The Hawk Must Fly (6/?)
Title: The Hawk Must Fly (6/?)
Author: Parallel Monsoon
Rating: Adult
Genre and/or Pairing: eventual Dean/Castiel, Sam/Gabriel, light Castiel/Gabriel
Spoilers: up to 5x19 and AU past that point
Warnings: heavy on the angst, pairings but little romance
Word Count: wip
Summary: My fix for 5x19 and covering through the season finale. Castiel was chosen to raise the righteous man from perdition on the basis of one thing alone. He is a creature of the air, made for flight above all else, and when Dean takes that from him the grief is crushing. Gabriel opens Dean's eyes to all that Castiel has lost on his behalf, but it may be too late to make a difference.
He tumbled down, windblown and breathless, high above the patchwork earth.
It should have terrified him, to fall from height, the promise of a death that could not be grappled or bargained off. Instead he smiled as he fell, for he knew the ground would not have him this day. His wings were strong and with them he could fly close to the sun without fear. All he need do was open them wide and take this formless place and its currents for his own.
Dean woke in slow stages, grasping after the last fading wisps of his dream. Mere flashes remained, white clouds against a backdrop of blue sky, but the euphoria of freedom lingered, making his heart leap against its latticework cage.
He sighed without opening his eyes, feeling himself return heavy to his body. Its myriad compliments helped further ground him, the joints of his neck throbbing heavy like a rotten tooth.
When he did open his eyes light lanced them, what had been the threat of a headache flaring to brutal life at the assault. And he realized that light meant dawn and failure in his self-appointed mission to watch over Castiel through the long hours of the night.
His neck cracked when he jerked his head around to stare at the bed. He half-expected to find a corpse splayed out beneath the sheets, but what he did see scarcely lessened his concern.
Castiel, awake and staring back, cradling a limp Gabriel against his side. The archangel's own eyes open but glassy, the pupils blown wide, emptied of history and power.
"What the fu…"
"Hush," Castiel admonished, "He needs to rest."
"That's sleep?" Dean asked. He had never seen Castiel do anything of the sort, had only witnessed the angel still when he had been injured (and he tried hard not to think of Castiel left behind in the past, vulnerable and bleeding, battered once again by their expectations.)
"Of a kind. He's gone inside. It's something we only dare do in the company of those we trust."
Well, that answered that question. The way Castiel looked down at the archangel with affection and quiet pride made Dean want to shout, do something, anything, to rouse Gabriel from his mockery of slumber. "You two seem awfully chummy considering he chucked you into a wall last time around."
"I forgive him," Castiel said, as if things could be that simple, that easy.
Dean pushed his irritation aside and leaned forward to feel Novak's forehead. The skin was still heated, leaving a slick of sweat across Dean's fingertips. He busied himself with fetching a fresh bag of fluids to replace the one that hung deflated from the bedpost. Here was something he could do that Gabriel could not, for what little it meant to the angel inside the vessel.
"Is Jimmy still in there?"
"No."
There was a wealth of sorrow in that single word, a loss gone too long unmourned. Dean wondered if Gabriel felt anything for the man he rode, if in the long millennia of the archangel's life he had ever given his vessel the chance to rise and rethink prayers answered by a Trickster God.
He knew Castiel better than he ever had, through memories shared and dreams of flight, but he still understood so little of angels. He had wanted to remake Castiel in the image of mankind, to reduce him in stature and strip away his shield of holiness.
He had even dared to compare the angel's faith in his Father to Dean's own. But Dean had always known his father for a man, capable of cruelty in word and deed equal to the good he wrought. He had loved him, admired him, but he had not worshipped him.
And if Castiel had answered the call, had become something both and less than what he had been, that was by his own strength and not Dean's own. Of all of them the angel had shown the most ability to change, to walk a new path while Dean himself dug in his heels, clinging to old thoughts and stale habits.
These words and more were heavy on his tongue, but what escaped was simply "Castiel."
Just a name, three syllables, but carrying an acknowledgment that Dean had no right to the familiar.
Castiel's hand touched him own, stilling his almost frantic fussing with the IV line. The angel looked at him, looked through him, as he had that first night, when he had told Dean his path had been chosen for him and expected of Dean to rejoice.
But there was new wisdom there, in the blue Grace behind blue eyes, and Dean submitted to it. Bowed low his head, as he had not done when faced with an archangel's fury.
"I'm sorry," he said, and here were words after all, apologies vomited up without control. "For the banishing trick most of all. But also for…for asking so much, and giving back so fucking little."
The angel's hand settled against his cheek, transfixing him in place and forcing him to meet that unblinking gaze. He could still see the predator there, the bird of prey he knew Castiel to be, but a strange peace had softened the soldier's thousand yard stare.
"I forgive you too."
But Dean growled, shook off that hand, shook off the unexpected and unwelcome absolution. "Bullshit," he said, voice still pitched low, not for Gabriel's sake but in deference to Castiel's desire to protect the archangel. "I hurt you."
"You did," Castiel said, "That is what I am forgiving."
His face was impassive; his voice so serene and controlled that it was all Dean could do not to shake him. Whatever else Castiel had become, he was not Christ, capable of turning the other cheek against the harshest of insults.
"I blew you back to Heaven. I asked you to kill your brothers to protect mine. I had you put your faith in me and failed at every turn." Dean's voice broke with the effort of keeping to a whisper, grinding rough across the words. "I took your wing."
It took the last to get a reaction. Castiel stiffened, something dangerous and bright sparking in his eyes. "We burned it, Gabriel and I, consigned it to ash and smoke. I feel it still, a phantom weight at my back, and without it I do not believe I will ever find my balance."
Had Dean thought honesty would hurt less than false peace? The confession was a shiv to the heart, slipping under his guard and sliding in deep. He closed his eyes against the pain and resting his head against closed fists in parody of prayer.
"Dean."
So soft, so gentle, a parent coaxing a child. Dean shook his head, refusing to be comforted.
"No, Castiel. Don't you dare sit there and pretend I didn't fuck up six ways to Sunday. I may not know much, but I damn well know that forgiveness requires penance. I don't want to ask anything else, but I'm going to ask that. Let me earn it."
Silence. Long enough for Dean to grow restless, to slit open his eyes and peer up through his lashes.
Blue captured him, not the blue of Novak's eyes but the impossible, searing blue of Grace unfolding. It should have melted his orbs from their sockets, to see Castiel as he was, one winged but still so very beautiful.
"You said you asked much and returned little," Castiel said and Dean heard the song beneath the words, also blue and holding within itself the whole of the sky. "You gave me questions, Dean. Questions that needed asking. You gave me truth and the courage to face it. You gave to me my brother and returned the road I had forgotten.
For all that I have lost, I thank you for these things."
The vision faded and there was only Cas, ducking his head to capture Dean's lowered gaze, as Dean had done when he pleaded with the angel in Heaven's prison. "Have you lost nothing in this war, Dean? Have you gained nothing in return?"
Dean looked at Gabriel, still lost inside, wherever that might be, and thought of trust strained and twisted. Trust in Sam, but also trust in himself, in his ability to make the right choices, to stand fast against temptation and the easy way out.
And he thought of trust found, in an angel that had started off the enemy and had become that rarest of all things, a friend.
Castiel reached out again and this time Dean did not pull back, letting the angel cup his cheek. "Do not ask of me to hate you. Not now. I am angry, I am wounded, but I cannot hate you."
"Yeah, okay. I hear ya, man. But just…knock it off with the peace and love shit, okay? If you want to kick my ass, do it. Anytime."
Castiel's thumb brushed over his cheekbone before the angel withdrew. "Very well. But for now, we must speak of what to do next. Lucifer is angered and we must strike before he does."
The shift in topic caught Dean off guard and he fumbled before replying. "Gabriel?" he asked.
Castiel's arm tightened around the archangel. The jostling brought Gabriel sharply back to himself, life and power surging into his empty eyes. Dean had not sensed the loss of energy in the room until it came flooding back, raising the tiny hairs at the nape of his neck.
"No," Castiel said to them both, "Never again."
"He's right. I am the best bet we have." Gabriel settled into the conversation as if he'd been a part of it from the start, making Dean flush at the realization his discussion with Castiel had been overhead. "I hesitated last time. I won't make the same mistake twice."
Gabriel made no attempt to separate himself from the lesser angel's hold, if anything pressed closer. Such open acceptance of comfort and support felt like an affront to Dean, made him draw back all the more to balance some unconscious scale.
"No," Castiel said again, and there was strength and assurance in his voice that hadn't been there in too long. "We cannot win this battle with a show of strength. There's another way, one I should have seen from the start."
He gestured toward the only wall free of doors and windows. A spiraling pattern appeared, weak and flickering at first, then bursting into brilliant life when Gabriel caught on and clicked his fingers.
"The final seal?" the archangel asked.
"The key," Castiel agreed.
"Okay, you're losing me," Dean said, "I know that's Enochian, but you're saying that's what sprung Lucifer when Lilith died, right?"
He carefully did not say when Sam killed her, but the way Gabriel rolled his eyes made it clear nothing had been forgotten. Castiel ignored the interplay, nodding in answer to Dean's question.
"With hooks they captured him and with chains they tethered him to the walls of the prison, deep below the crust of the earth. For God spared not the angels that sinned but cast them down, to be held fast until the day of final judgment."
Castiel spoke slowly, the story refined through long years of telling into the cadence of poetry.
"They locked the cage with seals 600. And the last was writ in the sigils of righteousness and justice, but also in servant and sacrifice. A key, where might have been a solid door, but they questioned not why. For their Father's ways were mysterious to men and angels alike, his Word of truth and glory."
He held up two fingers and Dean leaned into them without qualm, accepting the hard press against his temple. Power arched between them, making Dean gasp in something between pleasure and pain.
And the glyphs on the wall came suddenly clear, the pattern fine and complicated. Dean saw where the seal was meant to be broken, by the blood of a demon willfully and joyfully given in service to a greater cause.
And he saw too where a change could be made, a single substitution enough to close what had been opened.
"Oh, fuck no!"
Dean's curse blended with Gabriel's, brought them together in protest. Castiel smiled at them both, smiled, damn him, sweet and natural, as if he had settled into his shell of flesh at last.
"Do not deny me this," he said, "There is no other way, and even if there were nothing would change for me in the aftermath. Without my wings I am as an ant upon the earth and they would harry me across it until the end of my days. Let me do this thing and spare my kin the seeking of vengeance."
"I can hide you." Gabriel spoke over the tail end of Castiel's plea, raising his voice as if he could deny the plan by drowning it out. "If I do nothing else well, I do that."
"They'll need you, after. It will be on you to wrest control from Michael and bring peace to Heaven."
Dean cursed himself for sleeping, for giving Castiel time to consider their arguments and prepare his defense. What he had mistaken for tranquility in Castiel's eyes had been instead the last stage of grief, his seeming forgiveness of Dean's crimes against him just another way of saying goodbye. He felt himself in freefall and this time he had no promise of wings to catch him and bear him high.
"Castiel, Cas, I…"
And even now there were words he could not say, thick, sticky words that caught in his throat and deepened his voice to an animal sound. He lurched forward instead, butting his forehead against the angel's, a violent offer so that Castiel might absorb those things he dared not speak, so that the angel might have a reason to stay.
Now it was Castiel who drew back, holding Dean at distance with a shake of his head.
"I know, Dean."
And Dean shuddered because he knew what came next, what always came next when he gave up himself.
"But it isn't enough."
Author: Parallel Monsoon
Rating: Adult
Genre and/or Pairing: eventual Dean/Castiel, Sam/Gabriel, light Castiel/Gabriel
Spoilers: up to 5x19 and AU past that point
Warnings: heavy on the angst, pairings but little romance
Word Count: wip
Summary: My fix for 5x19 and covering through the season finale. Castiel was chosen to raise the righteous man from perdition on the basis of one thing alone. He is a creature of the air, made for flight above all else, and when Dean takes that from him the grief is crushing. Gabriel opens Dean's eyes to all that Castiel has lost on his behalf, but it may be too late to make a difference.
He tumbled down, windblown and breathless, high above the patchwork earth.
It should have terrified him, to fall from height, the promise of a death that could not be grappled or bargained off. Instead he smiled as he fell, for he knew the ground would not have him this day. His wings were strong and with them he could fly close to the sun without fear. All he need do was open them wide and take this formless place and its currents for his own.
Dean woke in slow stages, grasping after the last fading wisps of his dream. Mere flashes remained, white clouds against a backdrop of blue sky, but the euphoria of freedom lingered, making his heart leap against its latticework cage.
He sighed without opening his eyes, feeling himself return heavy to his body. Its myriad compliments helped further ground him, the joints of his neck throbbing heavy like a rotten tooth.
When he did open his eyes light lanced them, what had been the threat of a headache flaring to brutal life at the assault. And he realized that light meant dawn and failure in his self-appointed mission to watch over Castiel through the long hours of the night.
His neck cracked when he jerked his head around to stare at the bed. He half-expected to find a corpse splayed out beneath the sheets, but what he did see scarcely lessened his concern.
Castiel, awake and staring back, cradling a limp Gabriel against his side. The archangel's own eyes open but glassy, the pupils blown wide, emptied of history and power.
"What the fu…"
"Hush," Castiel admonished, "He needs to rest."
"That's sleep?" Dean asked. He had never seen Castiel do anything of the sort, had only witnessed the angel still when he had been injured (and he tried hard not to think of Castiel left behind in the past, vulnerable and bleeding, battered once again by their expectations.)
"Of a kind. He's gone inside. It's something we only dare do in the company of those we trust."
Well, that answered that question. The way Castiel looked down at the archangel with affection and quiet pride made Dean want to shout, do something, anything, to rouse Gabriel from his mockery of slumber. "You two seem awfully chummy considering he chucked you into a wall last time around."
"I forgive him," Castiel said, as if things could be that simple, that easy.
Dean pushed his irritation aside and leaned forward to feel Novak's forehead. The skin was still heated, leaving a slick of sweat across Dean's fingertips. He busied himself with fetching a fresh bag of fluids to replace the one that hung deflated from the bedpost. Here was something he could do that Gabriel could not, for what little it meant to the angel inside the vessel.
"Is Jimmy still in there?"
"No."
There was a wealth of sorrow in that single word, a loss gone too long unmourned. Dean wondered if Gabriel felt anything for the man he rode, if in the long millennia of the archangel's life he had ever given his vessel the chance to rise and rethink prayers answered by a Trickster God.
He knew Castiel better than he ever had, through memories shared and dreams of flight, but he still understood so little of angels. He had wanted to remake Castiel in the image of mankind, to reduce him in stature and strip away his shield of holiness.
He had even dared to compare the angel's faith in his Father to Dean's own. But Dean had always known his father for a man, capable of cruelty in word and deed equal to the good he wrought. He had loved him, admired him, but he had not worshipped him.
And if Castiel had answered the call, had become something both and less than what he had been, that was by his own strength and not Dean's own. Of all of them the angel had shown the most ability to change, to walk a new path while Dean himself dug in his heels, clinging to old thoughts and stale habits.
These words and more were heavy on his tongue, but what escaped was simply "Castiel."
Just a name, three syllables, but carrying an acknowledgment that Dean had no right to the familiar.
Castiel's hand touched him own, stilling his almost frantic fussing with the IV line. The angel looked at him, looked through him, as he had that first night, when he had told Dean his path had been chosen for him and expected of Dean to rejoice.
But there was new wisdom there, in the blue Grace behind blue eyes, and Dean submitted to it. Bowed low his head, as he had not done when faced with an archangel's fury.
"I'm sorry," he said, and here were words after all, apologies vomited up without control. "For the banishing trick most of all. But also for…for asking so much, and giving back so fucking little."
The angel's hand settled against his cheek, transfixing him in place and forcing him to meet that unblinking gaze. He could still see the predator there, the bird of prey he knew Castiel to be, but a strange peace had softened the soldier's thousand yard stare.
"I forgive you too."
But Dean growled, shook off that hand, shook off the unexpected and unwelcome absolution. "Bullshit," he said, voice still pitched low, not for Gabriel's sake but in deference to Castiel's desire to protect the archangel. "I hurt you."
"You did," Castiel said, "That is what I am forgiving."
His face was impassive; his voice so serene and controlled that it was all Dean could do not to shake him. Whatever else Castiel had become, he was not Christ, capable of turning the other cheek against the harshest of insults.
"I blew you back to Heaven. I asked you to kill your brothers to protect mine. I had you put your faith in me and failed at every turn." Dean's voice broke with the effort of keeping to a whisper, grinding rough across the words. "I took your wing."
It took the last to get a reaction. Castiel stiffened, something dangerous and bright sparking in his eyes. "We burned it, Gabriel and I, consigned it to ash and smoke. I feel it still, a phantom weight at my back, and without it I do not believe I will ever find my balance."
Had Dean thought honesty would hurt less than false peace? The confession was a shiv to the heart, slipping under his guard and sliding in deep. He closed his eyes against the pain and resting his head against closed fists in parody of prayer.
"Dean."
So soft, so gentle, a parent coaxing a child. Dean shook his head, refusing to be comforted.
"No, Castiel. Don't you dare sit there and pretend I didn't fuck up six ways to Sunday. I may not know much, but I damn well know that forgiveness requires penance. I don't want to ask anything else, but I'm going to ask that. Let me earn it."
Silence. Long enough for Dean to grow restless, to slit open his eyes and peer up through his lashes.
Blue captured him, not the blue of Novak's eyes but the impossible, searing blue of Grace unfolding. It should have melted his orbs from their sockets, to see Castiel as he was, one winged but still so very beautiful.
"You said you asked much and returned little," Castiel said and Dean heard the song beneath the words, also blue and holding within itself the whole of the sky. "You gave me questions, Dean. Questions that needed asking. You gave me truth and the courage to face it. You gave to me my brother and returned the road I had forgotten.
For all that I have lost, I thank you for these things."
The vision faded and there was only Cas, ducking his head to capture Dean's lowered gaze, as Dean had done when he pleaded with the angel in Heaven's prison. "Have you lost nothing in this war, Dean? Have you gained nothing in return?"
Dean looked at Gabriel, still lost inside, wherever that might be, and thought of trust strained and twisted. Trust in Sam, but also trust in himself, in his ability to make the right choices, to stand fast against temptation and the easy way out.
And he thought of trust found, in an angel that had started off the enemy and had become that rarest of all things, a friend.
Castiel reached out again and this time Dean did not pull back, letting the angel cup his cheek. "Do not ask of me to hate you. Not now. I am angry, I am wounded, but I cannot hate you."
"Yeah, okay. I hear ya, man. But just…knock it off with the peace and love shit, okay? If you want to kick my ass, do it. Anytime."
Castiel's thumb brushed over his cheekbone before the angel withdrew. "Very well. But for now, we must speak of what to do next. Lucifer is angered and we must strike before he does."
The shift in topic caught Dean off guard and he fumbled before replying. "Gabriel?" he asked.
Castiel's arm tightened around the archangel. The jostling brought Gabriel sharply back to himself, life and power surging into his empty eyes. Dean had not sensed the loss of energy in the room until it came flooding back, raising the tiny hairs at the nape of his neck.
"No," Castiel said to them both, "Never again."
"He's right. I am the best bet we have." Gabriel settled into the conversation as if he'd been a part of it from the start, making Dean flush at the realization his discussion with Castiel had been overhead. "I hesitated last time. I won't make the same mistake twice."
Gabriel made no attempt to separate himself from the lesser angel's hold, if anything pressed closer. Such open acceptance of comfort and support felt like an affront to Dean, made him draw back all the more to balance some unconscious scale.
"No," Castiel said again, and there was strength and assurance in his voice that hadn't been there in too long. "We cannot win this battle with a show of strength. There's another way, one I should have seen from the start."
He gestured toward the only wall free of doors and windows. A spiraling pattern appeared, weak and flickering at first, then bursting into brilliant life when Gabriel caught on and clicked his fingers.
"The final seal?" the archangel asked.
"The key," Castiel agreed.
"Okay, you're losing me," Dean said, "I know that's Enochian, but you're saying that's what sprung Lucifer when Lilith died, right?"
He carefully did not say when Sam killed her, but the way Gabriel rolled his eyes made it clear nothing had been forgotten. Castiel ignored the interplay, nodding in answer to Dean's question.
"With hooks they captured him and with chains they tethered him to the walls of the prison, deep below the crust of the earth. For God spared not the angels that sinned but cast them down, to be held fast until the day of final judgment."
Castiel spoke slowly, the story refined through long years of telling into the cadence of poetry.
"They locked the cage with seals 600. And the last was writ in the sigils of righteousness and justice, but also in servant and sacrifice. A key, where might have been a solid door, but they questioned not why. For their Father's ways were mysterious to men and angels alike, his Word of truth and glory."
He held up two fingers and Dean leaned into them without qualm, accepting the hard press against his temple. Power arched between them, making Dean gasp in something between pleasure and pain.
And the glyphs on the wall came suddenly clear, the pattern fine and complicated. Dean saw where the seal was meant to be broken, by the blood of a demon willfully and joyfully given in service to a greater cause.
And he saw too where a change could be made, a single substitution enough to close what had been opened.
"Oh, fuck no!"
Dean's curse blended with Gabriel's, brought them together in protest. Castiel smiled at them both, smiled, damn him, sweet and natural, as if he had settled into his shell of flesh at last.
"Do not deny me this," he said, "There is no other way, and even if there were nothing would change for me in the aftermath. Without my wings I am as an ant upon the earth and they would harry me across it until the end of my days. Let me do this thing and spare my kin the seeking of vengeance."
"I can hide you." Gabriel spoke over the tail end of Castiel's plea, raising his voice as if he could deny the plan by drowning it out. "If I do nothing else well, I do that."
"They'll need you, after. It will be on you to wrest control from Michael and bring peace to Heaven."
Dean cursed himself for sleeping, for giving Castiel time to consider their arguments and prepare his defense. What he had mistaken for tranquility in Castiel's eyes had been instead the last stage of grief, his seeming forgiveness of Dean's crimes against him just another way of saying goodbye. He felt himself in freefall and this time he had no promise of wings to catch him and bear him high.
"Castiel, Cas, I…"
And even now there were words he could not say, thick, sticky words that caught in his throat and deepened his voice to an animal sound. He lurched forward instead, butting his forehead against the angel's, a violent offer so that Castiel might absorb those things he dared not speak, so that the angel might have a reason to stay.
Now it was Castiel who drew back, holding Dean at distance with a shake of his head.
"I know, Dean."
And Dean shuddered because he knew what came next, what always came next when he gave up himself.
"But it isn't enough."