Chapter Text
~ Now : 2014, post-apocalypse ~
Riding with Dean- past Dean, was a double edged sword, especially now... headed where they were heading.
Truth be told, if he had to ride off towards the “final battle” with anyone, he could choose no better companion to be riding shotgun. Pro : he had missed this Dean. Con : he had missed this Dean, and it was making his being ache all over again. The younger man was clearly perturbed by the substances buzzing through his veins, but had dropped to silence after the initial conversation, no doubt having a crisis of conscience and managing to blame himself without having any proof to back his claims. After all, Dean always blamed himself. For everything.
It was and wasn't though. This Dean was blameless still. Hopefully would go on to continue things that way in what would surely be an altered future on his end. Present Dean... well, it wasn't all his fault. But he certainly hadn't helped, in any way, shape, or form.
He would have preferred to be a passenger over a driver for this trip. To have numbed himself with valium and a bottle of vodka and not have had to think about any of this until absolutely necessary. But if there were any time to be fully alert with all cylinders firing, it was now. So it was absinthe and oxy to make his meat suit functional, give him the ability to move how he'd later need to move. Followed by the amphetamines as they had hopped on the road to get his mind on board and wake his ass up.
He wasn't proud of it. Especially in face of past Dean. This intense need to manually power various aspects of simple living with synthetic sources.
He had just grown so damned tired, so battle-worn and weary in just a few short years post being relegated to practically human, than he had millennia of battles prior.
Being human... was just so incredibly painful.
A lifetime of being little more than an obedient drone had failed to prepare him for the physicality of humanity, for the emotional devastation that came with feeling and the illusion of free-will. Grace numbed them. To what extent he hadn't truly realized until the tendrils of existence reared up, constricting tighter and tighter over time, simultaneously choking the breath from his borrowed lungs and fracturing his being into thousands of pieces that stubbornly- persistently clung together.
He had gripped Dean tight, raised him from perdition, and meticulously pieced his shredded corpse and soul back together with precision and care not unlike the late da Vinci with his David. He had wrapped and shaped intricacies with grace, willed blood to fill his veins, and had restored a lifetime's worth of wear and tear of the “Righteous Man's” organs and flesh. He had later pulsed grace thorough Dean's being on countless other occasions, trying his best to spare the man the abuses heaven's interference surely inflicted upon his life. That he also desired his masterpiece to remain unmarred- that his attachment to the beautifully flawed human destined to be the Michael Sword had soared far past what the host had considered acceptable, meant little to him.
But experiencing humanity himself- if he could even claim to be human without a soul and the echos of grace in his flesh prison, had shown him quite quickly and cruelly that he had drastically underestimated the resilience of man. Because existence alone was pain. The mortal body was itself a weak, flawed thing. Fragile and unhealing, growing only weaker and more derelict over time, until inevitably life began to cripple it.
Jimmy Novak had been considered above average in fitness and health when he had taken his body as a vessel. He had thought that what little he had tweaked had been minor, and in comparison to Dean- whose body had been even younger, it had. He had considered mildly high cholesterol and age-appropriate joint degeneration of no import. Jimmy had been a casual runner. He had had no ailments, no organ damage, no prior bone breaks that had hindered range of motion. But even with having improved upon what he had considered more than satisfactory at the time, Jimmy's body- his body now, suffered.
He had never quite fully recovered his full grace after retrieving Dean from hell and restoring his body. Not with how he had continued to throw his grace around, all while his increasingly questionable loyalty to the host had threatened his position, turning the return-flow of grace to a mere trickle that took longer to replenish than use it. It had made sense at the time. While he was considered necessary for the mission, his superiors wanted him to know his place, and should he go down fighting with a fraction of his original power it would have been his own fault. He would not have been allowed to become a threat. He was not the first angel in history to become conflicted, nor was he likely to be the last, and historically speaking those angels tended to become a problem that heaven felt necessary to eliminate or imprison.
As the looming Apocalypse progressed, so had the failure of his grace. Even so, despite his inability to do many a thing he once could, it had been more of an annoyance than a real problem. No, it simply made him feel limited, but so long as he could still fight... still regenerate himself, heal Dean, then he would manage.
It had to show just how close to fallen he had been, that when Sam Winchester had said the almighty yes to Lucifer- for what reason they never learned, he had not known about it. Something he was sure that Dean had never quite forgiven him for. There had been no outpour of grace, no heavenly voice of outrage, no word from his former brethren. None that he had been allowed to be privy to at the very least, and he had long stopped slipping away to heaven for intel- could not risk his grace failing, or heaven deciding to keep him by force, and being unable to return to the man. His grace had simply faded rapidly with use, and shamefully it had taken longer than it should have for him to realize that he had been cut off entirely, that nothing was being replenished. Despite how he had desperately tried thereafter to hold onto what he could, to use his grace sparingly, with need, it had been futile.
Croatoan ravaged every city and small town. Dean had continued to need frequent healing. Wards had been necessary to avoid detection- to make a safe place for them to rest without being jumped in the dark of night... by both humans and croats alike, and it had not been until they had met up with other hunters that they had learned Lucifer had his vessel. He had wasted grace and blood to shield them from angels until then.
When it was functionally gone- when he had no longer been able to heal himself let alone others, and his vessel's bodily functions had returned, he discovered what physical pain had truly been... and it was excruciating. Minor cuts burned, became infected, swollen with heat. His knees, elbows, and wrists had never stopped aching. Broken bones were never right again, stabbing with the change in temperature, and after every strenuous fight. The stab wounds were absolutely incapacitating. He had been concussed far more than he surely remembered. Migraines were hell on earth. While humans were eased into such pain with age under a very gradual passing of time, he was obviously not so privileged, and having experienced only mild and fleeting pain in the past as an angel, suddenly going from zero to one hundred in a short period of time was debilitating.
Dean had tried everything and anything at first to keep him stable. His first dire injuries had refused to heal. They'd grown infected. Ultimately they had been forced to hole up in a mostly defendable penthouse hotel room for weeks, instead of carrying on toward Sioux Falls to regroup with Bobby, while his pathetic newly mortal body fought off sepsis. That had been the start of the pills.
There hadn't ever been a stop.
Early on especially, he ended up injured more often than not. Go a few millennia with a celestial body- his true form, then peak use and control of a vessel, and he had come to rely on a specific level of durability, flexibility, and level of strength. It had taken far too long to adjust to the new limitations. Truly, Dean should have just left him then. But although intelligent, Dean had still been brazenly sentimental back then, and had absolutely refused to consider it. Even if he had slowed the man down and very blatantly placed them both in danger countless times with his inability to adapt quickly.
But back then, things were still good between them. He hadn't irreparably damaged their dynamic yet. Sam hadn't for all intents and purposes been gone yet, even if Dean had forced himself to stick with keeping them separate “ for the sake of the greater good”.
The Dean sitting across from him wasn't a jaded one.
He wanted to shake him- tell him to not say yes to Michael. Even after having seen what he already had, and what was to come. He wanted to assure him that everything could still be fixed, that seeing what the world had become could lead him to make any number of different decisions that could lead to anywhere but here. He wanted to slam on the breaks, haul the man into his embrace, and never let him go.
Again, existence was painful...
Instead, he bit his tongue, and continued following his Dean's vehicle ever onward towards Michigan.
x
He'd known of course, going in...
There had been no doubt in his mind that things were not going to end well, for any of them, and he had walked to his death with a sense of finality, of peace. He had been both relieved and dismayed that Dean had sent him on his way, lamb to slaughter, rather than permitting him to stand by his side until the very end.
The “other” Dean from the past had never come back from his chat with their Fearless Leader. It hadn't surprised him. The Dean of yesteryear was still full of hope and life, and he was far from stupid, already disturbed by the man he had become. There was no doubt in his mind that the younger man had tried to change the massacre sure to come, and Dean had already shown no hesitation in knocking himself unconscious to remove him from the playing field. It was a small comfort knowing that Zachariah would allow no harm to come to him- not while he still had hopes of Dean saying yes to Michael in their timeline.
Ultimately, he hadn't expected to survive the initial raid, only anticipated being able to hope and pray to deaf ears that he was able to at the very least buy enough time for the man to reach Lucifer- to reach his brother.
It was perhaps a final surge of determination and pride that found him tearing through the Croats, a final hurrah for the garrison leader he had once been. It had felt so long ago... but the muscle memory, the pain killers numbing him to the never-ending aches, and the amphetamines overriding the bone-deep exhaustion made for a killer combination. He had abandoned his firearms in favor of his angel blade- old faithful in the end, and had tossed them to Risa when she'd run out of ammo. It had kept her going a mere five minutes longer at best, but it was something.
After giving them up, he had no longer paid much mind to his surroundings, just let himself drown in the battle and the sounds of thunder echoing from the sky. He had not even registered the gradual decrease in gunshots and screams, after all, what good would listening have done for a dead man?
But eventually things slowed down enough to be noticeable, even in the haze of adrenaline. Though he could see no comrades still standing- hell, he'd even re-killed a couple that had risen in the madness, the Croats themselves had even thinned down to a scattered few.
It was then that dread and fear crept in, radiating from his chest, because it wasn't supposed to go like this. He wasn't supposed to make it out alive and uninfected. Not when Dean-
He let his blade drop, the resulting metallic clatter against the ceramic tile turning the heads of the handful of Croats in sight, and he sucked in a sharp, pained breath.
He didn't want to see...
But he had to know, had to go, and now.
Blade abandoned, he managed to evade the first two croats, and rounded the corner to the next hallway. A third he managed to get the drop on thirty seconds later, swiftly defenestrated out an already shattered window. A forth he sent down a flight of stairs with a determined shoulder ram. But even then, by now he was painfully aware of just how silent things had become. No more screams, no gunfire, even an absence of the thunder and lightning cracks that had been background noise for the battle. Nothing but the sound of his boot slamming against the tile as he ran, and the occasional shuffle in the distance no doubt belonging to straggling Croats.
It was deafening, and even if he had not exerted so much from fighting, even if he hadn't been bolting as fast as his legs could take him, he was sure that he still wouldn't be able to get enough oxygen in his lungs. Because he hadn't heard anything. No booming monologuing, no rage fueled emotional declarations, surges of power, or crackling energy from a particular bullet hitting home.
He reached the garden... it too was silent, seemingly void of life. No sign any fight had taken place, no Lucifer making a mockery of Sam Winchester's body. He pressed forward, eyes flitting in hopes of finding something that would clue him in on what had come of everything.
It did not take him long.
Clearly, they had never had the slightest chance, not if the garden Lucifer once stood in had remained completely unmarred, no hint that he had ever even been there.
Except of course for the discarded firearm laying forgotten in the dirt...
...and Dean Winchester's crumpled corpse- limp and unmoving mere feet away from it.
He did not register his knees slamming into the pavement beneath them. His brain nothing but static, a screeching whistle building in the background as he forgot to breath, and blood struggled to keep up with the hummingbird thrum that was trying to crack through his chest.
Castiel screamed.