The television show "Supernatural" is copyrighted by Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc.
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Castiel was dragged to a gray room and the other angels forced him into an empty nude human form that lay on the floor like a discarded doll. Enochian symbols were tattooed across its back, ensuring that whatever spirit occupied the form wouldn't be released until the right words were spoken by someone else.
Once he was imprisoned in the human form, they threw him into a circle surrounded by Enochian symbols and stood back as Isabel began chanting. The very ether within the circle began thickening, the greater density muting light and sound.
The last sight Castiel saw, the last words he heard, were Ephraim saying, "Too good for him," as the walls of the Chamber closed completely around him.
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He had always been fascinated by human beings, and surely, surely, this interest was a gift from God. Some of his fellow angels thought this fascination amusing, some found it repellent. But down through the centuries, as the weird hybrid of animal and spirit began exerting more control over its planet, and as Lucifer found them more useful, angels who had been ordered to save a human soul or to bring about a miraculous change in a human's behavior came to Castiel more and more frequently. He became – a term Dean Winchester would later teach him – the go-to guy for help with humans.
Perhaps losing himself in his work was a way of escaping the fear. He didn't know why he was afraid. Angels are connected in a way humans can't understand, and the pinched rigid contraction of fear had been threading through the collective angelic energy for a very long time.
It hadn't been Lucifer's fall; that had created shock and horror, but he was certain that God's influence had caused the eventual balance and re-stabilizing. No, the fear had begun much later than that. At some point he sensed a void, and knew that others sensed it; there were odd contradictions when the archangels would come out of their conclaves, as though God hadn't told them exactly what needed to be done and how to do it. Gabriel's energy dimmed with unhappiness, Michael's cooled with grim quiet, Raphael's blazed with anger. Rumors (even in Heaven there are rumors) that God was distancing himself from the archangels grew to rumors that God couldn't be found anywhere in Heaven. Michael and Raphael denied it furiously, and regularly began sending angels who'd said that to the Chamber – a form of punishment that had seldom been used before.
If Castiel had been human, this hysterical need to silence the rumor would have told him everything he needed to know; but he wasn't human, and it simply never occurred to him that Michael and Raphael might lie. Then Gabriel left Heaven, and the stabilizing after that shock took a long time, as though it were being handled by far less calm and loving minds than God's.
While Castiel couldn't help but feel the fear pervading Heaven, he also didn't understand it. To him it was clear – either God was testing the archangels or the archangels were testing lower level angels, and what was there to fear from a test? If you knew that God existed, your faith was unshaken. If your faith was unshaken, your actions would be right. Even when they told him that his superior Anaciel, who had always understood and to enjoyed his interest in humans, had fallen, his faith never wavered. He mourned his reckless angry sister as a human might mourn a brother who'd committed murder, but he never pondered whether Anaciel might not have fallen if it hadn't been for Michael's and Raphael's regime. Nor did he consider that falling from Heaven to become a human, as Anaciel had, should maybe be considered a lesser crime than falling from Heaven in an attempt to overthrow God, as Lucifer had. Castiel's faith in the greater angels of Heaven was very strong.
And when he found his spirits too stretched or tattered between the fears of humanity and the fears of Heaven, he'd find a baby.
For many years he'd conducted a small experiment with adult humans, trying to learn more about them. When one of them was alone and quiet, he would reveal just the tiniest fraction of himself to them. It looked to them like floating specks of unearthly radiance, and felt like the softest touch of a Heavenly breeze. Castiel had become expert in predicting which human spirits would shrivel as though a guilty secret were haunting them, which would leap as though they'd received a divine revelation, and which wouldn't change a bit, those being the humans who'd rub their eyes and mumble that they had to get more sleep somehow.
A few hundred years ago he'd run across a baby at the edge of a field, being guarded by a dog, while his family worked to bring in crops. He'd conducted his experiment with the baby, and been rewarded with a laugh of purest happiness, the baby waving its little arms in excitement, his spirit brightening till Castiel swore it outshone his own little spiritual gleams. It never failed with babies: Some simply looked at him wide-eyed, some laughed out loud, but in all of them the spirit leaped to dazzling brilliance. God had not abandoned any universe in which these babies' spirits dwelt.
Of course, he never told anyone that his greatest spiritual comfort came from human infants. Not that he minded being the butt of jokes. He almost missed being the butt of jokes, Gabriel's energy vibrating as if with coarse laughter, wheeling and coruscating like God's own fireworks as he urged Castiel to loosen up.
But these days being different didn't mean your fellow angels would tease you. It meant they'd treat you like they didn't trust you, like you'd added another strand to the unspoken causeless fear threading its way through the angels' energy.
One day, an angel from Castiel's own garrison happened to be on the scene when a human hunter named Sam Winchester was, using questionable methods, exorcising a demon. The demon was taunting Sam about Sam's brother, who had apparently died and gone to Hell. The angel's main reaction had been that taunting a human about something like that didn't seem like the best way to stay in your human host, and indeed Sam had promptly and vigorously sent the creature back where it belonged, but not before it had tittered, "Hell's the perfect place for such a righteous man!"
For a moment, as the putrid seething smoke of the demon settled through the floorboards, Sam had studied the unconscious human vessel tied to a chair. That last phrase had somehow been significant to the demon, and Sam clearly wondered why, but then the vessel awoke, gasping, and Sam's concentration had gone to the human.
The angel, though, knew exactly why the phrase was significant, and by the time Sam had untied the man and was asking if he was all right, the angel was reporting to her superiors.
The fear was no longer causeless.
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"What do you know about the Apocalypse?" Zachariah asked.
(He didn't use words, of course, but for purposes of this history we'll have to translate angelic telepathy to human speech.)
Castiel kept his energy steady at the question, which wasn't easy. Hundreds of angels had been sent to a battlefield from which no one could read their energy, which was unheard of. Tension and rumors had been rife, and angelic energy generally was flickering and flaring like a light bulb near a malevolent spirit. "It is a prophecy, the final battle between our forces and those of Lucifer." Even now Castiel felt sorrow about just the prospect of warring against his older brother.
"How does it begin?"
"It begins when Lucifer walks the earth, possesses a human vessel, and raises – "
"Back further. How does Lucifer walk the earth?"
"Oh! He breaks loose from the cage in Hell where he's confined. More than 600 seals fused to human behavior and Earth's biosphere keep Lucifer in the cage. If 66 of those seals are broken within six lunar months, he can escape."
"And the first seal?"
"A righteous man spills blood in Hell. Do you mind if I ask, sir - "
" – why you're being drilled like a student? Because I have a vitally important mission for you, and I need to know you're prepared."
"I'm honored. What is it?"
"I need you to retrieve the righteous man who is in Hell right now."
Castiel's energy shuddered noticeably, but anyone's would have.
Zachariah, in contrast, seemed oddly placid. "We've been laying siege to Hell for several weeks, starving them of light and souls, working in a narrowing circle, scattering or destroying the cockroaches we're not looking for. Now we've formed a silent ring around the den of an infernal torturer called Alastair. The demons think we've gone; they're celebrating their victory against Heaven's incompetent raiders. We are quietly constructing an energy passageway straight from Heaven to Alastair's den. We need you – "
"Pardon me, sir. I mean no disrespect. But if the man has been there for weeks in human time – "
"Oh, it's been months," quite casually. "Four or so."
Castiel's energy darkened. "Then he's broken, sir. He's doing anything they want. Time in Hell, to humans, is like – like time in the Chamber, to us."
"You've never been sent to the Chamber, have you?"
"No, sir. But I have some sources of information. The stretching of time in the Chamber allows a maximum correction of the angel's attitude in a minimum of time here. It's the same for humans in Hell, sir. If he's been there for four months, it feels like 40 years to him. He has certainly spilled blood."
"Well, maybe, maybe not." Still that odd placidity. "His father was down there for almost a year and never broke."
"He's John Winchester's son?"
"Yes indeedy." (Best translation of Zachariah's jolly affirmative.) "The bloodline is valuable to us. The son and his brother both have work to do, especially if we're going to be keeping Lilith from breaking seals and releasing Lucifer."
"I wondered if Lilith was behind this."
"Lilith, and a demon named Azazel who got destroyed before his plot thickened."
"Azazel. Wait." There are so many humans on Earth, and so many struggling against evil of all kinds, but now Castiel was remembering. "Azazel fed his own blood to several human infants in North America, one of them John and Mary Winchester's son Sam. Azazel killed Mary when she tried to stop the rite, and John Winchester became a fearsome demon hunter to avenge her death."
"Well." Zachariah's energy stretched with amusement. "To the extent that a human can be fearsome."
"Azazel killed John and dragged his soul to Hell, but by that time John's sons were grown men and hunters in their own right. Dean killed Azazel, and John's soul escaped from Hell and is now with us. Sam is the only survivor of the children who were fed Azazel's blood."
"I knew you were up to speed."
"So the influence of the demon blood finally doomed Sam to perdition?" Castiel asked.
"No, he's not the one down there. Dean is."
"How in the name of our Father did Dean Winchester end up in Hell?"
"Sam was killed last year. Dean traded his soul to bring Sam back to life."
Castiel didn't even try to disguise his reaction.
"I know," and again Zachariah was amused, even as Castiel controlled his horror. "You really do wonder sometimes if God honestly did give them brains. So! If he hasn't spilled blood yet, we have to stop him from doing it. If he has broken the first seal, we're going to have Apocalypse-related work for him on Earth. Either way, we need someone to go down there and get that boy back. And we've chosen you."
"Why is that, sir?"
A moment's pause. "You ask a lot of questions, don't you?"
Castiel deliberately dimmed his energy. "I beg your pardon."
A longer pause. Then Zachariah said, "Well. It should be obvious, anyway. Your expertise with humans. Have you ever been near a completely corrupted human soul?"
"Yes, I have."
"No, you haven't. No corrupting influence of Earth does to a human soul what Hell can do. For one of us with minimal expertise in humans to be close to the thing Dean Winchester has become would be like – like – there must be some appropriately revolting metaphor from Earth – "
"Kissing a rotting corpse," Castiel suggested.
"Yes. Only worse. It helps that you're a fine warrior, Castiel, but I can't send just any warrior down there. If I sent your aide Uriel on this mission, he'd take one look at Dean, throw him even deeper into Hell, and then go to Earth and take a vessel just so he could spend a few days vomiting away his disgust. It needs to be someone who is comfortable enough with humans that he's willing to grab a corrupted soul, haul it to Earth, restore its decaying body, and then keep it on an even keel during very hazardous times. It's a vile job, and I don't envy you. But it's got to be done."
"I understand, sir. When do I begin?"
"Now," Zachariah said, and Castiel was at the entrance to the passageway.
It was narrow and guarded by angels all the way down to the Earth, the whole thing invisible to humans. The six angels guarding the entrance turned their attention to him as he arrived.
He paused long enough to assume a human form. Winchester's soul probably still assumed his human form, and it would be easier to deal with a human soul if Castiel was in a recognizable shape. At the same time, he wanted to make his power clear. He chose an interpretation of Michael by a medieval painter – white wings, flashing sword, flowing hair, and all. Even Michael, so grim these days, would have been pretty amused. Like Winchester's shape and like whatever shape Alastair had assumed, it would have been no use for dealing with the physical realities of Earth, but it would be perfectly serviceable in Hell.
The energy of the closest angel to him was pulsing irregularly with something close to fear. "Good luck, sir," she said tremulously.
He extended a hand, calming her shivers. "Peace, child. All will be as it's meant to be."
Then he leaped into the passageway.
It looked to humans like a lightning strike. When he cleaved Earth with the sword he was instantly transported to the realm of damned spirits (something no human device could have done). He could see the invisible ring of angelic soldiers below surrounding Alastair's den. He had only seconds to assess things before he was there.
The half-human half-monster chewing on the intestines of a human soul on the rack – that's clearly Alastair. The soul on the rack was a torturer himself in life, and the effect of Hell on him is like the effect of a hammer on a doll – distressing but not revolting. But the giggling human soul standing by the rack holding a bloody knife – that soul was brilliant and beautiful in life, and the effect of Hell is as if a human had deliberately put a drill into his own face. I'll have to steel myself, remind myself that this thing is my Father's creation too. Now!
He smashed into the room with a war cry and a blinding flash of light, and the battle was on.
The soul on the rack screamed. The Alastair monster made some bizarre cackling noises and three other creatures leaped into the doorway. But now the soldiers of Heaven showed themselves and began striking down any other demons who tried to get near. The sounds of blows and cries, flashes of painful light and moments of pitch darkness, surrounded the den.
Castiel leaped over the rack. All he had to do was get one hand on –
The vilest thing in creation, flickering energy gone orange and crusted over with pus and blood and shards, a grinning human form wrapped around it –
Winchester plunged his knife into Castiel's heart and dodged around the rack.
Alastair had assumed a human form so that he could begin saying the Latin chant that would send Castiel back to Heaven. Cursing his own hesitation, Castiel pulled the knife out of his chest and threw it at Alastair, who vanished. One of the intruding demons grabbed Winchester – he had no problem with it – pulling him toward the door. The other two attacked Castiel at once, one with a sword and one with a short black spear. Castiel struck both weapons aside and made quick work of the demon with the sword, but then he felt searing pain in the right side of his gut and realized that the spear was in him.
He backed up, gasping, slashing the sword in front of him, although the demon didn't seem intent on attacking again. Indeed, both he and the demon gripping Winchester's arm stood still, watching him, smiling. Smiling? Alastair reappeared. Winchester shrugged off the demon's hand as if an underling were being presumptuous.
How could my Father allow this horror to exist? Does He not care? It must be as they say, He's abandoned us. Winchester's knife was bloody, he's broken the first seal, and Lucifer will be upon us. Alastair's chanting again, he'll send me back to Heaven a failure.
He fell to his knees and his sword clattered on the stone floor.
Alastair stopped chanting and walked toward him, a measured pace. "Well, now. Isn't this interesting."
Castiel could have pulled the spear out of his gut. But what would be the purpose? He was already doomed, they all were. He couldn't believe he'd had such hope just moments ago, how pathetic.
I did have hope moments ago, strong belief. I can't believe I'm giving up so fast. I've never given up like this in battle before.
Alastair picked up Castiel's sword. Even the haft clearly hurt Alastair's hands, but clearly he didn't care. "I understand," he said, a sardonic drag to his voice, "that the only weapon that can kill an angel is an angelic weapon. I wonder – "
He ran the edge of the blade up the side of Castiel's face, and Castiel couldn't stop the groan of pain that burst from him. He had no fire to throw at Alastair. The two demons and Winchester all laughed. Castiel braced himself on the ice-cold floor, feeling the light of his grace pulsing out of the slash on his face. The spear's point shifted in his gut, and he felt a fresh spurt of despair.
It's the spear. It's not a physical weapon, it's spiritual. I have to get rid of that thing. Just a moment of will, just one moment more of fight –
Alastair had the sword's point at Castiel's eye. Castiel turned his head and lowered it as though in defeat.
Then his hands shot up and grabbed Alastair's hand that held the haft. With all his remaining will, he turned Alastair's wrist, the blade slashing Alastair's ear and shoulder, and slammed Alastair's clenched hand and the sword haft hard onto the spear handle, driving it deeper into himself. The spear's point leaped out Castiel's back.
Castiel lifted one hand to Alastair's face, and Alastair leaped away, dropping the sword. One of the demons ran at Castiel, but Castiel grabbed the sword with his left hand and, in a backhand slash, finished the demon. He stood, moved his right hand to his back, and yanked the spear completely out. The pain was excruciating, but now he was able to fight the despair.
The third demon fled, taking his chances with the battle outside. Castiel forced himself to focus on Winchester. But now Alastair, blood all over his face, was chanting again, and he couldn't let that happen. He raised his sword and turned toward Alastair.
And suddenly there were hands around his throat. Dean Winchester slammed Castiel back against the icy stone wall, slick with gore, and yelled over his shoulder in desperate determination, "Alastair! Run!"
Castiel clapped his right hand on Dean's upper arm. "Success!" he yelled in a voice that resonated throughout Hell, and fled as his fellow soldiers left the pit in a blue-white sunburst.
Winchester's soul only stopped screaming when it met the rotted ruins of his body, but then there were other sounds: the rumble of the ground shaking, the roar as uprooted trees fell away from the gravesite, a howling wind that brought a spattering rain of blood. Through it all Castiel, now in his true form, worked to knit the soul back into the body, to restore the festering flesh and organs (far less repulsive than dealing with that soul), using his own energy to act as a conduit for life, weakening the coffin lid so that Winchester could get out, and scattering three feet of earth in all directions so that the human was buried only shallowly.
He pulled back from the gravesite, hovering in the air over the fallen trees, watching, waiting.
And considering the most astonishing thing he had ever seen.
"Alastair! Run!"
The surprising thing wasn't that Winchester seemed to feel like he and Alastair were in this together. Alastair had had plenty of time to break Winchester's soul down, crumbling from Alastair's defiant prisoner to his submissive puppet to his partner in crime.
But partners in crime betray each other all the time, especially in Hell. "Everyone for himself" is the only lesson Hell has to teach, and forty years is more than long enough to learn it.
And even so, Winchester had attacked an angel, whom he knew to be much stronger than himself, hoping to give Alastair time to escape.
Courage. And self-sacrifice. After forty years in Hell.
In thousands of years of observing humans, Castiel had never seen anything so amazing, and he thanked God for letting him be the one to witness it.
No wonder Heaven had work for –
"Dean Winchester is saved." The news was already resonating through the angelic dimension; Castiel could hear it even as he saw Dean's hand stab upward through the earth.
The moment Castiel saw Dean chug half a bottle of water at the deserted gas station/convenience store he'd carefully arranged, he knew the mesh of soul and body was good. Attempted contact didn't go so well, so he needed to wait a couple of days while he found a human vessel named Jimmy Novak, persuaded Jimmy that an angel was really talking to him, and asked to use his body as Castiel's physical form on Earth, so that Castiel could communicate with and relate to all humans. Novak, a deeply religious man who had prayed to be of service to God, asked only for a promise that Heaven would protect his wife and daughter before he surrendered his autonomy.
By that time Dean, amnesiac about his last few moments in Hell, had convinced himself that only something horrifically evil could have freed him, so that the second time they met, Dean again began the proceedings by plunging a knife into Castiel's heart. Castiel had to control his smile.
.
Suddenly there were signs of intense demonic activity in half a dozen spots all over the globe. A small but violent lightning storm directly over a library in Egypt; a windstorm unrelated to air currents, as if a powerful witch were casting a spell, in the north-central United States; a fire at a long-revered grove of trees in France; and a severe but very localized earthquake that opened graves at a cemetery in the Ukraine were among them. All could, if you read the writings a certain way, possibly be seals. The units in garrisons were divided, some soldiers sent to the endangered sites, some sent to guard known seals in case the disturbances were diversions, some remaining on guard or in Heaven.
Castiel and some of his forces were sent to the endangered forest. By the time they got there, one tree was already engulfed in flame, but if they could save the rest they could save the seal. Castiel arrayed his forces around the small forest in case the blazing tree was a diversion. "Amenerat, deal with the fire," he ordered. "I'll deal with the human."
All of the angels were in their vessels, but of course Castiel could materialize in an instant by the teenage boy pouring gasoline on the forest floor. He was the only child of a depressed mother and a father largely absent at work. His spiritual longings were thought to be quite hilarious by a lot of his fellow students. He'd recently come under the influence of someone claiming to be a messenger of God. He desperately wished to be part of something larger than himself. Castiel could have worked with him if he'd had time, but he didn't have time.
A twitch of Castiel's hand wrenched the gasoline container out of the boy's hands and set it gently yards away without further spilling. "You must stop," Castiel said in perfect French, his voice resonating in a way no human's could have. He was emitting just enough light that his vessel was indistinct, a human silhouette surrounded by radiance.
The boy fell to his knees. "I'm – I'm doing your work!"
"You've been misled. The grove is sacred."
"To pagans! To godless pagans!"
"And is it your place – " Castiel began, then whirled to strike the demon who'd appeared behind him.
The demon staggered, then leaped at Castiel again, seizing his wrists. Castiel broke free easily and struck the demon in the gut. It bent, but as Castiel closed in the demon straightened suddenly, smashing the back of its head into the angel's chin.
"It's a demon!" the demon shouted to the boy. "Hurry! You know what you have to do!"
Castiel leaped backward, thinking the demon would pursue him, but the demon just ran. The boy ran, too – toward the center of the grove, splashing gasoline on himself as he went.
