The Soul Burns Brighter Than The Sun

Chapter 20: Keep The Change Ya Filthy Animal

Dean stares at the black hole Cas disappeared into and he feels his legs go numb. He collapses into a chair and watches black goo gather at the edges of the circle, just like the inky darkness that swallowed Cas's body and dragged him to The Empty all those months ago.

Dean's been sitting here for several hours. He knows if he leaves, he'll find the nearest bottle and drown himself in it, but Sam stayed with him for the first two hours, and Sam's making him a sandwich in the kitchen that Dean won't be able to stomach.

Sam comes back and there's the clinking of three plates. Right, Jack's sitting here too. He's been so silent Dean had forgotten the kid was there, and Dean turns to see Sam and Jack staring at sandwiches none of them really feel like eating. Eileen's in the library researching ways they get trap Lucifer and kill him. Rowena sits with her, the two of them reading and books and pages they've already read twice over.

"They'll come back." Sam says, catching Dean's eyes, then Jacks. "Cas will be fine."

Dean swallows. It's only been a few hours, after all, and he nods, trying to put on a good front for Jack, the kid looks at him with scared puppy eyes, and Dean nods again for the kid. "He'll be fine, Jack. Cas is a warrior."

Jack nods minutely. Dean picks up his sandwich and eats one bite, then another, going through the motions to maintain some kind of normalcy to ease Jack's mind. He watches as Jack eats half of his sandwich, and Dean eats the whole thing. It sits like mud in his stomach.

Dean watches the portal twist with black goo and darkness that Dean's only seen in dreams and in that cursed vision that Joan's book tried to kill him with. Each twist of black goo sends a jolt through Dean's body, and he begs for Cas to fall through. To smile triumphantly and return to him.

Dean waits, and all at once, it feels familiar again, the waiting for Cas to fall through a portal and return to Dean and be okay. Dean's been here before, sitting on a dungeon floor.

He gets up, excuses himself under the guise of needing to use the bathroom, and Dean throws up his sandwich in the toilet.

In the bathroom, Dean rinses his mouth out and brushes his teeth, the twisting in his stomach unyielding and unforgiving as Dean closes his eyes against his reflection. There's a slight bruise next to his Union Scar—both from Cas's mouth—and Dean can feel his blood pulsing through those points. He wonders if his soul has a twinge of blue now that he's got this scar. He should've asked Cas before he left. Is my soul yours too? Are we intertwined even while we're apart?

"Get it together, Winchester." Dean commands to the guy in the mirror that looks like he's falling apart at the seams and at every stitch Cas has sewed into him in the past few months to hold him together.

"He's going to be fine." He grits out through teeth, splashing his face with water and patting his face dry. He looks in the mirror. His knuckles itch. Dean sighs and throws the towel back on the countertop.

"DEAN!" Sam yells, his shout urgent and hard, and Dean's sprinting. He's running back through the bunker to the infirmary where the portal is, where he left Sam and Jack. He's back, he's back, Dean mind chants.

Dean skids around the corner to the war room and freezes. It's not Cas. It's a woman, her face bloody and beaten. He doesn't know who she is, much less how she got here, but she's not Cas, and instantly, Dean's hope is crushed, his stomach bottoming out and falling to the ground with a splat. Jack just stares at the woman, his head tilted in confusion. Sam trains his gun on her.

"Hello, Dean." She greets him, holding her stomach in where her clothes are torn and blood spills out. She smiles at him, blood in her teeth. It's all over her, dripping from her dark hair and spilling down her face. There are slashes over her chest where her shirt is cut open. Dean can see more blood than skin and clothes, and he counts more wounds than a human would be able to live from. Instinctually, he draws for a gun that would be useless against a demon or angel, but it's a security thing, and he's a shoot first ask questions later kind of guy. Especially now, Cas is still in The Empty, and Dean's anxious. Trigger happy.