Southern Sudan, Fall 2008

[noteful]

It's a pretty simple room -- bed in one corner, dresser in another, desk in the third and door to the hall in the fourth.

The bed is neatly made. There are toiletries arranged on one side of the dresser; the other side holds a row of paperbacks, spines lined up, flush and precise, between plain metal bookends. The middle of the dresser holds a carved wooden box.

The there's a laptop on the desk, speaker for an MP3 player, and a picture frame with two pictures -- a man, about forty, with brown hair and eyes and (improbably) a handlebar moustache. And a boy, nine or ten, with reddish brown hair and his mother's smile.

The only thing on the wall is a bulletin board, above the desk. It holds a few other photographs, a postcard view of Montreal, three to do lists, and slightly cryptic advice, You cannot worry about every sparrow.

Dr. Meghan Marriner has called this room home for almost a month now.

She's entering notes into the laptop, back to the closed door, Beethoven (the violin concerto) playing on the speakers.

It's been a long, long day.

Comments

[noteful]

She considers the answer for a moment before she replies.

"Well," she says, eventually.

"A little tired. A little homesick, sometimes, when there's time to be. But well.

"And trying to decide whether to hug you or slap you."

At least she's unlikely to swing a crowbar at him.

[thursdays_angel]

Castiel smiles a tiny bit.

"I promise I will accept whichever you decide to impart, without complaint."

It's the least he can do.

"It is not an easy path you have chosen for yourself."

He knows. He's watched. In this world and at the Universe's end.

[noteful]

"'Easy' isn't really the point. Or the goal."

There's a pause.

And then she hugs him.

[thursdays_angel]

A gesture which Castiel accepts.

And returns.

A promise is a promise.

"You never were one to back away from difficulty."

Just look at her choices of friends.

[noteful]

She's made some things harder than they needed to be, on occasion.

"I'd say it's good to see you, but I'm not sure I'd be right. If I remember correctly, it took something rather more significant than wanting to say hello for you to be on Earth.

"Water?"

It's all she has in her room to offer him right now.

[thursdays_angel]

"That would be welcome."

It's one of the unwritten rules among angels. You do not decline hospitality, freely offered.

"Earth has become a battleground. Beyond what it usually is."

He knows he does not have to explain the potential devestation of that statement to Meg. She herself has willingly come to such a place to offer aid.

And that is just conflict among humans.

"We are attempting to prevent the worst."

[noteful]

Meg pours water from the carafe on her dresser into the glass, and hands it to him.

"I don't think I really want to know what the worst involves.

"Those are the sparrows beyond my control, I suspect."

[thursdays_angel]

"Yes."

There's a tinge of dryness to the response. Castiel has watched Dean Winchester in the past--enough to know that he does not accept authority without a good deal of testing.

Now that he has actually interacted with him on a handful of occasions, Castiel is hard pressed to name any power short of Divine Authority that might control that particular sparrow.

Castiel accepts the glass of water.

"For what it is worth, I believe the situation to be in very capable hands."

[noteful]

"Good. And I'll pray for whomever those hands belong to."

It's all she can do.

"Is that what brings you here?"

[thursdays_angel]

"I appreciate that. I'm sure he would too."

Not that he'd admit to it.

Castiel seems at a bit of a loss for a moment. Then shrugs slightly.

"Not exactly. That work is elsewhere."

"I wanted to check in."

She is a friend. It's only right.

[noteful]

The fate of the world is a lot to carry.

There's a moment, while she weighs this answer.

"On me . . . or on the Sudan?"

[thursdays_angel]

"On you."

There's nothing strange about that.

Right?

"Since I was 'in the neighborhood' as you would say."

A planet-wide neighborhood. But a neighborhood nonetheless.

[noteful]

"Well, welcome to the neighborhood, then," Meg says, with just a trace of amusement.

She sits down on the edge of the bed, leaving the desk chair for him if he likes.

(There's more to examine on the desk, after all.)

"Once I would have found this whole thing very strange."

[thursdays_angel]

"Life and experience does tend to temper one's definition of 'strange.'"

Castiel gratefully takes the chair.

It's not so much that he's tired. Strictly speaking, his vessel does not get tired while he inhabits it.

But he will admit to being drained a bit by the past few months. The journey into Hell. The fighting that has gone on since.

Castiel looks at the pictures. The bulletin board. Around the small room.

"You are doing well."

He is proud of this person Meg has become. Is still becoming. Even though he knows he has no real right to claim such pride.

[noteful]

He has no real reason not to, either.

"Some days," she says. "I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I have days when I am far from doing well."

[thursdays_angel]

"We all have days when we doubt."

Even him.

[noteful]

"Even you?" Meg asks.

(She wouldn't have asked anything like that, not when last he saw her. But it's been years for her, and things change.)

[thursdays_angel]

Castiel tilts his head, eyebrows slightly quirked.

"That would surprise you?"

[noteful]

"Yes," she says.

"I just . . . you're an angel."

[thursdays_angel]

The small smile is back. Tinged with a little bit of regret.

"We were created to be obedient. Not mindless."

"And even then, there are angels who have disobeyed. Though the repercussions are serious."

"In the end, we make our choices too. We have to take some things on faith, just like you."

[noteful]

Meg listens, thinks, and then nods.

It makes sense.

"The days I doubted were actually a lot easier than the days I'm mad."

[thursdays_angel]

"You do not doubt anymore?"

Castiel pay attention to what humans say, and how they say it.

And Meg is not one to choose her words sloppily.

[noteful]

"That there is a God? No, not really."

Meg pauses.

"The first place MSF sent me was Sierra Leone. I wasn't even thirty, it was before Ned was born. And I knew, rationally, that I didn't really know what I was getting into, that I didn't know what to expect, for all that they tried to help me get ready. I knew that, but I'm not sure I understood it.

"The first six months were . . . I saw things, and I felt things, that I still don't think I could explain exactly. There weren't many days I didn't doubt. And there were times that I went beyond doubting and clear into disbelief.

"I was not a lot of fun to be around by the end of that mission. And I couldn't make Ed understand; he tried, but . . . I didn't have words for a lot of it, and I didn't try as hard as I should have. I still occasionally marvel that he didn't give up and leave.

"And then one I woke up on morning, and I thought . . . I can decide that there is no God, or that there is a God but He doesn't care, based on what I'd seen. Or I can decide that there is a God, and He does care, because, at the risk of overstating my importance in the grand scheme of things, because I'd been there to see it. Because people still go and try to change things, because people even when they're caught in the midst of horrors still live their lives and try to make them better.

"And of those two options, I chose the latter. It made more sense, somehow. Belief felt right in a way that doubting didn't."

Meg pauses.

"But there are still a lot of days I'm pretty mad at God."

[thursdays_angel]

Castiel listens attentively and patiently.

"There is no fault in being angry," he says when she is done.

That is a right afforded to humanity. Doubt and anger.

"Often the strongest faith can grow out of the most adverse circumstances."

[noteful]

"What doesn't destroy us makes us stronger?" Meg asks, and there's a slightly dry twist to the words.

Nietzsche seems a slightly odd person to quote, or at least paraphrase, when talking to an angel.