Chapter Text
It’s easy to lose all hope in Hell.
You let your mind spiral a little too far into just what eternity means and you’re gone. There’s nothing left for you but the honest truth of it all. You’re here, you’re not going anywhere, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
(Except becoming a demon, of course. A lot of people take that option when the pain gets to be too much, but she can’t, not even when Alastair has stripped the last of her humanity from her aching bones and set a knife in her hand to take her rightful place at the rack.)
(Her mother would never forgive her-)
(Her father would never forgive her-)
(Maybe becoming a demon would have been better. Let the corruption finish eating through her in the places Alastair’s blade hadn’t found and take the pain from her. Maybe that would have been better than who she is now, someone capable of twisting the knife till someone stops asking to be saved.)
(He did that too, Alastair did, he taught her that in this place no one saves you. No one but yourself.)
One day (but what is a day? Hell is endless, eternity is endless. There is no day, no night, not really, not unless you count all day. Count to sixty sixty times, repeat the process twenty-four times, repeat the process seven times with every twenty-four-) something happens. It’s like a crack opens up in the ceiling of the torturers’ pit, light streaming through. There’s a knife in her hand, trembling, and an unholy chorus of screaming fills the pit.
She’s used to screaming, this is different. This is something new. Bolts of glorious, blinding light soar high above, crash landing into sections of the pit above her. (Part of her hopes one of them will crash into her, will obliterate her. Eternity isn’t so bad as a sudden stop and nothing after, she thinks)
(She almost gets her wish)
A shooting star falls in all its brilliance towards her and she watches, entranced. The knife slips through her fingers, falls bloody and filth-caked to the steaming floor. She couldn’t move even if she wanted to.
(It’s so close, it’s going to hit her thank God -)
It stops, so bright she can barely look at it, maybe three feet away at most. Wings unfold from its back, made of the purest light. She has to close her eyes then, it hurts to look at even behind her eyelids.
She brings her hands up to shield her eyes, but it’s as if they do nothing. A hand that isn’t her own falls on her bicep, and she screams. It draws her in closer and she sobs, wrapped in light-
(It…)
( No-)
(He-)
( He cleans the filth of Hell away from her soul and it burns . Not like fire, no, but like a steaming bath on the edge of too hot. Agony for a split second before it soothes, before it heals-)
Her skin feels scrubbed raw and bloody. The hand does not leave her arm and it’s grip only grows tighter as they take flight-
(They rise and he is purifying her, carving out the dried blood from beneath her fingernails, scraping it from the roots of her hair, from the inside of her eyelids. Will there be anything left after the holy light fades? She doesn’t know if there’s enough of her humanity left after the corruption is washed away to survive-)
(The holy light holds her with so much tenderness she could cry-)
(It’s been so long since she’s been held-)
She forces her eyes to open, to look-
They’re breaking through the cracked ceiling, they’re above the pit, on the higher plains of hell where souls go once they’re broken, once the corruption sinks in. It’s a war zone, blinding light against clouds of darkness, and the screaming-
(She prays to go deaf-)
(It’s just too much to bear-)
The light begins to hum, not a song, no, but a single note. He wraps her in it like a blanket-
(She hasn’t been held like this since her mother-)
(She weeps-)
The hum covers the screaming-
She can see the crest of Heaven’s cliff and the bottomless canyon that lies between the plains of hell and where the rock shoots skyward without a handhold to be found.
(Her mother is there-)
(Is he taking her there?)
(Will her mother hold her like this?)
She can only see the outer gates but its beautiful in a way that words can’t describe-
“Please,” she begs, “let me go there.”
(She aches.)
(Her mother is there.)
There’s a door of light set in the middle of the cliff face, a beacon in the dark. They go towards it. She prays that this is the pearly gate, that she is going home-
(She doesn’t deserve this-)
(Her mother would be ashamed-)
They pass through the door and she shuts her eyes against the light. Then, sunlight, softer light.
She blinks, trying to adjust to the change. Her eyes ache-
A sound booms, louder than a tornado, than a freight train, like the sonic boom of the millennium. She couldn’t describe it if she tried. Her ears should be bleeding from it, she’s sure, but they don’t. It doesn’t hurt, but she feels it in her bones.
The sound resounds again, and then there’s a roar like ocean waves, like a hurricane through a garden of wind chimes. She curls into the light again for relief and finds it.
The world goes blissfully silent.
“Who are you?” She asks.
The wings spread over an endless field of wheat, “I am Castiel, an angel of the Lord.”
( There are angels watching over you, her mother says-)
“I must ask something of you.”
“Shoot.”
If the being made of light could furrow his brows, he would. She corrects herself, “Go ahead.”
“Angels cannot possess vessels without permission. Would you allow me to remain with you?”
( Dear God, her mother shows her how to clasp her hands together in prayer, protect us as we sleep-)
Her knee-jerk reaction is no. Absolutely not. She can’t-
“You could remove me at any time and I would return to Heaven. You would be in control, and I would not take control without asking.”
(Thank you for this day, she repeats after her mother-)
“Why?” Deanna asks, “why me?”
(Why did you save me-)
(Why would you remain with me-)
(Why have you held me like I’m something precious-)
“I wish to protect you. The apocalypse is coming and we all have our parts to play.”
(Help us to use the next one for good-)
She hates how high she is off of his presence, of the light that still burns her and heals her all at once. It clouds her judgement. She should say no-
She should say anything but-
“Yes.” She murmurs, because she was weak on the rack when she gave in to Alastair and she’s weak now-
“I will not let you down.”
If he does, she’ll have been the biggest fool the world has ever known.
(Her father will never forgive her-)
“I have to reconstruct your body,” he says, as if that’s a perfectly normal thing, a day to day chore, “It would be best for you to sleep now. I will wake you when I’m done.”
He waits for her to nod and then he crashes over her like a tsunami. Darkness falls, but it’s peaceful.
She floats among the stars.
(In Jesus name, amen.)