Cas told him.

Not much, no details or anything, just a little bit, of what saw. What Jack showed him. (Jack. It's strange that the thing they were dreading and fearing and planning around for months is just...just a kid, now.) All Cas really said was that they were all there and they were all happy. Alive, and together, and happy.

Dean scoffed a little and said something about happy endings only existing in fairy tales.

But, he let himself to think about it. All of them, together. Alive. Happy and whole and...past all the hurting and hunting. He let himself daydream about it, just once in awhile, in a hopeless sort of way. He knew it would never happen, knew it wasn't something that people like him got. But it was nice to fantasize, to pretend. To think about a life after it all, with Cas. With Cas and with Sam and, in this other future, even Jack.

He thought about the look on Cas's face when Cas told him about it. The way Cas was looking right at him, meeting his eyes, as if Dean himself had something to do with that future.

But then there was a burst of light and a flash of flaming grace and Cas's wings were burnt into gritty dirt.

They weren't all together and they sure as shit weren't happy.

(For a long time, that night, Dean stared at the charmarks of Cas's wings. They were ragged and used-up; nothing like the wings Cas said he saw on himself in Jack's vision. Nothing like the wings that burst out of Cas in that barn a thousand years ago. Dean didn't care. That night, he laid a reverent hand to the hinge of one wing and wished that he could pull Cas out of hell, like Cas had done for him.)

Dean drives to the meadow where he laid Cas to rest. (Cas deserved that, if nothing else - rest and peace.) He drives there and he takes a little bundle of wildflowers, just whatever he saw the bees attracted to, and he sits near the stream.

Years ago, he told Cas that he wasn't much for praying because it was too close to begging. Cas didn't come then. Now, Dean prays, wordless and formless, begging for Cas: CasCaspleaseCasneedyou. He doesn't come this time either.

"Cas," he says softly, eyes closed. "This isn't... It wasn't supposed to be like this." The stems of the flowers have gone ragged and wilted in his grip. "What about what you saw, huh? That future? All of us together and happy..." Dean's breath catches and he clenches his jaw around it. Swallows so thickly his throat clicks. "I never really believed that was something I could have but... But, god, man. I wanted it."

A breeze gently picks its way through the meadow. There are trees rustling nearby and the water continues to run. Dean hopes Cas likes it here.

"I wanted it with you."