0o0o0
Chapter 14 – Life As We Know It.
Team Free Will.
Balthazar shook Sam's shoulders, a panic stricken look etched on his face. Dean pushed him out of the way with an uncharacteristic yelp of panic, and pulled Sam's limp body into his lap. Cas wasn't far behind him, practically collapsing next to the pair; whether from blood loss or shock, nobody knew.
"I thought it would work! I really thought it wo-!" rushed Balthazar, but Dean cut in in a choked voice.
"Shut up! Just- just shut up…!" He pulled Sam's body tighter into his own and folded himself around him. "I'm so sorry Sammy." A few seconds passed – Dean burying his face in Sam's white-tinged hair as he shook. Castiel's head was down, hand clamped around Dean's as he stared, horror and grief clear on his face, at the ground. It was over. Sam was simply not here anymore – gone, not anything more than a memory anymore. He was their little brother, and now it was over.
Suddenly, Sam's body went rigid and a gasp rippled through him before his muscles relaxed and he lay gasping and panting in Dean's arms. His eyes flicked open, and he looked up at Dean in shock – with green-brown eyes without even a pale tint of infection. Milky fluid was still crusted around his face, but he was alive.
"Dean?" he asked in a small, weak voice. "I hurt them... I-I killed people. Dean, I killed him, Dean I kill-" he choked and stuttered and looked like he was about to vomit.
"Sam, I'm fine. I'm right here," soothed Cas, crouching down so that Sam could see him, but it didn't help.
"No, no, no. Not real," he mumbled, turning into Dean's chest.
Dean realized he was holding his breath, and let out a large huff as he looked down at Sam. He was alive. He was cured. Dean pulled him into the upright position, and Sam looked between Dean and Cas with tears in his eyes.
"Am I dead?" he said, with a hint of hope in his voice. "You're both dead and you're here, so I must be dead. This must be Heaven if both of you are here and aren't trying to kill me. Even the disease is gone."
A watery smile cracked Sam's face and Dean pulled him into another crushing hug. "You're alive, Sam. We all are. And you're cured now, you're better, and we're all going to get you home," he grumbled into the top of Sam's head.
"Wait...all of you?" Sam looked around at the faces looking down at him; Dean, happy and protective, Cas relieved but worryingly pale, a dark-eyed stranger, shocked and gaping, a brown-eyed stranger was calm and smiling and...
And Gabriel.
"Hey there, kiddo," he said with a lopsided smile. "Long time no see."
Sam pushed himself shakily from Dean's lap and tried to make his way over to Gabe and the older man strode over to close the distance and pulled Sam into his own bone crushing hug. "I'm sorry I left you kid, I thought it was for the best." Tears chocked Gabriel's normally chipper tone. "And now, I've found you and my little brother met, and you got with this idiot!" Gabe gestured to Dean. His voice broke, but happiness bled through his tears
Sam wrapped his arms around the older man's waist and mumbled, "You're here now," into his shoulder.
Dean stood up and walked over to Sam and Gabe, leaving Cas to pick a shell-shocked Balthazar of the ground. "How about we all go home then?" asked Dean, clapping Gabriel on the back.
"What about the girl?" asked Chuck, and Dean turned to him with a slightly vicious grin.
"Well if you feel apprehensive about leaving her on her own, I'll gladly slit her throat for you."
0o0o0
In a word, life was good. Sure, it was the end of times and end of days, but at least they were going out as a family. The summer passed in a hazy song of rustling, long grasses and yellow evening rays of sunlight, and slowly but surely, Sam healed. His nights were filled with the image of Castiel falling to the ground, of the taste of his blood under his teeth and the scrape of gravel under bloody hands, but when he woke up, Dean was there, and that was enough.
Meeting both his real brother and adoptive brother was enough of a shock to convince Gabe to stay – for a while, at least. He was a wanderer – a traveller above all else – but maybe his brothers' happiness could convince him to stay for just a little while longer, until Sam was confirmed to be right as rain once more.
Cas and Dean stayed attached at the hip for weeks after Castiel was healed (even though Dean didn't need to practically carry the other around anymore), and there wasn't a dirty little secret anymore. As the residents of the camp slowly returned, bruised and battered but craving home, Cas and Dean's rather unique relationship was the very least of their worries. Sam would've been kicked out – maybe even killed – if not for the 'Sammy Protection Squad', as Chuck had dubbed it before he left.
Speaking of Chuck; he and Balthazar were now long gone. The man's son let slip to Dean a few days after this event that the medicine given to Sam was simply a prototype – that really, they had no idea whether it would work or not. After a near-strangulation incident involving Castiel and his still weak but righteous anger, the father and son wisely moved on quite quickly.
Despite their assurances that they would visit every so often, Dean doubted that was true. They had moved out of their old base now, were off south to see who else they could cure, and even though Balthazar was an A+ Asshole, Dean knew that he and his father were doing a good thing.
As autumn, then winter and then spring rolled in, the long grasses around the camp browned and died, the ground becoming bare, before sprouting again, more green than before. Sam grew another inch, patches of white-patched hair falling out to be replaced by thick, floppy locks of brown hair that always covered his eyes. Dean himself didn't change too much; he didn't tell John who he was in the end, but he kept his jacket, and that was enough. All the rips and tears in Castiel's trench coat were finally sewn together, and he spent a whole day without it to let Jess get her hands (and her sewing needle) on it.
More joined the camp as time passed. A young infected who burst into tears when Dean said he could heal her; he and the young redhead soon grew close, but not as close as she was to Jo (1). A young, Asian kid, shockingly loyal but generally quiet, who made fast friends with Castiel. A dark-haired woman, beautiful but hard to trust, who gave Sam a bad feeling (she only stayed for a few weeks before moving on). The family grew and grew, Jess and Sam eventually quit dancing around each other and got together, and Cas and Dean… Well, they were Cas and Dean. Dean and Cas. Nothing more needed to be said.
But as the hot, brown summer scorched through, the long grasses striking up a scratchy chorus, Dean started to take more scouting missions. Days and weeks melded and merged until time was nothing – every day the same, nothing changing, no adventure and no purpose. No journey. Dean slowly started to resent it – the cycle of days a hypnotic cycle that dizzied him to the point of frustration. He needed to get out.
Castiel, meanwhile, was a caged animal. Even now that he felt more human, now that he had a home, he was instinctively a mapper. An explorer, and a hunter, who hadn't moved from one base for nearly two years. Even now that he was more of a housewife than a hunter, that instinct still boiled beneath the surface, and if he didn't start moving soon, he thought he might go mad.
Sam, on the other hand, couldn't be happier. Every day for him was brilliant – his eyes and skin and hair were no longer tinged with the milky-white of infection, Luci was long gone, and Dean and Cas were alive and well. He was in love, something that he never thought could ever happen to anybody like him, and he was part of a family, helping people and healing the infected. Gabe was here – even if it wasn't forever, and life was amazing.
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Cas and Dean finally addressed the elephant in the room as their second winter at the camp started to draw to a close. The last dregs of frost sprinkling the ground in front of him, Dean sat silently inside the main gate. His jacket – John's jacket – sat around his shoulders, but didn't do much to keep out the cold. Face pensive, he fiddled absently with the rifle at his side, and traced the slowly lightening horizon, looking thoughtful.
"Hello, Dean."
The man, now nearly 24, flinched harshly, twisting around and glaring mildly at Castiel in the shadows. "Damnitt Cas, it's been two years and you're still doing that?!"
Giving a small chuckle, the other man sat down silently beside him, faithful trench coat soon wrapped around both of their shoulders. "I apologise, you just seemed a little lonely."
The green-eyed man's eyes softened. "Couldn't sleep?"
"Jess is with Sam tonight, so I should be catching up on sleep, but…" Cas gave a vague gesture.
Dean sighed. "Staying here for so long… it feels weird, doesn't it? Like we should've moved on by now."
"Sam seems to like it, at least."
"But do you?"
It took Cas a moment to answer, and when he did, it was obvious that he was choosing his words carefully. "I don't know why, but this is… it isn't so good now that the novelty's worn off, is it?"
Dean slung his arm around Castiel's shoulders, face unreadable. "We both know that we have to move on sooner or later." Dean laughed sadly. "You'll go mad if we stay here much longer. So will I."
"Dean… What about Sam? We both know he'll follow us in a heartbeat but it'll break his heart to leave!"
There was silence for a minute, unbroken by all but the soft, mournful rustling of the dead and bare trees around the small courtyard. Oh the horizon, a small shaft of greyish sunlight started to drip through the clouds as dawn approached.
"We go on our own. At spring." Dean's voice was small. "He'll be okay. Sammy grew up, huh? My kid brother grew up." Even if John wasn't Sam's father, Sam was more of a brother to Dean than anybody had ever been. He would always be his little brother, even when Dean and Cas were long-gone.
0o0o0
Springtime.
Dean stared at the sleeping boy in front of him. A soft smile was etched on the face of the boy, more a young man now. Dean pulled the blanket over Sam so that it covered his shoulders, and backed slowly away, leaving Sam alone with his dreams of happy families, friends and home. He'll be fine, Dean assured himself, he has Jessica and Jo - hell, he's practically been adopted by Bobby and Ellen, and he's basically a big brother himself now, to Adam. He had his happy family and it wasn't like he was never going to see Dean and Cas again. They would come back and visit, just maybe not for a while.
Cas stood patiently in the as he waited for Dean to say his goodbyes. Cas hadn't had the heart to even go near his family for the past few days, afraid that seeing Gabriel and the others would just bring back all of the conflicted feelings he had tried to suppress. But Dean was right - if they stayed here they'd go insane, and it's not like this was goodbye forever. Still…
Cas was pulled from his crisis when Dean stepped silently through the doorway, softening its momentum as it swung closed, so as not to wake Sam and Jess.
"You ready?" prompted Dean is a hoarse whisper.
Cas sighed, interlinking their fingers in the dark. "As I'll ever be."
Dean's feet scuffed along the grass, sending sprays of mildew across the bottom of his trouser legs. Both he and Cas were silent, but whether it was for safety or because there were just no words wasn't discernible. When they finally reached the wire fence, he pulled back the segment they had cut earlier and waited for Cas to crawl through. This was it.
Neither looked back as they started to trek through the moonlit streets, the dark caverns of blown-out shop fronts and broken windows glinting and winking through the dark at them. Tomorrow morning, Sam would wake up to find Dean and Cas gone, only a note left. He would threaten to slip into a depression, light starting to leave his eyes again, but Jess would get him through it.
Dean thought back to when he first met Sam - curled up behind a burned-out car, all elbows and knees and pin-thin limbs. Then, to meeting Castiel – a figure thrown from the darkness into their campfire with eyes like fire, as cold and deadly as ice. Three years had passed, each day a blessing just to still be breathing, each night filled with hope that the next day would arrive.
Team Free Will had had a good run, but everything had to come to an end at some point.
This is it.
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(1) daaaaaaaaamn Charlie
Only the epilogue left! :D
Can anybody guess who all three of the people who joined the camp are?