It thrums beneath the soles of his feet, voiceless and entire- Castiel, he hears, and the darkness flickers a second time, a third, Castiel, Castiel, Cas-Ī crack of light before him, like a knife-slash. He can hear his name being called somewhere, an echo of voices pressed up against the wall of this dimension and the next. So when the impenetrable darkness surrounding him flickers, and the filaments of his heart begin to beat restlessly in the cradle of his ribs, Castiel doesn’t hesitate to pick himself up off of the nothing-floor and rise to his feet. But the time he spends waiting in the Empty is nothing short of interminable. He has watched planets coaxed from disparate atoms as one might coax the shape of a vase from a lump of clay he has seen mountains rise, and cities fall he has sat himself on the edge of heaven and watched for a billion years as water carved a place for itself in the bedrock of the earth, winnowing out the path of a river, of a lake, of an ocean.
Castiel is light years older than the most ancient star.
