de Profundis
warnings/spoilers: this story takes place after the conclusion of season 10. Therefore, a categorical spoiler warning is in effect for everything that happens prior to the season 10 finale. However, I plan to avoid spoilers when possible and de Profundis is intended to be comprehensible no matter where a viewer is in the Supernatural TV series. This is a Destiel fanfiction, which, as virtually all readers known, means that Dean will (eventually) be romantically involved with Castiel. Emphasis on eventually. I've applied an M rating because Ancient Rome is very much a rated-M place. Expect violence, slavery, adult content and other period-appropriate themes.
Summary: After the events of season 10, Castiel attempts to save the Winchesters, who are sent back in time to ancient Rome during the reign of Caligula.
Chapter 1
As I watch the Winchesters, knowing that this moment shall be our final parting, I reflect on the compression of space and time.
I have existed for millennia on end. I watched as the first single-celled organisms arose from the primordial swamp. I stood beside the mother of the last Neanderthal, weeping as her child died in her arms, and with his passing, their species. Through it all, the simplicity of the mission was my guide. Time sped by, meaningless to us except as an itinerary– what we were to do, and when we were to do it. Mostly, we were to watch, the eyes in the rocks, as life bloomed and died before our eyes. That is, the compression of space and time on a geologic scale.
The past seven thousand years have caused my perception of time to slow. With the ascent of humankind, the clockwork universe no longer operated of its own volition: we were only required to turn the cogs or to replace the occasional faulty screw, to prevent God's favored creation from destroying itself. Where there are things to do, to consider, time decompressed. We engaged with God's creation as more than just silent observers, but participants. Protectors.
A radical notion.
Father had recreated us as agents after passing down this new directive. The world was deep in the process of transformation beyond recognition, through the actions of Father's favorite children. We could never have dreamed of the worlds within worlds that humanity would create. The world which Father had created, and then stepped away from, once it truly became alive, the master of its own growth and development.
As I look at the resting bodies of my friends, I find this moment to be a fitting conclusion to my existence. I myself have transformed beyond recognition. A seraphim, a mortal, and a seraphim once more. I have known pain. Hunger. Loss. Longing, the deep yearning that no word can describe.
I have known love. Love for family, for the Winchesters who sleep in my arms, unaware of the destruction of the world that they have known. My hands, the conduit of my grace, is all that keeps them alive. The Darkness that would have obliterated their existence, as it is now obliterating every living thing on earth eight millennia after being put away, is but a storm cloud in the very distant future, as I slip further into the recesses of time.
It is an open question as to whether or not there is enough left of my grace to bring the Winchesters back to that critical moment in which all of this could have been prevented. But I must try.
I am not alone.
Without warning, Death stands beside me, the edge of his scythe pressed against the nape of my vessel's neck. He expresses no anger, though Death sometimes feigns anger in the presence of mortals. I am old enough to know the truth: Death is infinitely patient.
And there is no possibility that our meeting is a chance encounter. Death has planned this moment, just as he planned the death of his physical form.
Is that a surprise to you? Did you truly believe that Death would have handed Dean the one instrument that could cause his own destruction, if the murder was not exactly what Death intended for Dean to do?
The scythe is pressing tighter against my neck. I am aware of the sensation of pain, although the feeling is dissimilar to the pain that is known to humans. The pain of an angel is the agony of failure, of being, in totality, utterly insufficient to the task at hand. To a species created for its obedience, failure is tantamount to disobedience.
There is no greater hurt than to turn away from God.
But I will not think about Him now. Not when He no longer thinks about us.
I knew about the Darkness, though not from experience. I knew that one day the Darkness' coming would bring the Apocalypse. Not the genocide of humanity, which, to the Winchesters, understandably equated the end of the world. But a true finale to God's creation.
The Darkness is the antithesis of organic matter. The Darkness is the primordial swamp through which life fought, struggling to emerge. The prophet's words rush through my mind, and it is as if I had just heard them. In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was a round form, and void, and darkness lay upon the surface of the deep.
I had watched Cain slay Abel, receiving the corruption of Lucifer on his own body to put the Darkness away forever. But I had not watched Heaven's final victory, where the forces of creation met the forces of destruction on the field of battle.
The Key was lost, but I knew the location of the final battle. Anatolia. Eight thousand years prior to the birth of the Winchesters. I wanted to send the brothers back to that time, to observe what had happened, how the Mark had held back the darkness.
My strength fails me as Death's scythe cuts deeper. We have traveled two thousand years into the past. We are not nearly far enough, and I do not know Death's intentions, nor ask to know them. My power, my awareness, has gone wholly into this task. He places a hand on my shoulder.
"It is time, Castiel, Angel of the Lord," Death says, with the barest hint of a smile.
I am not an Angel of the Lord, I silently reply, and then I am no more.
Non fui, fui; non sum, non curo. I was not, I was; I am not, I do not care. The words had been a famous Epicurean epigraph. These mortal men who boldly proclaimed "death is nothing," believed that once a human died, the human no longer existed. Therefore the mortal felt no pain or fear because he no longer existed, and so there was no reason to fear Death. And these Epicureans who believed in the finality of life still had their own individual Heaven.
I once visited the heaven of Epicurus, strolling through his luscious gardens. Epicurus believes so strongly in his own philosophy that he does not even know that he is dead and his preparations for his garden party have lasted for thousands of years.
He is content with the remembrance of his mortal friendships and simple joys.
He feels no pain.
Epicurus never knew that his philosophy had not been written as a guide for mortals, but for angels. That he was a prophet sent down to earth by God to remind angels, once more, of our own subservience to Humanity.
There are many in Heaven who have refused to accept the truth of the gospel of Epicurus, many angels who felt anger that God would give this knowledge to mortals instead of directly to the beings who loved Him most.
The gospel of Epicurus states that God does not have an interest in what men are doing. Heresy, say the angels of Heaven. Yet I ask, does not the gospel speak in metaphors?
Is God not silent?
The angels are afraid of the terrible responsibility of self-determination.
I do not blame them, for so was I.
But I pity these angels and their belief that upon their deaths, they, too, shall be saved. They throw their lives away, believing that even this existence as an angel is temporary. They yearn for unattainable perfection instead of accepting God's creation for what it is, right now, at this moment.
And Epicurus says, Death is nothing.
And I, right now, at this moment, should be nothing.
Death stands beside me, inclines his head slightly, as I ask him such.
"You will see," he says, and I frown for his cryptic response has told me nothing at all. Then Death vanishes.
I look around me, my sight limited to a mile in each direction. Muted browns, a sunset which stirs in me a sense of awe which I have not felt in a very long time. Not since I was mortal.
"Cas?" a familiar voice says behind me. I do not turn. I know that he is all right. "Where are we? What happened?"
I will answer Dean's questions in the order of their importance, or at least I intend to. But I cannot take my eyes away from the colors wheeling through the sky. Never before has a sunset seemed so vibrant.
"It's beautiful," I observe, indicating the ball of hydrogen whose energy is driving the world. This crucial ball of hydrogen which separated the light from the Darkness. I turn to face my friends, aware, suddenly, of a profound exhaustion that has settled into my vessel's bones, and I sway on my feet.
"Dean—" I start to say.
"Easy!" Dean says, rushing forward. His arms are underneath my body, grasping me. Once, I was the one who gripped him tight and raised him from perdition.
But that was a long time ago. Relatively speaking. The decompression of time, you see.
Dean is saying something, but I can't make out his words. "Where is Sam?" I ask, then catch sight of him out of the corner of my eye. Dean is trying to get me to stop talking and I feel anger, remembering why I brought them to this place. This is important.
"Listen to me. The temple is the lock. Find the temple. And watch." I am fading fast. There is so much more I want to tell them, but the words are lost in my throat. "Find Castiel," I advise, even though the seraphim Castiel who lives at this time will not want to help them.
The Winchesters will convince him. I have faith in nothing except for the Winchesters.
And then there is nothingness, calling me home.