When he woke in the morning, it was to Charlotte staring at him from the couch. He jumped up and was at her side in an instant. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," she said. Her tone was different, and it sent Dean back from her a bit.

"Are you sure?" Dean wanted to reach out to her, just feel that she was really there.

"Yes, Dean. I am well." She sounded clipped and mechanical. It was as if she wasn't quite back to her old self yet. She sat up and even that move was stiff. And it was then that Dean really started to focus on her.

"Charlotte?" Dean did reach out now. He set his hand on hers. She did not move.

She stared at him long and deeply. He felt as though she was seeing right through him. He squeezed her hand. It was cold. She said, "I suppose there's no sense in subterfuge. Never was much good at it anyway."

Dean let her hand go then and moved minutely away from her. She was different. Her eyes held age and her face was somehow not as it had been before. He knew her, and yet he also didn't. It was then that he noticed that something was off with more than just Charlotte. It was the whole apartment. It had the stillness of a mausoleum. It had the stillness of space in the deepest, darkest pockets of it. He felt the cold next, the itch of it just beneath his skin, clawing toward his bones. He cast a glance around the room at the spaces that held Sam, Claire, and Alex. They were still, laid out in the varied postures of sleep. Yet there was no rise or fall to their chests. "No," he whispered as he brought his eyes back to Charlotte. "No."

The cold in the room intensified. She moved toward him. He stood and backed away from her around the coffee table. He wanted to keep himself between her and Sam and his girls. "I'm sorry." It was not what he expected. An apology?

"Has it always been you?" Dean had stopped moving now, as if the cold had finally fully frozen him in place.

"No." She paused and then added, "And yes." She moved closer and brought a hand up to his face. Her fingers trailed over his cheek and left behind traces of a deeper cold. Dean thought that if a mirror were present that he'd likely see frost there. "I am truly sorry."

"What happened to Charlotte?" He was fighting to maintain a sense of calm. He schooled his voice into something rough and powerful. It was difficult, to push aside the shaking that found it's way there.

She dropped her hand back to her side and said, "She's still here. I've settled her into a nice memory. I spent some time in it myself for several years. She can handle a few minutes more."

"Why now?"

"What do you mean?"

Dean involuntarily brought his arms up to hug himself against the cold. "I mean, you've been tucked away for several years. Why did you emerge now?"

"Oh, that is privy information, Dean. Let's just say that timing is everything. Well, that and proximity has its draws." Dean didn't know what she meant, but she continued before he could interrupt with a question. "I'd been quite content to imagine that all of this was just gone." She waved her hands out at her sides to signify more than just the room. "It was a relief to no longer have my old responsibilities."

"The reaping?"

"That and everything else." She turned away from him and moved back to the couch to sit and just stare at him. "I'm going to give Charlotte the driver's seat. You seem to like her better anyways. I'll be there though, listening. When the time comes, I'll be back to do my duty."

"And what's that?" Dean felt like he didn't really want to know.

"It's time that you were leaving. Get your people together and go."

"What's your plan? What are you going to do?" Dean was moving toward her, which was stupid in hindsight.

She lifted a hand to him and blasted him back to the seat behind him. Then with a slight twist of her wrist all of his limbs squeezed close. It was like he was being held in a vise that was surrounding his whole body. "My plan is to do my duty, just like I said that I would. I've carried this long enough. I will welcome the freedom." She eased up her hold on Dean a little, but his lips were quaking now with the cold that seemed to be overwhelming him. "She will know about this conversation, but it will be like a dream, just like so much of her existence. When I found her, she was a terribly broken thing. Without me she would be that again for the few spare, painful moments that she'd be able to live without me holding her together."

"You could heal her." Dean could only squeeze out those few words.

"No, Dean, some things only God can put back together. I've never been a healer. Besides, she's no spring chicken. She's had a good, long life, seen things, done things. She'll accept the end when it comes." She got up then and moved to Dean. She leaned back down to him again and touched his cheek. "I did not think that I could like you. She changed that though. You owe her a great deal."

"Billie, please." He was shaking now in a hard jarring manner that would have knocked him to the ground if she wasn't keeping him in place.

"Sorry, Dean." She stepped away. "Everything is cold now." Her hands lay straight along her sides. "Help her, help us to do what we must."

"Why would I do that?" He said past gritted teeth.

"Because you love her. Because you love all of them." She waved a hand out around the room. "Because it just might fix things that are rather broken. And in the end, if you do things just right, I won't be around to keep my promise to you regarding the big empty. I'd think that might be motivation enough." Her head fell back now, and her body fell onto the couch again. A few moments passed like the world was gradually thawing after a long hard winter. Charlotte opened her eyes and sat up slowly.

Dean felt the cold leave his body by degrees. She was looking at him. Her eyes were watery and did not carry the frightening hint of eternity in them. He tried to move from the chair, but his limbs felt stiff from before. Instead he said, "Charlotte?"

"Dean?" She moved toward him. "Did that just happen?"

So not quite like a dream. She remembers. "Yes."

Everyone was milling around in the living room and kitchen now. Someone would have to do a grocery run. There was almost nothing left to eat. Breakfast was a total of three scrambled eggs and a pile of toast with peanut butter. At least there was coffee. Paul sat next to Charlotte now. They both looked tired, worn down despite the rest that they had seemed to have been getting before.

Dean had questions. They all had questions. No one had answers. Dean was sitting back in the recliner again just staring at Charlotte and Paul across from him. Sam drifted in and leaned against the wall, casually eating a bit of peanut butter toast. "So, neither of you knew that you were vessels?"

Paul looked up and said, "Am I a vessel?"

Dean said, "Seems so." He was feeling overwhelmed by it all. He had managed to tell the rest about most of what happened in an economy of words.

"I still don't know what that really means. I mean, I don't think that I am anyone but me." Paul had his hands pressed against his thighs and he looked a bit fragile.

Dean said, "Something or someone spoke through you. It's possible that you are just a prophet right now, but that also makes you a vessel."

"I didn't pray for this. When I prayed for help with my sermons, I didn't ask for this." His voice cracked a little.

Charlotte settled a hand on him and said, "I don't think that we have anything to be afraid of in this."

Dean slumped forward and cradled his face in his hands. "All this time."

He felt her hands on him. He would have shrugged her off and maybe even would have left the room, but she spoke. "She fogged up the glass, Dean. I didn't know. It all still seems hazy."

"You had to know something was off." He did move now to free himself from her hands. "You don't carry around a reaper and have no clue. You don't live for generations in a world full of people that die normal human deaths without getting a clue."

"I can't make you believe me Dean. I can say that I felt drawn to you. I did. I sought you out and likely even came to this town, got a job at that college, just because you were there or would be there. I feel you even now. You're this gentle hum of energy just tugging away at something in me. I told myself though that it was just the loneliness. I told myself that you were kind, and I just really needed that in my life."

"And you just somehow overlooked the long life and chalked it up to...what?" Dean looked to Sam for support. Sam just watched.

"I don't know how to explain that. She made things make sense, and when she couldn't, she made things foggier. Some of my life seems like a vivid dream, or it's like I'm seeing someone else's life playing out on a big screen. It is easy to rationalize away what one knows for what the world says is normal." She got up and moved back to the couch but didn't sit down. She turned back to Dean and said, "Our friendship was and is real. I've never been close to anyone, at least not since…" She stopped and looked away again and then continued, "I just think you should know that all of this for me was real."

"I wish I could believe that." Dean got up and grabbed his jacket.

"When we met, it was the first time in a long time that I didn't feel lonely anymore. If you can't believe me, I get that, but I hope you will in time. You're my friend, Dean, and I'd do anything for you."

Dean's hand was on the door to leave. "Yeah, except tell me who you really are." He turned the handle and opened the door.

Sam said, "Where're you going?"

"Need some air. We also need food. I'll be back."

Sam caught up to him two blocks from home. "Wait up." Sam was a little out of breath, but Dean didn't slow up.

"Not in the mood for a conversation right now, Sam." Dean stuffed his hands into his pockets and pressed onward. It was still early in the morning, and the chill of the night was still in the air.

"You're never in the mood for conversation. If I had to wait for you to be ready, we'd never talk." Sam laughed a little, a clear attempt at lightening the mood.

Dean felt Sam grab his arm and this brought them both to a stop. "Can you just let me have a few moment's peace? I just need to clear my head."

"Then clear it with me. Tell what's up."

"We've lost it all. I've lost it all."

"What do you mean? Everyone is alive. No one is lost." Sam kept his hand on Dean's arm. He gave it a squeeze of emphasis with his words.

"Charlotte." He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he looked up to the clear blue summer sky. "I missed it. Who she was. I mean, how dumb do you have to be to not see her for who she was. I had to tell myself a million times, in a million ways that it was a coincidence. She just looked a Hell of a lot like Billie. Logically, the truth would have been easier to accept."

"If it helps, there are differences. There's humanity in Charlotte's eyes that Billie didn't have. It's why I accepted it. Charlotte doesn't look like she'd blink you out of existence or toss you into the empty. One look at Billie and there was no doubt that you'd be gone in an instant if she wished for it." Sam let Dean's arm go and stared off for a moment down the street toward the supermarket. "Let's walk." He nodded toward the store.

Dean complied. "She's gonna die."

"Why do you think that?"

"Billie pretty much confirmed it. She said a lot of things that I couldn't repeat in there." He looked at Sam and then back at the sidewalk as they continued. "She said that she's what is holding Charlotte together, and that if she is cast out or if she leaves, that Charlotte will spend her last few moments of existence in pain. She also said that soon she will be gone, which implies that Charlotte will be too."

"Sometimes, they're wrong." Sam stopped walking again. Dean came to a stop just ahead of him and turned back.

"Who?"

"All of these creatures and beings that we encounter. They seem to all think that they know our fate, the fate of the world. They seem to always think that our lives are all hurdling down this path. Well, how many times have they been wrong, Dean?" He waited.

"Depends on your perspective," Dean replied.

"No, it doesn't. They'be been wrong nearly every time." Sam started walking again and Dean had to catch up. "So, the apocalypse is gonna happen. Boom, nope it didn't. The Darkness will destroy the world. Nope again. You and I are gonna get worn by Michael and Lucifer. Well they were half right on that one." Sam did not go to the supermarket. Instead he crossed the street to the park. It was still too early for it to have kids in it. Sam pointed at a bench and they sat.

"You're making it out to be simple when it's not." Dean folded his hands in front of himself and stared off at the empty world in front of him. Without children the park seemed eerie and cold. There was a red slide, a swing set, and a wooden climbing tower that would ring with the excitement of children, but for now the little breeze blew the empty swings and the trees cast shadows on it all.

"Lay it all out for me Dean. If you don't, I'll never see it on my own."

Dean breathed in and out. He closed his eyes and pictured where they were going. The warehouse and the vast field next to it, the distant hills with the blanket of daytime fog rolling over them. He could see it all like he was really there again. He spoke in a quiet tone, as if someone else might hear him, but there was no one else. It was just Sam, his one constant in all of this.

"I see us going there. It'll be like before. Chuck will be there, and Billie will be there too. I'll stand at your side and watch things play out, powerless to stop anything bad from happening just like last time. Only now, we'll have Paul there and Alex too. And instead of Cas, we'll have Claire. He'd have wanted her far from all of this. He would have wanted her protected at all costs from anything that could truly harm her."

Dean breathed in and out. Sam did not interrupt his words. Dean continued, "We'll gather there, in the place that I lost him. We'll speak the words and burn the symbols as we've been told. Whatever it is that keeps speaking to us, it ain't Cas. He'd just come right out with a, 'It's me Dean,' and I'd know. I'd feel it too, if it was him. It's not, and no matter how much you all say otherwise, it doesn't change a thing."

A little breeze sent the trees to stirring, but Dean kept his eyes closed and his mind focused on the vision. He could almost see the sunlight as it seemed to pierce past his eyelids. It was the sunlight of the park. It was the sunlight of the past. "And God didn't leave alone. He took them with him, Amara and Lucifer. He bound himself up with them and tied them all up to Cas like he was their new Cain. He sent Cas away, took his life for what? For mankind? He couldn't find a solution that would save Cas?"

Dean's breathing was ragged and pained. He went on, "So when Chuck says that it's God calling us there, I feel even more reluctance. I have no desire to go there and pull him back to earth. Why should he get to come back if Cas doesn't?" Dean held his face in his hands and blocked the light that was blanketing him. "So then that leaves us with Lucifer. I see no reason to help him out do you?"

He didn't expect an answer, but he got one anyway. "I doubt that it's him."

"So the Morningstar, the motherfucking angel of light couldn't possibly be the one covering us in light and being cagey, pardon the pun, about his identity. Yeah, guess not." Dean's tone was bordering on angry. Sam said nothing. "So maybe it's her then. We just keep saying him when we talk about the prophetic words being shared out through our friends. Amara was always willing to send painful messages through people even if it meant that they might die. Maybe it's her."

Sam said, "It doesn't seem like her M.O. Plus, none of them have died or even suffered really from the visions. It really doesn't seem like her."

Dean opened his eyes then and looked at Sam. "Then who do you think it is, Sam?"

"I believe that it's God and that he won't come back without Cas." He stared steadily at Dean like he just couldn't see it any other way. There was confidence in his words.

"If he comes back, then they come back too. They're one now. And what will that do to the world we live in? It's not just getting Cas or God back that we have to consider. We have to consider what'll happen to the barriers too. It's all been sealed up tight. Hell is closed and so is Purgatory and Heaven. We only have to worry about the ones that were left behind. Soul's pass over and so do the reapers, but everything else stays put. We mess with the glue holding that together, and the world pays, Sam. Humanity pays."

"We don't know that bringing God back would do that?"

"We don't know that it wouldn't. If what we did that day sealed everything up, then how can you think that bringing them back would not impact that? Cas wouldn't want us to risk humanity for something like this."

"God wouldn't want to risk humanity either. That's why I don't think that what we're being asked to do will risk anyone. I think that it was always a part of some grand plan." Sam reached over and rested a hand on Dean's shoulder. "We have to try. Can't you feel it? We have to try."

Dean closed his eyes again. His mind flitted over the last moments once more, over the way that it felt when everything was lost. God had said, 'To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.' Dean had quipped, "Yeah, heard that song before." Chuck or God, Dean didn't differentiate at the time, pressed into his space, staring deep into his eyes. He swore later that God had spoken to him then, but Sam claimed that he had heard nothing. Dean heard, 'Make your peace, for it will be long before you will feel as though any of this was worth it.'

He didn't know why he had chosen to repeatedly set aside this moment, but he did. He thought that it was perhaps his anger toward God. He didn't want to remember speaking with him, let alone the fact that he didn't fight him after this. He tried to cling to Cas, to fight Cas' will, but that was different. He didn't let him go; although, it certainly felt like he had. He watched him go and he stood, powerless in the face of all that was to come. He watched as the others joined God and Cas. He watched as the light grew to a blinding wash of utter brilliance. It swept out over them all. He had to close his eyes against it.

And later when he held Cas in his arms. He felt the absence of him. He knew that he had lost his chance to tell him all that he felt, all that he thought and longed for. He held him and kissed past his hair, whispering into the move a world of 'sorrys,' a world of 'no,' a world of 'don't leave, please don't leave.'

When Sam finally got him to move away, to give up the seemingly eternal vigil, it should have been over. He told Sam to give Cas a hunter's funeral. He couldn't watch that, but he'd be damned if anyone would have a shot at wearing Cas around. He had stumbled away and had left Sam to it. He didn't come back. He didn't take Sam's calls in the days, weeks, and months that followed. For all he knew, Sam had dealt with much after he had left.

He slowly opened his eyes. "It will be long before you feel that any of this was worth it," Dean said.

"What's that?" Sam asked.

Dean looked at him. "God said that before he took Cas away."

"I remember now. You said that he spoke before he left. I didn't hear him."

"Yes. I told you about it, and then told you to give Cas a hunter's funeral." Dean noticed something in Sam's face that shifted, a barely there twitch at the corner of his eye. "What?"

"What?" Sam looked away.

Dean got up and loomed over him. "What did you not tell me? Something happened. Tell me."

"It's not important. I didn't tell you because it would have upset you. You didn't need that."

"You better start fucking talking right now, Sam or so help me God, I'll…"

Sam interrupted, "I couldn't give him a hunter's funeral."

"Why not?"

"He wouldn't burn. His body's still there. I couldn't do a thing for it."

Dean grabbed him and made him look at him. "What do you mean he's still there?"

"I mean, I've been back there, and Cas is still there. His body hasn't changed. I laid him out on the pyre, and I set it on fire. It burned, and he didn't. When I finally gave up, I couldn't bring myself to bury him. He looked so alive. He wasn't. It had been hard enough just doing the first burn. When it didn't work, when his body was laying in the ashes, I just couldn't do it again. I left him lying there. I left him in the warehouse and locked the door. I've gone back since, and he's still there, looking just like he did the day that we left."