To The East - (1/6)
Genre: AU - Starts in the last few minutes of 5x22 - Swan Song
Pairing: Dean/Cas (Destiel)
Rating: R - For graphic scenes of both violent and sexual nature.
Summary: AU. Team Free Will has averted the Apocalypse, some force has pulled Bobby from the void and Sam from the cage, but Castiel has been brought back...as a human. And not even he knows why.
-
He remembered a little from his time with Sam and Dean, and quickly learned the rest; like how to steal and where to lay low. When he had lingered too long. He learned how to sleep in the back of a livestock truck on Route 42 two days after he left Sioux Falls, and when he awoke he tasted salt. After a week of hitchhiking he spent an afternoon in a public library in the Northwest corner of Iowa reading Driver’s Ed manuals. Then he jumped a car in the back lot and, after a few grinding starts, more or less sped out of town. That same afternoon he forced his newly acquired Charger off the gravel highway into a thicket of trees and taught himself how to fire a gun, blasting a crooked cross into the heart of thick oak tree.
The months improved his aim, and he came to accept the necessity of driving. At first it felt like a cage - all metal walls and rubber - but when he sped down empty county highways at night it was the closest he felt to flying.
He used biblical names as cover until he got too many curious looks with ‘Abraham’ and ‘Ishmael’. After that he used whichever name was on the credit card he’d most recently stolen. And when he couldn’t steal cards, he stole food -from farmer’s markets and the backs of service trucks; stole clothes from the line and from unattended machines in something called a ‘Laundromat’. The sins came easier now and he wondered if, after three millennia as an angel, he’d finally be brought low to Hell by some fifty years of human existence.
He got better, though. When he was able to think about the Winchesters without the wave of memories causing him to pass out, he dredged up all the tricks he’d witnessed but never been taught. He learned how to play pool - Dean’s favorite hustle - and found he was quite good at it. It was a simple geometric application, after all, but both his wallet and stomach were grateful that this concept seemed to escape most humans.
He traveled East, dipping South occasionally in cadence with the road, and the farther he went, the better things got: waning headaches, easier sleep, fewer “attacks.” Out there things were new, completely unconnected to the Winchesters and his time as an Angel on Earth. New and unimportant and completely forgettable. He took in the sights and sounds of three dozen cities and then let them slip away again like a refreshing afterthought. Occasionally he would have to detour around towns they’d visited, cities where he knew Prophets lived - but those times were few and far between the closer he got to the coast.
He didn’t know how to be still. He didn’t know how to be anything but moving. There was an itch under his skin that flared at every prolonged stop, every detour. So he stayed when he had to and traveled when he could- trading mileage for the days of his life.
The distance grew under the spin of his wheels on cracked highways, but it was never fast enough. He could never get anywhere-the places he was trying to reach racing on ahead of him until he fell too far behind and forgot them. He was running to something, he knew that, but he never got close enough to remember what. Each time it was a constant reminder of his earthly limits.
Those parts of him had been cut away, like defective limbs - and it was their absence, above all else that he could not overcome. He learned how to get by; how to walk without their weight on his back. But he could never learn how to forget…and each morning he awoke to the loss and the emptiness.
His grounded human vessel would never fly.
He traveled for months in the summer sun, never really knowing why. Only that he was compelled to keep moving, keep going. But eventually America became too confining and he could feel his past catching up with him. The leaves had just begun to turn in Virginia when he bought a plane ticket under the name ‘Wendell Owens’ and left the country.
-
Europe was better. It was both too-crowded and gloriously large at the same time. He crossed borders like he’d crossed state lines but it felt so much more, because it was countries, something more than arbitrary lines on a map. As he road the train from London to Belgium he could almost imagine losing himself in the great chaos of it all.
And for a time, he did.
He lost himself in the streets of Amsterdam. He practiced his Dutch with tour guides in the Rijksmuseum and the Oude Kerk, and at night he walked Piet Heinkade. He liked listening to the sounds of boats in the river and the whir of bicycle wheels under late night travelers. The city streets smelled of cinders and rain.
He trained into Berlin and lost time in Schöneberg. Outside the subway station, he received directions from two German men sharing a cigarette on the street corner. Jan had proclaimed, in smooth tempered German, that he looked atrocious, laughing into his exhale while his companion Luka had attempted to keep a straight face.
Castiel’s flawless German shocked them both into laughter.
He spent six days with them exploring the city. Jan taught him how to shave and made him swear in ten different languages to never grow a beard again, however unintentionally. Luka taught him the names of stars in the dark midnight of an electrical blackout, the smoke of his cigarette expanding in rings above them, his mouth a perfect ‘O’.
He zigzagged down into Frankfurt for mass at the Kaiserdom before crossing into France in a stolen Lupo that had a tendency to pull to the left at 70km/h. He pulled off the road outside of Verdun to stand in a field of high autumn grass - ochre and sienna against the blue skyline - and listen to the sound the wind made running through it. He left the car there - ignition off, keys tucked up in the visor - and walked the last seven miles into town.
He tried not to travel North because it felt like going up.
In Paris, he ate lunch in the shadow of Notre Dame and walked to the Musée D’Orsay to see its cousin Van Gogh had painted in Auvers-sur-Oise. There was something comforting about the inconsistency of the lines, paint thick on the canvas. He spent two weeks in Boulogne-Billancourt because the daffodils were blooming and the sea of gold felt like something holy.
It’s there that he realizes what-who-he’s been running to. He’d never stopped, really...
Searching for God.
He wondered what else he’d forgotten.
The next day he bought a journal in a shop outside of Saint-Etienne. The cover was a deep green of gilded leather, the pages still crisp and clean. In it he wrote his secrets. Every time he felt something slipping away from him, he wrote it in the book, marking it indelibly in ink on paper that could retain what his human brain could not. Not everything was important, but all of it was worth remembering. Amidst spells for banishing rare demons and the names of every living Prophet, he drew careful angelic sigils - the marks for Hope, Trust, Faith. He named the rooms of the Records Hall. He took four pages to tell the story of Anna.
He wrote how she had led him into battle when demons breached the Citadel back when Man first walked, russet hair like fire in the heat of her righteous fury. She had been the one to put the angel blade in his hand, her brilliant wings unfurled. Anna was the first of his brothers and sisters to call him a Warrior of God.
She had shown him the way.
-
“You will stand with me, little brother,” she had said. Outside his brethren were crying out for help, the clash of metal on metal ringing through the empty hall. His Grace twisted in distress and the need to do something reverberated through him.
“I will.” He swore. “Though, I do not know how.” He had no armor, no sword - only the robes of his office - but he stood just the same.
Anna smiled. And then she pulled her very own sword from her belt and placed it in his upturned palms. “You have already done so.”
She drew another blade from beneath her robes and raised it before her. Her eyes shone silver in the glow of the holy weapon, and Castiel felt the rightness of that moment. He lifted his new blade, fingers gripping tight the pommel, and knew without asking that the sword was his now. It would work for no other as truly as it did for him.
“Given in the thick of battle,” Anna told him. “There is strength in such a gift. There are not many with so powerful a blade.”
The sound of fighting was drawing closer-more angels were needed to drive the horde back. He would drive them back; fighting beside Anna, the angel with the ruby hair. His wings snapped out with force, blowing parchment and scrolls off tables and from the shelves, and Castiel felt, truly, for the first time...purpose.
“I will fight with you.” He said, taking wing - his blade held aloft. “Or die in the attempt.”
Anna lifted from the ground, her Grace a fluid swirl of determination that stirred the ends of her hair and glowed visibly beneath her fair skin. “When the time comes, you will know how to use it,” she told him. Her eyes were like green fire as she looked on him, and when she did, Castiel felt as though she was looking through him and beyond him all at once, as if in that single instant she knew the entirety of him, now and forever. Who he was, who he’d become-all that was yet to pass.
He had always wondered why - through the proud pleasure that had tangled her Grace with his - he had seen such sorrow then in her green eyes. “There will always be something worth fighting for, little one,” Anna had said, and then they were soaring out of the citadel and into battle - fighting together for the very first time.
-
Months passed.
His transportation was never as permanent as it had been in the states, but he got by. Occasionally, he would meet people on the road, other travelers. Most were out to see the world; a few, like him, were simply lost. He never lingered too long in their company, but whenever they parted, he found each time that he had learned something new. Some of the things, so strange and unfamiliar as they were, he immediately wrote down in his journal, unwilling to trust his human memory.
Accounts of how to skip stones and ride a bicycle were slipped in between Holy Invocations. The chorus of a Queen song a little girl had sung to him in the back of VW bus had been scribbled on the back of a candy wrapper and tucked between pages like a drying flower. He began to collect postcards after that - the places he’d been - bookmarking his journal with glossy oaktag.
-
When October fell, he went South, into Italy. He liked the warmth of the coast and followed it down, some days just walking miles along the sandy shore, some days jutting inland for no reason on a stolen motorbike. He ate pizza in a little restaurant outside Florence - a place that claimed to have invented it. He knelt at the feet of the Pieta in Rome and spent four days walking St. Peter’s Square, feeding pigeons with the crumbs of the breakfast he bought but never ate. All around him, one-hundred and fifty saints stood sentinel above his head. Watching. He touched the great black obelisk in the center of their focus and tried to feel their belief. The stone was warm under his palm, even as night fell. He thought maybe that was enough.
He even went to Eden, where Angels had long stood guard over humanity’s birthplace-the beginning of all Creation. It was a Starbucks now.
If any angelic Grace still lingered in that place, Castiel could not sense it. He moved on, worrying disappointment between his teeth. Always he felt the constant bite of Time on his heels, and no matter how far he ran, it was still his time that was running out.
-
He chased the sun eastward from the Southern tip of Italy, into Greece. He climbed to the Areopagus and traced the words of Paul in the crumbling stone.
“Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.”
Castiel invoked the apostle’s name on the steps of the ancient temple. He knelt, head bowed, and begged him, as he had done for the people of Athens, to reveal to him the Unknown God, to name the Nameless. The place was hallowed, warm with the weight of righteous words, but no Apostle came. His Father did not answer.
He wept in anger; he wept because there were no other words to say, because he was tired. The old gods stirred - perhaps curious, perhaps moved by pity - and it might have been Ceres who told him to go. His God had never truly been here, and she did not understand why a god would ignore one of his children. He would not open his eyes, but she felt her thoughts and emotions with great force - hard enough even for a human to sense. He felt her wipe the tears from his face, and though he stayed long into the night, stubbornly waiting for a sign that did not come, he took her compassion with him when he left.
-
He sailed the Aegean from Athens to Izmir on the Ionian coast and was baptized in the splash of waves on the hull and the breath of salt sea air against his face. From there he traveled to Cyprus - found the tree whose branch had killed the Whore and traced a healing sigil into its fractured limb - and then on to Alexandria.
He crossed Egypt and stood at the base of Mount Sinai. Chintzy tourist shops and walking vendors tried to sell him laminated copies of the Commandments. Wafer cookies shaped like tablets. He’d used the last of his currency to get there, but it didn’t matter - Castiel didn’t matter. He stood in the shadow of the mountain as night fell and strained his eyes for a sight orange flame against the rock. But he couldn’t climb it; he didn’t know how.
God had been here. Once. Long, long ago. He had spoken to Moses in a voice like thunder and all of Egypt had quaked under its weight. Here, his Father had told humans, his children, how to live.
“Tell me,” he whispered. “What do I do now?”
-
Through all of this - the whole of his travels - he kept his phone, though he didn’t answer it. Dean called every day, like clockwork, never leaving a message. Sam called occasionally too - still reeling from Lucifer’s possession and whatever force had pulled him from the cage - and though Castiel still found his voice grating, there was something calming about the familiar annoyance. On particularly long drives he found himself replaying the voicemails simply to hear Sam’s rambles fill the silence.
Only a handful of times did he get a text from Bobby, and each time it was simply a town and a problem - demon, ghost, wendigo. Each time, it was never more than a day’s drive from where Castiel had bunkered down. He never answered those messages, never asked how the old hunter always seemed to know where he was - when sometimes he didn’t even know himself. He’d delay as long as he could, ignore the sudden weight of the phone in his pocket, but in the end, he always went. Castiel never reported back - not when he stopped the lamia in Cairo, or the pack of shifters back in Tallahassee - but Bobby knew - somehow - he knew he’d done it, knew not to send anyone else. Just like Castiel could hear the hunter’s gruff command in every text: “Make yourself useful, idjit.”
-
He bathed naked in the Dead Sea and pressed his forehead to the Wailing Wall. He walked the desert and watched the Middle East tearing itself apart, and if God had once loved the Israelites it was hard to believe it now. But though he had learned doubt, he also knew that truth faith came at a price-that belief without proof was a constant, painful struggle; it was the trade they had made for free will.
He felt his resolve strengthening in their presence. If these humans could still trust and believe in God, then he - who had been pulled from the void four times by the will of God, Himself - could surely carry on. He knew that God still lived, that he was Good-and if he knew that, then he could hold tight to the hope that He also had a plan.
He bought an apple off a vendor for a small child he’d seen hovering anxiously in the bazaar and murmured a prayer over her dark, tangled hair. God was not here, but he would continue the search.
-
It was December when he finally decided to go back. He was in the West Bank. Jericho. The sun was hot on the back of his neck and the breeze - when it came - was damp and heavy. It was a land graced by angels. It was here that his brother Michael had come to the human, Joshua, and told him to remove the sandals from his feet, for the place on which he stood was holy.
Castiel had heard the story from the archangel himself on the shores of Heaven’s sea. He’d never forgotten that moment. How pleased Michael had looked when Castiel had asked for that particular story, how his voice had flowed with the swell of the waves as he spoke of God’s commandment to him-how it had been one of the last times he had heard their Father’s voice.
There were people all around him - tourists taking photographs, locals going about their business - as he carefully toed off his shoes and stepped barefoot into the sand. It was hot, but strangely soft. The grains shifted under his weight, slipping between his toes, blowing over the tops of his feet with the breeze. He stood barefoot in the sands at Jericho and reached for Michael.
He was no closer to finding God than he had been a year ago, and then he’d had the aid of Dean’s amulet. Now he had only his human instinct to guide him, not a speck of Grace to hint that he was getting close. But he remembered every scroll in the Hall of Records and even if it took all his human years to recall them all, he could search those places Heaven had already touched. He could try to find a brother where his Father eluded him.
Suddenly, inexplicably - in the middle of the desert - he thought of Christmas. He looked around for the cause and noticed a woman next to him talking animatedly in a native dialect, waving a paper at her husband. December 22nd it read. Castiel frowned. In the heavy heat, he’d lost track of time, forgotten that winter had descended to the west; there had been no snow to remind him.
He remembered the aborted Christmas they’d tried to celebrate last year, when they had been in the middle of the capital-A apocalypse. They’d been travelling for days straight - through storms and demon nests - and they were all exhausted from being on the lookout for the other three horseman. Even Castiel was feeling the toll of their restless pursuits. He had grown tired more easily in those days, his Grace slipping away the longer he remained cut off from the Host. But then Christmas came and Sam was determined to make the most of it. And when Dean heard there’d be pie, he’d gotten excited about it too.
Despite heroic efforts and great personal risk to the Impala, snow had kept them from making it to Bobby’s in time. Cas had been too drained to ‘zap’ them - having used most of his power to keep the car on the road when Dean hit ice - so they grabbed some beers, ordered a pizza and had Christmas in a motel room outside of Fremont.
Sam made a “tree topper” that looked suspiciously like Castiel, and when the angel had been distracted by Dean’s return from the front desk with a pizza peculiarly laden with pineapple, Sam had balanced it on top of the TV antennae. Only Dean’s first genuine laugh in days prevented Castiel from destroying it on sight.
They had found a staticky station playing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Dean had spent most of the night trying to explain clay-mation to Castiel, while Sam sat on the floor and laughed.
He’d only been half an angel by that point - practically as human as he was now - but the memory didn’t feel…wrong. He could not remember feeling disconnected from the Winchesters or afraid; only a strange, blanketing contentment. He’d been exiled from Heaven, but he hadn’t been alone.
Castiel looked out once more across Jericho and reached again for Michael. Michael, who had left him to find his own fledgling wings, who wouldn’t tolerate anything less than his very best. But Michael who had always, always come when Castiel truly needed him. Michael. Please. I need you now.
But there was no answer. Wherever Michael was now, he could not help him.
It was the sheen of sun on sand that burned his eyes and nothing more when he turned his bare feet west towards Tel Aviv. His shoes he left behind though he knew he would not return. There was nothing for him there.
He spent his Christmas over the Atlantic Ocean; streaking through the dark winter sky and straining for a glimpse of stars as the rest of the cabin slept on.
-
Rathbun had a demon problem.
Castiel was not surprised. Since the aversion of the Apocalypse the demons were moving steadily North, away from the Bible belt and the cities where more than the average citizen was willing to make the mental leap from “bad people” to demonic possession. The freak storms and suspiciously doom-like omens of the past year were still fresh in the minds of humans, and since the Horsemen had stayed pretty much localized in North America there had been mass exodus to Europe and Asia by demons hoping to better avoid hunters. In fact, what did surprise Castiel was that there was a group of demons large enough stateside to draw Bobby’s attention at all. He’d only had three hunts in the two months since he’d been back - all of them vampires.
He always carried an anti-possession charm, of course, but he still pulled over outside the city to check over his limited arsenal and make sure he was stocked for a demon hunt. He’d had to resupply upon returning to the states and though he had not yet grown to suffer from humans’ irrational attachment to material possessions, he wished, not for the first time, that he could have found a way to smuggle his Ithaca onto the plane. The 12 gauge he had now was cumbersome and had a particularly violent recoil that he found irritating. He checked that the shotgun was loaded and emptied half a box of extra salt rounds into the pocket of his coat. A flask of holy water went into the back of his jeans and handful of other things found their way into pockets before he was satisfied and shut the trunk again.
He lay the shotgun across the passenger seat and pulled back onto the highway. The sky ahead looked like snow.
-
Castiel didn’t see the second demon until it was on him. He was thrown back and the flask in his back pocket shattered has he hit the catwalk, drenching his left leg in holy water. He fumbled in the breast pocket of his jacket - the demons were nearly on him again - and his hand closed around thin, unbroken glass. His bulb bombs had survived the blow. He pulled a fistful of light bulbs from his pocket, each one half-filled with salted holy water, and threw.
He caught one of the demons in the face, glass exploding into bloody, steaming shrapnel as the demon’s face started to burn. It was enough to slow it down. Castiel had just enough time to spout fifty odd words in Enochian and exorcise the demon from a middle-aged podiatrist before another barreled into him. They both went rolling in a crash of limbs down the metal stairwell, landing in a sonorous heap on the platform midway down.
The demon shrieked. Castiel was partially pinned beneath it, but it was the demon who was in pain. Its skin was starting to blister and smoke wherever it made contact with his leg, the denim soaked with holy water, and the demon was thrashing desperately to separate itself. With an obscene amount of luck, Castiel managed to get a leg free and a second later his foot connected solidly with the demon’s chest, kicking it back. The demon flew backwards off the landing with a yell, hitting the concrete floor below with a sickening sound.
Sound behind him - he twisted awkwardly, shotgun braced against his chest. From the ground he fired two salt rounds into the knees of the last demon, bringing it down as it headed for the stairs. He exorcised it quickly, amidst its jeers and threats, and then went after the one that fell. He reloaded as he went, painfully aware that he was bleeding and that he’d lost track of a demon three times stronger than his human form.
It leapt out of the shadows and he turned on instinct, trigger pulled but the gun snapped back and up, his shot exploding somewhere up in the rafters. He cursed the damned recoil, but it was too late. The demon was on him.
He managed two words in Enochian before her fingers closed around his throat and he couldn’t breathe much less speak. Pinpricks of light danced across his eyes. If the demon didn’t snap his neck he’d be unconscious in seconds. He swung at her face, breaking the skin across her cheek bone, but she only laughed and he scrabbled to get her hands from his throat, but he couldn’t, he-
“Tag. You’re it.”
Castiel felt the faintest touch of cold metal, but then the demon arched backwards and in the space between them he saw the tip of a jagged blade jutting through the bloody silk of her blouse. She’d been stabbed completely through the chest. Lightning sparked through her, eyes drowned out in purple-white light and then she was gone, her broken vessel slumping sideways onto the floor. Castiel was left blinking the stars from his eyes and panting on the factory floor.
Annoyed with himself, but grateful for the rescue, he took the offered hand and was pulled brusquely to his feet. Ice shot up his arm like he’d stuck it in snow. Castiel gasped and wrenched his hand back from Dean’s.
And it was Dean. Grime-spattered and thin, much thinner than he remembered, but unequivocally Dean.
“Cas?”
He responded automatically.
“Dean.” He didn’t recognize his own voice; how it broke like gravel underfoot. He can’t remember now, the last time he spoke.
“I thought you might be dead,” Dean said finally, his voice low. Like he hadn't planned on telling him that.
“I am not dead,” affirmed Castiel needlessly. The rest hung silently between them. You chose a human life for me, remember?
“Damnit, Cas.”
And it had been so long since anyone had called him that, that he started to smile - however inappropriate. He couldn't decide if he wanted to laugh or scream. Dean’s surprise slipped away; he’d decided to be pissed off instead. Castiel’s used to Dean’s anger. It’s a comfortingly predictable reaction - proof that he still knew some part of Dean after all this time.
He wondered if this is what going mad felt like.
“It’s been---a year. Where the hell have you been?” Because it’s Dean, and because it’s them, all Dean can think to do now is yell. That's okay.
“8 months, 14 days. Give or take a few hours,” Castiel corrects him, not for any particular reason other than that he does know how long it’s been, that he’d been thousands of miles away and still hadn’t been able to stop himself from keeping track. He felt like Dean should know too.
“All that time and you couldn’t send a postcard?” Dean snapped. “There a stamp shortage I don’t know about?”
Even if he wanted to, Castiel didn’t think he had the words to explain, to make Dean understand why. He was so angry - his green eyes dark with it - and despite everything that had happened, for a heartbeat Castiel would have done anything to make that go away. But the sight of Dean was too hard - the memories of him too steeped in his life as an angel. He was only ever the Winchester’s angel; their ally of light and grace, and now he's flawed and human and so faint with hunger, he thought his stomach might betray him. Something was clawing up inside of him - a word he used to know in a hundred different tongues, but which now escapes his human one. So he stared at Dean and said nothing.
Dean swallowed, jaw tense with the effort of keeping calm. Castiel watched his fists clench too, as though he was resisting the urge to reach out.
“I might be a freaking hypocrite, but I’m telling you this from experience, Cas - all this running? It never works. Whatever you’re looking for - it ain’t out there.” Dean caught his gaze, green meeting blue, and the unnamed thing inside of him stilled. “You got people here, man. People who want to help.”
Castiel looked at him, searching his earnest face. Winter had faded the freckles from the bridge of his nose, but the blaze in his eyes was fixed as ever. “You’re right.” He said, finally. “You are a hypocrite.”
He headed for the stairs, but Dean was right behind him. Dean made a grab for his arm, but Castiel shook him off - hard - the metal walkway quaking beneath them, and in the sudden space that opened up between them, Castiel turned around and leveled his shotgun on Dean. Just below the heart. “Let me go, Dean.”
Dean was surprised, but only for a moment. “Did that demon scramble your brains?” He snapped, more pissed off than before. “We both know you’d never shoot me.”
And for a moment - a very human - moment Cas considered whether a graze to the shoulder might blast that smug surety off his face. But in the end Dean was right; his whole body vibrated with the wrongness of pointing a gun at him. It was the most sure he’d been of anything in the last eight months. He swung the shotgun over his shoulder, wordless - free hand reaching into his coat and closing on plastic and metal. He’d learned a few tricks in the desert, and not all of them he’d used on the demons.
“Now look, Cas-“
A flicker of flame shot up between them with a practiced flick of Castiel’s lighter, and Dean broke off. In Castiel’s other hand was a small misshapen ball. Before Dean could react, Castiel touched flame to sphere and sparks burst from it in a flashing arc.
“Catch!” Castiel called and lobbed the thing at Dean. But it was on fire and Dean jumped back automatically to avoid being hit. When he looked back at Cas, the other man was halfway up the stairs.
He only had time to shout “CAS!” before the phosphor ignited and the flash bomb at his feet exploded.
-
Castiel’s body remembered that it had been hungry so he drove on autopilot. Out of the city, out of the county - he was an hour east of Rathbun when he saw a sign for food and exited. It was after ten and most of the streets were empty, despite the highway traffic, and he navigated them easily, pulling up behind a late-night burger joint.
He had done a very good job of not thinking about it up until this point. But now, under the flickering light of a Burger Royale, he remembered. He saw Dean’s face - how much harder it had looked, but relieved too - as though he’d needed to see Castiel. He wondered what his own face had looked like, seeing Dean again. But it hurt because he remembered too how it had been before.
With Dean he’d never needed to guess his intentions, never had to see with his eyes to know that he was there. He had been Dean’s angel. He had always just known. And to be reminded of that loss - the destruction of the bond they had shared…
Even his soul was invisible now - only the faintest shimmer visible to his oh-so-human eyes and even then only because he knew how to look for it. He ached for something beyond mortality, but there wasn’t a trace of angel left in him - he knew that - so maybe the sheen of light he’d glimpsed in the darkened factory had only been a wish.
Dean was a reminder of how broken everything was. A painful reminder, that settled like a stone in his gut and turned his earlier hunger to bile. He thought time and distance would have lessened the feeling; would have made their meeting easier to bear. But it had only made his gut twist. His skin crawled like it hadn’t done for months, and his body felt too small, too tight. He felt suffocated.
Shaking and sweating, he stumbled away from the restaurant with its sickening smells of meat and grease, and pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his coat. He didn’t think of Sam’s voicemails, inane and rambling, or the call log filled with Dean’s nameless number - he didn’t think of anything but go when he dropped it into the street.
The phone bounced and clattered a foot away from him, scuffed but resilient. He brought the heel of his boot down on it. Again and again and again. The screen cracked and then shattered. The keys split from their plastic mold and rolled away. Again and again and again until the circuitry was exposed and the phone was spilled open like some grotesque animal. Then he kicked what remained into an open sewer grate, and listened to the splash as the pieces hit water.
Then he got back into the car and rejoined the highway, heading east towards O’Hare.
~
It takes another four months and two disposable phones before Bobby tracks him down again - demons in Grenada. It’s a piece offering and a reprimand, and Castiel knows Dean hates flying too much to ever leave the states, knows that Spain is sparse with hunters as it is, so he steals a car and drives, his phone rattling on the dash in front of him.
--
( Chapter 2)
Pairing: Dean/Cas (Destiel)
Rating: R - For graphic scenes of both violent and sexual nature.
Summary: AU. Team Free Will has averted the Apocalypse, some force has pulled Bobby from the void and Sam from the cage, but Castiel has been brought back...as a human. And not even he knows why.
-
He remembered a little from his time with Sam and Dean, and quickly learned the rest; like how to steal and where to lay low. When he had lingered too long. He learned how to sleep in the back of a livestock truck on Route 42 two days after he left Sioux Falls, and when he awoke he tasted salt. After a week of hitchhiking he spent an afternoon in a public library in the Northwest corner of Iowa reading Driver’s Ed manuals. Then he jumped a car in the back lot and, after a few grinding starts, more or less sped out of town. That same afternoon he forced his newly acquired Charger off the gravel highway into a thicket of trees and taught himself how to fire a gun, blasting a crooked cross into the heart of thick oak tree.
The months improved his aim, and he came to accept the necessity of driving. At first it felt like a cage - all metal walls and rubber - but when he sped down empty county highways at night it was the closest he felt to flying.
He used biblical names as cover until he got too many curious looks with ‘Abraham’ and ‘Ishmael’. After that he used whichever name was on the credit card he’d most recently stolen. And when he couldn’t steal cards, he stole food -from farmer’s markets and the backs of service trucks; stole clothes from the line and from unattended machines in something called a ‘Laundromat’. The sins came easier now and he wondered if, after three millennia as an angel, he’d finally be brought low to Hell by some fifty years of human existence.
He got better, though. When he was able to think about the Winchesters without the wave of memories causing him to pass out, he dredged up all the tricks he’d witnessed but never been taught. He learned how to play pool - Dean’s favorite hustle - and found he was quite good at it. It was a simple geometric application, after all, but both his wallet and stomach were grateful that this concept seemed to escape most humans.
He traveled East, dipping South occasionally in cadence with the road, and the farther he went, the better things got: waning headaches, easier sleep, fewer “attacks.” Out there things were new, completely unconnected to the Winchesters and his time as an Angel on Earth. New and unimportant and completely forgettable. He took in the sights and sounds of three dozen cities and then let them slip away again like a refreshing afterthought. Occasionally he would have to detour around towns they’d visited, cities where he knew Prophets lived - but those times were few and far between the closer he got to the coast.
He didn’t know how to be still. He didn’t know how to be anything but moving. There was an itch under his skin that flared at every prolonged stop, every detour. So he stayed when he had to and traveled when he could- trading mileage for the days of his life.
The distance grew under the spin of his wheels on cracked highways, but it was never fast enough. He could never get anywhere-the places he was trying to reach racing on ahead of him until he fell too far behind and forgot them. He was running to something, he knew that, but he never got close enough to remember what. Each time it was a constant reminder of his earthly limits.
Those parts of him had been cut away, like defective limbs - and it was their absence, above all else that he could not overcome. He learned how to get by; how to walk without their weight on his back. But he could never learn how to forget…and each morning he awoke to the loss and the emptiness.
His grounded human vessel would never fly.
He traveled for months in the summer sun, never really knowing why. Only that he was compelled to keep moving, keep going. But eventually America became too confining and he could feel his past catching up with him. The leaves had just begun to turn in Virginia when he bought a plane ticket under the name ‘Wendell Owens’ and left the country.
-
Europe was better. It was both too-crowded and gloriously large at the same time. He crossed borders like he’d crossed state lines but it felt so much more, because it was countries, something more than arbitrary lines on a map. As he road the train from London to Belgium he could almost imagine losing himself in the great chaos of it all.
And for a time, he did.
He lost himself in the streets of Amsterdam. He practiced his Dutch with tour guides in the Rijksmuseum and the Oude Kerk, and at night he walked Piet Heinkade. He liked listening to the sounds of boats in the river and the whir of bicycle wheels under late night travelers. The city streets smelled of cinders and rain.
He trained into Berlin and lost time in Schöneberg. Outside the subway station, he received directions from two German men sharing a cigarette on the street corner. Jan had proclaimed, in smooth tempered German, that he looked atrocious, laughing into his exhale while his companion Luka had attempted to keep a straight face.
Castiel’s flawless German shocked them both into laughter.
He spent six days with them exploring the city. Jan taught him how to shave and made him swear in ten different languages to never grow a beard again, however unintentionally. Luka taught him the names of stars in the dark midnight of an electrical blackout, the smoke of his cigarette expanding in rings above them, his mouth a perfect ‘O’.
He zigzagged down into Frankfurt for mass at the Kaiserdom before crossing into France in a stolen Lupo that had a tendency to pull to the left at 70km/h. He pulled off the road outside of Verdun to stand in a field of high autumn grass - ochre and sienna against the blue skyline - and listen to the sound the wind made running through it. He left the car there - ignition off, keys tucked up in the visor - and walked the last seven miles into town.
He tried not to travel North because it felt like going up.
In Paris, he ate lunch in the shadow of Notre Dame and walked to the Musée D’Orsay to see its cousin Van Gogh had painted in Auvers-sur-Oise. There was something comforting about the inconsistency of the lines, paint thick on the canvas. He spent two weeks in Boulogne-Billancourt because the daffodils were blooming and the sea of gold felt like something holy.
It’s there that he realizes what-who-he’s been running to. He’d never stopped, really...
Searching for God.
He wondered what else he’d forgotten.
The next day he bought a journal in a shop outside of Saint-Etienne. The cover was a deep green of gilded leather, the pages still crisp and clean. In it he wrote his secrets. Every time he felt something slipping away from him, he wrote it in the book, marking it indelibly in ink on paper that could retain what his human brain could not. Not everything was important, but all of it was worth remembering. Amidst spells for banishing rare demons and the names of every living Prophet, he drew careful angelic sigils - the marks for Hope, Trust, Faith. He named the rooms of the Records Hall. He took four pages to tell the story of Anna.
He wrote how she had led him into battle when demons breached the Citadel back when Man first walked, russet hair like fire in the heat of her righteous fury. She had been the one to put the angel blade in his hand, her brilliant wings unfurled. Anna was the first of his brothers and sisters to call him a Warrior of God.
She had shown him the way.
-
“You will stand with me, little brother,” she had said. Outside his brethren were crying out for help, the clash of metal on metal ringing through the empty hall. His Grace twisted in distress and the need to do something reverberated through him.
“I will.” He swore. “Though, I do not know how.” He had no armor, no sword - only the robes of his office - but he stood just the same.
Anna smiled. And then she pulled her very own sword from her belt and placed it in his upturned palms. “You have already done so.”
She drew another blade from beneath her robes and raised it before her. Her eyes shone silver in the glow of the holy weapon, and Castiel felt the rightness of that moment. He lifted his new blade, fingers gripping tight the pommel, and knew without asking that the sword was his now. It would work for no other as truly as it did for him.
“Given in the thick of battle,” Anna told him. “There is strength in such a gift. There are not many with so powerful a blade.”
The sound of fighting was drawing closer-more angels were needed to drive the horde back. He would drive them back; fighting beside Anna, the angel with the ruby hair. His wings snapped out with force, blowing parchment and scrolls off tables and from the shelves, and Castiel felt, truly, for the first time...purpose.
“I will fight with you.” He said, taking wing - his blade held aloft. “Or die in the attempt.”
Anna lifted from the ground, her Grace a fluid swirl of determination that stirred the ends of her hair and glowed visibly beneath her fair skin. “When the time comes, you will know how to use it,” she told him. Her eyes were like green fire as she looked on him, and when she did, Castiel felt as though she was looking through him and beyond him all at once, as if in that single instant she knew the entirety of him, now and forever. Who he was, who he’d become-all that was yet to pass.
He had always wondered why - through the proud pleasure that had tangled her Grace with his - he had seen such sorrow then in her green eyes. “There will always be something worth fighting for, little one,” Anna had said, and then they were soaring out of the citadel and into battle - fighting together for the very first time.
-
Months passed.
His transportation was never as permanent as it had been in the states, but he got by. Occasionally, he would meet people on the road, other travelers. Most were out to see the world; a few, like him, were simply lost. He never lingered too long in their company, but whenever they parted, he found each time that he had learned something new. Some of the things, so strange and unfamiliar as they were, he immediately wrote down in his journal, unwilling to trust his human memory.
Accounts of how to skip stones and ride a bicycle were slipped in between Holy Invocations. The chorus of a Queen song a little girl had sung to him in the back of VW bus had been scribbled on the back of a candy wrapper and tucked between pages like a drying flower. He began to collect postcards after that - the places he’d been - bookmarking his journal with glossy oaktag.
-
When October fell, he went South, into Italy. He liked the warmth of the coast and followed it down, some days just walking miles along the sandy shore, some days jutting inland for no reason on a stolen motorbike. He ate pizza in a little restaurant outside Florence - a place that claimed to have invented it. He knelt at the feet of the Pieta in Rome and spent four days walking St. Peter’s Square, feeding pigeons with the crumbs of the breakfast he bought but never ate. All around him, one-hundred and fifty saints stood sentinel above his head. Watching. He touched the great black obelisk in the center of their focus and tried to feel their belief. The stone was warm under his palm, even as night fell. He thought maybe that was enough.
He even went to Eden, where Angels had long stood guard over humanity’s birthplace-the beginning of all Creation. It was a Starbucks now.
If any angelic Grace still lingered in that place, Castiel could not sense it. He moved on, worrying disappointment between his teeth. Always he felt the constant bite of Time on his heels, and no matter how far he ran, it was still his time that was running out.
-
He chased the sun eastward from the Southern tip of Italy, into Greece. He climbed to the Areopagus and traced the words of Paul in the crumbling stone.
“Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.”
Castiel invoked the apostle’s name on the steps of the ancient temple. He knelt, head bowed, and begged him, as he had done for the people of Athens, to reveal to him the Unknown God, to name the Nameless. The place was hallowed, warm with the weight of righteous words, but no Apostle came. His Father did not answer.
He wept in anger; he wept because there were no other words to say, because he was tired. The old gods stirred - perhaps curious, perhaps moved by pity - and it might have been Ceres who told him to go. His God had never truly been here, and she did not understand why a god would ignore one of his children. He would not open his eyes, but she felt her thoughts and emotions with great force - hard enough even for a human to sense. He felt her wipe the tears from his face, and though he stayed long into the night, stubbornly waiting for a sign that did not come, he took her compassion with him when he left.
-
He sailed the Aegean from Athens to Izmir on the Ionian coast and was baptized in the splash of waves on the hull and the breath of salt sea air against his face. From there he traveled to Cyprus - found the tree whose branch had killed the Whore and traced a healing sigil into its fractured limb - and then on to Alexandria.
He crossed Egypt and stood at the base of Mount Sinai. Chintzy tourist shops and walking vendors tried to sell him laminated copies of the Commandments. Wafer cookies shaped like tablets. He’d used the last of his currency to get there, but it didn’t matter - Castiel didn’t matter. He stood in the shadow of the mountain as night fell and strained his eyes for a sight orange flame against the rock. But he couldn’t climb it; he didn’t know how.
God had been here. Once. Long, long ago. He had spoken to Moses in a voice like thunder and all of Egypt had quaked under its weight. Here, his Father had told humans, his children, how to live.
“Tell me,” he whispered. “What do I do now?”
-
Through all of this - the whole of his travels - he kept his phone, though he didn’t answer it. Dean called every day, like clockwork, never leaving a message. Sam called occasionally too - still reeling from Lucifer’s possession and whatever force had pulled him from the cage - and though Castiel still found his voice grating, there was something calming about the familiar annoyance. On particularly long drives he found himself replaying the voicemails simply to hear Sam’s rambles fill the silence.
Only a handful of times did he get a text from Bobby, and each time it was simply a town and a problem - demon, ghost, wendigo. Each time, it was never more than a day’s drive from where Castiel had bunkered down. He never answered those messages, never asked how the old hunter always seemed to know where he was - when sometimes he didn’t even know himself. He’d delay as long as he could, ignore the sudden weight of the phone in his pocket, but in the end, he always went. Castiel never reported back - not when he stopped the lamia in Cairo, or the pack of shifters back in Tallahassee - but Bobby knew - somehow - he knew he’d done it, knew not to send anyone else. Just like Castiel could hear the hunter’s gruff command in every text: “Make yourself useful, idjit.”
-
He bathed naked in the Dead Sea and pressed his forehead to the Wailing Wall. He walked the desert and watched the Middle East tearing itself apart, and if God had once loved the Israelites it was hard to believe it now. But though he had learned doubt, he also knew that truth faith came at a price-that belief without proof was a constant, painful struggle; it was the trade they had made for free will.
He felt his resolve strengthening in their presence. If these humans could still trust and believe in God, then he - who had been pulled from the void four times by the will of God, Himself - could surely carry on. He knew that God still lived, that he was Good-and if he knew that, then he could hold tight to the hope that He also had a plan.
He bought an apple off a vendor for a small child he’d seen hovering anxiously in the bazaar and murmured a prayer over her dark, tangled hair. God was not here, but he would continue the search.
-
It was December when he finally decided to go back. He was in the West Bank. Jericho. The sun was hot on the back of his neck and the breeze - when it came - was damp and heavy. It was a land graced by angels. It was here that his brother Michael had come to the human, Joshua, and told him to remove the sandals from his feet, for the place on which he stood was holy.
Castiel had heard the story from the archangel himself on the shores of Heaven’s sea. He’d never forgotten that moment. How pleased Michael had looked when Castiel had asked for that particular story, how his voice had flowed with the swell of the waves as he spoke of God’s commandment to him-how it had been one of the last times he had heard their Father’s voice.
There were people all around him - tourists taking photographs, locals going about their business - as he carefully toed off his shoes and stepped barefoot into the sand. It was hot, but strangely soft. The grains shifted under his weight, slipping between his toes, blowing over the tops of his feet with the breeze. He stood barefoot in the sands at Jericho and reached for Michael.
He was no closer to finding God than he had been a year ago, and then he’d had the aid of Dean’s amulet. Now he had only his human instinct to guide him, not a speck of Grace to hint that he was getting close. But he remembered every scroll in the Hall of Records and even if it took all his human years to recall them all, he could search those places Heaven had already touched. He could try to find a brother where his Father eluded him.
Suddenly, inexplicably - in the middle of the desert - he thought of Christmas. He looked around for the cause and noticed a woman next to him talking animatedly in a native dialect, waving a paper at her husband. December 22nd it read. Castiel frowned. In the heavy heat, he’d lost track of time, forgotten that winter had descended to the west; there had been no snow to remind him.
He remembered the aborted Christmas they’d tried to celebrate last year, when they had been in the middle of the capital-A apocalypse. They’d been travelling for days straight - through storms and demon nests - and they were all exhausted from being on the lookout for the other three horseman. Even Castiel was feeling the toll of their restless pursuits. He had grown tired more easily in those days, his Grace slipping away the longer he remained cut off from the Host. But then Christmas came and Sam was determined to make the most of it. And when Dean heard there’d be pie, he’d gotten excited about it too.
Despite heroic efforts and great personal risk to the Impala, snow had kept them from making it to Bobby’s in time. Cas had been too drained to ‘zap’ them - having used most of his power to keep the car on the road when Dean hit ice - so they grabbed some beers, ordered a pizza and had Christmas in a motel room outside of Fremont.
Sam made a “tree topper” that looked suspiciously like Castiel, and when the angel had been distracted by Dean’s return from the front desk with a pizza peculiarly laden with pineapple, Sam had balanced it on top of the TV antennae. Only Dean’s first genuine laugh in days prevented Castiel from destroying it on sight.
They had found a staticky station playing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Dean had spent most of the night trying to explain clay-mation to Castiel, while Sam sat on the floor and laughed.
He’d only been half an angel by that point - practically as human as he was now - but the memory didn’t feel…wrong. He could not remember feeling disconnected from the Winchesters or afraid; only a strange, blanketing contentment. He’d been exiled from Heaven, but he hadn’t been alone.
Castiel looked out once more across Jericho and reached again for Michael. Michael, who had left him to find his own fledgling wings, who wouldn’t tolerate anything less than his very best. But Michael who had always, always come when Castiel truly needed him. Michael. Please. I need you now.
But there was no answer. Wherever Michael was now, he could not help him.
It was the sheen of sun on sand that burned his eyes and nothing more when he turned his bare feet west towards Tel Aviv. His shoes he left behind though he knew he would not return. There was nothing for him there.
He spent his Christmas over the Atlantic Ocean; streaking through the dark winter sky and straining for a glimpse of stars as the rest of the cabin slept on.
-
Rathbun had a demon problem.
Castiel was not surprised. Since the aversion of the Apocalypse the demons were moving steadily North, away from the Bible belt and the cities where more than the average citizen was willing to make the mental leap from “bad people” to demonic possession. The freak storms and suspiciously doom-like omens of the past year were still fresh in the minds of humans, and since the Horsemen had stayed pretty much localized in North America there had been mass exodus to Europe and Asia by demons hoping to better avoid hunters. In fact, what did surprise Castiel was that there was a group of demons large enough stateside to draw Bobby’s attention at all. He’d only had three hunts in the two months since he’d been back - all of them vampires.
He always carried an anti-possession charm, of course, but he still pulled over outside the city to check over his limited arsenal and make sure he was stocked for a demon hunt. He’d had to resupply upon returning to the states and though he had not yet grown to suffer from humans’ irrational attachment to material possessions, he wished, not for the first time, that he could have found a way to smuggle his Ithaca onto the plane. The 12 gauge he had now was cumbersome and had a particularly violent recoil that he found irritating. He checked that the shotgun was loaded and emptied half a box of extra salt rounds into the pocket of his coat. A flask of holy water went into the back of his jeans and handful of other things found their way into pockets before he was satisfied and shut the trunk again.
He lay the shotgun across the passenger seat and pulled back onto the highway. The sky ahead looked like snow.
-
Castiel didn’t see the second demon until it was on him. He was thrown back and the flask in his back pocket shattered has he hit the catwalk, drenching his left leg in holy water. He fumbled in the breast pocket of his jacket - the demons were nearly on him again - and his hand closed around thin, unbroken glass. His bulb bombs had survived the blow. He pulled a fistful of light bulbs from his pocket, each one half-filled with salted holy water, and threw.
He caught one of the demons in the face, glass exploding into bloody, steaming shrapnel as the demon’s face started to burn. It was enough to slow it down. Castiel had just enough time to spout fifty odd words in Enochian and exorcise the demon from a middle-aged podiatrist before another barreled into him. They both went rolling in a crash of limbs down the metal stairwell, landing in a sonorous heap on the platform midway down.
The demon shrieked. Castiel was partially pinned beneath it, but it was the demon who was in pain. Its skin was starting to blister and smoke wherever it made contact with his leg, the denim soaked with holy water, and the demon was thrashing desperately to separate itself. With an obscene amount of luck, Castiel managed to get a leg free and a second later his foot connected solidly with the demon’s chest, kicking it back. The demon flew backwards off the landing with a yell, hitting the concrete floor below with a sickening sound.
Sound behind him - he twisted awkwardly, shotgun braced against his chest. From the ground he fired two salt rounds into the knees of the last demon, bringing it down as it headed for the stairs. He exorcised it quickly, amidst its jeers and threats, and then went after the one that fell. He reloaded as he went, painfully aware that he was bleeding and that he’d lost track of a demon three times stronger than his human form.
It leapt out of the shadows and he turned on instinct, trigger pulled but the gun snapped back and up, his shot exploding somewhere up in the rafters. He cursed the damned recoil, but it was too late. The demon was on him.
He managed two words in Enochian before her fingers closed around his throat and he couldn’t breathe much less speak. Pinpricks of light danced across his eyes. If the demon didn’t snap his neck he’d be unconscious in seconds. He swung at her face, breaking the skin across her cheek bone, but she only laughed and he scrabbled to get her hands from his throat, but he couldn’t, he-
“Tag. You’re it.”
Castiel felt the faintest touch of cold metal, but then the demon arched backwards and in the space between them he saw the tip of a jagged blade jutting through the bloody silk of her blouse. She’d been stabbed completely through the chest. Lightning sparked through her, eyes drowned out in purple-white light and then she was gone, her broken vessel slumping sideways onto the floor. Castiel was left blinking the stars from his eyes and panting on the factory floor.
Annoyed with himself, but grateful for the rescue, he took the offered hand and was pulled brusquely to his feet. Ice shot up his arm like he’d stuck it in snow. Castiel gasped and wrenched his hand back from Dean’s.
And it was Dean. Grime-spattered and thin, much thinner than he remembered, but unequivocally Dean.
“Cas?”
He responded automatically.
“Dean.” He didn’t recognize his own voice; how it broke like gravel underfoot. He can’t remember now, the last time he spoke.
“I thought you might be dead,” Dean said finally, his voice low. Like he hadn't planned on telling him that.
“I am not dead,” affirmed Castiel needlessly. The rest hung silently between them. You chose a human life for me, remember?
“Damnit, Cas.”
And it had been so long since anyone had called him that, that he started to smile - however inappropriate. He couldn't decide if he wanted to laugh or scream. Dean’s surprise slipped away; he’d decided to be pissed off instead. Castiel’s used to Dean’s anger. It’s a comfortingly predictable reaction - proof that he still knew some part of Dean after all this time.
He wondered if this is what going mad felt like.
“It’s been---a year. Where the hell have you been?” Because it’s Dean, and because it’s them, all Dean can think to do now is yell. That's okay.
“8 months, 14 days. Give or take a few hours,” Castiel corrects him, not for any particular reason other than that he does know how long it’s been, that he’d been thousands of miles away and still hadn’t been able to stop himself from keeping track. He felt like Dean should know too.
“All that time and you couldn’t send a postcard?” Dean snapped. “There a stamp shortage I don’t know about?”
Even if he wanted to, Castiel didn’t think he had the words to explain, to make Dean understand why. He was so angry - his green eyes dark with it - and despite everything that had happened, for a heartbeat Castiel would have done anything to make that go away. But the sight of Dean was too hard - the memories of him too steeped in his life as an angel. He was only ever the Winchester’s angel; their ally of light and grace, and now he's flawed and human and so faint with hunger, he thought his stomach might betray him. Something was clawing up inside of him - a word he used to know in a hundred different tongues, but which now escapes his human one. So he stared at Dean and said nothing.
Dean swallowed, jaw tense with the effort of keeping calm. Castiel watched his fists clench too, as though he was resisting the urge to reach out.
“I might be a freaking hypocrite, but I’m telling you this from experience, Cas - all this running? It never works. Whatever you’re looking for - it ain’t out there.” Dean caught his gaze, green meeting blue, and the unnamed thing inside of him stilled. “You got people here, man. People who want to help.”
Castiel looked at him, searching his earnest face. Winter had faded the freckles from the bridge of his nose, but the blaze in his eyes was fixed as ever. “You’re right.” He said, finally. “You are a hypocrite.”
He headed for the stairs, but Dean was right behind him. Dean made a grab for his arm, but Castiel shook him off - hard - the metal walkway quaking beneath them, and in the sudden space that opened up between them, Castiel turned around and leveled his shotgun on Dean. Just below the heart. “Let me go, Dean.”
Dean was surprised, but only for a moment. “Did that demon scramble your brains?” He snapped, more pissed off than before. “We both know you’d never shoot me.”
And for a moment - a very human - moment Cas considered whether a graze to the shoulder might blast that smug surety off his face. But in the end Dean was right; his whole body vibrated with the wrongness of pointing a gun at him. It was the most sure he’d been of anything in the last eight months. He swung the shotgun over his shoulder, wordless - free hand reaching into his coat and closing on plastic and metal. He’d learned a few tricks in the desert, and not all of them he’d used on the demons.
“Now look, Cas-“
A flicker of flame shot up between them with a practiced flick of Castiel’s lighter, and Dean broke off. In Castiel’s other hand was a small misshapen ball. Before Dean could react, Castiel touched flame to sphere and sparks burst from it in a flashing arc.
“Catch!” Castiel called and lobbed the thing at Dean. But it was on fire and Dean jumped back automatically to avoid being hit. When he looked back at Cas, the other man was halfway up the stairs.
He only had time to shout “CAS!” before the phosphor ignited and the flash bomb at his feet exploded.
-
Castiel’s body remembered that it had been hungry so he drove on autopilot. Out of the city, out of the county - he was an hour east of Rathbun when he saw a sign for food and exited. It was after ten and most of the streets were empty, despite the highway traffic, and he navigated them easily, pulling up behind a late-night burger joint.
He had done a very good job of not thinking about it up until this point. But now, under the flickering light of a Burger Royale, he remembered. He saw Dean’s face - how much harder it had looked, but relieved too - as though he’d needed to see Castiel. He wondered what his own face had looked like, seeing Dean again. But it hurt because he remembered too how it had been before.
With Dean he’d never needed to guess his intentions, never had to see with his eyes to know that he was there. He had been Dean’s angel. He had always just known. And to be reminded of that loss - the destruction of the bond they had shared…
Even his soul was invisible now - only the faintest shimmer visible to his oh-so-human eyes and even then only because he knew how to look for it. He ached for something beyond mortality, but there wasn’t a trace of angel left in him - he knew that - so maybe the sheen of light he’d glimpsed in the darkened factory had only been a wish.
Dean was a reminder of how broken everything was. A painful reminder, that settled like a stone in his gut and turned his earlier hunger to bile. He thought time and distance would have lessened the feeling; would have made their meeting easier to bear. But it had only made his gut twist. His skin crawled like it hadn’t done for months, and his body felt too small, too tight. He felt suffocated.
Shaking and sweating, he stumbled away from the restaurant with its sickening smells of meat and grease, and pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his coat. He didn’t think of Sam’s voicemails, inane and rambling, or the call log filled with Dean’s nameless number - he didn’t think of anything but go when he dropped it into the street.
The phone bounced and clattered a foot away from him, scuffed but resilient. He brought the heel of his boot down on it. Again and again and again. The screen cracked and then shattered. The keys split from their plastic mold and rolled away. Again and again and again until the circuitry was exposed and the phone was spilled open like some grotesque animal. Then he kicked what remained into an open sewer grate, and listened to the splash as the pieces hit water.
Then he got back into the car and rejoined the highway, heading east towards O’Hare.
~
It takes another four months and two disposable phones before Bobby tracks him down again - demons in Grenada. It’s a piece offering and a reprimand, and Castiel knows Dean hates flying too much to ever leave the states, knows that Spain is sparse with hunters as it is, so he steals a car and drives, his phone rattling on the dash in front of him.
--
( Chapter 2)