fic: I Found Him Not
Title: I Found Him Not
Author: lies_unfurl
Word count: 4600
Rating/warnings: PG-13, brief violence
Summary: S5. Castiel and Claire are both looking for their fathers. Their paths eventually meet up.
Notes: Written for spn_summergen, for a prompt that was pretty much the summary. Many thanks to tfw_ftw for their beta reading. Title taken from a poem by William Bliss Carman.
Claire Novak leaves home the Saturday after her birthday. Just walks out, right after putting a note on the kitchen table. It's surprisingly, almost disturbingly, easy to do that. Maybe it's because "home" is nothing but a pay-by-the-month apartment in a building where the ceilings have water stains and the rooms smell permanently of cigarettes, even though neither of them smokes. Maybe it's because her mother's promises that she's going to find them a real house soon and get them settled down far away from where any demons could find them became stale after the first ten times she made them.
Or maybe it's because they haven't really been a family for a long time. Not without Dad.
Mom,
I'm going to look for him. I have my cell phone with me, but I'm not going to be answering any calls. I'm sorry, but I need to do this.
I love you,
Claire
She travels light. The cell phone she keeps in the right pocket of her jeans, where it forms a tight and comforting outline against her thigh. In a shoulder bag she puts a full water bottle, a change of clothes, and all the money that she has saved up, a grand total of $264.87. It's not much, but it's enough.
Her first stop is the train station, where she buys a ticket to take her three towns over. The seller raises his eyebrows as she pushes over her cash, taking in how small she is-built that way by genetics. "Aren't you a little young to be travelling on your own?"
"I'm meeting my father," she says brightly, though the words leave a sour taste in the back of her throat. In the past, she might have said that that was because she had lied, and lying is a sin. She knows that's not the case anymore.
The ride doesn't take long, and she's thirty miles away from the apartment by eight that morning. A small bakery provides breakfast, just some croissant grabbed from the "day old" rack. It's not nearly as soft as the fresh ones looked, all golden-brown and mouth-wateringly flaky as they lined on the shelves of the store, but it's cheap. Which is what she needs right now, since Claire doesn't really have a timeline for the moment.
She forces it down as she walks to the library. It's a small town that she's set down in, and it doesn't open for another hour. Claire sits down on an old bench underneath an overgrown maple tree, closes her eyes, and waits. She's been waiting for months, since the angel Castiel walked away from her and her mother, taking her dying father with him. She can wait a little while longer.
*
In Sicily, Castiel watches the procession of the Blessed Madonna. The devout Catholics bring out their idol of the Virgin Mary and ask her to please bless the sea. For them, he imagines it is beautiful-the idol with her worn, peeling paint covering a serene wooden face, held over an ocean that is incredibly still and bright and blue. A priest, small and hunched over, recites the prayers in a dry voice.
Castiel stands on the outskirts of the ceremony. The devotion of the people here on this little island, so broken by organized crime and by a misuse of the ocean's resources, is impressive. Others would have forsaken God, but here they are, still praying, just as they have been for years.
Part of him is moved by their faith. A greater part, though, is disappointed. He had thought that perhaps the loyalty shown by the Sicilians here would be enough to draw out the Mother that they are calling upon. Mary would know where God abides, would be able to tell Castiel the precise location of her Son. A Mother's intuition. And he knows that She is very willing to protect Her children; that to have the Holy Mother on their side would be a great boon to him and the Winchesters.
But Mary is as absent as God is, even at this, one of the oldest ceremonies venerating Her name. It frustrates Castiel almost as much as it disappoints him-which, granted, isn't much; he's a realist, and he knew that realistically, the chances of the Mother showing up were very slim.
Before he goes, he remembers to bend down to the ocean, wet his hands in the water that the priest was blessing, and offer a quiet benediction of his own. It isn't much, nothing like what Mary could do if She came, but he thinks that maybe the fish will have increased reproduction rates over the next year. These are good people, God's people. Castiel has no doubt that they would fight with Sam and Dean if he asked. For that, they deserve something.
He leaves just as the sun is staining the waters red and gold, ready to move on to the next site that might or might not bring him to God. It's a tiring, frustrating journey, but he has faith. His Father will show himself so long as Castiel works until he's ready to appear.
*
Claire slips into the library ten minutes after it opens. It's early in the morning, and naturally it's just her and a single librarian. She approaches the front desk warily and asks about internet usage.
The librarian regards her with an equal amount of scrutiny. "What's a girl of your age doing here so early?"
"It's for a school project," she lies, glad that it's a Saturday and she can't be accused of cutting. "I don't have a computer at home, and I know you usually ask for minors to have a note from a parent, but my mom was working the graveyard shift last night, and I forgot to ask her before for one. And my dad is probably passed out drunk on a street somewhere." She tries for a laugh, widening her eyes to convey how pathetic a soul she is. "So… please?"
The librarian stares a moment longer, but Claire meets her with a crinkled brow and a pleading, almost pouting, mouth. Finally, the librarian's look softens and she says, "Okay. I guess I can make an exception this once." She writes something down on a slip of paper and passes it over to Claire. "This is the password for the login. I assume you know how to use it?"
"Oh, yeah." She nods vivaciously and smiles as sweetly as she can manage. "They taught us in school."
"Good. They're over there, in the back." The librarian points to her right, and Claire can just barely make out a line of old, chunky monitors from between the rows of the bookshelves. "If you need anything, you can just come to the front desk and ask me, okay?"
"Okay. Great, thanks a lot." She smiles again and, readjusting her backpack, slips into the stacks of dusty old books. The smile slips from her face, is replaced with a look of grim determination. She's going to find her father, and she's going to find him soon.
*
Sam and Dean are fighting and losing against several demons, low-ranking citizens of Hell who would gladly turn them in to Lucifer in hopes of a promotion. Castiel comes at Dean profanity-laced prayer and smites the trio of demons. It takes more out of him than it would have last month. Castiel finds that worrisome, but he doesn't mention it to the Winchesters in their brief conversation afterwards. It shouldn't surprise him, the way that he's slowly losing his power; he can no longer tap into the steady flow of energy from Heaven that fuels him and his brothers.
Instead, Castiel draws his strength from his determination to find God. Following his meeting with Sam and Dean he flies to a Russian monastery that has been standing for approximately 500 years, and has been the site of several miracles over the centuries. He's disappointed to find no trace of his Father, and quickly abandons the Russian winter to go to a humble church in Albania that is heavily saturated with a sense of holiness that cannot be faked. It looks as promising as anywhere for God to have been recently.
As soon as he sets down, though, Castiel is overcome with wrongness. The sincerity of the place is true, he's sure; it has the distinct feeling of a location where people pray and genuinely believe that their requests will be answered, where neighbors help one another, and people are loath to covet what isn't theirs. But beneath that, lurking nearby, is-is-
The scent of Heaven fills Castiel's nose a half-second before the first blade slices through his trench coat, very narrowly missing his skin. He ducks instinctively, brings out his own sword and begins to fight back even as he rushes to take stock of the situation.
There are three of them, all of his former garrison. Iruel, Elad, and Jabin stand around him in a half-circle, swords drawn out and lips pulled up into identical sneers.
Castiel remembers when time was young and they had observed Earth in its earliest stages together. How Elad had been both fascinated and vaguely disturbed when man began owning animals as pets, and how Jabin had expressed grief more keenly than any of them when the Son had died. How Iruel had, at one time, been Castiel's second-in-command until Zachariah decided that he was too invested with certain happenings on Earth, and had him reeducated and replaced with Uriel.
It seems that he's leading once again, though, because it's he who steps forward. "Castiel. How dare you tarnish this holy place with your presence?"
"I'm fighting for their sake. You'd see it all destroyed." Keeping his eyes on Iruel and daring him to respond, Castiel reaches out and thoughtlessly drives his blade into Elad's gut. Elad was never a strong fighter, always preferring to watch. He and Inias were pacifistic for foot soldiers and frequently spent time together, overseeing Earthly affairs from a distance instead of getting involved with the fighting. Castiel wonders where Inias is now, if he's okay. He hasn't had to face him yet.
Elad dies impaled on his sword. Castiel waits until his wings are nothing but ashen marks on the ground before he goes to deal with the other two, whose faces now burn with sheer, unadulterated fury. It will be a difficult fight, but Castiel is confident that he'll win. He hasn't found God yet, and he cannot be stopped until he does.
*
Once she's actually away from home and sitting in a chilly library with a slow computer looming in front of her, Claire realizes that she has no idea where to start. She doesn't know if Castiel is still on Earth or if he went to Heaven, although she's guessing it's the former: from the time he inhabited her, she remembers a private, burning hatred of his higher-ups that, coupled with a growing sense of doubt, leads her to think that he probably didn't stick around for too long. But maybe Heaven found that out too and had him killed. There were a lot of angels who were mad at him, she knows that because he knew it when he took up residence inside of her.
Still, she's going on the idea that she'd know if he were gone, because wouldn't Dad have come home? She doesn't know if an angel's death releases their vessel or not, but she thinks that maybe it does. And anyway, she must have some sort of connection to Castiel, even if she's not too aware of it. There's got to be some sort of bond between an angel and its vessel that would let that vessel know that her services would never be required again.
With that in mind, she tentatively brings up Google. If Castiel were on Earth, she doesn't think that he would just be hanging out with those two brothers. He didn't have much patience for humans, definitely not enough to be around them at all times. So if she were an angel wandering the Earth, where would she go?
Maybe she's still driven a bit by the Guideposts of her childhood; maybe all of the fluffy stories that her youth pastor told her Sunday school class have stuck with her a bit too much, but Claire likes to imagine that maybe Castiel would be where it counted. He's a soldier, she knows, but can't God's work be done in a million different ways? And maybe certain things draw angels to them. Maybe.
In any case, it's not like she has any better idea. So, hoping to anyone-but-God that this works, she leans over her keyboard and types in miracles winter 2009, and waits to see what comes up.
A giant load of crap, is her answer.
Most of it, anyway; it's all things like how some lady's father died and she knew that he was watching her because she found a penny from the year he was born lying outside her car. Or how someone had prayed for their lost cat to come home, and he showed up two days later. Someone who was depressed until they saw a giant figure made of light in the sky, and realized that it was an angel telling them that it would be okay. Claire is torn between feeling irritated that she's wasting her time reading these stupid stories (that are mostly just giant leaps from coincidence to God) and feeling the most intense secondhand embarrassment ever. Once upon a time this sort of thing would have made her go all gooey-eyed, made her heart turn into a giant pile of mush. She might even have written one and expected it to inspire other people to see how God cares.
Now she thinks that they were all written by pathetic saps, people so sad and desperate that they're willing to see Jesus in a cloud formation. Her father would have scolded her for being so intolerant of other people's beliefs but, well, he's not exactly here, is he? Isn't that the whole damn problem?
A hand touches her arm gently, and she almost jumps out of the hard wooden chair. She swings around and glares at the hand's owner, a woman old enough to be her grandmother with a blush spreading over her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she says politely. Claire notes the nametag, and realizes that she must be a librarian. A nosey one, at that. "You looked frustrated. Is there anything I can help you find?"
Claire almost tells the woman that no, she's fine, it would be awesome if she would just leave her alone. But then her stomach rumbles, and she realizes that she's probably been here for two hours, maybe more, wasting all of that time looking through meaningless stories. "Um, maybe. I'm looking for reports of, like, miracles? You know, things that have happened recently? For a project I'm doing."
The woman-Gina, her nametag reads-shakes her head. "Miracles? Hon, you don't need a library for that. What you need is a church."
*
In New York there are three new men standing on the streets with signs, claiming to have received messages from God Himself about the end of days. Castiel visits all three of them and quickly verifies that none of them are being sincere.
In Reykjavik, a boy wakes up at his own funeral. Castiel is disappointed to learn that this was due to a team of faulty doctors, not divine intervention.
In Tennessee, Sam and Dean puzzle over a translation. Castiel stops in to look over it and inform them that it's nothing but directions on how to open a portal to the Sixth Circle. They burn it together.
In Tehran, a blind man claims to have been visited by angels. Castiel approaches him with caution, sees that he has indeed been marked by Heaven, and leaves in a hurry. Only one of his brothers is quick enough to follow him, and it's a cupid, of all things. They've got everyone on battle duty, he thinks as the nearly-naked corpse drops to the ground, which means that they must be getting desperate. He wonders how many of them have been killed so far. If Balthazar is still alive, or Inias, or Hester.
There's still no sign of God, and as Castiel stands invisibly watching a bazaar in Kabul, fingering the amulet that he got from Dean, he wonders how much longer he'll have to look. He's willing to go as long as it takes, of course he is-but still. He wonders.
*
"Miracles?" says the old, balding priest. His brow wrinkles, like he's not sure if he's ever heard of such a thing. "Well, of course, there are things happening every day that count as miracles."
"Yeah, but I'm looking for big things," Claire says, as patiently as she can manage. Respect for men of the cloth is deeply ingrained in her, but as she stands here inside of St. Lucy's Congregation, Father Rotella is seriously testing her. "Like, ones that… divine beings would be drawn to? You know, angels coming down and all that?"
"You could try praying if you'd like to talk to the angels," the Father suggests helpfully.
She takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. "I know, but it's for a project. I want to talk to people who have, you know, been visited by angels. Things like that."
"Well…" he taps a gnarled old finger against a pew. "There was a man who reported stigmata nearby."
"Really?" She perks up. Stigmata, that's a big thing. Probably Castiel would be drawn to something like that. "Where?"
He gives her the address, and it's only two train stops away. Claire leaves the church feeling considerably better than she did two hours ago.
Castiel doesn't show up there. Or the place after, where a kind old deacon told her that a woman had begun receiving visions from God. He's not at the place where a dozen witnesses swore that they heard angels trumpeting and saw huge winged figures in the sky, or at the old abandoned brick house where a drawing of Jesus appeared overnight (okay, so she knew in advance that that was a flimsy one, but it was within walking distance, and she figured that maybe it was worth a try).
But Castiel doesn't show up at the sites of any of a dozen miracles, and Claire wonders if she got this all wrong. Maybe Castiel did end up going back to Heaven after all, despite the storm that she could feel brewing inside of him when he occupied her body. Or maybe he did join the Winchesters. Maybe he's waiting out the Apocalypse somewhere quiet. Maybe he's dead.
Either way, she's almost out of money, and she hasn't talked to her mother in a week. As bad as things were in that cramped little apartment, as much as her mother was silent and depressed, and only spoke to snap at Claire, she misses her. She wonders if she's missed, or if maybe Mom is glad to be alone.
She's sitting on the steps outside of a town hall somewhere in Illinois at the moment. It's a nice building, big and stone with gargoyles looking down. She probably doesn't match with it very well, though-she hasn't showered in a week, and all of her sleeping has been on trains. Clothes don't go too far when you're always in transit. And hair, well, who has time to brush that? She does her best, but she's preoccupied with more important things right now.
As she rests back against the stone and watches the sun setting, she can hear claps and cheers coming out of the building. There's a faith healer in there, one who claims to have just been struck by God. You can only get in if you pay, though, and Claire would rather have supper than watch to see if he's sincere.
She wonders if maybe she should pray. That would-that should-bring Castiel in a hurry, if he wanted to keep his promise about watching over her dad's family. But it feels dirty and terrible and wrong to pray to the thing that stole her father, and Claire doesn't want to lower herself to that.
She's still watching the sun going down like an egg yolk slipping into a mess of watercolors when there's a sound like wind rushing through the leaves. Claire looks up and-
It's too easy, really. Too simple. How can he be here after all of this time? She didn't have to go to the ends of the Earth, to wrestle with lions to get him back. She isn't doing anything but sitting down, and yet that's unmistakably him.
The trench coat that he always wore is torn and matted. The tie is more askew than he ever kept it. And his eyes, trained firmly on her, are more tired than she ever saw her father's. It's Jimmy Novak all right, though. It's her father.
"Are you injured?" he asks, and it's too direct. Missing the sense of urgency that such a question would have had if it was Dad.
"No." She stands up and brushes a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. "I'm fine."
"Why are you at a faith healer's, then?"
All at once, her anger that's been pulsing beneath the surface, subtly driving her through this, is brought up in full force, and the only reason that she's not hitting the stupid angel is because he's in her father's body. "Why am I here? Because I was looking for you, Castiel. Because I was hoping I'd be able to find you again."
"You need only to have prayed. I would have come."
He's calm, and it infuriates her. "Why would I have prayed? You've done nothing but ruin my family and my life; you don't deserve to be prayed to."
Castiel looks away. Claire thinks she sees guilt in his eyes, but it's gone too soon for her to be certain. "Is there something I can help you with?"
"I want my father back."
The words suck out all of her energy, and she slumps back against the rail of the town hall. "I want Dad back," she repeats. "I've been looking for you, going to where there were miracles and stuff… I figured that you were an angel. You'd probably be there, if you were still on Earth. And I was right, wasn't I?"
He hesitates a moment before he dips his head down in acknowledgement. "Yes, I suppose you were. Although probably not for the reasons you're thinking."
She doesn't care enough to ask him to elaborate. "Can I just… please, Castiel. I want to talk to my father."
To tell him… what exactly? She's not too sure. That she loves him, that she misses him, that Mom is trying her best, but ever since he walked away from them that night after she was possessed, she hasn't been the same. To ask him to tell Castiel to get out. To ask him to come back to his family.
Being so wrapped up in her thoughts, she almost misses the sheer sorrow that passes over Castiel's face, chilling her to the bone. "Castiel?" she asks. Her throat is tight all of a sudden, and a cold sweat is starting to bead at her brow. "Castiel, let me talk to him."
"I'm sorry. That's not possible."
"What are you talking about? Just… just leave him for a minute! I don't need long, and he'll take you back, I know he will; I just… please."
"Your father isn't here," he says in as gentle a voice as she imagines he's capable of. "Claire, listen to me. He's in Heaven now, I'm fairly sure of that. There was… an incident, and this body-and myself-were temporarily destroyed. When I came to, I was alone. His soul was gone. He was ensured a place there, though, and I believe that's where he is."
No. It doesn't make any sense to her, and she stares at him blankly, not comprehending. That can't be true, because he's standing right there in her father's body, and doesn't he have to be in it? Right? "But. But I've been looking for him, I've been searching, and you're right here…"
"I'm sorry." He sounds so sincere. She hates that, because that makes it so hard to believe that he's lying. "If I could let him talk to you, I would."
"You asshole," she whispers. Her hands are gripping the wide stone rail that runs along the city hall stairs, and her knees have locked together. "You were supposed to keep him safe."
"Let me take you home," he says, reaching out a hand. She jerks away, stumbles, and only manages to avoid falling and cracking her skull on the pavement through virtue of the banister.
"Don’t. Touch. Me." He has the sense to withdraw his hand, and she continues. "I'll find my own way home. Just… get out. If that's all that you have to say, Castiel, I don't want to hear it."
Tears sting the corners of her eyes now, and she really, really doesn't want to cry in front of the angel who stole her father. "Leave."
Castiel seems to hesitate, and then he shakes his head. "No. I made a promise to keep you safe, and I think that leaving you alone right now would violate that." He steps forward. "Your father was a good man, and I'm sorry, Claire."
She wants to run or scream or something, but her dad's hand reaches out to her and touches her on her forehead, and then she's slumping down, the world going all fuzzy at the edges, and even though her Dad's body is standing right there, catching her as she falls, Claire is still no closer to him than she was when she first ran away.
*
It isn't hard for Castiel to scan through Claire's mind and pull out an address for an apartment in suburban Detroit. He goes there unnoticed, deposits Claire in her bedroom. Amelia is still sleeping, and he doesn't bother waking her.
Outside, the night sky is cloudy. There is a sense of an approaching snow in the air, and his breath makes small puffs in the chill. His hand automatically goes to the amulet, which is still cold, untouched by God's presence.
Claire never found her father, he thinks. Won't see him until she goes to Heaven. She deserves better, and he wishes that he could change that, he really does.
But wishes are a poor substitute for action, and angels are creatures of action. So Castiel walks away from the apartment, and he keeps going until he decides where to look next for God-because his Father isn't in Heaven, but he's still missing, and Castiel cannot and will not accept failure as an end.
Author: lies_unfurl
Word count: 4600
Rating/warnings: PG-13, brief violence
Summary: S5. Castiel and Claire are both looking for their fathers. Their paths eventually meet up.
Notes: Written for spn_summergen, for a prompt that was pretty much the summary. Many thanks to tfw_ftw for their beta reading. Title taken from a poem by William Bliss Carman.
Claire Novak leaves home the Saturday after her birthday. Just walks out, right after putting a note on the kitchen table. It's surprisingly, almost disturbingly, easy to do that. Maybe it's because "home" is nothing but a pay-by-the-month apartment in a building where the ceilings have water stains and the rooms smell permanently of cigarettes, even though neither of them smokes. Maybe it's because her mother's promises that she's going to find them a real house soon and get them settled down far away from where any demons could find them became stale after the first ten times she made them.
Or maybe it's because they haven't really been a family for a long time. Not without Dad.
Mom,
I'm going to look for him. I have my cell phone with me, but I'm not going to be answering any calls. I'm sorry, but I need to do this.
I love you,
Claire
She travels light. The cell phone she keeps in the right pocket of her jeans, where it forms a tight and comforting outline against her thigh. In a shoulder bag she puts a full water bottle, a change of clothes, and all the money that she has saved up, a grand total of $264.87. It's not much, but it's enough.
Her first stop is the train station, where she buys a ticket to take her three towns over. The seller raises his eyebrows as she pushes over her cash, taking in how small she is-built that way by genetics. "Aren't you a little young to be travelling on your own?"
"I'm meeting my father," she says brightly, though the words leave a sour taste in the back of her throat. In the past, she might have said that that was because she had lied, and lying is a sin. She knows that's not the case anymore.
The ride doesn't take long, and she's thirty miles away from the apartment by eight that morning. A small bakery provides breakfast, just some croissant grabbed from the "day old" rack. It's not nearly as soft as the fresh ones looked, all golden-brown and mouth-wateringly flaky as they lined on the shelves of the store, but it's cheap. Which is what she needs right now, since Claire doesn't really have a timeline for the moment.
She forces it down as she walks to the library. It's a small town that she's set down in, and it doesn't open for another hour. Claire sits down on an old bench underneath an overgrown maple tree, closes her eyes, and waits. She's been waiting for months, since the angel Castiel walked away from her and her mother, taking her dying father with him. She can wait a little while longer.
*
In Sicily, Castiel watches the procession of the Blessed Madonna. The devout Catholics bring out their idol of the Virgin Mary and ask her to please bless the sea. For them, he imagines it is beautiful-the idol with her worn, peeling paint covering a serene wooden face, held over an ocean that is incredibly still and bright and blue. A priest, small and hunched over, recites the prayers in a dry voice.
Castiel stands on the outskirts of the ceremony. The devotion of the people here on this little island, so broken by organized crime and by a misuse of the ocean's resources, is impressive. Others would have forsaken God, but here they are, still praying, just as they have been for years.
Part of him is moved by their faith. A greater part, though, is disappointed. He had thought that perhaps the loyalty shown by the Sicilians here would be enough to draw out the Mother that they are calling upon. Mary would know where God abides, would be able to tell Castiel the precise location of her Son. A Mother's intuition. And he knows that She is very willing to protect Her children; that to have the Holy Mother on their side would be a great boon to him and the Winchesters.
But Mary is as absent as God is, even at this, one of the oldest ceremonies venerating Her name. It frustrates Castiel almost as much as it disappoints him-which, granted, isn't much; he's a realist, and he knew that realistically, the chances of the Mother showing up were very slim.
Before he goes, he remembers to bend down to the ocean, wet his hands in the water that the priest was blessing, and offer a quiet benediction of his own. It isn't much, nothing like what Mary could do if She came, but he thinks that maybe the fish will have increased reproduction rates over the next year. These are good people, God's people. Castiel has no doubt that they would fight with Sam and Dean if he asked. For that, they deserve something.
He leaves just as the sun is staining the waters red and gold, ready to move on to the next site that might or might not bring him to God. It's a tiring, frustrating journey, but he has faith. His Father will show himself so long as Castiel works until he's ready to appear.
*
Claire slips into the library ten minutes after it opens. It's early in the morning, and naturally it's just her and a single librarian. She approaches the front desk warily and asks about internet usage.
The librarian regards her with an equal amount of scrutiny. "What's a girl of your age doing here so early?"
"It's for a school project," she lies, glad that it's a Saturday and she can't be accused of cutting. "I don't have a computer at home, and I know you usually ask for minors to have a note from a parent, but my mom was working the graveyard shift last night, and I forgot to ask her before for one. And my dad is probably passed out drunk on a street somewhere." She tries for a laugh, widening her eyes to convey how pathetic a soul she is. "So… please?"
The librarian stares a moment longer, but Claire meets her with a crinkled brow and a pleading, almost pouting, mouth. Finally, the librarian's look softens and she says, "Okay. I guess I can make an exception this once." She writes something down on a slip of paper and passes it over to Claire. "This is the password for the login. I assume you know how to use it?"
"Oh, yeah." She nods vivaciously and smiles as sweetly as she can manage. "They taught us in school."
"Good. They're over there, in the back." The librarian points to her right, and Claire can just barely make out a line of old, chunky monitors from between the rows of the bookshelves. "If you need anything, you can just come to the front desk and ask me, okay?"
"Okay. Great, thanks a lot." She smiles again and, readjusting her backpack, slips into the stacks of dusty old books. The smile slips from her face, is replaced with a look of grim determination. She's going to find her father, and she's going to find him soon.
*
Sam and Dean are fighting and losing against several demons, low-ranking citizens of Hell who would gladly turn them in to Lucifer in hopes of a promotion. Castiel comes at Dean profanity-laced prayer and smites the trio of demons. It takes more out of him than it would have last month. Castiel finds that worrisome, but he doesn't mention it to the Winchesters in their brief conversation afterwards. It shouldn't surprise him, the way that he's slowly losing his power; he can no longer tap into the steady flow of energy from Heaven that fuels him and his brothers.
Instead, Castiel draws his strength from his determination to find God. Following his meeting with Sam and Dean he flies to a Russian monastery that has been standing for approximately 500 years, and has been the site of several miracles over the centuries. He's disappointed to find no trace of his Father, and quickly abandons the Russian winter to go to a humble church in Albania that is heavily saturated with a sense of holiness that cannot be faked. It looks as promising as anywhere for God to have been recently.
As soon as he sets down, though, Castiel is overcome with wrongness. The sincerity of the place is true, he's sure; it has the distinct feeling of a location where people pray and genuinely believe that their requests will be answered, where neighbors help one another, and people are loath to covet what isn't theirs. But beneath that, lurking nearby, is-is-
The scent of Heaven fills Castiel's nose a half-second before the first blade slices through his trench coat, very narrowly missing his skin. He ducks instinctively, brings out his own sword and begins to fight back even as he rushes to take stock of the situation.
There are three of them, all of his former garrison. Iruel, Elad, and Jabin stand around him in a half-circle, swords drawn out and lips pulled up into identical sneers.
Castiel remembers when time was young and they had observed Earth in its earliest stages together. How Elad had been both fascinated and vaguely disturbed when man began owning animals as pets, and how Jabin had expressed grief more keenly than any of them when the Son had died. How Iruel had, at one time, been Castiel's second-in-command until Zachariah decided that he was too invested with certain happenings on Earth, and had him reeducated and replaced with Uriel.
It seems that he's leading once again, though, because it's he who steps forward. "Castiel. How dare you tarnish this holy place with your presence?"
"I'm fighting for their sake. You'd see it all destroyed." Keeping his eyes on Iruel and daring him to respond, Castiel reaches out and thoughtlessly drives his blade into Elad's gut. Elad was never a strong fighter, always preferring to watch. He and Inias were pacifistic for foot soldiers and frequently spent time together, overseeing Earthly affairs from a distance instead of getting involved with the fighting. Castiel wonders where Inias is now, if he's okay. He hasn't had to face him yet.
Elad dies impaled on his sword. Castiel waits until his wings are nothing but ashen marks on the ground before he goes to deal with the other two, whose faces now burn with sheer, unadulterated fury. It will be a difficult fight, but Castiel is confident that he'll win. He hasn't found God yet, and he cannot be stopped until he does.
*
Once she's actually away from home and sitting in a chilly library with a slow computer looming in front of her, Claire realizes that she has no idea where to start. She doesn't know if Castiel is still on Earth or if he went to Heaven, although she's guessing it's the former: from the time he inhabited her, she remembers a private, burning hatred of his higher-ups that, coupled with a growing sense of doubt, leads her to think that he probably didn't stick around for too long. But maybe Heaven found that out too and had him killed. There were a lot of angels who were mad at him, she knows that because he knew it when he took up residence inside of her.
Still, she's going on the idea that she'd know if he were gone, because wouldn't Dad have come home? She doesn't know if an angel's death releases their vessel or not, but she thinks that maybe it does. And anyway, she must have some sort of connection to Castiel, even if she's not too aware of it. There's got to be some sort of bond between an angel and its vessel that would let that vessel know that her services would never be required again.
With that in mind, she tentatively brings up Google. If Castiel were on Earth, she doesn't think that he would just be hanging out with those two brothers. He didn't have much patience for humans, definitely not enough to be around them at all times. So if she were an angel wandering the Earth, where would she go?
Maybe she's still driven a bit by the Guideposts of her childhood; maybe all of the fluffy stories that her youth pastor told her Sunday school class have stuck with her a bit too much, but Claire likes to imagine that maybe Castiel would be where it counted. He's a soldier, she knows, but can't God's work be done in a million different ways? And maybe certain things draw angels to them. Maybe.
In any case, it's not like she has any better idea. So, hoping to anyone-but-God that this works, she leans over her keyboard and types in miracles winter 2009, and waits to see what comes up.
A giant load of crap, is her answer.
Most of it, anyway; it's all things like how some lady's father died and she knew that he was watching her because she found a penny from the year he was born lying outside her car. Or how someone had prayed for their lost cat to come home, and he showed up two days later. Someone who was depressed until they saw a giant figure made of light in the sky, and realized that it was an angel telling them that it would be okay. Claire is torn between feeling irritated that she's wasting her time reading these stupid stories (that are mostly just giant leaps from coincidence to God) and feeling the most intense secondhand embarrassment ever. Once upon a time this sort of thing would have made her go all gooey-eyed, made her heart turn into a giant pile of mush. She might even have written one and expected it to inspire other people to see how God cares.
Now she thinks that they were all written by pathetic saps, people so sad and desperate that they're willing to see Jesus in a cloud formation. Her father would have scolded her for being so intolerant of other people's beliefs but, well, he's not exactly here, is he? Isn't that the whole damn problem?
A hand touches her arm gently, and she almost jumps out of the hard wooden chair. She swings around and glares at the hand's owner, a woman old enough to be her grandmother with a blush spreading over her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she says politely. Claire notes the nametag, and realizes that she must be a librarian. A nosey one, at that. "You looked frustrated. Is there anything I can help you find?"
Claire almost tells the woman that no, she's fine, it would be awesome if she would just leave her alone. But then her stomach rumbles, and she realizes that she's probably been here for two hours, maybe more, wasting all of that time looking through meaningless stories. "Um, maybe. I'm looking for reports of, like, miracles? You know, things that have happened recently? For a project I'm doing."
The woman-Gina, her nametag reads-shakes her head. "Miracles? Hon, you don't need a library for that. What you need is a church."
*
In New York there are three new men standing on the streets with signs, claiming to have received messages from God Himself about the end of days. Castiel visits all three of them and quickly verifies that none of them are being sincere.
In Reykjavik, a boy wakes up at his own funeral. Castiel is disappointed to learn that this was due to a team of faulty doctors, not divine intervention.
In Tennessee, Sam and Dean puzzle over a translation. Castiel stops in to look over it and inform them that it's nothing but directions on how to open a portal to the Sixth Circle. They burn it together.
In Tehran, a blind man claims to have been visited by angels. Castiel approaches him with caution, sees that he has indeed been marked by Heaven, and leaves in a hurry. Only one of his brothers is quick enough to follow him, and it's a cupid, of all things. They've got everyone on battle duty, he thinks as the nearly-naked corpse drops to the ground, which means that they must be getting desperate. He wonders how many of them have been killed so far. If Balthazar is still alive, or Inias, or Hester.
There's still no sign of God, and as Castiel stands invisibly watching a bazaar in Kabul, fingering the amulet that he got from Dean, he wonders how much longer he'll have to look. He's willing to go as long as it takes, of course he is-but still. He wonders.
*
"Miracles?" says the old, balding priest. His brow wrinkles, like he's not sure if he's ever heard of such a thing. "Well, of course, there are things happening every day that count as miracles."
"Yeah, but I'm looking for big things," Claire says, as patiently as she can manage. Respect for men of the cloth is deeply ingrained in her, but as she stands here inside of St. Lucy's Congregation, Father Rotella is seriously testing her. "Like, ones that… divine beings would be drawn to? You know, angels coming down and all that?"
"You could try praying if you'd like to talk to the angels," the Father suggests helpfully.
She takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. "I know, but it's for a project. I want to talk to people who have, you know, been visited by angels. Things like that."
"Well…" he taps a gnarled old finger against a pew. "There was a man who reported stigmata nearby."
"Really?" She perks up. Stigmata, that's a big thing. Probably Castiel would be drawn to something like that. "Where?"
He gives her the address, and it's only two train stops away. Claire leaves the church feeling considerably better than she did two hours ago.
Castiel doesn't show up there. Or the place after, where a kind old deacon told her that a woman had begun receiving visions from God. He's not at the place where a dozen witnesses swore that they heard angels trumpeting and saw huge winged figures in the sky, or at the old abandoned brick house where a drawing of Jesus appeared overnight (okay, so she knew in advance that that was a flimsy one, but it was within walking distance, and she figured that maybe it was worth a try).
But Castiel doesn't show up at the sites of any of a dozen miracles, and Claire wonders if she got this all wrong. Maybe Castiel did end up going back to Heaven after all, despite the storm that she could feel brewing inside of him when he occupied her body. Or maybe he did join the Winchesters. Maybe he's waiting out the Apocalypse somewhere quiet. Maybe he's dead.
Either way, she's almost out of money, and she hasn't talked to her mother in a week. As bad as things were in that cramped little apartment, as much as her mother was silent and depressed, and only spoke to snap at Claire, she misses her. She wonders if she's missed, or if maybe Mom is glad to be alone.
She's sitting on the steps outside of a town hall somewhere in Illinois at the moment. It's a nice building, big and stone with gargoyles looking down. She probably doesn't match with it very well, though-she hasn't showered in a week, and all of her sleeping has been on trains. Clothes don't go too far when you're always in transit. And hair, well, who has time to brush that? She does her best, but she's preoccupied with more important things right now.
As she rests back against the stone and watches the sun setting, she can hear claps and cheers coming out of the building. There's a faith healer in there, one who claims to have just been struck by God. You can only get in if you pay, though, and Claire would rather have supper than watch to see if he's sincere.
She wonders if maybe she should pray. That would-that should-bring Castiel in a hurry, if he wanted to keep his promise about watching over her dad's family. But it feels dirty and terrible and wrong to pray to the thing that stole her father, and Claire doesn't want to lower herself to that.
She's still watching the sun going down like an egg yolk slipping into a mess of watercolors when there's a sound like wind rushing through the leaves. Claire looks up and-
It's too easy, really. Too simple. How can he be here after all of this time? She didn't have to go to the ends of the Earth, to wrestle with lions to get him back. She isn't doing anything but sitting down, and yet that's unmistakably him.
The trench coat that he always wore is torn and matted. The tie is more askew than he ever kept it. And his eyes, trained firmly on her, are more tired than she ever saw her father's. It's Jimmy Novak all right, though. It's her father.
"Are you injured?" he asks, and it's too direct. Missing the sense of urgency that such a question would have had if it was Dad.
"No." She stands up and brushes a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. "I'm fine."
"Why are you at a faith healer's, then?"
All at once, her anger that's been pulsing beneath the surface, subtly driving her through this, is brought up in full force, and the only reason that she's not hitting the stupid angel is because he's in her father's body. "Why am I here? Because I was looking for you, Castiel. Because I was hoping I'd be able to find you again."
"You need only to have prayed. I would have come."
He's calm, and it infuriates her. "Why would I have prayed? You've done nothing but ruin my family and my life; you don't deserve to be prayed to."
Castiel looks away. Claire thinks she sees guilt in his eyes, but it's gone too soon for her to be certain. "Is there something I can help you with?"
"I want my father back."
The words suck out all of her energy, and she slumps back against the rail of the town hall. "I want Dad back," she repeats. "I've been looking for you, going to where there were miracles and stuff… I figured that you were an angel. You'd probably be there, if you were still on Earth. And I was right, wasn't I?"
He hesitates a moment before he dips his head down in acknowledgement. "Yes, I suppose you were. Although probably not for the reasons you're thinking."
She doesn't care enough to ask him to elaborate. "Can I just… please, Castiel. I want to talk to my father."
To tell him… what exactly? She's not too sure. That she loves him, that she misses him, that Mom is trying her best, but ever since he walked away from them that night after she was possessed, she hasn't been the same. To ask him to tell Castiel to get out. To ask him to come back to his family.
Being so wrapped up in her thoughts, she almost misses the sheer sorrow that passes over Castiel's face, chilling her to the bone. "Castiel?" she asks. Her throat is tight all of a sudden, and a cold sweat is starting to bead at her brow. "Castiel, let me talk to him."
"I'm sorry. That's not possible."
"What are you talking about? Just… just leave him for a minute! I don't need long, and he'll take you back, I know he will; I just… please."
"Your father isn't here," he says in as gentle a voice as she imagines he's capable of. "Claire, listen to me. He's in Heaven now, I'm fairly sure of that. There was… an incident, and this body-and myself-were temporarily destroyed. When I came to, I was alone. His soul was gone. He was ensured a place there, though, and I believe that's where he is."
No. It doesn't make any sense to her, and she stares at him blankly, not comprehending. That can't be true, because he's standing right there in her father's body, and doesn't he have to be in it? Right? "But. But I've been looking for him, I've been searching, and you're right here…"
"I'm sorry." He sounds so sincere. She hates that, because that makes it so hard to believe that he's lying. "If I could let him talk to you, I would."
"You asshole," she whispers. Her hands are gripping the wide stone rail that runs along the city hall stairs, and her knees have locked together. "You were supposed to keep him safe."
"Let me take you home," he says, reaching out a hand. She jerks away, stumbles, and only manages to avoid falling and cracking her skull on the pavement through virtue of the banister.
"Don’t. Touch. Me." He has the sense to withdraw his hand, and she continues. "I'll find my own way home. Just… get out. If that's all that you have to say, Castiel, I don't want to hear it."
Tears sting the corners of her eyes now, and she really, really doesn't want to cry in front of the angel who stole her father. "Leave."
Castiel seems to hesitate, and then he shakes his head. "No. I made a promise to keep you safe, and I think that leaving you alone right now would violate that." He steps forward. "Your father was a good man, and I'm sorry, Claire."
She wants to run or scream or something, but her dad's hand reaches out to her and touches her on her forehead, and then she's slumping down, the world going all fuzzy at the edges, and even though her Dad's body is standing right there, catching her as she falls, Claire is still no closer to him than she was when she first ran away.
*
It isn't hard for Castiel to scan through Claire's mind and pull out an address for an apartment in suburban Detroit. He goes there unnoticed, deposits Claire in her bedroom. Amelia is still sleeping, and he doesn't bother waking her.
Outside, the night sky is cloudy. There is a sense of an approaching snow in the air, and his breath makes small puffs in the chill. His hand automatically goes to the amulet, which is still cold, untouched by God's presence.
Claire never found her father, he thinks. Won't see him until she goes to Heaven. She deserves better, and he wishes that he could change that, he really does.
But wishes are a poor substitute for action, and angels are creatures of action. So Castiel walks away from the apartment, and he keeps going until he decides where to look next for God-because his Father isn't in Heaven, but he's still missing, and Castiel cannot and will not accept failure as an end.