Here we go...
...
Castiel is taken to an interrogation room, propped up in a chair that feels strange now that he is so small; his legs dangle above the ground. A female officer with red scales splashed across her face like freckles tries to ply him with juice boxes and vending machine snacks while she questions him about his parents.
Castiel eyes the food mistrustfully. Although his body is hungry, he doesn't take it. It would be a lie to say he's gone along with these monstrous people because they earned his trust; rather its that he is currently incapable of putting up a meaningful resistance to them.
Castiel doesn't reply to the questions about his own name, but he answers the questions about his Father truthfully-if monsters knowing more about God somehow manages to inconvenience the man, well, as Dean would say, 'that sounds like a Him problem'.
"I have known Father to go by the name Chuck Shirly in the past, though I highly doubt that is His true name. I don't have a mother." Castiel tells her.
She stares at him.
Castiel holds her gaze as he pointedly pushes the fifth different kind of juice pack she's foisted on him across the table and away from him.
The interrogation finally ends when Castiel asks, "Can I have my one phone call now?"
...
The woman hands him her own phone. It's different from the burners that the Winchesters often use and have taught Castiel to use. It's a thin touch screen, and Castiel needs the woman's help to get to the screen with the numbers. He dials Dean's personal number with a scowl on his face while the woman watches him from across the table.
The phone informs him the number is not in service. Castiel frowns. This is another good indication-as if he needed any more-that Castiel is not in the Prime Dimension anymore. Or that Castiel has fundamentally misunderstood how technology works again. But Castiel has been especially assured that he should always be able to reach Dean at this number, which is why it was the only one of the Winchester's many numbers that Castiel has memorized.
Castiel slides the phone back across the table with a scowl. The woman immediately looks at the screen with interest and leaves with only a brief smile at Castiel.
...
Later, the female officer and that same black eyed and black haired man that picked Castiel up off the street walks into the room and takes the chairs across from him.
The black marks under the man's eyes look even darker than they did before. The man stares dully across the table at Castiel as he reaches into one of the pouches around his waist and pulls out yet another juice pouch. This one is different, somehow. Larger, and the label less colorful. The man unscrews the cap on the bag while the woman watches with interest, and surprising both Castiel and the woman, takes a long swig of it. Castiel's face clears of it's scowl in favor of confusion. When the man is done, he places the rest of the juice pouch closer to Castiel than himself.
"Drink kid. We're not trying to poison you." The man says, dark eyebrows belaying the sharpness in his gaze.
Castiel stares at the juice pouch propped up in front of him with a little furrow between his brows, considering. The woman looks back and forth between Castiel and the black eyed man several times, mouth half open. Finally, Castiel reaches out and pulls the pouch closer, clutches it almost to his chest on the table, but still doesn't drink. Just turns his wide blue stare back onto the man.
"What is it kid?" The man says, eyebrows raising. "Still don't believe me?"
"Not that." Castiel shakes his head siriously. "It takes fifteen minutes for most poisons to begin having visible effect on the human body." Technically, Dean said that rule only works when you're pretty sure its a human who gave you the food and a human who poison tested it, but...
"...fair enough." The man sighed, while the woman gapes at him. "So while we wait for me to drop dead-" The man gives a pause. Castiel nods, as yes, that is exactly what Castiel is doing. Something about the pause feels similar to the way Dean pauses when he's waiting to see if Castiel has understood a joke or a reference. Like usual, Castiel fails to react in time. The man slumps and eventually continues, "I hear you're giving them some trouble with trying to find your family, Problem Child."
Castiel frowns. "Don't call me that." He says. Castiel is not a child.
The man shrugs lazily, peering at him from under dripping strands of black hair. "We've got to call you something, problem child." Castiel twitches. "Tell us your name and we'll use it."
Castiel breaks and tells them his 'name'. Mostly as another test of whether this is a different dimension, but also so they actually use it.
"My name is Castiel Novak." Cas recited the extra information as the Winchesters had taught him to recite it. "I was born in Wisconsin, America on November third, 1982, and I am thirty two years old. My social security number is-"
There was a long moment of silence while the man stared at him, face looking washed out in the interrogation room lighting. The woman officer's eyebrows were raised.
"You're thirty two years old." The man finally deadpanned, more stated than asked.
"Yes." Castiel said, very confidently. It belatedly occurred to him that inhabiting a smaller vessel presumably meant it was younger too; that was how much of the life on Earth worked. Did he now appear young enough that his previous aelius no longer appeared to be a logical lie to humans?
A piece of trivia from Dean came back to him.
"-I taught Sammy how to shave when he was sixteen."
...damn. If Cas's body appeared to be older than sixteen, he would have had that same, uncomfortable scruff on his face that most male humans had. Hence, he probably looked younger than sixteen, and therefore much younger than the thirty two he was claiming to be.
"Look...Castiel..."
The way the man pronounced it was more like Ka-ti-e-ru.
"...you can call me Cas." Cas said blandly.
"Cas...how old would you guess I am?" The man asked, head tilting marginally to the side in curiosity.
Cas squinted at the man. Facial hair, so at least older teens. No grey or wrinkles, so probably younger than fifty. "...between sixteen and fifty." Cas said, leaning back with relative confidence.
The female officer gawfed, hand moving over her mouth. The dark haired man blinked blandly at him, making some serious eye contact there. Finally he seemed to come to some conclusion, sighed and leaned back. "Well, you're not wrong." He said, running his hand up and down the scruff on the side of his face. He turns to address the female officer. "Do kids his age usually have that much trouble identifying ages?"
The female officer's smile faded. "No..." she said, "No, I don't think so. Not that much trouble at least." She made a mark in her notebook. "I'll pass that concern on to the social worker when they get here in the morning."
"And Cas..." The man turns back to him. "You said you were born in the 1980s? You know that was a good...more than two hundred years ago, right?"
Castiel blinked. Well, now he knew for certain he was either in the future or a different dimension, or possibly both. "Yes..." Castiel finally stated, folding his fingers together. "I knew that. I was joking." Sam would always argue that there was a difference between joking and lying, but Dean would often argue otherwise.
He insists Castiel is his real name and that he should be addressed by it, but refuses to elaborate on his 'joke' answers further, as he doesn't want to claim an answer that wasn't within the realm of making sense without knowing.
They eventually give up and move on.
He replies to the question of what his and his father's quirks are with the counter question of, "What is a quirk?"
Castiel understands what the word means individually, but what they were asking in this context escapes him. That is the wrong question though. Castiel has gotten adept at telling by a human's face alone when he has said something that is outside the human norm. They give each other that look, then try rephrasing it as 'superpower' which Castiel's Angelic Allspeak translates as...a fictional superhuman ability. As opposed to real superhuman abilities?
"I don't have one." Castiel says. "And neither does Father." Their superhuman abilities are very real, after all. Or they were, at least in Castiel's case. Or actually...were they asking what type of monster Castiel was? Should he have lied? Were they assuming he was a monster as well this whole time, and would they turn on him now that they know he is not?
The lady blinked in surprise. "Oh that's rare." She remarked. "Are you sure your quirk just hasn't come in yet sweetie? How old are you?" She tries to slip the question into conversation for the millionth time.
"...maybe." Castiel says. There were some monsters that spent the first phase of their lives as human. Could he fake being a monster later? There were a few more obscure ones that he could fake the signs of...telling them he was a flesh bound angel would be worse than admitting to being human, even though practically there wasn't much difference. He ignored the second part of her question and repeated the demand that he had been making every chance he got sense calling Dean hadn't worked. "Can I leave now?" He asked.
The officer gave a crooked smile. "Sorry sweetie, we've got just a few more questions for the paperwork first." She pursed her lips down at her clipboard.
"...and I want to ask you about Officer Kurome." The man stated. The female officer shifts uncomfortably, a pinched look coming into her eye.
Officer Kuro-? The demon police officer. Castiel frowns and glances at the nearby mirror, which Dean has assured him in a setting like this, mean someone is probably watching him from the other side of it.
The man studies Castiel's face for a moment, then asks more gently, "You got really scared of him when he came over to talk to you. Can you tell me why?"
Castiel glances back at him, but doesn't answer.
"Have you ever met Officer Kurome before?" The man asks, blinking placidly.
"...no." Castiel says, eyes drifting to the floor.
"Have you ever seen him do or say something scary before?" The man asks, leaning forward a little.
"No." Castiel admits. "I've never seen him do anything bad."
"Then why were you scared?" The man asks.
If Castiel says he was afraid because the man showed signs of demonic possession, would that mark him out as stranger than he already is? The others had shown no fear at the man's demon black eyes. Would claiming to be afraid weary of demons mark Castiel out as human, if he hasn't already? And if he was signaled out as human, would the monsters then turn on him? A bead of sweat rolls down the back of Castiel's neck. He doesn't understand why the body is sweating so much sense the police picked him up. That's only supposed to happed when it's warm, and the air is quite cool in here.
Castiel settles for a half truth. "...my friend says eyes like his are bad."
"...what, black eyes?" The man blinks his own in surprise, leaning back. "What friend told you that?" He asks, dark brows furrowing. "And what do good eyes look like?"
"Green." Castiel says immediately, as if being quizzed, ignoring the question about his friend. "Or blue. Or brown." The other colors are for monsters, Castiel does not say.
The man and the police officer look at each other.
A voice in Castiel's head that sounds like Dean swears. Castiel had named only human eye colors. Had he given himself away after all? "That's what Dean says." Cas interjected, shamelessly throwing Dean under the bus now in case these people were offended by 'monster racism' as Sam would occasionally call it.
Another bead of sweat rolled down Castiel's back as a moment of silence passed. The woman marked something down on her clipboard. The man studied Castiel with furrowed brows.
Castiel needed more information.
"What is...Officer Kurome's quirk?" He asks, fiddling with his pouch, brows furrowed.
"His quirk? It's..." The man trails off and glances over at the female officer. "It's some kind of mutation, right?"
The woman nods almost eagerly at the subject change. "Officer Kurome has a minor Fish Mutation Quirk; he can breathe and see underwater."
Castiel blinked and looked up in surprise. He had expected something like 'levitation' or 'vomiting smoke', or something else that demons are well known for doing. Castiel furrowed his eyebrows again. "And what is your quirk?" He asked the woman. If he had been forced to guess, Castiel would have said something like gorgon or...perhaps a lizard person? Castiel didn't know monsters quite the way the Winchester brothers did. But...
"My own quirk?" She asks, surprised. "It's Infrared Scales." The officer says, tapping one manicured finger against one of the galaxy of red scale freckles across her nose and around her eyes and cheeks. "It lets me see infrared light through my scales, like a heat vision camera."
Wrong again. Castiel turns his deep blue eyes onto the man. He has no guesses, other than something that's good at hiding what it is. "And what is-"
"Erasure." The man says. "My quirk allows me to prevent other quirks from working."
Castiel got a little wide around the eyes. He's never even heard of a monster with an ability like that, that stopped the supernatural powers of other monsters from working-although Castiel is becoming more and more convinced that the supernatural abilities in this world cannot be compared at all with the monsters in his old world. Which begs the question...
"...are you still human, if you can do that?" Castiel wonders, almost more to himself, staring down into the open lid of the juice pouch as if it held all the answers.
This question brings to mind an argument that Dean and Sam would sometimes have, on if witches still counted as human. Studying witchcraft didn't technically immediately change your species, but Dean, like most Hunters, was of the opinion that you might as well give up all humanity when you pursue the craft. Castiel had only heard of Dean sparing witches that swore to give the craft up after something went terribly wrong enough in their spells that a hunter had to step in-which was usually only after several people have died in unusual ways.
The other two stare at him in almost baffled silence. Finally, the man clears his throat. "...thats a heavy question, problem child." Castiel frowns at the appellation, but doesn't mention it. "But yah, you and me are both human, and so is everyone else, quirk or no quirk."
That's really not how it works in Castiel's world, but ok. Maybe that is how it works here. The only way to know for sure would be to check whether these people's souls were going to Heaven or Purgatory when they died, and that is currently beyond Castiel's capabilities.
They question him more, but Castiel finally shoves the juice pouch in his mouth and refuses to say any more on the subject as he feeds the body.
...
The questions change, after that. After it's established Castiel won't answer willingly anymore. The woman has started staring at him intently-not at his eyes, the way that Castiel stares, but at his chest and head. She hardly blinks, and the scales on her face shimmer faintly. After every question the man asks, she will tap her pen on the clipboard either once or twice. Castiel's eyes flicker up in surprise at the accuracy of some of them, though he neither confirms nor denies. Somehow they keep getting more and more accurate anyway.
Do you have a big family? Lots of brothers and sisters? Your father raised them all? You don't have a mom? Where did they all come from? Did your dad steal them?
Castiel outright stares at that one. "No!" He says, aghast. "Father just makes us. He doesn't need anyone else for that." Surely thats not strange in a monster populated society? But then again, Castiel had already established these people can't be compared to the monsters he knows, and they at least believe themselves to be human.
Do you know what year it is? Did your dad tell you people with quirks aren't human? Do your siblings have quirks? Does your family hurt you? Do they hurt you for fun? Do they hurt you when you break rules? What are the rules in your family? Did someone tell you not to talk to police officers?
Castiel stares down at the floor as the questions get worse and worse. He pushes his empty juice pouch away and tries to stop listening. His eyes start to droop. This has happened before, when he's forgotten that humans need sleep and his body starts to take things into it's own hands.
The questions stop.
The man leaves not long after that but long before the female officer, asking to be kept apprised of 'the cult investigation'.
The female officer stays with him as his body nods and dips in it's chair. A few hours later, a lady called a social worker comes in to take Castiel away.
None of this was something Dean mentioned might happen to him in police custody.
...
Thanks for reading, and please review!
And hey, if you liked this fic, you might like my others, so check them out and let me know what you think. I've updated a lot of others the last couple months.