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kerryweaverlesbian · 7 months

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Sarah Blake/Bela Talbot. One of them's a catgirl. You're interested?? Read it!! Sarah's a really fun POV to write!

For the Suptober prompts Black Cat and Portrait. Below is the opening:

Sarah Blake looks at the paper-covered painting she'd spent the past three weeks searching for, a glass of wine half-drunk in her hand. The painting is propped against the fireplace, and it looms, as portraits tend to. B, the little black cat that had followed her home from the auction house - the same day as when she got the commission, now she comes to think of it - sits upright next to her legs on the couch, ears twitching away from her fingers whenever she tried to stroke her.

That's unusual, for this cat. Typically, she'd sprawl out over any available surface, mewl for attention until she got head scratches, and purr contentedly any time Sarah put her hands on her. Now she was stiff, tense.

The only time Sarah had seen her like that before was when she'd tried to put a collar on her¹, and she'd ended up scratched and bitten so badly she'd had to go to the ER. When she got back, B wouldn't look at her, but kept following her from room to room, hissing if Sarah turned her face to her. Sarah, feeling incredibly guilty, had apologised out loud and showed B that she put the collar in the garbage, only realising after she'd done it that of course a cat wouldn't know what any of that meant.

Strangely, though, it seemed to work. B had come back purring as soon as the lid closed over the trash. She even licked the bandage over Sarah's cuts, and pushed her head into her hand.

B's a pretty funny cat overall. She has this unimpressed stare she levels at Sarah for such uncouth behaviour as 'bouncing a toy near her' and 'putting out cat food'². She gave a token grumble whenever Sarah scooped her up like a baby, but would dig her claws in if Sarah tried to put her down again before she was ready. She hops onto the counter when Sarah brings her research home (which is more often than she probably should, but hell, what else has she got to do on a Friday night?) and stares at the papers like she's reading them. More than once, B had put her paw on just the information Sarah had been looking for just after Sarah remarked on how she needed it³.

"My good luck girl," Sarah had praised, and kissed B's furry little head. B's hackles had gone up from the smooch, but then she seemed to calm herself deliberately, and she flopped over the papers like she'd lost all her bones in a fit of lazy decadence.

In the present, Sarah swirls her wine and surveys the hidden painting.

"What do you think is wrong with it, B?"

She's supposed to burn it. That's what the note said, which she'd found in an envelope taped to the back of the Picasso she'd just purchased. The note had been written in wobbly scratches of biro, addressed directly to her. It was lucky she was adept at reading awful handwriting - in the archiving business, it's essential - because the script was only barely legible. There had been $32,000 dollars in the envelope too.

The flat out work of the last few weeks had been for the money and the chance at more, she wasn't going to deny that, but part of it was her overactive curiosity.

What's wrong with it? Ava's first thought had been haunting. She'd waved her EMF machine at it half heartedly after the delivery guy left, but the needles stayed dissatisfyingly still. She'd bought the thing on Amazon when a friend mentioned cold spots, but it turned out they'd just had a fault in their double glazing⁴. She hasn't heard from them in a while, not directly, but from her Facebook feed she knows that they haven't been murdered in their bed by a malevolent spirit so far. Which is good! Just, well, a little disappointing, is all...

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¹ The collar was baby pink, and had a little bell on the end.

² Sarah's never seen her eat it, but it always disappears by morning.

³ So, she talks to her cat, so what? Before B, she'd talk through her process with her toaster.

#sarah blake #bela talbot #sarah blake/bela talbot #s1e19 #provenance #sapphicnatural #spn wlw rarepairs #I went for sort of a romcom feel for her inner monologue #dunno if I succeded but it was fun!#suptober23 #black cat #portrait #sarahbela #cawis creates

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quietwingsinthesky · 10 months

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your investement in the Castiel/Raphael au got me invested, tell me more

Okay, okay, okay so. To understand my thought process on this, you must understand that the thing that peeved me off the most about spn’s writing and what I think did the greatest disservice to Castiel’s character, is that there are no angel characters who really reoccur over a couple seasons. (Ideally, to me, some of them would have stuck around the whole time but eh, pipe dream.) Or, hell, not even reoccurring but fuck, why does Cas never mention anyone? Yes, he gets scenes where he’s sad about his siblings/his species being destroyed as a whole, but as an audience, him putting a face to that, or many, and mourning them specifically? That would have done a lot.

So, okay, I am perpetually upset at spn tossing out all its interesting angel stuff and by the end, them basically being kill on sight monsters with zero nuance and Cas being ‘the exception’ to that, the one who was ‘too broken to be an angel anyway’.

This is why Raphael should survive the Godstiel arc. Not even that they don’t die, I do think Cas should kill them. I just think they should be brought back with him, too. Leave it ambiguous who brought them back, because of course they won’t believe it was God, God is dead, but who else could it be? Cas with the remnants of his Godstiel powers?

But to have them cohabitating together without knowing what they’ve done to each other… Like, if you thought Dean was jarred by walking in to see Cas married to a random lady, imagine him getting to that house and seeing Raphael. Seeing Raphael & Cas exchanging inside jokes, talking about how they picked names for each other when they couldn’t remember their own, and just being generally affectionate. (Also, personally, for me? Raphael being like v explicitly genderless, that not being something that goes away when they think they’re human, and Dean just having to Deal With That with his whole gender issues thing.)

And then the fucking devastation of that being torn down when they remember who they are. That they’ve been at each other’s throats for years. That the whole reason so much awful shit happened is because neither of them would back down, neither of them could, and it was Heaven and their siblings that paid the cost no matter how much they both originally intended to protect them.

And for Raphael to still stay with Castiel when they see him absorb the Cage trauma off of Sam like… gosh… the double whammy of them maybe seeing too much of Lucifer in him for a moment, corrupted by the Mark and his time in Hell and someone Raphael could never have healed but why wouldn’t they take the brunt of the guilt for failing… and then also like. This is Castiel. He is the biggest thorn in their side Ever. But he needs help. And the only other person offering to stay with him when he needs it most is a demon. (Some of its got to be a bit of a pride thing. You think Raphael is going to leave their brother to be nursed by a demon?? Absolutely not.)

It’s the lingering affection of their amnesia. The looming anger of their past. The guilt that weighs on them both for how far their war went and how much damage they can’t undo.

And if they make it through this, things would obv change a whole lot. For one… Raphael purgatory jailbreak anyone? Alsjfhflshkf I’m joking but also like. God, the image of Raphael saving Cas from Purgatory (and maybe just Cas, too, because they still don’t even like Dean alsjfjksjfk sorry bud it’s alright you get to have gay vampire sex). Purgatory, the catalyst for how bad shit got. And Cas is trying to hide there and be punished but also, in a way, hide from having to face what he did, having to look heaven and other angels in the eyes. Raphael stomping in there, slaughtering a fuckton of Leviathan trying to get a bite of Cas, and dragging him out kicking and screaming like! ‘No! You don’t get to wallow! We made this mess! If I have to live with it, you have to live with it!’

Anyway, I also wrote a little ficlet for their hospital time as a proof of concept? I think it came out okay. If you’d like to see.

The bed at the hospital is only built for one person.

It’s such a small detail to focus on, but for the past few months, Raphael has slept with Castiel next to them, back to back like they were expecting an attack even while they were unconscious. Now, Castiel has a bed that only he fits in, and Raphael does not sleep.

It was a bad day. They pass their hand over Castiel’s forehead and feel the tremble that upsets his vessel, the sweat cooling on his brow. He doesn’t scream, but he hasn’t, not for some time. He stews in silence. He tells Raphael what he sees or hears, though sometimes all he gives them is a description of the room itself, like he’s not sure if even that’s real and he needs them to confirm it. He trusts them to help him construct his reality.

Raphael is a doctor who is more used to losing patients than to saving them. A mechanic who never manages to iron out the last few problems before the car swerves off the road. An archangel who could not hold Heaven together.

They are not someone Castiel should put his faith in. They haven’t earned it, but they are here. That’s more than can be said for a lot of beings, including his beloved Winchesters. Raphael stayed.

It’s what they know.

Castiel’s hand shoots up and grabs their wrist. They still, the tips of their fingers just barely behind his hairline. He squeezes their wrist, once, twice, and his eyes open. His breathing is disordered. He’s not looking at them.

He called them Lucifer twice, once afraid and once exhausted. Then, later, Anna, three times. Balthazar, five. Uriel, eight. He always figures out that they aren’t his ghosts in the end and apologizes.

“Raphael,” he calls them tonight, or not exactly because his vessel’s vocal cords strain into Enochian. He only dips from their holy tongue to speak to their demonic guard dog, since she doesn’t understand the language and reacts to the sound of it like the grinding of metal. With Raphael, he remains an angel. It’s almost like he’s making up for the months they spent thinking they were humans. Every conversation they had circling things they couldn’t remember and didn’t have the words for.

In a kinder world, they would have had more time to remain in ignorant bliss, but this is the way of things. Knowledge destroys. It casts them out. It locks them up.

The walls aren’t really the thing keeping Castiel in here.

“You would have made a better God than me,” Castiel says. Raphael’s mouth twists, and they aren’t sure if it’s disgust or humility.

“Or made the same mistakes.” Castiel tilts his head to look at them. He does not look at the eyes of vessels anymore. He forgets that human courtesy. He peers at souls with open curiosity. The center of Raphael’s grace sits at the base of their throat. Without thinking, their other hand follows his gaze to touch the divot of their collarbone, blocked by the high-necked sweater they’re wearing. They still feel cold, even now that they know there is something holy burning within them.

“No, you would have been a better God,” he repeats himself. “You would have controlled the leviathans, and you would have… You would have created an end that justified the means.” He squeezes their wrist again. “Paradise.” It's been a very long time since they let themselves think of that. Long before Heaven's civil war even started, with doubts borne by Michael's failure to secure Dean's consent.

“As many angels would have ended up dead.” Raphael may be blunt about their own failings here and not face judgment. The two of them are a pair of collapsed lungs. What stones does Castiel have to throw that wouldn’t shatter his house first?

“But the rest…” Castiel’s gaze drifts and snaps back. “You would all be happy.” He’s not including himself in that category. Raphael notices and does not argue for their ability to show mercy. “You would have accomplished something.” That lingers under all of Castiel’s guilt, empowers it, because for all that he feels he failed, he’s upset by the fact that even his failure hasn’t gotten them anywhere. No one’s death won him anything, not even his own. He’s still alone, and none of their siblings ever came any closer to understanding freedom.

Except one, and they don’t want the knowledge. It tastes like burnt coffee, and Raphael doesn’t pull that from any vessel’s memory. They have held a mug in their hands, let the liquid roll over their tastebuds, swallowed it down despite the grimace on their face. They remember Castiel smiling at them as he accepted that he shouldn’t touch the coffee machine anymore. Only, he still answered to a false name then, identity wholly unmade into someone who could love Raphael, who could be treated as an equal and a companion in turn.

“We’d be at peace,” Raphael says and tries not to let Castiel hear the bitterness in their voice.

”What did it look like?” Castiel asks, and then he changes it, so minutely that it shouldn’t matter, but it does. “For you, what did Paradise look like?”

There are a lot of answers that Raphael could give him. If he were not Castiel, if he were still the stranger who shared a life with them, they would tell him everything.

But he is Castiel. They’re not allowed to forget that again.

”I don’t know,” they lie. “All that mattered was getting there.” Castiel tenses under them suddenly, eyes flicking away. His grip crushes. “What?”

”Wounds,” he says, quickly, points at a bare wall. He looks back at them. Raphael stares long and hard at where he pointed so that he knows they take the truth they give him seriously. It’s only a wall.

”No,” they tell him, “don’t look at that. You aren’t seeing it right.” Castiel’s relieved. He relaxes again.

”What were we talking about?” he grasps for the topic.

”Paradise.”

”Yes.” Castiel breathes in, eyes shutting, and he smiles. When he opens his eyes again, it’s like he’s forgotten the momentary disruption completely. “Can I guess what it would be like? You can tell me how wrong I get it.” Raphael lets their fingers drift through his hair again, simple preening that calms them.

”There’s no harm in it.” Or plenty, but it’s the wrong place, wrong time, wrong angel, for any of Castiel’s words to have an effect. Castiel thinks. His voice buzzes at the back of his throat, a single note lost from its chord.

”A coral reef,” he settles on, “where everyone has their niche and their role to play, and they help something beautiful grow around them. And it’s alive. All of it is alive.” Castiel has not let go of their wrist this whole time. He was a clingy fledgling, too. Of course Raphael remembers. They remember watching over all of their little siblings, the role that should have been shared between them and Gabriel eventually falling onto only their shoulders.

(Because who could ask Michael to raise more little brothers. Who could ask him to lend Raphael a hand. Who could ask him to shoulder more than he would have to in the future. Who could ask him to be there in the present.)

Castiel is one of the few left who can still cling to them and the one they should yank their wrist from and abandon.

“Was I close?” Castiel asks. He trusts them.

Raphael passes their fingers through his hair again.

Death was peaceful. They don’t know who brought them back. Only that it wasn’t their Father. A different God, perhaps, one who knew how to feel regret, dragged them out of the only rest they’d ever known to drink bad coffee with him.

“Yes,” they lie, “that sounds beautiful. That would be Paradise.”

#castiel/raphael #castiel spn #raphael spn #filling out my rarepair portfolio one ship at a time saskljdklajd #really tho god spn should have had angels who could evolve alongside castiel.#highlight how his character has changed and theirs. have them recognizing the influence he has had on them #or the influence they had on him...#fanfiction #ask #prompt fic #kind of? not really. but i made fic for it so.#also god! god! raphael as a character just staying with what's familiar even as it hurts them!!!! fuck!!!!#them staying in heaven with michael. them still fighting for the apocalypse after it fails.#their abandonment issues made them unable to see when it was okay to abandon shit. they are soooo. sooooooooo #also apologies if my cage trauma!cas is a little... off? don't have much practice writing him.#spn #raphael lives au

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