[fic] Cyborg Gabriel 2/?
Title: Cyborg Gabriel 2/?
Fandom: Supernatural.
Rating: PG-13ish.
Warnings: Minor violence/descriptions of injuries.
Pairings/Characters: Gabriel, Castiel, Sam, Dean.
Word Count: 2,236 words, with 4,769 total so far.
Summary: Archangel Class Cyborgs are terrifying in combat, and practically unknowable off the battlefield. Castiel's an experimental unit with an unusual design, and he's caught Gabriel's interest.
Note: I refer you all to the first part of this cyborg story for notes and whatnot.
Warning! This is still a WIP and while more is coming within a day or two, you should read this at your own risk. If you're cool with that, then, read on!
---
Emotions he never wanted crowding his mind, interfering with observation. Fear, rage, pain -
Castiel feels phantom pains litter his body whenever he tries this. He smells blood, sulfur and worse, and thinks he can taste copper.
Every single time he tries to follow the memory deeper, get information from it, he can't help it when he jerks back to reality and finds that he is expecting his hands to tremble, even when they can't.
Castiel is afraid of Jimmy Novak's memories, and how can he ever tell his superiors that fear is why he hasn't been able to complete his orders? He can't, that's the plain and simple truth of it.
The trouble now is that he has to weigh one fear against the other: is he more afraid of the memories he needs to excavate for information, or is he more afraid of this archangel in front of him, who could destroy him with only a casual use of power.
The fear, then, explains why he acts the way he does when Gabriel asks the question. It explains why he runs.
But nothing he can think of could explain why, when Gabriel trapped him and prevented him from running, he turned and attacked the archangel.
---
Sam can tell when trouble's up. Even without the dead giveaways - emergency call for him when he's off-shift, something about one of the patrols he knows one of the archangels was covering - he can tell. Rumors spread like wildfire. He doesn't get a chance to listen to them, but it makes him think he's prepared for it when he arrives on the roof.
The roof, however, is another story altogether. There's a mess of bloodied and torn clothes creating a trail to the stretcher the other technicians have pulled out, and what's on that stretcher - Sam has to wince. Last time he saw injuries this bad, Azazel had been loose and working on terror tactics instead of out-and-out death - he'd capture the angel, torture and dismantle it, and leave it to limp home on its own. Sam had been relieved when that had been stopped, and not just for the usual reason of fewer emergency calls in the dead of night.
"What the hell happened here?" Sam hears, and when he looks it's Dean, still in civilian wear. One of the communications crew comes over to brief him, and Sam hurries over to hear it.
"I can't explain it," the crewman says, "As far as we can tell without pulling the entire log and getting Gabriel's report, Castiel here attacked Gabriel."
"Attacked." Dean says, then eyes the stretcher. "Is Gabriel in yet?"
"Yes, but he's not talking to anyone - "
"I'll get that report out of him." Dean turns, and pauses. "Sam. I didn't know they'd call you in - "
"We can talk later," Sam says. He knows, he knows. Dean thinks Sam's back at home preparing to have a pleasant day off, and he's going to be annoyed to find out that Sam decided to stay on call.
"Workaholic," Dean tells him, and gets going, leaving Sam to his business.
It's true, and they both know it. But Sam keeps coming to work and Dean isn't yet pulling strings to get a vacation enforced for him.
But that's all besides the point, and Sam needs all of his concentration for this. Castiel's lucky that its legs aren't flesh, those'll be easy to reattach - or replace, if it comes down to that - and Sam is already making an inventory of what parts he'll need brought up, as well as the medical supplies needed to keep the biological parts healthy.
Sam bends to brush back Castiel's hair, and tries to guess at how many cracks will be decorating the case protecting Castiel's brain.
He freezes at the sound of a soft sigh, and the sight of Castiel's eyelids twitching.
"Hey," Sam says, and it comes out softer than he meant it to, as if he were saying it to the angel in front of him. He clears his throat. "HEY!"
Someone's screwed up big time here. Castiel's supposed to be off, functions completely shut down.
There's the sound of creaking metal. Too-strong fingers close around his wrist, and Castiel is looking at him.
---
Castiel's getting too much interference in his thought processes, and there are too many readouts layered over his vision, and the pain -
Pain is unusual in angels. Very few models have been created with actual pain sensors, even if all of them have been created with alerts built in to inform them when something has been damaged.
Castiel feels pain. Sometimes he gets it in double-layers, as his biological parts, inherited from Jimmy, still have nerves that will scream if they are triggered, and Castiel isn't always in a state to turn off their signals.
This is one of those times, and he has to fight to stay focused, to identify that the shape in front of him is not a threat, and that he doesn't need to activate weapon systems. If they would even work, as he is still having trouble sorting through the complete report of how badly damaged he is.
He reels for a second as memories flash in, incomplete snapshots of Gabriel attacking him - of his own ineffectual lashing out moments before -
The figure in front of him is saying something, and Castiel realizes that his ears aren't working. No audio. Just the visual cue of a mouth moving.
He thinks he might need to finally figure out the extent of the damage. The pain makes it hard to focus, but he can't falter, not without a location.
He lets his eyes close, and focuses on the readouts instead, beginning the long process of self-repair.
---
Gabriel knows the questioning is going to start soon. He can't say he wants to go into details, but...well. It's been a long time since he's held a firm opinion about one of the models of angels, and as an experimental unit...
When Dean joins him by the windows, Gabriel's ready.
"Advance warning for your superiors," he says to him. "Unless some major modifications are done, they're not going to be happy with the results from the experimental unit, and I bet any more made like him are going to have the same problems."
Gabriel doesn't look at Dean, and waits for the inevitable questions. He likes Dean, because as much of a hassle as he is, he's probably the best handler that Gabriel's had to deal with since his creation.
"What the hell happened up there?" Dean says, eloquent as ever.
"Do you want the minutes, or just the important stuff?"
"Quit stalling, Gabriel. How the hell did a normal patrol go from 'one batch of demons disposed' to 'brought back Castiel in pieces'?"
"Conversation and some seriously screwed up programming." Gabriel debates holding off the details to see how mad he can make Dean get, but honestly? This is serious. He likes it when experimental units work out, and he likes it when he doesn't have to tell the scientists that their latest model is all-systems go.
"Go on," Dean prompts.
"We wrapped up the demons, and after I got the gore off of me I turned to him and asked him exactly why he wasn't following orders. Yes, I am aware that they're being lenient with him. Yes, I know emotions are sketchy to work with in the first place. No, I don't think he can get away with putting off the assignment for this long." Gabriel turns back to the window, resting his hands on the railing. "I asked the question. He froze up, and I repeated it. Then he took off running as fast as he could go."
"Running." Dean repeats.
"He was terrified. I took off after him, and pinned him to the ground. Or tried to, anyways."
Gabriel doesn't need to look at Dean to know that he's following. That if he stalled for too long, Dean would prompt him again.
"He shot me." Gabriel says flatly. "Made me pause for long enough for him to take off again. The rest of it...well, you saw what I brought back. And no, I didn't destroy the fleshy bits. None of the essentials, anyways."
There's a moment of silence, then when Gabriel looks, Dean has his arms crossed.
"That's a lot of fluff you're spouting at me. When are you going to tell me something I don't already know?"
"You didn't know what set him off," Gabriel points out. It's futile, he knows it, but this is why Dean has lasted the longest working with him.
"If I had time to check the log before I came after you, I'd have found it out. Quit evading the subject, and tell me what happened up there. He attacked you, fine. Why isn't he coming back disabled and restrained? Why are we going to have to get the roof mopped, Gabriel?"
"Now you're taking too long to get to the point."
"Why the overkill, Gabriel?" Dean asks, voice hard.
"He's going to be useless, and everyone in command is going to figure that out as soon as the scientists stop having their celebration that he opened his eyes in the first place."
"We've had failed models before."
"Not like this."
"What makes him different?"
Gabriel twitches a wing, then faces Dean. He's annoyed, and willing to show it to make his point.
"There's an innocent human trapped in there, a badly tortured and brutalized one. Don't protest that he was dead or brain-dead when he got here. Castiel's an interface laid over that human, and we're torturing him further by using him as a resource."
Gabriel's had this argument building for days. He knows it's odd coming from him, and he knows that as far as his freedom to influence events is, it's not far enough to halt experiments like this. He's overstepped his boundaries already, and he's willing to face whatever reprimand Dean will decide to lay on him.
Yet the problem remains: he is bothered by Castiel's existence, and bothered in a way that a lot of his brethren aren't going to get. Yet he might be able to make some of the humans see it his way.
"You tore him to pieces because you have moral objections over his existence," Dean says.
"That's about the size of it," Gabriel says, and turns away again.
There's a moment of silence before Dean sighs. "I would start pointing out ways where that just doesn't work, but you're going to have an argument for every one of them, aren't you."
Gabriel doesn't bother answering.
---
Castiel next opens his eyes in a different place. He is lying flat on a table, and he has figured out the extent of the damage. The worst of it are the internal injuries to his brain-case and lungs. The most obvious injuries are his missing legs and where his wings were torn from his back. He is fortunate to retain most of his torso, his arms and hands, and his head.
In short, the damage is excessive but he can recover from it.
This raises the question of why Gabriel didn't finish him off, as well as why he went about injuring Castiel in this manner. Castiel thinks he could attribute the brutality to Gabriel's nature, but...
He stops himself from that line of thought. There are more important issues to pursue, and it is folly to figure out an archangel's reasoning for its actions. Right now he needs to identify his location and what his possible actions could be.
There's movement, and Castiel is relieved to confirm that his neck and head are still operative enough to move. He focuses on the person next to the table, and retrieves his ID after a moment.
There still isn't audio, but he must try to communicate. Castiel checks to see if he can still speak, and decides that he must try, even if it is damaged.
---
Sam's ordered the assistants out to get him a list of supplies for the time being and is in the process of figuring out where to start when the angel on the table opens its eyes again. Which is wrong, because Sam made sure that it was off before he brought it down here after the first scare. Castiel should not be able to reactivate.
Sam freezes briefly and steps back, ready to call for security at the first sign of trouble. Instead of trouble, he gets Castiel's eyes focusing on him - he has always felt that Castiel's eyes were too human, but that's a personal opinion and nothing he can alter - and a moment later he gets confirmation that Castiel's aware in there.
Castiel's voice is creaky, stuttering with obvious errors, and at points it sounds like the most primitive of computerized voices, but he is understandable.
"Sam Winches-s-ter."
Sam nods, after a moment. If Castiel has identified him as someone who's not a threat, then maybe he can talk to him and find out how he reactivated himself.
"Castiel," Sam says, and figures it's worth a shot to say it. "Report."
There is a very long pause, and Sam wonders is he's going to get a response at all, before Castiel begins to speak.
---
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Fandom: Supernatural.
Rating: PG-13ish.
Warnings: Minor violence/descriptions of injuries.
Pairings/Characters: Gabriel, Castiel, Sam, Dean.
Word Count: 2,236 words, with 4,769 total so far.
Summary: Archangel Class Cyborgs are terrifying in combat, and practically unknowable off the battlefield. Castiel's an experimental unit with an unusual design, and he's caught Gabriel's interest.
Note: I refer you all to the first part of this cyborg story for notes and whatnot.
Warning! This is still a WIP and while more is coming within a day or two, you should read this at your own risk. If you're cool with that, then, read on!
---
Emotions he never wanted crowding his mind, interfering with observation. Fear, rage, pain -
Castiel feels phantom pains litter his body whenever he tries this. He smells blood, sulfur and worse, and thinks he can taste copper.
Every single time he tries to follow the memory deeper, get information from it, he can't help it when he jerks back to reality and finds that he is expecting his hands to tremble, even when they can't.
Castiel is afraid of Jimmy Novak's memories, and how can he ever tell his superiors that fear is why he hasn't been able to complete his orders? He can't, that's the plain and simple truth of it.
The trouble now is that he has to weigh one fear against the other: is he more afraid of the memories he needs to excavate for information, or is he more afraid of this archangel in front of him, who could destroy him with only a casual use of power.
The fear, then, explains why he acts the way he does when Gabriel asks the question. It explains why he runs.
But nothing he can think of could explain why, when Gabriel trapped him and prevented him from running, he turned and attacked the archangel.
---
Sam can tell when trouble's up. Even without the dead giveaways - emergency call for him when he's off-shift, something about one of the patrols he knows one of the archangels was covering - he can tell. Rumors spread like wildfire. He doesn't get a chance to listen to them, but it makes him think he's prepared for it when he arrives on the roof.
The roof, however, is another story altogether. There's a mess of bloodied and torn clothes creating a trail to the stretcher the other technicians have pulled out, and what's on that stretcher - Sam has to wince. Last time he saw injuries this bad, Azazel had been loose and working on terror tactics instead of out-and-out death - he'd capture the angel, torture and dismantle it, and leave it to limp home on its own. Sam had been relieved when that had been stopped, and not just for the usual reason of fewer emergency calls in the dead of night.
"What the hell happened here?" Sam hears, and when he looks it's Dean, still in civilian wear. One of the communications crew comes over to brief him, and Sam hurries over to hear it.
"I can't explain it," the crewman says, "As far as we can tell without pulling the entire log and getting Gabriel's report, Castiel here attacked Gabriel."
"Attacked." Dean says, then eyes the stretcher. "Is Gabriel in yet?"
"Yes, but he's not talking to anyone - "
"I'll get that report out of him." Dean turns, and pauses. "Sam. I didn't know they'd call you in - "
"We can talk later," Sam says. He knows, he knows. Dean thinks Sam's back at home preparing to have a pleasant day off, and he's going to be annoyed to find out that Sam decided to stay on call.
"Workaholic," Dean tells him, and gets going, leaving Sam to his business.
It's true, and they both know it. But Sam keeps coming to work and Dean isn't yet pulling strings to get a vacation enforced for him.
But that's all besides the point, and Sam needs all of his concentration for this. Castiel's lucky that its legs aren't flesh, those'll be easy to reattach - or replace, if it comes down to that - and Sam is already making an inventory of what parts he'll need brought up, as well as the medical supplies needed to keep the biological parts healthy.
Sam bends to brush back Castiel's hair, and tries to guess at how many cracks will be decorating the case protecting Castiel's brain.
He freezes at the sound of a soft sigh, and the sight of Castiel's eyelids twitching.
"Hey," Sam says, and it comes out softer than he meant it to, as if he were saying it to the angel in front of him. He clears his throat. "HEY!"
Someone's screwed up big time here. Castiel's supposed to be off, functions completely shut down.
There's the sound of creaking metal. Too-strong fingers close around his wrist, and Castiel is looking at him.
---
Castiel's getting too much interference in his thought processes, and there are too many readouts layered over his vision, and the pain -
Pain is unusual in angels. Very few models have been created with actual pain sensors, even if all of them have been created with alerts built in to inform them when something has been damaged.
Castiel feels pain. Sometimes he gets it in double-layers, as his biological parts, inherited from Jimmy, still have nerves that will scream if they are triggered, and Castiel isn't always in a state to turn off their signals.
This is one of those times, and he has to fight to stay focused, to identify that the shape in front of him is not a threat, and that he doesn't need to activate weapon systems. If they would even work, as he is still having trouble sorting through the complete report of how badly damaged he is.
He reels for a second as memories flash in, incomplete snapshots of Gabriel attacking him - of his own ineffectual lashing out moments before -
The figure in front of him is saying something, and Castiel realizes that his ears aren't working. No audio. Just the visual cue of a mouth moving.
He thinks he might need to finally figure out the extent of the damage. The pain makes it hard to focus, but he can't falter, not without a location.
He lets his eyes close, and focuses on the readouts instead, beginning the long process of self-repair.
---
Gabriel knows the questioning is going to start soon. He can't say he wants to go into details, but...well. It's been a long time since he's held a firm opinion about one of the models of angels, and as an experimental unit...
When Dean joins him by the windows, Gabriel's ready.
"Advance warning for your superiors," he says to him. "Unless some major modifications are done, they're not going to be happy with the results from the experimental unit, and I bet any more made like him are going to have the same problems."
Gabriel doesn't look at Dean, and waits for the inevitable questions. He likes Dean, because as much of a hassle as he is, he's probably the best handler that Gabriel's had to deal with since his creation.
"What the hell happened up there?" Dean says, eloquent as ever.
"Do you want the minutes, or just the important stuff?"
"Quit stalling, Gabriel. How the hell did a normal patrol go from 'one batch of demons disposed' to 'brought back Castiel in pieces'?"
"Conversation and some seriously screwed up programming." Gabriel debates holding off the details to see how mad he can make Dean get, but honestly? This is serious. He likes it when experimental units work out, and he likes it when he doesn't have to tell the scientists that their latest model is all-systems go.
"Go on," Dean prompts.
"We wrapped up the demons, and after I got the gore off of me I turned to him and asked him exactly why he wasn't following orders. Yes, I am aware that they're being lenient with him. Yes, I know emotions are sketchy to work with in the first place. No, I don't think he can get away with putting off the assignment for this long." Gabriel turns back to the window, resting his hands on the railing. "I asked the question. He froze up, and I repeated it. Then he took off running as fast as he could go."
"Running." Dean repeats.
"He was terrified. I took off after him, and pinned him to the ground. Or tried to, anyways."
Gabriel doesn't need to look at Dean to know that he's following. That if he stalled for too long, Dean would prompt him again.
"He shot me." Gabriel says flatly. "Made me pause for long enough for him to take off again. The rest of it...well, you saw what I brought back. And no, I didn't destroy the fleshy bits. None of the essentials, anyways."
There's a moment of silence, then when Gabriel looks, Dean has his arms crossed.
"That's a lot of fluff you're spouting at me. When are you going to tell me something I don't already know?"
"You didn't know what set him off," Gabriel points out. It's futile, he knows it, but this is why Dean has lasted the longest working with him.
"If I had time to check the log before I came after you, I'd have found it out. Quit evading the subject, and tell me what happened up there. He attacked you, fine. Why isn't he coming back disabled and restrained? Why are we going to have to get the roof mopped, Gabriel?"
"Now you're taking too long to get to the point."
"Why the overkill, Gabriel?" Dean asks, voice hard.
"He's going to be useless, and everyone in command is going to figure that out as soon as the scientists stop having their celebration that he opened his eyes in the first place."
"We've had failed models before."
"Not like this."
"What makes him different?"
Gabriel twitches a wing, then faces Dean. He's annoyed, and willing to show it to make his point.
"There's an innocent human trapped in there, a badly tortured and brutalized one. Don't protest that he was dead or brain-dead when he got here. Castiel's an interface laid over that human, and we're torturing him further by using him as a resource."
Gabriel's had this argument building for days. He knows it's odd coming from him, and he knows that as far as his freedom to influence events is, it's not far enough to halt experiments like this. He's overstepped his boundaries already, and he's willing to face whatever reprimand Dean will decide to lay on him.
Yet the problem remains: he is bothered by Castiel's existence, and bothered in a way that a lot of his brethren aren't going to get. Yet he might be able to make some of the humans see it his way.
"You tore him to pieces because you have moral objections over his existence," Dean says.
"That's about the size of it," Gabriel says, and turns away again.
There's a moment of silence before Dean sighs. "I would start pointing out ways where that just doesn't work, but you're going to have an argument for every one of them, aren't you."
Gabriel doesn't bother answering.
---
Castiel next opens his eyes in a different place. He is lying flat on a table, and he has figured out the extent of the damage. The worst of it are the internal injuries to his brain-case and lungs. The most obvious injuries are his missing legs and where his wings were torn from his back. He is fortunate to retain most of his torso, his arms and hands, and his head.
In short, the damage is excessive but he can recover from it.
This raises the question of why Gabriel didn't finish him off, as well as why he went about injuring Castiel in this manner. Castiel thinks he could attribute the brutality to Gabriel's nature, but...
He stops himself from that line of thought. There are more important issues to pursue, and it is folly to figure out an archangel's reasoning for its actions. Right now he needs to identify his location and what his possible actions could be.
There's movement, and Castiel is relieved to confirm that his neck and head are still operative enough to move. He focuses on the person next to the table, and retrieves his ID after a moment.
There still isn't audio, but he must try to communicate. Castiel checks to see if he can still speak, and decides that he must try, even if it is damaged.
---
Sam's ordered the assistants out to get him a list of supplies for the time being and is in the process of figuring out where to start when the angel on the table opens its eyes again. Which is wrong, because Sam made sure that it was off before he brought it down here after the first scare. Castiel should not be able to reactivate.
Sam freezes briefly and steps back, ready to call for security at the first sign of trouble. Instead of trouble, he gets Castiel's eyes focusing on him - he has always felt that Castiel's eyes were too human, but that's a personal opinion and nothing he can alter - and a moment later he gets confirmation that Castiel's aware in there.
Castiel's voice is creaky, stuttering with obvious errors, and at points it sounds like the most primitive of computerized voices, but he is understandable.
"Sam Winches-s-ter."
Sam nods, after a moment. If Castiel has identified him as someone who's not a threat, then maybe he can talk to him and find out how he reactivated himself.
"Castiel," Sam says, and figures it's worth a shot to say it. "Report."
There is a very long pause, and Sam wonders is he's going to get a response at all, before Castiel begins to speak.
---
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