Oneiroi [part five]

[mclachland]

prologue | one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | epilogue

Five.
“Dreams are the answers to questions that we haven't yet figured out how to ask.”


They found him waiting for Dean on the edge of a piece of paper given in a dream, and tore him from his vessel. He is not sure how they got to him so quickly; he had warded the abandoned warehouse with every sigil he could think of, every symbol, every name he knew, and it still could not hold against the fury of the Host. The moment he heard the Song explode across the backs of his vessel's eyes, he knew it would only be a matter of time before they -- some garrison of Virtues or perhaps even Principalities -- would tear down the walls brick by brick. He shed a lot of Jimmy Novak's blood in the service of a banishing sigil, but he hadn't had the opportunity to use it by the time they reached him.

He killed one of his brothers. Juniel. The echo of shock and horror rang like a gunshot from Dean's gun in the hush of the night, and he had been so surprised, so sickened by his actions that he stopped. Allowed them to take him back.

And here he stands, alone before the Consultation, tiers upon tiers of judges, eyes and flame and wrath, all fixed upon him, a loyal soldier turned traitor for a pair of humans who will never know what their roles are in all this.

Dean will meet him where he asked, but will find nothing glad to greet him. No answers, no truths, no absolution.

"As further punishment for your betrayal, you are restricted from the Song until We believe you deserve to hear It."

Castiel closes his eyes and shudders, swallowing down a sob. He has heard of only a few angels who were severed from the Song, and none of them recovered. Madness descends because it is the only way to fill the silence. It could be worse. Somehow, in some twisted way, it could be much worse. This mercy bestowed upon him by the Host is to be taken as a lesson in humility and divine compassion.

"Do you have words for Us, Castiel?"

He does. He has many words, so many. The words are angry, scared, calling out for a Father who will not hear them because they are simply not enough. He wants to shout at each and every one of his brothers and sisters, to somehow show them what he sees when he looks at Humanity. Works of art, all of them. Exquisite, stunning, and all one of a kind. They are all of them diverse in body and in mind, and they are all glorious. The Father made humans to be protected by His first children. Bringing down the Apocalypse goes directly against their purpose.

And to ask -- no, demand -- that two human men, both marked by time and trauma, carrying the weight of several worlds upon their shoulders, to add more to their already heavy burden is too unfair. The Father would weep if He knew Dean and Sam were to fill these roles. The vessels for Mikael and Lucis Ferre were not of His design. All of this is wrong. He does not say this because the Host can hear it as if he did, rippling in outrage.

"Who is it you serve?"

Dean once sat on a park bench in a saved town and told him everything around them is what matters. He was right. That is the right path.

"I serve my Father," is what he says.

"Re-Education begins immediately and will end when We feel you will carry out the orders given to you. You are forthwith stripped of your position on Earth until such time. All responsibilities will be assumed by Zachriel during the course of the Re-education process. This is mercy, Castiel. This is an extension of your Father's love. We cannot recall another to receive a boon such as this. It is a blessing."

They are going to erase him. They will scrub clean everything he has learned, every thought, every doubt, every dream, until he is empty and there only to be filled with the Word. They will remove color, music, light, and remake him into the hammer he has never wanted to be.

"Thank you," he says, and wants to weep.

"Cas!"

"You are to be taken to the Ninth Choir --" It is a blessing, for no angel below the rank of Seraph has ever been there. "-- and the process shall commence immediately."

"Cas, snap out of it! It's a dream!"

He turns and there, among the tiers, is a human man. Not just any man. He knows this one.

"Cas!"

Sam.

He turns back to his judges, shocked, but they do not pay heed to the human intruder who would surely meet a swift and untimely death, or would be taken and delivered promptly to the outer reaches of Lucifer's cage. A gift to appease the Fallen child, or perhaps an invitation to bring about the End.

This is a dream.

No, not a dream. A memory. This is his memory. He has lived through this once already, snatched away from Jimmy, who will be reunited with his wife and daughter, who will accept what will amount to a prison sentence in order to spare his progeny.

There are four of his brothers on either side of him now, leading him away from the tiers, tight against him as if they fear further rebellion, and they take him through a maze he cannot remember ever being in Heaven. There are no walls. There are no tiers. There is nothing physical about the Kingdom, not in the sense he is experiencing. This is Heaven and yet this is not. Sam follows close behind, keeping a short distance between himself and the escorts, saying nothing, just walking quietly around a dozen corners, all hard angle and violently lit chrome walls. Everything shines like the sleek appliances Castiel has seen on infomercials (he still does not understand the colloquialism), torn straight from the kinds of films that hold Dean's attention for hours, even though he tears apart the logic of it, the impossibility of robots, of space travel, and Cas wants to tell him that human progress -- if left alone -- will someday stretch to the stars. However, Dean does not trust him, and very soon he will have good reason.

No. No, this is a dream. A memory. This has already happened. Lucifer has been released from the Cage, but it is all for naught, because God is not God and Morpheus is more than a myth. Dean is not watching any film or infomercial, but is tucked somewhere in the heart of the dream realm, waiting for him and Sam to save him from whatever horrors Morpheus is inflicting. If Cas is in an unpleasant memory from his own past, then there is nothing to stop Morpheus from locking Dean in a memory of Hell.

He swallows and reaches automatically out to run his fingers across the too-smooth surface of the maze wall, then jerks his hand back. His hand. His hand. His true self does not have hands. His true self holds no particular shape, nothing more than a curve of celestial intent, but he still holds Jimmy Novak's visage. His visage. Jimmy Novak is no more, and neither is Castiel. He is Cas and this is his body. But why does he have it in a memory when there should be no form at all?

His four escorts -- Hadriel, Sariel, Maruel, and Gandriel -- come to a stop in front of a section of the wall, crowding around him, waiting for him to do something that will require them to use physical force. They, too, are in vessels. This should not be. Mortal eyes -- even eyes used by an angel -- could never withstand the awesome power of Heaven.

He knows what will happen. His escorts -- brothers and sisters he has been made aware of in other garrisons but has not met personally until now -- will leave him in this cell and two of them will not return to see him. Maruel will escort him to and from his meetings with Haniel, who has been assigned the dubious honor of seeing to his Re-Education.

A panel in the wall lifts like those he has seen in Dean's futuristic movies, and he is shoved in by Sariel's dainty hand, holding more power in her palm than the vessel she inhabits ever could. Sam slips by her easily and into the cell, but they do not see him.

"I will return," Maruel says stiffly, and all four turn away, leaving back down the hall as the door slides closed and the cracks seal up, leaving him and Sam trapped.

Sam exhales loudly. "What the fuck is all this, Cas? What's going on?"

The cell is very small and very bright. Too bright. It hurts his eyes to look at the walls for too long and he closes them tightly, expelling the light that still lingers. This is not meant to be a comfortable place. When Haniel is done with him -- and he really has no desire to relive his Re-Education -- he will be brought back here to suffer some more. Using this cell as a manner of respite after he is brought back from Haniel will prove pointless.

"Cas?"

He startles, stumbling back a step. Sam is here. How can Sam be here? Has he been taken as well in an attempt to separate him from Dean? Will his brothers and sisters try to coerce Sam into playing the role the angels have created for him? Dean will not care for Castiel's absence, but he will certainly notice Sam's. Bringing Sam here is folly; Dean will never cooperate now.

"Sam," he says, taking stock of the tall body, the clothes that are untouched. There is no blood, no obvious wounds. The angels have not harmed him.

Not "the angels". His brethren. He thinks in terms as though he were not one of them.

But he is not. He is human now. He is in Demos Oneiroi, and this is a memory.

He brings a hand to his temple and squeezes his eyes shut. "I am… My mind is muddled, Sam. I believe this to be real when I know it is not. This is different from the dreams before."

Sam has an expression on his face that normally preludes a comment suspicious in nature. "How is it --"

"It is not a dream," he says. "It is a memory. This has happened."

Sam licks his lips, a nervous tic, then moves to one of the walls, running his hand over it, searching for a weakness in the design the way Castiel has seen the Winchesters search for hex bags and information in tomes that should not be in human hands, yet have somehow found their way into Bobby Singer's library. He backs away from it, finding nothing. Even in this false, physical form, Heaven would show no flaw.

"Sam," Cas says urgently, drawing Sam's attention away from the wall. He must speak quickly before Maruel returns. "They will come for me to begin my Re-Education. You will have to stay here until I am brought back."

"Fuck that!" Sam shouts, slicing the air with his arm for emphasis. "What's this 'Re-Education' thing? When is this?"

"When you found Jimmy Novak in that warehouse."

"Shit," Sam gasps, eyes wide. Cas can see the realization dawn. "This is where you were. This is why you turned into a dick again. When you say Re-Education --"

Cas nods. "They broke me of my ties to Dean. And to you. To my empathy for Humanity. Little time passed on Earth, but I was here for twenty years."

Sam closes his eyes against the words, then shakes his head. "Fuck. I'm sorry, Cas, but we don't have twenty years this time."

"I do not want to be here for twenty years," he says wryly, agreeing, touched by Sam's obvious sympathy and sorrow on his behalf. "Once was enough. But I don't think Morpheus will be kind enough to cut the time short --"

"But there will be a door," Sam breaks in suddenly, eyes shining with a preemptive victory. "There's gonna be a door somewhere. We just gotta find it and then we can get the hell out of here. You won't have to relive anything."

So clever. There are two of them in this memory now, and they do not have to be in the same place at the same time.

"When I am with Haniel --"

"No," Sam says. "No, I'm not leaving you to go through that alone."

And so unfailingly loyal. "Sam, if you stay with me all the time, you will never find the opportunity to look for the door. You have to do this without me."

The wall behind them opens and Maruel steps in, fitting the hulking body of her vessel into the room. It is a large man with a shaved head and many tattoos that she wears. She frowns at him. "I am to take you to Haniel."

A sharp, jagged shard of fear lodges in Castiel’s throat and it takes a moment to swallow it down. He remembers his first visit with Haniel.

"Of course," he says and steps forward, but looks back over his shoulder at Sam, who watches them leave, stricken. "The door."

It takes half a moment for Sam to understand and he nods firmly, spurred into movement.

"What about the door?" Maruel asks stonily.

Cas steps out of the room and offers no explanation, although he doubts Maruel was expecting one. Behind them, Sam slips out of the room before the panel in the wall slides down and seals. Luckily, he does not stay to ask questions or follow them; he gives Cas a dubious smile, turns, and runs down the hall, disappearing around a corner.

He watches him go and quells the desperate urge to call Sam back when Maruel starts in the opposite direction, clearly expecting him to follow. He poses no threat to Maruel, or any of his brothers and sisters here. If he attempted any kind of attack, he would be struck down a thousand times in a thousand ways.

The hallway twists like the garden mazes he has seen on Earth, a labyrinth of white and that utterly blinding light that makes everything seem blue. Shadows play odd tricks with his vessel's eyes as they move silently and swiftly, their footfalls soft.

He does not know how long and how complicated the maze is, or how long it will take Sam to locate the door. Heaven's design is not something easily understood, not even by his brethren. It is not meant for them to know. But then, this is not Heaven's design. This has been wrought by another's hand. But who could ever hope to shape anything in the Kingdom that is not the Father?

It is shocking to entertain these thoughts, but he thinks of Dean and Sam, fighting so hard on Earth, fighting the wrong enemy, believing Lilith's death will stave off Lucifer's rising. Even now that he has been caught, on his way to Haniel, he thinks of the slip of paper he gave Dean on a lakeside dock, and wishes he had succeeded in what he planned to do. It would have been worth it.

"Ah, there he is!" Cas manages to suppress a shudder at the cheerful voice that resounds through the maze. He hears something scrape something else very loudly, as if punctuating the words, and it sounds like metal upon metal. The muscles in his vessel's back draw up tight, his wings tensing from where he has them hidden out of habit. He had forgotten how they balanced him.

No, impossible. That is incorrect. How could he have forgotten his wings?

Maruel brings him into a room that makes him stop, close his eyes and swallow the fear before he can look again. He knows this room, that table, this scene. Alistair was strapped to such a table, the metal dirty and out of place in such a clean, stark room. In place of the Devil's Trap, there are sigils, sigils meant only for angels, sigils meant for hurting. For pain. For Re-Education.

Re-Education is a lovelier word than torture. By calling it Re-Education, Heaven can somehow separate itself and its machinations from those of Hell. It would not do to be compared to that disgusting, writhing, seething pit of blood and horror and loss, especially when Heaven is exactly the opposite. A beautiful, still, quiet pit of blood and horror and loss.

What are these thoughts? The Host can hear him. The Host can hear all of this, and yet he cannot stop.

"Thank you, Maruel," Haniel says lightly from where he stands at a counter, back to them, focused on the metal tools he is inspecting and choosing with such care. He lifts a large blade with a serrated edge and it glows blue in the light.

Maruel brings Castiel over to the table and he acts fast, using his very physical form to rear his elbow back into Maruel's nose, the bone caving in with a satisfying crunch, and he pivots on the ball of his foot to bring her down with a punch. But there is a firm hand between his shoulder blades that forces him onto the table with a hard thud. His arms are pulled away from his body, stretched until he feels the muscles straining in the Teres Major, and strapped down. His legs, similarly, are parted and restrained, followed by binding around his midsection and neck.

Well and truly pinned. It is a feeling of vulnerability to which he is not accustomed, and he does not like the way it makes his heart beat wildly in his chest. In the lobby of the last motel the Winchesters stayed in, there had been a display of butterflies on the wall, all of them impaled with pins and labeled in the name of human discovery.

"You may have him when I am finished," Haniel says. Maruel's fading footsteps signal her departure. "It appears it is just you and me, Castiel. Or would you prefer your new name? I heard you have been answering to something else."

Cas.

He remains silent, cheek pressed against metal, and stares at the far wall.

Haniel wears the body of a man with tanned skin and kind eyes, perhaps the father to a small child or the lover of someone with the same, quiet gaze. His hands are big and callused, marked in a way that speaks of human hardship. Haniel could fix the calluses easily but probably prefers the abrasiveness; it makes holding smooth things easier.

"Tell me," Haniel says, rolling a small tray table lined with tools and instruments of all shapes and sizes, all polished to a shine, all glowing darkly under the too-bright lights. "Do you remember our venture into Hell? I do believe you were the youngest in our merry band, the youngest and lowest in status." Haniel pronounces status in Received Pronunciation, which does not match the face he is wearing.

Haniel always did favor corporal punishment and started such a trend on Earth years and years ago. He preyed on the God-fearing by invoking the belief that corporal mortification would bring one closer to God by physically purging their sins. Haniel was also one of those assigned to retrieve Dean from Hell and had said something about leaving Dean there, that he had broken and the first Seal with him, so there really was no need to drag him out. Castiel has never liked Haniel.

"You can speak," Haniel allows, lifting a blade and flicking the end, eliciting a high-pitched hum that has him smiling in satisfaction.

"I do remember."

"You became so offended when I suggested leaving Dean Winchester in the Pit. So much so that the others in our garrison spoke of your reaction quite often. I believe it was the first time any of us had taken notice of you… and your… let us call them 'differences'. Because you are different, Castiel. So very different." Haniel moves gracefully to the side of the table but does not come into contact with it. "This is the first time I can remember since the first war that I have had cause to use these fine instruments. The metal is the same we use to forge our weapons. Can you see this, Castiel?"

He strains against his bonds, eyes on the table of tools. He must get away.

Haniel holds up the blade, too far for Castiel to comfortably see, and admires it openly. "Such graceful design. There is not one flaw in it. Fabriel made the whole set as a means of aiding interrogation of Lucifer's troops during the first war. We lost so many of our own to his ranks. I confess none of us had the clever tongue he employed to sway our brethren into following him. Obedience, Castiel, is ingrained in all of us, no matter who it is we follow. Except, perhaps, you."

He stills when the tip of the blade is suddenly a hair from his eye.

"Who is it that you serve, Castiel?"

"I serve the Lord, Our God." Who would want His angels to protect His most vulnerable children: Humanity.

A hiss escapes his clenched teeth as the skin beneath his eye splits for the blade, a bit of Grace eking out and burning like Hellfire. The blade parts his flesh slowly, almost like an afterthought, and it goes on for so long it takes him a moment to realize it has stopped.

Haniel places the small blade down and then picks up a very large instrument, the same one he had been holding when Maruel escorted Castiel inside.

Castiel begins to struggle anew.

The construct of a bird's wing is far simpler than that of an angel. Humans seem to believe angels possess wings similar to a bird's, as if a group of hollow bones and digits could ever fully encompass something like an angel's wing. When Castiel showed the shadow of his wings to Dean in that barn, he projected them as what Dean would expect from an angel, if only for the sake of verisimilitude. Angels do not have feathers. An angel's wings can be many or few, depending upon rank and service. His own wings span the length of the Chrysler building, and upon the retrieval and remaking of Dean Winchester he was granted a third. Three wings, moving him up the hierarchy to enjoy the rank of Principality.

Here, in this place, they are as strong and fragile as a bird's.

Haniel's large, callused fingers find his third, his gift from the Host, and pulls it tightly, the radius grinding to dust in his grip. Castiel screams, tries to flap his other wings in counterpoint to the one trapped, but it does nothing to stop Haniel from digging deeper and piercing the skin.

He screams. He screams and screams and the room echoes with the force of it, but Haniel keeps digging until his entire hand is inside and gripping the ulna, wrenching it back. The bone breaks off with a jagged, wet snap, and Castiel chokes. His eyes burn with the pain, his face wet with tears and saliva, unable to drag in enough air to prevent his lungs from feeling as though they will collapse. The restraints on his legs hold him fast and he writhes, trying to get away from the pain. He cannot even move his head.

Haniel pulls his hand back, tearing ligament and muscle, and Castiel feels it unravel in his wing, sinew and vein stretching and pulling away. The fabric of his white shirt is wet and sticks to his back, and he heaves, vomiting bile and spit over the edge of the table, choking on acid and terror.

The bloody, twisted half of his wing hits the white floor in his line of blurred vision, a mottled and utterly destroyed thing. He weeps openly at the sight of it. It had been a gift. A reward. Something to show for a new, tentative connection to a man who did not believe in angels, but did believe he deserved Hell.

The base of the wing, the part that remains, throbs with a kind of pain he has never felt, the nerves exposed and the bones twisted and broken. It takes much to hurt an angel. This is too much.

"Tell me who it is you serve," Haniel says again, hands and arms caked with blood, ichor, and feathers. "And remember, we can hear your intent, Castiel. When you answered, you were not speaking on behalf of Heaven. We can stay here, Castiel, for as long as you like."

It takes a long time to stop crying, to wrestle his unnecessary breathing under control, and when he finally does it wins him a smile from Haniel.

He thinks of Dean on the dock, tipping his head back to feel the sun, relaxed in the cheap embrace of the chair, careless. Loose. Until Castiel handed him a slip of paper with an address written in the fold. Dean will never know what the reason was for being there.

"I serve my Father, and this is not the right path."

It is not the correct answer. And so Haniel pulls his the rest of his wing out from the root.

He does not remember anything after that, having most likely either detached himself from the torture or slipped into unconsciousness -- both frighteningly human reactions. He comes around to the sound of his shoes scraping along the floor, Maruel dragging him down the halls of the maze by his dislocated arm.

"Oh god, Cas."

The panel in the wall slides open with a whisper and Maruel drops him inside the room, leaving just as quickly.

As soon as the door shuts and seals, there are hands hovering over him, unsure of where to touch, how to help. He hiccups a query, struggling to open his eyes. One of them has been slashed out. He can feel bits of it still in the socket, the optic nerve spilling over bone and skin to rest against his cheek.

"Cas, this… Cas, I don't know what to do."

His tongue has been bitten through, or else he would answer Sam.

Sam.

Why is Sam here? If Sam is here, then Dean is alone and unprotected. In the face of Castiel's would-be betrayal, the angels will most certainly go after him.

He reaches out a trembling hand -- thumb and middle finger both broken, fingertips removed -- but it is gently captured and enfolded, held.

"Don't try to move, Cas. Fuck. Fuck, I don't know where… Cas, tell me how to help. There's… there's nothing in here. Not even water. I can't -- There's so much blood, Cas, and -- oh God, what happened to your back…" Sam's voice fades out for a moment, then comes back, too loud and shrill. "I didn't find a door. I didn't even get through the maze -- There's too much of it. It was sheer dumb luck I even got back here."

Door? He mutters something and shifts his hips, wincing at the pull of muscles in his back as he does. The hole where his third wing once was is still leaking blood. Haniel did not cauterize the wound, and he can feel every trickle of new blood spilled.

Sam is in Heaven and is speaking of doors while Dean is no doubt poking around the warehouse, searching for Sam, for a way to get his brother back.

Door.

No. No, Dean is not searching for Sam, because Sam is still with him. This has happened. This is a memory.

He rolls away from Sam and vomits up blood. "It will be there."

Sam tears the bottom of his shirt and presses the fabric to one of his many wounds. "You look like shit."

"I feel accordingly." His words are thick and slurred. "This seems to be worse than I remember."

"Heaven sucks," Sam says feelingly. "You lived through twenty years of this? How?"

Haniel's torture will eventually run together until it is a constant river of pain and degradation. Eventually, one day, Haniel will barter with him. Express his loyalties in exchange for reprieves. A pledge of faith to Heaven and he will remain untouched for an hour. A pledge of devotion to the Host, and Maruel will not come to his cell for a day. All this, with the eventual addition of gentle contact. Weaning him from the punishment and onto love in return for his allegiance. Break him of his ties to Dean.

By the end of twenty years, he will be healed and will never serve Man. Or Dean.

"Heaven can be very persuasive." He spits up something plush and wet. Congealed blood. "You have to find the door. Maruel will return very soon."

"What the fuck are they doing this for? I mean, this seems a bit… not Heaven-like, even for them," Sam hisses, removing the balled up fabric from the wound and tossing it away. It hits the floor with a loud squelch.

"Because of what I was going to tell you and Dean."

He can hear Sam frown. "Tell us what?"

"Everything." About the real plan behind the breaking of the Seals. About Lilith. About Lucifer and Michael and the roles the Winchesters were created to play. He had been ready to tell Dean everything, to show he was not a hammer, that he recognized the fact that Heaven was wrong and God was suspiciously absent, and he would Fall in order to help them fight against Heaven's machinations.

He coughs up another bloody pulp. Internal injuries. Many internal injuries. Things that will take time to heal. His abilities to fix himself have been severely diminished as part of his sentence. He remembers Haniel did damage to his heart and he was forced to slowly bleed out until his Grace was allowed to intervene.

Sam shifts next to him and puts a comforting hand on his shoulder. Right where Haniel's blade was buried, severing several nerves and arteries. "Not there."

"Right. Sorry. Shit." The hand moves to his hair, just resting. "We have to get you out of here."

"Maruel will return very shortly. You will have to continue your search for the door."

Sam scoffs. "Like hell I'm leaving you to go through this all over again!"

He smiles, warmed by Sam's refusal. It is nice, having a friend. "You have no choice. Do you have a weapon on you?"

"A knife. It's not anything -- it's just a knife."

"That's fine," he says and runs his tongue over his teeth. Three of them are missing, two are loose. All taste of blood. "Dig it into the wall as you go, leave marks. Keep going until you find it. Do not keep coming back, not even if you feel you have been gone too long. I will survive this, Sam, as long as you find the door. I will find you."

Their own door slides open and Maruel steps inside. He can hear the angel's footsteps as she draws near, as she bends and grips his wrist. Dislocated arm, of course. She drags him from the room and he whimpers as it jars his many wounds and broken bones.

"I'm going!" Sam shouts needlessly, but it settles the anxiety that sits in his belly to hear Sam go. He does not want Sam to see what will happen next. This time, Haniel will focus on his belly and everything contained within.

Time passes oddly in Heaven, as in it exists on all planes and not at all. Haniel, however, makes it seem as if it stretches as it does on Earth, makes him feel every second as though it were an eternity. Haniel asks questions without ever truly expecting an answer and will sometimes hum cheerily as he pulls out the bones in Castiel’s left hand, like a child twisting and plucking away at blades of grass. His voice has deserted him and his screaming has been rendered as a rasp, his cheeks wet.

It has been eight years -- if he were to count time like that -- and he feels as though he is waiting for something.

Haniel hums a song Castiel does not recognize and drops the last of his carpals into a bowl on his little tray table. It pings against the metal. Castiel watches as what is left of the blood in his deflated hand, just empty skin now, and wonders if it is possible to become used to pain like this. Eight years of this, and it still feels as though it is the first time.

"I must admit, Castiel, that you are very… obstinate in your beliefs. So let's not talk about them. Let's talk about your interests instead." Haniel lifts a small jug onto his tray table and something sloshes around inside. "Let's talk about Dean Winchester."

He hopes Haniel will attribute his flinch to the pain, but Haniel is so much more observant than that.

"Dean Winchester is such an interesting… man."

The abused flesh inside his throat bleeds anew as his breathing breaks free of his control and begins taking on a frantic edge, a wheeze of desperation scraping out. Haniel smiles at him.

"I remember when he lay with Anael. Not the act itself, because I have other things to do than watch a monkey and a traitor rut, but your reaction… Oh, it positively rippled through the Host. Such emotion you felt! I believe they call it 'jealousy'. Possession is not something we covet, Castiel, and yet there you were… longing to rip her apart for daring to touch him. He is a human! And not a particularly virtuous one, at that. Is it that he is Mikael's vessel that stirs you so? Or is it that he is a base, disgusting human? You seem to favor them over your own brethren these days. Do not think we don't know how you felt about the raising of Samhain. You were relieved the town was saved."

He had been relieved, yes. But it was not until he sat on a bench with Dean and watched children playing in a park that he understood why. That he knew destroying his Father's creations -- those works of art -- was wrong.

"But he makes you feel. He makes you want. It truly is disgusting to watch you simper after him like a diseased cur." Haniel creates a small spark in his hand and flings it into the jar, which catches and explodes upward in a blaze. Holy fire.

"Dean is the Righteous Man," Castiel grits out, shrinking away from the jug as Haniel regards it and then Castiel's boneless hand. "That is not simply a title. He is righteous. His soul is --"

"Yes, yes, we have all heard from you about the brightness of his soul." Haniel waves the praise away and considers the jug. "I have not experimented with the effects of liquid holy fire. Shall we give it a try? It would be a great aid in battle."

"Please," he gasps, struggling so hard that the bones in his other wrist crack against his bonds. His boneless hand pulls through the restraint with a wet slurhk but is captured by Haniel. "No, please!"

Haniel smiles and tips the jug. "Heaven thanks you for your contribution to the war effort."

He screams as the fire pours over his hand, searing skin and the shredded muscle underneath. Haniel holds his wrist tightly, the bones grinding together as he struggles, but does nothing except place the jug back on the tray and watch as the fire consumes Castiel's hand.

"Interesting," Haniel says, barely audible over the screaming. "It is a liquid and yet is flame. The physical world is wasted on the humans. Although, I wonder at its effects on human flesh."

Castiel cries piteously, thrashing. Haniel drops his hand and retreats back to his counter, bringing the jug with him. Castiel curls into himself, holding the bare remains of his hand against his chest, and grits his teeth against his sobs, sucking in air that is nowhere near what he needs.

The pain eventually lessens so he is somewhat aware of the room around him, and he stops struggling, collapsing weakly onto the table, still shuddering. How can this be allowed? How can Heaven call this just punishment?

"I have been authorized to try it. On a human," Haniel says off-handedly, turning around and smiling brightly. "And I know just the one. Do you think it will remind him very much of Hell?"

Sucking in a breath, Castiel holds himself very still.

"Although I have made sure he will never forget. The nightmares, you know. They can be very… colorful. It wouldn't do for him to forget his time there. He could become complacent, and we can't have that."

Castiel’s heart stops.

Dean. He means Dean. Haniel means to bring Dean to this place of blood-spattered chrome for reasons that amount to nothing more than his humanity. If this has been sanctioned by Heaven, then the plans have changed and Castiel's Re-Education is in fact a Termination. Dean, as a human, would never survive Haniel.

He will not let it happen. The Father, wherever He is, is either testing them or is simply no longer there. It does not matter. This is not what The Father spun into motion, and Castiel will not allow Heaven's taint to reach Dean Winchester. He has been through enough between Heaven, Hell, and the First Realm. The First…

A dream. This is a memory. This has happened. Eight years into his twenty and he has not broken yet. He will not, because he already broke and then healed and is not going to do it again.

"Tell me, Castiel. Has Samuel Winchester found your door?"

His heart stops.

This is not how… the rules of this place have changed yet again. Haniel should not be aware of anything that happens outside of this room. If the laws of this place can transform so easily, then so can he.

Gritting his teeth, he imagines a giant blade with a serrated edge and powered by electricity, much like the one in the trunk of the Impala, the one Sam calls a 'chainsaw' and Dean calls 'Betty'. It is a powerful thing, this chainsaw he dreams up, and down by his feet he hears the roar of it coming to life.

Cut my bindings, he thinks, and feels them fall away under the moving kiss of the saw.

Haniel turns and Cas swings the blade and buries it in Haniel's throat. He pushes, forcing his one arm to take the weight of it, and presses forward until the blade slices through Haniel's vessel's spinal column and keeps pressing in until the head is completely severed from the body.

When Haniel's Grace explodes out of him the way it did from Juniel, Cas reaches out and sticks the stump of his arm into it. It burns, but in a way unlike the holy fire. It feels cleaner, softer, like overlooking Jodhpur and breathing in when Dean leaves the bathroom after taking a shower. When the Grace dissipates, Cas lowers his arm. The end of his arm has been cauterized, cleansed, healed. There is no hand but there is also no pain.

He coughs, tasting blood, then looks around the room. The saw is heavy but easy to wield, so when the wall lifts and Maruel walks in, he is able to rush her, blade thundering as he slices her vessel's head at the neck. The room is sprayed violently in red, covering him, the white walls, the damned metal table where his blood has already dried.

"This is my memory," he gasps aloud, dropping his arm to rest the blade of the chainsaw on the floor. "This is mine. Dean and Sam are mine. Do you hear me? They are mine."

The path back to his cell is easy to take, as his shoes -- and bare feet -- know it well, having been dragged along it enough times. When he reaches it, he knows to go no further than the bare stretch of wall he stands in front of, and he turns his head and stares down the other end. Sam took off in that direction the last time they spoke, and so he pushes away from where the door to his cell would be, and down the hall.

The skin of his arm, the stump, easily finds the indent of Sam's knife easily and he keeps it there, using it as a guide, running as fast as he can, fighting through the pain in his side where Haniel stuck pins inside him. They rip at the soft tissue of his intestines as he runs.

"Sam!" No answer.

He stops running, drops both arms and stares down the white walls that encase him on either side, stretching on for forever. This will not do. Sam has been roaming these halls for years; it will take nearly a decade to find him.

Moving the walls back and away, so he may see the plane on which this false Heaven sits, would suit his purpose well enough, so he looks at the wall to his right and thinks, move. It does, and the one opposite it follows suit, pushing back until there is nothing except open space.

"Sam!" He shouts again, and his voice echoes across the plane. After a moment, a faint sound answers him, and he runs in that direction, tramping over years and years of hardship and pain. On the horizon, there is the shadow of some kind of structure, something he has seen before in a place that was not real, but no matter how far he runs, it does not come closer. "Sam! Can you hear me?!"

"Cas!" It is soft, but there, and it is not long until he can see Sam, standing tall in front of three doors.

"Jesus Christ, you look -- Oh my god, where is your hand?" Sam stares at the stump with something akin to horror and sympathy, his eyes wide.

Cas takes care to tuck it into the sleeve of his coat, away from Sam's stare, and turns to regard the three doors. Iris warned them about these. Three doors: one to trick, one to trap, one to kill. There is no way to differentiate between them; they are made of the same smooth, dark wood as the others in the endless hallway of Demos Oneiroi.

"Which one?" He grunts, a sudden pain bursting in his abdomen, a reminder of the several slivers of metal that puncture and rip at his insides. Even dead, Haniel still causes him agony. "Sam, pick a door."

Sam rakes his hands through his hair and shakes his head. "I don't know. I don't know which one to choose!"

"Pick a door, Sam!" He shouts, tasting the bite of blood in the back of his throat. The pins inside him hit something that forces him down to one knee, curling in on himself in hopes of containing the pain.

"Cas," Sam says quietly, breathless. "Cas, which one would you pick?"

Blearily, he lifts his head and sees Sam pace from door to door to door, frantic. "Sam, I asked you --"

"And I'm asking you," Sam bites back. "Which one would you pick?"

There is symbolism in everything. Had Sam asked him that same question when he was an angel, Cas would have chosen the door farthest to the right, because that is where an angel sits. Angels sit to the right of God and demons to the left. The left is the mark of the Devil. The middle, of course, is God. Or perhaps the middle is Humanity, caught between the crosshairs.

"The middle," he gasps out, his other knee hitting the floor hard. Blood dribbles from his lips.

"And I'd pick the one on the right."

They both look at the door on the very left.

Wordlessly, Sam bends and throws one of Cas's arms around his shoulders, and they slowly make their way to the door, every step taking a little more of his consciousness until he can no longer walk on his own and Sam must drag him there.

Sam opens the door.

"I'm sorry in advance if this kills us," Sam mutters.

Dean, Cas thinks, and closes his eyes as they step inside.


prologue | one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | epilogue

Comments

[laura-trekkie.livejournal.com]

*eep* Poor Cas!! The Host looks even less Heavenly than it did before! I'm glad Haniel got his comeuppance. I'm presuming the left hand door won't kill them with several more chapters to go, but the other options aren't great either...

Laura.