The pleasant warmth of the sun over the beach in Bermuda changed in an instant, now beating down hard enough that it was hardly a few seconds before Deanna felt herself begin to sweat. A look around her verified that they had once again changed location with little to no warning, and all at the snap of Cas' asshole friend's fingers. Deanna reached out for Cas' wrist, an instinct which seemed to be a good one, in case whoever the guy in the bright purple Hawaiian trunks and sunglasses decided he'd had enough of her. Cas had more than implied he didn't have to much patience for humans.
"Aren't you supposed be stuck in a rock?" the man asked Cas. There was no name for him in Cas' head, or rather their were many names, and all of them false. Anansi, Crow, Maui, Loki. Names and faces stolen or borrowed from others, for a few centuries at a time. The only word that really rang true was a word in a language Deanna didn't know, and whose closest English translation was 'brother'. Perhaps it was Enochian, the language of angels. It was a language that generations of hunters had done their best to purge from the world. "I was going to let you stew for a few more decades, listening to preteen boys complain about Suzie from homeroom not paying them enough attention."
Cas' mind flashed a bright yellow, sheer anger overtaking her. Deanna couldn't help letting it spread through her too, and within a second Cas' brother had two women giving him nearly identical death glares. Perhaps they were hopelessly outmatched, but they still managed to make him flinch.
"A witch found me," Castiel told him slowly. "And bound me to his will. I begged for your help, brother. And you left me there."
His expression didn't change, but Deanna could sense a changing in the desert air, almost as though it had thickened in the same way it did before a thunderstorm. She looked up to see a still blue sky and wondered where the hell they were anyway.
"I didn't hear you. I got into some trouble and I've been laying low," he said, and Deanna believed him even if she still hated him. "And the witch…"
"I killed him," Cas said.
"You should have left him for me," said the man. The whatever he was, Deanna means. Clearly not human. "I would have made it hurt. Men should know better than to bind gods."
"I am not a god," said Cas. "I know what I am. You can't lie to me anymore."
Deanna felt the heavy weight of amber eyes on her.
"Is that right?" he said. Although Deanna might have called his tone casual, there was no mistaking the threat. His eyes fell to her shoulder, where Deanna knew the binding spell was still inscribed into her very cells. And then, only moments later, she could feel extra pressure in her head like someone trying to pry it open and worm their way in.
"No," Cas said simply, taking the pressure onto herself and sparing Deanna's mind the examination. "She is not a part of this. And if you so much as touch her-"
"I'm fine, Cas," Deanna said to her quickly, not wanting to escalate anything until they had a decent plan of getting away or winning. She knew instantly she had made a mistake, if the intense feeling of pain in her stomach was anything to go by. She doubled over, and had but to look at Cas to see that she was in intense pain as well. It subsided after a few moments.
"You can't take her from me," Cas said, a forced calm in her voice. "The binding spell changed when she took it on. You can't remove it without our consent. And there is nowhere you can send her that my being would not be dragged in her wake."
"She knows your name," he said, sounding rattled. "Cassie, what the hell is this? Stockholm syndrome?"
"Humans prefer the term marriage, or so I'm told," said Cas, her biting and ill-timed sense of humor kicking in. Deanna mentally snapped at her to calm the fuck down. "And I'm the one who asked her to look for my name. We found part of it."
"Castiel," he said after a moment. Then he added: "You know."
Cas nodded slowly, but Deanna could feel the swirls of color changing rapidly as she took in her true name. The one that had been hidden from her. And with that thought, all of the pieces began to fall into place for Deanna. She knew who this was, at least vaguely, and she knew what had been done to Cas' memories. The information had been there all along, but so had that nagging feeling not to figure it out. Cas' mind stuttered to a stop as she read Deanna's thoughts.
"Brother, huh?" Deanna said out loud, all sense of caution gone. "Interesting word to give her to remember. It's the only one she believes. And if Cas is an angel, that would make you-"
A snap of the angel's fingers, and Deanna found herself unable to speak. Her mouth kept moving, but no words came out. She wondered if this angel realized that Cas could hear everything she was thinking, that his secret was already lost and decided likely he didn't. The side effects of binding an angel to a human would be unknown to anyone except them.
"An angel," Cas finished for her. Deanna touched Cas arm lightly, and didn't take offense when Cas shook her off. She wanted to feel this rage, and Deanna would let her. It wouldn't help in the long run, but sometimes that wasn't the point. "It was a possibility. I thought maybe Raphael had misunderstood, because if you were an angel, you would have told me who I was. You wouldn't have left my past shrouded in mystery and told me only vague tales that you saved me by waking me from a long slumber."
"An old God too long gone for even the old Gods to remember," said the man flippantly, his eyes darkening. "C'mon, Cassie. It's a good backstory. And it would have worked if you weren't so stubbornly determined to do the exact opposite of what you're supposed to. You got yourself cursed your first time off the bench. Hera still hasn't forgiven you. You can't even be stuck in rock correctly."
'He was trying to protect you,' Deanna realized, then thought towards Cas. Cas didn't much care.
"I remember you," Cas said, teeth gritting as she struggled against the haziness of memories coming into being. The careful architecture keeping her from her past life was being haphazardly dismantled as she spoke, and Deanna urged her to make sure she didn't hurt herself in the effort to remember. "Gabriel, the Messenger."
"Not anymore," he said. "And you aren't Castiel anymore, either. There are no more angels."
"You can't take my name away from me," said Cas fiercely. "I won't let you."
Gabriel snorted.
"Just like I thought. All those years and you still didn't learn any fucking gratitude," said Gabriel. "Do you want to know what would have happened if I hadn't taken those memories from you? You'd be dead, just like everybody else. Sure, Raphael's grace is still kicking, but he isn't. It's just you and me, and it's all because of hunters like your dumb girlfriend."
"Wife," Castiel corrected. "My incredibly intelligent wife."
Gabriel laughed in her face.
"Jesus Christ, and I mean that in the most blasphemous way possible," said Gabriel. "If the angels were still around and they heard you say that, they wouldn't kill you. They would eviscerate you. They'd invent brand new tortures to let you know just how fucked up falling for one of them is."
"But you're the one who told us," Deanna said out loud, surprised to find her voice again. She guessed that Gabriel had been too distracted yelling at Cas to keep up whatever magic he'd stuck on her. "You told the nomads of the Arabic peninsula how to defend themselves against angels. Holy oil, sigils, the hunter's creed. They spread the knowledge throughout their first empire, started the Men of Letters. It was all because of the archangel Gabriel."
"Key word being 'defend', princess," said Gabriel. "The heavenly host wanted to end the world, and I figured that sounded like a raw deal for you assholes. I didn't really take into account what vicious little monsters humans could be. Defense, my ass. You started hunting us the same as all those creatures of the night you're so scared of, and before long heaven was desperately fighting to the last man under Raphael's say so. It took two hundred years, but eventually you killed every last one of us. Even old Raphael buckled eventually."
"But you saved Cas," Deanna said.
"Why?" Cas said next. Gabriel smiled at her cruelly.
"Maybe I just didn't want to be alone," he said. "And I figured no one would miss the fuck up angel who couldn't even manage to kill children correctly in Egypt. You had more lamb's blood on your hands at the end of that night than men's."
Deanna could feel the sudden stillness in Cas.
"But don't get me wrong, Cassie. You still killed," he said. "Do you want those memories back? I'm not even the one who took those ones from you, you've been rewritten so many damn times. But I can give it all back to you. Do you think your wife would look at you the same way if she knew everything you'd done?"
Castiel looked at Deanna a moment, and Deanna saw doubt in her eyes.
"Let me break the binding spell," said Gabriel. "And everything can go back to the way it was. I'll talk Hera into breaking her curse, and I'll find you some other place to hide in the heavens. Your little friend can get back to her life. Trust me, Cassie. You're putting her in danger every second you spend with her. And not just from me."
Deanna started laughing. Gabriel and Castiel both turned to look at her in confusion, but she couldn't quite make herself stop. It was so fucking ridiculous, the posturing and vague threats and the way Gabriel couldn't quite hide how worried he was about Cas. The phrase 'Trust me' uttered with complete certainty that Cas would, and even more so the fact that Cas almost did. Almost.
"What's funny?" Gabriel asked after Deanna hiccuped and finally managed to stop digging herself further into a hole.
"You," said Deanna. "That might be the most convoluted way to tell someone you're not good enough to date their sister I've ever heard, but hey as long as it's effective. I have a little brother, dude, I know the feeling. Your first mistake was implying you gave a single fuck about my safety."
Gabriel narrowed his eyes at her. Deanna was quicker to the punch than he was.
"You can shut me up again, if you like. Cas can still hear me," said Deanna. "You can act like you don't care about her all day long, but honestly? You can't bullshit a bullshitter, and I'm the best liar I know. I don't care why you picked Cas to survive. Thanks for that, anyway. But if you think for even a second I'm going to let you take her from me, you have another thing coming."
Speaking of mistakes, angering an archangel was one Deanna likely wouldn't make again. The attack on her mind this time was merciless, and Cas couldn't protect her in time to keep Gabriel out. He raked through her memories, targeting the painful ones, and Deanna was vaguely aware she let out a pained scream before falling to her knees, Castiel quickly kneeling beside her.
"I get it now," he said, with barely a smile. "Role model like that, no wonder you have to keep Cassie tied to your side."
Oh look, here was a guy who knew how to go for the jugular.
"I am not like him," said Deanna. "Cas loves me."
"And mommy loves daddy, too," said Gabriel in a sing song voice. "She loves him so much she won't even leave him. No matter how much he hurts her."
"I would never do that to Cas."
"Then why won't you break the binding spell?" Gabriel asked. Deanna looked away from him with a frown, never having thought of it quite like that. Breaking that meant Cas leaving, and Cas couldn't leave. Dear God, did that sound as creepy and possessive as Gabriel was implying?
"At least I care about what she wants," said Deanna. Gabriel rolled his eyes.
"People want shit they shouldn't have all the time," he said. "My job isn't to keep her happy, it's to keep her safe. Safe from all of you. Because you want to know what being on humanity's side got me? It got my entire family killed, and you're not taking her, too."
"She's not," said Cas, breaking into the argument. "Ask me who I would pick Gabriel, and it's her every time. You lied to me and left me helpless to the mercy of others. And I don't forgive you."
"Cassie-"
"I didn't ask for your opinion on the matter," said Castiel icily. "You're not my brother."
Gabriel looked like he had been slapped. Then his face hardened into a crafty expression Deanna didn't like one bit.
"You'll pick her every time, huh?" he asked quietly. "Let's see about that."
One second later Deanna could feel her mind going totally blank. She lashed out against the feeling but there was nothing she could do to stop it. She turned to look at Cas, only to find she was obviously experiencing the same thing. In that moment of terror, something silver appeared in Castiel's hand. She looked down at it more in confusion than anything else, and it whizzed out of her fingers into Gabriel's palm within a few moments anyway.
"Not that this little pinpricker could kill me anyway," he said, with a smirk. "Take away the abandonment issues and the loneliness, and you've got two normally well adjusted grown ups that have to actually like each other for who you are. If things work out, I might even give you my blessing."
Deanna vaguely wondered who the hell was talking, and where the hell she was. She looked at Cas, who didn't seem to have any answers. She frowned suddenly and then hugged Deanna to her, tightly enough that Deanna couldn't have escaped if she'd wanted to.
There was the feeling of a tug in the center of Deanna's chest as soon as Cas touched her, and an annoyed look from the man that was glaring at them. She closed her eyes, feeling nauseous for a moment as the tugging sensation seemed to pull her back and the ground dropped out from under her. Then she was sitting in the middle of a circle of candles, a man and a woman staring down at her and letting out twin sighs of relief.
"Deanna, Cas, thank God you're okay," he muttered, reaching forward to help her up. She accepted the hand, if a little warily and then looked at the dark-haired woman who had just been holding her. Cas or Deanna apparently. She wasn't sure which.
"Yeah, thank God," she said after a second, not sounding entirely sure of herself. "I'm sorry, who are all of you?"