#enochianexample

[ironwallswillneverfall]

Thorns and Stings Make Strong

Summary: Erik Lehnsherr has known Castiel, sporadically, since he was seven.

Just Little Ones [1933 — Düsseldorf, Germany]

Not Yet Grown [1942, Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, Poland]

Learning the Hard Way [1949, Vinnitsa, Ukraine]

Grow Up Never Old [1972, Valhalla, New York]

"Thorns and stings and those such things just make strong our angel wings."

--Terri Guillemets

[ironwallswillneverfall]

TASMS [Pt.4: Grow Up Never Old]

[1972, Valhalla, New York]

The face of the once and future king is tired, lined more around the corners of the still-bright blue-grey eyes than around the corners of the mouth, as though he has perhaps spent more time worrying than smiling.  His hair has silvered, stress-accelerated--he likes it.  It suits him, he believes--makes him look more dignified, like more of a warrior or a statesman or both and less of a boy who grew up to be a weapon.

The sudden appearance behind him is registered in the red trim of his power, metal tracings and trims along the fastenings of the clothing the presence wears.  At first he thinks, Azazel, but he doesn't feel the wickedly curved blade the teleporter brings seemingly everywhere.  The identity is again thrown into shadow, so he turns his chair in the direction from which he feels the call of nickelchromesteel--

He doesn't recognise the man who stands there, fair-haired and slight, but he does recognise the blankly dispassionate set he has to his face, and this time, he's able to place it.

"Castiel," he says slowly, and thinks to himself that his voice has deepened somewhat over the years since he's said that name.  "I thought that you had interfered enough."  The half-quote is not mocking, though it is perhaps slightly bitter.  "What bad news do you play harbringer for today?"

Castiel looks as confused as it is possible to look with no emotion in your face.  His eyes are blue again, and he thinks quietly to himself that Castiel may have had the colour first, but that it looks far more natural on a man who can bring some life to it.  Then the very, very slight bunch of his eyebrows towards the centre smoothes, and he speaks, a different voice from the three that he remembers.  He thinks Castiel must take a new form every time he visits, because come to think of it, the three that he's seen can't possibly be the same person any more than this one.    "I am not a harbringer of bad news, Max.  Magnus."

Erik almost takes pleasure in correcting him. "Magneto."

"I know," says Castiel, just as he has known every other time.  Just as he has never warned Erik of anything.  Just as he never shows a jot of emotion, just as he has thoroughly convinced Erik that he cannot possibly care for the affairs of mortal men.  "You are Magneto, the once-and-future, and Erik Lehnsherr, the wandering Sinti gypsy.  You are Erik the Red and the Grey King, you have gone by Michael Xavier in past and you will someday call yourself the Creator.  But you are also Max Magnus Eisenhardt."

Max Magnus Eisenhardt falls silent.

Castiel continues.  "I am not here to bring you bad news, Max."

It is Erik Lehnsherr who answers, with a bite in his voice, "That's different."

"I have never brought you bad news," the angel points out, and Erik scoffs.

"A crime of neglect, then."

There is quiet for brief instants.  "You have lost your faith, I see."

"Every time I started to regain it, you appeared to build it up momentarily.  Then you would leave, and it would be torn down by something.  I see no more point in faith."  Erik's voice is blunt and cold, and he is angry for no reason that he can think of.  "Faith doesn't save people.  I could have prayed to angels or demons or both and no one would have saved the people who needed to be saved.  So I save people myself, now, if no servant of Heaven or Hell is willing to do it.  I am ending persecution, and all very much without your aid."  He sits back in his seat and crosses his legs, one over another, finger running absently over the curve of the helmet that sits on the table beside him.  "But do sit down, if you have something else that you don't want to tell me.  I'm eager for the challenge of overcoming it."  His arms cross, too, as he finishes, a tightly coiled spring of a man, and he stares at Castiel every bit as blankly as the angel has ever stared at him.

"You're angry," Castiel says after a time.  The words might have sounded stupid, slow-witted, from any other man, but they're not said in a dull sort of tone.  For all the obvious things Castiel says, he never quite says them in a way that makes him appear stupid.  "But I fail to see why you would be."

Erik laughs, not because he thinks anything is particularly funny, but because it seems the thing to do.  "I usually am.  Isn't that reason enough?"

"No," Castiel says.  He reminds Erik of someone else, and for a moment it's hard to place exactly who.  "Anger is destructive, especially when it is misplaced."  Suddenly, he realises who it is--Charles.  Charles with his blue eyes and his serenity and his naïveté; it would figure that an angel would remind Erik of him.  He pushes that thought from his mind and gives another laugh, one which sounds more hollow than anything else.

"What's wrong with a little destruction?" He says, and the question is a joke, obviously so, because he very much doubts that an angel of the lord would approve of 'a little destruction'.

"Many things," replies Castiel, who clearly doesn't understand the concept of being facetious, "too many for me to list unless you have a very long time."  He blinks a few times, and Erik swears that he's only ever seen two people with that particular shade of blue and he wonders if that's a coincidence or if it's not.  "What have you to be angry about?"

Erik laughs again, the same laugh as the first time, the same fake, not-really-there laugh that sounds ridiculous even to him.  "What have I to be angry about," he repeats when he decides that's gone on long enough.  "What have I to be angry about."  He looks at Castiel's face as though searching him, as though trying to determine whether he's serious or not.  "You can't think of a single thing I might be angry about?  You saw the camps, didn't you?  When you visited me there to tell me about some black-eyed woman who could have made my wildest dreams come true.  You didn't help.  You didn't bother.  You just gave me a useless warning and you left.  But you saw the camps."  He pauses for a second and tries to make his voice sound less accusing.  "That will happen all over again, if I don't stop it.  If you aren't allowed to 'interfere' for long enough to stop someone from doing that again, then so be it.  I'll take things into my own hands.  I am angry because despite myself, I care."

"You are angry," Castiel replies after a pause, still expressionless, "because you blame that which you have lost on those who had nothing to do with the loss.  And because you fear losing more."  There is yet another silence, and Erik sits quiet in it and feels that anger rising yet again and thinks, this has nothing to do with loss.  Castiel continues.  "And if I were allowed to interfere for such a thing, I suspect that you would be the first offender, Max."

The hard-lined face goes instantly dark.  "I would never."

"Wouldn't you."

"Never."  His voice is vehement, the words tasting coppery on his tongue, how he imagines a spent bullet would taste.  "I'm willing to play the monster, but I would never go so far."

"Monster," Castiel muses, sighing airlessly.  It doesn't feel accusing, but Erik takes it that way anyway, simply because he hears that word too much.  It began with Magda, and it never ended.

"I am nothing like the men who did this to me."  He shoves up his sleeve to bare the number, 214782, and his jaw clenches hard as he looks at the time-faded numerals.  Even the thought of being compared to them, to the square-faced man who needled his new name into his skin, to the tightly-held guards who marshaled the prisoners, to Schmidt and his steel tables and blades and coins--it nauseates him.

"You weren't supposed to be," says the angel, and then there's another whisper of maybe-wings and he's gone, with no explanation of why he was there in the first place.

This time, he keeps his promise of twenty-three years ago.

"I won't be coming back."

[ironwallswillneverfall]

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.

"Yes, I did."

"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.

[ironwallswillneverfall]

TASMS [Pt.1: Just Little Ones]

[1933 — Düsseldorf, Germany]

Max meets the angel when he is only a boy.  Mama has never told him that angels exist--but then again, she's never told him that they don't, either, so when the boy looks to him with serious eyes and says, "My name is Castiel.  I am an angel of the lord," Max has no reason to doubt.

He gets the impression that the angel is far older than he appears; though he takes the shape of a boy about Max's own age, dark-haired and with the most unchildishly sober face possible, he doesn't talk the way boys of seven are supposed to talk--he talks older.  Bigger words with more meanings behind them.  And his German is odd, too, as though it isn't his first language.

"It isn't," he tells Max simply, when he's asked.  Max wonders if they don't speak something different in Heaven.  He speaks a little Yiddish, but he finds it hard to imagine the boy who comes and sits by the side of the road with him while he throws stones speaking Yiddish.  Hebrew, perhaps?  Hebrew is marked in his brain as a holy language, but somehow, its singing cadences don't seem to fit Castiel either.  Perhaps some different language--some strange special one.

Yes, Castiel is older and stranger and perhaps a bit unfamiliar with himself, as though he isn't quite comfortable in his own skin.

"It isn't my skin," he explains, forever calm and honest, when Max finally comments on that.

Max cannot relate.  He is absolutely normal.  ("No, you aren't," says Castiel matter-of-factly with something that might be sadness--if you were to turn it on its side and squint a little--in his eyes.  Max doesn't believe him.)  He is human, isn't he?  He doesn't disappear for weeks on end sometimes, without so much as a by-your-leave.  He can't take off and leave with a flutter of invisible feathers.  Max Eisenhardt is nothing special.

Castiel almost, almost looks like he might smile, when Max tells him that, but he doesn't.  He never does.  Max isn't sure he knows how--such even humourlessness is odd to see on a boy who looks Max's age.

Max doesn't mind.  Castiel is interesting--he knows things, and he'll talk to Max even after the other children start to ignore him.

He isn't sure Castiel notices that, but as the other children withdraw from him, the angel's visits become more frequent.

Max even thinks he misses Castiel, when he's gone.  He always enjoys speaking with someone who takes him seriously, whose parents don't come by after a few minutes and drag them off, scared-eyed and murmuring something that he doesn't hear, but knows isn't complimentary.

In fact, he never sees Castiel's parents at all.  That, he doesn't ask about.

They know each other for two years before Max moves and Castiel stops visiting.  Max tries calling for him, occasionally, which never really worked before, but he tries anyway.  Nothing ever happens.  Eventually, he stops bothering.

He wonders, sometimes, if one of them is lost.

[ironwallswillneverfall]

Castiel, being the greedy bastard that he is, absorbs all the prompts from purgator-- oh wait

//um

megan

i think i wrote you a fanfiction by accident

i’m going to have to post it in parts

skype me maybe

5000 words and counting

[humbleprayer-blog]

Castiel flew by

"Hello, Castiel"

[shortbusruby]

enochianexample started following you.

"Can I help you?" She asked turning around and crossing her arms to face him.

[askhellsfinest-archive-blog]

enochianexample started following you

Hey there Clarence. It's good to see you again.

- Meg

ambassadorofbenevolence started following you

I'm starting to feel very uncomfortable with all these angels around.

- Ruby