When it comes down to it, Daphne was just afraid he’d leave.

It wasn’t that she was desperate. She’d had plenty of suitors and offers before this. And when this strange man who remembered nothing of his life ran into her, naked and lost, she thought it her duty as a good person to help him find his way.

She took him in and purchased clothes, telling her friends at church about him for the added security this offered. She did, after all, have a complete stranger in her house.

He did not seem to know or care what name he would prefer, but after a few days she found it would help her to give him one. He seemed apathetic to the idea so she feigned excitement and encouragement where he lacked it.

“How about Emanuel?” She offered the name quietly, her hand holding her bible, the same book she had been scouring every night for some form of guidance.

“What?” the man said, studying her with that intense child’s gaze he constantly had.

“Emanuel? For your name? It means ‘God is with us’.”

“God?” the man repeated.

“He led you to me, so I thought…it seemed fitting.”

The man sat in his chair, contemplating this suggestion, before finally looking up at her with a definitive ”I like it.”

That was the first moment he seemed…he seemed like a normal human being. It was as if the name unlocked something in him and slowly brought out a man, a man who smiles and jokes, talks and laughs and forms connections with other people.

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“He can’t see you,” Cas said carefully. The woman shrugged.

“Yeah. Well. It’s a slow day,” Tessa replied, watching as Dean sat on the hood of that stupid car he always drives around. Beers clinking with Sam. The odd parking lot overlooking a mountain’s stream. “He can’t see you either.”

“Slow day,” the angel repeated with a barely-there smile. Cas continued to stare at her. “But why are you here? You’re a reaper.”

“And you’re an angel.”

“Barely,” Cas whispered under his breath. “Are they going to die?”

She looked at Dean before she responded. Looked at him smile as Sam was correcting his story from their childhood, interjecting “I wasn’t scared” and “that’s not what happened” and the occasional smack away of a barely-offending pointing finger. She looked at him and glanced at her invisible companion. “Not today.” She shrugged her way back to the two brothers. “Not that death means anything to them anymore. You angels just pop them right back, two good-as-new vessels.”

“So you’re here to lecture me,” Cas said with a certain resignation that showed he was almost asking for it.

“No. I’m here because…because we’ve got a thing.” She nodded to Dean, on his beloved Impala. Cas followed her stare.

“I don’t understand,” he confessed after a moment.

“I’m his reaper.”

“I didn’t think humans get personal reapers,” the angel said, as unassumingly as he could.

“Humans aren’t usually repeat customers.” She crossed her arms and turned her face and body towards Cas with a sigh. “Every time he dies, Castiel, I guide his soul to move on, and he goes to heaven, and you guys send him right back.”

Cas managed to make a show of looking guilty, even though he was far removed from heaven at this point. His faith had found a new focus now. “He doesn’t remember,” Cas realized.

“He shouldn’t remember,” she clarified. “So sometimes I stop by. To see what he does with the days he’s alive.”

“But you don’t show yourself.”

She smiled. “Like I said. We’ve got a thing.”

Sometimes Castiel thought that the Enochian-to-English dictionary had really - what was the phrase Dean used? - dropped the ball.

“Faith” was an interesting word because in English it was belief and a choice. In Enochian, it was a given mandate. It was belief in something real, something that doesn’t need faith because you can take it as fact. The English word for faith carried more meaning, just like life carries more meaning, because it can stop existing. For whatever reason the individual human desires, they can cast away their faith yet still live as a good person. Angels can cast away their faith, Castiel supposed, but they can’t expect to live afterwards.

In English, “devotion” was commitment. It was sticking with someone even when you thought they were wrong because they would stick by you. Or because they wouldn’t. Humans form a strong attachment to people, places, things. They become devoted to whatever they think they can’t live their lives without, and they’re with it for as long as they possibly can be. Dean was devoted to his car. Completely committed. With the Impala to the very end. In Enochian, “devotion” meant “obedience”. There was no poetry behind it, or room for attempts to challenge it. There was just that, just devotion, and no alternative. Not for angels.

In Enochian, the dictionary defined “love” as dedication, devotion, loyalty, trust. You felt love towards God, your father. Towards you fellow brothers and sisters. In English, as far as he could tell, they had added one other characteristic. A need. In English, in human, love is a need you can’t shake. It’s why Castiel watches these two brothers die to save the other, knowing that neither can live by himself, yet doing it anyway.

Just a few words, out of many, yet they seem to Castiel to be the most important in the entire book. He finds it funny now when Zachariah throws around these words, easily, foolishly, assuming they mean the same thing in both languages. Assuming he knows what he’s saying. Assuming he can predict what the brothers would do, because they’re motivated by the angels’ ideas of faith, devotion, love.

Castiel often suspected that the language barrier was the reason Sam and Dean managed to scrape by and get away so often, so easily, from right under their noses.

“I don’t know, man,” Dean said, frowning. He didn’t think it was a difficult question, in theory, but Castiel’s earnest way of asking it had made him doubt his sarcastic, smartass reply. “Sammy’s the one who prays, he knows more about this stuff.”

Castiel seemed to shake his head at this. “I think you’re the more appropriate choice to answer this question.”

“I didn’t even believe in angels, Cas, why would I be the better one to ask? Who the fuck cares how humanity views them?”

“Yet you went to bed every night as a child certain that angels were real.” Castiel paused as Dean’s expression changed. “I seem to have upset you.”

“Don’t talk about that.”

“But it is directly related to the point I’m trying to-“

“Don’t, ok? Just don’t.”

Castiel stopped talking, staring at the floor and patiently waiting out a turn for the worse in Dean’s mood that he’s not sure how he set off just yet. “I’m only trying to understand,” the angel eventually said.

“Understand what?” Dean replied with the same tone of cautious uneasiness he carried in the beginning of the conversation, before his childhood was ever brought up.

“Your disappointment.” Castiel noticed the look of confusion on Dean’s face and mirrored it, for lack of understanding what caused it. He was still new to this world, to this meat suit (they called them vessels, but in the end it was still just a prison he has to willingly trap himself in just to interact with the human world), he didn’t understand how or why people did things and he still thought that if he could mimic them, then that’d provide a clue.

“My disappointment?” Dean echoed back and the angel stared at him harshly, as if enough eye contact would make it all suddenly clear.

“Yes. You are disappointed with us. Disappointment comes from failed expectations. What did you expect, that we failed?”

Dean leaned back in his chair as the pieces started to fall into place. “Angels, well. Well, they wear white. They-they play harps and sit on clouds and look down and help good people when they need it most.” The next few words were said with a dry throat and a harsh tongue. “People, well, they believe they’re watching over us.”

“And our presence, it disappoints this?” Castiel gave this some further thought. “We manifest as extremely bright white lights,” he offers slowly.

“Yeah, but,” Dean sighed and made some kind of vague hand gesture that only seemed to confuse the angel even more. “You’re not righteous, Cas.” Castiel seemed to tighten his jaw in offense to this and Dean quickly added, “well, you are, you’re very righteous, but you’re not really right.” This didn’t seem to make the situation any better.

“I know I don’t play a stringed musical instrument but such conclusions seem…arbitrary.”

“You don’t have people’s best interests at heart. You don’t - you don’t look out for them. Not really. Not individually. You’re not - you’re not angels.” As soon as the last sentence stumbled out of his mouth, Dean sensed his mistake.

The man in the trenchcoat rose from the chair and suddenly “nerd angel” was the farthest thing from Dean’s mind. “We’re not your angels, you mean.”

“Yeah, I guess,” the man said hurriedly, in hushed tones, and the celestial creature next to him seemed prime to strike.

“Perhaps you should consider that you do not know what angels truly are. Perhaps you would find your disappointment is misplaced.”

“I told you, Cas, I’m not a believer, it’s not like I think about-“

Castiel talked over him with such finality that it killed the sentence, the words dying in his throat. “Perhaps you forget that the angels who walk the Earth are bound by a human body in the human world and under human rules because our father wishes it so. Because otherwise our attempts at communication cause humans immense pain.” His face focused on Dean’s and the overwhelming feeling of causing offense to this wall of heavenly obedience finally settled in the man’s gut. “Perhaps you do not value our devotion because you can turn a blind eye to faith, whereas all we are given is obedience. We cannot waver in faith. We cannot babysit every human. You place no value in our way of life because you think we have a choice, and you pass judgement on our affairs because we don’t live up to your standards. Or maybe you place no value in our existence because you know we don’t have a choice at all.”

“Cas, I didn’t mean-“

“Maybe it’s humanity that is failing. Maybe it is you who have stopped living up to our expectations. Maybe we have to remind you what angels truly are because you’ve hidden us and underestimated us, dressing us in pristine white and giving us useless musical instruments.”

“Cas,” Dean says carefully and the storm seems to pass, Castiel’s face once again settling into a neutral curiosity.

“Man has always been so proud. And for so long, we have tried to be so humble in contrast.”

“I thought you guys would care more. You know. About innocent lives. About people dying.”

“We concern ourselves with the fate of the world, not the fate of every single person in it,” came the simple, monotone, slightly rehearsed reply.

“Which is righteous,” Dean repeated stubbornly, “but not always right.”

Castiel sat back down, face impassive, deep in thought. “You say that is how the world sees us.”

“Yes.”

“So if the world actually met us, then they would also find cause to be disappointed?”

“…Yes.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. “You were right,” Castiel finally said, breaking the quiet. “I should ask Sam about this.”

“He’s not going to tell you any different.” Dean leaned forward. “Why does it bother you?”

“Why should I care that you expected me to be someone different, and are saddened that I am not?”

“Yeah. Who cares? We’re here to prevent the apocalypse, not start a book club and be best friends for life.”

“Because I never expect you to be anyone but yourself. Because who you are is why raising you from hell was deemed necessary. Because I am not disappointed when you fail.”

“You’re not? Really?” This was said with a half hearted smile an a small chuckle, both seeming forced.

“I expect you to do what you would do. I expect that of all humans.” Castiel stood, obviously leaving in that blink-and-he’s-gone angel way of his. “It is odd that I am not offered the same courtesy.”

“It’s… angels are supposed to be comforting.”

Castiel stared down. “You find comfort in the warriors of God?”

“We find comfort in not thinking of them like that. In glossing over everything they do for the greater good and thinking of them as something watching over us for our individual…good.”

“Then you are right.”

“About what?” Dean said apprehensively, unconsciously leaning back from the intense stare.

“Your “angels” don’t exist.”

Dean sat back in stunned silence as a small, inexplicable wind carrying the faintest of sounds of wings flapping swept the room and Castiel vanished.

Angels are not born with mercy.

Otherwise, how could we watch as two boys grow up, again and again, knowing they live only as shadow puppets of the original brothers, and are doomed to their fate as well.

Angels are not taught morals.

Otherwise, how can we groom a man, watching as he nearly kills himself, over and over, to save the one we know he’s destined to kill. He dies and we bring him back. He goes to hell, and we bring him back. To save his brother, until his own hands are the ones who kill him.

Angels are not raised with love.

Otherwise they would understand how these two boys put each other’s welfare above everything, above saving others, above the greater good, above the apocalypse, above man, demon, angel and god.

What angels understand is devotion.

What angels don’t understand, not really, is family.

When they look at the two boys, angels see devotion and loyalty. Angels see strength of character. Angels see two brothers, two vessels, two perfectly poised pieces in the grand scheme of things. They don’t understand love, morals, mercy. They understand following orders. They see the two brothers and they see Cain and Abel, they see servants of the divine plan, they see destiny.

When I look at the two boys, I see family.

So I don’t actually ship Destiel

But if I did..

and if I had just watched Free To Be You and Me…

and if I had a bit of time on my hands and an urge to write Cas…

well…

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