This episode has finally undone my writers block, I blame Gabriel for that, completely and utterly. Every time I tried to write him in Diversus I cried. Now that I'm unblocked and Castiel's all broken... well, plenty of happy writing times ahead.
Disclaimer: Did you see the make up sex? Nope, neither did I. A sure sign, therefore, that I still don't own it.
Sleep.
Dean knows that he should be asleep, lying on the sofa with a scratchy blanket over him and soothed by Sam's dull snores and Bobby's heavy ones. Except that he cannot sleep, not with the weight of Bobby's questions and Sam's plan hanging on his mind, not with the four rings on a heavy chain about his neck so that there is no chance of losing them, not with Castiel's final step to falling complete and staring him in the face with every passing minute.
He sighs, rolls off the couch and sets sock clad feet on the floor. Sam is lying on a couple of folded blankets as protection against the hard wood of the floor, head pillowed on one arm as he clutches his jacket high about his neck. Such conditions are something that the brothers are accustomed to enduring, but the tell tale pile of blankets on the other side of the room tells Dean that Castiel has not sought to adapt in the same way. On the one hand Dean does not blame him, quite simply being human sucks, but on the other he knows that this is something that the fallen angel has to do.
This is when the worry sets in, because he just got Castiel back after an age of thinking that his friend was dead and even though he let the angel, former angel, go with Bobby and Sam it was only because he knew that the other two would keep an eye on him and that there was no use for him in the confrontation with Death. Castiel's telling absence right now has the concern gnawing at the hunter's gut and he half curses himself for letting someone else get close enough to hurt him in this way. He mutters something suitably blasphemous and pads from the room, feet almost silent and eyes alert, even in the darkness, for any sign of his friend.
Cas is outside when Dean finds him, a soft breeze teasing at his dark hair and the sweat pants and t-shirt Dean loaned him to asleep in as an alternative to his suit are baggy, moving gently in the wind as Castiel stares up at the stars.
"You should be asleep," he mutters gruffly, unwilling to put full voice to his worry and it causes the words to be more accusatory than he intends them to be.
"So should you," Cas responds, his voice still low and full of that power that first drew Dean in as moonlight glints off the glass bottle in the fallen angel's hand. Bobby's whiskey. The hunter has a hundred retorts to Castiel's comment on his lips and they all die when he sees that, the bottle and the scruff on Cas's face from two days without shaving. It is almost like a vision from the future, Castiel scruffy and high, or drunk, with no hope and shattered faith.
"Cas..."
"I used to be glorious, Dean," the fallen angel cuts him off and the hunter falls silent. "All grace and power and brilliance. A creature to be feared. Now look at me," he gestures to himself and Dean reaches for the bottle as some of the remaining liquid sloshes out, "trapped in this fragile shell of flesh and bone, a slave to it's needs and desires." He frowns at Dean when the hunter finally relieves him of the whiskey, his head tilting in a way that is an almost painful reminder of the fact that he was once an angel.
"I'm sorry," Dean responds, because there is nothing else to say to that. In comparison to what Cas was, being human is a poor substitute.
"I've lost everything, Dean, I've got nothing left," and that is a punch to the gut a hundred times worse than anything else that the hunter has ever been dealt. "I'm useless, worthless, I don't even know who I am."
Dean knows that the reality of his situation has finally hit Castiel, that he is grieving for all the things that he has lost and that the amount of alcohol the fallen angel has consumed has helped all of this come to the fore, but he is still startled by it. He is still shocked by the utter agony in Castiel's voice and eyes, by the way that the blue of them seems to beg him to make it right, to give him something to hope for because Cas has lost far too much to be able to do this for himself now. He can see that this is the first step on the road to Castiel becoming that broken creature of the future, a man who would knowingly walk straight up to his own death, not out of loyalty, but out of a desire to end his own suffering.
"Cas, you're not," he pauses, not sure how to make the words form, "you're not useless, you'll never be useless. Sam and me, we may be a little screwed up, but you'll always have us."
"Will I?" Castiel asks and Dean can understand that, can understand if something goes wrong with this plan and Sam fails or Dean fails and they both die.
"Yeah," he responds and there is so much more that he wants to say there, so many more reassurances and quiet words. There are so many things that he wants to admit, so many thoughts and feelings that have been buried for so long because they have terrified him, a need and a want that he could never admit to because Castiel may have been falling at the time but he was still an angel.
Once he was an angel.
Instead Dean just puts a hand on his shoulder and feels the tremble there, though whether it is from cold or emotion he is unsure until he risks meeting Castiel's eyes once more. The heart break he sees there takes his breath away and he is pulling the fallen angel to him without a thought, wrapping his arms about the smaller man in a bone crushing hug and almost sighing in relief when Cas returns it.
"I feel," Castiel whispers into his shoulder. "I feel so much and I..."
"I know," because Dean does, he really does, understand what Castiel is going through, the roil of agony and turmoil deep inside at realising that he is not what he thought, that he can never be who he hoped to be.
They cling to one another, in a hug that should have become awkward a long time ago and Dean promises himself that he will not let Castiel become that man of the future. He promises himself that he will not become that man either, the one willing to sacrifice his friends on a mission he knew he could never complete or return to the lessons learnt in Hell.
He promises himself that he will not let Cas down again, that he will be there for his friend through all of this. He promises himself that one day he will tell the fallen angel how he really feels, that one day they will cross the country together because they can rather than that the fate of the world depends on it.
He promises Castiel that he will always be here.
Artemis