Castiel feels the ebb and slide of pain, radiating far up his spine, down every nerve, and it feels like a volcano has erupted across his back, a fire down every synapse. His nerves are shot, the entirety of his form - lithe and shaking under the stale blankets piled over his prone body - screaming out for relief in the dark. He thinks he well and truly has a larger grasp of what it feels like to die, to really fall, and to land, face-first, tripping, bleeding and crying out. He feels like a helpless creature writhing in the mud, but no - he remembers, it's just the blankets, wrapping tight around him as he rolls and tosses, trying to gain some semblance of being comfortable on the cot, but every movement just causes him to release staccato gasps, seething noises tumbling out between his teeth as the pain rises and overtakes him, over and over.
It's embarrassing, and horrifying, being so weak, falling apart, and through everything he has ever experienced and gone through in this vessel, Jimmy's body that has now long since been his body, he wishes that they'd just torn his wings out entirely. Instead, the witches that he and the Winchesters had encountered a week ago had placed an irreversible curse upon him as a last resort before Dean had taken the head witch down, ending her, but not before she'd thrown something energetically massive past Dean's shoulder as she fell, an energy tangibly dark and malevolent at Castiel, a sweet smile dying with her.
Since then, the three of them had tried desperately to reverse it, but they didn't have a lead that had brought the curse to a resolution. Much to Sam and Dean's dismay, Castiel increasingly grew sicker, the angel finally admitting that the source was coming from where his wings were, nestled into the unfathomable realm where he had them stowed away within. He didn't divulge much more, because he simply had never experienced this sort of torture or fall-out, and truly, he did not know himself what was occurring.
His grace is now leaking from every pore, though obviously not visible on this plane, but it's all he feels, all he knows, all he breathes or not breathes as he tries to stifle every noise and sound coming from him. The whole room is darkness, and he's thankful for nightfall because opening his eyes against the onslaught of this barraging, rolling migraine and seeing any sort of light would probably tip him over the edge.
He wants to cry, sob and throw up, all at once, but he resolves not to wake the other two occupants of the bunker. He's been sleeping in the library, never far from any of the thick volumes of ancient texts they had been trying to sift through for any sort of information, any help they may hold for them, because he has grown too exhausted and weak to return to his own room.
Dean agreed to it, for Castiel to move there for nightfall, but it was due to a lot of convincing, and he couldn't really deny Castiel's logic. Even so, sometimes Castiel finds that the hunter passes out on the couch, feet away from the cot Castiel occupies, sometimes all night.
This is one of those nights, and for the angel, the worst night to date in terms of his affliction. He feels beads of sweat banding on his forehead, pooling in his lower back and down his shoulder blades, his whole body's temperature running hot, hotter than humans should ever be, and he tries to shuck his shirt off with difficulty, but just cannot muster the strength to twist and pull it off. He lays limply, belly down, trying to get a handle on his pain, but he has to moan miserably when his upper back spasms and his wings lock up and flutter in debilitating dismay in the other plane. It is agony, sheer effort placed upon hardly any effort to spare, to keep them hidden in the realm, and he needs to manifest them, though he is fearful of what is required for this level of control.
In order to bring them earth side, they will need to be controlled, feathers and bone and sinew and muscle, and not the true, glorious and illuminating, blinding light they are in God's kingdom. To bring them to light as they truly are would fill the bunker with an overwhelming surge of power and brilliancy that could obliterate the entirety of the Men of Letters' hideaway the moment they manifested. No, they would need to be fathomable, safely discernible by a human eye, shaped into a smaller and overall legible version so that the Winchesters could see them without their eyes and heads exploding.
