Chapter Text
One of the first things Castiel learned about Earth was that time passed differently there than in Heaven. Nobody thought to mention this before he set foot on the grass that he used to watch grow tall with the blink of an eye but now barely shifted as hours passed. Castiel's initial moments walking among humans were spent marveling at the feeling of being trapped in a frozen moment, the clouds crawling across the sky and the sun moving nearly imperceptively.
Castiel had lived for billions of years, but the few he had spent on Earth took up so much more space in his memory than they had any right to. He found himself calling a group of humans "family," despite the fact that the time he had known them was an infinitesimal fraction of his total existence. And yet, it seemed like eons longer than that.
Unfortunately, a brief stint on Earth here and there over the centuries did nothing to prepare him for his biggest mission of all: rescuing the Righteous Man from Hell. For forty agonizing years, Castiel hid from and fought through hordes of demons in their home territory. The Man’s screams guided him within the Pit, until one day, they stopped, and their absence made the endless tomb tremble. Castiel was the only one out of over a dozen angels to survive the first three decades (and wasn't that a shock afterwards, to discover that more angels had died in mere months than in the millennia since Lucifer fell). He was the only angel who wasn't crushed or lost in the debris from walls that began to crumble as Hell itself shook and the first seal was broken.
Perhaps the others only died because their dwindling hope of escaping was finally snuffed out in the wake of Hell's silent war horn stirring its occupants up into a frenzy. Castiel, on the other hand, saw a bright light amidst all the darkness; it guided him to his charge. He was slightly delirious at the time, believing that God had come down to rescue him, before remembering that he was supposed to be the rescuer of this flickering beacon.
The demons watching over the Righteous Man were no fools. They moved him around Hell to fend off anyone trying to get a taste of the fabled Apocalypse's harbinger. Castiel hoped to reach him while they were still near the surface, where the barrier between Hell and Earth would be the easiest and quickest to break through with his charge in hand, but he had no such luck. Alastair and his lackeys dragged the Righteous Man deeper and deeper into Hell, aiming to lose the feeble little angel in the crowd. Despite the demons' best efforts, Castiel never broke the connection, even when the light was reduced to no more than a pinprick amidst a sea of horror.
Castiel finally found the Righteous Man after ten years of fighting alone. By then, he'd been reduced to repeating his mission of rescuing the Man like a mantra. He said nothing else as he sliced through the guards and muttered no curses when Alastair escaped. He didn't gasp in horror as the Righteous Man pierced a soul's heart with their own sharpened fear of abandonment. He simply appeared before his charge, pulled him close, and propelled them both upward.
The effort made his wings burn, and his charge struggled in his grip with an animalistic fear exhibited only by someone still miraculously clinging to their humanity. Even as the Righteous Man kicked and screamed, begging to be left behind, he gave Castiel hope.