From Expatriate, Exiled

by Vasiliki

Castiel-centric. "When the Angels leave the Earth, expatriate Castiel becomes exiled." Warnings: spoilers for 5x04, i.e. The End-verse, ANGST.

Title: From Expatriate, Exiled

Author: Vasiliki (19 Aug 2010)
Beta-readers: Maat, written_in_dreams
Characters: Castiel-centric
Rating: PG
Spoilers/Warnings: 5x04, which naturally means ANGST
Word count: ~1200
Summary: When the Angels leave the Earth, expatriate Castiel becomes exiled.

.

Gnawing at Castiel's guts was the pain of getting distanced from Them, of the thinning susurrus of wings as they flapped further and further away.

This time he was the one being left behind. This time, he was the one searching with anxious eyes for his brethren's forms. But they were lost to him, invisible among the creatures of the air and the stars of the sky.

He had not realized how his siblings had felt about his own departure, about him betraying and abandoning them, until that very moment. As difficult as his decision to rebel was to make, from the moment he was certain about his new path, he hadn't looked back. He had been the one who got up and left them, the one who looked forward to a different future, to changing who he had been all his life among them. Away from them, he could be free. He would be an individual. His own master. The maker of his destiny.

What a farce that had proved to be! Man and Angel were inexorably tangled in between the strands of Fate's carpet - every attempt to cut the threads merely resulted in mangling themselves.

And now he was trapped forever on this foreign planet; he, a being of energy and blinding light. He was eyeless in a desert of silence. A deaf man plunged in darkness. Alone and powerless in the absence of the Host.

With all of his senses he kept looking in the night for them, but he found not a thing. Not one remained on Earth, except for him. The last Angel. He felt a void growing inside of him, a numb and hollow space. He could not understand why suddenly his legs would not keep his weight anymore, and he kneeled, as if in supplication. He thought he felt a desire to weep, but when he bowed his head, not a tear came to his parched eyelids. He wondered if the furnace of desolation inside him could have evaporated them.

(Three Years Later)

Castiel was lost without his brethren. When he had decided to move ahead and leave them behind, to become an expatriate, he had done so with the knowledge of them still being there, always existing. That with regret and penance before his Father, he might be granted forgiveness one day. He had not considered that his desire to communicate with them would not disappear with time, but become keener instead.

Back when he was still trying to adapt to human life, he used to feel alone and misunderstood, stranded with a foot in two worlds, belonging to neither. Yet it was only now, when he was completely abandoned, exiled in eternity, that he realized the true extent of his instability and turmoil.

He had not discoursed with anyone in his mother tongue in three human years, and they felt like eons. He had not even heard the rigid, gruff, clipped syllables of authentic Enochian coming from a fluent mouth in as long. Dean's articulation when reading spells was seriously lacking, and listening to any human trying to properly utter the angelic language was a travesty. Even his own inflection was tainted because he had been cut off from the whispers of the Host for three years, so he was moving his human tongue, lips, and vocal cords solely from memory, without his vessel's ears ever receiving feedback on the sounds produced.

He would have never thought possible that a day would come when he would long for an Archangel to find him, the renegade angel in hiding. That he would even be willing to place himself in mortal danger in front of Raphael again, only so that he could exchange with him angry words and provocations in his true voice, communicate with him in Enochian sounds and phrases - in the way of the Angels. Raphael or Michael or even Lucifer would look at him and call him by his name, his true name, the name his Father gave him when He created him and Dean could not even pronounce.

Dean had given him a nickname that meant nothing to him anymore. He had never rebuffed Dean for the alteration of his name because once upon a time it meant something to him: that Dean was not seeing him as a hostile being anymore, that Dean had started trusting him and treating him as a friend despite his otherworldliness. That Dean included him in his tiny family circle, and could look at the essence of him beyond the superficial wrappings and trappings of origins and names.

But now he was wise enough to know better. His origin, his name and his language defined the essence of him, and Dean did not see him for who he truly was, because Dean had made him in his mind into something he was not. Now he was hurt that Dean never used his true name, that Dean looked at him and saw only his angel "Cas". That Castiel, the Angel who sang praise to the glory of the Lord for times immemorial and walked through Hell to save a mortal soul because God commanded it, was someone that Dean had never cared to learn more about.

Dean had accepted him by changing him, by diminishing him, by cutting him down to his own measures, fitting him inside a familiar box. Dean had never asked him about his past, about his ways and habits, about any one thing, everything he had grown up with and given up in a single moment in the Green Room, trying to reverse Dean's ultimate "we're done", trying to gain back this man's friendship. Back then, he had not realized that Dean's friendship was for Cas - only Cas, not Castiel. For parts of him, not the whole him. That Dean disregarded and discarded the rest of him. That in the same way his kindred could not understand Castiel's part that longed for human companionship, Dean would never endure Castiel's part that thrived on angelic interaction.

So, Castiel was left alone, stranded in a world where he was not wanted in his entirety, never allowed to be his real self, having lost his family home, his faith, his native language, and even his own name. But the worst for him was that he had also lost the man for whom he gave all this, that Dean had changed irrevocably. Dean did not care about Castiel's well-being anymore, did not even care about his existence - the life of this poor example of an Angel was now eligible to be used as cannon fodder. And yet, he still remained by Dean's side, ever loyal; he still gave Dean everything he had, everything he was, without receiving anything back.

Castiel knew he would follow Dean everywhere, always, even though he could see clearly now that this path would lead to his own death. Even worse, that Dean would not be by him in his final moments, and that he would be left with no hand to hold onto, no eyes to look into, no arms to hold him while his soul departed. He knew now that there would be no gentle fingertips to close his eyes and merciful lips to whisper the proper rites for his safe passage. He would die alone, away from home, a stranger among strangers in a God-forsaken land.

-The End-