Title: and all the children of God said amen
Characters/Pairings: Jimmy, Jacob, Dean, Sam, Bobby, Castiel, Anna, Zachariah, Amelia, Claire
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Castiel has a message for his vessel.
Word Count: 2602
Notes: 4.20 AU, Novakcest/Canonverse fusion. Generous liberties taken with both. If you don't know what the Novakcest Verse is, check out the tumblr of the same name. Or check out the short version: Jacob Glaser of Stonehenge Apocalypse fame is Jimmy Novak's twin brother, and they and their mother are hunters.

THE STORY SO FAR

Jimmy said yes. And then he dreamed.

It is not the right word. There are no right words. He is a particle of awareness blown here and there in the wind, the world light and formless around him; he is debris on a crushing wave of sight and sound and sensation that his meagre human senses can barely comprehend. And sometimes he is in a room, the doors locked tight and windows barred, and sometimes he isn't alone.

Amelia will not speak to him. "When will you come home, Daddy?" Claire asks, old enough to understand the concept of sacrifice but not old enough to understand its costs. His friends drift through, shaking their heads at his madness. "There's a doctor who can help you," Roger says. Jacob stops by to play cards, just like old times. "This décor sucks," he says, looking around. The walls are always pale, the windows always look upon nothing. Jimmy watches the movement of his brother's fingers pulling at his collar, the memory of sweat meandering down the memory of his throat. "I can't get the windows open," he apologizes.

"You can't get out, period," Jacob says, and lays down his hand. "That's the real problem here." He's on a winning streak, just like in real life; Jimmy briefly considers the idea that this is the truth, the card game and the two of them and the madhouse imprisoning him and his flights of insanity but Jacob shakes his head, reaches out and turns over Jimmy's cards and Jimmy has won this game.

"Remember this," he says, his voice growing deep and rough with the suggestion of layers over layers, of impossibly long years casting shadows through the valleys of its acoustics. They look the same but in some indefinable way (the same way Jimmy can look at his reflection in the mirror) he knows he is no longer looking at his brother but at the angel, the one wearing their body and their face. "You would have long ago broken without this sanctuary," Castiel says. "But remember: you swore your service before me. Before God." He leans forward, eyes fierce and blue and intent. His other eyes stare, unblinking, nestled in between the many shimmering mechanisms of his wings. "Have faith, Jimmy Novak. This is in your mind, yes, but it is also real."

"My brother," Jimmy begins, falters. In the waking world he would have forever remained silent, but though he can feel pain here, it is dulled by the presence of the angel standing as indomitable as a city fortification in between soul and body. Sometimes, Castiel bleeds, a drying trail from the corner of his mouth or enough to stain his whole shirt red and Jimmy suffers the echo, a kind of phantom feedback from an amputated body through whatever strange angel-vessel connection that they share.

Castiel rides the connection now, seeking the end of the aborted thought. Jimmy keeps no secrets from Castiel, because he can keep no secret from Castiel; something he is simultaneously uneasy and relieved about. The thousand eyes stare into him and see everything but Castiel does not judge; judgement being solely the domain of God.

"I keep my promises," he answers at last, in a tone of gentle rebuke. "He is safe. They are all safe."

This is not what Jimmy wants to know. But then, if he does not quite know what is it that he really wants, he cannot expect Castiel, beautiful and detached and utterly inhuman (not in spite of, possibly because of), to know either.

The family that slays together stays together.

A joke, but not a particularly good one. It is war with all the rules broken; the children and the women on the frontlines killing together with the men. One day a civilian, the next day a soldier; the comforting façade of safety torn away from a dark, dangerous, senseless world through which monsters out of time and myth prowled without regard for the illogic of their existence.

"Who did you lose?"

"Someone." She wears a pale band of skin around one finger but no wedding ring. She will pass through the next round of questioning, the first of the hunter trials, with the same studied indifference, the fragile armor she has already learned how to don and will continue to cultivate over the following years. She has two boys in the car that she will drive from contact to contact, all the way up and down the country if needs be until she finds who—and what—she is looking for.

She will have her revenge where many others have failed. By then, though, it's too late. The world will never look the same again. The whisper of leaves in a breeze, the crack of a twig underfoot would never sound the same again. There are monsters which take on people-shapes, betrayed only by the merest glint of black in an eye, the stutter of a camera image. She watches for these things with a vigilance that has become an integral part of her as much as the inflation and deflation of her lungs, the blinking of her eyes, a cog in the system of survival.

A soldier never comes home from war, not truly. Not from this war. Even if she wants to, the monsters know her name and the names of her two boys. She's in it for good; as bound as though she has entered into a demonic contract signed and sealed in blood.

Years later, her son tries anyway. Fate has other ideas.

"My brother tried," a stranger tells Jimmy. He is sure they have met before but he cannot quite remember where. His skin itches. The stranger is dark-haired, green-eyed, good-looking but lacking the sort of unconscious confidence that usually goes with it. His carriage is casual but Jimmy can see the gaping hole in his chest where his heart ought to be. "Got the girl, got some fancy-pants education. Kid wanted to be a lawyer." Jimmy notes the faint shred of pride buried in the condescension. The man looks away. "The girl died. He couldn't have stopped it, couldn't have saved her, but…"

Jimmy had a wife and daughter. (He cannot count on still having them.) His happiness is tempered, always, with fear, that he will lose them one day; with caution, for he must live on if he loses them that day, even if it is only for revenge, to walk the same path his mother had taken.

"I would have done it all over again," Jimmy says. "They…" They are two of the few things in life I don't regret.

"But you went back again, dude," the stranger says, tilting his head and frowning in disapproval. He loves his brother. Family is important to him. "Why did you leave them?" His voice is colored with anger, with envy. With every passing second he becomes less a stranger, his history unwinding from him in strips of vivid color that curl around their feet. Jimmy still does not know his name, but names have no meaning here, in this intimate communication between souls.

An angel called me. "I couldn't say no," he murmurs, and realizes that this is true, more true than the similar but not equivalent statement I said yes. How could he have said no? The finger of God had landed on him, marked him as a piece in a narrative on a much grander scale than he is used to. He and his family had struggled to save lives, one at a time. Castiel promised that this would save the world.

"You had a choice," the man says, still annoyed—still a little hurt, extrapolated from whatever had passed between him and his brother.

Jimmy wonders if Jacob feels the same way. "No," he says. "I don't really think I did."

He has no flesh to burn, but the fire burns him anyway. He has no lungs to scream with, no nerves to warn him of pain. But his light flickers, filmed over with soot and the filth of human souls breaking and broken, and he knows he must hurry, before the flame of Hell consumes him completely, before the Righteous Man lifts his blade and spills the first blood of the Apocalypse.

Help us, the souls plead, but he is not looking for them and they speed by him in a stream of agony and regret. Flashes of memory contaminate him: a dead child, dead children, mutilations and murders and rapes and good intentions turned sour in a constant loop wound in endlessly on itself like the coils of the ouroboros. They deserve this fate, he tells himself. The Righteous Man will be different, a paragon among men.

The chains rattle, a trapped soul crying and wailing at the ends of it. The fabric of the world shifts, rusty gears grinding into position, a perfect alignment of omens. He thinks he must be mistaken. But the stamp of Michael shines out at him like a star from the skin of the torturer bent so industriously over its victim, the hellfire tracing the thick, ropy scars that deface both of them into shapes barely recognizable as human.

Castiel descends, screaming in outrage. The demons that stand in his way do not even bother to stop him, flitting out of the reach of his blade, grins gleaming with mad triumph. Unholy Father, they whisper, unhallowed be thy name…

Castiel takes the Righteous Man with him, that decaying soul still dripping with sin and blood. It fights him, curses him. Take me back, it keeps howling. Take me back, I don't belong out there. It babbles a name. Alastair, Alastair, take me back.

Castiel takes him home.

(So this is how I know him.)

"Uncle Jacob!"

Claire flies out of the door, flings herself at Jacob's knees with such force that they buckle and almost send the two of them stumbling to the ground. Jimmy laughs at Jacob's face, his look of panic as he holds back from swearing in the nick of time before Amelia can smack him for corrupting Claire. Instead he hobbles up the steps with Claire still attached.

"You're spoiling her, Jimmy," he complains. "I can't feel my leg anymore."

"You're one to talk," Jimmy says, laughing, as Claire disengages herself to take a look at what Jacob has brought—and the presents he's bought for her. "Get your own kid and leave mine alone."

Jacob gives an innocent shrug. "I'm not responsible for Claire's future wellbeing," he says. "As the rich favourite uncle I'm just responsible for spoiling her rotten." He stands, brushing ineffectually at the hand-shaped scuff marks on his jeans. "So what's for dinner, Chef Jimmy?"

Jimmy starts to answer—

This never happened.

"Is this not what you wanted?"

"I don't want what I can never have."

"I'm sorry."

"No, you're not."

A red-haired woman dies and is reborn in light. She is Castiel's sister. His orders are to capture or kill her on sight. Castiel loves her. He loves all his family. He does not understand, but surely Heaven does.

"I have questions, I have doubts. I don't know what is right and what is wrong anymore."

The seal was broken. Yet the children before him are alive to laugh and play, unaware of how close they have come to annihilation. Dean does not regret his choices. Where is that old certainty in Castiel himself? The faith that had carried him through millennia as a mere observer in Heaven, through the trials of Hell?

Lucifer had fallen, because he had had no faith in the ways of his Father. Castiel is afraid, for the first time in his existence. Heaven is static, orderly, safe. Castiel knows his place as a soldier. He does not know what he is when he speaks to Dean, when he investigates the contents of a heart that does not belong to him. Castiel feels, and it is terrifying and exhilarating all at once. He has not changed once since his creation at the beginning of time. He is changing now.

Oh for God's sake, Jimmy says, and is unheard or ignored.

Castiel comes to the shore of another country. The hem of their coat grows heavy with sand, seawater rushing into their shoes. The sea dashes itself against the rocks with a thundering roar, shatters itself into salty spray dropping through the air. The land recedes, proceeds as the wind and the water will. The mountains rise and fall. Castiel looks a thousand years forward and a thousand years behind and the world is different again.

In six years Dean and Sam Winchester will be gone forever and all who ever cared for them will be dead. How do humans live with this, the shortness of their transient, malleable lives? Castiel detects a shortness of breath in his vessel's lungs. The body is cold where the wind plasters the wet fabric of their coat to their skin. Castiel breathes warmth into the air around him and they are clean again, the sand gone, the water in their socks gone. Jimmy misses the feeling of sand in between his toes. At this moment in time his mother is ten years gone. "Are you asking me?"

Castiel is an angel; he does not need answers from humans. Instead he seeks certainty in battle. His mind closes around Jimmy like a steel trap, a sleek complicated machine processing calculations, optimum strategies. There is simplicity in slaying the enemies of God and humanity both. His superiors can have no complaint of him in this area. Castiel feels like an angel again. Before, he simply was; he is appalled at his need for reassurance.

Dean Winchester. Castiel hates him, admires him. Dean Winchester would rather break a seal than sacrifice innocents to save it. Dean would spit upon Heaven's plans for the world. But he is not God; he cannot see the trajectories of the many futures, or pick out the best of all possible paths. Destinies have been written, the Fates have been charged with their tasks. This Apocalypse has been a long time in coming. When it does come, it will be glorious.

This is what you must do, Zachariah tells him.

This is what he does.

A quiet dream, a happy dream. Castiel makes it specially for Dean, who has had little such happiness in his life. The water laps at the pier, and the fish swimming in the lake are fat and slow. Dean smiles as he reels in a catch. Castiel steps in.

"Meet me here."

The angels come first.

You must warn them—

The door opens, the windows break. Castiel pours in, and Jimmy raises his hand to shield himself from the blinding light. The angel's true voice crashes through him like a roll of thunder. "What's wrong?" he says.

Castiel screams in reply. Jimmy screams. It is as if many hands are rummaging through him and tearing him apart from the inside. He clutches the sides of his head, presses his palms against his wildly gyrating heart. He can feel Castiel's grace scratching on the inside of his skin, trying to hold on, slipping and scarring as he is pulled further and further away. "Castiel!" he shouts.

Warn them...

Castiel is dimming, casting Jimmy's vision and consciousness into slowly growing darkness. Jimmy grasps at thin air. The threads in their connection fray, Castiel blinking in and out like an image with poor reception. "Warn who about what?"

Castiel tells him. Castiel vanishes.

Somewhere else, Jimmy wakes.

-end-