Demon Seals

Chapter Ten: The Girl Who Thought

Do you remember chapter thirteen of the previous story where Danielle's friend Roxy is tortured and used to draw Sam into Gordon Walker's trap? We've just about reached that point in Castiel's POV, to give you a frame of reference regarding time in Heaven versus time on Earth.

Updates will start to get a little less frequent starting next month as I gear up for the new school year as a brand new teacher. I'm pretty excited (and anxious), and I know that until I feel settled in, writing probably won't be a high priority. Thank you to everyone who's hung in there so far. I hope you enjoy this next chapter!

Castiel soon fell into a routine with his shifts watching Danielle. At Uriel's suggestion, no angels were to watch the soul and her life partner without a companion, and the companions were regularly rotated. Castiel worked with Uriel, Balthazar, Rachel, Hester, and occasionally Sariah herself. Armed with the knowledge that Danielle was somehow able to understand Enochian, Sariah had ordered all angels to keep their silence during their shifts in the soul's presence.

With the other angels by his side, keeping his silence was easy. But over the next ten years, Castiel slowly found himself falling into a new pattern. Every fifth watch, he would ask the other angel he was with to report to Sariah (unless it was Sariah herself), and he would secret himself just out of sight at Danielle and Jared's door. He rarely gleaned new information from these moments he stole, but there were a few instances where he learned something new.

Danielle was working in earnest with the soul called Ash to decipher Enochian.

Ash was working on a way to travel between different Heavens.

Danielle mentioned once, in passing, that she thought the work Ash was doing could be applied to traveling beyond the borders.

Truthfully, Castiel wasn't entirely certain he wanted to know exactly what that last one meant.

The angel wished he could understand why he felt so drawn to Danielle. She was everything a soul shouldn't be, and stranger still, she didn't care at all that she was so different. There were plenty of independent souls in Heaven, but Danielle's persistence in going against the grain truly set her apart from the others.

"You know," she said one day after one of Castiel's fifth shifts, "I really don't understand why the angels act so superior."

"It's 'cuz they're just a bunch of feathered dicks," Jared replied.

"Well, yeah," Danielle said with a bark of laughter, "but it's more than that. Like, I'm seriously starting to wonder if God is even around."

"What makes you say that?" Jared asked.

"It's the attitude around here," was Danielle's answer. "Judeo-Christian religions, to my knowledge, anyway, all agree that humanity was God's greatest creation, and the greatest gift he gave to them was free will."

"Uh-huh," Jared prompted.

"So, if Lucifer was locked away because he refused to bow down to humans, that would mean that every other angel up here chose to bow to us, flawed and small as we are."

There was a pause. "That's not the impression we've been given the last 20-odd years," Jared finally stated.

"You're right," Danielle said, "it isn't. The angels act as though they are superior to us, that they are the adults and us the ignorant children they have to tend to. If God were really still around, wouldn't the angels treat us, treat me better than this?"

Castiel reared back and shut the door.

"We are not superior to humanity, Castiel! We were made to serve them, to care for them! And I cannot, will not, be a part of this mistreatment any longer."

Anna. It had been so, so long since he had last thought of his former commander.

This habitual spying was getting out of hand, planting thoughts and ideas that had no place in Heaven or in Castiel's mind. He had to stop what he was doing and stick to his orders.

It was better for everyone that way.

The next twenty years passed with little fanfare. Danielle and Jared seemed to settle into a routine of recreating old memories and making up new ones. All the other angels believed that Danielle was finally settling down, and that maybe the routine shifts watching her could be ended.

Castiel wasn't so sure. He hadn't spied on the souls for the last twenty years, keeping his silent promise to not go against his orders in any way, but there were days that passed by between shifts sometimes. Danielle's awareness of the passing of time likely meant that she knew the schedule the angels kept to and was probably going to do the things she shouldn't do when they weren't there. He knew he should speak to Sariah about this, but something held him back.

He couldn't give that something a name, but he listened to it and kept his silence.

"I'm getting really tired of all these silent shifts we have to work," Balthazar hissed in year 42 of Danielle's time in Heaven. "It is not as though we are gossiping cupids who will let slip important secrets to the wrong people."

"I know," Castiel murmured, "but it's for the best."

Danielle turned away from Jared to roll her eyes right at Castiel. Balthazar snorted and called out, "Impressive hearing, little one!"

Danielle stuck up her middle finger and turned back to Jared. "Castiel and Balthazar," she answered his inquiring look.

"It's been awhile since they last talked," Jared said. "Anything interesting?"

"Complaining."

"That's lame."

"Yep."

Their conversation moved on, and the rest of the shift passed without issue.

It was the last shift to do so.

The next eight years brought about some weird discrepancies. Angels began reporting that they were noticing the faint presence of a third soul that would quickly vanish within moments of their arrival. Castiel was growing certain with every passing shift that Jared was no longer capable of being lost in his memories at times as he had been upon Danielle's arrival. Danielle began taking to turning and bowing to the angels when they arrived before returning to her memories or conversations with Jared. Sometimes Danielle would be engrossed with her computer in the bar where Jared relived memories of hanging out with his coworkers, tapping away urgently and not participating in the memories when she was supposed to. The weird thing was that her screen showed nothing but utter gibberish whenever the angels tried to see what she was doing, or complicated math theorems that seemed to baffle the young soul.

One shift, both Castiel and Uriel swore that Danielle was not in her Heaven with Jared when they arrived, but she walked into his current memory after about ten seconds.

"Is it possible that she is traveling between different Heavens?" Uriel asked Sariah later on.

"No," Sariah said definitively. "There's no possible way for a soul to do that without tripping the alarms."

Castiel thought of the man called Ash that Danielle had spoken of to Jared in secret, and wondered if that were truly the case.

Despite his better thinking, Castiel spied on the two souls after his next shift.

"Jared, come take a look at this!" Danielle called out.

"What is it?"

"Ash," Danielle answered, "he says he found information about a prophet who's currently active on Earth, but not like one of those old Mormon leader guys."

"Okay," Jared said slowly, "so what's this prophet doing, then?"

"He's writing a new gospel, and I — Ash and I… Jared, he's writing about the Winchesters, like the stuff they're going through, but a few days before they actually go through it."

"Whoa," Jared said with a low whistle. "That's intense. Any idea what he's writing at the moment?"

"Ash says the prophet's writing…" She trailed off. "Roxy," she whispered.

"What?" Jared sounded alarmed. "Our Roxy? What's going on?"

"She's being tortured," Danielle said, voice strangely blank.

"By what?"

"Not what, a who. A Hunter. He's after Sam, and he's using my best friend to lure him in." Danielle let out a sob. "I need… God, I need Ash to see if he can use his research in a more practical way. I've been pushing him to go beyond what we're already doing, but he hasn't been willing to chance it before, and I…" There was the sound of chairs scraping against the floor. "Stay here," Danielle told Jared. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

There was the sound of footsteps, and Castiel was alarmed to realize that Danielle was walking straight toward him. He shut the door and stepped back, waiting to see if she was going to exit.

A minute passed.

Then two.

Castiel cautiously stepped forward and inched the door open. He peered inside.

Jared was sitting at the table containing Danielle's laptop.

He was alone.

Danielle was gone.

And something told Castiel that this wasn't the first time. He shut the door and paced, thinking hard. What should he do? He had yet to report any of the things he had overheard in the past. Why would he do that? He was a soldier, and he had orders that he should follow.

"God trusted us with these souls. We should care for them, Castiel, not hoard them into locked rooms for their potential power."

Anna's words penetrated his mind, and Castiel stalked down the hallway, unable to stay still. Anna had gone crazy, his superiors had insisted right after she tore out her Grace and Fell. They said she had been defective, hadn't been worth keeping around.

And yet…

Castiel paused and allowed the thought to form:

What if she had been right all along? Maybe it was for the best that Castiel allow this soul her freedom. After all, what could a single soul do against the entirety of the Host of Heaven?