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Chapter Text

5 BC
Bethlehem, Judea

By nightfall, the angel Castiel had his orders and his vessel. Seeking consent had been easy. A servant in the palace of the Herod the Great prayed for those ghastly plans to be stopped at all costs. But they had to be carried out to preserve the legacy of the Christ child.

And when it was known that the servant, Joshua, carried the blood of Ishmael, only Castiel could fill that vessel, as he was bound by that bloodline alone. The angel of the Lord descended, pouring his light into Joshua, a sturdy but confining vessel. He opened his eyes and blinked. Human vessels were always so delicate and fragile, difficult to operate, even when they were unusually large like Joshua. A hand flexed and stretched. He tested the bones, the tendons, and the imprecise mechanisms of the body.

Footsteps pounded down the hall. A man appeared in the doorway. "Joshua! Joshua! What are you doing here? The King requires all servants in the great hall immediately! He has ordered the executions of every male infant in Bethlehem."

Castiel turned to the rushed, distressed man and rose from the bench. "I am not Joshua."

The other servant's brows knitted together, his dark face contorted in confusion. He knew something changed about Joshua but he couldn't comprehend how much. Castiel read the fear steadily rising in him, even through torch light. And without another word, Castiel propelled his vessel toward the nearest escape out of Herod's palace. He stood in the lush gardens and listened to the other angels claiming vessels across the rest of Judea that night.

Herod the Great's rage exploded upon discovering the Magi hadn't returned with news of where to find the new Christ child. The throne was threatened by the innocent baby and he ordered the execution of every infant under two years, using a river of blood to secure his own position of King of the Jews. No filthy child born among beasts to an unwed mother would steal his throne, he'd boomed throughout his palace. God's orders were to allow the executions of every male infant surrounding Bethlehem. The legacy of the Christ child as the Savior of Man would grow throughout humanity upon hearing that he escaped Herod the Great's wrath.

The three Fates were to secure the executions.

The angels were to protect the three Fates.

Castiel detested the slow transportation of human legs. He hadn't occupied a vessel since Moses led the Jews through the parted Red Sea, and although humans were the most beautiful pieces of art in the universe, like all art, they weren't very practical. Black wings spanning more than twenty feet wide unfurled over his vessel's shoulders and he lifted off the ground. The familiar whoosh of air sailed under him as he instantly willed himself to Bethlehem.

His fellow angels landed in a perimeter formation around the village with an inner ring around the well. He recognized Hael, Ezekiel, and Anna around the center ring of protection and he descended among them. They faced outward, silent guardians in the dark.

Three columns of light blazed down from the sky and and burst into the shapes of three women. They were the Moirai, three sisters dressed in fine Greek robes with ethereal pale golden hair, much like the golden threads they left behind wherever they carried out their deeds. Marching soldiers approached along the road from Herod's palace to Bethlehem. The angels observed with stoic silence, keeping watch over the plans.

The Moirai fanned out between the angels into the depths of the village. Atropos, the sister responsible for each human's time and manner of death, smirked at Castiel in passing.

"Do you never grow weary of choosing vessels with exotic blue eyes, Castiel?" she questioned, her words slithering the same way she moved. "It isn't very conspicuous among Hebrews, is it?"

"Blue eyes are a mark of the bloodline of Ishmael. It's of no consequence to me how my vessels look so long as they're strong enough to contain me. I'm here to provide security for you, Lachesis, and Clotho. Now, if you please, carry out your duties."

Atropos smirked as she walked away carrying her leatherbound book containing the names of every child marked for death that night. Sometimes he endured some measure of discomfort concerning the Moirai, though he certainly didn't understand it. He disliked their egos and their propensity for thoroughly enjoying their duties. It was a grisly thing killing the beautiful works of art in humans and he couldn't comprehend their cool and calm demeanor. Emotion led to doubt, though. Doubt led to disobedience. And so, Castiel squared his vessel's shoulders and pinched his lips in focus.

Soldiers materialized in the darkness and scattered among the stone and mud huts. Distant screams, anguished cries, and bellowing terror echoed one by one throughout the village. The process would be slow, Castiel realized. Perhaps hours.

Each angel dispatched to the assigned detail of soldiers. Controlled chaos ensued as soldiers moved from home to home, family to family, searching for infant males under the age of two. Soon hysterical mothers ran through the streets and screeched in horror, begging for help. There was no help to be had. Not even the angels were allowed to provide comfort.

Silently, Castiel followed his detail. One of them stood at least a head taller than the other four and his dark hair poked out in clumps from beneath his iron helmet. Castiel felt his reserve, his hesitation. Not all of Herod's soldiers carried out the orders with perfect obedience, it seemed. And as the tall soldier slaughtered infant after infant, tears burned his eyes, the agonizing screams of young mothers burned his ears, and the face of his own wife burned his brain. Her name was Sarah. Such a volatile mixture of emotions poured from that soldier as he carried out his duties that it began to affect Castiel too.

Distracted by studying that soldier so closely led to allowing him to be separated from his detail in the chaos outside. Castiel should have nudged him toward his men again, but he couldn't make himself do it. Cloaked in invisibility, he knew the soldier thought himself alone in the center of the raging storm but he had an angel perched nearby. Orders dictated no comfort to the bereaved mothers, but nobody offered orders concerning the soldiers forced to murder the innocent.

The lone soldier sat on the edge of a water well. He considered washing away the blood splattered over his body but just as quickly, he decided he didn't deserve to be clean. The blood marked him as a murderer. He wasn't like the other soldiers and Castiel began sliding down the rocky hill of internal doubt.

Silent and invisible to mortal eyes, he draped a comforting hand on the soldier's shoulder. He felt the guilt. He felt the implosion of knowing he let down his wife and mankind by participating in the slaughter ordered by a monarch diving into insanity.

Together, the angel and the soldier sat perfectly still amid people running through the village like ants scattering from a compromised hill.

But a cramped stone home on the edge of the village caught their attention simultaneously, not because of the terror, but because of the lack of it. Dim oil light flickered within. They saw it through the hole functioning as a window. It drew the soldier and he glanced over his shoulder to make certain he wasn't being followed as he approached. Castiel followed him, yet he didn't quite know why. This wasn't his job. His orders were to provide security for the Moirai, not the soldiers. He bordered dangerously on the edge of disobedience.

The soldier let himself into the home without knocking and found a sparsely furnished one-room dwelling. The ceiling hung so low that he stooped, though his unusual height made him accustomed to a hunched stature.

A woman stood on the opposite end of a central table clutching a swaddled infant to her bosom with one arm and brandishing a knife with the other. Her round face appeared well-fed, as did her curvesome figure, yet she and the infant lived in relative squalor. Castiel's eyes narrowed as he read her history. She was of both Roman and Greek parents, not Hebrew. The state of her poverty had been a recent decision, about a year ago, because she disobeyed a great family to marry for love. And she married a Jew. The marriage didn't last, as he had been killed just before the child's birth. Castiel couldn't quite reach it. She buried the truth so deep that only bravado and a tough fighting nature remained, a veneer over her natural tenderness.

"You may reach my son," she snarled, pointing the knife at the soldier, "but you must kill me first. Not before I disfigure you for life. Choose wisely, sir."

Not even Castiel predicted how the soldier raised his hands to show his harmlessness and, dare he think it, surrender. The woman's bravery struck both the angel and the soldier. Both of them questioned the legitimacy of what they were doing, which proved far more dangerous for Castiel. Disobedience meant execution.

"What's your name?" the soldier asked her in a placating tone.

Black curly hair tumbled over the baby like a shield as she stepped back, blinking suspiciously at the soldier through deep brown eyes. "Korinna," she eventually replied. "My son is called David for his father."

The soldier offered a slow nod. "Korinna, I'm called Nathaniel."

As the soldier Nathaniel tested a step closer, the Roman mother Korinna lunged at him, stabbing the air around him with her knife. He retreated and showed his hands again.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said.

"How do I know that?" Korinna's voice drooped into a desperate whisper. "The blood of innocent Hebrew babies covers your flesh."

"You are not Hebrew," he countered, recognizing what Castiel did about her aristocratic presence. "I'm going to get you out of here. I - I don't know how yet, but I'm going to get you and your child to safety." His hand carefully folded against his chest to illustrate his point. "My wife, Sarah. She's Roman as well."

"Why are your soldiers doing this?" Her whisper trembled and shook angry tears from her eyes, yet she never let her defenses fall.

"I cannot say." Nathaniel turned suddenly and shut them in the home. He grabbed a sack of grain, dumping it on the floor. "Gather enough food and a few possessions in here. Hurry. We haven't the time to argue."

"But--"

"--Do it before I change my mind!" Fear made him boom down at her far more than a desire to carry out such a threat.

Korinna's body jolted with the power of his presence. Eyes wide, she still couldn't fathom trusting a blood-spattered soldier of Herod's madness, but she gripped the knife in her teeth as she haphazardly tossed things in the sack. Never once did Castiel see her turn her back on Nathaniel, nor did she put down her baby once. Her strength, her audacity to fight a man nearly three times her size thoroughly intrigued the angel.

He knew he had to leave. Another part of him knew God's task too. All children younger than two years in the vicinity of Bethlehem must die while the Christ child and the Virgin Mother escaped Judea for Egypt. He couldn't force himself to hurt the brave creature.

For the first time, Castiel filled with doubt. It burned his grace to feel so conflicted, but before he understood the rebellion he just committed, rustling black wings announced his presence in the widow's home.

He appeared and Korinna screamed in terror. Immediate fighting instincts took over Nathaniel as well and he flipped some bladed weapon in his hand. Rushing across the floor, Castiel clamped her head in his hands around her head with tightened fingers gripped around her mouth. Bulging dark eyes flickered over his vessel's face just as defiant as they were fearful. She clutched her baby tightly. Everything about her presence intended to die defending her infant.

"Do not draw attention to this house," ordered Castiel to both of them. "I am an angel of the Lord. I am here to convey this mother and child to safety."

The words tasted foreign in his vessel's throat - the first lie he ever told. The first rebellion. And yet, he felt. He felt the right think to do, just as Nathaniel did. They met eyes briefly and the soldier hesitantly replaced his weapon, suddenly knowing in his bones that they were all in this together.

"When I release you, will you scream?" Castiel questioned the lady.

She shook her head emphatically in his hands.

"You will obey?" he nodded.

She nodded. Castiel nodded. Nathaniel nodded. All in agreement, the angel released Korinna, and she backed away from him. She dropped her knife with a metallic clatter on the floor and wrapped both arms around her baby.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"I am an angel of the Lord," Castiel repeated.

"Do angels not have names?"

As she spoke, Nathaniel retrieved the discarded sack from the floor and filled it with odds and ends for her journey.

"My name is Castiel."

Korinna nodded, something like a greeting, but Castiel knew very little of human mannerisms. "Where am I to go?"

There was no time to discuss it. Castiel felt the executions drawing to an end across Bethlehem, which meant he would be needed soon enough. He crouched between Korinna and Nathaniel, a hand reached up to her arm and the other touching the soldier's shoulder. Neither of them had a moment to react before Castiel's wings unfurled, knocking jars off a shelf she'd never see again, and propelled all of them far away from danger.

The baby shrieked as they dropped in Rome, a place Nathaniel knew well. Kroinna grabbed up the baby so close to her chest that she could have smothered him in fear, but the sight of a busy Roman street distracted her into loosening her grip.

"My ... my home..." breathed Nathaniel, curling his head back for a view of the stone building. "Up there. The third level." His eyes flashed on Castiel questioningly, yet grateful all at once.

"Your compassion has earned you freedom from Herod's army. Korinna is to be your sister and David your nephew. Give them a home and see your own children born to Sarah." With a nod, Castiel gestured up to the third floor where his wife lived quite rounded in the final stages of her own pregnancy. "You left her with child."

Astonished, Nathaniel's eyes passed to the window once more.

"Go now," said Castiel to them both.

The lady started to leave with her baby, overcome by the sensation of safety, but another emotion altogether propelled her around again. All too suddenly, her scent, her length of curly black hair, her flowery scent surrounded Castiel as she threw her arm around his shoulders. The baby squeezed between them as she embraced the angel with her face nestled beneath his chin. Castiel froze, uncertain, and had no conception of how to respond to bursts human gratitude. He felt lost in a cloud of that female and just as he thought perhaps he ought to pat her shoulder in return, she let go and traipsed into the building without a word.

No goodbye.

Just the sudden void. It threw him into a wall of ... what ... emptiness.

The entire night left Castiel confused and unable to piece together the things in himself that somehow dislodged. Indeed, something within shifted and crumbled with the decision to help two suffering humans, but the worst sensation of all amounted to the emptiness they left when they set off into a new life.

The angel of the Lord returned to Bethlehem with hardly an upward glance. He found his way back to the little stone house, though he hardly knew why, except it felt necessary. The little drops of feeling invading his chest needed to be corrected and buried before it got him in trouble. And yet, he strolled around the single room dwelling and lingered in the floral scent he hadn't noticed until the final moments.

The glint of the knife she'd brandished caught his eye. He crouched and picked it up, still feeling the warmth in the handle, which, he guessed, was imperceptible to human touch by that time. He put it on the table as if someone might come home again.

A bed in the back corner stood with a baby cradle at the foot. Perhaps he should have sent the cradle along with her, or more food, or something else humans required. Another bit of glittering caught his eye on the floor between the bed and the cradle, where he crouched and searched. He found a necklace there, which seemed entirely too well-crafted for a simple wife in a Hebrew village. Suspended from a gold rope chain hung a series of oval and square pendants crafted in gold as well, each pendant inlaid with amethysts, chalcedony, emeralds, rock crystals, pearls, and colored glass. Dangling below the series of pendants was a butterfly crafted in the same style. It clearly came from the comfortable life she left behind, choosing a poor Hebrew man as a mate.

"Castiel! What have you done?" shouted the voice of Fate.

He spun on his vessel's heels and found the door blown wide open. Lachesis stood in the doorway, so furious that her eyes glowed like two ghoulish lights in the darkness. Castiel curled the necklace inward to his fist and hid it from her.

"You had your orders, Castiel. You were to provide security for my sister and I as we carried out our own orders. Now I find you here in some human's home, having sent that female with her child ... where? Tell me where you've sent them! This wrong must be corrected!" Her rage flowed through the house like the winds of wrath, blowing objects to the floor.

"I will not," Castiel replied calmly. He felt the butterfly pressing an imprint into his palm.

"You will!" she screeched. "How dare you disobey? Do you know you'll be executed for this? Orders stated that every male child born to Hebrew parents must die this night!"

"The child was not a Jew," corrected Castiel, still so calm that it infuriated Lachesis even more.

She stared, clearly trying to understand.

"His mother was born to Greek and Roman parents."

"His father was Hebrew."

Castiel's head tilted, a mildly arrogant sort of gesture, knowing he had his way around of disobedience. "According to Jewish law, a child can only be a Jew if born to a Jew mother. There are no stipulations for the father. Therefore, the child who was born to this house was not a Jew and not marked for this ghastly slaughter." He allowed her a moment to turn it over in her mind. "I have not disobeyed, Lachesis. An innocent child was saved tonight."

The rage in Fate could not be measured. Wind tore through the house, ripping furniture into walls, yet Castiel remained as still as a pond in springtime. Even as a piece of pottery sailed by his vessel's head, missing it by inches, he never flinched. The angel of the Lord drew a line in the sand.

"You've worked yourself into quite a technicality, haven't you?"

Castiel leaned forward with his hands braced on the table, one hand balled into a fist with the necklace. "Doesn't any of this seem wrong to you? Killing human babies?"

"It isn't our place to question the will of God. My sisters and I have our place. We have our function. And you, Castiel, you have your place and your function with the other angels. None of that entails questioning whether this is right or wrong. As it comes from God, it is law. You've spirited away a child, come dangerously close to disobedience, and now you're venturing into blasphemy." Her eyes glowed brighter. "You will ask God's forgiveness through me this moment."

The internal mechanism of obedience meant Castiel knew that was exactly what he should have done. He fought a myriad of different urges in himself and considered the dislodged hole in his chest opened him to the disease of emotions.

"I will not," he heard himself say. "This is wrong, Lachesis."

"Castiel!"

An electric charge exploded through Castiel's hand as it pounded the table, feeling the first impulses of his own sense of rage. "No! Were I to have another chance, I would send away the mother and child again without hesitation! How can you condone the slaughter of innocent human babies? Their only crime was being born in the generation of the Christ child! You're condemning all of these soldiers to a lifetime of tormented guilt resulting in more than half of them taking their own lives years from now! These men have been forced into sin! Were angels not created to be the shepherds of man?"

Lachesis backed away from Castiel as if he suddenly became diseased. She shook her head. "What's happened to you?"

He had no response. They both knew. Emotions led to doubt, and doubt led to free thinking, and free thinking led to disobedience. It was the worst possible development in an angel. God made an example of Lucifer to demonstrate the dangers of not trusting with perfect faith.

"Do you remember what happened to the angels who pined for humans?" she asked, steadying her tone.

"Of course." He didn't understand why she brought that up.

Her brows arched toward him, letting it sink into his mind.

Abruptly, he pieced together what she meant and righted his posture, uncomfortable and turning away. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm not pining for any human."

Lachesis traced the edge of the table with her fingertips as she strolled around it. She eyed Castiel with a condescending smirk toying at her lips. "Perhaps you ought to pine," she surmised aloud. "If you're so insistent upon learning emotions and thinking for yourself, perhaps you ought to suffer the daily loss of loneliness. Yes." She nodded as the plan formulated from her mind to her words. "I condemn this woman to walk the earth over and over again--"

"--Stop!--"

"--I condemn both of you never to feel whole without the other. Each life she lives will be like swimming through a swamp of misery and you will be forced to watch it. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, her suffering will be palpable in your own essence as if it's happening to you.--"

"--Lachesis!--"

Her voice rose over him. "--Only when you give in to your urges will you know peace. Only when you create life from the unnatural union will the condemnation be broken." Lachesis smiled darkly. "And in doing so, you will have committed the highest act of treason. You will be executed and you will learn the disobedience you committed this night cannot go unchecked without punishment."

"You haven't the authority!" Castiel shot back.

One-third of Fate stiffened, made herself taller, and stood toe-to-toe with his vessel. "Haven't I? It's already done. God approves of this punishment, it seems. Enjoy eternity fighting temptation, Castiel. I shall see you again when your nephilim is born."

He squeezed his fists so tight that the butterfly pendant sliced into his vessel's palm, though he scarcely noticed. "It will never happen!"

"It's your choice. Preserve your own life and condemn the woman you rescued to lifetime upon lifetime of loss and emptiness, or sacrifice yourself and your nephilim to release her from the condemnation." She smiled over her shoulder as he departed the house. "You will learn the true burden of free will. You will learn never to pine for a human and disobey on technicalities again."

Chapter Text

For a time, Castiel allowed himself to hope that he could erase the memory of disobedience for Korinna. He avoided mankind as much as possible, yet Lachesis dragged him back again. Perhaps she underestimated Castiel’s willpower to turn his back on pining for a human. Perhaps Korinna’s suffering opened her soul.

Of course, constant awareness of Korinna’s soul lived in his grace no matter how much time passed or how many times that soul got crammed into new bodies with new names.

He felt her life in Rome grow old. She suffered the loss of her baby to a fever and never had another child. Soon she lost Nathaniel and Sarah to fevers as well. The anguish sliced through her chest into her soul on a daily basis and bound her to Castiel even deeper with the cords of loneliness and misery. Lachesis made it impossible to forget and she made it impossible for Korinna’s soul to know peace without him, just as she vowed.

Her presence lingered in him wherever he went, through his promotion to leading his garrison, and his return to duty and obedience. Korinna’s soul appeared to him as the most beautiful light, a sweet little firefly on Earth. Daylight shined on her skin like gold dust. It threaded her hair in spirals and sparkled in her eyes, even from Heaven. In the night, moonlight passed over her skin with silver shimmer. Lachesis bewitched Korinna’s soul until it seemed to be made of the day and the night all at once, the sun and the moon never giving Castiel any rest. Such a glorious light was too much for human eyes but it attracted angels like moths to flames.

Temptation became unbearable whenever she died, her soul passing quickly into Heaven only to be recycled in a few human generations back to Earth again. And so, Castiel forced himself into a state of numb isolation as the years marched past his existence. A condemned angel was a solitary angel.

Six more lifetimes passed just that way for them until it became a numbing routine. She never understood her inherent sense of emptiness and he never allowed himself to take a vessel again. Watching her suffer through the deaths of loved ones over and over until descending into repeated isolation wounded Castiel to his core. He knew it was his fault. The guilt ravaged him until he lived in cold silence.

And yet, he resisted. He refused to give in to his need to be with her. It was a condemnation - a curse - of the worst kind.

The only comfort he had was the butterfly necklace taken from her home the night he found her. Occasionally, in rare moments of solitude, he passed the oval and square pendants through his fingers. The fleeting sensation of her soul in the gold and stones came over his pain like a salve. But just as quickly, it faded again.

Existence dissolved into an endless nightmare for both of them.

*****

May 19, 1536
1 a.m.
London, England

Orders arrived. A fifteen hundred year reprieve ended abruptly the moment Castiel understood that he was to accompany the human queen, Anne Boleyn, from the world of the physical to the world of the spiritual. For the first time since the Massacre of the Innocents, Castiel had to go back. He had to face the world. And for a moment, he considered disobedience again.

Lachesis and her two sisters of Fate did their work well, it seemed. Not only did Anne Boleyn await Castiel but so did his beautiful, glowing firefly. She’d been placed directly in his path and he didn’t know if his willpower could withstand the temptation.

The human queen faced execution in the morning and stalling wouldn’t serve her soul well. An innocent queen sent to her death by the insanity of a king who’s obsession with producing male heirs created the perfect storm that would spawn a ghost. In the end, Castiel knew his orders were just. If he didn’t counsel the human queen before her execution, she would most certainly remain behind as a lost soul. Subjecting a soul to a painful ghostly existence just to avoid personal temptation struck him as reprehensible.

He found his vessel, a direct descendant of the one he’d occupied in Bethlehem. All of his vessels came from the bloodline of Ishmael, marked by their distinctive blue eyes. Not everyone descended from Ishmael had those eyes, of course, but merely those strong enough to contain an angel of the Lord.

Castiel lured his vessel to the gates of the Tower of London and acquired consent easily. Secret loyalty to the human queen made it quite simple to convince his vessel to be of service to both her and God.

He lowered himself into the vessel, a pure white column of light cascading downward from the heavens.

Female humans never occupied sturdy bodies and he filled that one with some hesitation. The woman had been a friend to the human queen according to her thoughts and, as he acclimated to restrictive, heavy womanly clothing and small stature, he collected her memories. Her name was Lady Lenore Percy. Castiel turned her head from side to side, growing as comfortable as he could with the body. Though he had no gender in his true form, the restrictions society forced on human female clothing and mannerisms drove him to distraction.

Walking along the exterior stone wall bordering the Tower proved even more cumbersome as Castiel’s wings dragged miserably behind him. Lady Percy barely stood at five feet tall and his wings, though no human could see them, were four times that size. He knew how to carry himself in male vessels but there weren’t enough hands to lift the floor-length gown and manage his wings too.

Castiel glanced around, ensuring no one saw him, and then he spread those black raven wings more than twenty feet wide. With a flourish of the full gown, he disappeared from the stony London street.

"Lady Shelton, I require my Bible."

Those were the first words Castiel heard the human queen speak as he landed in a dark corner of the Queen’s Lodgings. He backed against the cold stone wall, receding into the shadows cast by candlelight. At least Anne Boleyn’s imprisonment in the Queen’s Lodgings appeared comfortable, as comfortable as one could feel on the eve of her execution. She looked remarkably calm and collected as she sat before the fireplace in a simple black velvet gown done in the English fashion rather than the French fashion she once favored.

Castiel stopped, tilting his head. He hadn’t the slightest idea what English fashion and French fashion even meant, but the instincts of his female vessel clearly knew.

He emerged from his blackened shadowy corner. Confusion flashed into fear instantly with the intrusion. The former queen’s ladies shrieked, skirts spun, and each of them surrounded her as if they intended to create a defense. Yet, Anne Boleyn wasn’t even a queen anymore.

"I mean you no harm," Castiel said. Words spoken through the filter of female vocal cords gave him momentary pause. "I have come to offer Mistress Boleyn comfort and hope."

"You will identify yourself in the name of the king!" ordered a woman in a voice less steady than her hard features.

Castiel’s eyes flickered over her face and identified her. “Lady Kingston, I am an angel of the Lord. My name is Castiel.”

"You are no such creature. Lady Percy, why do you torment me now when I am nothing to you but a simple woman without my lord or my country?" Anne rose as elegantly as if she still wore her crown and stepped closer, her black eyes flaming with accusation.

Before she reached him, Castiel closed his eyes and focused his grace to perfect precision. Under his control, thunder rolled and a bolt of lightning struck the Tower. The flash of heavenly light flooded the room in white tinged with blue, illuminating the silhouette of his outstretched wings on the wall behind him. Glowing blue eyes slowly opened and cast directly over Anne Boleyn, meaning to humble her into submission.

The former queen froze like a hunted animal. Each of her ladies stilled behind her until they all resembled the silence of a painting. Anne dropped to her knees in a poof of her skirts and her fingers wound together in a prayerful pose. One by one, her ladies followed her lead.

"Now that your faith is secure," said Castiel as his grace faded, "let us commence God’s work together."

*****

Anna Boleyn’s strength astonished Castiel, as did her resolute belief that she was wrongly accused and would die a martyr. She retired to bed around three in the morning after intensive prayer and confession with Castiel, preparing her soul for departure.

Of course, the former queen and her ladies asleep in the Tower meant he had nothing to do until they awoke after sunrise. He tried watching over the flock of ladies but soon found himself pacing in an altogether nervous human habit. The soul he’d rescued fifteen hundred years ago - the creature he’d come to call his beautiful firefly - felt warm and inviting all the way from Whitehall Palace.

Perhaps he could just look in on her. Perhaps he could simply see if she was in good health and, by some miracle, happy.

Castiel wrung his vessel’s soft, petite hands together. Distress wrinkled delicate skin between those blue eyes, making the body he inhabited age beyond her thirty years. He wanted to take a deep breath but felt suffocated by the heavily bound gown and hood covering his vessel’s long, dark hair.

Return to Heaven and wait for his charge to wake again. That was what he should have done and he knew it as deeply as he knew by inhabiting a female vessel that women were nothing but a commodity in that society. Korinna had more freedom as a Roman woman fifteen hundred years ago than she had living in Whitehall Palace under the Tudor reign with a new identity. Indeed, he knew he should have stayed far, far away from temptation, but reading his vessel’s feelings meant his beautiful firefly suffered as a commodity for aristocratic men as well.

If he could just have a glimpse, he thought. Just one moment to see her again, to reassure himself that she was well. He justified his temptation by reminding himself that she would know that body as Lady Lenore Percy, not the angel Castiel. Every human recognized the exterior, the facade, because their limited scope of perception made them blind to the unique colors of souls and angelic grace.

Before Castiel realized it, he departed the Queen’s Lodgings of the Tower in a quick rustling of wings. He landed in a dark, wide corridor of Whitehall Palace, having followed the warmth of her silver moonlight and the floral scent that she still carried through each of her lifetimes.

He stood at the entrance of her private rooms within the palace complex and resumed pacing at the door. Walk away. Leave, he ordered himself. No, she wouldn’t know him but he considered the implications of tormenting himself with her presence. He felt her life force in there. She was alive, at least. Perhaps that had to be enough consolation for him.

The door flung open abruptly. “Who’s ther—”

Castiel, within his female vessel, faced little firefly, shocked into silence. Her floral aroma overpowered him, as did the shimmering silver quality dusted over her skin in such a subtle glow. They called her “Pretty Madge” in that lifetime. Lady Shelton in formal terms, the daughter of Anne Boleyn’s lady serving her in the Tower.

"Lady Per—You’re not Lady Percy," breathed Madge, caught between terror and wonderment.

"Of course I am, Lady Shelton. What ever do you mean?" Castiel attempted a human giggle of feminine dismissal.

Madge shook her head, slow and hypnotic. Her slender hand traveled to her lips in disbelief. Unblinking eyes, wide and glassy, traced invisible lines high over Castiel’s head. Suddenly he realized what happened. If Lachesis ensured that he always saw her soul, the mistress of Fate also ensured that Madge - or whatever name she took in any life - would always see Castiel’s grace. He couldn’t hide from her.

His gaze fell. “You see my wings.”

"Merciful Christ." As all people of intense faith did, Madge sank to her knees before him. "You’re an—"

"—An angel, yes. Castiel is my name," he admitted. He couldn’t tolerate the sight of her showing reverence and respect when he didn’t deserve it. He was the cause of her misery for the last fifteen hundred years. "Please, you needn’t kneel. Let me help you stand."

They touched. He grasped her hands in the feminine grip of his vessel and she rose to her feet. Invisible lightning burned his hands against her touch as if to remind him of the temptation. Could he never entertain a moment of peace?

"You must certainly be here because of the evil that has befallen this place," she said in a secretive tone. "Come away from the public corridor before the evildoers see you." A curled finger beckoned him into her private rooms.

Castiel hesitated but followed. Her sitting room opened before him with plush cushioned chairs surrounding a table. A great fireplace warmed the room nearby and an impressive silver cross stood on a sideboard beneath a double window. He peered through the doorway and noticed a bed fitted with red damask curtains. But the sight of her bedchamber dipped his vessel’s stomach. At least it was physically impossible to get into too much trouble with his temptation, both of them occupying female bodies.

But now that he stood in the same shadowy room with the firefly, he didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t his assignment. No one in Heaven had thought of her suffering in the scandals spun by the selfish decadence of the Tudor court.

Madge drifted to the window with her hands demurely clasped. Her small stature seemed completely swallowed up by the hood pouring down from the crown of her head and the restrictive weight of her gown, which all concealed much of the attractive shimmer in her hair and on her skin. Lachesis hadn’t planned for masculine oppression of women to hide so much of the gold and silver dusting of soul light meant to make her utterly spellbinding to an angel like Castiel. Only her face, décolletage, and hands were left exposed to the air.

"Am I to be punished, angel?" She peered at him over her shoulder.

He tilted his head, though she kept her back to him and stared out of the window. “Why should you think such a thing?”

"This place has descended into the fires of Hell, most certainly, or it would not have drawn the attention of our Lord’s angels." Her tone sharpened into condemnation of the entire court, yet softened into fear in speaking of herself. "I was but a finger on the hand that closed around the queen’s throat. She saw me for the fool that I am. My pretty little fool, she used to call me, and she encouraged me to do it. She…"

Madge’s words broke into incoherent pieces as she dissolved into her hands with the sort of human weeping that reached angels with physical pain. Touching her proved dangerous and Castiel knew it, so he forced himself to keep the table between them no matter how deep her weeping cut through him.

Finally, she continued. “I’m a fallen woman well and good. The queen knew the king could not remain faithful and I know now that she thought she could easily control me. A wife nudging another woman into bed with her husband makes an abomination of all. When that husband is a king anointed by our Lord God? We are all of us destined for the fires of Hell - me most of all.” She wiped her eyes, not knowing the tears brightened the dusty glow of silver on her face. “I am reduced to a common whore before the eyes of all here. I condemned a man I was to marry to death in the plot against the queen. The wickedness in my soul makes me rather unforgivable and unworthy to stand in the presence of an angel.”

"Forgiveness is found for all who seek it," Castiel countered quietly, "but it means nothing if you cannot forgive yourself."

She jerked her chin, looking to the safety of her window again. “Then I shall never be forgiven.”

"Madge…"

The use of her familiar name tensed her hands, her shoulders, and narrowed her eyes at him. She studied him closely in that female vessel and he wondered if a twinge of distant recognition stirred the exterior solemnity of the highly placed lady. Darkness in the room could not extinguish the starry silver dusting in her eyes, giving the impression that the whole of the universe could collect in one human soul.

"What am I to do if not die?" she whispered.

"Live," replied Castiel, suddenly wishing he wasn’t clothed in the disguise of another body.

Astonished and baffled, she questioned him. “How? I have no prospects. I could have been a mother many times over by now.” Again, she sought the solace of her window. “A woman’s greatest consolation in this world is raising sons.”

Castiel drifted closer, around the table separating them, despite his better judgment telling him to leave. Worse still, he reached out and folded her hands in his own - except they weren’t really his hands. It was but one woman touching another, and certainly, his feminine exterior was the sole reason she didn’t pull away.

"Remove yourself from this place," he advised quickly, solemnly. "Find solace in taking your vows until the air shifts into something more peaceful. It may be a year. It may be more. You are an unmarried woman and that entails you more freedom than you expect."

"Become a nun?"

"For now, yes." He nodded. "Your strength is replenished in quiet contemplation and the freedom of not being tied to another being."

The truth was, he tried to save her from more unnecessary loss. Being married and having children only gave Lachesis multiple weaknesses to exploit in her games of making Madge miserable without Castiel constantly with her. If he sent her to a convent, there might be peace in her remaining years of that lifetime.

"Take me to Heaven with you," she murmured in a defeated tone, her face falling in exhaustion.

"I cannot." He slid his vessel’s hand along her jaw and lightly stroked her cheekbone under his thumb. Though, he reminded himself, it wasn’t his hand. “It isn’t your time to depart yet.”

"This is my punishment then - to live and watch this world self-destruct around my shoulders," said Madge as her eyes filled. Yet she leaned into his hand and grasped his wrist to keep him there. Something about her body let go and surrendered despite her melancholic condition. She took a deep breath, as deep as she could within that tight gown, and closed her eyes.

Castiel felt the room blur as if gravity dragged him into her orbit against his will. He needed to back away. He knew he got too close. Madge relaxed into peace and the sort of perfect trust that she never questioned but she should have. Removing himself from her presence only deepened the torment for both of them and he knew it. Again, he caused her pain no matter how he tried to bring her contentment and alleviate the damage his fifteen-hundred-year-old rebellion did to them both.

"I will come back for you. When your time to depart arrives, you will see me again, though I will most certainly inhabit a different body." He found himself making the promise before he could stop himself and the necklace appearing in his free hand sealed the deal. "Keep this as my promise, Madge. You will see me again."

Madge’s thin fingers explored the gold pendants lined up on a chain with the butterfly dangling from the center. She didn’t have to know that the necklace once belonged to her.

"Thank you, angel," she said, decidedly stronger.

"It’s more than fifteen centuries aged. The butterfly was the symbol of the soul in the Rome of old." Castiel grasped the necklace again, unhooking the clasp, and stepping around to her back where he put it on its rightful owner again.

Madge allowed him to secure it around her throat, saying, “Then it appears you must return for this soul as well as mine.”

"Yes," he replied, "but in the meantime, you must find things in life to give you peace. Live for freedom. Live for love. Live for the generous spirit of mankind."

Chapter Text

Repetition should have made it easier to bear. Her soul traversed the same cycle again and again - life, death, Heaven, rebirth. Not even the inhuman amount of suffering her soul endured surprised him after nearly two thousand years, but lack of astonishment did little to temper the burn of watching it happen from such a great distance.

Above it all, Castiel knew he could end her cycle of suffering. If he simply took a vessel and gave in to that need to fill voids for one another, it could all end. She'd bear his nephilim and probably die in childbirth. But she wouldn't be reborn again. And sometimes he considered it - he really considered it - but he couldn't justify bringing a third life into the condemnation that he created. If she even survived to full gestation without Castiel's superiors killing her, they would certainly kill the three of them for breaking Heaven's law. Lachesis and her sisters of Fate would win.

Each time she died, Castiel personally descended to collect her soul. They couldn't take that ounce of comfort from him or her. She never remembered him, of course, but she always saw him as an angel. She saw his wings and his halo. And each time, Castiel kept the butterfly necklace and other little trinkets from her lives, only to invisibly leave them in her paths when she reincarnated again. Her energy layered on each of the trinkets, allowing him to touch it in Heaven.

Yet the years wore on in that endless cycle until Castiel's sanity slipped just a little, pebble by pebble. Whenever she lost someone she loved, no matter where she lived on Earth in any lifetime, he punished himself in Heaven for causing her pain. He reached around to the enormous black wings erupting over his body and let one of the long feathers pass through his fingers, silky and tinged with fire. One solid jerk of his fist and the burn ripped through his heavenly form. Countless feathers fell that way and required more than a hundred years to grow again.

Castiel put himself through penance. None of the other angels noticed. They never noticed much about him, aside from his fearlessness in combat. Having nothing to lose makes an angel a deadly weapon. Soon he gained the reputation of being the angel to send on the most undesirable missions. Part of him wanted to meet his end.

*****

July 6, 1863
Washington City

Castiel had never spent so much time immersed in mankind since they came into existence but a war meant to free millions from slavery required angelic guidance, it seemed. Two years and three months witnessed the near-destruction of American society. It had to get worse before it ended, a thought that Castiel dreaded.

His vessel afforded him close access to President Lincoln, just as his superiors intended. Brigadier General Ezra Novak had prayed his entire life to be guided toward serving the Lord in the cause of abolition. Seeking his consent to be Castiel's vessel had been easy so long as his bodily sacrifice freed the slaves. Such strength in faith had been passed down through two thousand years of lineage in that bloodline. As a personal kindness, Castiel made sure to provide for Ezra's wife and five children in Illinois. Thankfully it didn't require living with them over the course of the war as he conducted business with the government. The angel advising President Davis of the Confederate States didn't seem to have any more sway than he did with President Lincoln in bringing the war to a quicker end.

Castiel walked along the dirt road outside of Washington City toward the Lincoln's summer cottage. The president called a noonday meeting of his advisers on the spur of the moment. It didn't come as any surprise to Castiel after the victory at Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg. Turning the tide of the war cost tens of thousands of lives just that week alone.

Sometimes Castiel enjoyed the walk from the city to the Lincoln cottage rather than fly there. Muggy summer air clung to his wings and kept his vessel quite hot in the navy blue wool uniform. A length of sword clanked along his thigh as he strolled. He gathered Ezra Novak must have been rather aesthetically pleasing as human females nearly broke their necks trying to get a look at him in passing. The vessel stood taller than most men. Perhaps that had something to do with it. Honestly, Castiel hadn't the slightest idea but he routinely felt watched by human females.

It didn't matter to him. Another house on the edge of the Lincoln property was the reason he enjoyed periodic walks through that area. Sometimes he saw her in the garden wearing the tightly corseted, bell-shaped dresses that all women wore those days. Black hair tied in ropes wound up at the nape of her neck, gold dusted skin in the sunlight, and small children running happily around her yard. For a while, he thought maybe, just maybe, Lachesis got tired of torturing the both of them and left her alone.

One of the first things Castiel did when he took his vessel was return the butterfly necklace to her. She was called Lavina Worth in that lifetime. He left the necklace on her pillow and left before she ever saw him, though the desire to be close to her nearly overpowered him.

But he hadn't seen her at all that summer, two years later. It didn't particularly strike him as odd since he learned women in American society rarely left home without male escorts. He didn't see her again that day as he walked to the Lincoln cottage either. Black crepe draped in an arch over the front door of her house and he tilted his head in passing, uncertain about that human custom.

"Afternoon, General Novak," greeted a guard with a salute at the door.

Castiel nodded and remembered to remove his hat. "Good afternoon."

"The president is in the library, sir."

"Thank you."

The library usually indicated Lincoln's mood as morose and more affixed on the reunification of the country. Days like that gave Castiel more of an advantage. The death toll after Antietam helped him convince the president to enact the Emancipation Proclamation. Today would be a good day to push him into thinking about the reconstruction process between North and South. He followed the sound of voices into the president's personal library where two other men arrived ahead of time. The Secretary of State and the Secretary of War weren't Castiel's favorite humans, but he knew how to work with them well enough.

"Ah, General Novak. Good to see you again, sir," the president said in his nasally Kentucky twang. But his warm, deep set eyes made up for his awkwardness apparent to even an angel foreign to the human world.

Castiel remembered not to take a seat until he was invited. He mimicked the slow human nod meant to convey a pleasant hello. “Mr. President, I do hope the heat hasn’t had any ill affect on your health or that of your family.” Pleasantries. Always with the pleasantries in human society.

"Nothing our boys in the field aren’t tolerating too," he replied sincerely. "Please be seated, gentlemen. We have miles to accomplish today. I wish to reroute supply trains to the field hospitals surrounding Gettysburg. Mr. Stanton, do we have any indication of the draft situation in New York?"

*****

By the time the president released Castiel and his other advisers, dusk settled over Washington City. Mrs. Lincoln had insisted that they stay for supper, which required Castiel to not only consume food but carefully mimic his way though the meal. As far as he knew, no one actually guessed that he didn’t belong in that body. Food left him in a tedious mood as if the human process of consumption was a waste of time.

The oppressive heat released its stranglehold over the surrounding countryside once the sun descended into the horizon. He craned his vessel’s head toward the sky and took in the distant glimmer of stars as he walked back through the same path that brought him there.

Lavina’s house drew his attention at the top of a rise. It stood too far away for human eyes to really perceive but his angelic focus narrowed in on a black figure standing motionless on the third story balcony. His gait slowed, watching closely until he spied the glimmer of silver dust on skin. She’d untied a bonnet under her chin and flipped back a lengthy black veil. It exposed her face and hair to the night air. Silver dust intensified to the glittery quality of a human star with threads of moonlight through her hair.

The glorious, magnetic sight reeled Castiel closer against his will. He never intended to see her up close in that lifetime. In fact, he’d gotten quite skilled at forcing himself to keep his distance since 1536.

She pulled off black leather gloves one by one and exposed more of the irresistible skin. But something felt off about her presence. Something entirely too calm. Eerily calm, in fact. And as he watched from a distance, Lavina lifted the front of her massive skirt and climbed onto a chair at the far corner of the balcony. She peered down to the yard below. The air tensed and slowed in disbelief as Castiel saw a dainty boot step up onto the railing. Her body rose higher and her posture stiffened at her full height. The bell of her billowing black skirt rustled in the evening breeze and her face tilted up to the sky just the way Castiel had looked to the stars.

It happened in a blur. Her arms extended out from her sides as if offering herself to the universe and the dip in her stomach even registered in his vessel. She started to fall.

Castiel’s wings spread more than twenty feet wide in a heartbeat and suddenly he was there on the balcony too. An arm hooked fiercely around the front of her waist from behind just as gravity embraced her weight. Roughly, Castiel yanked her back from the precipice. The momentum of her weight threw her body backwards into his other arm and they dropped to the balcony floor. He cradled her in his lap, unable to help it. That was the way she landed. He felt his vessel shaking violently and then realized hers shook too.

Eyes stricken and wide with terror, shock, and anger at being stopped from trying to jump to her death, Lavina stared up at him with a speechless sense of confused recognition. When she sat up and retreated away from him, back against the wall of her house, he let her go. It physically hurt him to release her but he did. He stood, hands raised to show that he meant no harm.

"You’re General Novak. I know your likeness from the newspaper. How did you get here?" she demanded, exasperated.

"I … I saw what you intended to do from below," he replied truthfully. "Please, Mrs. Worth, you cannot sincerely mean to carry out such an act."

"But I do, sir." Empty, cold blue eyes just going through the motions of life peered closer at him. "What in the world … Step into the light. Let me see what you’re concealing in the darkness."

"No. You don’t want to know—"

"—Show me what you’re hiding right now or I shall jump the minute you leave, sir!"

Castiel knew she could see his wings and he'd never be able to pass himself off as any other human. He considered disappearing right there to spare both of them of that conversation, but he feared for her life if he did so. A suicidal human was one of the most dangerous forces. He quickly measured up her desperation for release and knew there were small children in the house as well. It all amounted to one thing. He had to comply and pacify her raw nerves.

Slowly, he stepped into the glow of gaslights illuminating the balcony from within the house. His wings flexed and rolled self-consciously, yet he never broke eye contact, perhaps hoping to intimidate her into backing off from asking too many questions.

The realization of his inhuman nature fell over her slowly like another veil of ashen disbelief on her skin. Trembling hands hurriedly groped the wall to her back, searching for the door frame. A pair of tears dripped unevenly from her eyes frozen open and staring as if looking away put her in danger. Human females formed tears for the strangest reasons, he remembered, and he could tell if she was sad, terrified, or moved by sentiment.

"What in God’s name are you?" Lavina whispered. "You’re not General Novak but you … you look like him."

"God has little to do with what I am anymore, I’m afraid," Castiel replied, eyes downcast. "I do serve God nevertheless. I’m an angel of The Lord, Lavina. You needn’t be afraid of me."

Something about what he said brought out a slight shift in her eyes as if she struggled to recall something distant. Her death grip on the door frame behind her loosened, and although fear still trembled through her body, she took a hesitant step forward.

"You presume to use my name in a familiar manner. I … I know you somehow but I … That’s not possible," she whispered.

Castiel hadn’t expected her to react that way, to wrestle with the long-buried memory of him. As far as he knew, reincarnation cases were always sent into new bodies with barriers around the soul to block the memories of old lives from resurfacing. She simply wasn’t supposed to remember him. But there she stood, her soul bubbling and pushing against the barriers she didn’t even know existed. Part of him wanted her to remember him but the other part of him quaked with terror at the potential consequences.

"Did God send you to stop me from jumping?" Lavina probed in a peculiar lift of her syllables. She didn't believe she was worth God's notice.

"No." Lying to her simply wasn't a possibility. His true form rejected the idea beneath the skin of General Novak. "I happened to be here. My task is to guide President Lincoln through..."

"Through the war?"

"Yes." That time, he did lie out of necessity. Duty prevented him from telling her that he'd been sent to remain with Lincoln through the end of his life. Some things, he'd been sent to understand, couldn't possibly escape Fate, like the assassination and martyrdom of a world leader. He shifted where he stood. "I happened to be on the road. I saw you ... prepare. I chose to intervene and I'm glad I did."

"An angel can be glad?" Her eyes flickered over the intimidating height of his wings as she used the word for his species.

"In this case." Castiel nodded. "Why would you do this?"

The ashen pallor drifted over Lavina's face again and she averted her eyes to the emptiness beyond Castiel's body. Regret filled him the second her hands wrung around themselves until they trembled like so many soldiers he'd seen coming home from the front shell-shocked. She swallowed hard, a faint whimper of emotion caught in her throat.

"I buried my husband yesterday," she mumbled, "and my children are not long for the grave as well."

Castiel's head tilted. "What do you mean?"

She hesitated. Her eyes dropped to her hands. Long, tapered fingers laced together almost as if making a prayerful confession. When she looked up at his face again, her countenance smoothed into the expression of a woman ready to meet whatever fate awaited her.

"I've killed them," she said without blinking.

Chapter Text

Castiel knew the right thing to do was leave. It wasn’t part of his orders to intervene in this woman’s life - again - but there he stood in her children’s nursery.

He paced. He scrubbed a hand over his vessel’s face. His wings dragged the carpet behind him. The struggle clawed at his chest from within, feeling her watch him from a chair in the far corner, hoping and praying that he would help. Lavina’s prayers echoed oppressively loud in his mind. A guilty burden weighed her down even more than the harsh black gown of mourning tradition.

"Explain to me again why you believe you’ve killed your husband and children," he said in attempt to stall long enough to avoid looking at their innocent little faces.

"I was a nurse," she said numbly. "Ladies shouldn’t be nurses but the war has changed everything, I’m afraid. I thought I could help my country while my husband was gone putting down the rebellion. There was smallpox among the soldiers in the hospital a few months ago and I caught it. I survived, but just barely." Lavina tugged on the black sleeve and exposed smallpox scars branded over her inner forearm. "My husband took his wound at Chancellorsville. They sent him home and…" Tears sprang to her eyes as her mouth curled in tight misery. "I gave him smallpox. He could have survived his wound but he couldn’t survive the disease. I recovered just as he became ill. I watched him fight it for six weeks - longer than anyone I’ve ever known - but he just wasn’t strong enough. And now my boys are dying. I’ve killed my family."

Lavina fell forward into her hands. Silent sobs shook her body in the ordeal of having to recount the story once more. Kneeling around the girth of her spread hoopskirt, Castiel leaned close and draped a comforting hand on her arm. She sucked in a sharp breath and clutched her chest, feeling suffocated by the tight constraints of her corset.

"Castiel - is that your name?" she sniveled, looking into his eyes,

"Yes," he replied. Unable to stop himself, he touched her cheek and collected her tears with the pad of his thumb.

Her eyes slipped shut and her face turned to the safety and warmth of his hand. The poor lady was exhausted so far beyond the endurance of one lifetime, yet she had no idea it was just another year in a nearly two thousand year parade of torture. Perhaps souls of lesser fortitude would have broken by then but Lavina kept pushing forward whether her name was Korinna or Madge or any other moniker to follow each period of earthly existence.

Lavina calmed enough to study him there barely a few feet apart. “Your eyes are so familiar,” she whispered.

"You’ve seen Ezra Novak before," said Castiel. He sat back on his haunches and let his gaze fall away from her face to the billowing black waterfall of the skirt swallowing her whole.

"No." Thin fingers curled under his chin and forced him to look her in the eye again. "You’re wearing General Novak’s visage like a borrowed suit but your eyes - it’s you within. And your wings.” Her attention shifted to the silken black feathers, transfixed by the liquid bluish-purple light passing through them. Impulsively, she passed her fingertips over the highest joint and his wing muscle flexed with the unintentional pleasurable jolt. “I haven’t felt the blanket of safety in … perhaps never … but I feel I can trust you. I know your heart.”

Castiel needed to escape before the dam burst and she remembered him. Her instincts already gravitated toward the truth. It was only a matter of a few minutes before it exploded her conscious mind and wounded her beyond repair. The pain slicing through his chest took his breath away as he pushed himself to his feet and retreated to the open balcony doors.

"Castiel," she beckoned. Despite everything, Lavina never begged.

Against his better judgment, he turned back. She appeared so regal sitting there swathed in black, her corset forcing perfect posture and a tiny waist with a pronounced bosom, yet the instincts of a lady who once lived in Henry VIII’s court remained. A lady like her carried herself with grace carried from history, not that which could be learned.

"If my boys are to die and pass into God’s kingdom, then take all of us with you now. If I must live a single minute knowing my entire family is dead, I fear I shall throw myself from the balcony and injure myself rather than succeed at ending this agony."

The truth was, Castiel had caught the scent of death as soon as he came into the nursery with her. And he knew that soul well enough to understand that she never made idle threats just like she never begged. She commanded like a queen - a delicate balance between a lady holding herself together for those dependent on her and a lady struggling to control the impulses of her own heart.

He looked her way and then his eye fell over the children in the midst of feverish sleep. Novak’s army boots brought Castiel to the other corner of the room as if a force beyond his control drew him there. A brass baby crib stood against the wall, containing an infant male, and a brass framed narrow bed stood nearby, containing another male of about three or four. Both children had painful, horrifying pox dotting their faces, and each burned with dangerously high fevers. Neither of them would make it through the night.

The baby groaned in the crib and attracted Castiel’s attention. He peered through the gauzy netting draped over the brass frame in Lavina’s effort to keep out the heat and bugs. A glimmer of something entirely unexpected and familiar reached out from that baby into Castiel, dragging him through the veil of time. He knew that little soul when he wasn’t so tiny at all. Nathaniel. The very Roman soldier who aided him in the disobedience that saved Lavina’s life when her name was Korinna. Nathaniel came back to her.

Castiel spun to the other child’s bedside, half expecting to see the soul of Nathaniel’s wife inhabiting that little four-year-old body. Through the smallpox scarring his young face, Castiel still saw a smattering of freckles across his cheeks and nose. Otherwise, no recognition came to him. It seemed Lavina mothered an old soul and a new soul. But not for long, judging by their deplorable conditions.

Lavina’s heavy skirts rustled as she shot to her feet. “What of their condition? Is there nothing I might do?”

"They are beyond mortal aid," admitted Castiel.

"Oh, God." Wavering on her feet, the personal reserve of stubbornness kept her from reeling backwards into the chair again. Her hands trembled as she tightly wound them around each other, approaching her oldest boy’s bedside.

"Stay back." Castiel threw his hand and a wall unseen before her eyes appeared that kept her from coming any closer. "Please." He added the entreaty as an afterthought.

In some deep place that he never wanted to admit to himself, Castiel did not want Lavina to see his true nature in what he had to do. Of course, he couldn’t believe what he was willing to do for her, but there were only a couple of options. Those children dying meant she would soon die too, which would create an entirely new lifetime of torture and misery on his hands. Saving the children would give her the remainder of a lifetime in peace. She could watch her boys grow and take their own wives and have their own children. He’d never have credit for it but the gift of time would put both of them at ease, at least until she passed away again. With any luck, she’d pass away an old woman with decades of beautiful memories behind her.

Castiel turned his back and used his hulking raven wings to hide himself from the lady. Bending over the oldest boy’s bed, his grace ignited like a bluish white fire in his eyes. A hand hovered over the boy’s chest as Castiel drew out the putrid illness. He took it into himself. Though his grace dissolved the disease without issue, he felt the pain the boy suffered.

And then a gasping ragged breath filled his little body with life again. Disoriented, he wailed. He didn’t know Castiel, of course, but the wailing child, alive and healed, spurned the sobbing of relief from his mother. Castiel let her approach then and he quickly moved to the crib before she saw his true form bleeding through his eyes.

On the baby, he performed the same act and tried to make it quicker and painless. She sat on the bed with her older boy and sobbed over him as his little hands clung to her dress. Castiel took the baby in his own hands, the soul he once encountered as Nathaniel the Roman, and delivered him into the arms of his mother once more.

"I have given your children back," he said.

Tearfully soft blue eyes looked up at him. “How can I have ever repay you?”

"Live," he replied, moving for the balcony doors. "Live a full life happily with your children. Never give thought to snuffing out your life again. I cannot save you a second time." He already faced punishment for doing it that night, a pattern repeated in several of her lives.

"Will I ever see you again?" Lavina earnestly appeared sorrowed at his departure.

For a moment, the urge rose up in Castiel like a serpent. He could confess. He could tell her everything and hope that she wouldn’t remember in her next lifetime. Yet she teetered on the edge of remembering at that very moment, which seemed entirely too dangerous for the both of them. The longer he delayed that dam from bursting, the longer she wouldn’t endure the full force of loneliness without him and desire for his presence.

Castiel allowed himself one last lingering look. “I’ll return for you,” he murmured, feeling the weight of his own emptiness. “When it’s your time, I’ll return.”

"Wait!" Lavina rushed across the nursery floor with her perfectly recovered baby on her hip. Her free arm latched around Castiel's back before he could retreat, and suddenly she surrounded him in an embrace of lilacs and soft black fabric. She exuded gratitude and faith as she clung to him with the baby wriggling between them. "You have given my life back. I shall always give you my prayers, Castiel."

The sensation of that tiny faithful creature tightly bound around his torso disoriented him. He remained as long as he dared but the urge to kiss her rose through his sense of duty. Somewhat awkwardly, he cleared his throat and gently nudged her back, allowing him a moment to regain control of himself. Intoxicating soft skin brushed his vessel's cheek as she released him, a feathery touch reaching straight into his grace. It required every ounce of his self-control not to curse Lachesis, the sister of Fate who condemned them to feel incomplete without the other, and he turned his eyes away.

With a hand on her brow, he whispered dryly, "God bless you and keep you, Lavina Worth."

*****

Heaven felt neither welcoming or like home the moment he returned for respite, but at least an impossible chasm separated him from Lavina. Distance remained his best weapon against temptation, but he never could fully escape the tether between them. She'd felt it too, though she didn't understand the mechanism of it.

"Your orders haven't been fulfilled, Castiel."

He turned to the voice, having momentarily shed his vessel and stretched out the full length of his true form. His six wings and three faces along a light body stood larger than any structure on Earth.

"Yes, I know," he replied respectfully. "I needed a moment's rest."

One of his superiors, Maion, tilted his center face as if utterly confused by the idea of needing rest. "Here we are again. You intervened in a human life cycle without sanction. Two lives, in fact." Maion drew closer. "Disease kills delicate human bodies every day, Castiel. Why should you be bothered with two ill children? Your orders have been spelled out quite clearly. You sought revelation. Yet we find ourselves at this very impasse for the umpteenth time."

"Restoring their lives thus restored their mother's faith," Castiel quickly answered.

"In you, not God."

A standoff descended between them. As far as Castiel knew, none of the angels knew about the way Lachesis condemned him - not even his superiors. Each of his three faces focused on Maion, unwilling to show weakness that might have him reassigned elsewhere.

"Your lack of discipline has been deemed worthy of purification," said Maion without any semblance of empathy so ingrained in human voices. "We know you've developed some attachment to that particular soul, though exactly why remains unclear. You're walking a fine line. If you show yourself to that soul again, she will remember every other instance that you've encountered her. It's unnatural, Castiel. Humans are never meant to comprehend the realities of reincarnation. It destroys their limited minds. You will not allow her to remember. If you do, you will destroy her sanity and damage the faith of everyone she's ever known."

"I understand, Maion." The superior angel didn't tell him anything he didn't already know.

"Indeed. You say you understand each time we warn you to stop intervening in human lives, yet a few centuries pass by and you do it again." Maion studied him deeply - far beyond the scope of human vision - and it seemed he truly wanted to understand why. "It is quite the mystery. Just how did you become afflicted with a heart?"

Defiance flared and Castiel's light body brightened. "With all due respect, Maion, empathy and compassion are not weaknesses. Our purpose has always been to protect and shepherd humans. They thrive on love."

"You're dangerously close to blasphemy," warned Maion. He threw binding light around Castiel that left him an immobile prisoner. "Stay away from her!"

Maion dragged Castiel away again, a tendril of light serving as a rope around him. Castiel allowed the numbness of his species to set in and he went to face purification without a hint of fear. He endured purification numerous times in his history, all the result of following his heart rather than what Heaven intended him to be. It was different each time and the angel presiding over it changed quite often. Castiel, it seemed, had influence and his superiors never wanted him exposed to any one angel very long should he inspire rebellion in others.

But that time, Castiel's purification reached the limits of his endurance. The prize for helping Lavina and being given her faith was each feather ripped from the meat of his wings, one by one. Unimaginable white hot pain boiled screams from him until even his angelic voice broke and shredded.

They sent him back into his vessel not long afterward and forced him to resume working with the human President Lincoln. Castiel's raw, torn wings caused him pain for two more human generations as the feathers grew back. The intent, he realized, was to transfer the pain Lavina was meant to endure with the death of her family into himself. If he insisted on intervening in her life, Heaven made certain he endured all of the agony he lifted from her. The universe had a balance, after all.

Castiel bore the pain without complaint. Taking her suffering into himself certainly did purify him of being at fault for her never-ending cycle of reincarnation, emptiness, and temptation.

Chapter Text

October 2010

"Where have you been?" hissed Dean the moment Castiel’s wings ruffled in the garage. "Lisa’s gonna be back in an hour."

"I’m sorry," Castiel replied, already pawing at each other.

Protests and scoldings gave way to muffled groans as Dean leaned back against the hood of his Impala. He kept it covered, never driving it since Sam threw himself into the pit with Lucifer and Michael. The older brother tried to honor his younger brother’s final request by devoting himself to a family life with Lisa and Ben, but it didn’t go very well. Alcoholism plagued him worse than ever as did the nightmares. Always the nightmares. Only his bond with Castiel, an ongoing affair entrenched in secrecy since Sam began drinking demon blood, kept him alive and grounded. It soothed him enough to keep carrying on with Lisa, a woman that Castiel personally looked upon with utter indifference.

"It’s been way too long. We can’t keep going like this," mumbled Dean against his mouth as he ripped the blue tie from his neck.

Castiel nuzzled his throat. “I’m at war. It’s no life for you, love.”

Where his little firefly put a crack in Castiel’s heart, Dean flooded the crack with intense emotion. Love. Desire. Companionship born from free will. They weren’t bound together by a curse. They weren’t supposed to happen at all, yet Castiel knew he couldn’t look back the moment he dragged Dean free from the fires of Hell.

"The war isn't going well. I won't have you put at risk should Raphael assume power instead of me. I need you to stay here. I know you're safe as long as nobody knows about us." And absolutely nobody knew. Not even when Bobby and Sam were alive - no one. He learned the necessity of secrecy in his encounters with his little firefly. Dean never knew about her either. There was no need to distress him since Castiel hadn't seen her since Abraham Lincoln was president.

"I don't wanna talk about it," Dean growled as he flung his shirt behind him and violently ripped open Castiel's belt.

That was the way of it for Dean since his brother sacrificed himself to stop the apocalypse. He never wanted to talk about anything anymore. What used to be a love based in friendship dissolved into another form of denial, of self-medicating. He drank himself into numbness and covered his body with Castiel as if shielding his broken soul from the universe. Castiel should have pushed him into talking about it instead of giving in to his sexual urges, but the truth was, Castiel needed the escape just as much as him. Nothing existed except the two of them and they drank it up like water.

"I love you, Dean," he whispered, hiking up the hunter's legs around his waist.

"You gonna wax poetry or you gonna fuck me?"

The harsh words meant nothing and Castiel knew it. Dean resisted verbal comfort and believed he no longer deserved it, but Castiel saw into his soul, saw the words slowly binding the wounds. So he would tolerate every verbal lashing Dean threw at him because he saw the affect whether Dean wanted to admit it or not.

*****

Heaven felt emptier than ever - more isolating - but then again, Earth didn’t offer much comfort either. Castiel left Dean still panting and readjusting his clothes in the garage just as Lisa pulled in the driveway. The hunter turned family man greeted her with a kiss and put on such a faithful act that even Castiel wondered where his heart really lay.

Perhaps Dean wasn’t truly capable of loving anyone wholly and without reservation. So Castiel returned to Heaven in a flutter of wings and confusion when he should have felt completion and joy at having the chance to physically bond with Dean after many months. Perhaps Dean only knew love as a temporary reprieve from the guilt and blackness eating away at him. It seemed entirely possible that he just didn’t know any better. Sex numbed his pain as much as booze did.

Or perhaps Castiel felt too much again. Perhaps his emotions distorted his better judgment.

Still, he left Dean’s garage feeling rather used and dejected. He busied himself with checking on his lieutenants and then carefully went over plans for the next phase of the war. Being a good commander meant everyone beneath him knew their jobs and performed well without much guidance from him.

"Castiel," beckoned Rachel as the others cleared away. "We have intelligence from New York. It’s unconfirmed but—"

"—What is it, Rachel?" he pressed.

"It’s Gabriel. We’ve heard whispers that he’s still alive and hiding in New York with his own company of guards. Some of the angels that went missing after Lucifer and Michael were locked in the cage."

Stunned, Castiel checked himself before the emotion betrayed his cool demeanor. “How is that possible? Lucifer killed him.”

"Yes," she acknowledged, "but Sam Winchester also died because of Lucifer and he has returned as well. We don’t know how. In fact, one of our informants believes he saw Sam Winchester in Gabriel’s company last week. They’re both trying to understand how they’re alive."

"Why did no one tell me of this until now?" Castiel demanded.

Rachel never recoiled. She was a strong soldier and always stood her ground. “Because we were trying to get confirmation beyond whispers and rumors. They’re quite good at hiding but, given your history with the Winchesters, it appears you might be the only one who knows where to find them. I don’t think I need to tell you, Castiel, how badly we need an archangel to take up our cause. It’s worth speaking to Gabriel, convincing him to fight with us.”

"I doubt Gabriel can be convinced to join any cause pertaining to Heaven anymore, but you're quite right. We must try." Castiel nodded as his mind spun with different ways that conversation could go. "New York, you said?"

She nodded.

In the direction of a thought, Castiel transported to a place on the edge of his territory in Heaven and Rachel followed whether she was invited or not. An oasis of small, delicate flowers and weeping willows filled with more tiny blossoms not found in the physical world surrounded a body of water so calm that its surface hardly rippled at all with waves. Angels used it as a giant scrying mirror to look down on Earth without having to leave the comfort of Heaven, and when Castiel was just a fledgling, they began calling it the Reflection Pond. He hovered over the center of the pond while Rachel waited off to one side.

"Gabriel knows how to hide from the Reflection Pond," she cautioned.

"But Sam Winchester doesn't," he corrected.

Castiel's wings stretched wide beyond the bounds of the pond and swung up and down until their breeze passed over the watery surface. Through the waves, his vision and psyche focused in unison on traces of Sam lingering in America. An aerial view of the northeast materialized in the pond. Blackness consumed the image as he watched and in its place appeared an aerial view of the island of Manhattan.

Oppressive light pollution made it difficult to discern souls from electricity. Castiel focused deeper until he went deaf to his surroundings. Slowly, the electrical light pollution faded away, leaving white dots of floating human souls all over Manhattan. Time passed as those lights also faded from his vision, leaving Sam's soul shining like a beacon near a place called the West Village. Where Sam was, Gabriel couldn't be too far away if Rachel's intelligence was correct. He tried but he couldn't zero in on the archangel who spent centuries avoiding his Heavenly family.

"I've located Sam Winchester," said Castiel.

"And Gabriel?"

"Hidden but no doubt close by," he replied.

As Castiel tracked Sam's movement, the aerial view of Manhattan revealed another soul to him - a brighter soul soaked in silver moonlight. He froze, hovering over the Reflection Pond, and momentarily talked himself into denial. No. It wasn't her. He hadn't even been looking for her in more than a hundred years. Dean fulfilled the void enough that it tempered the burn of Fate's curse ... But there she was, just west of the lower part of Central Park, quite a bit north of Sam's location.

Castiel's little firefly reincarnated again.

A wide swoop of his wings lifted him higher from the Reflection Pond, fearfully backing away. He fought the overpowering urge to disappear completely.

Along the bank of the pond, he looked to Rachel for indications that she might have sensed his sudden confliction, his wicked agony, but she was nowhere to be found. She dissipated without a sound. No rustling wings. Nothing. Solitude - being alone with knowledge of his little firefly's current location - terrified him perhaps more than Rachel, his lieutenant, discovering that secret.

"Renee Abbott. That's her name these days."

A force beyond his control slammed Castiel back to the bank of the pond. He nearly flew straight into a feminine figure with sleek blonde hair, glasses, and an antiquated leather book. A gold tassel dangled from the end of the book and he knew - he just knew - who fixed the whole thing.

"Atropos," he said. "Where's your sister?"

"Oh, the one who cursed you, as you so eloquently put it?" She gave a thin-lipped smile. "Lachesis underestimated your stubbornness, Castiel, and I'm growing quite bored with deciding the manner and time of death for the same soul over and over again. I was thinking that I just might have to begin getting creative to revive my interest." She sighed in feigned weariness. "Perhaps this time she'll find the means to take her own life. You know, do my job for me. What do you think?"

"You touch a hair on her head--"

"--Or perhaps I ought to bring Dean Winchester into it. Yes, I could convince him that she's a monster and let you watch one love kill the other--"

"--Stop it!"

Atropos giggled in her restrained, uptight manner. "Oh, Castiel, you're so easy to wing up. No wonder my sister enjoyed toying with you all these centuries. She brought you to the cliff and I--" her voice lowered as she produced the butterfly necklace from behind her leather book, "--I intend to finish the job. You must learn that disobedience cannot be tolerated no matter how much time passes. The Fates never forget and neither does God. It seems--" she carefully eyed the ancient necklace, "--neither do you."

The power of restraint twitched Castiel's wings. He growled, "Give it back," when he really wanted nothing more than to throttle her.

"Of course." Atropos' long, spindly arm reached out to Castiel. "You will want to return it to her again now that you know where she is, won't you? Move quickly, Castiel. She's already sliding down that deep, dark mountain of depression. This life isn't going well for the poor creature, again. A lifetime devoted to becoming a principal dancer at the New York City Ballet shattered in an instant by an ankle injury. Those dark thoughts are creeping in. Her life is over at just twenty-three. Now it's merely a sleigh ride into the seduction of ending it all herself. A little nudge here and there--"

"--Do you gain pleasure from torturing us?"

"Oh no, I don't. If you were at all capable of the perfect obedience to your species, my sisters and I wouldn't have to waste so much time pushing and prodding until you crumble! You will commit the ultimate disobedience no matter how long we have to torture you into it and you will face God's wrath, Castiel!" She appeared inches from his face in a blink and lowered her voice to a soft growl that human ears couldn't comprehend. "Your taste for disobedience has only worsened since you pulled Dean Winchester out of Hell. Now look at you. Waging a civil war against your own kind while mating regularly with a human man behind the backs of all angels who adore your leadership."

Castiel wound the butterfly necklace through his fingers and never blinked as she twisted his existence into something evil. "Tell me one thing, Atropos. If God is so against who I am, then how exactly did I get resurrected more than once? Just who has the power to do that aside from our Father?"

At first she had no response. How could she when no one knew how Castiel was resurrected? He believed God did it. He believed in his Father's forgiveness.

But then her eyes hardened. "If God truly forgives you again and again, Castiel, then why hasn't your so-called curse been broken?"

"A test of faith," he said simply.

It infuriated Atropos, realizing she couldn't shake Castiel's faith as easily as she thought she could, and her jaw squeezed like a snake tasting prey. "As Renee stumbles down that mountain of self-loathing and failure, there will be no one to blame but yourself. The wheels are in motion. You know very well that only your presence can fill her soul and save her from harming herself. If you let her do it, knowing what happens to suicides when they die, then her blood is on your hands. Indeed, you may be rid of her forever but at what cost?"

Dean flashed in his mind then. A soul stretched and bound on a burning rack, torn to shreds by starving black-eyed creatures, put back together, and shredded again.

"We've reached a real battle of wills, haven't we?" Atropos smiled wide like a cobra flashing its teeth. "Good luck, Castiel."

Chapter Text

Being in humanity again, down in the muck of it all while in the tight confines of his vessel, took Castiel a little while to acclimate to each trip. The only times he made the trips over the last year were to see Dean, which provided plenty of distraction from confinement in his body. It was indeed his own body and there was more wiggle room since Jimmy Novak went on to Heaven, but he still found himself shrugging within the trenchcoat as he strode down a congested Manhattan street. Rachel flanked him on the left and Amadius flanked him on the right, each quietly armed to the teeth. They were, after all, at war.

"I believe this is the building," said Rachel.

Three sets of eyes turned skyward and took in the brick structure. It resembled every other narrow apartment building on the block, though it lacked a certain flare of graffiti. Perhaps that meant it was a higher class address in the middle of a bohemian, artistic neighborhood. He didn't pretend to understand those kinds of nuances in human society.

"Winchester is living in unit 4D under an alias," the aid known as Amadius said, pointing at a name printed on the callbox.

It occurred to Castiel, leaning in and reading the print LENNON, that Gabriel could be living with Sam at that moment. Intelligence said they were meeting quite often but he couldn't be sure about the nature of their relationship. He remembered the name Lennon from the iPod Dean once gave him and that songwriter was always in partnership with another name, McCartney. Tilting his head slightly, considered the implications of Sam's use of a partnership name. Without Dean there to fill the brotherly role, perhaps Gabriel bonded with him and filled those shoes while they figured out how they both cheated death.

Castiel decided Sam wouldn't unlock the lobby door mechanism if he was at all skittish about people (or angels) from his past. He hadn't reached out to Dean even once and Gabriel purposefully cloaked himself from Heaven's eyes. Rather than press the buzzer, he aligned his hand over the door handle and the strength of his grace flowed through his arm until the lock clicked.

The three angels avoided taking an antiquated elevator, choosing the vacant stairwell instead.

At the door labeled 4D, Castiel hesitated only a moment before raising a fist and knocking like any other human. He flattened his other hand low near his hip in a motion keeping them in the background no matter if they were there to guard him. He didn't know whether Sam might be hostile or welcoming but strangers at his door weren't going to help. All Winchesters were, at their cores, rather suspicious people and rightly so.

The door flung open without ceremony, producing Sam standing at his full, enormous height and looking as stunned into silence as Castiel felt. It had been a long time, not in linear hours and days, but they were entirely different creatures after taking on Lucifer and being resurrected. A thousand questions passed between Castiel and Sam in that moment before either of them uttered a syllable. It looked like Sam had just rolled out of bed, only shoving his legs into a pair of crumpled jeans hugging low on his waistline. There was something different in him--a man who survived Hell and came back with harder edges both inside and out. He appeared bigger like he'd been working on his muscle and strength. But there was something else different in him too.

"How'd you find me?" was the first thing Sam said to Castiel in more than a year.

Castiel stumbled over the question. "I'm ... I'm an angel, Sam."

"Yeah, but--"

"--Hey, babycakes! Whaddya say we pop over to Cafe Sabarsky tonight? Austrian desserts and coffees, Sam. I thin--"

Each of them froze where they stood in a terribly awkward moment as Gabriel chattered his way out of what Castiel presumed to be the bedroom in the same half-dressed state. They all realized the great secret in the same moment--well, maybe not inexperienced Rachel and Amadius--but Sam, Castiel, and Gabriel all exchanged hesitant glances. No one knew how to acknowledge the enormous half-naked elephant in the room.

Sam closed his eyes and banged his forehead against the edge of the door, realizing the futility of trying to deny how it looked. "All right," he sighed, "c'mon in, Cas."

"Stay here. Keep watch," Castiel ordered his lieutenants in his best effort to make Sam more comfortable with the abrupt intrusion.

Sam's apartment was little more than a two-room affair with, presumably, a small bathroom off the bedroom. It seemed peculiar for him being so physically imposing to live in such a small space while Dean, who shrank into himself since the apocalypse, lived in a spacious suburban home. The Winchester brothers couldn't have taken more different paths.

"Cas, Cas, Cas," said Gabriel, looking him over through rather suspicious eyes. "So what are you doing here, little brother?"

"How'd you find me?" Sam repeated his question.

Gabriel drifted closer to Sam and slipped his hand around the back of his wrist in a protective gesture that, after a moment, seemed both protective and secretive in Castiel's estimation. Intimate. His eyes shifted back and forth between their faces both shocked and quizzical as the truth wormed into his mind. They were lovers. While he expected sexual ambiguity out of any angel, Gabriel included, he'd never thought to question whether Sam would be willing to lie with a male body. Faced with the revelation right there, another bout of awkwardness descended, he guessed. Sam appeared rather awkward but he never once pulled away from the outcast archangel.

"I have my means of finding people, Sam," he hoped he mustered a nonthreatening tone. "In truth, I wasn't looking for you directly. I thought you were--"

"--Dead. In the cage," he said stoically.

"Right." Castiel's eyes flickered to the old floorboards for a moment. Then he corrected his posture and pressed forward. "I'm looking for Gabriel. There have been rumors about the two of you meeting and trying to make sense of what's happened to you. So I came here to ask if you knew where to find him. I wasn't expecting ... this ... however." He glanced at Gabriel, who scoffed and averted his eyes in return.

"Get on with it, Cas. What do you want?" asked Gabriel.

Defensive hostility exuded from the archangel but Sam, on the other hand, seemed confused, brooding, and taken aback by the sudden appearance of his past there in his apartment. He was quieter than Dean by nature but his silence that day suggested something harder in it. There was something broken in him.

"Heaven's at war," Castiel told Gabriel, deciding to be direct.

Gabriel chortled. "Another civil war, huh? Like you guys didn't wreck everything enough the first time."

"This is a different war, the likes of which have never been fought among our kind. We're fighting for our freedom. Raphael has become a fanatic for the old ways of blind obedience and everything that set the stage for the apocalypse in the first place. Someone had to take a stand. Angelkind has come too far to turn away from free will now."

"You? You're leading a rebellion?" Laughter curled from Gabriel's mouth in an ironic level. "Why am I not surprised? Babycakes, you surprised?"

The affectionate moniker caused a delayed uneasy expression but Sam cleared his throat and shook his head. "No, uhm ... no, I'm not surprised. But what does the war have to do with us?"

So it was an us situation. It occurred to Castiel with that tiny word that he wasn't going to get one to help him without the other. He amended his plan. "To be perfectly honest," he replied, rocking slightly on his heels to try and look casual, "the war's not going well for us. Raphael has access to much more powerful weaponry than we do. So I'm here to ask for your help." He was also going to ask Sam if he planned on reaching out to Dean at all but decided to wait until he didn't look like such a deer caught in the headlights. "I know both of you believe in the power of free will. You were instrumental in opening my eyes. I'm asking for your support in this war to bring Heaven into a modern era."

They didn't outright reject him and that gave him hope, though he didn't let it show in his expression. Sam and Gabriel communicated without speaking a word. A question passed from one to the other through a sidelong glance, and then an answer returned. Castiel recognized intimate mannerisms between them as similar traits he shared with Dean, although their bond wasn't clouded by alcoholism and self-denial. A peculiar sensation burned in Castiel's chest when he recognized intimacy without barriers. He dropped his eyes to the floor as he analyzed the new emotion, something like anger but more painful. Envy? Jealousy? Yes. He resented the way Sam and Gabriel let their traumas create a deep intimacy when, he reasoned, Dean pushed him away more often than not after they made love. Unlike Sam, Dean didn't think he deserved happiness. Sam, on the other hand, clung to the few sources of joy he had like the necessities of life.

"Let's be real," began Gabriel with a shrug. "You came sniffing around here because you need an archangel of your own if you're gonna have a shot against that uptight Raph."

"Well, yes," admitted Castiel. "I could lie to you but I won't. I need an archangel. It's bigger than me though, Gabriel. It's about the fre--"

"--The freedom of angelkind, I know." He laughed and tipped his forehead on Sam's shoulder, which provoked a faint smile as he peered down at him. "Oh Cas, little brother, you haven't changed at all. I love it. You could be a politician or a boring tax accountant depending on how the wind blows."

"He's not that boring," Sam replied softly, smiling. "One time I called him for help and he showed up drunk."

"I drank a liquor store," he confirmed.

"That's fantastic!" Chuckling turned into full-bodied laughter complete with rather human mannerisms of leaning back and clapping hands. When he finally calmed his laughter, Gabriel planted a hand on his hip and stepped forward, absently pressing fingers to his lips, pondering. "All right, here's the deal. You want my help, then you get Sam too. I don't do anything without my bae anymore."

Redness flushed Sam's face in the background but he stayed quiet.

"Your bae?" Castiel didn't understand the phrase.

"Bae. Before anyone else." He lifted his hand as if Castiel should have understood the human gibberish.

A heavy sigh showed Sam's frustration. "Cas, we're together. Gabriel and I, we've been a thing for six months."

"Five months, eight days," corrected Gabriel over his shoulder.

The corner of Sam's mouth lifted. "What he said."

Nodding, Castiel said simply, "I understand," but there wasn't time for socializing. Pressure crept in around him from elsewhere in the city and he wanted to escape back to Heaven as soon as possible. She flashed in his mind, his little firefly, now a ballet dancer called Renee in her present incarnation. She wasn't far. Temptation felt like the pressure humans experienced the deeper they dove into the ocean.

"What's with his face?" Gabriel asked, looking back at Sam, and then turned his question directly on Castiel. "What's with your face? Don't start judging us, buddy boy. I know how you ogled Dean Winchester and beat all my tricks to yank him back to reality."

"I'm not judging you. I'm pleased you've found companionship in each other through these difficulties," assured Castiel, carefully sidestepping Dean's mention.

"Okay, but you look sick, Cas. You okay?" There were shades of the Sam he knew before the apocalypse in his voice. He maneuvered around Gabriel with a loving touch on the arm and nudged Castiel toward a dark brown leather couch. "Here, sit down."

"The war is taking its toll. My apologies," said Castiel. It wasn't the war. It was the curse of the Fates but he couldn't begin to explain it. Even so, he allowed Sam to steer him to the couch. "You must believe me when I tell you there's nothing I could do but come to you for help. It's not only because Gabriel's an archangel. I wouldn't ask just any archangel to join us."

"Well, there are only two of us left. It's kinda poetic." Another short laugh covered Gabriel's true thoughts as he tumbled over the back of the leather couch. Cellophane crinkled in his hands. "Here. Have a Twinkie. It was worth going through Creation just to snack on these magical little things."

"Thank you," replied Castiel, uncertain of eating human food. He nibbled on one end of the vanilla spongy cake.

Leaning forward, forearms on his thighs, Gabriel allowed himself a rare moment of unguarded sincerity. He wore it well and Castiel saw the power and wisdom of an archangel bleeding through. "I'll help you," he said. "I really hate getting into crap going on upstairs but I tried to stand up to Lucifer, which was how I got killed, and I woke up all Cast Away style floating on a raft in the ocean. A cargo ship went by and picked me up, not that I couldn't blink an eye and leave myself, but I was disoriented. For weeks, I hid and wondered how I wasn't dead. Then I found Sam, we got to talking, and without everybody else around sticking their nose in our stuff, one thing led to another. We both turned up alive after dying months apart. That's a lot to have in common, like we're both cursed, you know?"

Castiel nodded, shaken by his choice of words.

"Yeah," he went on as he rubbed his hands in, again, a rather human gesture conveying internal tension. "I've been waiting for a sign. Why did I get resurrected? I guess you're my sign, Cas."

"I couldn't say for certain," Castiel replied thoughtfully.

"Well, little brother, I'm not taking any chances with signs and stuff. I needed a sign. Here you are. It's a cause I can get behind and I guess I gotta stop being Switzerland and pick a side. I'm in but only if Sam's in too."

"I'm in," Sam said simply.

Castiel sighed of relief, which surprised him. "Thank you."

Both of his new recruits were frayed around the edges, damaged by their experiences, and Castiel knew Gabriel has the power to see it in Sam. There was evidence of repairs here and there as if the archangel occasionally attempted binding up Sam's soul wounds with his own grace. They were certainly bonded and it explained why they appeared to communicate without speaking out loud from time to time.

"Cas, why don't you ditch the secret service out in the hall and hang out with us tonight?" suggested Sam.

The idea excited Gabriel. "Yeah, c'mon! We're gonna have dessert at this swanky place I like and go see the ballet afterward. Sam got tickets through his job."

"The ballet?" Castiel's throat went dry. No, no, no. That couldn't be what he said. It had to be a coincidence, despite his internal mind, his intuition, screaming about just how it was a symptom of the curse he'd carried for centuries. The Fates would always keep trying to place his little firefly in his path. He swallowed, hoping he gave a good impression of casual humor. "Dessert? What about dinner? I had no idea you enjoyed the ballet." He was rambling.

"Dinner's for chumps," replied Gabriel as he waved off the notion. "Ballet's great! The dancers look like twirling pastries. It's like dessert on top of dessert. We're seeing Giselle tonight. Right? Giselle?"

Sam offered a quiet nod and a subtle smile. "It's right up our alley. It's about a peasant girl named Giselle who dies of a broken heart when she finds out her lover's supposed to marry someone else. So then there's this group of supernatural women, like witches, I guess," Sam shrugged, "and they do this thing where they dance men to death. They decide to summon Giselle from her grave." He smiled. "I like the juxtaposition of twirling pastries--" a wink at Gabriel, feeling more at ease, "--and the dark stuff we used to deal with in hunting. It makes me think it's possible to find beauty in all the death out there."

"Babycakes, I just love your big sexy brain." Gabriel playfully swatted Castiel's arm. "Isn't his brain sexy? They put him in special collections at the New York Historical Society when he applied to be a maintenance guy. We're looking for a bigger place now."

In spite of the pressure coiling around his body, Castiel laughed low in his chest and thought perhaps he could endure it with them.

"So? You coming with us?" pressed Gabriel. "C'mon, Cas. Every rebellious angel needs a little fun every now and then. Keeps the grace pumping."