Chapter Text
Castiel stood, aglow with a new burden of power, as Sam Winchester pushed an angel blade through his back. Cas knew Sam's intentions before the blade pierced his torso, but there was no need to stop him. In fact, it would prove a valuable point.
"I'm glad you made it, Sam," Cas said casually as he dispensed with the blade. "But the angel blade won't work because I'm not an angel anymore. I am your new God. A better one. So you will bow down and profess your love unto me, your Lord. Or I shall destroy you."
Bobby Singer stood slack-jawed at the announcement while Dean's emerald eyes flashed in surprise. Confusion stampeded through Sam's mind like wild horses; Castiel didn't see fit to lash out at a boy with no tether to reality.
Their fear was a fog such that none of them could see Castiel, so he waited. Perhaps all they needed was time.
Dean Winchester was terrified, but that wasn't really the point. Not here, not now.
So, in a move that would be interpreted by Bobby as abject stupidity, Dean stepped forward and touched Castiel: first his face, then his hands. The angel, or super-angel-deity, or whatever the hell Cas was now – was cool to the touch.
Castiel's eyes flicked dangerously over Dean.
"He said you'd explode," Dean gave as an explanation.
"Who?"
"Balthazar. That's why he – he was afraid you'd melt," Dean said quickly, fumbling for words.
Balthazar had used words like 'nuclear reaction' or 'meltdown' or something to that effect, but Dean couldn't recollect the precise phrasing. For some reason, as Cas stared him down, exactness did matter.
"You're being truthful," Cas said slowly.
Dean's face scrunched up; the idea of lying to Castiel right now was utterly ridiculous.
Castiel waved his hand, and Sam's eyes cleared, like water purged through a filter.
"I have other things to attend to," Cas said before he vanished.
Sam spoke up, "What the hell am I doing here?"
"You don't know?" Bobby asked. "You came here to help us."
"No, that's – " Sam's face screwed up in confusion. "The last thing I remember is Cas telling Dean he'd save me... if..." Sam took his face in his hands, trying to focus. "Damn it, I can't remember!"
"You don't remember what he did after that?" Dean asked.
"No," Sam said. "What?"
Bobby and Dean stared, speechless.
"What?" Sam repeated.
Castiel returned to the Garden of Heaven for the first time in almost a year.
"Raphael is dead," he announced. "There is no more war."
Raphael's right hand, Gideon, appeared immediately, his angel blade readied for battle.
"Raphael's dead? By your hands? Unacceptable!" he roared.
Gideon thrust the blade into Castiel, who made no attempt to stop him or to parry the weapon. Unceremoniously, Cas yanked it from his body and tossed it aside.
Fury boiled up in Castiel, but something tempered him. Gideon adored Raphael and followed his cause for the sake of that love. It was not so unlike Cas's devotion to Dean's cause. In this way, he saw himself in Gideon.
"The only way to stop Raphael was to kill him, and for that I am sorry," Castiel said patiently. "But your death will not make Heaven a better place, Gideon. Your devotion, your love are invaluable."
"What are you?" Gideon asked in shock.
In those first moments that he embraced his power, Castiel had been taken by it, consumed by his own hubris. Yet at this instant, beside his heart-broken brother, all he could think to say was -
"I am powerful. You cannot kill me. And I know your death will bring nothing but suffering," Cas replied.
By now, the entire Heavenly Host was watching. The former angel had felt each one arrive, until all the angels of creation surrounding the Garden in rapt attention.
Cas turned to address the other angels. "We have fought for so long, it is hard to accept that there is no longer a need. But we've lost enough. Too much."
"What about bringing Paradise to Earth?" Gideon asked. "What about Destiny and Fate?"
"If I gave you all the answers, Gideon, you would be dissatisfied."
"What do I do now?" Gideon asked.
"What do you want to do?"
"I don't know what 'want' is," Gideon replied. "I've never wanted anything before."
Cas put his hand on his brother's shoulder. "You will. You will find your place. The process will be confusing and frustrating, but you will find it. And when you do, neither Fate nor Destiny will deter you from your work."
Gideon didn't hesitate to ask, "What if I want to kill you?"
Castiel smiled. "I understand what it is to be ruled by emotions. But killing me is finite. Once it is complete, what will you want then?"
The confusion on Gideon's face won him a reprieve, and the rest of the Heavenly Host kept their distance. Free will confused most angels, but the ideas of 'want' and 'finite' were widely understood. Questions bubbled here and there, but none of the angels dared approach Castiel to ask.
Sensing their fear, Castiel announced, "For the next earthly week, in memorandum of Raphael, no angel shall harm another. This peace will be a small fraction of the Paradise that was once Raphael's great goal."
Gideon bowed and disappeared.
Some of the bolder angels finally came into the Garden with Castiel. Hannah, another who adored Raphael, inquired after the same thing as Gideon, and soon even his own soldiers asked him what would come next. Perhaps the angels understood the words, but putting that understanding into action would take time and patience.
And Castiel didn't have much of the latter.
Hester, the most daring of his own soldiers, finally asked him, "You would have your soldiers mourn Raphael? When he led the forces against us for so long?"
"Raphael was our brother," Cas replied, "and now that he is dead, there is no reason to fear him. And if there is no fear, then only love abides."
"And we mourn the ones we love," Hester acknowledged.
To sooth his nerves, Cas lied to himself, claiming their acceptance was an act of obedience, but he was aware of the truth. After years of fighting Hell and one another, the angels wanted peace. Without archangels declaring angel 'sides,' the remaining reasons for warfare were the angel equivalent of sibling squabbles, but even those were lulled for now.
His siblings were quarrelsome and lost, even annoyingly confused. With his patience thin, Castiel needed to avoid the other angels, so he left Heaven.
Thus, Castiel spent the first day with his new power quelling the storms in Heaven.
There was, of course, the matter of the souls that he had consumed.
Souls were not simply raw power. Each one had its own encapsulated personality, an individual that had once been alive. He found that the more placid of the monsters, such as the phoenixes, had a great deal of philosophy under their belts. It was a phoenix, in fact, that gave him that knowledge on fear and love.
So, on the second day, Castiel created a world within himself for the souls that inhabited Purgatory. The process was simple enough, since Cas knew how the souls in Heaven generated little paradises. He didn't weave so complex a plane inside of himself, but he accorded each soul a placement. Some preyed upon one another forever; others flocked together in relative peace. A few preferred solitary hiding places. To each its own.
On the third day, he reflected about the problems in Heaven.
Cas's ability to handle his siblings would soon evaporate, which would drive the former angel to obliterate most of them. He needed a voice of reason to hold him back.
Or, perhaps, he needed a voice of un-reason. A voice of freedom. He couldn't decide which.
With a snap of his fingers, Anna and Balthazar appeared.
"Cas?" Balthazar said, rubbing his hands over the fatal wound that was no longer there.
"You are alive," Cas said. "Again."
"You killed me!" Balthazar protested.
"I thought you had betrayed me. You could have corrected me at the time."
"How could I correct you if I was dead?"
"I've brought you back for a reason," Cas said. He acknowledged Anna, "Both of you."
"You? Brought me back?" Anna asked.
"Yes. The apocalypse was averted. Raphael tried to recreate it, and now he is dead," he explained to Anna.
"Then why did you bring me back?" she asked.
"Unbelievable," Balthazar remarked.
"Because you understand humanity better than any other angel. So does he," Cas explained. "And since the apocalypse is over, you present no danger to the Winchesters."
"So, wait," Balthazar said, "you think you can just bring us back to life and we'll just, what? Do whatever you say? After you killed us?"
"Actually, Michael killed me," Anna said.
"No, I expect that you will help the other angels," Cas said, "because it is in your nature."
Balthazar laughed hysterically at that. "You think – " but he couldn't continue; he was laughing too hard.
"I don't understand," Anna said. "What is it you expect from me?"
"Most angels do not understand free will, and now that the allure of Destiny and the guillotine of Fate are both gone, they need guidance."
"Why don't you give it to them, then, Cas?" Balthazar asked, his voice haughty and taut. "Then, if they don't agree right away, or are afraid you'll explode, you can always just stab them!"
"That is what I'm afraid of," Cas replied with enough anger to shake the Earth.
"Whoa," Anna commented.
"Killing our brethren will not make things better. I logically know this, but after my initial contact in Heaven I found them...grating. I would prefer not to decimate the rest of our siblings."
"Your anger is tied to the souls inside you," Anna said. "You know you can't stand that for long, don't you? Souls are sequestered in Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory for a reason."
"Don't concern yourself with me – "
"Good advice, as it stands," Balthazar added.
Cas ignored him. "I will not return to Heaven, but only ask that you do so."
"Why are we doing this?" Balthazar asked.
"To ensure the fighting has died down. Perhaps to help your fellow angels find a new path and meaning. That is not my concern. It's yours now."
And with that, Castiel disappeared, leaving Anna perplexed and Balthazar flabbergasted.
The guilt he felt over originally killing Balthazar prevented him from killing him again, but even that had its limits.
Castiel was furious, and he had one excellent way of dealing with such things: hunting. He started wiping out Eve's soldiers, focusing first on the packs of skinwalkers and werewolves that remained ready to turn hundreds of people overnight. Eve might be dead, but her children's teeth were as sharp as ever.
Thus, on the fourth day, Castiel obliterated Eve's emergent army. Webs of arachne, nests of vampires, and families of shifters disappeared. Those that survived scattered to empty hovels and caverns in the ground to hide.
On the fifth day, Cas visited Crowley. The King of Hell hid himself in a shelter designed to ward off angels, so he jolted violently when his old business partner appeared.
"My apologies for the delay," Cas said. "But it took more effort than I thought it would."
"Finding me?" Crowley asked.
"No, I knew where you were the whole time," Cas dismissed. "I mean it took me longer to figure out how to use the Ethereal Enclosure."
Cas produced what looked to be an ordinary mason jar full of iridescent fluid.
"What's this?" Crowley asked, considering all forms of torture.
"Your share," Cas replied, as if it was an obvious answer.
"You – you said – you renegotiated our terms! You screwed me over! You told me to flee or die!" Crowley replied.
"I know you," the former angel replied placidly. "Tell me. If I asked you to go to Raphael and claim that I double-crossed you, would you have done it?"
"No, of course not! That'd be suicide!"
"Precisely. You had to believe that I really was betraying you. You needed desperation to push you to a last resort. Otherwise you wouldn't dare approach an archangel."
Crowley looked at Castiel with new eyes, almost unbelieving. "You're telling me you planned all that?"
"Actually, Balthazar came up with the idea. We needed Raphael to be close to the warehouse, and he'd never believe any of my soldiers would return to his fold. It needed to be you."
"You cunning little bastard," Crowley whispered. "What is this jar?"
"It's not quite half the souls, I'm afraid," Cas replied. "I thought you would prefer the wicked and depraved, which oddly only made up about a third of the souls. Unfortunately this jar is incapable of holding anymore power than that, so it'll have to be enough."
"So, you're going to just let me have this power? Why?" Crowley asked.
"As much as I distain demons, we had a deal. And free will relies entirely on choice. Choice does not exist without divergence. For Heaven to exist there must be some kind of Hell."
"Poetic, and not entirely yours, I take it," Crowley said. "Does this good will of yours extend to letting me live?"
"I have left Heaven. I don't intend to return or to lead the forces there."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning I cannot promise you that the angels will not kill demons, or that they won't kill you should they meet you."
"Ah, there's the rub."
"But as for myself, I have no intention of harming you," Cas replied. "So long as you make no attempt on me or mine."
"And, I take it, 'mine' includes the Winchesters?"
"As well as their family, friends, and so on."
Crowley bit his lip. Avoiding the Winchesters would be difficult, but doable with a power boost.
"Why are you really doing this, Cas? It's not just because we made some deal. That doesn't mean the same thing to you as it does to me."
"You have proven that you have no interest in the apocalypse, of bringing either permanent Paradise or permanent Hell on Earth. I have reason to invest in the survival of your position."
With that, Cas tossed the jar at Crowley, who deftly caught it. When the King of Hell looked up, the former angel had already disappeared.
On the sixth day, Castiel dedicated himself to healing the wounded souls of several humans on the edge of monstrosity. He had moderate success with several warlords and major drug dealers across the world. Some of them turned themselves in; others rededicated their lives to some acts of charity.
None would survive long in their new roles without guidance, however, so he called for one of his siblings, Hannah.
"You once watched over the sick and the weak," Cas said.
"I did."
"Until you became a soldier. I believe this might be an opportunity for you to do both."
Hannah was confused about the entire situation, but Cas focused on the big picture: an angel to watch after the humans he just converted to light.
"What if I fail?"
"There is no failure," Cas replied. "Only learning. And I am sure if you request help from Heaven, you will receive it."
Hannah dutifully accepted, and in the course of one day, Samandriel and Inias joined her mission.
On the seventh day, Castiel watched over the Winchesters. They had returned to Singer's Lot and remained there, holding out for the worst. Because they still expected the worst from Cas.
Yet, he stood by as the three of them woke up, ate, and washed. He watched as Sam cooked and cleaned, Bobby restored old books, and Dean surfed the internet for cases. He continued his observations into the night, as they ate and retired to bed.
It made him feel lonely. It made him ache. Yet he watched for the whole day anyway.
On the eight day, Castiel returned to his work eliminating the monsters of the world.
It so happened that, as he killed off a regrouped nest of arachnes, he experienced a sort of call: distress and terror and pain.
Dean Winchester was in trouble.
Instantly, Castiel appeared at his side and analyzed the situation. For some reason, the Winchesters had attacked but failed to kill Cronus, and his response was volatile and violent. Both Sam and Dean sustained broken bones and deep gashes.
Cas grabbed the pagan deity by the top of his head and thrust him to his knees.
"Why is the Greek deity of time attempting to kill you?" Cas asked casually, solely to confirm that they didn't need him alive.
Neither Winchester wasted much time on surprise or shock.
Sam replied, "He's been mummifying people. We tried to stop him – "
Fire erupted as Cas eliminated Cronus forever. The frustration released by his passing was almost enough to cover the fact that Dean didn't speak a word to him in greeting or thanks.
Without even laying hands on them, he healed the Winchesters and disappeared.
"What the hell?" Dean asked, looking at the charred remains on the ground.
"Guess he's... back?" Sam said tentatively.
Dean shook his head. "Did you see his eyes when he killed Cronus? He enjoyed it."
"So? You enjoy it when you gank something."
"But Cas doesn't. Not like that."
Sam asked, "You ever think, maybe, you're looking for a reason to discount him?"
"What?"
"He fixed my head, Dean. And just saved our asses."
"Just, leave it Sam."
Demolishing monster hordes and deities alike made one thing very clear: do not go near Dean Winchester.
The distinction was made between Sam Winchester and Dean Winchester on the ninth day, when the latter was cleaning out a nest of vampires. One managed to drop the hunter, nearly bleeding him out, but Cas intervened and incinerated all but one of the ill-fated vamps.
To the surviving monster, he said, "Spread the word: anyone who harms Dean Winchester will meet a bloody fate. And if you fail to be proficient in this message, I will dispose of you and find another."
In a matter of weeks, Dean found that hunting was no longer an occupation for him. If he showed his face in a town with a case, all monsters and demons fled from the immediate area. The only cases Dean got to work were angry spirits and ghosts.
It had been slightly over a month since Castiel had dropped off the radar. Dean had expected the worse – massacres, tidal waves, a new level of angelic warfare – but it hadn't happened. All in all, nothing had changed.
Except for monsters and demons now absconding from any apparent Winchester appearance. That was new. And, if Dean was being honest, quite annoying.
He had realized that the worst was not coming and that led him to a new kind of misery. He had been so certain that cracking open Purgatory would end badly that he had gone against Cas, fought him.
Fuck, Sam had stabbed him.
Dean still hated the idea of Cas swallowing souls. That couldn't be good for his health; after all, you are what you eat. Eating monster souls would make you a monster, at least as far as Dean was concerned.
But he felt guilty, like he betrayed a good friend who was already down on his luck; in fact, he was certain that was how Castiel saw this whole mess. And he missed the angel – former angel, whatever – a lot more than he'd like to admit.
And now he couldn't even distract himself with a damn case, so he settled for spending too much time working on the Impala. He even started working on other cars in Singer's Lot, because, why the hell not? It gave him something to do.
Meanwhile, Sam took the entire scenario with a Zen-like stride. Or attitude. Whatever. Sam only joined Dean on cases to humor him and that pissed the elder Winchester off to no end. After a month-long lull, Sammy was ready to just settle down and bake for the rest of his life. Apparently ex-blood junkies domesticated nicely.
Bobby didn't seem to mind Dean working on the junkers or Sam taking over the kitchen. In fact, he seemed downright happy. Sheriff Mills came over for diner on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and they went out for date nights over the weekend.
Weekends and date nights.
Everything was so normal, and Dean wanted to enjoy it. He had found happiness, even if only for a little while, with Lisa and Ben in their normal life. But even then, he was an invader; he didn't belong. It was just a matter of time before he was yanked out to be a hunter again. What the hell was he going to do if he couldn't be a hunter anymore?
Dean forced himself to smile, to thank Sam for cooking diner, and to refurbish cars. Maybe if he pretended to be happy, he eventually would be.