Take these broken wings and teach them how to fly

This is the last time (I promise)

Dean will wake up. He won't leave me. He knows I love him. He can't leave. I can't live without him. I need him.

Castiel still hadn't left Dean's side. A week had passed since Dean had almost died but Dean still hadn't woken up.

The doctors said it was normal, that Dean's body was concentrating on healing and that they couldn't say anything about when Dean would wake up. They said Dean not waking up wasn't a bad sign, at least not right now. Something about him healing and his body concentrating on that but Cas hadn't really listened.

Why should he listen? He didn't care about all that medical stuff. He just wanted Dean to wake up again, nothing else mattered to him right now.

Not even he himself mattered much to him right now. He knew he was destroying himself with this behaviour, he knew he was just making things worse for himself but he couldn't bring himself to care.

What did it matter that he had lost weight? What did it matter that he didn't sleep?

Eating was just too much of a task lately. He had to eat something, he knew that and he ate - it was just that it mostly was some toast or bread but nothing more. He just wasn't hungry most of the time and why should he eat something if he wasn't hungry?

And sleep? He couldn't think of anything that came harder to him. He was constantly plagued with nightmares, when he could fall asleep at all.

He always saw Dean bleeding out in his dreams. He saw Dean taking his last few breaths, no matter how painful they were. He heard Dean telling him that it was his fault that he died. Sometimes he saw everybody who meant something to him dead, staring at him with wide, lifeless eyes. He thought it was pretty reasonable that he couldn't sleep.

He was slowly killing himself, he knew that. Not eating and not sleeping? Easiest way to go crazy and die.

That couldn't happen though. He had to be strong. He wanted to be there when Dean woke up - if he woke up at all.

At first he hadn't wanted to think like that, he wanted to continue believing in his boyfriend but it was getting harder and harder to believe. Dean still hadn't shown any signs of waking up any time soon and he had already been so close to dying.

But slowly it had started to take over his mind and scared him more with each passing day. It was getting harder with each passing day, it was harder to believe and to stop himself from giving up.

He had never been someone that would easily give up.  He had fought in his youth because he had been the youngest and he had to fight all his older siblings to get what he wanted because his father had never been someone to give his attention easily and he had tried to treat all his sons the same. Cas had fought for his father's attention and had learned that there were ways to get what he wanted more easily. He had fought to not be at the bottom of food chain at his old school.

He had fought for Dean. Was still fighting. Or something like that.

But life would never be easy for him, would it? Being the youngest of many children had been a hassle and he had struggled to get the attention he needed. Then his father had vanished, leaving him behind with his older brothers that had better things to do than looking after their younger brother.

Things had started to look up when he had come to Jody and he had finally learned that love shouldn't have any conditions. Jody loved him and showed him that he didn't have to do anything to earn that love and that he was valid and loved and that he shouldn't change who he was.

Then Dean had come and... Castiel had learned that love wasn't only unconditional, it was also a quite beautiful thing that had to be cherished. At first he hadn't understood what it was, he had never felt this way before because every other person he had been with, he hadn't really felt a spark. Dean hadn't only ignited that spark, he had made sure that this spark would keep burning for a very long time.