Chapter 76.
"I did love you." said Cas, "I did and I do. You seemed so sure that I never had that I started to believe it, but two days without you proved to me that it was always love."
Jules hated the pain in his eyes and the fact that her thoughtless words had added to it. "I wish I could erase the things I said. You remember every word, don't you?"
"Yes." he said, "Perhaps forgetting is better. If you want me to, I could reach out and touch your head and make you forget all of it."
She leapt back, to the head of the bed and looked at him in horror. "You wouldn't do that to me!"
"Dean says I shouldn't, but remembering lost love hurts."
"When memories are all I can have, stealing them would be monstrous." she said, "I'll live with the pain. What we had was worth it all. Don't take it from me."
"I won't, I promise." he said, seeming shocked by her distress.
"Would you want to forget our relationship?" she said.
"No, but for me, even the pain is better than nothing."
"For me too." she said.
"Half of my friendship with the Winchesters is the pain we have inflicted on each other." he said.
"You are one messed up little angel." she said, returning to sit beside him.
"I know. Sometimes I wonder why any of you would tolerate me, Maybe now, you're starting to feel like this is a lucky escape."
"No, I'm starting to feel like I only ever saw the top few layers of your convoluted, contradictory onion."
"I don't have ... Oh. Metaphor, yes?"
"Yes." she said, "You're getting better at recognising them."
"I really don't think I am." he said.
She looked into his eyes. Just being so close to an angel who had threatened to wipe her mind was bringing back all kinds of apocalypse fears, but distance would not help him. He needed her to stay close. "You won't take my memories, will you?"
"No. I gave you my word. I can't, now I know it's truly not what you want."
"Forgetting isn't the answer, for either of us, but I wish I could take back the things I said. I wish I could unsay them."
"They were the truth."
"No, Cas, they were pain, screaming in capital letters and not caring what was real or true."
"I am everything you accused me of being and you were right that I am like the Empty. I think that may be why it scares me so much. We none of us want to be faced with our own desolation and emptiness. The void within me is the thing I fear most in the Empty. It cries out with a thousand voices, all of them mine. It tells me I can never have love or hope or happiness."
"It lies, like mine does." she said.
He sat up straighter, visibly trying to be strong. "I should not be so afraid. Sacrifice is the heart of service and I was created to serve."
"Life has changed you and now you live to love. You're not afraid. You want to live."
"Which is the impulse at the root of all fear." he said.
"One sentence spoken to Sam and Dean and the whole of their hunter army falls into line behind you." she said.
"I've always known that it ends with a sacrifice, mine or theirs. Heaven commanded me to be their guardian. I will not let them die for me."
"Or me live for you." she said.
"I want nothing done for me." he said.
"Because you feel unworthy?"
"Because I am unworthy and because you and Sam and Dean are worth so much more. Sam and Dean saved the world, more than once. You fought almost to the last breath of yours."
"You defied Heaven." she said.
"No, I just followed Dean."
"Against all your programming, everything you were designed to be."
"If I had never met Dean, I would have remained a slightly unreliable, but very diligent, servant of Heaven."
"But you met Dean, as did many other angels. Only one had the strength of character to choose to follow him."
"It's strange, we existed to follow orders. I don't know why they baulked at taking his."
"Because he was human."
"Our father's finest creation."
"Dean, or humanity?"
"Both." said Cas, "We were supposed to bow down to humans, so I bowed to the best of them and asked his will and he only gave me the freedom to follow mine."
"And when you did that for other angels, it blew their minds and not in the way you so often blow mine."
She was pleased to see a slight blush. Hard though it was to see him so weak, the echoes of humanity in his underpowered vessel had a strange sweetness. "We shouldn't talk of those things." he said.
"We can't even share the memories?" she said.
He shook his head. "This flesh is weak."
"No, our love is strong."
"Strong enough to break me and in this, I cannot break. For Jack, for the world, for the Winchesters, even for you, I must fulfil my agreement. The rich carnality of our former embraces ... " He looked at her, doubt and confusion in his eyes. Then he tried again, "The erotic charge of all that we have done ... and not done ... " His voice died away.
"Cas?" she said.
"How much do I have to lose?" he said, "How many bridges must I burn in two days?"
"You're right." she said, "You should reconsider."
"I can never kiss you in that way again." he said.
"Can you kiss me in other ways? Less intimate ways?" she said.
"As a friend, perhaps."
"Good. That's something."
"I realised last night that I can never open the mind link again, with either of them."
"Because they'll know about the deal?" she said.
"Yes."
"Open one with me." she said.
"No. You're not ready for that and you're already afraid I may break my promise and wipe your memory. Besides, it's dangerous, dealwise."
"How?" she asked.
"The deal is triggered if I become truly happy. I think perfect, mind to mind communion with the love of my life might class as true happiness."
"No, my love. I'm flattered, but you'll never be truly happy in a life where you have to lie to Dean."
He nodded. "That's probably true."
"So, mind link?"
"My mind is not a pleasant place for a visit right now. Maybe some other time. I don't want you hurt by my pain or scarred by my terror. Your prayer, earlier ... No doubt that sparked some bad feelings."
"Some." she admitted, remembering the bad memories that had haunted her few and scattered dreams in an almost sleepless night.
"I'm sorry that I made no response. I should have called you, but I was too much of a coward."
"All I wanted was for you to hear it." she said.
"I did hear it." he said. He looked profoundly unhappy.
"We should kiss as friends now." she said.
Their lips met and lingered and a chaste kiss became open-mouthed and passionate. They fell back onto the bed, lost in the kiss and when they stopped kissing, Cas sat up quickly and said, "My apologies. That kiss strayed some distance from friendly."
"No," she said, "That was just a kiss between very good friends."
"Jules, that made all former kisses in my life look like a politician's handshake."
"I wasn't intending to seduce you." she said.
"No, of course not. Kisses may be unsafe in general."
"But, on the other hand, the Empty didn't take you."