A/N: Just a little post ep to 8x17 Goodbye Stranger. There's no way Cas immediately was as calm as he was on that bus in the very end. Title comes from The Wright Brother's "Blood On My Name" I also don't own Supernatural.
With Dean's shouts ringing in his ears, Castiel fled the crypt. The tablet bit into his hands, and the wind made all sound muffled, pulsing in his ears. He flew erratically, before a sudden fear of his grace being detected made him haphazardly land, staggering into the dirt of a field in Oklahoma, miles away from where they had been (he and Dean standing face to face in that dusty crypt, and blood and panic and stop stop stop I won't hurt Dean), but still not far enough. He wanted to run, run forever and never face what he'd done, what had been done to him.
Castiel's shoes scuffed on uneven soil, and he felt a crawling over his neck and back, his wings flaring, hiding, protecting him from the eyes of Naomi, and everything that had happened. His throat was tight. The stone was too firm a thing to grip.
Naomi's influence had yet to reappear, but Castiel pushed the memories away (stop stop) as if the very thought of her name would make her swoop down and hook him in her claws, force him to become the puppet he was, dancing on a string. Only Dean had broken him free, and he was back in the crypt, back there far from him. Where he needed to be.
The tablets influence was like and unlike Naomi's and utterly terrifying. He couldn't put it down, nor leave it unprotected, and some sense of sentience told him to flee as soon as his hands held the stone. His overwrought emotions would not disagree, and so he flew frantically, rather than face Dean's questions, rather than stay where Naomi knew he was. He had to keep a low profile, as Dean would say. Stay under her notice. Act as a human.
It would have helped if he hadn't flown to the middle of tilled field, with no road in sight.
With a far too human sigh, Castiel tried to get a hold of his emotions and just walk. Pick a direction. One step first and then the other. He concentrated on tamping down his grace, his powers, not wanting to be a signal to the searching Heavens. He felt exposed, beige against brown in the too-hot-for-the-season sun, but there was little he could do, save hold fast, and walk.
Without his grace regulating his temperature, and healing small aches and pains, he quickly felt overheated, and blisters formed on his heels. Jimmy's dress shoes were not meant to trudge over this type of terrain, but there was little he could do about it. He kept his grace in a tight knot in his chest, and didn't let any leak out, not even to cool his sweating brow.
He walked. For hours. At some point he tripped, and the tablet flew from his hands. That's when he noticed the blood. It was caked across the knuckles on his right hand, smeared on the inside of his palm. There was an alarming scrape of another's skin under his thumbnail, rust colored and sickening. It was all Dean's.
Everything came rushing back, the beating he'd handed to his only friend in the world, if he could even be termed as such after all this. He'd smashed Dean, crushed him with barely a thought. He'd been protesting in Heaven, but that hadn't changed the way Dean's bones had felt, cracking under his fist. The way his flesh had bruised and bled. The crack of his arm when Castiel had coldly twisted it.
He knelt on the ground, staring at his shaking, marred fingers. The tablet lay forgotten a foot ahead of him, as he panted, the sweat beading on his forehead, and not from the heat.
What have I done?
Castiel scrambled backwards, dragging his knees through the soft furrows, scattering the seeds that were planted there, the small greenlings of sprouts. More death. The tablet seemed to pulse, but he couldn't answer, caught up in the sudden, overwhelming smell of Dean's blood. He had to get it off.
Standing quickly, he scooped up the tablet, and stowed it under his left arm, trying not to smear anymore blood on it. There were already browning smudges on the stone, in the grooves of unreadable text. He forced his gaze from it. He started walking again, this time faster, this time with gasping breaths, and feet that couldn't move quick enough. Castiel longed to take flight, to reach the ocean, some lake and just dive in, wash this taint from his hands. But he'd never be able to wash it away, and to fly was to invite death.
So he ran. His shoes skidded and plowed through the careful lines of plants. The farmer will be upset. He fell at least twice more, but each time he pushed himself to his feet again, grabbing the tablet (which would not be left behind) and ran faster. He didn't bother to brush the dirt away. His face itched with sunburn and dust. But he ran.
Finally, finally a road came into view. And on the side of the road, an oasis. A rest area, of the kind the Winchesters had been stopping at all their lives. Maybe they'd even been to this one. Lawns showed brilliant green, and the buildings stone walls were white and blinding. If ever there was a place that Heaven should have been like, it was this little, grungy building with two bathrooms and a vending machine.
Castiel stumbled into the parking lot, the asphalt jarring after the miles of soft dirt. His legs were shaky, and his breath was still too fast, and with the dirt and the blood, he probably looked like a madman. But, the culture of mind-your-own-business here on the road in the middle of nowhere kept curious eyes off him, as he walked into the mens bathroom, and practically shoved someone out of the way to thrust his hands under the sink's faucet.
And scrub and scrub and scrub.
The blood mixed with the dirt, and he couldn't tell what was what anymore, it was all reddish brown water running away into the pipes. The tablet shifted under his elbow, and he hitched it up without removing his hands from the stream. Eventually, he ducked his head under as well, and the icy water went a long way towards feeling like himself again. As he'd told Meg, he was just Castiel. That was all he ever wanted to be.
After a long time, after the water cooled his flushed and pinked face, and washed away the itch of the run, he lifted his head. Castiel could see himself in the shined metal that made up the mirror in the place. He was dripping and wide eyed, but there was a note of clarity in his eyes that he hadn't seen in a long time. Pain, yes. Guilt, depression, and anger and hurt more than he could comprehend also peeked out from his vessel's blue eyes. But Castiel was there too. And for a moment, the sight blurred a little in a mix of relief and anguish, and he felt a few warm, salty droplets make their way down his face too, to join in the tap water in dripping off his nose and chin.