Happy Holideans Guys

[righteously]

Who: Dean Winchester, Emma Swan & COMPLETELY OPEN
Where: Literally all over Wonderland
When: Dec 15-24
Rating: R for language, violence, adult themes
Summary: When Emma agreed to acompany Dean on his stupid suicide mission of inevitable death and idiocy, neither of them prepared for the mistletoe. Or, you know, the freaking time travel.
The Story:

The Arrival

They ran out of canned food. All of the stockpiled supplies had been growing steadily more scarce, but it’s probably the cans that finally triggered Dean’s decision to push through with the back-up plan brewing in his mind for the last several weeks. There was beef jerky- god damn, they had beef jerky by the friggin’ score, but with so many mouths to feed, it wouldn't last. There were hunters- actual game, what was left of the animals in the forest and the fish in the ocean were being picked off one by one for sustenance in much the same way that the Jabberwock was picking them off for sustenance.

Soon, there would be nothing. Soon, they wouldn't just have to worry about losing those last few precious lives to the roaming beast, but to starvation. Dehydration. Sickness.

Tom’s been stirring up talk about a second trip to the core, but morale is low. It was a stupid plan the first time around, it’s even more stupid with so many fighters taken out of the game. With so many injuries, with so few extra lives to spare and, more importantly, with the Jabberwock more strong than he’s ever been.

In the end, it’s not a difficult decision to make. Not by a long shot. Too many people are gone already, and waiting for more to go is stupid. He’s not going to do it.

Michael’s there, the Archangel, an ever present beacon of power and possibility, and though things are different now than they were back home- hell, different now than they were years ago in Wonderland’s less horrific years, there was always small part of him that protested the very notion of giving in.

That small part’s been ground to dust.

It’s a no-brainer. Dean says yes.

It’s a small piece to a bigger puzzle, a bigger and, admittedly, probably doomed plan. Cas had been able to take the Jabberwock down in the beginning. It had taken effort, a great expenditure of grace, but he'd been able to slay the beast over and over again to grant them a temporary reprieve. After it swallowed the Vorpal Shield, that bastard ground him into dust. Michael is stronger, though- a thousand times stronger, at least he would be in his true vessel. If they could get rid of it for good together, or, Christ, even just put it down temporarily, long enough to give Wonderland a chance to gather it’s strength, it might fix everything.

If it meant burning Dean out of his body, so be it. If it meant risking losing his remaining lives in the process, he was so far beyond the point of caring.

It would have to be done in secret. The fewer people who knew, the fewer people likely to stop him and the fewer to possibly get caught in the crossfire. He kept it to himself, kept it from Jo, from Sam, from Ellen, from anyone and everyone likely to put their fucking fingers in the mix and make things messy. He'd keep it from everyone if it were feasible, but it simply isn’t. He needs someone to take over in the event it doesn’t work, needs somebody to help him get to where he needs to be, and that someone is Emma.

She had tried to argue against it, tried to use logic to point out why it wasn't worth the risk, but it hadn't lasted long. He had trusted her for a reason; she understood what it meant to be a leader, to go forward and take a chance because the payoff would be beyond worth it if you could pull it off. That didn't mean she liked it. Dean was more than a friend and more than someone to take orders from: he was family now, more like family than just about anyone she'd ever known. Orphans were forced to build their own families, and if they were lucky, sometimes they made a friend like Dean who fit the bill completely, someone who could offer understanding and solidarity like no one else, someone else who knew what it felt like to lose and to grow up too fast and to make the best of what you had.

The idea of this going south and losing him, losing their leader, losing one of the best friends she’d ever had made her stomach drop and her chest feel tight. If it worked, it would be damn near a miracle, though she was hesitant to use the word. She never gave her approval, not really, but she let him know that he could trust her. Trust her to help him through it, trust her to pick up the pieces if it failed or if he didn’t make it back. Meanwhile, she’d spend as much time as she could trying to convince him to take another course, trying to figure out alternatives. She knew what taking the risk could earn them, and she wasn’t going to forcibly stop him -- she respected his decision -- but damn if she wasn’t going to try to get him to change his mind in the eleventh hour.

In the end, they go anyway. Gearing up is a grim affair, done in the silence and secrecy of Dean’s private quarters, tucked away in the back of the refuge. It’s the middle of the night, the civilians and refugees are sleeping. The resistance patrols are circling the small perimeter of the sanctuary they’ve carved out of sweat and blood. They slip through the cracks, through the woods, through the rubble and the dying gardens without a word or a sound. Even footsteps in the grass seem muted in this place.

The entrance hall and lobby, once a grand affair, is dirty and dingy and cracked. Dean can’t help but to sweep his eyes over it as he crosses the entranceway, doors broken in and swinging wide. They could be fixed, but why bother when the beast would simply break them down again and again?

It’s silent, deceptively so. His hands are tight on his gun as he pauses to listen, ears sharpened by Michael’s burning him dormant in the back of his mind. They’re waiting, saving it, saving his last few minutes with the angel tucked into a space too small for him while Dean steers the ship. As soon as Michael takes over, that energy will explode into something grand and heavenly, something burning bright and overpowering, but not yet.

His jaw tightens, and his eyes flick to Emma. One firm nod signals that the coast is clear, the need for words erased by time and familiarity.

She doesn’t like this any better now that they’re here, but as they cross the threshold, the deal is sealed. There’s no going back now, no chances to duck out and find another option. All they have left is to go forward, to follow through with this stupid plan she has no choice but to go along with. Dean is just as stubborn as she is, and they have a job to do. She couldn’t talk him out of this, but she can help him try to protect everyone here. Try to free Wonderland from tyranny and make it someplace everyone can live again, not just survive.

The signal is enough, and she moves forward with her gun pointed at the floor in a two-handed grip. She’s brought the replica of her father’s sword she managed to pull out of the closets all those years ago as well, sheathed at her hip, but it’s more of a good-luck charm than anything. A comfort. If she’s close enough to the Jabberwocky to use it, then it’ll already be too late. She’ll be dinner, and she’s running out of deaths.

She moves forward through the front foyer in time with Dean, their footsteps slow and deliberate, careful not to break the too-heavy silence that’s bearing down on them. Any moment, she expects that the Jabberwock will pierce it, slice through it like it’s nothing, sense them or smell them and somehow just know that it’s no longer alone. They’re on its turf now, and the beast has every advantage that comes with playing on the home field. Still, it’s not the Jabberwock that makes her stop dead in her tracks when they turn the corner.

It’s the mansion itself.

The cracked and crumbling ruin the mansion has become is gone, lush carpets and whole, unbroken mirrors in its stead. Garlands, holly, doors still on their hinges and none of it looking like its become the stomping grounds for something as ravenous as the predator that’s taken over Wonderland has proven to be. She relaxes her hold on her gun, just a hair, turning her head alone to narrow her eyes at Dean in question. What the hell is going on here?

His brow furrows as it tracks over the garland, over the wallpaper, over everything. Slowly, he looks to Emma. Meets her eye, and tightens his grip on his gun.

Whatever this is, it isn't good.

--

This is a catch-all for both Dean and Emma. They'll have their own subthreads to keep things organized!

Comments

[righteously]

For a long, tense moment there is only staring.

Dean's eyes are both wide and aggressive, disbelieving and guarded, and he doesn't lower the gun.

Cas.

Cas.

It hurts, stabs him in the gut in a way nothing's been able to do since the angel died, and his throat works tightly. His eyes harden.

This is it. This is the trick, this is the trap. Whoever that is, that can't be Cas. Cas is dead- the kind you don't come back from. The kind Dean's spent every moment since mourning until he broke and couldn't anymore. This is a shifter, or a demon. This is a hallucination. This is Wonderland, playing mindgames with him. Even Emmanuel disappeared, and as much as Dean had hated looking at the mirror's face after Cas passed, he'd still torn down everything he could get his hands on in a fit of rage.

Everything that ever was Castiel is gone. He doesn't ask what are you, or how are you doing this or what is this because ultimately, it doesn't matter.

He cocks his gun.

[freewill]

If this situation had been less significant, Castiel would have rolled his eyes. Dean should know better than to think that pointing a gun at him will have any effect.

"Dean," he says, finally finding words for the both of them. He starts to approach him, but he does it slowly, his hands splayed in front of him. "You've come back in time. Five years, by my count. It's..."

But as he does another scan of Dean's essence and soul to make certain of that estimation, he picks up on something else. The proverbial scent of Michael—his brother, the archangel, God's right hand—is all over Dean. Michael isn't actually present, but he leaves remnants, the same way that any angel does with a vessel.

Dean said yes.

Dean agreed to let Michael in, which means that now Michael has permission to use Dean's body any time that he wants. And only a very broken, hollowed-out Dean would do such a thing.

So Castiel stops in his approach, halts in his tracks and stares for even longer. Dean looks beaten down, a dog that's been kicked too many times, a gun that's been dismantled and never put back together properly.

"Why?" he asks through grit teeth. He thinks back to the alleyway, to punching Dean until he got his blood all over his knuckles, to the disappointment and rage. "Why did you say yes?"

[righteously]

It's not just any gun. He's got devil's traps in all his silver bullets, he's taken every possible precaution. Granted they wouldn't do jack squat to an actual legit Cas, but if this bastard were a shifter or a demon? These bullets would do exactly what Dean wants them to do.

But he doesn't pull the trigger.

The sound of his name, Christ, the sound of Cas's voice, it tears through his mind, scrubbing it blank. His jaw cocks- jerks more like, a muted and violent flinch. Teeth grit and grind together and he inhales sharply through his nostrils.

Cas moves closer.

Dean's mind struggles to comprehend, cogs whirring back into motion one at a time, slowly but surely, and the words replay in his mind until he understands them. Five years, by my count.

He doesn't lower the gun, not even when Cas stops.

He would ask that, wouldn't he? If he had lived to see Dean do it. Then again, if he'd have lived, Dean wouldn't have done it. No. A hundred other options, other chances, but never that. Because Cas would be disappointed.

His eyes rove over Cas's face, only now seeing the subtle differences. The same age, of course, always, but less worn. More stiff. Still wearing the trench coat, so fucking stubborn, so fucking....

It's Cas. Alive Cas, really Cas.

But it's not his Cas.

He rips his eyes away because he can't stand to fucking look anymore. He just fucking can't. The gun drops, and he breathes in and out heavily to calm himself. The anger rolls through him, livid, completely and totally, at the injustice, at the unfairness of it all.

He licks his lips and looks back finally, eyebrows hiked into something severe. He ignores the question. "Five years."

That's...

Gamechanging. He straightens. "Where's Michael?"

[freewill]

There's a whole epic playing out on Dean's face, but Castiel hasn't been handed the script pages. He sees the confusion, the moments taken to make calculations, the anger and the soul-crushing grief. Considering he can usually read Dean's expressions and moods like they're words in a book, it's jarring to find that he doesn't know the person in front of him.

Dean, but not Dean. Five years is almost as long as they've known each other in total, and this Dean has lived through that. Here, in this place.

This place he'd said he maybe wanted to stay in and enjoy for as long as he could, but clearly it hasn't worked out as planned, and Castiel has no idea why.

And what does Dean ask about? Michael. It's something they'll need to keep in mind now that he's here and in this vulnerable state, but the fact is that Michael doesn't have much reason to make use of Dean as a vessel at this point in time. Lucifer isn't here, they aren't even on Earth, so what good would it do? And Michael is a pragmatist. He wouldn't do something if there wasn't some point to it.

"Elsewhere," Castiel says, face pinched with annoyance as he looks away. He's not all that impressed with Dean's attempt at deflection. "Why? What do you have planned?"

What could he ever think was important enough that he would let Michael in?

[righteously]

What do you have planned. It's a slap in the face, every single word hurts and he almost can't bear it. More than that, though, the crushing waves of knowledge that he doesn't know anything, doesn't know what's happening, isn't the Cas Dean lost, it's almost overwhelming in it's intensity. He hasn't felt much in so long, and to have it all flooding back-

Cas is the reason. There are others, of course, other pieces to the puzzle, but the biggest piece is Cas shaped. He's the reason for everything, almost everything, no, everything. And he couldn't even fucking comprehend it right now.

Dean's being weak. Dean's getting caught up in this- this trick, this... temporary jump to the past. He's letting it get to him, letting it crowd the bigger picture, letting it obstruct what he should be doing.

Cas is dead, and there are dozens of people depending on him not to fuck this up.

Cas is alive.

Focus.

"Nothing you'd understand," is the curt reply, and with it, the spell is broken. His feet can move again, and he strides across the room, brushing past Cas toward his desk. It's all the same as he remembers, long before his room crumbled and was demolished by the beast. He doesn't even glance at the picture of his mother, not at the tokens or personal effects. His eyes, instead, search frantically for the notebook he knows is in one of these drawers.

[freewill]

That response cuts more than anything else about this bizarre interaction, and Castiel's left speechless as he lets Dean shoulder past him toward his desk.

Dean would never speak to him like that, as if he has no significance. Part of the reason that the two of them fight and get in each other's faces and spend weeks avoiding each other is because they care too much, because there's so much wrapped up in this bizarre bond that they have that it gets to be overwhelming sometimes.

But this person...

He's cold, he's detached. More than that, he's the person Castiel always feared Dean would turn into. An empty husk with a familiar wrapping, and that's all.

But he's still Dean, and his soul is still there. It's roughed up, but it's there. It's still bright, it's still powerful, and it's still Dean. A very, very cracked Dean, but Castiel's put him back together before.

After a long pause, he moves toward Dean, stopping at his side as he watches him dig through the drawer, tossing things aside in his search. "Do you have any idea what brought you back?" Did Michael send him back? It's completely possible, well within an archangel's ability. "And if you're here, then..."

Does that mean the Dean from this time period is five years in the future?

[righteously]

Even now, Dean cares too much. More than he should. More than it should matter, and he shoves it down. He stomps on it and trods on it and lets it build that fire burning in his gut, that urge to just end it all, everything, all of it. He needs to find Michael. Michael can take him to the future, right? Michael's got the power to jump to a point in time just before that fucker ate the vorpal shield, and maybe they can end it there, before the core mission. Maybe. Maybe.

If nothing else, they can strategize. Michael was heaven's deadliest warrior, and that's what he needs. With enough time and planning, a deadly warrior can turn the tide of a war.

Castiel's presence at his side is unsettling, but he can't pull away until he finds that journal. As soon as his hands wrap around it, he rips it out and rifles through pages in such a frantic hurry that he actually manages to rip one or two of them.

He ignores Castiel's questions again as he reads, fixates his mind on the point in time, tries to remember the details surrounding those months. The resistance fort is already built. Good. Christmas, his very first Christmas in Wonderland. The year before him and Cas....

He jerks his head up again, tosses the journal down onto the dresser.

Seems to debate on whether or not he's going to answer at all. Finally, annoyed with himself, he does. "No. I don't know."

A beat, and his eyes flick down to Castiel's hands. He holds his own out. "I need to make a call."

He wiggles his fingers impatiently. Give him the communicator.

[freewill]

Castiel only watches as Dean searches through the pages as if they'll give him some untold wisdom. As it stands, he's most likely trying to place himself in time, which wouldn't be all that difficult if he asked him.

Castiel doesn't have all that much time to be offended by it, as Dean next asks him for a phone.

Keeping his eyes on him for as long as he can while he walks, Castiel moves back over to the bed where he'd been sitting and waiting. He picks up Dean's phone that he'd been gripping onto until the door had opened.

While he turns back toward Dean, he keeps the phone held tight in his first. "What for?" he asks.

If Dean wants to make a call, he's going to have to explain himself or try to take it by Castiel from force, which isn't going to work well unless he's got some holy oil on hand. Castiel isn't worried, and he finds it hard to believe that Dean, even this Dean who's had all the marrow sucked out of him, would go that far.

[righteously]

No. No holy oil. Not for Cas. Hell, he'd sooner leave the fucking room and break into another one, he'd sooner steal someone's communicator than spend that much time and effort trying to extract it from an unwilling angel. Because that would mean interacting on such a deep level that he'd be forced to... deal with something, forced to do something, forced to say something-

How could you. How could you die, and leave Dean behind like that. How could you.

You never came back.

His jaw twitches.

"I don't have time for this. You're gonna help me because that's what you do, or I'm gonna find someone else who will."

[freewill]

Well, that much hasn't changed. Stubborn as a bull, that's one thing that Dean could never not be.

Castiel looks off for a moment, his jaw twitching before he marches over to Dean and hands the phone over with a sigh-slash-grunt.

But he's going to remain right in Dean's personal space so that he can watch everything he does with that phone. If he tries to call Michael, he's yanking it right back out of his hand, no questions asked.

"You need to tell me what happened." Castiel doesn't think he needs to give any more explanation than that. Whatever happens in the next five years that turns Dean into this? Well, it needs to be stopped.

Which is nothing different from what they've done in the past. Changing the future in one way or another is more or less their modus operandi.

[righteously]

He snatches the phone out of Cas's hands with some measure of satisfaction, and devotes his intention to scrolling through the contacts. Cas doesn't back up, though, doesn't leave his personal space and that's.

It's not acceptable.

He loses focus on the phone and his eyes settle absently on Cas's chest, head ducked, fixated like all he can see are the buttons, tan and shining and infinitely familiar. He could reach out and touch them if he wanted to.

He could reach out and touch Cas if he wanted to.








It rolls over him in another wave, the surreality, the suddenness of all of this. His hand shakes, and he grips the phone more tightly. The plastic squeaks a little in protest, but it doesn't break. These fucking things were always so durable.

It's not as grounding as he wishes it was.



A second of silence passes.

"People died." He finally bites out. "Wonderland's dying. We're losing. Sam, Tom, Jo. James. They're still alive and I can't let..."

He shakes his head slowly, as though in a trance.

He's right there. He can almost feel the warmth of Cas's chest. He used to touch it. Some nights when things were hard, the only thing in the world he ever had... the only thing that kept him from...

It's right there.

Cas has been gone for so long. There hasn't been a day that didn't.... that it still doesn't...

[freewill]

Normally when they stand like this, they're staring right at each other, but not this time around. Just like everything else, this is different, and Dean's got his head bowed low as if he can't actually bear to look him in the face.

Still, there isn't anger now. Dean doesn't shove him back or tell him to get out. He doesn't storm out himself, either. It's the first time since he walked in here that he's slowed down and Castiel's struggling to figure out what it all means.

People died. They're losing. But there are people still alive, and Castiel doesn't have to think too hard about it to find the name that's missing.

"They're still alive."

Meaning that he isn't.

Maybe he shouldn't be all that surprised. How many times has he died now? It had to stick one day, but he never pictured it happening in a place like this. Somewhere far, far away from home, on a battlefield he has no business being a part of, and now the pieces fall into place. Now he understands why this Dean is so fractured.

"What's causing it?" Wonderland's never had to try that hard to kill them all, really. But all this time, Castiel's been worried about Dean rushing to get himself killed, when he really should have turned that scrutiny on himself.

He left Dean behind. Again.

[righteously]

For a moment, the world is a dream. He's been cutting himself off so thoroughly, he'd been so... the last few years have been rough. The world has been gray and quiet, the world has been a battlefield and Dean has been fighting it. The world has been death and chaos, and Dean's hardened himself to block out the gravity of the losses they've all experienced. Hardened himself to block out the inevitable losses yet to come.

But he hasn't prepared himself for this.

Going from that shattered world to- to fucking home and garden magazine. To tinsil, to garland, to Cas with a fleck of glitter on his shoe, to Cas who broke his heart when he died in battle, ripped away, suddenly standing there smelling and looking and feeling exactly the same to a piece of Dean he's long since buried... It can't be real, and his head swims with it, adrenaline pulsing and pounding to balance out his doubt, pounding in his ears. He sways a little.

What's causing it?

"The Jabberwock," he mutters automatically, ripping his eyes up to look Cas in the eyes again. The desperation there is unmistakable, flooding out of him, sprawled across his face like a billboard. "We tried to stop it- we had a plan. Thought it would work, but we- it, it... It didn't, and we lost..."

He licks his lips, shakes his head slowly. "Cas, we lost so many people... We lost..."

Cas used to give him these... looks with those eyes. These Dean you're fucking infuriating and stupid and I don't know why I put up with you looks. He used to do that shit all the goddamn time.

[freewill]

The Jabberwock. Castiel only recognizes the name because he familiarized himself with Lewis Carroll's work soon after he got here. A raging monster. The jaws that bite, the claws that catch, or so the poem had said.

Of all the things to take him out for good...

Then again, Castiel had always imagined he'd fall in battle. In fact, for a time that's exactly what he had been looking for. During Purgatory, and even afterward, a part of him has been searching for a way to martyr himself, to make up for all of his sins in some sacrificial act.

He's learned better since then. He's realized that he's of more use alive than dead, and he's seen the pain in Dean's face every single time he leaves and then comes back. It's hanging on Dean's face right now, like a shroud, worse than ever.

Once again, Dean's saying it without saying it, that he died. Castiel almost feels like apologizing for something that hasn't even happened yet. He doesn't actually say the words, but he meets Dean's gaze and it wavers there, in his eyes. I hurt you again. I can't seem to stop doing that.

"That must be why you're here. To make sure that it never happens."

He lifts his arm up, reaches a hand out to set carefully on Dean's shoulder. "Dean, you need to tell me everything."

[righteously]

To make sure that it never happens.

It's too good. It's too easy. That pounding in his ears increases tempo, and he focuses in on Cas's eyes with a startling intensity, the ebb and flow of the world set on lock as those words repeat themselves. To make sure that it never happens.

But it already did.

It already did, and Cas is gone. His Cas is dead, and this- this guy in front of him, this stupid fucking optimistic idiot, this poor bastard doesn't even get it. He's going to die, and Dean's going to watch his blue eyes stare lifelessly nothing because he's going to leave. Forever

Rather than answering, Dean jerks automatically. Shoves at Cas's chest, sturdy as ever, angelic as ever, but it doesn't stop him from shoving. From ripping himself away.

"Don't touch me!" He snarls, that anger coursing through his bones again, through his everything. He points at Cas. "Don't ever touch me, you understand me? You just-"

He cuts himself off with a shake of his head, and strides across the room toward the door.

Stupid. Stupid, that he could let himself lose it like that.

[freewill]

It's the shove Castiel's been expecting, but it comes at the exact moment when he'd let his guard down. That's the only reason that he actually stumbles from it, arms flailing for a moment as he watches Dean stalk toward the door. Like a skittish animal he spooked.

Should have kept his hands to himself, clearly. He should have known he shouldn't try to make any sort of contact when he's nothing but a ghost to Dean right now.

It's still bizarre, because Dean had never screamed at him like this, borderline hysterical, like he's only barely holding the tattered remains of his soul in place. Castiel wants to reach in and put it all back together, like he did after Hell. He wants to make things right, even if they haven't gone wrong for him yet.

But this is a Dean who doesn't want or need his help, apparently, and what is he supposed to do with that? It's not something he's ever even considered, if he's honest.

"Where are you going to go? What are you going to do?"

Castiel doesn't want to let him leave, doesn't really see this conversation as over. He wants to pick Dean's mind for every detail, but really, he would rather hear it in Dean's own words. "Dean, I can help." Why not let him, while he's still here?

[righteously]

The questions have him faltering in the doorway, shoulders stiff and braced as he turns his options over in his mind again. Just to be sure. Just to be absolutely sure. Just because a small part in his mind is scrambling for an excuse, any excuse, anything at all to make this real. To make this viable. To make Cas just be Cas. But he isn't, and he can't help because he doesn't even know.

He could tell Cas he's going to find Michael. He could tell Cas he's going to get ready.

He could ask Cas to help him. He could beg for a little help, he could take Cas's hand and plead with him. He could say a single god damn word.

But he doesn't.

He just leaves, and slams the door behind him.

[freewill]

This time, at least, Castiel's prepared for that. He takes a single moment to clench his hand into a frustrated fist, but then he's heading after Dean.

Except he doesn't have the patience for doors right now, and so it's wings all the way, even if he's only moving the short distance needed to fall into stride with Dean as he walks down the hall.

"I know you have a beast to hunt, but it isn't here. There's no battleground for you to rush to."

Dean may be stubborn, but Castiel has always matched him with that, and there isn't much of a chance of Dean getting away from him until Castiel hears more of the details of this future. Until Dean looks at him like he's actually here and plans how to stop this with him like they always have.

Five years can change so much, but if Castiel has to drag Dean back into the present by force, then so be it.

[righteously]

"God damn it!" He barks, jerking a little at Cas's sudden appearance and slowing to a stop. It's been years since he's done that, been years since Dean's had to deal with the sudden beat of wings in his personal space, and he seriously, seriously doesn't know why he wasn't expecting that when he slammed the door closed.

He levels Cas with the most exasperated, annoyed expression known to mankind, and starts striding off again. "How about you keep your mouth shut about things you know nothing about, huh? How much more clear do I gotta be? I don't want you here. I'm handling it."

[freewill]

And somehow, that's what finally gets through to Castiel. I don't want you here.

Dean would have never said that, but right now Castiel's nothing but a bad memory to Dean, and no matter how much he questions him or pushes at him or demands that he give him the information he needs, it won't do a thing. Dean will just keep on pushing him away.

After working together on everything, even if they weren't always on the same wavelength, even if they'd argued and yelled at each other so many times... this is what pierces through the most. This is what cuts the deepest.

"Fine," he says. "But if you change your mind, you know where to find me." Castiel doesn't fly away, though. He doesn't walk away, either. This time, Dean's going to be the one who walks away from him, not the other way around.

It's not that Castiel's given up, but he's going to need to find other people to question. Once he knows more, he can circle back and give this another try.