For Thine is the Kingdom, for zara_zee

[summergen-mod.livejournal.com]

Title: for thine is the kingdom
Recipient: zara_zee
Rating: PG
Word Count or Media: 3.5K
Warnings: spoilers for the S14 finale, mild violence, and some swearing
Author’s Notes: Based on the “God just plunged the world into The Apocalypse. I’d like to see the boys and Cas doing what they do best: saving people, hunting things” prompt! Team Free Will-y goodness of Cas appreciating Sam and Dean’s humanity variety.

A giant thank you to my betas quickreaver and cherie_morte who tolerated my multiple typos and gave me advice and helped whip this bad boy into shape— guys absolutely rock, in general and my socks off! And a very happy Summergen to my recipient zara_zee. I hope you enjoy this offering. :)







i.

Sam thumbs the little wheel of his lighter over and over again.

The world is darker than the space behind a human’s eyelids when they squeeze them shut in the middle of an anguished sob.

Castiel watches Sam struggle. It’s what angels do. He doesn’t see in the dark, either, but he feels in a way humans simply can’t, all thirty-two of his faces unfurling themselves. The lion head tries to roar but it comes off weak as a kitten.

That’s how Castiel has been feeling lately. This pitiful noise is extremely fitting.

Sam’s fingers slide off the ridges of the wheel again. There’s blood caked under his nails. Castiel tries to help get it going, but the tendrils of his grace go right through Sam’s arms without stopping. Sam tosses the useless lighter aside and walks forward instead, fumbling in the dark with his arms outstretched. He doesn’t get far before his hands collide with an obstacle. Sam feels it, tentative, and flinches when his fingers curl around cool metal bars. He turns around and goes the opposite direction just to crash into another set of bars.

This space is six steps wide and six steps long. Castiel’s brother was always obsessed with that number.

“No,” Sam says, and Castiel watches like he watched last night and the night before and the night before that. Giving someone a good dream takes only a flicker of grace, but after a long day, Castiel doesn’t even have that to spare sometimes.

Somewhere in the real world, Sam rolls around on the ground, sweat on his brow, the blanket tossed aside in his sleep.

“Dean,” he breathes, and Dean, still sound asleep, turns his head to him, but doesn’t wake up.

Castiel sits down on the trunk of a fallen tree and folds his wings around himself, shivering in the wind. His wings are torn and tattered and offer no protection from the cold.

The sky is pink with dawn.

Castiel watches his surroundings change colors. His heart thumps against his ribcage, slow and stupidly human. He doesn’t need it to beat to walk the earth, but he allows himself that indulgence. His brothers and sisters would call it frivolous, were any of them still alive.

He used to think that maybe his Father would understand the joy he has for the ladybugs and the fig leaves and taking apart coffee makers and radios to see exactly how they work and kale smoothies and the seashore and the elephants and that particular feeling when an especially smooth note of saxophone curls around his eardrum and the church bells and sunrise and sunset and the chickens and the humans and the foxes and the snails.

A tiny snail is making its merry way on Castiel’s boot right now and he stares at it, blank. He offers it his palm to crawl on and helps it onto the tree trunk next to him, where he’s less likely to stomp on it. The snail doesn’t seem to be perturbed in the slightest by the sudden change in the environment and starts its slow crawl again, away from Castiel.

It does not matter anymore what his Father would’ve thought about Castiel’s love for all living things.

This thought tastes sacrilegious and smells heavy like lead. It sinks into every single one of Castiel’s heads like ink into a sponge.

Dean makes a noise, too, and Castiel walks over to him. He kneels next to the man and puts his hand on Dean’s forehead, already knowing what he’ll see. Dean’s dreams are no more diverse in their contents than Sam’s. He’s always in the same place, filled with shelves and shelves of books, made of black wood and shiny chrome. They go from the floor to the ceiling. The ceiling is far, far above Dean’s head and all thirty-two of Castiel’s, and it vanishes in the thick mist curling up there.

Dean pulls out a random book and flips it open, squinting at the text in the fluorescent light. Castiel doesn’t need to look behind Dean’s shoulder to know what the letters read, but for Dean, it’s a new experience every time. It’s like watching a child touch a hot stove over and over again. They’re learning the same lesson and getting the same scar and crying the same cry every time.

Sam Winchester, torn to shreds by a werewolf, the book reads. It tells Dean all about how it happens in the fine print, and Castiel watches the gears in Dean’s head click as he tries to figure out exactly how to keep Sam safe from such horrid fate. He puts the werewolf book down and picks up another one.

Sam bleeds out from a gunshot wound in a supplies trade gone very, very bad.

Sam breaks his neck in a fall into a freshly dug-up grave.

Sam’s mauled and eaten alive by a vampire—again. (Castiel’s clockwork heart twitches at that one and he’s very happy Dean can’t see him in this moment.)

Sam’s killed by lightning. Even the book admits there’s only a minuscule chance of that occurring, but Dean angrily tosses it all the same. When he gets to the one in which Sam dies by Dean’s own gun in the line of friendly fire, he tears the page out and rips it into shreds. Teeth gritted, he keeps destroying them one by one. The shreds vanish as soon as they hit the floor and the books regrow the pages mere minutes later.

It’s a labor worthy of Sisyphus. Castiel knows that sharply and acutely. He knows it’s not really Sam’s death room. Billie would never let his brother roam in it freely. It’s simply Dean’s brain making a metaphor for all the, what’s that word?—ah, catastrophizing—he’s been doing day in and day out, thinking of all the ways Sam Winchester might die if he falls short without the God failsafe attached.

Not that God ever had to lift a finger to bring Sam back. Why would he, when Dean was perfectly capable of making an insane deal of some sort all by himself? No, God simply sat back and watched it all unfold.

In a way, so does Castiel right now, even if his inaction stems not from apathy but from utter incapacity.

Dean finds a book in which they die in a fiery blast together and holds it close like it’s something good and holy. Like it doesn’t describe his own mortal body perishing and his flesh searing off his bones.

“Fuck,” Dean mumbles, and Castiel has to agree with that, perhaps crude, but entirely accurate, statement.

God asked him to love all humans, but He loved none of them. Castiel wouldn’t be surprised to find out the repetitive motifs in Sam and Dean’s nightmares are Chuck’s parting gift, an eternal loop of the same terrible image of their deepest fears.

Castiel looks at the way the plaid shirt folds in the crook of Dean’s elbow, at all the lines on the pattern of the shirt curving in harmony, and at the splattering of freckles peeking from underneath the hem of the shirt in disarray, and wonders how God could ever not adore every single cell he made.

Dean Winchester is very different from Sam Winchester and they’re both very different from a snail or a sunset but that does not matter to an angel’s love.

ii.

Angels are powered by faith. Sure, there’s the day-to-day issues of grace and wings and halos and the multiple faces and all the other cogs and wheels making up an angel, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to a matter of faith.

An angel needs to be believed in and prayed to. An angel must have faith himself.

There’s no shortage of prayers these days, when monsters roam the earth and tear people apart. But there’s an acute shortage of faith in God on Castiel’s part, and, he surmises, no one could blame him. Even the most devout of men would’ve abandoned faith, had he been witness to what Castiel has.

It makes his chest ache now, seeing some of the survivors that Sam and Dean bring back to their campsite-of-the-night pray. It would be cruel to tell them no one’s around, but it feels just as cruel to watch their pleas. They hold rosaries and mouth words that inevitably fall on deaf ears—if they fall on any ears at all.

They probably do. He’s probably watching all of this unfold from his first-row seat with a bucket of popped corn in hand, that...

This is when Dean would call God a sick fuck. It’s a sacrilege that Castiel agrees with Dean’s voice in his head.

Castiel wrings out his grace the best he can to heal a girl with a werewolf claw wound across her abdomen. She keeps whimpering even when her skin fixes itself back up and it doesn’t hurt anymore because she’s alone and she’s scared and she saw Sam cut someone’s head clean off to save her no more than half an hour ago.

Dean is stitching Sam up now, angrily muttering at him for getting himself hurt. Sam keeps sipping from the whiskey bottle the Winchesters use for anesthesia as Dean works on Sam’s bleeding flesh with a sharp needle. Sam shoots Castiel a brave smile when he notices Castiel watching and Castiel looks away, filled with shame. He doesn’t have enough grace to heal everyone these days, and Sam and Dean never accept his healing when there are civilians needing help.

The girl’s crying.

God told him to love humans, Castiel thinks, and it’s a bitter thought and not a warm one. He leans closer and shushes her the best he can. He’s no good at it, though. Words are difficult and often much too meaningless.

If he was a little bit pettier of an angelic being, he would start giving out “God’s Not Coming” pamphlets on a street corner.

iii.

Sam finds a guitar in one of the abandoned homes and quickly regrets it when Dean gets his hands on the instrument. Or so Castiel assumes. They gather next to a fire at their latest campsite, Sam, Dean, and him. He always ends up sitting a little bit to the left.

That’s alright. Castiel is other, down to his chemical make and model. He runs his hand against the flames and they lick his hand but don’t burn.

Dean plays a simple tune. Sam makes a show of plugging his ears but then cracks up, throwing his head back, and it’s a glorious sight, Sam Winchester laughing. If anything could bring on world peace, it would be this.

Dean’s hands fidget with the guitar and he plucks out another melody. The notes feel simple and earnest, like a peanut butter sandwich. He sings along, and so does Sam. Castiel knows the song from the pop culture knowledge Metatron forcefully installed in his head, but he chooses not to join in.

Music is something Castiel has also had a place in his heart and his grace for. Sam introduced him to Green Day and Imagine Dragons and The Killers. Dean introduced him to AC/DC and Led Zeppelin and Metallica.

Neither of them is too fond of the other’s music. Castiel eats it up.

Sam serves the stew they made for dinner, and, when Dean’s not looking, scoops some of the least-suspicious and most nutritious-looking pieces of meat onto Dean’s plate. The spoon clangs against the metal of the bowl as Sam stirs the meal in it.

Sam asks Castiel if he’d like any, which he doesn’t, ever. He doesn’t need food to sustain himself, unlike these two painfully mortal humans. Sam offers every night anyway.

Castiel appreciates that.

God making the Winchesters was a good day.

Birds fly overhead and when Castiel reaches upwards and closes his fist, it almost feels like he’s caught one in his palm, feathery and brimming with life from its beak to its tail. Those must be blackbirds, but he can’t see what they are from down here. Can’t feel it either. None of his faces can. His grace must be running well and truly dry these days.

Oh well. He’s used to squinting. There are so many things he does not understand.

Sam keeps looking at him from over his stew, eyebrows furrowed. Castiel cannot tell whether he’s concerned about something in particular or if it’s simply the weight of the world shifting ever so slightly to rest even heavier on his wide but ultimately utterly human shoulders.

Sam shouldn’t be worried about him. Castiel is not the one who dreams of the Cage over and over and over again.

Not requiring sleep has many upsides and not having dreams is one of them.

iv.

Dean wakes up while Castiel is rummaging through his dreams that night. Castiel finds himself in the crosshairs of Dean’s gun.

“Dude. Watching people sleep hasn’t gotten any less creepy since the last time you did it,” he grunts, putting the weapon back down. “What is it? Something happen?”

“No,” Castiel says. It’s a half-truth. Dean’s nightmare happened, but he doesn’t seem to remember those, and Castiel doesn’t want to help him there. “All quiet.”

That seems to satisfy Dean and he lies back onto the forest floor. After a few minutes of grumpy rustling from his spot next to the tree roots, Dean gets up and walks over to the still-warm remains of the fire they lit earlier that night and sits next to Castiel, who’s on watch.

“Can’t sleep now,” Dean says, by way of explaining. “So freaking stuffy.”

Castiel nods, and silence falls. It’s not a comfortable silence. Had it been Sam, it would have been a different story. Castiel generally feels at ease when he’s silent with Sam. Dean, however, is extremely talkative, and him being quiet is wrong on a fundamental level, like a pet refusing its dinner. Perhaps Dean remembers more of his nightmares than he lets on.

Castiel plans to ask him about his dreams, he really does. But what comes out instead is a wholly different burning question. Or, rather, a burning statement.

“Your father let you down many times.”

Dean looks up at him in surprise and Castiel starts to suspect this is one of those topics where one is supposed to lead with something like “would you mind if I asked you a personal question?”. Humans have a lot of rules.

“Well, that’s random.” Dean laughs and even Castiel can tell it’s a laugh of the awkward variety.

“I’m simply wondering how you dealt with parental disappointment. I know there have been moments when your progenitors have… fallen short. Your father, in particular, had asked an impossible thing of you before his demise.” They both are aware of what that thing is without Castiel spelling it out. “And I’m not placing blame. I just… how did you…?”

Castiel trails away, but Dean seems to have picked up on the point his meandering speech was making.

“I was pissed. For the longest time, after Dad dropped that bombshell on me, I was fucking furious. I mean, who pulls something like that as a farewell stunt?” Dean half-heartedly nudges at the tall grass beneath their feet. Castiel folds his hands in his lap, listening attentively.

Dean chews on his bottom lip. “I won’t lie and tell you there’s no baggage there. When I wished him back for a hot second, I was tempted to give him a piece of my mind like Sammy did. But what would’ve been the point? He’s been gone thirteen years. Things changed.”

Castiel nods.

“And hell knows Dad taught us a lot of things we needed to know to keep folks safe. Some things he did wrong, well… his lessons still hold up.”

“I see,” Castiel says, careful. As nice as it is to get a glimpse into Dean’s head while he’s awake, it’s also not really helping Castiel deal with his own issues.

“It’s easier for me to let these things go,” Dean says at last. “At least my dad didn’t throw a tantrum and bring on the apocalypse ‘cause his favorite show refused to dance to his tune.”

“Am I that transparent?” Castiel asks dryly.

“Not really. But Sam’s been worried about you ever since the Apocalypse Day. He let me know.” Dean looks up at the sky. “Chuck might’ve been a major peeping tom all these years, but he hasn’t actually been there to do shit for you. And He might’ve created you, but you’ve been making your own way ever since.”

Yes, he has. The results were questionable, but he has been exercising lots and lots of free will. Castiel exhales. The night air is getting chilly.

“You never believed in God,” Castiel says.

“Nope. I knew he had to be a fucking bastard, and I’d rather have no God than a bastard one.”

“But we don’t always get the things we want.”.

“No,” Dean says with a snort. “You don’t say.”

“You thought there was no God. And now you know God has forsaken us. And yet, you get up in the morning.”

Dean glances over at where Sam’s sleeping, curled up in a mighty oak’s shadow. The tree is so large, it makes even someone as sturdy and tough as Sam look small and defenseless.

It’s a barely-there look. A second, maybe two. But time runs differently for an angel. Castiel views it from above. Time is a river he sees from the height of a bird’s flight. He sees how it meanders. He saw it start (with light and with a fish) and, if he squints just right, he suspects he can make out where it will inevitably end (with two brothers at the end of all things).

This look has been there for thirty-six years, a month and twenty-eight days now.

This look will last forever.

“Yeah. What’s the alternative here? Rolling over and giving up? That’s never been what any of us were about.” Dean clears his throat, suddenly looking sheepish like he’s holding something very sincere back from jumping off the tip of his tongue. Castiel has heard him colorfully threaten and curse enemies so many times, and yet, right now, he can’t get the simplest words out. It’s astounding how much easier it is for a human to speak of hate than love.

It’s a good thing humans cannot hide their light under bushels. There might be no words, but there are careful stitches in someone’s injured arm, there are glances, there are songs sung together and there are meals with extra pieces of meat in them.

And then there are beings out there lucky enough to be witness to humans. There are beings—and Castiel almost keeps the bitterness out of it—who learn the right lessons after seeing said stories unfold. Even if God didn’t love humans when he made them, how could he not fall for them post factum? Watching them stumble and fall and always get up?

Dean pats Castiel’s arm as he gets back to his feet and offers Castiel a sweet if ultimately meaningless, “it’s gonna be alright, man”. He walks over to Sam and pulls the blanket Sam tossed off in his sleep back over him.

“What? I don’t want him to catch fuckin’ pneumonia or something. He sweats buckets,” Dean says, impatient, when he feels Castiel looking.

Words, Castiel has found, aren’t how humans say anything important.

God might have not meant it when he told him to love all living things, but the lesson was still solid.

v.

Sam flicks the lighter on.

He brings it to the bars of the cage to find there’s none. No bars. Nothing stopping him.

Sam walks forward. He makes more than six steps but less than sixty-six. There, Sam finds a door.

He swings it open and steps in. There are shelves upon shelves and books, rows and rows of them.

There is his brother, standing amidst shredded paper and clutching an empty, frayed cover.

Dean holds out a torn-out page and Sam brings the lighter’s flame to its corner.

Castiel curls his wings over Sam and Dean. The sky’s drizzling, but both of them are dry.

He turns his own faces to the sky and lets the raindrops fall on each and every one of them. His trench coat is soaking wet and his halo is clean of grime. There’s fresh air in his lungs and there’s a summer smell of grass on the breeze and there’s a snail making its way over the ground two feet from his shoe and there’s a family of blackbirds sitting in a tree half a mile over and there are two humans right here next to him.

The faux-beating of his heart speeds up.

All thirty-two of Castiel’s faces are smiling.