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Part 1
Meg’s not there when it goes down.
She hears about it from an informant, who heard it from an ally, who heard it from a double-agent, who heard it from one of Crowley’s closest. How Castiel and Crowley worked together, and Cas turned on him (good boy, she can’t help thinking) and took all of Purgatory into himself. He’s God now, according to her informant.
Clarence playing God. Now there’s a thought. Meg’s just glad she’s safely tucked away, in a beach house in Sydney surrounded by demons and holy oil and covered in warding sigils. Her informant says the protection didn’t help Crowley—Cas got to him anyway, reinstated him as King of Hell as the rumors go—but Meg doesn’t care. She’s almost looking forward to their inevitable meeting.
Her informant, a crossroads demon called Kai, paces the length of the beach house and back again. His eyes flare red, sending a slight glow down the bare chest of the surfer he’s currently possessing. If Crowley wanted, he could trace Kai’s position, but Kai’s very much a lower-level dealer and anyway, he’s assigned to Australia. It’s one of the reasons Meg’s chosen it. Allies are few and far between these days.
“He’s going to find you,” Kai says at last. He rubs at his scarred cheek and broken nose—souvenirs from surfing during a hurricane in South Carolina last year, according to memories Kai digs out of the guy’s brain. “These can’t protect you.”
“I know,” Meg says. She picks up the angel blade from the side table and twirls it in her fingers. The bright sunlight reflects off the shiny surface. Outside, waves crash on the beach, mixing with the sound of children shrieking and laughing. She stabs the blade into her armchair. “Kai, what did I tell you about people on my beach?”
“It’s a public beach,” Kai says. Meg rolls her eyes and pulls the blade out of her chair, pointing the sharp end at her informant.
“And this is the last time I let you find me a safehouse. There are four demons standing guard outside, get them to do something useful.”
He nods and disappears out the front door. Meg sighs and drops her head back on the chair. This was supposed to be a respite for her. She can watch the mayhem on TV, safely away from anyone trying to kill her, until Castiel shows up. And he will. He won’t be able to stay away, Meg’s sure of that.
“Crowley will find you, too,” Kai says, coming back inside. Her beach is silent, save for seagulls and ocean. If she closes her eyes, she can almost pretend the crying seagulls are the screams of the damned. Maybe this safehouse isn’t so bad after all. Kai moves to block the window and crosses his arms over his chest. She raises an eyebrow, and he continues: “Hell, your angel might hand you over to him as a consolation prize.”
Meg laughs. “No, he won’t,” she says. She’s worked her way under Clarence’s skin.
“Just know that when he comes, you’re on your own.”
She bows her head, smirking. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
Castiel doesn’t come for her that day, or the next, or the day after that. Meg passes the time watching news reports of mass smitings and miracle healings. Some of them reference a mysterious dark-haired man in a tan overcoat. Some don’t, but Meg can see Cas’s hand anyway. Occasionally someone will have a video, and it’s usually grainy and blurry and taken on someone’s iPhone while they run away (and, often, ends with the cameraman falling). No one has gotten a real, clear look at their new God yet.
Outside, her beach remains clear. She goes out sometimes, lies in the sand and waits for the occasional hapless tourist to wander by. Then she sends them inside the house for drinks and corruption, and Kai gets another soul, and Crowley stays out of his way. As long as Kai’s a good little employee of Hell, meeting his quota, Crowley has no reason to come visit. Businessmen. Sure, it was fine when Crowley was just wrangling the crossroads demons, but now that he’s in charge of everyone, Hell’s become much less fun.
After a week of sitting around and waiting for an attack that clearly isn’t coming, Kai finally agrees that maybe getting out of the house would be good for her. It takes Meg holding the angel knife to his throat and musing that this thing killed hellhounds—do you think it kills demons, too? He looks stricken, and relents easily. Meg wonders when her informant became her bodyguard, but as having him and the others around means she’s got something to throw at Crowley’s hounds before she makes a run for it, she puts up with his overprotective crap. Mostly.
Meg goes alone. Kai drops into a nightclub to make a few deals for Crowley, and Meg wanders around the alleyways, contemplating the perfect combination of destruction and fun and covertness.
That’s when she sees him, standing at a dead end, suit and trenchcoat and blue tie and all, silhouetted by eerie holy light. He raises a hand and Meg walks to him, her feet moving of their own accord, stiletto heels clacking and echoing through the alley.
Then he lowers his hand, and she screams.
~ * ~
He hurts.
Meg’s borrowed skin ripples and burns, boiling and tearing and the next instant healing smooth, only to bleed again. She kneels, naked, on the hard concrete. It’s all she can do to keep her gaze firmly locked on her hands, her fingers gripping her bare thighs. He’s so bright, he could burn the eyes right out of her head.
She screams when he touches her cheek, feels the skin melt away and the sharp cold of air strike her exposed bones. He draws his hand away and she heals, though frantic sobs still tear their way out of her throat.
“Meg,” he says, and she feels her eardrums break. “I have reinstated Crowley as King of Hell.”
So she’s still a fugitive. Or, she will be, if by some miracle she survives this encounter with the new God. She isn’t sure which is worse—death at Crowley’s hands, or at Castiel’s. Neither is likely to be quick.
“But I am strangely fond of you,” he continues. “I am compelled to make you an offer. A chance to stop running from your King.”
“What do I have to do, Clarence?” she asks, and the words turn to acid on her tongue. Blood slides down her chin.
“Nothing at all,” he says. He takes a fistful of her hair and pulls, and she stands. “I am God,” he says, more to himself than to her. “I will have what I want.” He crushes her to him, covering her lips with his own, cleaning out her mouth with his tongue. She screams into the kiss, claws at him and fights and struggles, her entire body burning. He touches her arms, her back, cups the swell of her ass, and she feels her skin sloughing off in the fire. It’s not like those of Hell—this fire cleans her, purifies her, turns her into a mockery of her race. Into something else.
Finally, the burning stops, and there’s only his lips on hers and his hands brushing through her hair, and she kisses him back just as passionately.
He fucks her against the wall, holding her on his cock with one hand while the other presses her shoulder to the rough cracks in the bricks. She digs her nails into the back of his neck, into his bicep, sinks her teeth into his lower lip and draws blood. Meg spits it on the ground—God’s blood is bitter and slimy and tastes like fish.
“You are mine, now,” he says, voice rumbling in her ear. “Bound to me.”
Meg just laughs. She presses down on his shoulders and lifts herself, rocking slowly on his cock. His hands falter on her, his eyes widening slightly. “Why?” she asks, dropping roughly onto him. “Why do this?”
“I want to watch you and Crowley fight for control of Hell,” he says.
“Sure,” Meg says. She’s not convinced. His deal with Crowley was somewhat less than secret after the Winchesters found out. Crowley made the angel his bitch. And this new Cas wants control. She can read it in his hands, pressed to her skin; in his cock, driving into her; in the total lack of dominance he actually displays as she easily prompts him to fuck her just the way she likes. He couldn’t care less about Hell—he wants to watch them fight over him.
It’s adorable, really.
“So I am yours,” she says, keeping the laugh out of her voice. She seals her oath with her teeth on his neck, hard enough to draw blood. It doesn’t taste like fish this time—it tastes like raw power, and she laps up several drops before sharing his blood between them. He bites her lip, and she tastes sulfur.
With a shout he comes inside her. Cleansing flames shoot through Meg’s body, and she feels the black smoke of her soul compress and shine just a little. She slides a hand down her stomach and presses at her clit, grunting her release a moment later.
She shakes herself out, removing herself gingerly from Cas’s cock and stepping to the floor. Cas’s hair is mussed and his lips are bruised and there are marks in the shape of her teeth on his neck and his blood drips on his collar. He puts his cock back in his slacks and zips them, and not even God can make that look dignified. On the other hand, she feels clean and pure and exposed.
“Remove your scourge from me,” she says, tossing her head back and writhing against the wall, her arms thrown wide in rapture. “I am overcome by the blow of your… well, your dick.”
He doesn’t look amused. In fact, he hardly hears her at all. He’s distracted, his eyes glazed over, head tilted as he listens to something calling him from far, far away. Without a word he disappears. She drops to the ground, laughing. As she is Cas’s, Cas is hers. Not wholly, not completely, but just enough. She is inside him, twisting and biting, And he knows it.
~ * ~
She returns to herself, slow and certain, the taint within her turning back into beautiful hellfire. Cas tries to summon her. She ignores him. Not because she’s angry, not because she’s uninterested, but simply because she can. Whoever or whatever told Cas he could bind her with one little fuck against a wall had vastly underestimated her. Meg is Azazel’s daughter. She is Alastair’s pupil. She is Lucifer’s favored child. Something like her can’t be bound that easily. He hadn’t even noticed she’d taken some of Purgatory’s power into herself. Meg considers making a show, lighting up the sky or something like that, but decides against it. She’s going to need that extra boost, that sad little soul-slice, and she’s saving it for someone special.
Meg still has designs on Crowley’s throne, despite the jealous ex-lover sitting in the stands. Her agents are out there, monitoring the situation, reporting back to her. She’ll have to strike soon, while he’s distracted and she’s still thrumming with Cas’s power. And she will, once she stops wanting to rip the shining meat from her bones.
In the meantime, she’s content to flip through news reports of miracles and God-sightings. Her bodyguards have gone on an extended spree since Meg wandered back reeking of Angel-God, not that she blames them. Kai drops by once, to let her know he has to return to Crowley. He speaks to the wall over her shoulder, tucking a hand into the pocket of his stiff black leather jacket. He’s possessing a wannabe biker, all slicked-back leather hair and pale, pointed face. He’s thin and gangly, his barely-faded jeans belted tightly around his waist and his boots still squeak when he walks. The guy even has a small moustache and goatee that looks like it’s taken four months to grow. None of it’s surprising—though for a crossroads demon, she’d think he’d want to look a little bit less like a serial killer.
He sends her messages on occasion, but nothing of much interest. Bought a soccer mom and a couple stockbrokers. Crowley’s not impressed. Neither is she. But she’s grateful for the peace.
It takes several days and many more failed summoning attempts for Castiel to finally show up in Meg’s living room. His eyes are sunken and he’s starting to show little scars at his temples, but power still rages through him and Meg shudders a little under his gaze.
“You disobey your God,” he says. “Why have you not come when summoned?”
At the word come she smirks. “I’ve been a bad girl, haven’t I?” she asks, sauntering to his side, her hips swaying a little. She tips her head up to look him in the eyes, and it doesn’t burn her away. Her lips part and she knows he can feel her breath on his skin. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I can’t see your face.” His expression is even, but behind his relaxed eyes Meg can see a storm raging, little flecks of light just barely restrained, and she shivers under the scrutiny. “Your true face is hidden to me. What have you done?”
“Nothing, I swear.” Liar, she thinks. “Maybe it’s a side effect of you trying to bind yourself to me. Now that we are one, you can’t see past the mask.”
He grabs her arm. “You’re lying. You’ve done something.” She wonders if anyone has defied him and lived to tell about it. She suspects she’s about to be the first, as she realizes Cas isn’t going to kill her. Can’t kill her. She’ s gotten to him, and he’s not about to burn her away now. Provoking an angry God gets a little less exciting.
But only a little.
“Are you going to spank me?” she breathes.
“Perhaps I should,” Cas says. She moans softly, tossing back her head and letting her long, dark curls cascade down her back. Her throat is bared for his teeth, and she waits for him to take. Long moments pass, and he doesn’t. She opens her eyes and lowers her chin. He’s looking at her, a bemused expression on his face that quickly turns into a superior little smile. She wants to kiss it off his lips.
“I won’t,” he continues. “Not now. But I will figure out what you’ve done, and it will be undone. A demon cannot flaunt God’s Will.” He disappears, leaving her wet and frustrated and somewhat impressed. The one thing that would actually be punishment for her, and he’s found it. Controlled himself enough to leave her. Yes—she’s impressed.
It’s still extremely annoying, Meg thinks, as she drops into her recliner and glares at the ceiling. It’s boring hiding all the time, boring enough that she’s tempted to provoke a confrontation with Crowley for the hell of it. He’s probably hiding from Cas, probably as bored as she is, and would be grateful for the entertainment.
Unfortunately, it probably wouldn’t end well for her, and Cas has left her too turned-on to focus on anything else. Instead, she opens her laptop and scrolls through her bookmarks for the YouTube video of a strange trenchcoated man smiting some douchebag preaching about The Power of Self-Actualization. Whatever that is. She cranks the volume.
The picture quality is terrible, though that’s not surprising considering the cameraman was using an iPhone and trying to decide whether or not to run screaming. But Cas is still visible, and it’s still obviously him, dark hair and trenchcoat and all. His voice rings clear and true though her speakers.
”The only true path is through Me,” he says. The camera cuts to the confused man on the stage. He has a horrendous toupee. “All of you who follow these misguided teachings do so at insult to Me. But I do not blame you, for you are weak of mind and of soul. Listen to My words. Cast aside this liar.”
Meg trails her fingers down her ribs, over her hipbone, slides her hand past the elastic of her underwear. Her other hand comes to her breast and she plays with her nipple for a bit, before pressing a finger inside herself.
“He does not wish to help you,” Cas—God—continues. “He desires only your money, and after he has spoken he laughs at you. Foolish little humans, so desperate for help. Forsaken by a God who no longer cares, forced to seek fulfillment from these charlatans.”
She moans softly, letting his deep, rough voice sink into her skin. It sparks against the half-bond and her moan turns into a cry. She presses a second finger inside herself and twists them as she arches into her own touch. Her nails scrape against her nipple.
“I will put a stop to this.” He steps forward, raising his hand. Meg moves her fingers faster, takes her hand away from her breast to rub at her clit. Cas smiles, powerful and certain, and she groans again.
“May your words no longer lead them astray,” he says. The man’s hands fly to his throat. He claws at the buttons on his shirt, sending them flying, but still he chokes. Meg adds a third finger and squirms desperately on her hands.
“May you find what you seek in Me and Me alone, and may you love Me above all else. I am a new God, a better God. Your God.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Meg says, her sarcasm almost masked by her moans.
The man stops choking and falls facedown on the stage, dead. Cas disappears and reappears on the stage, faces the crowd and raises his arms. “I am the Lord your God,” he says. “You will love Me.”
All at once, the audience stands, then drops to their knees, crying out their worship, while Meg cries out in worship of a different kind.
She licks the mess from her fingers and watches God descend the stage. He glides through the crowd, hardly noticing the little humans embarrassing themselves. With perfect certainty, he walks up to the man with the camera. He looks straight through the lens. Right at her. He presses a finger to his lips, and her own fingers fall from hers.
~ * ~
She goes back to the States. Gets herself onto the private plane of some CEO’s playboy kid. He’s been on a surf vacation, but now he and his buddies (assholes, all of them) are going to party in Vegas. Meg’s invited, of course. She smiles gratefully, takes another swallow of her drink, and watches the dancers.
The kid and his friends end up in Hawaii, on one of the tiny islands in the middle of a pineapple field, and she puts her feet up and orders another drink. Margarita, cherry, no salt.
Vegas sounds good, she thinks.
~ * ~
Meg’s leaning against the blackjack table when she feels a bone-deep chill. She frowns. Demons don’t get cold, not normally, and it echoes through her with a sharp, vicious edge. Just the wrong side of clensing and she knows. Cas. Something’s happened.
Or something’s about to.
She swipes a few chips off the drunk guy next to her and saunters off. It’s not her problem. Cas can handle himself. She goes off in search of something to get her mind off the cold and the pain and the screaming in the back of her mind that something’s coming and you need to go.
It doesn’t work.
Meg gets to the warehouse with seconds to spare. She hadn’t been planning to come at all. She’d been busy with three former Chippendales dancers and a bartender and twin acrobats. Which wasn’t at all an attempt to annoy a certain God who thinks he owns her.
But she’s got some lingering affection for the angel said God used to be, it turns out. And someone seems to have power over her, because the tug at her arm is definitely something that happened, and now she’s in the reeds and the cold’s abated and something’s happening.
Meg glances up to see the moon shade over, and the warehouse explodes with light.
“What—”
For a split second, she can see through Cas’s eyes. Purgatory splitting open, the souls pouring back in, dragged back against their will, and it tears at her insides just as it must be tearing at his. Meg gapes at the sight. She wishes she could be in there to see it firsthand, to get a glimpse into Purgatory—Crowley’d been so set on going there, she thinks she’d like seeing what all the fuss is about.
Slowly, the light fades from the windows. The only sound comes from the wind rustling through the grass and the trees. There’s no sign of anything wrong, no explosion, no Clarence appearing to gloat and take her. The eclipse is over. Meg lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding.
“So, it worked then?” she asks the grass. A thin layer of dew makes it shine in the almost-predawn.
The minutes tick by. The sun breaks over the horizon, and a few birds chirp hopefully. Then she hears the rattling of a fence, and she sees a black, bloodied trenchcoat, and Cas, stumbling towards the lake.
Dean and his fake dad stand on the bank as Cas walks into the water and disappears. Meg feels something tighten in her chest—apprehension, maybe—and watches the water swirl around where Cas sank. Then something black and murky shoots out from him, and his trenchcoat washes up on the shore, and Dean picks it up and walks away.
For a brief moment, she thinks he’s dead—that he brought her here just to witness his end. But then Meg hears a tiny cough some ways down the edge of the reservoir. She curses and kicks a rock into the lake before sighing and going over to check on her drowned angel.
~ * ~
Meg kneels in the reeds and pushes the man’s wet hair away from his forehead. Like this, she could almost convince herself he’s human. But beneath her fingertips she can feel his Grace thrumming away. It’s dimmer than it was back when he pushed her against that grimy prison wall and slid his lips against hers, his hand tangling in her hair, as she lifted his sword. And the pulse has shifted. Dim and erratic. If he were still God, it should be bright enough to burn the demon right out of her and throbbing slow and even. She wonders what it means.
He stirs, his eyes fluttering open, and she tries to stumble away. Tries, because there’s a hand around her wrist and yeah, he’s definitely still an angel—or enough of one to be dangerous.
“What—” he coughs, murky black water dribbling from his lips. “What’s going on? Who are you? What have you done to me?”
She stares. The angel scrambles around in the grass, like he’s never felt earth before, and she swears it isn’t endearing at all. “What do you remember?”
He shakes his head. “Light. Dark. Pain, and drowning. Nothing.” Nothing. He remembers nothing. He’s an angel who doesn’t know he’s an angel and, better still, doesn’t know she’s a demon. Doesn’t know not to trust her. She could dance with the beauty of it all.
Oh, yes. This is good. There’s no reason she should tell Clarence who he is. Not yet, anyway. Not until she has him.
“You had an accident,” she says. A slight edge of glee works its way into her words, and she hopes he’s still too out of it to notice. “You died.”
“I died.” He turns the words over in his mouth, over and over. “I died. I died. I—” he stops. “Do you know who I am?”
“Clarence,” she says. He makes a face. “But your friends call you Cas,” she amends, and his expression softens. She smiles encouragingly. “I’m Meg. You trust me.”
He nods. A strange look overtakes him, as his cheeks turn bright pink and his hands travel down to cover himself. “I seem to have—misplaced my clothes,” he says. She laughs. He looks so lost, so uncertain, so in need of her guidance. And she’ll give it to him.
“My car,” she says. Meg pauses, then takes off her own jacket and hands it to him. He tries to cover himself, wrapping the soft leather around his waist. He looks ridiculous. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”
She hesitates for a moment, her hand twitching by her side, then gives in to the urge and cards her fingers through the angel’s hair. It’s wet and slimy from the reservoir, but still sends tiny sparks of power through her. He smiles softly, his wide blue eyes shining with gratefulness, and she jerks her hand away so fast she takes a few strands of hair with her.
There’s a green sedan in the parking lot a few yards away. Meg smashes in the window and goes rummaging through the seats. Not much—a few dollars, a half-eaten sandwich (which she ends up tossing in a ditch, grimacing at the mold) and a bicycle pump. She has better luck with the trunk, where she finds golf clubs and a briefcase and a sports bag with a change of clothes. She slings the bag over her shoulder and returns to Cas.
“Here,” she says, tossing him the bag. “Get dressed.”
Meg turns around while he changes, as much for her sake as for his. The longer she’s around him, the harder it is to resist throwing him to the ground and riding him until he screams. Oh, she plans to do that eventually—that’s a given—but right now she needs him to trust her. There’s a suspicious glint in his heaven-blue eyes when he looks at her, and she can only hope she feels familiar enough to him that he doesn’t run off the second he has pants.
“Are you certain these are my clothes?” he asks. She turns around and promptly doubles over in hysterics.
The clothes are made for a man four inches taller and at least a hundred pounds heavier than him. His pants are a horrible yellow-green plaid polyester, cinched around his waist with a brown leather belt, and he’s holding them on with one hand. He also has a short-sleeved orange button-down shirt, paired with a blue and white argyle sweater vest.
“Sorry,” she chokes out. “They’re—a coworker’s. It’s all I had in my car.” She wipes her eyes and shakes her head. “We’ll find you something more appropriate later.”
He looks amused. “Do you usually have coworkers’ clothes in your car?”
“Sometimes,” she says. Cas smirks. She offers a hand to him. “Come on.”
He doesn’t take it.
“Where else are you going to go?” she asks. “I can give you answers. But you have to trust me, okay?”
Cas plucks a thread from his sweater vest. “Clothes first,” he says. His fingers are warm against her palm.
~ * ~
The owner of the car clearly isn’t a fan of keeping his gas tank full, because they barely get two miles away from the warehouse before Meg realizes they’re going to be stranded if she doesn’t find a station quick. It’s annoying, but Cas is still fidgeting in his oversized, tacky outfit, and he’s being very distracting.
She lifts a couple credit cards from a guy in the parking lot. Normally, she’d just kill everyone, but now that she has Cas with her, she finds she can’t slaughter quite as easily. Like the mere presence of an angel has given her a conscience.
He finds a suitable plain gray t-shirt and a pair of jeans that mostly fit, and changes in the bathroom while Meg wanders around picking out snacks. Something of everything, which gets her a couple strange looks from three shady guys standing near the audiotapes. She’s not sure if amnesiac angels eat, but even if it turns out they don’t, she’s hungry.
Meg makes her way to the counter and drops it all in front of the cashier. He puts down his Maxim and regards her with deep-set, bloodshot eyes. “And Pump Three,” she adds, as he starts ringing up the food. He shoots her a look of deep loathing mixed with boredom and hash.
“This, too,” Cas says behind her, dropping three burgers onto the counter. Well, that answers that, she thinks. Angels like burgers. She starts to tell him that gas-station burgers are horrible, but then she turns around.
“Look at you!” she says, smiling proudly at his new outfit. It’s a vast improvement. As awesome as it was seeing an angel wander around in oversized, tacky golf clothes, seeing said angel in a skintight t-shirt and low-slung jeans is much more appealing. She tugs at the hem of his shirt, grinning.
Cas looks startled. “Please stop that,” he says. Meg pouts, but pulls her hand away. She doesn’t want to frighten the poor guy into running. But she’s determined to get him out of that shirt soon, actually feel those powerful muscles she didn’t quite get to enjoy while he was lying naked by a lake, and—
“Hey, lady, are you going to pay for this shit?”
She tosses him the stolen card. The guy blinks at the name—Rolf Eriksen—but shrugs and runs it through anyway. Meg piles the candy and chips into a plastic bag while Cas gathers his burgers. She leads the way. Behind her, she can hear Cas unwrapping one of his burgers and biting into it. She rolls her eyes.
“Don’t get any of that on my car,” she warns him. “New interior.” Not that it’s her car, but she wants to see if he’ll obey her.
He responds by taking another huge bite and sliding silently into the passenger seat.
They get almost another sixty miles in silence. Cas finishes all three of his burgers—thankfully, without dripping ketchup and mustard on the seats—and continues staring out the window. There’s a tiny crease between his eyes, as he concentrates on the scenery. He’s looking for something familiar, she suspects, trying to get his memory back from the trees and farmhouses and fields of nothing.
“Pull over,” he says suddenly. She glances at him. He looks panicked, and his fingers are wrapped around the handle of the car door. And she really doesn’t feel like scraping angel off the interstate. Sighing, she pulls into the grass and stops.
“Need to take a leak?”
“Look, I appreciate the clothes, and the burgers, and the ride, but—I don’t understand. Who are you? Why do I trust you? What the hell happened and who the hell am I?”
“I told you,” she says. “I’m Meg. We’re friends.”
“I remember you,” he says. Her eyes widen. “I mean—you feel very familiar.” He still looks suspicious, and she doesn’t blame him—their familiarity isn’t exactly the kind where they chat over a fence and he mows his lawn and she makes him lemonade. Unless you want to play fast and loose with euphemisms, which would probably all go over the angel’s head anyway.
“Do I?” she smirks.
He nods and raises his hand, palm hovering an inch from her face. “May I?”
“Yes,” she breathes, and shudders as he cups her cheek, icy fingers stroking her skin.
Then his lips are on hers, and though the pressure is feather-light, she can feel the power coursing through his body and passing into her, burning her and setting her alight. She gasps and he pulls away. He’s smiling.
“Friends, huh?” he says. She blushes.
“I didn’t want to push you,” she says. “And yes, there was… more.”
He backs her against the car, hands pressing her shoulders against the curved roof. “How much more?”
She tilts her chin up, challenging. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
He lets her go. “I would,” he says softly. “I want to know who I am, what—but I don’t,” he growls, frustrated. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She curls her fingers through his, stroking the top of his hand with her thumb. He jerks away.
“Just tell me who I am.”
Meg shakes her head. “That’s not a good idea,” she says. She wants to—dammit, she wants to tell him everything—but she’s been warned, and she can’t be certain Cas-with-memories won’t just smite her. She can’t even be certain reminding him will bring back her fluffy-winged Clarence. It could just as easily bring back Our Lord Castiel. “I don’t even know everything. I told you. I was sent to find you. We may know each other, but we’re not exactly best friends. You’ve never braided my hair.”
“I see.” He frowns at her. “I think I am beginning to understand.”
“Good,” Meg says. “Then can we get back in the car?”
“For now.”
It’s good enough.
~ * ~
He stares out the window. Cas stares out the window.
It still sounds strange. His name is familiar, yes, but not entirely in a good way; on Meg’s lips it sounds like a hiss, like a joke, and in his mind it sounds like a knife wound. If knife wounds had sounds. It echoes through his mind in a hundred, a thousand different voices, He doesn’t recognize any of them. Not the ones that scream, condemning him and tearing at him and shoving him down. And not the ones that whisper his name in pain.
He’s not sure which is worse.
It doesn’t feel complete, either, which he thinks is fitting. An incomplete name for an incomplete person. The burgers sit heavy in Cas’s stomach, and it occurs to him the familiarity he felt towards the food might have come from a very different source. Perhaps he is supposed to be a vegetarian. Perhaps he’s allergic to something in the bun or the meat. Meg had looked amused at his choice, though she hadn’t said anything. And she knew him. If he had picked something lethal, she would have warned him.
Maybe.
Cas watches the clouds roll over the tops of the trees. Every so often he sees a flock of birds, high above the car, and his chest aches. His shoulders dig painfully into the car’s leather seats, and his legs feel trapped under the glovebox. He can see the speedometer from where he’s sitting, and Meg’s going well over the speed limit, but it still doesn’t feel fast enough.
Slow. Confining.
He hates it. Hates all of it. Maybe it would be better if nothing felt familiar. If he’d walked out of the lake and into the arms of a total stranger, one who didn’t keep hinting at a past Cas could no longer remember. If he could have a new name, a new life, rather than try to fit into a life that feels right and wrong and upside-down and nothing at all.
Most of all, he hates Meg. She makes his skin crawl. She’s like an infection and at the same time he’s drawn to her. They were lovers. He wants her and needs her, and he hates himself for it. He’s not a bad person—he thinks he’d probably feel it if he were—but there’s a darkness inside of him, eating at him, a darkness Meg’s hinted at but won’t say more about. He wants to know, and he doesn’t want to know, and he hates her and needs her and she laughs in his face.
He lets his head fall back against the seat and closes his eyes. The sun pours through the windows, despite the tint. He lets his mind wander, over mountains and to the deepest depths of the ocean, and through plains and up stairs and then he finds himself falling and it’s tearing at him but at the same time he’s never felt more alive.
Then Meg’s voice is calling him, and he opens his eyes. It’s dark. He can see her smile in the moonlight.
“We’re here,” she says.
“Where’s here?”
“New River, Arizona. About half an hour north of Phoenix. You were out for awhile. Guess amnesia really takes it out of a guy.”
He considers, then decides he agrees with that statement. Regardless, his mind is clearer, and the pangs are duller. He wishes they’d go away entirely, but as long as Meg’s around, he’s pretty sure he’s not going to get that fresh start. He climbs out of the car wearily and frowns at the motel she’s picked. It’s charming, he thinks, suited to what he can see of the rural desert town. Which isn’t much, as there’s no streetlamps—only the moon and a bright scattering of stars across the sky. The motel feels familiar, maybe, like he’s stayed in hundreds of places like this before, and from what Meg’s told him he supposes he must have. It didn’t seem like they had a home.
Then she brushes her fingers over his wrist, and he finds he doesn’t care about any of it as she leads him into their room.
Meg’s gotten two queens, which surprises him, but he doesn’t question it. He grunts in acknowledgment and picks the one closest to the door, pulls back the quilt, and lies down. Meg gets into the other bed, muttering something about shopping for a house and the various things living in motel sheets. He waits for the sound of her breathing to even out before rolling over and squeezing his eyes shut tight.
He’s not tired. He’s just—drained, perhaps, and still disoriented, and above all he’s confused. She wants to buy a house. Which means she’s picked this place to settle down. He’s not sure why it’s so strange. That’s what normal people do, right? That’s what people do.
Still. As cramped and uncomfortable and slow as that car was, being on the road felt familiar. The concept of living in a house is so completely foreign that Cas almost relishes the sensation.
Almost.
~ * ~
They buy a three-bed-two-point-five-bath from a nervous realtor in an atrocious green sports coat. It’s a foreclosure, the only one in the neighborhood, and the realtor is more than happy to get rid of the place. It’s been on the market for six months and has been sending the value of the entire street into the gutter. Meg takes one look at the crayon-covered kitchen walls and offers a twelve hundred dollar down payment. She arranges for a payment plan she doesn’t intend to follow. Cas walks around the house like he’s never had four walls and carpets before (and she knows he hasn’t) and spends that first night tucked in the backseat of the fat golfer’s car.
Meg takes advantage of his absence to paint bloody runes on the walls of the smallest room. They overlap the train-patterned border near the top, and she has to use a stepstool to cover the ceiling in sigils. There are little marks where glow-in-the-dark stars were stuck. She gets a few drips on the bright blue carpet, near where the carpet fades and indents from a bunk bed and ladder, and she sets up an altar over them. On the door, she paints the angel-banishing sigil.
She wakes him up bright and early, rapping on the car windows until Cas blinks awake. His lips are parted slightly, his eyes bleary but peaceful, the lines in his forehead all but gone. Sleep’s done him good, she thinks—he’s finally relaxed a little. Meg wonders if Cas sleeps or if he just kind of zones out for a little while. Either way, he looks better than he did when he crawled out of that lake. His skin is a little less pallid, the circles under his eyes a little less noticeable. His face is sprinkled with stubble, but no more than it usually is. His hair is messy. Meg likes it that way. She hates it when Cas tries to smooth it down—she’s never liked the feel of grease between her fingers. It’s all sticky like blood only it’s nowhere near as sexy. And oh, she likes pulling on the angel’s hair. Likes it when he pulls on hers, too.
Cas clears his throat, frowning with disapproval and confusion, and she realizes she’s been staring. She smirks and winks at him, just for that little taken-aback look. Eyes wide and mouth open just a little and innocent really is a good look on him. Of course, she prefers it when he’s staring at her with lust and loathing, but hey—she’ll take what she can get.
“Get in the front,” she says. “We’re going furniture shopping. Unless you want to sleep in the back of the car. I, on the other hand, prefer a bed.”
He scowls at her, but does as she asks, crawling out of the back and into the passenger seat. His t-shirt is rumpled to hell and back, not that he seems to notice, and she wants to trace the creases and rip it off him.
“Do you know how to drive?” she asks. He shrugs.
“I don’t know.” Cas stares at his hands. “I feel like—cars are familiar. But I’m not sure if I’m driving.”
She doesn’t respond. This is ridiculous. She should just give Cas the stolen credit card and bail on this whole thing. Fuck his protection, he’s more likely to lie down and weep in this state. She’s not spending however long hiding in Arizona and waiting for Crowley to find her. The prospect of maybe getting the angel to screw her is not worth his weird moping.
And he’s probably a terrible lay without his memories or his whole God thing.
“Thank you for… looking out for me,” Cas says nervously.
Once he gets his memories back he’ll run straight to his precious Winchesters, maybe stopping to hand her over to Crowley. He won’t protect her. No matter how nice she is to him.
“Oh, the pleasure is all mine,” she says. He smiles. He can’t keep her safe any more than he would want to if he could remember and Crowley’s going to find them before the Winchesters do and they’re both going to die.
She drives to the furniture store.
~ * ~
They look at beds first. Meg splays out across each one, curling her toes in the display quilts, peering at Cas through heavy-lidded eyes. Cas refuses to try them out with her, until finally she grabs his hand and pulls him onto the bed. He turns bright red—angels blush, how about that—and says he likes it fine. Meg asks if he wants one or two, and he answers two before running off to look at sofas.
Meg laughs against the pillows, and goes to find a salesperson.
They get matching beds, ridiculous king size four-posters that Meg thinks will be excellent for bondage and Cas gives no opinion on. She splurges on silk sheets and velvet coverlets, which Cas eyes warily—hers are deep red, and his are navy blue, and his hand twitches against the fabric. But he doesn’t object.
Cas himself picked out the furniture for the living room. They have a plain brown leather sofa and matching recliner, and a glass coffee table. He even picked out a book for the table—a giant thing on North American birds. Meg asks him why that book, and Cas answers that he likes birds and thinks their wings are lovely, and then he gets very quiet and she drops the subject.
Picking out curtains turns out to be somewhat more difficult. Cas likes plaid, and Meg thinks he’s out of his mind, but he’s insistent and plaintive and finally Meg gives in. The curtains for her bedroom match her bed set in solid deep red, and the ones for Cas’s room are a blue and white plaid that would almost be inoffensive except Meg knows full well why he picked them. The curtains for the three windows in their living room, on the other hand, are a strange orange-green plaid and she swears to herself that she’s going to find some way to destroy the things. No matter how much Cas looks at them with longing.
Back at the house, Cas nearly drills his hand to the wall, but eventually he manages to put the things up. Meg circles the outside with a small can of paint, drawing warding symbols near the dirt where the crabgrass swallows them up. She tells Cas she’s weeding the garden, and he offers to pick up some plants. Meg refuses. The gardens will be hers and hers alone.
He shrugs and agrees and goes back to fussing over the reminders of a past life.
~ * ~
Meg brushes her hands off on her apron. Her lilacs are coming in nicely, considering, and she’s well on her way to having a half-decent collection of herbs. Arizona isn’t exactly the greatest place to grow the plants necessary for hex bags and warding spells, but Meg’s resourceful. Cas stands in the doorway and smirks at her.
“Didn’t take you for a gardener.”
“I dabble,” Meg says. “Besides, it makes us look normal.”
He closes the door behind him, crosses the porch and sits on the step. “Makes us not look like a couple of fugitives, you mean?” he asks.
“Something like that.”
“Tell me.” She glances up. Cas’s fists are clenched by his side, his head is bowed, yet his eyes are fixed on her. He’s desperate, she can tell. “I’m sick of not knowing.”
She sighs. “Believe me, it’s better this way.”
“I’ve been good,” he says. “I’ve played along. I let you buy a house and move us in. But you can’t keep lying to me.” He stands up and stalks toward her, placing one of his large hands against her throat. “So tell me. What happened.”
Meg takes a deep breath, feeling her throat push against Cas’s hand. He restricts the breaths she doesn’t need to take. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll tell you.” But not the whole story. The whole story would prompt Cas to leave her, to wander off into the wild blue and probably end up dead somewhere. And that’s the absolute last thing Meg needs. She’s invested a lot in this angel and he’s the only ally she’s got.
She steps closer to him, so that her body is nearly pressed against his, and stares into his eyes. He watches her distrustfully. As he should. “There was an accident,” she says slowly. “It wasn’t your fault. Or, it was, but seriously no one could have predicted—and people got hurt. No jury would convict you, but there are—other things you did. We did. It’s a mess and I don’t know the whole story but it doesn’t matter anymore because you don’t remember, and I don’t care, and we’re safe. Okay?”
He doesn’t look convinced, but he nods anyway. “I think—I think you’re right,” he says slowly. “I think it’s better if I don’t know.” Slowly, he raises a hand and places it gently on her breast, thumbing her nipple almost absently. “Before, you said we had a sexual relationship.”
“I did,” she says. Meg can feel her skin growing warmer, radiating heat in Cas’s presence and throbbing quiet and dull under Cas’s hand. “We did.”
He grabs her wrist and pulls her along with him, inside the house, slamming the door shut and pinning her against it. “Remind me,” he says.
Meg arches against him, wrapping one leg around his waist and pulling him in. “You—always so strong—” she groans, tossing her head back and crying out to hide the urge to smirk at him. Cas slams a palm against the door, shoves his knee between her legs, and she rocks down on it with dramatic, exaggerated rolls of her hips. It doesn’t really do much for her, but Cas scrunches his eyes shut and ducks his head, his cheeks flushed slightly, and that does it.
“Did we—against the wall?”
“Yes,” Meg gasps. “Many times.”
“Yes,” Cas echoes, distracted, and Meg wonders what he’s thinking—if he can recall their tryst in the alley, or pushing her against the wall of Crowley’s prison and taking what he wanted, or if he’s not reminded of her at all but of someone else whose back he slammed against bricks or concrete.
He shakes his head, then, refocusing on her, tangling his fingers in her hair (oh, how she likes that) and leaning down to kiss her. His mouth is a solid presence against hers, his tongue insistent but not painful, and she flicks her own against his. He seems startled at that, losing his rhythm for a moment, but just as quickly he takes it back. His lips are rougher than she remembers. When she opens her eyes, she can see the concentration in the lines on his forehead, and she smirks into the kiss.
It barely takes a push to turn the tables on him, switching their positions so that he’s against the wall and she’s pinning his wrists by his sides. She teases him with light kisses, makes him want more, laughs to herself as he tries to follow her mouth with his lips.
She can feel the frustration brimming to the surface, his hands thrumming with the need to act, before he breaks free of her grasp and slams her into the wall. Meg cries out softly in shock, her head knocking hard against the drywall, and her hand comes up to grab hold of the curtains. She uses it to hoist herself up, wrapping her legs around Cas’s waist and rubbing against his crotch. He’s hard, tenting the front of his jeans, and she wants nothing more than for him to rip them off and fuck her hard.
Cas’s hands grab the back of her pants and he tries to slide them off. Meg watches him, curious, as he struggles—they’re tight and form-fitting and there’s no way he’s going to manage, but she’s curious to see if he’ll rip the fabric. Which he does, tearing a seam down her right leg, and she drops her legs and undoes her button and zipper to ease the removal of the garment. He rips the buttons from her blouse, tearing it off her and leaving her in just her underwear. She passes her hand over her bra-clad chest, smirking.
“Off,” Cas growls, and she suspects it’s a ruse to hide the fact that her angel doesn’t have a clue how to remove bras. When they fucked before, they were mostly clothed. She was his first woman, probably—aside from whatever Cas did to seal his deal with Crowley and if, as she suspects, he’s been bending over for the Winchester boys. He wouldn’t have any other reference.
She reaches a hand behind her and flicks open the fastenings, sliding her bra off and revealing her pointed nipples to the cool air. Cas ducks his head at once, mouthing along one of her breasts, flicking his tongue against her skin. Meg groans and moves her hands to his belt, sliding it out in one sharp, fast motion. He looks up, startled, and she smirks. It’s in her hand, still, folded, and she waves it in front of his face. His eyes widen and she knows what he’s thinking.
“Maybe someday,” she says, tossing the thing aside. “But I think it’s still a bit too advanced for you.” He blushes furiously, tries to hide it by kissing her neck, but she can’t help laughing. It ends on a sharp cry, though, as he bites down on a particularly sensitive spot and starts sucking a bruise into her skin.
Meg manages to get his pants unfastened, and he takes over from there, shoving them down off his legs and kicking them at the couch. He’s slightly smaller than she remembers, though she can’t say it’s too disappointing. He’s not especially long, just over average, but he is as thick as he was in the alley, and she groans at the sight. Cas kisses her, slow and intense, hitching her legs up around his waist and sliding into her easily. She pants into his mouth, moaning at the hot, slow stretch of him, squirming as he gets her fully seated on his cock.
She grabs the curtain for leverage and pulls herself up. He slides out of her, her breath catching at the sudden emptiness inside her, before letting go and dropping back on Cas’s cock. Cas’s hands tighten on her hips, pressing bruises into her pale skin, and he shoves her against the wall.
They end up on the floor, ripped pieces of curtain wrapped around their naked bodies and tying them together. Meg’s on top, then Cas, then Meg again and finally Cas, pushing her knee to her chest and pistoning his cock in and out of her. She’s come twice already, just from Cas’s dick, and she feels another orgasm building. It crashes over her just as Cas’s movements become harsher, more erratic, and finally he comes, fucking her as he spills inside her.
Later, Meg gathers the soiled, ruined curtains and promises to take care of them. They won’t work as curtains anymore, but she won’t throw them away. Cas looks grateful, even as there’s a confused mourning in his eyes.
While she’s taking care of that, Cas goes to pick out new curtains. He comes back with a horrible mustard-yellow, vomit-green, and brown plaid. Meg just sighs and helps him hang them. She should give up, just let him have his curtains, but it’s more fun to ruin them. Soon, she decides.
For now, she has an idea, and a sewing machine, and Linda Robertson from down the street’s been trying to get them to come over for dinner.
She’ll do Linda Robertson one better.
~ * ~
Part 2
Flames dance perilously close to exposed skin, licking unbuttoned shirtsleeves, and Meg holds her breath, but the sleeves don’t ignite. Meat sizzles, and the fire rises higher, then settles. She exhales.
Not that she actually thinks a barbecue can set an angel on fire, but there was a brief moment earlier when she thought he grabbed her holy oil instead of the lighter fluid. Luckily, it had all been a misunderstanding, but Meg also has ten strangers in her kitchen and Cas has never actually barbecued before and while she doesn’t really care if his burgers kill their neighbors, she’s trying to keep a low profile.
In the old days, she’d kill everyone and move on without a second thought.
Now, she tries not to wince as Cas grabs the spatula and flips the burgers, apparently not noticing that the handle was resting over the flames a second before. She pretends to care about whatever Bonnie Dolinger is rambling about. She smirks as a supremely unimpressed Linda Robertson scans the room haughtily, takes a bite of potato salad, and wipes her mouth with an orange-green plaid cloth napkin.
Cas comes in from the patio with a plateful of burgers. He sets it on the table, dripping barbecue sauce on the orange-green plaid tablecloth, and Meg unwraps the buns.
Linda appears at her elbow. “I was just telling Jenny Marlin how much I adore what you’ve done with the yard,” she says, taking the mustard from Meg’s hand. Meg frowns.
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. The family that lived here before, the Hesses, well, they were even worse than Chelsea Winters.” Linda nods in the direction of a woman in her mid-twenties standing out on the patio, sipping a beer and staring into space. Cas is watching her with an unnerving expression on his face. “Weeds everywhere, kids filthy and running all over town without a shred of supervision—they got foreclosed after it turned out they were paying with fake checks. Ran before the sheriff could arrest them. Just as well, I suppose. At least now they’re gone from New River. You and your husband seem like good people, though. How long have you been married?”
Meg glances at the sliding doors. Cas is arranging hot dogs on the grill and Chelsea Winters is pointing at the clouds.
“Three months,” she says.
“Newlyweds! How lovely. I remember when Mark and I were just starting out, finding our dream home here in New River. Seems like only yesterday, doesn’t it, dear?”
Mark Robertson smiles around a mouthful of beef and bread and nods amiably from across the table.
“Anyway,” Linda continues, “I was hoping I could get you to do my garden? I’ve never quite had the touch for it, can’t get a damn thing to grow. I’d be happy to pay, of course. And I have several friends who’d adore a garden like yours as well.”
Cas comes in again. The hot dogs are mostly burnt, and he has a tiny wrinkle between his eyes. “Sure,” Meg says. “Excuse me.”
She ignores Linda’s attempts to pull her back as she weaves through the crowd.
“I don’t think I’m very good at barbecuing,” Cas says. His tone is grave, as it always is, and his eyes are burning into her when he turns. “You seem to have a skill for sewing, however. These are our curtains, aren’t they?”
Meg shrugs. “Hey, I told you I’d take care of it.” She steps closer, resting her hands on his chest and tilting her chin up for a kiss. He doesn’t oblige, just stares at her, and she can feel the heat radiating off of him. She sighs, disappointed, and steps back.
“Linda wants me to do her garden,” she says.
“We could use the money,” Cas says. Meg shrugs.
“You could get a job.”
Cas doesn’t answer. Meg rolls her eyes, grabs a beer, and wanders out onto the porch. She’s considering Linda’s offer. Cas is right; they could use the money. Eventually their neighbors are going to get suspicious if neither of them has a job. And making Linda’s home look inviting to wandering spirits is tempting.
“Hello,” a voice says, knocking her out of her thoughts.
Meg forces a smile. “Chelsea Winters, right?”
The woman nods. “I live on the edge of town,” she says. “Don’t usually come to these things, but Bonnie insisted I get out more. So here I am.”
“Great,” Meg says.
“So, what do you do?”
Meg takes a swig of her beer. “Landscaping,” she finally responds. “I’m thinking of starting my own business.”
“That’s great!” Chelsea says. “I raise birds. Predators. Rent them out sometimes, but mostly they’re my babies. You should come hunting. I think—I’m sorry, but there’s something about you. I think you’d get along well with my birds.”
Meg stares at her. “Thank you?” she says tentatively. She’s not sure what to make of Chelsea. Or any of them, for that matter. She glances back inside, where Cas stands surrounded by Linda and Bonnie and a dark-haired woman Meg doesn’t recognize. His eyes are wide and she thinks, if he still had wings, they’d be flapping like crazy trying to get away.
“Excuse me,” she says. “Sorry. I have to go rescue Cas.”
“Of course,” Chelsea says.
Later, Meg and Cas dump all the plates in the trash, toss the soiled napkins and tablecloth into the washer, and pile the leftovers in the fridge. It’d taken longer than Meg would have liked to kick everyone out of the house, particularly Linda, who wouldn’t shut up about her garden. A couple women whose names Meg doesn’t at all remember also made Meg promise to do their gardens, and Meg supposes she’s well on her way to having a legitimate business.
Cas is happy for her, she thinks, as he responds to the news by dragging her up the stairs and pinning her against her bedroom door, kissing her until a normal human would pass out from breathlessness.
“What was that for?” she asks when he finally pulls away.
“Don’t ask questions,” he responds. She smirks and shoves at his shoulders, walking him backwards until his knees hit the edge of her bed and he collapses backward. “What—”
“Don’t ask questions” she echoes, smirking. Cas scowls at her, grabbing her arms and rolling them over.
“I find you strange as a housewife,” he murmurs. “Strange and a little foreboding. Can you explain that?”
Meg drags her nails down his bare arms, leaving little red tracks. “I can,” she says. “But I think you already know.” She cants her hips, rubbing herself against the slight bulge in Cas’s khaki pants, showing him how she’s not wearing panties under her sundress.
She flips them again and grabs the headboard as she mounts him. It breaks under her fingers, and when he rolls her over and fucks her into the ground, the bed frame buckles and splinters under the force of his thrusts.
Meg refuses to buy a new one, and Cas starts spending most of his nights tangled in her sheets.
~ * ~
The neighbors’ gardens, under Meg’s hands, bring bad fortune. Pay cuts, minor car collisions, and a couple a few streets over gets arrested for tax evasion. She remembers doing their garden, and thinks their name is something like Arsten, but she’s done jobs for so many by now she can hardly keep track.
She’s expanded, too; she has a website that’s almost impossible to navigate and a few jobs in Phoenix. She has a steady stream of mostly-legitimate cash, and the small amusement of watching her clients’ misfortunes. She never plants anything truly horrible—she doesn’t want to summon demons or anything—and nobody dies, but a young suburban couple fails to maintain their plants and a poltergeist moves in. Unfortunately, the couple moves out before the poltergeist can do any real harm, and Meg finds it hard to mask her disappointment. She’d done some research on the couple and found some rather interesting skeletons from the guy’s past as a prison guard.
Inelegant bastard. If there’s one thing Meg can’t stand, it’s amateurs. And now that Crowley’s redesigned Hell, all the new demons are going to end up populating DMV offices and nobody will be able to tell the difference. Which destroys the whole point of having demons.
A few weeks into her new business, she’s working on planting wards around the city limits when three demons show up. She kills two of them with the angel blade and is about to finish off the third when something he says stops her. One strangled syllable. Kai.
She drives the sword through his neck. His eyes and mouth glow orange-white, and then he falls. Meg shakes her head. If Kai managed to find her—if he thought it was necessary to send some of his employees after her—he either wants to threaten her, or he wants a favor. Neither is very appealing.
Meg sheathes her blade and returns to work. Kai will figure out his demons are dead eventually, and then he’ll have to call her directly.
Three days later, Kai contacts her. He’s in Salt Lake City, because for some reason Crowley wants his demons buying up Mormons, and—there’s a problem. Turns out demons aren’t the only one who like the city. She tells him she’s not talking over the phone, and he’s an idiot, and she digs through her closet for her secure line.
“What do you want me to do about it?” Meg asks the bubbling chalice. She’s in the heart of Phoenix, and there’s a fratboy at her feet, his throat slit open. The office building across the street, a brokerage firm, wants her to do their landscaping, on a recommendation from Meg’s neighbor’s cousin or something like that. She’s already thinking of all the horrible things she can make happen to the firm.
“Look, I know you’re in hiding, playing pretty housewife with some guy—seriously, Meg, that’s what you do with exile?—but we could use your help here. And it’d be worth your time.”
“How so?”
“I won’t tell Crowley where you are, for starters.”
Meg slams the back of her head into the brick wall behind her. “You’re threatening me,” she says calmly. “Not a smart move.”
“Maybe not, but it’s the only one I have. Now, are you going to help me?”
“Fine,” she says. It will give her a chance to eviscerate the little toad, anyway. Demons. They used to have integrity. Back when it was her and her brother and their father, and Alistair her teacher, being a demon meant something. Something more than being a slimy dick.
But they’re all gone now. It’s just her.
She packs up the chalice and returns to her car.
~ * ~
“One week. I promise.”
Cas doesn’t look convinced. In fact, if Meg didn’t know any better, she might think the angel looks downright terrified. Like he’s scared of her leaving him alone. It’s ridiculous, of course, but—this isn’t quite Cas. Not anymore. Now it’s just a guy with no memories and a shady, mysterious past, and the one tie to who he was is running off.
Yeah, maybe he’s scared.
“I’ll have Linda Robertson look in on you, if you’re that worried,” Meg suggests.
“No,” Cas says, glaring. He grabs her shoulders and spins them around, deposits her on the bed with her knees bent and her legs dangling off the edge. She props herself up on her elbows and watches him curiously.
He unbuttons her jeans and slides them down her legs, tossing them thoughtlessly in the corner, and rubs her through her panties. She groans and pushes against his fingers.
“I’m not letting you go without something to remember me by,” he murmurs. Her underwear is getting damp and uncomfortable, sticking to her cunt, but still he continues to tease her.
“Needs to be a bit more memorable than that,” she says. He smirks and lowers his head, kissing the wet fabric and sucking.
The sensations are horribly muted with that horrible scrap of cotton between his lips and her skin, but it’s enough to make her tremble slightly as she moans, high and breathy.
Meg grabs his shoulders and pulls him down with her. She rolls them over until she’s sitting heavily on his chest, then strips her underwear off and runs her fingers through his hair. His lips are parted softly in surprise, and she lowers herself over his mouth. He licks tentatively at her folds, then grabs her ass and pushes her closer. He presses his tongue inside her, wriggling in and out and she gasps, her fingers grabbing the headboard and her hips jerking towards his face. He holds her steady, not missing a beat as he continues to lick and suck at her center.
His teeth graze her clit, and she comes hard three times in quick succession, trembling and shouting as he keeps moving his lips against hers, relentless and just this side of painful. Meg tumbles to the side, gasping, and he props himself up on his elbow and grins at her.
~ * ~
Kai’s a dick.
Meg wipes Leviathan slime off her arm. She’s tempted to just kill Kai and be done with it, but as much as she hates to admit it, she kind of needs him. Early warning system against Crowley, and everything.
He keeps the head and she steals his truck. The green BMW was getting too conspicuous, and a pickup truck is a more believable vehicle for a landscaper. That’s how she figures it, anyway. Mostly she just wants to annoy and inconvenience him.
Meg stops for gas in Flagstaff. The station’s across the street from a glistening motorcycle dealership, and it makes her think—Cas hates riding in cars, acts like it’s crushing wings she knows he can’t feel, and she smiles to herself as she decides.
The machine is black and powerful. There’s no storage area—she finds them inelegant, and in any case, what could he possibly need to tow around? She pays in cash stolen from the wallets of a few bankers out to lunch, and loads the bike into the back of her truck, and hurries back to New River.
When Cas sees the bike, he drags her inside and proceeds to fuck her hard against the curtains. Meg gives as good as she gets, shoving against him and tearing the curtains—rods and all—from the walls. They rip massive holes in the drywall, forming long, ugly cracks in the plaster. Cas doesn’t care. He grips her hair and plunders her mouth with his tongue and she laughs, delighted.
“Thank you,” he says, when they’re lying exhausted and sweaty in the pile of fabric and dust.
“I thought you might like it,” Meg says, leaning in and drawing her tongue across his lower lip.
They don’t bother cleaning up the curtains.
~ * ~
Cas spends all morning going from store to store in the little town. Meg is throwing a Christmas Eve (Eve) potluck at their house, because the barbecue had been such a hit. Cas wonders what barbecue she attended. He can only recall charred burgers and awkward napkins, but figures she just wants to sell more plants. He’s supposed to be making a cauliflower casserole later, and while he’s almost gotten the hang of pancakes and burgers, he’s not sure he can manage something that complex. Meg says it shouldn’t matter—anyone can follow a recipe and, if Meg does her job right, they’ll all be too wasted to notice if it’s terrible. He’s not exactly convinced.
But before he can worry about his cooking skills, there’s the small matter of the destroyed curtains and giant holes in the walls. They’d been perfectly content to let the wall stay like that through Thanksgiving and the first weeks of December, but now that she’s having actual people over, Meg’s decided something needs to be done about it. Cas’s task is to find new curtains and heavy-duty bolts and caulk to fill the holes. She’d given him a dirty little smirk at the last item.
Cas has his backpack, which should be large enough to transport curtains and bolts. It fits nicely over the curve of his shoulders, padded by his faded black leather jacket. His t-shirt is a light blue, which Meg says brings out his eyes; his jeans are acid-wash; his boots aren’t quite broken in yet. The clothes aren’t very comfortable, but they are necessary. He’s taken the bike, leaving the truck for Meg in case she needs to run to the grocery store. Or that’s what he tells her, anyway—the bike was supposed to be for both of them, but he’s taken a particular liking to it. Riding it feels like flying, feels familiar and soothing. Meg smiled that strange, secretive smile when he told her. That look that meant he was referencing something about his life before the accident, but she wasn’t going to tell him what it was. It’s obnoxious, and he hates it, but he’s confident he’ll figure out exactly where to press to make her tell him everything.
He comes up empty at the bare-bones hardware store. All their little devices for securing curtains to a wall are flimsy at best and one of them breaks apart in his hand. Cas doesn’t fare much better at the convenience store near the edge of town, either. Which means he’ll have to go a little bit farther.
Meg’s warned him about leaving town. She likes to point out that in their little haven, no one will find out who Cas is or what he’s done. He still doesn’t know what she means, but from what he can gather, the accusations are false. It doesn’t sit well with him, not knowing, but even thinking about what he could have done makes his blood run cold and his hands tremble and his breath come fast and uneven. She says outside, there’s nothing to protect him. He’ll be found and punished and she can’t save him.
It’s hyperbole, he thinks. There’s a big industrial place in Phoenix—right on the outskirts of the suburbs. Not even inside the city limits, not really. He doubts there’ll be a fleet of officers waiting to take him to jail. It’s a twenty-minute drive, if he speeds, and they need curtains.
Still. His heart pounds in his ears as he passes the sign welcoming visitors to New River, over the white line and past Meg’s row of plants. It’s terrifying and thrilling and it occurs to him, not for the first time, how much he hates her. The brush of her body against his makes him want to scrub until his skin sloughs off. Her mere presence is familiar, but not in a good way. Yet he’s addicted, and he stays, and he lets her push him and nudge him until he shoves back. And she loves it, every second of it, every bruise and bite and every crack in their walls and dent in their bed.
Cas wonders if he’ll be disgusted with himself when he gets his memories back. If he gets his memories back. He’ll probably hate himself. More than he hates himself now, that is.
The warehouse is at the end of a dirt road, surrounded by dust and brush, and he parks his bike in the empty lot near the back door. A man in a plain black suit and yellow tie waits by the door, arms crossed and back straight and feet shoulder-width apart like a bodyguard.
He approaches cautiously. “Hello?”
“State your business.”
“I need a sturdy curtain rod and wall-fastenings,” he says.
“Name?”
“Cas.” The man grins. It reminds Cas of a shark.
“Oh, that changes everything.” He opens the door and gestures for Cas to enter. “Someone will be with you shortly.”
“Thank you,” Cas says. He glances behind him, but sees nothing save his bike and some brush. The man waits, and Cas crosses into the building. Immediately he feels something pass through him, chilling his blood and stinging his cheeks and the tips of his fingers. He gasps. “What—”
There’s another man. He’s startlingly tall and broad-shouldered, and wears a gray sweater and blue jeans and white tennis shoes. He has long brown hair, curling slightly over his forehead. His eyes are hazel behind wire-rimmed glasses. He taps his leg as he approaches. There’s something almost familiar about the man. Something pushing at the edge of Cas’s memory, something about the way the man’s hair flops in his eyes, and it itches. It hurts, because whatever it is about those eyes, whatever memories he can’t retrieve, there’s pain.
“So, the bitch finally let you off your leash.”
“I beg your pardon?” Cas says, shocked. He’s not sure which is worse—that the man is insulting Meg like this, or that he knows about her at all. And yes, she can be manipulative, and she can be horrible, but he’s not much better.
The man smiles at him. His face is horrible, deformed, and Castiel tries not to let his revulsion show. Perhaps the man had an accident. It’s not his right to judge. “My name’s Brian,” he says. “I know about you, Cas. I know you had an accident, and I know you don’t remember. I know what that slut of yours won’t tell you. Probably for the best, though. If you knew…” He clucks his tongue and shakes his head, a mockery of compassion.
“And how do you know all this?”
“I have my ways,” Brian says. He takes off his glasses and looks away. “I could tell you. But it would cost you. Not money, but the truth… it may be more than you can manage.”
Cas wrings his hands together. “Meg can’t protect me forever,” he says. “And I have to know.”
“Very well.” Brian raises his head and looks straight at Cas. His eyes blacken, and Cas stumbles back.
“What—” he chokes. “You’re not—”
“Human? No.” His eyes turn hazel again, though his face remains repulsive. “I’m a demon, Cas. And there’s a lot worse than me out there in the dark. Like, for example, you.”
“No,” Cas says. “No, I’m—” Panic rises in his throat. Footsteps approach behind him, and he swings his fist on instinct. The guard he met at the door falls unconscious at his feet.
Brian’s beside him in an instant, hand closed around his throat and pressing, cutting off his air. Cas’s head swims and he claws at the hand, kicks at the demon’s (man’s, there’s no such thing as demons, it’s a trick of the light) shins. He catches a kneecap and Brian goes down. Cas lands another kick to Brian’s nose. Blood sprays on his jeans.
As he runs from the warehouse, he hears Brian shouting after him. “Michelle Walker, Cas. Michelle Walker and millions like her. Can’t run forever, we’ll find you. You’re the worst of all of us. The King will find you.”
He bursts out the door and into the bright sun. It burns his eyes. Brian still shouts, Can’t run, can’t run, this is who you are, and Cas slams the door shut. The heavy steel warps under his hand.
Brian’s wrong, he tells himself. Brian’s crazy. Brian’s just a Fed, trying to scare him. Or someone from his past, messing with him. Or Brian’s crazy and Cas just happened to be the most immediate receptacle for his delusions. There are a million explanations, all more reasonable than demons and— He can’t think about that. There’s no such thing. A trick of the light, and steroids.
He mounts his bike and tears out of the parking lot. No matter how he tries, the name stays with him. It echoes in his mind, and it won’t leave him. Michelle Walker. Whoever she is. He’s not sure he wants to know.
Still, now his curiosity has been piqued, he doesn’t think he can let it go.
He returns to New River, and goes to the tiny hardware store, and buys some random fastenings and a caulking gun and several mismatching curtains (which he only realizes when the checkout girl raises a pierced eyebrow and asks if these are really the ones he wants, and Meg will probably be annoyed but he doesn’t really care and anyway if it bothers her so much they can always destroy the curtains and go shopping for new ones again).
Besides, once he gets back, he plans to distract Meg so much she won’t have the capacity to complain about the curtains. Or notice Cas stealing away to find information on Michelle Walker.
~ * ~
Meg’s baking cupcakes when he comes home. She watches out of the corner of her eye as he tosses his backpack into the laundry room and comes toward her, loosening his tie and draping it and his dress shirt over a kitchen chair. Then he comes up behind her and kisses her neck.
She laughs. “Eager much?” she asks as his large hands come to rest at her waist. He pushes up the skirt of her rose-patterned dress and slides his fingers across her thigh. She’s naked under her dress, and he smirks against her skin when he realizes this.
“Well?” she asks, breathless. He presses two fingers to her cunt in answer, sliding them deep inside, and she gasps, bearing down on his hand. He brushes his thumb across her clit and her hips jerk.
“Stay still,” he whispers, rumbling, into her ear. “Keep frosting.”
She rocks against his fingers, moaning. “Can’t you just fuck me?”
He grins against her skin. “No,” he says. “Frost.”
He presses his cock, thick and hard, against her hip as she continues trying to fuck herself on his fingers. He stops moving them and she whines.
“You’re very bad at following orders.”
“Yeah, well, takes one to know one,” she mutters. He tilts his head slightly, curious, and though she doesn’t look back he thinks she knows how he’s looking at her. She shakes her head. “Never mind. I’ll be good.” She picks up a chocolate cupcake and the knife to prove it and smears pink frosting over the top of the cupcake. Cas starts moving his fingers again.
Her body shakes with the force of it, her hands trembling as his fingers twist and press and thrust inside her, and he can hear the soft wet noises over her pants and gasps. Her knees are practically knocking together, he can tell—she’s having trouble staying upright, and her knuckles are white with the effort to keep herself standing. From the way she’s slapping pink on cupcakes in giant, lopsided globs, not bothering to spread the frosting and make the cakes look elegant, Cas knows she’s barely paying attention to what she’s doing. He thinks he should reprimand her, but honestly he doesn’t care—she has three dozen, and he likes watching her fall apart under his relentless hands.
She’s desperate, moaning just on the edge of a scream, and clenching hard on his fingers. Cas watches her dripping on the tile floor, mesmerized. His free hand comes to squeeze her breast, playing with her nipple through the thin fabric of her dress. She shouts, twisting in his grasp, but with her attention focused as it is on how turned on she is, his strength easily outpaces hers, and he keeps her still, flicking her nipple casually and pinching it hard. She gasps, clenching tight around his fingers and he can feel her shuddering as desire courses through her.
Finally, she slops frosting on the last cupcake and practically throws it at the plate in her hurry to grab the counter with both hands and bear down on Cas’s fingers. He smirks, withdrawing his fingers from her, and she slams her palm on the counter in protest. He stops playing with her breast and wraps his arm around her waist.
“Good girl,” he whispers. He laughs at the indignant little noise she makes, and he half-carries her over to the table. He spins her around and sets her down, legs dangling off the edge of the table. She hooks her ankles behind his ass and grabs his collar and pulls him in, biting hard at his lips and sucking on his tongue. He sighs at the pressure on the back of his neck and kisses just as frantically, tugging at her hair and pushing his tongue past her full lips to lick at her mouth.
They pull away, gasping for air, and he makes quick work of his belt and zipper to pull out his hard cock. He lets her glimpse it for a split second, watches the way her eyes widen slightly, then buries himself deep inside her. He slides in easily with how wet and stretched she is. Her back hits the hard wood, and his hands are pressing her down, pushing her dress up to pass his thumbs across her bare nipples. She pulls him in closer, moving her hips in time with his thrusts. He brushes rough fingers across her clit and that’s all it takes, she comes, bearing down hard on his cock as he fucks her through it, then keeps playing with her clit until she comes again, shouting. He keeps doing that, waiting until she comes down from one orgasm and then sending her straight into another, until finally she’s gasping, whimpering, boneless on the table.
Then he grabs her hips hard enough to bruise and pounds into her, head bowed and sweat-damp hair hanging into his eyes, and spills hot and wet inside her. She screams like it burns her.
He collapses on her, breath coming in harsh little pants against her skin. She shoves at his shoulders.
“Hey. Crushing me, here,” she says.
“Sorry.” He sits up and frowns at her. Meg’s lying on the table, ankles still wrapped around his thighs, laughing breathlessly. Her dark curls are damp, plastered to her forehead, and her eyes are bright. He growls, frustrated. Her stamina still far outpaces his, though—he thinks with a perverse sort of pride—he’s improved greatly from their first fuck.
The first fuck he can remember, anyway. He wonders how he was in bed before he lost his memories. He can’t have been that awful, he figures, or Meg probably wouldn’t have bothered fishing him out of the reservoir.
Still, he has his pride, and he steps away from her, fastening his jeans. She goes up on her elbows, curiously, just as Cas drops to his knees between her thighs. He hooks one of her legs over his shoulder and bites at the soft skin of her inner thigh, over and over, trailing bites ever-closer to her center until, with satisfaction, he hears her head whack against the table. He presses his lips to hers, sucking softly and licking his come from her. Meg combs her fingers through his hair, encouraging but not pushing, and Cas stabs his tongue inside her. The hand on his head falters.
He licks her clean, thorough, and he can feel her leg trembling and he can hear her breath quicken. He presses his tongue to her clit, sucking and brushing his teeth lightly against that spot. Meg’s back arches, her heel digging into Cas’s shoulder. He licks the resulting dampness from her cunt, not stopping, wondering how many times he can make her come with just his lips and tongue.
Cas makes six before she passes out.
Then he scoops her into his arms and carries her into their room. He leaves her on their bed, sleeping soundly. His own knees protest under the exertion; she’s not the only one who’s tired out, though if she had done to him what he’d just done to her… well, he kind of doubts he’d even survive it. Though he welcomes the challenge.
The bed is tempting, particularly with Meg’s body warming the sheets. But getting into her study, finding out the truth behind Brian’s words back at the warehouse—that’s even more tempting, which surprises him.
She’s never explicitly forbidden him from entering her sanctuary. If she had, Cas probably would have broken in long before. But even walking down the hall gives him a dark sense of foreboding, and he doesn’t want to go anywhere near the door. It’s the same discomfort Cas felt as he left town, and now he knows to take it seriously. Not that he was flippant before, but there’s a difference between believing something bad will happen and actually having something bad happen. Sure, he’d gotten out of there, but…
Hopefully, finding out the truth will help.
He doubts it.
He doubts it even more when he touches the doorknob, only to jerk away and press his mouth to his shoulder, muffling his scream. His hand throbs, skin blossoming bright pink and blistered, and the doorknob glows white before slowly fading to bronze.
Alarm bells ring in his head.
The need to know what the demons were talking about overrides the desire to run back to bed. He strips off his shirt and wraps his burned hand in the cloth, steels himself, and grabs the knob. The shirt barely makes a difference, as his skin is further scalded and at least one of the blisters pops, but this time Cas is prepared for the pain. He grits his teeth and throws open the door.
His shirt falls to the floor, and he’s pretty sure his jaw follows after. Whatever he was expecting, even with the strange burning doorknob, it wasn’t this. Meg’s “study” (what she could be studying in here, Cas isn’t sure he want to know) is covered in odd symbols. Crosses, pentagrams, letterings that Cas can’t read but that feel darkly, horribly familiar, and a few that evoke sheer panic, like they’re meant to hurt him. Some are done in black paint, others are done in dark red that Cas fears might be blood. There’s a table on the far side of the room, like a—like an altar—with half-melted candles and bones and talismans. Cas picks one of them up. A tiny skull, with a pointed nose and sharp teeth, stares at him through empty sockets. He drops it. The skull bounces on the carpet and rolls under the table.
Meg’s laptop is on a chair next to the altar. He kneels next to it and flips open the lid. Her wallpaper is a bright sunflower, and there’s nothing on her desktop except an icon labeled Internet.
Since he walked out of the lake, Cas has never used a computer. He’s seen Meg with her laptop before, typing away in the kitchen, but he’s never thought to use it himself. He’s not sure he even knows how. But it can’t be too difficult, he figures, as he opens the browser and locates the search bar.
Michelle Walker, he types. It takes him awhile, as he has to search for each key (the letters aren’t in order, and it’s very confusing). He manages, though, and clicks the search button.
Thousands of hits pop up. He finds Michelle Walker’s website first—she’s an incumbent senator, he discovers, or she was. The first page is taken up by an In Memorium He skims it, but it doesn’t offer much information. A tragedy, he sees; a terrorist attack. Those responsible will be brought to justice. Something tightens in his throat.
The next few results are the same. Articles about Michelle Walker’s time in office, her great service to her community, how much her constituents mourn the loss. Cas finds himself getting more and more frustrated—so a senator’s campaign headquarters was attacked. What does this have to do with him? What does this have to do with demons setting up shop outside his town?
Finally, he comes across a video linked in the comments of someone’s blog post about the incident. It’s black and white and grainy, but he can see clearly—a man in a trenchcoat, the bloodbath, the man’s insane grin at the camera.
At him.
The man is him.
He did this. He killed them.
There are more videos. Shaky, horrible quality, fuzzy sound and worse picture, but it’s enough. Over and over again he watches himself kill innocent people, listens to his voice condemn them. This man, this person that Cas is, he thinks he’s God. And the things he can do—choking a man with a look, shoving his hand through the chest of another—it’s horrible.
Two videos show the man healing. He supposes that’s some kind of comfort, but in the face of all the blood and destruction he’s caused, Cas knows it’s not enough.
He’s a serial killer, he realizes. An insane, delusional, psychotic serial killer. And Meg—Meg must be some kind of witch. His partner, perhaps. Maybe she’s waiting for him to snap, so they can continue their spree. Maybe this is a vacation for her. Maybe when she goes on those business trips (landscaping, how could he be so naïve) she’s really finding a few people to kill. Pass the time until her partner remembers who he is.
Cas feels sick. He stumbles out of her room. He doesn’t bother to close the laptop or the door behind him, though he does grab his shirt, and puts it on inside-out as he makes his way into the garage. He has to get out of here.
He lurches onto his motorcycle and blasts out of the driveway. There’s nowhere he can go, and he knows it—everywhere he’ll be terrified someone will know him, will recognize him, and he—he doesn’t remember killing all those people and yet he knows it’s the truth. He knows what he is. He’s always known. He’s a monster, and a killer, and he needs to—
Get away. That’s what he needs. He needs to get away from this place, from Meg’s façade of normal, from Meg’s smile and her touch. From the images burned into his mind of himself, standing among mutilated bodies, blood on his coat and a manic grin on his face.
He doesn’t notice when his neighbor pulls in front of him on his mountain bike, and the first sign that something might be wrong is the sudden appearance of clouds and a heavy weight on him and numb, throbbing pain through his entire body.
Very slowly, he finds himself crashing back into reality.
“Oh, God,” Cas gasps. He shoves the motorcycle off of him. His side is throbbing with pain, and he’s pretty sure he has at least a couple broken ribs, but he digs his fingers into the dirt and drags himself into the street. Joseph Anderson’s chest moves up and down, slow but even, and he sighs in relief. He hasn’t killed his neighbor.
Not yet, anyway.
“Hey, Joe?” He shakes the man’s shoulder lightly, and Joe’s head lolls to the side, but his eyes remain shut. Cas closes his own as panic overtakes him. His phone is smashed at the side of the road; nobody knows he’s out here; nobody will think to look for Joe until it’s too late. Joe’s going to die. It’s going to be Cas’s fault and that plus the massacre—
He’s going to go to jail. After everything Meg’s done to keep him safe, he’s going to go to jail anyway. It’s far, far less than he deserves, and he knows it, but the thought still frightens him. Locked away…
Cas rests a hand on Joe’s forehead. “Come on,” he whispers. “Wake up. Please wake up.”
Something shoots through him, blindingly hot and powerful, and Cas jerks away. His hand feels like it’s on fire, and his head follows into the flames shortly after. He shoves his other fist in his mouth and bites down, muffling his own screams, and barely registers Joe waking up and standing.
“What—you okay, man?” Joe asks from far away. Cas can’t see him. He sees wings and death and fire, so much fire, so much destruction and so much—stretching on and on forever. He lets out a tiny sob and Joe grabs his bike. “I’ll get someone,” he says. “Just—hang in there, buddy, okay?”
Cas’s hand falls from his mouth and he screams.
~ * ~
He remembers waves crashing on the beach. He remembers standing with his brothers, an endless procession, and Michael standing before them and announcing God’s plan. He remembers watching a fish crawl onto the beach, and he remembers running forward to greet it.
He remembers Gabriel holding him back, wrapping him in bright wings, telling him to stay still. As centuries go by, and Castiel grows and learns and fights, watches his brothers turn on each other and Lucifer cast into Hell, he never forgets that fish. He never forgets what that fish became.
Countless millennia of war and despair, so much that it’s nothing but a blur in Castiel’s mind.
And then there’s the Winchesters. There’s Dean, and Sam, and the Apocalypse that never was. Castiel falls, becomes human, then dies again and is remade. And then he makes a pact with the King of Hell.
Death. Despair. It never ends. Rachel and Balthazar and Raphael, fallen under Castiel’s blade. Sam, broken at Castiel’s hand. And always the demon whispers in his ear, whispers that he is all Castiel has anymore, and Castiel believes it.
The Winchesters only wanted him around when he could be useful, when he could fix their problems or do them a favor. Crowley’s almost the same, but with one exception—Crowley gives Castiel assistance in return.
And, of course, Castiel turns on Crowley as well. Declares himself God, and Castiel’s amazed he hasn’t been thrown into the cage with Michael and Lucifer, to rot with his prideful brothers. To have them tear at his wings and mind until the end of time. He’d deserve it, for what he’s done.
Shame and regret and despair well up inside of him, choking him, and he falls to the pavement and wails.
~ * ~
He must have passed out, because when he comes to, Meg is shaking his shoulder and staring at him with something like concern on her face. Only it isn’t concern, because she’s a demon.
“Cas?” she asks. “Joe said—there was an accident. Are you alright?”
“Demon,” he says. “There are demons, just outside of town. I saw them.”
She strokes his hair. “Cas—”
“I killed all those people. I saw it. Demons exist and I’m a murderer. I’m worse than a murderer. All those people—”
“What are you talking about?”
Castiel balls his hands into fists. “The demons told me what to look for. I found the videos. I found myself—I saw myself kill. I saw myself turn into a monster.”
“I’m sorry,” Meg says. She almost sounds like it, too, and it just makes him angrier.
He shoves her away. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he shouts. “Why—you couldn’t have—”
“You crawl out of the reservoir with no memory and no clothes and the first person you come across starts talking about demons,” Meg says. “You’d think they were insane.”
Castiel shakes his head. Who cares if she didn’t tell him about demons. That’s hardly the most pressing issue here. She knew he’d—he’d caused that massacre, he’d stood there and murdered all those people, and she’d just pretended nothing had happened. “No, but—”
“You were possessed,” she says. “It wasn’t you.”
“Possessed by a demon?”
“Among other things.” Meg shrugs. So she’s going for evasive. Castiel needs to get away from her. Memories are smashing together, and he can almost feel those things inside him as he fights to remember who he is. “I don’t exactly know all the details,” she continues. “I wasn’t there. Too busy running away from my own demon problems. But you—you’re special.” That’s one word for it. Castiel can think of a few far more appropriate ones.
“I killed people. And you knew about it.”
She doesn’t answer. Her presence is revolting. He can’t see her true face, and he might have an idea why, but everything about her reeks of Hell. Castiel tries to spread his wings, tries to disappear, but his feathers are shredded and his wing-joints are broken and he nearly screams when he tries to move them. The Leviathans must have destroyed his wings while they were inside him, and not being in control of his healing abilities, his wings had stayed broken.
He finds he doesn’t care as much as he should, and he jumps to his feet and stalks over to his motorcycle.
“Cas, please. We have to get back. The potluck—”
He ignores her. Screw her potluck. He needs to be alone. He needs to do something. There were demons at the warehouse. Crowley’s demons, he thinks, or at least not Meg’s. They’ll know something.
It occurs to him as he slings a leg over the sleek bike that he doesn’t care whether they know anything about anything or not. He’s not planning on interrogating them either way. Crowley will find him sooner or later.
They’re demons. They need to die. That thought keeps him going, keeps him sane or near enough as new memories bubble to the forefront of his mind, the faces of his fallen brothers and sisters flashing like strobe lights against the visor of his helmet.
Brian’s standing outside the warehouse when Castiel arrives. Like he’s been waiting. Like he knew Castiel would be coming back—and it occurs to him that the demon probably did know. He’s smirking, anyway.
“Castiel!” Brian greets cheerfully, as Castiel lets his bike fall in the gravel and tosses his helmet on top. “How is my favorite mass murderer this evening?”
Brian doesn’t look a thing like Sam Winchester. He’s several inches too short; is hair is a shade too light; his eyes are too round and too wide; his expression is too sinister. Even when Sam was under the influence of demon blood, even when he was Lucifer, even when he was walking around with no soul, there was always a glimmer of goodness in him. There was faith in him, too, whenever he looked at Castiel, and that never wavered even when Sam learned what Castiel had done.
Castiel slams his hand against Brian’s forehead and burns the demon out of him. Brian screams, lighting up in flames, his eyes burning away, and Castiel smiles to himself. There are three more demons in the warehouse, and he disposes of them just as easily.
Then he’s left with their bodies, strewn about the place, and their smoldering eye-sockets and the stench of death. These demons were possessing humans. It’s possible the human souls had been destroyed before Castiel showed up, but there’s a chance—
So his body count is even higher. Four more. He doesn’t know how many total he’s killed. How many humans, how many angels, how many—
He carries their bodies out behind the warehouse, one by one, allowing himself to labor under their weight. He finds a shovel in the warehouse and digs a grave, finds salt and fuel and burns the bodies. He sits next to the flames and watches them rise into the sky. It’s dusk, now, the sky is red and purple and he can see the first few stars blinking faintly. Meg’s potluck should be starting soon, and he almost laughs at the thought.
Meg’s potluck.
He never did make that casserole.
Slowly, he gets to his feet and walks away from the grave. He’ll return to her, of course. Where else would he go? Sam and Dean wouldn’t want to see him, and while the thought of throwing himself on Crowley’s mercy has some appeal, it wouldn’t solve anything. And he’s curious, he must admit. She’s taken care of him, for whatever that’s worth, and while he knows she didn’t do it out of the goodness of her heart, he appreciates it. He can remember all the things he’s done with that—with her, and while they disgust him, the sensations the memories evoke are not entirely unpleasant.
He gets back on his motorcycle and heads back to their house. He can—he can heal people, still. The thought of killing anything sickens him, but he can heal people. Meg doesn’t have to know his memories are back. He can hide out here and try to make up for his sins.
It’ll never be enough, but he can try.
~ * ~
Part 3
Castiel ends up missing the potluck. He rides his motorcycle in circles, in figure-eights, killing time and thinking. He’ll go back—he knows this already—but he’s not ready. Not yet. He must—he doesn’t know, but he needs more time.
He spends a week riding around, stopping in motels when exhaustion overtakes him, paying with a credit card that claims his name is Clarence Masters. He recognizes the surname Meg prefers, stolen along with her first name from the girl she’d been possessing when she met Sam and Dean Winchester. The girl had been blonde, and petite, and she’d died. The brunette Meg’s in now is good as dead as well, if Meg hasn’t already decided dragging the girl’s soul around slows her down.
It should bother him more than it does, given what he’s been doing with her.
Castiel decides then that he won’t tell Meg that he remembers. He’ll tell himself it’s because he wants to keep an eye on her, to learn what she’s been planning to do with him, to discover why she’s been watching over him in the first place. To find out what he missed since September, what the Leviathans and Crowley and—others have been doing since he drowned. He’ll tell himself this, because it’s more palatable than needing a demon for the protection and company she offers.
When he finally does go back to Meg, she smiles kindly and tells him they’ll talk about things in the morning. He nods absently. Morning sounds good. He’s been sleeping these past couple months, which is strange, but not entirely unpleasant. He should try tonight—perhaps it will help his wings heal.
However, Meg clearly has no intention of sleep, as she follows Castiel into his room and pushes him onto the bed and slides up his body. He stares at her, confused, and she presses her lips to his. Castiel doesn’t reciprocate.
“What’s wrong?” Meg asks. Castiel shakes his head. He doesn’t know where to begin with that one. Everything’s wrong. Everything, from what Castiel has done to the fact that he’s lying in bed with a demon and he isn’t smiting her. He should smite her, like the demons in the warehouse.
But then he would have to dispose of her body, and it would be yet another strike against him. Even if she’s a demon. His fingers tighten on her arms and she smiles.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” he whispers. She ducks and kisses his cheek.
“I’ll take care of you,” she says. “Let me.”
Every syllable she speaks is a lie formed to manipulate him. Her voice is venomous, her touch a mockery of human connection. But Castiel closes his eyes anyway, lets her strip him and then herself. The lights are off, but he can see perfectly. She moves sinuously against him, her hips into his, her dark hair curling over her breasts. The strands sway from side to side with her body, brushing her peaked nipples. He closes his eyes and tries to picture someone—anyone—else. But all he can see is the faces of those he’s betrayed, those he’s murdered, over and over again. He opens his eyes. The demon is preferable.
But not preferable enough. He grabs her waist and she stops.
“No,” he says. “Not—not tonight.”
He shoves her off of him and grabs one of their blankets, wrapping it around his naked form and fleeing their bedroom. Meg looks confused, but she doesn’t follow—as he closes the door behind him, he sees her shrug and press her fingers against her heated flesh. Castiel shudders.
Downstairs, he curls up on the couch and stares, unseeing, at a Home Improvement marathon. Laughter pours from the TV, but he’s not listening, and when the infomercials start he turns the TV off. He used to watch these with Dean. Of course, Dean hadn’t known Castiel was there, and the volume was low so Dean wouldn’t wake up Sam. But they’d sat together, and stared at the screen and watched over Sam and for a while Castiel didn’t have to think about the war.
He drifts off once or twice, but every time, he sees Balthazar’s eyes—wide, accusing, sad—and he can’t.
When Meg comes down in the morning, Castiel realizes he’s never been able to see her true face. Not since that night when he pinned her against an alley wall in Australia and—
He rejects her attempts to comfort him. Pushes her away and runs upstairs, where he finds a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and his boots. He grabs his jacket and says he’s going out. The leather is strange, the coat too short, and he misses the familiar weight of his trenchcoat. There’s no telling where it is now. Probably at the bottom of that lake, with his suit and tie. Castiel shoves his hands in the pockets of his jacket and wanders the streets.
Some of his neighbors pass him, but they don’t glance up. He’s grateful for it. The world is strange enough without suddenly having to make small talk (which, he recalls, he was terrible at even when he didn’t remember who and what he was). The dry wind blows through his hair, leaving little flecks of sand behind. His feet ache, and he wonders if it’s a side effect of his wings being injured, or if he’s simply allowing himself to feel pain.
Castiel walks in circles, always coming back to pass the house he and Meg bought, then wandering away to the center of town and past the shops and out to the old church. Thing’s been abandoned for years, overrun with foliage and half-burned to the ground. There’s a dark presence there too, spirits trapped within the church’s walls, and he supposes that’s why it’s been left to sit in ruins.
It’s mid-afternoon when he finally returns, walking through their front door and barely acknowledging Meg, who sits on the couch with Joe Anderson.
“Cas!”
He stops at the foot of the stairs. Damn. He’d been hoping they wouldn’t have to do that.
“Hello, Joe,” he says, turning slowly. Joe runs a hand through his hair.
“I was just talking to Meg here, about what happened. What you did, man, that was—I dunno what that was. Meg says you’re special, though, says God gave you special gifts, and I wouldn’t believe it except last night—”
“It was nothing,” Castiel interrupts him. “Please.”
Joe shakes his head. “No, but more people have to know what you can do. I already told the old congregation, and well, there’s more people than me who need healing. If you could just talk to them, I know Sarah McCoy’s mother’s got a horrible sickness and if you—”
“I can’t,” Castiel says. “If you’ll excuse me.”
He heads up the stairs. Behind him, he hears Meg trying to reassure Joe that of course Cas will heal Sarah’s mother, he just needs a little time, and then Castiel hears her on the steps.
“What do you want?” he growls. “What would you have me do here?”
“You feel bad about what you did when you weren’t you, right?” Meg says. “Well, here’s your chance to make up for it. Heal people. It’ll be good for you. Give you purpose.”
Purpose. Of course, that’s what he needs. Last time he had purpose he became an angry, vengeful god.
“I’ll think about it,” he says, and storms into his room. He’s hardly used it since he and Meg—since they decided to occupy her bed together. But now, he wraps himself in his blankets, the deep blue he once found familiar and comforting but now only finds a bitter reminder of what he once was, and turns away from the horrible, ugly curtains that taunt him with what he’s broken. Castiel glares intently at the wall and waits for the sun to go down.
In his dreams, he watches Dean Winchester rake leaves, and over and over again Crowley appears—with a deal, with a knife, with Lucifer, with a man Castiel has never seen and yet knows instinctively is God—and over and over again he damns himself while his Father shakes his head.
Oh, Castiel, God says sadly. I should have known you couldn’t handle free will. Then God morphs into Dean Winchester, and Dean Winchester laughs and tells Castiel he’s nothing but a useless child, good only for running errands, and Sam Winchester leans in close and whispers in Castiel’s ear, at least I’m forgiven. That’s something you’ll never hope to be.
Castiel wakes before dawn, slips into the shower, and uses all the hot water. He watches his fingertips prune, and wonders if he’ll shrivel up entirely if he stays under long enough.
~ * ~
Meg sits in the kitchen and listens to the water running. Something’s wrong, and it worries her—not because she cares about Cas, but because she worries he might end up going nuclear all on his own. The best thing, she knows, is to give him space. But she can’t help fearing that space would turn into Cas running off (again) and that wouldn’t be good for anyone.
He’s been in the shower for almost an hour when the phone rings.
“Meg?” Chelsea Winters, the strange bird-woman from the edge of town, nearly shouts down the line. Meg holds the receiver away from her ear.
“Yes?”
“I—okay. Classic car, just now, pair of supermodels just driving into town.”
“1967 Chevy Impala?” Meg asks. She’s already halfway to the closet.
“How should I know? I like birds, not cars.” There’s some squawking on the other line, and Chelsea swears in German while Meg digs through shoes and coats for her bag. “Ahem. Sorry. What’s this car about, anyway?”
“Nothing,” Meg says. She zips open the bag and pulls out her angel sword. No need to be any more heavily armed. She’s not exactly spoiling for a fight. With any luck, they’ll just turn around and leave and forget about her town in the Arizona desert.
“Not a problem. Hey, Luci’s missed you the past few weeks. You should take her hunting with me on Saturday.”
“I’ll call you,” she says, and hangs up.
She walks to the entrance of her neighborhood and leans against the sign. Casual. Angel sword in hand, tapping against her shoulder—a song she can’t get out of her head. Bonnie Dolinger played it at the potluck, before Joe crashed and Cas freaked. She can’t remember the words. Sam and Dean are in New River.
Finally, the car pulls up. It’s not the Impala. It’s a Charger, early 90s maybe, and while the change is curious she doesn’t question it. Meg pushes herself off the sign and stalks over to Sam’s open window. This is not a moment she’s been looking forward to.
“Hey, boys,” she says. “What are you doing here?”
“Could ask you the same thing,” Sam says. Meg smirks.
“I live here,” she says.
“Some serious power’s been blowing through. Don’t tell me it’s you,” he says. Dean just glares at her, and she tosses him a wink.
“In case you forgot, Crowley’s still on my ass. I’m not exactly itching to draw attention to myself,” she says, and shrugs. “I know who’s behind it. I got it covered.” She hopes, anyway. Cas has been acting weird since he found out he can heal people. Understandable, sure, but it makes him unpredictable and she’s not sure she can help if he loses control.
Dean leans over his brother and aims his gun at her. It’s a pretty pointless gesture, and they all know it, but she figures it probably makes him feel better. Like he’s in control.
Meg’s old shrink would have a field day with him. But then, she’d killed her old shrink when he tried to lobotomize her. Asshole.
“Whatever you want with this place—”
“I told you, I live here. I’ll take care of it.” And its residents, she thinks, but doesn’t say. “Turn around and don’t come back.”
“But—”
She strokes Sammy’s face with the tip of Cas’s blade. “I said, go. Come back, and I’ll make sure whatever’s here eats your faces. Hell, maybe I’ll grab myself an ear.” They don’t look convinced, and she sighs. “Fine. You really want to know, it’s at the nudist ranch on the west side of town. Knock yourselves out.”
It’s not a lie. A couple of Dick Roman’s finest bought up the place about a month ago. Meg’s not too concerned; they don’t leave the ranch and as far as she can tell, they’re too wrapped up in their own schemes to worry about a lone demon. Still, the Winchesters’ timing couldn’t be better—one demon might not be a concern, but now Cas has discovered he can heal people. And he’ll want to heal people, once he’s gotten over the shock. He’s an angel; he won’t be able to resist. And once that happens, the last thing she wants is Leviathans on her doorstep.
The boys look at each other for a long stretch, exchanging either telepathic signals or soulful glances. Or both. She doesn’t really want to know.
“Fine,” Dean says, defeated. “I hope whatever it is gets bored and kills you first. Have fun with…” he waves his gun around, “Stepford.”
“Happy hunting,” she says, patting the hood of their car. “Eyes up front.”
Meg watches them disappear down the road, then waits half an hour to make sure they’re not doubling back. Once she’s satisfied they’ve taken the hunt, she walks back to the house, making a mental note to send Chelsea some of her warding plants.
Cas is downstairs when she returns, sitting at the kitchen table and staring unblinkingly at his folded hands. He has deep shadows under his eyes and his damp hair is sticking up at odd angles.
“You want breakfast?” Meg asks as gently as possible, tossing the sword into the closet. He doesn’t seem to notice.
“No,” he says slowly, then unfolds his hands, refolds them, places them on his lap, places on hand on the table and starts tapping a three-beat pattern into the wood. “Where were you?” he asks.
Meg raises an eyebrow. “Nowhere,” she says. “A couple guys were making trouble out by Chelsea Winters’s place. You remember Chelsea? She came to the barbecue. She’s the one with all the birds. Gave me one, too, at the potluck just before Christmas. A hawk. I named her Lucifer.” Cas’s lips twitch in a brief smile—at Meg’s rambling or her bird’s name, she can’t tell. “Anyway, Chelsea gave me a call.”
Cas stops tapping. “Did you know them? The guys?”
Meg sighs. She shouldn’t tell him. She should make up some story about a couple bored hooligans out of Phoenix, say she got roped into some kind of neighborhood watch, but Cas’s eyes are fixed on her now. He can tell when she’s lying, and she can’t risk him running off again.
“Old friends. Or enemies; it’s all the same, really. I told Chelsea to keep an eye out, tell me if they rolled into town.”
“What did they want?”
“Working a job over at the nudist ranch. Don’t worry, they won’t bother us.”
Cas nods, brow furrowed, and goes back to tapping his fingers against the table.
~ * ~
Castiel knows the second she walks through the door, long silver blade in hand (his blade, that’s his blade, the one she took off him as they kissed, the one he gave her the one she stole kept after saving them all from hellhounds after watching Crowley burn not burn). He’s not sure how he knows.
They’re at the nudist ranch. Castiel remembers asking Meg about it once. They laid in bed covered in sweat, and Castiel asked, and Meg answered that the place was full of over-fifties and Castiel was under no circumstances to go there. She’d been angry, and Cas had assumed she was just being possessive. Now he understands. Leviathans.
Meg has a landscaping job at the Dolinger place that afternoon. Castiel dresses in khaki pants and a blue button-up shirt and waits in the kitchen until he hears her truck pull away before going out to the garage and mounting his bike.
He’s not sure what he’s planning to do. Castiel speeds out of the neighborhood, engine roaring in his ears, wind blowing hard through his still-damaged wings and tearing several broken feathers from the mangled joints. Sam and Dean will still be at the Ranch, he knows, and he has to—
Castiel has to see them. He hasn’t thought much beyond that, but now that he knows they’re here, he can’t not.
The ranch is located in a slight valley, surrounded by hills and flora. Castiel parks his motorcycle outside the main building and walks the perimeter.
Everything goes still and silent. His hands tremble as he lowers himself to one knee, peering over the desert brush into the pool area. From this distance it’s difficult to make out much detail, but he doesn’t need it. There’s Sam, standing by the chairs—or behind them would be more accurate—and he’s staring at the sky while a grey-haired man speaks with him. Dean’s more confident, lounging on the other side of the pool and chatting to a group of enthralled older women.
He calls over to his brother, and Sam responds by flipping him off. Dean tosses his head back and laughs. Castiel wishes he could hear them, wishes he could fly down and stand unseen between the brothers and listen to their easy banter. Wishes he could pretend, like before, that their smiles are for him as well.
For a brief moment, he pictures himself walking through the gates and letting them see him. He’d strip, of course, blend in and pretend his memories are still gone. Sam would approach first, tentative, and Castiel would smile pleasantly and ask for his name. They would sit and talk, and Dean would watch, and Castiel would stand to leave and—
Sam still has the sword, the one he used to try to kill a false God who’d end the world, and now it’s once again stuck between the arches of Castiel’s wings—what used to be Castiel’s wings—and Sam gives him the death he deserves
Or he would enter fully-clothed, and contrite, and he would kneel on the hard concrete and apologize over and over, for everything he’s done since he failed to get Dean out of Hell before he broke the first Seal. He’d beg forgiveness, and Dean would take his arm and help him stand and—
Dean’s hand pushes the blade into Castiel’s chest, and there’s nothing but anger in his eyes as he asks if that made Castiel feel better, if this makes him feel better.
Sam stumbles backwards, falling against the fence and sliding to the concrete. He digs his thumb into his palm, a pained expression on his face. Dean runs to him and kneels at his side, shaking his brother’s shoulder and touching the side of his face. Castiel watches and he knows, this is what he did. Sam bats at Dean’s hands, grabs Dean’s arms, looks around desperately until his eyes land on Dean’s and he relaxes. Sam lets go, then, and pulls himself to his feet. Castiel doesn’t have to hear him to know Sam’s insisting he’s fine.
Castiel ducks his head. There’s no going back.
Still, he can’t make himself leave the bushes. Not even when the sun begins to set and Sam and Dean go inside. Not even when the stars come out and Castiel is shivering in his thin shirt. He stays and he watches. I’m still the Winchesters’ guardian echoes in his head.
A couple hours later, he hears banging coming from the main building. He’s up and running before he realizes what he’s doing, only just managing to duck behind a car as the Winchesters come out. He pokes his head over the side and watches.
Dean’s holding a machete and a knife in his left hand and a shotgun in his right hand. Sam follows, carrying a cardboard box under each arm. Both of them are splattered in black ooze. Castiel can see the sharp jut of their jaws, the deep relief of Sam’s cheekbones, the bow of Dean’s legs. He can’t see Sam’s dimples, or Dean’s bright green eyes with the little crow’s feet that deepen when he smiles. Castiel once knew every inch of their bodies as he rebuilt them from nothing, but now he can’t recall the shape of Sam’s eyes or the swoop of his sideburns. He can’t recall the spread of Dean’s freckles or the furrows in his brow.
“What do you think, Sammy? Swing by Meg’s place on the way back, take care of her?”
Sam sighs and tosses the boxes into the backseat of a black car that isn’t their Impala. “I dunno, Dean,” he says. “Maybe we should let this one go.”
“What?” Dean opens the trunk, puts the machete and gun away, and starts rummaging around. “Come on. We’ve let that bitch go too many times already.” Castiel bristles slightly, unwillingly, and hopes they let her go. Hopes they never find out he’s been living with her all this time. After Crowley—
“No, I know that,” Sam says. “But Frank’s got another lead on Dick, and it’s kind of… time sensitive.” Castiel frowns. He’s not familiar with those names. It’s harder than he thought it’d be, listening to Dean and Sam discuss cases he knows nothing about.
Dean nods and slides into the driver’s seat. Sam pauses for a moment, his eye catching on Castiel’s motorcycle. He stares at it, like it’s important somehow, and Castiel holds his breath.
“Sammy?”
“Was that bike out here earlier?” Sam asks.
“Who knows? Get in, we still have to ditch the heads.”
Sam gives the motorcycle one last glance, then climbs into the car next to his brother. They speed away, classic rock blaring from the speakers. Castiel stands and dusts off his knees, listening to the strains of music disappearing down the highway. He gets his bike and rides away from them, away from the ranch, back towards Meg. Led Zeppelin howls in his ears. It’s Dean’s favorite song—or one of them, anyway.
Castiel lies awake all night, staring at the ceiling and imagining a hundred, a thousand scenarios in which he is found, or he reveals himself, and Sam and Dean see him. He imagines killing the Leviathan boss, or saving them from ghosts, or healing Sam’s mind. He stands certain, or apologetic, or prostrates himself at their feet. His apologies are eloquent, or spontaneous, or a garbled mess of sobs and sibilants. Castiel doesn’t remember ever crying before, but in his mind, his tears dampen the desert sand to mud. In his mind, he tells them everything he and Crowley did, or tells them it’s none of their business, or screams and blames Dean-Sam-Bobby-Raphael-God, everyone, anyone, until there’s no one left to blame but himself and he realizes that’s where it lay all along. They scream at him, kick him until his ribs shatter and his wings rip from his back, slide knives under his skin and the angel blade through his heart. They make him crawl. They bind him in the backseat and drop him off on the Leviathans’ doorstep, on Crowley’s porch, in Lucifer’s cage. The worst is when they claim to forgive him, offering neither punishment nor absolution, and Castiel in his desperation accepts their silent loathing.
By the time the first rays of sunlight seep into his room, Castiel is trembling on the mattress and clutching a pillow to his chest. He deserves it, all of it, whatever Sam and Dean choose to throw at him. And he would take it, gladly. But they think he’s dead, and they’re better off thinking he’s dead. The last thing they need is Castiel coming back into their lives. He shuts his eyes to the morning and wishes Meg were beside him. The thought disgusts him. He needs her.
Over a breakfast that he doesn’t touch, Castiel tells Meg he’s going to buy the church. He’s strong enough to heal people, and with each of his believers (who will be damned anyway, simply for following Castiel) passing through his church, Castiel will be reminded of the one person he broke and can never fix.
~ * ~
Meg ends up buying the church for him. She tells him she’s experienced an unexpected windfall as a landscaper, and Castiel doesn’t question it. He doesn’t want to know where the money really came from, and without his memories, he wouldn’t know to question it.
They name him Emmanuel, God is with us, and Castiel doesn’t point out the irony. He knows Meg’s well aware of the name’s meaning, and every time she calls him that, he struggles not to flinch and she fails to hide an amused little smirk. He reminds himself it’s just a stage name to protect his identity from Crowley’s demons. Should they catch wind that Castiel is alive and less than well, he’s not sure if he has the power to protect both himself and Meg as well as whatever collateral humans stand between Crowley and his prize. It won’t hold up forever, but it will buy them time for Castiel to come up with some other plan. Preferably one that doesn’t involve him becoming an Angel of the Lord again.
He tries his hand at carpentry, addressing the broken pews, but it ends in his foot almost getting smashed and a new hole in the floor. Meg gently takes the tools away from him, and she hires a few contractors to fix up the place, while Castiel sees to his first client.
Sarah McCoy’s mother lives in hospice right where the sprawling Phoenix suburbs bleed into the city. The nurses look at Castiel with curiosity, the strange unkempt man who arrives in Sarah’s car and on Sarah’s arm. He’s not her husband, they whisper. I’ve certainly never seen him before, have you? No. I think I’d remember eyes like those.
He ignores them. His heavy boots echo through the narrow hall, drowning out the buzzing of the fluorescent lights. His long black duster swishes against his calves, reassuring and familiar.
Sarah McCoy’s mother is sitting up in bed, reading a book titled ‘the noble highlander’s passion’. The cover features a muscular, shirtless man in a kilt, and a busty redhead clinging to his chest. There’s a Bible and rosary by the bed, and Sarah McCoy’s mother hides the novel under her sheets when she hears her daughter enter.
“Mom?” Sarah asks. “I brought someone to help you.”
Her mother smiles at them, wide and kind, and it puts Castiel at ease. “Who’s your friend?” she asks.
“Emmanuel, ma’am, he says. Sarah places a hand on his back and nudges him into the room. He glances at her, and she smiles encouragingly.
“Call me Rose, please.”
“Rose. I—your daughter asked me to help you. I can—” He frowns, struggling for the words. “She told me you were sick, and I have recently discovered I can help. If I may?”
Rose nods, and Castiel walks slowly to her bedside. He places a hand on the woman’s forehead, curling his fingers in her short, spiky gray hair. The last time he used his healing power deliberately, before Joe Anderson, he’d fixed Lisa. That had been his fault. He’d wiped her memory, too, and having experienced memory loss for himself, he wonders if he should have ignored Dean’s request. If he could have ignored Dean’s request. Rose looks at him oddly, and he shakes his head. He’s been so lost in his thoughts lately.
He concentrates. Power rushes through him, pouring out of his palm and washing over her body. She is cleansed. Castiel removes his hand and steps back, folding his arms behind his back and nodding at Sarah. It is done.
“What—” she gasps. “What did you do?” Castiel looks away, and Sarah answers for him.
“He’s healed you, Mom,” she says. Her voice is weak and shaking and her eyes are shining. “Emmanuel has special gifts.”
“You must be some kind of angel.”
Castiel gives her a twisted sort of half-smile. “Not at all,” he says. “But I’m glad I could help.”
He flees before Sarah can thank him, before Rose can contradict him. He calls Meg to pick him up from the Dairy Queen down the road and picks at a hot fudge sundae while he waits.
From then on, he refuses rides from clients (clients, Meg’s word, and he prefers it to the more loaded followers or believers or devotees).
~ * ~
Two weeks after healing Rose, Castiel is called to Whitefish, Montana. The owner of the gas station told his cousin about the great Healer Emmanuel, and the cousin told a friend, and the friend told another friend, and there’s a little girl who was paralyzed in a car crash last month.
He rides straight through and makes it in just under twenty hours. The girl’s mother greets him at the hospital, throwing her arms around his neck and sobbing into his jacket. He carefully disentangles himself from her and tries to give her a reassuring smile.
“You can help her?” she asks. “Tony said you could help her.”
Castiel doesn’t know a Tony. He nods. “I can help her.”
The woman nods and wipes her eyes. “Good.”
~ * ~
Castiel hunts. Ghosts, monsters, demons, anything that gets in his way and a lot of things that don’t. He sits in diners for hours, waiting for hunters to pass through so he can listen in. They never have what he’s looking for.
He sees Sam and Dean once, at a gas station, but they’re sitting on the hood of a car that isn’t the Impala and they’re eating sandwiches and drinking soda while waiting for the car to fill up. They’re laughing, and it hurts.
Castiel heals twins in Arkansas and heads back to New River.
On the way, he stops for a coffee, and overhears two hunters talking in hushed voices. He doesn’t make out much of their conversation, but something strikes him.
Bobby Singer’s dead. Been dead awhile, it seems. Shot in the head by the Leviathan boss. Castiel adds his name to the list of all those he destroyed while he was God. Adds, erases, moves to the top, erases again and starts a new list.
Sam’s wall. Dean’s faith. Bobby’s life.
Castiel leaves without paying.
~ * ~
He bursts through the church doors, ripping off his leather jacket and throwing it on a pew. Meg’s setting up some of her potted warding plants over the sigils behind the altar.
“Cas?”
A deep growl pours from his lips, and his hand comes up to close over Meg’s throat. He slams her down onto the altar, and she grins up at him.
“Kinky,” she says. “And blasphemous. I like it.”
“Shut up.” His other hand comes to tug at her hair, pulling her up to crush her mouth against his. He kisses hard and brutal, biting at her soft lips and flicking his tongue against the back of her throat. She jerks with each lick, but doesn’t try to get away, and he throws her back down.
“Now what?”
“I told you to be quiet,” Castiel says. He flips her onto her stomach and lies across her, rubbing his crotch into her ass. He’s barely aroused, but controlling his vessel’s blood flow is easy enough that he’s fully hard anyway. She wriggles against him, desperate for his cock, and he hates it. Hates how much he wants it, to sink into her and damn them both all over again. He hopes God is watching. He hopes God blasts the whole building into oblivion, and him and the demon with it.
Can you see me, Father? Aren’t you glad you brought me back? Aren’t you proud?
Castiel shoves her jeans and panties down her legs, trapping them around her ankles, as the tight fabric can’t slide over her boots. She tries to spread her knees anyway, still moving against him, and he brings his hand down hard across her ass.
She gasps and jumps, looking over her shoulder questioningly, but he’s far too entranced by the little pink glow on her skin to care. He strikes her again, and she practically yelps. Castiel smiles to himself and rains down another dozen blows, until Meg is crying out. Then he stops and reaches between her legs and yes—she’s wet. He shoves the fingers into her mouth for her to clean.
“I hate you,” he whispers in her ear. She smirks.
“No, you don’t,” she says. “You don’t know why you should.”
He knows perfectly well why he should, but doesn’t argue. Her guard is down while she thinks he’s helpless and trusting. He bites down on the back of her neck and thrusts into her, fucking her hard and fast while she claws at the altar and screams.
“Be. Quiet,” he growls. “Or do I have to gag you?”
She groans. He stops moving and reaches underneath her, ripping the buttons of her blouse apart and stripping the ruined garment easily from her. He balls it up and shoves as much as he can get into her mouth. She glares at him, but quiets.
Castiel goes back to hammering her warm, wet hole, trying to enjoy the sensations. But it’s not the sex that’s getting him—it’s that they’re doing this here, in Castiel’s church, that they’re a demon and an angel and he’s not the righteous one here, anymore, if he ever was. It’s his fault Bobby Singer is dead, and there’s nothing to do but make sure that when God or Crowley or those Leviathans finally catch up with him, the only place Castiel is going is Hell. Proper, eternal-torment Hell. The place he saw when he rescued Dean, when he failed to rescue Sam. Not the place he saw as Crowley’s guest.
He deserves, he deserves, he deserves.
Not Meg’s kindness, if he could even call it that.
She lets out a particularly high-pitched cry of pleasure, and the blouse falls from her mouth. Castiel doesn’t care. He’s almost finished, anyway. And then he’ll leave her, filthy and used and unsatisfied, and he’ll go heal someone in a useless attempt at repentance.
But before he can do that, she twists around in his arms and kisses him and brushes her fingers across his arm and says “Let go” and he does. He comes inside her with what isn’t a sob at all, and sinks to the floor behind the altar and buries his face in his hands.
“It’s okay,” she says. Her voice is a mockery of compassion. She strokes his hair and he wishes he could smite her, but even though his palm itches to press against her forehead, he can’t. He needs her.
“No, it’s not,” he growls. He tucks himself back inside his jeans and stands.
“See you at home?”
“Maybe,” he says, and turns to leave. Halfway up the aisle, he stops. “Yes,” he says, quietly, and he knows Meg can hear him. He goes outside to his motorcycle and rides back to the house. Their home.
~ * ~
Castiel spends more time at home and less time wandering pointlessly. When he gets a job, he performs his miracles quickly and returns without any detours. He’s tempted—he’s more than tempted—but he’s come to realize he’s not taking hunts to help people. He’s taking them in hopes of seeing Sam and Dean. But he can’t, not anymore. That’s not his life. It can’t be.
Meg seems pleased with the new developments, and doesn’t ask why Castiel doesn’t take as long to heal anymore. He hopes she assumes he’s just gotten better at it, but for all he knows she could have figured out he remembers. It doesn’t really matter, he supposes.
He starts preaching, a little. Sunday mornings. He gives meandering sermons on free will and forgiveness and feels like the worst kind of hypocrite, but he likes it when the neighbors shake his hand after. When they call him Father Emmanuel. For a moment, he can pretend he’s not damned.
Then Meg takes his hand and they walk home together, and she smiles and waves at everyone and if he concentrates he can still smell the sulfur on her skin. They have lunch and go shopping and act normal. At night he fucks her against the door, or she rides him on the bed, or he kneels on the carpet with his head pressed to the rough fibers while she opens him up and snaps her hips against his, driving a silicone cock into him.
On weekdays, he travels and heals and she takes landscaping jobs. Sometimes he comes home early and they fuck in the living room, destroying the increasingly heinous curtains Castiel picks out during their Sunday shopping.
It’s a routine, and he’s comfortable. Until he comes home to find Meg in his church with his old sword, staring down Dean Winchester, and he knows it’s all over.
~ * ~
“You’re Emmanuel?” Dean asks, when he can get his voice to work. Castiel nods.
“I am.”
“I heard you could heal people.”
“I can.”
Castiel’s gaze flicks up to Meg. She leans against the altar and watches them.
“My name’s Dean,” Dean says.
They shake hands, and Castiel resists the urge to let the touch linger. “What’s your issue?” he asks.
It’s Sam. Of course it’s Sam. Castiel hurt him after all, and it’s amazing Sam’s lasted this long. No. Not amazing. Sam is resilient and strong, and of course he would withstand—what Castiel did to him.
He leaves with Dean. Meg comes along. Castiel insists on it. He tells Dean that the demon is his wife, and watches the distaste and confusion and hatred flicker across the hunter’s face. It’s better than the strange almost-sympathy and hurt Dean’s been radiating.
Castiel knows he can’t fix Sam. Not completely. He has an idea, but no way of knowing if it could work or not, and even if it does, he’ll probably never see the Winchesters again anyway. But he wants to see Sam.
Castiel smites his way through a pack of demons. Miraculously, it ‘jumps’ his memory. Dean gives him back the trenchcoat, and as he puts on the stained, filthy garment, he feels like every muscle, every tendon in his body is stretched so far it would break if touched.
He presses his hand to Sam’s forehead.
The Devil calls him brother and Castiel presses his back to the wall and endures.
Meg stays behind, playing nurse, and Castiel watches Sam and Dean drive away.
She runs her fingers through his hair and kisses his forehead.
He doesn’t see her.
~ * ~
It’s not affection that makes her stay. It’s strategy. It’s those few bright moments of lucidity, when she can see and feel and taste his power and knows that he will protect her, when the time comes. The bright lure of his divine power wraps around them both, stained and poisoned and utterly beautiful. His shredded wings, broken feathers brushing Meg’s face, nevertheless will soon be enough to ferry them to safety. Back to their house, if he can, because Meg’s got the neighbors looking after their home and their church and she’ll have a lot of weeding to do when she gets back (if she gets back, which is looking increasingly unlikely and not just because Cas is crazy, she shouldn’t be planning to see the place ever again anyway).
He may be insane, but when Crowley comes, they’ll stand together. Because she stayed. Because he owes her. That’s all this is—all it’s ever been—ensuring Cas owes her a debt. Ensuring he’ll do what is needed to save her life. Nothing more and nothing less and certainly nothing to do with his strong hands and stronger voice and the way he makes her melt with the press of his lips to her neck.
Cas wasn’t that great a lay.
He’s probably even worse now he’s an angel again.
And he’s insane, which makes it even less likely he’ll be any good if she decides to toss him on the scratchy, starch-stiff hospital sheets and have her way with him. So, really, affection as a motive is right out.
He fumbles with his spoon. She takes it from him and helps him with the cinnamon oatmeal. He makes a face, and she promises to bring him burgers next time, burgers and pancakes and whatever he wants, screw hospital policy.
Cas gives her a bright, beautiful smile, and she rolls her eyes.