SPN fic: We hung our wings on the wall
We hung our wings on the wall
Anna, Michael, Castiel, Sam, Dean, PG-13, 2,000 words. Set before, during, and after SPN 5x13. Warnings for depictions of torture.
a/n: Title from Sassafrass, with thanks to batyatoon. Written for maboheme, who gave me a choice of prompts a while back, one of them a fic about Anna. Thank you to embroiderama for the beta.
Summary: Out of markers, out of allies, she does what she has to do.
When she was seven years old, Anna tried to lift a pot on the stove. Her mother's back had been turned as she'd leaned into the fridge to get out the apple juice.
The pot clattered to the floor as some of the water, close to boiling, splashed at Anna's feet, and some of it splashed her. Anna remembered the bright red flowers on her mother's skirt, how the fabric flowed as she spun around when Anna screamed. The pain seared through her white shirt into her skin. It hurt worse than when she'd scraped her knee, worse than when she'd fallen down the stairs. Anna always healed fast. Her parents joked about it, said she bounced like a rubber ball.
This had been a line of fire across her stomach. She couldn't believe how much it hurt, while her mother gathered her up, put her on the counter, and pulled up her shirt to look at the burn, her voice low and soothing as she reached for the phone with a trembling hand.
The doctor had said the burn wasn't that serious, even if it broke the skin. He'd said she was brave and he'd given her a tootsie roll pop.
The burn had left a little puckered scar on her stomach.
It was nothing, that pain, compared to what her brothers and sisters were doing to her now, invisible fire all over her body. She missed her human voice when she screamed. Screaming as a human had more satisfaction in it, tactile against her throat, hot in her chest. The ropes of light tightened around her wrists, yanking her down as she strained upward, her wings opened to their fullest. They surrounded her in a circle, hovering over her with disapproving voices, Chamuel and Tabbris refusing to look at her or speak her name. They stayed back as if even punishing her was beneath them.
The pain ebbed, the ropes loosened. Michael cupped her face with one hand.
"You could come home, little one," he said.
"I was home," she told him, thinking of the body that had burned up (again) when Munkir and Nakir had dragged her to Heaven.
He hesitated, lingering above her, but she turned her face away. Michael lowered his hand, then left her.
That was when the burn started at the root of her wings, crawled through them like a claw, growing more intense the farther upward it went until that was all she could feel of them. She screamed because it helped drown the pain out, although she thought they took it as a weakness.
She thought curses that the humans who'd raised her would be shocked to discover she even knew. She took her Father's name in vain. If he got angry enough, maybe he'd actually show up. She thought with a twist of disappointment that Castiel had broken, had said yes to them. She wouldn't. She pulled against the cords of light that surrounded her and kept thinking things that shouldn't be thought in Heaven.
There were those sympathetic to her cause -- terrified to act, but still loyal to their Father. Some had been watchers, like her, and were fond of humanity although they treated her like a freak, with her human parents, human upbringing, human feelings. But they helped her. Nathaniel cut her free, Yofiel sent her to earth.
She created Anna Milton a third time, using the additional grace she'd borrowed to form the shape of that flesh around her, blood, tendons, muscle, skin. As her creation finished, she screamed with her human voice this time, hair over her face. She was damp with sweat, shivering in her clothes, in a field under the dark sky. The air smelled of dirt and cold and distant smoke. Home.
A dog barked, probably in response to the screaming. She reached for a fold in the air and spread her still-aching wings.
She couldn't find the Winchesters. She found Castiel in Bali, a distant figure in a tan trenchcoat striding the flagstones of a temple. If she got too near, he would find her, so she stayed back, squinted against the sun, and in a blink, he was gone.
From her sympathizers, Anna learned how he'd rebelled against Zachariah, and allied himself with Dean Winchester. Her quick flash of pride was gone with the knowledge that Lucifer walked free.
Anna captured a demon.
It struggled against the ropes, eyes gone black in the face of the young man it possessed.
"I have a message for you from Lucifer," it said.
"What?" Anna tugged on his thick hair, yanking his head back. The human body the demon rode was already dead, or near death -- once the demon was out there was no saving him, whoever the man had been.
"He said Castiel's blind devotion to your Father is misguided. Lucifer said you are an abomination, but still his kin and if you go to him, he'll protect you from Heaven's wrath. It's not too late."
"Screw Lucifer," Anna said, thinking of chocolate cake, of her mother and father, of classmates and lovers and friends.
She splayed her fingers against the demon's chest. Eventually, smoke rising from his skin, he howled his pleas to her to stop, stop, stop, he'd tell her whatever she needed to know.
Neon-bright flowers, tidal waves, forests, running, sex, forgot there was a test -- her mind rifled through theirs, touching each only for a fraction of a second before it recognized a familiar note. It was blind entry, driving without headlights, and she had no idea where Dean's physical body was as she stumbled into his mind, sight returning.
His expression was stunned, maybe a flicker in his eyes as if he was glad to see her, which she ignored because she couldn't afford to notice that (or to recall the lingering taste of beer on a warm mouth, the way his fingers had brushed over the scar on her stomach).
She worked at not liking him.
Dean would never forgive her. Which was only how things could be.
In a battle against a legion of demons, a long time ago if she thought like Anna Milton (and not so long ago at all if she didn't), Castiel had made his first kill under her first command. In subsequent battles, she'd learned he was more tactician than warrior, a gatherer of information who thought ahead, told her how many of the enemy there were, outlined how many more he expected, what they might do next based on the pattern of their fighting. She'd catch him looking to her amid the shrieks and fire before he turned back into it. Castiel was deft with a sword, but went about fighting in a dogged way as if he would like it be over with quickly.
The skills she used in combat hummed through her, as natural as flight. Later, when she became a watcher, the restlessness made her thoughtful and watching the humans, she understood what she'd felt in battle, and missed it.
But that wasn't an appropriate thought for an angel -- the idea of self.
Castiel told her he'd changed. He faced her, no deference in the line of his shoulders, in his glance, and Anna wondered if he was even aware of the full extent of the differences in him.
A burn of fury and envy hit her, and for a moment she was too much like Anna Milton, who favored chocolate cake and wouldn't be able to save the world because she liked Sam and Dean, because she hated the cold hole in her stomach at the thought of Dean never forgiving her for what she planned to do.
Ironic, she'd wanted to draw this change from Castiel and now it was going to bite her in the ass. The warehouse air sank cold against her human skin, raising goosebumps under the sleeves of her shirt and jacket, while the thought caught, over and over, that he'd waited too long, too long. She had to clench her fist to keep from taking a swing at him, slamming him into the wall for his indecisiveness, for his delay, and most of all, because she envied him.
She hoped he appreciated the luxury of the decision he'd made, the messy human comfort of it.
Anna almost stepped forward. She almost changed her mind. She almost wavered, under the temptation to look to him the way he'd once looked to her, to be able to lean, to be among friends.
Almost.
When she drove the piece of pipe into Sam's stomach, the thick, metallic scent of blood in the air, on her hands, Anna remembered the carefulness of his grip as he'd helped her to hide in the church closet, how he'd given off a sense of safety, despite what she'd known about him.
(She managed to nearly block out the sound of Dean yelling his brother's name).
It wasn't fair, that this was the saving of humanity, that Sam had to die, that it had to be her that did it.
That was a very Anna Milton way to think.
Anna Milton died with Sam Winchester, but her regret, when she apologized to Mary, was genuine.
She'd had a mother once.
The human face Michael wore -- shape of his jaw and his eyes and his nose reminding her of Sam and Dean -- frightened her less than Michael's true form in heaven. She'd spent thousands of years an angel and the length of a sneeze, proportionately, as a human, yet now she responded instinctively the way humans did. Michael had always been intimidating, but he was less so to her like this.
Stupid to hope. She knew better. Michael would be Michael, the same tunnel-visioned, self-righteous jerk he always was.
He rested his hand on her shoulder. As her body burned away around her, she thought she heard her mother's voice, singing.
She didn't even have time to scream.
She was out of markers, out of allies -- they were too frightened now to help her. Zachariah was furious, blustering more than usual. They didn't even bother with torture this time, giving her up as a lost cause. Stripped of her wings, restless and alone and unable to move about freely, she had too much time to think. She thought of what the human poet had written about Lucifer, about making a Hell of Heaven, and laughed. Angels weren't supposed to know how to laugh.
She'd remake a body again, if she got free. She missed Anna Milton. She missed wet grass against her bare feet, the feel of piano keys under her fingers, the silence of church, the way hot chocolate burned her tongue.
She'd been wrong -- Anna Milton wasn't dead. She had herself.
The locks opened for her. Anna barely had time to feel startled before she found herself elsewhere, atoms, molecules, blood, tendons, flesh and bone shaping around her, although all she had was her own grace.
It was done.
She gulped in the air of a night on earth, finding herself fully clothed on a flat rooftop near a town, bridges and lights burning against dark hills. The wind whistled as it gusted across the roof.
"What now?" she called, turning in a circle, the soles of her shoes crunching against the rough surface. Killing Sam hadn't worked. Something else might but she was out of ideas. "What am I supposed to do?"
Nothing answered.
~end
Anna, Michael, Castiel, Sam, Dean, PG-13, 2,000 words. Set before, during, and after SPN 5x13. Warnings for depictions of torture.
a/n: Title from Sassafrass, with thanks to batyatoon. Written for maboheme, who gave me a choice of prompts a while back, one of them a fic about Anna. Thank you to embroiderama for the beta.
Summary: Out of markers, out of allies, she does what she has to do.
When she was seven years old, Anna tried to lift a pot on the stove. Her mother's back had been turned as she'd leaned into the fridge to get out the apple juice.
The pot clattered to the floor as some of the water, close to boiling, splashed at Anna's feet, and some of it splashed her. Anna remembered the bright red flowers on her mother's skirt, how the fabric flowed as she spun around when Anna screamed. The pain seared through her white shirt into her skin. It hurt worse than when she'd scraped her knee, worse than when she'd fallen down the stairs. Anna always healed fast. Her parents joked about it, said she bounced like a rubber ball.
This had been a line of fire across her stomach. She couldn't believe how much it hurt, while her mother gathered her up, put her on the counter, and pulled up her shirt to look at the burn, her voice low and soothing as she reached for the phone with a trembling hand.
The doctor had said the burn wasn't that serious, even if it broke the skin. He'd said she was brave and he'd given her a tootsie roll pop.
The burn had left a little puckered scar on her stomach.
It was nothing, that pain, compared to what her brothers and sisters were doing to her now, invisible fire all over her body. She missed her human voice when she screamed. Screaming as a human had more satisfaction in it, tactile against her throat, hot in her chest. The ropes of light tightened around her wrists, yanking her down as she strained upward, her wings opened to their fullest. They surrounded her in a circle, hovering over her with disapproving voices, Chamuel and Tabbris refusing to look at her or speak her name. They stayed back as if even punishing her was beneath them.
The pain ebbed, the ropes loosened. Michael cupped her face with one hand.
"You could come home, little one," he said.
"I was home," she told him, thinking of the body that had burned up (again) when Munkir and Nakir had dragged her to Heaven.
He hesitated, lingering above her, but she turned her face away. Michael lowered his hand, then left her.
That was when the burn started at the root of her wings, crawled through them like a claw, growing more intense the farther upward it went until that was all she could feel of them. She screamed because it helped drown the pain out, although she thought they took it as a weakness.
She thought curses that the humans who'd raised her would be shocked to discover she even knew. She took her Father's name in vain. If he got angry enough, maybe he'd actually show up. She thought with a twist of disappointment that Castiel had broken, had said yes to them. She wouldn't. She pulled against the cords of light that surrounded her and kept thinking things that shouldn't be thought in Heaven.
There were those sympathetic to her cause -- terrified to act, but still loyal to their Father. Some had been watchers, like her, and were fond of humanity although they treated her like a freak, with her human parents, human upbringing, human feelings. But they helped her. Nathaniel cut her free, Yofiel sent her to earth.
She created Anna Milton a third time, using the additional grace she'd borrowed to form the shape of that flesh around her, blood, tendons, muscle, skin. As her creation finished, she screamed with her human voice this time, hair over her face. She was damp with sweat, shivering in her clothes, in a field under the dark sky. The air smelled of dirt and cold and distant smoke. Home.
A dog barked, probably in response to the screaming. She reached for a fold in the air and spread her still-aching wings.
She couldn't find the Winchesters. She found Castiel in Bali, a distant figure in a tan trenchcoat striding the flagstones of a temple. If she got too near, he would find her, so she stayed back, squinted against the sun, and in a blink, he was gone.
From her sympathizers, Anna learned how he'd rebelled against Zachariah, and allied himself with Dean Winchester. Her quick flash of pride was gone with the knowledge that Lucifer walked free.
Anna captured a demon.
It struggled against the ropes, eyes gone black in the face of the young man it possessed.
"I have a message for you from Lucifer," it said.
"What?" Anna tugged on his thick hair, yanking his head back. The human body the demon rode was already dead, or near death -- once the demon was out there was no saving him, whoever the man had been.
"He said Castiel's blind devotion to your Father is misguided. Lucifer said you are an abomination, but still his kin and if you go to him, he'll protect you from Heaven's wrath. It's not too late."
"Screw Lucifer," Anna said, thinking of chocolate cake, of her mother and father, of classmates and lovers and friends.
She splayed her fingers against the demon's chest. Eventually, smoke rising from his skin, he howled his pleas to her to stop, stop, stop, he'd tell her whatever she needed to know.
Neon-bright flowers, tidal waves, forests, running, sex, forgot there was a test -- her mind rifled through theirs, touching each only for a fraction of a second before it recognized a familiar note. It was blind entry, driving without headlights, and she had no idea where Dean's physical body was as she stumbled into his mind, sight returning.
His expression was stunned, maybe a flicker in his eyes as if he was glad to see her, which she ignored because she couldn't afford to notice that (or to recall the lingering taste of beer on a warm mouth, the way his fingers had brushed over the scar on her stomach).
She worked at not liking him.
Dean would never forgive her. Which was only how things could be.
In a battle against a legion of demons, a long time ago if she thought like Anna Milton (and not so long ago at all if she didn't), Castiel had made his first kill under her first command. In subsequent battles, she'd learned he was more tactician than warrior, a gatherer of information who thought ahead, told her how many of the enemy there were, outlined how many more he expected, what they might do next based on the pattern of their fighting. She'd catch him looking to her amid the shrieks and fire before he turned back into it. Castiel was deft with a sword, but went about fighting in a dogged way as if he would like it be over with quickly.
The skills she used in combat hummed through her, as natural as flight. Later, when she became a watcher, the restlessness made her thoughtful and watching the humans, she understood what she'd felt in battle, and missed it.
But that wasn't an appropriate thought for an angel -- the idea of self.
Castiel told her he'd changed. He faced her, no deference in the line of his shoulders, in his glance, and Anna wondered if he was even aware of the full extent of the differences in him.
A burn of fury and envy hit her, and for a moment she was too much like Anna Milton, who favored chocolate cake and wouldn't be able to save the world because she liked Sam and Dean, because she hated the cold hole in her stomach at the thought of Dean never forgiving her for what she planned to do.
Ironic, she'd wanted to draw this change from Castiel and now it was going to bite her in the ass. The warehouse air sank cold against her human skin, raising goosebumps under the sleeves of her shirt and jacket, while the thought caught, over and over, that he'd waited too long, too long. She had to clench her fist to keep from taking a swing at him, slamming him into the wall for his indecisiveness, for his delay, and most of all, because she envied him.
She hoped he appreciated the luxury of the decision he'd made, the messy human comfort of it.
Anna almost stepped forward. She almost changed her mind. She almost wavered, under the temptation to look to him the way he'd once looked to her, to be able to lean, to be among friends.
Almost.
When she drove the piece of pipe into Sam's stomach, the thick, metallic scent of blood in the air, on her hands, Anna remembered the carefulness of his grip as he'd helped her to hide in the church closet, how he'd given off a sense of safety, despite what she'd known about him.
(She managed to nearly block out the sound of Dean yelling his brother's name).
It wasn't fair, that this was the saving of humanity, that Sam had to die, that it had to be her that did it.
That was a very Anna Milton way to think.
Anna Milton died with Sam Winchester, but her regret, when she apologized to Mary, was genuine.
She'd had a mother once.
The human face Michael wore -- shape of his jaw and his eyes and his nose reminding her of Sam and Dean -- frightened her less than Michael's true form in heaven. She'd spent thousands of years an angel and the length of a sneeze, proportionately, as a human, yet now she responded instinctively the way humans did. Michael had always been intimidating, but he was less so to her like this.
Stupid to hope. She knew better. Michael would be Michael, the same tunnel-visioned, self-righteous jerk he always was.
He rested his hand on her shoulder. As her body burned away around her, she thought she heard her mother's voice, singing.
She didn't even have time to scream.
She was out of markers, out of allies -- they were too frightened now to help her. Zachariah was furious, blustering more than usual. They didn't even bother with torture this time, giving her up as a lost cause. Stripped of her wings, restless and alone and unable to move about freely, she had too much time to think. She thought of what the human poet had written about Lucifer, about making a Hell of Heaven, and laughed. Angels weren't supposed to know how to laugh.
She'd remake a body again, if she got free. She missed Anna Milton. She missed wet grass against her bare feet, the feel of piano keys under her fingers, the silence of church, the way hot chocolate burned her tongue.
She'd been wrong -- Anna Milton wasn't dead. She had herself.
The locks opened for her. Anna barely had time to feel startled before she found herself elsewhere, atoms, molecules, blood, tendons, flesh and bone shaping around her, although all she had was her own grace.
It was done.
She gulped in the air of a night on earth, finding herself fully clothed on a flat rooftop near a town, bridges and lights burning against dark hills. The wind whistled as it gusted across the roof.
"What now?" she called, turning in a circle, the soles of her shoes crunching against the rough surface. Killing Sam hadn't worked. Something else might but she was out of ideas. "What am I supposed to do?"
Nothing answered.
~end