Fallen Chapter 2:

AN: So this fic was born out a whole bunch of my crazy head-cannons about the power structure of Hell/Heaven, mixed with my stubborn denial to accept certain plot points within the Supernatural universe, and my obsessing about what effects changing said plot points would have within the timeline of the show in an overly complex 'For Want of a Nail' type story, all the while finding new ways to torture my favorite characters.

You're welcome.

-CASTIEL-

There is a blue-white light, burning in the darkness. It is bright, so terrifyingly bright. Far too bright for something that is so cold.

He is falling towards it, falling fast.

It is getting brighter. Bigger.

No.

He tries to pull away. The light doesn't want to let him go. It pulls at him like gravity. He goes anyway.

"Vince, the 911 lady said not to try and move him."

"But he's like, twitching, Laura."

Trees.

He could see trees. Thin, dry ones, sprouting out of parched yellow grass, reaching up towards the pale blue-

There was something wrong with the sky.

"Do you think a meteor hit him?"

"I don't know, Laura. I mean, I saw one land right over here."

A meteor?

That seemed wrong, somehow. He stared at the sky, trying to focus his eyes, but instead the effort only made dark patches appear at the corners of his vision. He looked back at the trees instead. He could see two figures nearby, standing on a path near the trees. They looked human, but there was something wrong. He looked at them for a long time before he realized what was missing.

He could only see their forms. Just the physical shell, with no trace of the soul visible beneath it.

He had seen that sort of thing once before- after the apocalypse had miraculously not happened, there had been a brief period of time when he had felt invincible. After all, he had been unmade by Lucifer only to be brought back again. For a while, be had believed that there had been a reason for that.

And so he had set out to do an impossible task- to free Sam Winchester from Lucifer's cage. He had seen Fate itself defeated once before, and was convinced that he could do it once again.

He had been wrong, of course. The thing that he had brought to life had been empty- a shell. He had destroyed it almost immediately.

A human being without a soul was a creature of pure impulse, completely without compassion or sympathy.

And now there were two of them standing less than ten feet away.

He tried to pull himself up, to stand, but found that he couldn't. He coughed, tasting dirt and dust.

"Holy shit, Laura, he's moving."

"Oh, crap. He, dude- I mean, sir or whatever- you probably shouldn't move. You've lost a lot of blood."

Blood?

He looked down, saw dark red splotches on the sleeves of his coat.

How did all of that get there?

He was having trouble thinking. He turned back to the two figures- the female one was slowly approaching. He pulled back.

"Hey, can you hear me? You need to calm down- an ambulance is on its way."

Was she trying to reassure him? He studied the girls shape, trying to puzzle her motives out of the contours of her face. He still couldn't see even a trace of her soul, but she wasn't acting the way a soulless person should. It didn't make any sense. Unless-

The weight of the realization snapped the world into sudden focus.

The meteor. The blood!

He grasps at the blood-stained coat, tries to pull it off. It sticks to shirt underneath it, the shirt that is no longer white.

Please, no.

The two figures in the trees are shouting something at him, and, from very far away, he hears sirens.

Please, no.

He manages to pull the coat off and gets to work on the shirt. He already knows what he will find underneath it, but he needs to see, needs to be sure.

Suddenly, hands are grabbing his arms, trying to stop him from moving. Men. Paramedics. He hadn't seen them arrive. And he couldn't see their souls either.

"Sir, if you do not stop moving, we are going to have to sedate you. Do you understand?"

He nods. The panic leaves him suddenly, leaving him with only the pain and a dull sense of dread. He understood. He knew what had happened to him.

He lets the men help him up onto a stretcher. They lie him on his stomach, carefully not touching his back. He can't see it, but he knows the blood must be worse there- he can feel his shirt clinging to his skin wet and heavy. As they are loading him into the ambulance, he catches a glance of the two figures that had found him. He hadn't noticed before just how young they both are- late teens at most. The boy is standing behind the girl, hand supportively on her shoulder. Both on their eyes follow him, and he sees the girl mouth something that looks like 'good luck' before the doors to the ambulance swing closed. He is suddenly very grateful that he hadn't managed to get his shirt off before the ambulance arrived. No reason that the two of them should have to see it too.

The ambulance springs to life. He can hear them cutting his shirt away. They move quickly- someone says something about "significant blood loss". He closes his eyes, and waits.

"What the Hell?" One of them asks, and at that moment, any remaining hope that Castiel had managed to hold on to is gone.

The paramedics spring into motion. One of them starts calling to "Get the Sherriff on the phone and tell her that we've got a crime scene in the goddamned forest"

Castiel ignores them. The exhaustion is hitting him now. He doesn't try and look at the scars, at the symbols that he now knows are carved into his back. He knows what they are going to look like. And he knows what they mean.

What did I do wrong?

It's the only real thought that he manages to have before he passes out.

Things are clearer when he wakes up again. He realizes almost instantly that he is in a hospital room. There are thick bandages covering his torso and he is attached to various machines, some of which he recognizes, and others that he doesn't.

He is not alone.

There is a woman sitting across from his bed. He can't see her soul either. He wouldn't be able to see anyone's soul ever again.

He had fallen.

There were many different ways to fall, and each one affected the angel differently. Ana had ripped out her own grace and flung herself to earth, and had become, for a time at lease, essentially human. In a way, he had experienced something similar after being cut off from heavens power during the apocalypse.

This was different. This wasn't something that replacing his grace would fix. This was permanent.

The woman seemed to notice that he was looking at her. She smiles in a way that he supposes is supposed to reassure him, but he isn't sure whether or not to trust it. He knows humans can lie to get what they want, and he has little to know experience at reading people. He tries to start with the physical facts- female, early to mid-thirties, dark skin and darker hair that was pulled into a tight ponytail. A police woman, judging from the uniform.

"Your awake- I'm officer Amy Morgan with the local sheriff's department. Are you- okay? Do you remember what happened?"

"No." He answers truthfully. He knows, logically, what must have happened, but he does not remember it. Nor does he understand why.

What did I do wrong?

"Well, um, best we can tell you were attacked in the woods by some kind of cultists- they carved a bunch of these weird symbols into your skin. Then for some reason they put your shirt and coat back on and dumped you in the woods. You're really lucky that those kids found you when they did- I don't want to scare you, but some of those cuts on your back went pretty deep. You lost a lot of blood. According to Doctor Vasquez, you should be dead right now- but I don't think I was supposed to tell you that."

Should be dead-

Castiel gave a small nod, not really listening anymore. The woman continued, oblivious.

"I've got to say, you've us folks down at the station baffled. We aren't used to cases like, well, this, down here. The FBI even showed up, they're down by the path where those kids found you, looking for signs of 'cult activity'. Speaking of which, I probably should call them and let them know you're conscious."

The police woman fumbled with her phone and Castiel stared at the wall behind her. The doctors had lain him on his stomach again. The pain was gone now, replaced with a tired numbness. He regards the IVs and monitors that they have him hooked up to, and supposes that they must have given him something. He still feels relatively alert though, and is grateful for that. It takes a great deal of effort, but he manages to sit upright.

The woman immediately stops her call. "Sir, I wouldn't try to move just yet." Someone is saying something on the other end of the line. "Sorry, I've got to go. Just- get here as soon as you can" She says before hanging up.

He fingers absentmindedly at the bandages wrapped around his torso. "I need to see them. The carvings."

"I don't think that's the best idea."

"You took photographs, correct? For the investigation?"

"Well, yes, but that's not what I meant- you're in shock, you need to focus on your recovery."

"I need to see them. It is very important."

He could see that she wasn't convinced. He closed his eyes, wondering what Dean would do in this situation.

"Please, I just need to…" He paused, gathering his thoughts. "No matter how terrible the truth is, it's better than not knowing."

He wasn't entirely sure where that particular argument had come from, but the woman seemed at least somewhat convinced, and she reached into a manila folder, pulling out several photographs. "All right." She muttered. "But if it gets to be too much for you, just tell me. We don't have to do it all at once."

Castiel took one of the photos from her, examined it. The symbols had been carved purposefully, carefully. There was a sort of symmetry to the overall design, even if no individual symbol was repeated. The symbols themselves were in Enochian, and read almost exactly as he had expected them too.

Exile. That symbol had been carved into the skin over his left shoulder blade, while the symbol for Fallen had been carved into his right. In between, just below and centered over his spine was yet another symbol.

Forever.

He waited for the despair to hit him, and was surprised when it didn't come. Instead, there was only the distant thought of 'So that's the way it is then.'

He touched the photo. Forever.

The police woman was looking at him, waiting for some kind of reaction. When none came, she held out some more photos. "And these are the ones that were on your arms."

"Arms?" He looked down, noticing the bandages that were wrapped from his wrists up to his elbows for the first time. There had been blood on his sleeves, now that he thought about it. He supposed it had to have gotten there somehow. It just seemed so unnecessary. The markings on his back were more than enough to keep him from ever entering heaven again.

He took the photos hesitantly, not knowing what to expect. He looked at them, blinked. "I can't read it."

The police woman gave a weak smile. "Well, you're not the only one. No one can make heads or tails of it- it doesn't even really seem to be based on any known language. I mean, this is all Greek to me, but the FBI guys say that the stuff on your back is some sort of weird proto-Hebrew thing but that these other symbols are something else entirely, something they don't recognize. But, uh, I wouldn't worry- they sent all the images to some Linguistic experts up North, I'm sure that they'll figure it all out."

'I doubt that.' Castiel thought, examining the pictures closer. He had heard, of course, about the Word of God, the ancient alphabet only understood by a handpicked few of Gods most trusted servants.

Who could have put it there? No one had seen or heard from Metatron since even before the Fall of Eden. An Archangel might have been able to do it, but Michael and Lucifer were both trapped in the Cage, Gabriel was dead and Raphael- Raphael had no reason to do this.

Raphael had no reason to cast you out either, yet here you are.

His thoughts were interrupted as the door swung open and two men dressed in suits entered. One of them was extraordinarily thin. The police woman stood up. "This is agent Smith and agent Richardson from the FBI- They're just going to ask you a few questions about what happened." She smiled sympathetically before leaving the room. As soon as she was gone, one of the men- the larger of the two, shuts the door and stands in front of it. The thin man takes the chair that the police woman had been sitting in and drags it closer to Castiel's bed before sitting in it and leaning forward. Something about their demeanor makes Castiel instantly suspicious.

"My partner and I were both very surprised when we heard that you woke up." The thin man's voice is soft, almost friendly. Almost. "Considering the amount of blood we found all over that trail you were found on. It was quite a large amount, you know. I've had just a bit of medical training myself- not in any official respect of course, but I do know that all things considered, you really shouldn't even be alive right now, let alone be lucid enough to be sitting up and having a conversation. I'm sure the doctors are already calling it a miracle. But me- I don't believe in miracles."

The man leaned in closer, sitting on the very edge of the chair. "Which of course, leaves the question- what are you?"

What. Not who.

Dean had warned him, before, when he had first begun losing his powers during the apocalypse, about the way some hunters were. That, for some, it was less about what was right and wrong and more a question of human or not.

"Most hunters are pretty decent." He had said. "But some- some just want to kill. You need to be careful."

Castiel had not given the warning much attention, then. Back then, he had still had traces of his angelic power- more than enough to deal with an over enthusiastic monster hunter.

He remembered the warning now, though.

Castiel studied the thin man's figure. He certainly didn't look like a hunter.

"I can assure you, I mean no harm."

"Now, that really doesn't answer my question, now does it?" The man said calmly.

Castiel looked from the thin man to the larger man guarding the door and then back again. "Are the two of you hunters?"

The man laughed at that, which Castiel thought was an odd reaction. But then again, the entire situation was becoming downright bizarre. "What I am isn't what's important right now. What is important is what you are, and what you know about what happened to the sky a few hours ago."
There is something wrong with the sky.

Castiel remembered that he had thought that before, when he had first fallen. He hadn't been able to make sense of what the thought meant. He glanced out the window, but everything looked normal now.

"What do you mean? What are you talking about?"

The man sighed, shaking his head slightly. "So we're going to be like this then, are we?"

He felt a slight pull on his right index finger, heard a slight disruption in the rhythmic beeping of the hospital machines. He looked back to the thin man, and saw that he had pulled plastic clip of the heart rate monitor off of Castiels finger and had attached it to his own instead.

The large man at the door gave an exasperated sigh. "Damn it, Reid, here?"

The thin man, Reid, apparently, just smiled serenely. "Don't you worry- this shouldn't take too long."

Castiel glanced back and forth between the two of them, trying to puzzle out what was going on, while feeling a strangely familiar sort of panic building in his chest.

"It's really no use lying to us- we already know that you're not human, so you can go ahead and drop the act." Reid said, reaching into his jacket pocket and producing a small blade. "Or do you want to see how much more blood you can lose?"
Castiel stares at the knife in disbelief. Really? Are we going to do this right now?

Behind him, the machine beeped rhythmically, calmly. "So let's try again- what are you?"

Castiel stared at the man. "I've done nothing wrong."

"That really doesn't answer my question." Reid smiled, before grabbing Castiel roughly by the wrist and pulling him into some twisted version of a hug.

"What are you doing?"

"Shhh, shhh." The man whispers, and Castiel can feel the cold metal of the knife on his neck. "You know, if you cut open someone's jugular here, they can bleed out in less than a minute. It'll probably be faster with you, considering all the blood you already lost today."

Castiel can feel panic pounding at his ears, his heart rushing at a near lightning speed compared to the slow, rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor. He knows, with a cold certainty, that the thin man's heart rate has not increased at all during this rapidly escalating encounter.

"Come on, Reid, how are we supposed to explain that kind of blood?" Somehow, the exasperated way that the large man asks that question is even more terrifying then the knife at Castiels throat. It is as if he is complaining about a mildly annoying habit of a friend.

That Reid and his casual, unprovoked murder.

"I'm sure you'll think of something." Reid says jovially.

He has let go of Castiels hand- not that there's much he can do with it, with the knife already so close. The thin man could cut his throat open long before Castiel could do anything about it, and then, from his best guess, he would have thirty seconds before he bled to death.

It's just a word.

The heart monitor was still beeping that impossibly calm rhythm. Castiel looked down, say that it was attached to the hand of Reid's that was not holding the knife.

Just a word. Give it to them, and they may let you go.

But there was a man holding a knife to his throat whose heart was beating just as calmly as if he had just woken up from a pleasant nap, and another man who acted as though this sort of behavior was the equivalent of leaving dirty socks out in the living room of a shared apartment.

He remembers what Dean told him. Some of them just want to kill.

Castiel will not have these two be the first people he tells what has happened to him.

Thirty seconds. He thinks, wrapping his hand around the cord of the heart monitor. He thinks about the symbols on his back and what they mean.

A lot can happen in thirty seconds.

He pulls on the cord, hard, and the machine flat lines. With his other hand, he grabs the man's wrist pushes it back- the man's reactions are slow, he clearly had not been expecting a fight, and he almost manages to get the knife away from his throat. Almost. As it is, the cut is not as deep as it could have been, but it is deep enough. Castiel ignores it, kicks the man's chair out from underneath him.

29 seconds.

He clasps a hand around the wound on his neck. In his panic, he had forgotten about all of the IVs and machines he still was attached too, and his attempt to tackle the man ends with him falling clumsily onto the floor.

25 seconds.

He ignores the pain, and reaches toward the knife in the man's hand, who jerks it away. "You're insane!" The man says, voice rising to a shout for the first time. Castiel supposes that if he had been human, that would certainly be true. But he was not human, would never be human. He knew what was on his back, and what it meant. He grinned at Reid.

I know something you don't know.

The door busts open and he hears a man shout- "What on earth is going on here?!"

He glances over, sees a doctor with a hand clasped over his mouth in shock, and the police woman standing behind him. He can only imagine how the situation must look to them.

"These men- are not FBI agents." Castiel manages to say. He sees the police woman's eyes darting from the wound on his neck to the bloody knife in the thin man's hand. She draws her gun.

"Drop the knife!"

15 seconds. If he had been human, he had no doubt that he would have fallen unconscious by now. But the carvings kept him alert, aware, and while he had no doubt he would come to curse that over time, in the current situation it was a blessing. To his side, he saw the large man pulling a gun from its holster on his hip, pulling it up in what seemed like slow motion towards the police woman.

Sam and Dean would never-

Castiel felt offended on behalf of all hunters everywhere. He judged the distance- the room wasn't large. He might be able to make it. Some of the IVs had come detached in his failed attempt to get out of bed, but many were still attached. He pulled the rest out.

He had lost count of how many seconds he had left, but he was beginning to see darkness at the edges of his vision.

Not yet. You are not allowed to die yet.

The large man was pointing his gun at the police woman and Castiel ran towards it. He slammed into the man's arm, knocking off the aim, saw a bullet hit harmlessly on the tile floor. He saw the doctor tackling the large man from behind, pulling the gun out of his hand, and then the world started spinning uncontrollably.

Castiel hit the floor hard, and he could see Reid writhing on the ground in pain a few meters away. It seemed that in the frenzy, the police woman had shot him in the kneecap.

Well good for her.

He caught Reids eye. The thin man's pale eyes were wide, wild. "What- why?"

Because I know what is carved into my back, and I know what it means. Because I know that even if I die now, it won't be for long.

The darkness comes quickly, and Castiel doesn't fight it this time.

Forever. The symbols had said, and that was exactly what they meant. Forever.

Coming back to life is much more painful then he remembers it being. There is a flash of a blindingly cold, all consuming light. Then it is gone, replaced by the pain. He had known that the experience was not supposed to be pleasant, but he hadn't expected it to hurt more then the dying itself.

He coughs, tasting blood.

"Holy- the guys still alive! Somebody call the freaking doctor!"

He stares at the ceiling. The wounds on his back were screaming in agony, but he couldn't find the energy to move. Suddenly someone is hovering over him.

"There's nothing here- I mean, there's blood- a lot of blood, but no cut, not even a scratch."

"What in Gods name…"

The police woman voice rings out, authoritative. "All right everyone, clear out of the room. Doctor Vasquez, I want you to run a full check on this guy. Once you are sure that his life is not in danger, you call me, ok? The rest of you, get back to the station, and I think it goes without saying that no one breaths a word of this to those psycho fake FBI agents!"

"Yes mam!"

The doctor pokes around at his neck for a while, wiping away the blood as if expecting to find the wound underneath it, muttering obscenities in both English and Spanish as the cut continued to refuse to appear. After finally seeming to accept that he indeed no longer had an open neck wound, the doctor and a nurse carefully carried him back to the bed and reattached him to the IVs and monitoring equipment. The doctor studied the machines for a time before muttering more Spanish obscenities.
"Doctor?" One of the nurses asks, voice unsure. "How is this possible?"

"Hell if I know. Call Officer Morgan back in, maybe she can make sense out of all of this."

The nurse rushed out, and a few moments later, the policewoman walked back in. "What's wrong."

"Nothing. That's just the thing- he's perfectly fine."

"Meaning…"

"Meaning when this guy came in, he had lost about a pint of blood. It's all back now. The fever's gone too. So he's fine. Absolutely fine. Except of course that he can't be, especially considering that he was dead less than a minute ago."

The policewoman looked like she wanted to protest, but the doctor held up a hand.

"He was dead. You saw it, I saw it. His jugular vein was sliced open and he was lying on the ground for long enough that you and the other officers were able to get those crazy fake FBI agent cultists into custody. It's been 15 minutes at least. There's no way he can still be alive, much less in better shape than when he started. There's no medical explanation for all of this!" The man sighed, running a hand over his face. "As a doctor, I hate myself for even saying this but… this is nothing short of an act of God."

Castiel felt a sudden burst of laughter at that. The two looked at him strangely for a moment. The silence that followed was broken by the policewoman's sigh. "Thanks for all your help, Doctor Vasquez. Just don't… don't tell anyone about this, all right?"

The doctor threw his hands up dramatically. "Who would I tell? Any rational person would have me locked up in an asylum!" He left the room, still muttering to himself, casting a final confused glance at Castiel as he went.

The policewoman picked the chair up from where it had fallen on the floor and practically fell into it. "Right." She whispered, rubbing her eyes. "No one would ever believe this. God, what am I going to tell the station?"

The woman appeared to be almost as exhausted as he felt. "You could say that the cut missed the vein, that the amount of blood simply appeared worse than it really was."

The woman looked at him, blinking.

"I have been told that in certain situations, lying is the appropriate response."
"Yeah, well, you might be right there." She leaned back. "You know, I don't even know your name."

"Castiel."
"Castiel. Sure, why not. So are you immortal or what?"

"I suppose that I am in a way, now."
"You know what, on second thought don't tell me. I don't think I really want to know. You know, before today, my idea of a rough shift was a couple of drunks getting into a bar fight, or some kids taking their parents Mustang out for a joy ride. I'm really not used to dealing with… whatever this is." She made a sweeping hand gesture to indicate the entire blood covered hospital room. "But I am pretty sure that whatever just happened, that you just saved my life so… thank you." She paused, clearly trying to think of what to say next. "Is there… anything that you need? Anything I can get you?"
Castiel considered the question for a moment. "Could I borrow your phone? There's someone I need to call."