Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

"So, I wanna help you. I'm about to lose my family here if you don't tell me how... please, Castiel, just talk to me. What do you want from me?"

– God calls you forth now to do His will. It is time for me to dwell within your body and take it as my vessel. Trust and obey, Jimmy. –

"Yes. I always have. I – "

– Are you willing that I should do this? Understand: I need your consent. –

"Yes, I understand. Promise my family will be okay, and I'll do it."

– I promise. We always keep our promises. –

"Then... yes. I'll do it."

Jimmy Novak turns his eyes towards the sky, his gaze one of reverent expectation; and as he gives himself over fully to Castiel, angel of the Lord, he can feel the outside world spreading away from him, like seashore waves cascading in reverse.

The first impressions are not of warmth or love or anything close to what he imagined while sitting in the pews on Sunday morning. Instead it's stark and cold and there's a harsh light that obliterates his vision – obliterates it as surely as Castiel's true form would sear out his eyeballs, were he to fully look upon it – and total, overwhelming despair steals his joy, his entire worldview (God, angels, all of it) crashing into pieces in the space of a few seconds. There is no artistry here, he realizes: only a universe of mathematical calculations, designed to take him apart cell by cell.

– Castiel! –

He cries out, instinctively, and there's no response. Instead the light pulses and throbs with horrible indifference. He knows now that it was all a mistake. He'd been tricked, and now the angel is going to devour him, as all the angels must do with the souls of their vessels. And the worst thing is that it's not anything like being attacked by a predator – that at least he could understand – but more like being transported on a sterile conveyor belt into a car compactor, like in an animated movie he once watched with Claire.

He cries out his daughter's name, as the light begins weaving into the fabric of his soul with electric tremors, thrum-thrum-thrum. It threads through him, changes him. He is a wave, then a particle, then nothing at all – or rapidly becoming nothing at all. Idiot terror now fully grips Jimmy like a fist and he screams, but there is no longer any mouth with which to scream: nor eyes, nor ears, nor limbs. His soul, his I, is winking out of existence in this nightmarish unplace, as Castiel absorbs it all unto himself, like a machine created solely to feed –

Finally, when he's been pushed and fitted and whittled down into an infinitesimal dot, nothing more than a smattering of irreducible parts, the angel speaks. His voice is huge and booming and it makes Jimmy shudder.

– Fear not. This is not my first indwelling. I am merely refashioning your soul into a more compact form. –

– Claire. Claire! Amelia. –

– Claire and Amelia will be safe. –

Castiel sounds puzzled, and maybe annoyed, and that causes the fear to bleed out of Jimmy, replaced by untold relief. Emotion is good. Emotion is preferred. Rippling cold tingles up and down his not-spine, and the light continues to throb, but it's not quite as intense, and now he can perceive colors: silver-blue and mackerel scales that dance in disjointed unity.

– I'm so cold. I don't understand what you are doing. –

Castiel says nothing, and Jimmy starts to panic again. He's never felt more a stranger in his own body. Every moment that the angel occupies it, it becomes less and less his: the blood racing like lightning through his veins, the heart booming thunder in his chest, the bones and skin and muscles and all the rest of it. He feels like a ghost. He feels dead. Castiel isn't going to absorb him, but he still made a horrible mistake, and it's too late to take it back.

– Please, Castiel, – he says, not caring that he's begging. – I'm so scared. –

– I know you're scared. I'm cushioning you in my Grace. –

– What? –

– We have a lot of work ahead of us, – and the angel sounds almost purposefully vague. – Your soul is the appropriate size, but now I need to take measures to protect it. –

– Protect it? Protect it from what? What kind of work are we doing? –

– God's will. –

And then he feels the caress of steel-soft wings: twin spectrums of light descending to cover the speck of nothingness that is him. The angel's gesture is clumsy but not unkind, and Jimmy relaxes minutely, retreating further into the warmth offered by the massive, rainbow-esque wings. Castiel lets him. At the same time, he can feel Castiel wrapping himself around him in increasingly tighter coils, his movements careful but unrelenting. As he does so, he begins to sing, completing the process of harmonization, bonding his Grace to his vessel.

It's an imperfect song, an escalating radio whine that speaks more to the quadratic formula than the music of the spheres, but there is still glory in it. The music swells and crescendos, ultimately overwriting the initiatives of his own nervous system, making him surrender control over each body part (here a pinky finger, there his right eyelid). The process could be agonizingly painful, but it is not. Instead Castiel continues to work as he will, like a surgeon operating with the aid of anesthesia. It is beautiful, exquisite harmony and a horrible, discordant mess; but eventually the cacophony resolves into something approaching the former, and Jimmy finally lets himself relax fully into its strains.

But he is still deeply uneasy.

Because, somehow, he understands that Castiel is not supposed to be making allowances like this for his vessel. Castiel isn't even supposed to want to make allowances. Certainly not to sing, or to reassure.

Angels are machines, and Castiel isn't acting like one.

– This isn't how it's supposed to go, – he tells him. – You're not supposed to be like this. –

– I am what I am. –

– I'm scared. –

– I am not defective. –

Castiel sounds almost defensive, but the steel in his voice is nothing to smile about, if Jimmy even had lips to smile. He tries to retreat away from it, but the angel's Grace keeps him firmly tethered; and Castiel's sternness fades away, replaced by a much more human emotion: doubt.

And maybe doubt is something that Jimmy needs right now.

– No, – he agrees. – You're not. I will praise Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. –

For a long time there's nothing but radio silence layering over his consciousness, and Jimmy figures he's being ignored. When next the angel chooses to speak, he sounds curious. Or maybe impressed. Something.

– You are a faithful man, Jimmy Novak. – And then, even more enigmatically: – You may be tested. –

– I'm already being tested. I... all this... you misled me. –

Castiel doesn't even try to deny it. Jimmy doesn't know if that makes him more or less angel-like. – Let us not speak on that. Look, the indwelling is complete. –

And Castiel opens his eyes for him.

He's still standing in the crest of newly-fallen snow outside his house, icy flakes dusting his shoulders and hair, his breath visible in the frozen half-light. It had been so cold when he first stepped outside (over a lifetime ago now, it seems; he remembers slinging an oversized coat on over his sharpest business suit, wondering if Castiel might get chilly), but at the moment he doesn't feel it. In fact, all of his senses – barring sight – have been suspended, as if the signal facilitating connection between his soul and body petered out and died. That's how deeply Castiel has hidden him inside his own body, he realizes.

Before he can think about it too much and become terrified, he feels his body being turned, and he sees his daughter.

Claire stares at him, her doe-like eyes wide and concerned. Jimmy looks at her, and for the moment nothing in the world at all exists except for her. His strong, smart, talented, beautiful baby girl.

"I love you so much," he tries to say, but the words won't come. He can feel his lips moving, but he's not the one moving them, and he can't hear what is being said. And then – upheld by wings, cradled in Grace – his consciousness begins the long slide into a sleep that is equal parts fantasy and nightmare.

– Rest now, Jimmy. And thank you. –

His final thoughts are Castiel's thoughts, wondering (not without conviction) about the wonderfully made things that are human beings.