Castiel stared down at the bitten-off nubs of what had been, when he had awoken that morning, his fingernails.
There had been a time, many many years ago, when his mother would put socks on his hands at night to try and wean him from what had then been a habit. She would tell him, each and every night as she wrestled the scratchy blue wool over his flailing hands, that the fearless dragon-slaying Prince Dimitri, the star of Castiel's favourite bed time story, would never chew his fingernails.
Castiel could remember thinking, years later, as he trudged through the pouring rain towards the church, shouldering the weight of his mother's coffin, that Prince Dimitri would never have let someone he loved come to such grave harm, either.
But then, he never had managed to live up to all that his childhood hero had represented.
The day of the funeral, when he and his father had returned back to their too-quiet house, Castiel had snuck into his mother's closet and dragged out the dusty old box that lived, tucked away, at the back of the top shelf. He had carefully foraged amongst the sepia photos of unfamiliar faces and the indistinguishable drawings his mother had kept from his preschool days, until he found what he was looking for. Stuffing the moth-eaten socks into his pocket, he had re-shelved the box, and spent the next half hour trying to decide where in his bombsite of a bedroom to hide the stolen reminder.
If he had stopped to think, he probably would have realised that it really didn't matter; no one was going to miss those old blue socks. Not when there was the loss of an entire person to grieve.
He hadn't bitten his nails again after that day.
Not the first time his dad actually voiced the blame he placed on Castiel for the loss they had suffered, not on his first day on the job after he had enlisted...not even the night of his first kill, when the backs of his eyelids had been seared with the images of the life he had taken.
Not once had he felt the need to sink his teeth into the calcified ridges and shred until there was nothing left to chew on. Not once, in fifteen years.
But sitting there, in that claustrophobic room with its bland walls and obnoxiously loud clock, not knowing what the hell was happening to the person he cared most about in the world, who happened to be right down the hall...yeah, he was damn lucky his dress uniform included gloves.
He exhaled heavily, tapping his foot against the linoleum in time with the frustrated melody circling in his head. If he was to believe the clock on the wall, he had been there for five hours. Five hours, in which the other members of the squad had been and gone, given their testimonies and been released back to whatever afternoon duties awaited them.
But of course, Castiel was being saved for last.
Because it wasn't painful enough knowing that Dean was in there facing down the devil incarnate without having to wait the better part of the day to do his part in getting him off the hook.
He had rehearsed what he would say a million times in his head, had recited it to his reflection in his bathroom mirror every morning for the past month. And it had always seemed enough.
Enough to convince the jury that Dean simply didn't have it in him to be malicious or vindictive, that he was not capable of bringing someone needless harm.
...But in all his practises, it had been just him, he had not had prosecution breathing down his neck. It made Castiel sick to his stomach knowing that Dean had been in there all day having to field Alistair's hideous accusations.
Because they would have been hideous; Castiel had come across him once before, and the man had been nothing short of soulless. Dean might be stubborn as hell and stronger than any young man his age should ever have cause to be, but there was only so much merciless character defamation a person could be pelted with before they started second guessing themselves.
He slumped down in the too-hard chair, fingering the hem of his jacket. Any minute now, surely, the uniformed recruit who had been called to serve as clerk for the day, would come through those doors and put him out of his misery.
He would lead him out and down the corridor, their footfalls echoing down the otherwise empty passage, until they came to the heavy wooden doors that separated Castiel from the only thing that mattered to him anymore.
He would be told to wait, and he would, until they were ready for him inside.
And then...well, then the real torture would begin.
He would tell them that Dean was the last person who could ever cause someone undue harm, and Alistair would point out that that was exactly what Dean had done. He would say that Dean was trustworthy and level headed, and Alistair would bring up the countless brawls that Dean had been in over his time at base.
Whatever positive things Castiel had to say about Dean, Alistair would be right there slamming him with evidence to the contrary. It was going to be, in every possible sense of the expression, an uphill battle.
He supposed he should enjoy these last few moments in which he could still believe that things had the potential to go the way he barely dared to hope they would...because the second he stepped into that courtroom, the second he met Dean's gaze and took in the faces of the jurors, he would know how much hope there really was.
He may be yet to give witness, but that didn't mean that the jurors and judge had not already made up their minds.
They had probably done that long before Dean even got his chance to defend himself.
"Officer Novak?"
Castiel started as the recruit who had silently let himself in addressed him, his expression giving away nothing of what he had been witness to over the course of the day.
"You are required in the courtroom now, Sir."
The young man stood aside, holding the door open.
Castiel threw one last glance up at the clock, mentally cataloguing the moment he sent up his final prayer for strength, for calm, for justice.
He pulled his gloves back on and straightened his hat as he rose to his feet.
For Dean... He chanted silently, following the recruit out into the hallway.
For Dean...For us...