Something Stupid/2 (D/C; NC-17)

[zatnikatel]

Dean snatches four hours of sleep in the Century Motel, Kansas City.

Castiel stands by the roadside in the dark, opposite a luridly fluorescent Pump & Go gas station. He sighs, supposes he’s lonely, wonders if Dean might tear him a new one if he arrives in Kansas City early. He tries to think of things that aren’t Dean, but that means thinking of things that are his brother, of Michael, of the breathtaking horror that would come from seeing Dean burnt out of his own mind and body, slumping and drooling like Raphael’s empty vessel. It makes Castiel’s head spin with anxiety, and there’s that fluttering in his chest again.

He needs a distraction, so he pulls out his cellphone again and flicks down to Bobby, before remembering that the last time he troubled him, the old man barked, hesitate to fuckin’ call at him before he hung up. Sam then, to find out how he’s enjoying his separate vacation. Castiel clicks on the name, holds the phone up to his ear again, and the voice tells him he is now officially out of minutes. He briefly considers heading for the nearest motel, so he can continue learning from the television, but decides his time will be more productively spent plotting an Ocean’s Eleven of a heist that will secure them the Colt that might kill the devil. He formulates plans for tracking the demon Crowley, tricking the demon Crowley, turning the demon Crowley to dust.

As the time ticks slowly by, three truck drivers stop as they pull out of the gas station and offer Castiel a ride into town. A fourth stops to offer Castiel a ride on his joystick and ask him how much he charges for a piece of that sweet ass.

“Can I interest you in the word of the Lord?” Castiel deflects blandly. “Since God will soon raise the dead, condemn the wicked to annihilation, call His anointed ones to Heaven, and establish His everlasting kingdom on Earth for the righteous. I have a pamphlet we can study together and discuss if you’re-”

The man’s face takes on an expression of blind panic. “I’m an atheist,” he blurts out.

“Yes,” Castiel agrees. “I thought you might be. Born again, I take it?”

Castiel watches the vehicle’s tail lights disappear into the darkness, wonders if what he just did counts as blasphemy in any way, shape or form, concludes that it doesn’t really matter since he’s becoming more and more convinced Uriel spoke the truth when he said there was no God. He sucks in an appalled breath at his own acknowledgment of his dying faith, raises his eyes up to the heavens with something like terror, reaches up to press his fingertips to the hard outline of the amulet under his shirt. It’s cold still, no searing heat to signal his Father’s presence and the imminent lightning bolt of divine wrath.

He narrows his eyes, breathes it out in the faintest whisper. “Jesus Christ.” Nothing happens, and he swallows, dares again, louder this time. “I said, Jesus Christ.” And still no response. He grips the amulet tight, balls his other fist. “Goddammit.” Nothing.

He remembers a line from one of the movies he watched on that long night in Waterville, with Dean pressed up heated and solid against him and across him, and he hollers it out, wincing as he does. “Jesus H tapdancing Christ, I have seen the light.”

Again, nothing. And he stands and stares up at the peaceful, inky sky and considers how godfuckingdamn ironic it is that right at this moment he’d welcome being smited to a pile of ash and cast down to the lake of fire for betraying his brothers, simply because it would prove God hasn’t left the building.

“You okay, buddy? Only you’ve been standing there a while now, and it’s pretty late.”

The voice startles Castiel back to reality, and he finds himself gazing at one of the gas station attendants, Vic, according to the patch on his shirt, standing on the other side of the road. The man is observing Castiel warily, shifting nervously from foot to foot, and he’s shooting glances back over to the brightly lit building he came from, where a woman is squinting out at them through one of the windows.

Castiel realizes he’s staring back without talking, and remembers that it counts as fuckin’ freaky. “I’m - harmless,” he offers firmly. “I’m just…” He throws up his hands. “I’ve seen the light,” he says. “Just now, in fact. So I was just, uh. Clarifying that.”

Vic sniffs. “Yeah, I got that.” He roots in his pocket and produces a pack of cigarettes, proceeds to light one up, blows out smoke. He studies Castiel silently for a minute from behind the hazy fumes. “Forecast’s for a cold night,” he says then, and his tone is less suspicious now. “We’re open twenty-four hours, if you have nowhere to go.” He shrugs. “I’ve been there buddy. It’s no fun. Least it’s warm in the shop.”

Castiel nods respectfully at him, pastes on a smile he hopes is reassuring. He isn’t used to smiling, and he suddenly realizes this is the first time he has smiled at anyone who isn’t Dean. “Thank you,” he says hesitantly. “I’m waiting for somebody. A friend. We have an appointment. But thank you.”

The man winks as he stubs his cigarette out in the dirt. “Well, you know where we are if you’ve been stood up,” he says, as he turns to stroll back. “We got coffee and donuts.”

For a moment Castiel wonders if it’s a sign, if he’s supposed to see his Father in this simple act of kindness. “God would not leave us in a place of emptiness,” he murmurs. “Nor does he make us poor in spirit.” He looks up again. “Would you?” And then, from nowhere, he can hear Dean’s voice in his head as clear as if he’s right there next to him, so there’s this guy drowning, Cas, and a boat comes, and the dude driving it says, do you need help?, and the drowning guy says, God will save me. And then another boat comes and the drowning guy says it again, God will save me. Anyhoo, he dies and goes to Heaven, and he says to God, why didn’t you save me?, and God says, I sent you two boats, you fuckin’ idiot…

The sky stares back, silent and empty except for the moon. “You are there,” Castiel decides out loud. “You’re testing what remains of my faith. You’re sending me signs. Boats.”

He’s still gazing up as a carload of giggling young women crawls by. It u-turns and crawls by again, and they wave, and blow kisses, and beckon Castiel over. He wonders if it might be a boat, goes to see what they want. When he leans down beside the driver’s window, the young woman at the wheel snatches at his tie and uses it to pull him closer. Her eyes are shiny and wide and she exhales the familiar smell of alcohol. It reminds Castiel of Dean.

“We’re cheerleaders, gorgeous,” she trills, through brightly colored lips. “How would you like to be our wide receiver for the night, and we’ll be your tight ends?”

Her friends hoot and heckle so enthusiastically the car shakes as Castiel searches for the right thing to say, the sociable thing to say, something that might make him fit in instead of standing out because of the stick up his ass. He seizes on a mental image of Dean leering contentedly at a movie featuring cheerleaders on a stopover as they drove to Maine, and picks a random line that seems ideal.

“Let’s not put the duh in dumb.”

The woman lets go of his tie, scrunches up her nose, skeptical. “Say what?”

Castiel straightens up and shrugs. “It’s something cheerleaders say,” he offers. “I thought you might be familiar with it.”

Clicking her fingernails on the steering wheel, the woman snaps, “Do you want a good time or not?” She motions her head to her friends in the back. “We have whiskey, vodka. Rubbers too.”

Castiel considers her for a moment. “You’re inebriated, and shouldn’t be in charge of a vehicle in this condition,” he concludes disapprovingly. “You’ll have an accident.” He touches a fingertip to her brow and her face falls. She frowns up at him and looks even more puzzled. “Buckle up,” he advises, as he waves her away. “And drive safely.”

It falls quiet again after that, apart from the chirp of cicadas, and the traffic eases down to just the odd car flashing by. Castiel pauses briefly from his planning to revive an unlucky raccoon after it collides messily with a utility vehicle, needing some proof he still has the power to give life, and figuring that it won’t interfere too much with the cosmic balance if he resurrects a small mammal. The task takes him several moments of fierce concentration and he’s breathless and dizzy as he nudges grace out of himself in tiny doses, sensing vacant space where it once was and wondering how much is left to tap into. Bad idea, he thinks too late, because healing is particularly draining and he knows he should be conserving what’s left of him for the things that matter, for this fight, for Dean if and when it’s ever necessary. For a second, he wonders what he’d do if there wasn’t enough of him left for Dean, and it sparks the same flurry of panic in him as thinking about Michael does.

When the raccoon stirs, it rewards Castiel by hissing and sinking its teeth into the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. “Of course,” he sighs resignedly, as it scampers off into the undergrowth. He pushes to his feet, hoping the animal won’t end up like the cat in Pet Sematary, then watches idly as a car turns off the road and grinds to a halt outside the gas station. Two men debark, wearing masks over their faces, and slink into the small store.

Castiel stares over, can see frantically waving arms and shaking heads through the windows, can hear panicked shouts floating across, because noises are louder at night. He remembers the gas station attendant’s kindness and concern, remembers that the man might have been a boat. He remembers that in most of the instructional television he has been watching on the nights when he can’t fight his exhaustion and he Obi-Wans a motel room to rest in, the bad guys get their just desserts. And in the next beat, he’s standing between a freezer full of canned soda and beer, and a chips and snacks display, directly opposite one of the masked men.

The man barks out an alarmed, muffled expletive, and then demands, “Where the fuck did you come from?”

Castiel eyes him for a second, sizes him up. At some point, he supposes philosophically, his grace will weaken so much that he meets his match in one of these humans he sacrificed everything he knew for. But unfortunately for this human and his friend, it won’t be today. “Outside,” he supplies matter-of-factly. “I’m waiting for someone, and I couldn’t help noticing you were attempting to…” He trails off, fumbles for the right term. “Conduct a heist. Turn this joint over.” He frowns. “Something like that, anyway.”

The man cocks his head and his eyes go slitty. He raises his hand. “Don’t be a hero, pal. I’ve got a knife.”

Castiel eyes the weapon critically. “You call that a knife?” he says acidly. “That’s not a knife.” He lifts his own hand, his blade gleaming silver where it materializes. “This is a knife.”

The man bristles. “Who the fuck do you think you are, bitch?” he bites out, high and aggressive.

“I’m an ang…” Castiel stops, remembers Dean’s words of advice back in Waterville. “I’m the law,” he lies smoothly, because it’s getting easier now. “Agent Eddie Moscone, FBI. Put down your weapon and prepare to be judged.” He trusts that it’s suitably badass, steps forward and peers past the end of the aisle, sees heads craning to stare back. “That means you too.”

A gunshot cracks out, and the woman behind the checkout shrieks. Castiel feels the dull thud of the impact and glances down to where blood is trickling down his shirtfront. He looks up and meets three sets of variously horrified, anxious and enraged eyes. “Luckily, I have a high pain threshold,” he announces, as he leans across and touches his fingertips to the knifeman’s brow.

The man’s knees buckle and he crumples sloppily to the ground, coming to rest wedged up against a shelf from which brightly colored packages of something called Funyuns rain down on him. Castiel hears a collective gasp of astonishment, and there’s a brief, puzzled silence.

“What the fuck did you do to him?” barks the other masked man then, brandishing his firearm at Castiel in a lively fashion.

“I gave him the magic finger,” Castiel explains, and he nods towards the gun, his interest piqued. “And is that an AK-47? I’m told it’s the very best there is, and that when you absolutely, positively, have to kill every motherfucker in the room, you should accept no substitutes.”

He can see the man goggle at him through the eyeholes in the mask. “Fuck you, asshole,” he growls. “I’ll blow you and this place to pieces if you don’t-”

“Go ahead, make my day,” Castiel cuts in dismissively. “I don’t shop here anyway. But as you’ve already seen, Arnie etiquette doesn’t work on me.”

The man lets out a strangled, irate whine, takes aim and fires the gun again, and Castiel ducks, rolls, reaches up as swiftly as a fraction of a thought, and snatches at the air. It falls quiet again, and he holds out his hand, the bullet sitting on his palm. “You dropped this,” he says. “Are you aware that littering is an offense punishable with a fine as set out by local statute?”

The man is dumbstruck and motionless as Castiel rises to his feet again. He can still see into people if he concentrates hard enough, can see their hopes and fears, their intentions, and what motivates them, their many and varied gifts and flaws, and their sins. He doesn’t do it if he can help it, because what he sees there is frequently dispiriting. This man is no exception, petty, savage, a nonentity who has no weight, or worth, or redeeming features. “Your soul is a pitiful, diseased thing,” Castiel says softly. “Sometimes it troubles me that so many of you aren’t worth the time or effort.”

The man’s mask doesn’t extend all the way down his neck, and Castiel sees his Adam’s apple bob nervously. “What are you going to do about it?” he snarls.

Castiel pauses for a second, reasons that just because he doesn’t like to fight dirty doesn’t mean he can’t, or won’t, and concludes that in this particular instance he actually wants to. “I’m thinking extreme violence,” he clips out dangerously. “If you aren’t already convinced you’ve made the wrong decision in choosing a life of crime.”

The man bellows incoherently, flings his gun to the floor and lunges forward, loosing a poorly controlled haymaker. Castiel catches his fist in mid-air, calm. “Rule number one,” he observes. “Never be too eager to rush your opponent.”

He twists the man’s hand like he’s turning a doorknob, along to the dry snap of bone and a howl of pain. And then, because he’s irritated, he doles out a couple of hard cross punches, first with his right hand, then with his left, both slamming into the man’s chin on either side in swift succession. He grunts out in satisfaction as the blows land home, because there is much to be said for old-fashioned physical violence. The man sways on his feet, and Castiel regards him for a few seconds, then reaches across and places a hand on each shoulder before headbutting him full in the face. He rams his skull in swiftly, accurately, economically, pulling back slightly at the point of impact, since he has no real desire to crush the man’s delicate facial bones or kill him.

It’s brutal, and as a surprise shock maneuver, it works perfectly. Castiel sidesteps gracefully, so the man has sufficient space to make landfall as he poleaxes, and then he squats and heaves the man easily onto his side, bending him at the knees and tilting his face up to keep his airway open. He glances over at the friendly gas station attendant and the woman, who are gaping at him. “I placed him in the recovery position to prevent him from choking,” he informs them, almost as an afterthought. “I suggest you call the five-O.”

As he stands, he hears the woman gasp. She’s pointing at his chest. “But he shot you,” she squeaks.

Castiel looks down to see his shirt is now pristine. “I don’t have time to bleed,” he acknowledges offhandedly, as he steps over the man and bends to pick up the gun. He holds it at each end and brings it down hard and fast onto his thigh, snapping it clean in half. As he drops the pieces to the floor, his eye is caught by a camera fixed to the wall up high behind the counter. He points at it and it snaps, crackles and pops vigorously, sparks bursting out and wafting through the air.

“That was a total coincidence,” Castiel tells the huge-eyed couple. “It wasn’t anything I did.”

As he pulls the door open to leave, Vic gasps out, almost accusingly, “You said you were harmless.”

Castiel pauses, bites his lip. “Yes,” he concedes finally. “My apologies. I took the liberty of bullshitting you.”

The next time Castiel uses his fists and feels the same sense of base, squalid pleasure and gratification in doing so is when he beats Dean into submission in an alleyway in Cicero, Indiana.



In a motel room in Lawrence, Kansas, Castiel comes round gradually, on the memory of weakness, of his head exploding in strobing pain, of rematerializing three decades further on and four feet behind Sam, and the sheer relief of seeing both Winchesters alive and well as the room spun chaotically around him.

He blinks up at moonlight playing across the ceiling. It’s quiet where he is, a hush more profound than any he has ever experienced, and it takes him a moment to realize he can no longer hear the distant, sibilant whisper of his brothers. Their silence is abrupt and deafening, and his sorrow and regret overwhelm him. Tears flood his eyes, and he has to bring a hand up to his mouth and bite down on it to muffle his cries as he weeps.

After he doesn’t know how long, and once the wave of grief and disorientation has subsided, Castiel realizes that he is lying on a bed, the rough fabric of a cheap blanket scraping his neck. He cranes his head to see Sam sprawled across the other bed, one arm dangling over the edge, fingertips grazing the carpet. He becomes aware of a warm, solid shape next to him, and breath puffing out onto the side of his face. He slants his eyes left, can just make out the thick fringe of lashes. One of Dean’s hands is curled in the blanket where it covers Castiel’s arm, and the other is resting on his hip, loosely gripping the neck of a whiskey bottle where it leans against him.

Castiel sits up, pulls the blanket across Dean. He scrubs a shaking hand across his eyes, breathes in deeply. He reaches to gently tug the bottle from Dean’s lax grasp, studies the contents for a minute. He plants his feet on the floor before he takes a long draught, and the alcohol burns down his throat and makes his eyes sting even more. He thinks suddenly of a table busy with upended shot glasses and Ellen Harvelle’s eyes staring at him, bright and alive, daring him, of her daughter’s perfect, youthful amusement as she watched, in thrall to their drinking game.

He can sense that Dean is awake before he speaks.

“Are you getting a buzz from that?”

Dean’s voice is rough with sleep, but there’s something unsaid in his words, something that sounds like apprehension, and when Castiel glances over his shoulder and down, he can see that Dean’s eyes are wide open and watchful, so alert that Castiel wonders if Dean might have heard his sobs. He thinks on it for a few seconds, ignores the warm haziness stealing out from where the liquor pools in his stomach. “No,” he lies.

“Well, don’t.” Dean looks up at Castiel for a long moment, his gaze liquid and knowing in the moonlight. “It’s bad for you.” He shuffles further up the bed, pulls the pillow up to wedge underneath his neck, and links his hands behind his head. “Took you quite a while to get back,” he ventures, less snippy now. “I was, uh. Concerned.”

Castiel wants to reassure Dean, wants to reassure himself. “I’m falling, Dean,” he whispers instead. “It won’t take much longer. After it happens, I won’t be able to protect you from Michael.” He hears the bedsprings creak and feels a poke in his lower back, glances around again, and Dean is wearing a lost, worried expression now.

“The bottle, give it here.” Dean almost rips it from Castiel’s hand, stows it on the nightstand. “I don’t want you drinking,” he says shortly. He raises a meaningful eyebrow. “You got that?”

Castiel starts to respond but there’s a sound from the other bed, and he follows Dean’s gaze as it flicks past him. Sam is facing them now, his eyes moving around hectically under their lids, a muscle twitching in his cheek, his shoulders tensing. Castiel leans across the small space between the beds, touches his fingertip to Sam’s brow. He can feel that whatever mojo courses out of him is sluggish and unwilling, but Sam sighs, and his body relaxes. Castiel sits back, shifts sideways so he doesn’t have to twist to see Dean, pulls up one leg, bends it at the knee and rests it on the bed.

Dean’s gaze drifts back to him, and he’s picking at his lower lip with his teeth. “Do you think he was dreaming about him?”

His face is drawn and desolate, and Castiel swallows back his own despair and whatever he might have wanted to pour out, makes his voice purposeful and authoritative instead. “He won’t for the rest of the night. Assuming he was.”

Dean sighs out a faint, weary puff of breath, and his relief has him sagging visibly. After a brief pause he speaks again. “Cas, why isn’t Michael dreamstalking me?”

His voice is small, puzzled, and Castiel contemplates it for a minute. It’s the first time Dean has asked him about his brother since the hospital in Maine, and he wonders if it might be because Dean isn’t as sure as he once was. It’s unsettling, and he feels a tingle of unease track up his spine. “If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say it’s because Michael is sure you’ll see the bigger picture and do the right thing,” he says carefully, and then he stops, reconsiders. “I mean what appears to be the right thing. So he feels no need to expend his energy persuading you. Lucifer, however, is less sure your brother will do the wrong thing, so he exerts pressure. But…” He hesitates, and after a few seconds Dean nudges him with his knee.

“But what?”

“It could also be because Michael knows you’re strong enough to resist his manipulation, but Lucifer knows Sam may be… somewhat less likely to hold out.” Castiel sighs. “My brothers are very… perceptive.”

Dean huffs out. “Ever the fuckin’ diplomat, Cas,” he says, louder now Sam is out for the count. “But I just pow-wowed with Michael. Perceptive didn’t spring to mind as much as psycho with a God complex and an even bigger stick up his ass than you have.” He blinks, makes his voice apologetic. “Uh - had. I mean.”

Castiel smiles tightly. “Michael is a traditionalist, much like Raphael,” he concedes. “And yes, he’s… badass. Like the Terminator.” He shrugs. “He’ll be back.”

Dean chuckles, but it’s hard and humorless. “I don’t doubt that.” He cocks his head where it still rests on his hands, changes the subject. “The Terminator?” he says, with forced lightness. “You been catching up on all the movies you missed in your two-thousand years off-world, Cas?”

Castiel nods, but he doesn’t bother reminding Dean of his sage advice that night in Waterville. “I hope it might help me ascend the learning curve,” he affirms, and he taps his temple. “It’s all in here.”

Dean narrows his eyes. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

“Jaws,” Castiel fences.

“Yippee ky-ay, motherfucker.”

“Die Hard. And its many sequels.”

“May the force be-”

“Star Wars. And its many sequels.”

Dean’s lips twitch upwards at the corners. “Gotcha,” he says, all smug. “Some of them were prequels.”

They fall into an easy silence, and Castiel tracks Dean’s gaze as he examines the cracks on the ceiling. After a minute or two he opens his mouth as if he’s going to speak, and then shuts it as if he thought better.

“What?” Castiel prods.

“You like all the same movies I do,” Dean says, and he looks at Cas with soft eyes.

Castiel nods. “So it would seem. Although I think the prequels were-”

“I’m sorry,” Dean cuts in abruptly, and then he’s hurrying words out, earnest and heartfelt. “About you falling. You gave it all up for me and I’ve never… and you never - judged me. For what I did down there. You never looked at me like I was worthless. Which I am, really, when you think about it. I mean, if it wasn’t for the Michael thing…” He trails off, rubs at his jaw, and his expression has gone nervous and uncertain.

“I didn’t choose Michael’s vessel, Dean,” Castiel says. “I chose you.” And I hold fast to you so you won’t break, because if you break, I will break, he wants to say, but he doesn’t know how.

“He told me I’ll say yes.” It’s flat and unemotional, like Dean hasn’t registered what Castiel said. “Michael said it’s all planned and it’ll play out to their blueprint. He said that I don’t have free will. That I don’t have choice.”

Castiel stares back at him, and even in the dim light he can see that the gleam in Dean’s eyes has dulled into hopelessness.

“Am I - are we - going to say yes, Cas?” Dean asks him haltingly. “Is that really just how it’s going to be? Are we going to end the world, are we going to lose? Are we-”

“Dean…”

Castiel knows he barely manages to scrape out the name, and he finds himself reaching, gripping Dean’s hand. He tightens his fingers around it, scrubs the other hand through his hair. He feels his stomach clench and his heart pound at the raw fear in Dean’s voice, tries to even out his breathing and settle his nerves, because he feels the creeping dread he always feels at the thought of losing Dean to his brother, and he would give anything, he knows, do anything so that doesn’t happen. He steadies his voice. “I’m not really sure what I can tell you, Dean,” he says, with a kind of desperation. He searches for the right words to reassure, tries to be less blunt than he might usually be, because he heard the tremor when Dean spoke. “Just - maybe we need to focus on the fundamentals we’ve gone over time and time again and not get caught up thinking about winning or losing this game.” He nods his head for emphasis. “If you put your effort and concentration into playing to your potential, to be the best that you can be, well - I don’t care what the scoreboard says at the end of the game. In my book, we’re going to be winners.”

He’s staring down at where Dean’s hand grips his, and when he looks up, Dean is furrowing his brow, bemused. “Cas, that’s from Hoosiers. It’s Coach Dale’s pep talk.”

Castiel shrugs before he replies. “But did it work?”

“A little.” Dean awards him a weak smile. “You know, I wish I had your faith that God is watching over us,” he offers somberly.

“It isn’t God I have faith in Dean, it’s you,” Castiel says. Because you are my reason, my touchstone, he wants to add, but he doesn’t know how to say that either.

Dean interrupts his thoughts. “And you honestly don’t have any regrets? Zachariah had you on the fast track for a while there.”

He’s looking at Castiel curiously, eyes locked on his face as if he’s analyzing him, trying to figure him out, maybe even memorize him, and Castiel wonders if that’s how he looks at Dean. He considers the possibilities, considers his loneliness and the sense of loss he feels for his estranged brothers even while they hunt him. And he tamps it down, focuses instead on what he has gained. “I still wonder sometimes what’s worth saving about this world,” he murmurs. “But there’s no doubt in my mind that there are things, certain things, that I don’t ever wish to lose.”

Dean doesn’t take his hand back from Castiel. “After you fall, you won’t be alone,” he says. “You know that don’t you?”



On Castiel’s long plummet to earth, he senses Michael’s anger and knows what it means, that his brother was thwarted, that Dean refused, and he feels joy. As he falls, his grace shreds and burns, and he screams out white-hot agony. He is reborn to pain and confusion, bright lights and noise, endless questions he can’t answer from people he doesn’t know, a bug bite that won’t stop itching no matter how much he scratches it.

At thirty-three thousand feet, hurtling along at five-hundred thirty-two miles per hour towards Sioux Falls Regional Airport, and with cold sweat trickling down his spine and his fingernails embedded in his palms, Castiel concludes that now he’s human, he’s a nervous flyer. And alongside a sharper fear and anxiety than he ever felt when he had his grace, he has other basic instincts too: thirst, hunger, the need to take a leak, a dump, the need to sleep. When he sleeps he dreams, seeing pictures in his mind, a hectic jumble of emotions, sensations and half-formed ideas that he thinks must be fantasies, and he wakes to find himself rock hard and aching for release.

All of these cravings and urges are somehow familiar, as if Castiel can recall feeling them before. He remembers how Famine tapped into some deeply buried echo of Jimmy Novak even though he thought Jimmy was gone, and he wonders if the feeling of déjà vu is sense-memory, an imprint of the consciousness his body housed before he took it as his own coming to the fore now that his grace is lost. He finds it reassures him, makes him feel like he knows the human condition intimately, and can succeed at it. But alongside whatever vestiges of Jimmy Novak are woven into him are Castiel’s own memories of what he was, compared to what he is now. His existence was once crystal-clear clarity of purpose and vision, and he simply knew. Now he knows nothing, and as he wonders, and guesses, and assumes, his lack of certainty leaves him floundering. His mind was honed to a sharp edge that cut through doubt, ambiguity and hesitation, but now he struggles to absorb the world and process what he sees, hears, feels, thinks, believes. And he didn’t expect his body to feel so heavy after the fall, didn’t expect his feet to drag as much as they do, didn’t expect to be so earthbound and constrained by gravity, didn’t expect to feel so useless. He stands on Bobby’s porch each night as darkness falls, drinks whiskey and stares at the sky as he grieves the loss of himself. And his confinement on Earth is the solitary kind, because it turns out that Dean lied, that Castiel is alone, and invisible too, his distress the least of their problems now that time is running out.

Dean is gray-faced and tense, constantly moving, fingers nervously strumming the air, eyes bruised, distant and distracted. He looks straight through Castiel, rarely speaks, and when he does it’s a terse, edgy snap. Sam is still and seems tranquil but he’s thinking constantly, Castiel can see it in his expression, set and intent, see how Sam’s eyes ponder, and assess, and calculate, see how his cheeks and jaw twitch as he chews at the inside of his mouth, like he’s working out a plan of action. When Sam voices his plan, Castiel tells him it could work partly from hope and partly from the lack of it, and partly because he knows that he can bear to lose Sam.

At Stull, before Lucifer snaps him out of existence, Castiel finds Dean’s gaze and he sees love, respect, fear, sorrow, because in that brief instant of eye contact before it all goes black, Dean doesn’t look through Castiel, Dean looks at him like he matters.

After Stull, Dean’s eyes are empty, and he averts them as he tells Castiel what he’s going to do, what Sam told him to do.

In the Impala, streaking along a rain-shiny ribbon of highway at night, Castiel ventures to tell Dean what he supposes he’ll do himself, but any barely acknowledged hope that Dean might ask him to reconsider, to stay, is crushed, because now he has a brand-new, shiny set of wings, Castiel is God’s bitch again.

Castiel knows everything there is to know about the world, but he doesn’t know how to live in it without Dean, so he leaves.



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