annundriel | SPN Fic: The Ground Far Below (PG)

The Ground Far Below
Dean/Castiel-ish
PG
1018
General spoilers for season five, particularly 5.13 and 5.16.
The world doesn't end, but something else does.

A month ago I was listening to Clint Mansell's score for the film Moon. The track "Memories (Someone We'll Never Know)" (movie spoilers in the comments on that link) came up and triggered something in my head. We've seen the angels do many things. With a track title like that, I couldn't help but be reminded of what we saw them do in "The Song Remains the Same." So here's one interpretation of how the season could end without death and destruction. It's not happy, but no one dies.

Thank you,

olivelavonne,

ginnith, and

mclachlan for giving this a look over.

Somewhere on the back roads of America, in the dirt and the dust and the brush, the world doesn’t end.

It’s close. It gets right up to the edge, teeters there like child entranced by the Grand Canyon, unaware of the danger or their own mortality, staring down into the abyss. But when it comes to tipping over, it doesn’t. Something holds it back.

A hand on the shoulder. A parental figure standing just behind.

The world keeps spinning, and nobody falls.

--

Dean is angry.

Dean is often angry.

Dean is always angry.

He is livid when Castiel finds him.

“What was the point, Cas? What was the goddamned point of all of this if God was just going to…to fucking waltz in here at the last second, slap everyone on the wrist, and send them to their rooms?”

“It was God’s plan.” It’s not the first time Castiel has said some variation of the words; it is the first time they’ve felt so thick in his throat, hollow and useless.

“God’s plan. God’s plan. Fuck God’s commands and his almighty fucking plan. You and I both know this is the wrong way to do things. You don’t just…treat people like pawns! He turned His back on all of this; He turned His back on you—”

Castiel can’t help but flinch.

“—and you’re just going to…to.” Dean pauses, breathing deeply, eyes closed. When he speaks again, his voice is quiet. “Fall back in line.”

It hurts, cuts straight to the core, but Heaven is all Castiel has ever known outside of his short time spent on Earth, his time spent with Dean.

Castiel isn’t sure if the heart he hears pounding is Dean’s or his own, Dean stands so close.

Dean opens his eyes, and Castiel feels even more torn in two before Dean opens his mouth. “I thought we were in this together now, Cas. I thought…”

It doesn’t matter what Dean thought. Castiel found God. He found God and he refused no as an answer. Everything is going to change.

--

The archangels have all the power.

The things Castiel can do are mere parlor tricks in comparison.

When the time comes, the Winchesters are in their hands.

It isn’t quite time, though. Not yet.

Castiel finds Dean sitting in the sun on a park bench. It is early summer and children can be heard playing across the grass. A man plays fetch with his dog. Castiel remembers sitting with Dean on benches similar to this. He confided in Dean then, told him he had doubts.

Doubts which proved to be well-founded.

He had opened himself up and shared something with Dean then.

He wishes to do so now, before he has to say…

To say…

Before Michael arrives.

He sits beside Dean, close enough that he can feel the heat rising off of Dean’s skin, the life coursing through his veins. Dean shifts and their thighs brush once, twice, knees knocking as Dean angles toward him.

Dean looks tired, exhausted. Rough around the edges and human, all the more beautiful for it. He watches Castiel patiently, like they have all the time in the world.

But there is too much to say. There will never be enough time.

“So,” Dean says. “What happens now? There are still demons to hunt, right? Ghosts to exorcise. Werewolves to kill. Mysterious disappearances to—”

“Thank you.”

They’re the only words that don’t feel trapped behind his ribs, between his lungs.

Dean blinks at him, crease forming between his brows. “For what, Cas? I didn’t really do anything.”

“In the end, perhaps. But before, you—I want to thank you, for myself. Not for Heaven or God, but for myself.”

Looking away from what he finds in Dean’s eyes, he sees Michael walking toward them across the grass. Dean must see something in his face, because he follows Castiel’s gaze, says, “What—?”

The rest is lost to space and the sound of wings.

He’s not a hammer anymore, but he might be a coward.

There won’t be a trace of him left behind, Castiel knows this. It still feels like he’s lost something significant.

--

His brothers and sisters tell him he shouldn’t. Castiel doesn’t listen. He became very good at not listening.

Castiel watches the Winchesters from afar.

This pain is new to him. He cannot seem to stop himself from prodding it.

“It’s for the best, kiddo,” Gabriel says softly, appearing at his side.

“Yes,” Castiel says. “It must be.”

The words fall flat between them.

Castiel doesn’t turn to look at Gabriel; his gaze remains fixed on the diner across the street, committing it to memory as well as he can—very well. There are pansies planted in pots on either side of the doors, a sign across the front in red paint that reads Ruby’s. Castiel feels a heart that can’t be his clench in his chest every time he reads it.

They never would have stopped there before. Dean would have driven another ten miles, another twenty, just to eat someplace that did not bear her name. Sam wouldn’t have argued.

Now, it’s only a name.

There’s a tinkle of bells when the doors open and close—Is it true, Dean asks, that every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings? Castiel frowns. Angels always have their wings, Dean. They do not…get them. Dean chuckles and pats him on the leg. Never change, Cas, he says. Never—marking each entrance and exit. An older couple enter, and then Sam and Dean are exiting, stepping out into the bright afternoon light.

They do not even glance his way. They laugh, joking around as they head for the Impala. Dean grins at his brother across the roof of the car before he opens the door and slides behind the wheel, Sam rolling his eyes through his smile before he folds himself into the passenger’s seat.

And then they’re gone and it’s just him and Gabriel and a semi-empty street on a Friday afternoon.

Just another day without anything to mark it at all.

Current Mood: nervous

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From:

spacefragments.livejournal.com

THIS IS WORSE THAN DEATH UGH

that kind of forgetting creeps me out in a fundamental level, i swear :[

From:

The Rambling Confessions of a Fickle Fangirl

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