The angels, they're falling.
Dean gazed up at the night sky alight with hundreds of comets. It should have been beautiful. A shower of lights, raining down on the earth, streaking through the night sky as if God himself had decided to display the awesome power of His creation. But this was not God's doing, and it was not beautiful to Dean. Wherever God was hiding, Dean was sure that he was definitely not happy, because every one of those beautiful lights that were falling were not shooting stars. They were His soldiers. While a different man might have stopped to ponder the magnificence of the scene playing out before him, all Dean could do was wonder which one was Cas. He had to find Cas. He could be hurt, broken, lost, confused. Dean refused to even consider the possibility that he was dead. He couldn't lose his best friend again. The son of a bitch had already died too many times and Dean couldn't stand to lose him again. Dean needed Cas.
As he watched the angels falling, a childish idea struck him. Dean knew the things speeding across the sky weren't really shooting stars, but he didn't care. He had to hope. In his desperation, Dean did something he had never even done as a child: he picked a star and wished on it.
Please let Cas come home to us.
Please let Sam be okay.
Please.
His Sammy let out a little groan beside him. Dean tore his eyes away from the sky and looked at him. He looked terrible; his long hair was dull, his skin pulled tight over his cheekbones, and he had dark circles under his eyes. Sam reached out with trembling hands and twisted his hand in Dean's shirt. Dean pulled him close and helped him to his feet.
"It's gonna be okay, Sammy. I'm gonna take care of you."
Dean half carried him to the passenger door of the Impala and eased him in gently, supporting his head and neck like a small child, guiding him to lie down in the seat.
Dean would do anything for Sam. He would die a thousand deaths, rip apart an army of demons with his bare hands. Anything. He wanted to fight, to destroy whatever the trials had done to his brother, but for now all he could do was brush Sam's hair out of his eyes as he drifted to sleep. Sam was his responsibility. He loved his brother more than anything, and he refused to lose him. He would find a way to fix this and get Sammy back on his feet again.
Dean closed the car door and entered the church to get Crowley. They couldn't just leave him there, and Dean had an idea about what to do with him. He led Crowley to the back seat. The mook looked scared; worried that Dean was going to stab him in his throat. Dean shoved him in and slid behind the wheel. Sammy pillowed his head on Dean's thigh and sighed in his sleep, just like when they were little kids. As they hit the pavement and they took off down the highway, the last of the angels fell. The now dark sky seemed ominous. Dean's hands tightened on the steering wheel.
"Cas, buddy, where the hell are you?" He whispered. "Come back to us man."
There was no answer, so Dean turned the car in the direction of the bunker. If Cas was okay, Dean knew he would make his way home.
Castiel looked up at the sky, and saw his brothers and sisters plummeting to Earth. He felt a tightness in his throat and his eyes stung. A drop of water cascaded from his eye and down his cheek.
How peculiar, he thought.
Then a choked noise came from his throat and he fell to his knees chest heaving. These must be tears. His first tears as a human, shed for his kin, because of what he had done to them. So if these were tears then this crushing sensation in his chest, like his heart weighed a million pounds, must be emotions. He lay face down in the soft leaves and tried to identify each feeling as they washed over him in endless waves.
Sadness. Guilt. Shame. Anger.
He had experienced emotion to a small degree during the apocalypse when he had fallen, but it was nowhere near as intense as this. All the emotion swirling inside him was overwhelming. Castiel started to hyperventilate, his crying changing to a full scale panic attack. He felt like he was losing his mind. He automatically reached out with his mind and prayed to his Father.
Father, what do I do? Make it stop, please.
As if in answer to his plea, an image of Dean popped into his head. Dean. Dean. He had to do what Dean would do. Cas thought back to when he had first pulled the hunter from Hell. His friend had been haunted by the memories and the guilt of what he had done there. He'd had nightmares, panic attacks, and generally didn't seem to think he deserved to continue drawing breath. Cas knew different. Dean was a good man, a righteous man. Castiel, Angel of the Lord had touched Dean's soul when he raised him from the pit, and all he felt was good. Cas had never felt anything more beautiful in all of his existence. But Dean didn't see that. His mind was turbulent, his heart heavy, and yet he had carried on. Dean had shoved it all to the back of his mind and locked it in a steel box, never to be examined too closely. Cas decided to try it. He had to be strong like Dean.
He took all of his new emotions, his memories of Metatron's betrayal, the agony of his grace being ripped from him, and most painfully, the look on Dean's face when he had asked him not to trust Metatron, and locked them away in his mind. Castiel's breathing slowed, the tears stopped, and his trembling vanished. He took several deep breaths, in and out, then got up from his prone position on the ground, brushing dead leaves and dirt from his trench coat.
He had to get to the bunker. Dean and Sam would be there.
If Sam was still alive, he thought. No, don't think that, Dean stopped him. He had to. Shut it down, Cas. Be like Dean.
They would have no way to find where he had fallen, so they would have gone home. Maybe it could be his home now if they even wanted him anymore. Cas had caused so much damage to the Winchesters and the world. Raising Sam from Hell and then keeping it a secret. Working with Crowley. Unleashing the Leviathan. Leaving Dean alone in Purgatory and then staying behind when his friend tried to save him. Naomi forcing him to beat Dean almost as badly as Lucifer had when he had taken Sam as a vessel. Taking the angel tablet, and now Metatron. What if this was the last straw? What if Dean slammed the door in his face and he was all alone? He would have brought it on himself, but the thought made him physically sick. He had to make it right. He couldn't lose the Winchesters. He couldn't lose Dean. The green eyed hunter was his closest friend, more of a brother to him than even the other angels in Heaven had been. He couldn't bear it to lose Dean.
Cas didn't remember any of Dean's phone numbers. He didn't even know where he was, so he did the only thing he could. Castiel started walking. He walked and walked for hours, surrounded by dense forest. Every noise made him jump. He was by no means a coward, but he was unarmed and didn't like the idea of wrestling a wild animal in the dark. Eventually Cas came to a deserted highway. He remembered that humans sometimes stuck their thumbs out and cars appeared to give them a ride. He stuck out his thumb and was discouraged when nothing happened. Perhaps he was doing it wrong. He stood by the side of the road with his arm out and thumb up for a while, but nothing happened. He must be doing something wrong. Maybe there was a spell involved. He would have to ask Dean. In the meantime, he chose a direction and started walking.
Eventually, he came to a sign that announced that he was outside of Ottawa, Kansas. Kansas! Of all the places he could have fallen to, he was lucky enough to fall in the same state as the bunker. He did some calculations with the maps he had memorized throughout the centuries. Ottawa was roughly 250 miles from Lebanon. If he could manage to steal a car, he could make it in about four hours. He knew how to hot wire a car. Dean had taught him. Cas had remembered how at ease he looked as his strong, capable hands manipulated the wires under the dashboard. It made a warmth he didn't understand bloom in his chest, but he didn't mind. It put him at ease. Driving would be another problem altogether. Castiel knew the theory behind how to operate a motor vehicle, but had never had to do it before. He had simply willed himself across time and space, or one of the Winchesters had driven. However, Cas was confident he could figure it out if he had to.
He followed the curve of the highway and saw the lights of the small city. On the outskirts, there was a shabby motel. It was the middle of the night, and all seemed quiet. There was no one in the parking lot, so Cas decided to take a car from there. He saw a small blue vehicle, battered and run down like him, and decided this was the one. The emblem said Tracker. Cas was in luck: it was unlocked. He fiddled with some buttons and got the trunk to open. Inside he found a toolbox. He remembered that humans could track cars by their registration tags, so he quickly found a screwdriver in the box and swapped the license plates with a nearby Honda Civic. He slid behind the wheel and with a few fumbling movements, exposed the wires beneath the steering column. He stripped them the way Dean had shown him and tapped them together until the car rumbled to a start.
Castiel put the car in drive. In his inexperience, he hit the gas too hard and sent the car hurtling toward the wall of the motel. He panicked and slammed on the brake, sending him jolting forward in the seat. Cas took a deep breath and tried to think of how Dean had gotten the car to work. No, Dean always drove too fast and recklessly. He was too new at operating a motor vehicle to try that, so instead he thought about how Sam drove. With that image in mind, Castiel gently eased his foot on the gas and was pleased when the car moved smoothly. He directed the car to the highway and drove carefully, a sense of excitement overtaking him. He was going to Dean. He was going home.