Constellations

Stay

"What did I do?" Dean asked, the first words he spoke when he woke up to Sam beginning to stitch a wound on his forehead.

"Don't worry about that, Dean. You have some injuries let me take care of them." Sam's eyes were puffy and red. He had been crying.

Dean stopped Sam's hand before it could touch the cut on his head again.

"What the hell did I do, Sam?"

"It wasn't you okay, Dean? It was a demon, not you and it's gone; I exorcised it-"

"Sam."

"No, Dean." Sam's voice was hard and final. Dean was quiet and Sam cautiously continued to stitch the cut on Dean's forehead.

--

Dean could tell Sam was stalling for time. He had finished sewing the cut ten minutes ago. Now he was attending to small bruises that weren't even from the fight.

"You know that you finished a while ago," Dean whispered. "Tell me what happened."

Sam sighed.

"Please, please remember, Dean that this was in no way your fault...

Jo is dead."

Dean sat there in stunned silence before he said, "No, no she can't be."

"I-I found her on the way to the bunker at the side of the road. By the time I got to the hospital, it was too late. Ellen-" Sam's voice broke. "She came and took Jo's body. She um didn't want us at the ceremony." Sam looked away.

Dean couldn't believe it. He killed Jo, one of his best friends.

"Dean, this isn't your fault. It wasn't you, you know that."

"You keep saying that. Are you trying to convince me or you?"

Sam was quiet.

Dean's eyes widened with fear and with tears. "Cas. Where is he? What did I do, Sam?!"

"He's alive."

Dean sighed. "Okay, okay." If Cas was alive, he could handle anything even Jo's death. "What about Metatron?"

"He's locked in the bunker, but there's something else you need to know." Sam's voice was shaky.

"What, Sam?" Dean asked nervously.

"Cas is alive, but he's hurt, badly."

"How? Where is he?" Dean stood up from the chair rapidly.

"He's in the hospital. He-" Sam looked away. "He was stabbed in the stomach-"

"By me."

"No, not by you Dean, by the demon. You know you would never do this so stop fucking beating yourself up. You didn't make a mistake, this can never hang over your head because you had nothing to do with it. It was your face, but not your mind, not your heart. So stop torturing yourself and get your ass down to the hospital so we can figure something out." Sam was tired and angry; he needed something or someone to fix. He couldn't have two of his best friends dying today, he wouldn't.

Dean nodded.

They left.

--------------------

Dean gently lifted Castiel's hand from the bed and sat down next to him.

"Hey," he whispered. Cas didn't respond; Dean wasn't expecting him to.

"Listen, you're going to be okay. You have to be okay, Cas."

He had looked at Cas' chart a minute before: coma.

"You're going to wake up from this, please you have to wake up from this. I can't live without you." Dean looked down struggling for words, but when he found the right ones, he couldn't stop.

"For a long time, I felt empty, just a soldier blindly following orders. I did things without thought, without care, without love. There was a moment in my life when I realized I was gay, but I pushed it down and covered it up with- with sex and booze and- and women I knew I could never want. But then you came, and I felt like I could finally breathe. It's like I had been holding my breath my entire life, tense all the time, trying to be someone I wasn't, and then I saw you and I just relaxed and I remember thinking that you would change my life forever. You were the first person that made me feel like I could be myself, but more than that you made me the best possible version of myself. Every day that I'm with you , every moment that I get to spend looking into your eyes, just makes me-" His voice caught. He rubbed Castiel's hand with his thumb.

"Stay with me please just stay. I need you with me because I can't go back to who I was before. I need you, Cas. I promise you that I am going to do whatever it takes to get you back. I love you. I'll do anything, Cas. I'm going to save you if it's the last thing I do."

Dean stood up filled with sudden determination.

He heard three quick knocks.

"Dean, we got to go!" Sam whispered from outside the door. They had sneaked into the hospital to check on Cas. They weren't allowed inside; only family could be there. Didn't they know that Cas was their family? That family didn't end in blood?

"Coming." Dean whispered back.

He looked back at Castiel in the bed one last time. He looked perfect. Dean quickly cupped his cheek and kissed him on his forehead.
"I'm going to fight for you."