The only place with enough space for the ritual was one of Bobby's garages unless they wanted to just do it outside, where there were, like, birds and rocks and stuff. They probably could have fit the ritual and the seven angels in the panic room, but too many wards would have to come down, and there was no way all the Winchesters would be able to cram into that little doorway.
Other Dean had spent the last few days clearing out the garage, getting the cars in good enough shape to move them into the yard and send one of them home with its owner. He relocated all the equipment and a couple stacks of tires and a shelf full of fluids. He swept and cleaned and then he and the angels combed over the place to make sure no residual magic was left behind to snag on the spell and throw everything off.
He'd managed to ward the whole thing so Raphael wouldn't immediately notice the power surge. Sam had never seen the sigils before—apparently contributions from Cas C. They interlocked with each other to form a dome overhead, distributing any magic that hit them across the dome's surface. They wouldn't disguise too much power, and therefore wouldn't last for too long, but the wards were smaller, less powerful, and ultimately less likely to interfere with the Miscere Vires.
After one last check, Other Dean handed off control of the space and disappeared into the yard with Dean and their old friends Jameson and Guinness.
Sam A took charge like a general, his stride long and determined, arms full of sigils written on long, rolled up pages like blue prints. He practically vibrated, so beyond ready to do his part of the plan, the part he'd researched and perfected and slaved over. He was ready to show his stuff.
He was ready for everyone to do exactly what he said.
Sam followed in his wake, balancing a plastic bucket of chalk on top of a stack of books "just in case they needed to double check."
"I can get started drawing the first circle," Sam C offered, dropping a stack of spiral notebooks and reaching for Sam's chalk.
"No. I got it," Sam A said, taking the chalk himself. "I know the dimensions."
Sam C laughed. "Dude, we all know the dimensions."
"Yeah," Sam A said, distracted by measuring off the space and inspecting the floor for debris. "Don't worry. I got it."
Sam C moved to argue, but Sam elbowed him in the ribs and shot him a look that said, Let him do his thing.
It quickly became apparent that although Dean would have picked up on his meaning immediately, Sam didn't have a lot of practice reading his own facial cues. Or maybe Sam C was just more stubborn than Dean...which couldn't possibly be true. Sam C gave in on the first circle drawing, but kept pushing on everything else. He offered to start writing the runes once the circle was in place. He offered to start mixing the incense they needed to burn. He defended Cas G when Sam A snapped at him for getting in the way.
Sam C inevitably stomped out in a huff, muttering about how he was just trying to help and how he was unappreciated. Sam A didn't notice, too absorbed in a careful string of runes.
The angels circled, floating in and out of the garage. They watched in interest, checking over the spell or reading it for the first time like a mystery novel. It was hard to tell which, because Sam lost count of how many times the angels had to be moved for the sigil's construction to continue. If they knew what was happening, surely they wouldn't be in the way that much.
Well, no. They probably would.
Even Sunshine stood with her shoes planted in the path of the writing, staring as the chalk marks approached her toes, then staring more as Sam A pouted up at her. Sam turned his attention from helping prepare the spell (which he wasn't really doing anyway) to persuading the angels to stay out of the guy's way. He'd never really understood the phrase "herding cats" until that moment.
At least his Cas wasn't in the way. At least not physically. He hadn't seen the angel since the fight. No one spoke of it.
The preparations called to him, humming that he could help, that this was what he was good at, that it would get his mind off his brother and the angel and the life that waited for him. If only he had a piece of chalk in his hand, the grittiness against his fingers as something productive bloomed under his care. If only he could lose himself in the careful act of copying. Maybe he could draw the outer circle, or the interior heptagon. He held himself back from asking.
He could understand why the third Sam had given up and abandoned the garage.
Sam A asked Cas D for another piece of chalk when the one he was using ran down to a nub. Cas D just tilted his head and blinked at him, like why? Sam sighed and got the guy a new piece of chalk himself, appeasing their fearless leader and keeping Cas D from getting his head bitten off and his feelings hurt.
There was a crash from out in the yard, and everyone turned to look out into the dark, to wait for another crash or a shout. When none came, they went haltingly back to their work. A renewed silence settled on them all.
No one went to check on the Deans.
Sam A reached new heights of crazed and stubborn around three o'clock when Cas F questioned one of his runes, spawning a wave of citations that had him flipping through his "just in case" books in a flurry of defensiveness.
"I'm gonna..." Sam pointed over his shoulder, already backing away. No one paid him any attention, and he ducked out of the garage.
The salvage yard was the chilly dark of a sleepless night. He thought he'd get himself a snack and take a nap on the couch, but found himself walking away from the house, into the graveyard of cars. Twisted shadows from the scattered flood lights reached for his ankles, stretched for the hem of his shirt, brushed against the back of his neck. Maybe he'd check on Dean. Maybe he'd find Cas. Maybe he'd find Sunshine and she'd have something for him to do to stay busy.
Instead he found the residents of Reality C in a hissed discussion behind a Saturn stacked on a Ford stacked on a Dodge.
"He won't be the same," she murmured. "He's been there for three and a half centuries. There's no telling what that's done to him. And if we got him back, there'd be no assurance that you'd manage the kind of relationship that we've see here."
Sam's stomach dropped. He couldn't move to announce himself or back off. The drum of his heartbeat would surely give him away.
"Maybe you could put up a wall," Sam C said. His voice tripped over itself, excited and anxious and needy. "Or erase his memories."
There was a silence and Sam could picture the conflict on Cas' face.
Sam C's voice clouded with desperation, the volume dropping even lower. "You want to try just as much as I do. I know you do. We have to try. We have a chance and we have to take it. We just have to."
She sighed. "I don't want to get your hopes up. He might not be the man we want him to be. It may not be the perfect ending we both want."
"Castiel," his voice cracked on the plea. "Please. Now that I know..."
"I know, Sam. I know."
"I just can't..."
She murmured like she didn't want to say the words aloud, didn't want the fear to spread. "He might be a demon."
"He might not!"
Sam backed up several steps, then purposefully bumped into a Buick with a clang and stomped his way towards them, shouting, "Sam? Dude, you out here?"
"Over here."
Sam rounded the corner to see them curled towards each other, as if even with the feet of space between them, they could still prop each other up. With Sam's height, he practically leaned over her, a shield against the dark.
It hit Sam that they were alone. And in that they were together.
"Hey." It also hit him that he had nothing to say.
He stood awkwardly just long enough for that to be obvious before Cas F appeared at his side and announced, "The Deans have reappeared. Sam wants to go over the plan one last time with everyone." His voice strained like had zero interest in useless meetings and Sam was on his very last nerve anyway.
"Why?" Sam asked. "We've heard the plan a dozen times."
Both Castiels scowled.
The other Sam groaned, then straightened. "Okay. Let's go."
Everyone had gathered back at the garage, where—surprisingly enough—all twelve of them fit.
Sam A sat near the middle of the sigil with a spiral notebook on his knee and a pen between his teeth. His eyebrows were drawn as he skimmed a section in his handwriting one last time. The Deans stood next to each other, their eyes glassy and their postures a weird mixture of slumped and tense. Sunshine slipped between them, pressing a steaming Vikings coffee mug in lurid purple into other Dean's hands and nudging Dean until he looked up from the floor and took his own coffee. His mug was lime green with a daisy on it. The angels stood in a loose circle, oscillating between offended that they had to listen to things they already knew and fascinated by the air just over the runes. Cas G held one of the sigil blueprints unrolled in his hands, looking it over with a patient interest that had no business on Dean's face.
Cas had made an appearance, standing still and quiet and small, avoiding eye contact. The other Castiels ignored him out of respect for his wishes to not be bothered more than out of malice.
Dean took a sip of his coffee and grimaced off towards the far wall.
"Okay, here's how this is going to work." Sam A explained. "When the connection is formed, each Cas will get the strength of all the Castiels, so they'll each be about seven times as powerful—give or take depending on how strong they are right now." His eyes flicked to Cas and then Cas F before darting back to his notes. "But, the thing is that there's going to be resonance. So every time anyone uses their grace, it'll reflect back and everyone's power levels are going to increase."
"So the last person to kill their Raphael will have the most power to do it," Sam clarified.
"Yeah, but it's not just that. Just making the jump back to everyone's home universe will ramp it up by—" he flipped pages in his notebook until he could show a graph, "—a factor of three."
"And that's on top of the factor of seven from the connection."
"Yeah. So by the time you all get to your own universes, the Castiels will be around twenty times as strong as they are now. And that's if our estimates are right."
"And that's before anyone even uses their grace to kill Raphael."
"Yeah. We don't have any measurements to work with on how much grace it takes to gank an archangel, but definitely more than teleporting, even if it is across dimensions. So the power levels are gonna go up exponentially." Sam A consulted his notes again. "Now, we don't know how much power Cas can handle before it rips her apart—or rip any of you apart. We don't know where the cut off is. It might get bad enough to just burn you out completely. So don't use any more grace than you absolutely have to. We want everyone to pull out before it gets to be too much and does any damage, but we also want everyone to get the job done before that happens."
Sam C shifted at Sam's side, crossing his arms to hug himself in a gesture Sam knew—just knew—was incriminating. But incriminating of what, he wasn't sure. It took all of his restraint not to turn and draw attention to it. "If one person drops out, will that throw off the whole spell?" he asked.
Sam A didn't catch any hidden meaning behind the question, and consulted his notes. "I don't know. It definitely wouldn't be stable anymore, and it might just throw everyone else out of the spell too. But on the other hand, it would drop the energy levels, so if things were getting too crazy, someone backing out might make everything more manageable again. At least for a few seconds. I really don't know."
"So," Sam C said, "the last person to get their job done will have the most power, but also the largest chance that the spell will collapse before they finish."
"Well. Yeah. But it shouldn't get bad that fast. Like I said, just don't go on any side trips or try using the spell to power anything else."
Sam let his eyes slip to Cas C, who looked exactly as shifty as expected. In fact, a few of the angels did. The others looked oblivious or simply uncaring.
Two terrible sides of Castiel on display: ambivalent and deceitful.
So it was only fitting when Cas spoke. "The spell should stabilize again when there are only three of us left." He looked straight at Sam C, and the fact that he knew Reality C was planning something was so painfully, painfully obvious that Sam wondered just how oblivious the other Castiels could be. Maybe they just weren't going to stop each other from abusing power. Maybe they all agreed and just didn't want the humans from Reality A to catch on.
It didn't seem like Sunshine would be on board with that.
Sam C nodded. "Okay. That's—that's a good backup then."
Completely on accident, Cas' eyes caught Sam's before he turned his gaze back to the floor.
Sam's chest was so tight he might not have been breathing.
Sam climbed the stairs and let himself into Bobby's room. The bed was made with military precision at odds with the star-burst patterned quilt, so he could tell if anyone tried to sleep in his bed while he was gone. A handful of framed photos spotted the dresser, all showing grand sceneries and tiny figures unrecognizable from a distance. The window squeaked in protest as Sam raised it, and he swung a leg out onto the sloping roof covering the side porch.
Cas had his knees pulled up to his chest, his arms wrapped around his shins to keep them in place, holding his own wrist. He didn't move at the sound of the window, nor when Sam took a seat next to him. Sam stretched out his legs, pushing into the roof with his heels and his butt to keep from slipping against the grainy shingles.
"Hey, Cas."
Cas sighed. "Hello, Sam." He sounded even less enthusiastic than usual.
And that was all Sam had planned. The rest of what he wanted to say bunched up and tripped over itself until he didn't know where to start. He wanted to talk it out, shout at him, offer unwavering support.
It startled him when Cas spoke first, taking their talk in a direction he hadn't planned for. "I'm sorry."
Sam's thoughts cleared, leaving him with nothing.
Cas continued, "I didn't tell you that I raised you from hell. I'm sorry. I know it's been bothering you."
Sam narrowed his eyes, a wave of rage rising against his instinct to say, It's okay. "It's...I just don't understand. Why would you lie about that?"
"You left." Cas made it sound simple. "When I raised you, it didn't occur to me that I might not have done it correctly. That you might not be whole. You left without a word, and I assumed that was what you wanted: to be done with me and your brother and hunting. Even though I didn't understand, even though it...hurt, it wasn't my place to force you back. If you wanted to leave..." He swallowed. "I respected your decision. I see now I should have pressed the issue."
Sam stared at him. That wave of anger receded back out to sea, forgiveness rushing in to fill the space in its wake. "Oh."
Cas didn't meet his eyes, staring off over the salvage yard like a disheveled gargoyle waiting for the sunrise.
"That's...so not what Dean would have done."
"Yes. It seems he hasn't influenced me as much as everyone accuses."
"Cas, that's fine though! You treated me with respect. But Dean...He's going to treat me like I'm six years old forever, unless he treats me like I'm an abomination too evil to trust with my own choices. You didn't do that. And that doesn't happen to me that often."
Cas lowered his head.
"So thank you, Cas. It means a lot."
Cas' eyes snapped up to give Sam the most appalled and disbelieving look possible.
"Seriously." Sam leaned towards him in his earnestness, the roof biting into his palm. "You did the right thing. You did. At the time. Or at least you did the wrong thing for the right reasons."
"Even the best of intentions don't matter."
"Well, what are you going to do? Go in with bad intentions? Intentions are really all you have."
"That doesn't excuse my actions. Any of them."
"No. But neither option was all that great. You could have either treated me like a child, or you could have unknowingly let me walk around like a sociopath. Since you can't see the future, you picked the better option. You didn't know, Cas."
"That doesn't make it right."
"But you can work on making it right again."
Cas hunched in on himself, turning back to the yard. Sam had never seen a sight so wretched.
It only got worse. "Dean will never forgive me."
"Dude, of course he will." He reached out and shook Cas' shoulder. "Don't be stupid. You're going to make it right, and he'll get over himself, and things will be rough for a while, but then they'll be fine. I mean, look at how many times he's forgiven me."
"You're family."
"You're family! Come on, Cas. He loves you."
Cas pressed his forehead to his knees, slipping his hands down his shins.
"Cas..." Sam squeezed his shoulder, at a loss for what to do, what to say. How do you comfort an angel? How should he comfort Cas? "Just...just promise me you're not going to do something stupid."
The shoulder under his hand stiffened.
"During the ritual. I know you're beating yourself up right now. I know what it's like. But going out with a bang isn't going to solve your problems."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Sam growled in exasperation, pulling his hand away. "Damnit, Cas. Stop it! Isn't that the lesson we're supposed to learn from all this? Dean warned us from the beginning there'd be a lesson and that's it: we need to handle our shit together. As a team. No more of this shouldering the weight of the world alone crap. No more lying. No more secrets. That's how we got into this mess to begin with, so just stop! We need you. I need you. Dean needs you. So don't you dare sacrifice yourself in some misguided attempt to be noble and explode like a super nova just because you're too much of a coward to face your mistakes."
Cas glared, his eyes lit with such bright fury even in the dark that they would have burned Sam from his body were he not so mad himself.
"You have to forgive yourself!"
"Have you forgiven yourself, Sam?"
Sam faltered.
His rage slammed to a sickening halt, all his momentum thrown from his body like a physical blow.
"I..."
Cas' eyes were too sharp. Too knowing. Too right. Castiel was an angel, and he could slam Sam back in his place with one pointed question and a roll of thunder in his voice.
And yet Cas looked away first, pulling that otherworldly righteousness away like a passing spotlight.
Breathless and ashamed, Sam lifted his eyes to the salvage yard, to the sky paling and paling with every passing moment they came closer to dawn. He swallowed down bile in his throat.
"I'll work on it if you do."
Cas didn't turn all the way back to him. He didn't agree. His shoulders didn't even slump in defeat or exhaustion that Sam "just didn't understand."
But the fire had gone out, and Cas tilted his head to the side like he'd consider it.
"We'll work on it," Sam repeated. More firmly. More for himself. To hammer the intention into place.
As the sky turned the color of charcoal, Sam brushed off his pants and clambered his way back through the window.
Forgive.
Dean startled awake after an hour and a half nap on the couch to the sight of his own face hovering over him.
"Shit!"
Handsome Cas sounded completely unapologetic as he said, "Sorry. It's almost sunrise. We're about ready to begin."
Dean groaned. His eyes felt like they were made of coals and his mouth tasted like something had died in it. He pressed his face back into the couch cushions to hide.
"You need aspirin and water." Having informed Dean of this fact, the angel left. Somehow Dean knew the guy wasn't coming back in a minute with pain killers.
Clutching his head, he rolled off the couch, shrugged on his jacket, chugged a glass and a half of water, then swallowed two aspirins he found in the kitchen junk drawer. And he did it in that order.
The chill outside hurt his brain. Or maybe soothed it. Hard to tell.
The garage buzzed with activity and Dean winced against the noise and the light, slumping into place next to Sam. The angels circled the sigil, each in their own orbit, each at their own pace, like planets drifting into alignment. Dean set his jaw, fixed his eyelids at half mast and fought off nausea with the powers of his mighty stomach of steel and can do attitude.
Fake Dean flopped against the wall on his other side, wearing aviator sunglasses like an asshole. He hunched in on himself like he might fall asleep standing up.
"You're both idiots," Sam said.
"Bitch."
Fake Dean just muttered something vaguely obscene and lowered his chin to his chest.
Thing Two hurried towards them with a bronze bowl full of gunk in one hand and a notebook in the other, looking like he was about to drop everything. "I can't believe you, Dean. We've been working on this for weeks and you're going to spend the whole thing hungover."
"Not hungover. Still kinda drunk," Fake Dean said.
"That's not better!"
"It's not like you need me. I'm here. Showing my support. What else do you need?"
Thing Two didn't have anything better to say than "God, Dean," and nothing better to do than scowl and stalk off.
"I'm hungover," Dean admitted.
"Yeah, me too. But lying about it's funnier."
"I'm not helping you." They turned to see girl Cas planted in Fake Dean's personal space, gazing up at his aviator glasses as if trying to decide if they looked good or not. (They didn't.) Fake Dean slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in to bury his face in her hair and go back to sleep. She gave him about two full seconds before twisting awkwardly in his arms to face Sam and Dean.
"Thank you for all your help."
"No problem," Dean muttered.
"Hey, if it works, we should be the ones thanking you," Sam said.
For the first time since meeting her, a note of doubt crept into her voice. "I hope it works."
"Of course it'll work," Fake Dean said, his words muffled, but still scoffing and laced with bravado.
"It'll work," Dean agreed, while next to him Sam nodded.
She looked at them a moment, long enough to remind him of Cas and how ticked off he was. Then she nodded. "It was a pleasure to meet both of you."
"Same here," Sam said, reaching out to shake her hand, which was awkward not only because girl Cas was awkward but because Fake Dean was attached to her like a barnacle.
"Okay!" Thing Two clapped his hands together, having deposited his bowl of gunk in the center of the sigil and without a notebook for the first time in hours. "It's time!"
Girl Cas pried herself loose and offered one last look over her shoulder.
Stabby Sam squeezed C.C.'s wrist for good luck, and bounced up to join them, looking way too wound up, like Sam always got when he was twitchy and anxious and strung out on coffee. C.C. gave them a long look that Dean couldn't interpret while Stabby Sam nudged Sam and smiled a kind of manic grin. "So it was nice meeting you." He didn't say it was nice to meet Dean, but then again it probably wasn't that nice. More like traumatic.
Vampire Cas handed over the fat black and gray tie. "Thank you." He was way too close. "For all your help."
"Don't mention it," Sam said.
"And I'm sorry." This was addressed to Dean, who shrugged.
"It's fine."
And you know you're hungover when you can't convince a walking blood smoothie that you're okay.
Cassie came by to shake the Sams' hands and squeeze Fake Dean's arm. (He looked less hungover after she did.) Then she popped onto her toes to press an awkward, dry kiss to Dean's cheek, leaving him blinking and definitely not raising a blush. "Forgive," she ordered, her voice low and weirdly at odds with the little, girlish peck she'd left on his face.
The rest of the Castiels were already in place around the sigil. Cas Singer quirked a smile and nodded at them while Handsome Cas waved goodbye like a dork.
Cas just watched them, like a beaten dog fearing its next kick. Dean met his eyes, held them, then nodded once. Not forgiveness and not acceptance, but not condemnation. Not right now.
Sam shot the guy a thumbs up.
"Guys! Now! Come on!" Thing Two nudged Cassie towards the sigil as he retreated, earning himself a dirty look that he failed to notice. He found a place on the other side of Fake Dean, checking his watch and bouncing on the balls of his feet as the angels took position.
The Castiels each stood at a point on the seven pointed star chalked into the floor. Their placement apparently mattered, but Dean didn't know or care how. From inside the garage, they couldn't see the sun rise, but the angels could feel it, the air tensing in the moment. They began the spell in unison, blending into a single voice, a single song.
Fake Dean pushed his sunglasses onto the top of his head.
The chalk marks lit, glowing so softly at first, but building, building, drifting from white to a blue the color of Cas' eyes, of all their eyes as they too began to glow, a subtle flash like when Cas smiled, a gentle pulsing in time with their breathing—out of sync with each other, off just enough.
The goop in the center smoldered, filling the space with a cloying, sweet smell. Their voices rose, ringing like bells and birds and laughter. Their eyes burned brighter as their pulses aligned, matching the rhythm of their song, binding them together until they breathed as one. The center bowl flamed higher and higher, blue fingers of flame that pulsed and danced. The floor glowed, brighter, brighter, a whine building in the air, heat building with the rising of the sun, with the tangible build of power.
Their voices rose into static, still with a pulse, still with a heartbeat, but now a song without words, just joy and power and joy and heartache.
It overwhelmed the pain in Dean's head, just the song, the song, calling him, asking him to join them, pulling at his sleeves. It pulled at the edges of the garage, at the air in the room, at the concrete and the oil spills, drawing them in. It tugged at the wards on the ceiling and hugged at Dean's heart. He had to look away, cover his eyes before it was too much, before it pulled him in and consumed him, before he was lost to heat and power and brilliance.
Then silence. Stillness. The ringing of bells vanishing—No. Bound and contained in each of the angels before them.
The sun had risen.
And a new intensity rippled through the air, this one more earthly, one of intention and the need to act quickly.
Then they were moving. Cas Singer vanished and the angels' eyes flashed. Vampire Cas. Cassie. Flash flash. Stabby Sam grimaced one anticipatory smile, braced for C.C.'s fingers against his forehead, and they both disappeared. Flash. Handsome Cas vanished and Cas' eyes pulsed, determined, intent, and close, close, close—
Cas blinked and they flew. He hadn't even reached out to pull them along. Dean had never realized how much he relied on the stabilizing touch—a grip on his arm, a fingertip between his eyebrows—until he was in the void between worlds without it.
They landed again by the sunflower field. No, a different sunflower field, this one in their own universe. Crowley stood to the side, teleported along with them despite the distance. His eyes bulged in surprise, but otherwise he didn't move, his handcuffed wrists hanging in front of him.
The nausea, the ripping of Dean's lungs and the flaying of his veins did not appear. He pressed a hand against his chest and looked up at Castiel, who stood tall and strong.
Twenty times as strong.
His eyes pulsed again, brighter than before.
"Raphael will come." There were levels to his voice, layers and reverberations like the ringing when the spell was cast.
Dean marveled. Dean feared. His fingers bit into his shirt over his heart.
Raphael appeared far quicker than he expected. As if she were summoned. As if she felt Castiel reappear in this universe the very moment his feet touched the ground, like a new star, like a black hole. Raphael's eyes were wide as she took in Castiel, and—She was afraid. It was so strange to see her afraid. The two angels at her sides took terrified steps backwards.
"Castiel? How? What is this?"
Castiel reached out a hand, fingers tensed and curled, clawing the air, his face blank except for the flash of his eyes. And Raphael jerked, her shoulders rearing back as her chest thrust forward, her spine arching, eyes widening. The pulses of his eyes came faster now, rhythmic, flaring and flaring and fading and flaring.
Cas nodded. "Goodbye, Raphael."
That was all. She heaved half a cough. Her chest so constricted she couldn't voice her surprise.
Cas squeezed his hand and pulled.
And grace ripped from every pore in her body. A boom. An inhuman scream. Grace tearing and sizzling and so hot it burned, it burned, it burned so bright. An angry swirl through the air, grasping and curling back towards its body, desperate and terrified, fizzling at the edges and heaving in the middle, jerking left, right, left, before smashing to the ground in an explosion of white and a shockwave that shook the ground and plowed through the air.
Her eyes bulged in shock and pain, her lips parted, her body suspended, lifted onto her toes, poised for a breath held and held and held.
Then Cas' eyes flashed and she slipped to the ground, crumpling in silence except for the sigh of air as her wings burned across the grass.
The other two angels had frozen in horror. Cas swiveled towards them, his eyes flashing once more, and they fled.
Dean gaped.
The air was thick with the smell of burnt grace and thrumming power. Castiel stood, terrifying and beautiful, with confident shoulders and chin high and proud, his face passive but his eyes dancing, a storm surging, burning, singing just under his skin, setting the air ringing.
Dean breathed a disbelieving, "Cas..."
Something shuffled, and Dean pulled himself from the sight to see Crowley, his face paled in horror. He had stumbled back a step, eyes fixed on the scorched wings.
And he had caught Castiel's attention.
He seemed to realize this the exact same moment as Dean. He backed up in earnest as Castiel stalked forward, his eyes full-out glowing. Sam and Dean pulled towards him, needing to grab him, stop him, do something.
"Cas!"
"Cas, no. You have to save your grace."
Crowley held up a manacled hand and twitched an attempt at a laugh. "Now...let's not be hasty."
"Man, don't so it."
"Cas, stop. He's not worth it."
"It's fine, love. We'll just part ways amicably."
"Cas!"
But Castiel's hand was out again, fingers curled slightly like he could cradle Crowley's beating, blackened heart in his palm.
Crowley stiffened and twitched, an orange burst of lightning dancing under his skin, flickering across his cheekbone, his eye socket. Another flash lit the hinge of his jaw, the outline of his teeth. Another lighting the veins in his neck. The bones in his hand. Sweeping from his hairline. Around the hollow of his nose. Another and another. Faster and faster until he fell to his knees with a dry, choking gurgle.
Cas's eyes burned, and a scream built, low and quiet and eerie, growing, growing, shaking and cracking. Another flash and it ramped into a piercing wail, the death throws of a hurricane. The lightning ripped faster and faster, bursting and popping.
Cas flicked his fingers like flicking away water.
And POOF. Like dropping a bag of flour. Crowley exploded in a cloud of smoke.
Black. Eerily still. Hanging in the air with the ancient smell of sulfur.
Usually where the smoke would churn, roll on itself like a murder of crows, this smoke was thin and disconnected, every particle ripped from its neighbors and drifting like flakes of ash to the ground, where they didn't even burn against the grass. The cloud thinned gently, and—No. Crowley hadn't exploded. His body was still there, revealed slowly, surrounded by the remains of smoke and ash.
Cas dropped his arm and Crowley dropped with it, barely disrupting the stillness of the cloud, but falling out of it enough to show the shocked parting of his lips and the burned remains of his eyes.
Wind whipped against Dean's face, cutting and biting and pushing. His lungs compressed, and his eyes squinted. The color drained from the field under the light, the light, the light. He shielded himself with his forearm, cringing against the pressure in his ears.
And Castiel rose into the air, his arms spreading, unfurling outward, his eyes blue light and sightless.
"Cas!" Dean pushed forward, pressing through the wind and the song and the force that pushed him back. He grabbed for Cas' arm, pulling him, hauling him down until he could get his hand on Cas' shoulder. He pulled until Cas' feet touched the ground and then held him there. The light burned so badly that even with his eyes squeezed shut, he could still almost see Cas through his eyelids. The angry wind slashed at his clothes, roaring, pushing him away, trying to lift the angel back into the air, whipping away his words so he had to shout just to hear himself.
"Cas! It's over. Let it go."
His fingers dug into Cas' shoulder, the light and the wind and the pressure a shrieking wail in his mind, like Cas' true voice folded on itself a thousand times. Dean would shatter like a plane of glass.
"You hear me?"
He changed his grip, grabbing the back of Cas' neck, pressing skin to skin.
And Dean was on fire. It burned through his hand, his arm, his eyes and throat, through his veins, and this must be what it was to see Cas' true form, because he could feel Cas. Not just the back of his neck against the sweaty palm of Dean's hand, but the power surging and rolling inside him. Cas struggled to wrestle control from it, to direct it, to hold on for dear life. A nuclear reactor raging in the cage of his body. It burned, it burned, it burned.
Spinning through the torrent was the panic, tinged and sharp. Prayers, cried and screamed, unfocused and without form, and if Dean could just focus, grab just one as it whipped by...He could almost hear Cas' voice. Almost. Almost. Please, hold on. Please please please. I have to. God, God help me. Dean, please, I can't.
And it wasn't just Cas. It was all the Castiels, entwined and rolling, surging and burning. All with different voices, praying and trying and fighting to hold on.
And they needed him.
Dean grit his teeth. "Okay, Cas," he thought—he screamed—he grit the words through clenched teeth, his body so far away he could barely feel it, lost in the light, the whine of Cas' power so loud it drowned out his words. "You hold on. You can do it."
He latched onto the prayer, that little bit of Cas—his Cas—Cas' soul in a swell of other. He snagged it and rode it, clinging and flying.
Just outside his vision, he could sense the others. Feel them. Hear them. He just knew. He knew Fake Dean was screaming at Sunshine, holding her just as tight as Dean held Cas. You can do it, you can do it. He knew a Dean had grabbed Cas Singer, his panic leaking through the connection. Stay with me, Cas. Stay with me.
Vampire Cas tensed, focused the power they'd built, and pushed. Everyone screamed as the power ramped to the next level, the scream echoing, building, each new voice amplifying the others, as power forced through his Dean's veins, burning and burning, smelling of burnt tar and blood and blood and blood.
An explosion near Cassie. A Dean was screaming. Blood splattered. Cas was glowing, glowing, glowing, and Dean held tight like he could hold him together.
Then C.C. pulled. She wrapped herself in the swell and dove, the power building to blackout, and Dean clung to Cas as he faded in the storm, overwhelmed by grace. I got you, I got you. Stay with me. C.C. flew, wild and reckless, plunging into heat and smoke and blood and burning.
She dove into hell, pulling them all with her, their power fueling her mad decent, her desperate search. Faster. Faster. Even Dean pushed her on. Go go go go.
Hold on, Cas. Just a bit more.
Someone ripped from the spell, sending it toppling, grace spilling wild and wheeling, throwing off another Castiel, then another. Something tore. Sam was shouting.
Dean, please, Dean. We have to hold on.
It echoed, the prayer tripping over itself, pleaded from every Castiel. The fear, the need, the love, the heartbreak and confusion and devotion.
Dean squeezed—his eyes closed, his fingers tight, his mind wrapped so tight around Cas it ached. I got you.
C.C. grabbed Dean's arm in hell.
"We're done! Let go! Get out!"
But Cas had no form now. Only light. He was pulling away, dissolving into the formless current of Castiel, and it was all Dean could do to keep him, to squeeze his eyes closed and cling to what Cas had been, to remember with every fiber of his being. He slung his arm around what was once Cas' shoulder, pinning him down under the crook of his elbow. He pressed his forehead against what was once Cas', trying to fold over him in every way that could to keep him there. The trench coat wrinkled in his fist.
"Now, Cas! Drop it!"
Dean was burning. He was dying. And with his last trace of strength he growled, more a mental command to all angels, more a prayer in desperation than a working of his torn vocal chords.
"Listen up. All you sons of bitches go back where you came from. Get out of my Cas. Get the fuck out of my Castiel.
"And Cas—my Cas. The bastard who thinks he has to do everything alone. The one with the dry jokes and the terrible tie and the smug look when he's right. You're stubborn and exasperated and impatient and forgiving. Always forgiving. You belong here. We need you. So you get your ass back right now, or so help me, I swear to God—"
He was exploding. The world was exploding. This was how the universe ended.
"Caaaaaas!"
Silence hit like a bomb. Like the deep whoomp of angel wings. Like everything had fallen, dead and heavy to the ground.
Cas collapsed into Dean's arms, toppling them both to the ground—the ground with color and texture and no longer a wash of painful white and burning grace.
"Dean! Oh my God!" Sam skidded to the ground beside them, grabbing at Dean's coat.
Dean could not let go of Cas, who looked lifeless after teaming with so much soul, with so much fear and strength and passion.
Dean gripped him tight and waited.
And waited.
Somewhere there was wind—a calm, haphazard wind. Somewhere the sun shone in a now blue sky.
And in his arms, Cas opened his eyes, and they were blue.
Dean's exhale was a collapse, his forehead falling to Cas' hair, every muscle in his body melting. He squeezed the back of Cas' neck. His voice croaked when he tried to use it.
"Shit. It's good to have you back."
Cas shifted, his shoulders slumping like he'd just dropped the weight of the world. A tired fist locked in the front of Dean's shirt. His voice was even more wrecked and shredded than usual.
"Dean. I'm so sorry."
"It's okay."
"No, I'll make it up to you."
"You're goddamn right, you will. After I've slept for three days, you own me a sea monster fight and a trip to that fancy bakery."
Sam barked a laugh, wild and aborted, and Dean found himself grinning. He was laughing and Cas was laughing and Sam slumped against the both of them, turning their collapse into a full out pile.
Cas' chest shook, and Dean's eyes watered, and Sam gasped for breath, their fingers digging into each other's sleeves like they would never let go. The letter B sat scrawled and fading on the back of Dean's hand.