Supernatural FIC: Our Woven Webs
Title: Our Woven Webs
Author: guardian_chaos
Rating: PG-13.
Words: 2650-ish.
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Castiel
Spoilers: Takes place in the space between season five and season six.
Author's Note: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!" ~Sir Walter Scott, in Canto VI, Stanza 17 of "Marmion" (1808)
Summary: Meeting a child's imaginary friend should not be enough to damn anyone, except when it is.
* * *
“His name is Steve!” a young girl named Ariel declares to Castiel as they stand under the flickering lights of a mental health facility’s waiting room. Ariel’s eyes are bright specks of startling blue, encased in a youthful face that seems unaware of the hardships of living. She gestures wildly beside her at the young ghost leaning on her shoulder, his hands clutching her arm. The ghost and Ariel are siblings, Castiel knows. Steve had been involved in a tragic firearm accident many weeks ago. He is several inches shorter than his sister, and his eyes gaze fearfully up at Castiel. There is a bullet hole in his forehead, but it is not bleeding.
The girl’s mother startles, her haggard appearance growing all the more fitful as she frets around Castiel. “Oh, no, no, don’t listen to my daughter.” The woman’s makeup is smeared. Mascara lines the mother’s cheeks, telltale evidence of tears that have been palmed away but not entirely forgotten. This woman, as Castiel reads, has taken her daughter to counseling with the intention of buying for her the best anti-psychotic drugs money has to offer. Preferably something strong, though she worries about the effects the drugs may have on Ariel. The mother-Martha-waves her hands in the air as she speaks of her dead son. “Steve-Steve is an imaginary friend. That’s all.”
Castiel looks into Steve’s eyes, which are the same vivid blue as his sister’s eyes, and knows the boy has been far more than that. This ghost, Castiel knows, has been a constant distraction for Ariel, even to the point at which no outside interference could capture her attention when Steve already had it. This ghost seems, however, to possess more sentience than what Castiel would generally expect from a ghost, and Castiel is driven to understand why.
Castiel crouches, feeling the warm air of summertime drifting around in his clothes. He pays no attention to the mother, as her words are unimportant, and the hand he lays on Steve’s head is gentle. Inside of this ghost, a soul still stirs, warm and tingling like faint electricity against Castiel’s fingertips.
“Hello, Steve.” Castiel’s voice is a grumble, carefully measured to produce calm. “I am Castiel.” He leaves unspoken the declaration of what he is, as Dean has informed him it is creepy to introduce one’s self as an angel without proper reason to do so. Castiel has learned not to question this. Castiel tilts his head, and the child mimics him. There is a look of awe in Steve’s eyes, right below the clean and dry bullet hole in Steve’s forehead. Above them, Ariel’s mother keeps talking, and Ariel stares at Castiel, enraptured, but Castiel pays little attention to either of them.
“What purpose keeps you here?” Castiel asks, and the ghost opens his mouth to speak.
“I-I dunno.” Steve shakes his head back and forth as his arms tighten around Ariel’s. “I dunno.”
“Please,” the mother begs, “do not play into her fantasies. If you had any idea what-”
Castiel silences her with a hand that he merely holds palm-out to face her. “Steven,” Castiel places both hands on the child’s face and holds him there, “You cannot remain here.”
The ghost child’s eyes tear up. His soft shuddering can be felt through Castiel’s hands, yet Castiel keeps his arms still in mid-air.
“But I’m scared!" Steve cries, "I don’t want to go. I don’t want to.”
The tingle of a soul not even contained by skin sparks up Castiel’s arms and leaves him feeling strangely light. His palms tighten around the boy’s face, though Castiel is not sure why he has done so.
“You must leave.” The heat from the boy's soul buries itself beside Castiel’s Grace and pulses with an unnerving warmth. Castiel blinks at the strange sensation when it travels around his body, healing small injuries that Castiel has been deeming too unimportant to heal for months. This is…unexpected. He steadies himself and continues, “It is not appropriate for you to remain among the living.”
“The living?” Martha grabs Ariel by the upper arm and yanks her away from Castiel. Fear is growing in the mother's eyes. Her neck works rapidly as she swallows. “What are you talking about? Who are you?”
Steve stamps his feet, the energy around him sparking with power. “You don’t know anything!” He begins to sob, heaving breaths obstructing his speech, “You don’t! I won’t go! I won’t!”
“Steve!” Ariel, struggling to get out of her mother’s grip, kicks the air. “No! Get away from him! I need him!”
“Ariel!” The mother glares at Castiel, the whites of her eyes capturing her panic and the unmistakable promise of violence if Castiel does not leave. “Stop it!”
Castiel concentrates on Steve. “You must go.”
“No!” With a mighty kick, Ariel breaks free of her mother’s arms and grabs for her brother's ghost.
Steve grabs back, the energy around him feral. Castiel watches as the expression on Ariel’s face jerks from panicked to completely empty. She falls to the floor, her once-vivid blue eyes drained of all consciousness, her mouth stretched in a wide “O” of absolute agony. Steve’s hand grabs her about the wrist as she falls, and Castiel can feel the swarming in the air where his uncontained soul is gathering to drain her.
A ghost, but no less also a child, Steve screams when he looks down at his sister, clearly not understanding that he is harming her by holding her arm. Surrounded by brightly colored plastic toys on the waiting room’s neutrally-colored carpet, Ariel convulses, her body seizing as she screams with him.
Castiel can feel Ariel’s own soul dancing in the air as it frays between herself and her brother. Their mother has grabbed Castiel from behind, screaming, and is beginning to beat against his back, but he barely feels the hits. With all of the energy in the air, cloaking Castiel in a wash of strength, his vessel feels overcharged like it scarcely ever has. Everything is possible, a great high piercing through his consciousness and making it impossible to think straight. Nothing is unknown. Nothing is indestructible. Nothing could stand against him!
Stop this, Castiel begs, not knowing to whom he is pleading as his mind is buried beneath the intoxication of so much power swarming through his body. Without really thinking, he shoots out his palm and slams Steve in the head with it, shoving a banishment spell straight through the boy's spirit and wiping it out in one fell blast.
Steve’s mouth falls open, the ghost’s small body fracturing and disassembling, his wail ear-splitting as he blows away, invisible and inaudible to anyone but Castiel and Ariel.
It is over almost too quickly. Panting, Castiel holds onto his chest for the space of several split seconds. He is tingling all over, every hair on his body reaching for the ceiling. As the feeling fades and the beating of his vessel’s heart loses its frantic edge, Martha gets hold of his arm and hurls him bodily into a series of chairs.
“You goddamned freak!” She grabs a chair of her own and comes after him. “Get out!” Behind her, Ariel lets out a chest-shattering cough and rolls onto her side. The young girl’s face is a lesson in horror, a feeling Castiel is beginning to empathize all too well with.
“Wait,” Castiel stammers, though for what, he does not know, “you do not understand. Let me explain. My actions were to help, not hinder. I wanted only to-”
Martha stomps the ground, her fists shaking uncontrollably around the chair she is wielding. “OUT!” She is angry, but she is also scared. Her mascara is even runnier than it was before, draining from her eyes like black blood. Some part of Castiel gets caught on that, and he is not sure why. A shudder rips through his body, not the first trace of fear he has experienced since his decision to fight Raphael for control of Heaven, yet somehow more pronounced than any moment of fear before.
The door to the waiting room slams open and several people rush into the room, lending an even greater mix of rage and panic to an already unstable situation. They see Martha with her chair, held high over Castiel, and Castiel has learned enough about fighting for his life by now to know that every eye in the room turning towards him is nearly always a bad omen.
Ariel rolls to stand, her color already returning. She will be fine, after a week, and does not require additional help. She stares at Castiel, her small mouth opening as if to speak.
Before he can hear what Ariel has to say, Castiel gathers the energies he has inside of him and runs for the wall. Less than a second passes, energy surges through every aspect of his being, time folds for a flicker, the universe itself bends, and Castiel is out of the room and in flight.
Cut loose, Castiel hurtles through space until he arrives somewhere completely unexpected. His landing is unsteady. He topples through a church pew, knocking it over and breaking something in his back. The pain lances through his spine and leaves him blinded as he keeps going, straight through another pew and across marble tiles.
The energy still surging around him is massive when he comes to a stop against the far wall, halted in place by ancient stone walls. His body trembles against the stone, the sensation of raw, human soul causing his limbs to twitch, lost in an overdrive of rapidly firing neurons and an ecstasy of endorphins. In his back, his spine twirls back into place and he breathes rapidly as sensations he hadn’t realized he’d just lost in his arms and legs come back with reinforcements. He feels over-stimulated and blazing with heat, and not comfortably, either. With effort, he expels what remains of the energy siphoned from Steve’s ghost, burying it deep in the marble of the floor.
Panting, Castiel clutches a piece of rubble beside him and hauls himself to his feet. A purple and red, stained glass window rises high above him, bathing the church in violet rays. His coat settles on his shoulders, swaying around his ankles, dusty and smoking faintly as he grips the back of a still-standing pew and holds himself upright to assess his surroundings.
He strains his senses, reaching outwards, but the location of this place remains unknown to him. A faint chill permeates the entire chamber of the church, fogging his breath. He stands, enraptured by this, before he registers the presence of another.
When he looks up, there is a priest at the front of the church. The elderly man is clutching his podium as if in pain, his eyes wide and his jaw locked. To the man’s credit, he has not run, or perhaps that is instead an act of foolishness when confronted with an unusual event.
In hopes of calming the man before he panics, Castiel lowers his head in a mild nod. “I must offer apologies. I had not intended to land as I did. Forgive me.”
The flame-haired-but-balding priest stumbles down the stairs leading to his podium. “Goodness gracious!” His arms wave wildly at his sides, as if caught in a great wind. The white chords tied around the waist of his black priest robes flutter with the force of his enthusiasm as he clambers around pieces of rubble to run in Castiel’s direction. “Have you injured yourself?”
Still breathing harder than he’d prefer to, Castiel tilts his head to regard the priest approaching him with so little fear. There does not seem to be anything out-of-the-ordinary about him, save for this irrational bravery. For courtesy’s sake, Castiel attempts to smile, although he knows he is not skilled at it.
“I am unharmed.” Castiel turns on his heel, still feeling a slight tremble in his hands where too much energy had bled through him. To think that every human possesses such a power at his or her core, no matter how deeply buried, was astounding. “Thank you for your concern.”
The priest grips him lightly by the sleeve and pulls him back. “Wait! Stay. You are. You are not like other people, are you? Man falls through a chair-” The balding priest looks through the church before correcting, “two chairs-and gets back up by himself, something is definitely not normal.”
“No,” Castiel agrees. The smile around his lips somehow feels less strained when he turns it on the man still lightly holding his elbow. “I am certainly not normal.” A twinge seizes Castiel’s side and he gasps, going to his knees on the marble tile. The priest slows his descent by following him down, the elderly man’s eyes appearing concerned above deep bags of age.
“Perhaps you should rest for a moment,” he suggests, helping Castiel to lean against the back of a pew. The priest’s robes rustle through the scent of smoke and incense as he lightly pats the cross around his neck, though Castiel recognizes this as a subconscious and not an intentional gesture. “I’m Franklin.”
Inhaling deeply, Castiel lifts his gaze to the church’s gold-leafed and ornately patterned ceiling. He seeks out the energy inside himself to leave this place he has brought damage to, but finds that his reserves-so full just a moment ago-are now worryingly low. Perhaps the cost of using a soul for power is that it ultimately drains the one who uses it. Perhaps that is why the practice is so condemned among angels.
Castiel realizes he needs to recharge his own energies before he can leave this place. Castiel feels his lips purse of their own accord. There are certain human gestures he now finds difficult to remove from his own mannerisms, particularly those regarding stress.
“My name is Castiel,” he offers, finally, biting back I’m an angel of the Lord as if the unspoken words are poisonous.
“Strange name.” Franklin kneels in front of Castiel and smoothes down his robes, organizing the white chords around his waist so that they will look neat. “But then, I never met a man strange enough to fall through a ceiling, so I suppose it’s fitting.” Franklin nods and looks across the room, to the heavy oak doors at the exit. “Don’t suppose you’re going to tell me how you came to be here?”
“It is nothing you need be concerned about,” Castiel tries to reassure, well aware that he is often quite bad at this. “I simply required…refuge.”
“Refuge?” Franklin’s eyes are wide and his beard is speckled with many grays and whites amidst its overall reddish hue. “And this is the only place you could think to go to?”
Castiel grits his teeth, feeling his jaw creak painfully. He thinks of the many comrades he has lost in the past year, how many places of refuge have been taken from him, and how few-if any-still truly remain. To think of this makes him so very weary.
“I lack the time for an adequate explanation.” Castiel can already feel his energy seeping back into place, bringing a calm and controllable warmth that is nothing like the searing heat and power he had felt mere moments ago.
The priest goes silent, his brow furrowed. “Your life sounds complicated.” He burrows inside a pocket of his robe and produces a wrapped candy. “Would you like a lemon drop?" He adds, stammering, "I'm sorry I have little else. I was unprepared for your falling through the roof, you see.”
Castiel pauses only a moment before holding his hand out to accept the plastic-wrapped candy. “Thank you.” Small acts of kindness, as he has learned, are infrequent and must be accepted when offered if they are to be received at all. He finds himself thinking of his newest discovery regarding human souls, the myriad number of ways the world and his place in it have changed, the upcoming battles he must soon face, and of the desperate fear that he is not going to be strong enough to prevent the world from falling to Raphael and becoming consumed.
A dark, horrible thought begins to rise in his mind, but he quickly suppresses it. Only demons should think in such ways.
Castiel pockets the lemon drop as he stands, nodding at Franklin. The scent of fire and blood flutters in Castiel’s coat, caught there like a ghost. “Goodbye.”
Without offering an explanation, Castiel leaves.
Damnably, his newest discovery about human souls follows him.
~1/15/012
Author: guardian_chaos
Rating: PG-13.
Words: 2650-ish.
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Castiel
Spoilers: Takes place in the space between season five and season six.
Author's Note: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!" ~Sir Walter Scott, in Canto VI, Stanza 17 of "Marmion" (1808)
Summary: Meeting a child's imaginary friend should not be enough to damn anyone, except when it is.
* * *
“His name is Steve!” a young girl named Ariel declares to Castiel as they stand under the flickering lights of a mental health facility’s waiting room. Ariel’s eyes are bright specks of startling blue, encased in a youthful face that seems unaware of the hardships of living. She gestures wildly beside her at the young ghost leaning on her shoulder, his hands clutching her arm. The ghost and Ariel are siblings, Castiel knows. Steve had been involved in a tragic firearm accident many weeks ago. He is several inches shorter than his sister, and his eyes gaze fearfully up at Castiel. There is a bullet hole in his forehead, but it is not bleeding.
The girl’s mother startles, her haggard appearance growing all the more fitful as she frets around Castiel. “Oh, no, no, don’t listen to my daughter.” The woman’s makeup is smeared. Mascara lines the mother’s cheeks, telltale evidence of tears that have been palmed away but not entirely forgotten. This woman, as Castiel reads, has taken her daughter to counseling with the intention of buying for her the best anti-psychotic drugs money has to offer. Preferably something strong, though she worries about the effects the drugs may have on Ariel. The mother-Martha-waves her hands in the air as she speaks of her dead son. “Steve-Steve is an imaginary friend. That’s all.”
Castiel looks into Steve’s eyes, which are the same vivid blue as his sister’s eyes, and knows the boy has been far more than that. This ghost, Castiel knows, has been a constant distraction for Ariel, even to the point at which no outside interference could capture her attention when Steve already had it. This ghost seems, however, to possess more sentience than what Castiel would generally expect from a ghost, and Castiel is driven to understand why.
Castiel crouches, feeling the warm air of summertime drifting around in his clothes. He pays no attention to the mother, as her words are unimportant, and the hand he lays on Steve’s head is gentle. Inside of this ghost, a soul still stirs, warm and tingling like faint electricity against Castiel’s fingertips.
“Hello, Steve.” Castiel’s voice is a grumble, carefully measured to produce calm. “I am Castiel.” He leaves unspoken the declaration of what he is, as Dean has informed him it is creepy to introduce one’s self as an angel without proper reason to do so. Castiel has learned not to question this. Castiel tilts his head, and the child mimics him. There is a look of awe in Steve’s eyes, right below the clean and dry bullet hole in Steve’s forehead. Above them, Ariel’s mother keeps talking, and Ariel stares at Castiel, enraptured, but Castiel pays little attention to either of them.
“What purpose keeps you here?” Castiel asks, and the ghost opens his mouth to speak.
“I-I dunno.” Steve shakes his head back and forth as his arms tighten around Ariel’s. “I dunno.”
“Please,” the mother begs, “do not play into her fantasies. If you had any idea what-”
Castiel silences her with a hand that he merely holds palm-out to face her. “Steven,” Castiel places both hands on the child’s face and holds him there, “You cannot remain here.”
The ghost child’s eyes tear up. His soft shuddering can be felt through Castiel’s hands, yet Castiel keeps his arms still in mid-air.
“But I’m scared!" Steve cries, "I don’t want to go. I don’t want to.”
The tingle of a soul not even contained by skin sparks up Castiel’s arms and leaves him feeling strangely light. His palms tighten around the boy’s face, though Castiel is not sure why he has done so.
“You must leave.” The heat from the boy's soul buries itself beside Castiel’s Grace and pulses with an unnerving warmth. Castiel blinks at the strange sensation when it travels around his body, healing small injuries that Castiel has been deeming too unimportant to heal for months. This is…unexpected. He steadies himself and continues, “It is not appropriate for you to remain among the living.”
“The living?” Martha grabs Ariel by the upper arm and yanks her away from Castiel. Fear is growing in the mother's eyes. Her neck works rapidly as she swallows. “What are you talking about? Who are you?”
Steve stamps his feet, the energy around him sparking with power. “You don’t know anything!” He begins to sob, heaving breaths obstructing his speech, “You don’t! I won’t go! I won’t!”
“Steve!” Ariel, struggling to get out of her mother’s grip, kicks the air. “No! Get away from him! I need him!”
“Ariel!” The mother glares at Castiel, the whites of her eyes capturing her panic and the unmistakable promise of violence if Castiel does not leave. “Stop it!”
Castiel concentrates on Steve. “You must go.”
“No!” With a mighty kick, Ariel breaks free of her mother’s arms and grabs for her brother's ghost.
Steve grabs back, the energy around him feral. Castiel watches as the expression on Ariel’s face jerks from panicked to completely empty. She falls to the floor, her once-vivid blue eyes drained of all consciousness, her mouth stretched in a wide “O” of absolute agony. Steve’s hand grabs her about the wrist as she falls, and Castiel can feel the swarming in the air where his uncontained soul is gathering to drain her.
A ghost, but no less also a child, Steve screams when he looks down at his sister, clearly not understanding that he is harming her by holding her arm. Surrounded by brightly colored plastic toys on the waiting room’s neutrally-colored carpet, Ariel convulses, her body seizing as she screams with him.
Castiel can feel Ariel’s own soul dancing in the air as it frays between herself and her brother. Their mother has grabbed Castiel from behind, screaming, and is beginning to beat against his back, but he barely feels the hits. With all of the energy in the air, cloaking Castiel in a wash of strength, his vessel feels overcharged like it scarcely ever has. Everything is possible, a great high piercing through his consciousness and making it impossible to think straight. Nothing is unknown. Nothing is indestructible. Nothing could stand against him!
Stop this, Castiel begs, not knowing to whom he is pleading as his mind is buried beneath the intoxication of so much power swarming through his body. Without really thinking, he shoots out his palm and slams Steve in the head with it, shoving a banishment spell straight through the boy's spirit and wiping it out in one fell blast.
Steve’s mouth falls open, the ghost’s small body fracturing and disassembling, his wail ear-splitting as he blows away, invisible and inaudible to anyone but Castiel and Ariel.
It is over almost too quickly. Panting, Castiel holds onto his chest for the space of several split seconds. He is tingling all over, every hair on his body reaching for the ceiling. As the feeling fades and the beating of his vessel’s heart loses its frantic edge, Martha gets hold of his arm and hurls him bodily into a series of chairs.
“You goddamned freak!” She grabs a chair of her own and comes after him. “Get out!” Behind her, Ariel lets out a chest-shattering cough and rolls onto her side. The young girl’s face is a lesson in horror, a feeling Castiel is beginning to empathize all too well with.
“Wait,” Castiel stammers, though for what, he does not know, “you do not understand. Let me explain. My actions were to help, not hinder. I wanted only to-”
Martha stomps the ground, her fists shaking uncontrollably around the chair she is wielding. “OUT!” She is angry, but she is also scared. Her mascara is even runnier than it was before, draining from her eyes like black blood. Some part of Castiel gets caught on that, and he is not sure why. A shudder rips through his body, not the first trace of fear he has experienced since his decision to fight Raphael for control of Heaven, yet somehow more pronounced than any moment of fear before.
The door to the waiting room slams open and several people rush into the room, lending an even greater mix of rage and panic to an already unstable situation. They see Martha with her chair, held high over Castiel, and Castiel has learned enough about fighting for his life by now to know that every eye in the room turning towards him is nearly always a bad omen.
Ariel rolls to stand, her color already returning. She will be fine, after a week, and does not require additional help. She stares at Castiel, her small mouth opening as if to speak.
Before he can hear what Ariel has to say, Castiel gathers the energies he has inside of him and runs for the wall. Less than a second passes, energy surges through every aspect of his being, time folds for a flicker, the universe itself bends, and Castiel is out of the room and in flight.
Cut loose, Castiel hurtles through space until he arrives somewhere completely unexpected. His landing is unsteady. He topples through a church pew, knocking it over and breaking something in his back. The pain lances through his spine and leaves him blinded as he keeps going, straight through another pew and across marble tiles.
The energy still surging around him is massive when he comes to a stop against the far wall, halted in place by ancient stone walls. His body trembles against the stone, the sensation of raw, human soul causing his limbs to twitch, lost in an overdrive of rapidly firing neurons and an ecstasy of endorphins. In his back, his spine twirls back into place and he breathes rapidly as sensations he hadn’t realized he’d just lost in his arms and legs come back with reinforcements. He feels over-stimulated and blazing with heat, and not comfortably, either. With effort, he expels what remains of the energy siphoned from Steve’s ghost, burying it deep in the marble of the floor.
Panting, Castiel clutches a piece of rubble beside him and hauls himself to his feet. A purple and red, stained glass window rises high above him, bathing the church in violet rays. His coat settles on his shoulders, swaying around his ankles, dusty and smoking faintly as he grips the back of a still-standing pew and holds himself upright to assess his surroundings.
He strains his senses, reaching outwards, but the location of this place remains unknown to him. A faint chill permeates the entire chamber of the church, fogging his breath. He stands, enraptured by this, before he registers the presence of another.
When he looks up, there is a priest at the front of the church. The elderly man is clutching his podium as if in pain, his eyes wide and his jaw locked. To the man’s credit, he has not run, or perhaps that is instead an act of foolishness when confronted with an unusual event.
In hopes of calming the man before he panics, Castiel lowers his head in a mild nod. “I must offer apologies. I had not intended to land as I did. Forgive me.”
The flame-haired-but-balding priest stumbles down the stairs leading to his podium. “Goodness gracious!” His arms wave wildly at his sides, as if caught in a great wind. The white chords tied around the waist of his black priest robes flutter with the force of his enthusiasm as he clambers around pieces of rubble to run in Castiel’s direction. “Have you injured yourself?”
Still breathing harder than he’d prefer to, Castiel tilts his head to regard the priest approaching him with so little fear. There does not seem to be anything out-of-the-ordinary about him, save for this irrational bravery. For courtesy’s sake, Castiel attempts to smile, although he knows he is not skilled at it.
“I am unharmed.” Castiel turns on his heel, still feeling a slight tremble in his hands where too much energy had bled through him. To think that every human possesses such a power at his or her core, no matter how deeply buried, was astounding. “Thank you for your concern.”
The priest grips him lightly by the sleeve and pulls him back. “Wait! Stay. You are. You are not like other people, are you? Man falls through a chair-” The balding priest looks through the church before correcting, “two chairs-and gets back up by himself, something is definitely not normal.”
“No,” Castiel agrees. The smile around his lips somehow feels less strained when he turns it on the man still lightly holding his elbow. “I am certainly not normal.” A twinge seizes Castiel’s side and he gasps, going to his knees on the marble tile. The priest slows his descent by following him down, the elderly man’s eyes appearing concerned above deep bags of age.
“Perhaps you should rest for a moment,” he suggests, helping Castiel to lean against the back of a pew. The priest’s robes rustle through the scent of smoke and incense as he lightly pats the cross around his neck, though Castiel recognizes this as a subconscious and not an intentional gesture. “I’m Franklin.”
Inhaling deeply, Castiel lifts his gaze to the church’s gold-leafed and ornately patterned ceiling. He seeks out the energy inside himself to leave this place he has brought damage to, but finds that his reserves-so full just a moment ago-are now worryingly low. Perhaps the cost of using a soul for power is that it ultimately drains the one who uses it. Perhaps that is why the practice is so condemned among angels.
Castiel realizes he needs to recharge his own energies before he can leave this place. Castiel feels his lips purse of their own accord. There are certain human gestures he now finds difficult to remove from his own mannerisms, particularly those regarding stress.
“My name is Castiel,” he offers, finally, biting back I’m an angel of the Lord as if the unspoken words are poisonous.
“Strange name.” Franklin kneels in front of Castiel and smoothes down his robes, organizing the white chords around his waist so that they will look neat. “But then, I never met a man strange enough to fall through a ceiling, so I suppose it’s fitting.” Franklin nods and looks across the room, to the heavy oak doors at the exit. “Don’t suppose you’re going to tell me how you came to be here?”
“It is nothing you need be concerned about,” Castiel tries to reassure, well aware that he is often quite bad at this. “I simply required…refuge.”
“Refuge?” Franklin’s eyes are wide and his beard is speckled with many grays and whites amidst its overall reddish hue. “And this is the only place you could think to go to?”
Castiel grits his teeth, feeling his jaw creak painfully. He thinks of the many comrades he has lost in the past year, how many places of refuge have been taken from him, and how few-if any-still truly remain. To think of this makes him so very weary.
“I lack the time for an adequate explanation.” Castiel can already feel his energy seeping back into place, bringing a calm and controllable warmth that is nothing like the searing heat and power he had felt mere moments ago.
The priest goes silent, his brow furrowed. “Your life sounds complicated.” He burrows inside a pocket of his robe and produces a wrapped candy. “Would you like a lemon drop?" He adds, stammering, "I'm sorry I have little else. I was unprepared for your falling through the roof, you see.”
Castiel pauses only a moment before holding his hand out to accept the plastic-wrapped candy. “Thank you.” Small acts of kindness, as he has learned, are infrequent and must be accepted when offered if they are to be received at all. He finds himself thinking of his newest discovery regarding human souls, the myriad number of ways the world and his place in it have changed, the upcoming battles he must soon face, and of the desperate fear that he is not going to be strong enough to prevent the world from falling to Raphael and becoming consumed.
A dark, horrible thought begins to rise in his mind, but he quickly suppresses it. Only demons should think in such ways.
Castiel pockets the lemon drop as he stands, nodding at Franklin. The scent of fire and blood flutters in Castiel’s coat, caught there like a ghost. “Goodbye.”
Without offering an explanation, Castiel leaves.
Damnably, his newest discovery about human souls follows him.
~1/15/012