oselle | Fic: Once

Title: Once
Author: Oselle
Genre: Gen, AU based upon Episode 5:04, "The End"
Pairings: None (passing mention of Dean/OFC)
Principals: Future!Dean, Future!Castiel
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, gore, some language, shameless schmaltz, no Sam
Spoilers: For "The End"
Word Count: 4,700
Disclaimer: The Winchesters and all canon characters are the intellectual property of their creators. All original characters are mine. No money was made or sought in the writing of this story.
Summary: It's 2014, the world's gone to hell, Dean's gotten shafted and Castiel was an angel once but now...not so much. Dedicated to

ariadnes_string who pointed out Dean's impossibly hot thigh holster in "The End."

Foreword: Briefly, let me explain that I think that everything that Zachariah showed Dean of the future in "The End" was typical Zachariah bullshit and his Ghost-of-Christmas-Yet-To-Come sideshow was just a sham to trick Dean into saying yes to Michael. THAT SAID, the whole post-apocalyptic scenario and especially Dean's hard-boiled hotness pushed every one of my buttons and hence this fic. This is a 2014 that is real, not a vision or a premonition, and in which Dean of 2009 does not and could not make an appearance and I'm sure the medical stuff in here is total baloney and I can't remember if the other people in the episode knew whether Castiel had been an angel or not and I really don't care. Sometimes you want to write something plotty and thoughtful and then sometimes you want to write something where Dean's wearing a thigh holster and being all hot and angsty. This is an example of the latter. I'm skipping town for a few days, so enjoy!

Once

To these people he was just Cass, had never been anything but Cass and because it had been years since names mattered not even the girls ever asked him if it was short for something or what his last name was. Among all of them only Dean knew his real name. Castiel. The name he was given in heaven so long ago that he didn't recall anything of his own beginning at all, the name he carried down to hell when he was sent to bring Dean up although he didn't know then who Dean was or anything about him nor had he cared to know, his name when he disobeyed and apostatized and threw in his lot with that same Dean and Castiel, what the last of the angels called him when they said they were forsaking this world and there would be no coming back for him if he didn't go with them and he said no. And they went away sorrowful and not understanding and they did not return. Since then he had been just Cass. Except to Dean and even then only sometimes now. As if he also had forgotten.

* * *

A girl named Laurie had been sitting up with him in the camp's kitchen but the cabin was cold and damp and drafty and Cass wouldn't let her light the stove because their supplies were so low. She stood up and wrapped her sweater tight around herself and stepped over the picnic table's bench and looked down at him.

"Come to bed," she said.

Cass smiled and shook his head.

"You gonna sit here all night? You don't know when they'll be back."

"It's okay," he said.

"You should've gone with them if you're so hung up on it."

"They didn't ask."

"Maybe if you weren't stoned all the time."

"Maybe." He gestured to the candle on the table. "Take the candle so you don't fall."

"It's raining."

"You could put your hand over it."

"I can find my way. Besides, what are you gonna do, sit here in the dark?"

"Probably."

She sighed and walked away. At the cabin's door she turned. "I don't get you at all, Cass. Sometimes you're so sweet and then other times you're just...I don't know. You're not the only one who's been through shit, you know."

"My child," he said. "Of all the shit in creation who can say that your shit is the equal of my shit or mine the equal of yours or whose shit is the greater or lesser shit and that worse shit is not yet to come which indeed it is and in fact has yet even to hit the fan."

She stared at him. "What the fuck does that mean?"

He smiled. "Goodnight, Laurie."

"Whatever," she said and banged the door shut behind her. He heard her footsteps slosh off across the camp's sodden mud and then the squeak and slam of her cabin's door and then it was quiet. Chill autumn rain tapped on the roof. It fell into the collection barrels behind the kitchen's back porch. Shadows crowded around the candlestump on the table. This was an awful place. In their last camp they'd had electricity and running water but their survival depended upon mobility and they stayed there too long and lost so much in the escape. If the party that Dean had led out that afternoon came back with nothing or not enough they wouldn't be able to stay here for long.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wrap and the last shreds of weed and rolled himself a joint and licked it and sealed it and lit it off the candle and he took a long drag and held it and then blew out the smoke and the candle at the same time. He sat in the dark and smoked. His foot ached the way it always did when it rained or was cold. It had never really healed. He'd lain in bed for more than a week after he'd broken it, horrified by the pain and his inability to heal himself and more than anything by the understanding that to be human was to be so broken with no assurance of help or protection against something worse. He had thought he would go insane from that new and appalling knowledge. He would at the least have become wholly crippled if Dean hadn't finally hauled him up out of bed and dragged him around the room, not saying a word while Cass cried and cursed until he realized that Dean had been through this endless cycle of pain and recovery and pain again and so much worse than this and yet here he was. Bereft of both God and hope and beset by demons. Here they all were. He'd shut up and gone around the room with Dean and the next day he'd woken up and found a battered pair of crutches leaning against the bed and he'd understood and had gotten up on his own.

That had been a long time ago. Dean was different now and he had become Cass, just Cass, the one with the limp and the weed habit and a suspicion that Dean was the only reason most of the others even tolerated him though he was as useless to Dean as he was to the rest of them. It made him sick of himself to be like this and bitter and sarcastic and dissolute and there were times he thought about leaving but he couldn't.

The rain dripped into the barrels and the coal end of the joint waxed and waned and Cass, Castiel once, sat there in the cold and dirty darkness of that room and thought of what a terrible affliction this humanity was.

* * *

The headlights woke him and he raised his head from the picnic table and sat there blinking. The truck doors slammed and he heard their voices and their tread on the steps and they seemed heavier than usual and something not right about them and then the door was kicked open and their misshapen silhouettes were black against the white glare of the headlights. He shaded his eyes and tried to see.

"Get a light!" someone said. He thought it was Frank. They were across the room and hauling something up onto the table and the candle and candleholder skittered off and clattered to the floor and Cass looked down and saw Dean on the table. Staring up at the ceiling, wide-eyed and as pale as a lamp in that gloom.

"Get a fuckin light, Cass!"

Cass tripped over the bench and stumbled across the room and he got the LED lantern off the floor and came back with it and switched it on and someone killed the headlights. Frank grabbed the lantern and held it up and bent over and Dean pushed himself up on his elbows.

"Get it out," Dean said. "Get it out."

"That's the plan," Frank said.

Dean dropped his head back between his shoulderblades. "Fuck. Motherfucking kids. I never even saw the little shit."

"I think he was up in the warehouse."

"Fuck!" Dean said and then Tricia was there with the scissors and she started cutting away the material from Dean's left leg.

"Hold this," Frank said and gave Cass the lantern and Frank leaned over and helped Tricia expose Dean's leg and the arrow sticking out of it, the shaft some half inch in diameter and the fletchings made from dissected shuttlecocks and the head buried down into Dean's thigh. His leg was already swollen and blackening but the wound was plugged by the arrowshaft and there was not much blood.

"Dean?" Cass said and Dean looked at him but didn't answer.

Frank and Tricia rolled him over onto his side and Dean grabbed the edge of the table and lay there with his jaw clenched. The other side of his leg was also bruised and swollen but the skin wasn't broken.

"How bad?"

Frank shook his head. "Not even the point. We're gonna have to push it through."

"Shit," Dean said. "Okay. Just get the fucking thing out."

Chuck was at Cass's elbow and Frank told him to get the morphine and Chuck was halfway to the door when Dean said, "Wait, wait. What do we have?"

Chuck looked at Frank and Frank mouthed something and Dean repeated, "What do we have?"

"Four."

"Oh you fucking asshole," Frank said.

Dean ignored him and told Chuck, "Fuck the morphine. Go get me some of Ted's hooch, if there's any of that."

"I'm not ripping a goddamn arrow out of your leg on nothing but Ted's hooch."

Tricia said, "For Christ's sake, just take it, Dean."

Dean craned his neck around and looked at his leg. There was a rim of blood seeping around the arrowshaft now. Little bubbles in it like liquid escaping from a capped bottle. He felt the back of his leg. He put his head down on the table and closed his eyes.

"One."

Chuck said, "It's pretty old stuff. One's barely gonna take the edge off."

"One," Dean said. He lay there with his eyes closed. He was shivering and Tricia took off her jacket and threw it over his shoulders and went to start a fire in the stove. Frank was washing his hands in a pan of water. Cass set the lantern on the table. He took off his sweater and folded it and put it under Dean's head and sat down on the bench. He looked at the entry wound and put out his hand and barely touched it with his fingertips and Dean shuddered.

"I'm sorry," Cass said. "I'm sorry." Dean didn't say anything.

"Once," Cass said softly, "I could have healed this with a touch."

When he looked at Dean's face Dean's eyes were half open. "I'd settle for a zap to the head. Knock me out for a few hours." He grimaced. "Nothing left, is there?"

"No," Cass said. "There's nothing left."

* * *

Chuck gave him one shot of morphine and they waited about five minutes and then Dean nodded.

"Do it."

They held him down. Chuck, Tricia and Cass. Frank leaned on his leg and wrapped his hand around the arrow's tail. He took a deep breath and repositioned his hand and looked at the others and at Dean and he closed his eyes for a second and said something to himself and then shoved the arrow down into Dean's leg. Dean's seized up and grabbed the table. His jaw was trembling. The arrowhead wasn't out.

"Son of a bitch," Frank said. Dean rolled his eyes up to him. "I think it's against the bone," he said and Dean squeezed his eyes shut. "Give him another shot," Frank said to Chuck and Dean shook his head.

"No."

"Just fucking do it, Chuck."

"That puts us down to two."

"You wanna go into shock?"

"Try it one more time."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," Dean said. He braced himself against the edge of the table. Frank wiped the back of his hand across his forehead and he bent over Dean's leg and the others held Dean in place and Frank pushed the arrow hard and it shoved in about half an inch and still didn't come out and Dean bellowed and slammed his forehead against the table.

They stood there in the cold wash of lantern light. No one spoke. Now others had come and they stood just inside the cabin door and they were quiet too and tense and frightened and the only sounds were the flames in the stove and Dean's labored breathing.

"I can try to cut it out," Frank said.

Tricia said, "You'll have to carve through half his leg. He'll lose a lot of blood."

"Fuck. Fucking rock and a hard place."

From the table, Dean said, "One more time. It's past the bone. Just one more time."

Frank told Chuck to get another shot of morphine and Dean said, "Don't. Shit's half worthless anyway. Just do it quick. If I pass out, good."

Frank stood there for a moment and he looked at Dean and at the rest of them and then he nodded and said, "All right." He got up on the table this time so that he could brace Dean's leg with his knee and use both of his hands on the arrow. Dean lay there with the black shaft sticking out of him and he was horribly white and tears were running from under his eyelids and Cass said, "Wait."

"Wait?" Frank said. "Wait what?"

Cass sat down. He said, "Dean," and Dean opened his eyes and looked at him. When Castiel found Dean in hell he had looked nothing like himself but his eyes had been the same. So that every time after that Cass looked at Dean he saw the soul he'd pulled from hell but now within the man he knew on earth and later, much later he would understand that this had been the beginning of his long fall and the becoming of what he was now. No one had prepared him for it. No one could have.

Dean said, "Castiel?"

Castiel smiled and said, "That's right," and he put his hand on Dean's forehead.

"What..."

"Shh," he said. "Something must remain."

He sat there with his eyes closed and his hand on Dean's forehead. Once he could have put him out, or healed him, or taken him away from here but now he could only do this and he wasn't even sure it would work until he felt Dean relaxing under his hand. He opened his eyes and Dean was gazing at him calmly and smiled at him in a way he hadn't done in years and it pierced Castiel's heart.

Castiel looked at Frank and said. "Do it now." Frank just stared at him and Castiel said, "Go ahead," and Frank bent over and pushed the arrow through and Dean twitched and grabbed Castiel's wrist and Castiel said, "It's all right."

Frank broke the arrowhead off and threw it on the floor and then the shaft came out with a sucking pop. The entry wound was perfectly round and smooth edged but the exit wound was ragged and torn and dark rills of blood flowed from both like taps. They turned Dean onto his back and eased his leg up and Tricia put compresses on both wounds and Dean didn't say a word and lay there staring at Castiel.

"What is that?" Frank said. "Some kind of hypnosis?"

Dean murmured, "He's an angel."

"Was," Castiel said quietly. "Once."

"My guardian angel."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing."

Dean raised his head and looked down at himself.

"Fuck," he said. "My ass looked great in those jeans."

Tricia laughed in surprise and so did Frank because they had never heard him joke like that before or hardly joke at all about anything and then Dean said, "Get me my phone. I need to call Sam."

They stopped laughing and looked at each other.

"Come on, I have to call him. Get me my phone."

Castiel said, "Dean..."

"Get me my..." He looked at the holster on his other leg and he started pulling at the straps. "What the fuck is this? I need my phone, get me my..."

"Dean," Castiel said. "You need to get some sleep."

"What?"

He touched the tips of his fingers to Dean's forehead. "Go to sleep now," he said and Dean's eyes fluttered for a moment and then he was out.

They cleaned the wounds and bandaged them and they unbuckled Dean from all of his weapons and hardware and picked him up off the table and took him to his cabin. Castiel stayed behind and after a while he put his sweater back on and began to clean Dean's blood off the table.

* * *

In the early morning hours long before dawn Castiel sat up beside Dean in the cold cabin with no light except for the oil lantern and no heat except for a barrel stove with old newspapers and a few damp sticks smoldering inside. In his hands he turned over the broken arrow that Frank had pulled out of Dean's leg. It was crudely handmade, the broadhead hammered from some piece of metal and Castiel didn't know if the weapons out there were really so depleted or if the infected had begun pounding out their own devices in their mindless rage. Beating ploughshares into swords.

He put the pieces of arrow aside and raised the blankets to look at Dean's leg. It was propped on a rolled sleeping bag to ease the swelling but it was bleeding freely and the bandage was dark red on the front of Dean's thigh and the back and Castiel began to unwrap it so that he could apply a compress. He heard the door open and Tricia came in with a damp chill and a gust of dead leaves behind her and she closed the door and stood there hugging her elbows.

"How is he?" she whispered.

Castiel shrugged. "Bloody."

"Is he awake?"

"No. He hasn't woken up yet."

She looked down at Dean and then at Castiel. "That was amazing, what you did."

Castiel smiled. "It was just the morphine kicking in," he said and he coiled the sodden bandage on the floor and took up two pieces of cloth and pressed them to the wounds. Dean moaned and turned his head but he didn't wake up.

"Do you need some help?" she asked and Castiel shook his head.

She sat down cross-legged on the floor beside him and looked at what he was doing and began soaking clean cloths in disinfectant. Neither of them spoke. Castiel knew that she had been sleeping with Dean for about a week and he supposed that she might love him, or think that she loved him, or want to believe that love still existed and so she was here.

After a while he asked, "How was the mission?"

"Bad," she said. "We can't stay here. There's barely anything left to scavenge and there were troops in the city rounding people up. Infected, uninfected, same as the other places. If they find us here they'll take us to one of those places and torch us like the others."

"They won't find us."

"We've got a problem if Dean's out of commission."

"You don't think our fearless leader will be up and around tomorrow? Oh, ye of little faith."

"He should take it easy. Let someone else carry the load for a while."

"He won't. He can't."

"I know."

Castiel put down the soiled compresses and she handed him a fresh pair. Outside the rain had started up again and the wind blew under the log eaves and hooted around the doors and windows and it was very cold. Tricia shivered.

"You should go to bed," Castiel said. "There's not much to do here."

"I couldn't sleep." She sat beside him quietly and after a moment she said, "You've known him for a long time, haven't you?"

"No. Six years. It feels like more, but it's only six years."

He was wrapping the bandage around Dean's leg and he could feel Tricia staring at him and he didn't say anything. Then she said, "Are you gay?"

Castiel smiled. He shook his head. "I'm not gay."

"Then what's with the two of you? I'm sorry, I know it's none of my business but...that scene back in the kitchen? I don't know what you did but I feel like you couldn't have done that for just any of us. And he puts up with shit from you that he wouldn't from anyone else and the way you look at him sometimes..."

Castiel kept on wrapping the bandage, checking it for tension. "How do I look at him?"

"I don't know," she said, and then went on, "Like he's the only thing left that matters. And you hate him for it. Or hate yourself for thinking it."

Castiel fastened the bandage with clips. He eased Dean's leg down and covered him up. He looked at his hands. They were bloody and he picked up one of the cloths and started to clean them and he smiled but didn't look up.

"Patricia," he said. "That's your full name isn't it?"

"Yes."

"I had a full name too, once. Castiel. The name my father gave me. When I met Dean, I was still Castiel."

She didn't say anything and he raised his head and looked at her sitting beside him in the dim lamplight and the darkness of the cabin behind her with the smell of blood and alcohol in the air. Another one of God's abandoned children. Like Dean. Like himself.

"He was in prison and I was sent to get him out. That was my job. There were conditions applied to that...parole. It was also my job to ensure that Dean fulfilled those conditions. I was committed to my work. I was faithful. But then something happened and I couldn't do what I was sworn to do." He smiled. "I lost faith in my employers. I couldn't give him over to them. But..." He shook his head. "That's not the truth. The truth is...the truth is that I couldn't give him over."

He fell silent.

"You knew him before he lost his brother."

"Yes."

"He never talks about him. Tonight was the first time I ever heard him say his name."

"I know."

"Is his brother really dead?"

"He is lost. Yes."

"What was he like? Before?"

Castiel thought about this. He might have said that Dean was foul-mouthed and funny and hedonistic and that he was arrogant and impulsive and foolish and he was compassionate and noble and fearless, he was broken and yet he endured, hard and yet soft and he had loved his brother too much and yet not wisely enough and that he was so painfully, terribly human that when the angels asked Castiel to come with them and away from this place forever he'd had no choice but to refuse and he could have said any of this to the woman beside him. But he didn't.

"He was surprising."

She was quiet and then softly, she said, "Oh."

Castiel didn't look at her and after a moment she put her hand on his knee and when he raised his eyes she was smiling and she said, "Well. You're only human."

He almost laughed. She didn't say anything else. The oil lamp hissed and smoked. After a while she said that she needed to get some sleep and she stood up and said goodnight and went out into the rain.

* * *

In the morning just before daybreak Castiel left the cabin and stood outside the door and rubbed his neck. The light of that early hour was not gray as it should have been but coppery and dull and in the east through the trees he could see the dawn ascending as a red streak against the land that still lay in darkness. The night's rain had stopped but the eaves and the trees were dripping and the sound of it was all around him like hushed footsteps and the scent of wet earth and pine woods was pleasant and yet couldn't mask the faintly rotten smell of the camp itself. Moldering cabins and sullen fires in makeshift stoves and garbage left behind by God knew how many refugees who had sought shelter in this place. He stood there and looked out at the camp and into the woods. His breath steamed softly in the chill air. The encroaching day came on hesitantly and without birdsong as if aware of its own predestined mortality and then some small bird in the woods called out with one note and another answered and Castiel listened to them for a moment and then he turned and went back inside.

Dean was propped on his elbows with the blankets cast off to the side and he was looking at his leg. It was swollen and bruised and ugly but the bandage had only a trace of blood on it. He looked up at Castiel.

"Guess I'm lucky I didn't get my nuts skewered."

"How does it feel?"

"Like I had a fucking arrow pulled out of it," he said and he began to struggle onto his feet.

Castiel said, "What are you doing?" and crossed the cabin and put his hand on Dean's shoulder.

"What the fuck does it look like? I'm getting up."

"You shouldn't."

Dean shook his head. "We have to get back on the road. This place is screwed."

"The rest of us can take care of that."

"Yeah," Dean said. "Mm-hm." He was up on his knees with one hand braced on the floor and he raised his arm and said, "Give me a hand here."

Castiel crouched down and got his shoulder under Dean's arm and hauled him to his feet and Dean's injured leg buckled and he hissed in pain and swore. Castiel started to lower him back down to the floor but Dean tightened his arm around Castiel's neck.

"Come on, come on, get me up."

Castiel wrapped his arm around Dean's waist and pulled him upright and Dean groaned and for a moment the two of them just stood there while Dean caught his breath. Then Dean put some weight on his left leg and took a shuffling step and said, "Okay."

They made a clumsy turn around the room and by the end of it Dean was sweating and gray in the face and Castiel sat him down on the ledge under the window. Dean put his head down and closed his eyes and gripped the edge of the seat and Castiel brought him a cup of water. There was a folding stool beside the stove and he dragged it over and sat down before Dean and waited for some color to come back in his face. A faint crust of blood was dried onto Dean's forehead and Castiel reached out and brushed it off. Dean glanced up at him wearily.

"Think you could manage another laying on of hands or something?"

"I don't know," Castiel said. "I could try."

He leaned forward and put his hands on Dean's leg as lightly as he could but there was nothing there at all. Whatever he'd been able to do last night had only been an echo of what he'd once been and now even that was gone. He looked at Dean ruefully and shook his head.

"Oh well," Dean said. He sighed and looked around the cabin and said, "I need some pants, Cass. I can't go walking around in my shorts."

Cass found him a pair of sweatpants that would fit over the swelling and the bandage and by the time Dean got them on he needed to rest again. He wiped his hand over his face and sat there and stared at the floor and Cass stared at him. He felt so helpless. He felt so grateful. It was a terrible affliction, this humanity.

Dean said, "You must hate those sons of bitches."

"Who?"

"Those fucking angels, the way they just left you here. Never even told you they were leaving." He shook his head. "What a bunch of pricks."

Cass smiled. "I don't think about it."

Dean stood up with a grimace and when Cass tried to help him Dean waved him off. He limped to the door and let himself out and leaned against the porch post. Cass stood in the doorway behind him and Dean turned his head and looked at him over his shoulder.

"Well, I do," he said. "And I'm sorry."

He turned away and hobbled down the steps and began to make his way across the camp in the flat red light of the nascent day. Cass watched him go.

"I'm not," he said.

He stood there for a moment and then he closed the door behind him and went down the steps and followed Dean.

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