Ache
Ella sat slouched, with her elbows on her knees and her hands hanging limply, on the edge of the bed in the spare room of Chuck's house. The boys knew that she was too shaken up to help them search for Lucifer and try to find out what exactly had gotten them out of harm's way, so they told Chuck to keep an eye on her while they were away. He let her stay at his house, and she promised to cook meals for him in an attempt to work off the debt that he insisted she didn't owe. She had made spaghetti for dinner tonight; and though she ate with him to assure him that she was alright, Ella spent most of the meal pushing her food around on her plate. She couldn't seem to make herself feel hungry, no matter what she did. And so she had retreated back to the spare room, sat down on the bed, and wept.
Castiel was gone. He was not coming back. Raphael had made certain of that. And all she had left of him was the tan trench coat that now lay folded over the back of a chair on the opposite side of the room. When her tears had finally given out and she could not cry anymore, she just sat and stared at the jacket and felt empty and alone. Castiel had been her constant, her anchor. Whenever humanity had let her down, whenever heaven proved corruptible, Castiel had been there to give her hope; and she had done the same for him. He had been there at her birth of pain and tears and hatred…and she had been there at his death. And even on the brink of death, he still thought to protect her.
"I'll hold them off! I'll hold them all off! Just stop Sam!" And Dean was gone. The archangel was close, and Castiel turned to look at her, really look at her. He shed his coat with a speed she had rarely seen from him, throwing it around her shoulders. Heaven did not tend to look favorably on the Nephilim, and to discover one with Castiel was sure to be an unwelcome surprise. She heard Castiel tell her something along the lines of, "This will hide your true nature," but she could hardly hear him over the archangel's cries. She grabbed his hand, desperately, terrified. He glanced at her hand, and then met her eyes for a moment that felt almost too long with the frenzy going on all around them. Suddenly, she was pulled closer to him, and he whispered something in her ear that she could hardly make out. And what she thought she heard couldn't have been what he'd said. Not Castiel, he couldn't have said that. But she didn't get a chance to ask him, because his fingertips were suddenly on her forehead and she knew that he didn't want her to see what was going to happen. She saw his blue eyes darken in sadness and felt her body slump lifelessly against his before the darkness fully overtook her.
When she had come to, both angels were long gone. Chuck was standing a few feet from her, wringing his hands nervously and reminding her for all the world of a terrified rabbit in a cage. She had sat up, desperately trying to clear the fog that still lingered in her mind, trying helplessly to figure out why there was blood all over the room and Castiel was not there to wake her up. When the pieces were finally able to fit together in her mind, she wouldn't let herself believe it. Castiel could not be dead! But the terrified expression on Chuck's face as he reached down to help her off of the floor was enough to silence her doubts. She let him pull her to her feet. She felt limp, like a rag doll, feeling completely detached from her body. He was dead. She drifted for a while, vaguely registering the fact that Chuck was leading her to a couch. He pushed her shoulders gently, though she never felt it, and she stumbled backwards until her rear plopped down onto the couch. Chuck may have asked if she needed anything, but she didn't hear him at all. She kept repeating the same sentence in her head; "Castiel is dead," over and over again, trying to make sense of it all. But there was no sense to be made. After an indeterminate period of time, something inside of her snapped and she began to weep, heavily and heartily, until her eyes were red and puffy and her head pounded from the effort.
Ella had ended up sitting there on the couch for a very long time, until Chuck ran into the living room with a toilet plunger in his hand and pulled her to her feet, telling her to stay behind him. She waited where he told her to, not having the energy to disobey, and watched wordlessly as he ran around the corner and slammed the plunger into Sam Winchester's head. She still had no grasp of her surroundings, and had no idea what Sam and Dean were doing there. A logical part of her, somewhere deep down, realized that she would have a better understanding of what was going on if she would listen to their conversation. But it seemed to take a tremendous amount of work to listen to anything but the beating of her own heart; so she continued to stand off at a distance from the brothers and the prophet, staring at an insignificant patch of carpet and feeling very small and frail in Castiel's trench coat that was much too big for her. Her ears caught Dean speak her name, and Castiel's, but the words drifted away before being processed.
And then she was being shepherded again, led away from the Winchesters by Chuck, who seemed to be yelling about Zachariah. There was a part of Ella, a wrathful corner of her soul that was exceedingly common amongst her race; that part of her wanted to face off with Zachariah. Better yet, it wanted to rip his face off. It wanted to pay him back for what he had allowed to happen to Castiel. But her lethargy was even stronger, and she let herself be hidden away, reminding herself that Castiel's very last efforts had been to shield her from heaven's eyes. To throw that away now would be to make a mockery of his death, and she could not do that, not in a million lifetimes.
And then, without warning, she felt the white-hot pain of an Enochian banishing sigil being produced near her. It was not as strong as the last time she had experienced one, when she had suddenly found herself alone in a field, 30 miles away from where she had been. The sigils did not affect her in the same way as they did the angels, and the only effect of this one was the burning pain in her soul that caused her to stumble backwards for a moment, disoriented. But, if nothing else, the pain seemed to wake her from the stupor she had been drifting in and she found herself able to comprehend what was going on around her. She ran out of her hiding spot and found the Winchesters, just as they were telling Chuck that they would have to leave before Zachariah came back. Just before they left, Dean embraced her tightly and told her to stay with Chuck and to be safe. He pulled away and looked at her, and she found herself unable to meet the sadness and pity in his eyes as he added, almost as an afterthought, "It's going to be alright."
Ella couldn't remember how much time had passed since they had left, when she found herself sitting slouched on the bed in the spare room, staring at Castiel's coat. There was an incredible, heavy silence in the room; and she felt as though every passing moment without him in it was weighing down on her, trying to crush her, making it increasingly difficult to breathe. She tried to put on a brave face for Chuck, but she felt like a part of her, something essential to her being, was missing. And she would never get it back. She heard the door slowly begin to creak open, and she sighed, attempting to compose herself as she turned to see what Chuck needed from her.
But the figure that stepped hesitantly and silently into the room was not the prophet. It was Castiel, looking just as he always had. He said nothing, simply staring at her with the ghost of a smile playing about his lips. His eyes roamed the room for a moment, stopping on the chair with his coat folded across it. He stepped over to it, not making a sound, and picked up his coat, shrugging it on before turning back to face her.
"Ella," he spoke, his voice low and soft as it had always been. "I'm sorry." She felt paralyzed, afraid that if she moved or spoke he would vanish into thin air. He stepped closer and dropped to his knees in front of her, staring deeply into her eyes for a long, painful moment. And then he began to lean forward, and she closed her eyes and waited to feel his full, chapped lips on her own…
But they never came.
When she opened her eyes, she was laying awkwardly on her side, on top of the bed, her feet still firmly planted on the ground. The sky outside her window was darker than she remembered. She raised herself up to sit on the bed again, feeling a stabbing pain in her back from lying at such an unusual angle. But she forgot her discomfort when she saw the tan trench coat, still folded over the back of the chair. And she knew that he had never been there at all. She stood to her feet unsteadily, leaning over and picking up the coat herself, wrapping it around herself, burrowing deeply into it. She tried to catch his scent, the scent of a man named Jimmy mixed with the fiery, golden scent of the angel. She struggled to fight back the tears that threatened to fall, surprised to discover that she had any tears left to shed. But she was startled from this by a great commotion downstairs, followed by a pause and then Chuck's voice calling up to her, "Ella! Ella, come down here! Hurry!"
There was a tone of urgency in his voice, and she headed to the door quickly, stopping for a lingering moment to stare back at her reflection in the mirror. She looked horrible. This had not been the first time she had had a vision of her angel, and she suspected that some agent of heaven or of hell had been specially designed to torment her with them, as she always felt even more tired, worn, and alone when they were done. The bags under her eyes were pronounced and dark; she had no idea how much time had passed since Castiel's death, but she hadn't gotten any sleep since then—unless you counted the painful visions—so it must have been quite some time. Her skin was pale and waxy, and her usually frizzy, curly hair was greasy and lifeless, hanging limply around her face. Disgusted, she turned away from the mirror and hurried down the stairway, wondering what could possibly be so urgent.
So there you have it, part one of my Castiel/OC story. Let me add a disclaimer right now: I don't own Supernatural, nor any of its characters. I do own Ella, though, as well as a Supernatural T-shirt and the Season 4 DVD set. That's all. This will probably be a two-shot, but it is only a snapshot of a much larger story that I hope to start publishing on here soon. In case you missed it, Ella is a Nephilim--her father was an angel and her mother was a human. Castiel and her father had been friends before the latter rebelled against God, and so Castiel took it upon himself to watch over her and make sure that she did not share in the fate of most Nephilim. The two are very close, and Castiel often visits her for encouragement and hope when he begins to doubt, because he knows that her faith is incredibly strong. Anyway, I have not forgotten about my other story, "My Jewel," and I promise that it isn't over yet. I just needed a break from it for a while, so that I can dive back in and make it as good as possible. I truly hope you've enjoyed this chapter, and that you will read the next part which I hope to have uploaded very soon. Please review, so I know what you think and what I need to improve on! Thanks for reading!
