Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I. All the light that burns

Sam is too late.

Sparks of flame from the shattered light bulbs smoke on the cheap motel bedspread when Sam breaks down the door. Castiel flies in on the other side of the room. The plan is to surprise Dean, capture him, and lock him up until he can hear reason - before he says yes to Michael. As soon as Castiel arrives Dean turns to him and his eyes burn blue and then impossibly white.

Castiel stumbles backwards, shaking his head as Sam rushes towards Dean, arm outstretched. Sam might be shouting. All Castiel can hear is the voice of Michael as he asks, through Dean’s mouth, “where is Lucifer?”

Dean is a tangled glory of sun-bright soul and archangel fire. He looks at Castiel, then back at Sam like they’re nothing. And then he flies.

“The fuck happened?” demands a voice from the door. Sam’s eyes are red when he turns to meet the hotel manager.

The manager shouts and Sam shoves a plastic card at him until he goes away - only to return a few minutes later with a box addressed to Robert Singer.

While Sam cries openly over the letter he finds inside, Castiel walks around to the little bathroom. Carefully, quietly he leans against the cool wall and in the mirror he sees Jimmy Novak’s face. In the millennia he spent watching over earth he has seen anguish sculpt more faces than he can possibly remember, but he never fully understood the emotions behind it until this moment. His eyes burn.

II. Worship

Sam says no to Lucifer. He says no again and again. He says it in his sleep and in his prayers. He’s said it twice to Lucifer’s face.

The planet unravels around them. At first they fight the obvious fronts: demons, angels. But when the Croatoan virus hits the devastation is swift, gruesome, and worldwide. Sometimes they gain friends but mostly they lose them. It’s just Sam and Castiel: the last bastion of the war against the end.

Sam is in it to save his brother. Castiel is in it because he’s fallen this far, he might as well keep falling until he disappears. The world folds in on itself like matter in a black hole.

In a hotel room outside of Ann Arbor Gabriel appears to Castiel in a Casa Erotica pay per view movie. Sam is in the shower when Castiel learns about the rings of the four horsemen. He doesn’t tell Sam but he gathers the three from Bobby Singer and collects the last ring a few months later in the middle of a burning city. He found Death helping himself to the contents of a taco truck.

“End Lucifer and free me,” Death tells him. “And be quick about it.”

Castiel promises.

They set up a base at Camp Chataqua, an old scout camp with cabins ready for tenants and wilderness all around. Sam and his army wire it strong against diseased humankind. They don’t bother so much about angels and demons. Heaven and Hell are fighting their own war and ravaging what’s left of the world in their wake. Sam is beneath their notice now, as is Castiel.

It’s been one year since Castiel last prayed for God’s intervention. There’s no point in praying for something that died or left long ago. Worship is just an addiction - one for which angels were custom built. Now he prays with chemicals, replacing the holy fire that used to burn his grace white hot with absinthe, pills, and marijuana, or whatever the last raid brought in.

III. The word of God

“Bela,” Sam says, his tone dripping with disdain.

“Sam,” she purrs. “Don’t be like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re holding a grudge. You know I just did what I had to. I had to try to survive. You can’t blame me for what happened to you and your brother.”

Sam swallows and his fingers flex at his sides. He and Castiel are meeting Bela on a crossroad twenty miles from their location. There's a burned out car on the corner and the moon shuffling through the clouds is the only light for miles.

“Explain why you want to help us.”

Bela smiles and her eyes flick black. “What’s the matter? Don’t trust me?”

“Never.”

Bela pouts. “Sammy, if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s my desire to survive. Those bastard archangels are going to destroy everything - including Hell which, if you stopped to think, includes me. I’ve managed to get in on Lucifer’s inner circle. There’s a tablet in a crypt somewhere that, from what I’ve heard, works like an angel decoder ring. We’re meant to think Lucifer wants it for the war, but I think there’s something about archangels he doesn’t want us to see.”

The tablet ends up bringing the wrath of Heaven upon them. It also brings a young boy, not nearly close enough to manhood. He reads the tablet and tells Castiel about angels and weeps over his dead mother late at night when he thinks everyone is asleep.

IV. The fall

Michael kills Lucifer. It wasn’t easy, from what Castiel hears, and it wasn’t quick. But with Lucifer in a weak vessel Michael had the advantage, so it was only a matter of time.

Castiel gets this all out of Hester as she pants and spits blood in the interrogation cabin. The cabin walls drip with Enochian warding written in cheap spray paint and blood. Hester writhes at the sigils and spells on the walls but Castiel barely feels it these days. Castiel takes the angel blade and slices her casually from ear to chin. Blue light shines from the wound and she shrieks in pain. “So why the fuck are you still here,” Castiel growls.

She squeezes her eyes shut, squeezes her mouth shut, and shakes her head tightly. Castiel carves another line across her shoulder and another along her neck and another along her hip. Finally, Hester gasps, “Michael has commanded it. We are to bring judgment to the world.”

Castiel grimaces. “So you’re killing everyone.”

She nods and averts her eyes as though in shame. “Michael has commanded it.”

V. Speeches

Castiel leans back against the dank wall of his cabin. It smells musty after the wet fall they’ve had and it will only get worse through the winter. He stretches his legs out along the floor, jeans ripped and a hole in one of his socks. Castiel strikes a match and holds it up to the joint in his mouth. As he exhales, smoke twines around a pile of angel blades, the only remains of his brothers and sisters. When he closes his eyes, he imagines that he can still hear the reverberation of their grace. It’s like a distant echo of Heaven.

He’s always needed a mission.

As he smokes he prods at his feelings in the delicate way he sometimes still prods at the missing tooth he can’t seem to regrow after a bad fight defending the camp perimeter. Killing his siblings used to be unthinkable. First for the loss of his family. And later, in guilty twinges, for the lives of the vessels they had inhabited. Now he sees death as a mercy for all parties. Anything is better than living in this razed world.

He told Sam about Hester. And Samandriel. And Hael. How they told Castiel their hearts weren’t in the fight. They did as Michael ordered. “We need to kill Michael. If Michael is eliminated, the other angels will stop the killing. They’ll retreat to Heaven.”

“What?” Sam has grown skinnier in the past few years but there’s still a lot of power in his stance as he shoots to his feet, palms slapping the rough wooden table in the cabin that doubles as his living space and war room. Castiel has so little power these days, Sam might just have the strength to knock him into next Thursday. “No way. You kill Michael, you kill Dean.”

“Sam, angels are murdering the world. Your brother is only one man.”

Sam sets his jaw. “I won’t kill my brother.”

“He isn’t your brother anymore.” Castiel tries a different tactic. “You remember Raphael’s vessel? That drooling mess your brother told you about? That’s your brother right now, Sam. Burned out by an archangel. Dean is dead.” If Castiel has faith in anything, it’s in this.

“I won’t kill him. End of story.”

VI. Ring of fire

Michael arrives in the dusty old barn in a blaze of blue light. Castiel lights the ring of holy fire around him before he has a chance to say, “How dare you.”

Sam quickly works the spell that Kevin found in the angel tablet. Michael’s customary hauteur bleeds from Dean’s face as Sam compels his brother to resume control of his body. Sam thinks all he has to do is reason with Dean. Sam’s faith makes Castiel feel impossibly old.

He's lounging against a stable door, legs crossed at the ankles and a joint already lit and in his mouth when Dean surfaces. He looks around the barn, at the circle of fire heating the air, and mumbles, “where am I?”

Sam rushes in, stumbling to explain. They’re short on time. Dean must push Michael out so that Sam’s mission can come to fruition: save Dean, kill Michael.

Dean looks at Castiel as he smokes in the shadows and something in his face crumples. He shakes his head. “I don’t…” Dean quivers and Castiel can recognize the signs of repossession as well as any hunter. He clamps the joint firmly between his lips and pushes himself upright, plunging his hand into his pocket and taking out the rings collected from the four horsemen. He throws them down into the ring of holy fire and chants a spell which opens a swirling hole at Dean’s feet.

Holy fire streams into the pit. The circle won’t hold for long. Dean’s body spasms as Michael fights for control.

Castiel spares one last look at Sam as he sprints to catch his brother, then he hurls himself across the line of holy fire. He slams his body around Dean and together they topple over the edge into nothing.

He has fallen so far that the holy fire barely scalds him. Castiel plunges with the righteous man back to hell.

VII. Remission and relapse

The cage rolls them in its belly like it’s alive. The force of their landing throws Castiel off of Dean and he falls into the sides. Ice razors into his body where his vessel touches the bars. He screams and the sound may go on for seconds or years. The joint he’d tried to hold between his lips is gone, lost in the fall. His lips feel empty.

When his head clears enough for him to drag himself away from the edges of the cage, Michael has regained control of Dean’s body. Even in the dank pit of Hell, he is terrifyingly beautiful as he looks around and realizes where Castiel has pulled him. Michael cants his head down at Castiel. “You’ll pay for this,” he promises.

Castiel becomes a mess of blood and bone and the cage rebuilds him each time. Here, there is no absence of pain and Castiel rides the crests and troughs. When Michael is quiet Castiel misses the temporary bliss that drugs gave him. His body is still so human and further from the power of Heaven than it has ever been. Pain becomes its own kind of drug and he almost comes to look forward to the sensation of pain for the sake of sensation, the sound of his own screams for the sake of sound. He wishes the cage would let him die.

He wishes he couldn’t see Dean Winchester’s face. When Michael gets close, when he digs Dean’s fingers into Castiel’s chest and plugs them into Castiel’s heart, Castiel can count the freckles that scatter across his nose and spread along his high, perfect cheeks.

Castiel falls and he falls and he burns.

The cage eats away at their grace - what’s left of Castiel’s and Michael’s as well - and they both weaken as the days pass. Castiel suspects that’s how the prison sustains itself.

Castiel lies on the floor of the cage with his head turned away as Dean’s fingers break his own one at a time, almost lovingly. Crack. Crack. Crack. He stops with three fingers unbroken on the left hand. Slowly, Castiel marshals his mind and looks at Michael.

Michael shakes and shudders and then his mouth opens wide and pure fire rushes out and ricochets off the edges of the cage.

And then it’s just Dean, green eyes pools of grief. He throws himself over Castiel and Castiel tries to flinch away. He hears Dean screaming into his ear, “don’t you fucking touch him. Don’t you touch him.”

It’s a litany. It’s a prayer.

VIII. Sword and shield

The Michael sword stays between Castiel and Michael and as the decades press on, Castiel learns to stop flinching when Dean presses his fingers into his skin. Sometimes he can even control the shaking in his fingers enough so that his whole body sits still in the icy chill of the cage. Dean's lips are warm against his skin.

Dean tells him his regrets. “I’m not a confessional,” Castiel tells Dean. But he listens anyway.

Somewhere above them, Sam frantically looks for a way to free Dean. "I won’t leave you," Dean whispers to Castiel. "I’ll make it up to you," Dean tells him. He is unceasing in his gentleness.

Down in the pit Dean has his arms around Castiel, or Castiel has his arms around Dean. They hold each other together and wait for Sam as the world unwinds above.

Chapter Text

IX. In the garden

When Castiel finds Dean again, his head is wreathed in bees, like a halo. “I see you’ve made some new friends,” Castiel says. 

“Cas!” When Dean turns his smile is like sunlight. “You’re back.” He reaches out and takes Castiel’s hand in his own, running his other palm up to his shoulder and clasping it tightly. “I got lonely,” he says looking up at the bees briefly before turning his gaze back on Castiel. “They remind me of you. Are you okay?”

Castiel shrugs. Okay is a relative term. And anyway, it doesn’t matter because he’s back here in their garden once more. He inhales deeply - the scent of wet earth, green plants, and fragrant roses are a balm on his weary grace. It doesn’t matter that the garden is still as cold as the cage. Just the memory of sunlight is warming.

In a little while - minutes, days, years - the cage will remember that he’s still an angel. It will bite into his grace, severing the dream link. Whenever this happens, Castiel pulls himself upright with feet flat on the cold cage floor, curls into a crouch, and watches over Dean as he sleeps away the years in their garden. And then he waits for the cage to blink.

Dean likes to call themselves gods and Castiel has long since become inured to the blasphemy. Castiel holds up his hand to allow a bee to alight on his finger. He peers at it closely. “You did a good job,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“The thorax is oddly shaped, but yes. I believe this is flight worthy - even outside of your dream.”

Dean beams and then he looks intently at Castiel’s mouth.

Castiel takes that for the invitation it is and presses in close. Around them, the garden buzzes with life.

X. Death waits for no angel

Death displaces the air of the cage, jolting Castiel from his meditation immediately. Death raises his eyebrows ever so slightly and looks at Castiel. “Interesting.”

Castiel lays one hand on Dean’s shoulder and another on his brow. “Dean, wake up.”

Dean jolts awake - with a little boost from Castiel’s weak grace. He blinks slowly at the gaunt newcomer to the cage. “Who the hell are you?” he asks roughly.

Death scowls. “You should show me some respect, boy. I’m here to rescue you.”

“Rescue?” Surprise, relief, and then distrust flash across Dean’s face. “This is a trick. Ain't no way anyone can get in without the rings. And even then there’s no way out.” He glares over at the glimmer of light that sometimes looks like Dean and sometimes looks like his father when he was younger. “This is you, isn’t it, Michael? I thought you gave up tormenting us years ago.”

“I’m as old - or older - than God himself,” Death says. “You think I’d be unable to break any lock he’s ever created?” He reaches for Dean and wraps one clawlike hand around his arm.

Castiel realizes a moment before it happens and he draws his hands away, letting Dean go. Death disappears, and Dean with him. From the corner of the cage, Michael laughs with Dean’s face.

XI. Fight, no flight

Hell has never felt so close, or so cold, now that Dean is gone.

At first Castiel avoided dreaming, in case Michael chose to resume his torture. When that didn’t happen, Castiel escaped into the dream garden. He reshaped his own bees until the thorax was oddly shaped, but still flightworthy.

Castiel watches the bees.

XII. Echo the cage

The rush of teleportation, nearly forgotten after so many years, jostles Castiel awake. He lifts his head and pushes his hands into the floor of the cage. No, another cage.

“Cas?”

Castiel’s head snaps around, homing in immediately on Dean’s voice. “Dean?”

Dean stands outside of the new cage enclosing Castiel, despair and desperate joy warring in his expression. “Cas, you alright?”

Don’t ask stupid questions. “I think so.” He looks around. He is now trapped in a torch-lit wide cave, stone steps leading away into the darkness. He squints, trying to orient himself. It’s odd to see light again, strange to see people outside of his own imagination.

“Cas, just hang on. We’re gonna get you out of there, okay?”

“Dean, wait!” A shadow rises from behind Dean and Castiel tenses before his brain recognizes Sam’s voice. Sam lays a hand on his brother’s shoulder. He stares at Castiel with open hostility. “How do you even know it’s him?”

Dean’s gaze is steady and there’s a fire there that Castiel hasn’t witnessed in years. “It’s him, Sam. It’s him.”

They link hands through the bars and hold on until a door dissolves in the side of the cage and Castiel is finally free. He falls into Dean’s arms and Sam has to pull them apart, turn them towards the exit, and push them before they can completely grasp the notion of leaving Hell behind.

They walk out of Hell like they’re walking into another room. Like it’s no big deal. A smug young woman wiggles her fingers after them. “Ta, Sammy! This makes us square,” she calls out. A dour redhead stands beside her, a look of enmity directed towards the other woman, a witch collar around her neck.

“Eat me, Bela,” Sam mutters and Castiel turns his head sharply to look back at her.

She sees Castiel looking and smiles wide as a shark. “That’s King of Hell to you, Sammy!” Her laughter fills the cavernous hallway behind them.

XIII. Among the roses

Dean kneels in front of a hedge of roses, head bowed, shoulders sagging as he scrapes and pulls at the earth. Castiel pauses, his bare feet soaking up the stored solar heat from the wood of the deck they built together, and watches Dean work. Most of their property (as yet unclaimed by any virus survivors) is dedicated towards raising food. But in corners and hillocks and wherever it’s difficult to harvest, Dean has planted flowers.

Each bloom feels like a miracle.

Quietly, Castiel descends the steps and walks across the mulched paths until he reaches Dean. He leans over and runs a hand down Dean’s spine. His fingers linger in the small of his back and Castiel dips his head to kiss his neck, lips closing on the sweat-salty gray hairs curling at the nape. He crouches low and Dean sighs, then settles back into his arms. Age has stolen over Dean, giving him a softer body, which Castiel loves, and softer eyes, which he loves even more.

Maybe there are no endings, he thinks as he disentangles himself from Dean and settles shoulder to shoulder to help with the weeding. Maybe life is just a cascade of beginnings, stretching out into the universe, filling the darkness with light. 

Next door Sam’s children squeal over the buzz of summer cicadas. Sometimes, hearing them, Castiel can almost imagine that the apocalypse never arrived. The end of the world wasn’t easy but now, with Dean in his arms and the sun warm on his face, Castiel thinks he might have finally found peace.