DeanCasWeek2012HolidayEdition; Day 2 lets ignore the fact I’m a few days behind I got internet taken off me It’s Castiels first christmas without Dean and Sam. (angst) It’s 11:59pm and it’s Christmas Eve. There’s a small building, recently abandoned with a ‘67 Chevy Impala out the front, that won’t be driven again, because the only other person angel,but he can’t be an angel because angels aren’t meant to have human emotions like sorrow and pain and loneliness, but he does, who would drive it can’t bear to, can’t bear to look at it and can barely step foot on this property. But it’s almost Christmas, and he told them that they would spend Christmas together this year, but they never got the chance. He looks at the first headstone. “Sam Winchester” it reads and he can’t bear to read the date of death or he’ll cry, but he’s not meant to cry because that shows humanity and he is not a human, he can’t be, but he’s sure he is. Then the next headstone. It’s a fresher grave, buried in just a few days ago and Cas knows that it’s all his fault. Why why why did you have to have that argument that lead to him rushing into his hunt, unprepared, ambushed and hidden from you because of those stupid marks you left on his ribs. “Dean Winchester” it reads and Cas breaks down sobbing before he can read the rest. He drops to the floor and his trench coat crumples around his shaking body, engulfing him like the sorrow he’s been carrying around for days. He tried to bring him back, to tell him what he started to say before the argument erupted and he had stormed out, but he couldn’t. It was Fate, finally getting the people she had wanted after all this time. And there was so much blood, Castiel never learnt what it was that had killed Dean Winchester, but he had eventually found him, lying there on the concrete floor bleeding out and he had rushed over and held Dean while he died. “I can heal this if you relax Dean!” Cas had yelled “I don’t want you to heal this. I’m ready to die now. Let me.” Dean had said, his voice airy and weak and Cas had hugged his dying friend, and placed two lips on his forehead. So as Cas regained his composure and sat on the grass between his two friends and took a deep breath. “Merry Christmas guys.” - He was gone the next morning, never heard from or seen for weeks. Left on Deans grave was a piece of paper “I guess you knew, by the end you had to. If not, know that I love you, and that I’m coming to join you”. Three days later Castiel summoned an angel, he couldn’t remember their name but he knew that he had pissed them off one time, and asked him to kill him. Three weeks and four days later they found the body, in the old house with the ‘67 Chevy Impala out the front, angel wings burnt onto the wooden floor.
I'd just like to thank everyone for all the amazing response to this celebration. So many wonderful works came out of this, I could not have asked for better feedback.
There are still some posts left on the queue, but after this I will not be posting anything more from the tag. The winner of the give away will be announced tonight over at my personal Tumblr.
Thank you all so much again, remember for tune in for Castiel's return next Friday!
a little some thing I wrote for Destiel week that has been in my mind for a while https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HqsbzQVJnitSUhNG6Px8C6aO1QvdEqeZpOmyhZsstbQ/edit
Plenty of people were treating the Croats like zombies, but Dean thought of them as insects. Way too many of them, hiding in places you least expected them, and multiplying faster than you could easily get rid of them. When you got infected and you got mean. It didn’t matter who you were before, because once it took you over, you were little more than a rabid dog. He’d seen mothers bashing in the heads of infants, daughters taking down fathers, pastors ripping their congregation limb from limb. It was damn messy.
Any attempt to stop it at the source had been ruined when something went wrong the night they went to Niveus. They had the bombs, the guns, the manpower. But there had been too many demons and Croats surrounding the place and they had barely managed to get out alive, let alone detonate the explosives. Something backfired. Sammy had downed all of that demon blood, for what? Maybe it had been fear that kept Sam from acting. His brother just froze. Cas nearly got his head taken off when Sam apparently forgot how to choke the demons out of the people they were riding. Dean had to make the difficult decision to pull back.
The vaccine had gone out. Hundreds of thousands had been infected.
All they could really do after that was cross their fingers, wait out the worst of it, and clean up the mess. Maybe it was because Crowley had never intended on playing fair in the first place, but he didn’t break the contact he had over Bobby’s soul like he said he would. The only good that came out of the deal was that the old guy could walk again. Dean supposed that was worth something, even if it was idiotic to have given himself a ten year expiration date.
At this point, though, any of them would have been lucky to survive for ten more years. The virus went from a localized problem to a worldwide epidemic. He used to ignore those dumb bastards on the street corners with their “End Is Nigh” signs, but those dumb bastards were getting the last laugh now. The ones who hadn’t already been turned, at least.
It just went from bad to worse. Barricading themselves into Bobby’s house had seemed like a good plan, but they were restless.
“It’s my fault. If I had just been able to do something,” Sam said for what felt like the hundredth time in the past month. It was starting to wear on Dean’s patience.
“Just shut up, Sammy. Okay? Just…” The older Winchester sighed and glared down at the gun he was cleaning, unable to look his brother in the face. “Just let it go. It’s done.”
“I have to take responsibility for this, Dean. It’s all on me. I know it, you know. There’s gotta be some way to go back. Rewind it or – or something. I mean, shit, Cas took us back to the seventies. There’s gotta be something I can do.”
“If I could be of any help at all, I promise you that I would,” Castiel mumbled from where he lay outstretched on the couch, his suit and trench coat exchanged for a loose pair of jeans and a t-shirt he had borrowed from the stash of clothing that Dean kept in the guest room upstairs. He looked smaller in the street clothes. Weaker.
But he was weaker. Whatever he had done back in California, it had zapped the last of his Grace. Cas was as good as human now. He had to sleep, he had to eat, and he could be injured. That much had become clear from the broken wrist he was still nursing from the Niveus incident. Someone was going to teach him how to do all those little things that normal people took for granted. Like how to shave and how to microwave a frozen burrito. Dean supposed that was going to fall on his shoulders for, well, a few reasons. First and foremost because Cas was his friend and he felt responsible for the man.
Secondly, a month into their self-imposed exile, Sam left. Without a word, without warning, without so much as a goodbye Sammy took one of Bobby’s rust bucket junkyard cars and he drove himself to Detroit to give himself to Lucifer. It was Crowley who brought the news.
“Tip top job you did keeping a leash on that idiot brother of yours, Dean,” he had said without any preamble as he appeared in the middle of the living room. The green eyed man had startled, staring up at Crowley. The demon’s voice was tight, his eyes flashing between fear and anger. “Hope you like your hides chargrilled because Lucifer isn’t fucking around anymore, boys. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find a very dark cave and hope that he’s more interested in using your eyeballs for marbles than he is in reprimanding me. Cheers.”
“Does that mean that Sam…?” Cas had started to ask as he looked to Bobby.
The older man was sitting in his wheel chair near the couch, going through a pile of old books that had been piled up on the coffee table. Trying to find a solution. It was Bobby’s belief that if you just looked hard enough, you could right any wrong. Dean didn’t know if the fallen angel finished his thought or not, because his feet were moving before he was even aware that he had stood. The chair he had been using toppled, clattering against the hardwood floor.
It wasn’t smart and it wasn’t safe but he broke the salt line as he threw the bolts on the front door and walked out, leaving it hanging open. They had been locked in the ramshackle little house for a month. A whole month. He had been starting to go stir crazy and now this?
Sammy… That fucking idiot.
As his eyes began to burn, he drew a sharp breath of thick, stagnant summer air while he lost himself in the maze of stacked cars and scrap. It had rained a few nights before and now as the sun shined down, Dean could smell the sharp, earthy tang of the rust that was slowly undoing every last piece of metal in the junk yard. Rust had a heady sort of smell to it, not unlike dried blood. Same color too. Strange coincidences. Dean’s head was spinning and he felt a distinct need to sit down. Cas had followed him, though, and the last person he wanted to look weak in front of was the damn angel who had given up every last bit of what was good inside of him to fight a losing battle.
He heard the blue eyed man take a breath, but before Castiel could make any attempt at comforting the hunter – or potentially reprimanding him for letting all of this happen – Dean shook his head and turned to face him.
“Don’t.” Dean snapped. “Say it. You say a word. One damn word. And I swear to God…”
. . . .
They had left Bobby’s house after that. It had been a difficult choice, but they couldn’t stay holed up forever. Some of the old hunter’s contacts had told him about a place called Camp Chitaqua. A place where other hunters were gathering together. Safety in numbers. It was the best choice they had, so they took it.
Unfortunately supplies were hard to come by. As the number of people at the camp grew, so did the need to go out and find certain things. Canned food. Toothpaste. Toilet paper. Who knew that one day Dean would have gladly gone a day without food if it meant he could get his hands on some real soap instead of the boiled fat-and-lye shit that one of the women in camp had learned how to make. It may have gotten you clean but it always left him feeling like he’d just scrubbed himself down with a slab of pork.
It was a long trip back, but there was one place they knew they would be able to find what they needed. At least the virus struck in a way that didn’t leave the roads jammed with forgotten cars. Most people got hit in their beds. Or at work. Or walking the dog. The highways were actually eerily empty.
So he, Bobby, and Cas piled into the van. Castiel was there mostly for back up, to watch his back. He was the only one that Dean really trusted to be able to do that job. He had tried to insist that Bobby stay behind, but the gruff old hunter had just give Dean a look.
“Probly gonna be the last time I ever get to see the place,” he grumbled. “Let me have that at least, will ya? I’ll try not to let the wheels slow ya down.”
Dean was less prepared to return than he had expected. While Bobby was rolling around, gathering what he could upstairs, the green eyed man had gone down into the panic room, throwing everything he could find into a canvas duffel bag. He stopped short when he saw Sam’s laptop bag, half hidden beneath he creaky old army cot against the wall. He’d started sleeping in the lead lined room before he just up and left. Like it would protect him.
Or protect the rest of them from him.
“Everything alright?”
It was practically like old times, the scruffy fallen angel sneaking up behind him.
Meeting Castiel’s gaze was a challenge. The moment that he did, he looked away again. He couldn’t stand the sympathy there. Cas didn’t realize that he was the last person who should have been feeling pity for anyone but himself. Dean wanted to laugh. He wanted to destroy something He wanted it to just be fucking over already. It was impossible for him to do anything right. For the past few months, since Sammy left, he had been all but ignoring his friend and Cas hadn’t said a damn thing about it, but Dean knew it bothered him.
The other hunters in camp had found the idea of a fallen angel amusing. Most of them had never seen an angel before, period, so having one who was no better off than they were seemed to amuse even the worst of them. They called it just trying to be friends when they got him to start drinking. Smoking. Doing drugs. And who even knew whose bed he was sharing one night to the next any more?
Cas didn’t fucking know any better. He couldn’t see that he was dealing with people who didn’t want to be his friends. They wanted to tear him down. Because what was more poetic than some poor sap of an angel giving into every temptation under the sun as they all sat back and watched the world burn?
Dean knew he should have done something, but he ruined everything he touched.
“Sam’s dead, Cas.” He said it like it was a new revelation. But his brother had been gone for nearly half a year now. Dean refused to admit that Sammy was alive somewhere, being worn like a cheap suit by the Lucifer. No. There was no more Sam.
“You know that’s not -” Castiel started.
His voice betrayed him, he was shouting now, the angry bite of it filling the lead lined bunker. “He’s dead and gone! You hear me?”
“But Dean...” The burnt out angel looked worried. Genuine concern in his voice. “We still have a chance. We already have three of the rings. Death is the only one we need.”
“It’s not that easy, Cas.” Exasperation. Pain. Refusal. “We can’t just…”
There was a sudden, loud crash that came from upstairs. Dean swore under his breath and both men ran, scrambling toward the stairs. There were low, impatient voices – but Cas wasn’t well trained enough to notice the details. He had beaten Dean up to the first floor and he was the first one to encounter the intruders.
Croats.
Wait. No. They had guns. Not Croats.
Scavengers. Those assholes who took advantage of other people’s planning. They took to killing survivors and pillaging supplies instead of stocking up their own. They must have seen the salvage yard and figured they had hit a treasure trove. They had just need in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wouldn’t have been a problem but Bobby was in the living room and practically helpless. He didn’t even have a gun on him.
It all happened so fast.
“Stop!” Dean heard Cas shout as he rounded the corner at the top of the stairs and burst into the living room, fumbling to reach the pistol that was haphazardly stashed the back of his jeans. But the cry was followed by a trio of gunshots, a muffled groan, and a thud. Dean’s heart leapt into his throat, blood rushing in his ears. No… He had already lost his brother. He couldn’t lose Cas too.
…But it wasn’t Cas.
The thud had been. The man was knocked out cold, crumpled on the ground with a wide gash on his forehead from where he had taken the butt of one of the scavenger’s guns to the face. When Castiel had suddenly appeared from downstairs, it must have made the second man nervous enough to just start shooting instead of bothering to keep Bobby around long enough to ask where the good stuff was. Three rounds had torn through the graying hunter’s chest and left him slumped forward in his wheelchair as blood quickly darkened his plaid shirt.
No last words. No tearful good bye.
Bobby was dead.
. . . .
Dean couldn’t remember how he had done it. One moment he was looking at the man who had been more of a father to him than John had ever been, and the next he wasn’t connected to himself any longer. When he came to, he was sitting on the front steps of the house, aching all over like he had over exerted himself, blood on his hands and the scavenger’s gun lying beside him. Whatever he had done, it must have worked. He would have been dead otherwise.
Not that he felt alive right now. He felt disconnected.
“Shit… Dean. What did you do?”
Cas had stumbled out of the doorway, clutching a dish towel to his bleeding forehead. Looking back toward the house, toward where the hunter knew Bobby was quickly going cold, Dean scowled and stood. Maybe it was his fault that he had started to ignore Cas and hadn’t given him the proper training. He shouldn’t have let him slack off so much. Castiel didn’t have time for booze and pills when he hardly knew the right way to point a damn gun. If he had just thought to stop and figure out a way to take out the scavengers before bulldozing into the room…
Bobby would still be alive.
Letting out a soft, bemused breath the hunter reached out as if to put his hand on Castiel’s shoulder. Instead, rough fingers grasped the other man’s shirt collar, dragging him off balance. As he stared Cas, he could see himself reflected in the angel’s eyes – a creature constructed of pure rage. The bastard didn’t even have the good sense to flinch.
Dean couldn’t take it. Someone looking at him like he still knew what the fuck he was doing. Everything was instinct and look where it had landed them. Sam gone. Bobby dead. The whole goddamn world falling apart. Shoving Cas roughly against the old, faded siding of the house Dean’s words were almost inaudible.
“This is your fault. All of it. You and all those other winged assholes. I thought you were different, Cas. I thought you fucking cared. When we get back to camp, just stay the hell away from me. You hear me? I’m done with this. I don’t need some angel on my shoulder who can’t even keep his friends alive.”
For his part, Castiel was stunned into silence, not fighting the uncomfortable way that Dean had rammed him into the wall. All he could manage was to look surprised. Hurt. Cas dropped his eyes, pursing his lips and nodding shortly.
Angels didn’t need to sleep, but Castiel didn’t mind that Dean needed to.
The green eyed man became increasingly agitated the longer that he went without it. Too many long hours on the road, a case that went on a few more days than expected. It actually didn’t take that much to exhaust the hunter. No amount of coffee or energy drinks could make up for unconscious oblivion.
Dust motes danced through the small, warm space, floating on stale air. Dean had forgotten to close the thick, dark curtains which allowed the sunlight to spill in from beyond the window. It was softened, however, by the gauzy layer that had been pulled to provide a rudimentary sense of privacy. Something that was hard to come by in this cheap, rented room with its well-worn bed and thin carpet.
When Castiel moved to sit on the far edge of the bed, old springs creaked in protest. Dean made a quiet, nonsensical sound as he shifted, rolling onto his back and flinging one hand up alongside his head on the pillow. The angel hesitated before slowly settling, ignoring the lumpy sensation of the mattress beneath him. Looking toward the hunter, he narrowed his blue eyes slightly.
The sunlight has spilled across the plane of Dean’s face when he turned onto his back, clinging to the mused spikes of his light brown hair and turning his long eye lashes into tiny flecks of gold filament. It brightened the sleek bridge of his nose, highlighted the angles of his face… Castiel realized that he had begun leaning in toward the hunter, staring, his lips parted in silent wonder as he hovered closer to Dean than was strictly necessary.
The angel swallowed, pulling back faster than he should have. The bed groaned loudly and Dean woke with a start, shifting and rolling, rubbing at his eyes and then turning to look toward Castiel who had turned away to face the window, an unfamiliar warmth rising into his face.
Composing himself, he slowly turned to look toward the hunter.
When he first walked in, Cas wondered if he was higher than he had previously suspected.
His current stash had been growing a little closer to the trash heap than he would have liked and given the sort of shit that soaked into the ground water in this place, it could have affected the plants. Tainted weed or not, though, he could feel it. The man standing in his doorway had the beaten down yet still strangely hopeful nature that had made him so damn attractive in the first place.
Dean.
His Dean.
Not Fearless Leader.
He had been trying unsuccessfully for longer than he wanted to admit to stop caring about the man who used to be Dean Winchester. After he lost Sam, he simply wasn’t the same person. He seemed to survive on alcohol and stimulants, sleeping only when his body couldn’t take the stress any more. He had beaten how to be a hunter into Cas in more ways than one. The former angel had become little more than a punching bag for Fearless Leader’s frustrations.
So seeing the genuine article here in front of him drove the air from his lungs. All he could do was smile and turn away, inexplicably self-conscious that Dean was seeing him like this. Burnt out, washed out, faithless, and smelling like the inside of a bong.
He used to be something.
He used to matter.
It was an impossible situation. One that seemed tailored perfectly to break him. Forgetting completely about the girls who had just left, he just had to stop and stare. He used to think that the man was stubborn, difficult for the sake of being difficult, and ignorant of the reality of the world. Maybe Dean was ignorant, but it had made him soft.
Not bad soft.
Not can’t throw a punch soft. Because God knew the man had an angry right hook that could knock anyone but an angel flat on their ass.
Just… innocent.
It was a strange thing to think about a man like Dean, but compared to who he had become, he was. Innocent. A good man. A righteous man. A man who cared about the safety and wellbeing of others more than he ever cared about himself. A man who taught him about freedom and emotion and that he had the right to choose his destiny.
A man who he had loved, against his better judgment.
Cas found himself wondering… Would telling Dean any of that have made a difference? Or would they have still ended up here, hating each other, using each other, working under the dilution that the other could have done something to save the world just one more time?
sorry it’s so short, i just wanted it posted for destiel week! i’m actually really nervous because there are so many incredible vidders in this fandom, but i hope you guys enjoy this anyways!
Hell wasn’t really the way that most people described it. Ask a kid to draw a picture of Hell and you’ll give some flames, a couple of spindly demons, maybe even a pitch fork or two. That wasn’t Dean’s vision of Hell – not even close. They must have gone through an awful lot of trouble to tailor torment to each specific damned soul, or maybe he was just special enough to get the white glove treatment. Funny. Nobody had ever given him any special treatment until now. Hell must have had a real soft spot for his troublesome ass.
Or a sadistic streak. Whatever. It was all the same in the end, wasn’t it?
In a word, Hell was cold. And empty. Crushingly, horrifyingly empty. Time didn’t work right down there but they kept him up in the middle of that nothing for what felt like forever. They let him scream himself hoarse, let him bleed out as he struggled against the chains that bit into his flesh. It was impossible to remember that what was being tortured wasn’t his body – his physical body was buried six feet under in the middle of a aspen copse where Sam had left it. It all felt real.
