Chapter Text
Castiel should not be here.
Hell is not meant for angels, and every move he makes is a reminder of that. He is not corporeal yet, forgoing a vessel for this trip. He is glad for that, because he is certain that taking on a human form on this mission would cause him infinitely more pain than he is enduring now. If Hell was designed to prevent angelic beings from entering, there’s no way that a human form would survive. Castiel is strong, but he still finds himself recoiling every time he bumps into a wall, the heat from the stones burning like embers in a fire.
There is a heat in the air that is so intense it feels icy cold, and it consumes his every sense. He is currently nothing more than a celestial wavelength, and the tendrils of his existence are slowly becoming singed from the fires that burn white hot. His wings shudder every time they knock against a structure, a few feathers here and there slowly turning into ash. He can feel the warmth in the bones of his wings too, the marrow heating to an unfathomable degree as he surges onwards.
There’s nothing to tell him which direction is up or down here; he could be going in circles for all he knows. Hell is designed to throw him off, and it changes its shape as he moves in an attempt to do so. Whatever the soul he is sent to find must be important if Hell is literally bending itself over to keep it hidden. The angels want it for some cosmic mission, and Castiel has never been one to question the orders from above. They are gospel, and he has been devout since before there existed a word for it.
If he was not, he would not be in this situation. He is gliding through the confines of the tunnels, the hum of his grace an echo that the walls throw back at him, but it is not a perfect replica. The tones shift up and down wildly, a mockery of Heaven’s song designed to push him into fury. It sings the same song that the grace of a fallen angel sings; a poor imitation of something so formerly divine. Castiel flinches inwardly when he hears the buzzing, and it sparks a faint worry in his heart. What would happen to him if he were to lose his divinity down here? Surely there is no resting place for angels who fall in Hell.
This is what Hell does best. It instills fear in the hearts of all who enter, through methods that even Heaven dares not experiment with. Hell takes the deepest, darkest fears of those who enter, and turns it against them. It takes phobias and nightmares and pushes them to the forefront of the mind with deadly precision. It feeds on the fear of its patrons, using it like a weapon to keep them in line; a ghostly drill sergeant with an iron fist. Castiel has never felt fear before, not like this, and it overwhelms him entirely. There’s a fleeting moment in which he feels his energy start to fade out, like a soft descent into darkness, before he forces it to flare stronger in panic.
The only thing that guides him through the twisting corridors of Hell is a light. Not his light, although his grace does provide adequate illumination to chase away the suffocating darkness. This is a different kind of light, the kind that’s so achingly human it blinds Castiel. He cannot look at it directly lest he become overwhelmed, and the closer he gets, he begins to understand why Heaven wants this soul back so desperately.
Souls are fickle things. They are everything that spells life and death, and they are very easily damaged. Angel souls are unique in that they can exist with no scars or blemishes, because angels are designed as the epitome of perfection. How can one preach grace and reverence if they are tarnished by sin?
Human souls, however, are not subject to these rules. Human souls are often dirty, covered by years of sin and emotion, scarred beyond belief. They cannot see their own souls and cannot repair them before it’s too late. Many angels believe humans die when their soul reaches a state of complete impurity, allowing Purgatory to stake a claim in the purification process.
From what Castiel knows, that process is rather uncomfortable, and time consuming. It takes decades to completely clear the soul of its pain, even in a place as unique as Purgatory. The years of layered memories and trauma that adorn each human soul must be washed away with a delicacy found nowhere else, lest they incur more damage than they remove.
The light he sees only gets brighter as he approaches, and as he slips through the screw hole of a door, he finally understands why. The sight before him is distressing; there’s hooks and chains that fade into darkness, crisscrossing in a lattice of torture above him. It appears to be a location that has escaped all physical forms; it is both somewhere and nowhere. It exists, but it is not truly quantifiable, because this is Hell after all, and Hell does not follow any rules.
He slides along the metal hooks, twisting himself into uncomfortable loops as the heat increases. He can feel his pace quickening, rapidly approaching an uncontrollable speed. He knows in his current state he is vulnerable to heat changes, but he never imagined it would affect him this greatly. He finds himself starting to wonder what would happen if he were to fail; by overshooting the target, careening unstoppably until he hits a wall, or the ground, or simply ceasing to exist. Waves are not infinite, after all.
The metal burns when he touches it, and Castiel shudders as his wings scrape along the chains. He’ll have burns littering them for a while, he thinks, and there will be painful gaps in his feathers too. He can remedy that later, back in Heaven. He turns his attention back to the light gravitating in the middle of the hooks. They spiral inwards like a spider’s web, holding up this blinding entity.
Castiel cannot see what it is of course, although if he focuses, he almost thinks he can make out the shape of a nose, the slope of shoulders, and the edge of one leg. He is not surprised by this fact; angels cannot see the true forms of many beings that are not celestial in nature. What does shock him, however, is what this actually means. It means that the light he is seeing, the light that blinds him and surrounds him entirely, is a light from a human soul. Somewhere in this mess of chains and lies, there is a human soul waiting for his rescue. And he finds himself consumed by anger.
It is reckless, he fumes, for Heaven to send him after a human soul. He had expected something…better. Something righteous. Something primordial. Something that was worth fighting for. And this? This is none of that. This is not worth the deaths of his brethren at the hands of demons. It’s not worth seeing the shells of the wings adoring their resting places in the pits of Hell. He cannot, for all that he is, understand why this feeble human soul is so important to Heaven’s grandmasters. He finds himself considering the consequences of aborting the mission and returning to Heaven without the soul. Surely, they would not miss the presence of a human life.
But Castiel does not disobey orders, and he is moving too quickly to change his mind now. The hot air rushes past him at unbelievable speeds, and the light seems to actually draw him in rather than push him away. He adjusts the angle of his wings, tilting them every which way as he calculates his path to the light. The feathers ripple as they are unwillingly moved, and several detach and flutter uselessly to the void beneath him. These empty spots are barren in his mind, and he is starkly aware of their absence.
Suddenly, everything comes to a grinding halt, and Castiel finds himself frozen in place, as though he’s hit a wall. He cannot move in any direction, and his wings are stuck extended, wind whistling past them, yet not touching them. Panic rises, and all he can think about is how much he does not want to die here. It takes an immense amount of effort for him to refocus his energy, and when he does, he realizes the most shocking part of all. He cannot move, but he is not completely useless, because the light in front of him calls to him.
As though he is moving through heavy sand, he slowly and painfully extends one tendril of grace towards the light. It burns as he gets close, and he fights to resist the urge to pull away. Once he makes contact with it, everything explodes.
Castiel shrinks in on himself reflexively before realizing the explosion has not harmed him. Rather, it has absorbed him, surrounding him in a bubble-like structure. There are flashes of light everywhere, in every colour known to man and then some. The chains that hold it in place reflect the light back, adding more layers to the kaleidoscope of colour that dances before him. A strong golden light presses outwards, like pure liquid sunlight, and the bubble pops, throwing the room into darkness once again. The center of the light is dimmer now, but it still shines stronger than anything Castiel has ever seen before.
And it is through this that Castiel discovers what makes this soul so special. Why Heaven would send an entire legion of its very best into Hell to retrieve it. Why Hell was so intent on keeping it locked away in the first place.
There, hidden under layers of pain, is the soul of a man so righteous that it would destroy the Earth if it were kept untouched.
In fact, this soul is so righteous that it almost attracts sin and terror to cover its tracks, as though it is afraid of being caught. It buries itself in pain and fear and anger to hide the fact that it is everything good all bundled into one place. It is marred with deep ruts, and there are fractured pieces in it like an uncut gemstone, but even then, it pulses so strongly Castiel is convinced that it is alive. But no one can survive Hell, even with a soul like this, right?
Castiel extends a tentative ribbon of grace towards the light again, prodding it gently so as not to harm it. It skitters away from him with a blinding white flash, and Castiel understands this to be a fear so intense it hurts. He chases gently after it, but it is fruitless; the soul keeps retreating further into the darkness, dimming its light as a last-ditch effort of preservation.
Castiel’s angelic voice hums something akin to “I apologize”, and he jerks forwards violently, plunging his grace into the light. Immediately, he wants to pull back, but he cannot. Because what he sees is a rush of emotions and memories so intense they hold him in place. If he were in a vessel, he would feel the skin of his hand burning to a crisp, skin flaking off in thin sheets where the nerves are damaged beyond repair.
He sees flashes of memories before his eyes, and he struggles to make sense of them. Some of them are crystal clear; two young boys running after an older man holding a gun, two young boys walking alongside a different man, who smiles kindly at them. A young kid, barely old enough to walk, shuffling forward on uncoordinated limbs. A woman, dark skin and bright eyes, sitting beside a young man on the hood of a car, hands intertwined. Some of them are murky, as though being viewed through muddy water; a crack of a whip, the coppery smell of blood that drips from numerous cuts. A cry of pain, and the sharp heat of a brand being pressed into a shoulder, the scent of burning flesh in the air. A hand on the throat, the air leaving the body in gasps before fading to darkness.
Castiel sorts through these memories, taking information where he can find it. He is unsure if he will even remember this when he returns to Heaven, but he figures he might as well try. Something must be worth keeping about this soul, and the more he knows, the better. His astonishment at the brightness of it has been replaced by raging anger at some point long ago, and he cannot bring himself to care for more than the name of its bearer; Dean Winchester.
Why he is so angry, he does not know. It is petty, really, to be this worked up about a soul trapped in Hell. But something about it disgusts him. If this soul is meant to be the savior of all that is and all that ever will be, why is it a soul that has done so much wrong? This is the soul of someone who has killed mercilessly, who has abandoned and hurt and driven away those closest to it. This is a soul that has scarred others with its fire. What is so righteous about that?
Castiel’s thoughts clear when the soul starts to pulse again, and he recognizes he has very little time left before it explodes for a second time. Whatever must be causing it is strong, and he sifts deeper, searching for its abuser. He finds his answer at the very core of it, and his grace sparks dangerously when he sees Alastair standing there, instruments in hand, painting thin slices of red across a body on a table. The body is faceless, but Castiel understands it to be Dean’s body. He retracts himself from that memory and focuses his energy on the retrieval of this soul.
Pumping his wings, he tears the soul free with a mighty roar of his grace. The hooks are severed, and they settle into the abyss below with a faint blue glow. The metal that remains attached to the body is threaded with grace, humming gently under Castiel’s touch. The air rushing past him barely registers in his mind as he soars upwards, and his wings unconsciously move to catch the drafts as he goes. His grip is still firm on the soul, and the light refracts stronger as it leaves its prison behind. The newfound freedom allows it to stretch outward, and Castiel has to concentrate all his remaining energy on keeping the soul contained, lest it fracture and fall back into the pit.
As they begin their long flight skywards, Castiel debates heavily with himself about what to do once he reaches Earth. He could simply give the soul a body, create a vessel for it that would allow it to exist as it once did. He could alter it, an attempt to purify the mountains of sin that shot swords into his mind. He could ditch it somewhere and let it fend for itself; a soul left alone on Earth would eventually find a host, willing or otherwise.
He comes to rest on a ledge halfway up, settling down once he is sure he can slow his ascent to reasonable speeds. The air is cooling now, aiding his deceleration. He rests his wings, unfurling them to their fullest extent and laying them flat behind him. He sets the soul down on them, cradling it with the remaining feathers. He needs this rest to prevent himself from tearing apart at the seams, spilling unfathomable amounts of cosmic energy into the shadows. The soul hums gently from its nest, and Castiel, who is still bound to it for reasons unknown to him, carefully begins to decipher what memories he sees within it.
He finds, to his immense shock and concern, that some memories he found earlier are nowhere to be found. Where they should rest is instead empty pockets of space, hollowed out divots in the shell of the soul that stand out harshly against the light. His grace thrums nervously through him as he frantically searches for those memories, relief spreading warm when he finds them locked behind a wall. While it is not ideal, it is certainly better than the alternative; Dean must have sensed Castiel’s intrusion and locked them away in protection. He comments on it internally, and the soul seems to hum back in reply, as thought it had heard his musings.
Castiel has two options; either he can lose himself in joyful memories of a better time, or he can cut to the chase and find out why exactly this soul was in Hell in the first place. He opts for the latter. Each new memory he dredges to the surface sends different colours of light through the soul in whirlpool-like fashion. He selects a memory, handling it with gentle reverence as he examines it.
As he watches the memory, reds and greens swirl together like the arms of a galaxy, until the red stars to peter out and fade. The green grows intense, snarling like a dragon with a fear so foreign to Castiel it stabs daggers into his mind. The green light speeds up, drifting frantically until it comes across the red light in a corner, dim and weak. Castiel watches in fascination at the reunion, fully expecting the two lights to rekindle their flames to their original states.
What happens instead is a rush of pain and sorrow and panic as the red light disappears that is so intense it almost dismantles Castiel’s carefully constructed wavelength. He feels himself scrabbling for a hold on the ledge, his wings flaring dramatically until they find purchase amongst the rocks. It takes everything he has to keep himself from drifting apart, and once he settles into place again, he finds himself shaking violently from the exertion. When he can return his attention to the memory, the red light is extinguished completely, and the green light has turned itself into something else; streaked with lines of pure black pockmarked by holes that have started to appear in its shape.
Castiel sets the memory back in its place, feeling the lingering burn in his mind as the barbed wires that have set claim in his soul start to retreat. Whatever this memory was, it was powerful, and so full of sorrow it had almost torn him apart. If Castiel were to inhabit a vessel at this moment, he would find his mind so overcome by sadness that it would stab him in the gut like a knife buried deep until the hilt. His face would be wet with tears, and his heart would feel full of stones, heavy and cold.
Pulling a new memory from its shell, Castiel is delighted to find the return of the red pinprick of light. It is fragile and tender, a baby bird not quite used to being exposed to the world. The green light has vanished into the depths of the memory, still flaked in black. It faces a column of something that Castiel can only describe as the absence of light. A demon. The owner of this soul is making a deal. The two intertwine briefly before separating, and the green light returns to the side of the red one. They merge for a moment, and Castiel feels unbridled joy and soft care leap up in his chest.
Castiel turns to the next memory, and the first thing he feels is pain. Raw, pure, pain. It digs into every fibre of his being, like a thousand needles stabbing into his nerves. It slashes through him with such ferocity it stuns him, and a blinding pain nearly overwhelms his senses. Only one thing could cause pain like that, and Castiel realizes he is living the death of Dean Winchester, torn apart limb from limb by hellhounds. This was a sacrifice so strong, fueled by a love so pure it remained embedded in his soul even after it was corrupted by Alastair’s hands.
Drawing in a shuddering attempt at a breath, Castiel reshuffles his wings, recentering the soul in the dip of a wave, securing it with ties fashioned from his grace. He tries to withdraw himself from the soul, but once again, he hits a force that shoves him back with even greater ferocity than before. He is tied to this soul no matter what, he realizes, a cosmic bond so profound it reaches even into the depths of Hell’s maw. This soul is his responsibility now, Dean now becoming undoubtedly his charge. And Castiel hates it.
He feels insulted, to be tied to a soul like this. The power of the soul is overwhelming, and there is no question that this is the righteous soul he was sent to retrieve. It is the dark side of this soul that repulses him, filling him with a hatred so strong it draws a growl from his throat. The side that shows all the flaws of Dean Winchester; the ones where he has taken lives with his own hands and lied and stolen just to survive. It is the parts that tell of all the crimes he has committed, and all the sins he has lived. To Castiel, it is an insult to his divinity that he should be charged with a man this impure. No being should be this ravaged by sins, and yet, here he was. Bound to an angel. Sinner and savior.
Climbing out of the pit is a long and arduous venture. Not only does it take Castiel many hours to reach the surface despite his powerful wings, it then takes him an unfathomably long time to dig his way through the layers of packed soil that seal Hell from the world above. Were he returning by himself, he could simply phase through the soil, and his only obstacles would be the pebbles that sometimes are buried in the dirt and the ants that pass through their tunnels. But with this added burden that scorches him, he cannot take the easy route. Their juncture sends excruciating pain through him even though he is not touching a memory, and the burn is agonizing.
When he breaks free, the air parts before him with enough force to topple the trees around the gravesite. They collapse on themselves like matchsticks in the wind, fanning outwards from the grave marker like the ridges and valleys of an eye. Green leaves resting on dead grass, flecks of golden coloured sand interspersing the mixture. For a brief second, something deep in Castiel’s soul knows this to be the same colour as Dean’s eyes, but the notion is gone before it can really take hold. He would never be able to confirm this, not without a miracle.
As he bursts through the crust of the Earth, he comes to an uncomfortable notion. Once again, he is moving too quickly to stop, and if he is not careful, he will fly past the corpse of this soul at breakneck speed. If he does not time this right, the soul will crumble into shards of glass and scatter on the ground like a broken mirror, catching the sunlight on their sharp edges. Instead, Castiel adjusts himself so that he passes through the coffin. He will deposit the soul in its body as he moves through, he decides.
When he touches down in the interior of the coffin, he is moving faster than the speed of light. The soul in his grip gravitates naturally towards its home, and for a frightening moment, Castiel cannot seem to let go of it. Not that he does not want to, but rather, he is completely incapable of releasing his grip on it. He would do anything to detach himself from the impurities of Dean’s soul that threaten to consume his grave. Panic surges through him like lightening, shockingly cold, and that slows him down enough to fight for his freedom from the soul.
He tussles with it for what feels like ages, finally extracting it from the tangled mess of his grace. When they part, two things happen.
Firstly, the soul slowly floats down into the body again, reclaiming its place within its chest. The body, or rather, Dean, wakes with a start, eyes flying open and chest heaving with the weight of that first breath of life. Castiel can feel the soul settling down, and when he tries to look at Dean, he still finds his face completely obscured by the light. Even with the soul in a corporeal state, Castiel is overwhelmed by the brightness of it. This righteous man shines even brighter on Earth than he does in Hell, a king on his rightful throne among the living.
Secondly, Castiel is torn from his consciousness with all the grace of a hellhound’s claws. His mind and celestial body separate from each other with a vibration that shakes the dirt above Dean’s coffin loose and topples the last remaining trees.
His body ventures out into the universe, all that cosmic power and radiance blasting into the cosmos once again. Astronomers that night will find an aurora of immense magnitude streaming delicate light over half the globe, and if their instruments were any more powerful, they would notice that every single star in the sky had shifted minutely to the left. His consciousness flows upward, a river of thoughts and knowledge and ancient power that returns to Heaven in a flash of light.
It will take him time to recover from this dismemberment. Ideally, he will be able to recharge his grace while his wings recuperate, safe in Heaven and untouched by Hell. Then, he would rather like to find a suitable vessel, which may take some searching; he’s narrowed it down to a few men in the area. He might like to try Jimmy Novak first. Then, he will take this vessel and search for anything that could help him explain why Heaven needs Dean’s soul intact. He knows the seals of Hell are about to be opened, and he wants to get a head start on them before Lilith makes gains beyond their control. He hurtles through the clouds and into the welcoming arms of Heaven, touching down softly before his awareness fades out completely.
Somewhere on Earth, Dean claws his way out of the dirt and staggers helplessly into the convenience store. Here, he will find the only proof that his ascension from Hell was of divine intervention; a human handprint burned into the skin of his shoulder, that flares with pain every time he moves it. Castiel will not become aware of this print until much later, but even from Heaven he can feel a tug at his soul, growing stronger the longer Dean spends awake, getting his strength back. Dean will wander to Bobby’s house, and he will reunite with his family, and Castiel will feel his happiness even from thousands of miles and dimensions away. But Castiel will feel tainted for a while, because of the righteous man’s sins. He will always be marked by the soul of the righteous man who was raised from Hell, because a soul that burns so brightly leaves an impression on those who behold it.