dtkrushnics:

Dean stitches Castiel up there, on the ratty couch in the living room, with a fire crackling to stave off the cold that has inched into their veins.

The silence is like that which comes after an explosion, all ringing with something no one ever wanted to hear and no one can ever reverse. It whispers its reverberation to the point where Castiel wants to bash his own head in just so it’ll stop. He wants to take the fire and burn down the house, burn himself, burn the stench of what has just happened from his life.

He wants anything but what is being handed to him like a sick prize.

Somewhere, Father’s laughing, he thinks. Somewhere, God stands smugly.

The sharp pain of a needle threading through his skin is somehow the only thing that grounds him. Dean is skilled, he knows, but he is working slowly. The bullet is on the floor by Castiel, extracted half an hour before, and he picks it up now. Rolls it around in his fingers. No rifling. It had stuck in the muscle of his shoulder and stayed there, as stubborn as the man it had pierced.

Castiel could laugh. The wound is smack in the middle of his wing tattoo, and if that isn’t just some symbolism straight out of Joyce or Dante. You fell, Castiel. His one wing, already losing feathers and burning right up, has a hole right through its pinions.

He will never fly again.

- Aventine (DCBB 2014, November 19)