"It's not your choice."
The words played on loop in Castiel's mind, pulling at his every nerve. For millennia, he had been faced with countless situations in which he didn't get a say: battles between heaven and hell, power grabs from siblings desperate to fill the void their absent father had left. Never, in all his years, had his say being robbed from him shaken him so deeply.
Tears filled his eyes as he struggled to focus on the road. Crying was such a human trait, often still so foreign to him but, in this moment, entirely unavoidable. His focus darted another time or two to his son who now sat silently by his side, his thin fingers fidgeting with one another. Though Jack's anxious pinching and prodding of his hands usually sent a wave of fatherly concern through Cas, this time it only added to the rising anger settling in the depths of his stomach.
As his emotions continued to rise and threatened to overwhelm him, Cas pulled his teal truck over in the abandoned expanse of silent highway.
"What? Why did—"
Cas held up a hand, silencing him. The angel took a moment to try to compose himself but even some deep breaths did nothing to quell the surge of emotions coursing through him.
"Were you going to tell me?"
"Tell you what?" Jack's fingernails dug more into his cuticles.
"You know what. If I hadn't pried further, if we hadn't had that discussion with Pastor Joe, were you going to tell me? Were you going to let me know that you made a deal with Death where I'd have to watch you die again, or were you going to continue on with your plan without letting any of us know what you were doing? That you were planning to kill yourself without even trying to look for another way? That you were going to make me watch you die again without giving me a chance to fight it?"
Jack turned his face away, staring at his fidgeting hands.
A low growl escape from Cas. "Answer me."
"No, I wasn't," said Jack, looking up but eyes not quite meeting his father's. "I figured it would be best if you didn't know. When you made the deal with the Empty, you told me that I didn't need that burden. Well, I didn't think you needed this one."
"That's not the same thing!"
"Why not?" Jack snapped back.
"I made that deal to save your life and because I made a promise to your mother to protect you. If there had been other options available, if we had more time, perhaps another decision could have been made, but if you're in danger I will never hesitate to step in. Do you understand that? It is not just because of my promise to your mother but it's my responsibility as your father!"
"And I made this deal to help save the world!"
"You didn't even give us the chance to find another way, Jack!"
Their voices had risen to full shouts, breaking the tranquility spread around them in the darkness of rural Missouri.
Cas could count the number of times he had truly been angry with Jack on one hand. All of those memories were flying through his mind, forcing him to come to one awful conclusion: this was the most livid he had ever been with his son in the boy's short life. Sure, using up his soul without regard for his well-being was frustrating but ultimately understandable. After all, Jack had never been given such high consequences to weigh against his own self-interest. Then, there were the series of mishaps on their first hunt together, but Cas could chalk that up largely to childish overeagerness and Jack stepping fully into the stubborn independence of toddlerhood, regardless of what he looked like on the outside.
This time? Oh, this time. Cas heaved a breath through his nose like a bull seeing red. He knew he needed to calm down. Never speak while angry, never discipline while angry. The angel had seen enough battles, big and small, to know rage exacerbated issues beyond all control.
Yet, here he was, his son sitting in front of him with sad, wide eyes, firmly telling him that he had no choice but to accept reliving the worst experience of his very, very old life.
No.
"You were never going to, were you?" Cas asked suddenly, voice low.
"Going to what?"
Cas pushed away the concern at Jack's uneasy tone. "Give us the chance to find another way. You didn't even think about what this was going to do to us, to me, did you?"
"I know what Sam and Dean would want! Dean esp—"
"I'm not talking about Dean, right now, Jack! I'm talking about me and you! You were never going to give me the chance to find something else, were you? To even grant me the decency of hoping for another way."
Jack swallowed deeply and shook his head. Though Cas had hoped the confirmation would ease some of his anger, instead it just formed it into a rock that settled deep in his stomach. Without even pausing for another breath, Cas shifted further toward the middle of the combined front seat. Jack barely had a moment to catch the cue and understand what was happening before he was pulled over his father's lap, face flushing.
"I'm—"
But Jack was quickly cut off with a firm swat to the seat of his jeans. "Don't you dare tell me you're old enough, big enough, or mature enough to make this decision on your own, let alone to not face the consequences for it. You know how much your death nearly killed me, and you were willing…"
Cas could once again feel that all too human need to cry as he trailed off, forcing the emotion away and focusing his attention elsewhere. Instead, for the second time in Jack's young life, the angel raised his hand over the boy's bent form and brought it down with a harsh clap. Jack winced and grabbed the edge of the seat, eye pinching closed as another slap landed.
"I need to do this!" Jack half yelled, half whined as more blows rained down.
"For who? Why? To make up for something that wasn't fully your fault? To earn forgiveness that you should never die in order to receive? You kept this from us for weeks, kept this from me for weeks, and you were prepared to let it continue? No, Jack. You didn't need to do this."
He could feel Jack prepare a rebuttal, but the slap that followed knocked the wind out of the nephilim's sails. The boy then opted to bury his face in the crook of his elbow, apparently sensing his words were doing more harm than good, which would ultimately mean more harm for himself.
The front seat of the truck was awkward, to say the least, but Cas believed it offered more privacy at this point than the bunker and, frankly, he didn't even care too much about how embarrassed Jack was being half over the seat and his feet drumming the floor of the passenger side.
For a few rapid moments, all that mattered to Cas was getting through the task at hand. He'd never want to hurt his son, not truly. Sure, a small voice in the back of his mind, the voice of a soldier, told him how severely this wayward child deserved to be handled due to his drastic actions. Cas wasn't that soldier anymore. He was, as he told himself with another slap, a father and one that would move heaven and earth to keep this boy safe from anyone, including himself.
After a while, Cas could sense an energy coming from Jack and abruptly landed an even sharper swat. "No powers. I mean it, none."
"Because you don't want Chuck to find me or you don't want me to feel better?" came the watery reply.
Cas could hear the childish irritation in his son's voice and was tempted to end the punishment there. For all that Jack was carrying within him, the guilt and sadness that was clearly twisting inside him, for the first time in a while Cas could hear a hint of anger. No child liked to be taken in hand by their parent. The angel knew this firsthand, even if his manner of being dealt with had been dramatically different. Still, the tone gave him pause.
"Any hint of your power could put you in more danger, and I am hoping to instill in you that danger is the last place I want you to be in."
"What about what I want?!" came the shrill reply.
"To die?!" Cas snapped, giving the boy another loud crack to his jeans.
"To make things right!"
"Dying never made things right for anyone! You would know that if you had even asked!" Another few smacks and Jack broke into tears, sobbing fully now into his arm.
Cas kept him there for a minute or two, letting his son cry before he gently began rubbing his back, now warm underneath his brown jacket from tears and exertion. Jack relaxed at the touch then seemed to remember himself, pushing himself upright and gingerly sitting back into the passenger side.
"Jack, I know you feel—"
"You don't know how I feel," the boy shot back. "You didn't do what I did to who I did it to. You've died and come back and people were happy to see you. Grateful. Me?..."
The pause hung in the air and, not for the first time that night, Cas couldn't gather a response. He knew what the boy was referring to and the marked differences in their resurrections. Tearful hugs on a streetside versus a tentative, almost scared stare. Sam, Cas knew, had been working to put the past behind him, but it was Dean that needled at Jack's nerves.
"Son," Cas started, sensing the boy start at the word, "I cannot speak for Sam and Dean, but I can speak for myself, and grateful is a vast understatement for how I felt seeing you again. Then to have you so quietly and willingly able to throw that gift away?"
"Is it a gift?"
"Yes! Of course this is a gift. I don't care what mission you've been given, your life is a gift and I will not take it lightly. You have been taught too often to do so, and I bear some of that responsibility, for which I am deeply sorry. You need the time and support to know that this end you see yourself worthy of having? It's not the one you deserve."
"Isn't this the stove calling the kettle black?"
Cas heaved a sigh, tempted to pat Jack on the shoulder before thinking better of it. "The saying, I've been told, is the pot calling the kettle black. And, perhaps. I know you don't like to hear this Jack, and I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to try to understand it, but I am your father and you are my child. There is never any scenario in which I will accept you disregarding your life for mine or anyone else's. You come first and have since the moment I felt you kick in your mother's womb. Your anger with me? I can tolerate that. I can tolerate a great many things and have for millennia, but your death? Living through it once was unbearable. The least you could have done was give me the chance to never live through it again."
A few more tears slipped from Jack's eyes at those last words. He heaved a sigh, steeling himself. "I still think it's what I need to do, and we don't have much time."
"Well, then I'll use that time how I can, and you'll use it in your room."
Jack turned a mildly stunned look to his father, but Cas was already restarting the truck, his mind made up. "You want to wait for Billie's plan and to enact it however you must? As you said, I don't get a choice in that, but I do get a choice in where you go and what you do until then. You're grounded, and I do trust you to honor what I'm telling you because I will not be there entirely to enforce it."
"Where will you be?"
"Like I said, I refuse to accept this without finding another way," he said, pulling the truck back onto the quiet highway. "And I can only hope you try to find a way to forgive yourself and treat yourself with more care and kindness than you seem to be determined to."
"I come by it naturally," said Jack. Though the sentiment, Cas knew, held an edge of kindness, the bitterness of its true meaning hung in the air as they made their way back home. He'd felt pangs of anger toward the brothers for how much they'd instilled their beliefs in his son's mind, as they passed more empty fields he couldn't help but face the fact he'd instilled his own brand of self-loathing and sacrifice.
