A/N: After episode 7x17, this has turned into a full-blown Alternative Canon, but hey, there you go.

7x17 was... Well, there were some really awesome, heart-breaking moments, and some great parallels between that episode and 5x04 'The End', but I can't tell you how frustrated I am that Dean and Sam have just waltzed off leaving Castiel helpless again. *sigh* I suppose that means I'll just have to keep writing pretty much Castiel-centric fics to soothe my pain... !

Anyway, this is the last chapter! I hope you've all enjoyed reading this fic as much as I have writing it. I can't tell you how much your lovely reviews mean to me, so thank you all for being so kind =] Perhaps I'll see you over at one of my other fics? If not, thanks for joining me on this ride, and I hope you like the last chapter!

Today the sky is the colour of waiting, lingering palely somewhere between blue and gray. A mournful breeze picks up a few of the brown leaves on the ground, skittering and scraping them over the concrete in a lacklustre parody of a ballroom dance.

It is very quiet, but not quite silent; he can hear the lone, whispering call of a single bird as it flits around the courtyard, never quite alighting, never quite at home. He can hear the muffled sounds of voices inside the hospital, merging together into a buzz at the back of his mind. He can hear his heart, slow and steady and so very fragile. Once he had no need of that steady, comforting beat to stay alive.

He doesn't know where that thought comes from, so he methodically files it away inside his brain, along with all the other unexplainable things he thinks and feels. He places them carefully in a little, tidy corner halfway between his memories and his dreams, in his Cabinet of Uncertainties.

This lack of any particular sound is at once calming and worrying, because he feels like he should be able to hear so much more. Like he was once able to hear a mouse breathing, the displacement of air beneath a ladybird's wing, the voices of his brothers and sisters as they called to him.

Another thought for the Cabinet of Uncertainties, he reflects wearily. They seem to be coming more frequently these days; he doesn't know if this is a good thing or not. The doctors – and the kind nurse – all seem to think that remembering his old life will help. He is not so sure. Here, now, he is… not happy, exactly, but content, and what little he has recalled of the past so far has been… unpleasant. Distressing. Violent. Bloody. Pain-ridden. Uncertain. Grief-stricken. Lonely.

Guilty.

Traitor.

The guilt is worst. Now, whenever he hears that name, the one that is not his, the one that he has stolen anyway, the one that, until recently, was the only link he had with his past life – 'Dean' – whenever he hears that name, a heaviness settles in his stomach, a sickness comes to his throat, his eyes drag themselves shut and his whole being longs for absolution. Freedom. Forgiveness. No, that's wrong – not even that. His whole being longs for just the slightest chance. To apologise. To make things right.

These feelings frighten him as he tries to lock his Cabinet of Uncertainties tightly shut, bar his mind against such thoughts. Emotions are messy things that feel alien – unfamiliar – leaden - in his heart. Almost like he has yet to learn the meaning of each new one he experiences.

If this is what he feels when he remembers what may or may not be his past – and surely this guilty conscious, heavy as a waterlogged coat, is too real, too unrelenting, too painful to be merely dreamt? – then perhaps the doctors are wrong when they urge him to remember. Perhaps it would be better to forget the man named Dean, if his remembrance is so painful.

Perhaps he should accept that he is Dean now, and, despite whatever else he may once have been, he is content here, sitting in the courtyard, looking up at a watery sky.

Voices approach, the hum at the back of his mind growing louder, demanding his attention as he hears the click of a door opening behind him. He makes no move to turn and see who has come to him. It will be either a nurse with tired eyes or a nurse with kind eyes. It won't make any difference to him. They are all the same.

'Dean?'

The voice is gentle, and he cannot stop the spread of warmth at the hearing of it – it is the voice of the kind, dark-haired nurse, his favourite. The one who talks to him like he is a human, a sentient being, not the strange, silent man who cannot remember his past that he is.

'Remember what I said the other day about a new patient, helping him to settle in?' She comes around to face him now and he tilts his head up slightly so he can see her face. She looks tired and hopeful and open, and he wants to please her, to thank her somehow for everything she's done for him, so he looks directly at her and nods slightly.

Seeming to relax slightly, she looks over his shoulder and addresses someone who is there. 'Come and meet Dean.'

He doesn't stand as two men appear, but he immediately feels wary. It's another left-over from his memories, and he doesn't understand why it makes him believe that everyone is a threat. Do normal people avoid physical contact so determinedly, do they feel that everyone they see could hurt them, could be harbouring some great evil secretly within themselves?

One of the two men is tall and tired with eyes that used to try but gave up pretending long ago. They still care, though, deep down, and there is a spark of defiance in them yet. The other man is also tall, but not so much as the first, and when this man sees him, he jerks away suddenly, fear, anger and joy chasing themselves across his face in quick succession.

He doesn't understand what he has done to warrant such a response. Neither, apparently, does the nurse, because she asks, 'Hey, are you alright?'

He isn't listening. Suddenly his throat feels dry and his heart is hammering. This is a new sensation, and not altogether pleasant. He examines these symptoms scientifically; perhaps they mean that he is nervous about meeting these new people? He reflects that it is also possible that he is worried about having upset this man.

'I'm fine,' the man is saying. He doesn't sound fine. 'I just…' He swallows. 'His name is Dean, you say?' His voice breaks slightly but he regains it quickly; the slip was barely noticeable, but he has noticed it all the same.

The nurse affirms that he is correct. Then: 'Do you recognize him?' she asks.

The man nods.

The man nods.

Now he is looking up at this man with more interest, an almost desperate interest, the kind of interest a drowning man would pay to the lifeguard sent to recover him.

It is possible that the feelings he is currently experiencing are neither nerves nor worry. He realizes that is it just possible that they may be recognition.

The nurse and the tall man have moved away, he didn't see them go, although they are still close, just enough steps away to give him and this other man some semblance of privacy. He wonders why they have done this. He looks up at this man, studying his face, trying to find something in it that he recognizes.

The man is sturdily built, broad but not over-muscled, managing to be slim at the same time as strong. His clothes are scruffy and unkempt: a pair of old jeans, an ancient, scraggy shirt and a leather jacket over it. His hair is short and light, loitering ambiguously somewhere between a mousy brown and a dirty blonde. His face… His face is oval, with pleasingly regular features and a smattering of freckles.

But his eyes are the eyes that haunt his dreams.

For the first time since he has come here, he wants to say something. In a moment, he is on his feet, although he cannot remember rising, and this man, the man with the eyes, is so close to him – when did he move forward? – and yet it feels so effortless, so completely normal, and the man isn't moving away, he seems just as locked in the moment as he is…

He opens his mouth to speak, but his throat is dry and the words stick in it like burrs on the belly of a badger. His tongue rasps uselessly against the roof of his mouth; it's been so long since he uttered a single syllable, and he can't bring his mouth to form the words.

So he decides to say the only thing he knows how to, the only word that isn't like a stone in his mouth, the only word that seems to fit on his lips. It comes almost unconsciously to mind, like it has been there the whole time, just waiting for him to realize its importance.

He looks up at this man who he doesn't recognize, doesn't remember, and knows instinctively that this is right. This is the man who hovers in the corners of his eyes, this is the man whose name he stole, whose name is forever on his lips, and his mouth forms the word of its own accord, taking control from him gently, but it doesn't worry him because it feels right.

His voice, when it comes, is dry and deep and grating, forcing its way up his throat with thrilling determination. It is so abrasive that even he barely understands what it is he is saying, and so he swallows with an emotion he now recognizes as nerves, and tries again.

This time it is easy.

'Dean.'