Bird's Eye View for twoskeletons

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Title: Bird’s Eye View
Author: axilet
Recipient: twoskeletons
Rating: PG
Warnings: Implied main character deaths, a little bad language.
Author's Notes: Unlikely to ever happen in canon, but oh well.
Summary: Years later, Castiel leaves Jimmy Novak. Jimmy's family has aged, but he hasn't, and he is now the same age as Claire. Post 6.22 spec, second generation.


---

I'm sitting on the ceiling
I had to know the feeling
I'm sitting in the shelter
I'm going down helter-skelter
I'm sitting in the concrete
I'm listening for a heartbeat

Every time I turn around
There's another face watching me
Every time I turn around
There's another voice calling me
Every time I turn around
There's another fool reading me
Every time I turn around
There's another silence drowning me

- Porcupine Tree, “And the Swallows Dance Above the Sun”

---

Jimmy Novak wakes up with the distinct feeling that he is missing several vital limbs and organs. He cannot see, he cannot move—the only reason he does not scream is because this has become familiar, the odd and the strange become routine with the passing of the days. He stays still and breathes slowly until the dark of the room lightens to gray to his staring eyes, and identifies the bonds pinning his arms to his sides as the thick layers of blankets twisted around him and the weight on his chest as a carelessly flung arm.

Jimmy has to smile, even as his body shakes itself through the last aftershocks of whatever latest bad dream he feels compelled to subject himself to. Her breathing remains light and steady, and he is glad that he has not roused her; the first time she had leaped from sleep to wakefulness in an instant, snatching from under her pillow a rather large hunting knife. Living in paranoia is how she is still living after so long. Seeing her at peace, eyes shut and mouth unbowed by stress, is rare and he has to brace himself for the usual cocktail of emotions that chase this observation: guilt and pride and love and unhappiness. Mostly, regret.

This isn’t what he wanted for her. Then again, it’s not like any of them is in the happy ending he had once naively envisioned, back when angels were on the side of Good and putting God before his family had sounded right and reasonable; the kind of sacrifice the servants of God made, the first step into their thousand-mile journey. The world has changed and it has changed again since then. Tomorrow could be the start of yet another new age.

He gets up as carefully as possible, shifting the blankets around him. He is always cold, these days, without the fire in his blood. No matter how he sweats he can still imagine ice forming in the tunnel of his breath, riming the walls of his veins. It is especially bad after the dreams. Sleeping reminds him of being a vessel, dredges up all the soft half-formed memories, the smeared impressions that otherwise lie under the surface of awareness like river silt.

There will be no more rest for him tonight. Jimmy makes one round, checking all the wards are secure before perching on the edge of the bed to face the window, waiting for the dawn. He is not bored. It is no longer a word that has meaning for him, not when the first thing he had to master to keep his sanity was a saint’s patience and then some. If there are people who have built defenses against boredom, Jimmy has erected fortifications and raised whole battalions against that common scourge of humanity.

The night is full of small subtle sounds. Jimmy takes interest in them as he might peruse the lines of a good book, and so the hours pass.

Sure as clockwork her eyes open when the first rays of the sun crawl in through the strategic part in the curtains. Jimmy has to consciously will himself to shift his shoulders to ease the stiffness in them, comb his fingers through his hair. She hates it when he sits too still, when he forgets all those little gestures like the way an inept forger leaves off the fine details of a particularly challenging signature by accident. He’s been training himself, trying to fall back into the old ruts habit had ground into him before the angel had swallowed him up and washed clean all the old paths. He hates it when he sees the old fear start and stop in her face as she has to take a split second to wonder and reassure herself. It is his fault the fear was ever planted within her, a small seed taken poisonous root. He will ensure there is no longer any reason for it to grow.

She smiles at him, so it must be working. He smiles back—no need to work at this one. “Good morning,” she says, a hint of teasing in her voice. It must have been years since she isn’t the only one to be awake at an ungodly hour. It must be nice to not be alone.

“Good morning, Claire,” he answers, and kisses his daughter’s cheek.

---

Jimmy did not really think of what came after, lying there bleeding out the rest of his life onto the floor. The second time he did not mean yes me Jimmy. He meant no not Claire please no and this fear consumed his mind, swallowed up all the other lesser fears he might have had for himself. He did not think he might never open his own eyes again, or feel his daughter’s hand in his or make love to his wife in the small hours of the morning. He did not think that he might wake up alive when everyone else he knew was dead of old age and disease and war. Every quiver of his stilling heart was a call of urgency. He packed his remaining time with pleas, one for every long-drawn breath.

(Blood like iron in his mouth. He had a fleeting, longing thought for the sandwich Amelia had made for him, still sitting on the dining table. He will never taste it but will always taste what could have been.)

When Castiel-in-Claire looked at him her gaze did not stop at his face but peeled back the skin and muscle and bone to the frantic starving brain beneath. Just as they were two in one the barriers in between them were suddenly nonexistent. Jimmy’s body was shortly to be nothing more than an empty sack of useless flesh and blood. In contrast she was beautiful, radiant with light shining from her skin and the blue of her eyes and Jimmy wanted nothing more than to extinguish that light like a flame, pull his only child back to earth and never let her go again.

He was forced then to trade one lesser wish for another, speak the words. Yes Castiel I will sacrifice anything for my daughter. Yes. Yes. God and the end of the world were forgotten. Claire shivered, her head canting downward. For one moment they were truly together, her fingers tightening around his—

Castiel descended in a rush, an eagle from the sky. Jimmy drowned in cool, merciless grace. For a while, there was only stuttering silence, on and off, white noise like a radio without a signal.

There were times he could tune in to the right frequency, usually by accident, mostly when Castiel needed to heal, a diverting of grace that for a time draws back the haze with the trade-off of pain jabbing like needles through his skull. He stored whatever brief snapshots he could steal from Castiel’s lapse in attention with care, poring over them with the intensity of an old man searching the scenes of a happier youth; drinking in the only sight and sound with any meaning in an illusory world.

Even now Jimmy remembers flying, the cool rush of displaced air against his face and the raw electrical smell of spent grace. He wakes up often just a few feet from the ground, his heart in mid-escape from his throat, now that he no longer has wings to catch him and toss him aloft the sweeping winds.

---

This is what happened afterward.

Jimmy Novak comes back from the effective dead relatively unscathed—in form, at least, if not in mind. The first weeks were the worst, when he wandered dazed and confused through a chaotic shifting fog, flinching away at the slightest sound. Once the voices get in his head he cannot get them out. His entire body aches from the underside of his chin and the top of his hips as if he has been sliced open cleanly and his heart scooped clean out. He is empty. He can fall for hours through the void of his own head.

Then one day the fog clears and he looks to the side and sees instantly the mop of golden hair spilling over his pillow, the graceful curve of the sleeping body next to him. He would have been afraid only that he sees the hole in him is also in her, her soul dusted with angel’s grace like the powder off the wings of a moth. They are the same and Jimmy feels a rush of grateful kinship, as though the real world has suddenly reached out and gripped him solidly for the first time in what feels like an eternity.

It is the first step and she is there, always, to pull him up the rest of the way. Jimmy had such aspirations to save his daughter. In the end she is the one who saves him.

---

Castiel helped save the world with the Winchesters. Castiel turned his back on a destructive plan and joined the side of the humans.

Jimmy, stupidly, trusted him again when he says it’s not over. Just a little longer…

Then Castiel swallowed the contents of Purgatory in a move Jimmy never saw coming, and the walls between them went back up. This time, they had teeth and claws and thick, writhing limbs. (Jimmy feels them still, phantom movements scratching against the inside of his skull.) The souls that built the foundations died in fear and hatred and agony. They brought to Jimmy’s mind the eternal fires of Purgatory.

And he burned along with them.

---

Jimmy comes back from the nearest gas station with his arms loaded with fuel for the road and satisfied with this minor accomplishment. There is a familiar black car parked next to Claire’s and he comes to a dead stop, feeling ice trickle down the curve of his spine. The texture of the leather seats is as familiar to him as his ex-wife’s skin. He can feel it again, haunting as a stubborn ghost: the music rattling his bones, the purring of the car engine, the clattering of the little green man in the ash tray. In a way it is more home to him than the ill-fitting suit of his own body.

His lungs remind him of their need for air. He drags in one breath after another until the motion becomes smooth and easy and natural as it should be. The street is streaked with red through his blurring eyes and he steps carefully in between the swoops and curves of blood on the way to the door. There are raised voices on the other side. Jimmy opens it without hesitation and his eyes fill in the details of the man’s shape, lightning-quick, before his mind registers what he is doing. Dean. He feels like crying because it only takes a second to realize it isn’t true.

“Do you realize the danger—“ The man stops mid-shout, swings towards Jimmy. Where his face is white with anger, Claire’s is flushed and her hands are curled tight at her sides. Jimmy knows instantly they are talking about him. He is ever the only source of contention between the two of them. Claire had introduced him before. His name is Ben. Ben who owns that car now, Ben whose anger has switched to the target he wanted all along. “They’re looking for you,” he says, low and full of rage, because he cares very much for Claire. In another life Jimmy might have approved of him as a son-in-law; now he just feels a vague dislike. It’s not personal. He feels that way towards anyone who might possibly threaten to take Claire away from him.

“They?” he prompts.

“Don’t,” Claire snaps, but it’s half-hearted. She sounds tired. “Don’t you dare, Ben Braeden, I can handle this just fine—”

“The monsters,” Ben interrupts in a tone that heavily implies you great staggering idiot.”They had a grudge against the guy drinking them up like fucking Gatorades, now they have a grudge against the moron who let the big bad wolf in. I just helped clean up a nest of vamps right here in this neighborhood.” He smirks. “Demons, too. They all want a piece, and they’re all willing to share.”

Claire shifts her eyes away when Jimmy looks at her. “I wanted it to be my turn to protect you,” she says quietly. She doesn’t have to finish. The brand of guilt is on her, all the time, for having played the part of the hostage so well. Jimmy does not know how to ease its weight, unsure whether a sick man has the ability to heal another. It is almost funny the way they fight for the title of most guilty, only he knows it is in fact not in the least amusing.

“The longer you hang around her, the higher the likelihood you’re going to get your daughter killed.” Ben does not mince words. “Meanwhile, are you even human enough to die?”

Claire flinches as though she is the one the words are meant to strike against. “Ben!” she hisses, stepping into a fighter’s pose. “Take that back!”

“No,” Jimmy says. “He’s right.”

He thinks of demons, of black eyes and the Cheshire Cat’s grin on Roger’s face, bows his head in concentration and speaks the words rising from the deep like the memories he replays in his sleep. He has never uttered a word of Latin before today but Castiel knows, of course he knew and somewhere in that fingernail sliver of himself he left behind is a library’s worth of knowledge. The exorcism is flawless and he opens his eyes to see amazement on Claire’s face and a raised eyebrow on Ben’s.

“But we can take that risk,” Jimmy says, determined. “That’s not the only thing I can do now. I can help too, Claire. We can stay together if you let me help.”

Claire lifts her head, and she is smiling, her eyes wide as if she is seeing him for the first time. Maybe she is. “Okay,” she says. “Sounds like a plan.”

---

“Isn’t this what you always wanted, Jimmy? To be needed by your God?”

“We’ve already saved the world once. That’s all I signed up for. God is gone, Castiel! He said it Himself, He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about this place anymore!”

“Gods can be made. And I have remade myself.”

“…Castiel. You wouldn’t—“

“You doubt me. Let me show you.”

Jimmy screamed.

---

They pick the day at random. Choosing the anniversary would have been cliché and more importantly predictable, and it isn’t good to be predictable with a pack of vengeful monsters at your heels. Jimmy’s head still rings faintly from the effort of setting up the trail of sigils, left behind to further throw off the hunt. He could, perhaps, break into a gentle jog if pursued but he is confident in his work.

Claire takes no chances as they walk through the abandoned neighborhood. Her face is grim, her grip on her guns unwavering. The street is a ruin, pockmarked and cratered as the surface of the moon. Shattered glass crunches under their feet. There had been token efforts at cleaning the mess up, but few of the workers care to stay for long. There are rumors that the town is cursed; maybe they are even true.

Jimmy is unsure of his own motives in coming, and Claire has chosen to be inscrutable. They climb up the broken stairs, looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes. The walk through the narrow hallway takes forever, but they pause collectively in front of the door and it is Claire who at last turns the knob and pushes it in.

The floor of the room inside has crumbled more than it is safe to walk upon, and they cannot come any closer. But they can see clearly enough the melted and blackened stone, the warped outline of vast wings burnt right into the wall, stretching towards the ceiling where a bloody circle forever stares into the pit in the center of the room. Jimmy bites his lip as an echo of an old wound passes like a bullet through his chest, opening and closing cold fingers around his heart.

They stand there in silence, waiting, mourning, standing vigil. The air is as heavy and suffocating as velvet, here, oppressive as a summer heat. Jimmy has to shrug off his jacket and drape it over his arm. Nothing else moves.

“It could have been me,” Claire says after a moment. “That’s why I had to set things right, somehow.” She swallows, visibly, and wipes at the sheen of sweat on her face. “I know this wasn’t really what you wanted, Dad. Castiel told me—”

“He was lying,” Jimmy says distantly.”He only wanted to make you stop fighting.” He takes one last look at the tomb and turns away. “Let’s go,” he says, and they climb back out to the land of the living.

---

This is one of the last conversations they will ever have.

“I know what you dream about,” Castiel tells him.

“It’s not as if I can stop you,” Jimmy says bitterly.

They are standing in front of a window—in the house Jimmy used to live in. A little girl is playing outside and her hair flashes golden in the sun. Her face is turned away because he can no longer remember what she looks like. Amelia is in the kitchen baking cookies for exactly the same reason. They are fading like flowers pressed in a book, dry and colorless and thin as paper; yet he clings so helplessly to them. Perhaps Amelia has already remarried. Perhaps Claire has a boyfriend, and they will forget about him. That’s the best thing they can do.

“You can have this all back, Jimmy,” Castiel says gently. “Exactly as it once was.” He blinks, a brief gathering of power; and suddenly Claire is in Jimmy’s arms, warm and heavy and substantial. She giggles and buries her face in his shoulder, smelling of soap and grass and chocolate cookies. She feels so real.

“That’s impossible,” Jimmy says, even as his heart is breaking and the sun in the sky is dimming, dipping into the horizon. “They have changed. I have changed.”

“I am God,” Castiel reminds him. “Nothing is impossible for me.”

---

It’s not perfect.

But, somehow, it works.

-end-