Author's Note: AFTER CASTIEL DIES AT THE END OF SEASON 12. TAKING HUGE LIBERTIES AND DROPPING/IGNORING A LOT OF THE ACTUAL PLOT OF SEASON 13. (I haven't written for this fanfic/this world in quite a while, so please forgive any rustiness on my part. I can't remember how anyone is supposed to be written in season 12, in terms of my fanfic world).
Behind her, Kelly was giving birth and dying, simultaneously. Brooke could feel the pulses of angelic energy emerging from her body—the raw strength and power of the Nephilim being born. The boy would be named Jack.
In front of her, Brooke watched out the window, awaiting Castiel's return from the other world, waiting for him step out of the glowing slit in the world. Her heart pounded, and she gripped the windowsill with fingers white from lack of circulation. Vaguely, she could hear Mary offering Kelly words of encouragement, but the angelic pulsing was so strong and loud, a strange warping boom inside her brain.
Castiel stepped through, back in this world. Brooke's eyes lit up.
Cass—
An angel blade plunged through his back, out his chest. His eyes and mouth lit up with Grace, the explosion of Grace that came with death.
Brooke's world shattered into a million pieces…
###
"Brooke… Brooke!"
She awoke, as if out of a dream, to find herself standing outside. She had no memory of having gotten there. It was nighttime. She was standing beside some kind of… unlit bonfire.
"Brooke," someone said again, shaking her shoulder.
She looked up at the man speaking to her and murmured, "Who?"
Sam's brows creased in confusion. "Y-… Listen, do you want to… s-say anything to… to Cass, before we… put him on the pyre?"
Cass. Castiel. Her husband. Her dead husband.
A wave of darkness seemed to crash down around her head, and she forgot herself once more.
###
The next time she awoke, someone was shoving a burger into her hands.
"Eat!" Dean said.
She blinked up at him, confused. "Eat wha…" She studied his face. "Who are you?"
"What do you mean?" he demanded. "It's… I'm Dean. Look, I know you're… crazy right now, but, come on. Eat the burger, Brooke."
Brooke was sitting on a couch in a motel room. There was a boy sitting beside her—a boy who looked to be somewhere between sixteen and twenty-six. She stared at him for a long time, trying to place how she knew him. Trying to figure out why he looked so familiar.
He smiled at her. "Hello," he said, and raised one hand in greeting, smiling a beautiful, genuine, sweet smile.
"You look like Cass," she whispered.
And sank once more into nothingness.
###
When she awoke for the third time, not much time had passed. Brooke could tell in her body that it was very late at night. Either that or she simply had not slept in a very long time. She was so tired that her bones ached. Or maybe that was Castiel's Grace dying inside her.
Castiel…
"No," she said, and held her head in her hands. "No, I don't wanna forget again." She groaned as a headache pounded at her temples. "Ugh, where am I?"
"Brooke?" said a small voice.
She gasped and looked up at a boy with blue eyes. Not just blue. Blue with hazel around the pupils. Not like Castiel's eyes. But still, the hair, the jawline. He looked so much like Cass…
She seemed to awaken even further, and sat up straight on the couch. "Oh my God," she breathed, and reached out with shaking hands to touch his face.
He let her, though he looked confused. "A-Are you okay?"
"Jack," she whispered. "You're Jack."
"Yes," he said, with another bright, beautiful smile.
She blinked several times, as if he were an apparition and might disappear. "You're… grown."
"Yes," he said again, still smiling. "Before I was born, I could sense the world, and I knew that I would need a big body in order to survive. So, I… made this one." He gestured at himself. "I… modeled it after… Castiel."
Tears suddenly sprang to Brooke's eyes. "You made yourself look like him on purpose."
"Yes. Because… he was supposed to be here." Jack's brows drew together, a frown marring his features. "He was… supposed to be my father. But he's…"
"He's dead," Brooke whispered, and something inside her broke. She let out a sob, covering her mouth, but could not stop crying. Body-wracking, shoulder-shaking sobs escaped her and she let out a long, piercing wail.
Sam and Dean fell out of their beds and scurried over to see what was going on, and what they found was Jack, sitting on the couch, his arms wrapped around Brooke as she cried into his shoulder.
###
Unfortunately, by the next morning, Brooke felt a little bit more like herself. Which meant that she had to be constantly aware of the fact that Castiel was dead. It seemed so unbelievable to her; he'd been her one constant in life for so many years. He'd always seemed indestructible—which was probably stupid, since she'd seen him get hurt so often.
Sam and Dean walked around her like she might try to attack them at any moment, muttering quietly to each other in corners and glancing at her when they thought she wasn't looking. Mostly, she did nothing. Mostly, she sat on the couch in the motel room, staring blankly into space. Since breaking down the night before, and then falling asleep, she'd woken up expecting to feel even worse. Instead, she was back to feeling strangely numb.
It was as if, after that one outburst of anguish, her brain refused to continue to acknowledge reality. Still. There was a constant string of words running in her head, no matter what was going on around her: Castiel is dead. Castiel is dead. Castiel is dead.
"Brooke?" Jack said, very quietly.
She inhaled for a long time, then finally turned to him. And suddenly she wasn't numb anymore. Because for one second, he'd looked so much like her husband that she'd gotten confused. But his hair was lighter and his eyes not the same shade of blue. His nose not as sharp. Something like an electric shock pulsed from her solar plexus and out to the rest of her body, and she covered her face with her hands and cried all over again.
"B-Brooke," Jack tried, and placed a hesitant hand on her shoulder. "I-I'm sorry."
She gasped, trying to breathe and stop her crying. Castiel was dead but she still had to take care of the boy. It's what they'd promised his mother, Kelly. Oh God, she was dead, too. Jack's mother was dead and here she was, falling apart. The boy needed her. She slapped both hands to her face and scrubbed at her eyes frantically, gulping air. "I'm s-sorry. Sorry."
"Hey!" a voice called out, loudly.
Brooked gasped and her head whipped up to see where the noise had come from.
Dean was staring down at her. "You need to get a grip!" he yelled.
"Leave her alone!" Jack yelled back.
Dean exhaled forcefully. "Look, I know that she's upset. We all are. But we can't stay in this motel room forever. We gotta go, and I'm not leavin' her here."
Brooke stared up at Dean, shocked into silence, a reprieve from her sobbing for a moment. "You don't give a fuck about me," she said, in a half-whisper, her voice hoarse. "Why not leave me here?"
He held her gaze. "Because it's not what Cass would want."
Hearing her husband's name come from Dean's mouth was like a slap in the face. She rose slowly from the couch. "You never gave a fuck what Cass wanted," she growled. "You used him." The words came up from her throat like vomit.
"Excuse me?" Dean demanded. "He was my best friend!"
"You treated him like shit!"
Dean did not back down. "Everyone treated him like shit!"
"You think that made it better?" Brooke screeched, and felt Castiel's Grace rising inside her, but it felt broken, like shards of glass in her veins, slicing her open from the inside out. "You think that gave you the right?"
"Hey!" said a new voice, and Sam came into view, shoving his six-foot-four body in between the two of them. "Enough!"
Brooke stared at Dean, ignoring Sam. Held the older Winchester's gaze as fresh tears coursed down her cheeks. "I wish he'd never met you," she said. "I wish he'd never met any of us."
###
Brooke hardly stirred when Jack blew up the tattoo machine, her eyes flicking to watch the artist sail through the air at the electric jolt. She kept her eyes on the man, to be sure he was breathing, and the moment that was confirmed, she stopped paying attention. The boy had reacted to the pain of the needle; she knew this before he ever said anything—had seen his angelic Grace light up at the tiny wound in his chest, his teeth bared in a grimace.
Dean reprimanded the boy, using words and a tone of voice that Brooke did not approve of, yet she could not summon the strength to be angry at him. After her outburst at him several hours before, all her energy seemed to have been sapped from her. She watched the tattoo artist return to Jack, dazed, but alive, and begin to work again. She focused on the sound of the needle, a buzzing hum, a sound that seemed to fill her brain like a swarm of insects. She watched the ink cover Jack's chest—two different symbols for two separate forms of protection. She thought of her own tattoos, rubbing her left forearm with her right thumb, caressing Castiel's name.
The tattoo artist rose from his stooped position. "Okey-dokey," he said.
Jack sat up. His tattoos disappeared in a glow of angelic magic. Golden light instead of blue-white. Probably had to do with him being only half-angel, and his angelic half directly related to Lucifer. Brooke did not care that his tattoos had disappeared. The hum of the needle had hypnotized her, and she'd come to a decision.
She stepped forward. "Me next."
"What?" every single man in the room asked.
"I said me next," she repeated, ideas buzzing in her head.
"Brooke," Sam began, looking very confused.
"Everyone shut the fuck up," she snapped, and lay down in the chair.
"W-What do you want?" the artist asked, looking at her warily. "You got a drawing in mind, or whatever?"
Realizing that there was no way to explain to the man what she wanted, she pushed aside all guilt and warning bells in her head that told her she was going off the deep end, and grasped the man's arm. And did something she'd never done before—something she didn't know she could do. Something that should've been impossible. She opened her mind to the man and connected to him, as she had connected to Castiel before. But not quite so intimately.
She mind-controlled him.
Her vision went white as Castiel's Grace rose in her body, and she pushed that Grace into the artist's body, a little, not releasing it, not giving it to him. But forcing it into his body to take control of his limbs. His own eyes glowed blue-white with Grace, his face slackened, and he began to draw on her body, long lines of Enochian script, starting at her right forearm.
"Brooke, what are you doing?" Sam demanded, shouting the words.
Dean charged forward, intent on ripping the artist away from her, thinking to save him.
Brooke tore another tendril of Grace from her body, still attached somewhere inside, but out now, in the world, like an octopus tentacle. She flung her arm, and the tentacle of Grace shot out and slammed Dean back, as if Brooke were a demon, suddenly capable of pinning humans to walls.
No. Not a demon.
An angel.
Castiel was dead. So Brooke would become an angel in his stead.
But she needed to record his life and his deeds and accomplishments first. She needed to write down his story, and her part in it, and their love and their relationship. She clung to whatever small part of her was human in this moment.
"Brooke!" Sam yelled again.
Brooke gazed at him, feeling the burning bite of the needle still in her arm, the words written: Castiel is born before man, before dinosaur, before the Earth. He watches from afar as God creates new life on an empty planet.
"Leave me," Brooke murmured, forgetting her humanity.
"You need to stop!" Sam shouted, coming forward.
"LEAVE ME!" she said, and forced angelic power into her voice, forced Castiel's Grace nearly beyond its limits, twisting its original purpose to protect her body into something new, something once again impossible.
Sam and Dean Winchester cried out in pain, holding their heads, as the room around them shook and the floor cracked, and the window in the front area shattered. With cringing backwards glances, they left the room, unable to stand against her order.
Brooke closed her eyes as the man moved beyond her forearm, looping the Enochian script around the top of her arm now, near her wrist. He would move up her arm, to her shoulder, missing the wings along her back and writing on every available surface of her body. Castiel's story.
"Brooke," said a voice.
Her eyes opened, still washed out with angelic light, still glowing. There stood Jack, looking at her sadly.
"Boy," she said, her voice gentle.
Jack approached her slowly. "You need to let him go."
"Who?" she asked.
"The—the artist."
Brooke's consciousness brushed against the tattoo artist's, and she remembered that he was there, that he was alive, that the needle was not moving on its own. "I cannot let him go. I must write it down. All of it."
"But that'll take hours," Jack said. "You need to let him go home. He's not like me. He needs to eat and sleep. I mean, I need that too, but I can go a lot longer without it."
"I CANNOT," Brooke said, forcing power into her voice again, irritated with the boy.
But Jack would not give up. For all Brooke's strength, he was stronger than her. "Let me, then."
Brooke forgot she was an angel for a moment, her eyes losing their glow, her grip on the artist's mind loosening, causing the man to groan and pull the needle away from her arm. "What?"
"Let me do it," Jack repeated. "I can do it."
Were Brooke in her right mind, she would've seen then that all of this was wrong. That she should let the artist go and not make Jack do anything, either. That she had gone too far. Instead, she said, "Okay."
"Okay," Jack repeated, and took the needle from the artist's hand. "Brooke, let him go now."
Brooke had forgotten, again, that she had the tattoo artist's mind in her grip. She glanced at him, holding his head in pain and confusion, and released him, almost as an afterthought. The man stumbled away, staring at her in abject terror. Brooke stared through him, forgetting him again. "Begin," she told the boy.
"You have to tell me what to write," Jack said, poised over her arm.
In frustration, Brooke reached out with her other arm and gripped Jack's wrist, flooding him with words and stories and knowledge. Knowledge of Castiel. Knowledge of her love for him, and his for her. Knowledge that Jack wanted to know, and much that he did not. Much that he could've gone his entire eternal life without knowing. But he knew it now, and he could not forget it—every tiny detail of Castiel's life. And now he must write it down, because he had said he would.
Silently, saddened and troubled and frowning, yet somehow elated at the same time, he bent over Brooke's arm and began to write.
###
It took eight hours, partly because there was so much to write and partly because Jack took his time, to make sure the writing looked good, to make sure the story flowed the way Brooke wanted it to. She did not feel the pain. Rather, it blended with the feel of Castiel's Grace inside her body. It became a ritual of words and blood and the feel of the cloth as Jack wiped the blood away. When he was done, Brooke's entire body was covered in black ink, the story of Castiel's life and death forever inscribed into every inch of her skin, down to her fingers and toes.
She rose from the chair, her skin red and raw from the needles. She stood there and inhaled slowly, her eyes closed, though they glowed from behind her eyelids, and the rawness of her skin dissipated, healed with Grace. With the nuance of the Grace inside her, she could feel each line of ink in her skin, could feel Castiel's history playing against her skin, surrounding her old tattoos, spiraling in strange patterns. The only places devoid of ink were those places covered by her bra and panties, clothing she had not removed, for the tiny human sliver of her still left had been aware that the boy—Jack—did not need to see her fully naked.
Now she forgot he was there. Forgot she only wore the barest minimum of clothing. Forgot she had ever been human. She stood and breathed in Castiel's memories, and began to leave the tattoo parlor.
"Brooke!" Jack called.
She stopped and turned to him, eyes still glowing, head tilted as if she did not know him or know what he was.
"Your… your clothes," he said, and gathered them up in his arms and handed them to her, awkwardly.
She stared down at them, uncomprehending. She was an angel. Angels did not wear clothes. "WHAT IS THIS?" she asked, and the words were Enochian, for English had left her.
Jack, either through the memories that Brooke had given him, or through some instinctive knowledge he had as a Nephilim, could understand her. "You need to put them on," he told her gently.
"NO. I DO NOT."
"You do," he insisted. "Sam and Dean—
"WHO?"
Jack stared at her for a long time, tears in his eyes.
###
A day had passed since Brooke had tattooed Castiel's history onto her body, since she had forgotten her humanity and embraced the Grace inside her. One day.
Sam and Dean had taken her back to the bunker and watched her from corners, eyeing her suspiciously. Worrying about her. But not approaching her. Jack had warned them that she had forgotten who they were. Sometimes, recognition lit up her eyes when she saw them, but it quickly dulled and she would turn away, uninterested. The only one who could hold her attention was Jack. No one knew if that was because he was half-angel or if it was because she had some kind of bond with him that she did not share with the Winchesters.
She wandered the bunker aimlessly, her hand trailing along bookcases and walls and pillars, tables and chairs. She hummed sometimes, but the melody was unrecognizable to the three boys.
"Has she eaten at all?" Sam asked, mumbling quietly to Jack, who stood at his shoulder.
"No," Jack said. "I've been following her around all day, and she hasn't eaten or drunk anything."
Sam sighed. "We need to get her to eat."
"How?" Dean asked, sounding frustrated, standing at Sam's other shoulder.
Jack took a long deep breath. "I'll do it."
The Winchesters said nothing as they watched him go to her.
"Brooke?" Jack said, approaching her slowly, hesitantly, as if she were a wild animal.
She did not react to him.
"Brooke?" he repeated, louder.
She turned to him, a vague, faraway smile on her face. "BOY," she said, the Enochian sounding strange and staccato on her human tongue.
"Brooke, you need to eat something," he said.
The strange smile never left her face. "ANGELS DO NOT EAT."
Jack stared at her for a moment, swallowing. "Y-You're not an angel."
"I AM. DO YOU NOT SEE MY TRUE FORM BENEATH THIS BODY?" She spread her arms wide, and suddenly, from within, every line of Enochian script, written in black ink upon her skin, glowed blue-white, until she was almost too bright to look at.
Sam and Dean, from their corner, turned their faces away, blocking the light with their hands.
Jack withstood the light, staring at Brooke sadly. "That's… that's Castiel's Grace, not—
"CASTIEL," Brooke repeated, pronouncing his name the way angels would say it, all seven syllables. She smiled, though there was now something frantic in it, a wildness in her eyes. "YES. HE LIVES WITHIN ME NOW. I HOLD HIM HERE, IN MY BODY, IN MY SKIN. AND CASTIEL DOES NOT NEED TO EAT."
"No," Jack said, moving closer to Brooke, until he took one of her hands.
She stared down at their hands, seemingly confused.
"Castiel did not need to eat. But you do."
"I?" Brooke said. "WHO AM I?"
Jack closed his eyes, then tugged on her hand, pulling her towards the kitchen. "Maybe some soup," he said, and then stopped. "But I don't know how to make it…" He stared at the floor for a moment, and then murmured. "Actually, I do. I know how to make soup, and… lots of food." Because Brooke had given him every one of Castiel's memories, including those shared between he and his wife, with Brooke. And Brooke knew how to make soup. "Come on," Jack said, and led Brooke, hand in hand, into the kitchen.
###
A week had passed. Brooke had lost some weight due to continuously forgetting to eat. Jack had to follow her around with food and drink in his hands or she would not even think of sustenance. He was doing his best for her, but even Nephilim needed to eat and sleep themselves, and he could not watch her every hour of every day. Sam and Dean—of the two, mostly Sam—tried to fill in when Jack was taking care of his human needs, but Brooke's eyes seemed to slide right past the Winchester brothers. Often, Sam would put food into Brooke's hands, and she would look down, as if wondering why she was holding a bowl or a plate. Often, she would set the food down without touching it, and Jack would later have to coax her into eating it.
"Just a bite. For me."
Brooke would stare down at the food, a grimace marring her features, and then take a bite, forcing the food down her throat, fighting the urge to vomit. Food had lost its appeal. Now, she tasted all of it, every single molecule. Now, food overwhelmed her tastebuds, her nose. Water was no better. To most humans, water was tasteless, or tasteless enough. To Brooke, water tasted like every mineral it had ever come into contact with, or like the taste of the metal pipe, or like the flavor of the chemicals used to purify it.
"Just one more bite," Jack begged, his blue eyes wide and sad. "Please. I can't lose you, too."
That would make Brooke eat when nothing else did. She would remember, a little, who she was, why she was here. She would remember Kelly, and that Jack was Kelly's son, and that she had promised Kelly she would watch out for Jack. So she would force the disgusting food into her stomach and fight the dry heaves, and flee to the outside world. The bunker had become so… confining.
Jack followed her that night after she had choked down her food. He'd cooked it as blandly as he could, adding no spices, trying to pick food that had no real flavor to begin with. But even that did not help. He found her standing outside under the stars, taking deep breaths of cold night air.
"BOY," she said.
He came to stand beside her.
"LOOK AT THE STARS. SEE HOW BEAUTIFUL THEY ARE. HOW ENDLESS."
"I see them," Jack murmured.
"IMAGINE THE SUN," she went on. "THINK OF ITS VAST BRIGHTNESS—SO BRIGHT YOU MUST LOOK AWAY OR BE BLINDED, YET THAT BLINDING LIGHT IS NECESSARY FOR ALL LIFE ON EARTH."
He thought of the sun.
"EACH ANGEL CONTAINS THE VAST BRILLIANCE OF A SUN INSIDE THEMSELVES, BEAUTIFUL AND BRIGHT AND DEADLY AND LIFE-GIVING," Brooke said, and then fell silent.
And Jack knew that she was not talking about all angels. She was telling him, in the only way she knew how, about Castiel.
###
One month had passed since Castiel's death. Brooke had lost more weight, despite the combined efforts of all three boys living in the bunker with her. Even Dean had tried harder to feed her, to get her to remember her humanity. But they could all see how loosely her clothing hung on her, how skinny her arms and legs had gotten.
Jack could see more than the Winchesters, for he could see inside her, as well. He could see Castiel's Grace inside her body, and how it was the only thing holding her together. The only thing keeping her alive. Yet it was broken, too. As she wandered about the bunker, he trailed along behind her, watching the Grace inside her flicker and snap and yank at her body. He watched it light up like lightning, only to disappear into darkness for several moments. Then, it would flare up again, and Brooke's muscles would grow taut in pain as it lit her nerves on fire.
She had started to mutter to herself in Enochian every time these painful flares occurred. "Yes, Castiel," she would say. "I can feel you there. You are not forgotten."
Once, as she leaned heavily against a wall, breathing through the pain of electrified nerves, Jack approached her. "Brooke," he said.
She lifted her head to look at him, her eyes flickering blue-white light. He could almost hear the hum of the Grace inside her, like a power line.
"Brooke," he said again. "You know… you know that Castiel is… he's dead. You know that, right?"
"NO," she said. "HE'S HERE. HE'S RIGHT HERE. CAN'T YOU FEEL HIM? CAN'T YOU SEE HIM?" She bared her arms, pulled the shirt up off of her stomach, showing him the ink against her skin, lit up now by glowing Grace, blue-white. "HERE," she said. "HE'S NOT DEAD. HE'S HERE."
Jack had no idea what to say to that, so he left her leaning against the wall, holding back a flood of confused tears.
###
Brooke did not sleep in the room she had shared with Castiel. She had not been in there since before he had…
Instead, when she grew tired, she would sit in a chair in the library, in a nook in the corner, and lean her head back, and stare at the ceiling. Do you remember, she would ask, when…
When we met?
When we kissed for the first time?
The first time we made love?
When I taught you to drive?
When we forgot who we were?
When we lived with Daphne?
Do you remember when we exchanged rings?
Do you remember…?
She would fall asleep in the chair, and each time she awoke, she would forget a little more of herself, of her humanity, forget anything that wasn't a memory of Castiel. And each time she awoke, the Grace in her blood would hurt a little more.
###
Three months had passed since Castiel's death, and Brooke had stopped eating entirely. Sam, Dean, and Jack had no idea how she was still alive. Well, they did, but even with all their strange experiences, the fact that Brooke was being powered by Grace alone was still amazing to them. And horrifying.
"Jack, are you sure you can't get her to eat?" Sam murmured, watching Brooke as she slowly moved about the bunker, muttering to herself.
"I've tried everything," Jack replied. "She refuses food and water. Even when I beg and try to sound really sad, she just doesn't listen to me anymore." He took a breath. "She keeps telling me she doesn't need food."
"But… Look at her," Dean said, and they looked. They saw the way her hip bones stuck out, the way her face had sunken in. "We can't just leave her like this."
"We won't," Sam replied. "We'll find a cure. We always do."
Jack pursed his lips, squaring his shoulders. "So, let's start looking," he said, and turned away from Brooke.
###
They never found a cure. Six months after Castiel's death, Jack sat in the bunker, in the dark, surrounded by lit candles. Sam and Dean were out on a Hunt; they'd been avoiding the bunker for months. Jack did not move, but his eyes followed Brooke's broken form as she wandered in the dark, running her hands along the walls, the tables, the bookcases. Grace arced off of her body like lightning. reaching out for anything to ground it. But it had already broken every lightbulb in the bunker, and the three boys had learned months ago to stop putting new bulbs into the lamps.
Jack tried not to recoil as Brooke turned the corner and came into view. She was a walking corpse at this point, all skin and bones, mostly bald as well, as her hair had fallen out once she stopped eating entirely. She had a robe draped over her bony shoulders. Her eyes were sunken deep into her skull-like face, and glowed eerily with Grace. They were always glowing. Her entire body was constantly glowing, a blue-white wraith haunting the dark bunker. Her fingernails had become brittle months before, and then they'd fallen out. Now her fingers had bloody scabs where her nails had once been. Her skin, though unseen through the glow, had gone sickly.
Brooke was dead, for all intents and purposes—a walking corpse powered by a dead angel's Grace. A puppet, pulled ever forward by God knew what.
She stopped, and Jack could hear her raspy breath. BOY, she said, and he felt it in his mind like a knife. She sounded surprised to find him there, and stood staring at him for a long, long time.
He said nothing and did not move, taking shallow breaths. He had become her keeper, but he was terrified of her all the same. This is what came of those who loved too deeply, too hard. She lived because of her love for Castiel, but she died for it, too, and now she was stuck somewhere in between. Had she been anyone else, Sam and Dean would have killed her long ago, for she had become a monster.
Jack closed his eyes and shuddered as Brooke moved past his chair, shambling along on unsteady, atrophied legs, held up only by Grace and willpower.
He heard her move in a circle around the bunker, breathing, rasping, heard her hands dragging softly along the walls. She made a complete circuit, and returned to the library.
BOY, she said again, once more surprised to find him there. She stopped and stared at him, and moved on, and walked in a large circle, rasping, dragging, and stopped in the library.
BOY.
BOY.
BOY.
In the dark, listening to Brooke's rasps, smelling her rotting body, Jack bowed his head, squeezed his eyes shut, and prayed for Brooke's torment to end. And contemplated ending it himself if she did not die soon.
###
Six months after Castiel died, he returned to life, jolted awake in the Empty by the sound of Jack's desperate plea. Six months after he died, he returned to the Earth and called Brooke. She did not answer. He called Dean instead.
"C-Cass?" Dean said, his voice hoarse. "How are you…?"
Castiel smiled, so relieved at the sound of his voice. "I annoyed an ancient cosmic being so much that he brought me back."
"That's… that's great, Cass," Dean said.
But Castiel could tell that something was wrong. "Dean?"
Dean squeezed his eyes shut, massaging them with his fingers. "Cass, listen, man…"
"What is it?"
Dean took a deep, shaky breath. "It's uh… It's Brooke."
###
As Castiel sat in the back of the Impala, Sam and Dean tried in vain to explain to him exactly what was wrong with Brooke. But in the end, they knew that no amount of words would be able to describe what she had gone through, the transformation of her body and mind into a walking corpse, dragged along by Grace.
"She's just… not how you remember her," Sam tried. "She's… she got really sick after you died. She, uh…"
"She's a zombie," Dean said, tactlessly, though in this case, he thought he might be doing the angel a favor by just ripping the bandaid off as fast as possible.
Castiel's blood ran cold. "A… A z-zombie? But those aren't…"
"Not like a zombie in the movies," Dean said. "I mean, she's…" He closed his eyes for a moment, his grip on the steering wheel tightening. "I can't even… Just… Cass, she's… dead, but somehow not dead. She—she stopped eating. Like, entirely. But somehow she's still alive."
Castiel did not know how to respond to that. His mouth went dry.
"Cass, you need to try to… prepare yourself," Sam said, gently. "She won't look… like what you remember. She won't act like you remember. She… She doesn't remember who she is. And…" He felt bile rise in his throat as he pictured Brooke in his mind. "Cass, she looks like she's dead."
"Just stop," Castiel said, suddenly. "Just… just stop. I can't…"
"We know you can't," Dean said. "But you have to. You have to… be prepared. I have no idea what she'll do when she sees you. I have no idea if she'll even be alive by the time we get back to the bunker."
Castiel set his jaw, willing the tears of panic and pain not to fall. "Then drive faster," he growled, squeezing his own hands together until they went numb.
###
Jack's prayer for Brooke's salvation had gained them nothing. He had waited for another few days after praying—and he had prayed so hard. But nothing. Now he sat in the chair in the library as Brooke went slowly round and round, and he twirled an angel blade in his hands. It flashed in the candlelight.
"I'm sorry, Brooke," Jack said, even though he knew that she was not paying any attention to him, could not hear him over whatever magic compelled her to walk and never stop. "I'm sorry, but we've waited long enough, and we haven't found a cure. We can't take the Grace from you or you'll die without it, and none of us can make you eat. Besides, Sam said your organs are shut down at this point, so food wouldn't help you even if you did eat. That's why your hair and nails fell out, why your skin is rotting off." He took a deep breath, regretting it instantly as the smell of her fetid body reached his nostrils. "And you don't have any teeth left either, so we'd have to feed you a liquid diet. None of it matters. You're dead, really. Just… just a walking corpse. You're a… a monster. A monster who doesn't hurt anyone, but still a monster. And monsters have to be put down."
Jack stood up from the chair, gripping the angel blade tightly in his hand until the metal handle bit into his skin. "I don't know if the angel blade will even kill you. But it works on angels, and that's what you've always said you were, and if it kills the Grace inside you, then it'll kill you, too. And you can finally stop walking. You can rest. This has to be done."
Brooke appeared around the corner, surprised to see him, as always. BOY.
"Brooke," he said.
She blinked at him, breath escaping her in a wet gurgle, as if her lungs were beginning to finally fail.
He could see patches of raw wet skin where the top layers had sloughed off. Her skin was turning black at the extremities as the muscles died. But even still, her eyes glowed that eerie blue color, and the Grace arced around her like lightning, reaching. Ever reaching. It touched him, but did not hurt him, for he was Nephilim, and stronger than her. Especially now.
He approached her slowly, and she did not even notice.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered, raising the blade. "I'm doing this for you. I can't stand to see you this way anymore." He brought the blade down.
The door to the bunker opened, loud and intrusive in this smoky, candlelit darkness that stank of death.
The blade clattered to the ground as Jack dropped it in shock, leaving Brooke unharmed. Well. She was harmed, but not by his blade, anyway.
"J-Jack?" Sam called down into the darkness.
Jack covered his mouth with a hand and stifled a sob.
"Jack!" Dean shouted, probably hearing the sob, anyway. "Sound off!"
"H-Here!" Jack called, his voice cracking. "We're here."
A flashlight beam lit up the dark, and the boy squinted against the light, unused to it. He gazed at the two—no, three—men standing before him, and his breath caught in his throat as he realized that one of the men was Castiel. He opened his mouth, eager to say something to the man who was supposed to be his father, but he could say nothing in the face of the angel's horror-stricken look.
Castiel was not looking at Jack. He was looking over and behind the boy's shoulder.
At his wife. Or what was left of her.
"God, Jack," Sam said, sounding absolutely horrified. "You didn't tell us she'd—she'd gotten this bad."
But Jack did not respond to Sam. He could not take his eyes from Castiel, from the face the angel was making.
###
Castiel did not know how to process what he was looking at—who he was looking at. Logic told him that this horrific creature could not be his wife. Yet, logic also dictated that this was Brooke. He took a shaky deep breath and instantly regretted it, his angelic senses picking up on every foul odor emanating from her decaying body. He could smell her dead organs, rotting inside her body. His heightened eyesight landed on every open sore and every bone that stuck out of her emaciated body. He swallowed, and swallowed again, and realized that there was bile rising in his throat. He had never been nauseous before in all his millions of years. His eyes were watering and he could not tell if he was crying, or if the tears were caused by the smell of her.
She had not moved yet. He could hear her horrible rasping breath, wet-sounding deep in her chest.
His lips began to press together, to say her name, but he could not say anything. Not to this thing. Her eyes glowed with Grace, and, in fact, he could see great electric arcs of it shooting off of her body, searching for what he did not know.
She finally seemed to see him, to notice him, and she smiled. She had no teeth, and her gums were black. She reached toward him, stepping forward.
He inhaled sharply, in terror, and stepped back away from her. Never, in all his years of marriage, had he been afraid of his wife. But this was not his wife. This was a nightmare.
She did not seem to notice that he had backed away from her, and merely kept moving toward him, her emaciated, rotting arms reaching for him, that disgusting smile plastered to her face, eyes glowing from a skull-like face.
Castiel kept backpedalling, wishing fervently for his wings in that moment, praying to God that he could teleport so far away from here that he would forget he had ever seen her. She just kept coming. She kept coming and, God forgive him, he turned fully away from her and ran.
He got halfway to the bunker steps, up to the outside world and blessed fresh air, when he heard the sound.
It was the most pathetic sound he'd ever heard, like a drowning baby kitten, desperately mewling, its lungs half-full of water already. It was a keening, terrible sound of absolute pain. And surrender.
He stopped moving, and heard behind him the sound of her hitting the floor. She was still crying. Crying for him. But her throat was so rotted that this was the only sound she could make. He stood with his back to her for a long time, breathing in the fetid air and the candle smoke. And then he felt a single tendril of Grace brush against him, reaching out for him, twisted and deformed, snaking around his arm.
He hissed in pain, then screamed, his head thrown back as he experienced every memory that Brooke had from the last six months, shoved into his head in the blink of an eye. All of her pain and suffering, her confusion, her desperate wish and prayer for him to return to her.
All she wanted was him. He was all she had ever wanted. And he had hurt her so much more by running. Now she stood at the precipice of death—true death—waiting to know if he would stay or leave. Leaving would be the end of her, for good.
Castiel breathed, and breathed some more, and steeled his nerves, and slowly turned back around to face his wife. And, slowly, the horrible, broken tendril of Grace unwound itself from his arm. He took more deep breaths, despite the smell of her, and said, quietly, into the gloom, "Everyone leave."
"What?" Dean asked, and his voice sounded so loud. "Cass—
"I said leave. All three of you. Leave Brooke to me."
"I dunno if that's a good idea, Cass," Sam said.
"It'll be all right," Castiel replied, though he knew no such thing. It would go well or it would be a disaster. Either way it did not matter. He and Brooke had to be alone for this. "The three of you need to leave."
"For how long?" Jack asked, his voice so small and plaintive.
"I don't know," Castiel said. "Until Brooke and I come out, I suppose."
"What if you never come out?" Dean asked.
Castiel looked him in the eye. "We'll come out, one way or another."
Dean held his gaze for a moment, then nodded, and led the other two up and out of the bunker.
Castiel closed his eyes, listening to the metal shriek of the door as it opened, and the solid, echoing boom as it closed. Now he and Brooke had been entombed together. They would come out alive… or dead.
###
Castiel took another deep breath, and another, trying to think. Now that he was alone with Brooke, he had no idea how to proceed. Well, he did. He must touch her and reestablish their mental connection, but he was afraid of what would happen when he did. Would he simply go mad, like she already was? And what would he do if he could not fix her? He shook his head a little; he did not want to think about what would happen if he could not return her to normalcy. He did want to think about what it would be like if she were stuck as this Grace-fueled zombie for an eternity.
If it came to that, if she could not be healed, he would do the kind thing and end her miserable life.
And then he would probably end his own, for good this time. No coming back.
But he could not let himself think of that. Not yet. He had to try.
He focused his gaze on her, taking in her glowing eyes and her bald, rotting head. When she saw his eyes on her, she smiled that gummy smile again, once more raising her arms out toward him. He inhaled, and held his breath, staring down at her blackened, shriveling hands… and reached out, and touched her.
He braced himself, his body tensing for the worst, but it was not as horrible as he thought it would be. Her thoughts were not scary or gruesome. They were, however, relentless. And, despite the weakness of her physical body, her mind was strong and loud.
YOU CAME BACK, she said. Over and over and over.
YOU CAME BACK. YOU CAME BACK TO ME. YOU CAME BACK.
Castiel squeezed his eyes shut, pain lancing through his mind at the strength of her voice. Her words were Enochian, and she spoke like an angel. Not in the stereotypical angelic way, the way humans thought angels would sound. No. She spoke like a true angel, the way he did, when he was angry, or in his true form, shoving the power of himself through an enemy and smiting them to a smoking husk. He could withstand it because he was an angel, but it still hurt.
Carefully, slowly, he sought out her humanity, probing her mind, embracing the pain she threw at him. He tried to reach back for memories from before his death, but there was a wall around that part of her mind. The further back he tried to go, the more it felt like he was swimming through molasses. Every memory he could find had only occurred after his death, and it would be a stretch to call them memories, for they were endlessly similar.
Every day, she walked the bunker, dragging her hands along the walls, lost to the outside world, thinking of him. And, more recently, her mind was incapable of true thought, her brain rotting inside its skull, her capacity to think and function severely limited. The only thing that seemed to drag her forward every hour of every day was the sensation of his Grace inside her body, and the thought of his name and his face in her mind.
Even now, right this moment, thinking, 'You came back,' was the only coherent thought she had. And really, it was much more of a feeling than a thought.
Brooke, as Castiel had known her before, was almost gone. There was almost nothing left of her.
Tentatively, he reached out two fingers and pressed them to her forehead, shuddering at the feel of wet skin beneath his fingertips. She did not move, but continued to smile that black, gummy smile at him. He closed his eyes, the better to concentrate, but he had no idea where to even begin in terms of healing her. Her insides were even worse than her outsides. Total organ failure, including her heart and brain. Truth be told, he had absolutely no idea how she was still alive, even with his Grace. Under normal circumstances, no amount of Grace could've kept her alive this long. Once she had stopped eating, there should have been only a finite amount of time in which his Grace could keep her organs running properly. A week or two?
Of course, nothing about Brooke had ever been normal.
With a deep breath and a shudder, he knew what he would have to do if there was to be any chance of saving her. But he had no idea if he could convey his thoughts to her at all, and get her to comply. Without that—without her permission—he could do nothing.
"Brooke," he ventured, and, for good measure, spoke to her in Enochian, and echoed the word in her head. "Brooke, you must let me in. Do you understand?"
YOU CAME BACK. YOU CAME BACK. YOU CAME BACK.
He grimaced, trying harder. "Yes. Yes, I came back. Brooke, listen to me. You have to let me in. I need to possess you."
YOU CAME BACK YOU CAME BACK YOU CAME BACK—
"BROOKE!" Castiel gasped after shouting her name, breathing in more of her rot, tasting it in his lungs. Tears now coursed freely down his cheeks. He wanted to hold her, to grip her arms, to touch her face, but he was terrified that pieces of her skin would come off in his hands. He bowed his head, weeping bitterly, and muttered, "I did this to you. So I have to fix it. But you have to let me in. Can't you hear me? I just need you to say yes. Just one word. Just say that one word for me, please, Brooke. Just—
"Yes."
He almost could not understand the word for what it was, Brooke's throat so rotted on the inside that the word escaped as a wet growl.
He kept his head bowed, not daring to believe, but when he reached out his Grace to her, the beginning of a possession, he was not barred entry. She had said yes. She'd given him permission.
"Oh, God," he sobbed, and swiped at his eyes, rubbing them with the back of his arm. He breathed. "You're still in there." He stared into her glowing eyes, trying to find some amount of recognition, but there was nothing. Perhaps she had only said the word because he had repeated it so many times. Perhaps she had gained some small amount of consciousness only long enough to give permission, and now she was lost again. It didn't matter. He had what he needed.
He did not in any way relish the thought of possessing his wife's broken, dying body, but she was so damaged at this point that the only way to heal her was to do it like this. With a grimace, and a shudder, and fear in his heart, he steeled every last nerve and left his body. And entered her.
It was so much worse than he could have imagined. This felt like the worst kind of… what? Sacrilege was the first word that came to his mind. He felt doused in poison, in pollution, in radiation. In filth and stink and death. He was drowning in her, suffocating in the decay of her.
Focus! he reprimanded himself. Her organs first. He needed to heal her organs, or fixing the rest of her would be pointless—
CASTIEL—
Her voice had been loud enough outside of her body, but now it threatened to completely overwhelm him. In her voice and the saying of his name, he could feel the pain and suffering she had endured for the last six months. He could feel her desperation all over again. It made him want to curl up into a ball and cry. B-Brooke, he said. I have to concentrate. This is… very delicate.
CASTIEL.
Brooke, please, he begged, cringing from the strength of her voice, from the urge to give in to her insanity. Please, I need to heal you—
—CASTIEL—
Frustrated and overwhelmed and terrified, he took hold of her mind in a vice-like grip and overpowered her: BE SILENT.
She fell completely and utterly silent, to the point that he was afraid he had just killed her. But no. No, he could still feel her mind working, somehow, despite her dead body. She was still there.
Putting aside all doubts and fears, he set to work healing her body…
###
It took a week. One week of intensive, exhaustive healing. Castiel did not move Brooke's body in this time, opting to spread her out on the bunker floor. He had been too afraid to move her, afraid her limbs would fall off, afraid she would collapse, dead, if he walked around inside her body.
He regenerated her organs first, replacing dead tissue with healthy. Even that, alone, took a few days—mostly because he had to be very sure that her brain was entirely intact, and that he had not damaged her memories or her personality in healing the dead tissue. Her other organs were simpler. Afterwards, he made sure to sit and let healthy blood and oxygen flow in her body for a time, to be sure things were working properly.
She spoke for the first time as he began to work on rebuilding her muscles. Ligaments, tendons, tissue. Fat, as well. Helping her to become less skeletal.
Castiel, she said, and this time it came out as a soft whisper.
He stopped in his work. Brooke.
She was silent for a long time. Then: Are you… Is this really happening?
Yes.
She said nothing after this, not for a long time, but he could feel her mind working, her thoughts whirling. After an eternity of silence, she said, You should have killed me.
No, he began, immediately—
Castiel, she whispered, and he fell silent, despair overpowering him. Castiel, you don't… understand. I have to live with this, now. With… everything I became after you died. I have to remember all of this.
We can get past it, he said, desperately.
No, she said. We can't. And you know it. Nothing will ever be okay again.
Castiel went still inside her body for a long time, and when he finally shifted again inside her, to heal more of her, he refused to speak.
Together, they lay on the floor of the bunker, waiting for her strength to return. Together, they contemplated their future.
###
The door to the bunker screeched open and Castiel and Brooke stepped out into the daylight. Brooke blinked, tears streaming down her face, squinting at the light. She had not seen sunlight since Castiel had died, and had been living in near-perpetual darkness for months. She took tentative steps forward, and saw Sam, Dean, and Jack standing out in the grass beside the building.
"Were you three just standing there for a week?" she asked, her voice rasping, unused to speech.
"We took turns watching the door," Sam said. "We were about to switch off…"
"Where's Cass?" Dean asked, eyeing Brooke warily.
"Here," Castiel said, deepening Brooke's voice as he spoke through her mouth.
Sam, Dean, and Jack stared at Brooke and Castiel, their eyes flicking from her body standing there, to the door of the bunker, probably wondering where they would find the angel's body.
"No, guys," Dean began—
"We cannot separate," Castiel said, "or Brooke will die."
Jack inhaled sharply, the first noise he'd made since he'd seen them.
Everyone fell silent for a minute, letting this reality sink in. It had taken everything from Castiel to heal his wife, to restore her body to normal. In so doing, he had had to pour so much of his Grace into her that they were inexplicably tied together. Separating from her, pulling himself from her body, would tear her apart from the inside-out, and kill her instantly.
"So… you're just stuck like this forever?" Dean asked, and did not sound happy about it.
"Stuck," Castiel repeated, staring down at his hands—her hands. "We don't see it that way." The scrawl of Brooke's tattoos spiraled up her arms, the words telling Castiel's story. When he had healed her, he had not taken them away, for he knew it would upset her to no end.
"But…" Jack spoke up, his voice quiet. "But Brooke is… better now, right?"
Brooke stared at the boy and had no idea how to respond. She wasn't better. Not really. But what good would it to do to tell him that? "Yes," she said. "I'm… better now." The lie tasted bitter on her tongue. All she wanted was to be far from here, to forget herself, her life, all that she was. To dig her own grave and pull the dirt over head and sleep for eternity. Instead, all she could think about was the horror she had become after her husband's death. The flesh falling from her bones, the memory loss, the rattling breath, the stink of decay. She squeezed her eyes shut, turning her face away.
"You look better," Sam said, "but…"
"Yeah," said Dean. "But."
Brooke was so, so tired. "It doesn't matter!" she snapped. "Cass and I are leaving, anyway. You won't have to worry about us anymore."
"What?" Jack said, so much emotion poured into that one word, his face broken.
Castiel took a deep breath, reining in his wife's feelings, lest she break down. "We… Brooke and I think it would be best if we… retire. We'll go somewhere… far away and lay low, and never come back."
"Why?" Sam demanded.
Brooke stared at the younger Winchester. "I was dead, Sam. For months, I wandered around the bunker dead. Alive, but dead. I wasn't me. I was a… a husk. A—a zombie. I can't… I can't just… pretend like that didn't happen to me. I can't pretend like Jack wasn't two seconds from killing me before Cass came back."
Jack's eyes filled with tears. "You remember that?" he whispered.
Brooke turned to him. "It wasn't your fault, boy—
BOY—
The memory of wandering around and around the bunker in the dark, stumbling upon Jack and each time saying, BOY.
Brooke flinched, and so did Jack.
And that was why she had to leave. None of these men would ever look at her the same way again. Ever. She had been a monster and part of her still felt like one.
"So you're just gonna give up?" Sam said, breaking her out of her thoughts.
She stared up at him sadly. "Yes."
"No," Dean broke in, angrily. "No, you're not. None of you gave up on me when I had the Mark of Cain—
"Dean, I wanted to kill you every day of your life the entire time you had the Mark," Brooke murmured, not looking at him. "I gave up on you."
Dean fell silent, and though she refused to lift her eyes, she could feel him staring at her in horror.
"We're leaving," Brooke said, staring faraway at nothing. "And none you can stop us."
"So you'll steal Cass from us, too," Dean said.
"She's not stealing me," Castiel replied, quietly. "I choose to go, willingly."
"Fine," Dean snapped. "Go, then."
Castiel and Brooke, together, took a deep breath. Castiel wanted to speak to Dean, to try to explain, but Dean never listened to him on the best of days, so why would he listen to the angel now, when he was leaving for good? What could Castiel possibly say to the man to get him to understand? No one but himself and Brooke understood what Brooke had gone through for the past six months… Well… Perhaps Jack did.
Brooke gazed at Jack, feeling so sad that she had never gotten to know him better before losing her mind and her body. She reached out a hand to grip his shoulder, then let it fall before she touched him. He had had to see her when her body had been nothing but skin and bone and atrophied muscle and rot. He probably would not appreciate being touched by her, even now, even when she looked healthy again.
"Goodbye, Jack," she said. "I'm sorry."
Jack stared at her, blinking back tears. "Don't go," he whispered. "You and Cass are finally back. You can't leave me now."
"I'm not me anymore," Brooke said, trying to explain. "Whoever I was when you first met me… Well, I wasn't me, then, either, because when you met me, Cass was already dead. You've never met… me. So don't feel sad for me now. Don't miss this version of me, Jack. Brooke is dead. She's been dead for six months."
Jack's face twisted in sorrow and horror.
"Guys…" Sam began, but fell silent, as if he'd given up.
Brooke and Castiel took another deep breath, and walked away.
Forever.
Neither of them ever saw Jack or Sam or Dean again.