Dear Whomever Reads This First:

I used to talk. I promise. I talked until I was fourteen, truth be told. I haven't breathed a word for three years, haven't smiled for two and a half. When I was fourteen, when I stopped talking, my brother, Raphael, died in a car accident. It was my birthday and I was with him when it happened. I woke up three days later, and refused to talk after what I had been through. To compensate, my older sister, Anna, my brother, Lucifer, and my mother, Victoire, learned sign language.

Then I saw, one year and three days later I watched my father hit my mother. I stopped smiling at that point. My family tried everything to get me to talk, but I immersed myself in swimming and fencing after that had happened.

At the age of sixteen, my father kicked Maman out of our large house in rural Nice, France. We spent a year on the road, Gabriel, Anna, Maman, and myself. Lucifer was in Greece, Michael moved out with Zachariah. My cousin, Naomi, stayed with Father.

On the road I met a boy named Inias, who worked at a local coffee shop in a town that I stayed in for a long period of time in. We soon dated, after I found a note in my book that I had left on the table as I went to the toilet. When I had come back I found it in my book and sat down and read it.

Noticed you came by here a lot and I couldn't help but admire. I also noticed you never talked and I think you're insanely attractive. Text me?

986-1857

-Inias x

So of course I had turned red, reading it over. I wasn't much, maybe yellow jeans and a studded leather jacket, band shirts and the same winged high tops every day. I was gauges and piercings, recently highlighted blue hair.

So when I got to the motel room I was sharing with Gabriel, he saw the note and grinned, racing into Maman and Anna's room, yelling 'Cassie's gonna get laid!'

I never saw the note again.

So the next day as I went into the coffee shop with my newest book, I went up and smiled at Inias, handing him a slip of paper that read:

My brother took the note. Dinner?

(and ps. surprise me with the drink.)

And I swear to whoever's up there, his entire face glowed. So we went out for about six months, breaking up simply because it was time for me to move again. This is when we moved to America.

I still kept up with Inias, through email. I did, however, never see him again.

And this is the story of the man who got me to smile, who got me to talk, who got me to become human again.

I hope to see you in another life,

-Castiel Novak

—

The road was dry, the trees were dry, everything was dry, especially Castiel's chapped lips. He licked his lips, his already long fingers playing with a recently stretched gauge- a fourteenth birthday present.

"If you keep doing that, you'll ruin them," Raphael said from the driver's seat of the car, eyes focused on the road ahead of him.

Cas groaned and sat back in his seat, readjusting the seatbelt. The classical music filled the silence between them, making it more bearable, "You know, you weren't even looking at me."

His older brother let out a sharp breath through his nose as the corners of his mouth turned up in somewhat of a smile, accented by a glint in his eye, "Can't tell you all of my secrets yet, little brother."

Castiel was used to those kinds of answers. He looked out the window, listening to the music as he watched the road, lit up by France's September sun.

"Happy birthday, Castiel," Raphael said softly, "And many more."

Looking over at his older brother strangely, Castiel tipped his head to the right, "Thank you," He said, "I actually had a nice time."

Raphael looked over at Castiel, "If I told you I was being paid to be pleasant?"

"You should get a raise," Castiel said, giving him a smile.

Raphael chuckled lightly as he took a turn, heading down the road that would bring them home in roughly fifteen minutes, and maybe one and a half commercial breaks on the radio station.

Silence passed through them, causing Castiel to play with his fingers in attempt to find something to fill it. The oncoming car fixed that.

It was a blur of white sun, blood-stained glass, scratched forearms and screams. A seatbelt burn on Castiel's neck that saved his life, then blackness.

Blackness led to white light that burned against his eyelids, a soft touch of lotioned hands and the smell of antibacterial hand sanitizer. The steady flips of pages in a novel, then went unsteady like the heart rate monitor next to him.

He couldn't move his arm. Where the seatbelt had cut across burned hurt like no rug burn he'd ever gotten before.

"Castiel?" A French voice came from somewhere. He didn't open his eyes, but matched the voice to his mothers. Maman.

The book dropped, page not marked as he felt calloused hands cupping his face. Calloused hands that smelt like toasted coconut cookies, charcoal, faintly wine, and paint.

Definitely Maman.

Castiel opened his eyes in showing that he was here, and alive (although the steady heart beats could've shown the same thing).

His name was repeated again, this time by Anna, who was holding his hand as she sat on the bed. The long sleeves of the green sweatshirt- his green sweatshirt- pooled around her skinny and bracelet-covered wrists.

He looked back from her to Maman, not speaking.

"Castiel? Please say something," She begged in French.

He sat up, looking around the hospital room, then down at his arm that was in a sling. He looked up at his mother and elder sister, "Where's Raphael?" He croaked out, his voice scratchy like his arms and face.

His mother collapsed in tears at the words of her dead son