Knocking on Heaven's Door

[castfromhome]

He had to thank Crowley. And Naomi, really. The Revelation of the Word had smoothed over the cracks in Castiel's grace and in his mind, giving him no real purchase, no place to dig in and simply sit on his brother's metaphorical shoulder

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[nerdofthelord]

In the midst of laying Samandriel's motionless vessel out and tenderly composing his limbs, Castiel froze, straightening and casting wildly around for a moment before his eyes fell on Lucifer's figure. "You--you can't be here." Still grief-stricken and more than a little confused after everything that had just happened, he couldn't muster very much conviction. Why shouldn't Lucifer be free and wandering around Heaven? Nothing else seemed to be right anymore...

[castfromhome]

"Technically, no. But you're kind of my ride, Castiel. Where you go, I go, remember?" He sauntered closer, making a show of examining him closely before tapping his forehead. "Well well. Isn't that interesting?"

Cocking his head, Lucifer moved to crouch beside the bloodied vessel. "Tell me, did you recall anything odd when Crowley was digging around in Samandriel's mind?"

[nerdofthelord]

Castiel ducked aside in revulsion, then stared at him, incredulous as well as pained. "You mean apart from the fact that the King of Hell was tearing into our brother's brain and I couldn't reach him to stop it?" The entire incident had been hideous beyond description. And he, Castiel, had been worse than useless--he--

--he'd been, at one point, cowering on the floor, he remembered with a frown; huddled in on himself like a frightened child. Why had he done that? It was all a muddled blur now. "The sigils were interfering with my abilities," he remembered. Maybe that was what had affected him so badly...

[castfromhome]

Lucifer rolled his eyes and went to kneel beside Samandriel again, giving his body an experimental poke. "That's the problem with being stuck in your mind. I don't get to take a good look at things anymore." Straightening, he gave Castiel wolfish grin. "But the scenery is so interesting."

The stammer helped, another tiny crack for him to grab onto. "Sounds like you picked up another bad habit from your good buddy Dean. Denial. Sigils don't interfere with an angel's abilities and they certainly don't make them cower in abject terror. You weren't the dim one in the garrison, Castiel. Use your head. Think."

[nerdofthelord]

"But--I--" Castiel didn't want to think about it. Just trying made his head hurt and a deep distress rise up in him that he could neither explain nor dismiss. But he couldn't deny the truth of Lucifer's words, and he knew that it was all bound up somehow with the sight and sound of the other angel strapped into that chair, and the strange moments of disorientation he'd been experiencing since his return from Purgatory. "I don't know what it means. There's something..."

He blinked as an image fleetingly came to mind of a brighly-lit room and a female face he didn't know (couldn't consciously put a name to, at least, though she looked terribly familiar.) The vision in his right eye blurred suddenly, awash with red, and he wiped at it impatiently, then stared at his bloodied fingers. "Not damaged in the fight," he muttered. "What's happening to me?"

[castfromhome]

Lucifer's eyes narrowed briefly at the image of the woman, but he made no further comment on it. Instead, it was imperative that Castiel focus and give him something to work with.

"That, is a very good question, brother. I'd say the answer lies somewhere in your head. With us. Someone doesn't want you to remember things, or me. How else do you think you wound up so clearheaded outside of Purgatory? I wasn't exactly taking a nap. Someone smoothed over the damage and I think it's safe to say it wasn't benevolent."

Someone with considerable power, too.

[nerdofthelord]

"I believe at this juncture, Lucifer, a friend of mine would tell you that you wouldn't know benevolence if it walked up and bit you in the ass." Castiel hunted around in his trench until he found a hankerchief, using it to wipe up the blood, which continued to drip irritatingly from his eye. Reluctantly, he added a moment later, regarding Samandriel's body sadly, "What purpose could anyone have for secretly retrieving me from Purgatory and then setting me to assassinate Samandriel? The damage was already done. He'd revealed the existence of the tablet and he was out of Crowley's hands. There was nothing left to protect." He felt as though he was having an argument, not with Lucifer but with some unseen third party.

No, it hadn't quite clicked yet that the subject of his role in Samandriel's death hadn't actually been broached until that very moment.

[castfromhome]

Instead of reacting with anger, Lucifer laughed, rocking back on his heels.

"And why did you feel the need to kill Samandriel, Castiel?" Dark glee danced behind his eyes. "Tell me you haven't decided that you haven't suddenly developed a taste for it after all this time."

[nerdofthelord]

"No. Of course not," Castiel said, rubbing his forehead and frowning sharply. "He was--he--" He came at me, a voice in his head was prompting insistently. It was self-defense. But it didn't sound like his voice, nor even Jimmy's, the only other one that would have had any business whatsoever being there.

And then his own words of a moment before really sank in, and he looked up at Lucifer, wide-eyed. "He didn't come at me. That was a lie." He looked back at the body again, heartsick all over again and now beginning to be angry. "But--it wasn't my lie. Someone else put it there."

[castfromhome]

"Self-defense? He came at you? Come on Castiel, you were never one for excuses like that."

At the realization, Lucifer smiles, giving him a conciliatory pat on the shoulder. "No, Castiel. It wasn't your lie. So think. Think and tell me whose lie it was."

Was he doing this for himself? No. But logically very few powers can control an angel to the degree that Castiel had been manipulated. Powers like Heaven.

[nerdofthelord]

"I'm trying," he snapped, pivoting away from the phantom and scrubbing at his face with both hands.

There was a room. A sterile white room, brightly lit...or was it? Two warring impressions confused him, but he dismissed that and tried to focus, focus on the face. Peering close, doing...something terrible.

Serene, then stern, angry. Shouting, shoving him. (Afraid?)

What was it Samandriel had said, just before? They're controlling us.

"Naomi," Castiel said suddenly, turning to look back at Lucifer. "He said her name was Naomi."

[castfromhome]

Lucifer made a thoughtful noise at the name, turning to close the distance between them. "Naomi. Think of her again, Castiel. Let me see her face."

He doesn't quite recognize the vessel, but the ring of her true voice is a familiar one. "Interesting, Castiel. Very, very interesting."

[nerdofthelord]

It went against Castiel's every instinct to listen to Lucifer or cooperate with him in any way. But there was no denying the Morningstar possessed a vastly greater store of knowledge than his own, and given what had just happened, finding out anything he could about this Naomi had become a dire necessity. He concentrated on the fleeting image of her face as best he could, though it was frustratingly elusive, slipping away every time he thought it was coming into focus. "Do you know her? Or the room she appears in?"

[castfromhome]

"My my." His eyes go distant as Castiel focuses on the images. Fleeting glimpses, a vague impression of voices. "That room is supposed to be a myth," he murmurs.

"That, Castiel, is a room that's not supposed to exist. You must have found an agent of the Protectorate. I don't know her personally, but I do know of her."

[nerdofthelord]

He heartily wished it didn't exist. "What is the Protectorate? Who is she?" He'd always assumed that if there was anything to be known about Heaven and the other angels, the archangels would know. It was disquieting to learn otherwise, even if he would expect Lucifer to be somewhat behind the times compared to his brothers.

Of course, all of this was assuming Lucifer wasn't just a figment of his tortured imagination, a possibility he'd never quite managed to rule out. In which this entire conversation could be pure fantasy.

[castfromhome]

"Even Heaven has secrets that angels should and would die to defend. The Protectorate was established by Michael because, well, not to put too fine a point on it, he didn't trust me. He knew what I was doing to the other angels, making them see reason. Anyone who had access to secrets they shouldn't, who fell when they shouldn't, were dealt with by the Protectorate."

Lucifer pursed his lips, "Think of them as Michael's personal secret police, Castiel. Shadows in Heaven, the terror of the Host. I may be bad, but at least I'm honest about it. They cloak themselves in righteousness and that, dear brother, makes them far more dangerous than I ever was."