I Will Wait

"I don't know why we always seem to lose one another." Castiel laughs, weak. "Maybe that's all humanity is, really: loss after loss after loss. And somehow we're just supposed to get back up, when the people we love—"

He shouldn't say we. Castiel, for all his shortcomings as an angel, is not yet a human being.

"At least you are both together," Castiel says. He rests his forehead against the rock, throat tight with unshed tears. "And I hope the time passes more quickly for you than for me."

He squeezes his eyes shut. There is no physical sensation he hates more than crying.

"I will wait," he whispers roughly. "Fifty years is nothing to me. I'll find you again, I swear it, and I'll get you out without opening the Cage. Somehow." He presses one hand to the stone in goodbye. "I will wait," he repeats. "But know that I miss you more than I can bear."

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