fic: regret
title: regret
fandom: supernatural
prompt: grief
medium: fic
rating: pg -13
warnings: spoilers for "brave new world"
summary: as castiel dissolves in the water into something that is not quite nothing, he is cannot shake the feelings of regret and thinks about the mistakes he’s made (and that he made them for love, but does that excuse him?)
Slowly, the image of Dean lying on the floor fades away and Castiel is left with darkness. The limbs he used to control are moving, limping away after saying something that comes across garbled to him. Castiel is all alone in a little prison inside this body, with the Leviathans coiling like snakes around the bars, eager to bust the shell of his body open and crawl back into the world.
He may be trapped inside his body, but he will hold on and protect his shell for as long as he can. For all that he could control and manipulate in this world and in Heaven before has come to naught now, and keeping what will surely be the end of the world inside for just a little longer seems only his rightful duty.
As the body he used to have wades through the water, Castiel cannot feel its icy cold touch nor the air in his lungs freezing. The only thing he can feel right now, the only thing he can ever remember feeling and the only thing he could ever imagine feeling is the earth-shattering, head-splitting need to burst into a million translucent pieces to release the Leviathans into the world and the weakening part of him fighting desperately to keep them inside for just a little bit longer to spare the planet of their inevitable coming.
For a second, Castiel briefly closes his eyes and prays to whomever can hear him, harder now that he has ever done before, for a last glimpse of the world. He pushes through the Leviathans shady grip and can see. There are trees. Water. Rocks. Sunlight. Clouds.
And then a feeling of being pulled apart in the seams causes him to lose concentration, and his body sinks beneath the surface of the water. Through the pores of his skin, the Leviathans escape, tearing him apart a little bit more with every push, until there is nothing left of the body of Castiel.
A sudden darkness that ends just as quickly, a vibration moving through the water like a lone beat on a drum, and then nothing.
Castiel cannot open his eyes nor move, because he has no body. But he can see the sky and feel the movement of the gentle waves moving back and forth. He can no longer be an angel, nor God, nor human. As he dissolves further in the water into something that is not quite something but not nothing, he cannot shake the feeling of regret.
While he may no longer be Castiel the angel, God or human, the blame is still his, because the world will pay for the mistakes he has made today and for so long. Maybe if he prays for forgiveness, or truly believes he will atone for what he has done, this limbo between living being and nothing at all will end. Only Hell could be worse than this wretched consciousness.
For hours Castiel prays, yet as the sky turns dark and the stars begin to show one by one he has received no sign nor moved on.
However, a tiny voice somewhere has grown stronger with each hour that his praying, pleading, bargaining and begging has gone unheeded. Somehow, the voice tells him not to be at peace for taking the blame for what will surely cause the death of all he loves. Because he did it all for love, the voice insists, sounding smoother and smoother.
A part of him, now long gone, would say he was selfish, and power-hungry, and fearful, and vengeful, and cruel, and scheming. It would say that there were many paths to be taken far better than the ones he chose not only for himself, but for others.
Now, as a being lesser than the skimmings of the ocean, he cannot bring himself to believe those horrible things that he did were entirely wrong, and that he deserves this fate between Hell and living. He cannot believe this because of how much it hurts.
It hurts to live this barely conscious life with the shame that he feels for what he has done.
It hurts to realize he has released an ancient evil on the Earth he would so dearly like to walk.
It hurts to realize he will never speak to the Winchester brothers again.
It hurts to realize what he has done again and again to those he considers both friends and family.
It hurts to realize that he has let them down.
The moon lights the surface of the water, leaving his immaterial body glowing like amphibious fireflies. Castiel is frightened to whatever core of his being there is when a fish startles the still water, shaking him in a way a paradigm shift would, leaving him to feel like an upside down version of himself, facing the impossibly dark floor of the lake.
With little else to do, he wonders how Dean and Sam will spend the last time they have, before they are devoured by the Leviathans.
He imagines they will drive their dearly beloved car across the country several times, as they will never give up what they were born to do. Maybe Sam will even be allowed to drive once or twice, while Dean sleeps uneasily in the passenger’s seat. They will probably argue over the music, and Sam will eventually give up while Dean gleefully listens to the same records over and over. Hopefully, there will be small gaps in their trying time when they can be happy and laugh. Somewhere along the way, Castiel also hopes that they will stop by Bobby’s so they can see each other before everything ends. And everyone they ever felt they held dear. It would be terrible if Dean and Sam went to their death with regrets.
Castiel is lost in memories, real and engineered, and it takes him a very long time to realize he will never leave this place and go to Heaven. You have to be more than nothing to get there.
He wonders whether the people he believed himself to love and probably did will miss him now that he is gone.
fandom: supernatural
prompt: grief
medium: fic
rating: pg -13
warnings: spoilers for "brave new world"
summary: as castiel dissolves in the water into something that is not quite nothing, he is cannot shake the feelings of regret and thinks about the mistakes he’s made (and that he made them for love, but does that excuse him?)
Slowly, the image of Dean lying on the floor fades away and Castiel is left with darkness. The limbs he used to control are moving, limping away after saying something that comes across garbled to him. Castiel is all alone in a little prison inside this body, with the Leviathans coiling like snakes around the bars, eager to bust the shell of his body open and crawl back into the world.
He may be trapped inside his body, but he will hold on and protect his shell for as long as he can. For all that he could control and manipulate in this world and in Heaven before has come to naught now, and keeping what will surely be the end of the world inside for just a little longer seems only his rightful duty.
As the body he used to have wades through the water, Castiel cannot feel its icy cold touch nor the air in his lungs freezing. The only thing he can feel right now, the only thing he can ever remember feeling and the only thing he could ever imagine feeling is the earth-shattering, head-splitting need to burst into a million translucent pieces to release the Leviathans into the world and the weakening part of him fighting desperately to keep them inside for just a little bit longer to spare the planet of their inevitable coming.
For a second, Castiel briefly closes his eyes and prays to whomever can hear him, harder now that he has ever done before, for a last glimpse of the world. He pushes through the Leviathans shady grip and can see. There are trees. Water. Rocks. Sunlight. Clouds.
And then a feeling of being pulled apart in the seams causes him to lose concentration, and his body sinks beneath the surface of the water. Through the pores of his skin, the Leviathans escape, tearing him apart a little bit more with every push, until there is nothing left of the body of Castiel.
A sudden darkness that ends just as quickly, a vibration moving through the water like a lone beat on a drum, and then nothing.
Castiel cannot open his eyes nor move, because he has no body. But he can see the sky and feel the movement of the gentle waves moving back and forth. He can no longer be an angel, nor God, nor human. As he dissolves further in the water into something that is not quite something but not nothing, he cannot shake the feeling of regret.
While he may no longer be Castiel the angel, God or human, the blame is still his, because the world will pay for the mistakes he has made today and for so long. Maybe if he prays for forgiveness, or truly believes he will atone for what he has done, this limbo between living being and nothing at all will end. Only Hell could be worse than this wretched consciousness.
For hours Castiel prays, yet as the sky turns dark and the stars begin to show one by one he has received no sign nor moved on.
However, a tiny voice somewhere has grown stronger with each hour that his praying, pleading, bargaining and begging has gone unheeded. Somehow, the voice tells him not to be at peace for taking the blame for what will surely cause the death of all he loves. Because he did it all for love, the voice insists, sounding smoother and smoother.
A part of him, now long gone, would say he was selfish, and power-hungry, and fearful, and vengeful, and cruel, and scheming. It would say that there were many paths to be taken far better than the ones he chose not only for himself, but for others.
Now, as a being lesser than the skimmings of the ocean, he cannot bring himself to believe those horrible things that he did were entirely wrong, and that he deserves this fate between Hell and living. He cannot believe this because of how much it hurts.
It hurts to live this barely conscious life with the shame that he feels for what he has done.
It hurts to realize he has released an ancient evil on the Earth he would so dearly like to walk.
It hurts to realize he will never speak to the Winchester brothers again.
It hurts to realize what he has done again and again to those he considers both friends and family.
It hurts to realize that he has let them down.
The moon lights the surface of the water, leaving his immaterial body glowing like amphibious fireflies. Castiel is frightened to whatever core of his being there is when a fish startles the still water, shaking him in a way a paradigm shift would, leaving him to feel like an upside down version of himself, facing the impossibly dark floor of the lake.
With little else to do, he wonders how Dean and Sam will spend the last time they have, before they are devoured by the Leviathans.
He imagines they will drive their dearly beloved car across the country several times, as they will never give up what they were born to do. Maybe Sam will even be allowed to drive once or twice, while Dean sleeps uneasily in the passenger’s seat. They will probably argue over the music, and Sam will eventually give up while Dean gleefully listens to the same records over and over. Hopefully, there will be small gaps in their trying time when they can be happy and laugh. Somewhere along the way, Castiel also hopes that they will stop by Bobby’s so they can see each other before everything ends. And everyone they ever felt they held dear. It would be terrible if Dean and Sam went to their death with regrets.
Castiel is lost in memories, real and engineered, and it takes him a very long time to realize he will never leave this place and go to Heaven. You have to be more than nothing to get there.
He wonders whether the people he believed himself to love and probably did will miss him now that he is gone.