Chapter Text
Dream #1: The Lake
Dean is sitting at the edge of a dock, barefoot, pants rolled up. His toes skim the sunset-pink water. There’s a small child in his lap, and Dean holds them tight. They lean back against him, sighing the great, sleepy sigh of a sated young toddler.
“Are you coming in any time soon?” the low-floating cotton candy clouds hum, rumbling.
“It’s nice out here,” he tells the sky.
“What about dinner?” the blushing lake asks, rippling warm against his feet. “Jack’s nearly asleep.”
“We’ll eat outside,” Dean replies.
“Do you miss us?” a familiar voice says behind him. Dean turns, but there’s only a shadow of the shape he’s been searching for. Your future is covered in thick, black ooze. “We miss you too.”
Dean says nothing, because his voice has gone, and so has the toddler in his arms. He turns this way and that, half-thrashing where he sits as he searches for Cas and Jack, any sign, any trace of them. Any single shard of reality that will prove to him that Cas and Jack are still here, are alive, are okay, and maybe trying to find a way to get back to him, too…
The lake is void, now. There’s a thin layer of crystalline water over a certifiable black hole, and Dean freezes as the wind whips at him, tears at his skin. The sky is dark like a bruise, and there are voices screaming above him. The trees are flattened outward, and the lake cabin lets out a loud CRACK like lightning, and then the ground shakes as it falls, all the life and memories shattered within it.
The Shadow on the dock stands unaffected. Dean trembles to his bare feet, crouched low to keep his footing in the storm, and turns to face the Big Empty.
“You did this,” the Shadow accuses.
“I know,” Dean yells over the wind. “I’m sorry.”
“This is all your fault,” the Empty bitterly echoes.
“You’re right,” Dean agrees. “I’m sorry, I am.”
“I wish I never loved you,” the black ooze whispers in Cas’s voice.
“I’m sorry,” Dean hollers, voice gone hoarse and eyes now stinging hot with tears. “I’m sorry, Cas. Please, you— Forgive me, Cas, forgive me. I was wrong, and I know it now. I was always wrong. I should’ve asked you to stay. Cas, I wanted you to stay.”
The wind stills. Dean almost falls as his center of gravity jerks, suddenly, back into place.
“Then why didn’t you say anything?” Cas sneers.
Dean wakes up.
000
Dean wakes up. His face is plastered to the long table in the library, his right hand still holding open the pages of a drawing and very much in-depth manuscript written up by the Men of Letters on everything there is to know about celestials—like angels, for example.
“Dude,” Sam says from across the table, standing half leaned over because he’d probably slammed the table to wake Dean up. “Are you drunk again? Dean, this is getting to be ridiculous. If you’d just tell me what you’re looking for—”
“Like you don’t know,” Dean rasps, clinging to the dredges of sleep with all his might. The memory of Jack vanishing into thin air from his lap sticks itself firmly behind Dean’s eyes, and he flinches away from the table.
Sam stares as if he’s grown a second head. “Hell was that?”
Dean hides his eyes. He has no answer.
Dream #2: The Pit/The Omens
Dean stands alone at the bottom of the Pit. He is made of carbon and nitrogen, all the ingredients to make stars collapsed into separate atoms. He does not have a body, exactly; rather, he is a body, though not of skin or bone or sinew, but he is a body of light in the same way a river is a body of water. All the ingredients are there, tortured and burning and all glistening and throbbing, but he is shattered apart.
A celestial body is burning through the atmosphere made up by the crosshatch of the rack. It is coming toward Dean, without a single doubt. It glows white, pulses pink like a heartbeat, the color of spun sugar. White wings beat, stirring up the ash and cinder. Embers cling to once-pale feathers, staining them darker than pitch midnight.
Somehow, within the atoms of him, Dean knows it’s Castiel. At once, it’s their very first encounter, when humans make contact with extraterrestrial life, and Dean’s soul has always known the tender touch of Castiel’s familiar Grace. At once, Cas is fallen in every way imaginable, and Dean is shattered again to atoms, seared through by Castiel.
A figure forms in the light, shaped like a man Dean knows. All tanned smooth planes, dark hair, squinting eyes to see down into the nonexistent light at the valley of the Pit. A hand reaches out, like it has a million times before, an arm wraps around his chest from behind, and then pure energy grips him tight.
Raises him from Perdition.
000
Sam finds what he thinks is a case in early February, just after Dean’s turned forty-two. There are signs in Wisconsin that look like demonic omens until inspected under higher scrutiny. Storms causing flooding, highly unusual for this time of year. There are reports of a freshwater lake turning into saltwater in a landlocked state. A river turns into blood. A plague of locusts.
Dean doesn’t want to take it, preoccupies himself with his incessant research on everything the Men of Letters possibly got on the Empty, on Death. Sam gets pissed at him for sidestepping the case. There’s a one-sided yelling competition from his brother, and then Sam slams out of the Bunker and takes the Impala with him.
Sam reports that Eileen’s agreed to come with him to check everything out. Dean spends the week after his birthday alone, falling into fits of rest that end in silenced terror and screaming tragedy.
Dream #3: The Petals/Parting Ways
Dean is in a forest. All the trees are like cherry blossoms, all pink and blue like cotton candy. The delicate petals drift in flurries, land on Dean’s head like a crown. They hide him like a veil.
Distantly, there’s the thunder of waterfalls. Closer, a lake set into a vale like the warm whiskey at the bottom of the bottle, a cabin standing squat at the edge of the lake. Eternal autumn turning magnolia trees orange and gold, making oak leaves twirl in the cool breeze.
Closer still, an arch at the end of the forest path. A small toddler is walking up to an altar beneath the arch, tipping red, red rose petals out onto the carpet of cotton candy below. A figure, shaded beneath the arch, waits—awaiting Dean.
“You can have this,” a voice behind his ear says. The trees tremble, the petals pausing midair, as though listening. “This is all yours, Dean. All this and more, whatever you want. You can have it.”
“You missed the chance,” the Shadow contests. It reaches out a hand to the toddler, crouching, welcoming in the small child. Dean watches on in frozen, silent horror. “It’s far too late. How could this ever belong to you?”
“You can have this!” the pinkening sky dissents. The waterfalls crash, the lake grows ripples into waves, and the pink of the sky and the petals and the veil grow red. “I swear, Dean, this is yours! I am yours, Dean, you can take me!”
The Shadow steps away from the altar and down off the dais. It’s fuzzy in the red light, half-formed. It takes the toddler’s hand, and their small, frightened face turns to Dean. The Shadow covers their open mouth, and then their tears fall, and they vanish.
“Dean, you already have me! You’ve always—”
000
“What the fuck.”
Dean looks up from the thick tome he’s been combing with a fine-tooth. His eyes are bloodshot and sticky. Sam hasn’t been speaking to him in the week since he’s been back. Wisconsin gave him and Eileen nothing in the two weeks they were there—no angels, no demons, no nothing—so Sam had come back still pissed. Dean still doesn’t know what he was expecting to find up there.
Sam actually makes eye contact from the far end of the library table he and Dean have taken up post at. Sam’s laptop screen casts his face in nauseatingly artificial light. His mouth is slackened, his brows furrowed deeply.
“A new mountain range just sprung up in Wyoming,” Sam says, incredulous.
Dean sits back in his seat, feeling a wave of awareness washing over him. Sudden, bursting forth like he’s watching this moment unfold from afar, separated from himself.
“Dude,” Sam snaps, urging him to react, to say something, do something.
“Yeah,” Dean says belatedly, exhaustedly. He rubs at his gummy eyes. His voice sounds empty even to himself. “Yeah, that, uh.”
Sam’s face goes distinctly blank and emotionless. Dead in the eyes. Pissed again. That anger that’d dissolved somewhere within his thirties returns, sharp and clean, similar to how John might’ve been angry once if he were sober.
“You don’t care,” his brother recognizes coldly. He slams his laptop shut, picks it up. “Fine. Keep doing your research, whatever.”
“Sammy,” Dean tries, “this is something I need to—”
“Cas was my friend too, you know,” Sam bites, cold and cruel. There’s the frigid rage in his eyes, John’s voice cutting him to the marrow of his bone. “Not everything is about you, Dean. I miss him and Jack, too, every day, but I’m moving forward. You should try it sometime.”
Dean’s jaw clenches. Words get caught in his throat, his eyes stinging and dry. He turns away from his brother, and Sam turns away from him. Separate ways once again. Not an inkling of kindness between them anymore.
Dream #4: The Exhumation/Angel Heart
The garden is in full bloom. The air is hot and heavy. Bees hum as they land upon each flower. The scent of honeysuckle and forget-me-nots and upturned soil is thick on the breeze.
There are two young adults, both in their twenties, standing over a pit—seven feet vertically, five horizontally, six deep. The young man to Dean’s left has chin-length chestnut curls and kind, dark eyes. He’s got fair skin, a tinge of red high on his cheeks. The beginnings of sunburn, maybe. The young adult to Dean’s right, leaning on a shovel and partially covered in dirt, has short, floppy brown hair and the same dark eyes, these ones holding a curious twinkle. They have moles dotting over places Dean recognizes.
“So,” the young man says, hands wavering in the air as he pauses. He signs as he starts speaking again: “This is it, huh? Never thought we’d ever see the grave.”
The other young adult signs as well, emphatic and fast. “This is what Dad wanted us to do, Dean. We’ve found… Uncle Dean, which means we’ve found Castiel. You know what we have to do.”
Dean turns his head downward to look into the pit.
Two skeletons fit into the hollow of it. Their clothes are tattered, but Dean can clearly make out a navy green jacket and a bloody red handprint, old boots on the corpse flat on its back, laid out oh so gently with hands crossed over its decayed stomach. And the second corpse, skeletal arms wrapped around Dean’s own rotting body, skull tucked into Dean’s corpse side. A soil-stained, tattered trench coat is tucked around the second hunched corpse, like a blanket to hide away beneath. One skeletal hand clutches the shoulder of the green jacket, just off center of the handprint encrusted into the fabric.
“No,” Dean breathes, planting his feet and gently lowering himself down. “It— It can’t be.”
“Yeah,” the young man responds, but he’s still speaking to his counterpart. “I know. Perform the spell, bring Castiel back. That’s how we save the world.”
“W-What?” Dean manages to breathe, turning to stare up before turning back down. He crouches in the last slope of the vale, hand outstretched. He flinches away before he can touch. Unable to clench the fabric of that aged trench coat in his fist, as if just closing his hand around it is a form of violence. “No. No, this isn’t right— He’s— H-He can’t—”
Above him, the other Dean is sitting cross-legged at the ledge of the grave, a wooden bowl in his lap. He sprinkles in herbs and potent magical ingredients. Dean catches the flash of an angel’s Grace being dumped into the bowl before the man begins an incantation. By the sound of it, the spell is Enochian.
Something is seriously amiss.
“S-Stop,” he tries. He can’t get the quaver out of his voice. “Stop. Wait! You’ve gotta— Listen to me! It’s— It’s Dean— Dean Winchester. I’m right here! You’ve gotta stop!”
“Ro,” other Dean calls, and the young adult looks down at him as Dean stares up. “The poultice is ready. Help me down so we can…”
“Yeah,” Ro says, and helps Dean down into the well of the pit, bowl balanced carefully.
“Why are you doing this?” he demands, face burning now, crowded where he’s crouched over the corpses. Hunched and protective, baring his teeth at people who can’t see him. “This isn’t right! You have to quit. You’ve gotta stop this, whatever you’re doing.”
Other Dean dips his fingers into the poultice. It’s viscid and glowing blue the color of Cas’s eyes. Dean’s heart glugs wetly, loud in his ears as though he’s hearing it from outside his body, lying separate out of his body. Ro follows their counterpart’s example.
“Castiel,” other Dean says, reaching out to touch the exposed skull where the hair and flesh and muscle have long since melted away. “You’ve been gone a long time. It’s time for you to exist again.”
Ro traces the mandible of Cas’s jawbone. Their hand skips down to the ribcage, and each rib bone they spread the poultice on, smooth and even-handed, glows delicately. Enochian symbols appear on each dry bone.
They begin to rattle. The bones tremble, cotton candy colors glowing between each fiber of the molecules, toes to skull. Other Dean and Ro lean away, back up to give him space. They meet each other’s eyes, wide and hopeful. Dean stares on in horror. Cas’s skull twists all the way back to look at Dean. Dean stares into eye sockets where two glowing blue eyes had once laid. He’s nonexistent.
The mandible clicks, gapes open.
Hello, Dean, the breeze hisses in an ancient, once-holy voice.
Cas’s bones crumble to ash.
Through a flood of hot, burning tears, Dean looks up. The pair—siblings, now, he realizes—are devastated. The two of them were betting on this to—what, save the world again? There’s always another boss battle. Dean, already tired down to his bones, looks between his brother’s children, and they see him for the first time since he’s been here.
He utters out, “What did you do?”
And then Dean dissolves like mist in the heat. Melts into a puddle right there in the grave.
000
A month. Dean spends a month alone in the Bunker after Sam flies the nest to move in with Eileen, or so he guesses. Dean lives off tap water, canned foods, and the sheer desperate fear that drives him on, drives him continuously forward. Down this path, this downward spiral.
Images of a three-year-old burn into his mind’s eye, terrified and crying out for their daddy. A shadow looms over them. A whorl of a being, hardly shaped like a human at all, towering seven feet tall, hunched like a weeping willow, dripping thick, black ooze. The being shrinking, five-foot-eleven, its ooze dripping down in a mockery. Trench coat made of tar.
Then, one day, light into the darkness. The Bunker door creaks and bellows and protests, and then a silhouette stands there, long hair and glory. Golden in the white light of day. Soft hands. Angel heart.
She strides down like she owns the place, a duffel bag tossed over her shoulder and a backpack loose in her other hand. She calls in a tentative voice, “Dean? You still kickin’, old man?”
Dean can’t respond. His spine pops all the way up, lumbar to thoracic to cervical, as he sits up in his seat. He can’t remember when the last time he got up was. Maybe to piss. Maybe because he couldn’t see, words jumbling in front of his eyes. Maybe to lower the lights again, even though they’re always set to the lowest he can get them short of turning them off.
Claire Novak stands in the doorway between the war room and the library. A line forms between her brows, heavy. Her mouth, already ajar, goes slack. In a word, she looks horrified.
“Jesus,” Claire exhales.
She drops her duffel and backpack right there on the step down, rushes toward him. Dean flinches, something he’s been trained out of for decades on decades. He doesn’t know when he picked that little human instinct back up.
Claire slows, recognizing his fight or flight response. Her face falls further. “Dean,” she says, at a loss. She inhales. “I overheard Sam talking to Jody one day. Didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but it’s kind of difficult when she’s yelling. Like, seriously, tearing him a new one. She’s been trying to get ahold of you, you know. We were all worried.”
Dean has no words. Not anymore. He just blinks at her, jaw rusted iron. Mouth copper.
“Weird stuff’s going on all over the world, man,” she informs him. Her eyes change color, shift hues. True blue. Waterways, completely clear sky on a winter day, cerulean. Icy. “But Sam says you don’t care about that. That you don’t get out much anymore. If at all. He told Jody—he left you. He left you to rot down here, Dean.”
He’s silence. His whole existence is void. His being is a blackhole. Everyone around him gets sucked up, eventually. Dies or grows tired of him.
“I know…” Claire stops, shakes her head. “I don’t understand, actually. I could care less about you and Gigantor’s brotherly melodrama. But… I do know that it’s wrong for Sam to have given up on you, or abandon you the way he did, without telling someone sooner. You could’ve been dead when I walked in, and I would’ve had to deliver that news to—to Jody and Donna, and Sam and Eileen, and everyone. Your werewolf buddy and his family, right. That, uh. The witch that you said became the Queen of Hell.”
Dean’s eyes dart to the books. The pages of research, the entire notebooks he’s filled. His handwriting is shot to hell. The open page of the notebook closest to him looks like he wrote using his feet with his eyes closed.
“If you’d been dead,” Claire says, her words crisp and sharp, regaining his massacred attention. “If you were dead, Dean, who would… who would find Jack and Cas?”