In His Image: (In)finite

[whit_merule]

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In which Castiel is confused, the nurse is suspicious, and Sam makes contact.
Castiel, Sam.

Parts of Castiel’s thought processes in this chapter were, I think, inspired by Parallel Monsoon’s own beautiful season 5 fix-it, The Hawk Must Fly.

 

Present day.

 

there was a noise little Blips of mauve over and, over never stopping, which had always been there as soon as he noticed, it poking at the ears. the mouth tasted, of bile and Dead water something touching whisperingclinging to the body Mouthing soft and itchy at kneesbackPaintoeschest (words he remembered. concepts he knew but too familiarclose now to be understood meaning, something scratchy-different), The smell was noisy and lemonsharp too many people smothered in. deletion and hygiene, air that had been Breathed through too many lungs without seeing the sun but, he could not sense, the people, there was Nothing to touch or know When the. eyes opened the Light was. like a shout; white and white-green polite blue clamouring in sudden Pain to the back of the head, so he closed them again and did not reopen them for … some time, he did not know, because he had Always known precisely when he was and now time was passing in a way that he could not feel, humans Sliced it into Seconds and minutes and years and learned to feel its passing in the beat. of their own bodies but The body clamoured too, shouted feelings at him, from all sides, signals he didn’t know. tansharpredvermillionSicklyyellowbrown and, he could not see it clear.

hospital. sluggishbrownugly pain in the chest, wrong and Nasty, but weak, yielding to human antiseptics. deeperthumpingaching Pain in the back, a lawnmower growling at him. a Voice, soft and pale bluesparked with surprise that smelt like Cinnamon, distantly Caring, asking him things in a modern human language.

Jimmy was gone, hollow and cold where he had been warmBitterdoggedvast inside.

and there was an aching Emptiness where his Wings should be

unconsciousness dragged at him, terrifying, promising a cessation of thought.

 

­---

 

Castiel knew the sins, the great and pure and deadly seven, absolute and powerful and uncomplicatedly monochrome. They were basic impulses, to which everything was prey, angels and demons and humans and monsters, even many of the more complex social animals. He found it harder to understand the more human feelings, complicated mixtures of impulses, desires, self-corrections, self-conceptions, physical sensations, socially imposed constraints, and resentments of any of the other elements. Drifting back and forth between heavy black unconsciousness and the high-pitched inescapable whine of overconsciousness without choosing to do so, he tried to retreat into himself, to categorise these thoughts and feelings that were sudden and unavoidable and clamoured for his body and mind. Castiel had always been accomplished at study, and so he studied them, to keep them from becoming him.

Irritation, of the body and consequently of the mind. The feel of the sheets against skin would not go away when he turned his attention from feeling it. It stayed there, wouldn’t fade even if he wanted it to, reached out and reminded him of its presence at inappropriate moments. He had never before had to seek a comfortable position in which to stand or sit or lie (“if you’re going to hang around all night, Cas, at least get horizontal”), and now he could not; and after a few minutes or a few hours some part of the body would begin complaining at him about being chafed, or squashed, or constricted, and he would have to move again. There was a very physical pain in the damaged lower back, and an illusory pain in the back and shoulders where he couldn’t feel his wings. Which he was doing his best not to think about. When they removed some of the bags attached to the body, he had to compel himself to eat and learn to void its bowels and bladder like a human. It took him two minutes to understand the nurse’s explanation because his head was muzzy and she didn’t use any of the terms he was accustomed to hearing from Dean for such activities. And the skin was strange, the peculiar push and give of it, different from one place to another. His skin. All his now. He would have to accustom himself to using possessive pronouns to think of the body (his body?).

He disliked eating. It felt like compulsion.

(“Is there anyone we can call?”

“No.”

“Next of kin? Family? Friends?”

“No.” At the nurse’s patient impatience, he tried to explain further, his tongue sluggish and droning in his mouth: “I left my family.”

“Well, let’s try calling them – they might surprise you.”

“My family would kill me.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s not as bad as –” She looked at Castiel properly, and for some reason she faltered. “… Sir?”

Patiently, Castiel repeated, “I have no family.”

“Friends, then?”

He turned the face (his face) to look at the window. “No.”)

They gave him drugs, which made the world shaggy and distant.

Boredom. The walls made his vision finite. He could see nothing that was not in the room with him, or framed in the little sliver of daylight outside the window, and the darkness of night restricted the eyes as well. He could not fly to another country, another city, to the depths of the Indian ocean, because he was crippled, maybe broken, and even had that not been true what was there for him to seek? He could not stand and move, because the doctors had told him not to do so, and the back hurt. He remembered that humans would read to pass the time, and asked for a book, but was told that he ought not read until they were sure there was no residual damage to the brain. He told them that there was not, but they only smiled and said that they could not be sure of it yet. Once, he begged a newspaper from somebody else’s visitor, and read it with careful attention from front to back, then back to front; but it told him nothing of Michael or Lucifer, or whether Dean had said ‘yes’, or who was dead. There were only the same disasters and portents as had been seen since Lucifer’s rising; and then the nurse took the paper away. He had thought his patience great when he had had only the Winchesters for comparison (and they would have tried even the patience of Yrihel, before she had fallen); but after only four days of consciousness and constraint, he began to wish to do anything else, to move, to read, to see, to look into the soul of the nurse and lose himself in the thoughts of another living being, because his own ran around and around on the same paths and wore them deeper and rawer at every turn. He was not made for inaction; especially at the crisis.

(“Mr Novak, sir. How are you feeling today?”

“I am not Mr Novak.”

I am. What a strange combination of pronoun and finite verb; what an infinite concept.

“Really? Because you’re the spirit and image of the photographs on his MPB.”

“Jimmy Novak is dead.”

“Just as you like, sir; but you’re fit to be discharged, and we are short on beds. Should I call your wife, or the police?”

When he looked into the nurse’s eyes he saw nothing but sclera, cornea, iris, pupil: the edges of frail, changing flesh. He could not look at her and know her, know through her a little of all the other patients on her round, her family, her friends, the woman whose elbow she might have jogged on the bus on the way to work, all the thousands of tiny droplets in the web humans spun about them. She looked like the shell of a person. It made it strangely difficult to keep patience with her persistence.

“No. Jimmy left Amelia for Dean.”

“… Alright, sir.” The nurse’s voice became shorter, snipped off at the ends. Disapproval, for something Castiel could not recognise and was too tired to deduce. “Can I call this Dean, then?”

“I am useless to him.”)

Gratitude. Not the thanksgiving or rejoicing of a son before an infinite Father; nor the shared thanks of one strong warrior to a strong friend, with whom favours and gifts might be freely exchanged and no tally kept (sometimes Dean had looked at him and thanked him and meant it); but the abject relief of helplessness before charity, thanking the nurse for a glass of water sincere and deep, tinged by just a thread of resentment at the creation of an unpayable debt, at the confirmation of dependence. It was disconcerting, to be reminded of his own diminished size. Trying to swallow the annoyance that came with it, which was also born of the body and the harshbright scratch of the sheets against the bug bite on the – his – ankle.

(“Did Dean hurt you?”

… Turning and driving away from where Castiel lay hung over and damaged. Crude, hard words, designed to distance, to leech the meaning from every memory. Dean’s eyes, hard and hopeless, as his bloodied hand slammed into a sigil painted on cold iron. Torn away from him and from Earth, back into the arms of his startled and furious brethren. Fleeing. Raking tears in his wings, in his grace, grace already carved deep with wanhope and the names of the angels he had slaughtered.

Castiel breathed deeply, with lungs that needed it.

“Yes. He hurt me.”

He made me his. He scored me and broke me.

And yet, I am here.)

Shame. He had not felt the moment when Jimmy had departed. He should have done. He should have held him and comforted him and soothed him into the light. He should have apologised, for not understanding. For failing. For being hurt, for allowing it, for causing it to happen. For the emptiness at Castiel’s shoulders.

(The drugs dulled all the other things: the sensations, the thoughts, the feelings, the boredom. Castiel thought they could be seductive. He had never hidden from pain before. He wasn’t sure whether he liked it or not.)

Loneliness. That was easier to recognise, because it was not new. It was only more absolute now, more grinding. And he felt it in different angles. The ache of staring at walls and knowing that no one would come. The hum of envy at the murmur of family voices down the corridor. The unexpected desire not only for companionship, but for the little human tokens of it: the clap of a hand on a shoulder, the echo of warm purple-red laughter and eyes sparkling as they crinkled, an off-hand insult or “just drink the damn beer, Cas.” And in it, the swirling edges of anger and deep, aching confusion: Dean had absented himself, had chosen that, as had his Father long ago, as had (he now began to realise) so many other angels, each in their own way. Michael, Remahil, Zachariah, Uriel, Hanael-Anna, Beatrice, Gabriel-the-Trickster, Balthazar, Raphael, Chamael, Yrihel, burying themselves in pride or imagined orders or forgetfulness or bitterness or humanity or war, forgetting family. And self-doubt, that was very human: what did I do wrong, did I drive them all away or at least away from me. He recognised that, had seen it often enough in the Winchesters and other humans, knew it was not logical and yet found that he could not dismiss it. It was perplexing. And frustration, that he could not call a halt to the vicious little scratchings of the same thoughts, over and over.

And the body’s back hurt.

(Wanting had been unfamiliar once, too, anything beyond the joyous drive to obey. Wanting for himself was newer again, and it was a thought that, in its terrifying magnitude, he did his best not to touch. But the things that Castiel wanted (burned for, cried out for), he was not entitled to want; save only for the face of his Father, but that desire he must burn out of himself now, for other reasons.)

(“Mr Novak, sir. Was it this Dean who cut your chest?”

“No. His brother.” The drugs were strong in his head, but he felt that he needed to reassure her somehow, because she had been kind. “I asked him to do it.”)

Dean. He still didn’t know how to name whatever he felt there. Dean wove through everything, came up in every other entry in his mental catalogue, tangled things together. Like trying to decide where the Mediterranean became the Atlantic when they were both stirred up by a tempest. He had patched him up with his own grace, could feel Dean drawing him in like the magnetic pole, longed to have and to hold in ways that he could not allow himself to think and barely understood. And even had he been free to do so he could not act on it, because he knew that Dean was drawn to him the same way, by the threads of grace that had held his soul together until it repaired itself. That was not human, and so it was not fair.

 

­---

 

(“It’s natural and common to be anxious about unconsciousness after emerging from a coma, sir; but don’t worry about it, it’s only sleep.”

He had realised quickly that he had no power anymore over which he might lose control when his mind ceased to be aware of itself, but he could not learn to like it.)

Sleep was murky, a world of shifting reality and impressions and helplessness, of emotions that were stronger than the stimulus justified. He shed his first human tears without knowing it, waking up with damp cheeks from something he couldn’t even remember.

He heard voices in sleep, saw familiar faces, was tugged this way and that by things he could not control. So when he first heard his name whispered between the nebulous blue-gold brushstrokes of grass, he thought it was only that.

“Castiel.”

It tugged him, turned him around gently and called, but it did not compel. He followed it, because it felt warm, and because it let him choose. The grass closed over his head, or perhaps he was at the bottom of a dark pool looking up through ripples at the fractured light above.

“Cas? Castiel?” It was a voice he knew, and it was puzzled. “Are you there?”

Impressions folded over impressions, and he thought for a moment that he recognised another lost brother reaching for him, all strength and fierce protective love and dark fury and stubborn will and gentle sceptical humour, vanished some few human generations ago when their world had turned sour and violent. Chamael. But, no, not him: a more recent friend, who tasted almost the same but who lived a very different meaning to the word “brother.” Their names tangled under his stumbling tongue.

“Samuel.”

“Cas, hey.” Relief and laughter drifted past him, curled around his hand. “I can’t believe it worked.”

Castiel reached out through dark silver murmurings. “Where are you?”

“Eskdale, Utah. Can you get here? Are you okay? I can’t actually see you.” His voice was quick and warm and delighted, friendly, as if just to be talking to Castiel made him genuinely pleased, as if Castiel was not an invalid.

Not a dream. Castiel tried to hear-taste the nature of this line of communication. “The connection is… tenuous.”

A huff of chagrin. “I think that’s my fault. I took too long getting to sleep – the rosemary ash is probably cold by now.”

Ah. That ritual. Castiel cast about and felt where the weakness lay, harsh and apple-green in his throat. “No, you have done nothing wrong. It is that the ritual only summons an angel.”

A moment, as Sam worked it out. Then, “Shit, Cas, you’re not –”, horror and sympathy like a lash. “Are you okay?”

Something that was not the infected cuts ached in Castiel’s chest. He set it aside, because it served no purpose. “No. I am in a hospital. Somewhere near Delacroix, I believe.”

“Okay.” A quick breath, then another, deliberately slower. “Okay. So your body, then, you’re physically hurt?”

“I am told that the doctors thought me brain-dead until I woke, and that there is soft tissue damage and a minor hairline fracture in Ji- in my lower back.” Something was nibbling, a feeling that he had categorised the previous day as ashamed,with a little of embarrassed, mixed with self-reflective chagrin at both. It made him want to lighten the rough worried orange in Sam’s voice. He let his voice deepen with the confusion that sometimes made them laugh. “And I have a bug bite that itches no matter how much I scratch it.”

There was no laughter, only a worried rumble of water around him, and Sam’s words coming out gentler than they should have been. “I’m guessing you can’t snap yourself back into shape, then, or fly over here.”

Castiel thought of the tiny, immovable sliver of sky that he could see through the window in his room. He searched for a metaphor that would be comprehensible to the Winchesters, that would convey his inutility, without touching on points of which he was unsure.

“You could say my batteries are… drained.”

Silence, for a moment, only breathing. Then, firm and strong, “It’s okay, Cas. We’ll work with it.”

We.

Castiel’s eyes stung. Gratitude. Gratitude without the sour taste of abjection. Gratitude to Sam for provoking the gratitude of strength, not weakness, and human emotions were strange and self-reflective creatures.

“Thank you, Sam.” It came out rougher than he meant.

“You’ve got a phone in your room or something?”

“I believe there is a telephone beside the bed, yes.”

“You need anything before we get there, Cas, anything at all, then you pick that phone up and call, you hear me?” Castiel recognised that tone. It was the one Sam used on Dean, when he had been driving for more than twenty hours without a break. “Even if you just need to complain about that bug bite.”

The shadows shifted, lancing slowly down around him like old clouds, pensive and blue-grey and lumpy. Castiel watched them for a minute, silent, although he could feel the strength of the ritual fading. When his voice was his own to command, he used it to say something he had not expected to say, although it had been heavy in his mouth since he had heard Sam’s voice.

“He didn’t say yes.”

Gentler, with a faint snag of exasperation. Maybe a little affection. “No, Cas. No, he didn’t.”

The muddy brown grass swayed in no particular direction. Sam had insisted on taking Dean to Van Nuys, with pain but no doubt in his eyes.

“You have great faith in him.”

“I do.” Sam cleared his throat, and spoke a bit of a smile, a shadow of awkwardness. “Thought you did too, for a while there.”

“That was not fair to him. He is only a man.” But there was something wrong with that sentiment, something he couldn’t quite tease out. The silence was weighted. He could taste the flickering orange speed of Sam’s thoughts. There were many things he could say, should say. He settled on one, non-committal but laced with heavy velvet-purple regret. “I believe I owe him an apology.”

Sam pushed, gentle but insistent, reaching out to draw him closer, straining the capacity of the shaky connection that the ritual could afford. “How are you doing, man? Really?”

For a moment Castiel could feel him, the warm weight of fingers curling around his shoulder, solid and companionable. Castiel abruptly wished, something in him spilling over that had too many parts to it for him to name. The hand brushed over an aching absence behind his shoulder, just as Sam pushed too far and the dream dissolved into the brittle hues of coral.

 

­---

 

Wanhope. For a few centuries, not so long ago as he had measured time once, wanhope had been a sin more severely looked upon than any of the Seven. It had been the ultimate betrayal of God. A lack of hope, a final failure to believe that He could intervene: could, in his omnipotence, repair the world. Castiel remembered Gabriel’s joy and his delight, long ago, so old and so strong. He remembered the emptiness and the centuries of sorrow in the eyes that his brother had lifted to the artificial rain. He remembered Raphael’s once-gentle hands tearing him apart, and his vessel’s deep voice declaring their father long dead. He even remembered the unquenchable ferocity with which Dean had argued for the world, once. Wanhope was not new to Castiel, only the confession of it in his own mind. Failure and abandonment and doubt had broken his faith to pale dust.

And yet. There was an infinity inside humanity, inside every human. Heaven was strong and bright and simple. Earth, humans’ earth, was messy and full of the strangest impossible details. Castiel could not see beyond the flesh now, but he remembered looking, really looking, and seeing something deep and vast in a way so many of his brothers could never comprehend. Most angels, he knew, saw only the size and power of an angel and compared it to the tiny frame of the human body, not glimpsing the depths his Father had folded invisibly within it. Not the simplest of humans could be predicted in all things. They were and remained a mystery, even to themselves. Despite their unquenchable curiosity about themselves, humans spent so much time never glimpsing anything of the people about them. They had to reach out with words and hands and eyes, awkward and slow and often faulty in their communication. As did Castiel, now. And yet, and yet… every connection made, every moment shared, seemed to mean more for its difficulty, coloured deep and mysterious with the weight of the human soul.

Castiel’s faith was not worth the name anymore, but there was something hot like bronze burning there instead.

 

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