Title: Another Lonely Night [Supernatural Fanfiction] Part 1/1
Author: crystalofjune
Rated: PG
Word count: 1,852
Warning: AU in which Sam never returned from Hell and Dean left Lisa.
Summary: Like any other night, Castiel watches over his charge.
It was very dark, the streetlight nearest to the motel had long ago flickered out and it was far too late an hour for any passing vehicles to light the uneven road. The buildings on the other side of the street had only darkened windows and harmless alleys because the town was far too small to offer any real crime.
It was quiet too, the silence of the night deafening. No night bird shrieked, no drunkard wandered aimlessly through the streets, no monster stalked the town. The only sound to fill the air was the faint buzz of the mostly-burned out neon sign proclaiming in curly letters that there was no vacancy at the Morning Moon Motel. Whoever had created the motel obviously thought that alliteration was clever, but Castiel was not particularly impressed, or even really interested in the name.
The motel was a one story building, colourless on the outside and halfway to falling apart. There were just a handful of rooms, stretching out into a perpendicular shape surrounding the vacant parking lot. In front of room seven and just to the right sat a 1967 Chevrolet Impala, the sole automobile in the lot, dark blue in colour though this detail was impossible to make out in the pitch black of the night.
Castiel didn't need divinity to know what colour the Impala was anymore than he needed it to know the license plate by heart or the man who drove it. He knew all too well about the arsenal in the trunk, equipped to take out someone like himself and his opposite with equal efficiency and warded heavily to keep greedy, sneaky supernatural claws out. But Castiel wasn't interested in the car anymore than he was interested in the neon sign reflected dully on its windows.
In room seven, laid down on an almost guaranteed to be uncomfortable bed, fully clothed and in a state of alcohol-induced unconsciousness rested the most precious creature to exist in any plain of existence, be it Heaven, Hell, or the little planet trapped in between the two.
He would turn thirty-three tomorrow and the day will pass with just as much Jack Daniels as the day before because to him, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters anymore. Before he had drunk himself into a stupor of rage and self-hatred and torment, he had eliminated a spirit taking lives in the local haunted house. He had reaped no satisfaction from the effort, no pleasure, no release from his pain. He did it because he had nothing else to do and he had already broken enough promises.
He was completely alone now, all the time. He didn't have to be, but at the same time he did because he couldn't be around anybody. Lisa and Ben hadn't understood, hadn't known why he was torn up the way he was and Bobby Singer understood too much and he just couldn't handle the pity in Bobby's voice over the phone.
Castiel's charge wanted to be better for Lisa and Ben, be someone they deserved to have at their dinner table, but what he wanted and what he was were not the same.
He wanted his brother back, but there was no way to bring him back. Neither magic spell nor sealing kiss on a crossroads would ever bring Sam back from Hell. He would never get what he wanted.
Every night he had nightmares about Stull Cemetery and not even the Whiskey could make them go away, no matter how many bottles he managed to empty in a night. He had nightmares of the Devil's old vessel, Nick, torturing Sam and when he woke up, sweating, shaking and tearstained, he couldn't escape from the knowledge that it was so much worse than he was imagining. What was the memory of Alistair's skill and imagination to Satan himself?
Castiel felt horribly inadequate. There was nothing he could do, no way he could help and really make a difference. Sure, he helped with stupid, mundane things. Whenever Dean approached a light, before he could press on the brake, it turned green. The hot water at the crappy motels never ran out. The cuts and bruises he acquired from his hunts always healed a little faster than they should have.
But it's not enough – how could it be? Castiel cannot do for the man he raised what he so desperately wants. Besides, he had not called for his help. If he wanted him, he would call.
The angel thinks that's probably the worst part. The fact that he hasn't and it's been months tears at him in very unangelic ways. If he knew about Castiel's little unimportant actions, he would have said something, would have prayed, called, cursed him, anything but he hadn't and that hurt nearly as badly as having one of his dearest friends locked with his most vicious of brothers in a cage.
As an angel, Castiel is used to constants, things that remain the same. Or at least he had been, before everything. There had been no such thing as inconsistency. Upon meeting the Winchesters, he had been thrown into a world of change and free will that he was still only just beginning to understand. It terrified him to know that he could predict Dean now not because he knew the man so well, but because he didn't change anymore.
Surely, every human has a routine, even a hunter who faces a new abomination every week, but somehow, Dean made the whole process systematic, boring. He would wake in the morning, search the papers or the internet for strange deaths over coffee and bad diner food and then drive for hours. By nightfall, he drank himself to sleep and it started again until he found whatever he was hunting and vanquished it and so it began once more.
Castiel's heart broke for him. He was in conflict over awe or hatred for his Father for creating such a beautiful man and then shattering him so completely.
And he was beautiful. Castiel knew it to his core how pure and moral and good he was down to his very soul. He had held Dean's soul in his hands, tattered and broken, shamed and humiliated, but altogether good. Dean Winchester did not love often, but when he did, he did so with the intensity of the sun itself. His loyalty was inspiring and the sheer force of his will could move mountains. He could and had faced pure evil and mocked it to its face without batting an eyelash. As much as he pretended, tried to convince himself otherwise, Dean cared, or at the very least used to, about people. Just people, anyone, and he had willingly relinquished everything in order to keep people safe. He had nothing, and he still kept people safe.
Castiel admired him. Even this broken shell of a man that Castiel hardly recognized, Castiel admired because despite losing everything that mattered to him, despite knowing no matter how hard he had tried to keep his baby brother safe, protect him from all the evil of the world, he was still alone and he was still trying.
Even that was so wonderfully Dean to be so defiant, even to his own suffering, to keep pushing and pushing and pushing forward. Castiel could only watch and wait until the fatal moment when his charge pushed too hard and the only remaining Winchester finally collapsed on himself.
He could feel just how very thin Dean had been worn so far. He was so tired and Castiel could still hear Famine, maddened as he had been with hunger, telling Dean he knew how very worthless he felt, how he yearned for nothingness.
Whatever void awaited inside of him would end him and Castiel could but sit and watch.
Standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at the dark door marked with a crooked seven, Castiel knew he would look very out of place if anyone were to wake in the middle of the night and peer out their windows. But he had been there for quite some time now and no one seemed too bothered.
Cas…
Castiel felt it rather than heard it, resonating throughout his borrowed body and demanding his attention. For a moment, he thought he had imagined it, but he was not human anymore. He was more powerful than he had ever been and so incapable of that kind of error.
He appeared inside room seven in an instant and was unsurprised by the amount of bottles that had accumulated. While he had yet to come so close to Dean since their last conversation, driving away from Stull Cemetery, he was still acutely aware of his current condition.
Just as he had known, Dean was fully clothed on the bed, a bottle of Jack Daniels on its side beside his bed, his arm hanging off the bed above it. He was still wearing his shoes, his jacket, fast asleep.
"Cas…" he mumbled brokenly in his sleep and Castiel wondered what would bring his name into Dean's constant nightmares.
He didn't touch anything because Dean was not consciously calling for him and to disturb anything would plant suspicion that he didn't want to invoke. Instead, he slowly walked over to the bed, frowning at the spare beside it, neatly folded and unused but for the duffel bag lazily tossed onto it. Castiel wondered how much having that extra bed so clean and taunting must hurt him if even Castiel felt a terrible pang at the sight of it.
He kneeled beside the occupied bed, resting his elbows on the edge and folding his hands as if in prayer.
"Yes, Dean?" he murmured nearly inaudibly, hoping Dean's hunter senses wouldn't be roused by him.
"Where'da go?" Dean asked him and Castiel both thrilled and saddened that he was talking with him again. He had never gone anywhere, but Dean didn't know that and somewhere, deep down, Dean missed him.
"I am right here, Dean," he told him, leaning forward and lowering his voice even further.
"'Kay," Dean mumbled before falling silent again and drifting further into slumber.
There was a foreign wetness on Castiel's cheeks as he unlocked his fingers with some effort to press them to Dean's forehead and ensure that he would not dream, at least not tonight. That would hardly go unnoticed, but Castiel thought this one, more obvious favour deserved. Dean called him whether he knew it in the morning or not and he would not let the moment, that small chance fall to waste.
His fingers lingered on Dean's skin and he tentatively molded his hand to the contour of his head. It's more unfamiliar to him than the tears running down his cheeks, but he felt and those feelings wanted him to do this. Dean pressed his head into Castiel's hand, just slightly, but it was enough.
Castiel cloaked himself when Dean began to rouse that morning, but he didn't leave until Dean opened his eyes and stared straight through him, confusion but nothing else colouring his green eyes.