Sastiel Love Week Day IV – Angst: Tempting You And All The Earth

rodiniaorzetalthepenquin:

He knew it was a suicide mission.

Dean knew it was a suicide mission.

Even that painfully young alternate universe Dean that had showed up out of nowhere clearly knew that it was a suicide mission.

Castiel could have told Dean that the fabled Colt, the gun that had taken so much blood to obtain, would never work against an Archangel inhabiting his True Vessel, even a fallen and disgraced Archangel such as Lucifer. Not with the strength and power of Sam Winchester’s once-beautiful, broken soul for Lucifer to tap into, never so much as to use it all up, a continually renewing wellspring of power that fed Lucifer’s Grace like a glacier run off might have once fed the sea.

There were no more glaciers. Hellfire had melted them all away during the first year, raising the sea levels and drowning huge populations of island or coastal people, forcing humanity further and further inland, herded like cattle for the Croats to feed upon and the demons to pick among the rest for hosts.

Castiel wondered sometimes if Lucifer did that just because he knew it would hurt Sam more. He always drowned such thoughts in opiates and cannabis smoke, strangling to purely psychological pain behind the wall of numbness and sexual pleasure that always paled in comparison to the memory of the once fleeting brush of Sam’s hand and the shy flicker of his eyes behind a curtain of hair. Graceless and cut off from Heaven as he was, abandoned by his brothers and emotionally left behind by his chosen General, his sober mind was still too sharp to forget, sharp enough to cut himself to pieces if he let it, so he didn’t. Ever. Let it.

He was forced to keep a certain level of sobriety before the mission. Dean wouldn’t allow anyone to go who wasn’t “firing on at least half-cyllanders” as he put it, and Younger Dean had looked so honestly frightened by Castiel’s drug use and sexual debauchery that the former angel just didn’t have the heart left in him to argue.

The angel once accused of having too much heart, now with barely enough heart to spare his only remaining might-have-been-family.

Abaddon was the one who caught him, dragging him away from the others despite his efforts to remain behind and protect the few humans still left alive. The Knight of Hell was more than a match for him as he was, red painted lips framing pristine white teeth in a mockery of a pleasant smile.

“You don’t die with them, little angel,” she cooed. “Big Brother wants a word before you meet your end, and I wouldn’t want to keep him waiting.”

Five years since Castiel had seen Sam Winchester, and yet his face remained unchanged, a testimate to Lucifer’s presence inside his body even without the pristine white suit and the almost mocking edge to what might have been a fond smile curving his lips. Castiel’s bones ached in an all too human way from where he had hit the ground when Abaddon shoved him to his knees before his former elder brother who wore his might-have-been lover’s face, and his throat ached from dryness and the urge to retch or scream, but he did not dare look away.

“He’s still in here, you know,” Lucifer remarked with a casualness that was anything but truly casual. “Sam, I mean. I almost thought I might have to worry for my grip on him when I killed his brother, but the way that empty soul looked at us….”

“Dean no longer believed there was anything of his Sam left in you,” Castiel rasped, a minute flinch escaping him at the raggedness of his voice.

“But you know better, don’t you, Castiel,” Lucifer crooned, coming closer. “You know that only Sam could truly inspire such creative savagery in me–”

“No,” Castiel interrupted, and had the satisfaction of seeing Lucifer blink. He smiled, a wide and weary sort of grin that set his split lip bleeding again, and tilted his face up to look through Lucifer’s eyes and into Sam. “I knew that even your savagery could never completely destroy Sam’s kind heart and clever mind. Otherwise… Dean would still be alive.”

“What–” Lucifer started, his eyes narrowing, only to be interrupted once again by Castiel’s splintering laughter.

“It was a mercy,” he gasped, swaying with the force of his amusement, of the irony being shown. “Killing Dean now… that poor broken bastard is finally at peace! He’s free!” He slumped, as if by saying that, declaring that freedom, the strings that held him bound had likewise been severed. He clutched at the ragged, metaphorical ends, willing himself to hold on a little longer as Lucifer continued to stare at him.

“Explain,” the formerly brightest Archangel of Heaven demanded, low and hard, and Castiel could not help but laugh again.

“Explain what? Did you think I was still here because I want to live?” he demanded of Lucifer, rocking and shuffling forward on his knees, another burst of shattered giggles escaping him as Lucifer actually took a step back. “Oh, no, big brother… I only stuck around because I wanted to see Sam one last time. ‘Cause I knew you still had him.”

“And what did you hope to gain by seeing him?” Lucifer asked, his lilting tone too tense for true mockery. “Another chance to overthrow me? Another futile chance to avert what is already far too late to stop?”

“Another chance to tell him what I should have said the day I took his hand,” Castiel breathed, and saw the words strike home as Lucifer stilled. Just a little longer now… “Sam Winchester, the boy with the purest soul on Earth or in Heaven… I love you… and I am honored to have been allowed to know you.”

He let go at last, and the warehouse erupted in the light of Grace.

Oh my god.  This is beautiful and terrible and haunting and Castiel is absolutely 100% right.  Sam would have wanted Dean to die, so he could be at what passed for peace with him still separated from his brother.