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Jack had always thought godhood would come with answers.
Not all of them, of course…he wasn’t naïve. But some. Enough to make sense of why people hurt and loved and prayed and despaired. Enough to know why his father—Castiel, not Lucifer, never Lucifer—had always carried something unspeakable behind his trench coat and half-smile.
Instead, Godhood came with paperwork.
He hadn’t even known Heaven had paperwork until he took the job. It wasn’t actual paper, obviously, but it felt like it: endless lists of prayers, cries for justice, whispered curses hurled toward the sky. Requests for healing, for revenge, for love. The sheer volume of human desperation should have flattened him, but Jack learned quickly to file them away into neat little categories. Desperate hopes into one box, cruel bargains into another. He answered fewer of them than he liked.
Because he had promised.
“No more meddling,” he had said. “Free will means free will. No strings, no manipulation.”
He meant it. He really did.
But promises were easier when you weren’t alone.
The first thing Jack did, after Chuck’s defeat and Sam and Dean’s reluctant goodbye, was bring Castiel back.
It wasn’t easy. The Empty was greedy, a jealous warden that did not release its prisoners willingly. When Jack reached into its black maw, it pulled back, snarling, folding in on itself, waves of tar and silence crashing against his grace. It clung to Castiel like a storm to the sea, relentless, suffocating.
“You’re not staying here,” Jack whispered, though the sound echoed like thunder in that nothingness. His voice shook, but his will did not. He pressed forward, his light cutting through the sludge of despair.
“You don’t belong in silence. Not you.”
His hand found a shape in the dark: slack-limbed, heavy, as though weighed down by centuries of torment. Castiel’s vessel. His father.
Jack pulled.
The Empty hissed, dragged at the edges of Castiel’s being as though determined to tear him apart molecule by molecule. For one terrifying heartbeat, Jack thought he might lose him again. But then his grace flared brighter, stubborn and desperate, and Castiel’s body broke free from the tar’s grip. Jack cradled him, staggering under the weight of someone who had carried so much more.
Castiel looked ruined. His coat was in tatters, his vessel pale as marble left too long in the cold. His face was drawn, lined with exhaustion older than Heaven. Jack’s chest ached at the sight because despite how little time they’d truly had together, despite all the mistakes and stumbles, this was his family. Not Lucifer. Not Chuck.
For a moment, Jack feared he hadn’t made it in time. Castiel lay limp, too still, too quiet.
And then like a drowning man dragged into air, Castiel gasped. His lungs convulsed, hauling in breath as though the world itself was foreign. His eyes flew open, wild, panicked, searching.
He remembered it all: the crushing dark, the cold sludge of the Empty filling his lungs, pressing into every nerve like needles dipped in frost. Silence that wasn’t silence but a scream so loud it erased thought. He had been alone. He had been undone. He had been nothing.
And now… Light.
The first thing his eyes landed on was Jack.
Jack’s face hovered above him, wide-eyed and trembling, grace flickering like a candle barely containing its flame. His eyes were bright, gold, and impossibly human sparkled with something Castiel had almost forgotten existed. Hope. Love. Humanity.
“You,” Castiel rasped, voice shredded raw by centuries of silence. It came out a confession, a prayer, and a disbelief all at once. “Jack.”
Jack’s breath caught. His vision blurred at the edges with tears he refused to let fall. Gods didn’t cry. Not on the job. Not when someone was depending on them. So he smiled instead, even if it shook in the corners.
“Welcome back, Dad.”
And for the first time since the Empty swallowed him whole, Castiel felt alive.
They remade Heaven together.
Not the holographic playground of Chuck’s imagination, not the sterile corridors of bureaucratic angels, but something that could breathe. Gardens that smelled of rain. Music that wasn’t endless hymns but laughter, guitar strings, lullabies whispered by mothers who had missed their children.
They tore down the walls between “perfect memories” and gave souls what they deserved: choice, connection, real peace.
Castiel was good at it. Patient. Meticulous. When Jack lost focus, Castiel was the one who guided him back. When Jack doubted himself, Castiel looked at him as though he’d already succeeded.
But something was missing.
At first, Jack thought it was just exhaustion. Castiel worked until his vessel looked frayed at the edges. He spent hours in the gardens, sitting in stillness that wasn’t peace but emptiness. Jack caught him staring at the horizon like it might blink first.
“Everything okay?” Jack asked one evening, when Heaven’s skies bled with a hundred sunsets all at once.
Castiel smiled, small and tired. “I’m fine.”
The word rang hollow, and Jack, being half-human, half-angel, and entirely too earnest, didn’t know what to do with hollow words.
He found Castiel with Mary Winchester one day.
Jack hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. He just… stumbled into it. He’d been wandering, checking on the way the orchard’s blossoms bent toward sunlight, when he heard voices drifting from the kitchen Mary had claimed for herself.
“Pie,” Mary was saying, setting down a dish with practiced hands. “Dean’s favorite. He could eat an entire one after a hunt.”
Castiel’s voice was softer, almost reverent. “I never learned to make it.”
“Well, lucky for you, you’ve got me,” Mary said warmly. “Start with the crust. It’s all in the butter…keep it cold.”
Jack peered around the corner and saw them: Mary rolling dough, Castiel watching like it was scripture. His father—stoic, battle-worn, angel-made-human—taking notes on pie.
Something in Jack’s chest ached. Because now he understood.
It wasn’t Heaven Castiel missed. It wasn’t even the endless battles or the trench coat he’d once worn like armor. It was them.
The Winchesters.
Dean.
Jack didn’t know why Mary said Dean’s name so often, why her eyes lit with fondness and longing every time she did. He guessed maybe Dean was her favorite?
Jack wasn’t offended. Okay…maybe a little. Because honestly? Jack liked Sam better. Sam had patience. Sam explained things in bullet points if you asked nicely. Sam didn’t grunt and scowl his way through conversations like Dean did. Jack had tried copying Dean’s whole gruff, one-syllable, “man of few words” routine once. It lasted about ten minutes before Sam gently asked if he was choking.
Dean, though… Dean was like the Strict Dad. The “you better not scratch the Impala or you’re dead” dad. The dad whose approval felt like chasing a video game achievement you weren’t sure was real but still really wanted to unlock.
Jack wondered if he was secretly playing favorites among his three dads: 1) Dean the Strict Dad, 2) Sam the Patient Dad, and 3) Castiel the “accidentally stabbed a vending machine once but meant well” Dad.
But that was just in his head. Out loud, he loved them all equally.
Still, when Jack saw Castiel’s expression at the mention of Dean…
raw, unguarded, almost tender
Jack felt like he’d been handed a secret he wasn’t ready for.
Other moments piled up. Castiel listening to Bobby ramble about cars and long-dead Chevys. Castiel listened, nodding in rhythm, but when Bobby slipped Dean’s name into a story, Cas flinched. Just the barest twitch, but Jack caught it. The kind of reaction you’d miss if you weren’t looking for it. Jack was always looking.
Jack sometimes spends with Charlie. Charlie always brought a light with her; she could turn the dreariest Heaven corner into a party with her stories. Castiel smiled through most of them, small but genuine, until she described Dean’s pigheadedness in one memory. Then his whole face seemed to close up, shutters falling over a window. Charlie didn’t notice, still laughing. Jack did
Sometimes, when Jack told jokes, Cas would give a polite half-smile. But when Jack tried his best Dean impression: that gruff little grunt, or Dean’s habit of calling everything “stupid” Castiel’s laugh came unguarded, rich, and real. Then he’d stop himself, the sound catching in his throat like he’d remembered he wasn’t supposed to.
Jack wasn’t sure when he started keeping score. Maybe it was the orchard? Or the talk Pie Lessons with Mary? Maybe it was at Bobby’s? Or maybe it was with Charlie.
None of it was obvious. Not the way grief usually looked: no tears, no crumbling voice. Just… absence. A beat too long before he spoke. A smile that didn’t quite fit.
It added up. A thousand tiny gestures, stitched together into something Jack didn’t want to name. Something he was starting to understand.
He tried to talk to Castiel about it.
“You could visit them,” Jack suggested one afternoon, when he found Castiel sitting alone in the garden of a man who’d once been autistic, his Heaven filled with squirrels and quiet.
Castiel didn’t look up. “That wouldn’t be wise.”
“Why not? You miss them.”
A pause. Then, “Missing them is safer.”
Jack frowned. “That makes no sense.”
“Not everything does,” Castiel said gently, but his eyes stayed fixed on the squirrels chasing each other in spirals.
Jack hated it. He hated the way loneliness sat on his father’s shoulders like a second trench coat.
Months passed. or was it days? years? Heaven didn't really have time. Jack kept himself busy, the way gods apparently were supposed to. He stitched up the broken architecture of Heaven, built bridges where Chuck had left walls, guided lost souls gently toward peace.
But no matter how much he worked, no matter how many cosmic fires he put out, the ache in Castiel never went away. Jack learned to read it like scripture. The silences that were too heavy to be peace. The smiles that didn’t reach his eyes. The way Castiel’s jaw tightened whenever Dean’s name slipped from someone’s lips, like it was a knife he welcomed and dreaded in the same breath.
Jack told himself not to meddle. Not with Castiel’s heart, not with the Winchesters, not with anything. Free will meant free will. Even when watching hurt.
And then—one night—Jack heard it.
A prayer.
Not the polished, ceremonial kind. Not the whispered wish of a lonely child. This one was raw, jagged, ripped straight from the chest of a man who had no one else to call.
“Please,” Sam Winchester’s voice broke in his mind, hoarse with desperation.
“Jack. Anyone. Dean’s—he’s—”
The words dissolved into panic, but Jack saw enough.
Images hit him like fists: a hunt gone wrong, blood blooming under rusted steel, Dean pinned and helpless, impaled by a length of rebar like some cruel joke the universe hadn’t let go of. Jack froze where he stood. His entire body went cold.
He wasn’t supposed to intervene. He had promised. The first law he gave himself after Chuck’s downfall was simple: no more strings, no more puppets, no more cosmic interference.
But then the throne room doors burst open.
Castiel stormed inside, his vessel taut with fury and terror, eyes alight with something Jack had never seen in him so bare: panic.
“No,” Castiel rasped, each breath ragged, his voice cracking like thunder on the edge of a storm. “No. This is not how it ends. Not for him.”
Jack staggered under the weight of it. Jack forced his voice steady, though his hands trembled “Cas—”
“This is not his fate,” Castiel snapped, advancing until he stood right below Jack’s throne, trembling with intensity.
“I gave my life for him to live!” Castiel’s words cracked open on the edges, grief clawing through. “Don’t you understand? I chose it. I would choose it again. And yet, after everything…this? This?” His hands curled into fists.
“He deserves more than a death in the dirt. He deserves to grow old. To find peace. He deserves it, Jack. He deserves more than a bloodstained floor and another grave.”
Jack’s mouth went dry. Jack’s chest ached at the desperation spilling out of his father. Castiel’s voice, usually steady, faltered. He looked like a soldier who had fought too many wars and finally realized there was one more battle he could not win…unless he was willing to pay the price.
Every part of him screamed to say no, to repeat the promise, to remind Castiel that free will meant letting things unfold. He tried to steady himself, his voice barely holding.
“I can’t interfere—”
“Yes, you can,” Castiel cut in sharply, a plea hidden beneath the steel. “You are God. And I am begging you. Save him.”
The panic in his eyes burned through Jack’s hesitation. And suddenly, everything made sense, it was something else…Fierce, breaking, unashamed.
And suddenly, all the silences, the pie lessons with Mary, the horizon-staring, the loneliness Jack had noticed but never understood…suddenly it all clicked into place.
Castiel loved Dean.
Jack’s breath hitched. He wanted to laugh, or cry, or both. How had he been so dense? Of course. Of course.
“You could go to him,” Jack said at last, voice softer now, heavy with the weight of the choice he was about to make.
“Save him. But… but it’ll be the last time I tinker with humans.”
Castiel stilled. His eyes widened, and in them was everything…fear, hope, longing, and a love so deep it terrified Jack to witness it.
“What are you saying?”
Jack swallowed hard, forcing himself to explain.
“To bring you back from the Empty… I had to give you something. I gave you a soul. A human soul. It’s what anchors you now. I can return it fully to you, but it will change you. When you reach Earth, your grace will fade—little by little, day by day—until only your soul remains. You’ll be human. You’ll grow old. You’ll die. And when that vessel is gone, you’ll return to me. To Heaven. To… to where you belong.”
Castiel’s breath stuttered. His shoulders stiffened, but his eyes, those ancient, weary eyes, betrayed the storm inside. Centuries of being an angel, of knowing Heaven’s endless reach, the sharp power of grace in his veins… all of it would vanish. He would never fly again. Never wield his sword as he once did. He would trade eternity for a heartbeat.
For a moment, Jack thought he might refuse. That fear might win. As if the weight of Heaven and his angelhood still bound him. Jack watched the conflict play out
Duty against Desire
Eternity against Love
And then Castiel exhaled, as though cutting loose the chains that had bound him for millennia.
“If it means Dean lives,” Castiel whispered, voice trembling but resolute, “then I would trade everything. Even myself.” His jaw set, resolve hardening like steel. The decision was final.
Jack’s throat loosened, the tightness in his chest breaking apart into something lighter, something warm.
For the first time in months, the ache in him eased. He almost laughed, though his eyes glistened. “Okay, Dad.”
And for once, Godhood didn’t feel like paperwork.
It felt like joy.
It felt like love.