Eileen Leahy had arrived a little after Cas went off to go talk to Sam, something Deanna had tried and failed to talk her out of. Bobby had relayed Sam's instructions to her so he could start cooking up some kind of soup to feed them all, and Deanna had answered the door not quite knowing what to expect.
The hunter she met had the stance of someone who'd been through more than a few hard times, but within a minute of conversation, Deanna knew she liked her. Eileen was sarcastic, kind, and wary all at the same time, and she didn't treat Deanna like she was crazy, which was better than other hunters she'd met after they figured out her wife wasn't quite human.
"So how did you and Sam meet?" Deanna asked, looking towards the door and still not seeing anyone there. She doubted this conversation would last long once Sam was back, and she was curious about what her brother had been getting up to after he left Stanford. The last time she'd snuck off to spy on him, he'd still seemed pretty happy there. He'd been halfway through law school, and on track to a very different sort of life than the one she had been on.
"Case," said Eileen. "I saved him and he came looking for me afterwords. We started working together, and we didn't really stop."
"And when you say together, do you mean the two of you are… together?" Deanna asked next. For a moment Eileen looked like a deer in headlights. Her face scrunched up slightly and one shoulder made an aborted half shrug.
"He doesn't think about me like that," she said. Deanna noticed she didn't try to clarify the reverse. "I'm his friend."
It was at this moment that Cas appeared suddenly inside the house again. The slight rush of air was enough to get Eileen to pull out an iron knife, though she relaxed when Cas signed a quick C-A-S at her. Deanna watched as she sheathed the knife and approved of the hunter's good reflexes. She was more than glad that her brother had had Eileen to look out for him when he'd gotten into hunting. The woman didn't seem to be short on issues, but then again, no hunters managed to live a life without any of those.
In one of her few secret spying missions after Sam had gone off on his own, Deanna had met Sam's ex-girlfriend, Jess. She'd tailed the girl to some kitschy coffee place and pretended to trip next to her table. Jess had immediately offered to buy her a new coffee for accidentally tripping her, and Deanna had spent the next half hour enjoying a decent conversation with her. She'd passed every test Deanna could throw at her regarding her status as human, and had spent no small time bragging about her boyfriend's LSAT score and smiling about their plans to rent an apartment together for grad school. She had been nice, and Deanna wondered sometimes what had happened between her and Sam.
Eileen was someone entirely different. Deanna wouldn't have had to be told that this woman was a hunter to guess. She appraised her surroundings constantly, wouldn't sit with her back to a door, and occasionally touched her holster or knife sheath to ensure they were still there. Deanna sat back and watched as Cas and Eileen signed back and forth, paying attention to the loose translations Cas provided within her head to learn they were discussing Cas' teleportation thing.
It was about five minutes later when Sam trudged his way in, being sure to slam the door behind him. He'd always pulled the same kind of stunt when he was a kid and didn't get his way, and Deanna was half tempted to mention this to him. Then again, Sam stopped trying to show everyone just how displeased he was with everything when he saw Eileen was there.
Eileen looked up and smiled at him and Sam gave a little half nod and smile back, but there was something awkward hanging in the air between them. They were clearly very familiar with each other, but they wouldn't quite meet the other's eyes.
"So this is fun," said Deanna. Cas signed what she said so Eileen would understand why Sam had started glaring at Deanna. "What?"
"Leave it alone," said Sam. Deanna heeded the warning and went back to leaning back on the couch and hoping that Bobby would come along soon and break up the silence that had infected the room.
A memory lingered in Deanna's head of Sam at the age of thirteen asking Deanna for advice on how to get a girl to kiss him. She'd had an idea that Dad wouldn't exactly be happy that Sam's first ever crush was a kitsune named Amy, but that hadn't stopped her from giving Sam a few pointers.
It had been almost funny, Sam's dating tendencies in his teens. First there had been Amy, and then Madison the werewolf, and then Lenore the vampire. Every time Dad kicked up a fuss and every time Sam would tell him he was being an ass and that they were people too. And Deanna, she had stayed out of it as best as she could, but Sam had known back then that her opinion was closer to their father's than Sam's. The irony wasn't lost on her that when she'd finally honest to God fallen in love with someone, it had been everything she'd been taught to fear and reject.
That being said… Deanna remembered sometimes that when she'd daydreamed about what it would be like to be married, unlikely as she found the idea with the parody of her parent's marriage having made wounds so deep, sometimes she wasn't sure they would ever close. She'd kept her small fantasies simple, just someone she was comfortable with. Someone who thought the little things were enough, and didn't hold it against her when she couldn't manage being a functional human being. Takeout dinners, old movies, a warm smile.
It just so happened that Cas was more than anything Deanna would have thought to wish for.
Bobby rolled into the living room and told them all to eat something. After a rushed dinner of stew that everyone ate quietly, Bobby cleaned up and then dropped three books on the table.
"I thought y'all might figure it out someday," said Bobby. "And I've been looking into some answers for you, if you want them. Bigger issue, Cas, is gonna be that hunters might not have the shit on hand they need to kill angels, but it's pretty well documented how exactly that needs to be done, so it won't be long until just about every hunter has something that can be used against angels if someone gets a witch hunt up and going for you."
"Well, if she was a witch I'd let the mob get her," said Deanna. Cas rolled her eyes.
"We have friends who are witches, Deanna," Cas chided. "I seem to remember Rowena saving you from more than one curse while we were in Oz."
"Rowena is not our friend. She was only our ally because she wanted to murder the witch of the west," said Deanna back. "And she only healed me because you're scary."
"That is a very good reason," said Cas. "I would have been very unpleasant to everyone if you had continued to be in pain."
"Why didn't you fix it?" Sam asked before Deanna could respond to Cas. Cas looked at him for a moment, trying to gauge if he was actually interested.
"Magic plays by its own rules," Cas said. "It's older than even the old Gods, and does not like to bend to us- I mean, to them. And me as well."
Deanna could see Sam filing that away in the back of his head. She didn't much like thinking about what he might try to do with it.
"The most recent sighting of an angel, besides Cas here, was in fifteenth century Spain," Bobby continued, Sam's curiosity seemingly satisfied. He read from a passage of a book, loosely translated from Spanish in a way that added a sense of romance to the events described. But Deanna could feel through Cas the sense of wrongness in it, and knew it was a glamorized version of something much bloodier. "And the archangel, Raphael, surrendered his grace unto the city of Cordoba, promising his protection."
"That doesn't sound like an angel," said Sam.
"Yeah, which is why it's usually discredited despite the sourcing being decent enough," said Bobby. Pulling out a shitty photocopy of an old news article, he pointed to another passage, seemingly by memory. "But I did some research into it, and there's something to it. He's still seen as the custodian of the city by normal folk. And there has been a series of miracles in Cordoba, one every hundred years or so. Last one was in 1917, when a local woman was cured of cancer after praying in the cathedral there."
"So he might still be alive?" asked Cas. Bobby shook his head.
"I don't think so," he said. "As far as I can tell from the accounts I've read, grace is what makes an angel an angel. Take that out, you've got yourself a dead chicken. What I think is happening is that his batteries kept going after the chicken lost his head, and they'll react to any outpouring of faith that's big enough. The real deep kind that only desperate people have."
"So, we go to Spain," said Cas. Deanna gave her a wary look. It wasn't that she didn't want answers for Cas, or that she didn't want to help her through this newfound identity crisis (being downgraded from a forgotten god to a species of one was hitting her hard). It was just that for some reason chasing after this was ringing a million alarm bells in Deanna' head.
"Are we sure that's a good idea-"
"It'll get us out of reach of any hunters Dad sends after Cas," Sam pointed out. Which was true, unfortunately. "No one's buying a plane ticket to gank anything that isn't an active threat."
"I guess," Deanna said. She noticed Sam giving her an odd look, and braced herself.
"You got a better idea?"
"I guess I'm just thinking I can deal with hunters, if I need to. We don't know what the fuck is going on with this Raphael guy, and I don't think poking Cas' past with a stick is the best idea on the table."
"Maybe Cas has a right to make that kind of decision for herself," said Sam. "I know I would've liked at least the chance to know what was going on with Mom."
"Did you?" asked Deanna. "Sorry, I guess I figured when you fucked off on your own you weren't all that interested in any of us anymore."
"I came back. You didn't," said Sam, narrowing his eyes at her.
"You never even said goodbye to me," said Deanna, instead of letting him get the upper hand for even a second. Because the moment she did, it would be over and they would be back to square one. Make the world a little more comfortable for Sammy. "You just left me alone with them. How well do you think Dad took that? You have no idea-"
"No, I don't, because you never let me have any idea about any of it," said Sam. "You had a million chances to tell me what was really going on, and you never did. I could have helped, okay? You just needed to talk to me once."
"You were a kid, Sam."
"So were you," Sam pointed out, and some of the anger started going out of his voice at that, and Deanna didn't much like the change. She didn't need his pity. In fact, she'd thrown more than enough pity parties all on her own, thank you very much.
"Yeah, well, that's life sometimes," said Deanna. "Didn't mean I needed to drag you down with me."
Sam sighed and fixed his eyes on some spot on the wall, arms crossed.
"I don't want to fight," he said after a second. "But I don't know how to forgive you for this. I don't know if I can."
Deanna felt her throat tighten up at that. She swallowed down the feeling.
"Okay," she said after a second. She turned to look at Cas, who had been watching the entire conversation with a wary kind of interest. "You really wanna go look into this Raphael thing?"
"I have to know," Cas said quietly. Deanna nodded and tried to bury her misgivings. She didn't even know why she had such a feeling of wrong in her gut, and chances were they wouldn't find anything anyone. But if they did, and if that could give Cas a measure of peace, well, that would be something at least.
"I guess I'm outvoted," Deanna said. "Unless Eileen was thinking of taking up my cause?"
"I'd prefer to abstain," Eileen said in response, signing along as she spoke. Sam signed something to her back, and she responded to him quickly. Cas supplied to Deanna after a moment of prompting that Sam had asked if her if she had been able to understand everything they'd said and Eileen had signed back the equivalent of more or less.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," said Bobby, drawing Deanna's attention back to the matter at hand. "First things first, y'all are gonna need something to defend yourselves with. I am almost certain Raphael is dead, but you don't take chances with an archangel. First step, is gear up and then we'll start looking into exactly where you might find some answers."
Deanna didn't have to guess what that meant. Research and more research and still even more research until Bobby was satisfied they weren't going into this half-cocked. Oh joy.