Chapter Eight: the cracks that riddle me like fault lines
Sigils ran through the back of his eyelids like blots of ink soaking into tissue paper. Castiel shut the heavy leather bound book in front of him and massaged his temples slowly. He knew that he shouldn't feel tired, but after two days of relentless research defeat was taking on the form of physical exhaustion. At least Amara had agreed to stay and help where she could. She and Sam figured out that the sigil pieces from Heaven were inscribed on a material most similar in composition to slate. They had found a mountain in Chile where a decade ago a slate rock mine had collapsed, with rumors from locals calling it an "act of God."
"You think someone found another hand or little finger of God?" Dean had asked. "How do some broken rocks help us?"
"Better power conduit," Castiel had answered, without looking up from the patterns he was scribbling down. "We don't have the power of Heaven behind our Circle, we'll need all the boosters we can get." Amara had returned earlier that morning, and faint echoes of clanging had been resounding from the basement for hours now. Dean had insisted on letting him and Jack break up the giant slabs of rock "with a friggin hammer" because "I need to do something useful and you guys haven't figured out all the sigils yet anyways, so don't you go mojo-ing this away for me."
He could hear Sam in the kitchen making lunch, and he knew Serafiel was still in her room, huddled around the laptop Jack had lent her. Castiel checked on her every now and then, sometimes with an Enochian text or ancient script to ask her about. At first she had seemed interested in helping but the moment she realized they were trying to make a trap for Chuck here, in the Bunker, she had refused to even look at the papers. All of his reassurances only made her curl deeper into the thick covers until she was almost cowering behind them.
Castiel understood her fear. It was the same emotion he refused to let himself indulge in.
His hand slipped down from his forehead, fingertips bumping against his throat. The harsh colors ruining his skin didn't feel like anything under his touch, but every time someone looked at him their gaze was drawn to it, like it had replaced all of other features. Like it had eyes to stare back at them.
"It's strange, you know." Amara entered the room, looking anywhere but at him and yet he knew exactly what she was talking about. "I can see my brother's imprint in it. What happened to you-" her eyes traveled down to the incriminating spot "-must have taken something out of him as well." The coffee mug in her hand landed gracefully between the piles of books on the table and she pulled out a chair beside him. "I don't quite understand, though. Why he would go through all that trouble."
Blue eyes. You aren't even worth the effort.
Castiel pushed his heels against the side of the chair, willing himself not to shift away. Amara was different when she said those words to him all those years ago.
He was different then, too.
No offense, but you look a bit used up.
He tried not to think about her hand pushing against his chest, branding his vessel with a blistering warning. She was looking at him now with that same blend of wonder and curiosity in her eyes as back then.
Why God took a special interest in you I'll never understand.
"There were less than a dozen angels in Heaven when he unmade them," Castiel said aloud to drown out the noise of the rising quiet. "You said their essence remains in some way, right? Maybe like blueprints. Maybe he wants to use them when he recreates the earth."
"Less than a dozen?"
"Our numbers have been dwindling," he replied evenly.
"Blueprints? Huh." She leaned back, resting her hands on the table. "I didn't think he was sentimental like that. Not with the way he's been wiping out the other worlds. But then you are his first children. I think he was quite proud of the result."
"I doubt that." The smile on his face felt hollow and yet he lifted his head to greet her with it.
There was something else in her eyes. He hadn't noticed it when he had too been too timid to face her before. She wasn't scrutinizing him with hardness, but with a soft strain of sympathy. "What did my brother say to you?"
He swallowed through a forest of glass in his throat. "That he was going to make a better me. One that was less damaged. He said we were all mistakes."
"No one could improve on you, Castiel. Maybe he was just jealous of that." A hint of pride and amusement warmed her voice as she took a sip of coffee. "I think he never could quite predict what you were going to do."
You have never done what you were told, not completely.
Honestly I think you came off the line with a crack in your chassis.
Naomi's rebuke came back with a repressed shudder and he remembered that she was dead. Again. The knowledge somehow coursed through him with an unexplained pang of grief as another thought came to mind. "You said that the unmaking doesn't kill whoever is-does that mean the other angels can still feel-are they still aware of their atomized state?"
"No. When someone is unmade, and the process is completely finished, only the barest trace of them would be left. Their soul, or their consciousness, would be long gone." She raised her eyebrows slightly. "You know, it's something I always knew was possible for him-for us-to do, but I never thought he would actually go through with it. He never has before. It's just so..." she shook her head minutely, "...long and cruel and unnecessary, really."
"I know." He hadn't realized he was touching his neck again until he felt her fingers cupped over his. Her eyes met his, colored with a tenderness he hadn't expected.
"I need to know," she said quietly and he understood what she was asking before she finished. It was a question not to torment him, but to prepare herself for the possibility. "Do you remember what it felt like?"
He had been trying very hard not to.
Her fingers so close to his neck should have triggered a full body flinch, but instead he felt a sense of calm. The power she radiated wasn't a threat; rather it acted as a shield, fiercely protective. The knot in his throat loosened strand by strand. "I was awake for all of it. Jack told me it was a few minutes for them, maybe less, but to me it was…." he looked away. "I could feel everything coming apart, individually and all at once. My grace, my vessel, breaking cell by cell. The pain, it was-" he stopped.
"It was infinite," she whispered, unshed tears pooling in her eyes.
He nodded. "You have every reason not to want to do it to him. It's something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies. No matter what he's done, he is still your family."
"My twin." Her hand retreated and she picked up the coffee mug again. "I would probably feel it as it happened, too. The way it must have hurt him when he locked me up."
"Would you rather lock him up? We tried to do that before, and it failed. But maybe you could help us figure out another way."
The dark liquid almost sloshed over the edge as she set the cup down quickly. "No, I couldn't do that. It's as bad as unmaking him. I know that agony well. At least-at least in a way, the unmaking has a beginning and end. Being locked away..." A shadow stole over her face and she blinked, galaxies swimming in her eyes. "Imprisonment is truly forever."
The neon of the overhead lights glinted off the silk strands of her pantsuit sleeve. Castiel could feel the air itself bowing to the symphony of the resonance within her. He remembered that she wasn't simply a woman, or a sister, or even a divine being, but a heartbeat of the universe itself, one whose very breath coincided with the cadence of all creation.
"Chuck," he suddenly spoke without realizing it. "He's omnipotent, he can see-does he know what we're doing?"
"Probably. But as long as I'm here he can only see what I want him to. He knows you're trying to rebuild the Circle, but he won't know if you succeed. Or if I do choose to unmake him."
"Will you?"
She turned, those endless brown eyes staring into him. "Would you?"
"Here you go." Dean's pounding footsteps intercepted the conversation as he marched into the room with an armful of fist-sized stone pieces. Behind him Jack followed with another pile that he dumped next to the heap Dean unloaded. "Is that going to be enough for the-" he twirled a finger in the air "-circles in circles?"
"It should be. We haven't figured out the innermost sigils yet but I can start working on the outer rings." Castiel unfolded a large piece of paper and pointed to the markings circled in red. "The sigils need to be drawn in celestial light, copied precisely. One stroke out of order and the Circle won't hold."
"Celestial light? Are you going to make them glow in the dark?" Dean dusted his hands clean and patted Jack on the shoulder. "Great job on the rock smashing by the way. I think we better clean up the dungeon though, or Sam's gonna have a fit."
"Why would I have a fit?" Sam strolled in from the kitchen, balancing several plates with sandwiches in both hands. "Cas, I was thinking about the pattern for the inner sigi-oh, wow-" he took in the miniature mountain of slate pieces on the table "-you have to mark all of these in your blood?"
Dean held up a finger. "What the what now?"
"Celestial light," Castiel repeated, as if it hadn't been eminently clear before. "This should be enough, but if we need more you and Jack can always-"
"What about Sara, why can't she help draw the sigils?" Dean interrupted. "You're just gonna bleed out all on your own?"
Castiel barely kept himself from rolling his eyes. "I won't bleed out, this vessel has more than enough blood to write three hundred twenty-four sigils and maintain its health."
Jack bobbed up and down on his heels. "I can help! I've been studying some of the library books with Sam this morning and I'm pretty good at sigil work now. Well, I'm getting better," he added with a quick glance over at Sam.
"Yeah, the kid is as celestial as they come, so it should work right?" Dean asked.
"We can try," Castiel said, giving in to the eagerness spreading across Jack's face.
"Greetings. I regret to inform you that I require assistance." They all turned to see Serafiel standing woodenly at the side of the hallway, a laptop held out in her arms like a cadaver. "The device I was viewing the animated storytelling on unexpectedly became deceased."
"I'll get you a charger in a minute," Sam chuckled, pulling out a chair beside Castiel. "These sandwiches are going to get soggy if you don't eat them, guys. And yes, Dean, yours is sprout-free."
"How kind of you, Sammy," Dean grinned. "I'll go make some more coffee. Amara, do you want a refill?"
"Only if you make it Irish." She rose from her seat, mug clutched in one hand, but before she passed the table Castiel turned slightly towards her and lowered his head.
"I wouldn't do it," he said under his breath. Looking at the faces of those around him-Sam, Dean, Jack, Serafiel-he knew that he would never be able to unmake any of them, no matter the danger they posed to humanity. He would let them rage, a hurricane force, and stand there as a toothpick in the gale believing he could convince them to change course. "I would rather let them destroy me first."
A glimmer rose in her eyes and Amara pressed a hand to his shoulder, squeezing it gently before walking on to the kitchen.
Castiel sat back down and started to pull the first shard of rock towards him. But then he saw the gusto that Jack was hungrily munching through his sandwich with; Dean, trying to discreetly pass his flask to Amara even as Sam chided him about it; and Serafiel, curiously picking up the sandwich and taking a tiny bite from the side as if waiting for it to bite back.
"The molecules taste crunchy," she informed him soberly.
His face brightened as she pulled out a chair to sit beside him and he took the plate she passed to him with a smile.
Notes:
Chapter title from "The Curve of Earth" by Snow Patrol