"You've fallen." God tells Castiel.
It is perhaps the fifth, (sixth? Seventh?), time that Castiel has died; or should have, at the very least. Winchester luck, Dean calls it. Half the reason Castiel is an honorary member of the family, their shared penchant for coming back from the dead.
God is a lot taller than Castiel remembers... or no, Castiel is shorter. Cas blinks up at the man, and then down at his tiny hands, swamped by the sleeves of his adult sized tan trench coat.
"You've fallen," God repeats, and Castiel blinks big blue eyes back up at Him. "You've fallen from heaven, and fallen in love." God continues, face blank as he stares down at Castiel, very unlike the last time Castiel had met him, twitchy and nervous and only pretending at self assurance. "You've been brainwashed, indoctrinated, lied to and led astray. You've rebelled, and suffered for it. You've died and come back. You've sought power in the highest and lowest of places. You've sought friends in the highest and lowest of places. You've sought to find God, and later to become God, and became a monster instead; exalted and defiled, both at once."
Castiel swallowed dryly. Castiel is very aware of him many fuck ups. Most of them have had legendary consequences. Long sense operating under the assumption that God no longer cares, Castiel had not considered that he would ever be having this conversation; there have been many angels before him, after all, who have done similar things or worse, with intentions that were half as pure, and not a one of them brought to justice, except at the hands of the only two humans brave enough to hunt them.
A moment of silence passes.
"This-" God says, gesturing at Castiel's new, tiny form. "-is an experiment."
Isn't everything, with the man who created creation?
Castiel flexed his fingers idly. His human learned mannerisms were showing through.
"Unlike angels-" God begins, slower, more intently. "-when a human falls, they get back up. You've picked this up well in spirit, from your friends. Unfortunately-" God reached forward, and Castiel suddenly could not move, the weight of the galaxy bearing down on him. "-your Grace has not been so quick to catch on." And God took Castiel outside of himselfand held him in the palm of His hand.
Castiel gasped and dropped to his knees, little hands falling forward to catch himself, tears streaming down his face as he looked up at his Father, who held Castiel's Grace in the palm of His hand, gazing down at it ever so lovingly. Distantly, beyond the renewed horror of being forced to confront the true state of himself, Castiel found it in himself to feel surprised that his Grace still shone with such light, that it could both illuminate and cast shadows on the face of God, after the literal Hell that Castiel had dragged it through.
"The size of the Chrysler building when I first made you with these very hands..." God murmured, almost to himself. "...and now hardly a drop in a bucket."
Castiel knew. He knew. His grace had-he had-suffered terribly sense his rebellion. Withered, while cut off from the seat of heaven's power. Drained even further, inch by inch, always for a Winchester. He'd died, more than once, and been brought back with cracks. And later, blackened by the many sins he committed, in pursuit of...under the excuse of-saving lives, and keeping people-keeping his humans safe.
Castiel's grace-the angelic version of a human's soul-had not fared half as well as the archangels who had abandoned heaven before him, nor even as well as the many angels who had been forced to fall after him.
God looked into Castiel's eyes then, and Castiel found himself looking back up at him with wide terrified eyes, clutching his chest while his heart beat like a caged bird, doing it's best impersonation of his now absent wing beats-wings that now beat as fast and frantic as a hummingbird's in his Father's hand, as delicate as a butterfly's wings pinned to a corkboard. God's face had returned to imassivity as he looked back down at Castiel.
"I've tried snapping my fingers to make things better instantly more times than I can count." God stated solemnly. "I'm trying it a little differently this time."
And with that, God holds his cupped palm out over Castiel's head, the drop of Grace shining like a star in his hand, before the man is turning his wrist over and that star is falling, falling down towards Castiel, who closes his eyes, flinches in another human gesture he has picked up, but what lands on his face is only a drop of water, and when he blinks his eyes back open, they sky is dark and overcast, but it is not the deep darkness of that quiet place he had been, where Castiel supposes angels must go when they die.
Another drop of water lands on his face, and then another and another. Castiel is not sitting outside, he realizes as he pushes himself back to sit on his knees and look around himself. He sits in an abandoned church, the rain dripping down on him through a massive hole in the roof, under which Castiel sits in a massive divot in the floor, as if something had crashed like a meteor through that roof to create this crater in the ground; perhaps even one of his brothers or sisters during the Great Fall, Castiel thinks morbidly. He looks around and rethinks that, because this place had obviously been abandoned for a very long time, including the hole he now sat in, which had some common weeds sprouting out between the cracks in the tiles, and even one small tree. There were pues in the church so long abandoned that many of them had collapsed, succumbed to rot. Many more of them looked splintered and thrown about, as if two monsters of incredible strength had fought their way across the length of the place. There was even, Castiel noted, (eyeing the damage carefully, and with some respect for whatever caused it), some footprint shaped cracks in the tiles.
Castiel looked back down at his hands, looked with his human eyes down at his fleshy hands, unable to see the nothingthat was behind them now that his Grace was gone. Those hands trembled. Castiel failed to remember when he had picked that human habit up, or what exactly it meant.
Castiel was not completely inexperienced with living life as a human, or with living without enough-or strong enough-grace to make himself a pale shadow of the angel he once was. But often during those times he had amnesia, and was unaware of the dangers that lurked after him, or else he was with the Winchesters, which was as protected as you could get, when the forces of both heaven and hell were after you. He couldn't recall a time when he had been without his grace, without his wings even; so vulnerable, and empty, and so painfully aware of it, and not to mention...
...so damn small.