Based off a post that went around tumblr recently talking about the possibility of Dean and Cas falling in love while he was rebuilding him to raise from hell. Destiel. Oneshot.
Apologies to my regular Roselockian readers; I've been in a Destiel mood. I guess I've just needed to write something different for a bit. The second chapter of Omniscience is almost done; I just want to make sure the ending was actually decent this time.
Castiel had experienced love, but not like this.
He knew the love of family, of brethren, of comrades. He knew perhaps best of all the love of his Father, and for Him. Perhaps none of these loves was as pure as when he was first created, but how was it supposed to stay the same amongst all the blood and pain and loss? For him, the war had never started or stopped. It just was. The time before was too far away now for true recollection of what it felt like. Or perhaps that was a lie that was easier to tell himself than the truth.
So, when he was told that he and a group of siblings (brethren, comrades, soldiers from the garrison) were to lay siege to hell in order to rescue a human being, Castiel didn't think too much on it.
In hindsight, perhaps he should have.
The laid siege to hell (no small task) in order to rescue Dean Winchester. He was, in Castiel's opinion, paradoxical: a human who was important in the scheme of things. While he was required by his Father to respect human beings, since His absence, it had been difficult. Castiel had more important things to do than to worry about insignificant ants, what with demons on the loose. Though technically by killing demons he was protecting humans, Castiel had never truly wanted to interact with them, choosing to follow orders for the sake of his brothers and sisters, for the sake of the order of Heaven. He always thought that if a human was in Heaven's plan, he wasn't one to question it.
Castiel often wondered what might have happened if he had.
But then again, it was Dean Winchester who had taught him to question orders in the first place.
The siege took place over five years or so, in hell time. They failed to acquire Dean Winchester before the first seal was broken, and all of the other angels were reassigned to other tasks as a result. Castiel was not. Castiel was given the prestige, or perhaps the punishment, of single-handedly rescuing Dean Winchester. The higher-ups thought that a single infiltrator might be more successful than an entire legion, and they were right.
When Castiel arrived, having fought his way through a hundred demons almost easily, a thousand more with a little more effort, he saw the body he was supposed to take. He was torturing others on the rack. The boy's face was savage, even feral, as he dealt out pain. Castiel was disgusted, but he hadn't expected much else from a puny human. He was on his way to becoming a demon. Castiel would, unfortunately, have to fix it if Heaven's plan was to be carried out properly.
Castiel had acquired a vessel for the purpose of human interaction in the interest of physical interaction. It was much easier to heal a human body when one possessed a human body. When Castiel grabbed the boy's upper arm, he felt his soul, and for a moment he thought he understand why this human was so important. His soul, it was...well. The first word that came to mind was "beautiful", but it wasn't enough. There was a purity to its light, brought about not by lack of tainting, but through (literal and figurative) hellfire. It was a brightness that shone out as a beacon, a cry of life that could not be drowned or silenced, an unshakable goodness birthed in unspeakable acts of blackness.
Castiel shook it off and took the boy away. Humans were tools in Heaven's plan, nothing more.
The boy's skin was hot under his newly human fingertips.
"Who the hell are you?" the boy growled, trying to free himself as Castiel's hand burned a print into his flesh, gripping him tight.
"I'm an angel of the Lord," he growled. "And I'm going to raise you from perdition." Because it was irritating for Dean to struggle, a single touch to his forehead made him fall unconscious.
Castiel took him away, to rebuild the damage done by the demons, to a small house far out in the middle of nowhere. In Heaven time, it was a blip. In Earth time, it was a matter of weeks. In Hell time, it was a matter of years. For once, Castiel felt as though time was stretching (though perhaps that was a side effect of the human form): it was years, certainly, before Dean Winchester was put back together again.
Handling souls was a difficult task. Handling Dean Winchester's was even more so. It didn't want to be held. There was so much pain embedded in it, like splinters or daggers, from Hell, mostly. Castiel took the time to draw out each and every one, carefully, gently. And in each sliver was a memory Dean gave up to him like a gift, full of pain and loss, but with these also came feelings of relief and acceptance and healing.
One day (one year? One hour? One moment?), enough of Dean's soul was restored that was strong enough to talk in between healings.
"Castiel," he whispered hoarsely. The angel in question looked up in surprise and some level of irritation, but a greater level of curiosity. "That's your name, isn't it?" Dean continued. The human closed his eyes, already weak from the talking and his own wrecked soul. "Thank you," he breathed before falling unconscious again. Dean's body was perfectly fine, of course, but his soul was not, and in the process of healing it left his body weakened in a way Castiel could not heal.
The angel was not certain how the boy knew his name. It was unsettling, and he soon discovered why. It seemed that every time he had received a splinter of pain from Dean's soul, drawing out the memories of pain and loss and hopelessness, Castiel had inadvertently been giving up calming memories of his own in their place, a natural healing instinct he didn't know he possessed. It was unsettling in many ways: his care for the human was supposed to be what needed to be done, nothing more nor less, and yet Castiel felt compelled to respond to his pain, to respond to the life in front of him, to the memories he had seen by touching his soul, to the person. To Dean.
He therefore gave Dean calming memories quite purposefully at all healing sessions afterward. Castiel selected memories before the war and rare times of peace: witnessing the birth of stars and the joy in the death of them, knowing they would beget life, and of the Garden, and of the massive ocean, and of the careless days of he and his siblings as innocent children under a loving Father and doting eldest brothers.
He gave Dean Winchester everything he was and didn't even know why until the boy spoke again.
"Why are you doing this?" Dean asked one day. He was sitting up, stretching his arm muscles, judging the shape he was in (without his normal constant fighting, he had lost some weight in muscle, which would hopefully be corrected once the goddamn angel would let him out of the freaking house). "I know you have orders, but...I don't think this is a part of it." When the angel refused to answer, resolutely preparing some basic human nourishment for his charge, Dean growled, frustrated, and heaved himself into a standing position. He was slow, and somewhat wobbly, but he took an angry swing at Castiel anyway, who easily blocked it and touched his fingertips to Dean's forehead. After dragging him back over to the bed and laying him out flat, Castiel pressed a hand to Dean's forehead and gave him a memory of the first sunrise of the Garden. If his hand lingered while he watched Dean smile in his sleep, then at least there was no one around to notice.
Castiel did not know from whence this love had grown (no, that was a lie, he knew exactly). This affection for this tiny human blip in the existence of the universe. It had grown from admiration at the boy's strength and discipline as a soldier, the beauty of his fighting, respect for his loyalty to those dearest to him, and awe of his utter humanity. He did not know how to identify this love, so he did not know how to act on it. All he knew was that he knew this man better than he knew himself, and somehow, that the opposite was also true.
When the final day came, he did not know what to do with the tightness inside his chest.
When Castiel arrived that day at the little house covered in devil's traps with food, he was surprised to see Dean up and about. He looked like he had been exercising for an hour or so, judging by the sheen of sweat covering him.
Castiel's chest constricted further and his hand clenched into a fist. Why, why him? Why now? Why now was he given something good in his utterly meaningless eternity, something he would have to give up today…?
"How do you feel today, Dean?" Castiel asked, hoping the grief and the anger weren't bleeding out of his eyes.
"Great!" his human charge grinned, swinging his arms back and forth in a stretch. "Man, am I out of shape, though. Maybe we could spar sometime!" he laughed, rolling his shoulders.
"Dean," Castiel tried, softly. Dean didn't appear to hear.
"Although to be honest, you'd probably have to go easy on me for a while," Dean continued.
"Dean," Castiel said again, this time more urgently. He allowed some of his sorrow to leak into his voice. Finally, Dean's face snapped to his.
"What, Cas?" he asked snappishly, fearfully, sensing the pain of the angel he knew so well (practically by accident, though some would call it destiny). Though Castiel had at first sought out Dean's candy apple eyes, he now was forced to look away at the sight of Dean's doubt and worry, his overwhelming vulnerability.
"Dean...you're fully healed. My task is done; I can't keep you here any longer."
"Wait, you mean I can go back? Back to Sammy and Bobby?" His relief and hope should have been reassuring, because he willingly wanted to return to Earth in order to fulfill Heaven's plan, but Castiel felt only pain.
"Yes," he said simply, standing to face his human ward. Dean Winchester. A remarkable man far beyond worthy of Heaven. Gently, so as not to startle him, Castiel placed one hand gently upon Dean's upper left arm. The human looked puzzled and somewhat wary at the action.
"What are you doing?" he asked, eyeing the angel's hands. Even more gently, Castiel drew up the short sleeve to reveal the burned handprint mark acquired dragging Dean out of Hell. He touched it again, carefully, splaying his palm out over the mark. He thought he felt a shiver go through Dean but he dismissed it as an impossibility. His other hand went to Dean's face. "What are you doing?" Dean asked again, this time sounding much more agitated and potentially dangerous.
Castiel could feel his heart, his damnable human heart, breaking.
"Making you forget," he said softly, cursing his cracking voice.
"Forget? Why? No. No, you can't make me forget you," Dean said, looking suddenly terrified, and Castiel was terrified too, maybe he had made a mistake-
"Orders. You can't do what Heaven wants if you're too focused on what happened here, or even if you know what happened here," Castiel said bitterly.
"No. No, we can work this out. I don't have to forget you. Cas, this doesn't even make sense-"
"Hush," Cas tried to say, but too loudly and too heartbroken as his jagged emotions cut themselves out of his voice and sealed the forgetting, and Dean Winchester fell unconscious in his arms for the last time.
Dean Winchester was buried beneath the ground and Heaven's plans were set in motion, and Castiel felt like he was dying from the inside and he
just
wanted
it
to
stop.
I am so, so sorry. I broke my own heart while writing this. Also, reviews are love, even if said reviews consist of sobbing incoherent curses against me.