Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or its characters - these were created by Eric Kripke - I'm just borrowing them. I'm not making any commercial gain. No harm or infringement intended.

A series of short excerpts from Castiel's remaining life with the Winchesters, after hunting. Almost certainly AU. Set after Season 7. Close, but no Destiel. Warnings: Scenes of bereavement and indirect references to character death.

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Excerpts from a Life

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Coming Home

Dark clouds parted to display a sight too wondrous for any mere human eyes to comprehend. The blinding light, that was not a light, all but obscured the strangest impression of eyes on a multitude of wheels, spinning within wheels, which hummed with joy and sang words of praise to each other.

Cas screwed up his own eyes tightly while trying to stop-up his ears with his fingers, feeling as if his head was going to explode, or at the very least like his blood was going to boil away in his veins. He'd had previous experience of exploding and, just as he was sure he was about to go for a third time lucky, the sensory overload stopped as suddenly as it had started.

He opened his eyes and there stood the tall, somber figure of the archangel Phanuel.

"Are you ready to come home?" asked Phanuel, without any preamble.

"Home?"

"Yes, your banishment is over."

"Over?"

"Yes," Phanuel replied, with a gentle chuckle as if talking to a child.

Castiel forced down the surge of joy in his heart and closed his eyes. A silent count of ten later he looked at Phanuel with a frank skepticism borne from his long years on earth with the Winchesters, "Will I be allowed to see them again?"

"What, you think we're monsters? The days of Zachariah and Raphael are long behind us, brother."

Cas took the offered hand, his eyes glistening with tears, as the archangel of repentance drew him into a loving embrace.

With a final blinding burst of brilliant white light, and the sound of a thousand birds taking flight they were gone.

It is said that all those who were open to the potential of the Holy dreamed the same words that night:

Rejoice, Castiel is saved!

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"Love; it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you,

It will set you free,

Be more like the man you were made to be."

- 'Sigh No More', Mumford and Sons.

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A/N: Can I just say that I reject wholesale the concept of the afterlife as shown in Supernatural. Was that really the best you could offer us, Kripke? Re-runs?