A/N: Another shorter chapter because originally, this was way too long, so I decided to break it up into pieces.
Ten
Brooke wandered the broken remains of the building where Castiel had told her to meet him.
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"Brooke." He was jogging beside her at Bobby's.
She stopped, looking around. She didn't remember coming back to Bobby's.
"Am I dreaming?" she asked.
"Yes. I must speak with you, in person. Meet me here." He took a slip of paper out of his coat pocket and handed it to her.
"Castiel, what's wrong?" she asked him, reaching up to touch his face. He was shielded from her.
"Not here," he said, backing away from her, and vanished.
She unfolded the slip of paper and read the address.
###
She heard the sound of voices echoing up through the stairwell. Sam and Dean.
"Guys!" she called to them. "Over here!"
"Brooke?" Sam's voice bounced around the walls.
The boys reached the spot where she stood, aiming her flashlight at a symbol, drawn in blood, on the wall.
"Look familiar?" Dean asked.
Brooke shook her head, but Sam said, "Yeah, it does."
"Anna used something like that to wish the angels back to the cornfield," Dean explained, when Brooke gave the boys a confused look.
She nodded. She didn't understand everything about what he'd said, but she got the important part. "Cass was here," she said.
"Did you see him?" Dean asked, his voice sharp.
"No," she said. "But I have to assume…" She ran the flashlight beam around the room, noting the damage, and then aimed it back at the symbol.
"So, what?" Sam mused. "Cass was fighting the angels?"
"I don't know," Dean replied, turning away. He began to move about the room, and suddenly called out, "Hey, guys!" He was kneeling by a body. Castiel's body.
Brooke rushed over to him.
"Hey, Cass? Cass!" Dean shook him by the shoulder.
Brooke's head was spinning. Something was wrong. She should have known that he was in the room, even passed out. But she felt nothing from him, not even a glimmer of Grace.
"What's going on?" Castiel asked, as he awoke, but his voice was different. Higher. Squeakier. Confused and… human.
She stared at him as he stood up. "He's not Cass," she said, quietly.
"What?" Dean demanded.
Brooke did not repeat herself. She didn't need to.
"Castiel?" said the man, who had once been possessed by an angel. "I'm not Castiel. It's me."
Sam squinted at the man. "Who's me?"
"Jimmy. My name's Jimmy."
Brooke felt some part of herself die as she stared at this man—Jimmy. She remained kneeling on the floor.
"Where the hell is Castiel?" Dean asked.
Jimmy shook his head, staring desperately between the two men. Then he looked down at her, and he looked… sad. Hurt. "He's gone."
Brooke stared up at him, into his eyes. The eyes that were still so blue, even in the dim lighting. But those eyes were missing something, and his expression towards her was guarded. Guarded, sad, hurt… angry.
###
"My name is Jimmy Novak. I'm from Pontiac, Illinois," Jimmy said, pausing in his desperate attempt to eat as quickly as possible. He stared at Brooke from across the room, with those eyes full of anger. "And I have a family."
She closed her eyes, finally understanding. The car ride here had been hell. Having to sit in the back seat with this man who stiffened in rage every time he looked at her. He wasn't just angry at her. He was angry at Castiel. He was angry about a lot of things, she was sure. But his anger at her was because he had a wife and kids, and she'd kissed him. Not just Cass. Him. Jimmy. He had been there to witness it, even if he didn't remember all of it.
Brooke buried her face in her hands, refusing to look at him. She felt like a slut. Somehow, this had never occurred to her. Castiel… his body—his true body—was made of light and energy. In order to come down to Earth and interact with humans without blinding them or killing them, he had needed to possess a body. Jimmy Novak's body.
###
Brooke paced in the back of the room as Sam and Dean argued with Jimmy.
"Look, I'm done, okay?" Jimmy said, exasperated. "With demons, angels—all of it. I just want to go home."
"Look, we understand," Dean began—
"No, I don't think that you do understand. I've been shot and stabbed and healed, and my body's been dragged all over the Earth. By some miracle, I'm out, and I'm done." He spun, looking at Brooke, and jabbed a finger in her direction. "And I am done with you. I've given enough, okay?"
Brooke turned away to face the wall. She breathed. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, but she sniffed and swiped them away. Jimmy was right to be angry. Hell, she was angry at herself.
###
Jimmy had escaped, and by the time they finally got to his house, the demons had already gotten to him. To his family. Everything happened so fast. She got out of her car and followed Sam and Dean inside. There was yelling coming from the house. A man held a little girl with a knife to her throat. Dean rushed past Brooke and killed it.
The next thing Brooke really remembered was getting back behind the wheel of her car to follow the Impala out. They needed to get Jimmy and his family somewhere safe. But there was nowhere safe. They parked in a parking garage somewhere, in the middle of the night, and Brooke stayed in her car.
She watched Sam and Dean talk to Jimmy. She watched Jimmy speak to his family. She rested her forehead against the steering wheel and cried. She followed the boys out of the parking garage. She followed them down the freeway. She slammed on the breaks when the Impala suddenly spun around after ten minutes, barely avoiding running into it.
"Fuck!" she yelled, tires squealing as she spun to follow them. Her cellphone rang, something she'd picked up some time after the incident with Chuck and Lilith. "What the hell happened?" she demanded.
"Demons got Jimmy's family," Sam said. "Again. They want the knife."
"The demon-killing knife?"
"Yes."
Brooke fumed for a moment. "So what do we do?"
###
She waited around with Sam and Dean while Jimmy went in alone. She spun in slow circles. Cass, where are you? she prayed.
She got no response.
Men came up from behind them all and dragged them inside the building. Brooke fought so hard, her body fueled with the pent-up emotions of the last forty-eight hours, that she actually managed to break free for a few seconds. She sprinted away, but was caught almost immediately. The demon inside the man grabbed her and shoved her to the ground. He punched her in the jaw and she blacked out.
When she woke, it was to the sound of a gunshot. She sat up, bleary-eyed, and saw Castiel drop to his knees, blood spurting from his gut. She screamed, scrambled to her knees, crawled forward.
No. Not Cass. Jimmy. The demon inside his wife's body had just shot Jimmy.
"Oh God," she said, pulling Jimmy's hands away to see the extent of the wound. "Cass, where are you?"
Here, he said, his voice echoing through her mind.
She looked up, and saw him—his true form, boundless, incorporeal, beautiful—enter the body of Claire Novak.
The demon instructed to kill Claire came towards her, and when he was close enough, Castiel, controlling the girl's body, brought a hand up and touched the demon on the forehead, smiting him. Castiel burned the ropes holding Claire's body to the chair. She got up. She walked past Jimmy, who stared at his little girl, possessed by an angel. "Castiel," he said, his voice shaking with the effort to stay alive, with the pain of the bullet in his gut.
Castiel, don't do this to her, Brooke thought, desperately.
Sam was fighting a demon; Dean was fighting a demon. The little girl pressed her forehead to the demon that attacked Dean. The demon died in a flash of light. Sam stabbed the demon that had attacked him. His mouth was covered in blood. Demon blood. Brooke stared at him for a moment, but she had bigger worries on her mind.
The little girl turned her eyes to Jimmy. She knelt down beside him.
Brooke stared at Claire, not really seeing her. She stared at Castiel, whose true form leaked from the girl's body, bleeding light into the room. Light only she could see. "Don't," she said again, both aloud and in her mind. She's a child.
I do what I must, Castiel replied.
The angel spoke through Claire, touching Jimmy on the head: "Of course we keep our promises. Of course you have our gratitude. You served us well. Your work is done. It's time to go home now—your real home. You'll rest forever in the fields of the Lord."
"No," Jimmy said, his voice breaking. He was sniffling, breathing heavily, sweating in pain.
"Rest now, Jimmy," Castiel said.
"No. Claire." Jimmy's voice so full of sorrow, pain, fear.
Brooke looked away.
"She's with me now," said Castiel.
Jimmy groaned in pain, choking on blood.
"She's chosen," the angel continued. "It's in her blood, as it was in yours."
"Please, Castiel," Jimmy begged. "I mean, just—just take me. Take me, please."
Brooke saw Sam and Dean approach. Sam held Amelia Novak by the arm, keeping her steady. Brooke could not look Jimmy's wife in the eye. She got up and moved far away from them all, but the conversation between Castiel—through Claire—and Jimmy could not be drowned out.
"I want to make sure you understand," Castiel went on. "You won't die… or age. This last year was painful for you. Picture a hundred—a thousand more like it."
Jimmy's breathing was becoming more and more erratic. "Doesn't matter," he said, through a mouthful of blood. Brooke could hear it in his throat. She put her hands over her ears, squeezing her eyes shut, but it didn't help.
"You take me," Jimmy demanded. "Just take me."
There was a pause.
"As you wish," Castiel said.
The warehouse filled with light.
Brooke fell to her knees and sobbed.
Between her sobs, she could hear Dean tell Castiel to wait. "What were you gonna tell me?"
"I learned my lesson while I was away, Dean. I serve Heaven. I don't serve man."
Brooke felt the hooks of righteous anger tear into her mind. She gasped with pain as he spoke again:
"And I certainly don't serve you."
She knew he was speaking not just to Dean. He was speaking to her. He felt wrong. He felt cold and distant, as he had the first time she had seen him. He was beautiful still, but beautiful like a statue made of ice.
He released his grip from her mind, leaving her raw and bleeding, and walked away.