if you ever feel loved or needed

[marsfireignite]

Characters: Hino Rei [marsfireignite] and Castiel [wingsandwill]
When: Wednesday, November 23 2011.
Where: The Temple of Heaven.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: Castiel is crazy. Rei goes to check on him. And nearly gets stabbed in the face. How ungrateful. 8|

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[wingsandwill]

Castiel had held it together alright Sunday, even into Monday. But it had started to take a toll then; he couldn't keep brushing it off.

It might've been one thing if the nature of his dreams, or these glimpses of what might be the 'real' world, had been different. But it was so real, so real that he could remember them perfectly, and they didn't fade like dreams. And they were horrific.

Just the experiences would've been enough to unsettle him horribly, without the added level of confusion, the claims of insanity. That he had been able to ignore entirely, until the trauma of 'rehabilitation' had caught up to him and become too much all together, rattling him deeply enough to wonder if it might truly, truly be real

[marsfireignite]

Most individuals that dealt with Castiel brushed him off as being an apathetic being with a superiority complex that didn't particularly care about anything, but Rei knew better. Even when Castiel was at his most detached, he never actually was -- she could spot what he was feeling and thinking a mile away, without much effort whatsoever, and even found the angel downright expressive when he felt like being so. He was full of life without going overboard, which was Rei's favorite quality of her friend. You could read him like a book without him screaming it from the rooftops, if you put forth the effort.

So it was -- well, horrifying, if she wanted to be honest with herself, to see him completely blank. There was no curiosity, or annoyance, or happiness, or fear in his features. It was as if someone had reached inside Castiel and turned the 'on' switch to the 'off' position, leaving nothing behind but his vessel and the tiniest hint of the angel within him.

It wasn't just that they removed his reactions, they removed his

[wingsandwill]

He watched her as she approached, without a flicker of expression. This was so much easier. It had always been easier, before, hadn't it? Before he'd truly begun to question everything, when he'd allowed himself to believe in whatever he was told, to feel nothing and not think too deeply about it.

It was indeed the point of the reprogramming, to encourage such withdrawal and loss of will, but just like he had--so he believed--the first time, he wondered if it was such a bad thing.

"Of course I do." He responded quietly, lightly, none of his usual intensity behind his words. His head tilted just slightly to the side, but the movement was all wrong, like he was trying to copy something he'd seen instead of it being a gesture he used every day.

[marsfireignite]

None of this was correct.

Cas was supposed to look confused and ask Rei why she would ask such a stupid question, because he would need to know why she would ask, because it probably meant something was wrong, something that he needed to figure out, and then grow bored when Rei tried to brush it off only to ask two hours later when she was caught off-guard enough to answer him without a complaint or a means to dodge his question. Not just -- brush it off and that, combined with the mimicked body language, caused Rei to grit her teeth together briefly before speaking.

"What's inside your head right now, Cas, what you see when you go to sleep, it isn't real," Rei began, keeping her voice as quiet as possible, but it was hard to keep that fighting edge of frustration -- and, well, fear -- out of her tone as she stepped forward, reaching out to touch his arm, an action she's done a thousand times over. "It's the Animus and an event, okay, snap out of it."