Chapter 53.
"This is your peace." said Jack, "Your peace is in and of this world. Heaven gave you purpose, for a time, but there was no peace. Even in the best of times, the best Heaven could give you was a reason to repress your unease."
Cas watched the waves slide onto the shore, stroke the sand and then slip back into the sea. Even before life crawled out of the water, there had been something here he could love, but it was in pulling Dean out of Hell that he had come into contact with concepts of family and trust that was not blind faith. Dean had urged him to seek for love of his own in this world of vivid colours and momentary beauty and he had found love where he least expected it, in the bunker, in the kindness of a refugee from a doomed world.
"What if Anael wants what you have?" said Jack.
"Jules?" said Cas. He knew as he said it that it was stupid. "You don't mean Jules. You mean love, with a human."
"Yes." said Jack, a twinkle in his eye the only sign of his amusement.
"Anael wants to be a human."
"Yes, I think she does."
"And she can't be." said Cas, "And she'll keep slamming her head against that rockface and it will hurt more and more every time."
"Your journey to happiness hurt too. Would you rather have avoided it?" said Jack.
"No." Cas admitted, "Without Jules and the Winchesters and you, my life would mean nothing. I would not even consider myself alive."
"It could be that she will feel the same way when she finds what she's looking for."
"What she's looking for doesn't exist."
"She may find love. She may gather her own family around her, as you did."
"What love is there for her? Can she pretend to be human? Or find a human who doesn't care that she will never get any older, while the human ages and dies? Even if she did find this exceptional human and I had to go to another universe to find mine, can she love and not crave a fruitful union with that human? Even I, knowing all that I know ... well, you know my weakness."
"That door is not closed to you. The laws we had are rescinded for you."
"Just for me?"
"Castiel ... "
"So I alone can create the nephilim that will destroy you."
"It's quite hurtful that you still consider a nephilim automatically evil."
"Not evil, but powerful beyond our ability to stop it."
"It? I fear no child of yours."
"Lucifer was a child of God."
"Most of God's children turned out sketchy." said Jack.
"What if she wants to bear a nephilim?"
"As far as I know, she doesn't. Anael is not a big fan of things angelic."
"But if she takes a human lover and wants his children ... "
"She would have to gain his informed consent. She would need to tell him everything."
"And then you would let it happen?"
"I honestly don't think she wants it." said Jack, "Even if she did, what human would want it?"
"Jules wants my child." said Cas.
"You had to go to another universe to find her."
"Imagine a nephilim with that rebellious, dishonest, untrustworthy angel as his or her mother."
Jack smiled. "And my father was above reproach?" The smile faded. "I ended him, Castiel. I took him apart on a subatomic level. Nothing of him remains."
"You had no choice." said Cas.
"No, I didn't. He was evil. He gloried in his corruption. He was proud of it. Everything in him was cruel and vile and wrong."
"Yes." said Cas.
"And at first, I thought I was the same. I feared my own evil. I dreaded the inevitable fall into spite and envy and delight in the pain of others."
"You were never anything like him."
"No, so let's not judge someone who hasn't been conceived and is unlikely ever to be. You want to spare her pain. You want to protect the world from monstrous nephilim. It's also a fundamental part of your programming to want angels to serve Heaven. I understand all of that. You know, I would never ask anything of you that caused you distress if it were not important."
"Why is she important?" said Cas.
"What I am, I am because you and Sam and Dean put the choice in my hands. You taught me that I had a choice. I look at Anael and I see the same longing not to be what she is supposed to be, the same longing for acceptance and emotional connection and just to find her own way in the world. I ask only that you give her the chance you gave me."
"This longing for things she can't have will cause her nothing but pain."
"Her needs and desires may change as she comes to know the world. She's seen very little of it so far and she became a leader to her little flock and felt she needed to be the one giving advice, not seeking it. You and I had family to help us. She has no-one outside the bunker."
"She's been making friends within it." said Cas, glad to be able to give some good news.
"Good. All the angels seem so lonely, all the time. Since Hannah took over her little cloister, so many go there to talk to her. They come to me, too, nervously at first, with many displays of submission and respect, but they're learning not to fear me. They're starting to talk to me in ways they never talked to anyone before."
A lump came to Cas's throat, remembering the first time he had felt the love that flowed from Jack, still in the womb and how it had caused feelings to awaken in him that he had never known before, like the feeling of being known and understood and loved for the being he was and not the one he should have been.
The angels hid their insecurities behind cold, unyielding exteriors. They felt shame at their very need to be loved or listened to. He could imagine how it felt to walk into what had been the throne room of a cold, uncaring narcissist and find there a boy who took them all, just as they were and showed them genuine kindness.
Chuck had applied pressure to the deep cracks in their psyches, watching them fail and fall and hate themselves, for the grandeur of the story. Jack saw their pain and tried to heal it.
"If I believed that Anael had a hope of happiness, I would help her to find it." he said.
"Believe that she will find happiness or change her mind and return to Heaven." said Jack, "But let it be her decision."
"I can't guide her?"
"To find what she's looking for, yes, I hope you will, but don't tell her what to want."
"Would you be saying that if I had convinced her to return?" said Cas.
"Do you think I'm saying this to make you feel less guilty?"
"Your love for me may be a factor." said Cas, diplomatically.
"My love for you is vast and powerful and my respect for you almost its equal. You haven't failed me, so there is no need for me to say things to reduce your sense of failure. I will tell you what I want. I want Anael to have free will. I want you and the Winchesters to help her. I want Dean and Sam to help you."
"I need no help." said Cas.
"You thought you'd failed. But they told you that you hadn't, didn't they?"
"Yes."
"Listen to them more, Cas. You're too hard on yourself."
"Dean is a part of the Anael problem." said Cas "If she is to stay around humans, she will have to leave the bunker. He is tolerating her as a favour to me."
"Dean has no problem with her staying." said Jack.
"You know that for sure?"
"Yes."
"Because he was reluctant to have her anywhere near the bunker."
Jack bent and picked up a white stone that had been washed smooth by countless waves. "Take this quartz," he said, "Let it remind you of the peace of this shoreline and this pristine world."
Cas took it. "Thankyou, Jack. It's beautiful."
"And so are you, Viceroy of Earth, changed by tides and swirls and bits of grit you never saw coming. You taught me that what comes from love is never wrong. Dean tolerated Anael for love of you. Now, he's finding her useful and even fun to be around. If he wants her gone, we can find another place for her, but I think he'd prefer to keep her around for now."
"I still think she will regret ditching Heaven."
"And you may be right. If she ever asks to come back, I'll welcome her."
"I told her that I won't try to persuade her until after the wedding. She is friends with the women in the bunker and wants to help with the preparations."
Jack looked delighted. "That's wonderful! She'll be good at that!"
"Yes, I think so too." said Cas, "I also told her I would try to express her feelings on going home to you, so that you could seek solutions."
Jack nodded. "I understand her feelings."
"Better than I do, I think." said Cas, "I told her I would ask for more time, but now, if I understand you correctly, you are saying there is no time limit."
"And no obligation ever to return here, if it is not home to her."
"Should I tell her that?"
"Yes, tell her I understand and that she is free. Heaven will not command her or summon her back. She returns of her own free will or not at all."
"She will still want to be human." said Cas.
"That may need a little more thought." said Jack.
"Or you could tell her it's impossible and tell her to be satisfied with freedom."
"Tell her to be sure of what she wants and to take all the time she needs."
"It is impossible, isn't it?" said Cas, "Unless she wants to go the Anna Milton route."
"Difficult, but not impossible." said Jack, "However, it should be considered irreversible. It's not a decision she should rush into."
"Dean is dead against her ever becoming human."
"How is it Dean's decision?"
"I just mean that if I tell her it's possible, he'll blame me."
"Then don't tell her. When the time is right, if it even comes up, I can tell her anything she needs to know."
"So I just tell her the freedom thing?"
"Yes, just that."
Cas looked across the sunlit sea, feeling stupid. He had feared the meeting for nothing. He felt he would never understand anything.
Jack followed his steady gaze across the water and said quietly, "I wasn't clear enough."
"You were clear. I just heard what I expected to hear, obedience and destiny."
"And I should have known those things would be imprinted on your mind." said Jack.
"I was stupid."
"You've never been stupid."
"And, I think, unfair to Anael. Jules made me understand that I cannot rejoice in my own free will if I deny it to another."
"Jules is wise." said Jack.
"Sometimes, it seems everyone is wise except me."
"What wisdom I have came from you."
"It came from Sam and Amara and even a little from Chuck."
"Mostly from you." said Jack, "Now, go back to your wise and beautiful lady, but never be afraid to come to me, with good news or bad. The only thing from you I will ever dislike is distance."
"Forgive me." said Cas.
"Nothing to forgive, just trust me."
"I do."
"Will you see Dean tonight?"
"Yes." said Cas.
"Good. Tell him I said to let Anael make her own choices. I assure you, he will approve."
Cas hugged his son. Jack hugged back warmly. "Nothing you do will ever disappoint me." he said.
"Before I go back," said Cas, "I need to ask your permission to go to Hell with Crowley. We need to ask Rowena's help with Lydia."
"You need no permission. In all matters of Heaven, Hell, Earth and Purgatory, you may make your own decisions." said Jack, "However, with your permission, I'll brief you before you go. I've been wanting to make diplomatic contact with Rowena, so you can represent me there."
"Tell me all that you want me to discuss." said Cas.