Title: A Tangled Web

Summary: Castiel knows he's a liar.

Warnings: Cannon compliant? It's season six so I feel it's a valid warning. Also, my first Castiel piece, so ye be warned.

Rating: K

Disclaimer: I do not own the premise of Supernatural or any of the characters in the show.

Author's Note: To my lovely APH readers - no, HPatK is not discontinued, just on hold due to lack of inspiration. To all other lovely readers, I consider this a prelude to season six's episode 20, not a coda to 19.

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He's done many things he knows Dean and Sam would disapprove of if they ever found out. He sort of wonders if this would be one of them. John Winchester's heaven isn't what either of his sons would have guessed. It's part memory part imagination, John's constant, burning desire for Mary and that picture perfect family mixed with bad diner food and a life-long road trip.

Castiel doesn't usually come here, if feels like more than a slight, unseen intrusion. It feel's like a violation, like a transgression Dean and Sam would never forgive him for. Castiel's read human psychology texts before, either to pass time while waiting at Bobby's during his year cut off from heaven or, more commonly, the desire to understand the Winchesters, he knows he's projecting. But trying to believe his worst transgression against Dean and Sam is spying on an ongoing journey of laughing in diners and demanding bedtime stories makes him feel better about the real lie.

He likes the life John has built himself in his heaven. It's quaint and it's friendly, and Dean is full of smiles and Sam laughs and hugs his father and Mary stands in the background while they all play together in the grass. She makes bad jokes while they eat greasy fries and she lectures John on the dangers of bedbugs whenever they're at a particularly suspicious looking motel.

Castiel doesn't really understand John's mind, but that's true for even Sam or Dean, though he understands them much better. In this world he lives as he did after Mary's death, but is the husband and particularly the father he once wanted to be. The man who, during a discussion with a time traveling Sam believed that the brother's combined life was a horrible one, that their father was cruel.

It makes Castiel wonder what his heaven would be. He tries to picture that blissful, unthinking life he had before the Winchester's, before Dean and his questions and demands and stubborn belief that free will was better than the alternative. In the end though, all Castiel can picture is car rides to Bobby's, cheeseburger in hand, classic rock second to the teasing and planning and even arguments in the front seat, all ending with the smell of books and rusting cars and oil, and drowned out by affectionate proclamations of 'idjit'.

He tells himself that it is this war, Raphael's never ending badgering that has taken that possibility away. That this is only a temporary separation and soon he'll be able to catch at least a few moments of that life, a heaven he can't really, truly have. It is not true, but he has no one to help him. Those who would have are cut off, and the one who could help is not answering.

Still, it is a good lie.