title: your hope has burned with time
rating: PG
characters: Dean, Castiel
spoilers: 4.01 Lazarus Rising
category: Gen, AU, apocafic
word count: 200
disclaimer: Not mine; not getting paid; I'm just playing with them.
summary: He says, I pulled you from Perdition, but it was too late.
On September 18, 2008, Dean Winchester wakes up in his grave and crawls out of darkness into baking heat. The sky is orange overhead, and the air smells of sulfur. For a moment he thinks he's still in hell.
A blue-eyed man meets Dean there, inside the circle of fallen trees. He says he's an angel. He says, I'm sorry, and Dean believes that at least, because he looks so sad. He says, I pulled you from Perdition, but it was too late.
Sam? Dean says, as ash falls like rain.
Castiel shakes his head. It wasn't him. He tried to stop it. He almost did.
Dean's eyes burn, from fumes or tears. He turns to his grave, thinks about crawling back into it, hiding beneath slimy earthworms and soil that hasn't yet burned dry.
He isn't dead, Castiel says. I can show you where he is.
Dean turns back to him. Is it over? This, the world, the war... is it lost?
Castiel is silent for a moment. Falling ash outlines the invisible curves of his wings.
I don't know, he says. Perhaps. But as long as there is one left to fight...
Dean nods.
Take me to Sam.
end