Not in Kansas Anymore 1/1
Not in Kansas Anymore
nwhepcat
Takes place during 5.22, "Swan Song"; missing scenes and alternate ending
Character: Castiel, Dean, Bobby
Rating: mature
Summary: Castiel finds himself dragged back to life yet again after his confrontation with Lucifer. He looks for a phone, but finds something else instead.
Warning: Religious themes and personages
Castiel awakens with his cheek pressed into the gritty asphalt of a shadowy alley, his head throbbing like a drumbeat. It’s not the only thing he notices hurting, just the first thing.
No, the first thing he notes is the fact that he has awakened at all. The last thing Castiel remembers is Lucifer’s wrath, the snap of his fingers ... and now this place.
Castiel puts a hand to the epicenter of the pain in his head, discovers the peculiar stickiness of drying blood. Noticing a dark, glistening streak on the corner of the wheeled trash receptacle beside him, he suppresses a moan.
Attempting to wet his lips, he finds the inside of his mouth dry as ash, his tongue difficult to move.
Dean. Has he --
Castiel holds his breath, listening to the world beyond the mouth of the alley. Heavy traffic blocks out many of the smaller sounds he might hear, the throaty sound of a truck rumbling like Dean’s beloved car. Directly above are the sounds of air conditioners and the insistent murmur of pigeons, amplified in the vertical space of the alley.
Everyday noises. Not chaos and screams. Desperate and foolhardy as it was, Sam’s plan has worked.
A laugh bubbles up from deep within him, startling the pigeons into silence. Something in his chest protests at the sudden exertion, and the laughter devolves into a violent cough. Dragging himself up to his hands and knees, he coughs convulsively, unaware of the roar of the truck or the loud beeps that herald its approach.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing back here?”
Sparing a quick glance, Castiel sees dark uniform pants and work boots. “Officer --”
“Officer?” The voice is amused, but still retains the gruff anger from before.
Castiel tilts his head to get a better look at the man, taking in work gloves and a patch with a logo sewn on instead of a badge. It doesn’t help him identify his challenger. “I -- I fell.”
The man jerks his head upward, indicating the building looming over him. Castiel tries to follow his gaze, but attempting to look farther upward makes his stomach flip.
“What, from the fire escape?”
“No. From Kansas.”
This unaccountably makes the man angrier. “Well, you’re gonna have to move your ass, Dorothy. I’ve got a route to cover.” Without further consulation, he grabs Castiel by the upper arm and hauls him to his feet.
His breath hissing inward through his teeth, Castiel sways.
“You hurt?”
“No.” Castiel’s not certain why he lies, but he knows Dean would do the same if confronted by a stranger.
“You should find a better place to pass out. You fuck around with these dumpsters, you could get yourself killed.”
Not so different from the Winchesters. “I’ll be more careful,” Castiel says solemnly.
Dismissing him, the man wheels the cart around to hook its handles onto a mechanism at the back of the truck, then signals the driver. The roar and metallic clangs of the truck engaging makes Castiel’s head vibrate with pain much as it had in the instant before he’d vaporized. This time, though, he grits his teeth and somehow survives the onslaught.
After the truck lowers the emptied receptacle and the man shoves it back into place, Castiel asks, “Where am I? What city?”
“Tell ya one thing, Dorothy,” the man says unhelpfully. “It ain’t Oz.”
***
He should call Dean, he realizes. He must find him, help him if necessary. (He tries not to think about the possibility that Dean tumbled into Hell along with Sam/Lucifer.) Rummaging in the pocket of his trenchcoat, Castiel encounters a jumble of circuits and plastic shards.
Striding from the alley, he holds a hand up to signal a young woman carrying a briefcase. “I need to use your phone,” he says. “It’s an urgent matter.”
Casting an alarmed look at him, the woman scurries away, giving him a wide berth.
Castiel examines the hand he’d gestured with, finding his palm covered in blood. Impatiently, he wipes the hand down the front of his coat, then inspects it again. There is grime, but most of the blood is gone. Castiel steps into the path of a middle-aged man, showing his palm. “Listen. I have urgent need of your phone.”
The man just shoulders past him, striking Castiel’s own shoulder, which staggers him for a moment. Castiel gets his feet untangled just in time to encounter a young girl with hair as black as a raven’s wing. She obviously owns a cell phone, because she’s speaking into it as she walks.
“So then he goes --”
Castiel reaches toward her. “I need to borrow your phone. It’s vital that I make a call.”
“Fuck off, you freak,” she says, without even breaking stride. “I don’t know,” she says into the phone as she walks on. “Some crazy homeless dude.”
“I am not mentally impaired,” he calls out to her back, but she does not alter her brisk pace.
Perhaps it’s his manner. Dean has always accused him of being too brusque. “Please,” he says to an elderly woman, but her eyes widen in alarm and she hurries past him.
He spins toward another man who approaches from behind him. Making a gesture of supplication, he says, “Please. I need your help.”
Without meeting his gaze, the man reaches in his pocket and drops a few coins into Castiel’s hand.
Castiel opens his mouth to tell the man No, money is not what I was requesting when a voice distracts him.
“Hey, asshole.”
Before he can stop to consider whether this shout might be directed at him, a pair of hand grabs him from behind and pushes him against the limestone face of a building, grinding his unabraded cheek into the stone.
“This is my block, shithead. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll fuck off and stay away.”
Despite Castiel’s attempt to see the man pressing him against the building, all he can manage through the corner of his eye is a glimpse of blackened hands. The smell of an unwashed human is even more pungent than the trash-filled alley where he’d awakened.
“I had no intention of encroaching on your territory,” Castiel begins, but before he can say what he wanted, the man leans more of his weight against Castiel. The pressure of his cheek against the stone feels almost worse than a blow.
“Smartass,” the man with the dirt-caked hands hisses into Castiel’s ear.
“Hey, you two!” another voice shouts, and Castiel is abruptly released. The intruder is a man in a black uniform with a black stripe down the sides of his trousers, and gold braid at the shoulders. “Take off before I call the cops.”
“I need to use a telephone,” Castiel says. “Mine is broken.”
“Can’t help you. Just keep moving.”
The man who’d accosted him has already moved off, so Castiel turns in the opposite direction, hoping to escape further difficulties.
Rounding the corner, he finds himself gazing in the window of a shop with walkers and canes and prostheses in the window. He imagines himself asking, Do you stock prosthetic wings? and the thought makes him laugh bitterly. A shift in the pattern of light against the window presents him with his own reflection at this moment, and he sees why he’s received the reactions he has gotten.
Filthy, torn clothes, face and coat streaked with blood, a grinning face that he must admit looks demented. Turning from the window in disgust, Castiel nearly collides with a young woman whose attempt to sidestep him throws her off balance.
Without thinking, he grasps her by the arms to steady her, releasing her as soon as she’s stable. “My apologies,” he says. He’s excusing himself for touching her as much as for the near collision.
To his vast surprise, she smiles. “No worries.”
They perform an awkward shuffling dance as he attempts to remove himself from her path, and she tries to enter the prosthesis store. As he steps backward to clear the way, he sees that she wears a regular shoe on one foot, but on the other is a shoe whose sole has been augmented by a platform several inches thick.
“My apologies,” he says again.
“It’s okay,” she assures him. She reaches into her handbag and retrieves a leaflet, which she hands him. “God bless you,” she says, then continues on her way into the store.
***
God bless you. Castiel’s mouth twists as he imagines Dean saying, “He’s doing a bang-up job of it so far.”
He crumples the leaflet, but it occurs to him that it might have the address of the woman’s church, which would tell him what city he’s landed in. Smoothing the paper back out, he discovers he’s in New York City. Though he’s been here before on his search for God, his arrival in the alley hadn’t afforded him a view of skyline to orient himself.
When a white insert slides out of the leaflet and flutters to the sidewalk, Castiel bends to pick it up. On it is a list of soup kitchens and shelters in the city. Castiel stuffs that into his pocket and crushes the tract (Searching for God? He is waiting for you) in his hand.
Looking around, he takes stock of where he is and which direction he might follow. Clearly he will receive better attention if he attends to his appearance. To his left is a church run by the Jesuits; Castiel has been there before on his search for his Father. To the right, farther away, is a large building which covers a four-block long area across Fifth Avenue. He knows from his previous visits that this is an art museum. He has been there before, but at the time he appeared in a gallery without having to navigate any entrances.
Still, he heads in that direction, preferring to deal with the disapprobation of security guards than that of priests. Surely there will be a public restroom there where he can attempt to make himself more presentable.
At the museum he sheds his overcoat, making him look slightly less disreputable. Jimmy Novak’s suit has seen better days, but it is less battered than the coat. Now that he is earthbound, Castiel is forced to pause in the lobby to purchase a ticket, grateful for the “pay what you wish” policy and the coins he was given. He passes them all to the young man at the admissions desk, then shows his entry badge to the guard. At the first men’s room he finds, he scrubs away the dirt and the blood and does what he can with the stains on his coat. He’s still left with the abrasions and bruises from his landing and his encounter with the the man who’d threatened him, and his hair has a strange heaviness that gives it a different appearance than it normally has. He does his best to make it conform to the standards of most of the men he’s seen on the street, and then steps out into the echoing structure of the museum.
The last time he’d come, Castiel had sought out the paintings that resonated most with his drive to find God, but this time he avoids those galleries. He tells himself he’s merely wandering through the museum to determine if he looks less like a drifter and his entreaties to use a phone will be better received, but clearly there is something compelling him to stay here and put off that quest.
A few of the museum’s patrons give him sidelong looks, but no one demands that he be removed or offers him coins. Though he has a leaflet with the floor plan in his pocket, Castiel wanders aimlessly until he finds himself in an area with a large skylight and a sandstone temple -- Nubian in origin, he recognizes.
It’s a placid place, with a reflecting pool before the large dais on which it sits. Though he can read the etching upon the surface of the temple and its gate, dedications the gods and praise to the builders, he trains his gaze on the lotus and papyrus border at its base, and the calm of the water.
People come and go around him, none giving any evidence of the near-apocalypse that unleashed massive destruction on the world during previous days. Though his memory of exact details is hazy, he is fairly certain New York City was among the locations that saw death and ruin.
A school teacher marches a gaggle of uniformed children into the chamber, his voice echoing even though his words are unclear. Just as a double line of students snakes around the temple, a noise issues from Castiel’s abdomen, a long, forlorn sound that almost imitates the quality of speech.
A pair of students passing him giggle into their hands.
Once his belly finds its voice, it seems to have a great deal to say. Though he understands every language human and otherwise, this one escapes him, and his thinking is growing too fuzzy to work on the problem.
Feeling slightly light-headed, Castiel finds his way back to the entrance of the museum and breathes in the cooling air. There are people in all manner of garb seated on the stone steps, so Castiel finds a spot midway down and seats himself.
The scent of cooking meat wafts up from an umbrellaed cart on the sidewalk, and Castiel’s midsection again makes its opinions known. Finally he makes the connection between the noises, the smell of food, and his growing lethargy. He remembers Dean’s maddening interruptions to find food when Castiel was fixed on a mission. Now he understands.
Castiel rummages in the coat he’d folded onto the stone beside him, finding the rumpled paper listing the city’s soup kitchens.
***
A few steps above Castiel, a couple are talking. Feigning casualness, he leans back to hear what they might be discussing. It used to be so easy for him to discern what was in the hearts of the people he was near. Now he must eavesdrop like any overcurious human, without regard to his own dignity or those of his targets.
Again, he gets no sign at all of the narrowly-averted apocalypse, just a discussion of where to have dinner. Castiel’s stomach adds its own insistent commentary, so he turns his attention to the paper in his hand. He mentally discounts every church-run soup kitchen, trimming the list down to two viable options. One is called Hope House, the other Greta’s Kitchen.
He likes the unassuming sound of the latter. It makes no demands on his state of mind, welcomes him hopeful or not. Throughout his existence, he has had expectations to fulfill, requiring his heart, his mind and his soul as well as his sword arm.
The number of people on the street and the buses indicate the workday has probably concluded for most people. Checking the hours Greta’s Kitchen is open, Castiel realizes he has a long way to walk and is late getting a start. He rises and puts on his coat for the journey and heads toward the closest entrance to Olmstead and Vaux’ park, the Miners’ Gate.
He has never walked in the great park, his time always constrained by the mission at hand. Castiel no longer has a mission: the apocalypse has been averted and his Father has made it very plain that He has no wish to be found. He has been cast out of heaven, separated from his brothers so completely he can no longer summon the form or power they once shared.
While he’d meant to open himself fully to the beauties of the park, his thoughts have made a mockery of this intention. Instead his sense of loss blinds him to the landscape and the people inhabiting it. He sees only his path and the obstacles in his way.
Emerging at the Merchants’ Gate, he finds himself confronted with the complexities of negotiating the traffic at Columbus Circle. His ankle and knee throb from a sudden stumble on an uneven patch of ground, and his coat is stained once more with grass and dirt.
Summoning the sense of command he once had (arrogance, Dean had called it), Castiel raises his hand to the onrushing cars and trucks and steps out into the street.
This act creates an exquisite cacophony: screeching breaks, blaring horns and enraged voices. Castiel has a variety of new names bestowed on him in at least three languages. Still showing his palm (also dirt-smeared and a little bloody as well), he calmly crosses the curving street, safely reaching the far sidewalk despite a close call with a messenger on a bicycle.
“What are you, some kind of lunatic?” a man at a pretzel cart demands.
“Quite possibly,” Castiel admits. Without waiting for a reaction, he sets off down Broadway.
***
Castiel’s journey down Broadway takes him through a series of neighborhoods, each unique unto itself. Times Square is jammed full of street vendors licensed and otherwise, people performing music or magic tricks for the handfuls of change and bills that are forthcoming from the slow-moving packs of tourists. It’s the tourists who make it difficult to negotiate the sidewalks. Slow moving clumps of people who pause to stare at everything.
They stare at Castiel, and clearly he frightens them. He’s not sure if it’s his dirty, disheveled appearance or the pain and despair reflected in his face as he limps down the crowded sidewalks. Castiel discovers if he looks at the oncoming tourists with the expression Dean used to call “all smitey and shit,” they will scramble out of his way.
By the time he makes it to the garment district, it has emptied out, seeming almost a ghost town. Though the unclogged sidewalks should make it easier to pick up his pace, the pain in his ankle and knee have increased, slowing him down.
Broadway, already slicing through the grid of upper Manhattan streets, veers more sharply eastward as he crosses 34th Street. The streets become more crowded with shoppers and tourists again. Castiel no longer has the energy to glare; he passes through like a ghost.
Another mile takes him to 14th Street, another shopping destination, this one for poorer residents trying to squeeze as much value from each dollar as they can. His is not the only face that looks beyond weary. A surge of anger flares through him, sharp as the pain of his damaged ankle. These are God’s beloved children -- why does He allow them to suffer as they do? His brothers believe that it’s because humans are deficient in some way (in all ways, according to all his relations from Lucifer to Raphael), that this is the best they can hope to make of their lives and their world. Once Castiel believed that the suffering of humans must serve some divine purpose, but that certainty slipped away with the knowledge that his Father had no interest in his children and their affairs.
Funny -- in that not-funny way, as Dean would say -- that the attributes of humans that make angels so contemptuous of them are among the traits of angels as well. That very contempt -- the certainty that some of God’s children are beneath the notice and compassion of yourself and your kind -- is the root of much of the suffering in this world. The angels are not the only beings to look down on other beings they refer to as “mud monkeys.” But his brothers see no irony in the fact that they share the seething hate that they disdain in humanity.
At last Castiel finds the East Village street he seeks. He turns and searches for the address on the paper and finally finds a narrow storefront, its exterior cheerfully painted.
A man is letting another out of the front door, locking it from within. He turns away, picking up chairs and turning them up onto the tabletops.
Castiel beats his palm against the glass door.
The man turns toward him. “I’m sorry, man.” Castiel can barely hear him through the glass, but he can read the message plainly enough. “We’re closed.”
***
Though Castiel wants to protest that he’s just walked four miles from the museum and has no money or options, he just bows his head, his hand splayed against the glass. He hears the buzz of the man’s voice, though he can’t make out his words, and then the more distant murmur of another’s voice. Roused by a light tap on the glass, Castiel looks up and the man unlocks the door.
“Greta says it’s okay. We’ve got some soup left oover, if you don’t mind me sweeping up around you.”
“I would be very grateful,” Castiel says.
The man, a kind-faced Latino whose light footfalls belie his bulk, shows him to a table. “Someone left today’s newspaper, if you want something to read. Greta will be out in a minute.”
As the man begins turning chairs over and setting them seat down on the tables, Castiel reaches for the tabloid. Surely there he’ll find news about the devastation of Lucifer’s time walking the earth. Nothing on the front page -- the headline and large photograph relate to a sex scandal that threatens the mayor’s career. The articles inside are just as devoid of references to the near-miss apocalypse. Turning every page, even those with comics and puzzles on them, he searches for the slightest reference, and when he finds none, he turns the paper over to search again.
That’s when he sees what he should have noticed at the very outset. The paper’s date is September 8, 2014. Castiel’s breath catches from the shock of it. Four years after the battle with Lucifer.
Dean --
Where is Dean now? How is he making it with Sam locked away with Lucifer in the Pit? The thought that he’s been mourning his brother all this time without Castiel to -- well, to do whatever it is that human friends do -- it creates a grief in him that is almost physical in its intensity.
Again, the urgent need to find a telephone rockets through him, and he rises to his feet with such swiftness that his chair clatters to the floor behind him. Abruptly his vision goes dark. Head swimming, Castiel clutches at the table to stay upright.
“Whoa, hey,” says the man who’d opened the door for him. A few quick strides and he’s at Castiel’s side, hands closing around his shoulders to steady him. “You okay, man?”
“I’m --” He’s not even sure how to describe it. He closes his eyes.
“Here, man, sit down.” His hands leave Castiel for a moment, long enough to right the chair, then he guides Castiel back onto it.
“I need a phone,” Castiel says.
“You need a meal,” says another voice. It belongs to a woman who has emerged from the kitchen bearing a tray. Her hair is black overlaid with a vivid blue. It’s cut short and bursts outward from the back of her head in softly peaked clumps. There’s a silver ring in her nose and much more silver in her ears. She sets her tray down in front of Castiel, her ams tattooed from shoulder to wrist with so many colors and pictures that he can’t pick out any one image.
She sits across the table from him. Her history -- or part of it -- is evident in her face. Clearly she was a great beauty at one time, but the ravages of a life on the fringes of society tell her story like a child’s picture book. Meth, Castiel guesses from the condition of her teeth. Despite this, she has a look of health that is blossoming once more, creating a new form of beauty he suspects will grow with each year.
“I’m Greta,” she tells him.
***
Somewhat dismayed by the realization that there are two bowls of soup and plates of bread on the tray, Castiel stumbles over his reply to Greta’s introduction.
Holding up a hand, she assures him, “No names required here. You can go by Joe or Slim or nothing at all.”
Castiel nods, incapable of declaring one way or the other.
“Eat,” Greta says softly. “You look like you could use it.”
He hadn’t counted on a companion -- not like this. If he’d fumbled his utensils at a long table crowded with homeless men and women gazing down at their own bowls, it would not have mattered. But this way he feels on display. He has eaten nothing but hamburgers while in this vessel, and he suspects the techniques he has learned from watching Dean are not the best to utilize here.
Smiling at him, Greta picks up her spoon and starts in on her own soup, and Castiel follows her lead, leaning carefully toward the bowl so he doesn’t spill. It’s hot but not too hot, thick, with soft chunks of vegetables. Without intending to, Castiel makes a soft noise in appreciation for the flavors. If he allowed himself he could eat as if compelled by the influence of Famine, but another part of him wishes to savor each spoonful.
“You’ve come a long way,” Greta says.
“Four miles,” Castiel responds. “It’s not far, even on foot, except I injured my leg.”
“That’s not all. We can tend to that after you’ve had your meal.” She tears off a piece of the bread, then dips it into her soup. “Anyway, that’s not what I meant. We don’t get many in here wearing a tie.”
“I used to be --” he finds himself about to claim Jimmy’s former profession, but he suddenly feels that this would be wrong. “Someone else,” he finally finishes.
Popping the liquid-soaked bread into her mouth, Greta nods. “Yet you hang onto what you were. You keep that self knotted around your neck.”
All at once Castiel finds it difficult to see. His eyes burn and the rhythm of his breath comes unraveled. An unseen hand seems to tighten its hand about his throat. He doesn’t know what to do, whether to remain still, or run from this place.
A horrible noise issues from him, set off by a spasm somewhere in his chest.
“It’s okay to cry,” Greta says softly.
Cry? Clearly she has no idea what’s really happening to him. The pressure building up in his head and his chest, the constriction of his throat. Surely this is something humans can die from.
“It’s okay,” she says again. “You’re in a safe place.”
At these words the pressure batters down his ragged defenses and Castiel cracks wide open. Though he expects blood or some other vital fluid to issue forth, what comes is in fact a steady rain of tears. Pushing back his chair, he leans forward, elbows on knees, hands covering his face, and lets the flood come.
Drawing her chair close to his, Greta rests her hand on his back, but keeps her silence. He hears nothing but the sound of his own choking sobs, and when they begin to subside, the soft sound of broom bristles against the wooden floor.
“I miss my home,” Castiel says at last, his voice rough and congested, “but I can’t go back. I miss my family, but I can’t be like them anymore. I’ve fallen so far.”
“You have the ability to climb,” she says.
Greta doesn’t understand, but he realizes it would be ungracious to say so after her kindness.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Castiel says, still speaking toward his lap.
“Right now, you’re going to finish your meal before it gets cold,” she tells him. “And after that, you will get your injuries tended. What comes next is something you can decide when it’s time.”
At last he looks up, and Greta hands him a paper napkin off a pile that has mysteriously appeared on the table by Castiel’s bowl.
As he mops the moisture from his eyes, Greta asks, “Feel better?”
This is what humans believe about the process of weeping? That it’s supposed to make one feel better? Castiel’s eyes feel hot and painful, his head is filled with something that causes great pressure, and his eyes and nose are still leaking. “I am uncomfortable,” he admits, and the strangeness of the word strikes him. Perhaps he is incapable of being comforted.
Without seeming to think it odd that this is new to him, Greta teaches him how to clear his sinuses into a napkin, and the name for this technique: to blow one’s nose. Human language is a peculiar thing.
“Finish your soup,” Greta says again, and like a child he obeys.
***
After his outburst, Castiel is too embarrassed to resume their conversation, but Greta smooths the way.
“How did you find out about us? Four miles is a long way to walk, and thre are soup kitchens along the way.”
“I know.” He’s not sure whether to bring his issues into the conversation, but his bout of weeping has left him too raw to create a fiction. “Most of them were connected to houses of worship. I needed --” he huffs a short laugh -- “neutral ground.”
Tearing off another piece of bread, Greta says, “Yeah. I can understand that. It’s why I chose the name.”
“How long have you been running this place?”
“I guess it’s close to eight years now.”
She seems young enough that her descent into addiction must have begun when she was barely more than a child. His thoughts jump to lifespans. (His thoughts do this now that he is human, flit from topic to topic like a chittering squirrel from tree to tree.) How long is the measure of his days to be? What of the four years that seemingly disappeared when Lucifer struck him down? Making an effort to tune back in to the conversation, he says, “You must have been very young when ... things were bad. You are young still.”
Greta directs a closed-mouth smile into her soup bowl. “Oh, I feel plenty old most of the time.”
Castiel nods, but he can’t tell exactly how he feels. Ancient, ageless, a child ... it seems to vary from moment to moment.
Finishing his bread and soup, he carefully rests the spoon next to his emptied bowl. “Thank you for the meal. It was quite good. And to let me in when you’d already closed for the night was extraordinarily kind.”
A flicker of a smile plays at her lips, but it’s remarkably sad. “Well. I have a lot to make up for, I’m afraid.” She gusts out a breath. “No, I’m sorry. I’m not going to burden you with that.” Abandoning her own dinner, she rises. “Let’s see what we can do with those cuts and bruises.”
“It’s no burden,” Castiel says, catching a corner of her apron. “I’d like to give something in return.”
“You don’t have to,” Greta says. “If I wanted something in return, I’d have made this a restaurant.”
“I realize that, But I would like to.”
She chews at her lip for a moment of hesitation. “Well. Nothing says you can’t listen while I’m looking at your injuries.”
Releasing her apron, Castiel watches her go. As soon as she leaves the room, a powerful desire to track down Dean sweeps through him. Castiel looks around for the man who’d unlocked the door for him, but he has left the room without making a sound. An irrational impulse to burst out of the doors and into the night begins to build, and he pushes it back. There is no boarding a bus this time to reach Dean’s side when he has no idea where Dean might be -- if Dean is yet alive. But the need to do something has grown unbearable. He has seen to his own immediate needs, to delay any further is unconscionable.
When Greta returns with another tray, this one piled with first aid supplies, Castiel blurts, “I have no time for this. I have a friend who needs help -- I need to find him.”
“You’re no good to anyone if you can barely walk,” Greta says, and he has to admit the truth of this. “I’ll see if there’s some way I can help once we take care of the first aid, okay?” In some way he cannot fully fathom, the presence of another person blunts the unreasonable drive to action.
She pulls her chair close again and says, “Let’s see that ankle.” Before he can protest, she has reached down to cradle his foot in her hand, settling it on her lap.
Castiel finds himself acutely embarrassed at the sight of the filth ground into his trouser leg, the stains on his shoe. “I can do that,” he says unnecessarily harshly, reaching out a hand to stop her.
Folding his hand in hers, she says, “I’ve seen much worse. Just sit.”
“Let her help,” says the man who had let Castiel in. He has returned with a bucket and mop, carrying it to the far corner of the dining room. “It makes her happy.”
Smiling, she says, “Luis knows me too well. He runs this place with me. He writes a mean grant application.” Her deft fingers are already unlacing his shoe. As gently as she tugs on his sock, it still causes a hiss of pain to issue from him. Greta makes a soft noise of sympathy. “He said you were limping pretty seriously when you came in.”
First she cleans his foot with a damp cloth, as Castiel squirms with embarrassment. “How about that sad story to take your mind off all this?” Greta doesn’t wait for a reply, telling him, “I abandoned the people that I love and who loved me. That’s not true of everyone who’s out here on the street, but it describes a lot of us. When they depended on me, I kept my distance. Someone came after me, but I just went so far underground he couldn’t find me.”
Tenderly she probes his ankle and foot, which have swollen, the skin purpling.
He turns his mind from the pain of her prodding. “Why?”
The pause that follows is so long that he’s certain she will not answer, but then she says in a rueful, almost self-mocking tone, “It’s incredibly complicated.”
He gazes at her soft peaks of cobalt hair as she tends to his ankle, wrestling with an absurd impulse to touch them.
“Do you believe in forgiveness?” she asks.
Castiel wonders if she would prefer a lie. But after her honesty, he feels it would be disrespectful. “I don’t know anymore. At one time I would have said there is nothing that’s unforgivable to God, if forgiveness is asked for. But these days I’m no longer sure of anything.”
Greta twitches a smile. “It’s not so much God I’m worried about; it’s the people I’ve hurt.”
Sighing, Castiel looks across the room to where Luis moves his mop in sweeping arcs across the floor. “I’m afraid I know very little about the hearts of men,” he says.
***
“I do know,” Castiel ventures, “that I have found very little forgiveness among my own family. I’ve been disowned, cast out. I don’t know if I’ll ever see my home again.”
Taking up a roll of white tape, she begins wrapping it about his foot and ankle. “No wonder you have a hard time believing in forgiveness. Why did they disown you? Because you went away?”
He shakes his head. “No. My work called me away. But it changed me, to be among others who were so different from me. I was expected to obey, but I wasn’t supposed to change. As I did, I came to see that my family had aims that I don’t believe in, that I could no longer support.”
“And that hurts.”
“Very much so, yes.”
Greta cradles the back of his ankle in one hand, gently lowering it to the floor. “Try putting your weight on that.”
Standing, Castiel eases his weight onto his injured foot. Surprised, he says, “It’s better.”
“Try not to undertake any major hikes for a while. Is there anything else that hurts like the ankle?”
Despite the tenderness in his knee, he shakes his head. He will not disrobe any further. Besides, he has wasted enough time. He still must find Dean.
“You’ve been extremely kind,” he says. “But I should be on my way.”
“You really should have those cuts and bruises tended to.”
Although it’s unreasonable to feel annoyance at Greta’s helpfulness and concern, Castiel finds irritation bubbling up within him. “Thank you,” he says quite firmly. “But I need to be elsewhere.”
“You’re risking infection,” she tells him.
“It’s not important,” he replies, allowing a little of his impatience to leak through in his tone.
Luis stops his rhythmic motions with the mop, giving Castiel a meaningful stare.
“All right then,” Greta says, showing her palms in a placating gesture. Despite the gesture and Luis’ focused attention, Castiel has the distinct impression that very little intimidates Greta, and Castiel himself does not fall into this category. “Just let me tell you that we have a clothes closet here. If you want or need clothes that are undamaged, we can give you a change of clothes.”
She casts a meaningful glance at the battered trenchcoat Castiel has not taken off through his dinner or Greta’s attentions to his injury. The idea of relinquishing the trenchcoat feels like a stone in his chest. It is the nearest thing he has to the weight of wings. It is one of the last traces of Jimmy, who consented not once but twice to being his vessel.
“Thank you. You’ve been kind,” he says again. “But I must go. There’s a person I must find, and I’ve delayed enough.” He struggles to slip his foot back into his shoe, not bothering to tie it.
“Castiel,” she says softly. “Dean Winchester is perfectly safe.”
***
Castiel takes two hasty steps backward at this declaration, managing to stumble painfully with his left ankle as he gets his chair between himself and Greta. He knows it will be no more useful than a handful of matchsticks against any one of the beings who could know what she does about him. The movement is one of the many ways he’s shown himself to be vulnerable since he walked in the door.
“Who are you?” he growls.
Luis has abandoned his task but not his mop, holding it like a weapon as he approaches.
“Castiel, you’re in no danger from me,” she says. Flicking a glance to her companion, she says pointedly, “Or from Luis.”
“How do you know my name? What do you know about Dean?”
“I’ve never been as far away as you thought,” Greta says.
Is this a veiled threat? Has Lucifer somehow escaped his prison yet again, and found another vessel?
Or perhaps Sam never succeeded in his gamble and this entire experience -- from Castiel’s death to his awakening, the dreamlike walk through the city, this woman -- perhaps all of it is a Trickster-like fever dream, a vivid hallucination implanted in him at the very second his atoms are flung in every possible direction.
She reaches a hand toward him, the colors of her tattoos so remarkably intense. “Castiel,” she says again.
“Who are you?”
In answer she reaches into the pocket of her apron, retrieving a cord. At its end a small glowing pendant swings hypnotically. Castiel’s breath catches painfully in his throat, and he falls to his knees, heedless of the agony of the sudden impact. Despite his doubts and anger and despair, every moment of his long existence has ingrained in him that this is the proper response.
“Greta?” Luis asks.
Castiel barely hears him over the echoes of celestial music pouring forth from his memory. He knows he has them wrong, that his not-angelic, not-human mind can’t even retain such rapturous harmonies.
“It’s all right, Luis,” Greta replies, and the echoes in his head vibrate to the sound of her voice, creating a complexity of polyphony that he can scarcely bear. “We’re good. It’s been a long while since your last smoke break; why don’t you take one now?”
“Are you sure?”
“We’re fine here.”
The idea that Greta has anything to fear from Castiel is ludicrous to one who knows who She is. Luis must be as blind to Her glory as Castiel was. All this time to be working at Her side, chatting about sporting contests or neighborhood gossip, not even realizing who She is --
“Father,” he breathes.
“Castiel, don’t,” She says gently. “Get up.”
All he can remember is the last words he’d spoken to his absent Father, in yet another rundown motel room. You sonofabitch. He has no right to gaze upon Her now.
“Castiel,” She says again, patient and yet insistent, and this time he climbs unsteadily to his feet, but he will not turn his gaze upon Her. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”
“I’m sorry,” he says. Or perhaps it’s actually I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, he can’t be certain.
“Look at me.”
It takes a force of will to do as commanded, but he obeys. She looks exactly as She had before: cobalt blue hair in stiff little peaks, nose ring, damaged teeth, the appearance of ravaged health on its way back.
“You turned your eyes on me before. No point being bashful now.”
Bashful is such an understatement for what he is. His tongue is paralyzed -- his mind is paralyzed.
“I thought it was time we finally talked,” She tells him.
***
She gestures Castiel into the chair he’d occupied before, and after a moment’s hesitation, he settles himself into it. Speech is still beyond him, however.
Seating Herself opposite him, Greta tucks a foot beneath Her. “You’ve come a long way, Castiel.”
“You were difficult to find,” he says, even though he had stopped looking when Joshua had told him their Father had no wish to be found.
“And that hurt you,” She says. “I am sorry for that.”
Castiel finds his anger as well as his tongue. “Why did You leave? Why did You allow the most cynical and arrogant of Your children to claim they knew Your will? The damage they have done in Your name --”
“It wasn’t some cruel test,” Greta says gently. “There were reasons.”
Once again Castiel thinks of Dean, his bold, defiant willingness to speak in the face of enormous danger. “That’s comforting to know,” he says. “As an angel, it’s not my place to question Oh wait -- I’m not an angel anymore.”
This prompts a smile shining through with such affection that Castiel doesn’t know what to make of it. “As I said, you’ve come a long way.”
Not fallen so far. Come a long way..It confuses him. Castiel has killed his brothers, defied his orders, fought against Michael -- all because he trusted in Dean more than his Father.
“You asked me why I left my home,” Greta says.
“I understand now,” Castiel says, still calling up Dean’s defiance in his memories. “’It’s incredibly complicated.’”
“Well, yes.” Her smile and the affection are still present. “So many of my children -- human and angel alike -- have invested so much in keeping me unchanged. So much hierarchy between me and my children that I came to find it stifling. I wanted to sidestep all that.”
“But the Apocalypse --”
“As Joshua told you, there were times when I intervened. But it was important to me that men and angels would come to work together, to find the kinship that they always shared.”
“Then all of that was for nothing,”
“Truly? One angel and a handful of men worked together, and found that they were brothers. They stood together even when they believed they faced certain defeat.”
Scowling, Castiel says, “And in the end, what did that change?”
“Castiel,” Greta says softly, Her voice gently chiding. “You know your history better than that.” She holds his gaze for a long moment, and Castiel feels something shift within him like the unfolding of wings. “In the end --” Her quiet murmur seems to produce a breeze that moves over those wings, rustling feathers, creating a hum that fills his body. “In the end, that will change everything.”
***
Although Greta keeps her gaze on him as if awaiting a response, Castiel’s very thoughts seem to stammer and lodge sideways in his mind. At last he manages to say, “I am but a soldier.”
Greta smiles. “But not a hammer.”
The echo of what he’d said to Dean Winchester so long (an eternity) ago brings him up short. Has his Father truly paid such close attention to him, even while absent?
“Of course I kept track of you, Castiel. You don’t believe you’ve done remarkable things, but you have. You stayed true to my will, even when it cost you your rank and your place in heaven and your life itself.”
“But I defied my superiors.”
“You saw through their deception. You used your intelligence, which after all, was a gift I gave you. And you willingly carried out the command I gave to you and your brothers so long ago, and came to love your human brothers, even if you didn’t always understand them.”
The urge to dismiss such praise is strong -- he made so many grievous errors, and took longer than he ought to realize he was being deceived -- but he is not so foolish as to act as if his Father’s praise is worthless. Castiel settles on, “You overwhelm me. Tell me, what You would have me do?”
Placing an elbow on the table, Greta cups Her chin in Her hand, regarding him for a long moment. “What would you say if I told you to follow your heart?”
The concept is so alien to him that She might as well have said follow his hair, or his eyeteeth. Either of these makes as much sense.
Bursting into laughter, Greta reaches out and touches Castiel’s cheek. Again a surge of power tingles through his synapses, and the strong feeling that unfurled in him before spreads even further. “It’s not as appalling as all that,” She says. “Let me put it another way. You could do what you believe to be right.”
This is rather more free will than Castiel has ever hoped for. Before, he had at least been with humans who had more practice with it. Once more, he determines to keep these thoughts to himself.
“There’s plenty of work to be done. Starting with Heaven -- Team Uriel hasn’t been completely cleaned out, and now that Michael’s gone -- “
“I don’t think I understand.”
“You understand perfectly,” Greta says. “You just don’t quite believe it.”
“But I -- I’m just a foot soldier.”
“Consider this a promotion.”
Blinking, Castiel sits back in his chair, at a loss for words.
Greta flattens Her hands on the pitted wooden table. Her nails are clipped short, bare of artificial color. The tattoos that begin at Her wrist contrast sharply against the honeyed skin of Her hands. They are as vivid as Giotto’s frescoes once were.
She offers Castiel a wry smile. “I know these haven’t been the most welcome words for you in the past, but I want to make an example of you. You can show them another way of looking at humanity, make them realize I love neither angels nor humans more than the other.”
“How?”
“I’m leaving that to you.”
Trying to keep his face from revealing what a frightening thought this is, Castiel says, “I will do as You command.”
“It’s not a command. It’s a possibility. But I think it would suit you, at least for a time.”
As if the concept of a life ruled by free will weren’t enough, now he must consider one that changes, and then changes again.
Turning one hand palm up, Greta says, “I know you like I know the palm of my hand, Castiel. You’re up to the challenge.”
“Will You ever return?”
“Of course. I’ll want to see how my children are faring, just as I do here.” She retrieves Dean’s amulet and places it in Castiel’s palm, covering his hand with Hers. “It was unkind of you to call this useless,” she says, Her voice softly chiding. “Its purpose for Dean was quite different than the one it had for you.”
“I know,” he says, ashamed. “I’ll make certain he gets it back.”
“Give him my love,” She says, in that casual way humans have, but he reads the significance lying below.
Then She touches two fingers to his forehead.
***
When he’d slept in the back on the Impala, Castiel had dreamed of regaining the self he’d been before he lost what Dean called his angel mojo. All the physical-yet-not-physical sensations of battle and flight and the immense power channeled through him. The connection to his brothers -- lost, along with everything else. Torn from him.
He knew, even when he awoke from the dreams, that he’d exaggerated sevenfold his actual powers in his grief for all that he’d lost.
But now -- sent on his trajectory toward Dean, shot forth like God’s arrow -- he feels the power gathering in him and knows that it transcends even the dreams he’d had. With them comes a joy and certainty, along with a hope that the Dean he finds four years after Sam’s sacrifice is whole and at peace.
Alighting, he finds himself in a field. No, a cemetery. Spotting Dean kneeling in the middle of an empty expanse of ground, Castiel thinks perhaps he’s caught Dean on a memorial visit to the place where Sam tumbled into the Pit with Lucifer locked inside him. The sight of Dean, after all this time, on hands and knees like a blind man who has lost something (as he had), fills Castiel with sorrow.
But Dean’s movements are like those of someone not only broken but battered, causing Castiel to follow the trail of smashed and blood-smeared grass back to the Impala, and nearby he sees Bobby’s body, spattered with blood-spray, his neck at an impossible angle, and the truth becomes evident. It’s not four years after Sam drew Lucifer back into his prison, but mere moments.
As Castiel steps forward, Dean becomes aware of the presence behind him, turning his bloody, swollen face toward him. “Cas, you’re alive?”
“I’m better than than that,” he responds, touching two fingers to Dean’s forehead. In less than a heartbeat, he feels the knitting of flesh and bone, of damage being undone, just as Castiel’s ragged spirit had become whole at Greta’s touch.
Eyes widening, Dean rises and stares at him. “Cas ... are you God?”
Castiel thinks of the form God has assumed these last few years, even more unlikely than his own. He wishes he could take Dean to Her. A smile flickering at his lips, he says, “That’s a nice compliment, but no.” Holding Dean’s gaze, he feels his desperate grief, the palpable despair at the loss of everyone he has ever loved. Castiel cannot change all of it, but he can change something. “Although I do believe God brought me back,” he says, turning away to stride toward Bobby Singer’s corpse. “New and improved.” Dean has enough to handle, Castiel believes; the news about finding God can wait.
Kneeling beside Bobby, Castiel touches two fingers just below the bill of the cap he habitually wears. Gasping and shuddering, Bobby awakens to his life, his eyes wild. Castiel nods in acknowledgment of his own and Bobby’s resurrection, then rises and steps aside to allow Bobby and Dean their reunion, with mingled joy as well as sorrow at what Castiel cannot fix.
He doesn’t quite understand why hugging between men also involves smiting one another on the back, but it seems to serve some expressive purpose.
Walking Bobby to the place where Castiel had found him kneeling, Dean tells him what happened after Lucifer broke Bobby’s neck. Keeping his distance, Castiel listens to his account, watching Dean squeeze the fused rings of the Horsemen so tightly it must surely hurt his fingers and palm. This is his memento of Sam now, the physical reminder of the brother who’s irretrievably gone. Castiel fingers the amulet in his own pocket, grateful he has this to return to Dean. It’s not yet the right time.
Bobby cups his work-scarred hand around the back of Dean’s neck, his fierce face softened. “I wish I knew what to say, son,” he says quietly. “Nothing’s gonna make it hurt less, but Sam stepped up. He saved the damn world. The both of you did.”
“I almost don’t care, Bobby, I swear to god. World’s not much fucking good to me if Sam’s not in it. It was my job to protect him, and --”
“And you did a helluva job,” Bobby interrupts, the gruffness returning to his voice. “It took Satan to end his life, and Sam made sure he took that sonofabitch with him. You did all anybody could’ve done.”
As Castiel anticipated, this reassurance prompts nothing but a sour expression from Dean. Shoving the rings into his pocket, he says, “We should figure out what’s next. Hey, Cas. What’s the protocol for the post-non-apocalypse?”
“... I don’t quite know,” Castiel admits. He considers the world four years hence. “I think ... things go on. Men will rebuild what was damaged during the last several months.” Play sports, conduct wars, have political scandals, eat sandwiches. Behave as humans always have, even in the aftermath of a close call.
“Me, I could use some rest,” Bobby says. “So could you, Dean. Come on up to my place for a few days.”
“I can’t, Bobby.” His voice has grown rough again. “There’s something I promised I’d do.”
“Anything I can help with?” Bobby asks.
“No. Thanks, though.”
The men hug once more, and additional back-pounding takes place. Castiel is somewhat relieved when Bobby merely offers him a handshake. As Bobby drives away, Dean stares after his truck, eyes red-rimmed. He flicks a quick look at Castiel, then away. “Thanks for that, Cas.”
“I wish there was more --”
Dean puts up a hand. “I get it. I’m no big rush to uncork Lucifer again anytime soon, believe me. But the thought of Sammy being there too, being sliced apart bit by bit until there’s nothing left, and it all starts again. He’s made his mistakes, but he doesn’t fucking deserve that.”
“I do not believe Lucifer is being tortured. I think he’s in solitary confinement.”
Clearly he has made a misstep, because Dean’s face twists in grief and horror. “But it’s not solitary, don’t you get that? He’s got Sammy as his prison bitch, and you can believe he’ll make him suffer.” Turning on his heel, Dean aims a punch at the Impala, aiming for the strip of door frame between the passenger side windows. Aiming for a spot that will inflict no damage to his beloved car, but will take its toll on his hand.
When Dean draws back to punch the car again, Castiel catches his arm. With a guttural cry that sounds like a wounded animal, he wrenches himself from Castiel’s grasp and spins to strike him. Already bloodied knuckles vent Dean’s rage on Castiel, who allows it. Castiel is no more capable of being hurt than the Impala, and somehow it feels like a compliment, that Dean regards him almost as highly as the car.
When Dean shows no sign of stopping, Castiel seizes his arm again. “Dean,” he says firmly.
This time Dean allows him to retain his grip, at least until Castiel makes a move to heal the damage. “No,” Dean says thickly. “I need --”
Castiel believes he understands. Dean needs to feel something other than the pain of Sam’s loss, needs to know he’s suffering too. Nodding, Castiel says, “At least let me accompany you to a hospital to get it set.”
Dean gazes down at his hand, torn and bleeding and misaligned. “Yeah,” he says at last. “Yeah, okay.”
***
It has taken some time for Dean to be admitted into a treatment area at the emergency room. Although Castiel rose with him when Dean’s name was called, Dean waved him off, saying, “I won’t be long.”
Remaining on his feet by his chair, Castiel stands watch. He can feel the suffering and the fear from the people who have come here for their own trauma, or a loved one’s. These emotions have soaked into the very walls, the carpet, the battered magazines and health pamphlets. One by one, the others sharing the waiting area, the injured or sick or frightened, turn to stare at him. A few open their mouths to tell him to sit down and stop creeping everyone out (as he imagines Dean saying), but Castiel opens himself to their fear and misery, drawing them toward him. Every last one of them turns away with the rebuke unspoken, their fears calmed and hurts dulled. Now Castiel understands his Father’s choice better than he ever has.
After a much longer time than Dean had promised, he returns with a fresh white cast on his hand and a sheepish expression. A little color has returned to his face, leaving his freckles less noticeable once more.
“You’ve just been standing there like that the whole time?”
“Yes,” Castiel says.
Bemused, Dean shakes his head as they make their way to the doors.
“Your pain is at an acceptable level?”
Dean aims a sharp glance in his direction. “They gave me some pills, yeah. I don’t need ‘em yet, but I’ve got ‘em if I do.”
Castiel merely nods.
“I’ll take the keys now,” Dean says. Castiel had driven him here, which said a great deal about the damage Dean had inflicted on his hand.
Castiel makes no move for the keys. “Where are you going?” he inquires.
“There’s a girl. A single mom. I’m going to settle down, have a normal life. I made a promise.”
To Sam. This Castiel knows. He struggles with the desire to give unwanted advice.
“What about you? What are you gonna do now?”
“Go back to heaven, I suppose.”
“Heaven?”
Castiel nods. “With Michael in the cage, it’s bound to be anarchy up there.”
“So you’re the new sheriff in town?”
A smile twitches at his mouth. “I like that, yeah. I suppose I am.”
“After all that went on with God and your brothers. Huh. Well, lotsa luck.” He puts out his undamaged hand, palm up. “Keys, Cas.”
Reaching into his pocket, Castiel comes up with the amulet instead, carefully settling it and its cord onto Dean’s upturned hand.
***
“Shit!” Dean yelps. Tearing his eyes from the amulet, he looks at Castiel. “Cas--”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No. I just -- where did you get this?”
Ignoring the question, Castiel says, “It was wrong of me to say it was worthless.” He’d known this even before Greta chided him for it. “I knew when I borrowed it that it holds great significance for you, and to treat it as if it were scrap metal -- I am sorry.”
Dean blinks in surprise. “Forget it. We all say stupid shit when we’re pissed off. I guess that includes angels.”
“I am incapable of forgetting my history, Dean.”
“No no,” Dean says. “It’s a saying it means you’re forgiven, it’s okay.”
“Oh.”
Making no move to replace the amulet around his neck, Dean stares at it. His voice is thick and rough when he says, “I did the same thing to Sam. Shit-canned it like it was a wad of gum I was done with. He gave me that when we were kids, Cas. I never took it off, except to keep it safe. And now he’s gone and in hell with the memory of me doing that.”
Castiel thinks of Bobby. I wish I knew what to say, son. Taking the amulet from Dean’s hand, Castiel loops the cord around his neck. As he’d seen Bobby do, he cups his hand at the back of Dean’s neck.
“I don’t --” But the rest of the thought is blocked by the pain clogging Dean’s throat.
“Of course you deserve to wear it. You have Sam’s love, no matter where he is. I do know about the love of brothers, Dean. It’s often difficult and never perfect, even among the angels -- you’ve seen this for yourself. But it is no less real.”
A ragged breath bursts forth from Dean, and Castiel uses the hand at his neck to coax him forward into Castiel’s arms. He’s not altogether certain he’s doing this correctly; his arms feel strange, and Dean bunches a fist in the front of Castiel’s shirt. (Then again, his arms were created to feel strange without a sword in his hand.)
Give him My love, he remembers Greta saying. He shifts his arms a small degree, and suddenly everything feels as if it’s in the right place.
“Oh god, Cas,” Dean says into his shirt, his breath hitching.
Castiel is not conversant in the language of back-thumping, so instead he unfurls unseen wings, settling them around Dean, enfolding him.
They stand this way for some timeless piece of eternity, in a wash of light from a street lamp, Castiel’s hip resting against the side of the Impala as he shelters Dean from the storm.
nwhepcat
Takes place during 5.22, "Swan Song"; missing scenes and alternate ending
Character: Castiel, Dean, Bobby
Rating: mature
Summary: Castiel finds himself dragged back to life yet again after his confrontation with Lucifer. He looks for a phone, but finds something else instead.
Warning: Religious themes and personages
Castiel awakens with his cheek pressed into the gritty asphalt of a shadowy alley, his head throbbing like a drumbeat. It’s not the only thing he notices hurting, just the first thing.
No, the first thing he notes is the fact that he has awakened at all. The last thing Castiel remembers is Lucifer’s wrath, the snap of his fingers ... and now this place.
Castiel puts a hand to the epicenter of the pain in his head, discovers the peculiar stickiness of drying blood. Noticing a dark, glistening streak on the corner of the wheeled trash receptacle beside him, he suppresses a moan.
Attempting to wet his lips, he finds the inside of his mouth dry as ash, his tongue difficult to move.
Dean. Has he --
Castiel holds his breath, listening to the world beyond the mouth of the alley. Heavy traffic blocks out many of the smaller sounds he might hear, the throaty sound of a truck rumbling like Dean’s beloved car. Directly above are the sounds of air conditioners and the insistent murmur of pigeons, amplified in the vertical space of the alley.
Everyday noises. Not chaos and screams. Desperate and foolhardy as it was, Sam’s plan has worked.
A laugh bubbles up from deep within him, startling the pigeons into silence. Something in his chest protests at the sudden exertion, and the laughter devolves into a violent cough. Dragging himself up to his hands and knees, he coughs convulsively, unaware of the roar of the truck or the loud beeps that herald its approach.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing back here?”
Sparing a quick glance, Castiel sees dark uniform pants and work boots. “Officer --”
“Officer?” The voice is amused, but still retains the gruff anger from before.
Castiel tilts his head to get a better look at the man, taking in work gloves and a patch with a logo sewn on instead of a badge. It doesn’t help him identify his challenger. “I -- I fell.”
The man jerks his head upward, indicating the building looming over him. Castiel tries to follow his gaze, but attempting to look farther upward makes his stomach flip.
“What, from the fire escape?”
“No. From Kansas.”
This unaccountably makes the man angrier. “Well, you’re gonna have to move your ass, Dorothy. I’ve got a route to cover.” Without further consulation, he grabs Castiel by the upper arm and hauls him to his feet.
His breath hissing inward through his teeth, Castiel sways.
“You hurt?”
“No.” Castiel’s not certain why he lies, but he knows Dean would do the same if confronted by a stranger.
“You should find a better place to pass out. You fuck around with these dumpsters, you could get yourself killed.”
Not so different from the Winchesters. “I’ll be more careful,” Castiel says solemnly.
Dismissing him, the man wheels the cart around to hook its handles onto a mechanism at the back of the truck, then signals the driver. The roar and metallic clangs of the truck engaging makes Castiel’s head vibrate with pain much as it had in the instant before he’d vaporized. This time, though, he grits his teeth and somehow survives the onslaught.
After the truck lowers the emptied receptacle and the man shoves it back into place, Castiel asks, “Where am I? What city?”
“Tell ya one thing, Dorothy,” the man says unhelpfully. “It ain’t Oz.”
***
He should call Dean, he realizes. He must find him, help him if necessary. (He tries not to think about the possibility that Dean tumbled into Hell along with Sam/Lucifer.) Rummaging in the pocket of his trenchcoat, Castiel encounters a jumble of circuits and plastic shards.
Striding from the alley, he holds a hand up to signal a young woman carrying a briefcase. “I need to use your phone,” he says. “It’s an urgent matter.”
Casting an alarmed look at him, the woman scurries away, giving him a wide berth.
Castiel examines the hand he’d gestured with, finding his palm covered in blood. Impatiently, he wipes the hand down the front of his coat, then inspects it again. There is grime, but most of the blood is gone. Castiel steps into the path of a middle-aged man, showing his palm. “Listen. I have urgent need of your phone.”
The man just shoulders past him, striking Castiel’s own shoulder, which staggers him for a moment. Castiel gets his feet untangled just in time to encounter a young girl with hair as black as a raven’s wing. She obviously owns a cell phone, because she’s speaking into it as she walks.
“So then he goes --”
Castiel reaches toward her. “I need to borrow your phone. It’s vital that I make a call.”
“Fuck off, you freak,” she says, without even breaking stride. “I don’t know,” she says into the phone as she walks on. “Some crazy homeless dude.”
“I am not mentally impaired,” he calls out to her back, but she does not alter her brisk pace.
Perhaps it’s his manner. Dean has always accused him of being too brusque. “Please,” he says to an elderly woman, but her eyes widen in alarm and she hurries past him.
He spins toward another man who approaches from behind him. Making a gesture of supplication, he says, “Please. I need your help.”
Without meeting his gaze, the man reaches in his pocket and drops a few coins into Castiel’s hand.
Castiel opens his mouth to tell the man No, money is not what I was requesting when a voice distracts him.
“Hey, asshole.”
Before he can stop to consider whether this shout might be directed at him, a pair of hand grabs him from behind and pushes him against the limestone face of a building, grinding his unabraded cheek into the stone.
“This is my block, shithead. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll fuck off and stay away.”
Despite Castiel’s attempt to see the man pressing him against the building, all he can manage through the corner of his eye is a glimpse of blackened hands. The smell of an unwashed human is even more pungent than the trash-filled alley where he’d awakened.
“I had no intention of encroaching on your territory,” Castiel begins, but before he can say what he wanted, the man leans more of his weight against Castiel. The pressure of his cheek against the stone feels almost worse than a blow.
“Smartass,” the man with the dirt-caked hands hisses into Castiel’s ear.
“Hey, you two!” another voice shouts, and Castiel is abruptly released. The intruder is a man in a black uniform with a black stripe down the sides of his trousers, and gold braid at the shoulders. “Take off before I call the cops.”
“I need to use a telephone,” Castiel says. “Mine is broken.”
“Can’t help you. Just keep moving.”
The man who’d accosted him has already moved off, so Castiel turns in the opposite direction, hoping to escape further difficulties.
Rounding the corner, he finds himself gazing in the window of a shop with walkers and canes and prostheses in the window. He imagines himself asking, Do you stock prosthetic wings? and the thought makes him laugh bitterly. A shift in the pattern of light against the window presents him with his own reflection at this moment, and he sees why he’s received the reactions he has gotten.
Filthy, torn clothes, face and coat streaked with blood, a grinning face that he must admit looks demented. Turning from the window in disgust, Castiel nearly collides with a young woman whose attempt to sidestep him throws her off balance.
Without thinking, he grasps her by the arms to steady her, releasing her as soon as she’s stable. “My apologies,” he says. He’s excusing himself for touching her as much as for the near collision.
To his vast surprise, she smiles. “No worries.”
They perform an awkward shuffling dance as he attempts to remove himself from her path, and she tries to enter the prosthesis store. As he steps backward to clear the way, he sees that she wears a regular shoe on one foot, but on the other is a shoe whose sole has been augmented by a platform several inches thick.
“My apologies,” he says again.
“It’s okay,” she assures him. She reaches into her handbag and retrieves a leaflet, which she hands him. “God bless you,” she says, then continues on her way into the store.
***
God bless you. Castiel’s mouth twists as he imagines Dean saying, “He’s doing a bang-up job of it so far.”
He crumples the leaflet, but it occurs to him that it might have the address of the woman’s church, which would tell him what city he’s landed in. Smoothing the paper back out, he discovers he’s in New York City. Though he’s been here before on his search for God, his arrival in the alley hadn’t afforded him a view of skyline to orient himself.
When a white insert slides out of the leaflet and flutters to the sidewalk, Castiel bends to pick it up. On it is a list of soup kitchens and shelters in the city. Castiel stuffs that into his pocket and crushes the tract (Searching for God? He is waiting for you) in his hand.
Looking around, he takes stock of where he is and which direction he might follow. Clearly he will receive better attention if he attends to his appearance. To his left is a church run by the Jesuits; Castiel has been there before on his search for his Father. To the right, farther away, is a large building which covers a four-block long area across Fifth Avenue. He knows from his previous visits that this is an art museum. He has been there before, but at the time he appeared in a gallery without having to navigate any entrances.
Still, he heads in that direction, preferring to deal with the disapprobation of security guards than that of priests. Surely there will be a public restroom there where he can attempt to make himself more presentable.
At the museum he sheds his overcoat, making him look slightly less disreputable. Jimmy Novak’s suit has seen better days, but it is less battered than the coat. Now that he is earthbound, Castiel is forced to pause in the lobby to purchase a ticket, grateful for the “pay what you wish” policy and the coins he was given. He passes them all to the young man at the admissions desk, then shows his entry badge to the guard. At the first men’s room he finds, he scrubs away the dirt and the blood and does what he can with the stains on his coat. He’s still left with the abrasions and bruises from his landing and his encounter with the the man who’d threatened him, and his hair has a strange heaviness that gives it a different appearance than it normally has. He does his best to make it conform to the standards of most of the men he’s seen on the street, and then steps out into the echoing structure of the museum.
The last time he’d come, Castiel had sought out the paintings that resonated most with his drive to find God, but this time he avoids those galleries. He tells himself he’s merely wandering through the museum to determine if he looks less like a drifter and his entreaties to use a phone will be better received, but clearly there is something compelling him to stay here and put off that quest.
A few of the museum’s patrons give him sidelong looks, but no one demands that he be removed or offers him coins. Though he has a leaflet with the floor plan in his pocket, Castiel wanders aimlessly until he finds himself in an area with a large skylight and a sandstone temple -- Nubian in origin, he recognizes.
It’s a placid place, with a reflecting pool before the large dais on which it sits. Though he can read the etching upon the surface of the temple and its gate, dedications the gods and praise to the builders, he trains his gaze on the lotus and papyrus border at its base, and the calm of the water.
People come and go around him, none giving any evidence of the near-apocalypse that unleashed massive destruction on the world during previous days. Though his memory of exact details is hazy, he is fairly certain New York City was among the locations that saw death and ruin.
A school teacher marches a gaggle of uniformed children into the chamber, his voice echoing even though his words are unclear. Just as a double line of students snakes around the temple, a noise issues from Castiel’s abdomen, a long, forlorn sound that almost imitates the quality of speech.
A pair of students passing him giggle into their hands.
Once his belly finds its voice, it seems to have a great deal to say. Though he understands every language human and otherwise, this one escapes him, and his thinking is growing too fuzzy to work on the problem.
Feeling slightly light-headed, Castiel finds his way back to the entrance of the museum and breathes in the cooling air. There are people in all manner of garb seated on the stone steps, so Castiel finds a spot midway down and seats himself.
The scent of cooking meat wafts up from an umbrellaed cart on the sidewalk, and Castiel’s midsection again makes its opinions known. Finally he makes the connection between the noises, the smell of food, and his growing lethargy. He remembers Dean’s maddening interruptions to find food when Castiel was fixed on a mission. Now he understands.
Castiel rummages in the coat he’d folded onto the stone beside him, finding the rumpled paper listing the city’s soup kitchens.
***
A few steps above Castiel, a couple are talking. Feigning casualness, he leans back to hear what they might be discussing. It used to be so easy for him to discern what was in the hearts of the people he was near. Now he must eavesdrop like any overcurious human, without regard to his own dignity or those of his targets.
Again, he gets no sign at all of the narrowly-averted apocalypse, just a discussion of where to have dinner. Castiel’s stomach adds its own insistent commentary, so he turns his attention to the paper in his hand. He mentally discounts every church-run soup kitchen, trimming the list down to two viable options. One is called Hope House, the other Greta’s Kitchen.
He likes the unassuming sound of the latter. It makes no demands on his state of mind, welcomes him hopeful or not. Throughout his existence, he has had expectations to fulfill, requiring his heart, his mind and his soul as well as his sword arm.
The number of people on the street and the buses indicate the workday has probably concluded for most people. Checking the hours Greta’s Kitchen is open, Castiel realizes he has a long way to walk and is late getting a start. He rises and puts on his coat for the journey and heads toward the closest entrance to Olmstead and Vaux’ park, the Miners’ Gate.
He has never walked in the great park, his time always constrained by the mission at hand. Castiel no longer has a mission: the apocalypse has been averted and his Father has made it very plain that He has no wish to be found. He has been cast out of heaven, separated from his brothers so completely he can no longer summon the form or power they once shared.
While he’d meant to open himself fully to the beauties of the park, his thoughts have made a mockery of this intention. Instead his sense of loss blinds him to the landscape and the people inhabiting it. He sees only his path and the obstacles in his way.
Emerging at the Merchants’ Gate, he finds himself confronted with the complexities of negotiating the traffic at Columbus Circle. His ankle and knee throb from a sudden stumble on an uneven patch of ground, and his coat is stained once more with grass and dirt.
Summoning the sense of command he once had (arrogance, Dean had called it), Castiel raises his hand to the onrushing cars and trucks and steps out into the street.
This act creates an exquisite cacophony: screeching breaks, blaring horns and enraged voices. Castiel has a variety of new names bestowed on him in at least three languages. Still showing his palm (also dirt-smeared and a little bloody as well), he calmly crosses the curving street, safely reaching the far sidewalk despite a close call with a messenger on a bicycle.
“What are you, some kind of lunatic?” a man at a pretzel cart demands.
“Quite possibly,” Castiel admits. Without waiting for a reaction, he sets off down Broadway.
***
Castiel’s journey down Broadway takes him through a series of neighborhoods, each unique unto itself. Times Square is jammed full of street vendors licensed and otherwise, people performing music or magic tricks for the handfuls of change and bills that are forthcoming from the slow-moving packs of tourists. It’s the tourists who make it difficult to negotiate the sidewalks. Slow moving clumps of people who pause to stare at everything.
They stare at Castiel, and clearly he frightens them. He’s not sure if it’s his dirty, disheveled appearance or the pain and despair reflected in his face as he limps down the crowded sidewalks. Castiel discovers if he looks at the oncoming tourists with the expression Dean used to call “all smitey and shit,” they will scramble out of his way.
By the time he makes it to the garment district, it has emptied out, seeming almost a ghost town. Though the unclogged sidewalks should make it easier to pick up his pace, the pain in his ankle and knee have increased, slowing him down.
Broadway, already slicing through the grid of upper Manhattan streets, veers more sharply eastward as he crosses 34th Street. The streets become more crowded with shoppers and tourists again. Castiel no longer has the energy to glare; he passes through like a ghost.
Another mile takes him to 14th Street, another shopping destination, this one for poorer residents trying to squeeze as much value from each dollar as they can. His is not the only face that looks beyond weary. A surge of anger flares through him, sharp as the pain of his damaged ankle. These are God’s beloved children -- why does He allow them to suffer as they do? His brothers believe that it’s because humans are deficient in some way (in all ways, according to all his relations from Lucifer to Raphael), that this is the best they can hope to make of their lives and their world. Once Castiel believed that the suffering of humans must serve some divine purpose, but that certainty slipped away with the knowledge that his Father had no interest in his children and their affairs.
Funny -- in that not-funny way, as Dean would say -- that the attributes of humans that make angels so contemptuous of them are among the traits of angels as well. That very contempt -- the certainty that some of God’s children are beneath the notice and compassion of yourself and your kind -- is the root of much of the suffering in this world. The angels are not the only beings to look down on other beings they refer to as “mud monkeys.” But his brothers see no irony in the fact that they share the seething hate that they disdain in humanity.
At last Castiel finds the East Village street he seeks. He turns and searches for the address on the paper and finally finds a narrow storefront, its exterior cheerfully painted.
A man is letting another out of the front door, locking it from within. He turns away, picking up chairs and turning them up onto the tabletops.
Castiel beats his palm against the glass door.
The man turns toward him. “I’m sorry, man.” Castiel can barely hear him through the glass, but he can read the message plainly enough. “We’re closed.”
***
Though Castiel wants to protest that he’s just walked four miles from the museum and has no money or options, he just bows his head, his hand splayed against the glass. He hears the buzz of the man’s voice, though he can’t make out his words, and then the more distant murmur of another’s voice. Roused by a light tap on the glass, Castiel looks up and the man unlocks the door.
“Greta says it’s okay. We’ve got some soup left oover, if you don’t mind me sweeping up around you.”
“I would be very grateful,” Castiel says.
The man, a kind-faced Latino whose light footfalls belie his bulk, shows him to a table. “Someone left today’s newspaper, if you want something to read. Greta will be out in a minute.”
As the man begins turning chairs over and setting them seat down on the tables, Castiel reaches for the tabloid. Surely there he’ll find news about the devastation of Lucifer’s time walking the earth. Nothing on the front page -- the headline and large photograph relate to a sex scandal that threatens the mayor’s career. The articles inside are just as devoid of references to the near-miss apocalypse. Turning every page, even those with comics and puzzles on them, he searches for the slightest reference, and when he finds none, he turns the paper over to search again.
That’s when he sees what he should have noticed at the very outset. The paper’s date is September 8, 2014. Castiel’s breath catches from the shock of it. Four years after the battle with Lucifer.
Dean --
Where is Dean now? How is he making it with Sam locked away with Lucifer in the Pit? The thought that he’s been mourning his brother all this time without Castiel to -- well, to do whatever it is that human friends do -- it creates a grief in him that is almost physical in its intensity.
Again, the urgent need to find a telephone rockets through him, and he rises to his feet with such swiftness that his chair clatters to the floor behind him. Abruptly his vision goes dark. Head swimming, Castiel clutches at the table to stay upright.
“Whoa, hey,” says the man who’d opened the door for him. A few quick strides and he’s at Castiel’s side, hands closing around his shoulders to steady him. “You okay, man?”
“I’m --” He’s not even sure how to describe it. He closes his eyes.
“Here, man, sit down.” His hands leave Castiel for a moment, long enough to right the chair, then he guides Castiel back onto it.
“I need a phone,” Castiel says.
“You need a meal,” says another voice. It belongs to a woman who has emerged from the kitchen bearing a tray. Her hair is black overlaid with a vivid blue. It’s cut short and bursts outward from the back of her head in softly peaked clumps. There’s a silver ring in her nose and much more silver in her ears. She sets her tray down in front of Castiel, her ams tattooed from shoulder to wrist with so many colors and pictures that he can’t pick out any one image.
She sits across the table from him. Her history -- or part of it -- is evident in her face. Clearly she was a great beauty at one time, but the ravages of a life on the fringes of society tell her story like a child’s picture book. Meth, Castiel guesses from the condition of her teeth. Despite this, she has a look of health that is blossoming once more, creating a new form of beauty he suspects will grow with each year.
“I’m Greta,” she tells him.
***
Somewhat dismayed by the realization that there are two bowls of soup and plates of bread on the tray, Castiel stumbles over his reply to Greta’s introduction.
Holding up a hand, she assures him, “No names required here. You can go by Joe or Slim or nothing at all.”
Castiel nods, incapable of declaring one way or the other.
“Eat,” Greta says softly. “You look like you could use it.”
He hadn’t counted on a companion -- not like this. If he’d fumbled his utensils at a long table crowded with homeless men and women gazing down at their own bowls, it would not have mattered. But this way he feels on display. He has eaten nothing but hamburgers while in this vessel, and he suspects the techniques he has learned from watching Dean are not the best to utilize here.
Smiling at him, Greta picks up her spoon and starts in on her own soup, and Castiel follows her lead, leaning carefully toward the bowl so he doesn’t spill. It’s hot but not too hot, thick, with soft chunks of vegetables. Without intending to, Castiel makes a soft noise in appreciation for the flavors. If he allowed himself he could eat as if compelled by the influence of Famine, but another part of him wishes to savor each spoonful.
“You’ve come a long way,” Greta says.
“Four miles,” Castiel responds. “It’s not far, even on foot, except I injured my leg.”
“That’s not all. We can tend to that after you’ve had your meal.” She tears off a piece of the bread, then dips it into her soup. “Anyway, that’s not what I meant. We don’t get many in here wearing a tie.”
“I used to be --” he finds himself about to claim Jimmy’s former profession, but he suddenly feels that this would be wrong. “Someone else,” he finally finishes.
Popping the liquid-soaked bread into her mouth, Greta nods. “Yet you hang onto what you were. You keep that self knotted around your neck.”
All at once Castiel finds it difficult to see. His eyes burn and the rhythm of his breath comes unraveled. An unseen hand seems to tighten its hand about his throat. He doesn’t know what to do, whether to remain still, or run from this place.
A horrible noise issues from him, set off by a spasm somewhere in his chest.
“It’s okay to cry,” Greta says softly.
Cry? Clearly she has no idea what’s really happening to him. The pressure building up in his head and his chest, the constriction of his throat. Surely this is something humans can die from.
“It’s okay,” she says again. “You’re in a safe place.”
At these words the pressure batters down his ragged defenses and Castiel cracks wide open. Though he expects blood or some other vital fluid to issue forth, what comes is in fact a steady rain of tears. Pushing back his chair, he leans forward, elbows on knees, hands covering his face, and lets the flood come.
Drawing her chair close to his, Greta rests her hand on his back, but keeps her silence. He hears nothing but the sound of his own choking sobs, and when they begin to subside, the soft sound of broom bristles against the wooden floor.
“I miss my home,” Castiel says at last, his voice rough and congested, “but I can’t go back. I miss my family, but I can’t be like them anymore. I’ve fallen so far.”
“You have the ability to climb,” she says.
Greta doesn’t understand, but he realizes it would be ungracious to say so after her kindness.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Castiel says, still speaking toward his lap.
“Right now, you’re going to finish your meal before it gets cold,” she tells him. “And after that, you will get your injuries tended. What comes next is something you can decide when it’s time.”
At last he looks up, and Greta hands him a paper napkin off a pile that has mysteriously appeared on the table by Castiel’s bowl.
As he mops the moisture from his eyes, Greta asks, “Feel better?”
This is what humans believe about the process of weeping? That it’s supposed to make one feel better? Castiel’s eyes feel hot and painful, his head is filled with something that causes great pressure, and his eyes and nose are still leaking. “I am uncomfortable,” he admits, and the strangeness of the word strikes him. Perhaps he is incapable of being comforted.
Without seeming to think it odd that this is new to him, Greta teaches him how to clear his sinuses into a napkin, and the name for this technique: to blow one’s nose. Human language is a peculiar thing.
“Finish your soup,” Greta says again, and like a child he obeys.
***
After his outburst, Castiel is too embarrassed to resume their conversation, but Greta smooths the way.
“How did you find out about us? Four miles is a long way to walk, and thre are soup kitchens along the way.”
“I know.” He’s not sure whether to bring his issues into the conversation, but his bout of weeping has left him too raw to create a fiction. “Most of them were connected to houses of worship. I needed --” he huffs a short laugh -- “neutral ground.”
Tearing off another piece of bread, Greta says, “Yeah. I can understand that. It’s why I chose the name.”
“How long have you been running this place?”
“I guess it’s close to eight years now.”
She seems young enough that her descent into addiction must have begun when she was barely more than a child. His thoughts jump to lifespans. (His thoughts do this now that he is human, flit from topic to topic like a chittering squirrel from tree to tree.) How long is the measure of his days to be? What of the four years that seemingly disappeared when Lucifer struck him down? Making an effort to tune back in to the conversation, he says, “You must have been very young when ... things were bad. You are young still.”
Greta directs a closed-mouth smile into her soup bowl. “Oh, I feel plenty old most of the time.”
Castiel nods, but he can’t tell exactly how he feels. Ancient, ageless, a child ... it seems to vary from moment to moment.
Finishing his bread and soup, he carefully rests the spoon next to his emptied bowl. “Thank you for the meal. It was quite good. And to let me in when you’d already closed for the night was extraordinarily kind.”
A flicker of a smile plays at her lips, but it’s remarkably sad. “Well. I have a lot to make up for, I’m afraid.” She gusts out a breath. “No, I’m sorry. I’m not going to burden you with that.” Abandoning her own dinner, she rises. “Let’s see what we can do with those cuts and bruises.”
“It’s no burden,” Castiel says, catching a corner of her apron. “I’d like to give something in return.”
“You don’t have to,” Greta says. “If I wanted something in return, I’d have made this a restaurant.”
“I realize that, But I would like to.”
She chews at her lip for a moment of hesitation. “Well. Nothing says you can’t listen while I’m looking at your injuries.”
Releasing her apron, Castiel watches her go. As soon as she leaves the room, a powerful desire to track down Dean sweeps through him. Castiel looks around for the man who’d unlocked the door for him, but he has left the room without making a sound. An irrational impulse to burst out of the doors and into the night begins to build, and he pushes it back. There is no boarding a bus this time to reach Dean’s side when he has no idea where Dean might be -- if Dean is yet alive. But the need to do something has grown unbearable. He has seen to his own immediate needs, to delay any further is unconscionable.
When Greta returns with another tray, this one piled with first aid supplies, Castiel blurts, “I have no time for this. I have a friend who needs help -- I need to find him.”
“You’re no good to anyone if you can barely walk,” Greta says, and he has to admit the truth of this. “I’ll see if there’s some way I can help once we take care of the first aid, okay?” In some way he cannot fully fathom, the presence of another person blunts the unreasonable drive to action.
She pulls her chair close again and says, “Let’s see that ankle.” Before he can protest, she has reached down to cradle his foot in her hand, settling it on her lap.
Castiel finds himself acutely embarrassed at the sight of the filth ground into his trouser leg, the stains on his shoe. “I can do that,” he says unnecessarily harshly, reaching out a hand to stop her.
Folding his hand in hers, she says, “I’ve seen much worse. Just sit.”
“Let her help,” says the man who had let Castiel in. He has returned with a bucket and mop, carrying it to the far corner of the dining room. “It makes her happy.”
Smiling, she says, “Luis knows me too well. He runs this place with me. He writes a mean grant application.” Her deft fingers are already unlacing his shoe. As gently as she tugs on his sock, it still causes a hiss of pain to issue from him. Greta makes a soft noise of sympathy. “He said you were limping pretty seriously when you came in.”
First she cleans his foot with a damp cloth, as Castiel squirms with embarrassment. “How about that sad story to take your mind off all this?” Greta doesn’t wait for a reply, telling him, “I abandoned the people that I love and who loved me. That’s not true of everyone who’s out here on the street, but it describes a lot of us. When they depended on me, I kept my distance. Someone came after me, but I just went so far underground he couldn’t find me.”
Tenderly she probes his ankle and foot, which have swollen, the skin purpling.
He turns his mind from the pain of her prodding. “Why?”
The pause that follows is so long that he’s certain she will not answer, but then she says in a rueful, almost self-mocking tone, “It’s incredibly complicated.”
He gazes at her soft peaks of cobalt hair as she tends to his ankle, wrestling with an absurd impulse to touch them.
“Do you believe in forgiveness?” she asks.
Castiel wonders if she would prefer a lie. But after her honesty, he feels it would be disrespectful. “I don’t know anymore. At one time I would have said there is nothing that’s unforgivable to God, if forgiveness is asked for. But these days I’m no longer sure of anything.”
Greta twitches a smile. “It’s not so much God I’m worried about; it’s the people I’ve hurt.”
Sighing, Castiel looks across the room to where Luis moves his mop in sweeping arcs across the floor. “I’m afraid I know very little about the hearts of men,” he says.
***
“I do know,” Castiel ventures, “that I have found very little forgiveness among my own family. I’ve been disowned, cast out. I don’t know if I’ll ever see my home again.”
Taking up a roll of white tape, she begins wrapping it about his foot and ankle. “No wonder you have a hard time believing in forgiveness. Why did they disown you? Because you went away?”
He shakes his head. “No. My work called me away. But it changed me, to be among others who were so different from me. I was expected to obey, but I wasn’t supposed to change. As I did, I came to see that my family had aims that I don’t believe in, that I could no longer support.”
“And that hurts.”
“Very much so, yes.”
Greta cradles the back of his ankle in one hand, gently lowering it to the floor. “Try putting your weight on that.”
Standing, Castiel eases his weight onto his injured foot. Surprised, he says, “It’s better.”
“Try not to undertake any major hikes for a while. Is there anything else that hurts like the ankle?”
Despite the tenderness in his knee, he shakes his head. He will not disrobe any further. Besides, he has wasted enough time. He still must find Dean.
“You’ve been extremely kind,” he says. “But I should be on my way.”
“You really should have those cuts and bruises tended to.”
Although it’s unreasonable to feel annoyance at Greta’s helpfulness and concern, Castiel finds irritation bubbling up within him. “Thank you,” he says quite firmly. “But I need to be elsewhere.”
“You’re risking infection,” she tells him.
“It’s not important,” he replies, allowing a little of his impatience to leak through in his tone.
Luis stops his rhythmic motions with the mop, giving Castiel a meaningful stare.
“All right then,” Greta says, showing her palms in a placating gesture. Despite the gesture and Luis’ focused attention, Castiel has the distinct impression that very little intimidates Greta, and Castiel himself does not fall into this category. “Just let me tell you that we have a clothes closet here. If you want or need clothes that are undamaged, we can give you a change of clothes.”
She casts a meaningful glance at the battered trenchcoat Castiel has not taken off through his dinner or Greta’s attentions to his injury. The idea of relinquishing the trenchcoat feels like a stone in his chest. It is the nearest thing he has to the weight of wings. It is one of the last traces of Jimmy, who consented not once but twice to being his vessel.
“Thank you. You’ve been kind,” he says again. “But I must go. There’s a person I must find, and I’ve delayed enough.” He struggles to slip his foot back into his shoe, not bothering to tie it.
“Castiel,” she says softly. “Dean Winchester is perfectly safe.”
***
Castiel takes two hasty steps backward at this declaration, managing to stumble painfully with his left ankle as he gets his chair between himself and Greta. He knows it will be no more useful than a handful of matchsticks against any one of the beings who could know what she does about him. The movement is one of the many ways he’s shown himself to be vulnerable since he walked in the door.
“Who are you?” he growls.
Luis has abandoned his task but not his mop, holding it like a weapon as he approaches.
“Castiel, you’re in no danger from me,” she says. Flicking a glance to her companion, she says pointedly, “Or from Luis.”
“How do you know my name? What do you know about Dean?”
“I’ve never been as far away as you thought,” Greta says.
Is this a veiled threat? Has Lucifer somehow escaped his prison yet again, and found another vessel?
Or perhaps Sam never succeeded in his gamble and this entire experience -- from Castiel’s death to his awakening, the dreamlike walk through the city, this woman -- perhaps all of it is a Trickster-like fever dream, a vivid hallucination implanted in him at the very second his atoms are flung in every possible direction.
She reaches a hand toward him, the colors of her tattoos so remarkably intense. “Castiel,” she says again.
“Who are you?”
In answer she reaches into the pocket of her apron, retrieving a cord. At its end a small glowing pendant swings hypnotically. Castiel’s breath catches painfully in his throat, and he falls to his knees, heedless of the agony of the sudden impact. Despite his doubts and anger and despair, every moment of his long existence has ingrained in him that this is the proper response.
“Greta?” Luis asks.
Castiel barely hears him over the echoes of celestial music pouring forth from his memory. He knows he has them wrong, that his not-angelic, not-human mind can’t even retain such rapturous harmonies.
“It’s all right, Luis,” Greta replies, and the echoes in his head vibrate to the sound of her voice, creating a complexity of polyphony that he can scarcely bear. “We’re good. It’s been a long while since your last smoke break; why don’t you take one now?”
“Are you sure?”
“We’re fine here.”
The idea that Greta has anything to fear from Castiel is ludicrous to one who knows who She is. Luis must be as blind to Her glory as Castiel was. All this time to be working at Her side, chatting about sporting contests or neighborhood gossip, not even realizing who She is --
“Father,” he breathes.
“Castiel, don’t,” She says gently. “Get up.”
All he can remember is the last words he’d spoken to his absent Father, in yet another rundown motel room. You sonofabitch. He has no right to gaze upon Her now.
“Castiel,” She says again, patient and yet insistent, and this time he climbs unsteadily to his feet, but he will not turn his gaze upon Her. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”
“I’m sorry,” he says. Or perhaps it’s actually I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, he can’t be certain.
“Look at me.”
It takes a force of will to do as commanded, but he obeys. She looks exactly as She had before: cobalt blue hair in stiff little peaks, nose ring, damaged teeth, the appearance of ravaged health on its way back.
“You turned your eyes on me before. No point being bashful now.”
Bashful is such an understatement for what he is. His tongue is paralyzed -- his mind is paralyzed.
“I thought it was time we finally talked,” She tells him.
***
She gestures Castiel into the chair he’d occupied before, and after a moment’s hesitation, he settles himself into it. Speech is still beyond him, however.
Seating Herself opposite him, Greta tucks a foot beneath Her. “You’ve come a long way, Castiel.”
“You were difficult to find,” he says, even though he had stopped looking when Joshua had told him their Father had no wish to be found.
“And that hurt you,” She says. “I am sorry for that.”
Castiel finds his anger as well as his tongue. “Why did You leave? Why did You allow the most cynical and arrogant of Your children to claim they knew Your will? The damage they have done in Your name --”
“It wasn’t some cruel test,” Greta says gently. “There were reasons.”
Once again Castiel thinks of Dean, his bold, defiant willingness to speak in the face of enormous danger. “That’s comforting to know,” he says. “As an angel, it’s not my place to question Oh wait -- I’m not an angel anymore.”
This prompts a smile shining through with such affection that Castiel doesn’t know what to make of it. “As I said, you’ve come a long way.”
Not fallen so far. Come a long way..It confuses him. Castiel has killed his brothers, defied his orders, fought against Michael -- all because he trusted in Dean more than his Father.
“You asked me why I left my home,” Greta says.
“I understand now,” Castiel says, still calling up Dean’s defiance in his memories. “’It’s incredibly complicated.’”
“Well, yes.” Her smile and the affection are still present. “So many of my children -- human and angel alike -- have invested so much in keeping me unchanged. So much hierarchy between me and my children that I came to find it stifling. I wanted to sidestep all that.”
“But the Apocalypse --”
“As Joshua told you, there were times when I intervened. But it was important to me that men and angels would come to work together, to find the kinship that they always shared.”
“Then all of that was for nothing,”
“Truly? One angel and a handful of men worked together, and found that they were brothers. They stood together even when they believed they faced certain defeat.”
Scowling, Castiel says, “And in the end, what did that change?”
“Castiel,” Greta says softly, Her voice gently chiding. “You know your history better than that.” She holds his gaze for a long moment, and Castiel feels something shift within him like the unfolding of wings. “In the end --” Her quiet murmur seems to produce a breeze that moves over those wings, rustling feathers, creating a hum that fills his body. “In the end, that will change everything.”
***
Although Greta keeps her gaze on him as if awaiting a response, Castiel’s very thoughts seem to stammer and lodge sideways in his mind. At last he manages to say, “I am but a soldier.”
Greta smiles. “But not a hammer.”
The echo of what he’d said to Dean Winchester so long (an eternity) ago brings him up short. Has his Father truly paid such close attention to him, even while absent?
“Of course I kept track of you, Castiel. You don’t believe you’ve done remarkable things, but you have. You stayed true to my will, even when it cost you your rank and your place in heaven and your life itself.”
“But I defied my superiors.”
“You saw through their deception. You used your intelligence, which after all, was a gift I gave you. And you willingly carried out the command I gave to you and your brothers so long ago, and came to love your human brothers, even if you didn’t always understand them.”
The urge to dismiss such praise is strong -- he made so many grievous errors, and took longer than he ought to realize he was being deceived -- but he is not so foolish as to act as if his Father’s praise is worthless. Castiel settles on, “You overwhelm me. Tell me, what You would have me do?”
Placing an elbow on the table, Greta cups Her chin in Her hand, regarding him for a long moment. “What would you say if I told you to follow your heart?”
The concept is so alien to him that She might as well have said follow his hair, or his eyeteeth. Either of these makes as much sense.
Bursting into laughter, Greta reaches out and touches Castiel’s cheek. Again a surge of power tingles through his synapses, and the strong feeling that unfurled in him before spreads even further. “It’s not as appalling as all that,” She says. “Let me put it another way. You could do what you believe to be right.”
This is rather more free will than Castiel has ever hoped for. Before, he had at least been with humans who had more practice with it. Once more, he determines to keep these thoughts to himself.
“There’s plenty of work to be done. Starting with Heaven -- Team Uriel hasn’t been completely cleaned out, and now that Michael’s gone -- “
“I don’t think I understand.”
“You understand perfectly,” Greta says. “You just don’t quite believe it.”
“But I -- I’m just a foot soldier.”
“Consider this a promotion.”
Blinking, Castiel sits back in his chair, at a loss for words.
Greta flattens Her hands on the pitted wooden table. Her nails are clipped short, bare of artificial color. The tattoos that begin at Her wrist contrast sharply against the honeyed skin of Her hands. They are as vivid as Giotto’s frescoes once were.
She offers Castiel a wry smile. “I know these haven’t been the most welcome words for you in the past, but I want to make an example of you. You can show them another way of looking at humanity, make them realize I love neither angels nor humans more than the other.”
“How?”
“I’m leaving that to you.”
Trying to keep his face from revealing what a frightening thought this is, Castiel says, “I will do as You command.”
“It’s not a command. It’s a possibility. But I think it would suit you, at least for a time.”
As if the concept of a life ruled by free will weren’t enough, now he must consider one that changes, and then changes again.
Turning one hand palm up, Greta says, “I know you like I know the palm of my hand, Castiel. You’re up to the challenge.”
“Will You ever return?”
“Of course. I’ll want to see how my children are faring, just as I do here.” She retrieves Dean’s amulet and places it in Castiel’s palm, covering his hand with Hers. “It was unkind of you to call this useless,” she says, Her voice softly chiding. “Its purpose for Dean was quite different than the one it had for you.”
“I know,” he says, ashamed. “I’ll make certain he gets it back.”
“Give him my love,” She says, in that casual way humans have, but he reads the significance lying below.
Then She touches two fingers to his forehead.
***
When he’d slept in the back on the Impala, Castiel had dreamed of regaining the self he’d been before he lost what Dean called his angel mojo. All the physical-yet-not-physical sensations of battle and flight and the immense power channeled through him. The connection to his brothers -- lost, along with everything else. Torn from him.
He knew, even when he awoke from the dreams, that he’d exaggerated sevenfold his actual powers in his grief for all that he’d lost.
But now -- sent on his trajectory toward Dean, shot forth like God’s arrow -- he feels the power gathering in him and knows that it transcends even the dreams he’d had. With them comes a joy and certainty, along with a hope that the Dean he finds four years after Sam’s sacrifice is whole and at peace.
Alighting, he finds himself in a field. No, a cemetery. Spotting Dean kneeling in the middle of an empty expanse of ground, Castiel thinks perhaps he’s caught Dean on a memorial visit to the place where Sam tumbled into the Pit with Lucifer locked inside him. The sight of Dean, after all this time, on hands and knees like a blind man who has lost something (as he had), fills Castiel with sorrow.
But Dean’s movements are like those of someone not only broken but battered, causing Castiel to follow the trail of smashed and blood-smeared grass back to the Impala, and nearby he sees Bobby’s body, spattered with blood-spray, his neck at an impossible angle, and the truth becomes evident. It’s not four years after Sam drew Lucifer back into his prison, but mere moments.
As Castiel steps forward, Dean becomes aware of the presence behind him, turning his bloody, swollen face toward him. “Cas, you’re alive?”
“I’m better than than that,” he responds, touching two fingers to Dean’s forehead. In less than a heartbeat, he feels the knitting of flesh and bone, of damage being undone, just as Castiel’s ragged spirit had become whole at Greta’s touch.
Eyes widening, Dean rises and stares at him. “Cas ... are you God?”
Castiel thinks of the form God has assumed these last few years, even more unlikely than his own. He wishes he could take Dean to Her. A smile flickering at his lips, he says, “That’s a nice compliment, but no.” Holding Dean’s gaze, he feels his desperate grief, the palpable despair at the loss of everyone he has ever loved. Castiel cannot change all of it, but he can change something. “Although I do believe God brought me back,” he says, turning away to stride toward Bobby Singer’s corpse. “New and improved.” Dean has enough to handle, Castiel believes; the news about finding God can wait.
Kneeling beside Bobby, Castiel touches two fingers just below the bill of the cap he habitually wears. Gasping and shuddering, Bobby awakens to his life, his eyes wild. Castiel nods in acknowledgment of his own and Bobby’s resurrection, then rises and steps aside to allow Bobby and Dean their reunion, with mingled joy as well as sorrow at what Castiel cannot fix.
He doesn’t quite understand why hugging between men also involves smiting one another on the back, but it seems to serve some expressive purpose.
Walking Bobby to the place where Castiel had found him kneeling, Dean tells him what happened after Lucifer broke Bobby’s neck. Keeping his distance, Castiel listens to his account, watching Dean squeeze the fused rings of the Horsemen so tightly it must surely hurt his fingers and palm. This is his memento of Sam now, the physical reminder of the brother who’s irretrievably gone. Castiel fingers the amulet in his own pocket, grateful he has this to return to Dean. It’s not yet the right time.
Bobby cups his work-scarred hand around the back of Dean’s neck, his fierce face softened. “I wish I knew what to say, son,” he says quietly. “Nothing’s gonna make it hurt less, but Sam stepped up. He saved the damn world. The both of you did.”
“I almost don’t care, Bobby, I swear to god. World’s not much fucking good to me if Sam’s not in it. It was my job to protect him, and --”
“And you did a helluva job,” Bobby interrupts, the gruffness returning to his voice. “It took Satan to end his life, and Sam made sure he took that sonofabitch with him. You did all anybody could’ve done.”
As Castiel anticipated, this reassurance prompts nothing but a sour expression from Dean. Shoving the rings into his pocket, he says, “We should figure out what’s next. Hey, Cas. What’s the protocol for the post-non-apocalypse?”
“... I don’t quite know,” Castiel admits. He considers the world four years hence. “I think ... things go on. Men will rebuild what was damaged during the last several months.” Play sports, conduct wars, have political scandals, eat sandwiches. Behave as humans always have, even in the aftermath of a close call.
“Me, I could use some rest,” Bobby says. “So could you, Dean. Come on up to my place for a few days.”
“I can’t, Bobby.” His voice has grown rough again. “There’s something I promised I’d do.”
“Anything I can help with?” Bobby asks.
“No. Thanks, though.”
The men hug once more, and additional back-pounding takes place. Castiel is somewhat relieved when Bobby merely offers him a handshake. As Bobby drives away, Dean stares after his truck, eyes red-rimmed. He flicks a quick look at Castiel, then away. “Thanks for that, Cas.”
“I wish there was more --”
Dean puts up a hand. “I get it. I’m no big rush to uncork Lucifer again anytime soon, believe me. But the thought of Sammy being there too, being sliced apart bit by bit until there’s nothing left, and it all starts again. He’s made his mistakes, but he doesn’t fucking deserve that.”
“I do not believe Lucifer is being tortured. I think he’s in solitary confinement.”
Clearly he has made a misstep, because Dean’s face twists in grief and horror. “But it’s not solitary, don’t you get that? He’s got Sammy as his prison bitch, and you can believe he’ll make him suffer.” Turning on his heel, Dean aims a punch at the Impala, aiming for the strip of door frame between the passenger side windows. Aiming for a spot that will inflict no damage to his beloved car, but will take its toll on his hand.
When Dean draws back to punch the car again, Castiel catches his arm. With a guttural cry that sounds like a wounded animal, he wrenches himself from Castiel’s grasp and spins to strike him. Already bloodied knuckles vent Dean’s rage on Castiel, who allows it. Castiel is no more capable of being hurt than the Impala, and somehow it feels like a compliment, that Dean regards him almost as highly as the car.
When Dean shows no sign of stopping, Castiel seizes his arm again. “Dean,” he says firmly.
This time Dean allows him to retain his grip, at least until Castiel makes a move to heal the damage. “No,” Dean says thickly. “I need --”
Castiel believes he understands. Dean needs to feel something other than the pain of Sam’s loss, needs to know he’s suffering too. Nodding, Castiel says, “At least let me accompany you to a hospital to get it set.”
Dean gazes down at his hand, torn and bleeding and misaligned. “Yeah,” he says at last. “Yeah, okay.”
***
It has taken some time for Dean to be admitted into a treatment area at the emergency room. Although Castiel rose with him when Dean’s name was called, Dean waved him off, saying, “I won’t be long.”
Remaining on his feet by his chair, Castiel stands watch. He can feel the suffering and the fear from the people who have come here for their own trauma, or a loved one’s. These emotions have soaked into the very walls, the carpet, the battered magazines and health pamphlets. One by one, the others sharing the waiting area, the injured or sick or frightened, turn to stare at him. A few open their mouths to tell him to sit down and stop creeping everyone out (as he imagines Dean saying), but Castiel opens himself to their fear and misery, drawing them toward him. Every last one of them turns away with the rebuke unspoken, their fears calmed and hurts dulled. Now Castiel understands his Father’s choice better than he ever has.
After a much longer time than Dean had promised, he returns with a fresh white cast on his hand and a sheepish expression. A little color has returned to his face, leaving his freckles less noticeable once more.
“You’ve just been standing there like that the whole time?”
“Yes,” Castiel says.
Bemused, Dean shakes his head as they make their way to the doors.
“Your pain is at an acceptable level?”
Dean aims a sharp glance in his direction. “They gave me some pills, yeah. I don’t need ‘em yet, but I’ve got ‘em if I do.”
Castiel merely nods.
“I’ll take the keys now,” Dean says. Castiel had driven him here, which said a great deal about the damage Dean had inflicted on his hand.
Castiel makes no move for the keys. “Where are you going?” he inquires.
“There’s a girl. A single mom. I’m going to settle down, have a normal life. I made a promise.”
To Sam. This Castiel knows. He struggles with the desire to give unwanted advice.
“What about you? What are you gonna do now?”
“Go back to heaven, I suppose.”
“Heaven?”
Castiel nods. “With Michael in the cage, it’s bound to be anarchy up there.”
“So you’re the new sheriff in town?”
A smile twitches at his mouth. “I like that, yeah. I suppose I am.”
“After all that went on with God and your brothers. Huh. Well, lotsa luck.” He puts out his undamaged hand, palm up. “Keys, Cas.”
Reaching into his pocket, Castiel comes up with the amulet instead, carefully settling it and its cord onto Dean’s upturned hand.
***
“Shit!” Dean yelps. Tearing his eyes from the amulet, he looks at Castiel. “Cas--”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No. I just -- where did you get this?”
Ignoring the question, Castiel says, “It was wrong of me to say it was worthless.” He’d known this even before Greta chided him for it. “I knew when I borrowed it that it holds great significance for you, and to treat it as if it were scrap metal -- I am sorry.”
Dean blinks in surprise. “Forget it. We all say stupid shit when we’re pissed off. I guess that includes angels.”
“I am incapable of forgetting my history, Dean.”
“No no,” Dean says. “It’s a saying it means you’re forgiven, it’s okay.”
“Oh.”
Making no move to replace the amulet around his neck, Dean stares at it. His voice is thick and rough when he says, “I did the same thing to Sam. Shit-canned it like it was a wad of gum I was done with. He gave me that when we were kids, Cas. I never took it off, except to keep it safe. And now he’s gone and in hell with the memory of me doing that.”
Castiel thinks of Bobby. I wish I knew what to say, son. Taking the amulet from Dean’s hand, Castiel loops the cord around his neck. As he’d seen Bobby do, he cups his hand at the back of Dean’s neck.
“I don’t --” But the rest of the thought is blocked by the pain clogging Dean’s throat.
“Of course you deserve to wear it. You have Sam’s love, no matter where he is. I do know about the love of brothers, Dean. It’s often difficult and never perfect, even among the angels -- you’ve seen this for yourself. But it is no less real.”
A ragged breath bursts forth from Dean, and Castiel uses the hand at his neck to coax him forward into Castiel’s arms. He’s not altogether certain he’s doing this correctly; his arms feel strange, and Dean bunches a fist in the front of Castiel’s shirt. (Then again, his arms were created to feel strange without a sword in his hand.)
Give him My love, he remembers Greta saying. He shifts his arms a small degree, and suddenly everything feels as if it’s in the right place.
“Oh god, Cas,” Dean says into his shirt, his breath hitching.
Castiel is not conversant in the language of back-thumping, so instead he unfurls unseen wings, settling them around Dean, enfolding him.
They stand this way for some timeless piece of eternity, in a wash of light from a street lamp, Castiel’s hip resting against the side of the Impala as he shelters Dean from the storm.