Remaking a soul is nothing like rebuilding a body. It's not a matter of hours or days or weeks. With his fingers bleeding, with shattered muscles of his wingless back tensed and hard like rocks, Cas realizes he'll need centuries to put him together. Millennia to make him a whole.
"You can't fix me." Dean's voice is coarse from howling, from the torment of being ripped into pieces. "Stop pretending you can."
He'd put time on hold if he could. He'd work on the brightest till the stars surrender to its glow and turn to blackness, ashamed. He'd steal him away from the physical and lay him inside a supernova for a celestial recharge.
If he could he'd burn himself out for the silver threads of Dean's soul.
"I can," the angel whispers, yet the whisper carries the crushing force that is more stubbornness than faith. I will.
It's a start; a shining on the left that's weak and tired of the struggle. A palm-shaped patch pulsing like a dying heart, when the real heart has already decayed. Besieged, it's done putting up the resistance, despite the exhaustible ally, the withering protector. That which used to be a part of the savior and clung to the saved. The Grace that has branded him and kept him secure, taking the poison in – now corrodes.
"I can."
I'm the only one who can.
It's alien; when Cas comes – it's not calling, it's not his anymore. And he's not its, with a stolen fire writhing in his stomach – a counterfeit angel; a walking fallacy. The touch of it makes the chill crawl on his usurped skin. He crumbles: there's not a piece in him that is his own.
"You can't, Cas," the embers beneath him scoff with the lover's voice. A pained melody that pleads for a break.
Instead, Cas cuts in like a knife. He brings down the walls, the last line of defense, to get to the salvaged light and begin to build on that. Piece by piece he turns the weakened shield to dust. To recreate the sacred, he destroys the remains of himself.
I can.
The remnant of Dean's soul lays bare before him like an open wound. The serpents sharpen their teeth, insatiable. They'll conquer and raise their kingdom, they'll suck the rest in like a black hole. They'll attack at the angel's slightest falter, then he'll stop them with his bones.
They wait.
Were Cas God, he'd divide and multiply the strands of brightness and make them grow endless and strong. He'd weave them to create a new soul for the righteous man, just as remarkable and just as good, in the place of the charred one. He'd fill the body with it to the brim, having undone the embers and their fountain – the Mark.
But he's not God. Not even a god – the fake shepherd he called himself once; almighty.
He's saccharin – hoax, yet sweeter: the filthy paws clutch to him, as he lays around the bleeding ground like a barricade. They lick, curious and greedy, soon they'll hoard and devour, make him into the new Worthy.
He's a nothing: he takes the debris in, plucking it off Dean's bones, swallowing. The venom fulfills his stomach, but vacates the condemned soul. He's a ceasing void.
He's a gardener: the seeds are sown – he nurtures them, he watches them grow like he used to watch their soil sleep (it don't sleep anymore – it whimpers).
When the time comes, he'll be the reaper and he'll send the Grim – the rightful – one, away. He'll harvest the crop of young yarn when the body dies and he'll be a weaver. He'll stretch and intertwine, he'll sew and he'll stuff. He'll hang him far from the flames of the Abyss.
In death, he'll tuck him right outside the fields of Eden. In death, he'll save him for eternity. In death, for good, he'll refabricate the Damned – for Heaven's sake, he'll reestablish him wholly.