Chapter Text
“Castiel, Angel of all Thursdays, please make this Thursday full of joy and good, for the both of us. I hope you are well and… uh… that you’re… keeping the faith…”
The prayer trailed off but Castiel didn’t rise from his perch. This was the third Thursday that he had received a prayer from the same human. He hadn’t followed the prayer yet, to identify the one who continued to pray to him - who knew his name and his place. He, a minor angel.
It was more common for Michael or Raphael to get prayers, or Gabriel, still, as the mortals didn’t know he was dead. But Castiel rarely received prayers directed to him. It was… strange.
It made him curious.
His curiosity was something he had been warned against allowing to control him. He got himself into trouble when he let it take hold, but the prayer confused him. And… it made him feel good, too. It wasn’t a human asking for a favor he could not grant or pleading for something. It was just a request for a good day, a good Thursday, for the both of them.
Strange. And… nice.
Raphael would not be pleased if he knew Castiel was thinking such thoughts. He should stop thinking them. He should stop wondering about the human who was praying to him. A few quick decades and he would be dead and the world would be silent again.
He was nothing. No one. A useless mortal. Far less than Castiel, minor angel though he was.
“Do angels have favorite flowers? I think you’d probably like flowers. Live ones. Maybe some daffodils?”
Castiel swooped over the hill and down toward Earth. Just a little peek wouldn’t hurt. And no one would know.
He didn’t come to Earth often anymore. He used to. Gabriel used to drag him here, before he died. Before the war. Castiel didn’t know why Gabriel had brought him along when there were numerous other angels more inclined to go. Certainly others would have been more helpful, or more fun. Gabriel has enjoyed all manner of fun things.
Castiel didn’t really do fun. Gabriel had once accused him of being a stick in the mud, but as he’d been standing on solid ground at the time and was not part of a tree, he’d been somewhat confused by the claim.
There were odd moments when he found certain questions coming to mind that he knew Gabriel would be the perfect one to ask. Gabriel would explain it to him and make it less confusing, even if he did tease him about it, too.
And then he would remember that Gabriel was gone and the silence, which he thought he was growing used to, would become somehow worse.
He hadn’t been to Earth in a long time, even for an angel. It was different. The humans had grown considerably over the years. Some of their buildings were even taller than he was.
He ignored that for another time, as he followed the fading whisper of prayer that had been coming to him. The trail withered and wisped away and Castiel landed on the roof of a building to see if he could catch any more of it. But no… it was gone.
He looked around the area he was in. Humans wandering the streets, sitting in metal boxes that carried them from place to place, being loud and raucous and messy - many of the things his brothers complained about them for. Filthy mud monkeys, he’d heard often enough. They were far less than angels, certainly.
They appeared to be monkeys in mud as much as he was a stick in the mud, however.
He thought for a moment and then sighed. Another thing he wished he could ask Gabriel.
Why were there sticks in mud, anyway?
He looked around for some time, unconcerned with how much was passing. A bird landed close by on a wire of some sort hanging between two wooden poles. Castiel watched it for a moment as it preened its feathers, then let himself shrink down, growing smaller and smaller, before sending himself into the body of the bird.
He pushed the mind of the creature down, forced its instincts to submit beneath his strength, and shook out the wings he bore in the form, far removed from his own. Still, flight remained much the same.
The bird - a crow, relatively young for its species - was hungry, but Castiel ignored the sensation and adjusted his borrowed wings slightly, catching the warm air beneath them and ascending quickly until he was far above the rooftops. He watched the humans move below him, not really thinking of much of anything. He wished Gabriel was here. He had so many questions and no one to ask who would answer them.
“Here you go, Cas. An aloe vera plant and some lavender. It’s looking pretty good.”
The prayer came back suddenly, the tone of the one praying sounding satisfied, but there was a feeling of nostalgia and loss somewhere in there, too, and it made something in Castiel ache to hear it.
He adjusted the crow’s tail feathers instinctually, tilted his body and wings, and slid easily through the air in a new direction, following the prayer.
The rush of traffic and people gave way at points to fields of grass and farmland, or deserted areas of dirt and shrubs. And then there was a wealth of buildings again and more people.
“I bet I could even get some bees here. You’d love that. You would have loved that…” The prayer trailed off again, the connection faded, though the sensation of loss lingered, and that made no sense at all. Why did this human pray to him? And why did he speak as though he knew Castiel?
He had a thought that perhaps the human was a vessel for one of his brothers, abandoned to Earth, but the prayer was not from an angel. He would have been able to tell the difference. Strange and confusing, and he had lost the trail of the prayer again.
He settled down on the metal railing of a balcony and shook his borrowed feathers out. He didn’t know why he was trying to find the one praying to him. He couldn’t show himself to them. His True Form would blind them and his Voice deafen them, so he couldn’t not even ask them why?
He supposed… his curiosity had gotten out of his control again.
“Not one of mine.”
Castiel startled at the croaking voice and turned his head quickly, looking behind him. There was a raven perched on the balcony at his back, a massive thing with glittering dark eyes. He had arrived, somehow, without Castiel knowing, and there was a sense of power around him - familiar? not familiar. - that Castiel didn’t understand.
He didn’t say anything and the raven hopped closer, making the crow that was there with Castiel flinch away. His wings drifted outward without his consent, in preparation to flee should he need to.
“Not one of mine!” the raven shouted, and flapped his wings sharply. “Who you be, then, thief?”
Castiel struggled for a moment but managed to shove the instincts of the crow down. He tightened his wings against his body and peered up at the raven. He was far more than simply a bird. True animals couldn’t speak in such a way, with the exception of the humans. This one was something else.
“I am called Castiel,” he said. “I am an Angel of the Lord.”
“Oh. He’s an Angel of the Lord. Angel of the Lord, so special.” The raven battered Castiel’s smaller form with his wings. “Thief!”
Castiel backed away but the raven only followed, smacking him with his wings and shouting “Thief! Thief! Thief!” until Castiel gave up and threw himself from the crow’s body. He took back his True Form, invisible to the eye of these mortal creatures, and sighed.
It was a simple thing to crouch down and peer at the raven and the crow. The larger bird was now preening the smaller’s feathers, muttering and snapping its beak irritably. Castiel did not feel guilty about taking the crow’s body for his use. Mostly, he felt tired.
He missed Gabriel.
He missed Samandriel and hoped the younger angel would soon return from his mission.
He should not, as it was not his place, but he missed having someone to talk to. He missed asking questions. He missed home, even though he had only just left, and that such a feeling did not belong to an angel. Homesickness was not a thing. He was not a mortal and should not be prone to such things. He was an Angel of the Lord, and he was above such… feelings.
Like the feeling of being too large in a world that was big, but filled with people that were so very small.
He used to swim with the whales in the ocean. He missed that. Being large in a place where there were creatures just as large, or larger. He missed speaking with the serpent beneath the sea, or learning of the creatures in the deep that the humans had yet no knowledge of. He remembered when some of them had been created by his brothers. He remembered hearing them tell tales of crafting them, and the memory hurt.
Family. That was a thing he missed. Even when surrounded by them, the truth was, that feeling had gone a long time ago. His brothers were still his brothers, and yet… they were not.
Everything had gone away with Gabriel and Castiel did not know why.
Another question he wished he could ask.