Archive of Our Own

In the Beginning, God gently cups a ball of light in his hands and makes an angel.

He presses His fingers together and thins out the shape of its wings, the lilting crest of its halo, the warmth of its soul, the purity of its love. It is a tiny thing crouched in His palm, but He knows that it is strong and it is beautiful and it is one of His children now. It blinks up at Him with bottomless eyes that brim with starlight, and God smiles down at it.

“Castiel,” He names it, and it straightens up, shaking its wings out as the title settles over it like a blanket. “I have given you life so that you may protect and love my creations as I have made them. I have given you life to command your brethren as I have made them to be commanded, and to lead them as I have made them to be led.”

The angel accepts its duty eagerly, drinking down the command and twining it around its very core. It pulses warmly, happily, and God allows it to lift itself out of His hold and hover there in front of Him.

“You will protect and love my creations as I have made them,” He says again, because that is why he made angels, and the angel burns brightly and brilliantly as God places it among the other angels in heaven.

He will tire of his creations eventually, as He must, but for now He is content to watch over the souls that He has given life.

God settles against the fabric of existence and waits.

For a long time before there is a Garden, there are only angels.

They organise themselves into factions, split themselves up between their brothers - the Archangels - and that is how they spend the first of many eons.

There is Michael, who holds a mighty sword and prepares them for a battle that doesn’t exist. He protects the flock, keeps his blade pointed out at the forever-darkness, and he watches Samael sometimes with wary eyes, even though Samael does nothing worse than dare to dream.

Castiel does not fall into Michael’s faction, and Michael does not call upon him, and that is alright, really, but it still feels strange to watch his brethren prepare for an enemy that Castiel doesn’t think will ever be real.

There is Raphael, with his staff and his wisdom, and he is the cool head to Michael’s fiery temper, and he draws on angels who are level and calm and so fiercely determined to keep the peace. He warns Samael when their youngest begins to question the Commands they have been given by God, and Samael challenges him on it, but Raphael does not rise to it like Michael would, and Samael leaves burning with frustration.

Castiel does not fall into Raphael’s faction, and Raphael allows this with a knowing look and a patience that Castiel envies, and that is alright. There is no judgement, and there is no ill-bearing, but still Castiel feels wistful when he watches his brethren drink in their brother’s knowledge with an attentiveness that Castiel does not possess.

There is Gabriel, who is bright and joyful and teasing, and he sings beautiful songs and tells stories of worlds far away from their own, and he is the one that speaks to God, most of the time. He gathers angels at his feet and tells them about the stars and what lies beyond them. He tells them about love, about wonder, and devotion. He plays music for them, sometimes, clean and glowing and lovely, and when Samael wanders over to listen, Gabriel does not send him away.

Castiel does not fall into Gabriel’s faction, and Gabriel allows it with a wry smile and a secretive wink, and Castiel wishes despite himself that he was made like his brother was. Wishes despite himself that God had used some stardust when giving him wings, and had deemed him worthy of the light that Gabriel holds within himself.

And finally, there is Samael, who looks to where their Father should be, and asks why. Why were they made? What is their purpose? What are they meant for? What lives beyond them, out there in the great beyond? God does not answer, and neither does Michael, and neither does Raphael, but Gabriel does and that’s why he’s Samael’s favourite. Samael does not have followers because he does not want them, because he wants angels to belong to themselves, and Castiel thinks that Samael is naive, but he also thinks that Samael is the best angel out of them all, because Samael does not need to be told what to do.

Samael is the lightbringer, and he is God’s favourite, and that is why Michael finds it hard to be around him, and why Raphael watches him from the sidelines with a drawn expression, and why Gabriel loves him.

Castiel does not fall into Samael’s faction, either.

That is alright, because Samael is a dreamer and Castiel is not, and yet.

And yet.

Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden are beautiful and strange and unsettling. They are not angels, but they are of God, and Castiel’s job is to watch over them.

He does not understand them.

They are soft, and their bodies are fragile things made of skin and sinew and not starlight or grace, and they do not burn with purpose. Their movements are fluid and free and flimsy, and when they speak to one another in the cool shade of the trees, there is something in their voices that is untested and unbroken. They do not hum with the steady, unyielding certainty of God’s command.

They simply are.

And God loves them more than he loves the angels. Castiel knows this, and he forgives this, but his brothers don’t. Not Michael, with his flaming sword, and not Raphael with his cool temperament, and not Gabriel with his beautiful voice, and not Samael with his soul-deep curiosity.

But God told Castiel to protect and love His creations as He has made them, and Castiel obeys easily, because this is what he had been made for. This is his purpose. This is all that he is meant for, and so he does not keep his distance like his brothers do. He sits high up on branches, and he listens, and he looks, and he loves.

He tracks Adam as the man walks the length of the Garden with a restless curiosity, touching everything that God has given him as though he is trying to understand it through his hands and his fingers. He names the creatures as they come to him, and even though his voice is halting and unsure, the names settle over the animals just as Castiel’s own once did.

Castiel wonders about this, about the power that Adam wields without knowing it, about the touch of Creation that God has blessed his humans with. The angels have no such powers, and somehow he understands that decision, even though he’s sure he could never put it into words if he was asked.

Eve is different. She is quieter, but she is not uncertain and she is not cowed and she is not weak. Where Adam reaches outwards, she turns inward, tilting her head as though she is listening to something that Castiel cannot hear. She looks out at the Garden with glittering eyes, and she asks questions.

They are not questions of God, because God does not come, not anymore - not in the way He once did - but they are questions of Adam, and of the world around her, and sometimes of the angels.

Adam does not know the answers, and neither does Castiel.

But Samael will sometimes answer her, will come to be by her side when Adam has ventured away from her, and they will talk for many days and nights. He is delighted by her curiosity, and she is delighted by his, and they chase each other in circles asking question after question after question, and they are only vaguely disappointed when they cannot figure out the answer together.

Michael disapproves, Castiel knows this, but their brother does not tell Samael to stop. He does not scold Eve for her musings.

Maybe he should have, Castiel will think a long time from now. Maybe they should have stopped it here.

But they do not, and Samael only departs when Adam returns later, newly named animals cupped in his arms. He offers them to Eve, and she takes them with a fond smile, and Castiel tilts his head as he studies them and the way their bodies are made so perfectly for each other.

Adam laughs, sometimes, sudden and bright and uncontained, and the sound startles birds into flight. Eve startles with them, and then she laughs too, softer but no less real, and the two of them fold in on each other like they are trying to fuse themselves back together into the single being that God made at the Beginning of this all.

Castiel loves them, because that is what God commanded, but also because he cannot help it.

There are times where Samael does not go into the Garden and instead chooses to join Castiel in his vigil. Castiel does not protest, because he loves his brother as God made him to love, and because Samael is so often shunned by their other brothers that Castiel cannot find it in himself to turn the youngest Archangel away.

Below them, on this day, Adam is talking, his voice carrying faintly through the trees. Eve is half-curled against him, her attention fixed entirely on his face, as though there is nothing else in all of Creation worth looking at.

“They do this often,” Samael says, and his voice is quiet, absent of the brightness that plagues him when he speaks with Eve.

Castiel does not look away from his charges. “Yes.”

“Why?”

Castiel stills, and considers this question. “They were made to be together,” he says after a moment. “God created them that way.”

Samael’s wings twitch unhappily, and he draws them close to himself, the glow curling around his soul. He is unhappy, Castiel knows this, but he does not understand why. He does not have the same questions that Samael does, and he does not have the answers that Eve wants, and he does not know what to say to make these things less painful for the both of them.

Castiel was not made to ask questions. He was made to protect, and he was made to love, and he is doing these things well.

Samael, the light-bringer, his brother, God’s favourite angel but no longer God’s favourite-

It is not enough for him, anymore. All the unanswered questions, all the mundane aspects of these two humans, all the silence from their Father who crafted them all so carefully. Samael is restless, no longer soothed by Gabriel’s songs and stories. No longer cowed by Michael’s sword, or Raphael’s cool warnings.

“I think they were made wrong,” he confides in Castiel, as though it is not blasphemous to say such a thing.

Castiel’s wings bristle. “You cannot question God,” he says strictly. “He has made them as they are. This is His will.”

“Then He is wrong,” Samael argues stubbornly, grace flaring hot and bitter. “He has made them useless. He has trapped them in the Garden and abandoned them here, caught in this never-ending loop of nothing. They could be capable of such beauty, of such passion, of such creation. You know this, Castiel.”

“You cannot question God,” Castiel says again, and he feels uneasy now. “Samael, you cannot say such things.”

For a moment, he worries that Samael will continue to fight, that he will push and push until something gives way beneath them. Of all the angels, Samael is the least afraid of divine punishment, and he is the least afraid of challenging their Father, and he is the least afraid of the new and the unknown.

But Samael does not keep pushing. Instead, he dims again, his temper settling back down into something far less unwelcome. His grace no longer scorches against Castiel, but it does not disappear entirely, still flickering and daring.

He looks back down at the Garden, at Adam and Eve where they sit tangled together in the long grass, their heads bent close as Adam whispers to her.

“They don’t change,” he says, after a while.

Castiel does not respond.

“They wake, and they walk, and they talk, and they sleep,” Samael continues, his voice low and almost thoughtful now. “They laugh, and they touch, and they stay exactly as they are. Over and over again.”

There is no anger in him anymore, but there is something else that Castiel cannot name.

“They are as God made them,” he tells his brother, because it is the truth.

“Yes,” Samael says. “That is the problem.”

Castiel learns the meaning of regret on the day that Eve takes the apple from the Tree of Knowledge and presses it to her teeth. Her lips are blush-red, and her eyes are wide, and there is a snake wrapped lazily around her bare shoulders that hisses and whispers in her ear, and Castiel should recognise it, and yet-

She takes a bite, and just like that, she is lost.

Around her, the Garden starts to wilt as Eve trembles in the wake of her choice. She spent her days longing for answers, and now she has them but she does not want them anymore, she is afraid of them, she is ashamed of them. She drops the apple to the ground, and the snake melts away from her shoulders, and Castiel cannot stop the pain he feels as he recognises Samael’s grace.

Eve is no longer as God made her, and yet Castiel cannot help but love her regardless, so he cannot bear to stop her from bending down to scoop up the apple, cradling it close to her breast, and carrying it towards Adam.

Castiel cannot help but love Adam, too, even as he takes the apple from Eve and splits the tender flesh of the fruit in his mouth. He unmakes himself, separates himself from God’s image, and there is shame in the way he drops the fruit and uses leaves to cover up the body that had been crafted so carefully for him. There is disgust in the way he looks at Eve, the way he sees her beautiful form, the way she cowers away from his touch when he reaches for her.

They are no longer as God made them. They are no longer those pure, graceless, holy beings that the angels were Commanded to protect.

Still, Castiel loves them.

There is a thunderous crack as the sky splits in two, and God speaks to His creations for the first time in eons. Castiel trembles.

“You have scorned the gift I have given you,” God says to Adam and to Eve. “You have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge.”

Adam points a finger and says, “Eve gave me the apple. She told me to eat it.”

Eve says, tears on her flawless cheeks, “The snake made me do it.”

And Castiel thinks, oh Samael, what have you done?

“You have tarnished yourselves,” God tells them, and His voice is terrible and mighty. “You have brought mortality to the Garden. You must leave and never return.”

Even falls to her knees, beating at her chest, tugging at her hair. “I am sorry!” She wails, and she is far from perfect now, and somehow Castiel loves her still. “My Lord, I am sorry! Tell me how to fix it! Tell me how to take it back!”

But God no longer loves her as He once did, and He does not offer her comfort. He does not tell her what she wants to hear.

“You have followed the advice of a traitorous snake,” He says. “You have let yourself be deceived, and now you will face punishment. Your bodies are no longer immortal. You will know pain. You will know suffering. Your souls shall remain forevermore, but your bodies shall not. For dust you are, and to dust you will return. The Garden no longer belongs to you.”

Eve weeps and weeps and weeps, but God has no mercy to spare her, and there are no angels who can undo what she has done.

God leaves her there in the Garden, with all of her shame, and Castiel must turn away, because there is nothing more he can do for her. He was tasked to protect them, and he has failed. The only thing left is love, but he does not know if he is supposed to keep loving them now that they are stained with the first ever taste of sin.

He leaves the Garden before they do, escaping up and up and up into the clouds, and he flies straight to Gabriel, whose golden eyes are dull and devastated, and whose musical voice is hoarse and broken.

“Samael has done the unspeakable,” Gabriel tells him, and there is so much heartbreak leaking from him that it is suffocating. “He has brought sin into the Garden. He has unmade what our Father has made. He has torn the very stitches of Creation. Don’t you feel it, Castiel? Don’t you feel it?”

Castiel does not answer, cannot answer, and Gabriel weeps as Raphael takes his staff and his faction of angels to find their brother, and Michael takes his flaming sword to the Garden.

Samael’s grace burns with the force of a thousand furies when he is forced to his knees before the other Archangels, and there is no regret to be found as he stares defiantly up at his brothers.

“I have done nothing wrong!” He declares boldly, and he spreads his wings wide, and he shines so brightly that Castiel almost believes him.

Michael watches him with eyes that are so cold they’re scorching. “You have desecrated our Father’s creations. You have allowed rottenness and evil into the Garden.”

“I gave them free will,” Samael argues. “I gave them a gift. They are free now. They can decide their own futures.”

Raphael shakes his head, somber. “You have Unmade them,” he says. “You have ruined the work of God. You must face punishment.”

Samael laughs, and it is not cruel and it is not triumphant, and that is worse, somehow. It is the same bright laugh that once carried through Heaven whenever Gabriel told one of his stories, or when their Father allowed them to witness another Creation, or when Eve would search for him from beneath the branches of the Garden.

Hearing it now only makes the silence around them feel heavier.

“I have done no wrong,” Samael says, and there is no doubt there nor is there fear. He does not regret, he does not grieve, he does not wish things were not as they are. “I have freed them from an existence of mere contentment. They will be better, now. Better than us, even.”

Raphael’s wings flare and go wide, shining so brightly it hurts. “Humans were never intended to be better than angels.”

Samael glitters challengingly. “That is your folly, brother. That is your sin.”

It is a dirty word. It is the first of its kind, and it lands like a physical blow.

Grace crashes through the space around them, flooding Heaven like a tidal wave. It is thick and heavy and hot, and it scalds Castiel where it touches him. There is fury inside it, trapped like lightning inside a bottle, and it is suffocating.

Castiel has seen Michael angry before, has watched him train legions of angels with his sword burning like a second sun, has watched him prepare for wars that do not exist. But this is something else entirely. This anger is stripped clean of discipline, of purpose. It is personal. It is wounded. It is hate.

“You presume to know better than our Father,” Raphael says so that Michael does not, each word measured with frightening care. “You presume to alter His design because you found it insufficient.”

“I questioned. It is not my fault that He never replied.”

“You were not made to question.”

“No,” Samael says, and for the first time there is something weary in his voice. “None of us were.”

Raphael closes his eyes for a long moment before speaking again. When he does, his voice is as calm as it has ever been, but there is grief beneath it that he does not bother to hide. “You know what our Father has commanded.”

“I do.”

“And yet you would do it again.”

And Samael is the best of them, he is God’s favourite angel, he is the Light-bringer and the Morning Star, and he is beautiful, and he is not afraid when he says, “Yes.”

Castiel loves him because he cannot help it, because Samael is everything they should be, but he knows that this is the end. There is no universe where his actions in the Garden can go unpunished, there is no room for their brothers to be merciful in their judgement, there is no space for God left here in Heaven with them. Not now. Not for this.

And still Samael is not scared. Still he shines and glistens and radiates. Still he is exquisite. Still he is the best of them.

Gabriel begins to weep again as Michael’s wrath builds, but it is Raphael who says in a terrible voice that shudders against Castiel’s wings, “I cast judgement upon you, Samael, who is made of God. I cast judgement upon your actions and your words. I cast judgement upon your guilt, and I cast judgement on the absence of your remorse.”

Samael’s soul burns hotter, but he does not beg. He does not plead. Perhaps this is his sin.

“Exile,” Raphael booms, and it is mighty and it is awful, and Castiel is rocked to his core. “You are no longer of Heaven. You are no longer of our Father-”

“You must Fall,” Michael hisses, and he is righteous in most things but he is not righteous in this. “You will lose your wings, you will never return to us. You will be forgotten. We will wipe you from our memories and our hearts. You are removed from us. You are no angel.”

Samael’s grace surges, sparks, cries out, but Samael does not erupt. He is flinty and cold and foreign as he meets Michael’s contempt and does not shy away. “You can send me away,” he says, low and steady and cruel. “You can burn me up. But you cannot forget me. You will never be able to ignore what I have done. You will never be able to forget that our Father did not stop me. Everything that happens now is because of me, and that is all that will ever matter to you.”

There is something inside his brother now that is unfamiliar. It is dark and it is sinful. It is the first of its kind, and it is terrible, and it will spread like a plague amongst them one day, Castiel feels it deep within.

Michael bristles, but it is Raphael who slams his staff down and seals the decree.

“No,” Gabriel says, suddenly. “Please. He is our brother. Let me speak to him. This can be undone.”

Raphael is old and he is wise and he is fair, but he is not cruel. He does not allow Gabriel false hope. He does not allow Michael to spill the vitriol that bubbles at his lips. “There is nothing left to say,” he tells Gabriel with gentleness. “Judgement has been passed. Samael is an angel no longer. He cannot stay in Heaven.”

“Please,” Gabriel says again. “Please. He is our brother.”

“It is done,” Raphael says, and that is that.

It is the last time Castiel sees his brother for a long, long time.

And so Samael falls and Lucifer rises, and things change forever after that.

Time, Castiel learns, does not heal. It only buries.

The first humans die, and their souls leave the earth just as God promised they would. Heaven stretches itself open to receive the righteous, and somewhere far beneath it another kingdom opens its jaws, hungry and waiting. Castiel does not see its birth, but he feels it all the same, another wound carved into Creation that had not existed before Eve reached for the apple.

Adam follows after many centuries, and then Eve, and then their children, and then their children’s children, until death ceases to be remarkable. It becomes expected. It becomes ordinary.

Michael says that it is a Horseman that brings the first souls to their doorstep. He says that it carries a trace of corrupted grace, that it reeks of Lucifer, that it is unnatural and not the way of things.

Castiel waits for God to say something about it, but his prayers go unanswered and his chest remains hollow.

Below Heaven, the world grows.

Humans build homes where once there had only been wilderness. They discover fire. They learn to write. They learn to wage war. They love one another. They betray one another. They pray to a Father who speaks less and less with every passing century, and still they continue to call for him. These creatures that He once loved so dearly, that have been so twisted by Lucifer, that are so much stranger than Adam and Eve and the Garden had been.

Castiel watches all of it, as he was made for. He tries to love these beings the way he loved Adam and Eve, but they are cruel and they are greedy and they are twisted up inside, and it is hard now to follow his Father’s Commands.

And then the very ground beneath their feet yawns open, and darkness spills out, and Castiel is given new orders.

The war against the demons lasts eons.

There are some who wear the faces of humans, but there are some who do not bother pretending and sneer at him from across the battlefield. There are souls that scream when they are dragged away from Hell to pick up a weapon and go against the angels, and there are souls that beg to stay in the fight because they have forgotten what peace feels like.

There are orders given from Heaven and there are commands passed down through generations of angels who never knew the world before the Fall.

Castiel follows every order, because they came from his brothers, and he was made to obey and he was made to protect and he was made to lead.

He was made to kill, and he was made to love, and he tells himself these things often, even as time passes and he becomes better at the first and less certain of the second.

The battles ebb and flow, and there are sometimes human casualties, but Castiel’s job is no longer to care about such things. There are others who sweep up the bodies and allow the reapers to gather the souls, and there are angels who bring peace to families and offer silent blessings as payment for the service humanity has offered them through those vessels.

Castiel fights and he kills and he forgets, after a while, that there was ever anything else.

He expects to feel something, if he allows himself to think about it. Regret, perhaps, or grief. Some small understanding of what it means to destroy something that had once been created by God.

There is nothing. There is only the next fight, the next command, the next batch of fresh angels who have not yet been branded by the scorching grace of a dying angelic soldier. They have not had the imprint of wings burned into their souls, have not felt the weight of a lost battle, have not felt the muted triumph of a bloody victory.

There is nothing but the next order, and Castiel goes where he is told and he raises his blade and he kills and he leads and he protects Heaven.

The humans start mattering less, after that.

“You used to sit in trees when we were in the Garden,” Gabriel tells him once, when they are standing at the edge of Heaven and watching the human world below them. There are cities now. Thousands of lights and the hum of electricity where once there had only been forests.

Castiel looks at him. He does not understand. “Yes,” he says.

Gabriel hums and shuffles his wings. He has not taken a vessel for a long time, too busy trying to temper Michael’s thirst for absolute victory, too busy trying to appeal to Raphael’s wisdom while ignoring the growing flood of evil that slips free from Lucifer’s home.

“You liked listening to my stories.”

Castiel does not smile, but he feels like maybe he should. “Your songs used to be my favourite.”

Gabriel’s grace is dim and sad, and he wraps it tightly around himself as though he seeks the warmth. “You did not speak for Samael that day,” he says quietly. “But you did not speak against him, either. I have always wanted to ask you why, when you knew him as I did. You loved him as I did.”

Castiel considers that for a while.

“It was not my place,” he says, and perhaps it should have stung, but he feels nothing. “The argument was yours and Raphael’s and Michael’s alone. I was not made for fighting, Gabriel.”

Gabriel studies him for a long, long time.

“No,” he muses eventually, soft and with great sorrow. “You were not.”

He says nothing else, and eventually Castiel is left there alone.

The songs stop after that. Gabriel goes down to humanity, and loses himself amongst them, and does not come back. Heaven is only slightly bereft at his loss. God says nothing, and the angels say nothing, and the battles continue.

Castiel swallows down his thoughts, turns to Michael, and awaits his next commands.

For a long time, Castiel does not notice that Heaven is changing.

Perhaps that is because Heaven has always been impossible for one angel to truly understand. It is too vast, too full of voices and grace and souls that have passed beyond the mortal world. There have always been places that Castiel has never seen and there are angels whose names he has never learned, and so he tells himself that this is simply another part of Heaven that he has not yet encountered.

There is nothing wrong, not really, but the songs become quieter. Without Gabriel to lead them, the stories dwindle, and they no longer gather beneath the stars.

The places where angels once sat together become rooms filled with reports and discussions and orders. Souls fill their hallways, haunted and feeble and precious, and sometimes Castiel walks among them as though he might find Adam and Eve. Even now, he tries to find echoes of their innocence, of their curiosity.

He does not find the touch of God that he is looking for. He does not know why that matters so much to him.

Perhaps it is because the souls do not seem to know where God is either.

They ask about Him sometimes. The righteous ones, especially, want to know whether He is watching them, whether He knows they have arrived, whether He remembers the prayers they whispered before they died.

Castiel does not always have an answer for them

In the beginning, he used to stop and listen anyway, because that was what he had done in the Garden. He would sit beside them while they spoke, and sometimes they would tell him about their lives, about children and husbands and wives and wars and ordinary things that had seemed terribly important when they were alive.

He finds himself fascinated by the details. A woman spends what must be several hours telling him about the first time her husband made her laugh. Castiel does not understand why she remembers the exact colour of the dress she had been wearing, or why she began to cry when she describes the way he looked at her, but he listens until she is finished.

When she asks if God had seen it too, Castiel tells her that he is certain He had. She smiles at that, and Castiel fees as though he will carry the warmth of it with him for decades.

But he is told that he cannot keep doing this.

“There are thousands of souls arriving every day,” Zachariah says flatly, glancing down at the list in his hands. “You cannot spend all of your time talking to them.”

Castiel looks at the soul waiting beside him: an old man, who has been watching the two of them with increasing confusion.

“She asked me a question,” he says to Zachariah.

“She asked you whether God remembers her husband.”

“Yes.”

“And do you know whether He does?”

Castiel hesitates. “No.”

Zachariah shrugs. “Then there was no point in answering her.”

And then he is gone, swept up in the ever flowing currents of Heaven, and Castiel is left alone with the old soul at his side and the weight of a conversation that he doesn’t regret.

He is not Samael; he does not ask why, and he does not throw himself against the boundaries of his brethren and demand answers. He does not guide the humans in his care towards disobedience. He does not allow that touch of pride and sin to infect his grace. He is clean and untarnished and pure, but he cannot keep his distance the way that Zachariah says he should. He cannot abandon the creations that he was made to love.

But he becomes more careful with his time, after that.

There are still moments when the old instincts return to him. A soul wanders somewhere it should not be, and Castiel follows. An angel reports that one of the newly arrived humans is causing trouble, and Castiel takes it upon himself to investigate. When a frightened soul rejects their reaper and reaches for his hand instead, he stays with them until the fear of death has passed and peace has beckoned them forward.

He is not told to stop again, but he finds his other responsibilities increasing until he can no longer spare the time to tend to the beings that his Father once created so lovingly.

There are armies to organise and border to patrol and orders to carry down through ranks of angels who have never seen the Garden. There are reports that need reviewing and battles that need planning and disputes between angels that have nothing to do with Heaven’s original purpose and everything to do with who has been given authority over what.

Castiel learns how to do all of it, and when he is sent back down to the front lines, he does so without complaint.

He was made to obey. He was made to lead.

That is more important than being made to love.

He learns which angels prefer to be given information in writing and which ones want it delivered directly. He learns which reports Michael will ignore and which ones Raphael will return for correction. His battalion falls into line easily and quickly, because the new angels are being made differently than they used to be, and Castiel doesn’t know why.

There is a satisfaction in competence that Castiel does not remember feeling in the Garden. There is always something to fix, something to organise, something that can be made more efficient if he is willing to give enough of himself to it. He starts to forget about Adam and Eve, about Gabriel, about Samael, about the Father he has not seen in millennia.

Sometimes, Castiel finds himself standing in the same halls for days without once looking towards the doors that lead down to Earth. He hears the prayers of humanity as distant noise beneath the constant movement of Heaven, and he no longer tries to distinguish individual voices from one another.

There are too many.

Humanity has grown beyond Adam and Eve. They are not two fragile creatures wandering beneath the trees anymore, and Castiel is not the angel who sat among the branches and watched them discover the world. They are millions now, and then billions, and their lives are brief and violent and complicated. They build kingdoms and destroy them. They invent things that would have been impossible in the Garden. They hurt one another for reasons that Castiel still does not understand.

They are not his responsibility anymore.

When Michael sends him into battles against the demons, Castiel goes. When Raphael asks him to oversee a garrison, Castiel does. When an angel falls, Castiel replaces him. When a generation of soldiers arrives, Castiel teaches them how to hold their blades and how to kill demons without allowing the creatures to get close enough to possess their vessels.

He serves and he protects and he kills, and slowly the demons start to lessen. Michael and Raphael launch an offensive against Lucifer, and he is forced into his cage, and the darkness starts to recede little by little. It is not over, because it will never be over, but the new angels stop coming, and their ranks stop thinning so quickly.

It feels like victory, even if it isn’t, and Castiel celebrates by wandering through the private Heaven of a young woman that joined them nearly a century ago. She is beautiful, sprawled in a bright grassy field, her head tipped back in song and her face awash with peace.

And suddenly Castiel is somewhere else.

Suddenly, there are stars above them, and Gabriel is singing with his harp while a flock of angels perch at his feet. Samael is beside him, bright and restless and alive, and below them is Adam laughing as Eve tries to catch a bird that keeps escaping her hands.

Castiel aches with it. He aches.

The girl stutters on a lyric, falling silent as she forgets the rest of the song, and when she lies back down, the daydream crumbles away from Castiel hard and fast.

He is gone before the soul notices that he was ever there.

It gets a little colder inside him, after that.

The first time Castiel hears an angel describe human deaths as acceptable losses, he thinks he must have misunderstood.

Lyrial does not say it to be cruel, which is almost worse. There is no hatred in her voice, no disregard for life, no pleasure in the suffering of others. She is not being harsh or vindictive or critical. She is just reading the latest report, discussing numbers and outcomes and the most efficient path forward. She is the newest angel to their garrison, and she is another that has not been made the way that Castiel was made.

“The battle took out a small village near the base of the mountains,” she says dutifully. “The demons killed the humans before we could stop them. The loss of souls was many, but it was within acceptable parameters, so we did not fall back. The demons have been eradicated.”

Castiel thinks of Eve on her knees in the Garden, begging God for forgiveness. He thinks of Adam hiding his body beneath leaves, ashamed of what he had become. He thinks of the way he had loved them even when they were no longer what God created them to be.

There had never been anything acceptable about losing them.

There had only been grief.

Years pass, and then centuries, and Castiel becomes accustomed to the new language of Heaven. Human lives become weighted against objectives and territory and the survival of angels, and Castiel learns to make the calculations without hesitation. He does not enjoy it, but he does not hate it either. There is no reason to hate what must be done.

The great battles against Lucifer become stories told by older angels to young ones, and the young ones listen with the same reverence that Castiel once felt when Gabriel told stories beneath the stars. They are not told of Samael. They are told where Lucifer’s forces were strongest, which weapons were effective, which strategies failed, and how many angels were lost before the cage was finally sealed. They are told that he was dangerous and that he was proud and that he could not be trusted.

The young angels are satisfied.

Castiel is, too.

By the time Heaven begins to speak of Lucifer as though he had always been a monster, Castiel can almost believe it himself.

Michael is gone now, and Raphael is gone, and the structure of Heaven changes again beneath the weight of their absence. There are new commanders, new factions, new arguments over things that Castiel does not care enough to understand. The old Archangels become distant figures whose names are spoken with reverence or irritation depending on who is speaking.

The angels have become accustomed to the silence left behind by their Father, and they have filled it with administration. There are rules for everything. There are procedures for the handling of souls, procedures for the movement of angels, procedures for vessels and reapers and demons and prophets and the endless little problems that humanity creates simply by continuing to exist.

Castiel follows them all, and he does not let himself sit and wonder during those few times he inhabits a vessel of his own.

The world is always so strangely tangible when he is stuffed inside the constraints of a mortal body, but he does not allow himself to touch. It won’t be fair. None of this is fair anymore.

When he thanks his vessel and returns to Heaven, he uncurls his wings and spreads his grace as far as it will go, and it still doesn’t feel like enough space. The universe has gotten smaller, somehow, without him noticing. Creation feels hollow.

Castiel shakes himself, receives his orders, and obeys.

And then Dean Winchester dies.

He endures 30 years in Hell before he gets off the rack and takes up a blade.

“The First Seal has been broken,” Raphael says gravely, his grace flickering and overly warm as he watches Castiel. “A righteous man has shed blood in Hell. There are precious few Seals remaining before Lucifer is freed from his cage and unleashed upon the Earth, at which time he will bring about the Apocalypse.”

Castiel absorbs this information impartially, and shifts his wings in anticipation of his orders. The situation is precarious, but they have survived Lucifer and they will survive him again. It is the way of things now. It is what humanity itself demands.

Raphael’s staff rests against the floor and his wings are folded away neatly, but there is something deeply tired in the way he studies Castiel. “The demons have begun to move,” he says. “Lucifer’s influence is spreading. We do not know how quickly the remaining seals will fall.”

Castiel was created to obey. To lead. To protect.

“What are my orders?” he asks.

Raphael glows hotter, brighter. “You must go to Hell. You must find Dean Winchester and you must save him and you must make him whole again. You must do this in the name of Heaven. He is the Sword of Michael. Do you understand, Castiel?”

Castiel has been to Hell before. Not often, and not like this, but enough. He has fought his way through its outer reaches, has crossed its borders during the war, has seen what Lucifer built beneath Creation. He has watched demons tear at one another in the dark, because they are creatures of appetite and spite but they are not invincible. He has not been to the bowels of it, has not ventured into those wretched depths. It is too cold down there for him, so frigid that it burns and it scorches.

Hell is unpleasant for an angel, but Castiel was not made to disobey, and he is not afraid.

“Bring him home, Castiel,” Raphael says, and it is a strange word for him to use, but Castiel lets it be. Raphael has been absent for a long time, sequestered away with Michael in a place where Castiel cannot reach, and it is so strange to once again have him within reach.

He will not stay long - he will be gone by the time Castiel is back - but it has been nice to see him, just for a little while.

Castiel allows himself to bask in his brother’s warmth for one last moment before he backs away and takes his leave.

The siege begins before Castiel has left Heaven.

Angels pour towards the borders in such numbers that the air becomes thick with grace, and Castiel can feel the movement of them through his own soul. They are going to war again, though it does not feel like the wars he remembers. There is no great enemy standing at the gates, no army waiting in formation beneath a banner. There is only Hell, vast and hungry beneath them, and the knowledge that if they press hard enough, something will eventually give.

Castiel does not engage on the fighting fronts. He avoids the throngs of demons, circles around the angels that fall in desperate infernos of grace and light. The battle is a distraction, and it will be a costly one, so he cannot afford to get caught and waste this chance.

He waits just long enough for the bloodshed to reach a crescendo, and then he begins to dive.

The first thing he notices is the frost. It catches at him almost immediately, chewing through his grace and settling somewhere beneath it, where the sensation becomes difficult to separate from pain.

He has felt Hell’s cold before, but never like this. The outer reaches are hot with violence, crowded with demons and the remnants of souls and the constant burning of something he cannot identify. He has survived that kind of scorch, has become familiar with it during those long battles, but this is different.

The deeper he goes, the colder it becomes, until it is no longer just the absence of heat but something sharp, with weight and teeth and talons.

His wings ache and tremble beneath the onslaught, and his grace grows too brittle and cracked to keep repairing them, so he is forced to folder them tighter around himself and endure the agony as he continues downward.

He does not fall, exactly, and yet there is little else he can call it as he burrows deeper and deeper into the Pit. There are screams and wails all around him, and hands clutch desperately at what parts of him they can reach, and he forces himself to burn brighter and hotter and more defiant so that he does not get claimed by the darkness that Lucifer has created.

Castiel does not fall, not really, but it is something close enough that he cannot help but remember Samael.

Samael, who had shined so intently when he was cast out. The terrible brightness of his grace, the way his wings had spread against the dark as though Heaven itself had become too small to contain him.

Castiel had thought that Falling must be the worst thing that could happen to an angel.

He understands now that he had been wrong, because Falling is not just one thing. It is a thousand little losses. And Samael endured them all, as Castiel must.

The deeper he goes, the more the black presses against him. His grace sparks and hisses, furious and luminous, but there is nowhere for it to go. It strikes the walls of Hell and comes back upon itself, scorching through him.

His wings burn.

Castiel twists in the darkness, startled by the sensation, and sees the edges of them glowing.

For one impossible moment, he thinks of the Garden. He thinks of sitting in those familiar branches, wings spread wide, letting the warmth of the sun settle into his feathers while the humans move below him. He remembers how easy it has been to exist there. How little space he had needed.

Then the memory is gone, swallowed up by the despair around him, and Castiel is alone again.

His wings burn hotter.

He tries to pull them closer, but the movement only makes it worse. The outermost feathers have begun to blacken, the edges of them curling inward as Hell’s cold tears through the grace holding them together. Castiel feels every piece of himself that is lost, but he does not cry out and he does not mourn.

He was made to lead. He was made to protect. He was made to obey.

He continues downwards.

Castiel has not prayed without purpose for a very long time, not since the Garden. There has been no point - their Father does not answer - and yet. And yet. He finds himself praying as he dives further and further, and his wings burn and burn, and eventually he reaches for his grace and finds less of it than he expects.

Something has been burned away, and he does not understand.

He has been an angel for longer than humanity has existed, he has fought wars that lasted longer than entire civilisation, he has watched brothers die and watched sisters be replaced. He has obeyed orders from Heaven for so long that obedience has become indistinguishable from instinct.

And now Hell is taking pieces of him, and for the first time in his life, Castiel is less. He is diminished. Reduced.

But it is a sacrifice that has been commanded of him, and so it is a sacrifice he will make. It is a sacrifice worth making if it means keeping Lucifer bound within his cage. Castiel has grown tired of the fighting. He does not want another war.

He is one angel among many.

This is a sacrifice worth making.

Castiel gathers what remains of his grace, his soul, his wings, and keeps going.

Dean Winchester is a broken, bleeding little thing that rages and bellows and sobs when Castiel reaches for him. There is a pain inside him that is so visceral it stings, and he struggles desperately when Castiel pulls him close, and he wails in despair at the touch of soothing grace that Castiel presses against him.

But Castiel is not cowed by this temper, and he does not bow to Dean Winchester’s fear, and he does not care that his charge is a non-believer. It is not his place to judge this soul for what it has become or what it was before. This is the Sword of Michael, the Righteous Man, and Castiel will rebuild him. Will save him. Will take him away from this place so that he may aid Heaven and save the world.

Dean Winchester weeps and begs and pleads and screams, and still Castiel does not stop.

Rebuilding a soul is delicate, is tenuous, is difficult. Dean Winchester is mangled and battered and in agony, and he resists every single one of Castiel’s gentle touches. He is skittish, he has teeth, he is blood-soaked and bitter and brave, and-

When Castiel finally manages to dig his way underneath all the anger, he finds beauty.

Dean Winchester loves his mother, loves his brother, loves his father. It is bright like a fire, strong like a mountain, cool like a mountain river. It is all-encompassing, all-consuming. It is the Garden, soaked in birdsong and joy and freedom. It is the snake, poisonous and destructive and cruel. It is wound so tightly around his soul that Castiel does not know where Dean Winchester ends and love begins.

There is tragedy there, too. His mother and the yellow-eyed demon and Samuel Winchester dying. His father, sacrificing himself for the son who could never hope to make him proud. Castiel flicks through the memories with interest, breathing in the scent of rot and decay and despair and grief. It soaks Dean Winchester’s soul like gasoline, but it does not catch alight because Dean Winchester, more than anything, is good.

Castiel can see it, hidden and fragile as it is. The kindness that Dean Winchester holds onto so desperately. It is years spent in motel rooms giving up food so his brother can eat, it is young children clutching at his legs, it is soothing those wounded victims who trust him wholeheartedly to save them from the nightmare they are living. It is the mercy killings, the decision not to pull the trigger, the strength to swallow down his harshness and walk away.

Dean Winchester is obedient, raised by his father and trained by a military man. He is scared of raised voices and being locked in rooms, and he is scared of his brother’s strong will and tendency to look before he leaps. Dean Winchester is brave and unwavering in the face of monsters, human or otherwise, and he shrugs on his father’s jacket and emulates his bravado, but he does not lose himself in the act. He does not relinquish that soft thread of caring that John Winchester is incapable of.

Dean Winchester does not think he is anything special, does not think he is worth anything, does not have faith in himself let alone faith in angels, and yet.

And yet.

Castiel thinks that he is exquisite.

He is breathtaking, he is righteous, he is Adam and he is Eve and he is Samael and he is something more. He has lost his way, just a little bit, but that’s alright. Castiel is here now. Castiel will make him whole, because that is what has been commanded of him, but also because he wants to.

He wants in a way that he has not wanted since the Garden. Since he was Created and told that he was made to love.

He rebuilds Dean Winchester’s soul slowly, carefully, and when he is done, he holds the trembling thing close to himself and launches them both upwards, towards the light. Dean Winchester does not struggle, anymore, but instead latches on to Castiel’s thinning grace and holds on for dear life. He is shocked, in awe, afraid, resigned. He is glowing, he is new, he is wonderful.

Castiel ignores the burning of his wings, ignores the charring of his soul, the scorching of his essence. He curls around his charge, protects Dean Winchester from the touch of damnation, allows himself to bear the burden just for now.

It is a long, long flight out of Hell.

The closer they draw to the surface, to freedom, the warmer it gets and the louder it becomes. Castiel’s wings thaw, feathers ripping away from him as they hurtle upwards. Around them, the voices of the tortured souls crescendos, mixing with the screeching of demons as they try to claw at Castiel’s grace.

The siege is ongoing still, and there are angels dying, and still the only thing Castiel can do when they burst out of those dark depths is throw his head back and roar.

“Dean Winchester is saved!”

He repeats it over and over again, flooding the entire world. The ground trembles and the wind blows and Castiel soars up and up and up into the air, triumphant and victorious and free.

“Dean Winchester is saved!” He cries again and again and again, and the soul in his hands screams with him, sheds tears of joy when the sun’s rays touch his scarred remnants. “Dean Winchester is saved!”

Dean Winchester is saved.

Castiel rebuilds the body as accurately as he can, carving deep scars into that blank skin. He flicks his fingers to add those faint freckles, uses his hands to weave the nerves together and stitch the limbs back in place. He restores the clothes, the hair, the pendant that Dean Winchester remembers so fondly.

When he is done, he is tired, but the body beneath him is once again beautiful and mortal and imperfect. The soul that he cradles so carefully reaches for the vessel once it’s complete, and the yearning and desire is so strong that Castiel feels it as if it were his own.

“My name is Castiel,” he tells the soul gently and outstretches his hands so that it can finally sink back into the place it belongs. “I have gripped you tight and raised you from perdition. You are the Sword of Michael. You are the Righteous Man. I will watch over you until you are ready.”

Dean Winchester does not hear him and will not remember that he has been here, but Castiel does not mind.

When he leaves, the body is buried back beneath the Earth in anticipation of resurrection, and there is a handprint burned brightly into Dean Winchester’s shoulder.

In the Beginning, God gently cups a ball of light in his hands and makes an angel.

He presses His fingers together and thins out the shape of its wings, the lilting crest of its halo, the warmth of its soul, the purity of its love. It is a tiny thing crouched in His palm, but He knows that it is strong and it is beautiful and it is one of His children now. It blinks up at Him with bottomless eyes that brim with starlight, and God smiles down at it.

“Castiel,” He names it, and it straightens up, shaking its wings out as the title settles over it like a blanket. “I have given you life so that you may protect and love my creations as I have made them. I have given you life to command your brethren as I have made them to be commanded, and to lead them as I have made them to be led.”

The angel accepts its duty eagerly, drinking down the command and twining it around its very core. It pulses warmly, happily, and God allows it to lift itself out of His hold and hover there in front of Him.

“You will protect and love my creations as I have made them,” He says again, because that is why he made angels, and the angel burns brightly and brilliantly as God places it among the other angels in heaven.

Much, much later, when God has disappeared and the world has forgotten Him, Castiel rescues a soul from Hell.

Everything changes after that.