Title: Five Futures Dean Winchester Never Had (And One Present He Did)

Written for: caz2y5 for deancas_xmas

Rating: R

Warnings: torture

Summary: Dean is trapped in a series of nightmares and Castiel has to play along with them to get him out.

***

I:

The church was probably beautiful once. He can still tell, almost, what it must have looked like. Its interior has been destroyed, the pews crushed and splintered as if pummeled by giants. The walls are blackened and the windows are empty, only shards around the edges remaining. In the apse, the remains of a white cross, broken in two, lie on the floor.

He doesn't care about the damage done to a house of God because it was worth it: he has his prey. He has Castiel on his knees, chained to the floor by his wrists, his wings lamed and drooping. He experiences the sense of satisfaction that only comes after a long struggle and a sublime triumph.

He talks while he works. He has a knife today.

"I know you can tell me how to find them," he says, slipping the knife between the strong wing bones near the shoulder. Castiel convulses, straining against the chains, and a choked off cry rings through the church. The wings are a weak spot. That's why he keeps his own hidden. He waits for the spasm to die down.

Castiel's pain-dazed eyes find their way back to him. There's a great rent in his armor; angelic armor of black, beaten iron, impervious to anything but angelic weapons. Blood seeps through that tear and cold sweat is making his dark hair slick at the temples. He gasps, face pale and haggard with pain. But he still manages to speak, always.

"I would die first," Castiel says. "I said that to him once, too. Lucifer. Michael. You're all the same."

Michael. His name is Michael.

He shifts the grip of the knife in his hand. "Tell me where my brother and Sam Winchester are."

Castiel stares up at him, as defiant as if they were facing off equally on a battlefield. As if he wasn't kneeling in a pool of his own blood, its edges creeping silently out across the floor.

"This isn't personal," says Michael's voice. "You simply picked the wrong side, Castiel. You're really no better than Lucifer."

He aims a kick at the angel's ribs and watches him double over, wings twitching. While Castiel is still recovering, he places a foot on the delicate edge of one wing and crushes it, feeling the bones shift and break. Castiel curses him and he almost smiles at the human vulgarity of it.

"I could simply cut them off," he says. "That would be a fitting punishment for a fallen angel."

"No," Castiel says. It's the first concession, the first voluntary sign of weakness he's shown. Of course, by the end, there'll be nothing left but weakness. By the end, he will beg for Michael to stop.

"Then tell me. You and Sam Winchester took Lucifer's side after I possessed my vessel. You thought he was the strongest ally you could find against me. You thought the enemy of your enemy was your friend. But he's still your enemy, Castiel. Helping me find him is not a betrayal. And I will allow you to live and keep your wings."

He moves to grip Castiel's chin; and for a moment he's disoriented. The church wavers, seeming to be some other place and he wonders, briefly, what he's doing here. Then he blinks and things become solid again. He looks down and Castiel is staring at him with calm, clear eyes.

"Dean," he says.

He recoils.

"Dean Winchester doesn't live here anymore," he snaps. "There wasn't enough room in this vessel for both of us."

Castiel's eyes stay on him, searching. "This is a dream, Dean," he says. "Wake up."

"It's no dream, Castiel," Michael says. "You're going to die." A sharp rage overwhelms him but he represses it. This is no time to lose control. He wants to savor the slow kill.

He drops to his knees to face Castiel eye to eye.

"Dean?" the angel says.

He reaches for one wing and sets the edge of the knife against it. If the blade were less sharp, he could draw this out longer, but as it is he'll have to be careful. Delicate.

Even with a light touch, the first gash makes Castiel scream. The sound echoes under the high ceiling, but before the reverberations fade away, the room shifts.

II:

His steps resound on the stone floor. It's the same church, but without the destruction. He takes his time lingering between the pews, whole and gleaming dark brown. Sunlight filters through the windows in honeyed pillars and he passes, alternately, into darkness and light. In the middle of the aisle, he stops.

There is a white cross as big as a man hanging in the apse, and an altar covered by a white cloth in front of it. Drops of blood fall onto the cloth; not angel's blood, but the heavy, dark blood of a human body. There's a lot of it.

Castiel doesn't seem to notice. He's standing on the altar, sword in hand, and there's no sign of pain on that familiar face.

"I might've known," Michael's voice says.

Suddenly, silently, Castiel's wings shiver and open; he tenses, rocking forward on the balls of his feet, and then launches himself down the length of the church. His expression is fixed like a mask. He barrels into Michael, Dean, Michael, and the two of them crash into the pews, wood splintering with a scream. Castiel is on his feet first, but he stumbles, pressing a hand to his side, and Michael uses the moment of weakness to grab the hand holding the sword and wrestle him to the ground.

"Traitor," he says. "I should cast you into hell like Lucifer. That's what Father would have done." His fingers tighten on Castiel's wrist, trying to make him drop his weapon. "But maybe it's not worth the effort. I'll just kill you here."

But Castiel isn't finished yet. In one fluid motion, he flips them, dropping the sword to give himself more leverage. His wrist slips out of Michael's grasp and quicker than thought, his hands find Michael's neck. They squeeze, inexorable iron bands, thumbs digging in below the Adam's apple.

"It's your dream, Dean," Castiel says as Michael chokes. "I can only play the role you give me. But listen to me."

Their eyes lock and even while he's gasping for air he registers the desperation on Castiel's face and the pleading note in his voice.

"You are not Michael. This is not your future."

He closes his eyes to darkness and everything shifts.

III:

He knows what he will find even as he slips through the warehouse door. A part of him wants to turn back but another needs to make sure. So he continues on to where he can see, dimly, firelight flickering in the dark.

He finds the remains of a circle of holy fire, half-extinguished. An angel lies in the middle of it, face down on the concrete.

He puts out the fire first, taking as long as he can, but eventually there's nothing left to do but look.

He steps over the charred ring and turns over the corpse. It's Castiel, or at least the body he had once possessed. He's dressed in human clothes and if it wasn't for the ground below him there would have been nothing to mark him as anything but another dead human. Extending out from his shoulders, the outline of his wings are seared into the concrete, the brand of an angel's passing. All that spirit, burnt away to nothing.

Just an empty vessel left.

"Dead?" he says. It seems wrong. He can't remember if he wanted Castiel to be dead or alive. He is not, in fact, sure of who he is. Maybe he came here to mourn, or to save him; but maybe he's the one who did this.

He kneels down next to the body and lets his hand rest on the dark breastplate. His eyes burn.

"Goodbye," he says, because he can't think of a prayer.

His fingers travel upwards, and when they touch Castiel's face, he is somewhere else.

IV:

This time he knows who he is; he's Dean Winchester and the year is 2014. It's a beautiful starry night outside under the pine trees and he doesn't give a damn about any of it. The world is burning down too quickly to waste energy on noticing what it looks like.

"This is different," says the man he's pulling along behind him by an arm. It takes him a moment to realize that it's Cas, grinning and stone cold drunk. "No one is dying."

"The hell are you talking about? People do nothing but die these days."

He looks around for a likely spot, far enough away from camp to avoid curious eyes but close enough to be safe.

"This must be where Zachariah sent you. Under no other circumstances would I allow my vessel to grow this much facial hair."

Dean gives him look and a raised eyebrow. "Experimenting with new drugs, Cas? That's even more gibberish than usual." He picks a tree and pushes Cas up against it.

"What are you doing?" Cas's voice is flatter than he's used to, not sardonic or mocking at all; in fact, he actually sounds genuinely curious.

"What the hell do you think?" Dean says, annoyed. He slides his hands into Cas' hair and goes in for a kiss, rough and dirty. Usually Cas is right there with him, but tonight he just freezes and a sound of confusion escapes his mouth.

"What?" Dean pulls back. Cas stares at him with an expression he remembers seeing once before, when he'd dragged the angel off to see a hooker named Chastity.

"This… isn't real." Cas swallows. "You wouldn't actually…" He trails off, eyes darting around skittishly.

"Dude. You're not too spaced out to get it up again, are you?"

Cas doesn't answer. Instead, he leans forward and presses his lips softly against Dean's, almost shy. Dean accepts the kiss for a moment before breaking away with an eye-roll.

"What is this, a junior high school dance?" And he does it his way instead, sucking on Cas' lower lip, letting his tongue play, fierce and aggressive. If Cas seems a little more clumsy than usual, he's no less willing than ever.

They don't speak for a while. It's not until Dean's got Cas' coat off and his shirt pushed up to his armpits and starts to work on his pants that Cas says, "Dean!"

"You know it's my turn to top, Cas, so don't even argue," Dean says into his neck.

"No," Cas tears himself away, nearly tripping over his own feet in the process. "This is dangerous. None of this is real, it's a trap your mind has built for you. If you don't break free of it, you will be stuck here forever living out lives not meant for you."

After a moment to digest that, Dean says, "Wow, you really mean that. Maybe it's not drugs after all. I'm thinkin' you've just gone nuts. It's been a long time coming, to be honest."

Cas' fists clench and he presses his lips together in frustration.

"What I'm telling you is the truth. Why would I make something like this up?"

Dean shrugs. "I don't know why the hell you do anything anymore. Not sure I ever did. In any case, I think I know reality when I see it." He looks around at the dark trees, the distant, ramshackle camp, the half-dressed former angel, now drug addict and nihilist. "Sure looks real to me."

"This is far too miserable to be anything but a product of your mind."

He considers punching Cas for that. Instead he turns on his heel and walks away.

"Fuck you, Cas. I can find a fuck-buddy who isn't crazy."

He hears his name being called, but he ignores it. It's time to end it anyway, there's only so much he can handle of cynicism and acid trips and despair and most of all the guilt because he knows it's his fault Cas is the way he is.

He takes a step and in the middle of it, he's somewhere else.

V:

Dean sees him falling from a distance. Far, far above, a light like a shooting star flashes down through the noise and smoke and darkness of hell. It's a cold, white blaze, not the firelight shining through blood that is the native color here.

He knows who it is and he screams his name into the storm of screams already crowding the air.

Castiel blows through the flames and chains and demons in his path as if they were mere cobwebs. He's so bright and beautiful that Dean can't believe he ever forgot what this looked like: an angel's true form. The sight of it would have burned his eyes out if he wasn't already burning with hellfire.

When Castiel alights on one of the chains binding Dean, it doesn't so much as sway; he is weightless, bodiless, a being of pure spirit.

Castiel shouts his name and Dean can feel his horror.

"Help me, Cas!" he manages to say.

The angel creeps closer to him, spreading his wings like a shield around them. They block out some of the heat, coolness and peace emanating from them; but the pain inside him remains the same, overwhelming, all-encompassing.

"I can't," Castiel says. "I can't, Dean. Only you can. The only thing keeping you here is yourself."

"What?" Dean almost sobs.

"This is an illusion. You can escape it if you recognize it for what it is. But you believe this—all of this –is possible. You believe you would say yes to Michael. You believe I will die. You believe God would cast you back into hell."

Dean tries to formulate an answer, but his thoughts are nothing but confusion and torment.

"You believe you belong in hell. That's the illusion, Dean. If you can see how untrue it is, you will be able to recognize this as a dream."

"I can't—I can't even think, Cas!" Dean groans. "I don't understand why you…"

The angel's light grows brighter all around him. Hell recedes, and through the haze of pain still racking his body, the things Castiel has been saying to him become a little clearer. But he can't grasp them; everything is too real, too solid, it makes too much sense for him to be here.

Then Castiel bends down to his ear and whispers three words.

And suddenly he knows with absolute certainty that he is dreaming. Because that, that is impossible.

VI:

He wakes up on the shoulder of the highway with Sam's silhouette leaning over him. It's cold and dark and something soft touches his face.

"Dean? Can you hear me?"

He sits up, shivering a little. The softness, he sees, is snowflakes, drifting slowly down around them. It must have started recently; the road is still clear.

"Sam," he says, "you're not about to start telling me this is a dream too, right?"

Relief floods Sam's face and he laughs. "No, you made it out. You had me worried for a few minutes there."

"How long was I out?"

"About fifteen minutes."

"What?!"

"Yeah, that's it. Why, how long did you think it was?"

He remembers all of it now and it definitely seems like longer than a quarter of an hour. It felt like lifetimes. He shakes his head instead of answering.

"Where's…?" He looks around, searching, until he sees it: a few feet away, the Impala is parked at the side of the road, and Castiel is sitting on the ground, leaning back against the car. His eyes are closed.

It takes only a second for Dean to kneel at the angel's side. But before he can do anything, Castiel opens his eyes.

"Hello, Dean," he says.

"You're… uh, all right. Did you get caught in whatever-it-was, too?"

"A spell of some kind," Cas says, staring at him with the familiar intensity. "Something powerful and old. No. It was targeted only at you. You could have been left in a coma, dreaming forever."

"Lucifer?"

"My guess would be Michael. He doesn't need your mind to be awake to use your body. And if you had dreamed of yourself saying yes to him, that would be all the permission he needs."

"We didn't even know he could do something like this," Sam says from behind him. "It's lucky Cas was able to get you out."

Dean meets Castiel's eyes, trying to find a trace of his thoughts there. But the angel is inscrutable.

"So it was really you."

Castiel blinks once, slowly. "Yes," he says.

He can't think of anything to say and the silence stretches into awkwardness. After a moment, Castiel stands up, and Dean follows.

The angel opens his mouth to speak, then stops. An emotion flits over his face too quickly for Dean to read. Then he says three more words Dean can hardly believe even as he's hearing them.

"I meant it."

And he's gone and only the sound of wings remains.

"Meant what?" Sam asks.

But Dean just grins, stomping through the gathering snow to the Impala, and then laughs as Sam trails behind, pestering him with the question until they're both in the car and on the road.