Oh Lord, Oh Lord, what do I do? I’ve fallen for someone who’s nothing like you He’s raised on the edge of the devil’s backbone Oh I just wanna take him home Oh I just wanna take him home

Hell was as bleak and barren as the stories Cas had been told as a fledgling.

He spent years traversing the plains. His Grace pulsed like an open wound with every step he took, eons of nothing stretched out all around him, sapping at him, stretching him thin. His true form meant nothing here, the size of it dwarfed by the endless miles of wasteland. The Deadlands, the demons called it.

Every soul had to make the walk.

It served to damn them to ruination, a mock imitation of the walk to the gates of Heaven, a twisted spin set to wreck an already tarnished soul.  Despair hung in the air like a viscous fog, thick and clawing and every day was a battle to make it through.

Cas still had faith when he ventured into Hell, the task set before him one he’d willingly taken, his Father’s word one he’d never had cause to doubt. But by the time he made it to the mountains, the sharp ridge appearing across the haze of the desert, he had to wonder how the Righteous Man could have made it this far.

It took Cas three more years to cross the Devil’s Backbone—the ridge unforgiving, it’s valley’s wells of darkness. But it was here, fighting with everything he had to stay afloat, that Cas first felt it.

The warmth of a soul.

A soul that despite the whispers Cas had heard on his travels, still shone brightly enough to be felt by Grace. It wasn’t until he was on the descent that he realised he could see it, the glimmer of light that was as glorious as the sight of Heaven’s gates in the distance. And it wasn’t until Cas laid eyes on it—the soul that restored his strength, that filled him with light and hope—that Cas realised he was already in love.

Oh Lord, Oh Lord, he’s somewhere between A hangman’s knot, and three mouths to feed There wasn’t a wrong or a right he could choose He did what he had to do Oh he did what he had to do

Cas may have rebuilt Dean—stitched him back together and embraced the edges of his soul—but it tooks him years to truly learn the righteous man he’d fallen in love with.

Every piece that Dean let slip, every passing comment or shuttered expression, every joke that was laced with too much bitterness, Cas hoarded each and every one.

Like puzzle pieces, he started putting them together, his hands gentle, but struggling—the finished picture a mystery to him.

He started at the edges, pieces roughly hewn and hastily gathered, glimpses into Dean’s past that painted a picture but didn’t tell the whole story. So many of the pieces didn’t want to fit, like there had been an error in their manufacture, and it took a while for Cas to detract the lies Dean told Sam from the truth he didn’t want him to hear.

The central pieces were far harder to uncover.

Cas caught a glimpse through Dean’s dreams, flashes of pool tables and dirty alleyways, rough hands and knives on throats, money changing hands under tables and across bars. But it was years before the words were spoken for Cas to hear for himself, years before the righteous man crumbled before him, whispering the words that bore the weight of regret on his soul.

Cas ached for him then, ached for the loss of Dean’s childhood, for the things he had to endure. But still he loved him, because for all of Dean’s shame, all Cas saw was strength.

And when he finished the puzzle, when he slotted the final piece into place, the man that Cas saw before him had nothing to be ashamed of.

Give me the burden, give me the blame I’ll shoulder the load, and I’ll swallow the shame Give me the burden, give me the blame How many, how many Hail Marys is it gonna take?

Prayer had been Cas’ native tongue for as long as he could remember.

When he had first been sent to Earth, he prayed often. He prayed for humanity, for their souls—so human, so fragile. He prayed for counsel, and guidance; he prayed for a light to lead him home.

It wasn’t until centuries later that Cas realised he had stopped praying for his charges and started praying for himself. His unanswered prayers, lost in amongst the stars, had long-turned into pleas. His once humble words now little short of begging, the shame of it a burden on his Grace and yet the silence heavier still.

After his return from Hell, Cas’ prayers had turned to anger. Disbelief had rooted itself deep into his Grace, curling into despair at the Father that had turned his back on him. And for a while, Cas stopped praying at all. Instead he aimed his thoughts—his wishes, his fears, his desires—at the man who had never given him reason to doubt. Dean Winchester had once turned his back on him, but he’d found him again, and for an Angel that had been lost (abandoned), that meant more than his Father could ever understand.    

Cas’ prayers to Dean became coloured in shades of red. Shame. Wrath. Lust. Envy. All of Cas’ sins, laid out on a plateau of crimson. Cas wanted, wanted in ways he had never quite understood. And he loved. Loved in ways he was once told he never could.

And so when Dean took the Mark, Cas started praying again to a God he no longer had faith in. He prayed on behalf of the soul that had restored his own faith. He prayed selflessly and sincerely, begging not for answers, nor guidance, but for the first time for the true sake of another. He prayed that the stain on Dean’s soul wouldn’t tarnish the brightness beneath. He prayed that the blood Dean spilled would not be wagered against him, that the measure of his life would not go wanting.

And quietly, in the dark, when he finally realised that no one was listening, he prayed again anyway. He prayed for strength, for himself. Because despite it all, even when he looked at Dean and black stared back instead of green, he loved him—loved him with everything he had and everything he was. And Cas would give a thousand lifetimes to take the darkness away from him.

Don’t care if he’s guilty, don’t care if he’s not He’s good and he’s bad and he’s all that I’ve got Oh Lord, Oh Lord, I’m begging you please Don’t take that sinner from me

Dean carried guilt as though it was soldered to his soul—oil-slick dark and sticking to the spaces between his ribs, filtering into his lungs, slowly drowning him from the inside out.

With every touch Cas tried to wash it away. With every glance, every shared breath, every moment they spent alone in the quiet, Cas tried with all he had to cleanse the darkness.

Dean’s guilt was heavy, pressing. Valid. And yet Dean’s sins were sins that to Cas may as well have been miracles, for Cas had seen Dean’s soul at its weakest, and even in the barrenest depths of Hell, it had never once wavered.

It took years for Dean to let Cas in, for Dean to share the full extent of his burden. Longer still for Cas to share his. For Cas knew of guilt the same way he knew of love. A once unfathomable concept, now etched into his very being. He carried his own guilt beneath a banner of shame, but for Dean, for his soul, Cas’ pride was insignificant, nothing in the face of what he wouldn’t do for the man before him.

And so each night when they fell into bed, wrapped together under a different cloak—one made of secrets and moonlight, of intimacy and sweat on skin, of brushes of lips and touching fingertips—Cas said a final prayer. A prayer to the Father that left him, for the man who saved him.