snowblindrpg | [network] Event: Long & Lost [NIGHT 217]

It's what they told me, when I asked why I could not step in to answer prayers. That you didn't deserve us, or that we would only stunt your growth and make things worse.

[ He's not sure which of those answers grated on him more. It's hard to remember, now. The last time he even bothered to ask was so long ago. ]

But I did it anyway. And now I'm here.

I don't see what you being here has to do with it.

[Milder this time, more honest confusion.]

Are guardian angels not a thing in your universe? I'm pretty sure they weren't in mine either, but you always here about it. People say you've got a guardian angel watching over you if you survive a bad accident or miss something shitty happening to you, that kind of thing.

This is a punishment. Not the town of Norfinbury itself, but my being here, specifically. Heaven does not let its angels go so easily. If I've been removed from my station it's because they either put me here or let me fall from their grasp on purpose.

[ There are restrictions in place to prevent celestial beings from being summoned across universes, is what he's trying to say. While it's possible that something powerful enough could override that, well. It's time to talk about fears, not realistic assessments of the situation. ]

Guardian angels are "a thing", but only for certain people. Special people, ones who are needed to preform certain tasks or fulfill certain prophecies. And even then, once they have served their purpose, they are left to their own devices. Just like everyone else.

... Castiel, gotta say, you're doing a real shit job of advertising your whole theological clusterfuck right now. You're saying you're getting punished in some implicit way but they can't even be assed to tell you so? I don't necessarily think it's a thing of being allowed to go—we don't know how they bring us in yet—but still. You're saying that's a thing they'd do?

And helping people only while they're useful to you then leaving them high and dry is a kind of a dick move, just sayin'.

Yes. It is. [ No one really knows what happens to angels who disobey. Just that they go somewhere and when they come back you aren't supposed to talk about it, especially not to them. For all Castiel knows, every rebellious member of the Host across all of time has been dropped here, in one of this town's cycles, to learn some lesson about mortality or futility or whatever it is he's supposed to be doing here. ]

That's the problem. I should be able to defend this. I shouldn't feel the need to defend this. It doesn't matter what we think of Heaven's decisions and actions. I shouldn't care that you disapprove and I shouldn't disapprove myself.

Dude. Castiel. You really need a nickname.

[Not the point, moving on.]

If even you have a problem with it, maybe that's a sign there's something shitty going on. You don't even want to have one, and yet there you are questioning things anyway.

Why? [ That doesn't seem very relevant to him, but at least Davesprite decided to mention it instead of just giving him one like most people seem to. ]

I... can't argue with you. But admitting the possibility that not only did I receive bad orders, but that I have been for a long time now would call into question so many greater things. It's bigger than I am. It's bigger than any of us.

It would be easier to be wrong. I want to be wrong.

It's a long name and it's got weird stress and it doesn't roll off the tongue that smooth. Give me one you can stand or I'm going to give you progressively dumber ones until you give in and pick one anyway.

And anyway, Cashmere, sometimes you're wrong about the big stuff, and it fucking sucks, but you gotta deal with it anyway. I don't think that changes just because you're an angel.

It is three syllables and only requires one mouth to speak. [ Isn't that as much as one could ask for, in a name? He knows humans have had serious trouble interpreting his Enochian name over the millennia, especially compared to some of his luckier siblings, but 'Castiel' is the simplest they've managed to get while still staying close. ]

This is not something I have ever had to deal with before. How do you "deal" when you learn that everything you have ever believed may well be a lie?

Don't say I didn't warn you, Castlevania.

[That's five syllables. He never claimed to not be a hypocrite.]

But when that happens, you roll with it. I've been through it. Learned me and my bro weren't brothers but were made in a space lab in the future by my best friend, learned my whole universe was made by aliens, learned I could just get fuckin' yanked out of paradox space into this place without my say so. I've questioned way too many times if this is even the real me, which scared the shit out of me, but if signs had pointed to yes instead of no then I still wouldn't have anything better to do than stop what's going on here.

You keep going because—and I'm saying this as an actual time traveler—you can't change the past. The stuff that already happened to you doesn't un-become a thing. Maybe in another timeline you do something and stuff goes different, but your own life is still the same as ever. You learn more, you adjust, you act according to that. That's life, Cannellini.

Those were both longer than my name. [ His protest is weak, but he puts in the token effort out of a sense of obligation. ]

But you're right. The past cannot be changed, not without serious consequences. And neither can prophecy be derailed. The end will come, as it was written. Nothing I can do will prevent that. But maybe what I did delayed it. And maybe that was the plan all along.

[ He still doesn't like the idea. It credits much more importance and responsibility and free agency to himself than he's at all comfortable with, and means a corrupt Heaven that's turned against God's will, his siblings dying in droves for no real reason. ]

Or maybe I'm only making excuses. I am... not accustomed to uncertainty, Davesprite. I'm having trouble understanding how anyone could be.

[With their conversation in audio, the raising of his eyebrows goes unseen, but there is a perk of tone.]

Okay, now you're getting into the whole free will versus predestination thing. You know basically my whole life's hinged around that? Time travel gets you up real close and personal with it, and the sprite thing just gave me extra perspective. And—I'm not comfortable with it. Don't know how to be. I can fake it sometimes, but there's always the fact looming that the future's bound to go a certain way but I can't see the end. It's this whole thing, the Ultimate Riddle, about how much is shaped by your decisions and how much is just going to happen anyway. And it's both. One shapes the other. It doesn't make it any easier to go through. I have to anyway, like I just got done saying, but it's the same as if you sit on a tack for a while. It doesn't stop being a pain in the ass just because you've gotten used to sitting on it. And it's worse when the particular tack getting friendly with your rump involves big, important fate of the world type stuff.

So, the angel thing? I don't know what that's like. Probably can't. But I get some of it. You're not alone with it.

[ Similarly, the way Castiel snaps to attention partway through Davesprite's speech doesn't really carry, but he does. It's a rare thing for a human to be trusted with the overseeing and maintenance of the timeline and those few times it has happened it's usually because every single other option has proven extremely infeasible. He's not bothered by Davesprite's implication that he's among that unlucky elite, but it does get his attention. ]

I... Thank you. Though I wish that wasn't a burden you had to suffer. It's hard enough for many of us, and this is very literally the task we were made for.

I never could have been anything else.

[He sounds tired and resigned.]

My friend died and I had to save him. If I hadn't, I wouldn't exist. Time was too screwed up to continue. And if I hadn't done that, he couldn't fix some other nebulous stuff that went wrong. That's how everyone was able to finally win and make the new universe, from what I heard. You've just got yourselves fancy god-given directives about it.

If we even have that, anymore.

[ He goes quiet for a while, contemplating. ]

If you look at it the right way, being here is... freeing, almost. There's no point to worrying about the prophecies of my world in this place.

Yet somehow I still can't find any comfort in that.

Nah, that makes sense. The prophecies told you what to expect, right? Here you're cut free. You've got nothing to guide you but what we can find out, and beyond the whole 'get to the center' stuff, a lot of that is best guesses and trial and error. Plus, it's your world. It's not that weird to worry what's going to happen to it.

I worry about my world, too. I already know from my friend that they're going to win the game and make the new universe, but I keep wondering what that means for me. If this place is part of the timeline that makes that happen or if I'm just going to die like any other doomed alternate if I go back.

[His voice drifts into genuine worry with that confession, and he huffs a note of frustration at himself for spilling it. Nothing new by this point, but still annoying to deal with without control.]

[ Castiel goes quiet again, thinking about those few times rogue angels had tried to alter the past, and how the Fates raged and wreaked destruction on the world until someone went back and set things right. Each of those had been a disaster to rival the flood or the plagues, but being an undying being that existed above the mortal world and its concerns afforded him a kind of distance from things, too busy rushing around on damage control to consider the human element.

It must have been horrifying beyond words for any who realized or were told what was happening. To know that they were not meant to exist, and that this error would soon be corrected one way or another. ]

I hope that's not the case. No one deserves to be condemned for reasons that weren't under their control.

[The quiet pause just sits awkwardly on his side. Shit. Did he make things uncomfortable—more than they already were? It's worse when he can't control it. Castiel might hear him fidgeting before he speaks. He still feels awkward even after.]

I dunno if condemned is the word. Paradox space is impartial like the laws of physics. The time loops have to link up, or else stuff that was supposed to happen can't happen and causality gets fucked to next Thursday.

[A pause.]

Man, when was the last time I knew what day of the week it is? Probably with Rose? Can't believe it's been three or four years. You think that kinda stuff would be integral to being a Time player, but you don't get any magic time sense, just the ability to jump around. Or maybe other classes get it, but not Knights? Maybe today's Thursday. Maybe every day is Thursday. What makes a day Thurs, Castor Oil?

[Surely this is all very important.]

[ To his credit, Castiel follows the digression without missing a step. ]

Originally it was just known as the fifth day from the start of creation and every seventh day after that, but as other, pagan cultures started adopting the seven day week it gained other names. Association with thunder and the solar system's largest gas giant were common themes. The tribes of Northern Europe named the day to honor Thor. Their neighbors to the south favored Zeus. I think the two had some notable early conflict that made a lasting impression on the whole subcontinent. A few other languages chose to call the day after their regents of Jupiter as well.

For me specifically, it's always meant that it was my turn to aid in watching over the passage of souls from Earth to Heaven. It was a duty I enjoyed.

Huh.

[It's a quiet little noise, but he's pleasantly surprised.]

Kinda weird talking to an angel about other gods and creation and everything still. Heaven, too. We've got an afterlife, but it's not like that with the judgement or division.

What was heaven like? TV and stuff always seemed to paint it like this weird place in the clouds.

Most humans don't have the sensory or mental capacity to "see" Heaven for what it truly is. Instead it appears to each person as something different and specific to them that invokes the right feeling or context. The places they are supposed to be look like locations where they were happy and safe in life. Routes to places they aren't supposed to be may take on ominous or foreboding forms. Dark alleyways and hospital waiting rooms are common, from what I hear.

There are many afterlives. We can only lay claim to souls that choose to come with us. Which is yours?

Huh. That's... kinda interesting. Makes me wonder what mine would be like, if I somehow qualified despite kinda shitting on the way things work in your universe.

[Which is one of the odder things he feels like he's said tonight. Moving on.]

It reminds me a little of mine, actually? But not entirely. We had these things called the dream bubbles. I never saw them myself, but from what I understand, they're made up of memories from life all woven together and everything. Your memories, other people's memories, just kind of a disaster mishmash. And every dead version of you is there somewhere scattered among the bubbles, too. Ones from different timelines, or... Sburb had a bunch of extra lives built in, so from that, too? And—

Okay, this takes a little setup. So Sburb involved these things called dream selves, which are like an extra you that exists on these moons in the game and are meant to wake up when the real you is asleep. They have different purposes that don't matter right now, but if you lost yours, then instead of dreaming of Derse or Prospit you'd dream of the dream bubbles. Not every time, but sometimes.

They weren't even some weird metaphysical thing like yours—or not entirely? I don't know how angel magic works. But if you went out into this part of space at the edge of everything called the Furthest Ring, that's where they were.

'Qualification' for entry into Heaven is... less competitive, than some would make it out to be. [ Heaven takes whatever souls it can with exceptions made only for the most vile. And even then, 'vileness' is a rather subjective concept, even among angels.

In any case, that's an awful lot to take in, especially someone unfamiliar with videogames or the concept of "extra lives" outside of the context of reincarnation. Castiel listens intently, then repeats back what he's heard to make sure he's understood correctly. ]

You were granted a secondary physical form, which your consciousness would transfer to while you slept. If this auxiliary body died, then it would be moved to your dream bubbles, and you would awaken there instead, if you weren't dreaming normally.

[ That makes about as much sense as anything else. ]

I take it this isn't how the afterlife works for people who aren't involved in this Sburb?

[Davesprite hmms. It's more than he expected, and gives him all the more go-ahead to wonder about his own, personal slice of heaven. He'll think about it later, because Cas is answering the other part.]

Pretty much. And I've got no idea how it goes for people who didn't play the game, if there even is one for them.

... Kinda disturbing to think about it, when I put it that way. Maybe they just... die and that's it?

The soul is a thing of unparalleled importance and strength. It's unthinkable that they would not go somewhere after leaving their mortal forms.

[ He's as certain of the constancy of this fact across all universes as he is that his Father created all of them; which is to say very. ]

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I don't think we've ever seen a sprite in the dream bubbles SO

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