#did he quietly feel cas come back (since he was resurrected at the end of 13x04 and this is 13x05)

[aturnoftheearth]

it’s 5 episodes in to the widow arc. he makes a pb&j. they show the label saying “jelly”. cas found jam unsettling. it was an unusual thing. sam commented on it. dean doesn’t elaborate. he has never made a pb&j for breakfast before. cas’ favorite food was a pb&j. cas is back by the end of the episode. dean never makes a pb&j for breakfast again. he literally made it because he missed him (loved him) so much.

#there is so much to unpack here #did he quietly feel cas come back (since he was resurrected at the end of 13x04 and this is 13x05)?? #but because cas wasn’t there. didn’t call. (because Dean spread his ashes in a meadow in the middle of nowhere) #then he must’ve been hallucinating it. which makes the grief all the worse. so he made a pb&j. #or did he have a nightmare? watching him die all over again? still not being able to save him? so he made a pb&j. #(for breakfast!!) #or did he have a good dream? one where he was able to hold him again (properly this time)? love him the way they both deserve to be loved? #only to wake up to him still being gone? so he made a pb&j. (for breakfast) #or was he simply unable to sleep? too afraid of the possibilities? too afraid that if he closed his eyes his mind would betray his heart? #and he would have to start the grieving process all over again? so he gets up and he makes a pb&j for breakfast.

[hawkland]

(Mostly) Destiel Fic Recs #5

This is a LONG recs post because it’s been a while since I did an update and I fell hard into reading one author’s work (DeanRH). In fact I could easily do a rec post just of their fics alone, but for this round I’m just going to pick out a handful of my absolute favorites so far, the ones I’d recommend to start out with, along with more other authors’ works I’ve especially enjoyed lately.

Absolution at the Five-and-Dime by DeanRH (125k)  - this is perhaps THEE DeanRH fic to start with if you want a good, long read with a little bit of everything (Roadtrips! Intriguing casefic! Americana! Tasty Dean/Cas pining! Wing!kink and unique angel lore! Kinky soul fisting and tentacles!) It’s kind of two of parallel stories in one: the first, a flashback to Dean and Sam's first year hunting on their own (as well as trying to avoid hunting, and John in general); the second on how Dean and Cas finally get together during an unusual case and when Dean is able to really let go of his past trauma and accept himself/accept love from Cas. 

What I love about DeanRH’s work is that they write from the unique point of view of a drifter, so they understand living on the road, traveling place to place, and the highs and lows of that life like no others I’ve encountered in SPN before. (The author’s notes are often as much fun to read as the stories themselves). They also write a kickass angel!Cas and never lose sight of his non-human traits and background. Their writing style is unique - almost poetic in nature, and I know some readers have found it difficult to get into. But it works really well for me in their SPN fic...gives it the flavor of oral story telling as might actually happen at a drifter’s camp (with one story written exactly as such). Be warned this particular fic does play up the idea of John Winchester being mentally abusive and Dean having to turn tricks when he was younger in order to support him and Sam, so there is some dark stuff. But as someone who grew up with mentally abusive parent, reading this was extremely cathartic to me and believably written (unlike some stories that go too over the top with abusive John, or just don't understand how that kind of abuse leaves lifetime psychological scars.)

The rest of this round’s recs below the cut.

Carnevale by DeanRH (18k) - Actually the first fic by this author I read, because I just couldn’t resist a story set in my favorite place in the world, Venice, Italy. Castiel is the Angel of Venice, banished there for so long he does not even know or remember the reasons why. But Carnevale season is the one time a year he can let his wings out - figuratively and literally. And during this particular Carnevale season, he meets an intriguing masked young American tourist there with his brother and their one night stand turns into something far more powerful than either expected. This one’s hot, romantic, and achingly sad at the end as it all ties together unexpectedly with canon-verse...though with a hint for the future so it’s definitely not totally sad. I loved how DeanRH clearly understands Venice as a fellow lover of the city, the side of it most tourists never see unless they spend a long time there. This story made me cry just from wanting to be back in Venice again.

Ice cream was sweeter, food more satisfying, everything was an epicurean delight. There was just something magical about Venice, and he had lived here in the city for hundreds of years, so the shine should have worn off by now.

But it didn't, and there was always something more, something wonderful to discover around the next corner. The painted eaves of a church. The beauty of two women dancing with flowers in their teeth across the Piazza San Marco one day, overcome by the sheer joy of just being there. The way the university students still created Venetian masks, like Castiel's extravagant volto mask and Dean's humble servetta muta, with crafts that had been handed down across the generations. The morning silence that lay against the stones.

Hard Landing by DeanRH (26.9k) - A bit similar in theme to Carnevale. A pre-series Dean and Sam are sight-seeing in Spain when an angel, struck by a babel-spell, crash lands right in front of Dean. A strange yet seriously hot encounter with the angel turns into something much more complicated when the brothers return home and realize something more serious is afoot and they are both trapped in the middle of it. This is another story where things are very much not as they seem at first (as fun as that is!) It features master strategist Cas at his best, with a side helping of delightful trickery care of Gabriel and Balthazar as they deal with Lucifer, Michael...and a few others along the way.

The Sacred Band of Thebes by DeanRH (14.5k) - The last DeanRH fic I’m gonna allow myself to include in this round up, because it’s just very soft and sweet and beautiful - for a story about Dean & Cas being magically transported back in time to ancient Sparta! This is another story infused with a great knowledge of place and history, with some wonderfully delightful original characters added in that make it all the more enjoyable to read.

And now on to some other authors, I promise!

IPAMIS OL OLPRIT by emmbrancsxx0 (56k). A really wonderful fic that take a different look at what might have happened with a temporarily resurrected John Winchester during Season 14. Dean & Cas are in an established relationship here, and John here isn’t too happy about it — though mostly because he sees Cas (and Jack) as monsters, the kind of monsters he spent his lifetime hunting. This is a great fic for the emotional complexity of how John, Dean and Cas are all handled. John isn’t a cardboard evil dad, Dean is struggling between his loyalty to his father and to Cas, and Cas is increasingly bitchy/frustrated at Dean still being so desperate for his father’s approval (and all the more complex for not just being a quietly suffering perfect supporting boyfriend.) There’s some great action sequences in this too along with the emotional angst and a delicious dose of hurt!Cas if that’s your thing (as it is for me :D)

Abrenuntio by Neonbat (51k). A very dark but compelling AU take on the/a apocalypse universe. Dean, Sam and John are all alive in this post-angel war-apocalyptic world. They are part of a group of human survivors fighting against the angel army when they manage to capture “Blue” — a particularly feared angel of death. Dean is tasked with bringing Blue in for interrogation and he becomes a prisoner in their camp after John is killed. As mentioned, this is a pretty dark/sad fic (with some rather gruesome torture scenes) but I still found it quite compelling as a look at how things could have gone in some other parallel universe. And somehow the author manages to make the Dean/Cas relationship come together despite them starting out as complete enemies. This is one of those AUs that works for me because the core of the characters really shine through despite the differences in the setting.

if it all fell to pieces tomorrow by spocklee (37k) - a gorgeous post-Empty rescue fic that takes an approach I haven’t really seen explored in detail before (despite being something I’ve actually thought about as something that could’ve happened.) What if Cas has spent so long denying himself happiness, and then trapped in regrets and false-rescue scenarios created by the Empty, that he can’t trust that his rescue is real? And so he runs off to be on his own - literally stealing the Impala because he can’t handle being in Dean’s presence one moment longer - and only slowly comes to terms with the idea that it’s over now and he can be happy with/around his friends and family. This one’s both deliciously angsty and at times funny/sweet, looking at Cas’s relationships not just with Dean but with Sam, Jack, Claire, even Eileen. It does some fun stuff with other returned angels and demons who now find themselves back on Earth (and human), and...I just really enjoyed this one a lot.

Both Saved and Lost by angelfishofthelord (13.7k) Gen Cas character study, absolutely gorgeous and sad and one of those fic I couldn’t stop thinking about the day after reading it. AU where Apocaverse!Cas isn’t immediately killed by our Cas during 13x22 but instead hitches a ride back to the main ‘verse. Dean and Sam want to keep him alive for information on Michael; Cas is torn and trying to figure out just how similar—or different—they really are. Some great angel stuff here (I also highly recommend this author’s Jack & Cas “dadstiel” fics, they’re equally lovely and heartbreaking at the same time.)

flesh of the mighty by Mudprophet (2.7k) - THEE “What exactly did Dean eat in Purgatory, anyway?” fic you’ve probably already heard about. *cough* I’ve been trying to work up the courage to read this one for a while and finally gave in and OH MY CHUCK I’m so glad I did. It’s perversely disturbing and beautiful at the same time, Cas is wonderfully DERANGED and ALIEN in that way that I love it when fics managed to convey just how much angels are NOT human. Do heed the tags.

Full of Grace by ilovehowyouletmefall (11k) - Another one for the weird-as-fuck-angel!Cas lovers’ list. Heaven/canon-compliant fic where Dean knows he should feel happy and at peace but he just...isn’t, even with Cas and all of his friends and family there. He finally goes looking for Cas when he’s been absent for a time and, for the first time, gets to not just see but experience his true form. Another one that hits some kinks I knew I had and others I didn’t...until now. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

don't ask me where i've been by saltwound / @1x06 (8k) - I can never resist a good 09x06 fiction gap fic! What makes this one really stand out is how well it captures Cas’s internal voice - his struggles adapting to human senses, limitations and emotions versus what/how he experienced things as an angel. The longing and feelings between Dean & Cas here are so achingly beautiful and I just wanted to cry when Cas says he misses hearing Dean’s prayers, so Dean, he...oh, I’m not going to spoil it. *happy sigh* Just read it.

this room is wrong by DarkHeartInTheSky (12k) - Sometimes I like torturing myself with some good 15x03 divorce arc angst and this fic hit that button just so. It’s an alternative take on where Cas might have ended up after leaving the bunker and features some great Cas & Sam friendship feels, when Sam sets out to try to bring Cas home. It’s all the stuff you’d wish the writers would’ve let them talk out in canon.

Well that’s more than enough for this round! Go forth, read and give some great writers some kudos & comment love!

#fic recs #my fic recs #destiel recs #destiel #deancas recs #my destiel recs

[mittensmorgul]

Happy Resurrection Day

A short fic in celebration of Dean and Cas’s 12th anniversary!

Rated: T Words: 3652

Summary: The world didn't end, and Dean and Cas finally get to choose each other. It only took twelve years and a little road trip back to where it all started.

Read it here on AO3

One random morning in mid-September, a few months after the world was left in their hands once and for all, Dean woke up to the nagging feeling he was forgetting something. There wasn’t really much to forget anymore. There was no looming apocalypse, no new catastrophe on the horizon. The biggest dilemma he’d faced in the last few days was whether he had enough milk to make pancakes, or whether he’d have to run out to the store before breakfast.

Sure, he and Cas took the occasional salt and burn. Easy hunts they could usually dust in a day. Sam had taken an extended road trip to see the country and try to figure out what he wanted to do with himself now that he was truly free to explore what life after Chuck could look like, but Dean already knew. He’d known for a good long time that he loved his life, loved the bunker, and loved hunting. And for whatever reason, Cas had just decided to stay, no strings attached. Whether Dean was itching to get out on the road for a long weekend on the slimmest excuse of a hunt that just as often as not turned into a detour to some tourist trap or other, or whether Dean just wanted to sit at home bingeing an old tv series or having a movie marathon, Cas seemed equally content with the slate of activities Dean conjured up for them.

He hadn’t put it into so many words, and he definitely hadn’t said it to Cas, but Dean also loved that Cas had stayed with him.

So it was strange waking up with an unsettled swirling in the pit of his stomach. He held a hand up to his forehead, checked his eyes and throat in the mirror to make sure he wasn’t coming down with something. He didn’t want to get Cas sick, if he was. He’d already survived Cas’s first cold as a human, just barely. They went through so much soup in a week, Dean was starting to wonder if Cas was just milking it for the room service. He had to admit that Cas letting him walk him through the highlights of Dr. Sexy while he was curled up in a blanket nest by his side wasn’t the worst thing he’d had to endure. But for now, Dean wasn’t sick. He just had a restlessness in his bones and no idea how to cure it.

He pulled on his robe and ambled out to the kitchen. Coffee would help him figure out what was eating at him, surely. Only Cas had beat him to it, which was unusual enough to amp up that uneasy feeling. Dean usually beat Cas to the kitchen most mornings, so walking in to a full pot of coffee and no other sign of Cas had him wondering if something was wrong. He poured himself a cup and set off in search of Cas, and whatever he was up to so early in the morning.

He found Cas sitting at the table in the library scrolling around on the internet. Dean just stood in the doorway and watched him for a moment, studying his posture as if it might give him some clue what sort of mood Cas was in. Human or not, Cas still had the intense focus he’d always had as an angel, and aside from pausing to take a sip of his coffee or navigate to the next page, he barely moved from his position hunched over the keyboard. Rather than startle him, Dean waited until Cas put his mug down before clearing his throat to announce his presence.

“Mornin’ sunshine. You’re up early.”

“Hello, Dean,” Cas said, giving him a guilty glance before going back to his work. “Yes, I had been hoping to surprise you later, but I apparently didn’t wake up early enough for that. I hope you slept okay.”

Dean shrugged as he walked around the table and sat down across from Cas. He took a sip of his coffee before replying.

“Mostly. Woke up feeling restless, and I couldn’t figure out why.”

Cas nodded at him as if he understood exactly what Dean meant. “I did, as well. And then I checked the calendar. I assume you know what today is?”

Dean’s brow furrowed as he performed a few calculations. Days all sort of blended together after a while, but they’d made a trip up to Henderson for supplies on Wednesday, and that was only a couple days before.

“Friday?” Dean eventually replied, hoping he was right.

Cas laughed, but shook his head. “It is Friday, but it’s also September 18th.”

Dean blinked at him for a moment as he mentally rocketed back to a run down old gas station where the windows shattered the first time Cas had ever tried to introduce himself. He’d just clawed his way out of his own grave, and the local newspaper had helpfully supplied him the date, and the knowledge that he’d been in hell all of four months. No wonder he’d woken up feeling weird. He might’ve forgotten the date, but somewhere deep down, some part of him would always know it.

Dean came back to himself to find Cas waiting patiently for him, like he always did. He took another sip of his coffee and set the mug down, recalling what Cas had said before sending him off down disturbing memory lane. Better to focus on the present than linger in that particular bit of the past.

“So you were planning a surprise?”

Cas shrugged. “I thought maybe we should do something to celebrate. People celebrate these sorts of milestones, yes?”

Dean wobbled his head side to side and made a face. “Pretty sure Hallmark dosn’t make a card for this one.”

Cas frowned, reaching up to shut the laptop as if he’d made some terrible faux pas, but Dean quickly dropped his hand atop Cas’s to stop him.

“Doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate it anyway,” he said more quietly, smiling at Cas. “It was a pretty noteworthy occasion, you pulling me outta hell. What did you have in mind?”

Cas’s frown deepened. “That’s where I’ve been stuck all morning. It felt inappropriate to suggest going to visit your gravesite, and taking you out to dinner seems… trite, in light of the occasion.”

“You know me, Cas. I’m always up for food,” Dean replied, trying to lighten the mood. “Plus it wasn’t just about me being un-dead, you know. It’s the whole reason we met in the first place. And look how that turned out.”

Cas had finally begun to smile again, and turned his attention back to the computer. “We didn’t actually meet face to face until late the next night when you summoned me. There was a bit of a delay due to unforeseen circumstances.”

Dean thought about that for a minute, nodding as he remembered the events of his first few days back on earth. “Well, if you wanna do it right, we could always take a road trip back to that old barn, see if it’s still standing.”

“Have you been back there since then?” Cas asked, curious now.

Dean shook his head. “Driven by it a few times over the years, but never went back inside. The whole farm’s completely overgrown. I figured someone would’ve gotten freaked out by all the weird symbols and burned the place down by now. It was still standing as of a couple years ago.” That got Dean curious. “Have you been back?”

“It’s been a while,” Cas said quietly. “I used to fly there sometimes, when I still could. It was a quiet place to think.”

Dean nodded slowly. “Then that’s what we should do. We’re taking a road trip. I know at least three great diners between here and there I haven’t taken you to yet. We can make a whole weekend out of it.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Cas replied, finally shutting the computer.

“Good. Breakfast first, then we’ll head out. Have ourselves a little resurrection day road trip.”

Dean grabbed his mug and stood up. He’d need to get dressed and pack a bag. They could have a quick breakfast if they were gonna be stopping at Dana’s Diner for lunch. It was a bit of a detour, but the burgers were worth it. He flashed a grin at Cas.

“I’m gonna pack a bag and grab some cereal before we hit the road. Meet you in the kitchen in 20?”

Cas nodded and shut the laptop. As Dean made his way out to the hall, he heard Cas mutter quietly, “Happy Resurrection Day,” as if he was testing out the sentiment. He bit his lip to keep from laughing out loud.

The drive to Illinois took most of the day. It could’ve been a lot quicker, but in addition to Dana’s, they hit a steakhouse on the outskirts of Chicago for dinner before swinging back south toward their destination. Dean bypassed the Astoria Motel where a mirrored ceiling shattered by Cas’s angelic voice had once nearly killed him. He pointed it out as part of their trip down memory lane, but pulled up at a different motel clear across town with the excuse that it would be a shorter drive back to the barn in the morning. Their room was a lot less shabby, and a lot less pay-by-the-hour feeling than the Astoria, so Dean felt it was a win all around.

As they settled in for the night like they had every night they’d been on the road together, Dean let himself really feel the usual longing the three foot chasm between their beds brought out in him. Most nights he’d just roll over and pretend to fall asleep while mashing that feeling down as hard as he could. Tonight, though, he lay in bed staring across that gap, wishing he could make some excuse to crawl into the other bed. Of all nights, and in this particular place, he really just wanted someone to hug until dawn.

The specific someone being Cas.

In the dark, in the quiet listening to Cas’s breathing even out as he drifted off, for one moment Dean allowed himself to admit that he didn’t just love that Cas had stayed with him. He loved Cas. Full stop. Dean lay there until he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer, holding on to that feeling and knowing he’d have to crush it back down in the morning.

He dreamt of what could’ve happened in that barn, if he hadn’t stabbed Cas that first time they’d met. With twelve years of history between them now, and Dean’s quiet revelation that he was in love with Cas, his dream-self went through a series of alternate endings to that meeting ranging from love confessions to things that he would definitely not be enumerating to Cas over breakfast the next morning. It made for an excellent night’s slumber.

Morning came without the restlessness the previous day had. Dean opened his eyes to the dawn light seeping between the curtains to shine a golden spotlight on Cas’s face, which was smiling back at him.

“Hello, Dean. I take it you slept better last night?”

Dean yawned, but didn’t quite feel like getting up yet. He wanted to enjoy this surreal moment for just a bit longer. Instead he stretched out under the blankets and propped himself up on his pillow to get a better look at Cas.

“Yeah, you?”

Cas propped himself up on his elbow, no longer in the little beam of light, and blinked at him. “I’m reserving judgment until after we have coffee, but yes. It seems to have been satisfactory.” Cas frowned for a second, and Dean was about to ask what was wrong, when Cas asked, puzzled, “If yesterday was Resurrection Day, what does that make today?”

Dean must’ve still been a bit loopy from his late night thoughts, the restful sleep, and what he could recall of the dream he’d been having. He never would’ve blurted it out around a yawn otherwise, but that’s exactly what he did.

“It’s countdown to Cas day.”

He froze for a second after the words had escaped into the wild, and then slowly turned to take in the fond look on Cas’s face.

“I’m already here, Dean.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t twelve years ago. I didn’t even know your name yet.”

“You do now,” Cas replied. “How should we celebrate it? Since I sincerely hope you weren’t dead set on a complete reenactment. I don’t have the power to rattle the roof or blow open the doors anymore.”

Dean grinned at that and sat up. “Yeah, I don’t really wanna shoot you, either.”

“I appreciate that,” Cas replied, sitting up on the edge of his own bed opposite Dean. He looked right into Dean’s eyes, as if attempting to convey some deeper meaning to his words, and spoke quietly. “I’m glad you finally believe in me.”

They sat there for a long moment before Dean finally nodded. “‘Course I believe in you, Cas.”

They took turns in the shower and packed up their bags. After a quick breakfast on the way to the farm, they drove down the overgrown dirt road that led to the barn. Dean had to leave the car a good way back down the road, and they hiked through the knee-high scrub to the broken old barn door. Dean picked up a shattered timber and tossed it out of the way as he pushed his way inside.

“Man, this place is a lot less intimidating looking in broad daylight,” he said, as the two of them stood in the doorway and took in the faded symbols Bobby had painted on every surface of the interior. Broken glass still littered the floor, now covered with a heavy layer of dust.

“It looks different now, somehow,” Cas added. “Smaller. Which is strange considering I was so much larger the first time I was here.”

Dean turned to him and smiled. “Yeah, but now you’re seeing it human. It’s gotta be weird.”

Cas shrugged, and walked around the perimeter of the barn, examining the sigils out of old habit. “This has always been a quiet place for me,” he said, touching a warding sigil with his fingertips before continuing on. “Nothing unholy could find me here. I could be alone with my thoughts.”

Dean noticed a few of the sigils Cas stopped by, and didn’t recognize them. A collection of carefully drawn wards drawn much smaller and in a different shade of paint that stood out from all the rest he’d watched Bobby create twelve years ago.

“Did you add those?” he asked.

Cas nodded. “Angel proofing. Or at least, concealing.”

Dean thought back to all the times Cas had been running or hiding from Heaven and the rest of the angels. When he’d been human and had nowhere to go, and instead of coming here he’d run in the opposite direction, because Dean had kicked him out. A bolt of guilt shot through him and nailed his feet to the floor. This was a place Dean hadn’t come back to because it reminded him that he’d been to Hell, reminded him that Heaven had wanted him for their own for reasons that frankly horrified him now. But for Cas, this was the place Dean had first met him, a place that for him would forever be about the moment he was truly introduced to humanity. It had been kind of a shit introduction, if Dean was honest with himself. But twelve years later, after all the shit had played itself out, Cas had finally made his own choice about his life, and he’d come back to where it all began.

“Happy resurrection day,” Dean said as he stared at Cas from across the room.

Cas turned to him, the look of surprise on his face quickly turning to a smile. “It is a bit like a resurrection, isn’t it? We’ve come all the way back around to where it started, and we’re free of it all now.”

Dean just nodded dumbly, letting the enormity of it sink in as Cas walked over to stand in front of him.

“I don’t have wings or the power of Heaven at my back, but I do recall something I said to you that night. Good things do happen, Dean. And they have.”

“And here we are again,” Dean said, clearing his throat. Both of their lives had changed that night, and they’d spent so much of their time fighting against everything in the universe since then. The one constant had always been each other, even when they’d totally fucked it all up and broken the natural order and sacrificed themselves to fix it all again, they’d done it to save each other. At the end of the road, and the beginning of their journey, Dean couldn’t keep his feelings bottled up any longer. “I love you, you know.”

Cas sucked in a shocked breath of air and blinked at him for a moment, before a grin broke across his face, lighting up the gloomy, dusty haze in the barn. “I love you too, Dean. I’m so glad I’m here with you.”

Dean shook his head, finally prying his feet free to shuffle closer to Cas. He reached out a hand to rest it on Cas’s shoulder, right at the base of his neck. “No, I mean, I love you. I think I always have, and I know I always will, but I only really just figured it out. I’m in love with you and you’ve put me back together in ways you can’t even imagine. You might’ve resurrected me and healed me more times than I can count, but you helped make me a whole person, Cas. And I love you.”

Dean felt the prickling of tears behind his eyes and struggled to hold them back. Like he always did, Cas stared into him, right through him, and lifted a hand to Dean’s cheek.

“I’d hoped it was obvious when I chose humanity, when I chose to stay with you, that I felt the same way for you, Dean. I didn’t have any idea how much knowing you would change me, how much you would teach me about humanity and what makes life worth living when I first walked through those doors. One thing I did know, though, was that I already loved you. I had no idea what that even meant yet, but I would learn.”

A slightly manic laugh escaped Dean’s lips at the euphoria of hearing Cas’s words, seeing the heartbreaking honesty in his face, and wondering how long it was polite to wait before kissing him. Cas gave him a relieved smile, as if he’d been holding it all in far too long, and Dean let out a sigh as he pulled Cas to him.

“Love at first stab, huh?” Dean asked, smiling right into Cas’s face.

“Don’t belittle it, Dean. I loved you even before then. The moment I laid a hand on you in Hell. Healing your soul and reuniting it with your body, resting you gently in your grave and waiting for you to emerge again.”

“You do know how fucked up that was, right? You couldn’t have just dug me out?”

Cas’s brow furrowed. “It was Heaven’s orders. I never thought to question them. But yes, it has bothered me many times over the years.”

“Yeah, well, it’s bothered me more than once that I tried to thank you for saving me from Hell by stabbing you in the heart.”

“It worked, though,” Cas replied, one eyebrow raised. “I’m still here with you.”

“Better than cupid’s arrow,” Dean muttered, and then grimaced at his own terrible reference. It amused Cas, though. “Okay, enough awful jokes. Are you gonna kiss me already?”

Cas made a considering face, as if he hadn’t already made up his mind. “Happy resurrection day to both of us, then. I suppose we know exactly how to celebrate it now.”

Dean took that as the invitation it was, and leaned in for a kiss. Their lips met tentatively at first, and then more confidently as they clung to one another in the gloom. The exploding lights were all internal this time, but no less spectacular. Dean shuffled his feet and heard the crunching of broken glass, and reluctantly pulled back from Cas.

“We should probably find someplace less dangerous if we’re gonna keep going…”

Cas nodded his regretful agreement. With one last look around the old barn, they pulled the doors shut.

“We can come back next year, if you want,” Dean said, taking Cas’s hand and leading him back to the car. “Make it an annual thing.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Cas replied. “The annual resurrection road trip.”

“Next year we bring a broom,” Dean added, leading Cas through the weeds. “Maybe a picnic.”

Cas laughed, letting his hand go when they reached the car.

“So what do you wanna do next?” Dean asked as he climbed back behind the wheel. “We still technically got the rest of the day to celebrate.”

“You mentioned several diners you wanted to introduce me to, and it’s nearly time for lunch,” Cas replied.

Dean thought over their options, then leaned across the front seat to plant a kiss on the corner of Cas’s mouth, just because he could. The look of surprised delight on Cas’s face was more than worth it. “How much of a detour are you up for?”

Cas gave him a look of mock pity. “Dean, I’ll go anywhere with you. No detour is too long if I have you to share the journey with.”

Dean gave him a proper kiss, with a promise of more for later. “Then let’s get this show on the road.”

#things i have written #spn fanfic #destiel #the deancasversary #CAN YOU BELIEVE THESE NITWITS HAVE KNOWN EACH OTHER TWELVE YEARS?!

[katsidhe]

15.17 Final Thoughts (1/2)

.....part one, because I realized I wanted to talk about basically every goddamn scene. I’m dividing this roughly based on Dean-centric and Not Dean-centric thoughts. 

Who is the villain? Fighting against narrative-fate and fighting against order-fate are two similar but subtly and crucially different ideas. Chuck-as-narrative is contrary to the idea of endings in a way that Billie-as-order is not. Both agents of some definition of fate, but Chuck is a force in fundamental opposition to decay. He drags things out, he reassembles his favorite pieces over and over. Death, inasmuch as she is an agent of order, is entropic. Part of order is the chaos of natural unspooling, the inevitable unwinding of a clock.

And there was something fascinating in how s14 laid these pieces out: narrative resurrections as the villain, the peace of natural endings as the goal. To defy the God that kept Sam and Dean living past their natural years is to embrace Death. This episode pulled something like a philosophical reversal in setting up Death—and therefore both types of fate—as something which must still be defied, and I am confused and interested. Essentially, what I viewed in some ways as the fundamental meta-narrative question of s15—coming to terms with an ending when that ending has been delayed at all costs for years and years—is being fought and naysayed by Sam, of all people. I’m still noodling on this one, and I might have more to say later.

What does this even mean, to defy Death? Sam’s (weak, tbh) justification of why Billie as Supreme Ruler would be a bad thing is that her power would specifically undo certain wrinkles in the cosmic order that he and Dean have been party to. But which? How far back would this go? What kind of magics would be undone, would we have, like, a hard reset to season 2? Because that would be Bad for sure. But if Billie would simply be sending a handful of people off to overdue ends, and ensure no more demon/angel shenanigans, I don’t really see the problem with handing her the keys to the kingdom. I guess Sam’s point is that we don’t know, Billie has obviously been less than forthright, and we probably should take a second to think about who we’re giving absolute power to, and why, but. Idk.

[To be involved in the underpinnings of fate is to have some of those powers… can we discuss the Winchesters’ complicity in determining how the universe is structured?]

Part of this also feels like it slots into how Sam has moved on from the concept of martyrdom as a panacea to apocalyptic ills. He and Dean have both tried it over and over, and even when it’s accomplished something good for awhile the universe inevitably unspools further. His frustration with Jack’s willingness to sacrifice himself here reeks with the same frustration Sam had with Dean in 14.12, carrying his  coffin behind the car.

To what extent is Chuck lying about his control over the meta narrative? I’d say, a fair amount. His frustration has, in this season and in this episode, seemed very private and genuine. I think he’s adjusting most of this on the fly.

Jack successfully wins Adam’s rib by identifying that the divine is nested in every rock. Does this make anyone else uneasy at the idea of the plan to obliterate anything divine with a black hole spell? Just me?

Sam infiltrated the library of Death herself, got ambushed unexpectedly by a hostile cosmic power, and quickly discerned its  motives and knowledge while being tortured. And then he pulled the SMOOTHEST LIE of this entire damn show right out of his ass. Sam, we aren’t worthy of you.

Cas’s one contribution this episode was to compliment Sam for looking for a different solution. (I did the same thing, Cas, so I think this makes me as important as you.) But significantly, Cas does this specifically by affirming 1) Sam’s moral compass and 2) Sam’s sanity, and this is a big thing, because those two points are the accusations that Dean (and others) most frequently uses to tell Sam he’s in the wrong.

Something Cas does NOT do is intervene when Dean points a gun at Sam, even though guns don’t hurt him. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  This could be viewed as a mere issue of staging, but I prefer to slot it into the pattern of Cas finding it difficult to stand up directly to Dean in late seasons.

Jack quietly asks Sam if he’s angry or disappointed. He doesn’t bother asking Dean; he knows. Sam, with candor that Jack utterly deserves from him, tells Jack that he is impressed by Jack’s courage but that he thinks this plan is wrong. Sam doesn’t push harder than this, and he doesn’t say anything to Jack when Jack overhears Dean’s outburst: he just smiles this awful, awkward little smile, the plaster over the ways their relationship has been crumbling and unsteady with the weight of everything that has gone unsaid since 13.23. Jack understands where Sam stands so much less than he understands Dean.

Jack’s got this horrible, twisted air of maturity and gravitas this episode, as he goes to his unnecessary death. He is thoughtful and solemn; he insists he understands and accepts Dean’s condemnation. He is more placid than he was in 14.20, and even more cooperative, because he feels that he’s chosen this path for himself. I found myself comparing his attitude with Sam’s in 5.22: it’s very “I’m the least of any of you”, even though it’s tempered by Jack’s relative fearlessness (he’s going to oblivion, not torment). He’s likewise doing this out of guilt as much or more than necessity, and in service to a larger picture he doesn’t understand.

I really, really want Amara and Jack to bond over their shared status of Superpowerful Cosmic Beings Who Deserve Better.  

Amara wanted nothing more than to believe the best of Dean, and then of Chuck. When Chuck offers her equality and love and partnership, she weeps with how much she wants to believe him. Amara’s acceptance of Chuck, and Sam’s acceptance of Dean are both chilling versions of “unity”, when they have both spent so long sidelined and subordinated by their brothers.

We are in endgame, and this is the first episode that made me feel it. I’m gonna write more about this in Part Dos, but this episode felt like a SPN thesis.  

part two, dean boogaloo, coming tomorrow

#final thoughts #spn spoilers #15.17 #sam and dean #dean and jack #sam and jack #amara #sam and death #sam and chuck #I want to talk about this episode So Goddamn Muchhhhh okay

[kyber-kisses]

Too Soon ( part.3 )

Dean Winchester x Reader

Warnings: character death, cursing, season 14 spoilers, very very slight mentions of child abuse.

Summary: what if Jack has killed the reader instead of Mary? The reader finds a way to get a message to Dean.

A/n: goodness my mind has just been running non stop with where I want this series to go. I wasn’t expecting people to like it. If you want to be added to my tag list please comment!

You forgot how realistic heaven could be. How it could almost perfectly mirror your life before it had all abruptly ended in a flash of white light. It wasn’t your first time here. You were a hunter after all. You had to be resurrected at least once to have earned the title.

You were currently leaning against the hood of the impala, watching the stars twinkle across the black canvas above you. Behind you, the muffled voices of Sam and Dean attempting to explain the plot of Star Wars to Jack could be heard. You smiled to yourself, taking a sip of your beer.

Even though it all felt real, you knew it wasn’t. They weren’t your Sam and Dean. These, these were just mirages, stand ins until they could really be here. This would do for the time being, and you were okay with that.

A light flutter from behind you had your head suddenly spinning around at lightning speed, eyes landing on the beige color of a very distinct trench coat. Before you could even utter the Angels name, he was quickly rushing forward, an almost relieved look on his face.

“Y/N!” You were mildly caught off guard by Cas as he pulled you into a bone crushing hug. Sometimes you forgot about the amount of strength the angel held within him.

You wrapped your arms around him, taking in the warmth and comfort of your dear friend. “Hey, Cas.” Resting your chin on his shoulder, you knew full well he was somehow blaming himself for you being here at all. “ It’s alright. I’m alright.”

He pulled back, going to grip your hands in his. “ I’m so sorry Y/N, if I had known-“ you stopped him, firmly slapping a hand over his mouth.

“Don’t Cas. None of us could have known.” As your eyes bore into his you could see the sadness and guilt that filled them, and it made your heart break. “ I don’t want any of you blaming yourselves for what happened to me. Do you understand?”

The Angel cast his face towards the ground, trying to accept it.

“It was my fault anyway.” You muttered, taking a step back from your friend. At that his head snapped back up to look at you, his brows knitted together in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

You shrugged your shoulders, slipping your hands into your coat pockets. “Jack was upset. I was trying to calm him down, trying to get him to talk to me- but I pushed too much and he- he just snapped. He didn’t mean to Cas.”

Even with the explanation Castiel still looked confused, like his mind was still trying to comprehend it- piece it all together.

“Why are you here anyways? I thought you were kind of on Heavens no fly list- no offense.” You smiled.

“When Dean-“ Cas started, but stopped to correct himself. “ when we found out that you were- were dead, Dean got furious. He was scared and confused but he told me to come here. To find you.” You nodded, understanding that Dean would of course lash out. He was blaming himself again.

“I had to convince Dumah to let me through, it took awhile, but as you can see, I succeeded.” The Angel shrugged, a proud smile on his face.

You lightly chuckled, “ well of course, if anyone could do that it would be you. You did annoy a cosmic entity so much that it brought you back to life.”

“I need to get back to them though- Sam and Dean, they need to know what happened.”

“I understand.” You nodded, smiling up at the Angel. As you did something passed through your mind, making you push yourself up from your spot leaning against the impala. “Before you go I need to give you something.” Quickly walking around the side of the impala, you leaned through the passenger side window, popping open the glove box. It took a moment but you managed to fish out four separate envelopes. A different name written on the front of each one.

Standing back up, you walked back to Cas, extending your hand. “ When I first got here I wrote letters to each of you. There were a lot of things I never got to say to you guys. Things I still need to explain.”

Cas took them gently from your grasp, looking down at one name in particular.

Dean.

Pushing the envelopes into his coat pocket he look over into your eyes again. “Dean hasn’t been the same since you died. I mean, none of us have. But the only time I have ever seen him like this was when Sam died.”

“Which time?” You joked, a smirk crawling across your face. Cas shot you a look, making you look at the ground. “ sorry.”

Cas stepped forward pulling you into one last hug. “ we all miss you so much. I’m glad you are happy though.” He muttered, chin resting atop your head. A moment later the two of your parted, Cas turning to leave.

“Cas! If you find Jack- when you find Jack I mean, tell him I forgive him. I’m not mad at him.” You smiled sadly, Cas shared the same expression as he nodded. And with that he was gone as quickly as he had came. Leaving you standing there in the warm summer night air.

“ I thought he’d never leave.”

The new voice made you jump, almost dropping your beer. You spun on your heel, almost colliding with the tall, dark figure in front of you.

“Jessica told me you wanted to talk. Plus, I need to talk to you anyways.” You looked into the horseman’s eyes and let out a breath.

“Billie.”

*. *. *. *.

Hours later, Dean walked back into the bunker, skin thoroughly chilled and eyes red and puffy from the crying. Yet his expression was stoic. The minute he was around other people the walls went back up and they didn’t go down again until he was alone once more. Showing his feelings had never been his strong suit, and that probably wouldn’t change for awhile.

As he worked his way down the bunker steps he could see his brother sitting quietly at the war room table, his eyes glazed over, deep in thought.

“Sam.” Deans voice knocking him back into reality. “ you're zoning again.”

Sam shook his head, trying to clear it. A hand going up to rub at his eyes. “Sorry. I thought you went out for a supply run?” He questioned, turning his chair slightly.

Shrugging off his jacket, Dean threw it onto a vacant chair. “ Yeah, well I lied.” Sinking down into the chair across from his brother, Dean leaned back, running a hand though his hair. Sam nodded, knowing he didn’t want to go into detail about where he had been.

Silence lay heavily over the two brothers for a few minutes, the only sound being the soft hum of the electricity. It was so quiet, Dean could have sworn he could hear the blood rushing through his veins.

The silence was broken with the loud groan of the bunker door creaking open and then slamming shut. The sound of shoes hitting the metal stairs echoed through the bunker before the flash of a trench coat was seen out of the corner of Deans eye.

“Where the hell have you been?” Dean mumbled, swiveling in his chair to look over at the Angel.

Cas’s shoulders fell, his head tilting to the side in annoyance. “ I went to Heaven. Like You asked.” His voice laced with a certain sternness. As the sentence left his mouth, Dean sat up a little straighter in his chair, leaning forwards.

“And?”

“And Y/N is there. She’s happy. Happy as she can be at least. Her Heaven is full of memories of us.” Cas continued, taking a couple steps closer to the table. Dean nodded, a small look of relief on his face, and the faintest flicker of a smile.

Cas reached into the inner pocket of his trench coat, pulling out the envelopes you had given him. “ She told me to give these to you guys. There’s one for each of us. . .Including Jack.”

Deans eyebrows raised as he pushed himself out of his chair, taking the envelope Cas was handing him. His name scrawled neatly across the center in what could only be your handwriting. His hands were shaking as he took it. Cas passed Sams across the table towards him before tucking Jacks safely back into his pocket.

Dean had no idea what he was going to find when he ripped it open, but he knew he wanted to do this alone. He needed to be alone for this.

“I’m gonna- I’m gonna go.” Never taking his eyes of the envelope, Dean walked away, turning down one of the many hallways of the bunker.

He lost track of how long he had been wandering before he found himself in front of your door again. He probably stood there for a good solid minute before hesitantly reaching out and turning the knob.

As he flicked the switch he let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. It all still looked the same. The salt lamp in the corner of your room flowed softly, making the space seem warmer than it actually was. Your favorite flannel hung limply from the chair in front of your desk, which was littered with books and journals. Your lucky coffee mug was perched on top of a pile of old maps, undoubtedly leaving some sort of ring underneath it. He took another breath, feeling his shoulders relax. It even smelled like you were still here. Vanilla and chai and some thing distinctly you.

He couldn’t bring himself to sit on your bed, so instead the older Winchester slid to the floor, resting his back against the side of the mattress. With shaky fingers, he tore the seal of the envelope, pulling out a folded piece of paper. He took his time unfolding it, scared of what he might find. Once his eyes found the words, there was no going back.

     Dean Winchester, god I don’t even know where to start. I’ve got so much to say, to cover. I’ve known you for almost all of my life, practically grown up with you. I think that’s why I’m struggling to write this so much. I have a lot of years to cover. But I think I need to go back to the start, to before I met you, and Sam- and your dad.

   Like you I grew up in the hunting life, my parents were cold and harsh and I saw them as the same breed of monsters we kill every other week. But you already knew that. I never really had a childhood, but then again what hunter does?

A breath escaped his lips as he steadied himself. Hunters kids were never truly kids. Your childhoods had been messed up but the minute the two of you became friends, life was just a tiny bit brighter.

Feelings. God, for so much of my “childhood” I forgot what those even were. If you want to survive living with monsters, you have to learn to shut off your emotions or it will only hurt more. And then when I was 13 you and your brother came into my life, just by pure accident. But for the first time in a long time- I started to feel things again. I finally had people, friends that understood. My life was better off from the moment you stepped into it, with your dorky grin and big green eyes. I started to feel happy again. The minute I turned 18 I was packing my bags and ditching the monsters that had failed to raise me and leaving with you and your brother and dad. It was the greatest decision I ever made.I never looked back after that.

Dean paused, running a hand down his face to stop the tears. Your words were hitting him hard, like a solid fist to the face.

But I guess lately I’ve been feeling like your distancing yourself from me, pulling away. I can understand that though, you haven’t exactly been the same since Michael possessed you. And I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to help you. I just wish things could have gone back to how they were before it all happened. I miss going on drives and singing terribly off key to Zepplin, teaching Jack and Cas how to play those dumb board games, I miss watching Westerns with you late at night until we both doze off. 

Dean took another deep breath, taking the words in and preparing himself for the last few paragraphs of the letter. You true final words scrawled out on paper.

But I known that’s naive. Change is a part of life, and me being gone is just another piece of change your going to have to deal with. I know your going to break, but for the sake of me, keep moving forward. Keep hunting, keep saving people.

Keep living.

When I first got to heaven I sat down and wrote these out. I should have told you years ago that I loved you. That my heart was only ever yours. Nobody else’s. But fear got the best of me and I pushed it down and left it there.I didnt want to lose my best friend. . . And then someone told me, hell we might as well call them an old friend told me that that love I had been harboring for so long was reciprocated. Don’t be so shocked, apparently everyone (except us) could see it as clear as day.

He closed his eyes momentarily, attempted to keep the tears from spilling out, inhaling deeply he let his eyes eat up the last words.

I’m trying to think of a way to end this but I’m having immense difficulty. Don’t think this is a goodbye though, this is a thank you. Thank you for coming into my life and giving me happiness and adventure. Thank you for loving me. And most importantly thank you for giving me memories that I will cherish forever. You gave me a life Dee, you gave me a home.

Thank you. With Love, y/n.

As his eyes finished their trek across the paper, Dean let out a breath, sinking back a bit farther. His heart was thumping against his rib cage as he tried to catch his breath. He didn’t care anymore about the tears falling down his face, all he cared about was you. You had had feelings for him and somehow he never picked up on it, even when he had the same exact emotions. God, he was such an idiot. He allowed his head to fall back onto the mattress as his fingers tightened around the piece of paper in his hand.

Once again he was too late.

Taglist:

@iluvyewman-blog @a-dorky-book-keeper @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce @my-proof-is-you @a-crowd-of-newsies

#supernatural #dean winchester #dean winchester x reader #dean x y/n #dean winchester imagine #supernatural x reader #supernatural imagine #spn x reader #spn imagine

[bechloeislegit]

The Gweat Punkin Returns

Based on a prompt from horsegurl03 on FF.net: [Prompt is shown at the end]

Three years ago, Chloe's 2-year-old daughter, Sophie, was sick on Halloween. Chloe's best friend, Beca, helped calm Sophie by telling her the story of the Great Pumpkin, who visited sick little girls and boys and brought them candy since they couldn't go trick-or-treating. Sophie loved the "Gweat Punkin," and Beca is about the resurrect it for this Halloween for another special treat.

"I love you," Chloe told Beca as she pulled back from a kiss.

"I love you, too," Beca said. She let go of Chloe and knelt to hug Sophie.

"Do you hafta go?" five-year-old Sophie asked.

"I do," Beca said. "But, I promise I'll be back in time for us to go trick-or-treating, okay?"

"Okay," Sophie said, and Beca pulled her into a hug.

Beca kissed the side of Sophie's head and stood up. "I'm going to miss you two so much."

"We're going to miss you, too," Chloe said and sniffled. "You'd better go before we all start crying."

"Three months will fly by," Beca said, trying to make Chloe feel better. "And, I promise I'll call you every night from the road."

"You'd better," Chloe said, kissing Beca one more time.

"Come on, you big softie," Amy said. "I need to get you to the airport and get back to get ready for my date."

"Alright, alright," Beca said. "Bye. Love you!"

Beca grabbed her suitcase, and Amy pushed her out the door. Chloe closed the door behind them and let out a sigh.

"How about we order pizza for dinner?" Chloe asked, looking down at Sophie.

"Yay!" Sophie cheered.

~~ The Gweat Punkin Returns ~~

Beca told Amy her plan for Halloween as they drove to the airport.

"Do you think you can get everything I asked for?" Beca asked.

"Yes," Amy said. "I'll keep everything at my place. I'm curious to know how you're going to pull it off?"

"Leave that to me," Beca said with a smile. "I want it to be a big surprise for Sophie and Chloe. You can't say anything to anyone, especially Sophie and Chloe."

"I won't," Amy said. "I swear. It will be a great surprise for both of them."

Beca sat with a smile on her face as she watched the scenery go by. She realized Amy kept glancing at her as she drove.

"What?" Beca asked.

"You're so in love," Amy said with a chuckle. "And I don't just mean with Chloe."

Beca's smile grew wider as she said, "Not gonna lie. They are the best things to ever happen to me."

"Love looks good on you," Amy said.

"I have to admit," Beca said with a sigh. "I never thought Chloe and I would be romantically involved, especially when she stayed behind to be with Chicago after the USO Tour. And, when she came to me when the asshat threw her out, I knew she needed a friend. And that's all I ever thought we'd be. Friends."

"I could tell she was falling for you," Amy said.

"What? No way," Beca said.

"Yes, way," Amy responded. "It was obvious after Sophie was born. She would look at you when you were with Sophie, and the heart eyes were out in full force."

"You're wrong," Beca said. "She fell in love when I made up the Great Pumpkin for Sophie."

"You mean the Gweat Punkin," Amy said, laughing.

"That's still the cutest thing I've ever heard," Beca said. "She still calls it the Gweat Punkin."

"Well, here we are," Amy said, pulling to the curb to drop Beca off.

Amy helped Beca retrieve her luggage from the trunk and stood at the curb.

"Thanks for the ride," Beca told. "I knew Chloe would get emotional and didn't want her to have to drive home."

"You're welcome," Amy said.

Amy grabbed Beca in a bear hug, and Beca yelped. Beca hugged Amy back and whispered, "Take care of my girls for me."

"You got it, Cap," Amy said.

"See you in three months," Beca called back as she headed for the entrance.

~~ The Gweat Punkin Returns ~~

Beca called Chloe to let her know she had arrived at her first concert stop in Tokyo, Japan. It was after Midnight in LA, which meant it was almost five in the evening for Beca, so she left a message.

"Hey, babe," Beca said softly when Chloe's voicemail kicked in. "I know you're sleeping, but I wanted to let you know I made it to Tokyo. I'm sixteen hours ahead of you right now, so I'll Skype you later around six in the evening your time, which will be around ten in the morning tomorrow for me. These times zones are freaky. I miss you and Soph so much already and can't wait to hear your voices. I love you, and I'll talk to you later."

Chloe smiled as he listened to the message for the fourth time today. It's only been a day since Beca left and she missed her like crazy.

Chloe looked around the apartment and wondered how she and Sophie were going to manage, rambling around this big house without Beca. She couldn't help but smile as she thought of how Beca brought so much energy into the place that it never seemed so big.

Chloe let her thoughts wander back to how she came to live with Beca.

Chloe had been blindsided when she found herself pregnant, and Chicago told her he didn't want to be a father and kicked her out. She didn't know where else to go, so she had asked Amy to loan her the money to fly to LA. Beca took her in without hesitation, never asking for anything in return.

Chloe smiled as she remembered the day Sophie was born. Beca was in the delivery room with her. And Chloe recalls the exact moment she fell in love with her best friend.

Beca was holding Sophie while Chloe rested. Beca kissed Sophie's forehead and gently touched her forehead to Sophie's.

"Hey, Soph," Beca said, quietly so as not to disturb Chloe. "I'm Beca, and I'm going to be your best friend. I'm going to take care of you and your mommy as long as she lets me, I promise. And I always, always keep my promises. Just ask your mommy. I love you, Sophie."

Chloe wiped a tear from her eye as she remembered that day. She knew she and Beca had always had something special between them. It scared her to think she was falling in love with Beca. Not because she was a woman, but because she had always been her best friend Beca.

Chloe pushed those feelings down, and she, Sophie, and Beca became a family. They did everything together, and Chloe never got tired of the things Beca found to do with Sophie. Chloe was doing a good job of hiding her real feelings, until three years ago when Sophie was sick and couldn't go trick-or-treating.

Beca knew Sophie was upset, so she dressed up and went trick-or-treating to get Sophie candy. Beca didn't tell Chloe what she was doing.

When Sophie had gotten upset again and was crying for Beca, Chloe called her. Beca calmed Sophie down with the story of the Great Pumpkin, or as Sophie called it, the Gweat Punkin, who delivered candy to children who were sick on Halloween and had to stay home.

Beca showed up, dressed in a Pumpkin costume, and gave Sophie a bucket full of candy. Chloe couldn't hide her feelings any longer, and that night kissed Beca, telling her she loved her. Chloe was thrilled when Beca reciprocated her feelings. They've been a couple ever since.

"Mommy, can we talk to Beca now?" Sophie came running in to ask Chloe.

"Not yet, sweetie," Chloe said. "We have to wait for Beca to call us. It should be soon, I hope."

"I miss my Beca," Sophie said with a sigh.

"Me, too, baby. Me, too," Chloe said.

The mother and daughter sat quietly for a moment when Chloe had a thought.

"Where's your backpack?" Chloe asked. "Do you have any papers I need to see?"

"Oh, yeah," Sophie said, excitedly. "We're going to a museum."

Sophie jumped up and went to grab her backpack. She ran back over to Chloe and handed it to her before sitting back on the sofa to wait for Beca's call.

"A museum?" Chloe said. "That sounds exciting."

Chloe opened the backpack and took out the homework folder. She let the backpack drop to the floor and opened the folder just as she heard the ping of a Skype call coming in.

"It's Beca!" Sophie squealed, causing Chloe to jump and laugh.

"Hey, Becs," Chloe said, answering the call.

"Beca!" Sophie squealed.

Beca's smile grew even wider when she saw Chloe and Sophie on her screen. "Hey! How are my girls?" Beca asked.

"We're good," Chloe said. "How's Tokyo?"

"It's noisy, busy, and has a lot of people," Beca said. "How was your day?"

"I'm going to a museum," Sophie said.

"You are?"

"Yep," Sophie said. "We're going to the Natural History Museum."

"Sounds like fun," Beca said, smiling at Sophie's excitement.

"Oh, look," Sophie said, grabbing her homework folder from Chloe. "I made you a picture."

Sophie went through the folder until she found the picture. "See?" Sophie said, holding it up for Beca to look at.

"Wow," Beca said. "Is that me and your mommy?"

"And me!" Sophie said. "It's our family."

"I love it," Beca said. "Can we hang it on the refrigerator, Chlo?"

"We sure can," Chloe responded with a bright smile.

"I'll do it," Sophie said and ran off to the kitchen.

Beca smiled and looked at Chloe. "So, how was your day?"

"Not bad," Chloe said. "Just missing you like crazy."

"I miss you, too," Beca said. "Oh, I left you something."

"You did?" Chloe said, her eyes suddenly watery. She loved how Beca was always doing such sweet things for her. And for Sophie.

"Yeah," Beca said. "It's in my office. You'll know it when you see it."

"Beca, Beca," Sophie cried out as she ran back into the living room.

"What's got you all excited?" Beca asked, giving Chloe a small smile as Chloe wiped her eyes.

"I'm going to be Captain Marvel for Halloween," Sophie said.

"Really?" Beca said. "You will be the best Captain Marvel ever."

"Yep," Sophie said proudly.

"Don't you have some homework to do, little missy?" Chloe asked.

"But I want to talk to Beca," Sophie whined.

"We'll talk tomorrow, okay?" Beca said. "You should do your homework."

"Okay," Sophie said, taking her homework folder. "I love you, Beca. And I miss you."

"I love and miss you, too, Soph," Beca said. "I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"Bye," Sophie said and left the room.

"You okay?" Beca asked Chloe.

"Yeah," Chloe said. "Just emotional. I love you so much, and I can't believe that I get to call you my girlfriend."

"I love you, too," Beca said, sniffling. "How am I going to make it three months without you and Sophie to hug and cuddle every day."

"Among other things," Chloe said with a sexy wink.

Beca laughed and blushed. "I have to go. My car will be here soon to take me to rehearsal."

"Okay," Chloe said. "Have a great show."

"Thanks," Beca said. "I'll call you at the same time tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay," Chloe said. She blew a kiss at the screen, and Beca blew one back. "I love you."

"I love you, too," Beca said before ending the call.

Chloe sat back and sighed. Remembering the 'gift' Beca said she left her, Chloe got up and went into Beca's office. She smiled when she saw the box sitting on Beca's desk.

Chloe sat in Beca's chair and opened the box. Inside she found a flash drive, which meant Beca made her a playlist, and one of Beca's band shirts. She pulled the shirt out and brought it up to her nose, inhaling Beca's scent.

Chloe let out a chuckle when she saw a small bottle of Beca's perfume, guessing that Beca left it so Chloe could spray Beca's shirt when the smell faded.

~~ The Gweat Punkin Returns ~~

Beca was having a blast on tour and always looked forward to Skyping with Chloe and Sophie. There had been a couple of days where the timing didn't work, so she missed out, but the tour was winding down, and she had only had two more shows.

"I'll see you guys in three days," Beca said through Chloe's computer screen. "I can't wait to get in on a Beale hug."

"Don't be surprised if it lasts for a while," Chloe said with a smile.

"I miss you, Beca," Sophie said. "I can't wait for you to be home, and we can go trick-or-treating together."

"I'm looking forward to it," Beca said. "It's getting late here, so I'd better go. I'll try and call you tomorrow. I might still be traveling to the next show. But I'll talk to you soon, okay?"

"Okay," Chloe said. "We love you!"

"I love you, too," Beca said and ended the Skype call.

"Mommy?" Sophie asked, looking up at Chloe.

"Yes, baby," Chloe said, looking down at Sophie.

"Do you think I can call Beca mama?"

"If that's what you want to do, I'm sure it will be okay," Chloe said. "Why are you asking now?"

"Because I miss her," Sophie said. "And she's like my mama and does everything for me that you do. And that's what Bella calls Aunt Brey."

"I think it's a great idea," Chloe said with a smile. "But, you'll have to ask Beca if it's okay with her."

"I will," Sophie said excitedly. "I'll ask her when she gets home."

Chloe smiled at how excited Sophie was. "It's time for bed. Go brush your teeth, and I'll be up to tuck you in."

"Okay, mommy," Sophie said and ran upstairs.

~~ The Gweat Punkin Returns ~~

Beca was backstage after finishing her last show when Theo walked in.

"You ready to go?" Theo asked. "The jet is gassed up and waiting for you."

"Yeah," Beca said with a big smile. "I can't thank you enough for allowing me to take the jet home tonight instead of tomorrow."

"It's the least we can do," Theo said. "This tour has been one of our biggest moneymakers to date. And we know you'll just mope around tomorrow, bugging everyone to leave early. We know you want to get home to Sophie and Chloe."

"Thanks," Beca said.

"Come on, you big softie," Theo said with a laugh. "There's a car outside to take you to the airport."

Beca grabbed her stuff and followed Theo out of the dressing room. Before she knew it, she was on the jet heading to Los Angeles.

The jet landed around Midnight, and a car was waiting to take her home. She arrived just before one in the morning and quietly entered the apartment, so she didn't wake Chloe or Sophie.

Beca left her bags by the door and took off her shoes. She made her way upstairs in her socks and checked on Sophie first. Sophie was facing the door, and Beca couldn't help the smile that came to her face as she watched Sophie sleep for a moment. She whispered, "I love you, Soph," before quietly closing the door and going to her and Chloe's room.

Beca opened the door quietly and entered the room. She smiled when she saw Chloe snuggled up with the shirt she had left for her. She quickly shed her clothes and threw on some sleep shorts and a shirt and crawled into bed behind Chloe.

Chloe shifted, and Beca froze until Chloe had settled back down with a sleepy sigh. Beca settled down and fell asleep, holding Chloe.

~~ The Gweat Punkin Returns ~~

Beca woke the next morning to a squeal and kisses being peppered all over her face. She laughed, and Chloe grabbed her face and kissed her. Beca rolled Chloe over and leaned down to kiss her; Chloe grabbed her face and kissed her back. It was starting to get a little heated when Beca heard the patter of feet.

The door flew open, and Beca pulled back from the kiss.

"BECA!" Sophie screamed when she saw Beca.

Chloe groaned, and Beca whispered, "Later."

Beca gave Chloe a quick peck just as Sophie threw herself onto the bed and on Beca's back.

"You're home!" Sophie squealed, causing Chloe to laugh.

"Yep," Beca said and rolled off Chloe, taking Sophie with her.

Sophie was laughing as Beca 'squished' her. Sophie squirmed until she was lying on Beca's stomach with her head on Beca's chest.

"I missed you, mama," Sophie said, hugging Beca's neck.

"I missed you-" Beca stopped and looked over at a smiling Chloe. She then looked down at Sophie. "What did you call me?"

"Mama," Sophie said, looking up at Beca. "Is that okay?"

Beca had a tear in her eye and could only manage to whisper, "Yeah, it's okay."

Beca put her arms around Sophie and hugged her tightly.

"Come on, Soph," Chloe finally said, moving to get up. "You have to get ready for school."

"Can't I stay here with mama?" Sophie asked, staying in Beca's arms.

"I can't today, Soph," Beca said, letting go of Sophie. "I've got to go into the studio."

"Okay," Sophie said, pouting as she crawled off Beca.

"I'll make pancakes for breakfast since Beca's home," Chloe said and led Sophie out the door.

"Yay!" Sophie squealed.

Beca laid back and wiped at the tears in her eyes. "Mama," she muttered, shaking her head. "Wow."

~~ The Gweat Punkin Returns ~~

Halloween morning, Chloe woke with a sore throat and a small cough.

"Are you okay, Chlo?" Beca asked.

"I think I caught the cold that's going around the school," Chloe croaked out.

"You sound horrible," Beca said. "I'll call and let the principal know you can't come in today."

"I'll be fine once I get up and moving around," Chloe said.

"No," Beca told her. "If it was one of your students, you'd expect them to stay home. I'll get Sophie to school and ask Stacie or Aubrey to pick her up."

"I'm fine," Chloe insisted but lost some of her fire when she started coughing.

"Mommy, are you okay?" Sophie asked, standing in the doorway and looking at Chloe and Beca.

"Mommy's sick, sweetie," Beca said, walking over to Sophie. "I'll make breakfast and take you to school. Aunt Brey or Aunt Stacie will pick you up. Okay?"

"Okay," Sophie said. "Will mommy be going trick-or-treating with us?"

"I don't think so, baby," Chloe said, coughing again.

"Will the Gweat Punkin come visit you?" Sophie asked wide-eyed.

"I don't think so, Soph," Beca said with a laugh. "He only comes for sick children."

"That's too bad," Sophie said. "Don't worry, mommy; I'll share my candy with you."

"Thank you, Sophie," Chloe said.

"You get some rest," Beca told Chloe. She bent down and kissed Chloe's forehead. "I'll take care of Sophie. Do you want anything?"

"Some hot tea, please," Chloe said. "With honey and lemon."

"You got it," Beca said and ushered Sophie out of the room. "Come on, Soph. I have to make a few calls and make breakfast."

Beca made breakfast and called Chloe's principal and Stacie. Everything was taken care of for the day, and Beca breathed a sigh of relief. She walked Sophie upstairs to her room so she could get dressed for school. Beca then continued to her and Chloe's room.

Beca smiled when she saw Chloe sprawled across the bed, covers all askew, sleeping. She quietly placed the hot tea on the nightstand and gently shook Chloe.

"Babe, can you wake up for a minute, please?"

"Mmph," Chloe mumbled and squinted one eye open.

Beca told everything was set with school and Sophie. "And I brought up your hot tea. It's on the nightstand when you're ready."

"Thanks," Chloe said and snuggled back into bed.

"Text me if you need anything today," Beca told her. "And I mean anything. Okay?"

Chloe said something that got lost in the blankets Chloe had tugged up to her face. Whatever it was, Beca took as agreement. Beca stood from the bed and kissed Chloe's head before quietly leaving the room.

~~ The Gweat Punkin Returns ~~

"I thought Aunt Stacie was picking me up," Sophie said when she saw Beca waiting for her after school.

"She was," Beca said. "But, I was worried about your mommy and decided to leave work early so I could check on her."

"Oh, okay," Sophie said as Beca helped get her settled into her booster seat.

When Beca and Sophie got home, they found Amy sitting on the sofa with Chloe.

"Hey, Aunt Amy," Sophie said and ran over to her.

"Hey, short stack Jr.," Amy said, hugging Sophie.

"Are you going trick-or-treating with us?"

"No, I'm going to stay with your mommy," Amy said.

"Thanks for that, Amy," Beca said. "I was worried because Chloe hadn't been answering my calls or texts."

"I was resting," Chloe said. "And I am feeling better now."

"I'm glad," Beca said and leaned down to kiss Chloe. Chloe pulled back.

"No kissing," Chloe said. "I feel better, but that doesn't mean I can't get you sick."

"Okay," Beca said. "Soph, go do your homework, and I'll call you when dinner is ready."

"Are we still going trick-or-treating?"

"Absolutely," Beca said with a big smile. "I can't wait."

Sophie hugged Chloe and went up to her room.

"Chlo, do you want me to fix you anything special?" Beca asked.

"I could go for some soup," Chloe said.

"Amy, would you like to help me get dinner ready?" Beca asked.

"Um, sure," Amy said.

Amy followed Beca into the kitchen. Beca went to the refrigerator and turned to look at Amy.

"Is everything all set?" Beca asked.

"Yes," Amy said. "Be back here by eight-thirty. That's when Bumper will be here."

"I can't thank you and Bumper enough for doing this," Beca said.

"We love you guys," Amy said. "We can't wait to celebrate with you."

Beca smiled and continued to make dinner. After dinner, Beca told Sophie to put on her costume so they could go trick-or-treating.

Amy went to help Sophie, and Beca sat on the sofa, cuddling Chloe.

"Could you get me some ice cream while you and Sophie are out?" Chloe asked, wiping her nose.

"Sure," Beca said. "Chunky Monkey?"

"Definitely," Chloe said.

Sophie was ready and she and Beca left.

~~ The Gweat Punkin Returns ~~

An hour later, there was another knock at the door. Amy got up to answer and turned to Chloe when she did.

"Um, Chloe, it's for you," Amy said.

"Who?" Chloe said and walked to the door. She let out a small gasp when she saw a giant pumpkin standing at the door. "Beca, what are you doing?"

"I am the Great Pumpkin," the pumpkin said. "I have come to give a treat to Chloe Beale because I heard she was sick."

"Beca, this is cute and all," Chloe said, stepping to look out the door. "But where's Sophie?"

"I'm right here, mommy," Sophie said as she and Beca were walking toward them.

Chloe's eyes widened and looked from Beca to the pumpkin and back again.

"What? How? Who? I, I-"

"Are you okay, Chloe?" Amy asked.

Chloe stood there in shock, confused about what was happening in front of her.

Sophie stood looking up at the Great Pumpkin. "Are you really the Gweat Punkin?"

"Yes, I am," the pumpkin said.

"Come on, let's get inside," Beca said.

Beca ushered Sophie and the Great Pumpkin inside and closed the door behind.

"Beca, what's going on?" Chloe asked.

"Well, since you were sick, I called the Great Pumpkin to give you a treat for Halloween," Beca said with a grin. "Well, actually, it's for you and Sophie. Sophie, could you go over there and stand next to mommy?"

"Okay," Sophie said and did as Beca instructed.

"May I?" Beca asked, reaching for the plastic pumpkin that the Great Pumpkin was holding.

The Great Pumpkin handed Beca the pumpkin, and Beca reached inside. She pulled out something and hid it in her hand as she walked over to Chloe and knelt in front of her. Chloe let out a gasp and put a hand to her mouth.

"Chloe," Beca said. "I have been in love with you for so long. I honestly never thought the day would come that you would love me, too. We've had an incredible journey these past three years, and I want that journey with you to continue for the rest of my life." Beca opened the box she had been hiding in her hand and held it up. Tears were running down Chloe's face as she looked down at the ring and then at Beca. "Chloe Anne Beale, will you marry me?"

"Oh, my God, yes!" Chloe squealed, pulling Beca up and into a kiss. "I love you."

"I love you, too," Beca said, tears on her cheeks. "Now, I have something for Sophie."

Beca turned and knelt in front of Sophie. She pulled another box out of the pumpkin and held it in front of her.

"Sophie," Beca said, opening the box and showing a silver pumpkin necklace. "I've known since you were born. I have loved you since the day your mother told me she was having a baby. I'm so happy to have you in my life, and I want to have you in my life forever."

Chloe smiled as the tears fell, watching Beca and Sophie.

"So, Sophie," Beca started again and stopped to clear her throat. "Will you do me the honor of allowing me to be your mama forever?"

Chloe and Amy are both sniffling and wiping their faces.

"If I say yes, it means you're really going to be my mama?" Sophie asked quietly.

"Yes, it does," Beca said.

"Then my answer is yes," Sophie said with a big smile, jumping into Beca's arms.

Beca stood still holding Sophie and pulling Chloe into a hug. "I love you two, so much."

"I love you, too, mama," Sophie said.

"I love you, too," Chloe said and kissed Sophie's cheek, before capturing Beca's lips in another kiss.

"Aw, you guys," the Great Pumpkin said, grabbing the three in a hug.

An hour later, Sophie was in bed, and Beca and Chloe were cuddled up on the couch while Chloe was eating her ice cream. She stared down at her new ring and smiled.

Amy and Bumper sat on the other sofa.

"Thanks again, Bumper," Beca said. "I was going to dress up as the Great Pumpkin again but didn't want to ruin the illusion for Sophie."

"No sweat, Beca," Bumper said. "I should be thanking you for allowing me to be a part of it. That being said," Bumper stood up and knelt in front of Amy.

Beca and Chloe's mouths opened in surprise.

"Bumper, what are you doing?"

"I'm asking you to marry me," Bumper replied, causing Amy to gasp as he pulled out a ring and held it out to her. "So, Amy, will you marry me?"

"Yes," Amy yelled and threw herself at Bumper.

"Oh, my God," Beca said. "I was not expecting that."

"I guess you started something," Chloe said and turned to kiss Beca.

Their kiss continued until they were brought out of it when Amy yelled, "Double wedding!"

Full prompt from horsegurl03: So I just re-read the Gweat Punkin and thought about a one-shot a few years in the future where Beca uses the Gweat Punkin to propose.

#bechloe #bechloe fanfiction #beca mitchell #chloe beale

[unityghost]

Chasing Answers

Here we are again with part 22 of Post-Asmodeus Sabriel Feels, originally posted on Archive of Our Own.

Some of this story was inspired by a suggestion from @letbuckyeathisgoddamnplums​ on Archive:

The only point where I'm not sure if I like [the way Sam and Gabriel communicate] is the second part where Sam coaxes that confession out of Gabe, even though he clearly doesn't want to talk about it. I mean at some point he would have brought it up by himself when he was ready for it.

You were right, so thank you! (But I won't change my stance on pasta with ketchup.) For further context, see part 20, "Resurrection."

There are a few cagey (see what I did there, Sam?) references to sexual assault in this story. It’s safe to assume that most of these works contain such content.

At the moment I’m not taking prompts/requests because I have, like, fifty million that I haven’t yet followed up on. But you’re always welcome to leave suggestions as to what you would be interested in seeing more of in this series.

Thank you for reading!

By the time they reached the bedroom, Gabriel was facedown on the floor, tangled in blankets and screaming for help.

“Oh my god!” Sam sprinted over to him while everyone else - Dean, Castiel, and Jack - watched from the doorway, as taken aback as Sam was.

Gabriel’s face was coated in tears, mucous, and saliva, and he was sobbing so violently he kept breaking into coughing fits, gasping for breath, on the edge of vomiting.

Sam tried to tug the blankets off of him so that he would have room to move. But the second he touched him, Gabriel began clawing at his lap. Then he lowered his face to Sam’s knee, seized handfuls of his pajama top, and cried harder.

Astonished, Sam laid a hand on the back of Gabriel’s head.

“Can … can we help?” asked Jack.

Sam turned around. “Give us a minute. I don’t think he’s gonna want a crowd.”

“But - ”

“Not yet. Not yet, Jack, okay? Let me see what I can do first.”

“No!” Gabriel howled, and Sam’s eyes snapped back to him. “No, no, no, no - ”

“Ssh, it’s okay,” Sam murmured. “Come on, hey, hey, it’s me. Just me. Guys, I really think - ”

“Just come give us an update when you can,” said Dean, whose eyes were trained on Gabriel; and it occurred to Sam that Dean probably hadn’t seen this version of him.

“I will,” Sam promised.

They made their exit, but Castiel looked back, surveying the scene as if searching for evidence that it was better for him to remain.

“Cas,” Sam said, “Just give us a minute.”

“Right. Yes. Of course. Um … like Dean said. Come find us when you get a chance.”

When Castiel was gone, Sam shifted his attention back to Gabriel. “Okay, easy, Gabriel, easy. I know you’re scared but it’s only me. You’re safe. You’re all right.”

Gabriel was overcome with another seizure of coughing and gagging. All Sam could do was whisper that there was no danger, and that it was time to calm down.

After a few minutes, Gabriel shuddered and raised his head to stare up at Sam with wild eyes.

“Are you with me?” asked Sam.

Gabriel responded with a sound somewhere between choking and sobbing. Sam pushed some of the sweaty hair from his forehead. “Let’s get you back into bed. You got caught in the covers, huh? Here - ” He loosened the sheets from Gabriel’s legs and torso, then helped ease him onto the mattress. The fitted sheet had come halfway off.

Sam sat beside him. “Are you okay? Can you look at me?”

Gabriel did. His face was flushed.

Sam smiled. “Okay. Okay, good. I’m the only one here, all right?”

Gabriel nodded and leaned against him. He was trembling, his breathing shallow and erratic.

“Gabriel, what happened?” Sam asked softly.

Gabriel didn’t say anything.

“Gabe? Hey. Can you tell me - ”

“Don’t do that.” Gabriel’s voice was hoarse and shaky.

“Don’t do what?”

“Make me tell you. Don’t make me tell you when I can’t tell you. I can’t do it. I can’t. Not now. Don’t, please. Please don’t.

Sam frowned. “I won’t make you talk.”

“I owe it to you, I know. When you waste time on me and I don’t give you some kind of explanation for it - that’s bad. I know. I’m sorry.”

Sam shook his head in bewilderment. “You don’t owe me anything. And you’re not wasting my time.”

“Don’t force me, please - just don’t.”

“I wouldn’t force you. Why - ”

“My grace.”

“Your grace?”

“Back in - wherever we were. Raleigh. Rockefeller Center. Russia.”

“Rhode Island?”

“There, when you fought off that spirit. It was hard to tell you about my grace, about why I was afraid of having it back. And you had to know. Wasn’t ready but you wanted me to be so I had to be.”

Sam thought back to their exchange in the motel. Gabriel had been weak and flustered after an unexpected spasm of grace strong enough to heal Sam from an attack. Sam was elated at the reappearance of Gabriel’s powers. But Gabriel had seemed disturbed, and before he could explain what was wrong - that he expected emotional healing to accompany grace replenishment, that he felt useless to Sam and the others - Sam had …

Had what?

He remembered how reluctant Gabriel had been to elaborate - how it had taken persistence to get him to explain his reaction.

Had he really bullied Gabriel into telling the truth?

Ashamed, Sam wrapped an arm around Gabriel. “Well, that’s one thing you definitely should’ve told me. How come you didn’t?”

Gabriel was silent, and Sam saw what should have been obvious: he was afraid of Sam getting angry or taking offense. He was afraid of punishment.

“Okay,” Sam said quietly. “Okay, well, I’m glad you told me. I’m sorry, Gabriel.”

“Not your fault. It isn’t your fault.” He shivered against Sam. “You have every right to know what’s going on with me.”

“That’s not - it’s just that since you’ve told me so much, and I know how … how ugly things were for you … and how bad it still gets …” Sam took a deep breath. “If I know something’s destroying you from the inside out, eating you alive, and I can’t do anything about it - I worry. About you, and about whether I’m doing enough to help you feel safe. If I’ve been doing the opposite - ”

Gabriel shook his head. “Not a lot.”

Sam’s throat tightened. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about the dream.”

“Did I get everybody out of bed?”

“Well, technically Cas doesn’t go to bed in the first place.”

“Damn it.”

“No, no, it’s fine. Jack was worried - you know how he is. And Dean was a little at a loss, I think.”

“I didn’t mean to make a big deal out of nothing.”

“Don’t say that. It was a bad dream. It scared you.”

“No.” Gabriel pressed himself closer to Sam. “I wasn’t scared. I mean, I was, yes, but not - not like I should’ve been.”

Sam frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I’m the wrong kind of scared.” Then, before Sam could challenge this logic: “If I tell you about it, you might think I … that I … ”

He trailed off. The color had begun to drain from his face and his breathing sounded hoarse.

Sam pulled away and held Gabriel at arm’s length, trying to ground him with eye contact. “I don’t know what you expect me to think. But I’m not gonna judge you for anything. What he did to you wasn’t your fault.”

“Everything I told you about him,” Gabriel sputtered, “About what he used to do to me, and the things he’d say.”

“What about them?”

“You’ll think they’re not enough.”

That perplexed Sam. “Not enough? Not enough for what?”

“You’ll think that at the end of the day he wasn’t such a bad guy after all.”

Immediately, without thinking, all Sam could do was laugh. Gabriel’s face lit up with terror.

“Sorry,” Sam said quickly. “It’s just - I can’t imagine thinking even one good thing about him. Asmodeus was a monster. I know that. You know I know that.”

“You won’t think I’ve actually been hurt. You’ll think I wasn’t really tortured. Or not bad enough, anyway. Not bad enough to need you so much.”

“I’d never think that!”

“But you might!”

“No. I won’t.”

Feverish and panicked, Gabriel reached out with both hands and caught Sam by the upper arm. “If I let him help me - if he was willing to offer help in the first place - how much damage could he really have done? He gave me what I asked for. Sometimes.”

Sam creased his brow. “You’re talking about what you told me before? About how he used to come and, I don’t know, give you a hug when you were crying?”

There were times I begged for him to help me, to hold me. Because I would’ve taken anyone. I just needed somebody to touch me.

“So much pain,” Gabriel stammered. “There was so much pain, so much pleading, so many temper tantrums like I was a self-righteous toddler who’d already had too many sweets and was still begging for more. And even then, Sam, even then, he listened. Mostly he didn’t, no, but sometimes he did. He’d come to me and try to console me.”

Now and again I let myself pretend that maybe he wouldn’t hurt me again.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I remember that.”

How could I ever get so low as to need him to stroke my hair and tell me I’d be all right? When within five minutes I was back on the floor and the only thing that shut me up was how much heavier than me he was?

It was a vision that had haunted Sam since he’d heard the story. There was something so peculiarly twisted about the image of Gabriel groveling for the comfort that Sam couldn’t imagine withholding from him.

What if you did that, Sam?

“I could trust him,” Gabriel went on, “Because the others - the guards, the other demons, anyone who came in to visit - they were dangerous; they were strangers. Asmodeus did the worst but he was right to hurt me. I had confidence in him; he was the only one I knew, the only one I had. I took what I could get, Sam. It felt so good when finally, finally, he listened to me yelling for help and told me I was okay.” Gabriel clenched his jaw. “When I woke up just now, there was this - this emptiness that I don’t know how to explain to you. I dreamed he was with me, that I’d been desperate and panicked and my throat was bloody from screaming and he came, Sam, he was there;but when I opened my eyes he wasn’t. Which is weird, because normally he won’t go away. But I needed - I felt like - I needed someone again because he’d left and I would have to … to beg for help, to start screaming for somebody again, and … and it had to be him.”

What if it was you?

When Sam answered, his voice wasn’t as steady as he’d meant it to be. “He’s not here anymore. It’s okay.”

“But that’s the problem, Sam. I just …”

Sam waited for him to go on, but it seemed that he couldn’t.

“Do you miss him?” was the only thing Sam could think to say.

That seemed to rekindle something in Gabriel. “Ew! No! He can suck a pinwheel. It’s just that when he was there, and then he wasn’t, and I needed someone, and he was the only one I had, then … you know, who else was I supposed to scream for?”

Sam wasn’t sure he understood, but he nodded. “Well, you don’t have to beg with me.”

Gabriel’s eyes fell on his hands, still clutching Sam’s upper arm. Surprise flickered over his face, as though he hadn’t realized what he was doing. Slowly, he let go. “I’m sorry.”

Sam studied him, screening for Gabriel’s usual symptoms of panic: tight, thin breathing; wide, vacant eyes; rhythmic moaning; the pallor of nausea.

Once Sam decided that Gabriel seemed a little better than he had a few moments ago, he offered a small smile. “You’re not sorry. Okay?”

Gabriel shrugged, and Sam hoped he hadn’t taken it as a threat.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” said Sam. “You’re sweaty.”

“Every time,” Gabriel muttered.

“I can change the sheets while you get in the shower.”

“No.” Gabriel sounded nervous again. “Don’t leave me alone. I - I can’t. I just can’t, not right now. Please.”

The last word made Sam’s blood run cold. “Sure, yeah, not if you don’t want to. It’s okay. But you might feel better if you get into some clean clothes, huh?”

“No, Sam, I don’t want - I can’t - ”

“Let me just make up the bed, then. Get you settled.”

Gabriel edged off of the mattress and bent down to retrieve the rumpled sheets for Sam, who said, “It’s okay, I got it,” and went to the closet to retrieve clean blankets. “Should I hang out for a little?”

There was silence, and Sam turned around. Gabriel looked like he was going to start crying again.

“Hey.” Sam dropped the sheets and came back over to him. “No, hey, we can wait to go back to bed.”

“I’m fine.” Gabriel took a slow, shaky breath. “I’m tired, and I’m delirious, and I’m … fine. Son of a bitch, that was a five-star meltdown. When was the last time I threw a fit like that? A month ago? Two?” He sat back down, staring at his knees, simultaneously horrified and bewildered. “I didn’t mean to, Sam.”

“I know.”

“Most of the time it’s not that unreasonable a demand on myself to remember where I am. At least not during the day. Letting myself sleep while I wait for my grace to get back to normal, it’s … that’s been a real game-changer.”

Sam took a seat beside him. “Everything feels different at night, doesn’t it?”

“It was like he … like I … be honest: am I making any sense here? Do you understand, sort of, what I’m getting at? I’m not trying to tell you I have some freaky Stockholm Asmodeus-sized hole in my heart. That’s not it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not that.”

“Hmm.” Sam considered. “Yeah, I mean … it’s like you said, right? He was the only one you had.”

Gabriel nodded. “All I could think just now was, ‘Where did he go? What did I do? I need - I - ’” Gabriel tried to steady himself with a few deep breaths, but his face crumpled and he covered it with his hands. “‘I need him to come back.’”

Sam’s throat closed up as he watched Gabriel drag his knees to his chest and bury his hands in his hair, trying to make himself as small as he could. Somehow this felt different than simply trying to coax Gabriel out of the fear that so often paralyzed him after dark.

It wasn’t something Sam could remember ever having experienced in Hell. His torture had been different than Gabriel’s - from what Gabriel had told him, Asmodeus worked from the inside out, while Lucifer began with the skin - but it was generally easy to picture Lucifer engaging in so many of the psychological tortures Gabriel had cited.

This one - the practice of forcing Sam into loyalty, into something that Gabriel seemed, despite his denial, to read as something close to love - had no place in Sam’s memory.

Sam pulled Gabriel in for an embrace. “I’m here. You don’t need him.”

Gabriel jerked his head up, face streaked with tears. “I know I don’t need him! I know that, Sam! But I did then!”

Sam opened his mouth to reply, but then realized that this wasn’t about trying to explain that Gabriel had never really needed Asmodeus to come and sit with him, to come and guide him through the same helplessness Sam handled now; there was no point in trying to convince him that Asmodeus had lied.

Because to Gabriel, in Hell, illusion mattered. There was no disentangling true and false when each had bled into the other while Gabriel was at the mercy of the storyteller.

“Well,” Sam said at last, “You don’t need him anymore.”

Gabriel didn’t reply.

“Gabriel? You know that, right? You need help. You need to feel safe. You don’t need him.”

Gabriel nodded but didn’t meet Sam’s eyes.

“All he ever did to you,” Sam continued, “Was make you feel like you deserved what you got. And taunting you by pretending like affection was some kind of - of privilege - ” Sam swallowed. “I hate that he did that to you, Gabriel. I hate that he made you believe in him like that.”

Gabriel looked up at him.

“Asmodeus was cruel,” Sam insisted. “He liked seeing you in pain. And the best way of doing that was to play with what you would’ve given anything for. He teased you, Gabriel. It was a filthy trick, and it wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes it was,” Gabriel replied in a high, strangled voice. “For letting him do it. For letting him - for - ”

“Ssh, try to calm down. I know it hurts.”

Gabriel dragged a shaking hand over his eyes. “It’s on me, Sam. It is. There’s no trying to mess around with that. Which is - ” He pulled away from Sam and squared his shoulders. “Which is fine. That’s all good and done, isn’t it? No way to get that opportunity back.”

“Opportunity for what?”

“For dignity. For strength.” Gabriel forced a smile. “Knowing you, you probably believe what you’re saying - that I was just some poor bloodied-up sap with no understanding of what I was doing. But I knew.” His features hardened. “I could hear myself, Sam. And let me tell you, it was a hell of an experience listening to all that screaming and crying in my voice. All because I didn’t want to be alone. Because I was desperate for …” His face twisted with revulsion. “For comfort. I don’t even know why. Just … I’d been beaten and stripped and torn apart and screamed at. Had my grace drained. Wanted to be told I’d be okay. Even if I knew it was a lie.”

“Gabriel …”

“What I really don’t understand is why I couldn’t not need him. And it’s the same with you; I can’t not need you, except with you it makes more sense because the worst you’ve ever done to me is give a stern spiel about how I shouldn’t go looking for an angel blade.”

Sam stiffened, disturbed both by the memory of how alarmed he’d been to hear Gabriel speak of self-destruction and of how harshly he himself had behaved in response.

“It’s okay that you need me,” he told Gabriel.

“It really isn’t. Not to me.”

Somehow this disappointed Sam. “Not even after all this time?”

“I thought it would be over by now. I thought I would be better. Stronger. Not like this.”

“You are doing better.”

“You know what I mean. Healed. I thought that even if I had to sleep at all, the nightmares would stop; I thought if the nightmares kept going, I’d be able to handle them on my own. I didn’t think I’d still be stuck like this. Like a baby. Even Jack, an actual baby, is more put-together than I am. You’re doing everything right, Sam. Everything. Well, except - I know I’ve said before that you should be letting me face this down without all the extra help. That I won’t get over it unless I practice sans Winchester.”

“Which isn’t true," Sam protested. And I’m not doing everything right. You gotta tell me when I make it worse. Like forcing you to say what you really don’t want to.”

Gabriel blinked, puzzled, as if he didn’t remember making such accusations. “That? It’s okay.”

“No. It’s not. I’m glad you let me know.”

“Uh. Well … that’s still not something you’re doing wrong, Sam. That’s just down to my own wimpiness. If I’m gonna be shrieking for a savior in the middle of the night, Messiah Sam should at least know what I’m whining about.”

“Gabe, no.” Sam offered his hand, and Gabriel, after a moment’s hesitation, accepted it. “I’m here to help, not file a report.”

Gabriel gazed down at their hands. Sam saw his eyes flicking back and forth, as if trying to memorize the placement of their fingers. “He didn’t listen. All I could do was scream for help, scream that I was sorry, scream that I needed him to come back. Screamed so hard I tore my damn throat and puked up blood.”

Sam nodded. “I remember you telling me that.”

“And even though I knew - of course I knew; I was insane, but not stupid - that he’d come back in there and kick me in the ribs for that, make me shove it back down my wounded gullet, I still didn’t want to be alone. I - someone. Him. He was all I - ”

“All you had.” Sam tightened his grip. “You have a lot more now. You’ve got me, and your brother, and my brother, and your nephew. And Gabriel, I’d never be able to live with myself if I left you to beg for comfort.”

“Well, you’ve got low standards for what’s worth your self-esteem.” Gabriel paused. “Remember when I spazzed out about that kid in the grocery store?”

“Peanut butter cookie boy.”

“Yeah. This isn’t too far from what was going on then. Because the second Asmodeus would leave, it’d be ‘no, come back, help me,’ and he’d get furious - ‘Why are you always wanting more, Gabriel? How is it that nothing is ever enough for your greedy ass?’”

“Don’t go down that road,” Sam warned, as gently as he could. “You’re going to get all worked up.”

“I know. I just - it was the same sort of mess. Pleading for him to come back. Always demanding more - exactly like I do with you.”

That took Sam by surprise. “You don’t do that.”

“Oh, please. Maybe I don’t prostrate myself like I did with him - unless you count just now - but I still can’t function without you. Whatever you do to pull me out of this, it’s never enough for me. Not because you’re doing a shit job, but because I’m flimsier than a stoned flatworm. And this is going to sound crazy, but the truth is I feel like maybe that’s because I know you, like I knew him, except I could trust him partly because he was doing the right thing by punishing me. And I can trust you because it seems like you’re doing the right thing by not punishing me. What am I supposed to believe, Sam? Because I’d really rather believe you.” His eyes shone with tears. “So I keep coming back to you, over and over again, hoping that sooner or later I’ll take you seriously.”

Sam took a few moments to gather his thoughts before offering a reply. “I don’t know how true that is.”

Still holding on to Sam’s hand, Gabriel cast him a look of confusion.

“I think,” Sam continued, “That it’s easier to tell yourself you’re chasing answers than admit that you’re so broken you need someone to make you feel safe. There’s not an end to that. Or there is, maybe, somewhere, but it isn’t a missing puzzle piece. It’s time and learning. You had to face so much violence, so much abuse, for such a long time, that the pain is just …” Sam cleared his throat. “I know, Gabriel. I know how hard it is to stop hurting. You don’t owe it to me or anyone else to be okay.”

A number of emotions clawed their way over Gabriel’s features: horror and relief, sorrow and gratitude, hunger and uncertainty.

“This isn’t about strategy or expectations,” Sam told him. “This is about you.”

Gabriel made a small, frightened sound. Sam had the sense that he wasn’t scared but simply overwhelmed, incapable of understanding - or accepting - Sam’s narrative.

“I’ve told you before,” Sam went on, softening his voice, “You’re sick and you need to let yourself get better. Part of that means not being so hard on yourself. You’re not responsible for what Asmodeus put you through and I’ll tell you that as many times as I gotta.”

He could feel Gabriel’s hand shaking in his, but opted not to comment on it. It was Gabriel’s turn to talk - or, if he preferred, to stay silent.

Finally, he pulled in a harsh breath through his nose. For a second Sam felt sure he was going to speak; but Gabriel remained quiet, squeezing Sam’s hand hard enough to cause pain, probably trying to root himself in the present.

Or perhaps this was another way of begging.

“You know, right?” said Sam. “You know that you don’t have to worry about being ignored. I’m here for you and so are the rest of us. Gabriel, the second we heard you screaming, we couldn’t think about anything else. All that mattered was making sure you knew you weren’t alone.”

Eyes fixed on the far wall, Gabriel moved his other hand so that both clutched at Sam’s.

“Hey,” Sam soothed, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I feel like I can’t get close enough. I don’t know how to explain it. I was alone for so long, isolated, cold - ”

“And more importantly, you’re not anymore, all right? Now you’re with us.”

“With you. Guys,” he added. “With you guys now. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.” Gingerly, Gabriel extricated his hands.

“You don’t have to do that,” Sam told him. “Doesn’t bother me if you want to be touched; it just bothers me that you’re afraid you might not get the opportunity.”

Gabriel shrugged, eyes trained on his lap. “It’s okay. Practice makes progress, right?”

Why was it, Sam wondered, that Gabriel was so convinced he needed to restrain himself from seeking affection? “Look … I know you still think you have some obligation to learn how to keep your distance and deal with everything by yourself. I do the same thing. I - ” He paused, surprised at what he had just said. It was not a fact he’d intended to disclose. “Anyway, that wouldn’t mean getting better, would it? It’d mean hiding. There’s a difference.”

Gabriel studied him, likely trying to process the halfway point of Sam’s lecture.

“It’s a good thing you haven’t forgotten how to look for help,” Sam insisted, intent upon redirecting the conversation. “Otherwise you would still be falling apart.”

Gabriel’s expression shifted into one of derision. “Because I’m so stoic these days.”

“No one’s pretending you’re all right, but you’ve come a long way.”

“How can you say that after the state you just found me in?”

“I didn’t say you always feel better. Sometimes though, right?”

Gabriel sighed. “Sometimes. But I owe you at least - ”

“You owe yourself a break. That’s the only thing you need to promise anyone.”

He spent half a minute waiting for Gabriel to respond, but Gabriel only leaned his head against Sam’s shoulder and closed his eyes.

“I’ll stay with you if you want to go back to sleep,” said Sam.

“I have a headache. Sleep sounds anything but appealing but I guess I at least need to lie down for a little.”

“Okay. Well, let me put on some fresh sheets.”

Gabriel slid to his feet and Sam began making up the bed.

“I mean,” said Gabriel, “You don’t have to stay, but - ”

“No, I want to. Wait - ” Sam shook his head. “Sorry, I know you don’t like that word. I keep forgetting.”

“I don’t care if you’re talking about wanting to do something. I’ll happily tell you ‘I want to drink some trauma cocoa’; I don’t want to say …” He tensed. “Don’t want to say ‘I want trauma cocoa.’ Things. I can’t want things.”

“Gotcha.”

“It’s weird, I know.”

“You’re trying to tell me about weird?” Sam finished tucking in the top sheet and tossed the bedspread over it. “You have no idea how high my standards for ‘weird’ are.”

“I have pretty high standards myself, and this is still messy.”

“You’re not exactly an impartial judge right now.”

“Mm.” Gabriel hesitated, then said, “I hope I don’t dream again. I can’t take another nightmare.”

“Even if you do, you’re not gonna have to scream. I’m here.”

“I don’t usually get that bad, right?”

“You don’t usually wake up in hysterics like that, no. Oh - hey, listen, before we go to sleep I need to let the others know things are okay. Can I leave you for just a minute?”

“Uh. Yes. Sure.”

“Should I tell them what’s going on? Why you were so upset?”

Gabriel frowned, contemplating. Then: “Tell my brother. Keep it under wraps otherwise. If you don’t mind.”

“They won’t judge you for it. It might help them help you.”

“Look, Jack can’t know because he doesn’t need that image stunting his growth; and Dean can’t know because - no offense - but I sort of don’t trust him not to judge me for it.”

“I have pretty high standards myself, and this is still messy.”

“You’re not exactly an impartial judge right now.”

“I hope I don’t dream again.” There was distress in Gabriel’s voice. “I can’t take another nightmare.”

“Even if you do, you’re not gonna have to scream. I’m here.”

“I don’t usually get that bad, right?”

“You don’t usually wake up in hysterics like that, no. Oh - hey, listen, before we go to sleep I need to let the others know things are okay. Can I leave you for just a minute?”

“Uh. Yes. Sure.”

“Should I tell them what’s going on? Why you were so upset?”

Gabriel frowned, contemplating. Then: “Tell my brother. Keep it under wraps otherwise. If you don’t mind.”

“They won’t judge you for it. It might help them help you.”

“Look, Jack can’t know because he doesn’t need that image stunting his growth; and Dean can’t know because - no offense - but I sort of don’t trust him not to judge me for it.”

“No one is going to - ”

“Please, Sam. Just Castiel. Don’t let anyone else in on this.”

With some reluctance, Sam nodded. “Just Cas. I’ll be right back, okay? I promise.”

Gabriel held out his hand and Sam took it.

“I can wait,” Gabriel said, and let go.

Sam found the others gathered in the kitchen, Dean taking a swig from a bottle of beer, Jack focused on a laptop screen, and Cas gazing into the distance, lost in thought, chin in hand.

“Hey,” said Sam, and they all looked up.

“Did he conk out again?” asked Dean.

“No. I’m going back to stay with him for the night. But he’s okay. Cas, can I talk to you for a second?”

Cas got to his feet, looking unsurprised. “Sure. We can go to the library.”

“Can I - ” Jack began, but Cas interrupted. “You’re helping all of us with your research, Jack. Keep trying to find cases.”

Jack looked disappointed. “Okay.”

“You want us to clear out?” Dean offered.

“No, no, you guys stay put,” Sam replied. The truth was that he wanted a smaller, more intimate space that at least provided the illusion of privacy.

Sam and Castiel sat down side by side at a table strewn with tattered books on witchcraft. About a week prior, there had been signs of magical activity not far from the Bunker: a teenage girl who had died in her bedroom after cerebral fluid - per the autopsy report - had leaked from her ears, nose, and mouth, swimming with maggots. The culprit turned out to be the biology instructor at her school, a man who had had an affair with the girl’s mother and targeted Jamila after overhearing her tell a friend of plans to inform the principal.

Cas folded his hands on the tabletop. “What did he tell you?”

Sam suddenly wished he had taken the time to figure out how to explain. The more he pictured what Gabriel had told him, the more nauseated he felt having to witness it all over again.

“Sam?”

Sam blinked. “Yeah, uh, he said … a little while back he told me about how Asmodeus used to try to calm him down. Hold him and whatnot.”

Cas recoiled. “That’s repugnant.”

“Right. Well, apparently Gabriel used to have to beg for comfort, and when he woke up tonight he … he thought Asmodeus had left him to suffer alone.”

“And so Gabriel was trying to get his attention?”

Sam tightened his lips. “Yeah. Makes you feel sick, doesn’t it?”

Castiel didn’t say anything. His face was pale and drawn.

“Cas?”

Elbows still rested on the table, Cas laced his fingers and laid his forehead on them. “This is too much. For him, for me. For all of us.”

“Well, make sure you don’t tell him that.”

“Never. I just …” He raised his head, and Sam was horrified to see that there were tears in his eyes. “I almost wish you hadn’t told me.”

Feeling helpless, Sam replied, “He asked me to. He said not to let Dean or Jack in on it but he wanted you to know the story. Next time - ”

“It’s all right; I’m prepared for the next ‘too much.’ If anyone should be overwhelmed it’s you.” Cas shook his head, avoiding Sam’s gaze. “I only wish he hadn’t gone through the agony he did. That there was something I could have done.”

Sam wasn’t quite sure what to say. “Cas, he’ll be okay. I’m taking care of him.”

Cas nodded, still staring absently at the stacks of books on the table. “Go get some sleep. If something happens, find me.”

Sam stood up. “Listen, you’ve been pushing yourself pretty hard too. Go do something to relax. Watch a stupid show on Netflix. Unwind. I’ll see you in a little bit, okay?”

Cas nodded. “Good night, Sam.”

Sam tried not to think about Gabriel’s story on the way back to the bedroom. What was it, he wondered, that made this so particularly unsettling for both him and Castiel? Was it merely the shock of finding Gabriel lying by the bed, gagging on his own cries for help?

That image crept into Sam’s mind, followed by a vision of Gabriel in his cell, pounding the bars with his fists, face tear-streaked and bloody as he screamed and screamed …

Sam stopped to lean against the wall. He had to shut that picture away before returning to the bedroom. Otherwise he would be no help to Gabriel.

Every time the scene flashed before him, Sam felt the urge to intervene then and there, when it had actually happened. He wanted to shield that Gabriel - the terrified, desperate, battered Gabriel that had returned tonight.

But now was what mattered. Now was the time to reroute all that begging and pleading so that it led to safety.

Sam took a deep breath and pushed himself away from the wall. Gabriel needed him, and Sam wasn’t going to make him wait.

#supernatural #spn #fanfiction #sam winchester #gabriel #sabriel #platonic #gabriel/sam winchester #friendship #hurt/comfort #emotional hurt/comfort #angst #season 13 #post-season 13 #gabriel lives #castiel #dean winchester #jack kline #caring sam winchester #comforting sam winchester #protective sam winchester #scared gabriel #crying gabriel #gabriel has issues #sam winchester has issues #post-traumatic stress disorder #ptsd #gabriel has ptsd #sam winchester has ptsd #asmodeus

[miraclerizuin]

good evening, void!!

I am often hesitant to post things because I am worried about being “annoying” here on my own blog which is nothing more or less than a box full of stuff I like, and that’s ridiculous, I will be annoying if I wish

and I sure do have 20 pages of notes on my spn everybody lives family fic so.  buckle the fuck up

the premise began with this idea:

Spn AU of the day: everything is almost the same but Sam and Dean have been collecting orphans like they’re Batman since at least s5 

then I spent several days thinking about this quietly in a corner at work while cutting out paper hearts for a valentine’s day craft and I messaged a bunch of stuff to my friend who does not spn at all except to enable my AU shenanigans and what became clear to me is

Every single stupid plot on this show is improved by adding half a dozen adopted children

So as you may or may not recall, Jesse is the half demon antichrist child from 1 episode of season 5

As the writers of spn undoubtedly were aware, it would fuck up the plot of s5 royally to have a being this powerful in the mix, so they removed him from play

I did this entire twitter thread about how jesse turner could reconnect with dean in the interim of seasons 5 and 6 and you can read that here

so let’s move right straight on to season 7.  we gotta get to the good stuff

in canon, Cas is Officially Dead, while Dean & Sam are on the run from leviathans

Jesse gets some of his powers back bc I think he should and I don’t want to wait til s11 or whenever Lucifer gets out of hell properly. My handwave is that Sam’s escape from hell brings a fragment of Lucifer’s power to earth and thus restored a fragment of jesse’s powers

Jesse starts to realize the firebending is back on but doesn’t tell Dean & Sam bc he doesn’t want to worry them…

but then they meet (& kill) Sam’s childhood friend Amy

And Jesse is like “hahaha NO we are not killing this random lady, idc if she’s a monster, she has a kid to take care of” and just sorta. Unkills her

And of course doesn’t mention it at first

until a couple weeks later when Sam finds out Dean killed amy (he did it behind sams back) and they’re arguing abt it

and Jesse is like GUYS ITS FINE she’s not really dead.

So Dean and Sam are now freaking out that a. Jesse has powers again, b. Jesse can bring people back from the dead which never ends well, and c. Sam’s friend, whom Dean considers a dangerous monster, is alive.

Sam is like yah peace out guys I’m going to visit Amy to make sure she’s ok and Dean you are NOT invited

He eventually makes up with dean at jesse’s insistence but stays in touch with Amy which dean decides to tolerate on the premise that Sam is “keeping an eye on her”

bc Dean rewrites reality in his own head to suit his narrative and that’s never failed him before!

And Jesse becomes friends with Amy’s son Jacob

Jesse has some Mommy Issues on account of that time he found out his biological mother was possessed by a demon when she gave birth to him. So he’s like “no we do not kill ppls moms!!!”

as long as we’re here in early season 7 with this episode where Jo comes back as a ghost... I see no reason why Jesse can’t simply resurrect Jo too

sure is handy to have a kid around who can alter the fabric of reality!  hope that doesn’t backfire...

& just to add, bc I feel weird not talking about cas very much, jesse and cas had a few opportunities to chat during season 6 and have mostly moved past the “you tried to kill me so I turned you into an action figure” thing but jesse is not super thrilled about the “you lied to my dad who loves you very much” thing now

henry says thanks 4 reading xx

#uh oh she's talking about spn again #keep your heart young

[hekate1308]

Bunker Magic

Crowley isn’t gone until I say so. Enjoy!

Dean’s been suspecting the bunker is magical for a while now. And no, not in that “We’ve finally found a home“ way Sam would probably think if he explained himself. No, in the literal sense. Some hallways seem shorter or longer than they actually are, or the room Dean is walking to is suddenly nearer than he thought it would be.

Must be a relict of the Men of Letters and their magical experiments.

Now and then, he has wondered if he should pursue his theory; would be pretty cool to have the power at his fingerprints just in case some psychotic Brits show up.

The truth of the matter is, Dean has always been more... attuned to their home than Sam, maybe because it’s the only one he’s ever truly known since their first went up in flames, and Cas hasn’t been living with them for very long; and since he decided to fall once and for all, he can’t pick up anything with his angel senses anymore anyway.

So when things go awry, Dean doesn’t know whether they really do or he’s finally snapped.

But he could have sworn he got two loaves of bread instead of one from the store the other day. And why is there so little butter anyway?

In the end, he decides he must be getting old, starting to forget things. Maybe he should do one of Sam’s nerdy crossword puzzles now and then.

At least that’s the explanation until he’s walking to the library and could swear he hears the tell-tale rushing of water in the old pipes meaning someone is taking a shower, only to find both Sam and Cas buried in old books.

What the hell?

He returns to the hallway, but it has fallen silent.

Is he going nuts now?

Dean starts paying closer attention to the noises in the bunker, especially at night. He even loses sleep over it – which doesn’t matter much because he sleeps much better these days, except for when he thinks of their losses, one in particular he shouldn’t even be thinking about because neither Cas nor Sam have mentioned him, will mention him, and he’s the only one who’ll mourn him.

Dean continues to believe that until one of his bad nights, when he’s sitting in the war room drinking Craig because the thought of any other beverage turns his stomach.

Cas finds him and quietly sits down next to him.

After a few minutes of silence, he says “He did a hero, in the end.”

“Yes he did.”

“Remembering him is not shameful. You were something like friends.”

Dean snorts. “Doubt he would have said the same.”

“That doesn’t matter. I still mourn for my fallen brethren, even if they wanted to fulfil God’s work and start the Apocalypse.”

Dean nods; that makes sense.

And then Cas, who doesn’t like anything harder than beer, pours himself a glass to and they toast the late King of Hell.

Dean has no more nightmares that night.

But meanwhile, weird stuff continues to happen. He’s beginning to wonder if there’s something the matter with his ears, because he keeps hearing the water running when no one is in the bathroom, and he could swear that sometimes books dis- and reappear from the library.

From time to time, he even perceives footsteps, but when her ushers to the room he thinks they emit from, no one’s there.

It’s all rather confusing because he’s basically living through a haunting in a movie. All the classic signs are there, only that real haunting don’t work like this, as he well knows. So what is going on?

He tries to explain one day at dinner but ends up getting lecture by Sam about drinking less and “auditory hallucinations connected to alcohol” as if he’s a freshman out on his first binder, Cas just shrugging and calmly explaining that he hasn’t heard anything, which makes no sense to Dean whatsoever because if anything, the noises are growing more and more prominent.

One night, he wakes up to hear the shower louder than ever, and he tries to ignore it, but then the footsteps return as well, and he gets up. He’ll find out what’s behind this once and for all.

Following the footsteps, he arrives at one of the store rooms, the door of which is – glowing? Whatever, he’s dealt with much weirder.

“So” Dean declares, bursting the door open, “Finally – “

The words die on his tongue.

Because right there in front of him, as always impeccable clad in a suit, is –

“Crowley?”

To say the former king has some explaining to do is an understatement. The second Dean registers that yes, that is indeed Crowley in front of him, and more – he’s raising his hands, probably in order to do some magic – he acts.

Once he has Crowley in an arm lock against the wall, he says calmly, “Not so fast.”

“Let me go, Squirrel” he hisses while vainly struggling against his grasp.

Whoever this is – Dean has not yet ruled out a spell or a shapeshifter – they’re not a demon. Crowley would already have thrown him to the ground and disappeared.

“No, first we’ll make a few tests.”

After he has established the man in front of him doesn’t react to holy water, salt or silver, he steps away from him.

“Crowley?”

“How did you guess?” he drawls, rubbing the wrist Dean grasped.

He swallows, telling himself it’s ridiculous to feel guilty. “What did I call you when I asked for help during our hunt after the first hellhound?”

“Peaches”.

The answer is prompt and, much more importantly, true.

Dean shakes his head. “I can’t believe it. Who brought you back?”

“I don’t know. I just woke up in front of your little man cave here.”

“So you decided to play around a bit?”

It doesn’t make sense. Why would he hide out in the bunker and tell no one?

Crowley shrugs. “This was the safest place for me to be.”

“I agree. No demon gets in here unless we want him to” Dean says simply.

Crowley looks – surprised? “Yes. Well, so I decided to – “

“Crowley, I get why you are here, I don’t get why you didn’t tell us. At least I could have bought more bread.”

“You could have – “ Crowley begins, only to shake his head. When he looks at Dean again, his face is blank. “You do not have to pretend because I am human. We both know you want me to go.”

“Why would I want that? Asmodeus will come after you the second you step out” Dean points out, starting to feel like there’s something he’s not getting. How long will Crowley need to understand that its just not safe for him to leave?

Also, to be honest, he’s a bit angry at not having been told Crowley’s alive.

“The last time we saw each other you punched me in the face” Crowley points out and the penny drops.

“You didn’t think we’d want you here?”

Crowley snorts. “What gave it away? That I just told you?”

“Crowley...”

“Look, I’ll be gone in the morning, no reason to call Moose and Feathers...”

“Crowley... look at least let’s have a drink before you pack up.”

He still has the bottle of Craig he and Cas drank from the other night, thankfully.

“So how did you do it? Stay hidden, I mean” he asks.

“This bunker has lots of magical potential. I learned a thing for two from my mother.”

“Sorry about that, by the way” Dean says, wincing.

“Oh, you mean Rowena’s death?” Crowley shrugs. “Like I said, I would have ended up killing her anyway.”

Dean knows it’s more complicated than that – if he goes from his own experience, mother stuff often is – but he lets it slide. Crowley is back from the dead, and that’s enough for the moment.

“Alright. So you can do magic; what did you do exactly?”

Crowley looks thankful that he doesn’t bring Rowena up again.

And he has to admit: Checking out all the rooms he never knew existed because, as his – friend explains, they are “in the same space but not the same plane as the others” is – fun.

“Is that a Claymore?” he asks in a room containing nothing but swords.

“Yes.”

“You ever used that?” Dean continues excitedly before he remembers and finishes lamely “For sewing and stuff?”

“I was tempted more than once to hack a client to pieces. Does that count?” Crowley asks innocently.

Dean snorts. “Too bad, would have loved to have seen that.”

“I bet you would.”

They get caught up in yet another library where Crowley throws him a first edition of Slaughterhouse-Five. “Don’t look so spooked, Moose doesn’t have to know.”

Point is, they quite forget the time and stumble upon Sam as he prepares for his morning run.

“Dean, how the Hell did you get in – Crowley?”

“Yeah, he’s back” Dean says, walking past him towards the coffee maker. “Crowley, coffee?”

“Milk and sugar, please.”

“Dean – “

“I already did the tests, don’t worry.”

“I – “ Sam swallows, then nods. “Fine enough. We have enough rooms.”

Dean sees Crowley throw his brother a surprised glance. “And hey, at least he and Cas can talk about being newly human or whatever.”

“Who can – oh, Crowley.”

Naturally Cas isn’t that surprised. He himself got resurrected (again) not that long ago.

“Feathers. Long time no see.”

“You are going to enjoy this, Sammy” Dean says, “Crowley hacked the bunker’s magic.”

“How?”

“Experience. Just a couple of hundred years of experience.”

Sam rolls his eyes but smiles.

Crowley nudges Dean to the side. “Let me. Now that I can finally use the stove, I’ll take advantage of it.”

Of course he can’t just admit that he just wants to make them breakfast.

Dean smiles. At least he knows now he’s not going crazy.

Not crazier than he already is, anyway.

@dmsilvisart

@wholita

@shaonharryandpannisim

@treefrogie84

#my writings #crowley #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #if anyone wants me to stop tagging them please let me know :)

[mittensmorgul]

what do you think of the sw/dw/mw/cw carvings discussion j2 had at chicon?

I had no idea what you were asking this morning when I first saw this, because I don’t typically watch con videos, and haven’t for years (it gets old really fast when they basically get asked the same few questions every time, you know? How’s the family? Tell us about pranks on set! etc.). So I decided to scroll my dash to see if I could figure out what they’d said before replying.

I saw a couple of posts of tweets from the con that paraphrased them, and apparently they joked about it (as they always do).

So, being a responsible human being, I decided that I needed to actually see the video for myself before forming an opinion, and not just spouting off on a couple of out of context fan interpretations of what was actually said. Unsurprisingly, they go on for like four whole minutes, far longer than those Hot Take Tweets would lead one to believe…(eta: the video was being weird, but their question starts at about 7:15 in case it’s not functioning properly still…)

Jared starts out immediately making jokes while Jensen sits there quietly. They do joke about it a bit, but then Jensen gets serious and actually talks about the decision to add Mary’s initials to the table, changing what’s been an iconic bit of imagery that’s been part of the show since 5.22. How that made him feel, and commenting that he expects a lot more of that sort of thing as the story draws to a close. And then to break that tension Jared turns it back into a joke again and they play it off.

Which is how so many con question replies go.

Does anyone reading this legit think that the story the show has been telling isn’t leading directly to Cas completing this journey into the Winchester family? Like… really? Does anyone reading this think Cas won’t have a CW on the table by the end of the series? Because Cas is still struggling with exactly how and why he belongs in the family. This was his primary worry he expressed regarding Jack, and why he didn’t say anything about his concerns for Jack in 14.18. This is literally what Cas is struggling with, and is his main character arc right now.

How many times has Dean (and Sam) declared Cas part of the family? Going back YEARS, even.

So jokes about not knowing Cas, or not thinking he’s a Winchester? Um… I don’t know how to tell anyone this, but this is one of those “this would be a major spoiler if they discussed the future of an ongoing major plot point” sort of situations. Maybe not the actual carving of a CW into the table, but everything surrounding it as we’re running up to the season finale.

In the episode we’ve just watched, seeing the MW on the table as part of Mary’s funeral pyre montage… can we as a fandom allow that to stand on its own as a memorial in this moment without making the assumption that it’s some sort of dig against Cas? Can we understand how emotionally meaningful it was for Sam and Dean to fully embrace Mary after everything they’ve been through in the last three years since she was resurrected, and that it literally took her death for them to honor her memory in this specific way.

With that context, do people understand why this was a HUGE emotional hurdle for Sam and Dean? To take this symbol of the fact that they had been alone since childhood, this pact forged between boys when they were children, in an episode where Cas (in his flashback) told Mary he was glad she was back because now her boys aren’t so alone, and Mary herself (who told Dean from before he was born that “angels are watching over you”) insisted that they were never alone (because Cas was with them all along), and for Sam and Dean to acknowledge that Mary now was a real part of their lives instead of the Sainted Mother Mary on a Pedestal that had been the focus of the revenge mission that shaped their entire lives…???

S14 so far has been focused heavily on laying the baggage of the past to rest so that Sam, Dean, and Cas really will be able to look toward the future. And this memory of Mary is something they want to carry with them accordingly. She’d been what had been missing from their entire lives. She was the reason their lives were lived out of the back seat of the Impala where they originally staked their claim with their initials. They’re not two lonely, frightened children anymore. When they staked their claim on the bunker (in 12.18– ONE EPISODE BEFORE 12.19, and The Future, where their entire concept of their legacy goes out the window, thanks Bobo again), it was framed around a discussion of “their legacy” they were building for the future. It was framed as wildly uncertain, during a time when they were once again feeling profoundly alone– Mary off with the BMoL, Cas disappeared to points unknown and not answering his phone– that Bobo bringing this back to add Mary SPECIFICALLY at this point in the story, well… this feels like Step Number One in embracing their future rather than the end of the road, you know?

That said, what were Jared and Jensen really supposed to say to this question? We all know Cas is family. They’ve driven that point home so hard for years that it’s impossible to deny. But having his initials carved into the table should be A Big Deal, and not tacked on to this moment that was about Mary.

Cas hasn’t come to that point in his personal arc where he’s fully accepted his place in the family. Yes, he acknowledges he’s part of the family, but he hasn’t really finished figuring out what that actually means for him. Even in 14.18 he demonstrated this, admitting that he still feels insecure about his place in the family, still needing to feel “useful”:

Castiel: I was scared. I had believed in Jack for so long, I believed that he was good. I knew he would be good for the world. And he was good for us. My faith in him, it never wavered, and then I-I saw what he did. It wasn’t malice. It wasn’t evil. It was like Jack saw a problem, and in his mind, he just solved it with that snake.Dean: The snake!Castiel: What he did wasn’t bad. It was the absence of good. And I saw that in him. But we were a family, and I didn’t want to lose that, so I thought I could… fix it on my own. Felt like it was my responsibility. So I left and didn’t tell you. If I could go back and just – just talk to him right then and there, I would. But I can’t, Dean. I failed you. And I failed Jack. And I failed –Dean: No, no. Don’t even say it. Don’t even say her name.

He still pinned his worthiness as a Winchester to Jack’s. Still sees himself as maybe a conditional member of the family, not really deserving to be their in his own right yet. Which is clearly The Major Thing he needs to accept for himself, you know? Let’s not rush the end of his narrative and rob him of the immense personal victory it will be for him to fully accept his place with the Winchesters for who he is, and not for what he can do for them.

#chicon 2019 #castiel winchester #pr is not showrunning #and neither is con banter #mary f winchester #spn 14.18 #spn s14 spoilers #anyone with two eyes and two brain cells to rub together can see that adding a CW to the table #will be the culmination of cas's personal acceptance arc and not some afterthought randomly tacked on without comment #regardless of the seemingly flippant deflection j2 engage in on con panels #and again this is why i mostly ignore con panels because they're useless as meta fodder #and often get taken entirely out of context and blown so far out of proportion as to be nothing more than wank fuel so... #Anonymous #spn 5.22 #spn 12.18 #spn 12.19 #spn 5.13

[amwritingmeta]

Season Thirteen: Candlelight Pt.1

Please read the A/N lest you be confused about the timeline. xx

Previous Snippets:

1. Resurrection (13x04)

Dean’s eyes went to the clock on the kitchen wall, checking to make sure that time hadn’t actually stopped, since it was moving so damn slow. It hadn’t stopped. Last time he’d checked it was two minutes past seven; now the clock showed five minutes past seven. It felt like those three minutes were mocking him, the hands of the clock giving him the proverbial finger and he glared at it, but told himself it was time to ignore the tick-tock of what seemed an eternity and focus on setting the table.

So he did.

He brought over the cutlery, one knife ending up a little askew and, as he corrected it, he almost knocked one of the wine glasses over, grabbing it and balancing it, growing tentative with the coolness of the glass actually against his palm, thinking - again - that maybe the wine was pushing the informality of this setup into something… formal. Something forming. Something that had already formed for him. He let go of the glass, straightening his back, trying to keep his hands from shaking.

It’s fine, he kept thinking. It’s fine, you’ve done this before, and every time it’s been fine.

He ignored the tinge of impatience in his chest at the truth of that last thought, because every time had been fine. Every time he’d cooked Cas dinner had been the same, and every time he seemed set on proving to himself that he was a goddamn coward.

Drawing a slow breath, forcing himself to focus, he eyed the table setting. He’d kept it simple, as every other time. Actually, it was downright nondescript, with plates, cutlery… those glasses… and yes, there happened to be a bunch of wildflowers in a jug, but Cas had picked those himself. All Dean had done was move the jug from the counter to the table, and he could always blame the new placement on Sam. If Cas even noticed. He probably wouldn’t notice. But maybe the flowers should go back on the counter. No, they were staying where they were and enough of this damned indecisiveness already.

But something was missing.

“The wine,” he realised, gnashing his teeth in annoyance.

Fuck.

The red wine he’d gotten was still in the Impala. And the Impala was with Cas because Cas had asked to borrow it. So, now he’d have to text Cas and ask him to bring the wine in from the car, or it would seem weird if Cas had seen the wine in the passenger seat and Dean didn’t ask him to bring it in. If Dean just snuck out and got the wine after Cas had come in and then acted like it was no big deal - that would be weird. And the fact that he hadn’t just texted Cas and told him to bring it in would make the bottle of wine seem exactly like what he didn’t want it to seem like: a big frigging deal. Even to Cas it would. Or maybe not. No, actually, it probably would. Cas had been different lately…

Dean’s hands began to shake again at the memory of Cas lingering in his doorway the other night with that look in his eyes that made Dean feel as though Cas’ hand was branding its print into his shoulder again, no matter the fact that Cas was a wingless, Earthbound human. No matter that. Not that it didn’t matter…

Dean had almost leaned forward, had almost reached out for the tie around Cas’ neck.

The tie was new. And green.

Fuckfuckfuck.

Dean brought out his cell, clearing his head with some effort as he sent Cas a short text, asking him to bring the wine in, and was he almost back? The reply came within moments: two minutes. Dean couldn’t keep the smile off at the perfunctory message. To the point, as always.

Did Cas even like wine? It really was the only noticeable thing that was different this time around, the one thing that veered away from the nondescript, that maybe made it into something more than just sharing some food and talking about stuff. Well, the bottle and possibly the candle. If he was actually going to follow through on this urge and put a candle on the table. Maybe it was a bit of an overkill. He just couldn’t get this plan out of his head, that he’d turn the generator off and then they’d have to have some light source and it wouldn’t seem so forced. It wouldn’t be him turning off the kitchen lights to set some kind of mood. It would be a blackout. Candles were needed during a blackout. They were a goddamn standard issue during a blackout.

His fingers were trembling. He was hot all over.

Fucking fucking fuck.

“Oh, is it Thursday already?” Sam said, walking into the kitchen, eyes roving the table and the pots and pans filled with simmering food on the stove top, eyebrows rising. “That week went by quick.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean asked.

“Nothing. Just - well, you’ve gotten into this habit: every Thursday you make Cas dinner,” Sam replied, grabbing an apple and biting into it with too much gusto for Dean’s taste. “Smells good,” Sam added through his mouthful of fruit. “What’s cooking?”

Because of the fact that his brother was being a douche, Dean resisted the urge to ask him to taste everything, suppressing the immediate craving for reassurance that he’d done a good job with the meat and the sauce, because he knew this was what Sam was expecting. They’d gone through variations of this routine for the past five weeks now. That was why Sam was standing there, looking smug, because Dean was keenly aware of how Sam must know exactly how raw Dean was feeling about this whole dinner situation, and why there had never even been a question of whether Sam would be joining them. And now Dean was beginning to quietly seethe at his brother for continuing to be such a dick about it.

Feigning a casual attitude, he ignored Sam and busied himself with cutting up some bread, putting it in a bread basket, Sam eyeing him with interest, eyebrows still raised.

“What?” Dean finally asked.

“Nothing,” Sam shook his head. “Are you going to eat all of that? Because there’s that leftover cheese from the other night and… might as well…”

Dean handed him what was left of the baguette and Sam nodded his thanks with a smile. Dean brought the breadbasket to the table, feeling his brother’s eyes still on him, and before Dean could think twice about it he grabbed those silly wineglasses off the table. Red wine went well with cheese, after all, and Cas would be none the wiser.

Coward.

He paused, steadying himself, turning to Sam, who was frowning at him wonderingly.

“Lamb,” Dean said. “It’s a lamb stew, with - if you must know - a mint sauce. Okay?”

Sam smiled then, with another nod, leaving the kitchen as Dean put the two glasses on the kitchen counter, staring at them with something akin to despair. What the hell was he doing? Everything was good; for the moment everything was stabile. Jack was to the wind, but they’d find him. He was exploring. He was too young not to be curious and he wasn’t as messed up as when he was newborn. It’d be okay, Dean knew it would. It’d taken him awhile, but he could see it now, that the kid was good. Deep, deep down in an almost undiscovered corner good, but good nonetheless. Even so, they did need to track Jack down. So why couldn’t Dean focus on that? And why couldn’t he control this sensation of lifting off the ground the moment Cas walked in the room? It was such a natural high he’d gotten completely addicted to it and with every time they were separated the anticipation for Cas’ return grew into something almost unbearable.

Dean swallowed, closing his eyes, willing himself to calm.

It’s fine.

“You know,” Sam said, walking back in the room and Dean turned to him as he continued: “I wasn’t going to, but… man, you can’t keep doing this. Repeating the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.” Dean raised his eyebrows, but Sam didn’t even pause at the expression. “Cas is the most literal guy we know. Okay, he’s the only literal guy we know. My point being - he won’t get the subtext. You’re gonna have to spell it out for him.”

Sam was holding both hands out, the halved baguette still in one of them, looking as though he was brokering peace, nothing but earnestness on his face as he wasn’t picking a fight or wanting to start an argument, just stating the plain truth. When he left again it was with a meaningful and almost reproachful look.

Dean watched him go while his heart beat was becoming something painful and erratic and nervous, pounding out that plain truth, spreading it to every cell of his body. Of course, he’d been aware of this truth, because Cas being Cas meant that gestures were never going to be enough. They’d never been enough. All the times he’d attempted piercing through Cas’ nonplussed expression over the years, all he’d managed to get for it was that soft frown and a tilt of the head. So, now, right now, here - he was going to have to make a move.

It’s fine.

No. It was anything but fucking fine.

Dean glared at the wine glasses for another moment, then made up his mind and grabbed them, about to bring them back to the table when he was stopped in his tracks by the appearance of Cas in the doorway. His heart leaped, and then it settled, a calm spreading, because Cas was back again and he hadn’t disappeared or gone away or been killed or taken and locked up.

The violence behind that chain of conclusions made Dean, for one split second, wonder if it wouldn’t be better to stop hunting.

They could find a quiet, secluded place off a lake, spend their time watching the bees collecting honey or the flowers turning their faces to the sun or whatever the hell else Cas might want to do. Fish every afternoon for their dinner. Build a fire by the water.

But in the following blink the images of that possible life were gone.

“Hey,” Cas said, putting a grocery bag and the bottle of wine on the counter before sliding the trench coat off and hanging it on one of the pegs by the door, his suit jacket following close behind - he barely seemed to notice Dean’s eyes following him around the room. “So I went and talked with Trinny Abernathy. She doesn’t know anything useful, but she has kittens. Is Sam allergic to cats?” Cas asked, having started to unpack the groceries, putting them away in the cupboards without a pause.

Finally his eyes met Dean’s and Dean blinked, trying to focus on what Cas had just said, rather than the shape of his strong back, and how his shoulder blades moved underneath the fabric of the shirt he was wearing.

“Sorry, what?” Dean said, Cas eyeing him for another moment with a slight frown.

“We could get a cat,” Cas shrugged. “It might be good for Jack to have a pet. When he comes back. Something to be responsible for. A living thing that will feel affection for him without any so called ‘strings’ attached.”

Dean couldn’t keep the smile off, realising he was still just standing there like a proper asshat, holding the two wineglasses. He walked up to the table, placing either glass gingerly where they’d been before, considering how Cas would never even think twice about them being anything more than a couple of glasses, when to Dean they were some sort of declaration of this informally formed mess in his heart.

I’d build fires with you for the rest of my life.

He blinked the thought out of his head.

Make a move. Simple enough. Only nothing was simple. Nothing had ever been simple. The only simple thing was this feeling in his chest and how it had settled there without any hesitation. There had never been any question that it belonged there. All the hesitation and questioning had come from his head; his head had been what had always complicating things - unnecessarily.

He looked over at Cas, watching him for another prolonged moment before asking, as breezily as he could manage:

“You like wine?”

“Oh,” Cas said, eyes going to the wine bottle before meeting Dean’s. “I don’t know,” he replied, a small smile on his mouth that made Dean’s knees grow weak.

“Wanna find out?” Dean asked, returning the smile.

“Sure,” Cas said.

“Alright then,” Dean smirked, walking up to him with a soft thrill in his chest, grabbing the bottle, unable not to linger for a moment, shoulder almost touching Cas’ shoulder, his scent filling Dean’s nostrils and making him force himself away, to the drawer with the bottle opener.

His hands were steady now and they performed the task quickly, but pouring the wine he felt his mouth begin to grow dry with sudden, useless longing, thinking of tasting trace wine on Cas’ tongue, thinking of stubble rasping against his cheek, thinking of loosening that tie…

“This smells nice,” Cas’ voice brought him out of his mounting desire, back into the moment, with a slap of reality.

“Good,” Dean said, immediately annoyed with himself for avoiding eye contact, but starting to not trust himself.

He didn’t want to screw this up, he didn’t want to act rashly, he wanted it to feel right, he needed it to be the right thing to do and kissing Cas out of the blue wasn’t, acting on impulse wasn’t, he had to think logically, he had to act on invitation, if he could manage to get one.

Or you could just tell him how you feel about him.

But that thought sent a wave of such burning heat through him that he had to disregard it. And there should’ve been a goddamn candle on the table, shouldn’t there? Something  more visual to facilitate what he was trying to do here. How do you seduce someone who doesn’t understand the finer points of seduction?

Fuck.

He grabbed the glasses again, bringing one over to Cas, who was closing the fridge door, his task of putting the groceries in their designated place now done, and he accepted the glass with another smile, this one of thanks. He held the glass, pausing as a questioning expression of what to do next widened his blue eyes until Dean thought he was going to lose his goddamn mind if he didn’t break the moment, and so he took the lead in social etiquette, clinked his glass against Cas’ and said:

“Cheers.”

Which sounded every bit as forced as he was feeling, wanting it not to be weird and making it all the weirder. But Cas’ smile returned, this time it was wider and warmer and Dean knew that if he could only spend at least a few minutes a day making sure Cas was wearing it, then everything else would pale, would fade away into something distant and unimportant, and he’d be able to face anything.

And if he could’ve told Cas that; if he could put into words exactly how Cas made him feel then maybe… But he just couldn’t. He couldn’t figure out how to. It was too damn big.

What he could do was return the smile, and something glittered itself into Cas’ eyes that made Dean momentarily lose his ability to breathe, stuck grinning like an idiot.

Then Cas’ smile faltered as he frowned and said:

“Is something burning?”

That broke the moment alright.

“Damnit!” Dean exclaimed, rushing up to the stove, spilling half his wine as he practically chucked the glass onto the counter and began the damage control of their dinner.

“Is it… okay?” Cas wondered, suddenly leaning against Dean’s arm to get a better look at the now lidless pans and Dean felt his eyes catch on Cas’ temple, a few inches away from his nose, before he nudged him away with his elbow saying:

“Yes, it’s okay, it’s fine. Go… over there. And drink your wine.”

“I’m sorry,” Cas said, heading back over to the counter where he’d left his glass, Dean’s eyes on his back until Cas turned around, the movement reminding Dean that there was dinner to salvage. “Do I just drink it?” Cas asked in reference to the wine, and Dean couldn’t keep from snorting out a soft laugh, looking over at him, hoping there wasn’t quite as much affection on his face as what was moving pleasantly through his chest.

“Yeah,” he replied. “It’s a drink. You drink it.”

“But wine…” Cas said thoughtfully. “It’s not just a drink. I watched a YouTube video about wine tasting. And a movie,” Cas added, Dean frowning at him.

“What movie?”

“‘Halfways’.”

Dean went to grab the plates off the table, unable to suppress another wide smile, but Cas didn’t catch the joke, merely smiled back.

“It was a good movie,” Cas stated.

“Yeah, it is a good movie,” Dean agreed, beginning to plate the food. “‘Sideways’,” he added the correct title for it, Cas glancing sideways with a contemplative frown, which made Dean laugh out loud and suddenly Cas was smirking.

Dean got caught in that expression, a soft frown furrowing his brow, Cas completely unaware as he shed the smirk, taking his first sip of the wine, which distracted Dean into focusing back on the plates, adding the sauce, surreptitiously glancing at Cas, who was tasting the wine, keeping it in his mouth before swallowing.

“Not too bad,” Cas said and there was something, Dean could have sworn, there was something different about him lately.

“How’d you know ‘not too bad’?” Dean asked, unable to keep a teasing note out of his tone, bringing the plates over to the table as Cas moved over to take a seat, answering matter-of-factly:

“I didn’t spit it out.”

That made Dean laugh again, Cas smiling broadly, catching Dean’s eyes with his for a moment before he moved his gaze to the food, eyeing it up expectantly, placing the glass by his plate after another mouthful of its contents, mh-ing his approval as Dean took the seat opposite him.

Dean’s eyes lingered on Cas’ face while his mouth still wore a trace smile, enjoying this undercurrent of contentment that made him feel so tense and so at ease all at once.

It had been like this for a while now, though: the tense easement of being near this man. It had been like this before the angel’s untimely death. It had been like this for years. He had been in love with Cas for years. He just didn’t know - he couldn’t tell - had never been able to tell what he meant to Cas, and it hadn’t gotten any easier over the past six months, because there had been an understandable adjustment period for Cas to come to terms with his new reality. For all of them to come to terms, even Dean himself, though he hadn’t quite been able to contemplate the full scope of it at the time. And immortality to mortality was a scope too full to properly contemplate even now, if he was honest.

And if he was even more honest, he knew they shouldn’t be sitting here having dinner, because with everything that was going on somewhere beyond the walls of this place, and with all the research and planning in need of still being done within the walls of this place, they should be snacking on crisps and drinking beer with the rest of the Castoff Crew. But he didn’t care. Because, honestly, all he wanted to do was sit opposite Cas at this table. And the reason was simple enough: it was seven o’clock on a Thursday, and this was what they did at seven o’clock on Thursdays now.

“You know, all I want to do…” he found himself saying out loud, cutting himself short as Cas’ eyes met his. “…is say…” Making it worse. Backtrack. Now. “…that we… that this…” Fuck sake. “…yeah, you know, just… kinda glad you’re alive.”

Hell. This was hell. Right here was hell on Earth.

“Glad?” Cas asked, that sudden glitter in his blue eyes again and Dean’s mouth was drying and his fingers were trembling around the stem of the wineglass and he swallowed with effort, having to glance away, avoiding eye contact again and growing furious with himself for being such a weak, miserable coward.

“Well, yeah, I said kinda,” he tried to joke it away, feeling every word like gravel in his mouth and he took a hurried, deep gulp of wine that made him choke, sending him coughing for his life.

Cas was quietly observing him and once the coughing fit had calmed, once Dean had pulled a hand over his mouth and regained some kind of equilibrium, he found that he could not read the expression on Cas’ face. It was remarkable, almost enticingly so, to realise that however long he’d known this face, however well he’d grown to know every groove of it, those eyes could still startle him with their unfathomable, unreachable maturity.

A thousand years in those eyes. A thousand times a thousand years.

“Alright,” Cas now said, “which type of ‘kinda’?”

The question was followed by a slight head tilt, a familiar gesture that suddenly bordered on intimate, and though Cas was wearing - what Dean had dubbed - his ‘angel face’, which meant he could still look as cooly expressionless as ever, now there was that glitter.

Dean frowned slowly.

Was Cas teasing him?

That’s when the lights suddenly flickered out and the room went pitch black.

#season thirteen #candlelight #my fics #spn fanfic #destiel fanfic

[dreamin-of-somewhere-else]

I Thought You Were Gone

Characters: Sam + Dean Winchester x sister!reader. Also, two others that I don’t want to reveal yet, but they’re from the episode 5x16

Words: 3300 (I could have made it into two parts, but I didn’t really know where to part it so, yeah.)

[Angst, Sadness, Character Deaths, Blood, Comfort]

Tags: @evyiione, @daughters-and-winsisters, @samanddeanshotsis, @fabulouslycassie, @darkestgrungeuniverse, @delessapeace-blog, @mariairwin666, @1amluke

A/N: This is a bit spontaneous, as I didn’t finish the fic I wanted to post. I found this one instead though, but sorry if there’s any undetected errors :)

Also, this takes place in season 5.

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You sighed and leaned back against the headboard of the motel bed. It was quiet except for the mumbling of the random show on the TV. You weren’t even watching, you just put it on to break the silence, as you weren’t really used to it. The other day, Dean won some extra cash by hustling pool, and you all decided to splurge it on a second motel room, since well, it gets kind of crowded when you’re three and share one room. You had expected Dean to take the room by himself and leave you and Sam to share, not that you would question it, it was his money. But, he didn’t. Instead, to your surprise, he decided to be generous and gave you the room.

Even though it was a lot more spacious and not as warm, you still felt a bit odd being alone. Although, you appreciated the act. You really did, it was sweet of him.

Soon, you lied down on top of the bed, not even bothering to take off your clothes. You were quite exhausted from today’s, well yesterday’s — since it was past midnight — salt and burn. And that was probably the only reason you were able to sleep in that empty motel room.

You jolted awake by the loud sound. It took you a split second to place it, your heart hammering against your ribs. Gunshot. It was a gunshot. You flew off your bed onto your feet, confused. The noise was so loud you could have sworn it was in your room, but no, you were still alone. You were practically trembling because of the adrenaline pumping through your system. You were confused about the empty room, until you remembered why. But then, you were confused where the sound had come from until your realized that it must’ve come from the room next door. And who camped out there? Your brothers.

With your heart in your throat you began searching for your gun, and where in hell did you put it? It took you about 10 seconds to find it in your disarranged room — shamefully slow. In any other situation it would have passed fast, but right now, those ten seconds equaled an eternity. Once you found the gun, you gripped it tight, and violently yet fumblingly unlocked the door. But, while you fumbled a second gunshot rung out, and a sinking feeling emerged in your stomach, and for a second you thought that your knees would give in.

Once outside though, you were met by the sight of two men escaping the open door of Sam and Dean’s motel room. You instantly thought this was a bad sign, and those two meant trouble. And if you were smart, you shouldn’t let them get away. But, you couldn’t bring yourself to try and stop them. Instead, you were focused on even succeeding in carrying yourself towards their room, while your mind started to realize what might awaited you. You felt as you were going to fall over right there and then.

But somehow you managed to reach it, even though it felt like it was miles upon miles away. You grabbed ahold of the doorway for support and glanced inside.

You didn’t even have time to comprehend the sight before you instantly felt nauseous, and forced yourself to do a full 180 to not hurl all over the motel floor. You simply couldn’t take what your eyes were met with.

Blood. Blood, everywhere. Red splatter on the walls, ceiling, floor, the interior, not to mention the covers of the bed. And your brothers. They were soaked. All you saw was red, and then you had to turn around.

When you finally could straighten up again, you staggered into the room again. You instantly fell to your knees, letting out a sound you didn’t even know you could make. It didn’t sound like you, not even human.

Your brothers are not only soaked in crimson, they’re also ripped from the multiple bullet that had pierced them. It wasn’t an ordinary gun, it was a shotgun. A freaking shotgun.

You found yourself by Sam’s bed, the one closest to the door. He was completely lifeless. Your eyes were round and just rested on him, taking in the horrific sight. You didn’t want to see — but you couldn’t take your eyes away. It was too late anyway, this would forever be imprinted in your mind.

”Sammy…” You whimpered as you brushed a hand along his cheek. Tears were streaming down your own cheeks, and your face was morphed in pure pain.

If you need us, (Y/N), we’ll be right next door, okay? We’ll see you tomorrow, and then we’ll get out of this dump.

Minutes later you were clutching Dean’s flannel in your fists, as you sobbed. Your heart was aching in a way that you never had experienced before. Right now, you didn’t even feel as you would survive.

You didn’t know what to do. You were truly alone now.

Dean bent down and stared inside his dear car. ”Cas?”

”Yeah it’s me.” The radio responded, which was weird, but the most disturbing part to Dean was the fact that he didn’t even question it.

Dean frowned as he opened the car door and sat down in the leather car seat. ”Dude, you gotta stop poking around in my dreams. I need some me-time.”

”Listen very closely. This isn’t a dream.”

”Then what is it?” Dean queried, confused.

”Deep down you already know.” The angel’s rough voice spoke through the radio.

Memories flashed in front of Dean’s eyes. A shotgun. ”I’m dead?”

”Condolences.”

”Where am I?” Dean started feeling how panic got the better of him. He was dead.

”Heaven.” Castiel answered.

”Heaven?” The hunter didn’t believe it. But then something else crossed his mind. ”Where’s Sam?”

”Where are you?”

”I’m in my car… Cas what do you—”

”Follow the road and you will find Sam.” Castiel interrupted.

”Okay…” Dean paused. ”Where’s (Y/N)?” He clearly remembered his little brother getting shot, but he didn’t know what happened to you. He felt how the anxiousness got a better hold of him.

”She’s alive.”

Dean let out a breath in relief. At least one Winchester was left standing. The relief didn’t last long though. ”Okay, Cas, listen to me now. You gotta make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid, okay?”

The radio let out a crackling sound. ”Dean—” The connection broke and the radio went dead.

You gripped the wheel so tightly that your knuckles whitened. Your pulse was still high, but for the most part you had calmed down a bit. You didn’t cry anymore, because you were out of tears. It still hurt like crazy, but instead of a piercing pain, it had transformed into an almost numbing pain, one that clouded your judgement like nothing else.

You didn’t know what to do. You had already tried selling your soul. It didn’t exactly go as you wanted.

Foolish girl, what makes you think that we would want to make a deal with you?

But, you had already expected it to not go your way. It had been hard for you to believe from the beginning that any crossroad demon would want to deal with one of those holding Sam back — apart from himself — from saying yes to Lucifer. You were working against hell, and that proved to be fatal. Also, most demons probably didn’t want to resurrect the Righteous Man, vessel of Michael, who wanted to kill Lucifer. It was too long of a shot.

You glanced at yourself through the rearview mirror, and it was a haunting sight. Even you, through the haze of emotional pain, could see the difference in your own features. Your eyes were cold, your expression set in stone and showing little signs of the raging fire of feelings within you. It was pain, sorrow, distress, confusion, heartache. The sadness had also given away to a new emotion, fury.

You didn’t know how to bring your brothers back in the moment. A thought travelled to their bodies locked inside the motel room. You didn’t know what to do with them either. But you did know one thing you could do. Avenge your brothers.

Instead of the wheel, your hands now gripped the handle of the gun tightly as if someone would try and yank it out of your hands. You were lurking in the shadows, preparing yourself to strike. You didn’t know how you ended up outside the cottage where the two men that killed your brothers were staying, it was all kind of a blur. Your head was spinning and your heart was throbbing. Adrenaline was pulsating through your body, and all that anger? You had directed it all into your hunting. You were now more focused than ever. If you only had been this focused when your brothers needed you, and they wouldn’t be dead.

It had been a couple of hours since your brothers had been shot. It felt like an eternity, lifetimes ago. Everything was different now, you were staring into the world alone. At least until you found a way to bring them back, if that ever happened. You doubted that it would, but you tried to be optimistic, channeling your inner Sam. Sam, your heart broke by just the thought of the name. But, it also motivated you to keep going, intensifying the will for payback.

You drew a deep breath, trying to slow your heart beats, you wouldn’t perform well if you were too jittery. Although, you also knew that you didn’t perform the best if you were completely relaxed either. You wanted to be in the middle of the spectrum - on edge.

Then, you quietly walked closer to the window, bringing out the knife you kept in your boot. Just by inching closer to the window, you felt the warmth radiating from within the outer wall. It was dimly lit inside, a contrast to the cold, lilac dawn you were experiencing on the outside. You also heard mumbling, similar to the mumbling you heard the night before, coming from the TV. The fact that they had the TV on, was much to your benefit. You still tried to be quiet though. It was all about the element of surprise on your part, since they were two and you were only one. Since you were missing two.

You knew who the men were by now. Named Roy and Walt, two hunters. The worst part was that the name Roy rung a bell; Dean had once worked a case together with him.

The window gave away a slight clicking noise when you succeeded in unlocking it. You carefully opened it, and it creaked a little bit. Fortunately, they didn’t seem to notice it. They weren’t the best hunters.

You clutched the gun and climbed through.

Once inside, you had to go all in, no time for stalling. So, you stormed inside the small living room, where the two hunters were seated on a bed each. They didn’t see it coming. You quickly scanned off the room, and positioned yourself between them and the stack of their weapons with your own gun raised so that they couldn’t get ahold of one.

”You,” Roy uttered, his eyes round and filled with pure fear as he stared at you. ”I knew that they had a sister.” He then added, whispering.

Walt looked at his partner with an unreadable expression, knowing that he should have listened to Roy.

”You killed my brothers.” You spat through gritted teeth. To your displeasure, you felt how the stone cold anger started to morph back into distress. You were losing grip, but you didn’t know what to do about it.

”We did, kid.” Walt retorted, a sickening smirk making its way onto his disgusting face. ”You don’t let out the damn devil and go unpunished.”

His words made something flare up inside you, and without thinking, you pulled the trigger. The bullet buried itself in his leg, partly because of you not really wanting to kill him, at least not right now, and partly since the distress had started to mess with your focus — you couldn’t aim properly. But, Walt should be lucky you didn’t shoot him in the chest or something.

He didn’t seem to feel that way though, because he let out a scream as if he had been fatally shot. You watched his pain with a spark of satisfaction. Not a lot, but it was there.

But, here your success took a turn for the worse. Because Roy took the moment to charge at you, with a knife. He had probably kept it hidden in the mattress. You quickly direct the gun at him, and shoot him in the thigh, once again not bringing yourself to shoot him in the chest or head. Why couldn’t you be a ruthless killer when you wanted to? They were.

The shot didn’t slow him down much, and you barely had the time to glance at Walt, to see him charging too, before Roy reached you.

A fight began. You fired another shot, that missed, and then one of them smacked the gun out of your hand. It clonked away over the floor. You resorted to punching, kicking, smacking and clawing. You fought with everything. But they were one more than you, because you were missing two, and it was their fault.

Things went downhill pretty fast. Soon you found yourself blinking away the flecks of light and darkness from your vision, lying in the floor with the air knocked out of your lungs. Then came the kick and the punches, and everything just kind of melted together into an episode of pain. You were probably not going to survive, you started to prepare yourself for the bitter outcome of your failed revenge. But, you didn’t want to live without your brothers, and you had no idea how to bring them back, so…

Dean glanced over at Sam, to make sure he was ready before creeping closer to the front door. Shame was still written over his little brother’s face, he felt guilty for his memories in heaven. Dean still felt betrayed, but he had pushed it away. He could drown himself in that later, but right now, you, his little sister, were in danger. Sam caught Dean’s gaze and nodded slowly to show that he was in fact ready.

As they reached the door, they could hear the punches and hits from the inside, and Dean cringed while he could feel the little hairs in his neck standing up. Sam felt nauseous, like his heart was in his throat.

1, 2… 3.

Dean mouthed to his younger brother before he launched himself at the door, kicking it in. It flew open to reveal a scene that made them both want to hurl. 

You were lying on the floor, broken and bloody. Your face was swollen, and starting to bruise, while blood seeped out of your nose and mouth. Your hair was spread around your head, some streaks darkened by the red. You were unconscious.

Walt was hovering above you, it was clearly him who delivered the hits. He was also the one who shot both Sam and Dean. Roy was intently watching, arms crossed over his chest with an unbothered expression.

Dean didn’t hesitate when he shot Roy in the leg, not the one he was already bleeding from judging by the stain on his jeans, the other. It was enough to send him to the floor with a yelp.

Sam stopped and aimed carefully, making sure to have a good enough marginal between you and Walt before he fired a bullet. It hit Walt in the abdomen, and he screamed and fell to his knees, his gaze accusingly finding Sam as he went down.

Then both of your brothers set off towards you, pushing away Walt as they reached you. ”(Y/N)? (Y/N)!” Dean tried to get through to you, his voice breaking and desperate. ”Hey, hey! Come on, wake up!”

Sam shook your shoulders, as he prayed that you would open your bright eyes. Every second that went by with you being unresponsive was pure torture.

”(Y/N), please.” Dean begged, his voice sounding more and more as if he was about to cry. ”P-please.” He murmured.

”Come on,” Sam whispered, as he ran a hand over your head and hair.

And then, was that a twitch? To your brothers’ immense relief you let out a groan, as your eyebrows drew together in a pained frown. You didn’t want to wake up, you just wanted it to be over.

But, you opened your eyes and stared up into a pair of hazel and a pair of green ones.

Sam and Dean stared down into the most pain filled eyes they’ve ever seen on you, heck, on anybody. They were so hauntingly tired and distressed that tears spilled over in Dean’s eyes, and soon in Sam’s too. It took a couple of seconds, but then they started shifting into something else but pain and sadness — relief.

”Dean?” You tried asking, your voice coming out weak and raspy as your throat hurt. ”Sammy?” You added as you spotted your other brother.

You weren’t sure if what you were seeing was real. Were you brothers alive — and how in hell did that happen, if that was the case — or were you the one that was dead, and you were either hallucinating or actually reunited with your brothers?

”Am I in heaven?” Your voice only a wheeze.

”No, (Y/N)”, Sam whimpered in response, his eyes staring burning even more as he saw your eyes filling with tears.

”You are alive. We are alive, (Y/N).” Dean told you with a gentle but broken voice. ”Alive and well, don’t worry.”

”Oh my—” You began in relief, but was cut of by a piercing pain from your side. Probably cracked ribs.

The pain had crept onto you and was now in full bloom. You groaned, as you started feeling like you would go out cold again. You blinked as your vision got worse, trying to get the images of your worried brothers in focus.

”How did you find me?” You panted. ”How are you alive?”

”Cas.” Sam responded. ”And the rest is a long story. We’ll tell you later, okay?”

Nodding, you then briefly let your gaze travel across the room from where you were lying on your back, and saw two men crawling across the floor, leaving behind a glistening trail of red. And then you remembered, Roy and Walt. You had completely forgotten about them once you saw Sam and Dean, every fixation on killing them had been gone with the wind.

Now, however, you tried alerting your brothers but your words came out slurring, beyond comprehension. So, you tried pointing, but pain shot out through your arm as you tried moving it.

”Don’t mind them, (Y/N).” Dean said, putting on a calm voice for your sake, when in reality, he was about to freak out about the extent of your injuries.

You whimpered in pain, and Sam’s hazel eyes flashed in sympathy.

”We’re going to have to get you out to the car, okay?” Dean spoke, same steady voice.

You nodded, not trusting your voice.

”Don’t worry, (Y/N). Shh… We’re here now. You’re going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.”

You felt yourself slipping into darkness once again, Dean’s voice fading simultaneously. At least this time, you had a little bit of hope. There was something to wake up to. Your brothers were okay. Alive. It was all you wished for. And that brought you piece of mind as you drifted into unconsciousness.

#dean winchester #sam winchester #winchester sister #winchester brothers #winchester reader #supernatural #spn #supernatural imagine #supernatural one shot #supernatural sister #supernatural sister imagine #supernatural sister one shot #supernatural sisfic #supernatural sister!reader #spn sisfic #spn sister #spn sister imagine #spn sister one shot #reader #reader one shot #reader name insert #name insert #sam and dean #sam and dean winchester #sam and dean sister #sam and dean winchester sister #bro!sam #big bro!sam #big bro!dean #big brother!dean

[free-mormons-blog]

The Early Christian Prayer Circle -- Mormonism and Early Christianity -- HUGH NIBLEY 1987

The Early Christian Prayer Circle

The nature of the early Christian prayer circle may be described by letting the oldest documents speak for themselves, beginning with the latest and moving backwards to the earliest. The rite was depicted for the last time in a document read to the assembled churchmen of the Second Council of Nicaea in A.D. 787 and condemned by them to the flames. Their objection was to parts of the text that proclaimed the Gnostic doctrine of the total immateriality of Christ; on the subject of the prayer circle, which was strange to them, they preserved a discreet silence.1 Actually that part of it was an excerpt taken from a much older writing, the Acts of John, being the earliest apocryphal Christian Acta, dating at least to the early third century.

In reading this and other accounts of the prayer circles, we seem to enter, as Max Pulver expressed it, into “a strange space, a strange world—unlike ours—a world above the world that opens before us when we enter into the round dance of the disciples, led by Christ.”2 The passage from the Acts of John reads as follows, after a notice on the extreme secrecy in which these things were guarded:

    Before he was seized by wicked men and by the wicked serpent of the Jewish authorities (lawgivers, nomothetoumenoi), he called us all together and said: “Before I am given over to those men, let us sing a hymn (of praise) to the Father and so go forth ready to face whatever lies ahead.” Then he commanded us to form a circle, taking hold of each other’s hand; And he himself taking up a position in the middle uttered the Amen (formula) and “pay attention to me (epakouete mou—follow my instructions).” Then he began a hymn, saying,

“Praise (glory, doxa) to thee, Father,” and we standing in the circle, followed him with the Amen.

“Glory to thee Logos, glory to thee grace (charis, love). Amen.

Glory to thee spirit, glory to thee Holy One; praise to thy glory. Amen (or be praised [doxasou] with glory. Amen).

We praise thee Father; we thank thee Light in which there is no darkness. Amen.

And while we (all) give thanks, I say (explain):

I wish to be saved and I wish to save. Amen.

I wish to be delivered, and I wish to deliver. Amen.

I wish to bear wounds (titrōskō) and I wish to inflict them. Amen.

I wish to be born and I wish to bring forth (bear). Amen.

I wish to eat and I wish to be eaten. Amen.

I want to hear and I want to be heard. Amen.

I want to comprehend (know), being all intelligence (nous). Amen.

I want to be washed, and I want to wash. Amen.

Charis (grace) (leads) dances in the chorus: I wish to pipe (Play the flute)—dance all of you! Amen.

I wish to mourn, all of you mourn (lit. kopsasthe—inflict blows [cuts] upon yourselves). Amen.”

And after having led us in other things in the circle (chorus), beloved, the Lord went out. And we went forth like lost wanderers or like people in a dream, fleeing our several ways.3

St. Augustine in his 237th Epistle quotes a slightly different version, calling it “a hymn . . . commonly found in the apocryphal writings,” which he gets from the Priscillians, who believed it to be “the hymn of the Lord which he recited in secret to his disciples, the holy Apostles, according as is written in the Gospel: After he recited a hymn, he ascended the mountain” (Matthew 26:30; Mark 14:26). Its absence from the New Testament, which was Augustine’s argument for rejecting it as spurious, was explained by the sectaries by quoting Tobit 12:7: “The ordinances of the King it is well to conceal, though it is praiseworthy to reveal the works of God.” Conventional Christianity, following Augustine, has always denied that there was any significant teaching of Christ not included in the New Testament, for to admit such would be to admit serious gaps in their own knowledge. Yet Augustine labors to show line by line that the hymn is not heretical (as the Bishops of Nicaea found it 350 years later) but that each statement can be duplicated somewhere in the scriptures.4 The further back we go the more prominent becomes the rite in the church.

The actual performance of such a rite is described in a very old text, attributed to Clement of Rome and preserved in a seventh-century Syriac translation entitled “The Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ as delivered orally by him to us the Apostles after his Resurrection following his death.”5 In celebrating the sacrificial death of the Lord (Pulver calls his study “The Round Dance and the Crucifixion”), the bishop would

make the sacrifice, the veil of the gate being drawn aside as a sign of the straying of the former people; he would make the offering within the veil along with priests, deacons, authorized widows, subdeacons, deaconesses, readers and such as were endowed with spiritual gifts. As leader the Bishop stands in the middle . . . [the men and women are assigned their places, north, south, east and west, around him]. Then all give each other the sign of peace. Next, when absolute silence is established, the deacon says: “Let your hearts be to heaven. If anyone has any ill feeling towards his neighbor, let him be reconciled. If anyone has any hesitation or mental reservations [doubts] let him make it known; if anyone finds any of the teachings incongenial, let him withdraw [etc.]. For the Father of Lights is our witness with the Son and visiting angels. Take care lest you have aught against your neighbor . . . . Lift up your hearts for the sacrifice of redemption and eternal life. Let us be grateful for the knowledge which God is giving us.” The Bishop . . . says in an awesome voice: “Our Lord be [or is] with you!” And all the people respond: “And with thy spirit.”6

A sort of antiphonal follows with the people in the ring responding to the words of the bishop. Then the bishop begins the prayer proper, the people repeating these same things, praying. He thanks God for the Plan of Salvation, by which “thou hast fulfilled thy purposes by preparing a holy people, hast stretched forth thy hands in suffering, that they who have faith in thee might be freed from such suffering and from the corruption of death.” 7

The identical idea is expressed in the prayer circle so fully described by Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem (ca. A.D. 350) which we have discussed elsewhere:

O strange and paradoxical thing! We did not die in reality . . . after having been actually crucified. Rather it was an imitation by a token. . . . O love of men overflowing! Christ really received the nails in his blameless hands and feet and suffered pain; while I, without any pain or struggle, by his sharing of suffering the pain enjoy the fruits of salvation!8

Also in a long passage in the Acts of John:

You who dance, consider what I do, for yours is this passion of Man which I am to suffer. For you could by no means have understood what you suffer unless to you as Logos I had been sent by the Father. . . . If you knew how to suffer you would be able not to suffer. Learn how to suffer and you shall be able not to suffer.9

Plainly the rite is intimately involved with the suffering of the crucifixion.

The Syriac prayer ends: “Grant, therefore, O God, that all those be united with thee who participate in these sacred ordinances” And the people say amen. Bishop: “Give us unity of mind in the Holy Ghost, and heal our spirits . . . that we may live in thee throughout all eternity!” Then certain ordinances are explained to those in the circle: “It is he who gave Adam . . . a garment and the promise that after death he might live again and return to heaven.” It is explained how Christ by the crucifixion reversed the blows of death, “according to the Plan of the Eternal Father laid down before the foundations of the earth.”10

Still older are some documents designated as the Gospel of Bartholomew, belonging to that growing corpus of very early writings believed to contain instructions and teachings given to the Apostles in secret by the Lord after his resurrection. On one occasion when the apostles were met together, “Bartholomew . . . said to Peter, Andrew, and John, ‘Let us ask [Mary] the favored one how she conceived the Lord and bore him.'” This was an embarrassing question, and no one was willing to approach Mary on the subject. “And Bartholomew said to Peter, ‘You are the President and my teacher, you go and ask her!'” But Peter says Bartholomew himself should ask, and after much hesitation he approaches Mary on behalf of the other apostles, and she agrees to enlighten them.11

They form a prayer circle, “and Mary, standing before them, raised her hands to heaven” and began to call upon the Father in an unknown language, a number of versions of which are given.

When she finished the prayer, she said, “Let us sit on the ground [or stand quietly, kathisomen, at the prepared place, edaphos—since it is plain that they remain standing]; come Peter, you are in charge. Stand at my right hand and place your left hand under my forearm; and you, Andrew, you do the same thing on my left side.”12

John and Bartholomew are instructed to support or catch Mary if she faints, “lest my bones fail me when I start to speak.” This mutual support in the circle is necessary where some may be caught away in the Spirit and pass out.

In a variant version, when the brethren are met together on the Mount of Olives, “Peter said to Mary, ‘Blessed one, please ask the Lord to tell us about the things that are in heaven.'” But Mary reminds Peter that as Adam has precedence over Eve, so it is his business to take the lead in such things.13 Having taken position in the circle, Mary begins to speak:

When I was in the Temple of God [a number of early sources report that Mary served in the Temple, like Samuel, as a child]14 . . . there appeared to me one day a manifestation like an angel of unfamiliar aspect. . . . And suddenly the veil of the Temple was rent and there was a great earthquake and I fell on my face unable to bear the sight of him. But he stretched forth his hand and raised me up, and I looked up to heaven and a dewy cloud came and [lacuna] moistened me from head to foot; and he wiped me off with his stole (robe, shawl) and said to me, “Greetings, thou favored one, chosen vessel!” and he grasped my right hand. And there was bread in abundance and he set it out on the altar of the Temple [cf. the shewbread], and he ate first and then gave to me. And he put forth his hand from his garment and there was wine in abundance, and he drank first and then gave to me, and I beheld and saw a full cup and bread. And he said to me, “In three years’ time I shall send to you my Logos and you will bear a son, and through him all the creation will be saved. . . . Peace to thee, my beloved, forever and ever.” And suddenly he was gone from me, and the Temple was as it was before.

At this point the Lord himself appeared and commanded Mary “to utter no more of this mystery,” while “the Apostles were sore afraid that the Lord would be angry with them.”15 The sacramental episode is close to the holy wedding in the temple described in the Story of Joseph and Asenath, giving some indication of the great age and wide ramifications of the motif. 16 The account continues with Jesus giving the apostles further instructions in the ordinances, but the text is badly damaged. In one version Andrew accuses Mary of teaching false doctrine (an authentic human touch is the occasional reference in the early documents to a slight but uncomfortable tension between Mary and some of the apostles), but Peter reminds him that the Lord confided in Mary more than any other, while Mary, upset, weeps and says, “Peter, do you think I am making all this up?”17

In the book of 2nd Jeu, considered by Carl Schmidt to be the most instructive of all early Christian texts, the apostles and their wives all form a circle around the Lord, who says he will lead them through all the secret ordinances that shall give them eternal progression.18 Then “all the Apostles, clothed in their garments, . . . placing foot to foot, made a circle facing the four directions of the cosmos,” and Jesus standing at the altar [shourē] proceeded to instruct them in all the signs and ordinances in which the Sons of Light must be perfect.19

Snatched at the last moment from the rising waters of the Aswan Dam in 1966 was the Kasr al-Wazz fragment, where we read,

We made a circle and surrounded him and he said, “I am in your midst in the manner of these little children.” When we finished the hymn they all said Amen. Then he said other things and each time they must all answer Amen. “Gather to me, O holy members of my body, and when I recite the hymn, you say Amen!”20

The Acts of John describes the circle as being in motion, a sort of dance, and earlier texts than the Nicaean version add a cosmic touch to the formula:

I would pipe: Dance all of you. I would mourn: mourn all of you!21 One Ogdoad sings praises with us. Amen. The number 12 dances on high. Amen. All that which is above participates in the circle. Amen.” [Or—(alternate version)] “He that danceth not knoweth not what is being done. Amen. . . .” “Now if you follow my dance See yourself in Me who am speaking, and when you have seen what I do, keep silence about my mysteries.”22

It is doubtless to this rite that Clement of Alexandria refers in the second century when he writes, “Come to our mysteries and you shall dance with the angels around the Unbegotten and Eternal one and only true God, while Logos of God sings along with us . . . the great High Priest of God, who prays for men and instructs them.”23

Clergymen of every denomination have vied in fervor in condemning all dancing as of the devil, yet strangely the only passages they can find to use from early Christian writings never condemn it outright. The favorites are St. Augustine’s dictum: “Melius est enim arare quam saltare” (“It is better to plow than to dance”),24 and Chrysostom’s, “Where there is dancing, there is the devil also,” but the churchmen who quote it never finish what Chrysostom has to say, as he continues, “God gave us feet . . . not to cavort shamefully . . . but that we may some day join in the dance of the angels!”25 To which angelic dancing the great Basil also refers as part of the Christian tradition: “What is more blessed than to imitate the dance of the angels here on earth?”26 Ritual dancing was condemned by the fathers not because it was new, but because it was old in the church—it smacked of the old Jewish heritage. Both Augustine and Chrysostom condemn the old Jewish dancing as part of the Sabbath rejoicing. 27

Were it not for a violent prejudice against dancing, the long debates of the scholars as to whether the participants in the prayer circle really danced or not would be pointless, since the earliest texts clearly say they did dance. But what kind of a dance? In the classic work on the Therapeutae, Philo, writing at the time of Christ, tells how men and women in the circle, following the lead of an exarchos or choral instructor, would chant hymns with antiphonal responses in a manner resembling both the “rapt enthusiasm” and the circular motion of ancient choric dances, “hands and feet keeping time in accompaniment.”28 The Therapeutae were an Essene group related both to the Egyptian communities of desert sectaries and to the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls—one could hardly accuse them of frivolity.

The Greek and Russian Orthodox churches still preserve the ring dance around the altar in that most conservative of rites, the wedding ceremony, when bride, groom, and priest all join hands and circle the altar three times; H. Leisegang connects this definitely with the old prayer circle.29 At the coronation of the Byzantine emperor, everyone danced around the emperor’s table three times.30 The most common representations of ritual dancing in early Christian art show pious damsels dancing around the throne of King David.31 And the Jewish apocryphal writings often depict a situation best described at the opening of the Book of Mormon, where Lehi sees God on his throne “surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God” (1 Nephi 1:8). Surrounding concourses are concentric circles, and the singing and praising are never static: it is a dynamic picture with everything in motion, as Lehi sees it, and as the cosmic pattern of the thing requires. The prayer circle is often called the chorus of the apostles, and it is the meaning of chorus which can be a choir, but is originally a ring dance, as Pulver designates it in the title of his study. The prayer was a song such as Paul prayed and sang in the darkness of a prison: “About midnight they prayed a hymn to God” (see Acts 16:25). And if they sang in chorus, would they not dance? Philo says that the true initiate during the rites moves “in the circuit of heaven, and is borne around in a circle with the dances of the planets and stars in accordance with the laws of perfect music”—the music of the spheres.32

The most puzzling reference to the dance is also the oldest one, that in Matthew 11:16–17: “[This generation] . . . is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.” It was taking liberties with this strange passage “as a pretext” that the early sectaries justified the dancing in their prayer circles, according to Gougaud.33 In the text read at Nicaea the Lord says to the circle, “Amen! When grace comes I want to pipe and you all dance.” But in a circle where they are already singing, the dancing is only to be expected in view of old Jewish customs—and this episode takes place in the upper room at the Last Supper, the Passover. Why should that playful game be introduced on that most solemn of occasions? In Matthew 11:7, Jesus is speaking about John the Baptist’s followers and begins, “concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness to see?” This is a challenge to the desert sectaries. They were out there, as the Manual of Discipline so clearly tells us,34 to “prepare the way” (see Matthew 11:10). He speaks of John’s great mission as the herald of a dispensation, an “Elias, which was for to come” (Matthew 11:14), and then addresses the initiates: “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (v. 15), describing the present generation as those rejecting John’s message (v. 12)—they would accept neither John nor the Lord (vs. 18–19): they refused to dance to their playing, nor would they mourn with them for the sins of the world (vs. 16–17). The knowledge is properly guarded—”he that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (v. 15), a hint to the initiated that it is meant only for them. In the Acts of John, the Lord says, “Grace is dancing. I would pipe: Dance all of you. I would mourn: mourn all of you!” The connection with Matthew is undeniable, and again the limitation of the real meaning to the inner circle: “He that does not move in the circle knows not what is happening. Amen.” An important clue is the likening to little children in Matthew 11:16. The Kasr al-Qazz fragment says, “We made a circle and surrounded him and he said, ‘I am in your midst in the manner of these little children,’ he added, ‘Gather to me, O holy members of my body, and when I recite the hymn, you say Amen.'”35

In both the Acts of John and the Apocryphon of John, Jesus appears at the same time as a grown man and a little child; and in a famous infancy account when he and John embrace as small children, they fuse into one.36 Is it a mere coincidence that he repeatedly speaks of the little children and the dancing when declaring unity with John? The central act of the prayer circle was prayer, and it was “as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1–2; italics added). Again in close comparison with John, he teaches them the Lord’s prayer. Jeremias in a recent study of that prayer notes the significant fact that in it Christ addresses the Father as Abba. And that, Jeremias observes, “was something new,” using an Aramaic word “used by a small child when addressing his father. . . . Jesus’ contemporaries,” Jeremias writes, “never addressed God as Abba”37—that was little child’s talk, addressing God as a real, intimate father, as a trusting little child would. Little children do not stand on their dignity when they are happy; their singing and dancing is spontaneous. Some of that spontaneity and simplicity carries over into the later cult of the Christ child; but in the early Christian texts it is the clue to an authentic situation. In the Testament of the Twelve Apostles, the Lord, appearing to the people after the resurrection just before producing bread and wine miraculously for the administering of the sacrament, has a conversation with a little child.38 In exactly the same situation in the Book of Mormon the resurrected Lord blesses the little children “one by one,” but he begins his discourse to the Nephites by telling them three times that no one can approach him except as a little child (see 3 Nephi 9:22, 11:37–38). The prayer circle is the nearest approach to the Lord that men make on earth—and they can approach him only “as little children.”

The prayer spoken in the circle differs every time; it is not strictly prescribed. The one leading the prayer expresses himself as the Spirit moves him, and the others either repeat each line after him (which would not be necessary if they all knew it by heart) or add an “amen” at the end of each phrase, which is the equivalent of reciting the prayer for oneself. The most significant example of this freedom of composition is certainly the Lord’s Prayer. “Originally,” wrote Jeremias, “the doxology, ‘For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever,’ was absent,” yet it is found in the oldest church order, the “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.” Has someone taken liberties with the sacred canon, then? No, “the absence of the doxology from the original text,” Jeremias explains, “does not mean that Jesus intended his prayer to be recited without a word of praise at the end. But in the very earliest times, the doxology had no fixed form and its precise wording was left to those who prayed.” Only “later on . . . it was felt necessary to establish the doxology in a fixed form,”39 which explains why the prayer has different forms in Matthew 6:13 and Luke 11:4. Also, the older Aramaic form of the prayer required forgive “our debts,” which the Greek of Luke changes to forgive “our sins.”40 This vindicates both the inclusion of the doxology in the Lord’s prayer in 3 Nephi 13:9–13 and the reading there of “debts” instead of “sins.”

Almost all accounts mention the introduction of the prayer as being in a strange language, a triple formula of words resembling each other. Thus in 1 Jeu after they form the circle, Jesus begins a hymn which appears to be meaningless, a speaking in tongues, a glossolalia.41 In the Pistis Sophia also, the Lord, having formed the apostles and their wives in a circle around him and “taking the place of Adam at the altar, called upon the Father three times in an unknown tongue.”42 Elsewhere the text explains how while they stood “all in white, each with the cipher of the name of the Father in his hand,” Jesus prayed in a strange language, beginning with the words Iaō, aōi, ōia! which, we are told, meant “Hear me Father, the Father of all fatherhood, boundless light!” According to our source, “This is the interpretation: Iota, because everything came out of (began with) it; Alpha because everything will return to it; Omega because everything is process (lit. the fulfilling of all fulfilling).”43

In another version, when the Lord “ordered the Twelve to make a prayer circle and join him in a triple Amen and hymn to the Father and Creator of all treasure,” he began by saying “iē, iē, iē, [calling upon the Father] . . . to create beings to be the Lords of every treasure, and as such to bear the name of their Father Jeu, who has replenished the treasuries with countless spirits and degrees of glory.”44 When Abraham, according to an old and highly respected source, “rebuilt the altar of Adam in order to bring a sacrifice to the Eternal One,” as he had been instructed by an angel, he raised his voice in prayer, saying: “El, El, El! El Jaoel! [the last meaning Jehovah] . . . receive the words of my prayer! Receive the sacrifice which I have made at thy command! Have mercy, show me, teach me, give to thy servant the light and knowledge thou hast promised to send him!” 45 Abraham was following the example of Adam, who prayed to God for three days, repeating three times the prayer: “May the words of my mouth be heard! God, do not withdraw thyself from my supplication! . . . Then an angel of the Lord came with a book, and comforted Adam and taught him.”46 When Adam and Eve found themselves cut off from the glory of the Lord, according to the intriguing Combat of Adam, they stood with upstretched hands calling upon the Lord, as “Adam began to pray in a language which is unintelligible to us.”47 The so-called Coptic Gnostic Writing purports to give us Adam’s words on the occasion as being composed of the elements lō-i-a and i-oy-ēl, meaning “God is with us forever and ever,” and “through the power of revelation.”48 The Jewish traditions indicate that the story is no Gnostic invention, though of course mysterious names and cryptograms are the stuff on which human vanity feeds, and every ambitious sectary would come up with his own words and interpretations. Yet, though none of these writings may be taken as binding or authentic, taken all together they contain common elements which go back as far as the church of the apostles. When Mary asks the Lord, “Tell me your highest name!” “He, standing in the midst of a cloud of light, said, ‘He, Elohe, Elohe, Elohe; Eran, Eran, Eran; Rafon, Rafon, Rafon; Raqon, Raqon, Raqon,'” etc.49 Such mysteries are just the sort of thing unqualified persons love to play around with, and various Gnostic groups took fullest advantage of them. But again, the Jews are way ahead of them, as we see in the huge catalogues of mysterious angelic names in such works as 3 Enoch.

What H. Leclercq calls “that magnificent gesture” of raising both hands high above the head with which those in the prayer circle began their prayer was, as he notes, a natural gesture both of supplication and submission. 50 It was specifically a conscious imitation of the crucifixion,51 and that brings to mind the significant detail, mentioned by the Synoptic writers, that the Lord on the cross called upon the Father in a strange tongue: those who were standing by, though Aramaic was supposed to be their native tongue, disagreed as to the meaning (see Mark 15:33–36), and indeed the manuscripts give many variant readings of an utterance which the writers of the Gospels left untranslated, plainly because there was some doubt as to the meaning. It recalls the cry of distress of David in Psalms 54:2: “Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth,”52 and in Psalms 55:1–4: “Give ear to my prayer, O God. . . . Attend unto me, and hear me. . . .My heart is sore pained within me: and the terrors of death are fallen upon me.”

F. Preisigke, studying the same gesture among the Egyptians (it is none other than the famous “ka” gesture), notes that it represents submission (the “hands up” position of one surrendering on the battlefield) while at the same time calling the attention of heaven to an offering one has brought in supplication. He also points out that the early Christians used the same gesture in anticipation of a visitation from heaven, to which they added the idea of the upraised arms of the Savior on the cross.53 We have already mentioned the prayers of Adam and Abraham calling upon God in a strange tongue in the midst of darkness and distress. Abraham, says the Zohar, received no message until he built an altar and brought an offering, “for there is no stirring above until there is a stirring below . . . we do not say grace over an empty table”—or altar.54 Enoch was another who as he prayed “stretched forth his arms, and his heart swelled wide as eternity,” and to comfort him God sent him the vision of Noah’s salvation (see Moses 7:41–67). Noah also cried out in his distress, “calling upon Enoch three times and saying, Hear me! hear me! hear me!”55 Let us also recall that when Mary led the prayer circle of the apostles “she raised her hands to heaven, and began to call upon the Father in an unknown tongue.”56

Suffering is an important theme of the ancient prayer circle. The rite is always related to the crucifixion, according to Pulver, which was anticipated by it in the upper room, for “the core of the Lord’s Supper is the idea of sacrifice.”57 In the rites “the believer must incur the same sufferings as his god, and therefore he must mourn with him”—hence the peculiar passage in Matthew 11:16–17.58 Ignatius’ Letter to the Romans shows that “real suffering . . . alone enables one to become a disciple, to learn and gain experience. . . . For Ignatius, the believer must repeat the destiny of his God, he must become an imitator of God, mimētēs tou Theou.” 59 This is done ritually as is plainly stated by Cyril of Jerusalem and the author of the Testament of Jesus Christ, cited above: “and thou hast stretched forth thy hands in suffering, that they might be freed from such suffering” by an act of imitation.60

The clearest expression of the idea is given in that archetype and model of all initiates and suppliants, Adam. As he and Eve were sacrificing on an altar “with arms upraised,” an angel came down to accept the sacrifice, but Satan intervened and smote Adam in the side with the sacrificial weapon. Adam fell upon the altar and would have died were it not that God intervened and healed him on the spot, declaring that what Adam had suffered so far was acceptable to him as a true sacrifice, being in the similitude of his own offering: “Even so will I be wounded!”61

The prayer asks for light and knowledge as well as other aid, and the answer is a teaching situation. Thus the angels who came down in answer to Adam’s three-fold appeal, “May the words of my mouth be heard!” etc., came with a book, and comforted Adam and taught him.62 Or, in another version, when Adam and Eve prayed at their altar three messengers were sent down to instruct them.63 The Lord himself appears to teach Abraham as he is studying the heavens, according to Clement,64and the valuable Testament of Abraham begins with his receiving instruction at an altar on a holy mountain, surrounded “by men whom I will show you, how they will form a circle around you, being on the mountain of the altars.”65 Indeed, the main theme of those many ancient writings called “Testaments,” and attributed to almost every patriarch, prophet, and apostle of old, is the journey of the purported author to heaven, during which he receives lessons in the most advanced theology, history, and astronomy.

Of particular interest is the Testament of Job, whose age has been vindicated by the recent discovery of fifth-century Coptic fragments of it.66 “Make a circle around me, my children, form a circle around me that I may show you what the Lord and I did” (lit., what the Lord did met’ emou—along with me). Thus he begins with what seems no more than admonition to gather round. But when he begins explaining things to his daughters, strange ordinances emerge. When the famous three daughters of Job complain to him that their seven brothers received a greater inheritance than they, he assures them that he has reserved for them a better heritage.67 He then tells one of the girls to go to the “celle” and fetch three golden caskets containing their inheritances. In each one is a mysterious article of clothing designated as a chorda—a string or thread, but of such cunning design as to defy description, being of no earthly design, but of heaven “giving off lightning-like emissions like sunbeams.”68 The girls are told to put them on like shawls “so that it would be with them throughout the days of this earthly life.” 69 One of the women asks, disappointed, “Is this the heritage you told us about?” In reply Job tells her that these chordai will not only preserve them in this life “but will also lead you into a better world, even the heavens.”70 He explains that the Lord gave him the three bands “on the day when he decided to show me mercy,” healing him of the afflictions of the flesh, and placing the item before him saying: “Arise, gird up thy loins like a man! I shall ask you certain questions, and you shall give me certain answers!”71 When Job tied them on, all sickness left him and his body became strong and his mind at ease.72 “And the Lord spoke to me in power, showing me things past and future.”73 He tells the girls that they will have nothing to fear in this life from the Adversary, because these things they wear are a “power and a protection (phylaktērion) of the Lord.”74 Then he tells them to arise and gird themselves to prepare for heavenly visitants.75

Thus it was that when one of the three daughters . . . arose and clothed herself (periezōsen—showing that this was a garment and more than a string) according to her father’s instructions, she received another heart and no longer thought about earthly things. And she began to utter words (apephthenxato—make a clear and important statement) in the angelic sounds (phōne), and sent up a hymn to God using the manner of praising of the angels. And as she recited the hymns, she let the spirit be marked (kecharagmenon) on her garment.76

Here the “string” or chord is definitely called a garment—stolē. The next girl girded herself likewise and recited the hymn of the creation of the heavens speaking “in the dialect of the Archons,” making her a true Muse.77 The third girl “chanted verses in the dialect of those on high . . . and she spoke in the dialect of the Cherubim,” her words being preserved as The Prayers of Amaltheiaskeras—a most significant name.78

In the opening lines of the Testament, Job tells his three daughters and seven sons to form a circle around him (the second son is called Choros). “Make a circle around me (perikyklōsate me—he repeats the word) and I will demonstrate (hypodeixō, a very explicit word) to you the things which the Lord did with me (epoiesen met’emou, i.e., which we did together. It does not mean what he did to or for me!). For I am your father Job who was faithful in all things (en pasei hypomonei) and you are of the chosen and honored lineage (genos) of the seed of Jacob”; i.e., he gives them a patriarchal blessing—his “Testament.”79

Then Job recounts an adventure quite like that of Moses in the first chapter of the Book of Moses, after which Job suddenly appears as the humiliated King who regains his glory, the “Job who ruled over all of Egypt,” no less!80 He shows his royal visitors his real throne, which is in heaven, 81 and they become upset and angry about his illusive “eternal kingdom,” which he assures them is the only stable state of existence.82 “If you do not understand the functions of the body,” he asks them, “how can you hope to understand heavenly matters?”83 In the midst of his terrible afflictions he calls upon the Lord with upraised hands: “They lifted me up, supporting my arms on each side, and standing thus I first of all gave thanks, and then after a great praying I said to them: Lift up your eyes to the East” and there they saw Job’s dead children crowned in the presence of the Heavenly One84 and his wife who had just joined them: she having died of sorrow and exhaustion. According to an old legend, Satan had appeared to her as a baker, and when she asked for a scrap of bread to feed herself and her ailing husband, reminding him of his former generosity to one and all, Satan coolly replied that he would give her bread when she gave him money, piously assuring her—”You can have anything in this world for money!”85Eliphaz and the other friends were forgiven by God for resenting Job’s claim (which is also Enoch’s) that God had given him a right “to his own throne in the heavens,”86 and in his joy Eliphaz led another prayer circle: “He began a hymn, the other friends repeating after him along with their supporters (troops) near the altar.” He began by casting out Satan.87 “Behold, the Lord has drawn near, the Saints now stand prepared, their crowns of glory awaiting them in advance (proēgoumenōn).” 88 “After Eliphaz finished with the hymn, all the others repeating after him (epiphōnountōn) while moving in a circle (Kraft: ‘and circling about’), we arose and went into the city to the house where we live and carried on festivities rejoicing in the Lord.”89 Thus the story ends as it were in the upper room where it began (cf. Matthew 26:30 and Mark 14:26).

In 2 Jeu the apostles and their wives form a circle around Jesus specifically “so that he can teach them the ordinances of the treasury of light, they being conducted by him through all the ordinances and thereby learning to progress in the hereafter.”90 At Mary’s request on behalf of the apostles the Lord specifies the progressive order of “all ordinances (mystēria), all knowledge (instructions—sooun), seals (sphragidēs), tokens (psephoi), supplications (or forms of address—epikalesthai), degrees (or positions—topoi).” 91 And in the Acts of John he tells those in the circle, “What you do not know, I myself will teach you.”92 The whole situation centers around the Last Supper and belongs to the church from the beginning.93

In a Bartholomew text, the Lord takes the Twelve up into the mountain and standing in their midst gives them certain signs and tokens and then departs. 94 The Gnostics exploit and distort this situation in their usual way: Thus when an angel comes to rescue Norea in response to her prayer he says, “I am El-El-Eth . . . who stands before the Holy Ghost (obviously a Hebrew source—the Shekhina). I have been sent to converse with you and to save you from the Adversary. I will instruct you concerning what you should know.”95

Indeed, in various accounts Satan tries to get in on the act. We have seen how he smote Adam, interrupting his lessons at the altar. And when Abraham prayed at his altar, “Have mercy, show me, teach me, give to thy servant light and knowledge thou hast promised to send him!” Satan promptly appears on the scene with an insolent “Here I am!” And as he began to teach Abraham, a true messenger from God arrived and cast Satan out and proceeded with the proper instructions.96 In 2 Jeu the Lord warns the men and women in the circle that the ordinances in question are very secret, because Satan wants them distorted and misrepresented, as they surely will be if they go abroad in the world.97 Divulging those very things, it will be recalled, was the sin for which the Watchers in Enoch’s day were destroyed.98 According to Rabbi Eleaser, Abraham built three altars in order to instruct his children and fortify them against apostasy.99

As to the teacher, sometimes it is Jaoel or Jehovah as “the heavenly choirmaster,” and sometimes it is Michael or Gabriel. As often as not it is three Sent Ones.100 But of course all the knowledge is sent down from God. “Abraham . . . would utter prayers on certain occasions while sacrificing, thus invoking the ‘One God.'”101 This was the beginning of Jewish liturgy. Clement, however, takes it back a step farther: “Adam finding he needed help, solicited divine assistance with prayers and sacrifices. . . . That was the beginning of the ordinances of God.”102 According to the Moslem commentators, all creatures form in circles around God to be taught, suggesting the gathering of all the beasts at life-giving water holes in the desert. 103 H. Leisegang finds that throughout the ancient world the prayer circle is for the instruction of initiates.104 We may even go beyond his range to the medicine circles of Indians all over America. Among the Plains Indians, as described by H. Storm,

the people all sit quietly together and learn the four harmonies of balance. Each of the people can now perceive the others, and they realize that they are all Teachers. They put their arms around each other and care for each other. Then they begin to dance towards the Flowering Tree together in a Great Circle.105

The “four harmonies” mentioned in the last quotation appear throughout the world in the ring dance. The number of those forming the circle is among the pagans almost always sixteen, as Leisegang shows; with the Christian circle it is twelve, combining the three levels and the four cardinal points.106 In the Jewish 3 Enoch the three levels of the twelve produce rings of thirty-six. In 1 Jeu, “At every station (or step, topos) there are twelve springs of reason . . . and in each every father has three faces, so that the fathers that encircle Setheus have 36 faces. . . . At every level (taxis) there is a treasure containing 12 heads . . . and in each topos there are always three Watchers to instruct.”107 As might be expected, the number 360 is constantly mentioned and pedants and mystics had a field day shuffling and rearranging their cosmic circles, as did mathematicians and astronomers—our circles still have 360 degrees. If the Gnostic can tell us in a typical text that “the Nous of the universe has 12 faces and the prayer of each one is directed solely towards Him,” while in the midst stands an altar upon which is the Only Begotten Word,108 that is not so far from the impeccably orthodox Ignatius of Antioch, for whom the dance of twelve “is in imitation of God.”109

Monuments of great age and imposing majesty in many parts of the world suggest the prevalence of the main ideas. Thus when Heliodorus went far up the Nile to Meroe, describing conditions during the Persian occupation of the fourth century B.C., he saw a council of holy men sitting in a circle of twelve with three altars in their midst.110 As an eyewitness to the operation and as a personal friend to the emperor, Eusebius was able to describe the arrangement of Constantine’s tomb and the mystique behind it. “He built a martyrium in memory of the 12 Apostles in the city bearing his name.” It was a golden superdome, open to the sky and utterly dazzling. A ring of twelve columns with relics of an apostle deposited at the foot of each represented the holy chorus. Then Constantine had a happy afterthought: He had twelve reliquaries in honor and memory of the sacred chorus of the apostles placed in the circle of the rotunda, each at the foot of a column; and in the center of this he put his own casket . . . so that, as he explained it, by a clever calculation any honor shown to an apostle would be automatically focused—as if by a burning glass, on the object in the center—the remains of the emperor. Thus that smart man characteristically “utilized the intercession of the Apostles to his own advantage.”111

The plan was carried out in the still-surviving mausoleum of Constantine’s daughter Constantia, with its twelve double columns in a circle around the sarcophagus or altar,112 and from the same period in the Tomb of Diocletian at Split and many other imposing monuments dedicated to harnessing the power of the heavens through the prayer circle. There is a definite cosmic connection here.” ‘What is eternal . . . is circular, and what is circular is eternal,'” write Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, quoting Aristotle with the comment, “That was the mature conclusion of human thought over millennia. It was . . . an obsession with circularity.”113 If Plato bids us behold “immortal souls standing outside of heaven (as) the revolution of the spheres carries them round, and they behold all things beyond,”114 1 Clement, among the oldest and most esteemed of Christian writings, declares that “the sun and the moon and the chorus of stars according to his decree in harmony and without any deviation circle in their appointed orbits.” 115 The life of the soul is related to the motions of the heavenly bodies in the Twelfth Thanksgiving Hymn of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the remarkable tenth page of the Manual of Discipline is an ecstatic song with instrumental accompaniment and dance in the temple attuned to the circling of the spheres and the revolutions of the times, seasons, and festivals. It begins:

At the beginning of the rule of light in its circling, at the gathering to the appointed place, at the beginning of the watches of darkness, when its treasury is opened and poured out upon the earth, and in its revolving and drawing together from its source of [or for the sake of] light, when the outpouring of the light shines forth from the holy abode, etc. . . . I will sing what I learn and all my harping is for the glory of El, and all the sound of my harp shall be attuned to his holiness while the flute of my lips shall strictly conform to [lit. be laid to the line of] his instruction. . . . I will prescribe the limits from which I will not depart (11) . . . I will gladly receive what he teaches me. . . . As soon as my hand and feet are stretched forth I will call upon (abarekh) his name at the beginning both of the going out and the coming in [line 13].116

Here the singer compares his solitary song to the strict discipline and instruction of the prayer circle in the temple, e.g., “I will make the heave-offering with my lips” (line 6), that being a temple ordinance.

With the Fall, according to a Hebrew Enoch fragment, Adam tried his best to behold again the glory of the Shekhina, but had to settle in his fallen state for “the circle of the Sun which all behold in glory as the sign of the Shekhina with 6000 prophets circling around it.”117 In the various “ascension” texts we are taken again and again through the various levels of concentric rings, “the order [taxis] of holy angels in their ring-dances [chorostasian, lit. standing properly in a ring].” Isaiah is instructed in his Ascension not to worship at any of the six central thrones at any of the chorostasias or singing praise-circles, circles he must pass on the way up, since all the others are simply focusing their praise on “him who sitteth in the Seventh Heaven.”118 Such a mounting up is described by Philo:

The soul . . . is borne ever higher to the ether and the circuit of heaven, and is carried around with the dances of the planets and fixed stars in accordance with the laws of perfect music, reaching out after . . . the patterns of the originals of things of the senses which it saw here (on earth, while) longing to see the Great King himself.119

Philo is attempting to combine Jewish lore with the mysteries of Egypt. Pulver notes that the eight-circle is commoner than the twelve and “occurs also in early Christianity whenever it discloses an Egyptian influence.”120 Certainly what is purportedly the first and oldest shrine in Egypt, the Abaton, tomb of Osiris and first place of settlement with its great ring of 365 altars and its three levels, etc.,121 suggests the circle of 365 aeons that marks the place of the Adam of light with its three sides or directions,122 and even more does the arrangement of the ideal temple in the newly published Temple Scroll from the Qumran Cave I.123 Plutarch explains certain mysteries on the authority of the Egyptians in a combination of earthly and heavenly geography which is typically Egyptian: The worlds are so ordered that “one always touches the other in a circle, moving as it were in a stately ring-dance,” which takes place surprisingly within a triangle, “the foundation and common altar of all these worlds, which is called the Plain of Truth, in which lie the designs, moulds, ideas, and permanent examples or samples of all things that ever were or shall be.”124 Some have suggested that the three-cornered plain in question is the Nile Delta,125 and it is not surprising that Plutarch’s image of things was Christianized by an Egyptian, Clement of Alexandria: “That which Christ brings forth (is) transformed into an Ogdoad . . . and through three names is liberated as a triad. . . . When you bear the image of the terrestrial world then you also bear the image of the celestial.”126

It is because each prayer circle is a faithful reproduction of the celestial pattern that impulses can be transmitted from one to the other by all who are in a receptive state; the thoughts of those in the circle are concentrated as in a burning glass, or, since the thing most emphasized as the indispensable requirement of the circle is the absolute purity of mind, concentration of thought devoid of any reservations or distractions, and since the communication is beamed from one Treasury of Light to others, the analogy of the laser is quite striking.127 The three who were sent to teach Adam and Eve the order of prayer gave them the pattern “after the manner of what is done above in the Treasury of Light.”128 If that sounds too Gnostic, the same image meets us in the above-mentioned tenth page of the Manual of Discipline. In the Book of Adam, Adam is endowed

with the image and likeness of the Lords (above), while Eve is the Queen of this world. . . . I (God) provided [sent] the three visitors (genies) for their protection, and taught them the holy mysteries . . . and the prayers which they must recite . . . and I told them further, “I have provided for you this earth, in a dwelling-place fit for eternity. And then sitting near them I taught them the manner of calling upon the Lords to bless them.” 129

According to the Hasidic teaching, “the order of prayer is in accordance with the emanation of the Worlds,” since through prayer we become “attached . . . to Him Who is blessed”130 and rules the worlds. In orthodox Judaism “the Talmud represents the Beth Dīn or Tribunal of Heaven, as a circle, in the centre of which, God is seated,” and the earthly Sanhedrin as a reflection of it.131 The sympathetic vibration makes the individual also a microcosm responding to the cosmic forms, as we see in the Odes of Solomon, which echo the Dead Sea Scrolls with the ecstatic declaration, “The Lord is the Crown upon my head, I will not be shaken. Even though the universe is shaken, I will remain standing. . . . As I strike the chords of the lyre the Spirit of the Lord speaks in my members.”132

In forming the prayer circle one excludes the outer world, as families holding the Passover feast form closed circles with their backs all turned on the outer world, or as the true initiates form the inner or “esoteric” circle, leaving all the rest to the outer or “exoteric” world. The Lord explains this to the apostles, telling them of higher prayer circles as he takes each by the hand and introduces him into “the First Mystery,” explaining, “That is why I said to you that you were chosen out of the world.”133It was from such a circle in heaven that God at the creation of this earth chose those who would be his rulers in it, according to 1 Jeu, the Apocalypse of Abraham and the Book of Abraham 3:23: “And God . . . stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits.”134

The special object of Leisegang’s study, an alabaster Orphic bowl depicting a prayer circle, bears an inscription beginning with “an invocation of the celestial force which moves the outermost sphere, encompassing all the other spheres of heaven”;135 the third line reads, “‘. . . because thou movest in a circle,'” and “exhorts the readers to invoke the divine cosmic power, the sun which rules the infinite cosmic space over the heaven of fixed stars . . . [carrying] the reader’s thoughts back to the primordial age before the birth of the cosmos.”136 For the rites in the circle “take place in the supercelestial space beyond the starry heavens.” 137 Leisegang concludes that the many pagan versions of the thing “all bear witness to the mysteries, to the diverse yet always interrelated forms of the original Orphic-Dionysian cult . . . that extended deep into the Christian world.”138 His final word is that “all these rites were in some way related, though today the nature of the connection can only be surmised.” 139 They go much farther back than the Orphic-Dionysian tradition, however, since the old Babylonian hymn of creation, the Enuma Elish, tells how at the Creation God drew “the universal figure,” the quartered circle, which is repeated at every level of existence,140 with the idea that whatever is done on one level or world is done in heaven also.141

The only proper place for such activities is the temple, since that edifice is expressly designed for taking one’s bearings on the universe in every sense. “The Temple is the center from which light goes forth, and which at the same time draws everything to itself and brings all things together.” 142 Its ordinances are those prescribed after the heavenly pattern (see Hebrews 8:5). We have written extensively elsewhere on the “hierocentric” layout of ancient temples, cities, camps, and other ritual complexes—of their universality and antiquity there can be no doubt.143 Nor is there any shortage of early writings to tell us what they signified to their builders.

In 3 Enoch, the Rabbi Ishmael mounting up to heaven must pass through six hekaloth, “‘chamber within chamber,’ the Halls being arranged in concentric circles.” The word hekal usually means simply temple (it is the Arabic word for shrine or temple), but in the Enoch literature it regularly refers to the chambers or rooms of the temple representing various steps of initiation. 144 “Arriving at the entrance of the seventh hekal,” Rabbi Ishmael reports, in the opening lines of his epic:

I stood still in prayer before the Holy One, blessed be He, and, lifting up my eyes on high (i.e. toward the Divine Majesty), I said: “Lord of the Universe, I pray thee that the merit of Aaron . . . who received the crown of priesthood from [in the presence of] Thy Glory on the mount of Sinai be valid for me in this hour” [no unclean thing can take this step otherwise].

One thinks of Moses also “clothed upon with glory” on the mountain (Moses 7:3; 1:2, 9). Rabbi Ishmael having reached the door to the presence of God must become a crowned king and a priest before he can enter. He asks for this because, like others who make this supreme prayer, he seeks to be delivered from his lower condition, that Satan (Qafsiel) “may not get power over me nor throw me down from the heavens,”145 i.e., even as they were, for on meeting Adam in the dark and dreary world, Satan boasts and taunts him, that he has caused him to be cast out of Paradise even as Adam had caused his expulsion from heaven at the time of the Creation.146 In short, Ishmael utters the classic prayer of Adam, Moses, Abraham, and others, and receives the proper reply when God immediately sends “Metatron, his Servant the angel, the Prince of the Presence” to instruct him and bring him farther on the way:

“Forthwith the Holy One . . . sent to me Metatron, his Servant the angel, the Prince (sar) of the Presence,” who came joyfully to Ishmael, grasped him firmly by the right hand in the sight of all, and said, “‘Enter in peace before the high and exalted King and behold [comprehend] the picture [likeness] of the Merkabah.'” The use of special words (hitsaqel, “comprehend” for “see,” demuth, “likeness” or “picture” instead of simply saying God, and Merkabah [that elaborate circumlocution]) all save the writer from further obligation to say just what it was Rabbi Ishmael saw—since it cannot be described to those mortals who have seen nothing like it. The same caution is expressed in Lehi’s report that “he was carried away in a vision, even that he saw the heavens open, and he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne” (1 Nephi 1:8; italics added). Rabbi Ishmael also reports, like Enoch (and he is reporting all this to explain what it was that Enoch experienced), that God had given him a throne “similar to the Throne of Glory [cf. Moses 7:59]. And He spread over me [before me, on my account—‘ali] a curtain [veil] of splendour and brilliant appearance, of beauty, grace and mercy, similar to the curtain of the Throne of Glory; and on it were fixed all kinds of lights in the universe.”147 “The Curtain,” comments Odeberg on this, “regularly represents the recording of the Divine decrees with regard to the world, the secrets of the world’s creation and sustenance, etc., in short, the innermost Divine Secrets” 148—the secrets, that is, of this earth and of all other “lights in the universe.” We pointed out in the Egyptian Endowment that ancient temple veils represented the point or act of transition between man’s sublunary life and the vast open reaches of the immensity of space beyond, into which one passes by passing through that veil.149 They were cosmic veils, appropriately adorned, as Rabbi Ishmael reports, with astronomical marks and emblems.

Such a veil was discovered in a cemetery of Astana in central Asia by Sir Aurel Stein and has been hailed by de Santillana and von Dechend as done “in true archaic spirit (which means that only hints are given, and the spectator has to work out for himself the significance of the details).”150 It dates from the seventh century, was found in position suspended from pegs on a north wall; it was found near the body of a man dressed in Sassanian style. “Near the head lay also the crown-shaped paper hat.” An accompanying document says “that several sutras were copied and recited by monks” at the funeral of the man’s wife: she was buried A.D. in 8 December 667, her husband in 689.151 A mixture of cultures is apparent—the Sutras, Sassanian art and Chinese elements (the Chinese having moved in quite recently—A.D. 640)—and the ritual with which the parties are so much concerned may have been somewhat eclectic, with a foundation of Nestorian Christianity. In the veil in question, what first catches the eye are the signs of the square and the compass, boldly drawn as they are held up in the right and left hands respectively of the lady and her husband. To quote the official description: “Silk . . . perhaps originally white. Subject the legendary Emperor Fu-hsi with his consort Nuwas facing each other” about three-quarters life-size. “The bodies rise from a continuous flounce-like short white skirt”—an apron, “their two inner arms stretched stiffly and horizontally towards each other . . . the hand of each appearing under the opposite armpit of the other shows that they are embracing . . . Fuhsi holds in his uplifted left hand a mason’s square . . . . Nuwas holds in her right hand a pair of compasses. . . . From below issue two intertwined serpentine bodies which coil around each other “—the well-known caduceus, of life and death, signifying that all things have their opposites (cf. John 3:14, etc.). The whole design is completely surrounded with diagrams of the constellations, while above the heads of the two figures “is the sun disc, white with red spokes,” surrounded by twelve smaller circles, each connected to the next by a straight line to form an unbroken circle except at the very top where it is left open—plainly the circle of the months of the year.152 Fu-hsi is not only the first king but also the patron of artisans, the creator-god. As de Santillana and von Dechend explain it, “The two characters surrounded by constellations are Fu Hsi and Nu Kua, i.e., this craftsman god and his paredra, who measure the ‘squareness of the earth’ and ‘the roundness of heaven’ with their implements, the square with the plumb bob hanging from it, and the compass,”153 as they lay the foundations of the world. So the Pharaoh would go out by night with the Lady Seshat to lay out the foundation of a new temple by taking direct bearing on the stars with the proper instruments. The Lady was his one indispensable assistant on the occasion.154 Let us recollect that in the creation hymn of the Manual of Discipline the singer promises to gauge all his doings and mark the course of his ring-dance to the music of the spheres with the plumb-bob and line.155 The constellations on the Astana veil are dominated by the Great Bear, indicating the center of the universe, the omphalos or umbilicus mundi, the navel of the cosmos.156 Thus square, compass, and Pole-star designate the veil as the cosmic gate, curtain, or barrier to worlds beyond.

Rabbi Ishmael recited his prayer just before passing through to the throne which was behind a curtain, and he also informs us that God “made for me a garment of glory,”157 bearing the same markings as the veil and having the same cosmic significance, which reminds one of the close affinity between robe and veil in the very early Christian Hymn of the Pearl158 and also recalls how the bishop leading the prayer circle in the Syriac Testament of Our Lord “stands with upraised hands and offers a prayer at the veil,” after which he proceeds “to make the sacrifice, the veil of the gate being drawn aside.”159 St. Augustine’s version of the Priscillian prayer circle ends with the apparently incongruous statement, “I am the Gate for whoever knocks on me,” which Augustine explains in terms of Psalms 24:7, referring to the veil of the temple.160

The fullest expression of that altruism by which one saves oneself in saving others is a simple but ingenious device employed in the prayer circle; it was the “diptych,” a sort of looseleaf notebook or folded parchment placed on the altar during the prayer. It contained the names of persons whom the people in the circle wished to remember. The diptychs are among the oldest treasures preserved in the oldest churches. The name means “folded double,” though the documents could be folded triple or quadruple as well if the list of names was very long.161 The prayer for the people on the list was never part of the later mass but was always a litany, a special appeal for certain persons: “By litanies one intercedes for certain classes of persons.” 162 The original diptychs were the consular diptychs, carried around by top Roman officials—the mark of the busy pagan executive in high office. According to Leclercq, when bishops became important figures in city politics, high government officials would present them with diptychs “as flattering presents.”163 As notebooks they were convenient and practical—just the thing for keeping and handling important lists of names, and to such a use the Christians gladly put them.164 “In the place of the diptychs properly so designated [those used in government business] there were substituted at an early time notebooks or leaves of parchment which one would place on the altar during the celebration of the Mass. . . . Gradually that practice [the reading of the names (out loud)] was given up, [and] the priest merely referred to all the faithful whose names were written down on the diptychs or the leaves taking the place of diptychs.”165 The practice of laying names on the altar is of unknown origin though it is very old and, it is agreed, may well go back to the days of the apostles.166 Confusion with the old Roman pagan custom of reading off the names of donors from such lists caused it to be repeatedly denounced by the early fathers in the West;167 but the problem never arose in the East, and “the laying of a small tablet containing the names is to this day the practice in the Western Syrian rite.”168

At first the list of names was read aloud before being placed on the altar, but as that took up too much time (one of the surviving lists has over 350 names) the reading was phased out; “the list could be placed on the altar without any vocal reading of the names.”169 The common practice of scratching one’s name on the altar to assure inclusion in the prayers forever after may go back to old Jewish practice, for in 3 Enoch when the ministering angels utter the prayer (the Qaddish) “all the explicit names that are graven with a flaming style on the Throne of Glory fly off. . . . And they surround and compass the Holy One . . . on the four sides of the place of His Shekhina.” 170

Since the purpose of the prayer circle was to achieve total unity of minds and hearts, “keeping in mind the absent ones,” it was natural to include the dead as well as the living in remembrance. One prayed for himself “and also for all my relatives and close associates (consanguinitate vel familiaritate) and for all the Saints of the Church of God, as well as for those who died in the faith, who are recorded in my Book of Remembrance.” 171 “We pray for ourselves, our brothers and sisters . . . and for those who have paid their due to death, whose names we have written down or whose names appear on the holy altar, and all who stand in the circle whose faith and devotion are known to thee.”172 But in the earliest times the lists of the living and the dead were kept strictly separate “in two separate books.”173 For the work for the dead was something special and apart. “We remember the dead,” wrote Epiphanius in the fourth century, “(1) by performing ritual prayers, (2) by carrying out certain ordinances, and (3) by making certain special arrangements (oikonomias).”174 In the Clementine Recognitions when Clement asks Peter, “Shall those be wholly deprived of the kingdom of heaven who died before Christ’s coming?” he receives a cautious answer: “You force me, Clement, to make public things that are not to be discussed. But I see no objection to telling you as much as we are allowed to.” He tells him of the spirits of the dead “retained in good and happy places” but refuses to explain how they are to be redeemed.175 Likewise when Mary asks the Lord on behalf of the apostles how “a good man who has completed all the ordinances” may save an undeserving relative who has died, she is told that the good man must repeat all the same ordinances again while naming “the soul of such-and-such a person, on whom I am thinking my heart (mind),” whom he thus mentally accompanies through “the proper number of circles (kykloi) in the transformations (metaboliai), as he becomes baptized and sealed with the signs (psēphoi) of the kingdom . . . and so advances.”176 What these circles are the reader may decide for himself. “We remember not only the saints,” writes the Areopagite, “but our parents and friends, rejoicing in their condition in the refrigerium and praying that we too may finish this life worthily. We all join together in this.”177 The refrigerium referred to by the Areopagite means those “good and happy places” spoken of by Peter and Alma. The Greek name for it is anapausis, a place where you rest for a time, and the famous Stowe Missal says the members pray for all who are in the anapausis, “from Adam down to the present day, whose names are known to God . . . and also for us (the living) sinners.”178

Lists beginning with Adam smack of genealogy, and we have already noted one person who prayed for all those “even including the faithful dead who are recorded in my Book of Remembrance”179 In the fierce contentions between churches, from the second century (the Age of Heresy) on, in which each sought to establish its priority in authority and doctrine, the lists of bishops were brought forth as the strongest proofs of rival claims tracing the line of each church down from Adam, Abel, Seth, etc., thus combining the idea of dispensation with that of genealogy. The idea of keeping such bishop lists was inspired in the first place, Stegmuller maintains, by the general practice of keeping family records and genealogies among the Romans and Greeks; indeed it may go back to what Mommsen called “the genealogical mania” of the Hellenistic world.180 In one of the earliest of all orthodox Christian writings, the Pastor of Hermas, when the angel asks the writer if he knows the names of the elect, he replies, “I cannot keep them in my memory; give me a book and I will write them down.”181 In his Confessions, St. Augustine requests, “Whoever reads this, please remember my mother and father at the altar,” for which purpose he gives their full names.182

St. Augustine makes a sharp “distinction between the martyrs to whom one prays and the living for whom one prays.”183 Typically Roman, Innocent I condemned the old Gallic and Celtic practices of praying “for all the faithful of this place as well as our kinsmen and servants in this place” and limited the prayer to the official dead and recognized saints of the Roman church though the order was not enforced outside of Italy until Charlemagne cracked down.184 In the Eastern churches the lists and the prayers were always separate; it is specifically for the living, Chrysostom says, “that we pray standing with upraised hands.”185 As Cyril of Jerusalem explains it, “In the circle we pray for those who are sick and afflicted; in short, we pray for whoever is in need of help.”186 Cyril does not mention the list of names on the altar in this account, but he does elsewhere, referring to this very custom and specifying separate lists for the living and the dead. 187 In the Eastern churches “they prayed mentally for the living,” while the memento for the dead was something else, requiring, of course, the actual speaking of their names at some time. The prayer uttered for those whose names were on the altar was not a fixed formula, to judge by one old rubric giving instructions: “He (the leader) joins hands and prays for a while (no set limit); then he proceeds with his hands stretched out (extensis, extended): and all those standing in the circle join in.”188

The physicist Fritjof Capra in his “Reflections on the Cosmic Dance” 189 calls attention to that “system of archetypal symbols, the so-called hexagrams,” formed of trigrams which were “considered to represent all possible cosmic and human situations,” in the religious philosophy of the Far East. To convey their message “the eight trigrams [are] grouped around a circle to the ‘natural order,'” the circle among other things “associated with the cardinal points and with the seasons of the year.” These rings, based on multiples of six and eight, he compares with the latest schemes and formulas of advanced physics for interpreting the universe. Not only is the basic circle of eight hexagrams in the I Ching “vaguely similar” to the way in which “the eight mesons . . . fall into a neat hexagonal pattern known as the ‘meson octet,'” but also the great ring dance, “the sixty-four hexagrams . . . the cosmic arch-types on which the use of the I Ching as an oracle book is based,” presents “perhaps the closest analogy to the S-matrix theory in Eastern thought,” both being as near as the mind of man can get to explaining reality and matter.190

The various patterns and designs produced by ancient Oriental religion and modern Western science do look a lot alike, and this is no accident, according to Capra, because they both represent the same reality, though why that should be so, and exactly what the reality is, and how the two systems of thought are related is beyond human comprehension at present and may remain so forever. What bids us take both systems seriously, however, is that each is not only perfectly consistent within itself, but that without any collusion both turn up the same series of answers. So there must be something behind it. This reminds us of Leisegang’s discovery that “all these rites were in some way related, though today the nature of the connection can only be surmised.” 191 The many ring dances to which he refers were also cosmic circles and must somehow fit into the same picture.

Yet one closes Capra’s book, and a lot of others, with a feeling of disappointment. Somehow this Mayahana fails to get off the ground. What is wrong? In giving us a picture of the entire universe, including ourselves, both the Eastern sages and modern physics, covering the same ground in different ways, seem to leave out something very important. They give us the stage without the play. Granted it is a magnificent stage, a universal stage with self-operating scene-shifts providing constant display of ever-changing light, color, and sound, filling the beholder with genuine religious awe; still the more we see of it the more restless and disturbed we become. We are taken on a tour of the studio, but that is all. The sets are overpowering, they include the most dazzling space-science spectaculars, but our tour group becomes restive. Where are the actors, where is the show, what is the play? What is supposed to be going on here? The cosmic dance of particles whose nature we can never hope to grasp is not ultimately satisfying, even after we are convinced that that is all there is. “The divine lila is a rhythmic, dynamic play,” Capra tells us.192Yet “ultimately there is nothing to explain,” and “as long as we try to explain things we are bound by Karma.” What you have seen is the whole show, for “every part ‘contains’ all the others. . . . Every particle consists of all other particles.”193 The “bootstrap principle” would quiet all complaints with its neat circular argument; e.g., one hadron (particle) produces other hadrons and they produce it—don’t ask how, because the process cannot be grasped in terms of anything in our own experience. So the only solution is to stop worrying or looking for explanations; you must settle for that because that is all there is. Learn to live with it: “Don’t expect more and you will not be disappointed”; that is the sum and substance of the wisdom of the East.

The whole thing rests in the end not on reason or experience, we are repeatedly told; nothing can be described or defined, but all depends on feeling and intuition. But if that is so, must we not have respect for our own deep-seated feelings in the matter? The fact is that we cannot escape that haunting discontent; there is surely more to the play than the properties. The prayer circles, Christian and Jewish, give us assurance of that.

The old Christian prayer circle does not pretend, as the Orientals do, to embrace the whole universe and to sum up all knowledge; it is merely a timid knocking at the door in the hopes of being let into what goes on in the real world. Mr. Capra completely ignores the Near Eastern and old European schemes and patterns in his survey, and they are quite as rich and ingenious and probably more ancient than their Far Eastern derivatives. The Jewish and Christian systems are late and confused as we get them; they wander in an apocalyptic mist that cannot distinguish between revelation and speculation, but the dominant idea is that there is more, much more, going on than we have yet dreamed of, but that it is all on the other side of the door. The Oriental shuts his eyes in mystic resignation and with infinite humility makes sure that we are aware of his quiet omniscience. He knows all there is to know, and that is the message.

It is Joseph Smith’s prayer circle that puts it all together. Not only did he produce an awesome mass of purportedly ancient writings of perfect inner consistency, but at every point where his contribution is tested—and since he affects to give us concrete historical material as well as theology and cosmology it can be tested at countless points—it is found to agree with other ancient records, most of which are now coming to light for the first time. The prayer circle is one example of that; we may not discuss his version too freely, but we have seen enough of the early Christian prayer circle to justify some important conclusions:

1. It always appears as a solemn ordinance, a guarded secret and a “mystery” for initiates only. This does not express a desire to mystify but the complete concentration and unity of the participants that requires the shutting out of the trivial and distractions of the external world.

2. It always takes place in a special setting—the temple. Even in Christian churches of later time there is a conscious attempt to reproduce as nearly as possible the original temple situation.

3. The words and gestures do not always make sense to outsiders—only “he who has ears to hear” may hear, and only “he who joins in the circle knows what is going on.” This because the prayer circles are integral parts of a longer series of ordinances that proceed and follow them; taken out of that context they necessarily seem puzzling.

4. Though private prayer circles would seem to be out of the question (quackery, magic, and witchcraft made use of them), the members of the circle are never those of a special social rank, family, guild, or profession—they are ordinary men and women of the church, with a high priest presiding.

ADDENDUM

In the Cairo Museum, written on a huge shard of red pottery, is an ancient Coptic liturgical text which provides a remarkable link between ancient Egyptian and early Christian beliefs. It is a Christian “Book of Breathings” with the name of Osiris (representing the initiate) replaced by that of Adam, as if the “Egyptian Endowment” were organically linked to the Christian. Equally instructive is the predominance of the prayer circle in the text and the cosmic significance given it. As its modern editor, L. Saint-Paul Girard, notes, it has eight main divisions.194

A. Calling upon God

Line 1. (The Tau-Rho sign).195 Hail El! Fathouriel,196 who giveth

2. strength (comfort?), who gives replies [antiphonei] to the angels!197

3. Hail Adonai (My Lord), Hail Eloi (My God), Hail

4. Abrasax! Hail Iothael!198 Hail

5. Mistrael (for Mizrael) who has looked upon the face of the Father199

6. in the power of Iao!200 KHOK.201

B. Solemn adjurations. Adam as the type of initiate.

I adjure you (i.e. put you under covenant).202

7. by the first seal placed upon the bo-

8. dy of Adam. I adjure you (a different word: “give the hand to,” “make to swear”)203 by the second

9. [seal] which is upon the members of Adam. I covenant with you

10. by the third seal which marked the vitals (bowels)204

11. and also the breast (heart, mind)205 of Adam, when he was brought low (cast down) to become dust (earth)

C. The healing of the man Adam

12. until Jesus Christ stands bail for him (lit. takes him by the hand) in the embrace

13. of his Father.206 The Father hath raised him up (or met him).207

D. The breathing (Resurrection) motif

He hath breathed in

14. his face and filled him with the breath of life. Send to me

15. thy breath of life, (even) to this true and faithful one (or, to this vessel)208 Amen, amen, amen!

E. A type of the Crucifixion

16. Sousa, sousa, sousa!209 I covenant with you by the three cries (of distress) which

17. The Son uttered on the cross, namely: Eloi, Eloi, A-

18. hlebaks atōnē210 That is to say, God, my God, why (djou) hast thou forsaken me?

F. The hymn

19. Holy, Holy, Holy! Hail David the father (ancestor)

20. of Christ! He who sings praises (psalms) in the Church of the First-born (pl.) of heaven, Hail

21. David, theopa [tor?] (ancestor of the Lord), of the joyful ten-stringed lyre211 who sings

22. within (the veil of) the altar212

23. the joyful one (either David or the altar). Hail Hormosiel, who sings within the veil

G. Prayer circle

24. of the Father!213 They repeat after him, those who are at the entrances (gates,

25. doors) and those who are upon the towers (i.e. the watchmen at the gates). And when they hear what he says, namely the tribes (or gates?) who

26. are within the Twelve Worlds, they joyfully

27. repeat it after him:214 Holy, Holy, One (or Jesus) Holy Father.215 Amen,

28. Amen, Amen. Hail Arebrais in heaven and earth!

29. Then you (pl.) bless (praise God, pray), KOK (meaning that at this point certain actions are performed). Hail O Sun! hail ye twelve little children

30. who overshadow (protect?) the body of the Sun!216 Hail ye twelve phials

31. filled with water. They have filled their hands, they have scattered abroad

32. the rays of the Sun, lest they burn up the fruits

33. of the field217 Fill thy hands, pronounce blessing upon this

34. cup. KOK [another ordinance]

H. Entering the Presence

Hail ye four winds of heaven!

35. Hail ye four corners of the earth! (the inhabited earth, oikoumenē)218

36. Hail ye hosts (stratia) of heaven (i.e., the stars)! Hail

37. thou earth (land) of the inheritance

38. Hail O garden (or power, authority) of the Holy Ones (saints)

39. [of] the Father!219 One holy Father

40. Holy [Son] Holy Ghost

41. Amen.

*   “The Early Christian Prayer Circle” first appeared in Brigham Young University Studies 19 (1978): 41–78.

1.   Johannes D. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio, 54 vols. (Graz: Akademischer Verlag, 1960), 13:169–75. The minutes of the meeting are instructive, beginning with col. 172:

“Tarasius, the most holy Patriarch, said: Let us view the document as a whole as contrary to the Gospel.

“The Holy Synod said: Aye, sir: and it says that the human nature was only an appearance. . . .

“Constantine the most holy bishop of Constantia in Cyprus said: This book is the basis of their unauthorized assemblies.

“Tarasius the m. h. Patriarch said: These things are simply ridiculous.

“Theodore the most God-beloved Bishop of Catana said: Yes, but this book has been undermining the authority [lit. wrenching the vestments] of the Holy Church of God!

“Euthymius the most holy Bishop of Sardis said: Their false sects [parasynagogai] had to have this book to back them up [lit., as witnesses].

“The Entire Synod declared: All heresy depends on this book.

“Tarasius the most honorable Bishop said: Alas, how many heretical books support their false teachings!

“Gregory the most holy bishop of Neocaesarea said: But this book is worthy of all vile infection [miasma] and a disgrace.

“[On a motion by Tarasius] the Holy Synod said: Let it be condemned [anathema] from the first letter to the last.

“John a most revered monk and vicar to the Eastern Patriarchs said: Behold, blessed Fathers, it is most clearly demonstrated herewith that the leaders of the heresy which criticizes true Christianity are really the companions and fellow travelers of Nebuchadnezzar and the Samaritans, to say nothing of the Jews and Gentiles (Greeks), and also of those cursed atheists the Manichaeans, whose testimony they cite. . . . Let them all be anathemized along with their writings!

“The Holy Synod said: Anathema! . . .

“John the Reverend Monk . . . then made a motion: May it please the Most Holy and Oecumenical Synod to vote that no further copies be made of this pestilential book.

“The Holy Synod voted: Let no copies of it be made; furthermore we herewith declare it worthy to be consigned to the flames.

“[Here Peter, the secretary of the meeting, signs his name to the minutes.]”

Conventional Christianity views the ancient prayer circle as a sort of Gnostic aberration. L. Gougaud, “Danse,” in DACL 4:248–58. It is never mentioned again in orthodox sources. See Henri Leclercq, “Agape,” in DACL 1:787–92.

2.   Max Pulver, “Jesus’ Round Dance and Crucifixion according to the Acts of John,” in Joseph Campbell, ed., The Mysteries (New York: Pantheon, 1955), 169.

3.   Texts of this part of the Acts of John, taken from a number of sources, may be found in Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum Acta; Leclercq, “Agape,” 787–92; ANT 253–70; NTA 2:227–32.

4.   Augustine, Epistolae (Letters) 237, in PL 33:1034–38; quoted partially by Leclercq, “Agape,” 786, and NTA 2:227–28, n. 5.

5.   Ignatius Ephraem II Rahmani, ed., Testamentum Domini Nostri Jesu Christi (Moguntiae: Kirchheim, 1899). The age of the work is discussed on pp. ix–xiv.

6.   Ibid., 36–37.

7.   Ibid., 38, 40–42.

8.   Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis XX, Mystagogica II, de Baptismi Caeremoniis (Catechetical Lecture on the Rites of Baptism), in PG 33:1081; also in Hugh W. Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1976) 282.

9.   NTA 2:230–31, lines 31–42.

10.   Rahmani, Testamentum Domini Nostri, 44, 60.

11.   A. Wilmart and E. Tisserant, “Fragments grecs et latins de l’évangile de Barthélemy,” Revue Biblique 22 (n.s. 10) (1913): 321.

12.   Ibid., 324.

13.   Ibid., 327.

14.   Some references to this are found in Hugh W. Nibley, “Qumran and ‘The Companions of the Cave,'” Revue de Qumran 5 (April 1965): 186; reprinted in Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 1:261–62.

15.   Wilmart and Tisserant, “Fragments grecs et latins,” 324–25.

16.   Joseph and Asenath, chs. 14–17.

17.   Evangelium Mariae 17–18, ed. W.C. Till, Gnostische Schriften des koptischen Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, (Berlin: Akademie, 1955), 74–76.

18.   2 Jeu, 54 (40), text in Carl Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache aus dem Codex Brucianus (Leipzig: Hinrich, 1892), 99. Cf. German tr., 193.

19.   Ibid., 66–67 (53g), in Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache, 114–17, quote from p. 114; cf. tr., 204. Both First and Second Jeu contain sketches showing various arrangements of prayer circles. Other texts, e.g., the Gospel of Bartholomew and Pistis Sophia, p. 358, make it clear that the facing in four directions denotes standing in a circle.

20.   Kasr al-Wazz fragment, p. ii–end, from photographs kindly lent to the author by Professor Hughes at the University of Chicago at the time of their discovery in 1966.

21.   Pulver, “Jesus’ Round Dance and Crucifixion,” 186, notes that mourning here denotes that the initiate is expected to suffer after the manner of the leader. The word for “mourn” in Matthew 11:17 is koptomai, literally, to inflict wounds upon oneself.

22.   Variants in Montague R. James, Apocrypha Anecdota, second series, Texts and Studies 5:1 (Cambridge: University Press, 1897), 3:10–16.

23.   Clement of Alexandria, Cohortatio ad Gentes (Exhortation to the Nations) 12, in PG 8:241.

24.   Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos (Expositions on the Psalms) 111, 2, in PL 37:1172; quoted differently along with other texts on the same subject, by Gougaud, “Danse,” 250.

25.   John Chrysostom, Commentarius in Sanctum Matthaeum Evangelistam (Commentary on Matthew) 48, in PG 58:491, and Gougaud, “Danse,” 248.

26.   Basil the Great, Epistolae (Letters) I, 2, in PG 32:225–26.

27.   Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms 91, in PL 37:1171–81; Chrysostom, Contra Judaeos et Gentiles, quod Christus Sit Deus (Against the Jews and the Gentiles that Christ Is God), in PG 48:845–46.

28.   Philo, On the Contemplative Life xi. The passage as rendered by F. H. Colson in the Loeb Classical Library edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), Philo series, 9:165–69, reads: “After the supper . . . they rise up all together and standing in the middle of the refectory [cf. Qumran!] form themselves first into two choirs [choroi, circles], one of men and one of women, the leader and precentor [exarchos] . . . being the most honored amongst them. . . . Then they sing hymns to God . . . sometimes chanting together, sometimes . . . antiphonally. . . . Then . . . they mix and both together become a single choir, a copy of the choir set up of old beside the Red Sea.” This is the way Augustine and Chrysostom describe the Sabbath dancing of the Jews (see preceding note), but Philo being himself a Jew found nothing shocking in it.

29.   Gougaud, “Danse,” 250, giving these and other examples of ancient dances surviving in the Christian church. Hans Leisegang, “The Mystery of the Serpent,” in Campbell, The Mysteries, 244.

30.   Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Caeremoniis Aulae Byzantinae (On the Ritual of the Byzantine Court) 1, 65, in PG 112:568; 1, 83, in PG 112:689.

31.   Many illustrations from early Christian art published in Gougaud, “Danse,” 253–58.

32.   Philo, De Opificio Mundi (On the Creation) 70–71, tr. Colson (as cited in Leisegang, “The Mystery of the Serpent,” 234), modified.

33.   Gougaud, “Danse,” 248.

34.   1QS 8:12–16.

35.   See notes 20 and 21 above.

36.   Acts of John 88, in NTA 2:225; Apocryphon of John, in ibid., 1:322; cf. the Life of John according to Serapion, in ibid., 1:415; Pistis Sophia, p. 77 (Schmidt), in ANT, 66.

37.   Joachim Jeremias, “The Lord’s Prayer in Modern Research,” Christian News from Israel 14 (April 1963): 12–13. Cf. Joachim Jeremias, The Prayers of Jesus(London: SCM Press, 1967), 1–29.

38.   Gospel of the Twelve Apostles 2, in PO 2:133.

39.   Jeremias, “Lord’s Prayer in Modern Research,” 10; italics added.

40.   Ibid., 11.

41.   Pulver, “Jesus’ Round Dance and Crucifixion,” 175.

42.   Pistis Sophia, p. 358; tr. Mead, 295.

43.   Ibid., 375; tr. Mead, 310; 357–58; tr. Mead, 295.

44.   1 Jeu, in Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache, 326, 370.

45.   Apocalypse of Abraham 12:8–9; 17:11–17; cf. OTP 1:697.

46.   M. J. Bin Gorion, Die Sagen der Juden, 5 vols. (Frankfurt: Rutten & Loening, 1913), 1:260–62; cf. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews 1:91.

47.   G. B., “Le Combat d’Adam et Eve,” text in DA 1:329–32.

48.   Coptic Gnostic Work, 37–38, in Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache, 253; cf. tr., 300.

49.   Sebastian Euringer, “Die Binde der Rechtfertigung,” Orientalia, 2nd ser., 9 (1940): 249.

50.   Henri Leclercq, “Main,” in DACL 10:1212.

51.   Pulver, “Jesus’ Round Dance and Crucifixion,” 175–78, 193.

52.   Psalms 54:2: ‘Elohim shmac tephillati hacazina le-‘imrei-phi.

53.   Friedrich Preisigke, Vom göttlichem Fluidum nach ägyptischer Anschauung (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1920), p. 41, note 3; p. 42.

54.   Zohar, Lech Lecha, 88a.

55.   1 Enoch 65:2.

56.   See above n. 17.

57.   Pulver, “Jesus’ Round Dance and Crucifixion,” 174–76.

58.   Ibid., 186.

59.   Ibid., 176.

60.   Rahmani, Testamentum Domini Nostri, 40, 44; cf. Nibley, Message, 282.

61.   “Combat d’Adam,” in DA 1:329–32.

62.   Bin Gorion, Sagen der Juden 1:260–62.

63.   F. Tempestini, trans., “Livre d’Adam,” in DA 1:87.

64.   Recognitiones Clementinae (Clementine Recognitions) I, 32–33, in PG 1:226–27.

65.   Apocalypse of Abraham, ch. 12; cf. OTP 1:695.

66.   Robert A. Kraft, The Testament of Job according to the SV Text (Missoula, Mt.: Scholars Press, 1974), 3–111 on the various texts. Part of the Greek version is also reproduced by F. C. Conybeare, “The Testament of Job and the Testaments of the XII Patriarchs,” Jewish Quarterly Review 13 (October 1901): 111–13.

67.   The Testament of Job 46:1–5.

68.   Ibid., 46:8.

69.   Ibid., 46:9.

70.   Ibid., 47:3.

71.   Ibid., 47:4–6

72.   Ibid., 47:7–10.

73.   Ibid., 47:10–11.

74.   Ibid., 47:11–12.

75.   Ibid., 47:12

76.   Ibid., 48:1–8.

77.   Ibid., 49:1–3.

78.   Ibid., 50:1–3.

79.   Ibid., 1:1–5.

80.   Ibid., 28:7–8.

81.   Ibid., 33:1–9.

82.   Ibid., 36:1–6.

83.   Ibid., 38:5.

84.   Ibid., 40:1–3

85.   Cf. Ibid., 24:6–8.

86.   Ibid., 43:1.

87.   Ibid., 43:1–17.

88.   Ibid., 43:14.

89.   Ibid., 44:1.

90.   2 Jeu, 54 (40), in Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache, 99; tr., 193.

91.   Pistis Sophia, pp. 358–60 (363–66), (Mead, 300).

92.   Acts of John 1:43, in NTA 2:231.

93.   Even those Gnostic versions defending the proposition that Jesus did not really suffer on the cross celebrate “a pseudo passion and a pseudo death of Christ,” according to Pulver, “Jesus’ Round Dance and Crucifixion,” 176–78.

94.   Gospel of Bartholomew, fol. 14b–15a, in E. A. Wallis Budge, Coptic Apocrypha (London: British Museum, 1913).

95.   Hypostasis of the Archons 140:3, translated into German by Hans-Martin Schenke, “‘Das Wesen der Archonten’: Eine gnostische Originalschrift aus dem Funde von Nag-Hamadi,” Theologische Literaturzeitung 83 (1958): 667.

96.   Apocalypse of Abraham 12:8–10; 17:11–17

97.   2 Jeu, 54–55, in Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache, 100–109.

98.   August Wünsche, Der Midrasch Bemidbar Rabbah (Leipzig: Schulze, 1882), 11 (101).

99.   G. H. Box, The Apocalypse of Abraham (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1919), xxv.

100.   See the important discussion of Three Men in White, in Erwin Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, 13 vols. (New York: Pantheon, 1953), 1:25–28.

101.   A. Z. Idelsohn, Jewish Liturgy and Its Development (New York: Holt, 1932), 3.

102.   Clementine Recognitions IV, 11, in PG 1:1319–20.

103.   F. Dieterici, ed., Thier und Mensch vor dem König der Genien (Leipzig: Hinrich, 1881), 2–4; cf. Clement, Epistola I ad Corinthios (First Epistle to the Corinthians) 20, in PG 1:249.

104.   Leisegang, “The Mystery of the Serpent,” 244.

105.   Hyemeyohsts Storm, Seven Arrows (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 20.

106.   Especially instructive on the circles of eight and twelve, etc., is the Coptic Sophia Christi, 95–96, 107–17, 123–24, in Till, Gnostische Schriften, 230–33, 254–75, 286–89.

107.   1 Jeu 10–11, in Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache, 52–53; cf. tr. 151; cf. Second Coptic-Gnostic Work, 10–11, in ibid., 233–34, cf tr. 284.

108.   Second Coptic Gnostic Work, 8a, in Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache, 231–32.

109.   Pulver, “Jesus’ Round Dance and Crucifixion,” 175–77.

110.   Heliodorus, Aethiopica 10, 5–6.

111.   Eusebius, De Vita Constantini (On the Life of Constantine) 58–60, in PG 20:1209–11.

112.   Photo in Moses Hadas, Imperial Rome (New York: New York Times, 1965), 175.

113.   Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill (Boston: Godine, 1977), 48–49.

114.   Plato, Phaedrus 247.

115.   Clement, First Epistle to the Corinthians 20, in PG 1:249.

116.   1QS (Manual of Discipline) 10:1–3, 9; cf. Theodor Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures, 3rd ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), 136–43; 121.

117.   Adolf Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrasch, 6 vols. (Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1967), 5:172 (Book of Enoch).

118.   Ascension of Isaiah 4:15–17, in OTP 2:162.

119.   Philo, On the Creation 70–71.

120.   Pulver, “Jesus’ Round Dance and Crucifixion,” 187.

121.   See Hugh W. Nibley, Abraham in Egypt (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1981), 186, 166–67.

122.   Second Gnostic Work, 6a, text, in Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache, 230; cf. tr., 282.

123.   Yigael Yadin, The Temple Scroll, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1978), 34, 39–42.

124.   Plutarch, De Defectu Oracularum 22.

125.   I. e., the so-called Pyramidologists. A hypocephalus like that of Facsimile No. 2 of the Book of Abraham depicts the geography of the earth as a reflection of that heaven, with the Delta in the center.

126.   Clement of Alexandria (dubia), Excerpta ex Scriptis Theodoti (The Teachings of Theodotus) 80, in PG 9:696.

127.   Second Gnostic Work, 8a, in Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache, 231–32.

128.   Pistis Sophia, 10–11.

129.   “Livre d’Adam,” in DA 1:87–88.

130.   Or ha-Meir, ii, 109b, cited in J. G. Weiss, “The Kavvanoth of Prayer in Early Hasidism,” Journal of Jewish Studies 9 (1958): 182–83.

131.   Isaac Myer, Qabbalah (Philadelphia: Myer, 1888), 306.

132.   Odes of Solomon 5 and 6.

133.   Pistis Sophia, 10–11.

134.   Cf. 1 Jeu 10, in Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache, 53–54; Apocalypse of Abraham 21–22. Italics added.

135.   Leisegang, “The Mystery of the Serpent,” 201; cf. 241.

136.   Ibid., 211, 215.

137.   Ibid., 233.

138.   Ibid., 259.

139.   Ibid., 240.

140.   Enuma Elish 1:60–80; 6:51–73 (esp. 69, 73); 4:136–46. Cf. translations by Speiser, in James Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 60–72, and Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942). See Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis, 43, n. 96 for further bibliography.

141.   Enuma Elish 6:113. It is the circle of time divided into 12 lunar positions, 5:1–4, 9–14.

142.   Cf. Second Coptic Gnostic Work, 1, in Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache, 226; Pistis Sophia, ch. 65, p. 134.

143.   Hugh W. Nibley, “The Hierocentric State,” Western Political Quarterly 4 (1951): 226–53.

144.   Hugo Odeberg, 3 Enoch or the Hebrew Book of Enoch (New York: KTAV, reprint, 1973), 3.

145.   Ibid., 3–4; cf. OTP 1:255.

146.   Life of Adam and Eve xii–xvii, in R. H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964), 2:137. Cf. OTP 1:262–64.

147.   Odeberg, 3 Enoch or the Hebrew Book of Enoch, ch. 1, p. 4; ch. 10, pp. 27–28. Cf. OTP 1:263.

148.   Odeberg, 3 Enoch or the Hebrew Book of Enoch, ch. 1, p. 28.

149.   Nibley, Message, 245–49.

150.   de Santillana and von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill 273, with reproduction.

151.   Sir Mark Aurel Stein, Innermost Asia, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1930), 2:665–67.

152.   Ibid., 707.

153.   de Santillana and von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill, 273, with reproduction.

154.   Haus Bonnet, Reallexikon der ägyptischen Religionsgeschichte (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1952), 700.

155.   1QS 10.

156.   Another veil was found by Stein, sloppily executed by an artist to whom the details were a puzzle. His constellations are unrecognizable save for the Great Bear, which is identical on both veils. Stein, Innermost Asia 2:708.

157.   This is made perfectly clear in Odeberg, 3 Enoch or the Hebrew Book of Enoch, chs. 10 and 12.

158.   Nibley, Message, 271; cf. 246.

159.   Notes 5 and 6 above.

160.   Augustine, Letters 237, in PL 33:1037–38.

161.   O. Stegmüller, “Diptychon,” in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1957) 3:1138.

162.   F. Cabrol, “Diptyques (Liturgie),” in DACL 4:1050.

163.   Ibid., 1095–96.

164.   Ibid., 1046–47; Stegmüller, “Diptychon,” 1140.

165.   Cabrol, “Diptyques,” 1061.

166.   Stegmüller, “Diptychon,” 1138, 1147; Cabrol, “Diptyques,” 1051, citing Bona.

167.   Stegmüller, “Diptychon,” 1143; Cabrol, “Diptyques,” 1059, noting that the donor lists were unknown in the East until Constantine introduced them from Rome.

168.   Stegmüller, “Diptychon,” 1147; cf. 1144–46.

169.   Ibid., 3:1147, citing the famous Bobbio Missal.

170.   Odeberg, 3 Enoch or the Hebrew Book of Enoch, ch. 39.

171.   Quote is from Cabrol, “Diptyques,” 1061; cf. Stegmüller, “Diptychon,” 1140. The names in the diptych show “by this meeting of individuals the close bond of communion and love which united all the members of the church.” Cabrol, “Diptyques,” 1049.

172.   Ibid., 1061–62.

173.   Stegmüller, “Diptychon,” 1146; cf. 1144–45.

174.   Epiphanius, Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies) 3, 77; 7, 21, in PG 42:649–52.

175.   Clementine Recognitions I, 52, in PG 1:1236; also in Hugh W. Nibley, The World and the Prophets (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1962), 153; 3rd ed. (1987), 168.

176.   Pistis Sophia, pp. 325–26 (322–23).

177.   Anonymous (attributed to Origen), Commentarius in Job (Commentary on Job), 3, in PG 17:517.

178.   Cabrol, “Diptyques,” 1073.

179.   See above n. 171.

180.   Stegmüller, “Diptychon,” 146–47.

181.   Hermae Pastor (Shepherd of Hermas), Visio (Vision) 2, in PG 2:895.

182.   Augustine, Confessiones (Confessions) IX, 8, in PL 32:770–72.

183.   Cabrol, “Diptyques,” 1051.

184.   Ibid., 4:1071–74, 1073. Alcuin introduced the names of the dead into the regular prayer-lists of our ancestors, where they first appear in an Irish canon of circa A.D. 700, Stegmüller, “Diptychon,” 1144.

185.   Chrysostom, Commentary on Matthew 48, in PG 58:491.

186.   “Dissertatio de Vita Sancti Cyrilli,” 1, 16, in PG 33:116.

187.   Ibid.; Nicephoros Callistus, HE XIV, 26–27, in PG 146: 1137–49.

188.   Cabrol, “Diptyques,” 1067.

189.   Fritjof Capra, “The Tao of Physics: Reflections on the Cosmic Dance,” Saturday Review 5 (10 December 1977): 21–23, 28, being a summary of his book The Tao of Physics (New York: Bantam, 1977), to which following page references refer. These quotations occur between pp. 268 and 272; 2nd ed., 278–83.

190.   Ibid., 270.

191.   Note 139 above.

192.   Capra, The Tao of Physics, 78; 2nd ed., 88.

193.   Ibid., 28; 2nd ed., 291; 285; 2nd ed., 295.

194.   L. Saint Paul Girard, “Un Fragment de liturgie magique copte sur ostrakon,” Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Egypte 27 (1927): 62–68.

195.   The earliest signs of the cross were formed by a Greek Chi (X) with the vertical shaft of a Greek Rho (P) or Iota (I) through the middle, or by a Rho with a horizontal bar below the loop. They were interchangeable and are found in varying combinations, being closely associated also with the “Crux Ansata,” the famous Egyptian ankh or life symbol: ☥. For many examples, see Henri Leclercq, “Chrisme,” in DACL 3:1481–1534. The classic Latin cross does not appear in the West until the fourth century and like the others seems to have come from Egypt, ibid., 1485–89, and Leclercq is puzzled “that the Christians adopted a sign which ran a serious risk of being misunderstood,” ibid., 1483. Not to worry: these symbols had conveyed for centuries the very ideas which the Christians wished them to represent in a new context, just as they borrowed current alphabets and other symbols of general acceptance to convey their own peculiar ideas. The symbol prefacing this note is both the monogram of Christ and the earliest symbol of the crucifixion; as such, it also designates the victory of light over darkness as represented in the performance of the mysteries.

196.   Phathouriel for Bathuriel, from Hebrew Bait-tsuri-el, “the house of my strength is God,” or “My God My Rock.” Girard, “Fragment de Liturgie,” 66, n. 1, citing Moise Schwab, Vocabulaire de l’angelologie (Paris: Klincksieck, 1897), s.v.; cf. Souri-el, “My Rock Is God.” Henri Leclercq, “Abrasax,” in DACL 1:145. Since the names El, Adonai, Eloi, and Abrasax invoked together at the opening of the rites are all designations of the supreme God, Bathuriel, as second on the list, must be another epithet for El. Tsur is properly a stone and a foundation; coming at the beginning of the rites it strongly suggests the Stone of Truth in the Egyptian initiation rites and the Eben Shetiyah of Hebrew tradition. Nibley, Message, 120–24.

197.   Girard alters eb-ti phonē nenankelōs (“who gives a voice to the angels”) to ef [an]tiphonei nenangelos, “whose voice replies to the angels,” because he cannot imagine the meaning of the former. Girard, “Fragment de Liturgie,” 66, n. 2. The first suggests the Creation Hymn, the second the exchange of expressions at the conclusion of the rites (lines 24–27 below).

198.   The names of Adonai, Eloi, and Abraxas are the most common found on those carved Gnostic gems called “Abraxas” or “Abrasax.” Henri Leclercq, “Anges,” in in DACL 1:2087–88. Such gems representing “the world of Alexandria and the Egyptian-Greek magical papyri” consist of “stones which figure in superstition as well.” Reiss, “Abrasax,” in RE 1:110; Augustine writes, “Basilides gives to the Almighty God the portentous name of ABRAXAS, and says it contains the number of the course of the year in the Sun’s circuit, while the Gentiles designate the same number by the name of Meithra.” Commentarius in Amos (Commentary on Amos) 1, 3, in PL25:1080–89. In our text, Abrasax is an epithet of God as the ruler of all and the director and guide of Mysteries: The most common type of Abrasax gem (of Egyptian origin, though their meanings have never been explained—Reiss, “Abrasax,” 109–10) depicts the god as Anubis with the staff of office that shows him to be the psychopomp, conductor of souls or paralemptor (guide) through the mysteries; as such, he is identified with the classic Mercury and the Christian Michael. Leclercq, “Abrasax,” 134–37. He is often shown as the mummified Osiris, with or without a crown; cf. Leclercq, “Anges,” 2127, fig. 653.

199.   Mizrael is the angelic embodiment of divine authority, which enables him to see behind the veil. Girard, “Fragment de liturgie,” 66, n. 5, cit. Schwab, Vocabulaire de l’Angelologie.

200.   Iao is the common equivalent for Jehovah and God. Leclercq, “Abrasax,” 147, 141.

201.   KHOK occurs in lines 29 and 32 as KOK. It introduces a new phase or change of scene and indicates that at this point certain actions take place. Our text, in the manner of a prompting sheet, contains only words recited, without describing acts or rites performed but only the point at which they take place. The Coptic word KOK is the common word for “disrobe” and related concepts, and may indicate changes in costume.

202.   Ti-ōrk erō-tn, the erō– indicating “the person adjured,” here in the plural, while the n– is the thing sworn by; see W. F. Crum, Coptic Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1939), 529. To adjure is to place another under solemn obligation by entering a covenant with him.

203.   Titarko means literally “give the hand to” in token of covenant. Wilhelm Spiegelberg, Koptisches Handwörterbuch (Heidelberg: Winter, 1921); “make to swear, adjure, entreat.” Crum, Coptic Dictionary, 430.

204.   Tōōbe e– as here means to set a mark or stamp upon, to impress upon, to leave a mark on. For vitals the original has t-tchot, meaning size, age, form, which Girard emends to tchlot, meaning “Kidney, also other internal organs” (possibly from the root tschlodj, bend, be interlaced). It is the Hebrew kliyot, “the reins, kidneys, inward parts.” Crum, Coptic Dictionary, 813.

205.   P-het, heart mind, thought reason; cf. the Greek, stēthos, the breast as the receptacle of principles of thought, and Hebrew lēb, the heart “as the seat of the various feelings, affections and emotions . . . and of the moral sentiments.” Benjamin Davies, ed., A Compendious and Complete Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament (Boston: Bradley, 1875), 315.

206.   The verb for covenant is here sh(e)p tōre, vb. intr., “grasp the hand, be surety for, undertake;” Crum, Coptic Dictionary, 425; with the object mmof (as here) it means “be surety for.” Hn n-tchidj m-pefiot Girard renders “entre les mains de son Pere,” i.e., “in his embrace.”

207.   Tahof erat.f can mean either “set up,” “establish,” “cause to stand,” or “meet with,” “reach another.”

208.   The Coptic word pites Girard reads as Greek pithos, vessel, though he finds the idea “bizarre.” Early Christian and Jewish writers, however, speak of the living body (which is the subject of this passage) as a vessel (angeion). Barnabas calls the living body “the blessed vessel” (to kalon skeuos), Barnabas, Epistola Catholica (Catholic Epistle) 21, in PG 2:727–82. On the other hand, pithos is an alternative spelling for peithos, a Greek equivalent for pithanos, “obedient,” “receptive,” a fit epithet for an initiate.

209.   Girard makes no attempt to translate sousa, but since this is a cry for help, one thinks of the Greek imperative sōze (mid. sōzou, aorist sōson) or aorist mid. sōsai, meaning “to rescue.” Some maintain that the name of Abrasax is derived from Habros and Sao, “gentle Savior” or “le magnifique sauveur.” Leclercq, “Abrasax,” 129.

210.   Is the unfamiliar Aramaic the subject of mystic speculation or just confusion? Girard restores it to elema sabaktani. The trouble seems to be the scribe’s insistence on reading the last three syllables as the familiar Adonai (atōnē).

211.   Girard alters thea to theo and borrows the pat- from the next word to get theopator, “l’ancêtre du Christ,” an epithet of David in Byzantine liturgy. Pa.ti.tshittharashē is divided into [pa] ti-kithara [nn] rashe tamēt nkap, the harp of joy of ten strings. The ten-stringed harp is a cosmic concept, ten being the perfect number of the Pythagoreans.

212.   After writing “veil of the altar” the scribe erased the “veil.” The expression m.pethesasterion is for the Greek formula entos tou thysiastēeriou, meaning “inside the sanctuary.” Walter Bauer, A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, tr. William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), s.v. thysiastērion, 366; though thysiastērion properly means altar.

213.   Harmosiel is the exalted angel who sounds the trumpet and shares with Mizrael the privilege of beholding the Lord behind the veil. The Priscillianists were accused of worshipping him.

214.   Harmosiel instructs them? Girard: “Ceux qui sont sur les portes et les tours font écho î sa voix” is quite specific.

215.   Is per hakios for the Greek formula Heis Pater Hagios, though Is is the common writing for Jesus, and such an identity is monophysite, making Jesus identical with the Father. As it is, Girard must insert another hagios to make a proper trishagion.

216.   Girard: “Salut, o douze petits enfants qui protegez le corps du soleil.” Though this can also be read “minor servants,” the reference to the little children in our prayer circle situation recommends the former. Also the preposition mmof would justify “screen from him the body of the Sun.” Walter Till, Koptische Grammatik(Leipzig: VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie, 1970), #258. See the following note.

217.   The twelve water jugs and reference to the watering of vegetation recall the peculiar arrangements of the prayer circles in 1 and 2 Jeu. According to Pistis Sophia, p. 84, the earth must be shielded from the rays of the sun by veils or curtains lest all life be consumed. Today, the filtering of the sun’s rays by layers of atmosphere of various particles is held to be essential to sorting out life-giving rays from deadly ones and thus making vegetation and other life possible upon the earth.

218.   The imagery of the closing passage belongs to the coronation rites. The four corners of the earth motif is basic. See Hugh W. Nibley, “Facsimile No. 1, by the Figures, A New Look at the Pearl of Great Price: Part 8,” Improvement Era 72 (August 1969): 82–85. Paulinus of Nola associated the coronation and universal rule with the types of crosses discussed above, note 1; Poema (Poem) XIX, 638–41, in PL 61:546; a teaching confirmed by Ambrose and Jerome.

219.   P-tchom means either garden or authority; both are appropriate, the garden as the sanctified inheritance of the Saints, the authority being that with which the exalted “Holy Ones of the Father” are invested. The original text, however, has p-shom, which also makes sense, since it means “summertime,” i.e., the “Summertime of the Just” when the Saints receive their celestial inheritance, e.g., the Shepherd of Hermas.

[unityghost]

Resurrection

This, the twentieth installment of the Post-Asmodeus Sabriel Feels series, builds on two suggestions from readers.

1. A happy (ish) scene when Gabriel gets his grace back in a substantive way for the first time and has a real moment of hope for the future would be lovely. - Anonymous (Archive)

2. "I wondered if you'd ever considered what Gabriel's reaction would be if any of them (but especially Sam) came back from a hunt injured, and for whatever hand-wavy reason Castiel didn't immediately heal them [I dunno, send Cas out on a separate hunt with Jack, or be running low on grace and unable to, if I were to brainstorm reasons]." - @gammaspectrum (on Archive)

A side-note: As with Scratches, (yikes, that feels like such a long time ago - I get embarrassed rereading my old stories), I had to set this in Rhode Island because that's where I come from. I tend to feel uneasy mapping out anywhere else so easily in my head (except New York! Maybe sometime I'll do something fun with that).

Rhode Island has a wealth of vampire lore. Sarah Tillinghast and Mercy Brown (known as Lena in day-to-day life) are two of the best-known cases:

https://locationsoflore.com/2018/07/26/the-vampire-case-of-sarah-tillinghast/

https://locationsoflore.com/2018/07/07/the-vampire-case-of-mercy-brown/

Finally, I've written Jack as I normally would: all innocence. I'm pretty squirmy about what just happened in canon.

A general warning: this story (like many of the others) contains subtle references to sexual assault.

“What did you say these were called?” asked Jack.

Gabriel took a sip from his plastic cup of water. Stay hydrated, Sam had reminded him. “Vines. They’re called Vines.”

“I thought a vine was a plant.”

“Yes, these too crawl across the wall that is your brain and overshadow what used to be your identity.”

Jack squinted at the laptop screen. The two of them had gotten lucky with a reliable internet connection in such a run-down motel. “These do seem like something Dean would enjoy in his down-time.”

“Not him. Castiel. Who I think probably found them by accident when he was helping research those vampires they’re after. I happened to be in the same room at the same time and we spent an hour or two just, you know, watching them. All of them. Four hours, maybe? I’m not saying I’m ashamed, but also don’t ask me if I’m ashamed.”

“Sam and Cas said they weren’t looking for vampires,” Jack corrected. “The lore says ‘vampire,’ but they seem to think they’re dealing with vengeful spirits.” He paused. “Why’d you decide to come on the case with them? You hate Rhode Island.”

"I don't hate Rhode Island; I just remember that even in the horse-and-buggy era these people had no sense of vehicular coordination. Anyway, Sam said I can’t be trusted to be by myself for more than two hours at a time without going full Black Swan. And I’m in no position to disagree with him. Besides, I told them I could give them a hand if they wanted me to. Mother Sam insisted I need rest instead. But I’ve had more than my fair share of that.”

Before Jack could reply, there was the familiar billow of wings and Castiel appeared in the room.

“Guys,” he panted.

It was several seconds before Gabriel managed to take in the scene before him. Sam’s arm was slung over Castiel’s shoulders. His face was white and sweaty, and his breaths quick and ragged.

“Sam!” Jack leapt off the bed and hurried over to them.

Gabriel simply stared as they eased Sam onto the bed. “Sam?”

“I can’t heal him,” Castiel ground out. “One of those women, she - well, first she pinned me to the ground and then Sam got her attention so that she attacked him instead. Whatever she did, it took away enough of my grace that I can’t help him. And she seems to have stolen his breath.”

Gabriel blinked. “You can heal him. You have to.”

“I tried. More than once.”

“Try again.”

Just then Sam began gasping, choking, clawing for air that wouldn’t come.

Gabriel pushed himself up from the bed, and somewhere in his mind he registered the slapstick still playing in the background. “Castiel.”

Cas turned to Jack. “Call for help. Dial 911.”

“What are we supposed to tell them?” cried Jack.

“Don’t worry about that; just call them.”

Jack looked around for his cell phone and found it beside the laptop, under a fold in the bedspread.

Feeling dazed, Gabriel picked up Sam’s wrist. His heartbeat was quick and blurry, the surest indicator of a body in panic.

“Sam,” he said again, feeling dazed and distant, eyes trained on Sam’s purpling face.

Even though he knew it was pointless, Gabriel still reflexively tugged at his grace in moments like this. If he wanted to fix something he would normally be able to rectify with his powers, reaching for them was involuntary.

It was also humiliating, since he knew that there was no reason to expect results. Yet here and now, he reached for it, ached for it, hated himself for not having it.

As Sam’s pulse grew slower and weaker, Gabriel wondered what nauseating twist of fate could have turned this seemingly simple hunt into something so disastrous.

“Uncle Gabriel?”

Gabriel tried to speak and found he couldn’t. His skin prickled with icy sweat.

Am I panicking? he wondered. Am I freaking out and I’m not even really freaking out? Is my brain frozen but the rest of me knows what’s happening? What the hell?

“Cas!” shrieked Jack. “Something’s wrong with Uncle Gabriel!”

“Call 911,” Castiel commanded. “I’ll help Gabriel.”

Gabriel grew dizzy, and the next thing he knew there were hands on him, and then a second pair of hands.

“No!” he screeched, struggling, trying to throw them off, not sure whom to fight first.

“Let go!” Gabriel howled. "Let go of me!"

Someone called his name. Gabriel screamed, trying to force release.

“Gabriel!”

Gabriel’s vision edged in and out. He couldn’t see who was holding him down.

“Gabriel, stop! It’s okay, it’s us! It’s Sam and Cas! Hey hey hey, calm down Gabriel, calm down; it’s okay!”

At last, Gabriel managed to wrench himself out of their grip, then rolled over and, with a cry of pain, landed on the floor. He blinked, panting on all fours, trying to let things come back into focus.

“It’s okay,” Sam murmured, crouching beside him. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s all okay. You’re safe.”

Gabriel raised his eyes, trying to get a deep breath. “Oh god. Sam? Sam - ”

“Yeah, I’m right here, buddy.”

Gabriel shivered. “I’m freezing cold.”

“Okay, it’s okay; come on.”

Sam started to pull Gabriel to his feet, but Gabriel shook his head. “Dizzy. Can’t get up. Sorry.”

A moment later, a blanket was draped over his shoulders. He collapsed onto the dirty carpet, trying to will away his headache. The spilled cup of water stared back at him. An ant had crawled into it.

There was a rapid knock at the door, then a woman’s voice. “Who the hell is that screaming in there? Do I gotta call the police?”

Cas frowned and went to open the door. Gabriel couldn’t see who was standing there, but he heard Castiel’s reply: “My son, he’s … terrified of cockroaches. Right, Jack?”

A pause. Then, with surprising persuasiveness: “I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life!”

“Jesus,” said the stranger, “Keep it together next time. Thought someone was bein’ freakin’ murdered.”

As the door slammed shut again, Sam put a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “Do you know where you are?”

“New Hampshire.”

“Rhode Island.”

“Only two New England states with three syllables. Can’t remember which is which.”

“Can you get into bed if we give you a hand? Nice and slow?”

“Don’t even try.”

“Okay. All right. Gabriel, what do you remember?”

Gabriel closed his eyes, trying to think. “Got upset about … about ...”

“You were upset,” said Castiel, “Because Sam couldn’t breathe.”

Gradually, the picture grew clearer: Sam groping for breath, nearing a painful end on a bourbon-stained motel mattress.

Gabriel gasped and jerked upright. The room spun around him and he immediately collapsed again. “Ah, shit.”

“Easy,” said Sam, tightening the blanket around his shoulders. “I’m all right now. Everything’s all right.”

“But how?” Gabriel croaked. “Did it wear off on its own? Because the prognosis looked like a Maroon 5 cover band sounds.”

“Um … well … funny story …” Sam scratched the back of his head. “I think you healed me.”

There was a long pause.

Finally, Gabriel spoke. “That’s not a funny story.”

“You were holding onto me - like this - ” Sam grasped his own wrist, demonstrating. “And you healed me.”

The words swam through Gabriel’s head. He struggled to distinguish one from the other. “What exactly happened?”

“It’s really that simple,” Castiel explained. “It appeared you were caught up in some sort of adrenaline rush, or whatever the angelic equivalent might be. Jack and I both felt your grace - it was like an electric shock. There wasn’t much, but it seems you had enough to save Sam’s life.”

Gabriel turned his eyes to Sam, trying to focus on his face. “What?”

“Cas,” Sam said in a low voice, “If you can help me lift him, get him into bed - ”

"Oh shut up, Sam; I know I’m a charity case, but I swear if either one of you tries to carry me I’ll … I’ll, uh … do whatever I’d threaten to do if I could remember how to make words happen.”

“We just want you to be comfortable,” said Castiel.

“Are you kidding me? This carpet feels like a feather bed after eight hundred years of slimy concrete.”

“All right,” Sam said quietly, “All right. We won’t move you. Do you need anything? Another cup of water, maybe?”

“Not until I can lift my head. What about Jack, where’d he go?”

There was a moment of hesitation. Then Castiel answered, “He had to go outside. He told me the grace was … a little much for him. A surprise. He didn’t expect so much energy all at once.”

“Shouldn’t you have been the one who was affected? He’s half-archangel. He’s supposed to be able to put up with a lot.”

“Well, yes, but I’ve had more experience with exposure to other angels’ grace. It seems to have jarred him. He said he needed some fresh air.”

“Well, go find him. Help him. He needs you, Cas."

Sam and Castiel exchanged a glance, and Gabriel saw Sam’s tiny nod: He wants to talk to me alone.

“Okay,” Cas said to Gabriel. “I’ll go check on Jack. Sam, come find me if you need anything, all right?”

As soon as Castiel had shut the door, Gabriel said, “Start from the beginning.”

“Oh. Well … one of the spirits, Sarah Tillinghast, is supposed to have died of tuberculosis back in the late eighteenth century, then taken out her brothers and sisters in the same way by sitting on them in the middle of the night. The locals figured she was some kind of vampire and dug up her grave. Found the body well-preserved, which I guess they took as confirmation. So they cut out her heart and burned it.”

“Ah. I take it that didn’t do anything except double her beef with them.”

“Yeah, and some hundred years later, another girl - Mercy - same thing happened. Only she doesn’t seem to have been as malicious. People who end up near either of the grave sites report seeing them together a lot. Looks like they formed a friendship.”

“Partners in crime, huh?”

“Not so much. Sarah did most or all of the killing, and Mercy just sort of stuck around. I think she didn’t do as much to deserve the reputation she ended up with. Either she wanted to spend her career as a vengeful spirit being not so vengeful and hanging out with Sarah or couldn’t get away from her for some reason. So Sarah attacked us - Cas first, then me when I managed to pull her off him - while Mercy watched. Not like she was enjoying it. More like she was used to it, but it kind of made her sad. I guess Sarah takes away the life force in whatever she’s got under her; so for me that was the ability to breathe, and for Cas it was apparently his grace.”

“Did you kill them?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, we did. Turned out they weren’t vampires at all, just plain old pissed-off spirits. We burned one of Sarah’s old skirts - the Tillinghasts have had it for a while; they said they’d held onto it for generations because they knew what might happen if a hunter found it. Apparently we’re not the first to try getting rid of her.”

“But why the hell wouldn’t they want her gone?”

“She’d killed off at least one kid every generation. And when a hunter first tried to get a hold of her, she got angrier and killed more. A pair of twins, the family said, and the baby that came after. This was all the way back in the 1940’s. And then I guess no one gave it another shot. Mercy was a little tougher; we had to actually dig her up to get anything that belonged to her. Dean is on his way back now. But listen, I’d rather not get too hung up on the case, okay? We need to focus on you. Are you okay? How are you feeling?"

“Not great. Don’t wanna move. Cold. Head hurts. Might vomit."

“Gabriel.” Sam offered a genuine smile. “You realize what this means, right? Your grace. It’s on its way back.”

Gabriel didn’t reply.

“Gabriel?” said Sam. “Aren’t you happy about that?"

“I …” Gabriel closed his eyes against the pounding in his head. “Yeah.”

Sam waited for him to go on.

Gabriel sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Why?” Sam sounded perplexed. “Why wouldn’t this be a good thing?”

Gabriel kept his eyes shut. “I didn’t realize I had that much.”

“So it should be a nice surprise, shouldn’t it?”

“No.” Gabriel opened his eyes. “I didn’t realize it was there, and … Sam, why is it that I’m still such an epic disaster if I’ve got enough grace not to be?”

A pause, and then: “You think you have to get back to normal just because your grace does?”

Gabriel swallowed. “It isn’t just that.”

“Then what?” When Gabriel remained silent, Sam pressed, “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

Gabriel’s throat tightened.

“Are you just … not ready or something? Is it too much to take in all at once?”

“No, I’m not worried about that.”

“Then what are you worried about?”

Gabriel started to speak, but the words were too heavy. There was no way he could say what he had to say without breaking down.

Sam spoke softly. “It’s that bad?”

Gabriel tried to take a deep breath but didn’t quite manage it. “I - um - I thought - ” He fixed his eyes upon the moldy ceiling. “I thought that if - that when it started to come back, and I got to be more like who I was - ” His stomach churned with the effort of keeping himself together. “I thought I could help you. And if my grace comes back and I can’t help you, then - ”

“Whoooaaa, whoa whoa whoa.” Sam held up a hand. “We’ve covered this before. None of us want you around just because you could be useful. And we’re not throwing you away if you can’t be. What’s bringing that up again?”

Gabriel clenched his jaw. “Lately I’ve noticed that you treat my brother as an angel first and a friend second. I figure that’s me too. An archangel, and then a passion project, and then maybe a friend. A pet. A stray. I don’t know.”

“Come on, that’s - ”

“And even if I’m wrong, it’s not fair if I can’t repay you. You deserve compensation for everything you’ve done. Everything you’ve sacrificed.”

“Why would you think we expect you to pay us for anything? We’ve been over this. You’re not a house guest, Gabriel.”

“Well, whatever I am, if my grace comes backs and I end up still feeling so afraid all the time, and if I collapse every time I use it, I can’t give you what you deserve. I don’t care whether or not you think you should have it; if I can’t pay my dues, I might as well never have come to stay at all.”

Sam shook his head. “We don’t want anything from you.”

"The point is that you should want something from me. So I’d like to be able to give you a hand with cases. To take the fall you just did and get back up faster. It’d be a good deal - you guys get a little extra ammo, and I get somewhere to hang out.”

“Gabriel, listen - ”

“I know it’s supposed to get better,” Gabriel interrupted, “But better than this is a low standard. And I hate that I’ll never be like I was. Because the the only thing I’ll accept is a total reversal of what’s happening now.” He paused, forcing himself under control. “When I left Heaven - ah, man, it was great. I had so much freedom and I didn’t have to conform to whatever stupid demands those callous asshats came up with. And I knew I wasn’t gonna go back; it was out of the question, but … there was also no replacing what I’d left behind. And of course I had to leave it behind; it was going to kill me, watching all that pointless brutality. But Sam … no matter what I did, no matter where I went, no matter how many friends or lovers or whatever that I came across - I could only pretend to call them family. I could use even enemies to distract me, and to remind me that I’d made a whole world for myself. But at the end of the day, no one and nothing could take the place of - of them."

Sam looked away. “I know. There’s no putting that back. Not really.”

Hearing somebody else say it was more than Gabriel could bear to focus on, so he kept talking. "Let's say my grace does come back to full power, and I don’t wind up half-dead on a flea-infested motel room floor swaddled in a dirty blanket. Let’s say I get back to normal, in terms of angel-ness. But in any case I’m still going to need you propping me up like a cheap Raggedy Ann knockoff, because I’ll get to thinking about him and I’ll run straight to you, whining for TLC.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “What’s the point? What’s the point in letting my grace fill up again if I’m still just going to need help all the time? And this drives it home. My grace is there, but me? I’m not there, Sam. I’m gone.”

Sam took his hand. “You’re not gone. I knew you before you got hurt. You’re not that different.”

“I don’t want to listen to make-believe BS.”

“Gabriel.” Sam tightened his grip. “You’re not anyone else just because you’ve changed.”

“Well, I don’t like that!” Gabriel was angry now. He tried to sit up but simply dropped back down, too weak to hold his head over the floor. “Whoever I was before all this happened, I never thought about it. There was a hazy cutoff between good and evil and I was happy to straddle the line. All I cared about was how to fix what wasn’t fair, and if that meant hurting the people who screwed with justice, I spent no time questioning whether to take them out. Then, in my downtime, I was happy to indulge myself: food tasted good, so I ate it; sex felt good, so I made it into a game. This was all so easy, Sam. I never wondered about something being fundamentally wrong with me. I never felt like just being in the same room with someone was a sin, because I make everything filthy.”

Sam stared at him, mouth agape.

“And don’t you dare try to compare this to your situation with Lucifer,” Gabriel barreled on. “This isn’t a you-mess; this is a me-mess. The kind of mess that would have Marie Kondo convulsing on the ground frothing at the mouth. I don’t know how to handle how much of a horror show I am. And how to deal with the knowledge that I can’t ever, ever be what I was. And then wondering if I was actually the same scum I am today, except then I was blind to it, and - and I don’t know if I want to be me again. I don’t know who I was; I just remember not being worried about it. I felt comfortable in my own company. The only thing in all of Dad's creation I found even remotely intimidating was pasta with ketchup on it, because what kind of freak does that, but Sam - I don’t want that me back. Because I don’t want to be any version of me."

For a few moments, Sam didn’t say anything. Then, at last: “I know you think that you were tortured because you deserved it. That it was meant to happen, because you were just bad. Inherently bad. And that Asmodeus could see that and did what had to be done.”

Gabriel looked up at him, and hated the kindness written into the crease of Sam’s brow. It turned his stomach to think that that was meant for him.

And yet, in spite of all that, Gabriel longed for this storm to stop: the fear, and the doubt, and the hatred. He wanted to be rid of the guilt he felt over having access to Sam’s affection.

Gabriel couldn’t imagine a world in which he wouldn’t be punished for letting that happen.

“But you weren’t,” Sam went on gently, “And he didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Gabriel whispered. “I thought I’d be happy. I just didn’t expect that I’d still be like … like this.”

Sam offered a small smile. “Well, can you at least stop worrying about being useful? Or thinking we’re gonna make you leave just because you’ve started to heal? You trust me, right?”

“I’ve run out of excuses not to.”

“Then take my word for it.”

“Mm.”

Sam peered more closely at him. “No, hey, don’t do that. You know you’ll make yourself sick if you try too hard to keep yourself together."

“I’m okay.”

“Gabriel, man, it’s just me. You’re allowed.”

“I - I know, I just … I’m …” Gabriel turned over, so that his cheek was pressed into the grainy carpeting.

“Gabriel, I can help you get in bed. You’ll be so much warmer. Just close your eyes if you’re still dizzy.”

The notion of warmth appealed enough that, after a moment’s hesitation, Gabriel replied, “Okay.”

Sam eased him upright, and Gabriel did as he’d suggested and shut his eyes. Getting into bed was quicker and easier than he’s anticipated, even if it did make him feel dizzier.

“You’re okay,” Sam said, sitting on the edge of the mattress and covering him with the blanket again. “I guess that healing really did a number on you, huh? I’m sorry you had to resort to it.”

“You were dying, Sam.”

“I know, but … I wish you’d had the opportunity to use it on something else.”

“I know, right? The other day there was this crazy stubborn pickle jar. Should’ve blown all my grace on that. Definitely worth the hangover.”

Sam searched his face. “Do you wanna talk?”

“We just did.”

“Yeah, but I feel like you didn’t tell me everything.”

“Oh come on. I always tell you everything.”

“Are you sure? I don’t know, you just seem … like you need something, I guess. I don’t know. Do you?”

Gabriel tensed. “What would I need, huh? You just gave me a hundred percent of my daily dose of coddling.”

“Gabriel,” said Sam, “Please.”

“Why? What do you want to know? What d’you think I’m gonna tell you?”

“Well, maybe nothing. It’s fine if you don’t want to, I just … I’d like you to be honest. It’s better for you than keeping it bottled up.”

Gabriel gave a harsh laugh. “As if I keep anything hidden from you anymore.”

“I know you do. I know there’s stuff you haven’t told me.”

Gabriel gave no response, because Sam was right: more than once, Gabriel had stipulated that there were memories he simply couldn’t share with anyone, not even Sam. There were some things he simply didn’t want Sam to see.

“All right,” said Sam, “All right. When you’re ready. Whatever makes you feel okay.”

“Ah yes, my pastime of choice: being okay.”

Sam was silent, and perhaps he was aware that silence was sometimes the trick.

Gabriel averted his eyes. “Don’t worry about me. I just need a little time to get back on my feet.”

“Mm. Okay.”

There was another hush between them, and Gabriel wondered if perhaps Sam already suspected what was on his mind.

“Sam.”

“Yeah?”

“Look, would you - I know you wouldn’t, but - I have to ask.”

Sam waited.

Gabriel steeled himself. “Would you ever take it? Would you dig into my grace if you really needed it right away, and I was being stubborn about it?”

“No.” Sam sounded too calm. Yes, he must have been prepared for the question.

“Because it hurts," Gabriel said.

“I know it does, Gabriel.”

“So if it’s there … I mean, you could take it.”

“We don’t want your grace. We want you to be okay. And taking your grace wouldn’t exactly help that along, would it? We care about you,not your grace.”

“I know, but …”

“Look, you don’t believe me. Not in the way I wish you would. I don’t think I can change your mind right now. But no, nobody’s gonna touch your grace. We won’t touch you at all if you don’t want us to.”

“You. You can.” Gabriel reached for him, and Sam held his hand again. Gabriel wondered if this ever embarrassed him.

Sam certainly didn’t seem perturbed. “How come you didn’t let me know what you were upset about?”

“Because part of me knows it’s a really dumb question. But I’m still … I don’t know … I can’t help it.”

“You should’ve asked me. Maybe if you hear me say it over and over again it’ll click.”

“Maybe.”

“Well, your grace is all yours. Do you know that now? It doesn’t belong to any of us. And none of us think it should.”

Gabriel stared up at him, fingers too limp for a proper grasp. He hoped Sam wouldn’t take that as an indication that it was time to let go. “I think about what would happen if it turned out you weren’t telling me the truth. I can’t get that out of my mind. Because it would be worse, way worse, than having Asmodeus barge in here and just snatch me up again. I know who he is. I know he’d do that.” Gabriel tried to keep his breathing steady. “But I don’t think you would. My guard is down. Around all of you, but especially around you. I think you really don’t want to do anything to me. Or I think that I think so. So when I get to dwelling on what it would do to me to find out I’m wrong, I just - I can’t - ” He coughed, trying to loosen his throat. “I don’t know if this sounds absurd to you, or if it’s making you angry, but to me it’s a real possibility. After everything he did? There were times he seemed like you, Sam. He wasn’t always throwing me into walls and raking his nails across my back. There were times I begged for him to help me, to hold me. Because I would’ve taken anyone. I just needed somebody to touch me.

“I know that sounds stupid. It was stupid. But I begged for it until my throat started bleeding and I puked up blood. And he’d come in and hug me and let me cry into his lap. The next thing I knew he was doing a whole world of gross to me, and I hated it; I felt exactly the way he wanted me to feel, but he was there, and I needed - I - ” Gabriel pressed his other hand on top of Sam’s. “I needed this. I took it wherever I could find it. And now and again I let myself pretend that maybe he wouldn’t hurt me again, that he’d let me lie there and fantasize that I had someone to do what you’re doing for me. But then he would stop. Of course he would. He always did.”

Sam’s mouth hung open. “You think I would do that?”

“No, I don’t, but I think about what it would be like if you did.”

“I’m not going to.”

“I know! But that doesn’t make me believe you! If I let myself really know, if I let myself say it’s impossible - that’s when I let it become possible.”

Bewildered, Sam shook his head. “You never told me about that. About letting him help.”

“Because it’s hard, Sam! I don’t want to think about it because how could I ever get so low as to need him to stroke my hair and tell me I’d be all right? And who was I to just keep letting him do it? When within five minutes of rubbing my back and giving me that little bit of comfort I’d screamed for, I was back on the floor and the only thing that shut me up was how much heavier than me he was? What if you did that, Sam? What if it was you?”

“Jesus - ” Sam went to pull away his hand.

Gabriel cried out and grabbed it again. “Wait, no! I’m sorry, Sam; I didn’t - “

“Ssh, it’s okay.” Sam tugged his hand out of Gabriel’s grasp and walked to the other side of the bed so that he could recline beside him. “I know you can’t sit up and I thought you might like this better.”

Or, Gabriel thought, It makes you sick to touch me.

“Look,” Sam said softly, “This doesn’t have to be a good thing. Not if you don’t think it is. I know you’re a little freaked out about it. But you can heal again. Or you’ll be able to soon. And I’m sure this side effect will wear off once you get more used to using your grace. But seriously, man - you should be a little proud of yourself. You did what you thought you might never be able to do again.”

“But it was an accident,” Gabriel whispered, desperately wanting Sam to understand that he didn’t deserve praise. “I was scared to the bone and it just sort of happened. I’m glad it did, but it wasn’t because I had the willpower to get things going.”

“You don’t need willpower. Not yet. Eventually you’ll get a better sense of how to handle it.”

“But Sam, if I don’t have control, then - don’t you realize what I could do to you? Or to Dean, or Cas, or Jack? Grace can be used to destroy too.”

“This time you were scared and wanted to help. It’s not as if you’d get mad at one of us and next thing we know we’ve gone up in flames.”

“Sure, maybe, but how does this work? What are the rules? Is it just - ”

“Stop.” Sam’s voice was gentle. “We’ll figure it out. But we can’t do it all today. I need you to take this for what it is: you’re getting closer to having your grace back. And nobody’s gonna try and take advantage of it. And holy crap, Gabe, get rid of that whole thing about me turning into Asmodeus. It’s not going to happen.”

Gabriel closed his eyes. “I know. But to me, you could be wrong. I don’t know Sam, I … I know it isn’t real to you. But it’s real to me and I have to be prepared for it.”

Sam shifted so that he could look down at Gabriel. “It can’t be real to you.”

“Well, if that were the case, then this would be a very different conversation.”

“I’m serious. I won’t let you believe that. It’s - it’s so powerful. I can tell. It’s killing you. If you don’t let yourself push that away, he’ll still be in your head. Easier said than done, I get it, but - you have got to let that go. I’m not him, Gabriel. I’m me.”

Gabriel averted his eyes. “That’s what makes it so terrifying.”

Sam sighed and lay back down. They were quiet for a few moments, and then Sam said, “Lucifer used to do it to me. Not that, not the same thing. But I mean - pretending. He wasn’t the one who came to me and helped - he’d wear disguises. People I wished could be there with me. People I loved. It was a little like what you’re telling me about, because it was really just Lucifer all along, but … there were times I genuinely thought I had Dean back with me. Or Dad. Whoever.

“Then I got out, and everything started to come back. You know how it is when Hell starts bleeding into what’s happening right now. So I’d see someone I thought was, you know, not him. And then they’d do something that he got so right - the way they smiled or talked or laughed. He knew everyone in my life so well. I’m not sure how he got into my head like that, but he did. And when I saw the real person doing that, I’d think no, he’s there; he’s waiting to show his face. His real face. It’s not as if that’s completely gone away, Gabriel. I know what it’s like to be afraid that you’re only seeing lies. That you have to be on your toes for a break in the fantasy. And I know this is different for you, since Asmodeus was the one who was there to help and for me, Lucifer turned into someone else. So I guess as far as you’re concerned, I’ll start breaking you apart and I’ll still be Sam. Right?”

Gabriel was too stunned to respond.

“And,” Sam continued, “I always have to ready for a change in someone else. Some sign that they’re not really the person I think I see.”

Gabriel simply stared at him.

“So I think I get it,” Sam finished.

Gabriel took another several moments to collect his thoughts before answering. “You ever think that about me?”

“He did wear your face a few times. Made you seem … demonic. I remember you had this twisted expression on your face; you looked like a nightmare version of yourself. I think he did that because I didn’t have any really dark memories of you. Well - some not-so-great memories of things that happened, I guess, but it’s not as if you yourself ever made me feel like I had to be afraid. So … I guess it comes to mind once in a while. But don’t worry about it; it doesn’t happen that much. I’m just saying I … I know it’s a weird feeling. And I know it’s hard to shake off. But you gotta, man. You can’t get better if you still feel like we’re going to hurt you.”

Gabriel clenched his jaw. “‘We’ doesn’t matter. It’s you I don’t want to lose.”

Sam opened his mouth to reply, but then there was a knock at the door.

“Guys?” called Castiel. “Is everything all right?”

Sam glanced at Gabriel, who said, “Let him in.”

Cas opened the door before either if them could do anything more and surveyed the scene. “Gabriel, you look - ”

“I know. What about you? Are you okay? I’m not the only one of us with busted grace.”

“I’m fine.”

“And Jack?” asked Sam.

Cas opened the door further and Jack stepped in, eyes trained on Gabriel. “There’s nothing wrong with me. But Uncle Gabriel - ”

“I’m sorry about that, fella. I didn’t mean to give you such a shock to your system.”

“It’s okay. I just … I wasn’t expecting it, that’s all. Made me feel kind of shaky. Like I’d fallen down the stairs or something.”

“But you’re okay now, right? You don’t look any less like a baby penguin, so I take it you don’t feel too beaten up.”

“Uncle Gabriel.” Jack moved closer. “You’re upset. About your grace. I don’t understand why.”

Gabriel’s head was still pounding. He needed to drink something. “I’m not upset. Like you were saying, it just threw me off course.”

“But you look upset.”

Gabriel ignored him. “Would you mind finding some water for me, Sam?”

“Oh - yeah, of course.”

“I’ll get it,” said Cas.

Gabriel waved a dismissive hand. “You need to chill for a second. I’d get it myself, but - ”

“It’s okay,” said Sam. “Let me grab some for you. Be right back.”

It was strangely difficult to watch him leave the room. After so much discussion about Sam changing his mind, and choosing to abandon or hurt or loathe him, Gabriel wanted him within immediate reach.

“Hey.” Jack spoke softly. “Do you want to talk?”

Gabriel glanced at Cas, who didn’t say anything.

“No,” Gabriel replied finally. “You don’t have to babysit me. They’ll be back any minute and Sam will do his usual good Samaritan act and I’ll have permission to crack open like an egg.”

“You always have permission to do that. Anyway, I was thinking …” Jack bent down to retrieve the laptop, which had fallen onto the floor. “Either you can go to sleep - "

“No thank you. Can't say I expect pretty dreams in this state.”

“ - or we can go back to what we were doing. I liked them. The Vines. It seemed like you were enjoying them too.”

Gabriel shook his head. Jack peered more closely at him, and worry flickered over his face. “Oh no. Uncle Gabriel - ”

“Jack - ” Gabriel clenched his hands into fists beneath the blanket. “I hope you know this isn’t me.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s him. Asmodeus. The douchebird who did this to me.”

“The douchebird who did what?”

“Who turned me into this … whatever it is I am now. Look, it’s important to me that you know I wasn’t always this much of a wuss. That it would’ve taken a lot more than a sentimental conversation with Sam to reduce me to this state. I just - it hurt, the stuff he did to me. For so long. He taught me that everything is a threat, and to be scared all the time.”

“And you’re still so scared.”

“I’m terrified, Jack. I’m terrified of everything.”

“What about me? You don’t have to be afraid of me. I’d never hurt you.”

“I know. I know that. It’s just - ”

“Uncle Gabriel, you’re as safe with me as you are with Sam.”

Gabriel gave a weak smile. “That’s anything but your responsibility. Please just trust that this isn’t me. It isn’t me at all.”

“Yes it is.”

Gabriel closed his eyes. “Don’t say that.”

“But it’s true. He hurt you. That doesn’t mean he took you away. And besides, I don’t care if you’re afraid. Well - I don’t want you to be; of course I want you to feel safe. But I like you. You’re family.”

“You’re not obligated to like family.”

“No, I don’t mean I like you because you’re family. I like you because you’re you. And I like that you happen to be family. I’m lucky: I like my family.”

“That makes one of us. Oh - except you. And you,” he added to Castiel. “The rest of them can suck a - ”

“You need to go easy on yourself,” Cas interrupted. “You would never treat any of us the way you treat yourself. It’s hard to watch.”

Gabriel squeezed a fistful of the blanket. “It’s not like that. Not that straightforward. Self-love and whatnot, that’s - that’s a sick joke to me. I’m a sick joke. Jack, look, I just need you to understand that this isn’t me. Or that it wasn’t always.”

Jack rested a hand on Gabriel’s head. “I’m sure I would’ve liked you then. But I like you fine right now.”

You shouldn’t, thought Gabriel, and then there was the recurrent guilt of forcing Jack into benevolence that simply wasn’t right, because he didn’t know what Gabriel was. Didn’t know that the thing he was speaking to, the thing he was touching, the thing he claimed to respect, would never be anything other than what Asmodeus had made it into.

When Sam returned, he was holding a fresh cup of water that he helped Gabriel drink by supporting his head.

“You got all sweaty,” Sam observed. “Wanna take a shower?”

“You expect me to stand on a slippery surface without busting my skull open on the wall?”

“Well, you could sit down. Or I could help you.”

“Oh yeah, sure, as soon as that ‘sexy nurse’ costume I ordered on Amazon comes in. Hope I got the size right.”

“Okay, fine; when you feel better.”

Gabriel shivered.

“Should’ve grabbed a blanket too, huh?”

“No. I’m okay. Just a little …”

Sam waited.

“Chilly, I guess. And … it’s hard to get that stuff out of my head.”

“What stuff? The stuff about your grace?”

Gabriel didn’t want to talk about it in front of the others. He knew that Cas and Jack would understand, would probably even try to offer reassurance; but it was something he felt he needed to keep between him and Sam.

“I hate to be a little bitch,” said Gabriel, addressing Jack and Castiel, “But could I have, like, five more minutes to bug Sam? Cas, I know you need to rest, but there’s - I mean - ”

“Of course,” Castiel said softly. “It’s no trouble. Come on, Jack. Let’s watch some Vines out in the hall.”

When they were gone, Sam sat on the bed. “Gabriel?”

“Sam.” Gabriel could picture himself, could see his features crumpling and the tears sliding down his face. There was no longer room for humiliation. He was allowed, Sam had said. So Gabriel allowed himself.

Sam’s eyes brightened with worry. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“What you said - ” Gabriel took tight, shuddering breaths. “You said no, you won’t take it, you won’t use me - ”

“And I meant it.”

“You said you care - ”

“And I do.”

“That you don’t mind if I - that I’m allowed to - this - ”

“And I don’t, and you are.”

“But you still don’t expect me to pay you back, and that’s wrong, Sam!”

“It’s not, but if it was, I wouldn’t give a crap. Just relax. You don’t owe me anything. I promise.”

“You want me to get better, and sometimes I don’t know if I can. So I can’t even give you that.”

“Well, you will get better. And if it takes a long time, it’s all right. I’m not fed up, okay? This whole thing has sucked for you. And as long as you’re here with us - which we all like, by the way - I wanna get you through it as best I can.” He offered a small smile. “Nobody’s forcing me.”

“Your conscience,” Gabriel retorted. “Your conscience is forcing you. You can’t help it. You see a wounded animal and you have to help. Even if you - ” He let out a strangled sob. “Even if you touch it and get diseased in the process.”

Sam started to say something in reply, but Gabriel reached out and seized him, grasping with more force than either of them would have thought possible. “I wish I cared more about how diseased you get. I wish I cared more about you than I do about me.”

Sam gazed down at Gabriel’s fingers clasped around his arm. “I get it. It’s okay. I’m glad it’s okay for me to touch you.”

“But the problem is I - ”

“You need it, I know. You want it.”

Sam had said that deliberately, Gabriel supposed. He knew how much Gabriel hated that word, how much he needed to get used to it again.

“There’s no reason you shouldn’t,” Sam went on. “You can ask for it.”

Gabriel was silent.

“Gabriel … you gotta stop being so violent with yourself. Come on, I’m here; you’re not contaminating me.” Sam tugged his arm from Gabriel’s grip and, for the second time, lay down beside him.

“You shouldn’t let me be like this,” Gabriel croaked. “You shouldn’t let me keep losing control.”

“Why not?”

“It makes more work for you and it keeps me from getting better.”

Sam shook his head. “You really think holding everything in would be more productive?”

“I … I don’t know. I think maybe.”

“Well, I don’t. And you trust me, right?”

“I think so.”

“You know I’m not Asmodeus?”

Gabriel didn’t reply.

“You know I’m not going to force your grace out of you?” Sam coaxed.

Gabriel felt tears trickle over the bridge of his nose, across his cheeks, and into his ears. Yes, he knew that Sam wasn’t Asmodeus.

And that was the problem. If someone was going to take advantage of Gabriel’s grace, it would be Sam. And imagining Sam in the role of Asmodeus, as Sam Winchester, was uniquely sickening.

“Gabriel?” said Sam.

Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut. “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

“You mean - ”

“I mean this.” Gabriel pressed his face into Sam’s chest. Sam seemed to have been prepared for this: he wrapped his arms around Gabriel immediately, as if on cue or by reflex.

Neither of them spoke.

I needed this.

Gabriel shivered, trying to soak up some of Sam’s warmth.

It’s just me. You’re allowed.

“Sam,” Gabriel whimpered.

I know there's stuff you haven't told me.

“Yeah, Gabe, what is it?” Sam replied.

When you’re ready.

“Sam … there’s too much you don’t know. Too much I haven’t let you in on. I’m sorry.”

Sam squeezed him closer. “Don’t be sorry. When you’re ready, okay?”

Gabriel shut his eyes, remembering the way Asmodeus used to hold him like this, and yet knowing on an instinctual level that Sam felt different - especially when Gabriel began crying again and Sam only strengthened his grip.

This - with its warmth and firmness - was not the embrace of Asmodeus.

#supernatural #spn #fanfiction #post-asmodeus sabriel feels #pasf #sabriel #platonic sabriel #sam winchester #gabriel #castiel #jack kline #rhode island #hurt sam winchester #hurt gabriel #hurt castiel #jack kline feels #protective sam winchester #comforting sam winchester #caring sam winchester #protective jack kline #caring jack kline #comforting jack kline #asmodeus #post-season 13 #alternate universe #canon divergence #post traumatic stress disorder #ptsd #gabriel has ptsd #gabriel has post-traumatic stress disorder

[hekate1308]

Irony

Denial ain’t just a river, kids, and I’m in so deep I am basically drowning. Enjoy!

“It says it will bring back “The One who has done the most for you”, Dean! This could be our shot!”

“Sammy, I know you want Mom back, and trust me, I do too, but –“

Dean bites his lip.

“We don’t know she’s all that will return to our universe. Lucifer’s out there – “

“And so is Mom”.

Dean sigs and turns to their freshly revived and now human friend.

“Cas, what do you think?”

“There’s a great risk involved” he says simply, “And we shouldn’t forget...”

He trails off. Dean nods.

“Crowely offed himself so Lucifer wouldn’t come back, and we’re trying to open the portal again.”

“No, we’re not; we’re just dragging someone out”.

His brother won't take no for an answer, as Dean well knows, and he will do it on his own if he doesn't get what he wants.

So he acquiesces while trading worried glances with Cas.

Sam has been on saving Mom mode for months now, ever since Dean, reeling from the loss of Cas (and, as he much later admitted to himself, Crowley as well, just a little bit) had done away with the spawn of Satan.

At least Cas came back to life pretty quickly. They still think Chuck had something to do with it.

At least this might bring them closure, if nothing else.

So as Sam finishes the spell in an abandoned warehouse not far from the bunker, both Dean and Cas are holding angel blades, just in case.

There’s a bright flash; the portal opens once again; they hear the thump of a body on the floor; and when they can see again –

They watch Crowley jump up, obviously fuelled by adrenaline.

“What the – “ Sam begins in the same moment Dean moves forward.

Because the shock on Crowley’s face makes two things very clear:

One, he is as human as Cas.

And two, he’s just realizing that as the weight of everything he did as a demon comes crashing down.

Dean’s just in time to prevent him from crashing down on the floor again.

“Ugh. Guys, a little help? Dude’s not exactly a light weight”.

Cas is at their side in an instant; Sam needs a moment longer.

“Something must have gone wrong with the spell” he mutters as they carry Crowley to the car. He’s semi-conscious but unaware of them, babbling to himself with a Scottish accent Dean is pretty sure must have sounded right when he was human, but is all but ineligible nowadays.

“Sam...” he begins, unsure of how to voice his suspicion that the spell did exactly what it’s supposed to do, because if you compare what they’ve been through over the years...

He meets Cas’ eyes and realizes he understands too.

“So which hospital are we taking him to?” Sam asks once they’ve buckled him into the car. He’s silent now, but shaking all over.

“What?”

“Dean, we can’t very well – “

“Why? Guy’s got nothing, Sam. No ID, no insurance, hell, his meat suit might still be on the missing persons’ list, and what do we do then? No, he’s coming to the bunker”.

“But –“

“Sam” he says, tired of pretending that he hasn’t been grieving just a tad for the demon in the last few months because he knew his brother wouldn’t understand, “We’re taking him with us. He offed himself for us, for crying out loud!”

Crowley flinched at that.

“Sorry man” Dean mumbled, awkwardly squeezing his shoulder, “It’s all going to be okay.”

He has no idea if that’s true, but it’s the only thing to say.

“Cas? Can you look after him in the back?”

Their friend nods. He knows exactly what it means to suddenly become human.

And so does Dean. And Dean knows even more than Cas in this special situation, because he’s the one who turned back human after becoming a demon and he remembers the moment all the guilt that had been suppressed while he’d gone dark came crashing down again.

And from what Sam told him – that Crowley once openly bragged about the evil things he’d done – he assumes that he’s not doing well right now.

He does his best to concentrate on his driving and not glance back every few seconds; at least Sam does enough watching for the both of them, obviously still figuring out why they ended up with Crowley.

Dean, meanwhile, is busy attempting to find an excuse why he’s so damn glad to see the former King of Hell, even in his sorry state.

Yeah, he grieved and told himself he shouldn’t, and yeah, sometimes he missed him. They knew each other for years when he stabbed himself, and he’d become a familiar face in a world where that’s a rarity, and –

Yes, maybe their “Summer of Love” had something to do with it as well, because whether Dean has ever admitted as much, they actually were friends back then, or as close as two demons can get anyway.

Crowley doesn’t say a thing the whole drive, which is disconcerting to say the least. Dean doesn’t think he’s ever had a conversation with him without being reminded how much he loves the sound of his own voice.

Loved, apparently. All rules have been thrown out the window, he reminds himself, because that’s no demon in the backseat, that’s a man who needs help, furthermore, a man who needs help because he was helping them, and they won’t throw him out. They’ve history of not treating their – allies as well as they deserve, and as far as Dean’s concerned, it’s high time they stop doing that.

He meets Cas’ eyes in the rear view mirror.

As always, they understand one another without saying anything.

He’s concerned too.

At least Crowley follows orders (and isn’t that just another sentence Dean never thought he’d use).

When they tell him to get out of the car, he does.

When they show him an empty room and tell him it’s his, he sits down on the bed, still shaking badly.

When Dean hunts down some old clothes and hands them to him with an instruction to clean up and change, since his suit looks about as bad as he does, he takes a shower and returns to his room in jeans and a t-shirt.

Isn’t that a weird sight.

It’s pretty clear nothing will be happening when he sits down on the bed again, so Dean searches for the others.

They’re in the library, Sam pretending to read, Cas mustering him with a worried expression.

“Sam...”

“Don’t” he says quietly.

“I’m – pretty sure I get it. I just need some time”.

After a pause he adds, “I didn’t even really mean it when I thanked him that one time”.

“That’s alright. I thanked him too, and I did mean it”.

Dean smiles at Cas.

“After all, he could have just used that lance to gank Lucifer”.

“Instead he chose to save me. I wondered, at the time. It’s become clearer since I turned human”.

Dean grins and draws him into a hug.

“Yep, that’s what humanity’s about.”

Cas laughs.

Dean’s smile drops when he thinks of what this means for Crowley, though.

That’s what, three hundred years worth of doing evil deeds and laughing about it afterwards?

“Sam, didn’t you say he got all weepy and begged for forgiveness when you tried to cure him?”

Sam nods.

“Yes, but back then it happened slowly. This was sudden, and he has to deal with being resurrected too”.

After a pause he adds, “Dean, me asking to take him to a hospital... It wasn’t just me being a bit hard on him. I’m not sure we can handle this on our own”.

“I know”.

But he also knows that teh thought of locking Crowley up and throwing away the key is making his skin crawl.

“He just hates being confined, alright?”

A detail admitted during one of their late night drinking sessions when they were both demons and living it up.

“Alright” Sam says slowly. “There should be someone with him at all times, though. Losing your mind isn’t fun”.

“I agree” Cas chimes in.

It’s the one experience Dean can’t say he’s shared with his brother and best friend, despite the fact that others would probably think he’s as insane as he can be.

Dean nods.

“I’ll start the watch”.

“He’s always liked you the best anyway” Sam says.

Dean snorts.

“Means he’s hated me a little less than he’s hated everything but me, and that includes his mother”.

Oh dear, he suddenly remembers, Rowena. Now that he feels like a human, he probably misses her too.

And then there’s Gavin. He was even upset about his son’s death as a demon.

Crowley’s still sitting on the bed, staring at nothing, shaking.

Dean never thought he’d seen him like this, and he’d lie if he said it doesn’t hurt a bit.

Cain and his “mixed feelings” indeed.

He leans down so he can look Crowley in the eyes.

All he gets is a vacant stare.

Is that even him anymore? Is there a chance they’ve picked up a literary agent from New York, traumatized by years of being dragged around all over the place by a demon?

But no; if this was Crowley’s meat suit, he wouldn’t trust them instinctively.

“Crowley” he begins slowly, “You can stay here, you understand? You can stay here and get your bearings. You know the bunker’s safe. Just... try and get better, alright?”

At least Crowley blinks. That’s more of a reaction than Dean hoped for.

They settle into a routine. Crowley, after a few days of staying in his room and not doing anything, develops a habit of following one of them around, as if he’s clinging to reality by watching those he knows.

He never says a word and he’s certainly not annoying anyone, so they let him.

Even Sam admits after a week that he pities him; and Cas, of course, has long forgiven him for anything he’s done to him.

Dean’s feelings are more complicated, because they’re even laced with guilt because he punched Crowley on the same day he stabbed himself so they could get away.

At least he eats and sleeps when they tell him to.

It’s only Dean’s thorough knowledge of the demon that ensures things don’t take a very tragic turn at the end of the first month.

He’s been suspecting for a while that Crowley’s becoming more aware of his surroundings, and when he realizes doing the dishes one night that a knife’s missing, he doesn’t hesitate.

Without a word he storms past Sam and Cas to the bathroom, where, sure enough, Crowley’s standing with the knife, his face blank as usual.

“No” Dean exclaims as he wrenches the knife out of his hand.

“No. We are not doing that again. Look, I get that you’re hurting and feeling guilty, but that’s being human. You stand up, and you dust yourself off, and you throw yourself back into the fight like the King we know, alright? I told you, you can stay. We’ll figure this out”.

He could have sworn there’s a flicker of surprise in his eyes.

After this, Crowley predominately starts following Dean. Sam thinks it’s a good thing.

“Means he’s establishing his old patterns” he says, whatever this means.

Crowley’s not even bad company when Sam and Cas aren’t around, so he doesn’t mind.

Things start getting better. One day when they’re grocery shopping, Crowley actually reaches out and touches his arm to get Dean’s attention and points at an apple pie with a somewhat mischievous expression.

Dean buys it to celebrate, no matter what Sam says.

Slowly, there are other things too. Crowley starts signing to them, even if he still doesn’t speak, and he actually invents signs to differentiate between them.

Dean’s strangely touched he uses his fingers to symbolize antlers when he means Sam, makes a flying motion when it comes to Cas, and actually imitates a Squirrel when he’s talking about him.

As stated before, most would consider Dean slightly insane.

He points out passages in books and helpful websites to them all the time now, and they can even leave him in the bunker when they hunt, even though they’re reluctant to do so.

But one day, it’s a whole nest of vampires sucking dry a middle-sized town, so it’s all hands on deck, and Crowley nods as they explain.

Not only doesn’t he speak, he also doesn’t send texts, so Dean thinks nothing of not getting a reply when he informs him it’s all been dealt with a few days later.

Nothing could surprise them more than finding dinner ready for them when they return.

Except for one thing.

Crowley clears his throat behind them.

“Hello, boys”.

They turn around to find him smirking at them.

Yes, this is the guy Dean remembers.

A little down-cast, and a little beaten, sure, but close enough.

Things are going to be fine.

#my writings #crowley #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel