Fic: "The Kingdom of Heaven" [SPN, Castiel/Dean, PG-13], Part II
And after that I saw all the secrets of the heavens, and how the kingdom is divided, and how the actions of men are weighed in the balance.
And my face was changed, for I could no longer behold.
(The Book of Enoch)
~
"Just the same thing anyone's ever fought for." Metatron told Kevin, Dean, and Sam. He set his teacup down on a tower of books and stroked the spines idly as though reading them with his fingers. He gave another one of those meek shrugs, looking like a man who'd surrendered to an enormity he had no control over, ages ago.
"The chance to live for one more day. To self-determine."
Sam squinted dangerously at the angel, and Dean could feel that anger building up from across the room. That's it? That's your glib fucking answer? To why I'm risking everything?
"Free will," murmured Kevin, staring soulfully into his mug, like he had been thinking the same thing, but with a totally different emotion.
"Yes. When it comes down to it, that's all you've got."
Dean scrubbed his face roughly with both hands, feeling like he just wanted to sleep for a week. But underneath that, the weird, huge feeling lurked still, an electric storm over the horizon. His stomach buzzed with it. Or maybe that was just the tea.
"And what about the angels?" Sam asked hoarsely. "If we close the Gates of Hell, we get rid of Crowley and the demons, but what about Heaven? Do you think they'll just button up and go home once Hell is out of the picture?"
Metatron raised both eyebrows briefly.
"To be perfectly honest? No. With God out of the picture, the angels are just as lost as you are. Think about it. Humanity was created to have free will. To follow its own path, whether it was to glory...or ruin. You've had millenia of existence to figure out what it means to be able to do that. And even you haven't figured it out, have you? People still desperately cling to all sorts of authority figures. God. Presidents. Parents. Shamans. Priests. But the angels...all that power, and no free will. It had to be ordered, hierarchical, or else you lot wouldn't have had a chance. And then the Watchers fell. So enamored of you in your imperfection, your struggle. The small, but brilliant lights of your souls. Who wouldn't want to know that better? To taste what angels never could - freedom?"
The solitary little apartment was quiet and dusty, like Dean always imagined a professor's study would be, on those rare occasions when he tried to envision Sam's sojourn at Harvard. It was almost like they were talking about something pretend - something that couldn't touch anyone here, had nothing to do with any of them. Metatron's voice was mild and soft, and Dean wanted to scoff at him, this wingless dick and his so-called heavenly wisdom, but for some reason, Metatron's words didn't just flow over him, but stabbed through his brittle armor, finding claw-holds in his head and digging in.
"And now, with war, and upheaval, and murder, and loss...with Michael in the Cage with Lucifer - those two, whom so many angels always saw as opposite poles of their universe - now, there are certainly some, if not most, of the heavenly host who would do anything to return order to their world. Even if it meant imposing false order on yours."
Kevin, who had been almost sullenly silent, grimaced.
"Like those fundamentalist Christians believe already exists..."
Metatron nodded, slowly. "I suspect even they would be surprised at what angels would wreak. But yeah. I can only imagine that the angels would try to create an Eden of Earth. And of course, there would go the neighborhood."
Sam was staring off into the stacks of books, past Dean, probably past anything that the rest of them could see. Poor Sam and his dreams of being Sir Galahad. Dean's stomach twisted at the memory he couldn't remember.
"So...with Crowley and the demons out of the way, there's nothing to stop the angels." Sam muttered, weakly.
Metatron pursed his lips and remained silent.
"No."
Dean surprised himself, probably all of them, with the firmness of his voice, though it sounded like he hadn't spoken for a week, all gravelly and raw.
"Not nothing. We've got Cas." And that big, scary truth rumbled and shifted inside of him again, gleaming briefly in the dark, but didn't show itself.
~
"You must never go near the Cage of the Watchers, Castiel." They told him. "Their songs are poisonous and their truths blasphemy."
Castiel was young when the Watchers fell. He had been exercising his wings among the nearer stars, careening enthusiastically through the vacuum of space and delighting in chasing comets. So he had not been present when Semjaza, Azazel, Ramiel, and the others stepped from Heaven and approached the human souls living on the edges of the deserts and mountains. He had not witnessed - nor had any angel, except for perhaps a few of the oldest and most silent - the gentle touch of grace to soul, the tender mingling of spirit and then, finally, flesh.
He had been called back from his youthful play to take part in the Great Punishment. He had fought alongside Anael and Uriel, under the command of Zachariah, in Lucifer's own garrison. He had found himself face to face with Semjaza, one of the Watchers, one of the Fallen. He remembered being alarmed at the humanity of Semjaza's chosen face.
"Brother, little brother," Semjaza had said, softly. "Don't do this."
"Take him, Castiel!" Zachariah had snapped, but Castiel hesitated.
"Why?" He asked Semjaza.
The older angel, whose vessel wore greying hair and dark, fatherly eyes, said, "Someday you will understand."
Then Anael and Turiel had grabbed Semjaza and brought him before Lucifer, who, in blazing glory, forced him along with the others into the abyss below Heaven, where fire belched endlessly and along whose edges human souls, troubled and hateful in death, already wandered.
And Enoch, the Metatron, told them that this place was now called Hell, and all angels were forbidden to go there.
But before Hell was separated by several veils of existence and the demilitarized zone known as Purgatory, Castiel often wandered close, when he tired of the stars, halfway hoping to catch sight of the Fallen, imagining that if he could, he would ask Semjaza, who had always been so great and beautiful, what he had seen in a human soul that so tempted him to fall.
~
Dean holds up the hem of his t-shirt, baring his belly for Castiel's hand. Sweat drips down the small of his back, though the room isn't all that warm. He wonders what it will feel like - he knows it'll hurt, because he's seen Cas go fist-deep inside Sam and that kid, before, and it sure didn't seem like a party.
But Cas is still hesitating, wasting time and consciousness. His fingers are stretched halfway to Dean's skin, wavering above the bed covers, and there's a look of heartbreak on his face.
"What, Cas? Dammit, what? Just do it!" Tears are tickling the hot skin of his face, and he doesn't even care. The clock ticks away another second, two, five, hollow and deathly. Soon Cas won't be awake enough to do it at all; soon, all that's left of him will be an empty vessel and the huge ashen imprints of wings, reminding Dean that something holy and irreplaceable is gone, forever. Dean can't really think ahead to that moment, because that moment is when all thoughts end. It makes his throat close up. It makes him want to slap the shit out of Cas, right now.
"Do it."
He tries to use the scary-robot-commander voice from earlier, but what comes out is completely the opposite - a trembling, destroyed sound that's far more begging than commanding. It rips up from some tight and quickly-crumbling place in Dean's chest, and it finally makes Castiel's eyes open, their deep blue ringed with light, and fix on Dean's face.
Castiel's bloody fingers touch the skin of Dean's stomach, and for a terrifying second, Dean thinks that it's too late, that Cas is too weak. That soft, cool, and desperate touch is all he'll ever have.
Then, slowly, Cas' fingertips push, firm to bruising to unpleasantly stabbing, and the pain starts.
Dean tries to take deep breaths. He's undergone some serious stabbings and clawings and flayings before, but that doesn't make it any easier. Cas' hand becomes a blade, a sword of fire slowly piercing his belly, relentlessly parting his muscles, and bones and organs, splitting fat and flesh and still going, past his increasingly wrecked attempts to breathe and on into something that's neither bone nor flesh, something that tears Dean in two and makes the pain of being speared alive seem like puppies and ice cream by comparison.
He is only aware of the sudden and stark reality of being made of billions of atoms, and each atom is burning to a crisp, blowing up like a billion little Hindenburgs all on fire, floating away from each other, the electrical fields between them tearing like thin, soft skin. He wants to scream, stop, wait! It's too much! There is no voice to scream with, and no lungs, and no air, and no diaphragm, and soon, as the atoms all burst and burn, one by one, no brain to cradle the thought. There is a sound - something so enormous he can barely understand it as sound, at first. Like a thousand-voiced choir in a thunderstorm. The remaining atoms of his mind tremble with the force of it, and slowly, they realize that it is a voice. I'm sorry, Dean. He registers one last instant of panic, and then Dean is gone.
In his place is a rushing void that senses itself. It knows itself to be wider and deeper than seven solar systems, a cavern into which all light falls. It exists in all time and space, and yet, energy and light and matter are always streaming into the great dark gash of it at roaring speeds. They plunge into the eternal black and cold like debris over a thundering waterfall, yet it never fills. It is a gaping emptiness cut into the fabric of the universe, and if it had a voice, it would scream with hunger and despair. For millions of miles down it is nothing but darkness, until at the bottom, after five hundred years of falling, some of that hapless matter lands amid churning, howling fire. The fire devours the emptiness, eats holes into it, and in these holes something shines, brighter than stars and yet dwarfed by the blackness all around.
This is Hell.
In a chasm made of iron molecules that have collected here over billions of years, a man is strapped to a rack. His throat flaps uselessly as he tries to scream for help in the vacuum, and no one hears him.
The man is one of millions upon millions of creatures, stuck in the fabric of Hell like flies in a cosmic spider web. The void is made of their pain, and it screeches and tears itself, wider and deeper, one foot per year into the material of spacetime, as though it could tunnel right out of the universe someday, bringing all of the damned with it. One foot per year, and when it reaches a thousand trillion miles deep and wide, all existence will end, and all torment will be over. The fires shriek and devour, and still nothing is taken away.
The shining ones shudder in their chains, clinging to the edges of the black holes that imprison them, torn by cosmic winds that scream like a hundred thousand tornadoes, ripping the light from them, tearing at their trembling wings. Still they remain beautiful. Their tears flow like ice into the lava fires of Hell, cooling them one tenth of one degree for every ten million tears. Above the howling of the inferno, sometimes the damned can hear their songs.
It is a symphony played on instruments of glass, more beautiful and more sorrowful than all of the dirges mankind has ever written. It rises from the abyss like the songs of birds returning after great destruction - first one, lonely, high, ascending in a spiral of longing and solitude; then others, two and three and a hundred and a hundred thousand, weaving a melody that would break human ears and hearts if it could be heard. The harmonics shake the iron walls of Hell, so that once every two thousand years, a single pebble falls from the foundation that is millions of miles wide and deep. It is the song of stars cast from their sockets in the heavens to languish in the dark and cold. It is the song of a loneliness more profound than any human isolation. The song of love torn from love, completely and forever.
The song is just a background vibration in the pulsing gyre of Hell when it reaches the man on the rack, but the thing in him that was once human remembers - that it is the frequency of his cells renewing themselves every seven years, of the tides of the ocean that bore all life, the rhythm of his mother's womb. A heart that has been cut from his chest and hung on a meat hook above him aches with longing, and ocean tears fall from his bleeding eyes.
Across the immeasurable skyscape of Hell, something huge and bright changes its course and veers toward him with purpose.
~
Castiel imagines. It's not something he ever used to do. As an angel, he is able to see a vast portion of existence, and therefore generally doesn't need to imagine.
That was when he was certain. When he had pulled the Righteous Man (well, a Righteous Man, and that's what mattered) out of Perdition, and everything was on track. The Righteous Man would ascend to untold glory as the vessel of the Archangel Michael, and Lucifer would be defeated again, as was foretold. Supposedly.
But the Righteous Man didn't want to be Michael's vessel, and his brother didn't want to be Lucifer's, and even though Castiel's mission was to guide them in their paths, he found himself sympathizing. He found himself remembering, with discomfort, that old feeling that something wasn't right. That the translation was a bit off - that the system was running away with itself. If he'd known then of the human game of "telephone," he might have made the comparison.
And now, as he sits with the jar of blood in his hand, ready to swallow all the souls of Purgatory (a thought that makes him feel a little queasy, to be perfectly honest) in order to defeat Raphael, he allows himself the indulgence of imagination.
In his mind, he travels to the edge of the Cage of the Fallen. Though many of the Fallen were twisted to darkness over time, becoming part of Hell itself, there are a few who remain. Semjaza is one of those.
In his mind, Castiel approaches the Fallen One without fear. They sit near to each other, separated only by the forcefield that makes the Cage a cage. Castiel is rumpled and weary; Semjaza is fatherly and sad. Castiel asks, "Why did you do it?"
And Semjaza says, "I saw a soul who was beautiful, who was troubled, who was strong. And as I watched that soul struggle, I felt that she needed me. And more than that, I needed her. I saw humans capable of harming each other horribly, and capable of comforting each other in ways that angels could not experience. And I felt that I understood them. I, too, felt lonely among the stars sometimes, but who to talk to about that? We are not created to feel lonely, or tired, or afraid, or uncertain. But we are alive, and the Universe is alive, and so we do feel those things. And I thought I would say to that soul, you and I are alone in the universe, as are all beings. None help you, but I will help you. None take care of you, but I will take care of you. And you will teach me what it's like to be looked upon in love."
~
"You know why I don't believe in angels, Sam? Or God or anything like that?"
"Why?"
"Because of shit like this. Because bad shit keeps happening to good people, and it just don't ever stop. Where's a God who gives a shit about kids and innocent people getting torn to shreds? Where's this kid's guardian angel?"
"Yeah, but I -"
"What?"
"I don't think that it's supposed to be that way. You know? How would that be fair, if everyone always had a personal guardian always making sure they do the right thing and don't get hurt? Or if some people did, but others didn't? People die, Dean. It's what happens. It doesn't mean that there's nothing out there watching...it just means that it can't interfere in people's lives all the time."
"Well then, what's the point?"
"I dunno. I really don't. Maybe the point is we're supposed to figure it out ourselves. In a way, we let evil into the world, we gotta kick it back out. You know, if you believe that."
"Yeah, well. I don't."
"Sure. Right."
"What?"
"Nothing. Just...why would you believe that there was only bad stuff - demons, wights, ghouls, vampires - and not believe there was anything good, somewhere out there, too?"
"I think we're back to Point A, Sammy."
"Maybe. But just because we haven't personally run into anything like that, doesn't mean it doesn't exist somewhere."
"What, angels?"
"Sure."
~
Sound returns. Light returns. Mass and matter and weight return with the suddenness of a two-ton anvil falling off a truck bed, only to be immediately assaulted by something too loud, too bright, too fast and powerful to comprehend. The soul knows itself - it knows the pain of having a self. It knows itself mired in a darkness that doesn't only come from Hell. It knows itself to be small, weak, helpless, angry. The newly regenerated atoms of the brain begin to expand with that oncoming brightness, as though entire suns were being born in each one. But this time, it's not like exploding. It's like transforming.
Rivers of light describe the veins of an arm, reaching. A star sits in the chest, spinning with a sound like oceans breathing. It is the color of sun on water. Four faces gaze into one face, eight eyes wide with impossible tenderness, radiating with a ferocity and love more terrifying than Hell. Two eyes return the gaze, the sea rising in them as each cell is scoured clean in the light of the radiant intelligence that has come to save him. He thinks he will dissolve in that ocean of light, and his heart swells in his chest. Do it. Please.
But no.
There is a tear in the fabric, a wet red gap in the shining corona. Darkness closes on the great wings, hands of chaos tearing the pinions out, one by one. His savior cries in pain, beginning to dissolve right in front of him, and the soul knows panic, a fear deeper than anything driven by survival.
No.
A brand flares upon his arm. There is blood on his palm.
He slams his hand against the closing door of the angel's heart.
Thunder rolls up from the bottom of Hell, from the spaces between stars that humankind hasn't seen. The center goes supernova; everything is obliterated. A fast-disintegrating waveform, chased by its own ending, an ourobouros of mathematics, describes the arch of a human throat, the tender joining of flesh and open jaw, head tilted and mouth open to inhale the evaporation of space and time as though it were oxygen. The pounding flap of two great wings, alight with the glitter of starbirth, stretched in ecstasy, welcoming in the pulse of life. Hell transforms around them. Hell was the song of emptiness, and now nothing is empty; the universe filled with light and being.
Memory comes rushing back, and with it, pain unimaginable. The heart seizes in sorrow. The angel presses his lips there, and even sorrow becomes holy.
And I shall create a new heaven and a new earth
says the voice from beyond the void.
And everything that has gone before will not come to mind.
The throat remembers air, how to gasp, how to breathe a name in reverence. The soul remembers being filled, how two become one, for a single, nuclear moment.
I was dirty and you made me clean
(Set me as a seal upon your heart)
I was sick and you healed me
(As a seal upon your arm)
Together, they are something new. If the heavens howl at their blasphemy, if Hell rejoices, they don't hear or care. For one moment, heaven and earth are burned away, and what stretches for eternity before them is nothing either of them has seen before, yet somehow, blissfully familiar.
For the angel, it is a crystal path, winding up impossible peaks near a vast ocean - a pathway leading to the stars where he used to play in his youth. It is the tiny warmth of a human soul, tucked close, eyes wide in wonder at the glory of the galaxy that he will show to him.
For the human soul, it is the rumble of a big, old car and a road that curves away over a sunlit world. It is Zeppelin on the radio and a little brother tunelessly singing along in the passenger seat. It is a third presence, sitting in the back, scowling at the radio as though he could force it to make sense.
It hovers a moment in the space where muscles and joints collide, an elbow digging sharply into a soft flank, a knee bruising a hip. A mouth hovering wetly over a blood-smeared chest, panting gusts of hot air as the brain slows its painful careening around the inside of a skull. A smooth belly rising and falling gently and evenly, as though the body had never gasped in pain at all. Around this, the bright world retreats, slow as a tide, leaving jumbled bits in its wake - a star split into seven pieces, a face as bright as ten suns, the low, eternal resonance that creates the universe.
Castiel's fingers are still poking into Dean's belly, and Dean blinks several times before he remembers who he is and where that nagging sense of discomfort is coming from.
"Ow," he mumbles, and tries to sit up. He's locked between Cas' legs, body prone on top of Cas' body, his hand pressing bloodlessly against Castiel's chest. His arm is completely numb, and he's pretty sure he drooled all over the angel. Did he have a seizure? He blinks down at Castiel, who looks back with eyes deep and languid. Somewhere in the core of them Dean sees stars, and he realizes that his face is wet with tears.
"Cas, I -"
But he can't; it's still too enormous. Instead, he runs a hand down Cas' belly, feeling the edges of a scar and the dried tracks of blood. Castiel returns the touch, fingertips now feather-light, and Dean trembles. His head feels vast and light with memories. There is a fading ringing in his ears. Castiel brushes his hand across Dean's forehead, the rough rasp of palm cool and comforting on his skin. Dean leans into it, eyes closed, his nerves still singing like plucked guitar strings. When a softly chapped mouth finds his, he opens to it without hesitation.
for it burns like a blazing fire, a mighty flame
Castiel, warm, solid, living, shifts beneath him with movements that echo something massive and wild. If Dean doesn't open his eyes, he can see giant wings stretching through the walls of the slightly claustrophobic motel room, and a heart like a miniature sun. He grips Castiel's now-uninjured flank with iron fingers until he hears a slight grunt of breath. Dean lets his weight sink down, as though he were just now finally regaining his full solidity, and beneath him, the angel trembles.
Thy Kingdom come.
~
The Ute tribe of southwestern Colorado, who for ages have been stewards of the land where one day Dean and Sam would stand with the prophet Kevin and speak with the Scribe of God, naturally have their own stories about the beginning.
Pokoh, Old Man, created the world, they say. He created every tribe out of the soil where they used to live. Pokoh did not wish for men to wander and travel, but to remain in their birthplace. But when mankind was born and grew up, Pokoh, like all fathers, no longer had control over what they did. Humans had to make their journeys on their own, but the spirits sometimes helped and guided them, and sometimes confused and misled them. Sometimes, a human girl or boy would fall in love with one of the Sky People, like when Feather-Woman fell in love with Morning Star, and they had a son, Star Boy, who brought great knowledge and fortune to his people.
The Ute also know that there are many worlds. Some have passed and some are yet to come. In one world, humans all creep on the ground; in another, they all walk. Perhaps in some world to come, they may walk on four legs, or crawl on their bellies like snakes, or perhaps, they will learn to fly through the air themselves, like birds.
~