After The Fall

Chapter 2

"I'm kinda good, which sucks.

And you're kinda bad...which is actually all manner of hot."


"It's Meg."

He watches the smile on Dean's face slip away as confusion takes its place, and sees Sam's grey-flecked eyebrows furrow and his head tilt questioningly across the booth from him. He watches as Dean's mouth forms words – what? Cas? What? – but he can't hear them. He can't hear anything over the roaring in his ears.

He doesn't know how he could have possibly looked past her the instant he entered this place. Had he looked over, had he merely glanced at her face upon pushing the bar door open and setting foot inside, he would surely have known.

But he hadn't noticed her. Instead, he'd walked onwards and sat in a booth on the other side of the room with his brothers; smiling, joking, laughing, and oblivious to the fact that when this hour ended and it came his turn to buy the next round of drinks, nothing in his life would ever be the same again. He had simply sat there, so frighteningly unaware of her existence, and of how something so simple as standing from his seat and approaching the bar would be the start of an unstoppable movement.

And then the unremarkable bargirl had tiredly pulled her head away from the confines of her pale arms and shifted to meet his eyes, and he felt something twist and turn like a tidal wave in Jimmy Novak's chest.

Her hair fell in dark waves past the peach toned skin of her shoulders. She was a little taller than he remembered her, but she still had to pull her head back to look up at him; the sharp angles of her cheekbones and the lines of her jaw exposed in the dim light. Her eyes were slate grey. They had stared back at him, wide and unblinking, her thick eyelashes casting shadows across the contours of her pale face and the tired, slightly purple skin beneath her eyes.

She didn't look quite the same. Her hair was a little shorter, her skin was a little lighter, and she looked a little tired. But he knew. The colour of her eyes had changed, but they were the same eyes he remembered. He saw the same face, the same soul behind them that he had always seen. She felt somehow brighter now, like a slate wiped clean by some divine hand, but with a rush of burning nostalgia he found that if he looked hard enough – if he really, really looked – he could still see that all of that thorny pain in her. That surreptitious melancholy, that had always seemed to exist just behind the shine of her eyes and the sarcasm on her tongue, had clung to her like a ghost and followed her here.

He had stared, and she had stared right back. And before he could even begin to doubt the reality of the situation, she had quirked her dark eyebrow at him and her lips had twisted into that smile.

"If you keep looking at me like that, sugar, you'll make me all dewy."

The fire and steel of that voice alone were enough to anchor him to the world.

"Cas!"

He hears a snapping noise in front of him and the roaring in his ears stops. Dean withdraws his clicked fingers and looks at him expectantly, Sam's expression mirroring his brother's.

"It's Meg," Castiel repeats. His throat feels hoarse.

"What do you mean?" Dean asks impatiently, his smile from mere minutes ago replaced by a wary frown.

"I mean that that girl who has served us alcohol for the past hour is Meg." It sounds ridiculous, he suddenly realises, even to his own ears.

Deans eyebrows almost disappear into his hairline. "You're saying she survived? She survived that attack from Crowley?"

"Dean, keep it down," Sam interjects, discreetly pointing in the bargirl's direction. Her lithe back is turned to them and she looks like she's doing something to her nails. She's not within earshot, but Castiel knows if Dean gets any louder their little table will be getting some strange looks. "Cas." Sam's voice is hushed. "Are you saying Meg didn't die and found a new meatsuit?" His expression is a strange mix of disbelief and sympathy. Castiel doesn't like it much.

"I'm saying she did. Meg died." It's the first time he's said it aloud. He almost doesn't. Almost can't. She stands mere feet away from him, and Castiel is still mourning her.

"Then what?" Dean asks. "Did she somehow escape he- wherever Death sent her?"

The angel casts his eyes to the man in front of him, appreciative of his last minute correction. The subject has always been a delicate one, and while Castiel has steel nerves and an unconquerable force of will, he cannot fool Dean. Dean has seen the look on his face in his darkest times and knows that hell is the last place he ever wants to imagine her - no matter how many times his mind has tried to tell him that in all logic and probability, it was where she had gone.

"No." He struggles to find the words that can accurately convey this situation. He can barely wrap his own head around it. "She is Meg. She is Meg's soul. Reborn as a human."

Sam stares at him, the lines of his skin setting in a frown. "Is that possible?"

"I wasn't sure until now." Castiel shifts his eyes to watch the brunette as she works. Her actions are lazy and elegant all at once; a kind of movement that had seemed to define her from the first time he'd ever laid eyes on her. To Castiel, who is older than mankind and retains millennia – eons – worth of memories, the feel of her pressed against him and the gleam of the fire in her eyes that night feels like entire lifetimes ago. "There have always been stories of souls being unable to enter heaven or hell, and who were allowed to be reincarnated and given an additional human life in order to determine where they should be sent after it. Until now, I thought they were only stories."

He knows it sounds far-fetched even as he says it, and he can tell by the brothers faces that it sounds ridiculous to them too. To them, who have fought all manner of monsters; who have jumpstarted and averted the apocalypse; who once locked the devil in a cage and accepted a rogue angel as a member of their family, the thought of Meg Masters being too good a soul to rot in hell is unbelievable.

He's only trying to reason with them, but he can't completely filter out the bitter tone that escapes his throat. "Is it really so difficult for you to believe that the person who sacrificed herself to let you escape Crowley and attempt to close the gates of Hell, knowing full well you meant for her to be trapped with the rest of her kind, deserves a second chance?"

There's a silence between them. Sam glances towards the girl, and Castiel thinks he sees some soft expression cross his aging features before he turns to look him in the eye, and says, "I believe it." He can't quite decipher the look he sees on Sam's face. It's not quite sympathy, or sorrow, but more of a quiet type of understanding. He feels a sudden rush of appreciation for this brother of his, and before he can focus on the prickling feeling that Sam knows something he doesn't, Dean speaks.

"I'm not saying she didn't do us a good turn back there, Cas." His voice sounds almost apologetic and Castiel doesn't particularly like the direction this appears to be headed in. Dean's looking at Cas carefully, but Cas can see through Dean. He knows Dean still carries unspeakable grief. He knows Dean has lost many things, and he knows how at least some of those things were taken from him. "But you've gotta understand the likelihood of that theory being the real thing. She saved us back there. I know. We're grateful. But it doesn't change what she did." Dean looks away then. Clears his throat and warily looks back to Castiel. "It's not for me to judge her anymore, Cas, but if it was-" he cuts himself short. He doesn't finish. Castiel doesn't want him to.

"If you say it's her, then I believe you," Sam's voice cuts through the uncomfortable silence. "But how do you know?"

"I can see her," he replies, and despite the severity of the situation he can't stop the corners of his mouth tugging upwards and the rising sound of wonder in his throat. "Almost the way I could see her true face as a demon. I just looked past it and I saw her there." He leaves out the part where he's sure that even if he were just some normal human man, and not a celestial being with supernatural contact lenses, he'd recognise her anywhere purely from the feel of her soul wrapped around his own.


It's hours later when he feels the cool Wisconsin air kiss his skin. A half moon shines down from a starless sky, and for all of Castiel's divine power and celestial understanding, he still wonders at the beauty of something as simple as the way the white contrasts and completes the black so starkly.

Megan hadn't been behind the bar when they'd left. He'd half-waited for her to appear, but she seemed to have been the only member of staff working tonight and he supposed she was preoccupied with other duties, besides serving whiskey to old men in the trailing early hours of the morning.

It was just as well, he decides. If he had stayed in that bar stool talking to her all night, he doesn't think he could have left her there.

They stand at the impala now, none of them drunk. Nobody has made an attempt to climb into the warmth of the car, and there's silence in the air between them; a sense of finality that he both regrets and welcomes.

"So?" Dean asks. His voice is rough, but if Castiel knows his brother at all, he knows it's just the cracks in his battle worn armour. His tone sounds disapproving and almost cutting, but the angel sees the small smile in the lines of his world-weary face. This is difficult for him, just as it is difficult for Castiel. Sam watches them amusedly, the light of the moon glinting on the gold around his left ring finger. Castiel turns to look at him, and sees the sort of open acceptance he's rarely found in any other person. Sam understands. He always did.

And Castiel can see in their faces that they know exactly what he's going to do.

"I'm staying," he says, and when Dean's face breaks out into a genuine grin, he can't stop his own.

"You are one stupid son of a bitch, Cas. And good on you." And then Dean laughs, and he sounds young again. Sam stands shoulder to shoulder with his brother, and the grin rapidly spreading across his aged features speaks volumes.

Any doubts Castiel has about how this could impact upon their friendship are instantly washed away. Even after decades together, to the point where Dean and Sam are now frequently mistaken for a greying father and uncle, they are still his brothers. They have been pillars of strength for each other in the darkest of days, and have mourned their losses and celebrated their victories together. They are family, and the first two people Castiel ever consciously loved, and who consciously loved him in return. They have gone through hell for each other, and would do it again a thousand times over without question.

And so it's with only some sadness that Castiel watches his brothers drive away. Dean smiles at him from the driver side of the car as the impala moves on, towards the direction of Sam's sleeping wife, and then on to greener pastures. Castiel knows it's not the end for them. It never is.


A/N: My god. Look, I just want to apologise profusely if that last scene is cheesy as all hell. It's 5.08am, I've spent all night finishing some goddamn essay, and then I wanted to just do this while I still had it mapped out in my head, and as a result it's gotten to the end of the chapter and I'm in no real state to properly assess it. But I really want to post it so I will anyway. I needed to effectively veto the winbros from the story without outright ignoring them, because that's just rude and totally dismissive. I mean, they will of course be mentioned or perhaps make appearances at some point again, but Cas needs to busta move on Meg without a couple of old guys cramping his style. Anyway, really hope it didn't come off all lameo cliché.

Thank you so, so much to everyone who's supported this story. I thought I'd be doing well if I got 3 reviews, so I'm astounded. I really appreciate everyone who has reviewed, favourited, or added it to alerts! You are a wonderful bunch of people and you've really encouraged and inspired me to go the whole way with this fic. As always, your reviews/favourits/alerts are what keep me motivated and on the right track.

Now it's time for some shameless self-advertising. I have two Megstiel one-shots posted if anyone's interested in reading them – they're a lot angstier than this story but if you feel like giving them a quick read, that would be very kind. Best read while crying alone in your bathroom and eating Ben and Jerry's.

I'm bored of the sound of my own voice now, so bye bye, and good morning.