When Castiel had been told his purpose for the return, he had felt honored. This feeling of honor had lasted up until an old superior, Ishim, had pulled him aside and said, "listen, Castiel. I know you've heard many times to stay away from humans. You probably think it's because we're a danger to them." He scoffed. "They're a danger to us. Remember that. Remember it well." And he'd stared at Castiel as though sending him off to his death. As though looking at a dead man.

There was no way for a full angel to escape from heaven. There were only ways to twist them through. Zachariah had been sent through first; and Metatron; Zachariah had reached earth as a child, with no memory of heaven at all, and no powers, no way to contact him. Metatron had been the same; but the Scribe of God had followed the trail of books to the dark, forbidden tomes not meant for humans to know. It wasn't till he read an enochian translation of his own tablets that his memories came back to him, and when they did, they broke him. A human might call him a mad wizard—he transcribed fragments of angel radio that drifted through from heaven; created spell upon spell to refine the process of transmission, but he would not leave the town of Dunwich where he had landed so long ago.

It was with the aid of Metatron's spells that they had sent through Naomi; and it was Naomi who had, over the course of two centuries, perfected an opening, grown with care a thin spot in the veil between worlds. But Metatron and Naomi had been down on earth too long, and heaven wanted a warrior to keep tabs on the devil, when he rose from hell. So Castiel was chosen to be the last.

He came through the veil not as an angel, nor even as an angel born of humans, as Naomi and Metatron and Zachariah had been, but as an angel born of angels and the power of heaven, conceived on the night of All Hallows' Eve. This, truly, made him an abomination; for he had been conceived into his vessel, in an impossibility; and Naomi would always remind him. It was her body that had carried him; it was her that had suffered; and he owed her.

Castiel's memories remained his own. Or as much his own as possible, considering the flesh that was his, and the scope of memories he had once had, too much to fit in any human shape. It might be more accurate to call them impressions; dizzying things that he could not think upon too long without bleeding tears of blood. In his early years, he had cried constantly, and the sight of his own blood was not unknown to him.

He had grown at a rate exceeding normal men; skipping through the stages of childhood and into adulthood in the span of ten years; and as he did, he cried less. Partially because his memories were reconciled to him; partially because he became adept at thinking of other things; the now, this world—which, Naomi was quick to remind him, was only a fleshly prison.

He had not always agreed with her. Nor even agreed that opening the gates of heaven again was a necessity. Perhaps it was because he barely remembered it; barely remembered his brothers and sisters, his true family. Perhaps that was it.

He remembered, as a child of four that had matured to the extent of a human child of ten, saying "we were meant to be their shepherds. Not their murderers."

"Not always, angel," Naomi said coldly; her eyes abstracted, a thin cigarette held between her fingers. She was wearing a blouse and pants, but her feet were bare. On the old wooden floor, he noticed the chipped red of the nail polish on her toes. "There was that day, back in Egypt, not so long ago, where we slew every first-born infant whose door wasn't splashed with lamb's blood. And that was just PR."

"Well, I wasn't there," Castiel shot back, with the arrogance of youth.

"Oh, you were there," Naomi retorted flatly. "You just don't remember it." And she brought the cigarette to her lips; breathed in.

/

Dogs were the messengers of heaven. It was for that reason that Castiel knew he was an abomination; because instead of being drawn to him, the creatures were repelled; driven into a frenzy of hate. It didn't matter how gently he spoke to them or how he tried to avoid him; when he was near they would attack. His ordinary human limbs were cut with the bites of dogs, until he took to carrying a gun. Still, he was loathe to use it.

He didn't know when he had started to. Or why. It only occurred to him in his memory as a tiredness; a feeling of being hunted. And when he felt the pistol shaking in his hand, heard the sharp crack of it, saw the mutt at his feet, bleeding, and heard the rising swell of the whiporwills, he felt a stab of satisfaction he couldn't quell.

Perhaps it had to do with the fact that he was shunned in town. No one would go near those Klines—the demon-touched Klines and their bastard child. It became reassuring to remember that he was an angel; it became reassuring, on All Hallows' Eve, on the crest of Sentinel Hill, to perform the arcane rituals with Naomi and glimpse heaven above. The heaven where their brothers and sisters were waiting. And from which they meant to escape.

A real angel would not bleed so easily. A real angel would heal the shell that housed it with merely a thought, and fly the winds like a bird.

But he, the abomination, could only stand shaking beneath the burning end of Naomi's cigarette, pressed to his back. "Just like a human," she said, meaning not only the tears streaking down his face, but the skinny arms and legs, which never failed to look like anything other than ordinary, than mortal, biped, mud-monkey. Well-formed legs which carried him over the hills shook in the kitchen when Naomi pressed her cigarette to his back. Not like his brother.

Nothing like his brother.

/

His brother, Lucifer, was Satan. This Castiel knew. And he might have thought that would give him a leg up, but it never did. Lucifer had ascended from the pit in his true form, and lived in the house in his true form, and drank the blood from their demon-possessed herds.

Perhaps it was no surprise, considering his upbringing, that Castiel began to have dark thoughts. The chiefest of which was how an angel died.

In heaven, he recalled, they had had swords; swords tempered in the fire of their own grace. He had no grace, only blood, now. But Lucifer, who could always read the thoughts in his head without obstacle, once dropped into his hand a bright point of blue fire in which Castiel could bathe a small hunting knife.

It was Lucifer who showed him Naomi and Metatron talking downstairs, one All Hallows' Eve, before the rituals were to begin. It was from his brother that he saw Naomi say, "we need the devil, but we don't need the mutt. I don't trust Castiel not to muck up the whole thing. I was in his head for aeons, Metatron; he doesn't have it in him. The poor thing came off the line with a crack in his chassis."

"Compassion and mercy," Metatron said. "Not bad qualities for a hero."

"Bad qualities for an angel," Naomi had retorted. "We're warriors of God." Her hair, greyed before its time, pulled tightly at her nape; she reached into her pocket for a cigarette and brought it sharply to her mouth. "What the hell is taking the boy so long," she said. "Metatron, go up and get him."

Castiel let Metatron fetch him. He smiled at Metatron's quiet words of luck. He followed Naomi up the darkening hills. And he was not surprised when she grabbed him at the base of the altar, a knife in her hand.

His knife was faster. It cut through her stomach, and the intestines opened, wet, like a maw.

He did not see heaven that night. But the wind that blew over top of the hill gibbered with Their voices, and the earth muttered with Their consciousness.

/

Thus was Castiel Kline made. A degenerate creature, an abomination neither angel nor human. He had no friends, not among his own kind, nor among humans, nor animals. His father, Metatron Kline, was content to read, and let the story of their lives follow its own course. His mother hated him with a passion. It was no surprise, then, that as he aged at a rate uncanny, and began shooting dogs on the regular, he was regarded uneasily by the rest of Dunwich. The disappearance of Naomi Kline did not help matters. In fact, that was the last Dunwich saw of Castiel for some time; and when they later muttered that he was a matricide, he did nothing to dissuade them.

Into this mix came the Winchesters. The last of their line, and the fated point between this world and the next.

Samuel Winchester had been sullied with the blood of Azazel when he was a child; but the fact that he was an abomination did nothing but draw Castiel to him in a kind of sympathy. Sam, like him, believed—believed because to do otherwise was impossible. Because their own aberration must come for a higher purpose, or else the whole world was chaos. It was from Dean, though, that he learned of kindness. It didn't take much. An eager conversation across the kitchen table. Castiel knew Dean was here on false pretenses; but he knew, also, when Dean let go of his role and interacted with him as an equal. The Winchester was curiously unafraid, even before he had drunk any of the tea Castiel had made. Ordinary tea, actually; but it had a drop of his blood in it. The second part of preparations for the return.

It should have made Dean more able to bear his cursed presence, and that of heaven; but there was no sense in which Dean needed to bear anything as though it were a curse; instead, he seemed delighted by Castiel.

For a few short, summer days, Castiel let himself fall in love.

.

.

.