Cas started dying, again. First Dean was forced to watch Raphael explode him in agonizing slow motion, over and over while Dean stood there helplessly, frozen and unable to so much as scream a warning. After the first few times, Raphael started appearing in vessel form, his power and his devastation no less devastating but now able to turn to Dean and smile before he snapped his fingers.
He and Sam crouched in a warehouse amid the wreckage, helping Jimmy up, asking what had happened. Jimmy tentatively, shakily told them about Cas—about Cas being ripped out even though Jimmy hadn't rejected him, about the blast of light falling to a million splintered pieces that faded to nothing visible on this plane of existence anymore. He was dead, Jimmy told them apologetically, as if he'd had any control over what happened. They killed him, Jimmy explained. No reprogramming this time, in this universe. No hope.
Sam restrained him at the Bunker, telling him what happened to Cas after the last of his pilfered grace had ebbed away. He didn't want to, but Dean taunted him after one too many blood injections, the influence of human blood bringing back anger and frustration that he channeled outward, striking out unfairly but uncontrollably. He told Sam he was too weak to cure him, that he couldn't do this without help, without Cas. And Sam blurted out that it wouldn't be happening because Cas had died, had succumbed to a fever frying his brain while the grace faded. Dean raged so hard after that that he'd been able to break free of the restraints and the sting of the devil's trap, chasing Sam through the Bunker before his brother thought fast and managed to catch him in a simpler, physical trap.
Dean stood in a darkened basement, unable to affect reality. Unable to break Cas from his restraints or so much as wipe the blood from his face. And when Malachi decided to come down himself rather than send Theo, telling Cas not to ask for the mercy that wasn't there, Cas staunchly refused, simply requesting a quick death. In the end, Dean was just as unable to look away as he was to prevent Malachi from delivering the killing blow.
The worst was having to watch Metatron steal Cas's grace. Because this had happened so similarly in the real world as in this world. Dean grabbed for the instrument of torture still in the back of Naomi's skull, but his hands couldn't close on it and there was nothing he could do. Cas writhed in the restraints, Metatron's slick smug grin and infuriatingly soothing words about a new life for Cas... And here, that wasn't enough, apparently. Metatron giggled, sounding exactly as psycho on the outside as he was on the inside. "I'm sorry, Castiel," he snickered. "I never meant to let you leave here. I lied. We all tell stories. Some are more true than others. I did need your grace, though. Thank you." And his sickening smile never faltered as he picked up the blade again and shoved it into Cas's chest. He wasn't fazed even when Dean wrapped agonizingly ineffective hands around his throat or when Dean tried to break his neck. He calmly pulled the blade out, cleaned it with one slight movement of his hand, and walked away.
Dean would have stabbed himself if he could have picked anything up.
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Need You More Than You Know
FanfictionDean loses Cas, over and over again, at various points in their lives. But does he really? Takes place toward the end of season 10; MoC is still in play, Cas has his grace back, but can't sense Dean for the purposes of the story.
