Chapter Three
Castiel takes the key to the motel room with him when he leaves. He digs the metal into his fingertips in his pocket as he walks into town. As with the other towns, every building is deserted. The closer he comes to the battleground, the stronger the buzz in the air. Castiel cannot discern if it is because of the tension in his core or because of something entirely separate from him.
The warehouse is at the far end of one of the major roads that runs off the main street of the town. Huge chunks of metal and glass still litter the ground even before the building comes into view. The mess in his mind confuses Castiel even further.
How can I remember this so clearly, and even the night before my death—I can even remember the moment when I got hit. Yet everything in between is a blur.
Castiel climbs over the remnants of the exterior wall of the warehouse through the gaping hole and enters the main holding area. He sees the bodies. Some faces are familiar, though not too familiar. He decides he must have killed them, going by their emptied expressions. It still vaguely smells of sulfur. Castiel crosses the massive space, pausing to examine one of the rotting bodies. He still cannot decide how much time has passed since the battle.
When he stands, the light in the window catches his eye. It illuminates a fading sigil once drawn in fresh blood. He stares as he circles toward it. Castiel's foot hits something hard and he almost trips. He hardly notices. When he straightens up, he knows exactly where he is because it is one of the few moments of the battle he recalls: his end. There Dean Winchester stood, light pouring in behind him, surrounding him in the most beautiful light Castiel had ever witnessed. He held Dean's eye as the blade pierced him cleanly from back to front. He watched Dean's face shift from the almost senseless blazing high of the kill to all the senses kicking in at once and bursting through his body in one short word.
"No!"
The word resounds as if Castiel is still listening to the echo. He hears it in the dead silence in the woods, even when he is not thinking about Dean. He cannot shake it. Part of him does not want to, since it is the clearest memory of Dean, but why did it have to be one so painful, one that made him feel such anguish?
It makes me feel, so maybe that is why I cannot let it go. It is all I have left to feel now.
Castiel does not remember hitting the ground. He looks down; there is no blood or anything even to indicate that this spot is where he died. He looks around and sees what he had kicked aside: the blade that had fallen out of his hand. The release had been thoughtless; the impact with the floor had been loud enough to shatter all the windows. Castiel picks up the blade. It feels the same, as though he expected it to be as different as he is. He stuffs it in his messenger bag.
He does not know if he should return to their motel room. Castiel is not certain he would feel comfortable there, what with every single thing reminding him of the friends who never made it home. Suddenly, Castiel has a thought. He stands up—not certain when he decided to sit on the floor of the warehouse—and takes a few steps before his shoe steps on something alien. He steps back and cold confusion runs over Castiel. The old amulet, the little brass horned head, sits submerged in a puddle. He draws it out from the water; the amulet turns black in his hands, but otherwise remains intact.
Castiel quickly leaves the warehouse, stashing the amulet in his pocket. The further he gets from the warehouse, the colder the amulet feels through the fabric of his slacks.
As suspected, Castiel finds the Impala further down the road from the warehouse, just where Dean had left it. He wishes he knew how to drive it, even though he does not have the keys. The car always fascinated Castiel, especially now, so patiently waiting for its driver to return. Castiel pats its hood as if to reassure it.
Dean, Castiel almost sighs. He extracts the amulet from his pocket again to examine it in the clear sunlight. It is cold as ice, and still black as coal. Castiel tries to rub the blackness off the brass head but hardly anything comes off on his thumb.
He decides in the end to make the motel room his base, even though he is not certain why he is even lingering in the town. He can still feel the buzz he felt when leaving the warehouse. It makes him nervous. On top of that, Castiel has not forgotten the grace, or the explosion that almost made his head cleave.
He sits at the table in the dark motel room running the cord of the amulet through his fingers over and over, wondering what he should do. There are too many questions and not enough routes to answers. More than ever in the last two months Castiel feels entirely alone, and more than ever he wishes he had his friends at his side. He starts to realize how weak he is. The grace's power had strengthened him, but that strength is quickly waning. Castiel holds his forehead with the heels of his hands. He wipes away a line of sweat. His hands come off shaking.
By the time he resolves to leave the motel, darkness already tinges the clear sky. A couple of stars hang over the trees, but in all other respects, night is distant. Castiel walks briskly against the cold air. He finds a church near the center of the town, just past the road leading to the warehouse. His ears ring as he heaves the heavy wooden doors open, but as soon as he crosses the threshold, there is untouched, pristine silence.
It feels more like heaven than heaven itself, he muses as he walks down the central aisle. It is an old church, though nothing compared to the ones in Europe. Wooden beams support the arching, pointed ceiling. A tarnished organ looms over the back of the church as Castiel reaches the cross of the wings and turns around to behold the nave in its entirety. He turns back around and heads straight for the altar, stopping short at the steps. He lowers himself to his knees and gazes up at the crucifix. The bleeding Christ serenely gazes upward toward heaven in his last moments of human life.
"Father…," Castiel starts, his voice cracking ever so slightly. "I don't understand any of this. I never pretended to understand Your Will; I always accepted It. I did everything You wanted me to do, and yes—I do think rebelling was what You planned for me. But now… is this punishment for the destruction I caused? Or for—for the desires I had in the weeks before I died? Is this your way of finally saying, no, Castiel, that's enough; free will only goes so far for a creature like you?"
He stands and takes a step upward.
"Why would You do this to Your Creation? Why—how could You let this happen?" he says, his voice rising. "I did what I thought was right: I loved humanity. I still love it, and You took it away. Did You?"
Castiel takes a couple of steps back. He throws his arms wide open and shouts, "Did You do this? Why would You bring me back to see this hell of a world? I just want to know WHY!"
The ground shakes, and fire begins to spill out from between the flagstones. The walls are all ablaze, and the flames surround the Christ overhead. All the windows are black and cracked. Castiel, though, in the middle of the fire, is untouched. He runs a hand through the flames and still he does not feel the fire.
"Castiel," a voice says.
He looks up. Castiel can only imagine that the voice comes from above. He starts to feel something hot on him, but he pays no attention to it. His eyes are fixed on a point above the cross, his mouth open ever so slightly.
"Yes."
"This is a mistake in the past that can be righted in the present. Find your kin, and save them, for my hands have been severed."
"I don't understand—"
The fires quickly subside. The church is exactly as it was moments before. Castiel rises, looking around. He still feels something hot; he reaches into pocket and finds the amulet burning hot. His mind suddenly clears, his vision goes white, and he hears the voice again:
"You have your guide at your disposal, if you choose to be guided."
Castiel, in the end, chooses to be guided to the liquor store down the street.
He has been in the town for several days, mostly fluctuating between walking around while listening to the buzz and sitting in the motel room drinking his way past a buzz. Castiel has taken to wearing the amulet. It is still black, and it has been cold as ice since his visit to the church, which he has avoided ardently. Sometimes he thinks he feels it heat up when he approaches the warehouse, but Castiel usually concludes that it is all still part of the sick joke through which he is suffering. There is no other explanation, he decides. The world is empty; why should God still be around, and why should He have anything to say to Castiel now, after all this time?
Castiel drains a bottle of whiskey before tossing it aside. It shatters carelessly. He keeps looking back at the duffle bag with the clothes and starts to wonder if he would be more comfortable in the flannel than in his shirt and slacks. His clothes were getting dirty and were increasingly uncomfortable. Castiel stands up, a little shaky, and crosses the room. He throws the bag open and pulls out an old blue shirt and a pair of jeans. The shirt is soft, and he realizes it smells faintly of the Impala.
He drops the clothes on the bed. The amulet feels warm on his skin, but he thinks nothing of it. Castiel abandons the thought and instead leaves the motel. He is tired, and he has not properly slept since his return.
I don't need to sleep. I am an angel.
Down the road Castiel marches, his frustration building up again. He sees the church and turns hard left down toward the warehouse. His ears ring but he cannot care, even if it is even more intense than before. The metal seems to melt on his chest, and only once it starts to sear does Castiel stop and rip it off his neck. The amulet glows intensely, pulsating heat. The closer he moves to the warehouse, the more intensely it burns. He frowns; the amulet has done nothing since the incident in the church, even near the warehouse.
He steps over the familiar rubble. Wings bristling, Castiel tenses. Something is different. He reaches instinctively for his blade and realizes that in his mild stupor he left the motel unarmed.
Something cracks in the shadows. Castiel stops in the middle of the warehouse, not far from the spot where he was last killed. He is beside the puddle where he found the amulet; much of the water has been displaced. Castiel quietly takes a knife from one of the bodies.
"Hello?" he says.
There is more crunching and gentle rustling in the shadows.
"Show yourself," Castiel continues, approaching the shadowed end of the warehouse cautiously. He holds the blade out in front of him.
"Put that knife down," a voice demands. It is a young male voice. "I'm unarmed."
Castiel lowers it, but he does not relinquish the blade.
"I won't harm you," he says slowly. "I'm alone."
"I can't see you well."
"You sound troubled."
"Well, I'm stuck in this hole," he says. "That's troubling to me."
Castiel tosses his knife aside and strides into the shadows. He sees that there is a massive crater in the ground, presumably from the battle, though Castiel does not remember it. In one of the wider parts of the crack the rocks crumbled and formed more of a pit. Down in the pit, there is a boy in his late teens who looks rather annoyed. Castiel offers a hand and pulls the boy out with ease. They both step into the light.
It is Adam Milligan, the half-Winchester presumably condemned to an eternity in hell with Michael and Lucifer—and he is wearing Castiel's bloodied trench coat.