“I’ll be right back.”
Sam shoots him a look but doesn’t comment. Jack says “Where are you–” with a head-tilt so infuriatingly like Cas, but Sam cuts him off with a quick shake of his head. Now is not the time.
“Just get in the car. I’ll only be a minute,” says Dean. He tosses the keys to Sam and stomps up the porch steps.
“Why’s he going back inside?” he hears Jack ask Sam.
“I’ll explain in the car,” Sam says, his voice low.
Dean stands outside the door, unsure if he’s going to knock. He unfolds the picture again. It’s hard to believe it was nearly four years ago it was taken. Cas was human, they were traveling back to the bunker. They’d stopped for lunch, and Cas just looked so…happy. The sun had been shining on him, and he’d turned his face up to it…Dean had snapped the picture with his phone without really thinking about it. Later, when Gadreel told him Cas couldn’t stay, he was glad he’d gone with the impulse. A picture was not the same as Cas, but it was something. He’d printed it out the next day.
He runs his finger along the edge of the photograph. It’s getting worn. If he’s not careful he’s going to ruin it. Lately it spends more time in his hands than in his wallet.
“I thought you were leaving.”
It’s Mia. Dean had been so lost in his thoughts he hadn’t even heard the door open.
“Did I knock? I was thinking about it, but I don’t remember…” He doesn’t meet her gaze.
She shakes her head, but he doesn’t see. “No,” she says. “I saw your car from the window, wondered why you hadn’t gone. I thought I’d check to see if you needed help.”
Dean wonders how long he’s been standing on the porch. He sees Mia glance at his hands, sees her notice the way he’s holding tight to the photograph, sees her eyes reading his expression and his posture. He closes his eyes and lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.
“It wasn’t,” he says, his voice shaky, “It wasn’t just our moms who died.”
“Come inside,” she says.
Dean sits on the sofa, his face in his hands. Mia was in the other room. She had asked for the photo, and for his phone–for the voice, she’d said–and left him to change.
He doesn’t like not having the picture. He feels even more empty than usual.
There are footsteps behind him, and then…
“Hello, Dean.”
Something breaks inside his chest. He knows it isn’t real–it isn’t–but he wants it so badly.
He doesn’t turn around. “You’re not…him,” he says, unable to say the name, knowing if he did he would break all the way.
“It’s okay, Dean.”
“No it’s not!” he shouts, choking on the words. “You’re gone! You left. And you didn’t…I called and I called, and you didn’t come.”
A tear tracks down his cheek.
“I didn’t want to leave.”
He wants to turn around. He wants to see and touch. He wants to stay in this room for the rest of his life.
This is wrong, Dean thinks. There are so many things I want to say, but this isn’t the way.
He gets to his feet, shaky, holding a hand over his eyes. He can’t look. He knows if he looks he’ll give in.
“I can’t do this,” he says. He’s not sure who he’s talking to. Then, “I’m sorry, Mia. Thank you, but…I just can’t.”
“I understand,” she says, still in his voice. The pain is sharp, like a knife grazing his ribs.
He stumbles to the door, eyes half closed, head deliberately turned away.
“Dean!”
Turning to look is automatic. He responds to that voice
He almost laughed. Until this moment he thought he’d been feeling pain. But that was just a trickle; this is a flood.
“You’re not him!” he yells, desperate to cover his eyes but unable to look away.
“Dean, I’m so sorry,” Mia says; something in the tone tells Dean she’s trying to talk to him as herself, not as… “I just didn’t want you to leave without your phone, or the picture. I could tell from the way it’s worn that you’d miss it if you left it here.”
Blue eyes gaze into his, so sincere, wanting to comfort him.
“I–yeah–thanks,” Dean rasps.
Mia reaches out to him but Dean jerks back like he’s been slapped. “No!” He takes a moment to breathe, then says again, “No. Don’t touch me. If you do…” He forces himself to close his eyes, to get himself under control. “If you do, I don’t think I’d ever let go.”
Slowly she lowers her hand. She looks at him sadly and says, “You must really love him.”
“No I–” Dean starts to say, then stops.
Halfway through the door, phone and photo safe in his pocket, he stops. “I never got to say it,” he says, “but yeah. I love him.”
The door clicks shut behind Dean and he takes a breath of the sweet summer air.
“I’m sorry, Cas.” His voice breaks on the angel’s name, and another tear trails from his eye. “I should have told you.”
Elsewhere, fingers trailing the long grasses beside him, Castiel turns his face toward the sun.
He is home, and it is good.
And then he is hit with a longing and sadness so intense it nearly knocks him to the ground.
“Dean,” he says.
a 13×04 coda
Published
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