in about 15 years all of our kids will be fangirling over west collins and we’ll all just be sitting here like oh christ, not again

(x)

It takes Castiel days to pinpoint his own location. That first night, the stars are no help, eclipsed by the angels. The remainder of the night—after that one painful moment of brilliance—is a dark spot in his memory. A new experience, and not a welcome one. He awakes in the woods, aching in ways he doesn’t understand, and then he walks.

He sleeps through the second night, too exhausted to wait for the stars to reveal themselves. The green and white road signs are in English—Castiel is relieved, for an instant, that reading has not been taken from him along with everything else—and the climate is temperate. He is most likely in the United States. It’s warm enough that he doesn’t freeze to death while sleeping a cow pasture, but not warm enough that sleeping a cow pasture is comfortable.

Being human is anything but comfortable. He remembers the first time, of course, that long slow descent before the Apocalypse that wasn’t, but this is different. The discomfort has to do with the cold and the heat and the itch of being human, but it also has to do with something deeper, something vulnerable and afraid and violated. Castiel doesn’t want to think about it, so when he wakes up with grass tickling his cheek on the third day, he simply gets up and keeps walking. His legs are sore.

He doesn’t have to wait for the stars that night. He follows the road until he discovers the city of East Lansing, Michigan. He pulls the last crumpled dollar bill out of his coat pocket and spends ninety-cents of it on coffee at Biggerson’s. He sits down at a table by the window and stares down into the cup, trying not to contemplate the rest of his life.

There’s a rest of his life now. A finite rest of his life.

Of all his new limitations, that is the only one that feels like solace.

“Talk about coincidences,” someone says.

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