Title: Can't Find My Way Home
Summary: Follow-up to my story 'The Art of Misdirection.' Castiel has managed to rid himself of Lucifer but finds himself basically human, alone, and insecure. Post episode 7.19.
Synopsis of 'The Art of Misdirection:' At an abandoned factory near the mental institution, Meg sets up a ritual that would essentially kill Castiel, and Cas agrees because he can't tolerate the Lucifer-vision anymore. Castiel asks Dean, along with Sam and Bobby, to attend. Cas starts the ritual early, preventing Meg from being there, then distracts Lucifer for long enough to alter the ritual and substitute one that will destroy his grace, as well as a tiny piece of Lucifer's grace that he pulled out of Sam. The substituted ritual should result in Cas becoming basically human, though there's a possibility that it could kill him. Knowing that the process will be explosive, he sends the Winchesters and Bobby out of the building. As the fic ends, they leave, not knowing whether Cas will survive the process.
AN: Most of this chapter is a stream of consciousness type thing. The remainder of the story will likely be of a more standard style.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize. The title comes from the song of the same name, written by Steve Winwood and first performed by Blind Faith.
Pain. The first sensation that Castiel became aware of was pain. All-encompassing, excruciating pain, screaming from every atom of his vessel.
(Body, he told himself, no longer a vessel. If you survive this, it is now your own and only body.)
Castiel sucked in a breath, discovering even deeper depths of agony, but determinedly sucked in another and another, until finally the pain stabilized and receded to a tolerable level. He waited another few minutes, hoping for further improvement, which did not come. Eventually, he gathered his will and began to move.
He opened his eyes, seeing a mostly empty room with a bent metal framework lying haphazardly against the far wall. Broken ceramic lay around it, along with a sticky-looking red liquid and several unlit candles, one still smoking slightly. Sunlight streamed weakly through dusty windows and flashed on something silver in a corner (a knife, his mind offered in explanation).
With an embarrassing whimper, he struggled to sit up. When that was moderately successful, he crawled to his knees and ultimately to his feet. Swaying badly, he looked around himself again and wished that he hadn't.
His wings. Burnt to ash on the floor. Nothing left but a fragile imprint already scuffed from his ungainly ascent to his feet.
Unable to bear it for a moment, he squeezed his eyes shut, unwittingly releasing tears that then rolled down his cheeks. He forced himself to open his eyes again and tried to locate something that would indicate the destruction of another, smaller, piece of grace in addition to his own. However, he found that his eyes wouldn't focus properly (whether from his devolution to human-like status or from the tears flooding them, he didn't know).
He searched his mind, even sent a few comments into the ether that previously would have sent his own private Lucifer into a lather, and nothing happened. He decided to accept for now the theory that he was well and truly alone in his head again.
But alone in all respects, it seemed, as he resurveyed the empty room. Something inside him told him that was unexpected, that someone should have been there to help him to his feet.
Dean. Sam. Bobby. They had all been here, not that long ago. Hadn't they? Lucifer, too, but his absence was fine, desired, the whole point of this course of action.
His head swam, his recent past just a blur of arguments, vows, farewells, apologies, and more arguments. If he tried to latch onto a single idea, memory, thought, anything at all from the past day, it slipped through his metaphorical fingers like the wind. If he let the thoughts come to him on their own, he seemed to have better luck. (But his mind coolly warned that not all of his memories could be trusted. Lucifer had been here, after all.)
Memories from a few days ago were clearer: Lucifer looking bored and lying and offering to let him die peacefully, the surprise on the orderly's face when he unexpectedly looked up and asked if there could be hamburgers for breakfast, Meg rolling her eyes and drolly promising to call Dean-o just the very first chance she got, the first inkling of a sliver of an idea to defeat the Devil at his own game, the immediate secreting of that idea in the shadowy depths of his mind so that same Devil couldn't find it, praying to a Father he knew was undependable that Dean would come and understand and forgive him enough to help him for the sake of their combined purpose if not their lost friendship.
Memories from further back are even more clear: saving Sam, dispatching demons, trench-coat, riding next to Dean in a car (not his car, though, for some reason) while he talked about how he couldn't forget a friend's betrayal (Cas' betrayal), Meg smirking in the back seat, healing people, helping people, making amends for sins he didn't remember at the time, Daphne, the lake, something crawling beneath his skin and throughout his grace and devouring him from the inside out, Balthazar, holy fire, betrayal, Crowley, lies—
He grabbed his head with his hands, rubbed, squeezed, tried to make the memories fade or to claw them out or just make them stop.
First things first. Get help. Get out of here. One of those things should definitely be his first priority. Both of them would probably be best.
Getting out of the immediate here was an easy concept, a bit daunting given his current energy and pain levels, but easy to comprehend. Just walk out. But where was help? The Winchesters and Bobby had been here earlier, he's all but certain of that. Dean had even helped him. Or had he simply used Dean? Lied to him and used him and then sent him away.
Yes, that's right. He told them to leave, didn't he? So they would be safe, so they won't get hurt when his grace was torched. Maybe they were waiting outside, waiting for a signal that it was now safe to approach. After all, it hadn't been that long, just a few minutes since he woke up. Just a few more minutes since they left. He couldn't have been unconscious for long.
He would just have to go to them. Get out of here, first things first.
He steeled himself for the long trek outside. But something had him walking over to the corner, leaning down (uninjured hand pressing heavily into the wall, sliding down it with him, keeping him steady), and picking up the sleek silver knife. He clutched like a talisman, providing himself with a (false) sense of security in a world fraught with dangers for someone as flimsy as he now was.
He made his way slowly down two flights of stairs and staggered out into bright sunshine, agonizingly bright sunshine. When he could finally open his eyes more than a sliver, he looked around for his erstwhile friends, or the vehicle that had brought them here, and anything, simply anything, that would let him know that he wasn't alone.
There was nothing.
Not a car in the vicinity, not a Winchester in sight, nothing. They had left, as he asked. They had not come back, as he had hoped. Not yet, at least. It had been just past dawn when he said goodbye. How long had passed since the spell took him under? He looked to the sky, to gauge the hour.
Dark spots dancing before his eyes, he noted that the sun was halfway up the horizon at this time. Mid-morning then.
Mid-morning. Long after dawn. Not just minutes, but hours had passed since his friends left him. Had truly left him. If they were coming back, surely they would have done so by now.
Or perhaps they had come back, seen the evidence that the ritual had worked as hoped (his burnt-out wings), and left, contented with that result. Perhaps they'd thought he was dead, perhaps they didn't bother to check, perhaps they just stepped over and around his unconscious broken body and decided to leave him to it.
Perhaps he couldn't blame them if they did.
As he stared, lost, around that empty corner of the universe, he wondered for the first time just why exactly he'd worked and schemed so hard to survive.
AN2: I promise that this fic will cheer up. Probably. *wink*