[Adstringendum] | We're all Mad Here event
Characters: Castiel
When: Sometime around 3AM Sunday, November 20th, 2011
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Castiel's madhouse setting and initial experience.
It's a familiar place. A terrifyingly familiar one; he knows it--his perfect memory wouldn't ever allow him to forget--and he dreams of it often. At first, that's all it is to him, another nightmare of something that had happened so long ago, that he's beginning to finally comes to terms with but still haunts him.
But it's different, this time. More real, somehow; the exaggerated clarity of his dreams and the certain focuses don't exist. It's even and constant and no more or less dull than it should be and that's more terrifying than anything else, for a moment, because it's wrong. He can't get out of here, there's no escape--he knows that, both now and from before--and he's trapped, as he always is in different places and different situations.
Voices whisper soothingly, telling him it's okay, that something's gone wrong and he's lost the line of reality and illusion but it'll be made better, just like before. Just like when he'd decided that Heaven was wrong, had decided to risk everything, had to be corrected. It was for his own good and everyone else's, he'd been told, over and over again while he prayed for it to stop; while he prayed to someone he knows now was never listening. They tell him his sanity has broken, that he's imagining things, that he's thought he was somewhere else. That this city they've seen glimpses of in his mind, that the people he's met and the things he's done at home--rebelling, stopping the Apocalypse, fighting the war--it's all not real. They tell him this is the first he's been back with them, that they'd thought he was lost, but now there's a chance and they can fix him.
No. He dismisses the concept immediately at first, out of sheer denial; it wasn't all a hallucination. He's not insane. It's a dream, an event, someone in the city's power, something. It couldn't have all been a lie. Everything he's done can't be imaginary, can't be a product of insanity and delusion, he can't still be here. It's not possible. Some part of his brain, that part that's still angelic, that can still track and knows exactly when and where he is is indeed screaming at him this is an illusion, a dream, but wouldn't it do so? Wouldn't his own mind and his senses turn on him, if he had truly gone completely insane?
Or if it's real, and all of it was real, then what? He could have snapped, in the city, now. He knows he does in the future. This could be the delusion, he could be somewhere in the Temple completely lost to his surroundings and the careful and fragile hold on his sanity could simply have snapped under the pressure of everything that had happened.
It's chilling, as he realizes that it doesn't matter which is reality. He knows he has problems, that his own judgement isn't sound; he knows he can't trust his own mind or his interpretation of a situation and it's a horribly isolating, terrifying realization. Regardless of if this is a dream, or an event, or reality, does it matter? He can't tell. He'd never be able to. This is just as real, now, as the city was then. If it's a dream, then maybe he'll wake up. If he doesn't... Well it just doesn't matter. He doesn't have a choice; he has to just wait it out, and if it never ends, then it never ends.
But if this is real, if everything that had happened after his reprogramming is imaginary, then maybe... Maybe he hasn't done the bad, as well as the good. Maybe he hasn't killed countless siblings, hasn't been made permanently an outcast, hasn't died over and over and hasn't been mutilated into some creature not angel or human but something somewhere in between. Maybe it really is this simple. Maybe there's a chance he'll recover, and he'll be alright.
But what about the Winchesters? If this is true, then... They're at the edge of breaking the seals. Aren't they? And now he wonders, if it wouldn't be better for them, if he doesn't give in to Dean's requests. If he lets the boys have Paradise, if he doesn't let Sam end up in the Cage, if everything just ends. But no. Underneath everything, no matter what's going on, no matter how his mind breaks down, that one things stays; Dean, and Sam, their choices matter. They get to decide. They want to live, and they want to fight, and so he will do everything he can to make it possible for them. Even if that's simply not giving up.
He hears the voices of his siblings again, out of view of his angelic senses--his senses that he's missed so dearly, even muted and useless as they are in this place--and more reassurances. You've strayed and There's still a path and You can be fixed and he knows what's coming because he's heard the same thing before so long ago--recently?--and he can't stop himself from pleading for them not to, it's not necessary, he can figure this out and he won't make his mistakes again and he won't disobey and he knows what's real and what isn't.
But, as always, his pleas are as ineffectual as his prayers.
When: Sometime around 3AM Sunday, November 20th, 2011
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Castiel's madhouse setting and initial experience.
It's a familiar place. A terrifyingly familiar one; he knows it--his perfect memory wouldn't ever allow him to forget--and he dreams of it often. At first, that's all it is to him, another nightmare of something that had happened so long ago, that he's beginning to finally comes to terms with but still haunts him.
But it's different, this time. More real, somehow; the exaggerated clarity of his dreams and the certain focuses don't exist. It's even and constant and no more or less dull than it should be and that's more terrifying than anything else, for a moment, because it's wrong. He can't get out of here, there's no escape--he knows that, both now and from before--and he's trapped, as he always is in different places and different situations.
Voices whisper soothingly, telling him it's okay, that something's gone wrong and he's lost the line of reality and illusion but it'll be made better, just like before. Just like when he'd decided that Heaven was wrong, had decided to risk everything, had to be corrected. It was for his own good and everyone else's, he'd been told, over and over again while he prayed for it to stop; while he prayed to someone he knows now was never listening. They tell him his sanity has broken, that he's imagining things, that he's thought he was somewhere else. That this city they've seen glimpses of in his mind, that the people he's met and the things he's done at home--rebelling, stopping the Apocalypse, fighting the war--it's all not real. They tell him this is the first he's been back with them, that they'd thought he was lost, but now there's a chance and they can fix him.
No. He dismisses the concept immediately at first, out of sheer denial; it wasn't all a hallucination. He's not insane. It's a dream, an event, someone in the city's power, something. It couldn't have all been a lie. Everything he's done can't be imaginary, can't be a product of insanity and delusion, he can't still be here. It's not possible. Some part of his brain, that part that's still angelic, that can still track and knows exactly when and where he is is indeed screaming at him this is an illusion, a dream, but wouldn't it do so? Wouldn't his own mind and his senses turn on him, if he had truly gone completely insane?
Or if it's real, and all of it was real, then what? He could have snapped, in the city, now. He knows he does in the future. This could be the delusion, he could be somewhere in the Temple completely lost to his surroundings and the careful and fragile hold on his sanity could simply have snapped under the pressure of everything that had happened.
It's chilling, as he realizes that it doesn't matter which is reality. He knows he has problems, that his own judgement isn't sound; he knows he can't trust his own mind or his interpretation of a situation and it's a horribly isolating, terrifying realization. Regardless of if this is a dream, or an event, or reality, does it matter? He can't tell. He'd never be able to. This is just as real, now, as the city was then. If it's a dream, then maybe he'll wake up. If he doesn't... Well it just doesn't matter. He doesn't have a choice; he has to just wait it out, and if it never ends, then it never ends.
But if this is real, if everything that had happened after his reprogramming is imaginary, then maybe... Maybe he hasn't done the bad, as well as the good. Maybe he hasn't killed countless siblings, hasn't been made permanently an outcast, hasn't died over and over and hasn't been mutilated into some creature not angel or human but something somewhere in between. Maybe it really is this simple. Maybe there's a chance he'll recover, and he'll be alright.
But what about the Winchesters? If this is true, then... They're at the edge of breaking the seals. Aren't they? And now he wonders, if it wouldn't be better for them, if he doesn't give in to Dean's requests. If he lets the boys have Paradise, if he doesn't let Sam end up in the Cage, if everything just ends. But no. Underneath everything, no matter what's going on, no matter how his mind breaks down, that one things stays; Dean, and Sam, their choices matter. They get to decide. They want to live, and they want to fight, and so he will do everything he can to make it possible for them. Even if that's simply not giving up.
He hears the voices of his siblings again, out of view of his angelic senses--his senses that he's missed so dearly, even muted and useless as they are in this place--and more reassurances. You've strayed and There's still a path and You can be fixed and he knows what's coming because he's heard the same thing before so long ago--recently?--and he can't stop himself from pleading for them not to, it's not necessary, he can figure this out and he won't make his mistakes again and he won't disobey and he knows what's real and what isn't.
But, as always, his pleas are as ineffectual as his prayers.