All Things pt 2
Continued from here...
“This is why I loathe doing things myself,” Death sighs, stepping carefully around the puddle. “Reaping is clean work. Detatched. You show up, you take the soul to its destination, and you move on. No showing up beforehand to tell the family. No staying behind to watch messy displays of grief. No... vomit.”
“My most sincere apologies,” Castiel grumbles. The taste in his mouth is foul; the smell of the bile is worse. He’s hunched over, spitting. Chuck is rubbing his lower back, making that absurd tsk sound again. He straightens, wiping his lips on the back of a sleeve, and sniffs.
“I accept them.” Death watches as the floor of Heaven cleans itself; the stain of Castiel’s purged stomach gone as though it never existed... which makes sense. Heaven is meant to be perfect. It doesn’t accommodate things like puke. “Don’t feel offended, Castiel. It was not meant as a slight.” He taps his cane along the ground as he waits. “Your kind is not meant to feel, and yet you do -- clearly, you do quite deeply.” He narrows his eyes, a sly, sidelong glance. “Perhaps I misjudged you at our earlier meeting.”
Castiel stares at him for a moment, beyond the gaunt human visage that cloaks itself over the abstract itself. Death looms, quiet and patient, like a pair of vast, dark wings. It watches him, and does not judge. Merely waits.
That is all it has to do.
“Cas,” Chuck soothes. “Look at me. Look at me,” again, until Castiel does. He smiles at him, kindly. “Listen. I haven’t been the kind of Father that I should’ve been. I could’ve -- I should’ve -- done a lot better by you. I wasn’t there. Ever. I know. I regret that now. Stupid, but I do. Doesn’t change anything. I made the angels, all of you, to love me. And then when I made mankind, I wanted you to love them.” He sighs. “I didn’t spend any time or thought toward who would love you. And that was … that sucked. That was shitty of me. You guys got the short end of the Creation stick. Orders, and law, and discipline, and none of the good stuff.”
“Flying is good,” Castiel says. His voice is small in his own ears. It’s hard to hear what Chuck is telling him. They are the things he’s always wanted to hear. Acknowledgment, perhaps the most of all. But they are words that do nothing at all. They change nothing at all. “Flying is … good stuff.”
“I love wings,” God agreed with a smile. “It was a joy to give them to you.”
“Thank you.”
Chuck leans forward and kisses his forehead. “I have one more order for you, my Castiel.”
“You want me to kill you.” His heart hurts.
“That’s not the order.” Their faces are close. Personal space, the lack of awareness thereof, seems to be a family trait. “I want you to go to Dean when this is done. That’s my last order to you. Go to Dean. I’ll show you where he is. Go to him. Understand?”
“What’s Dean supposed to do?” Cas sighs. “I don’t want to send him against the leviathan. You told me they would take care of themselves. He’s done enough, hasn’t he?”
“He’ll take care of you.”
“He won’t,” Cas snorts. “He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you, Castiel,” Chuck huffs. “Far from it.” The writer tilts his head, giving Castiel a look that knows too much. Knows everything. “He loves you. You know he does. You love him.”
“I love him. I admit that. But he doesn’t love me. Not... not like I need him to.”
Death snorts; Chuck glances at him sourly but otherwise the interruption is ignored.
“He’s a human, Cas. He’ll surprise you.” A grin. “They’ll always surprise you. I still hold that they’re the best things I’ve ever done. You, though... “ He leans forward, voice dropping as though he’s telling some great secret. “I think you might be second best.”
A year ago, perhaps two, the words would have mattered. Now, though, all Castiel can seem to feel is cold.
“I will go to Dean,” he promises. How can he not? He is an angel -- the only one left. He is a soldier and servant of God. For another two minutes, at least, while God still exists. “I’ll go to Dean.”
Death steps closer, lurking dark at the edge of his vision. A waiting shadow, a perched crow.
“Now I’m asking a favor,” Chuck says, straightening.
Castiel wants to laugh. A favor. He has no ability to deny him. “What sort of sword kills God?” he asks. “I can’t even touch an archangel with mine. How do you suppose I even...” He looks up, and takes the hand that Chuck offers, gets pulled to his feet with his help.
“Sword?” Chuck quirks an eyebrow at him. He reaches into the pocket of his bathrobe and pulls out a single slim fountain pen. “I’m a writer, Castiel. I’ve always been a maker of stories. This is my true weapon.”
Castiel looks down at the pen in his hands, small and slight in his hand. He looks up, where Chuck -- God, the Father -- watches with an easy smile and a stained bathrobe, and bunny slippers.
This is the only favor God has ever asked of him.
He closes his eyes.
---
It’s raining in Spink county, South Dakota, a chill 43 degrees at 11:15pm, when Castiel appears on the front porch of a split-level ranch home. This is not Sioux Falls, not the familiar expanse of Singer Salvage, but he can feel three bright presences inside the house that beckon to him in that odd, irascible way of theirs.
He can’t bring himself to knock.
He’s not sure how close he has to get before the order of “go to Dean” is technically fulfilled, and he isn’t sure he can go any further than where he’s standing right now. He’s rapidly become drenched, blinking through the water as it sluices from his hair and down into his eyes.
He thinks he could stand here forever, if the door never opens. And he thinks he may as well. There is nowhere else to go.
Life doesn’t seem to work like that, though.
The door pulls open, a squeak of old rusted hinge, and before Castiel can say anything Dean is right there, in front of him, calling something out over his shoulder as he takes a step forward, nearly tripping on his own feet in surprise when he realizes there’s something on the porch. The man lets out a started “Jesus fucking fuck!” and all Castiel can think is there really isn’t any such thing as blasphemy anymore, so he can let that go.
That’s almost funny.
What really makes it work, though, is the rather impressive punch Dean lands right in Castiel’s face. He actually goes down. He must be in shock. He’s heard of it before, though never thought it might apply to a being such as himself. The only thought that seems to line up correctly in his mind right now is Dean... Dean I’ve done a horrible thing. Again. Will be he apologizing to this man forever?
He’s dimly aware of Dean’s ranting, some mix of think you can just show up out of the blue like that and thought you were dead you son of a bitch and scared the shit out of me for crissakes how long have you been out here, with a touch of holy water thrown in his face for good measure. He just stays where he landed on the porch, staring at the crooked wooden slats beneath him and trying to figure out what to do with the odd feeling bubbling up inside of him. It’s a surprise to him and Dean both when it finally bursts free -- laughter. Unrestrained, wild, broken laughter, and he can’t stop.
“Cas...”
Dean fills his vision. Castiel buries his face in his hands to make it go away. All the while, he laughs.
Possibly, he might be sobbing. The two seem similar, sometimes.
“Jesus, Cas... what is that, a pen? Where’d you get a pen? Fuck, is this blood? Are you bleeding? Cas, c’mon, you gotta... quit making those noises, you’re freaking me out...”
And other generally concerned noises. He quiets as he lets Dean hoist him to his feet, lets himself be led inside the house, pushed onto a couch. He’s sopping wet, twitching now and then with a flutter of belated hysterics. Apparently his right hand and the entire sleeve thereof is stained pink with rain-diluted blood. Trust Dean to know it when he sees it.
“I’m guessing there’s a story here,” Dean sighs after he drapes a towel over Castiel’s shoulders and sits beside him, having subjected the angel to a thorough round of cristo and silver and, finally, Bobby’s searching grouchy stare. Sam is nowhere in sight. Castiel wonders if he’s somewhere in bed being broken and crazy. He wonders if Dean remembers that’s Castiel’s fault.
Surely, he must.
God. Castiel is so tired.
Will you kill me now? he wants to ask Dean. Because Dean could, he’s suddenly sure. Just as Dean could punch him hard enough to fell him; just as Dean alone seemed to have this permanent ability to ruin Castiel’s heart. Can I be done now?
But Castiel has only ever asked Dean for one favor, and Dean had said no, then. The likelihood of Dean killing Castiel just because he asked him to seems slim to none. A better course of action would be to try and piss him off. Remind him, perhaps, that he has so horribly damaged his brother. Sam would always be Dean’s most sensitive trigger. Maybe he could just so happen to leave his angel sword laying about the house. Dean had killed Zachariah without ill-effect; Castiel is reasonably sure that whatever properties allowed that must still be in effect.
He blinks as Dean slaps him sharply across the face, and looks up with a slight frown.
“I don’t know why you did that,” he says.
“Because up until now you’ve been staring at nothing for so long Bobby thought you were having an absent seizure,” Dean snaps. True enough, the older hunter is standing just behind him, looking miffed and curmudgeonly and, Castiel realizes with surprise, concerned.
“You slapped me.” It’s not a stab but it’s a start.
“Works wonders on folk in shock.” Bobby stares at him a moment longer, then looks at Dean. “I’ll leave you two to suss out what’s going on. Just gimme a holler if I’m about to have a cloud of avengin’ angels taking off my new roof. I’d like a little prior notice, is all.”
“Was it angels?” Dean leans forward, staring at Castiel intently. He stares back. This seems to happen often between them. In fact, it’s so much like nothing has changed that he almost wants to laugh again. It’s all so absurd.
“There are no angels,” he says. “Avenging or otherwise. They’re gone. They’re all gone. There’s only me.”
He can see the hunter rise up within Dean. It darkens his eyes, lifts his shoulders. It threads steel through him, pushes back some emotions while bringing others forward. His whole soul shifts for battle. “They left?”
Castiel makes a wounded noise. “In a sense. They have left in the sense that they are gone. Utterly gone. Flash-burns of a hundred thousand wings on the floors of Heaven.” All he can see is that final smile on the face of God. “We have nowhere to go, you know, when we die. We simply burn to nothing.”
“Something killed the angels?” Dean asks him. His voice is hushed. He leans forward, and they’re very close now.
Dean smells good, Castiel thinks. He cannot for the life of him remember what Chuck smelled like. Possibly there was no smell at all.
“Cas, you gotta stay with me.” Drawing his attention back again. He looks up at Dean and his dark, deep eyes. This, he thinks. This is why He wanted me here, I think. He knew that Dean could end me. He knew that I would want it this way. It’s a lovely final gift. “Cas, is there something after you? Something that killed the other angels?”
“No.” Please make it quick. I don’t deserve that, but it would be … nice. And I’m glad that it’s you. A strange sentiment, but he is. Of all the times Castiel has died, he thinks being killed by Dean will be the best of them. “I killed them.” He looks down at his hand. The pen is still there, in his fingers. He can’t unclench them. There’s a bit of something dark and fleshy lodged in the tip of the nib. “I killed all of them. Heaven is empty. It’s only me.” He doesn’t wait for a reaction -- Dean seems to be frozen anyway -- reaching into his sleeve with his free hand and drawing out his sword. He hands it out to Dean, hilt first, frowning slightly as the hunter makes no move toward it.
“What’s this about? Cas, I don’t... I don’t want your sword.”
“You should take it,” Castiel insists. “You’ll need it for this. You can use it, you’ve done it before. Zachariah. You’ve managed before.” He holds it a moment longer; Dean doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything but give Cas that same heavy, pinched stare, so he shrugs and sets it down on the floor. “Sam must be upstairs,” he says, pushes deliberately at that button. “How is he?”
There we are. Dean tenses. Anger pulses through him, clear and dark and dangerous. “Sleeping,” Dean says, tight. “He’s doing all right, no thanks to you. And we gotta have words about that, don’t think I forgot. But he’s doing all right.” He sniffs, shifting on the couch a little. “Better than I would. Better than I have. I know he went through worse... down there... but somehow he’s making terms with it.”
Humans. They’ll surprise you.
Castiel stares at his lap. After a moment he holds up his hand, the one that cannot seem to let go of the fountain pen. It weighs nothing in his grip, despite being, yes, so much mightier than the sword.
They need to have words. It’s true, but they will have Dean’s words. There isn’t enough time anywhere for the things Castiel would tell Dean. Would that Dean just listen.
“I found God.”
“Was he on a flatbread after all?” Dean snorts, crossing a leg over the other. He kicks a foot lazily until it dawns on him that Castiel hasn’t moved, hasn’t argued, hasn’t done anything. He sits up with a blink. “You’re-- shit, you’re serious. What-- Where?”
“Heaven.”
“Go fucking figure, okay. What’d he say? Did you punch him in his face? Tell me you did.”
“I did not punch him in his face,” Castiel says quietly.
“But what did he say?”
“He said that he loved me.” The memory twists his lips, not quite a smile. No, not nearly a smile. “He said sorry. And he asked me to kill him.”
He almost wishes he had the forethought to take a photograph of Dean’s face in that instant. He would remember it forever, of course, had he the time, but he thinks that Sam would like a photograph of it, for after Castiel is dead. It’s such a perfect look of dumbfounded surprise that he’s sure the younger brother would have a wonderful time looking at it.
“Cas...?”
“Dean.” Yes. I’m glad it’s you. “My Father is dead. He said he loved me, and then he asked...” He sits up and turns to look at him, taking Dean’s hand and turning it over, palm up. It takes real effort to uncurl his fingers, to give over the pen. He takes a deep breath and thinks of the brothers and sisters who have gone before him.
He wishes, one last time, for a forgiveness he knows he doesn’t deserve. If there is any reason a righteous man should strike him down, of all of his grievous errors and sins and failures, surely this is it.
“I killed God.” His voice doesn’t waver. He takes that as a good sign. “I have killed God,” he says again. “And... and though you owe me nothing, though you hate me, I know...” But oh, Dean, I love you. He would say it in his head for however long he had left. Not long at all. “There is no one left. No angels. No God. There is no one left but you...”
Really, there never was anyone but him.
“Dean. Could you please kill me?”
---
The problem with humans, Castiel sees now, is that they surprise you. They will always surprise you. Even the ones that you know, down to the very tapestry of their molecules.
He has made a grave mistake.
It’s one of the reasons he fell in love with Dean in the first place, and somehow he just... forgot. He thinks perhaps Chuck did not, and that this was a clever trap that he fell into so very neatly.
The problem is this: Dean is a man who is kind and gentle with broken things.
He’ll never kill Castiel, not now. He thought that admitting the gravest of possible sins would be enough to ensure his execution (what could top deicide?) but Dean is too observant, or Castiel’s voice trembled and gave him away, or perhaps it was the utter lack of inflection... Either way, all he managed was to prove to Dean that Castiel himself is a broken thing.
So he’ll never kill him, now. He’ll take him in, wrap him in blankets and soft clothes -- his own, likely, worn jeans and faded rock shirts -- and force him to eat and sleep, and watch over him the way that Dean watches over any sad thing that stumbles into his care. Cas had wanted to enrage the Hunter; instead he awoke the Protector. And now he’s stuck. He can almost see the way that Dean weaves walls around him, hemming him in with soothing words, setting the sword up on a high shelf, out of sight. He can see the next few years rolling out before him like a road in disrepair: the gradual loss of his “mojo”, a slow descent into painful lesser, and the guilt that makes him ask for execution will blunt and become familiar (but never gone.)
Dean will keep him, but never kill him.
In time, perhaps Dean will even love him back.
But for now, Dean pushes a mug of cocoa in his hands and towel dries Castiel’s hair for him, speaking of television shows and useless trivialities, standing close enough that the heat of his body is a slow comfort. He takes Castiel under his wing, makes him family, makes him safe. It is the full force of Dean’s protective nature and Castiel cannot fight it, cannot outlast it. He loves Dean for this very part of him. It’s a twist that he could not have seen coming, but he thinks with a bitter smile that someone probably did.
It’s too much, and he is suddenly so very tired. His eyes slip closed; he gives in to Dean’s care, submits to the notion of survival, and he can feel the shadow of Death that followed him here, curious, pull away and vanish. There is nothing to reap here today. He tries not to call after it. Dean would not like that.
In time, perhaps Castiel will stop wanting to die. Very possibly it may be Dean coming round to loving him that changes that. Or else just the very nature of the only remaining angel, serving the only existing being left that he would admit to worshipping. Dean wants him to live, and so he must, until such a time comes that their time ends as well.
For now, he sighs, wrapped in terrycloth and Dean’s arms and Dean’s iron will, all he can do is wait.
“This is why I loathe doing things myself,” Death sighs, stepping carefully around the puddle. “Reaping is clean work. Detatched. You show up, you take the soul to its destination, and you move on. No showing up beforehand to tell the family. No staying behind to watch messy displays of grief. No... vomit.”
“My most sincere apologies,” Castiel grumbles. The taste in his mouth is foul; the smell of the bile is worse. He’s hunched over, spitting. Chuck is rubbing his lower back, making that absurd tsk sound again. He straightens, wiping his lips on the back of a sleeve, and sniffs.
“I accept them.” Death watches as the floor of Heaven cleans itself; the stain of Castiel’s purged stomach gone as though it never existed... which makes sense. Heaven is meant to be perfect. It doesn’t accommodate things like puke. “Don’t feel offended, Castiel. It was not meant as a slight.” He taps his cane along the ground as he waits. “Your kind is not meant to feel, and yet you do -- clearly, you do quite deeply.” He narrows his eyes, a sly, sidelong glance. “Perhaps I misjudged you at our earlier meeting.”
Castiel stares at him for a moment, beyond the gaunt human visage that cloaks itself over the abstract itself. Death looms, quiet and patient, like a pair of vast, dark wings. It watches him, and does not judge. Merely waits.
That is all it has to do.
“Cas,” Chuck soothes. “Look at me. Look at me,” again, until Castiel does. He smiles at him, kindly. “Listen. I haven’t been the kind of Father that I should’ve been. I could’ve -- I should’ve -- done a lot better by you. I wasn’t there. Ever. I know. I regret that now. Stupid, but I do. Doesn’t change anything. I made the angels, all of you, to love me. And then when I made mankind, I wanted you to love them.” He sighs. “I didn’t spend any time or thought toward who would love you. And that was … that sucked. That was shitty of me. You guys got the short end of the Creation stick. Orders, and law, and discipline, and none of the good stuff.”
“Flying is good,” Castiel says. His voice is small in his own ears. It’s hard to hear what Chuck is telling him. They are the things he’s always wanted to hear. Acknowledgment, perhaps the most of all. But they are words that do nothing at all. They change nothing at all. “Flying is … good stuff.”
“I love wings,” God agreed with a smile. “It was a joy to give them to you.”
“Thank you.”
Chuck leans forward and kisses his forehead. “I have one more order for you, my Castiel.”
“You want me to kill you.” His heart hurts.
“That’s not the order.” Their faces are close. Personal space, the lack of awareness thereof, seems to be a family trait. “I want you to go to Dean when this is done. That’s my last order to you. Go to Dean. I’ll show you where he is. Go to him. Understand?”
“What’s Dean supposed to do?” Cas sighs. “I don’t want to send him against the leviathan. You told me they would take care of themselves. He’s done enough, hasn’t he?”
“He’ll take care of you.”
“He won’t,” Cas snorts. “He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you, Castiel,” Chuck huffs. “Far from it.” The writer tilts his head, giving Castiel a look that knows too much. Knows everything. “He loves you. You know he does. You love him.”
“I love him. I admit that. But he doesn’t love me. Not... not like I need him to.”
Death snorts; Chuck glances at him sourly but otherwise the interruption is ignored.
“He’s a human, Cas. He’ll surprise you.” A grin. “They’ll always surprise you. I still hold that they’re the best things I’ve ever done. You, though... “ He leans forward, voice dropping as though he’s telling some great secret. “I think you might be second best.”
A year ago, perhaps two, the words would have mattered. Now, though, all Castiel can seem to feel is cold.
“I will go to Dean,” he promises. How can he not? He is an angel -- the only one left. He is a soldier and servant of God. For another two minutes, at least, while God still exists. “I’ll go to Dean.”
Death steps closer, lurking dark at the edge of his vision. A waiting shadow, a perched crow.
“Now I’m asking a favor,” Chuck says, straightening.
Castiel wants to laugh. A favor. He has no ability to deny him. “What sort of sword kills God?” he asks. “I can’t even touch an archangel with mine. How do you suppose I even...” He looks up, and takes the hand that Chuck offers, gets pulled to his feet with his help.
“Sword?” Chuck quirks an eyebrow at him. He reaches into the pocket of his bathrobe and pulls out a single slim fountain pen. “I’m a writer, Castiel. I’ve always been a maker of stories. This is my true weapon.”
Castiel looks down at the pen in his hands, small and slight in his hand. He looks up, where Chuck -- God, the Father -- watches with an easy smile and a stained bathrobe, and bunny slippers.
This is the only favor God has ever asked of him.
He closes his eyes.
---
It’s raining in Spink county, South Dakota, a chill 43 degrees at 11:15pm, when Castiel appears on the front porch of a split-level ranch home. This is not Sioux Falls, not the familiar expanse of Singer Salvage, but he can feel three bright presences inside the house that beckon to him in that odd, irascible way of theirs.
He can’t bring himself to knock.
He’s not sure how close he has to get before the order of “go to Dean” is technically fulfilled, and he isn’t sure he can go any further than where he’s standing right now. He’s rapidly become drenched, blinking through the water as it sluices from his hair and down into his eyes.
He thinks he could stand here forever, if the door never opens. And he thinks he may as well. There is nowhere else to go.
Life doesn’t seem to work like that, though.
The door pulls open, a squeak of old rusted hinge, and before Castiel can say anything Dean is right there, in front of him, calling something out over his shoulder as he takes a step forward, nearly tripping on his own feet in surprise when he realizes there’s something on the porch. The man lets out a started “Jesus fucking fuck!” and all Castiel can think is there really isn’t any such thing as blasphemy anymore, so he can let that go.
That’s almost funny.
What really makes it work, though, is the rather impressive punch Dean lands right in Castiel’s face. He actually goes down. He must be in shock. He’s heard of it before, though never thought it might apply to a being such as himself. The only thought that seems to line up correctly in his mind right now is Dean... Dean I’ve done a horrible thing. Again. Will be he apologizing to this man forever?
He’s dimly aware of Dean’s ranting, some mix of think you can just show up out of the blue like that and thought you were dead you son of a bitch and scared the shit out of me for crissakes how long have you been out here, with a touch of holy water thrown in his face for good measure. He just stays where he landed on the porch, staring at the crooked wooden slats beneath him and trying to figure out what to do with the odd feeling bubbling up inside of him. It’s a surprise to him and Dean both when it finally bursts free -- laughter. Unrestrained, wild, broken laughter, and he can’t stop.
“Cas...”
Dean fills his vision. Castiel buries his face in his hands to make it go away. All the while, he laughs.
Possibly, he might be sobbing. The two seem similar, sometimes.
“Jesus, Cas... what is that, a pen? Where’d you get a pen? Fuck, is this blood? Are you bleeding? Cas, c’mon, you gotta... quit making those noises, you’re freaking me out...”
And other generally concerned noises. He quiets as he lets Dean hoist him to his feet, lets himself be led inside the house, pushed onto a couch. He’s sopping wet, twitching now and then with a flutter of belated hysterics. Apparently his right hand and the entire sleeve thereof is stained pink with rain-diluted blood. Trust Dean to know it when he sees it.
“I’m guessing there’s a story here,” Dean sighs after he drapes a towel over Castiel’s shoulders and sits beside him, having subjected the angel to a thorough round of cristo and silver and, finally, Bobby’s searching grouchy stare. Sam is nowhere in sight. Castiel wonders if he’s somewhere in bed being broken and crazy. He wonders if Dean remembers that’s Castiel’s fault.
Surely, he must.
God. Castiel is so tired.
Will you kill me now? he wants to ask Dean. Because Dean could, he’s suddenly sure. Just as Dean could punch him hard enough to fell him; just as Dean alone seemed to have this permanent ability to ruin Castiel’s heart. Can I be done now?
But Castiel has only ever asked Dean for one favor, and Dean had said no, then. The likelihood of Dean killing Castiel just because he asked him to seems slim to none. A better course of action would be to try and piss him off. Remind him, perhaps, that he has so horribly damaged his brother. Sam would always be Dean’s most sensitive trigger. Maybe he could just so happen to leave his angel sword laying about the house. Dean had killed Zachariah without ill-effect; Castiel is reasonably sure that whatever properties allowed that must still be in effect.
He blinks as Dean slaps him sharply across the face, and looks up with a slight frown.
“I don’t know why you did that,” he says.
“Because up until now you’ve been staring at nothing for so long Bobby thought you were having an absent seizure,” Dean snaps. True enough, the older hunter is standing just behind him, looking miffed and curmudgeonly and, Castiel realizes with surprise, concerned.
“You slapped me.” It’s not a stab but it’s a start.
“Works wonders on folk in shock.” Bobby stares at him a moment longer, then looks at Dean. “I’ll leave you two to suss out what’s going on. Just gimme a holler if I’m about to have a cloud of avengin’ angels taking off my new roof. I’d like a little prior notice, is all.”
“Was it angels?” Dean leans forward, staring at Castiel intently. He stares back. This seems to happen often between them. In fact, it’s so much like nothing has changed that he almost wants to laugh again. It’s all so absurd.
“There are no angels,” he says. “Avenging or otherwise. They’re gone. They’re all gone. There’s only me.”
He can see the hunter rise up within Dean. It darkens his eyes, lifts his shoulders. It threads steel through him, pushes back some emotions while bringing others forward. His whole soul shifts for battle. “They left?”
Castiel makes a wounded noise. “In a sense. They have left in the sense that they are gone. Utterly gone. Flash-burns of a hundred thousand wings on the floors of Heaven.” All he can see is that final smile on the face of God. “We have nowhere to go, you know, when we die. We simply burn to nothing.”
“Something killed the angels?” Dean asks him. His voice is hushed. He leans forward, and they’re very close now.
Dean smells good, Castiel thinks. He cannot for the life of him remember what Chuck smelled like. Possibly there was no smell at all.
“Cas, you gotta stay with me.” Drawing his attention back again. He looks up at Dean and his dark, deep eyes. This, he thinks. This is why He wanted me here, I think. He knew that Dean could end me. He knew that I would want it this way. It’s a lovely final gift. “Cas, is there something after you? Something that killed the other angels?”
“No.” Please make it quick. I don’t deserve that, but it would be … nice. And I’m glad that it’s you. A strange sentiment, but he is. Of all the times Castiel has died, he thinks being killed by Dean will be the best of them. “I killed them.” He looks down at his hand. The pen is still there, in his fingers. He can’t unclench them. There’s a bit of something dark and fleshy lodged in the tip of the nib. “I killed all of them. Heaven is empty. It’s only me.” He doesn’t wait for a reaction -- Dean seems to be frozen anyway -- reaching into his sleeve with his free hand and drawing out his sword. He hands it out to Dean, hilt first, frowning slightly as the hunter makes no move toward it.
“What’s this about? Cas, I don’t... I don’t want your sword.”
“You should take it,” Castiel insists. “You’ll need it for this. You can use it, you’ve done it before. Zachariah. You’ve managed before.” He holds it a moment longer; Dean doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything but give Cas that same heavy, pinched stare, so he shrugs and sets it down on the floor. “Sam must be upstairs,” he says, pushes deliberately at that button. “How is he?”
There we are. Dean tenses. Anger pulses through him, clear and dark and dangerous. “Sleeping,” Dean says, tight. “He’s doing all right, no thanks to you. And we gotta have words about that, don’t think I forgot. But he’s doing all right.” He sniffs, shifting on the couch a little. “Better than I would. Better than I have. I know he went through worse... down there... but somehow he’s making terms with it.”
Humans. They’ll surprise you.
Castiel stares at his lap. After a moment he holds up his hand, the one that cannot seem to let go of the fountain pen. It weighs nothing in his grip, despite being, yes, so much mightier than the sword.
They need to have words. It’s true, but they will have Dean’s words. There isn’t enough time anywhere for the things Castiel would tell Dean. Would that Dean just listen.
“I found God.”
“Was he on a flatbread after all?” Dean snorts, crossing a leg over the other. He kicks a foot lazily until it dawns on him that Castiel hasn’t moved, hasn’t argued, hasn’t done anything. He sits up with a blink. “You’re-- shit, you’re serious. What-- Where?”
“Heaven.”
“Go fucking figure, okay. What’d he say? Did you punch him in his face? Tell me you did.”
“I did not punch him in his face,” Castiel says quietly.
“But what did he say?”
“He said that he loved me.” The memory twists his lips, not quite a smile. No, not nearly a smile. “He said sorry. And he asked me to kill him.”
He almost wishes he had the forethought to take a photograph of Dean’s face in that instant. He would remember it forever, of course, had he the time, but he thinks that Sam would like a photograph of it, for after Castiel is dead. It’s such a perfect look of dumbfounded surprise that he’s sure the younger brother would have a wonderful time looking at it.
“Cas...?”
“Dean.” Yes. I’m glad it’s you. “My Father is dead. He said he loved me, and then he asked...” He sits up and turns to look at him, taking Dean’s hand and turning it over, palm up. It takes real effort to uncurl his fingers, to give over the pen. He takes a deep breath and thinks of the brothers and sisters who have gone before him.
He wishes, one last time, for a forgiveness he knows he doesn’t deserve. If there is any reason a righteous man should strike him down, of all of his grievous errors and sins and failures, surely this is it.
“I killed God.” His voice doesn’t waver. He takes that as a good sign. “I have killed God,” he says again. “And... and though you owe me nothing, though you hate me, I know...” But oh, Dean, I love you. He would say it in his head for however long he had left. Not long at all. “There is no one left. No angels. No God. There is no one left but you...”
Really, there never was anyone but him.
“Dean. Could you please kill me?”
---
The problem with humans, Castiel sees now, is that they surprise you. They will always surprise you. Even the ones that you know, down to the very tapestry of their molecules.
He has made a grave mistake.
It’s one of the reasons he fell in love with Dean in the first place, and somehow he just... forgot. He thinks perhaps Chuck did not, and that this was a clever trap that he fell into so very neatly.
The problem is this: Dean is a man who is kind and gentle with broken things.
He’ll never kill Castiel, not now. He thought that admitting the gravest of possible sins would be enough to ensure his execution (what could top deicide?) but Dean is too observant, or Castiel’s voice trembled and gave him away, or perhaps it was the utter lack of inflection... Either way, all he managed was to prove to Dean that Castiel himself is a broken thing.
So he’ll never kill him, now. He’ll take him in, wrap him in blankets and soft clothes -- his own, likely, worn jeans and faded rock shirts -- and force him to eat and sleep, and watch over him the way that Dean watches over any sad thing that stumbles into his care. Cas had wanted to enrage the Hunter; instead he awoke the Protector. And now he’s stuck. He can almost see the way that Dean weaves walls around him, hemming him in with soothing words, setting the sword up on a high shelf, out of sight. He can see the next few years rolling out before him like a road in disrepair: the gradual loss of his “mojo”, a slow descent into painful lesser, and the guilt that makes him ask for execution will blunt and become familiar (but never gone.)
Dean will keep him, but never kill him.
In time, perhaps Dean will even love him back.
But for now, Dean pushes a mug of cocoa in his hands and towel dries Castiel’s hair for him, speaking of television shows and useless trivialities, standing close enough that the heat of his body is a slow comfort. He takes Castiel under his wing, makes him family, makes him safe. It is the full force of Dean’s protective nature and Castiel cannot fight it, cannot outlast it. He loves Dean for this very part of him. It’s a twist that he could not have seen coming, but he thinks with a bitter smile that someone probably did.
It’s too much, and he is suddenly so very tired. His eyes slip closed; he gives in to Dean’s care, submits to the notion of survival, and he can feel the shadow of Death that followed him here, curious, pull away and vanish. There is nothing to reap here today. He tries not to call after it. Dean would not like that.
In time, perhaps Castiel will stop wanting to die. Very possibly it may be Dean coming round to loving him that changes that. Or else just the very nature of the only remaining angel, serving the only existing being left that he would admit to worshipping. Dean wants him to live, and so he must, until such a time comes that their time ends as well.
For now, he sighs, wrapped in terrycloth and Dean’s arms and Dean’s iron will, all he can do is wait.