Fic: A Road That Runs Both Ways, R, gen; 1/3
I've been thinking about Castiel's mood and the little hints and anvils he's been dropping during the season, and started this story back in January, with a few interruptions, and finished it yesterday morning, in time to be Jossed all to hell by 6.20 (and Kripked in one thing).
title: A Road That Runs Both Ways
author:nwhepcat
fandom: Supernatural, pre-S6
genre: gen
characters: Castiel, Ash, Dean, Lisa, Ben
rating: R
summary: A snake-handling physicist and an angel find themselves in a bar in Heaven.... Some say you're an even bigger prick than Zachariah. And that's the ones who like you.
Castiel stands in the doorway of the hospital room, eyes on Jimmy Novak. He holds a bundle in his arms, a blanket-swaddled baby, as his wife sleeps. Castiel finds he cannot look away from Jimmy's face. In all his thousands of years, his handful of months walking among humankind, he has not seen anything like the joy in this man's expression. It casts a light so bright that Castiel has to turn his face away.
Without warning, the light extinguishes, leaving only the harsh illumination of the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling.
"You're not welcome here." Jimmy's voice is harsh, implacable.
Hesitantly, Castiel takes a step forward, halting as Jimmy gets to his feet. "I require --" He stops, drawing in a breath before trying again. "I've come to ask your help."
A harsh laugh bursts out of Jimmy, but there's no humor in it. "You want something from me? Fuck off, Castiel." Suddenly the child is no longer in Jimmy's arms, there's no bed with a napping young woman. The room itself has vanished, leaving only the unforgiving glare of the fluorescent lights in a sterile white space.
In the blink of an eye, Jimmy is upon him, fists lashing out, catching Castiel on his cheek and temple. Staggering back, Castiel realizes his mistake: He has come to this corner of Heaven thoughtlessly wearing the likeness of his earthly vessel.
He should have known better.
One final blow causes him to stumble back, tripping over his own feet. When he falls, it's not on the hard tile floor of the sterile emptiness he'd just occupied, but on rough black asphalt. It is a moonless night, yet the stars are cloaked by clouds or something else. As Castiel's eyes adapt to the darkness to some degree, he makes out hulking black shapes of trees. Pacing the asphalt surface to determine its boundaries, he quickly discovers his first impression was true -- he is on a road, what Dean calls two-lane blacktop.
If he's not mistaken, Castiel has discovered the Axis Mundi, but not his own manifestation. It is the Winchesters' version. How is he to find his way if he has no reference points? (And why is he here? He had no conscious desire to seek the Garden.)
He stops his restless movements, stilling himself to take in any details in the dark that might offer him a hint which direction he should take.
It's difficult to compose himself, to clear the agitated thoughts spilling over into a confused tangle. Echoes of screams, afterimages of light pouring forth from his dying brothers. Blood on his hands, Dean Winchester would call it, but of course there is no literal blood.
This time the thought of Dean triggers a memory that does provide a connection to this blustery roadside. I'll just wait here, he'd told Dean the night Zachariah had shoved Dean into a vision of the future.
Remembering Dean's warm hand on his shoulder, his fervent Don't ever change, Castiel is buffeted by a wave of shame and despair. He has changed, and not for the better.
He slips his hand into the pocket of his trenchcoat, hoping the cellphone is still there. The instant his fingers touch it, it erupts in the ringtone Dean had set up to replace the factory setting: Angel Is a Centerfold.
"Dean?"
"Waiting is thirsty work, my man." The voice is unfamiliar, higher in pitch, with a drawl unlike Dean's speech. "Well, not technically, but 'my angel' sounds pretty gay. Not that I mean that as any kind of slur, just ... that's not me."
"Who are you?" Castiel demands, using the human equivalent of the voice that has made him feared in some quarters of Heaven.
The voice at the end of the line betrays no apprehension. "Why don't you come out my way and we can have a little powwow."
Castiel sees nothing but the black ribbon of road stretching before him and the looming figures of the trees. "How do--"
"Energize."
An unpleasant tingling spreads from the hand that holds the phone, up through his arm and to the rest of his limbs. With no further warning, Castiel finds himself in a shabby building, blinking in the sudden light, even though it's fairly dim.
When his eyes adjust, Castiel sees that he's in a tavern, perhaps a step lower than the sort Dean usually frequents. On the bar is a machine bristling with wires and clamps and blinking lights, and behind this strange console stands a man in a shirt whose sleeves have been shorn off--unlike his hair, which hangs past his shoulders.
"Always knew I could do that, if I had me some copper, alligator clips and a wad of chewing gum," says the man, whose features bear a passing resemblance to a rodent.
"Your ideal Heaven is hardware and chewing gum?" Castiel asks, incredulous.
"That and some pretty girls, a good jukebox and plenty of PBR." The rat-faced man thrusts out a hand whose nails seem surprisingly well manicured "Name's Ash."
"Castiel."
"Yeah, I know. I've been hearing about you. Like a brewski?"
"No. How do you know of me?"
Ash gestures to another dubious looking piece of machinery. "Angel radio. It's a little like a police scanner, but the problems are on a much higher plane."
"You have been listening to the communications of my brothers?"
Raising an eyebrow, Ash says, "Your brothers, your sisters. You." He retrieves a can of beer from a glass-fronted case behind the bar. "If you don't mind."
It's not the liberty regarding the beer that sends righteous rage spilling over, sending physical reactions throughout this body that, here, is nothing more than an illusion. "How dare you spy on the communications of God's messengers?" If this were the earth, Castiel would flick a finger, and Ash would in an instant (an eternity of blinding pain) be nothing more than a literal representation of his name.
Ash returns his gaze, completely unconcerned. Not even Dean could attain this level of unflappability, not even as a pretense.
"Y'all have a lot to say for messengers of a god who's gafiated." At Castiel's piercing look of angry incomprehension, Ash sighs, adding, "Gafiate. Getting Away From It All. So what brings you to my neck of the woods?"
"You did."
"You were hanging around already. Maybe I'm too curious for my own good, but I've gotta wonder."
Seized by an impulse, Castiel asks, "Do you have anything stronger than beer?"
"That I do, my man." Ash turns to the back bar and retrieves a bottle of Jack Daniel's. He pours two fingers into a squat glass shaped vaguely like a barrel.
"Leave the bottle." When Ash sets the square bottle beside the glass, Castiel picks it up and pours until the glass is nearly full. "What do they say about me?"
"Depends who's talking. Some say you're an even bigger prick than Zachariah. And that's the ones who like you." Ash sets another glass down with a solid thump and fills it. By the time that's accomplished, Castiel slams his now-empty glass down and Ash refills it without remark. Again, Castiel tosses back the contents of the glass, then snatches up the bottle, carrying it and the glass to a corner of the barroom. Above the table a fierce-faced young man extends a blunt middle finger into the air in a black and white poster. Castiel pulls his chair out with a vicious screech on the scarred wood floor and sits himself down.
"Nice taste," Ash says from the bar. "The man in black."
Glancing up at the poster, Castiel notes, "He's not wearing black."
Ash smirks and retrieves another bottle of Jack Daniel's from the back bar. "He will, Oscar, he will. I been to his corner of heaven. Hell, brought some of his friends around for a jam session. We passed around guitars and jars of 'shine for damn, must have been a week. That's subjective, of course. Time doesn't mean much around here, but you know that." He reaches beneath the bar and sets a clear jar onto the dark wood, then walks over to the jukebox and bangs his knee against it.
"This is impossible," Castiel says. "Humans cannot pass from their own heaven into another's."
A rough voice emerges from the machine, and Ash retrieves the jar and ambles to Castiel's table. "Impossible for most. Most people are too distracted by their own personal heaven to tinker with how shit works. Tinkering with how shit works is my heaven."
"How is it that the angels don't know that you eavesdrop on us, that you move where there is no path?"
Ash shrugs. "I've learned me some Enochian. Comes in handy. This place is covered in wards." Twisting the lid off the jar, he tips the wide rim of the jar to his lips, his Adam's apple bobbing as he takes three hearty swallows. "Damn," he says, eyes glittering, as he sets down the jar. Ash pushes the jar across the table. "Try a sip."
Castiel follows Ash's lead, but when he swallows the first mouthful, he sprays the second before him in a spluttering coughing fit. Ash relieves him of the jar before it can slip from his fingers. When he can breathe again, Castiel wheezes, "What is that?"
"Moonshine, man. Sorry, but I did say take a sip."
When the coughing subsides, Castiel wipes at the tears that have streamed from his eyes. "I like it." He reaches across the table for the jar and drains half its contents. Heat buzzing through his limbs, he reluctantly passes the moonshine back to Ash. "It's much faster than what they have at the liquor store. Why don't they sell this there?"
Ash laughs. "This stuff is home-distilled. And illegal, at least in the states."
"Why are all the best intoxicants illegal?"
"Dunno, Castiel. Maybe because the original colonies were founded by religious nuts who couldn't get along with anyone else, and they inbred once they got there. That's one of my theories. The short version." He passes the jar back to Castiel.
"Perhaps their intentions were good, but they found themselves beset on every side by those who would thwart them."
"You know what they say about good intentions."
Scowling into the liquid still remaining in the jar, Castiel says, "All was chaos among my brothers. They had prepared for war when Lucifer rose, and once he was caged once more, their bloodlust went unsatisfied. They knew our Father had ... gafiated ... and each faction tried to rise to power. When I was brought back to life and my powers more than restored, I thought it was a mandate from God, that I was meant to reestablish order." He downs another two swallows of moonshine, passing over the last ounce back to Ash. "I was as arrogant in this as Zachariah. To put it in human terms, I have blood on my hands, the blood of my brothers."
"So what now?"
"I don't know," Castiel says morosely. "The only allies I still have are those whose actions are abhorrent to me. If I choose to act without their support, I would be a target for every faction -- including that one."
Ash takes a meditative sip, then asks, "They'd be gunning for you?"
"They would. And I don't believe this time I'd merit any divine intervention. The only true ally I have is Dean Winchester, and I have neglected him even as he suffers from the loss of his brother."
Draining the last of the moonshine, Ash thumps the jar onto the table top. "Sucks to be you. More moonshine?"
"I would appreciate it."
Rising, Ash heads for the bar by way of the jukebox, striking the top with his fist and continuing on his way. The song that had been playing ceased abruptly, to be replaced with a voice growling from the garish machine without musical introduction: Take this job and shove it. I ain't workin' here no more...
Something strong gusts through him at the sound of these words. Not a sensation, exactly. He'd call it an emotion, except that's impossible. A memory. Anael's terrible scream, as if she had fallen in battle. Then, utter silence where her voice had been. A while later, a growing sense of betrayal within the garrison as those closest to her remembered bits of private conversations, revealed her undue fascination with humanity. Castiel felt that betrayal keenly, even though he had not shared the others' view that humans are hardly above the animals.
It is doubtful, he thinks sourly, that anyone would feel Castiel's loss were he to vanish from the ranks. Most were done with him long before Lucifer was stuffed back in his cage. Those who stand by his side now do so because he holds power, and the moment they see an opportunity to wrest it from him, Castiel will mean less than nothing to them. He will be stalked and felled by the sword of a brother, the blackened imprint of his wings scarring some piece of earth where he falls.
Setting the second jar before Castiel, Ash says, "It might not cure your problems, but it will render you unable to think about 'em for a while. Sometimes that's as good."
"You don't have enough."
"This is Heaven, dude. I have as much as I need."
Castiel sets about testing this assertion, impressing Ash with his monumental consumption. As Castiel waits to become sufficiently intoxicated, Ash explains the dual role of bartenders and finds himself rewarded with a litany of Castiel's failures, betrayals, manipulations. "I was arrogant enough to believe that I could not become like Zachariah, because I felt I had Heaven's best interests at heart. I believed I was the only one who did."
"That's not exactly an original sin. I had that figured out about the Baptist church I went to when I was five."
Castiel shakes his head. "I am an angel. I am not at liberty to sin."
"You think you're the only one?"
Slamming his empty jar onto the table, Castiel rises to his feet. "It does not matter what the others do. I am accountable for myself."
Slouched in his wooden chair, Ash gazes up at him, raising an eyebrow. Castiel suddenly feels foolish to be looming and shouting over a human who is so unconcerned. He stalks to the jukebox, slapping its top with an open palm, then continues on to the bar to duck behind it to rummage for the moonshine jars as Ash had.
A third voice emerges from the jukebox:
I'm going off of the deep end
And I'm slowly losing my mind
I disagree with the way I've been livin'
But I can't hold myself in line.
There is one jar, not the dozens he expects, below the bar. As Castiel thumps it on the table before Ash, he says, "The songs on that machine are annoyingly apt."
"Some days what you need is the swaggering cock-rock," Ash says, unscrewing the jar. "Others it's the misery and gin songs."
"I think I prefer nothing at all."
Ash gulps half the contents, then makes a prolonged exhalation of satisfaction. "Afraid you're in the wrong tavern for that," he says cheerfully. He sends the jar sliding across the table with a flick of his wrist. "In this joint it's 'bartender picks the music, patron shuts his cakehole.' Unless you happen to be a pretty lady, then everything's negotiable."
Scowling, Castiel regards the small amount of liquid he's left in the jar to pass back to Ash, but as the next song begins -- same voice, same sentiment -- I could quit doing wrong, start doing right. You don't care about what I think -- think I'll just stay here and drink -- he downs the last two swallows.
The jar sounds like a gunshot when Castiel slams it onto the table.
Ash only smirks. "More?"
"That's the last of it," Castiel says with satisfaction.
"There's always more." Rising, Ash traces the same path, though this time he leaves the jukebox unmolested. He disappears briefly behind the bar at the same place Castiel had been looking, yet when he emerges there's a full jar in his oddly feminine hand. "I tell you what, you've got a pretty fierce capacity for liquor there. You got a hollow wing?"
"I once drank a liquor store," Castiel says, and the pride in his voice shocks him on some level.
"No shit." He passes Castiel the jar. "Go to town." Pulling his chair around to face the opposite direction, he straddles it, folding his arms on the wooden curve of its back. "Bartenders are supposed to just listen, make a few sympathetic noises. So that's another rule I like to grind under my heel. Sounds like you have a pretty good grip on what's wrong. So what do you want to do now?"
In his thousands of years, in heaven or on earth, he cannot remember being asked this question. What are you going to do?, certainly. And What next? But never has he been asked what he wants.
Castiel closes his eyes, and for the first time he can feel the effects of the moonshine. The sensation is much like the shift of seemingly solid ground that accompanies a distant earthquake, or a minor one. He resists the impulse to open his eyes and surrenders to the strangeness instead. After a long moment, he says, "I wish to gafiate."
Rubbing his hand across the lower part of his face, Ash regards Castiel. "As in drop off the radar?"
"Yes."
"Well, it's doable, because it's been done. The question is, how? I heard all the buzz about Anna when she got her angel mojo back."
"No," Castiel says flatly, without waiting for the question Ash was about to pose. "I have no wish to have my memories erased, and falter my way through a human childhood. I can't address my failures if I wipe the slate clean. It's cowardice."
Ash purses his lips. "So Gabriel's witness protection program trick --"
"No," Castiel repeats. He hid from responsibility and caused untold suffering. "Even if it were possible for an angel of my rank, I would not go that way."
"All right, we're running low on options we know have worked, but there's other avenues to explore," Ash says. His fingers tap rapidly on the scarred tabletop, as if he's making lightning-fast calculations on some unseen machine. "Well, the first thing I should ask, human or angel? Or hell, I dunno, lichen? You're not all that different from lichen yourself, a bit of this mixed with a bit of that, and you do kinda like to eat rocks, don't you?"
"I have no idea what you're going on about."
Ash shrugs, his skinny shoulders bobbing under the frayed edges of his sleeveless shirt. "Most people don't. It's easy. Who do you want to be? How do you want to live? How long do you want to live?"
Human or angel? He recalls the last time he'd been -- well, not quite human but more so than angel. Landing with a bone jarring body slam on the deck of the shrimp boat, battered, bloody, deep cuts carved by his own hand. Getting his first real taste of pain and sorrow and regret and the certainty of death. Complete separation from his family, who had previously been present in his consciousness at all times.
"Human," he says, the word tumbling out of him quickly. He blinks in surprise at the certainty in his voice.
Ash merely smiles, as if the answer to his question was never in doubt. "All right. Give me ... ninety four hours." He pushes back his chair with a shriek of wood against wood and strides to the ungainly machine hulking on the corner of the bar.
"You know time is meaningless here. Why do you speak of hours? In this place there is nothing but now."
Reaching for a notepad and pencil, Ash scrawls a quick sketch and mathematical notation. "It's human shorthand for 'Give me a shitload of now if you want me to do this shit for you.'" He raises the lid on the machine and begins typing with his left hand as his pencil continues dancing over the paper.
Fascinated, Castiel watches for a moment. "Where do you find spare parts to build these machines?"
Without turning away from the screen or slowing his scrawling, Ash responds, "I been known to sneak into the Collyer Brothers' heaven. Now git."
"But I --"
"Ninety-four hours."
The cellphone in Castiel coat pocket chirps. Startled, he opens it and puts it to his ear. "Yes?" There is no voice, only a vaguely unpleasant tingling over his whole body before he finds himself standing in a clearing by a pond. Some yards away he sees a dock and realizes he has been in this place before, in Dean's dreams. But this time he is alone.
There is no sound but birdsong, the peeps and low groans of frogs, punctuated randomly by small splashes made by fish.
"I'll just wait here, then."
***
Despite his avowal that time has no meaning in Heaven, it does indeed seem like a shitload of now that passes before Ash retrieves him via the accursed cellphone.
Before Castiel can even adjust to the sudden change in venue -- the fact that it takes adjustment is a surprise, as he travels in a similar way all the time -- Ash is speaking, his dainty hands gesticulating. His silver skull ring appears to wink as it catches the light.
"The problem is getting you from this realm to meatspace without losing anything in the process -- except your grace. I've done plenty of screwing around moving ones and zeros from there to here -- downloaded movies and tunes and whatnot. Shoulda let you chill in my media room now that I think of it, but I was distracted from the niceties. Anyway, I've never moved any data from here to there. And shit with mass, it's pretty radical. But I had somewhere to start. I took a little hootch over to Albert's place to talk about all this, and we kinda knocked together an idea."
With that, Ash seizes Castiel by the sleeve and pulls him toward his computer, one keystroke making an image resolve from the blackened screen. "This is the model we came up with. If E equals --"
"I have no wish to spend another shitload of now on the mathematics," Castiel growls. "Can you do it?"
Affronted, Ash pauses with a hand in midair. "I'm pretty sure."
"Is that the best you can offer?"
"Considering that it should be impossible, yeah. At the risk of being too technical for your big-ass hurry, what we'll do is translate your grace to data, then your memories and personality. We send your vessel to earth, then beam the data package you want. I can keep your grace here with heavy duty encryption and an assload of wards and sigils. I'm totally off the radar, so it should be safe from your enemies."
The thought of his grace being under attack, even as Ash dismisses it, gives Castiel a pang. It is not valueless, despite his eagerness to cast it off. But the things he has done to maintain his office, to establish control and keep it, have tarnished his grace. Castiel is by no means alone in this, but he is the only one who seems to care. Perhaps it is better in Ash's safekeeping than in his own.
"Havin' second thoughts?" Ash inquires.
"No."
"You might want to. I can't exactly test this out. There's no way to be certain you'll get exactly where I mean for you to go, or that the data package winds up where I aim it. Something could always go wrong, and the data could be corrupted."
This prompts a bitter laugh from Castiel.
"It's a little less hilarious than it sounds. I'll keep a couple of backup copies here and I'll try to monitor you, but as long as we're dealing with the spirit world to meatspace interface, it's tricky."
It's curious, Castiel thinks, that Ash and the Winchesters alike refer to human beings as meat. It seems little better than Uriel's dismissal of their worth. Castiel himself has been less appreciative of Jimmy Novak's sacrifice of his earthly form as he should be.
"My vessel," he says. "Could this procedure damage it?"
The corner of Ash's mouth quirks downward. "That's another clause in the 'Shit can always go wrong' informed consent document."
What are his choices? To stay here and continue to corrupt himself in the service of a Father who doesn't care, or take such risks that even a man as brilliant and cocksure as Ash feels he must enumerate them. There's only one choice, uncertain as it is. "When can we do this?"
"Any time you're ready." Ash looks almost psychotically happy to be conducting an experiment of which he doesn't already know the outcome.
Castiel nods gravely. "Now."
"**
If he were to tear away his grace on his own, as Anael had, he would have to be in his true form. But the translation of his grace into zeros and ones requires it to be extracted from his vessel by machine, hulking and ungainly, of Ash's recent invention.
At Castiel's request the jukebox is silent. He can't imagine what song could perfectly sum up getting his grace ripped away and then being blown to the winds like dandelion fluff, but he's certain Ash owns at least one.
"What we're doin' is 112 kinds of impossible," Ash says, "but I'm as certain as I have any right to be that this is gonna work. Hell, gettin' bit eighteen times handlin' rattlesnakes without dying should be impossible too, but all things are possible to him that believeth, am I right?"
Ash does not seem to require an answer, so Castiel watches his fingers dance over the keyboard of his computer. There's a large hypodermic needle on the bar next to a bottle of beer; in it resides a microchip no bigger than a grain of rice, engraved with Enochian wards to keep Castiel flying under the radar, as Ash puts it. This is also the destination for the data packet Ash will transmit once Castiel has fallen to earth.
"Try and relax," Ash tells him, jabbing him at the base of his skull with the needle. "Here goes."
Then everything is blinding light and searing pain, then utter dark and stifling nothingness.
***
Chapter 2 is here
title: A Road That Runs Both Ways
author:nwhepcat
fandom: Supernatural, pre-S6
genre: gen
characters: Castiel, Ash, Dean, Lisa, Ben
rating: R
summary: A snake-handling physicist and an angel find themselves in a bar in Heaven.... Some say you're an even bigger prick than Zachariah. And that's the ones who like you.
Castiel stands in the doorway of the hospital room, eyes on Jimmy Novak. He holds a bundle in his arms, a blanket-swaddled baby, as his wife sleeps. Castiel finds he cannot look away from Jimmy's face. In all his thousands of years, his handful of months walking among humankind, he has not seen anything like the joy in this man's expression. It casts a light so bright that Castiel has to turn his face away.
Without warning, the light extinguishes, leaving only the harsh illumination of the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling.
"You're not welcome here." Jimmy's voice is harsh, implacable.
Hesitantly, Castiel takes a step forward, halting as Jimmy gets to his feet. "I require --" He stops, drawing in a breath before trying again. "I've come to ask your help."
A harsh laugh bursts out of Jimmy, but there's no humor in it. "You want something from me? Fuck off, Castiel." Suddenly the child is no longer in Jimmy's arms, there's no bed with a napping young woman. The room itself has vanished, leaving only the unforgiving glare of the fluorescent lights in a sterile white space.
In the blink of an eye, Jimmy is upon him, fists lashing out, catching Castiel on his cheek and temple. Staggering back, Castiel realizes his mistake: He has come to this corner of Heaven thoughtlessly wearing the likeness of his earthly vessel.
He should have known better.
One final blow causes him to stumble back, tripping over his own feet. When he falls, it's not on the hard tile floor of the sterile emptiness he'd just occupied, but on rough black asphalt. It is a moonless night, yet the stars are cloaked by clouds or something else. As Castiel's eyes adapt to the darkness to some degree, he makes out hulking black shapes of trees. Pacing the asphalt surface to determine its boundaries, he quickly discovers his first impression was true -- he is on a road, what Dean calls two-lane blacktop.
If he's not mistaken, Castiel has discovered the Axis Mundi, but not his own manifestation. It is the Winchesters' version. How is he to find his way if he has no reference points? (And why is he here? He had no conscious desire to seek the Garden.)
He stops his restless movements, stilling himself to take in any details in the dark that might offer him a hint which direction he should take.
It's difficult to compose himself, to clear the agitated thoughts spilling over into a confused tangle. Echoes of screams, afterimages of light pouring forth from his dying brothers. Blood on his hands, Dean Winchester would call it, but of course there is no literal blood.
This time the thought of Dean triggers a memory that does provide a connection to this blustery roadside. I'll just wait here, he'd told Dean the night Zachariah had shoved Dean into a vision of the future.
Remembering Dean's warm hand on his shoulder, his fervent Don't ever change, Castiel is buffeted by a wave of shame and despair. He has changed, and not for the better.
He slips his hand into the pocket of his trenchcoat, hoping the cellphone is still there. The instant his fingers touch it, it erupts in the ringtone Dean had set up to replace the factory setting: Angel Is a Centerfold.
"Dean?"
"Waiting is thirsty work, my man." The voice is unfamiliar, higher in pitch, with a drawl unlike Dean's speech. "Well, not technically, but 'my angel' sounds pretty gay. Not that I mean that as any kind of slur, just ... that's not me."
"Who are you?" Castiel demands, using the human equivalent of the voice that has made him feared in some quarters of Heaven.
The voice at the end of the line betrays no apprehension. "Why don't you come out my way and we can have a little powwow."
Castiel sees nothing but the black ribbon of road stretching before him and the looming figures of the trees. "How do--"
"Energize."
An unpleasant tingling spreads from the hand that holds the phone, up through his arm and to the rest of his limbs. With no further warning, Castiel finds himself in a shabby building, blinking in the sudden light, even though it's fairly dim.
When his eyes adjust, Castiel sees that he's in a tavern, perhaps a step lower than the sort Dean usually frequents. On the bar is a machine bristling with wires and clamps and blinking lights, and behind this strange console stands a man in a shirt whose sleeves have been shorn off--unlike his hair, which hangs past his shoulders.
"Always knew I could do that, if I had me some copper, alligator clips and a wad of chewing gum," says the man, whose features bear a passing resemblance to a rodent.
"Your ideal Heaven is hardware and chewing gum?" Castiel asks, incredulous.
"That and some pretty girls, a good jukebox and plenty of PBR." The rat-faced man thrusts out a hand whose nails seem surprisingly well manicured "Name's Ash."
"Castiel."
"Yeah, I know. I've been hearing about you. Like a brewski?"
"No. How do you know of me?"
Ash gestures to another dubious looking piece of machinery. "Angel radio. It's a little like a police scanner, but the problems are on a much higher plane."
"You have been listening to the communications of my brothers?"
Raising an eyebrow, Ash says, "Your brothers, your sisters. You." He retrieves a can of beer from a glass-fronted case behind the bar. "If you don't mind."
It's not the liberty regarding the beer that sends righteous rage spilling over, sending physical reactions throughout this body that, here, is nothing more than an illusion. "How dare you spy on the communications of God's messengers?" If this were the earth, Castiel would flick a finger, and Ash would in an instant (an eternity of blinding pain) be nothing more than a literal representation of his name.
Ash returns his gaze, completely unconcerned. Not even Dean could attain this level of unflappability, not even as a pretense.
"Y'all have a lot to say for messengers of a god who's gafiated." At Castiel's piercing look of angry incomprehension, Ash sighs, adding, "Gafiate. Getting Away From It All. So what brings you to my neck of the woods?"
"You did."
"You were hanging around already. Maybe I'm too curious for my own good, but I've gotta wonder."
Seized by an impulse, Castiel asks, "Do you have anything stronger than beer?"
"That I do, my man." Ash turns to the back bar and retrieves a bottle of Jack Daniel's. He pours two fingers into a squat glass shaped vaguely like a barrel.
"Leave the bottle." When Ash sets the square bottle beside the glass, Castiel picks it up and pours until the glass is nearly full. "What do they say about me?"
"Depends who's talking. Some say you're an even bigger prick than Zachariah. And that's the ones who like you." Ash sets another glass down with a solid thump and fills it. By the time that's accomplished, Castiel slams his now-empty glass down and Ash refills it without remark. Again, Castiel tosses back the contents of the glass, then snatches up the bottle, carrying it and the glass to a corner of the barroom. Above the table a fierce-faced young man extends a blunt middle finger into the air in a black and white poster. Castiel pulls his chair out with a vicious screech on the scarred wood floor and sits himself down.
"Nice taste," Ash says from the bar. "The man in black."
Glancing up at the poster, Castiel notes, "He's not wearing black."
Ash smirks and retrieves another bottle of Jack Daniel's from the back bar. "He will, Oscar, he will. I been to his corner of heaven. Hell, brought some of his friends around for a jam session. We passed around guitars and jars of 'shine for damn, must have been a week. That's subjective, of course. Time doesn't mean much around here, but you know that." He reaches beneath the bar and sets a clear jar onto the dark wood, then walks over to the jukebox and bangs his knee against it.
"This is impossible," Castiel says. "Humans cannot pass from their own heaven into another's."
A rough voice emerges from the machine, and Ash retrieves the jar and ambles to Castiel's table. "Impossible for most. Most people are too distracted by their own personal heaven to tinker with how shit works. Tinkering with how shit works is my heaven."
"How is it that the angels don't know that you eavesdrop on us, that you move where there is no path?"
Ash shrugs. "I've learned me some Enochian. Comes in handy. This place is covered in wards." Twisting the lid off the jar, he tips the wide rim of the jar to his lips, his Adam's apple bobbing as he takes three hearty swallows. "Damn," he says, eyes glittering, as he sets down the jar. Ash pushes the jar across the table. "Try a sip."
Castiel follows Ash's lead, but when he swallows the first mouthful, he sprays the second before him in a spluttering coughing fit. Ash relieves him of the jar before it can slip from his fingers. When he can breathe again, Castiel wheezes, "What is that?"
"Moonshine, man. Sorry, but I did say take a sip."
When the coughing subsides, Castiel wipes at the tears that have streamed from his eyes. "I like it." He reaches across the table for the jar and drains half its contents. Heat buzzing through his limbs, he reluctantly passes the moonshine back to Ash. "It's much faster than what they have at the liquor store. Why don't they sell this there?"
Ash laughs. "This stuff is home-distilled. And illegal, at least in the states."
"Why are all the best intoxicants illegal?"
"Dunno, Castiel. Maybe because the original colonies were founded by religious nuts who couldn't get along with anyone else, and they inbred once they got there. That's one of my theories. The short version." He passes the jar back to Castiel.
"Perhaps their intentions were good, but they found themselves beset on every side by those who would thwart them."
"You know what they say about good intentions."
Scowling into the liquid still remaining in the jar, Castiel says, "All was chaos among my brothers. They had prepared for war when Lucifer rose, and once he was caged once more, their bloodlust went unsatisfied. They knew our Father had ... gafiated ... and each faction tried to rise to power. When I was brought back to life and my powers more than restored, I thought it was a mandate from God, that I was meant to reestablish order." He downs another two swallows of moonshine, passing over the last ounce back to Ash. "I was as arrogant in this as Zachariah. To put it in human terms, I have blood on my hands, the blood of my brothers."
"So what now?"
"I don't know," Castiel says morosely. "The only allies I still have are those whose actions are abhorrent to me. If I choose to act without their support, I would be a target for every faction -- including that one."
Ash takes a meditative sip, then asks, "They'd be gunning for you?"
"They would. And I don't believe this time I'd merit any divine intervention. The only true ally I have is Dean Winchester, and I have neglected him even as he suffers from the loss of his brother."
Draining the last of the moonshine, Ash thumps the jar onto the table top. "Sucks to be you. More moonshine?"
"I would appreciate it."
Rising, Ash heads for the bar by way of the jukebox, striking the top with his fist and continuing on his way. The song that had been playing ceased abruptly, to be replaced with a voice growling from the garish machine without musical introduction: Take this job and shove it. I ain't workin' here no more...
Something strong gusts through him at the sound of these words. Not a sensation, exactly. He'd call it an emotion, except that's impossible. A memory. Anael's terrible scream, as if she had fallen in battle. Then, utter silence where her voice had been. A while later, a growing sense of betrayal within the garrison as those closest to her remembered bits of private conversations, revealed her undue fascination with humanity. Castiel felt that betrayal keenly, even though he had not shared the others' view that humans are hardly above the animals.
It is doubtful, he thinks sourly, that anyone would feel Castiel's loss were he to vanish from the ranks. Most were done with him long before Lucifer was stuffed back in his cage. Those who stand by his side now do so because he holds power, and the moment they see an opportunity to wrest it from him, Castiel will mean less than nothing to them. He will be stalked and felled by the sword of a brother, the blackened imprint of his wings scarring some piece of earth where he falls.
Setting the second jar before Castiel, Ash says, "It might not cure your problems, but it will render you unable to think about 'em for a while. Sometimes that's as good."
"You don't have enough."
"This is Heaven, dude. I have as much as I need."
Castiel sets about testing this assertion, impressing Ash with his monumental consumption. As Castiel waits to become sufficiently intoxicated, Ash explains the dual role of bartenders and finds himself rewarded with a litany of Castiel's failures, betrayals, manipulations. "I was arrogant enough to believe that I could not become like Zachariah, because I felt I had Heaven's best interests at heart. I believed I was the only one who did."
"That's not exactly an original sin. I had that figured out about the Baptist church I went to when I was five."
Castiel shakes his head. "I am an angel. I am not at liberty to sin."
"You think you're the only one?"
Slamming his empty jar onto the table, Castiel rises to his feet. "It does not matter what the others do. I am accountable for myself."
Slouched in his wooden chair, Ash gazes up at him, raising an eyebrow. Castiel suddenly feels foolish to be looming and shouting over a human who is so unconcerned. He stalks to the jukebox, slapping its top with an open palm, then continues on to the bar to duck behind it to rummage for the moonshine jars as Ash had.
A third voice emerges from the jukebox:
I'm going off of the deep end
And I'm slowly losing my mind
I disagree with the way I've been livin'
But I can't hold myself in line.
There is one jar, not the dozens he expects, below the bar. As Castiel thumps it on the table before Ash, he says, "The songs on that machine are annoyingly apt."
"Some days what you need is the swaggering cock-rock," Ash says, unscrewing the jar. "Others it's the misery and gin songs."
"I think I prefer nothing at all."
Ash gulps half the contents, then makes a prolonged exhalation of satisfaction. "Afraid you're in the wrong tavern for that," he says cheerfully. He sends the jar sliding across the table with a flick of his wrist. "In this joint it's 'bartender picks the music, patron shuts his cakehole.' Unless you happen to be a pretty lady, then everything's negotiable."
Scowling, Castiel regards the small amount of liquid he's left in the jar to pass back to Ash, but as the next song begins -- same voice, same sentiment -- I could quit doing wrong, start doing right. You don't care about what I think -- think I'll just stay here and drink -- he downs the last two swallows.
The jar sounds like a gunshot when Castiel slams it onto the table.
Ash only smirks. "More?"
"That's the last of it," Castiel says with satisfaction.
"There's always more." Rising, Ash traces the same path, though this time he leaves the jukebox unmolested. He disappears briefly behind the bar at the same place Castiel had been looking, yet when he emerges there's a full jar in his oddly feminine hand. "I tell you what, you've got a pretty fierce capacity for liquor there. You got a hollow wing?"
"I once drank a liquor store," Castiel says, and the pride in his voice shocks him on some level.
"No shit." He passes Castiel the jar. "Go to town." Pulling his chair around to face the opposite direction, he straddles it, folding his arms on the wooden curve of its back. "Bartenders are supposed to just listen, make a few sympathetic noises. So that's another rule I like to grind under my heel. Sounds like you have a pretty good grip on what's wrong. So what do you want to do now?"
In his thousands of years, in heaven or on earth, he cannot remember being asked this question. What are you going to do?, certainly. And What next? But never has he been asked what he wants.
Castiel closes his eyes, and for the first time he can feel the effects of the moonshine. The sensation is much like the shift of seemingly solid ground that accompanies a distant earthquake, or a minor one. He resists the impulse to open his eyes and surrenders to the strangeness instead. After a long moment, he says, "I wish to gafiate."
Rubbing his hand across the lower part of his face, Ash regards Castiel. "As in drop off the radar?"
"Yes."
"Well, it's doable, because it's been done. The question is, how? I heard all the buzz about Anna when she got her angel mojo back."
"No," Castiel says flatly, without waiting for the question Ash was about to pose. "I have no wish to have my memories erased, and falter my way through a human childhood. I can't address my failures if I wipe the slate clean. It's cowardice."
Ash purses his lips. "So Gabriel's witness protection program trick --"
"No," Castiel repeats. He hid from responsibility and caused untold suffering. "Even if it were possible for an angel of my rank, I would not go that way."
"All right, we're running low on options we know have worked, but there's other avenues to explore," Ash says. His fingers tap rapidly on the scarred tabletop, as if he's making lightning-fast calculations on some unseen machine. "Well, the first thing I should ask, human or angel? Or hell, I dunno, lichen? You're not all that different from lichen yourself, a bit of this mixed with a bit of that, and you do kinda like to eat rocks, don't you?"
"I have no idea what you're going on about."
Ash shrugs, his skinny shoulders bobbing under the frayed edges of his sleeveless shirt. "Most people don't. It's easy. Who do you want to be? How do you want to live? How long do you want to live?"
Human or angel? He recalls the last time he'd been -- well, not quite human but more so than angel. Landing with a bone jarring body slam on the deck of the shrimp boat, battered, bloody, deep cuts carved by his own hand. Getting his first real taste of pain and sorrow and regret and the certainty of death. Complete separation from his family, who had previously been present in his consciousness at all times.
"Human," he says, the word tumbling out of him quickly. He blinks in surprise at the certainty in his voice.
Ash merely smiles, as if the answer to his question was never in doubt. "All right. Give me ... ninety four hours." He pushes back his chair with a shriek of wood against wood and strides to the ungainly machine hulking on the corner of the bar.
"You know time is meaningless here. Why do you speak of hours? In this place there is nothing but now."
Reaching for a notepad and pencil, Ash scrawls a quick sketch and mathematical notation. "It's human shorthand for 'Give me a shitload of now if you want me to do this shit for you.'" He raises the lid on the machine and begins typing with his left hand as his pencil continues dancing over the paper.
Fascinated, Castiel watches for a moment. "Where do you find spare parts to build these machines?"
Without turning away from the screen or slowing his scrawling, Ash responds, "I been known to sneak into the Collyer Brothers' heaven. Now git."
"But I --"
"Ninety-four hours."
The cellphone in Castiel coat pocket chirps. Startled, he opens it and puts it to his ear. "Yes?" There is no voice, only a vaguely unpleasant tingling over his whole body before he finds himself standing in a clearing by a pond. Some yards away he sees a dock and realizes he has been in this place before, in Dean's dreams. But this time he is alone.
There is no sound but birdsong, the peeps and low groans of frogs, punctuated randomly by small splashes made by fish.
"I'll just wait here, then."
***
Despite his avowal that time has no meaning in Heaven, it does indeed seem like a shitload of now that passes before Ash retrieves him via the accursed cellphone.
Before Castiel can even adjust to the sudden change in venue -- the fact that it takes adjustment is a surprise, as he travels in a similar way all the time -- Ash is speaking, his dainty hands gesticulating. His silver skull ring appears to wink as it catches the light.
"The problem is getting you from this realm to meatspace without losing anything in the process -- except your grace. I've done plenty of screwing around moving ones and zeros from there to here -- downloaded movies and tunes and whatnot. Shoulda let you chill in my media room now that I think of it, but I was distracted from the niceties. Anyway, I've never moved any data from here to there. And shit with mass, it's pretty radical. But I had somewhere to start. I took a little hootch over to Albert's place to talk about all this, and we kinda knocked together an idea."
With that, Ash seizes Castiel by the sleeve and pulls him toward his computer, one keystroke making an image resolve from the blackened screen. "This is the model we came up with. If E equals --"
"I have no wish to spend another shitload of now on the mathematics," Castiel growls. "Can you do it?"
Affronted, Ash pauses with a hand in midair. "I'm pretty sure."
"Is that the best you can offer?"
"Considering that it should be impossible, yeah. At the risk of being too technical for your big-ass hurry, what we'll do is translate your grace to data, then your memories and personality. We send your vessel to earth, then beam the data package you want. I can keep your grace here with heavy duty encryption and an assload of wards and sigils. I'm totally off the radar, so it should be safe from your enemies."
The thought of his grace being under attack, even as Ash dismisses it, gives Castiel a pang. It is not valueless, despite his eagerness to cast it off. But the things he has done to maintain his office, to establish control and keep it, have tarnished his grace. Castiel is by no means alone in this, but he is the only one who seems to care. Perhaps it is better in Ash's safekeeping than in his own.
"Havin' second thoughts?" Ash inquires.
"No."
"You might want to. I can't exactly test this out. There's no way to be certain you'll get exactly where I mean for you to go, or that the data package winds up where I aim it. Something could always go wrong, and the data could be corrupted."
This prompts a bitter laugh from Castiel.
"It's a little less hilarious than it sounds. I'll keep a couple of backup copies here and I'll try to monitor you, but as long as we're dealing with the spirit world to meatspace interface, it's tricky."
It's curious, Castiel thinks, that Ash and the Winchesters alike refer to human beings as meat. It seems little better than Uriel's dismissal of their worth. Castiel himself has been less appreciative of Jimmy Novak's sacrifice of his earthly form as he should be.
"My vessel," he says. "Could this procedure damage it?"
The corner of Ash's mouth quirks downward. "That's another clause in the 'Shit can always go wrong' informed consent document."
What are his choices? To stay here and continue to corrupt himself in the service of a Father who doesn't care, or take such risks that even a man as brilliant and cocksure as Ash feels he must enumerate them. There's only one choice, uncertain as it is. "When can we do this?"
"Any time you're ready." Ash looks almost psychotically happy to be conducting an experiment of which he doesn't already know the outcome.
Castiel nods gravely. "Now."
"**
If he were to tear away his grace on his own, as Anael had, he would have to be in his true form. But the translation of his grace into zeros and ones requires it to be extracted from his vessel by machine, hulking and ungainly, of Ash's recent invention.
At Castiel's request the jukebox is silent. He can't imagine what song could perfectly sum up getting his grace ripped away and then being blown to the winds like dandelion fluff, but he's certain Ash owns at least one.
"What we're doin' is 112 kinds of impossible," Ash says, "but I'm as certain as I have any right to be that this is gonna work. Hell, gettin' bit eighteen times handlin' rattlesnakes without dying should be impossible too, but all things are possible to him that believeth, am I right?"
Ash does not seem to require an answer, so Castiel watches his fingers dance over the keyboard of his computer. There's a large hypodermic needle on the bar next to a bottle of beer; in it resides a microchip no bigger than a grain of rice, engraved with Enochian wards to keep Castiel flying under the radar, as Ash puts it. This is also the destination for the data packet Ash will transmit once Castiel has fallen to earth.
"Try and relax," Ash tells him, jabbing him at the base of his skull with the needle. "Here goes."
Then everything is blinding light and searing pain, then utter dark and stifling nothingness.
***
Chapter 2 is here