I'm sorry I have taken SO LONG to update, I've been doing college and scholarship things... =_= So anyway here's the next chapter! Finally! It's here! Thank you to anyone who has stuck around this long, I love writing this story, and I enjoy reading your input :) Enjoy!
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When Andrea showed up at the prison the next day things didn't go so smoothly. Rick forcefully searched her for weapons, which made some of the other prison-goers uncomfortable. This was Andrea, not a straggler, they knew her. But Rick had trust issues, as did all of them, and when the woman they hadn't seen in forever turns up at Woodbury after clearly being on good terms with their enemy right before showing up at their doorstep the next day, there was a reason to be slightly hesitant with trust. When they were all sure she wasn't leading a surprise attack, or siding with the Governor, they let her inside. Greetings were made, hugs were given. Some hadn't seen her since the farm burned down, most thought she had been dead. The one person who kept her distance was Michonne, apparently they had a past together and it didn't end well when they stumbled into Woodbury. She found out about Lori and T-Bone, yet Rick still showed no sign of sympathy towards her. Cas knew it was hard to be trusting, but she didn't know what the Governor had been up to, and she was here now to warn them of the army he was putting together in Woodbury. It sickened her that he was putting weapons into children's arms to train them to fight a war against humans during a zombie apocalypse. During every apocalypse the humans always found a way to be the most damaging to their own broken society.
Cas made his way over to Andrea when the crowd dispersed after Rick went to talk over things with Daryl. Andrea went to hug him but pulled back when he winced, his shoulder still hurt like hell, the supplies him and Dean got only helped stop the infection, not the pain.
"What happened to your shoulder?" She asked, eyeing the bandage sticking out from underneath his jacket. Cas just shook his head, he didn't want her to feel like she was to blame, unlike Rick.
"The Governor shot me. Twice." Cas tried to keep the statement as casual and controlled as possible, but his tone was on the edge of sounding harsh. She frowned at him and looked down at her feet.
"I had no idea he was... I'm sorry." Cas told her not to worry about it, that he was fine. In all honesty, he had been the one who went after the Governor. Given that the Governor was the one who fired first and shot up their prison community like the psychopath her was.
"How have you been? Are you guys planning on staying here?" She asked, her eyes traveled to the main cellblock entrance she still wasn't allowed to go into. She cautiously eyed Michonne, who would occasionally look up at her, mostly glaring, before flicking her eyes away and focusing on her sword or shutting Merle up. Apparently Merle had been sent by the Governor to kill her when she left Woodbury. Apparently no one was allowed to leave that place alive or unscathed. Cas wished Andrea would just stay with them, but he didn't want to get involved in her choices. It wasn't his place.
"Okay, I guess. This place is the safest we've been in a long time, we just aren't used to having this many people on our side. For the longest time, before this apocalypse even started, it had just been the six of us. That had held up quite well until the number dropped to five and the supplies started to decrease. But hey, that happens to all of us." Cas walked over to sit against the wall, wincing slightly as he slid down it, Andrea hesitated and eyed Michonne once more before she joined him.
"I know how it is to lose someone. I wouldn't ask unless you want to talk-"
"He was my brother." For some reason the words just poured out of his mouth without him second guessing himself. It was easy to talk to this woman, even if he barely knew her. Maybe the fact that he barely knew her made it easier because he wouldn't have to deal with the aftermath of worried and concerned looks at his every move, or constant questions about his feelings. She'd most likely be back in Woodbury by tomorrow morning. Andrea was quiet for a long time, the two of them just sitting in shared silence. They watched as Daryl, Rick, Dean, Hershel, and Sam discussed Andrea's idea of a truce in the other room, the harsh whispering becoming louder as the quiet went on longer.
"I lost my sister. Walker got her one night at our first camp. It was the first time I saw someone turn. I was stupid, I thought there was a part of her still there... But she attacked me and I..." Andrea trailed off and smiled sadly to herself, looking down at her hands, "that seems like it happened just yesterday." Cas frowned and leaned his head back against wall.
"Gabe had been missing for awhile, but now it's permanent." Cas said, eyes traveling to where Sam was standing alongside Dean. Andrea followed his gaze curiously, "Sam found him in a pin behind the Governor's house, he was already a walker and was going to be used for sport or whatever that sick bastard wanted those walkers for. He wasn't my brother, not anymore, so I decided for everyone. I shot him." Andrea watched him sadly, her eyes widened at the mention of the Governor. She didn't defend the guy this time, she just said her condolences and they went back to their shared silence. An understanding between two people was often held above trust these days. Everyone had a sob story, many just decided not to say it aloud.
"So Sam and your brother were close?" She asked after awhile. They watched Sam as he leaned over to whisper something to Dean before they continued arguing against Rick. Cas didn't feel like involving Sam's personal life so he simply nodded, Andrea frowned in return.
"You never did answer me earlier about wanting to stay here. Do you think you guys will?" She asked, trying to separate from the subject. Cas didn't really know, they had no where else to go, but he wasn't sure if they had completely gained Rick's trust yet. Most the time he just felt like he was intruding. Everything reminded him of the way he felt when he was working for heaven during the first few years of meeting Dean. When he would occasionally travel down to help the boys on a few hunts, still a stranger.
"If anything, we'll at least stay until this issue with the Governor is solved. He has already cost us enough and we're too deeply involved already. Dean has a price on his head for shooting me. And Sam... Sam is blaming Gabriel's death on him as well. One way or another he won't be breathing much longer. Our family has a way of making sure monsters disappear." Cas missed the hunts, the routine aspect of them all. The identity theft, the research, the accomplishment of saving someone. That's all they used to do, save people. And now they couldn't even save themselves. The whole world was full of monsters. Cas realized Andrea was still silent and had forgotten about her ties to the Governor. She's not in the dark anymore, she's been informed of the guy's issues, she should be able to handle the fact that he's not a great guy and realize she's in the wrong place.
"Why don't you stay? You can't possibly go back to that guy, can you?" Cas felt like it was common sense, but relationships of any kind were always more complicated than that, even friendships.
"I don't think I have a choice in the matter. I heard what he tried to do to Michonne, and I can't let that happen again. I know I might be in danger, but so is that town, and they trust me. Those people don't know what that man has been doing, they are only seeing one side of the story: humans from another community attacking theirs. They're being trained into soldiers to fight a war they're being lied to about. I'm already on the inside, it should stay like that. To be completely honest it's our best, and quite frankly our only, chance." Cas couldn't disagree with that. He didn't argue, just nodded and leaned back against the wall, watching as Dean left the group and walked over to him in an angry huff. He knew there was a rant coming on.
"These idiots think it's such a grand idea to either make a truce or go head first into battle. That psychotic sonofabitch isn't going to be stopped by some childlike truce equivalent to sharing the sandbox, dammit. If he's going to fucking shoot at us we're firing back or so help me God I will track him down myself and put a bullet in his good eye. And this army he's setting up... We can't just-"
"Dean-"
"-barge in and wave our guns around shouting "shoot me, shoot me-!"
"Dean-"
"-It's a suicide mission, do any of them have any common sense...?" Dean continued to rant and Cas couldn't manage to get his attention, so he reached up and grabbed his hand and pulled him down. Of course this wasn't very graceful, and Dean basically landed on top of him, but at least he stopped ranting and Andrea actually laughed.
"Dean." Cas finally got his attention as he pushed Dean off of him and Dean sat at his side, practically banging the back of his head against the wall.
"Yes, babe?" The amount of sarcasm in his voice made Cas want to take a shot at his jaw, but instead he just ignored it and went on with what he was trying to explain earlier.
"This truce thing... They may have a point here-
"Not you too, It's a horrible plan." Dean interrupted, running a hand through his hair stressfully, "the bastard deserves to die-"
"I know, I know. I was with you on the whole killing the Governor no matter what thing... But, as you know, this guy is gathering an army together. You saw that town, it has a lot of people, enough to make a good defense force. We have children, elderly, beaten, wounded, and very tired people here. We don't have much going for us. This truce might actually be a good idea if we think it out well enough." Cas said the words as if he didn't believe them himself.
"How?"
"We can use this truce as a way to trick him, get some one on one time with him without his colony of defense behind his back-"
"Nice, you may have something there." Dean smirked, nudging Cas's shoulder with his own.
"I try. But we need to go talk this over with Daryl and Rick. This isn't our family, nor our shelter, we're only guests here. We have to follow through with their plans or leave them be." Dean sighed as Cas looked back over to Sam, who was still deeply involved in the argument inside the cellblock. Andrea nodded for Cas and Dean to go support their side, not even arguing against taking out the Governor. Soon enough the two of them stood by Sam, talking over their idea and trying to convince Rick that it was their best chance at getting the Governor alone. Rick was still iffy on the fact that Andrea was the one who came here with the idea of a truce, seeing as how she was all buddy buddy with the Governor and already on a first name basis. But Cas trusted her word, she was a good woman, she wouldn't lie to them and get them killed. She said she had known nothing of the Governor's prior attack and this would be the easy way to put an end to all the fighting. But Rick still didn't trust the idea. He trusted it as much as he trusted them. And seeing as how they were found in Woodbury that night with Andrea, there wasn't much trust there, just understanding. Dean started an argument, but it didn't get anywhere. Rick had already decided that he'd be taking a supply team to his old town to find weapons and supplies in order to fight back against the Governor's army. That team consisted of his son, Carl, and Michonne. They left without another word, Rick wasn't one to dwell on discussions he already had an authority choice over.
xxx
Rick had a right to trust who he felt he could, but it irritated Dean. He spent the rest of the day complaining about it to Cas as they waited from Rick to come back with the new supplies. Cas tried to keep him occupied by asking him to help Sam, Kevin, Charlie, and himself find flowers for the grave they were constructing for Gabe, but that didn't last long. Dean complained that he felt useless picking flowers like his "princess brother" when he could be off on a supply run or at least killing some walkers through the fence. Cas let him go, hoping he wouldn't be stupid enough to follow after Rick. So far the gravestone only consisted of a collaboration of broken stones from inside the prison, but it was something. They had put it on the other side of Lori's with Rick's permission. Again, he understood. He was a good man, he's just been through a lot of shit that's turned him cold. It was like looking in the mirror sometimes.
"I never knew what his favorite flower was." Cas murmured as he added to the pile of flowers on Gabe's grave.
"Aster." Sam answered without looking over at Cas, his eyes focused on the grave. "He liked Aster. It was never really about the color of the flower, but because it's name meant patience. He would always hide them in between the pages of my books, next to my coffee in the mornings, in the pockets of my jackets... Gabriel wasn't one for having much patience, but he always said he only had enough patience for one thing in his life, and that was me." Cas looked down at his shoes, not knowing what to say. There weren't any Aster flowers around here. Sam didn't seem to care, though Cas knew that wasn't true.
"I don't even know what Dean's favorite flower is." Cas whispered, mostly to himself, knowing Sam heard him. Sam didn't answer, just continued looking at the mess of courtyard flowers poured around the grave skeptically as Charlie jogged over with a handful of halfway welted daisies and common field flowers. She positioned the flowers around the grave and tried to order the prior ones before she stood up and reached on her toes to put a daisy in Sam's hair.
"Well I think we can proudly say we have enough flowers to make up for at least five percent of Gabriel's ego." She smiled, gaining a small laugh out of Sam that Cas didn't think possible.
"I think you're giving him too much credit, more like two percent." Sam said just as Kevin walked over to them with another handful of flowers and dropped them on top of the rest.
"Three percent." Charlie joked as Cas walked over to kneel by the grave and move some of the flowers to Lori's grave to even them out. They never really got to know her, but Cas felt like he owed her something for the amount of times he's sat out by her grave. She had been a nice woman, he wished he had the chance to get to know her.
"We don't need to feed his ego anymore than we already have." Cas stated blankly, Charlie patted him on the shoulder before walking off with Kevin back towards the prison. Sam didn't stay too much longer either, keeping all of his emotions under control for a while before he had to walk away as well, probably going to help Hershel fix up some broken locks and fences. Cas didn't feel the need to go anywhere, he felt useless sitting behind and waiting for the supply team to come back. Dean was right, they were too used to being on the frontline all the time and making their own decisions. If they wanted to stay members of this community, they would have to learn to follow behind someone else, which was something Cas never wanted to do again. He was actually starting to think it would be better if they left, but he hasn't told Dean yet. He felt guilty about wanting to leave when they had such a safe shelter to live at.
It started to get dark, the sun setting behind the trees as people switched out watch shifts and killed off the walkers right outside the fence in danger of pushing it down. Andrea left before sunset, Rick had given her a car and some ammo, enough to get her back to Woodbury. Cas had overheard Carol telling her to seduce the Governor that night in order to murder him in his sleep when he was at his weakness. Cas hated the idea of Andrea having to do that, but he didn't want to intrude on their conversation, his opinion didn't matter. It was her choice.
Cas was plucking the petals off a welting daisy, still sitting Indian style at the foot of Gabriel's grave, when Dean found him. He kept his eyes on the flower in his hand as Dean sat down beside him.
"It's getting cold with the sun setting, how long have you been out here?" He asked, voice concerned, Cas just shrugged in response and rested his head against Dean's shoulder.
"What's your favorite flower?" He asked suddenly, dropping the daisy at his feet. Dean was silent for a few moments, probably trying to figure out why Cas was asking such a random question.
"I don't know flower names... Anything blue is nice, reminds me of your eyes." Dean said softly before adding, "are you alright? Talk to me." Cas just sighed and watched as the sun set fully behind the trees and the walker noises seemed to become more distant. He really didn't want to explain what was on his mind, he'd learned that most humans tend to keep all the important emotions hidden on the inside because they were afraid of what people would say or think if they let them show. For some reason Cas just felt like talking today, and Dean should be the easiest to talk to. Though that tended to be a contradiction.
"I was just... I miss him." it wasn't much, but he knew Dean understood without him having to explain further. Cas was still learning about human relationships, but the one he had with Dean has always been the same, always been comfortably easy in a way. Not to say it had been uncomplicated, there were many rough patches along the way. Dean said that was a very human thing, but Cas didn't think the average relationship rough patch consisted of teaming up with the king of hell, swallowing souls, death, memory loss, separated in purgatory, controlled by a rouge angel, death, or the next episode of My Boyfriend Is A Demon. But they always found their way back to each other, and the reason Cas didn't always have to voice his problems was because Dean already knew them and was working at solving every one of them.
"Me too." Dean answered, cutting into their shared silence. He was quiet for a long time as the sun continued to get lower behind the trees. Cas wrapped an arm around his waist to pull himself closer to Dean when the wind picked up.
"But I've never understood this tradition." Dean went on, breaking through the silence, "I know the graves are put there as a solid reminder of their life, but sometimes it seems like it's just there to celebrate the death and hold people back from moving on. You can't survive out here with a mind stuck in the past, stuck in that one moment where you could have done something different to solve all your problems now. No one owns a Flux Capacitor, we can only dream. And if you live your life stuck in a dream, reality will tear at you so hard you'll lose yourself. I've never liked graves because they were a solid reminder that death is permanent and you can't go back and solve it. I can tell it's been tearing you apart ever since you found Lori's grave. You spend too much time out here." Cas just sighed and lifted his head from Dean's shoulder to watch him as he stared at the grave and fidgeted with a flower in his hands.
"I told you not to worry about me." Cas murmured, "and death isn't always permanent. You're a clear example of that." He continued, eyeing a car as it pulled onto the prison road and Daryl jogged to open the gates. Michonne, Rick, and Carl got out of the car with bags full of supplies and what looked like an oddly shaped cat sculpture. Dean didn't even turn his head at the sound of the engine, it was about time they got back. Instead he looked down at Cas and shook his head, arguing the prior statement.
"Not anymore. Death is death. Heaven's collapsing within itself, hell has locked its doors, who knows where the king of hell himself has gone to. Look around you, don't you realize there are less monsters. Once these walkers spread like a plague, we haven't had many vampires and other creatures to deal with." Dean answered as Cas picked up his hand to trace over his fingers out of boredom, he'd heard this talk a thousand times. "And yes I do worry about you, all of you, all the time. It's what keeps me on my guard and alive." Cas couldn't help a small laugh at the statement even though Dean was trying to be serious.
"Yeah right, Winchester, you stay alive because I keep your precious ass out of danger. If it weren't for me, you'd be dead." Cas joked, laughing as he tried to sit up but Dean pulled him back into his lap, knowing every spot Cas was the most ticklish and finding it easily. Another human weakness he hated.
"So you think my ass is precious, huh-?"
"I heard the wrong part of that conversation." Sam's voice came from behind the two of them, causing Dean to hesitate just long enough for Cas to grab his hands and knock him onto his back, pinning him to the ground so he couldn't get away. Sam just sighed out of embarrassment and took out a flask from his jacket pocket to take a swig of before he sat down in the grass next to Dean's head.
"Still worried about me?" Cas asked, letting go of one of Dean's arms to reach out and grab the flask from Sam, taking a sip of it himself. Dean just rolled his eyes and gave up, letting his head relax back against the grass as he held up his free arm in surrender.
"Yes." Dean answered with a smirk before he leaned up to kiss Cas's nose, which caused Sam to audibly gag. "Always."
"Careful with that worry, you'll be gray by next month." Cas joked and handed the flask back to Sam before moving off of Dean to let him sit up. Sam finally found a sense of humor and almost did a spit take when he saw the terrified look on Dean's face at the mention of his hair.
"Oh come on, I'm only... thirty-"
"Add five years to that." Cas said with a smirk.
"Says the multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent who's older than the fucking universe-"
"That statement is clearly false, I'm only older than Earth. And anyway, I'm human now, I'm whatever age this vessel was." Cas said, moving closer to Dean and reaching up to tug on a strand of hair. "Would you look at that, already found a gray one." Dean glared at him and took the flask from Sam.
"Whatever man, I'm going to be laughing when you have a full head of gray before me." He said. A sad look crossed over Sam's face, but it only lasted a few seconds, and neither one of them noticed. Dean saw that Sam still had a daisy behind his ear though, and he couldn't help but making fun of it.
"Dude, could you be more gay-?"
"Shut it, Charles put it there and I forgot about it-"
"Yeah right, you like it, don't even try to lie."
"I like it." Cas interrupted, both brothers turning to him with raised eyebrows. "What? I'd love one." Dean couldn't stop the smile from spreading across his face.
"I'll keep that in mind-"
"Who's gay now, jerk-"
"-bitch."
Charlie watched Dean and Cas go into their cell for the night pretty early on, she had been worried about Cas from the way he had been acting earlier, but she didn't want to get involved. They looked pretty happy for the time being at least. For once she just wanted to stay out of it and lay on the bunk in her own cell, reading The Hobbit for the second time that week. She'd read it to her mom so many times she could practically quote it cover to cover if she wanted. It was much easier than reading The Wizard of Oz. There were too many personal ties to characters in that book. She had heard the return of Rick and the others, as well as the discussion in the cellblock of what they brought back and an old ally they ran into again. It wasn't a conversation she was interested in being apart of. Apparently Kevin didn't want to either, because within a few minutes he was walking into her cell and making himself at home.
"Sam's being quiet again." He complained, sitting down on the edge of her bunk and looking over her shoulder at the pages of The Hobbit. Charlie sighed, closing the book on her thumb to save the page and glaring at Kevin.
"Sam's always quiet, what's new?" She asked sarcastically, placing her makeshift bookmark on the page and shutting the book.
"Not always. But I haven't been able to get a word out of him lately, and it's so quiet in there. I'd rather share a room with you like we always have." Kevin paused as Charlie sat up and raised her eyebrows at him. "I miss your stories about that place... and you. Mostly you. I've never had a sister, and I've been stuck with the Winchester brothers for far too long." Charlie stared at him for a long few minutes before a smile spread across her face.
"So I'm your sister?" She asked, sitting up straighter and smiling like the Captain of the Starship Enterprise just fell through the ceiling and gave her a job offer.
"Yeah... We're all family now, Charles. You've got yourself four brothers." He said, smiling at her genuinely for the first time in what felt like forever. Without warning, her arms wrapped around his shoulders in a hug.
