Chapter Text
Cas' foot caught in a tree root. He stumbled forward exhausted, his reflexes too slow for his arms to come forward in time and break his fall, instead he landed face flat on the ground, his cheek hitting a rock, skin peeling off, pine needles stabbing into his chin, and by god did that burn. Tears gathered in his eyes, or rather in the one eye that wasn't swollen shut and infected with pus. He could taste blood in his mouth and he desperately wanted to spit it out but he had neither the strength nor saliva to do that and so he lay there, half his face burning with the pain of the wounds bleeding into the mud, his eye blind and infected, himself thirsty, so thirsty his throat hurt and his head pounded, and hungry, so hungry that his body felt like a massive hole that was threatening to collapse in on itself. It reminded Cas of black holes and how sometimes they were created by stars collapsing in on themselves, he never liked black holes, they seemed to swallow up all that was familiar and homely and beautiful.
But worst of all was the fear he felt. It seemed to take over his whole body making him shake from top to bottom, making his breaths catch raw and rough in his throat as he tried to exhale, cold spots creep down his spine, make his palms sweat, his eyes fill up. And as if that wasn't enough Cas realised that it wasn't dying he was afraid of, dying would have been the most obvious thing to be afraid of at such a time, and it also wasn't fear of the death by thirst or hunger, no it was worse, Cas was afraid because of how strange, how unknown and foreign thirst and hunger felt. He had never felt thirst or hunger or lack of sleep in his entire life. He had seen the first living cell on the planet and he had watched it grow into the first organism, he had watched it develop and change and grow into various organisms, he had watched it become plants and animals, watched it develop spines, watched it become mammals and birds and other creatures. He had watched the first man on the planet, and then watched as that man became humanity, he had lived a long time and had seen and heard a lot, yet he had never felt the simple everyday things such as thirst and hunger and sleep deprivation. He had never cried before. And the utter foreignness of it scared him.
He dragged himself up slowly, it seemed like the most tiring task he had ever performed. First the legs, he told himself, dragging his knees underneath him, then the head, he thought as he raised his forehead from the ground, from there it was simple; elbows, then straighten your back, sit up, and just a little push, bring your knees upwards and you're standing again. He went through this list in his head every time and with each fall, and as they became more and more frequent, he started doubting if he'd get up again. He stopped thinking somewhere along the way, it just became a thing he did; fall and get up, fall and get up, and wander aimlessly through the trees towards - towards what? Cas had only one though, towards Dean, towards Dean to beg for forgiveness, to collapse at his feet and cry and beg Dean for forgiveness which he knew he didn't deserve, which he knew he would now never deserve. It was too late to aim for anything else, to late for false hope of fixing heaven and so this was the only one thought that he stuck to.
He wandered blindly -one eye still infected shut, the other just too exhausted to stay open- so he didn't notice when the forest ended and opened up into an asphalt road. And he still didn't notice, not even when he flew two metres forward and landed on his back, not even when his arm bent the wrong way, not even when his bone came up and broke through the skin of his shin, not even when the scream that escaped him was too loud for him to hear, not even when it brought up blood and bile, not even when the car's tyres screeched to a stop right beside his head.