Chapter Text
They win the fight against Chuck, because of course they do. It may have felt like an impossible situation at the time, but they have taken some pretty big fish before. Every monster and big bad Chuck ever threw at them was in preparation for this exact outcome.
Maybe Chuck always saw it coming, knew his end would be staring down the business end of Dean and Sam Winchester’s fury. He acted as if he didn’t see it coming, crawling in the dust and spouting off about his end at the hands of the ultimate killer, but writers lie.
Dean sees that, especially now.
Every story ends with their happily ever after, or some semblance of it at least. Heroes never die, family finds their way back to one another at the end, and lovers can never be separated.
Cas is gone and Jack is in heaven, not answering their prayers. If this is supposed to be Dean’s happy ending, his writer must be a miserable asshole who hates him.
Except the writer is him now and he feels completely out of control.
“It would come and take me forever,” Cas had said while staring down the edge of eternity. Dean spends nights beating his record for how drunk he can get, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom and day dreaming about all the ways he could’ve saved Cas if only he knew. Told him to shut up, gagged him if the stubborn bastard wouldn’t stop. Wrap his entire being around him like a full body anchor and went with him when the Empty came knocking. Something, anything, besides standing there with a hundred different things stuck to the back of his throat.
“Dean, I’m not coming back home.” Jack had said and maybe it wasn’t until then that Dean saw just how much he failed that kid. Cas’s son, then Sam’s, then his, and he had the audacity to say he wasn’t family. The audacity to act as if he didn’t give a damn about him when he knows as well as anybody just how hard he he had crumbled when faced with his death- both times. Jack had left and Dean can’t help but wonder if he had been a better father if things would’ve changed.
He supposes he will never get the chance to know.
Killing Chuck, being free, it’s all Dean has wanted for ages now.
Dean told Sam not all too long ago that he would give anything to get a shot at taking Chuck down. He had meant it, with everything in him, he meant it more than anything he had ever let fall from his lips.
He supposes that was before he knew that losing Cas was what he would have to give to be there to see Chuck’s defeat.
The next month after earning his free will, Dean uses it to either drink or be drunk. Sam is concerned, of course he is, but there’s only so many times he can beg his grown ass brother to tell him what happened with Cas just to get shut down before he learns to stop.
Dean is spiraling after losing him and not for the first time. At least with the leviathans and with Lucifer, Dean had something left of him. His trench coat to switch between every car trunk or his body to give a proper send off, wrapped in yellow curtains.
He never did quite look at wet trench coats or yellow the same way after that, but at least he had something.
Now Dean doesn’t have a damn thing of Cas’s to show he was ever there, ever a part of their lives, except for one photograph. The photo of them when they had played dress up in Dodge City sat propped up on his dresser against the bottom of his lamp, edges slightly curled from an odd tear.
There’s no trench coat, no body, just the bloody handprint he left behind on a jacket he can’t bring himself to wash and a mausoleum of a bedroom.
Dean doesn’t exactly know what free will feels like besides the open end of a beer bottle or what to do with it, but he does know that free will- true free will- can’t exist for him without Cas.
For such an obvious realization, it still manages to startle Dean out of staring down the neck of the bottle of whisky he just completely drained.
The two of them have always had a complex, deep relationship that Dean’s never been able to easily define. A profound bond, Cas had once said, and he supposes that’s about as close as it’ll ever get to describing it.
The angel has always been a constant in Dean’s life, someone he could always fall back on even when they were arguing. He can’t even count on one hand how many times they hurt one another, but even with two hands he couldn’t count every single time they had saved one another.
Most of the time, for years even, all Dean had was Cas and Sam.
Dean refuses to let Castiel go out the way he did. The angel may have been happy with dying and leaving Dean to sit with his words, but Dean isn’t fine with it at all.
“Happiness isn't in the having, it's in just being. It's in just saying it.” Who the fuck even says things like that?
Cas’s moment of true happiness was one of Dean’s absolute lowest points in his life. Cas speaking his truth may have set him free, but it shackled Dean and left him caged within himself even long after Cas is gone.
Cas got to speak his truth, got to save Dean, and now it’s Dean’s turn. He’s not sure what his truth even consists of, but he knows that saving Cas is something can’t put off until he knows.
The world spins when he stands, stomach twisting itself into knots like a pretzel. He presses a hand against the wall and tries to orient himself, but that’s hard to do when he can’t remember the last time he made it through the day without getting drunk.
Okay, so, maybe Dean’s turn can wait until after he goes to sleep.
The same day Dean begins working on finding a way to get Cas out of the Empty, Jack pays the bunker a visit. Call it divine intervention or maybe even just comedic timing, but whatever it is, he’s there.
When he stumbles out of his bedroom at four in the afternoon the next day, he almost thinks he’s still drunk when he lays eyes on Jack at the map table with Sam. Miracle is sitting at Jack’s feet, head resting on his knee, tail wagging a mile a minute. Jack is petting the dog’s head with one hand as he gestures widely with his free one.
His head is clear, maybe only a little slow with sleep, and throbbing with the persistent ache of someone far too old to be drinking like they’re sixteen. He’s not drunk, that’s for sure, but it wouldn’t be his first time hallucinating because of grief.
Squinting against the harsh lights quickly becomes rapidly blinking as if expecting Jack to evaporate into thin air.
“You good?” Sam asks, eyebrow cocked. It’s only then that Dean realizes he’s just been hovering in his pajamas a few short feet away from the two of them rapidly blinking.
“Yeah, sorry. Hungover as hell. Seriously it feels like someone is jackhammering my skull.” Dean croaks, making a vague gesture at his head with his hand before turning to Jack, “It’s good to see you, kid.”
“It’s good to be home.” He beams and it’s almost like the sun is pouring between the gaps in his smile. It’s so very reminiscent of Cas.
Dean’s heart does a painful little lurch.
Jack looking like Cas isn’t a new realization, in fact, it’s something that came up in conversation quite often. He remembers Sam hounding Cas for details about it, wondering about the logistics of angel genetics while Dean just joking accused Cas of actually fathering Jack.
His nose had screwed up at that even as Sam and Dean laughed through it.
It makes so much more sense now, all things considered.
Despite Jack’s beaming smile, his exhaustion is clear in just about everything else. Not exhaustion in the typical sense, Dean’s not sure Jack even needs to sleep anymore, but in the bone-deep way. He’s slightly slumped in on himself, skin sunken, and mannerisms just slightly slower than they normally would be.
Being the almighty has clearly taken a toll on him.
“So what’s the deal, world ending again and we have to come out of retirement?” Dean asks and he’s only half joking when he says it.
“No, nothing like that. Unless Amara managed to get into something in Heaven while I was gone, but... No, nothing at the moment.”
“Amara?” Sam asks, eyebrows steadily rising up his forehead. Based on that alone, Dean can only assume Jack and Sam’s conversation hadn’t gotten very far before he walked in.
“When I absorbed Chuck’s powers I absorbed Amara too. Once I got to Heaven I let her out. She’s been the one helping me run things.” Jack explains and Dean can’t help but be impressed.
“What sort of things have you guys been working on?” Dean asks, barely stamping down his curiosity.
“Creating angels was a big one, so Heaven’s structural integrity could rebuild. Then we started working on tearing down walls, uh for a lack of better terms, not actual walls. Heaven’s open to all the souls there, no more relieving the memories, just making new ones. That took a lot of effort even with all the new help.”
Dean isn’t sure what to say to all that, it all seems so much bigger than him. Creating angels? Rebuilding Heaven? An afterlife that isn’t just reliving your golden oldies? It all seems so hard to wrap his head around, even with an explanation as simple as the one Jack is offering.
Thankfully Sam’s always been smarter when it comes to these type of things.
“We’re really proud of you Jack,” Sam says softly, “Seems like you’ve been busy.”
“Super busy!” Jack nods enthusiastically, but then slowly offers, “I miss Cas, though.”
The flash of grief is so all encompassing that Dean can feel it deep within his chest. His fingers itch with the urge to wrap around a bottle or curl into a fist, but more than anything they itch to clap against an ugly ass trench coat covered shoulder one more time.
“Me too.” Dean offers, voice raw and grating. It’s hard to admit, to speak out loud without some semblance of drunken incoherency to blame for it later.
God, Dean has a problem, doesn’t he? He’s not even functional anymore. One step at a time, he supposes, rescue Cas then focus on his drinking problem.
“We all do, Jack.” Sam says and somehow manages to make it sound soothing instead of condescending. Dean should get him to teach him that someday.
“Do you remember when we fought that Gorgon? And- and you got hurt, Dean?” Jack asks and it seems so totally out of the blue that he’s taken aback for just a moment.
“Yeah, yeah I remember.” He says. His confusion probably shows all over his face.
“I was... upset afterwards, when we couldn’t get you to wake up. Cas came to talk to me and even though I included him in my worries about losing you and Sam, he completely moved around the topic of loss when it came to him.” There’s a considering pause, like Jack isn’t quite sure the point he’s trying to make either.
“Go on.” Sam urges, gentle despite his obvious need to hear this thing through.
“He said that humans burn very bright, but for a very brief time compared to beings like us and that when they’re- when you’re gone the hurt will remind us of how much we loved you.” His eyes are sorrowful, but bright. Ache is littering every word leaving his voice, but he’s getting ramped up instead of simmering down. A supernova, burning bright and fast even through his pain.
“He wasn’t entirely wrong.” Dean replies, not really meaning to. His grief is a constant reminder of just how much Cas meant to him, how much he’s lost. It’s been so obvious that the pain this last month has kept Cas at the forefront of his mind, forever immortalized with teary eyes and a quivering smile.
Isn’t that just what mourning is?
“He wasn’t entirely right either,” Jack shakes his head, “I asked him then what was the point of being a cosmic being and having my powers if I couldn’t use them to save the people I love. I meant it then and I mean it even more now. What’s the point of being God if I can’t right the wrongs?”
Dean’s heart does a shuttering little lurch in his chest.
“Jack?” Sam’s voice is a hopeful little thing Dean hasn’t heard in a while.
Cas had been his best friend too, he’s not sure when he forgot that.
“I don’t like being God.” Jack confesses, “Even with Amara and all the angels, it’s lonely. I want to give my powers over to her, perfect harmony, and come back home. Before I can do that, I think I need to make good on what I said to him.”
“Are you saying-?” He can’t bring himself to say it, afraid to be wrong. If he’s wrong he knows he’ll continue to do what he does best, figure it the fuck out, but he’s just so tired of things being difficult.
He hopes for it to be this simple, if only just this once.
“My last act as God is going to be saving Cas from the Empty.”