milliways_bar | (no subject)

[OOM: In the year 2013, Castiel gets by with a little help from his friends.]

A not-quite-man on crutches clumsily makes his way into the bar.

He may be familiar to you. From this side of the door, he hasn’t been away for very long.

Everything about him speaks of an existence that has grown shabby and threadbare. His jeans and button-down shirt are worn and frayed. He seems to be wearing an old ski boot in lieu of a cast. The crutches have seen better days; one of them sports a small pink Hello Kitty backpack, held on by a quantity of grey duct tape. His hair is unkempt and he is sporting about three days worth of stubble.

And yet Milliways, as far as Castiel can tell, hasn’t changed at all.

He had been thinking about it, for the first time in a long time, sitting in his cabin at Camp Chitaqua. And now, just like he has conjured it, here it is.

There’s really only one thing to do.

Castiel starts to laugh. Hard. And he shows no signs of stopping.

[OOC: You are all beyond awesome, but I must beg slowtime. As a favor, no new tag-ins? The cup runneth over. I'll catch tags tomorrow.]

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It's a slow, strange question. "How did this happen?"

It's so strange to hear his thoughts.

Castiel chuckles.

"Just happened. Such is life."

"One event spun into another, which spun into another, which spun into another, which spun like the proverbial curveball."

"Next thing I know, the angels pulled away from Earth entirely. And I was left behind."

Castiel shrugs.

"Can't complain. I made my choices."

Some part of Edward is deciding it very much liked Castiel's quiet, overpowering, omnipresence as opposed to this sloshing cascade of thoughts that don't seem quite right either.

Which might be what takes up Edwards response this time.

Castiel gives him a fond smile.

"You're doing it again," he says.

Castiel. Is. Smiling.
A determined, lazy, hazy thing.
Rather like his thoughts Edward thinks.

"It's rather hard not to right now."
Especially when he can hear him.

"You should try meditation."

"The group kind can be very relaxing."

In a number of different ways.

Endorphins instead of drugs.

Thanks, Human Castiel. That image is disturbing, clearer than it ever needed to be, and Edward can not scrub his head out with a wire brush at all. No seriously. It would break into smithereens's just trying.

And it wouldn't help the remembering it pristinely forever.

"I'll pass. You seem to have discovered a vastly different life."

Castiel laughs good-naturedly.

"Might do you a world of good, honestly."

He shrugs again.

"I chose it. It chose me. Possibly something in between."

Possibly there's a greater purpose to it.

But probably not.

The laugh and his entire countenance are bafflingly different. Edward may not have been sure of The Angel, but this he was surely against.

Mostly because now he ranked well into the annoying human bracket.

Which.....somehow bothered Edward.

"It doesn't appear to be doing you much good."

"If it eases your mind, there are some alternatives that could be far worse."

He could go the route that Dean's gone.

And while Castiel would follow Dean into Hell itself (has in the past, may well yet in the future) one humorless, semi-benevolent dictator in the camp is more than enough.

Edward is not quite sure what to make of those flashes.
He does agree it's some derivation on not-worse.

"Vaguely."

"Excellent."

Castiel beams.

"So, how's the family?"

If talking to Castiel is always a strange, strained, act, this one if almost unsettling enough it leaves him feeling reluctant to speak about those his existence protects.

"They are well."

"I'm glad to hear that."

He is. He's sincerely glad.

"You know, I never did really figure you guys out."

"It's only in the last couple of years that I've come to realize I never needed to figure you out. You are what you are. Vampire. Not vampire. None of it really matters in the end."

He is. Sincere. It should comfort him. It doesn't.

"How long has it been?"

"Since I came to Milliways?"

Castiel shrugs, unconcerned.

"I don't recall, off the top of my head. More than a year, anyway."

Drugs and memory recall don't go together well. Let alone mathematical abilities.

A miasma of haze. Normal on the trite ignored.
If this were only anyhow relate to that.

"Are you alright aside from--"
There's a lingering sense there, questioning possibly the leg due to the crutches, or the semi0human status, or really rather almost anything and all of it. Including whether it really actually matters to the one asking.

"I'll live," Castiel replies.

"Until I stop, of course."

And just given the general state of the world, that will probably be sooner rather than later.

After that, who knows?

If God does have some sort of pattern to order the Universe, Castiel no longer has any idea if he has a place in it.

He sounds like them,too. The milling randoms that fall in and out. Fade from focus without ever fading from sound. Getting by on being typically -- and self-medicatedly --numb.

A washed out version of what he'd been.

"You can die now." That was just strange.