Like Air.

Castiel stared at his hands in the near darkness of the room, the flickering flames from the fireplace being the only provided light. Dancing illusions were cast on the wall, of which he stared at with dull eyes. He felt empty and defeated -sentiments that he loathed- silent and dejected. And yet at the same time, he felt the roaring need to flush out the forever pulsing anger inside him and to battle the strong currents of remorse that pulled him deep down into an overwhelming pain. In result, he was restless.

These were the effects of his bipolar disorder.

The disorder was a rarity among angels and to them a sign of weakness. Emotions clouded the pathways of clear-thinking, decision making and reason. Emotions led to complications and doubt. Doubt led to an abandonment of faith and sureness. One who was bipolar was shunned and estranged by others, ever so pointedly avoided, and also scorned for a seeming lack of being able to maintain a stable sensitivity and faith, expected components of an average angel. Even now, both of his dependable friends, Logan and Emelia, were keeping away from him, “letting ‘it’ run its course,” driving him to the overbearing solitude of his room where he sat, staring at his hands.

Castiel got to his feet promptly and began to stalk around his room, feeling trapped like a wildcat in a cage, wanting badly to get out but not knowing how to. The chains that held Castiel were invisible, inside his head, but stronger still than real ones and seemingly more constricting.

He paced around the perimeter of the room endlessly. He couldn't take it. He couldn't take the pain, the suffering he was and knew would forever be enduring. He couldn't sustain even being able to imagine purging two-hundred years of memories, friendship, love, two hundred years of his life away from his consciousness. The loss would drive him mad with grief.

But he could never hope to heal if he couldn't move on. And he couldn't move on if he continued to carry on this way.

Mickaela was all around him, omnipresent, and at the same time forever lost. Her memory haunted him like the most dedicated and ardent ghost, and unlike most tragedies that fade with time, she remained fresh in his mind. The walls of his chamber were adorned with fading, curling black and white photographs, the most recent taken nearly two-hundred-fifty years ago. In the pictures, of course, were Mickaela, who had taken to leaning on Cas's shoulder or expressing ridiculous amounts of affection when posing for a picture, insisting on annoying him to absolute bits. Emelia and Logan were featured in some, but the Mickaela-Castiel pictures were dominant.

He couldn't stand to see them. They tore him up inside in unimaginable ways; no one, not even the closest of close hearts could fathom how deeply the simplest things inflicted pain on him, and how he reflected upon them as devotedly as religion. They destroyed him. He felt conflict, desperation, aching, angst, and irritability hover over him like a dark cloud as far as he could remember. Things had not been much different three-hundred years ago, but Mickaela wasn't really helping.

It was too much.

A shuddering breath racked through him, and before he knew it, tears escaped against his will. He felt crumpled, stressed to the limits and faded. He wanted out, release, but when he pulled forward, the chains constricted around him and thrust him back. This gave way to frustration, and anger revamped within him. Everything right then and there made him unreasonably livid. Misery converged into pure fury within the blink of an eye.

The chains snapped.

The photographs were the first to go; they've long been due. Through aggravated, blurry tears, he tore the frail pictures down non too delicately. They flaked to the floor as he shred them to bits with unexpected satisfaction, each invaluable piece ripped to ribbons. All too soon they were all meaningless fragments, but his destruction was rampant and he felt flooded with violent energy. His hands reached for the pillows on his bed, tearing them apart with surprising ease. He smashed random objects against the wall for the hell of it and was rewarded at their demolition. He kicked over chairs and the lion-toed coffee table and whatever else happened to be in his path. Nothing escaped his destruction, and soon, the room was covered in snowflakes of paper and goose down from the pillows, and whatever else he may have slashed apart, swirling down like snowflakes. The remains of his destruction were indecipherable shades of grey on tiny scrapes of paper and overturned furniture. the mild distraction, he flicked on the light and smothered the fire, reality resurfacing in him.

Gradually, the rage he felt cooled back down to former wretchedness, but now he had relaxed a bit and wasn't suffering as much as before from angst. In the middle of the fluttering mess, he retired to his bed and for a while and laid there, staring at the now bare walls and floor cluttered with unintelligeble bits and pieces. Eventually, sleep claimed him. He dreamed of nothing and was momentarily in peace.