Turnabout Perspective
Summary: Naomi hates Castiel. Until she sees him through different eyes, and realizes she might have misjudged. They all might have misjudged.
She hates Castiel. Hates him for all he has done. The perpetual rebel, whose persistent arrogance and pride and recklessness, whose monstrous self-righteousness, has destroyed thousands of angels. She hates him.
Until she probes into Metatron's mind, and sees Castiel from his perspective.
There is no arrogant power-mad angel in his mind. The Castiel in his mind is a thing of pitiable contempt. Desperately loyal. Desperately trusting. Practically writhing in guilt and shame and the burning desire to just fix things. The Castiel in Metatron's mind shines with honor, with the need to make things right. And that need makes him so easy to manipulate in Metatron's memories.
Even she can see that Castiel being in Heaven, with all of them, would be death for the Seraph. Certainly she knows what she would do, what she has done, were he here. Yet the memories she sees of the conversation between the two angels makes her realize he does not truly care about that. The way he speaks of Heaven in Metatron's memories….
Were she less cynical, she would say that, even now Castiel speaks of his brethren with love.
She can feel in Metatron's mind, his sneering contempt at Castiel's emotions. Castiel's care, his concern.
She pulls back. Metatron lolls, unconscious, and she knows he will be unfit for further examination for some time.
She withdraws and, before she can stop, she finds herself settling in to review her memories and records of Castiel.
At first, all she can recall is how he destroyed Raphael and his followers, decimated Heaven.
This time, in the spirit of investigation, she traces her memories of the war, and Castiel's, seeking reasons for the wanton destruction of the last archangel and so many others.
She sees madness, the taint of beings so dark they make her shiver, so full of malevolence that they make Lucifer look almost benign. The souls of Purgatory, of the Leviathan. She sees how this darkness touched Castiel, twisted and warped and tortured him, drove him to the edge of sanity and beyond. That it was this twisted mirror that destroyed Heaven, a dark image of the seraph. The madness of the darkest of monsters, melded with an angel's power. Not truly Castiel, but a warped and blackened image.
She sees the beginning of the conflict, when Raphael attempted to force Castiel to submit to him. Raphael's decision to restart the Apocalypse, undo everything that Castiel fought and died to accomplish.
She remembers that Castiel was resurrected after the final confrontation with Michael and Lucifer. And no one knows how or why. Many whisper that it was the hand of God. That Castiel is beloved, favored by the Father.
She hasn't thought about those whispers in a long time. But now, looking at these memories, hers and his, she sees that Castiel has died more than once, and lived more than once. No other angel has been afforded such privilege. Perhaps there is more to the whispers than she thought.
She remembers the angel she went to Purgatory to claim. And, for the first time in a long time, wonders why. As much as she hates him, why save him? Why sacrifice other angels to pull him from the depths of Purgatory? He had his uses, knowing the Winchesters and about the tablets as he does, but such a risk…
She remembers when they found him, ragged and battered and lost, hunted and haunted. The way he faced them, faced her, trembling. The way he stared at her when her soldiers surrounded him, a ring of protection. The way his shoulders squared when he faced her, looking at her like a man doomed and determined to die proudly.
The surprise, the relief mingled with grief and fear and desperate hope, when she held out her hand and said she'd come to take him home. The hesitation before he took her hand in his and allowed her to take him away.
The look in his eyes when she bound him to her chair and began the process of breaking and remolding his mind. Horror. Anguish. Betrayal. And...something almost akin to resignation.
She returns to her memories of the conflict between Castiel and Raphael. Forces herself to look as she would if she were untouched by the hurt of what Castiel had unleashed.
She sees a seraph fighting to protect that which he loves, that which he was willing to die to save. To preserve. And she sees another memory, one she discounted as unimportant, but looks at more closely now. A memory of Castiel in a snow covered park, hands folded, eyes anguished, pouring out a story of grief and remorse and uncertainty and begging, begging shamelessly, for his Father to give him a sign, any sign, any reason to turn from a path he feels he has no choice but to follow.
She sees how there is no answer.
An older memory, a series of memories, a desperate search for God and for answers, a search that ended when the Gardener told the Winchesters that there was no point, that God would not be found, did not want to be found. A memory of grief nearly beyond bearing.
She wonders if Castiel was truly the last of the faithful. She knows of no other angel who even attempted to seek God's counsel in the Apocalypse, much less pursued it with such devotion.
She's beginning to wonder if Metatron and the Winchesters saw Castiel more truly than the rest of Heaven.
She goes back to her oldest memories and records of Castiel. Castiel, the rebel. The spanner in the works. The angel she has been forced to 'correct' most often.
She remembers the Plagues. Castiel was reported by-passing the doors of Egyptians with children, on purpose. When confronted, he said he did not feel it was right or necessary to slaughter the children of servants. Of Egypts nobles and ruling class, yes, perhaps. That was the promise that was made, and had to be carried out. But the Egyptian and foreign slaves, the servants and working folk...he did not, very vehemently did not, agree with killing their children over a matter in which they had no say, and for which they had no warning.
A position he defended even as they stripped him of his weapons, forced him to his knees, bound him in place to be admonished. An opinion he maintained until she stripped him of the memory.
She has stripped him of many memories, because his will is stronger even than an archangel's blade.
She flickers back through all that she knows of him, this time without the exasperated fury she has always felt. Looking for answers. Looking for patterns.
She finds the answers in the words he spoke to her in a diner at their last confrontation.
'We were meant to be their protectors, their guardians, not their murderers.'
He believes that. To the core of his essence, he believes that. And he loves those whom are given into his care. Even the Nephilim Metatron forced him to kill, he mourns. And the love he feels for the Winchesters, who have been his charges since he pulled Dean Winchester from Hell, that is a force so great that even her strongest controls cannot break it, cannot bind it into nothingness.
She remembers the desperate agony in his eyes when she tried to make him kill Dean Winchester. His pleas to stop.
Oddly enough, very similar to the words he spoke of Samandriel, when she forced him to kill the young angel.
And Castiel always comes back to Heaven. She remembers now that he was the one who uncovered that some angels were working with Lucifer, changing sides.
She remembers touching his mind and feeling his genuine grief at all he did in the war, and when he opened Purgatory. A grief so deep that he considered a madness tortured by Lucifer a small price to pay in the balance.
She wonders for the first time what might have happened if Lucifer had won the Apocalypse. With only demons on his side, she would discount that notion with a laugh, but the fact that there were traitor angels….what would they have done, had Lucifer vanquished Michael? What would their world have been like? The mere thought makes her shiver.
It would certainly not have been Paradise that rose from those ashes.
Perhaps Castiel saved more than humans when he derailed the Apocalypse.
She flicks back through the records, through the memories, trying to find the arrogant angel she has hated so long. It feels wrong, horrible, to even contemplate how she might have misjudged him.
The arrogant, violent, warrior Castiel does indeed exist. What disturbs her is that she sees him most often in the memories that follow a 'correction'.
She wanted an obedient soldier. How many times has she erased Castiel's empathy for Man, in an attempt to get him to toe the line? How many times has she tweaked and heightened that sense of angelic superiority, that sense of Heaven's benevolence, to get him to cease his futile actions? How many times has she forced the concept of 'loyalty to Heaven' and 'Obedience to the Father's will' through his mind, wiping everything else until it strips him of almost all personality?
It is only now, flipping through his memories and her own at high speed, does she see a disturbing truth.
These things she has forced into Castiel's essence, these alterations in purpose and existence… now she can see how they have fused, molded together to create the Castiel she knows and fears. The superiority that let him play God, the lack of empathy she thought so essential to a soldier, the loyalty, so encompassing he could commit despicable acts in the name of Heaven's safety...
It only now occurs to her to wonder...why has Castiel been saved so many times? Such a hopeless case, always defiant, always too close to the humans...why did she keep trying to change him, why did they keep him around, make him a garrison commander? Why, when it would have been so much easier to simply terminate his existence?
Why, of all angels, was he the one assigned to be the guardian of the Righteous Man? There were other, stronger angels who could have done it. Who would never have batted an eye at anything they were ordered to do. Who would never have defied Heaven.
Perhaps it was for the same reason Castiel has been resurrected so often. Will of God. Will of Fate.
The evidence is staring her in the face, and her hatred is slipping away like water. Castiel is not what she thought him. And the monster she has hated for so long is at least partially of Heaven's making. Partially of her own making.
Another recorded memory catches her eye. Castiel's, from the war against Raphael. A darkened room, and one of Raphael's angels before him. A desperate plea. 'Please, brother. It doesn't have to be this way. There is another way. Please. I don't want to hurt you.' An attack. A thrown blade. A flash of intense grief on Castiel's face. 'Why won't any of you listen to me?'
It is a theme that is replayed in several different scenarios, hundreds of different moments. Right up to one, not long ago, in her own office. As she ordered Castiel to kill, to fight. 'Please…'
The truth slams into her with the force of divine revelation.
This is Castiel. Warrior. Peacemaker. The one who loves Heaven. The one who loves Man. The one who loves God. The one who walks the path of free will and choice. It is choice and love, not arrogance, which has led him to rebel, time and time again.
She has indeed misjudged. In all of creation, there are very few who have not. And perhaps even those who would follow him do not understand. She didn't, and she has held evidence of the truth for a long time.
She remembers the words Samandriel once spoke of Castiel. 'His problem is too much heart.' She scoffed at the young angel then. Now...she thinks she might know what he means.
Metatron is still unconscious. She considers, then flies to Earth. Castiel is easy to find, and she goes to him.
He's wary of her. But then, she hurt him so much last time. She has done so much to him. He has every reason to be wary.
"Did he tell you that you were going to fix Heaven?" She sees his eyes, the subtle flinch and tightening of his jaw. It's enough to tell her the truth.
All he has endured, at her hands and others, and he is still trying to save them all. The path he is on will destroy them all, but he doesn't know it.
Everything he has endured, and he still loves them.
A miscalculation indeed.
Of course he does not listen to her. Why would he, after all she has twisted in him, and all she has forced him to do?
She wonders where they would be, what Heaven would be, if she had not betrayed the trust he gave her when he gave her his hand in Purgatory.
She wonders what Heaven would be if Raphael had worked with him, rather than tried to dominate him, years ago.
She sees now his strength, his compassion, his unending courage and mercy. And she wonders...what would he be, what would he have become, had he not been broken by Heaven's will so many times? Had he not been remade and twisted and forced to restart his own identity by her actions and others? If his will had not been so battered, his essence so scarred?
What would he have become, if she had looked into his eyes that night of the Plagues and recognized his motivation for what it was? If she had simply let him go with a warning, instead of trying to force him into a mold he was clearly never meant to fit? If she had just once realized that Castiel was meant to be different, and let him grow into the form their Father has given him.
What would they be, if she and the other angels had taken time to try and understand what Castiel saw in the world? What would they be if any of them had tried to respect the values that molded a will stronger and more unbreakable than any archangel?
The question almost makes her want to weep. She has never felt so lost, so off-balance.
She has never wanted so much to apologize, and to receive forgiveness.
She makes her apology by warning Dean Winchester of the peril his brother's life is in. Castiel, she knows, will accept that far more easily than any formal apology.
To Castiel himself, there is only one thing she can say that he might hear. Only one thing she can offer to him, to this angel she has so badly misjudged, so badly wounded.
"Castiel...if you truly wish to return...I will listen."
She will listen. Someone needs to, and it is a small enough thing to offer.
He makes no answer, only turns back to his human friend, the man he cares for so much. She lets him go, because there is nothing else she can do, save pray that he is willing to give her, to give Heaven, one more chance.
Author's Note: I thought it was strange, that Naomi spends the entire season brain-washing Castiel, hurting him, then hunting him, and all of a sudden she's the peacemaker. At first I thought it might be a trick, but then I thought it might not be...and this just sort of wrote itself from there.