asgardeventide | 17th Spark || [Video]

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17th Spark || [Video]

[Good morning, Asgard. There's a cheerful warlock wearing a dopey sort of grin on your bracelet screen.]

Since Arthur's already had his time to talk about the Citadel, I guess it's my turn. After what happened with the Gentlemen attacking, and the SOS message a couple days ago, it's not a bad time to remind everyone that the Medic Corps are still around. If you want to help with the war effort but aren't a fighter yourself, we could always use more healers willing to go onto the field and help the wounded. The hospital's a good place to work if being a physician is something you'd like to do, too.

I've just finished packing some more of the medicine kits. [He holds his own kit up to the screen as an example.] If you want one, or if you need to restock yours, just go to the hospital and ask for Merlin.

Right--speaking of the hospital. I've been talking to Jack, and we're going to be redecorating the hospital. Most of the walls and rooms are white, it's hard to believe any patient would recover while looking at something so painfully bare. We could use the help brightening the place up. Paint, portraits, trinkets--anything you've got that you that you want to contribute, I'm sure we'll find some place to put it. Or Jack's little ducklings will if we older folks can't. [Merlin grins, picturing the Guardian surrounded by the native and traveler children.]

Send all of that over to the hospital if you want, or [the half teasing, half sly expression on his face indicates the second option is the better one] you can come and help us decorate in a few days. There's enough of you good at creating and the like that it shouldn't be a problem, right?

[Was that a challenge you just heard? Nah, probably your imagination. Merlin beams, practically radiating cheer and innocence.] Great, so I'll see you all there!

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Did Sam or Dean teach you?

[Unless you angels somehow learn how to do this in Heaven?? Merlin wouldn't know what to make of that if it were true.]

Daphne said it would be good for me to express creativity. Most angels are naturally adept at arts, but we were not supposed to partake in them.

He's really good at it.

[THE ENTIRE WORLD SHOULD KNOW]

Castiel would love to paint the hospital and help redecorate, it would look beautiful.

Edited 2013-11-13 22:10 (UTC)

Well if you're the one who told him to practice more, I guess it would be.

Does that mean you're an artist yourself?

No, I'm horrible.

Castiel is the creative one.

Aw, now you're just putting yourself down.

You should join us at the hospital, Daphne. You and Cas, both.

Well, I'm at the hospital nearly every day anyway -- but I can make lunch for everyone who paints.

[Daphne is so not artistic. :')]

[He'll just have the children paint something for her, then!]

That would be--great. We'll all be starving by the time we're done. Do you, do you need some help making anything?

I don't think that's necessary, but you're more than welcome to help if you want to.

[Daphne adores cooking, it's her favorite thing in the entire world to do. She rarely has opportunity to cook for an army seeing as Castiel eats like a bird and she's pretty shy.]

I'd love to.

[Cooking with others, as he's learned in Asgard, is one of his favourite things to do. In Camelot, he'd cooked alone for the knights, and the castle kitchens took care of anything else. This is a pasttime he could happily get used to.]

What do you need?

Why not? It seems odd that you have to keep it a secret if you're good at something.

[If he's looking a little too interested in the answer, it might be because it's a sore spot with him.]

It wasn't that it was secret, but that we were not allowed to express--or feel--emotion. As I understand, emotion is essential to art, and therefore it was greatly discouraged.

[They wouldn't truly have gotten in trouble for drawing or making music or anything for the actual act of doing so, but it would've drawn attention to whether they were feeling emotion that they weren't allowed to be. That had made it was a risk they had generally not taken.]

[He's known his friend's an angel since...probably the first month they got to Asgard, but Cas has never actually talked about Heaven or even what it's like to be an angel. Not that Merlin's asked, aside from the relevant questions about Lucifer.]

I don't understand. [His brows furrow.] Why would it be discouraged...? I mean, if you make something beautiful from your natural angel talent, then isn't that a--a good thing?

[Castiel hasn't had a lot of reason to talk about his home or what heaven had been like, and with everything he's learned recently it's been confusing even to him. But he's starting to come to terms with things, and so he's being a little less guarded with people he knows and trusts, like Merlin.]

For lesser angels, we were to obey the orders of our superiors without question; defying an order was punishable by torture if you were fortunate, death if not. Emotion was considered a gateway to doubt, and doubt to disobedience, and therefore anything that would encourage feeling--and from such, independent thought or will--such as art, was not allowed. Our superiors were afraid that if we had reason to think for ourselves, we would cease to follow orders.

[And they were right, but that didn't make their means so.]

That sounds...awful.

[Merlin's looking a bit like someone just punched the air out of his lungs. Not only hadn't he guessed Cas' life before the Winchesters could have been just as bad, it's something Merlin's having a difficult time wrapping his mind around at all.

Angels--the religion they belonged to was still young in Merlin's time, but even he knew that the after life was something pleasant, not...this.]

But your superiors were angels, too, weren't they? How could it be that different for them?

At the time, it was all I knew.

[Or so he had thought, anyway. Turns out Castiel had known a lot more than he ever realized, and it had all been burned from his memory; he's aware of that now, but that doesn't regain the pieces. They're still gone, leaving entire chapters empty or worse, replaced with false memories.]

It is difficult to mourn the loss of a freedom you never had.

[He gives a tiny shrug of one shoulder.]

Angels vary in power. The higher rank, the stronger the are, and the strongest controlled Heaven. They could enforce whatever rules they desired without having them imposed on themselves in return.

You're free now. [In a way. The gods might lord it over them sometimes, but at least they don't torture or punish people for feeling. The opposite, in fact.]

The angels who controlled you might have had more power, but you're the one the gods here chose to colour the city. It wasn't right of them to--to take away what's yours.

You have a wife now, and friends like Sam, Dean, Jo...and Bobby! Having emotions might lead to doubt sometimes, but it also leads to things like love. If they couldn't see that, maybe they're the ones who need to learn something new.

[So there! ]

[Castiel is quiet as Merlin speaks, watching him, impassive as usual but not cold; his expression is a little fond, actually.]

It's not an issue anymore. The system has been destroyed.

[Everything, really, has been destroyed. But the angels now have a kind of freedom they had never dreamt of before, so they have a chance to make something new for themselves.]

Regardless, you are correct. I am here, now.

[And it took everything to get to where he is.]

Edited 2013-11-14 05:01 (UTC)

Oh. Well...good. I guess?

[Merlin's voice wavers uncertainly. It certainly is good that the horrible system doesn't exist any longer, but what does that mean, destroyed?

As he wonders this, Castiel might notice him struggling not to ask about the system and what happened. He's a curious thing, after all.]

[Castiel is good enough at reading people now to notice that, and he gives a short explanation.]

There was a war, and it went from there.

[And though the war had toppled most of the regime, everything had truly been brought down only just recently in an unrelated event, and in a way none of them had wanted.]

[A war...in Heaven? That actually leaves Merlin with more questions than answers, but knowing how tight-lipped Cas and the Winchesters usually are about their world, Merlin knows even that little bit of information is a lot. Technically.]

...I'm sorry. Is everything all right now?

No. Little ever is, in my world.

Then I'll just have to make sure you and everyone else from your world have a better time in Asgard than you do where you're from.

[He's getting you something nice for Yule, Cas. You can't stop him!!]

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