Part 23/24: Nodus Tollens noun 1. the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore
**content warning: this chapter contains explicit sexual content**
It occurs to Castiel, sometime that afternoon and between
bouts of rather athletic sex, that he
has no idea how he ever ended up here.
Looking back on the last few months of his life, it seems
impossible that he would find himself in this position: happy – content, even –
and in Dean Winchester’s bed.
It gets even more absurd when he thinks of himself a year
ago. Then ten years. A laugh bubbles its way out of his chest before he can
stop it.
“Hey. Just so you know, it’s not polite to laugh at a guy
with your head between his legs.”
Castiel looks up from where he’d been idly sucking a bruise
to Dean’s thigh.
Dean raises an eyebrow. “Not really an ego boost.”
Castiel traces idle fingers down the side of his water
glass, drawing up the beads of condensation. The sun is warm on his face –
almost hot – but the cool May breeze cuts through it. It’s a perfect day,
really; the street is filled with people.
“Can I get you some more coffee?”
Startled, Castiel glances up at the waitress standing next
to his table, coffee pot in hand. She’s very young, maybe still in high school.
“Yes, thank you,” he says, and she picks up his empty cup to refill it.
“Anything else you need?” she asks, setting it back on the patio
table.
Castiel considers her a moment. “How old are you?”
She looks surprised at first, then a little unnerved,
throwing a glance back towards the door to the café.
“I’m sorry,” Castiel says quickly. “I don’t mean to be…
I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. You just seem very young to have a job.”
A bit of the tension eases from her shoulders, but she still
looks wary. “Yeah, maybe. But those jiu jitsu classes don’t pay for themselves,”
she says pointedly.
Castiel smiles and nods. Her tone was light, but the warning
is clear. “Of course. And I don’t need anything else just now, thank you.”
She nods and moves away to wait on another table, and Castiel
turns his attention back to the street.
Part 17/24: Lachesism noun 1. the desire to be struck by disaster;
to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire
Castiel does a lot of driving over the next two weeks. Up
and down, east and west, criss-crossing backroads and highways and never
staying still for more than a few hours. He’s not using a map, not heading in
any particular direction. It’s almost as if he’s letting the road itself lead him,
and he follows the bends and curves and turns almost mindlessly. Delaware,
Ohio, Alabama, California; he checks different states off a mental list, seeing
their fields and mountains but registering absolutely nothing. He gives Kansas
a wide berth.
Some nights he stays at motels, others he simply pulls over
on a deserted stretch and climbs into the backseat to sleep. He changes cars
every few days, and he only uses cash, pilfered from the bunker’s emergency
supply before he left.
Castiel is quite certain his evasive efforts have been
sufficient, but he’s still anxious, looking over his shoulder wherever he goes.
There’s a nagging piece of him that fears facing Sam and Dean, after all the
damage he’s done and the pain he’s caused. He fears being found.
There’s another piece of him that’s desperate for it.
Part 16/24: Chrysalism noun 1. the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm
The rain started up about ten miles south of St Louis. At
first it was just a light patter sprinkling against the windshield, but it
quickly grew to a downpour that blurred the entire road. It took Castiel several
minutes and a near-miss with a minivan before he finally found the correct knob
for the windshield wipers in his new, pilfered station wagon.
It’s his fifth car today. He left the bunker in an old Cadillac
from the garage, but abandoned it in a parking lot the moment he hit Phillipsburg.
From there he jimmied the lock on an SUV and headed west into Colorado, then switched
to a little coup and doubled back east. He swapped the coup out for a rusty
pickup in Wichita, then promptly dumped it and hopped a bus from Springfield to
Jefferson City.
Despite everything, Castiel is grateful for all he’s learned
from Sam and Dean over the years. Now he knows how not to be found.
Since the fight in the kitchen, Castiel has barely left his
bedroom. For the last three days, all he’s done is sit on his bed, trapped in
his own thoughts.
He doesn’t read or write in his notebooks, doesn’t scroll
through his phone. He only leaves the room late at night, when he’s certain Sam
and Dean are asleep and there’s no chance of running into them in the halls.
Even then, he’s out and back in quickly, making dashes to the bathroom, or the
kitchen when his hunger gets too painful to ignore.
Dean has pounded on the door, rattling the handle and
yelling words like coward and asshole. Sam once sat outside for two
hours, speaking softly through the wooden slats at the bottom of the door. Castiel
doesn’t really know what he’d been saying. He tuned him out.
It’s hard for him to even understand why. Even through all
his confusion and pain and anger, it’s as though Castiel is at war with
himself. Every moment he spends in his self-imposed solitude, there’s a voice
in his head, somewhere at the back, screaming to be heard.
Apologize, it
says. What are you doing, why are you
just sitting there? Stand up and open the door and fix this.
The thoughts run on a loop in his head, and each passing
second Castiel feels the voice try and propel him up out of bed.
It never does, though. That little voice isn’t quite loud
enough to drown out the other – the one filled with bleak and heavy certainty,
that knows what must be done now.
Karate, SPN Demonic Octopus Guardian 