Chapter Text
Dean opens his eyes, sucks in a breath.
He knows where he is.
Not specifically, but the fluorescent lights, the stiff mattress with metal railings along the side, the hanging curtains pulled partially closed for a sense of privacy; it all comes with a very specific locale.
He eases out of bed, notes the lack of shoes, and pokes his head out of the hospital room. “Sam? Dad?” He looks left, then right. “...Anybody?” He picks a direction at random and finds a stairwell. On the floor below there’s some more commotion - a few people in scrubs walking through doorways from a distance. By the landing there’s a large nurse’s station, a few women typing on computers, flipping through patient files.
“Hey, excuse me.” He ambles down the rest of the steps, stops in front of an older blonde woman looking at the screen between them. “Hi, uh. I think I was in a car accident. With my dad and my brother. I just need to find them.” She glances to the side, types something. “Uh. Hello?” No response. He snaps his fingers at her. “Hey, I’m talking to you - I just need some help.” He leans forward, raps his knuckles on the desk, but the nurse doesn’t even glance in his direction.
“Hey! Anyone?” None of the other staff around seem to hear him. Dean swallows, and it’s strange, because he knows he swallows, but it feels - wrong. It all feels wrong, all of it crashing down on him at once - there’s no pain from the accident, no feeling of cool tile under his feet, it’s like - it’s like he’s -
He runs back upstairs, and his feet don’t make a sound as they slap on the floor, as he halts to a stop, as he steps back into the room where he woke up.
He’s there already, or still - stuck in bed, a tube down his throat, wires hooked up to that heart monitor he thought just a few minutes ago was a formality. “What… what…” His words dry up and he doesn't try to get them back. It’s not like he doesn’t know what’s happening. What’s the point of talking if no one is around to hear him?
There’s a few minutes of dread where he has his hand outstretched, where he wonders if he just - touched his body, he’d return into it.
Maybe this was a nightmare. Whatever drugs they gave him caused some weird out of body experience, that’s all.
“Oh, no,” he hears a voice. He turns, sees Sam coming into the room, half his face dark and swollen from a bruise, cheek scratched up.
“Sammy,” he says, “you look good, considering…”
Sam steps forward, steps right up to the bed, and passes through Dean.
He shutters, jumping back, and Sam looks around, frowning. “Sam,” he tries again, even as Sam slowly goes back to staring at his comatose body, “please tell me you can hear me. Focus your psychic crap on me or something - anything.” That persistent feeling is back, digging its claws in deep.
A doctor comes into the room. “Your father’s awake,” he says. “You can go see him if you like.”
Sam doesn’t look up. “What about my brother?”
Dean watches the man. He tucks his hands into the pockets of his white coat. “Well. He sustained serious injuries. Blood loss, contusions to the liver and kidney, but it’s the head trauma I’m worried about. There’s early signs of cerebral edema.” Edema, Dean tries to remember what that means. Something with fluid. In the brain. He looks down at himself again.
“Well, what can we do?”
“We won’t know his full condition until he wakes up. If he wakes up.”
“If?” Sam and Dean say at the same time.
“He’s fighting very hard -”
“Fuck yeah I am,” Dean snaps.
“- Most people who sustained the injuries that he has wouldn’t have survived at all,” the doctor continues without missing a beat. “But I want you to have realistic expectations.”
Dean glances at himself again. He remembers the beating he took from the demon, the pain excruciating enough that he passed out. Then the car accident, him being jostled in the back when they were rammed out of nowhere. It was bad, but it wasn't that bad. Was it?
The doctor leaves soon after that. Sam goes back to looking at Dean, then he sighs. Digs out his phone. He dials a number, and it rings, rings, then Sam sighs again, hanging up just as the prompt to leave a voicemail starts up. “Damnit, Cas, where are you?”
That’s the question, isn’t it.
-
Sam does go to John, after. He looks just as beat up, but at least they’re both talking and not astral projecting themselves around the hospital. “Just because the doctors are gonna give up on him doesn’t mean we will,” Sam tells John, “we’re not giving up on him.”
“Of course we’re not giving up on him. We’ll find a way,” his dad says. Dean watches the exchange, a silent voyeur in the corner of the room. “When Dean got electrocuted on that hunt - you said you were going to fix it. What happened then?”
“Then?” Sam frowns. Dean hadn’t filled their dad in on the outcome of that hunt, and he supposes Sam wouldn’t have felt like bragging about Cas’s abilities then, either. “Cas saved him,” Sam says, slow, realization dawning on him. He gets up from the chair he had been sitting in and goes to the window.
“Saved him how?” His brother doesn’t answer. “Sam.”
Dean sees Sam biting his lip, trying to keep any fidgeting away from where their dad can see. “Cas is… he’s like me,” he admits, like pulling teeth. “He has these powers. Useful powers, even. Um. Dean called him and he showed up and he - he healed him.”
“You let him use his powers on Dean?”
Sam turns, abrupt. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“Sam, Cas is something you and Dean don’t understand -”
“H e doesn’t understand what he is!” Sam argues. “I know it’s unconventional -”
“Unconventional? Try against every single lesson I’ve ever taught the both of you.”
“Yeah, what lessons are those, dad? Screw everyone and everything else that isn’t involved in the mission? Never question you, your orders?”
“If you didn't, you could’ve shot the damn demon and be done with this whole mess.”
“It was inside you,” Sam says, low, “you would have died, too.”
“And now Dean’s the one who’s going to die, and where’s Cas?” Even though they’re on other sides of the room, even though John’s still regaled to a hospital bed, Sam takes a step back. At his lack of answer John looks away, his dark eyes just missing where Dean’s leaning against the wall. “Where’s the Colt?”
“In the trunk of the car. They dragged it off the highway to some lot.”
“Well, head over there and clean it out before someone sees what’s inside.”
“Way ahead of you,” Sam mumbles, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Bobby’s an hour out.”
“That demon is still out there, you understand me? It could be hunting us. We’re all sitting ducks here and you know it. You get the Colt, and give Bobby this.” It’s a list in John’s scrawl, written on the back of a napkin that came with his meal lying on the nightstand, untouched. Sam comes forward and takes it. Reads the ingredients.
“What’s this for?”
“Protection.”
Sam’s mouth twists, distrusting, but he leaves John anyway. When he’s out of sight Dean expects John to sigh, scrub a hand over his face, but he’s staring at the wall, deep in thought. Dean follows Sam out into the hall.
His brother is already dialing a number on his phone. Dean watches him, holding the breath that he doesn’t need anymore.
Sam licks his lips. “Cas, it’s Sam. I don’t know if you’re still… listen. It’s Dean. He’s - it’s not good. I’m going to try everything I can, the doctors said they’re doing their best, he’s fighting, but if you don’t come, then… he might… please Cas. I can’t -” He sniffs, face crumbling in a way it didn’t do by Dean’s bedside, by John’s. “I just got him back, you know? I know I never talk about - about family or things like that. But I missed him, and I thought we were starting to understand each other, and that once we finished this thing we could, I dunno. But if it ends like this… Just.” He presses the phone closer to his face. “Please come. Please. As fast as you can.” He shuts his eyes, and Dean can’t look anymore.
He turns away. Sam manages one last broken please into the receiver before the call ends.
-
Sam leaves soon after to get the Impala, get the ingredients John needed. Part of him wants to go with, but he can’t make it farther than the parking lot without getting - weak, maybe. Inconsistent, wavering. He’s not sure if it’s because he’s still tied to his body, or if he’s just going to be doomed to haunt the hospital, when, if - whatever. He heads back inside.
John gets up in between nurse rounds, gets himself into Dean’s room, sits and watches him. Dean tries to see into his dark eyes, tries to guess what’s going on behind them. He can’t, never could, really. Twenty-seven years of being his son and he’s still caught off guard by the things his father would - or wouldn’t - do.
“You haven’t called a soul for help,” he says, “you haven’t even tried.” Sam kept calling Cas, hell, he was probably spitballing plan B options with Bobby right about now. “I’ve done everything you ever asked of me, I have given up everything I ever had.” He can say anything he wants and John won’t care, won’t hear him. He gets up, pacing to quell whatever restless energy is thrumming within him. “And now you’re going to sit here and watch me die. Is it because of how things went down in Salvation? Because, what, I wanted to ask a couple of questions, get some goddamn idea of what you were planning for once.”
He stops, shifts on his feet. John can’t hear him, he reminds himself. Nobody can.
“...Is it because of him?”
There’s a rumbling; something deep and foundational. Dean frowns, following the noise.
He nearly walks into a spirit. “Whoa!” It’s grotesque and white, for the flash of it he can spot. He glances over his shoulder at John. “...I’m guessing you didn’t see that.”
He moves down the twisting corridors and stops when he hears gasping, choking. Further down in one of the rooms a woman is sprawled on the ground, seizing. Trying desperately to draw in breaths. Dean yells, but no one can hear him, and the woman doesn’t see him as he leans over her. She’s staring up at the wall, panicked, wide-eyed, and then it stops. She stops. It’s over.
Dean already knows something killed her.
-
It’s hard to do any actual research when you can’t talk to anyone, interact with anything. After spending however many hours pacing through the hospital rooms, he ends up back at the nurse’s station. Through the entryway to the outside, he sees his brother, stalking forward with his face more shadowed than before. Jess is behind him.
“Sam,” Jess is saying, “I’m not saying you and Bobby are wrong, but -”
“He’s selfish. No he’s insane. After everything Dean’s -” Sam bites his lip, stopping on the stairwell. Jess looks okay, hair pulled back, a large tote bag slung over her shoulder. Sam glances at her. “You don’t have to - you can set the stuff up in Dean’s room and I’ll meet you.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says. Her lips are pressed into a thin line, but she reaches out, squeezes Sam’s hand. His brother nods at her, and they keep moving up the steps, towards John’s room.
“What’s she doing here?” is the first thing John says.
“Hitched a ride down with Bobby. My boyfriend was in a car accident. Visiting him in the hospital is pretty normal behavior.”
John eyes her. “This isn’t a normal situation.”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “We know.” Jess takes a wrapped package out of her tote, passes it to Sam. He looks down at it.
“Did you get what I needed?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” He throws the bundle onto John’s bed. “This isn’t to ward off a demon. It’s to summon one. You’re planning on bringing it here, aren’t you? Having some stupid revenge showdown?”
“Oh no,” Dean says.
“I have a plan, Sam,” John returns, voice growing stern.
“That’s exactly my point! Dean is dying, and you have a plan! You know what, you care more about killing this demon than you do saving your own son!”
“Do not tell me how I feel -”
“Oh no, no, guys, don’t do this!” Dean steps between them, but it doesn’t do any good.
“You’re not thinking about anybody but yourself,” Sam argues, “it’s the same selfish obsession you’ve always had!”
“I thought it was your obsession, too!” John shouts. “Do you really think the demon is going to stop? It’s a miracle Jess hasn’t -”
“Don’t talk about me,” Jess says, hands tightening on the strap of her bag. “I’m not a part of this.”
“You walking out of that apartment that night made you part of this,” John tells her, “whether you want it or not.”
“You didn’t want me helping you in the first place,” Jess protests.
“Because you’re not prepared for this. If Sam were smart he would’ve made you hole up somewhere safe so we could finish it.” Jess makes a noise, strangled and angry, but John ignores it as he turns back to Sam. “If you had killed that damn thing -”
“We’re not doing this again,” Sam says. “I wasn’t going to kill you. Dean wouldn’t have killed you, either. We can figure this out. We don’t need you running out there with some half-baked plan that’s going to end with all of us dead, or worse!”
“So what are you doing, Sam?” John returns. “Just planning on calling in a favor from that thing?”
Sam pauses, a crease forming between his brows as he thinks. “Do you mean Cas? Cas is - he’s our friend.”
“Do you really think something like that can’t play a long con?” John says, in an eerie echo to what Dean’s thought about Cas, more than once. It’s so far removed from how he views him now, to hear the words have him jolting into motion, stalking around John’s hospital bed.
“Just because you can’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s evil,” he tells his dad.
“Even if Cas was pretending to be on our side,” Jess says, pointedly, “it’s worked out better for all of us than if we had to go it alone.”
“Yeah, dad. I mean, he’s saved Jess, he’s saved Dean. He can do it again.”
“And when he doesn’t show up?”
“He will,” he and Sam say at once.
John shakes his head. “This could have been its plan all along.”
Dean takes a step closer. He’s right next to his dad’s head. Since his father can’t see him, he can get as close as he wants, scrutinize him however he likes. He can see the unkempt whorls of hair along his head, his beard, the lines around his eyes. “Don’t you say that.”
“It gave Dean a knife that doesn’t even work, told him to pass that along to me -”
“- That’s not what happened!”
“- had Dean disregard direct orders, made all of us working together harder than it had to be -”
“Don’t talk about him like that!”
“ You did that! You always do that! I try and I try and you -” Sam and John talk over him, don’t hear him, they never hear him when it gets bad enough, do they?
“- That thing has Dean so twisted up inside, and then it got to you, too Sam. I should have never let you in on what I was doing in the first place. I knew it was a mistake. I knew I was wrong -”
“Shut up!” Dean throws his arm wide, not sure where he’s aiming, just that he can’t stand listening to them a second longer, and the next thing he realizes is that the glass of water by John’s bed flew off the table, across the room, and crashed to the floor. He breathes, watching the puddle slowly growing along the tile.
“Holy shit.”
Sam furrows his brows, and he looks up from the glass. For a moment, Dean swears he and his brother are looking at each other.
“Dean?” Sam asks, quiet, like he’s afraid of the answer he’ll get.
“Sa -” There’s a thrumming in his chest, and he slams his hand over it, wheezing. Is he wheezing? An alarm goes through the hallway, and Sam turns, runs out of the room. Dean tries to follow, but then he’s jerked forward, through space, through doors and walls, until he’s staggering in place next to where his body lies in the hospital bed.
That grotesque spirit is looming over him, his body. Dean runs up to it, past the doctors trying to resuscitate him. “Hey!” His phantom limbs slide through it without resistance, and it turns its face towards him, decaying and shifting. Its visage isn’t quite a skeleton cloaked in rotting cloth, but it makes something in the back of his brain prickle with uneasy recognition.
He’s tossed to the side, but somehow, either through the doctors’ or his own interference, it’s enough to drive the thing away.
He sees Sam and Jess crowded next to him before the doctors and nurses push them back, announcing he’s stable. Once his brother hears the news Sam reaches for his cell phone again.
Dean listens to it ring and ring, listens to another desperate message from his brother to his - to Cas. He swallows, turns away. “Come on Cas,” he says, looking at the ceiling, at the floor, at the people walking past. “I could really use your help here, man. Where are you?”
-
Cas wakes up. Not in a motel room, probably not in Pontiac, and hopefully not in 2003. The sun shines on his face, and he rolls over, feels the blades of grass against his arms. He lifts himself from the ground and sees trees all around him.
He’s not in Rowena’s dungeon anymore. He’s not… anywhere, really.
There’s birdsong in the distance, the noise of animals scouring through underbrush. Any cuts or injuries he sustained were healed the moment he was free of her binding spell. He closes his eyes, still in the dirt.
He had left his duffel in Jess’s Jeep when he went off with Bela. The weapons he had on him had been stripped away, his cell phone is still probably in that underground cellar, with ten thousand pounds worth of rock crumbled on top for good measure. There’s no easy way to know how much time has passed, where he is, and even if he did know, there’s no way he can move easily. Get back to Sam or Jess or Bobby. Get back to Dean.
Cas doesn’t need to breathe, but he forces air into his lungs, imagines the oxygen flowing through his bloodstream, and tries to believe that it works in calming him down. Past the sound of his own beating heart in his ears, he can just make out the rush of water moving.
He gets to his feet, follows the burbling to the edge of the clearing.
There’s a stream further into the forest. Based on the sun’s position, it flows north and south.
He goes south.
-
There’s a lot of lore about reapers, but a scary figure trying to take someone when their time is up is pretty par for the course, no matter what culture you’re from. He and Cas did enough research on the thing last time. But knowing what this thing is and fighting it are two very different matters. The last reaper they faced was being bound by magic, but Dean’s not sure about this one. And as something that’s not entirely living, he doesn’t have many options aside from hold on until Cas comes by or Sam or John figure something out.
“No answer?” Jess asks Sam. His brother shakes his head, scowling at his phone. Dean sighs, leaned up against the wall next to them. After a year of Cas in easy reach and John somewhere on the horizon, the shift in status is almost expected, like Dean’s not allowed to have both of them around at the same time.
He’s pulled from the morose train of thought at the sound of shouting, then screaming. Sam and Jess don’t notice. Dean turns, sees a woman about his age with short, black hair. “Hello? Can any of you see me? Anyone, please!” She’s getting in the face of passing doctors, visitors, but no one spares her a glance.
“Hey, hey, it’s alright. I can see you.” She’s wearing hospital garb, like him. He has a sinking feeling.
Her name is Tessa, and she doesn’t quite believe him about the out of body experience until they find her hospital room, her mother seated next to her, the room laden with flowers and get well soon cards. “I - I don’t understand,” she’s saying next to him, “I just went in for an appendectomy.”
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think there were some complications.”
“So we’re going to die?”
“No. Not if we hold on. Our bodies can get better, we can snap right back in there and wake up.” Tessa nods, but Dean isn’t sure if she’s agreeing with him.
He takes her away from her room, tries to get her talking, distracted. Some selfish part of him is grateful that there’s someone who can actually respond to his questions.
They’re walking down another hallway in a building of hallways when a new noise starts up, rising beyond the usual din of people milling about. An alarm, the sound of staff running. This time they’re not going to his room. “Stay there,” he tells Tessa.
He tries to get at the reaper hovering over a little girl’s body. He almost thinks he succeeded in getting it away, but then -
“Time of death, 5:09,” one of the nurses says. “At least she’s not suffering anymore.”
When he finally goes back to the main hallway, Tessa is gone.
-
Dean’s taught him many things. Some more useful than others. Cas recounts the few times they had gone out into the wilderness; the Wendigo case when they first started to work together, a few errant monsters and recalled stories; tries to see if he can glean any new information. He follows the river until the sun crests overhead, then begins its descent. He’s glad he doesn’t get tired, or thirsty. And when he does feel those things, he can push them down.
Eventually the stream narrows, and Cas wonders if it’ll taper into nothing before he can get out of the woods, but not long after he sees a concrete tunnel the water is being rushed into. At the first sign of human touch, he hurries his steps, and comes to a break in the trees.
It’s a road. A two line, straight road, no discernable signs, but it’s better than nothing. It runs perpendicular to the stream. East or west.
He goes west for maybe an hour when he sees a gas station across the road. Cas pauses, looking at the lonely structure. There’s a phone booth on the edge of the lot, a grubby looking phone book chained to it, and Cas dutifully flips through before going inside. Never ask anyone what year it is, Dean had told him partway through a rewatch of Back to the Future. And don’t ask where you are, either. Asking for trouble.
The phone book’s area codes and business names indicate he’s in Montebello, New York. He had been in Connecticut before.
He ducks into the small store, surreptitiously spots the news rack. All the newspapers lined up by the door tell him it’s July 20th.
He’s been gone for over a week.
He keeps staring, but the date doesn’t change.
“Buddy, you gonna buy something or are you gonna stand there and read the headlines for twenty minutes?”
“Sorry, I - sorry.” He turns to face the cashier. It’s an older man standing at a small desk, the wall behind him lined with cigarettes. A boxy TV mounted overhead is playing the news on low. Cas steps closer, and the man leans back, impatient frown morphing into something else. Cas thinks he must not look great. The reflection in the water and the window outside didn’t show him much, but it wasn’t flattering. “I don’t - I had to leave in a hurry, I don’t have any money,” he explains. “Can I just use your phone?”
The man stares at him. Cas can’t read his expression.
“Please,” he adds, glancing at the phone connected to the wall by the television.
“You need to get out of here,” the man says.
“I can, I’d be happy to wait outside,” Cas offers, trying not to show his desperation. Who knows where the next phone is, the next sign of life. Who knows how Dean’s doing. “I just need to tell my friends I’m okay.” The man doesn’t say anything else, so Cas raises his arm. He had only meant to point at the phone, but the man jerks back. “I’m… not going to hurt you,” he says, careful.
The man ignores him, hitting a button on the register. The drawer slides open. “Here,” he says, dumping a fistful of quarters on the counter between them. The coins go bouncing, clinking off the glass top and spinning across the linoleum. “Make however many calls you want - out there.”
Cas frowns, slowly slides a handful of change into his hand. He doesn’t look that bad, does he? There’s sweat forming along the man’s sparse hairline.
“I really won’t -”
“Leave,” he says, “please, just go.”
Cas walks backwards out of the store. The man watches him the entire way until he’s out.
He ducks into the phone booth. The coins clink against each other, and he puts all but one in his front pocket, stares at the phone. And stares. And stares.
He realizes he doesn’t know any phone numbers. Not Bobby, Sam, Pamela, Jess. They were saved in his contacts - he never had to memorize them. There’s only two that he ever dialed or looked at enough to remember off the top of his head.
He punches in Dean’s number.
It doesn’t even ring. “This is Dean,” his voice says, “leave a message.”
Cas hangs up, waits a minute. Feeds another coin into the slot. Calls again.
“This is Dean. Leave a message.”
Cas blows out a breath, hangs up. He fishes out a third one and hits zero.
“Operator.”
“Hello. Um, can you get me the number for - it’s an auto repair shop -”
“Name?”
“Robert Singer, um. Sioux Falls, South Dakota.”
“...Number’s out of service. Has been for months.”
“Months? No I was just there the - the number -”
“It could’ve been changed and not updated in the system.”
“Well what about a - a psychic. Her name’s Pamela Barnes, same city?”
“Psychic,” the voice says, dubious. “...Yeah, I can connect you.”
It’s her home phone number, and Pamela is either with a client or out and about, because all he gets is her voicemail. Cas realizes, belatedly, that he’ll have to stand by the phone booth all day to wait and see if she calls back. “Pamela it’s me, I - the lead I followed didn’t really. Work out. I had to get out of there, and now I’m… I don’t know where I am. Well, I know where, Montebello, apparently. I don’t - I mean, I’ll try to wait around here if you can call back. Please. Um. Goodbye.”
He is very quickly running out of quarters. Chewing on his lip, he calls the one other number he can think of.
“Please,” he says, glancing up at the ceiling of the booth, “if there’s anyone on the other end, I would really appreciate you picking up.”
It rings, and rings. Cas didn’t make a habit out of calling this number, but it was the same every time. It would ring forever, no stopping it. He had been hoping, this time, it’d be different.
He looks over his shoulder through the shop window. From here he can just make out the man behind the counter. He’s on the gas station’s phone - the one he wouldn’t let Cas use. His arms are crossed, looking between the TV and the parking lot. When their eyes meet he freezes. Cas frowns, hesitantly waves at him.
The man puts the phone down and walks towards the door. Cas thinks he’s coming to duck his head out, to tell him something, but he locks the entrance and goes back to the phone, still staring at him.
Cas has a sinking feeling. Giving up on anyone answering his call, he hangs up, exits the phone booth. As soon as the cashier realizes Cas is coming towards him, he ducks behind the counter. Cas gets close enough to see the small TV hanging over the cigarettes.
There are two news anchors with a banner below reading ‘Continued manhunt for CT killer; suspect linked to additional crimes.’ The clip jumps to grainy footage of a hotel entrance. Cas squints at it before realizing the man he’s staring up at is himself, the same t-shirt and jeans from however many days ago. Then a headshot of another man that looks like the demon Bela had shot. A composite sketch of himself is shown after, looking similar enough to his face that the man behind the register would have recognized him.
Cas glances back, sees the man holding a pistol, aimed shakily at him. He has the phone tucked between his shoulder and ear and his lips are moving. Cas can’t hear what he’s saying, but he belatedly thinks that he can probably guess.
He ducks around the side of the building and runs for cover, keeps running parallel to the road, then dashes off to the side, going deeper into the forest. He doesn’t need to slow down, doesn’t need to stop for breath or to rest. Through it all he wonders what he did that landed him outside of Rowena’s mansion. There was desperation, a drive to save Dean, go to him, but try as he might, no matter how panicked he feels, he’s stuck right where he is, the ground firmly beneath his feet as he carries himself deeper into the woods.
If he heads west, he’ll hit Lake Eerie, and if he goes south, he’ll get to Pennsylvania. It doesn’t matter so much which way he goes, as long as it’s away from where they’re circulating the news story. He follows the rapidly fading sunlight, picking his way through the dense foliage, listening for any sign of life, until the sun sets, and all goes dark.
-
Tessa’s back in her room, back with her mother. “I thought I’d find you here,” Dean says.
“You caught me.” She reaches out a hand to brush a strand of hair behind her mother’s ear, but she doesn’t notice it.
“Did you try…?” He gestures to where her body lays on a ventilator.
“I tried hopping back in, praying, speaking beyond the veil.” She wiggles her fingers. “All of it.”
“We can figure something out,” Dean tries. She smiles at him, gets up from the seat that she doesn’t need. “At least you’re taking it all pretty well.”
She shrugs, and they trail out of the room, down the hallway together. “What can I say? I think I… made my peace with it.”
He feels something in his gut twist. “What? Dying?”
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, not how I pictured it, but… I had a good life. Family, friends, good memories. So if this is it, then -”
“It’s not it,” he says, louder than he meant to. Not that it matters. He has the terrible thought of Tessa leaving, of no one actually being able to see or hear him. Of Sam leaving, John going off to chase that demon, Cas never appearing. He’d be here, in the hospital. Alone. He backs up, hand on his chest. He needs to get air - he can’t, he doesn’t need to breathe like this, but he feels like he’ll drown if he can’t get air into his own living, breathing lungs. Fuck. How does Cas live like this?
His brain catches on the verb and seizes.
“Dean,” Tessa is saying, “calm down. It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” he says. “Your mom needs you. My family, they -” He clenches his jaw. Turns around. “You’re not dying. You’re not giving up.”
“It’s my choice, Dean.”
“Exactly. You have a choice. Why wouldn’t you choose to live?”
She frowns at him. “Is it really so bad? To be at peace? To not have to fight anymore?” Dean can’t calm down, can’t focus, her dark eyes boring into him like that. Something gnaws at the back of his mind, persistent, unsettling. He can’t even tell what his own brain is sending warning signs about.
“Forget this,” he says, turning away. Tessa calls his name, but doesn’t look back or slow down until he’s back in his room, watching his own body, slowly dying.
He shoves his arm into his own chest but there’s nothing, no magic switch. “God damn it - Cas, where are you?” He paces, back and forth. “He has to be on his way. Sam’s called him, I’m sure Jess and Bobby, hell, Pamela’s probably doing a friggin’ seance -”
“Hey.” He looks up. Sam and Jess slip inside his room. “Dad’s asleep. Said he wouldn’t go looking for that demon until you were okay.” He looks at Jess, who tugs something out of her bag. “I think you’re here,” his brother tells the room at large. “I think you can hear me.”
Dean rolls his eyes - it’s not like Sam can tell. “Took you long enough.”
“And maybe we found something so we can talk?” Jess asks, opening the box she had brought with her. Dean takes a look at the packaging and groans.
“Oh - you have got to be kidding me.” The two of them open up the actual goddamn Ouija board and sit next to each other, the opposite side open. He sighs, then sits down across from them. “Are we braiding each other’s hair next?”
Sam just clears his throat. “Dean, are you here?”
“No way this is gonna work.” The thing looks like it’s made out of plywood, letters stamped on with cheap acrylic paint. Nothing mystic here.
Dean reaches forward, hands on the planchette.
He can touch it. Cheap, glossy wood solid under his fingertips.
He moves his hands, and the planchette moves along with it, until it's hovering over the big ‘YES’ on one corner of the board.
Sam laughs, and Jess sucks in a breath. “It’s good to hear from you, man,” Sam says.
“Still kickin’,” Jess murmurs. “What’s happening?”
Dean licks his lips, starts moving the planchette around the board.
“H-U-N… Hunt?” Sam guesses. “Are you hunting?” Dean blanches, then moves the planchette back to ‘YES’. “What the hell are you hunting here ?”
Dean moves the planchette again. He can almost feel Jess and Sam’s hands against his own.
“R-E-A-P,” Jess reads out. “What, like the grim reaper?”
“Or a singular reaper,” Sam says. “Well, I mean. It’s a hospital, right? People die, it’s their time, you know?”
“Tell that to that little girl,” Dean sneers, even though they can’t hear him, “tell that to her mother.”
“Wait, Dean,” Jess starts, looking at the spot where he’s sitting. She can’t know where he is, she can’t, but her stare is lined up almost perfectly. “Is the reaper after you ?”
He moves the planchette back to ‘YES’. Sam stares down at that section of the board. Dean watches how their hands overlap, somehow able to touch on this one common spot. He thinks his skin is starting to look strange - translucent, compared to Sam and Jess. He swallows. Moves it again.
“C-A-S,” Sam murmurs. “I’ve been trying man, I have. Keep getting voicemails. I don’t know what happened to him.”
“Bobby and I have been trying too,” Jess says. “It’s like he just - vanished. What if something…” Dean takes his hand off the planchette, pushes the Ouija board. He budges it, just an inch. “Whoa. Dean?”
“He’s fine ,” Dean insists. “He’s been here whenever I’ve needed him, he promised, I -”
“We’re going to figure this out,” Sam tells him. “This isn’t how things are ending.”
He looks up, past Sam and Jess, at Tessa. She’s watching them, him, leaning up against the doorframe.
That persistent feeling is back, digging its claws in deep.
“I don’t know, Sammy,” he says, even though his brother can’t hear him, “it just might be.”
Tessa tilts her head, then ducks out into the hallway. Jess and Sam are talking amongst themselves. Dean gets up and follows.
“What happened to the scared hospital patient act?” Dean says, catching up with - whatever this thing is.
“I was wondering when you’d figure it out.”
“Yeah well, already dug through a bunch of reaper lore last time around. You don’t forget that sort of thing.” He gestures at her, its - whatever - form. “You look nicer than the last one.” Allegedly. He was going off of Cas’s description.
“Well, I had to. You saw my true form and freaked out. Hurts a girl’s feelings. This was the only way I could get you to talk to me.”
“About what?”
“You know, death is nothing to fear.” She stops walking and turns back to face him. Puts her hand on Dean’s cheek. Her eyes peer up at him, so close to being human, and yet so other worldly, now that he’s looking. They go back for ages, eons. It’s not the first time he’s been on the other end of something like this. But instead of healing him, Tessa just says, “it’s your time to go, Dean. And you’re living on borrowed time already.”
He knows he is. And it’s thanks to Cas. He shakes off the reaper’s touch and pushes past her, not paying attention to where his feet are taking him. “I can’t go yet,” he tells her. “I have work to do.”
“That’s what everyone says,” Tessa says.
“Everyone?” he says, scoffing. “Ninety year old grandmas have work to do?”
“If it’s before Christmas, sure.” He stops, and looks back at her. She smiles. “You’re far from the first soldier I’ve plucked from the field.”
“It’s not about that - not just about that.” He works his jaw, puts into words something he hasn’t wanted to admit out loud to anyone. “Something is happening.” A war, like their dad would say. A real one. “And if I’m not here, my family - they’re going to die.”
She tilts her head, one way, then the other. “Maybe, maybe not.”
“Is this your brand of pillow talk? Lulling me into a false sense of security?”
Tessa spreads her hands. “I’ve been around for as long as there was life that needed to end. I’ve seen many things, and what I know for certain is that things are meant to end, Dean. Things are meant to happen a certain way.”
“You mean like fate.”
“That’s a word for it, yes.”
Dean licks his lips. They don’t feel dry, under his tongue. They don’t really feel like anything. There’s a dark hospital room and he walks over the threshold, towards the window there. He can just barely see his outline in the dark glass, warbled and fuzzy at the edges. “You said I’m living on borrowed time.”
Her mouth quirks. “Yes. Third time’s the charm, I suppose.”
He turns around. “What’s that supposed to mean? You couldn’t get your scythe into me the other two times? Does your hands of fate bullshit not work when you’ve got a personal magic healer on speed dial?”
For the first time, Tessa shifts on her feet, looks uncomfortable. “You’re talking about your friend,” is what she lands on. “He has the ability to make… allowances for things most are unable to.” Dean stops.
“You know him?”
“I’ve heard the… chattering.” Dean raises his eyebrows. “Not many things are able to smite demons with a touch, heal you, breathe life into something even reapers believe is lost.”
“Thought you guys were agents of fate.”
Her expression doesn’t give anything away. “Some exceptions can be made.”
Dean looks over his shoulder, back out the window. “Then I’m staying. You can’t make me.”
“You’re right, I can’t. But Dean, you should know… if you don’t come with me, you remain a spirit.” She steps towards him. “You’re not getting back in your body. You’re going to stay here, confused, alone. And over the decades, it’ll probably drive you mad.” Her voice is quiet, kind, even. As matter-of-fact as the doctor had been when he told Sam his own brother may never wake up. “You might even get violent.”
“Why would I…”
“Dean,” she says, “how do you think angry spirits are born? They refuse to move on. If that happens to you, you’ll become the kind of thing you hunt.”
Hunters only went out two ways - either they died, or they turned. The second option was worse, always, always worse. Dean tightens his jaw. “You said you and your buddies have water cooler talk about Cas, right? Is he alive?”
“What?”
“Is he still out there?”
Tessa hesitates. “I don’t know where exactly he is, but… I would certainly have heard by now if he had met his end. But there’s no guarantee he’ll be able to find you, or rescue you -”
“It’s Cas.”
“I admire your faith,” Tessa says, “I’ve always loved how humans can believe -”
“He’s never let me down,” Dean interrupts. “It’s not faith if it’s true. ” Tessa looks at him with a sad smile curling along the edges of her mouth. Pitying. He looks at his hands. They removed his bracelets, his ring. He tugs at the hospital bracelet instead. “I used to think that was the worst thing that could possibly happen, you know,” he confesses, “becoming a monster, something I’d have to hunt. I used to think Cas was that - something I’d have to take down. But now I…”
“Your friend can help your family,” Tessa offers, “you’d be able to rest.”
Dean barks out a laugh. “Yeah, right. John and Sam are probably arguing right now. If I’m not there, then who knows what’ll happen.”
Tessa gives him that look again, the one that makes his brain feel itchy and wrung out, like he’s nothing but a bug on a microscope slide. “Aren’t you tired, Dean?”
He swallows. “Who isn’t?” She opens her mouth, but Dean shakes his head. “Listen, I can’t just -” He puts his fist up to his mouth, thinking. Cas isn’t dead. Once he gets in touch with Sam, then he’ll save Dean, somehow. It’ll be fine. His family needs him, and whatever comes after, he won’t be any help to them if he’s gone.
“Can I ask you something?” he says it so quickly he nearly surprises himself.
“Of course.”
“If I go with you, do you know where I’ll end up?”
“Sorry. Can’t give away the big punchline.”
“And what about him?” Tessa shrugs, apologetic. Dean sighs.
That’s all there is to it, then, isn’t it?
“I’m not going to some place he can’t find me,” Dean tells her. Just manages a grin. “Maybe in the next life.”
She stares at him, and Dean wonders if her presentation is just a big trick; if she’ll drag him away to who knows where anyway.
But then she lets out a breath and goes, “can’t blame a girl for trying.” She straightens up, holds out her hand. “Okay, Dean. Final offer.”
He steps closer, raises his arm.
The lights around them flicker.
“Is this a scare tactic?” Dean asks.
“I’m not doing that.” She turns her head and pauses at an air vent. “No,” she says, stepping back, just as a black mist comes pushing through. “No, you can’t -!” Dean can’t see Tessa from this angle, but he can tell the black smoke of a demon is flowing into her body. He backs up. A reaper wouldn’t have hurt him, but a demon? He doesn’t know how they play with human spirits, but he doesn’t want to find out.
Tessa - or her body - straightens up. Turns towards him.
“Today’s your lucky day, kid,” the demon says, yellow eyes glinting as it puts its hand out on Dean’s forehead. He gasps, unable to pull away -
- from the tube that’s lodged down his throat. He hears the hospital monitor next to him, and Sam’s voice calling out for help.
“Dean,” he says, once a nurse makes sure he can breathe on his own and extricates the tube. “Dean, you’re okay,” he says.
“Thank God.” Jess has an arm around him before Sam does. He can smell her shampoo, overly processed body spray. It’s heaven compared to the industrial soap and sweat of the bedclothes he’s stuck in. Sam’s on top of him before he can speak, and he’s left awkwardly patting their backs, trying to make sense of what’s going on.
He coughs, manages to push them both back so he has some breathing room. “‘Course I am,” he says, hoarse, “I’m awesome.” He rubs his throat. “What day is it?”
“The nineteenth.” Dean squints. “It’s been three days, Dean. The doctors said - and then you said a reaper -”
He frowns, senses swimming. He’s sore from lying down for so long, and his head is pounding, and his stomach… He catches what Sam’s saying. “Wait, wait, if I was out for three days, how did I tell you anything about a reaper?” He frowns. “Was it a vision?” Sam cocks his head.
“You don’t remember?” Jess leaves the bedside and goes through her bag, brandishing an Ouija board to him. Dean barks out a laugh.
“What, did you two have a slumber party in the hospital?”
“I think you were… having an out of body experience, or you were a spirit,” Sam tells him. “You really don’t remember?”
Dean shakes his head. “No, but…” He frowns, crosses his arms. “I have this pit in my stomach,” he admits, “and I don’t know why.”
-
The doctor comes around, clears him of everything except for the surface level stuff - bumps and bruises, cuts and scrapes. “I can’t explain it,” he tells him and Sam and Jess, “you have some kind of angel watching over you.”
Dean swallows. “Yeah,” he says, “I’ve heard that one before.” When the doctor sees himself out, he looks up at Sam. “So?”
“So what?”
“What saved my ass this time? You find another faith healer?”
Sam squints. “What about Cas?”
He’s dehydrated and has a brutal migraine, like a rubber band pulled taut around his head. “He would’ve healed the rest of it - this must be someone else.” He rubs his eyes, trying to remember everything from before. The truck hit them, he got knocked around, and that had been it. Before that, when they were still chasing after the demon, he still couldn’t get in touch with Cas. “We gotta find him.”
“I know,” Sam says. “As soon as we get out of here -”
“You said I was out for three days.” He smashed his phone, so he can’t check that. “Give me your cell.”
“He hasn’t been answering,” Sam says, but he passes it over. Dean clicks through the call history, tries to figure out when the calls started piling on top of each other. It’s July 19th. They ran into John back on the 12th. “It’s been a week.”
“I know.”
“We haven’t heard from him in a week. ” He looks at Jess.
“He took my car over to Massachusetts,” she says, “I don’t know anything else. I’m sorry.”
“Dean, listen, the doctor says you’re fine, we can get you discharged, and -” Dean looks up, snaps Sam’s phone shut, and passes it back to his brother. Sam stops talking and looks over his shoulder. John’s standing in the doorway.
The feeling in Dean’s stomach gets worse.
“How you feeling?” he asks.
“Fine,” he lies, “I mean, hey, I’m alive.”
His dad smiles. “That’s what matters.”
Dean wants to think that’s what matters, but there’s more, so much more - Sam said he was going to die, and he made another miraculous recovery? Maybe he’s looking a gift horse in the mouth, but the only time something good has come to him without strings attached has been Cas, and Cas is. He’s -
Sam’s not taking the good news at face value, either. “Where were you last night?”
John’s eyes shift over to him. “I had some things to take care of.”
Sam scoffs. “Well, that’s specific. Did you go after the demon?”
“The demon?” Dean asks.
“He had a shopping list,” Jess explains.
“No,” John says.
“Really,” Sam says, flat. “Why don’t I believe you?”
Dean expects John to lock in his answer, to dig his heel in, to have to field a screaming match. But then John’s face changes. “Can we not fight?”
Next to him, Sam pauses.
“You know, half the time we’re fighting, I don’t know what we’re fighting about. We’re just butting heads. Sammy, I, I’ve made some mistakes.” Dean tries to school his features to cover up any sign of surprise. “But I’ve always done the best I could. I just don’t want to fight anymore, okay?”
Sam says exactly what he’s thinking. “Are you alright?”
John sighs. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m just a little tired. Hey, son, would you and Jess… Would you mind getting me some coffee?” Sam glances at Dean, then at Jess. His shoulders slump. Without a word, Jess gets to her feet.
“Yeah, yeah. Sure.” With another glance at his dad, Sam leaves the room, Jess watching Dean from over her shoulder before she turns a corner and is out of sight. John comes closer, but doesn’t pull a seat up by Dean’s bed.
He’s not sure how to look, what to do with his hands. His thumb rubs over the edge of the blanket, and Dean tries to push the urge to fidget down to that one small part of him. It won’t go outside of John’s notice, he knows, but it’s less obvious than the frantic pacing he wants to do. “What is it?” he asks.
John sighs, long and slow. In the hospital lights, no one looks good, not even his dad. “You know when you were a kid, I’d come home from a hunt, and after what I’d seen, I’d be - I’d be wrecked.” Dean looks at him. “And you, you’d come up to me and you, you’d put your hand on my shoulder and you’d look me in the eye and you’d… you’d say, ‘it’s okay, dad.’” John shakes his head. “Dean, I’m sorry.”
Not the words he was expecting. “For what?”
“You shouldn’t have had to say that to me, I should’ve been saying that to you. You know, I - I put too much on your shoulders, made you grow up too fast. You took care of Sammy, you took care of me. You did that, and you didn’t complain, not once.”
“...You’re making it sound like I’m the perfect son,” he tries.
“Oh, you see me and Sam. We’d tear each other apart if you weren’t around.” John puts a hand on his shoulder, and the room seems to tilt. He swallows down the nausea. “I just want you to know that I am so proud of you.”
“This really you talking?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s really me. I want you to watch out for Sammy, okay?”
“Yeah dad, you know I will.”
“I know we don’t always agree on - on everything. But you know he’s family. He’s the most important thing.”
Dean frowns. “Of course, dad. Why are you talking like this? You’re starting to freak me out.”
John smiles down at him and moves forward, whispers in his ear. And Dean wonders if this is the yellow eyed demon talking. If he’s torturing Dean one more time before snapping his neck. Because what John’s telling him - it’s - he can’t -
He can’t even speak, stomach tightening and pressurizing down into a black hole, sucking him into a void that stretches and pulls him apart as he stares at John. His dad who’s still - still smiling at him, after telling him. That.
John leaves.
Dean stares at the far wall, unseeing, for a long time.
He doesn’t move until he hears Sam scream. Then he jumps out of bed, goes out to the hall. His brother’s holding onto John, grasping at his shoulder. He’s pushed out of the way as nurses surround him, start compressions. The doctor who’d been treating them rounds the corner and tells them to stay back.
“That’s our dad!” they both say, Sam louder than he is. They’re pushed out of the room, into the hall.
Jess is standing in the corridor, hand on Sam’s shoulder as they watch him with desperate eyes.
“He’ll be okay,” Jess is telling Sam.
Dean doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing to say that won’t upset Sam.
Instead he watches the people in candy-colored scrubs do chest compressions, force air into a corpse’s lungs, and he knows he’s not coming back.
“Okay, I’m calling it,” the doctor who had just told Dean he was going to survive looks at his watch. “Time of death, 9:19 am.” He looks over at the hall, at him and at Sam. “I’m sorry,” he says.
Sam stutters, gestures, goes, “he can’t - you’re not just - “
“Sam,” he says, still staring at the body. “That’s enough. He’s gone.”
They put John’s body on his hospital bed, so that they can say goodbye properly, or however they phrase it. Dean stares at his slack face. Maybe this is how his dad looked when he was sleeping. He hasn’t seen that in a long time, never stayed close enough or up late enough to get a good look, not since he was a teenager, a little kid.
Dean doesn’t know what to do with the body, after. He has to get paperwork signed, get a way to release what had once been a living person to the right funeral home like it’s a car, a gun, a possession now that there’s nothing inside to make it get up and move around.
He calls Bobby, who says he’ll take care of it, get John out of some embalmer’s office and to a field so they can salt and burn him. Dean almost breaks right there, almost tells Bobby that it doesn’t matter, that where John’s going, there won’t be a spirit coming back to haunt them.
He packs up their stuff, pushes Sam towards Jess so they can get to the hospital exit. Dean goes through the bag John had. There’s his journal, a few weapons buried under his clothes.
The Colt is gone.
The revelation rings hollow, like it’s something Dean already knew, deep down in his bones.
He tries to act surprised when Sam voices the same realization a day later.