Fic: For the Deserters
Title: For the Deserters
Characters: Sam, Dean, Cas, others
Rating: Gen
Spoilers/Warnings: 12 x 19!, post-possession syndromes
Notes: Written for ohsam's Celebrating Sam birthday event, for lennelle 's prompt, "aliferous" (how could I resist one with wings?)
Summary: God in a ghost. That was what angels were.
When you were young, you believed in angels. Like your mother before you, but you didn't know that, not until you were far into the dimensions you'd grow through, ones that brought your mother back in the first place. But: when you were young and bright-faced as a moon in your brother's orbit, you looked heavenward. Even at that church in Providence, where you saw god in a ghost. But that was what angels were anyway, wasn’t it. Your shoulders itched when you knelt to pray.
*
A memory:
There's a splinter in your brain, and every twist breaks a soul loose.
"Listen,” Crowley says, turns his screw, while your brother winces, Cas crouches, looks at what used to be you in the place where your eyes were.
You can see out. Eyes like rose windows in a terrible sun; neo-eco-techno-vision. Your brother's face in winter colors.
"Listen," Crowley says,
The angel says his name.
"Wall of God,” Cas says, "that's what it means."
"Well ain't that--" says Dean, "how do we get him out of my brother?"
*
You left your brother behind, and it wasn't first time. Flew. Fled, that is. Flagstaff, California, hell, Texas; heaven too, in a way.
Today: you haven’t slept; up two nights reading on grace, genes and veins fizzing with it; eons of seraph-crossed blood. He’s still in there, sometimes, speaking his name tiniest-vibration, stereocilia, telling you not to say it, not to say it. Speak only the light of my end and not all those steps with your own heels and the way I held your hands out, murder-grace. Just say the way your shoulders ached, like you’d lift off; sky or die, like you’d live.
*
Dispossession was a dream once; more than once.
Before the splinter and the window there was a walk in the park. Or a garden fraught with roots, white trunks stretching to sky. You walked, and there was a path, and someone held your hand. Or two held your hands, your brother and an angel, or two angels, and you were swung between, loose and looped as a skip-rope.
There was a strange playground, abandoned clown-carousel, where a door to heaven tore air like teeth.
A snow-Wyoming. Snow-Stull. A dog made of snow. A blade.
The angel could breathe fire. Could tell the future. Blew out a ceiling of snow and pinned you to it.
Who are you, you said, but the angel didn't answer, and your brother was a five-times ghost, and gone, and in the snow the angel sketched with the ash of his wings:
Six sigils.
Fire. Knife. Hellhound. Cage.
*
Today: you thought about your mother, looked red-eyed at your old reflection, tore up the road after an angel and a gun. Your brother brought you, for the road, something made from fruit, called you beautiful, in a way. You walked (just to the car, that is) too-close-to-the-sun, shivering with spring.
*
Remember: you're not alone in here.
Someone told you that once. More than one someone.
There’s snow outside the window, or there was. A sash you might scratch at if you could remember.
Your brother is an iceman, cheerleader, ghoul.
Stay with me, the angel says.
Your name is Gadreel, the other angel says, deserter, insider, riser, covered hand.
You will leave a vacancy.
*
That was then.
You and your brother are in the wrong car now, tearing up the road through heaven. Or no, just a road through Kansas, through home, and all the roads that have been walked through you, demon and angel and devil and god. Angels nested in angels. Humans held close. The way grace wants to go up, up, burst out through blades and heads and pull, mass-migration, to the midnight of the firmament.
Your brother wants you to sleep, way you used to. But you’ll dream.
Angel in angel in angel, traveling on and on.
Characters: Sam, Dean, Cas, others
Rating: Gen
Spoilers/Warnings: 12 x 19!, post-possession syndromes
Notes: Written for ohsam's Celebrating Sam birthday event, for lennelle 's prompt, "aliferous" (how could I resist one with wings?)
Summary: God in a ghost. That was what angels were.
When you were young, you believed in angels. Like your mother before you, but you didn't know that, not until you were far into the dimensions you'd grow through, ones that brought your mother back in the first place. But: when you were young and bright-faced as a moon in your brother's orbit, you looked heavenward. Even at that church in Providence, where you saw god in a ghost. But that was what angels were anyway, wasn’t it. Your shoulders itched when you knelt to pray.
*
A memory:
There's a splinter in your brain, and every twist breaks a soul loose.
"Listen,” Crowley says, turns his screw, while your brother winces, Cas crouches, looks at what used to be you in the place where your eyes were.
You can see out. Eyes like rose windows in a terrible sun; neo-eco-techno-vision. Your brother's face in winter colors.
"Listen," Crowley says,
The angel says his name.
"Wall of God,” Cas says, "that's what it means."
"Well ain't that--" says Dean, "how do we get him out of my brother?"
*
You left your brother behind, and it wasn't first time. Flew. Fled, that is. Flagstaff, California, hell, Texas; heaven too, in a way.
Today: you haven’t slept; up two nights reading on grace, genes and veins fizzing with it; eons of seraph-crossed blood. He’s still in there, sometimes, speaking his name tiniest-vibration, stereocilia, telling you not to say it, not to say it. Speak only the light of my end and not all those steps with your own heels and the way I held your hands out, murder-grace. Just say the way your shoulders ached, like you’d lift off; sky or die, like you’d live.
*
Dispossession was a dream once; more than once.
Before the splinter and the window there was a walk in the park. Or a garden fraught with roots, white trunks stretching to sky. You walked, and there was a path, and someone held your hand. Or two held your hands, your brother and an angel, or two angels, and you were swung between, loose and looped as a skip-rope.
There was a strange playground, abandoned clown-carousel, where a door to heaven tore air like teeth.
A snow-Wyoming. Snow-Stull. A dog made of snow. A blade.
The angel could breathe fire. Could tell the future. Blew out a ceiling of snow and pinned you to it.
Who are you, you said, but the angel didn't answer, and your brother was a five-times ghost, and gone, and in the snow the angel sketched with the ash of his wings:
Six sigils.
Fire. Knife. Hellhound. Cage.
*
Today: you thought about your mother, looked red-eyed at your old reflection, tore up the road after an angel and a gun. Your brother brought you, for the road, something made from fruit, called you beautiful, in a way. You walked (just to the car, that is) too-close-to-the-sun, shivering with spring.
*
Remember: you're not alone in here.
Someone told you that once. More than one someone.
There’s snow outside the window, or there was. A sash you might scratch at if you could remember.
Your brother is an iceman, cheerleader, ghoul.
Stay with me, the angel says.
Your name is Gadreel, the other angel says, deserter, insider, riser, covered hand.
You will leave a vacancy.
*
That was then.
You and your brother are in the wrong car now, tearing up the road through heaven. Or no, just a road through Kansas, through home, and all the roads that have been walked through you, demon and angel and devil and god. Angels nested in angels. Humans held close. The way grace wants to go up, up, burst out through blades and heads and pull, mass-migration, to the midnight of the firmament.
Your brother wants you to sleep, way you used to. But you’ll dream.
Angel in angel in angel, traveling on and on.