had trodden mud and leaves into her parlour. "Oh, Hell!" he said.
"What's wrong?" she said from the kitchen.
"I just dragged half the forest in on my boots." he said.
She came in. "Give me your boots. I'll clean them in the kitchen."
"My job, not yours." he said.
"I decide who does what in my own house." she said. She fixed him with a look and he meekly removed his boots and gave them to her.
"I'll clean the floor." he said.
"You'll put your feet up and wait for your tea." she said, "The floor will survive a bit of mud." She gestured to the end of the couch until he put his feet there. "A few weeks ago, Castiel was lying there. It took all of us to calm him down."
"When he thought I was dead?" said Dean.
"You must never do that to him again. Even if his heart can take it, mine can't."
"I do worse things, these days." he said.
"Tea!" she said, hurrying into the kitchen.
"Can I do something?" he said.
"You can do lots of things, but I'm not so old and frail I can't manage a pot of tea."
"I never said you were." he said.
When she came back with the tray and put it down on the small coffee table, he sat up, feet on the floor. She smiled at him and said, "I'm not reporting to Sam or your mother. I take no notes. Whatever it is you don't want to tell me, only I need ever know."
"I came here to tell you." he said.
"I'm here to listen. What happened last night?"
"Last night was mostly good. I talked to Cas. I talked to Sam. I probably talked more than I should to both."
"Lost your plausible deniability?"
"My Michael issues should not be their problem."
"I agree." she said.
"You do?"
"Of course I do. You should deal with it on your own, just like Sam should keep his Lucifer issues to himself."
"No, the Lucifer thing is different."
"Only because it's Sam." she said.
"Anyway, we talked. I told them stuff."
"Stuff you now wish you hadn't said?"
He thought about it. "No. When I was ... When Michael ... When ... "
"Yes, dear, then ... "
"When you're possessed, you're alone, cut off from everyone, even from yourself. It's cold and dead and empty and ... " He looked into her kindly blue eyes and said, "It's hard to talk about."
"I think being bereaved is similar. It feels as if the world is going on without you and you have no-one to turn to."
"And you're resigned to it and you accept it as normal. Normal for being possessed by an archangel, anyway."
"And then you make it home and someone you've always taken care of offers you unconditional love and support and you struggle to accept it, but you're finally able to and then you're afraid that you're accepting something you can never repay, something you cannot possibly deserve."
"Yes." said Dean, stunned by how effortlessly she had encapsulated the situation.
"Maybe we need to look a little more closely at the word 'unconditional' for a while."
"I know in theory, I don't need to deserve it or repay it or even understand it. All they want is to help me and I need their help, but this thing inside me ... this pit where my soul used to be ... It's deep, Sarah and it's greedy and it could suck the life and joy out of everybody I know and still not be filled."
Sarah handed him a cup of tea and said, "I'm very old, my dear."
"I've known ladies a lot older." he said.
"And I know you pretty well, now."
"Yes." he said.
"So I hope you won't mind if I resist the urge to beat my head uselessly against this steel wall and instead ask you what you would say if Sam said that."
"About the pit?"
"Yes, about the pit."
Usually, he would have lied, but that never worked with Sarah. Distraction was also going to get him nowhere. In the end, his only option was to seriously consider the question.
"I'd say, 'Sammy, stop making excuses. Stop trying to pretend this isn't my fight. Lucifer didn't change you. You fought him and you won and you only came out more Sam.' But I didn't come out more Dean, Sarah. And I didn't defeat my fallen archangel."
"You didn't? Does that mean he's here with us now?"
"God, I hope not!"
"I don't think he is. I don't think I see anything but you and what you'd say to Sam applies to you too."
"I might also tell him what Cas told me. 'To fight alone is to fail.'" he said.
"Castiel makes a good point."
"Yes, he does." said Dean.
"What happened that you're afraid to tell me?"
"Last night, I ran off into the woods and Cas came after me and we sat in the dark and I could only talk to him because there was a tree between us. It was the only way I felt safe."
"Trees block his powers?" she said.
"No, not at all." he said, "Although he would usually need to touch me to smite me, there's a lot he can do at a distance."
"But even knowing that, you felt safe?"
"Yes. Safer."
"Maybe it's not his powers you fear, but his judgement. The shame you carry is entirely undeserved. I know that makes it no less real, but he doesn't see anything you've done as shameful."
"Maybe that was a part of it, last night, but then, in the car, I yelled at him and at Jack and that was fear, not shame. Last night, I overcame the fear. Today, it was making me crazy again. I hurt them both. I called Jack a baby."
"What did you call Castiel?"
"What I said to him was the worst thing I could have said. I told him something he already believes about himself. I watched the light die in his eyes. When I say stuff like that, he doesn't even doubt it."
"Of course not. He has no idea why you would lie to him."
"It didn't feel like a lie. It felt true."
"And does it now, when he's not here, being an angel?"
"No." he said, "I took it back. I apologised, but that doesn't unsay the things I said."
"You can't say what it was, can you?" she said.
"Do I need to? I don't even want to remember. But you know what? He'll remember. He'll remember and every time something goes wrong, he'll remember me saying it's always his fault. I wish Michael had finished the job. There's some dignity in death."
"More dignity in fighting to survive and be free." she said.
"What do I do now?" he said.
"Still I, not we?" she said.
"I don't know how to ask for help."
"It seems to me that you don't need to ask. You just need to stop fighting it off."
"I don't know how to do that, either. I can't keep hurting them."
"You let them help you, last night."
"Yes." he said.
"And that made them feel better, didn't it?"
"I think so."
"And you say you love them. Love them enough to let them be a part of your life, not the audience, seeing the best version, the stagehands, helping to make it work."