A/N: Welcome to chapter one of "Held," the sequel to "Kept." If this is your first time here, please head back to my author page and read the first book in the series, titled, "Touched." If you've been around a while, welcome back, and I'm pleased to have you!

One

Brooke sat on one of the beds in Sam and Dean's motel room, holding her face in her hands. She could hear their voices, but they were muffled, and sounded far away, as if through a wall, or from underwater. Her headache pounded with each heartbeat; she was dirty and sweaty and starving. She shook as she sat on the bed, from exhaustion or hunger or pain… She didn't really know.

Castiel appeared, walking out of the bathroom. The first thing she noticed, with her eyes so downcast, were his shoes. They were clean. And so was his coat. She stared up into his face. Clean-shaven. Clean. He smiled.

"Better?" he asked, spreading his arms.

She smiled at him, but it felt hollow. He was the sun, once again, but his light was weak and watery, unable to reach her fully, through whatever shadow surrounded her.

He smiled at Sam and Dean, then looked at her and said, "Oh." He approached her, two fingers held out, to push against her forehead.

She flinched away from his hand, an automatic response, her heart pounding.

Castiel's smile faded. He crouched down in front of her, looking up into her face as she sat on the bed. Slowly, he reached for her hand. She let him take it, and felt a little less foggy, all of a sudden. Her headache lessened; the stiffness in her muscles went away; the faintness in her body, like she was about to pass out, was replaced with strength.

Brooke looked down at herself and saw that she was clean. Still, she craved a shower, the feeling of warm water running down her body. She looked clean, felt physically better, but she felt… wrong. Everything felt wrong. She didn't want to be here, stared at by the Winchesters. She felt naked.

Castiel continued to hold her hand for a moment, then he stood up. "Does one of you have a credit card I could use to get Brooke a room of her own, here?"

"Uhh," said Sam, standing up and grabbing his wallet. "Sure. Here." He handed Castiel a credit card.

"Thanks," the angel said, taking it. He turned back to Brooke.

She stared up at him.

Come on, he said, gently, silently.

She stood and trailed him to the door.

"Hey, hey," Dean said, holding out a hand to stop them.

Castiel placed a hand on Dean's shoulder. "I'll be back soon. I'm just going to get Brooke settled in."

Dean glanced from him to Brooke. She stared at him with empty eyes. He looked away first.

###

Brooke stood in the shower as the water rained down on her, scaldingly hot. Castiel had left her alone in the room next to the boys', to give her time to… adjust. Or something. Truth be told, he was having just as hard a time adjusting as she was. He was just better at hiding it. More talkative. Talking, in general. Something that Brooke seemed to have forgotten how to do since they'd gotten out of Purgatory.

Purgatory.

Monsters, monsters, everywhere, and not an end in sight.

If Brooke had thought they were in Purgatory to be punished for their sins… well, they'd certainly been punished. She looked down at her hands, and saw them covered in blood, even though she knew they were not. She closed her eyes, and through the sound of the shower, all she could hear were growls and screams and wet, squelching bloody wounds.

No sleep. No food. In Purgatory, such human weaknesses did not exist. Brooke had been awake for a year. Had not eaten for a year. The fogginess from earlier had been because Castiel had teleported them around for the past two days, trying to find Dean.

She hadn't spoken since they gotten out. The sound of her own voice, even clearing her throat, made her jumpy. Everything made her jumpy. And now, Castiel was gone. He had thought, perhaps, that privacy was what she wanted. After all, they had been each other's constant companions, never separating for even a moment, for the past year. And leaving her on her own was giving him a chance to catch up with the boys. More Dean than Sam. Dean, who had found them in Purgatory, towards the end.

She wondered if she should have gone with Dean through the portal, after all. But it had already been a year by that point. She figured leaving just a little earlier would not have prevented her from going insane. Not at that point. At that point, she was already too far gone, barely human, reacting on instinct alone. The only thing keeping her from going completely feral was Castiel's presence.

And now he had left her, to go chat it up with Dean Winchester. To pretend like everything was fine.

Endless minutes later, the angel found Brooke sitting on the floor of the shower. The water had gone cold, but still it poured down onto her. She sat in the tub, her knees pulled up to her chest, shivering. But she would not turn off the water. Her headache had returned.

Brooke jumped as he shut the water off, the sudden absence of noise deafeningly loud. Purgatory had never been silent. Never. Her eyes met Castiel's, accusatorially, as if him turning the shower off had been the worst thing he could have possibly done to her. He held her gaze, and his eyes were soft. Slowly, he lowered himself to the floor in the bathroom and sat beside her as she continued to curl up on the floor of the shower.

He did not speak. In the past two days, he had hardly spoken a word to her, even in his mind, for he had realized that each time he spoke, she pulled further into herself. Only her utter exhaustion had prevented her from completely breaking down at the sudden influx of voices in the motel room with Sam and Dean.

Odd that the sound of running water was fine, but voices… She couldn't handle voices. Voices wanted something from her, and she had nothing more to give. They could kiss her ass if they asked anything of her. She was done. Yet, she could not be done, for she was bonded to Castiel so strongly that when he left her, it hurt. And Castiel, whether he knew it or not, was in love with Dean Winchester. So, wherever Dean went, Castiel would follow.

And wherever Castiel went, Brooke would follow. It had been like this from the very beginning, but it was only now, in the silence between the voices, that Brooke had realized what Castiel had not. It would take many more years for Castiel to realize that he was in love with Dean.

Brooke did not care. An angel could love two humans at once, in vastly different ways. She was not jealous of Dean Winchester. She only cared at all because she knew that, as long as Castiel loved Dean, then she could never quit. Could never give up the life of the Hunter. Could never go live somewhere quiet, and far away. Somehow, she would have to figure out how to pull herself together, even though all she wanted to do was sit here in the tub forever.

She glanced at Castiel, who was sitting quietly, staring at the wall. Why are you here? she asked. Don't you want to spend time with your boyfriend?

Castiel turned and looked at Brooke. I'm not in love with Dean.

You are, you just don't know it. Or maybe don't want to admit it. So, why are you here?

To spend time with my wife, he said, and smiled gently at her. My wife, whom I love.

She stared at him without really seeing him. You spent the last year with me, practically attached at the hip. Aren't you tired of me?

No.

Brooke looked away from him, staring at the wall of the shower. I'm tired of me. I'm tired of everything, and everyone. I just want to sleep for a hundred years.

Are you tired of me? Castiel asked, though there was nothing accusatory in his tone. It was only a question, a genuine one.

Brooke did not answer because she did not know how to answer. All she knew was that, sooner or later, Castiel would accompany the Winchesters on another adventure, and she would not be left behind because she would refuse to sit in the dark by herself. So, she needed to bury her shit down deep. And the first step was to get used to noise again.

"Castiel," she said, aloud, and her voice cracked from lack of use. The sound of echoed in the shower, and she closed her eyes against the noise. The noise that made her want to squeeze her own head so hard that it exploded. All she saw behind her eyelids was blood. Monsters and killing and blood and pain.

In her mind, she felt his sorrow, his pity.

"Fuck you," she said, and her voice cracked again, and she wanted to curl up in the bathtub and cry, and turn the water back on and lay under the faucet with her face turned to the water until she drowned. "Don't you pity me, you piece of shit."

Castiel said nothing, and did not move.

After a while, the sound of her voice stopped grating on her nerves so much. She lowered her hands from her head and looked at him. I'm sorry, she said in her mind, because she was afraid she would really try to kill herself if she spoke aloud again.

He shook his head. You're… traumatized. I don't take the insults personally.

Don't pity me, Brooke repeated. I'm not the only one here with PTSD.

Castiel stared at her, but did not deny it. He swallowed.

Brooke took a deep, deep breath and began to stand up. Castiel stood up faster and offered his hand to her. She took it, flinching at the feel of something touching her that was alive, but held herself together.

"Fuck me," she demanded.

Castiel went very still.

"Don't shut down like that," Brooke snapped, her voice cracking again, sounding hoarse and broken. Her throat hurt. "Both of us can't be shut down. You went crazy before Purgatory and I took care of you, then. Now I'm crazy, and you need to be stronger than me."

He gazed at her, his eyes soft, but in pain. "I don't think sex—

"Sex is the closest thing I can think of to combat that isn't painful. It's loud. There's physical contact. It's messy. I need to readjust to being back on Earth, and I need to prepare for whenever the fuck the Winchesters are going to demand that we help them with something. I can't be having a panic attack anytime someone does something loud, unexpectedly, or I'm gonna get myself killed."

"Your reasoning is… strange," he murmured.

Brooke stood her ground. "Are you gonna fuck me or not? You want me to ask Dean if he'd like to join?"

Castiel's eyes went wide.

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"What is your issue with Dean Winchester?" the angel asked.

"Not an issue. Just an understanding. I had a lot of time to think in Purgatory."

He sighed, looking at the floor. "I am not… sexually attracted to Dean," he said.

"No?" She folded her arms over her chest. "What about me, now that I'm not disgusting and covered in blood and dirt and… monster guts? Are you sexually attracted to me?"

Castiel closed his eyes for a moment, then he opened them again and brought his forehead down to touch hers. She almost flinched, but held herself steady.

You can hardly stand it when I touch you, he said. And you want to have sex?

Brooke shrugged. "Exposure therapy," she whispered. She felt his hesitation in her mind, and snatched one of his hands, pressing it to one her breasts, forcing the fingers to close around the flesh. "Just do it."

He took a deep breath. "All right."

…

The sex did not heal her, but she had not expected it to. It was only a first step. She cried halfway through, so they stopped, but it wasn't anything Castiel had done. It was simply… the pain of everything else. Still, some sort of wall that had been put up between them, some emotional distance, was broken down, at least a little. Castiel felt more familiar to her, closer. Their time in Purgatory had changed their relationship, so that she had stopped thinking of him as a husband and more as a… fellow soldier. There was no time for romance when all you knew was death.

As her tears abated, she turned in the bed to look at him, and focused on his hand, which was resting on his chest. The gold wedding band was back on his finger now—something both of them had removed and hidden away in his trench coat after some bastard monster had tried to take the rings from them.

She turned again and lay on her back, lifting her own left hand to stare up at her own ring. "We never contacted Daphne," she whispered, thinking back to those perfect six months, that time in their life that now felt more like a dream than reality.

"I wouldn't even… know what to say to her, now," Castiel replied, his own voice hardly above a whisper.

"No," Brooke agreed.

No, there was nothing they could possibly say to Daphne that would suffice. No way to explain any of it. It had been more than a year, now. It was best to leave Daphne be, and let her think that Brooke and Castiel had died. Because the truth of it was so much worse.