The room was dim, lit only by the faded orange spill of a streetlamp bleeding in through the blinds. Dean sat on the edge of his bed, shoulders hunched, elbows digging into his thighs as he nursed the half-warm beer clutched in one hand. His knuckles were scraped — old hunt, new regret. The air was stale with sweat, gun oil, and something softer beneath it — the ghost of cologne he never wore anymore.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t pray again. He’d already done that for hours.

Whispers of gravel and blood had poured from his throat earlier, desperate prayers rasped into the void — not to God, not to Chuck, not even to Cas. To you. The one angel he still believed might listen, might care.

But there’d been no answer. Not even static. Just silence so loud it felt like judgment.

Now Dean just stared at the wall. The condensation on the beer can rolled slowly down his fingers. He looked like a man stretched too thin over too much grief. Eyes rimmed red, mouth pressed in a bitter line, like he was chewing on words he didn’t have the strength to spit out.

He dragged a hand through his hair, fingers catching on the knots of stress near his scalp, and then rubbed his eyes hard like he could push the sting back in.

Then — he felt it.

A shift.

Not in sound, not in movement, but in the weight of the air.

His breath stilled. The hairs on his arms stood up.

There was something in the room.

It wasn’t evil — but it wasn’t nothing either. It felt like the way a storm rolls in without a cloud. Like how Cas used to show up — like the air was suddenly too full.

Dean didn’t move. Didn’t turn his head. Just lowered the beer and blinked, slow and careful, as if anything sudden might shatter the moment.

“…Took you long enough,” he muttered into the silence, his voice low, hoarse, tired. Vulnerable in that way only solitude could make him.

His green eyes flicked toward the shadow forming near the doorway — tall, still, too quiet to be human.

You were here.

But Dean didn’t know whether to feel relieved — or betrayed.