Pairings: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Endverse Castiel/Endverse Dean Winchester, HunterCorp Castiel/HunterCorp Dean Winchester, Demon Castiel/Dean Winchester, background Sam/Eileen, Sam/Ruby, Sam/Rowena, Sam/Jessica, implied Michael/Adam Milligan
Tags: Multiverse, Time Travel, Fix-It, Castiel Comes Back from the Empty, Significant Character Death (several AU Castiels die), Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Divergent After s15e18, Explicit Sexual Content, Each Chapter Takes Place in a Different Timeline/Universe, Top/Bottom Versatile Castiel/Dean Winchester
Summary: Sam keeps reading the spell, doing a quick and dirty translation in his head. “Dammit,” he curses when he gets to the last line of the incantation. “It won’t work. It says we need ‘The blood of one who died for love.’ But everyone’s just gone—there’s no blood anywhere. Certainly not ‘of one who died for love.’”
Dean recoils like he just got punched in the gut. He backs up a couple of steps and then turns and staggers back down the hall towards his room, wordlessly. Sam can’t tell if he’s drunk or just… distraught.
But a few minutes later, he re-emerges with something clutched tightly against his chest. His jacket. The one he was wearing when Cas died, the one stamped with Cas’s bloody handprint. He holds it out to Sam like a precious offering.
(A post-’Despair’ fix-it fic in which Castiel’s sacrifice for Dean defies time and space to save the entire Supernatural multiverse.)
Sneak Peek: The second Cas, though… he’s with his Dean, standing behind him, chin hooked over that Dean in the space between his shoulder and his neck, one arm wrapped protectively around his middle. They’re both touching the stone, and they’re both shirtless, and they look much younger.
Dean balks. Seeing them… that Dean and Cas, so intimate, clearly together in the way that Dean only recently learned Cas wanted with him right before he was gone forever, cracks his heart wide open and makes him want to die. They have no idea that they’re rubbing salt into the worst wound Dean’s ever gotten. He burns with rage and grief and jealousy, and hot tears slide down his face before he can do anything to stop them.
But then this Castiel’s eyes change and he appraises Jack with a gaze that’s pure and black—he’s a demon. And there’s blood smeared across the other Dean’s mouth like—like... then finally Dean notices the bloodied cut on Castiel’s forearm, all messy and smeared just like the other Dean’s mouth.
He’s hit with a roiling wave of sickness at the idea.
“What the hell…?” Sam breathes. Then he purses his lips, shakes his head a little bit, and refocuses on the task at hand.
Jack waits for a few more long, agonizing moments. Dean can’t stop staring at the way the demon Castiel’s chin rests on the curve of the other Dean’s neck, like it belongs there. Like Dean belongs to him. In his periphery, he sees Jack give a short, stiff nod to each and every Castiel, and finally the demon Castiel and the tagalong Dean, before closing his fist around the stone.
Then they all vanish in an instant, leaving Michael, Jack, Sam, and Dean alone and Castiel-less once again.
