Fic: Light of the Body
Title: Light of the Body
Words: 1,761
Genre: Angst, preslash (arguably, you have to look closely for it)
Rating: PG 13
Characters: Castiel, Leviathan, Dean (sort of).
Spoilers: Up to most recent episode.
Warnings: a little bit of gore, character death?
Summary: He was a being with no purpose and no name. He had no past, no particular qualities that were manifestly him. He was the mind that beheld the sapphires. Without them he was nothing. And yet he preferred jade.
A/N: I wrote this by accident. (That happens to me sometimes.)
Thank you to my beta, S.R.B., who was not shy about ripping this a new one until it sucked less. Because she is awesome.
The quote is what I found when I tried to discover the etymology of "The eyes are the window to the soul."
There were twin sapphires in the darkness. Two, winking specks of deep blue facing him like dagger points. They cut his heart to its roots and disrupted his sense of distance. They were foreign and they were unreachable, but they were undoubtedly his.
They unsettled him.
Around him the darkness swathed over all like a concussion. It kept him docile, kept him confused. And it kept him warm, blanket like, bedlike; as a comfortable sleep. And whether the darkness was a dysfunction of his vision or an external product of the world, he couldn’t say. But it was complete. Only the sapphires twinkled out of its depths, like sharp, tiny stars.
Sometimes he thought that, if he could get close enough, the sapphires would be like windows. Like perfectly smooth spheres designed to reflect creation. And sometimes he thought that, as he was looking at them, the sapphires were looking back; watching him in his suspension. And that under their scrutiny he was safe, he was known, and if their lights had voices he would learn his name as the sounds came whispering through the darkness to his mind.
If he had a voice he would have told the sapphires why they made him so uneasy. He would have explained to them that his awful twisting against them him was not an intentional betrayal. Merely, somehow, a fact of his being.
I prefer jade, he would have said. Knowing, as he said it, the impossibility of such an idea.
He was alone in the empty darkness-alone except for the sapphires-and by what miracle he could have ever fathomed the thought of jade…he had no memories, no experiences outside of the sapphires…He was a being with no purpose and no name. He had no past, no particular qualities that were manifestly him. He was the mind that beheld the sapphires. Without them he was nothing. Without them it would be only this tepid night eternally, and he; a slumbering creature with no identity. And yet he preferred jade.
The sapphires were cold and severe in the distance.
Occasionally they would wink out and leave him suffering the panic of their loss. And every time he was positive they were never coming back. Then, in the next instant, they would flash before him, brilliant and blue and slicing him to pieces all over again. And every time he would reel with surprise at their appearance because he wanted them to be green. He expected them to be green, as if, in some before time, he’d had specks of jade that were his, as the sapphires were his.
The epiphany was easy, second nature, like a breath. One moment he was unaware and the next, as the sapphires blinked away and back again, the thought was in him, rolled up on the tip of his understanding. The answer had always been with him. He had contemplated the very thought before and never recognized its significance.
I am asleep.
He was inside out. His perception was turned inwards. To find his jade all he had to do was wake up. If he could reorient himself, put the night where it belonged-
On the other side of the sapphires was his life and his memories, and something green. Something bright and precious that he would die for.
He turned away from the sapphires until the darkness was absolute and prayed he was not wrong.
He was swallowed. He floated without purchase though the black. Terror hammered within him. He scrabbled and slipped and knew he had made a mistake because, however he turned, the sapphires were gone.
But the darkness was not an absence. Nor a space or a veil. It thrived. It lived. It had individuality.
Leviathan, it was named.
Castiel stumbled under the weight of his own body and caught the edge of the stained white sink before he could sink to the floor. He could smell the edged odor of gasoline from his surroundings and the musk of lake water from his wet clothes. He looked around, blinking his overwhelmed eyes into focus. A mess of colors swam in the mirror, they slowly resolved themselves into the familiar shape of his face. His skin was covered in splits and abrasions and his complexion was white with blood loss. His knees were weak and his arms shook with the effort of holding him upright.
He was chilled. His coat was missing. Dark red and brown stains soaked his shirt and his tie. An ugly green smudge of algae wrapped his shoulder. He looked himself up and down in relief and breathed free air until he heard himself speak.
“Go back to sleep, little angel. Now is not the time.”
He was a hostage after all. Castiel would have pulled his back straight, he would have bared his teeth and closed his fists, if his body had been his.
I won’t, he tried to say. And he had the words but not the tongue. His face smiled sadly at him in the mirror.
“There’s nothing out here for you,” the Leviathan was not unkind, “sleep is better.”
Dean, Castiel snarled in response. Dean was in the world and it was Castiel’s place to be with him. Dean was in the world and he was fighting and if he was losing then it was Castiel’s place to lose with him. Dean was what he had.
Pity danced cross his own features in the reflection. A sad twist curled the corner of his mouth.
“Dean is dead, child. He died with the others of his kind,” Leviathan said.
…No. He did not even feel the rush of panic it was so obviously a lie. Castiel’s mark was on Dean and he would know if Dean was dead.
“Yes. Centuries ago.” Castiel’s memories were still disordered and confused, but he knew this could not be true. “You must have loved this mortal dearly, to keep waking up to look for him.” It wasn’t possible.
You are trying to trick me, he said. You want to keep me pacified because you fear me. Because when I am free I will rend you and yours from the very fabric of creation in his name.
Leviathan sighed, tired but patient. “He was dead when we found him. I looked on your behalf the first time you woke.” New memories, flashing into him like the light of the sapphires. “His body was broken.” A street turned to rubble, asphalt churned up like fresh dirt and littered with the bodies of cars and men who lay ruined, bellies to the sky. They were all ripped apart and spilled open. “His brother was dead beside him. You cried for them both.” His footsteps over the uneven ground. Stepping carefully around and over the dead. Until he came to the crumpled heaps of two familiar corpses. Then the feeling of tears on his cheeks, the wrenching agony of knowing real grief for the first time. And Dean, his intestines tangled with his legs, eyes open and unseeing. All the light and the sin blown out from behind them, leaving his eyes like polished glass. Like jade.
NO.
“I am sorry for you loss,” said Leviathan. And if his voice had been cruel or indifferent Castiel could have fought against it. He could have defended his denial with rage and made siege within his own body. But the voice was soft, like being gently rocked, and it crushed him. And the pain that was rising within him was no figment, it was the sight of his mortal, dead without his protection. It was exactly how he would feel knowing Dean was dead. Castiel lost his strength, he was a coward again.
“You have never lacked for courage, Castiel.” It hurt to hear his name spoken out loud. He was only thankful it had not called him Cas.
Why do I live if he is dead? He asked. He felt pitiful.
“Because you don’t know how to die,” Levianthan answered. “For a time, you were God and that has changed the way you exist.” A stroke, like a careful hand. It was meant to be comforting but there was nothing that could comfort him now. “If it was otherwise I would have killed you out of mercy long ago.”
What should I do? He could not continue like this. He didn’t want to.
“Go back to sleep. There is no pain there.”
Back to the darkness. Back to wanting Dean without knowing it was Dean he wanted. I will be alone. I am frightened.
“You want love. I’ve room enough to love you, little angel. Unconditionally. As long as we exist I promise to love you.”
But I don’t love you.
“No. That’s the tragedy of it. You loved him and I am other.” His shoulders shrugged, a testament to the unchangeable. “I can give you sleep and forgetfulness, Castiel.”
Please don’t say my name. He had not been content in the darkness. But he had not been in pain either. And perhaps, if he really couldn’t follow Dean, if he had the rest of eternity to face without him…
“I will take care of you.”
And when I wake up again?
“I will be here. And you may mourn him. And I will wait with you while you do.”
But not now.
“Not now, little angel. I have work to do and your grief will take many years. Go back to sleep.”
How could it be, if he had been God, that Dean was unreachable?
His eyes were green.
“Yes. He was beautiful. But he and your world are dead. Go back to sleep.”
Castiel leaned closer to the mirror and peered into his own eyes as far as he could. Into the black pupils dilated with pain. He looked into them until they turned inside out and the black swallowed the blue of his irises.
There was something he was forgetting. An important detail of his own history. But searching for it was like wading into deep water. Reaching for it was like drowning.
He smelled lake water. He was cold and wet. His coat was missing.
His eyes were green.
There were twin sapphires in the darkness.
†“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
Matthew 6:22-23
Words: 1,761
Genre: Angst, preslash (arguably, you have to look closely for it)
Rating: PG 13
Characters: Castiel, Leviathan, Dean (sort of).
Spoilers: Up to most recent episode.
Warnings: a little bit of gore, character death?
Summary: He was a being with no purpose and no name. He had no past, no particular qualities that were manifestly him. He was the mind that beheld the sapphires. Without them he was nothing. And yet he preferred jade.
A/N: I wrote this by accident. (That happens to me sometimes.)
Thank you to my beta, S.R.B., who was not shy about ripping this a new one until it sucked less. Because she is awesome.
The quote is what I found when I tried to discover the etymology of "The eyes are the window to the soul."
There were twin sapphires in the darkness. Two, winking specks of deep blue facing him like dagger points. They cut his heart to its roots and disrupted his sense of distance. They were foreign and they were unreachable, but they were undoubtedly his.
They unsettled him.
Around him the darkness swathed over all like a concussion. It kept him docile, kept him confused. And it kept him warm, blanket like, bedlike; as a comfortable sleep. And whether the darkness was a dysfunction of his vision or an external product of the world, he couldn’t say. But it was complete. Only the sapphires twinkled out of its depths, like sharp, tiny stars.
Sometimes he thought that, if he could get close enough, the sapphires would be like windows. Like perfectly smooth spheres designed to reflect creation. And sometimes he thought that, as he was looking at them, the sapphires were looking back; watching him in his suspension. And that under their scrutiny he was safe, he was known, and if their lights had voices he would learn his name as the sounds came whispering through the darkness to his mind.
If he had a voice he would have told the sapphires why they made him so uneasy. He would have explained to them that his awful twisting against them him was not an intentional betrayal. Merely, somehow, a fact of his being.
I prefer jade, he would have said. Knowing, as he said it, the impossibility of such an idea.
He was alone in the empty darkness-alone except for the sapphires-and by what miracle he could have ever fathomed the thought of jade…he had no memories, no experiences outside of the sapphires…He was a being with no purpose and no name. He had no past, no particular qualities that were manifestly him. He was the mind that beheld the sapphires. Without them he was nothing. Without them it would be only this tepid night eternally, and he; a slumbering creature with no identity. And yet he preferred jade.
The sapphires were cold and severe in the distance.
Occasionally they would wink out and leave him suffering the panic of their loss. And every time he was positive they were never coming back. Then, in the next instant, they would flash before him, brilliant and blue and slicing him to pieces all over again. And every time he would reel with surprise at their appearance because he wanted them to be green. He expected them to be green, as if, in some before time, he’d had specks of jade that were his, as the sapphires were his.
The epiphany was easy, second nature, like a breath. One moment he was unaware and the next, as the sapphires blinked away and back again, the thought was in him, rolled up on the tip of his understanding. The answer had always been with him. He had contemplated the very thought before and never recognized its significance.
I am asleep.
He was inside out. His perception was turned inwards. To find his jade all he had to do was wake up. If he could reorient himself, put the night where it belonged-
On the other side of the sapphires was his life and his memories, and something green. Something bright and precious that he would die for.
He turned away from the sapphires until the darkness was absolute and prayed he was not wrong.
He was swallowed. He floated without purchase though the black. Terror hammered within him. He scrabbled and slipped and knew he had made a mistake because, however he turned, the sapphires were gone.
But the darkness was not an absence. Nor a space or a veil. It thrived. It lived. It had individuality.
Leviathan, it was named.
Castiel stumbled under the weight of his own body and caught the edge of the stained white sink before he could sink to the floor. He could smell the edged odor of gasoline from his surroundings and the musk of lake water from his wet clothes. He looked around, blinking his overwhelmed eyes into focus. A mess of colors swam in the mirror, they slowly resolved themselves into the familiar shape of his face. His skin was covered in splits and abrasions and his complexion was white with blood loss. His knees were weak and his arms shook with the effort of holding him upright.
He was chilled. His coat was missing. Dark red and brown stains soaked his shirt and his tie. An ugly green smudge of algae wrapped his shoulder. He looked himself up and down in relief and breathed free air until he heard himself speak.
“Go back to sleep, little angel. Now is not the time.”
He was a hostage after all. Castiel would have pulled his back straight, he would have bared his teeth and closed his fists, if his body had been his.
I won’t, he tried to say. And he had the words but not the tongue. His face smiled sadly at him in the mirror.
“There’s nothing out here for you,” the Leviathan was not unkind, “sleep is better.”
Dean, Castiel snarled in response. Dean was in the world and it was Castiel’s place to be with him. Dean was in the world and he was fighting and if he was losing then it was Castiel’s place to lose with him. Dean was what he had.
Pity danced cross his own features in the reflection. A sad twist curled the corner of his mouth.
“Dean is dead, child. He died with the others of his kind,” Leviathan said.
…No. He did not even feel the rush of panic it was so obviously a lie. Castiel’s mark was on Dean and he would know if Dean was dead.
“Yes. Centuries ago.” Castiel’s memories were still disordered and confused, but he knew this could not be true. “You must have loved this mortal dearly, to keep waking up to look for him.” It wasn’t possible.
You are trying to trick me, he said. You want to keep me pacified because you fear me. Because when I am free I will rend you and yours from the very fabric of creation in his name.
Leviathan sighed, tired but patient. “He was dead when we found him. I looked on your behalf the first time you woke.” New memories, flashing into him like the light of the sapphires. “His body was broken.” A street turned to rubble, asphalt churned up like fresh dirt and littered with the bodies of cars and men who lay ruined, bellies to the sky. They were all ripped apart and spilled open. “His brother was dead beside him. You cried for them both.” His footsteps over the uneven ground. Stepping carefully around and over the dead. Until he came to the crumpled heaps of two familiar corpses. Then the feeling of tears on his cheeks, the wrenching agony of knowing real grief for the first time. And Dean, his intestines tangled with his legs, eyes open and unseeing. All the light and the sin blown out from behind them, leaving his eyes like polished glass. Like jade.
NO.
“I am sorry for you loss,” said Leviathan. And if his voice had been cruel or indifferent Castiel could have fought against it. He could have defended his denial with rage and made siege within his own body. But the voice was soft, like being gently rocked, and it crushed him. And the pain that was rising within him was no figment, it was the sight of his mortal, dead without his protection. It was exactly how he would feel knowing Dean was dead. Castiel lost his strength, he was a coward again.
“You have never lacked for courage, Castiel.” It hurt to hear his name spoken out loud. He was only thankful it had not called him Cas.
Why do I live if he is dead? He asked. He felt pitiful.
“Because you don’t know how to die,” Levianthan answered. “For a time, you were God and that has changed the way you exist.” A stroke, like a careful hand. It was meant to be comforting but there was nothing that could comfort him now. “If it was otherwise I would have killed you out of mercy long ago.”
What should I do? He could not continue like this. He didn’t want to.
“Go back to sleep. There is no pain there.”
Back to the darkness. Back to wanting Dean without knowing it was Dean he wanted. I will be alone. I am frightened.
“You want love. I’ve room enough to love you, little angel. Unconditionally. As long as we exist I promise to love you.”
But I don’t love you.
“No. That’s the tragedy of it. You loved him and I am other.” His shoulders shrugged, a testament to the unchangeable. “I can give you sleep and forgetfulness, Castiel.”
Please don’t say my name. He had not been content in the darkness. But he had not been in pain either. And perhaps, if he really couldn’t follow Dean, if he had the rest of eternity to face without him…
“I will take care of you.”
And when I wake up again?
“I will be here. And you may mourn him. And I will wait with you while you do.”
But not now.
“Not now, little angel. I have work to do and your grief will take many years. Go back to sleep.”
How could it be, if he had been God, that Dean was unreachable?
His eyes were green.
“Yes. He was beautiful. But he and your world are dead. Go back to sleep.”
Castiel leaned closer to the mirror and peered into his own eyes as far as he could. Into the black pupils dilated with pain. He looked into them until they turned inside out and the black swallowed the blue of his irises.
There was something he was forgetting. An important detail of his own history. But searching for it was like wading into deep water. Reaching for it was like drowning.
He smelled lake water. He was cold and wet. His coat was missing.
His eyes were green.
There were twin sapphires in the darkness.
†“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
Matthew 6:22-23