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Castiel has lost many things in the many millennia he's been in existence, knows that not every won battle counts to win the war. Knows that defeat is sometimes inevitable, as well as loss.
But nothing rips him apart, leaves him gasping for something better, leaves him aching in night, than the loss of what could've been the greatest thing he'd have in all eternity.
Nothing leaves him broken like Dean Winchester.
-
"I wish circumstances were different," Cas says, and Dean feels the break right down to his soul in the effort not to agree.
I wish we were younger and your eyes had less darkness in them, he seems to say. I wish we met in another world where we aren't soldiers fighting against each other in a war that never ends.
I wish you were just a mechanic and I have no idea what to do with piece of shit car, Dean reads in the slump of his shoulders.
I wish I could've been nothing but a small town librarian and you flirted with me with each Vonnegut book you borrowed, the fraying ends of his coat seems to say.
I wish I was different. I wish you were different. I wish it wasn't this way.
I wish things were different-I wish we had more time-IwishIwishIwish-
Wishes leave him spitting with fury because wishes come true in fairytales. If his life were a story, it'd the autobiography of an intoxicated psychotic killer. Fairytales burnt into ashes with his mother when he was four. Fairytales where wiped away when Sam swallowed that demon blood. Fairytales had never existed, had never seen the rising sun. Had never touched Dean's life.
For a moment, Dean is so angry he can feel it burn and fester in his chest and it's all he can do not to get in the Impala and find some necks to break. All he can do. His hand tightens into a fist, knuckles white as his shattering heart pounds hard against his ribcage.
But the anger drains out and it saps with it everything else. He's empty and he feels weak with it.
"Yeah, Cas," he says, his words heavier than any sigh he could manage. "Me too."