Eighteen
Emmanuel had gone out for just a little while, on his own, the day the demon came to the house. It was Saturday, but they had chosen to stay home that day, in case anyone came to the house needing to be healed. They still took days off, but they did so less often than they once had. Still, Emmanuel enjoyed being outside, and so he'd gone off to take a walk around the neighborhood while Ruth and Daphne made lunch for themselves.
Someone knocked on the door when they were about halfway through their meal. Daphne got up to answer the door, while Ruth waited to see if she would need to help her. Sometimes those who came to be healed needed help walking, or communicating their needs. Ruth could not do all that Emmanuel could, for she was not an angel, but she had learned enough to know what to do when someone was trying to tell her what they needed.
She heard the front door shut, and Daphne walked into kitchen with a man. Ruth looked up into the man's face—and screamed. His face was wrong, underneath. On the surface, he looked human, but he was not. His true face, his true form underneath the human part was twisted and feral and monstrous.
Ruth stood up so fast that her chair crashed to the ground. Instinctively, she rushed for the knife block near the sink. The man—whatever he was—took two big steps and met her halfway, grinning maniacally. Ruth punched him in the face, as hard as she could, not stopping to wonder how she knew how to punch like that, or what this creature was, or why she could see it and Daphne could not.
Daphne was in shock; she simply stood in the entryway to the kitchen, rooted to the floor, her face pale.
The punch jerked the creature's head back and Ruth lunged for a knife at the same time that the creature slammed her into the kitchen counter. She yelled, in pain, in fear, in wild anger, and stabbed the creature in the chest, to the hilt, with a sharp, serrated knife.
He did not react to the knife except to laugh at her, and then he backhanded her so hard across the face that she saw stars. She gasped, dots in her vision. The creature pulled the knife from his chest and held it close to her face, grinning. She brought her arm up, lightning-quick, and knocked the knife out of his hand. It clattered to the ground.
The creature snarled at her and reached for the knife block, but Ruth barreled into him, and they both fell—hard—to the floor. Ruth had enough clarity of mind to look up, quickly, for Daphne. She was no longer standing in the entryway of the kitchen. Ruth did not know where she had gone, but did not have time to wonder. The creature grabbed her roughly by the hair and slammed her face into the floor. Her ears began to ring, and her head throbbed. And that force, that energy in her blood, came roiling to the surface.
Without thought, she cried, "CASTIEL!"
Time seemed to stop as he whooshed into the kitchen, wings spread wide, eyes aflame with that cold, blue glow. The air in the kitchen seemed to suck inward, compressing Ruth's body so that it became difficult to breathe. Emmanuel—Castiel—the angel standing before her was large and imposing and blindingly bright, and his anger washed over her mind like a nightmare. She withstood it only because it was not aimed at her… and because the energy shared between them protected her from the worst of his ire.
He came forward in two large steps, reached down, and pulled the creature up off the floor by the hair, his fist tangled in it, his knuckles gone white. The creature growled and twisted, trying to pull away from the angel, but to no avail.
Castiel—for he was no longer Emmanuel—held the creature tightly by the hair and pressed his other hand to its forehead. Light exploded from the creature's eyes and mouth, and it screamed horrifically.
Ruth pulled herself up off the ground, breathing shallowly, staring in awe and horror as the creature was killed.
Castiel let go of it and the body crumpled to the ground.
The air seemed to release, suddenly, and Ruth took in great gasps of it, feeling lightheaded. Castiel appeared before her, cupping her face in his hands, but roughly. "Did he hurt you?" he demanded, his voice low and gruff and powerful.
"Not really," Ruth replied. "Slapped me once, but I'm fine."
He was breathing heavily, and he closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to hers. Together, they took five, slow, deep breaths. And when he opened his eyes again, they were no longer glowing. He seemed to shrink a little, to return to his mild-mannered human form. His angelic light dimmed and became a warmer tone.
Daphne appeared in the kitchen, staring down at the body of the creature that had attacked Ruth. Her face was still very pale; she looked about ready to vomit. Emmanuel placed a kiss on Ruth's forehead and then went to Daphne. "What about you?" he asked her, gently. "Did he hurt you?"
Daphne shook her head, mutely.
Emmanuel pulled the poor woman into a hug and Ruth came and placed a hand on her shoulder. The two of them stood and comforted this woman who had taken care of them for the past six months. She had become something of a mother figure to them both, and now they had become her guardians.
There was a knock at the front door.
Emmanuel immediately became alert and a little overprotective. He let go of Daphne, his eyes flaring blue-white, his wings spread wide, ruffling the kitchen towel draped over the oven door's handle, blowing the hair back from Ruth's face. He moved with purpose to the door. Ruth followed quickly after him.
Emmanuel opened the door wide, two seconds from sending whoever was standing there flying halfway across the street. Ruth ducked under his arm, looked at the man's face, and placed her body in front of Emmanuel. "He's not a demon!" she said, realizing immediately that the creature that had tried to kill her earlier had, in fact, been a demon.
Emmanuel was still in Papa Bear mode, and the very air in the house seemed to shake. "Who are you?" he demanded of the man standing on the front porch.
"Hey, whoa, whoa!" the man said, stepping back and putting his hands up as a sign of surrender. "I'm—I'm Dean!"
Dean. Dean.
All of the intense, angry power inside Emmanuel seemed to fizzle out. He placed a hand to his forehead as a stab of pain went through his mind. "Dean," he repeated, gritting his teeth.
Ruth, also, was experiencing a headache. She placed a supportive hand on her husband's shoulder.
Emmanuel stared up again into the face of the man, his eyes slitted in pain. "I know… that name," he breathed, but the pain in his head was only getting worse. The memory still would not come, and the more he tried to grasp at it, the worse the pain got.
"Let it go," Ruth hissed through gritted teeth. She squeezed Emmanuel's shoulder, hard. "Let it go for now. It'll come when it'll come!"
The angel took a deep breath, then took another.
All the while, Dean stood in the doorway, staring at the two of them like they were insane. They probably looked it.
The pain began to dissipate as Emmanuel accepted that he could not remember this man yet. "I'm sorry," he said, slowly. "I know that I know you, but I don't remember you."
Dean stood on the porch and stared into Emmanuel's face with a look of utter despair. Then he blinked and the expression was gone, replaced by one of neutrality, as if he felt nothing. "It's fine," he said, though it was clearly not fine.
Emmanuel shook his head. "Now isn't a good time…" he said, and then added, "Dean." He turned to look over his shoulder, towards the kitchen. "A—someone attacked us," he explained, thinking better of telling the man what it had been.
"Yeah," said Dean. "A demon, I'm guessing." He gestured to Ruth. "Considering that Brooke just had to yell at you that I'm not one."
Brooke.
Ruth stared at Dean, and then went up and grabbed him by the shoulders. "You really do know us," she said, her voice hoarse. "You know me as Brooke?"
Dean stared down at her, alarmed. "Y-Yeah," he said.
Ruth felt dizzy.
"What is going on?" Dean said, suddenly, emphasizing each word very clearly, and loudly.
"I'd like to know that, too," came Daphne's voice from behind Ruth.
###
In the end, no one did much explaining of any kind, for it was extremely clear that Dean had come there for some very important reason, and he was dying to get it out.
"What is it?" Ruth asked him, finally, after about five minutes.
"It's my brother," Dean said, all in a rush, so that it sounded like he'd said one, long word. "He's… he's sick, in the head." Dean looked up at Emmanuel, his eyes searching. "Can—can you heal that sort of thing? It's… sort of a—a psychological thing."
"Yes," said Emmanuel, confidently, nodding once.
Dean stood up. "Good, then we gotta go."
Ruth's mind was spinning, and she could feel Emmanuel in the same boat. There was so much that he wanted to ask Dean, about how they knew each other, about what had happened in their pasts, but Dean was so eager to leave, to return to his brother, that Emmanuel did not feel comfortable asking him about anything at that moment. There were, clearly, more important things to be doing.
Daphne stood up with the rest of them and walked them to the door. She was just as flustered as Ruth and Emmanuel were, but she tried not to show it. Probably, she assumed that this would just be like any other time that Ruth and Emmanuel went off to heal someone in a hospital. Probably, she assumed that they would return to her by the end of the day, or the next day.
But that would not be the case.
###
The air in the car was charged with a strange energy, as Dean drove Emmanuel and Ruth to to where Sam Winchester was being held in a mental hospital. Now that Dean was in the car, on the way, he seemed calm enough to want to know more about what had happened to the two of them.
Emmanuel sat up front with Dean, and Ruth sat behind his seat so that she could better look at Dean. She was mentally connected to Emmanuel and could sense him even with her eyes closed, so she did not feel the need to look at him even if the drive was hours long.
"So, Cass," Dean began—
"Emmanuel," the angel corrected, though his voice was soft. "I prefer my new name. It may be hard for you; I know you knew me as Castiel, but… I am not Castiel anymore. I… I don't even remember being Castiel."
Ruth could feel the sadness in him the more he spoke, and she reached out with her mind to comfort him.
"Right…" Dean said, slowly. "Emmanuel. Who named you that, anyway?"
"The Bible," Emmanuel replied, simply.
Dean glanced at him, then looked at Ruth in the rear-view mirror. "Br—Ruth, you wanna elaborate? Emmanuel, here, was never very good at explaining things."
Ruth smiled knowingly.
"It's a strange story," the angel chimed in, before she could say anything. "You may not like it."
"Believe me, I will," Dean countered.
Ruth could feel Emmanuel smile, and he touched her mind, telling her she could go ahead, if she wanted to.
Ruth took a breath, wandering back six months in time, to the day by the reservoir when she had woken up in Emmanuel's arms. She began to speak. Occasionally, Emmanuel would add a detail or two, but he mostly remained silent.
When Ruth got to the part where Daphne had come home with wedding rings, Dean cheered, quite loudly. "Wow, finally!" he exclaimed. "Was wondering when you two would tie the knot—although it must be weird… a human and an angel, being married. Is that even allowed?"
"No one's stopped us yet," Ruth replied, smiling at Dean's enthusiasm. She paused as questions began to pile up in her mind. "How—how long were Emmanuel and I…?"
"Over two years," Dean said.
So they had lost at least two years' worth of memories.
It grew silent.
Dean cleared his throat after a minute or two. "Must suck, not knowing who you are," he said, trying for sympathy.
Ruth said nothing.
Emmanuel spoke up, and in his voice was a smile. "Well, it's our life. And it's a good life."
Ruth smiled, too, feeling a little better.
"Well," Dean said, "hypothetically speaking, what if you found out you were some kind of… bad guy?"
A twinge of fear ran up Ruth's spine, and she could feel Emmanuel's sudden apprehension. All those times he had looked down on himself, those secret, whispered conversations about how he knew that he had done something wrong, in his past. His voice wavered as he spoke. "I don't… I don't feel like a bad person." It was mostly true. Now, in his life with Ruth and Daphne, he had done a lot of good for a lot of people.
Dean glanced at him, then met Ruth's eyes in the mirror. He said nothing.
The air in the car became tense, and the ever-present hum of angelic energy inside Emmanuel rang at a higher frequency, like a high string playing in the background of a horror movie soundtrack. The heartbeat-like pauses in the sound and feel of the humming grew closer together, like a racing heart.
Calm, Ruth warned him. Don't reach for the memories. You need to be strong for when we get to Sam.
Emmanuel acknowledged her words, and she could feel his sudden need to press his forehead to hers and breathe, but she was sitting in the backseat. The car did not have seatbelts, so she leaned forward and rested her arm on the back of his seat, reaching out her hand. He raised one arm up and across his chest and grabbed her hand with his. It was not the same, it did not afford the same physical closeness, but it was something.
Dean witnessed all this out of the corner of his eye, but he remained silent.
"So… Sam," Emmanuel began, wanting to focus on something else. "What's his diagnosis, exactly? You said it was… psychological?"
"Yeah," Dean replied, but he did not go into detail about what was wrong with his brother. Instead, he said, "Someone did this to him."
Emmanuel paused, letting go of Ruth's hand. She leaned back in her seat again.
"You're angry," the angel mused.
"Well, yeah. Dude broke my brother's head."
Emmanuel closed his eyes—Ruth could feel him—and sighed. It was a long sigh, for he knew that Dean was talking about him. Slowly but surely, the memory of what he had done was coming closer to the surface. But it was not quite there, yet. "He betrayed you, this dude," he murmured. "He was your friend?"
Dean glanced at Emmanuel with a look that was not very friendly. "Yeah, well, he's gone."
Emmanuel paused for a moment. They were talking about him, weren't they?
Ruth squinted, trying to piece it together. The reservoir, she said. I found you, naked, and you had crawled out of a reservoir…
Emmanuel looked at Dean. Fear ran high and cold in his blood, but he forced his voice to remain calm. "Did you kill him—your friend?" Had Dean killed Emmanuel and tossed his body into the reservoir? Had he only thought he had killed him? To keep from having some kind of breakdown, and to keep the slowly increasing pressure out of his head, Emmanuel added, "I sense that you kill a lot of people."
"Honestly," said Dean, looking at the angel, "I-I don't know if he is dead. I just know that this… whole thing couldn't be messier. You know, I used to be able to just shake this stuff off, whatever it was. It might take me some time, but… I always could." He paused, looking at Emmanuel. "What Cass did… I just can't. I don't know why." So, Dean had officially clued them in that he was, in fact, talking about Emmanuel—about Castiel.
Emmanuel took a breath, sinking into a deep depression, knowing that, eventually, he would discover just what he had done. And whatever it was, it was awful. Still, although he did not remember being friends with Dean, he knew that they had been friends, and there was some instinct to protect Dean, and his feelings. "It doesn't matter why you can't shake this off," he murmured.
"Of course it matters," Dean snapped.
"No. You're not a machine, Dean. You're human."
Dean stared at Emmanuel for a second or two, but moved his eyes back to the road. No one spoke for a long time.
###
They drove through the night, and Ruth fell asleep at some point. She awoke when the car stopped. Dean got out and leaned down through the window. "Just hang tight," he said. "I'll be back in a minute."
He was not back in a minute. Ruth and Emmanuel got out of the car to stretch their legs in the early morning air. Ruth was hungry and thirsty, and needed to pee. She glanced around and saw no one else walking down the sidewalks or driving past, so she darted behind a bush and emptied her bladder quickly, Emmanuel standing guard, scanning the area like a watchdog, lest someone come by.
Ruth smiled at him when she stepped out from behind the bush. He smiled in return, placing a hand on her cheek, and she felt a bit more energetic. He had reinvigorated her a little, giving her part of his own, endless, energy. She remembered the first night they had spent together, on the steps of the church, when he had kept her warm with his energy, and watched over her as slept.
They heard footsteps approaching them and looked up. Ruth gasped; Emmanuel grabbed her wrist and pulled her behind him, shielding her with his body. Dean was coming back, but he had a woman in tow—a demon.
"Her face!" Emmanuel hissed. "She's one of—
"It's okay," said the demon. "We come in different flavors."
Ruth stared at the demon's face, that horrible, twisted, permanent snarl.
"She's uhh… a friend," Dean said, though he didn't sound very sure.
"Meg," the demon introduced herself. "Just here for moral support. I mean, after all, we go way back."
Ruth stared harder at the demon, then looked up at Emmanuel. He shared a confused look with her, then glanced between Meg and Dean.
"Dean and me," Meg elaborated, seeing the looks on their faces. "Just met you, of course." She laughed, then swaggered up to Emmanuel and Ruth, glancing between the two of them. "I think we're gonna be good friends, too," she purred, and there was a clear indication of some sexual tension in her voice, her stance, the way she stared at Emmanuel, his body… but also in the way she stared at Ruth.
Ruth met her gaze, more intrigued and confused than she was angry or defensive, now. Whoever Meg was… she was hiding something. Ruth knew, and so did Emmanuel, that they had known her before, as well. She hadn't only known Dean. But, like all of their other memories, whatever their relationship with his demon had been, it was locked behind the wall in their heads.
Dean glared at Meg's back. "All right, can we go?"
###
The seating arrangement in the car had been decided in a short, intense argument that mostly consisted of neither Ruth nor Emmanuel fully trusting Meg enough to let her sit in the back with one of them, alone. In the end, Meg sat on the far right, Emmanuel in the middle, and Ruth on the left, beside him. Dean sat up front, driving, alone.
No one spoke. For a while, it was because of the tension in the back. Meg was fine, and she never did try to harm anyone in the car, and eventually, Ruth and Emmanuel were able to relax around her. Still, silence reigned, and there was a rigidity to the way that Dean sat, and held the steering wheel, that told her that he was stressed out about something. She thought it was probably about his brother, but…
Emmanuel, who had reverted back to his soft and gentle nature after realizing that Meg was not going to hurt anyone, was feeling extremely uneasy at this tense silence. Finally, he ventured to speak. "This silence is uncomfortable," he said. "Is there something I should know?"
"I dunno," said Meg, her voice dripping with something like sarcasm. "Dean?"
"No," said Dean. "Meg has that effect. Awkward, you know?"
Emmanuel, relieved that that was all it was, turned to look at Meg. "That must be difficult for you," he said, feeling truly sorry about her… aura of awkwardness.
Ruth closed her eyes and smiled tightly at Emmanuel's naïvety. She couldn't exactly blame him; six months spent around a highly religious woman (Daphne), reading almost nothing but the Bible, there hadn't been much time to learn about humor.
"Dean's making a joke, Emmanuel," Meg explained.
Emmanuel slowly faced forward again, and Ruth could feel him putting the pieces together. "Oh," he said, and chuckled.
And, despite everything, Ruth lit up to see him smile, to hear him laugh. She gazed at him, happily. He turned to her, a softer smile on his face now, his eyes crinkled at the corners, and kissed her. He felt no shame to be kissing her in front of two—for all intents and purposes—strangers. Somehow, she knew that, even before he had become Emmanuel, he had never shied away from showing her how he felt, no matter who was nearby. And she was grateful to him for it, for his relationship with her had been her one rock through these last six months. Of course, Daphne had been there, as well, but she could not kiss Daphne, or lay in her arms at night, and it had been a relief—though a selfish one—to know that she was not going through this strange amnesia by herself.
Ruth lay her head on Emmanuel's shoulder, and he rested his cheek on the top of her head.
They drove on.