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“He’s a golem. Well, he’s my golem.”
“Right…” Sam casts a sidelong glance at Dean, who’s already fishing around in his pocket for his phone, one step ahead of Sam on this one.
Back at the guy’s place – Aaron, they’d learned – they find Cas already waiting for them by the door.
“So…that’s a golem?” Sam asks Aaron as they enter the building, eyes glued to the massive man-creature.
“Yeah. Shaped from clay and brought to life by rabbis to protect the Jewish people in times of…I don't know, general crappiness?” Aaron must be pretty used to the golem by now. He doesn’t even glance at the hulking figure as he speaks.
Dean fidgets beside Sam, not sure how to handle any of this. It isn’t every day that a new creature crosses their path, and he’s always been uncomfortable with gray areas like this, monsters who aren’t evil, creatures who don’t need ganking. Cas eyes the golem, but not with Dean’s wariness or Sam’s uncomfortable curiosity. He watches it with something almost like wistfulness, fondness.
“And he’s yours?” Sam asks Aaron, who barely contains a frustrated scoff.
“Hardly. My grandfather left him to me. I’m the last surviving descendant of the members of this…this thing, this initiative.” He skirts around the word in his derision.
“The Judah Initiative?” Sam prompts.
“Right, and he – “ Aaron is interrupted by the golem, who has sidled up behind Sam, Dean, and Castiel.
“Who?! Who are they, to know about the men of Judah?” The golem accuses. Dean and Sam exchange worried glances as the giant towers over them, clearly expecting some sort of explanation, a presentation of bona fides that will placate its intrinsic need to shield Aaron and his kin from any possible threat.
“אני המלאך קסטיאל (ani hamlach castiel),” Castiel explains, lips pulling up just slightly at the edges, like he’s remembering something particularly pleasant. “I am an angel of the Lord, and these are my…commanders.” Dean cocks an eyebrow at that, but Cas pays him no mind.
The golem visibly relaxes, its attention fully shifting away from a terse focus on Aaron for the first time since they encountered the trio to settle squarely upon Castiel.
Sensing their opening to speak more freely, Sam and Dean follow Aaron into his kitchen, where he snatches a few much needed beers for them all out of the fridge. In the front room, Cas is still standing with the Golem, who appears to be taking its time staring at Castiel, unsure what to make of him in the most literal sense. It finally speaks, and as much as Dean would like to eavesdrop, he doesn’t understand a lick of the ancient Hebrew the two are bandying about.
“You are a servant of Elohim?” The golem asks, expression open. Relaxed, almost.
“I am. At this time, the brothers are my masters, as Aaron is yours.” The golem rolls its eyes, and Cas finds the motion rather endearing. He wonders if this is a behavior it learned from Aaron, or if this indignance is part and parcel of its nature.
“He is no master. This boy knows nothing, observes none of the mitzvot, labors on Sabbath, dines on swine.”
“Surely he observes some of the mitzvot. There are over six hundred of them,” Castiel counters, unable to keep a good-natured grin from his face at the golem’s obvious hyperbole. “I recall at least twenty such commandments pertaining to idolatry alone. Surely he is not in violation of these?”
“Even so. He is no rabbi,” it huffs. Castiel feels sorry for it. He knows what it’s like, to be created for a specific purpose, a specific being, only to find that being unable or unwilling to employ you in their service. God abandoned the angels, but at least they had one another. This golem has been set aside by its master, and it has no one with whom to even commiserate.
“You’re right,” Cas nods, laying a gentle hand on its solid shoulder. The golem meets his eyes, something like fear flickering behind them. Not fear of Castiel, but fear of being right after all, that Aaron cannot take command, will not take command. Will doom it forever to the agony of disuse. “Have you considered what it must be like for him?” Cas asks.
“In what way?”
“Think about how life as a Jewish man has been for Aaron, compared to those you’ve served before. His community has been subject to further diaspora, and survival in the United States has required assimilation, secularity. He was not raised in community. His parents did not approve of his grandfather’s open faith, and kept him from teaching Aaron about you. Even if Aaron wished to take command, he may not even know how. And to blame him for his ignorance is to blame him for his own cultural suppression.”
The golem’s expression softens at the mention of Aaron’s grandfather.
“Isaac was a good man. A faithful man,” the golem reminisces.
“And he wanted you to be with Aaron. Not just for him to control. But maybe to help fill in those gaps?”
“It is not my place,” the golem sighs, looking forlornly through the doorway into the kitchen where Sam and Dean are still talking with Aaron. “It is not my place, to guide the rabbi, to teach the teacher. He must take control.”
“But you said yourself – he is no rabbi.” Cas gives the golem’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze before dropping his hand back to his side. The golem’s eyes sparkle with the potential Castiel’s loophole provides. “Perhaps it is your place, as one who has served so many, to teach him how to become one himself?”
“Perhaps…” The golem stares into the kitchen, and Cas feels something twist in his gut at the familiarity of its stony gaze as the muscles clumsily melt towards something almost human. It reminds him of the way his own vessel’s face used to look, still new to emoting, disproportionately stoic and hard under the absent command of an indifferent God.
The golem whispers something in Castiel’s ear, and gestures for him to enter the kitchen while it waits by the door, spine stiff and straight.
“Aaron,” Castiel interrupts his conversation with Sam and Dean regarding the Thule. “I have been discussing at length the conflict between yourself and your grandfather’s golem, and I believe we’ve reached a solution. Go to it, and speak these words to it: קליי של אדם, מסור לי את החוזה שלך (klai shel adam, mesur lei et hachoza shlach). Then you must inscribe your name upon the scroll it presents, and it will be yours to command.”
“Clay of Adam…give…me…?” Aaron fumbles through the translation.
“Clay of Adam, surrender your bond unto me, or at least, that is a loose translation,” Castiel offers mercifully. “It seeks your guidance. You should not withhold your will from it.”
“It?” Dean asks, seemingly offended, though Castiel cannot parse why that may be. Dean is inscrutable to him, now as he often is.
Sam, Dean, and Castiel follow Aaron into his living room, where the golem waits exactly as Cas left it.
“Klai shel adam, mesur lei et hachoza shlach!” Aaron says, his tone firm but his words tentative. The golem bends down and opens its mouth, scroll resting lightly on its tongue. Aaron plucks it up and scrabbles on the side table for a pen. He writes his name and replaces the scroll. The golem straightens up and nods at Aaron, a cautious hope in its eyes. It turns to Sam and Dean, both of whom look perplexed at the sudden attention.
“Thank you, for the service of your angel. It has been most insightful. You are blessed to have it under your command.”
“Um…thanks?” Sam answers before the discussion drifts back to the Thule and their plot.
Later, when Sam, Dean, and Castiel are in the car on their way to the library where Isaac’s grandfather had been studying, chasing the trail left by the Thule, Dean breaks a silence Cas hadn’t noticed hanging over them since they left Aaron’s house.
“So…’it’?” He asks, as if Castiel would understand what he’s asking in just a single word.
“It?” Cas asks back, squinting involuntarily as he tries to figure out Dean’s angle.
“The golem, you called him an ‘it’, and then, uh. Then the golem called you ‘it’.”
“Oh. Yes. In Judaism, angels are inferior to humans, as we have no will of our own. We were created to serve, and are only capable of carrying out divine command. Much like golems, which were constructed by rabbis to carry out their will. In the Talmud, Adam himself was initially created as a golem when God kneaded his dust into a shapeless husk, though he was imbued with a soul. Aaron’s golem has no soul. Neither do I,” Cas explains. Dean is craned around in his seat, twisted uncomfortably but clearly dedicated to giving Cas’s answer his undivided attention. His jaw is soft, lips parted slightly, and Cas recognizes the expression as shock, perhaps bordering on disapproval.
“You’re not an ‘it’, Cas,” Dean grits out.
“Not to you, no.” He smiles. No one who doesn’t know Cas would recognize the miniscule turn of his lips as a smile, but Dean does.
“You’ve got a will of your own,” he insists, as if Cas hadn’t spoken yet.
“I do now,” Cas agrees, still smiling faintly.
He doesn’t tell Dean that it’s more like the relationship between Aaron and his golem, that sometimes it feels like Dean wrote his name inside Castiel that day in the green room, when Dean first convinced him to rebel against Heaven.
He thinks it might make Dean uncomfortable, to highlight the parallels.
He thinks it might make Dean uncomfortable, to tell him how pleasant an idea it is to him, how warm and fulfilling it is, to belong to him, even after everything they’ve been through, everything they’ve done to one another.
Dean turns back to face forward again, Sam driving and seeming to pointedly ignore Dean’s exchange with Castiel, as if it’s private. Perhaps it is – Castiel has never been good at determining such things.
“Good,” Dean assures Cas, or perhaps himself, as he settles in his seat again.