Jimmy opens his eyes in a soft-edged room with pale blue walls, in a haze of utter ohmyGodwhereamIwhathappened confusion, and in March 1997.

The world swims to the left as he sways with a momentary disorientation, and then he looks down and everything crystallises into perfect clarity, because he is holding his newborn daughter in his arms.

'Claire,' he murmurs. 'Oh my God, Claire.'

'Isn't she beautiful?' Amelia says, voice high and wavering with excitement. Jimmy glances up; his wife is sitting up in their bed, looking exhausted and radiantly happy. He remembers driving Amelia and Claire home from the hospital, the small space of their car filled with tears and laughter. He couldn't keep his eyes on the road, couldn't stop twisting round to catch Amelia's eyes in the passenger seat, couldn't stop the wide smiles tugging at his lips. He insisted that she lie down when they got home. He remembers it all. It was thirteen years ago. He doesn't understand.

Amelia smiles, waiting for him to answer. There are shadows under her eyes, her makeup is smudged and her hair is a mess, but the clean, pale light of the ceiling lamp overhead paints her face in smooth planes of white and cream, and God, she looks beautiful. Jimmy looks down at his baby, the shell curves of her closed eyelids and the translucent down of fair hair, remembers, and smiles. 'She's lovely,' he says. 'You're lovely.'

He looks around his bedroom, the pale colours and bright light, the happiness shining in his wife's face, the contented sleep of his daughter, this tiny enclosed space with everything he loved and lost, and wants to stay here forever, enfolded within this perfect moment. He wonders whether he can.

When he wakes up - he doesn't remember falling asleep - he is curled under a duvet and his mother is leaning over him, cast in a palette of soft shadows by the blue-tinted light filtering through drawn curtains. 'Jimmy,' she says softly. 'Honey, wake up.'

He frowns. 'Mom?'

She died when he was twenty-nine. He doesn't…Wait, this is the bedroom he had until they moved house when he was, what, six years old? I don't understand.

'Happy birthday, honey,' she murmurs, 'I made you breakfast. Pancakes. And Dad said he'd phone in the morning.'

And, yes, he remembers now. He was five, his dad was on a three-week business trip to Europe, and he got more presents that year than he ever remembered having before or since, to make up for not having his father there. He was five years old; it was a decent trade.

Jimmy gives up trying to work out what's happening; comes downstairs, sits and eats pancakes and maple syrup with his mother, spends twenty minutes talking to his father, on speakerphone so they can all talk as a family. He's confused as all hell. But he's missed this, the warmth and comfort of family - why has he missed this? What happened? - and as near as Jimmy can make out, he's happy.

The next time he opens his eyes he remembers Castiel.

He's watching movies with a few friends, the day after their high school graduation; his head is reeling with freedom and adolescent excitement and the delight of not having to get up and go to school ever again, and the last thing he remembers clearly is pain, blood and shadows, an angel wearing his daughter's face. His own voice, rough and torn with agony: take me. Claire's green eyes, shining calm and serene and unbearably wrong. You take me.

'Jimmy,' someone says. 'You okay?'

'Yeah,' he mutters, vaguely aware of something exploding on the TV screen. Someone hands him a slice of pizza and mechanically he takes it.

'Shit, what's happening?' he says helplessly to the room at large. Nobody seems to hear him.

His memory is a mess. Fragmented images smearing like paint into white-hot light. A girl with red hair and a pale, frightened face, a circle of symbols painted on a concrete floor, a man with angry green eyes; kaleidoscope swirls of things that don't make sense. But he remembers the feeling, the searing heat, the confusion, the sense of being dragged through space at an impossibly fast speed, trailing fire and ice. The dim awareness of taking a back seat in his own body while this utterly alien being flits around the world ignoring him completely. The occasional flashes of being almost-himself again; not enough to do anything, just enough to let him look out through his own eyes like he's a long way away from them and taunt him with teasing glimpses of what he gave up.

'Hey,' someone says to him; he looks up, and he can remember this face, at least. Mark Addison. They were friends in high school, lost touch after college. It's oddly comforting having a memory that he can clearly place, something prosaic and unimportant, something to ground him. 'Come on, Jimmy, watch the damn movie,' Mark says, smiling.

'Okay,' Jimmy says quietly. Watch the movie. He can do that. It's simplest to just relax into the sofa and let himself enjoy the moment, to not wonder about what happened before.

After he's made the conscious decision to just go with it, whatever happened, it's easy. Jimmy lives through Amelia's three-month ultrasound scan, dinner with about twenty friends for his thirty-second birthday, his first Communion, a big promotion at work, the first time he slept with Amelia, arriving on holiday in Italy when he was eight and had never been abroad before, his wedding day. He helps his daughter with her homework and tells his wife he loves her; he surrenders himself to this series of perfect moments, strung together like a necklace of pearls. Jimmy lets himself be caught in them like a bug trapped in amber, and in a strange way, he's happy.

He's crouched on his living-room carpet, watching Claire play with blocks and waiting for her to say her first word, when he hears a sound, glances up and sees his own face.

'Hello, Jimmy,' says a voice that isn't his.

'Get out,' Jimmy says. He stands up, looks Castiel in the eye. 'Go away.'

'I'm sorry, Jimmy,' Castiel says. 'About what happened - '

'I don't care what happened,' Jimmy says. 'I'm done. Just leave me alone. Let me be with my daughter.'

Castiel gives Claire a cursory glance, then returns his attention to Jimmy. 'I want to apologise,' he says.

'For what?' Jimmy snaps, taking a step closer. 'For ruining my life? Destroying my family? Dragging my body around the world, getting it shot at and stabbed and God knows what? Possessing my daughter? I don't want your apologies. I just want to forget you ever existed.'

Castiel's eyes - Jimmy's eyes, God, this is weird, talking to himself - flicker around the room, uncomfortably, and he says, 'Nevertheless, I'm sorry. For what it's worth.'

'It's not worth crap,' Jimmy says flatly. Castiel sighs.

'Do you understand what - '

Jimmy raises a hand, cuts him off. 'Yeah, I get it. I'm dead, this is Heaven. I'm guessing you dragged me into one too many angel knife fights and got me killed. Just to add to the massive list of ways you fucked up my life.'

'Broadly, yes. I'm truly sorry, Jimmy.' Castiel jams his hands into the pockets of Jimmy's coat, and adds, 'If it's any comfort, I died as well.'

There's a pause. 'That's nice to hear,' Jimmy says sardonically. 'So now you're joining me in the afterlife? I have to say, that doesn't sound - '

'No,' Castiel says. 'Angels don't…Anyway, I was brought back. Still in your body.' He gestures vaguely towards it. 'But you weren't. I'm sorry.'

Jimmy laughs. 'You're…You're sorry? You know, of all the things you should be sorry for, that's not one. Believe me, this is a blessing.'

'A blessing,' Castiel says. He looks around the room again, glancing anywhere but Jimmy. It's strange to watch; Jimmy has a vague idea that Castiel does this when he's uncomfortable. He has the muscle memory of it. Even the angel's mannerisms took him over. 'I was never sure, about human heavens. Dean told me some story about robots…He said it was fake. That it wasn't real paradise. But if you're…'

'If I'm what? Happy?' Jimmy snaps. 'I had a home and a life and a family, and you took it all away from me. I don't even remember most of what you did to me. But trust me, I remember enough of it to know that this is better. Being dead, getting to have the memories of what you took away like it didn't matter, is better than having you wear me like a suit. Anything would be better. Okay?'

Castiel closes his eyes. 'I'm sorry, Jimmy,' he says. 'For everything. It was never my intention to…' He pauses, and then says, 'Your family are well. I checked. They're fine, and…they're happy, although they miss you. I thought you'd like to know.'

Jimmy doesn't know what to say to that; there's no way this thing that ripped his world apart is getting his thanks for these small courtesies. 'When is it?' he asks instead.

'What?'

'In the real world…what year is it? When did I die?'

Castiel sighs. 'May 2009. That was more than a year ago, now, but…Time works differently, here. I could wait ten years on Earth and come back to this moment, for you.'

'Oh,' Jimmy says, taking this in. 'Okay.' He pauses, and then adds, 'If you feel so guilty about getting me killed, why'd you wait a year to come apologise?'

Castiel's eyes circle the room, dancing around everything in it but Jimmy's face, like flies searching for an open window. He really is uncomfortable. 'I…couldn't,' he says. 'I separated from Heaven. I'm back, now.'

'Yeah? That's nice.'

'You resent me,' Castiel says quietly, sounding almost hurt. Jimmy doesn't understand him, the way he is one minute as solid and implacable as a glacier and suddenly turns to show another side as fragile as glass. The way he rips Jimmy's family apart without it even occurring to him that he should care, and then suddenly turns up to apologise, with that slightly nervous expression like it's not something he's ever thought to do before. If he were a person, Jimmy would think Castiel was crazy. But he's an angel, and that's another basket of crazy altogether.

He laughs, short and sharp. 'Of course I fucking resent you! You ruined my life. You're not going to, I don't know, earn my forgiveness by coming here and admitting fault. Why do you even care? You didn't before you destroyed my family and got me killed.'

'I feel…' Castiel looks up to the ceiling like the word he's searching for is written there.

'Guilty?' Jimmy suggests. 'Responsible? Good. You should.'

'Can I ask you,' Castiel says quietly, 'are you happy?'

'It's Heaven,' Jimmy says. 'Isn't that the idea?'

Castiel shrugs.

'Before you came here,' Jimmy says slowly, 'wearing my face, reminding me what I gave up for you. When I could be back in the past, before you screwed it all up for me, and pretend it was real. I was happy then.'

Castiel meets his eyes, for what seems like the first time. Jimmy sees the regret, the guilt and the mournful exhaustion written transparently across his own face and for the first time feels a faint spark of pity for the angel. 'Then I'm sorry for coming here, as well,' Castiel says. He sighs, and runs a hand through Jimmy's hair, leaving it even messier than before. 'I'm sorry.'

'Okay,' Jimmy says quietly, a concession. 'Thank you,' he adds; it feels inappropriate, but he doesn't know what else to say.

Castiel nods, a small, slight movement. Then he isn't there, although Jimmy couldn't pinpoint the moment he disappeared; perhaps he was never there at all. To his left, Claire reaches out for a coloured block that isn't there, has been knocked under the sofa, and looks up, catching her father's eyes as he stares distantly at the wall. 'Yellow?' she asks, consonants blurred by her eleven-month-old mouth, and Jimmy crouches down to pick her up, tears in his eyes.

'Amelia,' he calls. She's in the garden, but the door is open. He knows she'll hear him. He's done this before. 'Amelia, you'll never guess what Claire just said.'

Jimmy waits for his wife to come in, hug their daughter, try and persuade her to say something else; immerses himself in a moment that isn't real, but is nevertheless perfect, and lets himself forget.