mémoire

part douze

Castiel drove himself home after he left Dean's. But he didn't go home. He ended up pulling over on the highway out of town, unable to see.

What had he just done? Why had he just abandoned Dean like that? God, he loved him... He wanted him back. He needed him back.

He couldn't have him back. Long distance didn't work and it was too late to apply to more colleges. Sure, he could try online college, but that wasn't good enough. Castiel learned better when he could try things and see what needed to happen. He couldn't do an online college and live in New York. Cas had to stay in Lawrence and go to the ridiculous Kansas University no matter how much he didn't want to.

No matter how much Castiel wanted to be with Dean, he couldn't be. The universe was forcing them apart.

Cas wiped at his eyes, took a moment to catch his breath, and headed back out onto the road, Dean's favorite AC/DC song playing at full volume.

A solemn silence fell over the apartment when Castiel left. Dean stood in the kitchen by the table, crying and trying to breathe.

If Castiel had hit him, like his own father had, it would have been better. Dean would have known how to deal with that. But... This? He didn't know what to do.

All he wanted to do was find a way to stop this. He wanted to just stop everything.

"Oh, no," Dean whimpered, shaking again. "No, no, no." He didn't want to go into that mindset again. He didn't want to fall into severe depression and try to take his own life again. He didn't want the hallucinations again. He didn't want it, he didn't want it, he didn't want it.

They came anyway. His hand closed into a fist when he heard the door open. Dean hid behind the wall, waiting until he heard the bag drop on the floor.

After a second, footsteps started toward the kitchen. He leaped out, knocking the form to the ground. His hand pinned an arm to the ground, his forearm against a neck. "What do you want?" he hissed, only seeing black eyes when he should be seeing eyes that resembled his own.

"Dean!" Sam gasped, barely able to talk. "Shit, Dean! Let me go! It's Sam. I'm not whatever you're seeing, believe me. I'm Sam."

"How can I know you're not lying?" Dean's arm eased up slightly at the tone of Sam's voice. "You son of a bitch, answer me!"

"Every-"

Dean came to his senses, eyes widening. "Shit," he whispered, scrambling off of his brother. "Shit, Sam, are you okay?"

"Yeah-" Sam coughed, sitting up. He stared at Dean with concerned eyes. "I guess I should ask..." Sam's voice was raspy and Dean felt like the worst brother in the world. "What happened? Why is this suddenly back?"

Dean swallowed, remembering the first few times the hallucinating had happened. When he tried to attack Bobby with iron pipes in the auto shop because he thought the foster father was a demon, Bobby had had him evaluated. They'd put him on medicine, and after a while, the hallucinations stopped all together. After multiple years without them, Dean had been approved to stop the medicine.

But now they were back.

"Cas," Dean mumbled, wiping his cheeks and then his mouth. "He- uh- broke up with me. He had a little episode with shouting and kicking and then just said it would be best to stop and left."

"Dean-"

"I know," Dean interrupted again. "I know. I shouldn't have let myself get so hung up on him and I should have distanced again."

Sam shook his head. "No," he said, "I wasn't even thinking about that. Cas made you better, Dean, he made you happy. He made you into the brother you would have been if you didn't have to raise me. I liked that version of you just as much as I do your protective version, but that other one was healthier. I was going to tell you that you should try to keep it up. Forget about Cas, but keep all of the happiness that was brought out, out."