"Castiel! CASTIEL!"
The familiar tingle of an angel's Grace flowed into Cas. He felt its unique thrumming energy snake its way like lightning through a tree into every pore of his being. The dull aching began to recede. The sharp throbs in his wrist began to lessen. The skull-splitting headache started to ebb away on the waves of reviving Grace. His hand tightened around the rough sack.
"Castiel?"
Lungs expanding with a blessed, full breath, Cas cracked his eyes open.
Hannah's worried face filled his vision. Her eyebrows were pinched in acute concern, her pale complexion marred by the deep burgundy stain that ran from her hairline to her left temple. Cas frowned. That looked serious.
"Castiel?" Relief coloured her tone as his eyes opened fully.
"Ha-nnah," he croaked, relief flooding through him. His diaphragm spasmed in a vicious fit of coughing, and he curled in on himself as he rode it out. He was so thirsty.
He felt Hannah's hands pull him gently into a sitting position against the coldness of a wall once the fit was over. He blinked her into focus, bullying his mind into concentrating. He had been so sure she hadn't escaped. He didn't think he'd ever been so happy to see another angel.
The pain of his injuries were gone, thanks to Hannah's Grace. The pain of his own impending death, however, was, if possible, even more acute than ever.
"Castiel, can you hear me?"
Fearing another fit of coughing, Cas nodded.
"We need to get out of here, now. Everyone's dead, there's no one left to fight. We have to evacuate Heaven before it's too late."
"The – souls," Cas gasped, gingerly testing his throat.
Hannah seemed to wilt slightly before him. "The souls are lost, Castiel. There's nothing we can do for them now. Their only chance is that we get out of here – now!"
Cas nodded – she was right, of course. He made to get up, trying to get purchase on the smooth floor with his boots. Hannah reached out to help him to his feet.
The sound of running footsteps made them both freeze.
They exchanged a terrified glance. Before he could stop her, Hannah stood to her full height, putting herself between the newcomer and Cas, ready to fight.
"Get up, Castiel," she said without turning her head. "You need to get to the Winchester."
"Hannah, no –!"
An angel skidded around the corner at the far end of the corridor. He wore an old-fashioned black suit that seemed at odds with his apparent youth. His black cape-like coat billowed out behind his thin legs. His pale skin was dotted with freckles, made all the more noticeable by his blazing red hair. He slowed to a stop several paces in front of Hannah, his coat whirling around him.
"Frederick?"
They both knew Hannah wasn't clarifying the angel's name. Hannah tensed as she waited for confirmation that this once-friendly, joking angel was now her enemy.
"Hannah! Castiel!" Relief broke over his anxious features, his easy smile making him seem impossibly young to be a soldier in this bitter war.
Hannah's shoulders sagged in relief. At least one of her brothers was alive and not trying to kill her and Castiel.
She gestured to Frederick and together they pulled Cas to his feet. He could barely support his own weight. His physical wounds may have been healed, but an angel had no cure for a smouldering Grace. Its burning nothingness was consuming him. Quickly.
He was amazed he'd lasted so long.
After looking Cas up and down with a deeply concerned expression, Frederick reached forward and placed the tips of two fingers against Cas's forehead. Cas tried to jerk away, but he could already feel the singular tingle of Frederick's Grace trickling into him. The intensity of his internal pyre lessened somewhat, blunted by his brother's Grace.
Cas opened his eyes as Frederick withdrew his fingers. He hadn't just healed some of Castiel's pain, he had given him some of his own power to sustain him. A lifeline.
"Thank you," he said fervently, suddenly wishing he knew the red-haired angel better than he did.
Frederick's welcoming smile faded as the corridor shook once more. "We must get out of here – the other angels have gone to free Metatron!"
"Free Metatron?" Hannah looked as despaired as Cas felt.
Frederick nodded. "We must hurry. I don't know how or why, but I have a feeling this is all a part of Metatron's plan. I never thought he'd give up so easily."
"You're right. We're not safe here. We must get to the door before it's sealed – forever."
Ignoring Cas's protests, both angels grabbed an arm and together they flew wingless through Heaven's decimated halls.
The door had not been left unguarded. Five smiling angels stood ready for battle, angelblades gleaming in their steady hands.
Gripping the sack more tightly, Cas straightened. As the others released him to conjure their own weapons from their Graces, he reached inside his tan coat and withdrew the angelblade his enemy had used to murder his best friend. It glinted as he gripped it firmly.
Sam had to be warned. He was the souls' only hope now.
Castiel would not fail again.
Feeling the confidence of the soldier envelope him like a heavy cloak, Castiel stepped forward. The angels guarding the doors shifted into defensive stances, their smiles widening as they saw the dust-covered, pale shell of the once-glorious Castiel advance towards them. The sight held no fear for them. They would dispatch him in moments, his companions in minutes. They did not fear him.
They should have.
All weariness forgotten, adrenaline and gifted Grace adding strength to his muscles, Cas ducked the first wild swing of an enemy blade and slashed his own in a wide arc, drawing a thick line of bright crimson through the air. The brilliant light of exposed Grace illuminated the blood as it sailed behind Cas as he brought the angelblade up to stab another angel in the gut.
The corridor filled with the dying screams of Metatron's angels.
Hannah and Frederick moved as swiftly and gracefully as any soldier Cas had ever seen. Together they killed the remaining angels, parrying the furious blows as quickly as thought. Desperation and need guided their every strike. Soon the walls were painted with the blood of their brothers, their broken wings burnt into the cracked floor.
Cas stood, breathing heavily over the corpses of yet more of his family. Marut, Dumah, Hadraniel, Egrid and Munkar.
He shook his head jerkily, banishing the useless thought. He looked up to his companions and was relieved to see they had escaped the fight uninjured, though Hannah's head wound was bleeding freely again.
After catching her breath, Hannah refocused their attention. "We must draw the spell."
She and Frederick set to work tracing the complicated sigil over the telltale power lines on the floor that indicated the presence of the portal. As neither angel nor Cas had had time to snatch a pen during their frantic escape, they used their fallen siblings' blood to plot out the spell. Cas watched them work as he sagged against the cracked wall, drawing in deep, slow breaths as he struggled to control the fresh waves of pain from each exhausted muscle. He was running out of time.
As he watched Frederick draw the final circular element of the spell, he felt his knees buckle and he slid down into a panting heap on the floor. Hannah shot him a concerned look, but he gestured vaguely at her to continue the spell.
Just as Hannah was starting the final component – the vertical line joining two of the furthermost circles – a wheezing chuckle broke the near silence. A shiver ran up Cas's spine. He carefully, subtly, hid the faded sack behind him as he turned his head.
Metatron stood before them, mere feet away and laughing.
"Well, well, well." He chortled, surveying the last free angels in Heaven. "How did I know I'd find you here?"
Hannah and Frederick sprang to their feet, angleblades flicking to their hands with silvery glints. Hannah took a step forward to stand beside Cas, shifting infinitesimally into a defensive stance.
"Metatron," Cas growled as he pulled himself to his feet. It was not as graceful a movement as he'd hoped.
The old scribe shook his head, his wicked grin widening with pleasure. He raised a finger and jerked it from side to side as he spoke. "Metatron? My dear Castiel, you're a little behind the times." He straightened to his full height, his face serious as death as he spoke again. "My name is X."
Cas frowned in confusion. Was this a reference to the X-Men comics? Or the ancient Roman numeral?
Metatron's shoulders slumped at this less than fearful reaction. "Oh, come on," he moaned, "is it too much to ask for a bit of boot-quaking? For dad's sake, Castiel, do you know how many times I've imagined this moment? You never just gawped at me like one of your hairless apes!"
"I – what?"
Metatron rolled his eyes and irritably flicked a finger at Frederick, who had been edging towards him with his blade held at the ready. Both Cas and Hannah found themselves pinned to the walls in the same moment.
"Whatever. But honestly, Castiel, did you really think I'd let you escape? When more than half the heavenly host is behind me?"
"I wasn't trying to esc –"
"Oh, don't deny it. No one likes a liar."
Hannah was struggling against her invisible bonds, her teeth gritted in barely concealed fury. "How did you do it?" she spat, her voice dripping with venom. "How did you dupe all those angels into following you? Into betraying their brothers, their sisters!"
Metatron regarded her with raised eyebrows. "I'm offended you even ask me that!" he exclaimed in a mock-offended tone. "But." He smiled. "You do raise an interesting point."
Cas felt the pressure pinning him to the wall relax slightly as Metatron shifted his weight and beamed at them, with the air of one about to indulge in their favourite story.
"When you left me to rot in that dad-forsaken cell, you forgot one vitally important thing: I am Metatron. Or I was." He chuckled again.
"You see, Castiel," he sneered, "your little trick with the microphone may have guilted the angels into rallying behind you again, but within weeks of my imprisonment, they had already started crawling back to me. You see, they believe in what I'm trying to do. They believe in a new, supreme Heaven. They believe in me.
"First it was just Sariel and Amitiel, and a few others. They came to me like lepers to the Messiah, skulking out of the shadows to bathe in my glorious light." Metatron's smile had turned sickeningly sweet. "It was just as I said, just as I knew it would be: they didn't care how I purified Heaven. They just knew it needed to be done. And, of course, they wanted to be on the side that survived the cleanse."
"Is that what you call slaughtering your siblings? A cleanse?" Hannah's eyes blazed with a fiery rage, and suddenly Cas felt quite fortunate she was on his side.
"It's what I call exterminating the filth that have desecrated the former house of God for thousands of years!" Metatron hissed. "This" – he gestured grandly to the cracked walls and rubble-strewn hallway – "was meant to be the high seat of power in our universe! The single most glorious, most inspiring configuration to evolve out of the ethereal planes! Angels were always meant to hold the power. But then God created those mud-rats."
"You sound like Lucifer," Frederick spat.
"Well, he had it right! The humans are pathetic, amoral, stinking piles of excrement! Lucifer's only problem was he didn't know how to work a crowd. He could've started what I'm about to finish in the Garden if he'd known how to start a decent rebellion." His voice darkened menacingly. "But then, ol' Luci didn't know half the things I know."
"What are you talking about? He was an archangel!"
"AND I WAS THE SCRIBE OF GOD!" Metatron roared. Dust trickled down from the ceiling with the force of his rage.
"I sat there listening to that old crock spout off all the failsafes and loopholes to this 'magnificent creation' of his. I wrote it all down on slabs of rock so that humans – pathetic, defenceless humans – could have a shadow of a chance if the Leviathans or the demons or the angels got too powerful! The angels! Our own father sold us down the river for those ungrateful apes! He told me everything that day. Everything! How to seal the gates of Heaven – that was barely my opening act."
Castiel scowled, anger heating his voice. "Our father gave the humans a chance, so their heroes could stand and fight against enemies like you. You're the villain here, Metatron. Not God. You used the Angel Tablet against your own kind and against humanity."
Metatron scoffed. "Heroes? What, like your Winchesters? Let's review, shall we? One freed the devil, got addicted to demon blood, killed how many innocents as he was tromping around with no soul? And the other one couldn't survive a few measly decades in Hell and so kick-started the apocalypse, caused untold damage to protect his oh-so-precious little brother, and now, oh yes, that's right, is one of the most prolific demons in history! Well," Metatron added, his voice cooling as he glanced at Cas from under his bushy eyebrows. "He was."
Cas frowned. "What are you talking about?"
The irritating, wheezing chuckle filled the corridor once more. "Didn't you hear? I sent Maalik after him. And you know Maalik. He never fails."
Cas's stomach plummeted so far down he was sure some farmer would discover it on Earth. Maalik? He was no better than a demon himself. But if it was true, if he had caught Dean ...
"You're wrong. Winchesters aren't so easy to kill." His voice sounded far more confident that he felt.
"Hahahaha! Sure, you stick to your denial, Castiel. I'm sure that'll help."
Cas struggled futilely against the invisible bonds restraining him. He didn't think he'd ever wanted to punch someone so badly. The loose handle of the sack flopped onto the floor by his shoe.
"You won't get away with this, Metatron," Hannah said coolly. Her blazing eyes were locked on Metatron's with such intensity Cas wondered if she was trying to set him on fire with her Grace.
Metatron laughed, taking a gloating step towards her. "'Won't get away with it'?" he mocked, mimicking her voice. "What am I, a Bond villain? I already have 'gotten away with it' – the hero always does. The only angels in Heaven, with the exception of you three pests, are loyal to me." He threw his arms wide. "They broke me out of Heaven's jail willingly, because they want me to be the new god! To be X. I've gained control of the most extensive collection of souls in the known universe! And this is just phase two!"
"Then what's phase three?" Frederick asked, sounding almost scared to hear the answer.
"Phase three." Metatron chuckled darkly. "Is to kill them all."
In the stunned silence that followed, Castiel carefully shifted his foot, tucking the sack safely behind his legs. Metatron gazed from captive angel to captive angel, clearly enjoying the shocking effect of his words.
"You see, the problem with angels is they just want to be led. Like sheep. They'll give anything not to think for themselves. And when God was around, that was fine! No one wavered, till the humans evolved. But since then they've scuttled from one master to another. Take the last few years for example! God to Michael to Raphael to Castiel to Bartholomew to me to Castiel again. They're the single most disloyal, fickle, predictable creatures ever to be created!"
"You speak as though you aren't one of us," Frederick accused.
"Oh, my dear Freddie." Metatron chortled. He paused and his face turned serious once more. "I'm not."
Cas exchanged a worried glance with Hannah as Frederick gulped uncomfortably. After leaving a suitably dramatic pause, Metatron turned pompously to Castiel and continued.
"Tell me, Castiel. How many angels have been mysteriously murdered these past months? Eighty? A hundred? More?"
"There's nothing mysterious about it," Cas spat. "You ordered it done and those" – he bit back an insult – "angels who follow you murdered their own brothers and sisters and stole their Graces!"
"Yep!" Metatron confirmed cheerily. "And then all the others turned against you." His smile was infuriating. "But they didn't steal the Graces for themselves," he added menacingly.
Metatron straightened, and allowed his pupils to glow a brilliant blue. The corridor was filled with light as he unfurled his enormous, healthy wings. They were far larger and looked stronger than any angel wings Castiel had ever seen – grander even than Michael or Lucifer's. His wingspan far exceeded the width of the corridor, but he made a show of extending them as far as the limited space would allow.
The light shining from within the swampy green eyes was growing brighter and more intense with every passing second, changing from the usual bright, electric blue to a pure, creamy white. It reached such a potency that Castiel had to avert his eyes, squeezing them shut and turning his head away as the force of light hit him like a physical blow.
Castiel remembered his father. He had never met God personally, but he had heard the archangel's accounts as they described their father to the young, eager, listening angels, back before even the Garden had been formed. He remembered Gabriel trying to find the then uninvented words to describe the singular experience of being bathed in the all-consuming, glorious light of God creating, of a light so fierce in intensity that even angels could not bear to look upon it.
This searing light warming Castiel's face from three feet away was the only experience in his millennia in this universe that came close to his brother's description of true godly power.
Metatron was no angel.
He was a god.
He was the god.