The Year of Redemption

Prologue: Where You Fall (Where It All Begins)

The apocalypse was ending.

Sammy had just jumped into the Pit. Castiel had exploded into a billion droplets of angel blood and disappeared. Bobby was splayed out on the ground, his neck snapped and blood oozing from his mouth.

Dean lay broken and bloodied against the Impala. He had just lost everything: the last of his friends, the last of his family.

His head hung low. There was still blood dripping from his mouth, and his face was a mess of bruises and fat, red welts. He didn't move for what seemed like an eternity. His thoughts were dark, tormenting and taunting him. His heart was heavier than he had ever felt it. His will was gone. He resolved to sit there patiently until the hand of death settled his fate.

But it was a different hand entirely that touched him next. Only a few seconds passed before a blinding light came from beside him. Dean managed to look up, but he immediately had to look away because the light was so bright. Dean felt something reaching toward his forehead, and with one touch of skin, he was healed from all of his wounds. His face was restored to its worn and rugged features, and his body was no longer broken.

Dean looked up again into the light and could make out a vague form. There was definitely a trench coat. "Cas...?" he managed, shielding his eyes from the light, which was now slowly dimming.

"Hello, Dean." Castiel stuck out his hand to help Dean up.

"How... What are you doing here?" Dean asked as he gained his balance against the Impala.

Castiel walked over to where Bobby lay on the ground, with his neck snapped and his head turned in the most grotesque way imaginable. Cas reached down and revived Bobby, then turned back to Dean. "I don't know. It could've been the devil, it could've been God. Someone saved me." He looked just as confused as Dean did.

Dean had tears in his eyes. Tears of joy and tears of pain. He kept them there in his eyes, refusing to let them spill over. He rushed over to hug Bobby, and it was a full minute until he let go. Dean walked Bobby back to his truck, and Castiel joined them. Dean kept his arm around Bobby's shoulder the whole time. It was as if he had to be physically in contact with the last remaining person he could call family in order to keep from losing him right then and there. Cas studied Dean with a worried look on his face. It was a look that Dean had become all too familiar with during the time he'd known the angel. After they both said goodbye to Bobby, Dean asked, "What... why are you looking at me like that, Cas?"

"Dean..." Cas began, but couldn't seem to find the words.

He looked down, and then looked up again and stared into Dean's eyes. "Dean, you just lost everyone you cared about. For a second, you had no one."

Dean turned away. Cas continued, gazing earnestly towards Dean, "I just can't imagine what that must have been like for you."

Dean turned around and stared straight back into the angel's eyes. "No, Cas, you can't. No one can imagine." Dean's voice became deep and passionate. "Because no one has to see an angel get blasted to smithereens right before their eyes, or to hear their dad tell them they might have to kill their brother before he destroys the world, or to watch helplessly as that same brother drags Satan into his own pit of hell for the rest of eternity. Ok, Cas?" He was almost yelling now.

Both of them kept staring straight into each other's eyes. Dean continued hotly, "No one has to see what I've seen, and no one has to keep living anyways. You know how I keep going, how I keep waking up every day? Because I think somewhere out there, there's people who haven't seen all this shit, who have lives that I can't have and who get to be happy and naive, who don't have to worry about their friends being murdered by demons or their family being dragged down to hell by the devil."

Dean finally looked away, but his voice was still on edge. "I hate this life, and I would never wish it on anyone. I've worked so hard to save so many people from it, and all I get in return is this," Dean spread his arms and motioned all around himself. He looked towards the ground where Sammy had jumped into the Cage along with Satan and Adam and Michael.

"Everything I have keeps being taken away from me. Every time it hurts just the same. And it doesn't go away, it just keeps piling up, and I can't take it anymore, Cas, I can't take any more of this hurt." He glanced back at Castiel, who was still motionless, staring straight at Dean, that worried look being etched deeper and deeper into the creases of his face.

"Do you know what I would've done if you hadn't come back, Cas? What I was thinking in those few seconds after I'd lost everything?" Dean continued. "I was thinking how great it would be to be back in Hell, laughing as Alastair tortured me, thinking how much less painful that would be than to stay here and try to keep living with this." He looked around again, then rested his gaze back on Castiel. The tears in Dean's eyes had reappeared, and they were slowly brimming over the edges and rolling down his cheeks. Cas's eyes were misty too, and he looked like he was about to cry any second. Dean was right. Cas couldn't imagine that much hurt. But for some reason, it was still distressing for the angel to hear Dean talk like this.

"Before you showed up, Cas, I was thinking about all the ways Alastair could torture me and all the ways I could torture anyone else down there, and about how none of those ways would come close to the hurt and anger I feel right now up here." The last few words were strained because Dean's tears came rolling down his cheek faster now, making his voice crack and become swallowed up by his sobbing. His legs became weak, and he would have collapsed to the ground if Castiel hadn't appeared in front of him at that very instant, his arms outstretched.

Dean fell into Cas's waiting arms and involuntarily buried his face into the angel's shoulder. Even if his mind and his dignity had wanted to, Dean's body physically didn't have the strength to pull away from Cas at that moment. He was uncontrollably sobbing by this point, so Castiel just held him like that, with the fearless hunter's face breathing heavily into the angel's shoulder and his tears staining the front of Cas's trench coat.

Cas used his free hand to cradle the back of Dean's head. "Shhhhh," the angel softly murmured next to Dean's ear. It was all he could think to say, "shhhhh." After a few minutes, Dean was still heaving, though he seemed to be out of tears. He had relaxed completely into Castiel's chest and had his arms also wrapped around Cas's waist, trying to keep himself upright as much as possible. Cas gripped Dean a little tighter and lowered them to the ground, where he knelt and let Dean's head rest on his knees while the rest of Dean's body lay limp, curled up on the ground.

Dean tried to say something, but he was still gasping and heaving a bit, so nothing but a choked sob came out. "Shhhhh," Cas repeated and moved his hand to the back of Dean's head again. "You're ok, you're going to be ok now, I promise," he whispered as he stroked Dean's hair. Dean let out a ragged sigh, and his breathing ever-so-slowly returned to normal. Castiel let out a soft sigh also, and the worried look in his eyes turned softer as he gazed down at Dean. The hunter was now dozing off, resting in Cas's lap with what was starting to actually seem like a serene look on his face.

Castiel's mouth twitched into a sad smile, and very slowly, a huge tear fell from his eye and made its way down his cheek, dripping onto Dean's face. It glistened where it landed, and Cas gingerly brushed it away with the back of his finger. He rested his hand gently on the side of Dean's face, realizing in that moment how much he had gone through with that fearless hunter and how much Dean had taught him.

"You know, all my brothers in heaven think I'm crazy for being so wrapped up with you humans," Castiel admitted to the sleeping hunter. "They say I'm weak... that I'm not worthy because I rebelled for some righteous man down here on Earth... that I chose him over God and the other angels." Cas stroked Dean's hair as Dean let out a soft snore. "But you, Dean," Castiel gazed down at the beautiful, broken man lying so vulnerably in his lap and whispered, "I don't regret choosing you," then added, ever-so-quietly, "You're my angel."