Chapter Text
“Why doesn’t anyone love me, mum?” you sobbed into your pillow, curling in your blanket on her couch.
“That’s impossible, honey,” Ellen tried to comfort you, rubbing a soothing hand on your back. “I love you.”
But you shook your head.
“You adopted me!” you pointed out, sobbing. “You’re double obligated to love me.”
Castiel only watched from afar and had to stop himself from physically touching you. This wasn’t his role not function. Still, seeing you like this made him want to break all of the rules.
“Double?”
“Once because you are their mother,” Jo left the kitchen, holding a tray with a teapot and teacups. “Twice because you decided to be their mother and they didn’t just pop out of your uterus the way I did.”
Ellen only raised her eyebrows at her children and glanced at the fancy set.
“Back in my time, those were reserved for the fancy guests.”
The blonde girl rolled her eyes.
“Mum, back in your time the Queen of England wasn’t good enough for your tea set.”
The sniffling from you made the two women turn to your direction, and Jo put things down.
“Okay, come on, stop. Crowley is not the only man on the face of the Earth. There are seven billion humans around, you probably have at least one billion that are or would be interested in you, and we’re not even categorising them by gender.”
But you only shook your head.
“No, Jo!” you sobbed. “Crowley said it himself, I’m too damaged for people. And Jimmy said I was too much to maintain, remember? And Hannah said I was too clingy!”
Your sister’s shoulders sagged, kneeling in front of you on the couch.
“You can’t define yourself on what your only three exes said to you during breakups,” she reminded you.
Castiel stepped away when Ellen stood up, walking right past him to the phone.
“Where are you going?” Jo glanced at her.
“Calling Y/N’s therapist to find a free hour today.”
To say the least, you weren’t lucky in love and both your mother and sister knew it very well. You had only dated three times, and they all went wrong.
“Not even my biological parents wanted me,” you sniffled, although calmer, and your sister reached for the tray, pouring tea into the cup and offering it to you.
Castiel moved in response, he couldn’t take it, not any more.
He was your guardian angel since college after there was some sort of rearranging of functions and he had to move from his sector, which gave you to him. His responsibility was to keep you alive and well while watching you from afar. He’d worked his whole life with children, most of them toddlers. Keeping them from falling from dangerous places, hunting away bad dreams and allowing himself to become their imaginary friend in case he was watching someone older and lonely.
When he was charged with taking care of you, he didn’t know what exactly he was supposed to do; you were an adult, with different problems he couldn’t just chase away and who couldn’t just be miraculously saved in case something too serious happened. But he realised you were more than that with time. You were genuinely caring and funny, absolutely loved the kids you encountered in your life, and just wanted to be loved. Ellen Harvelle had adopted you when you were nine, one year after her husband had died and five years after your biological parents had left you in an orphanage, and that aspect of your life has haunted you ever since. You wanted to be unconditionally loved and cherished and feel like you were wanted, and as much as your mother and sister were good for you, they had their own lives, and you were clearly searching for someone who would want to spend their life with you.
Castiel wanted to be that someone.
At the start of it, he just dismissed his feelings. He couldn’t allow himself to feel that way, it was wrong. But time passed, and he couldn’t ignore it. Instead of watching you from afar like most guardian angels, he was always by your side, always saving you from the smallest of dangers and caring for you the best way he could without breaking the rules. But he couldn’t do that any more, he couldn’t stay away from you.
“Zachariah,” he stopped in front of the angel that was above him.
The more experienced angel only gave him a look.
“Castiel,” he sighed. “If you do this, you can’t come back.”
Your guardian angel didn’t even flinch at the information. He knew about it already and still didn’t manage to convince himself to change his mind.
“I’ve been thinking about it for seven years,” he told him. “My place is by her side.”
Zachariah nodded, not protesting. It wasn’t his place to do so any more. He had advised Castiel before, and if he was sure of his decision, he wasn’t the one who was going to change it.
“Are you completely sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
The hierarchical higher angel didn’t ask any more questions, and raised one of his hands to the guardian angel, just an inch away from his forehead.
“This is not going to be pleasant for you.”
Castiel frowned but didn’t have time to ask why. Soon, everything around his was moving and his skin felt as if it was burning before it all went black.