Chapter Text
Cas.
Yes: Sam’s voice. But it’s weak, coming to him as though from a great distance. Castiel gathers himself—whatever that means in this non-place—and reaches out toward it.
Yes, he thinks in reply, it’s me, and he hears his own voice, or feels it. A vibration somewhere inside of him, but one that comes without pain. It occurs to him that there is no pain in this place. How could anyone feel pain without a body, without reality?
It seems clear that that is not what this is. Rather, it is the layer that overlies reality, or underlies it. Magic. Dream. The Veil between life and death: that is part of it, too. The world that the spell made him see, in its entirety.
Cas? Sam again, but fainter this time. Cas! Come back. You’re disappearing.
Castiel feels a pang of sadness, deep and sudden, remembering how he got here. The witch posing as a faith healer. He realizes that he did not have time to warn Dean before he lost consciousness, and wants to shudder.
Dean can handle a single witch, he tells himself. Dean will be fine.
Then, worse, he remembers what they were doing there in the first place. Sam, lying unconscious in his bed back at the bunker, the light bleeding out of his soul and no will left in him to fight.
Yes, he thinks in Sam’s direction. I’m disappearing. So are you.
What echoes back to him is resignation. That’s okay.
No. No: it is not okay.
Castiel can accept his own death. He knows the frailty of humans, and he knows there are myriads of his own brothers and sisters who would be only too happy to put an end to him. He realizes he never really expected to survive long.
But if Dean is to lose him, he cannot lose Sam too. And if Castiel can hold out no hope for himself, he can at least give it to somebody else. To his true family.
(His only family, for a long time now.)
He marshals his thoughts as best he can. Focuses them on this one single thing and sends them out, one last message.
No: one last prayer.
He puts into it all that he knows of Sam. How needed he is, and how loved. How his smile can light up a room, can ease both Dean’s burdens and Castiel’s own. The seriousness of his expression when he is focused on a case. How sincerely he hurts for each life he is unable to save, each family he is unable to spare grief—and how rare that is, how human and how precious. The admiration with which Kevin regards him, not simply for his intelligence, but for his strength—his ability to survive being chosen not by God, but by Lucifer, and still retain the core of his self. How that affords the frightened young prophet a measure of hope.
And how good a friend he has been to Castiel. How steadfast. How forgiving in the face of betrayal.
How much poorer all their lives would be without him.
Castiel collects all of these things, holds them for a moment in his mind. He focuses them all into one last bright stream of consciousness. And then he directs it right at the source of Sam’s voice. An offering of life; of hope.
He cannot think of a better way to use the last of his strength.
The last thing he hears is Sam’s voice again: a soft, surprised Oh.
After that, there is only light.
----
Castiel regains awareness an indefinite time later.
He breathes in deeply, savoring the clean cold mineral taste of the air. Then is occurs to him to be surprised that he can breathe, that he can taste, that he can feel anything at all.
There is something rough beneath his palms. The sky above him is pale and clear and his feet are wet.
He blinks and looks down, and finds that he is sitting on the ground.
No: on a boardwalk, at the side of a still lake. His bare feet dangle off the edge, the water splashing gently around his ankles. It’s cold, but Castiel does not shiver. He feels no discomfort.
This is a dream. Not his dream, though he knows it almost as well as if it were. He visited it once, out of necessity, and found it so beautiful he has carried its image in his mind ever since—that peaceful place where Dean used to go in his few hours of sleep, in those first years after his return from Hell. It is hazier now than Castiel remembers it being.
Perhaps it is because of the spell.
Or perhaps Dean finds it more difficult to conjure peace, now.
Castiel breathes in again. There is a strange flavor to the air, he decides. A few moments pass before he is able to place it. Dream root.
A few more, and he feels Dean’s presence at his side.
Castiel turns to look at him. “You put your dream into my head,” he says. It seems like the most logical thing in the world.
Maybe so. Dreams have a logic of their own, separate from that which governs reality.
Dean smiles, though it looks like a struggle, and despite everything, Castiel feels a small warmth kindle inside of him. “Well, you ain’t exactly taking my calls right now,” Dean says.
Castiel pauses a moment before asking, “I’m still alive?”
“Just about.” Dean looks straight in front of him, throat working as he swallows. Castiel reaches out to take his hand, and Dean blinks rapidly, stares down at it in surprise.
“And you’re okay?” Castiel presses.
Dean looks up at him. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
He falls silent, then, frowning to himself, as though unsure of what he means to say next. Castiel keeps hold of his hand.
“So, uh, I wanted to ask,” Dean goes on, eventually. “Before you passed out. You were trying to tell me something, and—you looked pretty freaked about it.”
Castiel’s heart sinks. Dean must have thought he had seen something—some sign that the faith healer would be able to help them. Why else would he have done this? Finding one’s way into the space between worlds, locating a single soul there, finding a way to talk to it—that must have been a difficult task, and more difficult still without Sam there to help. And Castiel has nothing to give him in return.
He consoles himself with the knowledge that if Dean is here, then at least the witch did him no harm, and sighs. “It was nothing that could help Sam.”
Dean looks at him curiously; without the disappointment he expects. “You don’t—” Dean breaks off, shaking his head. “This isn’t about that.” He gives Castiel’s hand a gentle squeeze. The dreamed touch of his fingers is more reassuring than it ought to be. It makes Castiel feel as though this is real.
“The faith healer,” Castiel tells him. “She wasn’t an angel. She was the witch who cursed me.” He frowns. “Dean, if this isn’t about Sam—what is it about?”
Dean just smiles at him. His smile is easier now, which Castiel cannot understand. He squeezes Castiel’s hand again, and opens his mouth as if to reply.
His image begins to fade. His mouth moves, but Castiel cannot hear what he is saying. It’s too quiet, indistinct as radio static.
“Dean,” he says, but whatever Dean says in reply is lost to him. “Dean!” He grasps at Dean’s hand. His fingers go through it like water.
The dream root is wearing off.
Castiel has been resigned to his fate, glad at least to have helped Sam with his last moments of consciousness—but now, panic grips his heart. He does not want to leave. He does not want to be back in that nowhere-place, without Dean, alone.
He reaches out, meaning to brush Dean’s face with his fingers. To feel the stubble at his jaw, the soft shapes of his lips.
He touches empty air. Dean is gone.
The dream is gone. Castiel is back in nothingness.
----
He wakes in a room in the bunker.
No: in Dean’s room in the bunker.
That is what he notices first, before it occurs to him to wonder that he is awake, that he is alive and in the real world. One of the lamps is lit, and in the dim light, he makes out the objects beside Dean’s bed: a book, his gun, the collection of faded photographs he keeps propped against the lamp. The pillow beneath his head smells of Dean’s hair gel.
Nothing more. The strange tang of dream root is absent from the air.
Castiel breathes in experimentally, turns his head to feel the fabric of the bedcovers rub against his cheek.
It’s more bristly than he expects. He has what he judges to be a few days’ worth of stubble.
He is not dreaming.
His heart sounds in his ears. He feels as though it might burst with amazement.
Castiel sits up, and there’s a movement in the shadows beside the bed, on the side without the lamp. He is not overwhelmed enough to have thrown caution to the winds: he stills, peering warily into the dark. It hurts his eyes a little, and he registers that his head still aches, though without the blinding, unbearable pain to which he has grown accustomed.
“Cas.” Dean’s voice, unsteady with relief. “Hey, hey, Cas.” Dean is leaning over him, then, his hands finding Castiel’s shoulders and urging him to lie back down. He looks very tired, but his eyes shine. “Don’t try to get up. You gotta take it easy.”
Castiel peers up at him. Would gaze into his soul to get a closer read on his emotions, but cannot see it.
He cannot see Dean’s soul.
He blinks. Nothing changes. “What happened?”
“Kind of a long story.” Dean scrubs a hand over his face. “Just let me—I just gotta—hang on.” He gets to his feet, points at Castiel as he heads for the door. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Dean? What’s going on?”
There’s no reply, but before Castiel can decide to get up and follow, Dean reappears in the doorway.
Over his shoulder, Sam grins. “Hey, Cas,” he says. “Good to finally see you awake.”
Castiel feels the smile that spreads over his face. “You too, Sam,” he says. “How did—?” He stops, catching sight of another figure out in the corridor, at Sam’s side. Too slight for Kevin. A woman. He frowns.
Sam follows his gaze, and when he turns back to Castiel, there is something apologetic in his expression. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “We’ve got somebody here who wants to talk to you.”
He stands aside, and so does Dean—who isn’t looking Castiel in the eyes—and the woman steps into the room.
At the sight of her face, Castiel starts upright, slamming the back of his head on the shelf above Dean’s bed. He ignores the pain that blooms dully in the back of his skull—he’s had much worse lately, after all. His heartbeat quickens, a frightened-animal thing inside his chest.
It’s her. Ruth Tramontini. The witch.
And Sam and Dean are letting her walk freely around the bunker. No handcuffs; no protective sigils drawn on the walls.
Castiel told Dean. In the dream. He knows that he did. Unless he didn’t—unless it was truly just a dream, and he never really spoke to Dean at all, and now Tramontini has them both under some spell, and who knows what she will do to all of them—
“Look.” Tramontini’s voice cuts through his panic, brings him back into the room. “You’re freaked out. I get it.” She is looking at her hands, avoiding Castiel’s eyes. If he knew no better, he would say that she was… embarrassed.
He glances from Dean to Sam, and back again, utterly bewildered. Dean makes a face. “I don’t like this any more’n you do, believe me.” He exchanges a look with Sam, then meets Castiel’s gaze again, his shoulders slumping in resignation. “But she isn’t gonna hurt you.”
“How do you know?” Castiel gets out.
Tramontini takes a step closer to the bed—hands palms up in front of her, placating, like she’s expecting him to lash out. When he doesn’t, she closes the rest of the distance between them, and perches herself on the mattress, near Castiel’s feet.
She looks up, then. “So,” she says. “I, uh, I guess I owe you an apology.”
Castiel stares. He cannot see Tramontini’s soul, cannot read her intentions—but if the spell is gone, and she is here, surely that means she has undone what she did. Perhaps she truly regrets it? The way she looks at him, from under lowered eyelashes, as though in shame, suggests as much.
For a moment, Castiel honestly misses the spell. For all the pain it brought, it made him better at being human. Now, he has only his own woefully undeveloped instincts to rely on.
Millennia of experience tell him not to trust this, but Dean’s nod, caught out of the corner of his eye, tells him otherwise.
He grips the bedcovers tightly, takes a breath, and meets Tramontini’s eyes. “Thank you,” he says.
She gives him a weak smile. “Think I should be the one saying that.”
“I have to ask,” he says, then. “Why?”
Tramontini drops her gaze, letting out a sigh. “You got me at a really bad time,” she says. “And don’t get me wrong; that isn’t an excuse. I just—” She breaks off and bites her lower lip, taking a moment to compose herself. “I’ve been doing the healing thing a while now. Since my mom got sick a couple years back. It’s always been just the two of us—Dad cut out when I was a kid, I don’t really remember him.”
Her eyes are unfocused, her expression distant and sad. Though Castiel cannot see her soul, he feels the pang of a loss he can never understand.
“It’s a money-making thing, mostly,” she goes on. “Keeps us going. Mom’s too sick to work, and with the healing gig, at least I only have to be away from her a couple hours a day.”
Castiel regards her curiously. “If you can heal with your magic, why not use it to help your mother?”
Tramontini shakes her head. “I just treat the symptoms. My spells don’t last. I give people a few more months, give them hope for a little while—but it’s borrowed time. They start to deteriorate again eventually.”
Castiel sees the sadness play across her face. “Your mother,” he says. “She’s—deteriorating.”
“I never stopped looking. I have contacts. Other witches—even a couple hunters. Guess they figured they were better off keeping me alive when they realized I wasn’t hurting anyone.” She casts a cautious sideways glance at Sam and Dean, and it occurs to Castiel that she is trying to convince them, too. “I’ve been hearing whispers about angels for a few years now. When I read about the deaths in Rexford, the bright lights, I put two and two together, and I came to check it out.”
“You thought an angel might help you,” Castiel says. “Heal your mother.”
“I thought I might be able to persuade it,” Tramontini confirms, a hard set to her mouth that suggests she isn’t talking about reasoned arguments here. “I know some pretty powerful binding spells. When you told me the problem had been taken care of—well, I just figured you were one of the hunters who’d killed it.”
Castiel’s heart sinks a little as understanding dawns. “You thought I took away your chance to help your mother.”
She nods silently.
He closes his eyes, then opens them again; is surprised when his dull headache stays just that, instead of the familiar stabbing pain. “In a sense, you’re right,” he says, watching her face. It stays impassive. “I did kill Ephraim. But believe me when I say you wouldn’t have wanted his help.”
“Yeah. Your friends told me what he was.” Tramontini casts an eye in Sam and Dean’s direction. She goes quiet for a moment, then seems to gather herself and looks back at Castiel. “The spell I used on you—I’d planned to use it on myself, to find him. It’s supposed to be temporary. There’s a counter-spell to undo it once you’ve found what you’re looking for. The sight’s too much for the brain to take in, long-term. I’ve read about witches who used it too often, did themselves some serious damage.”
“The counter-spell—that’s what you used on me? That’s why I don’t—?” Castiel gestures vaguely in the direction of his head, and Tramontini nods.
“You should be fine,” she says. “Just—give me a call if you keep getting the headaches.” Another glance at Sam and Dean, and Castiel realizes the offer is insurance as much as it is kindness. They can’t call her if she isn’t alive. He can hardly blame her. The Winchesters are a terrifying prospect when their family is under threat. “I lashed out,” she says, then, to Castiel. “You didn’t deserve that crap. So, you know. Apology.” She holds out her hand. Castiel hesitates a moment, then shakes it.
Tramontini relaxes a little, the tense set of her shoulders dropping. She puts her head on one side, then, regarding him like a curiosity.
“You stood it a lot longer than most people would’ve,” she says. “I have to admit, I’m impressed. You must be something pretty special.”
Not anymore. Without the sight, Castiel will live—but he will live uselessly. He has nothing to offer Dean and Sam, now, and though he does not think they will send him away, the knowledge aches coldly in his guts.
He ducks his head. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I’m just a man.”
“Actually, about that.” It’s Sam’s voice. Castiel looks up. “I need to talk to you.”
----
Dean shepherds Tramontini out. Castiel cannot hear their voices out in the corridor, but he assumes there is a warning that they know where she lives and will be back in less peaceful fashion if she ‘lashes out’ again.
He’s a little surprised that they don’t kill her anyway. That would be Dean’s favored option, in most circumstances, he’s sure. He must have allowed Sam to persuade him otherwise.
The thought speaks volumes; though Castiel is no longer sure of his ability to read them.
“So,” Sam says, once they are alone. “After you passed out—you remember any of that?”
Castiel frowns, thinking. “Yes,” he says, slowly. That dream-place feels as real as anything else did in the few days before Fremont. Realer, perhaps, without the haze of pain to obscure it. “I thought—I thought I heard your voice.”
He is no longer sure whether it truly happened. His thoughts are a jumble. The dream where he spoke to Dean must have been real, he supposes. How else would Dean have known who Tramontini really was? But it feels so strange to be alive again, to see the world without souls burning before his eyes. How to trust what he sees?
Sam smiles at him. “You didn’t just think it. I heard you, too. I saw what you showed me.”
“What I showed you?” Castiel says. Then goes quiet as the memory of that last prayer returns to him, blooming like a firework inside his chest. And now Sam is standing before him, conscious and whole. “It worked.”
“It did,” Sam agrees. His smile tightens, then. He glances toward the door, then, the sound of Dean’s and Kevin’s voices coming from down the corridor. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not say everything’s back to normal. What Dean did—well, I was pissed. I’m still pissed.” He looks back at Castiel. “But while I was out, before you got through to me? I felt like there was no point me being alive if I couldn’t save the world. Honestly, I think I’d felt like that for a long time. And you helped.” He pats Castiel’s shoulder, his big hand warm and grounding. “So, thanks.”
Castiel smiles back—genuinely, without pain. Then he frowns. “I’m glad to have helped, Sam. I truly am. But I don’t understand how.”
Sam shakes his head. “Me neither. Well, not exactly. But I’ve been looking into it. Kevin found some stuff on the angel tablet. It sounds like there’s kind of an aftereffect when an angel possesses somebody. You—they leave behind a trace of grace in the person when they go.”
Castiel nods. “That’s correct.”
“And we wondered if maybe the same thing happened when Metatron took your grace. You lost enough of it to make you human, but there was still a residue in there somewhere.”
“It’s possible,” Castiel admits. “Few angels have ever chosen to fall. We don’t—Heaven doesn’t have records.”
“We think that might be it,” Sam explains. “Somehow, that combined with the sight spell and it let you reach out to me. It let you send that bit of grace over to me while we were both unconscious.”
Both of them were in that between-place, where boundaries are less stable, where dream-logic sometimes prevails. Magic could work with that. Sam’s speculations make a kind of sense.
“It gave you the ability to heal yourself,” Castiel realizes. “My grace.”
“Pretty much,” Sam says. He glances down, and there is more in the look than can be expressed out loud. Castiel doesn’t need to see his soul to understand that. Sam clears his throat. “So, uh, we think it’s all gone now. You’re a hundred percent human.” His hand tightens on Castiel’s shoulder, and he looks down. “I’m sorry, Cas.”
Perhaps later, Castiel will feel the loss of it. That last part of his angelic self; that shred of possibility of ever being what he was. He is not naïve enough to think it will never matter.
But now, whole and healed, and with his family whole and healed around him, he feels only relief.
He sinks back against the pillows of Dean’s bed with a tired smile. “Don’t be,” he says, and pats Sam’s hand, and lets his eyes close.
----
Slowly, Castiel’s strength begins to return. He guesses it is early afternoon when he falls asleep. By the time he wakes up, Sam is gone. The light has been turned out, and there is an extra blanket over him: the faintly scratchy gray one that Dean favors. It looks vaguely military-issue, and Castiel wonders whether it came from somewhere in the bunker, or from Dean’s father.
From down the corridor, he hears the distant clank of pots and pans. There’s a faint whiff of frying onions. His stomach growls.
It takes him by surprise. He has gotten used to the low-level nausea that accompanies being in constant pain, to forcing down food only so Dean won’t worry about him.
Castiel stretches and climbs out of bed, locking his hands above his head until his spine clicks. His shoulders ache—but his head doesn’t. He feels clear and light and good for the first time in his whole human life.
He dresses in a pair of sweatpants and a faded t-shirt that he finds folded on the back of the chair. Dean’s slippers are beside the bed, and Castiel hesitates a second before toeing them on. A little too big for him, but they’ll serve for now. He opens the bedroom door, feeling a warm spark of relief when the lights don’t hurt his eyes, and pads down the corridor to the kitchen.
Dean is at the stove, pushing onions around a skillet. The line of his shoulders is tense. Castiel hears the sound of the television in the recreation room, and surmises that Sam is in there—avoiding Dean, rather than staying around to talk or help out with cleanup as he cooks.
He can hardly be blamed. As he said earlier, this will take time.
At the sound of Castiel’s footsteps on the tiles, though, Dean turns from the stove. A genuine smile breaks across his face, his eyelids creasing at the corners.
“Cas,” he says, and it’s all relief. “Lookin’ good, man. Though if you’re gonna stay here, we gotta get you some clothes of your own. It’s a fucking travesty, you walking around in a Stones t-shirt when I know for a fact you’ve never even listened to an album.”
Castiel lets himself smile, warmth blooming in his chest. “I can stay here?” he dares ask.
A tension he hadn’t realised was there fades from around Dean’s eyes. “Hell if I’m letting you leave,” Dean says, and Castiel hears, You’re home.
He will have to get used to reading human emotions the hard way again. But he thinks maybe he is already learning.
----
“I never thanked you,” Castiel says, much later. “For sharing your dream with me.”
It is past midnight and they’re back in bed, having left Sam and Kevin in front of some nerd crap (Dean’s words) on the TV. Castiel found himself yawning after dinner, though he had only been awake a few hours. He suspects Dean was rather glad of the excuse to disappear into the bedroom. The atmosphere between the brothers is still awkward, and Castiel knows it will not heal right away. Still, he feels hopeful tonight. They finally have time; none of them is dying. That is rare and precious enough to be held tightly.
Dean blinks down at him. “Huh?” He’s lying on his side, propped up on one elbow as he looks into Castiel’s face. It’s a little disconcerting, being the one watched so closely, but Castiel understands the impulse. He is sure he would not be able to look away, either, if Dean were the one so recently in danger.
“Your dream, with the lake,” Castiel explains. “You used it to speak to me.” He pauses, biting his lip as his earlier doubts recur. “You did use it to speak to me?”
“Oh.” Dean’s expression clears. “Yeah. We figured you’d been there before, so it might be easier to get through to you that way. Well, actually, Sammy figured it out.” His gaze flicks downward, a shadow crossing his eyes.
Castiel reaches up, traces the line of Dean’s jaw with his thumb. “I wasn’t invited, last time,” he says. “So, thank you.” The dream is a private, peaceful thing, and Dean has few enough of those. Being invited there, instead of simply walking in, feels meaningful. It kindles the same warmth in him as being allowed to stay here, at the bunker.
“Uh, you’re welcome?” Dean gives him a puzzled look.
“I mean it. I know I’m of little use to you and Sam, like this. You came for me anyway.” Castiel’s voice quietens as he says it, and he drops his gaze. Gadreel is still out there, and Metatron, and Abaddon, and so many other dangers. Without his augmented sight, he doesn’t know what help he will be able to offer.
Dean sighs. “Cas,” he says, and then waits until Castiel meets his eyes. There is a softness in them that belies the stern set of his face. “I know you think healing things, or seeing monsters, or smiting them, or whatever, is all you got. And I mean, not that that stuff wasn’t awesome, because yeah, Superman. But it wasn’t any of that crap that fixed Sammy.” Dean pauses, ducks his head. There’s sadness in his voice, but not bitterness. “You made him wanna fight when I couldn’t. And I dunno, maybe that’s because you see the good things. God knows I can’t fucking see ‘em most days. I mean, I look at people, and I see victims or assholes. That’s pretty much it. But you were working in that shitty gas station, and you still managed to smile at every stranger who came through. You did that damn job like it meant something, people being able to get their coffee just right and have a clean pot to piss in. Like you could actually see how it would make their days better, you being nice to them. Seriously, when am I ever nice to anybody? But you are. You make it matter. I don’t fucking know how, man, but you do.”
Dean goes quiet, then, his cheeks coloring. He looks down at his hands, fidgeting with the edge of the comforter.
Castiel cups his jaw, lifts his chin until Dean is looking at him again. “Maybe this is a start,” he says, gently. “At being nice.”
Dean snorts.
“But you are right,” Castiel goes on. “I do. See the good things. I’m looking at one of them right now.”
A beat, and then Dean groans and buries his face in the pillow. “Shut the fuck up,” he says, his voice muffled.
Castiel knows without seeing it that he is smiling. He nuzzles under the covers, his face pressed against the back of Dean’s shoulder, and smiles right back.
That night, he sleeps without pain.