Anael is made before the coming of man. God pulls at the strings of the universe to make her grace. God holds her in his hands to give her form. He shapes her with the tenderness of a father holding his child. When he finishes with Anael, God moves on and starts from the beginning, making another brother to add to the ranks.
Anael, along with all her new brothers, stand witness to Lucifer's fall. God makes them watch, with the understanding as a warning or a lesson. Anael doesn t think about why, because God doesn t order her to think about why.
God orders her to stand watch.
Anael stands on earth for a thousand years before her call comes. Middle management is bringing her to the front lines.
War with hell is the hardest thing Anael has ever endured. Harder than winter so cold the cattle died, and summer so hot the crops caught fire.
The red horseman drags angels into battle like a gleeful child, but angels are soldiers and what else do soldiers do besides fight? They were made to be pieces bent to his will, because all soldiers know is war.
Anael watches Barchiel s sacrifice. Her leader's angelic form turns to fire against the demons of hell. He was her brother, the last survivor of her garrison's command, and his sacrifice has saved her.
Anael is alone again.
Oriphiel is a seraph. Her form is hard and battle worn, but it wraps around Anael, soothing the images of Barchiel s ending from her mind.
Oriphiel promotes her. She gives Anael her own garrison, her own lieutenant.
Sabriel is strong; a fighter.
When he dies, Gazardiel becomes her lieutenant, and Uriel joins their garrison.
Soon Anael's garrison is a hundred strong.
Oriphiel's death rocks Anael to her core. The seraphim do not live on the battlefield. They carry the orders of the archangels to the garrison leaders. Oriphiel was her superior, she was coming to see her when demons ambushed. Her death is Anael s responsibility.
Anael meets her new superior soon after Oriphiel's death. She does not like Zachariah. She wants Oriphiel back.
Gazardiel dies.
Anael likes Uriel. She promotes him to lieutenant.
Balthazar accuses her of playing favourites. Anael likes Balthazar too, but she reminds him that she is his superior and he'd better learn to show her some respect.
Castiel joins their garrison to fill Uriel's old position, and it strikes Anael how young he is. He hasn't stood a thousand years before being called to serve, like Anael has. The forces of hell grow stronger, thriving with the growing vices of humanity. God creates angels like buying new toys now, only making them to replace the ones his army has lost.
Anael sees more and more differences between Oriphiel and Zachariah. When more of her brothers die, Zachariah does not take her grace and cradle it in his as Oriphiel had. He only brings more orders.
Anael wants Oriphiel back.
After Zachariah's presence has gone, Uriel takes her close and speaks for only Anael to hear. His comments on Zachariah are unapologetic and they hit everything Anael has thought about her superior, but not said. It makes her grace sing in happiness and- no, happiness is a feeling. The angels are soldiers. They are not to allow let feelings to get in their way.
Rules clearly state Anael is to bring Uriel to her superiors if his actions continue.
Anael does not bring him to her superiors.
Uriel's actions continue.
After battle, Anael and Uriel draw each other close and talk where they think no one else can hear them. They speak to each other freely, as they have never spoken to anyone before.
Their latest battle has been particularly long, particularly stressful, particularly tiring. Maybe Anael and Uriel haven't been as careful, maybe they haven't cared as much about being caught.
Balthazar is the first to find them, huddled together away from the rest of the camping garrison. Anael is mid-laugh when she sees Balthazar watching them. He hasn't meant to hide from them, but he leaves when he cannot meet the eyes of his leader.
Seeing Balthazar, his uncertainty at the small expression of rebellion between Uriel and his leader, makes Anael understand the gravity of what she and Uriel are doing.
Surely, though, God could see them, and if he was angry, he would have smote them where they stood, wouldn't he?
The next time between battles, Anael and Uriel meet again. They are careful again, and they see Balthazar approach from a distance, come to ask what he had not been able to last time.
If he is surprised to see Anael with her lieutenant again, he hides it well, as all good soldiers of the lord are taught.
After his question is answered, it is Uriel who invites him to stay. When Balthazar agrees hesitantly, Anael welcomes him into their fold, their family of two quickly becoming three.
After that, Anael watches out for Balthazar during the battles against hell's most fearsome. She notices him more. She notices the way he gravitates to the young angel that joined her garrison in the wake of Uriel's promotion.
Balthazar, Anael realises, is older than she originally thought. She hadn't paid him mind when he'd been new to her garrison, but it should have stood out that he wasn t a fresh recruit. A replacement, yes, after Sabriel died, but he'd been transferred from another garrison.
Anael wonders what for.
Disobedience, she would find out later.
Soon, Anael, Uriel, and Balthazar have another addition to their tight knit family. Castiel is welcomed, and Anael feels inside herself that Castiel is young, and does not understand the defiance it means to join their circle. Still, she forces these feelings to the bottom, and does not let them surface.
For a long time Anael feels more love than she has ever felt before. She is among her brothers, and the battles are in their favour. The more time they spend among humans, the more time they understand the concept of laughter. Uriel is the best at the human action of telling a joke .
But Anael knows, as all angels do, only God's love is infinite, and everything else must end.
One day, in the middle of battle, she is called from the field by the Archangels. They say they are aware of her disobedience and they tell her she is leading her garrison astray. This is her first offence, and God is merciful, so she will be given a warning, but if things continues she will be punished.
Things do not continue.
Anael worries that she has lead her brothers astray, for her feelings told her, when Castiel had become the fourth member of their group, that it was against all the laws heaven had set.
When Balthazar hears of this, he is angry. Anael blames herself, for this confirms she has lead her brothers to feel, and she should not and would not let it continue.
So things did not continue.
Uriel is only her lieutenant. Balthazar is only her subordinate. Castiel is only a soldier to be prepared for battle.
Hell's demons are ceaseless. Her brothers have been from home so long, and there is a slow, searing ache to be touched with heaven's light one more time.
More wars are fought. More wars are won by Anael and her troops. More are orders given.
In battle, the demons are truly inspired. Every time an angel falls, more demons rise up to claim their kills and slaughter her brothers by the thousands.
Finally, the orders come to fall back. Brothers would be lost, Anael knows, but her orders demand sacrifices be made.
Castiel is on the field, and he will be lost too.
When has Anael come to think of one brother as more important than all the other soldiers? She is an angel of the lord and she is supposed to love equally and indiscriminately.
Balthazar shouts at her, asks her how she can do these things, asks her how he is supposed to stand at her side while she lets their brother die.
This is not God s love. It is not his will. It is not his plan.
Balthazar runs out into the battlefield and does something rash, something reckless, something stupid.
He saves everyone.
The angels rejoice, for their battle is won.
Anael knows the consequences of Balthazar's insubordination. The Seraphim are coming. They will take him to the archangels.
They only have moments before their superiors would collecting him. Balthazar comes to her, and Anael cradles everything he is in her grace, wishing she could hide him there and shelter him forever. She doesn't care about impossibilities anymore.
She tells him that he's saved so many people and the archangels would see this, and God is merciful, and he is good, and Balthazar is loyal and noble and also good.
It is Balthazar's turn to hold her and comfort her now, and everything she is shakes, with rage, and fear, and guilt, and pain, and sadness, and humanity.
He speaks to her, the way only she can hear, they way they had so long ago. He says he's going back to heaven, isn't he? And that's what so many here yearn for, so rejoice and be glad.
He too, shakes with humanity.
Anael looks to heaven and sees what they have taken from her. They have taken the people she loves, and her freedom to love.
She looks to heaven and she cries out in anger. She has been their loyal soldier, and their loyal leader, never swaying in her love for her father, but if he is up there, why does he take away their freedom to love, a right which he so easily bestows on his favoured children.
Anael looks to heaven and she sees its corruption for what it is. Their freedom to love has been taken from them in fear of rebellion. They love their God, and no one before him, because this keeps them in line above all orders and all superiors.
This is a heaven Anael can no longer serve.
She pulls at the grace fashioned by her absent father. It comes first in a small trickle, then a stream, mounting ever higher until there's nothing attaching her to the heavens, her ethereal tether broken.
She is a comet falling through the night skies.
Castiel, in heaven sees her fall, and he gathers her grace and he wants to bring it back to her, but she has already fallen too far, and gone where he can't go, so he throws it to her, hoping, Sister, Sister, please take this, please come back to us, please come back to me, but her grace never finds her in the skies, and it falls short.
The Seraphim come to perform a customary employee evaluation after Anael s fall. Uriel expects to be given charge of the garrison in Anael's absence, as he is her lieutenant. The seraphim, however, make the excuse that they see him more fit for a specialist position, and remove him from the garrison, posting him somewhere else far from home.
All that is left of their little family is Castiel, and he has seen battlefields of the dead, and he has had the people he loved taken from him, and Anael no longer thinks him too young to be a soldier.
In the year 2008, Anna Milton hears a voice.
Dean Winchester is saved. The righteous man has been raised from Perdition.
It is Castiel's voice that drags her from her Eden of blissful ignorance.
That was an announcement, the first words after a long battle for the soul of the righteous man. After that, the tally of the dead. This lasts days. Names of angels are recited, but never mourned. Names, and names, and names, but the angels never cry for the brothers they lost.
Anna washes dishes one night and tries not to listen to anymore names, because it s been a long day, and did the casualties ever stop?
She hears the name Balthazar, and it takes her a long time to realise she s dropped that last plate and now there s porcelain everywhere, and oh no she s bleeding, but all she can hear in her mind is Balthazar, and her heart aches for this angel she has never known, and she wants to cry, like she's lost her own brother.
But Castiel is there, and he still speaks.
Even in the hospital, his voice is a welcome comfort.