A/N: This story is a prequel of sorts to What Heaven Hides and Hell Declares. Enjoy.
We're All Dancing on the Puppetmaster's String
Naomi was a creature of order, of set lines and certainties that did not change. To keep such things alive and well had been her duty since the day she was plucked from the angelic ranks and set to work by the archangels themselves. She was teacher and guide and beacon to the rest of her race. The eraser of doubts, the protector of loyalty, and the restorer of those who had lost their way. There must be peace, she was told, and it was her job to insure it was so. She did as she was asked and she did it well, and beneath her shepherding hand the flock flourished.
But then humanity was born, and the carefully crafted order of Heaven trembled as the ripples of that event spread to the far reaches of Creation. Lucifer, the Morning Star, strong and beautiful and beloved, rose up against his Father and brothers in rage at the perceived injustice that had been executed against him and was rebuked, harshly and firmly, an end put to his insubordination. But Lucifer was cunning and deceptive, and if he could not win over his siblings through his anger than he would do so through deceit and seduction. For the Morning Star was beloved, and more flocked to his side than Naomi would allow herself to believe, ignoring her teachings and the loyalty they owed to their fellows, so that what had been strife between her charges turned of a sudden to war.
Michael saved what he could from the corruption that came with conflict, keeping the lesser ranks free of the fighting, facing Lucifer and his army of Fallen with only the greatest and purest of his followers at his side. The war would not be contained, however, and Naomi found herself encountering uncertainty more and more often, facing the indecision of hundreds of her fellows who no longer possessed the confidence her instruction should have given them. She did as she was asked. She reasserted lessons already taught, reassured those who faltered, dragged those creeping into the shadows back into the light, but then Gabriel, Herald and Harbinger, vanished from the battlefield, and his abandonment cast a new pall of doubt across the Host. One of the Four had seen fit to leave before the war had reached its conclusion, had deemed the battle unworthy of completing, and many flocked in his wake.
Naomi and her closest colleagues pursued them all, dragging them back by force, killing those who would not return even when force was employed. It was bloody, and disastrous, and another stain on the white light of Heaven. The prisons newly created to hold those Lucifer had led astray and whom Michael had charged her with healing now stood full of their own followers, angels whose faith wavered, and who would not have returned to their home given the choice. She tried to teach them, as she had before, but most closed their ears to her words, or threw their own back at her, and she was left helpless to cure them of their affliction.
After a battle that endured far longer than many could stand, Michael cast his Fallen brother from the Heavens and sentenced him to an eternity bound in a Cage in the deepest recesses of Hell. Victory was attained, but the scarring left in the wake of the archangel's crashing descent was impossible to ignore, and too many of her brothers and sisters were left bearing wounds to their faith that her words could not soothe or heal. Order threatened to dissolve, and she knew such an outcome could not be allowed. The archangels were in disarray, the world teetered on the brink of ruin, and Naomi stepped into the breach. For the first time she touched the minds of her siblings, not with gentle reassurances and soft redirections, but with brutal finesse and callous finality. Any who had been scarred or tainted forgot they had ever been blemished, she gave them peace instead, peace and certainty, and order slowly returned to her home.
The battle would not be so easily won, however, nor the seed of rebellion Lucifer had sown so easily uprooted. Doubt still managed to worm its way back into the minds of the multitudes, seeping in through the cracks she could not fully heal, and she found herself purging minds that should have been clean already. None remembered, once the deed was done, but forgetting her was not enough, and she soon came to realize she would have to go further if she wished to cure the root of the problem. So she found ways to dig deeper, ways to intrude and tread upon her siblings' innermost beings, and one by one she washed them clean.
But there was one whose stain would not ever be fully washed away, no matter how many times she trod the winding paths of the Angel of Thursday's mind. And they were terrifying, those paths, so far from what she knew, so full of wonder, and thought, and love. There was such a capacity to care in this child of the Host, and therefore an even greater risk of loss and pain, so when those paths would not be erased she buried them instead, constructing the loyal soldier in order to keep the gentle guardian beneath away from harm. She should have known it would not be enough, but it still burned her pride when Castiel broke through her control time and time again, the angel that should never have been always finding a way to surface. He was impossible to contain, and that made him a threat to her carefully preserved order, a burr in her side that needed to be removed.
She almost succeeded in burying that rare heart once, when she realized it was always humanity that unwove her carefully twisted strands, Castiel standing as Lucifer's polar opposite on the worth of their Father's second children. It was not easy, but she managed to weave her words around a grieving Michael, manipulating both the archangel and events in her favor until the angels withdrew from the world below as a whole, content to dwell within their own borders and defend the same against the dangerously enlarged demon armies. She could not bring herself to regret what she had done to ensure order remained, and if doubts ever arose in the back of her mind as to whether or not she had gone too far she would remind herself that she had not made a deal with the Devil, only his witless subordinates, and they would have found their way to Heaven's Gates eventually regardless.
The means did not matter in the end, for all her charges were safely penned within her reach, and the black sheep of the flock was losing his unique colors, slowly blending into the carefully crafted sameness of his brethren. She had restored what was lost, the world was set aright, and then Michael came and set his eyes upon her redeemed charge and chose him to brave the depths of hell.
In that moment she was stripped of her greatest achievement, forced to watch as the one she had purified descended into utter darkness, and emerged tied forever to a human soul's tainting power. It was then she began to hate in earnest. Then that the fates of the remaining archangels were decided in her mind.
They would all burn for their sins.
Her work had taught her patience, and so she watched without acting as her blind, rebellious student led his charges towards the very thing he was trying to avoid. She witnessed the moment when his doubts in himself, his fellows, and Heaven came to a head, tipping him over the brink of blind obedience into a small but growing sense of self-awareness. He had never been exposed to a member of the human race for as long as he had the Winchester boys, and the more time he spent in their company the more willing he became to forego the path set before him for unexplored trails. Naomi watched the black splotch that signified the connection forged between Dean Winchester and his savior grow and mutate at a speed that sickened her, and braced herself for the approaching inevitability.
Had Castiel been adhering to his orders he would never have overheard the words passed between Michael and Zachariah. He would have known nothing of the terrible end towards which the Winchesters were racing. And, perhaps most importantly, he would not have fought so desperately against the brothers sent to bring him home.
It had been difficult, knowing he was so near but unable to do anything to intervene. To save him from the corruption the Winchesters had wrought. She knew the punishment Michael administered would not be enough, though it sowed fear in Castiel's heart it did not plant submission, and fear could be overcome with time. Castiel proved as much, and Raphael slaughtered him for his troubles. It was another mark against the archangels, a tally that grew ever longer.
When Zachariah returned days later he brought with him impossible news. Castiel lived yet, though the how and why remained a mystery that kept Michael brooding even more than usual. Naomi herself was similarly troubled, for she could no longer feel Castiel, his connection to her severed as though it had never existed in the first place. She no longer had any claim on him, and for reasons she could not define that grieved her deeply.
Castiel died a second time before she saw him next, and if his first resurrection had caused a stir his subsequent sally from the grave elevated him to admirable heights in the minds of far too many. He returned to Heaven with a plan, set upon spreading his newfound freedom among all others, and Naomi envisaged what was left of her orderly empire crumbling into ashes.
It was Raphael, in the end, who gave her the key to stopping it all. Raphael, the only archangel left for her to wreak vengeance upon. He beat Castiel for daring disobedience, and when he was done Naomi picked up what battered pieces were left and coiled them together with cold threads of manipulation. Outright reprogramming had proved ineffectual in the past, and she knew subtler methods would be needed for what she planned. She would also need help. Help such as that she had sought only once before, but turned to again in this hour of need.
It had been all too easy, in the end, as Castiel stood, invisible, at the edge of Dean Winchester's wavering false paradise, heart and mind at war. His thoughts had been on Dean's words and actions in the past, and how secrets had never served them well. A whisper here and a tug there and she had diverted those musings, feeding off Castiel's doubts, nursing his misgivings into something strong enough to turn him around to face the demon who would join his efforts with hers and condemn this angel so convinced of the rightness of freedom to captivity, without him ever needing to know.
It had been all too easy, but only in the beginning, because Castiel's mind was still a brilliant, twisted thing and the heart in his chest remained more human than it had any right to be. Naomi had to forego all else simply to hold onto his skittering consciousness, swallowing his regret over the bloodshed he was partaking in, quelling his doubts about Crowley, and amplifying every sense of guilt and obligation she could find.
Think of what the Winchesters gave to stop this, she screamed at him. Are you going to let it happen again?
She had never pushed so hard, and sometimes she feared he would splinter beneath the pressure, the fabric of his very being scattered to the farthest reaches by the doubt that gnawed at him like a hungry beast, or that tiny part of him aware that something was terribly wrong here, and fighting desperately against her iron fist to prove it. She would not risk letting him go now, however, despite the risks. Not even when holding him so firmly in check aroused the suspicions of the Winchesters within minutes of their first reunion. Castiel still cared so deeply for them it was unnerving, and maintaining control, focusing his thoughts away from confessing everything to them both was more difficult than she would ever willingly admit.
There were times when she slipped. Times when she wasn't fast enough to yank on the reins and stop his wild, headlong flight into the abyss of humanity. His relief at Sam's restoration to his true self was almost blinding, he had not been willing to sacrifice the Winchesters as the price for fifty thousand souls to aid him in the war, and not even the consolation of sending Rachel in his stead could keep him from aiding the brothers in their ill advised journey through time. She had almost lost him when Rachel tried to prevent what was soon to come, the pain – physical and emotional on a level she could not comprehend – clearing his mind in a flood, the sigil he wove on Bobby Singer's wall as much an effort to escape her as any others who might be hunting him. But he could not hide from her, and his Grace's need to recover allowed her to sink her talons in once more, one by one until she was certain he was hers again. She wove her own power with his leeching light, thanking Rachel for the opportunity she had given, twisting Castiel's memories to give false justification as needed, then lying in wait, sinking deeper and deeper inside her prize.
'It's not broken!' she told Dean in triumph, whilst inside his own mind Castiel screamed and pounded against the walls she had erected in that moment when Eve stilled his abilities and all power to resist her. Crowley's aid had ensured she was not similarly limited, and Castiel had at once become easy prey. It was a vindictive need to punish him for fighting her so long and so hard that led her to drag him to Singer's home in the middle of the night for a confrontation that would only further destroy both of those physically present. She could feel Castiel's simmering rage, his hatred that was equaled only by his despair, and she found herself reveling in that power. The archangels had treated their lessers like pawns, but they had never had control equal to that she now wielded.
She had underestimated her wayward lamb, however, for he was not yet beaten. There was enough of Castiel left free to care too much when Lisa and Ben were taken. To force her to threaten Crowley, to visit Dean, to heal and erase in an effort to prevent further pain. He did not attempt to explain the truth to Dean, perhaps knowing she would not allow it, not with her fingers so deeply embedded in his mind, but that did not lessen her anger at his simple refusal to be cowed.
She punished him by torturing Crowley's captive, breaking Sam Winchester's mind, and slaughtering Balthazar, who had only been allowed to live for so long because he was not human, and he missed the clues the Winchesters would have noticed given the opportunity. Had Castiel physically been in her presence he would have flown at her by now, wild with rage and grief and hopelessness, but those emotions did not help him in the battle he was currently fighting, and Naomi calmly informed him his humanity had made him weak.
He could not stop her from betraying Crowley, from opening Purgatory and finally, finally wreaking her revenge on Raphael. He could not stop her, and she could not stop him, their essences meeting and tangling in the midst of thousands upon thousands of too bright souls until something snapped and broke and she was abruptly thrust out of the mind she had come to regard as an extension of her own.
What happened next was horrific, nothing like the glorious ascension to the throne she had imagined, and terrifying to behold. Wielding the power of Purgatory, his mind unraveling where her grasp had torn deep rooted scars that had not healed, Castiel acted on every idea she had whispered in his mind, on every amplified desire and emotion she had used to control him, and on her own wishes. Deluded and beyond reason, he all but burned Heaven to the ground, and Naomi vaguely wondered if the unease settling in the pit of her vessel's stomach was what the humans called 'guilt'.
She brushed it aside, however, for Castiel's actions had not been committed under her control, and she could not be held accountable for them, as she firmly told Crowley upon his expression of utter displeasure at being brought to heel by the angel he had helped manipulate. She had no time for such petty things, Castiel more of a threat to her seat of power now than he had ever been, and she without the means to halt him in his tracks.
She did not learn of his third death until long after the fact, and was surprised by the almost emotive response it drew from her. She was almost... disappointed that she would no longer be able to walk those twisted, winding pathways of a mind that was not at all as an angel's should be. Castiel had been different from the very beginning, and whilst most of her had wanted to grind away those rough edges, another part of her had wondered at the flawed celestial. The angel who had been created with the ability to care, an ability that resurfaced no matter how many times she had forcefully buried and reburied it. The angel with too much heart, that would be forever used and held against him.
The angel who was no longer her concern, having played his part in delivering Heaven into her hands, and yet...