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It goes against Dean's instincts and John Winchester's first aid training drilled into him at a young age — "Do not take out the weapon used in a stabbing, the blood loss will increase and likely kill the victim" — but it's Cas. He can heal.
He can, and Dean's hands grasp tight around an angel blade deeply embedded in Castiel's sternum.
The feeling of the thin, silver handle has a secondhand warmth. From the now dead bastard who stick it in.
Dean doesn't realize how his own hands had been shaking until he yanks and drops the blade slickened with dark, congealing blood, having it thud beside his kneecap as he cradles up his friend. Presses down on the wound. Looks around for anything to help them, even if there isn't.
He's shaking like Dean has never seen this much blood from someone injured, when he has.
The chest wound emits a low, blue shimmer of celestial light.
Dean swallows hard, pushes away the realization of why in his head.
"Hey, buddy, you still with me?"
Castiel's eyes roll around in their sockets for a moment, as if he's having trouble locating where he is — this lonely, dirt road in the middle of bumfuck, Sam miles away with the car, and them on the run from the a-holes hunting them all down — and Dean squeezes the back of Castiel's neck with his fingers, whispers, "Hey. Don't do that. M'right here, Cas. Gonna be okay, gonna get you on your feet..."
"No."
It's a single draining word out of Castiel, with such a grim finality that Dean feels a jolt of anger.
He grits his teeth, screws up his face.
The blood-crusting spaces between Dean's fingers holding Castiel's wound...
They glow bright in small cracks. Like his Grace wants to escape.
(And the hell if Dean is gonna LET him just...)
"Cas, you son of a bitch," he snaps, watching as the corner of Castiel's mouth twitches in response, not even a smile, Castiel's eyes falling shut. And they don't open again. Not even for Dean. "Cas? Hey, Cas, I'm talking to you. I mean it. Don't even think about it. We're gonna—"
The wound glows larger, bloodier, so much hotter in sensation pressed into Dean's already bloodied-up palm... to where the edges of Castiel's face turns silvery. This isn't happening. Not with the sun so high above their heads, another smoked-out angel corpse only a few feet away, and not with Lucifer still on their asses and Michael too, and this is all so messed up. Castiel was... protecting him.
"...Why?"
Dean's ears are beginning to ring. Louder than they have. The blue-white shimmer that's supposed to be the real Castiel, not the moderately physically fit body of some guy from Pontiac... that trans-dimensional, living energy pulses like a rapid, panicked heartbeat and engulfs them.
He didn't mean to speak his thought out loud. Not really.
And if Castiel had an answer, or consciously could, the opportunity slips away.
Dean ignores another good instinct, to avert his eyes from the swell of blinding light, but he can't. He's somehow drawn to the image of his dying friend in Dean's own arms, Castiel's blood-flecked, whited out features, and the remarkable incandescence of Grace-glow.
When the hot slide of tears roll from the corners of his eyes, Dean decides to shut them. He still sees the glow.
The shock-wave explosion of the angel Castiel's Grace, andheisgone, forces Dean backwards.
But he would not see the blackened, burning etches of wings on the road.
Dean's eyes reopen, blink. Blink. But would not see.
"Castiel..."
*