There were many things Castiel never got the chance to tell Kylie. They ate away at him as he sat up in the night. He didn't even try and sleep anymore, not since he'd seen her, or at least thought he had. If he slept, all he saw was her, standing there, sending him away as if nothing was wrong; as if she'd been there the whole time, except in his dreams Lucifer was always right behind her, looking like Castiel again, smirking as he waved goodbye with an angel blade.
So Castiel didn't sleep, and instead was plagued by the things he wished he'd told her; the things he'd kept from her from one reason or another, without any clear understanding as to why.
He wished he'd told her that he wanted to see her, when they first met. Every day afterwards, he wanted to see her again, but things were changing. Leviathans were working to control him. He wasn't quite certain if he was himself anymore. So he didn't, because she believed in him, and he wasn't about to be a God that she couldn't believe in.
Then he was Ezekiel. He was married. He didn't remember Kylie until after he smote the demons, and it all came rushing back to him. Her face, clear as day, looking up on him with fear and hope and happiness and… not awe, but a sense of acceptance. He was there. He was real. She could… deal with him, that's how she would put it. She could come to terms with his existence being substantiated by his physical presence. He wanted to go to her, he planned to the second he had healed Sam. But the damage done… It was his penance. He wouldn't go back until he had served it, and purified himself from his wrongful actions. When he was woken back up, and the Word of God had been released from it's earthen prison… he still didn't go.
He had Meg. He had to protect Meg. He felt as though it would be wrong to leave her when she had been protecting him the whole time. But at the same time, he felt bad, because he could still hear Kylie's prayers. He could hear her, hear her begging for help some days, and that was when he gave in. He couldn't help it. He had to give in.
They were coming for her in the dark of night. She was asleep. She wasn't going to survive. He wanted to wake her up, to shout or say something or fight them, but he couldn't. He didn't do that anymore. Fighting was bad. Fighting was what got him in to that situation in the first place. And when he looked at himself… He wasn't the person she had met. He was changed. He was different. He didn't know if she would want to see him.
So he tripped the trap she had set up, and caused the salt to go flying in to the demons. It was a well made trap, he was impressed with how she had adapted, but it had been placed in the wrong spot. Demons had easily avoided it.
She woke up when they screamed, and ran. Castiel was glad she got away. He didn't want her to die. She was good. She was trying.
He left after that. He didn't know what else to do. He couldn't go talk to her, not like how he was. And there were still Leviathans to contend with. He couldn't just abandon Sam and Dean and Meg for this girl, much less drag her in to it.
So he left, intending to go find her after his mind was put back in order. That was always the intent. Once his mind was back how it was, and he was the angel she had met originally, he would return to help her. That was always what he told himself.
When Crowley had her, Castiel couldn't take it anymore. He could feel her pain, feel her crying out to him in her subconscious, still believing somewhere that he would come back, that he would do one more good thing. That was what made Castiel dig the bullet out of his body. That was what gave him strength to use his last vestiges of power to save the both of them. She had still believed in him. She hadn't ever stopped believing in him. If Castiel had left her there, she would've died, and it would've been his fault. He couldn't bear that burden, not anymore. So many things of late had been his fault. He had to do one thing right.
She had been the first thing he felt as though he'd done right in a long time. He hadn't told her any of this because he felt as though she would look at him strangely and differently.
He never told her about seeing her alive again, after the angels fell. Seeing her in the Bunker, alive in flesh and blood and there, right there in the room with him. He forgot everything he had just said, everything he had been discussing with the Winchesters, because she was there. She was standing right in front of him, saying things, but he almost didn't hear her for a minute because…
She was alive.
She was just alive, and he couldn't believe it.
Then he realized she was unhappy. She asked who April was, the name sounding like bile in her throat, and he said what may have been the most inane response to her question. He said her name, said "Kylie," because the fact that she was there still hadn't managed to cement itself in Castiel's brain just yet. Dean explained for him what had happened, Castiel couldn't. All he could do was say her name again, followed by an extremely short-lived attempt at saying anything else other than her name. She interrupted him, though, the hurt shining through like a beacon in the dark. She said she wanted to leave. Sam tried to stop her, but she was adamant. I couldn't say another word. I didn't know what to say.
She had been the one thing that he wanted to do right, the one thing he had finally done correctly, and in the blink of an eye he had managed to falter yet again. Much later on, he told her why he had turned to April – he had ran from what he had thought was a failure. He had to believe that he could do something correct again, something that wasn't a mistake. And he had been wrong. All he had done was make a bigger mistake, one that hurt him more than not seeing her for so long had. It hurt more because this time, he could see it. He couldn't just avoid her, nor did he want to, so he had see it in her face every day for a long time. The hurt. The betrayal. The unwillingness to trust him just yet, because he had hurt her.
That was when he learned that he would do anything to try and make things right again. Not because of the betrayal and pain on her face, though. For a different reason.
No matter how hard he looked, and no matter how enraged she seemed with him, there was one expression that never seemed to leave her face. She still believed in him. She still had hope that he would help her, that he would do something and be a hero. He didn't know if he was imagining things or if she was even aware of it, but he chose to believe that the latter was true. The latter was what spurred him on to keep trying, because she still believed in him, and he was going to make himself worthy of her faith and belief in him and eventually, her trust and happiness as well.
He never told her because he didn't want to be wrong, and then things were better between them for a while so he saw no point. After that, he just believed that she was better without him, that she didn't want him around, so he left.
He never told her that he fell in love with her smile before he realized it was simply being in love with her. It was always just physical things about her, or habits and actions that he began to associate the word love with. He loved it when she smiled. He loved it when he watched her think, planning out a next move for the pair of them. He loved it when she had a deck of cards in her hands, absent-mindedly fiddling with the pieces of plastic-coated cardboard and making them disappear in a way that even Castiel couldn't see, or if there was a box nearby flicking them in to the material so that they stuck out like darts. He loved it when she heard a song she liked and started humming to it or singing it quietly, even when it wasn't playing around them, because she could hear the music in her head and it made her feel joy.
He loved it when she was happy or elated or excited or feeling any sort of positive emotion.
He loved it when she was her own person, because there wasn't any good way to describe her personality other than her being her.
He just… he loved her. He loved all the small pieces and individual mannerisms and aspects that just made up her, and he loved her. He had fallen from Heaven, fallen from grace, and fallen for one of his father's creations. He had fallen in every possible sense of the word, and this time he didn't care as much. She was there.
He didn't want to be the same person she had first met, then. Not any more after that either. He had been pretending to be a God, pretending to be above it all. Now, he just wanted to be someone she would like, someone she would hopefully love as well. He wanted to be with her.
He never told her that because he didn't want her to find it silly or childish, and because he also wasn't completely certain how he would express his process of falling in love with her without becoming nervous and unsure and stopping himself before he could fully explain it and tell her everything.
He couldn't help but wish now that he'd told her these things, told her so many more. He wished that he'd told her that when she was gone, he worked like a man possessed until he found her again. He wished he'd told her that the words Cordziz Hoath never sounded so kind and beautiful, and that they'd lost all negative connotations to him the day he met her. He wished he'd told her that he was certain his heart had almost stopped when he saw what he had done to her body, saw the havoc that his hands had caused. He wished he'd told her that his heart almost stopped again when she said yes, purely out of an overwhelming sense of emotion and gratitude and a wish to find his father again solely so he could thank him, thank God, for creating this singular human that had just agreed to marry him.
He wished he could've told her he loved her one last time before she disappeared, before Lucifer cast her aside like a piece of garbage. That was the one that hurt the most, because there was no possible reason as to why he hadn't, just a reason as to why he couldn't. She was right in front of him, and he was powerless to do anything. When she had needed him the most, when he could feel her soul crying out to him the loudest, he had done nothing. He couldn't do anything, and there was only himself to blame. He couldn't put all of the fault on Lucifer, not anymore. Now that he was gone, Castiel had to wake up and accept that it was his fault.
There were many things that Castiel never told Kylie, for various reasons. There were many things that he wanted to tell her, that he wished he had told her, and they were all excuses so that he could just see her one last time.
And he had seen her, he was almost certain of it. She had been right in front of him, and she had sent him away before he could tell her any of those things.
Castiel gripped his necklace tightly, standing in front of the makeshift grave for her one last time. It was raining, but he didn't care. This was too important for him to care about the weather. "I believe you're alive." He said. "I'm certain you have to be. I'll find you." It was a promise, one he would keep no matter the consequences. Those didn't matter as much to him more now. He didn't have much else to lose, but now he had so much he could gain. "I promise."
When he found her, this would be one of the first things he would tell her out of the many that he hadn't before. He would tell her that he never stopped being in love with her, that not a day went by that he didn't miss her. He would tell her everything.
"I'll find you." He promised.
