[SPN] Ficlet: Of Wasps and Taxis
Uhhhh I don't even know what to do with this.
Title: Of Wasps and Taxis
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Dean/Cas squinty overtones but technically gen with Castiel, Daphne, Bobby, Meg, [Spoiler (click to open)]Inias and cameo Winchesters.
Words: 1985
Summary: What Castiel Did Next.
Spoilers: 7x21 and slightly the 7x22 preview.
Notes: This Daphne has absolutely nothing to do with my other Daphne. But Daphne haters should still back away.
The first place he goes is to land in front of a wrought-iron gate and walk up a set of steps that never quite became familiar. They're strange and new now, like everything, down to the very cracks in the paint. Daphne's expecting him-- he visited her dreams as soon as it occurred to him after he awoke-- but he still rings the doorbell. He learned that from Dean. The little rack of flower pots on the front porch are in full bloom, fat bursting buds waiting their turn behind the open blossoms. If he thinks of Meg as a dangerous rose (Meg would not like that), Daphne would be these geraniums-- or, no, the ivy rambling up the side column of the porch. He's watching a wasp build a nest under the eave when the door opens, and he tears his eyes away from it to meet Daphne's. He didn't know it before, but the green of them is very like Dean's, though the hope and unshed tears in them seem softer, cleaner.
She clasps his hands and moves to kiss him and he lets her; it's sweet and strange and tastes of the incense filling the house, of rose-hip tea. She's not angry, but she tells him he looks like an escaped mental patient.
"Technically, I am," he says with a smile. Smiling feels so nice, such a light thing.
Daphne doesn't smile. "You seem so different," she says. "I knew, but..." She shakes her head.
"You're disappointed," he says. He understands. The man she loved went away and came back Castiel. She asked in the dream if she should call him Castiel now, and he told her to call him what she liked, but she doesn't call him anything at all. "You have wasps," he says, pointing at them.
"I don't have the heart to knock it down. They're not really hurting anything."
"They're chewing bits of wood out of the siding. They'll be too small to see for a long time. It's amazing, isn't it?" Dean, perhaps, could be a wasp.
"Come inside and let's get you some real clothes."
She leads him by the hand but at the bottom of the stairs he says, "Wait," snaps his fingers and the clothes are on him. The snap isn't necessary, just a flourish. He's realized there's a certain inelegance in 'pull my finger' that not everyone appreciates. Gabriel would have appreciated it, laughed. Balthazar would have called him a tit or something similar, but smiled. They always enjoyed snapping their fingers for effect. Angels were not designed to have favorites, but they always have and always will. He regrets their deaths sharply whenever he thinks of them. He's glad Inias survived. He regrets so much, so many.
Daphne gasps at his trick.
"Don't be afraid," he tells her, but she is. The wedding ring is still at the hospital. She says it doesn't matter, but it belonged to her father and her father was important to her, like his was to him. It takes a while to get it, a few stops to cover his tracks, and he spends a few minutes on a beach in Mozambique watching a fisherman haul in his day's work with the sand and salt water seeping in between his toes. He watched humanity for so long, but never with these eyes. Taking Sam's struggle wants to call itself redemption, because every sight feels like a reward.
Daphne turns the ring over and over in her small hands. "What are you going to do?"
"I don't know," he says, and it's as wonderful as when he realized it. He can do anything, everything. The Winchester boys have their piece of him for their weapon and want nothing else-- unless it's for him to get better, but he's already better, so much better, or to button his coat and be their hammer again because Dean can't forgive him (Sam's forgiveness was a blessing he didn't expect or deserve, nor Dean's, but he'd hoped, and maybe Hester was right that he was lost the moment he and he alone was the one to break through the last of Hell's stronghold, and there are things he doesn't forgive Dean for either), so he's free.
"If you ever need me, I'll come," he tells Daphne. She nods and her eyes drop tears that he looks on in wonder, more regret. "Just pray and I'll come." He's only ever made that promise to one person, to Jimmy Novak when he needed a vessel. He wonders what Jimmy would think of him now, but he's persona non grata in Heaven and doesn't like to disturb Jimmy's perfect Sunday. They had a long talk there once, while a fabrication of Amelia pushed a fabrication of Claire on a swing. Jimmy told him to do what he thought was right, and rightness was stopping Raphael at any cost, so open Purgatory tore. Oh, he'd like to see that now, how terrible it would be to these open eyes of his. He'd like to see so many things.
*
In the infinite list of things he could see, the next one is the inside of a motel room where Sam and Dean are arguing. Meg's still putting away the phone she used to text him their location. She can see him; he lays a finger to his lips in a silent 'shhh' and she winks. None of them are who he's here to see. The ghost of Bobby Singer, invisible and exhausted, glowers at him and says, "Don't wait for me to say it's good to see you, 'cause it ain't happening."
"Oh, Bobby," he says, "I'm so very sorry."
Bobby snorts. "Yeah, I heard."
"Why do you cling to this plane? There's a place in Heaven for you--" Castiel reaches for the flask sticking out of the pocket of Dean's jacket, but Bobby appears in his path.
"Don't you dare. Who the hell else you think's going to make sure these boys don't get themselves killed? Not you, obviously."
The jacket falls off the chair and Dean snaps around to look in their direction. "Bobby?"
"I'm right here, damn you!" Bobby shouts, but Dean doesn't hear.
"I could put you to rest," Castiel says. "You wouldn't have to worry anymore."
"Have you met me, boy? If you're itching to do me a favor, gimme some ghost spinach so I can talk these idjits out of making a deal with Crowley."
"Spinach? Oh! Yes, Popeye is very funny."
"Well? How 'bout it, Cuckoo's Nest?" Bobby says.
"--over the damn rainbow with a teenybopper crush on Meg to boot," Dean's saying. ("Hey!" Meg interjects.) "What the hell good's that gonna do us?"
"Well, if you got your head out of your ass, he could help us and we could help him," Sam says.
"Yeah, 'cause that turned out so well the last time."
Dean, yes, is that wasp, chipping away at little bits here and there until there's a delicate beautiful structure that can be so easily knocked away, and all the little scars that have been chewed out will weather over and remain. He'll be loved on his own terms and he will sting. Dean slams his fist against the wall, and Bobby's spectre flinches as Castiel curls his fingers into where his heart would be, passing power over in a mirror of what Bobby once did for him.
The Winchesters' argument stops short at the sight of Bobby, and that's all Castiel's debts discharged, as best as anyone will allow him. Bobby's saying they've got a death wish if they're seriously thinking about dealing with Crowley, and Meg gives him another wink and a little wave before she steps in to turn her clever phrases in favor of logic.
Castiel's back on that beach in Mozambique before he hears what Meg has to say. He stands silent and unseen for three days, watching the fishermen and the sun and the waves, listening to the songs of men and earth. He does the same in a thousand places. Everywhere has bees if it's not winter, and if it's winter, he simply aims for summer to see them because if Meg is a rose and Daphne is ivy and Dean is a wasp and Balthazar and Gabriel are the sound of a snapping finger and fireworks, the generality of his brothers and sisters, his old garrison, are bees, so ordered and purposeful and so content in it. And for this, for there being something that the apocalypse and a power-crazed false God didn't break, he loves the bees, aches at them. He steps up to them and holds them in his palms and lets them sting him, tastes their honeycombs when a young woman in Mississippi finds him standing in her field. Her name is Kate and she has a sunburn across her nose and laughs like a bell ringing. When he tells her she's beautiful, her cheeks turn pinker and she gives him a jar of honey to take away, and a soft kiss on his cheek that leaves a sticky mark.
He's watching a baby being born in the back of a London taxi when Inias finds him, waves his hand and stops time on the traffic jam and the mother's mouth open in a scream of pain. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" Castiel says.
"It's about to get very messy and bloody," Inias says. "But it's glorious how resilient our Father made them."
"They made themselves resilient, Inias. I taught you better than that."
"Something that looked like you taught me that. What are you doing, Castiel?"
"I'm living."
"You're watching living. Come back with me. There's a place for you, I swear. I'll make sure of it. Now that Hester's gone--"
"No, Inias. Hester was right."
But Inias is right too. It's a fantastic thing to stand by and watch it all unfold, but to be part of it, to be the one of the fishermen and sing their songs with them, to be the homeless woman playing her guitar in a Budapest square, to hold this baby when it emerges screaming and confused-- he can see anything, but he can be anything. Do anything. He wraps Inias in a tight embrace, presses lips to his forehead and feels every cell of it. "Thank you," he says. Time unfreezes and Inias is gone and the traffic miraculously clears a path to the hospital where Castiel stands by the bedside as a little boy named Evan comes into the world, red and howling and wet, and this is why this world was made. He's seen millions of births, but none so close and none where he was so very awake.
His coat still has a few dollars' worth of change jingling around in the pockets. He changes them into pounds and pence with a turn of his wrist over the newsagent's counter and buys a postcard in the shape of an Underground sign. He doesn't know what to write on it, but a middle-aged woman on a bus suggests 'wish you were here' and something about the weather, so that's what he writes, steadying his hand against the bumps in the road and shielding the card from the drizzle that's started to fall. He doesn't know where to send it when he's done, considers asking Meg so it can find itself on top of some half-dirty clothes and shotgun shells in a duffle bag, but in the end it finds its way into the glove compartment of the Impala, hidden underneath a tarp in an anonymous storage unit.
It will be the first of many, because he's going to go everywhere. They'll be found, read, someday. Castiel died (the first time) for free will, and he's been granted yet another chance, so he's going to use it while he can. But if anyone calls, he'll come.
Title: Of Wasps and Taxis
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Dean/Cas squinty overtones but technically gen with Castiel, Daphne, Bobby, Meg, [Spoiler (click to open)]Inias and cameo Winchesters.
Words: 1985
Summary: What Castiel Did Next.
Spoilers: 7x21 and slightly the 7x22 preview.
Notes: This Daphne has absolutely nothing to do with my other Daphne. But Daphne haters should still back away.
The first place he goes is to land in front of a wrought-iron gate and walk up a set of steps that never quite became familiar. They're strange and new now, like everything, down to the very cracks in the paint. Daphne's expecting him-- he visited her dreams as soon as it occurred to him after he awoke-- but he still rings the doorbell. He learned that from Dean. The little rack of flower pots on the front porch are in full bloom, fat bursting buds waiting their turn behind the open blossoms. If he thinks of Meg as a dangerous rose (Meg would not like that), Daphne would be these geraniums-- or, no, the ivy rambling up the side column of the porch. He's watching a wasp build a nest under the eave when the door opens, and he tears his eyes away from it to meet Daphne's. He didn't know it before, but the green of them is very like Dean's, though the hope and unshed tears in them seem softer, cleaner.
She clasps his hands and moves to kiss him and he lets her; it's sweet and strange and tastes of the incense filling the house, of rose-hip tea. She's not angry, but she tells him he looks like an escaped mental patient.
"Technically, I am," he says with a smile. Smiling feels so nice, such a light thing.
Daphne doesn't smile. "You seem so different," she says. "I knew, but..." She shakes her head.
"You're disappointed," he says. He understands. The man she loved went away and came back Castiel. She asked in the dream if she should call him Castiel now, and he told her to call him what she liked, but she doesn't call him anything at all. "You have wasps," he says, pointing at them.
"I don't have the heart to knock it down. They're not really hurting anything."
"They're chewing bits of wood out of the siding. They'll be too small to see for a long time. It's amazing, isn't it?" Dean, perhaps, could be a wasp.
"Come inside and let's get you some real clothes."
She leads him by the hand but at the bottom of the stairs he says, "Wait," snaps his fingers and the clothes are on him. The snap isn't necessary, just a flourish. He's realized there's a certain inelegance in 'pull my finger' that not everyone appreciates. Gabriel would have appreciated it, laughed. Balthazar would have called him a tit or something similar, but smiled. They always enjoyed snapping their fingers for effect. Angels were not designed to have favorites, but they always have and always will. He regrets their deaths sharply whenever he thinks of them. He's glad Inias survived. He regrets so much, so many.
Daphne gasps at his trick.
"Don't be afraid," he tells her, but she is. The wedding ring is still at the hospital. She says it doesn't matter, but it belonged to her father and her father was important to her, like his was to him. It takes a while to get it, a few stops to cover his tracks, and he spends a few minutes on a beach in Mozambique watching a fisherman haul in his day's work with the sand and salt water seeping in between his toes. He watched humanity for so long, but never with these eyes. Taking Sam's struggle wants to call itself redemption, because every sight feels like a reward.
Daphne turns the ring over and over in her small hands. "What are you going to do?"
"I don't know," he says, and it's as wonderful as when he realized it. He can do anything, everything. The Winchester boys have their piece of him for their weapon and want nothing else-- unless it's for him to get better, but he's already better, so much better, or to button his coat and be their hammer again because Dean can't forgive him (Sam's forgiveness was a blessing he didn't expect or deserve, nor Dean's, but he'd hoped, and maybe Hester was right that he was lost the moment he and he alone was the one to break through the last of Hell's stronghold, and there are things he doesn't forgive Dean for either), so he's free.
"If you ever need me, I'll come," he tells Daphne. She nods and her eyes drop tears that he looks on in wonder, more regret. "Just pray and I'll come." He's only ever made that promise to one person, to Jimmy Novak when he needed a vessel. He wonders what Jimmy would think of him now, but he's persona non grata in Heaven and doesn't like to disturb Jimmy's perfect Sunday. They had a long talk there once, while a fabrication of Amelia pushed a fabrication of Claire on a swing. Jimmy told him to do what he thought was right, and rightness was stopping Raphael at any cost, so open Purgatory tore. Oh, he'd like to see that now, how terrible it would be to these open eyes of his. He'd like to see so many things.
*
In the infinite list of things he could see, the next one is the inside of a motel room where Sam and Dean are arguing. Meg's still putting away the phone she used to text him their location. She can see him; he lays a finger to his lips in a silent 'shhh' and she winks. None of them are who he's here to see. The ghost of Bobby Singer, invisible and exhausted, glowers at him and says, "Don't wait for me to say it's good to see you, 'cause it ain't happening."
"Oh, Bobby," he says, "I'm so very sorry."
Bobby snorts. "Yeah, I heard."
"Why do you cling to this plane? There's a place in Heaven for you--" Castiel reaches for the flask sticking out of the pocket of Dean's jacket, but Bobby appears in his path.
"Don't you dare. Who the hell else you think's going to make sure these boys don't get themselves killed? Not you, obviously."
The jacket falls off the chair and Dean snaps around to look in their direction. "Bobby?"
"I'm right here, damn you!" Bobby shouts, but Dean doesn't hear.
"I could put you to rest," Castiel says. "You wouldn't have to worry anymore."
"Have you met me, boy? If you're itching to do me a favor, gimme some ghost spinach so I can talk these idjits out of making a deal with Crowley."
"Spinach? Oh! Yes, Popeye is very funny."
"Well? How 'bout it, Cuckoo's Nest?" Bobby says.
"--over the damn rainbow with a teenybopper crush on Meg to boot," Dean's saying. ("Hey!" Meg interjects.) "What the hell good's that gonna do us?"
"Well, if you got your head out of your ass, he could help us and we could help him," Sam says.
"Yeah, 'cause that turned out so well the last time."
Dean, yes, is that wasp, chipping away at little bits here and there until there's a delicate beautiful structure that can be so easily knocked away, and all the little scars that have been chewed out will weather over and remain. He'll be loved on his own terms and he will sting. Dean slams his fist against the wall, and Bobby's spectre flinches as Castiel curls his fingers into where his heart would be, passing power over in a mirror of what Bobby once did for him.
The Winchesters' argument stops short at the sight of Bobby, and that's all Castiel's debts discharged, as best as anyone will allow him. Bobby's saying they've got a death wish if they're seriously thinking about dealing with Crowley, and Meg gives him another wink and a little wave before she steps in to turn her clever phrases in favor of logic.
Castiel's back on that beach in Mozambique before he hears what Meg has to say. He stands silent and unseen for three days, watching the fishermen and the sun and the waves, listening to the songs of men and earth. He does the same in a thousand places. Everywhere has bees if it's not winter, and if it's winter, he simply aims for summer to see them because if Meg is a rose and Daphne is ivy and Dean is a wasp and Balthazar and Gabriel are the sound of a snapping finger and fireworks, the generality of his brothers and sisters, his old garrison, are bees, so ordered and purposeful and so content in it. And for this, for there being something that the apocalypse and a power-crazed false God didn't break, he loves the bees, aches at them. He steps up to them and holds them in his palms and lets them sting him, tastes their honeycombs when a young woman in Mississippi finds him standing in her field. Her name is Kate and she has a sunburn across her nose and laughs like a bell ringing. When he tells her she's beautiful, her cheeks turn pinker and she gives him a jar of honey to take away, and a soft kiss on his cheek that leaves a sticky mark.
He's watching a baby being born in the back of a London taxi when Inias finds him, waves his hand and stops time on the traffic jam and the mother's mouth open in a scream of pain. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" Castiel says.
"It's about to get very messy and bloody," Inias says. "But it's glorious how resilient our Father made them."
"They made themselves resilient, Inias. I taught you better than that."
"Something that looked like you taught me that. What are you doing, Castiel?"
"I'm living."
"You're watching living. Come back with me. There's a place for you, I swear. I'll make sure of it. Now that Hester's gone--"
"No, Inias. Hester was right."
But Inias is right too. It's a fantastic thing to stand by and watch it all unfold, but to be part of it, to be the one of the fishermen and sing their songs with them, to be the homeless woman playing her guitar in a Budapest square, to hold this baby when it emerges screaming and confused-- he can see anything, but he can be anything. Do anything. He wraps Inias in a tight embrace, presses lips to his forehead and feels every cell of it. "Thank you," he says. Time unfreezes and Inias is gone and the traffic miraculously clears a path to the hospital where Castiel stands by the bedside as a little boy named Evan comes into the world, red and howling and wet, and this is why this world was made. He's seen millions of births, but none so close and none where he was so very awake.
His coat still has a few dollars' worth of change jingling around in the pockets. He changes them into pounds and pence with a turn of his wrist over the newsagent's counter and buys a postcard in the shape of an Underground sign. He doesn't know what to write on it, but a middle-aged woman on a bus suggests 'wish you were here' and something about the weather, so that's what he writes, steadying his hand against the bumps in the road and shielding the card from the drizzle that's started to fall. He doesn't know where to send it when he's done, considers asking Meg so it can find itself on top of some half-dirty clothes and shotgun shells in a duffle bag, but in the end it finds its way into the glove compartment of the Impala, hidden underneath a tarp in an anonymous storage unit.
It will be the first of many, because he's going to go everywhere. They'll be found, read, someday. Castiel died (the first time) for free will, and he's been granted yet another chance, so he's going to use it while he can. But if anyone calls, he'll come.