Oops. Here's a comment fic I could swear I'd posted here, but apparently not.
Prompt from Lassiterfics : "Anna visits Cas in the hospital. (She isn't dead until we see her shadow wings, okay.) "
Apex
The world...swam. He remembered the ocean, the great womb of the world, with its tides and its depths and its cold embrace. This was not that. But his sight had taken on that same hazy and liquid view, like looking through time.
He suspected it was the drugs. It was vaguely familiar from the time after the liquor store, but now it was strong, it's pull inescapable, and delivered in drips directly into the vein.
He rode its currents, lost himself in them. Embraced apathy; he didn't want to think.
He felt her before he saw her, the warm infusion of heaven sinking into his borrowed bones. He closed his eyes. "They told me you were dead," he stated, still not looking. "You are dead." Regret welled up under his collarbone and rolled downward, drowning lungs and stuttering heart.
He opened his eyes. She stood over his bed, lovely and eternal, in no other form than her own. No earthly flesh to weigh her down; no ties to the leaden, ponderous earth. His sister. His comrade.
Castiel sighed. It felt strange and too sensual, rough and delicate, as the air moved from the lungs into the throat. "This is a.." he searched, straining for a concept as illusive as will. "Hallucination," he concluded. His voice sounded empty and forlorn to his own ears, lacking the reverberation it should have held.
She smiled. Is it? He heard nothing, but remembered.
"Michael-" he started, and then despair closed the throat as he remembered the warehouse and why he was here.
She brushed a hand down his face. It tickled, like the warm sun shining through the window. Faith, brother.
"You speak to me of faith?" It crawled out of his throat and on to his tongue, leaving behind a bitter trail. He turned his face to the wall, waiting for the phantom of this drug-addled mind to dissolve into something else.
He felt her before he saw her, the warm infusion of heaven sinking into his borrowed bones. Her wings twined around him as she rested her forehead on his.
It felt like forgiveness.