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It’s a glass of wine that tips him over the edge. Just wine. Nothing special about it, except it’s sitting right there on the table, undrunk, with the deep ruby red of the liquid shining darkly in the glass. Who the fuck thought a black wine glass was a good idea, he can’t say.
He watched Rowena pour that wine three hours ago, setting it on the table with a flourish, and he watched Cas look at it with a crease across his brow.
The wine is still there. Cas isn’t.
Sam looks up from a book as Dean crosses the room and picks up the glass.
“Everything okay?” Sam asks.
“Where’s Cas?” Dean asks.
He tilts the glass, watches the wine as the black moves around it. He’s never been possessed, not in the same way Sam’s been possessed, or in the same way Cas has been possessed. Sure, he’s been controlled. That creature back on Bobby’s old case took him over for a span. But it’s not the same as when Sam held Meg, or Gadreel. Or Lucifer. Those were for longer, those did more damage.
He wonders what it felt like, to be the vessel around them.
Must be even weirder for Cas. He can’t decide if Cas is the wine or the glass in this metaphor.
Sam’s staring at him, but he hasn’t answered.
“Well?” Dean says. “You gonna tell me, or is this some kind of guessing game?”
“I don’t know,” Sam says. “I went to get a coffee and when I cam back he was gone.”
“And, what, you figured we’d spent so much time with him lately you should give him his space?”
Sam closes the books and stands, his expression careful. He doesn’t come any closer, but the added height makes the distance between them shrink.
“Dean, Cas chose to say ‘Yes’ to Lucifer. He did it to be a part in the fight. He hasn’t just been off…backpacking round Europe.”
“No, he’s been burning up under Lucifer,” Dean says, knowing he sounds angry. Not caring. “You think he’s in a fit state to wander off now? Or is it okay with you as long as it’s for the greater good?”
“That’s not fair,” Sam says.
And Dean knows it isn’t. At least, he can’t throw that at Sam as though Sam’s got no love for Cas. But Sam and Cas both are far too ready to throw themselves on the grenade, without telling Dean. And Sam just…accepted that Cas had chosen. Just like that.
Dean still isn’t sure if it bothers him that Sam was right about Cas’ choice, or just that Sam was right about Cas when Dean wasn’t.
He takes a sip of the wine. It’s stronger than he expected, richer.
“He’s not going to have gone far,” Sam says, and there’s only a faint curl of impatience in his words. Mostly, it’s sympathy, something Dean’s got far too used to hearing over the last few months.
The second sip goes down easier, and he thinks he might even taste some of those berries Rowena was harping on about.
“I’m sure Chuck knows where he is. You could go and ask him. Maybe they’re talking.”
“Cas and God,” Dean says. He isn’t sure what he means by that.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Suppose he tracked God down eventually. More or less.”
“He say anything to you about how he’s dealing with that?”
Cas certainly hasn’t said anything to Dean about it. He hasn’t said much of anything to Dean at all. Back at that warehouse, with Chuck out cold on the floor and Sam and Dean both knocked back, Cas came to and struggled to his feet before anyone could help him. He barely met Dean’s eyes as they got Chuck out to the car, and Dean’s pretty sure Cas got the doors so he could avoid touching his dad.
“Not a thing,” Sam says. “But it’s not really our business.”
“It’s not?” Dean asks. “Does Cas even know for sure Chuck brought him back all those times? Or that it was to help us?”
The third sip of wine doesn’t wash away the taste of bile in his mouth at that thought, at the realization that Cas’ own father didn’t even care enough to bring him back for Cas’ own sake, or because he approved of Cas. No. Chuck brought Cas back to benefit Dean and Sam, and that was so they could be the fucking firewall for humanity.
Dean once said he’d punch God in the face, and he still isn’t sure why he hasn’t gotten around to making good on that promise. Maybe that’s the thing that doesn’t feel like his place.
Sam doesn’t bother replying this time. He just looks at Dean, steady and soft, and a little bit frustrated, and Dean shakes his head and turns.
“Fine. I’m gonna find Cas. He’s been out of our sight for at least thirty minutes. Dude’s probably agreed to explode himself to save a puppy.”
He takes the wine with him.
******************************
Castiel finds solace in the soft dark of the night. Up here on the Bunker’s roof, he can see for miles, can feel the air currents against his vessel’s skin. Feeling the breeze ruffle his hair is pleasant. Calming.
He needs calming. He needs something.
Saying ‘Yes’ was hard, but hearing it was essentially for nothing is harder.
And all that time he spent looking for his father, only to find he’d met him, spoken with him…made his first grand gesture of defiance in front of him, making it up as they went…
Oh, it wasn’t the very first act. He isn’t sure what counts as the first act. Using his own father as bait to thwart Heaven’s plans, using Chuck the prophet to scare Lilith from Sam, seems a far larger transgression now he knows who Chuck really is.
But…Chuck must have known what was happening. He must have. And he didn’t stop it.
There are so many things Chuck could have stopped. Changed.
“Are you planning on staying up here all night?”
Chuck’s human voice is gentle. Castiel hears the harmonics beneath it, hears the throb and thrum of a power so vast it can’t be seen. He knows it’s only the edges, that Chuck is tamping most of it down, and it’s still a lot more than he sensed before.
“I haven’t decided,” Castiel says.
He hears Chuck move, the scrape of shoes on concrete and the rustle of fabric seeming wrong. Wrong because it’s just too mundane, too human, and Castiel still has trouble sorting through how he feels about how very normal human things have become to him. God shouldn’t be human. God should be…
He isn’t even sure he knows what God should be, but not play-acting a prophet while Castiel searched for him, begged for him.
“Why did you do it?” Castiel asks.
Chuck’s movements stop, closer but still behind Castiel. There’s a pause before he answers.
“Why did I do what, Son?”
Now he’s faced with the chance to ask, Castiel isn’t sure which hurt to list first. Why did he leave Heaven, why did he let the Apocalypse start, why did he let so much suffering take place? Why did he keep forcing Castiel to come back.
Chuck moves again when Castiel doesn’t answer, and he settles himself on the roof a few feet away, cross-legged and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He sounds for all the world as though he’s just an ordinary father having a soothing talk with a wayward son.
“I suppose you feel upset, that I left you to find your own way.”
“No,” Castiel says, and has a moment to see Chuck blink. “You didn’t leave me to find my way. You left me, left all of us, to try to keep to your way. And we failed. And we were punished for it.”
“My way?” Chuck asks, and he sounds surprised. “I never said you had to keep doing things my way. And most of what the Host did after I left, that wasn’t my way. You thought of that yourselves. You know, I understand it must be hard to accept your own-”
“I accept my own actions, and what they caused,” Castiel cuts in.
His heart hammers in his chest, and that’s enough to make him feel sick. When he first took this vessel, the heart beat steadily, some functional part of the human he wore with no link to Castiel himself. Now it speeds up when he interrupts Chuck. Interrupts God.
“Then, I don’t see-”
“I take responsibility. I accept the guilt. The penance,” Castiel says. “What about you?”
“Me? Castiel…”
Chuck trails off, and it occurs to Castiel that he should revel, should rejoice and sing and express his awe at hearing his own name from God’s lips. It’s a cosmic event, and it leaves him feeling nothing but irritation.
“Yes, you.” He turns his head to see Chuck better, and feels his right hand curl where it lies on his lap. “You locked away your sister. You locked away your favourite son. You locked away Leviathan and abandoned Heaven and left us to unlock all of those boxes because we didn’t know what we were getting into.”
For the fist time since waking to find Lucifer gone, Castiel sees anger flash in Chuck’s eyes.
“You should have left well enough alone,” Chuck says. “And you opened those boxes, Castiel. You helped push Sam into Ruby’s plan, you failed to get Dean there quickly enough to stop it. You opened Purgatory and made Rowena cast the spell to remove the Mark. Perhaps you’re the one I should have locked away.”
“You should have left me dead.”
The night air is colder, now, and the whole space rings with the echoes of Castiel’s words. He stares at Chuck, and God stares back.
“I’ve given you special favor,” Chuck says at last, “and you’re saying I shouldn’t have? I thought you were the angel who went searching for me, who believed finding me was his mission.”
“I’m the angel who realised you’d turned your back on us all,” Castiel says. He doesn’t think he could keep the bitterness from his voice if he tried. He doesn’t try. “Even now, this grand return, is only showing me how often you could have stepped in and didn’t.”
“Hands on parenting isn’t-”
“Don’t bother,” Castiel says. “I heard your talks with Lucifer. He brought me further to the surface. I don’t know why. Maybe he wanted a witness who’d actually know what it meant to speak with you. And I heard your justifications, your excuses. And they don’t matter.”
“I’m the Lord,” Chuck says, “I’m your father. And I have to consider the bigger picture. All of my creations need to find their own way, or else I’m taking away Free Will. I thought you, of all the angels, believed in Free Will.”
“Free Will?” Castiel asks. It twists something in his gut. “I didn’t rebel for Free Will. I rebelled because I loved humanity, and I didn’t think it deserved to be destroyed. And yes, I came to value Free Will, to fight for it, but I’ve had time to think, and if you truly think you gifted any of us with Free Will, then you are far from as all-knowing as your reputation claims.”
A corner of Chuck’s mouth twitches up, as though he’s amused at the ramblings and tantrums of a child, and Castiel feels his jaw clench.
“I think I know my own creations,” Chuck says. “You have the ability to choose.”
“Even the angels?” Castiel asks.
“Of course the angels,” Chuck says, and his expression screams that he expects this to be a breakthrough, that Castiel will thank him and be grateful. “All of my children.”
“Except the ones you locked up,” Castiel says. “Except that the rest of us have been controlled and conditioned and punished for feeling anything not sanctioned, for doubting or acting against orders. Yes, I chose to rebel. I exercised my Will. But it can’t really be called Free.”
Chuck opens his mouth, and Castiel carries on over him. He’s had more than time enough to think this through.
“Naomi reached into my mind and wiped my memories. She made me her puppet, and she did it because she believed it was fixing me. Fixing Heaven. Why would she think that? Where did that belief come from? And why didn’t you stop it? No. No, you can’t tell me stepping back preserved our freedom to choose, not when so many of us have been denied choice, even over our own thoughts.”
“It’s still Free Will,” Chuck says, and he sounds sad, as though Castiel’s failure to grasp the concept is a disappointment, as though he pities Castiel.
“There’s Free and there’s Free,” Castiel says. “So much of what I have done, I felt I had to do, and even when I’ve looked back and felt sorry for it and tried to think how it could have been different, there are so few options. I have spent so much time regretting my actions, feeling I deserve to pay, that I deserve death, and you didn’t even let me have that. That is not Free Will.”
“You’re suicidal,” Chuck says. “That’s not Free Will. That’s depression.”
“That’s the result of being controlled and manipulated and forced into corners I’ve had to kill my way out of,” Castiel says, and something in him loosens at the words. His guilt doesn’t vanish, but it may sit a little less heavily on him. “And I’m not blaming anyone else for the choices I made. But there’s a difference between making a bloody choice in a universe with no good way out, and making that choice while someone who could make it unnecessary chooses to sit back and let it all unravel.”
His voice has grown louder and his words spill out faster as he nears the end of that last sentence. Sitting on the roof isn’t calming anymore. Castiel pushes to his feet and glares down at Chuck, who stands too.
It didn’t seem so dark even a few minutes ago. Castiel tells himself that most of the darkness isn’t really clustered around Chuck. He knows he’s wrong.
“You had a choice, and you chose to let us suffer. You chose to watch us spiral into worse and worse states.” And he knows that by ‘us’, he means himself. It’s selfish and unheroic and he doesn’t care. He’s past being able to care. “You can lie to me, too, if you want. Tell me I was really your favourite. That you brought me back out of…out of love, or to save Dean, because you know that’ll matter to me, or whatever other crap you want. But I never deserved what you’ve let me be put through. None of us did. Not even Lucifer.”
“Castiel, that is enough.” Chuck’s calm, or seems calm, but it’s the calm of the ocean before a deep swell drowns everything, wine-dark and deadly. “Free Will doesn’t mean having every choice available to you. It means being able to choose with what you have. I didn’t take that away from you, and you could have chosen differently.”
“Fine. So I screwed up. I know that.” Cas says. Almost shouts. “I’m not asking you to wipe that away. You need to leave humanity to itself. Let them choose. We’ll ignore the hunger and the pain and the limited choices of all those who don’t have enough money, something you’ve never had to worry about, because you’ve never been human. You’ve just played human.”
“You were never human, either,” Chuck says. “Even without your Grace, you will never be human.”
“I know!”
He was never human, no. No angel could be. But he breathed and he hungered and he felt exhaustion eating into his bones, and he was as close as he could be without having torn out his own Grace and followed Anna’s path. And even Anna was never truly human, of course, but she didn’t have her angelic memories and thought patterns making it so hard to learn the currents of humanity.
“You need to accept that I can’t step in and solve your problems,” Chuck says.
“Then you shouldn’t have stepped in at all.”
He certainly never thought he’d be here, snarling at God on a rooftop in Kansas, with the stars above them so distant.
“Which is it, Seraph?” Chuck asks, and he’s barely Chuck now. Castiel’s vessel towers over him, but God is infinite, no matter that he’s wearing sneakers and a hoodie he’s clearly stolen from Dean. “Are you mad at me for leaving you to make your own choices, or for helping you?”
Castiel takes a dangerous step towards God, some of his old righteous wrath lending him a strength he never thought he’d have.
“You didn’t help me,” he says. “You damned me. And you can’t give speeches about having to leave us alone and then tug on our strings when it suits you. You’re God. You’re the Almighty. But you screwed up as much as any of us, so you don’t get to preach at me like you’re better than them.”
The next part climbs up his throat, spiked and slimy and writhing.
“You aren’t better than me.”
God’s eyes widen and Castiel’s strength leaves him. He steps back, slumps, tries to calm his breathing. Losing his Grace stripped away the cushion between his True Self and his vessel, and he’s never managed to bring it back.
“Better?” God asks.
Castiel doesn’t know what he expects to happen. For God to smite him, maybe. Maybe that’s what he’s hoping for.
“If you truly wanted us to have Free Will, you should never have let us know you existed,” Castiel says. “Leaving wasn’t to give us Free Will. It was washing your hands of your burden, your responsibility. And even then, if you’d just…just left… But you didn’t. You interfered.”
He’s already said this, but it cuts at him, the fact God only manifested his Will a handful of times, and how those included denying Castiel an end. He could have coped so much better with making those choices if he hadn’t had to deal with the pain afterward.
“I’m not going to apologize,” God says.
“You wouldn’t mean it if you did,” Castiel tells him.
And even though he feels the expectation of pain all along his back, he turns and leaves God on the roof. He can stay there forever for all Castiel cares. Above them. Alone.
****************************
Dean finds Cas in his room. Dean’s room. He’s sitting with his head in his hands, almost folded over on himself. He doesn’t move when Dean comes in.
“Hey, man,” Dean says. “You doing okay?”
Stupid question. There’s no way Cas is all right. He hasn’t been all right pretty much any of the time Dean’s known him. At this point, it’s a matter of degree.
Cas shrugs. Shrugs.
Dean frowns, hesitates, and moves to sit beside him, the half-drunk glass of wine in his hand. He clears his throat before he tries again.
“Where’ve you been?”
This time, Cas answers, but it sounds like the word’s been dragged from a long way off, the gap between Dean asking and Cas replying a delay on the line.
“Roof.”
Right. Probably an angel thing, wanting to be high up.
“You, er, you seen Chuck at all?”
Cas stiffens.
“Hey, I get it if you’re feeling…feelings about the guy,” Dean says. “Gotta say, if my dad turned up, I don’t know how I’d handle it.”
“Your dad didn’t drag you back from death to do his dirty work after abandoning you,” Cas says.
Dean’s heard the angel sound bitter before, and he hates it every time.
“Actually, he kinda did.” Dean shifts and glances down at the wine, because looking at what he can see of Cas’ face is too much. “But yeah, not quite the same scale.”
Cas sighs.
“I’m not trying to take away from what you’ve lived through, Dean,” he says. “You should never have had to suffer the way you have.”
Dean looks back up as Cas moves, sitting upright and rubbing both hands over his face. Dean isn’t sure whether Cas’ eyes are brighter than normal, maybe wet. He doesn’t mention it.
“I saw God,” Cas says, his words hammered-lead. “I’m fairly surprised he didn’t smite me.”
“You at least get it all off your chest?” Dean asks, because if Cas has really torn a strip off God then Dean hopes he made a good go of it.
“Some of it,” Cas says.
“How’s that feel?” Dean asks.
The chances of Dean ever getting to have it out with John are slim. Sure, Chuck could zap John back to life, but Dean hasn’t even worked up to asking about Charlie, and he has the feeling Chuck’s going to shoot that one down. As far as Dean can make out, Chuck does things for his own reasons or not at all, and someone else’s happiness isn’t a reason.
“Not sure,” Cas says.
It tugs at Dean, how flat Cas sounds, how defeated.
“Did you punch him in the face?” Dean asks.
“Seemed more your style,” Cas says.
“Yeah, well. Afraid I failed at that one,” Dean says. “I thought I’d be angry, but talking with him just made me…made me sad.”
“I thought I’d have my faith restored,” Cas says quietly.
Dean waits for a beat, but that seems to be all Cas has.
“Yeah,” he says. “Don’t have any of that for you. But I can offer you wine.”
He holds the glass out, feeling foolish as soon as he does so, and watches as Cas drops his hands and turns his head, looking puzzled.
“Rowena poured me that,” he says after a while.
“I drank some,” Dean says, as though Cas might think half the wine vanished some other way. “It’s good.”
“Thank-you.”
Cas reaches out and takes the glass, his fingers long and graceful, and Dean lets go.
“You know, whatever you said to him, whatever he said back, it doesn’t change the fact you’ve spent years cleaning up his messes, and you don’t owe him anything.”
“I haven’t cleaned up anything,” Cas says, but he sounds less certain of that than he could do.
“Yes, you have,” Dean says, and the memory of Lucifer and Chuck talking it out pushes him on. He isn’t going to be beaten by those two dicks. “And you’ve saved me, Cas, more than once. But that isn’t why I’m glad you’re back.”
“It’s not?”
Cas takes a sip of wine and Dean tries not to linger on the way the guy sounded doubtful. Fuck it. If Cas didn’t get any of his faith back from talking to God, the least Dean can do is let Cas know there’s more to his life than being a weapon, or whatever he thought he was doing by saying ‘Yes’.
“No. It’s not.”
“You’re right. It’s good wine,” Cas says.
Dean can’t imagine Cas has a lot to compare it to, but he does recognize a distraction when he hears one. Cas is giving Dean an out, so he doesn’t have to say anything more.
“No. Cas, don’t do this. Don’t try to brush this off. Okay?”
The wine sloshes in the glass as Dean gets hold of Cas’ shoulders and pulls him around, ending up with then both sitting sideways on the bed, each with a leg drawn up. Cas looks faintly surprised. The look grows as Dean leaves one hand on Cas’ right shoulder and slides the other one up to curve around the side of Cas’ face. His little finger grazes Cas’ ear, and it should feel too personal, too intimate, but Dean’s past caring.
“I’m glad you’re back because you are important to me. To Sam, too. But I don’t know what I’d have done if we’d lost you, Cas. I don’t care if you’re ever useful in a fight again. You could sit around and bake cookies all day for all I care. I just need you to be okay, and to be here at least some of the time. I get it if you don’t want to be, if-”
“What?” Cas pulls back, but it’s not enough to make Dean lose his grip. “You think I don’t want to be here?”
Dean opens his mouth and closes it again a couple of times before he can get out a reply.
“You keep leaving.”
“I keep leaving to further a mission. It’s not because I don’t want to be here.”
Cas stumbles a little on the last word, like he was thinking of saying something else.
“Then stay,” Dean says. “If we get through this, and you aren’t to pull any kamikaze stunts without telling me, at least, then come back here and stay. Sam and me, we both want you around.” He takes a breath, unsure about the next part, but he has his hand on Cas’ face, for fuck’s sake. Not like he’s being subtle. “Especially me.”
“You do?”
The note of hope in Cas’ voice might be more heartbreaking than all the rest, that such a small thing sounds to mean so much to him.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “So screw God. He doesn’t get to decide what you’re worth. Hell. I don’t. But for what it’s worth to you, I think you’re important, and I think you’re worth a lot. And now I need that wine back.”
“No,” Cas says.
And he does pull away this time, and he drains the glass.
“You drank all the wine,” Dean says.
“I did.”
There’s not much to say to that.
“Do you want some more?” Dean asks. “Because I do.”
And Cas only makes Dean wait for a little while before he nods and stands and holds out a hand to pull Dean up.
Dean isn’t foolish enough to think that one conversation, one sort-of declaration, will be enough to make up for everything Cas is feeling. It’s not enough to cure all of Dean’s ills. But it’s a start, and it’s a step in the right direction, that they go to get Cas his own wine in his own glass, walking close together down the hall.