Dean looked up from his piece of pie that Sam had decorated with a candle so it would pass as a birthday cake. „Say, Castiel," he asked. "When's your birthday?"
"I don't think I understand your question," Castiel answered with a mildly confused expression.
"Your birthday, you know? The day you were born? Like mine's today. Thirty-one years ago today I was born." He looked expectantly at Castiel. Because after this explanation he sure had to have got the idea.
"Oh." Castiel nodded to show that he got it, but then answered: "I don't have one."
"What?" Dean even hesitated to bite off his pie for a moment to ask that.
"As I understand it, you can only have a birthday if you were born."
"What you mean? You trying to tell us you haven't been born?" Sam asked.
"That's right. I was created." And if Dean didn't know that Cas usually didn't do pride… Arrogance, yes, definitely. But pride? Yet there was no mistaking it. Cas was proud of not being born but created.
"Fine, what's your … Creationday then?" Dean asked and took another big bite off his pie.
Cas closed his eyes for a moment. "I believe it would have been in June... the 29th."
"You believe?" Where Dean would have just accepted that answer, Sam had to pry on.
"There were no dates back then," Castiel explained with a hint of exasperation in his voice.
"Really?" Sam looked doubtful. "Just how old are you then?"
Castiel dipped his head to the side and squinted in concentration. "That is a relative matter," he finally answered. "Depending on point of view I am either 944 or 5.702.108."
"Years?" Dean and Sam all but gasped.
Castiel frowned in confusion. "Is that not how you measure age? I thought it was."
It was not easy to make Dean forget about his pie, but this did it. It wasn't every day you dealt with anyone – or even anything – that old. "You are FIVE ... MILLION ... YEARS old?"
"5. 702.108," Cas corrected.
"Damn, you're ancienter than ancient!"
"Dean, there is no such word as 'ancienter'," Sam automatically corrected.
"What, that's your problem right now?" Dean turned an unbelieving eye at his brother. "Cas here tells us he's a living fossil, and you get hung up on grammar?"
"Strictly speaking it's morphology, not grammar," Cas corrected, before continuing: "And I am not ancient. I am just only old."
"Oh, no, no, no. You're past a thousand, you're ancient."
Castiel didn't answer that, and for a moment everything was quiet. Dean solved the situation in his very own way: He finished off the pie.
"Hang on," Sam asked, "how can your age depend on point of view? I mean, how can you be – what was it? – 944 years old and at the same time..." He shook his head with an unbelieving look. Apparently even just thinking the number made his brain hurt.
"5.702.108," Castiel supplied helpfully, only increasing the mind-pain.
"Exactly," Sam said. "So... how?"
"It's because on Earth, time is linear and constant. In Heaven, time is also linear, but flexible."
"Like how?" Sam interrogated further.
Dean followed the exchange with interest, though mutely. Instead of saying something he got himself another slice of pie and occupied his mouth with that. Less complicated and a lot tastier.
"You have to imagine..." Castiel started, but stopped. "Here on Earth," he started anew, "time passes, no matter what you do or what happens. And it passes at the same rate. In Heaven, if nothing happens, time passes faster. If something happens, but I'm not involved, it passes slower for those who are involved, and like a flash for me, who I am not involved."
"Like sleep?" Dean chanced a question.
"Do you not notice time passing by when you sleep?"
"Save a dream now and then ... no." Dean shook his head.
"Then yes, like sleep."
"Dude, do you know what you're saying?" Dean couldn't help it, he giggled.
Cas frowned.
"If you are five million something years old, but only a couple hundred of those you know of..." Dean explained. "You're saying that you've been sleeping for five million years."
"5.701.164," Sam corrected.
"Boy, talk about a sleepy head."
Cas gave them his usual confused-exasperated look that he always showed when their banter moved out of his comfort-zone – so, pretty much every time they weren't trying to save the world one way or another.
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