Five Years Later

Chapter Four: The Angel

You're a failure in every sense of the word.

Cas walked down the hall listlessly. His eyes were closed and he was humming to himself as tears streamed down his face, smudging the blood from earlier into red, messy streaks. His hands were sore and his body was wrought with pain, but he tried to numb it out with the sheer power of his mind.

I can't believe I trusted you.

Cas hadn't been able to do it. He couldn't kill that man like Negan had wanted him to. He was usually fine with it, in a sense. He had murdered multiple people since joining Negan's group, but that was part of the process. He told himself it was in defense of the base. When he was standing there over that man in the dungeon cell, the bat poised in his hands to strike, he couldn't bring himself to go through with it.

You are a disgrace to everything we stand for.

Cas felt each word that Negan had shot at him being absorbed into his being, staining him with their hate and malice. He wanted a cigarette. His eyes were still closed as he was walking, treading lightly for fear of being ratted out for being out of his room past curfew.

You are a goddamn idiot, Cas.

He smelled the thick, sultry wisps of cigarette smoke wafting down the hall in a hazy, alluring way and he followed it blindly, craving the warmth it was going to bring him. Maybe it would make Negan and all of the shit Cas was dealing with disappear into the smoke, as though his pain was part of a magic show and could be waved away with a flick of a wand.

You couldn't even make Dean love you.

It was coming from the stairwell and Cas could practically taste it. He wanted to feel the bitterness in his mouth and the fire in his lungs so it would burn away all of the pain.

Dean hates you and so do I.

He opened the door and slipped down the stairs, his footsteps echoing along the walls as he went. He traveled down several flights until he reached the basement level and was stopped by the figure of a young woman, her body leaned provocatively against the wall as she smoked a cigarette.

"What are you doing down here at this hour? It's past curfew." She told this to Cas, her voice soft to his ringing ears. She set the cigarette against her lips and cocked one of her heels against the wall she was leaning on for support. There was a dazed, distant look to her eye – Cas could tell that she had been drinking.

"I came down on orders." Cas set himself against the wall opposite her, his feet balanced precariously on one step of the stairwell. "I could ask the same of you."

"I wanted a smoke and it's too dark outside. Cold, too. I think it's getting to be January." The woman remarked, the cigarette balanced between her fingers as she stared at Cas, taking him in. "I'm not sure. We stopped keeping track a long while ago."

A moment of silence passed between them, but it was comfortable. Cas relaxed into it, his head resting against the wall and his hands enveloped by the sleeves of his trench coat.

"Want a smoke?" The woman inquired, pausing a moment to dig out the crumpled pack she had buried in her pocket. She steadied herself on the railing with her other hand and offered the whole box to Cas, who eagerly snatched one out and rolled it back and forth in his palm while she got the lighter. After his cigarette was lit, they both stood in silence for what could have been hours, two strangers in the dark of the stairwell. The quiet was broken when the girl spoke, her voice raspy from the smoke.

"Why do you smoke?" She asked Cas, drawing in a deep breath as she tapped the edge of the cigarette so that embers drifted and fell onto the step she was standing on. They sparkled in the darkness like stars, glowing for less than a minute before fading to gray.