Work Text:
Vampires don’t scare Castiel. Neither do Demons. Or Wendingos or really anything that creeps and crawls and hides under your bed. Castiel has been alive since before the Earth was born, he has seen the rise of man, he has witnessed all human wars and delivered many of their souls to the afterlife. Castiel was an angel. He was considered one of the most powerful beings in existence. People prayed to him for help. He had braved Hell and rescued a righteous man from the pit. Castiel was impervious. He was incredible. He was seamless. He was shaking. Why was he shaking? Why couldn’t he breathe? Why did everything feel so tight? Why didn’t he feel like his mind was spinning out of control? Why did he feel like slamming his head into a wall until it all stopped?
When Sam found him come dinner time, Castiel, former angel of the lord, was on his knees, forehead to the ground, hands on either side of his head. His knuckles were white from where he was fisting his fingers through his hair. Castiel wasn’t sure whether he was holding on or trying to rip himself apart. Sam was worried though, he knelt down next to his friend and placed a worried hand on his quivering back. Cas’ T-shirt was thin, Sam could have counted the vertebre in his back. The oh-so-human bones that held him together now. Once, he had stabbed that back with an angel blade. Yet here he was, a broken angel, kneeling at his feet. Feeling unworthy of this man’s presence. A man he had called an abomination. Cas did not respond to Sam’s words of reassurance, so Sam left him in a heap on his floor.
Castiel hardly registered the screaming match that was happening outside his closed bedroom door. Had he not been lost in his own head, he would have recognized Sam’s pleas to his older brother to go talk to their friend. The one so wracked with emotions that he felt as if he were drowning. Fear. That is the one that gripped him now. Surrounded him- smothered him.
Castiel had screwed up today. Not much different from other days, actually. Castiel was a screw up. Castiel couldn’t do anything right. That’s because Castiel wasn’t cut out to be a human. He did not deserve even this. He deserved to be cast out. He was wrong. Not an angel, not a man. Just a broken… thing. He would go to purgatory as all things went.
Dean had told him off again today. Told him Castiel wasn’t good for anything. Used those words. You’re good for nothing, Cas. Can’t even make freakin’ toast without setting off every freakin’ alarm in this place. You cause too much damage.
Cas had let Dean down. Again. Like he has every other time. Every single one. Leviathans, Raphael, Purgatory, Breaking Sam, breakfast… all of it was failure after failure after failure. What kind of guardian angel is more trouble than what he’s worth? Every voice in his head echoed Dean’s words. Echoed them tenfold.
Fear would be Castiel’s end. Fear of letting down his two best friends- the only family who has refused to leave him, after all he’s done. Fear of being obsolete. Fear of amounting to nothing. Fear of not being able to protect the boys. Fear of failing again and again. Fear of losing what little he’s managed to cling to.
Castiel is holding back tears. These freakin’ salt water droplets that expose him time and time again. He doesn’t hear Dean open and shut Cas’ door before sitting cross-legged next to the broken angel on the floor. He can’t hear much over the ringing in his ears and the fighting in his head. They sit in silence. Dean’s head in his hands. Neither of them look at the other. They really have never needed to.
They wait.
Castiel’s hands still. His tears dry. His fingers unclench, and he is released from his terror. Presence has solved that. A constant, breathing, living presence. A remarkable presence, that has witnessed the death of his entire family, often more than once. A presence that is still here. Still breathing. A presence that made it through another day. A presence that too, is clinging to the last of what it has.
A presence that is an inspiration to an angel.
They sit until Castiel speaks.
“Am I broken, Dean?”
Dean meets his eyes.
“We’re all broken here, Cas.”