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Dean eased the car down the off-ramp into the rest stop and cut the engine. He hoped the sudden silence wouldn't wake Sammy. They'd only been driving for about 5 hours, managing to get at least three state lines between them and Glenwood, but after everything that happened both Winchesters were understandably exhausted. Dean climbed out of the Impala, pulling his jacket tightly around him against the chill night air. He walked towards the line of trees surrounding the rest are, taking out his phone and dialled a number from memory.
"Hey Cas," he said into the receiver as he slid down to sit at the bottom of a tree.
"Where are you?" was all the angel said.
Dean's chin fell to his chest, so relieved that his angel understood without him having to explain that he needed him. "Minnesota, off I 90, there's a rest area near mile marker 119."
The line went dead and Dean let his phone fall to the ground, making a sullen and pained thump.
That wraith bitch had really fucked Dean up. Ripping off old hardened scabs and causing fresher wounds to fester. And despite what he'd told Sammy, sometimes there was just no more room inside to bury the pain, fear, and regret. Sometimes it just had to be...
Dew covered grass and pine needles crunched nearby becoming a soft pattern of footsteps.
Castiel knelt on the ground in front of his hunter, brow creased in concern, left hand gripping Dean's shoulder just above the scar that physically symbolized their connection.
"Cas," Dean's voice cracking on the simple monosyllabic word.
The angel instantly pulled Dean closer and without regard for prying eyes, teleported them several feet further into the tree line. Castiel took the time to resituate himself so that Dean‘s back was to his chest. Just enough for Dean to rest his head against him angel‘s shoulder, but not so far as to make Dean ‘feel like a girl.' "Dean," he ground out roughly, flexing his wings into a cocoon surrounding them both and separating them from the outside world, "what happened?"
"She got into my head, Cas. She said things."
Castiel held Dean as he shook, content to be there as long as Dean needed him.
"She made sense, Cas. Fucking wraith-bitch made sense!" The hunter tightened his already white knuckled fists and screwed his eyes shut against the memory.
"Just because she made sense, doesn't make her right," the hardness in the angel's voice the absolute inverse of the tender fingers combing through Dean's short mousy hair.
Dean nodded half-heartedly, finally allowing himself to relax against Cas' chest.
"I couldn't tell what was real or not. I didn't know who was real." He gulped hard, tongue darting out to moisten uncharacteristically dry lips. "In the Pit, I'd create these images in my head. Places where Mom was still alive, Sammy was ‘normal', Dad never knew about all this evil, and I was...." Glistening hazel eyes, turned up to Cas. "That creature, she twisted things, I need to know this is real, all of it Hell, Lilith, Lucifer and Michael, you?"
"Yes, Dean," Castiel's voice rumbled through his chest like a low soothing purr. "I wish it were not so, but yes."
"Don't you say that! Don't you ever say that!" Dean's eyes, no longer looking as if they were ready to overflow with unshed and wanted tears, burned with an angry fire and the determination that Castiel so loved. "You are the only good to come of this shit, and I wouldn't trade you any more than I'd trade Sammy for that dream life."
A sly smile crossed the angel's face as he began to understand his charge's conflict. The angel smiled at the man he loved, dipping down for a quick, but passionate kiss. "This is real, Dean. I am real. My feathers brushing over your skin are real." Each statement was punctuated with another kiss, and each kiss lessening the weight on his hunter's heart. "Your painful fight is real, and my faith in you and that you will triumph is real. Even beyond all those things, my love is real." Castiel used one slim finger to raise Dean's face to him, "Dean, whatever she said or whomever she showed you was only to weaken and destroy your strength- and you are stronger than that. You defeated her, even under her influence you were able to best her."
Dean managed a quirky smile, trying to erase the overflowing emotion from his earlier his outburst with his trademark self-depreciation, "What would I do without my angel."
At a rest stop near mile marker 119 on I 90 in Minnesota, set back out of sight of the other visitors and travellers looking for snacks, bathrooms, and sleep, an angel wrapped the man he loved in his arms and whispered, "You will never be without me. Sleep now, there will be more battles when you wake."