How cruel, winter is.

Nothing burns like the cold.

A bitter chill pervades the abbey, frosting the cobble and icing the flagstones, creeping up the turrets and sneaking down the corridors. It is a sensation that is all-consuming.

And while fire is the fruit born from winter, not even naked flame can ward off the imminent freeze.

Although not your guardian angel, Castiel watched you since your inception—since you folded into the cloth of the clergy.

You weren't the first in the abbey, but now you are the last.

Once, it has been full of life.

He remembers it so vividly.

Prospering.

A school. An orphanage. A church.

Now a mausoleum.

After the fire destroyed the children's wing in the abbey, the school followed suit in closure.

He should've been there to stop it.

There'd been so much going on in that point of time that despite his years of vigilance over the abbey, Castiel got swept up in the lives of the two Winchester men, unable to watch over the abbey.

His unintentional neglect, he now finds, has come back to bite.

Either in death, or under the cloak of night, the remaining inhabitants—the nuns, the monks, the priests—left like a spring snowmelt.

And you are the last.

His last ward.

But it's with a dutiful fashion that you hold your vigil, kneeling in the chapel before the crucifix and altar, rosary in hand, muttering prayers softly beneath your breath.

He knows your knees must ache and protest.

The stone floor you kneel upon is unkind; cold and hard.

It's much to his dismay when he realizes the state you're in.

How fickle, mortality is.

You haven't eaten in days, you've slept even less, and he can only assume you've seldom allowed yourself to drink from the dwindling reservoir of clean water.

You can't travel to the water well, which is only a shy two miles away, nor can you risk a treacherous attempt at the village by the feet of the mountain. Not in the torrential and smothering onslaught of powdery snow and cutting ice.

It's only a matter of time before your body gives out. Perhaps… he can bring you to Dean and Sam?

He's heard it time and time again—bad things happen to good people.

You do not deserve this.

You never preached superiority, you always tried to emulate sincere altruism, you were kind to the children—you're his favorite, even though he should never admit to having favorites as invisible as a guardian he is.

Perhaps this is punishment for his absence.

Because he failed the lives lost when the childrens' wing burned down. When the school closed. When the ecclesiastics left.

Castiel should've been there.

But now you're all that's left.

Oblivious to him as you kneel before the altar, your body failing and health deteriorating.

He is the only one to witness your holy suffering.