A decade has passed since he fell. His body is still so small, half the size of his human father's. In the darkness, he flexes his hands, watching the interplay of muscle, tendon and skeleton. In five to eight years, he'll approach a physical status in which he might be able to care for himself and act independently. His human parents have been loving, and sometimes when he thinks of all they have done for him, his eyes sting, but he can't seem to let go of his memories, so hard-won, but also so freely left behind.
His grace is somewhere, sunken into ground, into water, into life. His wings that ache like phantom limbs are with it.
Anna is somewhere, too. He hopes she's forgotten. It's so hard to hide. His parents try very hard to understand why their child is so strange and distant, and for Castiel, it is a never-ending battle to open up to them. When the majority of his long life has taught him not to trust his family.
A chill passes through him, and his eyes snap open.
He's at Ashley's new house, spending the night. A blanket is stretched above his head, part of a pillow/blanket fort he'd carefully built with Ashley. It's only meant to last the night, but Castiel found it satisfying to make it sturdy enough to handle them going in and out over the last few hours of the day. And Ashley hadn't minded his unusual attention to that kind of detail – unlike most of the friends his parents' have tried to set him up with over the years, Ashley doesn't care about his quirks. If he annoys her, she just gets up and leaves, which is fine with him. Sometimes it even makes him smile, inexplicably.
She's sleeping next to him, a mess of curly blond hair. Her breathing is deep and even.
He hears footsteps, but it sounds like one is dragging. For some reason, it unnerves him. He sneaks out of the tent, bare feet silent on the wood floors. The only light in the living room is from the lamp posts outside. A tree between the lamp post and the house casts long, spidery shadows.
He turns silently, examining the house. Then he sees her – a pale outline of a figure, walking in the kitchen. She pauses at the fridge, then resumes her path.
"Hello," he says softly.
She continues on silently, so Castiel follows her. She's flickering between two forms, one pale and almost without shape, and one more like a teenage girl, facial features somewhat indistinct and eyes blank. The digital clock on the microwave turns off and on as she passes.
Castiel gets in her way. "Why are you here?" he asks.
She looks at him, flickering.
"You should pass on," Castiel says, feeling the echo of her sadness. "It's not safe for you to remain chained to this sphere." Eventually, she'll forget herself and become a violent spirit, even if it takes centuries.
She walks right through him. All the little hairs on his arms stand up straight, and he shivers at the sudden burst of sharp cold.
He turns, considering her. Then he goes into the kitchen and finds the sage and salt, along with a lighter. He won't be able to burn much – he'd done that once in his own house, and set off the fire alarm – but he gathers a bundle of fresh sage, and lights a tip. He waves it over all the doors in the living room first, then the bedrooms and bathroom. He sprinkles salt here and there. At the last one, the ghost disappears like a gutted flame.
Castiel goes back to bed.
He inquires about the history of the house over pancakes.
Ashley's mother, Mrs. Richardson, doesn't even give him an odd look before going off into one of her spiels. Gregory had, trying to be out of Castiel's hearing, called her 'one of those superstitious hippies' so Castiel was fairly certain she'd tell him what he wanted to know.
She does, waving a spatula as she speaks. "Oh, it's an old house, built in the 1800's. Legend has it that we have dozens of ghosts! The most popular one is a teenage girl that died of consumption just before her wedding day, but I hear there's an old man who used to work on the back property, too. Oh, and a young boy is said to haunt that old oak tree out back –"
Castiel takes careful mental notes.
Angels have no need of privacy. The Host is thousands of voices, his siblings speaking to each other either directly or indirectly. Some sing praises, some discuss battle, and none debate life. Disagreements are so small as to nearly disappear, lost in glorious unity. He doesn't hear all words at all times, the voice of his family a murmur until he chooses to focus on a single thread of thought.
Castiel learns to narrow his voice thinner than that thread. He sits in his current favorite heaven, that of a monk who lived quietly in the wilderness for thirty years. Within the malleable shape of the monk's memories, Castiel has carved out a little spot for himself – a space under a tree, a falling wall now encased in his words and memory. It is his in the way the rest of heaven could never be, because it's private.
Melos falls somewhere just before the middle. Before it, he lists the destruction of the MIdianites, and after, he lists the destruction of Cartharge. Spread throughout are smaller atrocities. The Black Plague, later in the list, is not human destruction, but he vaguely remembers being present regardless. His time during the Ten Plagues is entirely gone. He somehow has the distinct impression he wasn't there, but he cannot remember where he was in turn. He writes down all the blank spots, too.
Castiel touches the crumbling wall of his memories, the stone rough under his fingertips. He's taken human form, for the sake of his unwitting host. He scratches in new dates, new details as they come to him.
He's clawing at his own memory. Clawing himself.
One memory has come back almost in full.
He saved a child. He does not know when. But he remembers taking the child in his arms, and running. He remembers being caught, and indistinct siblings killing it. Him. Then he meets Naomi, and she tells him she'll fix him. He'll be safe when she fixes him.
Then he kills that child a thousand times, each repetition feeling the sting of loss lessen.
"Castiel," Anael says softly, appearing out of nothing. She kneels next to him, in the form of her last vessel, a woman from the depths of Africa. "These are new."
"So much has been lost," he whispers.
"Not just memories," Anael tells him. "But our feelings, too."
At one in the morning, Castiel gets up out of bed, puts on his normal clothes and grabs the bag he'd hidden under his bed. His room is generally conspicuously neat, even the stacks of books from the library, so he has little fear of that particular set of belongings being found. He uses pillows to create a vaguely-human shaped form on his bed, then dresses in warm clothing. Lastly, he takes Catherine's house keys and sneaks out of the house with his bike.
He'd had to make a story about a school project to get access to old newspaper records, but he eventually found what he was looking for. Fortunately, that cemetery was within biking range of his house. He rides fast, knowing he'll need to be back before dawn, in five hours.
He keeps an eye out for police cars. He knows from experience that it is incredibly inconvenient to be taken home by police, for merely wandering out of his parents' sight.
Since it's fall, a cool mist has settled over everything, making visibility low. He parks his bike out of the gates, then climbs over them. (He's spent years mastering this body to its fullest potential. He had to learn fighting styles from his books, but climbing and gymnastics had been an easy sell, even at six years old.) Headstones, some falling apart from age, dot the landscape. He goes over each, until he finds the one he's looking for.
Jennifer Hathes. 1807-1826.
He takes out five white emergency candles and sets them out in a circle, the five points of the pentagram. He lights them, and then chants quietly, "Amate spiritus obscure, te quaerimus, te oramus, nobiscum colloquere, aput nos circita."
Jennifer appears. She looks human this time, blank eyes sad, staring down at him where he kneels before the candles. His jeans are getting soaked by the night dew.
Castiel gets right to the point. "Why are you here?"
Her mouth moves, but he hears nothing.
"Do you wait for your spouse to be?" Castiel guesses.
She nods, frowning. She looks around, as if expecting him to appear.
Castiel pauses, thinking. "He's not here anymore. He's waiting for you. You need to let go of this place, of your house, and you'll rejoin him."
She gestures frantically, as if frustrated by his inability to understand.
"You died, Jennifer, and so has he. It's time for you to be together, and for that –"
The candles go out. She walks past them, up to him, and places a ghostly hand on his cheek. Cold flows over his skin. Her mouth moves, but he's able to read the words this time: He promised.
Castiel takes a deep, frigid breath. "You'll have to forgive him, then. You did love him, didn't you?"
She rises to her feet, looks at the sliver of moon in the sky. Grief falls over her face, as if she suddenly realizes how long she's been waiting, how long that promise has been broken. She turns back to him and smiles sadly. Then she nods, and disappears.
Castiel stares at her grave, thinking about a love that lasted nearly two centuries. Humans feel so much more than angels do. Humans allow themselves so much more. He presses a hand over his own heart, feeling the aching sadness of Jennifer's loss. He thought he'd feel so much more when he fell – that emotions would burst out of him, bright and loud like Anael's even before she fell. But instead they have creeped up on him, splintering out in unexpected ways and moments.
The fractured lines of Naomi's tampering split a little farther.
He gathers the candles, finds his bike, and rides home.
"Cas!" Ashley tugs at Castiel's sleeve. The summer sun is beating them down with heat, and they've retreated to a part of the playground with shade. "What are you looking at?"
Castiel starts, turning to his best friend. "Nothing," he says quickly, attempting to give a reassuring smile. But he finds himself turning back, staring.
He sees a mother and a child. Except what the tired, harried-looking mother is patiently feeding a sandwich isn't human. Its face is pale, with dark rings around its eyes, and a circular mouth with edges of tiny teeth. As Castiel watches, horrified, the changeling's mouth opens like it's preparing to feed. And that's what it is – Castiel, until he fell, hadn't been on earth in quite some time, but he recognizes it regardless. He didn't know he'd even be able to see that, after falling. He blinks rapidly.
"It's not nothing," Ashley says. She steps in front of him, raising a demanding eyebrow. "Well?"
Castiel frowns, thinking fast. "Can you do me a favor?" he asks.
She sighs. "What? Is it something weird again? If it is, then I totally get to a new video game from you."
"We need to write an essay."
Castiel carefully unlocks his weapon chest.
Unlike during the Middle Ages, it's not considered appropriate for an eleven year old child to own weaponry (Castiel remembers squires being that age), so Castiel has to use unorthodox means to get his and keep them hidden. He convinced Gregory to get a small, silver knife at a garage sale, then liberated it in such a way that his father thought he'd just lost it. He bribed an older brother of an acquaintance (one of Catherine's attempts to get him friends other than Ashley) for a proper combat knife. He really wishes he had his angel blade or a sword, but at this age knives are a more suitable weapon anyway. His arms are still small and spindly. Besides that, he has a stolen taser (he'd felt guilty about that) and an assortment of spell ingredients – none particularly rare, but useful nonetheless. All of it is kept hidden in a chest in the back of his closet, with a fairly hardy lock he'd bought with allowance money.
After Jennifer, he'd realized that the supernatural hasn't left humanity alone. It's merely gone underground. Ashley's family mildly believed in the supernatural, but they didn't view it as a threat. His own parents were Christians, but generally skeptical of actual paranormal activity. If they are to remain safe, someone who knows the truth of the world's nature needs to make it so.
Castiel gets out his last item, recently acquired. A jug of gasoline. It's small enough to fit into his backpack, if there's nothing else there. He straps the combat knife to his leg.
Today, he'll have his first kill as a human.
Finding where was a lot harder than he'd thought it would be. The essay he'd written with Ashley had given him enough data to make educated guesses, based on the fact that the changeling mother would probably need to roam and that her human identity would likely be incomplete. That combined with the one changeling he'd seen at the local park told him where the changeling mother was likely to be based. Once she's gone, the mothers and children dead, the police will get involved, but not most likely not before.
Castiel doesn't intend to wait that long, but he fears he's already taken too much time. He found an article in the local newspaper about a couple of missing mothers and their children, from a full week ago. He called an anonymous tip line, asking the police to look in abandoned houses, but he has no way of knowing if they listened.
So he takes the bus and then rides his bike down a nearly empty street. Dead lawns mark abandoned homes. He's alone, with Ashley covering for him, so his parents think he's at her house.
He jumps the fence on the first house, planning to enter from the back. A dried out swimming pool dominates the backyard, and a small porch is set up against the house. A window to a basement sits next to a sliding glass door. He checks the door first, but it's locked, and he doesn't know how to pick locks. (The librarian thought this an extremely suspicious topic.) So, the window.
It doesn't seem to have a lock, so he pulls hard. It doesn't budge, and several more attempts leave his fingers going numb. He traces the edges of the window, clearing off gunk and dirt, then tries again.
It opens.
He waits almost ten minutes for some reaction, but no one comes.
Taking a deep breath, he slips in and falls silently to the floor.
There are ten cages spread out against a wall, all of them with a young human child in them. Most are dirty, some with tear-streaked faces. The children look sickly, but asleep. Not dead. Their small chests – smaller than his – rise and fall.
The window is too high for him to pull any of the children through; he's going to have a hard time doing so himself. He could try to convince an adult to follow him back here, but that plan carries its own risks – the few times he'd attempted to persuade even his own parents of something they weren't prepared to accept, he'd always failed. That means he needs to go through the house, and potentially confront the changeling mother. Castiel kneels, gets the jug of gasoline with one hand and his combat knife in the other. A lighter sit heavily in his pocket.
Castiel is very old. He's a soldier of God, even if he's trapped in a human child's body. He's killed countless creatures like this. He can kill this one. He's an angel, he doesn't feel fear; the uneasiness in his stomach is his human brain attempting to instill self-preservation. He stiffens his spine, then creeps up the stairs.
He hears movement. Someone is up there.
The backpack slides off his back. He zips it open, takes out the jug and opens it, soaking several stairs with gasoline. Then he takes out his combat knife and lighter.
The door opens with a creak that makes Castiel wince. He darts out, but sees no one in the kitchen. There's disturbed dust on the floor. He goes back for the jug, and makes a circle of gasoline; he's starting to run out, so he leaves the rest at the door. He rounds the corner into the living room, hands clenched and knife at his side, hidden but available.
She's standing there, the changeling mother. He sees her true form, all discolored, slimy skin, with that lamprey mouth, like a shadow underneath the shell of her human appearance – a young woman, pretty. She whirls, startled, and then lets out a laugh. "Hi, sweetie," she says, still pretending to be human.
Castiel blinks at her, repulsed by her calling him by Catherine's nickname, then slowly backs up. "Sorry, I thought the house was abandoned," he says.
"You breaking into other people's houses?" she asks. "By yourself?"
Castiel hesitates, adrenaline pumping.
She seems to take that as an answer and laughs. "Another treat, then," she says, and lunges forward.
Castiel dodges back into the kitchen and around the door's corner, and she passes him by a foot or two, turning on a heel with startling speed. He slashes with his combat knife, scoring a long cut on her arm and she falls backward, letting out a pained cry. Slimy gunk drips from the wound. She hisses at him, "A little boy hunter," she says, stepping forward slowly.
Step by step, Castiel backs away, slightly moving to his left. He keeps his knife in front of him. He remembers where the puddle of gasoline lies.
"No running," the changeling mother chants, lilting.
Castiel turns and runs, flicking the lighter on. He drops it in the gasoline as he passes, falling to his knees past the puddle, trying to estimate her range of attack – he feels a whoosh of a close call, and the heat of the fire, and then a frenzied scream. The basement door is where he stops, knife held out in front of him protectively, but there's no need.
The changeling mother is dying. She fell into the fire, and it licks over her skin, a stench like Castiel's never smelled erupting from her. Castiel watches her die for a full minute, before she stops moving. He wipes his blade clean and returns it to its sheathe. The fire is still going strong, and the curtains on the kitchen's window are beginning to catch alight. Castiel's shakes himself out of his near-shock – fear pulsing through his entire body now, after the fact – and runs down the basement steps, nearly slipping on his second, unused trap.
The ten children in cages are still unmoving. He pounds on the cages, shouting, "Wake up!" But they don't move. He pulls at the door, then stares at the lock.
A key. He needs a key, or someone stronger than himself.
He should have doused the fire. He should have thought to look for a key. He looks up the stairs, seeing a red glow.
He's a fool.
After a moment's hesitation, he takes a running jump and scales the wall to the basement window, and lifts himself out. He jumps over the fence and goes to the next door house, their lawn a healthy green, and pounds on the door.
An adult answers, "What is –"
"There's a fire!" Castiel shouts. "Look! And I heard kids – "
The adult takes a few steps out, eyes widening. "Stay here, kid." He shouts into his own house, "Sarah, call 911!" and then rushes out to next door. He stops and blinks at the fire for a second, then goes to his yard and gets a water hose and begins pulling it over to the house. He breaks a front window, and then starts spraying water.
A woman, presumably Sarah, rushes out the door past Castiel. He grabs for her arm, desperate words falling from his lips, "Wait, wait," he says. "There's kids in the basement, I heard them!"
"Is there fire in the basement?" she asks.
"No," Castiel says.
"Okay, show me," she says. She follows him to the basement window, and then stares at the kids in the cages. "Oh my God," she whispers. She looks at Castiel. "Tell Matt to get his bolt-cutters, right now."
Castiel runs to the pass the message. Matt drops the hose and dashes into the house, appearing again moments later. He follows Castiel to the back of the house, and with some difficulty gets into the basement. Sarah stays just outside of the house, as he clips each lock, grabs a child and hands them off to her. They're all still unconscious, but they're breathing. Castiel checks respiration and pulse on each as Sarah lays them out on the small porch. Then finally all ten are out, the abandoned house now ablaze.
Castiel exhales, feeling dizzy.
Catherine hasn't yelled at him yet. She'd wept briefly, while the police officer explained what happened here, then simply taken him in her arms. Instead, she sits with him on the curb, watching the firemen put out the house fire. Police have cordoned off the area with tape, and a crowd has formed outside of those lines. The ambulances are gone, including the one that checked Castiel over. The children should all be at the hospital now. Castiel knows they'll be okay, with the changeling mother dead. The mothers whose children disappeared and then reappeared miles away will be having a harder time.
A man in a suit walks up to Castiel, smiles reassuringly at Catherine. "Hey, there. I'm Agent Marcus, with the FBI. I'm here investigating some deaths that may be related to this case." He shows a badge momentarily, too quickly for Castiel to get a good look. "Can I ask you a couple of questions?"
Catherine's arm tightens around Castiel's shoulders. "Of course, agent."
He turns to Castiel. "I'm told you were the one who heard the kids screaming for help," he says.
Castiel nods warily. "Yes."
"Why were you here?"
Castiel opens his mouth, and then shuts it. He hadn't anticipated being caught here. He has no good reason to be here, and a lot to suggest he's here for a purpose – taking the bus, breaking into that specific house. He didn't think this through at all. "I just heard some kids crying," he says at last.
"Cas," Catherine says warningly. "Why were you in this neighborhood? You must have taken the bus to get here from Ashley's house."
The agent eyes him. "Did you know something was wrong here?"
Castiel looks away.
"It's all right if you did," the agent says, voice softening. "If you saw something really strange or scary, you can tell me, all right? I promise I'll believe you."
Does he know the truth? How is that possible? Anael had told him that the vast majority of humans discounted the existence of the supernatural. "She wasn't human," he says. "The woman in the house, before the fire started. I saw her, through the window, when I heard the kids."
Catherine starts. "Cas!"
"It's all right, ma'am," the agent says. "Children often see things that way. Is that why you were here, Cas? Did you start the fire?"
His mother noticeably stops breathing.
"No," Castiel says. "I saw something weird through the window. That's all."
Agent Marcus's eyes go dark and suspicious, but after a split second he smiles brightly again. "All right. I'm going to give you a card, okay? You call me if you remember anything else at all. My name is Caleb."
Catherine nods, takes the card. "Thank you."
The agent walks away, then takes out a small mirror. Castiel watches, puzzled, then the agent tilts the mirror so he's looking in Castiel's general direction. Through a mirror, the only way for a normal person to see a changeling. Of course, he'll see nothing but Castiel's very human body, if that's really what he's looking for. The agent heads for an old, beat up car. Castiel examines his card. It has a number for Special Agent Caleb Marcus, but none for the FBI itself.
Castiel looks up, but Caleb is gone.
Next chapter John appears!