Chapter Text
It’s a wake of sorts.
Not in the typical sense. There are no flowers, no black-clad congregation, no appropriately somber priest keen to leave but not wishing to appear rude or insensitive. The bunker library makes a poor substitute for a church, even with the lamps dimmed. But there are mourners. Two men, sat in almost complete silence, getting progressively drunker.
Dean picks sluggishly at the label of the bottle of whiskey, the guest of honour at this grim little vigil, peeling it away to reveal the near-depleted contents.
Sam sighs softly before rising stiffly from his chair to his feet. He claps Dean on the shoulder as he passes but doesn’t say anything, the echo of his heavy, booted footfalls in the bunker corridor the only sound. There’s not much left to say. Not after “it’s time, Dean, it’s been six months, we have to call it.”
Guilt curdles like rancid milk in his stomach.
It feels like he’s been been running in a flat-out sprint since the moment Cas disappeared. Running towards any solution that might bring Cas back to him. Running to avoid looking back and facing Cas’s last action in life. Single-minded in his determination and relentless in his research, in six months Dean never really considered what he would do if he couldn’t get Cas back, if there was a future in which Cas never returned from the Empty, a future where Dean never got to…
But Dean’s run out of road.
He’d known what Sam was going to say from the first whispered ‘Dean’, as they’d sat together in the library continuing to comb through the rapidly dwindling stacks of books, everything the library had to offer on the Empty, piled about them. It was the same tone he’d used when he’d told Dean he was going to Stanford, the same tone he’d used to say that he’d quit hunting while Dean was in purgatory. It was ‘Dean’ in the tone that always preceded words that Sam knew would not be well received.
He’s trying not to blame Sam, knows that his brother’s words have been coming for a while, knows that he couldn’t have been the one to say them. Maybe he should be grateful to his brother in that sense, for taking that particular burden off his shoulders. But he’d been angry all the same.
“Dean, I get it, he was my friend too, but I don’t think… there’s nothing anywhere… I don’t think we can get him back this time.”
He’d had to leave the bunker. Just stood up and walked out without saying a word to Sam.
And kept walking.
When he became aware of himself again, he was stood somewhere in the woods surrounding the bunker. He didn’t know where he was, what time it was, what he was doing, how long he’d been walking, what, even, he had been thinking.
There were no tears to cry. No words either spoken softly in prayer to his adopted son, or thrown out to the universe in anger, amidst a spray of spit and rage. Nothing but a disconcerting lack of any strong feeling, he just felt… empty.
Ironic that.
As he’d stood in the rapidly darkening woods, night closing in on him, he’d considered going back to argue with Sam, rally him, try to keep them both going as he’d done so many times before. But to what end? So that they could do a couple more gruelling days, months, years, of soul crushing research only to end up right where they started?
Returning to the bunker, after hours of stumbling around in the dark, Dean had found a red-eyed Sam staring dejectedly into empty space, still sat at the table, still working, or attempting to work, despite his words. He’d looked at Dean, clearly ready to get back to research had Dean demanded it. Dean almost hated Sam for putting the decision back in his hands, would rather have Sam frog-march him from the library, take the books from his hands, force him into accepting Cas’s absence. Instead, Dean had grabbed the bottle of whiskey and the vigil had begun.
They’d even done a couple of ‘remember whens’ to really create that freshly bereaved atmosphere.
“Remember when Cas Molotov cocktailed the devil.”
“Remember when Cas tried to interrogate a cat.”
Remember when Cas admitted his undying love and devotion for you…
Dean wraps a hand around the neck of the whiskey and takes a swig of the amber liquid directly from the bottle, ignoring his glass entirely. Not for the first time Dean wonders what the Empty is like, whether Castiel is okay, is happy, is comfortable at the very least. Tries not to think about the possibility that with his inaction he is now dooming his best friend to some endless, unfathomable half-existence, without even the peace of death.
It makes his hands itch for a book.
Instead, Dean takes another swig, then leans forward to deposit the bottle back onto the table in front of him. The movement makes the room swim slightly and blur around the edges.
He’s drunker than he realised. Maybe passing out this evening wouldn’t be such a bad thing, he thinks. Maybe then he wouldn’t dream. Wouldn’t be subjected to confusing flashes of black feathers, hundreds of blue eyes boring into his skin, burning him with their cold fire, haunting him every night.
Dean is just resolving to finish off the last dregs of whiskey, reaching out to grab the neck of the bottle when a figure in his peripheral vision causes him to flinch violently, knocking the bottle to the floor.
He barely registers the shattering of glass or the weak spatter of alcohol against his pant leg.
Because Castiel is staring at Dean from across the room.
Not like in Dean’s more easily understood nightmares where Cas appears to him, broken and bloody and bruised by Dean’s many actions. Not like a ghost, edges blurring in and out focus. Actual Castiel, standing in amidst the stacks looking just as stunned to be there as Dean is to see him there.
He looks the exact same as he did in those final moments; dirty trench coat, tie askew, Dean thinks he can almost see the tear tracks still drying on his face. Perfectly preserved, like a fly in amber.
And Dean wants to, needs to, close the distance.
He lurches to his feet, trying to suck air into his breathless lungs, but the room has graduated from swimming to spinning. The one blundering step he takes forward puts his boot directly into the smashed glass of the whiskey bottle which slides underfoot. Dean barely registers himself falling before his head meets the table edge with stunning force and the world goes dark.
When he comes around the pounding in his head is so severe that for a moment he thinks he’s going to vomit. Sam is staring down at him with scared eyes when he finally manages to crack open his own. The tight grip on his shoulder, from where Sam must have been shaking him, loosens as his brother relaxes minimally.
Sam is speaking but it takes a moment for Dean to understand what he’s saying, like Dean’s head is underwater. The pain in his temple is blinding, pulsing in time with the beat of his heart. He can feel the warm, sticky trickle of blood that has run from somewhere near his eyebrow down into his hairline. Sam must have rolled him onto his back when he found him. Even in his inebriated state he registers that he can’t have been out very long because the blood hasn’t even dried. Sam must’ve heard the smash of glass. That’s good at least.
But then all thoughts of blood and pain and smashed bottles of whiskey drain out of his head, along with the blood out of his face, because Cas is peering down at him over Sam’s shoulder, looking equally as worried as his brother.
“Cas?” he chokes out, staring into the blue eyes that haunt him.
Sam’s breath hitches and Dean’s gaze flicks to him, catching the way his brother’s eyes soften from fear into pain.
“Dean… he’s gone,” Sam says softly.
“No, no,” Dean gasps, pushing weakly at Sam’s shoulder, gaze flicking back to where Cas still hovers over both of them. Dean can’t understand why Sam can’t feel Cas stood there, practically breathing down his neck. But then Sam turns and stares right through Cas before turning back to Dean with a worried expression.
From then on Dean doesn’t fight it when Sam insists on checking Dean for concussion, keeping his eyes resolutely focused on Sam, even as he sees Cas pull back to oversee the process from the corner of the library. He doesn’t fight it when Sam helps Dean to his feet and down the hall to his bedroom, all the while feeling like the guy from the Greek myths he once read to Sam when they were very young, Orpheus maybe, he thinks, determinedly walking forwards not daring to look back and check whether Cas is following. He even lets Sam pull off his boots while he stares at the doorway that Cas did not walk through, unsure if he’s disappointed or relieved.
Dean doesn’t fight it because in all his years, with everything they’ve faced and fought, all the horrors they’ve dealt with, nothing has struck him cold like realising that Dean is staring at something that Sam can’t see. Realising that in the end, it wasn’t the ghosts, ghouls, vampires or werewolves that did him in, but his own sanity giving him the slip.
He’s finally cracked.
There’s a cruel irony in that, Dean decides, and then he passes out.