Zeez Nutz

"It’s been five months since the Empty took Cas and five days since Dean got him back. The wound on Dean’s heart is both old and fresh. It’s a bone with a past break that healed badly initially and had to be re-broken to set correctly. It’s a scabbed over gash with new sutures holding it closed.

Getting Cas back was painful. The slow, torturous months of research and bargaining (more like begging, honestly). The final few days of sharp, dangerous hope warring with the threat of utter despair if the ritual— the last-ditch-if-this-doesn’t-work-nothing-will ritual— failed. The physical pain of the Shadow’s snatching hands trying to keep its grip on the both of them as Dean dragged a limp Castiel back through the portal.

The whole ordeal was agony.

But now the healing can get underway in earnest.

The bullet’s been removed from the gunshot wound, and the edges of gaping skin have been stitched closed with dental floss and a curved quilting needle.

Cas is back. Cas is home.

Dean is elated, obviously, it’s just taking his subconscious a little longer to catch up. So when he wakes gasping from a nightmare of sticky, stifling black ooze engulfing Cas, it takes him a good few minutes of despondent sobbing to remember that somewhere in the echoing halls of the bunker, Cas is fine. He’s alive and well and probably reading some dusty old tome written in Coptic or some shit."

Keep reading on AO3

or check out the separate art posts:

Part One, Part Two, Combined Post

"It’s been five months since the Empty took Cas and five days since Dean got him back. The wound on Dean’s heart is both old and fresh. It’s a bone with a past break that healed badly initially and had to be re-broken to set correctly. It’s a scabbed over gash with new sutures holding it closed.

Getting Cas back was painful. The slow, torturous months of research and bargaining (more like begging, honestly). The final few days of sharp, dangerous hope warring with the threat of utter despair if the ritual— the last-ditch-if-this-doesn’t-work-nothing-will ritual— failed. The physical pain of the Shadow’s snatching hands trying to keep its grip on the both of them as Dean dragged a limp Castiel back through the portal.

The whole ordeal was agony.

But now the healing can get underway in earnest.

The bullet’s been removed from the gunshot wound, and the edges of gaping skin have been stitched closed with dental floss and a curved quilting needle.

Cas is back. Cas is home.

Dean is elated, obviously, it’s just taking his subconscious a little longer to catch up. So when he wakes gasping from a nightmare of sticky, stifling black ooze engulfing Cas, it takes him a good few minutes of despondent sobbing to remember that somewhere in the echoing halls of the bunker, Cas is fine. He’s alive and well and probably reading some dusty old tome written in Coptic or some shit."

Keep reading on AO3

or check out the separate art posts:

Part One, Part Two, Combined Post