James' POV *his cousin got a turn, and now James is the subject of the little mind-hopping journey. I love developing these characters, I hope you enjoy too :)
It's a funny thing, optimism. It's not one of those things that can ever be measured, or recorded even. And it's so intangible it's almost hard to detect, because you never know if someone could just be faking it. My cousin isn't really an optimist, unfortunately. And I'd say I was, but not in the starry-eyed damsel in distress kind of way. Let me explain.
I hate to bring in that old analogy of the cup half full or empty, but that's what I'm going to do (so bite me). See, Henry would probably say the cup was half water, half nothing. But you see, that space without liquid is never 'nothing.' That space is being occupied by millions upon millions of invisible particles of oxygen and nitrogen and carbon dioxide, not to mention how heavy each little cubic centimeter of that 'nothing' would be underneath our crushing atmosphere.
See, there's really no such thing as 'nothing.' Things can get close, but it's something that can never happen. The closest we've ever gotten to nothing would have to be the condensation of our universe in the very dense, very unstable mass of stuff before the big bang happened. They say that our entire universe, everything we know and could ever even imagine, was around the size of a teacup. But you see, that's still not nothing. That's my kind of optimism, the very comforting fact that no matter what, there will always always be something. 'Nothing' is a concept that is utterly impossibe to actually achieve.
Sorry if I've gone off on a tangent, it seems to happen to me a lot. My dad always jokes and asks if I'm sure I'm not Sam's kid, by the way my brain whirrs and makes connections and theorizes until I realize I've been spacing out for close to half an hour and the tea I was holding midway to my mouth has grown stone-cold. But see, I know I got it all from Cas. I would be perfectly content to just sit and think and observe for hours just like him.
So, what had I been talking about again? Oh yeah, optimism. See, all those thoughts had just rushed in and out of my mind in the time it took for Henry to give me a few pats on the back and point to a pretty girl sitting all by herself.
"All yours, babe. Here goes nothing." He gave me a gentle nudge in that direction, and I start to walk. But shit, with that 'here goes nothing' now I'm thinking about all that talk of nothing again.
I am notoriously bad at picking up chicks, another aspect I got from Cas that I really didn't want to inherit. They say puns are the scum of joke world, and I agree. But that doesn't mean that I don't love them and will embarrass myself to the world with them.
I nervously run my hand through my hair and slide on the barstool. Fuck you, Henry. I shoot out, letting a little smile twitch onto my lips. He didn't reply, but when I saw him in the corner of my eye he made a few arm motions like he was picking up a girl and making her sit on his dick as he thrusted the air a few times. I slipped him a quick middle finger and then finally smiled at the girl. She looked a bit younger too, around twenty-two or twenty-three.
"Do you smell smoke?" I asked, sniffing and pretending it was a legitimate question. The girl sniffed and then frowned. "I lost my sense of smell five years ago in a culinary school accident, you asshole."
Shit. Okay, that really caught me off gaurd. "Because you're on fire?" I completed the pun timidly, scrubbing the short hairs on the back of my neck. God, this was almost as bad as last time.
"I'm just fucking with you. I just hoped you wouldn't go through with that awful pick up line, but you just went for it, didn't you?" She laughed and took a swig of her beer. "I'm Miranda. Nice to meet you, awful-pun-boy."
I smiled. "I'm..." I suddenly remembered that stupid ID. "Uh, Haywood."
"Come here often?" She asked, and I basically melted under her eyes.
"No. Me and my cousin are just passing through."
I looked back and saw Henry happily chatting up a guy who looked like he was very interested. Dammit, he had all the girls and guys all over him whenever he really tried. I could barely even get the one gender to like me. At least he was sort of making me his apprentice, even though he did make me do dumb stuff somtimes just for kicks.
Henry made his way over and slid onto the stool next to me, and the guy he was chatting up left. Henry sometimes just liked a fun conversation, never to see the person ever again. I was guessing this was one of those times.
"Hey, Miranda! Your break ended, like, five minutes ago!" Another worker who was wiping off tables scolded her. "Sorry, cutie. I gotta get back to work." She said, flashing me a smile. "Maybe I'll catch you later?" I nodded lamely and she went out to the back to go and put her apron back on.
When I turned back to Henry, it was then that I noticed something peculiar. He had a large, plasma-like translucent shadow enveloping his body, but it wasn't like I haven't seen it before. The problem was it wasn't shrinking back down at all.
"Hey, did you see this?" I asked him, nodding at the fluid and moving aura that surrounded him. "Why isn't it going back?" That was really weird. I had my own shadow of influence that I'd used a few times to move things telekineticically or influence something without touching it, but it never stayed out like this. Especially not this much of it.
"Hm. I have no idea," He answered sleepily, his head bobbing just a little. "I feel funny." He whined, and I tilted my head to the side.
"HJ, there's no way you've had enough to be drunk right now." I said, the way he was acting was scaring me. Sure, he said he'd needed a drink, but maybe it wasn't such a good idea to head out so soon after he'd used so much energy.
"I started getting a headache so I took some pain pills." He explained, slurring. "Shit didn't work." He suddenly fanned his face, which had started to get a little ruddy. "Heh heh. Hey, James. Do I look hot?"
I looked over him from head to toe, narrowing my eyes and trying to see what was wrong besides that extremely apparent three-dimensional shadow that surrounded him. He suddenly gripped the table tightly, sending shooting cracks radiating out from the wood where his hand was squeezing. The loud splinters immediately got everyone's attention.
My head whipped to look at him, and my heart skipped a beat when I realized something was wrong. "James," He insisted through gritted teeth, and I knew something was really wrong this time.
He screamed in his true voice, and every single shotglass and cup exploded on the far wall, as well as the windows in the front. Henry fell to the floor and collapsed on his hands and knees. I got just a glimpse of his true form before I immediately grabbed him and flew in a panicked crashland back in the batcave. We could never catch a break, now could we?
...
"What's wrong with him?" I insisted, to my dad, as I stared down Henry on Sam's bed and felt that deep pinch down in my gut like when I'd worried about my cousin before.
Cas reached out and touched his shoulder, and the barely-there shadow that was encompassing his body swayed just a little. "You see this, don't you?"
I nodded and swallowed down that rising lump in my throat. "It's never been that big before. Or even stayed out," I tried to keep my voice from trembling. I'd noticed the shadows before, when things were moved without touching them, but the shadow always sprang back like elastic.
"His shadow of influence must have been stretched too far when he used it to tear out the demons. Yours or mine could never get this big, only archangels have this much radius of power. And the fact that it was forced to become this large, when he's this young..." I tried to hold back tears as I felt a rush prick into my eyes.
"It's tricking his grace into thinking something's wrong. It's compensating, it believes he's much older than he really is-"
I suddenly understood. "Do you mean...the pain..it's additions?"
He squinted and shook his head. "Not really. It's not normal, this is throwing his entire balance off. I'm seeing almost fifteen trying to come in at the same time...there could possibly be even more." He rolled Henry to lie on his back and cupped his cheek, which was wet with tears. "They are only supposed to occur every decade or so. The more there are, the older and higher status the angel is. You know that." I nodded again, and noticed how Henry's shadow was rippling, draping on the ground, contracting unsuccessfully, trying in vain to pull back together again.
"They come in one at a time because of the energy it takes to grow, and it only caused discomfort the first few times. I don't even notice anymore when I begin to expand my form. But with him, now...there's not enough energy for these to all really grow fully with it distributed like this. And..." He sighed and ran a hand down his face. "It's never happened like this before, not that I know of. First additions are of animals parts, never...the first is never a Face. It must be excruciating."
I looked into his body to see his true form, and I felt my face grow pale as I had to steady myself with the bedpost. His deformities were horrifying, lumps and bulges, half-formed animal parts willy-nilly, another conjoined face pulling away from his, a half-formed tiger. It was grotesque, it was completely unexpected.
"No." The word slipped from my lips as I found my hand had wandered to my chest. "That's not him. That's not Henry." I couldn't help myself from looking again. Three tenticles curled and uncurled, stretching underdeveloped muscles. A stunted lion tail tried in vain to curl with deformity, unidentifyable bulges were sprouting feathers or coarse hair, a dark grey and wrinkly elephant's ear flapped like the wing of a doomed butterfly. I snapped away from that vision and opted to look at his human form instead.
His eyes were squeezed shut, his face was pale and with a sheen of sweat. His lips were pulled into a frown, and his eyelids would twitch as his whole body trembled. "He needs his father." Cas said in a cold voice, reaching out and stroking his cheek again. "Gabriel should have been there to warn him. He's too different as an archangel's nephilim; the spectrum between human and archangel is much larger than that of a seraph and human. There are dangers to him that my brother didn't even think to explain." He sounded pissed, even protective of my cousin.
"How is he going to be fixed? What's going to happen to him?" I let my voice tremble as my first hot tear spilled from my eye. He shook his head and closed his eyes. "I don't know, James."
He pulled the hot water bottle from the bedside table, and pulled the floppy pink object to rest of Henry's left side of his face, and he finally opened his eyes just a little. The look in his eyes told me he wasn't entirely there. "You're not my father, Cas." He growled, making no move to lean into the water bottle. "You don't have to take care of me. That's not your job." He said feverishly, clenching his fists with the pain.
"I'm doing this because I want to. Because I love you." He pressed the heated rubber to Henry's cheek, and he seemed to relax a little bit as another tear slipped from under his eyelid.
"Hold this here, James. I must retrieve Gabriel." He indicated for me to keep the object in place, which I rushed to do. I felt Henry's forehead and pushed his hair back as I heard my dad disappear behind me with a flap of feathers.
Henry had his eyes halfway open, and he was blantantly avoiding my gaze. A few seconds of silence passed, and I made sure that enough pressure was on his cheek and that my sight wouldn't slip back into seeing his true form.
"I'm hideous, aren't I?" He whispered hoarsely, looking off to the side with a haunted expression.
"No. Of course not, Henry." I lied through my teeth, pushing his damp hair off his forehead again. "There's a lot, I mean, and they're very different..." I started, not quite sure how to explain what I had experienced. "They'll all smooth out, grow out...it's going to be okay." I tried to assure him in my best confident voice.
"How would you know that? How, James?" He bit my name out in a way I'd never heard before. He rarely ever called me James, it was usually Jimmy or some outrageous nickname. I looked into his eyes, and I'd never seen him look so desolate. "I'm not like you are. I'll never be like you." He shut his eyes and concentrated, and the large shadow that surrounded him was finally able to contract a few feet. Maybe if he was able to contain it again, the reaction would end.
"This is all my fault." I said as a tear trailed down my face. "If I hadn't gotten hurt..you wouldn't have needed to protect me, this whole reaction wouldn't have been triggered.." He frowned more deeply and shook his head.
"It's not your fault. Shut up." He closed his eyes. "This is because I'm archangel nephilim. It's not a natural combination, okay? I'm going to have problems. I'll always have problems."
"If that were true, then I'd always be here to help you." I shot back, and I dared to look at his true form again. Our cores aren't really human to start with; just a kind of blank, smooth body, ready to be adorned with the most beautiful features of God's creations. I wasn't much more than a little white creature roughly resembling a toddler with arms, legs, wings and antlers now. Henry's was overwhelming at first because everything was budding at the same time, but it wasn't so bad when I really looked and observed. That patch of plastic-like pinpricks would be a glossy, feathered area, and that lion tail would be golden and strong and would swish powerfully back and forth, and those octopus arms would be strong and exotic with neon blue circles adding a perfect amount of color to his form. Here was that damn optimism again that I couldn't really ever seem to shake off.
I saw a little buldge in his form, another additon pushing up, and I reached out and rubbed his shoulder. A little prickle of feathers began to sprout, and I was surprised as I recognized them as peacock. "It's going to be okay. It's going to be gorgeous when it's all finished." I assured him, trying to stay as optimistic as possible. "Just like my dad's. You look like you have almost as many as him already, HJ."
"God dammit, James!" He choked out, his body shuddered and shivered from the pain and he hissed out a breath. "I'm so fucking jealous of you!" He cried out, pushing the pink floppy water bag hard against his face, he must have been getting one of the twinges that I was very familiar with. "You always had your angel and human parents. I've only had one! My whole life!" He was sobbing now, and I kept my hand on his shoulder, tears streaming from my own eyes. "Henry, I'm sorry." I managed to choke out. "I'm sorry."
"And you get these absolutely beautiful stag antlers...and I get...I get these...horrifying deformities.." He was sobbing freely now, and he curled up and latched onto me, squeezing me into the tightest hug I've ever been in. "I'll never be like you, James! I'll never be as good as you are!"
I squeezed back. "You're wrong." I said quietly, struggling to keep my voice from wavering. "Because you'll be better."
Hello! Aww, sorry for the sad chapter. But you know what this means: Next chap I'll be explaining what happened for Gabe needing to leave, and warning it will probably be sad too! But I'll have some more light hearted chaps a little later on, I promise! One question for you; am I doing a good job explaining the angel rules that exist in my head? Like I said before, I came up with them in "Heart of the Survivor" and just couldn't help but write about it again. Any questions? Suggestions? Thanks for any support :D Please review!