Flightless (Gen, PG-13)
Title: Flightless
Rating: PG-13
Category: AU gen oneshot
Word Count: 8736
Characters: Castiel, Sam and Dean
Spoilers: Up to 5.04
Warnings: None
Summary: His mother either had a weird sense of humor or was crazy when she decided to name him after an angel that no one had ever heard about.
Author's Notes: So many, many thanks go to legoline who was brave enough to take this on when it was just a jumbled untitled fic and help turn it into this. As always, though, any remaining mistakes are mine alone and are not the reflection of anyone else. Cross-posted around.
Disclaimer: The following characters and situations are used without permission of the creators, owners, and further affiliates of the television show, Supernatural, to whom they rightly belong. I claim only what is mine, and I make no money off what is theirs.
- - - - -
A long time ago when he was a child, he decided it was easier to think of his mother as having a wicked sense of humor rather than believing her to be fully crazy. After all, he knew that crazy was contagious, and the idea that he could potentially become like her in the future terrified him. So, even though his mother named him Castiel, told him he was named after an angel-just like those she read about in that tattered Bible of hers-and tried to change his bathwater into wine on more than one occasion, he initially found it in his best interest to think of her as having some weird brand of humor. Maybe this was something she giggled about after he had gone to bed. Because, again, it was easier to believe in humor than crazy because if she was crazy, he could become crazy too, and a kid named Castiel had a hard enough time fitting in at school without being labeled a loon.
When he was just shy of twenty-five, his mother died. His father had been long gone by then, whether dead or drunk, but altogether disappeared, so Castiel mourned her death alone. She died at home, after spending time in a psychiatric hospital where she got fat from the processed food and drugs. In the hospital, she read the Bible to anyone who would listen and made posters that spelled “JESUS LOVES U” out of dried beans and macaroni noodles. Those posters covered the walls of her bedroom at home.
At the time of her death, Castiel had given up trying to convince himself that his mother’s ramblings came from humor. Having gone through school, he understood that she did, indeed, have a mental illness. But, despite her disorder and how it worried him, he had graduated with his high school diploma, and he had a bachelor’s degree in religious studies-because didn’t the people say that if you can’t beat them, you should join them? Although he was legally an adult and his mother and her guilt were no longer sitting on his shoulders, he decided not to change his name. He had a driver’s license, a social security card, degrees and certificates, and as weird as Castiel was for a name, it just wasn’t worth the hassle of trying to get it changed. Besides, after twenty-five years of living with the name, it had grown on him to an extent. He wasn’t sure what he would change his name to if he really wanted anyway.
In his late twenties, as he approached thirty, Castiel saw nothing overly wrong in the way he lived his life. He’d left behind the immaturity of high school where he was constantly teased for his name. Outside of the few religious studies students he met, most people didn’t read enough religious texts to recognize that he had been named after an angel anyway, given that it wasn’t all that popular of a name like Michael or something like that-it would just figure that he’d been named after an unpopular angel anyway. Still, this meant that the majority of introductions were frequently followed by, “Castiel, huh? Hell of a name, man” and left at that when Castiel didn’t offer anything further. While the religious studies students were more likely to notice the origin of his name, they typically didn’t comment on it. Most of the students believed he was simply very passionate about religion and “Castiel” was more of a nickname than anything real and legal.
At the university, he worked as an assistant to various professors. This meant that he did a lot of typing for professors who were trying to get their books published or he corrected term papers from first-year students who were only taking Religion101 as a blow-off class. It wasn’t an exciting job, but he was familiar with the material, thanks to his mother. It wasn’t even a comforting type of familiar at times, but it was better than enrolling as a psychology major and worrying even further about what he might become. Besides, his job allowed him to keep to himself, typically away from people who left him feeling awkward and uncomfortable for no apparent reason.
He dreamed nearly every night, visions of men who identified themselves as angels and welcomed him into their company. Even though he knew enough from overhearing coworkers talking that his dreams weren’t of the more popular variety for people to be having, he never saw anything abnormal in them. After all, he didn’t spend enough time with other people to dream about them, so of course he would dream about the books-and the material in them-in the library where he spent his days. Simple as that.
He lived alone in a one bedroom apartment with his tabby cat, Chuck. Nights after work consisted of flipping through the TV with cheap dinners on his lap while Chuck perched on the arm of the stuffed recliner. Castiel watched TV and read the newspaper, and he knew enough about the American dream to understand that his life wasn’t especially glamorous or exciting.
He wasn’t rich, but he could afford his apartment and bills, groceries and a new toy now and then for Chuck. He had sold his mother’s house and property, which gave him a small amount in a savings account to fall back on if the unfortunate were to happen. He wasn’t popular, but he didn’t really prefer company, given that his mother had drilled it into his mind that the majority of the human race was swine, fat for the slaughter at the hand of God. Even though he rationally knew that this was highly untrue and just more of his mother’s humor-craziness-he still could not shake those words from his subconscious, and he really didn’t feel all that comfortable around others, finding it difficult to fit in with other people. He didn’t have a girlfriend-or even a boyfriend-and the closest he had come to physical intimacy with another was in a hallway of high school when an upperclassman girl had kissed him on the lips as a dare from her friends.
But, it was all right, he supposed. He had a roof over his head, even if it dripped on particularly rainy days, and he had a warm bed when the nights got cold. He had food in his refrigerator, even if it didn’t always taste the best, and he had Chuck for company and somebody to talk to when the nights got too long and sleep was nowhere to be found.
So, yeah. It was all right.
- - - - -
Shortly after Castiel turned thirty, things began to change. Up until then his dreams had-for the most part-been pleasant, filled with images of chubby cherubs and white, billowing clouds. Images of never-ending blue oceans and clean, warm sunshine. These were the dreams where Castiel walked alongside other angels in a never-ending garden of spiraling paradise. He called the other angels, “Michael” and “Uriel,” “Raphael” and “Zachariah.” They called him “brother.” Having been accepted by others in the dreams-an acceptance he did not typically find in his real life-he awoke from these dreams surrounded by a sense of peace. It was though he was able to take a walk through his favorite religious texts, and he often enjoyed these dreams immensely.
But these dreams gave way to ones that were harsher, more violent and bloodied. In these, he descended into the pit of Hell, where demons shrieked at him and begged for pieces of his flesh. He fought on Earth against a white-eyed demon who lifted him by the throat and made him squirm and bleed.
He never died in these nightmares. He was always saved by shadowed figures that stood in the background and pulled him away from the white-eyed demon on Earth or the black-eyed monsters in Hell. Still, this didn’t make it any easier to go through.
Halfway through a night after the white-eyed demon had spit blood in his face and was choking off his air for the umpteenth time, Castiel snapped awake, nearly tumbling out of bed. Covered in a cold sweat, he sat up in the darkness as Chuck, eyes narrowed in what could have been feline concern, looked up from the foot of the bed. As Castiel trembled, Chuck moved closer to him, rubbing his head against Castiel’s hand that gripped the blankets with white knuckles. But, no matter what Chuck did, Castiel continued to shake, and he tried to remember how to breathe evenly. He tried to forget the feel of the demon’s hand pressing tight against his throat.
- - - - -
The nightmares continued, and soon they passed from the darkness into daylight. He began to fear he was losing his mind entirely when he thought he saw black-eyed people walking down the sidewalk past him. He even went so far as to open the phonebook and flip to the yellow pages in search of a good psychiatrist who might be able to give him enough drugs to quiet the voices and still the nightmares. But, he wasn’t ready to admit to such things because then, he’d be like his mother, and that was a road he wasn’t ready to walk down. Not just yet.
One day at the university, he was sitting by himself in the library in the far corner, away from the rest of the people, when a student approached him.
“Excuse me?” she said.
He looked up from the book that he was translating from Latin to English. The girl smiled when they made eye contact. She was pretty and young with deep red hair and pale skin.
“You work here, right?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“I’m looking for a book,” she told him, shuffling through the stack of papers in her arms. “I was wondering if you could-if you have time, that is-if you could help me find this?”
He felt awkward talking to her, more than he usually did when engaged in conversation with strangers. But, he did his best to smile, and he advised her that the librarians at the front of the room could help her better than he could.
“Oh, okay, thanks anyway,” she said, and still shuffling through the papers, she turned to walk back to the front of the library where the librarians sat at their desks. As she walked away, a notecard tumbled from her papers onto the floor.
He paused. Then, moving out of his chair, Castiel picked up the card to give back to her, but she was moving quickly, and he didn’t want to leave the expensive Latin book on the desk by itself. He couldn’t risk that someone would steal or deface it.
So, he hesitated and looked down at the notecard to see that it was the call number of a book-probably the one that she had been looking for. Normally, he would have returned the notecard to the librarians at the front desk, but he was jarred by seeing To Castiel written in the corner of the card. Next to this, she had written, First-Lucifer and Michael, vessels. Second--??
As he knew that his name was not a familiar enough one that she could have meant another Castiel, along with the odd phrase about Lucifer and Michael and vessels, which didn’t even make sense and didn’t go along with anything he had ever learned, he decided that the book was nothing she needed immediately-or so he hoped. What was she talking about? Vessels? No, no, Lucifer and Michael were archangels. Unless…unless there was something he had overlooked somehow in all of his years of studying.
Troubled by this idea, he returned to table where his opened Latin book waited, closed the book, and tucked it under his arm before deciding to go in search of this book that she had been looking for. This book that was written on a notecard next to his name and Lucifer and Michael.
He was curious.
- - - - -
He found her book on the third floor of the library, tucked back into a corner that was rarely visited. It was a wonder that most of these books hadn’t been thrown out years ago, as their spines were cracked and flaking, held together by yellowed tape. Some of the books’ titles were no longer readable on their covers; he had to open up to the inside title page to determine their names. But, he found the girl’s book all the same.
It was a plain book with a brown cover and faded gold lettering. Written by Charles Shirley, the book was older than Castiel himself. He opened the book, quickly skimming and flipping through the pages. Inside, the words told him of the brothers Winchester, who fought against angels and demons alike. It was the story of how two brothers had lost everything-mother and father, friends and family alike-but saved everything-world and humanity-when the end pressed near.
Confused why such a book was placed in the nonfiction section as Castiel had never seen such a religious text before, he flipped back to the title page, past the copyright page, and he nearly passed over the dedication page before something made him stop.
There, the words on the dedication page read, For Sam and Dean. They started it, but they ended it too. Thanks, guys.
He stood there, looking at that page for longer than was necessary.
“Castiel?”
He looked up, prepared to see a woman standing there, but the space was empty. He looked around the corners of the book rows on either side of him, but he was completely alone on the third floor.
Sighing heavily, he shook his head and feared that now he was beginning to hear voices in the daytime in addition to experiencing the occasional flash of a nightmarish vision. But, he kept the book, the book about the Winchesters, and he went down to the desk on the first floor. He checked out the book, and he took it home.
He felt as though he had to read the book. He wanted to believe it was just because the book was located in the religious studies section of the library, so he should be fully educated on all sorts of religious materials. But, he knew that wasn’t the entire reason he took the book with him.
- - - - -
After a dinner of reheated macaroni and cheese, he settled into his chair in front of the TV. Instead of reaching for the TV remote, though, he picked up the book he had checked out from the library. A part of him still felt a little guilty that he had taken the book before the redhead student did. Yet, he promised himself that he would only keep the book for a night and return it early the next morning.
With Chuck perched on the back of the chair, Castiel opened the book and began to read.
- - - - -
“You will say yes to me,” Lucifer told Sam, and Sam said no.
“You will say yes to Michael,” Zachariah told Dean, and Dean said no.
Back and forth, the brothers and the angels went. The brothers refused each and every time, but the angels were not deterred.
In his words, Lucifer promised not to lie, but he did because he was Satan, after all. He had been lying and twisting the truth since Eve ate the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. Why would he change now?
In his words, Zachariah threatened, but Dean did not give way. He believed that he was stronger and smarter than these angels who had caused so much pain for him and Sam. Dean had been to Hell and back; he was not scared of a few angels.
As time passed, Lucifer twisted the truth further and further and Zachariah’s threats grew and grew. The brothers held fast, refusing and unwilling, because they believed that they could save the world without divine assistance.
But, then, one day, the brothers said yes. Sam did not say yes first. Dean did not say yes first. Sam gave way when Lucifer came to him in the form of his mother, and Dean gave way when Zachariah presented the form of his father. Both were lies, but Sam and Dean were only human. Great in their beliefs and abilities, but still human. Still boys who had lost their parents years too early.
They said yes in the same heartbeat, the same moment, and the same breath.
- - - - -
Once he had finished the story of how the Winchester brothers, Sam and Dean, allowed Lucifer and Michael to possess their bodies, Castiel fell asleep with the finished book in his lap. That night, he dreamt of an apocalypse where two men met in the middle of a field of blood. Behind them, armies waited with hungry eyes and cursing mouths. One man held an antique gun in his hands and pointed it at the other man, who was taller than the first. But, this tall man held a knife in his hands, and he smiled, as if he was pleased with the events around him.
Castiel knew in some unexplainable way that the tall man with the knife was Sam and the shorter man with the gun was Dean. He could never explain quite how he knew. It was just a feeling, sitting low in his gut, like how animals can sense a thunderstorm even though they can’t watch the news reports. He simply knew that one was Dean and the other was Sam.
In the distance where the hills rolled on until their black backs touched the red sky, a man stood alone. In his dream, Castiel could not see this man’s face, but he could see that the man had his face turned towards the sky as if he was praying. The man’s long trench coat, a faint khaki color, was splattered with blood. It whipped around him in the building wind.
As the man turned around to face Sam and Dean’s clashing armies, Castiel woke up, a scream caught in his throat.
- - - - -
He returned the book the next morning, barely making eye contact with the librarian. He spent a quiet day in one of the professor’s empty offices, where he continued the translation on the Latin book. His apartment was equally quiet, for which he was grateful, as he couldn’t completely shake the words of that Winchester book.
Later that night while he was changing Chuck’s litter, he heard a voice from behind him.
“He doesn’t look like I thought he would.”
Nearly dropping the brown paper sack half-filled with kitty litter, Castiel whipped around in the direction of the voice. There was no one standing behind him in the shadows of his apartment.
All the same, he felt it necessary to ask, “W-who’s there? Is there someone here?” His voice was pinched, making him feel small and stupid in his own home, and his heart was beating rapidly.
“Should we tell him?” the invisible voice asked. It seemed as though it was having a conversation with someone because there was a pause, followed by the masculine voice saying, “Shit. Maybe we got the wrong guy again, but she told us…”
This time, Castiel did drop the bag of kitty litter, and, scooping up Chuck underneath his arm, he ran out of the apartment and slammed the door behind him. He ran down the three flights of stairs to the sidewalk where he stood and watched his apartment from below. The window remained dark, then a light flickered for a few, hesitant seconds, and the apartment was once again doused in shadows. Shivering, Castiel held Chuck to his chest and waited for what seemed like hours in the drizzling rain until he gathered the courage to go back inside his apartment.
- - - - -
He found nothing out of place in the apartment, except for the bag of spilled kitty litter, which he had done himself. Despite these findings, he still was unable to calm down. So, he sat down in front of the TV, hoping to find a late-night talk show to distract his agitated mind. He was starting to believe more and more that these voices were part of augmenting hallucinations, and he was worried that he really would have to call a doctor for help sooner or later.
He struggled to stay awake, fighting against the soft press of sleep. But his eyelids grew heavy and his vision became fuzzy, and he dozed off again with Chuck curled into a warm ball on his lap.
- - - - -
“Think we should wake him?” There was a pause, and the voice said, “Looks like he’s pretty much awake anyway.”
Startled, yanked from his already troubled sleep, Castiel’s head snapped up from where he sat in the recliner.
“Who’s there?” he asked. He swallowed and gathered a bit of strength to make his voice sound slightly more threatening when he asked again, “Who’s there? Show yourself!” He stood up, shooing Chuck from his lap, and hurried into the bedroom where he kept a baseball bat by the edge of his bed. He never played any sport, really, as his mother said the devil was in sports and bred jealousy and anger. But, for some reason, the feel of the baseball bat in his hand, its heavy weight and smooth wood, helped to calm him.
He returned back to the TV room where he had heard the voices. The baseball bat was held tight in both of his hands, and his bedtime t-shirt was baggy and faded, clinging around the rolls of his stomach, and his boxer shorts were too short on his pale legs. He really wasn’t in any condition to be facing another person, but dammit, he almost preferred to see another person rather than think he was going crazy like his mother.
“Who’s there?” he said again, like he was some broken record stuck on repeat. He shook the bat in a way he hoped was menacing and said, “If you won’t show yourself, then…then get out of my apartment!” By then, the hour was closer to sunrise than sunset, and it had been a long night already. Part of him wanted nothing more than to get this whole ordeal done and over with.
There was a sigh from the darkness, as if the shadows were annoyed with him, and the voice-the familiar one that he kept hearing-said, “All right. Fine.” A pause, perhaps that second, unheard voice speaking, and the first voice said, “Look. He wants to see us, he can have a look.”
With that, light flashed and Castiel raised a hand to shield his eyes. He stumbled back, away, and tripped over his chair and nearly squashed Chuck when he collapsed down onto the floor again.
When the light at last cleared, there were two men standing in the middle of Castiel’s living room. They both looked at him curiously. The shorter of the two, wearing a two-sizes-too-big leather coat, cocked his head at Castiel and said, “So. You’re telling me that he’s the one that’s going to save the world. He doesn’t look at all like I remember.” It was the voice that Castiel had heard earlier.
The second man, the taller of the two with longer, shaggy brown hair, nodded, and said, “Don’t you remember? We knew that this day would come eventually.”
“Great.” The first one rolled his eyes and sighed. “This is not who I thought it’d be. This just looks like some sap and his cat, who are going to stop the apocalypse with a baseball bat. This isn’t him at all. Trust me on this, I know what he looks like, and this isn’t him. So, shit, that’s it. We’re screwed right now. Might as well call ole’ Lucifer and tell him we’ll sign up for his team this time instead.” The man snorted. “Shit. We’re so freakin’ screwed.”
Recognizing them, seeing them, the Winchesters, Sam and Dean, from his dreams, standing in his living room, Castiel scrambled to his feet.
“D-don’t,” he stuttered, holding a hand out to stop them from approaching-although part of him doubted that he would be able to stop them, no matter how hard he tried. “Don’t come any closer.” He continued backing up, not looking where he was going, and his breathing became more and more strained. His head was spinning and heart pounding, and he began to feel dizzy. Sweat broke out on his forehead and he felt as though he was going to puke.
“Hey, hey,” the taller man said, coming forward. “Take a breath. Breathe,” he said.
But, Castiel wasn’t listening. Sam and Dean were standing in his room. His dreams were coming to life. He was seeing his dreams from night while he was awake and that meant that the dreams were now hallucinations and hallucinations meant that he was going down just like his mother and it wouldn’t be long he’d be in a mental hospital…
The thoughts swirled, colliding and knocking against each other faster and faster, until Castiel’s vision began to grow fuzzy and black at the corners. He heard one of the men telling him to breathe, saying that he was hyperventilating and to get a hold of himself. But, the harder that he tried to control himself, the dizzier he became until the blackness grew too strong and he collapsed to the floor, still struggling to breathe. The last thing he saw before he went under were Chuck’s eyes, wide, green, and frightened.
- - - - -
He came to with water being splashed on his face. One of the men was saying, “Don’t! You’ll drown him!”
The other, the first and familiar voice, said, “Humans don’t drown in this much water. It’s got to be a lot more. You should know that, man.” Then the pitch of his voice changed, talking to Castiel now, and he said, “Wake up, c’mon, wake up.”
Castiel opened his eyes, and his vision was blurry at first. Then, things cleared, and he took in his surroundings. He was still in his apartment, and it was growing close to dawn, as the clouds outside were breaking apart and letting a deep purple light spread through them. Lowering his eyes away from the window, he saw the shorter man, the one in the leather coat, crouching on the floor next to him, while the tall guy lurked in the background.
Castiel flinched and tried to push himself away from them.
“Ah, that’s more like it,” the first man said, who Castiel knew to be Dean. “You know, you really can’t go passing out every time someone makes a smart comment about you. It’s going to be really hard for you to fight off evil if you’re going all narcoleptic on us now. Well, if you’re the guy we think you are, that is.”
Castiel lifted a hand to his temple where a pain was pounding through his head, as if it had the ability to rattle his skull right off. He winced, and when Sam and Dean stayed silent, he licked his lips, tasted blood-probably bit his tongue when he fell-and said, “I know you.”
“You do?” Dean asked. He looked over his shoulder at the tall one-Sam-before turning his attention back to Castiel. “Who told you?”
“No one. I…I saw you in my dreams.” Before either of them could say anything further, Castiel continued, “I know that sounds crazy, but it-it’s true.” He lowered his eyes, embarrassed to be admitting such a thing aloud.
“You think he’s telling the truth?” Dean asked Sam.
“Could be.” Then to Castiel, Sam asked, “Who are we then?”
“I think, I mean, I could be wrong, but I think you’re Sam and Dean. Winchester. Like I said I could be wrong because it was just a dream and dreams don’t mean anything, but that’s who I think you are-”
“Well, your dream is right. Because, yeah, I’m Sam, and this is Dean,” Sam said, confirming what Castiel already knew. “Now, what’s your name?”
“What? Do you really think this is him?” Dean said to Sam.
“It’s possible,” Sam answered. “If he recognized us from his dreams, don’t you think that means something? Let’s just ask him.” Sam came closer and sat down in the recliner next to Chuck, who purred happily at the chance to receive attention from someone. “All right, so you know that we’re Sam and Dean, now who are you?”
Castiel sighed. He was now officially and completely crazy. Not only was he seeing and hearing things, he was talking back to them and carrying on a conversation. He figured it wouldn’t be long until somebody at the university would have to call the hospital and get the men in white coats to take him away. But, he decided to appease these hallucinations-that came directly from his dreams, no less-in hopes that they would go away.
“My name,” he said, “is Castiel.”
“W-wait,” Dean said, shaking his head. “Say that again.” He looked up at Sam, who appeared pleased with Castiel’s response.
“Castiel,” he said, saying it slower and clearer, as if he had mumbled his words and they’d been confused.
There was a long pause as Sam looked at Dean and Dean looked at Sam, and Castiel realized that for some reason, his name meant something to them.
At last, Dean groaned and rolled his eyes, slapped his hands dramatically on his knees and said, “Well, that’s just great. Just freakin’ great. Here I thought he’d say his name was Bob or Dick or something, and we could keep going on our merry way.” He looked back at Castiel. “You have no friggin’ clue who you are, do you? You know about us, but I bet you don’t know about you.”
“Uh…” Castiel began, confused.
“It’s not his fault. You know they made him human when we got him out of there,” Sam interrupted. “Besides, I told you that he looked familiar. It is him.”
“But, it’s…” Dean rose to his feet, waving a hand weakly in Castiel’s direction. “Look at him, Sammy. He’s all pale and pudgy and weak now. It’s no wonder I wasn’t sure about him. He doesn’t look anything like he used to. Well. Maybe a little. But not much.”
Castiel lowered his head, wanting nothing more to crawl beneath a rock and die at that point.
“You really do lack all tact, don’t you?” Sam said to Dean. “I would’ve thought that one apocalypse would have been enough to knock all that asshole out of you.”
Dean laughed humorlessly. “Going to take more than one apocalypse to do that.” Before Sam could reply further, Dean crouched back down next to Castiel and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Cas, hey, Cas, look, sorry about all that pale and pudgy thing.”
“And weak,” Castiel mumbled into his chest.
“And weak,” Dean agreed. “Sorry about that. It’s just that…well…we, um, I don’t know quite how to explain this, but…shit.” He raised a hand and scratched the back of his head. “You looked sort of like a guy we used to know, but, uh, well, he was a real badass, and you’re more of a, ah, regular kind of guy…?”
“What?” Castiel said.
“Well? Any suggestions on how to explain this one to him?” Dean said, now looking back to Sam.
“I think we should be honest with him.”
“You sure he can handle it?”
“I’m still sitting right here,” Castiel reminded them in a morose tone.
“So you saw us in your dreams, huh?” Dean asked.
“I read about you in a book. Then I saw you in my dreams.”
“A book?” Sam said, raising his eyebrows. “What kind of a book?”
Castiel wiped a hand over his face. “It was basically the story of the Winchester family, and how Sam and Dean said yes to Lucifer and Michael and then…then the apocalypse happened and most of the people were killed in the battles…except that the writer was a prophet who couldn’t die until he told their story.” He swallowed and looked back to them.
“Well,” Sam said, “that’s part of it.”
Dean nodded. “Better than nothing though.”
“But the apocalypse?” Castiel asked.
“Happened,” Dean answered. “Just not in this time or this world. But it will. It’s coming.” He sighed and added, “Again.”
- - - - -
Before Sam or Dean would give him any further answers, they advised him to cancel his appointments for the rest of the day. So, early that same morning with Sam and Dean talking softly in the kitchen, Castiel called in sick to work for that day. It was the first time he’d ever called in, including that time when everybody else was out sick with the flu back in the winter of ’09, so his supervisor didn’t give Castiel too much trouble over the phone. She simply advised him to stay in bed, get some rest, and she’d be seeing Castiel tomorrow. Simple as that.
“No work today, then?” Dean asked once Castiel had hung up the phone and sat down in the recliner with Chuck in his lap.
“No,” Castiel answered.
“Good, because there are some things that we need to explain to you,” Sam said, coming out of the kitchen.
“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” Castiel said after a long pause. “I mean, it’s just that now I’m so crazy I can’t tell the difference between when I’m awake and when I’m asleep, and it’s all just blending together, right?”
Dean looked up from where he was flipping through the dog-eared TV Guide and shook his head, while Sam admitted, “Not quite.”
“Then I’ve lost it.” Castiel laughed, a short, rather hysterical sound, and he lowered his face into his hands. After all these years of thinking he’d been able to escape his mother’s genetics and hold over him, it turned out he was no less mentally disturbed than she had been. “I’m completely crazy now,” he continued, shaking his head in his hands. “They’re going to take me away soon.”
“Not quite,” Sam said again.
“What?” Castiel said, looking up. He hadn’t realized that he’d been crying, but his palms were wet where they had been pressed against his face, and his eyes burned with tears.
“You’re not crazy,” Sam said. “Not at all, actually.”
“You’re a talking hallucination. I’m supposed to believe you?” Castiel asked incredulously.
“Well, it’s either that or sit there, crying into your cat’s fur,” Dean replied. He slapped the TV Guide down on top of the TV. “No offense, man, but suck it up, okay?”
“Dean,” Sam began, a warning.
“Not now, Sammy.” Back to Castiel, he said, “We’ve got an approaching apocalypse, and this really isn’t the time for us to play Dr. Phil with you and your sob-story life. Number one, you’re not crazy. Number two, it’s not a dream, and number three, it’s all freakin’ real.” He sighed, sounding exasperated, as he walked over to where Castiel was sitting. “Look, I get that you don’t have a friggin’ clue who the hell we really are or who you used to be, do you?”
Castiel shook his head. Secretly, he was thanking himself for deciding to take the day off work. It had been one of the best decisions he had made in a long time.
“Right. Okay,” Dean said, and he sat down, cross-legged, on the floor in front of Castiel. Seeing that there wasn’t any attention to be given, Chuck hopped off Castiel’s lap and trotted out of the living room in search of the bedroom where he could curl up and be comfortable.
“What’s your cat’s name?” Dean asked, suddenly changing the subject, as if he had noticed for the first time that Castiel owned a pet.
“Chuck,” Castiel answered.
“Chuck,” Dean repeated.
“Yeah.”
Dean looked to Sam, who raised his eyebrows. An unspoken message that Castiel didn’t understand passed between the two of them, as if the name of his cat held some great secret. Finally, though, Dean turned his attention back to Castiel as Sam leaned against the window, arms crossed over his chest.
“I’m going to get straight to it,” Dean said. “As we’ve mentioned, the apocalypse is coming. And I’m not talking about any movie apocalypse with melting icebergs and bad weather. This is the real deal, okay?”
“Revelations?” Castiel asked.
“What? Is this a revelation to us? Well no-” Dean began.
“Yes,” Sam interrupted, “just like Revelations in the Bible.”
Castiel was about to tell them that they had to be kidding, that this was more of his dream sequence gone awry, but he remembered Dean’s harsh words from before, and he asked instead, “What does this have to do with me?”
“You’re the one who’s going to stop it,” Dean said. “Well, you’re going to help us stop it. But, y’know, we still need you all the same. A rip off on the Three Musketeers deal, I guess?” Before Castiel could speak, Dean continued, “And I don’t tell me that you can’t do it or you don’t want to do it because that’s pretty much what I told you when you said the same thing to me, and well, I’m not nearly as much as a pushover now as you were back then. So, I won’t hear it. Somebody has to do it this time around, and trust me-us-you’ve got to be it.”
“Did you read about the end of the world in that book?” Sam asked. “With us?”
“A bit, yeah,” Castiel admitted. “How you and Dean agreed to be vessels for Lucifer and Michael, and that was just part of the end of the world. I mean, there was stuff before it…Lilith and the Seals, but…yeah.”
Sam’s face tightened, troubled, and he asked, “Have you seen it? In your dreams?”
“A bit…” Castiel said again.
Dean leaned closer to Castiel, and he said, “All right, then, you’re going to be seeing it up close and personal now. Hold onto your boxers there, buddy, because we’re taking a ride.” He grinned and said, “I’ll apologize in advance for all the pooping problems that’ll come after this. Laxatives will be your best friend for a while. Trust me.”
Just as Castiel was about to ask what Dean was talking about, Dean lifted a hand and covered Castiel’s eyes. The world went black, followed by white with everything and everyone screaming around him, and then everything died to black again.
Castiel opened his eyes.
- - - - -
Dean was on his left, and Sam was on his right. They stood beside him, looking out over a rolling landscape of blackened trees and smoke rising high into a red-orange sky. Not too far away, another Sam and another Dean were facing each other, eyes alight with something that wasn’t natural, and Castiel knew that they were now the vessels for Lucifer and Michael. The other Dean held a gun in his hand, and Sam held a bleeding knife. Their smiles were wicked and malicious. They looked nothing like the men who currently stood beside Castiel, but they looked exactly like the men that Castiel had seen many a time in his dreams.
Not far from other Sam and Dean-Michael and Lucifer-Castiel saw the man in the khaki-colored trench coat. As the armies met, surging into each other, black-eyed people fighting and screams rising into the air, the man turned around to reveal his face.
Castiel saw himself. But, even then, even looking at this man who was him, he looked different. More than different than the initial detachment people sometimes feel when looking at a photo of themselves. This self looked rougher around the edges, more violent and determined all in one. Beneath the long trench coat, he was wearing a button-down shirt and tie beneath. There was a large cut running down his cheek, and he had a hand clasped to his chest. Blood was dripping out between those fingers, and his skin looked ashen and his eyes were frightened. He stumbled over the terrain, pushing through the demons and monsters in an attempt to get closer to Michael and Lucifer.
“Is this the apocalypse?” Castiel asked to the Sam and Dean beside him, even though he already knew the answer.
“Yes,” Sam said quietly, almost reverently.
“From before,” Dean clarified.
“I’m here.”
Sam nodded, and Dean said, “Yeah. This is when you were dying.” After a pause, Dean added, “From before.”
“I was dying? What? I mean, I’m here and…”
“Time travel sure works wonders,” Dean said, and then he fell silent as the other Castiel looked upward and whispered unheard words to the heavens. He collapsed to the ground, still holding his chest and whispering. In front of him, only feet away, Lucifer and Michael lunged at each other.
“Father,” the other Castiel called, the single word heard above everything else.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” Sam said, and this time, it was he who lifted a hand to cover Castiel’s eyes. The last thing Castiel witnessed before darkness swam over him was the Lucifer plunging a knife in the Michael’s chest and the sound of Michael’s gun splitting the air.
- - - - -
He came to in his bedroom.
Sam and Dean were both calmly sitting on his bed while Castiel was on the floor, rubbing his spinning head.
“So that was the apocalypse,” Castiel said.
Sam nodded.
“Do I get any sort of explanation? What does that all mean? I get that you two were used as vessels, but what about me? And how did you get here now? What’s going on?” He groaned at the sudden roll of a massive headache through his mind. He felt as though he was going to throw up.
“That was before,” Dean said. “As I’ve already said.” He stood up from the bed and approached Castiel. “Look, I don’t know how much you remember from before, but back then, you were an angel.”
“I was an angel?” Castiel gaped, the shock of this quieting his nausea.
“Will you let me finish? Man, I almost prefer you with that stick up your ass from before. Yes, Cas, you were an angel. You were dying in battle because you had just sacrificed yourself to save us. Both of us-me and Sam-were possessed, as you noticed, and your sacrifice sort of, ah, well, it saved our human souls and knocked those angel bastards out of us.
“Well, you would have died,” Dean continued, “except we used what was left of the angel mojo in us to send you to a bit of an alternate universe in the future. Apparently, you became human in the process, too, getting born and raised, puberty and pooping-all the perks of a good old human life. So, yeah, we didn’t see that one coming, but apparently the powers above figured that would help to hide you better from the uglies out there who were searching for you. So, for the last few years, we’ve been searching for you, too, and it took us longer than we thought because you do look different-guess you lost some of that angelic beauty or whatever the hell you want to call it since we didn’t recognize you at first. But, anyway, the point is that the apocalypse is coming again.”
“Which you’ve said,” Castiel replied. “So I…other me…was an angel?”
“Right,” Sam said.
“And I…fell?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” Dean said. “But, when you did that, God, I guess, saw it as more of a sacrifice to save our-Sam’s and mine-human souls, so it wasn’t like you were banished or smited or whatever.”
“And afterwards, once Lucifer and Michael were out of us, Dean and I had to save you, so we were able to take your soul and send it far, far away in this world where you were born as a human,” Sam explained.
“But what about you two? Didn’t Lucifer and Michael want back in?” Castiel asked.
“Well, sure,” Dean admitted, “because they’re basically dicks with years-centuries¬-of unfinished business. But, well, when you ‘fell,’ as I guess we’re calling it, it knocked them out of us, but still left us with enough of their powers to be considered immortal ourselves. Like, they had sort of mind-melded with us?” He looked confused, trying to explain himself.
Sam shook his head at Dean, and to Castiel, he said, “Because it was such a sudden separation, they left enough of their souls, their beings-to call it that-in us to allow us to be immortal and live among the angels. So, we’re definitely not them anymore, but we also…well, we’re not what we used to be before the war.” He motioned to Castiel. “And, apparently neither are you.”
“So, if I used to be an angel…what about my mother?”
“Just some ordinary lady who got tapped,” Dean said. “Although I think somebody may have tipped her off to the point that she was carrying some once-upon-a-time angel…hence all the crazy God talk.”
“Oh,” Castiel said.
“Sorry,” Dean replied and frowned.
Castiel sat, sitting and thinking, before he said, “So, you’re asking me, as a human, for help?”
Both Sam and Dean nodded.
“You asked us for help last time,” Sam explained, “and we were just as human then as you are now.”
They sat in silence for a long time as Castiel stared at the floor and thought. For some reason, despite all the rationality telling him otherwise, he believed them. He had been dreaming of such things all his life. It seemed only too easy, too natural, for him to be hearing about them now.
“Do I have to accept your offer for you to…I don’t know? Take me with you?” he asked at last.
“Well, that sure would make things a lot easier,” Dean admitted. “But we won’t threaten you, Cas, or try to push you into this. None of that bullshit that your angel buddies from before tried on us, okay? Stomach cancer, my ass.”
“Can you…can you give me a day?” Castiel asked.
“To think?” Sam asked.
“You really think the apocalypse is going to wait?” Dean began, but Sam quieted him by resting a hand on his arm.
“Yeah,” Sam said, “we can give you a day. We’ll be back tomorrow night.”
With that, the two of them were gone with the sound of fluttering wings. The curtains danced in the breeze that suddenly swept through the rooms, and Castiel was alone once again.
- - - - -
The next day, after a few hours of sleep, he went into the park by the university to eat lunch and get some fresh air, away from his apartment.
As he was sitting on the bench and eating his lunch, thinking about Sam and Dean’s words and the vision they had shown him, a woman approached him.
“Mind if I sit down?” she said.
He looked up to see that it was the young redhead who had asked him about the book of Winchester in the university library a few days ago.
“It’s you,” he said, as she sat down on the bench beside him.
“Me?” she asked, but there was a smile on her face.
“The girl from the library. You were looking for that book…about the Winchesters.”
“Caught me.” She smiled again and pulled out a plastic bag filled with cut carrots from her lunch sack.
“Did you know?” he asked. “What that book was about?”
“Of course. I meant for you to find that notecard I dropped.”
“This was all planned?”
She nodded. “I’ll admit that I probably shouldn’t have brought that book into this time-this world really, because it doesn’t belong here at all-but I had to tell you somehow. I knew that if I started telling you all about who you used to be and about Sam and Dean, you’d really freak out and run away.”
“You knew about them?” he asked. “Then why wasn’t I in it, too? I thought I was part of the story.”
“You were,” she answered, “but I had to take you out. I edited Chuck’s copy…I was worried it’d really do a number on you if you saw your name in print there.”
“You sound as though you know me,” he said as she took a bite of a carrot.
Chewing, she nodded her head. When she swallowed, she said, “We, you and me, we’ve known each other for many, many years, Castiel. I was never sure if you’d be able to understand exactly what it was like to be human, but I see you do now. You made a great sacrifice for Sam and Dean back then, I hope you know that. I think it’s admirable.” She paused. “Many of us do…even if they’ll never openly admit to it.”
He stared at her, no longer hungry. At last, some form of recognition came to the forefront of his mind.
“Anna,” he breathed.
She smiled again. “I hope you tell them yes. We can’t do it without you.”
He looked up to the sky, to the endless blue overheard. “Well, I…” he said and lowered his head to look at her. But, his words stopped when he saw that the bench next to him was empty, as if she had never been there at all.
- - - - -
They came for him late that night, as they had promised.
“Well?” Dean asked from behind him.
Castiel stood with his back to them, looking out to the world where the wind rolled through the trees, crisp and clean. The clouds were thin and sparse around the full-bellied moon. When he turned to face Sam and Dean, he felt a little dizzy, a little light-headed, but he picked up Chuck, who was rubbing against his legs and purring. He pulled Chuck tight to his chest and swallowed past the lump in his throat.
“I have a question,” he said. “Two, actually.”
“Oh great.” Dean rolled his eyes.
“Yeah?” Sam asked.
“First, what about Chuck?”
Sam smiled. “He’ll be fine. Let’s just say that he wasn’t always a cat before this world.”
“Okay,” Castiel said, thinking about this. He was going to ask more, but he decided that if he continued asking questions, he would soon lose his nerve altogether. He needed to just ask what he had already planned out.
“What was the second thing?” Sam wanted to know.
Castiel looked up from where he was gazing down at Chuck and met Sam’s eyes. “If the apocalypse came, wouldn’t that have meant the world was destroyed?”
“Yeah,” Dean said.
“Then how are we here right now? What about this world?”
Dean smiled. “I would have thought all that Bible time would have taught you that lesson.”
“What’s that?” Castiel asked.
“That God forgives,” Dean replied. “That there’s always a second chance.”
“Oh.”
“So?” Sam asked.
“Then yes,” Castiel said, thinking of dreams and Anna, thinking of how he’d been surrounded by the answers to his past life for so many years. Thinking of second chances. “Yes, I’m ready.”
Dean looked to Sam and Sam looked to Dean. They both looked to Castiel.
“All right,” Dean said, “let’s do this.”
- - - - -
When Castiel slept again, he was a million miles away, neither on land nor in the sky, but caught somewhere between where no humans had ever walked. In this sleep, his dreams returned. This time, there was no blood, no tears or violence. The horrors from his nightmares had faded away.
Much later, he awoke in a place he recognized from so many dreams before. There, little by little, his memories returned to him. He closed his eyes, and he began to remember how it felt to fly.
End
Rating: PG-13
Category: AU gen oneshot
Word Count: 8736
Characters: Castiel, Sam and Dean
Spoilers: Up to 5.04
Warnings: None
Summary: His mother either had a weird sense of humor or was crazy when she decided to name him after an angel that no one had ever heard about.
Author's Notes: So many, many thanks go to legoline who was brave enough to take this on when it was just a jumbled untitled fic and help turn it into this. As always, though, any remaining mistakes are mine alone and are not the reflection of anyone else. Cross-posted around.
Disclaimer: The following characters and situations are used without permission of the creators, owners, and further affiliates of the television show, Supernatural, to whom they rightly belong. I claim only what is mine, and I make no money off what is theirs.
- - - - -
A long time ago when he was a child, he decided it was easier to think of his mother as having a wicked sense of humor rather than believing her to be fully crazy. After all, he knew that crazy was contagious, and the idea that he could potentially become like her in the future terrified him. So, even though his mother named him Castiel, told him he was named after an angel-just like those she read about in that tattered Bible of hers-and tried to change his bathwater into wine on more than one occasion, he initially found it in his best interest to think of her as having some weird brand of humor. Maybe this was something she giggled about after he had gone to bed. Because, again, it was easier to believe in humor than crazy because if she was crazy, he could become crazy too, and a kid named Castiel had a hard enough time fitting in at school without being labeled a loon.
When he was just shy of twenty-five, his mother died. His father had been long gone by then, whether dead or drunk, but altogether disappeared, so Castiel mourned her death alone. She died at home, after spending time in a psychiatric hospital where she got fat from the processed food and drugs. In the hospital, she read the Bible to anyone who would listen and made posters that spelled “JESUS LOVES U” out of dried beans and macaroni noodles. Those posters covered the walls of her bedroom at home.
At the time of her death, Castiel had given up trying to convince himself that his mother’s ramblings came from humor. Having gone through school, he understood that she did, indeed, have a mental illness. But, despite her disorder and how it worried him, he had graduated with his high school diploma, and he had a bachelor’s degree in religious studies-because didn’t the people say that if you can’t beat them, you should join them? Although he was legally an adult and his mother and her guilt were no longer sitting on his shoulders, he decided not to change his name. He had a driver’s license, a social security card, degrees and certificates, and as weird as Castiel was for a name, it just wasn’t worth the hassle of trying to get it changed. Besides, after twenty-five years of living with the name, it had grown on him to an extent. He wasn’t sure what he would change his name to if he really wanted anyway.
In his late twenties, as he approached thirty, Castiel saw nothing overly wrong in the way he lived his life. He’d left behind the immaturity of high school where he was constantly teased for his name. Outside of the few religious studies students he met, most people didn’t read enough religious texts to recognize that he had been named after an angel anyway, given that it wasn’t all that popular of a name like Michael or something like that-it would just figure that he’d been named after an unpopular angel anyway. Still, this meant that the majority of introductions were frequently followed by, “Castiel, huh? Hell of a name, man” and left at that when Castiel didn’t offer anything further. While the religious studies students were more likely to notice the origin of his name, they typically didn’t comment on it. Most of the students believed he was simply very passionate about religion and “Castiel” was more of a nickname than anything real and legal.
At the university, he worked as an assistant to various professors. This meant that he did a lot of typing for professors who were trying to get their books published or he corrected term papers from first-year students who were only taking Religion101 as a blow-off class. It wasn’t an exciting job, but he was familiar with the material, thanks to his mother. It wasn’t even a comforting type of familiar at times, but it was better than enrolling as a psychology major and worrying even further about what he might become. Besides, his job allowed him to keep to himself, typically away from people who left him feeling awkward and uncomfortable for no apparent reason.
He dreamed nearly every night, visions of men who identified themselves as angels and welcomed him into their company. Even though he knew enough from overhearing coworkers talking that his dreams weren’t of the more popular variety for people to be having, he never saw anything abnormal in them. After all, he didn’t spend enough time with other people to dream about them, so of course he would dream about the books-and the material in them-in the library where he spent his days. Simple as that.
He lived alone in a one bedroom apartment with his tabby cat, Chuck. Nights after work consisted of flipping through the TV with cheap dinners on his lap while Chuck perched on the arm of the stuffed recliner. Castiel watched TV and read the newspaper, and he knew enough about the American dream to understand that his life wasn’t especially glamorous or exciting.
He wasn’t rich, but he could afford his apartment and bills, groceries and a new toy now and then for Chuck. He had sold his mother’s house and property, which gave him a small amount in a savings account to fall back on if the unfortunate were to happen. He wasn’t popular, but he didn’t really prefer company, given that his mother had drilled it into his mind that the majority of the human race was swine, fat for the slaughter at the hand of God. Even though he rationally knew that this was highly untrue and just more of his mother’s humor-craziness-he still could not shake those words from his subconscious, and he really didn’t feel all that comfortable around others, finding it difficult to fit in with other people. He didn’t have a girlfriend-or even a boyfriend-and the closest he had come to physical intimacy with another was in a hallway of high school when an upperclassman girl had kissed him on the lips as a dare from her friends.
But, it was all right, he supposed. He had a roof over his head, even if it dripped on particularly rainy days, and he had a warm bed when the nights got cold. He had food in his refrigerator, even if it didn’t always taste the best, and he had Chuck for company and somebody to talk to when the nights got too long and sleep was nowhere to be found.
So, yeah. It was all right.
- - - - -
Shortly after Castiel turned thirty, things began to change. Up until then his dreams had-for the most part-been pleasant, filled with images of chubby cherubs and white, billowing clouds. Images of never-ending blue oceans and clean, warm sunshine. These were the dreams where Castiel walked alongside other angels in a never-ending garden of spiraling paradise. He called the other angels, “Michael” and “Uriel,” “Raphael” and “Zachariah.” They called him “brother.” Having been accepted by others in the dreams-an acceptance he did not typically find in his real life-he awoke from these dreams surrounded by a sense of peace. It was though he was able to take a walk through his favorite religious texts, and he often enjoyed these dreams immensely.
But these dreams gave way to ones that were harsher, more violent and bloodied. In these, he descended into the pit of Hell, where demons shrieked at him and begged for pieces of his flesh. He fought on Earth against a white-eyed demon who lifted him by the throat and made him squirm and bleed.
He never died in these nightmares. He was always saved by shadowed figures that stood in the background and pulled him away from the white-eyed demon on Earth or the black-eyed monsters in Hell. Still, this didn’t make it any easier to go through.
Halfway through a night after the white-eyed demon had spit blood in his face and was choking off his air for the umpteenth time, Castiel snapped awake, nearly tumbling out of bed. Covered in a cold sweat, he sat up in the darkness as Chuck, eyes narrowed in what could have been feline concern, looked up from the foot of the bed. As Castiel trembled, Chuck moved closer to him, rubbing his head against Castiel’s hand that gripped the blankets with white knuckles. But, no matter what Chuck did, Castiel continued to shake, and he tried to remember how to breathe evenly. He tried to forget the feel of the demon’s hand pressing tight against his throat.
- - - - -
The nightmares continued, and soon they passed from the darkness into daylight. He began to fear he was losing his mind entirely when he thought he saw black-eyed people walking down the sidewalk past him. He even went so far as to open the phonebook and flip to the yellow pages in search of a good psychiatrist who might be able to give him enough drugs to quiet the voices and still the nightmares. But, he wasn’t ready to admit to such things because then, he’d be like his mother, and that was a road he wasn’t ready to walk down. Not just yet.
One day at the university, he was sitting by himself in the library in the far corner, away from the rest of the people, when a student approached him.
“Excuse me?” she said.
He looked up from the book that he was translating from Latin to English. The girl smiled when they made eye contact. She was pretty and young with deep red hair and pale skin.
“You work here, right?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“I’m looking for a book,” she told him, shuffling through the stack of papers in her arms. “I was wondering if you could-if you have time, that is-if you could help me find this?”
He felt awkward talking to her, more than he usually did when engaged in conversation with strangers. But, he did his best to smile, and he advised her that the librarians at the front of the room could help her better than he could.
“Oh, okay, thanks anyway,” she said, and still shuffling through the papers, she turned to walk back to the front of the library where the librarians sat at their desks. As she walked away, a notecard tumbled from her papers onto the floor.
He paused. Then, moving out of his chair, Castiel picked up the card to give back to her, but she was moving quickly, and he didn’t want to leave the expensive Latin book on the desk by itself. He couldn’t risk that someone would steal or deface it.
So, he hesitated and looked down at the notecard to see that it was the call number of a book-probably the one that she had been looking for. Normally, he would have returned the notecard to the librarians at the front desk, but he was jarred by seeing To Castiel written in the corner of the card. Next to this, she had written, First-Lucifer and Michael, vessels. Second--??
As he knew that his name was not a familiar enough one that she could have meant another Castiel, along with the odd phrase about Lucifer and Michael and vessels, which didn’t even make sense and didn’t go along with anything he had ever learned, he decided that the book was nothing she needed immediately-or so he hoped. What was she talking about? Vessels? No, no, Lucifer and Michael were archangels. Unless…unless there was something he had overlooked somehow in all of his years of studying.
Troubled by this idea, he returned to table where his opened Latin book waited, closed the book, and tucked it under his arm before deciding to go in search of this book that she had been looking for. This book that was written on a notecard next to his name and Lucifer and Michael.
He was curious.
- - - - -
He found her book on the third floor of the library, tucked back into a corner that was rarely visited. It was a wonder that most of these books hadn’t been thrown out years ago, as their spines were cracked and flaking, held together by yellowed tape. Some of the books’ titles were no longer readable on their covers; he had to open up to the inside title page to determine their names. But, he found the girl’s book all the same.
It was a plain book with a brown cover and faded gold lettering. Written by Charles Shirley, the book was older than Castiel himself. He opened the book, quickly skimming and flipping through the pages. Inside, the words told him of the brothers Winchester, who fought against angels and demons alike. It was the story of how two brothers had lost everything-mother and father, friends and family alike-but saved everything-world and humanity-when the end pressed near.
Confused why such a book was placed in the nonfiction section as Castiel had never seen such a religious text before, he flipped back to the title page, past the copyright page, and he nearly passed over the dedication page before something made him stop.
There, the words on the dedication page read, For Sam and Dean. They started it, but they ended it too. Thanks, guys.
He stood there, looking at that page for longer than was necessary.
“Castiel?”
He looked up, prepared to see a woman standing there, but the space was empty. He looked around the corners of the book rows on either side of him, but he was completely alone on the third floor.
Sighing heavily, he shook his head and feared that now he was beginning to hear voices in the daytime in addition to experiencing the occasional flash of a nightmarish vision. But, he kept the book, the book about the Winchesters, and he went down to the desk on the first floor. He checked out the book, and he took it home.
He felt as though he had to read the book. He wanted to believe it was just because the book was located in the religious studies section of the library, so he should be fully educated on all sorts of religious materials. But, he knew that wasn’t the entire reason he took the book with him.
- - - - -
After a dinner of reheated macaroni and cheese, he settled into his chair in front of the TV. Instead of reaching for the TV remote, though, he picked up the book he had checked out from the library. A part of him still felt a little guilty that he had taken the book before the redhead student did. Yet, he promised himself that he would only keep the book for a night and return it early the next morning.
With Chuck perched on the back of the chair, Castiel opened the book and began to read.
- - - - -
“You will say yes to me,” Lucifer told Sam, and Sam said no.
“You will say yes to Michael,” Zachariah told Dean, and Dean said no.
Back and forth, the brothers and the angels went. The brothers refused each and every time, but the angels were not deterred.
In his words, Lucifer promised not to lie, but he did because he was Satan, after all. He had been lying and twisting the truth since Eve ate the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. Why would he change now?
In his words, Zachariah threatened, but Dean did not give way. He believed that he was stronger and smarter than these angels who had caused so much pain for him and Sam. Dean had been to Hell and back; he was not scared of a few angels.
As time passed, Lucifer twisted the truth further and further and Zachariah’s threats grew and grew. The brothers held fast, refusing and unwilling, because they believed that they could save the world without divine assistance.
But, then, one day, the brothers said yes. Sam did not say yes first. Dean did not say yes first. Sam gave way when Lucifer came to him in the form of his mother, and Dean gave way when Zachariah presented the form of his father. Both were lies, but Sam and Dean were only human. Great in their beliefs and abilities, but still human. Still boys who had lost their parents years too early.
They said yes in the same heartbeat, the same moment, and the same breath.
- - - - -
Once he had finished the story of how the Winchester brothers, Sam and Dean, allowed Lucifer and Michael to possess their bodies, Castiel fell asleep with the finished book in his lap. That night, he dreamt of an apocalypse where two men met in the middle of a field of blood. Behind them, armies waited with hungry eyes and cursing mouths. One man held an antique gun in his hands and pointed it at the other man, who was taller than the first. But, this tall man held a knife in his hands, and he smiled, as if he was pleased with the events around him.
Castiel knew in some unexplainable way that the tall man with the knife was Sam and the shorter man with the gun was Dean. He could never explain quite how he knew. It was just a feeling, sitting low in his gut, like how animals can sense a thunderstorm even though they can’t watch the news reports. He simply knew that one was Dean and the other was Sam.
In the distance where the hills rolled on until their black backs touched the red sky, a man stood alone. In his dream, Castiel could not see this man’s face, but he could see that the man had his face turned towards the sky as if he was praying. The man’s long trench coat, a faint khaki color, was splattered with blood. It whipped around him in the building wind.
As the man turned around to face Sam and Dean’s clashing armies, Castiel woke up, a scream caught in his throat.
- - - - -
He returned the book the next morning, barely making eye contact with the librarian. He spent a quiet day in one of the professor’s empty offices, where he continued the translation on the Latin book. His apartment was equally quiet, for which he was grateful, as he couldn’t completely shake the words of that Winchester book.
Later that night while he was changing Chuck’s litter, he heard a voice from behind him.
“He doesn’t look like I thought he would.”
Nearly dropping the brown paper sack half-filled with kitty litter, Castiel whipped around in the direction of the voice. There was no one standing behind him in the shadows of his apartment.
All the same, he felt it necessary to ask, “W-who’s there? Is there someone here?” His voice was pinched, making him feel small and stupid in his own home, and his heart was beating rapidly.
“Should we tell him?” the invisible voice asked. It seemed as though it was having a conversation with someone because there was a pause, followed by the masculine voice saying, “Shit. Maybe we got the wrong guy again, but she told us…”
This time, Castiel did drop the bag of kitty litter, and, scooping up Chuck underneath his arm, he ran out of the apartment and slammed the door behind him. He ran down the three flights of stairs to the sidewalk where he stood and watched his apartment from below. The window remained dark, then a light flickered for a few, hesitant seconds, and the apartment was once again doused in shadows. Shivering, Castiel held Chuck to his chest and waited for what seemed like hours in the drizzling rain until he gathered the courage to go back inside his apartment.
- - - - -
He found nothing out of place in the apartment, except for the bag of spilled kitty litter, which he had done himself. Despite these findings, he still was unable to calm down. So, he sat down in front of the TV, hoping to find a late-night talk show to distract his agitated mind. He was starting to believe more and more that these voices were part of augmenting hallucinations, and he was worried that he really would have to call a doctor for help sooner or later.
He struggled to stay awake, fighting against the soft press of sleep. But his eyelids grew heavy and his vision became fuzzy, and he dozed off again with Chuck curled into a warm ball on his lap.
- - - - -
“Think we should wake him?” There was a pause, and the voice said, “Looks like he’s pretty much awake anyway.”
Startled, yanked from his already troubled sleep, Castiel’s head snapped up from where he sat in the recliner.
“Who’s there?” he asked. He swallowed and gathered a bit of strength to make his voice sound slightly more threatening when he asked again, “Who’s there? Show yourself!” He stood up, shooing Chuck from his lap, and hurried into the bedroom where he kept a baseball bat by the edge of his bed. He never played any sport, really, as his mother said the devil was in sports and bred jealousy and anger. But, for some reason, the feel of the baseball bat in his hand, its heavy weight and smooth wood, helped to calm him.
He returned back to the TV room where he had heard the voices. The baseball bat was held tight in both of his hands, and his bedtime t-shirt was baggy and faded, clinging around the rolls of his stomach, and his boxer shorts were too short on his pale legs. He really wasn’t in any condition to be facing another person, but dammit, he almost preferred to see another person rather than think he was going crazy like his mother.
“Who’s there?” he said again, like he was some broken record stuck on repeat. He shook the bat in a way he hoped was menacing and said, “If you won’t show yourself, then…then get out of my apartment!” By then, the hour was closer to sunrise than sunset, and it had been a long night already. Part of him wanted nothing more than to get this whole ordeal done and over with.
There was a sigh from the darkness, as if the shadows were annoyed with him, and the voice-the familiar one that he kept hearing-said, “All right. Fine.” A pause, perhaps that second, unheard voice speaking, and the first voice said, “Look. He wants to see us, he can have a look.”
With that, light flashed and Castiel raised a hand to shield his eyes. He stumbled back, away, and tripped over his chair and nearly squashed Chuck when he collapsed down onto the floor again.
When the light at last cleared, there were two men standing in the middle of Castiel’s living room. They both looked at him curiously. The shorter of the two, wearing a two-sizes-too-big leather coat, cocked his head at Castiel and said, “So. You’re telling me that he’s the one that’s going to save the world. He doesn’t look at all like I remember.” It was the voice that Castiel had heard earlier.
The second man, the taller of the two with longer, shaggy brown hair, nodded, and said, “Don’t you remember? We knew that this day would come eventually.”
“Great.” The first one rolled his eyes and sighed. “This is not who I thought it’d be. This just looks like some sap and his cat, who are going to stop the apocalypse with a baseball bat. This isn’t him at all. Trust me on this, I know what he looks like, and this isn’t him. So, shit, that’s it. We’re screwed right now. Might as well call ole’ Lucifer and tell him we’ll sign up for his team this time instead.” The man snorted. “Shit. We’re so freakin’ screwed.”
Recognizing them, seeing them, the Winchesters, Sam and Dean, from his dreams, standing in his living room, Castiel scrambled to his feet.
“D-don’t,” he stuttered, holding a hand out to stop them from approaching-although part of him doubted that he would be able to stop them, no matter how hard he tried. “Don’t come any closer.” He continued backing up, not looking where he was going, and his breathing became more and more strained. His head was spinning and heart pounding, and he began to feel dizzy. Sweat broke out on his forehead and he felt as though he was going to puke.
“Hey, hey,” the taller man said, coming forward. “Take a breath. Breathe,” he said.
But, Castiel wasn’t listening. Sam and Dean were standing in his room. His dreams were coming to life. He was seeing his dreams from night while he was awake and that meant that the dreams were now hallucinations and hallucinations meant that he was going down just like his mother and it wouldn’t be long he’d be in a mental hospital…
The thoughts swirled, colliding and knocking against each other faster and faster, until Castiel’s vision began to grow fuzzy and black at the corners. He heard one of the men telling him to breathe, saying that he was hyperventilating and to get a hold of himself. But, the harder that he tried to control himself, the dizzier he became until the blackness grew too strong and he collapsed to the floor, still struggling to breathe. The last thing he saw before he went under were Chuck’s eyes, wide, green, and frightened.
- - - - -
He came to with water being splashed on his face. One of the men was saying, “Don’t! You’ll drown him!”
The other, the first and familiar voice, said, “Humans don’t drown in this much water. It’s got to be a lot more. You should know that, man.” Then the pitch of his voice changed, talking to Castiel now, and he said, “Wake up, c’mon, wake up.”
Castiel opened his eyes, and his vision was blurry at first. Then, things cleared, and he took in his surroundings. He was still in his apartment, and it was growing close to dawn, as the clouds outside were breaking apart and letting a deep purple light spread through them. Lowering his eyes away from the window, he saw the shorter man, the one in the leather coat, crouching on the floor next to him, while the tall guy lurked in the background.
Castiel flinched and tried to push himself away from them.
“Ah, that’s more like it,” the first man said, who Castiel knew to be Dean. “You know, you really can’t go passing out every time someone makes a smart comment about you. It’s going to be really hard for you to fight off evil if you’re going all narcoleptic on us now. Well, if you’re the guy we think you are, that is.”
Castiel lifted a hand to his temple where a pain was pounding through his head, as if it had the ability to rattle his skull right off. He winced, and when Sam and Dean stayed silent, he licked his lips, tasted blood-probably bit his tongue when he fell-and said, “I know you.”
“You do?” Dean asked. He looked over his shoulder at the tall one-Sam-before turning his attention back to Castiel. “Who told you?”
“No one. I…I saw you in my dreams.” Before either of them could say anything further, Castiel continued, “I know that sounds crazy, but it-it’s true.” He lowered his eyes, embarrassed to be admitting such a thing aloud.
“You think he’s telling the truth?” Dean asked Sam.
“Could be.” Then to Castiel, Sam asked, “Who are we then?”
“I think, I mean, I could be wrong, but I think you’re Sam and Dean. Winchester. Like I said I could be wrong because it was just a dream and dreams don’t mean anything, but that’s who I think you are-”
“Well, your dream is right. Because, yeah, I’m Sam, and this is Dean,” Sam said, confirming what Castiel already knew. “Now, what’s your name?”
“What? Do you really think this is him?” Dean said to Sam.
“It’s possible,” Sam answered. “If he recognized us from his dreams, don’t you think that means something? Let’s just ask him.” Sam came closer and sat down in the recliner next to Chuck, who purred happily at the chance to receive attention from someone. “All right, so you know that we’re Sam and Dean, now who are you?”
Castiel sighed. He was now officially and completely crazy. Not only was he seeing and hearing things, he was talking back to them and carrying on a conversation. He figured it wouldn’t be long until somebody at the university would have to call the hospital and get the men in white coats to take him away. But, he decided to appease these hallucinations-that came directly from his dreams, no less-in hopes that they would go away.
“My name,” he said, “is Castiel.”
“W-wait,” Dean said, shaking his head. “Say that again.” He looked up at Sam, who appeared pleased with Castiel’s response.
“Castiel,” he said, saying it slower and clearer, as if he had mumbled his words and they’d been confused.
There was a long pause as Sam looked at Dean and Dean looked at Sam, and Castiel realized that for some reason, his name meant something to them.
At last, Dean groaned and rolled his eyes, slapped his hands dramatically on his knees and said, “Well, that’s just great. Just freakin’ great. Here I thought he’d say his name was Bob or Dick or something, and we could keep going on our merry way.” He looked back at Castiel. “You have no friggin’ clue who you are, do you? You know about us, but I bet you don’t know about you.”
“Uh…” Castiel began, confused.
“It’s not his fault. You know they made him human when we got him out of there,” Sam interrupted. “Besides, I told you that he looked familiar. It is him.”
“But, it’s…” Dean rose to his feet, waving a hand weakly in Castiel’s direction. “Look at him, Sammy. He’s all pale and pudgy and weak now. It’s no wonder I wasn’t sure about him. He doesn’t look anything like he used to. Well. Maybe a little. But not much.”
Castiel lowered his head, wanting nothing more to crawl beneath a rock and die at that point.
“You really do lack all tact, don’t you?” Sam said to Dean. “I would’ve thought that one apocalypse would have been enough to knock all that asshole out of you.”
Dean laughed humorlessly. “Going to take more than one apocalypse to do that.” Before Sam could reply further, Dean crouched back down next to Castiel and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Cas, hey, Cas, look, sorry about all that pale and pudgy thing.”
“And weak,” Castiel mumbled into his chest.
“And weak,” Dean agreed. “Sorry about that. It’s just that…well…we, um, I don’t know quite how to explain this, but…shit.” He raised a hand and scratched the back of his head. “You looked sort of like a guy we used to know, but, uh, well, he was a real badass, and you’re more of a, ah, regular kind of guy…?”
“What?” Castiel said.
“Well? Any suggestions on how to explain this one to him?” Dean said, now looking back to Sam.
“I think we should be honest with him.”
“You sure he can handle it?”
“I’m still sitting right here,” Castiel reminded them in a morose tone.
“So you saw us in your dreams, huh?” Dean asked.
“I read about you in a book. Then I saw you in my dreams.”
“A book?” Sam said, raising his eyebrows. “What kind of a book?”
Castiel wiped a hand over his face. “It was basically the story of the Winchester family, and how Sam and Dean said yes to Lucifer and Michael and then…then the apocalypse happened and most of the people were killed in the battles…except that the writer was a prophet who couldn’t die until he told their story.” He swallowed and looked back to them.
“Well,” Sam said, “that’s part of it.”
Dean nodded. “Better than nothing though.”
“But the apocalypse?” Castiel asked.
“Happened,” Dean answered. “Just not in this time or this world. But it will. It’s coming.” He sighed and added, “Again.”
- - - - -
Before Sam or Dean would give him any further answers, they advised him to cancel his appointments for the rest of the day. So, early that same morning with Sam and Dean talking softly in the kitchen, Castiel called in sick to work for that day. It was the first time he’d ever called in, including that time when everybody else was out sick with the flu back in the winter of ’09, so his supervisor didn’t give Castiel too much trouble over the phone. She simply advised him to stay in bed, get some rest, and she’d be seeing Castiel tomorrow. Simple as that.
“No work today, then?” Dean asked once Castiel had hung up the phone and sat down in the recliner with Chuck in his lap.
“No,” Castiel answered.
“Good, because there are some things that we need to explain to you,” Sam said, coming out of the kitchen.
“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” Castiel said after a long pause. “I mean, it’s just that now I’m so crazy I can’t tell the difference between when I’m awake and when I’m asleep, and it’s all just blending together, right?”
Dean looked up from where he was flipping through the dog-eared TV Guide and shook his head, while Sam admitted, “Not quite.”
“Then I’ve lost it.” Castiel laughed, a short, rather hysterical sound, and he lowered his face into his hands. After all these years of thinking he’d been able to escape his mother’s genetics and hold over him, it turned out he was no less mentally disturbed than she had been. “I’m completely crazy now,” he continued, shaking his head in his hands. “They’re going to take me away soon.”
“Not quite,” Sam said again.
“What?” Castiel said, looking up. He hadn’t realized that he’d been crying, but his palms were wet where they had been pressed against his face, and his eyes burned with tears.
“You’re not crazy,” Sam said. “Not at all, actually.”
“You’re a talking hallucination. I’m supposed to believe you?” Castiel asked incredulously.
“Well, it’s either that or sit there, crying into your cat’s fur,” Dean replied. He slapped the TV Guide down on top of the TV. “No offense, man, but suck it up, okay?”
“Dean,” Sam began, a warning.
“Not now, Sammy.” Back to Castiel, he said, “We’ve got an approaching apocalypse, and this really isn’t the time for us to play Dr. Phil with you and your sob-story life. Number one, you’re not crazy. Number two, it’s not a dream, and number three, it’s all freakin’ real.” He sighed, sounding exasperated, as he walked over to where Castiel was sitting. “Look, I get that you don’t have a friggin’ clue who the hell we really are or who you used to be, do you?”
Castiel shook his head. Secretly, he was thanking himself for deciding to take the day off work. It had been one of the best decisions he had made in a long time.
“Right. Okay,” Dean said, and he sat down, cross-legged, on the floor in front of Castiel. Seeing that there wasn’t any attention to be given, Chuck hopped off Castiel’s lap and trotted out of the living room in search of the bedroom where he could curl up and be comfortable.
“What’s your cat’s name?” Dean asked, suddenly changing the subject, as if he had noticed for the first time that Castiel owned a pet.
“Chuck,” Castiel answered.
“Chuck,” Dean repeated.
“Yeah.”
Dean looked to Sam, who raised his eyebrows. An unspoken message that Castiel didn’t understand passed between the two of them, as if the name of his cat held some great secret. Finally, though, Dean turned his attention back to Castiel as Sam leaned against the window, arms crossed over his chest.
“I’m going to get straight to it,” Dean said. “As we’ve mentioned, the apocalypse is coming. And I’m not talking about any movie apocalypse with melting icebergs and bad weather. This is the real deal, okay?”
“Revelations?” Castiel asked.
“What? Is this a revelation to us? Well no-” Dean began.
“Yes,” Sam interrupted, “just like Revelations in the Bible.”
Castiel was about to tell them that they had to be kidding, that this was more of his dream sequence gone awry, but he remembered Dean’s harsh words from before, and he asked instead, “What does this have to do with me?”
“You’re the one who’s going to stop it,” Dean said. “Well, you’re going to help us stop it. But, y’know, we still need you all the same. A rip off on the Three Musketeers deal, I guess?” Before Castiel could speak, Dean continued, “And I don’t tell me that you can’t do it or you don’t want to do it because that’s pretty much what I told you when you said the same thing to me, and well, I’m not nearly as much as a pushover now as you were back then. So, I won’t hear it. Somebody has to do it this time around, and trust me-us-you’ve got to be it.”
“Did you read about the end of the world in that book?” Sam asked. “With us?”
“A bit, yeah,” Castiel admitted. “How you and Dean agreed to be vessels for Lucifer and Michael, and that was just part of the end of the world. I mean, there was stuff before it…Lilith and the Seals, but…yeah.”
Sam’s face tightened, troubled, and he asked, “Have you seen it? In your dreams?”
“A bit…” Castiel said again.
Dean leaned closer to Castiel, and he said, “All right, then, you’re going to be seeing it up close and personal now. Hold onto your boxers there, buddy, because we’re taking a ride.” He grinned and said, “I’ll apologize in advance for all the pooping problems that’ll come after this. Laxatives will be your best friend for a while. Trust me.”
Just as Castiel was about to ask what Dean was talking about, Dean lifted a hand and covered Castiel’s eyes. The world went black, followed by white with everything and everyone screaming around him, and then everything died to black again.
Castiel opened his eyes.
- - - - -
Dean was on his left, and Sam was on his right. They stood beside him, looking out over a rolling landscape of blackened trees and smoke rising high into a red-orange sky. Not too far away, another Sam and another Dean were facing each other, eyes alight with something that wasn’t natural, and Castiel knew that they were now the vessels for Lucifer and Michael. The other Dean held a gun in his hand, and Sam held a bleeding knife. Their smiles were wicked and malicious. They looked nothing like the men who currently stood beside Castiel, but they looked exactly like the men that Castiel had seen many a time in his dreams.
Not far from other Sam and Dean-Michael and Lucifer-Castiel saw the man in the khaki-colored trench coat. As the armies met, surging into each other, black-eyed people fighting and screams rising into the air, the man turned around to reveal his face.
Castiel saw himself. But, even then, even looking at this man who was him, he looked different. More than different than the initial detachment people sometimes feel when looking at a photo of themselves. This self looked rougher around the edges, more violent and determined all in one. Beneath the long trench coat, he was wearing a button-down shirt and tie beneath. There was a large cut running down his cheek, and he had a hand clasped to his chest. Blood was dripping out between those fingers, and his skin looked ashen and his eyes were frightened. He stumbled over the terrain, pushing through the demons and monsters in an attempt to get closer to Michael and Lucifer.
“Is this the apocalypse?” Castiel asked to the Sam and Dean beside him, even though he already knew the answer.
“Yes,” Sam said quietly, almost reverently.
“From before,” Dean clarified.
“I’m here.”
Sam nodded, and Dean said, “Yeah. This is when you were dying.” After a pause, Dean added, “From before.”
“I was dying? What? I mean, I’m here and…”
“Time travel sure works wonders,” Dean said, and then he fell silent as the other Castiel looked upward and whispered unheard words to the heavens. He collapsed to the ground, still holding his chest and whispering. In front of him, only feet away, Lucifer and Michael lunged at each other.
“Father,” the other Castiel called, the single word heard above everything else.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” Sam said, and this time, it was he who lifted a hand to cover Castiel’s eyes. The last thing Castiel witnessed before darkness swam over him was the Lucifer plunging a knife in the Michael’s chest and the sound of Michael’s gun splitting the air.
- - - - -
He came to in his bedroom.
Sam and Dean were both calmly sitting on his bed while Castiel was on the floor, rubbing his spinning head.
“So that was the apocalypse,” Castiel said.
Sam nodded.
“Do I get any sort of explanation? What does that all mean? I get that you two were used as vessels, but what about me? And how did you get here now? What’s going on?” He groaned at the sudden roll of a massive headache through his mind. He felt as though he was going to throw up.
“That was before,” Dean said. “As I’ve already said.” He stood up from the bed and approached Castiel. “Look, I don’t know how much you remember from before, but back then, you were an angel.”
“I was an angel?” Castiel gaped, the shock of this quieting his nausea.
“Will you let me finish? Man, I almost prefer you with that stick up your ass from before. Yes, Cas, you were an angel. You were dying in battle because you had just sacrificed yourself to save us. Both of us-me and Sam-were possessed, as you noticed, and your sacrifice sort of, ah, well, it saved our human souls and knocked those angel bastards out of us.
“Well, you would have died,” Dean continued, “except we used what was left of the angel mojo in us to send you to a bit of an alternate universe in the future. Apparently, you became human in the process, too, getting born and raised, puberty and pooping-all the perks of a good old human life. So, yeah, we didn’t see that one coming, but apparently the powers above figured that would help to hide you better from the uglies out there who were searching for you. So, for the last few years, we’ve been searching for you, too, and it took us longer than we thought because you do look different-guess you lost some of that angelic beauty or whatever the hell you want to call it since we didn’t recognize you at first. But, anyway, the point is that the apocalypse is coming again.”
“Which you’ve said,” Castiel replied. “So I…other me…was an angel?”
“Right,” Sam said.
“And I…fell?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” Dean said. “But, when you did that, God, I guess, saw it as more of a sacrifice to save our-Sam’s and mine-human souls, so it wasn’t like you were banished or smited or whatever.”
“And afterwards, once Lucifer and Michael were out of us, Dean and I had to save you, so we were able to take your soul and send it far, far away in this world where you were born as a human,” Sam explained.
“But what about you two? Didn’t Lucifer and Michael want back in?” Castiel asked.
“Well, sure,” Dean admitted, “because they’re basically dicks with years-centuries¬-of unfinished business. But, well, when you ‘fell,’ as I guess we’re calling it, it knocked them out of us, but still left us with enough of their powers to be considered immortal ourselves. Like, they had sort of mind-melded with us?” He looked confused, trying to explain himself.
Sam shook his head at Dean, and to Castiel, he said, “Because it was such a sudden separation, they left enough of their souls, their beings-to call it that-in us to allow us to be immortal and live among the angels. So, we’re definitely not them anymore, but we also…well, we’re not what we used to be before the war.” He motioned to Castiel. “And, apparently neither are you.”
“So, if I used to be an angel…what about my mother?”
“Just some ordinary lady who got tapped,” Dean said. “Although I think somebody may have tipped her off to the point that she was carrying some once-upon-a-time angel…hence all the crazy God talk.”
“Oh,” Castiel said.
“Sorry,” Dean replied and frowned.
Castiel sat, sitting and thinking, before he said, “So, you’re asking me, as a human, for help?”
Both Sam and Dean nodded.
“You asked us for help last time,” Sam explained, “and we were just as human then as you are now.”
They sat in silence for a long time as Castiel stared at the floor and thought. For some reason, despite all the rationality telling him otherwise, he believed them. He had been dreaming of such things all his life. It seemed only too easy, too natural, for him to be hearing about them now.
“Do I have to accept your offer for you to…I don’t know? Take me with you?” he asked at last.
“Well, that sure would make things a lot easier,” Dean admitted. “But we won’t threaten you, Cas, or try to push you into this. None of that bullshit that your angel buddies from before tried on us, okay? Stomach cancer, my ass.”
“Can you…can you give me a day?” Castiel asked.
“To think?” Sam asked.
“You really think the apocalypse is going to wait?” Dean began, but Sam quieted him by resting a hand on his arm.
“Yeah,” Sam said, “we can give you a day. We’ll be back tomorrow night.”
With that, the two of them were gone with the sound of fluttering wings. The curtains danced in the breeze that suddenly swept through the rooms, and Castiel was alone once again.
- - - - -
The next day, after a few hours of sleep, he went into the park by the university to eat lunch and get some fresh air, away from his apartment.
As he was sitting on the bench and eating his lunch, thinking about Sam and Dean’s words and the vision they had shown him, a woman approached him.
“Mind if I sit down?” she said.
He looked up to see that it was the young redhead who had asked him about the book of Winchester in the university library a few days ago.
“It’s you,” he said, as she sat down on the bench beside him.
“Me?” she asked, but there was a smile on her face.
“The girl from the library. You were looking for that book…about the Winchesters.”
“Caught me.” She smiled again and pulled out a plastic bag filled with cut carrots from her lunch sack.
“Did you know?” he asked. “What that book was about?”
“Of course. I meant for you to find that notecard I dropped.”
“This was all planned?”
She nodded. “I’ll admit that I probably shouldn’t have brought that book into this time-this world really, because it doesn’t belong here at all-but I had to tell you somehow. I knew that if I started telling you all about who you used to be and about Sam and Dean, you’d really freak out and run away.”
“You knew about them?” he asked. “Then why wasn’t I in it, too? I thought I was part of the story.”
“You were,” she answered, “but I had to take you out. I edited Chuck’s copy…I was worried it’d really do a number on you if you saw your name in print there.”
“You sound as though you know me,” he said as she took a bite of a carrot.
Chewing, she nodded her head. When she swallowed, she said, “We, you and me, we’ve known each other for many, many years, Castiel. I was never sure if you’d be able to understand exactly what it was like to be human, but I see you do now. You made a great sacrifice for Sam and Dean back then, I hope you know that. I think it’s admirable.” She paused. “Many of us do…even if they’ll never openly admit to it.”
He stared at her, no longer hungry. At last, some form of recognition came to the forefront of his mind.
“Anna,” he breathed.
She smiled again. “I hope you tell them yes. We can’t do it without you.”
He looked up to the sky, to the endless blue overheard. “Well, I…” he said and lowered his head to look at her. But, his words stopped when he saw that the bench next to him was empty, as if she had never been there at all.
- - - - -
They came for him late that night, as they had promised.
“Well?” Dean asked from behind him.
Castiel stood with his back to them, looking out to the world where the wind rolled through the trees, crisp and clean. The clouds were thin and sparse around the full-bellied moon. When he turned to face Sam and Dean, he felt a little dizzy, a little light-headed, but he picked up Chuck, who was rubbing against his legs and purring. He pulled Chuck tight to his chest and swallowed past the lump in his throat.
“I have a question,” he said. “Two, actually.”
“Oh great.” Dean rolled his eyes.
“Yeah?” Sam asked.
“First, what about Chuck?”
Sam smiled. “He’ll be fine. Let’s just say that he wasn’t always a cat before this world.”
“Okay,” Castiel said, thinking about this. He was going to ask more, but he decided that if he continued asking questions, he would soon lose his nerve altogether. He needed to just ask what he had already planned out.
“What was the second thing?” Sam wanted to know.
Castiel looked up from where he was gazing down at Chuck and met Sam’s eyes. “If the apocalypse came, wouldn’t that have meant the world was destroyed?”
“Yeah,” Dean said.
“Then how are we here right now? What about this world?”
Dean smiled. “I would have thought all that Bible time would have taught you that lesson.”
“What’s that?” Castiel asked.
“That God forgives,” Dean replied. “That there’s always a second chance.”
“Oh.”
“So?” Sam asked.
“Then yes,” Castiel said, thinking of dreams and Anna, thinking of how he’d been surrounded by the answers to his past life for so many years. Thinking of second chances. “Yes, I’m ready.”
Dean looked to Sam and Sam looked to Dean. They both looked to Castiel.
“All right,” Dean said, “let’s do this.”
- - - - -
When Castiel slept again, he was a million miles away, neither on land nor in the sky, but caught somewhere between where no humans had ever walked. In this sleep, his dreams returned. This time, there was no blood, no tears or violence. The horrors from his nightmares had faded away.
Much later, he awoke in a place he recognized from so many dreams before. There, little by little, his memories returned to him. He closed his eyes, and he began to remember how it felt to fly.
End