Chapter Text
It started with an almond tree.
To be fair to himself, Dean was a little bit drunk at the time.
The Apocalypse was, so far, Dean's least favorite summer vacation destination, and he was including the summer when his dad had taken them all to spend a month with his marine buddy and his mom had spent the entire time in a foul mood over an argument about teaching six-year-old Dean to use a knife. At least then he'd gotten to spend the night in actual beds and had gotten to eat food that wasn't canned or dried or a Hostess snack cake (believe it or not, one can get sick of Hostess snack cakes), and Sammy had only been about two then, and thus far less of a know-it-all.
Also, there had been a distinct lack of earthquakes, floods, and the ever-present shriek of the hoardes of Hell battling the armies of Heaven for eternal dominion over the Earth.
What was left of it, anyway.
Hunkered down in the charred remains of a Home Depot, barricaded behind a wall of potting soil bags that had, miraculously (no, no more miracles, Sammy's voice hissed bitterly) survived the devastation, Dean did his best to ignore Demons Versus Angels Episode One Squillion and looked between his flask and the second Hostess Snoball idly. It might not've seemed like an all-important decision, whiskey or snack cake, but when you were seconds from death it was important to consider what you wanted your untimely end to taste like.
There was another clash of blade on blade, and a few more cement tree planters shattered. Shrugging, Dean shoved the Snoball into his mouth and tipped a healthy dose of whiskey in after it. He felt it was an appropriate symbol of his continued refusal to pick sides in this biblical pissing contest.
Something that sounded an awful lot like a body (and Dean knew all the kinds of sounds bodies made now) hit the stack of potting soil bags, sending half the makeshift wall tumbling around Dean, forcing him to roll out of the way as he struggled to swallow and swear simultaneously, and that was when he saw it.
Still alive, his mind supplied as he peered at the tiny sapling. It was no more than two feet tall, its leaves a bit tattered and a few burnt and crumbling, but it stubbornly clung to life as it forced its way up through a crack in the floor of the Home Depot garden center. A splash of green in a sea of blackened stone and flame.
There was movement close by, the hiss and snarl of a demon and a sort of inaudible humming feeling Dean would have once identified as electricity, except he associated it with angels these days. He didn't bother to look - he'd seen this battle played out thousands of times in the last decade or so - but he could feel them coming closer. In seconds, they'd be right on top of him, and he instantly, instinctively, and possibly a bit drunkenly curled his body around the little plant.
"Watch it, douchebags, we're tryin' to live over here!"
At first, Castiel didn't notice it. Didn't hear the small, weak voice, didn't see the figure hunched over in his path. He'd stopped noticing such insignificant things long ago. It was probable that he wouldn't have stopped in his attack had not the demon he'd been fighting begun to laugh.
He really disliked demons.
It took him a long moment to realize what had caught its attention, briefly taking advantage of the distraction to smite it thoroughly, and as its vile voice faded on the wind, he turned towards the human.
Humans, he thought tiredly, but without malice. Forever getting underfoot. In twelve short years they'd managed to do little more than scatter and scream, and yet they persisted in doing so directly in the line of fire. It was no wonder, he decided, that so many were to foretold to die. They had very little skill for getting out of the way.
He made to leave, already in the process of forgetting the entire incident.
"Y'okay there, buddy?"
Frowning, Castiel peered back at the human again, bewildered for a moment as he believed it had been talking to him.
But no. He saw it was still crouched over, fingers poking at something gently, and it was to that something that he spoke.
"You'd think these all-powerful dicks would be better at watching where they're stomping, right?"
It was a plant. An almond sapling, his memory supplied as he watched the human draw out a knife and dig into the crack from which it grew. The human had placed himself in the middle of a battle between an angel and a demon for the sake of a plant.
"Let's get you somewhere a little safer, huh?"
In the short time since the End of Days had begun, Castiel had seen humans put themselves in the line of fire for many reasons. Reasons he had, in a small, curious part of his mind, found admirable, if not especially wise. Sentimental belongings, homes, their families and friends. He had even borne witness early on to a woman's prayers for her grandmother's garden to be spared.
He did not know if this fell under that category or not. He couldn't even be certain why it had so captured his attention. Perhaps, he pondered as his memory drew up the human's first exclamation, it was simply the incongruity of it all. This battered and defiant human crouched in the ruined shell of what had once been an unremarkable marker of human civilization, rough hands that seemed at home with a knife tenderly saving a life most would find expendable.
'The trees will grow back,' Uriel had said in the beginning, back before Castiel had truly understood the Will of God, before his resolve had strengthened. He had been weak then, mourning His Father's Creation, torn asunder by the hands of not only demons, but by His angels, His most faithful children as well.
He had been confused, complicating that which was truly simple in the end. The trees would grow back. The righteous would be given Paradise. As it was written, so shall it be.
This human, he reasoned, was probably likewise confused, and without the brothers and sisters that Castiel had to show him the true path. Confused creatures clung to the unlikeliest of things.
It was as he thought this, prepared at last to dismiss the encounter and take his leave, that the human looked up into Castiel's eyes.
At first all Castiel saw was green, the very shade of the new leaves of the sapling. Then he saw anger.
No. He saw fury. A purer fury than he'd ever seen before, even in the eyes of his strongest and most admirable brother, Michael. The sort of fury that could only be felt on behalf of another being.
Over a tree.
"What did this little guy ever do to you, dick?"
Castiel paused. "Plants..." He frowned. 'Plants are incapable of malice and therefore unable to sin - I have no quarrel with the tree,' he wanted to say, but then, why should he feel obligated to give this human an explanation? He owed the man nothing.
"What, you don't like plants or something?" Cradling the sapling in one arm like a newborn, the human cupped its roots, glancing around before pinning Castiel with another glare. "I thought this was all God's Creation. Aren't you supposed to be protecting it or whatever?"
'The trees will grow back,' he wanted to say, though he didn't know why. This human was unlikely to understand, anyway.
"I mean, I get humans, we can be pretty fucked up. Not that I'm okay with this shit," the human amended, eyes narrowing as his jaw clenched, "but I get how high-and-mighty assholes like you might think we're worth wiping out. But come on, dude. It's a fucking tree. It never did anything wrong - you can't just let it live in peace?"
Again, the mouth of Castiel's vessel opened of its own volition. He forced it closed, his own face twisting in frustration. He owed this man nothing, he told himself again.
"So, what, all that shit about God being able to feel the death of one sparrow or what-the-fuck-ever, that's all bullshit? One puny oak doesn't count for anything?"
"Almond," Castiel snapped before he could catch himself. "That is an almond tree..."
The human blinked, apparently caught off guard, and Castiel would have been grateful for the reprieve from those angry eyes had he not come to a realization.
An almond tree.
Tilting his head, he moved closer to the human, slowing only slightly when the man didn't so much as flinch. Instead, he looked angrier, one hand dropping from the plant in his arms to drift closer to his knife. Castiel did not stop his advance; even if he could get the blade in hand, even if he could strike fast enough to stab the angel, it would do nothing, and they both knew it.
Somehow, Castiel imagined this human might just stab him anyway. Humans were irrational in that way.
Reaching out, Castiel cupped his hands around the roots of the sapling and allowed his Grace to trickle into it slowly, carefully. He felt every fiber of the tree, inched through every vein, unfurled into each leaf with a care he'd not used in many a century. He could feel the urge in it to put forth fruit and flower, and he could not stop himself from smiling.
Drawing his hands away, he inspected the root ball he'd created. As an afterthought, he willed into being a pot for it as well, and the human's arms tensed further to take the extra weight of it.
"Plant it deep," he instructed, eyes finding the human's. There was no more anger - only a grave sort of consideration. "It will root strongly and produce well."
The human's jaw clenched again, a bit of the anger flaring as though Castiel's words had been a spark falling into dry tinder. "Until one of you bastards razes it to the ground, you mean."
Castiel stepped back. He pondered his words carefully, because he wasn't entirely certain he wanted to speak them aloud. He wasn't certain he even dared to think them. And he really owed this human nothing.
Of all things, though. An almond tree.
"I sincerely hope not," he admitted. Drawing his blade once more, he couldn't stop himself feeling bemused when the human actually pulled out his own knife. "Goodbye," he added absently, mind already turning towards a nearby demon whose presence was crackling bitter against his Grace.
Without another glance at the human, he turned and flew into battle once more.
Dean looked down at the tree as the angel vanished, leaving behind only the sound of fluttering wings. The almond tree, he noted, equal parts irritated, bewildered, and amused. Okay, then.
"Mom's gonna like you," he told it, his thoughts still half wrapped up in the weird angel and its weird actions and weirder words.
It took him a while to find a wheelbarrow that was in good enough shape for the two-mile trek across the wreckage of Lawrence, Kansas. Loading the sapling into it, he rummaged until he unearthed the pruning shears he'd come in for in the first place and tossed them into the wheelbarrow, as well. Bags of jerky from the checkout followed, copper wire, a few other odds and ends. He wasn't sure when he'd be able to come back, or if the crumbling remains of the Home Depot would even still be there when he did.
He wasn't sure of much anymore.
Sighing, he took up the handles of the wheelbarrow and started the slow, tedious, and occasionally life-threatening journey home.
Sammy was gonna love this.