-Summary: It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU

-Chapter Warnings: Our episode-iest episodes yet. Dean's still swearing, Sammy's getting fed up, and Missouri Moseley never changes 'cause some things have to stay the same.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The Road So Far (this Time Around)

Chapter 12

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Dean needed time to think.

How was it possible he'd bought himself ten years of borrowed time, and still he needed more?

He remembered the case. How could he forget? It was one of the hardest cases he and Sam had ever worked, solely because it was so damn personal. It was his mom. And it all started with a solid crack straight through the foundation of his entire world view. It was when black and white, supernatural and normal, human and monster, turned grey.

And smack dab in that new grey block was little Sammy.

Overwhelmed hadn't quite covered Dean's emotional turmoil that day.

This time around wasn't going much better. He hadn't wanted to go home ten years ago, when he'd promised himself he would never set foot in that town again. He didn't want to go home now, not after he'd kept that promise going forward. They'd never gone back to Lawrence, Kansas.

At least, not without dick angels sending him there involuntarily thirty years in the past (and then voluntarily, but almost dying to do it – 'weakened' my ass.)

That town did not have good memories. And Dean did not feel particularly inclined to try his luck at making new ones.

He swallowed, but his throat was dry and there was nothing to go down. Sam was watching him, a storm building that he didn't have the radar capacity to see coming.

"Dean, did you hear what I said? I'm dreaming about our old house. That's where it all started, right? That has to mean something!" Sam was standing, body tense and agitation coursing through him like a drug. Dean couldn't split his brain power between watching his brother pace like a caged animal and figuring out what the hell he was going to do.

"I know, I just….I need a minute, okay?"

He just needed half a second to think.

"What do you mean, you need a minute? That woman might be in danger, Dean. I mean, this might be the Yellow Eyed Demon, the thing that killed mom!"

Dean couldn't breathe. He didn't want to go home; he didn't want to see Mary's ghost, didn't want to see his mom again, just as he remembered her – his last memory of her – only to lose her once more. Didn't want to see her on fire, burning. He just needed a minute to figure out how to breathe again.

Sam dropped his arms, staring at his brother in disappointment and irritation. His teeth ground against each other as he looked away, hurt flaring into indignation. "You know what? You can do whatever you want. I'm going back to Lawrence and I'm saving those people."

He grabbed his jacket on his way out, throwing the door open and not bothering to shut it.

Dean swore, taking half a moment to throw a hissy fit before he scrambled off the bed and after his brother. Damn it, what the hell had crawled up Sammy's ass that he couldn't give him five minutes to think through just hopping in the car and driving back to the one place he had no intention of ever returning.

Sam was almost past the Impala by the time Dean caught up to him and made a grab for his arm. The taller man spun and Dean, instincts screaming, immediately let go and took a step back. Sam was half a move away from punching him, body language screaming the hit was incoming. He kept himself in check but just barely, and Dean raised his hands in a truce.

"I'm not gonna stop you, Sam. But can we at least pack up the damn car first?"

Sam glanced at the Impala, to the boxers and t-shirt his brother was clad in, to the hotel room door still open behind them. Shame at his impulsive behavior tinted his cheeks red. He looked away, still angry as hell, but a little guilt-ridden too.

"Yeah, alright."

"Okay." Dean dropped his hands and his brother pushed past him to re-enter the motel in the early morning light. The older Winchester let out a rough sigh, tugging at his hair.

'Guess you get your wish, Cas. Guess some things are staying the same.'

-o-o-o-o-

In the car on their way to Kansas, in a silence that had reached the peak of tension between the two brothers, Dean finally cleared his throat. "It's not 'cuz of your visions."

Sam had been waiting and immediately snapped in response, "I know that I don't have them as often as you do, but that doesn't mean they're not important – that they don't mean something."

The way he spat it out made Dean's stomach turn. Because that was his little brother, hurting and angry that Dean was treating him like a kid. Hurting because he felt like his brother didn't take him seriously.

Hurting because he wasn't as good as Dean.

The older brother had seen it over the years, when Sam struggled to pick up target shooting as well as Dean had. When John would take Dean on a hunt and leave Sam behind because he wasn't ready yet.

When John gave Dean the Impala.

It had taken him years – roughly another four from this point in the timeline – to realize that his brother was often jealous of him and hurting that, in a family of hunters, he just didn't belong. It had been baffling when he'd finally seen it (when Bobby had finally hit him over the head with it, really). Because Sam was amazing. He was a genius, and kind, and good. And Dean…God, Dean wasn't any of those things.

He was nothing to be jealous of.

Sammy wasn't supposed to want visions. And he certainly wasn't supposed to be jealous of Dean having them too. Damn it, lying about having psychic dreams was supposed to make things better, not worse!

Sometimes he wondered if Time was just standing aside, watching Dean shoot himself in the foot repeatedly and getting a kick out of it.

"That- that's not- Sam, I know they're important! And the people you see, we're going to save every one of them. It wasn't…It wasn't the visions." Dean swallowed. He chanced a glance at his brother, who was watching him intensely. "I don't want to go back. I promised myself I'd never go back."

In a moment, Sam deflated. He was still angry, and that wasn't likely to change anytime soon, but his older brother rarely sounded so vulnerable. So honest. "We have to save that family."

"I know." Dean nodded firmly, fingers tight on the steering wheel as he watched the road pass by. "And we will. Just…give me a break, alright?"

Sam didn't answer, but he didn't argue either.

-o-o-o-

They got into Lawrence too late to knock on Jenny Richardson's door – on their door. So the two hunters found a motel on the outskirts of town to bunker down and catch some sleep for the night.

Sam was on the bed with his laptop out, watching his brother triple check their arsenal with the efficiency of a hunter dreading the hunt.

"You haven't seen anything, have you?"

Dean paused in his dismantling of his Remington 0870 sawed-off to look over nonchalantly. "Nah, nothing recently."

Sam saw his brother's arm move towards his chest, only to stop as the man noticed what he was doing and resume his maintenance of the gun. He wondered if Dean realized it was a tell.

"When are you going to stop lying to me, man?"

His brother sent him an offended glare. "I'm not lying to you, Sammy."

"It's Sam. And yes, you are. You're not even good at it!" He swung his legs over the bed, sitting up and setting his computer aside. "I'm not stupid, Dean. You're different; you have been since Jericho. If you saw something-"

"I didn't see anything, Sam. And I am not different."

Sam's face twitched in a humorless smile. "Where's your necklace?"

Dean froze, and Sam could see him swallow from across the room. "What?"

"The amulet I gave you the Christmas you told me the truth." The younger Winchester's gaze bore straight through every lie his brother hid behind. "It's never not been on your neck for fourteen years, Dean. So where is it?"

Damn. Dean had hoped Sammy wouldn't notice. He should have known better. But the minute he'd seen in, that first night at Sam and Jess's apartment….he hadn't been able to stomach the sight of it. Of what it represented. Of the god it would never find, who didn't give a crap when they tried. The dead beat dad who abandoned his kids and called it a lesson

Just didn't feel right on his skin anymore.

So he'd stashed it in his go-bag and hadn't thought of it since.

"I've done every test imaginable to make sure you're you. But you're not you." Sam stood from the bed, but didn't approach his brother, who was refusing to look at him. "I can't help if you won't talk to me!"

The older hunter opened and closed his mouth half a dozen times, but the truth was he had no clue what to say. God, he wanted to share the load. Doing this alone was killing him. He needed someone to talk to. He needed his brother.

But he couldn't.

Some things had to stay the same.

"Fine." Sam let out a huff and shook his head. He turned in for the night and the tension between the brothers got worse.

-o-o-o-

The Impala sat outside the old Winchester house.

Sam glanced at his brother, at the tense hands still wrapped on the steering wheel despite the cooling engine. At the tense posture and the occasional, harried glances at the house through the corner of the windshield.

"Dean-"

"Don't, Sammy." Dean swallowed heavily and shook his head. "I can't. So just don't."

"…You gonna be okay, man?"

It was an olive branch. Dean reached for the door handle and forced himself out of the car.

"Ask me again when this is over." He slammed Baby's door harder than he meant to, and gave her a brief brush of his fingertips in apology before crossing the street with his brother and heading for the house where everything in their lives had first gone wrong.

-o-o-o-

Jenny was just as warm and friendly as he remembered. And just as hurting, stressed, and scared by the thing plaguing her house.

Sam took them through the motions, and Dean didn't say much until the woman mentioned the clogged sink.

"Don't call a plumber."

Jenny blinked, and both she and his brother looked at him questioningly. He cleared his throat.

"Uh, don't call a plumber. We'll- we'll take care of the sink for you."

Sam's eyebrows reached for his hairline, but Dean shook his head. They had a lot better chance of not losing an arm than the guy she'd call in.

And he sort of recalled a liability battle the poor woman had to fight, so they might as well save her from that as well.

-o-o-o-

"You hate handy work," Sam said as they left the house much later that day than they had first time around. Dean was wearing someone else's dress shirt that didn't fit him, which Jenny had handed over with a look of such heartbreak that the hunter almost told her wearing his soaking wet one would be fine. "And where did you learn how to fix a sink?"

Oh, sometime during the year he'd spent playing house with an incredibly patient woman and her awesome kid in an attempt at an apple pie life he could never really have.

"Shut up," he grumbled as he opened the door to the impala. "There's a poltergeist in the house. Really don't think we should introduce more civilians for it to eat. Do you?"

Sam stopped, staring at his brother from across the hood of the car. "Poltergeist?"

Dean stared hard at his brother. God, he was tired of lying, he was tired of having to worry about lying, and he was tired of slipping up all the damn time and trying to back pedal out of it. He was just tired.

"Sari said it was on fire. A figure on fire, Dean. That doesn't sound like a poltergeist."

"Yeah, well, it doesn't sound like a demon, either. And that's what killed mom." He opened the door and slid into the car. End of conversation, check please!

Sam didn't have a response to that, so he climbed inside the car after his brother. "We need to get them out of that house."

"We will."

"No, now, Dean!"

The older hunter closed his eyes and took a deep breath as the Déjà vu added to his irritation. He didn't know what to do. He didn't even know what he wanted to do, let alone what he could do. Because so far, all the normal cases had been pretty easy. Either suck it up and bide his time, or start changing things.

This wasn't a normal case, he had no idea what he would even change – what he should change – if he could change anything at all. It sucked so badly.

"What would we do if it was a normal case?" He asked the question aloud, but he was asking himself more than anything.

Sam stared at him like he was crazy for a moment, before he sagged. "We'd work it, dig into the history of the house. Find out what happened."

Dean nodded, turning the key in the engine. "Then that's where we start."

His little brother was quiet as they pulled away from their old house. But he looked at his older brother and softly asked, "Does this feel like a normal case to you?"

He was so sick of hearing questions he'd heard before. Like a broken record on repeat, with ten year skips. Unsure of what he said the first time around, he didn't say anything at all. It was becoming his new default response.

-o-o-o-

They stopped at a gas station to use a phone book to find the garage their dad used to work at. Dean remembered he'd been a mechanic, but he couldn't recall the name of the shop.

Sam left him to it, telling him he needed to make a bathroom run.

As he rounded the corner of the gas station towards the bathrooms on the side of the building, he pulled out his cell phone and hit the second speed dial. He checked over his shoulder to make sure Dean was still at the phone booth.

"Dad?" He faltered slightly, realizing he had no clue what to say. He was sort of winging it, here. "Dad, it's Sam. I'm with Dean and we're in Lawrence, back…back home. I think there's something in our old house, and I think it has something to do with Mom's death. If, uh…If you get this, get here. Dean could really use you, Dad. He's taking it pretty rough..."

He hung up and headed back before his brother suspected anything.

-o-o-o-

"A palm reader? Do you know which one?"

Dean was trying really hard not to swear up and down like a sailor as his brother talked with their dad's old shop partner. Because shit if he knew what he was going to do about Missouri Moseley. He'd be lucky if that hellfire of a woman didn't oust him on the spot.

But some things had to stay the fucking same, didn't they?

Especially since the second he suggested he not tag along with Sam, that maybe he go check out other leads, he got the angry, don't-you-dare version of Bitchface #12.

God, he hated that face.

-o-o-o-

Dean shoved everything he was thinking deep, deep down in his head when Missouri came into the sitting room that served as the little foyer for her business.

She grabbed Sam's hand, and the sasquatch listened in amazement as she asked about their missing father and expressed her condolences for his recent breakup. She turned to Dean next, and he withdrew physically as well as mentally, letting no part of himself within reach of the psychic.

Missouri narrowed her eyes at him, regarding him curiously. "What is it you don't want me to know, Dean?"

Sam's expression flattened and Dean stubbornly refused to look at him. "Can we just get on with what we came for?"

"What did you come for?"

Dean glared at the woman. He'd never liked Missouri, mostly because she didn't like him and he took some offense to that. Yeah, he knew he was fucked up and anyone with access to his head probably wouldn't like him very much either. But she didn't have to take it out on him as publically or humiliatingly as possible.

"You're the psychic, aren't you?"

Missouri's eyes narrowed dangerously and she took a step forward, forcing Dean back like a terrified colt. "Boy, you see me sawin' some bony tramp in half? You think I'm a magician? I may be able to read thoughts and sense energies but I can't just pull facts outta thin air!"

Dean reared back. How the hell had he stepped in that one twice?

The plump woman turned back to Sam, smiling gently. "So, you're father's missing and there's something in your old house?"

Dean gave up entirely when he got yelled at for not putting his feet on the coffee table again.

-o-o-o-

Standing in the destroyed kitchen, holes punched through walls, knives sticking out of cabinet doors, and a heavy silence reigning over the household, Sam turned to Missouri and asked her if it was over. If she was sure. There was worry etched on his features, alongside something else. Dean had seen that expression before, so when Missouri said she was sure, Dean already knew she was wrong. And when his brother expressed doubt, he agreed with him this time.

It changed nothing.

Jenny came back with the kids and kicked them out of her trashed house as politely as possible, Missouri headed home, and Sam and Dean still ended up camped outside the house in the Impala to wait for the worst so they could break into the house without scaring the crap out of the woman or having her call the cops.

"Did you feel it too?"

Dean glanced at his brother, who was watching the house intently. "No. But I trust you, Sammy."

Sam met his gaze, saw the same olive branch he'd offered that morning now handed back to him. He gave a small nod, and they were good.

Not great, but good.

Then Jenny was at the window, banging on the glass and screaming for help.

-o-o-o-

Sam went after the kids and Dean went to get Jenny out of her locked room. He could smell smoke and fire, and he feared the worst. But he still grabbed the panicking woman around her middle and hauled her downstairs, trusting his brother to get her kids.

He stopped at the threshold of the front door, remembering taking an ax to it a lifetime ago. Remembering it as a barrier between him and his brother; a barrier he'd rather be on the other side of this time around. Jenny turned to him, panic warring with fear.

"Go! Jenny, go!" Dean pushed her through the doorway and turned back into the house as Sam came down the stairs. He was setting the kids down and looking behind him.

Sari grabbed her little brother and ran even as Sam's legs went out from under him and he hit the floor hard.

"Sammy!" Dean dove past the kids, grabbing at his brother. He missed by inches as Sam was dragged away from him, pulled by an invisible force. "Shit!"

The older Winchester scrambled to his feet, only to have a force like a sledgehammer hit him square in the stomach. He flew backwards with a pained grunt, straight through the front door. It slammed shut as he hit the concrete below the front steps.

But never let it be said Dean Winchester didn't roll with the punches. He was up and on his feet, using the momentum of the toss to make the whole thing look like one badass Assassins Creed move, running full speed for the trunk. That's where they kept the ax.

Sammy'll be fine. We all lived through this last time. He's fine. He's fine.

It was an ongoing mantra in his head as he took the stairs two at a time, launching the heavy weapon at the door with the last stride.

He's fine.

Swing. Crash. Splinter.

He was fine last time.

Swing, crash. Kick, splinter. He reached through to try the lock and went back to hacking away at the door when the dead bolt made no difference.

Time wants to stay the fucking same.

Still gripping the ax, he barreled through the barely intact door, screaming his brother's name as he headed for the kitchen on instinct.

You better be fine, Sammy.

His brother was pinned to the cabinets. He knew, despite seeing it many times in many different places held by so many different things, that he had seen exactly this before and almost sagged in relief.

Sammy was fine. He'd be fine. Because some things wouldn't change.

Dean took a chair to the head before he'd finished the thought. Splintered wood rained over him as he crashed into the cabinet beside his brother. Dean slid to the ground, dazed. Sam tried to call his name, choking on the pressure pressing down on him.

Well. He was pretty sure that was new.

The hunter let out a surprised cry as something wrapped around his legs and pulled him from the kitchen, down the hall and back towards the damaged front door. Oh hell no, he was not taking that stair case in a flying leap again. He knew how freaking lucky he had been not to break something the first time, Assassin or not.

Dean raised the ax with a struggle, slamming it into the ground with as mighty a swing as he could manage while being dragged across the hallway on his stomach. The blade dug deep and he held on for dear life as the Poltergeist tried to dislocate his legs at the sudden stop.

Light lit up the side of his vision, and he turned his head. The force holding him dropped, and his bottom half hit the ground with a thud. He could see fire in the next room, flickering just beyond his line of vision.

Mom.

Dean scrambled up, struggling for a moment to free the ax from the half foot drag-line he'd buried it in. Jenny wasn't going to have much of a house left when they were done. He slid into the kitchen as his brother cried out, "Wait! I know who it is…I can see her now."

His face was lit with the flickering light of her flames.

Green eyes slid to the figure even as the fire raged and warped and swirled itself out of existence, leaving only Mary Winchester in her nightgown, staring at her boys. Dean swallowed past the lump in his throat.

Ten years hadn't healed a damn thing that twenty-two hadn't already tried and failed.

"Mom," Sam whispered, watching her in awe and amazement even as he remained trapped, crushed against the wall.

She smiled gently at him, pride and happiness fading into sadness, into regret. "I'm sorry."

Dean couldn't breathe. Because this time, this time he knew what she was apologizing for. For making the deal, for selling her child to a demon to save her husband, to get her apple pie life. For not protecting him that night, for not stopping Azazel. For leaving them. For starting everything to come that even she did not know.

Mary turned her back to her boys, standing protectively in front of them.

"No, mom, don't," Dean whispered, taking a step towards the ghost. Because there had to be a way to kill the poltergeist and still save their mom. She shouldn't have to sacrifice herself for them. Not again.

May looked at Dean over her shoulder and smiled so sweetly at him, so happy to see him grown and safe and good. "I love you." Her gaze flickered to Sammy. "I love you both."

She turned back around, flames engulfing her as she told the thing threatening her boys to get out of her house. The fire flared, licking at the ceiling before encapsulating it and burning out to nothing.

The house was silent, the poltergeist and Mary Winchester both gone.

Dean slid to the ground as Sammy collapsed, heaving for breath now that his lungs could fully expand. He looked at his older brother, but neither knew what to say.

-o-o-o-

Sam sat on the front steps, watching Dean assure poor Jenny that it was really over. Despite their reassurances, he was pretty sure she'd be selling the house and moving as soon as possible. Rough re-start.

Missouri sat down beside him with a deep sigh.

"What did you sense from my brother?" The questions wasn't unexpected, at least not for the psychic. The tension between the two of them didn't require supernatural powers to detect.

"I don't know," she answered softly, her face thoughtful. "He is hiding something – something awful big."

She sensed the anger building in the man beside her, both physically and psychically. "Oh, honey." Missouri raised a hand to lie on the young man's shoulder, but hesitated at the last second. "Whatever it is, he's trying to protect you from it."

"I don't need protection!" he burst, but quickly reigned himself back in. He was a good boy, she knew, and he didn't mean to take it out on her. "I need answers. But he won't talk to me."

The Kansas-raised woman lowered her hand back into her lap, unsure how much she should say. In the end, she already knew she would tell him. She supposed she'd known for a while now.

"All I got was a flash. He's scared of something, and it's…nasty. Nothing like the spirit we saw back there," she glanced back at the house, Sam following her gaze.

"Do you have any idea what it is?"

She gave a thoughtful hum and looked back at Dean. He was watching them, but immediately turned back to Jenny as soon as their eyes met.

"There was a man, with…with black hair. And his eyes…"

Sam straightened beside her, gaze intense. "They were yellow?"

She shook her head. What she'd seen hadn't been the thing that killed their mom. It had been far, far worse.

"They were blue. The bluest eyes I ever seen."

-o-o-o-

Sam started a new document, still mislabeled so Dean wouldn't find it should he go looking. But despite the misnaming, its real title was 'Cass'.

He copied every scrap of information and lore he could find on the internet relating to any one or thing that could be shortened to the name his brother kept muttering in his sleep. Anything that had blue eyes. But eventually, he hit a wall and the black-hole-powered magic that was the internet could take him no further.

"Yeah, Cass. No, I don't know how to spell it. Best guess is C-A-S-S. Black hair, blue eyes. Yeah, okay, thanks Bobby." He shifted the phone to his other ear as he grabbed a second cup and slid it into the gas station coffee machine. Sam sent a quick glance over his shoulder, through the store windows to his brother drumming out a beat on the roof of the Impala as he gassed her up.

"I'm still here," he answered into the phone as he pulled his French Vanilla Caramel Café Delight away from the spout and capped it with a lid. He grabbed Dean's black sludge and headed for the front counter. "I know it's not a lot to go on. Just anything you can find."

There was a muffled answer of pure gruff down the line.

"Focus on demons, then," the younger Winchester said quietly just before he approached the bored teenager manning the register. The kid probably wouldn't notice a bomb going off in his own store, if the smell coming off him was any indication of just how high he was.

But Sam didn't want to admit his suspicions out loud, no matter the mental state of the audience. The niggling idea started on day one and hadn't left him alone since; that Dean was somehow consorting with a demon, or some other creature, to know what he knew.

Sam wasn't an idiot. The demon that killed their mom hadn't come back into their lives until he started having visions. Now Dean was having them as well and a mysterious name Sam had never heard before kept popping up. Either some demon was after his brother like Yellow Eyes was after him, or Dean had done something….something to get an edge up on Hell and whatever the Yellow Eyed Demon had planned.

He didn't want it to be true, but if it helped them find the thing…

"Start with Cassius Longinus. Yeah, the Roman general. There's enough lore out there about him turning in Hell after Caesar's assassination that it's worth checking." Sam gave a flat smile to the stoner who raised an eyebrow at the conversation even as he rang up his coffees and packaged donuts. "History paper."

"Uh-huh."

Sam's smile turned even flatter. He took his receipt and breakfast, and pushed his way out the doors of the gas station. "Thanks for doing this, Bobby."

He got called an idjit before the line cut out.

-o-o-o-

Missouri set her purse down on her front entrance table with a world weary sigh. That had been a long, hard day. Physically and mentally.

"That boy," she said with a shake of her head. "How he could sense all that, but not his own father, I have no idea."

John Winchester sat in her living room, running his hands over a tired, aging face. He was sitting right where his boys had been, less than a day ago now. Right where he had sat, at the start of it all, almost twenty-two years past. When he glanced at her, there was real pain in his eyes. So similar to that day. He worried at the wedding band still securely wrapped around his finger.

"Do you think Mary's spirit really saved the boys?"

He looked exhausted. She had not seen those dark circles beneath his eyes since the beginning. This was more than the world-weary state of a hunter. John's thoughts were far from her, something she had not before felt from the man or the hunter.

Missouri watched him from the doorway, concern sparking deep within her chest. There was something truly dark surrounding these poor boys. All three of 'em.

"John, you sleepin' alright?"

-o-o-o-

Dean laid his head down on the lumpy pillow and stared up at the popcorn ceiling of their latest fleabag 'home'. Sam was snoring in the bed next to him, and the older hunter longed to join him in passed out oblivion.

Only he couldn't. He couldn't get the image of Mary Winchester burning up and onto the ceiling out of his mind. Dean hadn't saved her. He hadn't changed anything.

How the hell was he supposed to save Sammy this time around, if he couldn't even save the ghost of their mother?

Aside from Jess, everything was still happening the exact same.

'Castiel.' The prayer slipped out before he could stop himself. Reaching out to the angel that way had become natural over the years. Especially when he needed someone to talk to.

Dean had found himself doing it long after Cas stopped answering. After Van Nuys. At Lisa's. After the reservoir. And even longer still once the angel lost his ability to hear prayer anymore. It was something Dean just did. Sometimes to make himself feel better, sometimes to be less alone in the universe.

And he was so damn alone right now.

'Cas, please.' Dean closed his eyes and his palm found its way to his sternum, pressing down against the imagined warmth of an undamaged soul. At the whole-ness that meant no angel had saved him, no winged warrior of God had pulled his bleeding, broken spirit from the pit and stitched him back together.

No Castiel, no handprint, no profound bond.

'If you're there, man, I need to talk to you. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not-' Tears pricked at his eyes and he shut them all the tighter to keep them out. To keep it all out. 'I'm not changing anything, Cas. I don't know how to do this.'

There was nothing but silence. There hadn't been anything more than that for years.

'I need you to tell me what to do. I'm drowning here.'

Eventually, he did slip into oblivion. Try as he might, he did not dream, of angels or otherwise. When he woke the next morning to the same silence he'd found himself in for months, Dean told himself that being disappointed at a lost cause was pathetic. That being angry because he'd let himself hope in the first place was a waste.

The warmth in his chest, the mountain lake he secretly loved and Dream-Cas showing up just when he needed him… They had never been anything more than a broken man imagining away his loneliness. Silence was all he would ever get when he was done dreaming.

Typical.

-o-o-o-

Very, very far away, in a kingdom of light and color, one angel out of thousands paused in his heavenly duties, tilting his head to the side as he listened to a voice call for him once more in prayer.