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He arrived in a spray of blood and flesh, torn muscle frayed like ribbon, an open cavity where a woman once existed.
An angel of the Lord reached into the carnage and lifted the infant out.
“He is just the sweetest little angel ever, isn’t he?”
Tanya’s voice pitched into the high-pitched squeal babies always inspired. Castiel meant to judge such silliness, but when he looked down at the open-mouthed grin on the baby’s face, he smiled as well. Infants had always stirred him, fragile humans with no dreams yet of purpose or destiny.
Castiel scratched absently at a bit of dirt along the side of his neck. Lighthouse Ministries, a halfway house tucked on a backstreet in Portland, Oregon, had been a wonderful place to spend a week. The staff, warm and genuine, radiated their desire to help their fellow man, and the other people availing themselves of services showed him kindnesses they themselves had not received.
As he had been so many times the six months, Castiel was humbled.
“Tom, hey, can I borrow your car?” Jonte, a man who relived Operation Iraqi Freedom each night in his sleep, touched Castiel’s elbow. “I’ve got an appointment at the VA tonight.”
Castiel nodded. “Of course. I am glad to hear you have made the choice to see someone.”
“Yeah, man.” Jonte rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous smile creeping onto his face. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Castiel recognized the other man’s desire for no further conversation on the topic and turned instead to Tanya. In her arms, extended before her, the baby gurgled and chortled, the picture of humanity. No matter how many times he saw him, Castiel always swept his gaze over each detail: the tiny swirls of sandy hair, the expressive eyes, the busy hands.
He had named him Judah. The Hebrew name for “praised.” The name promised power and goodness, and certainly, the nephil had it. Yet it was not his godliness but his fragility that tugged at Castiel’s heart.
Judah reached out with eager hands, and Tanya handed him over.
Tanya smiled, a silly glow in her eyes. “I swear, I’m half in love with you and that baby, Tom Smith. Are you sure you have to move on? Lighthouse could help you find something permanent.”
“I told you. I got word that Judah’s mother wants to make amends. Children need both parents.” The ability to lie, once so challenging, had become seamless.
She pursed her lips, shook her head. “I guess so.”
“I will take care of him.” Every time he said the words, in any setting, they felt right.
“And yourself?”
“And myself,” Castiel confirmed.
In the next few hours, Castiel made his rounds around Lighthouse Ministries. He washed a load of mixed clothes, folding everyone’s items separately, and helped Noli make sandwiches for dinner. He tried to find needs, feel them out like chinks in a wall, groped for blindly, to fix them before he went. Tanya’s addiction had been his first project upon arrival, but upon touching her arm, he discovered the physical affliction -- which he could heal -- was tangled with complex emotional addiction he could not. He prayed with her over the dinner table, fingers folded together, and silently offered up his own hope that she would stay clean.
When Jonte came back with the car, Castiel loaded up his duffel bag, diaper bag, and two sandwiches for the road. People hugged him, thanked him for everything, and wished him luck.
Before he put Judah in the car seat, the baby reached out for Tanya, touched her arm. Castiel saw an expression of inexplicable peace light her face.
He glanced back at her in the rearview mirror as he drove away and then took ironic note of the infant seat behind him -- rear-facing for safety, safety for a being whose power made Castiel’s seem no more than a pittance.
“What are we even looking for?”
Dean glared over at his brother, angry words about stupid questions bubbling up in his mouth. He and Sam had a map of the United States stretched out along the table. For months, it had become a permanent fixture, so much a part of the table that it bore food stains in addition to push pins, scribbled handwriting, and multi-colored post-it notes.
“Same thing we’ve been shooting blanks on for too damn long,” Dean replied. He tilted his head, stared at the map as if it were suddenly going to cough up answers now. Looking at the map was easier than looking over at Sam. He knew what facial expression was waiting for him there: a flat line mouth and a worried crinkle between his eyes.
“Dean…” Sam’s voice matched the look on his face Dean hadn’t even seen yet. What don’t I know about that kid? The thought -- part of his life since childhood -- made him half-smile. If they made it to be old and grey, no matter how much his little brother was his best friend and equal, he would always have some part of him that saw him as a kid.
“Don’t.” Dean cut him off.
“But let’s look at what we have here.” Sam pointed to an orange post-it note. “These indicate active faith healers. All these years, we have never come across a real faith healer, and suddenly we’re tracking 22 around the country with no evidence that they’re faking it.”
“We’ve only checked out three of them.”
“And all three checked out. We couldn’t find anything to gank anywhere near them. No angels, no demons, no Reapers.” Sam touched one of his handwritten notes on Tulsa, Oklahoma. “A rehab center turned out 100% of its patients one day, and all of them are still clean six months later. By all accounts, a miracle, and not the only one.”
“Bound to be a bunch of angels running around looking for Rosemary’s Baby.”
“And since when do angels do good deeds?” A thin reed of bitterness lined his voice. Dean geared up to pose another argument, but Sam’s point stared him in the face. Faith healings, miracles, devastated forests regrowing at unprecedented rates, air pollution over New York City reduced by 6.8%... the map was a far cry from lightning strikes and cattle mutilations.
If the nephilim -- “It’s a nephil, Dean. Nephilim is plural.”... “I don’t care.” -- planned to end the world, its path made no sense.
Yet it had taken their angel. Dean remembered the golden glow in Cas’s eyes when Kelly Kline reached out to take his hand. Angels glowed blue, demons fell black, and yet the nephil had made Castiel into something else entirely right before he dropped both Winchesters like a ton of bricks.
“So what exactly should we be doing then? Giving up?” Even as he asked the question, Dean knew how he would have answered the question, had the arguments been reversed, had Sam been the one desperately chasing a dead end. He would have told Sam they needed to catch a case and focus on one thing at a time.
“I think with Heaven, Hell, and the British Men of Letters on their trail, Cas and the nephil have enough problems,” Sam said. “We could stop hunting them and try… praying? If Cas knew we just wanted to help...”
Dean stared him down before turning and heading into the kitchen for a beer wordlessly. When he returned, he kicked one of the rolling chairs back, popped the beer cap on the edge of the table, and took a long gulp.
“You can pray to him if you want.”
Dean closed his eyes and tried not to see Cas burned on the inside of his eyelids, his face contorted in expressions nothing like his own.
The nephil didn’t seem to be taking the world, but even if all it took was the angel Castiel, Dean could hate it.
Castiel and Judah slept under an overpass with a teenage boy with the shakes.
He had no idea how to describe the way he knew what Judah needed. In the womb, he had flashed images, prophetic visions, but if the child had those capabilities in his physical body, he did not use them. Instead Castiel would simply feel what must be done, an idea with a heavier gravitational pull than other featherlight thoughts.
Sometimes that meant paying for public parking and moving out into the streets for the night. It was the reason he had allowed himself to change; his human body had not truly been a vessel for many years, yet he had tended to keep it the same, maintaining the look Jimmy Novak had once had. In the last year, he had grown out facial hair in a scruffy beard, let his eyes form heavy circles. For the work Judah wished them to do, Castiel needed to look as though he belonged.
When they had stopped tonight, he had barely made it two blocks when he had seen the boy: no older than fourteen and shivering on a stoop. The air wasn’t cold.
“Hey.” Castiel had learned humans preferred this greeting over hello. “Are you hungry?”
“What? Why?” The kid glanced around warily. He was street smart enough to know that nothing comes for free.
“Because I need a place to sit down to feed the baby, and I have an extra sandwich. Share your stoop for a peanut butter and jelly?”
The kid took another furtive glance, a sweep for safety, and then nodded. “Sure.”
“I’m Luke.” Castiel extended his hand once he had gotten down, transferring Judah from his hip to his knee in front of him. “And this is Judah.”
One of the things he had learned early on had been to always use Judah’s given name. He responded to it, and through it, seemed able to connect with people, able to help them. When Castiel fictionalized him as he did himself, the interactions changed. As he had come to expect, once he introduced Judah, the kid did not look away from the baby.
“I’m Cole.” His voice had that strange depth of pubescence, a new shiny low octave without any burr of manhood.
“Nice to meet you.” Castiel fished out the sandwich and handed it over. Then he busied himself in with preparing a banana from his bag. He pressed the overripe fruit inside its skin, working it until it was mush, and then opened the peel along an edge. Slipping a baby spoon into the fruit and then into the eagerly waiting mouth, he did not look over at Cole as he fed Judah. Privacy was something people on the street missed. He had learned to recognize the value of offering it to them.
“I have a baby sister. She’s probably the same age as him.” Cole crumpled up the now empty sandwich bag in his fingers, unfolded it and then refolded it. “She’s my dad’s, though, so I don’t see her much.”
“Would you like to hold him?” Castiel wiped a little banana from the corner of Judah’s mouth and grabbed the spoon from him before he could chuck it. Judah loved to throw things and delighted in watching Castiel fetch them repeatedly.
“I don’t know. Babies cry a lot.”
“He likes new people. You could try.”
He had watched these moments many times now, but he still marveled at the way Judah reached out, at the warmth as Cole slipped from quiet and trembling to steady and talking. He delighted Judah with patty-cake, both children unaware that the older’s hands had stopped quaking.
By the night’s end, they had walked to Cole’s chosen spot for shelter, and he had pulled a tattered grey blanket from behind a dumpster. Castiel had brought one in his bag as well and unfolded it. Cole had not let go of Judah once he had been given the choice to hold him, and Castiel watched as the teenager clumsily laid out the blanket on the ground before putting Judah down on it. Castiel slipped some of the toys from his bag onto the blanket as well. Cole built small towers with Judah, rebuilding each time an eager hand knocked one down, and they both laughed, each sound no more than a giggle. Judah babbled his stream of endless sounds; Cole responded to them as if they were actual words worthy of consideration.
Castiel wondered if this was what Dean and Sam had looked like as children. The ages were wrong, of course, but perhaps the spirit was right.
He missed them. He missed them in a bone-deep way. He missed them the way a drop of water, stolen away by a bucket, lost in a sea of sand, misses the ocean.
Both boys next to him yawned, and as they fell asleep, bit by bit, Castiel lifted the other blanket over them. Jealousy stirred in his chest as he looked at Judah there, asleep against a stranger, but he could not deny Cole the peace it brought.
When his grace had been drained, he had experienced sleep for the first time. The loss of being, the slip into nothingness, out of control and yet penetrable, had terrified and amazed him. Humans did this each night, gave themselves over to a darkness they could not command and trusted that it would spit them back out again, whole and unharmed. It did not always do so. In his years with the Winchesters, he had heard both of them cry out in their sleep. On occasion, he had even tried to help, slipping in to touch a shoulder, searching for an internal wound to knit back together. In this past year, he had seen many more humans struggle in their sleep, and yet he almost wished for it himself. To live the day-to-day rhythms of human existence without sleep became incredibly exhausting.
He listened to the sound of their breathing and tried to keep out the thoughts of Dean. To miss Sam and Dean together, as the Winchesters, was permissible. To miss the width of Dean’s shoulders and the dip of his concerned voice was not. A child depended on him now, and he could not risk Judah’s safety for anything but most certainly not for his own foolish fantasies.
It was 3:26 a.m. when the earthly plane shifted around them.
Archangels move on multiple frequencies, and Castiel’s cells buzzed on all of them. He opened his eyes to see a man walking down the sidewalk. His police uniform had been ironed and starched, creases standing stiffly on their own, but his stride was loose, open and relaxed. The smug arrogance on the face matched that of other cops Castiel had met this past year, but cops did not set off these metaphysical alarm bells.
Judah could hide them. In the presence of either angel or demon, the nephil usually made them go dark, an innate protective instinct Castiel could not harness. Right now, he had no doubt which black-sheep brother wandered down the street toward them, and he wished God really was the all-powerful father who answered prayers.
The cop walked to within inches of where they sat. He stood there, shiny black boots almost touching the toes of Castiel’s own. He squatted down. Then he tilted his nose up and sniffed the air, nostrils widening beneath his dark mustache. His unseeing eyes flared red.
“Oh, baby, oh.” Lucifer’s mouth did not smile, but his voice did. “This is interesting. I can feel you, you know. Somewhere right…” He reached out with his hand. “... about...” Castiel watched the fingers wiggle through the inside of his left knee. “...here. I recognize you, Castiel. The Winchesters’ pet dog off of his leash.”
Lucifer rose. “I’m not talking to Castiel though. I’m talking to you.”
As if the word carried its own power, Judah opened his eyes. A sleepy yawn split his small face, but then his eyes sharpened. In them was just a glimpse of the well of power inside.
“You can feel me, can’t you? You’ve been in good hands. Castiel has taken good care of you, but you’re mine. My boy.” The words were honest, the perverse love in them genuine, and Castiel wished to grab Judah and teleport, poof them away to anywhere, but he had neither the wings nor the grace to outrun an archangel, let alone Lucifer, whose angelic grace throbbed with vitality before them. Something must have shifted in the dynamics in Hell, for he was not only loose but empowered.
A glow began in Judah’s eyes, faint gold along their edges. Cole snored a thin, reedy exhale.
“Are you ready to come home? You belong with me.” His voice edged harder. “I will take care of you. I will not abandon you or put anyone before you. I will not create something new and replace you.”
If he had not been holding his breath for fear of Judah revealing them, Castiel might have marveled at Lucifer’s inability to see through his own hubris. His promise revealed why he thought he would be a better father than God had been to him. He did not seem to understand that the demons were his angels and Judah was his humanity. If given the chance, he too was going to put his second creation first.
Judah burbled, and the air seemed to shift. Lucifer smiled, his voice dropped half an octave.
“There you go. Come to me.” He paused, cocked his head to the side as if considering. “I will not hurt Castiel. He has cared for you. I will not hurt him.”
The air stabilized suddenly -- Castiel knew no other way to describe the sudden solidity of the invisible barrier between them and the King of Hell -- and Judah grabbed onto Castiel. The grip of his small hands held such urgency that Castiel pulled him in close. He wondered if the baby had sensed a lie in the archangel’s words.
Castiel rested his chin on Judah’s head and reached an arm around Cole too, closing his eyes tightly. He held them all together until the sun began to break across the sky in long streaks and Lucifer walked reluctantly onward.
In the shadow of a most dangerous brother, Castiel found he very much wanted to go home, and home was Dean Winchester.
He got up the next morning with changed plans.