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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Well, if he could make his own sound, surely he could exert his energy enough to make a little light. He tried that for quite some time, trying to work through his eyes, his fingertips, his vessel as a whole. He tried to force light out from himself in a burst; he tried focusing on the idea of light, building it within himself, and slowly persuading it outward from his mind.
He couldn't do it. His grace was securely bound in the human form. It kept his form from starving or thirsting to death, as a human would have. He didn't know whether it was preventing him from going blind or completely disabled, as a human body would have in these circumstances. But he did know that he couldn't project his energy out of this form in any way. He'd spent a lot of time trying.
How much time, he wondered. There was no way to measure time's passage.
But thinking of disability made him realize that this form was capable of something. He could exert his muscles. Castiel had never heard of self-resistance exercises, but he invented them then and there. He exerted his arm muscles by pressing the palms of his hands against each other; he tried to straighten each leg while grabbing the sole of his foot with his hand; he stretched and pressured every muscle he was aware of. Without a solid surface to brace himself against, it was hard to exercise vigorously, but it was better than nothing.
He was astonished at how good it felt. When he grabbed the sole of his foot there was a jolt of pleasure along the arch that was almost erotic. (He gasped at how good it felt, then remembered when he'd noted humans sucking in their breath that way at a touch; that was how the word "erotic" occurred to him.) It suddenly struck him that, although he surely had less need for sensory stimulation than a human would, within this vessel that need was clear.
He developed a routine. He exercised. Then he would stimulate himself mentally with lists – places in the world where he'd been, names of all the angels he'd met personally, the names of God in every human language. Then he would rub his skin vigorously from head to foot. Then he would pray. Sometimes, he thought, he slept – it was hard to tell.
He had to force himself through the routine eventually. It was hard to see the point. The isolation was harrowing, crushing. He found himself drifting without thought, almost without hope, for long stretches of time.
Had Michael and Raphael really been so evil, that it was worth going through this to defy them? The longer he was severed from the angels, the more brilliant and beautiful they were in memory.
But – a billion human deaths. Angels dead in a war that could have been prevented if Heaven's leadership had wanted to prevent it. And always the question – What if the leadership was wrong? What if Lucifer actually won?
He found himself humming again, drifting, thinking of times when he'd been certain, and it was such a blessed feeling to be certain –
Something stung his left calf. He was startled, then almost enthralled. He was feeling something! Something was coming to him from outside!
He could see it too, steady motes of light around him, more stimulation –
Pain. They had somehow thrown the net around him in the Chamber, scorpion stings lancing his vessel's flesh. He thrashed in desperation, trying to escape the pain, but it wrapped him easily and no matter how he struggled the burning shocks cut into him.
Suddenly, he thought: The net paralyzed me. How am I struggling?
He lay still, thinking, and the pain let up, then disappeared.
He'd heard of this. When a human body went without sensory stimulation for long enough, it would create its own stimuli through hallucinations. He was a little surprised that it could even happen to an angel in a human form, but he guessed it had taken him longer to begin hallucinating than it would have taken a human.
He certainly hoped so. But of course, he had no idea how long he'd been in here.
A short sentence, Ephraim had said. Of course, that was before he'd threatened Ephraim and Xavier with the angel-killing sword. But maybe they didn't know what it was.
Didn't know what what was? He'd been thinking about something –
A short sentence. What was Zachariah's idea of a short sentence?
Light. A slit of light opening to his right. He almost didn't want to turn his head and look directly at it for fear that it would disappear. But he did look, and saw Zachariah's face, in the midst of a square of light, as though he'd opened a door to look in at Castiel.
"He's not quite done. He needs basting," Zachariah said, and the light and the angel vanished at once.
All right, that was strange. You'd think that if your mind were going to come up with hallucinations, it would come up with exciting or enjoyable ones.
He wondered if this was what dreaming was like for humans. They invested so much effort in analyzing or divining the meanings of dreams, and now it made sense to him. If these images were being created by his own mind – why the net? Why Zachariah? Why the baking metaphor? If the hallucinations were directly from God – Well, the same questions applied.
Humans. So wonderful in so many ways, so horrific and destructive in others. They really did need guidance. Lorraine was before him with a bloody knife and she was pointing it at herself and he did nothing, no one did –
He flinched. She disappeared.
His breath was staggered. He would never forgive himself for obeying Zachariah's order.
But Zachariah hadn't plunged the knife into Lorraine, hadn't splattered the minister's blood all over the church altar. A human had done that.
He remembered Michael's leadership, so strong and so sure for so long. Castiel missed his angelic connection desperately. Had he himself ever felt diminished by having his decisions made for him by Michael and Raphael? Had he missed anything because he wasn't a helpless slave of fears and passions?
Would humans?
"We may be murderous thieving bastards," Dean had said, "but you have to admit we invent some cool stuff."
Would that inventiveness be the same without free will?
Would Dean be the same without free will?
He wasn't sure why he bothered speculating. For all he knew, it was all over by now – Lucifer risen and conquered, humans tamed without their tempter and tormentor present. Castiel might step out of the Chamber into Paradise.
And he would have played no part in it at all.
But if it wasn't God's will, then that was just as well, wasn't it?
He shook his head, shuddering. He didn't know how many times he'd argued this with himself now. If he couldn't think of something different, hear something different, feel something different, he was sure he would begin screaming, thrashing, pleading. And when nothing happened because of that – and of course it wouldn't – he didn't know what he would do.
Exercise. Count. Stimulate. Pray. Exercise. Count. Stimulate. Pray. Try to ignore how far away God was beginning to seem. Exercise. Count. Stimulate –
It suddenly struck him that he couldn't remember why he was here.
"You were going to warn me about Lucifer and Raphael taking over the world," Dean Winchester said, smiling at him.
Castiel didn't care if it was a hallucination. It was a friendly face, a friendly voice, something different. "You mean Michael and Raphael. Michael, not Lucifer."
"Same thing for us, isn't it?"
Dean was standing unexpectedly close to Castiel, and his voice was so intimate that Castiel had to ask, "By 'us,' you mean humans, don't you?"
Dean just continued smiling at him. Castiel could feel his own breath speeding up. "Michael and Lucifer are not the same."
"Funny. I'd've sworn you said they were."
"No. They're not. I would never say that."
Dean disappeared.
"I would never say that," Castiel whispered stubbornly.
But in resisting Michael and Raphael the way he resisted Lucifer, wasn't that exactly what he was saying?
Lucifer's goal was the destruction of humanity. Michael's goal was the survival of humanity in Paradise, free of temptations, free of the misery that caused –
Sam Winchester bowed his head to gorge himself on a red stream. Castiel had seen a drug addict die a horrible death once, drugs cut with the wrong powder. He remembered the calm smiling face of a woman who poisoned her husband, the shriek and collapse of the man's mother when she was told. It reminded him of women's screams as they were gang-raped. Screams of soldiers mutilated and dying in too many battles, too many wars to count, an endless cycle of death and vengeance. Fathers –
"I will stop these thoughts," he said aloud. "I will think of something else. I will not see – "
- at gravesites. Parents at the site of a school shooting, praying not to hear what they would soon hear. Children's bones breaking under the blows of those who should have taught them love.
"Father, I pray for your guidance. I am beset with horror and I plead to be led – "
The cracking and rending of the Inquisition victim on the rack. An insane emperor giggling at torture. A serial murderer chuckling over his mementoes.
"We may be murderous thieving bastards, but you have to admit – "
The click of the assassin's weapon. Blood splattered over leather, wood, velvet, stone, concrete, sinking into the ground. Blood on an altar in La Lluvia and a girl barely out of her teens driving a knife into herself.
"Stop! I will stop this! Stop it!"
Michael could stop it, Michael and Raphael. They were humanity's only escape from cruelty and horror, from wrenching grief over needless suffering and death.
"Well, yeah," Dean said, "if all you look at is the bad stuff, it seems like we need archangels to run our lives for us."
Castiel wasn't even surprised at Dean's reappearance. "What's 'the good stuff'?" he snapped, bitterly turning Dean's own phrase. "Guitars and clocks? The joy of a mother before her child is destroyed by addiction? The excitement of lovers before they tear each other apart? It doesn't balance out, Dean. It doesn't even come close."
"How would you know?" Dean was very close to him again, still with a merry insinuating smile. "When were you a parent? When was the last time a friend helped you, not because of an order, just because they wanted you to be happy?" His voice whispered into Castiel's ear; the angel could feel the warm breath of the hallucination. "You've never known what it's like – "
His fingertips touched Castiel's lips. Castiel started, but didn't move away. Dean's hand caressed the angel's cheek, gripped his neck rather roughly and traveled down his nude torso.
It was the most intense experience he'd ever had in a vessel, emotional and physical at once. It felt nothing like a mirage. His skin felt as if it had a life of its own. "We cannot experience those things," he said, and paused as his voice choked off. "We cannot wish to experience them. Anna was no exception. An angel who wants to experience what is good about human life will surely fall."
But he couldn't pull away from the warm sure hand stroking between his legs.
Dean moved even closer, body to body, and whispered in Castiel's ear, "So fall."
Castiel sucked in a noisy gasp, turned spasmodically, clenched his fists. "Go."
The hallucination clung around him somehow and he shouted, so sharply he startled even himself. "Go! Now!"
The image vanished, leaving Castiel alone with a hellish epiphany.
He desired Dean Winchester. In the vilest, most animal way, he desired Dean.
He was as bad as that predatory hypocrite Stephen Mahon. No, Castiel was worse. Mahon was only a human, and Castiel was an angel of the Lord.
He was supposed to be guiding Dean, the firm and objective guidance of a higher being. Instead he wanted to use a far weaker body containing a vulnerable human soul.
And this soul was uniquely vulnerable – tortured in Hell, pursued by its memories even after escaping. Never mind how horrible it would have been if Dean had allowed Castiel to use him sexually out of gratitude. What if he'd done it out of fear? What if he'd felt he had no choice but yielding to the being who once told him, "I dragged you out of Hell, I can throw you back in"?
This explained the knowing look, the near sneer in his smile, that Zachariah had whenever Castiel discussed Dean. Zachariah knew. And if he could see it, so could all of Castiel's fellow soldiers, and his superiors, clear up to Raphael and Michael.
He gave a long terrible cry of humiliation, covering his face as though anyone were there to see it.
And of course this was the motive behind his noble cause – the revolt he'd tricked Rachel and the others into joining. He remembered himself, filled with earnest indignation, going on and on about the evils of doing what Lucifer wanted and human death and angelic destruction, and how human free will was part of God's Plan.
As through he knew anything about God's Plan. As though he cared anything about human free will.
Castiel had been willing to destroy the archangels' plan for Paradise to ensure that one human being would be available to him, unprotected by archangelical constraints. Dean Winchester's soul would have been raped at every level of the spiritual realm, making Castiel the equivalent of Alastair.
Even Alastair had seen it, his sadistic grin curving as Castiel beat him in the devil's trap. "Can't say I blame you. Exciting young man. Isn't he?"
Hell brought endless misery to human existence. Heaven was trying to release humans from that misery. And one disgusting wretch was plotting against the happiness of humanity so that he could take advantage of the misery of one human.
"Dearest Father, please forgive me. Please forgive me. I know what I have done and the destruction I have caused, and I do most sincerely repent – "
He broke off as he remembered himself pompously lecturing Mahon on the nature of true repentance. He despaired for a moment of God's understanding and forgiveness.
Then he began praying again, the same few broken phrases over and over because he was incapable of anything else.
Castiel had proven himself to be a foul bundle of arrogance and lust. His judgment couldn't be trusted ever again. He would follow each order to the letter from now on.
How had he sunk so far, so fast? He had always been fascinated by human beings, and surely, surely this interest was a gift from God. It had made him helpful to Heaven in the past. It was only since he had taken on a physical vessel that he had become disgusting, dangerous. He reviewed the last five months unsparingly, reinterpreting every interaction with Dean.
He prayed almost continuously after that, prayers for humility and obedience and forgiveness. Occasionally he still exercised. The hallucinations still arose, and he had little choice but to tolerate them, unless they were of Dean. Then he fought them unrelentingly.
He was singing a hymn with Uriel when the space around him began to grow gray.
Uriel vanished. Castiel watched the developing mirage with fascination. It was a lighter gray now, and it had been so long since he had been able to distinguish any color at all.
His whole being vibrated suddenly, joyously. He could hear angelic voices, feel angelic presence. His connection with his reality had been restored.
His body had density. It was sinking, the packing that held it suspended slowly disappearing. And the space around him was so light gray that it was translucent, letting in light and color.
He blinked his eyes, which were given strength against the assault of light only by his angelic power. Tears of joy flooded from them at the feel and sound of his brethren.
Something solid was beneath him as his body finished sinking. A floor. He looked down to see Enochian sigils.
And looked up to see a gray room, with Isabel and Zachariah standing just a few feet away.
"You may leave the circle now, Castiel," Isabel said. "It's not a hallucination. You have finished serving your sentence."
He stared at her for a moment.
Then he pushed against the floor to raise the human form. He could tell that only his grace made this possible. He looked at Zachariah. His superior looked even more collected than usual in a charcoal suit, charcoal-and-burgundy striped tie, and a small gold ring on one finger. Isabel was all in white. The colors were stunningly beautiful.
"She's telling the truth," Zachariah said with a little smile. "You can leave the circle."
Castiel took a step or two, still stunned with joy at his angelic connection, marveling like a baby at his ability to propel himself forward.
Then he took a couple of steps in a rush and fell on his knees before Zachariah, his head bowed in shame.
"Please forgive me. Please forgive me."
Zachariah's voice was calm. "Do you give yourself over wholly to the service of God and your superiors?"
"Yes. Yes."
"Repeat it, Castiel."
"I give myself over wholly to the service of God and my superiors."
"Do you swear to follow the will and the word of your superiors as swiftly and obediently as you would follow your Father's?"
"I swear to follow the will and the word of my superiors as swiftly and obediently as I would follow God's."
"Well." Zachariah put a hand gently on Castiel's head, and Castiel looked up at his face. A spark of anger at Castiel's near betrayal still lurked in Zachariah's eyes. "I forgive you. Just don't scare us like that again, Castiel."
He looked at Isabel and nodded. Isabel spoke an incantation. Castiel suddenly felt a rush of power and knew that he could leave this human form if he wanted to.
But he remained on his knees before Zachariah.
"We usually allow a little recuperation time before a Chambered angel goes on duty," Zachariah said. "But I'm afraid we've got an emergency for you."
"I'm happy to be asked. I want – I need to atone."
"It's your former vessel, Jimmy – um – "
"Novak."
"Demons tracked him down. They think he has knowledge of Heavenly secrets."
"He doesn't."
"Of course not, but these are demons, not geniuses. They've possessed his wife and are holding his daughter hostage."
"Amelia and Claire?" Castiel shot to his feet. "I must go now, sir. I gave my word that Heaven would protect Jimmy's family. It's all he asked of me."
"We've got a few minutes. The demons won't kill the daughter until they get their claws on Jimmy, but he and the Winchesters are heading for a rendezvous as fast as that car can take them."
Castiel flinched. "The Winchesters?"
"They were keeping an eye on him, had to kill one of the neighbors when he got possessed and came after Jimmy. They're driving Jimmy to the demon rendezvous now, and of course will try to free the wife and daughter."
"I don't – I'm not – I don't believe that I can be trusted," Castiel had to lower his eyes, "in any matter where Dean Winchester is concerned."
"Well, that was my thought," Zachariah said easily. "But Michael insisted that you be assigned."
"Michael?" Castiel's gaze rose sharply.
"Yes. I've told you how important Dean is to the Plan. Michael wants him very well protected. And since Michael can't show up there in his true form and unleash his wrath on the demons without killing the Winchesters and the Novaks and leveling every building in a quarter-mile radius, he needs someone to protect Dean who can get there and get into a vessel fast. And he felt that your – attachment to your charge made it certain that you will defend him more vigorously than anyone else we could send."
Castiel put one hand over his eyes for a moment, feeling naked mentally as well as physically, even now not certain that the whole thing wasn't a gigantic hallucination. "I – I'm not sure – "
"They're in real danger, Castiel. Four particularly nasty demons. Sam's in withdrawal. Dean is distraught, his energy's all over the map. They're a double murder waiting to happen."
"Why – " Castiel choked off the automatic question, then decided that Dean's protector legitimately needed to know this. "Why is Dean distraught?"
"Well – they found Jimmy, Castiel. He and Sam saw the site, the destroyed site, where you were arrested. He knows you've been taken back to Heaven for correction."
"He's still distraught about that? After all this time?"
Zachariah and Isabel exchanged a glance. "Time moves differently in the Chamber, Castiel," Isabel said. "You were in the Chamber for about four months, which is a sentence of one Earth day."
"One day?"
He tried to grasp it. All that time, the isolation and darkness, talking to himself, thinking, exercise, the hallucinations, the horrible epiphany, all the prayers.
The Lucifer worshippers who'd been sentenced to two weeks would go through that for fourteen times as long as he had.
"Castiel?" Zachariah's voice was patient but had a steely edge. "We need your focus now."
"Yes. Where are they?"
"The demons are in a warehouse north of Pontiac, Illinois, USA. Jimmy and the Winchesters are almost there."
Castiel focused, still not sure if he could vacate the human form, and as a result his extra surge of energy took him halfway to Pontiac before the empty vessel had crumpled to the floor.
Claire was bound to a straight-backed chair under a dangling metal-shaded bulb. She was shaking with sobs that she was biting her lips to repress.
The demon possessing Amelia was standing over the body of a security guard. His throat had been torn; she held a ceremonial bowl full of the guard's blood in both hands, communicating with someone in Hell. There was nothing ceremonial about her tone, though.
"Well, I guess you lost the trifecta, then, didn't you?" she snapped at the bowl of blood. "Lilith's giving me everything I want. Everything. And she doesn't give a damn about the vessel and just wants me to let Sam go. All I need to do is bring her Dean and the knife. So let's see – half the work you wanted me to do, but more reward. Not a tough choice. Some demons know how to pay for value."
The Winchesters and Jimmy had arrived. Jimmy had gone to a different side of the building than the brothers and was standing on trash-strewn ground outside, looking to the heavens and excoriating Castiel. "You promised me my family would be OK! You promised you were going to take care of them! I gave you everything you asked me to give! I gave you more! This is the thanks I get?"
Castiel hovered near the rafters, his light at the lowest possible level, and did nothing.
This had never happened before.
He was frozen.