When Castiel let the door swing shut behind him with a final and devastating thud, his hand left ash on the handle. He stopped with one foot on the staircase and inspected the dusty remains of his fingerprints on the brass, and thought that perhaps it was just dirt. Or maybe just the thin remnants of pulverised tree bark. Or maybe a fine coating of fabric fibres from the Impala's steering wheel.
He just hoped that it wasn't ash.
Tentatively, with an uncharacteristically shaky hand, he wiped the handle clean and rubbed the substance between two fingers. The heaviness in his chest dropped to his stomach as the dust ground into his fingertips; perhaps never to be seen again. Though he could still feel it. Like a powder.
His eyes glazed over, as if staring past the realm of his hand, or the floor behind it, or the earth under that, or every subsequent layer right through to the molten core.
He followed the stairs down and navigated his way to the table and chairs located in the centre of the room, guided only by memory and not by sight. His past visits led him to his favourite chair, which he sunk into with all the grace of an eighty year old man; his legs collapsing beneath him and his back hunching into a sharp arch. His coat bunched up at the shoulders, casting his neck into shadow and concealing the severe rise and fall of his Adam's apple as he swallowed hard against the ever-present lump in his throat.
It seemed that no matter what he did, he couldn't make it pass.
In a daze, he once again inspected his hands and saw splinters that he hadn't allowed his grace to heal. Though he couldn't remember ever making the decision not to. He contemplated it for only a moment; his hands left hovering mid-air, suddenly in awe of their worn appearance. In fact, they hardly resembled his hands at all anymore.
No, they must belong to someone else.
He lowered them again, still with splinters scattered under the thin layer of skin. He lacked the energy required to focus his grace there to clear them away. He felt no desire to heal them now, though he knew he ought to if not just to be rid of the evidence. If not just to try and rectify the remains of what he had just done.
And now, as he sat alone in the bunker, he felt the burden of existing in another's body. There came something scornful about it: to possess the vessel of a mortal man and yet remain immortal.
As he considered it, he felt cheated—robbed of something important.
Castiel turned his attention finally to the room and observed the state it had been left in. All but one light was switched off, the chairs at the table left untucked as if someone had risen from them only a few minutes before with every intention to return. The table was littered with several lore books and empty mugs. Cas imagined Sam sitting for hours poring himself over loose pages and thick volumes, one hand still loosely grasping his third cup of coffee as it sat and turned cold, forgotten.
Cas could picture it perfectly, as though he were there reliving the moment over again. As if he had travelled back through time to once again sit at this very table, in this exact chair, with Sam and Dean sitting across from him. As he imagined Sam absorbed in his books, he remembered Dean with his feet up on the table, a bottle of half-drunk beer in hand. It was an image Cas had seen many times; just with tiny variations, like their changes in clothes and the different books pulled from the shelves. Before, Cas had never found much purpose in appreciating these brief, uneventful moments he had shared with them. He hadn't felt any need to. Familiarity had poisoned his memory and made everything feel special only in retrospection.
What he would do just to go back in time now.
If only his broken, skeletal wings would grant him that. He simply refused to believe that this loss was destined; set in stone, unavoidable. He had to believe that, had he the ability, he could rewrite the past. That he could correct it. Because this was surely a mistake.
Castiel leaned forward and stretched his hand out to touch the book closest to him, and he delicately traced from corner to corner without turning the page. He was afraid to move anything. He wanted everything to remain as it was—as it should be—in the hopes that Sam wouldn't be perturbed by his place in the thick volume being lost.
Similarly, Cas didn't wish to touch the cups though they were empty, with the last remnants of coffee already dry in rings at the bottom. Only one cup had anything left in it; filled halfway to the brim with cold black coffee, and Cas stood to gaze down upon it in contempt. Infuriated that it never had, and never will be, drunk.
The boys were often too busy or distracted to clean up after themselves; with most messes remaining for days at a time before one or both of them would find the time to clear the table and wash their dishes. And Cas had never paid it much mind, sometimes even cleaning for them without being asked—taking away drinks as they were finished and plates as they were emptied. He had dismissed Sam with a quick wave of his hand whenever he insisted Cas didn't need to tidy for them—that it wasn't his obligation.
Honestly, Castiel had liked taking care of them where he could. Besides, he disliked the clutter. Anything that sat long enough to be mildly odorous to the boys had already a strong, distinct stench to Cas whose senses were far heightened from theirs. So he usually took to domestic duties whenever he took residence at the bunker, no matter for how short a time, and eventually Sam had quieted and allowed him to do it without argument.
Finally it just became routine.
But now Castiel was aggrieved by the idea of cleaning anything and putting things back in their rightful place. Now it would feel intrusive: like he would be clearing things away when Sam and Dean weren't finished with them.
Castiel sat back in his chair and wrung his hands together in his lap. Dean's ridiculous bathrobe was slung over the back of the chair opposite him. He swore Dean had more than one, because it somehow seemed to be everywhere at once. Whenever Castiel visited, he remembered seeing it in different locations around the bunker within the same day without necessarily seeing Dean actually wearing it. In the morning it would be hung on the bathroom door. Before midday, it would find its way to the kitchen bench. Then by the afternoon it could be found in the dining room; somehow miraculously moving from chair to chair. And then by nightfall it had disappeared: most likely withdrawing to Dean's bedroom.
Castiel hated it. Though he could never explain why, as he hadn't yet understood the reason. But Dean seemed to adore it, and had incorporated it into his usual attire whenever he was in the comfort of his home. It hadn't taken long for Dean to shrug off any comments Sam had to offer on the ridiculous appearance of the robe matched with boxers and a loose t-shirt, and had announced aloud for both of them to hear that he was unashamed, and in fact pitied them for envying the luxury he treated himself with. Cas and Sam had sometimes locked eyes, silently expressing their amusement over Dean's unapologetic love for wearing it, and bonded over their mutual distaste for it. Cas had always appreciated Sam for never succumbing and wearing one himself.
Castiel still hated it, and looked at it almost with the same perplexity he always had. But now he also felt the strong sense of fondness for it too, and hated to think that Dean would never again wear it.
He stood up and took a moment to really find his feet. All the strength had left his legs, and he recognised weakness in his vessel's knees—his own knees—and placed his hands on the table to ensure he remained balanced. He dipped his head low, took in one long, sharp breath, and exhaled with an exhausting effort. He didn't need to breathe, yet he did somehow desperately need to release the tension from his chest and shoulders—a tension he couldn't accurately describe, and couldn't actually fathom how it got there.
Slowly, he edged his way around the table to the chair opposite and carefully picked up the robe; handling it as though it were made of a glass that was inherently bound to shatter. This robe did not belong to him, and he had never been granted permission to touch it. When cleaning up after them in the past, this robe was something that had always remained untouched, as he had somehow known all along never to move it. But now there was nobody to adhere to. No indeterminate rules of theirs that he had to follow. He could throw the hideous thing away and be done with it, and would never have to see it around the bunker again.
But he didn't.
Instead Castiel slowly ran his hands over the material, and clutched tightly onto it as he felt a yearning for his friend. Where was Dean to tell him to put it back where he had found it? Where was Dean to unnecessarily justify it to him? To tell him again the pros of a comfortable robe in comparison to the supposed cons of Cas' permanent suit and trench coat? And where was Sam to try and convince him to be rid of it while Dean wasn't looking?
He waited. And then waited some more. But the bunker remained as quiet as before, with all but one light switched off, the room completely void of anyone but himself. And then he folded the robe in half and placed it back down over the back of the chair exactly as he had found it, if not just folded a little bit neater. He hated that robe, but now loved it too, and almost missed it as though it were absent like its owner. There was some inconceivable agony brought on by the sight of it, yet he hesitated to look away.
He was afraid that if he did, it, and the books and cups, would all disappear.
Just like them.
Cas didn't turn any more lights on for the next two days. He didn't stand up. He didn't so much as shift in his chair. Instead he sat solemnly and waited. By now he knew that there was nothing and no one to wait for, and acknowledged that any hope he still had was wasted. He was simply trapped somewhere between acceptance and denial, and there was nothing to move him from his chair. Had he any need to eat or drink, then perhaps he might have considered getting up and venturing to the kitchen to rectify those needs. Maybe if he felt the rumblings of hunger or the dry ache in his throat from thirst, then he might have found reason to do something. Anything.
But there was nothing.
And somehow nothing felt awfully like something, though he couldn't define what. Like the void wasn't as empty as it appeared. As if there were unimaginable horrors lurking in the dark depths of his mind, reaching to take hold of him and he was simply too blind to see them. By now he had little doubt that he wouldn't have the motivation to fight them off if he could. No, he'd much rather give in to them, even if he never truly understood what they were. Feelings of burden and loss were nothing new, but still, even after all this time, the heavy sensation was alien to him. And this time, it went beyond anything he'd ever felt before.
It seemed that no matter what Sam and Dean had taught him—what it was to feel, to sacrifice, to choose his own path, and even what it was to repress and lie and doubt and dread—his own emotions would forever remain a mystery to him.
Cas couldn't understand what was happening to him now. He couldn't comprehend why the heaviness in his bones wouldn't alleviate. Or why his muscles were rigid as though anticipating a guillotine above his head that just wouldn't fall. Or how his mind—for the first time—could feel physically trapped inside his skull. The part of him that wanted to understand urged him to move, but he didn't. Instead, it was only more cause for him to remain where he was; still and solid like stone. As if he was frozen in place.
As Cas sat, he realised that perhaps days were merely hours, as the time passed under the guise of mischief and secrecy. He couldn't recall what time he had first come home, and had no way to tell what the time was now. The walls were bare of windows, the sun rising and setting in privacy behind layers of brick. Were he to guess, he would assume it had been forever, because forever was a long time. Without them, any amount of time was too long. And the world seemed to be passing him by so fast; leaving him behind in its wake.
He finally looked around the room again, first turning to the light briefly, as though suddenly in wonderment as to which of the brothers had left it on in the first place. Then he turned his attention elsewhere.
It amazed him how quickly dust starts to settle. With eyes that were more perceptive than most, perhaps he would be the only one to see it; but it was there: already leaving a fine layer of grey on every surface.
It was like ash falling after a flame.
It was the room accepting death after life.
It was the air turning cold and stagnant with eerie desolation.
The room was empty. Castiel may as well not exist at all. His presence there was lifeless and he was too exhausted to mimic what it was to be alive. He couldn't bring himself to pretend he had something to do or somewhere to be. The truth was he had nowhere to go, and no other place he would rather be. With nothing but time to sit, dwell, and contemplate, he felt regret at having come here so few times in the past. He had often gone wherever he assumed Sam and Dean needed him, but perhaps here, in the bunker, was where he had truly been needed most.
Maybe, were he lucky, maybe he had even been wanted here.
Though now it was hard to imagine being wanted anywhere.
Castiel finally stood and drifted to the bottom of the stairwell where he gazed upwards to the door. Then he waited for it to open. But of course it remained still, the handle left unturned. The air remained absent of the familiar sound of the key turning in the lock. He sighed again heavily and leaned against the handrail, his back arching so his forehead touched the cold metal.
And it was there that he first began to cry. He recognised the physical urge his human vessel had put upon him before—his body reflexively putting strain where it naturally didn't exist in his true form. There had been so many times in the past where his eyes had stung and shone with unshed tears, but still, he had never actually cried before. It was a connection between him and his vessel that could never quite align—it was, as all angels understood, physically impossible.
But here he was with tears streaming down his face, his chest heaving with audible sobs. His legs trembled with complete stability-robbing weakness.
Then it all came down.
As the grief struck him like a blade between his ribs, he collapsed in on himself and sat sobbing into his knees. His hands sought to grip onto something to keep him tethered to the world, but all he found was the material of his own coat, which, he remembered, had earlier been covered in their blood. Where he hadn't found it in him to heal his hands, he had pushed whatever strength he had had left to erase the red smear of their deaths from his clothes. It had looked like any other blood, and could have in fact passed as his own, yet his mind had been sent reeling because it was theirs. And there had been so much. Too much. More than what was within the realms of repair.
Though that hadn't stopped him from trying.
When the warding had finally failed, he had dragged his weakened body to them, desperately seeking any signs of lingering life. Whether it be the shallow rise and fall of their chests, or the twitch of their hands. But there had been nothing. He had tried calling to them, but the sounds that had escaped his lips couldn't have passed for words. There was so much unimaginable pain in the cries that had torn from his throat, the echoes of his despair enough to shatter the glass of the windows to the floor, leaving their frames empty. The icy gusts of wind had bit at his skin, reminding him how dangerously close to human he was in that moment. But he had already felt it deep in his bones.
And before he could reach them, he already knew.
Though still, that hadn't stopped him from trying.
They were there, side by side: Sam turned towards Dean, and Dean to Sam, and as Castiel touched them, there had still been warmth to their skin. There had still been colour in their cheeks as Cas had caressed them in his powerless hands, and had tried to focus his grace to their fatal wounds. All his muscles had tensed, like a rubber band being pulled until it snapped, and his head pounded like a hammer beating against the inside of his skull. Dark blood had dripped from his nose onto the floor, his face reddening at the pain his futile efforts was putting him through.
There had not been enough power left in him to heal the cuts on their skin, never mind bring them back to life.
His hands had merely been grasping their lifeless faces, urging them to come alive.
And there he had remained for hours, more guttural pleas for help clawing from deep within his chest. He had sat in the growing pools of their blood until they dried, the red shade on his coat deepening until it better resembled the dark depths of loss. He had urged his grace to return, but almost every ounce of his strength had been drained, and even now it hadn't yet fully recovered.
Maybe that was why he could cry.
But after he started, it seemed near impossible to stop. And he found that it took nothing to trigger it; crying abruptly for all the oncoming days, until eventually he learned to expect and accept it. He cried when he accidentally knocked the robe from the back of the chair onto the floor. He cried when the light in the study finally blew out. He looked at his favourite chair and cried when he found there was absolutely no more desire to sit there.
He cried because he could still hear him. Dean with his final words. The most quiet and vulnerable gasping pleas for Sam. And his cries for Cas to save the younger Winchester. It hadn't exactly come as a surprise to Castiel who had—at least once or twice—vividly imagined what those final moments could be like. He had always suspected that the brothers would think of nothing except each other as they died. Cas just hadn't expected those final moments to come so soon. And he hadn't ever been able to anticipate just how awful they would be.
The reality was far worse than anything he could have imagined.
He cried for all that he had lost, after everything he had only just found. All those centuries of blindly following his siblings and being rewritten whenever he dared not to—it had come to an end that day he had pulled Dean Winchester free from the pits of hell and reunited his body and soul.
The millennia he had spent bound to a cause he had never truly believed in had finally been interrupted by this righteous man, who, with his brother, had taught him what it was to look into the barrel of a gun and fight for the worthy cause. The brothers had taught him what it meant to love someone, and had shown him the true nature of family.
They had even gone so far as to call him a part of their own family. And somehow, not without difficulty and set-backs and mistakes along the way, two had become three. And Cas, from then on, had always thought of them as his brothers. Though, in retrospect, he realised he had never used the term aloud.
And god, he wished he had.
He wished he had taken more time to express what their love and battle-scarred loyalty meant to him. And he mourned all the lost opportunities to once again voice his repentances. To ask again for forgiveness for the mistakes he had made and the pain he had caused, and the betrayals that had cut deepest of all. Though he knew that Sam would have long ago granted him that, and that Dean would have stubbornly refused to hear it before eventually giving in and accepting it too.
Cas knew them so well. But somehow knowing what they would say couldn't substitute hearing the actual words. It wasn't enough to know he was still forgiven—he needed it confirmed loud and clear. He needed to see them standing before him: Dean rigid and broad shouldered, radiating conflicted rage and unconditional love at the same time. Sam with his hands awkwardly shoved into his jeans pockets, back slightly slouched, but still standing ridiculously tall and unintentionally brooding. And he needed their voices to ring loud and true that all had been pardoned.
He wanted them to know he had tried his best—though his best, to him, still didn't feel like enough, and probably never would.
Castiel wept into his hands, begging for forgiveness for failing to save them when that was the very thing he had always promised to do.
Thanks for reading, guys! To be honest, this originally was going to be a lot longer, but then I changed my mind and decided to cut it down to this very short snapshot. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm very interested in possibly taking any story requests if anyone would like me to do that. If I think I can do the request justice, then I'll surely give it a crack. So if you have any requests, please comment them and I'll see what I can do :)