Seventeen

The next several months were a frenzy of activity during the day, followed by quiet respites at night. Daphne had come out of her room in the morning after discovering Emmanuel's true nature, and had told him what Ruth had told him: that he could be using his powers to help people.

And Emmanuel, newly strengthened with a quiet confidence, had readily agreed. He had gazed at Ruth as he had said it, his eyes full of the perfect balance between love, adoration… and desire.

Daphne took care of everything, making whatever phone calls were necessary, mainly to her church, and others around the county. People began to show up at the door, people with any number of ailments, from a common cold to blindness to disfigurements. Emmanuel healed them all. They began to come from farther and farther away, as word of his gifts spread. They told no one of his true identity, and even among each other, Castiel and Brooke continued to call each other Emmanuel and Ruth. Only in the dark, late at night, did they whisper each other's true names.

Emmanuel came into his own, growing more and more self-assured, though it never passed over into cockiness. Even as his happiness expanded, with the more people he helped, he was ever-aware of the horrible memory lingering somewhere in the back of his mind. Hubris had brought him down the first time, and he did not intend to let it bring him down a second time. He would use his powers only to heal the sick and injured, and he would do it humbly.

Still, Ruth watched as the light that poured from his body grew brighter and brighter the more he believed in himself and his ability to do good in the world. And she was grateful to God that He had allowed Castiel to move on from whatever mistakes he had made in the past. She often watched from the background as her angel laid hands upon those who came to him and healed them. She would watch as light would flow from his hands into the person, would watch as scars disappeared, as cataracts disappeared from eyes, as the paralyzed would stand and walk.

Emmanuel; they had found the name, seemingly by coincidence, that morning in church. Somehow, Ruth did not think, anymore, that they had found the name by accident. Castiel was not Jesus, and it was arrogant to think so, but Jesus had been a healer, as well. Perhaps finding that name, among hundreds, had been God speaking to Castiel, giving him a hint of what he was meant to do.

Sometimes, Emmanuel would come across a person with a particularly difficult ailment. Usually, these were of a spiritual nature, rather than a physical one, as of someone who had lost their faith due to some traumatic event. Or they were psychological. Depression, PTSD, severe anxiety. Emmanuel could help these people just as well as those with physical problems, but it took him more time, for wandering through a person's brain was harder than mending a broken bone. He had to be careful not to break the mind, not to stray too far left or right, to only undo the one, specific knot in the system. These were the cases that Ruth helped him with. Helping did not include much—only that she would step out of the corner of the room and come to him, placing a hand on his shoulder as he concentrated. The ever-present humming in her blood would increase as Emmanuel would connect to it, take a slight increase of power from it. Ruth could never quite see what he was doing, for her mental reach did not include the people he was healing, but she could feel his slow, careful progress as he made his way through the maze of another person's mind to find the root of the problem.

These cases often left him exhausted on a spiritual level. The force in his body, the energy shared between himself and Ruth, would lay dormant for the rest of the day, recuperating itself. He would sit outside on the steps, with his face to the sun, basking like a cat. Or, if it was cloudy that day, he would lead Ruth gently to the bedroom and curl around her body in the bed, and go still, his breathing deep and quiet. It was closest to sleeping he ever came.

Sometimes, Ruth and Emmanuel would have to drive to where the sick were, for they were bedridden at home, or in a hospital, too weak to sit up, let alone to drive. These semi-regular road trips were fun for Ruth. It gave her a chance to show Emmanuel music that was not religious. She would flip through every radio station, usually landing on some rock station. Emmanuel did not necessarily enjoy the music itself, but she often caught him smiling at her out of the corner of her eye as she jammed out to Led Zeppelin, or AC/DC. These were songs that she remembered from long before she had ever lost her memory and woken up in Emmanuel's arms at the reservoir. These were songs she'd grown up on. She threw a little pop in there, too, sometimes, just for a change of pace. Always, Emmanuel would sit quietly in the passenger seat, his hands folded in his lap, but a small smile would play at the corners of his mouth. Every once in a while, she let him drive; they didn't know why he knew how to drive, but Ruth was grateful that he had the skill. It gave him an amount of freedom that he would not have had otherwise.

Not everyone who came to be healed by Emmanuel believed that it would work, that anything would happen. But they always left as a believer. Daphne was often gone when people came to the house, for she still had to work, but if a person did happen to come late, she would stand in a corner with Ruth and watch Emmanuel work. And sometimes, she would witness the help that Ruth gave the angel. And the more she witnessed the strange connection between Ruth and Emmanuel, the quieter she became around them both.

###

They were starting to become truly worried four months into their stay, for Daphne hardly spoke to them at all anymore. She was not unfriendly, only quiet. Still, her silence was concerning.

Then Daphne was late coming home from work one day.

Ruth called her cellphone but got no answer. She and Emmanuel sat quietly on the couch in the living room and waited, without speaking.

An hour later, Daphne came through the door.

Ruth and Emmanuel stood in tandem and walked quickly over to her. "Are you okay?" Ruth asked her, taking the woman in with her eyes, checking for injuries or some other sign that would indicate why she was so late coming home. She was holding a small paper bag in her hand, from a jeweler's store.

"Yes, I'm fine," Daphne said, putting her hand out in a calm down manner, palm facing the floor. "I'm sorry. I should have called, but… Well…" She smiled in a strange, secretive kind of way. "Why don't we sit down?"

Ruth and Emmanuel glanced at each other, and slowly shuffled back to the couch, sitting side by side and staring up at Daphne as she sat dragged a chair close to the couch so that she could sit near them. The small paper bag was slung over one arm. She pulled it off and smiled at them again.

"These last four months have tested my faith in ways I could never have imagined," she said. "I believe it's tested all of our faiths. Four months ago, angels were just a concept. Yes, I believed in them, but I believed they lived up in Heaven and did not directly interact with people." She grinned at Emmanuel.

"And," she continued, looking at Ruth, "four months ago I would have said that, were angels to come down to Earth, that a romantic relationship between a human and an angel would be… wrong. Unthinkable. Strange."

Ruth looked down at her lap for a moment, but lifted her gaze again almost immediately. Daphne was smiling at her, gently.

"We should always have our faith in God," Daphne went on. "But we should also have faith in each other. So… I bought you both something." She bent down, to the paper bag sitting on the floor at her feet, and pulled out two small, black boxes.

Ruth's breath caught in her throat.

"Now, you told me that you were married, and that you had to sell your rings for money," said Daphne, holding the boxes in her hands. "I assume that that was a lie, but, given the circumstances, I've long since forgiven you for any lies you may have told me when I first let you into my home." She handed one box to each of them. "Getting married for real is probably impossible, but… you should at least have the rings."

Ruth was crying. She opened the box and stared down at the gold wedding band.

"I didn't get you a diamond ring, Ruth," Daphne said. "They're… quite expensive, but it also didn't really seem your style."

Ruth shook her head. "This—this is fine," she said. "This is great." She laughed and glanced up at Emmanuel.

He had taken his ring out of the box and was pinching it between his thumb and forefinger. He squinted at it, head tilted to the side in that endearing, puppy-dog look. "I think this one is yours," he said.

Ruth pulled hers out and held it up next to his, and saw that he was correct. She was holding the bigger one. "This is good, though," she said. "We're supposed to put them on each other."

"I see," he replied. "Then…"

Still crying, and feeling slightly moronic, Ruth held out her left hand to him. He slid the ring onto her finger. She flexed her hand to get a feel for the ring. Somehow, it fit perfectly. She found herself wanting to stare at it all night, but quickly pulled her eyes away. "Okay, now you," she said to him.

He held out his hand to her, and she took it and slid the ring onto his finger. She could tell it was a little too big, looking at it, but Emmanuel squeezed his hand into a fist a few times, flexing his fingers out each time, and then the ring was suddenly the right size. She stared at his finger. "You can magically make rings the right size?" she asked, dumbly.

"Yes, I… suppose I can."

She laughed, feeling giddy. "Well, that's super random, but it's awesome."

Emmanuel smiled at her.

Ruth turned to Daphne, who had been watching silently the entire time. "How long have you been cooking this up?" she asked. "Is this why you've been quiet for so long?"

Daphne smiled and sighed, leaning back in the chair. "Yes," she admitted. "I've been thinking about this for a long time. At first, I thought that your relationship was wrong, that it couldn't happen, but the more I watched the two of you work together, the more I saw that I was wrong. And then I knew I had to do something." She gestured to their hands—their rings. "This was all I could think of."

Ruth reached down and squeezed Emmanuel's hand. "This was perfect," she said.

"Yes," Emmanuel added, in that quiet, gentle voice that perfectly hid the power thrumming in his veins. "This was perfect."

###

And so, their life went on. Daphne got up and went to work in the morning, and Ruth and Emmanuel waited for the sick and injured to arrive on their doorstep. In between patients, they would cook and clean, and read. And they would sit and talk, or curl up in bed. All together on Saturdays, they would still take their strolls in the park, or go hiking down by the river. On Sundays, they would still go to church, and their church family—for they had come to think of this congregation as a sort of family—commented happily about their new wedding rings.

And life went on, idyllic, perfect. Emmanuel had found his new purpose and began to forget that he had ever had a life outside of what his life was now. Of course, he had no real memory of his old life, but he began to forget even the snippets he had remembered here and there in the beginning of his new life with Ruth. And Ruth forgot her old life, as well. Even at night, in the darkness, as their bodies met, they no longer used each other's real names. They no longer cried out, "Castiel," or "Brooke."

Their real names, now, were Emmanuel and Ruth.

And they were happy. Truly happy.

But all good things must come to an end.