Summary: New angels accept very early on that everyone cannot be saved they have to. Angst, features Raphael and Castiel. Warnings for suicide.
Raphael is Castiel's companion for a long time, following each random prayer again and again to give aid, but eventually they grow disillusioned.
Note: Castiel isn't always inhabiting a male in this one, but I'm referring to Cas as 'he' anyway. It seems more appropriate.
This was inspired listening to 'Feathery Wings' by Voltaire. Always makes me think of Supernatural and Castiel. Great song.
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, nor any of the characters, ideas, concepts, or other materials therein.
And The LORD Hardened His Heart
The humans have many romantic notions about angels. They say that every time a church bell chimes, an angel get its wings. Whenever a kitten is set on fire, an angel dies.
And when children suffer, they say, an angel cries.
The last is the only one with even the faintest ring of truth – but even that only applies to young angels.
Castiel is created in what could be called 2069 B.C. While this period of his Father's rule is more benevolent than past years (consider the great flood that destroyed the world) it is nonetheless a brutal period – as are all periods of human history, he will later realize.
For his first year in creation Castiel is assigned to be trained among the ranks of Heaven. While most knowledge necessary to one's function is formed with an angel, even lowly footsoldiers typically need some time to fully process their knowledge and properly learn their duties. It is only after the first year of relative seclusion that angels are made aware of the larger society of Heaven, and only then that the place called Earth, and those fabled creatures called humans, can be fully recognized.
Castiel, like every angel, has heard of humans. He knows that they are Father's children as well, and much beloved by God. He is curious to learn of and converse with them. As soon as he and his year-mates are released from isolation he reaches out to grasp their prayers.
And it hurts.
"Please god stop them stop them - "
"He doesn't deserve to die -"
"Save our crops - "
"My son is ill -"
"Why have you forsaken us? - "
"Please shine upon us - "
"Give aid -"
"Help - "
"Let it end -"
Castiel freezes, stuck with a thousand conflicting impulses. His wings shudder and rustle, jerking and twitching, but where to go – there are so many -
And then suddenly all is silent. Castiel unfurls his young wings – and when did he fold them, when did he cower? - and looks up only to bow in automatic reverence.
"Raphael."
"You are Castiel, correct?"
"I am, Sir."
Other angels shimmer toward them; a warning flare of Raphael's Grace causes them to scatter, and the two are alone.
"You hear the humans."
It is not a question.
But Castiel answers anyway. "Sir, there are just so – so many – how can we help them? Answer them?"
"It is not necessarily our function to respond to every human plight," Raphael says gravely. "Our Father directs angels to people of extreme importance to humanity's future, but that is all. You are a soldier; you have no imperative to assist them, but only to fight the hordes of Hell."
Castiel is quiet a moment. "But can I assist?"
Raphael watches him. The intimidating radiance of his Grace looms over Castiel, and the new angel finds himself shrinking unconsciously. But, incongruously, Raphael's Grace suddenly diminishes and becomes warmer. Castiel shifts uneasily at the sudden change, but Raphael seems more relaxed. "If you are given a secondary function – yes."
"Meaning - "
Castiel shudders, twitching away instinctively but not fighting the sudden pull that Raphael gives his Grace. Stunned, Castiel stares up at the archangel and perceives the change in his own purpose.
"You are now the angel of Thursday, and permitted to descend to Earth on that day," Raphael declares. "And perhaps," he adds, "I shall join you."
For the time being, Castiel is relieved to be given a chance to answer the well of pleading voices that whisper even now in his mind. He bows again, sincerely grateful, sincerely proud.
In centuries to come, and millenia later, Castiel will often ponder that first meeting and wonder if Raphael had not known of their eventual enmity – and if Raphael had not purposely damned him.
It is a Thursday when God demolishes Sodom and Gomorrah.
Castiel is there, watching numbly as fire rains from the heavens to demolish the two towns. Milling, screaming humans riot in the cities, pleading, pleading, praying -
"Help me oh God have mercy - "
"I'm innocentinnocent sososorry - "
"Mercy mercy - "
"Forgive us - "
"Lord my children - "
"Save us!"
"Why is he killing them all?" Castiel asks quietly.
"Because the people of these cities are sinful," is Raphael's response. The archangel is in the form of a dark, slim man with queer amber eyes. He sits cross-legged, but watches the destruction soberly. Castiel, in the vessel of a lighter-skinned young girl, is standing silently upon a hilltop as they both witness the ongoing carnage.
The cities are ringed with high flames, and the looming forms of Grace that make up another squadron of angels move throughout the two distant masses. Screams trail behind them as humans are first blinded and then killed by the mere sight of their beautiful, otherworldly forms.
Castiel does not understand.
"They are not all sinners."
"All humans have original sin."
"Some are children."
"They would become sinners."
"As you say, all humans are sinners. So why destroy these ones so indiscriminately?"
"Men tried to force sex on our brethren who visited Lot."
This Castiel understands less. "Our brethren could have flown away, or fought. They are unharmed."
"It was a test."
"Then those individuals who tried to harm them should be punished. Not all of them. Not the innocents."
"It is not for us to question Father's will."
Castiel pauses, because there is no way to argue that. He is silent, and Raphael, with a quick glance, seems almost disappointed. The archangel sighs, and then, in a flutter of wings, disappears.
Castiel stays until the cities are nothing but ash and broken bone, and then he flees.
Sodom and Gomorrah haunt Castiel, but he still wings down to Earth with Raphael every Thursday, and together they respond to as many prayers as they can.
Sometimes it's the small things that help – comfort, consolation, a reassertion of Faith. The first prayer Castiel responds to is that of a young boy, weeping bitterly in the dirty dredges of a man-made ditch and staring at the fly-stricken, bloated corpse of his mother. He is holding a rusted meat-knife and contemplating what to do with it. He is praying to God for another way, for a sign that there is something worth living for.
Castiel appears.
He is not, however, very good at consolation, and so the only thing he can think to say is, "Suicide is a sin."
The boy gasps, and looks up. Castiel is still inhabiting the young girl-child from a village a hundred miles away, and the boy is plainly bewildered by 'her' rough, gravelly voice.
"God hears your prayer," Castiel adds.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Castiel, and I am an angel of the lord." With a wave of 'his' hand, the swollen corpse sinks into the ground. The boy gapes. "You asked for a sign," Castiel tells him. "And this is it: live."
And he flies away.
That is all that the boy needs, it seems. The child scrapes his way up from poverty and becomes one of the most renowned artists of his era, and also one of the most devout; many years later Castiel will feel his soul enter Heaven, and will be glad.
Because not all of his visits are so successful.
"How could you kill him!" The woman shrieks. "Why! What did he ever do?!"
Castiel, now in the form of a behemoth of a man, is unfazed but not without sympathy. "All must meet their end," is his gentle rejoinder. "But he would not want this for you." Perhaps a bid to recall her family? "Your children - "
"I want him back, I need – get him back for me."
"I cannot," says Castiel. It is a lie, but it is somewhat better than saying 'will not'.
The woman throws a plate at his head and leaves.
Later, she will regain her husband, but not by angelic intervention. She makes a deal with a demon, Azazel. Her soul is taken from Heaven forever, and Castiel mourns. He must learn to reach them, these humans, but how?
"Raphael has been at this longer than most," Balthazar tells Castiel one day.
"Been at what?"
"Charity. Philanthropy. Compassion. Whatever you would call it. It's common enough, of course. We're all told about our mortal cousins, Father's beloved, so we think, well, there must be something special about them. And then we see the horrors of Earth, and hear their prayers, and we want to help, because that's what we're made to do, is it not?" A pause. "But everyone stops, in the hand. Everyone has to realize, it's – it's just futile."
"I do not understand," says Castiel.
"You will."
Balthazar, Castiel decides, is wrong. He is in the form of a heavyset priest, and thinks he will keep it for awhile. The man was very sinful for a servant of god; perhaps time as a vessel will help?
It is in this form that Castiel finds another woman like the last, another single mother adrift in a misogynistic era. But this one is not hysterical, merely afraid.
Her father and she are feuding; he will not assist her, and in this period it is difficult for a single woman to earn a keep, much less when looking after three children. She considers suicide. Her father would surely take in her daughters if she herself, and their petty argument, were no longer factors.
But suicide, as Castiel always reminds himself, is a sin.
She looks for another way out, prays for it. And he answers.
"I will give you the means to provide for them," Castiel tells the amazed woman, "but you must live."
He conjures flourishing trees and berry-bushes around her small property, a dozen fowl, four sheep and a goat. She weeps with relief and thanks him profusely.
"Live, and be loyal to the lord your god," is his serene reply, "and all debt is repaid."
She is loyal and devout and good. She raises her three fine daughters and all of them become charitable individuals who work to save others in similar situations. To Castiel this one incident alone is enough to let him dismiss Balthazar's strange doubt. If the angels can have such a dramatic effect through one family, who could call their efforts futile?
When God purposely hardens the heart of the Pharaoh of Egypt, stopping him from allowing the Israelites to leave*, Castiel is confused. When the angels are ordered to kill innocent inhabitants of the land, to steal children and send forth plague, he is horrified – even moreso when they are forbidden from responding to prayers.
"Father is exhibiting his might before the world," Raphael mutters, uneasily, when Castiel questions him.
"I think there are more peaceful ways to do that," Castiel says.
Raphael is silent.
A man, weeping for his son. A child, a toddler, an innocent. "Please, please," the man prays. "Return him, god, I'd give anything, anything -"
God does not bargain for life. Castiel ignores the prayer, with difficulty, and pretends to not hear it. He is flying with Raphael, though, and the archangel flinches.
"God, please return my sight," a woman whispers.
Castiel gets Raphael, the healer, and they do. The dark-haired woman smiles and bows and thanks them profusely.
The next day she uses her sight to stab an ex-lover. She is destined for Hell.
"Even angels are not omniscient," Raphael consoles Castiel. It's not really comforting.
"What brings you such misery, child?" Castiel asks a little boy.
"Can you make my parents love me again?"
"...No."
"I am the archangel of healing," Raphael weeps. The two are flying over a plague-stricken city. "And yet Father has cursed them and I cannot even cure their children."
"Father is ineffable," Castiel murmurs. He watches with heavenly eyes as people keel over in the streets to die, and others side-step the bodies warily, going about their business. "There is purpose to everything he does."
"But to what end?" Raphael asks bitterly. And Castiel has no reply.
"Lord, keep my son safe," a father prays as his son goes to war. So Castiel gives the son a blessing so that he will be safe and shielded from harm.
After his first, triumphant battle, the son raids a harmless village, killing four men and two women and raping all of them.
Castiel and Raphael team together to take down half a dozen hellhounds pursuing an eighteen-year-old man. The relieved individual invites them to his estate in thanks, meaning to gift them with rich rewards, and Castiel peers into his mind.
The hellhound attack was not random. This man had sold in soul at the mere age of eight in return for the deaths of his parents, greedy for their wealth. He never regretted their demise – he only fears his own end.
They send the man to Hell and avoid demon-related prayers thereafter.
A woman is dying slowly and painfully, pinned down by huge boulders from a freak landslide that caught her while picking flowers. Castiel appears and flies her to her home, healing the dazed woman with one soft touch.
The next morning she has a heart attack and dies.
There is a day when Raphael and Castiel both respond to one prayer that shrieks above the rest in an ugly, desperate way. They find a man standing at the end of a cliff, toes dangling over the edge.
"What's the point of it all!" the man cries. He looks respectable, relatively speaking. Clean-shaven and garbed in expensive silks, he has no want of wealth or security. He is handsome, as humans measure such things, his skin tan and healthy, wrists ensconced in polished bands of silver. But his brown eyes are tinged with madness. "Why do you make us to suffer?"
"All of gods creations have purpose, cousin," says Castiel. "Step away from the ledge."
The man seems unsurprised to see angels. "Tell me then," he pleads, desperately. "Tell me why we are made to live such agony, made to live and suffer and die an ugly, ignoble death – why we are cursed with awareness of this fact, as no other beast is?"
"Original sin," is Raphael's unhelpful explanation.
"I ate no apple!" the man shrieks. "It all means nothing!"
Castiel tries to understand. "Your death will amount to nothing. Enjoy your life. Do not end it so abruptly - "
"Why not? Why not? Why now instead of later? I've never put off anything in my life, I won't start now, why not get a headstart?"
"The joys of life - "
"The misery of life will be over, over, gone and done, just black nothing - "
"It is a choice between Hell and Heaven - "
The man is uninterested in Castiel's argument, and he makes his choice. The rich man turns, laughing with that tinge of hysterical madness, and jumps.
Appearing at the foot of the canyon Castiel stares at the once-vibrant man's corpse, which seems so very still. His eyes trace over the youthful skin, the supple muscle, and other eyes, invisible behind the form of his human vessel, watches the small wisp of the man's soul float away.
He wonders where the man's soul will go. Suicide is a sin, but that does not necessarily mean he will not reach Heaven. Either way, though, he only accelerated his journey to the afterlife.
Humans have such a brief time on Earth, he thinks. And then either an afterlife reliving that time or being tortured, both for eternity. Who would care to die early? To rush to the end?
He does not understand – cannot.
At least, he tries to tell himself, the man will no longer suffer (should he go to Heaven, whispers a little voice), but that somehow is no comfort at all. Because this scene, this travesty, will happen again. A thousand thousand humans will suffer anew, independently, will reach for Death's hand with both tears and smiles. And few will consider those who fell from these sheer cliffs before them, none truly understanding the grief that precedes their own. Then, in a quick motion, their torment ends – for better or for worse. Finality and closure in death. The ultimate peace. It is God's envied gift to his second children, his beloved children, and finally Castiel understands, briefly, why Lucifer went mad.
Humans die, and fade, and forget. They meet an eternity which is not eternity at all – just repetition after repetition, ignorance preserved with jealous hands. But the angels always, always remember.
"You are not coming?"
"What is the point?" Raphael snaps. "No. Humanity just dooms themselves. Let them die in the droves, let them suffer, if they are so eager to go. I wash my hands of it."
"Our Father - "
" - Created us to serve Heaven. And we shall, and that is all." Raphael shakes his head, angrily. "It was always useless, anyway. They are born and live and breed and die, all in squalor, in pain – let the end hasten. Let them all die. It is for the better."
Castiel is troubled, because what of the single mother saved from death? What of the little boy they saved, who grew to become an artist? The uncounted masses they had consoled and comforted and led to the Word of their Father?
"None of them matter in the end," Raphael refutes when Castiel tentatively offers the thought. "They live a little longer, and they die. They always die. Always end. We can do them no good, and why should we try? They're no better than those similar creatures, the monkeys, eking out a petty living in the mud only to die in their self-dug graves. Those foolish, multitudinous – insects. That is what they are, insects. Millions of them, living and dying uselessly, striving for a purpose and never realizing – they don't have one."
It is blasphemy, and more than that it is cold. Castiel stares at his brother, full of not disgust but sorrow, and pity. "Raphael - "
But the archangel vanishes, and Castiel, with a sigh, decides not to follow.
It is a choice he will often come to regret, and Raphael the healer never again accompanies Castiel on his visits to Earth.
Within the century, those visits stop altogether.
It is many centuries more before Castiel is given the mission to invade Hell. It is many centuries since God had left, and many centuries since he has dared to think of humans, to acknowledge the low buzz and murmur of prayers that rush daily through his mind. He cannot allow himself to care for humans, to love them or hate them. They are small and insignificant and petty, and to actually care – that is dangerous.
Then he sees the soul of Dean Winchester.
It is hell-forged, burnished with damned fires until its strange mortal strength gleams and shines with a glow that rivals the Grace of the Morninstar in the days before the fall. And, suddenly, Castiel knows he has more to fear than the dark army of hell, because it is impossible not to admire this soul, to love this soul, and he is doomed.
The Righteous Man has given in to damnation. Castiel could leave him behind with no repercussion, because he has failed; the first seal has been broken. But he cannot. For the first time in over a thousand years, he puts down his arm and saves a human.
But, he tells himself, he doesn't care. He won't become invested. Not again - never again. He just needs to keep himself distant from this human.
How hard can it be?
*That part of the bible is honestly horrific, seriously.
Exodus 7:3 - And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.
Then phrase 'hardened his heart' is repeatedly used. Meaning, God totally mindwhammied pharaoh into denying Moses, and then cast the plagues on Egypt. To show off his power. Wtf.
Anyhow, sore spot of mine, sorry. Just wondered if anyone had noticed that awful little tidbit. No offense meant to anyone, it just weirds me out.
Reviews are love!