The Year of Redemption

Chapter 54: Tightrope

Dean felt himself curl up into Cas, he felt his hands going numb from clutching onto the angel so tightly, but still he didn't let up. He felt Castiel lower his own head onto the hunter's shoulder, he felt the angel's body gasping for breath too, but Dean couldn't hear anything over the sound of his own hysterical heaving and crying.

All of their tears eventually left their eyes and soaked into each other's shirts, leaving their bodies completely winded and struggling to regain their breath. Castiel rubbed Dean's shoulder instinctively, and the hunter shivered and trembled despite his warmth. He needed to be closer to Cas, always closer, so the angel could just wrap him up, surround him fully, cut him off completely from the world outside, and envelop him in an entirely different time and place.

Castiel tightened his grip on Dean, pulling the hunter further into his body, needing Dean just as much as Dean needed him.

They couldn't even try to talk, not for a long time at least. Their muscles were strained and sore – from worrying, from crying, from holding each other together. After a while, their arms just gave out. Dean loosened his grip on Cas first. A few minutes later, Castiel's arms went slack, and the hunter just leaned against him.

Dean finally mustered up the strength to pull away and look up at the angel – at his best friend, at his savior, at the one thing that had any chance of healing him, the one thing he swore he couldn't live without.

Dean's face was wet and crusty with the salt of his tears. His eyes looked bloodshot, surrounded by red, and his right cheek was creased deeply with the lines of Castiel's coat. His hair was still wet and matted from the damp air and from Cas's own tears. The light that usually brightened his hazel eyes was absent tonight, too tired and beaten down to manifest itself.

Honestly, Dean looked pitiful, awful, miserable – his body and soul broken beyond repair. Still, Cas saw him, through all of that, he saw Dean and he smiled. After everything, there was still no one else he would rather be with at that single moment in time.

Cas stared into Dean's eyes. There was no light, but deep down, he saw a spark. There was ever a spark. It sometimes fanned itself brilliantly into a flame, and it sometimes died out, so much so that it was barely noticeable – at times like tonight. But it was still there, despite all the waves that crashed and flooded and broke over it, dousing it time and again, but never completely extinguishing it.

Cas stared back into Dean's eyes, and in them, he realized something he'd been holding back, something he'd known for a long time but had been too afraid to admit, even to himself.

Suddenly Cas's face disappeared, and so did his comforting embrace. Everything was cold and black.

Dean was hovering somewhere far above the Earth. He could see certain places clearly though, as if he was zooming in on them. This memory was familiar to Dean, but it wasn't his own. He looked over his shoulder and saw the pair of black wings behind him.

An image flashed before Dean's eyes. He glimpsed Heaven. He saw all of his brothers. He felt the power of his Holy Father. Dean sensed a devotion to them, an unconditional love and faith. They beckoned him to join them, to help usher in a new era of paradise on Earth and in Heaven.

Then he saw a series of images on Earth. He saw images of demons taking over cities, and houses burning, and people dying of disease. He knew it was wrong, but still, he was ready to accept all of this as the price for paradise.

That is, until he zoomed in on one man, a mere mortal, a hunter even. The man was broken and battered inside, but he somehow kept it together on the surface. He knew this man – intimately. But up until then, he'd hardly given him a second thought. The man had just been a job, a chore, an order to carry out - right?