WARNING: This fic contains a major (and incontrovertible) character death.

Dean Winchester does not cry.

He doesn't remember the last time he really cried, more than the errant tear that escapes when life is too heavy and killing things isn't enough to make it stop hurting. But this…this is the point where he breaks at last, and though there is rage aplenty, there isn't nearly enough to smother the crystal-clear, razor-sharp knowledge of things—important things, essential things—lost and gone forever.

Dean always thought if he ever allowed himself to feel this much pain again, it would be over Sam, maybe Bobby. He was surprised and ashamed when it didn't come with his father's death. But whether he would allow it or not isn't even the issue; he has no power to stop what he's feeling in this moment. It's horrible and it's final, and knowing that is the worst part of all.

He's lost things before, people. He's lost his mother, his father, his brother three times over. He's lost Bobby and Lisa and Ben, and another child…a daughter he never had a chance to be a father to. He's lost Benny, and Castiel, Castiel, Castiel more than anyone. He's lost the angel more times than he can bear to think about.

But Cas always came back, and somehow that made it manageable. Whether he acknowledged it or not, Dean's always had that thought in the back of his mind, since the first time Castiel returned from beyond the grave. He was the most impossible-where do angels even go when they die-and yet he always showed up again. Dean counted on it. Even when he watched Cas disappear into the reservoir, even as he clenched his fingers in the wet fabric of that dirty trench coat as he folded it away for safekeeping…he knew somehow. Everyone he's ever loved will leave him eventually, but Cas always, always comes back.

Not now, though. There's a howling in his ears that just won't quit because he's staring, finally, at the incontrovertible proof that he is alone in the universe. There won't be a sudden reappearance, no phone call from a hospital miles away, no walking out of the river unscathed, no being pulled from Purgatory and dumped, dirty and confused, on Dean's doorstep.

Dean grasps one of those hands, the hands that gripped him tight and raised him from Perdition, the hands that have healed him, pulled him back from the brink of death and despair more times than he cares to count. It's cold and stiff under his fingers, as though the body it belongs to has been dead for a long time. It's only been minutes, and Dean doesn't understand.

"Cas," he gasps out. "Cas, please…tell me you're there, man. If you can hear me, just please…you have to come back."

He knows there won't be an answer, but it doesn't stop him from babbling on, begging the angel who always comes when he calls to show up just one more time.

His eyes blur with tears—not one, but many, more than he thought he had left—and he counts it a blessing. If he can't see he doesn't have to understand, doesn't have to take it in.

Sam stands a few feet away, speechless with horror and grief, both his own and an extra measure on his brother's behalf. He doesn't want to see this, either, doesn't want to acknowledge the evidence of Castiel's passing or the pain in his brother's choking sobs that tell anyone listening everything they needed to know about what Dean feels—has felt all along—for a nerdy angel in a trench coat.

That coat always made Castiel look so much more imposing than his slight stature should have allowed. It's a part of him, and always seemed just as obstinate and impenetrable as the angel inside it.

It looks oddly thin and flat, now, twisted haphazardly underneath the body, smudged with dirt and blood and God knows what else. The body itself looks so much smaller now, too, without the fire-and-gravel presence of Castiel to animate it. It looks like Jimmy Novak again, slight and thin and a bit pale, a conventional man in a conventional suit, sprawled in the dust to which he will now return.

The only evidence that Castiel was ever there is in that dust, spread out along the ground on either side of him, dwarfing him even more with their size alone, to say nothing of what they mean to the people watching: the scorched black outline of a once-magnificent pair of wings.

Author's Note: I have no idea why I had to do this to myself. It's the absolute worst case scenario I can imagine for the show right now, and I hope they don't ever go there. I guess just that quote from Misha and the growing fear that there won't be a happy ending for the boys has me thinking morbid thoughts, thinking about what it would take to break Dean out of his tendency to bottle all his emotions up, what it would take to make him give up on Castiel. And I think they're the same thing.