Thirty-one

Brooke stood in Castiel's arms in the doorway of Gabriel's room nine minutes later. Gabriel's mind seemed to have shattered again, and Brooke could feel his terror and anger and anxiety like someone was beating her head with a sledgehammer. She was pulled towards him, but he had shied away from her when she'd tried to touch him, moaning in wordless distress. Instead, she'd turned to her husband, who had been standing and holding her ever since, pressing her face to his chest and running a hand through her hair over and over again, though it did little to help.

Sam came back and spoke to Castiel, but she wasn't paying attention, hyper-focused as she was on Gabriel's emotions. The last time she could recall this kind of thing happening was when the angel, Samandriel, had been tortured. She had felt his pain through the walls of the building in which they had kept him, and then when Castiel's splintered memories of his own torture had come through, it had been too much for her. She'd fallen to the ground in overwhelming pain.

Gabriel suddenly stilled—Brooke could sense it even with her face against Castiel's chest. The stillness was not a good thing. In it, Brooke could feel Gabriel's Grace rise like bile rising in one's throat, a reaction to something that he could sense, but they could not.

Then, the lights went out, and a moment later, the bunker's red emergency lights kicked in. Brooke, Castiel, and Sam looked at each other, ever-aware of Asmodeus' threat to them about ten minutes. He was here.

Castiel and Sam left the room immediately, to head off the demons, and Brooke was a step or two behind them, but she spared a glance behind her at Gabriel, who looked so small and was so absolutely terrified that it threatened to overwhelm her. But she was stronger now than she'd been the day of Samandriel's death, and she took a deep breath and ignored the unintentional psychic attacks of Gabriel's emotions and went after her husband and Sam.

There were three demons, one for each of them, all of which were dispatched in a timely manner. But not timely enough. Those three demons had been there as decoys, to distract away from Asmodeus, and the other two demons who had snuck into Gabriel's room to drag him away.

But as the demon in the white suit appeared, knocking Brooke, Castiel, and Sam off of their feet, Gabriel's terror soared, and Brooke felt it like a tidal wave washing over her. It was so overwhelming that she hardly felt it when she slammed backwards into one of the bunker's humongous old computers.

Asmodeus turned away from them with a smile and approached Gabriel, who was being held up by the two demons who had snuck into his room to nab him. And the closer he got to Gabriel, the more pain lanced through Brooke's mind. She gasped, pressing her hands to her head, and Castiel's Grace inside her body rose higher, as well, in an attempt to protect her.

"Oh, I missed you, boy," Asmodeus purred. "I'ma have to punish you rather severely, I'm afraid."

Gabriel shouted in fear. Aloud, it was somewhat of a pathetic attempt, but in his mind, it was much louder and more desperate and it wreaked havoc on Brooke's mind. Castiel warred with it, with Brooke's seemingly sudden connection to Gabriel, calling to his wife, but the pull of an Archangel was much stronger. Brooke, who was as trapped as Castiel and Sam, strained and strained against Asmodeus' invisible bonds, fighting tooth and nail to go to Gabriel, whose fear was causing her own heart rate to increase to dangerous levels.

He was dragged away from her, up the stairs, and the farther away he got, the worse she felt.

"And as for you three," Asmodeus said, but Brooke could hardly hear him.

"GABRIEL!" she screamed, suddenly, his name ripped from her throat. A plea, a prayer, a command. Something had happened—she knew that now. Something had happened when she'd touched him, before. She had thought that she had not gotten through to him, had thought that that flashbang in her mind had been Gabriel keeping her out. She was beginning to see, now, that that had been her entrance. He was being dragged up the stairs, still, and was crying out in fear and despair, and she felt it as her own, as a mother feels the fear of her son, or a wife her husband's. For the first time in her life, someone else's pull on her was stronger even than Castiel's.

"GABRIEL!" she screamed again, her throat raw.

Castiel's calls in her mind were as a gnat bumping into the arm of a giant.

"Shut up!" Asmodeus said, and squeezed her throat shut with his powers.

Still, she continued to call to him in her mind, repeating his name like a prayer, something she had done to Castiel many times over the years.

And then she felt the shift in him, the anger that overrode his fear, the rise in power. His angelic form had been small and tattered before now, hidden inside his human vessel as she had never seen before, as if he had not wanted to be an angel. But now, he had accepted his role. He was Gabriel, the Archangel. And he was done with this bullshit.

He threw his captors away from him, one off the balcony and one down the stairs.

Asmodeus turned. "Gabriel! What are you doin', son? You know too well what I can do to you. I broke you!"

Gabriel was leaning heavily against the balcony, his one small act of rebellion having already exhausted him. Yet, it was a ruse. A moment later, he stared down at Asmodeus with glowing eyes.

"You're too weak!" Asmodeus yelled.

No, Brooke thought, with a smile. You're not.

Gabriel's attention diverted to her for just a moment, brushing against her mind with affection, though what type of affection was difficult to determine. Somewhere in the very back of Brooke's mind, she felt some small buzz of anger and jealousy, but it did not come from her. She brushed it away, focusing on Gabriel, whose face and body had cleared itself of injuries and old blood.

Gabriel threw back his shoulders and spread his wings and Brooke stared at them in awe. It had been a long time since she had seen unbroken wings—more anger buzzed at her mind like a bee bumping against a closed window. Anger and jealousy and sorrow. But she hardly felt it, basking in the light of this Archangel.

Asmodeus grew angry and threw an orb of some kind of power at Gabriel, like lightning, but it was knocked away.

"I'm not anymore," Gabriel told Asmodeus, and his True Voice hit Brooke like a truck, but it was as if she'd thrown herself in front of it, welcomed the pain it caused. The pain bordering on pleasure, or perhaps it was the other way around. "Oh, by the way," the Archangel said, "I always hated that dumbass suit." And he set Asmodeus alight, until he burned up to nothing.

Brooke smiled, and realized that she was crying. She was no longer stuck in place now that Asmodeus was dead, yet she remained on the floor as Gabriel came slowly down the stairs. She smiled up at him as he approached her, and gasped as he lifted her up and set her on her feet, her body burning with desire.

"Okay," Gabriel said, glancing at Castiel before smiling at her. "First things first. Let's uh, set you straight, here, huh? It's been fun, though. Hold still."

Obediently, Brooke held still, and closed her eyes as Gabriel pressed two fingers to her forehead. It took several seconds before she noticed anything, but when he pulled his fingers from her skin, she suddenly felt… different. There was Gabriel, standing before her, and he was, once again, simply an angel. An Archangel, yes, but no one special to her.

And beside and slightly behind her stood Castiel, her husband, whose previously tiny and irritating emotions now penetrated her mind like a spear.

"Oh, God," she whispered. "I am a whore." She turned away from them all, from Castiel and Gabriel and Sam. "What—what happened?"

"Listen, it's not your fault," Gabriel said. "I'm… an Archangel. Whatever… connection you have with Cass, here, it, uh… I overruled it. Sorry about that. It was fun while it lasted, babe, but I think we all know you two are better off with each other. Cass wouldn't last five minutes without you."

Brooke spun to stare at him, disgusted with herself and angry and confused, but Gabriel was smiling.

"Just don't touch me again, okay? Even though I kinda liked it." He winked.

Castiel's anger flared a hundred-fold and he took a step towards his brother with murderous intent.

"Hey, whoa, whoa!" Gabriel said, throwing up his hands in a surrendering fashion. "I don't want your wife, brother! Just tell me what the hell's goin' on around here!"

###

In the end, Gabriel refused to help them in their fight against Michael, or with anything else that they could have used his help on. He vanished in a flap of his wings, a sight and sound that Brooke had not heard in a long time—that rustle and the feel of wind on her face.

But when he was gone, mixed in with the disappointment of his refusal to help—overpowering that disappointment, actually—was a feeling of complete and utter disgust. And sorrow. And confusion. And Castiel's own anger and jealously was still there, bubbling just under the surface. She had never, in all her years, felt such feelings coming from him that were aimed at her. Even when she'd fallen in love with Meg, he had accepted her feelings and welcomed them. But this… this was different. He was… he was hurt. He was betrayed.

And before she could even begin to discuss it all with him, Dean came back. Alone. He'd rescued Apocalypse World's Charlie—great news—but she and Ketch had stayed behind to prepare to fight Michael, expecting that Dean would return with more help. But Gabriel had taken his Grace, and had left, and now there was no way to reopen the portal. Dean yelled, a flipped a chair, and they all stood around feeling worse than they had since all this bullshit had started. Jack—Brooke's son, adopted or not—was still trapped in the other world, along with the boys' mother. And her relationship with Castiel was on tenterhooks, at the moment, fueled by Castiel's anger and jealousy and Brooke's disgust and confusion over what the hell had happened between her and Gabriel. With Dean fuming in the background over this horrible setback, the entire bunker felt like it might spontaneously explode at any given moment.

Eventually, Brooke returned to the room the she shared with Castiel, feeling numb at first, but as she sank down onto the bed, a flood of tears overtook her. She felt Castiel enter the room after a time. "It didn't mean anything!" she wailed. "I don't even know what happened."

His anger had dulled, but his jealousy and sorrow were still just as strong. "You can't tell me you don't understand what I'm feeling," he murmured.

"I loved Meg and you were never like this!" she yelled, sitting up in the bed and staring at him.

"You know this was different," he said, his voice still so low. "You connected with another angel in a way that you never have since you met me. That was ours. It was mine—your mind, your thoughts and feelings, they were mine. And you gave them away."

"I didn't do it on purpose!" she tried, still yelling, still desperate for him to understand. He had to understand. He was still connected to her. Yet he was ignoring what he knew to be true because he was still so upset. Sitting there, staring into his face, she spat, "Well, now you really know how I've felt for all these years, watching you pine for Dean when I've been right here. Am I not fucking good enough for you?"

"Do not bring Dean into this," he hissed.

"Fuck you! You can't tell me that my mind and thoughts and feelings are only yours when you've been secretly wanting to share yourself with him for years, Castiel. I connected with Gabriel because he was still nuts and we needed to talk to him, and shit happened accidentally because I don't understand these powers I have that let me connect to angels this way, and you have the audacity to feel jealous—like I betrayed you? Me? I care about you more than Dean ever has, you piece of shit!" Her anger had grown and grown as she'd gone on, and by the time she reached the end of her rant, she was screaming at the top of her lungs, so that her final words echoed against the metal walls of their room: "WHEN WILL YOU UNDERSTAND THAT I AM ALL YOU HAVE?"

There was another message in all she had said, left unspoken except inside the very center of her heart and mind, where no one could ever find the words. No one but Castiel, who knew her inside and out:

He doesn't love you, and he never will.

Castiel stared at her where she sat on the bed, his eyes wide, a chasm opening up between them. He turned and went out of their room, slamming the door behind him so hard that it shook the walls.

###

It took hours, but Castiel did return to her. Being away from him after a fight had pulled at her like she was tearing in half, but being near him was just as torturous. She sat up in the bed, her muscles aching from being curled into a ball for so long, her eyes red and puffy, and reached out to him, yet simultaneously cringed from him.

He went to her and laid a hand gently on her cheek. She flinched—the smallest of movements—but he felt it, and some part of him broke. He stared down at her with sad eyes. He had not cried, but that flinch brought tears to his eyes now. He pulled his hand away, but she snatched it back and brought it to her face and pressed her cheek against it again, closing her eyes, breathing shakily.

He took a breath, too, gently extricating his hand from her to slide his coat from his shoulders, and then his suit jacket. He sat down on the bed and took off his shoes, and then reached for his wife, who fell against him like she could no longer support herself. He held her and petted her hair and breathed. And then, after a time, he said, "I never intended for Dean to come between us."

"Cass, I didn't mean what I said," she began, her voice muffled.

"Hush," he said. "Listen to me. I want you to understand something. I am connected to you both—you and Dean. I rescued you from those demons, but I saved Dean from Hell before I ever met you. You… laid bare your soul to me, but I caught a glimpse of Dean's soul first, when I… raised him from perdition. I did not mean to see inside him as I did. It simply happened, the same way that you never intended to bond to me as you did, but your ability to connect to angels did that for you."

He took a breath. "I saw the man that Dean was, and the one he wished to be, and—at that moment—I did not care. I was still an angel of the Lord. I fell in love with you first, because you helped me discover my own emotions, and because you were so in love with me, and because I loved—still do—the way you made me feel when you were near me. And for a long time, you were it. It was not until Purgatory that I realized that I loved Dean, that I was staying away from him to keep the Leviathans from him, to keep him safe. And he was still Dean, then. He still had hope, he still wanted to believe the best of people. And the Mark of Cain had not yet tainted him.

"And then I became human, and my feelings for Dean only increased, because my capacity for emotions increased. And it was confusing, because I love you so much. But I was hurt when he told me I could not stay in the bunker. It did not matter that he was doing it to protect Sam. I was hurt, and somehow, that only increased my feelings for him. I just wanted him to tell me that he cared for me. If he would only say it, I thought it would be enough. And, all the while, there you were, still by my side. But, by that time, I had gotten used to you taking my side. I took you for granted. And you kept telling me that I could love who I wanted to, so I… ignored the dormant feelings of pain and jealousy because I wanted your words to be true, even though your emotions told a different story."

Brooke pushed herself up. "I'm sorry I got jealous," she whispered.

"Nonsense," he said, immediately. "It's human to feel jealousy."

"You weren't jealous when I fell for Meg."

"That's because I also loved Meg," he replied, cupping her face in his hands. "In that, we were agreed. But you have never loved Dean the way I do. At most, you see him as a brother. And that is, in fact, the way he sees me. And the knowledge of his lack of love for me drove me to dark places. We always want what we can't have, and so, instead of focusing on what I did have, I pined. And he changed. He has never been the same since the Mark of Cain tainted him. The Mark may be gone, but he… He is not the man I fell in love with. He is angry and abusive and… and he's in a lot of pain. And I would love nothing more than for him to lean on me when he feels that pain. But it is not in Dean's nature to be open about his feelings. And, when his closed-mindedness is threatened, he reacts by lashing out."

Brooke sighed, feeling exhausted. "Where are you going with all of this?"

"I'm telling you that the way I act around Dean, the things I forgive him for, this pining—it is not fair to you."

"You don't choose who you love, Cass," she argued.

"No. But I can choose what to do with these feelings. Dean does not love me, and the man that I love is not who he is now. I tried to tell myself for years that my feelings for Dean were not affecting you, or our relationship. I tried… But my own jealousy about your connection with Gabriel was a… a wake-up call. A slap in the face, more like. I realized, then, how much I have hurt you over the years."

"Cass, stop," Brooke begged him. "Because if you're about to tell me you're giving up on Dean for me, then that makes me the bad guy, here."

"No, it doesn't," he said, firmly. "I fell in love with Dean after we got married—

"We're not even really married."

He saddened at this. "I feel married to you. A legal contract means nothing. Even the rings we have mean nothing. This feeling is what matters. And you never signed up to share your husband with someone else. In fact, you're not sharing me. You're standing back and letting me pine for someone else—someone who doesn't even exist anymore. And I'm… I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I hurt you for so many years."

Brooke said nothing. Castiel had finally told her what she'd wanted to hear for years, and now that he'd said it, she could only feel regret.

"Damn it, Brooke!" Castiel said, suddenly. "Fight for me!"

Brooke stared into his eyes, shocked.

He returned her stare, and then pressed his forehead to hers. "I—I can't promise that I won't still pine, sometimes. But I'm realizing that whatever I'm looking for—whatever I was looking for—is long past. And, all this time, you've been here. You have been by my side from the very beginning, even when no one else was. And I don't want to take you for granted anymore. Please…"

It was the please that got her, and she allowed herself to feel her feelings. Jealousy, anger, and that fear that had been laying just below the surface for so many years. The fear that he might leave her, that he might stop loving her to be with a man who was so unstable and hurtful and abusive. "Stay with me, Castiel," she whispered, and burst into tears. "Please. Please stay with me. Don't leave me."

"I won't," he promised, and cried, too. "I won't."