(no subject)
Sugar
by whereupon
Castiel. PG. Spoilers for 5.04. 2,561 words.
He did not fall.
Thanks to paxlux for encouragement and wisdom.
Caught between the branches of the trees, trapped around the twisted metal of the wrecked cars, the shadows are whispering. It might only be the wind, that is the most logical explanation, but he knows better than that.
He knows more.
There are two women in the cabin behind him. In his cabin, now that it is his cabin, now that he requires a place to rest during these long nights, now that he needs a place to sleep, a place to put his belongings. Now that he has belongings, now that he requires more than just the fact of his existence, needs to consist on more than the mere strength of his reason for being
There are women in the cabin behind him, two women, though there have been others, and there will be again. Two women, who think they know what he used to be (what he still is, still), and who trust him because of this, who come to him still as though he possesses those powers he once did, as though he possesses the power of the Word, as though by engaging with him, perhaps they will become closer to their Father.
They celebrate the skin, the flesh, as was done before they knew the word of their Father, and if he joins them, sometimes, if he finds peace as they do in the shift of flesh, he is only trying to better understand them. To understand what they are like. To understand what it means to be human, to understand how they do it, live out such a small cramped existence.
Not having ever known eternity probably helps.
He thinks sometimes that perhaps they know all the same, that perhaps they have some idea, that they lose themselves solely to escape the misery of this existence. They escape for mere moments, in the scheme of things (the scheme of things with which he used to be so familiar, the scheme of things that he used to know) but they escape, all the same.
He can empathize.
This body that was given to him, sacrificed so that others might live, others who most certainly have since passed, and it has since become a prison. He can feel every cell of it, sometimes, every piece of it, flesh and bone. He can feel all of the pieces that do not fit. He can feel the bones that did not mend properly in his foot, the way they press and grind together. They are still healing, but they will never be right again.
This body is flawed. This body was once one of his Father's children, and it is so fragile. This vessel, his vessel, is flawed. He is flawed.
No. He, like them, is one of his Father's creations, and he is as his Father would have him be, and that is no less than perfect. Nothing that his Father does is less than perfect, and if he does not understand, that is only because he is not meant to. His Father does not wish it to be so.
A fact that does not make enduring this any easier.
But he has not been abandoned. He is being punished for his rebellion, perhaps, or merely tested. This is his forty years, his forty days, and if he does not give in to temptation, if he does not lose faith -- and how could he, being a creation of faith himself, how could he even consider -- then he will be rewarded, he will be given understanding, he will be given peace.
He was right, he knows. That much, he still believes. He was right to stand apart from his brothers, right to rebel, to stand by the man who would be salvation, who will be salvation, as his Father commanded.
He was right, and the others left. His brothers, his comrades, and they left. They fled earth as Lucifer fled heaven, and perhaps that is blasphemy even to think, but he did not, he remained faithful. Faithful on earth, his Father's last bastion, and every day.
Every day, it is difficult. Every day, it is excruciating, but he will not falter. It is as his Father commanded, and he will do what he has to in order to carry out his Father's desires.
These vague approximations of what it used to be like, like glimpses of home, if home were not merely a human concept. These other paths to ecstasy, to nirvana, to the other names of his Father, of heaven. Instants in which he is almost made whole again. Clarity in those instants, split-seconds, fractionally minute, before oblivion.
But they do not last and to give himself over entirely to their pursuit would be failure. Because he is still a soldier, he is still a warrior, he has his quest and his orders and his general. He will follow Dean Winchester, as he has sworn to do, as he swore to do even after he knew that to do so would be rebellion, and he will strike down his brother, as his Father demands. His brother, dressed as he is in the body of Dean's own brother. His brother in the body of Samuel Winchester, though few people remain to remember the name that went along with that body, to remember the man who once possessed it.
His brother wearing the body of Dean's brother, and does this make Dean his brother, too? There are times when he thinks that it might, when he thinks that this might be an epiphany, might reveal something of great and epic import about his Father's children, but these times pass quickly, are lost with the path of chemicals twisting through this human shell, igniting paths, burning others.
It's easier to see, in those moments, those half-seconds of light. It's clearer, sometimes. Like it used to be, before his power was stripped from him, before he -- but he did not fall.
He did not fall, not as Lucifer did. He merely remained.
There is a noise among the trees, where the shadows were creeping. He turns his head fractionally and the prophet emerges into view, flashlight in hand. His footsteps suddenly seem very loud on the dirt path. Castiel should have been aware of his presence much earlier. He would have been, once.
The prophet draws close to the cabin. Perhaps deciding that he no longer needs his flashlight, that enough light streams through the windows of the cabin, he aims it at the ground, where it creates a small pool of light. "Hey, Cas," he says.
"Hello," Castiel replies.
"Do you need anything?" the prophet asks. "Because I was just delivering supplies, figured I'd check." It's an obvious falsehood. The prophet delivers supplies during the day. At night, the prophet retires to his cabin. There is a schedule. In this, as in everything, there is a schedule.
"No," Castiel says, because even if the prophet were telling the truth, the prophet cannot provide that which he needs, and the prophet does not need to be burdened with the impossible. His soul is weary enough already. "I do not need anything. Thank you."
"Are you sure?" the prophet asks.
"Yes." There was a time at which the prophet would have been shaken by the weight of his stare. Now, the prophet only gazes back at him and does not leave.
"Did Dean send you to speak with me?" Castiel asks, when the silence becomes almost tangible, as though it might seep black from the trees at any moment. The air smells faintly of smoke and sulfur, cinder and soot. Something is burning again. Something is always burning.
It might be the earth, salted and finally scorched. Perhaps the time has come.
"No," the prophet says.
"Are you sure?" Castiel asks. The prophet has known many things. It's possible that he's forgotten some of them.
"Yeah, I just, uh. Wanted to see how you were doing."
"I'm doing well," Castiel answers. It's another lie, of course, though perhaps not as untruthful as the previous one. His vessel is mostly intact. He is not mortally wounded, nor is he in immediate danger of becoming so.
"Okay. If you're sure." The prophet swallows. His gaze flickers away, to the ground, and then back. "Cas, if you ever wanna, I mean. If you wanna talk."
"We're talking now," Castiel says. "Are we not?"
"Right," the prophet says. "Okay. Um. Night." He raises his flashlight once more and the beam slides sharply across Castiel's eyes, causing him to blink.
"Good night," Castiel bids him, and he means it. He hopes that the prophet rests untroubled. The prophet has served their Father well and has been rewarded only with more tribulation, yet he has remained loyal. He has not lost faith. He has not fallen.
The prophet nods and turns back the way he came. Castiel watches him go until the flashlight glow is no longer visible, until the night is still and quiet once more.
Sometimes he thinks he is slipping. Becoming human, even as he struggles not to, as he struggles to remain as he was created. He thinks he is becoming lost, caught in semantics, the thousands of shades, intonations and inflections with which his Father's children color the world. The way they see it, the way they have to, because they are incapable of knowing more, of knowing everything. Because they cannot, they cannot, not without going mad, without going blind. To know as he once knew, as he was created to know, is to know ecstasy and tragedy, though even those are mere human words for concepts impossible to explain. To know, even for an instant, and to then live in the shadow of that knowledge, never once able to experience it, only to imagine -- perhaps, he thinks, that is hell. Not the hell from which he raised Dean Winchester at his Father's command, but a hell of a kind.
And even that is blasphemy, for how can there be more than one hell? How can there be anything but absolutes, the absolutes his Father created?
But surely this, too, is as his Father desired. Because how could he emerge stronger if he did not first doubt himself, if he did not first question his ability? How could he be truly faithful if he did not first overcome doubt so that he could believe fully, without reservation?
This is troubling, because he did not used to have to think about this, and surely then he was as faithful as he is now, and he was more pure, then, newer, closer to his own creation.
This is troubling, indeed, and there are no answers he can find, and there is no one to give him these answers. No one, even, to remind him that he is a child of the Lord and to question his Father's word is to blaspheme, is to lower himself to the level of the humans he is meant to watch.
He remembers burning with the power of his beliefs, the knowledge that they were more than beliefs, that they were truth. He remembers that he was right to rebel, but it's harder, now. There are days when he begins to question.
But he will believe, because he is belief, he is the embodiment of belief, and because without faith, he would be lost.
It is all he knows how to do.
In his cabin there is candlelight, there is incandescence like an echo a thousand times over of the light that used to consume him, the light that is gone, leaving him empty, leaving him aching. The shift of flesh a poor substitute for that light, but sometimes he can lose himself in it, as he lost himself once, as he was taken up, lost to the bliss of his Father, of knowing.
In the cabin, there is firelight, flame-light, shivering across the faces of his Father's children, and he imagines that in them, he can see some of the beauty of his siblings. They are all in possession of that beauty, these humans, though only to a degree. Shades, merely, echoes, but in the right frame of mind, he can imagine, he can pretend, he can put his faith in them as he did his brothers, his brothers-in-arms.
His brothers who left, who abandoned him, rather than fight. His brothers, and his Father, who has not intervened, who has not once encouraged him, given him anything, the merest sign that he has not been forgotten.
But he should not require a sign. He should be able to trust, to trust entirely, to give himself over to the belief that his Father will take care of him, as his Father takes care of all creation, this strange and unknowable world and all of the stars in this sky, and in the others.
He's seen humans do this. He's seen them begin to question, and he's seen that to which they turned. He's visited some of them, during the depths of their despair, and he has offered the word of his Father, and the promise of his Father, and some opened their eyes, and some only sank deeper. He has told them that they were misled, that these human creations allowed them to see only a fraction of his Father's glory, that they worshiped false idols, that in attempting to glimpse heaven, they were disobeying his Father, denying that which his Father loved.
He's not sure when he began to think of his Father as having loved things, rather than as loving them still.
But this body he now inhabits is fallible, is weak, gives in so quickly to the burn of chemicals, the sounds like wings in his ears and the sensation that is not flight at all, but might be something close to timeless, a memory of a memory of a memory, and he did not used to have to remember.
Once upon a time, he was all of time, and every time, always. He was everything. He knew the world, he knew the universe, and he knew the order of things, and it was his Father's order, and all he had to do was believe.
It was, he remembers, easier, then.
In a moment, he will return to his cabin, but first, this moment, this moment of searching, of pleading, and perhaps this time there will be an answer. Angels are not meant to pray, are not meant to feel the need to pray, but he is, he thinks, no longer an angel, and he's not sure how long that has been true.
His mouth shapes the words; they taste strange on his tongue and he cannot bring himself to speak them aloud just yet. The noise in his head not yet subsided to that point, to the hush of waves, to the point at which truths may be realized without ruin, without consequence, without pain.
Because now the shadows are whispering again, shadows hissing doubt and temptation, the certainty of a brief and terrible human death. Whispering no eternity, nothing for you, my son, and somewhere close by, Lucifer says, my brother, you understand, we are alike.
He tries not to listen. He closes his eyes so that he will not have to see how far away the stars have become.
--
end
by whereupon
Castiel. PG. Spoilers for 5.04. 2,561 words.
He did not fall.
Thanks to paxlux for encouragement and wisdom.
Caught between the branches of the trees, trapped around the twisted metal of the wrecked cars, the shadows are whispering. It might only be the wind, that is the most logical explanation, but he knows better than that.
He knows more.
There are two women in the cabin behind him. In his cabin, now that it is his cabin, now that he requires a place to rest during these long nights, now that he needs a place to sleep, a place to put his belongings. Now that he has belongings, now that he requires more than just the fact of his existence, needs to consist on more than the mere strength of his reason for being
There are women in the cabin behind him, two women, though there have been others, and there will be again. Two women, who think they know what he used to be (what he still is, still), and who trust him because of this, who come to him still as though he possesses those powers he once did, as though he possesses the power of the Word, as though by engaging with him, perhaps they will become closer to their Father.
They celebrate the skin, the flesh, as was done before they knew the word of their Father, and if he joins them, sometimes, if he finds peace as they do in the shift of flesh, he is only trying to better understand them. To understand what they are like. To understand what it means to be human, to understand how they do it, live out such a small cramped existence.
Not having ever known eternity probably helps.
He thinks sometimes that perhaps they know all the same, that perhaps they have some idea, that they lose themselves solely to escape the misery of this existence. They escape for mere moments, in the scheme of things (the scheme of things with which he used to be so familiar, the scheme of things that he used to know) but they escape, all the same.
He can empathize.
This body that was given to him, sacrificed so that others might live, others who most certainly have since passed, and it has since become a prison. He can feel every cell of it, sometimes, every piece of it, flesh and bone. He can feel all of the pieces that do not fit. He can feel the bones that did not mend properly in his foot, the way they press and grind together. They are still healing, but they will never be right again.
This body is flawed. This body was once one of his Father's children, and it is so fragile. This vessel, his vessel, is flawed. He is flawed.
No. He, like them, is one of his Father's creations, and he is as his Father would have him be, and that is no less than perfect. Nothing that his Father does is less than perfect, and if he does not understand, that is only because he is not meant to. His Father does not wish it to be so.
A fact that does not make enduring this any easier.
But he has not been abandoned. He is being punished for his rebellion, perhaps, or merely tested. This is his forty years, his forty days, and if he does not give in to temptation, if he does not lose faith -- and how could he, being a creation of faith himself, how could he even consider -- then he will be rewarded, he will be given understanding, he will be given peace.
He was right, he knows. That much, he still believes. He was right to stand apart from his brothers, right to rebel, to stand by the man who would be salvation, who will be salvation, as his Father commanded.
He was right, and the others left. His brothers, his comrades, and they left. They fled earth as Lucifer fled heaven, and perhaps that is blasphemy even to think, but he did not, he remained faithful. Faithful on earth, his Father's last bastion, and every day.
Every day, it is difficult. Every day, it is excruciating, but he will not falter. It is as his Father commanded, and he will do what he has to in order to carry out his Father's desires.
These vague approximations of what it used to be like, like glimpses of home, if home were not merely a human concept. These other paths to ecstasy, to nirvana, to the other names of his Father, of heaven. Instants in which he is almost made whole again. Clarity in those instants, split-seconds, fractionally minute, before oblivion.
But they do not last and to give himself over entirely to their pursuit would be failure. Because he is still a soldier, he is still a warrior, he has his quest and his orders and his general. He will follow Dean Winchester, as he has sworn to do, as he swore to do even after he knew that to do so would be rebellion, and he will strike down his brother, as his Father demands. His brother, dressed as he is in the body of Dean's own brother. His brother in the body of Samuel Winchester, though few people remain to remember the name that went along with that body, to remember the man who once possessed it.
His brother wearing the body of Dean's brother, and does this make Dean his brother, too? There are times when he thinks that it might, when he thinks that this might be an epiphany, might reveal something of great and epic import about his Father's children, but these times pass quickly, are lost with the path of chemicals twisting through this human shell, igniting paths, burning others.
It's easier to see, in those moments, those half-seconds of light. It's clearer, sometimes. Like it used to be, before his power was stripped from him, before he -- but he did not fall.
He did not fall, not as Lucifer did. He merely remained.
There is a noise among the trees, where the shadows were creeping. He turns his head fractionally and the prophet emerges into view, flashlight in hand. His footsteps suddenly seem very loud on the dirt path. Castiel should have been aware of his presence much earlier. He would have been, once.
The prophet draws close to the cabin. Perhaps deciding that he no longer needs his flashlight, that enough light streams through the windows of the cabin, he aims it at the ground, where it creates a small pool of light. "Hey, Cas," he says.
"Hello," Castiel replies.
"Do you need anything?" the prophet asks. "Because I was just delivering supplies, figured I'd check." It's an obvious falsehood. The prophet delivers supplies during the day. At night, the prophet retires to his cabin. There is a schedule. In this, as in everything, there is a schedule.
"No," Castiel says, because even if the prophet were telling the truth, the prophet cannot provide that which he needs, and the prophet does not need to be burdened with the impossible. His soul is weary enough already. "I do not need anything. Thank you."
"Are you sure?" the prophet asks.
"Yes." There was a time at which the prophet would have been shaken by the weight of his stare. Now, the prophet only gazes back at him and does not leave.
"Did Dean send you to speak with me?" Castiel asks, when the silence becomes almost tangible, as though it might seep black from the trees at any moment. The air smells faintly of smoke and sulfur, cinder and soot. Something is burning again. Something is always burning.
It might be the earth, salted and finally scorched. Perhaps the time has come.
"No," the prophet says.
"Are you sure?" Castiel asks. The prophet has known many things. It's possible that he's forgotten some of them.
"Yeah, I just, uh. Wanted to see how you were doing."
"I'm doing well," Castiel answers. It's another lie, of course, though perhaps not as untruthful as the previous one. His vessel is mostly intact. He is not mortally wounded, nor is he in immediate danger of becoming so.
"Okay. If you're sure." The prophet swallows. His gaze flickers away, to the ground, and then back. "Cas, if you ever wanna, I mean. If you wanna talk."
"We're talking now," Castiel says. "Are we not?"
"Right," the prophet says. "Okay. Um. Night." He raises his flashlight once more and the beam slides sharply across Castiel's eyes, causing him to blink.
"Good night," Castiel bids him, and he means it. He hopes that the prophet rests untroubled. The prophet has served their Father well and has been rewarded only with more tribulation, yet he has remained loyal. He has not lost faith. He has not fallen.
The prophet nods and turns back the way he came. Castiel watches him go until the flashlight glow is no longer visible, until the night is still and quiet once more.
Sometimes he thinks he is slipping. Becoming human, even as he struggles not to, as he struggles to remain as he was created. He thinks he is becoming lost, caught in semantics, the thousands of shades, intonations and inflections with which his Father's children color the world. The way they see it, the way they have to, because they are incapable of knowing more, of knowing everything. Because they cannot, they cannot, not without going mad, without going blind. To know as he once knew, as he was created to know, is to know ecstasy and tragedy, though even those are mere human words for concepts impossible to explain. To know, even for an instant, and to then live in the shadow of that knowledge, never once able to experience it, only to imagine -- perhaps, he thinks, that is hell. Not the hell from which he raised Dean Winchester at his Father's command, but a hell of a kind.
And even that is blasphemy, for how can there be more than one hell? How can there be anything but absolutes, the absolutes his Father created?
But surely this, too, is as his Father desired. Because how could he emerge stronger if he did not first doubt himself, if he did not first question his ability? How could he be truly faithful if he did not first overcome doubt so that he could believe fully, without reservation?
This is troubling, because he did not used to have to think about this, and surely then he was as faithful as he is now, and he was more pure, then, newer, closer to his own creation.
This is troubling, indeed, and there are no answers he can find, and there is no one to give him these answers. No one, even, to remind him that he is a child of the Lord and to question his Father's word is to blaspheme, is to lower himself to the level of the humans he is meant to watch.
He remembers burning with the power of his beliefs, the knowledge that they were more than beliefs, that they were truth. He remembers that he was right to rebel, but it's harder, now. There are days when he begins to question.
But he will believe, because he is belief, he is the embodiment of belief, and because without faith, he would be lost.
It is all he knows how to do.
In his cabin there is candlelight, there is incandescence like an echo a thousand times over of the light that used to consume him, the light that is gone, leaving him empty, leaving him aching. The shift of flesh a poor substitute for that light, but sometimes he can lose himself in it, as he lost himself once, as he was taken up, lost to the bliss of his Father, of knowing.
In the cabin, there is firelight, flame-light, shivering across the faces of his Father's children, and he imagines that in them, he can see some of the beauty of his siblings. They are all in possession of that beauty, these humans, though only to a degree. Shades, merely, echoes, but in the right frame of mind, he can imagine, he can pretend, he can put his faith in them as he did his brothers, his brothers-in-arms.
His brothers who left, who abandoned him, rather than fight. His brothers, and his Father, who has not intervened, who has not once encouraged him, given him anything, the merest sign that he has not been forgotten.
But he should not require a sign. He should be able to trust, to trust entirely, to give himself over to the belief that his Father will take care of him, as his Father takes care of all creation, this strange and unknowable world and all of the stars in this sky, and in the others.
He's seen humans do this. He's seen them begin to question, and he's seen that to which they turned. He's visited some of them, during the depths of their despair, and he has offered the word of his Father, and the promise of his Father, and some opened their eyes, and some only sank deeper. He has told them that they were misled, that these human creations allowed them to see only a fraction of his Father's glory, that they worshiped false idols, that in attempting to glimpse heaven, they were disobeying his Father, denying that which his Father loved.
He's not sure when he began to think of his Father as having loved things, rather than as loving them still.
But this body he now inhabits is fallible, is weak, gives in so quickly to the burn of chemicals, the sounds like wings in his ears and the sensation that is not flight at all, but might be something close to timeless, a memory of a memory of a memory, and he did not used to have to remember.
Once upon a time, he was all of time, and every time, always. He was everything. He knew the world, he knew the universe, and he knew the order of things, and it was his Father's order, and all he had to do was believe.
It was, he remembers, easier, then.
In a moment, he will return to his cabin, but first, this moment, this moment of searching, of pleading, and perhaps this time there will be an answer. Angels are not meant to pray, are not meant to feel the need to pray, but he is, he thinks, no longer an angel, and he's not sure how long that has been true.
His mouth shapes the words; they taste strange on his tongue and he cannot bring himself to speak them aloud just yet. The noise in his head not yet subsided to that point, to the hush of waves, to the point at which truths may be realized without ruin, without consequence, without pain.
Because now the shadows are whispering again, shadows hissing doubt and temptation, the certainty of a brief and terrible human death. Whispering no eternity, nothing for you, my son, and somewhere close by, Lucifer says, my brother, you understand, we are alike.
He tries not to listen. He closes his eyes so that he will not have to see how far away the stars have become.
--
end