"From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king."
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Some stupidly hopeful part of Dean had thought the Supreme Court case would be heard, understood, and dealt with quickly. He's had enough of trials and courts and crap by now—he's sick of it, and there's no way to move on with that hanging over his head, with his name and picture showing up in the news every time something involving the Omega Rights movement is mentioned, gritting his teeth over casual daily prejudices.
He just wants it done.
And then it turns into a waiting game. Charlie breaks the news to him, perched on the edge of their hotel bed as Sam paced and Cas sat on the uncomfortable hotel sofa with Dean's legs across his lap, diligently digging his thumbs into Dean's sore feet to soothe them.
The average wait time on a Supreme Court ruling, from hearing the arguments to actually doing anything about them, is eighty five days. And that's factoring in the easy crap that they just kick back. Tricky stuff, or things against the government. . . hell, that could take most of a year. Dean and Cas's kids could be crawling, babbling their names, hell maybe even standing before they hear back from the Supremes.
Dean doesn't sleep that night, and he ignores the worried looks Cas and Sam exchange behind his back as they drop Sam and Charlie off at the airport. The next afternoon, somewhere in Nowhere, Pennsylvania, he pulls over and hands the keys to the Impala over to Cas and drags Cas's trench coat over him like a blanket, tucking himself as tightly against the door as he can while ridiculously pregnant, and tries to tune out the Trans in the back seat and the low, quiet rumble of Cas's voice when he's prompted to join their discussions.
When he finally wakes it's night, they're in Michigan, and all signs point to Detroit. Cas knows Dean's awake, even if the Beta and other Omega in the car haven't picked up on it. A warm hand catches Dean's beneath the cover of the coat, squeezing tightly until he has to steer with it to bring the Trans home. Of course Cas didn't forget. He can't, he's not allowed to. Cas hears Dean's story all over again every time they're dragged out of their daily lives for Dean to tell it.
Dean accepts the hug from Kevin outside of their home, ruffling the kid's hair and patiently waiting through Linda's closing slew of advice to both he and Cas, exchanging a look with Kevin that makes Kev hide a grin and wondering when he ended up with another little brother to look after.
All he has to do after that is catch I-96 out of Detroit, and they'll be on their way to Sioux Falls again, maybe swing by to see Claire, Amelia and Emmanuel, since it's on their way. What isn't on their way is the heartland of urban decay, the run-down, husk of buildings in Detroit. Even discounting that a lot of the country is in decline, that population rates went to crap and ash has taken over large swaths of land, this place is a wreck.
The sign over the hardware store John Winchester picked up accelerant and tools from is half burnt out, tilted precariously beneath the weight of ash left to build up on it like concrete, but the lights are on and someone's in there behind the barred front windows, probably counting out their till. Dean drives past slowly, trying to picture John's pickup in the lot as it was before John t-boned a van in it. He doesn't remember driving past it as John got him out of this place, but he tries not to remember a lot of being found by his father, and he never came back himself, even if John did after Alastair got away with it.
Alastair evaded the law, but Winchesters don't forgive as easily.
Dean doesn't get out of the car when he finds what he's looking for. Idling at the side of the road, he stares out of the window, trying to ignore how quickly Cas's gaze swings from the ruins in front of them to Dean. Cas knows him well enough to let Dean speak first, his voice strangely hollow in the silence pressing in on them within the car.
"I wonder if the rack burned, too, or if he left it in one of the bars somewhere." How much of his cage went into someone's scrap metal pile when the ashes cooled enough to enter? If he went past the bent and broken chain-length gate barely acting as a hindrance to approaching the burned out ruins, would he find something of his past here? Did the people who spray-painted the remaining cracked concrete with colorful graffiti know what kind of place this had been before? Do his former 'clients' walk past it, as they leave the nearby dive bars at night, urinate drunkenly on its walls? There's a maple tree growing out of the ruin, a few years old now by the looks of it, grey scrub-grass softening the mounds of crumbled brick beside it, weeds swaying in the autumn wind, city detritus blown up against it by the wind, and there's probably a little ecosystem of hardy city dwelling creatures running around in there.
Rats and snakes and roaches and piss. Good. That's what Alastair deserves to be commemorated with. This is more than just the abandoned building he was caged in every day after being put to 'use,' this is Alastair's grave—Dean doesn't have any doubts about that. When John Winchester got an idea in his head, he didn't leave it half-done, no matter how obsessed and distant those crusades made him.
"I don't know why he didn't tell me. I don't know if it would have made a difference if he did, but I shoulda known, you know?" Maybe John didn't need to die drunk and alone: if he'd just made the effort, tried to look his eldest son in the eyes after what happened here. . . But hell, Dean can't even blame him. That's a Winchester trait too, never letting go of the past. John felt guilty over this happening to Dean, and he let it kill him slowly, one drink at a time.
" . . . Dean?" Cas has unbuckled his seatbelt, and he slides across the bench seat to be beside Dean fully, warm and comforting and solidly present. Cas is the present, he's what Dean escaped this to, and they're each other's future, too. Dean draws in a deep breath, pushing away the encroaching dark, and nods at Cas's unspoken question, turning to meet Cas's concerned stare.
"Don't ever let me do that, okay?" Dean knows he's shoved Cas away before, and Cas comes back every time. He knows that he's still screwed up in the head enough to end up like his old man, too, if he doesn't watch it. They're about to have kids of their own, kids that'll depend on them, and he needs to be there, not stuck here, or in Lawrence behind the stadium, or in the house where his mother died.
Cas may catch only half what Dean's saying as he wanders around in his own head, but he understands enough of what he's feeling to nod solemnly, palm cupping Dean's neck as he leans in to rest his forehead against Dean's temple, eyes closing. "Okay."
They stay long enough for Dean to burn this place as it is into his head, to give him an anchor next time he has to testify about his time here, or drag himself off of the rack that lives on persistently in his nightmares, or shut down Alastair's voice creeping into his mind when he's vulnerable. Cas doesn't press the conversation, but he doesn't back away from giving comfort, either, and really that's more than Dean ever could have asked for. Eventually it's the twins who get impatient with him, and Dean pulls away from his thoughts and from Cas.
"You drive. I need food and a bathroom, before your heathen kids try and kill me."
It takes Cas a moment, closing his eyes to the ruins, dragging himself out of his thoughts and taking a deep breath, before he meets Dean's forced change of tone head-on. "He doesn't mean that, children. Your father is far more 'heathen' than any of us but we love him anyway."
Technically true, as the devout atheist in the car, but Dean shoots Cas a look for it regardless. As Cas slips out of the car to circle it rather than try to maneuver past Dean's belly on the seat, he watches the stiffness in his mate's gait, the way his eyes skate over the ruins one last time from the outside of the car, and waits until Cas is settled in and done shifting gears before taking his hand.
They may have up to a year before the Supreme Court decides what Dean's gruesome history here means to the rest of the country, but Dean plans to try not carrying this past with him the entire time.