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He lands in fog.
It’s fitting, he supposes, considering the state he’s in. Everything’s been foggy, indistinct, for a long while now. He used to have a different definition of a ‘long while’, but it’s shrunk, compacted, over the last years. Now, a few months seems almost forever.
The same is true of distance.
He’s in some sort of field, and it takes far longer to reach the wall than feels right.
It doesn’t help that he’s dizzy on his feet, and it occurs to him this is the first time he’s been banished without wings. He isn’t even sure how that works. The other times he was banished, he felt the drag against each wing, billowing them out, sails of stretched night, and tearing him from his place in space-time. He was told the sigil worked on the wings. Now, his ragged remnants can’t so much as move him a foot, so that’s another piece of Angelic knowledge which has proved to be flawed.
He’s lost count on that front, something else which should be impossible but isn’t.
The wall, when he reaches it, is stone-grey and damp, coated in the residue of fog. His skin is cold where he sets his hand to the wall for balance. Or for comfort. It’s strange how comforting it is to feel something solid under his palm.
Dean felt solid, when Castiel hugged him.
But there’s no sense in dwelling on that. He’s still a solider, after his fashion, and he knows the importance of moving forward. Moving forward doesn’t bog you down. Not the way looking back does.
The full press of all the things he could look back on are a tidal wave waiting to swamp his mind, and he can’t afford that. He can’t.
Dean gave him a task.
Beyond the wall lies only darkness, with no sign of which way he should go or where he is, and that’s another change taking some getting used to. He used to know his exact location, always, and be able to change that at will. Now he doesn’t know where he is or how to move from there to where he needs to be.
He should be used to it, perhaps, after his time spent human. But he isn’t. He thinks maybe it’s something not even humans are used to, given how they complain. Complaining seems to be a part of the human condition, just like getting lost is, and forming into groups is, and making stories out of everything is, even if they’re false and flawed and close to lies.
Standing slumped next to a wall isn’t an option, long-term. He needs to move. He climbs the wall and finds himself standing on a grass verge, the darker, flatter surface of a road a foot or so away. There’s no sound of traffic.
Turning right, because it’s as good a direction as any other, he sets off.
************************************
Lucifer ditched Castiel’s phone at some point, or lost it, or it was broken by Amara. Castiel isn’t sure. He does know he can’t find it in any of his pockets, and it bothers him that it took so long to even remember to look.
When he first came to Earth, it would have been understandable, that he wouldn’t think to pull out a piece of plastic and metal to find out the time or his location or to reach out to another. It took a while to become habit, the fact he needed any such device to speak to Dean, or to Sam. Now, it irritates him that he didn’t think of it at once, and it worries him his phone is gone.
Hazy lights in the distance, smeared red and yellow in the fog, pull him on. If those are from a town or a gas station or a diner, he can find a pay-phone. He hasn’t any money, but one problem at a time.
The smeared colours coalesce, drops of oil in water sliding backwards into solid shapes, and he finds himself standing on the edge of a town. Maybe a town. He might need a smaller word.
The nearest building to him, the one he can make out almost clearly, is a squat thing of white walls and small windows, with a roof of deep grey slate. One window spills yellow into the night, and it hurts, to see such a sign of warmth and not be a part of it.
A selfish feeling: Castiel pushes it aside.
He makes it past several more buildings, some of red brick and some of white walls and some of grey stone, before he finds himself in front of a building with a swinging sign outside. The Green Man. It must be some sort of bar.
This building has red lights and blue lights and yellow lights running along the eaves, larger versions of the sort of thing Castiel has seen on houses at Christmas, and the garish display jars with the mist and the stone houses and the feeling of dislocation. Now he stops to listen, noise fills the space inside, and where there are people there will be phones.
He’s hit with the smell of alcohol when he steps inside, the noise level rising so it’s hard to hear one voice in the crowd, and his attention’s caught by a young woman throwing her head back and laughing. She’s standing by the bar, another woman next to her, and both of them look relaxed, look happy.
Dean did that. Dean saved these women, and they don’t even know.
“You all right, love?” a voice asks, and Castiel turns to find a short woman standing behind him, one hand folded around a bill that doesn’t look the right colour. “Bit crowded in here tonight, isn’t it?”
“Um. Yes.”
He glances away, scanning the room for a pay-phone, and doesn’t see one.
“You meeting friends?” she asks.
Castiel looks back and sees her peering up at him. She’s made no effort to get by him.
“No,” he says. “I need to call someone.”
“Oh,” she says, nodding and patting his arm. He doesn’t flinch. “Like that, is it? Ditched you? Some people can be right bastards, can’t they? Well, I think you’ll be heard better if you ring from outside, pet.”
“I don’t have a phone,” he says.
“You don’t-?” She frowns and tilts her head, and her light curls fall over one eye. “Don’t tell me they nicked it. I’ll never understand the way some people go on.”
Before Castiel can ask her what she thinks has happened, she grasps his sleeve and tugs him in the direction of the door.
“Tell you what,” she says over her shoulder, “you can borrow mine if you don’t take too long. I’ve got some minutes spare. You’re not calling far, are you? You don’t sound local.”
He isn’t sure how to answer that. For one thing, it’s occurring to him that this woman isn’t American, and he’s seen houses like this before, when searching for his father all those years ago.
“This is England,” he says, and it comes out too loud as they step through into the night air.
“I hope so,” she says, sounding amused, “or I’ve got a long way to walk to work in the morning. Who are you phoning?”
“My…” He stops, thinks back to his last real conversation with Dean. The memory stabs, and he folds it away quickly. “My brother.”
He doesn’t tell her he needs to call Kansas.
“That’s good,” she says, handing him her phone. “Family needs to stick together. God knows what I’d do without my Sandra. She’s younger than me and I’m always having to bail her out of sticky situations, but she’s there for me when I need her. You know?”
He can’t honestly answer that one, either. Sam and Dean have both been there for him. At times. As Dean said, they can become wrapped up in their own issues, but Castiel understands. He’s told himself often enough he understands. Right now, he understands Sam has been left alone with a strange woman dripping blood.
“I hope Sam’s situation isn’t…sticky,” he says, and makes the call.
His new friend pats him on the arm when it goes to voice-mail five times.
******************************************
He’s never stayed in a B&B before, and it’s just lucky he has a credit card on him, one Dean slipped him a while back which he didn’t need at the time.
The room he’s in is small and it has no kitchen area. Instead, there’s a jug kettle on a shelf, with a ceramic box containing teabags and sachets of instant coffee. He’s been assured there’ll be a bus by in the morning, which can take him to the nearest town.
For a fleeting moment, he considers using the banishing sigil himself, just to see if it takes him somewhere in the States, or at least on the same landmass as the States. He’s travelled on buses, but only that once by plane, when Dean sent him away to research the Darkness. He didn’t enjoy it.
He also doesn’t have a passport. These concerns seem…pointless, and it bugs him that he has to think of this at all. Humans seem like meat and souls and thoughts, but to be a human requires a nest of paper and he hasn’t got enough of it. Scraping by as Steve was hard, and he knows getting back to America from England is going to require more forging than he can manage.
There’s a phone on the bedside table and he sits and looks at it. Perhaps Sam will answer this time, and perhaps he won’t. Castiel uncurls his fingers and reaches out. If Sam doesn’t answer, he doesn’t know who else he can call.
Claire, maybe, or Jodie. They might know a way to help him get back. He doesn’t want to bring them trouble, so he’ll think of other options first. Perhaps he can call on Heaven, and they might even answer his prayers, but they were locking up the last time he checked and he doesn’t know of any doorway to Heaven in England. The people he knew when he was human, Nora and a few others from work, are out of the question. He didn’t go to them when his stolen Grace was burning up, and he won’t take this to them now. Not that such civilians would know how to fix his current problems.
He tries Sam again. It goes to voice-mail.
He needs to reach Sam. Dean told him to look after Sam, to be there for him, and Castiel doesn’t even know what that woman was there for, or who she is. He’s stuck on the other side of an ocean and no help to Sam at all.
Dean would be disappointed.
Without quite meaning to, he finds he’s dialed Dean’s number. It’s comforting, even though there’s no point to it, not now Dean’s gone. The sense of longing still lodges under Castiel’s breastbone, but that’s likely a sense memory. That pain lasted all the way through being human, too, when it couldn’t have been anything but in his mind.
The phone rings, and he closes his eyes.
He’s the other side of the ocean, without Dean, away from Sam, failing in this last mission Dean will ever set-
“Hey.”
He sits in silence, the greeting echoing round his skull. It’s hard to breath suddenly and tears prick at the corners of his eyes.
“Hey,” the voice says again, gruff and warm and welcome. “Who is this?”
“Dean?” Castiel says.
It can’t be. He’s imagining things. The soul bomb will have obliterated everything nearby.
“Cas? Cas, that you?” The chuckle sounds out of place, and not just because its owner is meant to be dead. “Man, you are not going to believe what I’ve got to tell you. What number are you calling from? It’s some weird string of digits.”
“I’m in England,” Castiel says.
“You what now?”
Dean still sounds upbeat, almost jubilant, and Castiel is relatively certain his words haven’t really gone in.
“I’m in England. Dean, I’m pleased you’re alive, but there was a woman in the Bunker, and she banished me. Have you spoken with Sam?”
“A woman? The Bunker?”
Castiel can practically see Dean’s smile fade as he catches on.
“Yes. And I’ve tried calling Sam, but it’s gone to voice-mail. Dean, I don’t know-”
“Hang on,” Dean says.
Castiel hears talking in the background, Dean’s voice and a woman’s. He can’t make out what’s being said.
“Hey, you still there?” Dean asks a minute later. He goes on without pausing. Of course Castiel is there. Dean commented on it himself, on that drive they took to nowhere. “Listen, we’re in Lawrence. We’ll find a car and get up to the Bunker. You somewhere safe?”
Castiel reassures Dean he’s safe, and doesn’t comment on how…floral everything is. It doesn’t seem pertinent, though he finds it less calming than he would real flowers. Dean needs to get off the phone and back to the Bunker.
He passes the time as he waits for Dean to call again by sampling each of the drinks on the tray. The coffee is bitter and somehow flavorless, and the tea is stronger than he was expecting. The chamomile is soothing, and he makes a second cup of that.
It’s close to dawn when Dean finally calls him, the fog from the night before lifting to reveal fields of green stalks and a wood in the distance, and he answers before the phone can manage a second ring.
“Dean,” he says. It can’t be anyone else.
“Sam’s gone,” Dean says. “That woman’s taken him. But I think we have a lead.”
“How can I get back to meet you?” Castiel asks.
Dean snorts.
“Yeah, don’t worry about that, Cas. Looks like Mom and I-”
“Mom? Your…your mom?”
Dean says it so casually, as though Mary Winchester hasn’t been dead for most of Dean’s life.
“Yeah. Mom’s back. Parting gift from Amara. I’ll fill you in later,” Dean says, and now Castiel can make out a woman’s voice on the other end of the line, sounding like she’s saying something in passing. “Mom says hi. Don’t think she’s sold on the angel thing, but I’ll fill her in on you on the way.”
“The way?” Castiel asks. He feels a little like he did when the banishing sigil hit him, disorientated and like his feet aren’t touching the ground. Dean was dead, but he isn’t, and his mom’s back, and there’s a trip but Castiel isn’t to go back to the States. “The way to where?”
“To England,” Dean says. “That’s where this mysterious woman’s taken Sam. Cas, you just sit tight. Mom and I are coming to you.”