CHAPTER TWO
EVER THE SAME
"Cas, you're alive."
"I'm better than that."
The act of healing was so infinitely easier than Cas expected that he swayed on his feet for a moment. Power flew out over his fingertips and touched every bruise, every cut, every broken bone, cascaded over Dean's broken nose, stitched even the scars from recent wounds shut and clean. He stepped swiftly back. He'd wanted to keep his handprint on Dean's shoulder safe. His only physical tether to humanity now.
"Cas, are you God?"
"That's a nice compliment, but no. Although I do believe he brought me back. New and improved."
Cas got in the car and Dean started the engine after they'd said farewell to Bobby. Cool, uninterrupted silence floated between the two of them and for a while Cas did not know what to do. This wasn't peaceful silence at all. This was tense, crackling with energy. Cas could sense the emotion rolling off Dean's broad shoulders. He'd never been able to do that before. Cas breathed in - and smelled it. Some new Archangel trick? This wasn't going to end well.
"So how was it?" Dean asked suddenly.
"How was what?" Cas, surprised, blinked several times and was caught staring straight into Dean's shocking eyes. Certain ways they hit the light took Cas off guard. Like right now.
"Death," said Dean, waving his hands to illustrate. "The afterlife. Do you even have an afterlife? You're already a freakin' angel." There was a bite to his words that gave Cas an unfamiliar pang in his chest. Cas understood the pain Dean must be feeling - he'd just lost two brothers as well; hell, he'd lost dozens of brothers in the past few months. But still - he'd never had any sort of relationship like Dean and Sam had. There wasn't anything special to be had, considering the were all brothers and sisters. Dean had lost people who weren't his brother, and now he'd lost Sam too. Cas believed this was probably the best illustration of the phrase 'double whammy'.
"It was ... interesting," Cas said, returning his attention to the road before him. As for now, he wasn't going to just spill his guts about meeting Azrael and her cryptic comments about Sam and Gabriel. "Painful. I've never exploded before."
Cas expected at least a chuckle out of Dean, but all he got instead was a clipped snort and a tightening of Dean's jaw.
"No afterlife, then." Dean's fingers tightened on the steering wheel and Cas sensed the simple sadness wafting off of him. It was so strong it had a smell, again. Like a lake just after a long, tempestuous storm. Cas closed his eyes and breathed it in slowly. "Figures, I guess. You already were in heaven. Where else are you gonna go? Not like you could stay there forever, though. Death's gonna reap God in the end, yanno." He shifted in his seat so his left knee was up against the door, and stretched his right leg out beside the pedals. Cas recognized this position as one that Dean took when he put on the cruise control.
Dean was rambling, a sort of stream-of-consciousness speech about death. A speech that started and stopped. Cas let him go on. He slowly grinned, shaking his head and chuckling. "You are so young," Cas said, resting his elbow on the door and putting his chin in his hand, looking at Dean. He stayed like this for a few tense, silent moments before going on.
"Everything ends, Dean. The world will eventually end. God will end. Your life will end. Mine will, too. New things begin, as well - new universes, new realities. New ideas. But between these two points - start, end - there is time. Lots and lots of it. God's been around for so long it could be considered Eternity. Whereas you: you're barely a speck, a blip insignificant in the huge ever-encompassing radar known as Time. You can't fathom it." Cas laughed. "I can't fathom it."
"Really, then, what's the point? What's the point of starting anything if all it's gonna do is end? And don't give me that 'just for the hell of it' speech. There's no goddammed point, is there?" A rhetorical question. Cas didn't answer. "I may be 'young'," here Dean used air quotes, "but insignificant? Well, shit. Thanks, Cas."
"That's not what I meant," backtracked Cas. "I meant -"
"Shut up," said Dean, and put up a dismissive hand. He looked so very tired, Cas wanted him to pull over and rest, at least for a moment. "Just ... let's shut up for a second, okay?"
Cas pursed his lips, folded his hands in his lap, and nodded. They drove. The afternoon blended into twilight and then evening; then the wind began, and the clouds rolled in, and the rain started. Slow, steady rain, not fire and brimstone rain. The windshield wipers woop-woop'ed across the windshield. Cas didn't know where they were going, and he didn't ask. He didn't want to know. He was just content with silence, even though Cas knew Dean was on the edge of something. The edge of something terrible. Cas didn't want to push him off, but he knew Dean would probably do the jumping.
"What are you going to do now?" Dean broke the silence and Cas let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. The air around him crackled with a different emotion.
"I'll return to heaven, I suppose."
"Heaven?"
Cas puzzled over it. Angels had always followed the orders of their Father, at least in theory. For a long time Castiel had known that Michael was most definitely pulling the strings under the guise of the Father. A false prophet. "With Michael in the cage, I'm sure it's total anarchy up there." Cas prayed there were more angels than just Azrael to count on. Angels that hadn't sold their souls to mindless labor.
"So what, you're the new sheriff in town?"
Cas smiled, but not with his eyes. "I like that. Yeah, I suppose I am." Something was brewing. Cas inhaled again. Now the air around Dean seemed like sulphur, firecrackers, and heat.
"Wow. God gives you a brand new, shiny set of wings, and suddenly you're his bitch again." Dean's lip curled and the scent around him exploded into chile peppers and smoke. Cas frowned, worried.
"I don't know what God wants. I don't know if he'll even return. It just - seems like the right thing to do." Cas licked his lips and looked down at his hands.
"Well, if you do see him, you tell him I'm comin' for him next." Dean's smell was now almost pure sulphur, Cas' eyes were watering from the strength of it. Even his consciousness blurred from the briefest instant at the apex of Dean's emotion. This hadn't happened to Cas before. Maybe out of the few people Cas had been around, he was closest to Dean, and that's why he was so affected by him. Maybe Dean was just the most furious person on the planet.
"You're angry." Cas found himself just slightly out of sync, like things were either moving too swiftly or too slowly for him to process.
"That's an understatement." It was.
Cas bit his lip again. "He helped. Maybe even more than we realized." It wasn't God's fault. It was Michael's. Dean had no right to be taking pot shots at his Father. Cas never ever made comments about Dean's father. Never ever. A single lick of anger floated in Cas' gut for an instant.
"That's easy for you to say. He brought you back. What about Sam? What about me, huh? Where's my grand prize? All I got is my brother in a hole." Now Cas smelled the pain on his friend, mixed with sulphur. Cas wrinkled his nose and endured it.
"You got what you asked for, Dean. No paradise. No hell. Just more of the same. I mean it, Dean. What would you rather have? Peace ... or freedom?" God Almighty, it hurt to be around Dean. It hurt to see him. To smell him. Cas was feeling his pain and then some. It set Cas' teeth on edge. Oh, how he wanted to say something neat and tidy and comforting, but then he felt the pull again: that tug around his navel. Fearing another explosion, Cas gave Dean a final pained look (he was sure Dean hadn't seen it) and followed the pull.
Dean turned, hoping (he told himself he wasn't) to find his friend sitting there. In Sam's seat. Gone. "Well, you really suck at goodbyes, you know that?"
Dean drove to Lisa's and didn't look back.
A/N: I've used the actual dialogue from the end of 5x22, and I've underlined it here. I did not write those bits of speech, I do not own them, nor do I pretend to be affiliated with them in any way. Thanks for the reviews, they made my day! I hope you like the next installments!
