Fic: Serpent and Staff (Dean/Castiel)

[trinityofone]

And here's the big one!

Title: Serpent and Staff
Rating: PG
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Spoilers: General S5; through 5x08 specifically
Length: ~10,000 words
Summary: One morning, Castiel wakes up in Jimmy Novak’s bed, in Jimmy Novak’s life.
Notes: aesc and ebrooklynw are my heroes, as is siriaeve, who provided invaluable information about Facebook and Detroit. (Girl’s got range, yo.)

Serpent and Staff

He wakes up, and that’s his first clue that something is wrong. He does not sleep, and therefore he cannot wake. But his mind stumbles back into awareness, and his vessel’s body, too, becomes aware-aware of someone’s arms around him, warm and human, and the gentle, human attentions of someone’s fingers along the base of his vessel’s throat.

For a second, Castiel feels himself wish- But no. It is a pointless, painful desire, and he hastily dismisses it from his thoughts. There is another explanation for this, though he can’t think what it might be. His attempts to reach out with his senses and acquire a clearer picture of what’s around him have not been fruitful; wherever he is, it must be somewhere tightly warded. As has become more and more often the case, he must rely on human means: and so Castiel rolls over and opens his eyes.

Amelia Novak meets his gaze without fear or sadness on her face. She smiles. “Good morning,” she tells him.

Her hand reaches out and strokes with gentle familiarity down his cheek. But of course it is not his cheek, a fact that Castiel has with worrying frequency begun to forget. He does not own this body and it does not own him, and it is in remembering this fact that he finds the wherewithal to stay still, to not start and scramble out of bed, away from this woman’s touch. His heart-the vessel’s heart-is hammering his chest, but Castiel focuses and does what he can to reassert control. He promised Jimmy Novak that he would look after his family-in this way and in this way only, Castiel now knows, he acted toward him appropriately-and that includes, here and now, not frightening them unduly.

So when Amelia’s smile fades at what she perceives as her husband’s agitation and she asks, “Jimmy? What’s wrong?” Castiel answers, “Nothing. I’m fine.”

His voice-but it was never his voice, he must remember that-comes out sounding strange, strained and higher pitched. The body will not cooperate with him, its heart continuing to beat rapidly, the lungs feeling tight and pinched. These are, Castiel knows, symptoms of agitation, confusion, fear. He is master to these stirrings. They should not bother him at all, and if he concentrates...

Amelia’s cool palm moves up to his forehead. “You feel a little warm. Are you sure you’re all right? You’re not coming down with something?”

“No.” He has to get out of this bed. He has to get her to stop touching him. “I need-” He slides over and levers himself off onto the floor. The body feels strange around him, heavier and yet also easier to manipulate. It moves almost without thought: bare feet landing on the rug, toes curling against the rough fibers. He’s wearing a set of unfamiliar blue pajamas, and beneath the fabric the hairs on his arms stand on end, awakened by the sudden chill that cuts easily through him, penetrates to the bone.

“I need to make a phone call,” Castiel says, in that wrong voice, that voice that isn’t either of his voices. He ignores the spike of fear he feels and walks purposefully toward the door.

“It’s six-thirty in the morning,” Amelia calls after him. She is concerned, he thinks, maybe worried. “Who are you going to call at six-thirty in the morning?”

He needs help. It does not shame him to admit it. He has requested the Winchesters’ help before, and they his, and that is how it should be: the apocalypse is a trial best faced together. How his current situation fits into the overall threat, Castiel does not know; he sensed no trace of anything demonic about Amelia, and he has seen no evidence of the type of anti-angelic warding he initially suspected. In fact, since he woke up he has sensed nothing at all-nothing beyond what the human senses of sight and touch and sound could have told him.

The tight, panicked feeling attempts to return to Castiel’s chest, but he refuses to allow it entry.

He walks down the hall. There is a phone in the kitchen; Castiel doesn’t remember observing it on his previous visits to this place, yet he is nevertheless convinced that it will be there. He is focusing on the phone, on putting one foot in front of the other and controlling this rebellious body, when a door opens just to his left. Claire Novak emerges, yawning in flowered pajamas. “Hi, Daddy,” she says, the words muffled against Castiel’s side as she presses against him in an absent, sleepy hug. He stands stiffly as she stumbles past him to the bathroom. I am not your father, he thinks, desperately. I’m not-

He hurries the rest of the way downstairs. The phone is where he suspected. He picks it up, dials the first number he learned by heart. Instead of Dean’s gruff, “What?” he gets a recorded voice telling him that the number is not in service. A horrible sensation sweeps through Castiel’s stomach. He hangs up, dials again. Same result. Tries Sam’s number: reaches a Chinese restaurant. Tries Bobby. After several rings, a woman answers. “Hello?”

The words are hard to form: his throat feels dry. “I need to speak to Bobby Singer.”

The woman lets out a groan. “Call back after nine.”

Castiel’s fingers clench tight around the plastic headset. “It is vital that I-”

“The work line. After nine.” Then he hears a muttered, “Jesus,” and the connection dies with a click.

Castiel stares down at the phone, feeling irrationally betrayed, before setting it back carefully on its cradle. He turns around and is surprised to see Amelia standing in the doorway. “Jimmy, are you sure you’re okay?”

Castiel swallows. He is not okay, he realizes-or acknowledges, finally. He is somewhere it should be impossible for him to be, cut off from advice and assistance. His senses are dulled or destroyed, leaving him little better than human. He is no longer sure that he could leave this body if he tried, and he is very, very afraid to try.

And on top of all that, he’s pretty sure he has to pee.

But even as terror and confusion roil within him, he hears Dean’s voice in his head. Oddly comforting, just as the warm, swift motions of his hands had been, straightening Castiel’s tie. When humans want something really, really bad, we lie.

Castiel wants all of this to go away. He wants to close his eyes and be somewhere that makes sense-on the road with Dean and Sam, on their suicidal mission to kill the devil. Not here, in the kitchen of the man whose body he stole, all signs pointing to the insane idea that somehow Castiel has stolen his entire life as well.

So, “I’m fine,” he lies. “Truly.”

Amelia eyes him, apparently not entirely convinced-and yet not, Castiel thinks suddenly, with the fearful, studied concern of someone who had once before watched her husband descend into perceived madness. “If you want, I can call your office and tell them you’re sick,” she offers. “You have plenty of days left.”

“No,” Castiel says, although the idea of trying to blend in at Jimmy Novak’s place of work is scarcely less repellent than the thought of having to continue this charade here, with his family. “That’s all right. I’ll go get ready,” he hazards.

“Okay, but hurry,” Amelia calls after him. “Don’t forget you promised Claire pancakes for getting that A.”

Castiel has little understanding of what this statement means, but it hardly matters: the idea of swiftness certainly appeals to him. When he returns to the second floor, he finds the bathroom free. Inside, with the door locked, he does what he swore he would not and surrenders to the body he wears, allowing it to move as instinctively it knows how. When he is finished he feels greatly, well, relieved, and thus it seems only prudent to continue in the same vein for as long as it is beneficial to him. And so, as if on autopilot-the body possessed not by angelic energy but by memories and instincts that Castiel himself does not share-he moves through the routine of stripping off his pajamas, of washing his skin and his hair, of brushing his teeth and shaving his cheeks. Memory and instinct lead him to a navy blue bathrobe hanging behind the door, and with it wrapped around his newly moist flesh, he retreats back to the room in which he woke up. Jimmy Novak’s bedroom.

He has no place here. Castiel has greater worries-far, far greater-but he cannot shake the guilt and the sense of subtle wrongness that assault him when he encounters the reflection of Jimmy’s face in the closet’s mirrored doors. The strength of the response is surprising especially in comparison to what he had felt previously: it’s as if the clothes on his back have become suddenly abhorrent to him, a symbol of everything that has gone-that he has allowed to go-wrong.

Clothes. Yes, focus on clothing this body, wrapping it away. He thrusts the closet doors aside and finds rows and stacks of neatly hung and folded clothes. A certain stretch of swaying black fabric is blissfully familiar to him, and he pulls it off the hanger and holds it close like an old friend. He can do this, he thinks. He can play along until he finds answers, formulates a plan. He can watch and wait and observe-that was what he was built for, after all.

So he goes downstairs and starts making pancakes. He’s surprised to discover that he knows how to do it-could this really be another thing that this body instinctively knows? And yet he does know how to grease and heat the skillet; he even knows which cabinet to open to find the box of Bisquick waiting inside.

“Yay, pancakes!” says Claire, coming into the kitchen-dressed, now, in jeans and a sweater. She goes to the refrigerator and pours herself a glass of juice. Castiel stands stiffly at the stove: he is afraid she will try to embrace him again.

Amelia appears a few second later, also fully dressed, shaking the moisture off a newspaper in a blue plastic bag. Castiel wants that paper, he realizes with a sudden start-and he has to force himself to focus again on the bubbling batter, to not strive with such swift purpose across the room that he alarm them all.

He almost cannot believe that they do not know: that they cannot tell their human husband and father from a divine being wearing his face. Dean had always made it clear that Castiel did not seem human-that he needed to put effort into appearing so when they went out in the wider world-and yet here he is in this warm family kitchen, and he apparently does not look out of place at all.

“Your old church suit?” Amelia asks, approaching Castiel’s part of the kitchen and repeating Claire’s actions with the juice. “Jimmy, why? That thing doesn’t even fit you properly.”

She is only lightly chiding, but still Castiel feels the need to turn away, to busy himself with the spatula. “I like it,” he says, “it’s comfortable”-and this is the truth, not a lie at all. He feels the most like himself in Jimmy Novak’s wrinkled, worn-out suit.

“All right, suit yourself,” Amelia says. She elbows her daughter’s shoulder gently. “Get it? Suit yourself?”

Castiel watches out of the corner of his eye as Claire rolls hers. “Hilarious, Mom.” Then they both turn and look at Castiel, almost-but-not-quite expectant.

“Come on,” Amelia says, lips quirked in a sly grin. “Don’t leave us hanging.”

Oh. It is a game. Castiel scoops the pancakes onto a platter (he knew just where to find it; top shelf, cabinet above the microwave) while he thinks. “Don’t press me,” he says finally, tentatively.

The two women let out almost identical small snorted breaths. “Uh, your might want to iron out the kinks in that one, Dad,” Claire says.

Amelia laughs lightly and smoothes her daughter’s hair. She looks up at Castiel again and he manages a shadow of a smile. “Pancakes,” he says-because he has, somehow, produced pancakes.

He is not entirely sure what to do with the platter, so he sets it down in the middle of the table, at the center of where Amelia has set plates. This does not seem wrong, as both mother and daughter offer him a grin and watch him expectantly until he sits down.

Their faces stay expectant, neither of them reaching for the food. Castiel begins to worry that he has erred after all, but then he sees the waiting curls of their hands, and it dawns on him. They wish to pray. They wish for Castiel to lead them in prayer.

With a heavy heart, Castiel slips his hands-the hands that are not his hands-into Amelia and Claire’s. Then he closes his eyes and asks for deliverance.

He told Amelia that he would go to work, so he must go to work. Amelia has left already, to take Claire to school and to go from there to her own job. Castiel sits in the remaining car and considers. The newspaper is spread out on the seat beside him, neat columns of black and white that betray almost nothing. Except that he is when he is supposed to be, if not where. It remains the spring of 2010. And yet all apocalyptic stirrings appear gone from the globe-his quick perusal revealed no trace of them between these pages. Everything is as it should be. Everything except Castiel.

He told Amelia that he would go to work, so.

He starts the car without really giving it much thought. He has never driven, but he has watched Dean drive: fast and panicked, gripping the wheel and cranking the gearshift swiftly into reverse; steady and happy and slow, cruising with his elbow out the window. Castiel has always been fairly sure that, in a crunch, he too would be capable of operating a motor vehicle. And indeed, he experiences no difficulty in backing the car out of the garage and onto the street. Dean would enjoy seeing this, he thinks, his worry and fear momentarily eased.

It returns when he realizes he has successfully driven all the way to Jimmy’s place of employment, despite not having been aware that he knew its location.

He parks and gets out of the car, then walks up the path and into the squat, grey building feeling as if he is in a dream. A dream he has distressingly little power to manipulate; instead, he can only navigate this office’s labyrinth of rooms with the same absent assurance that allowed him to maneuver around the Novak home. He walks steadily forward, smiling vaguely at the people he passes, until he finds a small, closet-sized room, and inside it, a desk. There is no nameplate on either door or desk, and yet he is sure it is in fact his.

Jimmy’s. It is Jimmy’s.

He sits down in the chair. The seat molds around him comfortably, as if used to his shape. Castiel looks around him: there are charts and graphs on the walls, a Chinese takeout menu clipped to a bulletin board, a few photographs. Jimmy and Amelia and Claire, smiling for the camera.

Castiel looks away. He doesn’t belong here. He takes a breath, then reaches for the telephone.

The same female voice picks up that answered before, although there is less irritation in her tone now. “Hello?”

“May I please speak to Bobby Singer?” Castiel asks carefully.

He hears a chuckle-perhaps bitter, perhaps bemused. “Oh, it’s you-the charmer who called at six in the morning.”

She is exaggerating; he called closer to seven, he is sure. “It is vital-”

“-That you speak to him, I know, I know. Men and their cars-you’d think it was life or death sometimes.”

Castiel is not quite sure what to say to this.

Luckily, the woman continues. “He’s out in the garage. At the work number. Do you have it?”

“This is the only number-”

“Relax,” she interrupts again. “I’ll give it to you.” She rattles off a number. For the first time, Castiel finds he does not trust his memory; he dutifully writes it down.

“Thank you,” he tells her. “I appreciate your assistance.”

“Yeah, well. When you call him, remind him that I’m his wife, not his secretary, will you?” And with that she hangs up the phone.

Castiel sits for a moment, staring at the headset. Then carefully, he dials.

After a single ring, a familiar voice answers. “Singer Salvage.”

“Bobby,” Castiel says, unable to stop the rush of emotion that runs through him-such relief. “It’s Castiel.”

Then Bobby says, “Who?”

Castiel goes cold. “Castiel,” he says. “I’m-Castiel,” because he no longer feels that he knows how to explain himself to people who do not know him (Bobby Singer doesn’t know him!) without them thinking he’s insane. Dean taught him this. Experience has taught him this.

“You looking for a part?” Bobby asks, sounding skeptical.

“I’m trying to reach Dean Winchester,” Castiel says, although already the relief he felt is long gone, hope fading fast with it.

“Don’t know anybody by that name,” Bobby says. He does not sound as if he is lying. He sounds bored. “I think you’ve got the wrong number, son.”

“Hunting!” Castiel tries desperately. “I have a question about hunting. Please.”

“Sorry, I do cars, not sporting goods. Try the yellow pages. Google it.” And then Bobby hangs up too.

Castiel squeezes the phone, then slowly lets it go. He thinks, for one wild moment, about flying to Bobby’s house, appearing on his doorstep- But he knows he can’t. As little as he wants to face it, admit it: he knows. He is earthbound. Cut off from the wider world.

Although maybe, he thinks, replaying Bobby’s parting words in his mind: maybe not completely.

There is a computer on Jimmy’s desk. Castiel proves surprisingly-or not-so-surprisingly-adept at using it. He knows Jimmy’s passwords. He opens Internet Explorer, loads the recommended search engine, and begins typing. Winchester Dean Sam.

He is not sure what he expects to find. He knows from speaking with the brothers, from reading the gospel of the prophet Chuck, that Dean and Sam have a rather notorious reputation among several law enforcement agencies; although they are officially dead, there should be significant records, and news stories, at least, available to the public. Instead he finds what appears to be Sam Winchester’s Facebook page.

In order to see more, he is asked to log in. He doesn’t even pause: Jimmy Novak’s Facebook name and password spring easily from his fingertips. And then there is Sam, smiling more than Castiel has ever seen him, in picture after picture. In one he has his arms around a blonde woman; in another he is wearing a ridiculous hat. His “relationship status” is “married.” His “networks” are “Stanford University” and “Columbia University School of Law.” His latest update reads “Sam Winchester is grateful for all the awesome birthday wishes!”

Castiel sinks back in his chair. He is obviously more lost than he realized. Or else-

Or else he is crazy. He is delusional. He wants to dismiss this theory immediately-he is Castiel, he is an angel of the Lord, he knows who he is-but the evidence is there, inescapable: he knows things he should not know. He knows where the Novaks keep their Bisquick, and how to shape powder into pancakes; he knows how and where to drive Jimmy’s car in the morning. If he thought about it-or rather, if he didn’t think-he’s sure he’d know how to do Jimmy’s job: make the calls, make the contacts, sleepwalk easily through this life. It is real and tangible beneath his fingers-the only fingers he has, now. It would almost be easier to believe that what’s before him is in fact all there is: the face in the mirror is Jimmy Novak. And therefore he is Jimmy Novak.

But Sam Winchester is real. He is right here in front of Castiel, pixelated features spread into a grin. He is real and unimagined by Castiel, or by a Jimmy who thinks he’s Castiel. They went together to Detroit to face down the devil-

And that’s the last thing Castiel remembers. But it was real. It was.

It just isn’t, anymore. Apparently.

Castiel takes a breath. He forces himself to focus. Internet research has never been part of his purview, but he’s witnessed Sam and Dean engaging in it plenty of times. Not to mention the fact that Jimmy knows, or knew, how to do it.

He begins searching for Dean in earnest.

This proves to be a lot simpler than expected. It takes Castiel about three minutes. Then he’s looking at a headshot of a man neatly dressed in a tie and a white coat. It doesn’t look like it can possibly be real-it looks like one of the pictures Dean pastes onto his fake IDs. But it’s there, toward the bottom of a legitimate institution’s legitimate webpage. Dean Winchester.

He’s a residing physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Castiel stares at the photograph for a long time. A woman-her name, he realizes, is Fran-stops and pauses in his doorway, asks him how it’s going with Lightning Photo. “Working on it,” he tells her, and she tells him there are doughnuts in the kitchen and he nods and she departs and still he stares at the photograph. Trying to read-what? Something, anything, from the two-dimensional Dean’s smoothly competent expression. Dean Winchester, MD.

There’s a phone number beside the photograph. With shaking fingers, Castiel dials.

“Hi,” a familiar voice answers-familiar but tinny, recorded. “You’ve reached the office of Dr. Dean Winchester. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911...”

Castiel hangs up. He doesn’t dial out again.

After a few minutes, he gets up and fetches a doughnut. He is hungry: he’d been too nervous to eat much of the pancakes.

When the doughnut crumbs are swept away, he takes one last look at Dean’s smiling picture, then closes the web browser. He brings up his-Jimmy’s-address book and locates the contact information for Lightning Photo. Then he takes a breath and reaches once again for the telephone.

He has a job to do.

Castiel moves through the rest of the day like a man possessed. On some level he even appreciates the irony in that: letting his body guide his actions as if the associated decisions were not his to make. Perhaps in this place, where Sam is happily married, where Dean is safe and successful, Castiel, too, has gotten what he deserves.

It’s wrong, all wrong-but it is bearable. He can pick Claire up from field hockey practice and make something that resembles conversation with her. He can cook dinner for this family that is not his family, and he can consume his creation-with hunger and need, if not pleasure. And he can sit with these strangers in the pale light of the television, watching actors take choreographed steps through a series of sets, speaking the lines that have been given to them. He can do all this, and not without empathy.

What he cannot do is curl into Amelia’s attempted embrace: he sees her cool hands reaching out and has to roll away. He recognizes this for the cruelty it is, but he can’t- Another man’s wife. Their human marriage bed. It is horrible and wrong and he can’t.

“I’m sorry,” he says in response to her tentative, “Jimmy?” “I’m not feeling like myself tonight.”

After another day comes the relief of the weekend. (The day before he was bade farewell at the office with many wishes that he “Have a good weekend!” and thus he knows not to make the mistake of dressing for work the next day.) After breakfast-an increasingly awkward affair, Castiel feels, the lines of worry in Amelia’s forehead deepening every day-Amelia announces that she is going to take Claire shopping. Does Jimmy wish to accompany them?

Castiel declines. He waits until he’s heard the car pull out onto the street, then selects a knife from the kitchen and takes it upstairs, where he locks himself in the bathroom. The space is a little tight, but it will do. He goes through the preparations for the ritual swiftly, but with precision. Finally, he rolls up his sleeve.

The cut hurts.

His blood is bright on the white tile floor. Gritting his teeth, Castiel draws the sigils with care, ignoring how badly his limbs want to shake with the pain. With just a touch of fear: he is still wanted, hunted. For being so brash as to initiate contact, his brothers may very well strike him down. But he has to do this. He has to know.

With a last swish of blood, he is done. Castiel rocks back onto his heels and opens his mind to Heaven.

Nothing happens.

Nothing. Not a thing. On his knees, Castiel trembles; then his voice-this higher, lighter voice that is not his voice-starts pouring out of him. He prays and pleads and implores. He rages at the Heavens, begs for an answer, an explanation. A sign. But he gets no response.

He is really and truly alone.

It doesn’t take too long to wash the blood away. While he’s at it, he decides to clean the entire house.

He stays busy. That’s all he knows how to do. All he knows how to be is an angel, and an angel needs a duty, a task.

Amelia clearly doesn’t know what to make of her new diligent, distant husband. One or two more times she tries to initiate more intimate contact, but Castiel still does not know what to do but rebuff her. Eventually she stops trying. They each keep to their own side of the marriage bed-dreaming, perhaps, of absent people who would, if the world were just, still be there.

Claire looks at him sometimes, too often, with worry in her bright young eyes.

At work he learns to answer the phone as Jimmy Novak.

He doesn’t give up. Not entirely. He researches: online, at the local library, at the nearest university. He doesn’t find anything. Not just no clue to his current situation: no evidence of anything-demonic, angelic, or supernatural. It’s as if the world has been wiped clean.

Castiel can think of worse things. He can think of far, far worse things. And yet-he is (or was) an angel, and if this brave new world has none... Well, where does that leave him?

It leaves him selling ad time for AM radio in Pontiac, Illinois. It leaves him going home each night to a family he is wounding slowly with neglect-to a daughter whose affections he doesn’t know how to return, to a wife he is every second betraying. For many people, he realizes, it wouldn’t be an unordinary-or even a particularly bad-life. But it’s not a life Castiel can lead. It’s a life built on lies, and worse, theft. He feels like Claudius: like he has murdered his brother and married the dead man’s wife.

Or maybe like Hamlet, he is simply mad.

“Gabriel.”

He stands, shivering, in the back yard. He addresses his anxious hiss to the stars, even though he knows that is not where Heaven is located-and that Gabriel would not be there if it were.

“Brother, please,” he says. “Whatever lesson you desired to teach me, I’m sure I have learned it. You’ve proven your point. Take me home!”

Crickets chirp; a jet passes somewhere overhead. Castiel’s stomach clenches. “Your tricks are not amusing!” he tells the absent archangel. “Do you not realize the magnitude of what’s at stake? You may not care what happens to this planet, but I do. The Winchesters need me. You have to let me go-”

It’s not so much that his pleas fall of deaf ears, Castiel knows. It’s that they don’t reach anyone’s ears at all.

Or so he thinks. Until he turns around and sees Amelia outlined, still as a statue, in the doorway.

“You need to see someone,” Amelia says. There were tears in her eyes, but she’s dried them, brushed them away. She is trying to be strong.

“I know,” he tells her.

“You can get help,” she assures him.

“Yes,” he says, though he doesn’t believe it. No one can help him.

“Tomorrow,” she says. She squeezes his hand. “Tomorrow we’ll go to the doctor. Together.”

She watches him, lying next to her on the bed, for a long time. But eventually he hears the pattern of her breathing change; eventually she falls asleep.

He does better than he did previously, elsewhere. This time he leaves a note.

It’s late afternoon by the time he arrives in Boston. He’s driven all night: he feels ragged and worn. And this is a fool’s errand, anyway-but it’s one he realizes he has to complete. He has to see him: see him one last time, with his own eyes. Or as close, anyway, as he’s ever again likely to come.

He parks in one of the hospital’s packed lots and strides in through the emergency room’s sliding glass doors.

Emergency rooms, Castiel knows from experience, are chaotic, unpleasant places-humanity at both its best and worst. The information Castiel gleaned from the website all those months ago-and in many, too many, subsequent, secret visits-indicated that Dean’s specialty is emergency medicine. Therefore-if Dean is on shift right now, and if he passes this way, and an increasing number of ifs that Castiel chooses to ignore because he knows he is setting himself up for disappointment merely by coming here-all Castiel should have to do is wait.

He takes a seat and fades almost instantly into the crowd. This is all he is now: just another human sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair in an unpleasant, frightening place.

He sits and watches. He has always been good at watching.

He lacks the patience he once possessed, however. It is becoming increasingly inconceivable to him that he once waited for Dean for four hours at the side of a highway, scarcely twitching a muscle. In this lesser parody of a vigil, he gets up twice in less than half that time: once to use the bathroom and once to get a candy bar from the vending machine. And now he is slumped in his chair, finding it harder and harder to stay awake.

Men, unlike angels, cannot be ever-vigilant. And whatever else he might be-lost, trapped, crazy, delusional-Castiel is, he must admit, just a man.

And just like the men to either side of him, he jolts to full attention when an ambulance comes in hot. Stretchers are wheeled in and doctors descend. Just like on E.R., Castiel thinks. And it’s fitting: in this new life of his, where reality seems unreal, nothing seems realer than a TV show.

Then he catches sight of him.

And it is real-it’s not a TV show. On a TV show, the moment would slow, extend, their eyes locking across the room and a double zoom closing the space between them while the soundtrack climbed to a dramatic sting. Instead it’s fast, almost too fast to believe: for one second Dean looks up from the patient he has arrived to assist, and in that second his eyes meet Castiel’s. His eyes meet Castiel’s for just a second: for just one second they lock and hold. But in that second, Castiel sees something he never expected to see.

Recognition.

Then the gurneys are rushed away and Dean is swept with them. But Castiel remains where he’s sitting. His back is straighter. He could wait forever now.

He waits another forty-five minutes or so. Then slowly, moving softly in his white doctor’s shoes, Dean emerges from the same direction from which he so briefly appeared and then disappeared. He walks across the crowded E.R., the muscles in his arms clenched tight under the pale blue fabric of his scrubs. Castiel gets to his feet. The distance closes between them in a brutally inexorable pace. Castiel’s heart is racing. He can’t decode the complicated expression on Dean’s face.

Dean, his Dean who was always so brave-Dean speaks first. He says, “Cas?”

Castiel nearly sobs with relief. No-he does sob; it bubbles out of him, a wrecked, broken sound. But his tears are joyful, as is the rough strength of Dean’s sudden embrace. “Cas,” Dean says, and Castiel says, “Dean,” over and over, and it takes them a few moments to get anywhere past a desperate repetition of names.

Then, “Do you want to get out of here?” Dean asks, drawing back. Castiel is relieved to see that his eyes are damp, too; and that beneath his tear-streaked cheeks, he is smiling.

Castiel nods.

“Good,” Dean says, “’Cause I already switched out the rest of my shift.” He backs up another step, but he does not let go of Castiel’s arm. “Come on,” he says.

They walk out together into the early evening.

The car Dean leads him to is not his-is not the Impala. Dean must catch something of the look of dismay on Castiel’s face. “I know,” Dean says with a sigh. “It’s okay and everything, but it’s not the same. I’m working on finding a good one to restore, but maybe I’m kidding myself. That won’t be the same either.”

Castiel is still looking at Dean’s sensible, silver car like it represents everything that’s wrong with this place he’s found himself in. “What happened?” he asks.

Dean scratches at the hair above his ear. “Well, since there was no way for me to catch a ride in the angel DeLorean, I wasn’t there to tell my dad not to buy some stupid van, so he...bought some stupid van, I guess. It’s in all these pictures. Makes my family look like a bunch of dopey hippies.”

Castiel can’t stop staring at Dean. Part of him is trying to make sense of what Dean is saying, fit it into the overall puzzle of this place, but mostly he is staring because it is Dean, Dean is here. He’s standing in a hospital parking lot with Dean, and Dean is talking about cars, and Dean knows him. Dean knows him.

“Cas, are you okay?” Dean breaks off. He is touching Castiel’s arm again, or else has never stopped.

Castiel takes a deep breath. He allows himself to close his eyes, and when he opens them again, Dean is still here. “I may be,” he says, slowly, and for a second he sounds almost like himself. “But I am very hungry.”

Dean grins, as Castiel knew he would. “Well, come on then,” he says, and there-his hand finally, regretfully drops from Castiel’s arm. He walks around to the driver’s side of the car. “I’ve missed feeding you up, man.”

Castiel clutches the door handle. “I’ve missed you,” he echoes. He sounds broken: too naked, too sincere.

At the other side of the car, he sees Dean shiver. “Me, too,” Dean says. “God, Cas, I’ve- I can’t believe you found me. I can’t believe you’re here.”

They stare at each other across the sloped silver roof. Castiel finds it’s difficult to stop.

Finally, Dean coughs; he opens his door. “Let’s go talk,” he says, getting in.

Castiel opens his own door and climbs inside. Dean operates this vehicle with all the skill Castiel remembers, although with far less obvious pleasure. He keeps his eyes on the road, but they also flick repeatedly over to Castiel, as if Dean needs to check to make sure he is still beside him in the passenger seat. For his own part, Castiel is finding it surprisingly painful to be this near to Dean and yet to not be-touching him, he supposes. Which is ridiculous: Dean is here, after months of nothing, no Dean, no one who knew him, no one to call him Cas. It should be enough to just sit in silence with Dean by his side, and yet Castiel wants more. He wants the oh-so-human assurance of touch. And so, after his months of deprivation, he decides to indulge himself. Tentatively, anxiously, he reaches across the gear shift and lays a hand on Dean’s thigh.

At first brush Dean starts, and Castiel almost pulls away. But then Dean peels a hand off the steering wheel and moves it down to tangle his fingers with Castiel’s. Together, connected, they drive the rest of the way to the restaurant. Paradoxically, the longer he gets to have this-again, for the first time-the harder Castiel finds it to let go.

Dean has chosen a diner for them to eat at-“For old time’s sake,” he says. Castiel follows him inside in a daze: except that’s the wrong word; everything is brighter and sharper now, the colors more distinct, the spaces that he moves through no longer hazy and dreamlike. He slides into a booth across from Dean, and Dean is there, his strong hands laid out across the tabletop. Castiel reaches out and Dean opens his hand and their palms curl together, effortlessly.

Their waiter drifts by, dropping off their menus with barely more than a sideways glance, and Castiel sits and looks at Dean. His heart feels like a clock wound tight in his chest. “I’ve been stupid,” he says, “so stupid.” He has to relieve himself of this knowledge, everything that he’s allowed to happen, the chances that he missed. “I found your number months ago, I should have called you again, should have left you a message...”

Dean shakes his head. “How could you know? I called Sammy right away and he didn’t remember anything. You, I didn’t even know how to begin to look for you. And anyway I thought-” He swallows, ducks his head. “It told me-”

“Told you?” says Castiel, at which point they are of course interrupted by the waiter. Dean orders something greasy and unhealthy and surely unbefitting a medical professional, and Castiel passes back the menu he never even opened with an easy, “I’ll have what he’s having. For old time’s sake,” he tells Dean, and for a moment they just grin at each other, their confusion forgotten, Dean’s thumb running gently over Castiel’s atop the cool Formica.

Eventually Castiel regains his focus. “Who told you?” he asks. And finally, the essential question: “What happened in Detroit?”

Dean’s eyes widen. “You mean you don’t remember?”

Castiel shakes his head. “I remember the demon Crowley coming to us with information: that both Lucifer and the angels led by Zachariah were descending on Detroit in search of an ancient artifact of considerable power. We spent a long time discussing whether we should go and try to retrieve it ourselves, and then whether we should go with or without Sam. But eventually we decided that we should stick together. That we were-”

“-Stronger together than apart,” Dean finishes. His fingers loosen; his hand dropping away from Castiel’s and slithering back under the table. “Is that really the last thing you remember?”

Castiel closes his eyes. “I remember,” he says, “I remember sitting in the back of your car as we drove downtown. It was very quiet-there were very few humans. We passed under the shadow of a skyscraper-it was a skeleton, all girders and steel, without any glass-”

And that’s it. That’s the wall he’s struck up against, time and again: Dean and Sam’s faces, tilted toward the sky, driving toward what could be their deaths in a city that looked already dead.

“That’s all?” Dean asks.

“Yes,” says Castiel, watching him more closely now, less for the joy of it. “That’s all.”

“Hmm,” says Dean. Their burgers arrive and Dean starts taking his apart, putting it back together with additional ingredients: ketchup, mustard, a sprinkling of coleslaw from its little white cup. Castiel prepares his burger as he has found he likes them. Because he is hungry, he eats.

He’s still chewing his first bite when the words spill out of him: “Are you going to fill me in or not?”

Dean grins a little around a mouthful of meat. “Karmic payback, Cas. Remember all those times that I begged you for answers?”

The comparison leaves Castiel distinctly unamused.

“Sorry, sorry,” Dean says. “I’m just trying to figure out how to explain it.” He sets his burger down and wipes his fingers. “Okay, so you remember that everyone was looking for an artifact-and we didn’t know what it was?”

“Yes,” says Castiel, his frustration not eased.

“Well, Bobby was researching it and he gave us a call, said he figured it was probably this jar thing that was supposedly capable of destroying the world as we knew it.”

“Lovely,” Castiel says.

“That’s what you said the first time you heard it.” Dean grins and eats a french fry.

“But why would Lucifer want such a thing?” Castiel asks. “The Morningstar has always been stringent in his insistence that he loves the unadulterated beauty of our Father’s creation; it is humanity itself that he abhors.”

“Whoa, déjà vu.” Dean raises an eyebrow. “You said that last time, too. But then you figured that both Lucifer and Zachariah were hoping to snag the artifact and use it as something they could hold over the other side’s head. A final failsafe: ‘Kill me and I’ll take the world with me’-like a lame Bond villain or something.”

“That does sound plausible,” Castiel admits.

“I’m glad you agree with you,” says Dean. “Anyway, this didn’t change our game plan: we wanted to get our hands on it first. And somehow-because we are just that lucky and handsome-we did.”

Dean breaks off and studies Castiel’s features. “Any of this coming back to you?” he asks.

Castiel shakes his head. It’s a good story-it sounds, as he said, plausible, but he can’t connect it to the long chain of memories he does possess. Like the myriad things he knows-doesn’t remember, but knows-from Jimmy Novak’s life, he can’t make it seem like something that happened to him.

“Well, stop me if any bells start ringing.” Dean sips his Coke, then sets it aside. “Turns out it was in the basement of this old, abandoned department store. Obviously, right? Place had been shut down something like ten years. Covered in dust, discarded clothing racks and mannequins everywhere. One of which-god, I wish you remembered this, I wish he remembered this-one of which Sammy freaked out and shot in its little plastic head.” Dean shakes his own head fondly at the memory of this accidental discharge of a deadly firearm. “Good times,” he says. “Anyway, it was in what I think used to be the discount lingerie department, beneath the register, in an old shirt box.”

“Is this a joke?” Castiel asks.

“Now that’s what I said. But apparently it was giving off all kinds of mystical energy-you got super serious and tense, Cas. You made sure to be the one to open the box. And inside was- If I say Gwyneth Paltrow’s head, you’ll kill me right now, won’t you?”

Castiel sighs.

“There’s a reason I usually let Sam handle the expository stuff,” Dean protests. “It was a bunch of broken shards of clay, okay? A bunch of broken shards of clay.”

“The artifact had been destroyed?”

“That’s what I thought, too. But you said no, it was still giving off too much energy. And that’s right around when Lucifer arrived from one side and Zachariah from the other. We grabbed the box and, uh,” Dean rubs his ear, “beat a strategic retreat.”

Castiel’s smile is small but present. “You mean we hid.”

Dean admits this with a nod. “But in a dignified and manly manner! Involving a utility closet.”

At a remove, with Dean here and safe and alive to tell the tale, Castiel has to admit the situation appears to have some humor to it. “So we had our hands on a rare artifact with potential world-destroying power, and with it we became trapped in a utility closet.”

“Basically, yeah.” Dean looks a little sheepish. “And it’s not like it took them long to find us or anything. You did something to the door so they couldn’t get inside, but we were trapped. We could hear them yelling at us from outside-the usual condescending ‘surrender Dorothy’ bullcrap. But it was still pretty fucked up, because we crammed in somewhere the size of a freezer with little more than a broken mop and a bucket. It was obvious that we weren’t going to be able to hold out for very long.”

Castiel swallows. He’s beginning to be able to picture this now-to feel it, even: that tight panic, that fear. He’d forgotten how unlike the slow existential despair he’s lately been experiencing true terror is. He can’t say he misses it-or that, given the choice, he’d trade the former for the latter.

“And then they.” Dean’s hands tense on the other side of the table. All traces of humor are at once gone from his face. “They- I’m not sure which side it was, but I think it was Zachariah, that prick- Something started happening to you; through the door, through the wards, it didn’t matter, they were close enough to make it happen, and Zachariah started talking about how at least one of us was expendable...”

Castiel has no memory of this. He can read it on Dean’s face, though: the horror of that moment, what it must have been like to have to watch.

“And all this time,” Dean says-no longer playful with his narrative; he sounds anxious now just to get through it, to be done. “All this time Lucifer was talking to Sam, telling him that he knew Sam, understood him, and so he knew that anything we threatened to do with the jar was just an empty threat, that Sam didn’t want to destroy the world any more than Lucifer did.

“Meanwhile, I was still staring at the damn thing, trying to figure out how the fuck you break something that’s clearly already been broken. I started playing with the pieces. And of course,” Dean rolls his eyes, apparently at his past self, “of course I cut myself.”

“Dean,” Castiel says: it’s meant to be a rebuke, but it doesn’t come out like that at all.

“I know, all right?” Dean says. “But Sam was listening to him, and you were-you were on the ground, and I couldn’t- A piece slipped. And suddenly I saw it, I saw exactly how the damn thing worked.”

Dean takes a deep breath. Their burgers are still mostly untouched, growing cold, but Castiel can tell that they’re almost there. He feels anxious, relieved, and strangely guilty-guilty that he is, in some way, forcing Dean to fight this battle again.

“It was a kind of failsafe, I guess. A highly specialized killswitch. Put it together, and all the bad stuff-the evil shit I’ve spent my whole life hunting-it all gets sucked back inside. Poof, gone. Like it never even existed.

“Which,” Dean says with a careful tilt of his head, “I figured would be the end of us, too. I mean something like that ought to rewrite all of history, right? Step on a butterfly in the Jurassic and we all end speaking Welsh, so snuff out every demon-” A soft sigh escaped him. “Every angel. Well, we’re talking about a whole new ball game.”

Castiel nodded, very slowly.

“But I thought-” Dean hung his head. “I was tired, Cas. I was so tired. And I thought, humanity would still win. Ordinary people-mothers and fathers and kids-they’d survive. Doesn’t that sound worth it to you?”

Castiel thinks about the family he’s left behind, that he can’t save or do right by in any reality. Very quietly, he says, “Yes.”

“Déjà vu.” Dean’s voice is soft. “That’s what you said then. You and Sam. I said, I think I might have a way to end this now. And you said, Do it. You both looked me in the eye-just for a second, Cas, but I saw you, you did. And so I did.

“I ended the world,” Dean says with a hollow laugh. He hums something, then-it takes Castiel a moment to get it. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

It’s a lot to take in. Castiel is still processing, and yet he doesn’t need to spend even a second thinking about this. He reaches back across the table and touches Dean’s pinky with his own. Curls their fingers together and waits for Dean to look up, to meet his eyes again.

He says, “The world’s still here, Dean.”

After a moment Dean nods. “I know,” he says. “I know. And it’s a pretty good world. I mean, look-” With his free hand he gestures extravagantly down the length of his body. “I’m Dr. Sexy!”

Castiel can’t say what he desperately wants to say to this, so he just returns Dean’s smile.

It falls away too fast. “But I. I was the only one who remembered. Sam-” Dean pauses. “Sam’s doing great. He seems really happy. And he’s down in New York, close enough that we can see each other every couple weeks. But we’re not- We were never on the road together. We were never-” His hand meanders through the air in a gesture even it seems to realize is pointless. “He’s still my brother,” Dean says, returning his palm flat to the table. “But it isn’t the same.

“And you!” he adds with sudden force. “Where have you been all these months? Don’t tell me you’ve been wandering the country with amnesia like some character from a soap-this isn’t Days of Our Lives, you know.”

“I know,” Castiel says. “I haven’t been wandering the country. I’ve been in Pontiac, Illinois. At the Novaks’.”

Dean’s eyes widen as he tries to digest the ramifications of this statement. “But you- Did you drop back into Jimmy somehow? I called, I called to make sure. I guess I was hoping- But I talked to a man who said he was Jimmy Novak!”

Castiel’s stomach drops. “That was me,” he says, leaden. “I’m Jimmy Novak.”

He relates-much more efficiently than Dean did-what had, from his perspective, transpired.

“Okay, forget Days of Our Lives,” Dean says when he’s done, “what is this, a fucking Thomas Hardy novel?”

Castiel feels shaky with the magnitude of it all. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to make of anything anymore. I don’t even understand how I am still here-how I exist at all.”

Dean chews his lip. “Well, I guess I figured, for me and Sam and stuff-we were just too awesome for the universe to let us go.”

He gets a flicker of a smile for that.

“No, but seriously, I thought-maybe it was just easiest to keep things as close as possible to the way that they were. That’s the natural order of things-the status quo.”

“Or-” Castiel looks down at his hands: the one joined, the one alone. “Or God-” he stutters, and stops.

“Maybe,” says Dean with a generous shrug. “Maybe.”

Castiel gives him a quiet nod of thanks. “But that still doesn’t explain how I am here. Why me and not-”

But he does know. The answer’s right in front of him. He half stands, reaching out across the table. Without being asked, Dean moves into his touch and Castiel’s fingers curve gently over his shoulder. Even through the sturdy fabric of the scrub top, Castiel can tell that the skin beneath is smooth and undamaged, unmarked.

“You brought me through,” he say, wondrously. “You brought me through with you.”

Dean has risen with him; his hand comes up to rest on top of Castiel’s own. “I guess I did,” Dean says, finding Castiel’s eyes with his eyes, Castiel’s mouth with his mouth. Castiel drops his hands, braces himself against the table. It’s still there, between them, but the distance is surprisingly easy to breach.

Castiel hasn’t slept in almost forty-eight hours; he doesn’t have the strength for anything else but sleep by the time they make it back to Dean’s apartment. They collapse together on the bed: both just men, after all.

When Castiel wakes, it’s to find Dean wrapped around him, his head curled gently against the hollow of Castiel’s throat. Castiel does not react as he would wish: he starts, has to force himself to stay calm, to breathe. Spend a moment just floating in sensation to convince himself that this isn’t a dream. That it’s real.

“Dean,” he whispers. “Dean.”

Dean blinks awake, rubbing at his eyes like a little boy. His short hair is sticking up in tufts. “Mm?”

“Is this real?” Castiel asks-not entirely serious, but not entirely unserious, either.

“Seems too good to be true, huh?” Dean runs a lazy hand down Castiel’s chest, making little murmured noises of approval. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I checked. No tricksters or djinns in sight.”

Castiel has confirmed this himself, several times over, but it still good to hear Dean say it. It’s good to lie here, lie here and let somebody hold him without feeling like he has to push that person away.

And yet it will always be there, a heavy weight in his chest. “I’m not sure I deserve this,” he says.

Dean looks suddenly more alert, propping himself up on his elbow. “I thought that was my line,” he says, “and anyway, I’m bored of hearing it.”

“But I stole his life,” Castiel says. Then he makes himself say it: “Jimmy Novak. I stole from him. I practically murdered him. I abandoned his wife and daughter.”

Dean lets out a weary puff of air. “What you did of that, Cas-you did it years ago. And you were a dick then. You didn’t know any better.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.” Castiel’s response is heated.

“No, it doesn’t,” Dean admits. “Was what I did in Hell okay?” Castiel opens his mouth and Dean halts him with a physical touch of hand to lips. Castiel swats him away, but he lets Dean say his piece.

“Don’t tell me it’s different. It’s all part of the same thing: the messed-up shit we did because we were in a war, in a war where we were in way over our heads. But that’s over now, and the only thing we can do is move on. Make right what can be made right.”

Castiel nods, his chin dropping to his chest. He almost wishes Dean would lay a hand on his forehead: that he could be properly absolved.

“I have a responsibility,” he says, looking up again, his face set with a new sense of purpose. I have a responsibility to Amelia and Claire-”

“Yeah, you do,” Dean says, echoing his nod. “But you have a responsibility as yourself. You can’t be Jimmy for them. You can’t be Amelia’s husband. You can’t be Claire’s-” He stops, reconsiders, says the hard truth that Castiel has already arrived at: “Well, actually, you do kind of have to try to be Claire’s father. But we can work on that. We can figure all this stuff out.”

It’s an easy enough promise to make, Castiel knows; but then, he also knows that Dean does not make promises lightly.

“Look,” Dean says, scooching closer, “I’ve even given you the perfect excuse. You’ve obviously been closeted for a really long time-which is apparently quite a problem with you religious types.” He winks. “But then you met Dr. Sexy here- Huh? Huh?” He waits until Castiel acknowledges that yes, Dean is Dr. Sexy. “That’s right. You met me, and then you just couldn’t lie to yourself anymore. Bang! Got your garden variety sexuality crisis. It sucks, but it happens.”

It’s a convenient branch and Castiel wants to cling to it. “I will just have to tell Amelia,” he says, solemnly, “that I am no longer the man she married.”

That sits between them for a moment. It’s funny and it’s sad at the same time. And Dean gets that. He understands all of it.

“This isn’t how I ever expected it would go,” Dean says after a moment. “I’ll tell you that.”

Castiel acknowledges this statement with another nod. What he wants to tell Dean is: he still hasn’t tired of just looking at him, basking in his presence, his warmth, his smell. But it’s easier just to show Dean that, easy as they both seem content simply to lie together for a while, the occasional soft, exploratory touch for the moment at least enough.

Castiel finds his eye drawn to the cord around Dean’s neck, the little gold charm resting against his sternum that Castiel had been too tired to notice the night before. He touches it, lifts it gently with his fingertip.

“It’s the Rod of Asclepius,” Dean explains, although Castiel has already identified it as such. “Sam gave it to me. I remember-well, I don’t remember, but I know he gave it to me. Just like I know like a billion years worth of medical school stuff that I never actually learned. The poor bastard I replaced learned it.”

Castiel wonders if, despite everything Dean just said, Dean feels guilty for killing or destroying some alternate version of himself-some other Dean who grew up riding in the back of a dopey hippie van instead of a classic Impala, who spent hours slaving over medical textbooks instead of books of demon lore. He’s about to open his mouth, to attempt to cut off such thinking at its root, but Dean preempts him.

“I’m not sorry,” he says-for they do know each other so well, so very well, in this time and place as much as any other. “The world is safe and I’m alive. Sam’s happy. And you-”

“And me,” says Castiel.

“You’re going to make me breakfast,” Dean says, lying back against the pillows with a grin.

As far as Castiel’s concerned, they could feast forever on what’s right here. But they have plenty of time for that. He can believe it now, that there is a future waiting for them: not easy or uncomplicated, but rich. But real.

So he smiles lifts a brow, puts on his most angelic expression. “Doctor’s orders?” he asks.

Dean’s grin is epic. “Damn straight.”

“All right then,” Castiel says. “I’m told I make a pretty good pancake.”