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"Cas," says Dean. He is kneeling in the dirt. His pain is tremendous. "You're alive?"
Green eyes. Thinks Castiel, looking past them. Red soul. A righteous man in hell. You are not the broken and burnt out shell of a man I believed you to be. He hears Dean's unasked question.
Sam?
He doesn't answer. He doesn't know. He isn't God.
But someone, somewhere, is. And Castiel does not understand why his father is still hiding from him?
The earth is shivering beneath in the relief of the aftermath. Lucifer and Michael fell beyond the physical plane and took their heavy existence with them. Blue sky falls gentle onto Dean's broken face. Silence in Lawrence. The missing voices of the dead.
Castiel knits Dean's bones and sews his skin back together. Grace floods his vessel and his being and washes him clean with power. Castiel reaches into himself in sudden panic and clutches, before his last human emotion slips away in the flood. Fury. His old anger with Dean for giving up and letting him down. The pain of betrayal because Cas believed in Dean. All while Dean was trying to believe in Cas. The human word is irony; there is no Enochian word for it. Dean believes now, it is bright and tenuous between them. The ache in Dean's chest is a crushing weight to Castiel, heavier than the ocean, heavier than the sky with all its slowly dying stars. He wants to kneel down before Dean and weep, the way he knows Dean will not.
If Dean weeps then Sam is dead. And Dean will not let go. For the rest of his life, Castiel knows, Dean will keep this,and it will always hurt this much.
Cas could take that away. But he is selfish. He believes in Dean, and he refuses to change the man he believes in.
Castiel is old. Has been for a very long time. There are, of course, older angels. Younger ones too. Castiel is one of the middle children.
He is one of the few that feels old.
Castiel goes to Eden to talk with Joshua sometimes. Joshua tells him the things God says. How God talks about dancing and poetry and monsoon season coming late. God always seems to be doing little things these days. Joshua says that God does not laugh much anymore.
"He is lonely, because so few of us understand him. We are petulant, and he is weary."
Castiel nods and thinks of earth, ruined and scarred. Earth, more beautiful than Joshua's garden.
"I understand."
Joshua smiles ruefully at him. "You do. But understanding is not forgiveness."
"No." Castiel agrees.
Heaven is "screwed", splitting itself into civil divisions and violent factions. Castiel's brothers are panicking, they call to him constantly. He is blamed and demonized. He is revered and begged for orders. His brothers want peace and justice but they don't want to think for themselves. Castiel gives to them, because he must and because it is the right thing, he gives and gives to the last. He keeps only enough of himself to feel the anger for God, and the ache for Sam, and the worry for Dean.
Castiel cannot feel as he used to. But he must not loose his connection to humanity. Every seventh Sunday he goes to earth and sits on a park bench somewhere, searching with his Grace until he finds where Dean is in the world. It is never hard, Dean is still a fresh and bleeding wound in the fabric. Then Castiel closes his eyes to the laughing of the children and the ticking of imaginary time and lets Dean teach him to suffer again. He does not know what he will do when Dean dies. He tries not to think about it. He hopes his memories and his anger will be enough.
In Aracataca, Columbia, at an open walled bar, wedged up in a corner away from the rain with a laptop on his knees and tequila in his left hand, is a man with a tired face and a patchy beard. He speaks perfect Spanish, even though he is obviously an American. He smiles sadly to himself, all the time, and writes bad poetry. He will talk to anyone. And he will listen to anyone. But he will not give advice.
The people know him. He came two years ago and now he comes every day. They do not ask him how he is feeling anymore, or what makes him sad, because his answer has never changed.
Back home he hurt people. They have not accepted his apology.
The man doesn't have much money. And his clothes are always the same. He wears a threadbare robe over his jeans and his t-shirt, and when he runs out of money he works the bar for a few weeks at a time. When there is food left over at night, after the bar is closed, he takes it to edge of town and feeds the strays and the homeless children. He gives free drinks to pretty girls and old men. His name is Chuck, but the locals call him Gabo after the novelist who came from their town.
"You are not as good as he is," they tell him. They mean his writing.
In Aracataca, Columbia, a small, tired, lonely man waits for forgiveness and writes bad poetry. His isn't judging, or expecting, or hoping.
He's just waiting.
The locals pray for him every night.