Only With the Heart, for flightagain, part 2 of 2
~oOo~…
“Dessine-moi un mouton.”
Castiel interrupted his vigil over Grace’s radio to look at the blonde boy standing on the sand by the plane. He looked both lost and decisive, like he did every time. He also spoke French, but as far as Castiel had been able to gather, that had no relevance to his origin. He appeared human, and if Castiel had still been an angel, he would have been able to tell. He had offered the boy some holy water, which he had drunk without hesitation, so at least he wasn’t a demon, and it was unlikely that a ghost would be able to interact as convincingly with his surroundings. Cas didn’t have pure salt, but he’d attempted the test with seawater, and nothing had happened. However, he couldn’t be entirely certain.
Castiel understood French, of course. It was a simple tongue in comparison with many he had picked up during his existence. “Je suis désolé. Je ne suis pas un artist.” He hadn’t bothered to ask if the boy spoke English. It was a welcome change to speak one of the many languages other than English, and it wasn’t like he would be able to introduce the boy to the Winchesters. They wouldn’t understand.
“I’m not an artist,” Cas said again, and pointed at the drawing he had created in the sand. “Neither is my friend.”
The boy sat on the sand facing him, folding his legs up under him. “I have a friend. He is a fox. I tamed him.”
“My friends are human,” Cas said. He had considered asking the Winchesters to buy a pet, but it would be impractical. They were often away for days on end hunting.
“Did you tame them, as well?”
Cas smiled. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose you could say that. Though I don’t presume to have done it single-handedly.”
“You talk like the grown-ups sometimes, but you are nothing like them.”
“Where are you from?”
The boy didn’t answer. He never answered direct questions, just stared at the sky. Castiel had done that a lot in the past days, as well. Without the artificial lights of civilization, the night sky looked magnificent. Castiel tried not to think of Heaven often, but the ethereal beauty of space reminded him. And yet, a night sky was something he could never have experienced in Heaven, unless he intruded upon one that catered for a human soul.
“Where are you from?” the boy asked, as if he’d just come up with the question out of nowhere. His long yellow scarf curled into the sand beside him.
“I used to be an angel. I came from Heaven.”
“My planet is B612. It’s very small.”
“Heaven is infinite. However, I cannot return.”
“I miss it. It’s my home, you know.”
“My friend has been dreaming of serpents.”
“That isn’t good. The serpent lies.”
Castiel didn’t reply. He was sure that the boy did not speak of snakes in general. Castiel had observed the animals that frequented the island, and there were no snakes among them. Most were birds that stopped to gather new strength for their flight. Castiel sometimes wished it were as easy for the Winchesters and him, but he had no Grace, and Grace didn’t have enough fuel.
“You understand.”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“Hmm. You can call me The Little Prince.”
“That is a nice name,” Castiel said. He wasn’t just trying to be polite. As human denominations went, le petit prince had a pleasant ring to it, though he had been around the Winchesters long enough to know that it wasn’t a typical name.
“I had a friend once. He had a machine like yours, and he also fell from the sky.” The Little Prince laughed. “But he wasn’t an angel.”
“I would have liked to meet him.”
“It was a long time ago. But I will ask the fox. Maybe he will agree to meet you. Tomorrow.”
…~oOo~…
Dean woke to Sam screaming. It wasn’t the first time, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but Dean still hated it every single time. And it definitely wasn’t just because his behemoth of a brother kept flailing his arms about and hitting Dean.
“Sam! Goddammit, Sammy!”
Sam bolted upright - and brought the ceiling of palm leaves tumbling down around them.
“Dean.”
“Yeah, still alive. What the hell, Sam?” Dean pushed a leaf off his shoulder, blinking into the almost darkness.
“Just a dream, I think.”
“You think!?”
“I’m sorry, okay? We’ll just put this stuff away and rebuild it in the morning.”
Dean nodded. “Want to share with the class?”
“Dean…” Sam was moving around, his frame silhouetted against the night sky, pulling his sleeping bag from under a pile of dried out palm leaves.
“Yeah, I’m listening.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Dean pushed himself to his feet, dislodging another leaf, and tugged the blanket and his sleeping bag, which had become snagged on something. “It was snakes again, wasn’t it.”
“They’re just dreams, Dean. They feel nothing like premonitions or anything. I can’t even remember them when I’ve been up for a few minutes.”
“They are frigging nightmares, Sammy, and they aren’t normal! Not even for us normal.”
“I’ve had recurring nightmares before.”
“Yeah, about clowns. And monsters. And Lucifer. And Hell. Not frigging snakes! You’re not even scared of snakes.”
Sam didn’t reply.
Dean bunched up the sleeping bag. “Whatever. Let’s go and keep Cas company? We can sleep in the Grace just as well at night.”
“I’ll get the water,” Sam said, quietly.
They made the trek to the plane in the light of a pen flashlight that Sam had dug up somewhere. Its batteries were slowly but surely dying, the pinprick of light growing progressively dimmer. Once, Dean imagined spotting something out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t mention it. He really didn’t need to add his own paranoia to Sam’s strange dreams and Cas’s all around weird behavior.
The Grace, once it came into sight, was easily visible - Castiel kept a cockpit light running over night. He needed to start the engines occasionally to recharge the battery, wasting fuel, but since they didn’t even have enough to take off, let alone reach the nearest airport, it didn’t really matter either way.
Castiel had obviously heard them, since he greeted them with his angel blade in hand, his own sleeping bag crumbled up and discarded in the cockpit behind him. “Sam, Dean.”
“Heya, Cas. Sam brought the roof down over our heads.” Dean ignored the dark gaze Sam was shooting in his direction. “Thought we spend the night here, rebuild everything tomorrow.”
“Oh.” Cas lowered the angel blade, staring past Dean into the darkness.
Dean moved into his line of vision. “Hey, is everything okay?”
Castiel blinked at him, then his tense posture melted. “Yes, of course, Dean. There is space in the back of Grace for you to sleep.”
“Actually, I don’t think I’m going back to sleep anyway, I might as well relieve you,” Sam said.
Castiel shot him a sharp glance, then looked back at Dean with an unspoken question in his eyes. They had discussed Sam’s dreams during dinner, and it was just a little gratifying to know that Cas, for all his own weird behavior, found the nightmares just as disquieting as Dean.
“Very well.” Castiel climbed back into the cockpit, collecting his sleeping bag on the way, then set up a quick sleeping area with Dean in the back of the small plane. It was surprisingly spacious once they’d turned the seats - without Sam, it certainly felt less cramped than their makeshift hut.
Once they were settled, Dean tucked one hand under his head as a pillow and stared up at the ceiling of the plane. Sam’s frame was actually obscuring most of the light coming from the cockpit, but it was much brighter than back on the beach, and he didn’t really feel much like sleeping anymore, either.
“Hey, Cas? Are you doing okay?”
“Yes, Dean.”
“No weird dreams?”
“None.”
“Okay… It’s just… I keep getting this feeling, like… Like we’re not the only people, beings, whatever, here.”
Cas didn’t reply.
“Am I going stir-crazy?”
“You are not crazy, Dean. Your caution is understandable.”
“That’s… good to know, I guess.”
And that was that. Castiel fell asleep pretty quickly after that, and at some point, Dean, too, drifted off. He felt better, safer, now that they were all together again.
In the early morning hours, Sam shook Dean awake to get an hour or two of shut-eye, while Dean kept watch over the stubbornly silent radio. Castiel didn’t seem bothered by the disturbance - he just rolled over and continued his slumber.
They were all awake by the time the sun had well and truly risen, and made their way back to the campsite for breakfast. The collapsed roof looked half as bad in the daylight. None of the leaves, though dried out by now, had broken, and all they had to do was stick them back together.
Castiel, who wasn’t really a morning person, said very little until he asked, out of the blue: “Do you have knowledge of astronomy, Sam?”
Sam was always eager to lap up any bits of angelic knowledge Cas could throw at him, though the former angel seemed to be unaware of Sam’s nerdgasms. Predictably, he perked up at the question immediately, despite looking tired and sleep-deprived. “Not really. I looked into moon cycles and planetary movements for hunts, you know, but I never had the time for any deep space research.”
“That is regrettable,” was all Castiel had to offer as a reply. He took a bite out of his energy bar, chewing slowly.
Dean poked his knee. “Come on, Cas, spit it out. What’s on your mind?”
Cas swallowed as if it were the most complicated act in the history of humanity. “Does the color of the wheat fields hold a special significance for you, Dean?”
“Okay, that’s it!” Dean was at the end of his rope, and he couldn’t let this go on, never mind that Cas actually flinched at his outburst. Cas hadn’t flinched at anything he did since… well, since then. “You aren’t broken anymore, Cas! Stop acting like that! I don’t give a damn about your random questions!”
Castiel very slowly, very calmly, stood up. He looked… disappointed. “Maybe he was right. Maybe you do lack imagination and curiosity.” He scanned Dean’s face once, then turned his back on them and headed out onto the beach.
Dean was too astonished to do much but stare after him until he’d vanished from sight - then, his voice came rushing back. “He? Who the hell was he talking about?”
Sam had no answer, but he shoved the last bite of his breakfast into his mouth and headed after Castiel, leaving Dean to pace nervously up and down. He had a rough idea of how long it took to get to the Grace and back, but Sam might have caught up with Cas before that, or they might have sat down to talk, or, worst of all, Cas might have headed of along the beach and not returned to the plane at all. Sometimes, the traces they’d left in the sand were visible long after they’d made them, but Dean couldn’t trust the traces any longer. If he did, and if his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, there was a child on the beach with them, and that just couldn’t be.
“Dammit!” Dean resisted the urge to pointlessly hurl objects around, and dedicated his pent up anger to rebuilding their shelter instead. Of course, it didn’t work, and that only fuelled his frustration - and Sam still wasn’t back.
Dean collected the gun and followed his brother’s footsteps in the sand.
He had been heading towards the Grace, but neither Cas nor Sam was in sight. The plane lay deserted in the morning sun, gleaming glass and lifeless steel, and no sign of the two people Dean would give his life for without hesitation - hell, had given his life for. Two tracks of footprints let up to the plane, but none turned away from it - none that could be real, anyway.
Dean dragged a hand over his eyes, staring at the pattern of a child’s feet leading up to the plane from another direction, only to vanish as well. It didn’t disappear, not even as he poked his finger at it. Apparently, he was really becoming delusional.
“Dammit, Sammy, Cas - I know you can’t hear me anymore since you’re human, but you can’t do this to me. I need you both. I’m sorry, okay? It’s just… you were scaring me, man. And you know how I get when things scare me. I lash out. I didn’t mean it.”
Suddenly, a hand fell heavily on his shoulder. “Dean.”
Dean turned to look up at Castiel, silhouetted sharply against the sun and the impossibly blue sky. For a second, he looked like an angel again, powerful and scary and having appeared out of nowhere, until Dean’s eyes adjusted and he saw that the exhaustion settling around Cas’s eyes was still there. He wore the same day-old t-shirt, stained with sand and oil and sweat, and still had the scruff that had been allowed to grow on his face because Cas never shaved without proper bathroom commodities. “Cas?”
Castiel nodded and pulled him to his feet.
“Where’s Sammy?”
“Sam is well, Dean. You just need to allow yourself to believe.”
“Believe?”
“Yes. After everything you’ve seen, is it so hard to believe that there are things on your Earth you do not understand?”
“Dude, it’s because of what I’ve seen that I don’t believe that. I mean, we were face to face with the devil. We’ve hunted every evil thing out there. How much more can there be? It’s all just there, what’s the point of belief?”
Castiel chuckled, and it was still such a new sound that it gave Dean pause. “You believed in me.”
“I didn’t until you showed off your wings.”
“Yes. Come with me, then.” Cas held out his hand, and - dammit all - Dean trusted him. And so he took it.
Suddenly, he could hear Sam laughing.
Castiel pulled Dean after him until they had rounded the plane, and Dean’s jaw dropped. His little brother was crouched in the sand, playing with a fox, of all things, and a child stood in the shade of the plane’s wing, watching with a serene expression on his face.
“Everything is fine, you see,” Castiel said, still smiling.
“What the hell, Cas?”
“Dean!” Sam looked up, and Dean could have sworn the fox protested against the interruption of playtime. “Don’t worry, it’s safe - I checked.”
“Sam’s pocket knife is pure iron”, Cas added, “and I tested with Holy Water and salt. The Little Prince is unlike the abominations we have encountered.”
“The Little Prince?” Dean stared at the boy, who laughed brightly and waved at him.
“That is what he calls himself, yes.”
“You know that’s a book, right?”
Cas’s expression darkened a little. “Yes, I remember. Much of the knowledge Metatron gave me has faded since I became human, but I chose to retain its contents. I enjoyed the message.”
“So all that random stuff about roses, sheep, foxes, astronomy…?”
“Of course.”
“And you didn’t think you ought to tell us that there was something running around pretending to be a frigging character out of a children’s book?”
Cas avoided his gaze, looking at the Grace instead. “I had… doubts.”
“About what?”
“Whether you were still capable of looking below the surface. I am sorry, Dean, but I still find it difficult to understand you. Sam - his wonder and curiosity make him much easier. I should have known better.”
Dean breathed in deeply. “Okay. Explanation time. What’s that stuff about snakes?”
“The serpent will no longer bother you.” Dean looked at the speaker and came face to face with the boy, thing, whatever, that pretended to be the Little Prince. He even had the sandy hair, the greenish shirt and the impossible scarf, despite the stifling heat. He was smiling. “I will return home tonight.”
Dean glanced at Cas, and was met with a deep sadness in the former angel’s eyes. “I have attempted to tell him. He won’t listen.”
“Okay… So what is this all about, then? Is it a game? Or what?”
“Don’t question it, Dean,” Sam said, appearing at Dean’s side. The fox was watching them from a safe distance.
“Don’t be sad, Castiel. You, too, will go home tomorrow.”
Castiel crouched down until he was face to face with the boy. “I’m sorry.”
“No. I gave you a present - all three of you.” He looked briefly up at Sam, then Dean. “On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur.”
Dean could recognize French when he heard it, but he wasn’t exactly a language expert. He leant over to Sam and whispered: “What?”
Sam just shook his head.
“Bien sûr,” Castiel said to the Little Prince. “Merci.”
Okay, Cas speaking French was all kinds of strange. Dean had known, of course, that the former angel was proficient in several languages, including Latin, and, naturally, Enochian, but he’d still only heard him speak English when it came to communicating. The Little Prince laughed a little, then reached out to sling his arms around Cas’s neck for an awkward embrace.
When he let go, Castiel stood and stepped back between the brothers. “We should leave.”
They turned their back on the plane and returned to the campsite in silence. Sam, though his excitement had simmered down a little, looked as though the weight of a hundred years had been lifted off his shoulders - and dammit, maybe Dean needed to get him a puppy, after all. It had never seemed like a good idea, with their life on the road, but if that was all it took to make his kid-brother happy…
Dean, well. He needed time to sort through it all, and he wasn’t sure what he was going to find. Hell, he’d known for so long that monsters were real, perhaps he had forgotten to just marvel at things once in a while. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that, yes, he loved fiction, but the haste with which he had equated Castiel’s wondering, his questioning of the nature of things that actually existed, with madness disturbed him. He should know better, really.
And Cas - Cas didn’t seem to want to initiate any conversation anytime soon. He gave them a hand in setting up the shelter again, and he ate with them, but Dean could tell that he wasn’t really focusing on the present. When the sun had set, he found the former angel sitting in the sand just outside their little group of rocks, staring across the beach at the stars stretching over the night sky.
Dean settled down beside him, careful not to jostle the former angel, but to his surprise Castiel acknowledged him with a glance and breathed out deeply. “Dean.”
“I get it.”
“I know.”
“What did he tell you?”
“On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur.”
“Yes, in English, Cas.”
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
“Is that a quote from-”
“Yes.”
…~oOo~…
Their rescue arrived the following morning. On the seaplane that took them back while the Grace was refueled, Sam couldn’t contain his excitement any longer and began bouncing ideas off Dean as to who, or what, the Little Prince had been. His puppy-eyed wonder was delightful, honestly, but Dean had precious little input to offer. He had no idea what to make of their experience, and frankly, he wasn’t sure what it had done to Castiel, who was more pensive than ever.
Surprisingly, it was Castiel who cut into their discussion with quiet conviction. “I think he was one of the Menehune. They are the fairy folk of these islands, occasionally mischievous but benevolent, unless disturbed. They are very shy. But it doesn’t matter.”
“But they are a species we’ve have never heard of before!” Sam said, with enthusiasm.
Castiel offered a small smile. “Yes, Sam. And your curiosity is admirable. But learning about his species does not tell us who he was. It would be like describing you as human or… calling me an angel when I was one. It would tell you nothing about who I was.”
“Because what is essential is invisible to the eye,” Dean said, suddenly putting it together.
Castiel looked at him, and held his gaze. “Yes. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.” And maybe that was all they really needed to believe.