caveofsapphires | (open) you've been gone much longer

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(open) you've been gone much longer

WHO: Castiel (Gregory Wilton) & open!
WHAT: Another mojoless angel flops around town hello /o/
WHERE: (Cave) The library mostly, creeping around town, eventually the bar because why not.
WHEN: Monday (4th) - Thursday (7th).
WARNINGS: None atm!

It wasn't long after Castiel had "woken up" and was fed an elaborate story about how he was really a human man named Gregory Wilton that the angel was walking around the Cave searching for answers. Normally, such a search would take him a few seconds at best, but it would seem that at the moment he was stripped of his powers and rendered human. Again.

He wasn't a fan, but nonetheless tried his best to search the Cave via foot and found by the end of the day his situation had not really changed.

The next day, Cas was being encouraged to... "go to work" by the workers. At first, he fully intended on ignoring them -- but when he discovered that Gregory's job was at the library, the (former) angel complied. Not that he even knew what on Earth librarians even did. Well, they organized books, he supposed, but that wasn't the only thing, was it? He didn't know and decided he didn't care to learn at the moment, though he could certainly use the facility for his own purposes. As such, Monday then became nothing more than one long study session that started with the collection of paper books (seeing as Cas was still a little perplexed by the digital technology of man). Begrudgingly grabbing himself one of the ladders provided, he set to work scanning over each and every single title, pulling out those he deemed useful. Piles of books formed around his search areas as he worked and at varying points throughout the day, one could either find him sitting/standing around thumbing through book after book or moving through aisles with his head titled so he could read the title written on the spine as he moved.

Tuesday, Cas was back at it. He had figured out the basic history of the Cave and the City, but beyond that he had yet to discover anything helpful. Eventually, Castiel found himself turning more and more to the digital information (which meant he spent some time simply figuring out how the gadgets worked). After a while of playing with the e-reader in his hands, he was able to figure out basically how the thing worked. But even so, Castiel was left staring intently into the screen with a furrowed brow and tilted head as though the device held all the secrets of the universe inside.

By Wednesday he had learned that the device did not hold any secrets of any universe. Cas had figured it out to the point of being able to look at it without an expression of confusion stamped on his face though, so there was that at least. That said, Castiel deemed the resources of the library depleted and decided it was time he ventured back into the strange little world. He located the subway system later that day, and though was denied access to it because he had not yet completed what he understood to be a week long quest of sorts, hovered around nearby for a little while before deciding this too was a lost cause. The people in charge here were very stubborn, it seemed.

Naturally, he was drinking by Thursday. Beginning to get a little ruffled by his lack of success here and growing concern about what must be happening in Heaven but powerless to do a damn thing, the angel sat at the bar quietly nursing a glass of some sort of whiskey. Normally he was protected by some holy alcohol tolerance, but now that he was human he had no such gift. That said, it would seem that he was still a far cry from a lightweight -- Cas had downed a couple shots prior to the whiskey and still didn't seem much different from his usual, serious self.

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For the last two weeks, Mal had been poking her nose into places it likely didn't belong and trying to dig up information on . . . well, anything would have been nice. Food sources. Information that had not been officially improved. A map with an X marked 'HERE BE THE TRUTH' would have been lovely. But no, none of that. That would have been too easy.

Still, she kept trying - in large part out of boredom, because there were so few people in the City spread out so thinly, and there wasn't even anyone to train with given the fact that Re-l had vanished somewhere - and on Wednesday found herself emerging from the Hiberna train. Slinking past the guards hovering around the entrance, she stretched her back out from the long ride. "Home again, home again," she muttered, before cocking her head at the man hovering at the entrance to the platform.

"Are you looking for something?" she asked curiously, studiously ignoring the guards.

Whenever he was finally able to move on from the Cave, it was likely that Cas would begin looking for all the same things Mal had tried and failed to find as well. It didn't seem like there was anything of much use to be found anywhere at this point though, leaving Cas to learn about nothing more than normal human contraptions.

Castiel had watched the train come and stop with a certain sort of curiosity and slightly tilted head. It reminded him a bit of the one time he had taken a bus, but of course recognized it was a fundamentally different vehicle. In any case, his eyes were still on the train itself when the passenger spoke, though he was aware of the fact that she was speaking to him. "Yes." Cas replied after a brief pause, finally turning to face the woman. "I am looking for answers."

He admittedly was not yet ready to pretend to be a normal human being if only to appease the strange people running the place.

Well, wasn't that an interesting answer? It implied so many things. For one, this person likely didn't believe whatever information he'd been given; for another, he liked a bit of dramatic turn of phrase.

Mal suppressed a grin. "Well, I doubt you'll find any very good answers here," she said, quite cheerfully, "although part of the reason for that is that nobody here much likes questions. Most questions. The big questions, like 'is all of this real?' and 'are you seriously expecting me to believe that I was slept through a global disaster?'"

She stepped a bit closer and held out her hand. "My name is Milena," she said, erring on the side of caution because here, in the Cave, with guards all around them, she'd be very stupid not to. "I'm going to hazard a guess that you've just woken up from a very long nap."

Castiel absolutely did not believe what he had been told. He also wasn't quite aware that he was being more dramatic than normal people were, but alas.

"I've noticed." His voice was grim when he answered, and the tired sounding sigh that followed indicated on its own that the station was not the first place Cas had visited on his quest for answers. When the woman extended her hand, he glanced down at it for a moment before grasping it with his and completing the handshake.

"I'm certain my name is Castiel, however I have been told that I am wrong and that my true name is Gregory." And there he was, blatantly failing to maintain the act that Mal and most likely everyone else had quickly learned to put in place. He nodded then to confirm her last statement. "I woke from a slumber that I don't remember needing a few days ago and I have been trying to understand what happened ever since."

Castiel. Well, that was interesting, and odd. Mostly odd. Not the first thing to ask about, though; she filed it away for future investigation.

Tucking her hands behind her back, she rocked slightly on the balls of her feet. "Castiel, then," she said, wondering if he failed to understand the potential consequences of using his true name in this place. "Good to meet you, although the circumstances could be nicer." She briefly toyed with the idea of warning him against using his name before settling on, "I hope you'll forgive me for using the name I don't remember. It's . . . easier, here."

The potential consequences of insisting he was not someone named Gregory were, at the moment, indeed pretty much lost on him. He had learned from Dean that humans sometimes needed to be lied to and that they lied to each other, but still he was finding that this particular situation was not as straight forward as it should be. The stories were too elaborate and the guards and workers and whoever were just too adamant about it all. He wasn't having any of it.

"Yes." He nodded in agreement. "These circumstances are not ideal." But he did at least seem relieved to find someone who wasn't crazy about this alternate life idea either, even though he didn't think to outright mention that.

She smiled, cocking her head at him. "Wait 'til you see what's waiting for you on the other side. It's a joke, it really is."

The City had been a tremendous disappointment, all told. So few people, and even fewer answers. She hoped that someone - Re-l, or maybe Chivy - would find out more than she had, but those hopes were dying, slowly and agonizingly.

"What sort of answers are you looking for?" she asked Castiel. "Keep in mind that I probably don't have answers to most of them. It's been a hard month for answers."

"There is nothing useful in the city?" He didn't sound entirely surprised, considering how scarce and guarded information was. But he didn't sound entirely defeated either.

Castiel paused briefly. What were the most important things he needed anyway? "How, mostly." Which could encompass anything and everything. He offered no further elaboration, nor with the added, "And why." Across his face was a serious, thoughtful expression as he undoubtedly went over the specifics of what he needed in his own mind.

"There's hints," she said, "but no big picture that I can see." It was the pervasive sense of not knowing how everything - the metro, the empty city, the static person who'd been on the network, and the Caretaker, whoever that was - fit together. "The main problem is that it's just empty. It's not really a city, it's . . . buildings."

She made a face at his questions. A bit too broad for her to answer, but she could certainly try. "Cryogenics, allegedly," she said. "But I'm very vague on what exactly that is. The real how is a question I don't think anyone's found the answers to yet." It was, after all, a very big and complicated question, and one they weren't technically allowed to ask.

"As to why . . . " She let out a frustrated sigh in a puff of air, blowing her bangs out of her face. "I think a lot of the people here, the Workers, don't know anything's wrong. Or they're very good actors. As for the Caretaker, don't know a thing about him, don't know how to find him."

Cas was attentive as she explained what she could to him, completely quiet and taking in the information she had to offer. He had done his own research by now of course, but he had the feeling that there was only so much that the readily available information sources were capable of telling him -- or anyone for that matter.

After a drawn out silence that lingered long after she had stopped speaking, Cas finally replied with a simple, "Interesting."

Silence again took over as the man thought for a moment longer. "Has anyone ever seen him?"

Watching Castiel think was interesting. It was like watching Jade think, in a way, Mal thought, because you knew that something important was happening in there but there were no tells as to what it might be, or even what neighborhood it might be in. She watched him expectantly, not moving to respond until he asked an actual question.

And what a question, too. "Seen him?" She thought about it. "No one, that I know of. Or heard from him." This wasn't typical behavior of somewhat with a maniacal plan, which, now that she thought about it, was worrisome. It likely meant that he either believed in what he was doing, or was intelligent. Nothing worse than an intelligent enemy.

On the train Gabriel had all but convinced himself that going to the hospital and talking to the Workers there was necessary, because surely they would know something about the cause for the power leak and thus maybe heal his blindness. It was as he made his careful, fumbling way off the train that he changed his mind. One of the odd things about losing his sight, the only thing which was even remotely good about it--if anything could be--was the fact that his hearing had adjusted to compensate.

"Hey, look who it is," he heard one of the guards mutter to another, and only just managed to keep from freezing as he stretched out his foot from the train's step to search for the platform.

"What's wrong with him?"

"Maybe someone squirted tabasco in his eyes. If I knew who I'd give 'em a medal."

They laughed and Gabriel felt his face grow hot. He was damn well flushing. With embarrassment.

Turning around and getting back on the train would only prove he'd overheard. With as much dignity as the archangel could muster he felt his way out of the subway, trying to summon his mental map and suddenly realising he had absolutely nowhere to go, because he damned well wasn't risking the hospital.

The bar. All of a sudden he wanted a frikkin' drink.

The problem was going to be finding it. He knew the Cave's layout, but it was one thing to know an area and another to know it and not be able to see a frigging thing. And he hadn't told anyone where he was going. Breathing a little ragged, his head half-ducked with a mixture of emotions Gabriel could even begin with separate, the archangel groped his way along the walls, trying to remember the way to the bar and put it into terms his remaining four senses could divine.

Castiel was, at first, uninterested in whoever was stumbling his way into the bar from the door behind him. He just stared into his glass for a little while longer, looking not unlike someone who was somberly pondering the very meaning of life. The angel sighed then, letting his head tip back a moment as he tried not to think about how clearly trapped he was.

It wasn't on purpose when Cas caught sight of the man out of the corners of his eyes, but the immediate turning of his head towards him was completely voluntary.

He knew that face, and he hadn't expected to ever see it again.

Castiel couldn't see his true face or sense anything even remotely supernatural with his powers removed, but he most certainly didn't need them to be able to recognize that face on his own. A flurry of questions ran through his head all at once -- was this just a vessel, was it really his big brother, but most importantly wasn't Gabriel dead? Gabriel was definitely dead, Castiel was sure of it. So... how? Despite his whirling mind, none of his questions manifested into words.

He had no idea how he was supposed to feel right now. But he knew he had to do something. So after quickly downing the rest of his whiskey, Cas slowly slid off the stool and stood facing the man with watchful eyes and a stiff demeanor (not that Gabriel could even tell in his present condition that Cas was failing to pick up on). And in a fantastic display of his total disregard for the fact that he really should be at least pretending that he no longer believed himself to be an Angel of the Lord, he asked a very direct, simple question in a voice of genuine surprise.

"...Gabriel?"

The only way Gabriel knew he'd actually made it through the right door at last was the smell (because it sure as Hell wasn't the first door he tried). For a moment he had to stop in the doorway, trying to orient himself, and then he shuffled toward the bar, hands out and with a weird sliding step to make sure he didn't walk into anything.

He still managed to stub his toes on a chair, cursing under his breath, and then his knee on a table, and was just leaning down to rub it when Castiel spoke.

The archangel froze. No. No, it couldn't be. Not Castiel--not now. Not after what he'd seen in Balthazar's soul. His stomach churned violently with anger and the need to get away both. Slowly Gabriel straightened, head turning in the direction of Castiel's voice. And he smiled, a rictus smile which showed his teeth almost more like a snarl, his expression so tight and amber eyes so hollow with sightlessness that he looked, for a moment, wild. (Or possibly insane.)

"Hello, little brother."

The look on Gabriel's face made Cas suddenly uneasy, enough to unconsciously take a step back. Considering that the last time he had pissed off an archangel he had gotten blown to pieces, again, the movement had been a purely kneejerk reaction -- but the unease was short lived. Recovering quickly, Castiel stood his ground and watched the displeased man before him with the same sort of caution one watches an animal that looks about to attack.

This was indeed his big brother. The greeting was indication of that. Trying to make sense of what was happening, Castiel fell momentarily silent.

"How is this possible?" Honestly, he wasn't sure exactly what was happening anymore. Gabriel was a master of trickery, but even he wasn't possible of such an illusion. Was he? No, of course not. Castiel didn't know. "Lucifer struck you down. You've been dead for months."

"Oh, really, Cassy? I hadn't noticed." One of Gabriel's hands danced in the air. The other slid across the tabletop as he took a careful step closer, a step with an odd, casual sort of tension. The archangel couldn't see Castiel, but he could hear him.

And his bitterness, his fear, his anger at how badly his brothers kept fucking up, all combined into one single idea which barely had time to pass through his head before he was putting it into play.

"Didn't you ever wonder where angels go when they died?" he asked, still with that awful smile plastered all over his face. He took another step closer, half-swaying, and this time lifted both hands to gesture. "Not human. Only human souls go to Heaven. Unless they're damned. Then it's the Hellscape for them! But everything else?" He leaned in, flicking his fingers at Castiel. "Purgatory. Nice lil spot, ain't it? It even supplies its own booze."

From what he understood, everyone here was currently human because whatever lives they thought they knew were (supposedly) fake. Castiel of course didn't believe any of that, but he definitely was aware that his angel batteries were not currently in working condition. And if that was the case for him, then Gabriel likely wasn't in full angel mode either. Which he supposed was probably a good thing for the moment.

Cas was tense as his less-than-pleased looking brother slowly came closer, but never once did he waver. He took note of the disoriented way in which his brother was moving and for a moment came close to asking what was wrong with him, but then Gabriel was speaking and Castiel was immediately hushed.

Purgatory. Gabriel was telling him he was in Purgatory.

But that wasn't possible.

"You're wrong." He replied when he had decided that the idea was ludicrous. "This isn't Purgatory. I'm not dead." His knowledge on Purgatory was admittedly limited still, but if nothing else he was sure that he hadn't died since being brought back for the second time.

"Aren't you? No big brothers to combat, no siblings who object to your methods?" The toe of Gabriel's shoe hit Castiel's and the archangel stopped before he ran into his brother. Even for someone like Castiel, who regularly invaded others' personal space, it would have to be uncomfortable.

It was Gabriel's aura that would do it, almost vibrating with tension, and the hardness in his eyes as he stared just past Castiel's head.

"No other angels to stab you in the back with a blade when you weren't looking?" His tone wasn't bitter, but so filled with cold rage that it was exceedingly lucky for Castiel Gabriel didn't currently have the power to smite him. The archangel reached up and tapped Castiel's chest with both open palms, leaning in a bit to stage-whisper: "I'm dead, bro. I'm not fucking ignorant. You wanted Purgatory. Well, you got it."

Castiel picked up on the intense energy radiating off of Gabriel and noticed his strange inability to make eye contact (or even find Castiel's face), but once again was halted from asking what was wrong with him by simply the archangel talking. It was all Castiel could do but stand there and listen to his brother as he spewed out things that made less and less sense as he went on, trying to make heads and tails of what he was being told.

"What are you talking about?" His voice sounded honestly perplexed, because he was. If Gabriel could see Castiel's face, then he would have seen an expression of genuine confusion amongst his growing frustration. As it was, there was only the younger angel's voice for Gabriel to judge.

Castiel had immediately tensed up when he saw Gabriel's hands reach up and when the tap didn't leave him bleeding or dead or something along those lines, he couldn't help but wonder how close he had come to a third death. But it didn't matter -- Gabriel couldn't smite him and was apparently going to get to Cas another way. As though he were suddenly aware of the fact that Gabriel wasn't just bursting his personal bubble but was also definitely within attacking range, Castiel finally backed away a couple steps.

His voice was firm, but still touched with the same honest confusion from before, when he addressed Gabriel's accusations. "This isn't Purgatory, and I have never wanted the real one."

"No?" Gabriel's smile and his gaze didn't move, and in fact at Castiel's movement backward Gabriel followed, his palms still flat on Castiel's chest to guide him. Yet something of Castiel's tone did filter in.

Never wanted Purgatory. Didn't know what he was talking about. The archangel tilted his head.

"Do tell, bro. What is the last thing you remember? And don't lie, now. I'll know." He hoped. Maybe not now, but if--when his sight returned and he could see souls again, he would know.

Having Gabriel follow him when he tried to retreat wasn't comforting, so he was left tense and defensive as he stood there with his brother whose very presence made no sense anymore.

"I remember disarray in Heaven after the Winchesters stopped the Apocalypse and Raphael deciding he was going to take over and restart everything we worked so hard to stop." It really wasn't a lie so it came out sounding truthful, even though there had been... a little bit more that happened between then and waking up here. "I also remember coughing blood onto the ground after I told him not to. Now I'm here."

Gabriel hummed, his fingers curling around Castiel's lapels. In actual fact, he was still thinking. If Castiel was telling the truth, and there was a ring of truth in his words, then that meant he was from a completely different timeline altogether just like Balthazar was. Then again, from all indications Castiel had learned how to lie by the time of his fight with Raphael, and lies were best spread with truths to cover them, so there was still no reason to believe that Cassy hadn't already come up with that stupid Purgatory idea anyway.

Either way, the archangel wished he could risk turning his brother's outfit into a bright orange tutu, but it wasn't worth exacerbating his circumstances. He could wait for his revenge. He was patient. Mostly.

Gabriel smoothed Castiel's lapels and patted them down, still wearing that flat smile, still staring past Castiel's head. "Well then. Maybe I should be saving my wrath for someone else. Maybe."

He had no intention of telling Castiel that Balthazar was here. He had every intention of telling Balthazar.

[ooc: oh, before I forget again, can you fill out Gabe's permissions post, please?]

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(open) you've been gone much longer

Wednesday, June 8

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Thursday, 7 June

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