It's dark.
It's dark because Castiel is blocking out the harsh, painful light from the too-bright every-motel-lamp-ever beside him with his palms. Except that lamp is on dim. And the radio fuzz exacerbating his migraine is two rooms away. And the fibers of his small clothes and suit trousers and the moth-eaten comforter and the threadbare sheets and the springs of the bed press harshly against what may as well be tender, new skin, and it all feels like lying on a bed of nails.
As an angel, Castiel could see—would see—everything anywhere all the time. He could snapshot the globe down to the very molecular structures in an instant and process it all the next. Stripped of his grace, though, his senses are dulled a thousandfold, and yet, each is an overload.
Well. "His" senses. Jimmy's senses. He doesn't know where to draw the line, anymore, if he ever did, if it ever mattered. That place beside his grace, the one he could always tap to check on Jimmy, to glean knowledge of some thitherto unknown social protocol, to seek internal human counsel, it's—not gone, but not open. Cut off. Unavailable. Like a memory that you have only just forgotten, that when you try harder to remember, it only slips further away. He's blocking out the light and sound and touch and smell (aftershave, Dean? It could knock out a rhinoceros) to search for it. No luck.
"Cas" is whispered from a broken-down sofa across the room, but Dean may as well have screamed it into the ex-angel's splitting ears. The reply is a miserable grunt. "Cas, you swear you can't fix him?" Another grunt. "I'm gonna need more than that."
"I swear," says Castiel, "I've told you everything I know, Dean. Now, can we please not speak? It hurts."
Dean complies. Between the two of them lies Sam, staring blank at the ceiling, haggard, gaunt, pallid. There is little time and less to do about it. Dean's earlier sobs, pleading, begging, desperation, it all has dwindled down to silent tears that collect on his jaw and stain his shirt.
"I truly am sorry, Dean."
It's sincere. Earnest.
"I know, Cas."
Then, Sam gasps. Dean scrambles instantly to kneel at his side, clasping hands with his brother and looking so, so... fragile. But Sam makes no other sound.
This new silence has to be filled, and Dean takes it upon himself to do so: "We did it, Buddy. We beat 'em, in the end." It sounds a little like a prayer and a lot like yearning. "Fate. Demons. Angels. Whoever. No one will ever dick with you again." Broken, beaten yearning. "You hear that? You did good, Sammy. You're done. Just rest, now, and I'll see ya later, Kid." The most Sam has moved in the two hours they have been in this motel is now, when his nearly vacant eyes make contact with Dean's. Then, close.
Sam Winchester dies at three minutes past midnight.
Six hours. Dean rises with the sun. Castiel is... tired.
"I'm out, Cas."
"Dean—"
"I'm done. I'm going to drive as far as I can, and I'm going to bury my brother. And then, it's over."
Castiel sighs but nods. "I agree; that would be for the best. I doubt there is any role I can play in this... new war." Then, Dean isn't meeting his expectant gaze.
"No, Cas," he says, suddenly unnervingly even.
"Your confidence in me is appreciated, but—"
"No, I mean, no, Cas."
"Repeating the statement has shed little more light on—"
"This is toxic, Cas." Dean has raised his voice, and Castiel winces with every well-paced syllable. "Us, together; it can only go bad." A sigh. "Worse."
"So what you mean to say is—"
"Good bye, Cas. And good luck."
The screaming tactile-audio-visual assault is drowned out by an overwhelming surge of... Castiel thinks this is what is known as grief, and if he is to confess, it is likely overdue. Still, his only recourse is to sink deeper onto his bed.
Dean collects Sam's body in Silence, then, his belongings, everything they'd brought. Then, he's gone. Castiel feels the urge to... to do something. Instead, he whimpers, confused, pitiful, and punctuates the sound with "Goodbye, Dean.
Castiel recalls a question in human theology—"How many angels can stand on the head of a pin?" It seems that a reasonable model has been erected at the Sioux Falls Greyhound Station. Vessel upon smartly-dressed vessel crowds the walls, the sitting area, the courtesy desk, and each one wears the same dejected, mournful expression. Castiel vaguely wonders where they all are going. Although it's not as though he can help them. He buys a ticket aimed straight for Lebanon.
"You're in luck," his vendoress remarks in all her trained, professionally chipper demeanor. "You'll only have to wait about an hour for the next bus out that way."
Castiel takes another pointed look around at his brothers and replies, "Are they waiting?"
"For what?" she says, voice lowering subtly. "Every one of them came to the desk, and when we asked, 'Where to?' they just... shuffled away."
"For what can they wait, if they do not know what is supposed to come next?"
"Something like that, sir," she says, somewhere between sympathy and curiosity. "And please, if you need anything, Concessions are right over there."
Castiel sees a line forming behind him and moves to quit the desk with a polite, "Thank you." He takes his place amidst the sullen crowd and stares a hundred miles past the sign above his gate.
Kevin Tran would give anything not to be a prophet. Or Asian. If God hadn't saddled him with this title, he'd be squired away comfortably by his studies in political science or contemporary American literature or, worst case scenario, string performance at Princeton. Or worse worst case scenario, Ann Arbor. He wouldn't flinch at words like tablet or leviathan, and he'd scoff at words like angel and demon (because Dan Brown is, in no uncertain terms, a complete hack).
Of course, if he wasn't Asian, he could just quit.
The recent meteor shower of falling angels says that's one thing he can't do. Still, Sam and Dean haven't come by to delegate his latest assignment, so, as far as he's concerned, he's on vacation, and he is certainly prepared for it. On the flawlessly finished conference table in the main hall of the bunker sits a sandwich, whole wheat break, one leaf of lettuce, one slice of tomato, one slice of American cheese (2%), two slices of turkey. A sandwich, a real, honest to Dawkins Sandwich: it's the first he's more than looked at in, what, two years? Kevin sinks into a cush, leather chair and marvels at it, reverent, awed. This perfect, beckoning stack of divinity and Wonderbread is a testament to God's love and mercy and—
Then, there's a knock at the door. Of freaking course.
"Layover" is not a word with which Castiel is quite familiar; he supposes it is synonymous with "reminiscence" or, maybe, "guilt." There are many things for which Castiel blames himself. The Fall. Naomi. The Leviathan. But here, in Geneva, Nebraska, Castiel's conscience is weight by a single, grievous transgression: Samandriel.
In yet another a bus station, in yet another spring-loaded, plastic chair upholstered with scratchy tweed, surrounded by more people and angels than he's been since The Flood, Castiel looks down at his hands—his vessel's, no, definitely his hands—and all he sees is the blood on them.
He prays to his father for the first time since he stopped looking for him. He confesses. He begs forgiveness. And then, he swears that no more of of his brothers shall fall by these hands. Silent. Solemn.
When he gets hold of Metatron, he will have to figure something else out.
A voice announces the arrival of his next transfer. He stands and joins the shuffling mass of bodies flocking toward the gate. He doesn't know if the trip would be worse, alone, or better.
When Kevin Tran opens the bulkhead of the bunker, he expects Sam and/or Dean, or Castiel, or Meg, or anyone besides Crowley looking like he's hung over and painfully sober. Kevin doesn't have his Super-Soaker of Borax-laden holy water, so, instead of attack, he cries out and stumbles backward into a chair. However, contrary to his expectations, Crowley doesn't grab him and blink away. He doesn't raise a hand to him. He fixes him with a single mournful look, then, shuffles into the bunker, silent, eyes glued to the ground, and followed by Cas.
"Do not be alarmed, Kevin Tran." And the Angel gets the Emmy for delivery. "He will not harm you."
Kevin looks frantically from angel to demon and back again, totally not shrieking, "He already harmed me! He's the freaking king of Hell!"
Cas tilts his head in the way that everyone who knows him means he's confused or intrigued. In this case, he's confused. "Dean left him in my charge. He hasn't spoken since we left the church. There is nothing to be done, as long as he remains as he is."
"Left him in your charge?" Okay, so, maybe he's shrieking. "He should have left him in a hole in the ground—he should be dead!"
More confusion. "Sam's task was to save a demon, not to kill one. You knew this. What did you expect to happen?"
Kevin falters, then, quickly stammers, "I—I don't know. I guess I thought that curing a demon would include the killing part. Why couldn't they have picked a different demon?"
"Better the devil you know."
Quickly, the roller coaster of rage is ascending to a peak, again. "But it's still the actual freaking Devil! He's the King of Hell! He killed my girlfriend! My mother! He—he cut off my finger!" And the roller coaster rolls to a stop at the sound of a stifled sob. When Kevin looks toward the source, he sees Crowley standing in a discrete corner, looking particularly small, even for the already small man he wears. Bloodshot eyes leak tears down his face in trails that must have been traveled, before, and often. This is all so very surreal.
Cas moves toward Kevin, close enough to put a hand on his shoulder, then, says softly, "He will not harm you. Crowley shall remain here with us for the foreseeable future. I suggest you become accustomed to his presence. But don't worry. He is not the same man he was."
Kevin is speechless. This is so not okay. Nothing about this is anywhere close. But something's even more off than just Crowley and Castiel, back on the same team after a very frightening story Dean told him, once. No, something is missing, and Kevin has a very, very bad feeling about it.
"Castiel."
"Yes?"
"Where are Sam and Dean?"
Cas's shoulders square visibly. "They... will not be coming back."