Disclaimer: I own nothing and am making no money from this. I write purely for enjoyment.
Author's Note: Just a quick little oneshot I had rolling around in my brain before I dive into finishing the next WIP. As with all my oneshots, the possibility exists I'll continue it one day, but for now this is it.
Takes place after The Gift in Buffy and before Lazarus Rising in Supernatural.
Encounters of the Heavenly Kind
Buffy slid another tile in place.
"Oh, 'gherkins'! That's a good one, Buffy!" Her grandma said, ignoring the fact that Buffy had played it at least ten times before and misspelled it the first time (okay, maybe the first two or three times).
The small smile her mom was wearing told her she was at least aware of the fact, though.
"Thanks Granny," Buffy forced a smile out.
Don't get her wrong. Heaven was great! All warm and squishy with the good vibes and people she'd lost, but…
She was SO BORED.
Have you ever thought what it would be like to be stuck in a house with your grandma and mom forever? No? Neither had Buffy. She hadn't been there long (at least she didn't think it'd been long – did time work in heaven?), but already the days of nothing were wearing on her. There were the occasional visits from her grandpa, who spent a lot of time "fishing" and her great uncle who smelled like bologna (she was sure bologna wasn't something that was supposed to be in heaven) to add a little variety, but… Yeah. Bored as hell.
Sometimes she went for walks, but besides her mom's little art studio next to granny's, grandpa's fishing lake and her great uncle's bologna smelling little cabin there really wasn't much to see. She'd walked all day once – well, whatever a day was there – and just ended up at her grandma's house again.
She played bologna next and her mom gave her an amused look while granny cooed over her great word choices that day.
"I need to stretch my legs," Buffy said, getting up and stretching her arms out above her head as if to prove she required said stretching.
"I don't think leg cramps exist here," her grandma said, looking thoughtful. "That wouldn't be very heavenly, would it?"
"Let her go, mom," Joyce said. "I think she comes up with all these great words when she's walking. And you want a challenge, right?"
"Oh, definitely! Get to your walk then, dear. We'll be ready for some competition when you get back."
"Yay," Buffy said with a complete lack of enthusiasm.
Managing a genuine smile for her mom, she slipped outside. As she walked down the little empty street her grandma's house sat on, she wondered if this would be it for eternity. Not that she wasn't grateful she wasn't being tortured in a Hell dimension but… this wasn't exactly what she expected her heavenly reward to look like.
Her mom told her (with a somewhat angry look on her face) it was because she was so young – she shouldn't be there yet. Young people didn't think much on what their heaven would look like (Buffy hadn't even believed it really existed) and didn't have a bunch of loved ones who'd gone before to look forward to meeting again. Joyce herself had run into that when she'd gotten there – just grandma Lucy, grandpa Roy and Uncle Dave.
Buffy had nodded and they'd settled in for another game of Scrabble, but inside she'd been confused. She'd seen a lot of death. Not that any of them were family, but… still, she wondered if Merrick was there somewhere, or Jenny, or Kendra or any of the Slayers that came before her. But maybe they had loved ones and Scrabble games of their own, and maybe no wanted to see someone that reminded them of their mortal end…
Lost as she was in her deep thoughts, she almost missed the weird flickering bush to her left as she approached the woods where her grandfather's fishing lake was. At first, she just thought it was the way the light was filtering through the leaves, but when she looked back, she realized it was the bush itself that was changing shades slightly.
"Oooh, glitch in the Matrix," she said, inching closer until a new thought occurred to her. Hadn't there been something about a weird bush in the Bible?
"Umm, God?" She tried, squatting down in front of it, then feeling like an idiot as it just continued to flicker in response.
"Okay, not God then. Too bad, we would have some talking to do about the way this place is decorated…"
Tentatively putting a hand out in the hopes that nothing in heaven would rip it off, she patted the bush only for it to go right through. After only a second's contemplation and a glance back toward her granny's house, she poked her head through, shortly followed by her entire body.
On the other side it was bright – probably eye wateringly bright if she'd had real eyes. Still, fake heavenly eyes and all, it still took a few seconds for her to make out what she was seeing.
It was a compound of some kind.
Rows of strange buildings went on and on and on, bathed in a warm golden light with angles that weren't ones you saw on earth yet were breathtakingly beautiful. The bush had spit her out next to the building on the farthest edge – when she laid a hand on its side, it was warm and made her hear a kind of low melodic tone.
"Awesome," she breathed, wondering if she wished really hard something like this would pop up next to granny's house.
"You shouldn't be here."
She jumped, jerking her hand away from the building and spinning to see… what exactly, she wasn't sure.
A large glowy thing stood (hovered? No, it was touching the ground… Can you stand without legs?) a few feet away from her, a shifting kaleidoscope of golds and whites and pale blues.
"Huh?"
The word more fell out of her open mouth than was spoken, and, in turn, the sentence was repeated from the glow cloud more as just words that just floated into Buffy's ears than were said, because, you know, glowy clouds don't have mouths.
"You shouldn't be here."
"How do you know?" She said, not ready to go back to Scrabble just yet. "Maybe I should be here and you shouldn't be."
"I… I suppose that is a possibility…"
She managed to grin internally while nodding serenely on the outside.
"So, what is this place exactly?"
"If you should be here then shouldn't you know that?"
Instead of sounding snarky, it sounded genuinely confused.
"Well, I mean, this is heaven, isn't it? If I'm here shouldn't it mean I'm meant to be?"
"I suppose…"
It sounded dubious now and Buffy noticed a kind of purple threading through the colors. Was purple, like, the color of suspicion?
"You are very large for a human."
"What?!" Buffy squawked, thoughts of emotional colors squished in outrage.
"We are hundreds of times larger than the human form, yet you are approximately the same size as I am. Why is that?"
Outrage dissipating, Buffy shrugged. "Maybe you shrunk?"
The light flickered turning a strange shade of golden red and swirled in place quickly in what Buffy interpreted as alarm before she waved her hands in front of her.
"Kidding! I was kidding! I mean, the building isn't huge to you, right? It's still normal sized?"
"Yes, yes, of course, it's the correct size. I have not shrunk."
"So just wacky heavenly mojo making us equal sizes I guess. Listen, it's kind of hard to talk to a giant ball of glowy light putting words in my brain. Little trippy actually…"
"Trippy?"
"Uh, makes my brain feel a little melty."
"That sounds… unpleasant. How is this?"
After a second of shifting a man with dark, messy hair and bright blue eyes stood in front of her.
Naked.
"Wowza, much better than a talking glow cloud…"
He looked down at himself curiously.
"Is it? It's an approximation of my earthly vessel's countenance. I've not had use for it before, but this is how I would appear if I were to travel to earth," he said in a ridiculously deep voice.
And that was how Buffy met Castiel.
Castiel had explained that those were the angel barracks and that he had training to get to that first day, so she'd left – stumbling blindly for the hole she'd come through until she suddenly found herself on the other side of the bush. But the next "day" she'd gone back. Probably some major sin to be oogling a hot angel, but a hell of a lot better than hours of Scrabble. That second day she'd waited for what felt like a long time, feeling silly as she sat at the back of the building (it wasn't as if he'd invited her back, or she'd even said she'd be back). But eventually he'd showed up - both seeming surprised but pleased to see each other again. He'd shown her the gardens near the barracks that time, which looked like a collection of strange shapes and colors to Buffy, but she ooohed and ahhhed anyway, because it really was beautiful.
"Why do you continue to come here?" He asked her on her third visit – he'd been waiting for her this time.
"I like it here," she shrugged, then bumped his shoulder with hers. "And the company isn't so bad either."
"Because I'm naked and attractive?"
Buffy burst out laughing. "Definitely doesn't hurt. But, no, I'd still come if you were a glow cloud."
"You'd rather be here than your personal heaven?"
"I don't think I have a personal heaven," she answered, not really looking at him but somehow feeling the alarm from him nonetheless. "It's no big, my mom says it's because I didn't think about it much before I died."
"You are in your mother's heaven? That's not unusual, many family members are often linked together in the afterlife. It's the most prevalent wish to see loved ones again."
"Yep, mom is there. And my grandma and grandpa and my uncle. Mom paints sometimes, but mostly plays Scrabble with me and granny – I think that's because I showed up though. Grandpa fishes. Uncle Dave... eats a lot of bologna, I guess? Maybe I should take up fishing..."
They stopped in front of what looked like a lake of light and Buffy squatted down to run her fingers through the edge, sending multicolored ripples across the surface.
"What would you have it be instead?"
Buffy blinked at him stupidly for a second before standing again. "My heaven? I'm… I don't know actually."
He ticked his head to the side like a curious puppy. "You are with your loved ones, are you not? You have been reunited with those you lost on earth."
"I have, it's just… I don't know, not what I expected?"
"But you did not have any expectations, you just said. An individual's heaven is built on what they wished their eternity to be like. What would you like yours to be?"
"I guess, just… safe. There was always so much fighting," she said, eyes going distant as she remembered the constant battle of just living.
It made her tired just remembering. The constant violence, the worry…
"Yeah, just… to be safe and loved and know that everything will be alright."
"And do you not have that?"
Buffy opened her mouth and shut it twice. She may have been bored at her grandma's, but there was no doubt she felt safe and loved there. And somehow, when she looked inside, she knew everyone back home would be okay. It wasn't the end and she'd see them again.
"Well, damn… I guess I do," she said with a slow smile.
Balthazar was doing what he did best – watching. The others thought they were such mysteries, their actions shrouded, their intentions hidden. They were fools. Today though, he was watching the biggest fool of them all – Cassie.
Little Cassie thought his Slayer friend was his own little secret. And, she was, for the most part. None of the others bothered to watch like Balthazar. He did miss how the two met, but he was relatively sure he caught on by the second meeting – Castiel's furtive glances as he slipped out of training early were so out of character that Balthazar couldn't help but follow.
Today they were at the Lake of Peace and she was touching it. If there had ever been an inkling that a human would be here it probably would've been considered blasphemous. But Castiel just watched her jam her little monkey finger in there with a soft look on his stupid human-like mask. She stood and they talked a moment, then, in a move that had Balthazar choking back a booming laugh, he bumped her shoulder with his own and sent her tumbling into the Lake. He'd obviously been trying to replicate the friendly gesture she'd exhibited earlier, but miscalculated slightly. Typical Cassie.
Then he watched as she sputtered to the surface, laughing, and dragged him in with her. Watching Cassie smile, he wondered if his definition of a fool needed to be adjusted slightly…
They'd all felt it – it was impossible not to. The tainted energy of Osiris sticking his filthy hands into their Heaven and stealing from them. No one cared what human soul he took – it was just a human, after all. Just the audacity of the so-called "God of Death" encroaching on their territory. While the rest ranted and raved about how to punish Osiris, Balthazar sought out Cassie. Because he knew what soul had been snatched and he knew there was one that would care a great deal more than any other about this offence.
Castiel was a thundering mass of grey and red that drew Balthazar like a beacon to the far barracks.
"Cassie, you look in a right snit, what's the trouble?"
"Do not play your games with me now, Balthazar. You know perfectly well what the trouble is."
After a beat of surprised silence on Balthazar's side, he tested the waters. "Didn't realize you would get so worked up over a little intrusion. Old grudge against Osiris?"
"I know perfectly well you've been following us, Balthazar."
Balthazar couldn't help it, he laughed in joy. It was so much more fun when someone exceeded his expectations!
"Yet you continued to meet with her?"
"I knew you wouldn't say anything."
Again he found himself shocked. "How?"
"Because you are my friend. And that's why you're not going to say anything when I go to retrieve her."
And there it was. The warmth that spread through him at that proclamation revealed the truth of the matter – the real fool was Balthazar himself.
"I am, and that's why I can't let you go after her," he said blocking Castiel's energy from reaching for its vessel.
Castiel jerked back from him, a fury he didn't know the other angel was capable almost scalding him.
"Humans weren't meant to return after experiencing heaven, Balthazar," he hissed, his anger changing the construct of the building slightly into something harsher and more pointed. "It will destroy her to return to the life she led after experiencing this."
"Yes, yes, her incredible afterlife of Scrabble marathons," he said drily. "Did it ever occur to you, Cassie, that she had no Heaven of her own because she wasn't meant to be here yet?"
Castiel froze, anger receding.
"Why would- I don't understand."
"Because you don't watch, Castiel," Balthazar said, his own anger rising before he bit it back.
How could he explain that all the small things he witnessed on a daily basis were building to something bigger he couldn't yet name? The behavior of certain angels had been very odd as of late; there was talk of the Seals that hadn't been mentioned in millennia; Michael was watching earth when he usually didn't give two shits about it; the Slayer just "happened" to find a way into the barracks… The list went on and on and Balthazar couldn't figure out what it all meant, let alone explain it to Cassie. Instead, he fell back on the tried and true reasoning - one that might not work on some angels anymore, but he knew would work on foolish, loyal Castiel.
"Father is not blind to what goes on."
Castiel's still rolling energy stilled, the fight seeping out of him and the building resuming its normal shape.
"You think Father planned this?"
"What Father plans is beyond me," Balthazar said, fighting to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "And you."
They were silent for a while before Cassie asked quietly, "Will she be all right?"
That was something Balthazar could answer more definitely.
"You know the answer to that even better than I do, Cassie."
And he bumped him lightly, like he'd seen the two do in the past.
Not much later Balthazar watched as Cassie was chosen to retrieve the Righteous Man from Hell, and he finally felt the pieces falling in place. There were better warriors, those more familiar with the layout of hell, those more familiar with humans - but that's not what they were looking for. They wanted someone who lacked all of these things and was nothing more than a good little soldier, one that would follow the rules. So, Balthazar bit his tongue and decided to watch the fireworks play out. Because whoever chose little Cassie for this mission (and it wasn't dear old dad, he was sure - or maybe it was in some backwards way, because that would be so him) were making the same mistake Balthazar had made - assuming Castiel was a fool.
No one knew about the lost little Slayer that had found her way into Cassie's heart, or the influence she'd left on him. Maybe Cassie himself didn't realize it yet. But, deep inside, it was there, Balthazar was sure. And when he needed it most, Castiel would find that strength she'd left him.
So, Balthazar did what he did best, and he watched…