touchedgod
in
damned
DAY 59: CAFETERIA
Billy surfaced into wakefulness. Sleep receded like an inky tide, and it didn't say anything to him before it was gone. His dreams had been nothing but the sensation of water, rocking him restlessly in his bottle. There seemed to be an ocean beyond his confines, but he couldn't see it and couldn't reach it. He pawed at the glass, but any progress
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He wanted to get out of the bed immediately, as if it was the reason for what had happened to him. And... what had happened, exactly? Normally he was so composed, his thoughts in such good order, but now it was like everything that had happened over the past day was rushing through him and he hardly knew what to think. He managed to get off of the bed without losing his balance or running into anything. That should have been a simple matter, but he was disoriented, and so accomplishing something as basic as that felt like a feat.
This wasn't like when he'd been drunk. That had been given him a feeling of heaviness mixed with the ability to be open, to speak his mind more than he ever did while sober. No, at this moment he felt like he'd just surfaced out of a haze. Castiel wanted to tell himself that none of that had happened, that none of those thoughts that he was thinking back on now had actually gone through his head. And perhaps they hadn't, seeing how he hadn't been Castiel at all for the previous day and night.
Oddly enough, he couldn't help but think back on Orihara's words: Rather than a man having dreamt of being an angel, you might be an angel now dreaming of being a man.
That was exactly what it had been, but that realization on its own was almost more than an angel could process. As Michael he'd felt things, things that he'd understood and addressed in kind. He'd had a complete history behind him, a human history where he had parents and siblings so unlike his own. The only link between reality and fiction had been his brother. In a way, Castiel now understood better than he'd ever thought he could what it was like to be human, and yet all of those memories were already starting to lose their vividness. A bizarre concept to a being who remembered everything perfectly.
It wasn't that Castiel didn't feel. He knew by now that he'd learned how to do that, at the least. But emotions were still so mysterious to him, while Michael had been able to make sense of all of it. He'd been devout, but he'd also been ashamed of... well, of Castiel.
He knew the truth, of course. He knew who he was; he knew that his eons of memory and existence outweighed a single day spent believing he was one of God's favorite creations. And yet the experience had certainly had its effect, seeing how he'd remained standing in the middle of his shared room for what had to be a few minutes already.
Castiel glanced toward his sleeping roommate and suddenly recalled how he'd told a large number of people that all of their conversations had been bred from his own insanity. Renamon, Aigis, Stefan, and even Orihara -- though the latter was a whole other problem, now that he was recalling the young man's reaction in retrospect. Regardless, he was now going to have to correct them on that point, which was going to be a humbling experience, to say the least.
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However, the person he'd spent the most time with while out of his mind had been Gabriel. His brother hadn't taken him seriously even then, but he'd remained at his side and that certainly counted for something, especially considering what Castiel had witnessed in that arena the night previous. Flashes of that monster attack from what felt like mere minutes ago cycled through his mind. He would need to make certain that his brother was all right. As for himself, he was sore from the way that overgrown ape had tossed him around, but the pain was nothing that he couldn't push through. There were far more important matters to tend to at the moment.
A soldier finally came to collect him and Castiel moved down the hallways with him, finding that he had to favor one of his legs as he walked. His whole side was bruised and the joint where his left leg met his hip was particularly sore. While the past twenty-four hours had shown him that he was still far from human, he couldn't forget that he was still closer to it now than he had ever been. Castiel's intention was to leave a message on that bulletin board the first chance he got, but his escort wasn't willing to allow that. After the meal, then.
However, as he stood in line for food as was expected of him, he quickly caught a smell that made it clear that something was wrong. The food they were being served was the same as always, and yet it had clearly gone off. There were patches of mold over the usual pink and Castiel actually appeared mortified when he was handed a plate. Though he attempted to point this out to his escort, he was told that the food was the same as always.
Was this a lingering side effect of what he'd just been through? Castiel couldn't be certain of what exactly had driven him insane for a day, but he did know that he was going to do what he could to ensure that it didn't happen again. While he took the tray (he didn't have much other choice), he held it as far away from him as possible as he started to search out a place to sit.
"Michael," the soldier at his side said. The name immediately caused Castiel to tense, but he regained control of his expression and sent the man a blank stare. "Go sit with one of the new recruits."
He was directed toward a patient who looked to be about Sam's age, possibly a few years younger, who seemed to be out of sorts. Castiel was in no position to be of comfort to anyone, but once again, he had no option. Nodding, he took a seat and then set the tray down, pushing it as far to the side as he could. Silence floated between them for a moment until the angel forced himself to speak. "Hello."
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Castiel, his brain immediately provided. Several iconic images came to mind; lightning flashes with nicely rendered CG wing shadows cast on walls, an intensely puzzled expression with his head cocked like a bird, shabby trenchcoat and slipping tie. All of those were missing at the moment, for reasons such as not being on a television screen or having no reason to look at Billy as though he'd grown another head. That might change, however, if Billy continued to stare. For the life of him, he couldn't remember the name of the actor. Likely he never had any reason to look it up. Oddly enough, the sight brought him back to a more mundane time, doing laundry with a much less real apocalypse playing in the background. He'd enjoy the story, get very little housework done, and call it a good evening, alone but content.
Billy did smile. A sort of restless, disbelieving smile. Apparently he was surrounded by very driven genre character actors. He didn't recognize any of the others trickling into the cafeteria, but this man, he was definitely Castiel. Castiel was probably what Billy had always imagined when he thought of angels. When he was told the angels were walking, Billy pictured a multitude of beautiful, aloof humans wandering the streets of London. He knew that his bottle-and-corpse guardian was probably lingering nearby, and he didn't want to hurt its feelings with his disappointment that it wasn't a hollywood actor with a lovably awkward set of social skills. It did the best it could. It wasn't its fault that... that certain things had happened. It wasn't its fault that it couldn't talk to Billy properly, or that Billy couldn't understand it.
"Hello. Good morning." He drummed his fingers on the table, not nervous so much as at a loss. "Sorry, I'm just a bit surprised you're, uh, here. I'm Billy Harrow."
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Unfortunately, he lost track of the conversation when the man spoke up and made it sound as if he somehow knew who Castiel was. Even when a name was offered and put to memory, Castiel was certain that he'd never met this person before. How could the man be surprised at his presence when this was their first time speaking?
Castiel's head tilted to the side in confusion as he tried to search for some manner of answer. Did it have something to do with Michael? But no, now he had that fake human's set of memories planted in his mind, and Billy Harrow did not fit anywhere in that life either.
"I'm sorry," he said after a pause that was likely too long. "I don't understand. What is there to be surprised about?" His tone was almost always stilted, but in this case it was even worse than usual due to the unsteady footing this conversation had started on.
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But... he would have expected that while off the job, the man would be looser, and more, well, human. Maybe it was a mistake. It could be a somewhat understandable reaction to Billy's own strange behavior. Fan recognition filtered through fresh wounds. Billy wasn't ready to call himself traumatized, but he genuinely couldn't care much about these unexpected brushes with celebrities. Not when he couldn't forget the context of the last few weeks. It was intriguing, but he didn't want to gush and tell the man how he loved his work, or ask where Sam and Dean were.
Still, he took just a second to scan the room, although failed to spot the main heroes anywhere nearby. It was just Castiel. His eyes lingered on the back of a head that he thought was probably Kirk/"Kirk", speaking to a posh looking young woman with a severe expression. Before he could spend any more time worrying about that, he returned his attention to Castiel's puzzled stare. It was uncomfortable, not because it was awkward or unnatural (which it was), but because Billy had seen it so often. It was out of place in the real world. He was displaced.
"Sorry, I just didn't think you'd end up in a military academy, considering what you do. That's where this is, right?" Billy realized he was at a greater disadvantage than he'd been at for at least a week. It made him anxious, not knowing. "And this is embarrassing, but I can't remember your name."
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Billy was acting as if they knew each other, or at least as if they had met once or twice before. Castiel knew that couldn't be the case and in situations like this he had to rely on his own knowledge and his own faith in it being trustworthy. Billy seemed to think this was some sort of military academy, which showed that he was new to this place and didn't quite understand the stakes. Perhaps he was just mistaking him for someone else.
"I think you must be confused," he said after a pause. "You and I have never met. There's no reason for you to know my name." There was one thing that bothered him about what the stranger had said, though, and he squinted his eyes as he peered at the man. "What exactly do you think I... do?"
There was very little chance that Billy actually knew who he was or what he did. Despite the fact that angels had become extremely involved in Earth in the last few years, most humans had no idea that they were more than just figures written about in the Bible. Many believed, but much of the time they had no idea who or what they were praying to. Michael had been that way, and the thought bothered Castiel.
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No, they hadn't met, but Billy knew him. This wasn't the reaction of an actor off duty. Billy's prompt for a name had been flatly refused, because there was apparently no cause for him to know it. Oh, but he was gaining the sneaking suspicion that he did know it. Once again, he certainly knew that expression he was being evaluated with. It was unlikely that Castiel was coming up with any fantastic conclusions about Billy based on this conversation. Or the character wouldn't be. Who knows what the actor was thinking. Billy couldn't come up with the circumstances that would require it, but the man was committed to staying in character. Very committed.
"You..." Billy stopped. He rubbed his face with his fingers reaching under his glasses to his closed eyes. He was tired and surprisingly irritated to have been pulled into this game. But it would be easier to play along. If only this had happened a month or so ago. Billy could have really had fun with pretending to talk to Castiel.
"Nothing." Whether or not it was convincing, Billy didn't know. "Never mind. Let's start over. How are you?"
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Starting over might be the best option either way, and so Castiel decided to accept it. Unfortunately, what he was asked next wasn't something he could easily answer, mainly because he didn't know. He was an angel that had been tethered to the earthly plain by unknown forces, cut off from his abilities and his friends. Dean and Sam were here, but they weren't truly here. More than that, he'd spent the past day thinking he was a human. There was no simple answer to the question.
"I'm..." This was the sort of situation where you lied, and he did so with surprising ease. "I'm doing well enough." It didn't seem like Billy was, though, if the tired slant to his body language was anything to judge by.
Rather than ask about it, Castiel decided to direct the conversation in another direction. He glanced at his abandoned plate of food, eyeing the mold and ignoring the smell to the best of his ability. "How does that food appear to you?" he asked. Plenty of other patients were eating their food, and yet Castiel couldn't understand how. Humans could be gluttonous, but to that extent? No, he needed to determine if he was seeing something that wasn't there. He couldn't entirely trust himself after what he'd experienced over the past day.
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No, he wanted to go to the home before any of this happened, a home that was safe, not an apartment where he had seen Leon get eaten, where he had been abducted. What would he do there but stare at the ceiling and think of dead friends? So maybe he didn't want to go home. Maybe being right here was just about all Billy could deal with.
And there was no reason why he should be impatient with Castiel, he reminded himself. No gain, nowhere to go, nothing to do. So he let it go, or at least pocketed it for later. Castiel wouldn't be fielding any of his questions about how he ended up here if he wouldn't even acknowledge that Billy might just possibly know who the fuck he was.
"What?" Billy's stomach turned again when he thought about the food. He hadn't paid it much mind, and assumed it was something like oatmeal or whatever. He dragged his abandoned tray closer, saw what it was, and reacted even before he spotted the bits of mold clinging to the nameless food. "What is this?" Billy narrowed his eyes, and pushed his glasses back up his nose to get a closer look. It was awful, but fascinating if he didn't think about how he was supposed to eat it. A lot like finding something you had forgotten in the back of the fridge too many weeks ago. And then-
And then it moved.
"Jesus Christ!" The creeping maggot proceeded its trek through Billy's breakfast, undeterred by his alarm.
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However, his reaction was more or less what would be expected from the spoiled gruel. Castiel felt some relief to know that he wasn't simply imagining it, but --
The yell startled him briefly, but in the end curiosity won out and he leaned forward to see what had garnered such a reaction. He watched as the larva crawled its way through the food with a detached interest. While he needed to eat now in his weakened form, Castiel still didn't have the same attachment to food as humans did. It was far more difficult for him to feel disgust, though he could at least admit that his appetite was virtually nonexistent at the moment.
"What are they hoping to accomplish with this?" he muttered as he settled back into his chair, mainly to himself. If they were meant to be used as soldiers or even experiments, they had to be kept in some manner of good health. Cutting off their food supply was counter-intuitive, and yet there had to be a reason.
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Billy couldn't tear his eyes away from the insect-to-be. It had successfully taken his mind off everything else, at least for now. All thoughts of Castiel's behavior or yesterday, both day and evening, had been pushed abruptly to the edges of his consciousness, and they leaked back in slowly and somewhat diluted. In the wake of the shock he could breathe a little.
After it wore off, Billy was a little embarrassed. This was not the most disgusting thing he had seen in his life by far. He had been paid to handle corpses, after all, so it was a little silly that a maggot, of all things, had been what caused him to lose his cool. It wasn't any wonder that the smell of rotting organic material hadn't phased him as much as seeing that his breakfast had been, ah, fertilized. He leaned away, and wrenched his composure back into place. To prove his impassiveness at the state of the food, he even took a utensil and began to sort through it, uncovering a few siblings to wrinkle his nose at.
He hadn't been hungry when he had woken up, hadn't even thought about food or the last time he ate, but now there was more motivating him to give up on breakfast than simple distraction. Castiel was focused on something else, though. The food was merely a symptom of... what?
"What do you mean? Who are 'they'?" Billy put down the fork and took up fiddling with his glasses instead.
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Oddly enough, Billy went from expressing shock at the state of his food to starting to dig through it like it was a point of interest. If Castiel had been more expressive, he might have raised an eyebrow at that, but instead he only stared. There was more than one maggot buried in that food, and the angel found that the longer he looked at it, the more uneasy his stomach felt. It seemed that he wasn't completely immune to this after all.
In the end, it was far easier to focus on Billy's face -- the way his eyes were shielded behind his glasses and the weary look that showed through nonetheless. It hadn't taken them long to get to the questions that truly mattered about this place, and Castiel glanced off for a moment as he considered the most accurate way to answer.
"Who they are exactly is kept from us, but I was referring to our captors. From what we've been shown, they seem to be some sort of military force, headed by a general called Aguilar." Castiel had seen the man with his own eyes, but he didn't need to divulge that now. "However, they only showed themselves in the past few days. Before that, a man named Landel was the one in charge, and he took a less direct approach. We were all told that we were mental patients and that the lives we recalled were constructs."
That was something that was more of a sore spot now than it had been, due to the fact that he had fallen for that lie over the past day. It wasn't that he had broken down or lost faith, of course. It was something that had been forced upon him, which only made his determination to break through the seal they'd put upon him that much stronger.
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Billy's mouth twisted with unspoken questions as Castiel picked through his words. It all called back to the ominous intercom and radio messages that he had assumed at the time were not for him. He still didn't want to take ownership of this situation, but he knew it wouldn't help him. Denial had never gotten him anywhere, even when it was the truth. Not being a prophet hadn't stopped him from being one, not in Dane's eyes. Billy's hands lifted to the back of his neck, and he hung his arms there, bringing a sort of reality to the weight he thought he would have gotten rid of after the world was safe. This was insane. This made no sense. This was his life.
"I heard those names last night." He looked back up at Castiel and studied his face. Ideas crept in and out of his mind, adopted and then dismissed. He didn't look particularly divine, sitting here in a strange uniform. He did look a little mad, but so did Billy. Castiel's outrageous claims were supported over and over again, even as the reasonable side of Billy fought with the unreasonable one. He wasn't sure which was which.
"Any idea why we're being held?" he ventured. Billy couldn't think of any remaining reasons someone would want him, unless they were a collector of religious artifacts. Castiel probably had a much greater value, if angels and prophets were like trading cards. He was on one of the big teams, after all.
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Having woken up in the night himself, Castiel realized how disorienting it was. He was now the first person entrusted to answer Billy's questions unless the man had run into others last night. (As Castiel had with Orihara, he realized, though he had been just as ignorant.) Focusing on that made it simple enough to avoid the fact that he had just spent a day living someone else's life.
As for the next question, Castiel had a good idea of why he was here, but for some of the others he could not begin to guess. Orihara had shown some of his true colors during their conversation yesterday, enough to make it clear that he was not as normal as Castiel had believed. Perhaps Billy was hiding something under the surface as well. Even he, an angel, appeared completely ordinary at first glance.
"That seems to be something they don't want us to understand," he started, recalling how he had asked Aguilar some of these questions to his face and had only received vague replies. "The military's involvement seems to suggest that we are being molded into soldiers, but I imagine they're also researching ways to make us compliant." Castiel could already fight; it was something he'd been made to do. But he would not fight for these people unless forced or controlled. They already seemed to have perfected the ability to trick him into believing he was someone else, so how much longer before they could send them all out to the battlefield as loyal drones? It was not a question he wanted to dwell on for too long.
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Dane did the best he could, but Billy's mind was entrenched in different things. Maybe he was a survivor, but he wasn't a career combatant. He stood on his own, and that was it. As soon as he was allowed to, Billy would sit down again, and he'd love it. Not like Dane, who lived to fight. Not because he had enjoyed it, Billy thought, but because he had built his life around an ever-threatened faith. A faith that didn't, and couldn't, care about him. That was what made him a soldier, more than any training, and that was why he had given up everything.
Maybe Billy's kidnappers were late. They went in looking for a massive squid worshipping twice-dead knight, and had to settle for Billy. Or maybe they really liked angels, and made a couple mistakes, such as the two men sitting at this table. Billy still had his money the theory where Simon's calculations had gone way off, though.
"I'm a curator. A scientist." There was an opening to root out more information, and Billy took it. "And you, you're not really a soldier either, are you?"
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On the other hand, everyone came across as young to someone who was centuries old.
"I suspect that they have some other use for you, then," he said after a pause. Right as he was going to ask what Billy was if not a soldier, the man provided an answer. A scientist? It wasn't something that Castiel knew much about. He knew all the different ways to summon or bind demons, angels, and everything in between, but science was hardly his territory. On the other hand, it made sense for Aguilar to want a large variety of talents at his disposal.
However, the question that Billy came up with next was almost enough to take Castiel by surprise. Why would he come to such a conclusion? While he'd just been thinking about how Jimmy's vessel didn't make his skills clear, he was somewhat bothered that Billy had assumed as much. He narrowed his eyes for a moment before glancing away. "What gave you that impression?"
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