The Year of Redemption

Chapter 43: Here Without You

Dean was in Pennsylvania.

It had been weeks since he'd last seen Cas.

The angel had honored Dean's request. He hadn't returned to visit the hunter. He had left Dean to travel the country again, hunt down monsters, stay at crappy, cheap motels, the works.

It took all of the hunter's pride to keep him from praying to Cas at night. All he wanted was to see the angel again. Sometimes, he couldn't get his mind to think of anything else.

But it was better this way – for both of them.

Dean even visited Bobby once. He lied about hunting. He said he'd given it up and was staying with Lisa. He said he was taking Ben to all his soccer games, that he was working at a construction site, building houses in some new suburban neighborhood there in Battle Creek. He'd thought about that life so much that it almost sounded convincing even to him.

When Bobby asked about Cas, Dean said there had been no sign of him. Which was true. Except his voice had wavered just the slightest bit when he said it. And Bobby had noticed. "Is everything ok?" he had asked in his gruff, yet caring voice. So Dean lied again. He said he'd only seen Cas once since the Apocalypse. He said Cas had told him something about a war in Heaven that wasn't going all too well. He told Bobby there'd been no news since then.

Except the hunter saw Cas every night. Just behind his eyelids. Barely into his subconscious.

The angel was dancing through all of his dreams. He was standing in front of Dean, arms open, forgiving him for everything. And Dean would fall, down and down and down, and Cas would gently catch him, and they would just hold each other.

It would be as if he was about to crash, hurtling a hundred miles an hour towards the ground. But then he would catch sight of the angel, and instead of smashing into the bottom of the abyss, he would just slow down and end up safe against Castiel's chest.

Dean never wanted to go to sleep. Because when he was asleep, he never wanted to wake up. He either felt like crap in the morning from the insomnia, or he felt like crap in the morning from the dreams.

Either way, he knew he wasn't in good shape. But at least it all distracted him from feeling other things. Sometimes, he cherished the exhaustion, the soreness, the one-track, apathetic, obsessive train of thought. He could cope with the physical pain and fatigue. As for the rest of it – the other, more unnerving kind of pain... well, he was getting used to taking it out in random spurts of violence and alcoholism.

Dean had just finished wiping out a clan of vampires at a nest in Lancaster. He sat heavily on his motel room bed, throwing his phone and his keys onto the end table and falling onto his back.

He had just let his eyes drift closed when he heard a vibrating sound beside him. Glancing over, he saw his phone light up twice, then go dark again. Dean checked it. There was one text from Sandra: "Ashland, Ohio. Rodeway Inn, Room 12."

Dean had no idea what this meant. He almost ignored it completely and laid back down. But then again, he wasn't actually doing anything at the moment, he'd just finished a hunt and had no more lined up, and maybe – just maybe – he could use some company. He wondered what she was doing in Ohio anyways.

Gathering up the little belongings he had, Dean lumbered out of the hotel and into his Impala. If he was being completely honest with himself, he was actually glad to have an excuse to not sleep. He drove through the night and got to the motel just after daylight. He almost decided to wait a few more hours before knocking on Sandra's door, but then he changed his mind and just walked up anyways.

The door swung open before he had even knocked. There was a flash of brown hair, and suddenly Sandra had her arms wrapped around his waist. Dean recovered from the surprise and slowly put his hands around her back too. "Hey, Sandra," he greeted, his face pressed against her hair.