A/N: Huge apologies for not uploading these tags with my usual alacrity. Which is the wrong phrasing considering I never upload quickly, but anyway. These past few weeks have been really hard on me in terms of college and the workload I've had so everything else has had to take a backseat because even when I did have time I was so tired that I had no motivation to write. I'm going to try and get tags for episodes 6-9 done before SPN comes back, but if I only manage to do this one I will consider it a win.
He'd thought he was doing better. He'd laid low, he'd managed to keep his powers under control. He'd moved the pencil.
Everything was... good. Even Dean was starting to like him, which had made Jack so happy. He finally felt like he'd found a place where he belonged - a home - and that he was in a place where he could make his mother proud. All he wanted was to be as good as she had been certain he would be.
Then Castiel came back and Jack was so excited to show him how well he was doing. He hoped Castiel would see how hard he'd worked at getting his powers under control, and then maybe he'd be proud of him, too. Sam and Dean had been so nice to him, especially Sam, but Jack had always wished that Castiel could see how he was doing. Now he could, and it was because of Jack that that could happen.
It was a good feeling.
He wasn't entirely sure how hunting worked yet, but he was learning. He remembered from the shifter case back in Wisconsin that you were supposed to ask for cold spots and strange smell, and that the EMF meter would tell you if there was a ghost. Or, that was what he had thought. Apparently it wouldn't work for this case, which left Jack just as confused as before.
He also wasn't sure what ghouls really were. They seemed like a combination of a zombie and a shape-shifter, but he didn't really understand it. There were so many different types of monsters in the world (and maybe he was one of them), Jack wasn't sure he'd ever keep track of them all.
Jack didn't know much about hunting but he knew it was supposed to be about saving people. It was killing the bad guy, because they were the good guys and that was what they did. They weren't supposed to kill the good guy too.
Nobody spoke as they made their way back to the motel, but Jack could feel the others' gazes on him. He stared down at his shirt. There was blood on it still. He knew it was his own, but all he could see as he looked at the drying stains was the red halo around the security guard's head. He hadn't meant to do it, but there was no going back now, and Jack knew that it would happen again. He poked his finger through one of the holes in his shirt, feeling the unmarred skin underneath.
He really was a monster.
They were all trying to pretend it was fine that he'd killed someone. Someone who, if it hadn't been for Jack, would have gone home to his family, and who would have woken up the next morning, and the next, and the next. So. It wasn't fine.
He could see that they were trying to make him feel better, but he didn't want to feel better. He wanted to feel that weight of what he'd done, all of it, crushing him, forcing him to do better, because he didn't know what would happen if he just shrugged it off. All he knew was that he would hurt someone again, maybe even Sam or Dean or Castiel. They knew it too, he thought. Maybe that was why they were all so afraid of him. Especially Sam.
So he would do the only good thing he could think of. Blinking the tears from his eyes, Jack raised his hand.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered.
Jack spread his wings, and left.
A/N: That was jumpy as hell. Oh well. I'm going to be writing another tag for this episode from Sam's POV which will be part of my one-short collection, however I'm not sure when I'll post it. This was the main tag for this episode, so I'm just happy to have got this one out. Hopefully I'll have the rest coming out in the next few days. Please review if you have a moment! Bye!