Nephilim
Author's note: As said in my profile, this particular storyline has been in the works for quite some time... While the whole thing makes perfect sense to me, let me know if I'm missing something that falls into the DUH category. Thx and enjoy!
Author's note 2: The first part of the story, as stated, actually happens shortly before Season 1, Episode 1
But, hey, all the main players are already in the game. I'm just filling in the blanks for the time they're not running an episode together. :)
Disclaimer: Obviously, I don't own Supernatural, it's characters, affiliates... blah, blah, etc. This is all in good fun, so don't sue me! :)
Prologue
I stood staring down at the shadow of her wings - a mere sooty outline of what they once resembled. She was sprawled in a sadly ungraceful pose in the dirt, her clothing tattered in some places, ripped and ruined in others. The fight had been vicious. Her blood was dripping slowly into the dirt, seeping from the deep empty wound in her chest. I couldn't help but stare at her wide, shocked eyes. Lips parted, as if to ask that final question that never left her... Why?
I wanted to pity her, and perhaps I did. But she had come to kill me. She had come with a petty, vicious wrath and a seemingly desperate, insane need to make me bleed.
I shivered slightly, but not because of the cool spring forest air. I wasn't cold. I wasn't hot, either. Nor was I angry, happy, relieved… none of the things one perhaps should be when contemplating the sudden death of a foe. An irreversible death. At that moment, I was none of these - but instead, strangely empty.
Gabriel, head bowed and kneeling, finished his quiet gesture and stood away from his fallen sister, an unreadable expression on his formerly jovial face, his eyes dark and deep. With a quiet snap of his fingers, the body burst into an intense blinding inferno... and was over in seconds. With the scent of rain on the air, clouds quickly covering over the moon, it would likely wash the area clean by morning, the world moving on just as it was meant to. He stooped to snatch a fallen blade from the ground and finally did have a definable look in his eyes... anger. He was very, very, very angry.
It seemed like I should maybe panic as he stalked across the short space, but I just didn't have it in me. Not right then. But a small shock of pain ran up my arm as he slapped the angelic blade into my hand with a sharp snap.
"Keep this," he said quietly, his familiar green eyes staring hard past me. "You've earned it." With a small flutter nearly lost in the sound of the rising wind, he was gone, leaving me alone gazing down at that burnt outline that had been her wings.
Dreams
S-
It started with dreams, I suppose. I can't ever remember not having them, and they were nearly always about angels. I remember being small, how old I couldn't say, only that I'd begun watching cartoons on our dingy little TV in the afternoon, which may account for my dreaming of cartoon angels. Happy bubbly wings, little halos for some, harps and horns and flutes for others. I loved dreaming when I was small; nary a complaint about me not taking naps. Not until the nightmares began, but that was much later. My dreams evolved as I aged, from cartoons to something more like a graphic novel in my early teens, then more dramatic and sometimes, strangely, even had theme music. But it was nearly always angels, though some seemed to be about a two boys; brothers, I thought.
Any shrink would have taken my dreams and drawings as a side effect of my mother's obvious obsession with angels. From figurines to doilies, she collected them all. I knew she was a lapsed Catholic, hadn't gone to church, except weddings and funerals since before she'd married my Dad; and even then they'd been married in the courthouse. I knew she still prayed; could feel it, in fact, but aside from too many angels in the house, she showed no other outward sign of faith. No cross around her neck, no saying grace at meals, nothing but angels and the family bible on one of the small shelves in the living room. It was tucked between an old copy of Good Omens and Catch22. As far as I knew, she never touched it except to dust.
My mom was a quiet woman, but a lovely one in my eyes. Petite, with soft wavy chestnut hair, soft brown eyes and a slightly plump figure, she always seemed to me a modern version of June Cleaver, though perhaps not as stylish. She worked part time as a seamstress in town, giving her something to do during the day, though she didn't have to work. She still received checks from the government - a combination of bereavement and pension, it left us with plenty of money, though it was just the three of us.
My older brother Damon resembled Mom in an almost eerie way - a handsome masculine version, at least in looks, though he had happily inherited Dad's height; a reasonable 5'10" instead of my mom's 5'2". In his earlier and more rebellious days, he'd pierced nearly everything visible on his body from eyebrow to ears, nose to nipples. Then there was the tattoos. All 18 of them, stretching and weaving from the nape of his neck down, (or so he'd said) to his butt. No one, not even his ex girlfriends would actually tell me what was there, though their eyes would alight with humor, even as their lips clamped stubbornly shut. After a full week of nagging for an answer, he told me it was a picture of me - the never-ending pain in his ass. At least, I think he was joking.
I wonder, perhaps it it wasn't my own resemblance to my father that made my mother so sad. He'd died before I was born, and she'd never quiet gotten over it, though she spoke often and fondly of him. A training accident, or so the government said, directly following a 2 week mission doing God knows what. I can't say for sure why I never believed the story, but suspected it was because neither Mom nor Damon seemed to. Nothing in words, just a quick tightening of eyes and lips, a secondary flinch that betrayed them.
Damon was adamant about relaying every story, every memory he'd ever had or heard about Dad to me. I think he was determined to fulfill some unspoken promise that I would never be lacking a father; and so I never felt that I had. Damon was, and is, all I could have asked for in a brother - as patient as any surly male relative could be, I supposed. I wouldn't know - Mom and Damon and I were all the family any of us had. Everyone else was gone, as far as I knew, lost young or too soon to disease or random accidents. Both of my father's parents - stage 4 cancer caught too late - she with ovarian and he with prostate, died within a day of one another, some 40 plus years earlier.
My mother's older sister - somehow drowned in the shower at age 10 and their parents gone not long after in a plane crash. A friend of the family took my mom in, then moved them both to Oregon for a much needed change of scenery. And so, raised from then on by a stout catholic, (also with an angel fixation), my mother lived on to meet my dad, love at first sight, marry and start anew. I'm not certain when in that time Mom gave up church, or why. Perhaps I never will.
But growing up, Damon was both father and brother, age completely aside. He was only 4 years older, but it was he who taught me to ride my first 2 wheeler, and bandaged me up after I fell. When I was 8, he skipped baseball practice to teach me how to climb trees safely, since he'd caught me the day before trying to climb without him. He pulled out every pillow, cushion, comforter and quilt we owned to surround the base of the old oak tree up the hill from our house. Mom, when she discovered where all the pillows had disappeared to, was not amused. Damon ended up with laundry duty for a month, but didn't seem to mind. After all, the view from the top was fantastic - living on the hill gave us miles of view in 3 directions from the top.
It was Damon who taught me to fish, catch craw-daddies, point out the hidden little spots in the forest I doubt anyone else might have noticed... to me, Damon was my home.
Don't get me wrong, I loved my mother, but all my life she had this way of gazing at me, not with regret in her eyes but a deep and intense sadness. Profoundly sad. I spent hours on some days, staring at myself in the mirror to try to see if there was something worth staring at. Long brown wavy hair, much like my mother's, streamed down my back to my waist, a lighter shade than my brother's, but could turn a fiery auburn in the sun. It was my eyes that caught most people, mossy green shot with grey that mostly resembled my father's in shape and color. I'd always secretly loved my eyes, though sometimes if I looked too hard or too long, it seemed that maybe they weren't mine. Or not mine alone. It was a mildly shocking thought when it first crossed my mind. I didn't go near a mirror for a week, thoroughly spooked.
After a day of nagging from Damon, I finally whispered that strange revelation... I wasn't sure if I was ever really alone. He only laughed in that quiet way he seemed to reserve just for me, the quite deliberately pointed out the 50 or so angels figurines and memorebelia we had in the kitchen alone.
"Well DUH, Sari," he cracked affectionately, "How could you be alone surrounded by a flock of this many guardian angels?" That wasn't quite what I had meant, but I felt better none the less. My mother, knitting in front of the TV in the next room, went silent for a moment, but the clicking needles continued as I wandered back to my room.
When I hit 11 or so, I began spending more time at my friend's homes, finally becoming a bit of a free spirit myself. It wasn't until after a few sleepovers with friends who did have siblings, older and younger, that I realized just how lucky I was. My brother was an absolute saint by comparison. He was, by far, my best friend. Maybe it was just the kind of a bond that is born in some families, raised just a little off the norm, that gave us the connection we had, but we never knew quite how strong that was until after he hit 16, started driving, and got a job. A month to the day after his birthday, 11:02 pm, my heart literally stopped.
My mother told me later it was as if I simply dropped where I was, halfway back to bed with a cup of water. She was dialing 911 when, in her words, it was like I'd been shocked, though clearly I hadn't. I'd sat bolt upright with a wheezing gasp, my eyes wide, pupils huge and unseeing. "Damon!" I whispered in panic.
We arrived at the accident site the same moment as the ambulance. The drunk's slightly less drunken girlfriend had had the wise thought of calling for help. No force or threat known could have pulled me away from him until the necessity of surgery- a hole drilled into his head to relieve the brain swelling. Even then, he still didn't wake.
My mother and I held silent vigil for two days neither eating nor sleeping, each holding a hand, like anchors. I wasn't really afraid he would die, or so I told myself. He couldn't. My mind was made, and for a 12 year old as stubborn as I, that was all it took. But I think maybe that's when I prayed - really prayed - for the first time. 'God,' I sent out to the universe, ' if you're there, if you exist, I'm begging... don't let him die.'
He woke 3 hours later, confused, pale and incoherent, rambling louder and louder, with panic and tears on his face. He looked imploringly to me, willing me to understand, his eyes terrified and intent. The doctor and 2 nurses rushed in, pushing at me and my mother for room, but they could do little about the death grip he had on my hand.
Sometime during the chaos, my mother had backed herself to the doorway, sheet white and scared, staring at her only son with something like horror. She could understand him, or at least, understand enough. I'd seen enough TV to know it was something close to latin, but not quite. The only thing that I did understand was a common enough name, one nearly everyone in the western worlds knew. Gabriel. His words slipped away in a quick dose of some sedative, his eyes fluttering closed.
The doctor frowned down at my brother, muttered under his breath "Pretty sure that wasn't in the bible," before turning to my mother with assurances on the edge of his tongue. But my mother was gone. It never occurred to me, after this nearly blinding wave of relief and exhaustion, to ask anyone what Damon had said. When he woke again the next day, he remembered nothing.
My mother, surprisingly, had retreated to the hospital chapel. Finally knowing for certain Damon would be alright, I followed that soft hum in my mind that I always associated with my mom, as unique as her scent, and found her with head bowed in the middle pew. I slipped silently into the space next to her, and let my gaze wander. I hadn't been in many churches, well, ever, but this one seemed strangely generic and bleak, yet peaceful and silent. I waited until she had raised her head, unclasped her fingers, before speaking.
"He'll be okay," I said quietly but with surety. I heard her shuddering breath and the edge of a sob before she caught me tight in her arms, and together, we both wept, knowing it was true.
The next few years were blissfully uneventful, except for the dreams. They were vivid, almost lucid in their intensity. I became increasingly convinced that not all of them were mine. Sometimes they were like lucid flashbacks, other times lucid flash-forwards, and sometimes, though not often, like a lucid rerun of some TV show no longer aired... The story of a Dean and his brother Sammy.
These were the truly odd ones, tinted and hazy, like old photographs. But you couldn't walk around in a photo, even unseen. Except in dreams. I always knew their names while the dreams were fresh, but like dreams do, they mostly faded away, leaving me confused. Why these two boys? Arguing over who gets the last of the cereal, sharing gifts on a dismal, parentless Christmas morning. Random bits that always left me pondering that bond between them, so unlike mine and Damon's. Most of the dreams seemed inconsequential and random, like skipping scenes on a dvd... Then there were things that definitely didn't fit. The man by the crib with those creepy yellow eyes. A small girl in the same room, years later, screaming in terror.
But even these visions were tame compared to those of battle. I dreamt of my first battle when I was 14. There was no fear but plenty of anger, no, rage aimed at my opponent. And bitter resentment. But there was surty and a deep sense of purpose - this was meant. This was meaningful. This was necessary.
My opponent was a dark haze, nearly transparent wings flashing in the sunlit field, distracting me just enough. A missed swing of that silver blade, a small flash of light and my arm thrummed in pain. I shot to the other side and countered, barely nicking him before he ducked back.
"This is pointless," I ground out. Parrying again and whipping around him, I missed seeing that wing lash out as he swung to follow. I ducked and rolled, skipping further away.
"Only because you refuse to yield to the inevitable," he snarled back. His voice was, as always, a deep and booming bass. He leaped suddenly, high and forward, slashing out again. I dove beneath him in another roll, nearly as quick and graceful as he, but striking my injured arm as it slipped in a small pool of blood. It hurt both more and less than it should have. I took a second I could barely afford to assess the damage. The artery was nicked close to my elbow and oozing in a steady stream down to my hand. I didn't have the time or the energy to heal this. This fight had gone on for hours already, and we'd both weakened, though I more than he. It was only a matter of time before that silver spike found my heart, or I bled to death.
"Would you yield, were you me?" I countered, crouching low and ready.
"If I had the choice between eternity as an abomination or that of a quick death?" He smirked, an ugly gesture on such a handsome face. "Death," he said, and I knew that he meant it.
I had a thought, a spark of memory, a mere sigil image drawn into my mind. It didn't feel like my thought and distracted me, slowed me as he darted forward again. I countered and dove aside, but not nearly fast enough. The back of my blade hand was torn down to the bone. Useless. The blade fell, but I snatched it awkwardly in my other hand, driving it in an upward thrust as I did, finally cutting into something useful. His wing was drooped and bloody at the joint, and with a growl he spun to meet me again, but slower with an injured wing. I had the time, barely.
Using my nearly useless blade hand, I traced the symbol out onto my own heaving chest, praying for speed; for accuracy. His eyes widened incredulously when he saw the mark complete, but even as he dove in to stop me, I smacked my hand hard against it and he burst into light with a final howl of anger, then was gone. I knelt down, panting and dizzy with blood loss.
I didn't really mind the idea of dying, though I would miss my adoptive family, even my never-ending list of responsibilities. But I would be back, of course. Who would replace me if I didn't return? At least this was clean. This death was on my terms. With that relieving thought, I gave in and collapsed to the ground, the world beginning to swim away.
I heard a flutter, felt a hum of energy and tried desperately to scramble back to my feet. I didn't even make it to my knees when I was pressed gently but firmly back down.
"Shh, easy," came that familiar voice. I relaxed back down knowing he meant no harm. He meant well, in fact, but I knew he wouldn't heal me. He'd simply watch over me until I passed on. I think he'd told me once that no good soldier deserved to die alone, but the memory was a distant one, long before the now. His face swam into view, those lovely green eyes so like my own smiling gently back. Beside him, a new face appeared, but these a striking shade of deep and intense blue, speckled with bits of silvery gray. Sober eyes set in a confused face.
"Way to go, Grasshopper," the first one grinned, eyes twinkling.
"Huh?" I grunted, followed by a near echo from the other face.
"I don't understand, brother," he said, his brow knit with confusion. "She's half human, not grasshopper."
The first just shook his head silently, eyes sparkling with both mirth at his companion, and sadness... He took my injured hand in his, and the pain abated. I could only sigh gratefully with a whispered thanks. The haze around me was deepening, darkening.
"Why have you brought me here?" asked the companion, his voice still confused. "This has nothing to do with me, or my duties."
The first sighed with exasperation. "You need to know this, Castiel," he said softly but firmly. "She is part human - mortal - and still fights the fight. Even when all hope seems lost, she carries on like so many of them do, and have, and will. Not so different from you or I."
I heard the shock in the companion Castiel's reply.
"Not so diff-" he sputtered and tried again. "She has no Grace!" he declared, skimming my face quickly as if to make sure this fact hadn't changed in the moments since he arrived. "Her death has been sentenced. That means -"
"Nothing," snapped the first, anger edging the word. "She has grace, not the same as you or I, but a grace nonetheless, unique even for her breed."
My mind might have been slipping away, but it snapped sharp at that. 'What am I? A Dog? A new breed of horse? God's next platypus?' I thought grumpily.
"No," chuckled the first, having gleamed my thoughts. "You're merely unique in that there is no limit to your definition." That seemed open to interpretation to me, but then, I was dying. Maybe I was as confused as this Castiel. I could almost feel the naivety trickling off him. Just how new was he? Surely he'd walked with mankind before?
The first spoke again to his companion, his voice turning away from me, though I could still feel him near. "Her grace lies in her faith, Castiel. It's that faith, that need to do what her heart and mind and conscience insist she must do... it's that faith that brings her 'round again and again. And all to do what she feels is right, honest. That same faith, brother, that sustains us."
My vision had melted completely away, my hearing lowering a bit, like a slowly fading echo. This was it. I felt him lean over me and press his lips to my head, a soft and silent apology and parting gesture. "After all," he said reasonably, "if it was your own soul and self, and those of everyone you've ever loved, or ever would, wouldn't you fight too?"
I drifted away then, carried on those words, light and air, melting ever outward, preparing myself to begin anew.
a/n: Reviews are always welcome and appreciated!
