Dawn

by MissFortuneSirPrize

The entire guard feels it when they awaken. The shockwave of power washes across them like a caress, pulling at their senses until they fall to their knees in anguish and joy, all mixed together in the tears that fall from their eyes.

The entire guard feels it when they awaken. The shockwave of power washes across them like a caress, pulling at their senses until they fall to their knees in anguish and joy, all mixed together in the tears that fall from their eyes. Luke is no different, bowing willingly under the weight pressing down on him and looking to the skies, a wide smile stretched across his face. "What's going on?" He can't stand, his knees seem too weak, but he does open his mouth to answer. He just doesn't get the chance when cold fingers, almost like bone, run across the space where the ink is dug deep into his skin, invisible on this plane, and he shivers instead. "Stand."

He does, unable to resist the alluring power in that voice, soft and somehow rigid and commanding all at once, and he sighs in bliss when a cool wind seems to wrap around him like two embracing arms. "Is it really you?" He can see Sam and Dean from the corner of his eye, frozen in place and gaping, but he fixes his eyes on the man standing behind him and gasps when they make eye contact. His eyes, black like the night sky but darker somehow, seem to flare into flame that feels like it could burn him if he stares for too long, but he can't quite make himself look away. He hasn't seen those eyes for a long time, hasn't seen the angles of that face and the sharp lines of that jaw in what feels like decades. "It's me."

He almost collapses in relief, all the worry and pain falling away from his shoulders like a heavy coat that he's shrugging off, and he barely has the presence of mind to ask about the others. "My siblings are tending to their own, little soldier." His knees do give out at the familiar nickname, wobbling a little before he pitches forward and slams to his knees on the worn carpet. "Luke!" The two of them ignore the shout, as if they're the only two in the room, and he tilts his head back when fingers slide through his hair, shivering again. The tips scratch against his skull, changing between the blunt fingers of the human form he doesn't recognise and the more familiar thin bones of the form that he does, and once again he's powerless to resist when the words wrap around him like a physical thing, "I'm back now."

He remembers the first time he met one of them, the blessed ones that his parents would tell tales of, with the power that seemed to flow off of them in waves that he could almost see, like a flicker just on the edge of his vision. He remembers falling to his knees for the first time, bowing in the presence of their combined glory, and the way that he couldn't keep his gaze off them even as his eyes burnt with tears and the pain in his temples grew. Some things weren't meant to be seen with human eyes, like them, but he couldn't make himself look away. When he thinks about that period of his life, before the war, before he had manifested as a guard for the first time, the thing that he remembers most is Raziel. The man that appeared to him, first in dreams and then, finally, in life, wasn't anything impressive at first glance. By the age of ten, Luke had sensed the raw power of the Others, felt their energy and the strength of their emotions. Raziel, at first, hadn't felt anything like that.

He was quiet, reserved almost, and though the hints of power were there he had never truly manifested into the same type of all-powerful being like Amariel had, or the weighted tenseness of Bariel. He seemed kind, almost, gentle in the way he would pick Luke up off the ground and teach him, the two of them sitting across from each other in whatever dreamscape the Other had created, gifting him the knowledge of the things he would need to succeed in his life. Rituals, languages, how to use his natural gift for the ancient languages to craft spells with a whisper or a thought, Raziel taught him them all. His kind were organised, schools did exist for them to attend to teach them these things, but it wasn't unheard of for one of them to take on a student. He understands why Raziel had chosen him over any one of his kind, knows all about the connection between his family and the quiet, small man, but when the time comes for him to fully comprehend who his mentor is, what he does, he can't bring himself to feel anything other than betrayal and rage. "Were you ever going to tell me?"

He wants to hit something, maybe even Raziel, when the man just looks back at him steadily, as if nothing is wrong. "Tell you what, zeri?" The familiar title, in a language he didn't recognise, would have made him smile at any other moment, but hearing it then had only made the anger build. "You know what. When were you going to tell me why you had chosen me, or exactly what you had chosen me for? I shouldn't have heard it from someone else, I should have heard it from you." Raziel doesn't move, just keeps staring at him with that blank look on his face, the one that he knows means he's taking everything in and deciding, carefully, how to react. Given the way he had talked, unheard of when addressing one of them, he expects punishment more than he expects an answer. It's happened before, when someone had made the mistake of questioning the orders of the Others, but no one outright talks about it. They've all seen the people that have their marks ripped away from them, the ink pulled out of their beings right down to their bones, until all that's left is a mess of scar tissue, and how they are thrown away from their houses, left to live or die on the streets as if they had never had families to begin with. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, expecting to feel the excruciating, bone breaking pain of his marks erased from his skin, and flinches away from the soft touches that skate across his face. The featherlight brushes trail across his nose, along his eyebrows, as strong hands settle onto his cheeks, and when he opens his eyes Raziel looks back with his eyes narrowed. Even now, half hidden, the sight of Raziel's eyes make tears appear in his, a burning that comes from looking too close into the black holes they seem to be. "You're going to be my greatest warrior, Luke. You're right, I should have told you who I really was, and I'm sorry for that. Together we're going to change the world, you'll see. Do you trust me?" He wants to say no, but there's no such thing as lying when one of them is this focused on you, so he can't stop himself from nodding. "Close your eyes."

He can't not follow an order, either, even though he doesn't want to, and the hands disappear but the force keeping him in place doesn't. "You're talented, zeri. That's why I chose you, not because of who you were. But you haven't proven yourself yet." He doesn't get time to ask what that means before pain explodes along his shoulders and up into his neck. By the time it reaches his head, he's already curled over on the floor, vision blacking over. When he wakes up, the sun is shining down on him, stinging his eyes, and his marks are gone. The black lines that had spread down the back of his neck and along his shoulders have been removed, replaced by raised lines of scar tissue where they used to be. 'If you're strong enough, you'll get them back,' a voice whispers in his head, one that sounds familiar, sad and amused at the same time. That's when he realises that everyone else had it wrong, that the exiled people hadn't been punished. Raziel had asked them to prove themselves, and they had failed. 'Are you going to be one of them? Or are you going to be my champion?' Even though it hurts, even though the pain is still radiating through his body, he stands up, because he refuses to end up like the rest of them.

He's going to win.