Some Cas feels
Producer’s preview. “Off his rocker,” says Crowley. “Crazy,” says Misha.
I don’t think Castiel is crazy.
I think he’s just incomprehensible to lesser forms of existence. Misha’s talked about it, hasn’t he? How the breaking down of “walls” in Sam’s mind drove him insane but in Cas’s mind it just shows him the entirety of the universe in all its absurdity.
Imagine for an angel who started out with no free will, seeing the universe for what it is?
My darling moorishflower told me once about a quote that said only art and the universe exist for their own sake. What is the point of existence? This is the question that cannot be answered, the reason so many humans turn to religion and mythology. But imagine you’re part of that mythology/religion. You exist to give humans a reason to live, but what of yourself? Do you have a reason for yourself to exist? When there’s nothing beyond you, you are it.
Or perhaps Cas is seeing in the bees, the route of the flowers, the divine pattern … maybe there is a purpose put there by his father. Or maybe there’s none. Maybe the flowers are spelling out the absurd meaninglessness of their own existence.
If these things exist just to exist, why wouldn’t Castiel see all bits of it as having equal significance? Why wouldn’t the minutiae of cats’ biology and the wars of leviathans have the same importance to him? If it all exists for its own sake, why is any topic greater than any other, and why should he not avoid things that make him feel bad?
I was there once, in the midst of my depression. I likened it to peeling an onion. With each “why” you ask, a layer is peeled off. And if you keep asking “why” to each answer you get, the layers get thinner and thinner, until you have the center, which is a dot. A diameter of zero. There’s nothing in the middle. Just layers to cover up that there’s nothing. That’s what I felt about life and existence when I was sick. I had to build up a reason to exist from that nothing. Cas is in the same place.
I’m gonna self-pimp a bit right now because I have written fics that discuss this deconstructed view of the universe. I wrote a ficset once called Beside the Highway that analyzed Castiel’s progression from Season 4 to the beginning of Season 5. Talked about how Cas saw the universe…
Castiel can use his wings to fly high above the fray, to see the whole shape of creation and the immensity of the destiny that has been laid on the shoulders of the world by the One who created it. He can see until forever, as though the universe were an endless scaffolding of a building not yet completed and he were dancing along one of its beams.
… Why does he have wings to fly with, to see the whole of Creation and the Plan, if he cannot do anything to alter it?
Now he’s changed it, and now he’s seeing beyond that building. What does it stand on, if it itself is the universe? And, if nothing, why does it matter whether it stands or not?
And of course, the answer to such despair is to find the things that move you enough to become your meaning for existence. Cue self-pimp #2:
“What’s the point?”
“I don’t know.” You lie. You know very well. Life is the point. Dean himself is the point.
He’s forgotten that. I’m waiting for the catalyst for him to remember. But I don’t believe for a moment that he’s just crazy.