To substitute the discarding of his trench coat and suit, as he had during his brief time as a human, Castiel rummaged through Sam and Dean's closets. He had no qualms about wearing the clothes of now-dead men. In fact, he felt that he was honoring them in a way, carrying on their legacy.
For the final layers of his outfit, underneath the tight-fitting leather jacket he found, he picked a blue and white patterned plaid shirt and denim jeans that were an inch or so too big on him. It would have to suffice. He was still an angel, after all; any damage the clothes incurred, and they most definitely would, could be mended by his grace.
The phone Castiel had placed on his nightstand rang insistently, a ringtone that grated in his ears. It annoyed him slightly, until he saw who was calling. Springing into action, he reached over and picked up the phone, knowing that this call could be important. And it was.
"Hello?" He asked cautiously.
"Castiel? I need your help." The voice on the other end said bluntly. It was a familiar voice, one he heard through the phone often these days. One he had recently heard in person, too.
"Claire?" Cas asked, tensing up instinctively. He grew worried then, as the tone of her voice sounded urgent, insistent.
"Yeah, it's me. I need your help," she repeated.
"With what?" "I found a case," she elaborated, "and I got in way over my head."
That didn't sound right to Cas. Claire never "got in over her head", as she'd said, in a case. She was careful, stealthy in her hunting, and successful in it, too. Still, Castiel was already reaching for a piece of paper to scribble a note for Jack.
"Where are you?" He asked, turning his concentration back to his phone, and the desperate-sounding girl on the other end of the line.
She told him her location, a five-hour drive away from the bunker. It was surprisingly close, almost too close for comfort. If something had happened to bring Claire to the brink of death...
"I'll be right there."
The Impala sat in the garage, untouched since Dean had last driven it back to the bunker. Castiel knew that time was of the essence, as the keys to the car materialized in his hand. He opened the door, hurriedly fit himself inside, and sped down the road, on his way to Claire.
The Impala was the first car Cas had ever driven. He had been human at the time, needing to get used to relying on human methods of transportation. And of course Dean, being Dean, had taught him to drive, albeit grudgingly. The force of the memory almost made Cas drive off the road, but he cleared his head and focused on his destination.
The hunt turned out to be a treacherous one, a nest of vampires. Castiel hurried to the place Claire had told him she would be, and found her lying, bruised and bloodied, on the floor amid a pool of blood. Most of it, thankfully, wasn't hers, but the blood of the vampires she had killed. Their bodies lay scattered throughout the place, the threat they posed to this world eradicated.
"Claire!" Cas exclaimed as he approached her.
She looked to him in relief. "Castiel," she said. Then she paused, looking him over. "You look...different."
"Is that bad?" Cas asked accusingly.
"No, it's a good thing," Claire reassured him. "You look like a hunter."
Cas took that as a sign that Claire was recovering from whatever had happened to her on the hunt. "Thank goodness you're okay,"he said, though they both knew that what he really meant was, "Thank goodness you're alive." He couldn't endure another hunter's funeral so soon.
"Yeah," Claire said. "I killed a few of the vampires before I realized that there were way too many for me to handle alone." She tried to get up, but winced when she put weight on her legs.
"You're hurt," Cas observed. "I can see why you called."
There was no point in Claire denying what could obviously be seen. She treasured each bruise, each cut, each scar she got from hunting. They were tokens, proof that she battled her demons and won, whether they were actual or metaphorical ones.
"I think my ankle is sprained, and my arm is definitely broken," she admitted. Without being asked, Castiel bent down over her, and let his grace wash over her wounds, healing them instantly. It was the least he could do for her in this situation.
Using the scent of Claire's spilled blood as a lure, they located the rest of the vampires from the nest. Castiel took them by surprise, killing them all in a fit of unexpected rage. Beneath that rage, as he dealt blows to each monster, channeled the power of his grace, and lashed out with his angel blade, was the raw grief from the death of two of the closest friends he had ever had.
Standing there afterwards, covered in blood as Claire had been, Castiel felt validated. He had managed to channel his very human emotions into this hunt, and done well by saving Claire.
"Thanks for your help," she said as they walked away from the now-empty vampire nest.
"You just...get home safely," Castiel told her. "That's all I ask."
He found a protective talisman that had been left in a pocket of his new leather jacket, and left it beside Claire's duffel bag just before they parted ways. Though he knew that she would most likely not need it, it was a gift from him, a courtesy. A reminder to her to be more careful the next time she hunted on her own.
At first, hunting began as a way for Castiel to cope with his grief. But soon enough Claire called him again, having found another case. This time, she let him handle it all on his own. Then the rest of the Wayward Sisters followed suit, collaborating their efforts to find a case a week for him, all of them in which a hunter had been injured one way or another. Castiel did his job diligently and successfully, so that he became almost a legend in his own right. Wherever he went, he drove the Impala, to the point where he could sense the relief at the sound of its engine when he approached places where hunters lay on the brink of death. Each time he would leave them a gift, as he had for Claire; a memento of his presence. They eventually whispered stories among themselves, spreading the word about the angel posing as a hunter. Over time their gratitude and awe manifested into a special title for him; the Patron Saint of Hunters.
Each time Castiel arrived back at the bunker, Jack remained his usual cheerful self, steering their conversations towards mundane topics, sometimes asking Castiel to explain pop culture references he didn't understand. They didn't speak of this newfound way for Castiel to channel his grief and loss, the one unspoken rule between them. But eventually, Jack looked up from his bowl of cereal one morning and said the words that Castiel had been dreading to hear ever since he began his relentless hunting.