Prayers are an odd thing. Sometimes they're important, people pleading to be spared, their pains eased, relief granted tot hem after a long struggle. Or the strength to endure during a new issue. Cas is all so used to it that he barely blinks at them for the most part. And then one day,, a little girl looks up at the sky on a pure, Thursday evening, and tracks a shooting star streaking through the night sky. "I wish," she says softly. "I wish I could somehow receive the doll I asked for. Everyone else at my school has one, and I... I'm tired of getting laughed at for not..."

Her voice filters up, full of longing and grief, echoes against Castiel's grace, pinging insistently with the weight of her misery, and he frowns down at his perusal of Earth as it spins slowly in its axis. He's heard similar prayers, of course but something about this one calls to him, wraps around him and seems to expect him to act. "How though?" he asks. "A mere doll, truly?" When there are so many other drastic things that need attention at any given time, and this is the thing he's most inclined to do something about. It makes no sense to him, but who is he to question the Creator's will?

It's not the first prayer he receives about something insignificant, children always seeming to yearn the hardest for such things around the winter solstice. Adults too sometimes, but no one with as much need and desperation as the youth. It would almost be funny if it wasn't so distracting.

The little girl ultimately gets her wish. A man named Nicholas, already known for giving gifts to the needy, simply seems to know, and within only a few weeks, she's clinging to a doll with happy tears in her eyes.

From there, Castiel makes it his mission. Any time a child yearns for a gift so desperately that even he can't ignore it, he encourages humans nearby with the ability to accomplish what the child needs to receive it. This becomes his main focus, each pleased child leaving him feeling like he's actually doing something worthwhile in the world. Sometimes things scatter, and he forgets, but he always finds his way back, led by someone's longer or intense prayer organizing details, encouraging situations to see it through to the end.

It works until the day comes that he can't figure out a way to make it feasible- for an adult to get the small boy the stuffed bear that he wants. He turns, sharply, still trying to figure out why this is the one case where nothing wants to work- when he stops short, face to face with Naomi. She stares at him, lips twisted. "Naomi," he says hesitantly.

She shakes her head. "Castiel, how many times are we going to have to do this?"

"Do what?" Castiel asks, truly perplexed by her and her frustration. "I do not understand..."

"You are all but useless," she informs him coldly. "You are a servant of the lord. You are not supposed to be spending your time chasing after human children playthings. I have tried, and tried, and tried..."

As she reaches out for him, he steps back. "What are you doing?" he demands, face twisting. "Naomi, please-"

"No, there's nothing you can say. I have given you opportunity after opportunity, and yet you still insult me, you insult our creator by running these meaningless errands for humans," she spits out, sounding absolutely disgusted. "I can't oblige this any longer. Farewell, Castiel."

The pain is sharp, breath-taking, and the next thing he knows, he's landed on something hard and rocky. He groans and tries to push himself up to look, but he has no upper body strength. Collapsing back down, he tries to expand his wings, stretch his grace out and try to get sense of where he's at... to no avail. This seems to drain him of whatever's left of his energy and he collapses once more.

He's in the middle of nowhere, no person around, when he comes to again. The sun is bright in his eyes and he struggles to sit up, finding himself a little stronger today. He still aches though, and it feels like something important is missing, when- He stops short. Gasps for air. Lifts his hands and tries- struggles... nothing happens. "No," he chokes out, realizing. He is powerless. There is nothing left of his former angelic strength. "Please."

What used to be a loud roar of voices and thoughts demanding his attention is now a dull whisper n the back of his mind, like an itch that can't quite be scratched. He grits his teeth and wavers, trying not to lose his balance. "Please, no," he pleads to thin air. "Naomi, please-"

He has Fallen.

-x

Time passes. Days into weeks, into months. His siblings' voices remain lost to him, but he still hears whispers at times, distant, low. Unlike anything he's ever heard before. The weather changes drastically, turns cold and wind batters upon his translucent form, It starts slow, around late October, perhaps. The whispers turn louder, he can hear requests and pleas, and suddenly he gets it. Whatever Naomi did to him when she evicted him from Heaven opened him to this sudden flood of longing, of yearning. Of every childrens' deep hope to receive the perfect Christmas gift, whatever that might be for them in that moment.

Sometimes nothing more than a doll or the latest Hot Wheels. Other times, a missing parent or lost loved one. It's those that eat at Castiel, keep him up long into the nights, listening to the pleas of these hurting children. He wishes he could fix it all, but alas, without his powers, he's trapped here, unable to do anything but listen and try to figure out a way to help, despite not knowing where to go or what to do. If this is Naomi's idea of a punishment, it is a brilliant one. He has never felt so wretched in all his life.

One year, he ends up in the Midwest of the United States, he thinks perhaps Illinois and he's listening to the latest wave of prayers when he hears something new, a plaintive whisper somehow louder than the others. I don't want anything for me, but for my brother. He... he's never had a proper Christmas, and I... The whisper eases off and Cas exhales, blinking as he comes back to himself, overwhelmed. "What was that?"

With Christmas passing, he gets a few months of peace, which he spends wandering the lands, trying to find other ways to pass the time. But no matter where he goes, that whisper remains in the back of his mind. Yes, there are a few others here and there where people request things for others, but there's something different about this one. Something that just sticks with him. He listens for it again, but it doesn't come.

He's not sure how much time has passed since he fell, but one day he notices a familiar essence not far from him. He frowns and looks around, realizing. "Naomi," he rumbles, and suddenly there's a pressure on his head, and oh God, it hurts, like nothing else he's ever felt before. "What... what are you doing to me?" he gasps.

"All hands on deck," her voice declares, and Castiel blacks out.

Hell is a mess of a place. He has his orders, however, and he ignores the rest, fighting and slaying, his grace overwhelming the darkness around him until he reaches the raging soul that had been drawing all of them to it since they first arrived. There's something familiar about it, but he can't recognize it, reaching out to touch it, pull it away from the mangled, mutated creature it's in the process of torturing. Just touching it sends a wave of something down Castiel's form, leaving his massive form quaking.

He freezes, staring down at the soul in his hands, before beginning to fight his way out, to get the soul to safety. He makes his way to the surface and, as soon as he breaks through, he feels relief and awe that he's accomplished it. "Dean Winchester," he declares, the name sounding funny in his true voice, "is saved."

Naomi visits him again, somewhere between rescuing the Righteous Man and his claiming his own vessel. "We're not done with you yet," she says, a tense look on her face as she examines him. "We need you to encourage the Righteous man to do his duty. To accept Michael."

Castiel nods along, despite a lingering thought he has in the back of his mind, just out of reach, taunting him.

It's not until he's in a dilapidated barn in Illinois that he first hears Dean Winchester's voice through his vessel's ears and something twists deep inside of him. A whisper in the back of his mind, thrumming, desperate. He knows him, somehow. Someway.

They fight, together, against each other. Naomi continues manipulating Cas, his powers, his memories. It's hard to break through, but he does- again, and again, and again. Dean's presence grounds him in ways nothing else has, and he feels himself changing. Altering permanently. Then he's reborn again, not as the angel he once was, but as this human form... with wings always locked away on another plain of existence... Jimmy Novak's face stares back at him whenever he looks in a mirror and he thinks he may never see himself again, but... it allows him to stay with the Winchesters, to fight, and to live, and... It's fine. It is.

They fight, and they laugh, and Dean slowly gets Cas into silly human things whenever they're not hunting or fighting apocalypses- diners, and movie marathons, and pranks that almost always ends in Sam glaring at one or both of them. Cas has never felt this alive in all of his existence. In ways, it hurts more than he ever could've imagined.

Dean suffers, Sam suffers, Cas suffers, other hunters they meet along the way die as parts of their various wars, and it all seems to funnel into Dean, fueling his self-loathing and his anguish. Cas wanders the bunker late at night sometimes and wishes he could do something, anything to help, to make things easier for Sam, for Dean. For the world.

How he realizes it, where the memory comes from, he's not sure, but one minute he's staring blankly at a TV show regarding Christmas and the next, he's all but bowed over by a memory of a voice he'd heard years ago. Young, pleading for his brother to have a good Christmas before suddenly falling silent. Never speaking again, at least not in a way Castiel could hear it. Until now, at any rate.

He gasps shortly and grasps on his last memory of a more recent prayer from Dean- the sense of it is the same, pride and frustration and hope somehow all mixed together under world-weary exhaustion and pain. It's the same. He feels ragged, heartbroken. "Dean," he breathes out. "How could I ever, ever forget you?"

But he knows how- Naomi, and Heaven, and everything in between working its hardest to keep him in line, ignoring the humans in need praying, begging for help from somewhere, anywhere.. He wonders if there were others before Dean who made him feel this way, who made him feel things. Not that it matters, no other human could possibly compare to the Righteous Man, so he pushes aside those thoughts and leans forward, burying his face in his hands.

He wants to fix it, but so many other things keep happening. Lucifer and Amara, Kelly and Jack, they lose Crowley and Rowena, Mary comes, Mary dies, and Dean is hurting in ways Cas can't fathom and he can't help either because he is mourning too, for Jack, and how he'd failed him, failed Dean. He takes his leave, but his life is still so interwoven with the Winchesters, he still hears their prayers. He sees Dean a few times, then they end up back in Purgatory together. Things squared away, most issues smoothed over between them, even if Cas didn't let Dean speak his peace face to face. Cas gets Jack back- then he gets his soul back and for now, things feel like they may be alright. But he knows the grief will only return- Jack may risk his life to defeat Chuck, and Sam and Dean will be in the line of fire, and there's only so much a former, Fallen angel can do to thwart God and keep everyone safe. He keeps his trump card close to his chest- the deal with the Empty. He's never considered it seriously, but he thinks deep down inside he knows exactly what will summon it.

In the end, he's proven correct. Dean is in mortal danger, Billie after him, trying to tear his heart to shreds, and the sigil he swiped against the door will only hold for so long. If Cas' last act is to finally, finally tell Dean everything he's been holding in for years, for decades, for millennia, there is nothing that can stop him. Not Billie, not Naomi, and certain not his own fears and self-doubts.

As everything turns dark and quiet permanently, Cas glows with the knowledge that he succeeded in this one thing. Yet again, Dean Winchester is saved.

Then Castiel is saved. Pulled from the depths of nothingness and finds himself back in the bunker, blinking in shock at hte sudden noise, the abrupt light against his oversensitive eyes. He cringes away from it all, breathing a little easier when his face is pressed into something warm, something sturdy and familiar. "Dumb idiot." It's a familiar voice, a cadence he knows almost as well as his own hand. "What the fuck were you thinking? That we... that we..." Dean's voice shakes and trembles as he fights for each breath. "That we would let you go like that? That I...?"

Cas has no idea what to say. Won't justify what he felt necessary to save Dean, to save Jack. Then he realizes that he can't sense- he can't- His head snaps up and he looks around wildly, trying to make sense of the muddled light and colors, and- "Jack! Jack?!"

"Whoa, whoa," Dean mutters, resting a hand on his neck. "Jack's fine. He... he's up in Heaven, taking care of a few things, but he'll be here soon. I promise."

"He... 'taking care of a few things'?" Cas echoes. "Dean, what..."

"He beat Chuck," Dean says, fingers trailing soothingly through Cas' hair. "We won, man. He... he, I guess, started draining power from things after the whole... bomb in the Empty thing." Dean exhales softly. "He took Chuck's power, and he..." Dean shrugs. "I guess he's kinda God now, man. He's fixing things up, and he..." Dean licks his lips. "We see 'im sometimes, but time up there's weird, another thing he's trying to sort out, so sometimes it's only a couple of hours, sometimes it can be weeks."

Cas' head is spinning. "I... I need to sit down," he says.

"Do you one better," Dean tells him, drawing him back upstairs and through the halls towards the bedrooms.

Everything is a blur, but all Cas can think is This is Dean's room. and Dean's bed is very soft.

When he wakes up to find Dean on his side, watching him, he's surprised further as Dena rests a hand on his jaw and lightly massages his cheek. "This ok?" he asks, leaning closer, and Cas nods slowly, still uncertain what's going on.

A lot of things fall into place when Dean presses slow, gentle kisses along his cheek, up the bridge of his nose, then one very warm, very sweet one between his eyes that make his vision blur even further with tears. Dean shifts and hovers over his lips, staring intently at him. "You always had me," he say softly. "Not always in the way you deserved, but it's true." He clears his throat. "Just ask half of the damned idiots we've fought over the years." He rolls his eyes and huffs, before finally, finally kissing him, fingers still tangled in his hair, slow and warm and filled with so much love.

Cas lets out a punched out noise before pressing into the kiss, desperate for this moment to last forever.

It doesn't, but there are plenty of other moments to follow that more than make up for that.

The first Christmas post Chuck, everyone is still kind of dazed, the holiday get togethers a little subdued as those who had been erased entirely from existence by one god and brought back by the next still wrap their heads around the sudden peace, even hunts fewer and further in between now. It's a lot of trauma with no real outlet anymore for a lot of them.

The second Christmas post-Chuck, Cas is fully recovered, completely adjusted to life now. Being together with Dean, helping Sam with a network for the hunters, and watching on proudly as Dean retires from hunting life and moves on, one of Charlie's foolproof aliases working well enough for him to get accepted on as a firefighter at the county's Fire Department.

It's well past November when Cas finds himself alone at the bunker, resting his hand against the cool wall of the library. Dean is talking about moving, finding a fixer upper nearer to the fire house for them to move to, but he hasn't entirely committed to the idea yet. So for now, Cas can do this. He finds the boxes of things Mrs. Butters had left behind pre-Chuck, and begins to decorate. It's a mindless activity, allows his mind to drift, remembering the prayer from that little boy so long ago who had such a pivotal hand in changing everything in Cas' life. He smiles fondly. Still does, he thinks.

The decorations aren't enough, there needs to be more, cheer in every room of the bunker, so much so that Dean will see it everywhere he looks. So Cas goes shopping, the ridges of the credit card Dean had given him after his return from the Empty cutting into his hand. Some things are hard to find, this far into December, but he accomplishes a fair amount. Before long, he's knee deep in decorating the bunker, humming under his breath as he works. He leaves a tree in Sam's bedroom, places another in Jack's, even decorates the various empty guest bedrooms with a content little smile on his face.

He hears Dean before he sees him, a strangled sort of gasp, then a whispered, "Cas?" that cuts through everything else Cas is focused on. He turns slowly and finds his significant other staring, frozen in the doorway.

Cas swallows and steps forward, reaching out for him. "Dean-"

"You..." Dean closes his eyes, presses his thumbs into them. "You did all of this?"

"I did," Cas confirms. "I... I hope it's not overstepping, I-"

"No, no," Dean breathes. "It's beautiful. I..." He swallows hard, looking around. "Ya know, our, uh." He shivers. "Sam's first official Christmas, kinda, was with Mrs. Butters? He was... Mom was gone before his first Christmas, and uh, Dad was... well. You know. I mean, I tried, but it... life on the road, you can't really..." He's struggling so hard, Cas' heart aches just listening to him trying to find the words to explain. "I used to plead when I was little to let him just have one day... but nothing happened, no one was listening, and I just. I guess I gave up."

Cas remembers, again, that young voice that still haunts his memories sometimes. The little boy, so desperate and yearning for at least one day of normalcy, who grew up into the beautiful man before him. He steps forward and cradles Dean's face in his hands, searching his eyes. "I heard you once," he confesses lightly.

Dean blinks. "Huh?"

"My memories are still muddled, but I... I grew enamored with Christmas, I suppose," he says, searching Dean's face. "I... used to help children get the gifts they wanted most." He sighs. "Naomi punished me for it. I was,,, trapped on earth for a very, very long time without powers or an actual corporal form. I could still hear prayers, but I could do nothing about them. One night, I heard yours." He strokes Dean's face. "I could do nothing for you back then, but..." He glances around the room, then gazes back at Dean. "Now I can."

Emotions are warring in Dean's face- protective anger (towards Naomi, Cas guesses) and overwhelming affection as he stares at him. In the end, the affection wins out and Dean tugs Cas closer, kissing him. "Mrs. Butters," Dean says in a soft, conspiring tone of voice, as if afraid the Nymph would return and smack him upside the head for even thinking what he's about to say. "was well-meaning, but fell short of giving us an actual Christmas. For one thing, October is no time for Christmas. For another, you weren't there." He pauses, then looks around. "This?" He exhales. "This is the best thing anyone's ever done for me. Thank you, Cas."

Cas starts to respond when Dean leans in, kissing him. He sighs and melts into it, enjoying Dean's hand in his hair, bracing his neck, digging his fingers into Dean's back as the kiss lingers and deepens and... oh. Cas feels overwhelmed in all the best ways by the time Dean pulls back, searching his eyes. "Dean?" he breathes, voice wrecked, hair more messed up than usual.

"I love you, Cas," Dena tells him.

Cas' eyes gleam as he smiles softly. "I love you, too, Dean."

"Now," Dean says, reaching out and lacing their fingers together. "Give me the tour, show me what all you've done to the place."

It's with great pleasure that Cas does exactly that, finally getting to see the joy and adoration in Dean's eyes that he's only ever wanted to witness since hearing his voice for the first time all of those years ago.