"I'll find some way to redeem myself to you."

Castiel to Dean

Dean used to come here when he needed to think. It was peaceful. Here, he felt free. Free of everything. A strange calm seized him every time he came here. The jetty creaked under his feet and the lake swayed with the steady rhythm of the waves. A slight breeze made the reeds sough softly on the bank.

The familiar rustle of a trench coat. "Cas?"

"I'm here." Castiel was standing right next to him, his coat was blowing in the wind like a cloak. The angel appeared and immediately he felt safe again. That was absurd...

"But you're not really here, are you?"

"No", he heard him say. This here was just a dream. The angel was merely visiting. Maybe that was all that remained. Would Castiel ever return? Neither of them knew.

They were no longer the same as they had been before. Even his voice wasn't the same anymore. A voice Dean had heard so many times was now a completely different one. It was a grip on his heart, a storm in his arteries, a hot shiver that shot through his body, and an elusive tug in his groins. Everything had changed. What had been was no longer. Their ember, their heat, their fire had left nothing but a pile of ashes. They were no longer friends, no family. What would they be now? Would they ever be anything again?

For a while they gazed upon the water without saying a word and lost themselves in the imagination that they would never have to wake up, that this would never end. A moment frozen in the middle of time. In the far distance a bird sang of the last hours of the day. The trees on the other side lost themselves in the light mist, just as they lost one another.

"Dean, what I ..."

"No, don't do that", the hunter cut him off.

Castiel was silent, filled with consternation. Perhaps it was still too early. Or already too late. Would they never speak of it again and pretend nothing had happened? As if everything was the same as always? A tempting and at the same time alienating thought. But comprehensible. Maybe the thoughts of it, the memories of what had happened, were too painful. And it was Dean's right to maintain this illusion of the dream. It was his dream after all. For in their dreams, humans created worlds that belonged to them alone. Sometimes Castiel wished he could too. To dream.

"I don't want your apology", Dean faltered, "because there is nothing it could be good for."

It must have been moments like this that changed you forever. Castiel closed his eyes and fell. Fell with the hope he had been holding onto. Dean was right, an apology wouldn't change anything, wouldn't make amends. There was nothing left he could do, nothing more he could say. It was too late. He had destroyed everything. Mentally Castiel tried to say goodbye to him, but it didn't work. He wished Dean would yell at him or hit him, do anything to make it easier to leave.

However, the hunter added more quietly: "I am the one who should bear the guilt." But he did not bear it. No longer. They both knew what the angel had done.

Castiel swallowed. "That is not true."

Hesitantly, cautiously, as if the blond man could run away from him if he made a careless movement, the angel gently placed a hand on his shoulder. To his surprise, Dean didn't beat it away. They just stood there. Fragile. Vulnerable. Sensitive. It was far too much and, at the same time, far too little. They kept silent. Neither of them dared to disrupt this breakable moment. It wasn't an empty silence. The space between them was crammed with longing and memory, dismay and heavy breathing.

Then after a while Dean took a deep breath as if he had to overcome himself: "How did you cope with it? How did you manage to live with that?" Castiel looked at him questioningly. His fingers slipped from the human's shoulder. "With what you've done in heaven", Dean completed. The angel had done bad things too, and yet he was still here. Perhaps the hunter would one day be able to do that too.

"To have slaughtered my brothers and sisters?", bitterness swung in his voice, "Not at all. I tried to do penance by staying in Purgatory. But by that I only caused more suffering."

Dean hadn't been able to deal with the thought that it had been Castiel's will to leave him, so he had created his own memory instead. He had preferred to believe that he had let go of Castiel's hand in the portal, that he had left him in Purgatory, that he had not been strong enough. Because he would rather live with the guilt of having been too weak and left behind a heartbroken angel than even go near the idea that Cas didn't want him. His grief and guilt had haunted him in his dreams, had not let him sleep anymore and had led him to perceive things that had not even been there. Again and again he had thought he had caught sight of the angel, just as Sam had kept seeing his girlfriend Jessica after her death.

"I have forgiven you, Cas, and have been for a long time." They looked into each other's eyes. Dean wasn't just referring to the incidents of Purgatory.

Castiel looked down at the ground and ignored this fact. Perhaps it was still too early to be able to accept his forgiveness. Or already too late. "But then... then Naomi came and I almost killed you!"

Still, the words with which Dean had broken the spell echoed, reverberated in the silence of the unspoken ones. We are family. We need you. I need you. They had never talked about it, not once. They had never brought up what it had meant.

"I've done that too."

Dean remembered just too well how he had beaten up Cas under the influence of the Mark of Cain and how the angel had not fought back, not a single time. Even today he could feel the ribs breaking under his hands. He had raised the angel blade against his best friend, Cas covered in blood beneath him... Never, he would forget this sight. Never again, he could let it get to that point.

"But shortly afterwards I did it again, Dean, under Rowena's curse."

Again, the hunter had made no attempt to defend himself, had merely held Castiel's hand while the angel had hit him with the other.

"And you... you didn't want to let me heal you after that, Dean, because you thought you would have deserved it. And I offered myself as Lucifer's vessel because I believed I deserved it."

"Maybe this between us...", Dean broke off helplessly. His features changed, as if he was in pain. Then he took a deep breath, wiped the emotions off his face and began anew: "Maybe we're doomed to hurt each other over and over again." Maybe it was better for both of them if this here was a goodbye. Castiel had sacrificed enough for them already.

"No, there's not just pain. I can feel it." Dean was not a bad person, he was a very good person who had bad things happened to him. There was so much more to him than he recognized, not just pain and anger. There was also so much good, Castiel sensed it. "Without you, I wouldn't be... me. And I think I am more than what I used to be." Perhaps this human had made him who he always should have been. "This is not destruction, Dean. This is construction."

Dean ejected the air audibly through the nose, a derisive snort that failed. He doubted that. Never, Castiel had been such a callous bastard like all the other angels. And what good had it to him? Now he stood in front of him with broken wings. And whose fault was that? Exactly, his, Dean Winchester's. Castiel had tried to put the pieces of a broken man back together and broke himself in the course of this.

"How can you forgive me? Over and over again?", Dean managed to utter. He had never asked him to. He had never asked for his forgiveness. For having lost faith in Cas when he had found out that he had worked with Crowley. For having left Cas in the hospital when he had taken Sam's pain on himself. For having said that he didn't care that Cas was broken. For not having spoken to Cas when he had confessed to being suicidal. For having kicked Cas out of the bunker and not having told him about Gadreel. For having beaten up Cas while he hadn't even defended himself. For not having noticed that Lucifer had been in Cas. And that wasn't even all.

Forgive him? Castiel didn't understand. He had never forgiven Dean because there was nothing to forgive him for. The hunter had always had good reasons for his actions, like when he had to send away the fallen and now human Castiel. Or Dean had been under external influence. Leviathans, Naomi's control, the intoxication of the Mark of Cain, Rowena's curse. They had never been themselves when they had hurt one another. Until that new moon night. Castiel had been in his right mind and had acted of his own accord in full awareness of what he had been doing to Dean. And therefore the angel didn't understand.

But he needed to say something, anything. "By forgiving myself first", so he answered. An outright lie, but that didn't matter now. "Can't you see that it's a vicious circle? Break through it, Dean!" And more quietly he added: "It just harms those you love if you hold on to your feelings of guilt. I had to learn that in a painful way." His remaining in Purgatory, his yes to Lucifer... The list was long.

Dean looked at him as if he had never seen him before, or as if he would only now be cognizing. Hadn't it been obvious? Castiel had rebelled and had given up his purpose, his home, his family and everything he had ever known. The angel had burned in Hell, fought in Purgatory, suffered in Heaven and died on earth, had returned and stayed. And for what? I did it, all of it, for you, Dean, he had said. Those you love, he had said. I love you too, Cas, Dean wanted to reply. It wanted to get out, involuntarily, simply like that. But he didn't do it.

"We are family. We need you. I need you."

Dean to Castiel 8x17

SPN-quotes to this chapter are listed in the pinned comment down below.

(song to the chapter: "Soldier" by Gavin DeGraw)