Castiel and Dean are lying in bed, but it's a bit early to go to sleep, so instead, they both pull out their phones. Looking over his shoulder, Castiel can see Dean is on Twitter, which was Castiel's first thought, as well, so he does the same. The first tweet in his feed is from Jody, talking about something that happened in Maine.

Though he already had a general idea of what it was, he goes to search the state's name, only to see that it's trending at number one. He doesn't hesitate to check it out, looking at the Twitter Moment provided.

There was a mass shooting at a nightclub that afternoon. Nearly 100 wounded and another 36 dead.

Castiel has to fight back a sigh. Again? These things are getting way too common for his taste. It's about damn time the country changed the gun control laws.

He types out a brief blurb about how it always hurts to see this type of thing or whatever, because he knows he'll get attacked if he doesn't, but he'll get attacked if he does, so he knows better than to check his mentions today, and maybe for the next few days, too.

Instead, he scrolls through the tweets under the hashtag about the shooting, as he usually does when something of importance is trending.

"'But now's not the time to talk about gun control,' right? #Maine."

There was a time Castiel would have retweeted something like this, but ever since Donald Trump left office, he's been staying out of politics. The new democratic president doesn't leave him constantly fearing his rights as a human being are going to be taken away because of his sexuality, so he hasn't had much reason to say anything about the political world. Sure, he doesn't particularly agree with the new left-center president, but he's better than Trump.

Also, because this book is taking place six years in the future, the author can make up the next president, because politicians haven't started announcing their bids for office (except Trump but he doesn't count for jack squat.)

Instead of a retweet, Castiel gives the tweet a like. He knows there will be a lot of people looking at his likes, but he doesn't care. They're essentially asking for his opinions when they do that, versus just wanting to be involved in his celebrity life by following his Twitter.

The next tweet reads, "This is unacceptable. Something must change. #PrayForMaine. #Maine."

He doesn't like that one because as an atheist — gay problems, you know? — the whole "pray for" concept just seems ridiculous, so he moves on.

"#Maine We need to stop this from happening again. Demand stricter gun laws."

"People died today, and liberals are making it all about forwarding their political agenda. #Maine."

Deciding he's had enough — once you find one ignorant gun-obsessed conservative, you find them all, and he doesn't want to deal with them right now — he exits Twitter and switches over to Instagram to read the captions. Unfortunately, disasters like this take up all social media platforms, and Instagram is full of captions about Maine as well, so Castiel doesn't stay on there long.

It probably makes him seem like a horrible person, passing over this without so much as a second thought towards the victims and their loved ones, but in a world like today's, it's what you have to do. It seems like there's a new terrorist act every week or two, though it might be as rare as once or maybe twice a month. Last time, someone drove their truck into a Planned Parenthood building. The time before, someone went to a gay pride parade and planted a bomb, which was thankfully found before it exploded, but could have been tragic.

At this point, these tragedies aren't tragedies at all. They're statistics. They're just numbers — number of gun-related deaths, number of Muslims terrorists, number of illegally obtained versus legally obtained weapons used in shootings.

Really, it's easier to think of them this way. It's easier to think that yes, these crimes prove this and this and this, than think about every individual that got hurt, every family that's falling apart, everyone mourning the loss of their child or sibling or best friend. So that's how he'll think of it.

Castiel sighs and puts his phone on the bedside table. He's not going to subject himself to that.

"Reading about Maine?" Dean guesses.

"Not anymore," Castiel replies, sliding out of bed without another word. He heads to the living room, grabbing his song notebook and his guitar, so he can do something productive.

As he searches for something to write about, his mind drifts back throughout the last few weeks. Nothing interesting has happened lately. He might have to think back farther. It's not uncommon for him to do that — he's written songs about things he felt years ago.

But he can't help thinking about Crowley. He's long since decided Crowley isn't worth it. He doesn't deserve to have a song written about him. He doesn't deserve to know what how he made Castiel feel.

But at the same time, he played an important role in Castiel's life, and apparently, that role isn't over. The events of that day are still fresh in his mind. Maybe that is the way to go.