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Sunflowers and Pussy Willows
Cas held his angel blade in the brilliant shaft of light from The Garden’s sun. It glinted in the white light and illuminated the hard metal of the blade. He swung it loosely from his fingertips. The blade felt useless now. An artifact of another universe. Another realm and timeline where his heart was shattered and his soul lost, broken. The sunflowers in Jack’s Garden peeked around the column. Their heavy heads bobbed non sequitur to the Roman columns they pressed against. Castiel didn’t know why Jack chose this presentation of The Garden, but it was bright, flowery, classical even. He appreciated the austere beauty of it even if he didn’t understand his son’s decision. To Cas there was only one place that was Heaven and it wasn’t anywhere he could walk around. He felt his heart dip into the cool sadness of his longing. His loneliness. His love wrapped in agony around Dean’s journey. It felt like a lifetime. It felt like several lifetimes. It felt like an infinity. Cas smiled bitterly at the thought. It really was infinite. He looked up at their son. Jack sat across from him. They were perched at the foot of two tall columns in a pavilion that reminded Castiel of ancient Rome. Jack was staring off somewhere over both of their heads. Far off into the distance or perhaps into another universe.
“How far is he?” Castiel asked even though he knew he could find the answer himself, if he allowed himself to open that connection. Jack grimaced at his father’s anguish.
“Far,” he smiled, regretfully. “He’s searching. Lost…” Jack dropped off.
Cas knew there was only one solution to their problem. And to his longing. They had to wait. Cas tucked away his heartache for another day. What’s a day? He laughed.
“Which galaxy is he in?” he asked. Jack squinted into the distance and tilted his head. Cas smiled at the boy’s unconscious mirroring.
“He’s been through many, but he’s some place I can’t see,” Jack said, matter-of-factly. He wasn’t unaware of his father’s heart ache, but there really was nothing he could do. The universe hung, once again, on the whim of a forty-year old man and his glass heart.
Cas looked up at the oddness of Jack’s answer. “Where you can’t see him?”
Jack raised a critical eyebrow. “I am running a universe solely off my own energy, Father.” Cas smiled thinly and submitted to his son’s mild chastisement. Father? Another thing that changed after that fateful day in the dungeon. Jack began to call him “Father.” Not Cas or Castiel, but “Father.” The formality of it was abrasive when their relationship had been anything but formal since the day Jack chose him. Cas knew he was Jack’s father, but somehow it fell hard and left a subtle stab to his heart like the sentiment was still incomplete. And there it was again.
He shook his head. Dean’s absence was never far from his thoughts. If he could seal the door that connected him to Dean–he would. In a heartbeat. Sometimes it felt like too much to bear. The universe once again asked too much of him. He swallowed.
“Freewill is a prickly bitch, isn’t she?” he asked bitterly and knew he sounded very much like the Absent Man that was somehow never absent.
Jack grinned widely and laughed. He held a flower crown and he spun it around his fingers. He flipped it up between his two hands and caught it in the L of his index finger and thumb. “Dean Winchester would agree.” He smiled and tossed the flower crown in smooth slow motion onto Castiel’s head in a playful display of his telekinesis.
Cas looked cross-eyed up at the crown as it slipped over his head and onto his eyebrows. “All dressed up with nowhere to go,” he said. His voice again sounded far more bitter than he had intended. He swung the angel blade around and sent beams of light skittering around the pavilion, then slid it up into his sleeve. He had no use for it anymore and yet he found himself tucking the weapon of war into his jacket just as often as when he would take it out. He also really had no purpose for wearing clothes anymore, but that led down a different path he wasn’t ready to walk down. He was glad Jack still acknowledged the human idiosyncrasy of clothes. He wasn’t ready for the whole Adam and Eve thing. He sighed. Or Adam and Serafina.
“What should we work on today?” he asked in an effort to distract himself.
Jack looked up at the flowery crown. “Should I make you a May Day festival?” he asked, earnestly. Jack had held a thatch of willow buds in his other hand. “Tis the season after all,” he said to the willow buds. Their small white buds were furry with new life and they froze in their eruption of blooms when Jack had pulled them from the dancing tree in the Garden. He turned them in his hand and Cas smiled appreciatively at Jack’s consideration. Jack twitched his eyebrows and puckered his lips thoughtfully. Cas smiled at the shadow of Dean’s sass. Jack ignored his father’s fondness and studied the broken ends of the branches. He waved his free hand in a small circle around the stems and the jagged pieces of the plant turned smooth, green and slim. Then they sprung into a handful of bushy roots that ended in the whispers of a trees’ proper end.
Jack held the small bundle of twigs which had become a handful of saplings under his focus. With one hand he released the saplings and stood them upright in the air. With the other hand he waved his fingers as if to beckon the growth forward like a spinner pulling thread from her wheel. The buds grew fat and some sprung small thorns that grew into drooping branches. The two saplings grew from broken branches to small trees under Jack’s ministrations.
Cas smiled and crinkled his eyes approvingly. “Very good, Jack,” he praised the boy’s kindness and skill with his powers.
Jack beamed at his father’s praise.“Now instead of two broken branches, two parts broken from their origin, they’re two growing trees.” He smiled brightly.
Cas felt a lump in his throat and tears stung his eyes. The tact of the boy’s allegory was not lost on him and he was left wondering how much if any of the boy’s display had been accidental–or intentional.
Jack continued and opened his hand like a flower blooming and the saplings followed suit. “Ready to bloom. Independent, but whole,” the god-child finished his thought.
Cas shook his head and his lips quivered with the simple beauty and truth this remarkable being brought forth from practically nowhere. “Jack–” his voice broke. Jack ‘cast’ the two saplings out of the shadows of the marble pavilion and they whirled like maple seeds caught in the wind. They floated down to the emerald grass of Jack’s Garden as they followed the arc of The Maker’s hand.
Cas and Jack walked to the edge of the pavilion. They leaned against the manifestation of Roman superiority as the two floating saplings touched down on the spongey grass.
Jack stopped their trembling roots before they plunged into the earth. “What do you think?” He looked to his father. “Should they be close together? Entwined? Their roots? Their branches? Or should we space them a bit farther apart so their roots can grow as full as their crowns?”
Cas smiled through tears. He knew what the boy was asking. “Apart, but certainly close enough that their roots and branches will touch… eventually,” he concluded.
Jack smiled. “Fair enough.” He took both hands now and brought them together. Then slowly he pulled the two saplings apart. They were nearly on opposite sides of the lawn, but Jack was looking towards the future. The future where the two trees were full grown and thriving not the slim potential of two meager saplings, but of their well tended mature possibilities. Their crowns would block the sunlight and become homes for whatever critters that might appear. Their leaves and branches would sway like silk in the breeze. Their trunks and arms would be thick, gnarled and sturdy. They’d reach for each other, no doubt, across the gap towards each other and….
“They need–” Jack dropped the saplings gently onto the mounds of emerald grass. He curled his hands down and around like a child digging into soft dirt. He wiggled his fingers in the air and the roots buried themselves in the fecund loam. He mounded his hands around an invisible base for each sapling like a wisened gardener. When their roots were nestled in the loam, he turned his palms up like a magician showing his innocence and then brought his fingers up like the gardener who feels the soil run through his hands. With his motions grass sprouted around the fibrous roots and covered the upturned soil.
With the saplings planted, he brought his hands together again in front of himself, but this time he dug them down deep like a great shovel in the earth. The emerald grass between the willows erupted with broken earth and tangled roots.The thick green carpet became chunks of jigsaw that will never fit together the same way again. Jack broke the earth up and crumbled the roots, soil, grass, and rocks in his hands. Where there was once a carpet of green, there was now a fluffy dark mound of rich earth. He ran his fingers through the air like ripples in a pond. With the earth now broken, the surrounding ground crumbled from its absence. Jack’s hands moved through the air like a silent, but great earthquake underneath the grass.
After the earth lay broken and loose, Jack clenched his fists together and a dark scowl crept onto his face. It was a look that signaled anger, but if you looked past the harshness, you could see he was concentrating. He clenched his hands firmly together and pulled down to his chest in one violent movement. In front of the two, the ground shuddered, groaned and compacted tightly into a large, rough divot. A cloud of dirt shot up from the abrupt change and the pavilion shivered its marble pillars from the nearby disturbance. The crushed clods of dirt, rock, grass and roots formed a large basin between the two willow saplings. Jack opened his hands and then pressed them down like a baker patting soft dough. He smoothed the basin into a hard, flat cup. A few more pats and Jack finally rested his hands. He dropped them to his side with a soft smile on his lips. He surveyed his work and looked expectantly at his father.
Castiel had been watching the boy’s face and hands work more than the garden’s transformation and his face slipped into an embarrassed display of paternal pride. He looked back to the garden to give Jack his acknowledgement. “Uh, well,” he hemmed. “That is, a, lake? Pond?”
Jack smiled. “A small pond. A reflecting pool, if you will,” he chirped. “Willows bend towards the water.” He let his father finish the thought.
“Ah,” Castiel caught on, “Yes, a reflecting pool for the willows to bend towards.” Cas stated the obvious, but felt like he was still missing some part of his son’s point. Jack smiled and waited silently for a moment. Cas looked back to the trees with what would be a pool between them. He stared. Jack stared.
More silence.
Then Jack decided his father wasn’t seeing the deeper message. “Willow trees bend towards the water. It was considered a plant from the realm of Saturn because of its affinity for water. But it was also a sacred tree of Hecate.” He paused and waited again. Castiel felt foolish as it became clear his son was indeed trying to teach him something. The foolishness coming from himself obviously still not getting the point. Jack let the silence linger and then with a wordless smile at his father’s lack of comprehension, he resumed his world building. A small world. A pocket-sized world in comparison to the infinite horizon of creation he now found himself enmeshed with. He smiled serenely and dragged his fingers through the air in front of him like a weaver threading her loom. Out of nowhere, droplets of water zoomed down from the sky with his gestures. He halted the droplets midair by cupping his hand underneath them as if to catch the falling water. Castiel was now fully in awe of witnessing this small creation. Jack continued.
He cupped both hands to hold the water above the land. The many droplets had coalesced into a quivering, gelatinous blob that sparkled and shimmered with the light of heaven in its churning innards. Jack lowered the water towards the packed soil and right before it would splash against the new basin, Jack separated his two palms and the water slipped out of its floating mass and darkened the broken soil with its presence. Jack opened his hands wider to release it into its new home as he continued his lesson.
“Hecate was often portrayed as a three-faced deity or three goddesses as one,” he added. Then waited for his student to catch up. Cas feigned comprehension.
“Um. Yes, Hecate–” But he didn’t finish the scholarly thought because he still didn’t see where the boy was leading him. He tapped his thick finger to his lip and began spouting any Hecate trivia he could remember. “Goddess of magic, witchcraft, the moon, the night… uh, light?” He furrowed his brow at the contradictory representation. “Ghosts, necromancy….” He began to trail off. “The goddess of the crossroads.” He smiled ruefully. “An intermediary. A mediator.” He nodded now and felt the predicted emotions welling up… the Absent Man. “The Maiden. The Mother. The Crone. Youthful vigor. Fresh perspectives. Boundless potential. The waxing moon,” he added as he observed his son’s latest creation. A serene blue pool like a flat polished stone of aquamarine between two diminutive willow trees. The blueness coming from its crystal reflection of The Garden’s blue sky above. A balance in blue. The willow trees’ nakedness were scarcely covered by filaments that would look like proper branches soon enough and their small spring green buds tightly packed against the limp twigs that shot from the propagated branch. He nodded. “The Mother. Love's depth, resilience, and the nurturing heart of existence. Abundance and care. Love.” He paused. “Sacrifice… and the art of balance. The full moon.”
Jack stood next to his father and nodded along quietly. He smiled and then tilted his head to the right. “The Crone,” he said, rather abruptly. He finally met his father’s eyes and the old man was humbled. Castiel raised his eyebrows, fiddled with the hem of his trenchcoat’s sleeve and cleared his throat with a battery of excuses that had nothing to do with the wintering of his age–or the graying of his temples. He pursed his lips with irritation and let sleeping dogs lie. Jack finished the lesson without judgment–and without sparing the old man’s fragility.
“The crossroads of conclusion and wisdom.” He took a breath (for the old man’s sake, not his.) “It’s easy to see The Crone as a symbol of the inevitable. The end. But she also reminds us of the insights that come with a lifetime of experience. She isn’t just the twilight. Or the waning moon. She’s the culmination of lessons learned. Of life and accepting that life.” He sighed deeply. “Life’s ‘ebb and flow.’”
Castiel sniffed like a scolded school boy and stopped fiddling with his clothes. He cleared his throat again and tried to act like the adult here.
“She may fade,” Jack continued. “But after a short absence… she’ll be back.” He smiled more broadly. “As The Maiden.” Castiel blushed and laugh-snorted. “Ebb and flow, huh?” he asked Jack.
“Ebb and flow,” Jack agreed. He tucked his hands behind his back and walked towards the edge of the pavilion. The sunflowers danced and bobbed with the wind. They were unbothered by the impulsive terraforming that just shook their whole world. Their dark hairy discs hung heavy on the thick stalks. The seeds had not formed yet, but pollinators busily did their duty and a few bees scurried about the bobbing heads as they covered their bodies with bright yellow pollen to bring to another disc. Jack squinted at the bees.
“Do you feel like planting more sunflowers right now?” he asked and winced at the thought of speeding the sunflower’s season along to where the seeds fattened and fell from their withering disc ready for a new life. If he sped it along they could plant a new line of blooming sunflowers around the reflecting pool.
Castiel studied the plant and tilted his head to the right. “We can wait. To everything there is a season.” Jack raised his eyebrows at his student’s quick turnaround. “And it's not their season, yet,” he added somberly. Jack beamed and nodded once.
“Good.”
—
Dean covered his eyes with his left hand. He pulled his right hand up, but held the Colt level with the flare of lightning that burst from the darkness in front of him. He heard the squeal of rubber on stone and his heart leapt.
Baby
The squeals turned to a crashing of metal and the shriek like splintering glass through dimensions and he blinked his eyes in the return of all encompassing blackness. He could hear Baby’s engine humming in the murky night. Wherever he had ended up it was always dark. Always dark, always cold and always damp. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face and the air was eerily silent of any life sounds. He had felt the dark vastness all around. Under him. Over him. Surrounding him. He had had to feel his way with one foot along the pebbly ground to make sure he wasn’t standing on the edge of some unimaginable redeath.
Wherever he was going. He didn’t want this place to be his last stop.
He had felt along his jacket for the Colt and then patted the other pocket for his journal. The thick leather-bound notebook was always on him. He had had to trade it out a few times and kept the other copies safely stowed under Baby’s seat. But then he lost her. And now he was stuck wherever.
The infinite darkness was only occasionally illuminated with a harsh eruption of some kind of electrical storm that brewed over the silent skies. The thunderbolts would touch down onto some poor sap–a tree, a rat, a rock, a something, another lost interdimensional traveler, maybe–and the entire world was shocked with white light against the black skies. This way he had seen there really was something but really nothing. Which was fine. He was already dead, but at least he wasn’t stuck on Earth. Doomed to roam as a restless spirit and on his way to becoming a vengeful spirit if he didn’t do something. Anything.
So he left. He left whichever way he could leave. An act he should have done sooner. An act that he toyed with his entire… well… life. But it wasn’t until now that he finally did it. In his afterlife.
He had run every light. Ran back to where he thought he’d find the answer. Back to where he thought he had been born. He went through all the names that went before him. All the lives that had been tangled in the web of Chuck’s lies and with every name, every timeline, every universe, every life he found an insatiable rage filled him.
Destined for a life of being torn.
That’s what Chuck’s “plan” had been. Nothing more. And he wouldn’t abide by the rules of Fate anymore. They deserved more.
He stared out to the light
And held his hands against the walls of time
Through barely opened eyes and yelled out
"Though you may want me
I ain't ready to go"
He deserved more and he wasn’t ready to go until he had roamed every road and untethered every life that Chuck had tried to tie to his ego.
But he thanked whatever god he might when he heard Baby crash through the whatever it was and heard those tires scream against the blackstone. He could smell the hot metal against the cold world and the dripping fog sizzled on her hood. He felt his way around the steaming mass of muscle car and his heart skipped a beat when he stuck a tentative finger out towards her fender. She was there. She was really there. He felt his way around her polished metal frame and maybe ran a finger along the sleek lines until he reached the driver’s seat. He didn’t know what to expect, but he sure as hell wasn’t expecting –her.
He pulled the door handle up and a small warm body fell into his arms. He held the Colt (finger still to the side of the trigger) in one hand and caught the body in his elbows. She was warm. She was breathing. She was… a “she.” He could tell by her small arms and her long, fine hair that tangled in his stubble and the small curves of her body in his arms as he shushed her like a doting parent to a child turning in their sleep. But most importantly, she was still breathing. She mumbled something and her tiny hand, comparatively, smacked against his shoulder. She grunted and made some kind of attempt to fight him off.
“Whoa, whoa. Take it easy, Slugger,” he tsked and pulled her upright. She elbowed him. He grunted. “OK, sharp elbow,” he muttered and scooped the five feet of barely conscious feistiness into his arms. “We don’t got much time, Tiger.” He swept his foot and leg against Baby’s frame, using it for navigation and pulled the passenger door open with his free hand. He all but dropped the kid into the passenger seat and slammed the door behind her. He felt his way back to the driver’s seat as the portal started sparking and snapping again. He jumped into the driver’s seat and shifted Baby’s humming engine into drive.
“Here we go, Kiddo,” he told the woman as he shot blindly forward and then spun a 180 back to the sparking portal. He accelerated. The woman shifted.
“Aw, come on!” he complained as he anticipated more of a fight if she came to, but slammed the gas pedal anyway. He looked over at her as he headed straight for the flaring interdimensional wormhole. She had blonde hair with a soft wave around her drooping forehead and a severe look of irritation at her own semi-consciousness.
“You gotta be kidding me!” he exclaimed and he knew exactly who she was. He accelerated towards the lightning storm that he hoped would be their exit and held back his urge to yell “Come on, Ma!” at the unconscious, well, girl, really. “Of all the terrible plans you could get yourself into–” he started to complain at her again, but stopped after a brief moment of self-awareness.
“We’ll get out of here,” he said to himself and held the wheel firmly as they bounced along the dark stones of wherever they were. He gritted his teeth and stole another look at the slumped figure of his young mother and he felt a lump in his throat. She seemed so impossibly young. Unwillingly, he remembered his first foray into this interdimensional Parent Trap sans twins and how badly he had wanted to save her from the dreadful future that he had seen play over and over and over again as he hopped galaxy to galaxy trying to tie up Chuck’s loose ends. He just wanted them to have a shot. Something. Anything besides whatever Chuck wanted. He swallowed his chagrin and hoped against all hope that he’d get her back to the man she loved–at the very least.
“We all deserve that,” he mumbled and pushed aside the tight knot of anger, love, fear, hope, hopelessness and desire that he so carefully ignored. “And we should all get it–someday.” His lip twitched and his eyes watered as the vortex of lightning enveloped the steaming black Impala, but it wasn’t because of the blinding light that he blinked back tears.