hadriel | video;

Um... I'm Castiel. Some of you know me, obviously. I sometimes show myself at the clinic--I'm a healer. Well. [ He looks down into his lap. ] I try to be. The ailment that so badly hit us last month was beyond my ability to remedy, and for that I am deeply sorry.

However if there is anything, any scrape, any...broken leg, or incurable sickness... I should be able to resolve it. Should be. Given the state of my powers here, it does seem to be a game of chance. But I have healed far worse in the past. It's better, surely, to let me try than to live with pain and scarring when I might help with both.

But that isn't what I was here to say, not really. I wanted to... I want to...

I haven't been very clear, and I feel that it's important, given the way things were, and the way things will likely be again. I hear you, all of you, when you turn to prayer. It's impossible to avoid, and while I understand that it is private... I just wanted to apologize, either way.

[ ooc: Castiel doesn't hear all character's prayers since you can opt out of that on his permissions post, however! It's a fun way to make new CR with him if you're interested; just drop him a prayer in his IC inbox! ]

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Sincerity...um. Sincerity is preferable. But it isn't as though you must pray to God. Or even speak out loud.

Everything is that much louder, here, with so few voices speaking.

I certainly have more faith in you than I ever have in any god, dearheart.

Yes. It's very lonely, isn't it?

[ He nods, quietly. ]

Yes, it's very... It isn't that I don't have occupation, I do. And company. But it is quiet, without the people--and without the bees.

You could pray to me, if you like. I hear those prayers louder than any others, and I would always be listening.

I know.

I'm coming to see you. I work best in touching distance.

Okay. Perhaps by the river? I like it there.

Bianca likes the river too. The endless motion of water reminds her that a wider universe still exists, and the lush growth of Hadriel's strange riparian plant life is almost enough to convince herself she's not trapped underground.

She approaches the angel smiling, her hyenas trotting behind her, and she doesn't stop until her arms are wrapped around him, her head on his shoulder. Bianca is one of a species created to be aware of each other at all times, to move in concert like a hive of bees, and she and Castiel are both the only ones of their kind in this tiny, stagnant pool of reality.

She is not accustomed to praying; but she aches with the need to not be alone in her own head. Perhaps that amounts to the same thing.

Castiel, like Bianca, sees the water as beautiful, but it is also alien; it doesn't carry with it everything he knows about its source, minerals leeched from boats in the water, animals and plantlife, even the rocks themselves, because he doesn't know where it comes from, or where it will go. There's a sensation of distance even in analysis of the water itself, but he can watch it and admire it none the less, even feed the cave fish on occasion, and that is something that he would rather not do without; a connection.

He glances up at Bianca's approach, but doesn't hesitate, accepting the hug the moment it falls on his shoulders and reciprocating the way he was taught, the way he knows best, firmly and with generous intent. He counts the exact, precise length of time that each of his other hugs seems to have lasted for, them begins to relax his shoulders, as though willing to release her and be released.

"It's the quiet, isn't it? How long have you endured it?"

Connection. It's exactly that Bianca craves, exactly that that she reaches for when she touches him.

There are other telepaths here: there's Wanda, there's Pell, there's Ushahin, and Bianca is friendly with them all. Still, none of them are her kind, none of them entirely fill that need. Nor, really, does Castiel, but his extradimensional nature, something larger and wider and deeper than he body he wears, make him a little closer.

She can hear him counting, and she smiles into his shoulder, not very willing to be released.

"Always. In a sense. I was created to be part of something larger - although, admittedly, I was equally never willing to subsume myself that way. It's harder, here. I can't even deceive myself that I'm alone by choice."

Edited 2016-10-06 14:38 (UTC)

When the hug goes past the few seconds, he doesn't question her--rather, he questions his own assessment of how long hugs can continue for. With others, there had always seemed to be a rule, a limit, which he'd found odd, because hugs were so comforting and openly familiar that surely if humans liked them so much they'd be hugging all the time. Castiel certainly liked them, and he found no social discomfort in this one lingering, because social discomfort wasn't really a thing he struggled with.

"Is anyone ever alone by choice? Nothing exists entirely by itself, and should not; even light has darkness. I was... I was forced to be alone, for a time, but even then it wasn't like this. It's unsettling. I think the human term for it is 'eerie', but I can't be sure. Is that right, do you think?"

Bianca is not human, however, and at close range nothing about her is particularly humanlike except appearance: her body scent, her time sensitivity, the structure of her brain and even the cool, dense texture of her skin mark her out as something entirely other.

But then, so is Castiel, and it's largely that part of him that makes him so soothing for her. Her timeship is also a powerful extradimensional being, also voluntarily bound into a physical form out of a passion to help and serve, and even in Hadriel where they can't reach each other, their symbiosis is bound into her very atoms and her timeline. If it were practical, she would remain wrapped around Castiel for the rest of their time here.

Of course, it isn't practical, and eventually she peels herself loose with some reluctance.

"I've heard the Silent Hill district described that way, but I rather enjoy the atmosphere there. Humans are built to be alone in their minds. I find it not so much eerie as horrifying."

At the mention of the place, Castiel goes very quiet. His thoughts turn inward, his shoulders hunch. It's a different part of him, a different side of him, because as hard as he has been working to be himself, there is still that part of him that is just so very fragile, a sensitive creature who has done so much wrong, and feels the guilt of doing so wearing him down, affecting all of his actions past and present. He had done harm, and the possibility that he might do harm again is a threat, looming, almost desperate to cripple him once more.

And the Silent Hill event had done so much to him. Dean's demon self, the threat that would be faced if his tie to the Mark was ever pushed too far, and his own--the Leviathan, the creature that threatened all and everyone, while wearing the faces of their friends, a creation that had leapt right out of his own terrors and taken shape, ready to maim and kill more even though he had hoped that his part in it was done.

"Why would you seek it out, if you find it so terrible?"

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