Twenty-four

The next morning found Castiel quiet and pensive, an abrupt change from how cheerfully they had ended the night before. When Brooke asked him what was wrong, he looked up at her briefly, but didn't maintain eye contact. He seemed distracted. "I know Dean told me to leave it alone… but I can't," he murmured. "It doesn't feel right."

Brooke sighed and sat down beside him on the bed. "I understand," she said. "You're… still an angel."

He looked at her, confused.

"You may not have your Grace, but you're an angel in here." She pointed at his chest, his heart.

He nodded. "I… I cannot abandon my brothers and sisters to ruin."

She took a deep breath, releasing it slowly, and felt the last remnants of her quiet life with Castiel slip away. "I know," she said. "I think I always knew."

"I am sorry," he whispered, and took her hands in his. They were warm.

He had beautiful hands, with long, delicate fingers. But Brooke knew the violent acts that those hands had committed. They were the hands of a warrior, a soldier. An angel of the Lord. Graceless or not, he was an angel where it counted—in his heart and in his mind—and, much as he would have loved to turn away from that part of himself, she knew that he couldn't.

Brooke smiled weakly, and joked, "There you go, being a Bottom again. All that violence and bloodshed… It feels like orders, doesn't it?"

"Orders?" he repeated.

"Like when I think naughty things about you and you're compelled to kiss me. The angel-on-angel violence—it compels you. You must fix it. You must make it all better."

He was silent for a moment, and then he said, "I must… tell all the angels to get laid."

She laughed, and pulled her hands out of his, standing up.

###

He spent the day in prayer. Brooke tried to stay quiet, only bothering him to remind him to eat and to pee. He probably would have ignored the food she brought him, except that she stood over him until he began to eat it. Other than these small reminders, she left him alone, even leaving the motel room for about an hour, just to give him uninterrupted time.

The idea of purposefully attracting an angel to him seemed like an awful idea to Brooke, but he had explained that, since he was warded, and since he was basically human, without his Grace, the only angels who would deign to answer his prayers were the good ones. The ones who only wanted to help a poor, little, lost human.

It took practically all day for one to finally appear. Brooke had begun to doubt that any angel would ever appear, but she felt its presence nearing the motel soon after the sun had gone down, and right as Castiel's own faith had begun to wane.

He got up off his knees, sighing, and said, "I don't know how humans do it."

Brooke smirked. "We've been ignored by God our entire lives. We're used to it." She stopped, suddenly. "There's an angel here."

Castiel turned toward the door, his expression somewhere between hopeful and disbelieving. He walked toward the door, but Brooke moved, quickly, in front of him, an angel blade in her hands.

"Wait!" he cried.

She yanked the door open and placed the tip of the blade against the angel's throat. It had chosen a small woman as its vessel. "Friend or foe?" she demanded.

"W-What?" the angel asked, her eyes wide, and backed away.

Brooke breathed a sigh of relief, lowering the blade. Any angel out to hurt them would not have reacted with such fear in the face of danger. They would have simply attacked.

"Please, Brooke," Castiel said, staring at her as if she'd gone insane.

She spread her free hand, and shrugged, then backed away from the door.

The angel—the woman—was staring at them. Her eyes flicked to Castiel, and narrowed. She said his name, in shock.

Castiel smiled down at her. Clearly whoever she was, she was an angel that Cass knew.

Immediately, the angel turned and began to walk away.

"No, wait!" he cried. "Please, just hear me out."

"It can't be known that I even spoke to you," the angel said, her back turned to him.

"I just need a moment," Cass argued.

"No."

"Please." He took a step toward her. "I just need information."

The woman turned, slowly, and stared at him. Then she sighed and came forward, peeking past him and into the room. She looked at Brooke. "You're not going to kill me, are you?"

"No," Brooke said. "Not if you don't give me a reason to."

The angel nodded, shuffling into the room.

"Name?" Brooke asked.

"Muriel," said Muriel and Castiel at the same time.

Brooke raised her eyebrows at her husband. So he did know her. Interesting.

###

"Let's say you're telling the truth and Metatron tricked you," Muriel said, later, as she paced back and forth in front of him and Brooke. "I should still turn you in."

"If you try," said Brooke, calmly, "I will kill you."

Muriel's eyes flicked to look at her, and there was fear there.

"No one hurts my husband on my watch," Brooke explained.

Castiel closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Brooke, she won't help us if you keep threatening her," he muttered.

Brooke said nothing.

Castiel sighed. "Ignore my o-overprotective wife for a moment," he told the angel. "I… I think you instinctively trust me." His eyes were wide and pleading. "We're similar. We both want no part of the fanatics."

"And when you prayed, how did you know you wouldn't get one of them?"

Castiel explained to Muriel what he had explained to Brooke, about being warded, and basically human, and hoping that only the non-militant angels would respond to him.

"You think I care about you?" Muriel asked.

"You're here," Castiel replied. "You may know the situation. Bartholomew, he's in a blood feud with another faction."

Muriel shook her head. "It's madness."

"Who leads the opposition?"

"Malachi."

"Malachi," Castiel repeated, sounding as if he knew him, too. "The anarchist."

"He's become equals with Bartholomew," Muriel said, slowly approaching Castiel. "In some ways, worse."

Brooke stood up from the bed, flipping her angel blade casually around in her hand.

Muriel stopped in her tracks, withdrawing from Castiel.

Castiel was too invested in the conversation to stop and lecture Brooke about her overprotectiveness, but he reached up and gently wrapped his hand around her arm, to calm her, or perhaps to prevent her from harming the angel. "But there's still those like you who want to stay out of it," he said to Muriel, staring at her intently.

"Fewer and fewer," Muriel muttered, glancing nervously at Brooke, but bringing her gaze back to Castiel almost immediately. "Each side is rounding up those who try and stay neutral. Angels are being tortured and killed if they don't pledge loyalty."

Castiel sighed. "It's worse than I thought."

"Each side wants to crush the other," Muriel went on, "overthrow Metatron, and rule Heaven, and… Heaven under either of them would be…"

"Hell," Castiel and Brooke said, at the same time.

The angel glanced at Brooke, nodding.

And, in the silence, just as Brooke realized that there were more angels here, the door to the motel room exploded off its hinges.

Brooke was moving before Castiel could stop her. She lunged at one of the angels, blade-first, and was slammed into the nearest wall for her efforts. The angel she'd tried to attack met her at the wall and held her to it by the front of her shirt.

"Stop!" Castiel yelled.

The angel holding Brooke to the wall turned and stared at him.

His teeth were clenched, hard, and his hands were balled into fists. "If you hurt her, I will give you nothing. Nothing but pain, and death. Do you understand?"

The big, burly angel said, "Sure. I won't hurt your whore."

Brooke wanted desperately to fight back, but somehow she thought she'd already created enough trouble for her husband. She remained still, pinned to the wall. What little element of surprise she'd had before was lost, so it would be pointless trying to go up against this guy again, anyway.

"But," said the smaller angel, stepping forward, "you and Muriel are coming with me." He turned to the big angel, holding Brooke, and jerked his head.

The big one released his hold on her and stepped toward Castiel and Muriel.

Think, Brooke said to herself. She'd already fucked things up, not managing to land a hit on this guy. She remained where she was, pressing her back to the wall. She hoped that if she did not move, or speak, or breathe, that they would forget her. Or, perhaps, they would think her only a whore, and leave here there in the motel room to cry about her missing angel husband. She tired to make her mind go blank, closing her eyes. If they left her here, she could call Sam and Dean for backup. Call anyone.

The other angel, the one who had come in with the big guy, stepped toward her.

She opened her eyes.

"Think we'd leave you here all by yourself?" he asked, as if being courteous.

Fuck, she thought.

###

They left her, chained up, somewhere else in the building where they kept all of their angelic prisoners of war. As promised, Brooke was not harmed, other than being shackled to the wall, but she was left alone, in the dark, and somehow that felt worse to her than being tortured. She had no idea where her husband was.

At some point, some angel came in and opened her door, leaving it open, and standing guard at the entrance. She did not understand why, at first. She was a human, chained with heavy iron. She had been frisked upon entering the building. She had no weapons, no means of escape. So why, she wondered, would someone come and stand at her doorway.

She realized, all too soon, what the purpose of it was. It had nothing to do with guarding her. They simply wanted her to be able to hear Castiel's screams as he was tortured. Perhaps they figured that if they could not physically hurt her, they would damage her psyche, instead, with the lingering sounds of her husband screaming in agony.

It did the trick.

She soon found herself screaming, every time she heard him scream. And though she was not connected to him by Grace, every time he screamed, she thought she could feel pain in her body. It was phantom pain, not real, but in the moment, it felt real enough. By the end of an hour, her throat was raw, her head was pounding, and her eyes were exhausted and puffy from crying.

After about an hour and a half—though, to Brooke, it felt much longer than that—she felt the presence of another angel walking down the hallway with purpose. She did not recognize them, but they were charged with anger. Something about them, though—their Grace—was all wrong, flickering strangely, like a lightbulb going out.

The guard was suddenly stabbed through the chest with an angel blade. His light exploded out of him, and he fell to the side, dead.

Castiel entered the room.

She stared at him. He had no wings, but there was Grace in him. It was not his Grace. It felt… wrong. All wrong. Brooke physically gagged at the sight of him—it was as if someone had sewn his head onto another person's body.

Brooke, he said, his voice echoing in her mind.

And, though he felt wrong, the Grace inside him completely at odds with the small amount of his Grace that resided in her body—the sound of his voice in her mind made fresh tears course down her face.

"Castiel," she whispered, swallowing painfully. Castiel.

Brooke, he repeated, coming toward her. I heard such screaming… but you seem all right, physically.

She shared with him what they had done to her, chaining her here, and then making her listen to his screams, for what had felt like days.

I'm so sorry, he said, as he carefully unchained her.

At his touch, she was at once enraptured and disgusted. He was an angel again, powerful and etherial and full of light and energy—vast. But it was not… him. He was beautiful, but twisted, the Grace of a different angel inside him distorting the features of his true form so that he looked a little demonic.

He heard her thoughts, felt her feelings, and grimaced. Trust me, he said. You only have to look at me. It's much worse, having to feel it. He touched her, lightly, on the throat, healing her aching vocal cords; the headache vanished, as well.

But the feel of another angel's Grace touching her that way made her squirm in disgust.

What did you do? she asked.

We have to go, he said. And as they made their way out of the building, he filled her in, silently, on all that had happened in the last hour and a half. As they left the room in which she had been chained, she turned to the left and saw a trail of dead bodies, lining the floor, leading up to her room.

They had tortured Castiel for information about Metatron, about the spell that Metatron had used to cast out the angels. Of course, Castiel had no information about it. Muriel had been killed. Malachi had left the room, to let the big angel, Theo, torture Castiel on his own, but, it turned out, Theo no longer wanted to work with Malachi. Castiel had tricked Theo into letting him out of his shackles by promising to put in a good word about him to Metatron, and then he had stolen the angel's Grace, and killed him.

Brooke listened to all this, but all the while, the trail of dead bodies that she had seen, leading to her door, kept popping up into her head.

You were screaming, Castiel explained. I thought they were torturing you. I have said that if anyone were to hurt you, that I would kill them without hesitation. When I was making my way to you, many angels tried to stop me. No one was going to stop me from rescuing my wife.

And Brooke understood, for she would have done the same thing if she had been the one to rescue him.

They came out of the building and into daylight. I need to get to a phone, Castiel said. I need to tell Dean what's happening.

Yes, she agreed, and trailed along behind him, staring at him as they walked.

She could not stop staring at him. He was beautiful, but horrifying. Seven years ago, when he had met her, he had been beautiful and terrifying at the same time, but that had been because she had never seen an angel before, and did not yet contain a part of his Grace that helped to protect her mind from going insane at the sight of them. Now, though, he was captivating and exquisite, yet vile, the Grace he had stolen flickering so because it knew it did not belong inside him. Yet it could not escape, so it twisted and pulled at his features until he looked nothing like himself. And containing it was exhausting him, already.

I'm sorry, she said, because she knew he could hear everything she was thinking, and he could feel how disgusted she was.

I cannot blame you for thinking as you do, he replied, though she could feel his despair at the way she thought of him now.

You did what you had to, she assured him. I'm not angry that you did it. It'll just… take some time, getting used to… you.

He was silent, unable or unwilling to continue the conversation.

…

They found a payphone soon enough, and Brooke, through Castiel's mind, learned the rest of what he had learned from Malachi. Ezekiel, the angel who was, supposedly, possessing Sam Winchester, was dead. He had died in the fall. So, whoever the fuck was inside Sam… it wasn't Ezekiel.

###

They had a few hours to themselves before Dean called them back at the motel. And in those few hours, Castiel's mind was abuzz with plans, preparing for war. And Brooke was packing, choosing which clothes to keep and which to leave. They both had more clothes now than they had when they'd left the bunker all those months ago. Brooke didn't much care about clothing, and didn't usually wear makeup, either (what was the point if it was just gonna get messed up in some fight with a werewolf… or an asshole angel?). But now she had more of both, and was slowly going through it all, pairing it back down to what it had been before.

But in the back of her mind, all she could think of was Castiel, and she found herself often glancing at him, subconsciously, studying that strange, twisted face and trying not to cry every time she saw it. She tried to see only his human body, but after so many months of seeing nothing else, it was difficult to ignore the sudden change. Still, even twisted, he wasn't whole—he had no wings. All the other angels had had their wings, broken and burnt. But his were simply missing, and that disturbed her, perhaps, most of all. It was as if he were somehow walking around without any legs, or holding things with invisible hands.

They had hardly touched one another since he had rescued her. He stayed sitting in a chair in the corner, thinking, and she meandered about, pulling things out of drawers, setting them on the bed or the floor, studying each item to decide if it was worth keeping.

Then she came across his trench coat, the one that she had worn more often than he had in the last several months. The one that had become a kind of security blanket, reminding her of the Castiel she had known when he'd had his powers. She held it in her hands for a time, staring at it, touching the pink stains from the blood that could not be washed out, touching the buttons, fiddling with the belt that he never, ever used…

Castiel, she finally said, and felt his buzzing mind still. She felt him looking at her from across the room and held up the trench coat. "You can fix the blood on this now, can't you?"

Slowly, he stood up from the chair and went to her, but remained a polite distance away, which was rather out of character for him, as he normally didn't notice or care about personal space—especially not with her. He reached out and gingerly touched the coat, and the pink stains around the collar and down the front of it disappeared.

Brooke smiled, and held it out to him. "Here," she said. "You're an angel again. You have your powers back. I feel like the trench coat… would fit, now."

He shook his head, smiling at her a little, though it didn't reach his eyes. "I can't take your wings from you," he said.

"What?"

Silently, he played a memory for her, from when she had been sick from getting his cold, and he had come back from the grocery store to find her dancing, with his coat draped over her shoulders. She had told him that she liked the coat, because she could pretend she had wings with it on.

She smiled and turned away at the memory, shaking her head. "The coat doesn't actually give me wings," she said. "It doesn't matter. You take it back. It's yours."

"It's all right," Castiel said. "None of us have wings anymore." His voice was very matter-of-fact, but underneath that veneer, there was pain. She could feel it.

She put the coat down, slowly, on the bed, then threw her arms around her husband, quickly, and held onto him as tightly as she could, pressing her face into his chest and squeezing her eyes shut. It wasn't a hug so much as a desperate embrace, as if he would disappear if she let go. In reality, she was forcing herself to touch him, to get used to feel of him, warped as he was. She knew that he hated having another angel's Grace inside his body more than she did; she feel the disgust he had for himself. He had thrown himself into planning for the war because it prevented him from thinking anything negative about himself, but, now that their mental connection was back, she could, once again, hear every thought, and she had long ago become fluent in Enochian.

The point was, Castiel already hated himself, already hated the way he looked and felt, with another angel's Grace trapped inside him, squirming and twisting, yanking at him every second. He did not need to feel Brooke's disapproval on top of that. So, she stood there, in his arms, forcing herself to hold him until the feeling of nausea in her gut went away. Until she no longer felt like backing as far away from him as possible and scrubbing her entire body with soap. Neither of them had any idea how long he'd have to live like this, with someone else's Grace inside him—he could end up like this forever, as far as they knew—so it would be better for both of them the sooner they could accept him for what he was now.

And, after all, he was still Castiel, underneath it all. He was still her husband. He still loved her, cherished her, and she still loved and cherished him. He simply… looked a little different. Felt a little different.

More than a little, he corrected, as he continued to hold her.

Shut up, she said, and lifted her head. Come here. She pulled his head down so that his forehead rested against hers. This, at least, was something that felt normal. It was something they did so often that it had become synonymous with kissing, or even just looking at each other. Together, they breathed—in, out, in, out—five times. Then five more. And as they breathed, in tandem, the Grace inside Brooke and the Grace inside Castiel, while still different from one another, seemed to settle into some kind of agreement with each other.

It did not feel like it normally did, like it had, before. Before, when Castiel had had his own Grace, then the Grace in Brooke would generally run at the same frequency, and speed, as the Grace in him. After all, it was the same Grace, simply split between two bodies. With any kind of emotional shift, the Grace in both of them would speed up or slow down, changing pitch, as well, and this helped to keep each other aware of how each was feeling. The only time the Grace in either of them ran at a different speed or pitch was when one of them had a sudden outburst of emotion. Then, the Grace in both of them would immediately attempt to find the new medium between their emotional states, like an irregular heartbeat attempting to stabilize itself.

This, though, felt like an entirely different kind of harmonizing, like a violin and piano both being played at the same time, but each person was playing a different song. The longer they breathed together, and held each other, the closer the songs came to being the same, but they could never quite get there. There was still something ugly in the frequency differences, like one of them was occasionally playing the wrong note or pressing down too hard on the strings.

Brooke pulled back from Castiel enough to look up into his face, and made herself stare into his eyes until the strange, twisted features no longer scared her. She forced herself to see only those beautiful blue eyes that had so captivated her for years. The eyes that could gaze at her with love and adoration, or lust and possessiveness. Now, he only looked at her with a quiet sorrow.

Don't, she said. Smile for me.

He closed his eyes against the words, turning his face away.

She sighed, brushing his cheek with her fingers. "Please smile for me…?"

He took a deep breath and stood a little taller, then turned to face her again and gave her his best smile.

She stood and looked at him, studying his face, pushing past all the ways that the unfamiliar Grace pulled at his true form, wrenching him slowly apart. Somewhere behind all of that, he was there, wings or not. She squinted harder, and could finally see him. And she smiled back at him. "There you are," she said.

He released a breath and pulled her to his chest, crushing her against him, holding her closely.

And then Dean called.