Sam walked up to the immobile figure hesitantly, softly clearing his throat to draw the Angel's attention. When that produced no discernible results, he called out Cas' name, addressing him by the nick-name he remembered Dean using sometime during the jumbled haze that was the night before. Still, the Angel remained unresponsive, and Sam began to wonder if he had somehow gone into some kind of delayed shock. Did Angels even experience shocks like humans did? Hell, if anyone had reason to be catatonic, it was Sam. He had just died last night, after all.
Seeing no alternative, Sam finally lifted his hand, and extending his fingers cautiously, tapped lightly on the Angel's shoulder, unsure of how he would react. "Hey Cas," he prompted, fingers still on the shorter man's shoulder. "You alright in there?"
At his touch, Castiel seemed to snap out of his reverie, and spun around to face the younger Winchester. For a moment, they both stood stock still – Cas trying to get his bearings after having snapped out of whatever dreamland he'd been stuck in, and Sam suddenly unsure of how to begin an early morning tête-à-tête with an obviously confused Angel of the Lord.
Eventually, Cas seemed to get a grip of himself, shaking off whatever thoughts had held him so entranced, and inclined his head slightly at his companion in what seemed to Sam to be some form of a strange greeting.
"Sam Winchester," began Castiel in that soft, deep voice of his – slightly raspy as if from disuse – that had almost been drowned out the night before amidst Gabriel's incessant, high-pitched chirping. "Forgive me. I had been...preoccupied," he finished, hesitantly. Somehow, Sam got the feeling that his hesitation sprang more from an inability to explain himself than from a desire to keep secrets from his companion.
"Yeah, hope I didn't interrupt you there. You seemed pretty deep in thought. I was just worried you had gone into shock or something, y'know."
Once again, the Angel tilted his head slightly to the side like an inquisitive sparrow, as if Sam were speaking a foreign language that puzzled him, but he was too polite to say so. "I am not sure I understand," he said eventually. "I was listening to the songs of the Host. It has gotten rarer, since the fighting began, their voices have faded." There was something in Castiel's tone as he said this that made Sam incredibly sad, though he had no idea exactly what he was sad about. "And on Earth, so far from home, it's even harder to hear them. They don't speak much anymore. They're afraid, of being overheard and betrayed by their own brethren."
Suddenly, Cas sounded incredibly tired, and Sam felt an indescribable urge to understand, to make the lost Angel before him feel slightly better, even if momentarily. Besides, there was a part of him that had always hungered for knowledge, no matter what its source.
"The Host? You mean the Host of Heaven? The other Angels?" he asked curiously.
"Yes," Castiel agreed, accompanied by a slight inclination of his head. He seemed to have forgotten his own troubles in the face of Sam's almost childish curiosity. "The Host of Heaven. My brothers."
"But if they're in Heaven," began Sam, confused, tilting his head in an unconscious imitation of his companion. "How can you hear them from here? Is it some form of telepathy?" he asked, intrigued.
"I am not certain I understand you," Cas answered, further resembling a sparrow by the minute. He began moving away from the window and Sam followed him. "When the Host sings in Heaven, every Angel in existence can hear them; no matter which realm or dimension they are in. It is how we communicate, the source of our power."
"So it's like, umm," Sam hesitated, grasping for an appropriate description for the phenomenon that had just been explained to him. "Like an Angel-radio?"
"There are no electronic contraptions involved in the process," the Angel assured him with a bemused expression on his face. "But I suppose, in mortal terms, that would be an apt description," he conceded.
"So Mr. Feathery Ass knows what a radio is, eh?" Dean rasped from his reclining position on the bed, voice still heavy with sleep but laced with obvious amusement at the conversation he had just overheard.
Sam, who had sat down on one of the plush, fluffy sofas on the other side of the room during the course of the conversation, jumped about a foot into the air in surprise. "A little heads up next time wouldn't kill you, you know Dean?" He growled angrily, glaring at his brother while simultaneously trying to cover for his terrified reaction.
Cas, for his part, gave not the slightest indication of surprise, simply turning slightly towards Dean before continuing his explanation calmly. "I do not," he began matter-of-factly, giving no indication of offence at being called a 'feathery-ass'. "My...vessel, James Novak; he liked to listen to the radio with his family, in the evenings." That strange sadness seemed to have returned to Castiel's voice, and Sam noticed that his eyes were lowered, gazing intently at the floor. "I do not have his mind or his feelings, but I can access his knowledge, his memories, if required."
"What do you mean he liked listening to the radio?" questioned Dean warily, eyeing the Angel up and down. "He's still in there somewhere, ain't he?" he demanded gruffly, indication Castiel's trench-coat clad vessel with a casual wave of his hand.
"No," Castiel whispered, his eyes downcast and his voice weighed by such an acute sadness that it made Sam wonder if the Angel had actually been friends with his own vessel. "We were...attacked; Gabriel and I, by some of our brothers, soon after coming to Earth. We eventually managed to defeat them, but the fight was fierce, and I sustained some injuries. Injuries that the human body was not crafted to survive. James' soul left his body, departed to Heaven," he finished softly.
"To the same Heaven that is presently being torn apart by civil-war?" demanded Dean coldly, glaring at the Angel, and Castiel seemed to cringe at his accusing tone. "Fat lot of good that'd do him, I'm sure," he finished sarcastically.
"Dean!" Sam hissed, wanting to shut his brother up. Couldn't he see that the Angel was already tying himself into knots with guilt and regret as it was? What was the point of rubbing it in even further? Sometimes, Sam wondered if Dean was just being a self-righteous dick for the sake of it.
"What?!" Dean demanded angrily, glaring at his brother. "Are you going to pretend that it's alright for these supernatural things that call themselves Angels –" Dean sneered at the word derisively before moving on. "To come flying into Earth whenever it fucking suits them and trick innocent people into becoming their meat-suits? Only to then blow them up and let them die, all to resolve a petty family squabble? These are human lives we are talking about, Sammy!"
"I know that!" snapped Castiel, seeming finally to have had enough of Dean's tirade. "James was not just my vessel, Dean Winchester. He was my friend, my comrade. If there was anything, anything at all that I could have done to protect him, I would have."
"Well, why didn't you then?" Dean asked with unmasked derision in his voice. "If you managed to save your own ass, you could have saved his too. Hell, you could just have left him alone and out of your little family feud! But no, of course not. For that you'd actually have to have a respect for human life, wouldn't ya?"
"Dean," Sam warned, getting more and more worried for both his brother and the Angel. Dean was seething from years of pent up resentment against God and all things divine, blaming Heaven for having failed to protect their family all those years ago, for all the pain he had had to suffer as a consequence of that failure. But Castiel didn't understand any of that, and Sam could see that he was hurt by Dean's scathing words. That, in combination with his own sorrow, guilt and regret, was making him hostile and defensive, and Sam had no illusions about who would win in a fight between his brother and the Angel.
Dean, however, was too angry to heed the warning, and continued. "You call yourselves Angels, but you're nothing but a bunch of glorified monsters, no better than the rest of those abominations that we hunt. You ripped a man away from his family and then, when that wasn't enough, you killed him. All of it just 'coz you couldn't get on with your bratty brothers?"
For a moment, Castiel sat stock-still, and the temperature around him seemed to have dropped a few degrees. The tension in the air was almost palpable, and Sam's hand instinctively reached for the closest thing that could be used as a weapon. The lights in the room flickered ominously, and for a moment Sam could have sworn he heard thunder cackling outside.
As soon as it had arrived, however, the tension left the room, and all of a sudden Castiel deflated, his shoulders slumping forward and all of that preternatural energy leaving his form as if it had never been. He suddenly looked no more than a very confused and miserable young man.
"You're right," he whispered finally, burying his face in his hands. "We had no right. I had no right to bring James into this. To bring any of you into this. God's last commandment to us was to protect humanity, and how miserably we have failed at it! James' death was my responsibility, as is the destruction that Heaven's war shall wreak upon this planet. If my brothers want Brother Lucifer back, if that's the only way to stop these atrocities from happening –"
"Hey hey! Slow down there Cas!" Sam interrupted, carefully wrapping an arm around the smaller man who had hunched over into something resembling a foetal position. "Dont listen to Dean, he's an ass," Sam advised sagely, glaring daggers at his brother, who was spluttering indignantly. But Cas' obvious regret over the death of James Novak seemed to have punched the fight out of Dean more effectively than any arguments could have, leaving behind a kind of ineffectual anger, directed not at the Angel, but at the world in general.
"I don't know about you, man, but I'm starving," Dean muttered eventually, pushing himself off the bed and snatching his leather jacket off the hangar on the wall with slightly more force than was strictly necessary. "I'm going to find breakfast. Come along later if you feel up to it, ladies." And with that last parting shot, Dean fled the room in search of food, leaving Sam alone with his new Angelic husband.
For all his people-skills (which far exceeded his brother's, any day of the week), Sam had no idea how to console a grieving Angel. It wasn't like these situations came with an instruction manual. For lack of any better ideas, he decided to try the time-tested lure of apple pie. It always worked like a charm on Dean anyway, so it was worth a shot.
"Hey Cas," he began softly, trying not to startle the Angel any more than necessary. "Wanna come down to breakfast with me? We can steal Dean's apple-pie, as payback for him being a dick," he offered with a wink, standing up and extending his hand to the still hunched-over Seraph.
At the sound of Sam's voice, Castiel finally looked up at his companion, his face clouded with confusion and misery. For some reason, the sight made Sam's heart clench with some incomprehensible emotion, and he decided once again to have a talk with his brother about being a self-righteous ass to confused heavenly beings.
"I don't need to eat, Sam," he replied finally, his voice hoarse. His eyes were bright with what appeared to be unshed tears, and Sam sighed again, forcing himself to smile despite his own disorientation with the morning's events.
"Dean would have a fit if he heard anyone refusing apple-pie, you know," he confided conspiratorially. "First thing about being human? We don't do things coz we need to. We do them coz we want to!"
Finally, a small smile appeared on the Angel's lips, and he met Sam's eyes with something akin to humour in his own. Sam didn't know if the room really got a little brighter with Castiel's smile, or if it was just his imagination, but a weight seemed to have been lifted from his chest when Castiel took his hand and pulled himself off the sofa in one fluid movement.
"I am not human, Sam," Castiel reminded him gravely, as the taller man held the door open for him to pass.
"Stick with us, and pretty soon you wouldn't be able to tell the difference," the younger Winchester assured him with a grin, and if the sight of Castiel's smile made him feel a little less cynical about humanity himself, nobody ever needed to know about it.
