Chapter Text
Something is tickling his nose, and he wakes up sneezing.
“Ugh! Wha—where am I?” he grunts, wiping at his face while sitting himself upright. The bright sun is just cresting the hillside, but the air is already warm; and it would feel really nice if he wasn’t so damn confused. With a grimace, Dean looks around to try to get his bearings, but all he sees are small orange flowers, spreading out for miles across the landscape. They look like poppies, and the rolling hills beneath them remind him of California—the one time drove up the western coast … but, he can’t be there … can he?
Dean holds his breath, not sure if he should even dare to think it … but maybe … maybe this is heaven.
Yet memories of tall, tall trees and snow and salty water filling his mouth immediately follow the thought, making his head pound as he tries to sort it all out. “What happened?” he says louder now—shocked when he hears someone answer him.
“Oh good—you’re awake.”
He whirls around to see Castiel—three times his usual size, sitting in the middle of the field. The being then leans forward and presses his palms into the ground, closing his eyes after another moment—looking like he’s turning all his focus to the earth. “Holy shit—you’re big!” Dean yelps, but his shock over Castiel’s hugeness is quickly set aside as he wonders at the color erupting behind the giant. There, just beyond Castiel’s back, rushing towards the horizon like a wave across a beach—are infinitely more orange flowers, growing and blooming before his very eyes. Soon, the entire countryside seems to be covered from end to end, replacing every inch of brown grass with candied gold petals unlike anything Dean has ever seen.
“How …?” he begins, but immediately forgets when Castiel hums.
The massive man then lifts his hands, wiping them together to knock off the clumps of dirt and earth— and then he shrinks, melting into a much more comprehensible height; but Dean can’t say it eases his amazement any.
“You’ve been motionless for so long, I thought you’d remain like that forever.”
Dean’s mouth falls open, but as Castiel soars closer to face him, he finds that he has nothing to say.
“I am very glad that you’re alright. I honestly thought I was too late.”
“Too …” Dean breathes, still trying to figure out what, if any of this, is real, “too late?”
“Yes” Castiel nods, smiling softly. “Thankfully, I am faster than a bullet.”
“Wait …” A chilling realization begins to pinch at Dean’s skin. “You mean … I didn’t die?”
Castiel’s smile only grows. “No. I moved you out of the way.”
Dean gapes, finally standing to his feet. “But … but wait … I thought …”
“I knew it was risky, but I brought you back after we made contact the first time. There would be no bringing you back if you had a hole in your head. I can mend a great deal in this world, but I wouldn’t be able to mend that.”
“I … I …” Dean stammers, suddenly feeling very weak, because he never expected to live. He didn’t want to. That wasn’t the plan … he had no plan! He has nothing! That was the whole point! “Why didn’t you just let me die?” he finally gasps, feeling the guilt and tears build within him once more; and that causes his knees to give out, making him crumble back to the earth like a sand castle to the sea.
Castiel’s presence drifts closer, but Dean is too angry now too look up. “It is not within me to let things cease to exist, Dean. I exist to do exactly the opposite. Your life is just as important to me as the trees or the animals, or the very grass we’re resting on. If it is within my power to keep you breathing, then I will do whatever I can to ensure that. How you could want to anything different, is nothing short of insane.”
“Insa—what? What the hell? Seriously! Who gave you the fucking right?” Dean finally brings himself to look back at the being, feeling like the thing is more of a monster now than a god or man, or whatever. “It’s my life! It’s my life, and unlike a god damn tree or fucking raccoon or something, I have a choice in what to do with it! I have a choice and I chose not to deal with it anymore!”
“That wasn’t a choice” Castiel growls lowly.
“Yes it fucking was! It was a choice and it was mine! You took that away from me!”
“I gave you your choice back! Don’t you see that? You can live now—you can continue to make choices and make your life into something to live for.”
“I have nothing to live for! I don’t want to go on seeing people die! I can’t—I can’t!” Dean is shaking, feeling his head cloud with all the memories, flashing like a summer storm. The sounds of his family’s screams drown out his own. He needs it to stop—he has to make it stop!
Castiel stares at him, looking both frustrated and worried all at once, and it just makes Dean angrier.
With the last of his strength, he pulls himself back to his feet and takes a wobbly step towards the wavering shape, and then another—and Castiel slides backwards with every approach.
“Dean? What are you doing?”
Dean doesn’t answer, he just continues to move forward.
“Dean?”
With one final lunge, Dean throws out his arms, attempting to grab Castiel and hold him for as long as he can manage—he needs this to end, and that blue eyed, electric cloud of color and light is better than any gun.
But just as he bites his tongue, waiting for the sharp stab of and snap in his muscles, all Dean feels is the ground clashing against his body, knocking the wind out of him. “No!” he gasps, crying into the dirt—clutching it in his fist. “Please!”
“Please? Please!” Castiel’s voice explodes from somewhere behind him, and it makes Dean jerk and flip over—heart racing with a new kind of dread. The being’s energy begins pulsating the air, making it quiver and crack with every clench of his jaw. “You will not use me to kill yourself!”
“I just want it to be over” Dean eventually whimpers, looking down at his own body on the ground—the pathetic mess that he is.
“Life is never over!”
But just as Dean takes a breath to say something else, Castiel’s eyes darken, and the skies seem to darken too—the wind picks up and the poppies whip in the currents, causing many of those brand new petals to break from their stems and hurtle through the air, already browning at the edges as they pass Dean by. “Humans love to think they’re so different, don’t they?” Castiel beats, sounding like a maxed out bass, amplified to deafen. “Just because you have this language and science and the ability to manipulate nearly everything around you—you think that you should. You feel entitled and powerful, like you are somehow the gods you pray to! So you tear apart the world that’s literally keeping you alive, and then you complain when you make your own lives unlivable! Yet … instead of fixing anything, instead of learning from your mistakes, you either keep making things worse, or you simply end it all! You claim to have more ability than an animal, Dean? Well … an animal will still learn to avoid a trap after the first time it gets caught in it! You’ve learned nothing, and then you want to wail on and on about how unfair everything is! You’ve already been given a second chance at life—yet you’re squandering it! You’re squandering everything!”
Dean listens as the powerful creature erupts with fury—but he cowers when that fury causes Castiel to grow once more, larger and more looming than ever. He towers over Dean, with his eyes expanding quicker than the rest of him, and now—Castiel appears to be nothing more than two, hundred foot tall irises, ringing a set of deathly black pupils, staring daggers into Dean through the dust and gusting wind.
“I – I …” Dean wails, but those eyes flicker with snap of electricity, making him shut up and curl into a ball between the thrashing flowers. He covers his head with his hands and blocks out as much of the chaos above him as he can, just wanting the noise and the wind to stop. “I’m sorry!” he finally shrieks, not able to control sobs that follow; because even though he is terrifying and cruel, Castiel is right. Dean is the one who made his life what it is—because he’s too stubborn and too full of pride to have listened to anyone with any common sense. The squalls pick up, and the whistling wind soon threatens to burst his ear drums. Dean curls into himself even tighter, shaking—scared that he might die, and too afraid to recognize all the irony in that “Please—please, I’m sorry! Please!”
Somewhere in the distance, the sound of wood cracking echoes over the grass.
“Please!” Dean shrieks again, crying while feeling the dirt coat his face.
And just as he’s about to scream, all at once, the winds halt; and the flashes that were lighting up the air, darken—and when Dean finally hazards pulling his head from the ground to look around, he sees Castiel—once more in his vaguely human form, sitting just a few feet away from him with his back turned and hunched over.
Dean stares, teeth still chattering from his fear, and he should probably run, but somehow he knows there’d be no point. Castiel could catch him if he wanted to—plus, Dean doesn’t even know where the hell he is. So he gawks a little more, noticing how the being’s bare shoulders are trembling, and even though Dean can’t be sure, it seems like Castiel also scared himself just now. “Are … are y-you okay?” Dean whispers, voice rasped and creaky from all his sobs. He wipes the snot and dirt away on his shirt as he waits for Castiel to answer.
But Castiel only bows his head and shakes.
“Look … I’m sorry, okay? Y-you were right … I made all the wrong decisions and then … I was too stupid to learn from them. I’m … I’m a fuck up.” Dean’s unsteady legs manage to step just a little closer as he continues to speak. “And even though that’s the main reason why I wanted to … ya know … end it, I—I shouldn’t have tried to use you … or be upset at you for doing your—your job or whatever.”
“My job” Castiel repeats—sounding bitter and cold, and eventually becoming even smaller where he sits, until he’s almost the size of a young child. “My job is to protect the earth—to keep it moving, and where sometimes that means I must set into motion a series of events that will ultimately take life, it’s always so that more can start anew. It’s never careless. It’s never random.” He sighs heavily before finally turning around, but he still doesn’t look at Dean, only down at the stems of the poppies, now bare and broken. He touches one softly, and new, orange petals immediately bloom. “My anger … my outburst a moment ago, it was random and careless, and too many lives are now gone because of it.”
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?” Dean doesn’t understand—and he has a sickening feeling he doesn’t want to.
Castiel shakes his head again—and it causes misty tears to float from his eyes, flitting through the air, over his cheeks …. catching the light—prisms of color tumbling down his face. “Tidal waves, earthquakes … mudslides. So many trees fell. So many animals, dead. A few humans are gone as well. The insects … thousands of them …” His shape then fades, almost completely—leaving only a dim, red outline of where he used to be upon the grass.
Dean spins around; searching the rest of the field for where he’d gone, but he can’t see Castiel anywhere.
“This one—he’d already lost his mother to disease, but I ended his life. This was my fault.”
Dean whirls back once more—finding Castiel standing directly behind him now, holding a small grey squirrel to his bare chest. Dean bends forward, wondering at the how the thing is being lifted—it’s as if it’s in Castiel’s hands, but also floating just above them—and as Dean moves in closer to look, he can see tiny currents of electricity bouncing back and forth between Castiel’s fingers and the lifeless animal’s body—acting as a static, blue pillow for it to rest upon.
“I still don’t understand … you’re saying, that all that craziness just now … with the wind and everything … that caused … like, a disaster somewhere?”
Castiel’s eyes are still on the little animal, but he nods in response to Dean’s question.
And that makes Dean feel like he was punched in the gut. “And that … that disaster—it killed people?”
The other being finally snaps his gaze up, grimacing at Dean’s choice words. “People—and trees, and animals, and insects. All of them were alive only moments ago.”
“But … no. This can’t be happening!” Dean hisses, still hoping for this to be some kind of bad dream, because he doesn’t want to be involved in the loss of even more life. “This can’t … it can’t be real!”
“It is! This is all real, Dean! How many times do I need to tell you that?” Castiel booms, and the wind picks up again because of it.
Which scares Dean enough for him to rush back once more and hold up his hands. “Woah—okay! I’m sorry, just … calm down, alright? Don’t get mad!”
Castiel’s shape instantly softens, but his eyes are still angry. “Yes … yes, I need to remain calm.” He then looks back at the squirrel and Dean follows his gaze—only, as soon as he looks down at it, the squirrel and Castiel are both gone. “Cas—?” Dean calls out, and the manlike form soon materializes to his left. He’s back—but he’s returned without anything in his hands. “Where did you go?” Dean asks cautiously, feeling very nervous that he’ll say the wrong thing and set Castiel off again.
“I left to put the animal back near his mother’s remains, and then I spread more seeds over the disrupted land. I also directed many of the neighboring insects to the dead bodies—the sooner they start the process of breaking them down, the sooner the earth there can begin to mend.”
Dean swallows hard, not wanting to visualize that, but then he pauses, noticing the pain that’s wrecking Castiel’s face—a face that he can for once, see very clearly. It’s all clear and very, very familiar, the pain—the regret. Dean has worn that same look for most of his life, and he wouldn’t wish it on anyone, not even a shapeshifting, electrical, weather spirit like Castiel. “It’s my fault …” he finally whispers, knowing that it’s the truth, “it wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t … trying to … I was pissing you off. I’m so sorry … for everything. I never wanted any of this to happen. I didn’t think—”
To his surprise, Castiel nods, eventually looking at him without another hint of anger. “I know you didn’t, Dean. But I can’t blame you for this. You are not the first human to infuriate me—it happens constantly; but I can normally control myself. Your kind are always destroying this planet, poisoning it and not caring in the least that you’re slowly killing yourselves. I am almost always angry with you humans, but I am still able to keep the balance. Yet, this time … I didn’t. I should have had better sense, but I didn’t … I will … I will have to live with that—forever.”
“I will too” Dean mutters, not feeling any less accountable; and without thinking—he reaches out and puts his hand on Castiel’s shoulder, a gesture of reassurance—only realizing the second those blue arcs begin to spark that he just did something extremely stupid.
“Dean!” Castiel yelps, and the earth rumbles once more.
But this time, it doesn’t actually startle him—and that stinging ache he’s expecting to feel, doesn’t come.
Nothing comes. Nothing happens.
“Dean?” Castiel repeats, more quietly this time—and his gaze has moved from Dean’s face, to where his hand is bringing them together.
The electricity is tangible; Dean can tell that much … but it doesn’t hurt. All it does is whirr from Castiel’s body to his own, dancing back and forth from skin to palm.
“How?” Castiel asks, lips dangling open with the word.
“I … I don’t know” Dean mutters, stepping in closer to watch the currents arc.
“It doesn’t hurt you?” Castiel asks, even more quietly now.
“No … not this time.”
“But … it … it should!”
“I know.”
“But … you’re a living thing. You should be—” his words cut short, and that makes Dean finally tear his eyes away.
“What?” Dean wonders, narrowing his gaze on the pale shock that’s now plaguing Castiel’s face.
“I thought …” the being begins, and suddenly, the world is a blur around them—eventually clearing into a familiar grassy pasture, with shaggy trees in a long row just behind them. All the poppies are gone. The rolling hills are gone. The easy warmth in the air is gone. All Dean sees now is the sight of the Impala, still with her hood up, and the long stretch of untraveled road laying out in front of her. “Wait …” Dean mutters, turning around because he’s starting to catch on to what Castiel might be thinking.
“No” Castiel gasps, and then he’s off—gliding over the grass and past the first line of trees. “No!” he yells out again, and the ache in his voice makes Dean follow him.
When he finally catches up, he matches Castiel’s gaze, looking down to eventually meet the crumpled lump of his own body. Half of his face is gone and the other half is covered in a thick coat of blood.
“No …” Castiel whimpers again, shrinking and shrinking until he’s the size of a browned leaf, fluttering dryly to the ground.
“I’m dead” Dean says flatly. Cold. A fact that somehow, he’s only just now realized he’s known all along. “I’m dead” he says again, turning to look at the tiny shape of Castiel.
“No! I saved you!” the other counters, a desperate plea that they both know doesn’t change a thing.
“I’m dead” Dean repeats for a third time, feeling like that is what it will take for everyone to accept it. “I’m dead … but I’m here.” He’s trying to work it all out now. There’s a new calm that’s filling him, a calm that comes with sense. The sense of relief. The sense of understanding. The sense that this is all finally making sense for once. It’s a realization that actually makes him want to smile. “So … does that make me a ghost?” he asks out loud, but not to anyone in particular. He doesn’t expect Castiel to have an answer for that one. Ghosts and spirits—that’s all too other worldly, and Castiel has made it abundantly clear that he is all about this world.
“I … I don’t know what you are” the small figure says softly, but his voice is cracking as he stares out across Dean’s lifeless body.
“I guess I have to be a ghost, right? I mean—I still look like me and—”
“No you don’t” Castiel mutters, and suddenly, he’s his regular size again.
“What?”
The other creature gestures to where Dean is standing, waving his hazy arm up and down to get the man to look at himself. When Dean does—he yelps.
“What the fuck!” he gasps, clamoring back as he looks across his now glowing skin; he soon stumbles and falls to the ground, but instead of hitting it with a thud, he feels his body break apart, apart into a trillion tiny pieces, bursting upon the dirt like cloud of mist.
Color and cold coat every, tiny piece of him, and then his body feels wet—like he’s once again underwater. Dean looks around, noting the sloshing grey and blue, the seaweed, the fish.
He closes his eyes. An arid heat begins to fill his nose. He opens again to see sand, whipping around him in a spiral, piling up over his head only to blind him once again.
“Dean!”
Castiel’s voice is loud, yet it sounds so far away, and it only confuses Dean more. It makes him panic and flail; and with every thrash, he feels his outstretched body clash against ice and rock, and snow and water. Wood snaps beneath his weight. Fiery heat smashes against icy cold and it shocks him, harder and more violently than any lighting could. And when he’s finally able to open his eyes once more and look at where he is now, all he sees is miles and miles between him and the earth. Clouds float carelessly below him, and the stars buzz loudly behind him; and a new, paralyzing fear snakes through his existence unlike anything ever has before.
Dean screams.
“It’s alright.”
The cold calms.
“It’s okay, Dean.”
The waters recede.
“You’re okay.”
His body slowly comes together once again. Skin collects from scattered bits and fragments, into something that is finally recognizable. Breath begins to fill his lungs, although—the sensation still seems much larger than it ever did before. As if the only thing keeping it all in perspective, is the memory of how it used to be; because when he tries to gather up the actual feeling in his mind, what it is to take in breath and use it, to push it out again, to release this tension—it feels like he is bursting with every speck of the ozone, and exploding with enough energy to render the planet to dust.
“Do you see that leaf, Dean? The red one, just to the right there? Focus on that. Look at every line. Memorize its shape. Focus on the curves, the color.”
Dean tries, and the more he stares, the less his body seems to hum.
“Good …” Castiel rumbles, and that’s when Dean finally realizes just how close the rumbling is.
It’s vibrating just beneath his cheek, under the palm of his hand, against his shoulder.
A soft, feather light touch grazes of his other shoulder, and as Dean finally stills himself enough to look around, he sees the tan span of Castiel’s chest—his arms, wrapping around Dean. He feels the being’s chin on the top of his head. He’s holding him. Rocking him gently back and forth.
Keeping him calm.
Keeping him together.
A part of Dean wants to move away, but the rest of him doesn’t want to move at all—finding the closeness welcoming and familiar. “What am I?” he finally manages to ask, feeling his throat close around the words.
Once again, Castiel’s deep, soothing voice thunders to life beneath him.
“You … you are like me.”
***
“So … I can control the weather?”
“Maybe. We have yet to see what you can do.”
“But, if I’m like you, then I must be able to do the things that you can do.”
Castiel smiles, a soft, gentle smile. His face is sharp and angular, but still—just as kind as Dean thought it was. “Yes, maybe. However, I thought I was the only one like me, and I may still be the only one like me. Yet, you are somehow similar to me in that, you are everywhere all at once. You have some sort of connection with the earth; but what that connection is, I don’t know.”
“Do you ever feel like you’re drowning?”
The question is an odd one and it obviously catches Castiel off guard. They’re back in the poppy field, and Dean has noticed that the poppies can somehow sense nearly all of Castiel’s emotions, and the pedals spread out wider with the widening of the his eyes. “What? No. I have witnessed creatures drown, and it does not seem pleasant; but I myself, cannot drown because I don’t actually breathe.”
Dean looks away, feeling even more confused now. “I think I still do.”
“You breathe?”
Dean turns back and Castiel’s eyes are even wider, and so are the poppies—in full bloom, orange gold covering the world. “Yeah, I think so. And …” he pauses a moment, trying to figure out how he can explain this, “before I woke up here, I thought I was in the ocean. I felt like I was drowning. And I also felt like I was in the snow … a couple other places too.”
“So … you were with me then?” Castiel asks, sounding more and more intrigued by the second.
“With you where?”
“After I saved you—or, thought I saved you, I took you here, but I was also tending to a volcano on the ocean floor, as well as tempering a storm atop what the humans call, the Andes.” Castiel blinks several times, and then looks around. “So, we’re connected. Somehow—we’re connected.”
Dean gapes a moment. “But—that doesn’t make sense, because … like, you’re here, and I’m here. And you are still doing all your weather crap, aren’t you?”
Castiel smirks but nods.
“Okay, so I don’t really know what you’re doing with all that, like … I know I’m not with you right this very second on the ocean floor; so how are we connected?”
“I don’t know.”
“And how am I seeing all of you right now if you’re still everywhere else. Like—I really see you. Before, it always seemed like part of you was missing.”
“I do have a concentration of self.”
“What does that even mean?” Dean asks with a laugh. He really wishes Castiel would stop saying things like Dean is supposed to understand them.
“I mean, I have places where I am most present. I suppose you could say that this is where my head is, even while my limbs are stretched out everywhere else, controlling things.”
“Then why don’t you look like just a head?” Dean chuckles, eyes moving down from Castiel’s face, across his bare chest, blushing when he dares to look any lower.
“I think your mind gives me a form in order for you to make sense of me.”
“So what do I look like to you, then? If I’m like you, then my head is here but apparently, I’m stretched out everywhere else too? I don’t feel like I am.”
Castiel shrugs, and Dean wonders a moment if he being is actually shrugging, or if he’s just projecting that action onto him. This is so confusing. “Well, first of all—you don’t have to be spread out. If you’re like me, you could be all in one place; which is what I believe is the case right now. Your body’s reaction is to stay collected. Mine was too right before the world flew into the sun’s orbit. But then life began to form and I formed with it. I am connected to every growing life on this planet, Dean; and that’s also why I think that we’re somehow very different. Right now, I feel the existence of every tree and animal, and squirming piece of bacterium on this planet. I always have been able to sense it all; but I don’t think you do. Whatever your connection to this world is—it seems to be looser than my own.” Castiel turns and stares at one of the poppies. “When you were fell back in the pasture and I had to calm you down … I could see you expanding. I could see you reaching out across the world. You were vast, just like I was, but in a different way. You didn’t penetrate the air like I do. You stayed on the surface of things. You didn’t filter down to the molecules. You were more like … like water, flooding out and splashing across the world. You were able to spread out and you are able to reabsorb in an instant. It was rather astounding.”
“Really?”
Castiel nods. “Yes. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Once I calmed you down, you gathered back into one piece. I didn’t sense you anywhere but right there in front of me. Right there in my grasp.”
Dean blushes even harder now. “Uh … yeah. Thanks … ya know—for that … for calming me down.”
“Of course.” Castiel smiles at him, and the pedals on the poppies brighten. “As for what you look like—well, you look how you always have. You look human; which is why your demise came as such a shock to me. Nothing about you seems any different than it ever has been. I am honestly just as confused as you are by this whole situation.”
They sat in silence for some time, both just thinking—although, Dean’s sure that Castiel was also doing a million other things as well, in order to keep the world turning. He’s probably creating a warm front in the northwest right now, and sending an ice storm over the highest points in Canada. He’s everywhere, and always has been. He’s been there with every raindrop and every snowflake for as long as Dean’s been alive … as long as life has existed; and with that thought, Dean remembers something.
“So, before … you mentioned something about seeing me when I was younger; so, just how long have you known about me? Like … known that I was one of the ones who could see you?”
Castiel hums and all the orange flowers around him, shiver. “Since the morning after the fire took your family.”
“What?” Dean chokes. “How?”
“Well, as I told you before, that old oak tree was worried, so I checked on you—or, more, I sensed that you were still alive.” Then, with a deep breath—that Dean is sure he must be imagining now, Castiel turns to him and smiles. “I filled up that hospital, I scanned every living thing in there—no one noticed me, which was not surprising in the least; but what was surprising was one little boy. He was crying. I felt his pain because all his tears were actually changing the moisture in the air. I filtered into his hospital room, and all of a sudden, his cries stopped and he looked up and around, as if he knew someone was there with him. And that is when I focused in on your energy, Dean … and that was the first time you actually saw me. I feel it was only for a moment, like a shadow in the corner of your eye, but I knew that you saw me. I knew that you were one of the few who could.”
Dean is speechless. He remembers that moment … of all the horrible moments that came that following morning, there was that one—that one solitary minute that he didn’t feel like he was completely alone and lost in the world; but for the life of him, he never understood why … until now. “That was you?”
“Yes.” Castiel’s smile grows wider. The poppies stand taller. “And it was me a few years later—I saw you hiding in the bushes behind that red brick building.”
“That was the orphanage.”
“And I was there when you fell out of the window of that house … directly onto that anthill.” Castiel’s smile suddenly drops. “You killed so many ants that night, Dean. It was awful.”
Dean’s shoulders hunch up, either from guilt, or from that unfortunate memory clamoring back into his mind. “Sorry …” he mutters, feeling like things are crawling all over him again. “I had to get away from my girlfriend’s dad … he sorta … he sorta caught me trying to take her bra off.”
“Bra?” Castiel’s brow furrows. “What is that and why were you taking it off of someone?”
“Well … it’s uh … um” Dean chuckles. “Uh … never mind.” There’s no way he’s going to get into a birds and bees talk with someone who can actually talk to the birds and bees.
Castiel doesn't seem too caught up on the specifics though because once Dean is finally finished muttering and turning cherry red, Castiel is already drifting off, fading slightly around the edges while lost in thought. "I somehow knew that you were different than the others ... I could sense it. I just suppose I didn't know how different you were until now."
Dean tilts his head in confusion. "What do you mean?"
With a soft smile, Castiel closes his eyes. "Every time..." he whispers, almost reverently, as if this is something he's cherished for a long while, "every time you saw me, you'd pause. You'd look around ... and then, you'd stare directly into me. You'd stare like you could see every detail that made me up. No matter where I was centered, or how high I was above you—your eyes tracked me down in an instant."
Dean's mouth hangs open but he doesn't know what to say.
"It was nice" Castiel continues, so gently, his words could be mistaken for the breeze. "Whenever you looked at me that way, I felt—"
"Like you weren't alone?"
The other opens those deep, blue eyes once more; but this time, they seem warm, familiar ... full of hope. Castiel nods.
"I get that" Dean smiles, absent mindedly leaning closer to Castiel's side.
Several silent beats pass them by before either can bring themselves to say anything else.
“So … " Dean eventually jumps in while clearing his throat, feeling a little awkward now with all this quiet "why do you think I can see you, like—completely see you, now? Why not when I was younger?”
The blue eyed being doesn’t say anything at first—just bites his lip and tilts his head towards the sky. “Perhaps …” he begins after a long moment, “perhaps when someone feels like they don’t have anything else in their life to focus on, they are finally able to focus on the shadows.”
***
Weeks passed, and Dean became the shadow—Castiel’s shadow, following him everywhere, experiencing the side of existence that he was always blind to.
“Do you want to go inside?”
“What?” Dean had to yell because the winds were so loud.
Castiel is standing in the middle of a field, yanking a tendril of clouds down from the sky. “Do you want to go inside the tornado?”
For a second, Dean hesitates—still defaulting to that human-disbelief that any of this could be real, but after all that he’s seen, after all that he’s experienced recently—taking a spin inside of a tornado is probably one of the more normal things he could do. “Will it hurt?”
“Can anything hurt you?” Castiel asks with a laugh.
Dean shrugs—because, he isn’t really sure of that yet. He knows that he can still feel pain like he used to, but it usually only happens when he forgets that he’s no longer what he used to be. In all his travels with Castiel, he has stumbled into many situations that probably would have killed him in his human form. He’s fallen off of cliffs and felt the crashing waves of a tsunami; and even stood in the middle of a lava flow. And although all that caused him pain, he was never actually hurt when it was said and done. The feelings he had were always more akin to an empathetic pain, and he can almost always control it if he focuses in on the fact that he’s now … a very different kind of being. He’s now … supernatural. “I don’t know, man …”
Castiel reaches up above his head once more and gives the storm one final heave, eventually spinning around in a circle to set the tornado into motion. “Why not? You once told me how interested you were in storms, Dean. Why not take a closer look?”
He still wasn’t sure, but Castiel apparently was—and before Dean could react, he was getting sucked in by the spiraling torrents of wind. “Holy shiiit!” he screams, flailing wildly as he feels his body start to glow. It’s obvious when it happens now—when he’s starting to come apart by the atoms, or whatever it is that he’s made up of. It’s like a warmth exploding inside of his chest, and then his entire body begins to tingle, like it did when his arm used to fall asleep and he’d have to shake it out to regain any feeling. It’s that, only multiplied by a thousand—and as the tornado lifts him higher and higher into the air, more and more of him comes apart in the gusts, until he is spread out like debris throughout the cyclone, seeing it from every angle. Feeling every wisp and wave of the wind. “Cas!” he screeches, but his voice is muted, dimmed by the vastness of his self.
And then is stabs him—like a knife in his gut, and he instantly retracts back into one dense, leaded ball, plummeting to the earth like a meteor.
“Dean!” Cas’s voice sounds as if it’s echoing through a tin can, drowned out by a deafening thump thump—thump thump.
Then the thumping begins to slow.
Thump … thump.
“Dean?”
Dean opens his eyes and uncurls his body, spreading out his arms to let go of what he’s clutching—what he didn’t even realize he was holding onto in the first place.
“Dean … what … what did you do?”
Dean looks up and into Castiel’s eyes. They seem sad, worried—and that’s when he finally looks back down to the ground and sees the motionless body of a bird, a magpie. Its white-capped wings, splayed out at its side. Its yellow beak, opening and closing—eyes wide, unblinking. “I– I don’t know.”
“Did it fly into the storm?”
“I don’t know! I … I think so.”
Castiel frowns and all the clouds above their heads rumble and darken. “It’s dying, Dean” he says after a moment, staring at the bird with water rimming his eyes.
“No …”
“Yes. I hear its heart slowing.”
But something inside of Dean knows Castiel is wrong. “No” he repeats, slowly reaching down to pick up the bird once more.
“Dean, don’t!” Castiel warns—just like he always had; worried that if Dean is like him, then touching a living creature would only do them harm; but Dean isn’t worried.
In fact, he felt indescribably calm, knowing that if he holds this animal, if he cradles it in his arms—somehow, that will help.
The bird’s wild eyes dart around frantically, and Dean can sense that it’s confused, scared … it’s small body wants to give up from the shock, but he can’t bear to let it. “Shh it’s alright, little girl” he says, stroking the feathers on the bird’s head.
Castiel just gawks in amazement, and for a moment—the sun peeks through the clouds.
Dean continues to stroke his fingers over the bird’s dark black wings, feeling a warmth pass through his hand and down into the tiny, trembling body.
“Dean … how are you—how are you doing tha—?” Castiel is speechless, and that in itself is a wonder.
Dean smiles. “I don’t know … but she’s calming down now.”
“She’s … she’s not … dying?” Castiel asks, bending in closer to watch in amazement. The storm altogether breaks across the sky, and the tornado dissipates in the distance.
“No. She’s not dying” Dean whispers happily, knowing in the deepest part of him that it’s true. Somehow he understands now that if that bird had stayed in that tornado—it would have only lasted a minute. And he also has come to understand, that as soon as he felt that tiny life enter the storm, he had to protect it. It's what he wishes he could have done with his family, with Bobby ... with everyone he's ever loved, but he was simply too weak back then. But now, now he is more. Somewhere within the depths of Dean’s soul, he knows it isn’t this bird’s time to die, and he is finally strong enough to do something about it. “I think this is what I’m meant to do, Cas” he says after the magpie’s eyes flutter closed and it falls into an exhausted sleep. “I think … I think I’m supposed to protect life from things it can’t control. I think I’m supposed to—”
“Relieve its pain?”
Dean grins, nodding as he turns back to stare into that kind, magnanimous face. “Yeah … can you imagine that? Me … actually taking pain away.” He laughs and then turns his head back to the bird, finally setting it onto the ground and gently folding in its wings so it can rest.
“Yes. I can.”
“Hm?” Dean asks, pulling himself back to his feet but still looking down on the peaceful little creature.
“I can imagine it, Dean.” Castiel puts out his hand and twines their fingers together, sending soft shocks throughout every speck of Dean’s body, lighting him up from the inside out, and he feels his skin begin to glow.
“Cas …”
“You’re the balance, Dean. You feel so deeply … you always have. You feel what life truly is, in all its pain and all its wonder. I keep life moving, but you keep life living. That is why you’re here … to restore order to my chaos.”
He watches him—watches Castiel’s sweet, sad smile grow across his face, and all at once, Dean can hear exactly what he’s thinking. “You aren’t chaotic, Cas … you said it yourself. You sometimes need to end life in order for the world to mend. Life and death … that’s just part of the cycle.”
The other being shakes his head and looks away; and Dean can see some more lightning crack on the horizon. “That bird nearly died because of my storm; but you saved it. You are the good that I need … that I have always needed.”
“And you are the green in the grass.”
Those blue eyes shiver, but finally focus in on Dean once more. “What?”
“You are all the color in the flowers, and the warmth in the sunrise. Hell, Cas! You’re the happiness on a snow day and the reason a kid can build a sand castle! Castiel … you are this world! You keep every new day coming when a horrible one ends. Life has a limit, we all know that—whether it comes from a storm, or a person killing another person. Disease, a freak accident … whatever, but the clock always restarts because of you.” Dean does his best to squeeze Castiel’s fingers, but in a way, it feels like he’s trying to hold onto a tidal wave. It’s all power and movement, crashing into the very palm of his hand. “I can maybe ease something’s pain—like I did with that bird just now; but you … you are the reason that bird exists. Castiel … you are life.” He steps in closer, feeling their energies pull together like magnets.
Forces keeping them close.
That dark head shakes, still disbelieving.
“Do you know why I see you the way I do?” Dean finally says, leaning in close, closer than he ever had before, watching galaxies form in Castiel’s eyes. “Because as a child, I tried to imagine the perfect person … the one living creature in all this world who could be strong enough to make everything okay again. Someone who could be so powerful and good. Someone like God … someone I could have faith in. Someone who would never leave me … and I pictured you.”
The wind picks up and curls around them—warm like a blanket. It wraps them together, energies mixing. Light bursting.
Currents whirling through their beings—polarities balancing the other out.
Dean is glowing.
Castiel is glowing, and it make the air spark around their heads.
Their lips come together.
The sky burns red.
***
It’s been a long day and Lynn isn’t sure how many more of these she can take.
Her back hurts, her neck hurt – her heart hurts. Too many people came through that diner door and none of them seemed to have a smile on their face. Sometimes, she wonders if she’s ever actually seen a real smile before, or if she’s only every imagined them.
With a sigh, she takes off her apron and hangs it up on the hook on the wall, grabbing the set of door keys off the other hook at the same time. “Let’s go home” she whispers to the empty room, wincing as she hobbles around the counter.
The moon is bright and shining through the dusty windows, lighting up the black and white tiles below her feet like a runway, guiding her back to the front door.
The rusty hinges squeak as she pulls at the handle.
The moonlight floods across her face.
The smell of roses bloom beneath her nose, and the sound of those keys falling to the floor, marries with the sound of her gasp.
Peonies and daffodils. Tulips and lilies—and of course, miles and miles of primroses spread out as far as she can see. Colors of every shade, shine brighter than the moon and dance in the breeze, waving back and forth at that old, tired woman in the doorway.
“She looks happy” Castiel whispers, peeking through the flowers as Lynn clutches her heart and smiles up at the heavens with tears streaming down her face.
Dean smiles too. “Yeah … she is. She finally is.”