There Is A Star And A Child

dreamnovak:

~~this is a repost because the first one was deleted 😔~~
You have fallen in every way imaginable, a sister had said, long ago. She was right then, and she is right now.
Sometimes, the full force of how far Castiel has fallen still hits him. Sometimes, it means he can’t breathe. Sometimes, he swears he can still feel his wings, like metaphysical phantom limbs. He spends hours contorting himself in the mirror, staring at the smooth expanse of his back, searching for the scars that he knows are there on some plane his now-human eyes can’t see.
Sometimes, he’s convinced the wounds are still bleeding.
More than sometimes, he has nightmares. He dreams about all the faces that had been his (or the ones he had claimed, not thinking about who else’s they may have been), the damage he’d done over millennia, a soldier with armor made of grace and celestial intent. Once, he wakes up screaming, and Dean has his gun out and cocked before he can realize the only danger is inside Castiel’s head. He puts down the weapon in exchange for soft touches and soothing words until Castiel falls back asleep.
On the nights his body fights sleep, still desperately pretending like it doesn’t need it, Castiel dreams of watching the Grand Canyon form with an older brother. He dreams of ancient forests, of empires rising and falling, of a tiny fish hauling itself onto new land. Those nights he wakes up crying. Sometimes, he’s not sure if that’s better.
He only cries when Dean’s asleep. One night, it’s during a nature documentary that Dean thought would make him feel better. You like bees, he’d said. He hadn’t known that Castiel likes the bee because it was the first creature that his Father let him hold, in his young grace, before breathing life into it and freeing it into the world. That was millions of years ago. Now, watching the bees on the screen—nearly unrecognizable from what they began as—a tear slips down his cheek. Dean isn’t asleep, like he thought, and he moves from Castiel’s shoulder to wipe the tear away with his thumb. Castiel leans into him, and Dean doesn’t say anything but he kisses the tears that come next and sometimes, that’s enough.
Sometimes, though, Castiel ends up on the roof of the bunker, staring at the night sky, greeting the stars like old, lost friends—and he aches with his whole being. He remembers what it was like to be among them. What it was like to be them. Thousands of years spent as starlight, watching the Earth with the wonder and curiosity of a child, wanting to reach for it but being held back because even then Heaven knew that once he touched it, it would keep him.
Sometimes Dean is there with him, squeezing his hand, an anchor, and Castiel looks at him and remembers why being down here is worth it. The stars don’t have Dean. He connects Dean’s freckles to replace the constellations he left behind and decides he likes these better. He remembers every single time he has chosen Dean Winchester, every choice stripping him of more grace—and although he longs for what he left behind, he never regrets a single one of them.
Sometimes he forgets about the phantom wings, about the hole where his grace was, what it was like to be a Seraph, because Dean looks at him with the love and devotion most angels—most Gods—dream of, and Castiel thinks that there is nothing in the universe more holy.