"You have lost your goddamn mind," Benny drawls from a shadowy corner of the room. Dean ignores him, just like he's been ignoring pretty much anyone who tells him what he's attempting to do is foolhardy, dangerous, and impossible. He already knows all of that, after all.

"Dean, I'm serious, brother," Benny says, sounding more urgent this time. "We barely got out alive the first time, and now you wanna dive back in? Angel might not even be—"

"Don't." Dean cuts him off there, voice harsher than it's been towards Benny in a long time.

"I know you're all about the loyalty and I know he means a lot to you…but he wouldn't want you to do this."

"Yeah, well, he's done dumber things tryin' to save my ass," Dean mutters, still focused on the text in front of him and wishing fervently that Bobby were here—not that Bobby wouldn't just give him extra hell for even trying this. "Guess you could say I owe 'im one."

"Fine," Benny says, sounding as frustrated as his gentle, drawling voice will allow. "How can I help?"

Dean turns to him. "You can tell me every single thing you know about Purgatory and the door we came through."

In the end the solution is devastatingly simple. Dean can't believe he didn't think of it before, even though a part of him doesn't even want to consider it. After nearly two years of scouring the continent for answers hasn't given them any other leads, though, he's ready to try anything. Benny thinks it's the only thing that just might work—even if he puts undue stress on the might and tells Dean at least five times a day how crazy he is to keep trying.

Purgatory wasn't made for humans. That's why there was a door for them to come through; it wanted to spit Dean out as badly as he wanted to leave. If those are the rules, then…Castiel just has to become human. He has to tear out his Grace.

Getting that message to Cas and convincing him it's the only way are another story entirely, of course, and that takes Dean to levels of weird spellwork mumbo-jumbo he never wanted to mess with. He does though; he gets his hands dirty up to the shoulders and doesn't think twice about it, because it's Cas. And in the end it pays off: exactly four years and four months after he first set out to find his angel, Dean is flat on his back in the smoking remains of an old barn and Cas is a cold, heavy weight in his arms, pale and barely breathing but alive.

His eyes are rolling in his head and for a second Dean is afraid that what he pulled out won't be his Castiel at all, but then those glassy blue irises lock onto him and hold. There's a choked rasp that might have been "hello Dean," and he's so happy he could cry because Cas is here. Graceless, damaged, and dirty…but here. Dean can see him and feel him, and for the moment that's enough. He takes that warmth and stores it up, locks it away where it can't be touched as he struggles to get them both upright and moving. He knows he'll need it for the coming days.

He doesn't realize how much.

After his initial attempt at speech, Castiel is mostly unresponsive as Dean half-drags, half-carries him to the car, drives them to a motel, and gets him cleaned up and put to bed. Dean puts it down to exhaustion and tries to be quick, managing to get Cas looking more or less like himself and buried under a pile of soft blankets in less than an hour. Castiel doesn't close his eyes, though, just stares up at Dean with that same blurry recognition, and Dean's heart constricts painfully. He slides into the bed beside Cas without another thought, curls up behind him and holds him close and warm, feels his uneven breathing stutter and catch and then restart, as if it's a task Cas isn't used to performing all the time. He warms the ex-angel's cold hands with his own and presses his face into the sharp bones of Cas's shoulder blades, his own breath hitching as his stomach starts to curl and squirm with the first twinges of doubt. He tamps down on that firmly and closes his eyes, determined to go to sleep.

In his arms Cas's rigid muscles relax, but his eyes remain open and staring through the night, even as his breathing evens out to match Dean's and his mind goes to sleep.

Three day later Dean starts to panic in earnest. Castiel's body may be human, but his mind is still that of a fallen angel of questionable mental stability. It doesn't do things that a human mind would do automatically, like make his body breathe consistently, or make his eyes blink when they're dry or close when he's tired. He doesn't eat, even when Dean tries to coax food into him, and he doesn't speak. Dean tries to get him to talk a couple of times, but Castiel just stares up at him without responding. Dean almost wonders if Cas is even in there, but then he thinks back to that moment in the barn when Cas recognized him and reassures himself fiercely that this is still his angel.

That works for seven more days before Dean finally cracks. He doesn't do it in the usual way, suddenly loud and promising violence if his words aren't heeded. It comes on slowly, creeping up on him so he can't stop it, can't push it to the back of his mind like he usually would. He's in bed with Cas again, curled up against his back for fear that if he sleeps too far away he'll wake up to find that he stopped breathing in the night. It's been a long day; Cas would barely eat, as usual, and only drank a small cup of water after Dean begged him for two solid hours. He looks paler and thinner than he did when he arrived. Dean sees a hospital bed in their immediate future, fake insurance cards, feeding tubes and a respirator keeping Cas's body alive while his mind continues to drift. It's that image that does it, finally. It's seared into his brain before he can stop it, and he chokes on his own breath, gasps around the tears he can't make fall from his eyes, clutches at Cas and sobs, dry painful sounds of anguish into the back of one of his old t-shirts that soon shape themselves into words, into prayers.

"Cas, I'm sorry. I should've found another way. I should've found a better way to save you. I should've gotten to you sooner, something. God. I'm so sorry. But please…please don't do this. I already lost you once and I…I can't do it again. I just can't do it again."

He babbles into Cas's back for what feels like hours but is really only minutes, his lungs burning from the lack of air as he tries and fails to breathe around his panic. His chest feels like it could split open from the pain of what he knows is coming for them: a slow decay in a drab little room, life departed long before death actually arrives, and the sour pall of his own helplessness over everything.

Castiel doesn't suddenly blink to life. He doesn't go back to his old self and tilt his head in confusion at Dean's human emotions. He does lift one hand to wrap it around Dean's on his stomach, a weak press of skin to skin that has Dean immediately silent and still, breath held and every muscle locked.

"Cas?" He sounds like a child, so hopeful and ready to believe just seconds after despair. Something unknots itself from around Castiel's mind and falls away. He squeezes Dean's hand again, a little harder this time.

"Cas," Dean breathes, cautious relief brushing against the skin of Castiel's neck and tickling the hairs at the nape. He moves experimentally, leaning into that air and finding himself nuzzling against something solid that pushes back, warm skin against his and weak laughter in his ear. Dean holds him tighter, arms and legs wrapped around him so that he is cocooned, surrounded by the feel and smell of Dean. It's safety at last after so much fearful darkness, and he relaxes into it, matching his breathing to Dean's as he slowly unwinds himself from the intricate tangle of pain, guilt, and loneliness he's been hiding in for some untold amount of time.

It's warm and quiet in this room. The yellow street lamp filters through the curtains and the air smells of old cigarettes. Dean is real and there, and no one is coming for them. Castiel sighs and lets his eyes drift closed.

It takes months, but eventually Castiel really is himself again, more or less. On the less side of things, he isn't really an angel anymore, although Dean still refers to him as one sometimes in a way that Cas suspects is part habit, part veiled affection. In any case, he's sure it has nothing to do with divine beings. He can no longer hear the voices of the Host, but he knows they're still there, and that gives him a feeling of dread combined with dubious comfort. He has to eat, and bathe, and sleep now, not to mention all sorts of other time-consuming human necessities that he isn't used to worrying about. He can no longer fly, and his physical strength is tempered by the normal human limits of his slight build and weakened physical state. It's all rather banal and annoying.

On the more side, however, he is human. He sees the world through human eyes the way Dean sees it, feels things the way Dean feels them. He finds, with no small measure of surprise, that he enjoys many of the same things Dean enjoys, and for their own sake. He is particularly fond of cherry pie, and he seems to have retained some of Jimmy Novak's liking for red meat. He prefers AC/DC to Led Zeppelin, which Dean considers a small but allowable blasphemy.

He still doesn't understand a lot about being human, and this makes for some awkward encounters and exchanges. These moments still make Dean laugh, and so Castiel doesn't mind all that much.

Eventually he's strong enough to move around a little more often, and that's when he asks Dean what they're going to do from now on.

"Well," Dean hedges, scratching the back of his neck and avoiding Cas's eyes. "I was thinkin' we could keep on the road. I mean, we don't have to hunt. We could, if you wanted, but we don't have to. We could actually see some stuff instead of just passing everything by. I've always wanted to see the Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone National Park." He pauses, but goes on before Castiel has the chance to say anything, still not meeting his eyes.

"If you don't want to do any of that it's fine, I get it, you can go wherever—"

"Dean." Castiel breaks through Dean's uncharacteristic ramble, surveying the man's flushed face and chagrined expression with a delight that he makes no attempt to conceal. "Yes."

Dean snaps his head up and searches Castiel's face for a moment before narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

"Yes?"

"Yes," Castiel says earnestly, holding Dean's gaze.

It isn't a cakewalk by any means. They don't agree on everything, and Castiel is probably the one person on the planet who can render Dean literally speechless with fury. Of course, he's also the only person on the planet willing to put up with Dean's temper tantrums and ranting, his random bouts of sulky silence, his sporadic nightmares and consistently horrible eating habits…not to mention the macho posturing and tyrannical control of the radio in the car. Things even out.

They take it easy at first. Castiel isn't at full strength—human strength, that is—yet. He can't assist Dean on hunts and Dean actually isn't willing to leave him alone in a motel room all day and night while he ganks monsters, so they take an extended vacation. Castiel chafes under the feeling of being weak and needing to be coddled, but soon he notices what he should have already known: Dean enjoys taking care of people, and he desperately needs a vacation. There are shadows under his eyes, lines on his face where there were none just a few short years ago, and he's lost a bit of weight himself. So Castiel submits, as graciously as he can, to being taken care of and watches with quiet joy as the light comes back into Dean's eyes little by little.

They head west. It's the wrong time of year for it; Arizona's going to be hot as hell when they get there and probably crawling with tourists. Castiel doesn't care, and if the way Dean belts Quiet Riot out of key for the first two hours is any indication, neither does he. They eat up the miles quickly at first, then more slowly as Cas starts to show interest in his surroundings. After the third time Castiel turns in his seat to shoot quizzical looks at the signs for a flea market, Dean chuckles and exits off the highway, explaining without having to be asked that no, it isn't a market that sells fleas and no, he doesn't know why it's called that.

It takes them weeks to travel distances that once would have taken Dean only days. They aren't in any hurry, though. There's no destination in mind, no monster that needs killing pressing them for time. Sure, Dean knows there are definitely still monsters that need killing, but right now he's focused on taking care of his angel. He loves watching Castiel take in every new town like it's a completely different animal from the one before. It's like watching a kid seeing everything for the first time. After a while Dean even starts to notice a few things himself, like how the land changes from region to region in shape and color, and how the air feels different in each place, not just in temperature, but in taste and smell and weight as well. His nightmares are fewer and further between, and if he feels guilty for shirking his duties, well, it's just instinctive. It isn't nearly as deep an emotion as the way he feels teaching Cas to drive, or showing him Star Wars for the first time.

"So," he says when the credits appear on the screen at the end of the first film. "What'd you think?"

"I think the princess is going to choose Han Solo in the end," Castiel states blandly. Dean does a double-take, leaning back from where he's possibly been sitting closer than necessary to give the angel an incredulous look.

"What makes you say that?" Castiel shrugs, a gesture he learned quickly considering the number of times I don't know is his appropriate response when it comes to all things human.

"Isn't it obvious?"

"No it's not obvious," Dean shoots back, slightly outraged that his angel figured it out so quickly. Call him dense, but Dean was rooting for Luke and Leia right up until he found out they were siblings. Maybe just a little bit after, even. "Luke is the hero!"

"Exactly," Castiel says. "Luke is the hero. In classical literature the hero is almost always a solitary figure. Even if that were not so, Luke is almost…too good."

"Okay, you lost me."

Castiel turns in his seat, angling his body towards Dean and pulling one leg up, eyes bright with his revelations.

"Luke is a good person, but in many ways he is still a child. He needs much guidance. And he's impulsive."

"Please," Dean scoffs. "Like Han Solo isn't impulsive."

"He is," Castiel concedes. "The difference is that Han operates under his own instruction. He is confident in his abilities. Luke is a naïve boy looking for adventures, an idealist who sees the world as he thinks it should be. Han is a grown man who understands the world for what it is. As a politician, Leia would have to be able to do this also. Therefore, I think he and Leia would be much more compatible than Leia and Luke."

"Oh come on, that's not how these things work, Cas! Love isn't a numbers game, man. It's not all about who's compatible. Sometimes it's about who gets your blood runnin' hot."

"In that case, Han would most definitely win," Castiel retorts with a small smile. There's a gleam in his eye that Dean finds slightly worrisome, but he doesn't ask. Instead he sits back in his seat with a huff, grumbling under his breath about nerdy angels who think too much.

"Besides," Castiel says just as the prologue for the next movie begins scrolling up the screen. "Han and Leia argue often."

Dean gives Castiel a bug-eyed look of disbelief.

"And you think that means they're in love? Dude, where did you get your fucked up ideas about romance?"

"People who love each other argue," Castiel says with finality. He doesn't say you used to argue with Sam all the time, because they haven't spoken of Sam yet, and he isn't sure how Dean would react. He also doesn't say you always argue with me. He simply settles in against the back of the motel couch and watches the movie, drawing a perverse contentment from the way Dean keeps shooting looks at him out of the corner of his eye.

When Leia professes her love to Han just before he's encased in carbonite, Castiel smiles.

Castiel is facing away from Dean, eyes transfixed by the wonder before them both. Dean has been waiting to see this all his life, but now that he's here he can't seem to stop looking at Cas. Unfathomable twists and juts of red rock and shining water before him, massive open space and golden sky, fiery orange light over everything…and Dean can't even look at it. He knows the light will be gone soon, that he might never make it back here, that he's missing his chance. It doesn't matter. Castiel's brow is furrowed, eyes squinting against the bright light. The dry breeze lifts his hair off his forehead and the glow of an Arizona sunset lights him up almost from the inside out. It's too warm to be the light of Heaven, too soft to be Grace, but Dean almost swears he can hear the rustle of shadowy wings.

Castiel watches the sun set over the Grand Canyon, and Dean watches Cas. They both leave feeling as if they've received a revelation.

Somewhere between Albuquerque and Disney World, Dean starts making mysterious phone calls. Whenever Castiel excuses himself to the bathroom or walks into a station to pay for gas, he comes back to hear Dean bid a hushed and hasty farewell to whoever is on the other line. He has a guess and he doesn't pry. He just hopes Dean is getting good news.

They're at a roadside stand in Georgia—which is sweltering, even in early May—buying Cas's first-ever bag of boiled peanuts when Dean finally says, as offhandedly as he can manage, "So…I've been askin' after Sam."

"How is he?" Castiel returns casually. He knows the news isn't bad, or else Dean wouldn't be as calm as he is. If Sam were in trouble they'd be having this conversation on the road, going ninety miles an hour in his direction.

"He's…well he's kinda dropped off the hunter radar, but a friend of mine's been keeping tabs on him for me since I left. He's settled down with a girl, somewhere over in Banks County. They're about to have a baby."

Castiel isn't sure how to react. Even more disconcertingly, he's not sure if his uncertainty is because he isn't used to being human, or because he knows how complicated the situation is. Dean looks at a loss himself.

"Are we going to go and see them?" he asks finally, still unsure.

"No!" It's harsher than Dean intended, but Castiel doesn't flinch. He understands.

"Okay," he says simply. They don't mention Sam for a long time after that.

Weeks turn into months, and months turn into years. The time slips by almost painlessly, and Dean slips into his forties with an ease that was missing entirely from his thirties, and most of his twenties, too. They do go back to hunting, eventually, but it's never like it was before, never a constant war against the end of the world. The end of the world has come and gone, and it pretty much left everything the way it was before. People still live, and love, and hate, and die. French fries are still salty and politicians are still crooked.

The biggest difference between now and before, though, is that Dean Winchester is happy.

Not "perfect world" happy. He still has bad days. Now sometimes he even has boring ones. He still misses his dad, and his mom. He still mourns Bobby, and Jo, Ellen and Ash, hell, even Rufus. The nightmares never completely go away. No magic snap of the fingers is going to give him back three and a half decades of his life, shaped into something warmer. Then again, he doesn't live in constant fear that a magic snap of the fingers will take everything he still has away from him.

He still has his life, and his health. He knows his brother is somewhere in the world, alive and finally happy, living that normal, apple pie life. And he has his angel.

Castiel doesn't get less grumpy with age, and he still manages to find himself in some kind of awkward social situation about every other time he talks to a human being besides Dean. Dean suspects he does it on purpose, because he knows it makes Dean laugh. He loves him for that.

He loves him for what he does behind Dean's back, too, the traitorous little letter he sneaks into the care package Dean finally gets up the courage to send to Sam. He'd never admit it out loud, but Dean is dying to see his niece. He knows he would never take that first step himself; no matter how peaceful his life has become, relatively speaking, some small part of him is sure that the moment he and Sam are in the same room again, everything around them will fall to pieces. He knows what Castiel would say about that.

"The universe and all its trouble doesn't revolve around you and your brother, Dean."

"Not anymore, anyway."

And Cas would smile, agreeing. "Exactly. Not anymore."

Sometimes Dean wonders if destiny found another pair of brothers to make its bitch. Maybe a pair of sisters, who knows? One second he's just glad it's not him and Sam anymore, and in the next he hates himself for being so selfish. Castiel is always there to smooth away those doubts with practiced hands. That's another big difference, one Dean at twenty-six never would've seen coming.

He remembers wishing he could trade places with someone, wishing he'd never been born. He wouldn't trade what he has now for either. Dean Winchester likes his life.

"I hate my life," he laments as he turns off the highway onto the twisting, tree-lined back road that will lead them to Sam's house.

"Of course you do," Castiel mumbles from the passenger seat, head tilted back and eyes closed in an attempt to stave off the motion sickness triggered by driving all day through winding hills and mountains.

"This is a bad idea, Cas," Dean insists, for what must be the millionth time.

"Terrible," Castiel says. "But turning around now is a worse one, if you value your upholstery."

"What?"

"If I don't get out of this car soon, I'm going to vomit."

Dean shuts up and keeps driving forward, closer and closer to the one thing he wants and fears most in the universe: a reunion with his brother.

He hopes that the moment he sees Sam's stupid, floppy hair and big, puppy hazel eyes won't be the very moment that their normal, apple pie lives come crashing down around them all over again.