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The thing is, Dean thinks, Cas is wrong about him.
Dean is a blunt instrument. He's the hammer he once accused Cas of being, the gun leveled at the poltergeist in the dark, the jawbone-blade cleaving tissue from bone. He's the sword swung on marionette strings by the archangel. He's the best pupil Alastair's ever had.
Cas is moving closer, speaking softly: gentle, lovely words that cut through the rhythmic clanging of Billie's fist against the warding. And all Dean can think is that he's so, so wrong.
Dean wasn't made for love, he was made for war. He was made for violence and blood and hunting the things that go bump in the night and doing exactly what he was told and being damn good at it as long as the it was killing something.
"You changed me, Dean," Cas is saying through tears. Dean tries to think. Tries to make sense of what is happening, through a burgeoning haze of panic.
"Why does this sound like a goodbye," he manages.
"Because it is," says Cas, and Dean realizes, too late, that Cas is doing what he always does. That Cas is throwing himself on the sword. Giving himself up for Dean. Sacrificing himself again as if—as if Dean is going to survive this without him, as if anything is going to matter at the end of this fight if Cas isn't there on the other side.
No, Dean thinks, and his throat closes up even as he feels a scream building inside him. Think, he begs himself, but he wasn't made for thinking, and he wasn't made to receive sacrifices. Dean Winchester was made to carry out sacrifices. To carry out orders. Kill the monster, save the world. Kill your brother, save the world. Kill yourself, save the world.
"I love you," says Cas, and something splinters in Dean's chest.
"Don't do this, Cas," he whispers. Because Cas cannot do this to him. Cas cannot stand here and say those things and then let himself die for Dean, who has not ever deserved any of the faith that others have put in him. Not Sam's faith, not Jack's faith, and certainly not Cas's faith.
A void opens up in the wall behind him.
"Goodbye, Dean," says Castiel, angel of the Lord, and he puts his hands on Dean. Castiel, angel of the Lord, throws Dean to the ground, and the unfathomable love in his eyes is enough to unravel Dean at the seams.
But Dean wasn't made for love, and he has always known this. He was made to be a weapon.
Dean has always been good at what he was made for.
Dean hits the ground and he rolls, fluid despite the ache from old wounds, the stiffness from aging joints. He comes up on the balls of his feet and spins back around, just as the black portal in the wall foments and surges and shoots out two metallic tendrils of itself.
Dean moves. He moves faster than the Empty's questing tentacle, faster than the first traitorous tear escaping from the corner of his eye, faster than he has ever managed to move when it comes to Cas.
And Cas, Cas stands with his chin lifted, tears glittering down his cheeks, a small smile on his face. Castiel, angel of the Lord, colossal idiot, goddamn infuriating son of a bitch, stands at attention, waiting to die, and Dean hits him with roughly the grace and force of a derailed train and tackles him directly into the stone floor.
"Dean—" Cas wheezes as he lands hard on his back, as Dean comes down on top of him. The metallic coil of the Empty whooshes over their heads with a sound like cracking lake ice. "What—"
Dean braces his arms on the floor on either side of Cas's face and looks up to watch as, mere feet away, the other tendril makes contact with Billie. As it simply—dissolves her. Covers her, absorbs her into itself, retracts with her.
"Dean," says Cas softly from beneath him. "You have to let me go."
Dean looks down at Cas, whose arms are pressed against Dean's chest, trapped between their bodies. Whose stupid hair is sticking out at odd angles. God, when did Cas start looking so human? Dean can remember a time when he looked like he was carved from the stormblast itself. When he blew in and out of Dean's life like an inevitable wind, unyielding and unrelenting. Angels aren't supposed to age, but Cas has tired creases around his eyes that weren't there before. He has laugh lines and crow's feet, he cries and he doubts, he feels pain and sorrow and longing and grief.
Dean did that to him.
I cared about the whole world because of you.
Dean was made to break everything he touches. Of course Cas wouldn't escape unscathed. Cas was made to be something inexorable, something beyond pain, beyond hurt, beyond caring. Beyond love and all of its cutting razor edges. Dean changed that.
Maybe he can change this too.
The remaining tendril of the Empty reverses course in midair and dives at them. Dean puts one hand on the back of Cas's head and pulls it toward him, tucking it under his chin.
"Dean, what are you doing—"
"What I should have done last time," Dean grits. He feels another tear coalescing and angrily blinks it free. He brackets Cas with his arms, presses their legs together. He covers Cas's body with his own. "Stopping you from leaving."
The Empty knifes against Dean's leg, against his back and his shoulder. Dean can feel it recoiling from him, snatching itself back as though burned by the touch of him. It splits and flows around him like water and he can feel it seeping between him and Cas, latching onto Cas, twining around Cas. It feels cold, frictionless, textureless. It feels like nothing at all.
Dean tightens his grip. No, he thinks, even as he feels the Empty worming its way around Cas's body, engulfing him slowly like a parasite, like a blight. He curls his fingers around Cas's face, around Cas's shoulder. He digs his fingers through a cold nothingness like the vacuum of space and finds Cas beneath it.
He thinks he feels a presence in the back of his mind, a crawling terrible voice that pages dispassionately through the fear in his head and says, this one is mine.
You can't have him, Dean thinks at it. He doesn't belong to you. He doesn't belong to Heaven, and he doesn't belong to Chuck, and he doesn't belong to YOU.
Beneath him, Cas exhales.
Dean wasn't made for love, he was made for war. And so he fights, there in the back of his head, a tiny, immense, desperate war.
Stop, commands the presence. Stop this.
Dean buries his face in the Empty. He buries his face in a seething, roiling nothingness that drags against his existence like a rusted blade, that flinches and snarls and flays at the thought of him, at the existence of him, at the human-ness of him. He pulls it against his body and his heart and his soul and everything that he is, and he feels it contract away from him, until he is burying his face in the familiar smell of ozone, in Cas's messy hair.
I will never stop, he thinks.
The Empty spits a kind of slow, entropic irritation at him. A resigned sort of disgust, a lowering of a weapon.
And then, it leaves.
Underneath him, Cas sucks in a raw, terrified breath. "Dean!"
Dean screws his eyes shut. His skin crawls momentarily where the Empty had brushed against it. He breathes out, one shaky exhalation, and opens his eyes again. Still no Empty. Still no jangling chorus of the void to contend with. He looks down at Cas. He's suddenly hyper-aware of the fact that their entire bodies are pressed against each other. Cas is rigidly still beneath him, his eyes enormous, his face streaked with tears, his mouth pressed in a trembling line.
"Billie...?" he whispers.
"Gone," says Dean. He swallows, his mouth dry, and lifts himself onto his forearms to double-check. No Death, either. "It got her."
"It—" Cas's voice cracks. "It was supposed to get me."
"You're fucking welcome," says Dean. It doesn't come out the way he intends it—it comes out low, furious, angry. He hates himself for it immediately.
Something shutters in Cas's face. His eyes go quiet.
Dean was made for battle. He wasn't made to survive it. He was made to die at the end of a blade or the barrel of a gun, he wasn't made to live. He doesn't know how. Was this what he saved Cas for? For more pain? For more breaking? Dean doesn't know how to do this. He doesn't know how to fix this. He doesn't know how to be this.
"Cas, what you said—"
"Dean," Cas says, low. There is so much abject misery visible on his face that Dean wants to close his eyes again. "I don't regret anything I said. I don't take it back. But I don't expect a response from you. That is not why I said it."
"Cas, I don't—"
"You don't have to say anything," says Cas. He shifts his arms, still pinned between their chests. Pushes Dean back enough to prop himself up on his elbows.
"I don't want to save a world that doesn't have you in it," Dean blurts.
Cas stops moving. He looks at Dean and he doesn't say anything at all.
"Cas, I..." He doesn't know how to do this. He's never known how to do this. "Cas, I wasn't...made for this."
"For what?"
For anything, Dean wants to scream. For love. For happiness. For you.
"Dean—"
"Ask me," says Dean. He drags in a shuddering breath. God, he's afraid. "Ask me, Cas. Please, this, I can't...please."
"Ask you...what?"
Dean bows his head. He's still crouched over Cas, their faces inches apart. His arms are shaking—no, his whole body is shaking. "You said you knew you couldn't have it, the one thing, but you never asked. You never asked me, Cas. You think you can read my fucking mind? You think I'm a fucking book for you to flip through? That you know everything about me?"
Cas furrows his brow.
"Ask me," Dean begs again. It would be so easy, to just say it. It should be so easy, and he can't do it. He's a coward and always has been but maybe Cas can be brave for both of them, one more time. "I need you to ask me because I—I don't know how to—to say, without—please, just—"
Just have a little faith in me, he thinks. Pleads. Just a little more.
Something clears in Cas's eyes. He looks, suddenly, as terrified as Dean feels. And yet there's a kind of elation on his face too, uncoiling beneath the surface.
"I..." says Cas. "Can I...if you..." He closes his eyes, breathes slowly and shakily even though angels aren't supposed to need to breathe. Opens them again. "Will...you have me, Dean?"
Dean lets out something that might be a breath, and might be a sob, and might be a word. He curls one hand into the fabric of Cas's stupid coat. He presses the other against the side of Cas's face, leans forward to touch their foreheads together. "Yeah, Cas. Yeah, I—yeah."