#camniel ; human v

[uselessdevice]

FATHER CAMNIEL DEVINE.

FACECLAIM: Andrew Scott. AGE: 6000+ (25-30 in human verses). GENDER: Male. OCCUPATION: Priest. SPECIES: Archangel. SEXUALITY: Pansexual. NATIONALITY: Irish. EYE COLOUR: Brown. HAIR: Short, black. HEIGHT: 5"8. SCARS: None. LANGUAGES: English / Gaelic / Welsh / Latin / Italian. ZODIAC: Libra, October 21st. SKILLS & HOBBIES: Invulnerability / Immortal / Can sense love in all forms / Reading / Charity work. MEDICAL: None.CONNECTIONS: None.

BIOGRAPHY

Camniel is an Archangel, created during the building of the Universe and tasked to watch over God's creations on Earth. In the beginning, when Adam and Eve were ejected from the Garden of Eden for eating forbidden fruit, Camniel was sent to comfort them before they were left alone in the wilderness. He was also present to comfort Jesus before his crucifixion.

Camniel has spent a long time on Earth since then, mainly prayed to throughout human history by those seeking something. This has led to him being known as the ‘angel of lost things’, most notably those who are seeking peace, God’s love, forgiveness, understanding and strength/courage during a time of conflict.

In order to feel close to God while working on Earth, Cam opted to become a part of the human priesthood, lecturing often on the topic of love. He’s always been drawn to it, able to sense all forms of love clearly but also eager to help others find it and nurture it. Dealing with humans over thousands of years has only made this more important to him, seeing it as his ongoing mission on Earth- and so far, has been unchallenged by God.

Spending so much time among humans had an effect on him, however, and in the late eighties Cam found himself falling for a member of his congregation. Knowing that relations between angels and humans were forbidden, he did his absolute best to keep a distance, but found that it was too difficult to quell the feelings he’d developed. He became involved in a brief but deeply loving romance before a disapproving visit from his fellow Archangels put an end to it.

VERSES

Main Camniel, Archangel of Strength and Love, has been living on Earth since creation. Posing as a priest, he spreads God’s message about love as best he can- even though he hasn’t heard from God in a long time. Faithful to his mission and truly believing in the power of love, Camniel has grown to enjoy life on Earth, even though he tries to hold humans at arms length when it comes to relationships.

Human In this verse Father Cam Devine is an ordinary human priest who left his church in Ireland after some personal drama and started life over in London. He’s in his late 30’s.

Van Helsing Another human verse, Camniel is a priest who specializes in hunting vampires and demons, reporting back to the Holy Order in the depths of the Vatican.

[uselessdevice]

@imjustanauthor // & CHARLES

"Charles....I'll always be concerned about you. Leaving the flock doesn't mean you're forgotten. By me or You Know Who." Camniel replied, lips curving slightly. "God, by the way. Not Voldemort."

He wrinkled his nose in amusement, always one to enjoy a silly little joke. The sillier the better.

"Honestly, I'm more worried about how concerned you are, about yourself."

"You know, you're not obliged to feel any concern about me. Not anymore," Charlie pointed out. He wasn't foolish enough to think that the other man could just turn off the caring nature that he possessed, no doubt honed to perfection over the course of his career, but he didn't want to be an active concern. That just wouldn't be fair, would it?

"Anyway, it'll all be fine. What's the worst that could happen?"

It was definitely losing his job. Charlie was confident that nothing would go further than that. He knew how the courts worked, and if the Met wanted to charge him with anything, they'd have to explain why they'd brought him back in the first place. They wouldn't want to do that, therefore a far more likely outcome was 'encouraged' retirement.

But it wouldn't come to that! Charlie wasn't going to get caught! Nobody cared about him enough anymore to be watching him that closely!

"Or are you just worried about yourself?" He then checked. "You shouldn't feel guilty. You're helping to stop crime - that's a good thing."

[omniishambles]

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been five weeks since my last confession." Usually, she went to Mass and unburdened herself every Sunday, but she'd been working a lot of late, playing someone who did not believe. Was that where she should start? "I have denied God, I have let greed get the better of me. I have stolen things. I have been prideful." She could go on, but she was sure the priest did not have all day. "I am sorry for these and all my sins." / Kate for Camniel on Sunday.

        * * *

  Camniel settled in his chair, one leg propped on the other, though the confessor couldn’t see him. Ah, greed. One of the most seductive sins of all in the modern world, and one of the most heavily confessed- alongside lust, of course. 

    “When Christ's faithful strive to confess all the sins that they can remember, they undoubtedly place all of them before the divine mercy for pardon.” He replied, speaking softly back to her through the divide of the confessional. 

 The priest smiled wryly, hoping that his voice carried with it enough comfort. It was hard sometimes to feel that you were truly helping someone when you weren’t speaking face to face, but anonymity eased the process for the confessor. Now to weigh up the sins for their appropriate penance. 

 But first-

   “Y’know, five weeks is a relatively small break. Some go years, letting the time slip by, feeling as though it’s just too late- but it’s never too late and I welcome you. The things you stole...were they of great value?”

        * * *

[omniishambles]

     General tag drop !

[uselessdevice]

@imjustanauthor // & CHARLES

"We all have trials that make us feel alone. It doesn't mean that we are."

These were the hardest moments, of course. The real tests of faith. When the worst possible things in the world happened, when trauma had a grip on someone, how could they be blamed for feeling shaken?

Camniel understood. It was perfectly natural, understandable, to question God. Unlike most priests, he felt that asking questions was a good thing.

"But you're here. It wasn't your time. Have you...spoken to anyone? About what you remember?"

There was a not insignificant part of Charlie that knew exactly what was going on. He was being asked simple, kind questions in an effort to get him to talk. It was a standard play, but that just spoke to its effectiveness.

He didn't want to talk about it - not really - but, at the same time, there was some of him that still felt guilty about the idea of avoiding answering a priest. That, and he didn't feel uncomfortable. It wasn't like when the therapist he had been forced to see had asked him questions. He hadn't known her, resulting in her questions feeling intrusive. Here, though? Here, it was different. He could easily convince himself that the other man did care.

That was the only reason Charlie actually gave an answer. That, and that perhaps, deep down, he did want to talk about it, because ignoring it clearly wasn't making anything any better.

"There was nothing. There was no light, my life different flash before my eyes - nothing. One moment everything else fine, the next I have some vague memories of the hospital."

A lot of his stay in the hospital was very fuzzy. While Charlie knew what had happened because it had been explained to him, it had taken a while for memory to really get itself started again after coming out of the coma. That was probably for the best, though. He was pretty sure they wouldn't have been particularly nice memories if he had been able to keep them.

"If I concentrate really hard, sometimes I think I can remember the gunshot and then-"

No, he shouldn't say that. Nobody needed to know that he wasn't sure if he could remember a vague flash of the feeling of his secret girlfriend's brains splattering across his face. That would just cause concern.

Charlie smiled, the expression sad and formed from a place of not knowing what else to do.

"It wasn't peaceful," he said. "It felt like abandonment."

[uselessdevice]

@imjustanauthor // & CHARLES

He could see the man was pensieve. There were heavy things on his mind, not uncommon for those who worked in law enforcement. That was why Camniel joined him, why he greeted Charles in a jovial way.

Whatever burdens he was carrying weren't easily lifted, but perhaps the priest could take the pressure off for a moment or two.

Sometimes that was all anybody needed.

"Oh, day in, day out. It's like a conveyor belt around here, y'know?"

"Catch any bad guys today?" Camniel for Charles

Castle Sentences, Vol. 4

Charlie didn't know why he'd found himself wandering into the church that evening. It would have been easy for him to claim that old habits died hard, and that his visit was nothing more than a show of how the subconscious was fond of the familiar, but that wasn't the case. Perhaps, somewhere in his mind, he still found comfort in the building. After all, there was some peace in the silence there, was there not?

He didn't think he would have stayed had there been other people there, but the church had been blissfully empty, and so Charlie had decided to sit for a while. Camniel joining him had been unexpected but, well, he supposed he didn't mind. Who was he to turn a priest away in his own church?

"No, not today," Charlie admitted. Truth be told, it hadn't been a very good day. A double homicide had come in - one of the victims being a young girl around the same age as his daughter. While Charlie wasn't assigned to the case (he still had yet to work his way out of the cold case duty he had been relegated to), he had seen the photographs of the crime scene and he couldn't help but imagine Tilly there in the girl's place...

"And you? Have you absolved any sinners?"

[uselessdevice]

@imjustanauthor // & CHARLES

Though skeptical, Camniel decided to let it slide. Surely Charles did know what he was doing. He didn't want to accuse the man of losing his touch. Still, he seemed more and more inclined to treat policework the way they did in films and TV.

Looser than was strictly correct.

"Alright then, alright. I just don't want to see you get into any trouble, Charles."

Well... That was a good point, wasn't it? Charlie was pretty certain that nobody was going to question how he got any of his evidence - for the time being, his colleagues seemed pretty content to just leave him to his own devices, looking over cold cases that they didn't think he'd solve. Or, nobody was going to question his work until he came to the court case, should he actually manage to find the perpetrator of any of the crimes.

"I'll claim it's an anonymous tip," Charlie decided. He'd seen colleagues get away with that before, so why couldn't he do the same? Truth be told, he'd never done this before. It felt like it was going well though, right? Nothing too terrible had happened yet?

"Or, if it turns out to be useless, I can just shred it. It'll be fine. I know what I'm doing."

He didn't. Not outside of theory and what he'd observed (and previously criticised) other detectives doing.

[uselessdevice]

@imjustanauthor // & CHARLES

"Hmmm....carry on like this and I'll expect to see you in confession, Charles." Camniel replied, though only jokingly. Why the man wanted to be so secretive made him worry, actually.

There was no doubt that Charles was very good at his job, but he seemed to do this a lot. Had it been like this before? Had Camniel just never known what it really took for police work to get done?

"It's not gonna cause trouble with the evidence, is it? Wondering where and how you got it?"

For a few minutes, Charlie seemed to have gotten away with it all. He had his new clue in his pocket, and all he had to do was get back to the station, get away with breaking and entering, and solve the case. Easy, right?

But apparently not. Apparently, he hadn't been quite as sneaky as he would have hoped. Charlie's first instinct was to play innocent and deny everything - but then, he wasn't necessarily the best actor, was he? Before, he would have been perfectly capable of it. Now, though? Somewhere inside his head, Charlie knew that that it was a gamble to give that a go, and that his inclination towards impulsive reactions was likely to give him away.

"It's something I printed out," Charlie eventually replied after a moment of silent consideration. "He won't notice. I made sure everything was exactly as it'd been when I entered the room, and it's hardly like he's going to count the number of blank sheets in his printer, is he?"

It was fine. So what if he technically didn't have permission? It was going to help him solve a murder that had gone unsolved for far too long!

[uselessdevice]

@imjustanauthor // & Charles

At first Camniel did as the other man said, eager to get out of there and back on the street where he belonged. But once they reached the car, the priest threw his companion a suspicious glance as he clipped his seatbelt in.

"D'you think I didn't see that, Charles? What's in your pocket?"

If Charles was going to drag him into what was essentially breaking and entering, he could be honest about what he'd taken. God, please let it be something that wouldn't be missed when the owner got home...

It was maybe ten minutes after he had first gone upstairs that Charlie returned, summoned by Camniel's shout. From his lack of shouting earlier, and the fact he had no one with him, it could be assumed that he hadn't found anybody upstairs. Of course, that was to be expected, considering he'd known full well that the house was empty to begin with, no matter what excuse he gave for his forced entry.

"No, I didn't find anything," Charlie replied, as he not so subtly shoved a sheet of paper into one of his trouser pockets.

He was lying. He had found something - a computer, which he'd managed to turn on and print off some suspicious emails. He was convinced that he'd found the clue that'd finally crack the case, but he was illegally acquiring that evidence and he was pretty sure that wouldn't go down well if he admitted to it. So, even though it did spark a twinge of guilt within him, Charlie lied.

It was alright, he told himself. God would understand that it had been done in the name of the greater good. If he still believed in him, anyway.

"We should go," Charlie then said, motioning to the door. "I'll call the incident in while we're in the car."