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Sam had always put his interests and research fetishes up front and center. The laptop was constantly open, and splayed across it was mythology, lore, legends and folktales, not only about the things that go bump in the night, but about things they had never encountered. For the past few years, it had been Angels—Not their powers or abilities, because that was something they had learned firsthand. They knew about an Angel’s blade, about their speed, agility, raw destructive power. They had learned that Angels were not draped in kindness and forgiveness, they weren’t sweet or friendly.
Angels were warriors of God. A warrior was exactly that; a being placed into the line of fire, which had been trained, or made from scratch, to protect and carry out their fathers will. There was nothing sweet about their job, or about their dealings with humans. Uriel, Raphael, Zachariah—They had all been huge assholes, nothing remotely close to what the legends on Sam’s computer screen or books had put into words or portraits.
But while Sam was always by the book, Dean had interests of his own. Most of which were stupid in his mind, so he didn’t really take the time to confess them out loud. After all, Sam was the brains, he was the brawn, and that was the arrangement. It was a fantastic arrangement, because it meant less sitting in front of boring texts reading, and more time drinking beer and shooting things.
No, research and book learning weren’t Dean’s thing. But that didn’t mean that there were questions he had. Questions about the Angels that watched over him as a child, ones that he clearly remembered, perhaps in a feverish dream, or something he had made up to survive each day of growing up. Those were times before he shut the idea out completely, as he had once told Castiel, ‘There ain’t no frickin’ thing as Angels.’
That was before the Angels had sprung up all around them, grasping tight on the strings of fate. That was what Angels followed anyway, a large plan. The all-encompassing plan, because they weren’t fortunate—or unfortunate—enough to have free will.
The question was: Did those types of Angels exist? The pictures in each Bible he had seen, hanging on the walls of people’s homes to invite them in, the mosaics in churches and cathedrals. The statues in graveyards, of Angels draped in silk, weeping over one fallen member of the mass of mankind. Cherubs, flying around the heads of nobles and brandishing tiny horns and Archangels with six or eight wings.
Where were those Angels? Simply manmade? Dean didn’t know anyone that creative, and either way, he found himself wishing constantly that Angels were that way. If they were kind and soft and gentle like the paintings made them out to be, he would have had his ass kicked a few less times, and they wouldn’t be in this living hell now.
He had the time to ponder on this idea, because currently, Castiel was passed out beside him. After the initial shock of everything that had happened, finding them at the bunker, having been bathed and helped into bed by Dean, only to be kissed out of his mind—well, that was Dean’s claim to fame, moreso than hunting, being a good lover—but damn, he didn’t realize that his make-out power could knock someone out.
No, Dean, he told himself. The damn Angel just fell. The fact that he passed out makes pretty damn perfect sense. And the word ‘fell’, even in his mind, was too much. In the darkness of the room, it hit him. The warm body beside him was Castiel, asleep, silent, except for his soft breathing, an Angel who had been with him since the very beginning, now so very different. The Angel who had walked into his life through an explosion of sparks, who had saved his and Sam’s ass about a thousand times—only to become the cause of all problems in the Leviathan issue. But Dean didn’t hold a grudge—Not if Sam didn’t, and Sam had forgiven. Forgiving an Angel kind of seemed like a no brainer, somehow. He had meant well, in some fucked up way.
He had told Cas that nothing would ever change him to Dean, and that much was true—He was still about as much fun as a phonebook, still had no idea about human customs, would look at him with the tilt of the head like a stray puppy. It was still Cas.
But did Cas still feel like Cas?
Uriel had told him once that humans were nothing more than worms, crawling on God’s beautiful green Earth. (Asshole.) Dean thought, on the drive back to the bunker, in the pained silence with Sam crawling in the backseat;
If he were suddenly turned into a worm, would he still want to live? If he were torn away from his life, family, all he knew, to become something so inconsequential, tiny, would life feel worth living?
His mind had drifted to ‘No beer, no sex, no hot chicks’ pretty fast, but it was a serious issue, he realized. His thoughts had drifted to Castiel, and where he was, if he was alive, or if the Angels had killed him for what he had done upstairs.
It had been hard to see the road. Either he was dead and gone, or he was somewhere on the planet, anywhere, probably human, wings burned and flayed. Sam dying in the backseat, the Earth changed forever.
The Apocalypse might have been better than this. He wondered to himself, if he had said yes to Michael, would this have ever come to pass? Were they responsible for every damn angel falling from Heaven?
No, no. No time to think about how many levels of fucked up that would be now. He would take one step at a time, like Cas would have to do. He had been a shitty friend in about every way, but this was the time to change things—while everything else would change with him.
He looked beside him, at the head sharing his pillow. There was enough room in the bed for two people, but Cas had fallen asleep a little close, his body laid awkwardly on the bed, on his back, dim light from the lamp reflecting off of his pale face. Dean sighed when he looked at the clock, seeing 4:33 in bright red, realizing no sleep was going to come for him tonight—though, he hadn’t slept well since they had gotten back.
Something about knowing that the entire balance of the universe had been fucked up really put a hold on his beauty sleep.
Sighing, he sat up, stretching out his sore muscles. The days ahead were crucial, he knew that—but he didn’t know what to do. Where to start. This was too big, too much, on the scale of the Apocalypse, maybe bigger.
Could things be set right?
He moved as quietly as he could to set his feet on the floor, feeling strangely restless. The kiss still felt heavy on his lips, and the taste of Castiels’ skin was still on his tongue. He couldn’t say he regretted it, nothing like that—And he knew that Sam had been teasing him about their prolonged stares before, and if he were to come right out and say ‘I love Cas’, things would continue on as normal. Sam was the open minded college brainy type. It wouldn’t be an issue.
The times were too uncertain for him to put it off any longer, for fear of looking bad. Honestly, now, who would give a fuck? There were too many things happening, too much to be afraid of, being honest with himself seemed a pretty good place to start making sense of things.
As Castiel had been sleeping, he had thought about his intent. He had kissed Castiel on the neck, eliciting sounds he wasn’t sure the Angel was capable of making—human sounds, not deep in his throat, but shallow, shocked gasps that he would laugh at, if in a different situation. So different from the normal, deep, brooding Cas he was so used to.
He wanted to lay him down, and teach him about being human. He would, once things were safe. Once Cas was okay. Because now, he sure as hell wasn’t—and if Dean was going to do this whole thing, he was going to do it right.
Standing up, trying not to shake the bed, he walked over to the desk, where he had been doing his best to be studious. There was a notebook open, with nothing written in it, because hell, Dean wasn’t really the note taking type. He had been distracted, thinking about—
Wait. There was writing. Writing he couldn’t understand.
It was one line, at the very top of the lined paper, where a person would usually write a title. The room was too dark for him to really make out much, but he could tell that it wasn’t English. The symbols looked vaguely familiar, something that he had written before.
Enochian. He knew it by now. Not it’s meaning, but the shape and curve of the symbols were more familiar to him than he realized.
He didn’t want to wake Castiel. Either way, could he even read Enochian now? Or, had the letters disappeared from his mind forever? Were his memories wiped away, of his brothers, of his life in Heaven?
Dean hoped so, for his sake. Who would want to remember a paradise you may never be able to return to? Why would a worm bother dreaming about becoming human—and why would a fallen angel get his hopes up, to be able to return to Heaven?
He reached out to turn up the brightness, just a bit, so he could try to find any other markings on the page. In his boxers, the room felt too cold, and somehow he felt too exposed. It felt a little like an angel would show up any moment, and once again make his life a living hell. Shove an Angel sword through his back, for harboring Heaven Criminal Number One.
Bring ‘em on, he thought. Cas was staying here.
Brushing his fingers over the page, he tried to see if the ink would smudge. It looked dark and wet, as though written with paint, but nothing came off onto his fingers. Though, running his fingers over the page seemed to be the perfect password, because moments after, more writing appeared, as though the ink was coming from the pages beneath.
Zona donatur a militia, te dictarem puritatem, pro vobis in possessionem sepulchri integumento.
Dean stared at the words in irritation, wanting to say outloud ‘Sam speaks Latin, not me. I just recite it in case of emergency.’
He didn’t have to wait. The words popped up a third time, in English, the calligraphy looking like something out of an ancient text, cursive letters curling around with purpose.
The sash gifted by the host, dictating your purity, for you a burial shroud.
Dean read the sentence over a dozen times, trying to understand. Sash? He didn’t have one, Cas didn’t have one—No one around wore a sash. Could it stand for something else? He tried to think, tired brain fumbling over several dead-end ideas.
There was a noise behind him, a small gasp, making him think of the passionate moment earlier.
Turning to look at Cas, placing the source of the noise, his eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. Cas was sitting straight up in the bed, looking down at something in his hands. The room had become infinitely brighter—but it wasn’t the lightbulb emitting it.
In his hands, Castiel held some kind of cloth. Dean walked away from the notebook, returning to the bed and sitting on the edge, hesitant. The look on Castiels face was horrifying, but the thing in his hands was anything but. It wasn’t anything Dean had seen before—he didn’t normally get all wide eyed and slack jawed from fabric.
It looked as though if he reached out and touched it, it would ripple, like when a rock falls into a still pond. It was a mix of silver, gold, some kind of shimmering fiber that he couldn’t really place. And it was glowing. There were designs on the outer edge, things that didn’t look Enochian, but maybe another language. It was a long piece of material, falling over Cas’s side of the bed, and onto the floor towards the door.
Dean wanted to reach out and touch it. He raised his hand to do so, but stopped when Cas pulled the cloth to his chest, his head bowed, silent.
That was when he noticed that there was something off about the cloth. There was a tear, a ragged, unclean tear, close to where Cas’s hands held it. It looked not as though as it was cut, but as though someone gripped it and pulled, harsh and dirty. Dean felt for some reason pissed—He wondered who would do something like that to something as otherworldly and beautiful as this.
It struck him. ‘A sash.’ That was what it was. He could imagine it gilding the shoulder of someone important, of someone…Holy.
Standing quickly, he looked at the notebook one more time, trying to see if he had missed something important. Why was this suddenly here, and what did it mean?
He was exhausted.
And there it was, at the very bottom of the page. A signature.
The Voice
Dean stopped, his blood pressure about to explode through the roof. Metatron. The Voice could only mean him. He heard a soft voice behind him, a voice that sounded so far away, so out of contact, he physically winced.
“Mine. This is mine. He has returned it to me. There is no use for it now.”
Dean turned, walking back to the bed, running a hand through his bed matted hair. “Cas…What is this? It’s…well, it’s damn beautiful.” That was the only word to describe it. Even with the tear.
And that was what Cas reached for, when he slowly let his grip release. Dean noticed that his arms were shaking when he let it drop, and saw his fingers trembling as Castiel slowly stroked the tear. His voice was deep, but wavered, and the reverence in his voice weighed heavy with remnants of guilt and longing.
“My sash. Given to me when I was created, by our Father. Created alongside me, to adorn me. Each Angel has a sash, handmade by our maker.” Dean looked up quickly, and it was quickly enough to see the emotion in Castiels eyes, blue and glistening as he stared at the brightly glowing object. “Sacred…Never to be touched by another.”
And Dean understood. Understood why Castiel didn’t want him to touch it, and understood why it being ripped was a big deal. Suddenly, he wanted to strangle Metatron even more—and that was a pretty impressive feat, that his bloodlust for the piece of shit angel had increased even still.
“Cas, I…” He was at a loss. He didn’t understand the custom, didn’t understand the implication. But what was written in the notebook, about it becoming a burial shroud, Dean needed to reach out.
But he got no chance. Castiel was suddenly speaking, but it wasn’t anything Dean could understand, fevered Enochian, holding the sash in his hands, somehow gently, as if afraid that squeezing the fabric too tight would cause it to disappear in his hands.
Suddenly, Dean pictured Castiel adorned in the sash, as he had said—Glowing against his pale skin, otherworldly presence growing, an image of the Angel naked, save for this one piece of holy cloth, made him want to put his hands together to pray.
The chanting stopped, and blue eyes closed slowly. “Dean, I…” He stopped, and it was awkward, as though he was afraid to cry, or as if crying wouldn’t be enough to exorcise this pain. Some line had been crossed, Dean knew. He wanted to fix things, but didn’t know how.
“It was Metatron. He sent us a message.”
Castiel looked up, locking on to his forest green gaze, making it hard to Dean to break the line of sight. He stood, and picked up the notebook, showing it to Castiel, watching as his eyes moved across the page.
When the Angel looked up at him, it was as though a small child were begging not to be hit. This was a broken sight before him, a sacred being grasping at his holy relic, something physical from the life he could no longer return to.
It was cruel.
Too cruel.
Putting the notebook down, Dean returned to the bed, sliding beneath the covers, and staying to his side. He was careful not to touch the fabric, but kept his gaze on it, as it was harder to look away by the second.
It was as if he were seeing Castiels grace, in a way he could process it. Dangerous, beautiful, too many things for his human mind to be able to process and understand.
A miracle.
“ If you touch this, you will be touching a part of me.” His voice was low, and it seemed for a moment that he had read Deans thoughts. But he knew that to be impossible now.
“How so?”
“If you touch it, you may see things. Things humans aren’t supposed to see. Things from Heaven.” The answer was typical cryptic Cas, but Dean understood. It was a private matter, it was a personal effect, a gift that he shouldn’t take without asking. He still wanted to touch it, knowing that it could mess his mind up even more. He remembered seeing the Hellhounds, and the true forms of Demons—But seeing Angels, or anything from Heaven, without burning his eyes out? That would be a welcome change.
“I have to admit, I am curious. It’s a human thing, you know.” Dean tried to lighten the mood, but knew he was failing. “This is…a piece of you. I feel lucky, getting to see it.”
Castiel almost looked angry, the very idea that Dean was at all happy about this making his blood boil. The sash shouldn’t be on Earth, and the tear was like a tear in his own soul, his own being. The sacred sash, one he had had since his creation, millions of years ago.
He would not allow himself to hide from the one giving him shelter and warmth. He feared what would happen, were another to touch the soft fabric. Something not meant for rough, human hands.
Lifting the fabric with his hand, he leaned down, placing a kiss on Deans forehead, soft and resilient. As he did so, he touched the sash to the hunter’s cheek, surrounding him in warmth, and opening up a portal that would certainly bring even more change.
“This is a gift to you. I cannot have Heaven now, cannot feel the warmth of the Host, my brothers or sisters. I can only feel the cold, the chill of this planet. But you may see, Dean. See the other side. Broaden your mind, and do not squander this gift.” The words were quiet, and sounded reverent, as though Dean were getting some kind of award, some kind of special treatment. And he was, he realized.
His vision cleared, and as he looked at Castiel, he felt his skin tingle, and his heart begin to beat too quickly.
This was the shadow of an Angel.