Archive of Our Own

“Castiel, it falls to you.”

“No, another can go.”

“But you’re our leader. It’s your duty, unless you forget our mission?”

“I’m no leader, sister. And besides, I’m needed in Hell.”

“We’ll tend to the boy.”

“But—”

“Your sister is right. We have neither the experience nor connections you have.”

“...I suppose you make a point.”

“Bring us hope for heaven, Castiel.”

“Yes, bring us hope. Please.”

“I—Fine, I’ll go.”

“We thank you for your sacrifice.”

“Agreed. Good luck, brother.”

Dean finishes his prayer. The room is washed ocher by the glowing red sign outside; the navy blue bed sheets are a bloodied near-black. It’s an eyesore, dominating the senses, so Dean looks instead to the grey night sky alight with the light pollution and adorned with cotton balls clouds that have been disembodied by the atmosphere. Dean blows out his own cloud through the motel’s screen window to accompany them, courtesy of the Marlboro Black he has perched on his bottom lip with its filter going brown between his teeth. He made a bad choice with this pack, he muses, curling his tongue around the morgue flavor in his mouth. It’s not worth the familiar wheeze his lungs sing in protest, but he stains and burns his shaking fingers lighting one after another and putting them out in the sink, until the cigarettes bring about the migraine they were supposed to cure.

When he’s finished, his nicotine-stained fingers screw the cap onto the jug of holy water he was purifying, tucking the rosary away for future use. This once special errand had become banal and tiresome, but holy water was a hot commodity. Maybe the apocalypse that didn’t happen had excited the demons, made them unshrinking in their attempts to exist on Earth. Or maybe Dean just felt like there was more work to be done, now that he was doing it by himself.

Dean then sits, taking apart his guns for cleaning and reassembly, running a cloth over the metal in a familiar routine. It’s one that his fingers know well and are apt enough to do on their own, letting his mind go numb. If he tries hard enough, he can almost forget where he is as one hotel bleeds into the next and the monsters become a nebulous, writhing mass of evil in his mind. There are no breaks, not anymore, and he couldn’t stand them if he had them.

It’s been six months, now. Depending on his mood, sometimes that six months can feel like days or years. Dean thinks it doesn’t matter how long it's been, not now that his life is one continuous stream of monsters and gore and blood that will ultimately be cut-off by his death.

He packs away his gear in preparation for check out, his phone ringing as he zips up his duffel bag. The caller ID tells him it’s Bobby, and he hesitates to answer. He’d gone real quiet there for a while, right after it all went down, and while Bobby had given him hell for making him think Dean was dead, he’d let Dean come back at his own pace. He still doesn’t call unless it’s something important, but he calls.

Dean puts the phone to his ear. And then he’s in the Impala, tearing across the country.

It’s Sam. Alive. He’d been retched up by that ground that’d swallowed him. His face is cut up—a side effect of digging out of your own grave, it seems—and his hair is in desperate need of being cut, but otherwise he looks like himself. Bobby had already tested him but Dean went through it all again: silver knife and holy water and scrutinizing the planes of his brother’s face for a glimpse of the devil peeking through the cracks.

According to Bobby, around three hours ago Sam had knocked on the door, barely staggering through the threshold and giving Bobby a hug before collapsing on the floor. “He’s just dehydrated, is all.”

It could’ve been worse. That’s why Dean is skeptical. It was troublesome enough to get himself out of Hell, and he wasn’t locked in a cage with two royally pissed-off archangels. And his stent in Hell had put the apocalypse in motion so, yeah, whatever had brought Sam back couldn’t be good. Their luck didn’t work so well.

That isn’t stopping him from smiling down at his kid brother, waiting for him to wake. He can’t believe it. Sam. Alive. It’s unbelievable. Dean’s half-sure that any moment now he’ll be jolted awake from a liquor-induced dream, condemned to thrash through life like a flat tire, thumping his head on asphalt round and around again. So for whatever’s coming, he’s immensely grateful that his brother is truly home.

He has to rip himself away for a moment, nonetheless, seeking solace among the rows of junk cars. He shuts his eyes, loosening his throat, and steels himself as is habit to him now, “Hey, Cas...It’s been awhile. I’m not even sure if you’re still around. But, I gotta know: did you do this?”

He’s not stunned at the lack of answer, just let down. It didn’t even sting that much, not like it had. Even though the glimmer of hope he was nursing is tossed into the fire and abandoned to smolder. He doesn’t have time to dwell, returning to the house where his brother is stirring.

Dean holds his breath and perches on the ledge as Sam sits up a little, certain that something could be wrong: that his brother’s eyes could fog up black or he could start speaking in that cool cadence that Lucifer used. Yet Dean’s chest eases a little when Sam’s face pulls up in a half-smile, almost apologetic, and he says, “Dean.”

“Sammy? That really you?” Dean’s voice sounds calmer to his ears than he feels, torn between elation and anxiety.

“I think so.” He’s throaty and looks to be aching and exhausted, but there’s a playful edge there, too, one that Dean can’t resist smiling at.

“It’s damned good to see you.” Dean bends over and gives him a stiff hug, careful not to hurt him, and retreats after a couple pats to Sam’s shoulder.

“Do you remember what happened?”

His smile falls a fraction, looking away with a slight shake of his head, “No, I was thinking maybe Cas... ?”

“Cas’s been awol since everything. I tried, y’know, getting in touch with him.” Dean tells him, then after a moment tags on forlornly, “I think he’s dead.”

Dean looks away, but he can feel Sam’s eyes on his face. Even now, after everything he’s been through, he looks for something in Dean’s expression. Dean doesn’t give it to him.

Sam was resting again. He’d been back a week already, but Dean was considering sticking him in a hospital. At first he’d complained of headaches, then he started getting nosebleeds and, most recently, dizzy spells that led him to pass-out. The last one gave him a bit of a concussion after he fell face-first into Bobby’s kitchen table. He assured them he was fine, but Dean worried. Besides the physical symptoms, he’d been acting strangely and was prone to bouts of aggression like Dean had never seen before. Dean had flat-out asked him if he was using demon blood again, earning him a middle-finger and cold shoulder, and Dean had even snuck holy water into one of his drinks, just to make sure he wasn’t possessed by a demon.

Dean tried to write this off as side-effects from escaping Hell, but his behavior seemed suspect. He and Bobby had conspired to dig into possible causes as Sam’s mystery illness progressed. Meanwhile, Dean had made sure Sam was taking care of himself and tried to be there however he could, but Sam wouldn’t talk. Remembering his own recovery from Hell, he tried not to pry but couldn’t help himself, every time getting shot down.

Besides looking for a cure for his brother’s illness, he and Bobby tried to determine what had brought Sam back. They scoured news reports for anything omen-related and even checked out the site where Sam had popped back up, but they couldn’t outwardly detect any angelic activity. Dean morbidly entertained that this whole thing could be a ploy by the angels to punish him for stopping the apocalypse, bringing Sammy up only so Dean could watch him get sick and die all over again.

Dean is skimming the pages of a book about different curses late one evening while a storm rages outside, and he falls asleep with the book still open on his chest. His sleep is fitful, tossing and turning as the worries of the day make it into his sleeping mind. At a clap of thunder he wakes, or maybe his subconscious knows, because as he blinks open his eyes he’s alarmed to see a dark figure cutting a silhouette through the flash of lightning outside his window. He scrambles for his gun, aiming and about to shoot until he’s interrupted by a stern voice, urging him to stillness.

“Dean.”

There’s a lot to be said about Dean’s heart in his moment, the initial shock that slides too-easy into excitement, even hope. The only thing he can say through the grogginess of sleep is, “Cas? Whaddya doin’ here?”

“I heard that Sam is back.” Cas says, nonchalant as always, like he hasn’t been away for over six months, like it’s routine to stop by.

“He’s been back for a week.” Dean says, the accusation hefty on his tongue. He’s surprised at how easy his anger comes. In his defence, he was just startled from sleep.

Dean can see Cas better, now, the blurriness of his eyes dissipating with his annoyance, and he sees Cas stiffen in the cool, dimmed moonlight, drinking in Cas’s stern features as he says, biting, “I’ve been busy.”

“For six months?” Dean sits up a little bit, trying to work his way to actually waking up.

“I can’t drop everything at your every inconvenience.” Cas says in that same measured voice Dean had gotten used to when he first met Soldier Castiel, heaven’s wind-up-toy.

Dean rolls to a sitting position, disgusted with the angel that he had, for a time, cared about, “Sammy was dead! My brother had died, Cas! And I thought you were dead—Even now, I don’t know what’s going on. Sam’s sick, and we don’t know what brought him up, and—”

“Sam is sick?” Cas interrupts, and finally there’s a chip in the indifferent mask he’s wearing.

“Isn’t that why you’re here?” Dean doesn’t like looking at Cas and remembering how often he’s prayed to him, the whole thing feeling too much like a string of sorely ignored voicemails.

“No, I…” Cas begins to explain, then stops, switching tracks and adopting a determined expression, tipping his chin a fraction so that his face is cast deeper into the shadows of night as he orders, “Take me to him.”

Dean admits that, after all this time, it feels surreal having Cas back in Bobby’s house. It’d been so long since Dean had seen him that he’d forgotten the particulars of Cas’s features. They’d gotten murkey in his imperfect memory, and at times he’d even wondered if Cas was just something he’d imagined in the stress of the apocalypse, a fever-dream that’d burned away in his grief. Stalking through the hallways now, he feels Cas’s inhumanity more acutely, to the point where it’s a laughable juxtaposition to have Cas walking behind him on the ratty carpet, not making a sound.

Dean raps his knuckles against a sleeping Sam’s door, “Wake up, you’ve got a visitor.”

“Cas?” Comes a disbelieving voice, not from behind the door but in the back of the hallway, Bobby having emerged from his room with shotgun in hand, not pointed but held in front of him as a precaution.

“Look who decided to show up.” Dean says, mainly to dispel the tension that he can read clearly across Bobby’s skeptical face, “Feathers here is alive and kickin, after all.”

“Can’t say I’m not surprised to see ya. You hear about Sam, then?” Bobby lowers his defensive stance and puts the shotgun on the hallway’s table, not exactly off-guard but relaxed for Bobby, anyways.

Before Cas can answer, their attentions are garnered by Sam opening the door of his room, peering out into the commotion and bright lights of the hallway with bleary, annoyed eyes. He looks about a second away from bitching at Dean, but he registers Cas, and the animosity drops from his face and lands somewhere on the floor.

“Cas? You’re alive?” Sam says, clearly the most thrilled with Cas’s sudden arrival.

“I could ask you the same.” Cas says, and despite his earlier disregard, his expression brightens around the eyes and one corner of his mouth actually half-curls before promptly plummeting as he shoves Sam back through the doorway.

“Hey!” Sam and the others collectively protest as Cas manhandles him backwards, Sam’s attempts to protest futile against Cas’s strength.

“Sit, I need to assess you.” Cas bosses, controlling Sam like some sort of stringless puppet, placing him on the bed even as Sam gives out an indignant little huff at his lack of control.

“C’mon, Cas, you just got here—” Sam starts, and then hisses as Cas preses a hand against his stomach. Sam curls backwards on instinct, head falling just short of his pillows, as his jaw clenches against Cas’s intrusion.

“What are you doing to him?” Dean barks, his concern for his brother overshadowing the former trust in his ally and friend.

“Helping.” Cas retorts, frustratingly unhelpful and shocking both Dean and Bobby as he pushes his hand deeper and elicits a shout from Sam as he wriggles against his bedsheets in a frail effort to get away. Cas’s face is bent in concentration, his eyes almost falling shut as he studies something that only he can see, and announcing bleakly, “There’s something wrong with Sam’s soul.”

“What?” Dean’s breath hitches.

“They…” Cas mutters, shaking his head like he’s deep in a conversation with himself and disagreeing with what he has to say, then stating, “His soul is in tatters.”

Cas pulls away, while the human trio look amongst themselves with varying shades of confusion and anxiety. Sam is the first to speak, placing his hand gingerly on his stomach after Cas has pulled away, “How—is that even possible?”

Cas looks bleak as he stares at the side of the room, not willing to meet any of their eyes, and there’s a certain bitterness to his tongue as he utters, “Lucifer’s possession left a mark on your soul, his residual grace is fighting inside of you.”

“Is Lucifer still possessing him?” Dean asks, suddenly eyeing his brother suspiciously. He hates to admit it, but it would almost explain the strange mood swings and displaced aggression he had witnessed and been the victim to for the past few weeks.

“No, Lucifer is in the cage.” Cas explains, “Whenever an angel possesses a vessel, they leave behind their grace. Lucifer’s grace is trying to corrupt your brother’s soul, even now.”

They are all silent for a moment as they take this information in, Bobby and Dean sharing glances before their eyes fall back to Sam, and for his part he squirms in discomfort at their overbearing gazes. He looks away to Cas, “Does that mean, will that make me evil?”

Cas gives Sam a sad-looking smile, “No, your soul is resoundingly good. It’s rejecting Lucifer’s grace and influence, which is in itself damaging. It seems you would rather hurt yourself than let Lucifer have any sway over your nature.”

Sam looks reassured by that answer, but Dean hangs onto all the wrong words, “So, what happens? What does a damaged soul do?”

“A sick soul lends to a sick body, and I’m afraid if this progresses…” Cas trails off. Dean has noticed that, while Cas remains blunt in general, he has gotten a lot better at censoring himself when it comes to saying difficult things, like he understands the weight of them, now. So, when he pauses, Dean expects the worst. And of course, Cas delivers, “I’m afraid your brother may die.”

“What do we do?” Dean demands, immediately. He will not expect anything less than a solution, not when fate and chance have brought back his brother to him once again. Bobby looks like he wants to protest, but remains silent as Cas turns to Dean.

Cas’s frown consumes his features, his eyebrows pinching together over his eyes like a brooding umbrella, “We could, of course, remove your brother’s soul.”

“Can he live without a soul?” Asks Bobby, finally chiming in as the voice of reason in Dean’s relentless bargaining.

“Yes, but he won’t be your Sam.” Cas looks defeated, almost guilty as he delivers this news, “It’s not something I would recommend.”

“C’mon, this can’t be happening.” Dean says, face falling as he plants himself in the rickety chair against the wall of Sam’s room, his legs feeling wobbly. His head spins round and round. When will this end? He pictures the grief he’d been swimming in as a vast black sea, sees it toss him up briefly before its waves crash back down, swallowing him whole.

Sam speaks, and it carries none of the fear and anguish that Dean’s does. It’s direct, functional, “Cas, do you know who got me out? Why would someone bring me back?”

Cas blinks, considering something, “Truthfully, I don’t know.”

“Was it heaven?” Dean asks, suddenly remembering, “I thought only angels had the power to bring somebody back.”

“I don’t know.” Cas repeats again, lamely.

“C’mon, you have to know something!” Dean shouts, standing from his chair in annoyance and finding him squaring off with Cas, staring at him and desperate for any sort of answer.

Before the situation can escalate, Sam begins coughing fitfully and forcefully, hunching back down on the bed as he brings his fist to his mouth and his eyes water from the force. He almost chokes with it, unable to stop coughing until Dean rushes over and gives several forceful pats oto his back. When he’s finally regained his composure, Dean finally sees the bags under his brother’s eyes, the sickliness of his face, and so he crosses back to the door.

“C’mon, let’s leave Sam to sleep. We can discuss this more in the morning. That is, if you’ll still be around?” Dean’s voice is supposed to sound accusatory, but it comes out almost sounding hopeful, and he curses himself.

“Yes, Dean.” Cas says, and as soon as they’re out of Sam’s earshot Cas says, in a low growl of a voice, “I would like to speak to you alone, Dean.”

While Bobby heads back to his room to catch a little more shut-eye, Dean and Cas proceed to the kitchen, where Dean fetches a beer in order to calm his swirling storm cloud of emotions. He looks at Cas expectantly, who’s let his guard down, watching the planes of his body as he leans back against the kitchen table in a gesture that is painfully human, “Dean, I’m sorry.”

Dean doesn’t know what else Cas is going to say, but he can’t bear to watch something else awful spill out of that pretty mouth, so he asks, “Where were you?”

Cas tips his head back towards the ceiling, baring his throat and effectively hiding his face as he answers vaguely, “There’s been trouble in heaven.”

“Well, I could’ve helped—” Dean protests.

“You had just lost Sam.” Cas’s voice is gentle, yet it’s heavy enough to stop Dean in his tracks.

“Yeah, I had.” Dean shakes his head, cursing the angel in his kitchen. The angel that had abandoned him. His eyes sear as they slide up to meet Cas’s, who has the indignity to look away. Dean continues, “And now you’re telling me he’s... again?”

“Dean.” Cas pleads with his eyes and his mouth, for a forgiveness he has no right of asking for. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.’ Dean spits, more acrid than cigarette smoke or engine exhaust, but the sentiment is lost as soon as it’s found when Dean bubbles over with the real necessity of the hour, the shaking going into his fingertips, “Just do something. Please. Fix it.”

“I already told you—” Cas, for his part, looks like he wants to help. And it’s the sincerest expression he’s worn all evening.

“I can’t just watch him waste away, Cas!” Dean’s angst rockets his volume up a couple notches and he lets it, uncaring, “I can’t.”

Something in Dean’s expression changes Cas, who turns and sits at the table and with a loose hand gestures to the empty seat across from himself, which Dean takes. Cas hestiates to speak, instead busying himself with straightening the bowl of dried yellow and black flowers and a flat, curved Roman dagger that Bobby had employed on a recent hunt. As Cas’s fingers arranged Bobby’s loose change into neat stacks on the table he spoke, “There might be another way.”

Dean’s voice is immediate and harsh, “Why didn’t you say?”

“I didn’t want to give you false hope.” Cas swallows hard, looking up, “There exists a people that deal intimately with soul magic. I’m unfamiliar with it, and I don’t know if souls can be healed, really—”

“Let’s talk to them, then.” Dean rushes, interrupting.

“That’s a little difficult.” Cas admits, “The magic hails from a different realm. Humans of the past have called it the Twilight Realm.”

“Like the Twilight Zone?”

Cas stares at him blankly, “It is one of the lesser realms of the fairies, not as powerful but forbidden to angels nonetheless.”

“Okay, say I’m following, how would I get to this magic?”

“We’d have to go to the realm of course, acquaint ourselves with its people. It’s not the first time that humans have gone there, but most can’t return.”

“O-kay… but you just said angels can’t go there.”

“Not by ourselves. But I think with your help I could cross over. And, since humans can’t pass back to this realm with any object from the Twilight Realm, I would be responsible for retrieving any relics that we might need to cure your brother.”

“In that case, I’m down.” Dean says, and despite his cynic nature the weight in his chest begins to ease.

Dean studies his exact replica, resting peacefully on the frayed, eyesore-yellow bed sheets, and thinks that he’s never looked this good the countless times he’s died. Though it’s not technically a corpse and yet a hyper-realistic doll made from a little bit of blood Cas had taken from him earlier in order to harvest his “lifeforce,” something Cas had assured him he “wouldn’t miss.” It looked like it could leap from the bed at any moment and, knowing Dean’s luck, attack him, but Cas told him he didn’t know of any cases regarding people’s golems being aggressive towards their maker.

“This thing is giving me the creeps, are you almost ready?” Dean ventures, growing impatient from where he waits on a greyish brown chair by the door.

Cas, who has been busy assembling ingredients and studying a piece of paper covered with Enochian scribbles with clear frustration, calls over his shoulder, “Almost. I require more of your blood.”

Dean wrinkles his nose, crossing over to the table where Cas holds his mess and, recovering the bowl from earlier, makes a fresh cut in his palm that he squeezes into the bowl while trying to resist making a face at it. Cas accepts this without thanks and combines it with one of the two preparations he’s been working on for the better part of an hour.

“I’m ready. Are you ready?” Cas asks, and when Dean nods he tips back the first preparation—the one with Dean’s blood—into his mouth and the sight makes Dean want to gag.

“Ugh, dude. Seriously?”

Cas looks at Dean like he’s acting childish, one of Dean’s least favorite expressions, “It’s to help tether my grace to your soul, Dean. We went over this.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Dean says, unconvinced by the intricate, far-reaching explanation Cas had launched into earlier.

“The Twilight Realm is inaccessible by angels, primarily because we can’t locate it. But, my grace will be like the spool of thread in the labyrinth: I can follow it and find myself in the Twilight Realm.” Cas says, bored at having to repeat himself in simpler terms.

“That easy?” Dean suggests.

“Does any of this look easy?” Cas’s voice holds a touch of annoyance as he gestures to the ingredients strewn in front of him and the many ‘failed’ preparations that he had deemed unfit before landing on his final concoction.

Dean shrugs, “I don’t know. It seems kinda weird that my soul is gonna be leaving my body, though.”

“A part of your soul.” Cas corrects, “And a part of your soul leaves your body every time you’re dreaming, anyways, though it doesn’t exactly go to other realms—”

“Can I die there?” Dean interrupts, predicting the start of another one of Cas’s rambling explanations that Dean, frankly, can’t be bothered to understand.

“No.” Cas answers, but he sounds more thoughtful, so Dean feels less stupid for asking, “Even though your golem is linked to you it is, again, much like dreaming. When you die in a dream, you wake up. Your soul returns to you.”

“Hm.” Dean says, digesting this information.

“I wouldn’t suggest dying, though. There’s no guarantee you’d be able to make another golem, and I might get stuck there…”

“Stuck?” Dean echoes.

“My tether is to your sleeping soul, which in the case of your golem’s death it would be yanked back into your body so forcefully it might break the tie.” Cas says, pausing to consider how he might better phrase it, “Your soul will take part of me with you, so I’ll be able to find that part and travel there physically.”

“Sure. Let’s do it.” Dean raps his knuckles impatiently on the table, just shy of a chopping board full of diced mushrooms, figuring that understanding the mechanics behind something like this was better left for those dusty dudes sitting with their chins on their palms.

First, they must send Dean’s double over to the Twilight Realm so he can possess it with his soul and interact with the realm without getting trapped there, as Cas warns him humans cannot return if their souls in their entirety venture to the realm. They do this by opening up a temporary portal into the crepuscular Forest which involves smearing the hotel mirror with a sticky, greenish substance that Dean declines to ask the ingredients of before physically shoving the double through.

Cas picks up the fake Dean by himself, using his extraordinary strength, and slides Dean through the mirror.

“Where will not-me end up?” Dean asks, hoping that by the time he gets there his fake body isn’t being roasted by cannibals or becoming some monster’s chew-toy.

“A tree, most likely. Golems like trees.” Cas explains wistfully, “And you’ll always wake up in the same place. It’s the nature of a golem to return to its point of origin during its off-use, and since it can’t come back to our world that’s the next best thing.”

Dean stares at the mirror, looking at himself and the angel reflected back, but trying to imagine the strange, fantastical world that he’ll shortly be visiting. It seems like a fantasy, despite Cas’s convictions that it’s real. Perhaps it’s a case of seeing, then believing.

“I’m going to tether my grace, now.” Cas’s voice sounds even deeper as it tapers into the last note, maybe he’s unsure of what manners are appropriate with a matter like this.

Dean, likewise, doesn’t know what to expect as Cas plants two firm, warm hands on the side of his face. He holds Dean’s gaze steadfast, especially as Dean’s eyes widen in an unspoken question, one he’s too afraid to ask as Cas leans, his head tipping forward into the space between them.

Dean thinks, honestly, that they might kiss; it could be a demon-deal type of thing, this whole tethering-of-grace. And he finds himself somewhat disappointed that, if he and Cas were gonna kiss, it’d be like this. He’s torn between wanting to pointlessly punch Cas in the face, cursing, or leaning in to help him out.

But Cas just tips their foreheads together and Dean finds himself closing his eyes, surrendering just like that, and then his vision is consumed by a fire of white, blinding his senses entirely. There’s a flash of pain, right in the center of his chest, and he finds himself trying to jerk away but Cas’s hands hold him close, making him feel the sensation in full. It’s over before Dean can fully comprehend it, taste it on his mouth and in his eyes, and then he’s staggering away with a great huff of breath.

Dean expects to feel different, but if Cas wasn’t standing there with a furrowed, expectant expression, he wouldn’t be able to imagine the little piece of Cas wedged somewhere around his friggin’ soul.

“I’m—” Dean starts, unsure of what he’s trying to say, then settles for swallowing it away and beginning anew, “What now?”

“Are you ready?” Cas asks, and Dean nods causing him to continue, “Now, we visit the Twilight Realm.”

Cas turns to where he has already prepared a tea of sorts—made from the flowering fruit of the Twilight Realm’s native trees—that Cas tells Dean will put him into a slumber and cause him to awake on the other side and, if their plan works, Cas’s grace will have come with him and Cas will be able to join him physically.

Dean accepts the magenta-colored drink, and wrinkles his nose as its floral notes hit his face. He is directed to sit on the bed by Cas, who looms nearby with a hawk-like focus on Dean’s soon-to-be-sleeping form, and tips back the drink in one fluid motion. It surprisingly tastes like a sugared blueberry syrup, like one would use to bake pies or drizzle over pancakes, but its effects are immediate as Dean finds his eyes drooping and his head slumps back towards the headboard.

He feels his head connect with the wall behind him, and then he’s lunging forward as he first tries to sit up and then, discovering he was already standing, stumbles into a lush patch of grass, tall enough to brush his knees. He’s not in Kansas anymore.

Surrounding him is one of the most breathtaking places he’s ever seen. Behind him, where he’d come from, is a tree so large it could be a giant sequoia’s much larger, much wiser older brother with a thick, house-wide base that’s a dark, purplish-red grey that grows pinker as the trunk of the tree thins and eventually forms massive branches, so high up Dean can barely make out where they fan out into waxy, emerald-green leaves, each the size of Dean’s face. The grass is so green it's almost blue, healthy and vibrant looking and Dean can make out a freckling of flowers in pinks, blues, and whites throughout the landscape.

If not for the trees Dean could be convinced that this was just a more vibrant Earth, yet upon closer inspection of the sky he sees that by the sun, which he thought was setting based on the sky’s hazy, purplish pink hue, it's actually midday. Huh. Guess the name is quite literal.

Dean’s appreciation of the beautiful landscape is interrupted by him hearing the brush of wings, much like shaking out a folded blanket, and a gasp as someone thuds into the muddied ground a few feet away. Cas is on his knees, bent forward with one hand pressed into the ground and the other clutched to his chest.

“Cas?” Dean’s voice comes out pitched, worried.

“I guess I underestimated some of their angelic wardings.” Cas’s face reveals nothing as he stands, Dean’s hands awkwardly hovering, “It seems I’m more...moral.”

“Mortal?” Dean echoes.

“More or less.” Cas says, and that’s all he has to say about that as he begins walking towards something on the horizon—a city, “Let’s go.”

Dean is surprised by this realm’s similarity to his own, almost like another-Earth that may be strikingly different technology-wise but is populated with its own type of humans who, in addition to being amicable with some of the non-human inhabitants, also come in a myriad of jewel-toned colors reminiscent of the rest of the landscape. It seems even other-realm cities have things such as bars, which is Cas and Dean’s first stop once they get into the city, as it seems to be sort of a social hotspot for the townsfolk.

Cas chastises Dean for gawking at a particularly attractive, strikingly naked pale green woman bathing outside of her home, but he can’t help letting his eyes linger on an obscenely tall man sporting two curved horns and a reptilian tail who stands at the entrance of the bar playing an unfamiliar card game with two other, much normaler men. Dean tips his head in greeting as they pass, but the men glare back warily.

“What are we doing here?” Dean whispers to Cas as they break the threshold of the bar and its members turn to fix the two travelers with a hostility similar to what they saw outside.

“You didn’t read the manuscript I gave you?” Cas questions instead of answering. Dean recalls that earlier in the day Cas had delivered him a thick, yellowing stack of papers titled, A Contemplation of the Twilight Forest that Dean had forgoed reading in favor of dousing his brain cells with whiskey, “Travelers must prove their worth here.”

Dean didn’t know what proving his worth would entail, but he went along with Cas dragging him to the bar, thinking whatever he had to do it couldn’t be too bad if there was drinking involved. The other patrons seem to lose interest, a bit, as they sit down but they are addressed by the bartender, a beefy guy who Dean saw was missing a finger as he poured two towering glasses of something that looked like a greenish beer.

“You two new in town, huh?” The guy’s voice was deeper than Cas’s and sounded distinctly like the rumbling of the impala. Dean supposed the most surprising thing about this ordeal so far is that they speak English, or at least he’s hearing English; there’s something about the guy’s words that don’t quite line up with his mouth, and Dean thinks it could be by the work of magic that they’re able to converse.

“Yes.” Cas deadpans, his eyes narrowing a fraction as his chin gets a little snuger to his chest, meeting the bartender’s eyes determinedly.

At the same time a woman with dark, reddish-brown skin and butterscotch eyes slides them two plates filled with something that looks like meat wrapped in a fruit roll up, with a side of some vegetable that Dean doesn’t recognize but looks like an aloe-vera leaf with a white interior, announcing, “Visitors should eat up.”

Dean opens his mouth, ready to protest with some excuse about not being hungry, when Cas speaks hastily over him, “Thank you, we’re very hungry.”

Cas shoots Dean a beyond obvious look and he gets the sense that there’s something important about eating food, even though he’s never seen something further from appetizing. He takes a hesitant bite and is surprised by the flavors that assault his senses. He almost wants to spit it out at first because of the disconnect between his eyes and taste buds. The meat tastes almost like honeyed ham, with the red-and-orange fruit roll-up thing tasting like fresh bread, with a hint of cheddar. The vegetable is like a soda that has gone flat in the heat of the day but with an added bite of peppery freshness. Dean gets used to it and even starts to enjoy it, eyeing Cas who picks at his food as he converses with the bartender.

“You’d best be careful here.” The bartender says, but it sounds like less of a warning and more like friendly-advice, “Young men like y’all’ve been disappearing.”

“Well, me and my friend here—” as Cas says this he gives a pointed kick to Dean’s barstool to make sure Dean is listening, “like to investigate disappearances.”

Dean doesn’t know anything about the social graces here, but he knows he doesn’t want to investigate anything except for a cure for his brother, so he mumbles, “Well, yeah, but—”

“We can look into these...missing men.” Cas interrupts Dean yet again, giving the bartender an awkward wink that leaves the guy looking more than a little uncomfortable.

“Thanks for the help.” The bartender says, but he doesn’t sound that grateful, “I’ll getchu a list of the families names, you can start by talking to them.”

Cas gives a little nod, an oddly human gesture on the angel, and as soon as the bartender slinks away Dean is leaning in close, letting his outrage seep out all over his tongue as it lashes against Cas’s ear, “What the hell, man? We don’t have time for this shit.”

Cas meets him with daggers in his eyes, voice annoyed, “I already told you: we have to earn favor with these people—prove our worth— before they’ll consider helping us. It’s customary.”

Dean doesn’t really have an argument to that, so he sinks back and with a cross of his arms says, “Well, doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.”

Matilda sits with her daughter, Maxine, on the couch of their home—a giant mushroom. Other than that glaring fact, the interior had been pretty standard, if not dated. Matilda bats tears from her eye with a silky white cloth as she recounts the details of her husband's disappearance from their lives a little over a week ago. She’s already informed them that they’d been having financial problems after her husband lost their magic milk-producing goat to a band of thieving gnomes. Dean sympathizes with her in the way anyone would sympathize with somebody in a real-life fairy tale: the best he can.

“Were the two of you fighting?” Dean asks, trying to sound non-judgemental.

Matilda looks to Cas, who has been practically mute throughout the duration of the interviews, and back to Dean before answering, “No. I mean, we had a little argument before he left, but…”

“What was the argument about?” Dean asks.

“Well, he’d asked me to sew a hole in his dress clothes and I told him we hadn’t the money for thread.” She explains, then looking pained goes, “Oh, my. You don’t think that could’ve lead him to—”

Dean cuts her off before she can psyche herself out, blaming herself for her husband's disappearance, “No, ma'am. Don’t blame yourself for this.”

“I just want him to come back to us.” She said, voice wobbly and getting teary-eyed once more.

“I know, we’ll try our best.” Dean feels the tiniest bit guilty for lying, knowing that he’s only doing this to ultimately help save his brother, but he shuffles the notion away.

Once they’re standing outside of her house Dean turns to Cas, sighing and running a hand through his hair at the exhaustion looming at the edges of the day. The sun is getting closer to the horizon, now, and it does seem to be getting darker outside.

“They were the last family.” Cas informs him, studying the list that the bartender had made up before they’d started on their quest.

“We learned a whole lot of nothing, if you ask me.” Dean says, kicking at the dirt outside of her house as they walk away, towards nothing.

Cas considers this for a moment, walking a little more purposefully than Dean towards the busier parts of the town once again, “There seemed to be a...stressor in all of their lives.”

Dean thumbs over his lips, “Not Bayard. His wife Miriam said that they’d just found out she’s pregnant. He was stoked.”

“Not quite.” Cas disagrees, and Dean is about to chalk up his assumption to angelic perspective before he continues, “While you were with Miriam, I was interrogating the daughter, Kedyn. She suggested her mother had been sexually intimate with another man.”

“Dude, she’s like seven.”

“She was very perceptive.” Cas assures him, “Also, her father may have vented to her while she was shining his shoes.”

Dean smirks, “Okay, what did she actually say?”

Cas’s voice is even deeper as he quotes the little girl, adding that much more hilarity, “”Mommy had another boyfriend.””

Dean rolls his lips to prevent himself from smiling, and they’re silent a moment as they head further into town. Dean recognizes that they’ve meandered back to the bar, where he expects they’ll report their findings to the bartender who, personally, Dean feels is way too invested in the lives of the townspeople.

As he’s walking, Dean’s struck with another idea, “Also, Finn might’ve died of...you know...normal causes.”

“How do you know?”

Dean frowns a bit as he answers, “His brother suggested that he was a little unstable. Like, his brother had to cut his hair a few days ago because he couldn’t be trusted around scissors, unstable.”

Dean’s unsure if Cas catches onto his meaning, because Cas’s expression remains painfully neutral as he summarizes, “The only conclusion we’ve made is that the men were troubled.”

“Yeah.” says Dean, “Which gives us jack.”

“It’s not about solving the disappearances.” Cas reminds him lightly, and Dean’s surprised to find himself having somewhat forgotten this, too caught up in the job, “This will help us get closer to getting in contact with a lich.”

“A what? Is that some type of bug?” Dean’s nose wrinkles, thinking about some squirmy parasite.

Cas’s face blanks, blinking before he regains his composure, “Oh. They’re undead magicians typically formed from a devotion to acquire the magic of this realm.”

Dean really can’t believe his life, sometimes, “Well, we were right in not bringing Sammy, then.”

“Why is that your reason?”

“He’d be such a nerd right now.”

After they’d reported to the bartender their scant findings he wasn’t exactly happy, but obliged to fork over some information regarding the lich they sought. It seemed speaking of liches was a little taboo, from the way the bartender had lowered his voice and drawn them close, but he was able to tell them where a shady, lower-level magician lived that probably had more answers for them. Counting it as a success, Dean had been more than gung-ho in telling Cas he was ready to go after the magician right then and there, but Cas had told him it was time to return to Earth, and instructed Dean in a ritual involving drawing Dean’s blood with the angel blade and drawing a sigil with it, sprinkling it with the flower from earlier. As soon as the sigil activated, Dean was rendered unconscious once more.

Now, Dean comes to with a gasp, blinking his eyes open to the motel room once more. He’s somehow gravitated lower on the bed, so at least his head has been resting on a pillow, but his mouth is dry like he’s slept for a year instead of the—he checks his watch—five hours it’s been.

And that’s the first question out of his mouth, “Five hours?” It had certainly been much longer.

Cas, who has just appeared in time to hear Dean’s question, says, “Time works a little differently, there. We might lose or gain a little, it’s not a perfect conversion.”

“Good to know.” Dean says tartly as he quickly fills up a glass of water from the sink and throws it back in just as much time.

Dean and Cas prepare to part ways. Dean packs some of the weird tea with him as he goes with the instruction to take it whenever he’s ready to visit the Twilight Realm again. There’s the unspoken rule that he can’t wait too long, of course, or the progress they’ve made will be lost and Sam will slip a little bit further away from them. Cas tells him he’ll join Dean there, in the realm, as soon as he “feels Dean there.”

Dean tries to work up the nerve to talk to Cas, really talk to him, and his tongue lolls around in his mouth with an unspoken question, sticky-sweet like the honey in a fly trap. The fluttering of wings announces that no, Dean, you’re not allowed to ask. A private, pathetic part of Dean thinks that whatever is keeping Cas away now is the same reason as the past six months, which is that he simply doesn’t wanna be around.

And Dean can’t catch a break, it seems, because his phone rings and it’s Bobby, demanding he come back right away to deal with a demon problem. Demons had been nothing but problems lately, but this one was hitting close to home by setting up shop outside of Bobby’s house in order to get to Sam.

The demon had gone on its normal demon spiel, with a dash of “I’m fleeing hell!” and a peppering of “There’s war afoot!” It was the same as the other broken-record cases they’d seen the past few months. They knew there was something wrong in hell, seen as Crowley had been uncharacteristically quiet (besides sending Bobby a birthday card—creepy), but they hadn’t heard the details of what was going on down there. Dean figured it was a fallout of losing their Daddy Lucifer and the resulting scramble for power.

Sam had taken advantage of the ordeal to throw in a couple of swipes to the demon, just for kicks though he’d claimed it was an interrogation method. Dean hated seeing the way his smile curled so violently across his face, but hated more the way his energy had sapped out of him post-exorcism, sending him off to bed as one of his migraines came on again.

It all motivated Dean to get back to the Twilight Realm as soon as possible, so two days later he boiled a pot of water and brewed the specific tea after Bobby and Sam had gone to bed, or so he’d thought. As he rounded the stairs, tea in one hand and bag of ingredients in the other, Bobby caught him.

“What are you sneaking around for?” Bobby asked, his skepticism serving him well as he eyed the bad of dried flowers.

Dean sighs, opting for a partial truth, “It’s something I’m doing with Cas, okay? He thinks it could help.”

Bobby wrinkles his nose in the direction of the mug, “I’m not gonna pretend I can talk you out of doing something stupid, but you be careful, alright?”

“Always am.” Dean grins, over the top, and Bobby glares but allows him passage up to where Dean’s been sleeping. Dean can hear him retrieve a beer from the fridge, and counts on no more interruptions for the night as he settles into bed and throws back the tea in one big chug.

Waking up in the Twilight Realm isn’t as jarring as it was the first time, but he is a little daunted to know he might be going at it alone, especially with how hopeless he would’ve been without Cas telling him how to interact with the locals. Dean snorts to think that Cas would be the one giving him social pointers.

Cas was right about him waking up in the same place, though, and it creeps Dean out to think that his fake body walked itself back over here. It’d probably be weirder if he’d just dropped wherever he was standing, though, left for the townspeople to deal with. He’s thankful he’s not waking up in a grave.

He’s just started to walk towards town whenever he hears the telling sound of wings, and finds Cas standing beside him. They don’t speak, a strange silence holding between them as they walk back to town, both caught up in their own worries, Dean supposes. But a smaller part of him knows just why things are so awkward between them.

The bartender had directed them to go to a swampish part of town, with huge swaths of grass that come up over their heads, and they come to a house made out of old sheets of dead tree bark looking haphazardly stuck in the ground with a beaten, holey roof that threatens to crumble around them. It looks to be vacant for decades, except for a few stray scraps of food littered around the front lawn, looking as they’d been thrown out with flies still buzzing about them. Other lawn ornaments include an actual stick and skull—not human, by the looks—in some idiotic attempt to be threatening.

Dean turns to Cas, jerking one thumb over his shoulder to the decor as a smirk breaks out across his face, “Get a load of this guy.”

“Who goes there!” booms a voice from inside the cabin—and seriously, are they in some kind of cheesy movie? Dean sees a young, thin guy with greasy black hair wearing dark, tattered and faded ceremonial clothes at the entrance of the house. At best, he looks like an overgrown teenager and any shrivel of intimidation that might’ve been within him evaporates on the spot.

“We seek your council, oh high and gracious one!” Dean calls out, his voice light and mocking.

“If you’re here asking me to your stupid dance, you can fuck off!" Well, at least the guy doesn’t sound like a pretentious magician. Small mercies.

“We’re looking for the lich.” Cas informs him, holding a resolved sort of seriousness in his voice that Dean could only feign to replicate.

The magician props one arm up on the frame of the door like he alone supports it, and it makes him look tiny, like a toothpick being the Atlas to the Hoover dam, “I might know something…you willing to pay?”

Dean thinks con artists are truly universal, even spilling over into different realms because of the innate selfishness woven into every living being he supposes. Luckily, he knows how to deal with them, “Yeah, on second thought I think we’ve got some bad info. C’mon, Cas, let’s find someone who can actually help us. Not some grimy kid.”

“I’m a high-ranking magician of the Order of the Serpent!” The magician protests, coming out of his house to follow Cas and Dean as they leave, Dean pulling Cas along with a firm hand to his shoulder. “We have traditions passed on from the lich himself!”

“Sure you do.” Dean says dismissively, still not turning to look at him.

“Listen, I know where his old castle is. I can help you, but I really need to ask you guys a favor.”

Dean supposes that’s the best he’s gonna get, so he turns Cas and himself around, Cas for the most part having gone along with the whole thing though his face betrays his skepticism, “What type of favor?”

“Help me do a simple spell, a ward.” The magician explains, “I’ve got an unwanted admirer, and I was gonna do a spell to bolster my protection. I could use an extra set or two of hands.”

“I don’t know about doing strange spellwork—“ Dean starts.

Cas interrupts by tugging on Dean a little, himself leaning in as to whisper low in Dean’s ear, “It’s okay, I think I can determine what type of spell we’re performing and we’ll stop if he’s being dishonest.”

Dean licks his lips nervously as he responds, speaking to the magician, “Alright, we’ll help, but don’t try anything. And you’d better show us this castle.”

The ward spell was simple enough, and for once in his life Dean is pleasantly surprised that it was, actually, a ward spell and not some plot to trap or otherwise screw them over. Afterwards, upon Cas’s insistence, the magician—whose name was Randall—took them on a hike through the wilderness of the land, which Dean thought would be much more exciting than it was.

Besides a few key differences, like the mysterious white orbs that buzzed around some of the flowers, giant trees and mushrooms, it was pretty much like Earth. Though at one point they saw an actual centaur gallop through the thicket of trees with a bow and arrow, hunting something.

The castle, as consolation, was not disappointing. It’s crackling stone spiraled upwards almost as if an outpouring of lava had shot forth and cooled in its ragged shape, then been conquered by a mess of ivy and worn away by the cumbersome burden of time. Dean could imagine a lich living there, much as he could imagine any twisted fantasy creature making a home of this foreboding place, which reeked of evil like the ominous black tower of a Frankenstein film.

Standing there now, the only thing Dean has to offer in face of its might is, “Wow.”

“Truly.” says Randall, who peeks nervously at the position of the sun like he’s suddenly become aware of its climb across the sky, “Well, I better leave you to it.”

“Yeah.” Dean spits quickly, past the sweat that sticks to his lips, so Cas doesn’t do something stupid like give thanks.

Luckily, Cas has been mostly silent even in their walk. Dean found that, traversing this foriegn terrain, he was unable to make small talk. They progress silently into the castle.

The interior of the castle is lavish but not not overstated, yet crumbling apart like the exterior nonetheless. Dean doesn’t know why an undead magician would need furniture or a grand entryway, or any other provisions besides a decked out laboratory, but it has the strange effect of putting Dean more at ease, making it easier for him to start speaking to Cas, if only to clear out the stiff, suffocating silence of the rooms.

“What are we looking for?” Dean whispers, like the room itself is sleeping.

“Notes, magical artifacts, an indicator of the lich’s location, or anything interesting.” Cas tells him, looking distracted as he pulls out a table.

“Well, ‘anything interesting’ is gonna be hard to find in some dusty drawer.”

Dean thinks he should’ve kept his mouth shut, especially as the very drawer Cas was working on whirrs to life, jumping towards them both like some twisted reincarnation of Beauty and the Beast. As Dean stumbles back he falls into a couch, which in turns wheels on him and begins to attack. All throughout the room, the unused furniture sheds off a layer of dust and revs up in order to fight Cas and Dean.

“Dean, go!” Cas bellows, shoving him towards the staircase just as a book goes flying above his head.

They sprint across the room, and are able to dodge the aggressive furniture until they reach about halfway, where suddenly a sneaky end table hooks around Dean’s legs and he tumbles to the ground. He feels himself being pummeled on all sides by various pieces of furniture; books fly into his face and hands while the end table stomps on his ribcage, making him groan as he struggles to stand up.

And then there’s a sound like splintered wood as Cas drives an angel blade into the end table. It stops jumping for a moment, letting Dean roll out from underneath it, and Cas has the hint of a victorious smile before the end-table turns, slowly, and makes a move to chase them down. They fly away from the other furniture and try to maneuver towards the staircase, even though the books are flitting around their faces and trying to dive in.

As soon as they reach the stairs they’re met with safety, taking the steps two at a time and stopping once they’re at the top. The books have abandoned them and now fly around the bottom of the staircase like hawks circling for prey, and they along with the rest of the furniture sulk away, dejectedly, back to their posts.

Dean feels a little bruised but otherwise is okay, even if his ribs ache, but he eyes Cas’s battered face and the trickle of blood coming from his right temple courtesy of a particularly aggressive book. He clears his throat, “What the hell was that?”

“A trial.” Cas answers, wiping away the blood at first absentmindedly, but pauses to study the scarlet stickiness clinging to his fingers, “Traditionally used to keep the lich’s secrets guarded if he ever fails to guard them himself.”

“Well, you could’ve warned—” Dean cuts himself off as his vision begins to warp in front of his eyes, swimming for a moment between two worlds, when suddenly he finds himself jerking awake in a room of total darkness.

Surrounding Dean on all sides is nothing but inky blackness, so dark it hurts his eyes as he strains to try and see anything around him. The floor is a sickening, seemingly never-ending void that Dean thinks he could fall into forever yet he somehow rests atop. He turns around once more, and thinks he glimpses a flash of movement before he jolts awake, for real this time and with Bobby’s face looming above him.

“Bobby!” He shouts, voice coming out an octave higher than normal in its surprise.

“Jeez, son, I was just making sure you weren’t comatose.”

“No, I—” Dean groans, clutching his face in his hands against the sunlight streaming through his window. He realizes it's best if he doesn’t say. Surely Cas will retreat, coming back to the human world until Dean can rejoin him. He just hates that they were interrupted.

Dean returns to him, a week later, with no sign of Cas. He looks everywhere, rowing about like a lost, helpless animal of prey in the now seemingly threatening world. When he does find Cas, or rather, Cas finds him, he’s drinking away in the bar, deep in a drink that might not be remotely alcoholic but has the placebo effect of taking the edge nonetheless.

“Dean, it seems you’re steadfast in your habits.” Cas sits down next to him, pleasantly.

“Where the hell were you?” Dean asks, face going warm and red from the crowded atmosphere of the bar.

Cas lifts an eyebrow at him, an expression Dean has never seen on those features before. It makes Dean feel all the more like a stranger is in front of him, “I finished investigating the lich’s tower and managed to piece together a location spell to find him. It seems our magic works here, interestingly enough.”

Dean hates the pleasant fact-of-the-day delivery of Cas’s doings, hates how left-behind he feels, “I could’ve given you a hand, y’know.”

Cas’s mouth parts, like he’s about to say the obvious, “I didn’t need it” but there’s a few things he’s learned about humanity and Dean Winchester is one of them, “You’ve been a great help, Dean.”

The faux sincerity in Cas’s voice is enough to put a bitter smile on Dean’s face and, for the moment, he forgets his disappointment, “Well, there’s still a lich to find, right?”

“Yes, although he’s about a week’s journey from here. I could always fly, but it would leave me in no fighting condition, especially if you were my tagalong.” Cas talks almost as-if he’s not directly speaking to Dean, but then hones on him in the last moments of his tangent, “However, I have discovered an alternative form of transportation via one of the locals.”

“Oh?” Dean says, not meaning to let the note of disbelief creep into his voice.

“The locals happen to like me.” Cas deadpans, but pride shines through the still waters of his throat, growing algae and humanity at its bottom. “I have more charisma here than on your Earth.”

Dean bites back the stupid, possesive bile that launches up his throat as he grumbles, “Well, let’s hear about this transportation.”

Thirty minutes later and Dean wishes that there were airplanes in the Twilight Realm. Standing in front of him is, to his best description, a mix between a deer and a tree. The beast, which looms as tall as an elephant, has a very deer-like face except for the fact that fuzzy green moss hangs in sheets on its body and rains down its face like hair, almost covering up its three eyes and teal fur. It’s antlers curl around its ears like ram’s horns and branch off much like the branch of a tree, and little leaves dot the ends of the sharp brown protrusions.

“Beautiful.” Cas breathes, just as Dean is about to turn and high-tail it out of there.

They’re at a little, normal-looking farm with a young, feisty woman named Izzy with her black hair cut around her face to reveal two pointed ears. She strokes the beast rather lovingly, and it bats its big, dumb eyelashes against her touch.

“Zulges here is pretty rare, the only one in the entire province as far as I know.” She tells them.
“He can give us a ride?” Dean asks.

Izzy shrugs, “Ask him. Zuluboon like him are inherently telepathic, if you have good intentions he’ll be happy to help. But I doubt he’ll like you all, no offense. He’s never been too fond of people.”

Dean couldn’t fathom that the creature in front of him—a zuluboon, apparently—could be capable of wiping its own ass, much less intelligent thought, as he watched it sneeze and give a great shake of its head, tossing out loose moss from it’s hide.

Cas steps forward to the mystical Zulges and extends a hand to the zuluboon’s snout, closing his eyes in concentration and Dean can imagine him in deep conversation, trying to win the animal over. But, after barely a moment the animal steps back, letting out a distressed sound akin to a moo and lifting up its weapons of antlers as it stomps its back hooves aggressively. Cas skitters away as Izzy lets out a cruel laugh, “Wow, he really doesn’t like you. Should I be concerned?”

Cas looks the slightest bit pissed, and Dean wants to join Izzy in laughter if it weren’t for the fact that they were pretty screwed, now, in terms of getting to the lich’s location. Dean whistles, “Damn, so much for that.”

“You can ask him.” Izzy says, gesturing to Zulges who now fixes Dean with a blank stare.

“I don’t know…”

“Dean, you should at least try. He may be more sympathetic to you.” Cas tells him.

Dean hesitantly approaches, even as Zulges lowers his head again so Dean can reach it. Dean’s outstretched hand is apprehensive, like Zulges might decide to go ahead and bite it off, but at last he buries it into the creature’s peculiar fur, finding his eyes fall closed automatically. Images of Dean’s memories flash before his eyes like they’re being gently tugged at with a magnet; he’s able to refuse their pull but he pushes forward the ones surrounding Sam, and Sam’s situation. Strangely, the knot in his chest loosens just a little and he feels a deep sense of compassion radiating from his fingertips to the rest of his body. At the last moment, he hears a grumbly voice echo in his mind, “Okay.”

Zulges pulls his head away and makes the strange, almost-moo sound again but this time it sounds like a plea. He looks to Cas, first, then he rolls his three eyes back to Dean. Dean finds himself fixed in the beast’s gaze as it stares him down and then, seeming to decide something, it makes a grunting noise and folds up its legs underneath itself, sitting fully on the ground.

“Well, I’ll be.” speak Izzy, because Dean is still speechless with the strange, uncomfortable pleasantness of being known, “It seems whatever’s on your heart more than makes up for your friend. He’ll take you.”

After that, all that’s left is to board Zulges’s back—apparently zuluboons are capable of bending the laws of space, who knew?—and wait as he steps, shredding layers of reality, and materializes on the other side with miles of distance behind them. They’re on the side of a mountain, now, fit with wind-swept grass and screaming birds that circle the skies above them. Dean slides off first, a little ungracefully, onto the rocky ground while Cas pauses to murmur something to Zulges.

“Why did he say that to you, if he hates you?” Dean doesn’t want to feel jealous over Zulges’s affection, but he kinda is.

“He knows I’m an angel, not from here.” Cas says, causing Zulges to narrow his eyes at Cas for emphasis, “But, that means I can interpret his mind just as he can mine.”

Dean doesn’t bring up the fact that Zulges spoke to him earlier, writing it off as one of Cas’s weird abilities that carried through to this realm, and watches as Zulges sets off, stepping into the air almost like he’s traveling underneath it and disappearing from their view.

“Incredible magic…” Cas muses, then turns to the rocky cliffs facing them, “Let’s find a lich.”

They begin to climb into the rockier, more dangerous ledges of the mountainside and Dean feels himself becoming dizzy with the altitude. Growing at this height are plants Dean has never seen, such as flowers that open and close like they’re respiring and strange, silver ferns that form big loops reminiscent of a stretch of barbed wire. Turning the corner, they’re met with the most baffling sight of all: muscular, angry-looking hogs with underbites so severe their entire row of teeth hangs out of their mouth fit with gleaming, ferocious tusks. As soon as they’re spotted, the hogs rush them, squealing as they make their attack.

Dean sprints for his life alongside Cas, who must’ve been a runner in his past life for how easily he keeps pace in flee of the crazed pigs, who thunder behind them like a stampede of screaming whistles. When Dean feels his lungs will fail him he veers for an opening into what looks like a cave sheltered between two large rocks, and he pulls Cas alongside him before collapsing into the cool shadows, exhausted. He holds his breath as the pigs rush past the opening of the cave and further down the mountain, and then Dean pants for recovery.

It takes Dean a moment to regain his strength, long enough for his eyes to adjust to the dark of the cave and making him realize it extends much deeper than what was initially apparent at its mouth. As Dean stands he’s thankful that with the pigs gone they’re at least able to ascend the rest of the mountain, and so he says, “Alright, I’m ready. Let’s climb.”

“You have a lighter in your jacket pocket. Hand it to me.” Cas brushes his fingertips against the cave’s walls.

Dean, puzzled but assuming he must’ve had it on him when he created the golem, fishes for it a moment and produces it triumphantly to Cas, who flicks it to life and reveals an unlit torch hanging on the cave’s walls. Cas touches it with the lighter and it bursts aflame, surprising Dean into saying, “Woah! Cool.”

“This could be the lich’s hideout.” Cas announces, peering into the dark maw that the floor sloped towards.

“C’mon...I hate caves.” Dean says, a bit claustrophobic already.

Cas either fails to hear Dean or simply ignores him, and with Cas’s excellent hearing it's definitely the latter, for he simply starts the descension into the cave, leaving Dean to either sulk alone in darkness at the mouth of the cave or follow Cas—and the torch—into its depths. Luckily, Dean’s cowardice is in short supply.

The air below the earth seems colder, yet stuffy in contrast with the racing patterns of the wind outside, threatening Dean with the idea that one little slip could leave them buried underneath rubble with a rapidly waning air supply, doomed to never re-emerge. The unknown of stepping into barely-lit terrain in front of them along with the pitch-black curtain at their backs left Dean subconsciously keeping a little closer to Cas, feeling like unseen eyes were staring at them from the walls.

When they finally arrive at signs of civilization, Dean is both grateful and trepidatious. A couple lit torches revealed to them they were standing in a larger cavern, fit with stalactites and tiny pools of crystalline waters, seeming lit by themselves. As Dean stares into them, he remembers a cave tour he’d done on a rare class field-trip he’d had as a child. The instructor told them that the shallower the underground water looked, the deeper it was. He was careful not to slip on the wet ground and topple in, lost forever.
Across the stretch of cavern sits a simple set of furniture: a thick, wooden chest, a table and chairs, and two skeletons which sit upon the chairs, strangely preserved in their upright positions. They cross towards it, Dean investigating the skeletons and Cas peering into the chest.

Dean snorts, pointing to first the skeleton wearing a tan jacket with a book sprawled in its lap and then to the one clutching desperately to a glass similar to those in the bar, “Look, that one’s you and this one’s me.”

Cas is unamused. Especially whenever the first skeleton, the Cas doppelganger, leaps up and tackles the real Cas. Dean immediately yanks the book off the table and holds it far above his head, preparing to use it to smash in the skeleton’s skull. The other skeleton, however, has pulled a knife from between his ribcage and flails it wildly at Dean.

The Dean skeleton jabs at Dean’s right side and he uses the book to wack it out of the skeleton’s hand, pleased when the entire hand comes off. Cas, meanwhile, has managed to get his skeleton off of him but is trying to use his angel blade to somehow wound the skeleton. Dean, figuring there are far too many gaps to hit the skeleton with a knife, does the extraordinarily stupid by grabbing his assailant’s femur bone and yanking, hoping for the best.

His skeleton crumples to the ground but twitches as if to reassemble, so Dean uses the femur like a bat and smashes through the skull until the entire thing stops wiggling around and, when satisfied, throws the femur to Cas, “Cas!”

Cas battles back the remaining skeleton, knocking most of it into one of the pools before he smashes in its skull with his shoe before mumbling a measly, “Thanks.”

“So, what in the chest is so important?” Dean asks Cas, who is already bending down to rifle through it while Dean keeps a close watch on the disassembled skeletons.

Cas removes several sheets of paper from the chest which contain intricate drawings and diagrams, filled almost in their entirety with little notes in tiny, neat cursive that Dean finds hard to read, until he realizes they’re in another language, “Notes on his magic.”

“Anything helpful?” Dean asks, already knowing the answer.

“Nothing we need.” Cas says dejectedly, yet shoves the papers into his pockets as he does so, not bothering to prevent them from crumpling.

They have no other option but to continue through the cave, going through a tunnel so tight they have to turn to their sides and shimmy through the gap, with no promise of a larger opening or even the ability to make their way back and then into a long, seemingly never-ending tunnel that they have to crouch through. Dean’s anxiety piques a couple levels, but eventually they make it to another large room, this one significantly more decked out.

Within the walls of this cave is somewhat of a house, with wood panels separating the various floors with even the semblance of a staircase creeping around the outer edge of the wall. Strewn about the place is more furniture, but also more personal effects like books and objects that look to be involved in ritual: candles and ingredient bowls.

Cas creeps towards the center of the room, where an ornate dagger lays unattended on the table. It’s beautiful, looking as if carved from something similar in color to amethyst, but which glimmers mystically with an untapped power. Cas reaches out to touch it and, despite its beauty, Dean gets a bad feeling in his gut as Cas’s fingertips brush the metal hilt and then pull away just as fast.

“What?” Dean demands, already edging closer to Cas.

Cas smiles down at the blade knowingly, almost marveling as he again touches it, and picks it up, “It’s warm to the touch.”

“What is it?” Dean’s voice is skeptical.

Cas, in his moment of victory, is unthinking. With the same small smile plastered across his face, he stares at the blade like it holds the answer to all of their problems, “This blade can kill Rapheal.”

Dean feels the same unsettling relief as when his eyes first adjusted to the dark of the cave; he sees Cas now, finally, as he whispers, “You knew it would be here.”

Maybe Cas can detect the change of tone in Dean’s voice, and the pain there, or maybe he’s realized his mistake because he backtracks, slipping the blade into his coat, and is about to speak, to lie and make his excuses, when a fireball sails above their heads.

The lich is skeletal, like his goons earlier, but something tells Dean he’ll need more than just a firm kick to the head in order to take him down. He glows, eclipsing the torches in his illumination, and casts shadows on the walls around them from where he hovers above them, his staff holding another ball of fire that he reigns down upon them.

While not a direct hit, the fire bursts around them and casts half of the room in flames and Dean can feel the heat of them scorching at his eyebrows. They duck under the next assault of fire and dive towards the exit, into the tunnel that delivered them here. For the second time today they run, hoping the twists and turns in the tunnel can protect them from the lich’s line of fire, because if he can see them they become fish in a barrel.

They can hear the lich shouting behind them, declaring that they’re thieves and that he will slaughter them and use them as skeletal servants until the end of time, but Dean tries to block it out. The only thing he can focus on, now, is getting he and Cas out of there. They manage to remain fairly unscorched as they race out of the tunnels, but it’s that tight, chest-to-wall squeeze that will be the death of them.

Dean shoves Cas ahead of him, for even with the adrenaline running circles around his brain he remembers he can’t die here like Cas can, but the idea that he’d simply wake up in bed and leave Cas to fight for his life makes Dean push that much harder for their escape. The lich advances on them, and Dean can tell when he’s reached their little slit in the wall whenever a stream of fire licks out from the space next to Dean and brushes up against his arm. He curses and tries to slide faster, even as the rough rock rubs his skin raw and his new burn starts to sting.

Then, at last, their solace is the opening of the smaller cavern. Dean hears Cas tumble out first and he is close to follow, just as another attack of fire bursts out from the opening in the wall and barely misses the tops of their heads and Dean realizes that, actually, they’re screwed. That is, until Cas pushes Dean out of the way.

Dean watches as Cas, battered and bruised, rises to his full height and definitely raises his chin, staring down the fire as he summons whatever strength lay within him in order to to spread his wings, casting huge black shadows on the walls around them and causing a roar of thunder that shakes the very foundation of the cave. It seems Dean’s fears of a cave-in weren’t unfounded, for the tiny fissure of the wall is soon suffocated by a multitude of falling rocks, just as stalactites make their descent to the ground.

Acting on instinct, Dean throws Cas’s arm around his shoulders and races, now against the collapsing cave, stumbling on the incline in the pitch-black dark with a newfound exhaustion and not thinking one coherent thought until he breaks through to the light of day. Then, the fight leaving him, Dean surrenders and falls to the ground, Cas slumping beside him.

They sit in silence for a moment, each assessing their own injuries and marveling at the fact that they got out alive. As the adrenaline fades and his heart rate falls, Dean’s anger returns.

“Cas,” He says, then stops a second longer until he has his breath, “Why did we come here?”

“To find the lich—”

“No, I know that.” Dean says, and there’s a hint of a roar in his voice, if it were to elevate, “I mean, why were after the lich this whole time?”

“I told you.” Cas meets Dean’s eyes head-on, trying to look earnest, which makes the whole thing worse.

“Now there’s telling, and there’s seeing.” Dean feels like he got punched, all he can taste is dust and metal in his mouth, “What’s this weapon, Cas? Is that what we were here for? Why we almost died?”

“Well, you can’t actually die, here.” Cas says, like that’s the part that matters. But he knows Dean enough to know that Dean’s onto him, now, and there’s no weaseling after that, “But...yes. I needed the blade, trust me, Dean. This was important.”

Dean had stopped listening after the ‘yes’, instead his thoughts had taken a darker turn and yet, the more he’d thought, the more it made sense, until despite being afraid to ask he was compelled to, “Is there even a cure for Sammy here?”

“It’s a...possibility.” Cas admits.

Dean’s anger shoots out, white-hot, like an uncaged lion, roaring and biting at anything that moves. But not for the maliciousness of the lion, yet its corrupt keeper, “Damnnit, Cas! How could you do this? You know he— You know Sammy doesn’t have a lot of time!”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“I’m sorry doesn’t cut it! Why don’t you fuck off to wherever the hell you were the past six months?” Dean can’t stand to be around him, can’t stand Cas using him like this. He staggers to a standing position despite the protest of his back and legs, putting distance between them.
“I was fighting a war!” Cas defends, himself standing if only to shout in Dean’s face. Dean has never seen Cas this animated, his voice breaking as he pleads, “I didn’t want to ignore your prayers, Dean. I didn’t—”

“So you heard my prayers?” Dean’s voice whips out, interrupting him.

“Yes.”

“All of them?” Dean can’t veil which he’s referring to, and the reminder casts both he and Cas’s faces into a bleaker shade. At the time, Dean had been desperate, and yet he’d made peace with the fact that he was utterly alone.

“...Yes.” Cas, finally, has to look away in shame.

“And you didn’t help?” Dean hates how his voice wobbles, how it sounds chock full of tears even if they’re just coming on from exhaustion.

Cas swallows, hand coming up to pull at the grime settling into his face before he responds, “I was forbade by my siblings in heaven, Dean. It wasn’t something I did lightly, I did it for you!”

“How? How was that helping me?” Dean protests.

And now it’s Cas's turn to be angry, disbelievingly angry, shaking his head and gesturing with one palm flipped up to the sky, “Who do you think pulled Sam out of Hell, Dean? Do you think that was something the angels were adamant about?”

“...It was you?” Dean blinks.

“My siblings, per my request.”

“So it’s their fault he’s fucked up?”

“Dean—”

“No, it’s fine, Cas, really. I guess you really can’t trust angels, huh?” Dean turns his head away, “You lying is just the icing on the cake.”

“In exchange for storming Hell I had to provide something to my siblings. I needed your help, and I knew you wouldn’t care, Dean. Don’t think that I haven’t been looking for a solution to Sam’s problem, too.”

“Just stop.” Dean is deflated, blinking away the cave dust from his eyes, “I don’t wanna hear your excuses.”

And then Dean whistles, and Zulges reappears on the mountainside in time to stop Dean from doing something stupid, like forgive Cas, because there’s something deep in his chest that feels for Cas, even understands him, the part that conveniently wants to hold onto Cas and never let him go. So Dean climbs Zulges while Cas watches in silence and doesn’t wait up before telepathically asking Zulges to take him back.

And as soon as he’s back to that little, cozy farm Dean’s face falls, screwing in a mix of grief and betrayal, and he buries it into Zulges’s moss. He’s so angry it feels like it’ll burn him up from the inside-out, but even as he prepares to storm off he places a hand against Zulges’s cheek and silently communicates a plea for Zulges to return to Cas and at least take him to safety. Something swimming in Zulges’s dull eyes tells Dean that he understands, even feels for Dean, and Dean is surprised to find himself laughing as his hair and face overrun by a long pink tongue poking him in what he thinks is supposed to be affection.

“Thank you.” Dean whispers for the second time to the beast.

“I’m sorry.” is Zulges’s pitying reply.

Dean could wax poetic about the passage of time, or heartbreak, but he won’t, even though he finds in moments like these his longing for Cas greatly outweighs his dislike for the angel. In the past day, especially, he’d felt the urge to pick up the phone or break down and pray nearly every time his thoughts had gone quiet, frustrating him to no end and leaving him in this state now: drinking away the night in Bobby’s dilapidated kitchen.

Sam was nearly bedridden, now, and in just a few short weeks he’d shed much of his weight and hovered around Bobby and Dean like a helpless specter. To be fair, Dean wasn’t exactly helpful. He spent his days looking over lore, making an occasional demon run, and placing calls to far-out leads that always amounted to nothing and his nights were filled with drinking and tossing in that exhausting nightmare of the barren, black landscape that he wondered in aimlessly, this time searching always for his angel.

It was pathetic how his heart soared whenever a flutter of wings announced the arrival of an angel in the kitchen, but his excitement soured into fight-or-flight when he saw that it wasn’t Cas, but a goofy-looking tax-accountant type. Dean stuttered to his feet with a mild sway and tried to recall any sort of defense, settling for stammering a, “W-who are you?”

“I am Haneal. I mean no harm.” The angel gave him a pleasant, off-the-manufacturer’s-line smile.

“What do you mean, then?” Dean said with a mild snarl, meaning for it to come out as clever and biting but it sounded almost nonsensical to his own ears.

“The angel Castiel has gone missing.” Haneal’s face betrays the slightest concern, but it does wonders in relaxing Dean and honing him on Haneal’s words, “We believe he’s in the other realm, but you must retrieve him.”

“Why me?” Dean doesn’t fully weigh what his words mean, just wonders why it’s up to him to do the angels’ dirty work again.

“As you know, we cannot visit that realm freely.” Haneal snaps, “While we have wizened to the importance of free will and humanity, we are willing to sacrifice a human life in the pursuit of the greater cause. Think of your brother.”

Dean’s stomach sinks at the threat, both in loathing for these pretentious angels and in fear for his brother’s life, a fear that had already been acute in his mind and now received a revival.

“Fine. I can fetch him for you.” Dean says, making sure to let the acid drip into his voice.

Dean's mouth felt dry in the atypically hot evening, twitching to check a watch he didn’t wear for some measure of the time. He’d been in the Twilight Realm for the better part of the day, canvassing the locals for some hint about Cas’s location. They’d be infuriatingly blase about Cas’s missing person status, attributing it to another traveler moving on from their dreary town or just another tragedy in the string of disappearances plaguing the people.

After exhausting his last lead—an old lady with dreadful grey skin that reported someone who “met your friend’s description” had made a purchase in her flower shop, yet who later informed Dean that she was blind—Dean found himself at the gated entrance into the town where, despite his better senses, he sat down in the dust and tipped his head between his hands.

His head felt like a fork in an electrical socket, the calluses on his fingers scratchy against the skin of his face. And his chest was heaving, though he couldn’t pin-point why. He remembered the last time he’d felt like this; it was on a milk-run vampire case, back when Sam was dead and Cas was missing. He’d taken out the head vamp and thought that was the end of it, heading back to his hotel room to get the kind of drunk that danced a fine line between black-out and alcohol poisoning.

He was gone by the time he’d gotten the call from the Sheriff’s phone, a remaining vampire claiming to have killed the Sheriff and taunting Dean to come to the station to kill her. It was time to call Bobby, but Dean hadn’t. He’d simply put on his coat, staggered to the door, and shot one last fleeting glance to his hotel room.

“Cas, if you’re out there…” He’d started, the sentence leaping from his lips before it’d fully formed in his mind, “Stop me.”

Even in his state, he managed to take out the vampire. But he didn’t account for the human thrall, the one who’d pulled a gun and shot Dean in the shoulder. It was a miracle she didn’t finish the job, running off now in fear of finally being by herself, and Bobby had patched him up after that, that being when they’d started speaking again.

There, laying in the dirt of the unfamiliar realm, Dean realized that he could forgive Cas for leaving him, even using him, but he could never forgive Cas for getting himself killed. It was a realization that ripped through him, cutting him apart and putting him back together so quickly he was left in a state of mind-numbing calm.

That’s the state that the young man found him, apprehensively clearing his throat to garner Dean’s attention, “Um, excuse me… excuse me!”

Dean looked up to the man, who had boyish features and docile eyes, which instantly struck Dean as familiar, yet the man approached Dean like a stranger, clutching an envelope in his hand, “This is for you.”

The envelope had ‘Dean’ written on it in an elegant script, prompting a thousand questions from Dean, but when he looked up they all melted from his mind, instead replaced by that gnawing sense of familiarity again, “Do I know you?”

“No,” The young man paused, a soft, polite smile gracing his lips, “But someone does!”

Dean watched, bewildered, as the young man turned and left to a horse-drawn carriage that Dean hadn’t even seen approaching, and as he was carted away Dean suddenly realized why he’d looked so familiar. Dean had spoken to his wife, Matilda, and his daughter, Maxine. That man’s name was Jacob, and he’d been missing for over a week.

Inside the envelope was a simple, yet elegant, handwritten note addressed to Dean from the Estate of Lord Berengerus. The note was short and to the point, asking him to a dinner party. Dean felt a little less hopeless; maybe this could be a lead.

After returning to Zugles’s owner and explaining the situation, he stands knocking on Lord Berengerus’s door in a new (to him) set of dress clothes. The place is built into the trunk of by far the largest tree he’s ever seen, expansive enough that it would be considered a mansion by any normal standards. Dean glances towards a naive little tag-along named Caleb who hadn’t stopped smiling at him, his soft features haunting Dean’s conscience as he went forward with his plan—investigating this dinner party—without stopping to dissuade Caleb, because behind the man’s friendly demeanor there was a hungriness in his eyes that seemed to suggest he wouldn’t be reasoned with.

At this point, Dean’s figured out that there must be something tempting these men here that far outweighs a simple party, but the question is why haven’t they returned?

The door swings open, and what stood behind to greet them was a piggish, balding man in a barely-decent leopard-print robe, with small, dark eyes that raked generously over both of them. Dean had suspected something like this, but it did little to stop his skin from crawling. The man laughs, clutching at his hanging belly, and says in a nasally voice, “Why, you’re already late! Come in, come in.”

Once inside, the man announces himself to be Lord Berengerus and has several fae, who Dean could spot by their peculiar eyes and the elegant wings that glided behind them, offer to take their coats. As they exchange pleasantries Dean bats his eyes at him, plays him up like he’s a girl at the bar or a greasy guy at the truck-stops, and hopes he’s not overselling it.

Dean is busy taking in the room, by far the most elegant place he’s seen in this realm, and maybe his own, candlelight casting the place in a warm, amber glow with a massive, gorgeous interior decorated with lavish paintings and golden trinkets. They pass a lounge which is covered wall-to-wall with thick, soft-looking rugs in a multitude of prints as well as short, circular seats that are occupied with guests lounging atop them. Most surprisingly, the guests pass around an alchemical-looking device that they take great huffs of, exhaling a purplish-blue smoke and giggling with pink faces.

The guests were both human and non-human, but all of them were young-ish and male-ish. The manner of dress was also all over the place, with some having on something that looked strikingly like lingerie and one man, with white skin and hair, wearing a parka. Dean assumed they were from all over the place and, in truth, he doesn’t know how far he himself traveled to get here.

He and Caleb are led to a dining room and given tiny, ornate pins that read ‘Guest of Honor,’ whatever that means. Lord Berengerus slaps a hand to Caleb’s back, smiling, “I’m going to give Caleb the tour of the place myself, but my friend Baely here will show you around, and I’m sure you’ll find him to be excellent company!”

A taller, bulkier fae with glowing white eyes approaches as Lord Berengerus puts a possessive hand to the small of Caleb’s back and leads him away, and all Dean is able to do it rattle off, “Ah, excellent.”

Dean is escorted to a narrow, secluded spiral staircase that offers them a moment of privacy for Baely to say, “My Lord has surmised that you’re...interesting. You’re not quite from here, are you Dean?”

Dean opens his mouth, ready to deny, but Baely interrupts, “That plays in your favor, because you are very special. So special, he would like to offer you his gift.”

Baely materializes from his pocket a glistening bottle of golden liquid, like shining honey, that has an instant effect as Dean stares into its swirling mystique, his mouth watering and his mind screaming to reach out and touch. He knows in that moment if he drinks it, then all of his troubles will be solved. Sammy will be cured, Cas will come back home, and Dean will be happy for the rest of his life.

Dean can’t tear his eyes away from the bottle as he answers, “Please.”

Baely offers, and Dean accepts, his fingers curling around the cooled glass protectively. Dean desperately needs to drink it, but in the muddled haze of his mind he knows it's a trap. IIt takes everything in his willpower to not uncap the bottle and drink gluttonously, instead looking to Baely before smashing the bottle over his unsuspecting head.

Baely is less preoccupied with fighting Dean and instead frantically tries to brush the liquid away from his skin but it seems to sink into him, leaving his skin to sparkle with gold flecks as his eyes fall closed and he slumps to the floor. Dean checks and, yes, he’s unconscious. Well, that was easy.

Dean creeps up the staircase and into the second floor of the house, on high-alert for any guest or Lord Berengerus himself, creeping out from one of the twisting hallways or trapdoors that seemed to be built into all the buildings in this realm. He hurries, his heart hammering against the walls of his chest as he peered into each empty room and feared he was too late to save Cas, who he knows must be here like a sixth-sense. It’s strange, that certainty, far greater than any hunter’s instinct, and it speaks to the profound bond between them.

At last he reaches the master bedroom, which he could tell by its extravagance, its ornateness eclipsing the rest of the house, even the main entrance. It was clear that this was the most important room and thus the most looked after, from the over-the-top furniture to the meticulous cleaning. Dust bunnies were vanquished and no expense was neglected. And yet, Cas wasn’t there.

He hears footsteps coming down the hallway and must flee to the closest room: the master bathroom, and just in time as he hears the door swing open and the voices of Caleb and Lord Berengerus greet him.

“Here’s where I sleep. And the others, if they’re lucky.” Lord Berengerus sounds like a sickly sweet mousetrap.

Dean turns, looking for a weapon and—

Cas, laying on his back in a bathtub, unconscious and stripped down to his underwear. At first glance, Dean was sure he was dead. Cas’s skin was pale and grey, and he had deep bruises under his eyes, reminding Dean of the countless corpses he’d seen laid out across tables at the morgue. Still, Dean rushed to him, hissing as his fingertips hit the icy water Cas was partially submerged in. One of Cas’s wrists was slung over the edge of the tub, and hanging from it was some type of IV, made with an entirely different technology but having the same purpose of pumping Cas full of what Dean assumed was sedatives. Dean pulls it, wincing at the spurt of blood and watching the same golden liquid from before drip from its point, confirming his suspicions. He grabs at Cas’s shoulders, trying to jostle him awake, but he realizes the purpose of the cold water is to cool off Cas's raging fever.

“Cas?” Dean pleads, his fingertips resting just short of Cas’s lips, feeling for breath, and finding relief at the gentle, yet shallow, exhale. He gives Cas a shake, “Wake up, please. We gotta get out of here.”

But Cas wouldn’t wake. Dean couldn't surmise if it was an effect of the medicine or something else entirely, even as he assesses Cas physically for any other problems. He tries to squash down his rage, and his repulsion, but his eyes keep falling back to the spectral blue outline of a hand against Cas’s throat, the smattering of purple up his thighs, and the crescent-moon bite marks. Dean’s eyes sting and his fingers shake, gut-wrenched.

He needs Cas to wake up back in their own world, angelic power restored, so his marks would fade and the color would return to his skin. But miracles didn’t often happen to Dean. So he sinks his hands down further into the tub, ready to hoist Cas out, but hesitates. He didn’t know what to do next. Lord Berengerus still had an army of fae downstairs, how could he get out of here with Cas still unconscious?

To Dean’s relief, Cas' ribs heave under Dean’s hands as he coughs, blinking his eyes open. Hazy, they focus on Dean and Cas’s face splits into a dopey, exhausted smile as he says hoarsely, “Dean.”

And then Dean was pulling Cas into his arms, clutching him despite the icy torrents of water running down both of them, despite the urgency, and with a relief so acute it felt like Dean could sob, instead whispering as loud as he dared, “Cas! Cas, you idiot. You fucking idiot. What happened?”

As Dean pulls away Cas answers weakly, “I thought...maybe a remedy for Sam—Dean, I’m so sorry.”

Even for the iciness of the bathwater, any of Dean’s resentment towards Cas melts and, in its stead, warmth floods through him at finding Cas alive. His panic at escaping hasn’t subsided, but he’s so caught up in the moment he’s struck with the urge to yank Cas to him and kiss him.

But before Dean can do or say anything else, the door begins to creak open and with the last of his strength Cas shoves Dean towards the adjoined closet and whispers out a frantic, “Hide!” before shoving the IV back into his own arm and his head falls once more.

Caleb enters the bathroom, his eyes flying wide as he sees Cas. Reeling around to Lord Berengerus behind him and exclaiming, “What’s this?”

Lord Berengerus was too quick, grabbing Caleb and forcing a cloth to his face and as the smaller man struggles against him announcing, “The price of success.”

Caleb sags, wanting to fall, but Lord Berengerus grabs him with an unexpected strength and holds him up, even as he wriggles in protest, slurring out, “Is he dead?”

“Not yet.” He answers, and in one fluid moment reaches out with a knife Dean hadn’t seen and stabs Cas in the stomach.

At this, Dean lunges forward. But he finds himself unable to move; it feels like something has wrapped itself around his midsection and refuses to let go, and as he looks down to see his hindrance he’s shocked to find shining silver threads of grace holding him to his place. Their glow must only be visible to Dean, who still flails to get closer to Cas, to save him as he bleeds into the water.

Caleb yells, something incoherent as he tries to break free, yet sliding even closer to the floor, and Lord Berengerus brings his hand up to comb through Caleb’s hair, “Shh...it’s alright dear. You’re just dreaming.”

Dean watches Lord Berengerus struggle to pull Caleb out from the room and then Dean leaps up, free at last, and hauls Cas from the bathtub. Blood and water leaps from Cas’s body and colors them both with shades of rose and scarlet. Dean puts pressure on Cas’s wound immediately, leaning into his interlocked fingers to stop the blood flow.

Dean can hear the Lord’s voice in the other room, “Caleb, sweetheart, wouldn’t you do anything for the one you love?”

“Cas.” Dean mutters, his ear flush to Cas’s ear, “If you can hear me, please don’t wake up here.”

But Cas was starting to stir underneath his hands, and if he fully awoke Dean wondered if he’d be able to get himself back to the other world.

“Deary?” Lord Berengerus says, his voice sounding taunting, “You’re looking weak, there. Where did all your fight go?”

“Cas, please.” Dean said, begging as he searches he holds Cas’s wound with one hand and searches for the baggie of flowers in his jacket with the other. Wait, didn’t Cas have it? Where were his clothes?

Dean tries to block out the images of this bloodied bathroom floor from searing into his memory, “Please don’t leave me like this, Cas. C’mon, I’d just forgiven you.”

And then Dean is struck with a crazy idea. Moving to the discarded IV on the floor, he thinks that if he can just fall asleep, maybe Cas can find him in their world because in this world, Cas’s body is broken and beaten and dying. It’s a long shot, but it seems better than the alternative, so Dean grabs the baggie with the golden liquid and punctures it with the end of the IV, pouring it over himself. Then, as it hits, he wonders if he’s just given himself a heart attack as his eyes slump and his heart races.

He stumbles to the floor beside Cas, tucking an arm over Cas’s chest, and goes willingly into the black curtain overtaking him. The last thing he registers, with a mental note to come back to Caleb’s aid, is Lord Berengerus’s voice in the other room, “Come here, darling, it’ll all be over soon.”

Dean can’t tell if his eyes are open or closed, at first. But he realizes he’s in that same dark place that had haunted his dreams for weeks. He must be dreaming, now, disoriented by the inky blackness before him.

He takes a step forward despite his fears he might plunge down into the void forever, because he has a mission, “Cas?”

He swivels around, feeling like he’s being watched from behind, and when he faces front again there’s Cas, lying on his back with his eyes closed like he was in the bathtub. He looked normal, now dressed and unwounded, and even his skin was its normal hue instead of the ghostly white of earlier. Dean kneels, cupping a hand to Cas’s face and thumbing a finger across his cheekbones thinking that the sensation might rouse him.

Cas was unmoving, and Dean couldn’t tell if this was Cas, or just Cas’s mind, or just some trick of Dean’s unconscious brain. But as Dean watched, Cas gave a little cough, the pink water of the bathroom spilling from his lips like he was drowning in it. Dean worked frantically, drawing Cas into his lap and trying to tip his head forward as more water flooded from Cas’s lungs and mouth, seemingly endless. It had to be a spell, or something, and Dean trembled as he watched Cas’s face turn blue, “Cas! Please!”

Seeming to hear his pleas; the water stopped. But, Cas was still unmoving, slumped against Dean’s chest. He pawed at Cas’s hair, tapping the side of his face, “Cas, wake up. Can you hear me?”

Something answered with a reverberating sigh that sank right into Dean’s bones, consumed his entire being. It was difficult to drag his eyes away from Cas’s face, but he looked to see if someone was there, whipping his head wildly around, but it seemed the sigh came from the blackness itself.

“Whoever or whatever you are,” Dean addressed the presence, “Please help.”

The answering voice snively and mocking, feeling exactly like someone poking you in the ticklish spot between your ribs, “Why don’t you try true love’s kiss?”

“What?” Dean barks, outraged.

“Like the fairy tales!” chimes this voice again, sing-songy and sounding disturbing like Lord Berengerus.

“What are you talking about?” Dean protests, and the flush of embarrassment starts to creep up his neck.

“Kiss your angel, Dean.” The voice held no warmth, dripping like murky, violent waters, “Your pining is pathetic.”

“I won’t.” Dean’s face is red; this smarts like salt in his wounds of defeat.

“But what if he loves you?” The voice taunts, “If you kiss him and he loves you, he’ll wake.”

“Cas doesn’t—” Dean stops, interrupts himself, “If you can wake him up, why don’t you?”

“That’s not a good story. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? You kiss your little crush before he dies?”

At this, a trail of water escapes from Cas’s mouth once more and Dean knows he’s faced with two options: attempt to appease this mysterious force or watch Cas die while maniacal laughter echoes around him.

So he does what he must, lowering down until his mouth nearly meets Cas’s. At the last second he hesitates, closing his eyes before closing this gap. It’s merely a brush, chaste and sweet, but it’s enough to make Dean’s heart sing, anyways. And then Dean jumps as a hand grabs at his jaw, pulling him in, and Cas starts kissing him back.

Oh. Dean jerks back, eyes flying open as Cas sits up. Cas’s eyes soften as they meet Dean’s and he sits up, grinning a little, “I assume you forgive me?”

“Cas.” Dean whispers, then leans in again.

And there it is, the wonderful feeling of his lips on Cas’s, and the ecstasy of Cas being alive. But, as soon as the sensation is there it’s gone, and Dean opens his eyes to see nothing but pitch-blackness in front of him.

“What did you do?” Dean yells, standing.

“Nothing. He woke up, back in your world.” The voice tells him.

“And me?”

“Oh, didn’t read the terms and conditions? A life for a life, Dean. You’re dead.”

Dean blinks, “I’m going to Hell?”

“Only human souls go to Hell.”

“I am a human!” Dean protests.

“Why do you have angel grace, then?” The Empty counters.

“I—” Shit. “It’s a long story. It’s Cas’s grace, tethered to my soul.”

“Well, then.” The voice considers, “I’ll do you a little favor, then, Dean. I’ll wake you up.”

“Really?” Dean sounds disbelieving to his own ears.

“I’ll have to break your tie, of course, but I have no interest in collecting human souls.”

“Ok...ay, then.” Dean thinks it sounds too good to be true.

“Pleasure doing business with you, Dean. Have fun on the other side.”

“Wait—”

And then Dean feels like someone’s stabbed him, right in his heart, burning up worse than any heartburn. But the feeling passes and he’s able to open his eyes, groggy but alive, alone and bloodied on a bathroom floor.

Dean doesn’t know he has a guardian angel. Mary Winchester might’ve hoped, and Sam might’ve suspected, but only Castiel really knew: knew that he was meant to be here at the foot of Dean’s bed, watching over him as he slept like a sentinel. If only it were better circumstances. Sam is pissed, rightfully so, as he’s found out not only have he and Cas ventured into a different reality without him, but that Dean is now legally brain-dead.

“Your brother isn’t actually dead, Sam.” Cas had explained.

“Yeah? Well, he’s got on record that he wants to be unplugged after three days. Three days!” Sam shook his head bitterly, and Cas could see how much the past few weeks have taken their toll, “What about then?”

Cas hadn’t an explanation for that.

Bobby had taken it better, knowing that whatever trouble they’d gotten into was probably Dean’s fault, too. As Cas explained where Dean’s soul was trapped, Bobby has just solemnly nodded along. And now he’d excused himself to delve into the books, looking as always for something that might help them, leaving Sam and Cas alone.

“What if he’s dead already?” Sam mutters, sitting on one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs next to Dean’s bedside. “In the other world, I mean.”

Sam was similarly dressed in a patient gown because in the commotion of getting Dean here he’d had a dizzy spell again and the nurses admitted him. It wasn’t a bad idea, though he kept sneaking out of his room to be near Dean.

Cas watches Sam scratch at his IV and resists the urge to shudder, “He’s not.”

“How do you know?” Sam shoots back, skeptical.

Cas extends a hand to brush against Dean’s forehead, his thumb making lazy strokes across the skin there in what he’d learned was a gesture of affection. Sam didn’t comment—Cas knew how perceptive Sam could be—but watched carefully, “I can feel him.”

This was something, in hindsight, Cas should’ve explained. But, to be fair, he didn’t know it was possible until recently. Back in the lynch’s cave, when he’d caused the ceiling to fall, he drew on some of the power from Dean’s soul. Angels can draw on the power of souls, of course, but this didn’t feel like that. It was like Dean was an extension of himself, so he hadn’t noticed where his grace stopped and Dean’s soul started.

It seemed that, with the tether, there had been an accidental swapping: Dean’s soul for Cas’s grace. So, even without the tether, Cas knows Dean must be alive because a part of Dean’s soul is a part of Cas’s grace, now, and he’s sure of it like a second sense.

Which is why Cas is startled, but not entirely surprised, when Dean starts praying to him.

“Cas, man, I hope you can hear me.” Dean mutters, voice hollow and exhausted after being sat in the same position for hours courtesy of the ropes rubbing marks into his wrists and ankles that for all of his trying, he cannot slip, “Don’t let me die, ok? I’m gonna come back, I’m gonna save Sammy, and then we’re gonna fight this angel war together. Alright, buddy? Just you hold on.”

“Aw, how cute. I don’t think your little angel friend cares about you.” Lord Berengerus chimes from behind Dean, “You might as well stop trying.”

“Then why are you holding me as bait for him?” Dean shoots back, a thick bead of saliva pooling past his swollen lip, which has had its fair share of being beat this evening.

“Well, it’s better than being dead, darling.” Lord Berengerus tells him, pulling a chair in front of Dean so he can sit across from him. “Plus, I can have so much fun with you while we wait!”

Dean swallows hard, trying not to imagine what would be worse, and instead picturing the ways he’d like to see Berengerus dead. The picture of Berengerus’s head on a pike in front of Randall’s shack is what Dean focuses on as Berengerus crosses over and slices the skin on Dean’s forehead. He’s determined not to cry out, and instead stares down Berengerus as the blood trickles into his eyes. He’s handled Hell, this is nothing.

But unlike in Hell, Berengerus reaches forward to swipe up some of Dean’s blood and suck it from his own piggish fingers, making Dean’s stomach flip.”Your blood isn’t as powerful as your friend’s, and it doesn’t taste quite as nice either. Angels have such a clean, sweet flavor. It was how I knew his secret.”

Dean doesn’t hide the disgust from his face, causing Berengerus to laugh as he exits the room. Tending to Dean is the fae from earlier, Baely, which is surely not a coincidence. Baely manhandles Dean as he cleans up the wound on his forehead; apparently the health of his hostages is of utmost importance to Lord Berengerus.

“Why are you doing this?” Dean asks him, “I mean, seriously, what’s keeping you here?”

Baely peers out the door before he answers, “I’m bound in servitude until I die. I’m sure you’ve noticed he’s not an ordinary man. My kind is always forced to work for his kind.”

“His kind being?” Dean prompts.

Baely shrugs, “We just call them Wicked Ones. Powerful evil beings who play with others for their own amusement.”

“Is there anything you can do?”

Baely snorts a laugh, “Kill him.”

“Why don’t you?”

“The only way to kill him is to feed him poison.”

“That’s not so hard.” Dean argues.

“The only thing he eats is blood. Fresh from the victim.” Baely draps a bandage across Dean’s forehead and prepares to leave, “If you want to kill him, you must die.”

It had been two days, now, on their Earth, and Cas had no way of knowing how much time had passed for Dean. He had spent the two days with Dean, mostly, but he kept leaving to check on Sam, who’d lost his energy to even get out of bed. It seemed Sam’s condition was taking a turn for the worse and there was no telling how much time he had left, either. Cas knew Dean wouldn’t want to come back to a world where Sam was dead, and he thought he should at least be here for his brother’s final moments, which is how Cas had decided what to do.

“How’s Dean?” Sam had asked—the same question he’d always asked anytime Cas came back to the room.

“Stable.” Cas answered solemnly.

“They keep coming in here and asking me if Dean is a donor, y’know, for when they pull the plug.”

Cas didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything.

“I said to donate all of it. For me, too.” Sam tells him, then chuckles under his breath, “I guess it’s kinda fitting that we’re both gonna be gone.”

“Dean could still wake up. You could still pull through.”

“C’mon, that’d take a miracle. And with our luck, you might as well be saying your goodbyes.” Sam said, rather bitterly, and then softened as he looked to Cas, “I’m sorry. You’re gonna be on your own. I guess you have your family up in heaven, though.”

“My family is you.” Cas says, and he’s surprised at the certainty in his own voice. It’s what makes him so sure of what he does next.

Cas knows what to do. And it’s an easy choice, really, going into the bathroom adjacent to Dean’s hospital room and taking out the preparations. The green, gooey substance is first which he smears heavily across the mirror, and then it’s the angel blade to his own throat, extracting his grace. The tea is already prepared, and his own regret is not seeing Bobby before he goes.

Dean is awoken from his sleep—dreamless at last—by a warm, buzzing sensation engulfing his body. He opens his eyes to white light and angel grace swirling provocatively at his feet. He watches, dumbfounded, as the first thread of light winds around his leg, followed by a second, and then he feels a tug, so strong it’s almost painful, trying to tow him forward. If not for the bindings on his hands and feet he might stumble forward, or he might be yanked along entirely.

He knows it has to be Cas. This is Cas’s grace, trying to guide him home just like it stopped him in the bathroom. And Dean remembers now, with new clarity, the vampire thrall that had almost ended him. How, in what he’d perceived to be his final moments, her eyes seemed to fog over just as she’d dropped the knife and abandoned him. Cas had been looking out for him, hadn’t he?

He has to trust Cas, now, to get him home. But to do that, Dean figures he needs to get out of his body. So when Baely comes to bring him something to eat, he asks and the fae, shocked, brings him a shiny, near-silver leaf and instructs him to swallow it before Berengerus arrives. And so he does.

“You look pretty with your face all cleaned up. My servants do a good job of it, don’t they?” Berengerus’s fingertips brush along Dean’s cheek, oblivious to the poison now circulating in the blood vessels underneath.

Dean’s tongue feels heavy in his mouth, numb even, so he doesn’t speak. Berengerus uses Dean’s silence as an invitation to press his mouth against Dean’s, kissing him. Dean turns his head to the side, which prompts Berengerus to kiss down Dean’s jaw and onto his neck.

Dean is beginning to sag in his bindings, his skin breaking out into sweat as paralysis sets in his limbs. His heart beats out of his chest as Berengerus shoves a hand between Dean’s legs, forcing them to spread as he begins to unfasten Dean’s pants.

Dean doesn’t think he can last much longer, vision swimming, but at last Berengerus licks a swipe up Dean’s neck and bites him.

The outrage on his face is enough to make Dean smile before everything goes dark and, suddenly, Dean is watching from outside of his body as Berengerus slumps to the floor, eyes rolling back into his head. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to being outside of his body, and for his sake he hopes he won’t have to.

Torn between thinking he’s just signed his death warrant and thinking he’s had a stroke of genius, he lets Cas’s grace engulf him. Truthfully, he doesn’t know how Cas’s grace found him: maybe it was his prayer, or maybe something else neither of them had dared to acknowledge outside of the inky black emptiness, but as the white ropes of grace tie around him he surrenders to them, closing his eyes and hoping he can see his angel again.

The only thing left is to follow the line of grace, tugging him along as Dean flies from one realm into the next, and with a ‘pop’ he’s opening his eyes in a hospital bed.

The sudden blaring of the heart rate monitor is enough to cause Cas to freeze, the tea halfway to his lips, and instead he rushes to Dean’s side. Dean’s eyes are open and darting around the room as he struggles to swing his legs out of bed and stand up. The hospital staff rush over to subdue him, and he makes a move to fight until he locks eyes with Cas.

“It’s a miracle!” One nurse claims as Dean is finally lays back down, barely, and they check his other vitals.

Cas agrees with them. He doesn’t wait for the hospital staff to clear before he crosses the room and, grabbing Dean’s jaw with a gentle grasp, presses his lips to Dean’s. The heart-rate monitor jumps up again, and Cas smiles into his mouth.

The connection is enough to stir Cas’s grace, still connected to Dean, and it leaps back into the angel through his mouth. He feels it flooding into him and he staggers into full power, closing his eyes so that the flash of light won’t be visible to their audience.

The hospital staff can tell they might want some alone time, so after running a simple exam all but one nurse--who hovers in the corner--leave. But before Cas can utter a word her voice interrupts them, shouting, “How did you do it?”

“What?” Dean croaks hoarsely, as Cas moves to put himself between the screaming nurse and Dean.

She turns her anger to Cas, “You! You did this!”

Dean and Cas share a bewildered glance, but then realization dawns across Dean’s face, “Wait, you’re the voice.”

“I am the Empty.” The nurse announces, and she punctuates her sentence by making the nurse’s skin ripple with a sea of inky darkness, “And you tricked me.”

“No, you were the one who tricked me!” Dean shoots back, his voice shaking as he realizes she might take Cas away from him yet again.

“Hush, did I say I was upset?”

“You were acting upset.” Cas says, much calmer than he feels.

“I must commend you for besting me. I am truly impressed.” She explains, giving them a mischievous grin, “In fact, I think you’re quite deserving of a reward.”

“Reward?” Dean asks skeptically, one hand burrowed into his bedsheets and the other half-extended towards Cas.

“Yes, a reward.” She pauses, considering with a little tilt of her head. Then she grins, “There. Enjoy.”

And suddenly the real nurse is blinking, looking at them strangely like she can’t quite remember how she got there, before her pager goes off and she’s distracted.

“What did she mean by that?” Cas asks as soon as she’s out of earshot, coming back to Dean’s bedside.

“No clue.” Dean says, grabbing for Cas’s hand. He needs reassurance that he’s really back; that they’re both really alive.

They’re interrupted by Sam appearing at the doorway, beaming at them. The change in his physical appearance is immediately eminent, his face is flushed with excitement and he stands taller. Fuller, too, like he’s put back on some more of his weight, “Dean! They just told me you were awake and, guess what? They said my vitals are perfect.”

“Sammy.” Dean breathes, and he’s not sure who he’s speaking to, but inviting his brother into a hug.

Dean stares out to the motel sign, its green light announcing vacancy, as he fills up a glass with water from the sink’s tap. At times like these he might be tempted to smoke, but there’s something so much more addicting about the smooth slide of arms around his waist and tiny exhale of breath against his neck. It’s been a couple months since the whole Twilight Forest ordeal, but he still sometimes finds it hard to fall asleep. Cas has been doing a good job of wearing him out, though.

The war in heaven has been going favorably, thanks to the help of Cas (and Dean, Sam, and Bobby) and it leaves them plenty of time for dealing with the milk-run hunts, like the nest of vampires they’d just finished clearing. He still wants to go check-in on Caleb and sometimes misses Zulges, eager to test the strength of Cas and his newly discovered bond, but it might have to wait a little longer.

Tonight, Dean’s just focused on getting back to bed, especially since Cas’s arms are there to pull him close, kissing him as they entangle in bed. He knows that sleeping can transport him to places wilder than his dreams, but for now he’s happy to stay in Cas’s arms.