Chapter: 1 - Reaching For Clarity
Author: AntiquityDreams
Co-Creator: BlackFruitBat
Pairing: Eventual Dean/Cas
Rating: PG (eventually R?)
Disclaimer: I own nothing! Just borrowing them for a little bit, I'll return them soon!
Feedback: We're big fans of feedback. Keeps us going _
Warnings: While the story is set in the SPN verse, it is ever so slightly AU as we are making up a background for Cas pre-show. It also deals with reincarnation/past life recognition ideas for the boys and their angel.
Author notes: This is my first time posting and first time writing for SPN. Please forgive me if I fail at something T__T! I'm the lead writer/concept creator and BlackFruitBat is my allstar Beta Reader/Researcher/Idea helper/part-time writer and all around amazing aid. I'm very sure this piece would have never made it up here without her help so I list her as my co-creator. So *deep breath* here it is ^^.

If he thinks back far enough he can remember something he suspects he wasn't meant to. At first, he guessed it was a consequence of being in a vessel; the lingering fragments of Jimmy seeping through the hardened veneer of his angelic presence to induce dreams while still awake. He'd catch glimpses every now and again, ripples of emotion and traces of color that would strike him at odd moments. It wasn't until their passing, until he was brought back to life and Jimmy had moved on, leaving an empty shell for Castiel to keep, that he truly knew it was something else.

The first lucid dream was of color, specifically blue and green. Not the artificial blues and greens of Man, mind you, but steel blue and true green -colors that vaguely reminded him of the ocean. And if the angel concentrated hard enough, for long enough, there was also a distinct smell. Distant as the color but more vibrant than the hue was the fragrance of water.

Now none of this would seem abnormal, really, if it weren't for the fact that these collections of sensations were more profound a phenomenon than he ever recalled any experience being. As it stood, all angels have dulled responses to their senses in order to keep them from distractions. Even when inhabiting a human experiences only became fractionally more intense, like experiencing the world through a plastic film with only vision and hearing reaching crystal quality. And even then, there was a filter.

His world was indubitable different. Perhaps to the average person it would seem more simplistic, having so much dulled compared to living under the influence of emotions. But really, it was such a perplexing view of reality that most would feel lost in a dream if they looked through his eyes. Castiel's world existed in muted tones of everything except blue, green and the smell of water.

Dean Winchester has green eyes. In fact, Dean's eyes are exactly the same shade he remembers so well and the reason behind this is questionable at best. Yet that hue strikes him as so very familiar, almost as if the answer was dancing on the tip of his tongue and that only serves to make him more inquisitive about the nature of this "familiar" sentiment. He often catches himself starring as he tries to force puzzle pieces together so as to make sense of the clues. Dean sometimes catches him in the act and calls him out on it in his own manner. If Castile could feel, he'd call himself embarrassed. But since the depth of that particular emotion still lacked clarity, he found the best thing to do was switch his attention to something less mock-worthy and smirk-inducing.

There is a third piece to the puzzle; one even more confusing than the first two because he doesn't understand what it is beyond a feeling. There is an emotion sunken in the depths of his being, and it has existed longer than doubt. Doubt that he knows only because he was taught to avoid it. Perhaps this is why his falling from grace had been so much faster than those around him. Because, unlike the others, he always had one foot out of step, "dissension " was merely a sideways motion instead of a downward fall.

The first time Dean insisted they go fishing was when Castiel began to realize that perhaps these slivers of sensations may actually belong to him. Jimmy was no longer with him (the human spirit had not been reinstate when he was resurrected) and the empty space gave the angel a lot of room to analyze everything. Much to his surprise, there was more there than what had been there before and not all of it could be accounted for.

"Are you serious? Fishing?" That was Sam Winchester; younger brother of Dean Winchester, designated vessel of Lucifer, eater of salads and things Dean liked to refer to as "healthy crap". Which Castiel had noted, on many an occasion, is an oxymoron. Feces is never healthy.

"Sure. Why not? No one is here to complain if we borrow the boat and some poles. 'Sides, I've got a cooler full of beer and time to waste." That was his charge, Dean Winchester. The soul he gripped tight and pulled from perdition. The chosen vessel of Michael. The one he chose to fall from heaven to help. Consumer of burgers and beer and.. apparently fish.

Catalog. Organize. Make sense of the clues, thoughts, feel--

"Cas?" Said angel blinked back to the present, aware that he had drifted off for 8.6 seconds but unaware as to why that caught anyone's attention.

"Yes?" The sound of his humanized voice always struck him as odd because of how little it sounded like his true voice. The human vocal cords stretched and strained to contain the sound of his speech and, in the end, came out sounding so much like gravel under foot. His real voice was not at all like this. The voice of any angel is supposed to be a smooth and claming vibration, washing over people in waves of honey and milk; light as a butterfly kiss and warm like your grandmother's freshly baked pie. The tones all varied, as if each angel had a unique flavor of pie (if he continued this metaphor he'd like to say his was apple but he's unsure if that's because it's true or if that's the influence of Dean Winchester).

Yet the voice he used now... it was rough and-- SNAP!

Castiel jerked backwards, away from the fingers snapping in front of him.

"Hey Captain Kirk, why don't you take a vacation from the Enterprise and join the rest of us down here on earth?"

"Dean, you know I don't understand these references..." Honestly, why he eve bothered using them on Castiel was beyond him.

"Yeah, he's more like Spock anyway." Sam corrected from the far left where he was pulling gear from the impala.

"So how 'bout it green blood? You and me out on the boat?"

"I assure you my blood is red and there is only room for two individuals on that flotation devise."

Dean looked amused and Castiel couldn't help but squint at him in question. He resisted the urge to glean thoughts from the man's mind because the last lecture had been strongly worded enough to make a point that Cas should NOT be doing it anyway. So he settled for a look that was second nature and mostly unconscious.

"You really weren't listening, were you?"

"I beg your pardon?" Head tilt.

"I'm not going." Sam stood up from his kneeling position on the ground, brushing his pants off as he did so. "I'm not fond of lakes. Or large bodies of water in general."

Castiel nodded at this because he understood, "The drowning incident of 1991."

Sam raised a single eyebrow and Dean fidgeted slightly, apparently uncomfortable with the mention of the accidentally almost-drowning of Sam Winchester. Probably due to the fact Dean was supposed to be watching Sam instead of picking up on girls when the bullies approached the boy alone on the dock. Evidently Dean still had lingering guilt over the situation regardless of how unnecessary it was. Castiel understood the condition but not the reasons... or the feelings associated with it. Humans were a labyrinth of byzantine emotions.

"Right. So, since there's one open spot, means you're coming. Grab a pole and let's go."

Castiel learned long ago that arguing with Dean when he had already made up his mind was like trying to pull crop from a barren land. It was fruitless.

True blues scoped the area to find a pole leaning against a tree next to a tackle box, which he presumed was also his unspoken duty to carry along. Picking both up, the brunette headed for the dock where small boat waited their arrival. The boat belonged to the owners of the cabin; however, no one would be using it any time soon as the cabin had been recently deserted because of rumors of ghosts that turned out to be just raccoons in the attic. City people were really clueless sometimes, always stubborn that there is no reason to leave a house despite the human-like shadows and flying cutlery, yet an easily explained nesting animal causes them enough fear to evacuate.

Finding the place hospitable and (now) raccoon free, Dean took it upon himself to squat for a few days and enjoy the benefits of a summer cabin stocked to the brim with no inhabitants to speak of. At least, none until the owners came back to check on the "ghost exorcists" they had claimed to be.

With tackle box and pile in toe, Cas couldn't help but marvel at the advancements fishing had made over the span of its inception. For being such an old tradition, it's amazing all the progress modern man has put towards a technique that has never actually changed. Much like war, you can change the players and the equipment but the basics remain the same.

The Holy Wars of Heaven are not all that unlike the wars of man.

Upon push off, Castiel felt an instant overwhelming rush of familiarity. The gentle lapping of water and the distant sounds of splashing wildlife. He knew this. And the look on his face must have been strange for not even four strokes deep into the lame, Dean looked... concerned? Confused? Both? Emotions were hard to read when you only had a face to observe, especially when the one being deciphered heavily relied on the strange acts of "sarcasm" and "dry humor," something Dean indulged in on a daily (or sometimes hourly) basis.

"Oh don't tell me you're hydrophobic too..." Case in point.

"I know this."

Dean raised a single brow and pushed his head forward, the look Castiel has categorized as 'I need more information but I'm not going to verbally ask for it'. The angel knew this one pretty well, if only because he saw it so often.

"Fishing. I know this. It's... familiar."

Dean scoffed as he opened the tackle box Cas had brought and began to bait his own pole. "I would hope so, you're older than dirt... right?" The man cast his line out and would have completely missed the look Castiel was giving him if the angel didn't have the habit of holding his expressions for longer than necessary.

"No. I'm not as old as some of my brothers and sisters. I was created..." And there was that 'zoned out' look again. If Dean didn't outright KNOW better, he might have accused Cas of getting an early start on the foretold drug abuse habit he saw in Zachariah's future.

"Created..?" The blond prompted once he steadied his line in the pole holder while simultaneously reaching for a beer.

"After man kind." Cas seemed confused and possibly a little lost so Dean took a bit of sympathy on him and handed him the first open beer. What? He knew how to play nice with other kids when he had to.

Taking the beer, the angel drank from it slowly and Dean just watched because it seemed foreign every time he did something distinctly human. A while ago the oldest Winchester had discovered that Cas liked beer as it apparently reminded him of years spent in Egypt, long before Dean was thought of… or most countries were invented. When the world was still new, Cas told him, beer was much like a meal in itself and the acquired taste for it simply grew on him. Even if today's beer was a much more watered down version of the older drink, he still appreciated the darker brews and Dean was just sort of fine with that. Damn his life was weird.

The angel's eyes were unfocussed at some distant point that Dean could only dream about and it reminded him of how he and Sam had once theorized what it would be like to be as old as Cas. Seeing humanity grow and change like the shifting sands on the face of a desert.

Well... Sam theorized, Dean just got drunk and humored his rambling until he passed out.

Reaching over, the man snagged the end of Cas' pole and baited it for him, waiting for the angel to snap out of it and get down to business.

"Alright Skipper. Since you're so well versed in the ways of fishing, whoever catches the biggest fish first wins and the looser can do everyone else's laundry for a week."

Castiel thought to argue the fact that he, in fact, did not make laundry and also did not mind doing the boys' chore but stopped short at the smug expression on Dean's face. He was amused and pleased with himself, for once, so the angel refused to break the spell and simply cast out his line instead. Some part of Castiel wanted to explain to Dean that fishing wasn't so familiar because he'd seen humans do it for centuries, it was familiar because (if he stretched his mind back far enough) he can actually remember doing the act himself. And that was a shell shocking realization because it could really only mean one thing.

In heaven there are two types of angels. Those who were created from thought and spoken into existence and those who were once human souls that ascended and forgot their humanity.

Or in Castiel's case, almost forgot their humanity.

That night Dean triumphantly declared himself free of laundry duty for the next week and Castiel faintly smiled with a secret like a father who let a child win at a game to make them feel better. Besides, he liked remedial tasks that allowed him to understand the human race a little better. Specifically things that allowed him to become closer to the people he watched over.

Sam, his friend, and Dean his... special person.

Tbc