AN: This is my first SPN fic, written for the dc-summerlovin exchange on livejournal. Title comes from "Easter Wings" by George Herbert. Please R&R! It means a lot! Thanks!

They say it won't be like this for long, that before you know it, the novelty of existence will wear off, and this knowledge you were born with will cease to be overwhelming. Your grace won't always swell inside you when you look upon His masterpiece, and no matter your perch, there is no worldly view so breathtaking that it will compete with the ethereal fields you are meant to reside in for the rest of eternity.

The sum of it all, they say, the dewdrops and the hummingbirds and the sunsets, is no more than a pile of stardust. While His other creatures may marvel at the paradox, the complexity born from the simplicity of an atom, you are an angel. You are not defined by such physical boundaries nor are you captivated by frivolous details, for stardust is the stuff of sandboxes.

Heaven, they tell you. Heaven is home. Don't mind the blue and green marble below your feet. All in due time, they assure you. Now, you are a warrior. You are a loyal soldier among the army of light, and you will serve a greater purpose. This is what brought you into existence.

That's what they say to you.

But you're young.

And you're new.

And maybe you don't know it yet, but you're quite different.

So when they turn away, done with both their coddling and lecturing, you are left reeling. Because if Father wanted you to ignore His magnificent creation to blindly follow a sword, why did He instill you with burning consciousness and brazen curiosity? Why did He leave you with this unbridled ache to seek and explore the product of His vision?

Something tells you that what they've been saying, well, that's all wrong.

Your chance comes with the arrival of a sister, a flaming youth you'd claim to be a kindred spirit if you had stopped to entertain the thought. Instead, you take advantage of the turned backs, clumsily slipping down and away from the upper realms.

The Earth is in your sights, and a pair of black wings flare out behind you.

In the town of Lawrence, Kansas, the sun is kind and the people are warm. It is lazy and quiet most days, the kind of place where new is something that doesn't happen. This is not always bad.

Few wish to lift the blanket of calm that encompasses the community, but one little boy seems to try his hardest, kicking restless feet into the sky as his father's swingset carries peals of laughter up and back again. A bit harder, and maybe he'll take off one day.

A lack of forethought has left you harried and flustered, yet a natural pull to this world grants you intuition and the ability to adapt. So many things you were left to discover on your own; it has been arduous but also riveting, your grace fluttering about your chest now that you walk your Father's planet.

But now that you are here, you falter in your purpose. Wandering does not sate the curiosity ingrained into your being, does not live up to the unspoken expectations of your place on Earth. There is something you need to do, a direction you need to take. The skies call your name.

These wings are broad and strong despite your youth, with coarse, dark feathers that cut through the white clouds around you. And while the black initially concerns you, makes you feel like an outcast as you remember the pure light shades that fanned out behind them as they spoke to you, the thrill of flying will not be subdued. Wind plays with rogue feathers, lost tendrils of your hair, and whatever feeling encompasses you is beyond words. Instead, laughter bubbles up from within, and you are smiling through the sound.

Until you realize someone else, somewhere close, is laughing with you.

There is no elegance as you bank to your left, then right, and soon you fumble through the air as you did on that very first flight. The ground is getting closer, but control is within your reach a second too late. The soft grass you imagined threading through your fingers becomes an inadequate cushion to the solid surface you plummet into. The impact is not so much painful as it is shocking, but as you rise to your feet, you stiffen.

You had thought there to be silence following your impromptu landing, but now you can see that you were wrong. Now you can hear the small puffs of air, the sputtering noises of confusion. Now, you notice the child in front of you who has stopped swaying on his wooden toy to stare at you with innocent curiosity.

He is a mess of sandy hair and freckles, with green eyes that anchor you in place. He is small, and he is young, and when he puts his feet on the ground and takes a step closer, the lack of fear you see in him sends warmth pulsing through your body.

Perhaps Father's creation is just as interested in you as you are interested in it.

But as you marvel, as the boy clumsily shuffles toward you with a hand stretched for your wings, a panic settles in. Because you may have defied their words and you may have ignored their goals, but you are not so foolish as to disregard the weight of their power over you, the punishment that will fall on your head if you are not careful.

So before the child can smooth down your feathers, brush a hand down your wings and etch a place in your heart, you are gone. You are up, and you are home, and you are terribly lucky, for when you collapse against the gates of Heaven, the only person in sight is your fiery sister.

And because her eyes are curious and not harsh, wary but not judgemental, you answer the question that is on her lips.

"I met a human."

Somewhere below, in the corner bedroom of a modest house with white panels and blue shutters, a freckled boy is leaning into the crib of his cooing infant brother.

"I think I saw an angel, Sammy," he whispers, mind dwelling on blue, blue eyes and black, black wings.

"I think I saw an angel."

Anna promises to guard your experience with surprising ferocity, but there is one condition. You must go back. Because Anna may share your sentiment, have a grace glinting with the same thirst as yours, but she refuses to explore for herself. She will not let down the superiors to whom she's already pledged loyalty, but she will not let go of the Earth.

This is how you find yourself standing in the boy's backyard at night, alternating your eyes between the pinpricks of stars and the darkened windows of the house. At least, until one light in the middle bedroom flicks on, and you see a small face press against the glass. Your head cocks sideways, because how could the little human sense your presence? But then a hand squeezes into view, waving frantically down at you. This is your invitation.

In less than a second, you are standing in a small blue room, tripping over plastic cars and wooden blocks. By the time you've steadied yourself, the boy has turned around, eyes wide with wonder, but silent nonetheless.

A thousand languages bubble to your lips, dozens of greetings to welcome man into your existence, but one word fights its way to the surface.

"Hello."

It tastes smooth and salty, the kind of flavor that beckons your tongue for more. You want to repeat it, fire off all the words in your head in effort to sate the hunger. But you are not the only one with things to say.

"You really are an angel." The voice is awed but not trembling, self-assured as much as a child can be. He steps closer. "An angel, like the ones Mommy talks about."

All the songs and prayers and sayings of the heavens get caught in your throat. You want to reply, to ask of the stories this child's mother tells about you, but you cannot. Not when this tiny boy is standing square in front of you, peering up with starstruck eyes. You believe they hold the universe.

"I'm Dean." There's a smile then, white teeth against pink lips. "Sometimes Mommy calls me Sweetie Pie, but you don't get to call me that. Just Dean." A brief scowl that fades. "Who are you?"

"Castiel," you say too quickly, because you may be dumbfounded but you are also eager.

"Cat-still?" Dean tries to get his lips around the name, but they are too full and clumsy. You repeat yourself, enunciating this time, but consonants blur once more and Dean fails to get it right.

"Cas..." he starts again, but your wings twitch in anticipation and apparently that is enough to distract. Before a weak protest can escape, he has closed the distance between you, fingers stretched toward feathers. An inch away and Dean catches himself, whispers, "Can... Can I...?" All you offer is a nod.

And when the boy lays a hand on your wings, you know that you are lost.

The following night, Mary Winchester is tucking her son into bed with a ruffle of hair and a shower of kisses.

"Goodnight, Dean," she whispers through a fond smile. "Angels are watching over you."

The boy mumbles into his pillow, and maybe she heard a murmur of agreement, a name, a string of garbled gibberish, but she's gone back to her husband when there's a sigh and the boy's voice again.

"Cas..."

Your grace finds any excuse to lead you to Dean, and it is rewarded frequently. There are small things, a shiny rock he brings you back from the playground or a bird's feather he found on the walk home, games born from imagination and whispered jokes you don't quite understand but enjoy anyway.

And then there are big things.

One day, Dean grips your hand tight and takes you through a hole in the fence where there is a missing plank. You are content enough to follow the boy as he rambles on about his mother's pie and Sammy's teddy bear and his father's garage, the nonsense soothing. You catch him when he teeters over fallen logs and tree stumps, and just when you start to wonder how far you shall venture, Dean stops.

At your feet is a babbling brook, quiet and mossy and small, but absolutely magnificent. And while you observe you feel Dean's eyes on your face, a pleased smile that grows when he realizes you are impressed. Smug, he drops your hand and finds a dry rock to sit on. You soon join him, and at first you are watching the current, the insects, but then you are watching your companion.

And when the sunlight hits Dean's face and you can make out every last molecule that went into the freckled skin stretching across his cheekbones, you smile for you have found the reason that Father made you so different from your brothers and sisters.

You were not meant for war, you were not meant to take part in the battles that are fought on the fringes of Heaven and Hell. It is far more simple.

You were meant for Dean.

With this realization your grace aches to leave your chest, and you are certain Dean now holds a piece of you. You come more often.

But one night when you come, Dean is standing in front of a blazing house, Sammy wrapped in his arms.

That is the night that you know things will be different.

Dean does not see much of you anymore. You, though, you see too much of everything. There is a reason why John Winchester has yet to perish in his mindless pursuit for revenge.

Some nights, though, it is not John who worries you. The road has not been kind to Dean or his brother. You've taken to watching over them in their sleep those times John leaves them on their own. It is not as satisfying as your backyard excursions, but it has its moments. Because maybe Dean does not see much of you anymore, but he still feels you as always.

"Cas?" It is not unusual for him to call for you in the darkness, after the door's locked and Sam's breathing evens out.

"Yes, Dean?" It is not unusual for you to answer him, either.

"What is heaven like?" And you suppose it's not an abnormal line of questioning for humans, but it still throws you. How to explain?

"It's..." Peaceful nothings and pleasant everythings. Happy and joyous but calm and quiet. It is Heaven. It is all you want it to be. "...nice."

"Is..." He hesitates. "Is mom there?"

"Yes, Dean." The words fall out, even if you are not certain. She is Dean's. There is no other place for her. "Your mother is there."

"Does she like it?" There is hope and a bitten lip.

She is without her husband; she is without her children. There is only so much for which paradise can compensate. But you would rather not explain. "She likes it very much, Dean."

There is a brief silence, and then, "Oh. Good."

"Go to sleep, Dean." And he does. Normally, you would sink into his dreams, set them right and leave Dean in peace. Not tonight.

You are still young and you are still small, but you know the value of this relationship. So that same night, when a demon creeps in on John Winchester's eldest son with nothing but ill intent, those first words echo in your ears again. You are a warrior. You are a loyal soldier.

There is no other option. You are not deft; you are not skilled. In hindsight, you had no idea what you were about to do. But at least they were your screams, not his. At least it was you who endured the pain, not he. Because when the fire spreads to your wings, creeps down the nerves and burns them blacker than they were meant to be, you are thanking Father that this is not happening to Dean.

It is not a silent agony. It is not an easy one. You are surprised when you are coherent enough to recognize a flash of light and fingers curled around your wrist. The Earth is far behind you now.

"Oh, Castiel." Anna ghosts the shape of your wings, trembling at the charred bones that jut from your back. She recoils at an unconstrained sob ripping from your grace, pity in her eyes.

"You flew too close to the sun."

In a motel room off of Route 90 in the state of Indiana, there is black smoke and blood stains and John Winchester's voice. There is a whimpering Sammy curled under torn sheets and a door hanging off of its hinges. There is a lot more too, but that's not what he notices. What he notices is what isn't there: His angel.

He's not stupid. He saw what Castiel did, what Castiel lost. And he would think it were a nightmare if not for the lone black feather gripped between small fingers, the one that would later find a home next to a nickel-plated pistol underneath his pillow every night.

Now, all he can do is sit and tremble and squeeze his eyes shut, praying for the first time in his life.

Initially, they don't know what to do with you, and you don't know what to do with yourself. Anna steers you away from the hushed, angry conversations, drags a white cloak over your shoulders and wraps you in her arms. You know her tawny wings are purposefully kept tight and close to her back, but as you flex the charred remnants of bone, you want nothing more than to feel feathers around you once again.

Eventually, they find you a place away from prying eyes, a job that is menial and petty but not dismissable. You are set to walk the infinite halls of a grand library, keep the records of time as history plays out. You shall file, refile, then file again. You are no longer a participant; you have become a witness.

This is not what you were meant for. This is not the task Father set you out to complete. The rest of eternity will not come about with you wandering the home of Heaven's best-kept secrets, eyeing the scrolls on high shelves and pining for the time when you could fly up to meet them.

But you are broken, and you are vulnerable, and once again, there is no other choice.

The boy, the one who never really had a fair shot at childhood anyway, becomes a man. Limbs lengthen, muscle works its way around his frame. Sandy locks darken to honey tones and the angles of his face lose the softness of youth. The freckles though, those stay the same.

It's been a long time and the years have brought many, many things. But age does not hinder the nightmares.

With all the horrible things he's seen, he wouldn't expect these to be the worst, for these to be the moments that haunt him. But there's something about black eyes looming over his bed, thick blood pouring over dark feathers that leaves Dean wide awake and trembling, reaching for a pen in the middle of the night.

Sam worries. He traces over the wings sketched into cruddy motel paper while his brother slips into the shower. Castiel was never his, but he knows all the same. He sees it in his brother's eyes each time they meet a demon, the first time they met an angel. He's not sure that Dean registers the pain there, but if he doesn't, Sam knows his brother's heart well enough for the both of them. Dean is hurting. Dean has been hurting for a long time now.

Amidst the chaos, there is a sanctuary in Bobby Singer's salvage yard. When the Winchesters catch the rare break, a lag in hunts at the end of the world, this is where they default. And maybe it's the stability that his mind seeks to wreck, but Dean wakes up in cold sweat every night until Sam has a whole notebook covered in black wings to fret over. This is when Dean gives up on being passive.

A plan sets into motion.

The next time his brother runs to the library, Dean pulls him aside and thrusts a list of books into his hands, ones with titles that include phrases like "the mechanics of flight" and "avian anatomy." And perhaps Sam quirks an eyebrow and thinks back on inaccuracies drawn in black ink, but he agrees nonetheless.

By the time Dean has commandeered one of the abandoned sheds in the back of the yard, there is a short stack of hardbacks waiting for him on the kitchen counter. He shuffles through the covers, smirks at an old Greek mythology text Sam bookmarked at page 157, Daedalus and Icarus, and returns to his new workshop.

There is much to be done.

Bits of aluminum and scraps of kevlar are not hard to come by, but Dean finds himself arguing with manufacturers over the phone, fighting about fiberglass and mylar and down. Stolen credit cards are burned through quickly, and Bobby is often disgruntled by the boxes that show up at his doorstep as Dean orders from the road. He never asks questions though, not when Dean makes the effort to show up every chance he gets to unload his bounty.

There are many trials. If Dean is not shooting, he is welding or tearing or sewing. Very rarely is he fruitful. Most everything ends in the trash, on the floor, pinned to the wall as a reminder of where he went wrong. Weeks fade into months fade into over a year, and Dean still cannot tell if he's really done anything of import.

But at night, he dreams of big white wings and bright blue eyes and a hand to hold. And he'll steal away to the shed just as the sun comes up, until eventually, there is a crude set of snowy wings hanging from the rafters.

Because the color of the feather underneath his pillow may be black, but he knows Cas never liked black. So this pair, this pair will be white so Dean's angel can think he is as beautiful as Dean thinks he is.

Heaven is an infinite sunrise of which you have grown tired. Your grace is floundering, your hands still tremble as you sort your brother's triumphs, and no amount of white cloak can cover the gaping holes that run along your spine. And maybe you are more concerned with the crack in your chest, but you'd given up on healing that one long ago.

That is, until the apocalypse comes about, and you hear Dean Winchester's name more than once. You appeal to Anna immediately.

"That boy is dangerous, Castiel." Anna is swamped with the trouble of an oncoming war, flustered and frustrated and not exactly willing to deal with a petulant brother. You will not have it.

"Anna."

You fix her with a look, one that says He is the sun that I chose to protect and if I had to melt to do that, then so be it. But he needs me again, and I will not fail him because I am stuck here. Help me, sister.

And that spark in her grace that had been fading, the one you saw on that very first day, flares back to life. What she ended with a hand around the wrist is revived the exact same way, and with a kiss to the forehead, she leaves you standing alone in the dirt of Singer's Salvage Yard.

But you are not by yourself for long.

The man that peers from behind the shed door is tall and built, dressed in layers with his sleeves rolled up. There is sweat gathering on his brow and an iron wrench in his hand raised in defense, but this is not what you notice first.

What you notice is green eyes, long lashes, and freckles.

"Dean." And oh how his name has turned into a prayer.

The wrench falls, the door opens, and for the first time since that dark motel room in Indiana, you are face to face with your reason for existence. He has grown, gotten older in more than one sense of the word, but that awed look belongs to the little boy too stunned to swing because an angel landed in his backyard.

"Cas?" His voice is slung low and rough, lips twisted in an odd sneer. You think him upset, or at the very least, confused. And perhaps it's understandable for the human to be displaced upon your sudden arrival, thrown by the presence of his imaginary friend come to life. But your gut still twists at the thought that maybe Dean has not missed you as much as you missed him. Nonetheless, a long time ago, you were the one he called Cas, so you nod.

And you thought you had more distance between yourself and the man, but ten feet seems more like two when he closes the gap and pulls you into an embrace. It's new, and it's odd, and it's warm, but with Dean murmuring your name against your hair, it feels more like home than Heaven ever did.

Strong hands close around your back, stroke up your spine until they reach the scars that are your shoulder blades. And as comfortable as you are, the flinch is involuntary. Dean takes note, but when he pulls back to hover inches in front of your face, his eyes are not as sad as yours.

"Come with me." It's a whisper that barely floats to your ears before his fingers twine with yours and you are gently being pulled into a run-down shed. And since you are tired and happy and home, your feet follow readily.

But you were not prepared for this.

"They're not perfect. I mean, you're an angel, right? I couldn't..." Dean is choking out words, sounding nervous and frustrated with himself. You, though, you are blinded. Your line of sight has been limited to wings. Giant, beautiful, white wings.

"They may only be good for one go around, but... if I can give you this back, give you back your wings just once..." He's still talking, saying things that are surely important, things you should certainly be listening to. But the wings, you reach out to touch the feathers and your grace shudders.

"Well, then, why not?" Your Dean, he's never been a quiet one, has he?

"Say something, Cas." But you don't know how to say something. So you do the next best thing

Dean's lips are just as soft as they look, and maybe you didn't realize how often you imagined the press of him against you, but now that you've felt it, you aren't willing to let it go. At least, not for long. With a whispered "thank you," you step away so Dean can lower the wings from their spot on the wall. There are brushes of fingertips and grazes of skin, and eventually, the contraption is strapped around your torso. It's awkward and heavy, maybe crude in its structure, but the affection sewn into it is unmistakable.

You are ready for flight, and it is Dean's turn to step away. You hear the intake of breath, the silence that follows as you stretch and flex the artificial wings. Eyes closed, smile on your face, you move to make that first, grand stroke, but the only thing you're thinking is that even if you remain grounded, at least you are right where you want to be.