Leo Martinez / Castiel (![]() ![]() @ 2009-05-12 23:20:00 |
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Who: Leo and Cas
What: Pilgrimage - Leo's history
When: Mid-morning to evening
Where: ?
Warnings: Mentions of murder
With the roar of falling water in his ears, Leo took a deep breath.
The air was heady here, lush and hot and heavy with the scents of thousands of flowers. He couldn’t name them all, couldn’t name any, but they eased heart-ache and blurred the edges of his memory enough to stop it hurting.
Don’t think. Just live.
“I’m trying,” Leo murmured, knowing Castiel could hear him even if he only thought the words. But he hadn’t met another living soul since he left, and the sound of his own voice was the only real proof of humanity out here. It was hard to be alone again, after letting someone in so close.
Cas didn’t answer, and Leo returned his attention to the landscape. He didn’t know where they were. The Amazon rainforest, maybe, or somewhere in
Now, though, he was standing on the edge of a cliff. To his right, a small river plunged over the lip, tumbling and falling in a glorious crash of sound and light-on-water into the moss-lined pool below, dark and deep and blessedly cold in this heat, Cas assured him.
Because the angel wanted him to jump off.
Let go, he murmured, waiting patiently as Leo glanced down again. The moss and grass were soft under his bare feet; rolled up jeans and a t-shirt, he’d had no real need of anything else yet, not with Castiel in her with him. It will do you good.
“The last time I did this, I had a bungee,” the ex-assassin muttered – and then he shrugged, backing up. “You ready to fall or fly?”
Yes, the angel said simply.
Despite everything, Leo laughed. “That was a joke,” he started; and then cut himself off, sighing. “Never mind.”
Without another word, he ran forward.
Leapt.
Dived.
Flew.
*
Later, the cold water chilling over his skin as twilight swathed the jungle in soft golds and violets, Leo sat curled up on one of the rocks circling the pool, the thick moss like a velvet cushion beneath him. His eyes gleamed blue, Castiel right in there with him, watching the play of the falling light over the water.
Do you want to talk about it?
It was a while before Leo answered. It wasn’t quiet here; the waterfall crashed against the glass pool below it, turning the water into a boiling cauldron where they met, and though the pool had worn the area around it into a clearing, the trees were full of sound – leaves in the breeze, monkeys, the cries of birds. Animals he couldn’t identify, but he thought the rough barking noise might be some kind of jungle cat.
“Her name was Tanya,” he said finally, quietly. Another person wouldn’t have heard him, over all the noise, but Castiel was inside his mind, and it wasn’t an issue. “She was studying music at
The history of his world, wrapped up in three sentences.
It was easier, then, to just show Cas the memories. The girl with hair like burnished copper and eyes like the summer sky, her chocolate-smudge freckles. I have freckles on my nose/left there by a fairy’s toes. Her laugh, the smile that refused to let the stand-offish rugby player visiting her college avoid the party. Come and dance with me! Flashing lights, whirling dancers, and she hadn’t been his usual type but everything she touched turned to gold, and when she offered he went back to her room.
And they’d stayed up all night talking, instead. Were still talking over breakfast in the college canteen, swapped phone numbers and emails and just didn’t stop for two straight weeks. She saw everything through a rose-tinted veil; it was impossible to make her sad. She was exciting, interesting, smart, with depths he couldn’t even have guessed at, the first night. They talked about philosophy, about books, about sport, colours, art history, marksmanship, architecture, current events, their days. Her anecdotes about her friends and colleagues had made him laugh until he cried; the most normal day became a festival of positive experience through her mental filter.
She’d melted the Ice Prince.
The first time they’d been together had been his first time making love rather than fucking, and no matter how cold he grew, he’d never forget it. No matter what had come after, that was one of the most precious moments of his life.
The sheer love of being alive hadn’t faded as the months passed; if anything, it grew deeper, until the slightest thing could make him smile, and nothing could make it fade again. Another precious moment; going down on one knee at the New Year’s celebration of their final year, two years later, and seeing the sky erupt in jewel-bright fire as she threw her arms around his neck, his ring on her finger.
His life had been complete. He’d never been happier; offered a position in the unnamed ‘governmental project’, he’d taken it just for the thrill and the paycheck. They wanted to buy a house.
By the time it became clear what all the training was for, Leo was in way over his head – and more than that, addicted. To the adrenalin, to the rush, to feeling his body perform beyond its greatest potential. Power, of any kind, is a drug; and like any drug, too much of the wrong kind with the wrong people around you can drag you down so deep into the darkness of your own soul that nothing in the world can drag you out again.
There’s a moment, in the training, that makes or breaks you. It’s not the first time you use a gun, feel the punch of the recoil against your wrist and fingers. It’s not when you commit your first crime – theft, usually – and switch disguises, out on the street. It’s not even the first time you put your gun to someone’s head and pull the trigger.
It’s when you go home, to the person you love more than life itself, and see your own darkness reflected in their eyes.
It broke him.
He spent hours on his knees, his arms around Tanya’s waist and his head on her lap. He told her everything. The project, the training, the killing. The blood on his hands. How much he’d enjoyed it, how much he’d wanted it. How good at it he was.
He told her everything. Cried his eyes out and let her lance the poison in him, draw it out of him with soft touches and softer words. Making him warm again.
I don’t know what she did, Leo said finally. Maybe talked to the wrong people. Tried to find a way to get me out of the contract. Anything.
Because he’d come home a week later, and Tanya – his Tanya, his beautiful, warm, perfect fiancé, the most alive person he’d ever met – was lying dead on the floor, a shattered coffee mug lying by her fallen hand. Neat and professional. Quick…
Life, love, meaning. Over.
The only way to survive was to go cold. To lock his heart and throw away the key – and lock his heart in the deep freezer, for good measure.
The rest was nothing unexpected. He’d had no where else to go, nothing else to do. Numb, broken, he’d been just what they wanted; the expert trainers had had no trouble peeling back the layers of broken glass inside him, ripping away the humanity he hadn’t even wanted anymore to bare the core of him. The perfect assassin: exactly what they wanted.
He didn’t want to think about it anymore. He uncurled from his position on the rock, and didn’t bother to undress before he pushed off and dived back into the pool.
The freezing cold water wiped everything away.