Chapter Summary: After Meg's initial shock and anger at having been ripped from Oblivion she enters a near catatonic state. Castiel vows to help her through her apparent withdrawal from paradise, but doesn't know where to begin. AU based off the tumblr Meme .

In the Lethe Part 2:

Surface (When Demons are Resurrected)

"What have you done to me?"

"I brought you back."

The sight of the tiny woman in the windowsill should have been peaceful.

Calm, quiet and right.

But it wasn't. There was a world wrong with her, an endless pit of it, and it was all just under the surface, as if someone had dropped a mask over her face to try to hide the cracks showing through. There wasn't the slightest sign that she felt the sun pouring through the dirty window or cared that the breeze through the broken frame was ice cold.

For all that anyone could have been watching, she was dead to the world.

Dean wondered if knifing her would have been a mercy and he had never imagined that he would give Meg mercy.
"She just sits there. Has since you all brought her here a couple of days ago."

Kevin's voice was loud in the quiet hull, making Dean jump in place though Meg did not even look around. The younger man was hunched over his slice of the tablet, running one finger over its worn edges as he tried to read. Dean's arrival hadn't stopped him in his translation and he wasn't ready to stop yet.

"Garth is pissed, you know. Said that a hunter guarding a demon is against the laws of nature. Was going to yell at Cas and everything but he's not been around except to see her at weird hours when Garth isn't around."

"Yeah well, Garth is doing it for me and I'm doing it for Cas. He'll get over it." Dean glanced over his shoulder and stared at the dark head bent close to the lamplight. "You really don't care about her being here?"

Kevin shrugged. "Never had a problem with Meg. She never lied to me, never really tried to hurt me. Garth is upset though; he tried using Mr. Fizzles on her and she set the sock on fire. We had to have a mini funeral before he went to Wal-Mart and bought himself a new sock." Giving up on focussing for a second, Kevin turned around in his chair and tapped his pen against his chin as he stared at Meg. "Cas really pulled her out of Hell?"

"No." Dean looked back at the demon. "Not Hell. Some other place I didn't even know existed."

"Someplace worse than Hell?" Kevin whistled before turning back around. "No wonder she's like that."

"I'm not sure it was worse," Dean muttered. He hadn't forgotten Meg's strange, distressed screams or the way Castiel had apologized to her so quietly. He hadn't forgotten her desperate pleas for Sam to kill her if Castiel wouldn't. When Sam had stared in silence, confused, she'd almost thrown herself on Dean to try to force him to fight and in his disgust and shock he'd only held her still until Castiel had peeled her off.

Meg, desperate enough to ask for help, more desperate to die… that always spelled trouble.

Taking another long drink of his beer, Dean stared at the back of Meg's hair, still stained with blood and knotted carelessly at her nape.

The day an angel apologized to a demon and meant it? The apocalypse must be coming again.

Castiel never came to the old houseboat when Mrs. Tran was around. Though he was aware of Dean's friendly affection for the older woman, being badgered with questions and now her badly hidden distrust about Meg was nothing he wanted to deal with. She was a bit awe-inspiring to deal with and he sometimes felt a little overwhelmed by her force. It was easier to wait for her to leave with Garth.

He needed to focus on Meg anyway.

"Hey, Cas," Kevin called out from where he was stretched out on a bunk, sitting up the moment he heard the flutter of cloth and wings. "You just missed Dean. Him and Sam are hunting a Wendigo."

"Yes, I know." Castiel put down the bag he'd been carrying and stared at Kevin's drawn, almost aged face. "You're ill?"

"I'm fine. Take care of your demon again and let me sleep." Kevin rolled back over and buried his head under a pillow, essentially ending the conversation. Though Castiel suspected that he eavesdropped and told Dean what he heard. Which, for a human, wouldn't be much.

Meg still sat in the windowsill where he'd left her, her head tilted against the glass pane and watching the way the rain fell against the pane. Only wearing one of Sam's old plaid shirts that hung well past her knees and a pair of boxers Dean had given up, she was a pitiful sight from the time when she'd taken pains to look beautiful to the humans. Her odd coloured hair, knotted from blood and reeking so strong of smoke that he could smell it from across the room, draped over her face.

"I'm back," he announced unnecessarily, crossing the swaying floor slowly and picking up the first aid kit on his way. The only sign she'd heard him was that a slight twitch of her hand on her bare knee. The bandages he'd wrapped around her old wounds were already crusted over and he shook his head unhappily. "You need your bandages changed."

He was talking mostly to himself but a muffled voice piped up, "She wouldn't let Garth near her after that Mr. Fizzles episode."

Castiel had the feeling the less he knew about this Mr. Fizzles the better.

"Go back to sleep, Kevin." He bent his head and nearly had to force his will on the prophet but just after he spoke there was a loud snore and rattle from Kevin. The prophet was exhausted and it didn't take much power to get him sound asleep. Content that they were more alone now, Castiel took one of the chairs and set it down in front of Meg's place at the window.

"You've been sleeping?"

No answer. He hadn't expected one. Reaching out he took her hand in his and turned it over, looking at the broken nails and bloody fingers. Deep scratch marks raked from the back of her hand to her palm; the angry red wounds were fresh and painful to look at.

"These weren't here yesterday, Meg," Castiel murmured, eyes going to her face. Meg sighed and still looked out the window, her expression of wane hopelessness. The angel turned her hand over and traced the fresh wound in the centre of her palm with his finger. "Why did you do it?"

The demon still stared away from him but he felt her tense a little when he dabbed antiseptic on the marks.

"I wish you'd scream or snap at me." He began to wrap her hand again with the gauze. "Anything. I never thought I'd miss your terrible jokes even."

Meg said nothing so he kept wrapping and spoke a continuous low litany to her. His words were nonsense really. She wasn't listening and the longer he spoke the more he felt her withdraw. His voice didn't seem to be helping her. The demon was a shade of what she'd once been and he struggled to ignore the change.

He remembered being in the hospital. When he'd screamed and raged and then withdrew from the world. She'd always talked at him, growled and cursed and made the worst situation lighter. She'd lingered when others would have run from an angelic rage. He'd been able to focus on her voice then. It had grounded him.

It was familiar now that he realized she needed him. Differently than Dean, differently than Sam, and very differently from the mission. She didn't want his help or his attempts at redemption but he thought she needed it to forget the pain of her afterlife.

"You were right though." He felt her stare riveted on him suddenly and he sighed, hiding a smile. He'd thought that would get her attention. "Things were simpler when we first met. When everything was black and white. I never thought I'd be wrapping a demon's wounds while trying to get her to talk to me. To tell me why she didn't want me to bring her back."
He bent and bit off the remainder of the gauze with his teeth, nose brushing her skin when he didn't move fast enough.

Meg recoiled a little but he ignored her movement though it did a weird thing to his stomach. He discreetly checked her other wounds, the internal ones inflicted by Crowley, ones he was still trying to figure out about why they wouldn't heal.

When he looked up, she was still staring at him, caged and angry beneath that placid surface.

"Where did you go?" he asked, blue eyes searching her battered face and finding nothing there. "Where are you now?"

It had been a week since he'd rebound her wounds and then left her with Garth once more. Dean hadn't liked owing the thin Hunter favours but he'd done it for the angel all the same, despite his grumbling and complaints. Castiel just wasn't sure what to do with her. They were fighting a war against angels and demons now, and he couldn't afford to stay in one place. Travelling all over Earth, looking for some place where the angel tablet could be safe, some place where he could rest… none of it did him any good.

His problems were no longer that simple and Meg had become part of them.

The longer he looked at her, the deeper that realization went.

"You're cold out here."

Somehow Garth had managed to move Meg to top deck and she was still there at night when Castiel showed himself after an hour of watching her from afar. She didn't turn around, just sat still and quiet.

Lost.

Grabbing an old blanket from the rail, Castiel kept one eye on the door to the engine room as he crossed over and stared down at her. Barely dressed for the weather, her clothing was damp and clung to her, her hair stringy and a miserable mess of knots and dull lanky locks. Slowly unfolding the blanket, he tucked it close around her. He felt her shoulders tighten just a little under his touch before he let her go and sat carefully beside her. Technically, demons didn't need be warm anymore than angels but he wanted to feel better about having her out here.

Wanted to feel like he could still protect something.

"Garth said you seemed to like being on the water, looking out over it. That you were less upset up here." Castiel felt like every word created a deeper sense of tension between them. It was a tension he couldn't cut. "Do you like being here?"

For a moment, he thought she was going to answer.

Without a word to him, Meg stood up and walked back down below deck, the blanket falling from her tiny body and into the water.

Castiel stared back out over the river and disappeared in the next heartbeat.

"She can't stay here." Garth crossed his arms over his chest. "It's bad for my rep."

"Your rep?" Dean asked incredulously, holding up a hand to keep Castiel quiet. "Garth, you use a sock puppet to interrogate. Your 'rep' can't be any more damaged."

Garth glared at him. "That's not my point. Whatever she is, it ain't something I need here."

"Wait, what do you mean 'whatever she is'?" Sam pointed out. "She's a demon. She was in Hell."

"You ever see a demon go back to Hell and come back like her?" Garth snapped.

Meg still sat in the windowsill, staring out, and didn't appear to care that they were discussing her. She'd been there for the past few hours and even though they shouted at one another, there'd been nothing from the demon who once would have been in the middle of it all. Either she didn't hear them or she didn't care. None of the humans cared; she was a problem to them that needed to be fixed.

Her hands flexed a little though and Castiel felt himself bristling a little because for a moment he saw her actually react.

She was itching to get to that demon knife Sam had set down on the table while cleaning his weapons.

Castiel put himself between her and the table discreetly and her head lifted.

"Don't be stupid." Garth gestured at the silent demon. "Wherever she went, it wasn't Hell and it scrambled her circuits."

"Purgatory?" Dean offered and Sam shook his head.

"That was for monsters. Not demons. Makes sense God would think of something for Demons though. Right, Cas?"

They all turned to find angel and demon staring at one another. It was impossible to guess why and Castiel's stone-wall of an expression gave them nothing. It was Meg who looked away first.

Then, with a small strangled sound, she slammed her fist into the glass window and shattered it into shards.

Dean didn't like it. Didn't like the thought of a useless has-been demon on their hands but Castiel had begged. For once he had begged Dean for help with something that did not pertain to angels or the Winchesters.

That quiet desperation in his voice had tugged at Dean's soft spot for the angel.

So Meg was to be put in the equivalent of a panic room in their Hall and left alone unless Castiel was there to keep her controlled.

It was the only thing any of them could think of since neither Sam nor Dean wanted to chance trusting her.

In the main library, Dean watched Castiel patiently wrap the last of Meg's wounds which stubbornly refused to heal.

They'd put together a 'demon girl' care package for him and the moment the demon had been set down he'd taken her as his responsibility. With a disturbing amount of enthusiasm, Dean thought while he rubbed a hand over his scruffy jaw.

"I think killing her might do it. Get Cas back to normal."

Sam shook his head. "Doubt it."

Dean looked at his brother and gave him a troubled look. "Why are you so hard up on NOT killing her, Sam?"

"Because." Sam coughed discreetly into the already blood stained handkerchief. "We used to take better care of people who died for us. Like it or not, that's what she did. Remember?"

Hearing Castiel murmur again to Meg to hold still, Dean shut his eyes. "Never thought that would apply to a demon again."

"We're not demons, Dean. Or monsters." Sam uncrossed his legs and stood up from his favourite old chair. "I think you forget that sometimes."

He walked away from Dean and missed his brother's pained expression.

Aware of the Winchesters leaving him, first Sam and then Dean, Castiel fished through the bag he had packed for Meg. It had been strange, finding things for a woman and a demon, but he thought he did a fair enough job finding what she might need. He watched Meg flinched as he crouched beside her spot on the floor again. The bookshelves that loomed around them made her seem tiny and even he felt a bit small now.

"I found this for you."

Almost eagerly, he held it out to show her.

It was a gossip magazine, one of those ridiculous ones he didn't understand because apparently a celebrity's weight mattered to people who never met them, and he was sure it was one he'd seen her reading now and again. For some reason, the demon liked them though she never explained why. Her eyes locked on the page and he put it in her lap gently. Meg touched the pages, as if she longed to open them, and then stopped herself before turning a single one.

"I could read it to you?" he offered tentatively, glad to see a reaction.

Meg's eyes lifted to his and then, with a subtle twist of her hands, she picked up the magazine and tore it in two, tossing it at his feet. Her expression didn't waver. Castiel stared at the pile of glossy pages that were scattered on the floor before he slowly slid to his buttocks across from her, leaning against the other shelf.

"Where did you go?" he whispered as he stared at her. The same question he asked before and the same one he still didn't know the answer to.

Meg only stared him down.

He lost himself in a meditative trance, more to pass the time than anything else. Easier to do than wait for humans to get their sleep or demons to stop their own catatonia.

The only reason why he snapped out of it was the feel of thin fingers going inside his coat. The invasion was cold and abrupt, deliberate. Before opening his eyes, his hand wrapped around the thieving grip and he jerked his head up to see Meg kneeling just across from him. Her eyes, black and flat like a caged animal, stared down at him as she brandished the angel sword between them, only his hand keeping her from stabbing him.

For a second, he thought he understood.

"Would it make it better?" he asked and he let her go, feeling the point of it press just against his shirt and skin.

Meg stared at the tip of the blade on his otherwise pristine dress shirt and then with a fierce look she dug it in. It went far enough that he felt a spark of pain as blood and light began to weep from the wound. It took all his will not to slap her away but something in the way her face changed just a little, from hard and angry to afraid, made him wonder.
Meg dropped the blade and launched herself back from him, almost shaking as she curled up next to the book shelf again.

It didn't take much to find Death. The entity enjoyed going to the smaller souls really and he let his Reapers do the majority of the more glorified work. The less significant ones he enjoyed because he somehow found them more significant in their simplicity. Knowing this, Castiel simply waited by the bedside of a dying dementia patient, long neglected by family, and wondered if he was making a mistake. But just before he gave into his fear and escaped, reality began to warp around the room the moment the patient took her last breath.

"The last time I saw you…" Death appeared in the doorway, thin face pulled into a fierce scowl. "You were more saturated than a sponge and mostly mad with stupidity."

Castiel stood up from the uncomfortable chair he'd been sitting on and bowed his head in respect. The way a duellist might to a respected enemy and judging by the smirk Death gave him it amused the creature.

"So. Castiel. Why are you waiting for me? It is not your time yet." Death checked his watch. "Is it because of your Winchester and his brother again?"

Those expressionless eyes fixed on Castiel's face as he flipped the watch closed again. Whatever he read there made him shake his head.

"I see." He stepped into the room and sat on the hospital bed in a graceful mood that somehow made Castiel long to run far and away from him. "You are here for a different sort of thing. A different sort of devotion."

"I need to ask you a question."

"She's not mad, if that was the question." Death waved a hand. "Your little pet demon. I know all about her. I doubt there is a god or angel or demon alive, that has eyes and half a brain, who isn't aware of the strangeness going on with the pair of you. She's not mad and not really redeemed. Not really." The bleak stare pinned Castiel in his place. "Are you sweet on her, Castiel, is that what this is about? Do you care for her? Love her even if you remember how to love without sheer obedience to a cause? This one who is a demon, a tortured soul? How utterly poetic and thoroughly tragic. I enjoy such dramatics."

"She deserved better than that death."

"Perhaps. Or perhaps it was needed." Death didn't wait for the angel to interrupt. "But you've done something you shouldn't have. You disrupted the natural order of things. You stole a soul. Again. Third time is the charm. What is it with you, Castiel? Can you not respect the way things must be?"

Castiel didn't like to be reminded of Sam and Dean when dealing with Death.

"Where did she go?"

Death cocked his head on the side curiously.

"When I pulled her out from whatever torture she was in and into the body she had taken…"

"Pulled her out? Oh no, Castiel. You ripped her out. You yanked her out kicking and screaming. In the end, I think you'll find that you were the one who tortured her. Worse than any demon could imagine and in a way many never experience." Death stood up and began to pluck imaginary lint off his black suit. "Demons are not angels. They do not go to God's self to be absorbed as light once more. They do not go to Heaven when dead and rarely return to Hell. Nor are they monsters, where God created a special cage for that failed experiment of their half-blood selves."

"Demons were human and…"

"They were. They were tortured past most endurance, twisted, and in my opinion some were actually perfected." The entity moved over to the window past Castiel. "She would have been removed to a place of forgetfulness. A personal favourite of mine, a crowning achievement of my speciality if you will. It has been in existence as long as souls have been in existence. So it is as old as God, as Creation, as Death itself. Run by another ancient entity who does their job, as we all do."

"But if she couldn't go to Heaven and couldn't go to Hell." Castiel struggled to keep up. Demons had, for the most part, been shrouded in a little bit of secrecy for their afterlife.

Death gave him a thoroughly exasperated look.

"Do you not forget one very large personality flaw of the Father you so loved? He loves so absolutely that he is willing to forgive all sins, somehow and eventually."

Death drew a smiley face on the glass with his bony finger. "Lethe. A sort of therapy center. Directly alongside Hell and just under Heaven."

"You made her forget," Castiel whispered, voice tight with anger though it wasn't at Death. Realizing what he'd done in his arrogance made him want to take it all back.

Even if it meant losing her.

"Lethe washes them clean. It takes some time of course. New demons are recycled quickly but old ones such as Meg? They take some additional effort and care. Like scrubbing out blood stains on pavement with a toothbrush." Death struck his fingers through the glass drawing to erase it and frowned. "There she would have felt a love and protection she would not have felt since before she was damned. Love and protection, forgiveness and forgetfulness. That is the nature of Lethe. As long as it takes, it happens to them all. Even the ancients, who take the longest, forget and are welcomed back to God's good graces eventually. She did start to forget, you know. Everything. Every sin, every deed, every loyalty and pain."

Death looked at the most hopeless pair of blue eyes he'd seen in a long time. "She'd forget every hope, desire, and love."
The angel understood perfectly what Death meant.

"Well done, Castiel. You managed to cock it all up once again. You'll learn eventually but please hurry up."

He was gone before Castiel could respond, before he could think of anything. Left him with only a corpse and a destroyed happy face on glass.

Sprawled on the cot, Meg stared at the ceiling of the basement panic room and with just one tiny frown it was obvious that she longed.

Longed to finally sleep and drink.

Castiel leaned against the doorway and watched her.

"I'm sorry."

She twitched a little but refused to look at him.

"I know where you were." The angel took slow, measured steps towards the cot, circling the devil's trap warily. "Lethe."
For the first time in weeks, Meg moved fast. She launched herself off the bed and met the invisible barrier at full speed. Castiel grabbed her before she could be thrown to the floor and stepped into the trap. He warded off her nails and teeth, felt her anger rolling off her and for the first time he knew she felt something too.

"You were in Oblivion," he continued over her snarling whimpers and angry punches, half-buried in the depths of his overcoat. "You were happy. They took care of you so that you didn't have to worry and so that you felt loved. I took you from that. I stole you back. And I'm sorry."

Meg stopped fighting, as if the apology had drained her, and he simply walked her back to her cot and sat her down. Like a patient father about to tuck a child in, he smoothed her tangled hair back from her face.

"I can't take it back." His fingers just gripped her chin and he tilted her head up. "Look at me."

The demon looked away and fixed her eyes on the floor, so he simply stooped down and looked at her averted face. "I wanted you back and I'm going to see this through until you can fight with us again. Until you can forgive me."

Leaning forward, he awkwardly just pressed against her and could almost sense her rolling her eyes.

"I'll take care of you." He felt her exhale against his collarbone. "I'll watch over you, as you did me. Until we're both ready."

"It's weird, watching these two." Dean almost felt like throwing up. "Like watching a… a grown man with a doll fetish."

Sam almost choked on his coffee. "Ugh, really, Dean?"

"I mean, yeah, if it was maybe you it would be cutesy disgusting. But with them? Weird disgusting."

They both looked over at where Castiel was patiently trying to clean the last of Meg's long-standing wounds. He muttered to her to tilt her head this way and that, checked her remaining bruises, and generally fussed over her. Both Winchesters wouldn't have been surprised if, after the past few weeks, he mother-henned the demon to death and somehow used his wings to shield her from them. But she had a patient look on her usually blank face and, seeing that tiny tilt she did with her head, Sam could have sworn he'd seen a smirk.

"Weird," he agreed.

Castiel waited until Sam and Dean were gone and asleep before he attempt to brush Meg's hair in the common room. The TV, set to some public station, blared in the background just to act as a white noise. The act of brushing her hair, to him, was startlingly simple yet intimate and he'd realized that the first time he'd done it for her. Her hair was, thanks to an oddly kind move by Dean in purchasing the soap, back to the clean waves she'd loved and he actually didn't mind this odd human duty as he ran the brush through now silky strands. She'd done it for him occasionally in the hospital but he didn't remember how it'd felt then.

It seemed to soothe her a little and he'd made it one of his jobs as her caretaker.

But of all the things he did for her, for the Winchesters as well now, this one he didn't have to think about and Meg didn't seem to care that he would lose himself in thought as he took care of her.

He almost wished she did. After weeks of silence and an eerie sense of tension, he was ready for a fight.

He longed for once just to see if she was feeling a thing beyond apathy. But Meg simply sat across from him on the couch and leaned into the brush a little, just enough to let him know she was aware of him while she closed her eyes.

"You've been quiet." He slowed the brush and gently checked her face. He talked more around her now than he had before. He had to fill that silence somehow when it made him a bit nervous to see her staring at him. "Well, or so to speak. You've always been quiet these past weeks, you know, but even under everything it is so still. I do miss the thorniness. Even if you were just telling me to shut up most of the time."

He bent his head and missed the way her eyes opened. She watched the way his knees shifted on either side of hers, listened to the soft hum of his breathing, and finally she shifted a little so that she slid off the couch a little towards him. Castiel stopped the soothing motion of the brush and she felt him suck in a breath at her movement.

"You too, huh?"

Castiel didn't miss that soft mutter and he stared at the side of her face. Ignoring his expression, Meg stared at the television advertising holiday films. She stared as if riveted and he slowly leaned forward, brush dropping to the floor with a clatter.

"Meg?"

"I named you after a Christmas movie, remember?" Meg said and he looked as well at the screen. Some overly loud woman was screeching about saving ten dollars off classic movies since it was still just the late spring.

"No, I…"

The black and white picture flickered and distorted just as a tall skinny man came on.

"Clarence! Clarence! Help me, Clarence! Get me back! Get me back, I don't care what happens to me!"

Castiel slowly looked back at Meg to see her staring at him intently.

"Remember, Clarence?"

What he saw in her for just a moment nearly stole his breath. For him, to see the bright depths masked within the darkness of her thorns and pain was beautiful.

"Meg."