The experience isn't entirely unfamiliar.

Hurtling through the atmosphere at breakneck speeds, crashing into the earth with such force as to knock up great plumes of dirt and dig long furrows in the ground— It's every bit like being banished. Even the delirious and painful aftermath isn't entirely unexpected, at least until Castiel gets his bearings and realizes he isn't at all where he's meant to be.

Which is— well.

That's the problem. He doesn't know. And he should.

When he climbs his way out of the crater of his impact site, digging his fingers into the loamy earth to drag himself up, it's with a broken leg and a broken arm. The pain flares through him like heat, traversing his body inside-out, and though he knows he'll heal once his powers recover, right now he doesn't have the strength to hide his injuries. Honestly, he's kind of a mess. He doesn't even remember what he was doing before he was banished. Confronting Raphael? Confronting Michael? Or was he running from the creatures in Purgatory, trying to draw them off? Wasn't that years ago? Or—

He clutches his head. The image of a small, fine-toothed drill enters his mind, and he doubles over in a full-body wince.

"Ugh."

[ whilte recovering from the wreckage of his own arrival, castiel sets his eyes to the burning wreckage of the train. of course, to say he's given himself any time to recuperate would be a vast understatement, but he's bold enough to ignore his injuries— confident in the fact that they'll soon heal on their own.

but there are people in those train cars, and who better suited to help them but him? he rushes into the wreckage without a second thought to the licking fire, or the burns he'll quickly accumulate. he closes his hand around an arm and yanks, grabbing fistfuls of clothes, pulling who he's found free of the twisted metal frame of what was once a working train car until they're outside, beyond the heat of the wreck, breathing in the open air.

there are little embers smoldering in his hair and on his shoulders. ]

Are you okay?

[ moving in and out of the train, it's inevitable he encounters it. he doesn't remember what it reminds him of at that particular moment in time— his past firmly lodged in the events of the biblical apocalypse he helped to avert. there are no purgatory souls, blessedly no leviathan, but when he sees the stuff on his arm, black and viscous, his reaction is instinctive and immediate. he scrapes at it with his fingernails, tries to burn it off with a power that hasn't yet returned to him—

and none of it helps.

when all else fails, his intention is to sequester himself. except, by then, it's already beyond the point he could have bucked the thing trying to influence his mind. a sort of calm comes over him as he wanders, instinctively toward the most popular areas, looking for some living being with the sort of mindless clarity common to all hungry predators. ]

prompt a. castiel becomes cruel/violent and attempts to start a fight. (à la leviathan!castiel)
prompt b. castiel becomes incredibly friendly and clingy. (à la honeybee!castiel)

1. I've been committed to a mental health facility before.
2. Every time I die, God resurrects me.
3. I'm glad my friends aren't here, so they don't have to see me like this.

( ooc: feel free to hit me up at plurk at chayot if you'd like to plot out something specific! )