Chapter Text
Castiel is in an open air market in Abadan when the thought comes to him, suddenly, that he is happy.
Cas examines the panic that comes flooding in at that thought, understands it, and sets it aside. After the panic moves on, he finds that the happiness remains. He is happy. Cas thinks back on the last several moments and tries to examine this thought — no, this feeling — to understand it the same way he understands panic and fear and rage. As a thing whose cause he can root out.
Happiness, he finds, is the second most confusing of the emotions that he’s come to love. Fleeting, but powerful. He likens it to the fluttering of birds wings — weak boned and capable of flight. Cas returns his gaze to the pile of fish before him, arranged as they are in neat rows.
He was thinking about what Dean might cook with the fish if he brought it home, how he might respond, whether or not Jack would like it, if Sam would declare it a good find.
Sam and he have a log of the food that Cas finds and brings back. Sam rates them on absurdity and taste. Cas writes about their history, tradition, and texture. Together, they determine how well Dean rose to the challenge. A special notation if Jack “helped.”
Dean has been cooking a lot these days. Castiel thinks that it’s important to have hobbies.
These thoughts had made him happy.
This is not surprising, Cas decides on examination. One of the first things Cas had come to appreciate about humanity had been food. Food makes Cas happy.
When Jack had come to bargain with the Empty, to bring him back, the Empty had gleefully decided that Cas’s grace would be a good cost. After all, if Cas was not an angel, then the Empty would have no claim to him.
Jack had agreed readily. Cas had consoled himself with the knowledge that while he would not be fully himself, he would again be able to taste food the way it was meant to be enjoyed — holistically and smeared across the taste buds, rather than perfect molecules tasting of empty space.
Cas had been bleary from waking up, and Jack had flicked his grace away without so much as a snap. Like that, Cas was in Heaven.
It was only then that Cas had confronted Jack. Pleased though he was to be saved, Jack had not asked, and Castiel felt this set a dangerous precedent for the boy. This was when Jack revealed his plans to Castiel — his plan all along. He was going to fashion Cas a new grace, a stronger grace to restore him to his old power (his oldest power, one that even he’d forgotten amidst Naomi’s hundreds of rewrites). Castiel, one of the Seven Seraphim of the Days, Shield of Heaven, whole, complete, and powerful. Castiel's caged grace, tainted and tattered, hemmed in by scars put there by Naomi and hundreds of others who had wished to curb him, could rest in the Empty. Jack would see his father whole.
Jack wanted Castiel to be the first of the new angels, to guide and protect the new Heaven Jack was going to build.
So, Jack had reached forward to restore Grace to him, and Cas had gently stayed his hand and said, “I have some suggestions.”
One of the foremost had been the ability to put that power aside. Cas didn’t want barriers to the way the world feels, to the sensations of humanity. This was one of Dean’s first lessons, given to Cas in Heaven’s waiting room, years and years ago. Cas had offered him peace, safety, the surety of Heaven. Dean had chosen pain, guilt, freedom.
Love.
Dean had understood then, in his 26 short human years, what Cas had not in his thousands. That one can not pick and choose what emotions they want. That there are either all of them, or none of them. Happiness, sadness, fear, love, anger — they’re not sides of a coin or bullets in a gun. One is not more important than the other, and they all come and go in the same way: impertinently and with a hidden lesson. Just like Dean.
So, Castiel greets his happiness, the way he greeted his panic, and waits for it to teach him what it will.
Only in this greeting does he realize that this is a new friend. It’s not the pan flash of happiness, but something softer and longer. Cas frowns at the Alburnus chalcoides. The fish offers no insight to this new emotion.
Cas buys 5. He haggles with Dariush, the shop owner, not really for a better price, but because he delights in the old man's flashes of wit and clever turns of phrase, the way he slides quotes from great poets around his tongue. Castiel tells him this as Dariush wraps the fish in paper, and smiles at the laugh that sounds out of the man's chest. Dariush replies that he is an old old man, and so he is wise. He says it is this wisdom that will sell the fish for 840,000 Rials and no more. Cas and Dariush both know that this is much too cheap a price. Somewhere in the conversation, Castiel had begun arguing for the higher price and Dariush for the lower. Cas hands over 900,000 — pretending to miscount.
“Tell me then,” Castiel says in Farsi, enjoying the taste of the words, “If you are so wise, what turns happiness into a softer friend?”
“That is very very simple, young man.” Dariush chuckles, as he hands the fish over. “Feeding it.”
Castiel brings the fish home.
Later, several days later, Castiel stands in a forest near Füssen with Indra and several of the new angels, observing them observe humanity. Michael and Adam oversee the day to day bustle, tending to the souls of Heaven, but Cas tends to the angels, attempting to guide them in their understanding, show them how to learn from his mistakes. He remembers the birth of Mariel, the first of the new angels after him, and the quiet wonder they had all felt. He remembers Asariel’s fear when the first words out of Mariel’s mouth had been questions and doubts. The way Indra had drawn in on himself, eyes looking carefully away. Castiel had smiled at Mariel and answered what he could. He told her he did not know for what he could not.
He likes when the other angels ask questions he does not know the answer to. He likes that they get to discover the answers together. Dean had laughed when he’d told him this. Called him Captain Picard, boldly going.
Now, in this forest, Indra remarks on the quality of light. He suggests and rejects different ways to recreate it in Heaven. Marvels at the warmth of it on his skin, laughs when Sariel suggests his motives might be more selfish than pure.
Castiel feels that soft happiness surge in his chest again. He revisits Dariush’s wisdom.
He watches Zadkiel stretch his wings over a young woman, who is staring into the forest lost in doubt and self-fear, softening the light around her. She cannot see any of them, but Cas satisfies himself that she feels the warmth of their presence, knows that she is loved and created perfectly as she is. They are not meant to interfere, but Castiel knows that he encourages transgressions.
He realizes, abrupt in the way epiphanies tend to be, that this feeling is contentment. It's not just that he’s happy; he is also satisfied.
Castiel, First Angel of Free Will, Last Seraphim of the Days, Shield of Heaven, is happy. Against all odds, against his father’s will and all enemies’ ire, he has everything he ever wanted. Even things he did not know he would need.
He has purpose. He has Jack, happy and hale and unburdened by destiny. He has the Winchester brothers, alive and safe. He has many new friends, and a few old. He has Sam’s friendship, Jack’s love, and Dean.
Dean. Quiet, stubborn Dean. Dean, who in the months since Castiel had returned to him, had gifted him the tiny miracle of his love over and over again. Who had returned Cas’s affection tenfold in a hundred different ways. Who is so shy in his vulnerabilities, but leans into Cas’s hand. Who carries the mixtape that Cas gave him in his pocket like a talisman of his affection, who cooks and cleans for their strange family, who cares for Cas, who doesn’t try to make him less angel even as he teaches him how to be more human.
Castiel knows it shouldn’t have mattered, but it had been delightful to watch Dean’s reaction to the first tape. The way the blush had scattered beautifully over his cheeks, the secret, hidden way he regarded the tape like it was too important to him to share with anyone — even Cas, its maker. The way Dean softly sang the words in the kitchen sometimes, or when it was just the two of them in the bunker, quietly to himself.
He feels the contentment flicker in his chest, a soft frown tugging at his mouth. Dean gives him so much. Dean strives constantly to be better, to do better. Castiel had shied away from being too affectionate on the first tape — cowardly, afraid of how Dean might react.
Now, Castiel regrets that choice. He should be shouting his love. Dean, who has suffered so much and still loves so deeply and so completely, deserves that. Castiel knows that neither Winchester brother received the love that they deserved much when they were young. His heart clenches painfully at the image of a young Dean bundling Sam up for bed, tucking him in gently, and then crawling under his own threadbare blanket, alone.
He feels his wings flare out, expansive, and takes to the sky. He cannot change that past, but he can show Dean that he’s not alone now.
He gives Dean the second mixtape the next morning.