"All This And Heaven Too"
by Lexiconish

Disclaimer: I do not own anything. No profit is being made. I am having a lot of fun, though.
The characters are from 'Supernatural'. The title is from Florence & the Machine's song by the same name.

Prologue: Funeral

He'd known Rachel had a child, of course, though he'd never met the girl before. He'd known she was married, too, but he had also never met her husband, his brother-in-law, merely seen him from a distance at the wedding the entire family had actually bothered to attend.

Seeing the child now, dressed in a black cotton dress in her grandfather's garden, it surprised him how different it was to actually see the child, instead of merely knowing she existed in the abstract sense. He'd never even seen a photograph of her. Once upon a time, when they were children, Rachel and he had been close enough – she'd have followed him to the ends of the Earth – but as they'd grown older, and their family's distant relations with one another influenced them, they'd grown apart. So much so that he'd only learnt the name of his niece today, at Rachel's funeral.

"Castiel, you look as grim as ever."

He fixed his unnerving blue gaze on his cousin, Uriel. "We are at my sister's funeral."

"Of course. Tragic, I know. No one's saying what happened to her exactly but…"

"But you have your suspicions and you think I'll confirm them for you. Well don't bother asking, I know as much as you do; perhaps even less." He turned back to the little dark-haired girl in the garden, plucking grass from the ground and shredding it in a pile at her feet.

"They won't tell you anything either? Typical. I suppose I should expect no less. It wouldn't be decent for people to know the gory details, would it?"

"I'm sure it's not like that." He wasn't sure, but it was expected of him to respond that way, so he did.

"Yes, well."

The girl looked up then, meeting his gaze with equally wide hazel eyes. Her mother's eyes, he knew, knew her father had had brown eyes. Startled, she jumped to her feet and vanished around the corner of the house.

"What will happen to her?" he wondered aloud, and Uriel shrugged.

"At the moment, she's staying at Raphael's house, but he can't take care of her forever. She'll probably be taken to an orphanage. I don't know." That Uriel didn't know usually meant he didn't care, either, but Castiel tried to give him the benefit of the doubt in this case. He said farewell to Uriel and weaved among the mourners. If he didn't, it wouldn't be long until his uncle Zachariah found him, and Castiel had no wish to speak to Zachariah, today of all days.

He was instead discovered by one of his brothers. "Cassie! So good to see you. Unfortunate circumstances as they may be."

Castiel didn't smile, but he was glad to see the tall blonde man with the British accent. "Balthazar," he greeted, nodding his head. "It can't be helped that we haven't seen each other for a while."

"I guess not. I've been abroad too long – everyone's been commenting on my accent." He sighed, looping an arm about his younger brother's shoulders. "It's a shock to hear about Rachel, it truly is. Did Uriel hound you for information yet? Dear Raphie is hiding it from him, and he's pretty grumpy about it."

"He has spoken to me, yes." He slipped out of Balthazar's half-embrace, facing him. "What did you tell him?"

"Everything I know. It's best that way, I find, like ripping off a band-aid. I told him I knew she and her husband had been stabbed, possibly a mugging, and that's all I've been told. It's a bit annoying, really, when you and I knew her better than anyone else here."

"Anyone else here? So I suppose that means…"

"No, Cassie. No one's been able to contact either of them. It's not surprising, so don't act like it is."

"You're right, of course." Castiel spotted the child across the room now, pressed right into the corner and eyeing what must have been a lot of strangers to her warily. "Uriel told me that the girl will probably be put into the system. Do you know if that's true?"

"If Uriel said it, it probably is. You know I met her once, when she was a baby of course. It was just luck that one of my annual trips home coincided with her birth. Rachel called me up. Weird pudgy lump of flesh… she's different now."

"I'd never seen her before. I heard from Zachariah that she existed… but Rachel never told me herself. So she must have been born near Christmas then. How long ago?"

"Three years, I think. Yes. Well, Cassie. I'm sure there'll be some discussion later on, and we'll talk then, but I'll be leaving you for now."

The service was led by Pastor Jim Murphy, and though there were no tearful, nostalgic eulogies, it was a respectful service, and Rachel and her husband Ryan's friends told some enlightening stories of Rachel's life since he lost contact with her.

Afterwards, Castiel noticed a few other children around, none of them crying, and of varying ages. He knew they didn't belong to anyone in his family, and could only assume they were the children of Rachel and Ryan's friends. He watched curiously as one of the other little girls approached Rachel's daughter and returned to her friends rather put-out by her silence.

Gradually the unknown faces began to dissipate, and within only an hour, all that remained was Castiel's family. His uncle Zachariah, a balding man with a smarmy look about him that was always off-putting, and his two adopted sons, Uriel and Raphael, both dark-skinned and not blood-brothers. His cousin Hester, a blonde woman who often reminded him of Rachel, and her brother Inias, a quiet man with a neat mop of black hair atop his head. His brother Balthazar and their oldest brother Michael, black hair and blue eyes like Castiel, sat at the table with Castiel.

At the head of the table sat the eldest of them all, Joshua, Castiel's maternal uncle. He had no children, but had a great fondness for plant life. "Are we all here, then?" he asked.

Castiel glanced outside where the girl sat plucking grass again. They were not all assembled; Michael's twin Luc was absent, as were Castiel's other siblings Anna and Gabriel, and indeed Castiel's father. Their mother had died when Castiel was little, and he didn't remember her well. But of course it was no surprise to anyone that these four would be missing, and so no one mentioned it.

"Then I suppose we need to talk about what to do with Danielle."

At the mention of her name, the girl looked up again, and seeing the room of sombre people dressed in suits and plain black dresses, quickly turned away.

"I cannot continue to care for her," Raphael pointed out. "I'm not in any position to care for a child. I work full-time, over-time, usually. Someone else needs to take her home today, it can't be me."

"Regrettably, my job requires me to travel regularly," Balthazar cut in, "and let's face it, I'm a bachelor. I'm no role-model for a kid."

"There's no room in our apartment, and quite simply, I do not want children," Hester said. "So Inias and I can't take her."

"I don't see why we don't just put her into care and be done with it," Uriel complained. "Why waste time discussing this? None of us can look after a child."

Castiel frowned. It was a valid point; most of them worked full-time and were rarely ever home. Additionally, he couldn't imagine any of his relatives raising a child, besides Zachariah, and really he questioned how that had turned out when he saw what serious people Uriel and Raphael had grown into, in spite of Uriel's excellent sense of humour. He couldn't picture, or didn't want to picture, Rachel's child in any of their homes. At the same time, it would be a shame to place her in an orphanage. At such a young age it would be difficult to understand why no one in her family had taken her in, especially having such a large one. It would seem to her that no one wanted her, and Castiel knew Rachel would never have wanted that for her child.

But then, what else could they do?

"I can take care of her tonight," Michael was saying, "but that's the most I can manage. We need to find a home for her before tomorrow night."

"I can start looking as soon as I get home," Zachariah offered, "I'll find one that'll take her on short notice and it'll be cleared up in no time. Problem solved."

'She isn't a problem. And you know she can hear us.' His eyes widened, and he shot a glance outside. Danielle sat stiffly on the ground, hands clenched on her knees, eyes squeezed shut, even though she wasn't (yet) crying. 'She can hear all of this, it must sound like...' He stood abruptly. "I'll take her. I can do it."

Everyone stared at him, even Danielle. Balthazar slowly reached out to push him back into his seat. "Cassie… I don't think you understand what that would mean. It's not an easy task, and you work full-time too, like the rest of us. You're biting off more than you can chew if you do this, I guarantee it."

"No one else is offering," Castiel protested, "and it wouldn't be fair to give her up. She's family, she's Rachel's daughter. I will take her."

"What about your workload?" Zachariah pushed. "You work for me; I know exactly how many hours you do Castiel. You can't raise a child like that."

He scowled. "I'll cut back on my hours. You don't need me there every day for that long and you know it."

"But-!"

"Enough," Joshua interrupted, voice soft, but everyone instantly silenced. "If Castiel thinks he can do this, well, let him try. If he cannot manage, we can give her away then. It isn't a problem."

"Fine." Michael rested a hand on Castiel's shoulder, squeezing slightly. "It's settled then. If you're absolutely sure Castiel."

He hesitated; he had no experience with children at all, and it was true he worked long hours. But this was Rachel's child, his sister that he'd let down, that he'd lost contact with, who he had not seen since her wedding, well over three years ago, and if there were anything he could do to make it up to her, this would be it.

He nodded. "I am sure."

A/N: This idea is… different. I'm not 100% sure where I'm going with it, and I've never written for the Supernatural fandom before, please bear in mind. Honestly, there's a chance everyone'll be a bit out of character, and I'm really, really nervous about writing for this fandom. There are a lot of excellent fan fictions for it and it's intimidating to emerge into that, but I've wanted to write something for it for a long, long time now, and I've never had a good enough idea to do it.

This idea is probably still not good enough, but at the moment I'm just happy to be writing something. You do not have to review, I don't expect anyone to, but it would be nice if you feel like it. Constructive criticism is very, very welcome, but please if you do have something to say, don't be a dick about it – try to keep it constructive.

And that's about it guys! Dean will be in next chapter, I promise, and I'll be more detailed too. This chapter is kind of a prologue. I say kind of, who am I kidding, it is a prologue.

Lexiconish.