Fallen

Chapter 14

AN: We're going to get a bit darker in the next couple of chapters. This shit, my friends, just got real.

Any way, this is exciting! Finally, the fun stuff is finally beginning! (And by fun, I mean awful, horrible things happening to the characters we all love, because we're all a bunch of depraved sadists)

Castiel feels the pull of the summons, and knows that it is time. He isn't ready. Won't ever be ready.

He wishes that he was more upset, knows that he should be angry, or afraid, or something.

He doesn't know why he can't find it in him to be any of these things.

The room that he finds himself suddenly transported too is large, industrial looking. Some factory that has been long-since abandoned.

Dean was right. It is strange that we encounter so many of these abandoned buildings.

He shakes the thought from his head, regards the angels around him. Raphael, of course, as well as quite a large crowd of others. Some he knows. Others have taken new vessels and he can not see past the flesh to recognize them. But of those he does recognize, he sees several that had not previously been Raphael's followers. Many who had been his friends. That- hurt, in a way. He hadn't been expecting that.

"Confess." Raphaels voice was cold and low. "We already know that it was you who caused the Fall. Repent now, and we may be merciful."

Castiel shook his head. "I will not."

"Then you leave us no choice." Raphael said, voice thick with a regret that Castiel did not believe for an instant.

Castiel had decided, in the moment after Crowley had vanished from the bus station, that he would not beg. He would not try to reason with Raphael, because it would not make any difference. Whatever lies Crowley had fed him, Raphael no doubt already saw them for what they were- lies. He just didn't care.

Someone had to be blamed.

The angels were all dying. They would likely have years, decades before it happened, but to an angel, that was nothing. Just a blip. They knew that was all the time that they had left before they vanished forever, dissipated into the void. And just as it was clear that they had been made mortal, it was equally clear that someone had done this to them.

Someone had to be blamed.

And Raphael had decided that it would be him.

It made sense, Castiel had to admit. He had already been singled out by falling so differently then the rest of them. The angels all already hated him, and there was also the more practical matter. With how he had fallen- he was all but damned already. Most of their work had already been done for them.

This course of action had likely been decided the moment that the angels fell.

The angels are all crowded against each other, bordering the edges of the warehouse. None of them seem willing to get within twenty feet of Castiel, where the farthest edges of the circle ends. Understandable, considering how violently the portal tends to open.

He closes his eyes, and lets himself mentally drift away from Raphael's continued accusations, far from this place and everything that has happened these few months since the Fall. They hadn't been that bad, really. He thinks that maybe, if he had been given the choice, he could have been quite happy on Earth.

He manages to feel almost peacefull when all of a sudden, all Hell breaks loose.

Sam inhaled sharply as they approached, feeling a sudden onslaught of nerves as they reached their destination. He wasn't sure how he had known to come here. He had simply felt drawn, like a magnet. Dean hadn't said anything as Sam gave him the directions- there was no time for that, not right now, but Sam could feel that a 'Talk' was coming, provided that they both actually made it out of here alive.

"This it?" Dean asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah." Sam said. "The angels are in there."

As if on cue, they could hear talking coming from the other side of the door- Raphael's cool monotone droned for a moment and then another voice, clearly Castiels, replied. Dean and Sam shared a look, each breathing a small sigh of relief. They weren't too late.

"You ready?" Dean asked, and Sam nodded silently. There was no telling how many angels were on the other side of that door, but neither had even the slightest thought of turning back. Sam steeled himself, remembering the brief glimpse of Castiel that he had seen, knowing that a room full of dozens of angels would be much worse.

The door burst open, and Sam realized that 'worse' did not even begin to describe it.

OhGodSoBrightWhatTheHellISThatThingHowIsItPossibleForSomethingToBeThatBlue

The thoughts flew in and out of his head lightning fast as he took in the scene before him. The room was full of what he rationally knew were angels, but what he only saw as beings made of pure light, that same sharp blue light he had seen in that space between worlds. The light was so bright that it devoured all else, eating away at the rooms' shadows until it every visible surface appeared to be bleached white.

He blinked, desperately trying to clear his eyes, to see some form of spacial definition again, as Dean dove headfirst into the light, angel blade in hand. He drove the blade into the center of one of the lights and the thing exploded. Sam ducked down to avoid a piece of flying shrapnel before he remembered that the light wasn't real- or at the very least wasn't solid.

Move. Sam thought, pushing himself forward. He had to move past this. He had to help.

One of the figures was rushing towards him, it's bizarrely shaped form buzzing angrily. He tried to pull out his angel blade, only to find that it wasn't in his hands. Had he dropped it somehow?

There was no time to find out. The thing was already almost there.

Dosen't matter. You can still fight, you can still beat this thing. Eve gave you that power.

Part of him was screaming that he had no idea how to use that power, that he didn't even know what it did yet. He pushed those doubts out of his mind. They weren't helping anyone right now.

The light was almost on him now, its high pitched, inhuman hum almost deafening. It looked like- God, there weren't even words that could describe it. Now that he could see it closely, there were unmistakable echoes of the human form within its shape, but they were all wrong. Things that looked like they may have once been arms or legs had been stretched out and bent into impossible angles. Gaping holes peppered the body of the thing, as did bulbous lumps. It was almost as though someone had cut great chunks of flesh from the thing and then sewn them back on in seemingly random locations. What might have been the torso was almost entirely hollowed out.

When he had seen Castiel, Sam had pitied him.

For this creature, he felt nothing but disgust.

Without even thinking, he reached up, and plunged his hand deep into the light.

Some detached part of his brain wonders why the light seems to be wet on the inside, but he didn't have time to think about what that meant, because at that precise moment, the light cracked. A dark red fissure spread out from his hand, spider-webbing through the light like broken glass. He stared in awe at what was happening, finding his gaze drawn to the angels head- or at least what he thought was the head. He could see something there, the shadow of something that might have once been called a face, its faint lines painting a picture of absolute agony.

Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. As the cracks spread, the blue light began to break off,and disintegrate, Sam found that he was able to see more and more of the vessel underneath it. Bit by bit the light vanished, until only the eyes were left. And then finally, even that faded. Sam could see the vessel clearly for the first time. He looked like a business man, mid fifties maybe, with graying hair and wire rimmed glasses. He saw the massive bleeding hole in the mans chest and realized, all too late, just what that wet sensation was. The man had collapsed, but was looking up at Sam with the last of his strength. Oddly enough, the man still seemed to almost glow, but the light was far fainter then what it had been before, looking almost as though the man was standing under a warm golden light.

The man was crying. No, weeping, still staring at Sam in what Sam is suddenly sure will be the mans (angels?) last moments.

The man breaks out into a wild grin, and then plunges his own angel blade into his heart.

Sam stumbles backwards in shock, struggling to pull his arm from- God, was that intestines?! The blood was all the way up to his forearm. His brain was firing off at a thousand miles a minute.

Holy shit, I just killed him, I just killed him with my bare hands, I stuck my hand through him, Jesus Christ, that was an angel, I just murdered an angel. No, no, he killed himself, he stabbed himself in the heart- Why did he do that? Did I make him do that? Is that how this works?

He needed to get himself the Hell out of here. He had been wrong, in making Dean bring him here. He had obviously wildly overestimated his sense of self control if he had just stuck his arm through an angels guts without even realizing it. Shit, this had been a bad idea.

What happened if he did make it to Castiel? What did he seriously expect was going to happen, coming here? Did he really think that he would be able to help him? He hadn't even been able to see that angels face beneath the light, he couldn't see any of their faces, not until they were dead (or close to it), what was going to happen if he made it to him and didn't recognize him and then-

Oh wait, there he is.

Sam blinked, staring in Castiels direction. Because that was Castiel, there was no doubt about it. That awful coiling light is still there of course, snaking through him just as it had been when Sam had caught that brief glimpse of him in the Panic Room. And back then, when Sam had nothing to compare it to, that image had seemed like the worse thing in the world. But, God, compared to the other angels, compared to those faceless, formless things, it was nothing.

Is it because he fell further then the rest of them? Sam couldn't help but wonder. Is that why he's so different?

He can feel the other angels eyes- no, not eyes, they don't have those- the angels gaze turn towards him. He could feel them, looking at him, looking at the body on the floor next to him.

No burn marks. Guess the angels lost their wings during the Fall.

There is a brief moment of silence as he can feel the angels taking in what they see, and then an enraged shrieking suddenly fills the room. The sound is dense, almost suffocating, and Sam an feel it vibrating his bones. It grips him like a vice, pushes every other thought out of his head.

Something shifted in Sam's perception in that moment, and suddenly, terribly, he understood. He understood what Eve had shown him, understood the dying angels last wild grin, understood what had happened all those millennia ago, what was still happening.

And he understood, with an awful unavoidable clarity, what that light was.

He collapsed to his knees, and started to scream.

Dean meanwhile, saw none of this.

He had entered the warehouse and had found it full of angels. In the center of the room was some weird circle lined with symbols that he didn't recognize, and in the center of the circle was Cas. Cas, who was covered in blood and who looked even paler then usual. Who was collapsed on the floor because his legs looked to be so sharply broken that they might as well have been snapped in two.

He immediately got to the work of stabbing every angel that he could find.

He didn't see Sam kill the angel- he was too busy grappling with another angel for their sword when the angels suddenly erupted in a chorus of enraged screaming. He felt, more then saw, the angels turn as one towards Sam. By the time he got himself turned around to see what was happening, Sam's arm was covered in blood for some reason that Dean could not quite comprehend, and his eyes were glazed, fixed on some point in the distance just above Castiel.

"Do you have any idea what you've just done?" Raphael shouted, enraged as the deafening screams finally died down. Dean didn't understand what the big deal was. He saw the dead angel by Sams feet, sure, but Dean had just killed like, 3 angels just now, and Raphael and the others didn't seem to give a shit. Why was it that as soon as Sam did it that they all started throwing a hissy fit?

"You will learn to regret that, you abomination." Raphaels voice boomed, the archangel visibly struggling to control his rage.

Raphael was walking towards Sam now, who had for some reason collapsed to his knees and was- oh shit, Sammy was crying. He was looking up at Raphael with an expression that Dean had never seen on his face, never in all their years of hunting, this awful combination of horror and grief and disgust, and crap, Dean needed to get over there right now.

There was no way that he could though, not with so many angels in the way. Instead, he subtly nicked the palm of his hand and pulled out a small piece of plywood that he had hidden in his jacket, conveniently pre-painted with the angel-banishing sigil.

Who says that I can't plan ahead?

But no sooner has gotten the thing out of his jacket that two things happen in quick succession.

First, Raphaels gaze snaps towards him. And then, just as suddenly, Dean can't move- at least, not in any way that he can control.

He falls bonelessly to the floor with a resounding crack that he knows must be the sound of his nose breaking against the concentrate.

What the shit?

He tries to stand up. Can't. Can't even lift his head. Couldn't seem to move at all.

What the Hell had Raphael just done to him? Severed his spine? The thought seems terrifyingly possible.

Raphael looks at him the way some might look at a particularly disgusting worm. "Hold him up. I want him to see this." Two nearby angels awkwardly pulled Dean into something resembling a sitting position. He felt strangely detached from his own body. The entire situation had taken a turn from bad to straight up nightmarish. Everything suddenly seemed far too terrible to be real, from the impossible angle of Cas' legs, to the strange almost catatonic look on Sams face.

Raphael spoke, voice low and booming. "The three of you have defied God's will time and time again. It is that defiance that has prevented Edens return, that has seen Michael, the most loyal of Gods warriors unfairly imprisoned within Hell. And it is this defiance that has caused the very destruction of Heaven itself. But you shall soon learn that the forces of Heaven are not so easily defeated."

Raphael approached Cas, never acknowledging that the other angel was struggling just to stay lucid. The declaration was clearly meant more for the surrounding angels anyway.

"Castiel- you stand accused of a crime far greater then that of Lucifer- of destroying Heaven, and plotting with our enemies to create a weapon to even further strip what remains of our essense from us. The proof is right here." Raphael turned his head towards Sam. "I must say, Castiel, using Lucifers vessel as the means of our destruction- it seems that you wanted to shame us as much as destroy us."
"It's not- Sam's not-" Castiel ground his teeth, tried to lift himself up.

"But you miscalculated. Revealed your hand too soon. And now, everything will be put right."
"Don't-" Castiel blinked, looking suddenly more vulnerable the Dean had ever seen him. "Don't hurt them. Please."

It was that please that hurt Dean the most. The idea that Cas would be reduced to begging, not for his own life but for that of some idiotic human- Sam, he could understand- despite all the kids mistakes, he was a good person, and deserved only the best, no matter how much the world kept giving him the worst it had to offer. But him? Definitely wasn't worth it.

The other angels took a step back as the weird circle below Cas started to glow. The air was becoming charged, thick with some kind of energy.

This is actually happening. This is happening right now.

No one was saying a word. Dean could see some of the angels look around nervously, but none of them were saying anything to try and stop it.

It wasn't right, it wasn't fair, and he needed to move, to fight, to do something- but he couldn't even seem to blink. Didn't even have that much muscle control.

He had never felt so pathetic and God-damned helpless before in his life.

Cas had started to crawl away- little by little, he was making his way towards the edge of the circle, away from Raphael. And even though there were over a dozen angels staring directly at him, no one was making a move to stop him. Dean had the absurd mental image of him just crawling away, past all the other angels and through the door. But of course, that didn't happen. No sooner had Cas' fingertips brushed the edge of the circle, Raphael gave a small flick of his wrist, and with a sharp cracking sound Castiel collapsed completely.

Dean heard a sharp intake of breath from somewhere behind him. The other angels around Cas backed away further, looking afraid even though Cas obviously posed no threat at all at this point.

Dean looked at Cas, trying to figure out what had just happened. Raphael had bent Cas' arms backwards, right at the elbows, and it was pretty clear that his arms were broken.

Now that just seems unnecessary.

Raphael actually sighed, like he was disappointed. "Why must you continue to make this more difficult for yourself?"

"No-"

Dean almost didn't hear it- it wasn't his voice- not only was he pretty sure that he didn't even have the ability to talk rght now, but the voice had definitely belonged to a woman. One of the angels? It had to be, there was no one else here. So there was an angel who wasn't totally on board with what was happening.

Dean prayed.

Look, whoever you are, you have to do something, you have to stop this.

Silence. The energy in the room had taken a heated quality, and Dean knew that there wasn't much more time.

I can't

Another voice! A womans voice, somewhere inside his head. Dean didn't know that angels even could communicate telepathically.

Yes you can! You have to at least try- please, I'll do anything.

The voice came again. There's too many of them.

The banishing sigil! Dean thought desperately. There's one already drawn on that piece of wood on the floor over there. You can get rid of all of them in one shot!

There was a pause as the angel seemed to consider this that felt like an eternity, but was actually about three seconds.

I will try. The voice suddenly declared, and Dean could have kissed her.

It would suck for Cas, getting zapped to New Zealand or China or wherever with both of his arms and legs broken, but it would still be better then being in this warehouse once that portal below him opened.

There was a shifting moment behind him. The weird circle increased in brightness, red glowing so bright it seemed almost white.

We have to hurry!

Suddenly, Dean felt an explosion of sensation. His left arm had been twisted into an awkward position by the angel holding him up, and there was a small piece of debree digging into his knee that he hadn't been able to feel before.

Raphael really did snap my neck, the bastard.

He felt a thin hand slip something into his right hand, and recognized the familiar grip of an angel blade. And suddenly, it was official. Whoever this woman was, she was his new best friend.

First thing's first then.

Dean jammed the blade into the angel that had been holding him up- some big dude that looked like a corrupt investment banker. And then, all of a sudden, there was no time to think. A surge of movement and violence erupted all around him. He could see the angel who had helped him over to his left. She was small- short and rail-thin, upper body almost swallowed in an over-sized blue sweater. She was frantically trying to reach the banishing sigil, but one of the other angels had grabbed her by the hair, and was roughly pulling her back. The guy looked about three times her size, and Dean was reminded of those cartoon bullies that would demand the nerdy kids lunch money.

Dean rushed forward, stabbing a balding angel on the way.

There wasn't enough time!

All they had to do was touch the sigil, and then all of this would go away. The fiery charge in the room was getting more and more intense by the second. Dean could almost smell the sulfur.

Maybe if he threw the angel blade, if he was able to hit the angel holding her back- but he couldn't get a clear shot, not with him holding her in front of him like that. Or he could just activate the sigil himself, and then...

He spotted a glint of silver in the massive angels hand.

He tackled the angel, and miraculously, it worked. He let her go, seeming startled. If Dean could just hold him down long enough then-

There was a flash of fiery light as the ground in the center of the room opened up. When it dissipated, Cas was gone.

They hadn't made it. They were too late.

He caught a glimpse of the wide eyes of the angel just before she activated the sigil

Blue.

And then, suddenly, he and Sam were alone in an empty warehouse that was thick with heat and the smell of sulfur.