Work Text:
Dean has died so many times that there can’t possibly be a new way to do it. This one isn’t new, and it looks so simple, so generic, no hellhound, no reaper walking around masked as a hot chick, no nothing. Just him, circling through his memories, places and people, good and bad. He knows he’s stuck between life and death until a reaper comes for him. He also knows these memories are supposed to be significant, to make him realize something.
He watches himself, thirteen years old, beating up a kid who was a dick to Sammy, and then himself, as a demon, being a dick to a waitress in some diner. He watches himself sharing a drink with Sam, watching movies with Cas, helping a random teenager from a year he can’t even place. He watches himself living – stubbornly, pointlessly, sometimes on the edge of giving up, sometimes high from victory.
He has no idea where these memories are supposed to take him.
There has to be an end to them, right? In reality he is pinned on a nail somewhere in a barn, like a fly caught on the wall, and he’s dying.
He supposes after all the monsters, after Apocalypse, Death, God and fate being taken out by a vampiclown is almost ironic.
He wonders who’s left to laugh. If Benny were alive this would have made his day, probably.
That is, if Dean indeed dies and doesn’t get stuck as a ghost. He’s not ready to give up his life yet, to say goodbye to the world he helped save.
To die or to live, but he needs to find the way out of this memory lane. There must be some line he can cross. A door, maybe. A way out.
He feels his brain working, turning the new thought over and over.
To get out, he must find a door. He suddenly know how this is supposed to go down. Bobby told him, after he died, how he managed to wake up from his coma. He needed to get those Dick Roman numbers to them, so motivation wasn’t a problem. He just had to find the right door and to live through his worst memory.
That’s what Dean has to do now, all right.
Face his worst memory, something so painful that he covered it with crap and more crap and didn’t ever, ever go there, even though his life basically amounts to reliving the worst of it again and again.
As he walks away from Cold Oak, he wonders what his worst memory is. He wonders who proclaims it such.
He wonders if he’ll make it through. He feels so broken, physically and mentally, that he actually isn’t sure he’s strong enough for this.
There’s another door.
He’ll have to find out.
As soon as he is on the other side, he knows what is going to happen.
A small room. Devil’s trap on the floor and a chair in the center.
Billie, banging on the door.
Cas, with happy tears, telling Dean all these things Dean can never accept.
He never was the person Cas described. He couldn’t wrap his head around what Cas was saying and when it clicked, it was too late.
He was frozen. Scared. Not a thought in his head and a burning in his heart.
Cas felt– Cas felt, so deep and powerful and strong– Dean never realized angels could do that, could feel human emotions, recognize them. Accept them.
Cas loved him.
Cas loved him.
Cas died because he loved him, because telling him was the only way he could be happy, the only way to summon the Empty and stop Billie.
Cas died. Got pulled into nowhere.
Cas loved him.
Cas left, again. And Dean didn’t ask him to stay. Again.
He knows what he has to do this time, how he can get through this.
“I love you, Dean,” Cas says, eyes full of tears, so beautiful and so bright and so, so far away.
And Dean–
Dean can’t–
If he says it now, if he says Cas can have him – already has him – then Cas will die knowing they could have had more. Could have been more.
Could have been so, so happy.
And Dean can’t. Not like this. Cas deserves to be loved. To be cherished. To be free, and happy.
He deserves so much more then falling into the void knowing it could have been.
Dean can’t–
He’d rather die–
If Dean dies now, he won’t have a chance to fix it.
The thought burns.
He inhales, sharply, and again. There are tears in his eyes.
He can fix this.
“Me too,” he says, meaning: I love you too. Meaning: you changed me, too. You taught me to love and to live and to choose.
Cas’ touch stings, just like the first time, when he pushes Dean out of the way.
Cas looks at him, just like the first time, and disappears into the empty.
Cas is gone.
Again.
Again.
Not forever, if Dean has something to say about it.
With his last ounce of strength Dean crawls and pushes the door–
When he opens his eyes, he is in a hospital.
“That’s one nasty piece of rebar,” he hears. “He should be lucky you got him here so fast.”
“Thank you, doctor”, says Sam from somewhere.
Dean exhales. He made it. He his eyes again, letting himself drift.
He is alive.
He is alive.
And damn him if he isn’t gonna drag Cas out of the Empty now and make him so much happier.