InsaneJournal

Who: Castiel & Chuck
When: Tuesday afternoon
Where: Outside the complex at first, then who knows? Somewhere with alcohol, knowing Chuck.
What: Curious!Angel is curious, Crazy!Prophet is crazy, and... oh yeah, there's an Apocalypse a-comin'
Status: Thread, incomplete

The term is asshats, he had told Dean, but they are still family. It is complicated. Had that been an untruth on Castiel’s part? Perhaps. It was not so very complicated, after all; he had disobeyed, and been called to account, and somehow escaped the usual fate reserved for those who began to doubt because he remained useful. All he had to do was follow instructions. Zachariah said ‘jump’, to use the human idiom, and Castiel asked how high the leap should be. The arrangement, at least, was simple.

The execution was a little harder.

He had not been lying when he said he’d neglected his duties to the Winchesters. To say he was afraid would have been wrong – angels did not fear, any more than they doubted – but… he did not trust himself, not where they were concerned. It was hard, far harder than he’d anticipated, to be around Dean and not doubt his convictions, his orders, even his own brothers. That was an unacceptable risk.

Avoiding them did not mean he was not curious, however. While he did not like to levy accusations of duplicity at his kin he was not stupid; he knew how they viewed him now, and therefore it seemed logical to conclude that what they told him was not the full story, much as it was safe to assume the fact his assignments kept him far from the brothers was not a coincidence.

Which made this latest task a little… incongruous.

There was nothing particularly unusual about the forces of heaven taking an interest in one Chuck Shurley, of course. And he had given them plenty of occasion to worry of late, between his drinking and his change of address and the continued contact with the displaced individuals at the compound (though that in itself was a poor excuse, as had anything threatened him there was, after all, little to fear… except that while he remained in the complex his guardian angel was subject to the same restrictions as Castiel himself, which would have made the trenchcoated angel smirk if he hadn’t been worried someone would see and mistake it for unacceptable thinking; the image of an archangel orbiting the complex like a forlorn puppy sent outside in the rain was amusing). But Castiel was, it should be reiterated, far from stupid and this request that he check up on the wayward prophet when he should have been concentrating on the rapidly falling seals and the hunt for Lillith was, he postulated, as much a test of his own loyalties as an actual assignment; Zachariah had hinted that there were major workings for which Castiel might be recommended, and it would be foolish to assume that his earlier transgressions did not still weigh upon his superior’s mind.

Still, if Zachariah said jump…

And so Cas went, homing in on the ragged figure with his wild eyes and permanent fug of alcohol and desperation in equal measure the moment he stepped outside those accursed wards. One second he was not there, the next he was. In retrospect it might not have been the best of plans, but old habits died hard and his were older than most.

“Hello, Chuck”