A/N: Second ever SPN Fic. Still hoping I do it justice. Unbeta'd, any errors are mine. Set sometime after Season 4. I don't own Supernatural, but apparently I like to peer inside Cas' head (The Logical Song by Supertramp is his theme tune).
I don't know what it's like to be alive, to say goodbye, to cry a thousand times cause my ears won't listen - Ellie Goulding
He's older now – for the amount of time he has spent in this body must count as ageing – and he is wiser. He never expected to learn anything from following the hunter brothers, but against all the odds – they seem to have taught him many things.
He wasn't designed to learn like humans were. They grow and adapt to suit their environments and situations. He was designed to live in an unchanging world, to follow orders and be one body amongst millions walking the same path.
It's clichéd really, to say that by exposure to the men-children has made him more human than anyone ever thought possible. But their flawed and fragile selves have made him stronger than everyone anticipated.
His brothers think that this new found knowledge makes him weak. That becoming closer to his Father's creations makes him imperfect and foolish. He thinks that if humans were created in Father's likeness – does it not make him more like Father to become like them?
For a time, they try to separate him from them – or corrupt them into something that would be blasphemy to be likened to. When that fails – they try to remould him into their perfect soldier. That too fails, for once he has walked the earth as man does, no matter how high they make him fly, how far away he travels, he still longs to find his way back to the ground; and it's easy for him to tread the paths there once more.
They try to break the brothers – testing them above and beyond the necessary, throwing obstacles and traumas and parodies of life lessons at them.
Still they not only endure, but they live. They hold themselves together with grace and duct tape, clinging tightly to one another in the darkness. They hold him tightly as well, as though their mortal bodies can protect his own immortal one from harm he has never needed to fear.
If he's completely honest – he started to change the moment he touched Dean's soul in the pit. Having to clutch the bright shining and screaming thing to his chest as he flew left a mark on his Grace as deeply felt as the marks he left on Dean's physical self.
Holding another's soul so close, patching the damage as best as he was able - made him look closely at what made Dean...well, Dean.
The very essence of his humanity wasn't faith like he always believed. Nor was it anger and hate – like observations of their blood soaked history might let one conclude.
No, what held Dean's soul together against all the darkness he had been held in wasn't any of those things.
It was love. Love for his brother, love for his adopted family and those he saved, love for those that saved him in turn. Love of the feel of a car's engine rumbling around him and the wind in his hair as he drove endless roads. Love for life itself.
Love and loyalty and compassion held Dean together at the very foundations.
(When he settles Dean back into his body that love tastes like sunlight and joyous singing on his tongue, making him want to sing with happiness as he works.)
It seems simple when he thinks about it. Father loved his creation above everything else he had made. He'd told them all to do the same.
Castiel thinks that his brothers have forgotten that command after everything they've seen humanity destroy over senseless things in the course of millennia.
They are all wilfully blind everything that has been created with love over those same years.
In the end, it's easy for him to be more like humans. All he has to do is love them as much as Father once did, and as much as they love each other.
With the lingering taste of sunlight in his mouth – he wonders how could it ever be wrong to want to be more like that which he has grown to love?
Simple: It can't.
And he has lost faith to ever see again
So may he once thought of me then
Underneath the skin there's a human
Buried deep within there's a human - Daughter