Moving On (Destiel)

63: Three years and change

Cas insisted on keeping family dinner nights. He insisted on an extra chair every time. He kept going to school, sitting alone in class always.

Cas graduated. He looked at where his family was sat. Jody, Sam, Jess, Gabe.

One chair always stayed empty.

Dean was okay when he ate the same food for the 90th+ time. He was okay when he started losing cards against the other inmates regularly, leaving him with nothing. He was okay when some of them teamed up to beat the crap out of him because they suspected him to cheat at poker (which wasn't true; not in the way they accused him of, anyway).

He wasn't, however, okay anymore, when Sam stopped coming.

Cas didn't sign up for College. He signed up for working at a local store, making a few hundred dollars every month. Sure, most people would call it a wasted time, since he wasn't spending it either doing something to pursue his education or his dreams, nor using the time trying to figure it and himself out like you do with travelling, he just... existed. Waiting. Some voluntary work on the side, countless movie marathons with Gabe. But it wasn't the same. Sometimes, months would go by in a blink, and at others, days would stretch with no end. He then wondered how Dean must do it. Lonely in a prison cell with nothing and no one. He must be going crazy.

Dean didn't go crazy, although he himself didn't know how. Or maybe he just thought he wasn't, but really was, had gone by the rails already, who knew. All he could state for certain was that if not madness, then depression became a normalized state.

Life lost its meaning, the meals its taste, the sun its color. The morning its appeal, and one day he found himself waking up not wanting to stand up anymore, and the many suicides happening in prison cells didn't seem as unreasonable anymore.

He couldn't even tell how much time was left, how much time he had already been in. He stopped marking the days when he stopped caring.

Gabriel cared. Always had, for Castiel. That's why Castiel had forgiven him for trying to talk him out of Dean. Sure, he was angry that Gabriel attempted, but he wanted to protect Cas. And he thought doing that best was to assure Cas would forget Dean and just move on already.

"You can't hang on to him forever like you do right now," Gabriel said desperately.

"It's not forever," Cas corrected him, scowling.

"No, that's what you think," Gabriel insisted. "Who guarantees he'll be the same after this... experience?"

"He probably won't," Cas admitted. "But he's still worth it."

"He, maybe. But this madness? This isolation from the fun of life, you losing three years, for fuck's sake, Cas, three years. I'm not saying you can't come back, but you could try something different, for one. And then you'll see if you even want to come back. Maybe it'll be so great that you see... Dean Winchester isn't the one and only way."

"He's my one and only," Cas prompted and ended the discussion. But the truth was – he saw the reason in Gabriel's argumentation. And that scared him. Of course, he didn't want to basically lose three years of his life. He wanted to keep his promise to Dean to enjoy life outside this godforsaken town.

Except he was also scared that the one good thing in his life was and always had been Dean, and by giving that up and leaving, he'd never get it back. He might not find it reason enough to return, finding it better elsewhere because Dean and him and been so far in the past that he didn't remember the best of it, and he wouldn't risk that. Dean meant too much to him.