Demonstrating Need

Banner By: Stacey

Title: Demonstrating Need
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Castiel/Anna
Word Count: 680
Prompt: Gift Fic for Ensign_amy prompts ("Drowning”) at spn_hetexchange



Castiel had experienced many things in his long life, but few were as potent as the times he’d spent with Anna. She’d always been unique in her own way, but it wasn’t until after she fell that she truly let herself shine. He’d watched from afar as she immersed herself in life, taking everything she could from each event that unfolded before her.

Anna was a natural born leader, just as she had been when she was in heaven. She might not have had her memories, but it didn’t change the essence of who she was. He was there when she broke up her first fight, demonstrating a need to protect those who could not protect themselves.

He was there when she held her mother, Amy, after she lost her second child that should have never been able to be conceived in the first place, demonstrating compassion and a need to comfort those who couldn’t find comfort on their own.

He was there when she fell in love for the first time, demonstrating a passion and a need to feel a physical connection with someone other than herself or her family. He was there when she went off into the world on her own, demonstrating a zeal for life that put most others to shame.

Anna had truly been an amazing young woman, and that hadn’t changed since she got her memories and grace back. The only difference was now instead of watching from a vantage point Castiel was a part of the story.

It all started with the Winchester brothers. Dean had told him what this life was about, made him see that there was more than following rules, watching and just existing, but it was Anna who had showed him.

She took it upon herself to drown him in the vivid and colorful world where Castiel no longer existed as a single observer of events, but lived and experienced them with her by his side.

She drowned him in her emotions, made him weak in the knees as her grace enveloped him, hummed around him and made him understand and put a name to everything he’d been feeling since he brought Dean back from Hell and rediscovered his lost Anna.

Each day brought a new revelation, a new experience, a new challenge, and only now did he open his arms and welcome them. Those who knew him before he came to earth would barely recognize the person he’d become and somehow that didn’t bother him as much as he thought it should.

He had friends, companions, a family and he had Anna. The brightest spot in the bleak world they lived in and she was happy. That was all that mattered to him. Castiel sighed as he shifted his position on the bed and glanced at her sleeping form. He smiled.

In sleep she always looked peaceful, angelic. All traces of tension, fear and the hardened exterior that she wore everyday were gone leaving only the creamy expanse of flesh and a softness to her face that he loved. Her grace lit her body aglow to his eyes making it impossible for him to look elsewhere.

They might be in the middle of a war, fighting daily to keep themselves and the people they cared about alive, but Castiel wouldn’t trade it for the world. He had once been angry with Anna. Couldn’t understand why she fell willingly, why she was so determined to leave the world their father had created for them.

But as each new day dawned, he could see the possibilities that this world brought to them and slowly but surely he was starting to understand.

Castiel was drowning in the feelings surrounding him and he accepted it, revealed in it because he knew when he finally broke the surface, Anna would be there waiting, hand outstretched, ready to lift him from the shelter he had once known and bring him into the light where they could be a part of a life that they were never meant to have, but would treasure wholeheartedly anyway.