[ castiel's arrives to the infirmary in a charmed daze, compliments of jo harvelle, with severe, infected wounds to his arms, chest and back, lesions broken out all across his body, the ritual effects having sunken deep roots into him. he's taken immediately into care, given the cure, and put under with sleep draughts to excise the growths. it's a couple days before he comes to again, some middling level of better.

a rough, wheezing cough still plagues him with a persistent fever nocwich's healers only seem able to manage rather than alleviate. puzzled, they treat symptoms and move on to tend to other patients. he isn't well enough to release, but the illness worries them enough to put him into a private room.

when awake, castiel's listless, eyes staring empty into the far wall, mind elsewhere. jo and sam regularly stop in, and cas brightens minutely. they speak in low, muted voices, an air of mourning tangible and suffocating in the space around them. there's a sinking, dean winchester sized hole between the three of them and no one quite knows how to bridge it, if they're even willing to recognize it's legitimacy.

occasionally, moments of a sharply raised voice - ] He isn't dead, he can't be, [ and, ] It's not supposed to happen like this. [ as if there were any scenario in which cas would accept dean's death.

in softer, more honest moments, later into the week, it's a murmured admission of - ] I miss him.

[ when other visitors come by, cas smiles, thanks them for coming, asks how they are, but there's something distracted and vacant there, beyond the sickness that refuses to fade from him. ]

[ in Cadens, Castiel is taken immediately to the hospital. Though the cure was given in Nocwich, his lesions had growths plucked from them, and his major wounds have been cleaned, stitched and bandaged, the sickness lingers. Fever, cough, chills, fatigue, clammy, pale skin. The doctors in Cadens don't understand it, but Cas does.

It's his Grace. The power he'd stolen from another angel back home, but can't renew on his own. Struggling through the pit, forcing his abilities when he could, healing others, summoning up light. It drained the last of his stores, and now, well. Now, Castiel is dying.

He doesn't tell them. Not the doctors, not Sam or Jo, not anyone. ]

It's beyond your ability to fix. [ He grinds out to the last doctor insisting he stay in his hospital bed. Pushing past the confused healer, he's making a quick beeline towards the exit, then home. ]

[ cas spends most hours of the day asleep. it's easy to pass off as recovering from illness lingering after the pit (and the depleted grace takes so much out of him), but he's in the horizon every moment his eyes aren't open. scouring, searching, soaring through the sky above each domain looking for any sign of him.

nothing. the cruel reality of dean's demise presses on him from all sides, and cas bitterly rejects it.

at some point, he feels bed sores coming on, and cas knows he can't lock out jo and sam. not now, not after the loss they've all felt so keenly - sam especially. dressing himself in the meager remaining clothes he has (he only owned 1.5 outfits before the pit, now reduced to .5, as the others were so deeply soiled they were better off burned), cas pauses to center himself before his bedroom door, shove the illness down as far as he can, and goes out into their home. there's an eerie quiet without dean working away on some renovation project somewhere, sawing or hammering or shouting obscenities. the silence leaves a sharp pain in his chest.

he finds the kitchen, lingers near sam to silently help him cook, or settle nearby with a book. what's there left to say? 'i'll find him, i'll bring him home' is empty words until some ounce of a lead or clue arises. the best he can offer is insuring sam isn't alone. he hovers near jo, commiserating over a bottle, or going out into the town with her (near on shoving nosy local writers away with a palm to the face when they nag for details about his time in the pit).

eventually, he can be found in the empty plot of overgrown land behind their home. cas employs jack to help him weed out and tame the land, teaches him about the plants they find, how they interact, which are invasive species, which attract the kind of insects a garden needs or those that do more damage than good. they clear the chaos and till the earth, and when cas seizes up in a violent coughing fit that shakes his frame, he blames it on all the kicked up pollen and dust. ]

[ cas will be mostly infirmary bound in Nocwich, but feel free to wildcard if you want to assume he went sneaking off for a breath of fresh air, shuffling around somewhere outside the inn or getting some wandering in. ]