FIC: Hold the Blessed Child Now
Title: Hold the Blessed Child Now (1/?)
Characters: Dean, Castiel, Sam, Claire Novak, Amelia Novak (this part), Lucifer (future parts), mentions of of very slight past Dean/Castiel
Rating: R
Word Count: 2501
Warnings: Violence, language. Genderbending? This is a WIP. Spoilers through the end of season four.
Summary: What if Castiel got to the warehouse where demons were holding the Winchesters and the Novaks too late? What if Jimmy died that night? What if Castiel had to stay in Claire? AU of 4x20 and beyond.
Time, among its other qualities, is vicissitudinous. It's mercurial and unreliable. One moment might spawn a dozen futures, and each in turn will spawn a dozen more, and even if some of them warp, twist, and grow gnarly and tangled, even if they brush close together as though they could reach the same place or are woven of startlingly similar cloth, it doesn't matter. It's never quite the same. The forks in time's path extend as far back as the beginning, and no story is ever told twice.
So it happens that in one moment, the angel Castiel uses the body of the child Claire to cup her father's face and promise him paradise. Jimmy Novak is having none of it. He has been devout and obedient to the Lord for his entire life, but now he struggles against His angel, pleads with it, cares not for its heaven, or its grace, or its God. What Jimmy Novak cares about is his daughter, and she's being ridden by a being that can be more adequately described in hyperbole than as bearing any kind of human resemblance. He grips the shoulder that Castiel is using as its own and, unashamedly, he begs.
In that story, Castiel calmly and coldly takes Jimmy's body mere moments before his death, expels the bullet, heals the gunshot wound, the bruises and the cut on his cheek, and stands, shaken by his experiences in heaven but possessed of a newfound purpose, if not, as his superiors had hoped, his old blind faith in their orders. Later, he will go on to turn his back on all of the Host, escape a confrontation with an archangel with wings broken but life intact, and fight, over the course of several years, to seal Lucifer back in Hell. He'll fight with Dean Winchester on one side and Sam Winchester on the other, and eventually, they'll succeed.
For their part, Claire and her mother, touched by the horrors wrought by demons and by angels, will find somewhere safe and lie low for a while. Amelia will consult every source she can find and learn all she can in order to protect her daughter, but Claire will never show more than a passing interest, and that's for the best. She'll go on to lead a normal life stemming from a highly abnormal past, attending a good college, working a steady career, marrying and continuing her unusual bloodline through her children. She and Amelia will never see Jimmy again. That's for the best too.
In that story, things aren't too bad. Of course there are difficulties. There's torment and heartache; Sam has an addiction, Dean has a destiny, Castiel has only taken the very first step on the road to self-discovery, Amelia and Claire are changed and heartbroken, and Jimmy never awakens from the slumber Castiel gave him. Still, it's the apocalypse. All in all, they get off surprisingly easy.
This is not that story.
*
As Castiel sears the last demon from its host, Jimmy stutters out his last breath and dies on the warehouse floor.
Dean's breath catches in his throat. For a moment, it's like the ground opened up beneath his feet but gravity refused to pull him down, leaving him treading air with his stomach plummeted to his toes. It's not only that Jimmy is a guy Dean genuinely liked, who took no shit and ate with gusto and stole away in the middle of the night to be with his family, who he'd promised to help, or that a small, panicked, suppressed part of Dean looks at the mussed dark hair over a bloodied coat and sees a dead Castiel instead. It's that Dean forced himself to look away from the blood caked around Sam's mouth and chin and the first thing his gaze settled on was Jimmy's corpse, and it's all too overwhelming. The last time he felt this much like vomiting over a failure was the night he watched a knife sever Sammy's spine.
“Dean.”
It takes a moment for the voice to register as Castiel's. When it does, Dean gets that sick vertiginous drop in his stomach again. A kid. He'd thought this change was a stopgap measure, but Jimmy died and now it's not. Castiel's in Jimmy's little girl.
“Dean.” Castiel watches Dean implacably through Claire's clear hazel eyes, under a fringe of long blond hair, and Dean is seriously this close to ralphing all over his shoes.
“Cas,” he says, hoarsely. “You-”
“Claire?”
Amelia Novak is crouched by her husband's body. Her hands hover helplessly over the gunshot wound, like she, against all reason, believes that it would help if she applied pressure, but she's afraid of dirtying herself with Jimmy's blood. Now, though, her horrified stare is riveted on Castiel.
“Claire,” she whimpers. “W-what...”
“I am not your daughter,” Castiel says emotionlessly, and that's all it takes to turn Dean's nausea into rage.
“You jackass,” he breathes. “You dick. That's a kid you're in, a kid whose mother just lost her husband, okay? You need to let her go. Being in a kid, that - that makes you like Lilith, it makes you worse than Lilith. It's wrong.”
“I am sorry if you have moral objections to my choice of vessel, Dean,” Castiel says, looking not very sorry at all. “I assure you, I would change if I could.”
“Bullshit!” Dean snarls. “Jimmy's right there. Bring him back like you brought me back. He's the one who prayed for this, not his fucking daughter!”
Castiel regards the prone form that used to serve as her host with an infuriating serenity on her face. “You were in Hell, Dean. I cannot steal Jimmy's soul from its rightful reward. He is at rest now, and there he shall always remain.” She glances sharply at Dean. “And before you ask, the process of finding and preparing another vessel would be a lengthy one, and I don't have the time. Claire will stay with me for the foreseeable future, and, in all likelihood, for all the time beyond.”
Amelia lets out a low animal cry. “No,” she moans, clutching at Jimmy's damp lapels. “No, Jesus, Claire, give me Claire back, please, God, you bastard-”
“Cas, I'm telling you-”
Castiel whirls on Dean with the righteous fury of Heaven and the agony of one angel in her borrowed child's eyes. “I learned my lesson while I was away, Dean. I serve Heaven, I don't serve man. And I certainly don't serve you.”
With a rush of wingbeats, Castiel disappears.
Dean swears and punches a wall before realizing that Amelia's still there, crooning silently to herself, rocking over Jimmy's dead body. “Hey,” he says awkwardly, acutely aware of how much shit he's brought on this woman just by existing; if he'd never broken, Castiel wouldn't need to be on earth fighting to stop Lucifer, and he wouldn't have robbed Amelia of her whole family. It sends sickening tendrils of self-loathing crawling through his veins. “Do you, uh - look, I'm so sorry, and if I can do-”
“Leave,” Amelia murmurs. “Just go.”
“Mrs. Novak...”
“Go!” she sobs, and flings a rock at him. Sam's nowhere to be seen, so Dean gets out of there as fast as he can, tripping and stumbling in his haste to leave the warehouse and the nightmare of gore and loss swaddled within. He finds his brother by the Impala, face innocent of blood, expression wary. Like a liar and a monster who knows he's been caught in the act.
“I'm getting a phone call,” Dean gasps, and stumbles around the side of the building, where, hopefully far out of hearing range, he finally gives into the urge and, bracing himself on the wall, throws up the remnants of his last meal all over the cold cement.
*
Dean goes down to the junkyard and screams for Castiel for hours. When Cas, Castiel, Cas! fails to work, he delves deeper into his vocabulary, first to coarser insults - dick, asshole, son of a bitch - and then, as his voice wears down to a growl, more creative terminology; fuck-winged cocksucker, shit-souled bastard, heartless spawn of a devil whore.
No one answers.
The problem is, Dean thinks, empty of even despair, as he gazes up at the silent firmament, is that he let himself care for the stupid asshole. Maybe it was the contrast with the other angels who still worked for Heaven, because Castiel was a fuzzy, cuddly kitten compared to Uriel and Zachariah; maybe it was that he was somehow funny in how painfully unfunny he actually was; maybe it was that sense of earnesty, that he was starting to act a little more human in the feelings department, that he did try hard to be honest and helpful, even if he needed a good kick in the pants for encouragement every now and then; that, under whatever restrictions Heaven and his history and his training and his nature placed on him, there was an angel who cared about Dean in return. He hadn't realized how much this caring had crept up on him, but when he'd found Castiel's vessel lying in a heap of rubble and Castiel wasn't inside, Dean felt scared.
“C'mon, answer me, Cas, you cradle-robber,” Dean shouts, and immediately feels disgusting.
Dean has entertained a few idle fantasies about Castiel over the months. They're nothing hardcore or explicit, and as often as not the idea simply flits through his head as a passing fancy and leaves not an echo of itself behind. He can't claim to have devoted any particular passion to the notion, or more energy than one would typically grant a curious and inconsequential hypothetical, but it would be disingenuous to say that the thought (and maybe a few more detailed thoughts about Castiel's fingers on his belt buckle and his hands clenched in Castiel's hair) had never crossed his mind. It was bad enough seeing Jimmy get up and realizing there was someone else in that body; now Castiel is walking around in a twelve-year-old girl, and Dean feels like the sickest son of a bitch on the planet.
But Dean understands, as he stares at the glimmering stars, that it wasn't that which left him so blindsided and reeling after Castiel abandoned him in the warehouse with a brother he barely recognized. Sex isn't the problem.
The problem is that he'd thought Castiel might be his friend.
“Cas,” Dean whispers. “Please.”
“What do you want?”
Well, that's a fabulous question. Dean tamps down the instinctive wave of anger that washes over him when he turns to the blank-faced girl poised on the gravel. He isn't here to fight with Castiel. He's - he's here to beg for her help. Questions like How's the preteen doing in there, fucker? will have to wait.
“It's Sam,” Dean says as evenly as possible. “He's in there detoxing from the-” He swallows. “The blood Ruby was feeding him. He's down there sweating and shaking. Talking to himself.”
Castiel nodded. “The addiction is psychological as well as physical. It doesn't help that there's a magical component, due to the nature of any demon's blood. The taint Azazel left in him will hunger for it just as powerfully as the parts of Sam, mind and body, that are purely human. A difficult detoxification process is to be expected, Dean.”
“Well, I don't like it.” Dean stares down at the unperturbed expression on Castiel's sweet young face. She looks like some kind of tiny, barretted Terminator. “What if I let him out? What if he and I ganked Lilith and he burned it out that way?”
“It is imperative that Sam remain a prisoner,” Castiel says sternly.
“What if it isn't?” Dean persists. “Would it hurt him to come help me kill the bitch and get that shit out of his system?”
“You know the answer to that question, Dean. You know what the consequences would be.” Castiel cocks her head and narrows her eyes. “You didn't ask me here to confirm your worst suspicions. What do you really want?”
The moonlight delineates the soft curve of Castiel's cheek and illuminates the flowers patterned on her shirt. “Let go of Claire, Cas.”
Castiel huffs out an impatient breath. “Dean, I have already explained that with the time constraints imposed on me by my duties-”
Dean kicks gravel into the crisp night air. “I don't give a shit! Time? You took me thirty years into the past, Cas! Go back as far as you gotta to find someone who wants this, and then you'll come back and a minute will have passed. There has to be some other whackjob who's praying to become a puppet with gooey angel insides, goddammit.”
“I can't do that.”
“Why the fuck not?” Dean's voice has grown so loud it's hurting his raw vocal chords. “Did you lose the keys to the time machine? Did they clip your wings in Heaven? Did Daddy send you to your room, no time travel until you've thought about what you did?” His hand twitches out almost involuntarily, aching to spin her violently back around, as Castiel puts her back firmly toward him. “You fucking coward. You thoughtless, soulless, selfish prick-”
Castiel finally loses her grave calm as she rounds on him. Her expression is downright pissy. “I'm under no compulsion to explain myself to you,” she snaps. “You're not equipped to understand. In this, Dean, for the first time in your life, you will simply have to take my word without question!”
“Yeah right,” Dean grunts bitterly, but the fight has gone out of him. He shoves his hands into his pockets, watching as Castiel takes a deep, slow breath, shoulders relaxing, small fists uncurling slowly at her sides, and face smoothing back into its peaceful emptiness. It's a calming technique Dean himself has used over the past year, in those moments when he couldn't bear to keep ripping himself apart with memories of Hell and the pain of Sammy's secretiveness and distance. If Castiel's learning how to control her brand new emotions from Dean, she's screwed.
“What did they do to you when they took you back to Heaven, Cas?” Dean asks.
Castiel's eyes open in startlement and she casts Dean a glance so helplessly stricken that he loses the breath in his lungs. And before he can open his mouth, the air thrums around her wings, and she's gone.
Dean stands for too long just inhaling the frigidity of night into his body. When he makes it back to the house, Bobby is sprawled unconscious on the porch and Sam is nowhere to be found.
Part Two
Characters: Dean, Castiel, Sam, Claire Novak, Amelia Novak (this part), Lucifer (future parts), mentions of of very slight past Dean/Castiel
Rating: R
Word Count: 2501
Warnings: Violence, language. Genderbending? This is a WIP. Spoilers through the end of season four.
Summary: What if Castiel got to the warehouse where demons were holding the Winchesters and the Novaks too late? What if Jimmy died that night? What if Castiel had to stay in Claire? AU of 4x20 and beyond.
Time, among its other qualities, is vicissitudinous. It's mercurial and unreliable. One moment might spawn a dozen futures, and each in turn will spawn a dozen more, and even if some of them warp, twist, and grow gnarly and tangled, even if they brush close together as though they could reach the same place or are woven of startlingly similar cloth, it doesn't matter. It's never quite the same. The forks in time's path extend as far back as the beginning, and no story is ever told twice.
So it happens that in one moment, the angel Castiel uses the body of the child Claire to cup her father's face and promise him paradise. Jimmy Novak is having none of it. He has been devout and obedient to the Lord for his entire life, but now he struggles against His angel, pleads with it, cares not for its heaven, or its grace, or its God. What Jimmy Novak cares about is his daughter, and she's being ridden by a being that can be more adequately described in hyperbole than as bearing any kind of human resemblance. He grips the shoulder that Castiel is using as its own and, unashamedly, he begs.
In that story, Castiel calmly and coldly takes Jimmy's body mere moments before his death, expels the bullet, heals the gunshot wound, the bruises and the cut on his cheek, and stands, shaken by his experiences in heaven but possessed of a newfound purpose, if not, as his superiors had hoped, his old blind faith in their orders. Later, he will go on to turn his back on all of the Host, escape a confrontation with an archangel with wings broken but life intact, and fight, over the course of several years, to seal Lucifer back in Hell. He'll fight with Dean Winchester on one side and Sam Winchester on the other, and eventually, they'll succeed.
For their part, Claire and her mother, touched by the horrors wrought by demons and by angels, will find somewhere safe and lie low for a while. Amelia will consult every source she can find and learn all she can in order to protect her daughter, but Claire will never show more than a passing interest, and that's for the best. She'll go on to lead a normal life stemming from a highly abnormal past, attending a good college, working a steady career, marrying and continuing her unusual bloodline through her children. She and Amelia will never see Jimmy again. That's for the best too.
In that story, things aren't too bad. Of course there are difficulties. There's torment and heartache; Sam has an addiction, Dean has a destiny, Castiel has only taken the very first step on the road to self-discovery, Amelia and Claire are changed and heartbroken, and Jimmy never awakens from the slumber Castiel gave him. Still, it's the apocalypse. All in all, they get off surprisingly easy.
This is not that story.
*
As Castiel sears the last demon from its host, Jimmy stutters out his last breath and dies on the warehouse floor.
Dean's breath catches in his throat. For a moment, it's like the ground opened up beneath his feet but gravity refused to pull him down, leaving him treading air with his stomach plummeted to his toes. It's not only that Jimmy is a guy Dean genuinely liked, who took no shit and ate with gusto and stole away in the middle of the night to be with his family, who he'd promised to help, or that a small, panicked, suppressed part of Dean looks at the mussed dark hair over a bloodied coat and sees a dead Castiel instead. It's that Dean forced himself to look away from the blood caked around Sam's mouth and chin and the first thing his gaze settled on was Jimmy's corpse, and it's all too overwhelming. The last time he felt this much like vomiting over a failure was the night he watched a knife sever Sammy's spine.
“Dean.”
It takes a moment for the voice to register as Castiel's. When it does, Dean gets that sick vertiginous drop in his stomach again. A kid. He'd thought this change was a stopgap measure, but Jimmy died and now it's not. Castiel's in Jimmy's little girl.
“Dean.” Castiel watches Dean implacably through Claire's clear hazel eyes, under a fringe of long blond hair, and Dean is seriously this close to ralphing all over his shoes.
“Cas,” he says, hoarsely. “You-”
“Claire?”
Amelia Novak is crouched by her husband's body. Her hands hover helplessly over the gunshot wound, like she, against all reason, believes that it would help if she applied pressure, but she's afraid of dirtying herself with Jimmy's blood. Now, though, her horrified stare is riveted on Castiel.
“Claire,” she whimpers. “W-what...”
“I am not your daughter,” Castiel says emotionlessly, and that's all it takes to turn Dean's nausea into rage.
“You jackass,” he breathes. “You dick. That's a kid you're in, a kid whose mother just lost her husband, okay? You need to let her go. Being in a kid, that - that makes you like Lilith, it makes you worse than Lilith. It's wrong.”
“I am sorry if you have moral objections to my choice of vessel, Dean,” Castiel says, looking not very sorry at all. “I assure you, I would change if I could.”
“Bullshit!” Dean snarls. “Jimmy's right there. Bring him back like you brought me back. He's the one who prayed for this, not his fucking daughter!”
Castiel regards the prone form that used to serve as her host with an infuriating serenity on her face. “You were in Hell, Dean. I cannot steal Jimmy's soul from its rightful reward. He is at rest now, and there he shall always remain.” She glances sharply at Dean. “And before you ask, the process of finding and preparing another vessel would be a lengthy one, and I don't have the time. Claire will stay with me for the foreseeable future, and, in all likelihood, for all the time beyond.”
Amelia lets out a low animal cry. “No,” she moans, clutching at Jimmy's damp lapels. “No, Jesus, Claire, give me Claire back, please, God, you bastard-”
“Cas, I'm telling you-”
Castiel whirls on Dean with the righteous fury of Heaven and the agony of one angel in her borrowed child's eyes. “I learned my lesson while I was away, Dean. I serve Heaven, I don't serve man. And I certainly don't serve you.”
With a rush of wingbeats, Castiel disappears.
Dean swears and punches a wall before realizing that Amelia's still there, crooning silently to herself, rocking over Jimmy's dead body. “Hey,” he says awkwardly, acutely aware of how much shit he's brought on this woman just by existing; if he'd never broken, Castiel wouldn't need to be on earth fighting to stop Lucifer, and he wouldn't have robbed Amelia of her whole family. It sends sickening tendrils of self-loathing crawling through his veins. “Do you, uh - look, I'm so sorry, and if I can do-”
“Leave,” Amelia murmurs. “Just go.”
“Mrs. Novak...”
“Go!” she sobs, and flings a rock at him. Sam's nowhere to be seen, so Dean gets out of there as fast as he can, tripping and stumbling in his haste to leave the warehouse and the nightmare of gore and loss swaddled within. He finds his brother by the Impala, face innocent of blood, expression wary. Like a liar and a monster who knows he's been caught in the act.
“I'm getting a phone call,” Dean gasps, and stumbles around the side of the building, where, hopefully far out of hearing range, he finally gives into the urge and, bracing himself on the wall, throws up the remnants of his last meal all over the cold cement.
*
Dean goes down to the junkyard and screams for Castiel for hours. When Cas, Castiel, Cas! fails to work, he delves deeper into his vocabulary, first to coarser insults - dick, asshole, son of a bitch - and then, as his voice wears down to a growl, more creative terminology; fuck-winged cocksucker, shit-souled bastard, heartless spawn of a devil whore.
No one answers.
The problem is, Dean thinks, empty of even despair, as he gazes up at the silent firmament, is that he let himself care for the stupid asshole. Maybe it was the contrast with the other angels who still worked for Heaven, because Castiel was a fuzzy, cuddly kitten compared to Uriel and Zachariah; maybe it was that he was somehow funny in how painfully unfunny he actually was; maybe it was that sense of earnesty, that he was starting to act a little more human in the feelings department, that he did try hard to be honest and helpful, even if he needed a good kick in the pants for encouragement every now and then; that, under whatever restrictions Heaven and his history and his training and his nature placed on him, there was an angel who cared about Dean in return. He hadn't realized how much this caring had crept up on him, but when he'd found Castiel's vessel lying in a heap of rubble and Castiel wasn't inside, Dean felt scared.
“C'mon, answer me, Cas, you cradle-robber,” Dean shouts, and immediately feels disgusting.
Dean has entertained a few idle fantasies about Castiel over the months. They're nothing hardcore or explicit, and as often as not the idea simply flits through his head as a passing fancy and leaves not an echo of itself behind. He can't claim to have devoted any particular passion to the notion, or more energy than one would typically grant a curious and inconsequential hypothetical, but it would be disingenuous to say that the thought (and maybe a few more detailed thoughts about Castiel's fingers on his belt buckle and his hands clenched in Castiel's hair) had never crossed his mind. It was bad enough seeing Jimmy get up and realizing there was someone else in that body; now Castiel is walking around in a twelve-year-old girl, and Dean feels like the sickest son of a bitch on the planet.
But Dean understands, as he stares at the glimmering stars, that it wasn't that which left him so blindsided and reeling after Castiel abandoned him in the warehouse with a brother he barely recognized. Sex isn't the problem.
The problem is that he'd thought Castiel might be his friend.
“Cas,” Dean whispers. “Please.”
“What do you want?”
Well, that's a fabulous question. Dean tamps down the instinctive wave of anger that washes over him when he turns to the blank-faced girl poised on the gravel. He isn't here to fight with Castiel. He's - he's here to beg for her help. Questions like How's the preteen doing in there, fucker? will have to wait.
“It's Sam,” Dean says as evenly as possible. “He's in there detoxing from the-” He swallows. “The blood Ruby was feeding him. He's down there sweating and shaking. Talking to himself.”
Castiel nodded. “The addiction is psychological as well as physical. It doesn't help that there's a magical component, due to the nature of any demon's blood. The taint Azazel left in him will hunger for it just as powerfully as the parts of Sam, mind and body, that are purely human. A difficult detoxification process is to be expected, Dean.”
“Well, I don't like it.” Dean stares down at the unperturbed expression on Castiel's sweet young face. She looks like some kind of tiny, barretted Terminator. “What if I let him out? What if he and I ganked Lilith and he burned it out that way?”
“It is imperative that Sam remain a prisoner,” Castiel says sternly.
“What if it isn't?” Dean persists. “Would it hurt him to come help me kill the bitch and get that shit out of his system?”
“You know the answer to that question, Dean. You know what the consequences would be.” Castiel cocks her head and narrows her eyes. “You didn't ask me here to confirm your worst suspicions. What do you really want?”
The moonlight delineates the soft curve of Castiel's cheek and illuminates the flowers patterned on her shirt. “Let go of Claire, Cas.”
Castiel huffs out an impatient breath. “Dean, I have already explained that with the time constraints imposed on me by my duties-”
Dean kicks gravel into the crisp night air. “I don't give a shit! Time? You took me thirty years into the past, Cas! Go back as far as you gotta to find someone who wants this, and then you'll come back and a minute will have passed. There has to be some other whackjob who's praying to become a puppet with gooey angel insides, goddammit.”
“I can't do that.”
“Why the fuck not?” Dean's voice has grown so loud it's hurting his raw vocal chords. “Did you lose the keys to the time machine? Did they clip your wings in Heaven? Did Daddy send you to your room, no time travel until you've thought about what you did?” His hand twitches out almost involuntarily, aching to spin her violently back around, as Castiel puts her back firmly toward him. “You fucking coward. You thoughtless, soulless, selfish prick-”
Castiel finally loses her grave calm as she rounds on him. Her expression is downright pissy. “I'm under no compulsion to explain myself to you,” she snaps. “You're not equipped to understand. In this, Dean, for the first time in your life, you will simply have to take my word without question!”
“Yeah right,” Dean grunts bitterly, but the fight has gone out of him. He shoves his hands into his pockets, watching as Castiel takes a deep, slow breath, shoulders relaxing, small fists uncurling slowly at her sides, and face smoothing back into its peaceful emptiness. It's a calming technique Dean himself has used over the past year, in those moments when he couldn't bear to keep ripping himself apart with memories of Hell and the pain of Sammy's secretiveness and distance. If Castiel's learning how to control her brand new emotions from Dean, she's screwed.
“What did they do to you when they took you back to Heaven, Cas?” Dean asks.
Castiel's eyes open in startlement and she casts Dean a glance so helplessly stricken that he loses the breath in his lungs. And before he can open his mouth, the air thrums around her wings, and she's gone.
Dean stands for too long just inhaling the frigidity of night into his body. When he makes it back to the house, Bobby is sprawled unconscious on the porch and Sam is nowhere to be found.
Part Two