Title: Like a Handprint on my Heart

Summary: Two years after the end of the war, Dean realized that he was being mocked.

Rating: PG-13

A/N: Written for the Secret Angels fic exchange. Prompt: "Castiel leaves Dean messages." Title (and a couple of lines) from the song "For Good" from "Wicked."
Warnings: Suicide, but no character death.

Disclaimer: The show and the characters belong to Kripke's demented mind. Not mine. Thank goodness.

Like a Handprint on My Heart

Two years after the end of the war, Dean realized that he was being mocked.

It took him a while at first. It was subtle. Maybe Sam would have been able to see it, maybe Sam would have known and understood. Maybe not. Dean would never know, what with Sam off in California, shoved back into the backwoods, being all secretive and sneaky.

He new it could have ended worse. Had known it from the second that Sammy's eyes had glowed yellow and the demons had hit their incorporeal knees. Had known it when the angels tensed and gathered around him, shielding him from his own damn brother. Like Sam would ever actually hurt him.

Dean had to smile about it now. That split-second thought that all was lost. Because Sam had raised his arms and spoken the three simple words that had sent the hordes back to their warm and cozy home.

Go to Hell.

They had laughed about it, after Sam had regained consciousness. And they had hunted. Had taken down monsters and ghosts and all sorts of things, working at a break-neck pace while Dean tired to settle his thoughts and move on. As Dean tried to convince himself that it just seemed like everyone left him. They didn't really. Not for death or school or Hell or Heaven. No, no one left.

Except they did. All the time. Mom and Sam and Dad and Sam and Cas and Sam. Always Sam. For school or his own life. Same thing, though, he supposed.

Dean could barely keep himself from calling, making sure his brother was ok, because settling in one place and setting up an actual training camp for people like them was a good way to get himself killed.

It wasn't like Dean hadn't had the chance to join him. It was just that Dean had to hunt. Had to scour the earth for that elusive something that he'd had and lost. Had to find a loophole, of sorts.

He was alone, but he'd be damned if he was going to stay that way.

Sam had just given him that look, that sad, pitying gaze, and wished him luck as a new class of hunters - big and tall, young and small - had approached the front gate.

So it was his own fault, the whole being alone thing. He just hoped he wouldn't be alone for much longer. He just hoped that he was doing the right thing. Hoped that I love you, too actually meant just that. Hoped that he hadn't put his heart in the wrong hands.

He had to smile about that, too. The day he'd realized what that weird feeling in his gut was, the day he'd figured it out. All the time he'd spent trying to hide it, trying to keep himself out of the Pit. To keep the one he loved out of the Pit.

Leave it to an angel to be a little too perceptive, though. Leave it to an angel to promise love and happiness and hope and a release from everything he'd ever feared.

Leave it to Dean to believe the damned thing.

It had been a nice three months, though. Happy. Warm. Safe. Feathery.

Three months, and then Lilith was killed and demons flocked to Sam and every last one was sent back to Hell. Three months, and the war was over. Three months, and the angels were called back to Heaven. No excuses.

But Dean wasn't stupid. There was still clean-up to do. He would know. He and Sam had done most of it before they'd found that little cabin in California, the one that Sam had claimed as his own, had protected, had opened to anyone who needed help. Except his own brother.

Apparently, pulling an Azazel (and hadn't Dean's blood run cold at that comparison) was frowned upon in Heaven. The troops retreated and he was alone. Completely and utterly alone.

And he was tired. Sore. Sick with the memory of what he'd had and lost. He was searching, scouring books and the internet and calling up people he didn't know in countries whose names he couldn't even pronounce all in the hope of finding a way to get everything back.

A loophole. A way out.

Something besides ripping out the angel equivalent of a kidney.

Because Dean would be damned if he was going to hurt one more person he loved.

Two years, though, had gotten him nowhere. He'd found absolutely nothing. Nothing, but the mockery of someone or something that knew what he was doing.

It hadn't even been obvious at first. Just a handprint in the wet cement of the sidewalk that ran alongside his motel. A handprint that he noticed only because he'd gotten his boot stuck next to it in the sticky mess.

Just a kid. A kid with really big hands. Dean had retrieved his boot and gone on his way.

But things got weirder. Weird enough for him to start wondering what the Hell was going on. It had been early winter and he'd stayed up through the night looking and searching and coming up empty-handed yet again.

There was a fresh layer of snow on the ground. A dusting. It had covered the motel roof and the parking lot and the Impala. Barely enough to make an impression, until he'd seen the windshield.

Pressed into the fresh fallen snow was a handprint. A single hand standing out black on the white. Right where he was sure to see it. Like a message written in soft snowflakes, so vague and unidentifiable that Dean was sure he was imagining it.

Unconsciously, he'd rolled his left shoulder - only the left - before wiping the powder off his car. He had a long way to drive for information on angels and humans and bonds and souls and hopefully something that could help.

It hadn't.

So he kept searching, kept scouring the globe and the internet and the library. He put all thoughts of cement and snow and handprints made by bored kids out of his mind. He had more important things to worry about.

Months passed and he was getting nowhere, still running from town to town, hunting for things and answers. He'd been in Kentucky when he'd pushed up the screen to his laptop and seen it. It was perfect. Five fingers and a palm, spread cleanly across the middle of the screen in grease.

That had been it. That had been the moment that he realized he was being mocked. The moment when he looked at the screen and saw a greasy handprint marring his warped reflection in the blackness. The moment when his mind flashed back, unbidden, to a gas station in Illinois, a pain in his shoulder, and the angry red flesh of what had slowly become a puckered and pale scar.

He'd called Sam first. Sam, who was still in California and told him to just give up. He could find a nice girl (or guy, if that was the way he was swinging since the almost-Apocalypse) and settle down.

Dean had hung up the phone. That was the day that he doubled the protection in the room.

Fast-forward to the present. He hadn't seen a handprint in almost four months. They'd been spread out before, but never by that much time. Either the thing mocking him had given up, or he'd dispatched it with salt and iron and crude drawings of protective symbols. The same ones he'd once painted in a barn, actually.

The shower was warm without anyone else there to take up all the hot water, and Dean let himself relax. He stopped the flow of water and stepped out of the tub, drying himself off and smiling at the fresh feeling of being clean.

Then he saw it.

It was right there, stamped out wet and clean against the steam on the mirror. A handprint. Five fingers and a palm.

He stared at it, his heart pounding, before his eyes traveled slowly to the mark on his shoulder. It was almost unrecognizable now, warped and faded, a reminder of what he'd once had.

Its copy on the mirror stood out brighter, fresher. Staring him down. Daring him.

Mirrors had been his enemy for a long time before, during, and after the catastrophe they'd barely averted. He saw things in them that he knew weren't there. Things like black eyes and flashes of red, people that he'd flayed and people that had flayed him. A handprint. Red and aching.

Most of the time, he'd seen death. But if he really looked hard, looked at himself, he saw life.

Life after death. Imagine that. Heaven and Hell and the Earth in between. An endless cycle of pain and torment, with only one release. The only way out of life. The only way into Heaven. Death.

Because you can't stop the Apocalypse and still be damned to Hell, right?

Right.

So Dean got a gun.

He got a gun from his duffle bag, and he set it reverently on the bed. He finished toweling off and got dressed. He wasn't going to die naked. He was going to die clothed and with dignity. He was going to Heaven to get back what he'd lost. He just couldn't understand why he'd never seen it before.

If Cas couldn't come back to him, then he was going to go to Cas. No questions about it.

He sat down on the bed and took the pistol in his hands. Its cool weight was comforting, familiar.

He considered writing a note, explaining things to Sam, but why bother? Sam was a continent away, settled in and happy. Sam was surrounded by people. Sam would be fine. He'd always been fine without his brother. Well, save that one time, but Ruby had been dealt with. She wouldn't be a problem now.

Besides, Sammy was smart. He'd figure it out.

With a sigh, Dean put the gun in his mouth. His hands had warmed it, made it seem alive. Another familiar weight, hard and round on his tongue.

He closed his eyes, let himself pretend for a moment. If he concentrated, it was almost as if the past two years hadn't happened, as if Sam was just out getting coffee and he wasn't alone and Cas was there with him, loving him, telling him things he'd never thought anyone would say about him.

His imagination ran away with him, and in the split second before his finger tightened on the trigger, he could have sworn he heard the rustle of wings.

-.-

When Dean woke up, the first thing he realized was that he was cold. The second was that Heaven looked a lot like his last motel room.

At least it wasn't Hell.

The hunter sat up and looked around. Nothing had changed. Nothing was different. Nothing but the fact that he was naked. Huh. Could have sworn he'd gotten dressed.

Dean shook his head and eased himself off the bed. His body protested the movement, his chest burning as his heart pounded behind his ribcage and pain sparked to bright life in his right hip.

Somehow, he'd imagined there'd be no pain in Heaven.

"Cas?"

No response. Nothing but the pain. So was he really dead? Did the gun jam?

No. It couldn't have. For one thing, it was his, and he kept his weapons clean, obsession or no.

So he must be dead. But if that was the case, and there was pain in Heaven, his heart and hip shouldn't have been on fire. His head should have hurt. What was left of it.

Slowly, Dean made his way toward the lopsided mirror hanging on the wall. He took a deep breath, and focused on his reflection, gasping when he realized what he was seeing.

The tattoo that had rested over his heart for the past three years had been obscured, the ink twisted and faded and dispersed by the bright red scar of a handprint that had settled on top of it.

"Cas," he whispered, running tentative fingers over the angry burn. The skin was still hot to the touch, nerve endings that should have been dead jumping to life at the brush of his fingertips.

He let his eyes wander from the handprint on his heart and down toward his hips, a smile playing at his lips. Maybe he'd find another handprint, kinky angel he knew Cas was.

Dean's smile faded, though, as he saw what had actually been branded onto his right hip. Burnt into his skin in large, jagged letters was the reminder, "suicide is a sin."

He stared at the text permanently scarring his flesh, and sighed. A message. Maybe it wasn't as vague as the multiple handprints that had haunted him for the past year, but a message, nonetheless.

And suddenly, everything made sense. The handprints, the fact that there was blood on the walls behind him, reflected in the mirror, but none on his body. He'd never really been alone.

Dean closed his eyes and let his hand snake softly up to the new print, covering the mark of Castiel's hand even thought it hurt. He'd never been alone. Maybe he couldn't see his angel, but that didn't change the fact that Cas was still there, still watching him, saving him from himself.

He sighed as he felt a hand curl over his own, two palms resting on a mark of love and devotion, life over death.

Something soft wrapped around him, sheltering him. A wing. Silky feathers keeping him safe, holding him together, slipping low enough to cover him, feather and bone brushing joined hands and heart as the air left the room and weightlessness set in.

He dared to open his eyes and look. In the mirror. At himself. At the very corporeal hand over his own. The strong black feathers holding them together. Their feet hovering above the ground.

Dean smiled. "Just you and I," he whispered, eyes slipping shut again, willing the moment to last. "Defying gravity."

Soft hair tickled his neck and he felt the angel smile against his skin. "They'll never bring us down."