Hearing it was like hitting the ground after his 5 year free wall. Saying it...
He swallows around what feels like glass shards in his throat. Feels the hot trail of tears over his face, and has to tear his gaze away from Castiel. It lands on the worn wooden floor boards instead. And Cas just... stares for a moment, throat working to produce sound.
Dean was in trouble.
And Cas wasn't there to take the blow for him. ]
He's dead.
[ And everything inside of him screams just like the day he did when Heaven shut and he was plunged into horrifying silence, shattering upon his own spine and never, ever recovering. Except this is worth, because Dean's been the last bastion of anything Cas believed in, when his belief in God, Heaven, the cause and himself was long gone.
And it doesn't matter that it's temporary. It doesn't matter that Cas knows he'll be back.
It matters that Dean is dead, and Cas is choking on his grief and his pain, and he just wants it to stop, doesn't want to survive Dean, not now and not ever, doesn't want to handle too many feelings he cannot even begin to number or name or numb down, overwhelmed and incapable of handling things he was never designed to parse in a mind vast enough to casually handle quantum theory and use it to his own advantage, yet not large enough for this horrifying, human thing called feeling.
And he knows that to inflict this upon Castiel is horrible, too. Knows that if Castiel has any shred left of what they both used to be, then this will be a devastating blow, and yet Cas can't not deliever it, and cut himself open on having to say it. There is no comfort here, not in sharing the knowledge nor after. ]
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Hearing it was like hitting the ground after his 5 year free wall. Saying it...
He swallows around what feels like glass shards in his throat. Feels the hot trail of tears over his face, and has to tear his gaze away from Castiel. It lands on the worn wooden floor boards instead. And Cas just... stares for a moment, throat working to produce sound.
Dean was in trouble.
And Cas wasn't there to take the blow for him. ]
He's dead.
[ And everything inside of him screams just like the day he did when Heaven shut and he was plunged into horrifying silence, shattering upon his own spine and never, ever recovering. Except this is worth, because Dean's been the last bastion of anything Cas believed in, when his belief in God, Heaven, the cause and himself was long gone.
And it doesn't matter that it's temporary. It doesn't matter that Cas knows he'll be back.
It matters that Dean is dead, and Cas is choking on his grief and his pain, and he just wants it to stop, doesn't want to survive Dean, not now and not ever, doesn't want to handle too many feelings he cannot even begin to number or name or numb down, overwhelmed and incapable of handling things he was never designed to parse in a mind vast enough to casually handle quantum theory and use it to his own advantage, yet not large enough for this horrifying, human thing called feeling.
And he knows that to inflict this upon Castiel is horrible, too. Knows that if Castiel has any shred left of what they both used to be, then this will be a devastating blow, and yet Cas can't not deliever it, and cut himself open on having to say it. There is no comfort here, not in sharing the knowledge nor after. ]