Song Remains the Same
Chapter 40 / Wide Awake
"I never meant to wither; I wanted to be tall.
Like a fool I left the river, watched my branches fall."
- Lights
Five Days Later
She stood in the graveyard alone.
Skeletal trees dotted the cemetery, their limbs shivering in a ghostly breeze. Half-rotted wooden crosses quietly stood every few feet. The call of crows echoed over the dismal, cold scene. It felt hollow here.
...Where had Sam and Dean gone? They'd just been with her... hadn't they?
She thought she heard them calling, but when she listened hard, all she could catch hold of was the harsh whistle of wind across earth.
Trying to get her bearings, Alex was left to notice how everything seemed to become two-dimensional and blurred at her peripheral. About thirty feet off a large hole loomed in the ground—an open grave. Her legs seemed to have a mind of their own, because they carried Alex there without a coherent thought in her mind. She got to the edge and peered down into the void. At the bottom of the deep grave two lifeless bodies laid, their glazed-over eyes staring up unseeingly. And when she recognized them as her brothers, she stumbled back in horrified shock. Into someone.
She whirled to find herself staring into the face of Sam—but it wasn't Sam and she knew it right away. He was cold, soulless, evil, dark, strong, taller than he'd ever been and bigger, too. It was Lucifer, she knew it on instinct, and he smiled at her. She backed up immediately, only thinking get away from him now, forgetting where she stood. She almost fell back into the grave when the heels of her shoes sank into the crumbling dirt at the edge. She flailed backwards, Lucifer caught her by her arms, and his grip was bone crushing. He smelled like smoke and ash, and she saw the reflection of orange light dancing in his eyes, was shocked when she looked down and saw that the ground beneath his feet was on fire. "You could have saved them," he told her in a velvet whisper—Sam's voice—his eyes were cold, his mouth was twisting up into a sneer. "But you didn't." The flames underneath his feet were spreading out like water might flood flatlands—and the entire graveyard which had been so cold a moment ago was now engulfed in blistering heat.
"Whatever choices you make, whatever details you alter..." he leaned terrifyingly close, his voice was barely audible, that dark smile was impossibly gleeful. "I win." And Lucifer let her go with a shove, she screamed, falling back, trying to catch hold of something, anything. She fell forever, for what felt like miles and miles, and then landed hard on her back even as heavy burningly cold dirt began to rain down over her. She was stuck in place, and all she could see was Lucifer leering down at her in victorious contempt while wearing Sam's face. Around him the world was burning, even the sky. Alex could hear screams of dying people who she hadn't been strong enough to save. The dirt that fell down onto her was heavy, each clump that struck was like a kick to the gut. Her eyes burned out of their sockets, her chest was tearing apart, she was roasting to death and freezing solid even as every limb in her body was turning to liquid and she was gasping for air and screaming no, no, no!
"No!" she shouted and her eyes snapped open even as she rocketed upward breathless, disoriented, panicked, and in the dark. It came back to memory as her wide eyes adjusted and heart continued to race: Bobby's house. The sheer terror began to abate. It had just been a dream. Another vivid, shocking, terrifying dream.
She wasn't in a graveyard—she was in the attic on the bed there. She must have fallen asleep as she laid there in the place she and Cas had been together last.
Her feet hit the floor as she sat up. She held on tight to the edge of the bed, leaning over her knees. Feeling crazed as she reeled, Alex put a shaking hand to her forehead, telling herself it was okay. That none of that was real. But the images remained so vivid, burned into her mind's eye. It had felt so, so real. She could still see Lucifer smiling cruelly at her as he wore her twin's face. She could still feel the obscene heat from the inferno he'd spawned. Her heart was still racing sickeningly fast and she shut her eyes for a moment, just trying to steady herself.
Maybe the dream hadn't been real, but the fear of losing her brothers, the fear of seeing them dead, of seeing Sam as Lucifer… that was real, was something she couldn't escape from in dreams or reality. And almost every time she fell asleep, ever since escaping from the Elysian Fields she'd dreams just like that. Where Sam or Dean were dead, where Lucifer crushed her beneath his heel, where he taunted her, hurt her, killed her and burned the world of life entirely. She felt haunted and hunted, unable to escape from her inner fears. And most of all, she was afraid the dreams would come true. They were always different, but the ending was the same—her brothers, dead. Lucifer smiling as he killed her, too.
Alex looked down at the bed she sat on—it was sometime in the middle of the night but the light from the full moon illuminated the attic well. She'd come up here to get a box of books for Bobby, had seen the bed, then had subsequently remembered everything she wanted to forget. Still, perhaps a glutton for punishment—or maybe reaching out for any small ounce of comfort that still existed—she'd curled up onto her side on the center of the bed and laid her palm down onto the empty bed beside her. That's where he had been. She'd shut her eyes slowly, trying to remember what Cas had felt like that afternoon over a month ago—when she'd held a piece of the only heaven she'd ever known there in her arms, not knowing how close the two of them were to being torn apart completely.
He'd loved her, and look where that had gotten him: dead.
He was gone. She still couldn't get herself to fully believe it—and she didn't want to. It had been almost forty days but her heart, mind, and soul couldn't let go of the desperate need to see him again. She caught herself sometimes expecting at random moments to look up and see his frumpy outfit and dark hair and the face she'd come to love so much. She hated how deeply losing him had hurt her. She couldn't find a way out from underneath it. Why did he do that? Why did he sacrifice himself like that? Her life wasn't worth his and she was angry at him for getting himself killed. Angry. And sad. So fucking sad.
She was beginning to forget his face. Her mind strained to fill in the details, but he was fading. She couldn't hold on, even though she tried so desperately to. She didn't even have a picture of him. Not a single damn picture. A hot tear spilled out now onto one of her cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut tighter, trying to remember him while cursing herself. The sadness was too heavy and she was nearly broken from carrying it. When would life be bearable again?
Alex forced her eyes open, sniffing, trying to get herself together. If nothing else, she was glad her brothers weren't here to see her like this.
She looked down at her scraped up right-hand knuckles—at the huge scabs from where she'd punched asphalt in a fit of incredible rage and sadness. Alex still didn't know what the hell had made her do that. She remembered flying into fits of rage as a kid and doing crazy destructive things when she was frustrated—she'd knock things over and ruin stuff and break things on purpose as a way to express her anger. But she'd never intentionally hurt herself like she had five days ago.
All the everything she'd felt was what she'd been slamming her fist into repeatedly. For a second she hadn't even known she was pounding her fist into the pavement. She'd just known it was her fault Cas was dead.
Her brothers had yanked her up, physically preventing her from continuing the hysterical antics. And even though she'd resisted them for a minute, kicking and screaming and sobbing like damn crazy person, the fit passed and she'd been left deflated and dazed, one of them holding her by either arm. When she'd taken in the shocked, alarmed concern written across her brothers faces, the anger had been overcome with bitter shame. She'd given up, cried herself hoarse there on the side of the road, finally letting someone comfort her after a month of refusing to even acknowledge that she needed help. By the side of some random highway in the absolute dead of night, her oldest brother had hugged her close, hesitantly at first, while her twin pat-patted her back and kept a hand on her shoulder. She had never felt so wretched or low, so weak and so ashamed of herself as she'd cried on her brothers.
She remembered sobbing "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," over and over again, not knowing what she was sorry for. It had left her so mortified to need her brothers comforting her like she was eight years old again. She remembered snatches of things they'd said like "not your fault" and "will all be okay" and she'd cried even harder to hear those things, those lies that were meant to make her feel better. Alex had felt like she would never feel better, that it would never be okay ever again.
When she'd finally become too exhausted to cry any more, they'd realized that Kali had disappeared. Apparently (and hopefully) she'd released them from the blood spell. At that point, none of them had really cared. Alex remembered very little about the rest of that night.
Vaguely she recalled Sam grabbing his laptop out of the car, setting it on the roof and muttering something about "better watch that DVD before we forget." What DVD, she'd wondered. She remembered her oldest brother helping her sit in the back seat. She slumped there, exhausted, as Dean and Sam watched the Casa Erotica DVD Gabriel had handed to Dean after telling him to guard it with his life.
On it, Gabriel had recorded a message. It had gone something like "If you're hearing this message it means I'm dead and you have no hope of killing Lucy without me. But... you can trap him, put him back into the cage you got him out of." Gabriel had explained how the horsemen of the apocalypse each had a ring, and if all four rings were brought together, they created a key to the cage. And the Winchesters, well they already had two—War and Famine's rings. After Gabe let that little piece of information slip, the recording had become a little more X-Rated and Sam had slammed the laptop shut with a sound of disgust.
"Okay, you know what, this is good," Dean had said. "It's a long shot, but it's better than nothing, right? We got two rings. Collect all four, Satan's back behind bars."
"You make it sound so easy," Sam had retorted sarcastically.
"Easy, no, a plan… yes." There had been a long pause.
At that point, Alex had been so exhausted she wasn't able to keep her eyes open. She felt delirious almost, going slack against the car door, trying to shut the world out. Her brothers, maybe thinking she'd fallen asleep, proceeded to have a whisper-fight about what to do with her.
"You get that she can't come with us on this one, right?" Dean. "Not now, not the shape she's in."
"So what, we ditch her at Bobby's and burn rubber?" Sam. "Go after these horsemen without her, just leave her behind when she needs her family the most?"
Dean sounded furiously intense, like he'd been thinking about it a lot and was everything from worried to pissed regarding the subject. "She hasn't slept in weeks, Sam, not more than a couple hours at a time, she's not eating, the dude she was into is dead, her brothers are Heaven and Hell's most wanted, she's one damn step away from the friggin' nuthouse… and I am telling you, this is gonna kill her if we keep going like this!"
There had been another long pause. Sam sounded torn. "Look, I know she's not doing so great, but I still don't think it's a good idea to just… to just leave her!"
"I know it's not, Sam, but what other option do we have? And listen, if you don't think it kills me to see her like this, you're wrong," Dean had shot back in an angry hiss. Then he'd paused, sounding a lot less angry, just… torn apart instead. "But we just don't have any time left. We got to stop the apocalypse. And as soon as we do, I promise you, this family will stick together like we used to. We'll make sure she's okay, gets whatever help she needs. But for now, what she needs is to be in one place, safe, resting, somewhere that isn't with us. Bobby can take care of her. It's too dangerous here with us, and what if she loses her mind like that again? In the middle of the job or something? We can't risk it. This is how we keep her safe. Now let's go."
Sam had been silent. Alex kept her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. She hadn't been able to even think about looking her siblings in the eye.
They'd driven twelve hours to Bobby's, arriving early afternoon. Sam and Dean had tried to take their sister aside once they were there, explain themselves and why they'd taken her there. But she'd just told them, cold and detached, that she understood why they were doing what they were doing and that they'd better be on their way. That she'd be fine. They'd looked at each other warily. Then they'd nodded. Dean looked like he wasn't sure what to do, and ended up just squeezing her gently on the shoulder, telling her "take it easy, kiddo." He was standoffish, looking at her like he knew how bad she hurt and was ashamed of himself for being any small part of it.
Sam also looked like he felt guilty when they left. He'd hugged Alex hesitantly, for a second almost looking like he was going to argue against the decision to leave her there. But he'd stayed silent after all. She'd watched them go, remaining stone faced until the Impala disappeared down the driveway. Then she'd gone inside and shut herself away on the second floor the rest of the day, crying and miserable with herself. Knowing that with each passing second her brothers were getting further and further away from her, despair washed over anew. Her life was wrecked, and she had become a useless burden yet again. Strangely enough she almost longed for the 'simpler times' of her cruel and lonely childhood... it had been bad back then. But not this bad.
After all these years, she should be stronger. But she couldn't find strength anywhere. Life was running her over repeatedly. She couldn't bear to think of Castiel, or the apocalypse, of anything with any real weight to it.
Alex forced herself to stand up, wipe her face off, and go find the box Bobby had sent her up here for who-knows how long ago. She looked through the dusty stacks of boxes for the one labeled "Mayan volumes"—there were about a zillion shelves up here full of boxes, junk, and defunct gadgets Bobby intended to 'get around to fixing someday.'
Bobby and Alex had always had this understanding, and it was the same now. He gave her enough wary, concerned looks to last a lifetime, but he hadn't asked her even once why she was there or what was wrong. He'd treated her like normal, which she appreciated, even though she could tell he knew she was having a rough time. She figured Dean must have told him details of what happened over the phone—she'd seen him make a call as he fueled the Impala up back in Janesville.
She was trying, whether consciously or subconsciously, to remain aloof and cool. Mostly she hated inconveniencing her ornery uncle—even though she sort of got the feeling he'd been lonely recently and frustrated with his wheelchair-bound status. She wasn't exactly the best company, but helping him with intown errands and around-the-house chores had been a good distraction from her jumbled emotions.
Alex found the box she'd been hunting for and she clomped down the stairs, through the second floor hallway, and then down more stairs, rounding the corner to the study where a dim light came from. She could hear him talking on the phone.
"Yeah, well, you better get to drivin'," Bobby was saying. "Hello? ...hello?" he asked listening hard for a second. He gave up after a minute, ending the call. "Musta lost signal," he muttered, looking up at Alex as she carried the box into the study. "Just missed a checkin from Tweedledum and Tweedledee," he announced as she set the box down on the desk.
The mention of her brothers caught her attention and also laid the softest strain of guilt across her heart again. "They find anything?" she asked, hoping Bobby wouldn't see through her.
"Swine flu—but no Pestilence," Bobby told her, sounding mildly frustrated by it as he threw an errant hand up into the air. Sam and Dean were trying to track down the horsemen Pestilence to get his ring, but they kept getting a cold trail. She and Bobby had been working on this end to try and figure out where Pestilence would strike next from the pattern he'd been establishing: dropping large amounts of swine flu in an eastward sweep. Maybe it should have felt good to be helping in that behind-the-scenes way, but Alex felt pretty useless. Bobby could have done that without her help, Sam and Dean were obviously managing fine… it was sort of depressing. "So what, you get lost up there or what?" Bobby asked, stirring her out of the thoughts. He was watching her out of the side of his eye as she pulled the books out of the box and stacked them on his desk.
"Fell asleep, sorry," she muttered, trying to avoid the subject and his gaze both.
Bobby sat back a little in his wheelchair, looking at her in that knowing way of his. "Y'alright?"
Alex tried to look at him, but could only bring her eyes up to his shoulder. "I dunno." She focused on pulling the heavy books out one by one. "Not really."
A couple of second passed, then Bobby's firm voice startled Alex. "Quit that."
She stopped unloading books from the box with a confused frown. "...Quit what?"
The reply was matter-of-fact. "Feelin' sorry for yourself."
Suppressing a knee-jerk outburst at his unexpected command, Alex's mouth went into a thin line. Bobby was trying to be helpful, but he really had no idea what he was talking about. "I should be with them, you know I should be," she said tensely, and began to unpack the rest of the books with new purpose.
"You think you should be with them like this?" His tone wasn't challenging, it was honest—but she didn't like that he was implying she wasn't fit to hunt.
"I'm fine," she insisted, slamming the final book down onto the stack. She stared at it for a couple of tortured beats then reconsidered grudgingly, her eyes flickering up to Bobby's briefly. "Or... I'll... I'll be fine." An embarrassed sigh eked out. "I don't have time for this right now—the friggin'… end of the world is going down and I'm… acting like I can just have a breakdown in the middle of it all." Her frustration began to come through sharply. "I shouldn't be just sitting around on my goddamn ass."
"How you think I feel?" Bobby retorted, motioning to his wheelchair. If he was trying to make her feel bad for being ungrateful, it worked. He fixed her with a perceptive, hard stare. "Kid, lemme tell you something. I know fine. And you ain't." He relented a little, studying her with a mixture of understanding and sympathy. "And what's more is you shouldn't be. Hell, these times we're in… it's a wonder any of us is hangin' in anymore. Don't be so damn hard on yourself." He sighed tiredly. "You're just like your idjit brothers, you know that? Always first in line to knock yourself down a notch or ten."
Alex knew he was trying to cheer her up in his own way but she just looked down, feeling cagey, dissatisfied, and pitiful. "I should be with them," she repeated in a mutter. "You know I should."
Bobby was giving her a challenging, no-nonsense look. "Well, you ain't." He pulled a book off the stack. "You're with me. And I could use a hand with this pile."
He looked at her expectantly. Alex contemplated the books reluctantly. They were all about Mayan end time prophecies. He was right, of course, but… she just wanted nothing more than to just shrivel up and die from the relentless unhappiness and fear. But Bobby needed some help. "I'll… make us some coffee," she said wearily.
"And for what it's worth…" Bobby said, stopping her as she was halfway out of the study to the kitchen, "it'll get better in time. Manageable at least." His kind features were soft with sad empathy. "The pain of losing someone you cared about."
His words really affected her. With a quick nod and a managed 'yeah,' Alex turned around to go to the kitchen before her emotions got the better of her. Thankfully, Bobby didn't bring it up again. She made them some coffee (Bobby put whiskey in his, offered her some… surprising herself, she said no).
After that it was back to business as usual: hand me that book could ya, where'd I put my damn magnifying glass, does your text say anything about goat sacrifice?
For about an hour, they tried to find a connection between what the Mayans had predicted and the actual apocalypse that was currently developing. Not much seemed to line up. It seemed sort of useless, but they dilly dallied with it. There wasn't really anything else to do, after all.
Alex's phone buzzing in her pocket startled her, for the briefest second, as always, she hoped she'd pull the phone out and see 'Cas' displayed on the incoming call screen. But it wasn't Cas. It was her twin.
"Hey Sam," she answered, a little deflated.
"Hey—"
The one-syllable word was said in a way that made Alex sit up straighter. "What's wrong?" she asked intently. Bobby glanced up.
"It's Dean," Sam said, deeply upset. "He's gone off with Crowley and just left me here."
"What?" Alex thought she'd misheard. "Crowley? Wait, wait. Lemme put you on speaker." She did so and then put the phone down onto the desk between herself and Bobby. "Bobby's here too."
"Hey Bobby," Sam said heavily.
"Sam," Bobby greeted neutrally.
"Are you... drinking?" Alex asked, realizing that her brother didn't sound just off, he also sounded a little tipsy.
"Uh... yeah," he confirmed, and they heard him take a drink—straight out of a bottle it sounded like. Bobby and Alex exchanged an uncertain look. Sam didn't drink like that—not like Dean did.
"What happened, kid?" Bobby prompted
Sam sighed gustily. "Okay, so Crowley just shows up in the damn car out of nowhere, says he wants to help us. And while I'm trying to gank him, Dean's actually listening to him for some reason." Sam sounded infuriated and whiny at the same time. "Like how the hell does he get off acting like—"
"Wait, back up—Crowley wanted to help with what?" Alex asked.
"Finding Pestilence," Sam replied impatiently. "He swears up and down he can get the guy, he knows the demon who'll know Pestilence's exact location… blah blah blah."
"So lemme get this straight," Bobby surmised doubtfully, "after handing the Colt over to you however many months ago, knowing it wouldn't work to kill the devil, he's trying to screw you over again—and Dean just went along with it?"
Sam chuckled sarcastically. "My point exactly. Crowley said he didn't know the Colt wouldn't kill Lucifer, Dean believed him, I guess." He let out another windy sigh. "Anyway, so Crowley says all we need to do is get this demon who's in with Pestilence and from there we can figure out where he is… but Crowley wouldn't let me go with. Maybe cuz I kept trying to kill him, but that's beside the point, right?"
Bobby and Alex looked at each other again. "Right..." Bobby agreed. Sounded like Sam and Dean were having an interesting night.
"So the two of them left to go get this demon together, bring him here and get Pestilence's location out of him. Dean just… went off with that demon, left me here." Sam almost sounded like he could be pouting. "I mean, it's crazy, right?"
Bobby took a second to think about it, sipping at his spiked coffee. "Well, look, Sam, I got no love for demons, and, yeah, this whole thing is crazy, but… I dunno. After a year of chasing up zilch, maybe it's time to go crazy."
There was a reluctant pause. "Yeah, maybe..." Sam replied grudgingly. "Maybe it's the whiskey talking or the idea that now's the time to go nuts but… I'm… I'm starting to get a pretty crazy idea."
Alex stiffened, immediately worried. She didn't like the sound of that. "How crazy? What is it?"
Sam paused. "Uh… Bobby, you remember that time you were possessed?"
"Well yeah," Bobby replied. He made an uncertain, confused face and glanced at Alex. Where was Sam going with this? "Rings a bell."
"When Meg told you to kill Dean, you didn't," Sam said. "You took your body back."
"Just long enough to shank myself, yeah."
"Well, how'd you do it?" Sam asked. "I mean, how'd you take back the wheel?"
Bobby and Alex sat forward on opposite sides of the desk at the same time. "Sam. You... you aren't suggesting what I think you're suggesting, are you?" Alex asked in disbelief.
They could hear him taking another swig from his bottle. "Say... we can open the cage. Great. But then what?" Sam asked. "W-we just lead the devil to the edge and get him to jump in?"
"Sam…" Alex cut in warningly, seeing where he was going with this. Sam continued anyway.
"So what if you guys lead the devil to the edge and I jump in?" Bobby and Alex looked at each other in mutual shock as Sam continued. "It'd be just like when you turned the knife around on yourself, Bobby," Sam said, and he sounded like he was getting intense, emotional. "One action—just one leap."
"Are you idjits trying to kill me?!" Bobby demanded angrily.
Alex was hot on his heels with a reaction of her own. "That's insane, Sam, no way!"
"Guys, I—" Sam started.
"We just got done talking your brother off the ledge, your sister's a holy wreck from hell and now you're linin' up to say yes?" Bobby thundered in disbelief.
"I'm not… it's not like that," Sam protested emphatically. "I'm not gonna do it, not unless we all agree. But we gotta look at our options!"
"This isn't an option, Sam!" Bobby insisted. Alex was sitting back in her chair, stunned and unable to speak for the moment.
"Why not?" Sam asked.
"You can't do it," Bobby insisted. "What I did was a million-to-one, and that was some pissant demon I was brain-wrestlin'! You're talking about taking back control from Satan himself...!"
"Yeah," Sam said flippantly. "Yeah, I am."
"Do you hear yourself?" Alex asked. "There's no way, Sam, no fucking way that would ever work!"
"But maybe it would," Sam replied. "I'm strong enough."
"What are you smoking?!" Alex demanded, standing to her feet in alarm.
"You ain't strong enough," Bobby argued. "He's gonna find every chink in your armor and use it against you—your fear, your grief, your anger. And let's face—you're not exactly Mr. Anger Management. How you gonna control the devil when you can't control yourself?"
There was a long pause, and Sam sounded both disappointed and slightly annoyed when he spoke. "Look. Yeah. Maybe you're right. It's a crazy idea. I get it."
"I don't think you do!" Bobby protested even as Alex was snatching the phone up and switching it onto regular speaker, holding it against her ear.
"Does Dean know you're thinking about this?" she demanded, exiting the study without a word to Bobby and heading outside.
"...Did you take me off speakerphone?"
"Yes, now answer the damn question." The door slammed behind her, she began to pace a small area on the dark porch.
"No," Sam told her quietly. "No he doesn't. I haven't told him yet."
Alex ran a hand through her hair, pursing her lips in frustrated anger as she struggled to find the words. "You realize, don't you, that even if that worked somehow, and that's a big if, Sam that… that you would be going into the cage, too, right? That you'd… basically be killing yourself?!"
"Saving a lot of people in the process, too," Sam said bluntly, then paused, sighing. "Listen, it's just… an idea, okay? A last resort if we can't figure out anything else out."
"I hate this idea," she told him without hesitation, shaking almost, remembering all of her nightmares.
"Alex—" Sam started.
She stopped pacing. "No, I'm tired of everyone I know trying to sacrifice themselves!" Her voice grew high and loud with emotion. "There has to be another way, you hear me?! You can't do this!" He was silent on the other end. She sat down onto the stairs, put her head in a hand, elbow on her knee. She thought about telling him about the dreams, but realized she would come off as insane. "Just… just promise me you won't do anything crazy," she pleaded faintly, realizing all she could do was beg. "Please, Sam. Not you too."
He grew quiet for a couple beats. "Like I said before," he told her, gentler now, more empathetic. "I won't unless everyone agrees. I promise, okay?"
She was silent for a long pause. Ironic—she now trusted Sam more than she did Dean right now. And when he said that he wouldn't do it without everyone else's consent, she was able to feel a little set at ease. "Okay," she said softly. She let out a tired, frustrated sigh, her hand still on her head.
"So other than all of that, you, uh, you doing okay?" he asked her hesitantly.
Was she doing okay? What a joke. But, considering everything… at least she hadn't signed herself into a mental ward or jumped off a cliff. "I guess so." She shrugged even though he couldn't see. "I don't know. I'd be better if I wasn't me, you know?" She was attempting to lighten up the conversation, but her humor rang true and just made her feel more miserable.
"I'm sorry, Al," he said, and it was weird hearing him use the nickname. He didn't do that very often at all. "I really feel like we shouldn't have left you there."
"I'm fine, really, I am," she insisted, trying to convince herself of it, too. "I needed the break." And even though she didn't completely buy it, Sam seemed to. Maybe because he needed some good news, he'd take whatever he could get, even if it weren't totally true.
She could hear some amount of relief in his voice. "Good. Good. We're probably gonna head back to get you in a day or two anyway, after we get Pestilence's ring, if you're feeling up to it?"
Alex was startled—was she really ready to get back on the road? She feigned enthusiasm. "Yeah good, good. It'll be, good, to get back out there."
She hear him taking another swig of his drink. "Hey, you realize our birthday is pretty much next week, right?"
Alex frowned. She hadn't—but sure enough, today was April twenty-something, wasn't it? She absently scratched her hairline for a second. "It is, isn't it?" She smiled slightly, trying to pretend to be in a good mood. "I got you a pony."
"Damn, you're always one-upping me," he joked back. "I got you a book of stamps."
Alex made a face, genuinely amused now, cracking a little smile for the first time in forever. "A book of stamps, Sam? That's your made up gift to me when I got you a made up pony?"
He chuckled. "Yeah, uh, first thing that popped into my head," he admitted tiredly. They were both quiet for about three seconds. Sam sounded introspective and sad when he spoke up again. "Do you... ever miss the way things were?" he asked her faintly, his tone soft with nostalgia and longing. "I mean not everything, obviously, just… before it was us trying to stop the whole friggin' world from ending. It seems like everything was simpler."
"Yeah, it was simpler," Alex said quietly, nudging at a leaf with the toe of her shoe. "But it was still hell."
She heard Sam breathe out softly. "Yeah, it was hell, but… it was a better hell. For me, anyway." Alex's eyes felt shut for a couple of beats. He sounded lonely and sad, like he was holding in how freaked out he really was. She felt so sorry for him, so helpless to assist him in any way. "You don't know the half of what it's like, having Satan want you," he said softly. He'd never said much about this to her, and hearing him talk about it was terrifying. "I used to think that, that maybe the angels or Dean could save me, you know? But I'm starting to think that maybe no one can save myself but me. And that maybe even I can't."
"Sam…" Alex murmured softly, not sure what else to say. She thought of the terrifying dreams where her twin's familiar hazel eyes had been cold, dark, and evil. Telling him about the dreams didn't seem like a good idea—at least not now when he was so obviously scared shitless. "Don't give up," she encouraged. Both a request and a command. Because I've seen what happens if you do.
"I'm not," he said. But she wasn't sure if she believed him. "Hey, I—uh, do you remember when I used to have those dreams?" he asked, changing the subject abruptly, startling her because of what she'd just been thinking.
Slightly alarmed, she faltered. "What dreams? Like the weird vision dreams? The Azazel stuff? Yeah..."
"Did you?" He continued. "Ever have crazy premonitions or dreams back then, I mean."
The alarm was no longer slight. Alex was staring straight ahead of herself, not sure how to answer. She'd always had nightmares growing up, but… these that she'd had recently seemed different than any other dream she'd ever had. "Uh, no," she told him, attempting nonchalance. "Can't say I ever did." She cleared her throat, concentrating hard. "What—what were they like, Sam? The dreams?"
Sam was silent for a couple seconds. "Uh… hazy. Just… weird glimpses of stuff strung together." That didn't sound like the dreams she'd had. "It's not important," he hedged, apparently already ready to drop the subject. Something about his weird, anxious tone made her feel a strange sense of dread in the pit of her stomach. "I just…" he began to ramble. "I dreamed lots of weird stuff and… some of it… there were some that I never, that you… I dunno. I'm sorry. I'm kinda drunk. I don't know why I brought that up." He cleared his throat loudly.
"Are you okay, Sammy?" Alex asked, getting even more worried than before.
"Pssh. I'm fine." She could hear how trashed he was with the overly enthusiastic don't worry about me way he said it. She rolled her eyes at that point. Maybe she was worried about nothing.
"Yeah, you're fine," she retorted sarcastically. "And I'm great."
She heard him give a short airy laugh. "Yeah," he agreed. "Pretty much." He paused heavily, she heard him settling the bottle down onto a hard surface. He hesitated for a couple beats. "Hey, I just want you to know that I'm… I'm really sorry things ended the way they did for you two."
The abrupt mention of Cas caught Alex off guard, and for a minute, she was too startled and shocked by the sudden rush of emotion to reply. She felt the familiar ache of tears filling her eyes and she looked up into the cloudy night sky, wishing she could see the stars. "I miss him," she admitted in the faintest whisper. They were both silent for a few seconds. "I can't believe that… that he's… that he's just gone."
"Yeah," Sam said softly, understandingly. "You spend hours and days hoping you're just in some nightmare," he murmured hollowly. "That you'll wake up and realize it was all just a horrible dream. But it never is." That's when Alex knew he was thinking of Jess. She could hear how close to tears he was now, too. "Losing someone you love... it hurts more than anything."
Love. She swallowed painfully, screwed her eyes shut, then scrubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand. "H-how did you get through it?" She just wanted to know the way out of where she was right now.
"Honestly?" A cynical chuckle. "Trying to get revenge."
Alex was silent a long moment. Revenge. Did she want revenge? Yes, but… what she wanted most was Cas back. "Revenge, huh?"
"Yup," he said. "But... no amount of killing ever got me what I really wanted. Azazel's dead now, but… so's Mom, so's Dad. So's Jess." He was quiet for so long she almost thought the phone call had been cut off, was about to ask hello when he suddenly spoke again. "I really loved her, Alex. No one else has ever come close." She heard him breathe out shakily. "I... I still wish so bad I could get her back. She was the one. She was it, ya know?" She heard him sniff and clear his throat. Yes, she did know. "Jesus Christ," he commented, chuckling forcibly. "Listen to me, all drunk and pathetic."
She was struck by the urge to respond to him genuinely, to try and comfort him—but she didn't even know how to do that right then and she felt too emotionally weak to be a shoulder to cry on—everything he'd just said had struck a chord in her, had resounded completely, and she felt cut open as a result. So instead of deepening the conversation, maybe selfishly or in cowardice, she backpedaled with a forced joking tone. "Yeah Samantha, making me a little uncomfortable over here."
He chuckled softly, taking her cue. "Sorry Alexander," he said. She could hear how he was suppressing his pain, too.
"Okay, so... call me when Dean gets back, okay?" Alex cleared her throat. "Keep me updated."
"Will do," he agreed.
She hesitated, wishing yet again she were with her brothers. Wishing she knew how this was going to end. Wishing she knew she wouldn't always feel so bad inside. "Be careful, Sam."
He paused, sounding every bit as heavy and afraid as she felt. "You too."
Alex ended the call then looked at the screen for a second. She was restless and apprehensive. Would Sam really say yes to Lucifer? Would the things she'd seen in her dreams come true? How could she stand by and just let that happen if that's what was ahead? There was no way Sam was strong enough to overcome Lucifer—no way. They would have to find another way to trick the devil back into his cage. Because Sam saying yes to Lucifer would only end badly. She knew it beyond understanding, in every cell of her body.
She looked up into the night sky, breathing in some of the chilly air. She wasn't sure why she still did this but… she looked back down at her phone, went to recent calls, and scrolled down one. She hit the call button. Click—straight to voicemail. "You have reached the voicemail box of…" said the recording. "I don't understand—why do you want me to say my name?" Beep.
Every time she did this, called his phone and listened to the message, it made her sadder. But she didn't seem to be able to stop herself from doing it. He's not coming back… stop hoping he will. She hit the end call button, stood up, and with a frustrated cry of anger she threw her phone as far as she could. It clunked against an old car somewhere off in the darkness.
Two seconds after she threw the phone, she realized that she really shouldn't have done that—and cursing under her breath, she went inside to find a flashlight.
A Few Hours Later
Alex realized it was a dream right away because she'd had this particular dream several times recently. Unlike the other dreams she'd had of fire and the devil and the end of all things, this one was good. Well, maybe not good. But better than the other ones.
In the dream she stood in Bobby's attic looking out the window, where the dark landscape below was a low, endless grassy field. Above it the velvet blue sky was scattered with millions of brilliant stars, and it was so bright and beautiful she could cry. But she turned, knowing what was beside her was even more beautiful.
On the bed, Castiel laid on his back with his arms at his sides, by all appearances asleep. Every time she had this dream it was the same: He never woke up no matter how she tried to rouse him.
Just knowing it was him—the sight of the trench coat, the tie—was enough to break her heart and fix it all at once. She went to the side of the bed, sat down gently, and tried to see into the shadows. His face was becoming harder and harder to see, because she couldn't remember. She touched a hand to his cheek, heart breaking in two because she couldn't feel him, either. "Why are you always sleeping?" she asked in a whisper. "Why won't you wake up?"
She laid her head onto his chest, but he was cold, not warm—and it was like laying her head against a stone. She started to cry and it began to rain in the room, flooding the attic rapidly. She held onto him tighter, desperate, even though it wasn't him. All she wanted was for him to wake up, to be alive again, to be real.
The Next Day
Mid afternoon. Alex was on the porch again. She'd slept a few hours last night but not well and not enough—after dreaming of Castiel, the nightmares had returned. It was cruel: The dreams of Cas were so blurred and indistinct, hard to remember at all; the nightmares of her brothers and Lucifer were so vivid and inescapable.
Today she'd tried all day to stay busy: Sharpened her hunting knife, rearranged Bobby's pantry, taped her half-broken phone back together, swept the basement and found an old punching bag in storage—she'd put it up and beat it until she was shaking and weak. A long, hot shower followed. Somewhere in there she'd actually worked up a solid appetite for the first time in recent memory and fixed her specialty: cereal and hot pockets. It was nervous, anxious energy that kept her going. But as the hours dragged on and no calls came from her brothers, she took a turn for sullen and annoyed.
Currently with a cigarette between her two fingers, she squinted out into the salvage yard angrily. Sam hadn't called—his phone was off when she tried to call him—Dean wasn't answering—what the fuck was going on? She took a deep drag from the cigarette and exhaled.
"Nasty habit, that," came a smooth dark voice beside herself.
Alex whipped her head up, her free hand automatically going to where her knife was as she prepared to fight someone... then paused instead. "Crowley." She let her hand fall away from the knife warily but kept her distance and eyed him closely. "What are you doing here?"
"Now let's not be rude," he teased with a smile. "It's nice to see you too. Didya miss me?"
Alex pivoted her chin downwards, staring at him cooly. "Tell me what you want or leave." She took in another huff from the cigarette, eyes on him the whole time.
"To kill the devil," he returned mildly. "You know this." There was a suggestive eyebrow wiggle. "Or did you forget about our little chats?"
She purposefully blew smoke out onto his face, smiling cynically when he made a face and wrinkled his nose. "Can't say that I have." She did however have a question now that she thought about it though. "Sam told me about your little offer to help find Pestilence," she said. "Seems to good to be true."
"S'not though, is it?"
Alex looked at Crowley down her nose, her cigarette forgotten momentarily. "You know my family's stance on trusting demons by now."
He matched her attitude blow for blow. "Darling, you're not one to talk about trust issues. But listen, besides the point." He leaned his head a little closer. "I'm here to offer my thanks."
Her cigarette paused at her lips as her suspicion deepened. "For what?"
"For, hmm... how do I put this…" he asked softly, and then flew into a fit of rage. "For completely and totally mucking up a chance to kill the devil!" Great. This shit again. Alex half rolled her eyes then took another drag. "Perhaps you recall a small detail about little old you having a chance to off Lucy, mm?" Crowley pressed unhappily. "Remember how I was going to see what I could find, see what I could uncover? Well. I've got answers now but what's this: You couldn't do the one thing you needed to do and keep it in your pants! So there goes that little option," Crowley ranted, "and now I'm stuck doing all this bothersome legwork myself. I find it quite tiresome, especially because the moosey one keeps trying to kill me!" He sighed impatiently. "I hope it was worth it, your little sexual awakening," Crowley wiggled his eyebrows up once—not amused, just inconvenienced. "Tell me, was Cas a good lay then?"
Alex tossed the cigarette down, crushing it underneath the heel of her boot as she pointed a threatening finger. "Watch your tone," she snapped. "I'm this close to stabbing you in the goddamn throat."
He held his hands up in mock-surrender. "Touch a nerve, did I?" He lowered his hands and narrowed his eyes. It was his turn to look at her with contempt. "You don't seem to realize the magnitude of the chance you've pissed away."
Alex was losing patience, fast. That, and irritated because what if he were right? "It was some rumor, Crowley, a rumor of a rumor."
"No, dearest, it wasn't," he said soft and low, one of those unnerving smiles on his face. "Oh the demons I tortured to find what I did... and just in time for you to tramp it up with Heaven's most recently fallen angel." Crowley shook his head. "Come to find out, you're…" he pulled an overly thoughtful face, "satanic kryptonite, if you will. The demon I tortured went on and on about you and Sam and genealogy cack and DNA rubbish I couldn't quite wrap my head around, but..." he took in Alex's expression and held up a finger, as if to tell her wait. "But, what I did understand was that the prophecy about Michael and Lucifer was misinterpreted."
Alex prompted him silently with a doubtful expression as he began to pace slowly back and forth in front of her.
"See, downstairs they foretold that Lucifer's vessel—Sam—would be dark and twisted by demonic forces—Azazel, the demon blood, etcetera etcetera, we all know this story don't we. Sam's the vessel—he was prepared for it since conception, practically. And in him, Lucifer is at his most powerful. Are you with me so far?" He smirked. "See 'cause this is where it gets good. The prophecy also said that the one who would defeat Satan would be blood-related, starkly similar and yet the total opposite of the devil's vessel—a pure soul capable of destroying all Lucifer should seek to create. And see everyone always thought that was Dean—Michael—who the prophecy spoke of. No, no. That, my dear, was you."
"...And you think that why?" Alex asked slowly.
Crowley made a face. "Dean, a pure soul? Please." He rolled his eyes at that idea. "It's a story as old as time. You and Sam, it's like Yin and Yang, the two of you. The good one—you—the dark one—Sam. Polar opposites… a boy, a girl. What's more opposite than that, aye? And yet starkly similar. Twins."
Alex looked at him uncertainly, not knowing what to make of all of it. And Crowley chuckled. "Starting to regret that roll in the hay yet, love?" Jaw clenched tight, Alex looked at him spitefully. It didn't seem to bother him in the slightest. "I haven't even told you the best bit. Basically, from what I gathered, if you'd gone to Lucy with your sweet, shining pure soul and gotten him to say yes… he'd die. It wasn't clear how, demon wouldn't tell me no matter how much I..." he chuckled fondly, "twisted the knife, so to speak. But my guess's Lucy'd be so weak and useless with you as a vessel, Michael would win by default. You're so scrawny and that, Dean, even Adam as Michael would be able to win easily. Or who knows, maybe he'd explode the second he moved into Chalet Alex. What was clear was that Lucifer would die." He took a deep breath, pausing for effect as if thinking of something. "And well, you would too, but small price to pay, am I right?"
Alex listened, skeptical and apprehensive. Then she shook her head. Something was off. "How would the angels not know about this, huh? How would Lucifer not know?"
Crowley shrugged, blasé. "Beats me, but apparently he doesn't." He smiled cooly at her, raising an eyebrow slightly in contempt. "Does it even matter anymore? You've gone and cocked it up, after all."
"It does matter, because something's wrong about all this," Alex said. She had the distinct feeling that this was a load of crap, but Crowley seemed convinced and some parts did seem to make sense, but... "Why would he even want me as a vessel when he could have Sam? How would that scenario ever even happen?"
"Ah, I wondered that too. He wouldn't. But he'd see it as an opportunity to blackmail Sam into doing what he wanted. Think about it. You'd play him while he thought he was playing you. He wouldn't even have known what hit him. 'Course you'd have to get your oaf brothers to agree to that and I suppose that would never happen, would it? They couldn't bear to part with their precious, sweet sister, let you die to save the world." He looked like he'd never heard of anything more off-putting. "Your family is the most ridiculous display of Hallmark sentiment I've ever come across."
She ignored the would-be insult, trying to make sense of all of it. Crowley continued.
"Is it any wonder Azazel tried to skank you up with demon blood, love? Take away your little squeaky clean soul status? Not only did he do that but he pushed your mute button, tried to make you helpless. He must have known you were a threat."
She hated to admit it, but everything Crowley was saying sounded more and more credible. She was shocked, guilty, confused. "Makes sense now, doesn't it?" Crowley coaxed softly. "You were a weapon all this time and didn't even know it. And of all things a friggin' angel came 'round and ruined it for us all." He scoffed. "Maybe that's why God put a guardian angel on you, aye? To keep you alive long enough to kill the devil. Except you and good old Cas—had to go and ruin it all, randy sods. Can't say I fault you so much, he is easy on the eyes, but blimey Alexandra. The chance you flitted away."
Troubled, Alex was staring hard at somewhere to the left of herself. She struggled with whether or not to believe what the demon had told her.
He kept on as she maintained silence. "We have one option left," Crowley said. "One. And it's a long shot from hell, if I say so myself. I need you and your two whiny brothers to cooperate with me if you're going to let me help you put Lucy back into time out."
Alex scoffed and chuckled, covering over her conflicted emotions with cynicism. "We don't need your help."
"Keep telling yourself that," he said smugly and straightened his suit lapels. "Well. I'm off to go knock over a nest of demons. S'all part of my clever little plan to get us Pestilence's locale… care to join me? Get some aggression out? I mean it is your fault I'm having to do this, after all."
That got him a brief glare. "Screw off."
He looked like he'd expected as much. "Suit yourself." He moved as if to leave, then changed his mind, as if he had one last thing to say. He held up a finger for a moment. "Did you ever stop to think… that perhaps you don't have a Heaven… because your soul is destined for Hell?" Alex looked at him wordlessly, struggling not to gape. "Of course you have," he answered for her coyly. "It's the only logical thing to assume. But now, knowing these things I've just told you… do you wonder if perhaps your sweet little soul was supposed to be destroyed completely, wiped out of existence when you killed Lucy?" His mouth quirked up into a little smile. "Mysterious, isn't it. Mind boggling." He leaned closer, tapped her chin with his finger, getting a warning scowl from her. "Perhaps, somehow…" he all but whispered, "You still have a part to play in this, hmm?" He stood back, shrugged nonchalantly, smiled cheekily. "Stranger things have happened."
And without warning, he disappeared into thin air.
Alex spread her hands wide apart as she leaned heavily onto the porch railing. What—the—hell! For a minute she just tried to breathe, tried to think straight. Talk about a bomb being dropped on her. Holy shit.
Could any of that be true? Her eyes scanned back and forth rapidly on the ground below as her mind spun around and around. It did make some sense, or at least the idea of it. Sam was huge, strong, beefed up on demon blood—she was small in comparison. When she'd been younger, she'd cursed her petite build—she was strong sure—but next to her big brothers, she'd felt less than. Was her comparable weakness to her siblings actually a strength or part of destiny somehow? Was Crowley right, that God had tasked a guardian angel over her to keep her alive along enough to kill off the devil? That she'd had no heaven because in the future her soul wouldn't even exist at all? Was Dean the one who was supposed to walk away alive from the apocalypse?
So many questions. She thought back to Lucifer, when she'd been face to face with him in the hotel and he'd been so teasing and dark—and she wondered if maybe he were thinking even then about trying to use her to get Sam to say yes.
Alex would spend the rest of the day mulling over the things Crowley had said to her. Wondering if by being with Castiel she'd messed up a chance to kill the devil... realizing she could never take that back, ever, no matter what. Wondering if maybe she still could somehow play a part in killing Lucifer, even if she wasn't exactly what the prophesy had called for—a pure soul. That was a load of crap anyway. What did losing her virginity have to do with anything? What Crowley had said was true—she was physically smaller than Adam, Michael's vessel. She hadn't been prepared since birth like Sam had been, which also made her weaker.
For once, her weakness seemed to be a strength, and all she could wonder was what did she have to lose? If there were even a chance that she could turn the tide in this... she would take it. The question she asked herself: was there a chance?
That Night
She was in the dream where Cas laid sleeping nearby. It was the same as always: Bobby's attic, the stars out of the window, Cas obscured by shadows on the bed. She looked in his direction for a few seconds, then leaned against the window and looked out of it, wondering where the sudden gust of chilly breeze came from—and she looked up to see that the roof was missing. She wandered into the center of the room as she gazed upward. Overhead, she could see all the stars shining down. And snow fell gently, slowly. Snow? That was new. She shivered, glanced over at the bed… and was shocked to see that it was empty.
Where had he—
"Alex?" came the familiar gravelly voice behind her, and she whirled to see a sight that made her heart jump. Castiel. In perfect, vivid detail standing there in front of her. He was looking at her in serious confusion. She almost fell over.
"Cas—you're awake?!" she was overcome with shock and awe alike, unable to believe that he was there. Snow fell around them. Why was the dream changing?
"No... I'm not awake," he replied, looking at her like he couldn't believe what he was seeing, like he was absolutely unsure what was happening but also amazed. "I'm sleeping..." he said, and she frowned now too. "But I'm... less asleep than I was." He tore his gaze away from her, glancing around briefly, frowning ever so slightly. "Is this a dream?" He looked at her with one of those careful frowns that was so familiar. His head canted to the side in an inquisitive tilt. "Are you a dream?"
His question struck deep sadness into her. "No, I'm real," she murmured quietly. "You're the dream." He seemed puzzled by her statement. She looked into his eyes, went closer, and wanted to cry. He was so clear to her now for some reason. "I can see your face again," she said softly, and cupped it in both of her hands, trying to memorize the details. She was surprised that his skin was warm beneath her fingers, that she could feel the rough stubble underneath her fingers. "How can I see your face again?" She asked softly, mystified, becoming a little worried. Their eyes locked. He looked so real, especially since everything around them was so indistinct and unrealistic. He looked at her with a curious, slightly troubled frown on his features, as though he were confused as to why she was amazing to see his face. "I'm... forgetting what you look like," she explained faintly, ashamed. As she looked him over, her eyes went to the bruise along his temple and the scab above his other eyebrow. "What's... wrong with your face?" she asked, touching the cut just slightly. That seemed like an odd thing to dream, and he'd never had a cut there before, so it wasn't a memory...
He touched a hand to the scrape above his eyebrow, feeling it, frowning. "I don't know," he said, then looked at her, squinting. "Did it work? What I did? Dean and Sam... they rescued you and Adam?"
"Yeah, it worked," Alex said bitterly, looking away.
Cas frowned, seeming to be putting together pieces in his mind. "How long have I been gone?" he asked. He seemed intensely concerned.
"Thirty-eight days," she told him, tried to smile and shrug, wrapping her arms around herself. "But who's counting?"
"Thirty-eight days?" he repeated, stunned. "I don't understand…" he trailed off. "And what's… what's happened to you?" he asked, looking at her carefully now, concerned. "You look unwell."
Alex felt ashamed again. "I uh, haven't been doing so great, I guess. Since you..." she couldn't say 'died.' "Left."
His expression wavered with guilt. "I'm so sorry," he told her, and in the cruelest trick of fate, he touched the side of her face, then brushed her hair back a little, and the touch was achingly tender. She began to cry softly at the ghostly touch, and she squeezed her eyes closed. This was too much. None of it was real, but she wanted it to be so badly. She felt his other hand on the other side of her face now. His hands were warm, they felt real. She opened her eyes, looked at him, her hands coming up to grasp either of his wrists firmly. She never wanted to let go of him, ever.
"I miss you," she whispered, agonized and miserable. "Why did you do this to me?"
He responded by becoming intensely frustrated with himself, and she thought offhandedly about how well her subconscious had constructed him. He was very believable. She was going insane, wasn't she? Losing her mind? But she didn't care. She wanted to keep dreaming this dream for as long as possible, even if it hurt. She could feel a tear rolling down her cheek even as she thought that.
"I'm asleep and I can't wake up." He sounded desperate as he held her face gently in both hands. "How do I wake up?"
"Why do you keep saying that?" She asked, searching his bright blue eyes for understanding. "That you're asleep?"
"Because I am," he insisted, and his eyes went to her cheek. He moved his thumb, brushing the tear away.
Alex didn't understand why he would insist he was asleep—maybe, she thought, maybe this was some kind of metaphor for how she felt about Cas. This had to be a lucid dream, it made too much sense to be anything else. She shrugged—he was waiting for her to answer. And she couldn't bring herself to say 'you're dead.' She decided to play along. Pretend. She felt so defeated and she looked down for just a second. "If you're asleep... wake up." She looked back up at him, mourning his loss all over again.
Snow fluttered in the air around them. Alex's voice softened into a scant whisper. "Just wake up."
"Just… wake up," he repeated, thinking hard about it. That was the moment when Alex halted at a single word that made her go still inside. Wait. He looked real, he sounded real, his touch felt real, he was insisting he was asleep and for the past few weeks as she'd had this recurring dream, he had been sleeping. Why was this time different? ...Cas had come to her in dreams before, hadn't he? What if this really were him somehow? What if he were stuck somewhere oh my god! Her heart began to race as hope blindsided her and she began to lose the ability to breathe.
"Are you… are you real?" she asked him, her eyes flickering wildly between him. She grabbed his arms tight, suddenly feeling frantic. "Is this really you? Are you still alive?"
He opened his mouth to reply. But before he could say a thing, abruptly, he disappeared from her grip, leaving her panicking. "Cas?" she turned in a circle. "Cas!"
The snow began to fall heavily now, cold, whipping around her like a blizzard. She called his name again, but there was no reply.
And Alex suddenly woke up sitting in the recliner that Bobby kept in the second floor bedroom. She blinked a few times, realizing where she was.
The window was open and cold night air seeped in, a breeze gusting into the room. That's where the wind had come from. She got up slowly, automatically, blank inside. She shut the window, absently rubbing her arms with her hands. Even though she was wearing a long sleeve flannel, she was still cold. For a few minutes—maybe five—she stared out the window. She really was losing her mind, thinking Cas was still alive and coming to her in dreams again. But he had before, she protested internally. So why would it be different now? Because he's dead, you stupid girl.
She sat back into the recliner, crossed her arms, then nestled down into the uncomfortable old chair. She reached for her jacket, which laid on the floor beside the chair. In the pocket, his tie. She'd read somewhere that part of letting go of someone was getting closure… symbolically burying or cremating the remains of a loved one if you had no body to put in the ground. And it was almost like this tie was making it harder for her to let go of Cas.
She should burn it, she thought sadly, like they burned haunted objects to release ghosts into the void. He was haunting her. She was letting him. But she couldn't bear the thought of parting with his tie, his blade, his memory. As much as it hurt to hold onto Castiel, letting go and trying to move on seemed worse. She held the stupid tie in her hand, closed her eyes, and pictured his face. She could see it again. A small mercy.
Her phone suddenly rang loudly, and startled, her eyes snapped open. Sam or Dean, finally. She fumbled for the phone—it was in the other jacket pocket. She knocked it out in her haste and onto the floor, having to feel around for it a couple seconds. The poor phone had death wish—the screen was cracked and distorted from her fit of rage the other night. She squinted at the screen—the incoming call had a 504 area code. Wasn't that New Orleans? She almost didn't answer, because she knew no one there and it wasn't one of her brothers like she'd been hoping. But with a heavy sigh, she figured why the hell not and hit the answer button.
"Hello?"
And she almost dropped the phone when she heard his voice on the other end. "Alex?"
She shot up to her feet, nearly falling over in shock. "Cas!?"
"Yes, it's me," he said. "I woke up, like you told me to. Are you—"
"You woke up?" Alex repeated, a hand on the side of her head, her mouth hanging open as she stood frozen, unable to believe this. Was she still dreaming? "W-what happened? Where are you? Are you all right? You're alive?!" She pinched herself, hard. Ouch, son of a bitch, holy shit! Tears sprung to her eyes again, but this time they weren't because she was sad.
"Yes, of course I'm alive. I'm at a hospital," he was saying. "I'm told I've been in a coma. You... thought I was dead?"
She was buzzing with euphoric amazement, pacing back and forth. Tears streamed down her face even as she grinned. "What? A coma? I don't—can you come here? Shazam yourself over?"
He was quiet for the shortest moment. "Uh… no. I tried but… I seem to be… powerless. Completely."
She stopped pacing, worried all over again, suddenly wondering if he were laid up in a hospital paralyzed or near death. "What? Powerless? Are you okay?"
"I don't think so." He sounded vexed. "I feel… a lot of things. Everything hurts and itches and I think I'm... thirsty."
"You're, you're thirsty?" She was smiling through her tears. "But you have your legs and arms and you're not dead or dying, right?"
He was quiet for another second and she could just imagine him frowning, looking down at himself to check and see if he did have his legs and arms. "Yes, I'm all in one piece."
Alex was already grabbing up her jacket, her wallet. "What hospital are you at, I'm coming there right away," she said, yanking her jacket on practically as she shoved her wallet into her back pocket.
"The hospital bracelet says Saint Bernard Parish Hospital. In Chalmette, Louisana," he said. Alex could hear another voice in the background where Cas was as she descended the stairs at almost a run. "The nurse is insisting I get off the phone now," Castiel said grumpily.
Alex's mind was a million places at once, too high on relief and joy to think straight. "Okay that's fine I can… find a flight in just a little bit, umm I…" she stopped at the foot of the stairs, overcome suddenly, leaning against the wall there, barely able to believe it. "Oh my god, Cas," she said, suddenly breathless from emotion. "I thought you were dead. I really fucking thought you were dead."
She could hear how worried he was. "Are you all right, Alex? What happened after I left?"
"I'll tell you everything when I get there," Alex said. "And I'll be there soon." Her heart was frigging soaring at this point. "Not long at all, okay?" She was turning in a circle, not remembering where she'd put her shoes, she'd taken them off down here earlier, hadn't she? "Just uh, uh, give me a little bit and I'll be there. I can't—I can't think straight, holy crap," she exclaimed, unable to believe what was happening.
"How long?" Castiel asked. He sounded anxious. "I want to see you."
She almost ran out of the house without her shoes when he said that, it made her so much more desperate to see him. She thought fast, calculating travel time hurriedly in her mind. "A few hours, maybe? I dunno. A-as soon as I can. I'm coming now. I'll find you, okay?"
"The nurse is insisting," Cas said, then lowered his voice, like he were trying to be discreet. "She wants to talk about… insurance." He sounded like he had never heard of such a thing and was wary of it.
Alex found her shoes beside the front door, where she'd left them. She shoved her feet in haphazardly. "Stall her, I'll take care of all of that when I get there, okay?"
"Yes, good," Cas replied. He sounded reluctant to end the call. "I'll... see you soon."
Alex stopped again, smiling in absolute overjoyed disbelief. "Yeah. See you soon."
Cas grimaced as he shifted in the hospital bed. He was… tired. And sore. It was a strange sensation, and the nurse's constant questions were not helping. It had been almost four hours since he'd woken up and called Alex. The nurse had left a few minutes after he'd gotten off the phone with her. Castiel had feigned illness and had told her he was too unwell to answer questions. She'd seemed to believe him and had left him after telling him he would need several types of therapies after his month-long coma. His senses were dull—he couldn't remember what exactly she'd said now. He did remember her telling him how he'd been found on a shrimping boat off of Delacroix, bloody, unconscious, unresponsive. She'd told him he was on a painful pain medicine and would need to continue to take it for awhile. He wasn't sure if the medicine were working. He was highly physically uncomfortable. Things ached that never had, especially his head.
The nurse was back now, asking him questions, trying to fill out a form. She'd reappeared about ten minutes ago with her clipboard and her questions. Stall her, Alex had said. Not something Cas knew how to do, exactly.
And it didn't help that all Castiel could think about was Alex. He kept looking to his right, where he could see out the open doorway and down a hall. Every part of him was anxiously anticipating when she'd appear, finally. When he could see that she was safe with his own eyes. He couldn't believe how long he'd been gone, how tired and thin she'd looked in the dream. He wondered how that had happened—how they'd been able to meet there at all...
"You said your… wife Alex was on the way to get you, Castiel, right?" the nurse asked, looking at him over the clipboard through thick-rimmed glasses. For a moment, he was confused. His wife? And then he remembered earlier—because she had asked about insurance and then he'd fumbled around and said 'the person who has my, uh, insurance information is on her way.' The nurse had then asked 'oh, your spouse?' and he'd confirmed it nervously, just trying not to be discovered.
"Oh, um, yes," he said, trying to focus. But he was reflecting on how strange it was to refer to Alex in that term, even if it were just for cover. It wasn't an unpleasant strange, though. "She is."
This nurse had been asking him a barrage of questions: what was his name? Castiel. What was his last name? He didn't have a last name. How old was he? As old as the planet, if not older. But the body he inhabited was thirty-seven years old. The nurse had become increasingly confused with his honest answers. Currently she was staring at him in growing frustration she attempted to hide. Her pen hovered unmoving on the clipboard. "Does she have a last name?"
Castiel almost said Winchester, then remembered that Alex and her brothers were wanted in multiple states. He glanced around the room, then beside himself at the heart rate monitor device. The name brand on it was Nellcor.
"Nellcor," he answered the nurse, smiling just slightly at his quick thinking.
"Alex... Nellcor..." The nurse looked at him oddly, her eyes slid to the heart rate monitor, but she said nothing and went to the table on the other side of the room to sort through her files. Castiel thought he heard her mutter something about "shock, maybe amnesia or delusion..."
Castiel looked back down the hallway. His stomach felt strange. Everything felt strange. Why was he powerless? He couldn't help but think of the future he'd glimpsed where he'd been human, weak… was this how it had happened? It worried him.
He felt so much, not just physically. His emotions, which he had thought were loud before, seemed to be screaming at him. He felt too much. It was intense. And every time he looked to the right and saw no Alex, he felt even more. Too much to hold. He was overwhelmed completely.
Alex had never been so anxious in all of her life, ever. Flustered and excited and nearly jumping out of her skin, she'd woken up poor Bobby, rambled off where she was going, told him she was taking one of his old junkers and hope he didn't mind—she'd then driven herself to Sioux Falls Regional Airport and gotten a last-minute flight to New Orleans. The flight was fast, only about an hour and a half. But it might as well have been a thousand years for her. She'd driven the guy sitting beside her insane the whole flight as she'd tapped her foot and checked her watch repeatedly and drummed her fingers and chewed ten sticks of gum right after the other.
After disembarking the fight, she'd gotten a cab to the hospital and she was now, finally, in the intensive care ward, barely able to see straight—she went to the first person she saw. Being this close to finding Cas was making the anticipation even worse. She couldn't stand it.
"Yes ma'am, can I help—" the nurse started to ask her, and then Alex happened to see a familiar face peering up from the room behind the orderly and she forgot her manners and everything else. Just ran.
Nurse Katie Cooper looked across the room at this Castiel guy suspiciously, her eyes squinty. He claimed to have no last name, said his wife's last name was Nellcor, told her he was as old as the planet…? He was either lying or he was crazy or maybe pulling her leg. That plus all the other weird, halting answers he'd given her… something was fishy. The minute he'd woken he'd started asking for a phone before he even knew why he was there. She wondered if he were afraid someone was coming after him. She was convinced after his shifty behavior that he was either suffering from delusion, insomnia, or maybe he was in the mafia. That would explain the weird, obvious lies he'd been telling. Or maybe it was a voodoo thing, what with that crazy symbol that had been carved into his chest… not that Katie believed in that stuff.
Castiel looked to his right—he'd been doing that a lot, obviously expecting to see someone. But this time, his expression changed, becoming this remarkable mixture of surprise and anxiety and relief all at once—he sat up straight then stood up without warning, a little clumsily—and promptly was barreled back over by a willowy dark-haired girl who wrapped herself around him tightly—she knocked him back so that he was sitting on the bed again, and the girl was crying through laughter, she was hugging his neck tightly, then pulling back to hold his face in her hands, looking at him like she couldn't believe he was real, then hugging him again with what looked like every ounce of strength she had, burying her face in his neck, sobbing happily. Castiel had wrapped his arms around her in the most tender, touching way and his expression was strange, relieved—emotional in a restrained way, but emotional all the same—and Katie stood back, holding her breath almost. It was like those soldier reunions you saw on TV… like he'd been gone for years and they'd both been anticipating the reunion day and night, living for this exact moment.
Castiel's wife—Alex, he'd said her name was—pulled back a little, cupping his face in her hands lovingly as she gazed at him with great amounts of emotion. "I thought… I thought I lost you," she said in a choked-up whisper.
"No," he said simply, softly, and tucked some hair behind her ear, smoothed the skin of her cheek, moved his hand back behind her head even as in tandem, they seemed to get the same idea, and kissed each other gently, their arms tightening around the other, soft little sounds of relief escaping them both.
And when the two of them broke the kiss, Castiel had a bewildered, perplexed look on his face—Alex was looking at him in dawning disbelief—and he brought a hand up to his face slowly, touched his fingertips to just below his right eye and pulled his hand away, looking at his shining wet tears in utter shock.