Chapter Text
Castiel has been driving for around 6 hours after leaving the bunker, stopping off for some gas and snacks at service stations, when the night starts to appear and he decides to stop for the night in Denver, Colorado. He stops at a motel, similar to what Dean and Sam have stayed in so many times. He pays for the room with one of the credit cards that was given to him years ago, he knows it can easily be tracked by Sam and Dean so he plans to destroy it tomorrow and ask Claire to set him up with some new stuff including a new phone.
Once he checks into his room he takes off his trenchcoat, laying it over the chair before turning on the tv for some background noise. Whilst he shouldn’t need sleep as an angel, he wasn’t lying when he said his powers were failing and with the emotions of the last few weeks and the hours of driving Castiel would rather get a few hours shut eye to be safe. As he lays himself down his thoughts drift off to Jack and the tears begin to fall before he can even attempt to stop them.
Cas is angry, he’s so angry. Angry at his father - no Chuck - for being a deadbeat sorry excuse of a dad, angry at said person having the nerve to kill Castiel’s entire world in front of him, angry at that demon, the abomination that had the nerve to possess his sons corpse within minutes of its absence. He’s also angry at Dean, so upset and hurt and angry, angry that Dean can be angry and everyone allows it, angry that Dean can use him as a verbal punching bag with no repercussions, angry at Dean for not allowing Cas to destroy Belphagor from the start, angry that he was blamed for Mary’s death and angry that he didn’t get the chance to grieve any of those they’ve lost.
He’s also angry that Dean and Sam both act like they’re the only ones betrayed by Chuck, as if he isn’t Castiel’s father of millions of years, the person who made Castiel fight his own kind like a mind controlled soldier for centuries. Castiel is furious, hurt, upset and grieving and doesn’t know where each emotion ends. It’s with that thought that he lets the tears fall, he sobs in a way he hasn’t ever allowed himself too, his body shakes with the force of them. There’s so much passion in each sob that Castiel exhausts himself out with the force of them and falls asleep, tear tracks staining his cheeks.
When he awakens it’s to the sun streaming in softly through the gaps in the motel curtains, his eyes are dried and his throat hurts from the sobs that racked through it only hours prior, but Cas does feel better for getting the emotions out and for getting some hours sleep. He allows himself to enjoy an hour or so to slowly awaken properly, with no reason to force himself upright and ready to fight, mainly because he’s nothing to fight for anymore. As he comes around from his slumber he makes a little bit more of a plan for today, his first call is to contact Claire and ask her if she can help him set up a new credit card and phone that cannot be traced by the brothers, then he’s going to carry on travelling forward heading up to Salt Lake City, Utah.
Grabbing his trenchcoat, his only loved possession, Cas checks out of his motel room and gets in his car, pulling his phone out to contact Claire. He explains the situation to her, only manages to cry once at the mention of Jack which he counts as a win compared to how many tears feel threatened to fall whenever he tries to speak, and she is finishing up a case in Rock Springs, Wyoming so they plan to meet in Grand Junction, CO in a few hours time where she’s going to set him up with a new phone and card.
Cas begins to drive towards Grand Junction, playing Taylor Swift through his car speakers, humming along to the lyrics when he allows himself to think. Ironically, Castiel giving himself the chance to think makes him think about how he’s never been able to just... think before because he could. He’s always been thinking for fights or cases or apocalypses or survival when he was human and alone, but he’s never been able to think outside of that until now.
So he thinks, and he thinks of Mary and the time they went to the storage warehouse, Mary telling stories of the brothers when they were younger and in turn asking Cas about stories since he knew them. He thinks of how she saw to him right away, not as a tool or weapon, but as a friend, a family member, someone who made it so her boys were never alone. He thinks on when she was asking him about life in heaven, if they had childhoods and how it worked, how he informed her they only have God as a creator and Father, no mother. He remembers Mary’s sad expression as if the idea of Cas never having motherly love is a terrible one, of how Mary held his hand and squeezed it, telling him how he deserved to have that love around him.
He thinks on how within the next few weeks as they began to get to know eachother, they bonded over coming to earth after so many years, of fitting in, of the brothers. How Mary made him tea one time and was the person to add some honey into his tea, with the added offhand comment about Castiel being sweeter than anything she’s ever known, made almost without intention of Cas hearing it, it still made Castiel’s breath catch in his throat and his chest feel warm and fuzzy. He hasn’t drank tea without honey since.
He thinks of the weeks when Dean and Sam were in prison, when it was just him and Mary. How Mary messaged him good morning and good night every single day without fail, how Cas tried to do a case himself but just didn’t get to do it right, so Mary looked him in the eye and said we will do it together, you and me. Cas thinks of the first time he heard Mary call him one of her boys, how he felt close to tears, how he finally felt like he had a place. ‘She was my mom’, Cas thinks, driving ahead, ‘she was my mom and she’s gone and I was blamed’. Cas has to pull over because tears blur his vision.
He misses Mary, he remembers how scared he was to become a parent himself, how he ran to her first for advice. That’s back when he thought Jack would be a baby, he lets out a little snort at that idea, he can’t imagine his boy being a baby anymore, even if he deserved it so very much. He thinks on Mary helping him pick out some items to give to Kelly, Mary helped him sign up to the online doula classes too. He truly doesn’t think he could’ve been half the parent he was if he didn’t have Mary to be his mom. Fuck, he misses them both so badly.
Once Cas manages to stop the tears and feels safe enough to get back on the road, he turns up the music and blocks out the sounds of his thoughts, deciding thinking freely may not be a good thing right now with his current mental state. As he checks the GPS he sees he’s around halfway to his destination, so he puts his foot down on the pedal, sings along to the songs and happily watches as Kansas gets even further in his past.
Time flies by as he drives down the freeway and before Castiel knows it he’s in Grand Junction and pulling in to where he and Claire agreed to meet. Once his pseudo-daughter arrives she runs over and pulls him into a hug, much to his surprise and delight, he hugs her back tightly, rubbing circles in her back. God, he may have lost so much but he still has one kid around and someone who cares for him and he is beyond thankful for that. Claire takes his hand and they go into the mall, first stop is to get him a new phone. They end up picking just a better version of his old iPhone, Claire adding her phone number in before they trash Castiel’s old one, he doesn’t bother adding the brothers phone numbers in, they won’t need him.
They then head to a motel room Cas has booked for the night in order to get some forged documents so he can get a job, credit card or even a down payment on a house. When the documents ask for a surname, Castiel falters, he doesn’t have one and he can’t choose Winchester, he is sure Sam and Dean wouldn’t appreciate that. He thinks on to being Jack’s dad, maybe he could use Kline? He’s sure Kelly wouldn’t mind, if she does he’s sure if he can ever return to heaven he can explain, out of everyone Kline feels right, Castiel Kline.
Claire then raises the point that if she’s going to be his only remaining family contact, they need to at least seem as family, so he should add Novak somewhere. He falters, worrying of overstepping after the pain he inflicted on Jimmy and Claire alike but Claire reassured that she would be honoured to have him as a parent figure, which makes Cas cry again. So with that, Castiel Novak-Kline is created. On the documents he says he was born 28th September 1975, the date itself being when he came to Earth for good, it also says he was married to Kelly which makes him giggle a little at the idea, but it helps explain why Claire is his only remaining family.
Once all the documents are filled out and printed, they head back to the mall to get Cas a credit card, the process is actually super easy much to his surprise. Claire decides to transfer him $2500 from her fake account, just so that he has some to get by until he finds somewhere to settle down and can have some real earned money, Claire assures Cas there’s no rush and she can keep him topped up until he no longer needs it. Once they’ve destroyed the card Cas left the bunker with so he can’t be traced, Claire asks him where he’s going to head to, Castiel isn’t sure he knows. He doesn’t have a home he realises as the breath catches in his throat, it feels like he’s reliving when he was human all over again. He feels the panic rise in him, his senses being heightened, his mouth becoming dry and his hands shaking. He vaguely registers Claire speaking to him before he blacks out.
“Hey, hey Cas? You scared me so bad are you okay? What the hell was that?”, Claire speaks frantically as he wakes up, eyes adjusting to the light. He explains to her about his autism diagnosis, about how he was kicked out of the bunker and how he has no clue on where he’s going anymore. They brainstorm a few ideas but none stick until Claire has the brilliant idea of the Lake House where Jack was born, it’s empty and still under the ownership of Cas and Kelly, whilst he knows it will be painful to go back to where it all began again for him, he knows it may be a beautiful way to honour everyone’s memory by creating a happy life within that space. He doesn’t add on that he prays there will be a sign of Jack, Kelly or Mary there, he doesn’t want to allow that thought to be spoken out loud, he can’t risk it becoming too real of a dream that he can get his heart broken again.
An hour passes and Castiel has calmed down from his panic attack when Claire says regretfully that she should be heading back to Jody’s, he hugs her tightly and thanks her for all her help, tears springing to his eyes again. She promises to message him often and that he’s always welcome at Jody’s whenever he needs them all before she heads out, leaving Cas alone in a motel room, memories swirling his mind and heartbreak and grief closing in on his heart. With the exhaustion of another day towards moving on, Cas falls asleep despite the whirlwind of pain in his mind and heart, dreaming of the Lake House and the memories from there.