A/N: Thank you guest Kathy for reviewing again! Many of you were also wondering how I could possibly ruin all this domestic fluff. Here's how. ;)


Chapter 7: Haunted Past

Jack rotated the pencil midair, slowly at first, but then faster and faster, increasing the speed until the pencil was spinning so fast that it was a whirring blur. He could feel the micro vibrations through his mental link, and focused on maintaining a tight hold of them.

Until movement in his peripheral vision distracted him for a split second, and the pencil suddenly went flying across the room to embed itself in the concrete wall, an inch from Castiel's head.

Jack jumped to his feet. "I'm sorry!"

Castiel reached up to extract the pencil, its lead tip now completely mashed and a blackened smear left in the crack that now sat in the wall. Hopefully Sam and Dean wouldn't notice.

Jack ducked his gaze abashedly. "Sorry," he said again. "I thought I had complete control over it."

Castiel gave him a warm smile. "From where I was standing, you did. Until you got distracted." He examined the pencil. "That would probably be a good lesson for later."

"Not now?" Jack asked hesitantly. He really did want to gain control of his powers.

Castiel walked over to a small table against the wall and set the pencil down. "I have something else in mind for right now. I've been feeling out my own grace, and maybe I can help guide you in some use of your own."

Jack perked up. "I'd like that."

Castiel nodded, and then canted his head toward the hall for Jack to follow.

They headed outside and around back to the garden. Jack had yet to see it, but he'd heard Dean and Castiel discussing it, along with Sam. The soil had obviously been tilled recently, and fertilizer mixed with the dirt gave the patch of land a rich, dark look. Small plants had been evenly spaced out on one side, while the other was bare.

"There are seeds planted here," Castiel informed him, gesturing to the barren section. "Try to use your grace to coax them into sprouting."

Jack furrowed his brow. "How?"

"Reach out with it," Castiel instructed. "First to just sense the dormant seeds."

Jack squinted at the ground and tried to do that. His focus narrowed on the soil until he could hear the pulsing heartbeat of the earth—the worms and roots, underground tributaries and burrowing insects. It was quite overwhelming.

"There's so much," he said.

"Concentrate on filtering the other stuff out."

Jack scrunched his face up with intense concentration, feeling like he was wading through a mire of sensations. But then he found the seeds, their presence an almost imperceptible chord amongst the cacophony around them. It was like they were asleep.

Pursing his mouth, Jack focused on 'waking them up.'

"That's it," Castiel said nearby. "Gently. If they grow too fast, they could break. Let your grace fill them gradually."

Jack could see them in his mind's eye—the pods cracking open and fragile shoots poking their heads out. He had to concentrate on not letting his powers flood them, but to just let a trickle of energy pour into the saplings.

"Very good, Jack."

He'd been so focused that he hadn't even realized the sprouts had come up through the soil, and now the entire patch of dirt was spotted with green fronds.

Jack broke into a wide smile. He'd done it.

In his elation, he felt some of his power course outward, and suddenly the flora around the garden started to blossom as well—ivy climbing up the trees, flowers unfolding in the branches above, and berries turning bright and plump on the bushes.

Jack was beaming as he turned to Castiel. "I did something good. This is good, right? Creating life?"

Castiel smiled back proudly. "It's very good, Jack."

Jack's chest swelled. It felt good. It felt good to create something beautiful and serene, something that didn't hurt anyone. He was about to ask what else he could do with his powers, but Castiel started to frown, and then flinched.

"Are you okay?" Jack asked hurriedly.

Castiel didn't respond right away. His gaze had drifted down and his forehead was creased as though in deep thought. Jack shifted his weight, wondering if he should do something. But then Castiel gave himself a small shake.

"I'm fine," he said. "I just…I think I remembered something."

Jack perked up again. "What?"

Castiel roved his eyes over the flora. "A garden like this one," he said somewhat dazedly. "Only, there were angels everywhere and…and scorched wings."

Jack frowned. Scorched wings? Of angels?

Castiel straightened, his expression going carefully blank. "It's nothing. I think that's enough practice for today."

He turned and headed back inside, leaving Jack standing alone in the garden to worry. Wasn't getting his memory back supposed to be a good thing? So why did Castiel suddenly look so haunted?

Jack wished he knew what to do to help, but one act of using his powers to create something beautiful didn't mean he was ready to fix things much bigger than him. Especially when it put his family at risk.

And so all he could do was sit back and wait, and hope he didn't mess up again.


"You will kneel, Castiel."

"No."

Castiel squeezed his eyes shut and tried to push the memory from his mind. He'd been getting more and more snippets now, pieces spanning thousands of years, when civilizations were first starting out and he remembered what it felt like to be a multi-dimensional wavelength of celestial intent. He was an angel; he knew that now, in his bones as opposed to just accepting what he was told.

But for all the snapshots, he still couldn't make sense of any of them. He could have a hundred pieces of a puzzle, but if the total was over one trillion, they did little to paint a coherent picture.

And so many of the flashbacks were…horrific. So much so that Castiel was afraid to ask Sam and Dean what they were. Having Sam tell him about Ramiel had unlocked a few more memories of that incident, and it had been terrifying. Castiel had remembered blood and sweat and the feeling of choking on his own liquefied insides…

He clenched his fists and almost punched the table he was sitting at. That memory had triggered another one full of agony and screams and black goo, and fields of angels laying decimated in Heaven.

Heaven. Heaven should be a place of paradise, of peace. But so far, all of Castiel's glimpses of it contained violence and brutality. Nothing made sense, and he was beginning to feel more confused than when he'd known absolutely nothing.

"I know you've been working with Jack on controlling his powers," Sam was saying, though his voice was muffled in contrast to the images currently assaulting Castiel's mind. "Do you think there's a chance he could open a rift to that other world?"

Castiel frowned. "Where Lucifer is?"

"Yeah, uh…it's just that Lucifer wasn't the only one to get stuck over there. We lost someone we cared about, too. And if there's a chance we can get her back, we have to try."

Castiel was having trouble following. "We risk Lucifer coming back as well."

Sam's throat bobbed. "Yeah, I know. But—"

The Sam standing before him was suddenly replaced with a younger looking version, and Castiel watched as he reached out to touch the young man's temple. Sam flinched and immediately collapsed. Dean's horrified yell echoed in Castiel's ears as he flew away.

The images flashed forward to a dingy room with broken glass and lab equipment. Castiel stood in the center…Sam stumbled in and stabbed him in the back.

"Cas? Cas! Hey, what's going on?"

Sam's face was abruptly in front of him, and Castiel jerked back so hard he toppled the chair over and hit the ground.

"Cas!"

He scrambled backward, holding out his hands to ward off attack. "Don't touch me," he snapped.

Sam pulled up short, eyes wide and worried. He raised his palms. "Cas," he said more calmly. "Are you having a flashback?"

Castiel staggered off the floor and backed up against a bookcase. His chest was heaving and his lungs felt tight, even though he knew logically that his vessel could survive without oxygen.

"Cas, talk to me," Sam said desperately. "What are you remembering?"

"I hurt you," he blurted. He didn't know how or why, but he knew that whatever he had done in that flashback, it had caused immense damage to the young hunter.

"And you hurt me," he went on, unable to control the outpouring of words. "I- I don't understand." Sam was his friend. He was Sam's friend. Was it some kind of trick? A false memory? But how could it be false?

Sam blanched. "Okay, Cas, whatever you're remembering…you're probably missing a lot of context."

"What context could possibly make trying to kill each other okay?" he retorted.

Sam flinched. "That's not…"

Flashes of screams and red veins shot through Castiel's head like lightning, and he stumbled back another step as he reached up to clutch his temple. Devilish laughter echoed in the background.

"Okay, look," Sam rushed, "after we stopped the Apocalypse, the archangel Raphael wanted to start it all over again, and you were fighting a war in Heaven to keep that from happening. Only you were outgunned, so you made a deal with a demon to open Purgatory and use the souls there to gain enough power to defeat Raphael."

Castiel shook his head. What? He remembered broken angels in a beautiful garden. "Alright, and?" he said snappishly.

Sam's cheek ticked. "And when Dean and I found out that was your plan…we were upset. You tried to explain and we didn't listen, and instead we decided to stop you. So you broke the wall in my head that was protecting me from remembering the trauma I went through in the Cage with Lucifer. To keep us distracted."

Castiel stilled, horror overtaking him. He had what?

Other details began to filter through.

"I left your soul in the Cage," he murmured.

"Not on purpose! You didn't know. And me trying to hurt you…" Sam's face pinched with distress. "I wasn't thinking straight, and you had consumed the Purgatory souls and they were corrupting you…"

Scorched wing prints, seared across Heaven.

Castiel reeled back and almost tripped. "What have I done?"

Sam took a step forward, but stopped when Castiel shot him a dark glare. "You've made some mistakes."

"'Mistake' hardly seems the right word for it," Castiel bit out. "What happened after that?"

Sam fidgeted.

"What happened?" he demanded.

Sam's eyes wavered. "After you stopped Raphael, you eventually realized what the souls were doing, so you decided to put them back. But…there were these Leviathan, and they held on inside you, took control and we thought you were dead—"

Castiel remembered the inky poison in his veins and maniacal laughter as he was crushed into dust.

He bolted from the library and toward the nearest bathroom where he fell against the sink and vomited. There wasn't any black goo, not like before, not like that other bathroom with monsters pushing against his flesh from the inside out…

He retched again, dry heaving into the sink.

A shadow filled the doorway, and a moment later, a hand towel appeared in front of him. He took it, wiping at his mouth. Sam was a silent presence blocking his exit.

"What kind of monster am I?" Castiel whispered, gaze fixed on the floor.

"You're not a monster," Sam said fervently.

Castiel squeezed his eyes shut as Dean's face flashed before him, furious and raging in a way that seemed completely incongruent with the man who had found him in that alley and brought him home. Why? Why had Dean done that for him? Castiel certainly didn't deserve it.

"I hurt you," he said again, heart breaking. Everything he'd been led to believe about the Winchesters and his relationship with them had been a lie.

"We've worked past it," Sam said insistently. "It was a long time ago and we've all forgiven each other. It's not like you're the only one who's screwed up that badly before."

Oh, Castiel doubted that. Declaring himself God

"How can I be a good role model for Jack?" he choked out. "How could I have ever thought I was qualified to raise him? Was I truly that arrogant?"

"It's not arrogance, Cas." Sam reached out to clasp his arm, and Castiel couldn't help but look up. "It's precisely because you've learned from your mistakes and tried to make things better that you are the best teacher for Jack. That's what makes you better than Lucifer or Raphael or anyone else who went for absolute power."

Castiel shook his head. That was a nice thought, but all these glimpses he'd been getting told a different story. He wasn't better than the Devil. He was just another version of him.

Sam gave him an aggrieved look, almost as though he could read Castiel's thoughts. "Cas, you're still missing a lot of context. And I wish that giving you a run-down would clear things up, but I know it's not enough. Just, please trust me when I say that you are not the same as you were then. You've changed, for the better, and you always try to do the right thing. Even then, you thought you were doing the right thing for the right reasons."

Castiel wanted to take comfort in that, he did. But the echo of atrocity was still too fresh.

"I need some time to think," he said hoarsely.

Sam's lips thinned, but he took a step back and let Castiel push past him. "Cas," he called. "Me and Dean are here."

Castiel hesitated in the hallway, but then kept going without looking back. He made his way upstairs and out the door, stepping into a brisk evening chill. He stood for a moment and let the physical sensations anchor him to reality and the present.

He tried to cling to the past few days with Sam and Dean, and Jack, tried to convince himself that this family unit was real, that somehow it was whole and strong in spite of what they had gone through in the past. But he couldn't do it, couldn't let go of the guilt and loathing from his mistakes. It didn't matter what his good intentions were at the time, or what he'd done to try to 'make up for it' since.

Castiel's shoulders sagged. His memory was returning to him, but he was finding that he didn't like the person that he was.

And he wished he could go back to blissful ignorance.