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In his exceedingly long existence, the angel Zachariah has not often been surprised. (The last time was probably the third season finale of Lost—boy, did he not see that coming!) So it is…unexpected when, months after that pathetic traitor Castiel was thoroughly ripped apart by archangels, Zachariah feels the shivery pulse of Castiel’s grace once again join their ranks.
Well, not their ranks; never again will a weak, easily manipulated fool like Castiel be one of their righteous number. But he is, apparently, alive, and Zachariah feels sufficiently curious to exercise his power as Castiel’s superior and take a gander through the lesser angel’s seemingly reconstituted eyes.
There is no privacy among angels.
None especially for those who dare to rebel. Zachariah looks, and what he sees is that Castiel’s vessel—or a new facsimile thereof—is bound to a table. The room is not heavily warded, but Castiel is too weak to escape; his grace flutters in Zachariah’s perception like a wounded bird. His rogue servant appears to have been resurrected merely to fall into the hands of the enemy—or perhaps resurrected by the enemy for some nefarious purpose. Whatever. Castiel is—and has always been—no more than a pawn; he knows nothing of any import and Zachariah frankly always found him to be rather tiresome company. So serious! Acting like he believed that everyday actions, ordinary people, actually mattered. Such a poor grasp of the big picture—definitely not management material. Anyway, if Castiel’s going to finish out his days being tortured for information he doesn’t have, it’s no skin off Zachariah’s nose. He has more important things to attend to.
Plus there’s a Gilmore Girls marathon on.
He doesn’t think about Castiel again for weeks, except to note that his grace has yet to be permanently snuffed out—demons may not be terribly creative, stuck as they are on the idea that the most exquisite form of torture consists of pain, but they sure are persistent. So it’s not until he goes to give Dean another little pep talk—human beings are so high-maintenance—that he discovers that Castiel is still a player in this game.
This does not surprise Zachariah, exactly. Castiel is of too little consequence for him to affect things one way or another; Zachariah would be as likely to be shocked by the presence of an additional chair in the motel kitchenette. A chair might actually have more life to it: Castiel just stands there, half-hidden behind Dean as creation’s ill-chosen agent of destiny and his disgusting mongrel brother do their usual tough-guy dance. Zachariah hums the theme from The Partridge Family to himself and waits for them to finish. Then he shakes his head. “Taking in strays now, Dean?” he asks, pressing on Castiel with his stare. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. You don’t know where it’s been.”
“You mean the fact that he used to hang out with you guys? I think the stink’s mostly washed off by now, thanks.”
Zachariah uses his vessel’s nose to take an exaggerated sniff. “And yet it still smells of sulfur in here. Fancy that.”
Dean bares his forearm. “Well, this has been another lovely chat. Now are you going to get out, or am I going to have to channel some emo teenage cutter?”
“That’s not necessary.” Zachariah stretches his vessel’s face into a smile. “Be seeing you,” he says.
Zachariah did not choose a television executive to be his vessel by chance. In fact, he may have subsequently had a hand in bringing back The Prisoner. The original was seriously underrated.
Dean Winchester is not nearly so entertaining to watch. Frankly, Zachariah was bored after the first ten minutes: “Blah blah blah SAM! Blah blah blah GUILT! Blah blah blah trust issues daddy issues blah Sam blah.” This is the problem with humanity in general, Zachariah thinks. They’re messy and they’re not very well scripted. It’s like God gave them a perfectly good coloring book, and they went and scribbled outside the lines. In things like fingerpaint and magic marker. So frustrating.
Well, Zachariah’s going to change all that. And whether Dean wants to or not, he’s going to help.
Zachariah has no worries in that department. Dean Winchester is a tool, to be picked up and set down at will. When the time comes, Zachariah will wield him to his own ends, and Dean himself will have very little say in the matter. Meanwhile, Zachariah will keep an eye on him, if only because it is sensible to make sure one’s tools are well-maintained, and occasionally given a good, firm polish.
In this, Castiel may prove to be useful after all. Zachariah would have plenty of other means at his disposal, were the lesser angel not still around, but since he is, it’s much more efficient to simply slip in through Castiel’s perennially downcast eyes, the tattered remains of his grace like an open window for Zachariah to stare out of.
He takes a gander through his little peephole not long after he leaves Dean huffing and puffing and threatening to blow the motel room down. Dean is still pacing, and Zachariah watches along with Castiel as he struts and frets and expends nervous energy into the atmosphere.
Sam, on the bed, is much stiller—almost a statue. He hesitates, listening to Dean rant—“Blah blah blah smug angelic assholes blah”—before quietly clearing his throat. “He may have been right, though, Dean.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What Zachariah said about not knowing where Castiel’s been.” Sam speaks slowly, carefully. “No offense, Cas,” he continues, giving Castiel—and Zachariah—a brief moment of eye contact. “But you were brought back to life by Lucifer. I don’t think he did it out of the kindness of his heart. He’s probably using you. Using you to get to us.”
So that’s how it went down. Zachariah suppresses the wave of revulsion he feels at being anywhere near such a corrupt and tainted thing—even simply using it to gather intel. He’s, well, he’s puzzled that he couldn’t tell how debased Castiel was when he’d been in the room with him—that he can’t feel it now, some dark stain wriggling around in the other angel’s grace. His very existence is an abomination.
But Dean, of course, will never see it; Zachariah knows that Heaven’s chosen warrior will, for some perverse reason, continue to defend his half-blood brother and his fallen angelic lackey right up until the moment Zachariah finally forces him to face reality. But that’s not to come for a while yet. In the meantime, “Bullshit,” Dean says. “Cas isn’t going to betray us, Sam.”
It’s a tone of voice Zachariah knows well. You’re not evil, Sam! I’m going to save you, Sam! Blahty blahty blah.
It’s too bad humanity doesn’t come with a mute button. Or maybe a fast-forward.
“I didn’t mean—” Sam starts, continuing on as loudly as ever. “Not consciously, okay? But he could be, like, some kind of sleeper agent or something. Letting the other side in on our plans without even knowing it.” He glances up at Castiel, whom Zachariah knows is displaying no response to these accusations. “You got away much too easily for me not to be suspicious, Cas, I’m sorry.”
Were he at the moment corporeal, Zachariah might be chuckling: at least the scene has some dramatic irony to it now. Because of course, Castiel is unwittingly giving them away. Just not to whom they think.
“No, you’re right,” Castiel says. There is more emotion than Zachariah would have expected in his vessel’s voice, layers and layers like pen and ink and chalk scribbled all over each other. “I should have…I should not have come back here. I should have stayed away. I am a danger to you. A...liability.”
“No, you’re not.” Dean’s face looks like a crumpled bag, tears pricking at the corner of his eyes. It is sad—that this is what Zachariah’s got to work with. Things would be running so much more smoothly if he’d been the one in charge from the beginning.
“We all stick together from now on, all right?” Dean is saying. “That’s how it’s going to work. Blah Sam Cas I really just want a HUG blah.”
Yeah, Zachariah’s had more than enough for now. There’s really only so much he can take of the Winchesters through Castiel’s eyes.
But take it he must. Never let it be said that Zachariah doesn’t understand sacrifice, doesn’t understand devotion. (He sat through every episode of The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, Saved by the Bell: The New Class, AND Joey, thank you very much.) So from time to time, he slips in through Castiel’s grace and watches them plan and bicker and make pathetic inroads in the fight against evil. It’s painfully boring, but every once in a while he’ll overhear a “What are we going to do about those darn angels?” conversation. And that is fun, to spoil their little attempts to evade and outwit Zachariah and his brethren. Even without his man inside, Zachariah doesn’t think that Dean’s little ragtag bunch would ever present any tangible threat, but all the boredom and monotonous classic rock and endless conversations about food—“Where should we eat? No way, we are absolutely not getting Mexican, Sammy—Cas has to sit right behind you, hasn’t he been through enough? I want mozzarella sticks. Have I shown you mozzarella sticks yet, Cas? What could be more genius than fried cheese? Blah gluttonous blah”—all of it becomes worth it to see the baffled/pissed looks on the Winchesters’ faces when Zachariah trumps them once again. To see the growing horror and fear and doubt—let him doubt now, let him doubt now all he wants—in Castiel’s hooded eyes, in the tattered, trembling threads of his grace.
The righteous path is so very satisfying, sometimes.
It’s why Zachariah has kept this assignment for himself. A good leader knows when to delegate, and there are other angels high enough up on the food chain to know about the little trick involved in piggybacking on an inferior angel’s grace. But Zachariah continues to handle it himself. He thinks maybe he wants to be able to tell Dean, at the end: Yes, I watched you; I was there every time you thought yourself alone, unseen. Alone except your trusted friend, Cas. I watched you through his eyes as you tended to him after his return. So much concern in your voice, tough-guy Dean, asking him why he wasn’t healing himself. And the look on your face when he told you he couldn’t anymore, that he no longer had the capacity! I saw that. Up close and personal, I saw you, Dean, saw you peel away his torn, bloodstained shirt, clean and stitch the wounds. I saw the way your fingers lingered, the way your breath hitched, your pulse sped up. I saw you, Dean, and you disgust me.
It’s possible Zachariah’s being unfair. He’s never been a fan of romance getting tacked on to perfectly good plots. The supposed “chemistry” between Mulder and Scully nearly ruined The X-Files. And do not even get him started on Moonlighting.
But honestly, he’s not surprised. He’s never surprised, and certainly not by Dean’s desire to fuck almost anything that moves. How many times has he been forced to sit through some variation on this scene: “Why, hello there, female! Blah I’m Dean blah—let’s have sex relations!” Nor is he surprised that Castiel has found further ways in which to debase himself. Zachariah has seen the clumsy smiles he puts on for Dean, the almost boyish enthusiasm he has brought to helping the Winchesters with their pointless little rebellion. He has heard him try to crack jokes, try to fit in—Castiel, who always held himself aloof, quiet and staid, the perfect model of the perfect angel. The perfect, mindless drone. And so Zachariah told him, You have been granted a great honor. You will retrieve the righteous man who languishes in Hell, and you will watch over him. He knew he could count on Castiel—unimaginative, faultlessly loyal Castiel—to do exactly as commanded.
Zachariah would not say he’s surprised at the way things have turned out. He wouldn’t say that, precisely.
He will admit, however, that it would give him much satisfaction to destroy his former servant, were he not still of use. Like Dean, Castiel is a tool Zachariah is looking forward to ultimately being able to discard.
He wants Castiel to know this: know that although he may owe his rebirth to the Morningstar—and how has that not come back to bite him in the ass yet?—he owes his continuing existence, every second of every day, to Zachariah’s generosity. That he is allowed to continue to live, to continue to taint their unfortunately chosen savior with his presence is down entirely to Zachariah’s beneficence. The whole merciful New Testament thing that Zachariah’s rocking? He wants Castiel to acknowledge it and be appropriately grateful.
So the next time Zachariah swoops in and easily foils one of the Winchesters’ plans to vanquish Lucifer (it’s not time yet—not nearly time), he can’t help but, well, expound on his own achievements a bit.
“Seriously?” Dean says. “You’re gloating? You just allowed Lucifer to slaughter innocent people and you’re throwing yourself a frickin’ ticker-tape parade?”
Dean looks murderous, a mess of uncontrolled emotion. Sam is not much better—maybe more skilled only at keeping it inside, more numb to it. Castiel, meanwhile, stares straight forward with an expression that’s controlled and blank—but Zachariah can see the effort it takes him now, the way his jaw twitches, the degree to which his hands are clenched. Zachariah smiles easily, breezily. “Castiel’s proven himself to be a helpful ally, hasn’t he?” he says, enjoying to some extent the slow drag of a human tongue producing sounds, making words. “What would you do if he weren’t constantly around to watch you fail?”
“Leave Cas out of this,” Dean snaps.
Zachariah can’t help the chuckle; it’s too perfect. “Maybe you should try taking your own advice, Dean,” he says, and vanishes.
Dean’s too thick to get it, of course. But Castiel—Zachariah knows Castiel already has his doubts, has his suspicions. Zachariah’s not surprised that Castiel purposefully excuses himself from their next little war council, leaving Zachariah to instead watch his former associate, his lost little brother, change the dressing on a wound on his side, hands awkward and trembling, like a human. He watches Castiel stare at himself in the bathroom mirror, examining features he stole from a dead man as if they were his own. Zachariah can see what Castiel is seeing but he can’t tell what he is thinking. He can’t put himself into Castiel’s mindset at all.
But no matter. Nor does it matter that the Winchesters are left to carry out some set of plans unhindered. They remain no threat to him, and even if Castiel figures out that he’s unwittingly Zachariah’s mole…well, actually, Zachariah rather hopes he does. Whatever will he do then? Pathetic outcast angel, with nowhere else to go.
He’ll be weak, Zachariah thinks: weak as he’s already proven himself to be. Weak to side with humanity in all its vileness and corruption; weak not to destroy himself when he returned to life and surely realized what a grotesque, tainted thing he’d become. Weak to keep coming back, and keep coming back, to the Winchesters—to Dean Winchester. Even if he knows, he won’t be able to stay away, Zachariah thinks, and thus, through Castiel’s weakness, Zachariah will be able to keep his eyes and ears on Dean until the time comes for him to play his final part.
It doesn’t surprise him, then, that the next time he pushes himself through Castiel’s grace, Castiel and Dean are fighting. “You can’t,” Dean is saying. “Cas…I can’t ask you to do this.”
“You’re not.” Castiel’s tone is firm. “It’s my decision, Dean.” Zachariah can’t see Castiel’s face, but there’s something in his voice when he speaks next that suggests he’s almost smiling. “I’m exercising free will.”
“But you won’t…” Dean steps closer, makes an aborted movement like he wants to reach out. Love me need me just don’t ever show me blah to the epic blah. “It’s too much, Cas!”
Castiel shakes his head. “It’s not. It’s practically nothing. Honestly, sometimes,” his tone almost light, peaceful, “I feel like I’m already there.”
Dean’s Adam’s apple bobs roughly; he looks down. “When are you going to…?”
Castiel laughs. It’s a small sound, barely there, but Zachariah’s never heard Castiel, of all angels, laugh. “No time like the present.”
“Do you want me to…can I stay with you?” Dean asks, and this whole conversation is nauseating, really—he’s watched soap operas better than this—but Zachariah needs to stay, too; he needs to figure out what’s going on.
Because he’s not entirely sure.
Castiel says, “Please.” Then he kneels down on the dirty motel carpet.
He watches—they both watch—as Dean steps haltingly forward and gets down on his own knees in front of Castiel. They stare at each other, angel and human, and for the first time, for just a split second, Zachariah feels like he’s intruding on something. Dean Winchester belongs to Heaven—he is Heaven’s weapon and Heaven’s charge. Zachariah can’t say that he likes the idea, likes the evidence right in front of him, that there are other, perhaps stronger claims. That when he sent Castiel down to pull Dean out of Hell—after a suitable amount of time had passed, of course—he may have inadvertently relinquished control.
Zachariah knows what he’s doing. He has no reason to doubt. Castiel is of no importance. In the end, even Dean will come to see it.
Zachariah watches Dean watch Castiel lift his right hand and place it, fingers first, against his chest. He watches them both suck in a breath together—unaware, he thinks, that they’re breathing in tandem. And he watches as Dean’s stiff upper lip trembles and cracks, as Dean grinds out, “Cas, wait!” and pulls the angel forward into a kiss.
Castiel’s vessel’s eyes glide closed as his lips meet Dean’s, but his true eyes have no lids: they remain open and all-seeing, and Zachariah sees through them. He sees Dean’s face from startlingly close: his freckles and long lashes, the tiny imperfections in his skin. It is baffling to him why anybody would want to get this close to a flawed, irritable animal. Better to view it all away from their messes and smells—from a distance, through a pane of glass. Where you can have some blessed perspective.
He certainly doesn’t need such a close look at blasphemies such as this, and he’s seriously contemplating leaving and checking back later when Dean and Castiel break apart. “It’s going to be okay, Dean,” Castiel says, and if either of them gives that statement the slightest credence, then Zachariah’s got a bridge in Heaven he’d like to sell them. But Dean nods like he believes it, like he trusts Castiel—Castiel who’s betraying him right this instant without him ever knowing.
If Zachariah could move Castiel’s lips, manipulate his mouth and his hands like the puppet he is—he’d tell Dean right now, announce his own presence here just to see the look on his face.
But instead Castiel moves his stolen hand back so that his fake human fingers are positioned in front of his fake human heart. And then he pushes…in…
Zachariah realizes too late what Castiel is doing, what he is attempting to do. Because surely he will not be able to go through with it. Zachariah is still trying to decide how to respond, what action to take, when Castiel begins to scream. Dean is clutching at Castiel’s thighs, holding him steady, holding him, as Castiel makes a sound loud enough to shatter glass. A trickle of blood winds its way out of Dean’s eardrum. “Dean,” Castiel gasps out, “close your eyes.” But it is Zachariah’s vision that flickers, falters, turns jumpy like a TV set that’s losing its signal. Castiel holds his own grace in his hand, and Zachariah can almost feel it, like it’s he himself who’s being held between those tightening fingers. In his own body, he feels the echo of the horrible rip and tear, the sound deeper and more long-lasting than Castiel’s suddenly cut-off scream, than the last glimpse Zachariah sees of Dean’s face before it all goes abruptly black.
The next time Zachariah sees Dean, it is through his own eyes. Castiel is not with him. “Where’s your shadow?” he asks.
“Shut. Up,” retorts Dean, wittily.
But Castiel is apparently the angelic answer to David Caruso: he just won’t go away, no matter how annoying he is. Because the next time Zachariah meets Dean and his brother on the battlefield, Castiel is with them again. The left side of his face is puffy and swollen, all black and blue; he looks like a nice, simple straight line that’s been turned into a smudged mess. He looks pathetic and fragile and small. He looks human.
Zachariah can feel his vessel’s lip curl. “Dean, Dean, Dean,” he says. “You really need to learn to take better care of your toys.”
Dean does his usual “Don’t mess with my FAMILY blah mess with me if you want but leave them ALONE blah did somebody say WEAK SPOT? blah blah.” Castiel just stands there, silently. Watching Zachariah.
It doesn’t matter. Castiel is more irrelevant than ever—he’s cannon fodder; demons will probably capture and torture and destroy him within a month. Zachariah’s, let’s say, mildly peeved that he’s lost his little spyglass, but he doesn’t need to see everything the Winchesters are up to, not when they’re so useless. Not when Dean is apparently more interested in protecting his corrupted brother and babying his pet fallen angel than in defeating Lucifer. If he could still see through Castiel’s eyes, he’d probably only glimpse something like Dean carefully washing the blood off Castiel’s shoulder the way he had that other time, gentle sweeping motions on the sensitive skin, Dean’s fingers graceful and probing. Or else he’d see what he’d seen was coming, huge and up close in the sloppy promise of their kiss. They are animals—they are both animals now—and no doubt they would rut on the ground like animals, a frenzy of feeling that Zachariah is grateful he doesn’t have to witness.
Zachariah definitely does not want to witness that.
He watches a MacGyver marathon instead. Now there was a guy who knew how to focus on a problem! Why couldn’t the righteous man selected by Heaven have been MacGyver?
Possibly, Zachariah reflects, he needs to start watching a little less TV.
In fact, what he needs is a goal, a scheme, a plan of action. It’s been too much of a waiting game lately, and, well, idle hands… It’s getting closer to crunch time. He needs to get Dean ready.
He needs, Zachariah realizes, to destroy Castiel.
He sends out a message and he waits.
It takes Castiel longer to come to him than he expected, but that’s limited human mobility for you. He’s come alone as instructed, stepping into the lavish Hollywood Hills mansion Zachariah’s using—property of his vessel, and thus, like the body, now his—looking out of place amongst the plush surroundings in his worn denim jacket and dirty boots. He moves differently, Zachariah notes, like there is no longer anything that separates him from muscle and blood and bone. Everything that Castiel is is right here in front of him.
Zachariah can snuff him out with one hand. But not yet.
Castiel moves warily forward. “Is it true?” he asks.
Zachariah composes his vessel’s face into something serene and merciful. He no longer has to worry about Castiel looking any further than the surface. “Yes,” he says. “The time is almost at hand. We need you, Castiel, and we are willing to forgive your trespasses.”
“And Dean?”
“We still have work for him. We will not harm him.” They won’t have to.
“What would you have me do?” Castiel asks.
“Kneel, brother.”
Watching him, looking up through his eyelashes, Castiel sinks to his knees.
Zachariah keeps the smirk off his face, somehow. “I need to see your penitence.”
Castiel’s eyes flicker down. Slowly, he begins to crawl forward, head bowed, dragging himself closer with his fists and knees until he’s prostrate at Zachariah’s feet.
Zachariah curls a hand around Castiel’s shoulder. He’s thinking about how he’s going to do it. He could snap Castiel’s neck with one firm twist. He could put his hand on him, palm to forehead, and burn the life out of him with a touch.
But first, he wants Castiel to know. He wants him to understand.
“Look at me,” he says.
Castiel’s shoulders remain hunched, his head bowed.
“Look at me, Castiel,” Zachariah says, putting his other hand under the former angel’s chin and forcing his face up.
Castiel’s gaze meets his. There is no repentance in his eyes. He smiles.
Then his hands catch, firm and tight, around Zachariah’s wrists.
There are blood sigils carved there, deep and raw, like hot brands across both of Castiel’s palms. They burn into Zachariah, burn through layers of borrowed flesh and bone, right into the truth of him. His grace shudders and bucks, wriggling like a worm caught on a hook. On some level he cannot process the entirety of what is happening. But he is not surprised, oh no. He has almost lost control of his vessel’s tongue, but still he manages to say it, to gasp out, “I knew it. You belong to Hell. They corrupted you.”
“No,” Castiel says easily. “Not Hell.”
A flicker of mischief in Castiel’s blithe human gaze is the last thing Zachariah sees before his vessel falls away from him and he feels himself pushed into something else, something small and confining and cold.
He skitters against the glass, testing the walls of his prison, crackling against them like bottled lightning. He cannot see or hear in the traditional sense, but Castiel has apparently woven an exception into the spell. “I have no desire to harm you, brother,” comes Castiel’s voice, from everywhere and nowhere. “But humanity has decided to handle this threat on our own.” His voice caresses the possessive, proud, and Zachariah rages against his bonds. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to sit this one out.”
Then even he is gone, leaving Zachariah with nothing to do but plot and seethe and watch it all play out again in his head, trying to catch the twist.
Eventually, he switches over to episodes of The Love Boat. He knows them all by heart.