Believe in Me
K Hanna Korossy
The angels had bound Dean for killing Tessa, rejecting his explanation.
He claimed he hadn't despite the fact he'd smuggled in his cursed blade. His brother believed him instantly, rushing to untie him.
Castiel was a little slower to concur. He knew better than Sam what that Mark on Dean's arm could lead him to.
But while Dean was capable of the kill, it was unlike him to deny it. And it was certainly true that Tessa had not been acting like a Reaper, abandoning her duties, shedding her invisibility, agitating for a cause she did not even understand. Desperation drove desperate acts, but Castiel could well believe it was her despair, not Dean's, that caused her death.
He'd had to side with his friend on this. Even if it was the beginning of the end of his command.
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Followers were fickle.
Castiel hadn't wanted to be a leader. They were the ones who'd sought him out, who'd begged him to direct them. He'd fought and argued until he could no longer. And then, they chose to believe Metatron over him, the angel who cast them out of Heaven. To renounce Castiel simply because he wouldn't renounce his friends.
Yes, all right, so the Winchesters were not exactly allies of the angelic host. They stopped the Apocalypse, killed Zachariah, caged Michael, and got the Prophet killed, even if that was really Gadreel's fault. They'd inadvertently helped close Heaven, even while choosing not to seal up Hell. Castiel could, in all fairness, see why the angels felt betrayed at his choosing the Winchesters. But did loyalty count for nothing?
He followed his Lord, his Father, even when he wasn't sure God was there. He continued to feel that tug of the divine. The idea of renouncing that, pursuing his own means, sickened him still, even as he embraced free will.
At least his friends believed he did not command those "suicide bomber" angels to give their lives for him. It was ironic that those who had the least to gain from trusting him were the ones who didn't fail to.
Because that was the reason, the one his brothers and sisters did not understand, that he chose the Winchesters above his own kind.
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No one trusted Gadreel. That was only fair. Even if attacking him as Dean did was not.
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The Mark made Dean wary of everyone, even his brother.
He was not meant to, but Castiel had overheard Dean's declaration that the Winchesters' partnership was now a dictatorship. Another irony, considering what Dean had confided in him earlier, that Sam had said they should be as partners, not brothers.
Apparently they were in agreement now that their family bond was a liability rather than an asset, something to be discarded.
Did no one have any faith left?
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But. Sam.
Sam believed Castiel. Believed Gadreel, when he had the least reason. And believed Dean and in Dean even after what his brother had done to him.
Castiel saw it in the way he watched over his unraveling brother, face pinched with worry. Stayed ever closer when common sense would have dictated distance. Swallowed his brother's dismissiveness and callousness, and clung all the more.
No matter what either said, this was not a partnership. It was a brotherhood. Greater love hath no man…
And that…that was why Castiel had hope. Because it didn't always take two Winchesters to triumph.
It just took one's belief in and love for the other.
The End