twispitefic

Title: Dies Irae
Author:

gehayi
Fandom(s): New Moon/Supernatural
Rating:
Word Count: 2,591
Summary: The Angel Castiel has seen human love. He knows that love and Bella Swan have nothing to do with each other.
Chapter Inspiration: Chapter 7 – Repetition
Author’s Note: Okay, I’m going to try another crossover, because dear God, Bella deserves it!

***

“You seriously aren’t sick of me yet?” I wondered. He must be starting to ask himself how desperate I was for company.

Jacob led the way around the house to his garage. “Nope. Not yet.”

“Please let me know when I start getting on your nerves. I don’t want to be a pain.”

Jacob smiled. But before he could say anything, a very calm voice said, “That is a lie.”

“What?” And I spun around to face the person accusing me of lying.

At first glance, he looked ordinary--just a thirtyish man in a dark suit and a brown trench coat, not worth a second glance. But...there was something about him that made you look at him a second time, and then a third and a fourth. Maybe it was his eyes. Their gaze was like a laser beam. I had the feeling that he could see right through me…and that he didn’t much like what he saw.

He turned away from me--leaving me feeling that I’d just been dismissed from the presence of a prince--and spoke to Jacob. “God has sent the Winchesters and me to La Push with a message. You are to relay it to all of your tribe…and to all of the werewolves in the pack.”

“Werewolves?” I stared at the trench-coated man. People just didn’t talk this casually about supernatural matters. Ever.

But the word barely registered with Jacob. He was focusing on something else. “Winchesters?”

Two figures—one impossibly tall—loomed up in the opening to the garage. “That would be us,” the shorter one called out.

Jacob looked nothing so much as scared. Why he should be afraid to be in the presence of the Winchesters and the Holy Nutcase, I had no idea. “Did—did you find them?”

“Oh, yeah,” said the shorter one, swaggering into the garage as if he owned it, his lanky--brother? cousin?--trailing after him. “Sam and I didn’t have any trouble finding the Cullens. Most of ‘em, anyway. Carlisle, Esme, Alice, Jasper, and Edward were all on a family compound on a ranch in rural Mexico. No defenses. No weapons. Nothing. It was stupid, even for vampires.” He sighed as if annoyed with vampiric ineptitude.

“Dean and I took pictures,” added Sam. “Before we steamrollered their corpses, after we steamrollered them, and photos showing them burning on white-hot funeral pyres. We figured that since the Quileutes were paying us, we’d better prove that we’d done what we said we’d do.”

“We didn’t take out Emmett Cullen or Rosalie Hale,” Dean said, sounding grumpy about this. “For one thing, they weren’t there. And for another, Cas” --a nod toward Trenchcoat Man--“wouldn’t let us go after them. He said that they had a different destiny.”

“They will be Hunters,” Cas said, his voice and face still filled with that eerie serenity. “They will save many human lives—and some who are not human. They may, ultimately, redeem their souls in this work; I do not know. But while they Hunt, they serve Heaven.”

That was when it hit me. These men were claiming that Edward, my glittering guardian angel, was dead. That they’d killed him. I was standing here talking to my boyfriend’s murderers.

I opened my mouth to wail or shriek about the sheer wrongness of this...and Cas’s gaze lanced through me once more. “Be still,” he said, and suddenly I couldn’t do anything but be quiet.

“You are not in love with the vampire, Isabella Marie Swan,” he continued. “You only craved what he could give you--beauty, wealth and an accursed form of immortality. Indeed, you have never loved another in your entire life—not your parents, not your alleged friends whom you despise, not this poor werewolf cub who loves--no, not you. A portion of you. Twenty-three chromosomes, to be precise.”

I thought I heard Jacob say, “Wait, ‘werewolf cub’?” But I couldn’t be sure. I was too upset to focus on his crisis; I needed to deal with mine. I couldn’t even think about the possibility that Edward was dead. All I could do was contradict what Cas the Implacable was saying.

“It’s not true,” I whispered, my eyes filling with tears. “I love Edward. I would know if he were dead. I don’t know how you can say something so mind-bogglingly cruel.”

Cas raised an eyebrow and spoke in an utterly indifferent tone. “I say it because it is true. You have never chosen to love another in your entire life. You have experienced emotional addiction, but that is not love. I have witnessed human love. It does not bear any resemblance to addiction, obsession, or greed. And you manufacture misery to gain the attention and adulation of others. There is no drop of love or unselfishness within you.” He gazed at me for a moment with an expression of contempt. “In fact, you are the very epitome of what my brothers and sisters despise about humanity.”

His words felt like physical blows piercing my brain and my heart. What hurt worse than this was the sensation that he was telling the truth. He wasn’t, of course. I knew that. And yet...it felt as if I’d never heard such truth before in my life.

“Aren’t you human?” Jacob demanded.

“No. This vessel is human. But I am not.”

“I hate it when he talks about ‘vessels’,” Dean complained. “I don’t care how you spin it, Cas--an angel possessing someone is just creepy.”

“I am an angel of the Lord,” Cas said with a shrug. “I will not lie.”

“You already have,” I snapped. Now that I knew that he was just another lunatic, I could ignore that sensation of being told the unwelcome truth. “You said that I didn’t love Edward Cullen. And I do! I love him with all my soul!”

His gaze flicked me like a knife. “Your soul is damned.”

Just four words. But when he said them, I could feel the weight of his condemnation. It was unbearable. It hurt. I had to make him take it back.

Dean spoke up before I did. “How’d that happen? Did she make a deal with the yellow-eyed demon—her soul for wealth, power and the corpsified boyfriend?”

“I was thinking this might be one of Lilith’s deals,” Sam said--which made no sense to me whatsoever. “This would be her kind of thing—take the girl’s soul in exchange for the ‘love’ of a vampire, and then make sure that the vampire dies. So Lilith wins either way.”

“I don’t much like the notion of being an instrument of Lilith’s will,” Dean replied, scowling. “Tell me that’s not what happened, Castiel.”

Cas--or Castiel--simply shook his head. “No. This has nothing to do with her, the demon which haunted your family, or any other denizen of Hell. She did it to herself.” He spoke then, shockingly, in my own voice. “‘Edward, you can have my soul--I don’t want it! You’re the only thing that matters to me! You’re my world!’”

Jacob stared at me, appalled. “You said that? You feel that strongly about him?”

“She said it,” Castiel said in that same inexorably calm tone. “She said it repeatedly over the course of six months. And she meant it. Nothing mattered to her but having the beauty, power, and accursed immortality of a Hellbound monster.” He glanced at the brothers, giving them a reproving look. “Sometimes a direct deal with Hell is required...particularly when one human is willing to sacrifice all for the sake of another. But there are complex business arrangements...and there is throwing out the trash. Isabella Swan willingly threw away all hope of salvation months ago, and never missed it.”

I couldn’t breathe.

Jacob didn’t seem to be having that problem. He swallowed, then spoke to Castiel. “Isn’t there some way that she could get it back?”

“Of course,” Castiel said, sounding indifferent. “But that would require remorse and atonement. She is not sorry for her sins. She is merely sorry that she will suffer for them instead of getting what she wants. There is a difference.”

“Remorse and atonement don’t fix everything, anyway,” Dean mumbled, staring at the floor.

“Of course not, Dean,” said Castiel in a voice that sounded almost gentle. “But they do count. And they can signify the beginning of change.”

“So…if she were sorry,” Jacob said slowly, “then everything would be okay?”

“It would require more than being sorry,” Castiel said, his gentle tone disappearing. “She would have to fully embrace her humanity--to stop despising those who cater to her greedy whims and to cease loathing those who do not dance attendance upon her and praise her with great praise. She would have to understand that other people matter, and that their sufferings are no less than her own and may, in fact, be greater. She would have to abandon her position of sociopathic superiority and her overwhelming conviction that she must have or do what she wishes simply because she is Isabella Marie Swan. Most of all, she would have to cast aside her comforting illusions about her supposed love for the vampire.”

He glanced at me dismissively. “I do not think that she will do any of the above. I think it far likelier that she will cling to her illusions and superiority, dismiss me as a mortal madman saying nothing of importance, and continue damaging others around her. Including you, Jacob Black.”

“Me?” Jacob gaped at him. “Why? What’s going to happen to me if I keep hanging around with her? You said ‘werewolf.’ Am I going to eat her or something?”

“No.” Castiel looked, for want of a better word, uncomfortable. “I do not like speaking of what will happen if things remain unchanged.”

“You’ve come this far, Castiel,” said Sam. “You may as well tell the kid.”

“Very well.” He turned back to Jacob. “She will have a bad effect on you if she lives. Her omnipresent dreams of reunion with the dead vampire will corrupt you, causing you to behave like a stalker and a sexual assailant. Eventually, she will prostitute herself by wedding a man who can get her to a place where there are more men of power and wealth to choose from, and you will be little more than her dog. And you will fixate sexually upon her first-born daughter from the very moment of the child’s birth. You will spend years in a quasi-parental, quasi-fraternal relationship with the child...who, when she grows up, will be revolted by the notion of entering a sexual relationship with someone who is not only father and brother to her, but who is also male. The child will be a lesbian. And you will never be able to accept that. You will do everything in your power to become that which she loves, and several things that have less to do with human effort and more to do with evil magic. Eventually, you will become what you hate.” He sighed. “And that is only her potential effect on your life. The damage she will do to her parents, and to humanity in general, will be incalculably worse.”

Sam scratched his nose. “You said ‘if she lives.’”

“This is why you insisted on coming here, isn’t it?” Dean demanded. “Not just to deliver a message in person to La Push. To take her out.”

Csatiel nodded. “She has long been an agent of Hell, after all, albeit an unwitting one. Killing her now will spare billions of people from anguish, corruption and damnation in the future. Go back to the car. I will take care of this.”

Jacob rushed forward; I was still frozen. “No! Look, I don’t care who you are, I’m not going to let you destroy her--”

Castiel blew a breath toward Jacob, who collapsed to the ground.

“You killed him!” I shrieked. “How could you do that?”

“He sleeps. When he wakes, he will remember this as a dream. But the pack will know of its truth. They share consciousness, after all.” A pause. “Sam. Dean. Go back to the Impala.”

Sam squirmed. “I don’t much like the idea of killing someone for being dumb.”

A sigh from Castiel. “Her continued existence will lead to the breaking of eighteen seals—three of them critical. I cannot say that her death will preserve the world or prevent the apocalypse…”

“But it may slow things down a little. And save people she would have destroyed.”

Castiel nodded.

There was more discussion--a lot more--but I wasn’t paying attention to it. I was trying to figure out how to get past this creepy guy who was claiming to be an angel of vengeance. Kicking him in the nuts might have seemed like the obvious decision, but I didn’t even want to touch him. The idea was repulsive.

I was so busy worrying about what I was going to do that I didn’t notice when the Winchesters left. But then Castiel spoke. “Now it is time for you to die.”

I didn’t believe it. Not even then. But I tried to stall him, all the same. “Wait! You can’t do this! You can’t just condemn me to Hell! That’s not angelic at all!”

“It is the will of the Lord,” he said quietly. “And I will do what must be done.”

And with that, he, too, fell to the floor. Or rather, his human body did. There was still something in front of me--something made of fire and smoke and blazing, blinding light--but I don’t know how to describe it. It wasn’t human-shaped. It wasn’t animal-shaped. It was simply...other. The only vaguely familiar thing about it was a pair of impossibly huge wings that seemed to be made of shadow and fire.

It was beautiful. And it was horrifying.

But I only saw it for an instant. Then my eyes exploded.

I screamed--half in pain, half in raw terror. I might have been wailing, too, and begging for mercy. But not crying. How can you cry without eyes?

He spoke. I couldn’t understand a word, but, as with my eyes, I didn’t have worry about that for long. First the windows in the garage shattered, and then my eardrums burst. I could feel the blood trickling out of them. I knew somehow that I would never hear again.

“Kill me,” I said--or thought I said--out loud. “I can’t live like this.”

I felt the faintest brush of a flame against my skin. For one brief and hideous moment that lasted for eternity, every atom in my body was on fire. I couldn’t even scream. There was nothing left in my body that was capable of speech or breath.

And then, as my body crumpled to ash on the floor, I felt myself rushing toward something so vile, so twisted, so obscene that it made me feel befouled just to be in its presence. I could see this wasteland--for lack of a better word--but seeing was no longer a benefit.

A gelatinous creature covered in eyes and mouths reached out a tentacle and touched me. As it did, I felt myself shifting into a repulsive, nightmarish form very different from my old one. Without being told, I knew that my new grotesque form would be permanent.

The tentacled blob smiled at me with all of its mouths and spoke in a mocking, rasping voice. “Welcome to Hell, Bella Swan. Welcome to eternity.”