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Dean Winchester is a good man.
This is something Castiel often needs to remind himself of. Residing in a vessel for too long risks giving an angel a myopic perspective on the world. It overprivileges what’s right in front of you. But in the broad, universe-shaped scheme of things, Dean Winchester is a good man. Probably.
“Better woman, though,” says Dean. “Call me Baywatch Barbie—found you a kickboard.”
Dean hurls a piece of brightly colored foam into the water. It lands with an inelegant smack, though any ripples are lost in the already-flinty, uninviting chop of the lake surface.
Castiel doesn’t know what a ‘kickboard’ is, but its purpose is self-evident. It makes him feel infantile. Dean had already once referred to him as a baby in a trenchcoat, but Castiel has witnessed the rise and fall of many epics, for many epochs. He has laid feet on mountains now turned to sand. His wings have shaded glaciers long since melted. He is no child.
“And that’s why you don’t get a floatie,” Dean says, utterly uncowed. “Probably why the pool girl put you in that getup, too. Pretty sure she said ‘all man’, though, not ‘good man.’ Dunno why you keep saying that.”
Regarding the “getup,” Castiel feels underdressed. The same wind that’s disturbing the water’s surface disturbs Castiel’s hair, his naked back. His buttocks are beginning to numb. He doesn’t know where his trenchcoat’s gone. But the pool girl had suggested that this garment would be appropriate lake attire. Red is so your color, she’d said. Very classic.
Dean Winchester is a good man. But Castiel is fairly sure this is all, somehow, Dean’s fault. “You said we needed to ‘get in character,’” Castiel says. “Why are you still wearing your regular clothing? Why are you still wearing all of it.”
Castiel refuses to acknowledge the kickboard, keeps his gaze locked on Dean. It’s—
—very strange. Dean looks basement-lit, though the sun is orange behind the clouds. The sky is free and open.
When Castiel finally looks elsewhere, his gaze finds an ant, which is struggling in the shallows where the water meets rock meets grass.
What a brave little ant you are.
Castiel turns back to Dean. “Wh—” he starts, but Dean is already explaining that him and Sam are grad students—Environmental Studies, though, so they’re allowed to look like shit. They’re researching—
“HABs. Harmful Algal Blooms,” Sam supplies. “There aren’t any, by the way. So I dunno how long this cover story’s gonna last.”
Since their arrival at the lake, Sam has not once averted his eyes from the EMF meter that is allegedly measuring algae. Prior to this, Sam’s only contribution to Castiel’s predicament had been to hiss at his brother, “rounds down to fucking naked.” And then, “That’s great, Cas. Really helpful. Blends right in.”
Sometimes, it is also challenging to remember that Sam Winchester is a good man, too. Intimacies with Lucifer notwithstanding.
Dean crosses his arms. “Look, you wanna hang with us, Cas, there’s only one rule: You gotta know how to swim.”
Castiel gestures half-heartedly. “That sign says NO SWIMMING.”
“Okay, second rule: Never read the signs.”
Once you were my favorite pets before you turned and bit me.
There were plenty of signs. That Dean was suddenly so interested—aggressively, forcefully interested—in Castiel, for one. Castiel has known Dean to be callous, practical, vengeful. Driven. Bold. Dean has been ruthlessly passionately loyal to the thing he calls “Cas,” in ways that Castiel can only begin to understand and that seem only sometimes traceable through Dean’s actions and words and feelings. Castiel has also received Dean’s enmity, searing and Biblical. And while the Bible may be Castiel’s only literary point of reference, he has never used it lightly. Dean is many things. Above all else, Castiel insists, a good man. But Dean has never been interested. Not in Castiel. He’s had other things on his mind.
(Castiel is a soldier, and he knows one when he sees one.)
But now, Dean has time to be interested. He has world enough and time for curiosity, and this is a sign of peace.
In peace time, Castiel had once dreamed, Dean and Sam Winchester would be different. They would be free to be more than that which is required.
Dean and Sam Winchester are different now, because this is peace.
This is peace: The Impala (as they call her) curving up toward the lakefront, trees pared away by human hands several generations of logging cultures. Dean and Sam chatting about any number of things, only several of which seem obviously linked to the string of drownings that have summoned them. The rest of their conversation is tacked together by a free association that rivals Enochian’s more esoteric scriptures. Castiel’s contributions do not historically turn the tides of these types of road conversations, but he mentions that angels cannot swim. When he says it, he is thinking about how, in the Beginning, Earth was a place of water; how this was its earliest distinction from Heaven. Perhaps none of this sounds that different than any other tale in the Winchester Gospel. But on this day, in peace time, Dean takes his eyes off the road and his hands off the wheel and turns around.
Then he says, “Why the fuck not?”
(Sam grabs the wheel.)
And then Dean says, “If you wanna hang with us, Cas, there’s only one rule: You gotta know how to swim.”
He goes on to repeat this more than once. Dean’s interests are often signaled by obsession. Castiel must learn to swim. Driver picks the lakefront, backseat packs his swim trunks. Dean says, I’m serious, Cas.
Then they are with the pool girl. And then, the lake. The kickboard, bobbing.
“Why is everything an ultimatum with you?” Castiel would have asked, if the moment were different. Some part of him still expects he’ll need to—that they are in one of those moments, after all.
That part of him anticipates Dean’s would-be retort: Says the angel who said he’d throw me back if I put a toe outta line. Just speakin’ your language, Cas. He would say this to Castiel as though no time had passed between them; no trust had ever built; no love had gently revised, all this time, the ways they were meant to see each other. He would speak as though it all meant nothing. As though linear time were the purview of angels, not man. You promised, Dean would spit, with a look like he has only ever been waiting for the first sign of Castiel’s inevitable betrayal.
If there were blood on the ground, if basements were involved, if the world were coming to an end. Perhaps that’s all how this would go.
But this is peace time.
For the first time in a long time, the world isn’t ending. This lake might be haunted and people might be drowning, but ghosts are part of the natural course of the universe and so peace includes them. And so God made ghosts, and ghost-hunters. God made water, and so the possibility of drowning. And so Castiel resolves to weather the discomforts of peace. And so Castiel makes the purchase of a “Speedo.”
And so it is Castiel finds himself ankle-deep in the water, staring out at a kickboard that only seems to be drifting ever-further away.
“Attaboy,” says Dean.
Angels cannot swim, Castiel tries to impress upon them, though in the end it won’t matter. They are at the lake. He is already in the water.
Castiel wants to convey that for angels, swimming is not a matter of ability; it is an existential truth of the type that cannot be usurped. (—Can’t or won’t?)
Water is only a series of bonds and polarities, and angels are only energies. Water is of Earth and angels are of Heaven and in water, water becomes angel and angel becomes water and there is no swimming because there are no verbs.
“Which means what, your wings are gonna go frizzy?” Dean translates, turning Castiel’s words into a language all Dean’s own.
“Dean, we don’t have time for this,” warns Sam.
Castiel thinks, Humanity will never fully comprehend the miracle of the Yam Suph.
Dean cracks a wicked grin, which Castiel has probably seen before but cannot remember recent examples of. Things had been strained before this peace. An imperiled universe invites that, though Castiel thinks that for Dean, universes come second to Sam. Dean had tried the other way around, and it went poorly.
Still grinning, Dean dives into the water. Castiel isn’t sure how or when Dean cleared the shallows, but suddenly he is in the black, kicking recklessly into the deep.
He resurfaces, a head and a neck emergent. He runs his fingers through his hair, which had gone flat and heavy in the water. He is further than the kickboard, really too far for conversation, but this doesn’t stop him.
“So. Working with Crowley,” Dean says, as casually as young boys had ordered shaved ice from the Snak-Shak. “You get there first, or did we?”
Crowley. Alphas and monstrous menageries and a bounty of souls. Castiel and the Winchesters and the rest of the world are on the other side of all that now. Castiel knows they are on the other side because Dean’s question sounds impossibly casual; it is not an accusation. It’s small talk now. In this peace, there is room for questions.
Castiel, of course, had been first. Dean had still been trying to put the universe before Sam. Dean still thought Sam was gone. But even in peacetime, with all its generosity, Castiel knows Dean doesn’t want to hear that.
Dean must know, too, because he doesn’t wait for Castiel’s answer. He says, Race you. He yanks his head in the direction of the darker, swampier side of the lake.
Between them lingers the kickboard.
“You are still wearing all of your clothes,” Castiel says, in some disbelief. “The— pool girl. She said this Speedo was custom—"
“Cas, when have I ever not worn all my clothes,” Dean interjects. He is so strange. He is treading water. He still wants to race to the other side. Castiel can feel the rearrangement of fibers as all that denim, all that leather, drinks the lake in. It must be heavy. He thinks for a moment that what Dean really wants between the two of them is a race to the bottom, toward some new and worse perdition.
But this is peacetime. They are past all that now.
The way the water claims and intrudes Dean’s garments doesn’t seem all that dissimilar from what Castiel knows will happen to his wings. Castiel’s wings fan across innumerable dimensions but they can sense the water in this one, and maybe Dean is right. Maybe “frizzy” is the right word for this feeling. It’s such a new word, and this is such an old battle. But maybe Castiel fears it more than he should.
Dean dives deep. He’ll resurface at the other side of the shaded lagoon, no doubt, the distance crossed as though it were nothing. He will be far away while Castiel remains only steps from shore, his wings warning no.
To Castiel’s surprise, Dean doesn’t surface at all. Castiel is standing at what he knows to be the edge of a precipice below the water, the cooler deep pushing at the shallows; and there, from the deep, Dean’s hands grab Castiel’s ankles. He pulls hard.
For a bright, brief moment, Castiel experiences joy. Some of it is Jimmy’s, shocked out of death and dormancy by the novelty of swimming. Some of it is Dean’s, because for all that has happened and all this world may never forget, there is something about tumbling through water that screams summer, and brotherhood, and better bygones. Some of it is the sheer vertigo of swinging through the air like a rogue clock hand as his feet come out from under him.
But there it is: Joy.
Then, Castiel forgets his vessel. He has moved in this form for hundreds on hundreds of days, with all the ease of the man to whom his body once belonged. (JV Swim but only for three semesters, the cells of this body squeal as the lake closes over Castiel’s head.) But no angel has ever swum before. Not in water, not on Earth.
There is no blueprint for this.
There are no verbs here, in the deep.
Not long ago, Castiel had tried to sell Dean on the merits of freedom over peace. Peace or freedom? he’d asked, as though the two represented opposite poles, some other ultimatum.
It was even less long ago Castiel had carded his way through the minds and memories of one Lisa and one Ben. To give them peace, in order to give them freedom. To give them, Castiel suspects, neither of those things. But he did it anyway, because Dean is a good man, and Dean asked him.
Castiel remembers a memory of Ben’s body gliding through the water, gangly but afloat. Dean is there with him and when Castiel is done, Dean isn’t.
I could have cast you back into the pit.
Castiel cannot remember how his vessel ever moved. It is more than a change in atmosphere, in medium. Earth has almost nothing in common with the atmospheres in Heaven, but water is another realm entirely.
When at last Castiel can remember enough to lift his vessel’s eyelids, see through its eyes, he’s rewarded with nothing. Like grace and angels, sun cannot penetrate the depths. There is too much silt, and algae, and plant. These things Castiel knows, has welcomed before. Don’t step on the fish, he is reminded, in ways he remembers being reminded not too long ago. He remembers when this planet was all water, all beyond the purview of angels. He remembers—
Dean was there with him, but now he isn’t. And Sam had refused the water entirely.
Castiel can feel no churn of water as Dean kicks, no heavy garments being rearranged by water, no heat signature of a soul, nor a heart. Dean is not there.
Suddenly, implausibly, Castiel breaks the surface.
And Dean did leave him, Castiel realizes. He pulled him in and then was gone. Now Dean is back on shore, barking lessons in physical education. But then, if this peace were any gentler, Castiel probably wouldn’t believe it was real. He can cherish this.
Still, Sam is bleeding sympathy as quickly as the sun is fading. He wants to get a move on, and Castiel and his Speedo and Dean’s kickboard and this swimming lesson have overstayed their welcome. Sam’s clocked a dive team on the lake’s east end (guys? another drowning? hello?), which is as much peace as this world will ever get.
At the moment, the person Sam is mad at is actually Dean, because Dean is focusing on all the wrong things, but Castiel still feels like he is the one at fault.
Dean—
—isn’t even wet, Castiel realizes. His hair and his clothes (all of his clothes) are suffused with air and air alone. The first thought that crosses Castiel’s mind is How did you do that?
The second is Ah.
You don’t.
Castiel looks to Sam again. Sam who hasn’t met his gaze since long before they were in the Impala, on the way to a lake. If Castiel were not so far away, he would say, Sam. He wouldn’t need to say anything more, because Castiel is still an angel, and Sam has always understood: He must write his own prayers. Castiel would not need to say I’m sorry.
Sam, he would say, if this were a different moment.
Probably.
“How is Sam?” Castiel asks, which is wrong. He means to ask where. Where is Sam?
No thanks to you, the look on Dean’s face growls, which isn’t a where, nor a how. “Sam’s fine,” he says, which isn’t a where. For the Winchesters, it has also never been a how. Not really.
The lake is colder now. The sun is setting. The waters grow darker. Castiel hears the faint sound of Sam Winchester diving into the lake. No kickboard. No hesitations. He is over a mile away.
“There’s a wall,” Dean says, which continues to not be much of an explanation. He gestures in the direction of Sam, who is only heat in the distance, a fading ripple.
“Like, a big, sea wall type of deal. Biblical flood stuff,” Dean adds, which Castiel knows is Dean, for the first time, trying to put his life in terms Castiel might understand. Castiel understands then why Dean has never tried before.
“This is a lake,” says Castiel. “Not a sea.”
Castiel is in the lake, and Dean is not. Which means, Castiel realizes, this is a dream, not a conversation.
There’s a wall, he thinks.
There is a wall.
There was a wall.
I am an angel of the Lord, Castiel said once. And angels cannot swim.
If this is a dream, Dean still barks, Can’t or won’t?
Dean has said this before. Castiel does not know if it’s more or fewer times than he has said You gotta know how to swim.
Castiel joins the repetitions. Angels cannot swim.
Dean says again, Can’t or won’t?
Time closes in, and their words nucleate. Time orbits.
Castiel knows, instinctively, that the sun has set now. Even if he cannot see it, the rotations of the planets are ingrained in him and he knows it is night on this side of the world. (Lake Moraine, Minnesota, the Snak-Shak had helpfully supplied. Best Cones In Greater Red Wing!)
He is still underwater.
There are no verbs in the deep.
By contrast, Dean and Sam are bodies that have always been in motion. In this peace, there is no freedom from the threat of obligation. From the churn of always needing to be in motion. That’s what led them to this lake in the first place—that desire to keep moving for lack of knowing how to stop. Tonight, they may save several people from a ghost. (Or Sam will, in the water a mile away.) They will be heroes.
“Why is this so important to you?” Castiel once asked Dean. He is pretty sure it had been on a dock not too many hours ago, and knowing how to swim had been the important thing. Why did Dean think Castiel needed to know this?
Dean replied, “Because you don’t stop, ever.” But it was as though Dean were echoing out of some other time, grim and aggressive, or like the important thing had been some other important thing.
Castiel cannot feel this wings for the water. But Castiel thinks Can’t or won’t? and he locates Jimmy’s legs and kicks. He pulls his arms to his sides, shoots them up over his head.
If angels cannot swim, maybe he is something else.
Maybe he can exceed form, rebel against that which is written. Maybe he can—
Become something else.
In Heaven, Castiel has six wings and four faces. But when he thinks about his time on Earth, by which he means his time with the Winchesters, he sometimes imagines otherwise. He imagines becoming otherwise. All four faces face God, and all six wings are of Him.
That’s the thing about Earth: Here, there are worlds in which Castiel has been a traveler first and an angel only second. There are worlds that belong to other gods. Some of these gods grant wishes, and others are wishes themselves. Wishes, in Castiel’s understanding, are distinct from petitionary prayer. Prayer has protocols. Wishes have only thresholds: If enough people believe in something, they can believe things into existence. The traveler’s way of putting this is this: Castiel has been to Tibet.
Dean and Sam have not, but he knows they have been to Richardson, Texas. They know of tulpas, too.
Castiel is six wings and four faces. He wishes with all of them. He is an angel, and in air, wings alight, angels are all verb. They are multi-dimensional wavelengths of celestial intent. He can become. He can make.
Castiel wishes for peace.
It is a new day. On earth, and in heaven. Rejoice.
But Castiel, of course, is an angel. If he is anything else—and become he does—he is that which was once an angel first. Tulpas do not answer to God’s angels, because they do not answer to God. Briefly, Castiel is God.
Then he is in the water, wings electric as they make contact with the cold, the black, the density of molecules knit tight. Castiel feels his vessel walk into the water long before it walks into the water.
Dean says, We have ‘til dawn to stop this, and for a moment, Castiel is already in the water, it is dark, and Dean is either saving him or pulling him under. It’s difficult to say. Castiel turns to Sam and sees a different brother. Morningstar.
Castiel feels his vessel walk into the water. He cannot wrench it backwards. He cannot wrench time backwards. This is going to happen. Because even if a tulpa were to rebel against its own scriptures, what is inside Castiel now numbers more than numbers.
We are legion, they scream.
We are Leviathan.
Maybe angels don’t need to breathe.
When Castiel opens his eyes this time, Dean is in the water, too. Freckled shoulders, hair as dark as Sam’s in the wet. He’s smiling this time. Instinctively, Castiel looks down. All below is tinged green-brown—every inch of this water is alive, the lake is full of life—but Castiel can tell Dean’s swimwear still isn’t anywhere near as immodest as the Speedo. So that had been a joke, then. Castiel doesn’t suppose red is really his color.
“See? I told you,” says Dean, as though something has been proven. Castiel tries to imagine what.
He remembers something about sea walls.
He says, “This is a lake.”