Archive of Our Own

There was a profound difference in the quality of jobs one could be assigned on Earth. Even within a garrison, there were obvious favorites. Anna, for example, stood guard over Paul, having blinded him with the light of Heaven, guided him through his conversion, and restored his sight so that he could face the world a changed man. Paul would one day be remembered as the most prolific and important figure from this period of history, born to lead the fledgling religion into a new age. 

Castiel felt, at times, that this was unfair. 

Luke threw another bowl at his head. This one was wooden, and did not shatter like the last two, though if he’d thrown it any harder there would probably have been some splintering. 

“This does not solve anything, Luke of Antioch,” Castiel tried again, and then ducked a plate, which bounced off the wall and hit him in the back of the leg. It did not hurt, but it was not pleasant, and he thought rather longingly of Anna’s last report, which was half laughed over the garrison’s personal frequency as she explained that Paul still refused to call her anything other than Ananais, even though he could now see her true face and knew she was no mortal man. Castiel longed for these sorts of problems. 

“Fuck off and die, you demanding piece of shit,” Luke said, and Castiel stifled a sigh. At another time, in another century, he might have enjoyed the experience of such a profoundly human reaction, but not now. Now, he had Luke, and no time to be interested in any of his new human experiences. 

Luke threw himself back onto his bed, and dragged his blanket over his head. “I don’t want to do it and you can’t make me,” he said, muffled, and Castiel took the time that he was not paying attention to look up at the ceiling and pray for— something. Patience, maybe, except that all patience had gotten him that morning was broken pottery and Luke, not even upright for an hour before he was down again. 

“There are things that need to be done, and you are the only—" 

Luke yanked the blanket off of his head and glared hazily in Castiel’s general direction. “If you say that I’m the only one capable one more time I am going to banish you. Again. I know how to do it better this time. The angels told me.” He spat the last words out like a curse, and buried his head in his blanket once more.

There was a moment where Castiel seriously considered letting him, if only to have a bit of peace and quiet for the rest of the afternoon, but he eventually, regretfully, decided against it. He liked this vessel, and it would be a shame to have to find a new one, not to mention repairing the damage that such a violent exit would do to the little house would be inconvenient, even if Luke had perfected the banishment like he threatened. The last time had been messy enough to necessitate their leaving Antioch, the city of Luke’s birth, and settling instead in this remote house, close to nothing and no one, apart from their well and the small vegetable garden that Castiel was sustaining primarily through his own will and an unauthorized amount of grace. 

The lump in the bed was curled in a tight ball, quivering minutely with, he assumed, apoplectic rage at the universe, God, and Castiel himself. He waited for a moment, to see if this was one of the days when the blankets would come down again for more declarative statements, but when the lump remained silent, he moved from his position guarding the door. 

The pottery he mended as he picked it up, with one well-practiced brush of grace, before stacking them neatly in their basket by the hearth. He stoppered the jug of unmixed wine that he retrieved from the side of the bed, after carefully making note of the current amount, and replaced it with the wooden bowl, dusted off and filled with water. 

He gathered together the scrolls that had been flung across the table, sorting them into neat piles based on their level of completion, and reflected that this may be a relatively peaceful day after all. There was more wine than he had expected left in the jug, and Luke had not even attempted to destroy any of his work. Pottery aside, perhaps Castiel was getting through to him more than he realized. 

He glanced over at the lump, which had relaxed at some point during his quiet tidying. Luke was breathing evenly and slowly, in the beginning of a more natural sleep than Castiel had seen in several days, and his fists were no longer clenched in the blankets. His open palm dropped over the side of the mattress, nearly touching the wooden bowl, and Castiel moved around the table quickly to rescue his little peace offering. 

The blanket slipped off of Luke’s head, and he looked down at his flushed cheeks and closed eyes, lashes fluttering above deep, bruise-like bags. He hesitated for a moment, and then stooped down to gently place one finger on Luke’s forehead. The furrow forming between his brows softened, and his breathing deepened. Today, at least, Luke would not dream of true things. 

It was necessary, he rationalized as he straightened up, and resumed his post by the door. A prophet who was so terrified to sleep that he drank himself into a stupor each night was not a useful tool for the Lord, or for His angels, and a prophet that was so emotionally volatile that he would attempt to strike out at his own angelic guardian was a danger to himself and others. 

Even if he had not been given the most difficult of cases, Castiel felt rather uniquely unqualified for the job at hand, if he was being perfectly honest with himself. Soldiers were not meant to shepherd prophets, that was the job of archangels, but God was walking among the humans, in a vessel of His own making, and the archangels were caught up watching over Him. It was an eventful time. It was foretold that it would be an eventful century. 

His own garrison, therefore, the Garrison of Earth, was spread to the four corners of this tiny land to stand watch over the humans that God dictated must be protected, who would have parts to play after God’s human vessel had— left. The exact manner of leaving that was planned was not something that he particularly wanted to think about yet. 

Anna was stationed with Paul, poking and prodding and preparing him for his new role in a new society. Uriel followed around Matthew, who by all accounts enjoyed alarming people just as much as Uriel, so that was a match made in some deranged corner of Heaven. Balthazar was hovering over John, one of the young men who was following around God’s vessel, and apparently coaxing him into writing some truly interesting versions of events. Samandriel was very busy orchestrating the meeting between the God-vessel’s disciple Peter, and his own charge Mark, who was evidently very excited for his destiny as a scribe of Peter’s experience. 

Luke, on the other hand, made no secret of the fact that he felt that Castiel was full of holy shit, and could go stuff his orders and expectations somewhere anatomically unlikely. Castiel tried not to take it personally, but it was difficult when Luke made all of his insults so very personal. Early on, it was mostly attacks about the physical appearance Castiel’s true form, against which Luke had extreme prejudice, but after Castiel informed him that it was only due to his human sensibilities that he was unable to appreciate the full glory of an angelic face, he transitioned to attacking his intellect, his faith, his mission, his God, and also, for some reason, his vessel’s physical appearance. He was more offended by the last than he should have been, at least on behalf of the man who had once been in this body. He had not been an unhandsome man, and Castiel had become rather fond of his curly black hair and wide, gentle eyes. Luke was less impressed. 

Far worse than the anger and hatred, however, worse even than the drunken rages and the never ending vitriol he spewed on a daily basis, was the grief. 

Castiel could understand his anger. He was a soldier, he knew battle rage better than most. Once, nearly a thousand years before Luke, he had spent time on Earth helping to fight in a war that took place quite near where their little house now stood. That war had raged for ten years, and in its midst he had learned every twist and turn of human anger, in all of its similarities and yet awful differences to angelic.

He could even understand the fear that seemed to be at the heart of Luke’s hatred, though he himself had rarely experienced such fear before. Luke was being called to witness and record some of the most terrible parts of humanity. He would, in time, bear witness to the death of God on Earth. It was right that he was frightened, even if his choice of expression was inconvenient.  

What Castiel did not understand, what he could not even begin to comprehend, was the despair that hung around Luke like a cloud on the days when he was not fired up with rage, or lost in that blank-eyed haze of the true prophet, when he wrote until his fingertips bled and never seemed aware of his own hunger, or thirst, or exhaustion. 

Castiel did not know what to do with human grief, or human tears. He yearned for Anna, who knew how to be gentle, or even Balthazar, who had studied humans long enough that he could at least mimic the mannerisms of a caretaker, a facsimile of comfort. Anyone, he thought night after night, as he stood over Luke’s bed and watched helplessly as his shoulders shook and his breath came in sharp, jagged gasps, anyone else would be better than him at the moment. He could see the blanket go dark with the water coming from Luke’s eyes, as he made terrible noises, as if he’d been stabbed, and he stood by, and was completely useless. 

Luke had not been stabbed, that much he knew. That was something that Castiel could have healed, but this was a wound too deep inside of him for grace to touch. Castiel had tried, the first time this happened, when Luke sat up in the middle of the night and wailed as though his body was engulfed in flames. Castiel had reached him before the first cry had ended, hand outstretched and shining. It had not gone well. 

He had tried asking Luke about where his pain was coming from, after it seemed that he was capable of speech again, but that had gone even worse. 

After that disastrous night, he had learned to simply stand and watch and try to keep track of what was causing the tears, the gasping, the cries and, almost worse, the echoing silences in between. He paid attention to the fragments of sentences that Luke managed to get out around his own choked breathing, he noted what dreams seemed to be more likely to end in this brutal awakening. 

Often it was caused by people from Luke’s past. Memories of patients that he had not managed to save, and some that he had, only in his dreams they died as they had not in real life, their blood draining out onto the floor of Luke’s house, their hands still grasping his sleeve. Luke had been a good doctor, Castiel knew, with a brief flash of an odd, undeserved pride for the human under his care. There were not many people that he had not managed to save. Still, each one was emblazoned upon Luke’s subconscious, etched in stone on his dreams. He had tried to tell Luke that human heavens were pleasant and peaceful, far better than Earth, many times. On the good days, he was ignored. On the bad, he spent the afternoon repairing the pottery again. 

Sometimes the problem was people that Luke had not met yet, and perhaps never would. They stood in front of him, masses of them, throngs of angry faces, screwed up into furious glares, as they hurled accusations at Luke. He left them, they said. He was their only hope, and he left them, he ran off with an angel, only it wasn’t an angel, it was just a man, or just a figment of his imagination, he had abandoned his responsibilities and his people to chase his delusions of grandeur, of being a prophetic scribe for a god that didn’t even exist. 

This grief was mixed in with fear, and usually appeared in the middle of the day, rather than at night in his dreams. In the daylight, Luke knew who he had saved and how hard he had tried to save those that he lost, and he did not dwell on them. Instead, he saw his own future inaction, his inattention, his prospective guilt as if it had already come to pass, and his tears were broken up with screams and accusations of his own, hurled at Castiel along with more pottery, and the bloodstained scrolls that he could not bear to look at. Castiel did not have any words of consolation for this grief. What could he say? It was true, Luke could not be a doctor and a prophet for the Lord, and he had not been given a choice. He had not been a man of faith before Castiel had arrived with his message from God. All he had was Castiel’s word, that Castiel knew that it was his duty, as it was his own duty to ensure that Luke was successful in writing his gospel. Castiel did not feel guilt. He was sure of that. Any twinge that reverberated through his vessel at the sight of Luke’s anguish was merely a human response to another human’s distress. 

In any case, there was nothing he could do. Luke was called on by the Lord to be a prophet, just as Castiel was called to be a soldier. That was that. 

Very occasionally, the dreams that set Luke to shake and sob into his blankets in the dark were dreams of Castiel himself. It had been unsettling, the first time he witnessed himself and his arrival from inside Luke’s head. He heard the thunder painfully loud in Luke’s delicate human ears, he saw the walls and the table shake and the clay bowl shatter by the door, and in the midst of the shrieking whine of an angelic harmony, he heard words, in Luke’s native Greek. “I am Castiel, an angel of the Lord, and I am to be your guide and your guardian, Prophet Luke.” They echoed around in Luke’s head, though they had not really been spoken aloud, and this frightened Luke more than anything that had come before. He could feel the rabbit-quick beat of Luke’s heart, the adrenaline rushing through his veins. He saw his own vessel appear in the center of the room, glowing even to human eyes. He saw his own wings, a shadow of their true glory, wrapping nearly completely around the small room. Then, it all went fuzzy, and he was forced out of the dream seconds before Luke shot up, already crying. 

At first, he’d thought that Luke was being awoken by fear of that initial introduction, and perhaps he was, the first few times. Later, though, after Castiel had tried to ingratiate himself with his charge, and at least succeeded in ensuring that Luke was definitely not frightened of him anymore, Luke woke from the dream still, and the air around him did not taste like a sharp and acrid fear, but a soft, mellow grief. Castiel had no idea what to make of it, and none of his siblings were of any use, when he tentatively brought it up during one of their meetings. None of their charges wept as his did, none of them were filled with grief at the sight of an angel’s face. None of them knew whether the fault lay with Luke, as a flawed prophet, or with Castiel himself. They did not say this to him, but he could feel them think it, when he spoke. He did not mention it again. 

He did not dare ask Luke. Luke did not appreciate the reminder that Castiel could see into his dreams. The last time Castiel had appeared in a dream, Luke had refused to write down anything for nearly two weeks, snarling that if Castiel wanted to have a written record of what happened in his dreams, he could just come in and write them down himself. He drank until he had no dreams, nor any thoughts at all. It was a miserable time for both of them, and Castiel learned to respect, if not entirely understand, the human desire for privacy. 

Luke sees many things in the seconds after meeting Castiel for the first time. They come to him all in a rush, in an overwhelming flood of information, of past and future and present all tangled up together, and he cannot understand them in that singular instant, but he has had time now. Every night that he dreams about Castiel, he sees a little clearer. 

Luke sees the Garrison of Earth recalled to Heaven in reward for their work with the prophets. He sees centuries of endless drudgery. He sees— or does not see, but feels and hears and tastes— an absent father, a god dead on Earth and missing in Heaven. He sees the endless forging and reforging of Castiel, blunt hammer of the Lord. He sees uprisings and small rebellions squashed before they even get off of the ground. He sees angels Fall. He sees the Garrison of Earth, the Garrison of the Age of Prophets, shrink, and shrink again. He sees angels lose faith, and rebuild it into something unrecognizable. 

Luke sees the end of the world. Luke sees several ends of the world, in quick succession, and does not understand much about each individual event, but he understands that what he is seeing is nothing less than the end of all things, over and over and over again, written and rewritten before they can take true shape. 

Luke sees Castiel. He is in a new vessel, paler and smaller and less handsome than the one he currently wears, but Luke would recognize that grace anywhere. He knows him from the inside out.

Luke sees Castiel’s true form, unbound by his vessel and under siege, diving into the depths of Hell to wrench a soul back from the devil himself, and he sees the moment that the soul and Castiel’s grace connect. He sees something more beautiful and more devastating than anything he has ever seen before. He does not understand it. This is the rewriting of destiny, this is as inevitable as fate, this is the unspooling of a thread that he is much too small and human to know, this is the end of the world and of a god and of Heaven and Hell, and the beginning of something else. Luke wakes from this dream and tries to tear out his own eyes because he knows he has seen something that was never meant to be and also is so incontrovertibly true that he should never be able to see anything ever again— but Castiel stops him, and heals his scratches, and makes soft upset sounds that he doesn’t even seem to notice making, and Luke remembers that no angel on Earth will let him die before he finishes his work. 

In the week after that dream, every time he looks at Castiel, in his tall, handsome, familiar vessel with that almost too bright grace pouring confidently out of every pore, he is violently sick, and he can never find the words to explain why. 

Luke sees nothing, for a while. Luke thinks that perhaps he has reached the end of Castiel’s story. Luke dreams only of the most present future, and takes it up with relief, and writes six chapters in as many days. 

Luke sees Castiel’s pale, strange new vessel sitting on a bench, looking at a man. The man is looking away, staring unseeing into the dizzyingly green land around them. He has a familiar soul, shining through him strong enough that even Luke, a lowly prophet, can see it. He says something that Luke cannot hear, and Castiel responds. The man turns to face him, and their eyes meet for long, long moments. 

Luke did not know what he saw in hell, when the raw grace of a soldier angel and this powerful soul met and changed the course— or perhaps created the course— of the world, but here, on this bench, beyond the grace and the soul, they are staggeringly human. Luke recognizes. 

Once, a woman was saved on his table. He stitched and bathed and bound her wounds and breathed air into her lungs when they stopped working on their own, and dragged her into life measure by measure, thread by thread, through an endless night. When the sun rose, the light flooded through the open door, and the woman looked at it as though it was the first light in all of creation, brought into being for the purpose of resting across her eyes and welcoming her into a new day. 

Luke sees Castiel, stone faced and still as he has never seen him before, frightening like Luke has never feared, with blood on his hands and his clothes and the strange slick shape of his blade, which Luke only knows from visions. Despite his own best efforts, Castiel has never once threatened him. This Castiel holds the blade above his head, and the man with the shining soul kneels before him, blood dripping from his mouth and flecking across his swollen cheek and eyelid. His hands scrabble at Castiel’s bloody coat, raised in supplication, and he speaks, words ripped from his mouth as if every syllable hurts, and yet he can’t help but to say them. Luke does not know what he says, but Castiel’s horribly blank face shatters, and he looks downward and seems to see the man at his feet for the very first time. Luke understands.

Once, a baby was born on his table. He wiped the blood from her body and handed her to her mother, who was only half conscious from pain and exhaustion, but she took the child, pressed her to her chest, and looked at her as though she would never see something as beautiful, as precious, as wholly her own, as insensibly perfect, in all the rest of her days. 

Luke sees a dark, foreboding room. The shining man is staring at Castiel. Castiel is speaking, with tears in his eyes and a gentle smile on his face. His grace is nothing more than a flicker at the heart of him. The man is shaking. A darkness, more vile and more final and more empty than any part of Hell that Luke has seen before, is growing on the wall behind them. Castiel smiles wider. Luke knows. 

Once, a man died on his table. He had tried everything he could for two days and two nights, and it had not been enough. For those days and nights, his wife had stayed by his side, his hand in hers. She had never taken her eyes off of his face. He had died with his eyes locked on her, his last piece of the world before he left it, and he smiled. 

Luke wakes from his dreams and writes down his prophecies. The book is coming to a close— even with all of his resistance, it has been three years, and the life he is writing about was never going to be very long. 

He argues with Castiel less often. Partially because he understands, after so much time, that there isn’t much use in arguing, but partially because he has come to appreciate the gift that has been the presence of Castiel, rather than any other angel, at his right hand this whole time. 

He sees other prophets, sometimes. He isn’t sure if he’s meant to, but after he finally deciphered the dreams about his guardian angel— at least as well as anyone could from his vantage point— he paid closer attention to the background of his visions, to the minor players that appeared and disappeared as the vessel of a god moved through the world. He’s familiar with their faces by now, and he’s self-aware enough to notice when someone has an angel sitting on their shoulder, just as he does. He writes about them, too, in bits and pieces, squirreled away under his real work, though he does not think Castiel would mind if he knew. He is beginning to learn that Castiel is unusual that way. 

Though they still argue about everything from the veracity of any religion to the most interesting bird calls, Castiel doesn’t try to change his mind about things anymore. Luke will fully acknowledge that Castiel’s god has power, but he refuses to acknowledge him as the one God. His gods are of his mother’s people, and Castiel will bow to that belief. 

They have found common ground. Luke is a healer, and Castiel is a soldier, but they have both watched while their own people died, they have both felt life slip through their fingers. Castiel appreciates, in his own quiet way, beauty in the world. He allows Luke time to paint, to write and rewrite so that his work is not a laundry list of deeds and miracles, but poetry to its very heart. Luke may hate the task, but if he must write, he intends to write well. Let it never be said that Luke of Antioch abandoned his home and his people and his work to run off with an angel and produce a subpar piece of literature. 

There is a garden behind the house which Castiel tends almost— dare he say— religiously. Angels don’t seem to need sleep, and every morning when Luke wakes up, Castiel, who no longer hovers beside his bed all night, is walking the neat rows of growing things, humming to them in that deep, reverberating tone that Luke is fairly certain he shouldn’t be able to hear with human ears. The leaves rustle as he walks by, the flowers turn ever so slightly to him. The soil softens underneath his feet. It is damp and rich and far too fertile for a plot of land so far from a natural water source, and it supports plants that have no business existing anywhere in this part of the world. He recognizes some from his mother’s garden in Antioch, but he doesn’t mention it, and neither does Castiel. 

On a peaceful day, Luke will rise with the sun, or near enough to still see the mist of dawn slowly burning away. His head will not hurt, and his dreams will not be so urgent as to drive him to pick up his stylus immediately. He will walk to the door and look out to see an angel, barefoot in the garden, slowly walking the rows. Breakfast will already be laid on the table, and his cup will be full of a dark, sharp juice that is fresh and bright and nothing like wine. He has never been able to identify the fruit, and he suspects that it is not from a plant on this earth. Castiel delights in this small secret, and Luke lets him have his little mystery, as much as it pricks at his curiosity. He will eat, and he will find something slipped onto his workstation when he is finished: a new brush, new paint, a particularly lovely feather or leaf, a perfectly shaped piece of charcoal wrapped in a cloth that he will never tell Castiel is far too fine to use merely to protect his hands. He does not think that Castiel will ever truly understand human money, or the value that humans place on material things, and he certainly would not be impressed to learn exactly how much a nobleman might pay for such a small scrap. 

Sometimes he will paint. He has been trying for three years to capture the exact shade of an angel’s grace, but more recently he has taken an interest in illustrating a human soul. He thinks Castiel might have noticed, because the new gifts of paint have skewed far warmer in hue. 

Sometimes the dreams will be so vivid and the words he needs will be so clear that he can write them down immediately, without taking time to paint and gather his thoughts. They dance in his head and fly onto the page, and it feels like a relief. He is finished by midday, and can join in the preparation of an evening meal that doesn’t appear miraculously out of nowhere with ingredients that are too perfect to be real. He thinks Castiel appreciates these days, and the gentle camaraderie that comes with the peaceful nights. They’re certainly better than the days that every word he drags out of himself is an agony, and he breaks things until his home looks like the inside of his head feels. Those are the days that they argue for real, that he screams and screams until his throat is raw and Castiel, with a thundercloud face and stubbornly crossed arms and grace on his fingertips, refuses to allow him the courtesy of space or pain. 

The bad days are few and far between, now, and getting fewer and farther, until one morning he wakes up and he has not dreamt at all. 

He rises with the dawn this morning. The light is soft and blue and sleepily whispers into the room, along with the song of one brave lark, welcoming in the day. The birdsong is very close, in fact, and he suspects that when he peers out of the door this morning, Castiel will have a solemn little addition on his shoulder or his head. 

It is not a hardship to open his eyes. They are not heavy with lost sleep, or with the weight of dreams. The early light plays on his low ceiling, and he watches the patterns it shapes out of the cracks for a moment before getting up. He yawns, stretches, and pushes off the blanket to stand. No matter what night he’s had, his morning routine always begins the same. 

He has only one foot on the floor when he realizes exactly what is different this morning, what is unaccountably missing. 

He goes to the worktable first, then, to check what he’d written the day before. It is crisp and clear and shockingly simple, for what it must be. 

The floor is cool beneath his feet, and the air is misty and chill as he makes his way to the door in a daze. 

An angel is in his garden, absently stroking the head of the lark balanced precariously on his shoulder with one finger as he walks carefully down the rows. The light is just catching in his hair when he turns to face the door, moving smoothly so as not to disturb his little passenger. His smile is as soft and gentle as the dawn, genuine and real and at home on his face in a way that he never would have managed during the first year that Luke knew him. 

“Castiel,” he says, hoarse with sleep and wonder and relief and strange, bewildering grief, “It is done.”

The morning that everything ended, Castiel met a bird. She was a dusky mottled brown, with shining black eyes and a tiny pitter-patter heart that he could time his steps to. She sat with him and sang in his ear as he paced through the garden to perform his daily checks on the vegetables growing there. It was good for Luke to have fresh vegetables in his diet regularly, and even better to grow them from seed here near the house instead of flying away every time he needed to feed his charge. A cup of cranberry juice here and there— borrowed from a far-off corner of the world to keep Luke out of the wine— was one thing, it was quite another to continually feed him food that had been touched so heavily by grace. 

Castiel let the lark give him the tempo for his steps as she swayed on his shoulder, until a soft scuffle at the door made him turn. He’d known the moment Luke woke, of course, the air around him had gone tight with anticipation, and then broken very suddenly the moment he must have opened his eyes, but his mind had been untroubled, so Castiel left him to his quiet morning. 

The Luke at the door was not one Castiel had ever seen. His hair was bed-ruffled and his cheeks were oddly flushed, his eyes hazy and yet sharp, taking in none of his surroundings, but piercing Castiel through as if with a needle. 

“Castiel,” he said, positively quivering with an unnamable energy, “It is done.” 

It takes him a moment to understand what he means. “It…” 

“It is done. The whole thing. The whole book. It has an ending.” Luke was waking up, coming out of his reverie and sounding increasingly on the edge of hysteria. “I wrote it last night. I didn’t even notice until I woke up this morning, and I just— I knew.” 

Luke leaned against the doorframe. His breath was coming in sharp pants, and Castiel recognized the beginnings of a panic attack. He hadn’t had one recently, but Castiel would never forget the signs from their early days together. He shrugged the lark off of his shoulder as gently as he could, and went to his charge, maneuvering them both onto the low bench that was placed against the back wall of the house. He liked this bench, it was a good place to watch the sunrise before he began his day, but it was also a good place to settle Luke down. He made sure his back was pressed against the wall, a show of good posture that Luke tended to unconsciously mirror, and used his grip on Luke’s wrist to monitor his blood flow, and thread a minuscule bit of grace through his system, calming the heaving lungs and the frantic beat of his heart. 

Slowly, Luke’s color returned to normal, and his gaze returned from the middle distance on which it had been fixed. “It’s done, Castiel,” he said finally, closing his eyes and leaning back against the wall. 

“So you said,” Castiel replied neutrally, trying to keep his tone as even as possible in order to not set him off again. He now knew that it was, more often than not, the way he said things that was upsetting, rather than what he said, and he’d spent a lot of time working on that aspect of verbal communication over the years. He’d gotten much better at maintaining the proper tone and was rather proud of his own success. Luke hardly threw anything at his head when he was upset anymore. 

The thread of grace continued circling Luke’s system soothingly, small enough that Luke probably wouldn’t notice the interference, but it made Castiel feel better, knowing that it was there. 

“I just thought I would have more time,” Luke sighed, and Castiel gave a soft hum of understanding. Truthfully, he did not understand at all. Luke had spent more time complaining about his work than he had spent actually working, he would have thought that he’d be more than happy to be done, but that was not the right thing to say. 

“There are still things that I wanted to do,” Luke explained, not clarifying anything at all. 

He was clearly working his way to a point, however, so Castiel simply sat and let him speak, running grace through a full systems check one last time, and fixing his gaze on the lovely little tendrils of the grape vines as they wound lazily around the edge of one of his stakes. He would have to put in a full trellis at some point, the grapes were getting so big— or perhaps not, if Luke was truly finished. There would be no need for grape vines, or for the garden behind the little house in the middle of nowhere, if Luke was finished. 

“I’ve seen part of your future,” Luke said, and Castiel’s attention snapped back to the conversation at hand with an immediate rise in panic.

“You can’t—” he began, but Luke cut him off. 

“I know. Angels aren’t meant to know their futures, I understand that.” 

“My future is Heaven’s future,” Castiel said, and Luke opened his tired eyes and looked at him. 

“I know,” he said, softer. “You might not even remember me, after this ends.”

Castiel bit back a snort at that. No matter what happened, he was fairly sure the last three years would be burned into his mind. His grace could be ripped from his body more easily than these memories. 

“You might not remember me, and you probably won’t remember a thing I’m going to tell you now, but you must try, Castiel,” and he looked so fiercely up into Castiel’s eyes that he was completely taken aback. Luke had never looked at him with such intent, even when he was in the middle of one of his endless fits of temper, even when he was screaming obscenities and hurling pottery at the walls. “One day, many years from now—” 

“Luke—” Castiel interrupted, trying to force as much command into his voice as he could, but Luke pressed on. He had never been one for following orders. 

“One day, a righteous man will be in Hell. He is a good man, an honest man, and not meant for Hell, but he will be there. I don’t know why. Castiel—” Luke grabbed him by the arm, his hand a brand on his shoulder, and Castiel had to supress a confusing shudder “— you must save him.” 

Castiel felt bewildered. “If there is a righteous man in Hell, of course we will save him.” 

“No,” Luke said. “You must save him. Castiel. You must. Promise me. Promise me.” 

“I promise,” Castiel said, and then, when Luke’s gaze continued to bore into his own, and his grip tightened, “I will write it into the stars. I have places to leave myself messages that might get lost, in my head or my grace. I will put it there. I promise.” 

Luke relaxed his grip, and smiled, but something was still off. Castiel recognized the smell of it, the soft, mellow notes of an old grief, one that he knew uncomfortably well. He wondered if this order was what Luke had seen in his dreams, when he relived that moment where he met Castiel, or if it was meant to prevent whatever he had seen. He wondered if this was grief for an opportunity missed, or for a path set in stone. He wondered many things, but he did not dare to ask them. They were closing in on territory that would certainly get him remade, when he went back to Heaven, and he had not yet left the message. He needed more time. 

Luke held his gaze with that fierce, probing glare for one more moment, and then dropped his hand and stood up abruptly. “Breakfast?” he asked, and Castiel nodded, blinking slightly at the change in subject. Luke’s moods had always shifted like the weather, with no rhyme or reason, but it was still surprising when he became happier, instead of angry.

“I will fetch the—” 

Luke whipped around to look at him, eyes gleaming, the sour tang of grief subsiding for the moment. “Yes? Are you finally going to tell me what it is you’ve been feeding me? Or where it is you get it?” 

“It won’t help,” Castiel said, amused in spite of himself. He had no idea this was such a pressing concern. Luke had always let him have this quiet ritual without comment. “It’s not from anywhere that you can get to.” 

“At least I’d know, though,” Luke pointed out. “I’ve done well, haven’t I? I’ve written the whole damn thing, I deserve a prize or something.” 

“You get juice every morning.” 

“And now you’re going to tell me what kind of juice it is. New information can be a gift, when it’s something nice,” Luke said reflectively, turning on his heel and wandering towards the house.

“You usually say that new information is a curse and a trial,” Castiel pointed out, getting up himself to follow. He reached out with a flicker of his wings, and between one heartbeat and the next he’d returned with a cup full of juice and a small basket. “It’s called a cranberry,” he said, “though it has many names. It comes from a place on the other side of the earth.” 

Luke charged back through the door, nearly knocking Castiel off of his feet. “Oh,” he said, in some sort of enthusiastic ecstasy, the likes of which he usually reserved for small furry creatures and whenever Castiel made a particularly egregious error of etiquette. He snatched the basket from Castiel and shoved his face into it. “They’re so red,” he exclaimed, sticking an entire berry into his mouth, and then spitting it out almost immediately, “and they taste so bad!” 

He picked up another one just as fast, and licked it. “It’s like a grape, but horrible. Why is it so hard? Where is the juice?” 

“Juicing a cranberry is a complicated process,” Castiel explained, patiently holding the cup out for Luke to take. “It must be thoroughly cooked, first. Raw cranberries are unpleasant, I understand.” 

“Very,” Luke said, thrilled. 

“The people who grow them usually eat them dried.” 

Luke’s eyes went wide, and he inhaled deeply, but Castiel had predicted this, and cut him off before he could make more demands. He tugged the basket from Luke’s hands, and pulled the piece of pemican from the bottom. “It’s made with meat and dried berries. It can be part of your breakfast today, if you’d like.” 

“Yes, absolutely,” said Luke, sticking half of it in his mouth. His face scrunched up, and then smoothed out as he gnawed on the pemican. “I like it,” he said, sounding entirely unconvinced. He took another bite, chewed thoughtfully, and smiled. 

“Congratulations, Luke,” Castiel said, smiling back at him in that involuntary human response to another's joy. “I hope it was worth it.” 

“Not in the fucking least, you piece of angelic shit,” Luke said cheerfully, and turned to walk back inside, one hand around Castiel’s wrist to drag him and the basket of inedible berries in his wake. “I want bread, too. The good kind, with the honey.” 

“Of course you do.” 

“And the good grapes. With the green skin.” 

“Mmhmm.” 

“It’s a reward.” 

Castiel hummed indulgently. He had done well, after all. 

“For my work,” Luke said, looking back at him sternly. 

“Right.” 

“It was very hard, you know.” 

“Yes.” 

“I hardly made it through.” 

“I know.” 

“It’s really only down to my perseverance and ingenuity that anything was finished at all.”

“Sure.” 

“Was that sass, Castiel? I’ll have you know, I am a successful prophet, you should bow down to— oh no please don’t— I didn’t mean actually— that’s horrible, stop it right now.” 

“If you insist.” 

“I’m at least the best prophet you’ll ever meet, right?”

“If I ever meet another, I'm sure I will compare them to you.” 

“And they’ll suffer for the comparison.” 

“Absolutely.”