Two Boys, an Old Drunk, and a Fallen Angel…
The other hunters came for them, but it was much too late. Michael had already spirited them away to who knew where and who else cared.
Castiel stood in the ashes of what had been a church. His heart was seven thousand miles below this ground and sinking.
He had no idea if they were dead or not, but they may as well be. At least to him. At least for now.
For a moment, he wondered at his foolishness. Of course, he knew that he'd outlive them. Even if they were still alive somewhere out there in the great wild worlds, he knew that he would outlive them in the end.
"Oh, God...the Chief," said Riley first.
"What do we do without him?" Maggie said next.
"They're really gone…" said Mary.
"Oh, God...the boys! Not...This is not real…." Jodie with her hand to her mouth, crying there in the muddy ashes. Cas registered her presence for a moment. Mary may have given birth to Sam and Dean but Jodie was more their mother figure. He sighed inwardly as another voice, one he forgot was his own, snapped at him.
"I stupidly let them do this…" Cas closed his fists around the fire.
And then another tender voice, a fatherly voice, one from the past said into his mind.
Nobody lets Sam and Dean Winchester do squat. They do what they gotta.
Bobby.
Cas closed his eyes as tears began to form, out of ashes. As he recalled the story of two boys, an old drunk and a fallen angel.
"Bobby! Can you believe that freaking Cas here knows literal zilch about Star Trek?!" Dean sitting on the hood of a rusted out old truck.
"To be fair, Cas doesn't know much of any pop culture." Sam climbed out of the bed of the truck, over its roof, like a spider monkey and landed beside Dean. He swept his arm around him as he nearly pushed him off the truck. Dean leaned back into Sam's chest as he was caught up in his arms and smiled.
Cas sat on the lid of a cooler, sipping his first taste of beer. He didn't know if he liked it, but he liked them and this is what they did.
Old Bobby with his kind eyes, tattered clothes, and a ball cap that had a year's worth of motor oil on it stood there smiling at his children. Oh, Cas knew he hadn't sired them. But he may as well have. Their eyes called him father even if they called him by his name. The respectful tilt of their chins when he spoke said "Yes, sir." even if they rattled off teasing speech at him.
"Well, guess we're gonna have to remedy that. When we're not busy stopping Crowley from whatever in literal Hell he's doin'." Bobby smiled at his boys, laughing as they finally re-adjusted themselves on the edge of the truck. They'd been manhandling each other for 5 straight minutes, completely oblivious to it. It was like they were twins except for the difference in their ages. Cas felt the cheer of the summer heat and amusement color his face. They forgot he could see the color of their souls. Sam's was a little worn from the flames of Hell, but whenever Dean's hand took a playful swat at his hair or Bobby's kind eyes settled on him, a bit of its fire licked back into flame.
Cas was snapped back to the present moment. He stood in the center of the ashes. He had found, mostly unscathed because of a spell put on them, a pair of rifles crossed like an X marking the spot. And in the midst of them, the pendant he'd called worthless before he understood. How this could be the family crest of two lost boys, an old drunk, and a fallen angel.
To think they were all three of them gone from the world was more than the angel could bear. He felt his knees giving out. He slid to the ashes and took the pendant up in his hands. The sound of their laughter resonated through it. The taste of their tears. The heat of their blood as it rolled from the wounds of their agonized last stand. Team Free Will…
"I...I...Oh, God! Oh, Father, why…?" Cas clutched his fist to his mouth, remembering that God was his father but they...roughneck and swaggering little humans that they were...They had been his family.
Cas closed his eyes. He was an angel of the Lord. He remembered the first day the grass sprung up all over the Universe. How it plumed with life. Yet he never saw the color of green or vibrancy until he was standing in Hell and a pair of human eyes opened on the dark. Cas realized all too soon, in a landslide of emotions, that Dean Winchester was the first of all humans he'd ever physically touched without any violence. Looked directly into the eyes of. The first human being that he had willfully rescued and the first that got in his head. That he'd needed to personally acquaint himself with.
He was also the first human to talk plainly to him. As if meeting an angel was his every day.
The Lord works…
If you say "in mysterious ways" so help me, I will kick your ass!
All fire, all fury...And the innocence of a motherless boy and a father's forsaken burden in his eyes.
Cas held his breath. He was an angel. Duty was all he'd known. But Dean...he remembered Dean with his back to the wall of the beautiful room, with Cas' hand over his mouth to keep him from shouting. He remembered the pain and the fury and the sudden revelation in those God's green eyes as he realized it.
Dean had been Cas' first choice. First free will choice. Dean was the first ever time that Cas had actually allowed himself to feel something more than angelic duty toward something. He had no idea how it happened. The rough way he talked to him and the fact that he had no qualms about sparring with him should have offended the angel and caused him to smite him. Cas had thought it a silly notion, the idea that a feeling that powerful could begin the first time one laid eyes on another soul. But he'd been color blind before. Love was the color of green and it began when in Hell scorched eyelids opened to reveal the forests and the seas beneath them.
In a domestic sense, much like a mother feels when a baby is put in her arms, Dean was Cas' first love and love at first sight.
What if I never see them again?
By which he'd meant those eyes…
Cas' breath caught as into his mind he saw the swish of cinnamon hair fall away from a smile as bright as fireworks. Sam. A supernova across his heart. If Dean was the first thunderclap of freedom across his heart, then Sam was the lightning to rescind all resistance to the human pull.
Sam was an abomination so the angels said. He was still hated in heaven, so far as Castiel knew. But how could an abomination have such gentleness resting in his eyes? Except for the moments he'd entertained his curse, Cas had not ever met a more docile human being. It was almost painful for Sam to be a hunter. He could be a brutal killer and yet his eyes spelled out an unrelenting need for kindness that made Cas want to bathe himself in his soul and become a better representation of celestial intent. In more ways than the angelic brothers that made his name mud, Cas felt that Sam was an angel.
Sam's hands ran through his hair in Cas' memory and he smiled.
What if I never see them again?
By which he meant smiling teeth, awash in the blood of sunset.
What do I do without you?
Cas prayed. And then, he saw them. In his mind. All the times they'd made a choice that they'd no idea what they were walking into.
What if we lured Lucifer to the hole...And I jumped in?
No, Cas, I gotta do this one on my own.
Castiel was crying now, into his fist, and suddenly, suddenly the light sparked in that amulet. The light that said God was near.
And then he heard his Father's voice in his head. For the first time in a long, long time.
I can see them...They're alive.
Losing them is something I can't take...Bring me back together with them, please! All three of them…
Cas closed his eyes, unaware that he was suddenly gone from the sight of his friends.
