fic: the colossus
the colossus
"i shall never get you put together entirely;
pieced, glued, and properly jointed." -sylvia plath
notes: claire/castiel again, this is for haley (sailetheach)
The first time she hears him, she’s holding the bud of a flower in her hand. There’s no breeze and there’s no one around, but Claire can’t think for the noise she keeps hearing. Something like the whistle of a teapot, or the distant screech of a train. She thinks she hears bells, but it’s more like pennies, tumbling to the ground. Carefully, she closes her fist around the bud and the world grows quiet.
Jimmy Novak is a Believer and Believers are prone to odd and roaming thoughts. Claire is infected with her father’s Belief, and it drives a wedge between herself and her mother from an early age, when Amelia wants to know why Claire handles the mud on her shoes so carefully after soccer practice. Claire’s mother is a believer, and just that. She doesn’t see things the way Claire and Jimmy do.
That’s what Castiel tells her. It’s the first thing he says and he doesn’t tell her his name for a long time. Maybe a year, if Claire remembers. She knows that she’s twelve and brushing her fingertips through the water of her fishbowl, and the little thing swims up and presses its mouth to her skin before swimming circles around her hand.
“What are you called?” she asks, watching the fish swim lazily to the bottom of the bowl and blink at her.
Nothing you could understand.
“What can I call you, then?”
Castiel.
Claire keeps Castiel a secret from everyone, even her father, the Believer. Jimmy Novak has a faith to rival the papacy, but he’s a father, too, and entering high school with an imaginary friend is enough to make any parent nervous. Claire is fifteen and on her first day of school, she pluck the bud of a flower off a bush by her bus stop and puts it carefully in her pocket. There’s the sound of pennies falling and a distant whistle and Claire feels comforted by the gentle humming in her pocket only she can hear.
“How do you move like that?” she asks.
Very carefully, he says. Claire laughs. Castiel has a sense of humor that is subtle and almost too sarcastic to understand, but she can hear it. The same as you move. One minute you are upstairs. In another, you are in the kitchen. The process of getting there is of little importance to you, is it not? So long as you get where you need to be? Where you want to be?
“Yeah…If you move from here to the tree, will I see you?” She’s holding a dry little frog in her hand, carefully shielding it from the wind. It croaks and hops away. Nearby, the tree leaves shudder in the windless afternoon. “What--”
You cannot look on my true form. It would blind you.
“But would I see you?”
You would be blinded, he repeats.
Claire stands and presses a hand to the trunk and closes her eyes, leaning her forehead to the bark. “But would I see you?” For the first time, Castiel has nothing to say.
Castiel’s favorite haunt is the willow in the backyard. The Novaks have a large property littered with trees and Jimmy’s vegetable garden. Amelia’s roses line the edge and the sunflowers Claire planted when she was in kindergarten have spread all over the property, cropping up every summer in different places. Claire hides behind the heavy green branches, a book stuck in a crook in the tree, murmuring to Castiel.
How is your father?
“You always ask about him.”
He is a Believer, I told you this. Naturally, I am interested.
“He’s fine. Tired. He didn’t go to church last Sunday. His back hurts.” The branch under Claire’s back quivers and the two of them are quiet for a while. Claire toys with the buttons of her shorts, circling the metal with her finger. She’s thought about this before, wondered if it would make her feel different to touch herself outside, if it would make her want different things.
If Castiel disapproves, he says nothing. Claire undoes the button and zipper of her shorts and slides two fingers over her clit, already wet from just the thought of it. After a few minutes, she picks up her pace, gasping and sitting up, clinging to one of the branches overhead for support as she grinds onto the branch beneath her, fingers pressed tight at her center, moving in circles over her clit until she comes, breath caught in her throat. Spent, she collapses forward, hanging loosely from the branch over head, her knees weak.
Your mother is calling you, Castiel says over the pounding of blood in her ears. Claire fixes her shorts and slides out of the tree, running inside to help her mother with dinner.
She does the same thing a few times a week, but only when Castiel is in the tree. She tries it once when he isn’t. It doesn’t feel the same.
Castiel asks about her father more and more and Claire is increasingly bothered by it. Sometimes she doesn’t answer, sometimes she is awful to him, and asks him if she isn’t enough.
Your father is--
“A Believer. Right. I thought I was, too.”
Not the way your father is.
“Is that why you come to me then? Is that why you chose me? Because I don’t believe enough?”
There is nothing to be angry about. I have been with you for many years. Have I ever said you weren’t enough?
“Then why do you ask about him?” Castiel is silent. “Castiel. Why do you ask?”
I am a Guardian, is all he says before Claire gives up.
She doesn’t know why, but that night, for the first time, she’s self-conscious before changing, knowing Castiel has settled into the vine on her windowsill.
Her father begins behaving strangely after that. Claire isn’t around to see it and her mother won’t talk about it, but they have harsh, whispered arguments in the kitchen and Claire catches words like ‘therapist’ and ‘get help’ and she’s terrified.
“Is he alright? Do you know? Is he okay?” she asks Castiel, almost begging for some kind of answer, something he’d know and she wouldn’t.
Your father is fine. Tell your mother not to worry. Claire laughs, because it’s impossible for Amelia Novak not to worry about something, but Claire does her best anyway, wrapping her arms around her mothers waist and murmuring Castiel’s words into her shoulder. It doesn’t help, but Claire likes to pretend that it does.
Her father seems fine to Claire, but Amelia is hypersensitive to the discussions at the dinner table. They stop praying and no one argues. Claire hasn’t prayed since she was in middle school, since she met Castiel. It doesn’t click with her then, but it will later, when all this has blown over and she can sort her thoughts through the fog of memory and realizes what it all meant.
The last time she sees her father is the last time she sees Castiel, too.
Claire wakes up in the middle of the night, feeling like all the air’s been sucked out of her room. There’s the lingering sound of pennies on the ground, of the teapot in the distance, of a quiet song in her ears. “Castiel?”
When Claire finally steps outside, her father is gone. She witness the last tendrils of light fall off his body and then something else is standing on her sidewalk. Something she knows.
“Where are you taking him?” Castiel turns and regards her with her father’s eyes, though any sign of him is gone. “What did you do?”
“Your father is a Believer. He prayed for this.” Castiel flexes his newfound hands, gazing at the rest of his body with a detached curiosity. “This was always meant to happen.”
Claire doesn’t accuse him of using her, or lying. If she’d asked, he would have told her. Not the whole truth, but he would have given her a clue, a sign, some kind of hint. She watches him take two steps down the sidewalk before disappearing, the noise of a crow lifting from a fence.
In the morning, Claire isn’t sure which loss hurts worse. She settles into the branches of the willow and she touches herself and feels nothing. Later, she sleeps in her parents’ bed with her mother and they don’t ask questions about where Jimmy’s gone.
Claire just wishes she hadn’t lied to her mother. That she’d told her from the beginning, Worry more. Worry all you can. He won’t be around much longer to worry about.
She’s just not sure who she’s really talking about anymore.
"i shall never get you put together entirely;
pieced, glued, and properly jointed." -sylvia plath
notes: claire/castiel again, this is for haley (sailetheach)
The first time she hears him, she’s holding the bud of a flower in her hand. There’s no breeze and there’s no one around, but Claire can’t think for the noise she keeps hearing. Something like the whistle of a teapot, or the distant screech of a train. She thinks she hears bells, but it’s more like pennies, tumbling to the ground. Carefully, she closes her fist around the bud and the world grows quiet.
Jimmy Novak is a Believer and Believers are prone to odd and roaming thoughts. Claire is infected with her father’s Belief, and it drives a wedge between herself and her mother from an early age, when Amelia wants to know why Claire handles the mud on her shoes so carefully after soccer practice. Claire’s mother is a believer, and just that. She doesn’t see things the way Claire and Jimmy do.
That’s what Castiel tells her. It’s the first thing he says and he doesn’t tell her his name for a long time. Maybe a year, if Claire remembers. She knows that she’s twelve and brushing her fingertips through the water of her fishbowl, and the little thing swims up and presses its mouth to her skin before swimming circles around her hand.
“What are you called?” she asks, watching the fish swim lazily to the bottom of the bowl and blink at her.
Nothing you could understand.
“What can I call you, then?”
Castiel.
Claire keeps Castiel a secret from everyone, even her father, the Believer. Jimmy Novak has a faith to rival the papacy, but he’s a father, too, and entering high school with an imaginary friend is enough to make any parent nervous. Claire is fifteen and on her first day of school, she pluck the bud of a flower off a bush by her bus stop and puts it carefully in her pocket. There’s the sound of pennies falling and a distant whistle and Claire feels comforted by the gentle humming in her pocket only she can hear.
“How do you move like that?” she asks.
Very carefully, he says. Claire laughs. Castiel has a sense of humor that is subtle and almost too sarcastic to understand, but she can hear it. The same as you move. One minute you are upstairs. In another, you are in the kitchen. The process of getting there is of little importance to you, is it not? So long as you get where you need to be? Where you want to be?
“Yeah…If you move from here to the tree, will I see you?” She’s holding a dry little frog in her hand, carefully shielding it from the wind. It croaks and hops away. Nearby, the tree leaves shudder in the windless afternoon. “What--”
You cannot look on my true form. It would blind you.
“But would I see you?”
You would be blinded, he repeats.
Claire stands and presses a hand to the trunk and closes her eyes, leaning her forehead to the bark. “But would I see you?” For the first time, Castiel has nothing to say.
Castiel’s favorite haunt is the willow in the backyard. The Novaks have a large property littered with trees and Jimmy’s vegetable garden. Amelia’s roses line the edge and the sunflowers Claire planted when she was in kindergarten have spread all over the property, cropping up every summer in different places. Claire hides behind the heavy green branches, a book stuck in a crook in the tree, murmuring to Castiel.
How is your father?
“You always ask about him.”
He is a Believer, I told you this. Naturally, I am interested.
“He’s fine. Tired. He didn’t go to church last Sunday. His back hurts.” The branch under Claire’s back quivers and the two of them are quiet for a while. Claire toys with the buttons of her shorts, circling the metal with her finger. She’s thought about this before, wondered if it would make her feel different to touch herself outside, if it would make her want different things.
If Castiel disapproves, he says nothing. Claire undoes the button and zipper of her shorts and slides two fingers over her clit, already wet from just the thought of it. After a few minutes, she picks up her pace, gasping and sitting up, clinging to one of the branches overhead for support as she grinds onto the branch beneath her, fingers pressed tight at her center, moving in circles over her clit until she comes, breath caught in her throat. Spent, she collapses forward, hanging loosely from the branch over head, her knees weak.
Your mother is calling you, Castiel says over the pounding of blood in her ears. Claire fixes her shorts and slides out of the tree, running inside to help her mother with dinner.
She does the same thing a few times a week, but only when Castiel is in the tree. She tries it once when he isn’t. It doesn’t feel the same.
Castiel asks about her father more and more and Claire is increasingly bothered by it. Sometimes she doesn’t answer, sometimes she is awful to him, and asks him if she isn’t enough.
Your father is--
“A Believer. Right. I thought I was, too.”
Not the way your father is.
“Is that why you come to me then? Is that why you chose me? Because I don’t believe enough?”
There is nothing to be angry about. I have been with you for many years. Have I ever said you weren’t enough?
“Then why do you ask about him?” Castiel is silent. “Castiel. Why do you ask?”
I am a Guardian, is all he says before Claire gives up.
She doesn’t know why, but that night, for the first time, she’s self-conscious before changing, knowing Castiel has settled into the vine on her windowsill.
Her father begins behaving strangely after that. Claire isn’t around to see it and her mother won’t talk about it, but they have harsh, whispered arguments in the kitchen and Claire catches words like ‘therapist’ and ‘get help’ and she’s terrified.
“Is he alright? Do you know? Is he okay?” she asks Castiel, almost begging for some kind of answer, something he’d know and she wouldn’t.
Your father is fine. Tell your mother not to worry. Claire laughs, because it’s impossible for Amelia Novak not to worry about something, but Claire does her best anyway, wrapping her arms around her mothers waist and murmuring Castiel’s words into her shoulder. It doesn’t help, but Claire likes to pretend that it does.
Her father seems fine to Claire, but Amelia is hypersensitive to the discussions at the dinner table. They stop praying and no one argues. Claire hasn’t prayed since she was in middle school, since she met Castiel. It doesn’t click with her then, but it will later, when all this has blown over and she can sort her thoughts through the fog of memory and realizes what it all meant.
The last time she sees her father is the last time she sees Castiel, too.
Claire wakes up in the middle of the night, feeling like all the air’s been sucked out of her room. There’s the lingering sound of pennies on the ground, of the teapot in the distance, of a quiet song in her ears. “Castiel?”
When Claire finally steps outside, her father is gone. She witness the last tendrils of light fall off his body and then something else is standing on her sidewalk. Something she knows.
“Where are you taking him?” Castiel turns and regards her with her father’s eyes, though any sign of him is gone. “What did you do?”
“Your father is a Believer. He prayed for this.” Castiel flexes his newfound hands, gazing at the rest of his body with a detached curiosity. “This was always meant to happen.”
Claire doesn’t accuse him of using her, or lying. If she’d asked, he would have told her. Not the whole truth, but he would have given her a clue, a sign, some kind of hint. She watches him take two steps down the sidewalk before disappearing, the noise of a crow lifting from a fence.
In the morning, Claire isn’t sure which loss hurts worse. She settles into the branches of the willow and she touches herself and feels nothing. Later, she sleeps in her parents’ bed with her mother and they don’t ask questions about where Jimmy’s gone.
Claire just wishes she hadn’t lied to her mother. That she’d told her from the beginning, Worry more. Worry all you can. He won’t be around much longer to worry about.
She’s just not sure who she’s really talking about anymore.