Fic: Never Gone (1/1) Dean/Castiel
Title: Never Gone
Author: Aerilex
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre/Pairing: Pre-slash
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~1320
Disclaimer: I’m not playing in my sand box, I’m just doodling with it.
Warnings: Fix-it from 6x20
Summary: From a prompt by hils in tiptoe39’s Post 6x20 Fix-It Commentfic Meme. The prompt: No matter what was said Cas can't bring himself to abandon Sam and Dean entirely. He keeps an eye on them and starts stealithy saving them without them knowing. Finally the boys catch a clue.
A/N: Yeah, it sort of got away from me.
It isn’t the correction of the inaccurate sigils on Bobby’s walls that does it (which Dean later finds himself feeling remarkably stupid for, considering that Cas told him about the sigils).
It isn’t the way their latest hunts seem to end too smoothly, especially the hunt for the wendigo Sam gets knocked into a tree and Dean gets thrown for a loop through about fifty yards of foliage. Both wake to find that the wendigo seems to have been incinerated by their homemade flamethrower lying nearby the pile of ashes, but neither can remember being the one to gank the thing. Chalking it up to head wounds and old age, they move on.
It doesn’t happen when Bobby finally finds a book that seems to have come from nowhere and contains some vague information about the angels and how to kill an angel if the need arises (and why should it, unless their Superman-gone-bad was feeling suicidal enough to hand them clues to his kryptonite?).
Strangely enough, though they must have gone through a dozen or two hunts and remained ignorant to the divine intervention-or, whatever, angelic intervention-thrown their way, it doesn’t happen for Dean until he looks Castiel in the eyes as Sam lies in the panic room broken and writhing from insanity. “You were family, once,” Dean says, eyes hard as he simultaneously begs and commands. “Help me save him.”
Then, watching the exhausted look on the angel’s face as he nods slightly and glances away toward the house, then Dean gets it. His face slackens with alarm and incredulousness as sudden comprehension dawns on him and-oh fucking shit you’ve been here the whole time haven’t you?
He doesn’t say anything. He simply watches as Castiel brushes his fingertips across Sam’s brow and reaches inside his brother to the shattered wall inside. His whole body trembles and light pours through all the cracks between angel and vessel, bringing tears and stabbing heat to Dean’s eyes until he clenches them shut. When the strange buzz of Grace recedes into silence, Dean blinks the colorful blurriness from his vision to find a room devoid of angels but full of SamSamSammy as his brother finally wakes up and gives him a puzzled frown and demands to know what the hell just happened and why he feels fluffy.
Dean gets it, but he doesn’t call the angel and doesn’t mention it to Sam until they get dragged into the whole damn thing by finding Crowley just days later.
Bobby, Sam, and Dean stare blankly as the demon and Raphael stand side-by-side while Castiel faces them from the far end of the room. Dean isn’t sure what they just walked in on, but he kind of thinks that someone turned on someone else. It’s become way too complicated for even him to follow, secret soap opera fandom be damned.
Dean can barely pay attention, the buzzing in his ears that always comes with the sound of thrumming Grace distracting him somehow. It feels…off, like something is tampering with his senses.
When he realizes that this is the same sound he heard from Castiel’s Grace the moment the Whore chanted that spell at him, he glances with alarm at Castiel, thinking of the strain on the angel when he had saved Sam days ago.
Castiel who impassively faces down Raphael and Crowley, who turns to Dean and Sam and Bobby and murmurs, obviously intending for these words to be his last, “I told you it wasn’t broken.”
And then Dean knows, like really knows-and he knows that Sam knows and that Bobby knows. That this, right here, this is the endgame for Castiel. This is the moment he’s been striving toward.
The angel strides forth toward his ending, murmuring what sounds like a prayer and throwing one arm out toward the humans.
And with the rush of ache in his middle that bespeaks of Angel Air, Dean finds himself, his brother, and their crotchety drunk father-figure standing somewhere outside the compound they’d just been occupying. Dean and Sam only have a split second to glance at each other in horrified understanding; then the screech of Grace shattering and the explosion of light spilling out of the building knocks them off their feet, hands grasping at ears and bodies curling for whatever protection they can manage.
When it’s all over, when everything recedes, Dean finds himself rushing into the now-empty building with Sam close on his heels. There are imprints of wings from the angels that had been with Raphael staining nearly every wall, and finally they reach the center where their angel had been.
There is the stench of sulfur and the odor of destruction like the scent of lightning as it rushes through cool air, something that clings, bitter-tangy and light, to the pile of ash that spreads over the floor. There is a pair of wings burned partially-across the floor and climbing one wall, as though the angel they had belonged to had tried to take flight at the last moment.
And there is a trench coat, dirtied by dust and blood, puddled near the charcoal image.
They think that he is dead for nearly two weeks before fucking Balthazar with his smug fucking face wings in, and demands that they direct themselves to a hospital near where the last stand went down. He fails to explain, just tells them to kindly shut up and get a bloody move on and zaps off amidst Dean’s threats of imminent violence.
So they go to the hospital, Dean a mess of jumbled nerves and stuttering pulse (and he knows that that can’t be good, what with his history with heart issues and all), and they ask the hot blonde nurse in the snug pink scrubs (Peggy, her nametag reads, and she’s so totally Sammy’s type that Dean considers playing wingman later) if she’s seen any tall, dark, and broody guys come crash-landing around the place.
And Peggy? Totally grins at them, brown eyes all huge and welling up, and says, “Oh, tell me you’re his family. I’m so glad you decided to come…he didn’t seem to think you would.” And she explains as she leads the way that ‘he’ hasn’t spoken and refuses to communicate any other way than to nod or shake his head in response to questions. And she says that there is a lot to go over with them later, but for now she’ll let them visit with their ‘loved one.’ And she leaves them standing awkwardly outside room 214 for a minute, staring at the prone figure in the hospital bed inside.
He looks smaller, Dean thinks. And the telltale buzz of electricity in Dean’s ears is gone. Dean’s still too…well, Dean to actually do as he so desires and rush in and climb onto the stupid hospital bed with the drowzy angel-man?-lying there gazing intently out the window, but he makes a compromise.
Dean strides in, genuinely smiling when those blue eyes turn to him and widen fractionally in astonishment. “Hey, Cas,” Dean says warmly, perching on the edge of the bed and reaching to interlock his fingers with the pale ones lying by Castiel’s side. He glances over his shoulder, daring the others to comment. But neither Sam nor Bobby seem to notice or mind as they both regard Castiel with similarly open expressions, one fatherly half-stern look of approval intermixed with what may be lingering doubt (but Bobby’s never quite come around so easily as all that) and one warm puppy-dog look that reeks of the threat of cuddling in the near future.
And maybe some things still need some serious hashing out. Maybe things aren’t really okay yet. But Castiel is human now, and he never gave up listening to them even after they were done listening to him.
So Dean decides that they can really start now.