Archive of Our Own ^beta

It isn’t easy to kill god.

This is a fact as old as time is, as old as fact.

It has never once been simple, uncomplicated, easy, and generally a piece of cake.

Dean Winchester is, however, learning this for the first time.

The 899th day.

Trees frame the road, big, well-lived things. Built for tire swings and woodland creatures. They’re not oak, but the splaying of branches reminds him of that scene in Shawshank even though that tree got split by lightning a couple months ago. The wonders of useless pop culture knowledge. When’s it ever failed him.

They’re ash, he thinks.

Sam would know.

“So, to break this down: I have a weapon that may, or may not work. A day that could mean absolutely nothing. No backup plan, no backup. Everything to risk, and the only shit we’re maybe going to gain, is living in a godless universe.”

It’s more complicated than that. There’s nuance. Complexities. Rituals and investigation, and damn near two and a half years of planning, research, and blood-sweat-tears mixed up to get them here.

“Never said it was a walk in the park, boy,” Bobby’s gruff voice over the phone is right, of course. “More importantly, it’s possible this is the only option that we’ve got for the next nine thousand years, and I don’t think my social security will last that long.” Again, he isn’t wrong.

“Yeah, well,” he cracks his neck and stares at the empty road in front of him. “Let’s hope I don’t hit traffic.”

The conversation ends there.

The call doesn’t. Dean’s phone crackles softly. Unhappily, which, no shit, no one’s actually happy about driving through Minnesota.

Bobby breaks the silence.

“He’ll be alright.” And he doesn’t have to say it’s about Sam. It’s always about Sam, at this point. It’s what’s forced his hand now. What’s brought them to this sorry excuse for a plan.

Dean doesn’t have the energy to give a real response to that. “Yeah,” he’s saving his energy for what happens tomorrow.

In something like 7 hours, when his eyes start to flutter shut, he’ll pull off the road. It’s warm this time of year. Been a long time since he slept in his car, but he feels like he should enjoy it while he’s still got the chance. Get the same kinks in his spine that the mattress topper at Bobby’s finally worked out. For old time’s sake.

Or something.

“Look,” and here it comes. “I know this isn’t easy for you,”

“Understatement of the year,” Dean huffs, interrupting. He shouldn’t have, really.

Bobby takes it in stride, though, like he didn’t even speak at all. In a way, he appreciates that. “This is Cas. You two have… been through a lot, together. And I wish there was some other way for this to go down.”

That’s true. Factually. He got pulled out of hell by him. Cas good and abandoned everything he stood for because Dean had a hunch that things weren’t supposed to go down that way. He was right, but still, he hardly trusted his own gut that much. The apocalypse. Everything that followed. All of the shit that went down in heaven, Raphael. He should’ve asked more questions. Kryptonite. And now this.

He’ll lose his mind thinking about if he’d done things differently. Feels it fracture a bit.

Dean grinds his teeth. Imagines grinding them to dust.

“Not the first time I’ve lost a friend.”

Dean says it like it’s already happened.

In a way, it did, eight hundred and ninety-nine days ago.

He hangs up before a reply can be sounded out. Cranks up the radio. Drives.

It’s been happening every day since then. His shoulder is sore. None of it matters.

They’re out of options, and out of time.

The 1st day.

Cas. I– Castiel, oh Almighty God in Heaven, or wherever the hell you are. This is stupid. Ridiculous, I don’t know why I’m wasting my time.

Told me you’d step on me like an ant, or something after all. If you meant that. It really seems like you meant that, by the way, but that’s not the point. The point is– well, the point– I just want you back, man. The actual you. I don’t know what all this is, but you were sorry. Before you became this. And I wanna forgive you, really. Give you the chance. Mostly, I just want you safe. Okay? I don’t know how real this god thing is. How biblical you’re trying to take things, but I just need you to be okay. We can fix this. This isn’t really you — because I know you, and this isn’t… You just give me a call, alright? When you’re good? ‘Cause I won’t give up on you, not like this. And Sam’s– well, you’re god, you know.

Amen, and stuff. Fuck.

The 574th day.

“Fuck,” he snaps, slamming the tome shut, a new plume of dust arising.

It’s been three hours reading some mind-rattling combination of Old English, Latin with Bobby on the phone listening to his butchered approximations of words, and symbols he’s never even seen before. Because that’s his luck.

And by the look of the librarian in this particular stuck-up college’s archives, he’s gonna get kicked out pretty soon if he keeps throwing around their centuries-old, deeply valuable texts, which of course don’t mean shit to them really. Not like Chaldean numerology means fuckall to them, anyway. But that’s what the grouchy bastard in his ear is telling him to look for. Dean grimaces and gives a small, apologetic wave to the string-of-pearls-wearing librarian, lady, chick. He wonders how you wind up with a job like this, incredibly specific, and still manage to really hate everything about it. Maybe she just hates him.

“Focus, Dean.”

He coughs belatedly as the dust particles make their way to his face, and he waves his hand in front of him fruitlessly. “Focusing,” he lies, grabbing another book.

They’re close to something. Dean can practically sense it.

An hour later, it’s damn clear why.

“Time’s up,” says the librarian, something like a Miriam or a Merrideth, or he wasn’t paying attention, suddenly way closer to him than he realized.

“Thought I had five hours?” Dean replies, glancing down at his watch, giving himself another 35 minutes or so. He gives her a sidelong look. He could wrap all of this up in that time, head back. But if she kicks him out now, to be petty, he’s gonna have to come back again tomorrow, and something about college towns just sets him on edge nowadays.

He hears her heels click, and doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction of meeting her eye for whatever judgemental look she’s giving him. He even wore his nice boots.

Hands curl around the back of his chair, and that’s creepy for a librarian, and– “You do. I’m curious, how long does your brother have? I can’t imagine he’s doing too hot right now.” The voice is condescending in the same way it was when he was handed his visitor pass. Dean’s blood runs cold.

“I don’t know who the hell you are,” he starts, turning from the chair quick, making space between them, half the table in his way. He’s got a blade tucked in his boot, but the books are closer. Reading lamp plugged in on the corner. Dean’s gaze flicks over the table, his surroundings, and his opponent.

“You don’t.” She replies. The lights pulse, but don’t flicker. Her eyes flash, nothing he’d seen before, colors cascading closer to a roulette wheel than the dilating of pupils. It’s freaky as fuck. “As far as the universe is concerned, I’m a nobody.” She leans against the table, looking over to him. “But you’re somebody, Dean Winchester. Especially to the god currently ruling.”

“So?”

She scoffs. “Don’t get upset with me, now. From the little snooping that I’ve done in the… biblical nonsense you’ve gotten into, you’ve all brought this upon yourselves, haven’t you?”

Sure. Technically. But it’s all water under a rickety bridge, rotting away and threatening to cave with every step. More importantly, it’s not as relevant as the probably killer librarian talking shit to him. “Listen, lady—”

“Call me Miren. Stop looking you as though you know how to kill me. That blade won’t do it any more than the lamp could,” she says, nodding to his leg. Definitely sticking with creepy. “You’re wondering what I am, but really you should be considering what, exactly it is that I want from you. I’m not here to cause problems for you, and I don’t want to waste my time trying to kill you, certainly not with a divine rite carved into you like that,” Miren smiles at him, perfectly unbothered. Divine what? “Nonetheless, I’ll humor you. I am a fatia, one of three, though my sisters are quite far from here. We’re spirits of fate, not unlike the Greek moirai, though they’re–” she tsks, opinionated, “the more popular sisters. Fame isn’t all that matters, though. So they can take their little Disney adaptations, and shove them up their asses — ultimately, we’re the ones doing the true seeing. And fame gets you nowhere at the end of the world, which is coming up quickly if you don’t get your ducks in a row.”

Biting back a defense, because Hercules was a damn good movie, with a damn good soundtrack, and the fates were admittedly pretty cool, Dean focuses on the important part. “End of the world? Yeah, Cas’ gone a bit biblical, but none of the signs are pointing to some sort of Second Coming.”

“That’s not an ending within your control. Or Castiel’s. Whatever it was that he did to get like this, that is no longer your friend,” and he wants to cut in. Let her know she hasn’t got a damn clue about him. Them. “It’s something else entirely. And the world isn’t meant to hold an unholy host for so long. Already, it is fragile.”

It’s in one ear, out the other. Another thing that isn’t supposed to exist, ruining everything for everyone, nothing new. It’s Cas. Nothing’s happening to him.

“Even if this world could adapt.” Miren just continues, looks at him critically. “You’re looking for a way to save him. I am here to propose to you something better. Sam can be fixed.” That gets his attention, and Dean tilts his head in question, not willing to ask it out loud. “There have been times before after every god. Your friend is no different. This is when there is a true balance in all things, when the cycles merely perpetuate themselves.”

Sounds, generally, like a fat load of bullshit.

“What happens when the pendulum stops, Dean?” She asks him pointedly.

“The walls close in.” Hot, burning.

She gives a nod of recognition. What? He reads. “Balance is restored. True balance. Isn’t that what you’ve been working toward? It all stops. Everything. Nothing pushes you into the bottomless pit.” Miren rises, walking closer to him, getting in his face. Dean hates it. “All things end. As an agent of fate, I would know. There is nothing to foresee, in a freed universe.”

It sounds nice. Heaven, hell, everything gone. It wouldn’t be the first time they tried to close the gates of hell, shut the door to heaven, any of that. He doesn’t see what that has to do with Cas being the one in charge.

“Nothing would haunt your brother’s psyche, anymore. He must be on the brink by now, isn’t he?”

“What’s the catch?” It’s not like Cas would ditch the being god thing easily, not for Sam, probably not for him anymore. It’s a nice thought, but hardly realistic. Worth a shot, if there are no strings attached.

“Oh, Dean.” He’s getting real sick and tired of this condescending bitch. “Castiel has to die.”

He stares at her.

Not happening. He’d figure it the fuck out. But he doesn’t die.

“It’s the only way. Take your time to find a way to live with that, but don’t take too long.” That’s rich. She frowns, looking down at the tomes and archival pieces on the table. Then a hand is on his arm. “You have the right idea, but you’re looking in the wrong place. Notice what’s missing. There, you’ll find the day. This is your weapon.” Her grip tightens, and his shoulder flashes hot. Dean’s eyes squeeze shut with the pain, and she steps back.

Then she’s gone.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

None of that made any fucking sense. At all. One thing’s clear, though.

He needs to save Cas.

The 365th day.

Same old shit.

It’s a year to the day, though he doesn’t know it. He’ll realize it soon.

The passage of time is about to become crucial, actually.

Sam isn’t doing good. Wakes up with all sorts of terrors. Asks him if he heard that every five minutes, and there’s never any noise. Dean thinks he knows the feeling, just a bit. Remembers waking up and feeling like he’s in hell.

He doesn’t know what he’s seeing, but he sees the exhaustion set in. Sam won’t last long like this.

The 729th day.

“Bobby!”

Dean yells, thundering downstairs, book in hand. “I think I got it.” He says, astonished. Reads over the page again. Flips between it and the previous one. “So Miren told me that what I was looking at, it was the right thing, but not– not the right thing right?” He pauses, replaying that sentence in his head.

By the look Bobby’s giving him, it made even less sense out loud.

“Listen, we were looking at numerology. Specifically, Chaldean, because the timing makes sense, but that’s just it. What’s Chaldean numerology missing? What does it leave out in– well, basically everything?”

He’s catching on, Bobby mulls it over. “Nine. The number nine isn’t utilized naturally, they all thought it was too divine.”

Dean snaps, grinning. “Exactly! It’s a holy number. It’s what this was missing, but if we take into account other kinds, Pythagoeran, all that shit — here,” he clears his throat, grabbing his laptop and holding it up “here we go, ‘the energy of the number 9 represents completion, but not finality.Think of it more in a cyclical sense; it’s about the ending of one cycle and the potential it creates for another cycle to begin’ it’s all like this. Endings, beginnings, and the ebb and flow of time. Some of it sounds like nonsense, but new sources and old lore are saying the same thing.”

Bobby nods. “It’s better than anything we’ve got so far, boy. Let’s get to work. What day is it?”

It’s another begging of an end.

The 611th day.

Is there any way to fix this? At all? ‘Cause I’ve been looking, man. I don’t even think you’re listening anymore, or if you are, it’s not the same. You’re not who you were, and you’re my friend. Cas, I really hope we can find something else. Soon. Shit.

Day 900.

He’s here.

It doesn’t seem real. So much time has passed. So little time has passed.

Dean’s not sure when the days really started to matter, but it feels like some kind of trap, on this walk through the woods.

It’s all deceptively peaceful.

Or, maybe it’s not deceptive at all. There’s a waking stillness, like lungs breathing, but it’s not erratic. Leaves and branches sway in the breeze, but they don’t shudder. His heart and mind have been in turmoil for a long damn time, nine hundred days at least, probably his soul too, but he’s not an expert on that.

As the trees clear, he figures he’s about to see the closest thing to an expert on his soul.

Does the world know?

That it’s ending and beginning again.

The church is a pretty thing, a little reverse-mojo went a long way. Castiel must want to be found, or sought out anyway. He might not be here at all and everything’s been a waste of time. The thrum of the earth tells Dean otherwise.

Wood and stone, simple glass. What used to be a garden, when there was a community to preach to and look after, now overgrown and a little wild. The door is cracked open.

This is it.

“Ash Wednesday is a particularly unique ritual, did you know that?” He’s calm. Aware. The pews have been cleared from the long hall. There’s no altar. No crucifix adorning the wall. Castiel stands in the middle of it all.

Cas.

“It signifies the beginning of Lent. It’s so… peculiar. Lenten observances seek to challenge the individual on the spiritual level, to engage one by paralleling their experiences with a Christ figure. Jesus went into the desert for 40 days, fasted, and prayed for humanity. In return, to honor that sacrifice, you give up chocolate for those 40 days.” He tilts his head, and it’s so damn like him that it startles Dean. Reminds him of exactly who he’s going to— “To die for all the sins of the world, and be memorialized in such a way. Still, Ash Wednesday is more solemn in this appreciation. It is a commitment to this great sacrifice, an honoring of God. Reverence.”

Castiel looks to him for the first time. Dean thinks those eyes see straight through him, burrowing into his soul, revealing each of his intentions.

But he does nothing. The show goes on.

“I mean, they’d die if they actually fasted for 40 days, right?” He clears his throat. Doesn’t know what to say to him. “Is it worth it? Doing all that material sacrifice, or is it mocking at that point?”

He’s done his research. He knows all this already. It’s important, actually, to what happens. All part of the passage of time.

“It’s inconsequential.” There it is. There’s something cold about him. Not-quite-Cas about him. It sets Dean on edge, and it’s probably the only thing that keeps him here. Brings him closer.

“Sam’s dying.”

Castiel nods. “The actually unique thing about Ash Wednesday, is the ashes themselves. The parish saves palm fronds from the past year’s Palm Sunday, allows them to dry over time, then burns them.”

And those ashes get plus-signed, smudged, smeared, and tic-tac-toed across a bunch of people’s foreheads in an attempt at the cross. He knows.

“Sam is dying, Cas.” He repeated again, trying to get through to him. To his friend. In there, somewhere. “His mind couldn’t handle whatever wall broke. He’s just… it’s like lights out in there, he’s alive, but–” like a coma, except instead of medically induced, he’s probably completely lucid in there. Thinking it’s reality. “He’s not gonna make it like this, he’s going to die.”

“Humans have a tendency of doing that, Dean.” Castiel furrows his brow. Stepping closer to him. There’s a deep pain resonating in his chest now, and Dean can’t move away from it, or him. There’s a disconnect he can’t align.

It’s all wrong, and he wants it to end.

“It hurts you. Grief is a powerful thing,” he says, in that kind of all-knowing way that omniscient things say. Not in the curious way Cas spoke about emotions. “As is love.” Castiel hums. “That is all I asked of you, do you remember that?”

“All-encompassing, kneel-down-before-ye, you’re the one true God kind of love. Yeah. I remember.” He snaps back. It shouldn’t go like this. It’s all wrong. “I wanted there to be another way.”

Cas considers him for a moment. He’s let slip in the wrong way, but the words are out of his mouth, and out of his control. “Does it really matter? How you love? Would it have been so truly difficult to say yes to me?”

Dean doesn’t point out that it’d defeat the whole point of things. Angels and consent.

They lived by it, but they hardly understood it. A yes was a yes, in his book.

“If I said yes, if I loved you now. Would that fix Sam?”

He wants the answer to be yes. So badly. For everything to just be normal.

Those weren’t the terms and conditions, though. There is no normal like this. No more saving. Dean won’t think about it as a final hunt, but the thought crosses his mind, anyway.

“I won’t.” Castiel offers, simply, and turns his face to the sunlight through the window. It’s a nice day out. Dean wishes he’d said can’t.

“Yeah, I know.”

And then it happens too fast. He’s sinking a thin blade into his own shoulder. Forged from ash and steel, his own blood, it drives deep into the burn that’s long-since gone numb. It’s agonizing to drag it through his flesh, but he completes the circle.

Stumbling, blood soaking into his sleeve, he watches Castiel.

He’s impassive. Dean digs in deeper, and there it is — a flicker between them, that spark.

Profound.

“It matters.” Dean says, blinking fast, as he just concentrates his thoughts like he’d been told to, prays that somehow, it’ll be enough. “It matters, Cas. Of course it matters how I fuckin’ love you,” he cries out. The young god is startled, rising from the ground, and it’s clear it isn’t his choice.

It’s working. Dean wishes he could stop. He keeps going.

“‘Cause I do. I do, man. I have for a long time, you’re my best friend. Through everything.” Everything. And he means it. Through hell and high water. Not dying a virgin. Time travel. Every goddamn monster known to man. Almost dying. Almost dying again, together. He'd never had a friend like that before. And he's going to lose that friend for good. "There's no way I couldn't love you through all that." It's true. And it hurts.

There's a pained sort of look in Cas' eye, and Dean wants to look away. He forces himself to keep looking. He owes it to him to watch.

"I love you."

There is light, and divine intention. Then the most awful noise he's ever heard.

Beyond screams in the pit, and creatures in the night, this sings out clear. The glass shatters. It's Cas.

Fuck. Dean looks up to him, far out of reach now, but it's his friend looking back at him. Terrified. It's working. It's too late to do anything else, it's already done. There is a look of question in his eye, and he speaks. "I wanted you to love me, as I love you." It's earth-shattering, shifting paradigms and reality, the holy presence between them is more than he can stand. Dean glances down to his shoulder, the wound singing out like gas station windows and motel mirrors. His ears must be bleeding.

"I do."

Then there's blinding light. Castiel cries out in a human way, and Dean feels impaled. Watches four shining rods pierce through him. Dean is fine. Castiel is not. He's killing him. It only builds. The sounds grow louder, the ground seems to quiver, there is an energy that flows through the 900th day. The cycle is complete. His only friend dies. To have loved and lost.

Dean blacks out.

He’s trembling.

The world ended and began in the beat of a heart, the blink of an eye, a single breath.

No time has passed.

The floorboards are scorched. Great, triumphant wingmarks spread across the ground, wood singed and threatening to catch alight.

It’s not a bad idea. There’s no body.

Dean moves and it feels like he’s floating.

It’s everywhere.

Beautiful. Ash swirls past the sunlight like dust, settles against his skin. Upon the floor. Streaks smear against the wood as he rises.

Drawing a hand up, he wipes the sweat from his forehead.

There is something holy in the dust that smudges across his brow.

Reverence, he remembers.