A/N: Who's ready for the premiere? I'm dressed in as much Supernatural merch as possible, and I've practice crying.

WARNINGS: This chapter contains suicidal thoughts.

For long moments Dean couldn't find the right words to say, and when he did speak his voice didn't hold all his truth, lacked strength: "And you trust me, Cas? After…?"

He left the question hanging in the air.

Castiel understood.

After Jack. After I tried to kill him.

Dean faced him down, guilt ripping into his stomach, and up to his diaphragm till there was a yawning pit in him and it was hard to breathe. And the blue eyes so near him held something he knew he deserved to be looked at with: betrayal.

Castiel ground his teeth together and lowered his head.

"You didn't follow through," he forced out. "I have to hope that means something, or else I don't know what I'm doing here with you." He released Dean and then gave Sam the same hard look. His brother bowed his head, adam's apple bobbing in his throat. "With either of you," he added. "You are my family, but Jack was my family too. And if you can't believe in that, then don't bother having faith in me."

Cas started walking away, and Dean was too stunned to say anything.

"Cas―" Sam tried.

The angel was gone before he could finish talking.

"What now?" Dean asked breathing out hard, slumping against the pillar. "We all gonna write suicide notes and share 'em with the class?"

"No." Sam slid the notebook and pen towards him. "You're on food duty."

Now it was Sam's turn to start leaving, and Dean asked as he approached the table to grab the notebook, "What, where are you going?"

"Gonna see if the Men of Letters stocked up on any explosive artifacts. An explosion got us out last time, maybe it can do it again."

"Sam, we sealed that wall up, and everything else, it's… it's caved in. We never got to fix it, remember? We'll just bring the ceiling down on ourselves."

Sam shrugged, but still left.

Dean growled at his absence, at Castiel's, and he grabbed the notebook and the pen. He eyed the sling lying on the floor where he'd left it. He shook his head, and went to do his duty.

There wasn't a lot of food they had left, mostly the boring stuff no one wanted to eat but kept around anyway. He figured if they rationed they could make it last two weeks.

But was two weeks even worth it?

Dean didn't think so.

His room was calling to him, the walls decorated with his guns.

His heart wanted to say goodbye first, telling him he owed his family that much, but they'd stop him. He knew they would. Those idiots were too compassionate, too hopeful. Or maybe they were hanging on by a thread.

"No, Dean, don't do it," he grumbled to himself. "Don't be stupid."

With his list of all the food written down, along with ideas for rationing and meals, he went looking for Sam in the storage room. His brother's back was to him as he entered, and he was digging through a drawer. Sam's hair seemed a bit different, but Dean couldn't figure out what it was.

There was a pile of ash off to his left, and Dean frowned at it as he asked, "Find anything?"

"Uh… the Men of Letters kept a lot of stuff." As he spoke he held up an amulet. It dangled on an iron chain, and the metal encircled a gem of glowing blue-white cut into a rhombus. "Don't know what this is," Sam commented, setting it aside on a table without another glance. "But yeah, don't touch anything. I'm only certain about what two of these things do, and one of them spontaneously combusted."

"That the pile of ash?"

"Yeah. Notes say that it'll reconstruct itself in an hour or two."

Dean went over to the ash and crouched down to dip his fingers into it, as if he could test its potency. "It strong enough?"

"Don't think so. Not unless we can find an amplifier."

"And uh, what's the other thing do?" Dean asked, looking over Sam's shoulder, seeing him rifle through different wooden boxes inscribed with symbols.

"Makes your hair grow."

Dean couldn't help but smile, even in their grim situation, and grabbed a lock of Sam's hair. Yeah, now he could tell. There was an extra half inch added on to it. Made it look fluffier too.

"Huh, Rapunzel."

Sam smacked his hand away, and backed up.

"Dude, leave me alone."

"Alright, was just trying to see if I could help."

Sam rolled his shoulder and glared, "You've helped enough."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know damn well what it means. Maybe Chuck wouldn't have gotten involved if you didn't lock Jack up."

"Hey, you did that too."

Dean tried taking a step closer, and Sam drew something from the box he'd just been handling. It was a simple wooden rod, but Dean wasn't eager to find out what it did. Sam surely didn't know either, but apparently he felt like he needed to defend himself.

"No," he told him, tears building in his eyes. He angrily pointed the rod at him, making Dean take a step back, raising his good hand defensively. "You made me do that. You-you… You forced me. And for what? So-so we could lose him? Is that it? Did you not care about him?

"Sammy, I loved that boy," Dean argued, heart aching. "But he was gone. No soul, no Jack. He was destroyed when he saved us from Michael. I know it, and you damn well know it too. That thing we locked up. It wasn't Jack."

"No, no―"

"It wasn't our son."

Sam's grip tightened on the rod, knuckles turning white, and then he lowered it, shaking his head. "We're not doing this. We're not going out like this ― fighting. Mom wouldn't want it."

"Well Mom's not here."

"And that's my fault," Sam told him. "I brought Jack back when he died. And now you're gonna take it out on Cas? Come on, man."

"He's to blame too."

"Then we all are! We were all his parents. We all failed him. But there's nothing left to do. He's gone. We all fucked up, and we could either fuck up some more for Chuck's entertainment, or we could do what he wouldn't want us to, and get over it."

"Oh, so you want me to forget? You want to forget?"

"There's no forgetting this stuff," Sam argued. He took in a deep breath, and looked down at his feet for a long moment before continuing, "But there's forgiveness."

"Yeah, well I was never really good at that anyway," Dean drawled, and then he left.

If his brother wanted to go on a "love and family conquers all" crusade then Dean wasn't having it. What he would be having was more scotch.