Six Card Spread
Hello lovelies <3
This is the fic that some of you have heard me rambling on about over the past week or so. It's just over 3000 words, so it's officially the longest thing I've ever written. It is also, possibly, the first installment of something. I'd love to know what you think. Comments make my day, so please indulge me :)
Author's notes: Supernatural. Dean/Castiel. PG. Set in the Gaiman/Carey universe, but during Season of Mists, so before Devil in the Gateway. The Council of Seven are the Archangels (traditionally, there are seven of them). Archangels, seraphs and thrones are all kinds of angel.
Link to previous part: The Souls and the Stone
Six Card Spread
Castiel had been outranked and outvoted. It may have been Zachariah who had taken Dean and Sam, taken their minds, pushed and pulled at them, making a false face for the world, but the plan had the imprint of Amenadiel all over it. The thrones were conspiring. It was enough to make a shiver run through Castiel, shaking his vessel from the centre.
Castiel had spoken, of course. He had worked to gain Dean’s trust, to ask him rather than command him, because the bonds of love are stronger than those of fear. Dean was a better warrior when he fought for what he loved. That was the Winchester way, had been Sam’s way while Dean was gone, John’s way before him, and Mary’s before that.
The look on Zachariah’s face was cold as he ordered Castiel away from the front. This, he said, was precisely what he had been worried about. Castiel was too close to the humans. He was a liability to the cause. One shouldn’t befriend the weapons. That was what he had said. There had been a little smile. Castiel had seen it, seen it as Dean would have seen it. It made him faintly nauseous. So he had taken the time away, with thanks and a meek dip of his head, and for the first time in his very long life, Castiel had felt servile.
---
The barn was still covered in wards, as though it had been painted by a stoned teenager with a book of spells. Castiel picked his way through the splinters that had shaken to the ground the last time he was there, and sat cross legged on the floor. He closed his eyes, seeing Dean in the shower of sparks from the blown bulbs that hung overhead. The vessel’s head felt heavy, and he dropped it to his chest, rolling his shoulders. The power quivered in the air, light and sharp, like pins and needles in a phantom limb, and Castiel smiled darkly as the shadows of his wings rippled into the corners of the barn.
He breathed deeply, and for the first time since Alistair’s death he felt calm. If he could manifest his wings, he would fly. As it was, he flexed the ghost wings, feeling the coldness of the air near the ceiling, tasting the space with his wingtips. It tasted like thought. That was why he was here. Castiel needed to think. It hurt. He knew hurt now. Hurt was what had happened when Alistair hit him. That was pain. But sitting next to Dean in that hospital bed, watching the tube breathe for him, watching the blood stain the white cotton sheets. That was pain too. It had hurt. Castiel had sat there, and he had hurt. He had measured it, in the heights and the depths, and he had learned its name; pain.
It hurt, but Castiel was thinking. He had lived to follow orders, it was blasphemy to wish for anything other than the plan, and the plan was not for the likes of him. Castiel had a small part to play; he was a throne, a soldier of heaven. His eternity had been spent on the training ground, commanding the lesser thrones, answering to the council of seven. The war in heaven had been a bloodbath, and the archangels had spoken: it would never happen again. So they trained. Lucifer was coming, and heaven would be ready.
There were no orders for this. Anna had refused him, and who else could he go to for help? His brothers who fell were all in their places, ruling in hell as they had served in heaven, and which of them would speak to him? The fallen lay in the mansions of the silence, too far away for his voice to carry, and what would he say to them? Aziraphale would fuss, and make tea, and however consoling that might sound, it was essentially ineffectual. Castiel listed the options in his mind, and the last on the list was the only one left. Meleos.
It had been a long time since Castiel had cause to speak to a seraph, and even among the seraphs, Meleos wasn’t spoken of. Nonetheless, Meleos was Castiel’s only option. His wings shivered into nothing as he stood up. He closed his eyes, and the world shifted around him.
---
When he opened his eyes, Castiel was standing against a wall in an alley in St Pauli, Hamburg. It was the middle of the afternoon, but the neon was burning, and it looked like a party. At least, a year ago, Castiel would have said it looked like a party. Now, he saw the faces of the women and men who wandered the streets, and he knew them. They were faces of Dean in a hundred shades of fear and desperation and pain, heart pain that body pleasure couldn’t fix. The shards of their pain were flying in the air, broken and sharp, snagging on walls and clothes and skin. Castiel was tempted to run, but he saw the bookshop ahead, on his right, and he’d come too far not to try.
The bell rang as he entered, and it faded dully through the empty shop, muffled by the walls of books. Academic texts nestled with old science fiction, and Castiel was reminded of Sam and Dean. The thought came to him unbidden, ‘this is what we mean by too close’, but before it had time to settle, the dust swirled up around his feet.
“Good afternoon.”
The man’s face was grave, old and tired in its middle age. Castiel bowed his head, a little, and blinked respectfully.
“Meleos of the seraphim.”
“Meleos is perfectly adequate, Castiel. What do you want from me? Surely heaven isn’t calling on me now?”
Castiel tipped his head to the right, a curious gesture, but he looked Meleos in the eye when he answered.
“No. I haven’t come from heaven. For heaven. I came here for myself.”
“That sets a dangerous precedent for one of the thrones. Remember what happens when one of you breaks rank?”
It had been ten thousand years, but Castiel shuddered at the memory. The scream had lived in the walls of the silver city for centuries, an echo of an echo. A reminder: disobedience will not be tolerated.
“So, what can I offer you? This is neutral ground. I am no longer heaven’s, I was never hell’s. What is there for you here?”
Castiel blinked, quickly, then slowly.
“Are they here, Meleos?”
“Are what here, Castiel?”
The reply was sharp, edged, laced with something Castiel couldn’t recognise. It might have been fear, if the seraphim knew fear. Then again, the thrones didn’t know pain. In these times, all things seemed possible. Perhaps it was fear.
“The Basanos, are they here?”
Meleos stood still and tall, but simultaneously crumpled in on himself like a piece of paper scrunched into a ball. The fight went out of him in an instant. He flipped the sign to closed, turned the lock, and pointed to a door at the back of the shop.
“Step into my office.”
---
The Basanos had been almost a myth in heaven. Nothing had been made since the silver city, and that was built by the hands of the Lilim. Only the seraphim could create, and even they had never constructed. The crafts had died with Ibriel and his silver city, baptised in blood. But before the silver city, Meleos the artist had drawn his portraits. Twenty two had taken form, taken meaning, become the Basanos; the major arcana of the most powerful tarot deck ever created. Tarot came into being to mimic the Basanos; the children of angels, with their eyes that see all possibilities, time as a hydra of potential futures bleeding out of now. Castiel hadn’t been sure they were real, not truly sure, but the look on Meleos’ face was enough to convince him.
The other side of the door was a small room, and the top of a stair well so deep that even angels felt dizzy at the drop. Meleos treated the stair well like a shrine, and out of respect, Castiel stayed two steps behind him.
“Every book ever written, in every language. You watch them, don’t you Castiel? I’ve collected their thoughts, their madnesses, their insights, since they were writing with chisels on stone. Mankind. They fascinate me.”
Meleos’ tone was reverential, and the nondescript noise that formed in his throat was all the reply that Castiel could muster.
“Forgive me if I don’t invite you down. I’ll bring them to you.”
“Thank you, Meleos.”
Castiel’s gratitude was quiet and sincere. He was reaching for something he could offer in return.
“I’ll prepare the room. Have you any chalk?”
“In the drawer on the right of the desk.”
Meleos turned in the doorway, hesitant, that strange tone back in his voice.
“The cards, they have their own agenda, my brother. Be certain that you want this. He who dines on revelation may also dine on madness.”
“I do want this, brother. I will take what the cards offer me.”
Meleos flinched slightly, and not with his face, before turning his feet back to the first step.
---
Castiel cleared the desk, gently placing papers on the top of cabinets around the walls. He found a candle in the left hand desk drawer, and lit it with the lighter he found in his vessel’s coat pocket. It wasn’t incense, but then these weren’t exactly prayers. He was seeking guidance from those who were exiled from heaven. He was far outside his ken, he felt alone, and he knew fear. He measured it as he had measured pain, the depth of his stomach, the height of his dizziness, the racing of his mind; he named it fear. It eased if he worked, he found, so he drew an angelic ward around the door. The cards were the children of an angel, it should keep them in, as well as keeping the garrison out if anyone was sent to look for him. This was fear, again. It was dark, and it curled around the inside of him. He wondered whether there might have been fear before; watching Dean fighting with Alistair, there had been some of this curling smoky feeling then. It was different, though. Castiel wasn’t ready to call it fear.
Meleos came back with a chest in his hands; iron and wood locked small and tight. He put it on the desk as though it weighed more than he could carry, looked up from under his terse eyebrows. When Castiel nodded, tightly, he opened the lid of the box.
The cards flew around the room, fluttering like the wings or heartbeats of tiny birds, bright and sharp, with just a hint of metal. They settled on the desk in a shape that swirled, moved, seemed to breathe. Their voice, when they spoke, was simultaneously present in four octaves, it shimmered and shivered through tones of light and dark. They were chimerical, and faintly ominous. Castiel swallowed, and faced them.
“We saw you coming. We saw you long ago, and you have come. You have come to us.”
Castiel’s voice was steady. Fear, he thought, I know you, you are fear.
“You know what I will ask of you then?”
The cards giggled. It was a shattered sound, like breaking a mirror with a tuning fork. It was an awful sound.
“You want to see. You are crawling around in that vessel, little, pink and blind. You want us to see.”
Castiel blinked, and nodded; an affirmation. The cards twisted a little.
“We must taste you, Castiel of the thrones. We must know your scent.”
Castiel looked to Meleos, alarmed. Meleos nodded.
“It is their way. They need to know you.”
Castiel raised his hands to the cards, offering himself to them. The cards corkscrewed with another shimmering laugh.
“Remove your coat, angel. Loosen your tie. We need your skin.”
Castiel closed his eyes, but slid the tattered beige coat off his shoulders, and folded it over the back of the chair beside the desk. He folded his jacket on top of the coat, and slid the ends of the tie through his fingers. He stood in front of the cards, feeling naked, with three shirt buttons undone and his sleeves rolled up to his forearms.
The cards danced on the air, touching every exposed patch of skin, running through Castiel’s messy dark hair. They felt like fingers, small, light fingers, everywhere at once. Castiel’s lips fell open a little; his closed eyes saw Dean’s fingers wrapped around Sam’s wrist, and he wondered if this was how Sam felt. Meleos watched from the corner, the look on his face was unreadable.
It had been moments, it had felt like longer, but the cards lay themselves out on the desk. They had drawn themselves into a six card spread.
The first card spoke. Its voice was male, and Castiel felt that he should know it, but it just slipped out of his mind.
“You paint yourself as the fool, angel. Am I really how you see yourself? Are you the child? A change is coming, child, a change in the spirit and a change in the flesh. The winds of this change will strip you bare, back to the essence of who you are. Do you know who you are? Do you want to know?
The fool smiled knowingly, mockingly, took an elaborate bow towards Castiel, and twisted back to the card on the desk. The second card tipped its face, and climbed up to speak. Its voice was male too, deep, rough, sleepy, distinctly American. Its eyes were vividly green.
“The hanged man holds your question in his hands. It’s a question of perspective, Castiel. Are you too close, or are you still too far away? This relationship has things it can teach you. The question is; are they things you want to know?”
The hanged man swung by the rope around his ankle, raised his hand in a strange salute, winked from under its raised eyebrow, and snapped flat onto the desk. The third card twisted into shape; a blindfolded woman with a balance and a sword. Her voice was strong, clear and unflinching.
“Justice indicates the place you stand. Your world is out of balance, son of heaven. You have seen a wrong committed, and everything you are is telling you to right it. Wrongs must be righted, Castiel. Justice must be done.”
The lady Justice raised her sword, a gesture of challenge, and twisted back to her card form, sword still held high. The fourth card built itself, tall and dark, a menacing presence in the small room. Its voice was indeterminate, like the crash of stones, or the sound of hammer and chisel. It was a hard, unforgiving sound.
“The Tower is where you are going, warrior angel. One of your endeavours must fail, but in your failure you have much to learn. The time has come for change, for you to shake your foundations. Build only on what is strong, and test everything. Only then will you be able to see.”
The Tower crumbled, cracking and crashing, taking the air of darkness with it, leaving an uncomfortable vacuum in the room. Castiel shifted his weight awkwardly, and the fifth card rose. Her voice was soft, slightly ethereal; she spoke smokily into the still air.
“The Moon will help you, if you let it. What you’ve labelled as sickness, see again as emotion; let it guide you, it will make you strong. Trust your vision, angel, you see more than you think. The things that you see, you must know that you have seen them. They cannot be taken from you. Trust them, and trust what you glean from them. You are learning intuition. It’s rare that we see it in a child of heaven. You are what you have, so use yourself fully. I won’t always guide you truly, and my paths are not always easy, but I will guide you, if you let me.”
The Moon smiled softly, maternally, with a hint of melancholy in her eyes, and then set herself back among the cards on the desk. The sixth card stood like a gathered breath, letting Castiel catch the orange yellow flickers that flamed in his eyes. His voice was familiar, smooth and spiked as honey wine. It was a voice that could raise hell. It had, once.
“Hello, Castiel. The Lightbringer, the devil card, will bring you down if you aren’t on your guard. Watch for the one who is pulling your strings, my brother. You are hindered when you are controlled. Don’t hold an idea above the requirements of the situation, holding onto ideas is part of their control. Take a light, Castiel, and shine that light into the shadow places. Beware of what you find there.”
The Devil raised his chin, as he had thousands of years before, when he’d taken his freedom and renounced his name. He folded himself into a card again, like the space had folded out in front of him at the gates of the silver city. The cards were moving again, swirling into a pack, counting themselves flat. Meleos stepped out of the shadow, picked them up, and locked them gently, firmly, back in their box. Castiel took a breath, and let it out shakily.
“Castiel, you must know what this looks like.”
“What does it look like to you, my brother? I confess I need a little time to think.”
Meleos’ voice was hushed, almost a whisper.
“It looks, it sounds, like rebellion. No angel has ever drawn the Moon. She was made to represent humanity.
Castiel picked up his discarded clothes, and drew his fingers through the chalk line of the angel ward around the wooden door. He sighed, turned back to Meleos, and bowed his head.
“Thank you, Meleos of the seraphim.”
He closed his eyes, and the world shifted around him.
---
Castiel arrived back in the US in time to watch Dean be systematically stripped of everything he had thought he wanted. When Dean was Dean Smith, and Castiel was nothing but dust in the air, Castiel saw the light in Dean’s eyes. His father did not order this, would not have ordered this. It was cruel, and meaningless; what part of the plan could need to cause this pain? If this were the plan, Castiel realised suddenly, he would still wish it otherwise. This is pain. This is fear. This is blasphemy.
When Dean woke up, in the Impala, dreaming of Dean Smith’s life, Castiel was there. Somehow, he knew that he should be. The moon smiled.
---
Link to next part: And A Prayer
This is the fic that some of you have heard me rambling on about over the past week or so. It's just over 3000 words, so it's officially the longest thing I've ever written. It is also, possibly, the first installment of something. I'd love to know what you think. Comments make my day, so please indulge me :)
Author's notes: Supernatural. Dean/Castiel. PG. Set in the Gaiman/Carey universe, but during Season of Mists, so before Devil in the Gateway. The Council of Seven are the Archangels (traditionally, there are seven of them). Archangels, seraphs and thrones are all kinds of angel.
Link to previous part: The Souls and the Stone
Six Card Spread
Castiel had been outranked and outvoted. It may have been Zachariah who had taken Dean and Sam, taken their minds, pushed and pulled at them, making a false face for the world, but the plan had the imprint of Amenadiel all over it. The thrones were conspiring. It was enough to make a shiver run through Castiel, shaking his vessel from the centre.
Castiel had spoken, of course. He had worked to gain Dean’s trust, to ask him rather than command him, because the bonds of love are stronger than those of fear. Dean was a better warrior when he fought for what he loved. That was the Winchester way, had been Sam’s way while Dean was gone, John’s way before him, and Mary’s before that.
The look on Zachariah’s face was cold as he ordered Castiel away from the front. This, he said, was precisely what he had been worried about. Castiel was too close to the humans. He was a liability to the cause. One shouldn’t befriend the weapons. That was what he had said. There had been a little smile. Castiel had seen it, seen it as Dean would have seen it. It made him faintly nauseous. So he had taken the time away, with thanks and a meek dip of his head, and for the first time in his very long life, Castiel had felt servile.
---
The barn was still covered in wards, as though it had been painted by a stoned teenager with a book of spells. Castiel picked his way through the splinters that had shaken to the ground the last time he was there, and sat cross legged on the floor. He closed his eyes, seeing Dean in the shower of sparks from the blown bulbs that hung overhead. The vessel’s head felt heavy, and he dropped it to his chest, rolling his shoulders. The power quivered in the air, light and sharp, like pins and needles in a phantom limb, and Castiel smiled darkly as the shadows of his wings rippled into the corners of the barn.
He breathed deeply, and for the first time since Alistair’s death he felt calm. If he could manifest his wings, he would fly. As it was, he flexed the ghost wings, feeling the coldness of the air near the ceiling, tasting the space with his wingtips. It tasted like thought. That was why he was here. Castiel needed to think. It hurt. He knew hurt now. Hurt was what had happened when Alistair hit him. That was pain. But sitting next to Dean in that hospital bed, watching the tube breathe for him, watching the blood stain the white cotton sheets. That was pain too. It had hurt. Castiel had sat there, and he had hurt. He had measured it, in the heights and the depths, and he had learned its name; pain.
It hurt, but Castiel was thinking. He had lived to follow orders, it was blasphemy to wish for anything other than the plan, and the plan was not for the likes of him. Castiel had a small part to play; he was a throne, a soldier of heaven. His eternity had been spent on the training ground, commanding the lesser thrones, answering to the council of seven. The war in heaven had been a bloodbath, and the archangels had spoken: it would never happen again. So they trained. Lucifer was coming, and heaven would be ready.
There were no orders for this. Anna had refused him, and who else could he go to for help? His brothers who fell were all in their places, ruling in hell as they had served in heaven, and which of them would speak to him? The fallen lay in the mansions of the silence, too far away for his voice to carry, and what would he say to them? Aziraphale would fuss, and make tea, and however consoling that might sound, it was essentially ineffectual. Castiel listed the options in his mind, and the last on the list was the only one left. Meleos.
It had been a long time since Castiel had cause to speak to a seraph, and even among the seraphs, Meleos wasn’t spoken of. Nonetheless, Meleos was Castiel’s only option. His wings shivered into nothing as he stood up. He closed his eyes, and the world shifted around him.
---
When he opened his eyes, Castiel was standing against a wall in an alley in St Pauli, Hamburg. It was the middle of the afternoon, but the neon was burning, and it looked like a party. At least, a year ago, Castiel would have said it looked like a party. Now, he saw the faces of the women and men who wandered the streets, and he knew them. They were faces of Dean in a hundred shades of fear and desperation and pain, heart pain that body pleasure couldn’t fix. The shards of their pain were flying in the air, broken and sharp, snagging on walls and clothes and skin. Castiel was tempted to run, but he saw the bookshop ahead, on his right, and he’d come too far not to try.
The bell rang as he entered, and it faded dully through the empty shop, muffled by the walls of books. Academic texts nestled with old science fiction, and Castiel was reminded of Sam and Dean. The thought came to him unbidden, ‘this is what we mean by too close’, but before it had time to settle, the dust swirled up around his feet.
“Good afternoon.”
The man’s face was grave, old and tired in its middle age. Castiel bowed his head, a little, and blinked respectfully.
“Meleos of the seraphim.”
“Meleos is perfectly adequate, Castiel. What do you want from me? Surely heaven isn’t calling on me now?”
Castiel tipped his head to the right, a curious gesture, but he looked Meleos in the eye when he answered.
“No. I haven’t come from heaven. For heaven. I came here for myself.”
“That sets a dangerous precedent for one of the thrones. Remember what happens when one of you breaks rank?”
It had been ten thousand years, but Castiel shuddered at the memory. The scream had lived in the walls of the silver city for centuries, an echo of an echo. A reminder: disobedience will not be tolerated.
“So, what can I offer you? This is neutral ground. I am no longer heaven’s, I was never hell’s. What is there for you here?”
Castiel blinked, quickly, then slowly.
“Are they here, Meleos?”
“Are what here, Castiel?”
The reply was sharp, edged, laced with something Castiel couldn’t recognise. It might have been fear, if the seraphim knew fear. Then again, the thrones didn’t know pain. In these times, all things seemed possible. Perhaps it was fear.
“The Basanos, are they here?”
Meleos stood still and tall, but simultaneously crumpled in on himself like a piece of paper scrunched into a ball. The fight went out of him in an instant. He flipped the sign to closed, turned the lock, and pointed to a door at the back of the shop.
“Step into my office.”
---
The Basanos had been almost a myth in heaven. Nothing had been made since the silver city, and that was built by the hands of the Lilim. Only the seraphim could create, and even they had never constructed. The crafts had died with Ibriel and his silver city, baptised in blood. But before the silver city, Meleos the artist had drawn his portraits. Twenty two had taken form, taken meaning, become the Basanos; the major arcana of the most powerful tarot deck ever created. Tarot came into being to mimic the Basanos; the children of angels, with their eyes that see all possibilities, time as a hydra of potential futures bleeding out of now. Castiel hadn’t been sure they were real, not truly sure, but the look on Meleos’ face was enough to convince him.
The other side of the door was a small room, and the top of a stair well so deep that even angels felt dizzy at the drop. Meleos treated the stair well like a shrine, and out of respect, Castiel stayed two steps behind him.
“Every book ever written, in every language. You watch them, don’t you Castiel? I’ve collected their thoughts, their madnesses, their insights, since they were writing with chisels on stone. Mankind. They fascinate me.”
Meleos’ tone was reverential, and the nondescript noise that formed in his throat was all the reply that Castiel could muster.
“Forgive me if I don’t invite you down. I’ll bring them to you.”
“Thank you, Meleos.”
Castiel’s gratitude was quiet and sincere. He was reaching for something he could offer in return.
“I’ll prepare the room. Have you any chalk?”
“In the drawer on the right of the desk.”
Meleos turned in the doorway, hesitant, that strange tone back in his voice.
“The cards, they have their own agenda, my brother. Be certain that you want this. He who dines on revelation may also dine on madness.”
“I do want this, brother. I will take what the cards offer me.”
Meleos flinched slightly, and not with his face, before turning his feet back to the first step.
---
Castiel cleared the desk, gently placing papers on the top of cabinets around the walls. He found a candle in the left hand desk drawer, and lit it with the lighter he found in his vessel’s coat pocket. It wasn’t incense, but then these weren’t exactly prayers. He was seeking guidance from those who were exiled from heaven. He was far outside his ken, he felt alone, and he knew fear. He measured it as he had measured pain, the depth of his stomach, the height of his dizziness, the racing of his mind; he named it fear. It eased if he worked, he found, so he drew an angelic ward around the door. The cards were the children of an angel, it should keep them in, as well as keeping the garrison out if anyone was sent to look for him. This was fear, again. It was dark, and it curled around the inside of him. He wondered whether there might have been fear before; watching Dean fighting with Alistair, there had been some of this curling smoky feeling then. It was different, though. Castiel wasn’t ready to call it fear.
Meleos came back with a chest in his hands; iron and wood locked small and tight. He put it on the desk as though it weighed more than he could carry, looked up from under his terse eyebrows. When Castiel nodded, tightly, he opened the lid of the box.
The cards flew around the room, fluttering like the wings or heartbeats of tiny birds, bright and sharp, with just a hint of metal. They settled on the desk in a shape that swirled, moved, seemed to breathe. Their voice, when they spoke, was simultaneously present in four octaves, it shimmered and shivered through tones of light and dark. They were chimerical, and faintly ominous. Castiel swallowed, and faced them.
“We saw you coming. We saw you long ago, and you have come. You have come to us.”
Castiel’s voice was steady. Fear, he thought, I know you, you are fear.
“You know what I will ask of you then?”
The cards giggled. It was a shattered sound, like breaking a mirror with a tuning fork. It was an awful sound.
“You want to see. You are crawling around in that vessel, little, pink and blind. You want us to see.”
Castiel blinked, and nodded; an affirmation. The cards twisted a little.
“We must taste you, Castiel of the thrones. We must know your scent.”
Castiel looked to Meleos, alarmed. Meleos nodded.
“It is their way. They need to know you.”
Castiel raised his hands to the cards, offering himself to them. The cards corkscrewed with another shimmering laugh.
“Remove your coat, angel. Loosen your tie. We need your skin.”
Castiel closed his eyes, but slid the tattered beige coat off his shoulders, and folded it over the back of the chair beside the desk. He folded his jacket on top of the coat, and slid the ends of the tie through his fingers. He stood in front of the cards, feeling naked, with three shirt buttons undone and his sleeves rolled up to his forearms.
The cards danced on the air, touching every exposed patch of skin, running through Castiel’s messy dark hair. They felt like fingers, small, light fingers, everywhere at once. Castiel’s lips fell open a little; his closed eyes saw Dean’s fingers wrapped around Sam’s wrist, and he wondered if this was how Sam felt. Meleos watched from the corner, the look on his face was unreadable.
It had been moments, it had felt like longer, but the cards lay themselves out on the desk. They had drawn themselves into a six card spread.
The first card spoke. Its voice was male, and Castiel felt that he should know it, but it just slipped out of his mind.
“You paint yourself as the fool, angel. Am I really how you see yourself? Are you the child? A change is coming, child, a change in the spirit and a change in the flesh. The winds of this change will strip you bare, back to the essence of who you are. Do you know who you are? Do you want to know?
The fool smiled knowingly, mockingly, took an elaborate bow towards Castiel, and twisted back to the card on the desk. The second card tipped its face, and climbed up to speak. Its voice was male too, deep, rough, sleepy, distinctly American. Its eyes were vividly green.
“The hanged man holds your question in his hands. It’s a question of perspective, Castiel. Are you too close, or are you still too far away? This relationship has things it can teach you. The question is; are they things you want to know?”
The hanged man swung by the rope around his ankle, raised his hand in a strange salute, winked from under its raised eyebrow, and snapped flat onto the desk. The third card twisted into shape; a blindfolded woman with a balance and a sword. Her voice was strong, clear and unflinching.
“Justice indicates the place you stand. Your world is out of balance, son of heaven. You have seen a wrong committed, and everything you are is telling you to right it. Wrongs must be righted, Castiel. Justice must be done.”
The lady Justice raised her sword, a gesture of challenge, and twisted back to her card form, sword still held high. The fourth card built itself, tall and dark, a menacing presence in the small room. Its voice was indeterminate, like the crash of stones, or the sound of hammer and chisel. It was a hard, unforgiving sound.
“The Tower is where you are going, warrior angel. One of your endeavours must fail, but in your failure you have much to learn. The time has come for change, for you to shake your foundations. Build only on what is strong, and test everything. Only then will you be able to see.”
The Tower crumbled, cracking and crashing, taking the air of darkness with it, leaving an uncomfortable vacuum in the room. Castiel shifted his weight awkwardly, and the fifth card rose. Her voice was soft, slightly ethereal; she spoke smokily into the still air.
“The Moon will help you, if you let it. What you’ve labelled as sickness, see again as emotion; let it guide you, it will make you strong. Trust your vision, angel, you see more than you think. The things that you see, you must know that you have seen them. They cannot be taken from you. Trust them, and trust what you glean from them. You are learning intuition. It’s rare that we see it in a child of heaven. You are what you have, so use yourself fully. I won’t always guide you truly, and my paths are not always easy, but I will guide you, if you let me.”
The Moon smiled softly, maternally, with a hint of melancholy in her eyes, and then set herself back among the cards on the desk. The sixth card stood like a gathered breath, letting Castiel catch the orange yellow flickers that flamed in his eyes. His voice was familiar, smooth and spiked as honey wine. It was a voice that could raise hell. It had, once.
“Hello, Castiel. The Lightbringer, the devil card, will bring you down if you aren’t on your guard. Watch for the one who is pulling your strings, my brother. You are hindered when you are controlled. Don’t hold an idea above the requirements of the situation, holding onto ideas is part of their control. Take a light, Castiel, and shine that light into the shadow places. Beware of what you find there.”
The Devil raised his chin, as he had thousands of years before, when he’d taken his freedom and renounced his name. He folded himself into a card again, like the space had folded out in front of him at the gates of the silver city. The cards were moving again, swirling into a pack, counting themselves flat. Meleos stepped out of the shadow, picked them up, and locked them gently, firmly, back in their box. Castiel took a breath, and let it out shakily.
“Castiel, you must know what this looks like.”
“What does it look like to you, my brother? I confess I need a little time to think.”
Meleos’ voice was hushed, almost a whisper.
“It looks, it sounds, like rebellion. No angel has ever drawn the Moon. She was made to represent humanity.
Castiel picked up his discarded clothes, and drew his fingers through the chalk line of the angel ward around the wooden door. He sighed, turned back to Meleos, and bowed his head.
“Thank you, Meleos of the seraphim.”
He closed his eyes, and the world shifted around him.
---
Castiel arrived back in the US in time to watch Dean be systematically stripped of everything he had thought he wanted. When Dean was Dean Smith, and Castiel was nothing but dust in the air, Castiel saw the light in Dean’s eyes. His father did not order this, would not have ordered this. It was cruel, and meaningless; what part of the plan could need to cause this pain? If this were the plan, Castiel realised suddenly, he would still wish it otherwise. This is pain. This is fear. This is blasphemy.
When Dean woke up, in the Impala, dreaming of Dean Smith’s life, Castiel was there. Somehow, he knew that he should be. The moon smiled.
---
Link to next part: And A Prayer