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Dean doesn’t know what compelled him to open Baby’s door and let himself slowly be pulled down to his knees into the dirt. His grief suddenly pulling him to the ground. It was almost primal, like the emotion he was feeling right now could only be tended to by the Earth.
He had been driving about three hours on the backroads of Kansas in complete silence, and by the fourth, he was parked on the side of the road crying into his hands. He can guess that’s what led to him on his knees in the dirt.
Except that apparently sitting on his knees wasn’t enough for the earth, he felt the need to be closer. With harsh, loud sobs erupting from his chest Dean let the natural gravitation of the Earth pull him down until his face was pressed against the cold dirt. The smell of soil filled his lungs and he could feel the particles of dirt sticking to his face from where the tears had traveled down.
Dean never fully understood what people meant when they said they wanted to be closer to nature. Sure he understood where they were coming from. He enjoyed sitting and fishing while admiring the flow of the river in front of him, and he always loved the aspect of scenery when driving long stretches. But he never really understood it fully, until now.
As Dean struggled to calm himself down as he breathed in the cold dirt, as he felt the imprints of pebbles molding themselves in the sides of his hands where they were clenched beside his head, he suddenly understood.
When a pack of wolves loses one of its mates to the cold of winter, they do not howl in sorrow at a ceiling light fixture. When a mare gives birth to a stillborn foal, it does not mourn in the confines of a home. When a fawn lays to shiver in the dark after a hunter takes its mother, it is not under a blanket.
When a swan watches his love lay slack in the mouth of a dog, it does not cry out in agony sitting in a car.
Dean understood now.
Dean understood that an emotion as raw as grief could only be expressed fully in something as raw as dirt.
So right then and there, on the side of a dirt road in the middle of Kansas, Dean wailed. A harsh and raw sound of agony that only belonged in nature.
The sound of a wolf losing its pack, a mare losing its foal, a fawn losing its mother, a swan losing its lover, and Dean Winchester losing Castiel.
The Earth has heard this sound a million times, but it doesn’t make the primal sound of grief any less breaking.
And that was exactly what Dean was doing, he was breaking. Like a crack splitting through the terrain during an earthquake, Dean’s body was being split apart. Not even in just a metaphorical sense. As Dean heaved out his sorrows into the ground he could feel his insides being pulled apart.
It could be said that a break like this was just the beginning of a long journey of healing, that this needed to happen before one could move on. Time heals all wounds and such.
And that was the case for a lot of things. Over years the crack in the terrain that once left devastation would now be covered in vegetation and life. Because through the hard times' life always finds a way to move on.
But that is not always the case.
Sometimes after an elephant loses its young, it lays down in the tall grass as its grief had been too all-consuming. As it lies next to its deceased child it knows that it has no use in this world without the very thing it was living for. And as the days go by its body is laid to eternal rest right next to its baby. Over time the elephants become one with the very earth that gave them life, the grass they once died in would now be the very grass that would fuel a new mother and her calf.
Was that all that Dean was worth?
Was he only meant to fuel the love of the future, to be someone else’s grass because he was not granted a life of eating it with the one he loved?
“Please” Dean sobbed, “please”
He knew no one was listening, and that’s what made it worse.
Laying there on the ground Dean became hyper-aware of what he truly was. He was just a person.
People throughout his life had been telling him that he was different, he was chosen. But as he felt the cold wind biting against his wet cheeks as he mourned in the dirt, he knew the truth.
The truth is that he was no different from anyone else in the world feeling the exact same thing he was feeling. That no matter how big and all-consuming the emotions he had now felt, it was the same feeling everyone will feel at some point in their life.
He tries to let that thought soothe him, that he is not alone, but it somehow only makes the grief seem bigger.
It didn’t help that Dean’s mind wouldn’t just let him mourn Castiel as a whole, no, it made him think about the details. About everything he had lost. And with the reminder of each one came another stab to the chest, another sob into the dirt.
He would never be able to share a meal with Cas again or watch him talk with Sam and feel all warm inside because he had his two most important people right in front of him. He would never be able to tease him about how awkward he was again or experience the feeling of giddiness he felt when a movie he had picked out for them to watch had made Cas laugh. There were a million things that Dean loved about his angel that were suddenly ripped from his grasp with no gentleness.
What Dean thinks works him up the most though is thinking about all the things he should’ve told Castiel.
Like how badly he wanted to thank him for being by his side no matter what, or taking care of his baby brother like he was his own. Dean wanted to thank Cas for being the reason he kept going.
But most of all, if Dean had known that Castiel would be taken away from him he would've told him that he loved him too.
If Dean had known that every scrap of his angel would be taken away from him he would’ve been down on his knees, looking up to Cas in an effort to show him that he was his everything. He would have confessed everything he had ever felt towards him, embarrassing or not, because Cas deserved to feel loved, and to know that his love was reciprocated.
What he didn’t deserve was to die without Dean telling him all of these things.
Dean didn’t know if he could live with himself for letting that happen.
“Cas, Cas, please.”
Dean gasped.
“You have to know man, you have to know that I love you” The harsh sounds Dean made into the ground could break even the strongest man.
“I can’t do this if you don’t know that I love you”
A happier story might have ended with Dean getting some closure that Castiel had known.
But when has Dean’s story ever ended happy?
Instead, Dean was left with knowledge, the knowledge that Cas couldn’t hear him, that he would have to live the rest of his miserable life without him, and that Castiel didn’t know he loved him.
His angel didn’t know.