The Feather

While the impala purrs and pants, inside its walls scream silence. Dean ignores it for favour of the road, Sam accepts it as inevitable and unavoidable. Castiel counts it, because its all his brain will allow him to do. Its static grey and beige, its bland and tasteless, a texture of woollen fuzziness, and a weight of a thousand leagues.

Two hours of solid silence and Dean announces they're driving through the night.

Sam mumbles about fuel, about food, and is rewarded with a scathing look, I know what I'm doing. So he sighs and teases the window open. The wind ripples chills across his face, and he watches as the giant feather trembles in the breeze. Behind him Castiel says nothing, and goes unnoticed.

Five and a half hours of solid silence and Dean mutters about a pit stop.

Sam jolts awake, opens his dry mouth to suggest a motel, but shuts it before Dean can cut him with angry retorts. The window is now glued closed, a ward against the dust of the road, which whirs pale and sickly in the fading light. Dean rolls his eyes, Sam drifts back to sleep, Castiel says nothing and goes unnoticed.

Nine hours of solid silence and the impala mewls malcontent.

Its enough for Dean to snap himself from his thoughts, which are whirling blue and red, and enough to rouse Sam from his lightheaded slumber, where he dreams of smoke and chains. A gear is crunched, a signal snapped, and the impala slows from run to prowl. Castiel sluggishly rolls his head towards the door.

Night has fallen, still and empty. The diner is small and ordinary, its parking lot swathed in sharp neon light, burning painfully bright in the new-formed darkness. Dean pulls himself out the moment the engine has lulled, doesn't bother giving Sam a look, but strides around the car and yanks open the back door.

He's met with the quiet eyes of Castiel.

Biting back unfathomable words, Dean breaks eye contact, rubs his face, reforms it again. Cas doesn't move, hasn't moved since they slung him in; his body hangs in a limp slump, hands uselessly by his sides. The white of his bandages scream obvious in the dusk, the stinging smell of antiseptic too sharp against the tepid night. His chest slowly rises and falls, faded eyes watch with distant caution.

Dean snaps, 'hungry?' and tries to ignore the break in his voice.

The response comes slowly, '… no.'

'You should eat.'

Cas lowers his gaze. 'I don't need to eat,' he says to his fingers.

'Huh,' Dean thins his mouth. 'Thought you felt hunger and all that now.'

'I did…' He curls his fingers slowly, open, closed. '…I don't.'

'All that angelic stuff kicking back in? You'll be back on your feet and flying off in no time.'

Castiel says nothing.

Sam twists in his seat to look back at them. To a broken angel and an angry man. He catches his brothers eye and tries to say everything with a look. He's tired, man. He's hurting. He's not ready to talk about it, we just need to give him time. Give him more time. Deans jaw is already clenched and the air is already singing with the unspoken; an emotional door is tentatively open, but instead wrenching it wide and alighting, Dean simply slams it shut.

'Okay. Well, I'm getting a burger, if you're not eating you should probably stay here cos, no offence, you look like a walking punching bag.'

And then he straightens up and walks away.

They watch him leave and, strangely, Sam finds he doesn't feel anything much. He mutters a quiet, 'ass,' but more for Cas' comfort than his own. There should be something more, even amongst the bone-tiredness, but he feels nothing, and he doesn't understand why. Its as if Dean has taken it all, in his rage and his despair. Dean is a sun blazing, and all Sam has done is slowly turn to stone.

But he flicks his attention to Cas, to his strange eternal sadness, and sure enough begins to feel again the heavy hopelessness pooling again, like liquid lead into his stomach.

'How are you doing?' he asks.

Cas tears his eyes away and refocuses on Sam. Almost clings to Sam, like he is the only anchor in an endless sea. 'Better.' It shouldn't sound so unbelievable.

'You kicked some ass back there, whatever it was you did.'

Cas give a momentary squint, and then presses his mouth into a fractional smile. Its small and sad and doesn't quiet reach his eyes. 'You should go with Dean,' he reassures. 'I'll wait here.'

Sam nods. 'Maybe you could get some rest,' it feels odd to suggest, but he plunges on anyway. 'There are blankets in the back if you want…?'

'I can't sleep,' Cas says, his voice weary.

'Like… nightmares…?'

'No, I…' he frowns, as though he's only just realised thats what he's been having. 'I don't need sleep, Sam.'

Sam says all to quickly, 'right, right,' forces lightness to his words, 'angels and sleep don't mix, huh?'

Cas lets his eyes slip away, 'I suppose,' he answers unconvincingly.

And Sam can understand Dean in a heartbeat, because what is there left of the angel to give? Running into a wall is one thing, it can be hit and broken and struggled against. This… this is a chasm, a great yawning pit of empty. And Castiel is lost into it, giving nothing and hiding everything and yet somehow still trying to communicate and it makes no sense.

Inside his hand the feather crumples. His fist curls tight, squashing one half into oblivion. It should make him feel something, why doesn't he feel anything? Sam stares. Castiel watches him. The feather flashes almost translucent. Words reverberate, those small, select, important words.

They discarded me
They were finished
They don't want me

Sam thinks of abandonment, thinks of outliving usefulness, and knows deep down he can't really understand because he's never truly lived it. But Sam is Sam and cradles the warmth of humanity in his heart, so he feels the desolation nonetheless. Not his, he is still stone, but perhaps a spark of what Cas might feel. It makes him think of a junkyard, of a flat battery, of a busted lightbulb. He's not sure why he says it, but suddenly it seems the most important thing in the world.

'You're not a object, Cas.'

Castiel says nothing.

The feather quivers under strain and tension. It shudders as though it had life of its own, a will, a desire, an anger. And suddenly Sam realises what he's doing, what he's breaking. A heartbeat and then he balks; his hand snaps open, guilt churns from his stomach to his throat.

'Sorry,' he says thickly. 'Uh...'

Cas watches him carefully, quiet and patient. Sam swallows and holds out the feather, now disheveled and bent, still clutched in his clammy fingers.

'Do you want it? I mean…' he lowers his hand, then immediately raises it again. 'It's yours, right? They, uh, left it for us, but...' He watches with trepidation as Cas transfers attention from face to hand. 'It's from you, like your wings- do you want it back? Its yours,' he continues stupidly, 'right?'

'Yes, its mine.'

Like drudging up from depths, Cas drags himself forward. He raises a leaden arm and gently takes the feather. It arcs before him, thick and fragile and stiff and crumpled; beyond its length Sam can see tender blue eyes blaze. Cas holds it carefully, like its precious. But, and acid begins to swirl, it looks wrong. Torn fingers twirl it, slowly, jarringly, and it looks so ungraceful in his hands, so clumsily and uncontrolled. So ugly. Because its not a part of him any more. It was ripped away, and sullied, and snapped and now its dead. Its a dead thing. And Sam breaks a little more. Because if it was still a part of him it would be beautiful…

And Sam wishes he could see that, not this pathetic thing.

Castiel takes a small breath and runs his fingers up the feathers length, an artist surveying a ruined portrait. The barbs slip through like silk, clumping and splitting, but Cas carefully smooths them out until even the stains seem less than before. Sam wonders whether to ask about the blood, though when he looks up Cas is watching the feather with strange detached longing.

'I don't know why they wasted energy making it tangible,' he says at last.

'It was a warning,' Sam chews the inside of his mouth, 'they left it as a warning,' bitterness slowly creeps. 'We were trying to save you, they wanted us to back off…'

The feather slowly lowers. 'That sounds like you.'

'Yeah, for all it was worth,' Sam mutters.

'It was,' comes the steady reply.

And when Sam next looks, Castiel is holding the feather out to him. Amongst the heavy purples and sickly greens his eyes pierce out all the sharper. His hands a firm and definitive. The feather is perfectly still, and perfectly formed.

'Perhaps you should keep it,' the angel says. 'I think it might mean more to you than to me.'

He knows, Sam realises, he knows you hold it when you pray, that you hold it when you're tired, when you're stressed, when you need it. That… strange primordial peace of holding onto something, that belief you hold a connection to the world, or to something so much greater than himself. It's the only thing that maybe makes him feel more than nothing. Cas doesn't want him to loose that.

'Thanks,' he says, voice slipping into hoarseness.

A little nod, a little flash of something. Its not strong enough to be joy or pleasure, but a whispered relief that he's understood. And then his head flops slowly back against the seat, and his eyes begin to drift away.

'You know you can talk to us, right?' its something else that seems so important to say. 'I mean, you don't have to, its okay. But, if you want to.'

In days to come, Sam will understand. Even as the hours creep past he will begin to realise: that the strange sharp scintilla burning behind Castiel's eyes, ungraspable, is disappointment. But for now he is only met with silence and an unfathomable look.

'Are you,' he sighs through his nose, chewing over his words. 'You're not going to disappear on us, are you?'

Cas raises his head off the seat. Like water slowly pooling, sad guilt now fills his eyes. 'No,' he reassures softly, 'I'll stay.'

It makes Sams guts shrivel, he hadn't meant it as an accusation. 'Okay,' he affirms quickly, 'we'll… be back soon.' He pulls himself out of the car, stiff and numb, and just before he cranks the door closed the words leap from him.

'We'll fix this.'

Castiel sits in impala and clicks the indicators on and off.

He does it because its something he can do, its a certainty, its a fact. Whatever broken and withered impulse that still lingers inside his head, he is strong enough to push it forward. He pushed it into the demons, a split-second of a lightning knife. And he pushed it into the feather, a heartbeat of warmth and softness. It is his, he recognises it, but it feels unconnected to him. A lost found thing, a known unknown, like the strange space that stretches between sleeping and waking.

Dull and aching pain thrums over him, though muddied and suppressed under heavy-handed exhaustion. The exhaustion is the worst, a cold and clawing nausea, mindless and smothering. It shouldn't be so hard to move, it shouldn't be so hard to simply breathe. He swallows and feels the protest of tender skin around his throat.

What had Sam said? Well fix this. Castiel blinks away blurring patterns from his eyes. He hadn't considered how broken things could be, but… now that he thought harder about it, he hadn't thought anything much. Its easier when Castiel ignored Castiel. Sometimes it was still to hard to think about things, or, at least, the right things, he seemed to be good at thinking the wrong ones.

He reaches out again with fractured self and pushes feebly. The silence is filled with small ticks, little clicks of indicators flicking on and off. And on and off.

Inside his head an aching pulse begins to gnaw.

Minutes tick by. He tries to stop thinking, tries to stop burning, clicks the indicators on and off and on and off. Minutes tick by and the pain behind his eyes continues to grow.

Then there is the whoosh of squashed air escaping, and the impala doors are pulled open. Dean and Sam clamber inside, bringing in new smells of food and night. Castiel blinks, pulls back into himself, but not before Dean holds his hands an inch or two above the wheel and frowns.

'Whats-?' he cranes around. 'Thats you right? With the indicators. What are you doing?'

'Giving myself a headache.'

'Well don't.'

Another door slammed shut. A purr widens to a growl and the impala leaps forward again. As the miles eat away, Castiel battles the dysphoria that clamours under his skin. Half snatches of conversation are heard from the front, the brothers voices barely rising over the engines rumble. Sam is calling his state 'being in flux', Dean quips a Delorian reference and then argues, 'fluxing between what and what? Human and angel? He never stops being an angel, its not flux.'

Castiel's eyes drift hazily down and he realises he still doesn't have shoes.

Sam counters, 'he's in and out, Dean, he's half with us, hes in flux.' and they argue the problem whist never thinking of how to fix it. Castiel has a better word, but he finds he can't bring himself to say it. It echoes round his head, loud and angry and never fading away. He wishes he could explain in words that carry meaning and weight, wishes it could be simple and everyone would understand.

He tries to focus on what he knows, but thats just Sam and Dean. Dean and Sam and their unhappiness. They never sounded this unhappy when they were just prayers in his head. And its him. They're unhappy at him. He affixes himself the title of burden and considers how perhaps he shouldn't have tried so hard to find them.

Cold numbness sets in.

They drive into dawn, and drive through the morning. They race the sun as it arcs over a painted sky, and drive until it sets. They drive though dusk and drive into darkness. The impala roars on, oblivious to another day being eaten away.

'-almost two days straight, we need to stop.'

'We have stopped, look: Car. Road. Stopped.'

'I mean a motel, with beds and a shower. We can't sleep roadside with Cas the way he is.'

'So we won't.'

'What-'

'Sam, whatever those demons wanted, Solas and his cronies or whatever, we need to kick it before it becomes any bigger. We sort it now, its done and dusted.'

'Becomes any bigger? Any bigger than what? We don't know whats happening! We don't even know where they are! We iced the demons remember?'

Minutely, Castiel shifts. His shoulders ache, his back throbs into a symphony of low bass and high sparking jolts. There is a pounding in his chest, screaming knives that sing the antithesis of a heartbeat. It fissures along his spine, pooling vicious in the back of his skull. The swollen skin around his eye pushes relentless angry pressure.

'Yeah, and they followed a knight of Hell. You heard them talking, "certain circles"? Theres gunna be more than five of them. A ten second glance at a newspaper and we both know somethings up. People going missing. Demons. End of.'

'But we don't know anything. You're just being bone-headed. Lets- Lets take the night and start looking into it tomorrow.'

'You do what you want, Sam, I'm gunna kill me some demons.'

'Sure. Okay, yeah. You don't even know where they are.'

'Don't need to, we've got a walking radar,' Dean swivels in his seat. 'Cas, where the demons at?'

The church is quaint and ordinary. It is new and un-intimidating, not very big and not very impressive. Its unobtrusive little existence, on the side of a hill just outside the city, goes by almost unnoticed and most definitely uncared about.

When Dean and Sam burst through its doors, their final demon bomb alighting the walls in a wave of fired smoke, the quaint and ordinary church does no more than echo with hysteric laugher.

When Sam and Dean are smashed into its walls and left to hang like grotesque butterflies pinned, the quaint and ordinary church becomes not a battlefield but a prison.

When Dean and Sam struggle pitifully, and are rewarded with forceful pain, the quaint and ordinary church watches the demons laugh at humanity in all its pathetic weakness.

He'll be back soon, they howl.

When the doors slam forcefully shut, sealing Sam and Dean inside, the quaint and ordinary church blends back into the quiet night. And all around the sky, black smoke twists as stars begin to fall.

Oh hey! Remember me?

Many apologies for the delay - for those who don't know, I've been in Tokyo the past two weeks performing the first ever stage adaptation of Studio Ghibli's 'Princess Mononoke'. Its been amazing and wonderful and I was the butt of a giant wolf god (puppetry for the win!).

So here, have an emotionally crippling chapter to make up for it. Thanks for waiting, thanks for being so patient. Oh Cas, what is going on in your brain? I'm so goddamn excited for the next chapter because ACTION and things.

And thanks, as always, for all your kind words and comments!