Those simple words were oddly comforting, given the full extent of the situation they found themselves in and the once angel of the Lord that had uttered them. Cas wasn’t an angel anymore, he didn’t have the holy mojo that other angels had and no smiting power or insta-healing. The being that stood before him was human, Castiel wearing the meat suit of what had once been a good man that gave himself over completely and lost his soul when the angel died and was remade. It was the same Castiel that he’d shoved a knife into, the one that dragged him out of the pit despite how he was tormenting souls on the rack.
But he was different too.
Looking over Cas, there was a certain steel that his azure eyes still held and his spine was stiff as ever. Down to his core, the man appeared as a warrior ready to do battle even if he was going into things along.
❝I’ll watch over you.❞
That was wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be one person protecting him. They were Team Free Will. Dean, Sam and Cas all working together like old times. Before the apocalypse, before Dick, before all of it — things had been so simple. Demons and angels fought one another, hunters went after the monsters, and the average person was safe enough. It all went to hell in a hand basket pretty fucking fast, but now? Now all that looked like a pretty picnic.
He was supposed to be a team. They were supposed to be a team.
Cas wasn’t supposed to give him that look — so painfully controlled and sincere, as if he believed it would make a difference — and he certainly wasn’t supposed to be walking away.
