Fallen Demon

She didn't know how to help him and that reality dug into her soul and tugged at the ragged pieces still left there. She didn't even know why that was. She shouldn't care this much. She couldn't afford to.

But she did care and there was no getting around that fact. She cared about him, maybe more than that, but cared was as far as she was willing to admit for now. She wasn't even sure she was capable of more than that anymore.

She doubted he knew she was there. He gave no outward sign that he even acknowledged her presence, rather less wanted it. And why would he want her around? She was his enemy. That's the way it had always been and if Sam and Dean's attitude were any indication of his, she would never be more than that.

Angel and Demon, two sides of a battle that had been waging since the dawn of man. But then again, neither of them were truly what they'd started out as anymore. He was no more Angel than she was Demon now. She'd been a first hand witness to his fall, maybe not the culmination of it, but she'd been there when his wings began to droop. She'd seen the signs of his fall long before he'd hit the ground.

And her? Was it possible for a Demon to fall from grace as the Angels could? Because there was really no other explanation for where she found herself now. A fallen Demon searching for her place in the world and just trying to survive. Surviving was what she did. And if switching teams was the only way for her to accomplish that task, then switch teams she would. And she'd do it with everything inside her, because Meg Masters never, ever did anything halfway.

Her loyalties weren't something that could be divided. Once she was committed to something she stayed that way until the bitter end. The problem was there was no longer anything for her to commit herself to and that left her troubled, confused and not knowing where to turn.

Then she'd heard about Castiel's reappearance in the world and suddenly her purpose became clear. She needed him. As long as Crowley was running things down below, she had a bull's eye on her chest. She'd spent so much time hiding, laying low, running for her life. She knew she couldn't keep it up. Although, to be honest, she wasn't sure that hitching her wagon to Crowley's most wanted was the best way for her to lay low. But it was her only option for the time being.

Getting rid of Crowley was the only way she'd ever manage to live the nice long life she wanted to live. Going back to hell to languish wasn't on her agenda. She had no intention of giving up the fight, though there were times when she was exhausted, friend-less and more than a little scared that the idea had some appeal.

In fact, that is exactly where she was when she'd heard the first stirrings of rumors about the Angel's survival.

She'd decided to take her chances with the Winchesters. Maybe if she could manage to avoid them killing her on sight, she could make them see how useful she could be. The brothers were nothing if not practical. And Dean had saved her life once, why she could never make herself understand, but he had and it was something to go on. It wasn't much, but it wasn't nothing.

And when this opportunity had presented itself to her, there was no way she could pass it up. Not only could she endear herself to the Winchesters, but she could get the troubled Angel on her side as well. And that was a lot more than nothing.

These were good people, people that believed in returning favors. These people understood the way it worked and they held up their end. They could be trusted which was more than she could say for the demons she normally mingled with. There was a sense of obligation here. And she was doing everything she could to make them feel obligated to her.

At least that was how it started out. This was all supposed to be just a means to an end for her. Take care of the crazy angel and Sam and Dean and even Castiel himself would owe her one.

Now it was more than that. She wouldn't admit it out loud, but Castiel had come to mean something to her.

Maybe it was just some sort of warped, reversed Florence Nightingale syndrome. Maybe his desperate need for her had turned into something else in her mind and she was making things up in her imagination that couldn't possibly be true. But she wanted to believe that it mattered to him that she was there. And the motive for that wasn't about owing her a favor.

Somehow it wasn't about her at all anymore. It was about him, about easing his pain, helping him through his suffering. She wanted, no, needed to feel like she was doing something for him. She wanted him to need her, not because she wanted something from him, though she still did want something from him, but the real motive was more about her need to feel needed. Actually it was about more than that even. She'd done things to souls, souls that had, at one time, been clean and untainted, just like hers had once been. So she knew the things that were going on inside the Angel's head. She'd been responsible for inflicting the same sort of pain on countless many. But just maybe by helping him, she could make up for some of that. She didn't know why that was important to her, but it was. She needed to make amends for the evils she'd caused, wanted to grab hold of some kind of redemption for her acts.

And that was strange too. Demons didn't feel guilty for what they did. They weren't supposed to hate themselves for following the orders handed down to them. But she did. Perhaps that meant she wasn't cut out for the work. She could live with that. It wasn't great work and there were no openings for her at the moment anyway.

She'd been searching for a cause since Lucifer had abandoned her and now she had one. She'd keep Castiel safe. He was her cause now, her purpose.

What she couldn't so easily explain was her need to be nice to him. She didn't have to. It wasn't part of the bargain. Her promise to the Winchesters had been to keep him alive not make him comfortable. Watching over him didn't entail trying to help him fight his way through the torture in his mind.

She reasoned that the only way he could truly help her was if he were sane. She told herself that was why she held his hand in the middle of the night and sat beside him while the worst of his nightmares caused him to thrash and cast about in his sleep.

Those nightmares had convinced her that she wasn't just wasting her time here. If it hadn't been for the fact that he seemed to settle when she took hold of his hand and talked to him, she would have thought herself useless.

But there was progress being made. She knew that now.

When she first came to him, she found him spending his days staring at nothing and talking to himself. His nights were worse as the nightmares ran unchecked through his consciousness. She'd never felt more helpless. Nothing she did seemed to get through to him.
Then one day, out of the blue, he'd turned to her and there was recognition in the depths of those tumultuous blue orbs that reminded her of the sea in the midst of a hurricane. The fog was still there, masking their normal brightness, but she could see him there as well. And when he opened his mouth and her name fell from his lips, her heart soared in a way she hadn't expected it to.

That was the moment she devoted herself to helping him win the war over his sanity. She'd help him find his way back to himself. And maybe in doing that, she might find herself as well. Now this was as much about her own need for redemption as it was about helping him become whole so he could seek his own.

So she spent every day taking care of his needs. He didn't need to eat which was a good thing because forcing him to do so was probably beyond her capabilities. There were times, when the madness had full control of him, that he fought her as she tried to see to his needs and it was a battle to see which of them would win. Still she made the effort to pretend. She couldn't afford to have the staff of the hospital questioning things like that about him.

She was thankful for the poor wiring in the old building. It helped explain the way all the lights on the floor where his room was located spontaneously blew out all at once on occasion. It didn't happen often, but every once in a while, Castiel had his fill of the insanity and fought back against it in a spectacular show that proved he was still in there somewhere and he still had plenty of Angel juice at his disposal.

The first time it happened, it frightened her. She just knew he was about to come out of his stupor, see her and gank her without thinking twice about it. But his attacks were never directed at her. There had been one time, in fact, when he grabbed her and pushed her behind him as he fought off something only he could see. He had protected her and she didn't know why. But she was grateful for his unexplainable safeguarding of her. If he felt the need to be her hero, she certainly wasn't going to argue with him.

Her nights were spent by his side, reading to him from books, magazines, anything she could get her hands on really. It seemed to comfort him, the sound of her voice, so she talked, never really sure if he knew what she was saying but content in the fact that the sound of her voice appeared to help.

She told him of things she'd never spoken aloud to anyone, things about her life as a human, things about her time in Hell with Crowley, things about the years she'd been on her own and running for her life.

At times, she could swear she saw him looking back at her. But by the time she latched on to the thought the vacancy was back in his eyes and he was no longer there. He was too elusive for her. It was like trying to grasp hold of a spider web in a windstorm. The line was too flimsy for her to grab. She thought that maybe, just maybe if she could grab hold of that fleeting recognition for even just a moment, she might be able to break through to him.

So she tried, almost every night, she tried. She pleaded and begged him to give her something, anything she could use to help him. And every night it was as fruitless as the night before. She would have suspected he'd given up and vacated the useless, wasted vessel he found himself trapped in if it weren't for those so very rare instances when he reached out to her.

Instances like the one she just witnessed. It had been a simple statement, so quiet if she hadn't been staring right at him, she might have missed it. But she had been and he'd told her with two words, eight silly little letters, that he knew she was there and appreciated all the effort she was making.

"Thank you," he'd said and it meant more to her than she could tell him.

She'd been so stunned by his moment of lucidity that she wasn't sure what to say in response. He was seeing her for the first time in days. His eyes, though more hooded than normal, were clear. The effort he was exerting to reach out to her was apparent on his face, but he was making the effort and that was something.

He was still in there, still fighting the fight.

She was disappointed when he dropped his head back to the pillow and his rhythmic breathing told her he was asleep. She had hoped that perhaps they might make even more progress before he gave up, but she also understood what even that little touch of sanity had cost him and she didn't disturb him.

Especially when she saw that he was actually sleeping peacefully for the first time in forever. She couldn't deny him that. She couldn't take that away from him.

The exhaustion he felt was evident on his handsome face. His eyes bore the marks of heavy dark circles underneath them. His skin had taken on an ashen pallor and there was a perpetual crease between his brows. He needed the rest if he were to continuing battling the madness and she'd let him have it. In fact, she'd make sure that got as much as he needed.

Getting to her feet, she moved the uncomfortable, torture devise the hospital called a chair away from his bed and pulled it quietly to the door. Then she propped it under the knob, effectively locking out the rest of the world.

She'd have some explaining to do as to why the door had been locked, but it was nothing she couldn't handle. She'd make the humans understand that it was in her patient's best interest one way or another. Once the door was secure, she looked around the empty room and considered her options. She could take one of the spare blankets from the bed and makes herself a pallet on the floor. That was probably the most appropriate course of action.

But as she reached for the blanket that was folded across the foot of the bed, the little Tree-Topper pitched in his sleep and reached out in the direction of where she'd been sitting only moments before. It was like he was reading her mind and telling her he didn't approve of her decision.

At least that's what she told herself as she eased herself down to the bed beside him. She was doing this for him. She wanted to give him a peaceful night of rest.

It wasn't until much later that she realized that his presence quieted the nightmares in her mind as much as she quieted them for him.

She'd never told anyone about the nightmares. They rarely bothered her anyway. She was a demon. She didn't need to sleep anymore than she needed to eat. That didn't mean that she didn't find herself nodding off on occasion. And it was on those occasions that the nightmares came. The last time she'd slept without being haunted by her past, she'd been human with no past to haunt her.

Castiel shifted behind her and she was more than a little startled when his arm slid around her waist and he tucked his head into the crook of her shoulder. It wasn't the move that startled her. She had been half expecting it since she laid down next to him. It was how much she liked the feel of him wrapped around her that surprised her. Or maybe, more than that, it was the feeling of being protected.

She knew he was next to useless in his present state, but that didn't stop her mind from imagining that this was what feeling safe must feel like.