Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or any of its characters.
I decided to do a Castiel PoV chapter today.
Warning: It's a bit choppy, since Castiel's take on things is pretty challenging to write, and I'm suffering a pretty bad case of writer's block as it is.
I'm not sure when I'll be able to post chapter sixteen, since school is starting on the 2nd, but I'll try my best to put it up tomorrow!
Chapter name borrowed from the band 'New Edition'.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed!
On with it, shall we?
(Castiel PoV)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN-CAN YOU STAND THE RAIN?
I surveyed the small town before me, teeming with humans. A thousand thoughts, a thousand wishes, a thousand urges. A mix of emotions- anger, happiness, boredom, lassitude, pleasure, sadness, all combining to form something that was intricate and complex in it's very simplicity- humanity.
I contemplated the humans. One particular human.
The girl.
How was I to describe her? What was I to say?
That even her beauty had delicateness, a... fragility? That she was teetering on the edge of her sanity, on the verge of falling off of it?
That she might break at any second, given the slightest push? That she was struggling, striving, fighting for control?
Control against what?
She was hiding something, and it would be the destruction of her. I had gauged that much.
I had been ordered to protect her. But how was I to protect her when the threat was Odette herself?
It was gnawing at her insides. Twisting her essence into absolute misery, agony.
Her thoughts were perturbing me. Sweet, pure, innocent as they were, they were laced with grief. Laced with grief so strong it was almost tangible, as if I could taste her pain.
It wasn't that she didn't want to tell us. It seemed as if she literally couldn't.
I could not cause her harm, not when she was going through so much. Had gone through so much.
I'd lived centuries. Centuries of watching man rise and fall countless times, get back up again, and again, and again.
Stood by as they stagnated, grew complacent, wallowed.
Watched as the mightiest of nations had been razed to the ground because of simple hate, anger, and sheer overconfidence.
People ripped apart for nothing but prejudice.
And I had never, in eons, come across a human or angel so utterly gentle, so sweet, so beautiful, and good, than this little human child and I knew I would never find one again.
Never come across such grief and pain and sadness, which dwelled in her.
How was I to describe her soul?
It was beyond words.
Odette pulsated with light, with purity, with forgiveness, mercy, love, innocence to the point of naiveté, with every emotion that made me accept, finally, the last order that God had given us. To love humans more than we loved him.
I had followed Him. Obeyed his every word. But I'd never understood. Not really. Never had been able to love them. Never could have been able to love humans.
Never understood why Father had loved them so much.
I did now. Humans were works of art. Beauty in its cruelty, faith in its disbelief, hope in its despair. Light in its darkness.
For every atrocity man committed, for the millions of humans that were a dark stain on Earth that would burn in Hell for their sins, as long as there was Odette there was hope for humanity.
She had blinded me with her radiance.
She had shocked me to my core, so much so that I had not noticed the striations, the thickly sown strands in her soul.
I noticed now.
Odette?
She didn't believe it herself. Didn't believe she was beautiful, in every sense of the word, in the real sense of the word, at all.
She thought she was guilty. A monster.
I'd read her thoughts, seen her mind. It was bleak. Deserted. She was in torture, stuffing her pain down as deep as it would go, almost into numbness.
Almost.
It was part of her very psyche, part of her soul, woven into the threads of her very being, all of it. The pain, the hurt, the sorrow, the regret, the shame, the loneliness, the all-consuming, fiery, scorching, grief. Burnt into her awareness.
It was as much a part of her as her heart was.
She truly believed it.
It was a component of her soul, a major one, and in some sick, perverted order of things, made it even more beautiful.
As if it wasn't enough already.
It was there in her. Constantly running across her mind.
Leave me.
Leave me to die.
I ruin everything I come across.
I'm a danger. A menace. I'll be the death of you.
I couldn't protect what was mine. I can't even protect myself.
She writhed with it, with her crippling agony.
So leave me.
Leave me and don't look back.
As if I could. As if I was allowed to.
Forgive me, for I have sinned.
Almost laughable, that the girl could ever hurt anyone. Anything.
Who are you asking forgiveness from? There is no one left to help. Not anymore.
Her desolateness was staggering.
But it was what she had directed at me that was alarming.
I don't deserve your compassion, she had thought, not if you knew what I've done.
I would never be able to forget the utter self-hatred she had felt at the time.
I'd seen it, seen it and felt it as keenly as Odette had.
And I understood what it was like to be her.
It was irony in it's cruelest form, that the girl who was the epitome of humanity's strength, believed she was a monster. A demon. A murderer.
That the world's purest, best, most beautiful human was absolutely miserable.
It was eating at her, her misplaced guilt, and one day, it would consume her. This I knew.
I had to help her.
I tilted my face up to the sky.
Father. Tell me what to do.