AN: Credit to: Supernatural wiki, Wikipedia, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Hummingbird Bakery and the Indiana Jones series. This sounds like an Oscar Acceptance Speech. It's really not.
All feedback is appreciated, adored, then printed off and stuck to my bedroom wall. I'm kidding.
Seven hours later, in the motel they've pulled up in, Dean decides to confront Sam and Cas about whatever it is that they're not telling him.
Dean knows this isn't going to end well; Sam's still a little bit grouchy from being thrown through a door and Dean's eyes are closing from sheer exhaustion, but he needs answers before he goes back to his 'old', original body otherwise he won't find out what he has to give up until he has to give it up. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.
Sam looks at Dean who's sitting at the table in their room, finishing his metaphorical last meal, a Mississippi Mud Pie, "You, erm, made certain sacrifices to prevent the apocalypse."
Dean blinks, he hadn't been expecting that. "What? What kind of sacrifices?"
"We cannot tell you Dean..." Castiel says.
"Don't spout that we-can't-tell-you-bullshit!" Dean says slamming his fist on the table, because he's tired of hearing the same old excuses for so freakin' long, "Next thing you're all going to be saying how it'll all be okay and how I'll make the right choice when the time is right."
Castiel and Sam say nothing.
He stands up, hands still balled into fists and walks towards the window, "Fuck it, this is my future and I have a fucking right to know."
Sam is quiet, so Castiel interjects, "The risk is too great."
Dean barks a sound that should be a laugh but it is too bitter and resentful and tired to be such, "What? You might tell me and I'll think fuck that shit – I'm not going to do that and then what? It's not like I'm solely responsible for averting this apocalypse!"
Sam and Cas exchange looks.
"You have got to be fucking kidding me!" Dean mutters shaking his head, as he tries to stare both Cas and Sam down which a mean feat in itself. When neither of them crack a smile to tell him that they're yanking his chain, because fuck this is not happening, he grabs his coat and runs out.
He only gets about one hundred yards before he can hear Sam's huge-ass mammoth feet stamp on the ground, as he runs across the motel car park to catch up with him.
"Dean!" Sam calls, "Wait up!"
Dean ignores him and keeps walking, but Sam darts in front of him, "How could you keep something like this from me?"
Sam grabs his arm and he has this pained expression on his face and Dean wants to hug his brother and promise to cook him his favorite dinner, but he's not seven anymore and those memories seem a whole lifetime away. Dean twists out of reach, "Fuck you Sam."
"Look," Sam says, "you're important to preventing the apocalypse."
"No shit Sammy."
"I don't get it Dean." Sam lets go of Dean and puts his hands up in a sign of surrender. "Why are you so mad? I mean, we averted the apocalypse, we-you saved the world!"
"Yeah and that's all good and well," Dean says suddenly, voice rising as he turns to face Sam. "But what about me Sam? I don't get a fucking choice! I mean, what did I sacrifice? You're sure as hell not going to tell me.
"It can't have been my soul, so what was it Sam?" His brother's expression is black and he looks past him to see Castiel watching them from the doorway of the motel room. He knows he can hear everything that they're saying perfectly well even though they're across the parking lot.
"Huh? I don't get a fucking choice, because it was the right choice and that's all that matters. I've already given up my life to this, I've died, I've spent more years in Hell than I'd like to remember and for what? At the end of the day, there's always more, what else do I have to give up?"
"Dean…" Sam mutters, brushing his bangs out of his eyes, "It wasn't like that."
"No, shut up, Sammy." Dean says, rubbing a hand over his face, "I've already made this choice, in this timeline it's already fucking happened, okay? That means when I go back, I'm going to make the choice that leads us to this world, this moment, this situation where the past me is pulled back."
Dean steps a step back from his brother, before he turns away and starts walking. "It's already happened."
"There's always a choice Dean!" Sam calls.
"No there isn't."
"Dean!"
Dean doesn't know how he finds himself sitting in Cas's motel room waiting for the angel to return, or where the angel is to return from. Maybe it was when he finally summoned the strength to look in the mirror after his shower and see the love bites peppered along the length of his collarbone, the bruises on the inside of his thigh or maybe the newly formed war wounds on his forearms.
Either way he can't tell if Cas is surprised to find him sitting in his motel room, because Cas always has that look on his face.
"Why are you here Dean?" Castiel asks as he shrugs out of his trench-coat and leaves that folded over the back of the chair.
"I need some answers Cas," Dean says, rubbing his face with his hand, "I can't begin to say how fucked this is."
"Indeed," agrees Cas as he sits on the bed next to Dean. "You are aware there are many things which I cannot tell you."
"I don't see why not." Dean grouches, "Things are just going to turn out the same anyway."
Castiel sighs. "They would not. The reason we are not telling you the choices that you have made, is so that you choose. You have no way of knowing which could take you to this path."
"Well that's comforting," mutters Dean.
"Indeed," Cas says again.
Dean is silent, looking down at his hands.
"You were not supposed to die." Castiel says.
Dean doesn't even bother asking him when, since there have been too many times.
Cas grabs his chin, forcing Dean to look at him, and since when did he get this hands on in his pep talks? "Don't you realize? Every time you've died you've come back. You have this protection on you, I can't go into it, but, you only give up something that you've already lost. It's-" Castiel releases Dean's face from his grip and looks out the window again, "I should stop talking now."
Dean shrugs next to him, and looks out the window as well, just in time to see a man teaching his kid to ride a bike run past, "Cas – what did I sacrifice?
"It's not my place to tell you."
"Yeah, well I'm asking."
Cas doesn't say anything.
Dean turns back to face the angel, "I need to know—if you're talking about me having to give something up, something this big then I have a right to know what it is. Don't you think? "
Cas still doesn't say anything and the silence that stretches between them isn't uncomfortable and Dean sort of thinks that he could get used to this, this thing with Cas that he has.
Eventually, Cas speaks, "What you gave up—it was not yours to give."
Dean pauses to process that, and then frowns, "What do you mean?"
"Well you know how the cupids merged together your parent's bloodlines?"
Dean sighs and rubs his boots over one another because it means they're back to this 'everything was planned out and you must do what we say because it has been so decided' bullshit, "So everything was preordained?"
"Exactly. You didn't give up anything Dean. In order to stop the apocalypse the sacrifice of your mother's soul and her protection on you were deemed sufficient. That and everything else that you have already suffered through."
"…. My mother's soul?" What kind of an asshole is he? Who gives up their dead mother's soul?
"Yes," Castiel nods, "we were surprised as you are."
"This is ridiculous," Dean says, feeling a little bit numb and more than a little bit shitty. "Can you tell me anything about this choice?"
He takes a deep breath, and tries to collect his thoughts instead of just burying himself in a hole in the motel parking lot, which given what he has to do when he goes back to his own time, seems like the more sensible option.
"No," Cas shakes his head, "I should not have told you that, you are doing that thing where you blame yourself for everything."
"How did y-"
"Because I love you Dean and we have been together for a while now, the you of this present and myself. I know you intimately."
Dean looks at him and Cas shrugs like what he just said wasn't a big deal or a life-changing revolution.
"It's just that she's my mother," Dean says, "family always comes first and you don't know what I'd sacrifice just to spend one more day with her and now you're telling me that I give her up—just like that. What kind of a person does that make me?"
"She planned this," Castiel moves back and envelops Dean in this awkward hug type thing, with too much elbow somehow. Dean guesses they don't spend much of their time together hugging. "It was her sacrifice for you; she did it so you could live. There are some things in life you have to learn to accept Dean and this is one of them."
Dean doesn't know what to say, but draws himself out of Castiel's uncomfortable hug shaped thing, and takes Castiel's hand into both of his.
"Cas?"
"Yes?"
His voice is pathetically small and he hates it, but at least it isn't cracking. "Can I make a choice now?"
Castiel nods slightly, eyes fixed on Dean's face.
Dean leans in towards Castiel, his hand sliding across the angel's knee and up without a thought, and fits his lips to Cas's.
It's soft and gentle and when Cas exhales into Dean's mouth—it's perfect.
Castiel is the best fucking kisser in the world, because when they come apart and Cas's cheeks are flushed, Dean's eyes are wide and when he says, "Oh," in a breathy tone, Cas pushes him down onto the bed with his inhuman strength (so hot by the way), pulls Dean's bottom lip into his mouth and makes his toes curl.
Suddenly Cas pulls away, like he's just remember Dean needs to breathe and right there Dean is jealous of him for the first time because if it wasn't for this irritating habit of his (breathing) then they wouldn't have had to stop.
Yeah, it's that good.
But it gets better when Dean flips them and then Castiel fits right underneath Dean that it's like they were made to fit one another, and he's all hands and when Dean runs his hand over the waistband of his pants he makes this deliciously happy noise at the back of throat and Dean feels like he's going to die soon if this doesn't get somewhere.
Their motel room is dark; it's just after three in the morning. Dean is normally awake—because it's the witching hour and that's when demons, ghosts and witches are most powerful. Midnight is the most dangerous time; a door opens from one world to the next and that is why magic is most powerful at the middle of the night.
That's when the demons come, when you are alone in your dreams and most vulnerable and helpless. You cannot stop them from taking what they want. You lie there, deep asleep while they pillage and plunder and take what is most precious. Since John taught him the folklore, Dean rarely sleeps during these hours and he breathes a deep sigh of relief whenever it passes and both him and Sammy are fine.
"It's all about the number eleven." Castiel says quietly, disrupting the silence of the room and Dean from his thoughts.
Dean's interest peaks so he slides a hand over Cas's waist and pulls the angel towards him.
Castiel pretends he wasn't just dragged across the bed like a rag doll and continues, "Your mother, the date of her birth and the date of her death are the same. She died November 2."
"And that means what?" Dean frowns, "There's obviously some significance to it."
Castiel nods, "I don't know myself, but she died at 11:27 exactly. I believe it was to enable a protection of sorts." He pauses and rubs the back of his neck absently. Dean marvels at the human gesture. "The night you were conceived a Hellhound was watching, and many years later when your father incited a ritual to reach her on the spirit plane, a Hellhound locked onto her and tried to prevent it."
"But what does it have to do with Hellhounds?" Dean says and rolls onto his front so the pillow pushes him up and he can look at Castiel better, "Did she make a deal?"
"I do not know exactly what your mother invoked, but whatever it was it was powerful." Castiel says, playing with the sheets, "In order for the protection to work, something needed to be given in return; that is the way Old things work."
"Old?" Dean asks, sighing, he can practically hear the capital letters.
"Yes," Castiel nods, "objects, practices, people that have been on this Earth since the very beginning, like the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant and the first set of Commandments God gave to Moses."
Dean ignores the fact that apparently there have been people on this Earth since the beginning and are apparently still alive well over two thousand years later.
"With such an extreme protection there was a debt to be paid. I believe she tried her hardest to avoid it, that was until your father almost drowned and your mother saved him. But, with a ritual like that there's no going back. Blood is the payment because blood is life. For a protection of that caliber they took all her blood; all her life."
Dean is silent, because it all makes sense and she had no right and there is absolutely nothing he can say to that.
"I don't know exactly why she did it," Castiel admits, "but it was a very good thing to do. I am a little curious as to whether or not she remembered your visit to the past, but, why did you think you never stayed dead?"
"Honestly?" Dean asks, tensing, because he's not in a Mr Nice guy mood, "So I could be Fate or Heaven or who-fucking-ever's bitch."
Castiel says his name in the resigned tone that it took Sam years to master.
Dean calms down slightly for some reason he doesn't really want to analyze but still dismisses him because he wants to keep the Let's Tell Dean Something For Once juices flowing, "Why did this Adrian take my soul?"
"If your soul was removed then you would essentially be a body," Cas replies, "you could be controlled, he could command you to do a ritual—remember, all you need is blood. The bond forged between your soul and your mother's when she made that sacrifice would be broken, and the apocalypse could be back on track."
Dean rolls his eyes because it always comes back around to an apocalypse or world domination, "What is it with these people and ending the world? Where the hell are they gonna live if they succeed?"
He sighs dramatically, "Talk about not thinking these things through." The tension that had been building is suddenly diffused and Dean feels a little bit more relaxed now that he has the full picture.
Cas smiles a lazy, fucked-out half smile that does things to Dean's insides he doesn't want to think about.
"If only I'd known softening you up with sex would get me answers before," Dean muses, "that would have saved me a lot of time."
Cas nods and waves a hand dismissively, "You only have yourself to blame."
Dean wrestles him into the mattress.