Song Remains the Same

Chapter 20: Above Us Only Sky

"And I'm finding in myself the things that chase me to the corners:
in the dark, far from home—the sins of longing for you."
- The Crash Years

Two Days Later

"Dean. We have got to stop driving." Alex was cramped, uncomfortable, and going stir-crazy in the passenger side seat. None of all that was unusual per se, but after sixteen hours of it with only three or four short stops, she really was beginning to feel like she might commit murder if they didn't pull over soon.

Dean ignored her. She waited a few more seconds and then tried again, her tone bordering on pushy. "You've been driving for a million hours straight and you haven't slept in like three days. Can we please stop?"

He acknowledged her with a half eye roll. She could tell he was tired as hell but fighting it. He had a lot on his mind—guess you would after trapping an archangel and nearly being fried by wacky lightning powers. Alex thought back to Raphael's grand speech about God being dead and the angels who would bring the end of the world. Raphael had then suggested that they should consider that Lucifer was the one who had resurrected Castiel—something that had startled all three of them. That suggestion was still eating at Alex. It had shaken Cas too. After leaving Raphael trapped in a ring of holy fire, they'd gotten out of there. Clearly troubled by the encounter, Cas had disappeared shortly after without saying much. But at least he'd survived the encounter. A small mercy.

"Dean," Alex prompted again.

A muscle jerked in his cheek. "What."

Getting annoyed too, Alex huffed. "What's your problem?"

"I'm tired and I've been driving all day!"

Alex gave him a flat look. "How many times did I offer to drive?" He ignored her and huffed loudly. Alex took in a tired breath and watched the buildings pass outside. "You think God's really dead?"

Her brother chuckled sardonically. "Alex, I don't even think God is real."

"Then where did angels come from?"

"Planet Voltron," Dean wisecracked.

Alex patiently refrained from jabbing him in the side and thought for a minute instead. "Maybe God got lost out there," she suggested. "It's a pretty big universe. Maybe he forgot who he is. Maybe someone trapped him somewhere to get him out of the picture..."

She got an unamused expression. "Or maybe it's all friggin' nuts and you're starting to sound looney tunes."

It was a possibility. Alex pulled out her phone to check it for messages. Usually, she forgot that she even had a phone unless it rang, but after getting a text earlier that day from Cas, she was curious if she'd hear from him again. He had written Does this message appear on your device? After laughing about how awkwardly he had phrased himself, she texted back, No. And about two minutes later, he had texted back, What about this one? And she and Dean had giggled uncontrollably, Dean commenting that he forgot how much fun gullible people were.

Cas kept unintentionally throwing these funny, ironic, surprising moments into their lives that somehow made things brighter. Alex almost didn't want to admit that to herself, because it was almost like they had replaced Sam with Cas there for those two days when they were tracking Raphael. And that made her feel guilty. She thought about being with the angel on that porch under the stars and how scared she'd been at the thought of him dying. Her heart was warm to know he was still here.

After about twenty minutes more, Dean finally gave in and pulled over onto the side of the street in front of a motel in the heart of Kansas City. Alex left all of her stuff in the Impala, Dean grabbed his backpack, and then they headed inside, but not before being accosted by some religious pamphlet-passing guy asking them if they had thought about God's plan for them. If only that guy knew.