Chapter 13: Phantoms and Fictions

Author's Note: I am very sorry for making you all wait so long for this chapter, but it was a very difficult one to write as it addresses a few deep emotional issues such as Castiel's mother's mental illness and its effects on his life both as a child and as an adult. This is the first time I have ever included a trigger warning in any of my fics and I hope it will be last. The conversations and interactions in this chapter are fairly mild but they do cover topics such as mental illness in a parent and its effects on a now-adult child. If this will upset you in any way, I am deeply sorry. As always, read with your own care in mind.

"My hatred of Valentine's Day is not irrational, Dean," J said, not bothering to look up from the books he's busy re-shelving, "It is perfectly normal to abhor it."

"And yet, it's not normal to use words like 'abhor' in normal conversation," Dean pointed out, gesticulating with a book he is supposed to be shelving, "And you know why?"

James gives him a flat look without ever taking his eyes off what he's doing. He's just that good. Dean would be a little impressed if he wasn't so used to it by now.

"I sense a terrible pun is imminent. Take shelter all those who value their literary integrity," J said dryly.

Dean shrugged ever-so-casually, "I was just going to point out that 'abhor' sounds a hell of a lot like 'a whore' and do you really want to be saying that in a family bookshop?"

"And yet you just did, twice. Three times if you count the time you actually said 'whore'." And dammit, J's tone of voice is just to flat and wry and Dean's trying not to laugh because he can't be the first to snap under the pressure (one of these days J will be the one to laugh first, it will happen, Dean will make it so).

"Go on, laugh. I know you want to," and then J smirked and Dean lost it.

The laughter went on for who knows how long and somewhere around the middle James' voice joined Dean's in hilarity (although not after remaining prissily silent for a good minute just to prove that he wasn't the one to break down first). Wheezing, gasping for air, Dean leaned against the bookshelf and ran a hand down his face, "Damn, it's a good thing you don't have any customers right now. That would be awkward."

"Really?" And J is back to being serene.

"Yeah, no one wants to look like a psycho in public. That's how you get arrested for disturbing the peace."

"You like the peace to be disturbed," J (accurately) pointed out.

Dean shrugged, "Keeps things interesting."

"No wonder you work with teenagers."

Dean chuckled, then re-focused on what they had been discussing until they had digressed into whores and 'abhor'. "So, Valentine's Day. You hate it."

"Yes."

"Hate it, hate it."

"Yes."

"…Why?"

"It's monochromatic and tedious."

"You're going to be fun in a week," Dean said sarcastically.

And there was his second James-Novak-flat-look-of-DOOM for today.

"Don't remind me. I still have to decorate for the ridiculous fake-holiday before I leave."

Dean blinked. Leave? In a week? During Valentine's Day?" Why?

He moved to say something, ask something about it but snapped his law closed as J rapidly changed the subject.

"Did you know that the original St. Valentine was stoned to death? No pot jokes please, Dean. Stop laughing. Now. …I give up."

A few days later and J's comment about leaving had managed to skitter away from Dean's mind, leaving him with nothing but surprise when Gabriel slapped a piece of pie in front of him and said, "Ready for your road trip Dean-o?"

"What are you talking about, midget?" Dean asked, too focused on the pie in front of him to bother making the insult sting.

"Road. Trip. You leave tomorrow."

Dean blinked, "Okay, run this by me again, where am I going? And who signed me up for a road trip?"

"You're just driving out…somewhere…umm…yeah…AskJamiecuzIreallydon'tknow."

Dean ran a hand down his face tiredly, eyeing his pie. He really wanted to eat it, but he didn't want to waste it and if he talked through eating his pie he might completely forget to savor it and that would be terrible… Oh, hey, Gabe was still talking.

"Dean? Dean-o? Deanerrific?"

"Stop that, midget. What?"

"I am not a midget!"

"You keep telling yourself that, dwarf," Dean said on auto-pilot. Screw it; he's so eating this pie.

Gabe grumbled incoherently as he wiped down the counter, apparently out of snappy comebacks.

One bite into his (completely awesome) pie, Dean sighed and set down his fork (this had never happened before, not with pie at least, it should have been marked as the momentous occasion it was, but sadly went unrecognized). "I can't enjoy my freaking pie."

"Serves you right for saying hurtful things to the vertically challenged," Gabe said huffily.

Dean paused, thinking, "I would totally turn that into a dirty joke if I wasn't so busy wondering what the hell you mean when you keep saying 'road trip'."

Gabe winced. "Um, oookay…so you know when you really want someone to do something so you just sort of act like they've already agreed to do it?"

Dean was wary now (and a little irritated that this road trip mystery was encroaching on his pie eating time), "Yes…?"

"Sooo, Jamie needs someone to drive him to Washington…and I can't do it."

Dean felt like he had said these words far too many times in this conversation. "Wait, what?"

Gabe eyeballed him and said, deliberately slowly, as if he were speaking to a particularly slow child, "Jamie doesn't have a driver's license. He can't drive. He needs to go to Washington, I normally do it, but I run a bakery and Valentine's Day is three days away."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"What the hell are we disagreeing about at this point?!"

"Disagreement? But Dean-o, you promised you'd drive Jamie to Washington tomorrow!"

"You're doing that thing again."

"What thing?" Gabe asked all-too-innocently.

"You do realize that pretending someone's already agreed to do something before you ask them never works for five-year-olds?"

"Uh-huh."

"You're not five."

"Its strength improves with age!" Gabe grinned, flinging his arms wide.

Dean glared at him over his plate of mostly-uneaten pie. "You are spoiling my pie time."

Gabe sighed and seemed to deflate, "Come on, Dean-o, JayJay's your best friend and he really needs to go to Washington. I would totally ditch work to do it, but Kevin's down with the flu and it's Valentine's Day weekend. I can't leave this place alone for three days on freaking Valentine's Day weekend. Please, Dean."

Damn, Gabriel Shurley had never, ever, in the entire time Dean has known him, said the word 'please'. If he had it certainly hadn't been directed at Dean.

"Okay, why does J need to go to Washington so bad?"

Gabe honest-to-god fidgeted. And not in the 'I'm plotting something diabolical hahaha' sort of way. In the 'I'm mildly anxious about talking about this' sort of way. This evening was getting weirder and weirder. Dean just wanted to enjoy his end-of-day pie in peace.

"I can't really tell you, it's not really my place," Gabe admitted, "If Jamie wants to talk about it, fine, ask him. Just, it's a family thing, it's screwed up and he needs a friend's help now and I'm a sucky cousin who can't lend him a hand right now."

Dean didn't quite face-palm, more dropped his face into his hand and let it rest there for a defeated minute. "Fine," he grumbled into his fingers, "I already took a personal day for tomorrow so I could work on some stuff around the apartment, I'll drive J to Washington."

"Yay!" Gabe yelped, face lighting up like a neon sign.

"Yay? For that, you forfeit all claims to manhood for the rest of your life."

"Have it your way," Gabe huffed, "See if I give you an extra piece of pie on the house for being a good friend to my baby cousin."

Dean frowned at him, pondering whether or not the indignity of an apology was worth pie. Then Gabe had the audacity to wave the freaking plate of strawberry heaven in front of his very hungry face. "Sorry. Pie."

"Ask nicely."

"Pie, now."

"Fine, princess."

Castiel did a halfway decent job of not acting shocked when Dean showed up on his doorstep early the next morning, duffle bag in hand, ordering him to "load up, we're heading out."

No, Castiel did a good job of concealing his surprise when he slowly shut the door in his friend's face, turned around, grabbed his mug of coffee and took a good long swig. Head marginally clearer after a hit of blessed caffeine, he scooped up his cellphone and dialed Gabe.

"Kevin's-sick-I-have-to-work-Dean-can-drive-you-you're-like-besties-you-can-totes-trust-him!" Gabe spat out in an impressive display of verbal vomit before his cousin could get in a word edgewise.

"Totes? Gabriel, you're not a preteen girl."

"Shut up, I thought you were going to kill me."

"How could I kill you? We're not in the same room."

"Your mildly disturbing psychic powers?"

Silence was really the only response that line deserved.

"Fine, okay, Cassie," Gabe's voice was quiet, just like all the other (few) times he ever used any permutation of Castiel's real name, "I get that your mom's…condition is kind of a touchy subject but if you ever want to visit her you'd better either move to Washington or man up and ask our friends for help cuz god knows I won't always be around to play big brother."

Castiel blinked slowly and took another gulp from his mug. Finally, when his thoughts had stopped chasing their tails and the silence was beginning to become oppressively maroon, he spoke, "Thank you, Gabe. I needed to hear that."

Gabriel's sigh of relief was deep and long, "Thank god, I thought you were pissed."

"Goodbye Gabriel, I'll tell Mother that you send your regards."

"Ugh, don't go all stiff and formal on me, Cassie. It's appalling."

"Bye, Gabe, take care of Claire while I'm gone."

"Okay. Drive safe."

Setting aside both the phone and the coffee, Castiel re-opened the door to see Dean with a questionable-looking hairpin and a guilty look on his face.

"Picking my lock, Winchester?"

"Ugh, what is it with your family and giving me perfect setups for dirty jokes at all the wrong times?"

"It's a gift."

"I'm sure it is," Dean said sarcastically, "Get your stuff, we're heading out."

Castiel grabbed his duffle and coffee and followed obediently behind him.

They were an hour into the drive and fifty minutes into the silent treatment. Well, Dean mentally corrected, it wasn't so much the silent treatment as J just not talking and Dean getting sick of jabbering only to receive monosyllabic responses.

"So why are we going to Washington? And at some point I'm really going to need more than just 'Washington', something like a town name or an interstate, y'know basic navigation stuff."

"Family reasons."

Well, that was enlightening.

"Okay," Dean decided to roll with it, "And about those directions?"

"Leviathan, we're going to Leviathan, Washington. I'll tell you when to turn."

More silence. God this was boring.

Apparently crappy Carl's Jr. burgers held some sort of magic secret make-J-hold-a-normal-conversation juice because about fifteen minutes after lunch J began to talk. Not about anything particularly relevant, but at least it was something to break up the monotony.

"My mother was a painter. She didn't really do it professionally, just whenever inspiration struck. She was very into realism; she loved concrete, static things. She didn't like change. She hated abstract art. We never agreed on much in either technique or style. She still taught me everything I know. My brothers used to think I was her favorite. I'm not so sure. She spent more time with me, but not because we liked each other. We just didn't understand anybody else."

"What about your twin?" Dean asked before he could slap the thought down.

"We were too similar in nature and too different in nurture."

Right about now, if this were a normal conversation Dean would crack a joke about psychobabble and Freud. But somehow he didn't think that would help here. Something was wrong here, and he wasn't quite sure what it was. "Sounds like Sammy and our dad," Dean said instead.

"Yes?"

"Too similar. Way too damn similar."

"Were they happy?" J's voice is different somehow, distant and abstract.

"What do you mean?"

A muscle ticked a steady rhythm in J's face. "I don't know."

Dean sighed and rubbed his hair absently, "Yeah, I guess. We had a pretty good childhood, all things considered. Not a lot of money but you know."

J laughed dryly, "I really don't."

Dean shook his head wryly, "I knew it; you're secretly filthy rich."

"My family was," the way J said it was odd, disconnected, almost. Like he didn't really feel like that part of his past was still linked to the present.

"So this whole 'starving bookseller' is just an act?" Dean teased.

"I am hardly starving. But no, there isn't any money coming from the family."

Dean grunts, encouraging him to elaborate.

"It has been…diverted to other purposes."

Dean narrowed his eyes at him, "Did those bastards disown you?"

James laughed, "No, not really. We just all…drifted apart. It happens," he laughed again at the puzzled look on Dean's face, "Most people don't live next door to their brother and a few miles away from their mom."

Dean snorted, "I know that, J, I lived in New York City for close to a decade."

"But you and your family never drifted?" J sounded genuinely curious.

Dean looked perplexed, "No, not really. I mean, I went to university, then Sam did, but Adam was still at home and we saw him and Mom and Dad for the holidays. We were apart but there was no 'drifting'," he frowned at his friend, curious, "But you know how that is, you've got Chuck and Becky and Gabe."

But James was already shaking his head, "When I was a young child, yes, now, yes, but for a while it was just…me. And my twin. We used to be close."

"But you said…" okay; now Dean was really confused.

"Having a twin is hard, having an identical twin is harder. In many ways we were burdens to each other but we couldn't give up on one another."

"Dude, that sounds incredibly unhealthy."

And then J laughed, throwing his head back and laughed until he was just shaking and mouthing the sounds silently. Dean was pretty sure his barely-funny comment did not warrant this kind of reaction. He started to look for place to pull over until the hysteria passed.

"I'm fine, Dean," J wheezed around the last giggly shreds from his fit of hilarity.

"I'm pretty damn sure you're not."

"I'm fine, I really am."

"Whatever you say, man."

J wiped the laughter-induced tears from his cheeks and grinned, bright and burning and kind of beautiful in it's own way. "You didn't do it."

Okay, he could play this game, "What? Didn't do what?"

But James was off on a tangent and there was no stopping him now. "When you have a dead family member, mother, brother, father, sister, gerbil, people are so horrid about it. They walk on eggshells and get awkward and it's terrible. And plum, so very viciously plum. And then there's you and you're just…normal about it."

Dean had no idea what to say to that. "What if I had no idea your twin was dead and was just being an ass?"

"That would be okay."

"You're…something, man. You're something."

"People generally are. And mint green. Have you ever noticed that people are strangely mint green?"

"Not typically."

And that was the end of the Heart-to-Heart-Talking for a while. Which was fine with Dean because really, talking about feelings for any length of time was starting to give him hives.

The closer they got to their destination, the quieter Castiel grew. He wanted to talk. He wanted to scream. The knowledge that he was drawing closer and closer to That Place itched beneath his skin like a spreading rash but he still couldn't find any words. It didn't help that Dean was there, just being quiet and… existing. Dean, good, kind, dependable Dean. Dean was a good man. Castiel wasn't so sure about himself. All he knew that the longer he spent sitting next to Dean the more he wanted to talk. And some skeletons he couldn't unearth right now. He just couldn't. Simple as that.

He tried to smother the irrational surge of resentment towards the solid, understanding, patient presence beside him.

It was harder than it should have been.

Dean eyed James, trying not to worry as the hours dragged on and the conversation tapered off and died. J had seemed to be doing better after talking about his twin and that last desperate burst of relieved laughter. But as the miles slid past beneath the Impala's wheels the words slid away.

Where were they going? Dean didn't know anything about Leviathan, Washington. What the hell was so important that J had to go there now?

It was a humbling experience, realizing you didn't know a thing about your best friend.

Because in the end, Dean could right a book on all the stupid little things he knew about J: his disgusting sludge-like coffee, his obsession with The Lion King, his way of living in color, how he couldn't organize a thing to save his life but his bookstore's inventory was flawless, his love of bees, his collection of special edition Sorry! game boards. Dean knew a lot about J. But he really didn't know jack shit.

It was fairly frustrating, to say the least.

Castiel didn't look at Dean when he asked him to pull into the parking lot of Our Lady of Mercy Mental Hospital.

"J, what's going on?"

"Park the car, Dean."

They sat in the Impala, parked, staring out at the rain-slicked pavement in front of them, watching water spittle from the sky and trail down the windshield in sad little streams. Castiel braced his elbows on his knees and rested his face in his palms. He could feel Dean making a conscious effort not to look at him, as if concerned that eye contact might scare him off.

"I'm not crazy," Castiel said into his palms. In hindsight that might not have been the best line to start this conversation with. He could feel Dean's eyes on him now, bright green and burning. "I'm here to visit someone," Castiel elaborated, "My mother. She's…not well."

"Okay," Dean said evenly, voice steady. Castiel closed his eyes and listened to that voice, searching for hints of judgment or pity or mockery. There were none. It was just Dean. Gratitude for that steady presence washed over Castiel, making it hard to think about anything in that moment but the fact that for once in his life someone was actually listening to him without demanding or expecting anything. And even if it was about his crazy mother, and perhaps a little because it was about that particular ghost from his past, it was good, it was okay.

"I might act a bit strange, I promise there is a reason, please trust me in this," Castiel asked him.

"Sure thing, J. Sure thing. Do you want me to wait in the car or go in with you?"

Castiel needed get out of this vehicle before he did something childish like hug him. "Whatever makes you most comfortable. You may have to sit in the waiting room for a while."

Dean could apparently read between the lines rather well, "Okay, let's go. We don't have all day."

Castiel allowed himself to smile just a bit and settle into the sheer burgundy-ness of this moment. Dark but warm and a little bitter. Kindness is a lot like coffee when you're on the receiving end of it.

Angela Novak looked just like J.

It was a punch in the gut to see her, really. She sat in an uncomfortable-looking wooden chair by the window in the common area, an easel propped up in front of her. Her back was to them as they approached; narrow shoulders shrouded in a tan shawl that reminded Dean uncomfortably of J's favorite trenchcoat, a fluffy cloud of dark, curling hair pulled back in some sort of sloppy almost-style, wayward curls trailing over her shoulders and down her back like dark creeks down the side of a cream-toned mountain. Her spine was very straight. She held herself like J did sometimes. Very, very carefully. As if she thought excess movement would break something vital deep inside her. Her body was tight, movements sharp, almost awkward. But her hands were graceful, each finger like a dancer moving to its own tune. J's hands were like that too.

Dean found it was getting harder and harder to watch her without seeing her son.

J stopped short of her chair, a good meter still separating them. "Hello, Mother," he said, but his voice wasn't its usual deep growl. Instead it was higher, strained in a way that only Dean and a handful of others could have recognized. That was the voice of a man fighting his own body, struggling for a sound that wasn't quite attainable. It was painful to listen to.

And Mrs. Novak didn't turn around.

Dean glanced at J, brow furrowed in question, but his friend didn't look at him. Instead he pressed the bright beam of his sharp blue eyes into the back of the woman before them. She sighed and scooped up a dollop of blue with her paintbrush. The same shade of blue as J's eyes. But she still didn't turn around.

"Hello, Mother."

She paused, head tipped to the side, like a curious bird, like J sometimes, and Dean was sure she was going to turn around and acknowledge her son in some way.

"Why yes, Luci, that sounds like a wonderful idea," her voice was beautiful, but still she didn't turn, didn't spare a glance in J's direction and Dean struggled not to resent that beauty as he watched it slice into J's heart and leave him bleeding.

She paused in her painting; brush in mid-stroke, tilting her head to acknowledge her invisible conversation partner. "No, let your brothers sleep…They're very young, they need their rest…Lucifer Nicholas Novak do not wake up your father! …He had to work very late last night…No, I can't tell you what he was working on…hardly a subject for a little boy…get the sandwiches and we'll have the picnic in the living room…just you and me, no one else…" she hummed a few notes, paused, hummed a bit more, but this time uncertainly, as if she were just now realizing that she had forgotten the tune. Then she seemed to see, as if for the first time that there was cerulean paint dripping off her brush and into her lap. With a flick of her wrist the oil that remained was deposited on the canvas and the brush was back in motion.

"Hello, Mother." A small muscle was working in J's jaw and it made Dean want to protect him. Stand in front of him and shield him from the pain that was working its way into his bones.

No acknowledgement from the woman in the chair. She kept painting. J watched her. Dean watched J. Minutes slithered guiltily past. Suddenly the woman went rigid, her back a short sharp exclamation point, arm stiff as it ground the brush's bristles into the canvas.

"CASTIEL!" she snapped, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? Get over here. You are absurd. Clean this nonsense up. JAMES! Where is that boy? JAMES, COME GET YOUR TWIN!" There was a pause and Dean wondered if she had come back to reality when she muttered, "More ruined things, have to start all over again," before she tossed the brush aside, paint and all.

"I'm sorry, Mother," J said, voice quieter, false inflection slipping away. Dean wanted to reach out to him, comfort him in some way, but James' back was too straight, his posture too perfect. Dean knew if he tried to touch him now someone would get hurt.

"What do you want from me? What do you all want?" she seemed to grow more and more distressed as she realized that her paintbrush was no longer in her hand, fingers flying as she pawed around her body, around her chair, around her slice of the laminate floor, searching for the prize she had carelessly tossed away.

Dean saw, out of the corner of her eye, the moment where J picked up the brush. He didn't give it back.

Castiel thought he might fly apart if he didn't move, escape, flee the rainbow of emotions and memories and violent, tearing, breaking voices swarming his subconscious with their half-remembered syllables and foggy inflections. God, why couldn't he fucking breathe anymore? He didn't realize he was halfway across the parking lot until he blinked and felt wetness on his lashes. Rain was still spittling its way out of the flinty grey sky and he knew it had to be the clouds crying because god knew he had long forgotten how.

Footsteps, charcoal and wet behind him. A hand on his shoulder, warm and here and everything he knew he wasn't right now.

"J, hey, J, are you breathing? J, look at me."

Before he even knew what he was doing, Castiel spun on his heel and let his fist (when had his fingers clenched like that? He didn't remember this) fly towards the one man who dared to intrude on his personal maelstrom. Dean rocked with the blow, taking it in the stomach, tightening his abdomen and just letting Castiel's knuckles bounce off of the muscle. It wasn't a hard punch, not serious, not even moderately powerful. Sloppy and desperate and violent because how else do you respond to a world that had dissolved into sharp bright whites and blacks and reds?

But somehow, it worked, throwing that desperate punch worked, because Dean now had a hand on each of his shoulders and seemed to be leeching the tension away with their weight alone. And just like that Castiel was back in control, or at least he thought he could reasonably fake control for as long as necessary.

"I'm sorry, Dean. That was appallingly crimson of me. I'm so very sorry."

But Dean didn't seem all that concerned about that because he was still hanging onto Castiel's shoulders and glaring at him with sharp green eyes, "Hey, space cadet, you with me all the way, cuz you don't sound like it."

"I am perfectly fine. Practically perfect. In every way. Fine."

"No you're not, dumbass. Not if you're quoting Mary Poppins," Dean snorted, "That's weird, even for you."

"I suppose so," Castiel began to muse before Dean grabbed his shoulders and yanked him into a crushing hug. Castiel went stiff; he had no idea what to do. His family was hardly the most physically demonstrative when he was young. He hugged Claire now, and occasionally accepted a hug-assault from Gabe when his cousin was feeling particularly affectionate (or hyperactive). But beyond that, he was not the most hugged of children. Or teens. Or adults. No, he was not pathetic and needy. He was not traumatized. He was just…confused.

"You all there, J? You okay, man?" Dean asked, voice slightly muffled.

And for once in his adult life Castiel Novak chose to be honest, "No. Not really."

"That's okay. You know what you do when you're not okay?"

"Find a liquor store. Drink it."

"Haha, very funny. No, you hang on as tightly as you damn well can for as long as you damn well need to."

Castiel slumped a bit, letting some of the tension leak out of his body as he leaned into his friend's impromptu embrace. "Okay," he muttered, and hugged Dean back.

Hours later they were sitting on the hood of the Impala, staring up at a sky strewn with stars, beers in their hands. No, they didn't drink the local liquor store. They just grabbed some microbrew and what was left of their sanity and headed out to an anonymous field in the middle of anonymous Washingtonian countryside.

"Why do you do it every year?" Dean asked. He wasn't drunk, just lightly buzzed. Enough to make him brave enough to try chatting about this crap but not enough to make him stupid about it.

"Gabriel rat me out, did he?" J's eyes glittered dimly in the dark, throwing out scraps of light when no one's eyes had any right to be that bright and…and…freaking shiny. Seriously, what the hell? Was he magic or something? Maybe Dean was a bit drunker than he thought…

"Yeah, lil' bastard bullied me into bullying you into letting me be the one to drive you out here. So how 'bout it? Why the hell do you do this shit every year?"

J raised both eyebrows as he took another pull from the bottle, "Sometimes more than once a year," he murmured softly, lips still brushing the rim of the bottle.

"More? Holy shit, J, what's wrong with you?" Dean demanded before the smart half of his brain could remind him that saying stuff like that typically ended in pissed off people and broken friendships.

"She doesn't know my twin brother is dead. Sometimes I go dressed…differently...and she thinks he's there. It puts her at ease. I think. I don't really know. It could just be me projecting feelings onto her that she has no right to."

"Your twin…Castiel? The one she was yelling at?"

J's face tenses and releases. It's a very quick motion, almost invisible in the dimness. But Dean saw it. "Yes."

Oh, short answers now. That typically means shut up.

"Why do you care, J?" Dean asked. He was never very good at shutting up.

"About my brother?" J asked archly, deliberately misinterpreting Dean's words.

"You know what I mean."

"Because no one wants to be alone. And I still remember who she was. Before the illness."

Dean remembered the painting she had been abusing. It held a strange jumble of images, half-finished projects, ghosts of dreams. It was as if she had begun work on six different paintings all on one canvas, haphazard and sloppy and messy. Nothing like what J described.

"Hey, J," Dean felt like this is a serious subject and should be handled with care, but he wasn't really sober enough to think all that logically. He cleared his throat gruffly, "J, did she ever hit you? Did you grow up afraid?"

"I never feared any of my family. Not her. Not my father, when he was there. Not even Lucifer, not even at the end, when it all went to hell. What issues we had were a bit more…complex."

"Okay," Dean accepted that because he could smell the honesty in the air, heavy and cloying and not going anywhere…

"I'm not visiting again as my twin this year," J said, voice steady and sure, that of a man who knew his limits and knew when he didn't need to push them, "It's too much."

"Okay," and that was the beauty of having someone other than his regular driver come, they didn't poke and stab every one of your open wounds just to see what color you bleed.

"You know what Sammy and I used to do as kids? When one of us had a had a shitty day?"

"What?" J asked, voice smooth and relaxed and mildly sleepy.

"Fireworks," Dean grinned, a manic glit in his eyes. "We'd wait until it was dark out and we'd find an empty field and set them all off at once. We'd run around, screaming and shouting and freaking out like we were possessed."

"Really?" J's tone didn't fool Dean, he was obviously intrigued.

"Yeah. It didn't fix anything. But it was pretty awesome."

Silence hung in the air, swaying between them like a presence.

Finally J sucked in a moderately long-suffering breath, "You bought fireworks at that grocery store, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"How many?"

"A freaking ton."

"Let's see what they look like together."

"Okay, J, get some matches."

When the sky exploded into a million, billion, zillion glorious colors and the men raised their bottles in tipsy salute to the display, Castiel thought he might have felt the soft snick-click of a once-displaced fragment of himself snapping back into place.

Sam Winchester was not a goddamn answering machine. Yet here he was, staring at James' cell phone sitting on the counter of Trick or Treat where James had accidentally left it the day before (Gabriel had shifted it over to beside the cash register as if it was supposed to be there and wasn't prime fodder for some thief's light fingers).

Wincing a bit at the breach of etiquette, but realizing that everyone knew that if left to his own devices, as he often was, J would never bother to check his messages, Sam scooped up the phone and pressed 'Accept'.

"Hello, this is Dr. Winchester on James Novak's phone," Sam began politely, emphasis on the word began. He didn't get very far into his opening line before his ears were overwhelmed by the sound of tear-soaked babbling.

"I just want my baby, is that too much to ask? A mother's gotta see her little girl all grown up and beautiful? Isn't that right, Novak? Isn't it?" her voice, it was a woman, whoever it was, wobbled and shook with drunken emotion.

"I'm sorry, who is this?" Sam was growing suspicious.

"You're so cruel. Heartless little bastard, always were," some water-logged snuffling, but no actual tears. Great, progress.

"Excuse me, ma'am? Are you all right? Do you need something?"

"You know you're a selfish bastard, Novak. A selfish bastard," her voice began to rise in hysteria and fury, "I ask for one little thing as her fucking mother an you can't be bothered to answer your phone? Goddamn you, GODDAMN YOU –"

"That is enough, ma'am."

"You steal everything. You stole my husband before your mother even popped you two out. You were always going to be twins. Best pals for ever and ever. How cute, no wonder you had to hijack his life. Without him you're just an empty carcass."

"Ma'am, what are you talking about?"

Her breath rattled, wet and tangled through the phone's speakers and Sam resisted the urge to pull it away from his face. If it wasn't there, sodden and stinking of things he was growing ever more certain should not be said, he might have thought she'd hung up on him.

Eight little words.

"Fuck you Novak, I'm coming for my daughter."

Sam hit the 'END CALL' button before his brain caught up to his fingers.

Author's Note: Things are starting to heat up…and I clearly have problems with Amelia-related cliffhangers.

Again, I'm sorry for the small (extremely) long delay on this chapter. Due to the content, this one was harder to write than any of the others (you have no idea how many drafts I went through trying to do this one right) and I'm still not completely happy with it. Mental illness, especially that of a character's close family members, is a difficult thing to write about and I really wanted to be as careful with the subject matter as possible. Please remember that Cas and Dean and the Novaks are all human and as such their reactions are emotionally based and may not necessarily result in the right choices in the circumstances. However, they are trying to cope as best they can. I am sorry if anything in this chapter hurt or offended anyone in any way; that was never my intent. I felt that this chapter was an important part of this AU's Castiel's story and needed to be told.

As always, I love all you wonderful people who take the time to read this fic. If you have a few extra seconds I would love to hear from you.

See ya next time!