Title: visions and delusions
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: spoilers for aired season 5
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 235
Point of view: third
Prompt: Dean/Castiel, Cas feels a world apart whilst Dean's asleep.
Angels do not need sleep. Even now, when he knows that his grace is almost completely gone, he is not physically tired.
Emotionally, yes--his soul (that tiny light left of Heaven) is exhausted. Every day seems longer than the one before, especially now that he finally grasps just how frail humans are.
(Jo. Ellen. He asks their forgiveness and does not feel anything but what Sam defines as grief.)
But Dean sleeps. Sam sleeps. While they rest, Castiel searches the cosmos and the ground, seeking any hint of Father, but Father refuses to be found.
He watches their dreams sometimes, especially Dean's. Castiel knows that humans need sleep to recharge, to be able to function at peak condition, but Dean's dreams do not seem conducive to functionality. In his dreams, he is back in Hell or at Cold Oak. In his dreams, he is either the tormented or tormentor, or the survivor clutching close his brother's corpse.
Castiel has lost the ability to sweeten Dean's dreams; all he can do now is watch, and that seems so remote. So useless. He was never the most able soldier, but as a scholar, he excelled, designed—so he had always believed—by Father's hands. And now he is nothing but an observer, unable to help Dean sleep or exorcise a demon.
All he can do now is fly, search. Hope.
All he can do is pray.