Wouldn’t it be so cool if we got an entire season driven by Cas?
Like, say Dean gets stuck in this alternate dimension at the end of the season in a typical self-sacrificing way and they all have to figure out how to get him back (which is better than usual because this time it will not be about raising him from the dead) and Cas carefully hands the Nephilim to Sam, entrusts the baby to his and Mary’s (and Kelly’s, if she’s still alive) care and says, as a fully powered-up angel who is badass and knows his shit about the universe his father made, that he’s got this one.
And we have a season of Mary and Sam bonding in a weird, totally Supernatural-esque, grandmother and son and adopted baby family comedy complete with monsters and hunting of evil creatures; alongside a viewable mashup purgatory-reversal/hell-search for Dean, by Cas.
When Castiel woke up, he woke up blind. Or at least, he thought he did. It turned out he had landed in a storage locker underground, where the light couldn’t find him. He didn’t mind too much. There was nothing to see anyway. He sat there for a while, staring blankly ahead, sinking into the blackness, trying vaguely to swallow the muddled remnants of his life. And then he remembered.
Sam. He had promised Dean that he would take care of Sam. And he had failed. That woman, she… who was she? Cas didn’t know, but if she had to banish him to get to Sam, she couldn’t be good. There was no telling how long Cas had been here, or even where he was. As the panic surged inside him, he pulled out his phone. After so long in the darkness, the bright light from the screen shocked him and left him blinking stars.
He stumbled onto his feet and out of the locker, more than a little stiff from the journey that sent him in there. He listened for Sam’s prayers, but he couldn’t hear anything. The quiet brought with it a sense of grief that settled into Cas’s stomach and stayed there. Taking a deep, steadying breath, Cas checked the time on his phone—only to realize that it didn’t matter because he had no idea what time it had been when he and Sam had arrived at the bunker. On top of that, the phone had no service.
Cas gritted his teeth against the wave of hopelessness that threatened to overtake him and gripped the phone tightly. He stared around the room, not quite able to get his eyes to focus properly. But he managed to find the hallway, then a door and the stairs behind it. He began to trudge up them, determined to get back to Sam.
Just as he turned onto a second landing, his phone began to ring. He answered it without stopping to catch his breath.
“Hello?”
“Cas?” a pause.
“Sam!” Cas croaked. Before he could ask any questions, Sam continued.
“Where the hell are you I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour.” Sam was too rushed to wait for a reply. “I made it out but she won’t be far behind. It’s the men of letters, they want to put me down. But I’m not gonna let ‘em. I’m not. I’ve gotta ditch the phone and the car…” Cas could hear the pain in his voice at the thought. “Don’t go back to the bunker, Cas. She knows everything—you’ll have to run too. Where are you?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know.” Cas frowned, looking around as he stepped onto a landing marked “ground floor.”
“Okay, well, if it’s far away from here it’s probably a good place to stay.” Cas began to interrupt, but Sam ignored him. “I’m going to have to ward myself from magic. You won’t be able to reach me, but it’s better if we don’t cross paths; two trails are better than one.”
As Sam paused to consider whether there was anything he left out, Cas took the chance to jump in. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Dean said—”
“Yeah, well Dean’s dead,” Sam retorted, as though that settled the matter. Cas was about to let Sam know that it didn’t when Sam let out a noise like a grunt. Cas stopped and listened as Sam continued, his voice softer now. “He’s not going to get his funeral.”
Both men froze for a few moments, unable to continue. Cas struggled to find the words to reply, but Sam snapped back before he could. “If I need you, I’ll pray.” And then the line went dead.
Cas shoved the phone in his pocket and kept walking even though he didn’t know where he was going. He made it out of the building and down the street, following the sun. Dean’s sun. It would be forever Dean’s now, even if no one knew. He ended up on a beach somehow, staring into the sun, not caring if it made him blind again. There was nothing else to see. He baked in his trenchcoat and slacks, but he didn’t even notice the sweat. He just squinted at the sun until it began to fall. And Cas fell with it, lying on his side in the sand, curled into himself. When the sun was fully gone, he stared at nothing. He lay like that for what seemed to him like days, guilt and hurt pooling in his stomach until it formed into what felt like an army of ants that made him want to scream. It was too much. Emotions are too much, Cas thought seriously. He remembered Dean just before they went for that drive, standing angrily at the kitchen table, empty beer bottles spread before him. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to find a liquor store and drink it.
He pulled himself to his feet, stiff and unsteady but with purpose. Looking back the way he came, he saw a bar on the corner and made for it, not bothering to watch where he was going. He kept his eyes on the door until he was through it. Shifting his gaze around the room, he saw that it wasn’t too full. That pleased him, or would have if he could feel pleased. He took a seat at the bar away from everyone else, staring absently at the shelf on the wall behind it.
“What’ll it be?” the bartender asked as she sidled towards him.
“Whisky,” Cas muttered, still staring at nothing.
She poured him a glass and set it in front of him, leaving him to it. Cas reached for it hungrily, bringing it to his mouth and tipping it back. He grounded himself in the smell of Dean and the feel of fire in his throat. Lifting the empty cup from his lips, he motioned for more. As the bartender refilled his drink he caught her gaze. “I’m going to need a lot more of that,” he warned her.
She smiled kindly. “I’ll be here.”
Several drinks later, Cas lost his momentum and simply sat cradling a half-full glass of whiskey in his hands. He had wanted so badly to be human for Dean, and now that he was cut off from heaven, nothing to lose, ready to be with Dean, Dean was gone. And he was stuck acting out the part of human alone in a bar who knows where.
“Where am I?” He suddenly asked aloud.
“How much have you had to drink there, sport?” came the reply from the bartender.
“Oh, no, I’m not drunk,” Cas explained. “I just… what is the name of this town?”
“Miami,” she said, giving him a bemused look.
Miami was a bit of a surprise. That was much closer than he usually ended up after a banishment. Maybe I could find Sam after all, he thought hopefully. And then he remembered that Sam didn’t want him to do that. He tried to decide what Dean would want him to do, but instead got lost in the memory of the joke Dean had made one cold night after the leviathan about there being a place called Purgatory in Miami. The thought of Dean’s jokes crushed him and he suddenly felt whatever had been holding him up start to dissipate.
“Are you okay?”
The bartender seemed to have been watching him without his realizing it.
Cas forced himself upright as he managed to reply, “I’m fine, thanks.”
“Did you lose someone?” The bartender pressed him gently.
Castiel looked up, surprised. He could see now that her eyes knew grief, and he suddenly felt his eyes begin to itch with phantom tears. “It was… he was my… best friend,” Cas said, remembering Dean’s face as he used those words in the car just hours earlier.
“I’m so sorry,” the bartender offered. “You must have loved him very much.”
“Yes,” Cas said, knowing it was true. “I didn’t tell him,” he continued, looking away.
Her brow furrowed. “I’m sure he knew,” she said.
“I didn’t,” Cas replied, getting worked up. “You think you know how it feels, watching people. But I didn’t. I didn’t know. I didn’t think. I used to find joy in seeing flowers, insects, people. Now I feel as though I can’t even see.” Cas continued haltingly “…He was my…everything… I would have died for him, I should have died for him…”
“Did he love you?”
“I think so,” Cas replied. “He told me, right before, that I was his brother. For him, there was no higher praise.” Cas’s eyes shone with pride. “I think he… I think he loved me back… in… in the way I loved him too,” Cas said hesitantly. “I just wanted him to be happy.”
“I think that’s important,” the bartender said. “Was he happy?”
“He was happy,” Cas said. “And I… was his.”
The bartender smiled and then headed off to refill a drink at the other end of the bar. Cas sat, thinking about Dean and how he had deserved to know how much Cas loved him. Just then, he began to feel a burning in his chest. At the same time, his phone began to ring. He fumbled to pull it out of his pocket and answer it.
“Hello?”
“Cas you’re never gonna believe what happened.”
It was a good thing Cas didn’t need to breathe. “Dean?”
When the bartender turned around, the man in the trenchcoat had disappeared.
