[ that’s the crux of it. so simple and to the point and entirely understandable. That part, it makes such immediate, visceral sense it reflects a little too clearly in himself. things he'll be stuck mulling over later, when it runs endless laps through the track in his dying mind. now is about jo, and dean. ]
I believe the human saying is: "better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."
[ if so many throughout human history have said, wrote, sang it who are they to argue? even lucifer knows that truth, god damn him. if love is such a powerful thing it heals through time, long after the source is gone, how foolish it is to pass up the opportunity. ]
All things end, Jo. If we never did anything simply because it wouldn’t last, there’d be no joy in life.
[ it's a very angel, very immortal way to think about things, that they aren't worth doing because the have an expiration date. it's made their existence rather dull and meaningless. an endless stretch of pragmatic apathy. but to invest your heart so much in something finite, a life or a bond or a moment that's temporary, blazes brilliant and moving and earth-shaking, and then fades, is a feeling there's no equivalent for in heaven, no way to explain. the worth of those bonds, it's become clear enough to castiel, after ellen and jo, after bobby, kevin, charlie. after meg. each one of them were entirely worth knowing, risking for, making memories and enjoying life with. it's a tragedy they're gone, of course, it was sharp, painful, it made him angry and helpless, but their loss doesn't diminish the friendships, joy, connections they had. it doesn't make him wish he'd never tried to be close with them. ]
Loss is loss. Whether or not you act on it, Dean still loves you. That grief comes for him regardless. But, without you, without what you could have here... Dean mourns twice. Your loss, and the regret for what could have been.
[ he mourns, only. he doesn't reminisce, he doesn't dream of bright moments and kisses surrounded by anything but tragedy, he doesn't have the voice in the back of his head reminding him you are worthy of love. just the yawning chasm of all he'll never know and forever regret missing. ]
Time is a strange thing to the human mind, something easily condensed. Memory is a form of immortality. A moment of peace, of pure, simple happiness can be relived over, and over, and over. It keeps people, feelings, moments alive. [ he considers mary, bobby, the others who've meant the world to dean and sam. they were never weaker or more damaged for loving and losing them. if the boys had never had bobby, how much worse off would they be now? would they have ever stayed alive, stayed sane, this long? when they think of him now, in the present castiel came from, they smile more than they ache. his words and care for them, little moments of inspiration, or pride and comfort - they never die. they never cease to soothe. ] What love you pour into Dean in life doesn't dissipate with your death. It goes with him, and continues to heal.
[ keeps him sane, gives him an anchor to return to, a solid reference point in a sea of uncertainty. it's partly ridiculous for an angel to be going on about things like that, and cas only now realizes how he's entrenched himself in this life, surprised at just how deeply it's burrowed between his ribs. perhaps it's the waning grace, but he says it and he truly, truly feels it, like a heavy stone weighting down the center of his chest, a dull ache and strain in his throat.
cas shifts, curling forward to hang his head near jo's, the side of his damp hair almost bumping hers, and pulls up their linked hands as if holding a bright, flickering candle up between them. to marvel at the connection, treasure it, etch it into his mind so he can recall, on the other side of oblivion, that he had this. he was never supposed to, and he didn't make as much of it as he should have, but he did. his voice is small, intimate, with a too honest crack and rasp. ]
You are not the weight, Jo. [ loss is, life is, the cruelty of fate and god's design and the circumstance dean's been shouldered with. but not jo harvelle. no, she's something entirely different. ] You're the relief.
[ loathe as he is to say it, metatron's pop-culture infodump actually provides something useful, a soft, bitter-sweet curl at the corner of his lips. a set of words lay heavy on his tongue, and he aches even as they leave his lips, grieving his own regret for what he never knew, never allowed himself, will be leaving forever behind when this sickness takes him. ]
"We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love."
[ as the words leave him, cas knows what a fucking fool he's been. to have this beautiful, otherworldly, incomprehensibly powerful thing in his hands, in his heart, and think of it as a curse. of course the revelation comes now, when it's all too late. ]
no subject
I believe the human saying is: "better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."
[ if so many throughout human history have said, wrote, sang it who are they to argue? even lucifer knows that truth, god damn him. if love is such a powerful thing it heals through time, long after the source is gone, how foolish it is to pass up the opportunity. ]
All things end, Jo. If we never did anything simply because it wouldn’t last, there’d be no joy in life.
[ it's a very angel, very immortal way to think about things, that they aren't worth doing because the have an expiration date. it's made their existence rather dull and meaningless. an endless stretch of pragmatic apathy. but to invest your heart so much in something finite, a life or a bond or a moment that's temporary, blazes brilliant and moving and earth-shaking, and then fades, is a feeling there's no equivalent for in heaven, no way to explain. the worth of those bonds, it's become clear enough to castiel, after ellen and jo, after bobby, kevin, charlie. after meg. each one of them were entirely worth knowing, risking for, making memories and enjoying life with. it's a tragedy they're gone, of course, it was sharp, painful, it made him angry and helpless, but their loss doesn't diminish the friendships, joy, connections they had. it doesn't make him wish he'd never tried to be close with them. ]
Loss is loss. Whether or not you act on it, Dean still loves you. That grief comes for him regardless. But, without you, without what you could have here... Dean mourns twice. Your loss, and the regret for what could have been.
[ he mourns, only. he doesn't reminisce, he doesn't dream of bright moments and kisses surrounded by anything but tragedy, he doesn't have the voice in the back of his head reminding him you are worthy of love. just the yawning chasm of all he'll never know and forever regret missing. ]
Time is a strange thing to the human mind, something easily condensed. Memory is a form of immortality. A moment of peace, of pure, simple happiness can be relived over, and over, and over. It keeps people, feelings, moments alive. [ he considers mary, bobby, the others who've meant the world to dean and sam. they were never weaker or more damaged for loving and losing them. if the boys had never had bobby, how much worse off would they be now? would they have ever stayed alive, stayed sane, this long? when they think of him now, in the present castiel came from, they smile more than they ache. his words and care for them, little moments of inspiration, or pride and comfort - they never die. they never cease to soothe. ] What love you pour into Dean in life doesn't dissipate with your death. It goes with him, and continues to heal.
[ keeps him sane, gives him an anchor to return to, a solid reference point in a sea of uncertainty. it's partly ridiculous for an angel to be going on about things like that, and cas only now realizes how he's entrenched himself in this life, surprised at just how deeply it's burrowed between his ribs. perhaps it's the waning grace, but he says it and he truly, truly feels it, like a heavy stone weighting down the center of his chest, a dull ache and strain in his throat.
cas shifts, curling forward to hang his head near jo's, the side of his damp hair almost bumping hers, and pulls up their linked hands as if holding a bright, flickering candle up between them. to marvel at the connection, treasure it, etch it into his mind so he can recall, on the other side of oblivion, that he had this. he was never supposed to, and he didn't make as much of it as he should have, but he did. his voice is small, intimate, with a too honest crack and rasp. ]
You are not the weight, Jo. [ loss is, life is, the cruelty of fate and god's design and the circumstance dean's been shouldered with. but not jo harvelle. no, she's something entirely different. ] You're the relief.
[ loathe as he is to say it, metatron's pop-culture infodump actually provides something useful, a soft, bitter-sweet curl at the corner of his lips. a set of words lay heavy on his tongue, and he aches even as they leave his lips, grieving his own regret for what he never knew, never allowed himself, will be leaving forever behind when this sickness takes him. ]
"We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love."
[ as the words leave him, cas knows what a fucking fool he's been. to have this beautiful, otherworldly, incomprehensibly powerful thing in his hands, in his heart, and think of it as a curse. of course the revelation comes now, when it's all too late. ]