Chapter Text
Once Sam is inebriated enough to slip into dreamless sleep, Castiel gently lays Sam’s tear-stained face against his pillow, and tucks him in as he believes humans prefer. He thinks he does it correctly, because Sam doesn’t fuss or move much afterward.
Castiel knows Sam is deeply exhausted.
The evening was spent celebrating the destruction of Amara, the saving of the world, but mostly it was spent mourning Dean, and Castiel drank with Sam so as not to force Sam to drink alone (as is socially unacceptable for reasons Castiel still struggles to understand), but he is in no way inebriated.
Castiel considers watching over Sam as he sleeps, monitor his dreams to see to it that he sleeps peacefully, just as a task to keep himself preoccupied, but he thinks to himself that Sam is of a similar mind to Dean, and Dean never wanted to be watched over.
At least, not by Castiel.
When Castiel shuts Sam’s bedroom door behind him, he wonders what to do with himself.
There are many things to do, he supposes. He has been tasked with seeing after Sam, and that guardianship was not passed down to him lightly. He takes it very seriously, and internally, he has already accepted his eternal loneliness on Earth, guarding over whatever bloodline Sam extends, on and on until there is no Winchester of this blood for him to look after.
The first task that had come to mind when he returned to the bunker with Sam was to seek out Dean in Heaven, but Castiel cannot access the Host, and even so, he cannot sense Dean anywhere near it.
He isn’t concerned that Dean is in Hell or Purgatory – he’s concerned Dean’s soul has been destroyed.
Even now, Castiel extends his limbs of light out into the universe, to its furthest edges, he can see where no light has ever touched or ever will touch, and still – he cannot sense Dean.
Dean is lost to him, wholly and completely.
Stiltedly, he walks down the hall, falters near Dean’s bedroom door, pauses, considers, but carries on until he gets outside.
The night is cool and quiet, even the smallest creatures of the Earth are sitting shiva with him.
Still, he has never felt so alone, and this despair sloughs off him, sickening the ground, permeating the sky.
The unpaved road splinters where he steps, the night sky is overcome by shadow, sharp winds begin to build speed, and flashing lightning strikes.
He walks and walks, the ground trembles in fear beneath him, parting like the Red Sea, tears build in his human eyes as his ethereal eyes search across planes and waves for any sign of Dean.
There are none.
This is my fault, Castiel continues to berate himself with this mantra that has been tattooed across his mind all day, this is my fault. You would be here, were it not for me. I’ve failed you. I’ve only ever failed you. Why did you not let me come with you? I would have preferred the destruction of myself than to know existence without you.
Walking the Earth without Dean somewhere within it is so instantly abhorrent and unnatural.
Castiel doesn’t know why he’s walking, only that he must move, he must stay in motion or he will become something truly terrible, something horrible and nameless and evil will overtake him.
He walks as he might through a desert, as he has been ordained to by a power he does not know.
He walks all night, the storm above and around him fells trees, ruins roads and footpaths, animals flee from the field of energy he emanates, and eventually he finds himself atop a hill of thin, wild grass that shivers all around him.
Standing in place, Castiel searches the barren world around him, casting his eyes far and wide, despite knowing he will find nothing, because he has found nothing across realms and planes and vibrations all night.
He thinks he hears Dean’s laughter, but it is only the rumbling of thunder Castiel’s mood has conjured some clicks to the West.
He scowls up at the sky; scowls at his own unmasking.
He thinks of how he has felt when Dean has smiled at him, he worries that his memory is false, that it cannot capture the authentic beauty of the real thing, and a smothering warmth hits him, but it’s not coming from within.
He looks over his shoulder and there – beyond the storm, the Sun dares to rise, and the first tendrils of light are slipping past the horizon, brazen enough to reach toward him like they have any right.
Enraged, he turns to the Sun and extends both his hands, pushing down and back.
Expending this kind of effort means that his wings materialize, so do many hundreds of his eyes, because he cannot keep them contained; his innate holy light bursts and burns from beneath his human skin in a way that would turn any on-lookers to pillars of salt. Mercifully, he is alone for many miles in all directions.
His power effects the nature around him and the grass around him grows rapidly, twisting like vines, shifting and changing into something that is not meadow grass anymore; a crevasse cracks open along the ground like a jagged road leading from the toe of Castiel’s Oxford to the tip of the horizon.
Some of the plants surrounding him turn to glass and shatter, some melt, some turn into winged things, taking off into the storm that gathers above him.
The Sun pushes back on him so hard that his feet leave skids in the dirt where he’s dug in his heels, and he roars under the strain.
“Enough!” he screams in a thousand voices, all booming and terrible with might, “he isn’t here! He isn’t here and so you will not cast light! Get thee behind me!”
Tears stream down his human face, but all of his many eyes weep as well, sparking fires where their tears land, casting purple, blue, and white flames; some fall to the Earth as diamonds and pearls, skittering across the soil, hurriedly tucking themselves below and sprouting up ghost orchids, twisting vines and balls of lightning crackling up toward the sky.
“Gnay ge mir ol!” Castiel cries, booming as war drums, but stars have never understood Enochian, “do not torment me! You are an offense! What can you do but bear witness and draw into abominable light a world that can never be home to me! He is gone from me! Tia i abiit lrasd ol! Please!”
The ground shudders, and though Castiel can hold it back for perhaps half a minute, the Sun does climb again, stronger than him, and more dutiful than he ever could be.
Unlike him, the Sun was crafted with perfection, and does not fail.
It bursts over the horizon, and Castiel staggers back.
He gasps with a thousand pains, unaware he could hurt in so many ways at once, and he falls to his knees, folding until he is bent over his knees; his fists are in the dirt he’s made muddy with a plague of blood, he turns his hands out so he can hide his face in them and he screams with his true voice into his human hands and into the bleeding Earth.
He weeps, his six wings flap in tandem, putting out the fires all at once, and then they fold and drape over him, hiding him; the Sun beats back his storm, pushes light unto the world where he has been pulling a mourning shroud over it.
He grips hard at his fringe, cries as an animal does, wounded noises he has never before made or heard come from him; he makes them, some loud, some soft, for a long stretch of time, but eventually, he calms.
In time, he finds himself lying in the miracle-laden grass, covered in oil, blood, and ash for some reason. He can’t recall where the ash may be from. He has been unjust, and so he will remain so, he believes, and he is filthy now, and so filthy he will remain.
Was he ever righteous? Was he ever holy?
Whatever he is, the last of it is clear – he is not Saved.
That much has never been more evident than it is now.
“Time should not pass,” he says to no one, in a flat, tired, singular voice, “I am weary and burdened, and what redeemed me has been taken from me. There is nothing left for me but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. There is no mercy in this. Have I truly done such evil, to be deserving of this?”
He knows no one will answer. No one ever does.
He thinks of the color of Dean’s eyes, mossy, hazel, how the curl of his lashes framed them, how expressive they were, how they shone with lights enough to lead him home.
“I thought, for a time, I may find peace. With him. Eventually. But peace is not for me, is it? I am a sword, and all I bring with me is ruin.”
His many eyes and wings are tucked into another plane, he comes to his knees again, tilts his face toward the Sun, and the light dries his tears. That star pities him.
Exhausted, he stands; he casts his open palm over the ground most affected by him, and his mismatched, wayward miracles clear away, leaving unremarkable Earth.
As he walks back to the bunker, he seals the cracks in the roads and paths, deer and birds and wildlife return to their joy and lives, and by the time he is presentable and sat in the kitchen, Sam is just waking.