Chapter 2

"Show me what?"

Castiel knew that her question was not really an assent, but they had so little time. If he could learn of her acute importance to Dean, if he could find her so easily, then so could others on either side of the conflict. Reaching out, he placed his whole hand on the side of her face before she could draw back. She breathed in sharply, convulsed, and he caught her as she fell. Carefully, so very carefully, he opened up his own mind to her, sharing his memories one by precious one, every memory he possessed of Dean Winchester from the first moment he had seen the Righteous Man in Hell, tormented and in agony, to his confrontation with Dean in an alley in Cicero. He held nothing back, censored nothing, knowing she would experience not only his memories of those events, but the emotions that went with them. It left him feeling… vulnerable, terribly exposed. It was a kind of intimacy he had shared only with other angels and then only in a very limited way. Soul mates existed among his brethren just as they did among humans. For angelic soul mates, such close connection of minds and hearts, the joining of their very graces, was a thing of joy. Castiel had no such bond with any angel, and the only human he felt something approaching that level of closeness for was, at that very moment, locked in an iron room, determined to end his own existence. And this woman, this ignorant human, was an utter stranger to him. The risk was great for them both, and he guided her consciousness through the joining as gently and deftly as he could. He guarded only his thoughts, for to let her see the actual thoughts of an angel, the inner workings of an angelic mind could destroy her fragile human brain as easily as letting Pamela Barnes glimpse his true form had destroyed the psychic's eyes. He still regretted that… accident, though he had done what he could to warn her not to pry.

Castiel quivered with the effort at concentration. He kept tight control, rigidly maintaining his power over their union of memory, trying to direct all that happened. He was not entirely successful. With an angel, the joining would have been effortless. With a human it was taxing, exhausting, even painful. It was also not what he would have expected in any way. He had known that the woman would receive his memories. That was, after all, his intent. He had not suspected that he would also be gifted – or perhaps burdened – with hers. They came at him in rapid flashes, strangely dim and muted compared to his own diamond-sharp recollections. An angel's memories did not fade or alter themselves over time. It seemed that for a human, this was not the case. Lisa Braeden's memories of the last three years were filled with tremendous gaps. Even those that were the strongest were missing key details, entire senses occasionally absent. Her memories of her encounter with the changelings were vivid, strong with the ripe scent of fear and an overwhelming sense of despair in the moment when she realized that the creature before her was not her son.

Her memories of Dean, especially of her first meeting with him, were also powerful and, to Castiel, far more disturbing. Meeting the prostitute Chastity had stirred unexpected sensations within him. Desire, sexual desire was a wholly new experience for the angel. Yet the feelings Chastity had awakened within him were mild, meek things at best. The sensations he experienced through Lisa Braeden's memories were vibrant, potent and all-encompassing. She had desired Dean powerfully when they'd met for the first time, immediately enamored of his smile, his brilliant eyes, his slightly bow legs and taut – Castiel concentrated, cutting the memory off, tucking it away for later examination. He could not afford to be distracted now, when so much depended on his absolute focus and control. Dealing with her more mundane memories was troublesome enough for humans lacked certain senses that even the lowliest angel took for granted, and those senses that humans did possess were far inferior. Castiel had never before realized just how inferior. The differences in sight alone were appalling, and the angel found it problematic to reconcile Lisa Braeden's view of the world with his own. Humans saw so little of what was around them every moment of every day. How did they bear it?

The longer the transfer – no, the sharing went on, the more excruciating and demanding it became, but Castiel gritted his teeth and persevered until the human could claim his every last recollection of Dean Winchester as her own. When the joining was completed, he staggered back, arm falling to his side, wings drooping with exhaustion. Lisa Braeden no longer convulsed, but sagged limp and still into the cushions of the armchair. It had been simplest to accomplish his goal with her asleep, but he would not know if he had been truly successful in his endeavors until he woke her. He took a few moments to compose himself first. He layered wall upon wall in his mind, closing off his own memories from those of the human lest he be overwhelmed as she had been. Then, at last satisfied that he could function, that the unnerving human memories were properly shut away, the angel took a step forward, reached once more for Lisa Braeden's face and promptly collapsed. As his legs folded beneath him, he had time for only one thought, a word he had never before uttered aloud but which more than adequately expressed his current consternation. Crap…

When Castiel regaining consciousness of his surroundings – he could not call it waking for he had not been asleep as humans knew that state – he found himself lying on his back upon a cool upholstered surface. He came instantly to full awareness but was disturbed to find that he did not know how much time had passed. That was another thing which had never happened to him before. Twice before he had collapsed in the Winchesters' presence because of the ill effects of time travel. Though he had been largely unaware when Sam and Dean had left him in the hotel room in Lawrence in 1978, he had never completely lost his sense of time passing. The same had been the case when he returned to the present time and again collapsed. When he was attacked by the Whore of Babylon, he was weakened and damaged, but he maintained knowledge of what transpired. Even when he died, when Rafael smote him and reduced him to particles so small that humans could not yet conceive of them, even then he had not lost his sense of time passing. Well… perhaps he had. But when he was miraculously restored, he had been remade with all of his senses intact and at their peak. He had known exactly how much time had passed since his death at the archangel's hands, had known exactly where he was, had known everything that had transpired with Sam and Dean while he was gone and, mostly importantly, he had known exactly where he needed to go. He regretted the deaths of the angels he'd been forced to kill, but given the same circumstances, he would do it again. It was only a pity that Zachariah could not have died in his followers' place. But now… now his sense of time was broken. He could mark every moment he had lived back to the beginning of his creation, say exactly where he was and what he was doing for every instant of his existence until this one. Clearly, the joining between humans and angels was far more dangerous and had far greater consequences than even he had supposed.

And his coat – Jimmy's coat – had been removed. He found that… oddly disquieting and did not know why. Angels did not care about clothing. He sighed. He wanted his coat, but was not yet ready to go looking for it. He had lain still for a time, simply breathing, trying to reestablish some semblance of calm when a voice startled him.

"Cas, are you alright?" It was Lisa Braeden. She was leaning over the back of the sofa, peering down at him anxiously. "You dropped like a drunk with a glass jaw."

"I am not an alcoholic," Castiel corrected, sitting up gingerly, his arms trembling with the movement. "The joining – the transfer of so much personal experience weakened me enormously, but I will recover."

She sighed. "Good. That's good." She walked around the edge of the sofa and dropped a black nylon duffel bag beside the front door. A backpack, a large suitcase and a second duffel were already piled together there. They had not been there before. Clearly, he had been unconscious for some extended period of time. People marked time carefully. Clocks in all shapes and sizes were everything in the human world. She would know how long. He would ask her.

"You called me Cas?" he said instead, surprising himself.

"That's what Dean calls you, right?"

"It is."

Lisa Braeden – Lisa, Lissie, Lis-Be, Pooka? There were so many names in his mind. – stared at him solemnly. "You're an angel," she said. It was not a question, but he answered nonetheless.

"Yes."

"You're Dean's angel?" she clarified.

Castiel felt a moment of irritation. He belonged to no one. He certainly did not belong to Dean. And yet… "He is my friend."

Lisa nodded. "The apocalypse, those things I've seen on TV, the weird stuff I'm reading online… it's all real?"

"Yes. All of it."

She swallowed. Turned away. Turned back. Her eyes were brimming with tears that did not quite overflow. "And Dean? He died and he… he went to Hell?"

Castiel nodded, relieved. The joining had worked to some extent at least, for she clearly had many of his memories. He sought her mind, sought to read her thoughts and found, to his dismay, that they were now closed to him. Whether it was a temporary response to his own incapacity or a more permanent change in the structure of her mind, he did not know.

"You saved him." Again it was not a question.

He inclined his head and regarded her gravely. "I was but one of those sent to rescue the Righteous Man, as you must now know."

"No," she shook her head. "It was you. To the others, it was just a mission. You felt more. Even then, you sensed something… wrong." Taking five quick steps, Lisa stopped in front of the sofa, leaned down and kissed him quickly on the cheek. "Thank you."

"For saving Dean?"

She smiled, her dark eyes sparkling with wry humor and intense emotion. "For maybe saving all of us."