Chapter Text
“Team Free Will. One ex-blood junkie, one dropout with six bucks to his name, and Mr. Comatose over there. Awesome.”
***
Narrative symmetry, Castiel thinks as he hovers silently at the periphery of Bobby Singer’s living room, is highly overrated.
It’s difficult to believe that it’s been a year since he was in almost this same position, except with Sam in the panic room instead of Dean.
Certainly, other superficial facts have changed since then – Castiel is a shadow of what he had been then, the consequences of his exile from Heaven nearly complete, the remaining vestiges of his power fluttering weakly at his chest. Bobby is in his chair now, the change in his personality almost as sharp as the change in his physicality as a result of his accident. Adam Milligan lies on Bobby’s couch, giving annoyed little sighs every few minutes, every inch the petulant teenager that Castiel suspects Dean and Sam rarely got the chance to be.
Sam is different as well, the dark stain on his soul no longer so visible (Castiel hopes that is a result of being on a righteous path, rather than his own diminished vision, but who can be sure?), demon blood no longer flowing through his veins, thoughts of revenge no longer clouding his vision.
Castiel does not feel good about it, because he’s grown quite fond of Sam over the past year, but he wishes more than anything to go back, to trap Sam in the panic room rather than Dean.
Because as much as Castiel now likes Sam, Dean is, has always been, more. He is the nexus of Castiel’s faith now that he knows God is gone, he is the reason that Castiel rebelled in the first place, he is the origin and object of every human emotion that Castiel has ever had.
Castiel may have spent the vast majority of his existence without experiencing human feelings, but he is not oblivious: he understands the nature of his relationship with Dean, or at least what he wishes his relationship with Dean was.
The room has been silent for the past half-hour or so, ever since Dean’s frustrated yells from below have faded away. Bobby is half-heartedly leafing through one of his thick tomes, as though he’ll find an answer that wasn’t there the last time he looked. In the absence of his brother, Sam appears to have taken over his drinking, and is making his way through a half-full bottle of whiskey, albeit much more slowly than Dean would.
Surprisingly enough, it’s Adam who breaks the silence. “So you’re an angel, right?” he asks, lolling his head to the side to fix his eyes on Castiel.
“That is a complex question,” Castiel replies.
Adam rolls his eyes, but presses on. “I mean, you knew this Michael guy, right? Zachariah kind of made him sound awesome. How could it be a bad thing to let him kill the devil?”
Castiel allows himself to process the question and decides to focus on each part separately. “I did not know Michael well,” he allows. “He was…above my pay grade, you could say.”
“Because he’s an archangel?” Sam asks.
“Yes,” Castiel says. “They didn’t much mingle with the foot soldiers. I knew Anna pretty well, of course, but by the time I knew Uriel, his archangel status had already been stripped.”
“Archangels can be demoted?” Bobby says, at the same times as Sam yelps, “Uriel was an archangel?” Bobby and Sam exchange looks before Sam continues, “I thought you said there were only four archangels, Cas.”
‘ “Four angels who have seen the face of God,” Castiel corrects. “There are seven archangels – were seven archangels.”
“Wonderful,” Bobby mutters, “More superpowered dicks to deal with.”
Castiel doesn’t even react to the slur against his brothers. It’s rather nice to know that he’s no longer included in this classification. “Admittedly, Azrael and Raphael might be problems, but Gabriel is in hiding, Uriel and Annael are dead, Michael will only be a problem if someone says yes, and Zadkiel has always been above this sort of thing. We should be fine.”
“Well, that was helpful, thank you,” Adam says, and Castiel can suddenly see the Winchester in him more clearly than ever. It’s too much, and Castiel stands up abruptly, even though he can see from the eager look in Sam’s eyes that he wants to ask more questions.
“I will go check on Dean,” Castiel says, sweeping out of the room before anyone can answer.
There was a time when Castiel would have liked nothing better than to talk about the Seven, to tell the stories of faith and heroism and the consequences of disobedience that he knows by heart, but now it would just be painful.
He descends the steps to Bobby’s basement. Though checking up on Dean had been mostly an excuse, a distraction, Castiel is worried about the lack of noise from the panic room. Dean is brash and loud and unwilling to censor himself for anyone. He is also extremely intelligent, and a silent Dean reminds Castiel uncomfortably of a silent child: he’s likely up to something.
Although Castiel knows that it’s impossible for Dean to have escaped, impossible for Dean to have said yes, he still worries when his calls for Dean go unanswered.
He ducks his head to look through the peephole in the heavy iron door and into the room, and grows even more worried when he can’t see Dean. Certainly, he doesn’t have a complete view of the room through the small peephole, and it is entirely possible, even likely, that Dean is just sulking out of view. But images of Dean, injured or passed out or dead, spring unbidden to Castiel’s mind, and he opens the door and steps into the room without really thinking about it.
He hears Dean’s voice say, “Cas,” and turns around to see that Dean has drawn a bloody sigil on the wall and is preparing to press his hand to it.
Dozens of thoughts go through Castiel’s mind in that split second before Dean’s hand meets the wall: How did Dean manage to cut himself in this room? How could Castiel have been so stupid as to fall for so transparent a trick? Where would he end up being sent this time?
These thoughts are all filtered through the most immense sense of betrayal that Castiel has ever felt, even worse than when Joshua had told him that God had abandoned the earth. He meets Dean’s eyes and can see that Dean is aware of this betrayal, but it’s like looking into the eyes of a man condemned – Dean is too far gone to stop now.
As Dean’s hand meets the sigil and a rushing white light fills the room, Castiel spares another thought to narrative symmetry. Fitting, that he was the one to let Sam out of the panic room and start the apocalypse, and now he will be the one to let Dean out of the panic room and finish it.
He’s angrier than he can ever remember being, but he recognizes that a large part of that anger is directed towards himself, not Dean.