milliways_bar | (no subject)

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The debriefing with Zachariah had not been pleasant.

Fortunately, he had stopped short of taking punitive action. Castiel had, after all, gone to the barn with the honest intent of doing his duty and killing Anna. None of them had foreseen her taking a gamble as big as pitting demons against her brothers.

Still, Castiel has gotten what you might call an earful of biblical proportions.

He is quite relieved to be able to take refuge in Milliways for a while.

Castiel is sitting in a booth. A mug of coffee is on the table in front of him.

It’s full. He just wants to appear occupied.

[Plotlocked: Here there be very focused and powder-keggy angels.]

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"I trust she had her reasons."

So his sister would have something to needle him about later. Who knows?

"You were forever underfoot."

"And very dictatorial."

"And you tended to do what I told you."

Old habits?

"It was generally easier than arguing."

Not to mention more productive in the long run.

"And you'd have lost, anyway."

"Yes, that's rather what I meant."

Castiel cautiously rests his elbows on the table.

"You remember it well? Being here?"

"Yes.

"I remember it very well."

And that's true. Sort of.

She remembers the facts of it, the details of what was said and done and what caught fire with far better clarity than she did as a human.

It's the emotions tied to all those things that are getting blurry.

As she told Dean, angels don't feel things the way humans do. And they certainly don't feel things in the all-consuming, mercurial, near-hyperbolic fashion of a pre-teen girl.

Anna can remember that she felt a given way, but she can't quite remember what it that way felt like.

It's like looking at something through stained glass -- you can see it, but the colors are all wrong.

And it clearly remembers you."

Castiel isn't sure what to make of that.

He'd like to think that Milliways would not allow her access if she were dangerous, but this is the same place that allowed the Crossroads Demon in.

"It is a strange bit of Creation. Milliways."

"Stranger than most."

Though not as strange as others.

"How long have you been coming here?"

"I believe the time is equivalent to a couple of years."

It can be hard to reckon time as an angel, and Miliways makes it even more so.

"A good deal of time before we were sent to Earth."

"And how did that happen?"

"I was ordered to come."

His head tips slightly to the side. He can guess what Anna will think of that answer.

"I was told to come here as the door found me, and to learn from what I found."

And just what are her former superiors playing at now?

"Hmmmmm," says Anna.

"And what have you learned, little brother?"

"A great many things."

And still is.

Even as they speak, though this lesson is not at all as pleasant as some of his others have been.

"You were there for some of them."

"You've certainly learned a lesson or two about evasion," Anna says.

He didn't used to try to avoid answering her questions.

He didn't used to distrust his sister.

"I learned how to build a ship in a bottle."

"I learned how to attend a birthday party. How to fold cranes out of paper. I learned to play baseball, and, in doing to, to speak civilly to vampires. I learned that I do not like ice cream for all humans are so fond of it. I learned to take apart an automobile and put it back together again."

He has learned how to have friends here, though it was nothing he set out to do.

"Is that the sort of thing you mean?"

"It's a start," Anna says.

But, oh, he's trying to hide something.

Interesting.

He attempts to stare her down.

He's still not able to do that. Castiel attempts to take refuge in humor.

"I have not learned to cook."

"So I remember."

Flaming Easy Bake Oven.

"I did learn to cook."

She never could quite manage, as an angel. No matter how accomplished her vessel was at it.

"Don't suppose I'll need to know that any more."

"We are facing the Apocalypse. It is difficult to know what we might need to know."

Still, Castiel will admit that cooking is probably pretty far down on the list.

"Caterer of the End Times.

"And here I thought I didn't have a part to play any longer."

Castiel frowns momentarily down at the tabletop.

"It is true."

She'll never be allowed back in Heaven's ranks. Not after all she's done.

"It is a pity. You would have been an asset. Before."

"I doubt it.

"I suspect that what I would have been was dead on Cheat Mountain."

"Or perhaps you would not have led us so far into danger."

Castiel had played 'what if' a lot after that battle.

"Ecanus did not have the appropriate command experience."

"I'm flattered you think that's even a possibility, but . . . based on what I heard, I don't think so. I'm not sure what appropriate command experience for that would have been.

"She went after the leader first. She's Lilith and I'm no archangel.

"Outcome would have been largely the same. I'd be dead, someone else would be alive, and your grief for me would have been a lot cleaner.

"Seal would still have broken."

"Perhaps."

He's not sure if he'd welcome that cleaner grief or not. Though it would be so much easier.

"That was the end of our old unit. What remained of us were scattered to other groups. We were always considered the weaker for your leaving."

Tainted, almost.