Written for comment_fic on livejournal

It is when you start to see individuals that the walls begin to crumble, Anna knew. It's when you favor one over another, when you think that your love for one should mean an exception to the rules. Anna recognized this process in Castiel, his on-the-brink-ness. She liked to think she had some small part in it.

The day before Anna came to earth, she asked Cas for help. To try to be like humans, just for a moment. She wanted to connect with Cas the way humans connect. To better understand their situation, to expand their compassion for their charges, Anna had told him.

Cas went along. He had trouble disobeying authority at the time, and Anna was authority then. But it wasn't very good, Anna knew.

It felt good. It felt really good. But there was a certain emptiness in the act, the knowledge that it was just an imitation.

The next day, Anna decided she wanted the real thing. She fell.

And when she got recovered her memories and then her grace, it became clear that that brief connection to Cas really had left its mark. When she heard the angelic voices, she should have heard them all equally. But she always heard Cas' the most clearly, the most intimately. No matter where she was, he seemed closest. They were connected, individual to individual, and not just as fellows in arms.

It was wrong for her to think of Cas as an individual instead of a soldier. But now it didn't bother her so much to be wrong. She savored that connection, being able to sense what was going on with Cas, his doubts and struggles. It wasn't likely that Cas could sense her in a reciprocal way; he was still too loyal a soldier to think of her as an individual, as a special voice among the voices. But she knew what was going on with Cas, possibly even better than Cas knew himself.

She could sense how much Cas had changed. How much he was thinking about Dean when he should have been thinking about winning.

She could even sense that seed of desire, the curiosity Cas had about Dean. And, more importantly, about himself.

Anna could feel - both in her body and her mind - Cas' longing, his wonder at Dean, and with Dean, Cas' slowly resurfacing memories of the lines and textures of humanity.

She felt Cas' sense of discovery when looking at the conflicts flitting across Dean's eyes, his protectiveness when watching Dean sleep. His shock when Dean dared to flirt with him.

And in those unusual unguarded moments, when Dean would look at Cas with eyes full of hope, as if Cas were still saving him from something, as if Cas would finally be the one to show Dean why he was worthy of love, Cas felt a pull so strong it nearly broke him.

And Anna could feel it all. How Cas could see Dean change. How he made Cas want to change.

That's what's dangerous about individuals, Anna knew. There's always the danger (or the hope) that they might change into something completely different.

Her sense of him wasn't perfect, though. She was dragged away, to be tortured for information, not that she had any that would help. But amid the pain and the dark, at the back of her mind, she could sense Cas. And as they finally decided to end Anna, she tried to make her last moments of experience as full as possible. She searched her mind for the presence of Cas, to feel the strange and wondrous and unsettling things Cas was finding in himself. She remembered that feeling, standing on the precipice while the walls come tumbling down around you. She remembered what it was like to be the unchanging being who was about to change. And in the moment before she shattered into nonexistence, she confounded her executioners by giving a small but gratified smile.