Fic: Command us all to fall (Supernatural, gen)

[maharetr]

Title: Command us all to fall
Author: maharetr
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13 (brief descriptions of injuries and violence)
Wordcount: 2,500
Notes: written for liliaeth's apocalyptothon prompt: "Castiel sits alone in a synagogue in New York, while the battle rages between Lucifer and Michael, destroying half the world. There's a range of children with him in the building and Cas has to do anything in his power to keep the humans around him safe." This is AU from about mid-season 5.
Disclaimer: Non mei, commodo operor non educo
Summary:
The girl stares up at him. “Are you a policeman?”
“No.”
“Are you a good guy?”
Castiel thinks that over.
"I am here to protect you," he says.


~*~

“Castiel!”

The voice carries through the heavy doors, muffled, but so much like Dean that Castiel pauses in opening the wards just to hear him sing out again. “Castiel!”

He opens the door. The world outside the synagogue is surprisingly intact; Castiel can make out the shapes of other buildings through the smoke. The figure on the steps has his back to Castiel, hands thrust in the pockets of his leather jacket, and for a moment, hope leaps in Castiel’s chest. Then the other man turns around.

“You called?” Michael asks. Dean’s right eye is gone, nothing but a dark, bloody hole. His ear is a mangled pulp. Castiel fixes his gaze cowardly on the empty socket, because staring at the empty socket is far more preferable than the possibility of seeing something of Dean trapped in the other eye.

Castiel had hoped that Dean was still in there somewhere; that he would have been able to help impress the importance of such a tiny, human task on Michael. Now, staring at the ruin of Michael’s vessel on the temple threshold, he prays that Dean is no longer aware.

“We need supplies,” Castiel says as steadily as he can.

“Who is we?” Michael echoes, arching an eyebrow in a way that is utterly unlike Dean. “Are you still including yourself among our number, brother? We don’t need supplies.”

Castiel does not rise to the bait. “Blankets,” he says steadily. “Food, medicine.”

“You could come back, you know,” Michael says, and this time it does sound like Dean; the same low, confiding tone that Dean had used to say: “you don’t have to follow their rules, Cas, fuck ’em.”

“No,” Castiel says, staring at the ruin of the body in front of him. “I won’t come back.”

Michael looks regretful, almost. “You have rejected Our Lord,” he intones, the same words he’d recited when Castiel had turned his back the first time. “No mercy will --.”

“He rejected his creations,” Castiel spits, shaking with it, fighting to keep his voice low. “He’s prepared to destroy this world to – to prove a point!”

“And what are you doing?” Michael retorts. “Hiding in there with mudmonkey spawn?”

“They are children. They have no place in this fight.”

Michael leans back, too slow and disdainful to be called recoiling. He curls his lip.

“You shall die with them, then, if that is your wish.”

Castiel does not slam the door. He closes it as calmly as he can manage while his hands shake. The children are going to see him reinstate the wards, he can feel them staring from the other end of the synagogue, but there’s no helping that. He flexes his arm to reopen the gash, swipes his hand bloody and presses his palm against the temple floor to strengthen the seal.

Dizziness is a symptom of blood loss in humans, but the way the world lurches as he straightens up still catches him off guard.

“Hey, man...”Castiel flinches. He hadn’t heard Ben approach, but the boy is hesitating a few feet away, something white in his hands. “You want me to...?” Ben gestures vaguely at his own arm, and Castiel realizes he’s holding a bandage.

Castiel tries to form the words I don’t need help or We need to conserve the medical supplies both of which are true, as far as Castiel is concerned, but he can’t make the right sounds. Ben closes the gap between them, reaching out. It’s easier to let Ben tend to him than it is to speak.

Ben guides him towards a pew. “You want to sit down? You look kinda peaky.”

“Your friend?” Ben asks, soft, under the guise of getting Castiel settled. “Could he get us anything?”

Dean would have known how to answer, instantly. Jimmy could have offered suggestions: morale or honesty? But Jimmy isn’t there anymore. Over Ben’s shoulder, at the other end of the temple, the rest of the children are staring, too. It’s been forty-nine hours and nineteen minutes since Dean had finally, finally rasped out that single word. They are possibly the last twenty people left alive in New York City. Castiel doesn’t want to think about the rest of the state, the country, the world.

“He...” Castiel tries to swallow in a suddenly dry mouth.

Somewhere inside Castiel is a hole. He knows it’s not real, knows that this body God had ... gifted him with was perfect. He also knows that this body is missing its soul, missing Jimmy, and Castiel finds himself aching, suddenly, for the true presence of his vessel. He closes his eyes, and falls into the silent blackness instead.

~*~

Not needing sleep meant that waking from it did not leave him any more rested than when he began. There is a child sleeping against him, her head resting on his thigh, her thumb firmly in her mouth. There are children curled up in blankets, on the floor, on the pews; they’d all migrated down the temple, as if being closer to him affords them more protection.

The girl whimpers and shifts against his leg. Castiel strokes her blonde hair, his fingers brushing over her forehead, and he receives the disjointed flashes her nightmare: the blood red sky, Central Park in flames, someone carrying her, running, jolting her while she clings to her teddy bear, the agonised screams of people –. Castiel takes those, her memories of people burning alive. She sighs in her sleep and settles.

There’s a hushed commotion near the side doors, and Castiel looks up. Alison and Ben are conferring and then Alison breaks away to creep-run over to him.

“Cas!” she stage-whispers. Her eyes are wide, but it’s the least fearful expression he’d seen in days. She looks... excited. “Come see! We heard noises...”

Castiel is abruptly afraid enough for both of them, but he eases himself out from under the sleeping child and follows her. The door leading into the Elmanuel temple – that huge, unwarded, unknown quantity of a holy space in the apocalypse – is open a crack.

“We opened it,” Ben babbles. “I’m sorry, sorry, but we heard...”

Castiel has lunged for the door, ready to haul it closed, and has seen for himself.

“You do have friends in high places, don’t you?” Ben says.

On the other side of the threshold there are piles of blankets, white bags with stencilled letters, plastic tubs with red crosses on the lids, and small flat plastic-wrapped rectangles. Castiel stares for a moment longer, struggling to think. He can’t see any signs of traps or spells, but he makes sure he steps forward alone, touches everything before he allows the other two to start carting things inside.

“Air mattresses,” Ben almost whimpers, filling his arms with the plastic wrapped packages.

“Tell me you see a pump,” Alison says as she shuffles a bag stencilled ‘RICE’ across the floor.

“No pump. Shit. Well, this is gonna suck.”

“No, no, it’s gonna blow.” Their laughter has a slightly hysterical tinge to it. They are giddy with relief, relaxing, basking in the reflected glory of being able to present the illusion of survival to the others. Castiel remains quiet; this is not going to come without repayment.

~*~

The attack comes at dawn.

“Toby!” a woman’s voice wails. “Toby! Are you in there?”

A little boy is on his feet, scrambling free of the blankets, running for the doors.

Castiel is fast, but an older girl is faster. She gets Toby by the back of his shirt, tackling him to the stone floor. “It’s not mom,” she gasps, choked with her own tears as he screams and tries to thrash free of her grip. “You know it’s not. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not.” She puts her hands over her brother’s ears.

Fear starts to curdle in Castiel’s stomach: he can ward the doors against outside evil. He cannot bar them from the influence of little, desperate fingers turning locks.

“Lucy” the voice howls suddenly. The girl flinches, hard, and tightens her grip around Toby. “You good-for-nothing little shit. You let him out!”

Castiel moves around behind the two of them and cups his hands around the girl’s ears. She tries to say something, chokes on it, and leans back against him.

“They are not your relatives,” Castiel says, pitching his voice to carry across the rag-tag group. “They are demons.” The children stare back at him, trusting, terrified.

“You are safe in here,” Castiel says. He does not say: “If you go outside, you will die.” He thinks some of the older children might take him up on that.

There are no windows with a clear view of the street, and none of the demons can cross the outer wards, but they don’t need to see. The day wears on, and so does the litany of bereft name-callers: mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers... Castiel learns the names of everyone in the temple, seared onto his memory like an auditory brand.

“Is God keeping us safe?” one of the younger children – Nicola – asks. She’s maybe seven, and wears the same Barbie nightgown she’d gone to bed in nights ago, a world ago. Castiel pauses.

“God is watching over us,” he says finally. It’s true enough; He would be watching the battle fronts closely. Even if the Holy Army won, there would be nothing left to celebrate.

Someone comes for Castiel, at last. The sky has darkened, enough to require the lighting and then the gradual snuffing of the menorahs. The children are asleep, or still enough that Castiel feels safe going to the wards shrouded in the darker corners to strengthen them.

Castiel... It’s not so much an audible voice as a tugging on his mind. He pauses, feeling the pull, and then presses his bloody palm firmly against the final ward. Satisfied, he takes a lit candle from one of the menorahs, crosses the floor and enters the main synagogue.

They’d started out in here, the twenty of them in a space built for thousands, expecting more. But none had come. He presses a bloody hand to the crack in the door, hoping that would be enough, feeling the indefinable shift away from hallowed ground. Although it feels like everything is profane now.

There is a figure is sitting in one of the pews, head tilted back, looking wonderingly up at the vast ceiling. Castiel guesses Lucifer doesn’t need light to see.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Lucifer says. “Built by those who so loved God…”

Fear has been a constant for far longer than the last few days, but Castiel finds he has the capacity for a whole new level of terror when Lucifer turns Sam’s head to stare at him.

“Did you like my gift?” Lucifer asks.

Sam has fared far better than Dean. He wears a suit which once might have been white, but is now deeply bloodstained black in the candlelight. None of it seems to be Sam’s. Lucifer pats the pew next to him, and his expression is so much like Sam’s bashful, nervous smile that Castiel almost stops breathing. He certainly can’t move. Lucifer sighs.

“I didn’t want it to be like this.”

“Tell that to them in there!” The words burst from Castiel’s mouth. “Their parents are murdered, or possessed!”

“You do understand…” there is a hint of a smile in his voice, “how recalcitrant troops on the ground can be, surely, Castiel?”

Castiel manages a snarl of rage. “I am nothing like you.”

“Really? I think we’re more alike than you think. We wanted to serve our Lord, yes? But He asked the unaskable: worship the humans above me, or, oh wait – abandon the humans to death to fight a pointless war, hmm?”

Castiel attacks without thought, thrusting out a hand to channel a killing blow –

“Ah!” Lucifer chides, and holds up a single finger, freezing Castiel with arm outstretched. “Just listen,” Lucifer whispers, and it’s not like Castiel has a choice.

“Heaven on earth, if they win,” Lucifer muses. “You, who has experienced the best ‘mercy’ Heaven has to offer, do you really want that sort of ‘compassion' shown to the children in there? To the few survivors huddled in the wreckage out there? Who are you protecting them from, really?”

The fact that Castiel cannot speak is no defense from the tiny voice in his own mind that whispered he was on no side anymore. That he could not fight against an entire war on his own.

“Fighting the forces of heaven is not fighting God,” Lucifer murmurs. “We wish to serve and love God, do we not?” He gestures around the temple, at the grandeur of the building shrouded in darkness around them. “Look around you. The humans who built this, built it for their love of God. That is the side we are all on.”

Castiel stumbles forward a step, released to complete his lunging attack. He doesn’t. He feels suddenly very cold. Lucifer smiles, just a little.

“Come with me,” he says. “The children have food enough for many days, weeks if they’re careful, and this will be over long before then.” He stands, raising his arm. Castiel flinches, but Lucifer just holds his hand out, palm upturned, offering. “Come with me. Fight, and return to God’s true Grace…”

Castiel stares down at the slightly curled fingers. The blood under the fingernails is black in the candlelight. He breathes out, and he sees himself reach out and clasp Lucifer’s hand…

Sam’s a tiny voice says. For a moment, the word means nothing to Castiel, and the voice tries again: Sam’s hand. Castiel looks up into Sam’s face, with Lucifer’s smile twisting his features, and it’s enough, just enough: Castiel breathes in, turns and runs.

He expects to be blasted off his feet, he expects to burn alive five strides across the temple, but he’s hitting the doors when he feels the subtle shift in the air, in the world, that means Lucifer has gone.

Castiel stumbles back over the wards, to safety. The children are still asleep, and he has just enough presence of mind to close the door quietly. He manages to make it to a secluded corner, the candle snuffed, before the shakes begin in earnest.

One of the children stirs, and sits up. She sees him sitting in the shadows, and walks determinedly, picking her way through the scattered sleeping forms towards him. The girl with the nightmares, Castiel realizes once she is close enough, although that could describe all of them, including him. She hasn’t spoken a word since she’d arrived, and she stops a few feet away, head tilted, looking at him. Solemnly, she holds out her teddy bear. It’s a singed, grubby thing. Castiel takes it reverently.

“Thank you,” he says. She keeps looking at him, and just as solemnly, climbs into his lap and leans against him. He wraps his arms around her.

She can’t have known what had gone on next door; how very, very close it had been, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling a little less unclean when she falls asleep against his chest.

He sits and keeps watch over her, over all of them.

Comments

[samvara]

AngstyMcAngsterson :p

[maharetr]

*beams proudly* <3