Castiel

The world has never looked so dark.

Cas lies on the cold ground staring up at the stars. They're strangely beautiful, shimmering through the blood red haze descending over his vision.
He can feel his limbs bent at unnatural angles, and even through the searing pain in his right leg and the burning numbness settling in his forearms, Castiel can hear Dean calling his name weakly.
"Cas...Castiel..." Dean's voice comes from somewhere off to his left. "Are you there?"
Cas tries to open his mouth to speak, but his senses are flooded with the acrid stench of burning oil and smoke and singed vinyl, effectively choking off any sound he might have made. He can hear a ringing in his ears that has grown to a earsplitting scream, blocking out everything that he might hear.
Pain begins to take over his body, the corners of his vision begins to darken, but all Castiel can do is look at the stars.

***

Dean

"Cas...Castiel..." Dean's voice is strained and anguished. "Are you there?"
Silence.
Dean's heart feels like it's breaking. He can't bear the thought of Cas lying bloody and broken in the wreckage of his beloved Impala. Dean refuses to entertain the notion of Cas being anything worse than badly hurt.
Dean tries to reach for his phone to call 911, but he cries out in pain as he tried to move his arms. Both of them seem to be broken.
Dean does something he's never done before: he prays.
God, please, if you're real, if you care about your children at all, please, please, let Cas live. That's all I ask.
Dean hears sirens in the distance, and relief floods him and he allows darkness take him home.

***

Dean wakes to white walls and blinding white light.
For a minute he thinks he died and went to heaven, but then the pain in his arms set in and a pounding headache reveals itself to him and he knows he survived.
Dean groans and looks around his hospital room.
It was pretty bland, as most hospital rooms are. Several machines were hooked up to Dean, making various beeping sounds; there was a fake plant in the window that faces out to the hallway whose purpose Dean assumes to be was to liven up the clinical, sterile room a bit.
Suddenly, Dean is hit with a wave a panic concerning Cas.
Where is he? Is he alive? Is he hurt? Cas!
Dean looks around frantically for a nurse, but can't see any from the confines of his hospital bed. Dean spies a red button with a faded but still discernible CALL NURSE printed above it.
Dean reaches for the button, but is stopped by a sharp pain in his arms. Dean just now realizes both his arms are firmly wrapped in layers of Ace bandages and gauze, and from the rigidity of his joints he can tell his arms have also been splinted.
How the fuck am I supposed to call the nurse with two broken arms?? Dean thought disbelievingly. He wanted to talk to the one in charge of that decision.
Fortunately, a nurse walks by his room at that time, and Dean calls out to her in a croaky voice,
"Ma'am? Miss? Excuse me?"
The nurse backtracks to his room and pokes her head in,
"Oh good, you're awake! Your father--Bobby, was it?--is here in the waiting room if you'd like to see him."
Dean's heart drops down through the bed and settles on the sterile white laminate floor. His own dad didn't want to see him?
At least Bobby cares enough to see me when I almost died, Dean thinks bitterly.
"Uh, yeah, I guess. Is my brother there too?"
"I think he went home; it's almost 5am, he's been here most of the night," the nurse responds.
As the nurse is about to leave, Dean calls out suddenly, "What about Cas? Castiel Novak."
The nurse's perpetual smile wavers and she says, "I can't tell you that right now. You need rest, we can't have you worrying about someone else when you should be worrying about yourself." With that, she disappears.
Dean rolled his eyes and panic starts to set in. Didn't the nurse know that he would worry even more if he didn't know Cas was okay?
As Dean looks around for some way to escape his bonds, he hears someone clear their throat in front of him.
Dean's head snaps up and his eyes settle on a short-ish man with a scruffy beard and a smart black suit.
"Who're you?" Dean asks warily, already suspicious about this new character.
"Doesn't matter right now. Let's just cut to the chase: your friend is dying. I can help," the man says. He has a British accent and a condescending voice that sounds confident in having the upper hand on the situation.
"Cas? Cas is dying?" Dean's heart climbs its way back up into his throat, a lump of emotion constricting his words. "How do you know? You're not hospital staff, are you?"
The British man laughs bitterly. "No, no I'm much more than that. I'm Crowley," he says as if it is a grand title.
"Crowley," Dean repeats. "Sorry, doesn't ring a bell."
The man--Crowley--seems slightly put out, but digresses.
"Anyway, Dean, I was wondering if you'd like to strike a deal. One human soul for another."
Dean snorts, "A human soul? What kind of sick joke is that? You're crazy. Get lost, you creep."
Crowley rolls his eyes, "I'm not a creep, I'm trying to help you, you ungrateful bastard!"
Dean narrows his eyes at the man, "Okay, so let's say I do 'sell my soul' to you. How do I know you're not just conning me and that Cas is perfectly healthy?"
Crowley advances on Dean and touches two fingers to his forehead. After a dizzying, lurching sensation, Dean finds himself by his best friend's bedside. Cas is laid out on the hospital gurney, blanched as the sheets he's resting on. His lips are pale, and his breathing is shallow, filtered through a tube jammed down his throat. The wires and machines hooked up to him beep faintly and weakly, which worries Dean. It breaks Dean's heart to see him like this: fragile, broken, and clinging to life halfheartedly.
He buries his face into Cas's neck, his movements hindered by his bandaged arms and Cas's wires.
Dean feels tears gather in his eyes and blinks them away, embarrassed at the thought of crying in front of this stranger. He pulls away, his touch lingering on Cas's heavily bandaged arms.
"Sorry. Can you...can you really fix him?"
"Good as new. Scout's honor." Crowley holds up three fingers in a mock salute.
Dean nods, gaze still fixed on Cas's shallowly rising and falling chest.
"So how does this work? I just give you my soul, and when I die, I go to Hell? Forever?"
Crowley nods, "Hit it right on the head."
Dean is caught in a moment of indecision. Should he do this? Should he actually sell his soul to the Devil to save the man he loves' life? Forever was an awful long time to be burning...but the rest of his life was going to be a living hell without Cas.
Dean inhales shakily. "How long...how long would I have? Before I die, I mean."
Crowley hums, his hand resting near his mouth, pretending to think about it. "Well, normally I'd give you ten years, but in this case I'm not sure if I have ten whole years to give. After all, he might survive, but will he ever love you back...? How badly do you want him, Dean?"
"You're right. I do love him,"
God, was that a hell of an understatement. Dean adored him, cherished him. Dean wished he had bigger words than "love" to describe Cas. He wished he had words for the way Cas's eyes lit up like Christmas when he saw Dean, how Cas would grit his teeth and force food down his throat even though he hated everything about eating, he did it for Dean and Dean alone. He wished he could describe to this Crowley person how Cas's raven hair was perpetually ruffled and how his strikingly blue irises were intensified by the thick black frames of his glasses, and how it hurt Dean to see those scars crisscrossing his beautiful body, how much it killed Dean to know that Cas didn't think he was worthy of the slightest affection. Dean wished all of these things and more, but the one thing he could have was sitting in front of him, dying. Dean wanted him so, so badly, but what about what Cas wants? How would he react when he found out that Dean had literally sold his soul to Satan to save him, when the last thing he wanted was to be saved?
Dean sets his jaw and looks Crowley in the eye. "I love him, so much, and I want him more than anything I've ever wanted before. But he wouldn't want me to burn in Hell for a mistake he made. I decline."
Crowley shrugs and says, "So be it."
With a snap of his fingers, the machinery hooked up to Cas begin to scream, warning lights and beeping going off as Cas's body arches, his arms and legs jerking and twitching as he chokes on the breathing tube that was supposed to be helping him breathe. Foam trickles from the corners of his mouth as choking gasps are ripped from his throat.
Dean is paralyzed with fear, the shrieking of the machines completely disabling any reactions he might have had to seeing his best friend, the man he loved, dying in front of him, all because he was too selfish to save him when he had the chance.
Nurses rush into the room, and one preps the defibrillator while another one rips open Cas's hospital gown, exposing his chest and protruding ribs, as well as numerous scars. Dean feels a painful twisting in his chest as he realizes, yet again, how much Cas had been hurting and how little he knew.
Another nurse tries to shoo him out, but Dean digs his heels in and the nurse gives up, focusing on the dying boy in front of him.
"Clear!" one of the nurses shout as all the other nurses remove their hands from Cas's body, which arches again as electricity so pumped into his body in a feeble attempt to restart his heart.
Dean is crying now, tears streaming down his face as he watches, powerless to stop it, the death of an angel.
But is he powerless? Dean tries to call out to Crowley. How do you contact a demon? Is there like a Dark Side version of praying?
"Crowley, you son of a bitch, come back! I accept! Any time period, I'll take it!" Dean cries out, his eyes screwed shut as hatred and pain and absolute anguish courses through his body.
When he opens his eyes, Crowley is standing in front of him.
"You have ten months. Make them count." With that, Crowley pulls Dean close and kisses him roughly, much to Dean's confusion and disgust.
When Crowley pulls back, Dean wipes his mouth vigorously on his hand, and returns his gaze back to Castiel.
With joy and pure gratefulness filling his chest, Dean's eyes light upon Castiel's living, breathing body. The nurses's frenzy slows. The machines return to a normal, steady beat. Dean can breathe again.
One of the nurses--the same one that tried to usher Dean out a little while ago--catches Dean by the shoulder and marches him to his room, lecturing about how he needs to stay in his own damn room and stop nearly killing other patients. Dean can barely hear him over his own thoughts, though:
What the hell? Did that actually work? Is Cas going to live? Ten months? Is that how long I have left to live? Did I actually sell my fucking soul to the Devil?
Dean was happy, hell, he was ecstatic that Cas was going to be okay, but he was still having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that he had ten months to live.
Well, I guess I'll just have to make them count.
When Dean returns to his hospital room, he grabs a pad of paper and a pen and begins to write, ignoring the protesting of his broken arms.

Three Hundred Day Bucket List:
Day one: save a life.

Check.