Lena and the Winchesters, Part 5
When Lucy heals enough to hunt, she returns to the field with a new sort of fervor. Its not the crusade Sam anticipates, but it's an intensity that tells Dean it's something she needs. It's a realization that feels too much like looking in a mirror, and guilt eats him up for days when it occurs to him that hunting is all Lucy knows. Since waking up with no memory on a cult's ceremonial altar, she's lived their life. She doesn't remember enough to want more, to wonder what else the world has to offer.
She could have a family if it weren't for them. If she had been found by anyone else, she might already at home, safe with her loved ones.
Instead she's here, with jagged scars across her chest and thigh.
The algorithm she has searching the missing persons database pings occasionally, but the photos it pulls up never come close to matching Lucy's appearance. After six months, she turns it off. Too many girls-- girls so like her, girls who likely met the same fate as the thirteen who still haunt her nightmares-- are still unfound. It hits too close to home, and it's not worth the horror it brings.
"I'll just have to not die," she jokes one night, on her way out the door to meet Sam at the nearest roadhouse. She checks the chamber of her favorite pistol before slipping it into her waistband. She then tucks her switchblade into her jacket pocket before shooting Dean a light grin. "Easy."
Dean keeps an extra eye on her anyway.
More than a year after Castiel last appeared, warning that an as-then-unnamed Lucy may not be human, the angel reappears in their motel room with a whisper of wings and Dean's name on his lips.
"She's Enochian," he delivers solemnly, unaffected by the guns leveled at him by three sleepy hunters.
"Cas?" Dean grumbles, grinding the sleep from his eyes. "What the hell?"
"Wait..." Lucy says blurrily. "Is this the guy?" The period following her awakening has always been foggy, and a year's absence has erased what little she remembered of the few minutes she'd spent with him before he put her under.
Sam mutters an affirmation, but is the quickest to recover. "Enochian? Like an angel?"
He asks in incredulity more than explanation, but instead of confirming it, Cas tilts his head. "Not exactly. Maybe."
"You poof for a year and come back with maybe?" Dean accuses.
"It took me that long to find even a trace of who this woman is," Cas returns, casting a glance towards where Lucy is swinging her legs off the side of the bed, pushing hair from her face with her gun dangling from her other hand.
Dean follows his gaze, and when Lucy meets his eye, he sees the same flicker of apprehension that had given her away the day she confessed she didn't want to know who she used to be.
Turning back to Cas, Dean lifts an expectant eyebrow. "So what does maybe mean?"
"It means that she shouldn't exist."
Lucy flinches, and Dean reacts in an instant, growl in his throat. "If that's all you have--"
"I couldn't sense her soul because it wasn't created by the Almighty. It was created by something else. And even then, it's incomplete."
"How?"
"I scoured heaven for any trace of information, and came up with only fragments of whispers, murmurs of hearsay about the illicit actions of an archangel long dead. I've put together what I can, but it doesn't explain everything."
Dean rubs his hand across his jaw, silently willing himself to be patient. This is good, he tells himself... isn't it?
"Okay. Let's start with what it does explain."
"An archangel--Orfiel-- presided over the domain of repentance and truth. For centuries, he heard the prayers of mankind, listened to their sins, and determined that God's greatest creation was losing its way. To remind them of their potential, he sought to put a pinnacle on earth: the perfect example of goodness that man could be. But God had already washed his hands of Earth, and refused to intervene. So Orfiel set about creating a soul of his own design."
Sam reaches for a notepad, making quick notes against the top page. "That sounds like something God would not appreciate. And I thought the creation of life and souls and all that was only in his power?"
"It is. Orfiel wasn't able to do it on his own. It seems he sought aid from the Morningstar."
Dean swallows thickly. "Ho boy."
"After the fall, Orfiel feared discovery, and cast the essence of his created soul to Earth."
"Yeah, that sounds about right," Dean snorts. "Fuck things up and then wash your hands of it."
"If it's true," Cas continues, shooting Dean a sharp glare, "the soul wouldn't have been able to last long in the mortal realm without a human vessel. It would have likely settled in an infant, while its true soul was still taking root."
The room flashes as headlights turn into the parking lot outside. They all freeze, as though a long lost archangel might show behind the wheel of a suburu hatchback.
When no heavenly beings knocks down their door, Lucy seems to sag.
"So, what you're saying, is that I'm this... botched attempt at a soul?"
"Yes."
"No," Dean counters.
"It makes sense, Dean. The ability to see things the way I do, the way that dragon kept calling me 'it'. It must have sensed I wasn't... right."
"Luce--"
"Of course," Lucy pushes on, voice catching in her throat, "if what I am is the parasite, then... what happened to the true soul?"
Castiel looks around the room, like the answer he lacks might be hidden somewhere in the tacky wallpaper.
"I don't know. But it's unlikely that it would have expelled on its own."
"The cult," Sam interjects. All eyes turn towards him. "Is it possible they knew?"
"It's highly unlikely," Cas returns. "I had to spend a year recovering even this much information. It was a secret beyond any like Heaven has ever seen."
"But you got this much. If someone had more time to dig up the same secrets, maybe had some help from a certain caged archangel...?"
Dean levels a heavy look at Cas. "We've seen crazier."
The room falls silent, and Lucy meets Dean's gaze. He sees the same fear again, but also the same look she gets when doing the crossword. They have a puzzle in front of them, and for better or worse, she intends to solve it.
"We need to learn more about that cult."
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Interlude, Part 6a, Part 6b
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The most terrifying monster was there before him! It looked like an ancient demon, a horrible puzzle of different creatures. Its hooves resembled those of a horse. Its front feathered legs had eagle claws, but retractile as those of felines. Its mouth was surmounted by twisted horns. Its face looked like that of a lion, apart from a cartilage structure around its jaws that produced electric discharges, as well as an odor of death that Deerandro’s animal nature could perceive very well, and which he feared strongly. A few meters away there were corpses; looking at them carefully he could see they were human, men and women, eaten up and torn to pieces, while some of them were still entire, instead; but their heads no, they were not human, they were sheep heads. Deerandro pointed his big horns against the beast, roaring. Behind his roar, he heard a squeaking ironic echo. It was Orfiel, the leader of all the serpent-squirrels, Leo Bruno’s heraldic animals, currently the most important transgenic creature worldwide. At night Orfiel loved wandering around the most remote areas of the New Vatican Gardens, leaving Elfeia’s Garden for a while, a more pleasant and safer corner where the squirrel colony lived.
Orfiel wound around Deerandro’s body as if wanting to protect him, showing the vampire demon his strong incisive teeth. The squirrel’s look made the hellish being shiver, so that it slowly moved backwards and disappeared behind a huge and perfumed rose garden. The squirrel did not leave the deer-man at once, but stayed on him a little longer, as if his arms were the strongest and most beautiful branches he could rest upon; then he disappeared among the real trees. Deerandro moved on to make his dangerous way across the New Vatican Gardens.
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