No Penance Harsh Enough

You can't stay.

It had been a week, no, maybe two since Dean had said those words. He'd thought the hole would have started to heal by now, but it had only grown into something more ugly and painful.

Cas was alone. Homeless, hunted, haunted. Every day he spent hungry and in hiding served as a reminder of how wrong he had been, how much pain he had caused.

He slumped down against an old building and coughed. He couldn't remember exactly when he'd gotten sick, all he could remember was days of dirty food pilfered from trash cans.

Despite all this, he couldn't bring himself to feel any pity. In his mind, he deserved this. God was still out there, and this was his way of punishing Cas. He would serve his penance, running on a basic human instinct to live that was still unfamiliar to him.

A young ginger woman stopped in front of him and Cas looked up, confusion in his eyes. He was expecting a harsh comment, an insult, a rebuke. "You did this to yourself." "Get off the street and stop begging for handouts." He even heard these things in his head when she began speaking to him.

"Mr.?"

This time he heard her clearly. She was holding something out to him. For a long minute he simply stared at her, not understanding.

"Sir, please take this. You look sick."

Suddenly he realized what was happening. She was holding out a bill. A crisp twenty. His mind jumped immediately to planning out exactly what this would mean for him. He would have food for a week, maybe more if he was careful. His stomach growled in agreement. He was reminded suddenly of that night back at the bunker. It was the first night in a long time since he'd been well-fed, well-rested, and at home. But he'd had no right to be there. It wasn't his home. He had taken Dean's trust and spat it in his face, torn apart everything important to him, and he'd had the nerve to come back, selfishly thinking he was welcome there.

"I can't take this." His deep gravelly voice surprised even himself, and it seemed to catch as he refused her gift.

Her eyes went wide with surprise and she thrust the bill closer. "Why not? You need it more than I do."

Castiel cast his head down in shame. "You're a nice person. I don't deserve your kindness."

The woman kneeled down and opened his palm. She pressed the money into his tired, limp hand and cupped his fingers around it. "I don't know what you've done to make you feel that way, but everyone deserves a second chance. That's the one that really counts."

Something wet brimmed in his eyes. She didn't understand. He'd already been given a second chance. He'd been brought back to life and he'd used that life to destroy what precious little was left of heaven.

The woman was already gone though.

҉

It was dark. Cas was lying against cold concrete, his head propped against a heap of bunched up newspaper. Nights were the worst part. As he tried to drift into an uneasy sleep, there was nothing to distract him and the past was free to haunt his thoughts.

He'd see Dean's face when he broke the wall in Sam's head. The way Sam screamed as every horror of Hell came back to him and broke him to pieces. Family's he hadn't even known sobbing after he killed their loved ones. And for what? Lying? Stealing? Not believing?

Hot tears left thin tracks in the dirt caked on his flesh. Just weeks ago, it was entirely new to him. He'd never experienced a sadness so deep that it drained him of his energy to do anything but exist. But his grief was becoming a tangible, black mass, and Cas was being sucked deeper inside it, and as he fell further, this small reserve of energy that had pushed him to live, was draining quickly.

Cas no longer saw an angel. He no longer saw a bringer a good. He saw a man, caked with dirt, who brought a trail of torment in his wake. A creature who cast his friends aside without a backwards glance. A demon.

He was no better than the things he had hunted.

Cas drifted into disturbed dreams, that thought stinging him even through a shield of sleep.

Images played through his mind. Dean, Sam, himself, neck-deep in a good cause. The furious faces of his brothers when he abandoned them for what he knew was right. Crowley. A trade. Leviathan. Inside him. In his head! Heaven. His brothers. Dead. Thousands of winged bodies. Scattered at his feet. HE KILLED THEM!

Castiel let out a shout as the images tore him from his sleep, shredding him from the inside out. Every night, that was all he could see. His victims at his feet. People who followed him and loved him and trusted him. He'd killed them all without an ounce of remorse. He had enjoyed it. A tortured cry broke from his throat. What had he done?

His insides churned as the image seared itself further in his head and he gagged. A strangled noise escaped him that sounded inhuman. He collapsed, sobbing for those he had killed. It was all he could do to breathe under the crushing weight of what he had done. There could be no penance harsh enough for him. No amount of pain that he went through would bring his brothers back. So why was he here?

҉

Cas stared down at the heavy angel blade in his hands. His eyes were stiff and dark. The lingering light had been snuffed out of them and something black remained. There was a small pad of paper in front of him. It was the only thing he could bring himself to buy with the twenty the ginger had given him earlier that morning. And it wasn't even for him. It was for four other people. It was for four very important notes. He'd slipped the rest of the money into another homeless man's pocket somewhere along the way. He might as well give it to someone who was going to need it.

Eventually, as night had drawn across the sky he had found an abandoned bus and decided to stop there. And now here he was. Angel blade in his hands, a pad of paper missing four pages.

One addressed to Dean. One to Sam. One to Kevin. One written in Enochian, to all the angels he'd trapped on Earth. They need not worry about him anymore.

He lifted the angel blade to his chest, hating how his hands shook. He'd had firm resolve to do far worse than this. Why should he be shaking in his doubt now? His eyes slammed shut as he prepared for the stinging pain only a celestial blade like his own would offer. He willed his hand to make the final plunge.

But no pain came.

He'd killed his own brothers and sisters, but he couldn't stop his own heart. He was so selfish and weak that he couldn't bring the knife down. Couldn't stop a creature as terrifying as himself from hurting anyone or anything else. The one chance he had to make the right choice, and it was too much for him.

A roar of frustration escaped him and he whirled the blade across the bus, taking small satisfaction in hearing a window shatter in its wake. He let loose another tormented yell and threw his fist against the metal frame, not leaving a mark, barely noticing the sharp pain it caused him. It was as if something had taken over. The last time he had lost control like this, he'd had the Leviathan inside him and the mere thought terrified him. It was as if something evil was there with him again, spurring him on in his rage.

But the only one in that bus was himself.

He was panting and sobbing and shouting in rage as he took out his self-hatred on the only other solid thing around him, and it wasn't until many hours later that he fell into an exhausted sleep. No dreams, no nightmares, just empty space.

He awoke shivering. The windows he had busted were letting in a dark chill. With the numbness of a man devoid of the will to live, but without power to end it, he reached for the notes he had written in the black of night, and set them ablaze, warming his fingers in the heat of the empty promises he was burning. He could have done something right for once.

As soon as the warmth reverted to ashes, Castiel stood. He left without a thought in his head. No pain, no happiness. No fear. Just darkness.

He left that bus as something neither human nor animal. Neither alive nor dead.