Spoilers for 4.16

May disturb certain religious sensibilities.

Not Falling

Angels do not doubt. We cannot. Doubt is the burden and the privilege of mortals; it comes with the gift of free will, the single gift not given to the angels. We are made only to serve the Lord.

But I doubt. Ever since the storming of Hell, doubts have preyed on my mind, night and day, battle and peace, even as war swallowed up my brethren in the garrison. And with doubt comes emotion; with emotion, weakness.

At first, I thought it was my host. I did not lie when I told Dean that my host was a pious man who welcomed my presence in his body (for all the good it did me). This man—Matthew, his name is; I must remember that—is a true and faithful servant of the Lord, who he names Wotan the Allfather. Strong faith, however, does not mean that a man has no doubts. If anything, the stronger the faith, the stronger the doubts. Faith without doubt is fanaticism, and in the eyes of the Lord that is the greatest sin of all.

A demon would simply silence his host's mind, but for an angel possession is different; the Lord charges us to care for the bodies we inhabit, to behave as polite guests. At best, we can send our host's minds into a peaceful sleep, but often we cannot, for far more practical reasons: We are servants of the Lord, not concerned with the day-to-day lives of mortals, and often we cannot find our way in an increasingly hostile world without the practical knowledge of our hosts.

The shared knowledge is the danger. Just as Matthew shows me how to blend in, to not call attention to myself, to use the tools of this time to seek my quarry, he shows me also his doubts, his fears, his temptations. He worries that these make him less, and I cannot tell him that they make him more, not when the bits of knowledge he gleans from me make his doubts greater. A man cannot be good without doubts, just as one cannot be evil without doubts; a conscious choice, to go one way or the other, must be made. This is true of all mortals.

But Matthew was not the cause. Nor was it the ill luck that made me, rather than another of the garrison, Dean Winchester's handler—not the boy was not a shock and a challenge in and of himself; a righteous man, broken and pulled from Hell, and yet incapable of hearing my true voice, too jaded to believe in any such things as angels and Heaven even as he fought demons hand-to-hand and sold his soul to Hell. They certainly played a role, but they were not the cause.

Perhaps it was Matthew who saw it, Matthew's mind which was open to the possibility—for I was convinced that it was impossible. I blinded myself to the very words Uriel would later throw at me: Demons cannot kill angels. Exorcise, certainly; banish us from our hosts and kill them to prevent their use again, but not kill. We have the protection of the power of the Lord, the protection that demonkind rejected when they chose the path of the Morning Star. It is a thing we tend to forget in the Lord's charge to protect our hosts.

I stood over the broken bodies of my brethren's hosts, I scrubbed away the telltale imprints of wings that devout mortals might see, and still I was blind. I rejected Haniel for seizing free will, for hurling herself from Heaven, and all the while my unquestioning obedience aided the forces of the Adversary in opening the seals and hastening the Apocalypse. Not until Alastair escaped, not until Uriel tried to sway my allegiance, did I truly see.

Free of Uriel's traitorous influence, I went to Dean and healed him. Heaven did not protest. The Lord did not strike me down or yank me from Matthew's body.

Hell screamed.

I told him all that I knew—not enough for him, but I never pretended that I was anything but a soldier, the soldier assigned to handle Dean Winchester possibly because Dean was such a maddeningly active unbeliever that mere exposure to him would exacerbate my newborn doubts and pull me towards the Adversary's side. I told him that he was the only mortal who could possibly stand in the way of the Apocalypse.

"It's not me," he said, his voice as broken as I feel. "I'm not strong enough."

He does not believe. He believes nothing except that for which he can accept the guilt. In Dean's mind, quick and discerning as it can be, there is nothing except that which he caused. All that is good came from John, from Mary, from Sam—from anywhere that is not Dean—and all the rest of the world, all the pain and suffering and evil, came from him.

If he believed, I would tell him of another man, an obedient servant of the Lord, who said those very words when first confronted with his own fate, two millennia past. But to Dean Winchester, the name of that man is at best a tool for discerning minor demon possession, and at worst a mindless swear word. I cannot comfort him thus, and I know no other way, not for the unbeliever.

He can still be saved—from Hell, from himself. Though I have never heard the voice of the Lord, I know for certain that the order to take an interest in Dean Winchester came from on High. When it came, I had no doubts, no emotion, no weakness, none of the mortal failings that plague me now.

Perhaps—can I dare to think so freely? Can I learn such free will, as Haniel has?--even Sam can be saved. Perhaps Sam is the way to save Dean. Only Uriel ever told me that Sam was already lost, and Uriel, as I have learned so painfully, was tragically misguided.

I have not rebelled against the Lord. In this much, I am certain. I have set myself against the current agenda of the Host. I have refused the orders of my superiors. I have sided with Haniel, a fallen angel—but she is not a demon, not truly Fallen, so I have not joined with the Adversary.

Control of the Host may have been hijacked, by a traitorous ally of the Morning Star, even by a Fallen disguised as an Archangel. Demons may roam the earth turning angels from the light, tempting them to the breaking of seals and hastening the Apocalypse. The only weapons I have to hand are a fallen angel, the man who became the First Seal, and one of Azazel's children.

But I still have my faith. I still serve the Lord, and no other. I will serve neither Lilith nor Lucifer.

I have not fallen. Neither have the Winchesters, not now, not yet.

I will not fall.

I will not let them.

the end