TASMS [Pt.3: Learning The Hard Way]
[1949, Vinnitsa, Ukraine]
Magnus is no good at smiling and he always wears sleeves that cover his wrists. Magnus used to be Max Magnus but isn't anymore. Magnus has a wife named Magda who he loves and a baby on the way who will be Anya if she is a girl and Pietro if he is a boy. Magnus is happy, for the first time since he was seven or eight.
Magnus hasn't seen an angel in seven years, and he isn't sure he should believe in them anymore.
He thinks perhaps that Castiel was a figment of his imagination. He cannot find it in himself to believe that angels would allow such a thing as was allowed during the second world war. Surely Heaven could not have writ such things. A child's imaginary friend--a warning in the camps brought on by a delirium, insanity, perhaps.
If he wasn't. Well. He can't have been a very good angel. Angels are supposed to guard, aren't they? 214782. That many people and more, shuffled into the camps to die. His entire family--
Angels. Why would anyone with the power to stop that allow it to occur?
He turns in his tight workspace, humming tunelessly to no one at all as he tosses a hammer between hands, and finds himself face-to-face with unnaturally serious eyes and a thin-lipped mouth with no tilt at all. "Hello, Max," he hears, in an odd, deep voice that he doesn't recognise at all, even if the inflection is familiar. Max. His spine straightens, and the metal around them begins to rattle violently.
"Schmidt's--" he growls, anger and perhaps fear in his tone, and the man pauses and shakes his head slowly.
"Castiel," he says, and immediately the metal stills. Magnus is silent for a long while, and so is the angel.
"I go by 'Magnus' now," he says, if only to have something with which to break the silence, voice quiet and somewhat wondering. Speak of the devil. Had any phrase ever been less appropriate? "It's been a while, Castiel."
"Yes. It has been," Castiel says, voice blank as ever--something is missing from the words, something inexplicable, something human, "Magnus." It sounds as though he's trying the word out on his tongue, an experiment, as though to see whether he likes it or not.
Magnus is tired of being someone's experiment. "Why are you here?"
Castiel blinks at the tone in his voice--his equivalent of a frown, most likely, though Magnus is no expert at reading the faces of those who evidence nothing. "To see you," he says, perhaps deliberately obtusely.
The reply is dry, but not angry. "Well, now that you've seen me--"
"You married a good woman." The statement is unexpected enough as to catch Magnus off guard, and he furrows his brow, eyes narrowing minutely.
"May I meet her?" Castiel is looking at him as though this is an entirely normal thing to ask, as though it is every day that an man from Heaven steps down from the gates and deigns to visit with no explanation other than 'to see you', as though perhaps any visitor he entertained--in his workplace, of all locations--would ask to meet his pregnant wife.
He says yes and he has no idea why.
Magda thinks it odd that he brings a friend home for dinner, because Erik is not precisely well-known for getting on with people, though he's not precisely known for antagonising them, either. He's simply very private. She thinks it odder when Castiel doesn't eat, doesn't even bother to sit down, in fact looks very confused by the whole proceedings--the whole idea--of 'dinner'.
Magnus supposes that angels probably don't eat.
He does not inform his wife of this.
When Castiel leaves, she says only, "What an odd man," and moves on. Magnus mumbles something about old friends and pulls her away from her sewing and into his lap. "You didn't seem to be very friendly with him--the two of you were as stiff as a pair of boards."
"He's always like that," Magnus explains, and turns her to kiss him, and then they don't talk any more of Castiel.
They do talk of him again, though, when he reappears. Every few weeks, he crops up in one place or another--Magnus hasn't a clue why, and he never says anything more than 'to see you' in explanation, but each time he asks, 'may I see your wife?' and each time Magnus hesitates and says 'yes'. It gets less awkward after a time, as Magda gets more used to the angel's tics and Magnus gets reacquainted with them.
"I never met your black-eyed woman," he says idly one night to Castiel when his wife is seven months pregnant.
"I know," Castiel replies, because there's always something that he knows that everyone else doesn't. Magnus has to admit that he found that fascinating as a child and he finds it fascinating now. And the total, honest bluntness that he receives in response to his questions is something he can't help but appreciate.
"Why did you leave?"
"When you were a child?"
"Yes."
"I didn't."
Even though some of the things he says infuriate Magnus.
"Why did you let them all die?"
"Who?"
"Don't play the idiot, you know who I'm talking about."
"Your family?"
"Everyone."
"I didn't."
He comes every few weeks to the little house up on the hill, and Magnus is only just getting used to his presence again when he stops. For weeks--months--on end, there is nothing. Magda gives birth--it's a little girl, a little Anya, after her grandmother. And still, Castiel doesn't bother with coming back. Magnus cannot help but feel a little abandoned again. And a little apprehensive. The last time the angel disappeared--
He calls, and is surprised when the call is answered. In the middle of the night, Castiel just appears by the bed, and if his startled jolt wakes Magda up, she is excellent at concealing it. Magnus points a frustrated finger at the door and follows closely behind when Castiel lopes out, across the hall and into Anya's room, a destination that he hadn't planned, but which the angel had lead him to anyway. He leans down to take the bundle of child from her crib, just because it makes him feel safer about her safety to have her in his arms. Not that he thinks Castiel is particularly threatening, but the idea of a supernatural creature with his child--
"You came," he says, in hushed tones, because Anya is still asleep and so is Magda.
"You called," Castiel replies matter-of-factly, and pads over to him to look down at the baby in his arms. "Anya," he says, and requires no confirmation. Magnus nods, but the angel isn't looking. "Favour or grace," he muses, and, a beat behind, Anya's father realises that her name has just been defined by an angel of the lord.
When Castiel looks up from his reverie again, it's simply to say, "I am going to leave now," in the most final of tones, "and I don't believe that I will be coming back. I've interfered too much already."
You haven't interfered at all, Magnus almost says, but in his confusion, he waits too long. Castiel says, very squarely and to his face, "Goodbye, Magnus," and then he turns his face back to the little girl again. "Goodbye, Anya," he says, touching a finger to her forehead. "Be very careful with her, Magnus," he adds, a warning in parting, and before Magnus can comment, he's disappeared in a flurry of feathers that no one can see.
Bending his head, he kisses the spot on Anya's forehead that the angel's finger had touched. "You're blessed, Kleine," he says softly, though he doesn't know that for certain.
'I'm sorry, Max' echoes in his head, even though it's been seven years since he last heard it.
