Chapter 7: The Presentation
Waking up was something that Castiel would never get used to. He may have slept, and understood its function in terms of rest, but the jarring moment between sleep and wakefulness, when the mind realized that the body was awake, the transition from foggy to alert, was something that he could do without. Not to mention the four to five hours that he'd spent unaware of anything beyond dreams and his REM cycle.
He glared at the digital clock announcing that it was 11:00 in the morning, and that he'd overslept. Because he'd decided that 'overslept' was the term he was going to use instead of 'visitation from Heaven' and no one was going to say otherwise.
He threw his arm over his eyes. That entire exchange had been emotionally draining. Never mind the fact that he hadn't thought he was capable of dreams prior to this. The vast ability of the human mind to compartmentalize and forget was something he held both in respect and not a little amount of terror. What vast amounts of dreams had he been stumbling into for the past years and never known?
Castiel didn't even want to dwell on his penitence, the deep whisper of his mind that told him that he had never been the hero of this story. What he was, was a former angel and a Judas who had never been brought to trial. It seemed that he could never atone enough.
He peeked at the watch again. 11:15. Where was his time going? When he had been 'all mojo-ed up,' as the Winchesters called it, time didn't seem to matter as much as it did now. With his wings and his grace, he had been able to move at blinding speed and go back in time to do the things he had missed. Now, there were so many things to do and so little time to do them.
He sighed as he dragged himself out of bed to pick the cleanest set of clothes he could find in his closet. He had choices, never mind that he mostly wore a white button down anyway. The mere fact that he was allowed choices, instead of the standard dark-pinstripe that the usual angels wore, was still a novelty despite the years that he had been allowed it.
There was a perfunctory knock before Kevin peeked between the doors. "I heard you moving around and figured you were up, sleepy-head," Kevin greeted from the doorway.
"I had—" Castiel stopped rummaging between slacks to choose the most appropriate word, "—a rather disquieting night filled with blood and hauntings."
"You could have just said that you had a nightmare."
Castiel hid a small smile as he closed his cabinet. "Where's the fun in that?"
Kevin looked at him for a moment, apparently unsure on how to respond to a decidedly chipper Castiel. To give Kevin credit, Castiel was rather unsure on how to respond to the way he had woken up, either.
"So where are we going today?" Kevin asked. They had been making slow progress on the souls in the guf, but they had read most of the myths and enough of the lore inside the bunker to have a good idea where to look. Besides, they were a team consisting of a former Angel of the Lord and an unschooled prophet. It seemed like this case should be right up their alley—at least, more so than the werewolves and witches littering the standard hunter logbook.
"I'm going to the cemetery before trying to meet the angel garrison stationed the next city over," Cas decided, because there was truly nothing else he could do after a sending like that but show his respects. And he was due for a visit.
Kevin furrowed his brow; he probably couldn't think of a reason to visit a cemetery when they were hunting for souls and angels who could pinpoint whereabouts of those with said souls. "Do you want company?"
The correct answer to that was probably yes. But there was always something personal about visiting Dean's grave that Castiel believed was solely his. "It's always best to visit a garrison with someone you would trust to have your back," Castiel conceded.
"All right, I'll wait for you to pick me up then?"
oOo
Dean had died as most hunters did, in the middle of nowhere. He had been honored with a hunter's funeral by fire and salt. Instead of having his ashes scattered or placed in an urn, because that seemed like a recipe for a haunting, his ashes were buried in a small cemetery in the outskirts of town, in consecrated ground. It was probably one in the multitudes of graves with the name Dean Winchester, but this one had the distinction of it being the truth.
If he had retained his wings, or even his grace, Castiel would have not needed something as physical as a gravestone to remember Dean. But here he was now, mortal and barred from Heaven, so he would take what he could get.
While Enochian was the language of the angels, Latin was the language for prayer to his Father. It was why he still prayed in Latin even though Enochian and the Song were his. He touched the simple marker briefly and said, "Requiem Aeternam dona eis, Domine."
If anyone deserved eternal rest, surely it would be none other than Dean Winchester. "Et lux perpetua luceat eis:" And it was somewhat fitting that he ask perpetual light for his former charge. There was a lyrical quality to prayer in Latin, and it was personal enough that only God and he understood it right now. "Requiescant in pace. Amen."
Short and formulaic and rather impersonal, if truth be told, but angels always did find comfort in orders and repetitiveness. He wondered if there was anyone still listening to an angel's prayers despite them being barred from Heaven. "I'll see what I can do about this caretaker of yours, Dean," Castiel murmured as his parting, because he could not come and visit Dean without talking to him.
He walked back to the car that he had appropriated from the bunker, briefly remembering the many times he had to retake the test at the DMV to get his license. It was one of the first choices that he had made and it still brought a smile to his face when he had the time to actually drive it.
Time to pick up the prophet.
oOo
Angel garrisons were born at the beginning of time when the angels started populating their own circles of Heaven. It was natural for an angel to seek a commanding figure, because free will had never been in their distinct coding. Of course, there were always the exceptions, but mostly angels sought both enlightenment and direction from the upper echelons.
It made for a structured society with a complex hierarchy. While humans only had to contend with other humans, the entire angel hierarchy was based both on rank and species. While Castiel had been a malakh, raised as a seraph after his second death, Michael ranked as an archangel, classified as a seraph, and sometimes ruled as a principality. But Michael had always been the best of them all; he had been able to handle being in all three spheres of the Celestial Choir at the same time.
Because of that ranking, it had been difficult for Castiel, a former angel completely outside of the current hierarchy, to visit.
Kevin, dressed down in his jeans, a round neck shirt thrown on under a grey hoodie, shifted beside him as they looked at the office building that housed the angel garrison in Lebanon. "You would think that for an angel garrison, it'd look more like a military encampment," Kevin commented as they took in the glass doors and the steel frames.
Castiel's eyebrows furrowed, because other than training in the fourth circle of Heaven and the prisons in the second, there wasn't much that screamed "military barracks" in Heaven. Naomi's office certainly looked similar to this, and that was mostly in the second circle as well. "We did not undergo drills like your military; we did not need to repeat maneuvers every day to ingrain them in muscle and mind."
"Huh, so what did you do in Heaven, exactly?" Kevin asked as Castiel opened the glass doors, pausing at the doorway to steel himself against entering an establishment filled with angels. Though he could not participate in the Song, he could still hear its notes, and it was overwhelming at times to human ears. It was the reason why Anna had thought herself mad. Suitably guarded, he stepped in and noted that their receptionist was Amiel, who inhabited a lanky youth who couldn't seem to contain all that was the angel.
"You mean apart from bickering and following orders? There were other types of training angels underwent." There was a memory of an empty warehouse filled with hundreds of massacred green betrayed eyes. Another of indoctrination filled with hours and hours of lashes and solitude. "Generally, we watched humans. And, of course, followed whatever mission there was on the roster."
Amiel stood up from behind the counter, nodding at Kevin, because an angel never could ignore a Prophet of the Lord. Castiel, on the other hand, was another issue altogether. He was human and, without grace, difficult to recognize to his brethren unless they had seen his vessel prior to the Fall. Humans generally were not welcome in angel garrisons unless they were to be vessels.
In all the chaos of the garrisons forming and re-forming in attempts to imitate and restructure the hierarchal choir circles, Castiel had never once attempted to visit a garrison other than Bartholomew's. He had learned enough from the one time he had been forced to visit, and that had certainly not been pretty. He was Heaven's outlaw, and he wasn't welcome in most of his brethren's earthly establishments.
"Master Tran," Amiel acknowledged, which was a little strange for Kevin because his exposure to angels had been that brief moment when he had been found out as a prophet, and then mostly Castiel, who had never given him an honorific. "Have you come to finally receive enlightenment as a prophet?"
That was equivalent to reading the Word in the middle of the desert for forty years, so the answer was a most definite shake of head. "I was here to ask about the guf?"
Amiel's brows furrowed. "The Chamber of Creation is not part of the Word until the final moments of the Apocalypse, Master Tran. And the Word, as you know, was never meant to be read by angels."
That just meant there was no conceivable way to find answers about the guf in the lower choirs. They had already gone through all the information the bunker had to offer on the guf but they still needed to learn about its inner workings, so that they could ferry the souls from the repository to Earth.
"There are babies being born without souls. If there was ever a cause for alarm in the garrison, this should be it," Castiel informed him.
Amiel turned his attention to Castiel, not recognizing the almost brand new soul that had been bestowed unto him when his grace was stripped. It certainly held none of Jimmy Novak anymore. "A hunter? I'd expected you to stick with the Winchesters, Master Tran." There was a hint of disapproval in his voice. Other hunters were unknown, but the Winchesters, at least, were archangel vessels.
If there ever was a time that Castiel could agree with Dean's assessment of his brothers, this was it. Bigoted, the lot of them. "We would like to bring these concerns to the captain of this garrison. Surely the Prophet visiting your garrison warrants enough respect for the captain to see him? After all, had there been an archangel to spare, one of the generals would have been bound to him."
One thing that was good about how angels worked was that under their bravado, all angels yearned to follow orders. It was little wonder that, faced with logical facts, Castiel and Kevin were admitted to the waiting room for an audience with Nathaniel.
Amiel led them towards the waiting room, barely going through the hallways of the garrison. The Song intensified by the sheer number of angels that were present in the building. Castiel had not been immersed in the Song's orchestra for such a long time that he had to close his eyes and just listen. Had he made different choices, he could have been a part of this Song.
It was almost complete Song; he could hear angels other than seraphim and malakhim. The only missing tones were the warm, rich, pure tones of the archangels. A garrison that had all hierarchies meant an entire governing body and a complete family. If he had been part of this garrison, he might have been given a task as a solider; they were certainly not going to give him the work of an administrative hashmalim.
As with most offices in Heaven, Nathaniel had decked his sparsely with Heaven's propensity for blinding white light, glass doors, and barely-there furniture. Kevin was taking the waiting well, but the mention of Nathaniel's name had Castiel's jaw clenching so hard that Kevin took notice.
"Nathaniel is a seraph," Castiel said. Had Kevin been an angel, it would have been explanation enough. Seraphim were usually not mere captains. As the highest choir in the highest circle, their principal duty had been guarding the Throne. When Castiel's rank had been elevated to seraph, he had been granted a certain freedom and additional skills that he had not had before. Then again, seeing as there was a lack of thrones here on Earth, "captain" seemed like an adequate replacement. "He's going to know who I am."
"There's nothing wrong with who you are," Kevin assured Castiel. At least they had not been stonewalled at the gate, and that was reason enough to celebrate. "It's not going to be a problem."
Castiel didn't want to contradict the Prophet, but Castiel knew better. Once an outcast of Heaven, it was difficult to be redeemed. "Thank you, Kevin, but angel garrisons work differently than what you seem to believe."
Kevin frowned because they usually didn't talk much about angels. There was never really an occasion for it, but Castiel also believed that Kevin wanted to spare him the painful memories. "You know I never knew how the entire garrison worked exactly."
Further conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Nathaniel. He had found a tall male for a vessel, and his grace shone brightly out of his eyes, almost impossible for a human to look at. Nathaniel, it seemed, had never learned to cover the grace bleeding out of his eyes. That or he was just too proud of what he was to conceal it.
Because of Castiel's all-too-human eyes, he could not look at a seraph's grace without going blind. But looking away from a seraph was certainly something that Castiel wouldn't stand for, especially since it was most probably a power play on Nathaniel's part. And one certainly did not want to look weak in front of an angel from whom one needed information. He settled on looking at the middle of his forehead, which would have to do in terms of dominance games.
"Kevin Tran," Nathaniel acknowledged, although no hand was offered. It had been ages since a handshake was used to show proof of being weaponless, but Nathaniel would remember its archaic function rather than as a ritual to convey equality, neither of which was in an angel's makeup in the first place. They had their own version of a salute, but handshakes were virtually unheard of. "We certainly do not have libraries in this garrison that contain what you seek."
Direct to the point it was then. "But you have been in the presence of the Treasury of Souls," Castiel said. As the treasury was in Aravoth, not a lot of the angel choirs were familiar with its inner workings. An archangel or an orphanim would have been the better option. But a seraph knew enough. "You can give us an idea where to start."
Nathaniel turned to Castiel, projecting irritation and disdain. The former because someone as lowly as a human hunter would dare address him and the latter because Castiel was just that—human. "And what would you do with this information that you're trying to find?"
When their Father made man in His likeness, He bade forth four angels to look for a suitable material that could hold His breath. His breath imbued man's soul, which was now held in the treasury.
Angels, on the other hand, were not made to be corporeal because they had been created before man was made. They had been made with light and will, imbued with His voice and strengthened by grace. As such, if they came into this world of man, if they wanted to interact with it without breaking it irrevocably, they had to find vessels to hold what they were. Without humans, they would be stuck between the Veil and Heaven, unable to interact safely with humans and unable to use the full range of their abilities.
All this, Castiel knew, so he replied, "What's more important for you is, what will you do if this vessel burns out and there are no more humans to host your grace?"
Castiel hadn't known that Nathaniel could look more irritated than he was when he thought he was addressing a mere human. It blew to something close to rage when he paid closer attention to just who Castiel was. "Ahh, I should have known the Prophet would not associate with just any hunter. Castiel, I had thought by now that being cut off from the Song would have driven you insane."
The words weren't meaningful; they were just a distraction while Nathaniel measured Castiel's worth. Angels and their displays of dominance were a more roundabout than demons'. At least demons were mostly straightforward with blood, gore, and brute strength. Telling Nathaniel that he could hear the Song but not resonate with it was pointless. "I can live without Heaven constantly watching what I am doing, Nathaniel. More importantly, having the Song with you has not helped you open Heaven's Gates."
"Heaven is only Metatron now." Nathaniel's eyes darkened, turned accusatory. "From what I understand, that was somewhat of your doing as well. Your grace permeated Heaven before we were thrown out. It was lucky we survived the burn of the Fall."
Remembering the Fall was certainly not something that would give them an in in any way with regard to what they were looking for. And Castiel did not stand for being stonewalled. "Bottom-line it, Nathaniel. If you do not care that humanity is dying, you do not need to expend your time and effort beyond this one audience with us. I simply need information regarding the Treasury of Souls. How do we open a channel for humans to be born with souls again?"
There was a long beat of silence while Nathaniel considered Castiel's words before he sighed suddenly. He turned back towards the massive desk that had been the focal point of the room and leaned his hip on it, his shoulders turned inward as if the vessel felt the weight of the angel's wings, arms loose and ready as if waiting for the drop of the angel sword. It was a look that seemed oddly vulnerable in an angel, as if he was feeling all his vessel's short years on the body.
"Let there be truth between us, Castiel. The Treasury of Souls has always been the Messenger's domain. For he who has announced the birth of man's salvation has always heralded all births."
Castiel gave Nathaniel a perplexed look. "But Gabriel has been gone from Heaven for a long time. Certainly long enough before the births became a problem."
"Because Gabriel had travelled to the future and ferried enough souls before he disappeared," Nathaniel admitted. Most angels lived in a linear time line because going back in time expended a lot of grace. As a messenger, Gabriel was more familiar with the way time folded and looped, with how the universe branched out in its infinite possibilities. As an archangel, he had enough grace to make frequent trips in the past. Though he was more happy-go-lucky than the other archangels, he did take his duties seriously. "After that," Nathaniel continued, "Leilah had taken enough of the burden that if Gabriel's future ferry ran out, Leilah would be competent enough to do his work."
Now was really not a good time to find out that Gabriel was the one angel they needed for this case. "Do you know where Leilah landed? If she survived at all?"
"With this, I can actually help."
Nathaniel looked towards the door. Castiel almost heard the summons along the veins of the Song threaded in this particular garrison. They had only to wait a few moments before a tall brunette, more homely than lovely, walked through the doors, grace shining mutely through her blue eyes.
"Leilah, I do not know if you've met Castiel before?"
She gave Castiel a long, searching gaze, enough that the room's silence must have been uncomfortable for Kevin, before she responded, "No, I did not ferry this soul. I do remember Master Tran, though. Chosen."
"Then please, Castiel seeks assistance in a matter regarding the guf." Nathaniel nodded to Kevin before moving to leave.
"Wait," Castiel called out, before his chance to help Dean could pass. Nathaniel stopped before opening the double doors that led to the garrison's inner sanctum but did not turn around to face them again. "The Throne, its Caretaker. Would you know who it is?"
If Castiel could still see wings, then he imagined Nathaniel's would have tensed at the question. "The Caretaker is a myth. I think it was just Father's way to get us all to earn our place in His Kingdom." With that, he left without a backward glance.
That couldn't be right. Dean wouldn't have been misled by Michael. Michael was a lot of things, but he was certainly not a liar, and he would not send Dean on a wild goose chase.
Castiel turned to look back at Leilah, who smiled at him. "How can I be of assistance?"
"The Chamber of Souls? We're looking for a conduit from the treasury to the womb," Kevin supplied when it became clear that Castiel was still thinking about the Caretaker.
"As Nathaniel told you, that's mostly Gabriel's purview," Leilah answered. Castiel had forgotten that in a garrison, what one angel hears all the rest would have probably been aware of. There was not much want or need for privacy, and unless the higher choirs deemed something confidential, most knowledge was shared within a garrison's walls. "While I could have filled in for him, he still did most of the troubleshooting if something went wrong. And the closing of the Gates is definitely something that is definitely outside my experience."
That was definitely not the response he wanted to hear. "Is there nothing you can do?" Castiel asked, because he did not want to have announced his presence in the area after he spent years and years of hiding just to learn nothing on this trip.
"There is one thing," Leilah conceded. "I would need a television."
oOo
Castiel would have preferred to go to a mall and check out television displays there instead of spending money in a motel just so they could watch TV, but Kevin had informed him that those retail stores didn't always have cable, and apparently some type of connection was needed for Leilah's purposes. Neither he nor Kevin was comfortable with any other angel knowing about the bunker, so the motel had won out.
They all sat down in front of the motel's well-used television set. Leilah had switched a couple of channels, looking for one that would appeal to their tastes and they settled on Elementary, because Kevin was a Lucy Liu fan and Castiel could sort of relate to watching a recovering addict even if he had never actually picked up an abused substance in this life.
Castiel kept giving Leilah sidelong glances. As a human, he'd learned to doubt, and he was dubious about wasting an entire day. Leilah just watched television, unblinking, because she was still graced up enough not to need things as human as blinking. It made her look this side of heavily botoxed, though.
Leilah, sensing Castiel's gaze, reached for him and squeezed his hand in small comfort. She had been a rather motherly angel even before the Fall, and she had been tasked with watching the babies while they were still in the womb. Gabriel's duty had involved bestowing each soul to its respective child, while Leilah's work had involved guarding the soul while it germinated in the womb. Leilah was the storyteller who first told the child about their Father.
"Castiel," Leilah said softly as she inclined her head towards the television. It had taken almost an entire re-run of the series before what she wanted came up.
It was an advertisement, which was why he had not been paying attention in the first place. There, in the middle of isles and isles of grocery products were two men pushing carts of carbonated drinks. One of which was a short man in blue coveralls of Pepsi. Castiel frowned, "So Gabriel's vessel is an extra in a Pepsi commercial?"
Leilah smiled and shook her head. "Wait for it, brother." So Castiel watched them build progressively larger and catchier boxes to show case their drink until finally in the end, Gabriel's character had built a stage and—
"Did he just snap to access grace?" Castiel asked incredulously as he stared at the screen. It was a rather unique knack that Gabriel had for grace and creation. Although other archangels probably could do it the way Gabriel did, archangels were creatures of habit. Michael managed it with less pomp and Raphael accomplished it with fire; Castiel had little knowledge of how Lucifer curbed creation. "How did he ever survive in something as pervasive as television?"
"You forget, mostly everyone knew him as the Trickster. No one was going to associate Loki with a vessel," Leilah said warmly. She and Gabriel had worked eons together and they certainly knew each other well enough. "Only a handful of angels were privy to the fact that the Trumpeter fled Heaven to hide as a pagan god."
"How am I going to contact Gabriel?" Castiel wondered out loud, just as Elementary went back on, but Castiel's mind was distracted enough not to pay attention to this particular murder. Unfortunately for them, though Leilah showed them Gabriel, talking to him was another matter entirely.
"Well, he is an angel," Kevin said, eyes still on the screen, back braced against the couch and the armrest. "We could always just pray."
Maybe for another angel, but Gabriel, being an archangel, received a lot of prayers. And he was probably adept at ignoring them, since he decided that he wanted a complete change in religion.
Leilah shook her head. "I may know Gabriel well enough to know where he would hide for recuperation after the Morning Star terminated the Trickster's existence, but because of that, he will not answer any summons coming from me."
And there were just a lot of things in that sentence that Castiel couldn't parse. Because "terminated" and "recuperation" just did not go hand in hand. He let that thought go before looking towards Kevin. "But Gabriel might listen to a prophet's prayer."
Kevin looked at the screen intently before sighing. "We'll do it when the next ad comes up."
The next Gabriel-fueled ad turned out to be Gabriel proposing to a girl with a shoe. Castiel certainly did not understand how magic was exactly there, but the moment that Gabriel stopped putting the shoe on for the girl had him breaking the fourth wall and staring intently back out at them. "Goddamn it Leilah, I thought we agreed that I was better off lost. Are you out of your freaking crazy noggin? Why do you have to ruin my sweet deal of witness protection, huh?" Gabriel's TV date looked appalled at his words and more appalled at the shoebox.
At least it had worked. Gabriel could have ignored them, and then where would they be? Leilah shrugged, a serene smile gracing her face, and Castiel could imagine the dynamic of them working together for centuries. Leilah was grounding and infinitely patient, enough to balance Gabriel, who was flighty and willfully spontaneous. "That was before questions of the Caretaker were brought to my attention, Gabriel, and only an archangel can answer these questions."
Castiel was certainly a little bit confused with where the conversation was going. While the Caretaker was something that he had asked about and was certainly something he wanted to know to better help Dean, Castiel had thought that Leilah talking to Gabriel was mostly because of the Treasury of Souls.
"The Caretaker?" Gabriel repeated. He frowned, eyes flitting briefly between Kevin and Castiel before settling on Leilah uncertainly, confirming for Castiel that the archangel physically in the show instead of some studio filming. "You know where two other archangels are, Leilah."
"Michael and Lucifer can only be reached through the ninth circle of Hell. Without wings and a proper seven, we are not breaking through the walls of Hell for that conversation," Castiel answered for her, because he was not going to be forgotten in the middle of this conversation.
Gabriel frowned and snapped, and he appeared in the middle of a car, toying with a greeting card, still intently staring at them. He had apparently jumpstarted to another commercial with him in it about hallmark moments and cards. "No wings and no proper seven?" Gabriel closed his eyes, and from the way his brow furrowed, and a pained look crossing his face, Castiel guessed there was a story there, one that Gabriel probably wouldn't be sharing anytime soon. "Shehaqim getting too painful to visit?"
"Shehaqim closing up after the Fall, more like," Castiel corrected. And this was sounding bad, that an archangel did not know about the state of Heaven. "You really don't know anything, Gabriel?"
"Well, bro, when I went into hiding from the crazy older brother who torched my wings, I had to cut myself off from more than the Song and Revelation," Gabriel explained, tapping his Hallmark card against his knee and frowning.
"The Evening Star has been locked in his Cage with Michael for a while now; there is no need to hide," Castiel reminded Gabriel. What would an archangel have to fear when all the other archangels were gone?
"Cassie, what do you want from me?" Gabriel asked.
Castiel's heart sank. This was what he'd come to, asking help from the one archangel who had preferred the humans over Heaven. Opening the Gates would not be proper incentive, but ferrying the souls might just be the key. "Guidance and, barring that, information."
"What guidance could I give you? I'm a fugitive and I've been hiding so long from the God-crew, you know more about things in Heaven than I do." Gabriel threw open his arms wide.
"Not about the guf, Gabriel, and certainly not about the Caretaker of the Throne," Leilah chimed in. Castiel hoped that if there was someone who could convince Gabriel about the endeavor, it would be Leilah, whom he'd worked with for a while. "We are broken in our ranks without an archangel, Gabriel. It has been so long that we've had infighting and bickering and factions. The last time Heaven was at a divide, Lucifer's light dimmed, taking almost half of our brothers with him."
Gabriel still looked unconvinced. They were losing him.
"Look, it seems to me that you left Heaven because you hated the infighting. Unless that's changed, then this seems the right moment to come back," Kevin said, finally putting in his two cents. He looked at Gabriel meaningfully before nodding towards Castiel and Leilah. "The angels can barely function here on Earth without leadership. There would be less infighting if someone would take a leadership role, and who better than the last archangel walking free?"
Gabriel looked doubtful. But the prophet's words seemed to have affected him. "Leading has always been Michael's domain." It was said in the tones of a last-ditch attempt to convince himself against a bad idea.
"Yes, but it was always an archangel's responsibility, Gabriel. The ranks have fallen. The Gates have closed. Metatron has cast out all angels from Heaven." Leilah leaned forward as she stated the facts. "There is no reason to hide anymore and stronger reasons to stay. You told me when you left that you loved your brothers; this is the time to show Heaven that you are more than just your word."
"Yeah, and seriously, are you going to get a pencil pusher like Metatron to take an archangel's place?" Kevin chimed in.
Gabriel snapped again and was finally in front of Castiel. That shocked Castiel so much because the only thing consistent among the earthbound angels was the lack of functioning wings.
Being forced to fall out of Heaven had forced angels to use their wings as a buffer in the rip between worlds. Not all angels had enough grace within themselves to travel between this reality and Heaven's. In effect, it burned some of them out. But all of the survivors had charred remains of wings and all of them had exhausted the ability of grace to make pure creation, because the cut off from the airways of Heaven had depleted them. No wonder humans thought they had looked like meteor showers. The truth was, they had just been trying to survive.
"Why do I have a feeling I'm going to regret coming out of witness protection for you, little bro?"
