Chapter Text
Alone. You don’t know the meaning of alone, until you’ve been forced to spend years travelling on your own, with no family or friends, no pets or lovers, no companions to talk to on long car rides. The bare ache of loneliness seeping into your bones while you struggle to sleep in an empty bed; the hot searing anxiety you get when in dangerous situations, and the deep emptiness you feel when you remember no one will mourn you, or even realize you’re gone. Castiel Novak knows all about this.
When he was younger, he had it all; A loving family, friends, a dog, and a big house in a nice neighborhood, but all of that was destroyed in a huge house fire when he was eight. Castiel regrets every single day that he survived it, wishing he had gone down with his family. He was passed from foster home to foster home for years, until he was old enough to be off on his own. Since then, he’s just been driving around the country completely alone, doing jobs for gas, motels, and diner money. It was a harsh life, and he hated every minute of it.
The only reason he hadn’t just offed himself, like his mind had been telling him to do since he was eight, was because of the jobs. When he had first left for the open road, he was about 17, and was not very observant. He would scan the newspapers for odd jobs in whatever town he was in. Then he’d do as many as he could before moving on. It wasn’t the greatest way to make money, but it was the only way he knew how. It took him about a year to notice a pattern, and another couple of months to put all of the pieces together. When it finally hit him, he had to take a few days just to comprehend how much of a life changer this was. What he had found, in a nutshell, was everything that goes bump in the night, all of the vampires and werewolves and ghosts of your nightmares, actually exist.
He had to do a lot of research, make plenty of hospital visits, and go through a hell of a lot of trial and error, to figure out what kills what enough to make a job out of it. Now, he travels the country looking for Supernatural disturbances, hunts them down, and destroys them. It wasn’t a nice life; it was dangerous, lonely, and required a lot of research. It did however, help other people. The knowledge that what he does saves lives, even if they don’t know it, is enough to keep him going.
~♢~
Castiel woke up screaming, again. He always got night terrors, it wasn't anything new. Not wanting to go back to the dream, he got himself out of bed, dressed, and looked at the clock. 5:47 AM. Not too early to get breakfast, if he could find a diner that opened this early. He hopped into his car, and drove around till he found one at the edge of the town.
He had barely even sat down in a booth yet, when he found a case. According to the man sitting in the booth next to his, there was a town around here where all of their wishes came true. Castiel stopped listening after they started getting crude with what their wishes would be, and opened up his laptop to research this town.
When the waitress came up to take his order, he ordered his usual; coffee, eggs, and bacon. He ate that every day for breakfast; he knew it was bad for him, but he honestly didn't have it in him to care.
While he ate, he found out that the town had this Chinese restaurant with a wishing fountain, that would grant any wish. He decided that after breakfast he would pack up and head over to check it out. But for now, he just wanted to enjoy a nice breakfast without the anxiety hunting always gave him. It wasn't the monsters itself that scared him, it was his lack of backup. If something went horribly wrong, he wouldn’t be able to escape with his life.
~♢~
It took him awhile to find the Chinese place, but not that long to figure it out. He had done extensive reading in the past about coins, ancient symbols, curses, and those kinds of things. In this case, it was a mixture of all of those. There were only two coins in the well when he went, and one of them was significantly bigger. When he looked closer, it also appeared appeared to have some sort of a symbol on it, which sent off a flag in his head. When he attempted to pick it up to examine it closer, it was stuck to the bottom, which confirmed his theory. The coin had some sort of a wish granting curse, and he just needed to get it out and destroy it to lift it. Unfortunately, no matter what he tried, he could not get it out. He went up to the counter and asked who had been in here today that used the wishing fountain, but there were had no answers for him.
He took a picture of the coin on his phone, calling it a day, and went back to his motel to do a bit of research on it.
He found out that the symbol on the top was actually a rune, that meant "luck," and that the coin had a very old curse on it. If you made a wish with it, the coin would grant it, and everyone elses' who used the fountain; but the only way to remove it, was for the original wisher to take it out.
In the end, he was able to figure out who the coin had belonged to, get him to remove it, and destroy it. On his way out, he hesitated, then turned back. He took out a coin and flipped it into the fountain.
"These things are stupid, and they normally don't work, so I don't know why I'm bothering with this." He started off, speaking softly to the water.
"But if you could work now, even after I took out the coin, that would be great. What I want, is a friend. Or a pet. Or something, anything that is alive and will miss me if I die. Please." Cas walked back to his car, heartbroken, because he knew his wish wouldn't be granted.