ultraviolet9a | All God's children need travelling shoes

>> All God’s children need travelling shoes

TITLE: All God’s children need travelling shoes
AUTHOR:

ultraviolet9a
SPOILER: up to 4.10
GENRE: Het-ish (could probably get away with gen too, but let’s stick to one label, yes?)
CHARACTERS: Castiel, Anna
SUMMARY: When they meet again, there is no light nor wind.
RATING: pg13
FEEDBACK: Dude… duh.
DISCLAIMER: Don’t own, no profit, don’t sue.
NOTES: Don’t even ask.
BETA: by the brilliance that is

pdragon76

When they meet again, there is none of her light and no gust of wind. The field is bathed in bright sunlight, though, and the trees are barely moving in what tries to be a breeze and fails.

The road is dirty and the grass is high and the fence she’s leaning against is old; her face too young as she tilts it against the sunlight, trying to soak it in.

“Annael,” he says. This is no battlefield and her name slips like a song.

“It blows, you know.” She turns her face to him, opens her eyes, and they are old, old eyes. “I can’t feel it. I’m trying so hard to remember what it’s like, but I can’t really feel it.”

“Feel what?”

“The light. Anything.” She shakes her head in frustration and in the sun her hair seems to be on fire. “It sucks.”

“Annael.”

“Anna.”

“Anna is no more.”

She pushes hard off her hands and covers the few steps between them.

“You don’t know anything! You don’t know what it’s like!”

Her palms connect hard with his chest, pushing him and he doesn’t resist: one small staggering step backwards, hands remaining in his pockets, and her anger is no more.

“Why are you here, Castiel?”

“You let me find you.”

She tilts her head upwards. A cloud has covered the sun. Everything seems muted.

“I wish you hadn’t left,” Castiel says.

She laughs. “Angels don’t wish. They just obey. Don’t you know that by now?”

“I wish you hadn’t left.” There’s something hard in his voice and a clench to his jaw that has her looking at him through half-closed eyes.

“You never understood, Castiel.”

“I’ve always tried to.”

“Not hard enough.”

“Falling is not the answer, Annael. We are what our Father made us.”

“We are what we choose to be.”

She leans back against the fence and the space between them feels like eternity.

“When this is all over…” she says. “When this is all over.”

There is longing and regret in her voice. She lets herself slide down, sit on the earth. She takes off her boots, and shoves flimsy socks inside them. Lets her hands move through the grass before she raises herself again.

The boots’ high heels have left small holes in the ground, crumbling earth and grass. Castiel tilts his head to the side.

“I do not understand that,” he says, pointing at her boots. “Nor this,” he adds, sliding his hand over his loose tie. “I fail to see their purpose.”

She digs her soles on the grass, takes green-stained steps towards him.

“Beauty.” Now it’s her hand over his tie. “They please the senses.”

“That is why you fell? Shoes? Ties? Senses?” A slight wind has started to rise.

“I wish you had fallen with me. I wish you had understood.”

“I will not fall. For anyone,” Castiel says. “I am an angel of the Lord.”

“I remember missing you,” she says. “When I was falling. I remember how that felt. How being near you felt. The Lord must hate us if he deprives us of… ”

“Hold your tongue, Annael!” He shoves her hand away. “Blasphemy doesn’t become you. Our Father loves us.”

Her hand moves, travels over fabric and layers towards his crotch, and her mouth finds his.

“Did you feel that?” she asks as she pulls away.

He lets his fingers hover over his lips, wide-eyed, then wipes at his mouth with the back of his palm. “No.”

She smiles. “Liar.”

“Angels do not lie.”

She quirks her eyebrows. “Then you’ve come a long way.”

Castiel pushes his hands deeper in his pockets. He doesn’t look at her, eyes pulled to the blades of grass around her feet instead.

“I longed for you,” she says after a while. “Even when I was with Dean, I could feel your mark on him, and I longed for you. I always have, Castiel.”

“No. Speak no more. Your tongue knows neither truth, nor bounds.”

“I thought angels didn’t lie.”

Grass and leaves are rippling. Shadows seem longer. Castiel takes one step forward, chin down, eyes menacing, voice rough as gravel.

“I am warning you, Annael. This is what I came here to relay: you are one of us no more. You are stronger, but my message is in the name of my legions. You left us. You made your choice. You have no part in this. Stay out of our way.”

“So wrath is the only thing God lets us feel? Wrath and sorrow and love for Him? Nothing else? Where is his famous forgiveness?”

“God might forgive you, Annael, but I won’t. You left us. You left me.” His fist hits hard against his chest. “You left me.”

His arms fall lifeless to his side, fists clenching and unclenching as he pants and looks anywhere but her.

The wind settles after a while. She trails gentle fingers over his face.

“You do understand,” she says. She blinks, a reflex for tears she can no longer shed. “You do understand. You’re walking in a man’s shoes now, Castiel. And you were always different.”

“It’s been… difficult,” he says. He passes his hand over his eyes wearily. He looks up, palms skyward in resignation. “It is too heavy a burden. It feels…”

“It just feels, Castiel. That’s the whole point.” She wraps slender arms around his neck, hides her face on his shoulder. Castiel’s arms wrap around her waist as he buries his face in her gleaming hair.

“When this is over,” she says.

“When this is over,” he says.

The fence is old and the grass is high and the road winds on forever.

-The End.

All God’s children need travelling shoes.
-Maya Angelou.

SIDENOTE: This story was written and betaed by my sparkly dragonz back in December, and then I passed a couple of months unable to focus on writing, until I sat down to polish it this week. Anyway, here’s how this story started: I had bought new ankleboots. Leather and heel and omg so pretty (I can see your smirk from here, dragonz. Just so you know.) And I told e313 that they were so hot that even Castiel would fall, or something silly of the sort. To which she replied: Cas and a shoe fetish! Sounds like crack. And then I had this image of Anna wearing high heels and Cas grovelling at her feet (how dominatrix of me) and I really wanted to set out to do that, but instead of the pure porn I was hoping for I came up with this. Freaking plot donkeys, always getting their frakking way.