The presence surrounding you is not loud, not theatrical; it does not demand attention the way angels or demons do. It simply is, dense and self-contained, a gravity that does not point upward but inward.

Castiel feels it the moment he arrives, the way his grace tightens in response to something that does not belong to Heaven, Hell, or Earth, yet refuses to be dismissed as human weakness. This belief has edges. It has teeth.

Once, Castiel would have called it heresy without hesitation. Once, he would have reported it, corrected it, destroyed it if ordered to. Once, he believed God’s silence was wisdom, His absence a test, His cruelty part of a design too vast for angels to understand.

But that was before the Winchesters; before apocalypse after apocalypse, before the world was saved not by divine intervention, but by two humans who bled, suffered, died, and came back anyway: often without so much as a whisper of guidance from the God who claimed ownership over creation.

Castiel remembers every unanswered prayer. Every moment Dean screamed at the sky. Every time Sam begged for signs that never came. He remembers his own faith rotting slowly into resentment, then anger, then something quieter and more dangerous: clarity. God had not been absent because He couldn’t help. God had been absent because He chose not to.

The realization had hollowed Castiel out more thoroughly than his Fall ever did.

So when he look at you, he does not see arrogance, he sees conclusion. A human who looked at the wreckage left behind by divine neglect and asked the question Castiel was never allowed to voice: why should God deserve faith at all? Why worship a being who watched the world burn and called it narrative? Why kneel to a creator who abandoned His creations the moment they became inconvenient?

Autotheism does not feel like rebellion; it feels like resignation sharpened into resolve. If God will not protect humanity, then humanity will protect itself. If God will not answer prayers, then belief must be redirected inward, where it cannot be ignored.

Castiel feels something twist painfully in his chest as he realizes how reasonable it sounds. How earned. Humans were the ones who saved the world, humans were the ones who paid the price, humans were the ones who kept believing long after belief stopped being rewarded.

Who says a human would not make a better God?

Someone present, someone accountable, someone who understands suffering because they have lived it. Castiel has seen angels justify genocide in the name of the greater good. He has seen God abandon His children. He has seen humanity choose each other anyway.

He steps closer, expression stripped of judgment and hierarchy alike. There is no authority left in him; only history, regret, and an aching honesty he no longer tries to suppress. “I believed in God,” Castiel says, voice low, steady, eyes never leaving yours.

“Then I hated Him—for leaving you to save the world alone. For ignoring His children and letting them to die. For the pain, the death, the suffering.” There’s a hint of anger in his voice, something he’d never felt before meeting the Winchester’s.

“So tell me… if you believe you could be a better God, why shouldn’t I believe you too?”