I just realized I never published this now. A little late, but this was my head cannon for how Cas got out of Purgatory. Title and imagery taken from "Folk Bloodbath" by Josh Ritter. Amazing song, well worth a listen.
I own nothing, thought if Supernatural continues to not use Gabriel, I might want to buy him for use in many a snarky fic.
Un-betad so please let me know if you notice any mistakes. Enjoy!
"Dean!"
One syllable. Four letters. One sound ripped from the ragged flesh of Cas' throat to hang heavy in the iron tang of blood soaked air. Four letters to mean everything. One syllable to say I'm sorry.
To say I can't do it anymore.
To say you're better off without me.
But also a sound rich with thank you.
Thank you for giving me meaning when I had nothing left.
Thank you for teaching me about family.
About freedom.
About humanity.
About love.
Thank you for putting my soul back together after I shredded it with the blade of good intentions the way I rebuilt your body, your flesh, your self.
If Angels had souls, that is.
Thank you for teaching me that even though you sometimes have to kill your brother to save the world,
That you can then save yourself by sacrificing everything to get him back.
Thank you for teaching me how to mourn.
Thank you for teaching me how to live.
And with those four letters, Cas closed his eyes to the image of an anguished face, and waited for the fall into darkness to take him away.
...
Darkness proved to provide a very short trip.
As Cas' eyes opened to a familiar de-saturated landscape, he supposed he wasn't surprised. After all, dead Angels went to Purgatory. If killed there, the only other option would be oblivion. And Cas knew he didn't deserve the freedom of oblivion yet.
Cas pushed himself off the ground with thin wrists, and squinted into the grey sky, trying to see where he fell.
Purgatory didn't fall subject to the same rules as Earth; however, it usually did not disregard the rules of physics so entirely either. All that was above him was endless dusky sky. Cas had never seen this part of Purgatory before.
But Dean would be gone soon with the vampire. Dean would be free of this place. Left without the only purpose that had guided him for so long, Cas felt lost, drifting.
There was nothing to do but walk.
So Cas walked in the perpetually grey fading light, filthy with death, and fear, and regret. No world to save. No Winchesters to keep safe. No way to finish the penance that burned through his stomach with a fire of never ending need.
Nothing to do but walk until he could find oblivion.
But instead, Cas found something else.
A field of briars, convoluted and twisting, their very harshness beautiful in that you couldn't tell where one began and another ended. Brown and twisted, streaked through with sickly greens and bruise purples, with only a single splash of red to wrench this quiet and dark beauty from the palette of Purgatory.
Cas raised a single eyebrow.
"Anna." Four letters that seemed insufficient. His voice cracked with disuse, uttering a syllable of regret that he had tried not to think about for so long.
With a soft smile Anna stood, barefoot in the briars.
"Hello, Castiel. It's good to see you again."
"I find that somewhat hard to believe," Castiel replied wryly. Anna let out a surprised laugh.
"It seems your time with the Winchesters did teach you some things after all. Humor never was one of your strong suits, Cas." Anna's voice lilted, warm with affection. Not knowing how to respond, Cas took a moment to slowly approach the briars, drinking in the welcome sight of a brother he had thought lost to him forever. At the same time his mouth felt sour with the forgiveness he had not earned.
"You have no reason to be kind to me, brother. I am the one who sent you to this place."
"I disagree," Anna replied, soft but firm. "You are more deserving and in need of kindness than most."
"Oh, hang on now, I never actually agreed to be nice to the guy." Another voice rang out behind them, a teasing affection at odds with the words being said.
"Believe me, darling, nice is nothing anyone ever accused you of being." The British man shot a disgruntled look at the grinning archangel beside him.
"Now, play nice boys. You only have to stand to be near each other for a short time." Gabriel responded to Anna's words by bestowing Balthazar with a cocky grin.
"Awww, if Balthy wanted to come over for a play date he should have just asked."
"Stand to be near each other? Are, you in fact standing, brother?" Balthazar quipped. "My mistake, I assumed you were kneeling at my feet."
"Now, Balthy, you know there's only one reason I kneel, and you have not showered me with nearly enough gifts for that."
Castiel stood silently, gaping at his brothers, mistrustful of the warm feeling he felt spreading through his veins at the sight of them. Gabriel took in his expression and shot him a wink.
"He obviously didn't learn what he should have from his time in humanity. I would have thought that by now you would have had something up your ass other than that stick of yours, Cas." Gabriel's grin widened. "Huh. I made a rhyme."
"You are a poet and a scholar." Balthazar said, dryly. Gabriel ignored him and rubbed his hands together briskly.
"Let's get this little show on the road, shall we? I'm suddenly struck with the urge to write some dirty limericks."
Cas blinked slowly.
"Did you somehow plan this?"
"You being in this wretched place?" Balthazar responded by asking another question and cast a dark look around them. "No, brother. You have truly met with the grisliest pitfalls of free will."
"However," Anna continued, "Once you arrived, we were faced with the task of getting you out again."
Castiel continued to stare at them with disbelief.
"Get me out? Why?"
Anna's only response was a soft and slightly sad smile. Both Gabriel and Balthazar's faces were inscrutable. Castiel tried again.
"I deserve nothing less than being here in this place. Anna, I killed you, and have felt nothing but regret since that day." Castiel turned to Balthazar, his tone turning harsher. "I betrayed you, and many of our other brothers, in some misplaced attempt to do what our Father has chosen not to. If I were human, I would have been cast into hell for far less blood on my hands. I should be left here to rot."
It was Anna who finally broke the silence that followed Castiel's words, at barely a whisper.
"What's the matter? You don't think you deserve to be saved?" Castiel jerked back as if he had been shot, his words to Dean hitting him like a slap to the face.
"You think I have been righteous?" He intended his words to be hard, cutting, but instead they came out like a plea, carried through stagnant air to an absent Father that never was.
"No, Cas." Anna put her hand on his shoulder. "I think you've been human." Cas looked at her with haunted eyes. Anna slid cool fingers to his temples, an anchor tied to his beating heart.
His beating heart.
"What?" He started, his voice choking off as the first gasp brought oxygen flooding through his blood.
"Angels can't pass from Purgatory." Gabriel reached out and placed his palm flat on his brother's chest with a small smile. "Your grace is not what can save you now, bro."
Castiel gasped and closed his eyes to the sharp stab of pain that rocked through his core. Gabriel took his hand away.
"We'll keep it safe for you, brother." Balthazar said softly. "Until the time comes when you need it again."
"If you want it." Anna corrected. "That is a choice you will still have to make."
Castiel looked around himself, bewildered.
"I still don't understand. What does this mean?"
"It means you're going home, Castiel." Anna reached out to straighten his trench coat.
"To our Father?" Cas asked softly, images flashing through his mind of a human's childlike belief that dying means being gathered into eternally loving arms.
"No, you prat. We're sending you home. Back to Earth. Didn't the Winchesters at least teach you what that means?" Castiel found himself worrying his lip between his teeth as he looked at Balthazar, a newly found human gesture.
"You should hate me for what I did to you. Anna as well." Castiel paused and spared Gabriel a glance, the smile only apparent in his eyes. "You, I had nothing to do with."
Gabriel let out a full body laugh and clapped him on the shoulder.
"Yeah, our little boy is growing up just fine."
Castiel felt the smile creeping onto his lips, that unretractable warmth spreading again through his limbs.
"But how could you do this? No Angel has the power to take another's grace. And even if they could, are you suggesting I return to infancy as you did, Anna?" Uncertainty hedged his tone. "I'm not sure I want that."
Gabriel laughed again.
"Of course you don't want that, tiger. You already have a fully grown boy toy just waiting to get you out of that awful suit and into something a little more form fitting." Gabriel waggled his eyebrows as Castiel continued to stare at him blankly.
"What?"
Balthazar rolled his eyes.
"Oh dear. Even as a human he's still a terrible prude. He'll have to work on that." Gabriel's eyes lit up at that.
"Hey! Why don't you borrow Balthy's shirt when you go back? It's feminine enough that Dean will be able to skip hours of agonizing yet manly soul searching." Gabriel plucked at the vee of Balthazar's shirt as he spoke. Balthazar sourly swatted his hand away and continued speaking as if his brother had never interrupted him.
"And in case you hadn't noticed, we already did it." Balthazar cast a significant look into the briar patch where a single rose grew in the midst of the jumbled mess. "You'll return to Earth just as you are now. The body is your own, and the life is yours to do with as you choose."
Castiel subconsciously trailed his fingertips across his stomach, aware for the first time of how all of the pieces of the human body that he had so lovingly crafted together felt from the inside, warm, and churning, and electric.
"But you did not have the power." Castiel tried again. "Even you." Castiel's words were aimed at Gabriel, but it was Anna who responded.
"Not alone, no. But with all of us together working for a common goal, we could accomplish anything." Anna's voice turned wistful. "That's something we seem to have forgotten in the passage of time."
Castiel shook his head.
"But, even the three of you ..." Anna cut him off.
"Not just the three of us, Cas. All of us. All of the angels that were sent to Purgatory during the course of this war. All of us together had grace enough to give this gift to you."
If Cas thought he had been shocked before, that was nothing compared to what he felt now.
"But it was I who killed so many of them" the words were pulled out of him in a reluctant whisper.
"If it makes you feel any better, many of them still consider this to be a punishment." Gabriel responded brightly. Anna slapped him in the shoulder before continuing.
"We love you, Cas. We have always loved you. You are our little brother, and nothing can change that."
Castiel smiled gently.
"That, at least, I understand." Suddenly his vision was filled with Gabriel, who crowded around him, power crackling into every pore as he reached for Castiel's forehead.
"Time to go home, little bro."
As Castiel closed his eyes, waiting for this fall to take him away not into darkness, but into light, he was left with one last image of a single rose against the briar patch. For the first time since he began to feel emotion, he felt the burning need for penance ease from his stomach, to be replaced with something warm, something churning, something electric.
Something alive. It was time to go home.