Chapter Text
Castiel falls from Heaven on a tuesday.
An angel’s fall from grace used to be a noteworthy event once upon a time. ‘Apocalypse redux’ levels of noteworthy; shower of stars, souls rising from the grave, earthquakes, plagues and so on. Castiel’s departure, by contrast, barely causes a stir. Heaven is so bereft of personnel at present, it’s hard to make a big production out of it, or maybe it’s just a sign of the times. Forget biblical days, or even the New Testament; history has marched on. The year is 1226 Anno Domini (or thereabouts, humans are still arguing over their calendar as with so many other things), a Tuesday as we’ve established, and Castiel has just said, “That’s it, I’m done,” as he heads out the door.
His remaining brethren pretend not to notice, as if acknowledging his departure might cause their own precarious perch in Heaven to teeter. Nobody tries to stop him. Anyone he could be said to have been close to once, Anael, Balthazar, Hannah, they all died fighting Lucifer long ago, nobody cares that much about him at this point. Certainly not God. Their Father has been gone for eons, bequeathing himself and his last precious attention to humanity rather than to his first children. He didn’t even bother giving the angels any orders as he walked out on them, only an injunction not to interfere directly with the nascent species that was replacing them.
In hindsight, it’s not surprising Lucifer and his cronies got into a bit of a snit, but the majority of angels, Castiel included, decided that God’s last directive meant they had to protect the fledgling barely-sentient creatures, leading them to civilization and salvation, and up until today Castiel never flinched. Castiel has always been the textbook definition of a good soldier. He never questioned their Father’s eon-long absence. He battled Lucifer and his demons alongside Michael and the Host, and he continued fighting after all the archangels annihilated each other. He mourned his friends but did not protest their sacrifice. He has faithfully protected the human race for centuries from the shadows of anonymity which barely make room for legends of angels anymore, and he never made any snide remarks about how these precious apes their Father loved so much spend all their time thumping each other, to the point that the ingress of demons barely causes a blip in the casualty rate anymore.
So what, you ask, caused him to fall? That’s a good question. All his brothers are caught flatfooted, Jonas muttering “It’s always the quiet ones,” when Castiel is almost out of earshot past the pearly gates. What startles the angels is that they are in the midst of congratulating themselves on an easy win for once. This time last week, they’d all been sitting around on their wings wondering how their dwindling numbers could defeat a demon of Alastair’s calibre without putting their full arsenal of miracles and holy might on display, and lo and behold the humans did the job for them. Humanity has come a long way from their stumbling infancy; they now have magic, this nascent ‘technology’ they’re proud of, organization, a hierarchy of kings and soldiers, cities and castles, spies and mages. Alastair did a lot of harm, granted, and a good portion of his army is still out there, but nevertheless, today is a win!
The tone of fatuous self-congratulations on not having done anything is the spark that ignited Castiel’s gunpowder, so to speak (gunpowder is another newfangled invention humans have come up with.)
Congratulate themselves? Why?! They’d not contributed to Alastair’s defeat. Their Father’s second born has grown up and is striking out on its own, leaving the angels to flap around in increasing redundancy, pretending that protecting humanity is their father’s last order, even though he hadn’t bothered making it one - and it’s to be noted that orders are all he’s ever given them, no direction, no love, no hope in the future - no future, just ever present unchanging vigilance over a world that no longer needs them or contains anything they could call relevant to themselves and all their sacrifices and losses and they are supposed to be CHEERING this development as if they had in anyway contributed?!
That’s it. I’m done.
...Castiel is a good soldier, as mentioned. He’s the opposite of a bad angel; the rebels all fell with Lucifer, the cowards and the delinquents skedaddled when the going got tough in the eons of war that followed. No, Castiel stayed through all of that. Castiel is a rock, a rampart, a mountain, calm, strong and placid. But deep in the depths of Mount Castiel is a heart that beats, that feels and writhes under neglect, injustice and love imposed upon, and when the pressure grows too strong, the placid mountain becomes a volcano.
It’s no wonder no one tries to stop him from leaving. Theoretically the garrison is supposed to hunt down fallen angels, but they understand that Castiel is not the type to create an army of demons or anything dramatic. So everyone is just going to pretend he’s gone for a long walk to cool his head until his Grace runs out in a few hundred years, and he either crawls back to Heaven to recharge (nobody believes this will actually happen because Mount Castiel is also very stubborn) or he turns mortal and dies, and they’ll never talk about him again.
Castiel is quite content with that.
He flits around the planet a few times, relishing the indescribable breath of freedom he’s not tasted since-... ever, really. He’s free to go wherever he wants and do what he wills. Other fallen angels before him let that freedom go to their heads and did some pretty silly things: founded new religions, bossed humans around, smote everything they disapproved of, the like, but Castiel doesn’t see the appeal. He has no intention of violating heavenly decree, and he doesn’t feel like getting hunted down and killed by his brethren for doing so either. He now has a finite lifespan, a few centuries at most, and this is as refreshing and precious to him as the freedom to fly through crisp mountain air without pressing duties. He has time now, a limited amount, true, but all of it his own. What does he want to do with it?
He’s got many options, but he already knows deep down where he’s going. He gravitates towards the kingdom of Lawrence less than an hour after his Fall. There is someone here he wants to see.
The capital city has a conjoined twin made of tents and semi-permanent encampments attached to its western flank. Many folk, nobles, soldiers and commoners alike, have rallied to this small backwater kingdom in the past few years to oppose the incursions of Alastair’s hordes from the wild lands of the east. There’s even a contingent of knight templars sent by the current Pope, with a bunch of crusaders lending cavalry support; the threat of Alastair’s horde was declared anathema back in 1219 AD and triggered the start of several holy wars. Today the assembled human armies have fallen back to Lawrence, and the place is hopping with people, which is a minor hindrance. Castiel has every intention of obeying his Father’s laws to the end, so he can’t miraculously appear in the heart of the fortress atop the hill dominating the capital. Instead he picks a discreet landing spot behind a copse of trees in a deserted area outside the city where no tents or allies have gathered. The northern gate is within sight. Castiel makes his way over.
It’s mid-morning in the month of May in this hemisphere. Flies buzz around a cart of cabbages arriving late for market while their owner argues with a guard. Castiel walks on by, but is stopped by a second armed man.
“Hold up, where do you think you’re going?”
Castiel glances indifferently at the halberd blocking his advance. “To see the king.”
The answer seems to surprise the armed man. “The king?”
“Yes. His name is Dean,” Castiel adds. “Dean Winchester. Do you know him?”
“Do I- what the- of course I bloody know him! You thinks I don’t know who I took the coin from?”
Castiel focuses more attention on the man, the latter transitioning from minor impediment to source of information. “I am here to see him. How do I do that?”
The guard looks Castiel over. He seems confused. Castiel materialized wearing the long white robes he used last time he was visible to a mortal.... which was several Books of various Prophets ago, he now remembers; a blink of time in his lifespan, but for mortals it’s a chunk of centuries that merits the adjective ‘historical’. Castiel watches over humans every day from on high, he knows their current language, their habits, some of their strange customs, but as for actual interaction, he’s not done that for a very long time. From the way the guard is staring at him like a curiosity rather than answering his question, he’s not doing too well.
“You a priest?” the guard finally hazards, giving Castiel’s floor-length white robe another hard look.
“No.”
“...A jester?”
“No.”
Castiel’s steady gaze seems to unnerve the guard, even though the angel is not doing anything threatening. On the contrary, he’s standing quite close and looking the man right in the eye to show his honesty and good intentions. The guard hedges back a bit and glances appealingly at his colleague, but the latter is deeply engrossed in cabbage matters all of a sudden and does not look willing to help.
“What do you want with the king?”
Castiel pauses. He hasn’t actually thought the matter through that far. Neither is he used to being questioned on his actions or motivations.
“I want to see him. He’s the one who killed Alastair, and he’s fighting the remnants of the demon hordes. He must be extraordinary.” He looks to the guard for confirmation, but though the man has said just one minute ago that he knows Dean Winchester, he does not leap to confirm or deny that statement. Castiel thinks a bit, then adds: “His cause is righteous. I followed the same one for eons. I think I can be of service to him.” Even without using a battery of miracles that would betray his true nature. He can still use his powers of course, especially when confronting the unnatural abominations from the Pit, but he has to stay discreet and give humans no proof of the divine. That shouldn’t be too hard; they are not, as a lot, very perceptive creatures. They can only see in three dimensions to start with...
The guard’s confused air clears up. “Oh, I gotcha, I gotcha. You wants to take the coin too. We got loads like you. From all the weirder parts of the land, they come, god’s tears, places I never even heard of, they come to fight the good fight. We won’t turn away a big strapping lad like you, that’s for sure, even in a dress.” The other guard stifles a snicker and pokes a cabbage.
The guard fishes around in the nearby guardhouse and comes back bearing two objects. The first is a silver coin soused in holy water which he indicates, with the air of one fulfilling a boring formality, that Castiel should grasp. Castiel does so and does not burst into flames, wince or otherwise react negatively (he keeps to himself the observation that the sanctity of the holy water is in fact wearing off and will soon have to be re-blessed.)
Not seeming surprised by Castiel’s lack of demoniac energy or monstrous origins, the guard hands him the second object. “Here. You takes this wooden token, see, it proves you passed muster here, keep it with you and you shows it to anyone who asks or you’ll be clapped in stocks. We keep the city tight these days, we has infiltrators and such comin’ in otherwise. You goes straight down this road, turn a right at the market, then go up the hill to that big building past the fortifications. Asks for the recruiter’s station. You gives him this token and say you want the coin. They’ll getcha signed up in no time.”
Castiel wants to see the king, not get a coin, but the guard seems very sure of himself, and what does Castiel know of human formalities? If a coin is required in order to see Dean Winchester, then a coin Castiel will obtain. He walks away from a lively murmur of discussion and speculation as to his origins between the two guards and the cabbage seller, and heads in the direction indicated.
The streets are festive. Barefooted children run around waving pretend swords, there are as many banners and bunting as laundry hanging across the alleys, and people emptying chamber pots out the window do so with a certain vim and vigor to the gesture, and even have the good natured reflex to check if anyone’s beneath them first, a courtesy they normally forgo according to Castiel’s previous observations of current human norms. In short, the whole of Lawrence is in a great mood. Dean Winchester returned to his seat of power yesterday with news of Alastair’s death, and the party is still ongoing.
Castiel lost his temper with the angels’ celebrations, but he does not begrudge the humans theirs. Every sapient being on this continent has had a lucky escape. Alastair was an anomaly. Over the eons, angels and demons had expended themselves against each other in much the same way fire and water get along, leaving nothing but damp ash behind in the end. It’s been a long time since a beast as powerful and full of sin as Alastair crawled out of the Pit. His death has taken every human from this area out from under a death sentence, and the power vacuum he’s left in the demonic horde’s leadership will give them a reprieve from the fighting.
Castiel makes his way through packed streets full of humans overindulging in fermented beverages. He wants to go to the castle quickly and get this coin he needs, but he’s stopped by a patrol before he even makes it to the market. They examine his wooden token suspiciously. Other humans in the throng are ogling Castiel’s raiments. Once the patrol lets him go on his way, Castiel takes a minute to detour down an alleyway. When he re-emerges, his white robes have transmogrified. The boots and cotton trousers, belted at knee and waist, are the same many people wear here, his gray tunic reinforced with leather panels matches the guards’, the rough-spun baggy brown surcoat is inspired by the cabbage seller’s. He is neither a priest nor a jester, so he should not dress as such.
His attempt to pass himself off as a mortal of the current times is a success; he’s no longer stopped by patrols, nobody gives him a second glance, and the man sitting behind the long desk in the recruiter’s station looks positively bored with the heavenly Being before him. The man, ill-shaved and tired, rubs his eyes and says a sentence in a language which the angel, all-knowing that he is, cannot begin to make out.
“What?”
“I says welcometothearmy, birthplace-n’-name, we don’ payinadvance, do yurtime, get ursov’rein.”
Castiel stares at him, nonplussed.
The man looks up from the ledger he’d been scratching in in a dilettante way. He examines Castiel more closely, especially the eyes, then he straightens up a tad.
“You here to join?”
“I’m here for a coin,” Castiel corrects.
“Ri’, ri’, king’s coin.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Ri’. Birthplace?”
Ah, a metaphysical quandary right out of the gate. On this continent, humans without noble heritage most often identify themselves with a name given by their parents and their place of provenance, but in Castiel’s case the latter is a bit of a theological puzzle at the best of times, not having been born per se, and certainly nowhere this mortal would be equipped to understand.
“Eden,” Castiel extemporizes.
“Never heard of it.” The recruiter’s tone suggests this is a faux-pas on Castiel’s part. “Name?”
“Castiel.”
“Whatcha good at?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You good at anythin’? Other than wieldin’ a pitchfork and buggerin’ sheep?”
“...I’ve never done either of those things. The latter is a sin in the eyes of our Father,” Castiel thinks to inform him. The casual way it was mentioned makes him uncertain the man is aware of it.
The recruiter rolls his eyes, but then a thought seems to strike him. “You don’t talk like no farmhand, I grantya. You a scholar?”
“Not especially.”
“Oh? You sure? Hey, by chance you wouldn’t be one of them magic users? Because we can always use more of-’
“Absolutely not!” The incensed ruffle of Castiel’s wings in the higher spheres shreds a cobweb and sends dust flying.
The recruiter gives him an owlish look. “Cool yerself, I wus jus’ askin’.”
“Magic is foul, I would never touch it,” Castiel snaps. The very thought of his Grace being compared to that- that parody, that sick twisted perversion-
“Strong words,” says someone off to his right.
Two humans walk through the door to the office. Castiel was listening to their footsteps for the past minute without thinking much of it, there are people moving all over these large barracks.
Castiel’s focus lands on the first man, the one who just spoke. A little taller than Castiel’s current form, taller than Castiel expected (size is tricky to judge for a celestial Being existing in several dimensions), dressed in a tough hauberk covered in a surcoat of rich chestnut-brown cloth. Panels of black velvet sewn onto the skirt, lower arms and chest lend the clothes a touch of luxury, which is solemnized by the embroidered sword and rifle crossed over a field of rye, the Winchester coat of arms. That and a thin gold circlet around his brow are his only outward identifiers, not that Castiel needs those, for this is the man he expressly came to see. Dean Winchester, the human who killed Alastair after years of a difficult campaign and great personal danger. Castiel recognizes him instantly, even though he only saw him for a brief instant and at a very large distance during a skirmish. But the light of Dean’s soul shone bright, it snared his attention and called to him… Castiel came all this way to confirm what that brief glance suggested; that this man with the shining light in his heart, however rough around the edges, is as strong, upright and tough as any angel, a true Righteous Man. Castiel came all this way just to verify this, and now he has, staring enchanted at the quality of the soul before him. Hardship has sharpened the edges of that tenacious light; there’s a faint tarnish there of a dozen minor sins cheerfully embraced; there’s mortality and a hard history and bitterness and dogged faith in the future all blended together, unique and precious. It is beautiful. It seems the guard at the gate was perfectly correct, Castiel’s met Dean - and he doesn't even have the coin yet.
King Dean is looking Castiel over in much the same way Castiel is looking at him, from top to toe, fetching a pause when their gazes cross. He finally clears his throat.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’d be glad to do without magic if we could. Grates my nerves, I admit. But our mages are the backbone of our big offensives, and our healers have saved too many lives to count.”
“It’s usefulness does not remove the stain of its origins,” Castiel answers, pleased to be able to actually interact with this remarkable human. Also, he’s telling the truth and spreading God’s word. “Demons are the creators of all the magic humans possess, its allures compromise the weak of soul. Its use is forbidden by our Father.”
Dean’s eyebrows arch, he doesn't look impressed with Castiel’s faultless logic. “Our father? You a half brother I don’t know about?”
“Our Heavenly Father. Children of Adam, do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them. So says His decree.”
“I see.” Dean half turns his head without breaking eyecontact. “Bobby, we got room in the army for another chaplain?”
Dean’s companion - another soul Castiel recognizes from his surveillance, Sir Robert Singer, Dean’s seneschal - makes a noise like “Harumph.”
“I am not a chaplain.”
“What are you then?”
Castiel pauses. He can’t say ‘Angel’ without revealing the divine, and besides it’s now inaccurate. ‘Fallen Angel’ is equally indiscreet and has a lot of negative connotations.
“I’m me.”
“Alright, mister Me, what can-”
“Castiel,” Castiel corrects him.
“...alright, mister I have no Humor Castiel-”
“Just Castiel,” Castiel assures him kindly.
Dean looks at him closely for a few seconds as if searching for something between Castiel’s eyebrows. Whatever it is he thought was there, he fails to find it, and seems puzzled. Sir Robert covers a derisive snort with a cough.
“Very well, Castiel. You’re not a magic user and you’re not a chaplain, so what can you do?”
“I can fight,” says Castiel after a few seconds of contemplation (it has been several billion years since someone has asked him what he can do; up until now, it’s always been a given.)
“Sword? Arbalest? Musket rifle? Cannoneer?”
“I use this.”
Sir Robert tenses as Castiel’s blade slips into his palm. Dean merely glances down, weighs the weapon with his eyes and then looks Castiel in the face again.
“Fine, any other weapon than a knife?”
“I’ve never needed anything else,” says Castiel after another moment of reflection, “however I can certainly learn.”
“You got the right attitude at least.” The smile this earns him is like a heavenly chord ringing out, Castiel almost looks around in bemusement for the origin of this feeling of warmth and light suffusing him.
Dean is quiet for a moment, then without breaking eye contact, he fishes in a small embroidered satchel tied to his large belt and draws out a coin.
“Here.” He flips the coin up in the air once, catches it, then sends it spinning in a new arc towards Castiel who catches it neatly. “The king’s coin. Literally in this instance. Take it in exchange for your allegiance, and welcome to the army.”
Castiel examines the small coin solemnly. It is made of gold with a crude picture of Dean stamped on one side. In his peripheral perception, the jaw of the recruitment officer sags. The coins in the box near the ledger are all made of copper.
Dean waves in that direction. “Sign in the book, or if you ain’t at ease with letters, make your mark. Then have a talk with the recruiter, he’ll sign off with the commander of the watch and get you situated in a regiment. We won’t be moving out all that soon. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Beast Alastair is dead along with his top officer. I think we can expect a few months of peace before we-”
Someone near the portcullis outside calls out incoherently, sharp and shrill before cutting off in an ugly choking gurgle.
The humans stand paralyzed, heads up, listening. Castiel, for his part, watches a soul leave a body in the distance and, oh dear, what’s coming does not look good.
Shouts ring out louder and louder, increasingly panicked. A horse screams nearby. A woman screams in a similar manner and abruptly stops, the cessation more chilling than the cry.
The words ‘under attack’ rise like the tide, carried by waves of different voices. And there’s the smell of course. Sulfur. Olefiant gasses. Rot. Corruption.
Divine sight picks out the advance of the spreading miasma rising from the cellars of a dozen boarded up houses surrounding the castle. It is oily black at its densest, a plague of pure corruption, but ahead of that noxious pool runs transparent veils of airborne poison, reacting with any liquid it finds to burn human skin, eyes and lungs. The clouds slither and pool along the ground, surging up when they hit an obstacle to kill here or there indiscriminately, leaving the survivors reeling back in horror, fleeing in incomprehension. Anyone knocked over in the stampede screams, seizes up, claws blindly at the empty sky, further spreading panic.
Panic. Despair. Death. And demons.
They come surging over the wall, back trails of smoke like flocks of ill-omened birds. Dozens of them. The castle has defences, but somebody - some human traitor - must have broken the salt-rich pavement lines, scratched away the protective charms. There’s still the spellcrafted shield the mages have cast over the crown of the hill, which Castiel noticed when he was making his way to the castle earlier, but the first wave of attackers are the shock troops, and after a few vicious runs at the magical structure, the latter shatters and lets them through. Weaker minions follow, flaring and sputtering over the walls and heading straight towards all the freshly dead bodies lying around. Somebody on the demon side thought this out carefully. Alastair, this has his mark all over it… He only died a few days ago, and this plan must have been in preparation for weeks; it’s been set in motion without him, possibly under the guidance of one of the more ambitious dauphins who wish to inherit his mantle. Poisonous gasses kill dozens of humans, then demons smoke in to possess the corpses without effort; a recipe for an instant army that mostly bypasses the walls and defence. This is bad.
Castiel brings his attention back to the recruitment office which has been empty of humans for the past thirty seconds. The recruiter left his book behind. Castiel contemplates it, then he leans forward to find the man’s quill. He signs an approximation of his name in the local language, then adds a tiny rendition of the same in Enochian, which may pass as his ‘mark’. He puts down the quill, closes the book with care, switches his angel blade back to his right hand and heads out the door.
A possessed corpse staggers by. Castiel stabs the thing in the chest and carries on without a pause, ignoring the gape-mouthed soldiers who had been bracing for the undead creature’s attack.
Out in the courtyard, Castiel slows to a stop and looks around. All three generations of Winchester kings, Henry, John and Dean, decided to spend their wealth on the practical rather than the exotic or the grandiose. The castle is a fortress, a byzantine maze of three-foot stone walls added to by each generation, dotted with choke-points, gates, guard houses and murderholes. It’s rather challenging to navigate if you can’t fly right this minute. Castiel looks around, a little at a loss. He absently swats at a slithering tendril of the poison gas that is trying to waft by him. A flick of wing in the higher spheres sends three demons caterwauling away through the air, to the surprise of the men at arms who’d been holding them back from attacking some helpless castle staff near the kitchen’s outbuildings.
Hmm.
Castiel glances down at the gold coin in his hand. He turns it to look at Dean’s profile.
With a flicker of thought, the coin vanishes from his palm to reappear on a gold chain around his neck. But since he’s only just signed the book, he doesn’t yet have a regiment, orders or a notion of who does what here, so his next step as Dean’s brand new soldier is to find his liege and go on from there.
---
Despite the confusion, the clouds of poison and the demonic attacks, finding Dean isn’t all that hard. He’s left a trail of resistance behind him: rapidly organizing troops, civilians gathered into protective circles surrounded by defences, knight templars protecting priests chanting exorcisms at the top of their lungs, and mages repairing their protective shields. Dean’s path curves from the recruitment office through to the barricade near the main gate, then off to a defensible position in a high courtyard the gas cannot reach, down the stairs towards more dangerous areas where pockets of castle staff might still be alive and need help. Castiel follows, killing whatever demon crosses his path as a matter of course.
Near the northern wall is where the king’s wake changes from organized resistance to a breadcrumb trail of bodies; most of them are the quickly-rotting corpses of once-possessed dead humans, but here and there are members of Dean’s guard. The arrow of violence points to the barricaded entrance of a barbican. There are ten demons there, hammering at the door, while two more try to breach a small high window reinforced with metal bars and boards. Their gestures are frenzied with violence, fury and impatience. They know they’ve failed. They have not taken the castle in their first deadly push, their offensive has not broken the kingdom of Lawrence, they’ve lost many of their numbers already… their last chance at a pyrrhic victory is to take down the king. They’re too maddened or stupid to realize that it’s not the door that’s holding them back, it’s the line of salt behind it. One of them does knock open the wood shutter of the small murderhole and toss something inside, but he cannot follow even in his smoked-out form due to more salt applied there. They all rage around like impotent cats around the mousehole until the last one in line notices Castiel standing right behind him.
A dozen dead demons later, Castiel kicks down the barbican’s door and enters.
Annoyingly though, he’s too late. Dean is dead.
Castiel picks up the smoking spell bomb the demons tossed in and throws it back out the murder hole. A wing flick banishes the poison shrouding the fallen king like a winding sheet. The body is dead already, has been for almost a minute, skin raw, eyes ulcerated and bleeding, lungs clotted with blood, but the soul is still flickering in its setting of flesh for a little while longer. Castiel stops it from slipping away with a hand to Dean’s forehead, and sends a surge of healing grace through the savaged body.
He immediately hits a snag. This is not just a physical injury or normal poison, which Castiel could banish with a thought, this is corruption most foul. Even as he fixes some of the damage, it sticks to the body beneath his hands like tar and undoes the work almost immediately. It takes an actual effort to wrench Dean back to life, and at best Castiel only gets the body minimally functional. Dean gives a gurgling gasp - but forget curing the rest of the damage, Castiel is barely making a difference.
Cold realisation goes through the angel like a stone sinking into the dark depths of a well. It’s too late. Dean will die unless Castiel goes all in. The only way he can reverse the damage is if he uses all the Grace at his disposal to heal it.
Castiel is a little lightheaded at the thought. He fell from Heaven a scant two hours ago, and he’s already having to make this kind of choice - he thought it would be decades, centuries before he faced mortality. But it’s not even a question of what he’s going to do. In truth, a part of his dizzied realization boils down to the single thought, ‘if I’d just stayed up there a couple of hours longer to say goodbye or punch Zachariah in the face, then this man would be gone…’ How close he’s come to not knowing this soul. How close.
There’s no hesitation in the hand Castiel places once again on Dean’s forehead.
The trickle of healing Grace turns into a stream, then a torrent, then a waterfall endlessly tumbling into the body beneath his hand. At first it makes no headway, Dean’s condition doesn’t change. The poison and corruption are very potent, they can kill even in diluted clouds wafting through large spaces, and Dean received a high dosage concentrated by the barbican’s walls and actually died from it, that is a lot of damage to reverse with the corruption fighting him every step of the way. Too much damage perhaps, but Castiel doesn’t even contemplate the possibility that this is all for naught, that he’ll lose all his Grace and not even save Dean at the end of it. If that happens, so be it, he’ll have at least tried. And for a being who’s lived eons, dying in a few centuries or in fifty years or tomorrow is all pretty much the same.
Dean’s lungs suddenly seize around a gasp. Then he gives a strangled bloody cough.
The Grace that seemed to be flowing through him uselessly to start with, like water trying to fill a sieve, is incrementally gathering pace in the healing. The ulcers on his skin pucker inwards, just a bit to start with, then faster and faster until they fade and finally disappear. Dean’s chest heaves under the hand Castiel has moved from his forehead to his heart. The darkness that was smothering his soul light dissipates like mist under sunshine.
Dean makes a rusty sound like “Guwar?” followed by a noise of pain and another agonizing cough. Castiel sends a flick of Grace to heal the scorched throat.
His Wings are burning in the higher plane, tilting as they capture and siphon every last ounce of Grace he has at his disposal. Minor miracles follow in its wake: an old oak table sprouts tiny stems and leaves on one of its legs, the corrupted gas turns to ash, coating the floor, the straw spilling from a worn mattress nearby starts to braid itself into complex patterns and the cheap plonk in a nearby flagon turns to fine wine, its container healed of its chips and cracks glinting like crystal from the spillover. A light that has no source a human eye can see knocks around the room and throws huge shadows of wings against the far wall. They strain, slowly fading evanescent into twilight.
The limits of a Power once infinite are within his sight for the first time in his existence. Castiel examines those limits without fear, measures them against the remaining damage, and finds the result satisfactory.
It’s working. He’s going to have enough. He can fix this. Dean is going to live.
Dean pulls in a raspy breath, then another, and painfully blinks. Castiel is too busy repairing Dean’s organs following poison and oxygen deprivation, but he should still have enough at the end to heal those pupils and burnt sclera.
“Wings,” Dean suddenly mumbles, staring somewhere over Castiel’s shoulder.
“Shh.” Castiel focuses on the blood flow to the previously burned lungs. Almost there...
“Wings,” Dean insists like it’s very important. He’s just coming back to full consciousness. Castiel doesn’t even know how Dean has seen the angel’s wings since his eyes are still burned and useless. He must have sensed them as he hovered there between life and death.
Castiel puts his hand over Dean’s mouth gently, and takes a minute to remove the painful blisters from his lips and fix the eyes. They turn brilliant green again instead of blood-red and suppurating. Pupils blow wide with shock as they stare at the ceiling then flicker shut in pain, as brand new as a baby’s. All his recovered senses, sight, smell, taste and touch, must be reeling from being newly remade, but this cacophony of sensation will soon pass. Almost there…
The only noise in the barbican up to now was the fissioning silence of Grace performing miracles and the small rustling fflffl of the table leg’s leaves growing and sprouting. But as the divine power slowly tapers off and flickers like a candle about to gutter, other noises intrude. There’s a lot of shouting outside. “Hold the line!” someone yells. Another voice Castiel can barely make out is calling Dean’s name frantically. It sounds like the humans are rallying and are trying to push the demons and dead armies back.
The holy light dims and goes out.
Castiel removes his hand from Dean’s mouth. The limb feels odd. Heavy. Meaty.
Mortal.
Oh well, it would have happened sooner or later, Castiel thinks philosophically. There is not an ounce of regret as he looks down at Dean, now peacefully asleep on the flagstone. Only the king’s clothes show the effects of the gas that almost killed him, musty, powdery, scorched in places where the poison reacted with sweat and blood to turn to acid. Castiel clicks his fingers to remake the hauberk and surcoat anew.
He doesn’t even stir a single broken thread. Oh. Right.
Castiel glances around. Dean chose his refuge well; the barbican of the castle, like many rooms and fortifications, was retrofitted to deal with the supernatural as well as human invaders. Runes are etched in the walls, and large bags of salt are stacked everywhere, one gutted open by an impatient royal dagger and scattered about. There’s also holy water in a bucket, a somewhat disrespectful display which Castiel doesn’t improve on when he uses it to mop away the worst of the ash, blood and mucus from the king’s face, before covering him with a blanket he finds on the camp bed near a table covered in playing cards. Castiel takes a minute to pour a new salt line in front of the door, replacing the one he disrupted by his entrance. Dean slumbers on. Castiel goes to check on him again. He puts his hand on Dean’s cheek… but he can no longer heal the body, sense damage or touch the soul. He can feel the warmth of a normal temperature, though, the ruggedness of unblistered skin that otherwise bothers only occasionally with a barber’s ministrations. Very human, very healthy and normal.
With a sigh, Castiel tears himself away and gets to his feet. Dean will be alright now, but by the sound of the rising brouhaha outside, there’s still work to be done. Castiel would prefer to stay here and watch Dean recover fully, but it’s his duty to help humans and kill demons, and he’s never been one to shirk. He marches grudgingly towards the door, steps over a couple of bodies, gestures at a demon rushing towards him, smiting the evil creature where it stands-
Oh. Right.
With an inward sigh, Castiel puts away the now-useless gesture of divine wrath and fills the startled demon full of stab holes instead. There’s still a great deal of physical prowess in the human frame built in Heaven, while traces of his Grace live within the angel blade in his hands, anathema to infernal spawn. He’s far from helpless.
Demon executed, Castiel stomps off to go see what all the shouting is about while keeping an eye out for any sinners who might try to circle around him and further harm Castiel’s new charge. Further along the battlements are the stable yards. There are some thirty or forty demons in one corner and a cohort of humans on the other led by prince Samuel Winchester. Castiel recognizes him from his discreet surveillance of the past few years. The man is a mage, he’s slinging spells right now while also maintaining an impressive defensive shield around his troops. Samuel Winchester is a bit of a conundrum for Castiel; the man has flirted with corruption most of his adult life, and Castiel is not sure he appreciates that, but he cannot fault the prince’s courage, leadership or ability to fry demons by the dozen. With Dean out for the count, Samuel is now the de facto leader of Lawrence’s forces and thus the man Castiel will assist. He marches in that direction, past a horse trough and a couple of empty stables, wondering why the nearest fighters behind Samuel’s protective shield who have spotted him approaching are making large ‘Stay where you are!’ and ‘Don’t come closer!’ gestures at him.
Castiel stops abruptly and brings a hand to his nose. Whew, what’s that smell?! It stinks like-
Darkness.