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heavenonearth) wrote2016-01-18 04:17 am
heavenonearth) wrote2016-01-18 04:17 am
application @ drift fleet
OUT OF CHARACTER:
Name/Handle: Aiden
Contact: owlcoholic @ plurk; mischieving @ aim
Reference: KJ
Other characters: N/A
IN-CHARACTER:
Character name: Castiel
Character journal:heavenonearth
Series name: Supernatural
Canon notes: Castiel is an canon AU from the fourth episode of season five, titled The End. This alternate universe takes place five years in the future from the current timeline of the episode, in the year 2014. It's a post-apocalyptic world, where Lucifer unleashed the Croatoan virus on the populace which spread quickly, and effectively turned humans into mindless, violent zombies. In this future, Dean never allowed Michael to use him as his vessel, so Lucifer won the apocalypse, and the outlook is bleak.
Species: Castiel is technically an angel, though he has lost his immortality, and most of his powers have dwindled down to next to nothing, effectively rendering him human.
History:
Castiel lived much of his long ageless life as an angel, a foot-soldier, obedient and loyal to Heaven, God and his angels. He witnessed the birth of the world, watched evolution unfold, beheld the spectacle of humanity as it grew as a species, God's favored and beloved. Little of note happened in his life until he encountered the Winchesters - two brothers, Sam and Dean. Angels laid seige to Hell to rescue Dean's soul, and it was Castiel who found him and raised him from the pit, restoring him to his body on Earth, only to find that they had come too late - Dean's actions in Hell had broken one of the first of sixty-six seals on Lucifer's cage. It was the beginning of the end.
Seals broke left and right as the demons moved swiftly to unlock them, eager to release their king, the father of their race, while Castiel and the angels worked against them, trying to protect the seals, but there were far too many of them, and their forces were spread too thin (or at least, so he was led to believe), and the heavenly host was losing the race. All the while, Castiel was tasked with watching over Sam and Dean Winchester, and he began to grow close to them, to develop human emotions and attachments, dangerous traits for an angel to possess, a creature bred and programmed to adhere to strict, militant orders. He began to experience doubt, to question the morality of the orders he received, and just when he seemed keen on defecting he was taken to heaven and punished severely, knocked back in line.
Too bad their reeducation didn't stick. Castiel tried to remain loyal to heaven, to a God he had never known but felt compelled to love and obey, found his allegiance at war with his own sentiment as each and every day he fell more and more in love with humanity, fostered a burgeoning desire to protect them, nurture them. By Dean's influence at last he shook off the yoke, rebelled against heaven and released Dean from a seraph's imprisonment in hopes that they might be able to stop Sam from inadvertently breaking the final seal - a task, we find, that had been a part of the plan all along. The angels never meant to protect the seals, they allowed them to be broken, because the apocalypse itself would close Earth's final chapter, bring paradise to the planet. They were tired of waiting.
Despite his and Dean's best efforts, however, they were unable to thwart the breaking of the final seal, and Lucifer was raised, and soon settled into a human vessel. Soon after, we learn that Sam and Dean were bred to be the true vessels of Lucifer and Michael, respectively, and in order to play out the grand script of the apocalypse, they would have to allow these archangels into their bodies to engage in a fight to the death. Both, of course, refused. Sam and Dean split up soon after, and that was the last that Castiel ever saw of Sam; he remained instead loyally by Dean's side. This is where we begin to diverge from canon, and into Castiel's alternate timeline.
Lucifer worked quickly, raising his four horsemen one by one, using Pestilence to release the Croatoan virus onto the world, an incurable disease that spread rapidly, transforing humans into mindless, violent monsters, and the world fell quickly into chaos. Sam and Dean never sought one another, and Castiel remained by Dean's side; when it became apparent that Dean would never allow Michael to use him as a vessel, despite Lucifer's wild rampage across the planet, the angels withdrew, left the Earth and disappeared. Castiel, naturally, remained behind, dutiful both to Dean and the choice that he had made to side with humanity. Once the angels withdrew, Castiel found that his grace, the essence that gave him his power and immortality, began to drain away, and soon enough he became effectively human, mortal. He learned to live as one, to handle firearms and unfamiliar weaponry, to eat and sleep and drive a truck. For five years he walked a devastated planet infested with Croatoans and Demons, working with Dean to survive as best as he could, and protect those that they could, building a small camp, scavenging what they could, tracking Lucifer and trying to track down the gun that could potentially kill him. They never found Sam, but learned that he had said yes to Lucifer, allowed him to take him as a vessel.
Castiel changed. Burdened by the weight of his mistakes and the utter annihilation of the world, he fell to drinking, drugs, and casual sex to bury his pain and misery, unable to atone in any way beyond what meager help he was able to offer. He developed survival skills, broke and healed and broke again in ways that warped him into a looser creature, all easy smiles to disguise the hurt.
In the year 2014, five years after it all began, Castiel was confronted by Dean - but not the Dean he knew, a younger Dean, from the year 2009, brought by an angel from the past to witness the devastation of this timeline in hopes that it would convince him to say yes to Michael. Castiel spoke with him, and found, later, that (current) Dean had returned from a mission with the colt in tow, a small band of them, including Castiel and both past and current Dean, drove off that night to confront Lucifer. The next day, Castiel lost his life in the ensuing battle, walking into a death trap knowingly, willing to sacrifice the last of what he had in order to remain loyal, to act as a diversion to give Dean the shot he needed to bring down Lucifer. Thankfully for Cas, he didn't have to live to ultimately see Dean fail.
Personality:
Suffice it to say, if you're at all familiar with original verse Castiel, this guy is going to come as something of a surprise.
There was a time, once, when he might have considered himself a pure creature. He'd been stiff and self righteous, a holy being in service to the Lord, confident in his ability and his moral high ground, though this began to deteriorate when he met the Winchesters and was slowly but surely changed for it. All that, though - that's small potatoes in comparison to the shift that was to come.
Castiel is a survivor. In a world gone dark, he's crawled on his belly to keep breathing, to stick by those he'd sworn himself to, been changed and warped into a creature all but unrecognizable from the one he'd been only five short years ago. The weight on his shoulders has bent him in ways he can't even begin to categorize, but then, when you're bearing the responsibility for an entire world's annihilation, there are things that get crushed under the pressure, trampled underfoot by long years of self-deprecation and the unforgivable knowledge that countless lives have been lost solely due to your own decisions.
To give a brief overview, Castiel comes off as an easygoing, friendly sort. His smiles are lazy and easy, his posture loose and open, he's quick enough to converse with people, and has an undeniable charm about him. All of this outward warmth, however, is underlined by a sharp bite of sass, bitterness and cynicism that manifests in the dullness of his eyes, the way his languid smiles never really reach them, how quick he is to rebuke his comrades, and surely in the way he relies heavily on drugs, sex and alcohol simply to endure existence. It's clear enough that he bears an impossible amount of regret. Castiel fell from heaven for humanity, he allied himself with free will and choice, was so sure of his path, that what he was doing was right, but it was choice, in the end, that was his undoing. Living an eternity as an angel without freedom had not prepared him for the responsibility of making the wrong choice, and it haunts him without end. Not only did his poor decisions turn out badly, they laid the foundation for the end of the world, and for a creature such as Castiel, who loves more deeply than any angel should, that is a heavy, heavy weight.
To say he lacks self esteem would be an understatement. Not only did his actions help to lead directly to the apocalypse, he's also lost his powers as an angel, dwindled down to what is essentially a human, and that is a deep and bitter wound. Castiel considers himself a hopeless case, useless, pointless, for as much as he loved humanity he had never hoped to be one, and his utility as an angel was a point of pride. He can no longer heal, fly, or smite demons, he can hardly feel his own grace within him, and that is a grave loss, though one he is not undeserving of. He has failed the world, after all; it is only fitting that he lose his wings, crawl in mud and blood like a bottom-feeder, stripped of all dignity and pride. In many ways he's given up, lost himself to carnal pleasures because, well - why the hell not?
I'm hapless, I'm hopeless. I mean, why the hell not bury myself in women and decadence, right? It's the end, baby. That's what decadence is for. Why not bang a few gongs before the lights go out? But then that's, that's just how I roll.
Castiel comes off as lazy, though much of that is an illusion. He's still quite capable, and while he spends much of his free time indulging himself, he knows when to stand up and get done what needs to be done. He challenges Dean's orders if he doesn't like them, but he always follows them, quickly and thoroughly, and he's certainly not afraid of putting himself out there in the line of fire. He works well in a group, and has a good head for strategy, though in the end he will always defect to Dean's final decisions. Castiel also has not lost his blunt and forward honesty. Though he plays with his words more than he used to, he does not back down from sensitive topics, and he's upfront about his feelings, and his opinions, and he's not always gentle about it.
Though he covers it up with laughs and boneless shrugs, Castiel is a miserable creature, a shadow of himself, and the proud, strong creature he had once been. He is numbed to much of the violence and horror that surrounds him, though not so numb as he might like, considering how much of it he feels the need to drown.
Perhaps the one remaining light to cling to is his loyalty. Despite it all, through the blood and the pain and the despair, he has remained true to Dean, stuck by his side through thick and thin, unwavering, for it seems that no amount of torment could ever break his allegiance. He's crass and casual, comfortable in his skin, Dean's influence clear in his speech and mannerisms, his easy tongue and languid wit. Castiel might not think it of himself, but he's tough as an old tree, a stalwart survivor, smart and sharp and strong, when he isn't drowning himself in absinthe. No amount of pain has been able to erode his cleverness, and has served only to sharpen his biting wit, honing him into a tenacious, rough-edged thing that's able to withstand incredible torment without breaking. He bends. He bends so far that it twists him, misshapes him, but in the end, he did not break.
Abilities: As an angel, Castiel had many, many abilities, up to and including teleportation, dreamwalking, telekinesis, healing, mind-reading, resurrection, time travel, and the ability to smite demons, as well as impossible strength and incredible resilience. Since his grace has greatly diminished, Castiel has all but lost these abilities. He must eat and drink and sleep, can no longer heal his own wounds, and must fight as a human.
He's very good at it. For years as a soldier of heaven he has been well-practiced in hand to hand combat, and while that didn't extend to firearms, he was a fierce knife-fighter, able to disarm and kill even other angels; this ability was not lost. He has also learned how to handle firearms of all types, and is an incredibly handy fighter. More broadly, he is a scavenger and a survivor, and possesses all the cunning and tenacity and lightning-quick reflexes that come along with the sort of lifestyle he has needed to adapt to.
That said, he is not entirely human. He is able to instantly recognize 2009 Dean as different, knowing right away that he was from another time, so it stands to reason that he has grace enough to recognize anomalies and feel people, even if he no longer has the strength to fly or do anything at all cool anymore. He also brews a mean absinthe.
Augment Skillset: Security.
Sample: Bam.
Name/Handle: Aiden
Contact: owlcoholic @ plurk; mischieving @ aim
Reference: KJ
Other characters: N/A
IN-CHARACTER:
Character name: Castiel
Character journal:
heavenonearthSeries name: Supernatural
Canon notes: Castiel is an canon AU from the fourth episode of season five, titled The End. This alternate universe takes place five years in the future from the current timeline of the episode, in the year 2014. It's a post-apocalyptic world, where Lucifer unleashed the Croatoan virus on the populace which spread quickly, and effectively turned humans into mindless, violent zombies. In this future, Dean never allowed Michael to use him as his vessel, so Lucifer won the apocalypse, and the outlook is bleak.
Species: Castiel is technically an angel, though he has lost his immortality, and most of his powers have dwindled down to next to nothing, effectively rendering him human.
History:
Castiel lived much of his long ageless life as an angel, a foot-soldier, obedient and loyal to Heaven, God and his angels. He witnessed the birth of the world, watched evolution unfold, beheld the spectacle of humanity as it grew as a species, God's favored and beloved. Little of note happened in his life until he encountered the Winchesters - two brothers, Sam and Dean. Angels laid seige to Hell to rescue Dean's soul, and it was Castiel who found him and raised him from the pit, restoring him to his body on Earth, only to find that they had come too late - Dean's actions in Hell had broken one of the first of sixty-six seals on Lucifer's cage. It was the beginning of the end.
Seals broke left and right as the demons moved swiftly to unlock them, eager to release their king, the father of their race, while Castiel and the angels worked against them, trying to protect the seals, but there were far too many of them, and their forces were spread too thin (or at least, so he was led to believe), and the heavenly host was losing the race. All the while, Castiel was tasked with watching over Sam and Dean Winchester, and he began to grow close to them, to develop human emotions and attachments, dangerous traits for an angel to possess, a creature bred and programmed to adhere to strict, militant orders. He began to experience doubt, to question the morality of the orders he received, and just when he seemed keen on defecting he was taken to heaven and punished severely, knocked back in line.
Too bad their reeducation didn't stick. Castiel tried to remain loyal to heaven, to a God he had never known but felt compelled to love and obey, found his allegiance at war with his own sentiment as each and every day he fell more and more in love with humanity, fostered a burgeoning desire to protect them, nurture them. By Dean's influence at last he shook off the yoke, rebelled against heaven and released Dean from a seraph's imprisonment in hopes that they might be able to stop Sam from inadvertently breaking the final seal - a task, we find, that had been a part of the plan all along. The angels never meant to protect the seals, they allowed them to be broken, because the apocalypse itself would close Earth's final chapter, bring paradise to the planet. They were tired of waiting.
Despite his and Dean's best efforts, however, they were unable to thwart the breaking of the final seal, and Lucifer was raised, and soon settled into a human vessel. Soon after, we learn that Sam and Dean were bred to be the true vessels of Lucifer and Michael, respectively, and in order to play out the grand script of the apocalypse, they would have to allow these archangels into their bodies to engage in a fight to the death. Both, of course, refused. Sam and Dean split up soon after, and that was the last that Castiel ever saw of Sam; he remained instead loyally by Dean's side. This is where we begin to diverge from canon, and into Castiel's alternate timeline.
Lucifer worked quickly, raising his four horsemen one by one, using Pestilence to release the Croatoan virus onto the world, an incurable disease that spread rapidly, transforing humans into mindless, violent monsters, and the world fell quickly into chaos. Sam and Dean never sought one another, and Castiel remained by Dean's side; when it became apparent that Dean would never allow Michael to use him as a vessel, despite Lucifer's wild rampage across the planet, the angels withdrew, left the Earth and disappeared. Castiel, naturally, remained behind, dutiful both to Dean and the choice that he had made to side with humanity. Once the angels withdrew, Castiel found that his grace, the essence that gave him his power and immortality, began to drain away, and soon enough he became effectively human, mortal. He learned to live as one, to handle firearms and unfamiliar weaponry, to eat and sleep and drive a truck. For five years he walked a devastated planet infested with Croatoans and Demons, working with Dean to survive as best as he could, and protect those that they could, building a small camp, scavenging what they could, tracking Lucifer and trying to track down the gun that could potentially kill him. They never found Sam, but learned that he had said yes to Lucifer, allowed him to take him as a vessel.
Castiel changed. Burdened by the weight of his mistakes and the utter annihilation of the world, he fell to drinking, drugs, and casual sex to bury his pain and misery, unable to atone in any way beyond what meager help he was able to offer. He developed survival skills, broke and healed and broke again in ways that warped him into a looser creature, all easy smiles to disguise the hurt.
In the year 2014, five years after it all began, Castiel was confronted by Dean - but not the Dean he knew, a younger Dean, from the year 2009, brought by an angel from the past to witness the devastation of this timeline in hopes that it would convince him to say yes to Michael. Castiel spoke with him, and found, later, that (current) Dean had returned from a mission with the colt in tow, a small band of them, including Castiel and both past and current Dean, drove off that night to confront Lucifer. The next day, Castiel lost his life in the ensuing battle, walking into a death trap knowingly, willing to sacrifice the last of what he had in order to remain loyal, to act as a diversion to give Dean the shot he needed to bring down Lucifer. Thankfully for Cas, he didn't have to live to ultimately see Dean fail.
Personality:
Suffice it to say, if you're at all familiar with original verse Castiel, this guy is going to come as something of a surprise.
There was a time, once, when he might have considered himself a pure creature. He'd been stiff and self righteous, a holy being in service to the Lord, confident in his ability and his moral high ground, though this began to deteriorate when he met the Winchesters and was slowly but surely changed for it. All that, though - that's small potatoes in comparison to the shift that was to come.
Castiel is a survivor. In a world gone dark, he's crawled on his belly to keep breathing, to stick by those he'd sworn himself to, been changed and warped into a creature all but unrecognizable from the one he'd been only five short years ago. The weight on his shoulders has bent him in ways he can't even begin to categorize, but then, when you're bearing the responsibility for an entire world's annihilation, there are things that get crushed under the pressure, trampled underfoot by long years of self-deprecation and the unforgivable knowledge that countless lives have been lost solely due to your own decisions.
To give a brief overview, Castiel comes off as an easygoing, friendly sort. His smiles are lazy and easy, his posture loose and open, he's quick enough to converse with people, and has an undeniable charm about him. All of this outward warmth, however, is underlined by a sharp bite of sass, bitterness and cynicism that manifests in the dullness of his eyes, the way his languid smiles never really reach them, how quick he is to rebuke his comrades, and surely in the way he relies heavily on drugs, sex and alcohol simply to endure existence. It's clear enough that he bears an impossible amount of regret. Castiel fell from heaven for humanity, he allied himself with free will and choice, was so sure of his path, that what he was doing was right, but it was choice, in the end, that was his undoing. Living an eternity as an angel without freedom had not prepared him for the responsibility of making the wrong choice, and it haunts him without end. Not only did his poor decisions turn out badly, they laid the foundation for the end of the world, and for a creature such as Castiel, who loves more deeply than any angel should, that is a heavy, heavy weight.
To say he lacks self esteem would be an understatement. Not only did his actions help to lead directly to the apocalypse, he's also lost his powers as an angel, dwindled down to what is essentially a human, and that is a deep and bitter wound. Castiel considers himself a hopeless case, useless, pointless, for as much as he loved humanity he had never hoped to be one, and his utility as an angel was a point of pride. He can no longer heal, fly, or smite demons, he can hardly feel his own grace within him, and that is a grave loss, though one he is not undeserving of. He has failed the world, after all; it is only fitting that he lose his wings, crawl in mud and blood like a bottom-feeder, stripped of all dignity and pride. In many ways he's given up, lost himself to carnal pleasures because, well - why the hell not?
I'm hapless, I'm hopeless. I mean, why the hell not bury myself in women and decadence, right? It's the end, baby. That's what decadence is for. Why not bang a few gongs before the lights go out? But then that's, that's just how I roll.
Castiel comes off as lazy, though much of that is an illusion. He's still quite capable, and while he spends much of his free time indulging himself, he knows when to stand up and get done what needs to be done. He challenges Dean's orders if he doesn't like them, but he always follows them, quickly and thoroughly, and he's certainly not afraid of putting himself out there in the line of fire. He works well in a group, and has a good head for strategy, though in the end he will always defect to Dean's final decisions. Castiel also has not lost his blunt and forward honesty. Though he plays with his words more than he used to, he does not back down from sensitive topics, and he's upfront about his feelings, and his opinions, and he's not always gentle about it.
Though he covers it up with laughs and boneless shrugs, Castiel is a miserable creature, a shadow of himself, and the proud, strong creature he had once been. He is numbed to much of the violence and horror that surrounds him, though not so numb as he might like, considering how much of it he feels the need to drown.
Perhaps the one remaining light to cling to is his loyalty. Despite it all, through the blood and the pain and the despair, he has remained true to Dean, stuck by his side through thick and thin, unwavering, for it seems that no amount of torment could ever break his allegiance. He's crass and casual, comfortable in his skin, Dean's influence clear in his speech and mannerisms, his easy tongue and languid wit. Castiel might not think it of himself, but he's tough as an old tree, a stalwart survivor, smart and sharp and strong, when he isn't drowning himself in absinthe. No amount of pain has been able to erode his cleverness, and has served only to sharpen his biting wit, honing him into a tenacious, rough-edged thing that's able to withstand incredible torment without breaking. He bends. He bends so far that it twists him, misshapes him, but in the end, he did not break.
Abilities: As an angel, Castiel had many, many abilities, up to and including teleportation, dreamwalking, telekinesis, healing, mind-reading, resurrection, time travel, and the ability to smite demons, as well as impossible strength and incredible resilience. Since his grace has greatly diminished, Castiel has all but lost these abilities. He must eat and drink and sleep, can no longer heal his own wounds, and must fight as a human.
He's very good at it. For years as a soldier of heaven he has been well-practiced in hand to hand combat, and while that didn't extend to firearms, he was a fierce knife-fighter, able to disarm and kill even other angels; this ability was not lost. He has also learned how to handle firearms of all types, and is an incredibly handy fighter. More broadly, he is a scavenger and a survivor, and possesses all the cunning and tenacity and lightning-quick reflexes that come along with the sort of lifestyle he has needed to adapt to.
That said, he is not entirely human. He is able to instantly recognize 2009 Dean as different, knowing right away that he was from another time, so it stands to reason that he has grace enough to recognize anomalies and feel people, even if he no longer has the strength to fly or do anything at all cool anymore. He also brews a mean absinthe.
Augment Skillset: Security.
Sample: Bam.