Never has he walked this far. Never alone, at least. No, he has always flown, or—at his darkest moments—traveled by car, only hiked through Purgatory with a hunter and a vampire at the moments most bittersweet. But now his legs burn as his Grace once did and the gale-force wind brings tears to his eyes as it mocks the way it once felt to feel his family’s approach.
His vessel’s worn shoes only muffle the feel of the bramble crunching beneath his feet, and his billowing coat impedes him like a set of flightless wings, and suddenly, Cas thinks, he’s aware of a certain irony, that never before has he felt so out of place in his vessel than he does now that it has become his own body.
He feels as cut off from himself as he is from the Host, can’t hear the voices of his brothers or sisters, only knows dimly that they must have called out in the moments after his own Grace was lost to him. But their pain nevertheless sings with clarity in his mind, surges in his quickly pumping human heart, and he hears the echoes of their screams in the sounds of human blood rushing and ringing in his dull and insensitive human ears.
But in the distance, he hears his name, an invocation of something once Holy. “Castiel!” the voice screams, and its familiarity cuts to his human soul like its prayers once cut straight to his Grace. “Dean,” he answers, though he knows the hunter cannot possibly hear him, knows that he can no longer reach his friend in an instant, knows that he must now choose to go to him, must fight his way through the woods until he finds him by the water.
So he follows the voice, follows it to a clearing and finds Dean sobbing against the Impala, finds him clutching his broken little brother to his chest, mumbling prayers with nowhere to go.
“Dean,” he whispers, dragging his tingling leaden feet to the hunter’s side, extending a reverent hand to brush away his friend’s falling tears. But he doesn’t get close enough before his wrist is seized and his body pulled out from under him, before Dean takes his hand and he tumbles gracelessly to the stinging, prickly-soft ground.
Dean says nothing, simply yanks him to his side and puts an arm around him, pushes Cas’ face to his chest and sobs into his hair. Dean leans against his baby, clutches at the broken man and the torn angel in a silent prayer that they stay, and Cas finds that he can still hear that prayer, can feel Dean’s warmth flowing into him like the communion of the Host, can feel Sam’s shaking like the resonating thrum of Grace, and they’re not okay, but they’re there, they’re not nothing—they’re just empty—and, as Dean tightens his hold, Cas can feel the groans and sighs of spaces being filled, can feel the yawning of wounds sealing over, can feel the stirrings of grace.
![valiantparadox:
“He’s adorable, Gabriel”
Based on this post [x]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/0aad591cde0c0e92ccdcc8d5b32bc956/tumblr_mmls211WvQ1rpmwhjo1_500.png)
