heraldingangel | Inbox for deerington

[ He's written a version of this message every single day since his arrival. Never sent it. Good practice for the device, though. Cas has had precious little exposure to technology and convenience - by the time it would have become relevant the world had already, as he likes to echo Dean, gone to shit.

It's not quite clicked for him yet, the window to the outside world this device can be here, while Dean refuses to tell him anything at all about the world he's been washed into - tripped up on sending Cas to his death, missing the point that Cas chose to follow that order, and as a result unwilling to give Cas anything to work with, lest he be a fool and step outside will still healing from the remnants of the wounds that killed him, and that weren't quite gone upon arrival here.

And then finally, one day, the restless boredom of a soldier without purpose and without point wins over the part of him that is trying to spare himself the pain of connecting to a version of himself that holds the grace gone from the hollow carcass of his own form, in which his ribcage feels like a prison and the spaces where his trueform and his wings should rest feel like a festering, rotten wound.

He sends the message. ]

this is riding on the assumption that dean informed you of the inconvenient fact of my existence in this place, but i wonder about the metaphysical implications of our parallel existence here.

signed: yourself

[ The name sinks between his ribs cutting straight through him. His thoughts cease and for a harrowing moment, he thinks it's another Dean arriving in this place. Swallowing thickly, he reads through the message discovering the folly of his thoughts with every word. Not Dean, but himself from another timeline.

Muscles loosen and he lets himself take a moment to settle his thoughts. Unlike many of God's creations angels were equipped to handle time-travel. The idea of meeting another version of himself while unexpected was not impossible. In truth, it was a lot less stressful than meeting another version of Dean. Castiel dreaded it each time. But another version of himself? Who thought like him, viewed the world like him. Who understood him to his core. It was soothing.

Should be.

Flexing his fingers, he recalls his blunder of their first meeting. Of how Dean had to filter the news of his arrival in the aftermath. Uprooting the uncertainty taking hold, Castiel focuses on the direct message instead. No filter this time. Turning the words over with a fresh mind, his thoughts stay with a disturbing sentiment lurking behind the simple message. ]

You're not an inconvenience.

[ He states, first and foremost. ]

Dean informed me of your arrival. I didn't mean to intrude on you. I thought you were someone I used to know. I won't make that mistake again.

As for the implications, that depends on what you mean. You exist. I exist. The world still stands.

Signed: Castiel

[ Cas lowers his hands for a moment, tips his head back and blinks up at the ceiling. He'd... forgotten how earnest he used to be.

Fuck, this was a bad idea.

You're not an inconvenience.

And Cas' first instinct is to brush that aside, because clearly his own past self is full of shit.

He's full of shit.

But Cas, too, recalls the blunder of their first meeting, the ringing of bells such a sweet, painful reminder of everything lost and everything he'd tried so desperately to regain in drugs and sex and any form of escapism available.

Good to know Dean informed Castiel, though. ]

I thought you might come to kill me. That's sort of where I left it with our dear siblings.

[ The exiled, hunted rebel. And then they left him in the mud where he belonged. Fallen, broken, weighed down by the corpse of what he once was. ]

Addendum: Not sure I'm equipped to handle true voices anymore. Felt a bit like Jimmy's teeth were vibrating out of my skull.

[ Kill him?! His brows shoot up. Why would he think - a thought strikes, lucid yet coherent. Is that why Dean broke the news to him? To gauge his reaction before his other self contacted him? His muscles go rigid, an unwelcome feeling settling in the folds of his grace. Stiff fingers punch in a response before he has a chance to linger on the implications, if true. ]

It's not my intention to kill you. Now or ever. I'm not a threat to you.

My apologies. I'll refrain from that mode of contact.

Edited 2020-10-17 00:51 (UTC)

That would admittedly take our self-loathing to quite lofty heights.

[ Cas actually chuckles at that, dark and without humour. His life is fucked up. can't recognize his own voice as filtered through mortal senses. Can't live right or die right, either. ]

And I didn't mean you specifically - honestly didn't even know it was you. Well, me. Us? My fearless leader refrained from listing you among his available assets until I attempted to warn him about there being an angel.

We would return. Death isn't permanent here. There's no point in killing you or me.

[ Or he would have taken that route already. If he thought it would stick, he would end his existence without a second thought. Anything to prevent the massacre of his brothers and sisters. Genocide Dean had called it and he was its harbinger.

His stomach roils at the thought and his grace surges forward to calm his vessel. But the ache at the back of his throat remains making it difficult to swallow. ]

I'm not his asset. You are.

[ Cas has no idea. He barely got the information that Castiel exists here out of Dean. Everything else is... well.

Everything else exists in the silence that curves around him and Dean like an old, much too worn down blanket, scratchy and stained. ]

Aren't you just delightfully optimistic and naive.

Your Dean back where you came from still able to look at you without disgust then?

[ It's sharp, because Cas has never learned to be kind - least of all to himself. ]

[ The question sends his thoughts into disarray, skittering to the last time he saw Dean from inside a burning circle of holy oil. Trapped by the soul he once saved. Condemned for his actions by his newfound family while besieged by demons. A moment in time etched into his memories. ]

I betrayed him.

I don't imagine he'd look at me with any kindness.

[ Well... shit.

That's not...

That's not how that's supposed to go. Past!Dean was supposed to fuck off back home and make sure they didn't break the way they did for Cas and Dean in their own little post-apocalyptic mess of a universe.

Are they just doomed to be festering disappointments to one Dean Winchester?

Fuck, he's not sober enough for this. Cas reaches for the bottle of pills, shakes two into his palm. They go down dry. ]

Why?

[ The simplest, and most difficult question. Why do they break, no matter which path they choose? ]

[ Why.... Dean asked him the same question from beyond the flames. Begging him for an answer that made sense, for an excuse he could live with, anything but what he gave him.

Denial.

Behind him, large and black wings twitch involuntarily without his notice. ]

I thought I was doing the right thing.

I know now that it was pride that led me to that end.

Edited 2020-10-17 03:55 (UTC)

[ Pride...

And here Cas thought that'd be the first thing he'd lose in any version of the world.

Sounds like no matter how you twist circumstances, he still ends up breaking everything - himself, their profound bond...

Shit.

His fingers twitch. Move from the Fluid to the frayed edges of a hole in his jeans. He picks at the hole for a moment, just focused on the way the fabric feels against his finger tips. ]

We both know it's not as easy as that when it comes to you and Dean.

[ 'You', this time. Not 'us' or 'me'. ]

[ When it comes to him and Dean...

There's a tightness in his chest heavy and oppressive. Which one? The one who saw him as an agent of Heaven there to keep him in line? Who didn't trust him from the start? Or the one who saw someone else when he looked at him? Who ran through so many iterations of him they couldn't see him standing in front of them? Or the one who didn't speak to him for half a year? He learned to do without him. To find his own way.

Things between them were never simple, but after a year and a half on his own, he finally understood. Something was wrong with him. He was broken. A piece, chipped and frayed, that no longer fit. Oh, he could play the part but he no longer felt the same pull he once did. Whatever thread connected them had wound around him like a noose choking the life out of him.

When it came to him and Dean the answer was simple. ]

There is no me and Dean.

I watch over him. Nothing more. Unless you mean the one from my world. I've already destroyed that too.

Edited 2020-10-17 17:37 (UTC)

[ That just... doesn't feel like it should be true. Like it could be true. And yet...

There is no me and Dean.

And all Cas can think is... Yeah... same.

For a moment he sits there, in Dean's house, and stares into the dark of it, eveloped in incense and a sadness so bone deep it's festered into bitterness long ago. Two of the very few human emotions he's learned to identify and name, lost in a swirl of so many more that overwhelm him whenever he doesn't numb himself to them.

They were never made for this, for any of this. ]

But it's Dean.

[ Dean who can hardly look at Cas, and when he does it's with anger.

Dean who patched him up and couldn't hold back tears because he'd sent Cas to his death, and Cas had gone to do as requested. ]

He matters to us.

[ Doesn't he? Besides... ]

I don't understand. I'm the hapless and hopeless one - not you.

Edited (oops saw your edit too late, sorry! added something for it <3) 2020-10-17 17:46 (UTC)

[ Everyone wants their own little piece of the world. For him it was Dean. Watching him from a distance. Then closer and closer until his world narrowed down to a single soul. Worth dying for. Turning on his family for. A soul worth the civil war he wrought in Heaven, all to keep him safe, and in the end, none of it mattered. All that he'd done for him was at a distance. The saddest truth of all was - ]

You misunderstand. He's not the one that's unworthy.

Edited 2020-10-17 18:07 (UTC)

[ Cas gets up from the couch, sways on his feet and sits back down, unsure about the sudden, painful surge of feeling in his chest, the way something claws at the expanse of his ribcage and threatens to snap him right in half, fierce and ugly with teeth of righteous fury, and he punches his fist against a wall in a feeble attempt to layer a sensation over the feelings he can't handle, to overwhelm himself until all there's left is synaptic static.

It's better than feeling this much and being unable to do anything about it. It burns inside his skin, like the weight of dead and broken wings, and a vast being folded into a body supposed to be too small yet now too cavernous and empty, filling up with so much feeling that all Cas can do is sink and drown and choke and scream where no one can hear it.

his fingers shake when he types the response, and badly. it takes a while. the smooth surface of the fluid isn't enough sensation for his brain to tether itself to, still lost in a too turbulent sea. ]

but i broke. and you're everything i've lost.

[ And if Castiel is unworthy, then what what worth did Cas ever have to begin with? ]

[ The utter despair of any version of him finding solace in the broken token he's become solidifies the ache humming in the folds of his grace. It pulses through him and a crack carves itself through every form of him disrupting his song. He shivers and a pool of dark feathers wrap around him in a cold and lonely embrace.

He's no one's everything.

Their piece of the world... What a lovely fantasy they spun for each other. This version of him still believed in it, but he woke up from the dream a long time ago. He crawled out of the cave to view the world as it stood and found himself grieving for the shadows on the walls.

His hands go limp and his head dips down. Around him, his wings tremble unable to follow the broken melody, and for a long while he does nothing but sit amid his thoughts until his grace repairs the crack searing through him. Once he's stitched back together and his melody finds its tune, he turns back to the message still unanswered and does his best not to break another part of him. ]

I'm not what you left behind. And you're not a broken version of myself.

We are two roads that diverged a long time ago.

[ Roadkill, more accurately.

Cas sneers into the darkness, takes momentary delight in pulling his muscles into the expression. Easy for Castiel to say, perhaps - Cas knows what he is, and it's nothing but the shadow he once cast on a dirt road.

Castiel is right in one regard, though - he's not what Cas left behind. He's better.

He has to be better, because when Cas died at Dean's behest, he could go into that painful dark with a smile knowing Dean would take his shot - he didn't - and that past Dean would have to do better - he did.

And he himself? Well... inconsequential, really, yet apparently he lives. ]

so i'm the dead end obviously

[ He laughs, there in the dark house, mind sluggish with painkillers that can't quite numb him down enough to not feel the pain and horror of his own existence. ]

where's your road going?

[ Sitting in the forest on an altar built on grass and flowers, the angel lets his thoughts sink into his surroundings. He finds solace in the chirping birds and fast-hooved creatures running through its winding woods. Above him, the constant buzzing of yellow insects fills the emptiness until dark thoughts settle like sediment clearing up the haze.

Leaning on his Father's creations for peace, Castiel pulls up from the tailspin of his thoughts. Inside him, his grace settles and the pool of dark feathers follow after. They can't fill the void inside him no matter how tightly he wraps himself in them. Letting go, the angel tucks his wings behind him accepting his faults.

A broken puzzle piece with the edges frayed. Not quite slotting into place as intended. Is that what happened to his other self? ]

You're not dead here.

[ They still existed, and Castiel came to realize he preferred to live in contentment than guilt. A road he still struggles to find his footing on when he so recently stepped onto its path. ]

I don't know. I think that's the point.

But, I know where I want to go and that makes all the difference.

Edited 2020-10-21 03:42 (UTC)

[ Huh. Where he wants to go? Cas is impressed. Didn't think there'd be versions of his own existence where that still mattered. After all... he'd gained his freedom only to voluntarily put on the yoke of Dean's command. And where Dean points, Cas goes. ]

and where would that be?

[ What does he want, this version of himself that didn't break, didn't debase himself, didn't become something Dean could barely stand to look at anymore?

Something is coiled tight in Cas' chest, thrumming. He can't quite name it, the sensation, and digs his fingers into the frayed edges of his jeans instead to rear his mind to things it can parse better than the feelings that threaten to drown him in blackened sludge.

If he leaves the statement of his lack of death untouched, well, that is entirely on purpose. He does think, though, in the depth of his mind and the corners of his empty smile: And isn't that just such a shame. ]

Contentment.

[ Cas' quirks an eyebrow. Well, not that he'd have assumed happiness was on the table for any version of him. Still... he has to wonder. How high is that reaching? For him, even that seems far. ]

loafty goal

[ Lofty, yes. Same as throwing out the script to stop the Apocalypse. Once he made up his mind, he devoted himself to it like a soldier at war willing to give up his life, faith, every piece of him to see it through to the end. ]

'Shoot for the moon', I believe the saying goes.

[ Even if he missed, he'd be among the stars. ]

[ That, at least, gets a chuckle, if more one of disbelief. He remembers being overly literal, out of a lack of understanding. These days, he's deliberately obtuse, because he likes to needle at people, get under their skin. Anger and annoyance are much preferrable to indifference, he's found. ]

bullets don't go that far

[ He knows exactly what Castiel means, but... well. ]

They do if they have enough energetic material strapped to the back to escape earth's gravity. Crude, but effective.

touché
i'll make that my new line when asking people for sex
crude but effective

Inbox for deerington

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cw: mentions of sex, substance abuse

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