(c a s t i e l pov)
Things in heaven were simple.
Clear.
Easy to understand.
You knew what was wrong and what was right, you knew what was good and what was bad. Everything was black and white and you never had to worry about shades of gray.
You did what your father told you.
And that was that.
But then you saved Dean Winchester from the pits of hell.
And nothing was ever simple again.
You had lived the majority of your life in heaven, training with your brothers and conversing with your sisters. You lived in the patchwork of dreams, in the spaces in between people's happily ever afters. Heaven surrounded you; your family lived together in harmony.
But the first time you went to Earth, you wondered if heaven was missing something.
There was just something about humanity, something that you couldn't quite put your finger on, something that made them different, something that made them more. They weren't the same as your siblings, but that didn't mean they were less than your family.
Humans were simply different from angels.
You didn't view that as a negative quality, there was actually something about the humans that you envied.
It would be many years until you would identify the cause of your jealousy.
Humans were chaotic and messy and cruel. They hurt one another without a second thought, cared too much and loved each other so much that it caused them pain to be separated. Humans were, simply put, complete messes.
But they were something you were not.
They were free.
Seeing Dean Winchester's soul for the first time was like being reborn.
It altered everything about you.
There was something about this man, something that made his soul glow. It wasn't that he was perfect or that he never made mistakes or that he was superior to all other people on the planet. He was flawed and angry and much too emotional. He made mistakes and loved his brother too much and he had killed people before with no hesitation.
But his soul was beautiful.
It was pure in a way you had never seen before, unchanged even by the darkness that surrounded him in hell.
Dean's soul was that of a survivor's, one that remained untouched by the horrors of the world because deep down, he was so, so sure that at some point, things would get better. His soul was unbreakable.
And seeing it changed you.
It gave you hope.
"You have been quiet recently, brother," a gentle voice says from behind you. You don't bother turning to face him, instead keeping your gaze on the clouds in the distance.
It was your third visit to Earth in as many weeks and you had been wondering when someone was going to come talk to you about breaking the rules. "Hello, Michael," you respond, completely ignoring his statement.
He moves until he is beside you and remains silent for the next hour, simply watching the clouds form with you.
"Do you ever wonder why humans were created so differently from us?" you finally speak, turning the green eyes of your vessel towards your brother in the grass beside you.
"No," Michael responds shortly, frowning at the clouds.
You open your mouth to say something, ask why angels don't have music or food or books, why humans could enjoy simple pleasures and angels could not, but he speaks first.
"I do not wonder, Castiel. Wondering only leads to trouble," he disappears in a flutter of his wings the second the last word is spoken, his words remaining to hover in the air behind him.
The words echo around you like a warning.
Shortly after you rescue Dean and bring him back to life, things begin to change.
Suddenly you're questioning everything, wondering if blindly following orders really is for the best, pulling back from your brothers.
You begin to trust the Winchesters more than you trust Uriel, even though you know Sam is doing something with Ruby that is causing darkness to seep through his blood like poison and Dean's beginning to crack under the memories of the torture that he performed while in hell. The brothers are damaged. They are bruised and bleeding and confused.
But they are not broken.
And you begin to take their side over everyone else's.
You begin to wonder why more angels aren't like the Winchesters.
Michael did try to warn you about what questioning things could lead to.
You come dangerously close to falling from heaven because you come dangerously close to falling in love with Dean Winchester.
The first time it happens, you don't understand.
The vessel that you're in, his heart beats faster and his stomach tingles in reaction to your thoughts when you see Dean. You don't understand what it means, why you're reacting the way that you are.
You don't understand why the sight of Dean makes you feel the same way you used to in heaven lazing around with your siblings. Like the entire world is just there for the taking.
All you have to do is reach for it, and it's yours.
Dean Winchester makes you believe in the impossible, in the insane.
He makes you feel.
And that's something that hasn't ever happened before.
Dean is so very human.
He eats too much and curses all the time and sleeps with random women. The only person that he loves is his brother and maybe Bobby. He bottles up his emotions and gets angry for no reason and you can see all his emotions written in his green eyes as easily as if you're reading a book.
He is gloriously flawed, wonderfully imperfect.
You didn't realize that he was what you were waiting for until it was too late, until you wanted him too much to even think about leaving.
You got too involved.
And the worst part was that you couldn't even bring yourself to regret it.
There are moments.
Moments in which everything is pressing and moaning and kissing and gasping and you can't catch your breath and you don't really want to because Dean's stealing it away and you don't care if he takes it.
He takes pieces of you with him every time he brushes a kiss across your cheek, laces his fingers through yours and squeezes once before letting go. You find it becoming harder and harder to leave him behind, to be without him. Everything he does only draws you in closer. The way he calls you Cass with that husky, drawling voice of his and the way he stands so close you can feel his body heat, even when Sam and Bobby are in the room.
You find yourself thinking about what shade of green his eyes are, wondering if he thinks about you as often as you think of him.
Dean Winchester slowly but surely makes you love him.
He makes you human again.
But along with humanity comes emotions.
And emotions lead to mistakes.
It's the end of the world, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
Your father has left you.
Your siblings are killing one another without hesitation or regret.
So you lose yourself in the feel of Dean's lips on your neck and the press of his hips against yours. Hours are wasted away in his arms, entire days that you should be worried about saving the world being thrown away because you can't bear to leave him.
The thought of never feeling his warm skin again terrifies you.
But it's the apocalypse and really, you should be more worried about that than you are about Dean.
So you start to push him away.
You start to reject your emotions again.
Being a human is horribly complicated.
There are too many feelings, too much pain and too much happiness.
Life as a human was chaotic.
Life as an angel was easier.
But life as an angel didn't include Dean.
Michael falls.
Lucifer is once again trapped in hell, the end of the world has been averted, Dean and Sam are still alive and, for the most part, well.
But there is something off.
Sam loses himself sometimes, gets distracted by imaginary screams and half remembered pain. He was stuck in the pit with Lucifer and Michael for three months before you found a way to get him out and the torture that he suffered there changed him.
He had not broken, but his soul had cracked.
Watching him try to repair it was like watching someone glue a mirror back together. The cracks were always going to be visible in his reflection.
Bobby wasn't around much anymore, spending his time with old friends, hunters who dealt with no more than ghosts and monsters. There were no angels for him to worry about, and that was how he wanted it.
Dean was the one who changed the most.
Turning back into an angel was a painful process.
Your grace, it almost burned you from the inside out once you recovered it.
It felt like you were being born once again.
Like you could have a clean start.
The decision to make your clean start emotion-free is easier than you thought it would be.
Emotions were killing you.
You didn't want them anymore.
The transition back to emotionless is simple.
Losing Dean isn't nearly as easy.
He rages at you, screams and throws punches and yells insults that make his lips curl.
And you want to hurt with him. You want to feel guilty and hate being without him and you want to want him back.
But you cannot feel things anymore.
You will not be human again.
The civil war in heaven continues with you leading one side and Raphael the other.
There is a fight, a bloody, violent, end-of-the-war fight.
Raphael loses.
For a second, just after you win, when you're standing there covered in blood and feathers, wounds covering your body and your breath coming in harsh pants, you think of Dean.
You think of being unbreakable, of warm kisses that felt like love and of hazel eyes that always brightened at the sight of you. You think of a soul that changed your world view, of a man who taught you how to feel.
There is a moment, just one moment, in which you allow yourself to remember.
Moans and gasps and sweat and tangled limbs, kissingkissingkissing all night long and wasting days away because all you needed was each other. You can feel fingers trail down your spine, a mouth press against your chest, hips rock against your own. Laughter rings in your ears, golden laughter that was rarely heard, Dean mocking 'Sammy' and their banter filling the air around you during fights.
You remember forbidden dreams and stolen moments and every emotion that you've ever felt, Dean being the cause of them all.
Then you close your eyes, blink them until all the tears are gone, and stand tall in front of your siblings.
You no longer have time for anything but being an angel.
You've won.
And there is much for you to accomplish.
You won and you can't even appreciate it.
You don't feel anything anymore.
You're an angel again.
But sometimes, when you have a few spare seconds, you check in on the Winchester brothers.
And you remember.
A/N: First Supernatural fic! Hopefully it's all right. It's been a long time since I wrote anything at all, let alone something for a new fandom. I changed a few things, like Sam being in hell and already having his soul when he got out. I just felt that the story worked better that way because I was trying to focus on Cass and not the brothers.
But anyways.
Let me know what you think? Thanks for reading!