Fic: To Heavy for Heaven (Push Your Head Towards the Air)
Title: To Heavy for Heaven (Push Your Head Towards the Air)
Author/Artist: flatlanddan
Recipient: ebonystar
Characters/Pairings: Cas/Dean. Mention of Dean/Lisa. Bobby and Sam.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for all that has aired.
Notes/Prompt: Well, ebonystar, it turned into an odd one. The Editors song really struck a chord with me, and I tried to include bits and pieces from all your prompts though I didn't exactly follow one specific one. The prompts lead me to this, so I hope you'll forgive a few liberties. Enjoy! Special thanks to the ever lovely randommagic for the beta read and ego boosts.
Summary: God closes up shop, banishing both angels and demons to Earth with disastrous results for all involved. In the years that follow, Dean and Cas have their own set of revelations on the nature of free will and the relationship they have.
But I will tear the price from your head
And keep your from harm, that's what you said
There's people climbing out of their cars
Lining the roadside, tryin' to glimpse at the dead
- Editors
Of all the permutations and combinations of events that would happen once the apocalypse had been averted, Castiel had never though of this one. His Father would be happy. His Father would be proud. He would be welcomed back into heaven. Dean would be as safe as he could make it and Sam...he would try to save him. But his Father assembled the heavenly host and told them He had failed. It wasn't just mankind that had sinned it was them as well, but they had done the best they could. This timeline had failed, but He had learned much and next time it would be better. As they raised their voices to offer excuses, beg forgiveness, ask questions He had smiled sadly at them and simply said to think of somewhere on Earth.
Dean...
It was the only somewhere he could think of that mattered, whatever was going to happen.
- - -
It was a good bed, Dean had to admit. Slightly softer then he would have liked, but it was Lisa who had bought it and hell, he still kinda felt like an overstaying house guest after six months so who was he to complain. The novelty of the same soft bed every night, the same soft skin next to his, hadn't worn off. If the house was quiet enough he could hear Ben breathe in the room next door, something he tried to tell Lisa so she wouldn't check on him in the middle of the night. That she had to see with her own eyes wasn't something he could blame her for. Hell, how many things did he not believe until he saw them with his own eyes? How many things had he seen that he still didn't quite believe?
He felt a weight settle into the bed next him and frowned. It was a different weight. He hadn't heard the door. He could still hear Lisa's footsteps next door.
“Hello, Dean” the weary voice said next to him. Dean flailed, pushing himself away and to the gun he kept latched under the bedside table. “I'd appreciate it, as a favor, if you didn't shoot me. I'm not sure I can heal anymore.” Deans sleep addled brain snapped awake as he recognised the voice. It hadn't been that long ago that he'd hear it from the other side of the bed at night.
“What the hell Cas?” he asked, flopping back onto the pillow. “Just because you don't have to use doors or cell phones anymore doesn't mean you shouldn't. I could have shot the bed.”
“I truly am sorry, Dean.” Dean sighed and rolled over, reaching out with a finger and giving the solid body next to him a poke. It was, undisputedly, Cas. The same stubble, the same slightly perturbed and sad expression, the same damn trench coat.
“What do you want Cas? I mean, it's great to see you but...” Dean's voice trailed off. It was great to see Cas and really, he couldn't think of a “but” he would say. But you're on Lisa's side of the bed, and you never called, and I could have really...I might have talked to you.
“But I am unexpected. I understand. I'll...”
“Leave? Oh come on, stop being a dick. Can we just not have this conversation in bed?” Dean got up, pulled on a pair of jeans and switched on the light. “You're not going to disappear on me if I go tell Lisa you're here are you?” Cas's eyes flickered to him briefly, then out the window before he looked back to the ceiling.
“I don't think I could leave if I wanted to.” Dean frowned.
“Mojo gone again?”
“God is gone, again” Dean rubbed the bridge of his nose and shouldered the door open. Beer. Possibly something harder if he had it in the house. This morning his biggest stress had been the idea of going to parent/teacher interview in a week and now he had the whole circus started up again.
“Just give me a minute.”
“I believe we have all the time in the world, and this is a very comfortable bed.” Dean nodded, and mentally started running through excuses for Cas being in the house when the voice from his bed continued. “Oh, and Sam is in your front yard.”
- - -
2 Years Later.
Cas often thought back to that night, the night they had all become human. No angels, no demons, just people with the same powers as those they had once felt superior to. And no God. That had been the hardest to explain and so at first he hadn't. He remembered the time after Dean had gone downstairs to confront his brother, though not in much detail. Mostly when he thought back he remembered ice cubes, though Dean said that had been after a few days. It was the silence that had bothered him the most. Even in his most human of moments before that, he had always felt the noise of angels inside him. It had taken two weeks for him to remember to talk and it was the sound of Dean raging at him that they needed answers that finally made him. Yes, God was gone. No, he was never coming back. The angels? Back in their hosts bodies on Earth or born into new ones, stripped of their powers. Demons? Probably the same.
It had taken four weeks for the rest of the hunter community to figure out that every child in the world born at 1:37 am on April 11th, 2011 was either an angel or a demon. It had taken Sam, Dean and Cas a week after that to find out that the hunters were intent on killing every one of those babies. It had taken three days after that for a hunter to show up at Lisa's door only to find his pray long gone. At least they had seen that one coming.
He was driving now in a beat up Toyota Tercel that Dean hated with a passion, but was the only thing Cas could drive. The road was getting worse, which made him feel better. People rarely drove down roads like this. It was a long road home, and though he could have taken a short cut his cargo was more precious to him than time. As he'd told Dean that night, he had all the time in the world. It was, after all, the world and not him that was running out of time. The veil had been lifted and after a year of floods, famine, drought, war, people had believed. God was dead, his influence over the world that kept things fair gone. But the people who had served him walked the Earth and they were the perfect scape goats: innocent babies and angels and demons who's bodies suddenly operated within reality.
They hadn't prevented the apocalypse at all, just changed it's course.
He was driving now, the baby asleep in the car seat next to him. He had climbed up onto a shed roof and used a tree branch to get into her bedroom window. The note he'd left in her place had been short. We know what day she was born. We know you wanted to protect her. You can't, so we have taken her. We will keep her from harm. She hadn't cried, but they never did when Cas came for them. He thought they might recognize him, and when they got older he would ask if they remembered what they thought when he had picked them out of their cribs.
Close to Camp Chitaqua now, the place Dean had remembered for them as safe harbor. There was only the village, mostly deserted now because of the dust storms and the incident, between him and home. He didn't bother slowing down, just watched as the curtains twitched and held his breath. Watched for gun muzzles, pipe bombs and the flicker of the face of a hunter he might recognize.
- - -
13 Months Before
Dean remembered when he liked driving. When driving didn't mean breaking into peoples houses and stealing babies that might grow up with the memories of a demon or an angel. His rock tapes had been replaced by Classical Music for Babies, Vol. 2, though he didn't think it made much a difference. The babies still cried themselves to sleep. Some nights when he pulled over on the side of the road he joined them.
He would be home soon. Back to Sam, Cas, Bobby and the weird little family they had made for themselves.
“Purgatory” he said softly to the sleeping baby. “You might like it there. We've tried to make it ok, with books and toys. Castiel is there, if that makes you feel any better. If you're an angel it might, I guess.” Bobby had come up with the name and it had stuck. A place far away from most people when the 1:37 Babies could grow up with a chance of turning out good and a few adult angels and demons who made it to them could be...tested. Pass and he and Bobby let them out. Fail and it was a single bullet to the head. They knew good from bad by now, and the test never failed. As far as they were concerned, if you put a person in a room with a baby and told them if they killed it they could stay, them attempting to do so was a clear indication of just how evil a person was. Cas's identification of the bodies confirmed 25% angels. It just went to show that God wasn't entirely wrong.
He was coming up to the town now, a few more miles until he could exchange the baby for dinner, a cold reward beer and the left side of a mattress. The world had had a lot of revelations about angels and demons, and so had he. Angels, even fallen ones, didn't feel cold feet on their backs. It meant at least one part of him was warm every night and although the bed was not as soft as the one he'd shared with Lisa, the skin next to him rougher and the sleep harder to find. The novelty might have worn off, but it didn't mean those few hours didn't bring him some comfort.
The cassette switched side and he couldn't help himself.
“Baby baluga in the deep blue sea. Swim so wild and swim so free. Heaven above and sea below just a little white whale on the go.”
He watched the people walking down the street, the birds fly up into the sky, the neon sign with one letter flickering, the baby's chest go up and down, the man he thought he recognized get out of the car to his front left and walk behind a wall.
He never heard the bomb go off.
- - -
Cas breathed again only when he'd left the town limits. The miles passed before he turned down a side road, then another side road and finally carefully crossed a river. The sun was setting as he reached camp and turned off the engine. The baby stirred, bright brown eyes opening and peering around as Cas undid the car seat and carried the girl across the yard and around the corner to face the only test she'd have for years.
“Well?”
“A girl. She slept the whole way but is awake now.”
“Let me see her.”
In later years, Cas resolved, he would ask the children if they remembered Dean holding them on his lap and feeling their faces when they first arrived. He would ask them if they remembered him pulling them to his chest and listening for as long as it took him to memorise the sound, smell and faint shadow of them. Dean had told him, late one night, that he finally understood. Angels, demons, humans: it made no difference. Everyone was a shade of gray. Everyone had the potential and no one had a reputation to live up to anymore. Free will had been the last parting gift God had given them.
Dean smiled and bounced the little girl on his lap until she giggled. Cas sat down on the lawn chair next to Dean and felt the last rays of the sun touch him. He didn't want a beer, he didn't want dinner, he simply wanted this moment of peace to last until the world needed him to save another revelation.
“What do you think?” Cas asked, already knowing the answer.
“She was worth the trip.”
Author/Artist: flatlanddan
Recipient: ebonystar
Characters/Pairings: Cas/Dean. Mention of Dean/Lisa. Bobby and Sam.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for all that has aired.
Notes/Prompt: Well, ebonystar, it turned into an odd one. The Editors song really struck a chord with me, and I tried to include bits and pieces from all your prompts though I didn't exactly follow one specific one. The prompts lead me to this, so I hope you'll forgive a few liberties. Enjoy! Special thanks to the ever lovely randommagic for the beta read and ego boosts.
Summary: God closes up shop, banishing both angels and demons to Earth with disastrous results for all involved. In the years that follow, Dean and Cas have their own set of revelations on the nature of free will and the relationship they have.
But I will tear the price from your head
And keep your from harm, that's what you said
There's people climbing out of their cars
Lining the roadside, tryin' to glimpse at the dead
- Editors
Of all the permutations and combinations of events that would happen once the apocalypse had been averted, Castiel had never though of this one. His Father would be happy. His Father would be proud. He would be welcomed back into heaven. Dean would be as safe as he could make it and Sam...he would try to save him. But his Father assembled the heavenly host and told them He had failed. It wasn't just mankind that had sinned it was them as well, but they had done the best they could. This timeline had failed, but He had learned much and next time it would be better. As they raised their voices to offer excuses, beg forgiveness, ask questions He had smiled sadly at them and simply said to think of somewhere on Earth.
Dean...
It was the only somewhere he could think of that mattered, whatever was going to happen.
- - -
It was a good bed, Dean had to admit. Slightly softer then he would have liked, but it was Lisa who had bought it and hell, he still kinda felt like an overstaying house guest after six months so who was he to complain. The novelty of the same soft bed every night, the same soft skin next to his, hadn't worn off. If the house was quiet enough he could hear Ben breathe in the room next door, something he tried to tell Lisa so she wouldn't check on him in the middle of the night. That she had to see with her own eyes wasn't something he could blame her for. Hell, how many things did he not believe until he saw them with his own eyes? How many things had he seen that he still didn't quite believe?
He felt a weight settle into the bed next him and frowned. It was a different weight. He hadn't heard the door. He could still hear Lisa's footsteps next door.
“Hello, Dean” the weary voice said next to him. Dean flailed, pushing himself away and to the gun he kept latched under the bedside table. “I'd appreciate it, as a favor, if you didn't shoot me. I'm not sure I can heal anymore.” Deans sleep addled brain snapped awake as he recognised the voice. It hadn't been that long ago that he'd hear it from the other side of the bed at night.
“What the hell Cas?” he asked, flopping back onto the pillow. “Just because you don't have to use doors or cell phones anymore doesn't mean you shouldn't. I could have shot the bed.”
“I truly am sorry, Dean.” Dean sighed and rolled over, reaching out with a finger and giving the solid body next to him a poke. It was, undisputedly, Cas. The same stubble, the same slightly perturbed and sad expression, the same damn trench coat.
“What do you want Cas? I mean, it's great to see you but...” Dean's voice trailed off. It was great to see Cas and really, he couldn't think of a “but” he would say. But you're on Lisa's side of the bed, and you never called, and I could have really...I might have talked to you.
“But I am unexpected. I understand. I'll...”
“Leave? Oh come on, stop being a dick. Can we just not have this conversation in bed?” Dean got up, pulled on a pair of jeans and switched on the light. “You're not going to disappear on me if I go tell Lisa you're here are you?” Cas's eyes flickered to him briefly, then out the window before he looked back to the ceiling.
“I don't think I could leave if I wanted to.” Dean frowned.
“Mojo gone again?”
“God is gone, again” Dean rubbed the bridge of his nose and shouldered the door open. Beer. Possibly something harder if he had it in the house. This morning his biggest stress had been the idea of going to parent/teacher interview in a week and now he had the whole circus started up again.
“Just give me a minute.”
“I believe we have all the time in the world, and this is a very comfortable bed.” Dean nodded, and mentally started running through excuses for Cas being in the house when the voice from his bed continued. “Oh, and Sam is in your front yard.”
- - -
2 Years Later.
Cas often thought back to that night, the night they had all become human. No angels, no demons, just people with the same powers as those they had once felt superior to. And no God. That had been the hardest to explain and so at first he hadn't. He remembered the time after Dean had gone downstairs to confront his brother, though not in much detail. Mostly when he thought back he remembered ice cubes, though Dean said that had been after a few days. It was the silence that had bothered him the most. Even in his most human of moments before that, he had always felt the noise of angels inside him. It had taken two weeks for him to remember to talk and it was the sound of Dean raging at him that they needed answers that finally made him. Yes, God was gone. No, he was never coming back. The angels? Back in their hosts bodies on Earth or born into new ones, stripped of their powers. Demons? Probably the same.
It had taken four weeks for the rest of the hunter community to figure out that every child in the world born at 1:37 am on April 11th, 2011 was either an angel or a demon. It had taken Sam, Dean and Cas a week after that to find out that the hunters were intent on killing every one of those babies. It had taken three days after that for a hunter to show up at Lisa's door only to find his pray long gone. At least they had seen that one coming.
He was driving now in a beat up Toyota Tercel that Dean hated with a passion, but was the only thing Cas could drive. The road was getting worse, which made him feel better. People rarely drove down roads like this. It was a long road home, and though he could have taken a short cut his cargo was more precious to him than time. As he'd told Dean that night, he had all the time in the world. It was, after all, the world and not him that was running out of time. The veil had been lifted and after a year of floods, famine, drought, war, people had believed. God was dead, his influence over the world that kept things fair gone. But the people who had served him walked the Earth and they were the perfect scape goats: innocent babies and angels and demons who's bodies suddenly operated within reality.
They hadn't prevented the apocalypse at all, just changed it's course.
He was driving now, the baby asleep in the car seat next to him. He had climbed up onto a shed roof and used a tree branch to get into her bedroom window. The note he'd left in her place had been short. We know what day she was born. We know you wanted to protect her. You can't, so we have taken her. We will keep her from harm. She hadn't cried, but they never did when Cas came for them. He thought they might recognize him, and when they got older he would ask if they remembered what they thought when he had picked them out of their cribs.
Close to Camp Chitaqua now, the place Dean had remembered for them as safe harbor. There was only the village, mostly deserted now because of the dust storms and the incident, between him and home. He didn't bother slowing down, just watched as the curtains twitched and held his breath. Watched for gun muzzles, pipe bombs and the flicker of the face of a hunter he might recognize.
- - -
13 Months Before
Dean remembered when he liked driving. When driving didn't mean breaking into peoples houses and stealing babies that might grow up with the memories of a demon or an angel. His rock tapes had been replaced by Classical Music for Babies, Vol. 2, though he didn't think it made much a difference. The babies still cried themselves to sleep. Some nights when he pulled over on the side of the road he joined them.
He would be home soon. Back to Sam, Cas, Bobby and the weird little family they had made for themselves.
“Purgatory” he said softly to the sleeping baby. “You might like it there. We've tried to make it ok, with books and toys. Castiel is there, if that makes you feel any better. If you're an angel it might, I guess.” Bobby had come up with the name and it had stuck. A place far away from most people when the 1:37 Babies could grow up with a chance of turning out good and a few adult angels and demons who made it to them could be...tested. Pass and he and Bobby let them out. Fail and it was a single bullet to the head. They knew good from bad by now, and the test never failed. As far as they were concerned, if you put a person in a room with a baby and told them if they killed it they could stay, them attempting to do so was a clear indication of just how evil a person was. Cas's identification of the bodies confirmed 25% angels. It just went to show that God wasn't entirely wrong.
He was coming up to the town now, a few more miles until he could exchange the baby for dinner, a cold reward beer and the left side of a mattress. The world had had a lot of revelations about angels and demons, and so had he. Angels, even fallen ones, didn't feel cold feet on their backs. It meant at least one part of him was warm every night and although the bed was not as soft as the one he'd shared with Lisa, the skin next to him rougher and the sleep harder to find. The novelty might have worn off, but it didn't mean those few hours didn't bring him some comfort.
The cassette switched side and he couldn't help himself.
“Baby baluga in the deep blue sea. Swim so wild and swim so free. Heaven above and sea below just a little white whale on the go.”
He watched the people walking down the street, the birds fly up into the sky, the neon sign with one letter flickering, the baby's chest go up and down, the man he thought he recognized get out of the car to his front left and walk behind a wall.
He never heard the bomb go off.
- - -
Cas breathed again only when he'd left the town limits. The miles passed before he turned down a side road, then another side road and finally carefully crossed a river. The sun was setting as he reached camp and turned off the engine. The baby stirred, bright brown eyes opening and peering around as Cas undid the car seat and carried the girl across the yard and around the corner to face the only test she'd have for years.
“Well?”
“A girl. She slept the whole way but is awake now.”
“Let me see her.”
In later years, Cas resolved, he would ask the children if they remembered Dean holding them on his lap and feeling their faces when they first arrived. He would ask them if they remembered him pulling them to his chest and listening for as long as it took him to memorise the sound, smell and faint shadow of them. Dean had told him, late one night, that he finally understood. Angels, demons, humans: it made no difference. Everyone was a shade of gray. Everyone had the potential and no one had a reputation to live up to anymore. Free will had been the last parting gift God had given them.
Dean smiled and bounced the little girl on his lap until she giggled. Cas sat down on the lawn chair next to Dean and felt the last rays of the sun touch him. He didn't want a beer, he didn't want dinner, he simply wanted this moment of peace to last until the world needed him to save another revelation.
“What do you think?” Cas asked, already knowing the answer.
“She was worth the trip.”