‘Til The Sirens Sound v.2: An Alternative 9.23 Coda

dtkrushnics:

When Catholicism was young, when it was finding its footing as a newborn fawn learns to stand, Castiel would come to Earth. He would stand in the shadows of a barn or a home, listening in as persecuted crypto-Christians practiced in secret, spoke their vows, looking fervently over their shoulders. They exchanged faith in Latin, touching their hands to their foreheads in seek of guidance. And, occasionally, they would sing. They would recite hymns in low voices, off-key and afraid but together, in one voice, in communion.

At the door, Castiel would turn Roman soldiers from their meeting, deafen their ears so they would not suspect. All while listening to the psalms, closing his eyes against the melodies, struck in an area he never knew quite how to name. While the candles flickered and night fell across towns steeped in secret devotions, Castiel listened to hymns. Oh, how they filled him with being. Oh, how they tapped at the stone in which he had been built to be encased, how they could softly breathe on him and melt it all away. How beautiful the songs were, and how beautiful the hope the songs elicited on the practitioners’ faces.

There is a song on the wind tonight. Castiel hears it, as his car’s tires burn the asphalt of the road back to Lebanon. He hears it, whistling against the grill, humming through the engine and out the exhaust pipe. He sees the lines imprinted stark white against the otherwise empty night sky, rolling through like credits, and the sound of them should fill him with that wonder again, with that awe.

But this hymn just sounds like an elegy. It sounds like a funeral song.

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