Author's Note:

Thanks to those who still read this, it's such a work in progress isn't it? Love you guys, stay cool.

Update: Wrists still kind of hurt but getting better think.

Futurum: Part 3

Castiel stood in silence, his eyes fixed on the statue of an epic battle frozen in time. A priest of the faith perched crystalized with a smile on his face, a face that Castiel knew too well. There were large piles of crystalized dust, some chunks in the mix that looked like limbs, all layered around his feet. Cas slowly stepped forward, his hand reaching to touch Dean's skin, it was cold and as solid as stone. He retracted his hand and held it close to his chest, pain etched into his heart and carved into his features as another approached him from behind.

"Let's go, Cas." It was Dean, living breathing and perfectly fine. "We can't do anything here."

"You're right, this is long over." Castiel shook his head and turned away with his partner, "I just can't imagine what that Castiel must have been feeling."

"I think you know." Dean kissed his cheek and took his hand.

Castiel looked over at Dean curiously, "I think… that was where the original timeline became corrupted, where they lost you."

"Wow," Dean huffed out a laugh and scratched the back of his head, "I nearly had a heart attack there, I thought that was me."

"Thankfully it wasn't," Sam smiled at him tiredly, Futurum was starting to get to him but he wanted to see the last of the visions, to see what would happen or what he should look out for. Maybe seeing the future wasn't a great plan. "My question though is why does it react stronger to Cas?"

"Who knows?" Dean smiled over at Castiel, "He's a pretty special guy."

"Stop," Cas tried to appear stoic about it but his cheeks lit up at the compliment.

Dean followed Castiel's touch the next time, again it flashed brighter than before but this time sphere flickered and made some sort of groaning noise as the light faded. The scene started to unfold as any of the others, the image was blurry at first and it even seemed small. Then the sphere expanded, the area surrounded them at first like a 3D, virtual reality movie, they could see everything like a hologram.

"Whoa…" Jet looked over at Cas and Dean, "What the fuck did you guys do?"

"I… I'm not sure, I assume it's supposed to do this-" Cas was in the middle of saying when suddenly everything shook like it'd been jolted from its supporting pillar. No one moved or spoke, they just looked at one another, waiting for something to happen again. For several seconds nothing did, they slowly exhaled, bodies relaxing.

"I don't like this." Jet was the first to say anything before the ground gave away entirely, all four were sucked down but not through a ground tunnel or anything like what they'd been expecting. The world around them flashed by like a slow shutter speed camera taking pictures of moving traffic, Castiel held onto Dean instinctively but they weren't torn away from one another. It felt as though they'd gone through a wicked waterslide when they reached the end, smooth, twisting, and increased momentum before tumbling out.

No one had a graceful landing; Castiel would've been closest except Dean had latched onto him for dear life so they ended up in a heap on the ground. Cas grunted a little and opened his eyes to see the weight on his chest was his partner, clinging as tightly as he could. "We're okay," Cas whispered to him softly and Dean's head shot up like lightning.

"Uh…" his cheeks flushed and he sat upright, "Yeah, of course, right, sorry."

"No problem," Castiel pushed himself up and looked just in time to see a wall burst open. He shielded himself from flying debris but it passed through him like he wasn't even there. "What the…?"

"No idea." Dean stood up and looked over to where Sam and Jet had landed, a similar situation to himself and Castiel except Jet was the one holding onto Sam. 'Guess I shouldn't be surprised.' Dean thought with a smirk, "You two gonna lay there all day or what?"

"Thinking about it." Jet chuckled as Sam shuffled to his feet.

"Where are we?" Sam looked at the broken wall and flinched when a blastwave crashed through it again.

"You think you'll get away with this!?" Dean's voice snarled from beyond the destruction, an echoing and multi-toned laugh reverberating as a response.

"We already have, priest. Your beloved is slowly draining away, the Void is awake and there's nothing you can do about it."

The group ran to the hole in the wall, no questions asked. They weren't particularly worried; the only thing they seemed to be able to touch was the ground anyway. Dean nudged Cas as they peered inside, "Who am I fighting there?"

"I… I think those might be the Celestials… but not the ones I know, from the other timeline?" He looked over at Sam who had read more of the journal than he'd had the chance to.

"By definition yeah, that's gotta be them." Sam furrowed his brow and reached behind him, the journal tucked into the back of his pants under his sweater. He started to rifle through it again, looking for the entry that had brought up the difference in the first place, "The celestials that the other group knew looked something like these guys did." He muttered, hoping he'd find something similar to the last entry, something explain more of what was happening. "Dean's fighting the celestials, if this is the other timeline then Castiel's unconscious and Jet and I are getting him out of here. I think this is where we lose him…"

Cas wanted nothing more than to turn his gaze away, stop looking and get the hell out of there. And he would have, too, if it weren't for the nagging thought in his mind; 'what if you need this later. What if you need to know something about this to save Dean from the same fate?' And so he fixed his gaze, mouth pulled tight and chest aching as he watched a version of his partner go toe to toe with three god-like beings. The destruction around them was still terrifying, the sounds were very real and though they knew they couldn't be hit by anything they still flinched when a wall blew open nearby. Dean put an arm around Castiel's shoulders and held tightly, he wasn't always aware of people's moods or what they needed but his connection to Cas told him enough.

Dean crashed into the ground, air knocked from his lungs as he struggled to stand again. The celestials swooped in at blinding speeds, they swarmed him like locusts, lashing out and trying to tear him apart. Loud, echoing laughter seared his ears and brought a gagged feeling to his throat. Dean materialized his weapon from his coat and with as much force as he could muster swatted the monstrosities aside. He grunted and forced himself upright; his breathing came in short, gargled bursts. "You're wrong," he grinned at the beings as they regained their orientation. "If there's anything I've learned with them, my family, my loved ones, it's that there's always something you can do."

The celestials stared at him long and hard, "He's bluffing." One said with a laugh, "He has nothing more to do, these are his final breaths."

Dean looked up at them, blood matted on his face, dripping down his chin and all over his body. He was physically broken, skin torn open and bleeding out, and still he smiled. "I guess they kind of are my last words, huh? Well let's see what else I can do." His eyes started to glow, the light growing brighter and more intense as a whirlwind started around him. "Can you guess what my partner taught me?"

Castiel's eyes widened, "He's doing an energy transfer."

"How do you do that?" Dean looked at him, the pressure in the room slowly weighing down on them.

"And is it supposed to be this dramatic?" Jet had to shout over the gust of wind as it picked up.

"No," Cas yelled back, a quick shake of his head as his face tensed, "He's using all of it."

A wave of sound and motion crashed into them, it deafened the area to only a high pitched whine in their ears.

Dean stared down the celestials, everything felt like slow motion as they charged him, his expression faltering for only a second, just one moment of weakness for him to whisper an apology that rang loud in the audience's minds. "I'm sorry, Castiel."

The light that had gathered inside him flickered and in the silence, past the rush of the monsters closing in, there was a moment of peace. Dean smiled, his gaze soft and accepting of his fate, he didn't flinch as the light exploded out of him. Everything in its wake engulfed in crystal, frozen where it stood. The celestials, midair when it connected with them, crashed into the ground and shattered on impact. Their screams echoed as hollow bodies broke, nothing left but pieces and the lasting screech. Dean didn't move again, his body forever in position, facing off against something he never could have survived and all of it with a smile.

Castiel couldn't look away, his heart pounded hard in his ears. That vision, that display, it was nothing like the others, they weren't involved they were just watching. They were thrown right into that one, standing there, experiencing it all around them instead of peering through a looking glass. He didn't stop himself when his legs moved and carried him to the site. His feet nudged the crystal piles but he didn't care, his hand trembled when he reached up to touch Dean's face. It was so cold.

"Cas," Dean, the current one, tried to get his attention but Castiel wasn't quite there.

"There's an exit," Sam pointed behind them, a single doorway in the middle of space that had no business actually being there. "We should go."

Dean nodded and walked up behind Cas, he placed a hand gently on his partner's shoulder. "Let's go Cas, we can't do anything here."

"You're right this…" Castiel trailed off and furrowed his brow.

"Is long over." Jet finished for him, "We just lived one of those visions, did you guys notice that?"

Cas looked at Dean, his expression tightly wound, "Did… you notice it?"

"No," Dean admitted and rubbed the back of his neck, "I got a little caught up in the moment."

"Let's talk about it back in Futurum," Sam said as he hurried to the exit, "This place gives me the creeps."

No one argued and followed him, there was no problem as they exited and the sphere glowed brightly as if it were about to show something. Soon the light died down and they stood in the silence of the world again, nothing special happening, nothing ominous and about to happen. They stood quietly as they let it sink in.

"It just happens, we don't even realize it." Jet muttered as he folded his arms over his chest, eyes cast down and lips pursed together in thought. "Kind of weird."

"Not really," Castiel shook his head and turned to Jet a little more fully, "Seeing a vision of it is one thing but it's entirely different to be there. There will be so many other things going through our minds at the times of the visions, for example Dean will be face to face with his father, he won't be saying 'I saw this in a vision!'"

"Fair enough." Jet smirked at him and then nodded toward the sphere, "So we gonna check out the rest of them before we talk about it?"

"Right," Castiel went to touch it again but nothing happened that time. He scrunched his nose and tapped it again, still nothing. "Okay… I think we may have over stayed our welcome…"

"I think it's because the visions connected to you have already come and gone, it has nothing more to show you." Sam offered the best explanation that came to mind.

Dean shrugged and looked at them all, "Okay so we got some info to work with here, right? Jet gets into a lot of trouble, we see mom and dad again, and… some stuff about a monster world."

"Yeah that doesn't sound as helpful as you think." Sam frowned and rubbed his forehead tiredly, "This is starting to piss me off. Why did we even come here? To get information but none of it useful!" He kicked a rock that hardly moved, the wince on his face was more than enough information to know what had happened there.

"Some of it is," Castiel tried to reassure him while trying to ignore the same despairing feeling. "We know your parents are alive, that they're fighting and we can find them. We know that we'll face a vacuo and can plan for it. And we know to watch out for one another, as we always have, but this time we'll focus a bit on Jet's well-being. We have plenty to work with; just not a whole lot is helpful to the big picture." He looked over at Dean who shook his head, he had little to add. "We should read more about the journal; see what we can get from it."

"The celestials are the things that attacked me in the last vision, right?" Dean took on a similar stance to Jet's thoughtful pose; Cas could tell they'd been around each other far too often. "We know that they're probably the cause of opening the Void, you think if we can find the location that this Dean went down we can figure it all out?"

"I think it's time we visited the celestials that we know." Sam muttered as determination welled inside him, his eyes darting up to meet each of the others'.

"That sounds like a plan I could get behind, who else thinks so?" It wasn't a surprise that Jet was the first to agree but it made Dean smile all the same.

"That's the next move then, c'mon let's get out of this place."