This story has been eating my brain for a week. So, I'm starting it. Having written an outline for it...it's going to be even longer than I originally thought it would be. Starting it now is almost certainly a bad idea. But screw it. I'll try to work on it interspersed with finishing Offline.
This story is based on a prompt from Writing Prompt Wednesday.
What is Writing Prompt Wednesday?
Writing Prompt Wednesday is a feature I run on my Tumblr. Followers, readers and friends suggest themes for AUs, and I come up with a list of prompts based on the suggested them. Then, based on those prompts, anyone who wants to join in writes up a short story (or a long story, I guess) and posts it to Tumblr (or AO3, or FF dot net, or wherever) and tags it Writing Prompt Wednesday! If you cross post to AO3, make sure you add the story to the Writing Prompt Wednesday Collection. You can read all the prompts on AO3 or by searching the Writing Prompt Wednesday tag on Tumblr.
This story is for Week 18: Telepathic AUs.
You can read more about Writing Prompt Wednesday and see this week's prompts on my unforth-ninawaters dot tumblr dot com.
This week, I chose this prompt:
Historically, a sin-eater would eat a ritual meal to assume the sins of those around them, thus exonerating the original person. With the advent of species-wide telepathy, the term has taken on a new meaning - a sin-eater is the dumping place for the telepathically projected sins of their community or family, allowing everyone other than the sin-eater to live a blissfully happy, untroubled existence, while the sin-eater suffers for all of their wrong doings and wrong thoughts. And I'm a sin-eater...
Archive Warning: Rape/Non-Con
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester; Castiel/Other(s); Abaddon/Dean Winchester
Characters: Dean Winchester; Castiel; Sam Winchester; Abaddon (Supernatural)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe – Fantasy; Top Castiel; Bottom Dean; Demon Blood Addiction; Telepathy; Telekinesis; Spy Castiel; Anal Sex; Anal Fingering; Masturbation; Other Additional Tags to Be Added; Angst; Angst with a Happy Ending; Juvenilization; Twink Dean; Virgin Dean; Bisexual Castiel; Demisexual Dean; Slow Burn; Miscommunication; Dean Has Self-Esteem Issues; Writing Prompt Wednesday; Dark; Demons; Demon Castiel; Addiction; Touch-Starved Dean; Coercion; Blood Drinking; Bloodplay; Blood Magic; Accidental Feces Ingestion; Accidental Urine Ingestion' only a little but i wanted to warn for it; Dean Whump
About the Archive Warnings:
1. (lack of) Underage Tag: Despite early indications otherwise Dean is NOT underage.
2. Rape/Non-con: There is no actual, physical rape/non-con in this story. Telepathy/mental communication plays a prominent role in this story, and in light of that there will be discussion of the appropriateness or inappropriateness of having fantasies involving a non-consenting person, and specifically of sharing those fantasies telepathically before consent has been obtained. As I prefer to air on the side of over-tagging, I have decided to warn for Rape/Non-con. The events in question will be consented to after the fact, for whatever that is worth. If you have concerns and would like more information, feel free to contact me on Tumblr and I'll be happy to explain.
"Can you direct me to the home of the local Sin Eater?" After several hours of searching the neighborhoods of Lawrence, Castiel had not been able to locate where he could Unburden himself. The challenge confused him; in other cities he'd visited things were much like in his homeland far to the north. The home of the Sin Eater was centrally located, well-marked and easy to find. Contacts in Dakota had warned him that things were different in Kansas, but he'd not realized how true their words were.
"He's outside the south gate, can't miss it," snapped the shopkeeper, eying Castiel with unexpected disgust. As Castiel turned away, the man spat at Castiel's feet.
"Thank you," he stammered with what diplomacy he could muster in the face of such rudeness.
Lawrence was a large city, easily several thousand souls, homes built cheek by jowl, second floors hanging so far over the first that, as the sun lowered towards mid-afternoon, the streets were already in shadows. Uneven cobblestones were rimed with frost. The smell of refuse and rot and worse permeated the air. The joints between the stones were suspiciously damp despite days of dry weather; the reason was obvious as a housekeeper opened an upper floor window and heedlessly emptied a chamber pot, urine and feces splattering those too slow to dodge the deluge. Pigs and rats rooted in the darkest shadows, competing over discarded scraps. Metal-shod hooves clattered loudly on stone and Castiel barely jumped out of the way before a horse cantered by, splashing fetid water in all directions.
He'd been in Lawrence less than 24 hours and he already hated it.
Walking down the dreary streets, surrounded by hawkers and workers and idle children and their exhausted parents, Castiel couldn't help but contrast this kingdom with his home. As he stopped and bought a fresh loaf of bread and a hunk of yellow cheese from a man and woman pushing a cart, he wished that duty didn't take him so far from familiar haunts. Heaven perched high in the mountains. It was not an easy place to live: food was scarce and the poor often suffered for it, but the rich were profoundly wealthy on the bounty of the mines and largesse was considered both a civic and moral duty. Those at the lowest rungs of society might not live well but they could live. A complex series of aqueducts pumped pure fresh snow melt from higher in the peaks down through the city and the sewers carried waste down the cliffs to fertilize the valleys below. Those condemned of crimes were tasked with cleaning the streets under the watchful eyes of their guards. The city was pristine, sparkling, a city on a hill, a beacon of light and hope for the world.
Lawrence more closely resembled the descriptions Castiel had read of the underworld. Even in the nicest parts of the city, the air was ever permeated with an undernote of decay. Filth and sin barely hid down alleyways and behind shuttered windows. Food was plentiful yet neglected, the rotten fruit left in amidst the ripe despite the danger of despoiling the bunch. He hadn't needed a warning not to drink the water in Lawrence; the semi-transparent brownish tone of the laughable, stinking liquid that came from the municipal pumps and wells was warning enough.
As Castiel approached the south gate, the homes grew more dilapidated, a far cry from the mansions and palaces that had greeted him when he'd entered the city from the west. A slight slope meant that waste flowed south and the prevailing winds reinforced the undesirable nature of the location – most of the year, his innkeeper had informed him with her nose in the air as if she smelled something repulsive, the breeze blew from north to south and carried the reek of the city with it. No one who had a choice lived in the southern district.
The city walls were immense and mightily fortified, the gate manned by a squadron of soldiers whose gleaming armor showed their pedigree and whose upturned noses showed their opinion of the portion of the citizenry they'd been tasked with guarding. Two street urchins sat on broken barrels against a wall nearby heckling the guards, playing a game that appeared to entail picking the filthiest things they could find from the ground and seeing who could flick their prizes closest to the guards without actually hitting them. No one paid Castiel any mind; his clothing was well enough made that he could pass in nicer neighborhoods as someone who'd once had money but come on hard times, little different than many a family who had a noble name but had squandered their fortunes on frivolities. The threadbare collar and sleeves of his jacket, the worn cuffs of his pants and the battered leather of his boots meant he fit in among the poorer classes too. Walking past the stationed guards and into the long, dark tunnel beneath the thick walls, Castiel felt the distinct sense of a mental probe, though none of the guards so much as looked his way as someone among their number scanned Castiel's surface thoughts for evidence of wrong-doing. Finding none relevant to their interests – Castiel had done nothing wrong, but his mental defenses were nigh impenetrable even if he had – they let him proceed.
The cloud-dimmed light of the day was bright in contrast to the perpetual gloom of the passageway beneath the stone walls. A shanty town huddled pathetically about the gate, another contrast between the poor district and the wealthy. The western gate was surrounded by a profusion of luxurious, colorful merchant's tents that made the king's road leading to the west a year-round carnival featuring all the finest from around the world. Here beggars asked alms of travelers who looked barely better off. Homes constructed of rotted boards, haphazardly stacked stones and torn fragments of burlap and cloth leaned drunkenly against their neighbors, the lot looking in perpetual danger of collapse. Castiel proceeded quickly down the rutted, muddy road, oppressed by the lowering sky, seeking among the dregs of Lawrence society for the home of the Sin Eater that was, according to his rude informant, unmissable. His frown deepened as the shantytown grew sparse, fragments of wood that might once have been crates or barrels forming low lean-tos that provided barely room for a man or woman to sleep, barely enough cover to keep off the rain, the last bastion for the most destitute. A hopeless, listless woman sat cross-legged on the dirty ground, breastfeeding a baby that she attempted to protect from the biting wind with a tattered length of cloth that he thought might once have been a skirt.
"The Sin Eater?" he asked hesitantly. Wordlessly, she pointed down the road. Winter-barren fields lined the way, interspersed with trees that served as windbreaks, skeletal branches clattering and lashing too and fro under the harsh winter gales. Castiel saw nothing that looked like a habitation, but he followed her directions, throwing her a coin that was near-valueless to him but might help preserve her life and that of her child for days, walking on before he could see her reaction. He didn't want gratitude and he didn't want his generosity acknowledged. He didn't want her to remember him at all. If he were a powerful enough telepath, he'd erase the memory from her mind, but that was not where Castiel's mental strength lay.
Perhaps a half-mile down the road, he found his destination. Thin boards were held to the small frame of a shack little bigger than some outhouses Castiel had used, rusty nails keeping the whole together so poorly that the wood rattled and clattered whenever the wind picked up. A post set in the ground outside provided hitching for a fine horse – the same Thoroughbred that had nearly run Castiel over within the town, he noticed, the mare's coat sleek and well cared for, her saddle fine-tooled leather, the blankets beneath finest wool from the eastern reaches dyed in expensive shades from the tropics far to the south. A sigil was painted above the door of the hovel, a five pointed star surrounded by a circle, edged inscribed with arcane runes. Where Castiel came from, such symbols were used to ward off or contain evil. Castiel wasn't sure what purpose it served here, as a Sin Eater was anything but evil his or herself, but it was active; it glowed faint red, as if the wood on which it was painted were embers aflame.
As Castiel stepped up to the shack, a woman emerged, tugging aside the curtain that served as a door. Castiel caught a glimpse of dark red hair framing a pale face, made to look more so by the blood-red rouge on her plush lips, before she pulled up the thick wool hood of her fine cloak, her appearance obscured beneath yards of fabric. Though she couldn't fail to observe Castiel's presence, she didn't acknowledge him; she unhitched her horse, mounted with practiced expertise, and galloped back towards the city, cloak held close around her, leaving a cloud of dust in her wake.
For a long moment, Castiel stared, first at the woman quickly disappearing in the distance, then at the pathetic hut where the Sin Eater must reside. He was horrified at the living conditions that this noble soul endured. Without a Sin Eater, the residents of Lawrence would have to live with the guilt of their crimes and misdeeds. Without a Sin Eater, even children could be trapped with a life time of remorse for the smallest of transgressions. Without a Sin Eater, society would devolve as resentment seethed and grew into hatred among those who should be loving neighbors. The duties of the Sin Eater were essential to their communities, as important as a magistrate or king or noble, hence their respected position in many kingdoms. They committed no crime themselves, did no wrong, yet they willingly took onto themselves the sins of their fellows – rich and poor, men and women, good and kind or wicked and selfish – and they kept every secret entrusted to them. A criminal might be brought to justice if they were caught and evidence brought to bear demonstrating their guilt, but a Sin Eater would turn in no one for even the most heinous crimes.
In Lawrence, they treated their Sin Eater as if he or she were unclean, as if he or she were the sinner. Why did the person tolerate such exploitation? The pathetic structure looked like a stiff wind would destroy it, the shredded cloth that served as a door swayed in even the faintest breeze. Eying the doorframe, Castiel considered the propriety of knocking.
"Come on in," called an exhausted man from within, resignation making equal parts with disinterest.
Of course the Sin Eater knew Castiel hesitated outside. Only the strongest telepaths, those most receptive to thethoughts and feelings of others, could serve as Sin Eaters. That was another reason it was a position of distinction in Heaven. Castiel could only wonder how culture had developed so differently in Lawrence.
Brushing the curtain aside, Castiel stepped into the dull interior. There was no light source, but spots and lines of sunlight cast strange, glimmering shadows where they came through pinholes and cracks in the board siding. The interior resembled the austerity of a prison cell, scarce 6 foot square and lacking even a sleeping pallet. In the faint light Castiel could make out a small, low table that tilted awkwardly, one leg shorter than the other three, a stinking bucket in the corner, and a filthy man who looked scarce older than a boy sitting on the floor behind the table. As Castiel stepped in, the Sin Eater held out a chipped wood bowl clutched in both of his hands, every wrinkle and bend of his flesh picked out in thick lines of dirt, palms wrapped in layer upon layer of mottled brown fabric. Multitudes of rags draped about his arms and body were his only protection from the bite of the cold, which passed through the clapboard like it was paper. Still, if there was not a single commonality between the appearance of this Sin Eater and those that Castiel was familiar with, the rituals were the same. Reaching into his pocket, he took out the bread and cheese he had purchased and placed them in the bowl. The Sin Eater surveyed the alms he'd been given with dull, lifeless eyes and his eyebrows lifted with what Castiel took to be surprise. It was a modest gift, and Castiel wished he had done more – the moreso now that he knew the conditions in which the Sin Eater lived – but the man appeared pleased.
"Excuse my intrusion," Castiel said formally, inclining his head. The Sin Eater's eyes widened, looking from the offered gift to Castiel and back again. "If you are amenable, I'd like to Unburden myself."
"Sure – yeah – of course," the man stammered. With a hint of wonder and curiosity in his voice, he sounded years younger, reinforcing Castiel's supposition that the Sin Eater was aged beyond his years by his role and by the neglect of the people of Lawrence. Matted scruff on his chin and cheeks hid fresh-faced youth; dimness and layers of cloth bulked out shoulders not yet broadened into adulthood. Hastily, the boy set the bowl aside and reached out across the table. Castiel sat opposite him, cold permeating the dirt ground soaking quickly through his pants and into his flesh, and took the Sin Eater's hands. The skin was gritty and dry, rough from the cold and labor. Looking up, their eyes met, the boy's shadowed in darkness and sunken with fatigue. A frisson tingled up Castiel's arms, dissipated down his chest, as the Sin Eater reached for Castiel's mind with his thoughts. Training had given Castiel defenses against unwanted mental intrusion but he let them fall away, allowed the Sin Eater access.
"One week ago, I killed a man," Castiel admitted. The words were irrelevant: the Sin Eater would pluck the experience directly from his thoughts. However, Castiel always felt better if he confessed his sins aloud. "He'd done murder in Lafayette Free Township and elsewhere." It wasn't enough that Walker had been dangerous to all innocent non-humans in his path, Castiel still felt guilty about his death. To allow a Sin Eater to expunge it when Castiel had never admitted his crime felt wrong. Intellectually and emotionally, until Castiel confessed he knew he'd done sinned. The Sin Eater would excise the emotional guilt, telepathically take it upon himself. Speaking his wrongdoing enabled Castiel to set his intellectual qualms to rest as well. He'd killed other people and committed many crimes. He'd kill many more in the future, use innocents to further his ends, engage in theft and sabotage and blackmail, do what he must to achieve his ends. If not for Sin Eaters, Castiel doubted he could live with the burden of his crimes regardless of the noble purpose that drove him.
"I don't regret what I did, but I wonder, as I wonder every time: did he have a family? Parents? Children? A spouse?" As Castiel spoke, the Sin Eater gripped his hands harder and a charge like static coursed through Castiel's veins, trailed throughout his body. "Everyone has someone who loves them, someone who will miss them when they're gone."
Except me.
The Sin Eater's eyes flared brilliant green, luminous enough to cast lurid shadows over the confined room. A burst of wind jangled the loose boards of the walls and Castiel shivered. He had no idea whether the thought was his or the Sin Eater's.
"I wish I had another choice, but if I didn't take bounty cases from time to time, I wouldn't be able to afford to eat," lamented Castiel, wondering who he was making the excuse for. Himself, probably. Heaven refused to pay him for his work, citing the dangers of such payments being tracked. Plausible deniability was essential. If Castiel were caught in a foreign country bearing papers and currency from his homeland, it would be much more difficult for Heaven to claim that Castiel was an independent citizen operating on his own recognizance. That left it to Castiel to earn coin however he could, and on a job such as this one, where he expected bribery to pay a critical role, he might need a great deal of it. The money from the Walker job and his weapons were safely hidden in his dank let room in the northern quarter.
"Tomorrow, I begin my mission in Lawrence," he added, staving off the pre-emptive guilt by confessing. He'd be back to visit the Sin Eater, probably multiple times, before his mission was done. "I hope I can accomplish my goals without too many casualties and too much suffering, but time will tell."
Green light flooded the room as Castiel finished his confession and the Sin Eater excised the feelings of wrongdoing from Castiel's mind. That Castiel had done the actions remained, but there was no longer guilt associated with his crimes, nor remorse, nor regret, nor sorrow. There was merely a memory freed of all emotional baggage. The green intensified, coruscating around the Sin Eater's eyes, when suddenly the background ambiance of the room seemed to shift, a sound that wasn't a sound inverted and grew hollow, and a circular symbol Castiel hadn't observed on the floor erupted in deep red light. By the eerie glow he could see another symbol of holding burnt into the bare packed dirt of the ground. The Sin Eater gasped, blinked, and the green glow vanished from his eyes as if it'd never been. Panting, face contorted as if the symbol on the ground hurt him, the boy dropped Castiel's hands and fell backwards, curled in on himself against the far wall of the hut and whimpered.
"Are you alright?" Castiel asked, alarmed. The contact with his mind had ceased abruptly when their hands separated, though a telepath as powerful as the Sin Eater surely didn't require physical contact in order to invade a foreign mind.
"Thank you for your offering," croaked the Sin Eater, mustering words and forcing them out as if this conclusion to their interactions was normal and expected. Castiel had never seen anything like it. "You are Unburdened."
"Have I hurt you?" Castiel's concern grew, joined by glimmers of disgust, quiet fury at those who would abuse a Sin Eater so. Wasn't it enough that this man suffered the guilt and remorse that might have afflicted an entire city worth of people? Why must he live in such terrible conditions? "Is there something I can do to ease your discomfort?"
In Castiel's experience, only evil creatures, those touched by the underworld, could be bound by such symbolic devices. It was inconceivable that a Sin Eater could be such. By their very nature, Sin Eaters were the most human of humanity.
"I'm fine." The Sin Eater attempted to sound harsh but his distressed body language spoke louder than his words. Castiel longed to go to him, to help him, but he was new to this place and their customs. He couldn't risk drawing attention to himself by agitating on behalf of the Sin Eater. "Leave now. Please."
"Of course. My apologies, honored Sin Eater," Castiel rose quickly and bowed. The boy's eyes widened; by the light of a split in the walls, Castiel could see they were a dull, deep green, bloodshot and old far beyond his apparent youth. "Until next time."
Rather than risk discomfiting the Sin Eater further, Castiel left, resolving as he brushed the curtain aside and stepped into the late day shadows that he would return as soon as he had a sin fit to confess and he'd bring far more than mere bread and cheese as an offering.
End note:
I honestly have no idea how long this story will be. I thought it was going to be around 30k or 40k words when I first imagined it but when I wrote this first chapter (unusually short for me, I know!) I ended up adding like four major plot elements that I hadn't originally planned, and my outline is pretty long (...like 18 items...) and it feels like I'm still missing some pieces, so it'll likely get more complicated before it gets less. As such I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up considerably longer.
Just what I need. Another long idea. (I actually debated not posting this at all - it wouldn't be the first time I wrote the introduction to a long story and then held off on posting it until I'd have time to work on it - but oh well. I love this idea and I'm gonna share the damn thing. I was actually thinking that when I finished Offline I'd go through and just finish off all the stubs I've got on my comp and post them all, even if they're just the first chapter of what will ultimately be a long WIP, if only so I can gauge interest and figure out what I should focus on next...thoughts?)
No idea when more chapters will be up. Sorry about the proliferation of WIP, but I just have so many damn ideas...
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