They built a statue of us...
And put it on a mountain top...
Now tourists come and stare at us...
Blow bubbles with their gum...
Take photographs, have fun...
The statue is on a familiar cliff, not that he's ever seen the cliff in person, before. But it was on Tv once, during the apocalypse thousands of people died there, when the demons came to their shores. All those people dead in a place he'd never been. People who never knew how to draw a devils trap or that salt could keep them safe from all kinds of monsters.
The people here never believed in monsters.
Rio de Janeiro, home of only twelve thousand survivors. A shanty town inhabited by the poor and the rich alike.
And above it all - the statue.
It used to be Jesus. Dean knows that, he's seen it on television and maybe on posters in travel agent windows. It was partially destroyed in the climactic battle.
The battle when the angels should have intervened, but didn't. All the faithful men and women, children even, praying for help.
Only one angel came.
An angel, two boys and an old drunk.
No one remembers Sam or Bobby, even Dean, as he looks up at the statue, goes unremembered.
It is Castiel who has been pieced together out of stone. 130 feet tall and gazing down with a strange expression of confused friendship, one that Dean remembers well. The statues arms are at its sides, awkwardly.
The locals had some trouble with the trench coat.
They'll name a city after us...
And later say it's all our fault...
And they'll give us a talking to...
They'll give us a talking to...
Because they've got years of experience...
It's not Rio now either, it is, roughly translated – Angel's mercy.
Dean finds that funny, especially now.
The war upstairs might be over, the apocalypse might be over – but mercy is still becoming a foreign word to him.
Castiel is dead.
He looks up at that stone face, caring and remote. It would have pain in it to, the increasing pain of having to make the hard decisions and never, ever, feeling as if it was worth it.
He wonders what he would have made of this, a statue in his honour built by people who never really met him.
Dean wonders what would mean more, the statue, or that Dean has come here to forgive him. To show his son (eight years old and begging to be taken somewhere that wasn't uncle Sam's or the salvage yard) the godfather he might have had.
John Mercy Winchester looks up at the statue, recognising the man from the single photograph in his father's den.
Castiel sits just beyond the doors of purgatory – where dead angel's go, far from God who is in any case, nowhere to be found. He contemplates the irony of trying to find this place, only to die in the attempt and end up there are a course of nature.
He thinks of Dean, and wonders if the last ten years have been kind to him.
He wonders if enough time has passed for the hunter to forgive him.
Castiel sits by the doors of purgatory, and waits.
Someday, he will be let out. He'll find a way.
He always does, when it's Dean.