Chapter Text
“I searched for a foreign land, for years and years I roamed
I gazed a gazeless stare, we walked a million hills
I must have died alone, a long, long time ago
Who knows? Not me
I never lost control
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world.”
- David Bowie, The Man Who Sold the World, 1970
~
A tallish woman strode toward the doors of the midsized crème-colored building, making her way through the crowds of people as they cantered off around her, going this this way and that with a flurry of their jackets and a crisp click of their shoes.
Glancing up, she lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the glare of a perfectly cloudless sky, despite the fact that an overly large and extremely floppy yellow hat had a home on top of her vivid red tresses. She stared up at the building a moment, feeling the familiar pang of smallishness that had accompanied her to the city. Even the shop, which was as unremarkable to others as it was friendly to her, spurred the wonder that was already in the front of her mind… Even though it truly wasn’t actually much of anything, and everything did often bled together in the bustling, hectic streets.
Not to the red-haired woman, of course. But she was caught in awe far too often for it to be novel anyway. With a small grunt and a decision to stop getting distracted, she lowered her eyes to the doors in front of her and purposefully pushed into the shop amid the familiar tinkle of bells.
The woman clicked up to the counter, ignored the appreciative looks that several of the seated customers threw her way, and slammed her hand down on another bell, this one rusty, the color of brass, and perched on top the counter like a squatting toad. It was a beacon among the plush cushions and seats of the room, which lined warm, chocolate walls and seemed to call out declarations of their own comfortableness to anyone laying eyes on them. Two cranberry armchairs stuck out the most, facing a small, white-stoned fireplace in the corner. Though not emitting any warmth then, it burned infinitely during the cold months of winter – when the entire shop smelled like gingerbread and hot chocolate and became even cozier than it’d been before, if that was possible.
A deep voice answered the bell not five seconds after it had croaked its proclamation, quickly calling “I’m coming!” from the other side of a door just beyond the counter. It evidently led to storerooms of some sort. At the creak of old hinges, the woman looked up to see the voice quickly followed in by a focused twenty-something in a Novak’s Coffeehouse apron. His head was bowed with the task of carrying what looked like enough Styrofoam cups to let a small army have their fill of caffeinated beverage (but with what was, in reality, enough for another hour of business) and his foot was kicking the door open, as graceful as a dog on its hind legs, on stilts, navigating a child’s bounce house.
The man - for lack of a better term for someone who still seemed to be so young - nearly tripped and spilled all of the supplies on his way to the counter, but caught himself and gratefully let the paraphernalia of tableware fall onto the wood with a sharp intake of breath. He then exhaled, relieved. Then, the man dusted his apron with a swipe of his palms and started, “Sorry-” as he lifted his head; but he stopped when he saw the person leaning over the bar.
“Anna,” he said instead, with a pleasant sort of surprise to his voice. He flashed her a bashful grin, which she returned amusedly. Their smiles were like twin sets of pearls, and lit up both their faces just so.
“Hey, Cassie,” the woman beamed.
Castiel brushed his fingers through his messy head of raven black-brown hair, looking at the pretty woman in the white sundress. He kept his grin a moment longer, then turned back towards the assembly of take-away cups strewn over the countertop. As he piled them into tidy stacks, he seemed to think a moment, then commented, “As soon as I finish with these, I believe that I can take my break.”
“I’ve got an hour, then I’ll have to leave. Got a class at eleven,” chirped Anna.
“I assume I can get you somethin’?”
“You know you can.”
Castiel chuckled. A couple of the men whom had been eyeing Anna earlier, and whom had been getting less hopeful by the minute, turned back to their drinks with sour looks planted on their faces. Of course, they were mistaken in their assumptions, but it wasn’t as if Anna had even given a single thought towards talking to any one of them.
Castiel finished stacking and sorting the cups, looked the towers over to make sure that they were as neat and as straight as it was possible for them to be, and placed them carefully into the holder. Then he snatched two off the top of one pile and took them over to the coffee machine. Into each of them, two pumps of cream followed the hot drink. His fingers skittered across the row of other finishings. His lips pulled into a smile as he poured a grievous amount of caramel into Anna’s cup, and then he smiled even more as he carried the coffees over to where she had decided to sit herself down.
She was lounging on a chair in a secluded spot near the window, watching the cars and the taxis and the buses go by with admiration in her eyes. Not many people, Castiel supposed, would know exactly what Anna was thinking to herself right then. But he did. He knew precisely what Anna was thinking, because he himself was thinking the same thing.
“Doesn’t it amaze you? The city.” he breathed as he sat down across from her.
“Yes,” she replied, reaching across the table and taking her coffee. “Thanks.”
“I do work at a coffeehouse,” Castiel reminded her, though needlessly. She came over for free drinks often enough that he had started to worry about whether he could be fired over it.
“Mmhhh.”
They both turned towards the window again, appreciating the scene that left them both so dumbstruck. Castiel could tell that Anna felt the same way as he; disbelieving, admiring, stunned and happier than either of them had ever felt. Neither could ever have imagined they’d actually be here, despite the hours they had spent talking and planning and hoping and wishing it so. Years ago, he’d given up trying to make something of himself the way he wanted to, and he had been fairly sure that she had too. But that feeling he’d gotten when he’d realized that this was their chance, yes, maybe life had dealt them one right in a sea of wrongs… it was overwhelming. He felt it again and again, every day as he woke up to find himself still in the middle of the metropolis, still as far away as he’d hoped to be for a long time.
There was no way that Castiel would give up looking at the sun coming up over the skyscrapers, bathing the city in orange light as he strolled to work in the chill that each morning bloomed . When they’d finally gotten here, after an uncomfortable flight on the cheapest airplane they could get, he’d been caught breathless. And it had been better than he ever could have imagined. In truth, they’d just been looking for anything surpassing the suffering that they had endured for so long; for as long as Cas had known Anna and she Cas, which felt like their entire lives. And they, sister and brother in almost every sense of the words, had needed a fresh start. They’d needed to be saved.
And they’d managed it. They really had.
It continued to amaze him.
Anna snapped out of it first, turned to her table partner. “Speaking of you, how’s it going? How are your classes?”
“Good. Mr. Turner is the best lecturer I’ve ever had. It’s better than anything I could have hoped,” Castiel gushed happily.
Anna rolled her eyes. “Obviously, you’ve got about fifty essays that you’re not going to complain about.” He shrugged. Outside of working, either at the shop or at the animal shelter, classwork was really all he had to do, anyway.
“Same old, same old, then,” Anna chuckled. “So, for my first semester’s design, I’ve been trying to pick a theme. Something fun to paint, you know? And I was thinking ‘something with mythical creatures’. Like supernatural stuff or something. Thoughts?” She looked up at him expectantly.
He pondered over that for a moment. “…that sounds interesting.” She blinked at him, wanting more. “Though it’s missing something,” Castiel mused.
The pair was silent for a minute, both thinking.
“It could show the boundaries between the common ‘good versus evil’ perceptions… angels… and demons, maybe?”
“I like it!” Anna beamed. “And we could have, like, humans being the sort of middle man, yah know?”
The way she said ‘we’ was so natural, so sisterly – that was the way it had always been. They didn’t even notice when the other said it anymore, because it was so expected that I meant we anyway.
They talked and sipped their coffees in their own special harmonious pleasure, and Castiel smiled.
~
Castiel got off his shift at two, then went to grab a bite to eat before his hours at the local animal shelter. As he bit into what was, as far as he was concerned, the best burger that had ever been made, he contentedly read a chapter of his English textbook. As he paid for his meal, he marveled at the fact that he could. He wandered around the streets for a while, then went to sit and watch the ducks at a shady pond within the park, simply because he was able to. Is this what birds felt, as they stretched their wings towards the endless sky above them? Freedom, boundless and vast? It was hard to believe that this was something that he could do every day, for a week; a month; a year, even. He could do it just for the sheer pleasure of doing it. There was no one here to say he couldn’t, no one here to judge him. He didn’t have to answer to anyone.
He could usually convince himself that he was all right.
He liked being on his own. Crowds and outrageous gatherings often made him feel overwhelmed, and sometimes a bit sick to his stomach. People were complicated. And yet…
He longed for someone to talk to. Someone to get to know, whom he could tell everything and more. Anna was that person, it couldn’t be gotten wrong, but she wasn’t enough.
God help him. How could he seek out a relationship and know that it’d never be torn from him? How could he be absolutely sure that blood wouldn’t spill over his hands and seep into his head, that he wouldn’t tear someone’s heart out and leave them broken? Hurt? He had only ever known that hurt, and it had left a trail of blood seemingly in his wake (emphasis on ‘seemingly’, because it had never been Castiel spilling the blood or breaking the hearts; but it would sure as hell take a miracle for him to even get close to realizing that). No. No, it wasn’t worth it. He would shatter everything he touched. He would, he’d done it before, he’ll do it again and prick his fingers on the shards.
Sometimes he even wished Anna would go, because it might take time, years, but he’ll surely break her too. She’ll come to pieces in his hands and then he’ll have no one. Not a single soul, and no one to blame but his own pathetic self. So wouldn’t it be easier if they both agreed to part before the time came that something tore them away in a way much more painful? Of course it would, but Anna had been through much too much with him to ever agree do that. She had been through so much that she understood, in some ways, how it sometimes still hurt him to get out of bed. But there were things she didn’t understand, and there were things he kept to himself, and there were things he tried with all his might to block out and just forget and never ever think about again ever. Never.
But then he thought, and he thought some more; eventually, all these thoughts were banished. Most all of the time. Usually. Sometimes.
It was all fine; Castiel didn’t have nightmares as often as he used to; they only came about four times a week now, and that was better than he could hope for. Waking up drenched in sweat and unable to breathe didn’t exactly tickle his fancy, but he was sort of used to it. At least they were just dreams, however real they felt as he ghosted through them in the late hours of the night, on the wrong side of midnight and loaded with sleeping pills that never seemed to work.
It was all fine; every logical part of his brain told him that the occasionally unbearable paranoia that coursed through his veins, cold and filled with dread, was completely irrational. It was absurd to think that someone would get to him, punish him, miles and miles away – he was in the middle of New York, for Christ’s sake. He wasn’t worth it anyway. Who would put any energy at all into looking for him?
It was all fine; nobody would hurt him, no matter how much the thoughts of it consumed him.
He was perfectly content to sit down with a book and while away the hours laying on the grass. Maybe with Anna. Because (she was all he had) that would be nice, right? He was all right. Right?
During his shift at the shelter, he toyed with the idea of getting a dog. They were cheap, with all the overflowing pounds of the city, and taking care of it wouldn’t be too hard. He’d have to pay for food, but, if worst came to worst, he could salvage the barely-expired bags that they kept around here. Though he wasn’t an expert, he was fairly sure that dog kibble was good at least another month after the ‘official’ expiration date. Too many possible health concerns otherwise, he reasoned. It wasn’t as if it would be missed, in any case. The dog wouldn’t be missed either, and he could give one a home. Not a particularly nice one, mind, but it was better than a little iron prison cell, Castiel could be sure of that. To add to it, pets, welcome or not, were present in his crumbling apartment complex already; another animal surely wouldn’t get on anyone’s nerves any more than the ones that were there already did. Truthfully, if you lived in a place like the one he did, you couldn’t really afford to be picky about the arrangements.
He wondered what he’d name it.
The woman behind the desk stared at him again, when she thought he couldn’t see it. She complimented him on his jacket (which was, in fact, a rather plain, tan-colored trench coat; but Anna hadn’t been there to tell him not to buy it) and gushed about how good he was with the animals as she twisted her fingers around a strand of her long, honey-colored hair… And, as per usual, he ignored her. He wasn’t interested.
~
He had taken the late shift at the shelter, so he didn’t walk out the doors until after eleven-thirty in the evening; though it truly wasn’t all that late for a city that was just beginning to turn on its lights. Technically, he could have been out a half-hour earlier than that, but had been lost, absentmindedly petting one of their newest arrivals - a sweet mutt with an auburn spot, a missing eye and a broken leg. The dog had been sleeping against his legs and warming him like a soft blanket, and Castiel had had to fight a huge impulse to take him home right then. The animal was older, seven years at least, and it wasn’t likely that anyone else would want him. But he was lovely and smart, and Castiel could tell that he’d be very strong when his leg healed up.
In a way, they were just alike.
Eventually, he had to push the dog’s head out ofhis lap and get up. He secured all the cages, turned off all of the lights, and started to lock up behind him before he set off home.
It could be said that he didn’t live in the nicest part of town; that would be a lie. He really didn’t live in the nicest part of town. Considering the fact that he didn’t have a car of his own, nor could he even dream of being able to pay for cabs to take him everywhere the subway couldn’t, his situation could look fairly worrisome. Walking around in the part of the city that he resided in had a reputation for being risky. So much that so that Anna had begged him to move in with her and the fellow student she was currently crashing with. “She really wouldn’t mind, Cassie, she took me… and I don’t like to think of you in that part of the city, alone…,” She’d suggested this on more than one occasion. But Cas always turned her down. It was principle really, and there wasn’t really any space for him, and he really didn’t think he could bear to be a burden.
He didn’t mind where he lived, really. It was nice enough, better than anyone said he would ever get on his own. (Though that really wasn’t saying much, considering they said he’d get exactly this: nothing.) It was just a location, and yeah, he’d seen a couple of shady guys around street corners, and yeah, they’d made him a bit nervous. Maybe more than a bit, but he could usually shuffle past without drawing too much attention to himself. As long as he let them be, nothing ever happened. Besides, he liked walking through the city, even the bad parts - seeing all the interesting people, the architecture, and the sheer size of everything. He was definitely being naïve, but it didn’t really irk him. And it didn’t really irk him that he would never be able to afford a place closer to where he studied. And it was really only risky to be out alone in the middle of the night anyway, and he only had to do that on those rare instances where he took a late shift, which he didn’t do often, with school and all. He just kept his head down, which was something he’d been trained to do his entire life. Hadn’t ever been a problem.
And it really was a fairly good deal – the apartment had a bathroom and a bedroom, and the water almost always was at least lukewarm.
He glanced around the ever-bustling street as he pulled an unassuming silver key from the lock, stuffing it into the pocket of his jacket. He stood for a minute, blinking, before he set off from the small business and in the direction of his apartment. Trusting his feet to take him home on the well-treaded route, he winded through the crowds with practiced ease. A slight breeze quietly ruffled his hair as he strolled, and a tune filled his head. He didn’t have class in the morning, so he’d be free to sleep in. Hopefully it would be one of his better nights. He could watch a movie on his busted-up old TV, and maybe get some work done on the paper due next week… Anna did have a point, Castiel had a surprisingly vicious number of essays to write, but it could be peaceful. He could sit drinking tea and smirking at old soaps. Yes - Actually, he’d recently acquired the hobby of blending his own tea. Sometimes it didn’t turn out, and he was left with a depressing cup of subtly-mint-flavored water boiled on the stove, but he was getting better. The last one had actually tasted pretty good. It had made him feel considerably accomplished, too.
He supposed there was probably symbolism behind that, but it wasn’t something he wanted to dwell on. He would much rather not think, and just do - go about living in his own comfortable freedom. He didn’t need to question everything, even if not everything he saw fell into the category of ‘things that Castiel can understand [may God help him this list is fucking microscopic]’. He thought of himself as content. And because such a fact was subjective, Castiel thought… well, he was happy. About to burst with joy in comparison to years past.
He was being quite the philosopher, as always.
He gradually faltered in his walking, sensing something different. The air felt suddenly stagnant, somehow, reminding him of small closets and stuffy cabinets. He shook his head and looked up blearily, sniffing at the air, head swiveling to look at an abandoned construction zone as he walked past. He stared at it. Rusty framing and rotted wood stared back. Curiosity wormed its way into the front of his mind, because it wasn’t as if it was the best place to start a renovation. Whatever had been there before must have not have been all that noteworthy, because, try as he might, he couldn’t remember.
It might’ve been a club of some sort; he would steer clear of anything like that on impulse. Too many nagging fears resided in the back of his mind for him to even try his hand at ‘clubbing’; whatever that entailed. A chilled expression reigned his features at the thought, and he walked on.
Adrenaline and a strange sort of exhilaration went hand in hand with the world after nightfall. You could feel suddenly, rushingly alive. Or, you could cower at every shadow you crawled past, abruptly feeling the openness and the unfathomableness of the world. You were left in thought. Exposed. Just as sure as the fact that it was late at night was the fact that the night put everyone it touched, with its pitch tendrils and its cool breath, on edge.
Castiel turned his head and spotted a dog, his limbs skinny and ribs clearly made out underneath his skin. Worse off than any of the animals at the shelter as it was, he didn’t give much back-up to his initial thought of taking it there. It barked once, twice and then turned its head to meet the eyes of its spectator. The animal searched for a click of its feet against the pavement, then spied Castiel, and a low-toned growl escaped its snarling lips. Cas gulped.
The buildings that he passed started to get shabbier around him, cluing him in to the fact that he was nearing his destination. Though the fact that everything here was less funded and or taken care of than the center of the city was didn’t automatically mean it wasn’t the safest part of town. (There were signs much less noticeable than that, and some even more blatantly obvious.)
Really, any trouble that happened in this part of town had nothing to do with the prosperity or even the niceness of the inhabitants. It was fairly simple: the police were mostly doing their business over there, in the huge cluster of gleaming skyscrapers that both Miltons admired so much, and were very rarely taking trips over here. Quiet would welcome you if you kept your mouth shut and your nose clean, and nobody saw any reason to draw attention to themselves by ratting out anyone or anything they saw to police - who weren’t even there anyway; whether the person be caught in a compromising situation (or position), or just doing something unashamedly against-the-law. Anyone with anything to hide licked their lips at this kind of situation, and that was why where Castiel currently roomed could be considered ‘dangerous’. But hey, the rent’s dirt cheap, despite the drips and the shabby electric and the holey carpet and the mold growing in the shower which accompanied it all like shit-flavored icing on the cake.
Whatever.
He could look back and chuckle at what disrupted his thoughts, then. It was undeniably ironic – and a little funny, too, if you had a somewhat dry sense of humor.
As Castiel rounded another corner, he was immediately confronted with the scuffles and shouts of a fight, distant but discernable over the sharp sounds of the dark. They seemed to die out as he noticed them, though, and he allowed himself to be relieved for about two seconds; but his ears instantly perked up, making out a mute, wounded groan in the gloom. Probably coming from one of the narrow alleys between the buildings, he thought, because there was nothing to be seen from glancing down the street as he walked. And it was very reasonable that the moan would have a source, unless he was finally going insane. (In all truthfulness, he’d been waiting for the moment when his mind finally snapped - broke open like a fragile little egg or a beaten piñata - for years. It just hadn’t happened yet.) As he glanced round the edifices, pondering, another sound attracted his attention. This time it was a chorus of laughter, sluggishly chiming along among wind and car horns. It was louder than the moan had been, and Castiel turned his head to see where it was coming from. Instead, he heard another punching-like sound, muffled but evident. He buried his head into his coat, frowning.
Well, there was no doubt that it was the sounds of a brawl. He wished he could just block it all out; he knew that if he started to think about it – really think, not just try to ignore whatever he heard – he’d get involved. Just because he couldn’t bear to know that he’d strolled by and let it happen. That was his problem, Michael had “explained” to him once, and Cas could recall the scene in an instant: he on the couch, rigid-backed and pale, and his elder brother towering over him with a snarl plastered over his usually impassive features. He had been shaking with terror, and Michael might’ve been doing the same thing, although in his case, it was an effect of his boiling temper.
“Why can’t you just let it be, boy? Your disobedience will lead you to Hell. You don’t have the right to control anything, and those matters are nothing to concern yourself with! It will lead your faith to waver, and I will,” Michael’s voice had dropped dangerously low, “I will make sure you get what you need to never let that happen.” And he could remember cowering, falling in on himself and breaking eye contact, head down; and he wasn’t supposed to look away, he knew that, Michael knew that, yet he had, and he could feel his brother’s hands on his chin, wrenching it upwards so that he would face him again, and Castiel’s face was streaming with tears that he shouldn’t have let come – why had he let them come? - and then his voice had dropped again, his eyes steely and glinting in that way they always did before, and he was telling Castiel to get on his knees and Cas was crying –
He didn’t know why he hadn’t noticed it before, but it was like the street around him was a constant strobe of light, (or lack thereof), and his chest was tightening uncomfortably, (and was he dying?) his heart was giving out and he couldn’t breathe - He rubbed his eyes, hard, so hard that he could see black spots dancing in his realm of vision.
Some part of him, somewhere inside his head, reached out and pulled him back to where he was. Which wasn’t anywhere with Michael or anyone else. It was like drowning and calling for help, only to realize that the pool was empty and you were shouting for something that could easily sound like no reason at all. He thought about his breathing, concentrating on the smooth in and out and his gasps of air had started to become full and quiet again and his chest was loosening, like a heavy weight had been lifted off of it.