Wings - A Castiel Drabble
Title: Wings
Author: tasty_boots
Rating: Very light PG-13 for disturbing images
Genre/Characters: "The End" Verse / Castiel
Spoilers: 5.04 "The End" and commentary for that episode.
Warnings: Angsty. Creepy. Some disturbing images.
Word Count: 341
Summary: He's been falling for five years.
He’s been falling for five years.
He’s been losing his grace bit by bit, day by day, year by year, but he’s not human yet. He still has some grace left. It seems as if he will never lose this last little handful. It seems as if he will never be fully human. He will always be stuck in this horrible in-between; unable to fly and unable to forget he ever could.
They looked at him differently. They watched him out of the corners of their eyes and they stared when they didn’t think he was looking. That’s why he had to leave. He had to get away from camp, from their eyes so full of pity.
He reaches Bobby’s old house without much incident and finds some canned food and bottled water hidden in the panic room. He sits there on the old, musty cot, surrounded by spam, and green beans, and corn, and stale water, and he thinks.
He thinks the grace he has left is probably killing him. It’s probably eating him up from the inside out. He might start rotting any day now. It’d probably be best to just get rid of it. Cut it out.
He considers this for a moment and goes to get a knife.
He remembers his wings, his huge, beautiful wings, and with that thought, he begins to cut.
It doesn’t work of course. He hits bone and his grace is still there. He can still feel the memory of his wings, heavy and oppressing. It was silly of him to think that it would work. Silly, silly, stupid, stupid, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. He’s not crazy. Don’t stare at him. Just leave him alone.
A cockroach crawls up next to him on the cot, and he crushes it with the butt of the knife he still has clasped in his hand. And then… and then he wonders. He wonders… Could he? Is there enough left?
Yes.
With a touch, the cockroach twitches back to life.
Castiel smiles and kills it again.