He listened carefully. It was hard to tell over the rain, but, yes… there was definitely something going on in the house. First it was a soft banging sound. Now it was a clicking. Dean moved back to the bed and put a hand on Sam's shoulder.

"Sammy," he whispered.

"Mmmph," Sam scrunched his face up, still mostly asleep.

"I'll be right back, okay?"

Sam just sighed. Dean was pretty sure he was not awake enough to know what was going on, and Dean figured that might be for the best right now. He walked quietly to the door, unlocked it, and then closed it behind him. He stepped out into the hall, but saw nothing. He was really wishing he'd gone out to check Baby's trunk for weapons.

The rain had softened to a quiet drizzle now as it pattered against the windows. A few steps further into the hallway and he could see wet spots on the floor. Some one or some thing was in the house. He held very still and followed the wet spots with his eyes to what appeared to be the back or side door of the house. Then he noticed a small, cut-out rectangle in the bottom portion of the door. There was a plastic flap over the opening. It took him a moment to make sense of what it was, and then it hit him. Could it be?

Dean held his breath as he stepped the rest of the way into the room. And there on a big round cushion in front of the fireplace was Miracle.

They locked eyes and Dean's face lit up as he got down on the floor. The dog hopped up and ran to him, licking his face and wiggling all over.

"Miracle! Oh, hello! It's so good to see you," Dean cooed at the dog.

Miracle's tail thumped wildly against Dean's leg as the dog climbed into his lap.

Dean laughed and hugged him, running his fingers through Miracle's fur and scratching behind his ears. He leaned back against what was apparently a kitchen island that he had sat down beside.

A kitchen island… he looked around. From where he sat, he could see into the living room where there were arm chairs, a couch and a large television mounted over the fireplace.

A television?

Dean's stomach sank as he looked down at Miracle. Doubt was creeping back in, surrounding him with a cloud of fear and suspicion. "Are you even real?" he asked. "What is all this?" he asked to no one in particular, but he was certainly surprised when he got an answer.

"It's for your comfort, Dean."

Dean nearly jumped out of his skin, his head slamming back against the wall of the island. "DAMN it, Cas!" he hissed, turning to see the angel standing a foot or so beside him.

Miracle hopped out of his lap and looked up at Cas with body language that Dean couldn't quite read. Protective? Nervous? He wasn't sure.

Cas was looking crossly down at the dog. "Miracle, what did I say?"

Miracle tilted his head at Cas and let out a soft woof.

"No," Cas scolded. "I said not yet. Sam isn't ready. In fact, Dean isn't ready either."

"Ready for what?" Dean asked confused.

But Cas ignored him, focused solely on the dog. "I'll let you know when. For now, you have to go back-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Dean Got up shakily and stepped between them, holding up his hands. "Go back where? And-" Dean squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "Cas, are you having a conversation with him?"

Cas looked at Dean as though he'd asked if the sky was blue. "Yes. I'm reminding him that we had discussed that he wouldn't come here yet. You and Sam need space to heal. Even I shouldn't be here right now."

Dean just stood there, mouth slightly agape as though he were about to say something, but then he closed it, and just ran both hand down his face and groaned.

"You have questions," Cas stated. "I know, I'll get to that." He turned back to the dog. "Miracle, please."

And if Dean didn't know better, he would swear that dog looked at Cas with a bitch face that would rival Sam's as he let out a huff and trotted back to the dog door and left.

Dean's expression of disbelief would have been comical had Castiel not been aware of how traumatized he actually was.

"Where is he going?" Dean asked. "It's pouring out there!"

"He's fine. He's going back to your parents' house," Castiel replied as though there was nothing odd at all about the fact that he'd just had a small argument with a dog. "Your mother adores him. He's been asked to stay there until you and Sam have adjusted to your new life, but he's very stubborn"

"Yeah," Dean nodded slowly. "About that whole 'new life' thing…" Dean made a sweeping motion with his arms. "I don't really get all this."

"You mean you don't believe all this."

Dean looked crossly at him. "Fine, you want the truth? I don't believe all this." He pointed at the television. "A TV? In Heaven?"

Cas nodded. "Yes. We still have actors here. And artists and musicians. And sports. And people love to see what they create and what they do. We even broadcast most of what you could see on Earth. But quality programs, not the Kardashians."

Dean put his hands over his face and mumbled something that Cas assumed was profane.

"Dean-"

"No, Cas!" Dean said in an angry whisper, trying desperately to keep his voice down so as not to wake Sam. "I feel like Sam is right. We're not really in Heaven, or if we are, we aren't meant to be here. I mean, look- bodies? Breathing? Sleeping? Do we eat here too? And there's TV, but I'm supposed to believe it's Heaven's streaming service because you don't air the Kardashians? What's next, we have to go find day jobs? Next thing I know you'll be telling me there are monsters and-"

Cas waved a hand to stop him. "No, Dean. No monsters. No day jobs. This is all to help you adjust to life here. It's all real and many people choose to continue to live this way. There are people here from ancient Earth who are happily living in mud huts near rivers. There are people from years after you left earth living in city high rises. People find contentment in many different ways. You are a soul. You will have the ability to see and do and be anything you want to."

Dean leaned back against the countertop and rubbed his forehead.

Cas stepped forward and laid a gentle hand against Dean's temple before Dean could protest. There was a soft glow and then the sweet absence of pain. "It will come and go," Cas said softly. "But you'll get better."

Dean nodded and let out a breath. "Why does it feel…"

"As though it cannot be? Because you are broken. And these doubts and fears you are having are stemming from that brokenness. Any pain you feel, that's the darkness inside you that you carried around for so long being stripped away from your soul. What you and Sam lived through in your lifetimes…" a fleeting expression of despair crossed Cas's face. "Well, it was not something a human soul was ever meant to endure."

Dean swept a glance around the room again. "So right now we can't do all the normal soul things? We're kind of what, stuck in the past?" He chewed on his lower lip as he wandered over to a large wall of windows that looked out over a beautiful pine forest and an open area of rocks and moss where birds were flapping around in a small puddle. For a moment, a brief feeling of contentment washed over him. The bunker had been cool. It had been appropriate for their lives on Earth, but it would be nice to live above ground with windows. If any of this was real...

"You are...stuck, if you want to call it that, in corporeal form for now as you adjust to being here." Castiel tilted his head and gazed past Dean for a moment, considering a thought that had come to him just then. "Think of it this way," he said. "Your soul is like an ocean. A beautiful, limitless ocean. Right now, you're confined in a small boat in the middle of that ocean and it's beauty has been obliterated by every awful thing that has ever happened to you during your life and your multiple deaths. There aren't many people here who have experienced multiple deaths, Dean. Do you see what I'm saying? You've never heard of healing in Heaven because almost no one has to."

Dean stayed quiet and Castiel continued. "Every horrible experience you've ever had is being dredged up from the bottom of your soul- the ocean- where it has sat buried in darkness. On Earth you were able, for the most part, to keep these things buried. You had to in order to survive. Do you remember The Wall that Death put up in Sam's mind?"

Dean squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. His stomach churned as the memory came rushing back to him. Sam… in all that pain. And what Cas did to him.

It was the last thing Cas wanted to bring up, but he needed to at least try to make things a little clearer for his friend. He cleared his throat and continued. "That wasn't entirely unique. All humans have "a wall" very similar to that inside them. It's more of a thin shield. It acts as a buffer of sorts. It helps you to live through the hardships and tragedies that are an inevitable part of life. Sam's wall was a much more robust version of what most humans have, but his was also… less stable." He paused here, taking in Dean's aura of resentfulness, then continued. "Your soul absorbs these hardships, holds them, keeps them contained enough so that you still feel them, but at a decreased intensity. It's how people survive unimaginable losses. Generally speaking, when a soul enters Heaven, these things are released and fall back to Earth. But with souls who have been to hell, the pain clings to them. It's embedded in their scars and it's hard to let go of. These things you have carried with you during your entire life are floating all around you right now, brought to the surface, turning the water choppy and black and terrifying. But slowly, the light of Heaven will obliterate all of it forever. Even if you can't let go, it will all burn away completely and the dark water will become clear. So clear that you will be able to see everything and you will get out of the boat and experience the ocean."

Dean didn't reply, he just looked doubtfully at his old friend.

"Now, as you can see, from Sam's transformation, while you may not be able to fully experience what it means to be a soul, you are capable of things you might not even imagine, even during this transition process. You just don't know how to control it yet. This is part of the beauty of being here… learning, discovering what you're capable of. Somethings will just happen naturally, like Sam reverting to a younger form of himself."

"Will he stay like that forever?"

"No, Dean, not unless he wants to." Castiel softened his voice and looked at Dean with tenderness, realizing this was way too much for him to process in the state he was in. "Sam will heal. He will have a much harder time with his healing, but he will heal. He will have as much freedom as anyone else to do as he pleases."

Dean glanced back towards the kitchen. "So… what about all this?" Dean asked, indicating their surroundings and trying to look nonchalant. "Do we get to stay here or is all of this going to change? Once the… ocean is clear?"

Castiel's eyebrows rose. "So, can I take this to mean you do like the house?"

Dean scowled at him. "What is it with you and this house? Are you hosting your own Fixer Upper- Heaven Edition up here or something? Yes. Fine. I like the house. I… like it a lot." He said the last part very softly, gazing around at the beautiful rooms as though if he were too forward with his excitement, the entire place might vanish before his eyes.

Castiel smiled then, looking pleased and Dean was sure at this point that he'd had a hand in designing the place. "This is your home. You will get out of the boat eventually, but from time to time, you might get back in. But when you do, it won't be because you have to or because you are afraid. What I'm saying," Castiel shook his head, deciding the metaphor had gone on long enough. "Is that even after you heal, you may chose to stay in this form at least some of the time. Or possibly all of the time. To be honest, most souls here prefer the familiarity. Bobby has not altered much of anything about his past life in all the time he's been here and I doubt that he ever will. And he is perfectly happy that way. In contrast, your friend Missouri spends most of her time as energy, traveling from one universe to another. It's hard to say what form she'll be in when she visits you eventually. But this is your home. And your home will be here, regardless of where you venture. This piece of heaven belongs to you. You can come and go as you please, in whatever form you choose."

In My Father's house are many mansions, Dean thought. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. He didn't know why he remembered this verse of the Bible, but it came easily into his mind right then.

"Look, Cas," Dean's shoulder sagged. He looked back towards the hallway again, trying to subdue the nagging feeling that something was wrong. "I'm not complaining, I mean, you're right- this sucks, but we've been through way worse. I'm just…"

"Having a hard time believing this is all real."

Dean nodded. "And…" he was staring back at the bedroom door. He cleared his throat "believing that I won't lose him."

Cas nodded. "You won't. You're soul mates. You will be together for eternity. There is nothing that can come between you."

Dean looked visibly relieved.

"But," Cas continued, "that is likely one of the other things that is happening right now. You're in that boat alone. Sam is in his boat alone."

As Castiel was speaking, the panic started to rise again. Slowly, but more intensely this time.

"The two of you are not only dealing with the darkness from your lives, but also trying to reestablish the broken connection between your souls now that you are together again. In fact, we probably shouldn't be-"

And suddenly, he could see it. He could see himself in the boat, in the middle of this huge, black churning sea and things were floating all around him. Dark, shapeless things that surfaced and submerged and surfaced again. It was so vast... so massive, he could not possibly survive this. His body tensed as an ache flared in his head and started to spread downward. It radiated through his entire being as though something had been physically torn from him. He felt a rawness, like an open, gaping wound. He noticed then that there was a rope attached to the side of the boat, frayed and thin, looking too delicate to withstand resistance of any kind. It was tied securely to a metal hook, and it draped limply into the water, reappearing here and there between the waves. At the other end of the rope, far off in the distance, he could see another boat tied to his, and he knew it was Sam's. They were drifting farther and farther apart and terror seized him. He reached down and pulled carefully on the rope. His stomach sank as a frayed end emerged from the water, attached to nothing. Sam… Sam. SAM!

Thank you all so much for your kind reviews. I appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment. Hope you are enjoying the story so far!