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“Is he okay?”
“I don’t know …”
“Well, is he breathing?”
“Sam, I said I don’t know!” Dean cradles the angel’s head in the crook of his arm, trying to stabilize it as Sam keeps the Impala speeding down the road.
“Where are we going? The hospital?” Sam asks, looking at Dean through the rearview.
“And tell ‘em what? We have an angel here who was just possessed by the devil—give him a pill?”
Sam begins to roll his eyes, but the glare Dean is giving him through the mirrored glass makes him stop.
With a muffled growl, Dean turns back to the angel at his side. “Hold on, Cas—we’re taking you home, buddy. We’re gonna fix you up. You’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.” From the corner of his eye, Dean can feel his brother looking at him again, but he doesn’t turn his head. He knows what he’ll see in Sam’s face and he doesn’t want to think about that right now. He just needs to think about Cas … just Cas.
Come on, Cas … wake up.
***
Sam attempts to help Dean lift the angel’s unconscious body as they fumble down the stairs to the bunker, but the older Winchester shakes his head.
“I got him.”
“You sure?”
Dean doesn’t answer and Sam doesn’t ask again—holding back as his older brother winds down to the lower level.
“Where are you going to put him?” Sam finally calls out just as Dean is making his way to the mouth of the hall.
“My room” Dean answers without thinking—his cheeks reddening a moment later with the hindsight. “It’s closer to the bathroom—he might need to—”
“He’s an angel, Dean. I don’t think he really uses a toilet.”
Dean stops mid stride, hoisting Cas closer, trying his best to keep all his weight supported. “We don’t know what he is right now, man. We don’t know what Lucifer did to him while he was in there, or what he took when he got kicked out …” Dean glances back over his shoulder enough to see the faint outline of Sam still at the top of the stairs. “He could be human now … he could be something else. I don’t care, I just want him to be—” okay, here, awake, safe … Dean chokes on all the things clamoring to get off his tongue.
“He will be” Sam offers before he can get out another word, and with that, Dean swallows everything back down, nodding and continuing on to his room.
***
It has been nearly an hour and Sam has resisted every urge to go down the hall and check on his brother. He knows that if he does, he’d only be bothering him and getting in his way—but Sam is worried. Not so much about Cas—he can’t explain it, but he just knows somehow that the guy will be okay; he feels it all the way through his bones. Even if he’s no longer an angel anymore, Cas will be fine. But Dean … Dean is the one he’s not sure about. Sam knows how hard he going to be on himself for all this—for not knowing about Lucifer jumping in Cas in the first place. For not getting to him quicker, for not figuring out how to save him sooner. In all honesty, Sam figures it’s probably good that it all went down the way it did—if they got back to Crowley’s any earlier, then he might not have found a way to bring Rowena back, and since Lucifer had been following them anyway, looking for the codex to the book of the damned, then they all could have been killed if they came together too soon—and Cas would have been stuck sharing a skull with the devil for all of eternity. No, as luck would have it, the timing was just right and they managed to get just a little bit ahead of that rat bastard archangel; and thankfully … Rowena holds a mighty fine grudge against those who kill her.
A small clanking sound startles Sam out of his thoughts, and as he looks back over his shoulder, he catches a quick glimpse of his brother coming out of the kitchen—a glass of water in hand and his robe draped over his other arm. It would all seem very normal if it weren’t for the absolute fear he sees blazing up Dean’s eyes.
Yeah …
Cas will be fine—but Sam isn’t sure if Dean will ever forgive himself for this.
***
“C’mon, man … try and drink some.” Dean holds the edge of the glass to the angel’s lips, but all he succeeds in doing is spilling some water down the guy’s chin. “This would work better if you woke up” he pleads, sounding more desperate than he’d intended, but he figures that it doesn’t matter since Cas is still out and Sam is in the study.
He sighs and eventually gives up, placing the glass on the end table beside his bed. He twists around getting a little more comfortable while seated on the edge, leaning back so he can plop his head against the wall. Every so often, he peeks back down to watch Castiel—watch his eyelids flutter, and the eerie way his chest doesn’t move at all, yet the warmth of his breath is still puffing softly onto Dean’s arm. It’s as if he’s half dead—or his vessel is, yet the angel within is still kicking around, trying to break out.
“You got this, Cas. I don’t know what that jackass did to you while he was in there, but you got this.” Dean moves his finger slightly to rub it along the edge of the angel’s wrist, wanting to offer more comfort, but he’s not even sure if this is okay. He has no clue what he’s doing and that angers him beyond all reason. So he settles on pulling his robe more tightly over the angel’s body, figuring the extra warmth could be helpful—or not. Fuck, he hates this. With a grunt, he pulls his hands back and folds his arms across his chest, finally closing his eyes. In the matter of minutes, he’s falling asleep sitting up beside the angel.
Helplessly hoping that when he wakes—everything will be better.
***
“Dean?”
A light tap on his door makes his eyes pop open, and as his foggy vision clears, he sees Sam poking his head into his room.
“How is he?”
Dean looks down—Cas is exactly how he was, which may not be too bad considering Dean could have only been asleep for a few minutes.
“I didn’t want to bug you, but it’s been a few hours …”
Shit … never mind then.
“Do you need anything?”
Dean let’s out a heavy breath as he looks back to Sam—the guy seems tiny and scared somehow, like he’s once again that gangly kid who was always nervous about letting him down. The sight makes Dean warm a little. “Nah, man … I’m good.”
Sam nods and looks to his feet. “So, no change?”
Dean shakes his head.
“You know he’s going to be okay, right?”
The older Winchester sighs and then shrugs, letting his head fall back against the wall with a thud. “No … I don’t.”
“I do—it’s Cas. He’s always okay.”
The warmth that was just soothing him, suddenly turns to ice. “Is he? Because it seems like every time he comes back from something like this, he’s always a little more broken.” His words are sharp and cutting, leaving his mouth tasting of copper and his tongue stinging from the edge.
Sam cowers even more. “Yeah, but he comes back.”
“To what, though? He comes back to us? To this?” Dean lifts himself from the bed, trying to remember to keep his voice down—even though, he wants Cas to wake up, he doesn’t want him to wake up to anger. “Every time he comes back, he’s just kicked down again … I honestly don’t know why he keeps doing it.” He takes a few more steps towards his brother, stopping with his last words—his voice lifting, almost as if he is asking Sam to explain it to him. He wishes someone would.
“He’s loyal.”
“He’s not a golden retriever, Sam! He should know better by now! He should know that I’m no good for him!” As he says it, Dean has to turn away—knowing that he didn’t intend for it all to come out like that.
“Dean …”
“Sammy, don’t … okay?”
“He’s your friend … and he’s a good friend. That’s why he keeps coming back.”
Dean can only shake his head and bite at the fight he wants to start. He could punch his brother for being so delusional … for trying so hard to cut himself against all that silver lining he paints over and over aagin. This isn’t shiny and rose colored; this isn’t a best case scenario. This is wrong, plain and simple. Dean has let Cas get hurt over and over again, and it’s wrong.
“Dean?”
“I need to get back to him, Sam” Dean mutters with a sigh, still looking towards the other side of his room. The tension breaks the moment Sam nods and begins to step away, leaving his brother and the angel be.
“Just … just let me know what I can do” Sam adds, waiting with his hand on the door handle.
Dean rounds back and looks at the bed, eyes dragging across his best friend, lying far too still and cold. “Yeah ….” he whispers. “Sure.” His head drops with the click of the latch.
***
“Dean?”
The rough, graveled voice has never been more welcome, and Dean nearly topples out of his desk chair as he whips around.
“Cas?” he spits, suddenly scared that he only imagined it all.
The angel is still lying exactly how he was, but now his eyes are open and staring at the ceiling. “Dean? Why am I in your bedroom?”
Dean barks out a laugh—it is all he can do. Only Castiel would ask that first, as if that were the most important thing right now. He springs out of the chair and rushes to his friend’s side, sitting upon the edge of the bed and pulling up his knee so he can look down on the guy more easily. “Well, Sammy never washes his sheets, so I thought that my room might be more sanitary.”
“Dean …” Cas says, his voice edging on warning as it always does.
Dean sighs and gives him an apologetic smile. “You were out cold … for like, a day. We kicked Lucifer out of your holy tax accountant … well, Rowena did. That bitch was pissed, man. It would have been badass if it wasn’t so freaky –”
“She … she kicked Lucifer out?” Cas jumps in, sounding nearly scared.
Dean’s eyebrows furrow together. “Yeah, dude. He was wearing you like a sock puppet.”
Cas tries to sit up, shoving back the blankets and the robe Dean had put over him; but Dean juts out his hand and presses it to the guy’s chest—an action that only seems to pull more concern across the angel’s face.
“No, Cas—you need to rest. You just went through hell, okay? I don’t know what all Lucifer did to you, but I know how Sam was after doing the tango with him, and it wasn’t pretty.”
“Dean, I need to go” Cas growls, swatting his hand away and attempting once more to sit up.
“Like hell you do!” Dean leans in closer and presses the angel back down by the shoulders.
“What are you doing?” Cas asks, sounding angry and even more panicked. “Don’t you see how bad this is? With Lucifer gone, we’re never going to stop her!”
“Wait …” Dean pulls his hands back, looking away because he can’t quite gather what Cas is getting at. “You … you knew he jumped you?”
The angel’s mouth opens, seeming almost offended. “Of course I knew, I asked him to.”
Dean’s head snaps to the angel once again—small guttural sounds pushing past his lips as he tries to come up with something to say; but the dam breaks a breath later. “What the fuck do you mean, you asked him to? How could you ask him to? It’s Lucifer, Cas! The devil! You know how fucking hard I fought to keep him from riding Sammy! How the hell could you just let him do the same to you?”
“He’s our best shot, Dean!”
“Fuck that! No! You’re our best shot!”
“If every angel in heaven couldn’t stop her, how am I supposed to? I needed his help! We all need his help!”
Dean yanks himself to his feet and runs his hands through his hair, walking around his room in small circles, trying to understand all this—maybe Lucifer was doing something to Cas before he possessed him. Maybe he brainwashed him … he had to have done something, because he knows his angel would never have done this otherwise.
“Dean, I need to go back to hell and try again.”
Dean stops pacing to glare at his friend. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
“Dean, what’s going on?” Sam picks just that moment to open the door. “Cas! You’re awake!”
“Hello, Sam.”
“Sam, get out!”
“But—I … I heard …”
“Get out, Sam!” Dean thrusts his hand towards the door, a pointed finger telling his baby brother where to take his nosiness.
“Jeez! Fine!” Sam hisses and slams the door closed again. His muffled grumbles can be heard fading down the hall.
“That was very rude, Dean.”
Dean can only laugh again, but this time, it’s bitter and snide. “No, the only rude one around here is you! You scare me half to death, and then tell me that you want to go back and do it all over again?”
“I didn’t do any of this to scare you. I did it so we could all live. I couldn’t even touch Amara when I met her face to face. I needed Lucifer to be released so he could put her back under lock and key. She is going to tear the world apart if he stays in the cage.”
“We’re going to find another way, Cas! Don’t we always find another way?”
“This is the other way, Dean!”
Dean clenches his jaw and drops his eyes to the ground, trying to steady his breathing so he can calm down a little. All this yelling isn’t getting them anywhere, and if Cas is still an angel, he might just be able to poof out of here if he wants to, so Dean needs to not piss him off and make him get to that point. “Listen to me, Cas …” he begins, voice much more level now. “I know that he might be able to take her down –”
“He did it before.”
“Not alone” Dean snaps, closing his eyes quickly so he can settle again. “But it’s not worth it, okay? Even if he got rid of the Darkness, then we’d still be stuck with him. And you would be stuck with him most of all, and that’s just not something I am willing to see happen.”
“I would gladly take the abuse if it meant you all get to live” Cas says, sounding too much like the cold, emotionless angel he used to be.
“Would you stop that shit?”
Cas sits up more and cocks his head to the side, looking him over with that questioning blue gaze that always makes Dean feel too exposed. “Stop what?”
“Stop sacrificing yourself!”
“That is what I was built to do” the angel says matter-of-factly.
“That’s bullshit! You weren’t built to do anything! I thought we got you out of that brainwashed crap. You of all people … or angels, should know that destiny and plans and prophecies mean jack shit! It can all be changed; it is all pointless and worthless if you want it to be. I thought you were finally starting to realize that you could build yourself—be who you want.”
“I want to be useful.”
Dean practically moans with his frustration. “You are useful, Cas! God damnit! There has never been anyone more useful than you! I would have been dead, stuck in hell if not for you—Sammy would have been stuck in the cage with Lucifer if not for you! Zachariah would have skinned us alive, Dick Roman would have devoured the entire world, Lucifer would have started the apocalypse if not for you. You are the ace in a deck of cards, Cas … you help everyone you meet! How can you not see that?”
“I didn’t help Claire.”
Dean watches as the angel’s eyes fall, and his hands clasp together across his lap, making him look once again like a child in a trench coat, and it nearly breaks Dean in two. “Claire knows, Cas … she knows that her father chose this. He had faith and he wanted to do his part, and she knows the sacrifice and the gift he gave. She knows that he died a hero.”
“But he shouldn’t have died at all. I took his life from him—I took away everything.”
Castiel is still refusing to look up, so Dean moves back to the bed, sitting down once more and putting his hand on the angel’s shoulder. “Jimmy knew the risks; he knew you could keep Claire safe so he let you back in. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t think it was best for his daughter. You gotta realize that, man. He knew this was best.”
“You can’t be sure of that” Cas mutters, shaking his head and letting his words tumble down his chest.
“Yes, I can be.”
The angel finally brings his gaze back to Dean, looking broken and confused. “How?”
Dean smiles and squeezes Cas’s shoulder a little harder, making sure to keep those blue eyes on his. “Because you’re always the best, Cas. You’re always the one to come through—you keep everyone safe, and Jimmy knew that. I know it too, even if I am a complete ass most of the time and don’t show it, I know that you are the one I can count on the most.”
Cas tilts his head again and narrows his eyes. “But … Sam?”
“I can count on Sam, but he’s stubborn, and he’s still a big, idiot kid at times. He always thinks he knows best … that’s why he needs me around” Dean says with a laugh, trying to lighten the mood a little.
Cas gives a pathetic attempt at a smile.
Dean sighs. “But you, Cas … you may make a mistake here and there, but in the long run … you do know what’s best. Even with this Lucifer thing—”
The angel raises his eyebrows in surprise.
“Yeah, yeah … don’t get too excited. I’m still not gonna let you go back there and be the devil’s prom dress, but … I do know that he is one of our best shots at taking down Amara. I’m not delusional.”
“Then why don’t you let me?” Cas interjects, exhaustedly.
“Because it’s you, Cas.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Dean.”
Dean smiles and rolls his eyes. “It would if you just pulled your head out of your ass for a minute.”
Castiel growls at that.
“Hey, hey … don’t feel bad. My head has been in my own ass for quite a while too. I’m no better.”
“I don’t understand.”
Dean lets his eyes fall away, gliding across the folds of the angel’s jacket and down to where his fingers press together atop his waist. “I didn’t either, not for a long, long time.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I will never be good for you, Cas … I never have been. Like that one bitch Naomi said, you were lost the second you laid a hand on me.”
“Dean …”
“But the thing is …” Dean slowly peers back up into the blue skies that parted all his clouds. “I was lost too. The exact second you touched my shoulder, I knew—I knew you were it for me.”
The angel opens his mouth to question him, but Dean continues on before he can lose his nerve.
“I fought it back and I tried to tell myself it was some angel voodoo you were pulling at first; but then you died. You were just … gone, and you did that for me and my brother. And—and when you came back, I told myself I would never let you go that far again.” Dean chuckles dryly at the memory. “But I was never very good at telling myself what to do.”
“Dean, I still don’t—”
“I know, Cas … but just, shut up so I can finish, will ya? I’m barely hanging on here.”
Castiel nods and drops his chin to his chest, ready to listen intently.
Dean takes a deep breath, trying to convince himself that it would not solve anything to get up and run right now. “You died, again and again, and each time it made me realize just how much losing you, hurt.”
“I’m sorry, Dean.”
“Don’t apologize – you were doing everything you could, and usually—for me. I know I wasn’t worth that; and for a while, I told myself that the guilt was the only thing wrecking me every time you were ripped away. But—but that wasn’t true.” He shuts his eyes tight and blindly reaches out for Castiel’s hand, fumbling a little as he works to twine their fingers together. At this angle, it’s awkward, and his wrist is bent all funny; but feeling the angel’s grace humming through his palm is the most comforting thing he’s ever known. “I don’t want to ever lose you, Cas. I don’t want you to keep throwing yourself on the sword for me, or for anyone. I—I want to show you that … that you’re worth more than that. You’re worth more to me.” Dean sighs and finally opens his eyes to stare into the angel’s. “You’re everything to me … and it’s about damn time I start showing you.”