Title: For Him to Suffer

Fandom: Supernatural

Word count: Roughly 800

Rating: G

Warnings: None

Pairings: None, Dean/Cas if you squint hard

Notes: This is kind of what I imagined going through Cas's mind during 7X21.

Summary: "…he realizes why he's still here. This is his punishment, his price he must pay for his deeds. He's trapped here, forever."

This is it. This is finally it. Millennium of years stretch out before him everything that has ever occurred in the history of the world is at his fingertips. But all he sees is the last three years. He sees sparks exploding from the sky as doors are ripped from their hinges. He sees a scared boy pretending to be a man fighting even after he has nothing left, he sees a good soul tainted by evil desperately trying to prove his more than the scars that mar his essence. He sees it all laid before him jumbled and mixed up, the sad seeps in with the happy. The confusion mixes with the clarity and it becomes a single point fixed at the end of an angle blade. A blade that is held by a sister, someone who once served with him, that fought in the great rebellion with him. Her hand is gripping his jacket, or his is it Jimmy's? Or is it is his now? Jimmy is no longer here the Leviathans hallowed him out, ate away his soul, ate away the steady thrum of grace that had inhabited the vessel.

He stares at the point arching towards him, he can feel the phantom pain of it piercing his skin, it's his now there is nothing left of the original owner, nothing left of the man that sacrificed himself so his child could survive, could live a life free of all the horror that inhabits the world. He knows what will happen, he knows that it will end him, permanently. Even his confused catastrophe of a mind can suss out will happen once that blade slams into him.

It doesn't even pain him to admit he wants it. He knows it should, he should feel remorseful that he's going to blink out of existence before he could prove to Dean how truly sorry he was. Before he could show Dean that he knew what he was doing, that he was doing it to save Dean. It did not end that way, it went wrong, horribly horribly wrong. But his intentions had been good at the beginning, they had been pure. They had become corrupted though, corrupted through pain and betrayal and loss. He should mourn the fact that he could never truly express to Sam how much the taller man had meant to him. Could never tell him how much he admired and envied his strength to keep moving, that after all the hell that had been thrown at him, quite literally, that he was able to keep his head up, keep his heart where it belonged.

He won't get to say all this, to show the Winchesters what they meant to him, but he doesn't care. Because right now that blade is arching back, reaching its pinnacle before it will slice through the two layers of fabric then right through his skin till it reaches the grace that swirls and tumbls through his body and rip it apart, rip it out of reality. He smiles, a small smile he's still not used to it, it stretches his mouth in an odd way.

He waits and waits. Then there's a blinding white light and his smiles grows even wider, it's over, it's done. Everything is done, Dean and Sam can go one with their lives, forgot him, and move on, it will be better this way. Yes better.

A frown tugs at the corner of his lips, nothings happening, he feels no pain, doesn't feel the pin prick of the angel blade. When he looks up the blinding white light fades away, the body of his sister falls and is replaced by the body of the demon Meg. Her face contorts for a second to her true form, it's hideous and his grace lurches at it, screams at him to destroy it. She's familiar though so he simply stares up at her in confusion. Why hadn't she let him die, why couldn't she let him slip away.

It's as he's standing up he realizes why he's still here. This is his punishment, his price he must pay for his deeds. He's trapped here, forever. He has to face the Winchesters, has to watch them look at him with eyes full of pity and anger. His punishment is for Dean to yell at him, tell him he is broken and no one cares. To see Sam every day and know that he nearly killed him, that he released something worse than death within the young man. His punishment is to suffer, to see just how much horror he let into this world, to see the heart he broke and the trust he threw away. His punishment is to stay with the Winchesters and see what he lost.