Chapter Text
After the wave of painful sadness comes a storm of fire.
Sam’s grief is quiet, restrained. He goes out to find Eileen and brings her home and they don’t waste any time because you never know what could happen, and he doesn’t want to take her for granted. He goes out and looks for his happiness and finds it in leadership, in teaching others how to keep themselves and the world safe. He finds it in tracking leads and making calls and building up a network of hunters across the states that comes in and out of the bunker at all odd hours. He finds it in weekly trips to the library with Jack, in discussing Greek mythology over breakfast, between pages of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. He finds it in movie nights on Tuesdays and true crime podcasts on long road trips.
His grief for the people they’ve lost is a drink on an off evening and shared memories and reminiscence. His grief is figuring out how to let go, how to move on, how to make the most of their sacrifices.
And Dean tries, he really does, to go back to normal. He tries to work cases and kill monsters and play games and watch soapy tv. But it’s hollow. Empty. It doesn’t quite make sense to celebrate a victory that doesn’t feel like one. More than that, really, it doesn’t make sense to celebrate a victory that doesn’t include his best friend, because if their goal was to save lives, they didn’t really succeed, not entirely.
He’s a powder keg, ready at any moment to explode, but every time it comes out he’s alone, sometimes in the car, sometimes in his room with a bottle of burning, numbing alcohol and a pile of books that refuse to give him the answers he’s looking for. Sometimes he wants to talk about it, but he’s afraid the second the words start coming out he’ll start lashing out, and he’s decided he won’t subject Sam and Jack to that again.
Jack reaches into the Empty and finds nothing but quiet darkness pushing him back into the world of the living. He ascends to Heaven but comes back with news only of a devastated paradise, walls crumbled, lights going out. Amara, escaped with the power of light and dark after Jack pulled her out of Chuck, is no help, so Jack keeps one foot through the pearly gates and forges new angels and creates a different kind of Heaven, and keeps an eye out for one soul in particular that didn’t get enough time. He doesn’t see him.
And then— a call. Alex Jones, from the hospital in Sioux Falls at the crack of dawn, what feels like an eternity after the dethroning of God but is actually more like two months of that angel-shaped empty space in the bunker and fruitless research.
It’s Jack that shakes Dean awake in the library, his head on his folded arms, fingers brushing the carved name of Castiel. Jack doesn’t sleep much, which everyone has decided to take as a good sign, since it’s pretty much what was normal for him when he was a whole, original-make-and-model nephilim.
“I think it’s him,” Alex says, her voice crackling over the phone. “He’s in bad shape, though. I’d say get here as soon as you can make it.”
She doesn’t have to tell them twice. Dean scribbles a note to Sam and leaves it on the table, and in minutes he and Jack are speeding off in the Impala to South Dakota.
And Dean’s thought about what he’d say if he saw Cas again. So many times. But he still doesn’t know what he’s going to do, if he’s going to suffocate him with hugs or find himself struck dumb or kiss him senseless or punch him in the face.
He hasn’t considered what he’d do if Cas came back human. If he came back and he was in a hospital and he was comatose and burning up with fever. He hasn’t considered what he’d do if he stepped into Cas’s hospital room and Jody was there to wrap him in a hug and tell him oh honey, it doesn’t look good for him.
He doesn’t know what to do when Jack puts his palm to Cas’s forehead and tells him that he’s lost all his grace, that something’s wrong that goes beyond normal human illness, that it’s all that time in the Empty and the forced inter-dimensional travel that’s keeping him under, that he’s not sure if he can fully heal Cas right away but he can take him home and he can try his best.
So he and Jody and Alex and Jack sneak Cas out to the Impala and lay him down in the backseat and Dean doesn’t say anything.
Jack sleeps through most of the drive home, already exhausted by the little bit of healing he did at the hospital, so Dean lets the radio play softly and drives through what feels like six hours of a bizarre dream and watches the sun set to the west behind golden fields.
Sam and Eileen and Rowena, visiting from Hell to give her two cents, help them get Cas into the bunker, into his room, into his own bed.
Rowena gives about the same diagnosis as Jack.
“It’s Castiel,” she says. “He may be human, but he always seems to pull through, doesn’t he?”
And he does. For days, Dean keeps vigil at his bedside, watching Jack make his rounds, and Sam and Eileen come to check in on them, to make sure both that Cas is making progress and Dean isn’t letting himself waste away.
Dean’s grateful. He tells them that. He wishes he told them that more often.
Cas isn’t comatose, per se, just asleep for a very long time. It’s like his vessel is catching up to so many years of being awake, Jack said. Don’t worry. He’ll wake up.
Three days. Three days Cas sleeps, and then, suddenly, his eyes flutter open and he sits up, breathing hard, blinking out bleary confusion.
Dean rises from his chair, steps closer with his arms out, ready to steady him.
But Cas backs away, dark fear growing behind his ever-bright blue eyes.
“No,” he whispers, “Not this again. Not again.”
“Not what? Cas, it’s me.” He tries to put his hand on Cas’s shoulder, but he pushes it away.
“I said stop it! I know this isn’t real. I know this is still the Empty. Just go back to sleep, isn’t that what you wanted?” His voice is cracked, shattered like china. He squeezes his eyes shut.
Dean calls for Sam and Jack, then turns back to Cas. Cas breathes heavily, shakily, balling his hands into tight fists around the edge of the blanket, knuckles white.
“Cas. Cas. Listen to me.” He sits gently on the edge of the bed, one hand on Cas’s knee. “You’re home. You’re safe. I’m here.”
And then Sam and Jack and Eileen are there too. Jack presses his fingertips to Cas’s temples just long enough to help him calm down, then practically attacks him with a hug, shouting “Cas!”
And then, “I missed you so much.”
“It’s so good to have you back, man,” Sam says, bending down awkwardly to embrace him.
Then they’re all sitting on the bed, Sam and Eileen on the end and Jack and Dean on either side, and Cas is staring at them, his mouth hanging open just a little.
“You’re… real.” His eyes are clearer now.
“Hey, we’re just as surprised as you are,” Dean says, and it’s only partially a joke.
“Do you remember how you got here? Do you remember leaving the Empty?”
Cas frowns. “I… do. Bits and pieces. It…” he looks down at his hands, open now, palms up, in his lap. “It kicked me out. The Empty. Because I wasn’t an angel anymore.”
“Your grace. It was failing before you left, wasn’t it?” Jack remembers.
He nods. “And… before that… it…” he swallows and shakes his head. “Well, it’s…“ his voice falters, “not important.”
Clearly it is, but Dean knows that now is not the time to press. He communicates this to Sam nonverbally as he opens his mouth to ask. Sam closes his mouth.
“How are you feeling?” Eileen asks.
“Like crap. And… thirsty. And tired.”
Dean passes Cas his own glass of water from the nightstand. He gulps it down eagerly, then returns it and lowers his head back onto the pillow. He’s slipping away from them again, but this time it looks a little more peaceful, a little less like Cas is dying, and the warm glow of Jack’s two fingers touching Cas’s forehead, healing him a bit further and sending him all the way into sleep, is reassurance enough for Dean, for now.
“Let’s let him rest,” he says, and they file out the door, flicking the light off behind them.