[ Castiel remembers it well. Years mean little to something that has existent since before the world itself, and yet he remembers his few months spent human feeling as if they'd stretched for ages. He remembers the pain and confusion, the crush of emotions he wasn't created to be able to parse, usually protected by the blinding, searing light of his own grace. Overwhelming physical sensation and input, and noise that was less than and yet so much more than being able to skim the thoughts of passerby, so many of his usual senses crippled and crumbled away, yet so many others heightened to such painful heights he'd not been sure why he'd ever considered humans weak in the face of all their very frail existence makes them endure.
He remembers, too, spending money on a tattoo to hide himself, and not having enough left to clean Jimmy Novak's trench coat and still be able to afford water. The kindness of strangers. The horrific deceptiveness of strangers.
The painful shame of existence as human. Somehow less than and more than before at the same time. All that he'd considered 'himself' cut away.
Emotion....
You can't stay.
Feelings, he'd found, were always harder than physical sensation. Castiel was a soldier before he was anything else. He can soldier through. Emotion, though...
He's lost in thought wandering the alleys, trying to reconcile his death and revival, and what he currently takes for the Empty's idea of a joke, his newfound... humanity, for all intents and purposes.
He's still an angel. He can feel it, simmering somewhere inside his veins. But he's much more flesh and blood than light and grace, here, tied within his vessel in ways he'd thought he'd escaped.
Maybe, he thinks, PB&J will taste of something other than molecules again... if he can find the way to afford something as nice. For now, he counts his limited blessings in the fact that the trench coat is still...
Someone bumps into him, a young man, and Castiel blinks owlishly at the merely human form he beholds, all traces of what he usually seels when looking at people gone. And then comes the onslought of feeling, and it's hard, at first, to realize they're not his own when they're so painfully, horrifyingly familiar.
He remembers Ephraim coming to kill him, an angel of mercy searching for the greatest pain, and finding Castiel, holding it and choking under it.
It feels like all the broken shards and jagged edges he keeps tucked away inside his own rib cage. It feels like the mangled, broken thing of a soul he'd once raised from the pit. It's familiar.
Castiel reaches out a hand, but pauses in time - remembers not to touch, and slowly lowers his hand. And what good could he do? He cannot heal, here, cannot take away that pain.
Castiel remembers... loneliness. And the kindness of stranger. ]
Empathy
He remembers, too, spending money on a tattoo to hide himself, and not having enough left to clean Jimmy Novak's trench coat and still be able to afford water. The kindness of strangers. The horrific deceptiveness of strangers.
The painful shame of existence as human. Somehow less than and more than before at the same time. All that he'd considered 'himself' cut away.
Emotion....
You can't stay.
Feelings, he'd found, were always harder than physical sensation. Castiel was a soldier before he was anything else. He can soldier through. Emotion, though...
He's lost in thought wandering the alleys, trying to reconcile his death and revival, and what he currently takes for the Empty's idea of a joke, his newfound... humanity, for all intents and purposes.
He's still an angel. He can feel it, simmering somewhere inside his veins. But he's much more flesh and blood than light and grace, here, tied within his vessel in ways he'd thought he'd escaped.
Maybe, he thinks, PB&J will taste of something other than molecules again... if he can find the way to afford something as nice. For now, he counts his limited blessings in the fact that the trench coat is still...
Someone bumps into him, a young man, and Castiel blinks owlishly at the merely human form he beholds, all traces of what he usually seels when looking at people gone. And then comes the onslought of feeling, and it's hard, at first, to realize they're not his own when they're so painfully, horrifyingly familiar.
He remembers Ephraim coming to kill him, an angel of mercy searching for the greatest pain, and finding Castiel, holding it and choking under it.
It feels like all the broken shards and jagged edges he keeps tucked away inside his own rib cage. It feels like the mangled, broken thing of a soul he'd once raised from the pit. It's familiar.
Castiel reaches out a hand, but pauses in time - remembers not to touch, and slowly lowers his hand. And what good could he do? He cannot heal, here, cannot take away that pain.
Castiel remembers... loneliness. And the kindness of stranger. ]
Let me help you.