Work Text:
He's driving along a road at night. One long, winding road after another, all leading to this point.
He thinks about Cas. He doesn't want to. The thought hurts. He doesn't know who he is without Cas anymore. Doesn't know the shape of his life. He came back to life because of Cas. It doesn't stop him.
He's firmly Nowhere, Middle Of, by now. The road he's on is paved, but cracked and narrow. There's no lines, no room to pull off. To the sides, there's just trees, thick woods that he can't see through. He hasn't seen so much as a telephone pole for miles. He hasn't seen another car for even longer.
Above him, there's the stars.
He drives, and he doesn't know where he is, could never find this place on a map, yet he's absolutely certain of every turn he takes. Something in him knows exactly where he's going, even if he doesn't know where that is.
It's a new moon tonight, and the stars are brighter for it. This far from civilization, he can see the milky way. It's the kind of awe-bringing night sky that you can only get where there's no cities, no towns, just you and the empty road.
He slows down as he comes to a road, an even smaller offshoot of the one he's already on. The leaves seem to catch the starlight, glinting and reflecting, stars captured by the earth.
He turns down it, letting the impala roll to a stop. In front of him, the illumination from the headlights falls away, as the road stretches on. He breathes here. Closes his eyes. Opens them.
The stars are so bright.
He starts down the road. It's normal, just like any other road he's driven on at night. He breathes out, and his breath fogs in the air. He turns the heater on. The vents clank before slowly hissing out heated air, but it's not enough to warm him.
It's summer.
The road is dirt, rough and bumpy. Each imperfection transfers directly through Baby, jolting him in his seat. He gives a mental apology to her for the road, but he doesn't stop, and he doesn't turn back.
The stars stud the sky like jewels. He's seen some incredible sights over the years, but somehow none of them have ever compared to this.
He goes as fast as he dares. The road is too narrow and too rough to go over quickly, but this isn't the kind of place you want to linger in.
The cold is sharp on his lungs as he breathes, painful on his lips, his nose.
He turns the heat up. It doesn't help.
The road falls away behind him and stretches forever in front of him. Above him are the stars, and to either side are trees, thick, and black, swallowing the light from the headlights. One mile, and another, and the next.
He starts to see shadowy figures in the corners of his eyes. They flicker in and out of his awareness, like the shadowy mirages that your brain makes when you look into the black night. He wishes he could tell himself they were just a mirage.
He speeds up. He doesn't look away from the road.
The sky is filling with stars, to the point that they stop looking like stars at all, dripping with light.
A voice forms, more like the wind than something made by human vocal cords. It gets louder and louder, a humming whistle that hurts his ears to focus on, so he doesn't. He's not meant to hear this, but he doesn't have another choice.
The road opens up, all of a sudden. A bright, blinding light forms in the sky above him, where the moon would be. The trees disappear to reveal a lake, stretching out to either side, a massive body of water bisected by the road he's on. He does not look away from the road. He does not look at the water, and he does not look at the light in the sky, not when it forms, and not as it grows brighter, and brighter, swallowing every star in the sky.
He passes the lake, the trees returning just as suddenly as they left. A wind picks up, shaking the trees, almost blowing him off the road.
His radio flips on. He doesn't listen to it. He doesn't listen to the static. He doesn't listen to the screeching, and the screaming, and he doesn't listen to the horrid, distorted voice that would tell him all his worst fears, if he did.
The light gets brighter. The wind starts howling.
The car jerks like something's hit it. He wrestles with the wheel, desperately, trying to keep it on the road. The light's not in front of him anymore. Instead, there is a bright light in the backseat that doesn't go away, and a voice he knows.
"Dean."
He doesn't look away from the road.
The sky is black now. No mimicked moon, but no stars either, like they were swallowed up whole in the process.
The impala rumbles beneath him, the only point of stability in the deep, starless night.
"Dean. How are you here?"
Outside, the winds have picked up. The trees are bending in the gales, and shadowy figures flicker in and out as he drives. Sometimes he slows down. Sometimes, the figures are in the road, shadowy hands clawing at the windows.
He does not look at them. He does not stop.
The air is bitingly cold by now. It's only gotten colder since the presence in the back seat joined him, cold enough for his breath to form a solid cloud in the air, and he can see frost creeping over the side windows from the corner of his eye, frost making its way towards the windshield. The light keeps building.
His headlights flicker. He doesn't stop.
"Dean! You can't be here."
The light builds in intensity. His eyes start hurting.
The car stalls. He closes his eyes. Closes them against the light, and doesn't open them. Doesn't think about what he's seen. Doesn't think about what he hasn't seen. Turns the key. Baby grumbles, trying to turn over. Once. Twice. Three times. Four. Finally, she starts. He can see the light from behind his eyelids. It's not going down. There's a hum, building in the air, and deep into his bones. The light feels like it's burning him, even as his fingers are numb from the cold.
He's realized that the howling wasn't coming from the wind.
He hits the gas and goes as fast as he can. He doesn't open his eyes.
The light fades back again, back and away from his skin. He opens his eyes. The road in front of him is black. His headlights can barely illuminate far enough in front of him for him to see the road, but behind him there is a light, building and building and building. If he looked back, he would see that it would fill his entire field of view, the body of light trailing behind him and filling the world.
He does not look back.
Baby stalls again, her engine shutting off, but she doesn't stop moving. (The loyal steed that can bring him home, even when it's been pushed to its limits.)
"Dean!" He hears, but he also hears the howling of the wind, louder than is natural, loud enough to drown out the universe. It feels like the wind is shaking apart the impala, shaking apart him. The light starts building again, creeping into the corners of his vision, closer and closer. There are no more shadows, no more figures, but he is less safe than ever. (He is the safest he ever is.)
He slams his eyes shut, hands over his ears. The light is so bright, screaming, the howling so loud. Baby is still careening along, without her engine running, without his hands on the wheel, and the light is so bright and so loud it feels like it is scouring him from the inside. It's not cold. It's hot. It's a heat that burns so strong that it burns him from the inside out. He doesn't know how he was cold, how he could have ever been cold, not when this heat is going to burn him up, not when the light is burning at his skin and the inside of his eyes and is screaming so loud he can feel it in his teeth, so loud that it goes beyond a sound, becomes a feeling, something he can feel with his body. He can't breathe, can't feel, there's nothing beyond this screaming, this light, this burning.
It ends, all at once. The light, the heat, the sound. He opens his eyes. Brings Baby to a stop. Breaths. Takes advantage of the fact that he can.
It's no longer freezing, but shock makes him feel cold anyways.
It's black again. He can see trees.
He starts driving again, along the winding road at night. There are no shadowy figures, no gale-force winds, no supernatural light. He can see stars again, a normal amount, plenty but not unnaturally so. His headlights light the road, not stretching forever, but neither is the black swallowing it whole.
No voice.
The road comes to a sudden dead end. He stops, parks the Impala. He's alone.
He thinks about Cas. He doesn't shy away from it. He lets Cas fill his mind's eye, his hair, his eyes, the way he moves, the quiet burr of his voice. Thinks about every conversation they've had, every time they've stared into each other's eyes, every time he's longed for more and been content with what he's had. Thinks about the bad, too, thinks about the arguments and the fights and the betrayals, every time they've hurt each other and all the ways they never understood each other. All of it. The good, the bad, the mundanity that sits in between. Pictures Cas here, with him, pictures him alive.
Like food from the fey court. He was given something so incredible, so amazing, and now he's just left knowing that he has to live without. He never thought he was missing something. But now he is. He's missing Cas, and he'll never be satisfied otherwise.
He fills his mind up with Cas. Like a prayer, like a wish. More than hope. Fills his mind up like certainty.
He opens his eyes.
He is back at the turn, that turn that he made so long ago, onto the strange and unnatural road. He is alone. There is nothing – and no one – else in the car besides him. No strange objects. Not even a stray coat. Just him.
He turns around, winding through narrow, old roads, winds his way through the night, unsettling, but no more than normal.
He is alone. He drives. He does not look back.
~~~
He wakes up in his bed. Stumbles his way into the bunker kitchen, bleary-eyed, pours himself a cup of coffee as he contemplates his dream. Sam's sitting at the table, muffles a laugh at the way he shambles over and takes a seat.
It comes back to him in pieces. The long, endless road. Slowly making his way onto smaller and smaller roads, more and more deserted. Finding that final road. The stars. The black, black void that surrounded him, and the uncanny creatures that had walked through it. The false-moon. The cold.
The voice, so familiar, that he never looked at.
The light, scouring his eyes. The howling, louder than just sound. The heat that blistered through him.
And the wish. He made a wish.
He gives a self-deprecating laugh at the thought of it. He doesn't think more about the dream. (He doesn't want to think about how he drove back alone. All of that, to end up alone. He doesn't want to think about that at all.)
There is a thud, from the bunker entrance. Both of them look up immediately, hunter's instincts clearing all sleep from them. They grab their guns, and make their way to the entrance, ready for whatever horror has come to their doorstep now.
In the entrance of the bunker is a man. His hair is black, and messy. His eyes are blue.
Dean wants to drop his gun. He doesn’t – he’s been burned far too many times to just accept a good thing. But he wants to.
He thinks about his dream. He thinks about dragging some blinding light behind him. Thinks about dragging the stars from the sky, the moon, taking every inch, drop, of howling light with him.
Cas stands at the entrance to the bunker, returned once more from death, as only their surreal lives could lead to.
"Hello Dean."