There are limits, Castiel finds, to what his grace is capable of influencing.
With very little effort, he can stitch flesh and bone back together until it's whole and clean and healthy. He can slip between the fabric of space and time, follow the ebb and flow of the universe as easily as a sailor can navigate the Atlantic. He can restore his vessel back to its original state, right down to the chemical compounds of Jimmy's underarm deodorant and the crumbs in his coat pockets.
No matter how hard he tries, though, he can't seem to will away the blood and gore that has found its way into the crevices of the angel tablet.
It's like a mirror, and every attempt he makes just bounces back against him.
So, in the harsh fluroescent glare of a Biggerson's bathroom somewhere west of Rockland, he washes the Word of God with ocean breeze hand soap. It doesn't smell like any ocean breeze he's ever encountered. He doesn't like it.
As he scrubs at the stone, the bulb above him buzzes and flickers, and though he knows the difference between angelic interference and an electrical fault, he feels fear. It crawls up his arms, itching under his skin. It's not an unfamiliar emotion, but it's still so much more than he was ever meant to feel, and it makes his breath come short and shallow. He is afraid that the prophet won't be able to find anything. He is afraid that he will never find a solution. That he will be alone, fleeing forever, never getting another moment to just be.
Most of all, he is afraid that while he keeps moving from city to city, town to town, time will pass quickly and leave nothing for him at the end. His minds eye supplies the image of a black car abandoned, rusted on a roadside, it's owner and his brother swept away to a Heaven he cannot return to, and he feels his heart clench.
With one hand on the counter, watching dirty pink bubbles spiral down the drain, he takes a deep breath. He needs to calm down. He thinks of Dean's prayers, remembers bronze-tinted light wrapping warm around his grace and calling him home, and soon he can breathe again. He can breathe, though he shouldn't need to.
He's not sure precisely when that particular need started, but he's spent the past few years scrambling down the slippery slope toward humanity, and he suspects that at this point if he were to take the final plunge and fall, much would stay the same.
He's been tempted, more than once, to throw caution to the wind and let it happen. To tumble down to Earth; trade his wings for a true heartbeat, his halo for sleep, for dreams. Sometimes, he thinks of letting his grace go, letting it plunge deep into a forest floor to grow into something lush and green and beautiful.
The only thing that's stopped him is the uncertainty about whether he would be allowed to remain in the vessel he has come to call his body, or sent as a new soul to be born a human child. If he'd wanted it sooner, he could have asked Anna, even Joshua in his garden. But Anna is dead, and the thought of going to Joshua after everything he's done leaves a bitter ache in his chest. The risk that he'd be someone new is too great.
With a bitter sigh, he returns to scrubbing.
The tablet is almost completely clean when it begins to burn against his fingertips, and before the other angels can lock on his location he flies quickly to indistinguishable bathrooms in San Diego, Boston, Missoula, Cheyenne, Wichita and Palm Beach before settling in Jackson, Tennessee. The tablet is still clutched in his wet hands, and he turns on the new faucet, rinsing the last of the blood away.
After drying it with a wad of paper towel, he pulls out Dean's cell.
The first picture he takes is partially obscured by a fuzzy pink shape that may or may not be his thumb, and in trying again he taps an icon on the screen by mistake and ends up with a photograph of himself frowning in concentration.
His third attempt is considerably more fruitful, and satisfied that it's the best he's going to get, he sends Chuck the message before pushing the tablet back through his skin with a twinge of discomfort.
The phone rings seconds later, and he presses answer.
"Can you read it?"
"You're not Dean," Chuck replies, and Castiel stops himself from saying obviously, opting instead to explain.
"Dean gave me his phone."
There's a brief pause before Chuck speaks again.
"Castiel? Is that you?" he sounds worried, and Castiel wonders if he still thinks himself responsible for everything they've all been through, despite being told he is simply a conduit for the gospel, "Are you okay?"
"Yes. Can you—"
"Read it? Yeah. I mean, I think so. It might take a few days, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to work it out with my, uh... insight."
"What insight?"
"It's kind of a long story?" Chuck says, voice ticking up at the end as if he's asking a question, and Castiel squints toward the phone as if Chuck can see him, "actually, it's a really long story. I've seen some serious crap these last few years."
"We all thought you were dead," Castiel tells him.
"Well. Like I said—"
"It's a long story."
"Yeah."
Castiel has a sinking feeling that Chuck is itching to tell his long story, and to deter him, he speaks quickly.
"You need to begin translation immediately."
"I doubt I'll get much done tonight."
"Where are you?"
"On a bus heading out out of Denver."
"Is that safe?"
"Not really. But I'll be arriving in Lebanon first thing in the morning, so..."
"Lebanon?"
"The town, not the country. Place where Sam and Dean have been living. It's warded against pretty much everything, and I saw myself in their kitchen so I'm gonna end up there whether I go by choice or not," Chuck says, resigned, "visions, man. They're a raging pain in the ass."
Despite never having had one himself, Castiel has no doubt that it's true. He's about to say as much when the tablet begins to grow hot, buzzing painfully against his ribs. Barely ten minutes have passed since he landed here.
"I need to fly again," he tells Chuck, rubbing at his midsection though he knows it makes no difference to the uncomfortable feeling, "good luck."
"Yeah, you too."
Castiel slips the phone back into his coat pocket before he flies.
After three minutes and nine more Biggerson's, Castiel finds himself in Bozeman, Montana, and realizes that he has a problem.
There's a stain on the floor to the left of the pie bar, it's shape vaguely remeniscent of the Rosette Nebula, and he recognises it. He's been here before. More than once, he thinks. He glances around and sees the chipped corner of the booth at the back of the restaurant, the bobble-headed novelty pen on the edge of the cash register, the framed photograph of a smiling blonde woman on the wall, her name signed in illegible silver letters across the background and knows that it's not identical. None of the restaurants are, not really. Not when you get to know the tiny differences. He's been in every one of the locations enough times now to recognise them at a glance, and when he feels the other angels closing in on him again he has no doubt that they have, too.
He flies on immediately, keeps on flying until he's dizzy with it, the pain of the burning tablet the only thing stopping him from losing focus, and when it finally cools he lands in Waimea, Hawaii.
With trembling limbs he sinks into a booth by the window and presses his eyes shut and waits.