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It should have been easy, after his memories returned to him – piecemeal, but steady – to go back to helping Dean in whatever ways he could. He still had time to warn him, about Lilith, about Sam. But it wasn’t easy. Every time he considered reaching out to Dean, something sharp scraped against the inside of his grace.
He’d fled Dean’s bedside the night before, the burden of this decision too heavy to manage in that moment, but now he wished he’d stayed. It would have been easier to fight this, if Dean were there to help him through it – but even that thought, that traitorous thought, was like razor wire sliding against his brain.
He shouldn’t need Dean for anything at all. Dean is to be the vessel for Michael, and nothing more. He should have no connection to Castiel whatsoever, aside from his having retrieved him from Hell. And yet. He finds Dean’s presence…comforting. The idea of protecting Dean, watching over him, offering him aid, is unspeakably appealing.
The day crept by, and the skirmish at the core of him, between his allegiance to Heaven and his preference for Dean, played out over and over, predictable and bloody and unsatisfying. He should be doing something – the apocalypse was looming, and he couldn’t even decide whether he was to thwart it or grease the wheels, but he should be doing something to advance whichever position he ended up aligning with. He just couldn’t seem to settle which position that was.
So he spent the day isolated from his brethren, isolated from Dean, from humanity and Earth and the mess being made down there. He spent the day curled in on himself, trying to pry apart his innerworkings, to see what bits were to blame for which thoughts, to decide which thoughts he wanted to keep, and which he wanted to quiet. Castiel made little progress – as soon as he isolated one problem area, subdued it, another whirred back to life, demanding his attention.
He was in the middle of wrangling a particularly insistent impulse – the need to know where Dean was, at all times – when a sound interrupted his work. At first, it was just a low rumble, present on all sides, but easy enough to ignore. Over time, it turned into syllables, unintelligible and gruff, sometimes sounding like Castiel’s name, sometimes sounding like marbles rolling across a tile floor, sometimes sounding like branches breaking underfoot, sometimes sounding like warm breath against his ear, sometimes sounding like drums beating under swollen palms. After a very long time buried under these sounds, it occurred to Castiel that these sounds were prayers – Dean’s prayers. After a brief and ferocious internal debate, he relented, and appeared before the man.
Dean was still at Robert Singer’s home, though he was standing outside, surrounded by dilapidated cars. Night had fallen again, but Castiel knew that Dean hadn’t bothered trying to sleep. For some reason, he was certain that he would know, if Dean had been asleep.
“Well, it's about time. I've been screaming myself hoarse out here for about two and a half hours now.” Dean’s voice did sound a bit raw. Castiel wondered at the faith, the devotion, Dean must carry, to have prayed for over two straight hours. He tried not to think about the fact that Dean had not merely been praying to Heaven, or to God. He had been praying to Castiel, and Castiel alone.
“What do you want?” It would be best to keep this brief. Castiel tended to make mistakes, when things between him and Dean went on for too long.
“You can start with what the hell happened in Illinois,” Dean fumed. I needed to warn you, Castiel’s mind supplied, but he shoved that impulse down. Even thinking that thought, for just a moment, sent pain slicing through him.
“What do you mean?”
“Cut the crap. You were gonna tell me something.” Dean’s anger was palpable, but not unpleasant. It was warm and alive, and Castiel was tempted to get even closer to the man, to let that anger seep into him like healing light. He wasn’t sure why he needed healing – he was an angel, there was nothing a human could give him that he could not generate on his own – but he felt soothed by the idea, of Dean’s indignance and wrath smoothing over the raw edges inside him, cauterizing his throbbing mind like a wound.
“Well, nothing of import,” Castiel lied. Dean, unsurprisingly (Why wasn’t it surprising? Shouldn’t it be? Castiel couldn’t answer his own questions.) saw right through his deception.
“You got ass-reamed in heaven but it was not of import?” Dean scoffed, incredulous, and rightly so. How Dean could tell that it was Heaven’s intervention that explained his altered behavior and not merely Castiel’s own change of heart, he hadn’t a clue. It was a relief, in a way, that Dean knew Castiel well enough to know he wouldn’t have come to this coldness, this mindlessness, on his own.
“Dean, I can't. I'm sorry,” Castiel offered, with whatever scraps of himself he could muster, the parts that hated lying to Dean. “Get to the reason you really called me. It's about Sam, right?”
“Can he do it? Kill Lilith, stop the apocalypse?” Dean was desperate, whether to hear that this was true, or to hear that it wasn’t, Castiel could not tell.
“Possibly…yes. But, as you know, he’d have to take certain…steps.” Castiel really really wanted to stop lying to Dean. And he couldn’t. Each lie burned in his mouth, literally burned it. He could feel the heat under his cheeks, the metallic hot scrape against his gums. He could feel his grace healing the little raw patches of flesh almost as quickly as they formed.
“Crank up the hell blood regimen,” Dean surmised.
“Consuming the amount of blood it would take to kill Lilith would change your brother forever. Most likely, he would become the next creature that you would feel compelled to kill.” Castiel dodged the inherent question, as to whether or not killing Lilith was desirable or necessary. It still felt a little like lying. “There's no reason this would have to come to pass, Dean. We believe it's you, Dean, not your brother. The only question for us is whether you're willing to accept it. Stand up and accept your role. You are the one who will stop it.” He went with vagaries – it’s you, accept it, your role, stop it – to avoid further outright falsehoods. It almost felt dirtier, tricking him like this.
“If I do this, Sammy doesn't have to?” Dean pleaded. Even now, the righteous man was driven only by his own propensity toward martyrdom. How would any other angel ever convince him to accept his place as the Michael Sword? They only saw him as a weapon, a selfish and misguided man, bent on doing things his own way. Castiel seemed to be the only one who could see that he was selfless, that every step he took was dictated by his immense sense of personal responsibility. It was shameful, to lie to a man like that.
“If it gives you comfort to see it that way.” Castiel’s vessel felt too small, for the swell of emotion building inside of him. That sharp pain skittered across his brain again, claws digging in and goring out the malformed bits.
“God, you’re a dick these days,” Dean muttered, and the loneliness, the hopelessness, that ebbed off of him like cold fog, was almost too thick to see through. Castiel felt it prickle over him like ice, frosting in crystalline whorls over his vessel’s skin. “Fine, I’m in,” Dean sighed, though the fog did not lift.
“You give yourself over wholly to the service of God and his angels?” Castiel clarified, his training taking over. He felt like he was looking out of himself through a telescope, like Dean was a distant exoplanet, spinning alone on the edge of the galaxy, light years out of reach.
“Yeah, exactly,” He breathed. Castiel missed the sacred heat of Dean’s anger, as he stood in the frigid waste of his desolation, his defeat.
“Say it,” Castiel commanded, and that wretched, broken, bloody part of him, the part he’d been flaying all day, to no avail, trembled with the hope that Dean would not comply. Dean looked at him, hard, like he was searching for that same, rebellious sliver inside him. But he must not have found it, wherever it was hidden.
“I give myself over wholly to serve God and…you guys.” Dean shifted uncomfortably. It occurred to Castiel that they were standing unnaturally close to one another, but he did not move, and neither did Dean.
“You swear to follow his will and his word as swiftly and obediently as you did your own father's?” He recited, again, feeling somehow far outside of himself, like he was peering down on the whole ordeal from the boughs of a tree, or the rafters of the garage. Like he couldn’t even live this moment from inside himself, let alone control its direction. Dean looked stricken, though Castiel couldn’t figure out which particular part of his question would cause such a reaction.
“Yes, I swear,” Dean gritted out. “Now what?” His eyes met Castiel’s, and the world narrowed down to that single connection. Dean may as well have grabbed him by the shoulders, for how firmly locked in place he felt, looking into his hesitant green eyes. Dean was scouring Castiel for any hint of trustworthiness, of camaraderie, lingering in the shadows of his stare.
“Now you wait. And we call on you, when it’s time.” He lingered, seconds stretching on and on, stacking into minutes. They stared at one another in utter silence, faces separated by less than a foot of negative space. When Castiel retreated back to Heaven, he was immediately set upon by his superiors, who demanded a full debrief. Out of options, he obliged.
+++
He felt dirty enough, for one night, but Heaven was unconcerned with Castiel’s feelings. Or, rather, they were concerned with Castiel’s feelings insofar as they disapproved of their mere existence – the substance of said feelings was largely immaterial. He got the impression that the new orders were designed specifically to remind him of this fact.
Even though he’d already secured Dean’s oath to cooperate with the plans of Heaven, whenever they were revealed unto him, it wasn’t enough to prove Castiel’s loyalty to Heaven was secure. He was now tasked with releasing Sam Winchester from his protective imprisonment at the hands of his brother, so that he could go forth and break the final seal.
Without much of a choice, he complied. He easily broke the bonds on Sam’s arms and legs. With a wave of his hand, the heavy iron door to his cell swung open. Moments later, Sam was free, slinking off into the night, just as the Host had intended. Castiel stood beneath the basement staircase, vaguely aware that somewhere in the house above him, Dean had just fallen asleep. He quickly shut the door to the cell, fleeing before he had time to do something sentimental and stupid again.
+++
He found himself standing at the edge of a river, somewhere. The water stretched out like thick black ink beneath the rusty metal railing he leaned against. Following Heaven’s orders should feel natural, easy, fulfilling. All Castiel felt was shame, roiling through his grace like a fever. Wherever God was, whatever God wanted, Castiel knew He could not have wanted this.
He felt her presence before the streetlight even flickered, and he turned to face his fallen sister.
“What did you do?” Anna asked, as coldly as he deserved to be spoken to.
“You shouldn’t have come, Anna.” He knew they were tracking his movements, especially given the magnitude of his most recent mission. Her presence was its own beacon, but paired with Castiel’s, they were obscenely noticeable. There was no method available for him to shield them from Heaven’s view, no way to hide them from the Host.
“Why would you let out Sam Winchester?” Anna ignored his warning, paltry though it may have been. Would he feel guilty for her eventual capture, too? Would he add that shame to the fast-growing list?
“Those were my orders.” It wasn’t even enough to convince himself, not really – why would this explanation be enough for someone as self-assured as Anna?
“Orders? Cas, you saw him. He's drinking demon blood. It's so much worse than we thought. Dean was trying to stop him.” She was right. Dean was righteous, and his actions reflected that, even when they contradicted the will of Heaven. Perhaps that was the real source of his shame – that he had come to serve a Heaven whose righteousness had fallen away, a Heaven that aimed to lift up the wicked, to punish and circumvent the righteous.
He felt their presence before Anna did – she was distracted by her anger, her grief, her disappointment in him. The other angels flanked her, menacing and sure.
“You really shouldn’t have come,” he lamented. She didn’t have time to respond before she was captured. He wondered if they would hollow her out, fill her up with something more palatable, as they’d done to him.
He turned back to face the water. Something about the way it lapped against the side of the concrete wall beneath him was soothing. The rhythm was familiar. He basked in the small comfort it offered, until that bitter ugly part of him piped up again to remind him why he liked it so much. It reminds you of Dean, it sneered, and a hundred memories descended on him like crows, pecking at his softest weakest parts. Memories of Dean, laying peaceful and safe in his bed, under Castiel's vigilant protection and care. Unable to banish the thoughts while in the presence of the river's gentle song, Castiel retreated to Heaven, utterly defeated.