Carnage?

Pfft.

Dean's seen enough of that to last him into the afterlife. Dean's seen enough death, enough sadness, to last the world into the afterlife. He never gets tired of it.

He was born, he is sure of it, to kill. Since he was young, his father had taught him the art of blood and bone, taught him the way a pulse stops, the way a dead circulatory system rises into a vampire, the way a werewolf dies over and over again during a transformation, and beyond that, the way a man falls.

Dean Winchester is schooled on the art of blood, he has memorized the way it looks on white sheets.

Dean Winchester has been taught the art of bone, and he knows far too many ways to make it break.

This exposure to violence was only increased when he was sent to Hell.

There, he learned other things.

He learned about flames, about smoke, learned the way a soul flinches away, learned the way suffering creeps under your skin, and how down in the Pit, blacked-out eyes meant power, not plague. He learned how to pull teeth from skulls, how to carve apologies and sins from the meat of a thigh and he learned how to make that fragile human pulse curl inside out.

Dean Winchester took what he learned from his father, and turned it backwards, fashioned it into a spear and stuck it through humanity's heart.

But damn if this isn't something new…

Minnesota's moon flashes it's cold midnight grin down on the fairground.

Carnage?

This demon fight club is crawling with it. Demons are leaping through the air, snaggle-toothed grins and black tongues scraping up corpses as they slink towards new victims, hunters are falling like flies, but then again, so are demons, so are werewolves, so are vampires, so are fairies.

Dean slices through a female vampire's head as she reveals her fangs and aims for his shoulder, feels vertebrae separate beneath his blade, feels blood spurt onto his already blood smattered face.

Somehow he and Sam got separated when they broke into the fairground. Dean headed straight for the Ferris Wheel, and Dean thinks that Sam went towards the Log Flume.

But Dean's not worried. Sam's got this.

…Okay, maybe he's scared out of his wits, but Sam did kill the Devil.

He'll be fine.

XxX

He touches the feathers as they fall.

Castiel closes his eyes and thinks of Heaven.

XxX

Dean feels his wrist snap under the weight of the werewolf's body, as the writhing creature falls on him from a raised sign with directions on it. Dean screams in pain, feels his bones scrape together beneath his skin. He hardly feels his shotgun as it bucks against the werewolf's back.

Perfect center on the heart. Dean flips the animal off his chest, stands up weakly, his left arm completely useless.

Dean sees Sam behead a vampire, sees the way the gigantic hunter limps slightly, eyes unfocused. Bobby is ripping a demon blade through a succubus's ribcage. Dean stumbles towards a demon, arm hanging loosely at his side.

XxX

Balthazar stumbles.

Wings burn themselves onto the floor.

XxX

Dean barely feels alive. He feels out of time, like this is something he isn't supposed to be doing, as if he has somewhere more important to be, numbness and haziness and warmth seeping through his veins and turning him, ever so carefully, to stone.

Something isn't right.

His fighting becomes reflexive, practiced… not his…

Something is gravely, deeply, soulfully wrong.

Something is pulling at his atoms, ripping through his cells, trying to force it's way in. Pressure finds his chest as he slices through a kitsune's heart, his breath leaves him, his vision fogs, his thoughts slow.

XxX

Castiel watches Balthazar's eyes close.

He had no idea that such a sadness could be so pure.

XxX

'Bobby, something's wrong.' He barely feels himself say it. Bobby turns to him heatedly, excitement and overwhelming adrenaline plain in his face.

'What the hell do you want me to do then, Princess?' Bobby pulls a pistol from his belt and shoots an oncoming werewolf in the heart, barely looking at Dean.

Dean's heart flutters a tattoo against his ribs, and he grabs Bobby's jacket, his left hand, despite the pain the broken bone causes him, grips his shirt above his heart.

Is this a heart attack? Dean wonders. Has my reckless drinking and eating finally caught up to me?

Chaos reigns down around them. Dean simply watches it happen.

Everything is running. Demons launch themselves off of decorative rocks a rides to try and jump the fence, vampires trying to claw their way through the barrier at the front of the park, minutes passing like seconds until the moon goes down and the werewolves die over and over again as they return to their human bodies, and Dean is barely here.

The presence pushing through his defences shoots him with crippling pressure and pulsing warmth, bends his ribs and curves his spine, makes his whole body beat with his heart.

Dean Winchester is afraid.

XxX

Cas puts the phone down.

This is the climax, he thinks. We can only fall from here.

XxX

Dean fights through it, this heart attack. He kills, and smites, rips and shreds, teams up with the Parkers to block off the sewer system where demons unwilling to fight the onslaught of hunters skitter into, feeling their way through labyrinths of tunnels and stone.

It all becomes routine after that. The ripping. The shredding. And soon, the pressure fades from Dean, the presence recedes, and Dean feels the fibers of his flesh bind together again, feels his body seal itself off, as if the presence simply bent the walls as it tried to enter him.

In hindsight, Dean will call it a possession.

In the future, Dean will commit the heat to memory. Memorize the way it pulled him apart so gently, bent him with its power and probing fingers.

He will begin looking back on this hunt, when he gets back to Bobby's cabin. Begin writing down the way the presence felt, begin cataloging everything he can remember, from this day, from this minute.

This is the climax.

We can only fall from here.

XxX

The dust settles.

The silence pokes it's nose in through the broken windows, slinks in through a crack in the wall, steps gently over the still figures, curls up beneath Bobby's desk, and falls asleep.

The quiet, has never been so deafening.

XxX

'Sam. We need to go. Now.' Dean throws a few of Sam's things into his duffel bag to demonstrate, face red.

'Dean, wait, holdup,' Sam says, as Dean turns around and starts packing his own things, 'What's going on?'

'It's Cas. Something happened at the house.'

Sam's mouth falls open, mind reeling. 'How do you know?' Is all he can muster, his hands stuffing things into his duffel by their own accord.

'There was this message on my phone. An-and he's not picking up when I call him, and dude… can we just get out of here? I'll let you listen to it in the car but, please man, we gotta go.'

'Well, do you know what happened?'

Dean eyes are watering in frustration and slowly breaching horror, shoulders shaking as he says in a hiss, 'Zachariah'.

XxX

For a moment there is nothing, just static. Then, like cracking ice, Castiel's voice separates the background, making way for something Sam Winchester is not prepared for.

'Dean… I shou-should have known you wo-wouldn't pick up. But that's not of import right now. I just… I just wanted to call and tell you what happened, because, if you stumbled in on me like… like this without… without knowing what happened, well… I don't want that.

God! It hurts…

So I might as well start with how this happened.

I took the… angel wards down yesterday because I needed to say… say goodbye to Balthazar… But, this… this morning, when I woke up…Zachariah was there. H-he had followers with h-him. The-they made me watch them… kill Balthazar… and then Hester… well…

Let's just say the wound is far more impressive than the one that bled my Grace. A-and it won't stop bleeding and… and…

I just don't want to die… alone that is…'

Castiel's voice falls off the static, and for a moment Sam thinks that this is the end of the message, and that this is the end of it all, but he hears Castiel gathering breath in the background.

'Humans don't know this but… an angel blade is made of a feather of the angel that bears the blade itself. Which means that one of my feathers is in the angel blade in the trunk of the Impala. That is a part of me.

I'm going to become a spirit, temporarily, if fallen angels are given such an option. I need to say goodbye, Dean. I need you know, more than anything, that I love you. I may even try to possess you, try to help you with the fight, if I can. But I need you to know… that none of this is your fault. None of this could ever be your fault. It took everything to get me here, absolutely… everything… and you and Sam… are not to blame…

You two made… made my… my life worth…

The gaps between his words become longer and longer, and in between the static and the breaths that could be Castiel's last, Sam hates himself for thinking, damn, this is one long voicemail.

And then the message ends, and all Sam can hear, is silence.

XxX

When they pull up on Bobby's driveway, Sam's heart is heavy.

When Dean unlocks the door with fumbling fingers, breath shallow, Sam's stomach drops through the floor.

Dean is already wiping tears away when he bursts through the door, passes Balthazar's body, collecting the ashes of wings on his boots. Sam watches Dean bend over a broken body, sees Castiel's phone slip from limp hands.

Sam had often imagined, with regret, what all their deaths would look like. He had already seen Dean's death, and after all of the grief, Sam could appreciate that Dean's death had been fit for the man he was. A final battle, fit for a seasoned hunter. All bloody and murky, like city rivers.

He imagines his own will be less extravagant, a simple death. A knife through the gut, a bullet to the brain, something pure and wholesome. He shudders as he thinks this.

As if any death could be wholesome.

But he never imagined Castiel's to be this… muted. He was and angel after all, pure electricity and worship trapped in a human vessel. His death should have been grand, explosive, all white light and knightly action.

But instead he is reduced to empty blue eyes and a copper blood smile.

Sam supposes that his wings weren't seared onto the floor because they had already burned.

Burned.

Sam's mouth falls open. Castiel is in Hell right now.

Nausea pools in Sam's insides, and he has to lean against the door frame, only to see Balthazar's vacant grey eyes staring up at him blankly. He can't stay here. Dean's shoulders are shivering, and shudders send the silence of the house away. Sam decides to go wait on the porch for Bobby, so Dean can be alone with his…

Angel, Sam thinks firmly.

So he can be alone with his angel.

A/N This is not the final chapter. We have one more to go after this one, and then I say adieu. Please leave a review. You can tell me this chapter sucks, that you hate my guts, whatever really, but I do so love to hear from readers.