Title: Special Providence
Author: smilingsoprano
Rating: T for dark themes and heavy drug use (which the author does not in any way endorse).
Pairings: Could be seen as either gen or Dean/Castiel.
Summary: A dark and rather trippy character study of The End!Cas as he buries himself in decadence.
A/N: Supernatural is a new obsession of mine, and this is my first attempt at a fic in the fandom. Castiel fascinates me, and this came out of a friend's observation that his blissed-out smile in "The End" is either the most hilarious or the saddest thing ever. Set only a little before past!Dean's visit. The title is is drawn from a quote from Hamlet: "Not a whit, we defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is't to leave betimes, let be." For the record, this comes off as rather fatalist, but I'm on Team Free Will one hundred percent. Drugged!fallen!Cas is not exactly a model from which to draw personal philosophy. Enjoy!
The air tastes like spun sugar and cream. It reminds him of Heaven—or at least an idea of Heaven in which mortals once believed—and so he drinks of it greedily, forgetting for the moment that the real Heaven tastes more like lightning and clarity and purity (that is to say, nothing at all). He also conveniently forgets that were he now in Heaven, he would instead be tasting ichor, the blood of his angelic form spilling over his lips as some pitiless enforcer read out the litany of his sins.
By this point, that could take a while.
He is laughing now, and he understands the reason, but that how and why is somehow divorced from him, the knowledge of the absurdity of his fallen state hovering at the edges of his newly bounded consciousness, rendering his mirth more spontaneous than anything, a series of helpless giggles that feel at once pleasurable (because laughter means he is happy, right?) and ever so slightly terrifying, if he could stop being amused long enough to contemplate them.
He can't. He can't stop laughing, because of the drugs (and there are many of them, coursing through his veins in a sweeping, burning invasion, spinning him into darkness and dizziness and oblivion, and he can feel the individual receptors in his brain light up, because he'll never never never be less than an angel, no matter how often he tells his friends the fall rendered him fully human), but also because if he stops, he can't be certain what else he will do. Given his state of mind recently, he might feel compelled to act in some phenomenally stupid way, and people would die or get hurt or he would get hurt and he couldn't go through that again, because the worst thing in the world is not only being trapped in a body which doesn't belong to you, but also being subject to its many frailties, and at least the drugs take away his agency so that if something terrible happens (and it always does, in this hell-on-earth) it won't be his fault.
The almost mortal, not quite divine Castiel closes his eyes and imagines his wings restored, for those shadow-silvered feathers marked his bondage and his certainty, a time when he could smite with a thought and when an order was a mandate, righteous and clear and ineffable and perfect. Later they had called themselves Team Free Will (Dean had told him that after he had woken from his comatose state, and he keeps it in one of those bright little memories he hoarded in the back of his mind, a conversation when they had smiled and exchanged sarcasms and Armageddon had not seemed quite so dire), but now free will seems at best a pretty illusion, at worst a curse. Dean has not said yes. Not yet. And Cas supports his decision, because that's what he does, he smiles and reassures and jokes in front of the refugees and then he objects to the details when they're in private but never the entire premise, because that last shining ideal, battered and cracked and broken though it might be, is all that is holding Dean together these days, and if there is one thing Cas cannot do it is watch him fall apart.
Dean the vessel has been fired in a kiln stoked with the bodies of his friends and charges, their eyes Croatoan-red, the blaze belching demon smoke and smelling of death. He is hard but brittle, liable to split down the center should the hellfire discover the smallest fault, and so any chance of tenderness or warmth has long since evaporated, leaving Cas clutching at barked commands and disapproving glares where once there had been knowing glances and true concern. They had been close, the angel and the warrior of the Lord, united in their rebellion (which was in truth some odd form of loyalty), their belief in a God more caring than the one the archangels claimed to follow (except Gabriel, who followed no one but himself, and look how that had worked out for him).
They still stand together—they always have and they always will, of that Cas is staunchly certain—but it will never be what they had hoped in those early days. The fallen angel sighs as his drug-addled laughter subsides and the room drips with colors so vibrant they seem to etch trails in his corneas.
"You all right, Cas?" It's not a real question. It's an accusation, hard and sharp and cutting, and it takes every ounce of willpower in every fiber of his being not to flinch away from those gravel and ground glass tones. He stares up at Dean Winchester, the instrument of his damnation, and he smiles more broadly and more falsely than he ever has before.
"I'm fine," he manages. And then, because apparently he can no longer help himself: "You're glowing, did you know that?"
Dean's jaw clenches in that way that means he is holding back an ocean of pain and fury and disappointment and disillusionment. "For fuck's sake, Cas, you're a goddamn angel—don't look at me like that, I don't give a damn about your fall—and we have people to take care of here. If you don't sober up before the mission tonight, I'll take you along just to feed you to the Croats. Are we clear?"
He leaves too loudly, not waiting for a response, and Cas is left to laugh again, because even in his drugged state he knows reality from hallucination, and the truth of the matter is that Dean Winchester has always been radiant in his vision, even when he was a broken soul just dragged from the Pit, because the children of God are always given to know His chosen ones, His favored ones, and so to an angel (even a twisted, shattered, disenfranchised, sin-steeped, mortal, fallen one) his smile truly is enough to light up a room, and that has to be the funniest, most tragic thing Cas has ever heard, because Dean who is and yet will not be Michael's vessel doesn't smile anymore, but still he glows like a second sun.
It is the most impossibly beautiful thing Cas has witnessed in his impossibly long life and also the one thing Dean will never believe from him, not now, not since they all went to hell in a handbasket and Sam said yes and Cas buried himself in grief and decadence, because if God has a sense of humor, it is crueler even than His righteous fury.
Castiel is the moth to Dean Winchester's flame. He flew into the light until his wings burned off and now he falls toward it continuously, all afire with the glory of God's love. He is irony incarnate, a bitter joke in a dying world, and whether he believes this end is fated is beside the point.
Because really, if he had free will, would he have made different choices? If he is being honest with himself, no. Never.
The world melts into song as he surrenders to the reality that this is and was and must always be.