Disclaimer: I do not own the characters used in this story, and will not profit from it (I wish).
Spoilers: to all of season 7 (vaguely)

Set sometime after 7.02.

The 7 Faces of Redemption
(And The One Castiel Knows Best)

1.

Freedom is a length of rope.

He's there, but he isn't.

Blackness clings to him, cocooning him like a heavy blanket. He tries to escape it, but it just grips him tighter, and he's too tired, too weary, to fight more.

There isn't one Heaven.

He blinks. The blackness twists as he does, and it suddenly seems suffocating.

Each soul generates its own paradise.

"Hello?"

Castiel hates that his voice cracks. He hates that he sounds choked and broken. He hates himself for all he has done and all he does and doesn't know.

He hates.

"Where am I?"

The worst part was Dean trying so hard to be loyal with every instinct telling him otherwise.

He closes his eyes against his own voice, the voice that booms through the darkness in his head, more suffocating than the blackness itself, and thinks that this, Hell has nothing on this.

2.

He can feel reeds around him. They murmur, quietly, whispering the secrets of this unknown place. He feels deaf to their words, separated from their secrets.

Somebody visits him, a quiet, calm body. He can't see the person or hear them, but he can feel them, feel them like invisible reeds whisper when they pass, circling him round and round until he grips at nothing and screams to be heard.

He never feels threatened by the presence.

Just cold.

Just sad.

Just empty.

"This isn't the end, Castiel," The Voice says, a whisper and a shout at the same time. The Voice is soft and rough, male and female, everything and nothing.

And then the presence is gone.

This isn't the end, but that's what he fears.

He fears that there will never be an end to this.

He fears that his guilt will rear up and drown him.

He fears.

"Progress," The Voice interjects sometime between day and night. "This is progress."

3.

You know the difference between you and me? I know what I am. What are you, Castiel?

One morning, he opens his eyes to the sun rising.

"Isn't the end," he whispers to himself, hopeful and careless. "Isn't the end."

He doesn't know what is and what isn't anymore. He does not know what this feeling is spreading inside him as he stands, stretching tight muscles and sore legs, but he thinks it's nice.

With the sun a gentle glow in the sky, he can see the fields of reeds surrounding him. He can see a small lake next to him, calm and lucid. He can see the clouds milling together in the sky, the moon disappearing behind them, winking goodbye.

He does not know this place. This is not heaven. It is far too lonely to be heaven.

Something unravels in his gut, something strange, something warm and rare. He has only ever felt this feeling in relevance to Dean, has only ever felt like this when Dean is telling him that he is family, he is family and he doesn't want to lose him.

"That is hope, Castiel," The Voice confides from everywhere and nowhere. "That feeling is hope."

4.

I'll find some way to redeem myself to you. I mean it, Dean.

He wanders aimlessly for hours and hours, for days and days, for so long and yet never long enough. His feet ache, ache like only a human's could, and his chest is tight, tight and throbbing, like something's missing that he's not sure can ever be replaced.

He thinks of Dean often. He thinks of the smile that Dean smiles when he feels content, and the smile Dean smiles when he is falling apart. He thinks of Dean the Broken Man, and Dean the Righteous Man. He thinks of Dean and wishes he could cry, but the tears gather beneath his eyelids and never escape.

He thinks of the way he betrayed his – family – his friends. He thinks of betrayal often, like a man in jail who thinks of all the things he's done wrong and all the things he could have said but never did.

He thinks of the way he is too late. He thinks of how he wishes he could go back and change things.

He thinks of how maybe he doesn't, maybe Sam and Dean are better off without him.

He thinks of how they must be faring against the Leviathan, and screams for no more thoughts until his throat is sore and his voice nothing.

"This is loneliness, Castiel," The Voice comments. "This feeling is loneliness."

Mostly, he thinks of Dean.

5.

What's the matter? You don't think you deserve to be saved?

He sits with his legs dangling in the water of the lake, feels the coolness brush against his skin and imagines that it could take him away. He slips into the lake and submerges himself, eyes open against the chill.

He stays down there for two hours.

He is ageless here, he thinks. He is not a human, not a vessel, not even an angel. He is existence, he is everything and he is nothing, he does not die but he does not live.

He thinks of the way Dean's eyelids flutter when he dreams of Hell and the knots Castiel felt in his gut that day he waited for Dean to wake. He thinks of the way Dean drinks liquor like he drinks to die, and the way Dean the Broken Man once raised his head to the sky and prayed, prayed not for Castiel the God but Castiel the Angel Who Once Was.

He thinks that he should have saved Dean the Broken Man. He thinks that he should have saved himself, stopped himself before he went barrelling over the edge.

Mostly, he wishes he could have made Dean feel worthy. Made him feel content and happy in the way he never quite has been.

"This is compassion," The Voice shares warmly, like a father praising his child for finally, finally, learning a lesson he has been trying to teach for years. "This feeling is compassion."

6.

I've been here for a very long time.

The hole in his chest stretches until it is raw and aching, a wound that he places a grain of salt in with every thought, every feeling.

I'm sorry, Dean, he thinks or yells, he doesn't know, and he feels heavy and tired and weak and broken. I'm sorry, Sam, Bobby. I'm sorry, my sisters my brothers.

He has never realised. Castiel has lived, seen history and made it, watched mothers lose their children and sons march out to war, but he has never realised what it is like to really lose something. Not like this.

I'm sorry.

Forgive me, he screams at the sky. Please.

Forgive me.

I'm sorry.

Forgive me forgive me forgive me

"This is –"

Castiel lets out a heavy sigh. "Regret, I know," he whispers to the reeds. He is a broken thing, not quite human, not quite angel, just something, something and nothing and everything and existing without ever knowing what. "Regret."

Please.

7.

One day, or night, he doesn't know. It is always light, always day, or night, depending on how you looked at it. It is always the same. This world never changes, never becomes tainted by humanity, never breaks and never rots. Never dies.

He resents it.

On this one day or night, he stares up at the sky and sees his family in the clouds. He sees Dean yelling at Sam, telling him that Castiel would never betray them, that he is family. He sees Dean sitting next to him on a random bench in a random place with people they don't know, and sees himself whisper to Dean secrets he has never told anybody. He sees the way Dean's face softens, the comfort he offers without every really offering it.

His chest feels light.

He sees now, and he thinks that it may have been this all along.

"You know this feeling, Castiel," God says softly. "You do."

He does.

8.

He blinks.

Grey, black, white – now colours, blending into each other, rushing together – light, so much light, everywhere, inside him, wrapping around him, cocooning him.

And then a motel, a damp, dark one, bleak and colourless, home, home, home, because his home is not a place but a person, a person who is standing by the misted window and gazing over at him.

"I've been waiting for you," Dean confides softly.

Castiel takes one step, and Dean takes the other, and the angel finds himself kissing Dean Winchester the Broken Man or Dean Winchester the Righteous Man, and not caring which, because, in truth, he loves Dean Winchester no matter what name he holds.