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What It Means To Fall
Castiel had not understood what it meant to fall. The descent from Heaven was of its nature controlled, but he was a tactician—he should have known it could not be so easy. He should have known that the house of the Nephilim would see his descent, that even one small seraph could not avoid their gaze as it swept, seeking, over the state of Kansas, over and over again. He should have known
He only thanked the Father, as the lightning swept towards him and the wind whipped at what should have been incorporeal, grabbed his wings and flung him towards an unyielding surface, that he was only one small seraph after all, and that his loss would be of nothing to the kingdom of Heaven.
*_*_*_*
He had also not understood that humanity might be… not as he’d expected.
“Cas—hey, Cas. Where’d you go?” Father Dean Winchester prodded him in the side. “Are you daydreaming? Or is angel radio not tuning into the right channels? Hey, do angels daydream?”
“No,” Cas told him, committed to honesty if not to disclosure—he was reasonably certain of the answer to at least some of those questions, if not quite all of them. Then added, “I’m reasonably certain priests don’t poke people.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m ‘reasonably certain’ angels aren’t supposed to be ticklish, either, but here you are.” Dean’s fingers didn’t move to make the quotations that Castiel had thought humans favored, but Castiel traced mockery in the tension of his arms, dusted with freckles and insolence.
Castiel frowned at him. “I’m not.”
A smirk curled at the corner of Dean’s mouth, and his own amusement rose off him, soft and smoky. “Yeah? Coulda fooled me, dude, ‘cause you jump when fingers hit your ribs every time.”
Castiel did not dignify that with a response. Just because the twist of electricity at Dean’s touch was strange did not mean that he jumped. “You should show me more respect.” It was not the first time he’d said it in the time he had been on Earth, and far from the first time he’d meant it, but perhaps it was true what was said—that each repetition meant it a little less, until by the end it might not be recognizable at all.
“Yeah, probably.” Dean shrugged. “Funny thing ‘bout that.”
“You are irreverent and impertinent.”
“Well, so long as I’m not impotent,” he sing-songed, wiping the communion goblet with a fresh bit of muslin and setting it back behind the tabernacle.
Castiel narrowed his eyes in consideration, inhaled through his mouth and sampled the air. “You do not smell so, no.”
Dean stared at him over his shoulder, hand frozen on the tabernacle door, then coughed, once, again, his lips and cheeks and shoulders going through a strange convoluted pattern of twitches that made Castiel wonder if perhaps he was having a seizure. Many of those who had been thought to be touched by God did, he understood. But he did not smell the electric twinges of epileptiform discharge from Dean’s mind, just saw a bright waft of amusement, and so he simply waited.
“Uh, good to know,” Dean managed, his voice run through, higher than it had been. “Yeah, uh, so. You got an update on this unholy angel bébé you’re looking for?”
Not for the first time, Castiel wondered why in the name of Heaven Dean was saying it like that, as that pronunciation was not native to Dean’s thoroughly Midwestern tongue. However, he had learned that any such questions were unlikely to garner him responses that he found satisfactory. “It is neither holy nor unholy, Dean, it is immature but not an infant—”
Dean flapped his fingers at him, then wiped them off with the pale square in his hand, finally reaching out to fold the cloth spread across the altar. It was laundry day, he had informed Castiel earlier. “I know, I know. Nephilim, half-angel family out to squash humanity, very bad, so how’d they lose their baby again?”
If Castiel knew the answer to this, he would not be here. “It fell through the firmament.”
“Is that like the thing that I use to drain pasta?”
“Dean.” Castiel was also starting to learn when Dean was actively working on being exasperating rather than having mischief simply floating off his skin. “You are not amusing.”
This time, Dean laughed. “Says you, the congregation all laugh at my homilies,” but he turned towards Castiel and leaned on the altar, hands leaving shadows of warmth on the heavy marble of it. His mouth was smiling, but his shoulders were serious. “Look, you say the Nephilim is here, but there’s no way you can give me a better timeline? It’s been a month, man, we need something. I checked all the records of kids in this area who’ve been surrendered up for adoption in the last year, and I could keep looking, but it’s gonna be hard getting info outside my parish. You sure it’s even a kid? There haven’t been any demonic signs or omens or anything that I’ve heard of. Not since I’ve lived ‘round here, anyway, and that's been my whole life.”
“There wouldn’t be, until the Nephilim attained maturity and the demons sought it out,” Castiel agreed.
“And how long does that take?”
Did all humans have so many questions? “The passage of time means almost nothing to me, and consequently even less to the Nephilim.”
Dean sighed, irritable, and walked towards where Castiel was standing in the center aisle between the pews, then past, his black pants swishing lightly against the corner of Castiel’s coat. Castiel followed at his heels as he shouldered a box of creamy white candles and a metal bucket, walked to one small bank of lights and began scraping dried circles of wax from several of the unlit, small glass jars in which the candles sat.
He had done this before. Castiel watched, curiously, then plucked one of the glass containers for himself. The wax slipped and slid against his fingertip, but it was not unpleasant, tingling with an odd flavor of hope until he discarded it into the bucket as Dean was doing. The next had a tinge of sadness in its still-warm surface.
There was something meditative about this, if not revelatory; Dean seemed to think so as well, and they worked in a soft, echoing silence, shoulders brushing. As they approached the last row of candles, Dean gave him a sideways, crooked smile. “Just my luck, huh. David gets the Angel Gabriel, who blows a horn that lights up the world and tells him yup, exactly seventy sevens to start, seven and sixty two until the Anointed One, then war and a covenant and all that. I get the Angel Castiel, who helps me clean the candles up and says ‘I don’t know, figure it out or else this thing’s gonna kill you all.’”
“I doubt he truly said that,” Castiel mused, digging with his fingernail at a particularly stubborn bit of wax. It popped free and he huffed softly in satisfaction. “Or if he did, it was because Gabriel just liked the sound of ‘seventy sevens.’ He always thought himself very clever compared to the rest of us.”
Dean paused and stared at him, as if that was a thought that struck him strangely, though Castiel didn’t know why that would be any more bizarre than anything else Castiel had said. But after a moment, Dean chuckled. “Oh-kay, then, I… y’know, I should be less surprised. Just sayin’, when an Angel of the Lord crash-lands through the roof of my church and makes like a puddle right in front of the altar, I kind of expect him to have more details than ‘X marks the spot’ when X is a state. Even if you did fix the roof after. If you get my meaning.”
“I truly don’t,” Cas answered. Then, sulkily, “I was not a puddle.”
Though he had nonetheless been grateful to awaken to a hand on his shoulder and another on his forehead, gentle on the shattered bones that mended at a kiss of Castiel’s grace, the sound of prayer mingled with creative obscenities in a fascinating patois that Castiel had never heard the like of before or since. He had been surprised to awaken at all.
Dean Winchester did not understand that angels were not to be touched—not casually, not at all. Castiel had not reprimanded him then, and perhaps he should have, but shaken by being so corporeal, he had not—the hands resting on him had been warm as the prayers that had revived him.
Dean’s hand reached out and prodded at his side again, and grinned. “Cas, man, I know everyone else thought it was a tornado touching down… but you kind of were an angel puddle.”
Castiel did not understand, still, why the light touch of those fingers against his flank, his elbow, his shoulder, through the weave of jacket and coat and shirt, made his shattered wings feel less broken. He didn’t understand why the way Dean tapped at him occasionally as if simply ensuring that he was corporeal, that he was real, felt so good.
*_*_*_*
The children had flocked to Dean, yelping and dancing with pleasure and all but ignoring Castiel unless it was to flutter past the edges of his coat. Dean had pressed blessings to their foreheads with his thumb and his fingertips, the palm of his hand leaving the hair he touched limned in warmth and fondness for a moment before he released them. The school’s headmaster had hugged Dean, folding around him, complaining loudly, and Dean had slapped his back, called him ‘Sammy,’ and they had made strange faces at each other, fondness floating around both their shoulders like a warm cloak.
He had seen no bond of blood between Samuel and Dean Winchester, for all that they bore the same name, but the one of kinship had been stronger. It was, he was certain, only that that had kept Sam from attempting something to Castiel that they would have both surely regretted—or, for that matter, Castiel from attempting something at Sam, for he stank of the contamination of demons. Dean had stepped between them, a hand shoved on each of their chests, and both of them—both beings who, Castiel was certain, could have swatted him aside without much thought—had stopped short.
“Demonspawn, angel, angel, demonspawn,” he’d drawled, as they stared at him. “Aaaand priest. We cool?”
Demonspawn was an unkind word for those referred to in Heaven only as the Unfortunates, but it was not inaccurate—demons could reproduce but rarely breed, and their efforts to create a nephilim of their own devising had been legion. Most were twisted, broken creatures—Sam was hale, whole, with a keen gaze and power simmering underneath his skin like a pocket of tar, but no malice. Certainly that explained why Dean had been alarmed, but rather less than awed when Castiel had landed in his church.
Or perhaps it didn’t, at all. From what he knew of Dean, that was too simple a thought.
Dean was still smiling faintly to himself as they drove from the home. “So I thought that went well. Only a little dick waving,”
Castiel pressed himself back against the leather seat. “That was my angel blade, not my—” He knew little of human customs but even he knew the revealing of genitalia in public was improper.
“Oh God. Stop, just… just… yeah, never mind, actually, go on,” and Dean was laughing, the inside of his vehicle bouncing with its colors. But he reached out and pressed a hand on the inside of Castiel’s elbow as Castiel scowled at him, and when he lifted his palm away its print remained faintly there, as it had on the heads of the children. “Aw, Cas.”
Castiel did not, as it turned out, wish to continue. “You and Sam have the same last name.”
“Yeah, we’re brothers.” Dean grinned at that, his thoughts bright on his face as he maneuvered the car down the thin, crunching gravel. “I mean, yeah, we’re both adopted, but I kinda think that makes us more brothers rather than less, right?” He laughed, softly. “Mom… she used to love to tell this story, ‘bout how they were just gonna adopt me, ‘cause, y’know, I was older, harder to adopt. She wanted to make a difference. And I just wouldn’t let go of little Sammy, and I told them they had to take ‘im too, ‘cause he was so ugly no-one would take him if they didn’t.” His grin was wide and pink, flashing with teeth. “I tell Sam I remember, but yeah, no, don’t remember a thing of that. ‘Cause he was a cute little sonovabitch in those pictures.”
“You are well-loved,” Castiel observed, as they rattled down the road from the orphanage, the trunk of Dean’s car filled with a small armamentarium of tools that his demonic brother had provided, the words of the exorcism that Sam’s fingers had bled to write down still tingling at the base of Dean’s throat. “They adore you, there.”
Dean’s eyes narrowed in an expression that would have contained threat if not for the small capillaries dilating in the apples of his cheeks, warm wisps of embarrassment. “Hey, now, you’re gonna give me a rep, vow of chastity here.”
Castiel blinked, slowly, and let his head fall back against the window’s cool glass. He understood that there was a joke being had at his expense here, but… “Why would you vow that?” He truly meant it—from what little he understood of humans, he understood they enjoyed hedonism.
Dean blinked back at him, a hand on the wheel, and his laughter was sharp and mocking, flechette-bright. “Well, seminary tells me it keeps me from dividing my heart, and brings me closer to God.”
Cas felt his head tip just slightly to the side, the weight of his thoughts unbalancing him. “I fail to see what proximity your fornication would or wouldn’t provide to my Father.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not really sure why it would either, but they really liked to pull out religious justifications for political fuck-all back in the eleventh century,” Dean answered, light, and grinned sideways at Castiel, friendly with it. “Gotta say, though, if everyone called it fornication, I’m pretty sure no-one would do it, and then I’d have to hear about it a lot less in confession.”
“Does that bother you?” The concept of penance was not a new one, nor that of a sin-eater, but that the custom had persisted was still strange. It was a question that Castiel was quite certain he would not have thought to ask a week, a month, a year, a century before, but it danced off the tip of his tongue easily now, after only a few months.
Dean chuckled, shook his head. “Nah, not that part of confession anyway?” he shrugged. “I mean, I tried it, before, it was fun, felt good, I guess? Sex? But there was something sort of lonely about it…” and he glanced sideways. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you.”
“No,” Castiel agreed, unashamed about it. “I’ve never engaged in intercourse.”
Dean chuckled. “No, didn’t think so,” but he was smiling, so clearly Castiel had not said something amiss. “Getting into trouble with girls—or boys—or whatever, that was ‘bout the only kind of trouble I didn’t get into. S’why they used to joke I’d maybe be a good priest, back, y’know. Or, well. Mom used to joke.” He quieted, and his sorrow was soft and bitter.
Castiel frowned, picked through the words carefully and sorted out one, another, wishing it would be so easy as to push his fingers through the prickle of that sorrow. It was not that easy. “It seems an odd joke. You are a priest.”
“I notice you don’t say I’m a good priest.”
Turning, Castiel blinked at him. “How would I even judge that?”
Dean blinked back, and then softened, so suddenly it left the line of his throat arched. “Geez. You are the best angel ever, Cas, I swear,” he laughed, finally, and with the sorrow gone, now, its color was warm and golden tendrils of it so rich that Castiel almost reached out to catch them from the air, twine them around his fingers like ribbons. “So you’re sayin’ you don’t care ‘bout my chastity, is that it?”
He… didn’t, that was true. But the air in Dean’s black vehicle was bright and strange, and the stronger, stranger truth lingered on Castiel’s lips. “You are important to me,” he tasted the words, found them truer than perhaps he liked, “And I would never ask you to break a vow you’ve made, Dean.”
“I know.” Dean’s breath was a soft cloud of heat that licked across the distance before him, between them. He smiled, so rueful it was a touch, and did not turn his face from the road stretched out before them. “But, y’know? Sometimes you say shit like that, and it kinda makes me want to.”
They should have been a blow, but the words felt like a caress. Castiel had no idea what to say to that. But for the first time, watching Dean’s pupils widen and swallow green, felt the twist of his lips as Dean shook his head, turned away towards the road, still smiling, he suddenly understood less than he had.
*_*_*_*
Oh, Castiel thought, watching the slide of muscle down a long, lean back as Dean undid his collar, stripped off his black shirt—the wings of shoulder blades that made Castiel’s own twisted feathers seem insubstantial. His skin was peppered with soft golden freckles where the sun could not have kissed him, so what had?
He did not understand confession. He did not understand sin.
But for a moment, he understood wanting, a mouth that did not need moisture dry as starlight as Dean twisted at the waist to look at him, brow crinkled, fresh shirt in big, capable hands.
“So we huntin’ demons or what, Cas?”
Castiel would deny until his final moments of existence that he jumped.
*_*_*_*
This, Castiel realized, was what it was like to die. Not tumbling from the sky uncontrolled, whipped by winds that slammed debris through his body and shredded his wings until they were only aether—not the sometimes-tedium of Heaven or the pain-webbed darkness of Hell. This, his angel blade wet with blood because not even his grace could burn it free from the glut of demons around them. He had Dean behind him, but Dean’s voice was long since worn ragged, exorcitamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, but the impurities around them were too many—regna terrae, cantate Deo, but God could not hear them sing here, for all the screaming.
He could not win, Castiel realized, but there was no time and no breath for despair. And if he could not win, he could not fly—he could protect, to the last shining drop of his grace. Somewhere, he thought, perhaps they had forgotten that angels were guardians and that humanity was not coin to be gambled with. That he had been sent here not to retrieve an errant babe and balance the power games of Heaven, but to protect.
That, he could do—to the best of one small seraph’s ability.
It shouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t, in the span of things. Dean was only one human—blessed, bright, but not chosen. Only chance had put Castiel in his way, Castiel knew this. He realized it. It could have been any other, and it would all have come to the same. They had not found the Nephilim, but it must be so close, and the demons were slavering. Castiel had failed—Heaven’s mission, and Dean’s choice. They would both die here.
And yet.
He set himself in front of Dean, manifested the dark, aching skeleton blades of his wings, and spread them wide to set himself between a human and a demonic mob.
It did not last long. It couldn’t, of course. He fought as they stabbed and stabbed at him, grace leaking through his wounds when he could no longer seal them closed; he fought until his hands were slippery and he did not know if it was his own blood or ichor. At his back there was the jerking retort of the shotgun’s last rounds, and then nothing more as it fell to the ground, only the twisting motion of the knife that Sam had pressed into Dean’s hand even before the gun clattered to stone. Demons sparked and flashed and died behind him, before him.
But inevitability beckoned.
It was the claws to his throat that felled him, the spill of his own grace gagging him, and Castiel fell to his knees in gore and bodies. The remnants of his wings dragged behind him, wet. He knew better than to release his angel blade, he knew better, but his fingers were empty and raw and stained, and his blade wavered in his vision, lying on slick cement and no longer in his hand.
“Cas—” hoarse and broken, but that curt, truncated nickname nonetheless that he had come to love the sound of. “No—c’mon, you bastard, you get up—get away from him!"
And a tall, brash, impossibly lovely human stepped in front of him, wielding nothing but a short-bladed knife given to him by a demon-touched brother, and the demon licking Castiel’s grace from its claws shattered in fire and smoke.
“Don’t. No—” Castiel had voice enough for this. “Dean, go.”
It was foolishness to say. There was nowhere to go. But somehow it mattered that he said it.
“Fuck that.” Dean’s smile flashed at him through a bloody, split lip, vicious and beautiful. “Think there’s a place up in the big house for a priest who’s maybe got a thing for an angel?” And he bent and grabbed up Castiel’s angel blade.
The warmth watered away the pain until it bloomed. It drained thought, lifted away exhaustion, and demons winked out around them like the stars going to rest, one by one. The light was so bright it sang hosannas like the little choir at Dean’s church, steady as prayers spoken in front of flat white candles. Castiel was so filled with grace that it bore him up, up, and he found himself standing on legs no longer littered with cuts, blinking eyes that were no longer stinging with blood. His wings rustled softly behind him, unbroken.
Dean turned, Castiel’s angel blade in one hand, Sam’s demon knife in the other.
Dean’s wings were seafoam white, high-bladed, and if Castiel had needed to breathe he would have been breathless. Instead, his grace trembled within him at the force of the glory before him, and he would have been hard-pressed to know if it was the power of him or simply the sight of Dean’s familiar, beloved features limned in holy light.
Thirty-four years was naught to angel and nothing to Nephilim, but it had been a lifetime to Dean Winchester. He had been right, as it turned out: the Nephilim’s heir was not a child.
It had all been right before him, Dean had been right before him, and this man, he knew. This man, he loved. Humanity had naught to fear from him, when they had raised him to love God and love a demonspawn, dedicate his life to a congregation that laughed at his jokes and brought him pie.
Castiel thought that the Nephilim should tremble, for what was lost was found, what was before him was glory and wrath, and that which would have been their sword would, undoubtedly, be turned against them instead.
There was, perhaps, a metaphor there.
Dean opened his full, pink mouth, and the tone of his voice rang radiant with Heaven’s choruses—
“Okay, what the fuck.”
~fin~