Author's Note: Hey, guys! This is another 'Cas thinking about Dean for x amount of words' story. (I actually created a series on AO3 for fics that are just Cas being emotional about Dean with no real plot. It's called Still beautiful. Still Dean Winchester. because I'm a fucking sap.) Anyways, the pairing for this one is Destiel (obviously) and I will warn you, this is really sad. Warnings are: no happy ending, major character death (Dean), grief/mourning (Cas is basically doing nothing but mourning Dean in this fic), and mentions of Dean's self-hatred. Please keep yourselves safe <3 The title is Latin for 'soldier to life'. Link to the AO3 version is in the external link. I really hope you like this! Votes make my day and comments validate my existence, so please feel free to leave those, if you want :) I hope you have a wonderful day/night!

~ Em

Cas supposed he only had himself to blame, for falling in love with a soldier that had never quite learned how to obey like the rest of them. Dean was a lot of things, but Cas knew that easy was not one of them (neither was painless). Despite that, Cas had always found that his easiest moments came when he was with Dean - sharing coffee over breakfast, bickering about which movies were the best, sitting in solidarity on a park bench when one of them needed the company. Not thinking, not feeling, just being. And yet, still, despite that and despite everything, loving Dean Winchester was also hard. It was the hardest and easiest thing Cas had ever done.

Slumped against the Impala, drenched in sweat and blood and tears, Cas struggled to inhale air into his lungs, even though he knew he didn't really need to breathe. Sometimes it felt like he did. Sometimes, Cas thought, he was too human for his own good.

The thought of humans, of Dean, evoked another onslaught of tears, and Cas choked on a sob, gasping for breath. He'd never thought it would end up like this, that he would end up like this. Alone and hurting and full of regret. Hannah's words, so long ago yet as clear as if she'd said them yesterday, rang in his mind.

"Ever since Castiel laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost!"

Cas closed his eyes against the heartbreak, against the pain, and struggled to breathe. He was certainly lost now, and it was all because of Dean. Not because of something Dean had done, but because of something someone else had done to Dean. Either way, it didn't matter. It was always Dean.

Dean was volatile and sharp around the edges, like a shard of glass. Cas had never minded it before. There'd been no one who could truly hurt him before Dean. In a way, the pain was a welcome change after millenia of feeling nothing at all. Dean was the one who had made Cas understand what pain felt like, but he was also the one who had made Cas understand what happiness felt like. Cas didn't think he could choose one reason, out of the millions that swam in his mind whenever he thought of the hunter and his liquid emerald eyes, why he loved Dean. But if he had to, he knew that the ways Dean had changed him would be at the top of his list.

Dean had changed everything for Cas, and then, together, they had changed everything for the rest of the world. They had carved out their own destiny and chose their own paths and somehow, Cas had still chosen the wrong one. Dean had changed him, yes, but the tears almost made him wonder if it wasn't for the better. Life would've been simpler, for certain, if Cas had never rebelled, but would it have been better? Cas didn't know if he could reconcile blissful ignorance in the face of Dean's 'fight 'til the very end' mentality. It was a mentality born half out of suicidal recklessness and half out of some warped sense of duty, but Cas had adopted it even so. It wasn't noble, not really; it was pure Dean. But Cas still lived by it every time he so much as thought about battle.

Dean had shown Cas the world. It was just a glimpse of what humanity had to offer, but it had opened the spillways. It made Cas question the age-old rule that he had been raised under; it made Cas start and lead and win a bloody battle for Heaven that had ended with Cas choosing the world, choosing the humans, all over again. For everything Cas was proud of, he knew that Dean was the reason.

Likewise, for everyone Cas loved, he knew that Dean was the reason. For everything Cas was, for the person he had grown to be and the heart he had grown to have, he knew that Dean was the reason.

Dean was broken and lost and beautiful and Cas loved him in so many ways, so many conflicting and confusing ways that kept his mind in tatters at night when Dean was sleeping. He had thought he loved Dean like a sibling, like a brother loves his sister. But as years sped past and the world shifted to accommodate more than Cas had ever thought possible, he realised that he didn't, and maybe never had.

He loved Dean like John and Mary Winchester loved each other - fiercely, dangerously; a fire that burned so bright he could do nothing but chase after it, time and time again, even when it hurt him. Now, Cas regretted not telling Dean how he felt, not telling Dean that he meant everything to him, even if Dean didn't feel the same way. It wouldn't matter. Cas just wanted, no, needed, Dean to see that he wasn't too broken to love, that he was and would always be worthy of someone else's unbridled devotion.

Dean thought himself a tool, a weapon, a hammer for everyone else to use and then discard when they were done with him. He hated himself, and in Cas's heart, he knew that no amount of love was going to change that. It didn't mean Cas had ever stopped trying, and it didn't mean that he had ever been okay with himself afterwards when all of his best efforts failed. Now Dean was gone, and Cas would never be able to convince him that he was so much more, had always been more, than Daddy's blunt little instrument.

For all Dean had given him, Cas couldn't give back the one thing that might have saved him.

More tears slipped down Cas's cheeks and he stopped trying to fight them, instead surrendering to the powerful emotions that scorched his veins and tried to claw their way up his throat. Dean Winchester wasn't just someone he loved; Dean Winchester was the person who had taught Cas how to love.