Fifteen

Ruth stood in the bathroom at Daphne's house as the water in the shower heated up. She stared at herself in the mirror, turned around so that her back faced it, with her head thrown over her shoulder. She glanced up at her own face, saw how wide her eyes were.

Steam began to pour from the shower, so she turned and quickly shut off the water. She looked at her back in the mirror again, tracing the gigantic wings—angel wings—with her eyes.

Without realizing she'd been doing it, she was calling out, reaching for Emmanuel with her mind. She didn't know how far the telepathic connection went, but he could certainly hear her from across the house. He entered the bathroom suddenly, paused for a moment with wide eyes at her nakedness, then quickly shut the door. He turned back to her again, swallowing.

"Oh, stop," she said. "I'm sure you've seen me naked before. Look." She turned her back to him, so that he could see the massive tattoo spanning her entire back, her shoulders, the backs of her arms.

He approached her slowly and placed trembling fingers on her skin, tracing the tattoo—

—You've branded yourself.

The memory came quickly and left just as fast. Those three words, spoken in Emmanuel's voice, and nothing more.

After the headache receded, Ruth turned to face him again. "There's more," she muttered, and showed him her arm. A tattoo covered her left forearm on the underside, the soft skin. The language was entirely foreign to her, and did not look like any other language she had seen. The symbols looked less like true symbols and more like chicken scratch, and she couldn't figure why she'd make a tattoo out of the word (words?).

Emmanuel snatched her arm roughly in his hand, bending his head to study to the tattoo.

"What…" she began.

He sucked in a breath between his teeth and held his head in both hands, dropping her arm.

Ruth groaned in pain as his memory was shared with her. A cascade of voices, all different, male and female, young and old, rushed through her brain. And they all said the same word. A name:

Castiel.

Three—no, four—voices among the dozens and dozens that they heard also said, simply, Cass. One of the voices was hers.

His head was splitting, and his face was stuck in a grimace, his teeth bared. He held his head in his hands, squeezing his temples with the heels of his hands.

Concerned, and in less pain than he was in, Ruth gently pushed him down. Blindly, he sat on the floor in the bathroom, and she knelt in front of him, her knees digging into the thin bath mat over the tile. She cupped his face in her hands and brought her forehead close to touch his. Together, automatically, they breathed.

After a minute or two, the pain in his head went away, at least, mostly.

He pulled away from her, breathing shakily. His blue eyes, still squinting slightly, in pain, gazed at her face. He reached up and brushed the hair out of her eyes.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Physically, yes. I think."

"Well…" she began, slowly. "At least we know your real name, now."

Castiel. Emphasis on the -el. Castiel.

Emmanuel. -El.

Ruth smiled. "What are the odds?"

He rubbed his forehead a little with the heel of his hand. "Maybe it was fate."

"Maybe," she agreed, and sighed. "Maybe I should show you the rest later…"

"The rest?"

Sighing again, she straightened up on her knees, and tapped the tattoo below her navel, right above her bikini line: Angel Whore.

He stared at the words, his head slowly tilting to one side. "Well, that's inappropriate," he murmured.

She laughed. Somehow, it hadn't been the reaction she'd been expecting, though she didn't know what she had been expecting. The laughter died on her lips almost immediately, however. "Listen," she said. "It would seem crazy to say this if we were in any other situation, but I think I know what you are."

His eyes flicked up to look into hers, tearing away from the tattoo right above her vagina. His expression was quizzical.

She gave him a look like she was wondering if he was a little thick in the head. "Don't think too hard," she said.

His blue eyes darted around the bathroom for a moment, putting it all together in his head. Angel wings; "Angel Whore"; and that name etched into her arm: Castiel. A Biblical name. The name of an—

"Angel," he whispered. "I'm… I'm an angel?"

She shook her head at him, slowly. "I mean, look at yourself." Her eyes traced his body, but then moved beyond it, to the light that outlined him, to the wings that were currently folded at his back, but were very large and jutted above his shoulders and out a little.

She could hear the jumble of his thoughts in her head, stumbling over each other as he fought to make sense of this information that made no sense. Yet he knew, instinctively, that she was right. He was an angel.

A memory fell into his head, a memory that Ruth did not share directly, but she heard it nonetheless:

"Who are you?"

"Castiel."

"Yeah, I figured that much. I mean what are you?"

"I'm an angel of the Lord."

It was too much at once. He fought to stay conscious, now, holding his head tightly in hands again, rocking back and forth on the bathroom floor, moaning wordlessly. His head felt like it would explode.

Ruth, mentally tied to him, also fought her own flickering vision. There was a dull throb in her head, and she tried to separate her own thoughts from his, but it was virtually impossible in that moment. She leaned toward him and pulled him to her, holding him in her arms. They sat like that for a long while, and eventually, they calmed.

"So," Ruth murmured, "what do I call you now?"

He shook his head. "Castiel just gives me a headache, and I feel some… negative emotion towards it. For now, I think I'd prefer Emmanuel."

She nodded, tracing the symbols on her forearm. Enochian. That was the language his name was written in. It was the language that had been humming in the background her mind since she'd woken in his arms by the reservoir.

Funny, she thought, with a smile.

What?

You, naked, holding me at the reservoir. And now I'm naked, holding you. It's just a silly thing.

They sat for a while longer, not speaking, but soon, Ruth began to shiver. Emmanuel shifted, and they both stood. He touched her face for a moment, and then left her so that she could shower.

###

Ruth lay beside Emmanuel in the dark of Daphne's guest bedroom later that night. When they had spoken to her about staying there, in her house, Emmanuel had let Ruth do most of the talking. They had told her only what she needed to know, and that had not included any superpowers that Emmanuel might have. Now that they knew what he was, they had no intention of telling Daphne about that, either.

Ruth turned in the bed to face her angel, laying on her side. He lay on his back, but turned his head to look at her. It was dark, but Ruth could see the light inside his body; it spilled out into the room, a little, almost like a night light. The amount of light, she thought, did not match the amount of power that thrummed inside his body. Perhaps she simply couldn't perceive it all.

"Do you think we were ever really married?" she asked, her voice low, barely above a whisper.

"I don't imagine an angel would marry a human," he replied, blue eyes gazing at her. "But, somehow, it feels like we've been married for years."

She balled her left hand up into a light fist. "No rings," she said.

"Where are your wedding rings?" Daphne had asked, earlier that day, as they were discussing things.

Ruth had said, quickly, "We had to sell them for money."

Daphne had pursed her lips at the answer, though Ruth did not know if it was because she had felt bad, or because she didn't believe it.

"Perhaps we were only married in spirit," Emmanuel murmured, breaking Ruth out of the memory.

"Seems good enough," she said.

He did not speak.

She scooted closer to him in the bed and lay an arm across his chest. "I assume you're not tired?"

"No."

She laughed. "So, you don't sleep. What the hell are you gonna do all night?"

"I just thought I'd lay here quietly—

Last night on Earth. Any plans?

I just thought I'd… sit here quietly.

Emmanuel winced as the memory took over his brain for a moment. But it was gone quickly.

"You must know that man," Ruth said. "It's the second time you've seen him, heard him."

"Yes," Emmanuel whispered. "He feels… familiar."

Ruth massaged her head. "I think I know him, too."

"Yes," the angel repeated.

"Should we be… looking for him?" she wondered, aloud.

"No!" He said it so emphatically, with such a whip-like tone to his voice, that it shocked her.

She felt the No reverberate around in her skull, and winced. "All right," she said.

Emmanuel sat up in the bed. Ruth sat up with him. "I'm sorry," he whispered, touching her face. "I—I don't know why I said it like that. There's something… something tied to him, to the memory of him. Something bad."

She touched her forehead to his. "I believe you. If you don't want to look for him, then we won't."

He sighed. "I just want to stay here, with you. With Daphne. I don't… I don't want to be an angel." His voice cracked on the last word.

Concerned, Ruth pulled back to look at him. He looked… broken. His head remained bowed, and there was a furrow between his brows. His mouth was set in a grim line. "What is it?" she asked, her voice gentle.

A small glimmer of a feeling floated into her mind as he allowed her farther into himself. "I think," he began, in a voice so small and plaintive that it nearly broke her heart, "I think I did something wrong."

And she realized, then, that he had been hiding this feeling from her the whole time. It tied in with his aversion to lying, but it was so much more than that. A vision of the dream she'd had that morning flashed into her mind: his head and face covered in that black liquid, thick, like tar. His eyes, wide and crazed, his mouth in a malicious grin.

"You think that was real?" she asked, remembering to keep her voice low, ever-aware of Daphne in the other room.

"I do," he confirmed. "I don't have any real memory of that, but… Somehow, I know that that was really me. It wasn't just a nightmare you had. It was a memory. At least, that part of it was."

Ruth shivered, disturbed by that picture of his face in her mind. She took a shaky breath. "Well, if there was ever a time to start over, it would be now. We don't have most of our memories, so…"

"I don't want to go searching for anymore of them," he said, looking up into her eyes. "Please. I just want to be Emmanuel."

She took another breath, this one steadier than the last, and cupped his face in one of her hands. "All right," she said. "Then we won't. We'll just be… Emmanuel and Ruth. That's all."

"Thank you," he said, and leaned forward to kiss her.

When he pulled away, she said, "Now, I can't exactly… ignore that you're not human." She gestured at him with a hand. "I can see your… everything."

"As long as you're the only one who can see me, I don't mind," he told her, his voice calm and serious.

She smiled at him. "You're sweet."

Together, they lay back down in the bed. Quickly afterwards, Ruth drifted off to sleep. She did not have nightmares.