Fragile

Fragile X

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

I shrugged, flexing my fingers against the leather of the steering wheel. "I don't know. It just...seems like something I should say," I admitted, because it was true. That's what you say when someone shared something tragic with you. I'm sorry. As if those two words could change the pain that they felt.

"Can I tell you something?" Castiel asked suddenly, glancing back towards his brother.

"Anything," I answered immediately, feeling my face warm up at his surprised laugh. "Ah, sorry, can we try that again?"

His lips twitched. "Can I tell you something?" He repeated.

I shrugged carelessly, my tone indifferent. "I mean, if you want."

He rolled his eyes, a smile playing on his lips for a moment before it slowly faded away. "I'm sure you've noticed that I don't talk about my dad a lot."

"I didn't want to push," I said and he nodded in understanding.

"I know, but...I feel like I know so much about you that it's only fair you know something about me." He pursed his lips.

"Cas-"

"Give me a second." He let out a breath, and he was quiet for so long I had thought he had changed just mind. I was getting ready to tell him it was okay again when he finally spoke again. "Alright, so the last time I saw my dad was when I was six," he said slowly, staring out the windshield now. "My mother used to joke about how much we worshipped him. She'd say, 'You father already has a big head. If you guys keep following him, he'll think he's God himself!' I didn't think much about it at the time, but now? I feel like it was a warning." He clenched his hands again. "Gabe took it the hardest when our dad didn't come home. He didn't understand why a man we loved so much wasn't coming home to his family. Hell, if I'm being honest, I didn't understand either. I...still don't," he added quietly, clearing his throat. "Anyway, we kept asking our mom what happened and she would just brush us off - tell us not to worry about him. But we obviously couldn't. We loved our dad. So...I stole my mother's phone. I snuck into her room one night and found my dad's number and called him." His eyes hardened now, eyes becoming as harsh as a winter storm. "The man I called that night wasn't the dad we remembered. It wasn't the dad who taught me constellations and played ball with us. It was a stranger. A stranger that I had cried over for days only to realize that he was okay without us," he chuckled bitterly. "I told my mom the next morning that I knew. That she couldn't keep this from Gabe because he was starting to get frustrated too. It was only a matter of time before he found out, I had warned her. She asked me how I would've wanted to find out. So... I told her to say that he was missing because, in a way, he was."

I frowned, feeling the tension starting to build. He was leading up to something.

"It worked for a while. Gabe still didn't really understand what had happened, but he was a kid, so he believed us. He had stopped asking questions. Of course, with every lie, there's always the risk of someone finding out the truth." His eyes flickered. "Gabe found him three years later with another woman. Another kid. He ran up to him. Happy. Crying. Not realizing that our father wasn't crying in relief with him." He gestured towards the grave, his expression empty. "We made that the day after. A grave to the man that was our father. A man who is missing, because the man he is now is not the man who raised us." His eyes flickered towards mine, softening slightly. "So don't apologize. Don't say sorry, because I'm not. We are better off without that man. I am better off without him even if some days that's harder to believe than others."

I nodded, unsure of what to say, because what did you say to a story like that? What did you say to a man who just poured one of his harshest memories out to you? I had come up with so many ideas on what could've happened to his father. Maybe he was a cheater and left. Maybe he was a gambler. Maybe he died. Maybe his mother had kicked him out. I had come up with so many theories and it turns out none of them were as harsh as the truth was. Castiel's father wasn't a fuck up. He wasn't an addict.