Sound the Bugle
A/N: This is a 2 part short story that I cooked up real quick. I'll post the second part on Friday, unless if I get an overwhelming amount of people asking for more (Yeah, like that's going to happen). I recommend listening to Sound the Bugle by Bryan Adams. It's the song that inspired this, especially Melissa Swanson's Sound the Bugle - Castiel (MINNCON WINNER). This takes part in the very beginning of season 7, with Godstiel, and then does a small time skip. Maybe a few years later. In this, Gabriel and Balthazar managed to fake their deaths, but they aren't sitting out anymore. Any questions, comments or reviews are very welcome.
Also, I don't own Supernatural. Thank God. Enjoy!
"No. There is no way that Castiel could have done this." Balthazar defended his brother immediately after getting over his shock of the sight before him.
"Yet it was him. I saw it with my own eyes." Hester replied with a detached voice that made Gabriel's skin crawl. Was this reaction the only thing keeping her from breaking down completely?
"Well, you're obviously wrong! Maybe you should get your eyes checked, sister." Balthazar's scathing tone bit past Hester's thin mask and pulled a harsh flinch from her.
"Balthazar, enough." Gabriel was surprised to hear the same coldness that Hester sported in his own reprimand. "This isn't Hester's fault." His head hung low as he beheld the charred wings of his brothers and sisters beneath his feet. The bodies that covered the ground of the eternal Tuesday of an autistic man's Heaven amassed into the hundreds. "We all know who really did this. And I'll be sure to kill him myself."
"I just... I can't believe he did this. I can't see Cassy doing something like this." Balthazar's anger faded into surprise and confusion, which could only lead to painful realization and misery.
"Our brother is dead, Balth. Now it's up to us to destroy his murderer.
"Gabriel..." There it was. The break in Balthazar's voice; the broken expression and anguish.
"He tried to kill you, Balthazar. He doesn't deserve your defense. He doesn't deserve our mercy. All he deserves is righteous retribution for the slaughter of our brethren. Castiel will die."
Balthazar nodded firmly, but his eyes were wet and he was forced to look away as a glint of a tear trailed silently down his cheek. Gabriel only wished he could cry for his fallen siblings, Cassy included. But he felt strangely empty inside.
Gabriel landed in a puddle of something suspiciously warm and sticky, hearing the viscous blood squelch under his feet. Any other time, and he would have complained about getting it on his shoes, but nothing could distract him from the thing in front of him. It was wildly clear that any trace of the Castiel Gabriel had known had been ground into dust and replaced by the monster in front of him. The usually bright light of an angel's grace was tainted with the thousands of souls from Purgatory and was now a disgusting pulsing purplish black color that was reminiscent of Lucifer's grace when Gabriel had last seen him. Castiel's raven black wings were disintegrating under the power that he held; sparse amounts of feather barely covering the bloody bones underneath. His vessel didn't look much better.
Castiel finished with the person hanging several feet off the floor in his hands before acknowledging Gabriel; a sickening crack ringing in Gabriel's ears as their neck snapped and they fell with a loud thud to the floor. Castiel stared down at the teenager for a moment before rolling his head to look at Gabriel with a mad look in his eyes, utter glee on his features that came close to terrifying the archangel.
"Are you here to kill me, Brother? Because that won't end well for you." His voice was higher than usual, with sadistic joy illuminating Castiel's generally expressionless face in a sick light. His bright blue eyes had deepened into a near black and dulled to resemble those of the dead. "But you know that. You saw what happened to the disobedient angels, right?."
"You are no brother of mine." Gabriel said.
"That's too bad." He actually sounded regretful, the sick bastard. "Then what am I?"
"A monster." Gabriel answered blandly. "I mean, have you looked in the mirror recently?"
Castiel scowled. "Have you been talking to the Winchesters again? Don't you remember what happened last time you did that?"
"I seem to recall saving the world from a power hungry Lucifer. In fact, right now seriously feels like deja vu."
"I am nothing like Lucifer." Came his quiet reply.
"No, really. The resemblances are stunning. Your grace is just as tainted as his is."
"NO! What I'm doing is for the good of everyone! Lucifer rebelled because he didn't like the humans! I- I'm doing this to save the humans! I'm doing this to save everyone, especially the angels!" Desperation colored his voice, a desperation for Gabriel to see his intentions.
Throat suddenly dry, Gabriel managed to ask quietly, "Can you see what you have become, Castiel?"
"I have become a God! And not just a faint imitation of one like you did when you went off to join those pagans, or what Lucifer did with the demons! I have become an even better God than Father!"
"No. You haven't. You've become something worse than Lucifer."
Silence strangled Gabriel for minutes as Castiel stared him down.
"Why are you here, Gabriel?" Castiel finally asked in a low voice.
"I came to stop you."
"Why?"
"So you wouldn't do anything else that you would regret when you finally snap out of this." It wasn't what Gabriel had initially been planning when he came here. It was true, he was so absorbed by rage that he had been raring to kill Castiel as soon as possible, no matter the risks. But... maybe there was still a Castiel to be saved. A Castiel of good intentions buried beneath power and betrayal; drowning in it.
Castiel raised a hand, poised to snap, and Gabriel knew this was the deciding moment. If he was wrong, he could be very well cease to exist in the next second.
He dropped his hand as he fell to his knees and stared up at Gabriel with big blue eyes welling up with tears of self-hatred and intense suffering. "Please. Stop me." He choked out, laughing sadly with giant wracking sobs interrupting the broken grateful laughter.
"What is this place?" Dean glanced around at the white Heavenly walls that was on the cusp of being painful to look at and got a dreadful feeling in the pit of his stomach as he observed the bars that blocked cells from the outside world and got a feeling he already knew where exactly in Heaven they were.
Hester (or at least, that's what Dean thought she was called) glanced back at him disinterestedly before replying with a tone that made it clear how stupid a question she thought it was. "Heaven's prison."
"And why are we in Heaven's prison? You told us Gabriel wanted to talk with us about Abbadon."
"He does. This is the shortest route to his office."
Sam snorted. "Gabriel with an office?"
She sighed in agreement before adding, "Office being a loosely used term."
Dean was still stuck on them being in Heaven's jail. "Why is the shortest route to Gabriel's office through the jail? Why can't you just zap us there."
She scowled at him and turned her nose up slightly. Snootily, she said, "I hardly think a human like you would be ale to understand the series of complex equations necessary to explain the metaphysics of Heaven."
Dean huffed but stayed silent as they continued out of the prison section to Gabriel's office.
"Deano. Samsquatch. Can't really say I'm that happy to see you two again." Gabriel greeted from
"Believe me, the sentiment is returned tenfold." Dean replied.
"Bit overeager, aren't you there big boy? Hey Samster. How are you doing? Looks like the mane has added a few more inches."
Sam gave one of his perfected bitch faces, the one Dean had labeled as 'Selected for the specific use of when Gabriel is being immature'. "Let's get to why we're here." Sam said.
"Right. Abbadon. Well, the prissy cat always had a bit of a fiery disposition..."
Matters on the newest Hell-threat resolved, Sam turned to the question that had been on his mind since they had entered Heaven.
"What type of people does Heaven keep in its jail?"
Dean made a show of rolling his eyes at his nerdy brother but found himself also curious.
Gabriel's shoulders stiffened slightly but relaxed so quickly that Sam wasn't sure he saw it at all and Dean missed it entirely. "Well, Sambo, jails usually house bad people that do bad things to keep them away from the innocents like yourself and Deano." Gabriel patronized them in the tone you would use to talk to a three year old. Sam glared at Gabriel until the archangel relented. "Mostly, they're angels that committed large sins. Gadreel, Abner, angels like them that needed to be punished rather than 'corrected'."
"Why wasn't Lucifer kept here then?" No one mentioned the flinch that jerked Sam's body at the sound of his torturer's name coming from Dean's lips.
"Uh, der, because he's an archangel, genius. He's too powerful for any cage other that THE Cage. Not to mention that he's the Deceiver and could easily sway some of his followers to break him out and start another war. And..." Gabriel took on an air of melancholy that was uncharacteristic of the former Trickster. "I'm beginning to think it was also for Michael too. For all of us. So that we wouldn't keep trying to go to him and help him get better, change him back into what he used to be. So Michael wouldn't continuously torture himself day in and day out by forcing himself to see what became of the brother he loved so much, that he imprisoned."
There was an awkward silence that lasted too long before Sam cleared his throat and made a show of collecting up the new lore book Gabriel had collected for them.
It broke Gabriel out of his stupor and he grinned. "So how did you dunces find out about our little prison anyhow?"
They glanced at each other before Dean shrugged and answered. "That Heather angel brought us in through there."
All of the blood drained from Gabriel's face, leaving him frightfully pale. "Hester led you into Heaven's jail?"
"...Yes?" Dean answered uncertainly, disconcerted by Gabriel's reaction.
"And you didn't see him?" Gabriel wouldn't meet their eyes now.
"What? Who?" Sam asked.
Gabriel shook his head and it looked like he was going to brush off the questions until Sam interjected again. "Gabe. What's wrong?"
They could see his Adam's apple bob and he swallowed, meeting their eyes with a colder expression than they were used to seeing in those amber eyes. "Follow me." Gabriel jerked his head towards the door and led the way. Sam and Dean had no choice but to follow.
They once again entered the prison, this time with a tense atmosphere of questions. Gabriel led them down the winding pathways. As they traveled, a resonant ringing that was barely on the edges of the humans' senses grew louder to the point that they could identify it as singing. A beautiful voice echoed through the hallways, sad not because of the words that they could not yet hear, but because of the emotions buried deeply in the voice that dare utter them in such a depressing place.
As they drew even nearer, it became clear that the voice was not murmuring English, but almost humming words that could only be the angelic language of Heaven. But Dean wasn't focusing on the singing. The turmoil in his own mind was too loud for that.
Sam faltered to a stop. It took Dean several steps to realize that his brother was no longer beside him because of how wrapped up in his own self-destructive thoughts he was at the moment. When he turned with a scathing remark along the lines of 'hurry up princess', the words died on his throat. A Heavenly glow was surrounding Sam, light dancing around him playfully and comfortingly, pulsing in response to the deep angelic voice that echoed in the hallways. Sam watched it with a child-like curiosity and wonder, looking more at ease than he had for years. Hesitantly, wary of scaring the light away, he reached out to it. It gathered around his hand happily, and when he cupped his hands, it pooled into them where it cast a gentle light on his face.
Dean looked back at Gabriel -who had also turned to watch the light with a sad fondness- for an explanation.
"If you've ever wondered what it's like for an angel to sing, this is it Sambo." Gabriel chuckled.
"It's beautiful."
"It's the closest you can get to seeing an angel's true form without getting your eyes deep fried." He explained, which caused the Winchesters to glance up at him in surprise and then look even closer at the light pooling in the younger's palms. Gabriel allowed them to look without interruption for a minute or so. "It looks like he's doing well today. Come on guys." With that, he urged them forwards. Sam dropped his hands and the light continued its dance around him before leaping to Dean and swirling around him. Dean felt something akin to joy blossoming in his chest just from the proximity and was glad when it followed him further in, finding himself unwilling to give up the small comfort the light gave.
When Gabriel stopped at a cell and turned to look in it, the humming emanating from the cell, the thing that surprised Dean was that he wasn't surprised by what he saw the voice belonged to.
Cas's humming continued for several seconds, his eyes closed and such a peaceful look on his face that Dean was reluctant to disturb it. Especially considering how that same face had been covered in blood with a maniacal expression last time Dean had seen him. He made no acknowledgement that he had heard their approach other than a small quirk at the edge of his lips, looking out of place in a prison cell but totally at home on Cas.
Cas allowed the song to die off slowly. Only when the last sounds were echoing in the corridor did he speak. "Hello Dean." His eyes drifted open and immediately caught Dean's own in that magnificent blue. Thank God it was still blue.
"Hey Cas." Dean managed to say past the lump in his throat.
"Sam. You're looking well." Cas directed the gaze to the younger.
"Good to see you, Cas."
"Wow bro. I know your smitten with the Idiots of Flannel, but couldn't you at least spare me a glance?"
"We see each other every day, Gabriel. While I am glad to have your company, I also find that certain company, namely yourself and Balthazar, can become tiresome without others nearby to balance out your excitable personalities." The twinkle in Cas's eye made it clear it was a joke despite his straight face and level voice.
"Well shit, Cas. Did you just burn Gabriel politely?" Dean laughed. Gabriel's scowl deepened before breaking into a mischievous grin. Dean was sure that he should expect payback in some form in the near future.
"I believe so."
And then the pleasantries were over, leaving only awkward silence.