✝ AND IT WAS GOOD [drabble]

[trenchcoatedly]

After everything is said and done, and all his proper goodbyes are said, and his friends are spoken to, and the greenhouse key is on his dresser drawer where it will likely become property of the Admiral once more, he leaves.

He stands on the far front of the deck, where there’s almost no room for his two feet. He stares into the multiverse and sighs. Home is calling. This place is good. There are promises to be fulfilled.

He spreads his wings from this vessel one last time.

The family is still in the house, which is now thoroughly demon-barricaded. He can sense the runes carved into the doors from outside of it. A smile quirks at the corner of his lips. Humans are brilliant creatures. He knocks.

Jimmy’s wife, Amelia, stares at him. He knows that gaze - aching loss and love. She thinks he’s gone already.

A few seconds later, that loss disappears. Her expression tightens. Confusion. Fear.

“It’s you,” she says, and she takes a step back inside the house.

“Yes.” He nods.

“What do you want?” She asks, “Claire’s at school, I---”

“I don’t want her,” he answers, because he remembers what that vessel felt like. He can hear Stildyne’s words in his head, sharply disapproving. He never knew that she was a child. “I’m here to give you your husband back. I’m going back to heaven.”

Her knees start to shake, and he holds out a hand. She doesn’t take it. She leans on the door instead, staring at him with confusion.

He could explain everything - about the barge, and Stildyne, and that Dean, who didn’t yet know the horrors to come, and hated him so because everything was his fault - and then about his terrible traumas he’d brought to this skin, the Leviathans and souls of purgatory and death and torture by the hands of heaven - but instead he stays silent. She has something to say, but her emotions are making it difficult to speak. So he waits.

She tries, a few times.

“I thought you needed----”

“But, what about the demons---”

“Don’t you need him to---”

She doesn’t really understand, of course. He doesn’t explain.

“I’ve done enough with this vessel,” he says, simply. He doesn’t know if he could go over everything again, all the triumphs and the endless, seemingly impossible list of failures. Just thinking about it wears him down in an entirely strange way - exhausting. He’s never been tired. Thinking of his failures makes it impossible to think anymore. And this poor woman, collateral damage in his whirlpool of destruction, how could she ever understand?

“However,” he continues, pushing through his thoughts, “the process to extricate myself from it is somewhat difficult. When I’ve completed it, he will be unconscious. It’s important for you to bring him somewhere safe while his soul recovers. Afterwards he should show no ill affects, besides perhaps a hunch for knowing possession when he sees it.”

She nods, quietly. Overwhelmed. Wanting so desperately to believe.

“With this in mind, I’d like to do the ritual in your backyard.”

He walks to the backyard. He won’t ever walk again. The sensation is so strange and fascinating - all the interlinking muscles, tightening and loosening in synch, the sensation of the ground under his foot, the feeling of this body’s weight shifting. A perfect machine. God’s gift. What an amazing thing.

He looks over to the house, where she watches from a second story window. Then he steels himself. He leaves the trenchcoat and jacket to the side and rolls up the sleeves of the shirt. He draws the vessel’s blood and makes cuffs of it on his wrists and ankles, then smears more on his ears, eyelids, nose and lips. Then he smears the sigil into the asphalt patio, lines and symbols within it. No one has used this spell in a long time, he thinks.

No one ever thought they could get their vessel back now that the vessel knew how horrible his or her fate would be. And that’s why humans and angels were made this way. Because angels need bodies - and ignorant bodies do just as well.

He steps to the center of the sigil and kneels there. He takes a breath to steady himself, and draws his weapon. Then he begins to chant in Lain.

Oh Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who Created us and gave us might, grant this holy man back his body and his spirit, for his time as Your humble servant has closed.

Allow him back his heart to beat and feel time as one of Your Most Loved, and make his steps free to rejoice in Your honor and almighty grace, and give him his own thoughts, so that he may rejoice in Your name as he desires, that his valor in war has been rewarded.

And more, as he grips the blade. The lines of the sigil begin to pulse, and he can feel it pulling at him, responding to the magic. His fingers shake, and light begins to spill out from under his fingernails. He bends his head, as if to be executed, and brings his weapon as if to run himself through.

Permit him, after giving You the ultimate sacrifice of his body to serve for your purposes and Your servants, the almighty angels of the heavenly host, to rejoice in Your greatest gift of free will. Be it so that his contract be undone, that his permission be required again. Be it so that he may live the life of joy and wonder that Your Greatest are permitted to have. And be it so that his guardian the angel be thrust back to heaven, to serve Above and for eternity.

Amen.

He thrusts his own blade through his heart and can feel where it’s punctured his back, sticking out the other end.

The pain makes it impossible to comprehend existence. It’s not like being banished - oh, that was a slap on the wrist compared to this, because all that felt like was being pushed around compared to this, not like actual violence. Or even being dragged back from his vessel from punishment, because the contract was in place, and the vessel was primed for him, like coming out the same way he’d came in. But not this. This was reaching into every immortal bit of him, every fraction and wavelength of light in which had been in Jimmy, and ripping them all out. He could have been disciplined a hundred times- a thousand times - every day until forever - and it would never match up to this. The siege of hell, where they had been attacked from every angle, and there had been teeth and blades all through him, would be like a summer rainstorm in comparison to this.

And just as suddenly as it came, it was over.

Heaven was gentle and soft, and the world below was aglow with the light of souls, and he could sense Jimmy’s, slightly battered but in one piece, beginning the healing process. And Amelia’s, dragging his body into the house and weeping. And Claire, in school, wondering with all her curiosity.

And Dean and Sam, in Missouri, hunting a werewolf.

And seven billion others, glowing upon the planet. A thought and he was in a different place, and from there he watched, and felt at home.

*


Jimmy Novak woke up.

Most people did not treat waking up as some sort of massive shock. Of course, most people had not spent the greater part of the last several years being unconscious and more or less repeatedly beaten by an angel.

So waking up was a big deal.

He had hands and feet and a glass of water on his bedside table along with a letter sealed with what must have been old-fashioned wax.

He was in his bed. His bed, in Pontiac. In his house.

With trembling fingers and the low, nauseating sensation of foreboding horror in his stomach, he broke the seal on the letter. A piece of paper fluttered to the floor, but he hardly noticed it.

Dear Jimmy:

I imagine you must be confused, though you shouldn’t be hungry. I’ve remembered to eat. There are many different foods to eat and I rather enjoyed some of them, especially ‘pecan pie’ and ‘blueberries.’

I’ve left. For good, hopefully. In essence, I completed a ritual which severed our deal. If I ever need to return - and I sincerely hope that is never - you will have to consent again. It would surprise me very much if you were to do so without very stringent conditions. I would not be offended.

I’m sorry for everything I brought upon you. For your family’s trauma, and your own. For being away for so long. For being shot and stabbed and pressed in on in all directions by other souls and leviathans, which likely tried to eat you and failed. For being injured in ways you didn’t think possible. For everything I could have done right by you and didn’t, because I was blind and filled with my own hubris. It’s fine for you to not accept this apology, because I find it likely that I wouldn’t. But please know that it exists, and there are no ways for me to express my sorrows at what I’ve done to you.

And thank you, for your faith that I didn’t deserve. Thank you for believing in me, for standing up for me, for trusting me. In all my victories and catastrophes, you have been my one constant. Please know that if there is anything I can do for you, you need only call my name and I will be there.

I will always protect your family, and your children, and your children’s children, until your bloodline can no longer be identified. They will never be harmed.

In this letter is something I believe could help you. It is lottery ticket from four weeks in the future, and matches exactly the numbers that will be called. It is the least I can give you for everything you gave me.

Thank you, and I’m sorry.
Castiel

Jimmy closes the letter and picks back up the slip of paper on the floor. It’s a lottery ticket all right, dated from three weeks from today. He smiles a little and puts it next to the letter.

Then he hears a soft gasp and looks up.

“I’m really back,” he whispers to Amelia, standing on wobbly legs and embracing her. Her skin is warm in his touch. She feels like his wife.

“I love you,” Amelia whispers, and her voice is shaking. Then, the feeling of warm tears on his skin.

“I love you too,” he replies, kissing her gently. “Can we pick up where we left off?”

She stares at him, and for a while he can’t identify the feeling in his chest. It’s been a long time since he had feelings, since he was able to identify them. But his hands are his and his alone, and that gaze is for him and no one else.

And above them, if an angel had lips, he’d smile.