The television show "Supernatural" is copyrighted by Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc. This chapter contains dialogue excerpts from the episode "The Rapture."
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He had moved past his sorrowful disillusionment at Heaven a month ago. Now he was angry.
The sheer, violent, uncaring arrogance of it. Allowing the rise of God's enemy because you're sure you can beat him. Shrugging off the deaths of a billion of God's children as a side issue to the war you want to fight. The certainty that you cannot possibly lose.
And the removal of the free will God wanted his children to have! Castiel may never have spoken to God, but he knew that God intended for humans to have free will. It was one of the fundamental tenets of Heaven – or had been. It was in their resistance to and rising above the evils sometimes wrought by free will that humans rose to their greatest height. Angels were magnificent creations of love and light, power and obedience, and Castiel was proud to have been made that way by God; but in humanity's unbelievable complexity, their range of choices, inventiveness, and variety of responses to both good and evil, God had achieved His masterwork.
And Zachariah had tried to convince Castiel that whitewashing over that masterwork was God's will.
He hoped he'd played his reluctance and eventual agreement well enough. It didn't matter too much – Zachariah would keep a suspicious eye on Castiel anyway – but a convincing display of obedience might get him more information.
All the information in Heaven, however, wouldn't help unless the revolt had a leader who was a credible rival and successor to Michael and Raphael. He began thinking about the qualities such a leader would need immediately, because he'd have to contact that angel before serious organization started. Obviously, an unwavering faith in God would be necessary, as well as the willingness to rebel – it would be hard to find that among beings whose raison d'etre for millennia had been obedience. Battlefield experience would be ideal. But mostly, the leader would have to be an angel with the ability and purity of spirit to inspire loyalty in angels of similar capability and integrity.
And, of course, they'd need a leader courageous enough to fight an archangel.
He prayed for guidance and help, then began thinking of names. Zachariah would have him watched, so he'd need to be gradual and normal in his approach to potential leaders. He wanted to tell Sam immediately not on any account to kill Lilith, but it would be impossible to start a revolt from inside the Chamber. Lilith's deadline was very near, and without a change in Heaven's leadership, she'd meet it. He had a great deal to do, and perhaps only two weeks to do it.
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Lorraine had hit an artery when she stabbed herself; despite the EMTs' best efforts, she had bled out by the time the ambulance reached the hospital.
Even as he planned a Heaven-shaking rebellion, Castiel attended the funeral of a lonely deranged human in a small church surrounded by tabloid photographers and television news vans.
Lorraine's parents were even now in shock, staring at a coffin draped in pink roses as though they couldn't understand why they were at a stranger's funeral. Castiel sent solace energy to them, even knowing how little it would help. Katie saw him after the service, tried to say something, and could only lean against his arm, crying like a child.
Martha Tyler didn't cry; her pain went deeper than that. Her spirit had been shaken by the horror she had witnessed, and she would never be quite the same person.
"I wish I had listened to you better when you warned me about this," she told Cass quietly.
"I can only repeat what you said to me. This was not your fault. I know you tried to reach her in any way she would allow. You could have done no more."
I could have done more, he thought, and I obeyed an order instead. That will not happen again.
He realized why he hadn't sensed murder in Lorraine's mind that day. She had said it herself in the church; to the depths of her tortured soul, she believed that what she planned was not murder or suicide, but a necessary sacrifice to atone for sin. He had sensed resolution, but not murder. It made sense.
Many things made sense suddenly. Zachariah's apathy about seals being broken. The organized effort to stop Lilith, which made the lower-level angels feel like something was being done, but which was begun only after more than 50 seals had been broken. Heaven's insistence that Ruby be kept alive to continue strengthening Sam's demonic aspects.
The prophecy involving Sam and Lilith had actually not turned out to reveal anything terrible about Sam. Failing to kill Lilith with demonic power in the motel room, he'd pretended to be seduced into a deal with her, so that he could get close enough to her to grab the demon-killing knife from a bedside table. Lilith had fought him off and was trying to use the knife on him when Dean had burst into the motel room with the prophet Chuck. The prophet hadn't been in the same room with an angry knife-wielding demon for ten seconds before Raphael had announced his advent with light that pierced every chink in the motel's walls and thunder that cracked the plaster. Lilith had fled from her host promptly.
"Then comes the weird part," Dean said cheerfully, stretching his legs out from the outdoor bench near the library where Sam was researching something. "Sam gets down from the bed to see if the host's OK, she wakes up, and the first thing she does is slap him."
"That's unusual," Castiel said. He was standing stiffly beside the bench.
"Unusual? Try unprecedented. You know, demons usually use their hosts pretty rough, so the host usually dies after the demon's exorcised, but even then, if they have time to say anything, it's usually 'Thank you.'" And when we can exorcise, or the demon just leaves, and the host lives? They're so freaking grateful, they'll take any advice to keep from being possessed again."
"But not this time, I gather."
"Chick sits up, looks at all of us, and says, 'You assholes, what did you do to her?' Then she graduates to really creative swearing while we're trying to explain that, you know, we saved her life. She doesn't see it that way. The way she sees it, this was the only time in her life she had the power and excitement she feels like she should have, and we just ruined that for her."
"She sounds like she has chosen evil in her life before."
"Sam thinks she's a sociopath. Anyway, she wouldn't let us drive her anywhere, stomped out of the motel on foot, probably calling Lilith to come back."
"Well, if Lilith does possess her again, at least you'll have the advantage of knowing what she looks like."
"That's what Sam said. Chuck said it would be a darkly ironic twist to the story. My feeling was, it's a waste of a hot babe. But I s'pose it's just as well. She'd probably stab you in your sleep if you pissed her off."
Castiel nodded.
"Are you OK?" Dean looked up at him, squinting slightly into the sun. "You seem even more like a rock than usual. I don't mean dumb. I mean, you know – "
"Working to stop the Apocalypse is occupying a great deal of my attention."
Dean nodded. "For what it's worth, Sam's really mad that he couldn't kill Lilith."
"Well. All will happen at its appointed time."
Dean looked at him disapprovingly. "Or when we damn well decide to make it happen. You know, we might just make it up as we go."
Castiel smiled tolerantly. "I don't expect you to understand destiny, Dean. But you sound like you're in fighting form, and that's always a good sign with you. I just wanted to check on you. If you need nothing, I'll be about my other business."
"Like seal defense? You take care, Cas."
"You take care as well, Dean."
Now, that sounded like an adequately distant conversation between angel and charge, Castiel thought. He was definitely being spied on. He hadn't used his grace to find out where exactly the spy was, what guise he or she had assumed, because if he'd done that the spy would have known Castiel was looking for him; but there had certainly been a hidden angelic presence nearby.
He had to take excruciating care to contact potential soldiers and leaders of the revolt. He spoke only to those whom he knew would be appalled if Heaven's leaders were deliberately allowing the Apocalypse to happen. He came up with a cover story as to why he talked to those angels, approaching the topic gingerly, making certain that any second or third meetings weren't spied on, shielding each step of the way. He didn't dare speak to the Winchesters again too soon, but he desperately wanted to warn Sam against killing Lilith.
He had the opportunity within the week. Sam and Dean had discovered that they had a half-brother, sired several years after their mother's death when the brothers and their father were hunting together. Then they had discovered that before they even had the chance to meet their half-brother or their father's lover, both had been horribly murdered by ghouls. Dean's irrational sense that his father had cheated on their mother, his envy of the normal life his half-brother had led, his discovery of the mutilated corpses, were boiling in his dreams along with memories of Hell.
Castiel stood by Dean's bed, trying very passively to see if there was another angelic presence nearby. He felt none; but if there was anyone, it would seem clear why Castiel was entering Dean's dreams. Dean's face muscles were twitching and his breathing was ragged.
Castiel slipped into the dream, stood behind Dean and made lucid-dream suggestions until Dean was sitting in a comfortable chair on a dock, fishing in a pastoral pond.
He stretched his grace out just a little. No spy was evident.
He approached Dean without fanfare and quietly stood beside him on the dock, wishing he didn't have to dash the peace from Dean's expression.
"We need to talk."
Dean looked startled, then disappointed. "I'm dreaming, aren't I?"
"It's not safe here. Someplace more private." Castiel conned the dreamscape as he spoke.
"More private? We're inside my head."
"Exactly. Someone could be listening."
Dean looked up at him. "Cas, what's wrong?"
Castiel handed him a slip of paper. "Meet me here."
Movement by the plants fringing the pond caught his eye. A brown rabbit with beady black eyes froze as Castiel looked at it, then dashed into the underbrush. It was probably a creation of Dean's subconscious, responding to Castiel's tension. Probably.
"Go now," he said, and woke Dean as he fled.
Within twenty miles of the motel where the Winchesters were staying, there was an old factory. It had descended to the level of a sweatshop and, after successfully bribed inspectors had been arrested, it had been closed down. An illegal immigrant had died here of an asthma attack in filthy stifling air. The residual energy of the place was miserable, clotting and fatiguing to an angel's spirit – but it also hid an angelic presence well.
Using the angel killing sword, he cut his vessel's upper forearm and painted a large angel-banishing sigil high on one wall with the blood. He wanted to do another, but decided to wait a few minutes while he replenished Jimmy's blood supply. He replaced the sword in his sleeve and waited behind a pile of wooden pallets, not because they would hide him from angels but because he could blow them out in all directions if need be. He hoped he wouldn't need to fight at all, but he would prepare every non-lethal defense mechanism possible.
He prayed that he wouldn't have to use the sword. He'd never killed a fellow angel in all of his existence as a soldier – not even during Lucifer's rebellion. But he steeled himself for the possibility that he might have to do it. A billion human deaths, an unnecessary war that might kill thousands of angels, massive destruction of God's favorite planet, the removal of free will from humans. He knew what he was fighting and how desperate the fight might be.
He might have little time with the Winchesters, so he mentally organized the priority of the things he wanted to tell them. First: Lilith is the final seal and Sam must not kill her. Then, if they hadn't been interrupted: Heaven's leaders are conspiring to allow the Apocalypse, and while he had several strong allies, they were few in number and he might need the Winchesters' help. Then: If anything happened to him, they should summon Anna and ask her to find Rachel. Rachel felt unqualified to lead the revolt, but she had a fierce sense of right and wrong that had earned her the nickname "Little Raphael," and she would fight anyone at all who was conniving at the Apocalypse. Rachel could put them in touch with the others Castiel had contacted. After that –
"Castiel! Thank the Father that I found you!"
It was Ephraim, an angel from Castiel's garrison, in the vessel of a casually dressed young man who wore a silver cross over his T-shirt.
Castiel hesitated for only a second. "Ephraim. You seem quite emotional."
"Forgive me, but this matter is urgent. Zachariah sent me to ask for your immediate presence. He has discovered that there is a plot against Michael."
"I am certain that Lucifer plots against him constantly, and further certain that he is no match for Michael. Why is this plot more important than averting the Apocalypse?"
"I don't – I don't know, Castiel. I am of lesser rank. I only know that Zachariah is so concerned that he sent me to seek you out personally. He needs to meet you with the greatest secrecy and urgency."
"I am guarding a seal that is in grave danger. Please make my apologies to Zachariah, and tell him that I will attend upon him as soon as it is at all possible."
Ephraim drew a deep breath, then seemed to give up, exhaling it in a sigh. "There is no seal here. And if there were, you know perfectly well that there is no need to guard it."
"How could you, Castiel?" Isabel, wearing a professional-looking woman in a pants suit, stood by an office on the floor above, where supervisors had looked down onto the factory floor. "How could you choose humans over the Host?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do. You were going to tell the Winchesters about the plan to bring about Paradise."
"What were you thinking, Castiel?" Ephraim asked. "Were you thinking that two humans could thwart God's will?"
Within the container of his shielded emotions, Castiel felt a cool wash of relief. They thought that his greatest crime was that he was going to tell the Winchesters about Heaven's collusion in the Apocalypse. That meant the Chamber for himself; but Rachel and the others were safe, if he could keep Raphael from examining his mind.
"I am willing to die, as all of us are, to bring eternal peace to Heaven and Earth," Castiel said. "The Winchesters may be humans, but they are warriors nonetheless. If they are to die, they should be told in what cause."
Isabel shook her head. "This is what Zachariah told us. That you were blurring the lines between human and angelic in your thought."
"Please surrender yourself, Castiel. Your sentence is short. Zachariah simply wants you to put emotional distance between yourself and your charges. Why do you have such pride, to feel that you should be different from all other angels in this regard?"
Ephraim wasn't lying, Castiel could tell; he had only been sentenced to a short period in the Chamber, or at least that was what Ephraim had been told. But Castiel needed to fight the breaking of seals for two weeks – just to be on the safe side – and he had a rebellion to organize. He couldn't afford to spend one hour in the Chamber, nor however much time it might take to recover.
"Have you given no thought – " Castiel began, then spun and struck the angel who'd been sneaking up behind him.
Ephraim leaped forward. Castiel seized the third angel, Xavier, and flung him into Ephraim, then jumped toward the wall with the angel-banishing sigil.
With screeching metal and a roaring crash, Isabel brought down the side of the upper floor over the sigil. Beams and ductwork fell between Castiel and the sigil, then a cascade of cables and filing cabinets.
Ephraim grabbed Castiel in a chokehold. Isabel began speaking Latin, a chant Castiel had never heard before. Xavier tried to grab Castiel's arms, but too late: Cas struck backward sharply, smashing Ephraim's nose, as he kicked Xavier in the gut and freed himself.
Sparkling motes of energy were forming in the air over the fighters as Isabel chanted. Whatever that was, it wasn't good. Castiel flung some of the wooden pallets upward at her as he unsheathed his wings and flew toward the sigil.
With a thunderous impact that shook the building, Xavier uprooted machinery bolted to the floor and flung it at the sigil. The wall and sigil cracked.
He couldn't banish them harmlessly. They'd left him no choice. He slid the sword from his sleeve, faced Ephraim and Xavier, and brought down a live electrical cable on Isabel.
Isabel flew to one side. Her vessel's voice staggered to a gasping, grinding halt for a moment; then she continued, grasping the railing above the factory floor, choking out Latin words. There were more pinpoints of energy above them now, and bright filaments were beginning to connect them.
"Leave now," Castiel gasped, "and I'll spare your lives."
Ephraim and Xavier exchanged a glance. Then Xavier flung himself to the floor. "Isabel, cover!" Ephraim bellowed.
Their vessels could bear being in the presence of angels in true form – obviously – but the shock wave of one angel leaving a vessel might actually damage the others. Castiel realized what was happening, whirled, and dove for cover. There was a blinding flash of light and the concrete floor shuddered as Ephraim left his vessel.
Xavier would be next, and the sword wouldn't work against angels in their true form. Castiel cast the sword under some of the fallen debris, where he could find it later. Then he left Jimmy, fleeing to another end of the building, flinging machinery as he went.
The connected flashes of energy, now clearly a net, raced across the building above him, shorting out and exploding the swinging, clashing work lights.
Castiel ran into Ephraim. Another boom shook the building as two beings of pure energy collided and struggled. Xavier, now in his true form, pulled Castiel back, away from Ephraim. Then, suddenly, he let Cas go.
The energy net fell on Castiel alone. In his true form he didn't experience many physical feelings, but this felt like a thousand sharp stings in every part of his being. And it paralyzed him.
Isabel left her vessel and the three servants of Zachariah soared to Heaven with their prisoner.
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There were no trials in Heaven. Since Heaven's leadership was, by definition, righteous, anyone who went against their will was, by definition, guilty.
Castiel was dragged to a gray room and left in the paralyzing net while his captors assumed human forms. They were like the form he had assumed to go into Hell – useless on Earth, but perfectly mobile and sentient in the spirit realm. A fourth such form, a nude male, lay face down on the floor like a discarded doll. Enochian symbols were tattooed across its back, ensuring that whatever spirit occupied that form wouldn't be released until the right words were spoken by someone else.
Ephraim and Xavier forced Castiel into the empty human form. The lashing stings of the net hurt far more when he had physical nerve endings, but he was still paralyzed and couldn't even groan in pain. He prayed for strength. They threw him into the center of a circle surrounded by Enochian symbols and stood back as Isabel began chanting again.
The very ether within the circle began thickening, the greater density muting light and sound. It was happening above him too, the gray ceiling being covered over by clustering darkness.
Suddenly the net was removed and he gasped in relief. He could barely hear his own gasp, barely see Ephraim and Isabel and Xavier standing outside the circle.
The last sight he saw, the last words he heard, were Ephraim snarling, "Too good for him." Then there was utter darkness and silence as the walls of the Chamber closed around him.
Suddenly, movement. The Chamber began tumbling him, side over side as if he were rolling down a hill, head over heels, every angle between. He was not slammed against walls as this happened; it was like he was packed in something thick and soft preventing sensation.
When the tumbling stopped he was suspended in this softness, not knowing whether he was lying or standing, which way was up or down. But a far worse sensation set in.
He was isolated.
The low thrum of other angels' energy, the spike or song of an occasional message of urgency or joy, had been a part of him since his creation. He took it as much for granted as a human takes the involuntary reflex that makes him breathe.
It was gone. There was only profound silence where that connection had existed – no sense that other angels existed or had any idea that he himself was alive.
He reacted as a human might react if he suddenly had to think about breathing: He panicked. He tried to stretch his grace beyond the confines of this body, he gasped, he screamed just to hear something.
He could only barely hear himself. The stuff filling the Chamber that kept him from feeling and seeing also muffled his own voice to a whisper.
He fought his own panic, willing himself to stillness. He hummed. The vibration inside his own head was the closest he could come to the feel of angelic connection.
There were tears in his eyes. He was ashamed of himself for being so hysterical so fast, but he had never expected this. Angels who'd been in the Chamber weren't allowed to discuss it – and didn't seem to want to, anyway. He had expected pain, humiliation. He never expected his connection to the rest of God's creation to be utterly severed. He wouldn't have thought it was possible.
This was what Rachel and his other co-conspirators would go through if they were ever suspected. He prayed for all of them.
Prayer helped. He had never had direct "conversation" with God, but the sense of communion couldn't be kept out even from the Chamber.
Calmed somewhat, but still humming, he began to explore the Chamber as best he could. Suspended in soft stuff, utterly unable to see, unable to tell what was floor or wall or even if they existed, it was hard to explore. By making swimming motions and rolling he could try to find the limits of the soft stuff, what boundaries marked his confines and how they might be opened.
Except that there weren't any. No matter how far he went, which direction he stretched, there was no end to the muffling density that surrounded him.
He persisted in this for a long time, inventing new ways to move within the packing. He even tried to "surprise" the walls by floating still for a long time and then moving as far and as suddenly as the packing would allow.
Finally, he realized that there were no walls. The prison wasn't physical, it was composed of energy. And without any way to exert his own energy, he was completely trapped.
He wondered if other angels' energy could reach in without his sensing it, if someone was watching his powerless naked human form thrashing and sobbing and humming in here.
"Allowing the Apocalypse is doing Lucifer's will!" he shouted. Whispered.
There was no response. But he found it oddly comforting to imagine that someone was listening to him. He yelled defiantly for quite some time about the wrongness of doing what Lucifer wanted.
He grew weary of hearing the sharpness and shrillness of his own voice. He began to explain instead. Surely that would be more convincing, in any case.
He explained why Michael and Raphael were wrong to assume that God's lack of communication meant God's apathy. He explained how humans should have the free will God wanted them to have. He talked about Dean Winchester, his struggles, his courage, his protectiveness toward his brother and other humans, his humor. Castiel tried to demonstrate how this complex creature was an example of God's handiwork at its finest, flaws and all, not some kind of blunder on God's part.
He talked about pulling Dean out of Hell, what that had been like, how proud he had been to be a member of the team that had made the rescue possible. He admitted that he bitterly missed that sense of comradeship. He talked about Uriel's betrayal, Anna's courage, Amenerat's despair.
He grew angry again, talking about the seal he had so carefully guarded and then let go because of one snapped order from Zachariah. He relived again that moment where he could have saved the seal, could have saved Lorraine, and let it go. He pleaded with whomever might be listening not to make the same mistake.
For no reason he could think of, he began to talk about his past, battles in which he had taken part, people he had observed. He spoke wistfully about missing Gabriel, sorrowfully about Lucifer's rebellion.
But between each story he was pausing for longer periods of time. And in those pauses the silence was complete.
There was no one listening.
He was utterly alone, floating without sight, without sensation, without any sound but what he made himself.