"Why do you do that?" Asks Dean.
"Do what?" Castiel replies, tickling the roach's stomach, and watches its legs kick back to life once more.
He watches the bees, and thinks of days when the sun was the same color.
There are hundreds of them. Little yellow and black speckles dancing in his vision, running places on a bright and sunny day. Flowers to tend, pollen to spread, traveling back and forth in the garden. Itinerant lives, they lead, these little ones. No time for rest, oh no. Not for the bees. They are diligent workers, and amidst the humdrum chore they did not bat an eye to the silent observer who sits among the bushes, with his hands folded neatly on his lap.
"I believe you are called," says Castiel to a nearby bee, whose lack of attention did naught to his mood for conversation, and continued, "busy bees."
Castiel chuckles. It takes, however, more than that to amuse the bees. None pauses in his flight. But Castiel thinks, that may as well be, for they are busy bees, after all.
He closes his eyes, and indulges in the gentle, monotonous hum of the flock around him.
Some days, Castiel thinks he can navigate the garden just by listening to their buzz. He has been sitting so often with his eyes closed that his other senses have been able to prevail. Hearing, especially. A bee can whiz by and, with closed lids, he can lift a finger and point the direction from where it had come, "Here."
It's what leads him to explore. And it's what leads him into a nest.
He doesn't mean to—really, really doesn't mean to. It had been okay at a distance, he had no intention of disrupting their ways. But when his hand lifts he feels ghosting touches down his skin, the gentle tone of their buzz grows a note too jagged, and when his eyes snap open the creature is already driving its needle into his arm.
In a flash, Meg is there. He yelps but he doesn't remember. She holds his arm, still with the bee attached, and guides him to the nearby bench.
He sits. The bee pulls away, leaving half its body stuck in Castiel's arm, and flies an inch or two before falling gracelessly at his feet. Its wings try to pick up again, but it's futile. It rolls, slides, flips on the stone like it's being grilled, torment clear in the way it kicks its legs. Twitching, thrashing, falling on its back, wings fluttering weakly behind.
"I killed a bee."
"Shh, give me your arm."
"Meg, I killed a bee."
"Yes, you did, but you didn't mean it."
"I killed a bee."
"Heal yourself, Cas."
He remembers how, and he does. The wound is gone.
"Why must bees die this way?" he asks.
"It must have felt you were threatening the safety of the hive, so it stung you to protect them."
"Them?"
"The little thing must have had family in there. A whole branch of relatives. Like neighbors in apartments."
"Family?" Castiel repeats.
"Yes."
They watch the dying bee at their feet for a moment.
"That is so unfortunate," he says, and bends down to pick up the thrashing bee and places it in his palms. He brings it to his face, gazing at its stripes. "You're a soldier, aren't you," says he, reaching out to snip off a flower from a nearby branch and place it beside the bee, who was flipping and bending in his hands.
He doesn't quite realize what happens next, only the little thing all of a sudden finds its wings and flies off, and Meg is setting a hand on his knee, patting it once and saying, like a reminder, "You're an angel."
There's a pause. "Indeed, I am," he murmurs.
He watches the bee, once again jubilant and alive as before, disappear into the crowd where it will live a long and happy life with its family and neighbours and friends.
Castiel ponders over it for a moment, the way bees work. "It is, I presume, not self defence, but a desperate measure taken." He fiddles with the band around his wrist, eyes downcast. Beside him, Meg says nothing, but watches the bees with him. "Sting or not, they are doomed. And still they would not resign without bringing the attacker pain of whatever degree."
He sits back, and laughs.
"But, consider, the size of their brains. And to think it is so deeply ingrained in their bodies to seek justice." Something makes him catch on that word, but he continues. "Fascinating species, are they not?"
He watches the bees. They remind him of days when the sun is just as vibrant a shade. Days spent in another garden, somewhere closer to home.
Castiel thinks again about the sacrifice of bees, the ones who guard their families, and he seems to recall a time when that sequence was oddly familiar.
He brings up a hand and, for whatever reason, traces an invisible circle on his chest.
"What are you thinking about, right now?" Meg asks.
Castiel glances over at her, stilling the hand on his white scrubs, and sets it down neatly in his lap again. "I don't quite know, either."
He turns his eyes back toward the bushes and the bees, and watches them in appreciative silence.