Dean followed the three angels into the abandoned library, wondering what the hell was going on. He was taken out of his warm bed at the ass crack of dawn, just to talk to some angel chick? Where's the thinking? Why couldn't this be done when he had some food or even coffee in his system? Albeit, she was fairly cute to look at. As he followed all of them, Dean caught himself staring at her ass as she walked, that beautiful ass that was so tempting in those skin-tight jeans. Hey, he was only human. And it had been so long...
"Dean Winchester." The angel chick- Ariel, she had called herself- called out his name from the front of the group. "Don't stare at my ass." How did she know? He turned a bright red of embarrassment as the other angels accompanying her each shot him lethal glances. Dean didn't know if she saw the glares, but she chuckled and began to slow down. Castiel's glare was particularly lethal. It was like, "One wrong move, and I'll kick your ass where you stand." Don't get him wrong, Dean was a fighter, but he knew he couldn't take down an angel. His face normalized but a shiver crawled down his spine.
They all stopped at a small alcove: five leather chairs surrounding an empty fireplace. There was a table in the middle of the grouping, just enough to place few books or magazines for other people's enjoyment. Unstrapping her swords from her side, Ariel sat down immediately and looked to the chair in front of her. "Dean. I don't bite. Come, sit down. We can at least be comfortable while we do this." Without any warning, Uriel shoved him into the seat and stood guard with Castiel, his face a smirk of contempt for the mud monkey.
"Uriel!" Ariel's voice, when it was angry, sounded like the baying of hounds on a hunt. "Unnecessary." At that tone, Uriel backed away and the smirk faded. "You two can go guard the doors. Dean and I need to talk alone."
"Ariel?" Castiel's glared melted into confusion. "I'm supposed to be guarding him."
Ariel's face became stone. "My orders trump yours, soldier." Her fingers drummed along the hilt of the larger sword. "I will protect him, Castiel." She cocked her head at him. "Don't make me repeat myself. To the doors."
Dean watched in amazement as the two asshats- I mean, angels- walked slowly towards the doors, however grudgingly.
Well, silence is always awkward after the two most powerful beings were shunted aside for a new player. Dean leaned back in his chair as Ariel placed the blades within her reach. "Well, ain't this peachy." Dean twiddled with his thumbs while trying to avoid staring at Ariel. He so did not want angry angels coming after him if he flirted with the cute angel-chick in front of him. "So, I know your name. But, who are you?"
Ariel cocked her head and grinned, leaning back in her own chair with a finger tapping her cheek. "Blunt. I like it." She sighed quickly and looked at the cold fireplace. Within seconds, a roaring blaze jumped up. Dean tried hard not to startle, but he would maintain that he didn't squeak in surprise at the angel. Not even a snap of the fingers.
"My name is Ariel. I am an archangel, one of five. I've been sent here by my generals to talk with you." Ariel turned her attention back to Dean. "They are under the impression that we have common ground. Forgive me, though: I've been away for a long time. I only just received the intelligence briefings recently." She looked not at Dean's eyes, but at his shoulder. "Is Castiel's mark still bothering you at times, like a grip that just won't leave you alone."
Dean stiffened. How did she know? No way was he going to answer, though. Not after his last entanglement with higher up angels. A cheeky grin burst out, covering the sweat running down his spine. "I thought there were only four archangels, at least according to Cas: Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Lucifer. What, did we forget about you?"
Ariel smirked herself. "Men, so arrogant: you think it's all about you." She turned her gaze to the fire, eyes dancing with the flames. "I told you: I've been away for a long time. Castiel... well, he has his own reasons for neglecting me."
Dean's creep-o-meter was racing to eleven now. "So, you said the generals sent you. Like, Michael?"
Ariel nodded. "And he wins a gold star." She leaned forward in her chair.
Dean's heart raced. "So, a previously unknown archangel is here on behest of the most powerful angel in the heavens, to talk to me." Dean cocked an eyebrow. "What the hell's going on?" His face blanched for a moment, before, "Is Lucifer free?"
"Not that I'm aware of." Ariel was stock still, still not looking at Dean but instead at the flames. "From the reports, there have been no more broken seals since Anna regained her Grace two months ago." She scoffed once. "Anna, of course, is still on the run. She's a small fish, though. Fallen, yes, but just a baby angel." Pushing back in the chair, Ariel stood up and stood before the fire. "I'll probably have to kill her, eventually. You see, that's my job."
Dean was really, really freaking out now. "What, executioner?"
Ariel finally laughed. "My job is to do what Michael and Raphael tell me to do. You see, it's part of my punishment. Well, penance, really." She chuckled at Dean, placing a hand on the mantle. "I'm the tip of the sword, Dean. Where ever the two generals point me, I'm to strike, or talk, or kill. It depends entirely on their moods, and their plans."
She turned and looked at Dean, sitting in the chair like a shivering statue. "Don't worry. Tonight is for talking." She sat in her chair again, completely at ease. "Well, I'm supposed to say that I'm sorry for the rude wake-up call, but I have my orders, Dean. I don't sleep, so the time of day means nothing to me." She placed a fist under her chin, looking right at Dean for the first time tonight. "I've been told that you're having trouble, Dean. Troubles with the past that are possibly clouding your commitment to stopping the Apocalypse." Such a Gallic shrug from a being literally tens of thousands of years old.
Dean's fear near stopped his heart. "You mean, that thing with Anna?" Gods, were they watching his every move?
Ariel's face cringed in disgust. "Seriously, Dean, I don't care who you screw. But, you could probably do better than one of the Fallen." It was her turn to shiver. "She probably gave you some schtick about how she realized what she was missing out on in human emotions, couldn't stand just watching. Wanted to be a part of your world?"
Ariel shrugged a shoulder. "Be careful, Dean. Everyone has an agenda. She used you to get to her Grace. Just like she used Uriel to fight against Alastair and send him back to the depths." Her face stilled again. "Even I have an agenda, even though it's bloody impossible."
Dean was getting bloody tired of the roller coaster. "Well, my agenda is simple." His fists curled. "I want answers."
Ariel smiled. "Good. I like honesty. So... question for question?"
Dean was taken aback. "I'm been asking questions of those two," he pointed to Castiel and Uriel with his head, "for months now. And I've gotten squat from the angel twins. Now, you turn up, and you're supposed to have all the answers. How the hell does that work?!"
Ariel waved a hand. "Easy: I outrank both of them. My boss feels it's time to talk, so he sent me. So." She looked at him. "You go first."
Dean had been waiting for a chance to ask questions for months. He thought he knew what to ask, would just barrel up to her and demand an answer. But now, his tongue wasn't working. Words weren't coming.
Ariel shook her head. "Okay, then. I'll ask and answer, since I have a good feeling what your first question is." She leaned back in her chair, an indolent predator at rest. "You want to know why you? Why were you pulled out of the Pit? Why this is happening to you?" Ariel's nose crinkled. "Well, that's three questions. But, here goes. Because." She chuckled. "Because it was meant to be you. Because it's your destiny, your fate, whatever you wanna call it. This is happening to you because it was written thousands of years ago that it was going to be you." Ariel cocked a head. "Now, it's my turn." She looked a little sad, now. What a change. "Does it still hurt? The handprint?"
Dean's brain was on overload from that dump of an answer. "Why do you care?"
"Because mine hurt for almost a hundred years before it finally stopped. Because Alastair is a master at exploiting weak links, and you did what you had to in order to survive another day in the Pit." Ariel had this piercing gaze now, staring right through him. "I care because you are not the first being ripped out of Hell, and we need to stick together."
Okay... what the hell? "You... were... in... Hell?" How the hell was she so damn calm?
Ariel sighed, rubbing her face. "Yes, Dean." A harsh exhale of air, and she was looking pensive. "You hate talking about Hell, but that's all anyone cares about right now. People want answers. What was it like? What happened to you? How did you escape? You're met with looks of fatherly worry, of brotherly concern when they think you're not looking. For me... well, that's different. When I was pulled out, I was met with looks of disgust, of hatred. None of my brothers or sisters could understand what happened to me."
Ariel began to strip off her jacket. Down to the black shirt, where she yanked up the sleeve of her left shoulder. There, marring her perfect skin, was a pulsating red hand-print. A match to his own, but hers was slightly larger. He could see older scars underneath it, large and small. "It was supposed to heal, eventually. But it remained this." Ariel nudged with her chin at the mark. "Another reminder of my sins."
With her thousand-yard stare, she placed the jacket on the table between them. A silvery tear fell from her eyes, scaring Dean more. He had never seen an angel cry. It was... unnatural, but he couldn't stop looking.
"Dean." Ariel spoke up through the haze in his ears. "Dean, I need you to listen. Once I'm done, then you can decide what to do. All right?"
He just nodded in horror.
Ariel felt herself shudder. "It was during the Great Battle, when Michael struck down Lucifer and locked him in his cage. It was a long time after Lucifer fell, so his forces were far beyond what my brothers had prepared for. I was six hundred years at the time, the leader of the Rit Zhen, the Hands of Mercy, healers. Normally, I'm nowhere near the front lines, but that was where they needed me. So many dead and dying, brothers and sisters. Well, I have so many, but I lost many more during that siege.
"I was left alone for only a moment, when I was snatched from behind. His name was Asmodeus, one of Hell's generals. He stole my voice and my sight, and dragged me down to the Pits. He didn't fight anyone on our way down, just chortling in my ear, laughing at his good fortune." Ariel shuddered again, remembering the feeling of him holding her again. "I lost all sense of where I was. My voice taken, I couldn't even call for help.
"I woke up impaled on two hooks, my wings broken. All I could feel was pain, and loss. Somehow, he had bound my Grace. I screamed, feeling the blood run down my chin. That was when he came to me. He told me," she had to swallow back her tears at the memory of it, "that the pain I was feeling in that point was nothing compared to what it was going to be like. Then, he started.
"I don't need to give you a crash course on the tormentors of Hell and their methods, Dean. You know them well. Asmodeus was a prince at torture. He considered it an experiment, a science to be perfected. His favourite exercise was breaking my wings, one bone at a time, then stripping me of my feathers. An angel's feathers are like fingernails, Dean, and I have hundreds. You'd think I'd get numb to it after awhile, the pain. But every time he was finished with me, he healed me. With a snap of the finger, like brand new, just to start again. "
If she closed her eyes, Ariel could still remember the knife digging into her gut, twisting and shredding her innards, drawing their horrible bloody designs over her skin. The crack of the whip and the crop against her back, and the whispers from Asmodeus and his cretins of horrible consequences if she did not scream. The heat of the fire and the burn of the brands were seared into her mind. The items that Asmodeus raped her with. Nothing was sacred in Hell, nothing spared her.
Her body still bore the scars from her time. A condition of the penance Michael deemed appropriate, that her vessels bear the marks to warn off those that saw and knew their meanings. From vessel to vessel, they stayed the same. Never healing, never changing. Another debt she owed Michael for his mercy.
Ariel slid back into her jacket and stared at the silently weeping Dean. "I don't need to tell you what Asmodeus and his kin did to me, Dean. You have your own experiences." Her voice was gentle, but it only made the tears come faster and harder. Dean began to hyperventilate. "I lasted four hundred years in the time of mortals, Dean. Four hundred years is forty-eight thousand years in the twisted time-scape of Hell. He didn't care if I begged for mercy, or pleaded for it to stop. It only stopped when Asmodeus was done with me.
"I was now one of them. I trained with a Knight of Hell, how to fight for Hell. Demons, humans, angels: it didn't matter. So long as I didn't have to return to Asmodeus. Out of my torment and anguish was born Afriel, the second-in-command of the Knights of Hell and one of its finest warriors. For one thousand two hundred mortal years more I killed and tortured. That's one hundred, forty four thousand Hell years. Dean, I grew to love it: the screams of the damned under my blade, their moans as I visited every torture upon them that had been visited upon me. I knew that if I didn't, I'd be back to the torture and then there would be no second chances.
"My leader, Asmodeus, the others Princes of Hell: they taught us everything, and we applied it willingly. I knew, in my core, that there was no chance that I was ever going to be rescued. I had killed hundreds of my brothers and sisters, fellow angels. And I did it with a smile on my face. I liked it, Dean." The tears were not stopping now.
Dean could not speak. How could she be so calm about it? He hated talking about Hell, but it was all anyone wanted to know. Sammy, Bobby... complete bloody strangers. Angels, demons. They all knew that he'd been to Hell, and not a one of them understood what he'd done, why'd he done it. Until now. He wasn't the only one taken back from the depths of Hell. He wasn't the only one made to torture and kill, and who survived it all. Pretty damn big concidence, isn't it? He looked to Ariel, simply sitting across from him and staring at him. Why? "Wh... what happened? How'd you..."
"How did I escape?" Ariel snorted. "I didn't. Michael found me after one of my missions Earth-side. We fought like animals. He held his blade to my throat, and I told him to kill me, because if he didn't, then I'd kill him. But he didn't. He placed his hand on my shoulder and dragged me up to Heaven. You humans would explain our fight as the Great Flood of Noah, when Raphael covered up the evidence of two archangels duking it out and purged the Earth of the sinners.
"He... fixed me. He provided me instruction, gave me purpose." Ariel's voice grated when she said that, like she was fighting something. "He tried to have Afriel exorcised, but we are so entangled, that I nearly died every time. I couldn't survive without her, and she couldn't survive without me. We are each other's meat-suits, if you excuse the couldn't have that: he wanted to prove that Heaven was greater than Hell, that even one of the Fallen could be rescued. So, Michael had locked Afriel away: Enochian sigils carved into my skull keep her there, subdued and quiet.
"Once he figured that out, he sentenced me. For every angel that I killed, I was to spend one hundred years on Earth. Exiled, disgraced. Stripped of all contact from the Host, stripped of my weapons. The one part of me that remained is that I could save humans, if I deemed it in line with my orders. Those were to heal humans. I was to learn everything about your kind, how to save them. He thought it would remind me of my time in the Rit Zhen, but Michael seemed to have forgotten that I spent more time in Hell than in Heaven."
The dawn was coming out now. Light purples and reds streaked the skies. The fire had died down, charcoal crackling in the pit. Ariel had long stopped crying, dried streaks of silver. Dean was exhausted, even if he hadn't moved from that chair. Both of them stared at each other, empty.
"Four thousand years, Dean. I've walked this Earth for four thousand years. I've saved so many lives, but it will never be enough." Ariel's voice was hoarse. "I know, better than most, what you feel like. How you might have wanted to give up, end it all. You are in Hell still in your mind, some days less than others. You can't forgive yourself, because how can anyone forgive you for what you've done?"
One last sigh, and Ariel stood up. "I can't forgive you, Dean. I barely forgive myself some days. What I can do, is be with you. On the bad days. All you have to do is say my name. I'll come, and we'll do this together."
Ariel gathered up the blades and strapped them back to her belt. Walking by him, she moved as if she'd aged fifty years in one evening. She placed a hand on Dean's shoulder. "Dean, I'm not supposed to tell you this. But, you need some good news today. If you can stop the Apocalypse from happening, your reward from the Host will be the greatest we offer. If you're successful, you'll earn a place in Paradise when you die, without question or qualm. That is your destiny, Dean."
When he heard the whoosh of the three angels leaving, Dean let himself breathe. What was he into?
