And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. – Jude 1:6-7
"Useless." Castiel was starting to associate that word with being human, along with: exasperating, slow, tedious, repulsive, and absolutely crappy. He was incapable of grasping how they managed, how Dean and Sam and Bobby dealt with constantly having to stop what they were doing to ingest food, to sleep and, the most disturbing of the three, to discharge in restrooms. An angel on the toilet was the most interesting and current topic of discussion in the Winchester household, in between the constant Apocalypse banter. It lightened the mood for the boys to freely announce, safe from the threat of being smitten, ever so gracelessly how Castiel was about to "bestow the toilet with holy water" or "holy shit".
It didn't matter that he wasn't even an angel anymore.
He kicked a spare tire from beside a skeletal car at the edge of Bobby's lot, felt the sharp pain it sent up his foot with disdain, and watched the wheel fumble its way down the dirt path before toppling over with a dull "thump". He dropped the beer bottle in his hand, observed its short fall, and let it clank onto the ground. He was almost tempted to jump from one of the many piled cars, just to find out what sound he'd make when he fell. Again.
It had been four days since he'd woken up in a hospital with a sharp pain in his side and a dull throb in his head Dean told him was "the start of a beautiful human experience, Cas. It's a headache, you'll learn to love it". That had been the only real ringing alarm to notify him that he'd fallen, fired and discarded from Heaven. A headache, a hollow pit in his stomach they'd said was hunger, but he wasn't so sure, and a peculiar lightness to his shoulders and back as if his wings had simply evaporated into thin air. And perhaps they had, along with his grace. Without those wings, that grace, he'd had to walk out of a hospital, and get back to Dean and the others by human transport.
It had been one of the most humiliating experiences of his long life.
"Sir," the grating voice came through the hole in the glass, covered by a metal, matted plate punctured through with holes. It seemed to amplify the voice, and when Castiel tore his gaze away from the rapidly changing list of destinations and glanced through the glass, he saw the enlarged woman attached to that voice. She sat with a displeased look to her face that creased the rolls of skin about her mouth and brow. "Sir, cash or credit?"
Castiel frowned in agitation with his hands fidgeting at his sides, and a burning between his legs he didn't understand and had been fighting off since the plane from Delacroix to Sioux Falls. Now that he was out of the cash Bobby had wired him and in need of transport, yet again, to Davenport to meet up with Dean and Sam, he had no idea how he was going to manage this.
"I don't have much credit anymore, but I don't see how that relates to money," he answered, puzzled. The woman sighed and jabbed a finger at the picture on the glass displaying different cards ranging from Mastercard to VISA. He remembered seeing something resembling that in Jimmy's wallet once. Maybe they still worked.
"If you don't have one of these, you don't have a bus ride out of here, sir," she muttered impatiently.
Nodding, he reached into the pockets of Jimmy's trench coat, and felt the smooth leather wallet. He pulled it out, wrestled with the material that felt skin-tight against the array of cards inside, stabbed his thumb on the corner of the plastic. Once he'd fought with it and won, he pulled out a card and pressed it against the window.
"Credit," he announced.
"Congratulations, now can you pass it through the slot?" The woman sighed. Castiel's gaze fell down, spotted the opening in the glass, felt a rush of blood sprawl throughout his face.
"Right," he muttered as he shoved it through the slot. The lady took the card and swiped it through a machine, punched keys and the whirring of another machine produced a ticket, his ticket. She slid it through the slot along with his credit, and he was on his way.
"What a lovely family you have," a voice from behind jolted Castiel as he tried to put the credit back into the wallet. When he turned, he picked up on a flash of vibrant ginger hair and, beneath it, an old lady with a sealed, toothless smile.
Her eyes were flickering between him and the wallet. Glancing down, Castiel's eyes fell on the picture Jimmy kept of his wife and daughter. He felt that hollowness again, and knew at once it wasn't hunger.
"I don't have a family anymore," he admitted solemnly, and the old lady's toothless smile turned into an equally toothless frown.
"That's a shame, you being so young." She shook her head and placed a slightly shaking hand on his as he closed the wallet, putting it in his pocket again. "Divorce?"
He smiled, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Disowned."
"Well I never. You don't look like the kind," she scoffed, though her hand fell from his and returned to her baggage. "Where are you off to, sweetie?"
"Davenport, Iowa. Bus two." He read off the ticket in his hand.
"And so am I. Mind helping out with my suitcases?" She rushed to the point, already shoving one towards him. And she was shuffling past him, leaving him with five bags and that burn between his legs, and a soreness in his arms when he lifted all the baggage.
When they sat down on the bus, luggage tucked away, she bombarded him with more questions he couldn't answer.
"Where do you come from?"
Heaven, but Dean had already warned him over the phone about this: "Cas, dude, you gotta learn how to lie. No more of that angel crap where you have to be honest all the time. You're human now and some of the shit you say is certifiable, and I don't need you being shoved into another hospital."
"Lawrence, Kansas." He shuffled in his seat, crossing his legs past the discomfort of lying.
"Hmph, never heard of it. What're you heading off to Iowa for?"
To try and stop the apocalypse, even if I'm not of any use. Seeing as I am not an angel of the lord, anymore.
"To visit friends." More shuffling.
"Aw, how sweet. Good friends?" At least now he didn't have to lie, and the bus was starting to move. He wondered how long this was going to take. He was also wishing he was still an angel, if only to transport himself away from this woman.
"Very," he said. More shuffling. His nether region was on fire.
"My boy, there is a restroom here, you know. It's probably not the nicest, but it's there in the back," the old woman leaned over to whisper, an amused spark in her eyes. Castiel frowned.
The bathroom. Right, he needed to use the bathroom.
It took him a while to balance himself on the moving bus, to maneuver around bulging suitcases that stuck out into the walkway and children that wouldn't stay seated, but he managed to get to the end of the bus were a small corner was sectioned off as a small room, with a door that said "VACANT" in green, bold letters.
When he opened the door, however, he realized it was occupied by at least two cockroaches.
Trying to urinate was yet another feat he had to master. And yet again he found himself despising the human body, but more specifically the male one.
"Aim straight, cowboy," he could imagine Dean saying from behind the door with a hearty laugh.
And he tried, and then there was a bump in the road that had him flailing for the wall and bodily fluids running anywhere but the toilet.
"Naturally," Castiel complained, planting his forehead against the wall.
There was a knock on the door.
"I have a little girl out here that needs to use the potty so can you hurry up in there?"
After cleaning up his mess, rushing from the bathroom with a blush and his zipper down as one passenger delightedly told him, the old woman continued to ask discomforting questions about a human life Castiel didn't have until just now.
And there was one question that stuck with him, despite how he tried to shake it out of his mind.
He played with gravity; he climbed atop a car roof, teetered his feet off the edge. He felt the teasing tug of the rusted dirt beneath him. It was playful now, at a short distance, but he wondered how it would have felt to fall from Heaven and plummet down to Earth. A prolonged descent. That was how he imagined a fall from grace to feel. And, all the way down, he would experience the feathers being torn from his bones until his wings were left bare and useless against the fierce pull. He imagined a searing pain, millions of needles digging into his back only to swell into knives that would cut at his grace, severing it from his celestial body with excruciating accuracy until none of it was left in him and he was sliced into pieces, tumbling downwards until he crashed with a splat on the asphalt with no one around to pick him up.
Falling was fear, fear of losing himself and everything he fought so hard to keep. But, apparently, that fear had exaggerated reality.
Castiel jumped down from the car and allowed the sting of the landing to rise from his heel and ankles to his calves and knees, let it ripple through him, tried to imagine that times a thousand, a million and failed.
He wanted to feel that pain, because that would have taken his mind off the normalcy of his human body. It would have been a reminder of what he had been. All he had now was his blade, and even that was pretty much pointless.
Caaas, a familiar gruff call beckoned to him, rise and shine wherever the hell you are, angel face, and get over to Bobby's.
Castiel flinched at the voice in his head. Ah, yes, he had that as a reminder, a painful one at that. What was the point of a prayer, if he couldn't answer them?
It was as if small bits of him were trickling off. His wings and indestructibility, endurance, and the remaining thread to Heaven was this. He'd already tried kicking into his brothers and sisters frequencies, and they were gone. For once, besides the occasional call from Dean and sometimes Sam, it was silent in his mind. And it left him with too much room for thought.
And his thoughts turned to Dean as he walked up the path to the darkened house, making note of the early hour, of the Impala recklessly parked with a trail of dust still settling behind it, the still open door. The group was supposed to be out celebrating Bobby's legs, snagging Death's ring, stopping Pestilence's plans, but it seemed they'd returned.
"You do know I don't sleep, Dean," Castiel grumbled wearily as he entered, engulfed by the familiar musk of rotting wood panel flooring, beer stained carpet, and salt.
He shuffled into the living room, eerily empty in the bleak morning hue. His eyes skid over the desk where Sam would have been, behind a mountain of books. The pop of beer caps as Bobby walked through the kitchen was absent from his ears and his wheelchair lay discarded, no longer needed. The place was a tomb.
Soundlessly, Castiel's blade slid down from his sleeve into the snug hold of his hand and he wondered how well he'd fight without his "mojo". He was already considering a trap, nerves on alert, though how could they mimic Dean's voice? He knew it too well to be fooled.
"Newsflash: you're creepy, Cas, and now that you're human you might actually need some beauty rest," Dean's low rumble jolted Castiel and he turned on his heels towards the sound, his blade retreating.
And there he was, leaning against the doorway to the kitchen, unmistakably Dean with scrutinizing green eyes that could make an angel doubt his faith, the red baggage underneath them screaming "drunk: approach with caution" and the smile even further beneath saying "come on in, welcome home". Drawn in, as if by a spell, Castiel almost missed the deep gash that marked Dean's left temple. But when he saw it, his hollow gut dropped with a sudden, sickening weight.
"Am I here to play nurse?" Castiel barked, harsher than usual; it was getting harder to be neutral about Dean's drunken beck and call routines, especially now that it required him to walk.
Dean's grin widened. "This?" Dean waved off the bloody mess of a head as he pushed off the wall, surprisingly steady. "Just a scratch."
"Is what caused it why I'm here?" He articulated drearily. Dean's humored eyes hardened, his casual smile wavering.
"What if I rang you to hang out, huh? Have a beer, instead of having you play pit-bull all the time?"
"Dean, you're drunk already. And, it's the apocalypse," Castiel sighed tiredly as he moved towards Dean, hand raised to ease him into sleep.
And then he remembered, around the same time Dean reached out to swat away his hand, that he couldn't do that anymore. Dean's smugness increased tenfold.
"No more of those tricks, buddy. Besides, the apocalypse is perfect reason to waste time," Dean scoffed, shaking his head. Drunk or sober, Dean was blind to Castiel. He didn't see how much Castiel wanted this to be just them talking, bantering back and forth about human customs Dean thought he needed to know or TV sitcoms that were "just classics", instead of constantly being summoned to tip over the hourglass and slow down the end, or put a drunkard to sleep just so he could help when Dean woke up sober. He didn't see the shadows underneath Castiel's eyes, didn't see that he was tired, so very tired but really didn't want to show it. Because he knew what this was, and what his boys needed and wanted from him. He needed to be useful to them, to Dean after everything that had and would occur. He needed to be the angel that guarded him, and what use was a guardian angel that fell asleep on the job?
Dean was making his way to the couch, where he carelessly plopped down.
"But since you've got such a pole up your ass, yes, it is why you're here," Dean admitted grumpily, running a hand over the wound. In the pooling light from the window, Castiel caught the scuff marks on Dean's knuckles.
"Demon, horseman, what was it this time?"
A humorless laugh. "Younger brother."
Letting out a pent-up sigh rolled in aggravation and exhaustion, Castiel moved towards the couch and nudged at Dean's sprawled out legs until they moved off to make room. They sat next to each other in silence for a passing moment, Castiel allowing himself that brief span of time to hear the therapeutic in and out of Dean's breath. But he wasn't here to enjoy that instant. Castiel finally moved for the first aid that lay in wait on the coffee table, its contents almost completely done for.
"I told you, it's just a scratch," Dean huffed in protest when he noticed Castiel rummaging through the box for ointments.
"The correct term is 'gash', and if you don't clean it you will get it infected, and then you will be whining about it later," was the dry retort. There was a bit more huffing and puffing about it, but Dean allowed his fallen angel to mend the wound. First aid was something Sam had taught Castiel after they'd staggered back from Serenity Valley, useful but slow tactics for someone who used to heal with just the touch of a forefinger. However, it was exponentially easier than trying to teach him how to shoot a gun, though he'd finally managed a gun that very day. It came naturally when he was trying to help Dean. It was an excuse to get closer to him, that personal space issue dissolving long enough to let Castiel get a good look at him.
The hunter's skin was burning under his fingertips and weary, deep lines drew frowns in the freckled skin. Briefly, Castiel wondered how Dean would react if he tried to smooth out those lines with his hands.
"Sam's planning his wedding to Lucifer. Did you know that?" Dean suddenly coughed up between swabs of alcohol against his forehead, and Castiel knew that the pleasantries were over. Sure, Dean was trying his hand at being casual but the veins in his temples grew strained, and more blood rushed to the opening Castiel was trying to clean.
"It's a possibility that he may have mentioned it," Castiel muttered quietly.
"Remember when I told you to lie because that's what humans did? Don't do it to me."
"It doesn't matter that I knew or not. He already told you, didn't he?" More tension, more blood.
"Damn it, Cas, that's not the point! You didn't try to talk him out of it? None of that angel preaching babble you fed me about Michael?" Dean steamed, turning his head so that the gash was out of Castiel's reach. He was glaring now, and Castiel wasn't sure if this was drunken anger or sobering anger. Either way, it was misdirected.
"It's not the same, Dean, and you know that. I don't like what Sam has planned any more than you but it's the only plan we have right now, and I'm confident it will work," Castiel tried to reason calmly, but Dean wasn't tolerating any of it.
"Saying yes to Satan and jumping in a hole isn't a plan, Cas! It's a suicide mission, and it sure as hell is a bad one," Dean scowled.
"And his plan somehow caused this gash?" He tried his hand at sidetracking.
Dean's scowl deepened. "Fight in the bar after a few drinks. He wouldn't even give me the fucking keys to the Impala, making me fucking jump the wires."
"You're intoxicated and shouldn't drive."
"Not the fucking point, Cas, and I see what you're doing here."
"Reasoning with you? Yes, I am doing that," Castiel retorted. Usually, his sarcasm would gain a smile from Dean but tonight, he wasn't a happy drunk. Instead, it flicked a switch and Dean was up and off the couch with a light stumble. And he could feel the waves of frustration bulldozing off of Dean and pinning him onto the couch where he sat as his friend began to pace around the room with his arms flailing.
"Then reason me this: what was the fucking point huh? In telling those angel shits to shove it where the sun don't shine? One last minute rebellion against the tsunami of crap that's been comin' at us? It doesn't matter if I say yes or no, Michael still gets what he wants and so does Lucifer. And me? What the fuck do I get?" Dean bellowed, pulling at his chin as if to break off his own jaw.
"Dean..."
"No, you can stop trying to use your shitty reason with me. No, it's not going to work- not this time. Because I don't give a shit about this fucking world," he exclaimed with a snide laugh. "It has never, ever given a shit about me or my brother. They will never know what we gave up for this ass of a planet. And that's what it really is, a big ass of a planet. Oh, whoopie fucking doo, we save the world on the off chance Sammy can fight off the fucking Devil and fling himself into the cage. But what's there to save, huh? You know what I saw outside of the bar tonight? A group of fucking sickos chasing down a homeless guy. You know what I see every day while you fucking chickens flap all over your coop in Heaven? Shit, utter fucking shit every day. And the one constantly good thing in my life is my brother, and after everything, everything I have done, everything he has done, everything -every damn thing, what do we get as a reward? My brother in a fucking hole six feet under, in Hell. With two pissed off archangels and, oh right, possibly my other brother. I'm still just a vessel at the end of the day, because you know what, I'm done. I'm so fed up, I'm done," Dean heaved. He took a breath, shook his head, leaned back against the desk for support that didn't seem to give him enough. He was squeezing his eyes shut, shaking.
"I got nothing left in me and nothing left for me. I don't get peace at the end of the day, I get to clean up after everyone. And those other angels are gonna want my ass on a platter if everything goes down right. And then what?" He continued, fuming.
Hollow, he hated feeling so hollow when he was so large and stuffed into a pocket sized human. He was hollow, and it was a bit of that hungry hollow they talked about because he was starving. He was starving for Dean to see him, to understand.
"Dean, I'm still here. We'll figure this out, and-"
"And what, Cas? Huh? You're gonna be my guardian angel and fight off the bad guys all my life? Newsflash, you're not an angel anymore so what's the point in ha-"
But he couldn't let Dean finish. He couldn't hear it, not from Dean, and when he was so desperate, craving attention that didn't come with any strings.
"Is that it? Is it so bad of an idea to have me around? Is it such a horrible life with me at your side, after everything I've given up for you? Is that it? Now that I don't have my 'mojo', I'm dispensable to you? Pointless?" Castiel seethed, suddenly so close to Dean he could count every individual freckle on his face, and distinguish the different shades and sizes of those little imperfections.
Dean was caught off-guard, his mouth slack and then his eyes melted down, trying to apologize. But Castiel's glare was steel, resolute against showing anything but anger even as a deepening sadness sank into his bones.
"Cas..."
And this was supposed to be the point in the scene when Castiel disappeared, zapped himself out of the picture to avoid being pulled in again, being worn down by Dean Winchester and his words, words, words. Always words, preaching like a devout- but they were just words. And he was too tired to listen.
Dean was still trying, those words pending, waiting to be said.
"Cas, demons. Cas, Cas if you can hear, there are demons and we're a bit stuck, lots of them, surrounded. Cas, demons, get Dean, the knife," came an unprovoked howl from Sam, fulfilling Castiel's need of an interruption but feeding him something worse.
"Dean, we need to go." He was pulling at Dean's jacket, pulling him towards the door and out before he could take in the shouts his drunk companion was aiming back at him.
"What the hell, Cas?" Dean huffed in bewilderment as he was shoved into the passenger seat of the Impala. Castiel was already in the driver's seat, but he wasn't quite sure how to make it move. "Get out of my spot, Cas and tell me what's going on."
"You left them at the bar and there were demons, we need to go, you're drunk and shouldn't drive," he was going for the ignition but remembered the keys were with Sam and he didn't know how to illegally start up a car.
A firm hand gripped his flailing one, and pulled it away from the steering wheel. When he glanced up, he could see beneath the humor in Dean's eyes to the sober urgency they both felt. "Cas, buddy, now's not the time for morals or a driving lesson. Move."
And he did, if only to remove Dean's burning hand from his.
"How the hell did they find us," Dean grumbled, his hands at the wires beneath the steering wheel, bashing them together and tweaking to get a result but there was nothing but his heavy breathing in answer to his labor.
Castiel could only watch from the sidelines, waiting against the side of the Impala. And that's when he noticed shifting shadows amongst the piled cars.
"Dean," he called calmly after counting four of these shadows, his body pulling away from the comfort of the car and coming to attention. A bustle of hair popped out from beneath the wheel and he could feel the tension bunch up in Dean's shoulders when he'd locked onto the scenario before them.
"You have to be shitting me," he hissed, yanking the knife from inside his jacket. Castiel had counted five now, but it didn't matter if he kept count or not. They were no longer shadows but approaching morning-lit figures and, amongst them, a familiar smirking raven-haired demon.
"Morning, sunshine," Meg cooed from the front of the demon pack, her eyes glinting when Dean jolted out of the car with a snarl.
"What the hell do you want? Didn't you get the memo, I'm not Michael's bitch anymore."
"Oh, but that's not the only reason we want you dead, buddy boy, and you know it. See, you've been messing with plans, cutting off fingers, and Lucifer is becoming a bit snippy himself," the demon explained with a disdainful sigh.
Castiel grew rigid, watching as a few from her group began to circle the car.
"What did you do to my car?"
"I think you should be more worried about yourself and your little sweetheart over there. Besides, cutting a few connections should make up for all those rings you've been stealing."
"Rot in Hell," he spat, his knuckles projecting out of his hand as it tightened around the blade's handle. Castiel readied himself with his own.
"See you there, pretty boy."
But she wouldn't. The cluster of demons descended upon the two men, but Dean was a Winchester and Castiel had once been an angel, and even with all the quirks that came with being a human he could still remember the basics of killing a demon. And Dean was beyond the basics. It was something Castiel had at once been struck with awe and sorrow about. The skill with which Dean sliced through the attackers was gained through years of ritualized kills, years of having to fight off demons, years that had started during childhood. But it was a skill that Dean executed with such grace; sometimes Castiel wondered what he would have accomplished if he'd been an angel, no longer bounded to humanity's limitations. It was no wonder he was Michael's chosen, and it was no wonder why Castiel had chosen to trust this man with his life as he turned to fight beside him.
He had counted five, and now there were three down. Four, as another dropped beside the leather of Dean's boots. The last one was, naturally, Meg and hurdling towards Dean with the intent to end it while he was still trying to pull the knife from the crumpled body beneath him.
She only got one hit in, sending Dean throttling into a mountain of tires, before Castiel met her full on and shoved her against the Impala with more strength than he thought he had left in his reservoir.
"You brought four demons and you still can't get rid of him. You should have backed off while you had the chance," he seethed, landing a punch in the demon's gut along with another to her face, splitting her lip. He tried to wipe the smile off her face, his pent up frustrations coming out punch after punch, each received with a fragment of his exorcism's incantation. And it felt good, this human, harsh contact that he'd never really felt in the tear of his knuckles. He felt the sting of contact, intense and adrenaline-fueling, and his newly found blood pumped, rushed and pounding in his ears and making him feel alive.
He could barely hear the quick rustle of bodies behind him, the abrupt call from Dean, until he felt a new, searing sting sprawl up from his back and throughout his entire body. When he glanced down between Meg and himself, he saw his own blade protruding from his hollow stomach.
A sickening chuckle rang in his ears, along with the screaming of his nerves.
"Missed one. Didn't they teach you how to count up there? My, my, a fallen angel that can't add, how sad," Meg grinned, her bloody teeth nothing compared to the rush of red coming from his intestines.
He could make out pacing feet in the background, and a body fall to the ground, behind the hammering in his head. The body pinned between him and the car fell limp, Meg rushing out of it as Dean's shadow shrouded over the car. And he felt so small against that shadow, and he was swallowed by it.
As Dean pulled the blade out, pain began to fill Castiel from head to toe, and then numbness.
"I'm falling, Dean, I'm still falling." His voice shook with his crimson hands, stained with blood, his blood, after pressing against the wound. And he felt light as a feather, dizzy, his eyesight failing him, heart flailing and slowing, and his legs were no longer beneath him or glued to the ground.
So this is what it felt like to fall.
Dean's arms caught him before he hit the pavement, secure in their confidence to hold him up. He could hear Dean calling out to him but he couldn't make out the words. The voice was loud and incredibly close. The magnitude of his yells vibrated down Castiel's back and he was grounded. But the calm that came with being caught was brief.
"Hey, hey Cas," Dean called to him, urgent, fading in and out of focus. And was his voice shaking too, or was that just Castiel's breath? "Hey, I got you. I got you."
He could make out the shriek of an approaching car, the crunch of gravel, somewhere behind Dean's warmth.
"Dean, I'm falling," was the only reply he could manage, his mind finding it hard to form sentences, form words besides Dean, Dean, Dean. "Dean..."
"Hey, if you're gonna fall, you better stick the landing. Don't close your eyes on me, come on and try to stand," Dean urged, practically begged as he nudged his friend, pulling him up as Castiel's legs slipped against the pavement. He was trying to turn him around, to get him in the car that wasn't even working anymore, like everything else that wasn't working, that was useless. Useless, utterly useless.
"I can't go anywhere, Dean. I'm falling and I don't have anywhere to land. I'm going to die, Dean. I'm dying and I don't know where to go, I don't want to go." His white shirt was now almost completely drenched in blood, and he remembered how Joe went, and this was how he was going to go too. And by his own blade. Was this what humans called irony? Irony was useless, too, when you were dying.
"You're not going anywhere, you idiot," Dean's grip tightened around his fallen angel. "You're landing right here and I got you, so don't you fucking go anywhere." The back door to a car was opening, and he could hear feet now, two pairs stampeding towards them.
"Dean," Castiel sighed, no more panic- just exhaustion.
He thought he heard Dean say something behind the roar of his heartbeat and the flicker of Castiel's. But his vision was being swallowed by that shadow and everything was turning black. And then he was gone, falling between Heaven and Hell with Dean somewhere in the middle grabbing him and fighting against gravity like he fought against everything.