The place we are in has no form, no shape. Neither he nor I have need of these things, but as I release him eventually from me, I realize it should have something.
So I give it trees as tall as giants, and soft-falling rain.
*
He tears free of my grasp.
He stares at me, water reflecting light all around him, furred branches heavy with it. The smell is oddly familiar to me, where here I should have no sense of smell and I see that somehow it is with him, also. Just for a moment, before I offer him my hand.
Before he puts a knife through it.
They say we host are creatures of justice. Of retribution. We are His will, His law on earth. An army. Soldiers, bearing weapons of divine wrath. That is what Daniel saw us to be. As Michael, sword-wielding. Terrible, inexorable, fearsome.
Is this what he sees now? We are still as we stand, facing each other, my hand pierced through and the slow luminous fall of what I bleed pooling on the soft ground below. He grips the knife, still staring. Face twisted in fear and hate. His gaze is black as coal, as the dark underbelly of the universe. I remember what it had been, the colors of oak and moss, late afternoon sunlight and what once lay in that gaze, burning intensity, passionate love and loyalty, for all his feigned laconic indifference.
"Your name is Dean Winchester," I tell him. "You are here because you willingly sacrificed yourself, in loving devotion, for your brother."
The knife sinks slow, and I close my fist, reflexive against it and then look down at that fist. And slowly force it open again.
"I am Castiel. Malak. Messenger. בני האלהים, one of the bene Elohim. Sons of the Father. "
He's listening. Even as his eyes blaze black hatred, some deep part of him
hearkens
and I go on.
"This is not your true form."
"LIAR"
His gaze has come to my hand, and the knife, and he sinks it more yet again, in punishment, in test, for the sheer pleasure of it or all these things.
"You are made in His image. That is your true shape, you true nature."
"LIAR"
At last I reach my free hand. It curves his cheek and in all my aching hope for their kind, I have known no relief like this, where the ghost of warm skin, weather of a day's hard travel and stubble is there under my touch, under the visage of hatred he has become.
"You are loved," I tell him, and I mean those I have known, those who surround him, those he cares for and defends, even those people years and miles behind him whose gratitude and love for what he did for them he'll never know.
At the same time, there is some flutter of something, unbidden in my own breast. Even as I say those words of others, and realize I mean more.
A moment's arrest, where he forgets to call me a liar again and I forget the knife, and the rain falls.
Then he pulls the knife free and plunges it into my heart and tears claws through my feathers and flesh and we do it all over again.
*
Forty days, forty nights. Is that the number? He doesn't realize that there is nothing of me that once sundered, is not still whole. Even were he to burn me to ash, disperse me as motes of dust.
He fights, I bleed, bright feathers drift until finally I once again enfold him and
HUSH
I tell him and speak his name and
Now I am sure I feel the rugged lines of his frame in my arms, sweetly imperfect, utterly mortal. A human weight, which for a moment ceases the raging struggle and instead coils in terrified relief against me.
I wrap him tighter still, until there is nothing there but all I am, whatever wings and light and love and benediction I can offer him.
One moment.
Eye of the storm.
One moment, and it will become signal to me, one bright and glittering thing. For all my overlong eternity.
