S16 E01: The Empty Chair
SERIES MASTERLIST
divider by @talesmaniac89
Summary: Dean’s obsession with a series of unusual radio frequencies leads him to a ritual that require the soul of a Primordial Being. Sam worries that Dean is chasing a ghost, distraught after Castiel’s death.
The bunker was different now. The overhead lights were dimmed, casting long, sharp shadows across the Great Hall. The usual clutter of lore books and half-eaten burgers was gone, replaced by a haunting, sterile tidiness.
Sam Winchester sat at the map table. He looked healthy—physically. He was wearing a clean flannel, his hair tied back, and a laptop was open in front of him. But his eyes were only tracking the rhythmic, low-frequency thrum coming from the hallway.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
Sam sighed, closed his laptop, and rubbed his face. He looked at the greasy hamburger sitting on the table across from an empty chair.
He called out quietly, "Dean. Food’s getting cold."
No response. Just the thump of the ball.
Louder, he said, "It's bacon cheeseburger!"
Nothing.
Now, Sam was really worried. First, Dean didn't call the bunker his Batcave for a week, then, he refused to look at his baby (aka that rusted Impala), and now? Denying a bacon cheeseburger?
Something was terribly wrong.
Sam got up and walked towards the source; Dean's bedroom. As he moved down the corridor, his footsteps echoed on the cold linoleum. When he reached closer, however, he slammed his hands to his ears, wincing.
"The autumn moon lights my way..."
The song had been completely desecrated. Drunk, slurred lyrics were being sung in the most untuneful manner Sam had ever heard.
"For now I smell the rain"
When he entered, Sam nearly gagged at the smell of stale beer. Was that...oh god, was that a rat in the corner of the room? The room was a chaotic contrast to the rest of the Bunker. It looked like a conspiracy theorist’s basement. Dozens of old Shortwave Radios, CB units, and Men of Letters frequencies-scanners were stacked on top of each other, wired together with a rat’s nest of cables. And scattered all across the room? Stinking old clothes and paper cups.
Dean Winchester was hunched over his workbench, sitting in a swivel chair as he stared at an oscilloscope. He looked... rough, to say the least. He was wearing a threadbare black t-shirt (which was no longer black, having been stained with some mysterious white powder) and an old brown overshirt. Definitely not washed for a week. The noise was coming as he tossed a baseball against the metal casing of a 1940s transmitter.
THUMP. CATCH. THUMP. CATCH.
"Dean," Sam said softly.
Dean didn't turn, although the singing stops. Small mercy. "Found a new signal, Sammy. It’s coming from the Pacific Northwest. Low-band. It’s pulsing in a prime number sequence. Can you believe that?" He scoffs.
"It’s 4:00 AM," Sam countered, stepping further into the room. He looked at the walls. Dean had pinned up dozens of transcriptions: strings of numbers, Enochian symbols, and grainy photos of celestial maps. "You haven't slept in three days. You’re chasing ghosts."
"I'm chasing him," Dean snapped, finally turning around.
The sight of his brother made Sam’s heart sink. Dean’s eyes were bloodshot, the skin beneath them bruised with purple shadows. He looked like he’d aged five years in three weeks, especially with the beard on his face.
Leaning against the doorway, Sam tried to change the topic, "You know, I checked the news in Lebanon. They’re calling it the 'Great Quiet.' No omens, no weird weather, no freak lightning strikes."
Dean stared at him, but didn't respond.Taking a seat besides his brother, the younger Winchester continued, "It’s been three weeks, Dean. The world is... it’s just the world!"
Dean turned his head back to the instruments. His voice was gruff. "The world’s a big place, Sammy. Lots of corners for him to hide in."
Sam had had enough. If Dean kept going, he'd kill himself. "Things are hiding? Or you’re looking for things that aren't there?"
Dean stopped the ball mid-air. He turned slowly, and Sam wished he'd been slightly less harsh. "I’m hearing it, Sam." His voice was filled with an almost maniacal hope, and Sam felt terrible breaking it.
Gentler, he continued, "Hearing what? Static? We’ve been over this. With Chuck gone, the frequency of the universe shifted. Angel Radio is off the air. Forever."
Dean points towards a monitor on his right, with deep blue and red spikes. "Not all of it. Look at the wavelength. See that spike? Every night, 3:00 AM. It’s a 10-hertz pulse. It’s not atmospheric. It’s... it’s rhythmic."
"Dean... it’s probably a pulsar. Or a faulty transformer in town."
He didn't like that. "It’s Enochian Morse, Sammy! Or it’s close. I just know!" His voice was loud.
Cas is gone, Dean," Sam said, his voice cracking. "Jack said he’s at peace. He’s in the Empty. There’s no signal that reaches that far."
"Jack’s a kid with the power of the sun and the emotional intelligence of a toaster," Dean growled, shoving a stack of books off the table to make room for an ancient, leather-bound folio. "And Cas? Cas doesn't do 'peace.' He’s probably down there kicking the Shadow’s ass or being bored to death. Either way, he’s not supposed to be there."
Dean pointed a trembling finger at the folio. On the yellowed pages, scrawled on with dark ink were the words, The Ritual of the First Breath. Faint geometric patterns lined the pages, and a hauntingly beautiful drawing of a body being split open was there.
"I found this in the restricted stacks," Dean said, his voice dropping to a feverish whisper. "The Men of Letters thought it was a myth. It’s a way to pierce the Veil. To reach in and pull something back."
Sam leaned in, reading the jagged, ancient script. His eyes widened. "Dean... this requires the soul of a Primordial Being. You’re talking about an entity that predates the Archangels. There aren't any left. They died out long, long ago."
"Not all of them," Dean said, his jaw setting in that stubborn, dangerous line Sam knew all too well. "There’s a town in Oregon called Blackwood. People are disappearing. But it’s not just people. The town’s history is literally being erased. Libraries are losing books. People are forgetting their own names. It’s an Echo : a Primordial that’s starving. It’s eating the reality around it." He gestured towards a page from their father's diary.
"And you want to kill it," Sam guessed. Because, of course.
"I want to harvest it," Dean corrected. "I use its essence as a tether. I drop a line in, I hook Cas, and I haul him up. It’s a simple catch-and-release, Sam."
"There is nothing 'simple' about harvesting a pre-biblical entity!" Sam shouted, losing his cool. "You’re talking about tearing a hole in reality! What if you bring back something else? What if you break the world right after we finally got it back?"
Dean stepped into Sam’s space, his breath smelling of bitter coffee and beer. "The world is fine, Sammy. It’s great. It’s sunny and people are eating brunch and nobody’s being turned into salt. But he’s not here. And I’m not... I’m not doing this 'peace' thing without him."
"Look, I... how do I say this? There's the North Star, right? In the sky?" Dean's arms moved with his words, trying to reenact the galaxy. "And you need it for moving around, navigation. So, Cas was my North Star."
"And now you're like a smashed compass? Needle spinning aimlessly?"
Dean paused, giving Sam a dirty look. "Not what I was going to say but it's much more poetic sounding. And... I didn't say it back, Sam."
"He knew, Dean," Sam said gently. "You didn't have to say it for him to know."
"Doesn't matter," Dean whispered, turning back to his radios. "I’m saying it now. I’m saying it with every scrap of lore I can find. I’m going to Oregon. You can stay here and enjoy the peace, or you can get in the car."
Sam looked at the empty chair in the corner of the room, the one Cas used to sit in when he’d watch Dean work.
"Give me twenty minutes," Sam sighed. "I need to pack. And Dean?"
Dean paused, his hand on a dial.
"We do this right. No suicide moves. If it gets sideways, we pull out."
Dean didn't promise. He just nodded, his eyes fixed on the oscilloscope where a tiny light flickered in the dark; a heartbeat in the static.
"Yeah. Sure. Just get the coffee, Sam. We’ve got a long drive."
Ten minutes later, the roar of the Impala broke the silence of the Kansas night, a defiant scream against the emptiness of a world that was far too quiet.
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The drive to Oregon was a grueling thirty-six-hour stretch of asphalt and caffeine. Usually, the Impala was a place of sanctuary, Dean's favourite place to be. But now, the air inside the cabin felt thin. Sam sat in the passenger seat, watching the blurred tree-line of the interstate, while Dean gripped the wheel as if he were trying to physically assault it.
The music wasn't right either. Dean hadn't touched his tapes- no Led Zeppelin or AC/DC today. Instead, he kept the radio tuned to the static between stations, his head tilted slightly, listening for that rhythmic 10-hertz pulse.
"You need to sleep, Dean. I can take a shift," Sam insisted as they crossed the border into Oregon.
"I’m fine," Dean snapped. His voice was gravelly, worn down to the bone. "We’re close. Blackwood is just over the next ridge. Feel that?"
Sam frowned. He did feel something. It wasn't the usual cold chill of a ghost or the sulfurous heaviness of a demon. It was a sensation of lightness, but not the good kind. It felt like the world was losing its density, like the gravity in the car was failing just enough to make his stomach float. Like the feeling you got when you felt like the roller coaster would crash.
"Yeah, see? So, let me drive Samantha, and you work your witchcraft with those spells."
Sam rolled his eyes, flipping through the spell. Most of it was easy enough. Until you came to the harvesting part. One wrong move and Oregon would be Ore-gone.
But there was no pressure at all.
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They pulled into Blackwood at dawn. On the surface, it looked like a postcard-perfect Pacific Northwest town—moss-covered brick buildings, a quiet main street, and a dense curtain of Douglas firs. But as they drove deeper, the anomalies became impossible to ignore.
A street sign stood on a corner, but the metal was blank—not painted over, but simply smooth, as if the letters had never existed. A local diner had a "Closed" sign in the window, but half of the building’s western wall seemed to be fading into a grey mist, the bricks becoming translucent.
"Look at that," Sam whispered, pointing to a park bench where a woman sat reading a newspaper. As they watched, the newspaper turned white, the ink vanishing line by line until she was holding a blank sheet of paper. She didn't seem to notice; she just kept turning the pages.
"It’s eating the information," Dean said, pulling the Impala to a stop. "The Echo. It’s not just killing people, Sam. It’s un-writing them."
They hopped out, the soles of their boots hitting the pavement with a hollow, ringing sound. Dean went straight to the trunk, his movements practiced and frantic. He bypassed the salt and the silver, reaching instead for a lead-lined box tucked under the spare tire. Inside was a Soul-Trap—an intricate brass sphere covered in Enochian engravings, something he’d modified with Men of Letters tech.
"Dean, wait," Sam grabbed his arm. "Look at the people."
The few locals wandering the street moved like sleepwalkers. They weren't possessed, but they were hollow. A man walked his dog, but when Sam looked closer, there was no leash and no dog—just a man holding his hand in a specific shape, walking a ghost.
"They’re losing their anchors," Sam said, his heart aching. "If we harvest this thing, we might be taking the only thing holding this town together."
"This town is a buffet, Sam! The Echo is the one eating them!" Dean shouted, his voice echoing too loudly in the thinning air. "If I trap it, the 'eating' stops. We save the town, we get the tether, we get Cas. It’s a win-win-win."
"Win-win-win? You just made that up," Sam said flatly.
"Doesn't make it less true." Dean slammed the trunk shut with more force than necessary, the sound echoing weirdly in the too-quiet morning air. Sam flinched. Even the birds had stopped singing.
Sam caught up to him as he strode toward the diner. "Dean, listen to me. If we trap this thing wrong, the whole town collapses. And we don't even know if the ritual works. The Men of Letters called it a myth for a reason."
Dean yanked his arm free. "The Men of Letters also thought ghosts were just 'residual psychic energy' and that vampires could be cured with essential oils. They were idiots in tweed, Sam. I'm not asking for permission."
He pushed open the diner door. A little bell jingled overhead, the sound tinny and wrong.
The diner was empty, as if no one had visited in weeks. The chairs were bolted to the floor, the tables pristine, the napkin dispensers full. A half-eaten plate of eggs sat on the counter, the food slowly turning transparent, the plate underneath beginning to show through the food.
Dean walked past it without looking. His eyes were fixed on the back wall, where a giant map of Oregon was pinned up. He pulled out his phone, comparing it to a set of coordinates he'd scrawled on his hand.
"The Echo's nest," Dean said. "It's not a building. It's a frequency. The heart of the town. The old church." He pointed to a spot on the map where the paper was already beginning to fade.
Sam stared at the map. The ink was literally bleeding out of the paper, the lines dissolving like sugar in water. "The church is literally being erased, Dean. We're running out of time."
"Then stop talking and start moving."
They drove up a winding gravel road, the Impala's engine coughing and sputtering as if the air itself was getting harder to breathe. The trees on either side were completely wrong, their bark was smooth and featureless, like they'd been sanded down. The leaves were all the same shade of green, too uniform.
Dean killed the engine a hundred yards from the church. The building sat at the top of a hill, a simple white clapboard structure with a single steeple. Like a stock photo of a church.
"Okay," Dean said, grabbing the lead-lined box from the back seat. "Here's the plan. I go in, I find the Echo, I trap it. You stay here and—"
"No."
Dean turned. Sam had his arms crossed, his jaw set in that stubborn line that meant he wasn't budging.
"Excuse me?"
"I said no, Dean." Sam stepped out of the car, grabbing his own bag of supplies. "We've done this dance before. You go in half-cocked, you almost die, I have to save you, we have a big emotional talk about feelings that we both pretend never happened. I'm skipping to the part where we do this together."
Dean opened his mouth to argue, but Sam cut him off.
"Cas is my friend too, Dean. He's my family. And I'm not letting you do this alone."
For a moment, Dean's mask slipped. The manic energy faded, and Sam saw the grief underneath. The exhaustion. The desperate, clawing hope.
Then the mask snapped back into place.
"Fine," Dean said gruffly. "But if I say run, you run. None of your heroics or bullshit magic, bitch."
"You just described literally every hunt we've ever been on, jerk."
"I know. I'm trying to sound cool."
Sam rolled his eyes and followed his brother up the hill.
The church was not a church on the inside. No pews, no altar, no stained glass. Just a hollow shell of a building, the walls slowly turning transparent, the floor starting to feel like walking on marshmallows.
In the center of the room, hovering three feet off the ground, was a sphere of shimmering darkness. It pulsed slowly, a heartbeat in the darkness. As it pulsed, the walls flickered, pieces of reality sloughing off like dead skin.
"Okay," Dean breathed. "That's not terrifying at all."
The sphere pulsed again, and Sam felt a wave of nausea wash over him. His vision blurred. For a moment, he couldn't remember his own name. He couldn't remember why he was there.
"Sam!" Dean grabbed his arm, shaking him. "Sammy, stay with me!"
Sam blinked, the fog clearing. "It's… it's doing something. It's eating my thoughts, I think. I can't... I don't know."
"Yeah, that's the Echo." Sam looked up, confused at Dean's tone. When had he become so interested in proper research?
Meanwhile, Dean was already pulling out the Soul-Trap, the brass sphere humming with faint angelic energy. "Jack gave me a little boost before he went back to Heaven. Said it might help. Called it a 'parting gift.' Real dramatic, I know."
"You saw Jack?" Sam turned to his brother. "WHEN?"
"Couple weeks ago. He was having a rough time, all that 'loneliness of God' stuff. I told him to deal with it like the rest of us: whiskey and beer."
Sam snatched it and started chanting under his breath, the Enochian words falling from his lips like a prayer. He hoped his reading was good enough.
The Echo pulsed faster. The walls began to dissolve entirely, showing nothing but grey void beyond.
"Sammy, it's waking up! Hurry up!"
"I noticed!" Sam kept chanting, his hands steady on the Soul-Trap. The brass sphere began to glow, golden light spilling from its engravings.
The Echo surged forward, a tendril of darkness lashing out toward Sam, trying to stop him. He dove to the side, rolling across the dissolving floor, hand tight around the sphere. The tendril hit the ground, and the floor vanished, revealing a bottomless void.
"Dean, the binding circle! Now!"
Dean dropped to his knees, pulling a piece of chalk from his bag. He started drawing the intricate Enochian symbols on what remained of the floor, his hand shaking. The Echo was screaming—a sound that wasn't a sound, a pressure in his skull that made his nose bleed.
"Almost… almost…" Dean finished the last symbol, then grabbed the Soul-Trap from Sam. "Now?"
"Now!"
Dean slammed the Soul-Trap into the center of the binding circle. Golden light erupted, a shockwave that threw both brothers against the walls. The Echo shrieked, a sound like reality tearing, and then it was pulled into the brass sphere like water down a drain.
The darkness vanished, and the walls solidified again. It was like a veil was being lifted, suddenly, the crystal windows and wooden altars were back in sight, shimmering.
Dean lay on the ground, gasping for breath. "Did we… did we get it?"
Sam looked at the Soul-Trap. It was glowing with an angry, pulsing light, tendrils of darkness writhing against the brass.
"Yeah," Sam breathed. "We got it."
Dean started laughing. It was a broken, hysterical sound, relief and exhaustion and something that might have been joy.
"Good," Dean said, pushing himself to his feet. "Now get my baby. We've got a resurrection to perform."
The Impala was parked in a clearing deep in the woods. A full moon hung overhead, the only light in the black sky. Dean had drawn the ritual circle on the forest floor, using salt and holy water and his own blood, the Enochian symbols glowing faintly in the darkness.
The Soul-Trap sat in the center, pulsing angrily.
Sam stood at the edge of the circle, a shotgun in his hands loaded with rock salt. Just in case. "Dean, if this goes wrong…"
"It won't."
"Dean. You don't know magic. Let me do it instead, please."
Dean turned, and Sam was struck by how calm his brother looked. For the first time in weeks, Dean wasn't manic or desperate.
"I've got this, Sam. I've been ready for this all these weeks. I read that goddamn spell book again and again just in case, just in case, there was some chance."
Sam shook his head. "That's what I'm afraid of."
Dean smiled, probably the first real smile Sam had seen in weeks. "Then don't watch."
He stepped into the circle. The Enochian symbols flared to life, golden light washing over him.
Dean began to chant in Enochian, his voice steady and strong. "I call upon the First Breath. I call upon the Echo of Creation. I open a door that should not be opened."
The Soul-Trap exploded. The darkness inside it burst free, rising into the air, forming a vortex. Sam grabbed a nearby trunk to steady himself, from the howling wind and the shaking trees.
"I seek what was taken. I seek what was lost. I claim a soul that is not mine, but belongs to the world."
The vortex began to rotate faster. Sam could feel it, a presence on the other side. Something ancient and hungry, that did not seem very happy. But Dean wasn't reaching for the Echo. He was reaching past it.
"I summon Castiel!" Dean shouted, his voice breaking. "My best friend. My family. My… my…"
The vortex exploded. A blast of white light burst outward, and Sam was thrown backward. He hit a tree, the wind knocked out of him.
And then, silence.
Sam pushed himself to his feet, his ears ringing. The clearing was destroyed, trees uprooted, the ground scorched. Dean lay in the center of it, unconscious.
But he wasn't alone.
A figure knelt beside him. A figure in a familiar trench coat, his hair dark, his expression bewildered.
"Dean?" Castiel's voice was rough, confused.
Sam felt his breath catch. "Cas?"
Castiel looked up. His blue eyes stared at them with confusion. He looked lost.
"Sam. Where… what happened? I was… I was in the Empty. And then I felt something. Something pulling me."
Sam stumbled forward. "It worked. It actually worked. Dean, wake up!"
He shook his brother. Dean groaned, his eyes fluttering open. For a moment, he just stared blankly at the sky.
"Sammy? What happened? Did I… did I hit my head?"
And then he saw Castiel.
Dean scrambled backward, his eyes wide. He stared at the angel—his best friend, the being he'd spent weeks trying to save—and he couldn't speak, only stare.
"Dean. Hello," Castiel said awkwardly.
"Cas. I… you're here. I didn't… it worked." Dean's voice cracked.
Castiel looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers. He looked confused. Worried. "Something is wrong."
"What do you mean? We did the ritual. We pulled you out. You're free," Sam said.
Castiel shook his head slowly. "No, Sam. Something is very wrong."
And then he screamed.
Castiel's body convulsed. His skin flickered—human one moment, angelic the next, a flash of something monstrous in between. His eyes blazed white, then blue, then a sickly yellow that Sam had only seen once before.
The yellow of a Leviathan.
"I'm not… I can't… DEAN!" Castiel's voice was distorted, layered with something ancient and hungry.
Dean lunged forward, grabbing Castiel by the shoulders. "Cas! Cas, stay with me!"
But Castiel was changing. His face was shifting, the human features melting away, something sharp and predatory beneath.
"He's here. The Shadow. It… it's in me. It won't let go." Castiel's voice flickered between his own and something else entirely.
Dean's face went pale. "No. No no no no. Cas, you fought it. You won."
"I didn't… it didn't let me go. It followed me. It's… it's eating me from the inside."
Castiel convulsed again. This time, the Leviathan in him surged to the surface. His mouth opened wide, rows of jagged teeth appearing where his normal teeth had been. A sound escaped him—not a scream, but a roar. A roar that shook the ground beneath them.
"Sam! The holy oil! Now!" Dean shouted.
Sam scrambled to his pack, pulling out a flask of consecrated oil. He poured a ring around Castiel, the fire catching instantly. The flames rose high, a barrier of blessed fire holding the thing inside.
Castiel was in the center, writhing, his body shifting between forms. Human. Angel. Leviathan. A flickering nightmare.
"Dean, what do we do?!" Sam shouted over the roar.
Dean was on his knees at the edge of the ring, his hands pressed against the invisible barrier of fire. His face was streaked with tears.
"You fight it!" Dean shouted at Castiel. "You hear me? You are Castiel. You are the angel who rebelled against Heaven. You are the angel who saved the world. You are my… you're everything. You fight it!"
Castiel's eyes snapped open. Blue. Human blue. For a moment, he was himself.
"Dean…"
"I'm here. I'm right here."
"I can feel it. The Shadow is inside me. It's… it's all my mistakes. Everything I ever did wrong. It's using them against me."
Dean shook his head violently. "They don't matter. Do you hear me? None of that matters. What matters is you. You get out of that head, and you come back to me."
Castiel smiled. It was a broken, tired smile. "You always were a terrible motivational speaker."
"Shut up. Just… just hold on. Sam, get Jack. Now. Call him. Tell him—"
The flames flickered. The barrier was failing.
"He can't help. No one can help. This is… this is what I deserve. After everything I've done. All the angels I killed. All the people I hurt. This is the price," Castiel said weakly.
"Bull. Crap." Dean's voice was fierce. "Cas, listen to me. Listen to my voice. I don't care what you've done. I don't care about the price. I need you. Sam needs you. The world needs you. And if you don't fight this, I swear to God, I will find a way to go into the Empty and drag you out of there myself. Again. And again. And again until it sticks."
Castiel laughed. It was a weak, watery sound, but it was laughter.
"You're insane."
"Yeah. I know. You made me this way. Now get your feathery ass back here."
Castiel closed his eyes. The roaring from inside him grew louder. The fire flickered, threatening to go out. Sam grabbed another flask, pouring more oil on the flames.
And then, in the center of the ring, Castiel went still.
The roaring and flickering stopped. He lay on the ground, his body shifting slowly. Human. Angel. Human. Angel. Finally settling on human.
His eyes opened. Blue. Tired. But human.
"Dean?"
Dean collapsed forward, his forehead pressing against the barrier of the fire. "Yeah. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
Castiel smiled. A real smile. "I know."
The flames died.
And in the silence of the clearing, under the watching moon, Dean pulled Castiel into his arms. He held him tight, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs. He had been so afraid. So terrified that this wouldn't work. That he'd lose Cas all over again.
Sam stood guard, scanning the treeline for anything that might be coming. But nothing came. The only sound was the soft whisper of the wind through the trees, and the quiet, steady breathing of the three of them, together again at last.
For the first time in weeks, the world felt right.
It took them hours to get Castiel back to the bunker.Sam drove while Dean sat in the back seat, holding Castiel's hand, whispering encouragement the entire way.
"You're doing great, Cas. We're almost home."
Castiel's eyes fluttered open. "Dean… I'm sorry. I'm sorry I left."
"Don't." Dean's voice was fierce. "Don't you dare apologize. You saved us. You saved everyone. And I'm never letting you go again. Do you hear me?"
Castiel smiled weakly. "Loud and clear."
When they finally pulled into the bunker, Sam helped Dean carry Castiel to the medical bay. They laid him on the cot, covering him with a blanket. His body was still flickering, but it was becoming less frequent. The angel part of him was winning.
"Can you get me some water?" Dean asked, not taking his eyes off Castiel.
Sam nodded and left the room.
Dean sat beside the cot, taking Castiel's hand again. "You're going to be okay, Cas. I promise. I didn't bring you back just to lose you again."
Castiel's eyes opened. He looked at Dean, truly looked at him, and saw the exhaustion, the grief, the desperate hope that had carried him through the past three weeks.
"Dean," Castiel said softly. "You haven't slept in days. You need to rest."
"I'll rest when you're better."
"That's a lie. You'll find something else to obsess over. Another hunt. Another case."
Dean laughed. It was a tired, broken laugh. "When did you get so good at reading me?"
"I learned from the best. You. And Sam. And a very large amount of human television."
Dean smiled. It was a real smile, the first one in weeks. "I missed you, Cas. I missed you so much."
"I missed you too, Dean. More than I can say."
They sat in comfortable silence for a long time. The bunker was quiet, the world outside silent. But in that room, something had changed. Something had shifted.
The empty chair was filled.
And for the first time in three weeks, Dean Winchester felt like he could finally breathe.
Ok that's all! I know I took super long with this (so sorry) but now, I expect to update almost daily. Comments, reblogs and likes are an author's best friend! And let me know if you want to be added to my taglist for this series!
