Chapter 4: GraceSong
Near the exit, Dean stopped. He took not another step forward. Nor a step back. He stood there, swaying on his feet, as if hoping momentum alone might carry him through.
“Dean?”
He swayed forward again. Swayed back.
“Man, that exit’s never been so far away.”
Castiel fired off ultra-sopranic, sonar-like sound waves, bounced them off the far wall, and measured. “Same distance as always, Dean.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?”
Dean’s oscillations slowly ground to a halt.
Dean? Castiel couldn’t push the word out. He didn’t, couldn’t move. If he didn’t move, then Dean wouldn’t move, Dean wouldn’t leave—
Dean waded back through the wreckage, clutching his beers tight. A hopeful warmth, a flashflood of golden Grace, poured through Castiel’s heart.
“You forget something, Dean?”
“You. I forgot you. You done talking or—”
Leaving. He was still planning on leaving—a crackle of purple and electric lime splitting the air behind his silhouette—
The golden surge of his Grace stuttered, caught mid course, nowhere to go.
“Dean, Dean—it was supposed to be Anna, meant to grip you tight, raise you from perdition, I wasn’t meant to—we weren’t meant to—and I was wondering, Dean, IwaswonderingDeanifyou—”
“Cas! Slow down! Take a breath!”
Castiel took a breath.
The purple-lime crackle blinked away.
Castiel reeled in the words he’d been about to spout, words tumbling over and over each other in his mind like fish through a torn net—IwaswonderingDeanifyou—
Better to leave the rest unsaid. Better not to hear Dean’s reply. A reply that would—
No. Don’t think of it.
“Sam snug you so tight your brain’s overheating?”
“What? Oh.” Castiel focused inward and scrutinized his vessel’s brainstem thermoreceptors. Then he reached out with his Celestial senses, scanned Dean’s internal systems, and compared. “Approximately the same temperature as yours. A fraction hotter in the alpha sector.”
“Cas, Cas…” A quick smile gloried Dean’s mouth. “Lemme rephrase that—I’m thinking you’re confused.”
“Now I am confused. I’m confused why you think I’m confused.”
“Hang on a sec, gotta get settled.”
Dean slid into his seat. He lowered the warded box and its clinking army of beers onto the table, still managing not to tip any over. He popped one open, swigged. After a moment of savoring the unruly molecules, he tossed his jacket onto the table. Then—likely noticing Castiel’s gaze speeding toward the lair of the mind-savaging runes—he cleared off the bottles and wrapped the box in his jacket, muffling the runes’ Siren-song.
Dean nudged the box aside. “Because Anna couldn’t have”—again, for no obvious reason, he dropped his voice a register and roughened it, as if he’d shot a stream of gravel through it—“‘gripped me tight.’ She ripped out her Grace and got born human—didn’t you know that? Me and Sam didn’t meet her until she was, what, early twenties? She didn’t even remember she used to be an angel, at first.”
In the ether, Castiel’s raggedy wings spasmed—primaries, secondaries, tertials jerking. “Anna told you that? That she ‘got born human’? And you believed her?”
“Why the hell not? And why you giving off vibes like a, a, a upset bird or something?”
Because she was meant to save you. I wasn’t. She not only abandoned the mission, but now I find out she turned around and fed you stories—
“Maybe I shouldn’t say. Maybe it no longer matters.”
“Nah—too late to hit the brakes on your tongue. Tell me.”
Dean swallowed more beer. He turned his attention to the table’s art deco lamp, yanking its chain. On, off, on, off. Only, Castiel’s runic chanting having blown all the room’s bulbs, it stayed unlit.
“Dean, Uriel and I—”
“Uriel.” Dean curled his lips as if to spit. “Ruthless bastard.”
“Exactly. And I believe you would’ve said the same of me. After Anna’s crime, Heaven gave Uriel and me explicit orders: destroy her. Neither of us would’ve ‘sat around twiddling our thumbs’ for twenty years, waiting for her to ‘grow up’ first.”
“But you guys had to. You couldn’t find her. Sure, angels could track me and Sam before you carved up our ribs with Enochian, but that’s because we’re vessels, right? You can’t find any ol’ human, ’less they’re praying to you—”
“Dean, no.”
On, off, on, off, click-clacked the chain.
“‘No,’ what? You can find any ol’ human?”
“Dean—”
“And there you go again with your ‘upset bird’ vibes.”
Damn his flittering wings. Since when could Dean pick up on their “vibes”? How often, how much? He’d never mentioned it before this evening.
“I’ve been trying to tell you, Anna… Never human. A dis-Graced angel. Exactly like me, after Metatron.”
Click, clack, click, cl—
The chain choked mid-clack.
That last, sharp cl scurried up to the rafters, vanished.
Sour expressions, full of biting dissonances, jangled across Dean’s face.
“Exactly like you. Jesus, how the hell did I never put two and two together? Lost her Grace—but no freakin’ Enochian tattoo inked across her skin, keeping her off the radar. Exactly unlike you.”
Which Dean would know. He’d inspected her rib area thoroughly.
Something hot and bile-green and poisonous roiled Castiel’s guts. Even though Anna was long dead. Even though she could claim no hold on Dean now. But the image of her and Dean inspecting each other’s ribs in the back of Dean’s Impala—
Made him want to flick his angel blade from his sleeve.
Hunt her down—wherever the afterlife had taken her.
And—
End her. Twice.
Ludicrous. Pathetic. He shoved the hot, green, poisonous, grinning thing away. Where it grinned at him in mocking triumph.
He clenched his hands beneath the blanket. “Either didn’t think of getting a tattoo, or didn’t have time,” he said, his tone neutral, beige, uninflected—or as near to it as he could manage. “Inexperienced with Earth, with being on the outs with angels.”
“Wait, wait, wait just one damn minute.” Dean’s bottle opener flailed through the air like a maddened signal flag. “Back up. What, exactly, was her deal? Bare bones.”
“Bare…bones?”
“Basic facts, man. Lay ’em on me.”
Castiel searched his memory files, compiling facts, sorting them, stripping them down to a few essentials— “stripping” must be where the “bare” came in. The “bones”? God—or Whoever—only knew.
“Soon after her failed attempt to raise you, Anna substantiated herself in a mature vessel—”
“Yeah, yeah, got that—ripped out her Grace, you and Uriel on the Warpath of Righteousness, blah, blah, smite-fest blah.” More signal-flailing on the blahs. “So, no forgetting she was an angel, neither?”
“I didn’t. Metatron didn’t. No other dis-Graced angel—”
Dean slapped the opener down. “Bare, bare bones: that ‘slip of a girl who eavesdropped on angel radio’ looked me straight in the eye and lied. Used her wispy little voice—” Dean’s voice climbed a register, thinning like the tweets of a chickadee, his hands flitting in the air like a little chickadee’s wings. “‘And you’re Dean? The Dean? It’s really you. Oh my God—’”
He swept up his beer, knocked it back. “Making me think she needed my protection, telling me her Grace had sprouted a damn oak or something— Christ.”
Another beer swept up, knocked back. “Friggin’ angels.”
Friggin’ angels. As if we, unlike humans, are all of a kind.
Castiel said nothing. The colors and shapes of Dean’s thoughts assaulted his mind: bluish-white, pulsing, amoeba-like forms on a background of black. Black predominated.
He sighed, a low moan, like wind murmuring through a fire-blackened home. Under the blanket, he folded his hands in his lap and kept his gaze on them. How much can a “friggin’ angel” truly be a part of your family, Dean?
“But Cas—” Dean tapped the opener on the table in front of him. “Sam’s gonna want to know—what about all that Anna stuff he found out on the internet? Like that meteor vanishing from the night sky nine months before her birth, right where she was born?”
“A meteor, as in a falling angel?” Castiel swallowed hard. In vain, he tried to hold at bay the vision of the meteor shower of Falling Angels. The result of Metatron’s spell. The result of the Scribe of Heaven duping him, manipulating his desire for his Heavenly family to reconcile against him. “Clever of her.”
“Yeah, friggin’ ingenious. Whaddya talking about?”
“Her role. In combat. She served Heaven as its finest strategist—and apparently, she applied her skills to you. Used to her advantage both Sam’s ‘computer nerdiness’ and your compassion—”
His fingers confined by the blanket, Castiel made the air quotes in his mind; despite the topic, their Celestial Light sparkled and danced around him, gliding giddily in glissandos, pirouetting witlessly on ultra-sopranic trills, perhaps buoyed by Dean’s coming back to talk with him.
“—to exploit circumstantial evidence: random meteor twenty-some years ago, reinterpreted as her falling, ‘proof’ she got born human. With facts and fabrications, she spun her ‘cover story’ airtight.”
Dean’s sea-green eyes all but frothed. “Wow. Just wow. Master conniver playing like she’s a victim of you big bads—while playing both Sam and me.” He yanked the lamp chain so hard it snapped.
Castiel’s breath stalled in his throat. “Y-you did ask to know.”
“Yeah, no, it’s fine, years and years ago. Rather hear the truth than pretty lies.”
Dean swung his feet up, plunked his boots beside the beers. Bottles wobbled and chinked. He guzzled more beer. Scowled at the label—as if he might force it to confess. “But why would she lie to me— Us? Why not just come out and say?”
Because of your ill will toward angels—all angels—at the time?
“I don’t know. I imagine you want me to guess.”
Dean tapped his beer to his forehead, swung it out, a jokey salute. But his lips pressed tight to his teeth—as if they held in curses. “Guess away.”
Did Dean really want his guesses? Castiel squinted, trying to see. But as with Sam, squinting didn’t help.
“Go on, Cas. Give it to me straight—I’m a big boy. And no sugarcoating! Not that you could.”
“Maybe, as you said, to gain your sympathy, so you would aid her. Or maybe—”
Abruptly, one of the room’s emergency lights flickered off. Then on. And as if that signaled a new circuit firing in his brain, a quite different explanation jiggled loose. Perhaps Anna’s act hadn’t been pure manipulation. Perhaps—
“Dean—” He snapped upright. Perhaps they weren’t all friggin’ angels, after all. “Maybe to spare you, so you wouldn’t feel responsible for her choice.”
“Yeah?” Dean threw him a brief, crooked smile. “Really? Yeah, probably. She was kinda into me. What can I say? All the ladies are.”
All the ladies are. For an instant, all the colors of the room, awash in the emergency lights, tolled in dull, dark tones, like carillon bells that’d fallen into the depths of an ocean and drowned.
Not a lady, Dean. A genderless angel. In a female vessel. One sugary enough for you, evidently.
Dean rocked his chair back on two legs and lifted his gaze. Watching a memory unfold on the ceiling?
His fingers curled. His belly and thighs tensed. Castiel’s Celestial senses registered the sudden flush of warmth spreading from Dean’s groin outward—and Castiel squeezed his hands tight tight tight and forced his focus down into the ache in his arms. Deeper into the pain. Deeper into the flesh. Anywhere but the flush of warmth—
Made him want to stab his angel blade into the memory. Kill it dead.
Dean dropped his chair’s front legs to the floor with a thud. “Wait. Why would I feel responsible? And how was it you—” Dean paused. He tilted his head and made his voice a low growly thing. “Did the ‘grippin’ and raisin’’?”
“I’ve never understood why— Are you trying to impersonate me? You’d deceive no one. I, however, can mimic any human’s voice perfectly. It’s all in the harmonics.” Castiel demonstrated: he slid down into a Dean Slouch—the better to access the proper frequencies—and repeated Dean’s “grippin’ and raisin’” in Dean’s fake-Castiel voice. Pitch-perfect.
“Hell. You better not be still pulling that crap.”
“I pull that crap when necessary. And what happened was, a swarm of demons cut her off from you. Cut us all off from you. The demons were slaughtering us—”
“How?” Dean took a poke at the jacket-wrapped box, the raging Lance blade rattling around inside. “Angel blades hadn’t fallen to earth yet, for demonic riffraff to snap up.”
“Some of them had—lost in battles over the ages. And there’ve always been other ways to harm us: Attacks by Princes of Hell, who can smite any angel but an archangel. Enochian chants to incapacitate us. Sigils to depower us, sigils to imprison us—”
Dean held up his hand and wiggled his fingers. “Let me count the ways, huh?”
A little thrill of surprise riffled Castiel’s feathers.
“You—You know the poem?”
“There’s a poem about demonic weapons?”
“Oh. Um, no. About—” His feathers sank back down. “Never mind.”
I love you, Castiel had told him in the barn.
Depth and breadth and height—that was it, exactly. The dimensions of his Grace, the span of his wings, the reach of his love for Dean.
Browning’s poem—as beautiful as the finest Neanderthal poetry.
“Plus, demons simply outnumber angels, Dean. Why do you think it took us forty Hell years to save you?”
Dean jabbed his beer bottle’s mouth toward Castiel. “You. You saved. Not the others. Not Anna.”
“Anna got close—her wings brushed your soul.”
Dean’s soul: a radiant spiral of crimson flowing into flame-red, flame-red igniting into sun-white at its core—his courage and passion blazing.
Yes, that dazzling soul. He and Anna had been privileged to touch it. “I believe that’s why she rebelled afterwards. You gave her a taste of freedom unknown to angels—and she wanted more.”
Dean’s blood swish-whooshed through his heart in increased tempo. He swept up another beer, gulped it down. Then another.
“Dean?”
Dean’s hand clamped around his bottle, knuckles white.
“Dean ?”
Charcoal gray tones churned around Dean—so thick they formed a room with no doors.
“Dean! What’s wrong?”
Dean cocked his arm and hurled the bottle at a concrete column scarcely five feet away. The bottle burst, its knife-sharp shards, glinting ruby in the emergency lights, clawing for their throats—
And falling short, barely. Glass fragments rattled onto the table, screaming wild yellow. Deep brown liquid bellowed down the column, puddling on the floor.
Castiel surged to his feet: to murmur an Enochian blessing and calm the lubdub of Dean’s heart, to take away the upset from his mind, to, to—to something—
“You’re saying I put the death sentence on her head!”
Castiel thumped back down. “What ? No! Heaven decreed—”
“’Course I did,” Dean said, his voice as sharp as the shards. “Just another anti-angel weapon, me—like some freakin’ angel’s backdraft! You, she—you both!—kick open the door to Hell to save me, and your whole damn lives explode. She brushes my friggin’ soul, and—boom!—rips out her Grace, earns herself top spot on Heaven’s kill list. How long between the brushing and rebelling, Cas? Hours? Days?”
Minutes. Only minutes. Just enough time to lead the angels under her command back to Heaven.
He did not say this. But Dean must’ve somehow read it in the tension vibrating in the room—
The tension vibrating between them. A high-pitched, murky maroon string-shape, stretching between their solar plexuses, wire-taut; a conduit of memory, whisking them back to that other time, that other place—the Hell-battle for Dean's soul.
“Jesus. And you—look at you !—shaking, haunted by some crazy-ass Lance that nearly killed you— Dammit-to-hell, fuck!” Dean slammed his fists on the table. “Fuck.”
“Dean, don’t—”
Dean’s glare crashed into him, knocked him back in his chair harder than any fist. “You should’ve stayed the good little soldier, never got tangled up with me—saved yourself a helluva lot of hurt.”
“Don’t. You mustn’t think—”
Castiel shook free of the blanket—no angel straitjacket, it. He reached toward Dean.
Dean twisted in his seat, dodging him. “What’re you—?”
“Allow me.” And Castiel let electrostatic crackles of his True Voice thread through his vessel’s larynx, shaping his words into something more than an ask but shy of a command.
He inched his hands toward Dean’s trembling fist—for Dean might spook, the most nervous of colts. Dean jerked, an impulse to pull away—but Castiel scooted forward and cradled Dean’s hand in both his own.
Dean, Dean, please, allow me.
Castiel closed his eyes. He exhaled long and deep, and everything slowed within him. No breath. No heartbeat. No sense of his body’s weight—and yet neither was he weightless, as if he were hanging suspended in Existence. He guided his Grace inward, gathering it like light into a prism.
Not to overpower. Not to control. Only to share. To soothe. To show.
And then…
From his Heart Center, he sent forth a Wave of Grace, and a healing blue-cool glow wrapped around their joined hands, as gentle as the dawning light of day. He urged the Wave into every particle of their physical selves: coursing down to their toes; rushing up to the top of their skulls; swirling round and round their hearts. And then urging it deeper: mingling with their nerves and muscles; merging with their atoms and spirit matter; melding with their minds and memories. Shimmering in them like morning dew lit by stars. And into that Graceful Wave, he wove the Song of his Wings. A Holy Song, still, if only the original’s shadow, its mellifluous tones ringing out pure and pristine, joyful and bell-like, over their entire range, from infra-bass to ultra-soprano.
The sweet Song of Grace surged over their All like an iridescent flood of precious jewels…
And together, he and Dean dissolved into Light. A river of Light. A river of Song. A river of Bliss. Light Song Bliss…Oneness…
Too much! Too much for me! Dean’s mind cried out. I’m not built for this—I’m not built for you—
But at that moment, the Song soared: Castiel’s tattered wings, borne aloft by the wondrous, willing essence of Dean’s soul, spread wide wide exuberantly wide, wider than ever before, singing out in ultra-sopranic tones of coral-and-lavender ecstasy—tones unattainable since the angels’ Fall; tones purer than any hymn sung by Heaven’s Sacred Choir; tones transformed by a human soul freely intermingling with Angel Grace.
And with those glorious and long-held notes, Time itself dissolved. Time itself melted into luminescent GraceSong—hours blurring into seconds, seconds blurring into forever, forever flowing into nothing, nothing giving rise to everything…and everything streaming through the soft and round harmonic tones of the Holy…
Castiel held on to the edge of awareness, and after a Timeless Time, he let go Dean’s hand. Dean didn’t move. Dean didn’t breathe. Dean’s eyes stayed closed, a glow of blue—a sliver of angel-light—lingering behind his lids. His frown smoothed away into a smile of rapt delight, as if he were still absorbing Song.
Wasn’t that as good—better, even—than the connections Dean formed with humans?
Dean stayed motionless for another heartbeat…
Two…
Three…
“Dean?” Castiel whispered, his voice soft, as soft as the last coral-and-lavender tone of their blended Song.
Dean’s eyes flew open, the blue glow blazing, intensifying—
And guttering out, like the last flare of a match.
He yanked his hand to his chest. “A little touchy-feely, there.”
Castiel flinched. In the ether, flight feathers dropped from his wings. Pain slashed through his heart, sharper than a thousand angel blades thrusting into him all at once.
His Grace, only moments ago as vast as boundless space, shrank—smaller and dimmer than a dust mote caught in moonlight.
“I…I’m sorry. I, I wanted to—”
“Wanted to what ?” Dean snatched up another beer, patted his pockets, peered around the table. “Trip the light fantastic, angel-style, on wings of bliss? Dammit, I lost my opener.”
His opener. To crack open a beer. After Castiel had cracked open his Self and the universe for him. How could he have imagined that the experience would bring Dean joy—and not yet another opportunity for a biting joke? How could it happen that Dean’s soul would willingly soar with his Grace, but his mind would reject him?
“Nothing, Dean. Only, please, don’t ever think of yourself as a backdraft. Angels the likes of a Hester would say that, yes. But you know that’s not how I see it. I told you tonight: knowing you has been the best part of my life.”
Castiel leaned forward, closed the distance between them. Waited—letting three more of Dean’s heartbeats pass. “I meant it.”
I love you, he’d said. He’d meant it.
Dean pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “Not drunk enough for your ‘you’ tonight.”
Castiel brushed the bottle shards off the table with a sweep of his hand. With twists of his wrist, he telekinetically popped open five more beers and pushed them toward Dean.
Dean drank. Said nothing.
The final coral-and-lavender note lingered in the air, wrapping itself around them. No longer perceptible to Dean. Castiel folded his wings, and the note turned to mist, drifting away into the ether.
He said nothing back.