Five

Brooke tried to sleep while they were gone, but nightmares plagued her, as they had ever since her return to Earth. Castiel was gone for hours with Sam and Dean. She got up out of bed at some point, knowing that sleep would not come, and spent the time exercising in her room, going through the routine she always did when she was left somewhere with nothing to do. Push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, high knees. There were more. By the end, she was sweaty and exhausted, and she took a shower.

She was drying herself off when she felt Castiel's return, that mental link growing stronger and stronger as he came nearer and nearer to the motel. He did not walk into their room. Instead, he went into the one next door, to Sam and Dean's room. Brooke thought that maybe that was for the best.

She could hear his thoughts as Dean started to talk to him a few minutes later, but did what she always did when he and Dean were speaking privately: she ignored it as best she could.

What she could not ignore was the sudden spike of anger a minute later. She winced, sucking air in through her teeth as Castiel's words echoed loudly in her mind: "Dean! I said no!"

Slowly, warily, Brooke reached out a tendril of her mind to him. Are—are you all right?

He did not respond in words, but silently asked her to stay. To listen to that conversation with Dean that was meant to be private.

She stood in the middle of her motel room, and closed her eyes to better focus on his words, and through him, Dean's.

"Talk to me," Dean said to Castiel.

"Dean, I…" Castiel sighed. "When I was… bad… and I had all those things—the… the Leviathans… writhing inside me… I caused a lot of suffering on Earth, but I devastated Heaven. I vaporized thousands of my own kind, and I—I… I can't go back."

"'Cos if you do, the angels will kill you," Dean said.

"Because if I see what Heaven's become—what I…" He took a steadying breath. "What I made of it… I'm afraid I might kill myself."

Brooke slowly made her way over to the bed and sank down onto it. She understood why Castiel had beckoned her in, let her spy on their conversation. He wanted her to understand that he truly was as broken as she was. And that, while she wanted to kill everything and everyone else, to lash out in anger and pain, he wanted to kill himself—to stop the pain.

She pressed her hand to her mouth and began to cry.

He appeared in the room and walked up to her, crouching down in front of the bed where she sat and looking up into her face.

She stared down at him and saw pain—hers and his—reflected in his face.

"What the hell are we gonna do?" she whispered. "You're suicidal. I'm… I wanna kill everyone, including myself…" She shook her head. "We're falling apart." She slid off the bed and onto the floor to be nearer to him.

He sat down on the floor, completely, and pulled her up into his lap, wrapping his arms around her. "I don't know what we'll do," he murmured, "but we'll do it together, like always… Entreat me not to leave thee."

She smiled slightly, wiped her face with the heels of her hands, and kissed him.

###

They were not, exactly, better by the time they walked into the old folks' home. But there was a kind of numbing over both of their emotions, a dull acceptance of their "new normal." They hid their true feelings underneath humor, and underneath the need to do this job, to solve this case.

Dean occasionally glanced at the two of them, his eyes lingering longer than necessary, but he said nothing.

Apparently, every robbery in the area related to this case had someone attached to it from this retirement home, which was… odd.

"All right, let's do this," Dean said, once they'd gained permission to question the residents. He turned and looked at Sam, Castiel, and Brooke. "No flirting."

Does he mean with each other? Castiel wondered. Or… with the residents?

Brook glanced at him. He was joking, she explained.

But, as it turned out, he wasn't far off.

As she and Castiel sat down to question one of the women, the old lady stared at Castiel with clear attraction. She put her face in her hands and smiled at him like a love-sick teenaged girl. "You are so pretty, Charles…" she sighed.

Castiel smiled awkwardly at the woman, then glanced across the table at Brooke. Help me.

It took everything in Brooke not die laughing. Well, she's not wrong, she told Castiel. You are pretty.

Now is not the time, Castiel said, his face growing more and more panicked the longer the old lady sat and stared at him. "That's not my name," he finally told her.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "You look so much like my third husband."

Brooke cleared her throat, leaning on the table. "We're here to talk about the robbery, ma'am."

The woman looked at her. "Robbery?"

"Yes. The one the police talked to you about a few days ago? Someone broke into your old house and stole a stack of bearer bonds. And some jewelry that you stashed under your floorboards."

"Oh, my diamonds!" the old lady said, her eyes lighting up. "Yes. I hid them there." She turned back to Castiel. "I'm sorry, Charles. I didn't trust you. You were quite the bounder."

At this point, Castiel was sort of learning to roll with the punches. Instead of trying to correct her again, he merely asked, "Did you tell anyone where your valuables were, Mrs. Tate?"

"I don't think so," the lady responded. "But then, I get a little fuzzy sometimes." She smiled.

"Have you noticed anything strange, lately?" Brooke asked. "Cold spots? Funny smells?"

Mrs. Tate tilted her head, thinking. "Well, there's the cat," she said, and pointed to a ginger cat laying on a couch nearby.

"The cat?" Brooke repeated. She's completely insane, she thought to Castiel.

"He talks sometimes," Mrs. Tate explained. "Really hates that mouse."

Brooke glanced at Cass.

He glanced back at her, out of the corner of his eye, then he said, "I'll interrogate the cat."

Brooke stared at he got up and went to go… talk to the cat. You'll what? she demanded, silently. Can you talk to animals?

Yes, he replied.

You can talk to animals and I didn't know about it for six years?

You don't remember the dogs at the race track in Perth?

Brooke proceeded to stare at him as he crouched down in front of the cat, and she felt the strangest sensation of being connected to an angel and a cat at the same time. Because she could not communicate with animals, all she got were strange images and sounds that did not make sense. She sat in the chair, holding her head, until Dean's voice seemed to wake her up.

"Guys," came Dean's hissed whisper. "Let's go."

Brooke looked up at Dean.

"I've almost cracked him," Castiel said, from his position on the floor in front of the cat.

"Now!" Dean commanded.

Castiel glanced up at Dean, rolled his eyes, and pointed a finger at the cat. "Hey. I'm not through with you."

Brooke was finally able to think clearly again when Castiel cut off the mental connection to the cat. "Okay," she said, standing up a little unsteadily. "That was weird."

Castiel went over to her and gripped her shoulder to steady her. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Fine," she said, and they went off to follow Sam and Dean.

But Brooke could've sworn as she was leaving the day room that she heard someone behind her say, "Dumbass."

###

In the end, the one causing all the strange, cartoonish chaos in the vicinity of each robbery, was an old man with psychic powers. He was in something like a coma, or so far gone in his dementia-addled brain that he could not be roused into true consciousness. All he did, all day, was sit in his wheelchair at the old folks' home and watch cartoons. Which explained all the weird stuff: a man's heart leaping out of his chest; the robber painting black holes on the walls so that he could sneak in and out of buildings; anvils falling on peoples' heads.

The man doing the robbing, a staff member at the home, stole from the children of the old men and women living there. He carted the psychic around with him when he wanted to go rob a place, to cause chaos and make everything easier for him, and harder for anyone trying to investigate.

It was a strange case, one of the strangest that Brooke had ever worked, but none of those details were what stuck out to her. In the end, the way that they stopped the psychic man from causing anymore chaos was by going into his mind. Since he could not be roused into consciousness, then they had to go to him. Luckily, they had an angel on their side, who had powers like the ability to teleport himself an others into the mind of a person.

And as Sam Winchester spoke to the man, trying to convince him that being stuck in his own head wasn't the best idea, something about that speech rubbed off on Castiel as he stood back and watched, and listened.

"I need you stop this—take control," Sam begged of the old man.

"It's too hard!" he shouted, and there was pain in his eyes. The pain of having had to deal with the power of his own mind for so long.

"Look, it can be nice living in a dream world," Sam said. "It can be great. I know that. And you can hide, and you can pretend all the crap out there doesn't exist, but you can't do it forever because… eventually, whatever it is you're running from—it'll find you. It'll come along, and it'll punch you in the gut."

Beside her, Brooke could feel Castiel slowly taking in Sam's words. She could feel him listening, could feel him applying the words to his own situation. He was terrified, but he knew that Sam was right.

"And then," Sam continued, "then you gotta wake up, because if you don't, then trying to keep that dream alive will destroy you! It'll destroy everything!—

"I destroyed everything!"

A multitude of memories cascaded into Brooke's head.

Castiel crying, back in the psych ward a year ago, his forehead pressed to the window. Begging her to just let him be anyone other than who he was.

Castiel deflecting every time someone told him that he could do a lot of good in the fight against Dick Roman.

Castiel deciding, on a whim, that he wanted to become a Hunter, like Sam and Dean.

Castiel, finally admitting to Dean… to Brooke… that he wanted to kill himself, for all the devastation he had caused on Earth, and in Heaven…

Brooke took his hand, a silent gesture of strength and solidarity.

I have to go back, he said to her. To Heaven. I can't run anymore.

I know, she replied.

But when it was all said and done, and the old man was back in his wheelchair, happily listening to Ode to Joy in his head, there was another Blip! in Castiel's head. And a moment later, he no longer felt the urge to return to Heaven.

It happened again, Brooke said.

Yes, he replied. But, somehow, it doesn't worry me. The last time it happened, we thought it had to do with our memories of how we left Purgatory. We agreed not to push through and try to recall the memories on our own.

Right, said Brooke. So?

So, if this happened again because I wanted to return to Heaven… then I don't think I should. Not yet. One day, yes. But not yet.

In the end, Castiel decided he simply wanted to sit with Mr. Jones, the psychic, and watch over him for a few days. And after that, he did not have a plan. Sam and Dean left Brooke and Castiel in the old folks' home, and after a few minutes, Brooke left Castiel to go find a motel room within relative walking distance (she missed having her own car).

###

Castiel stayed with Mr. Jones even through the night, sitting, invisibly, beside him.

Brooke had found a motel room to crash in for the next few days, and she expected to be alone for quite a while, though she was still close enough to Castiel, physically, to sense him. They had never really tested how far away he had to be before they could no longer sense one another, but she now knew that their connection was strong enough to encompass multiple street blocks.

As the night wore on, she eventually said good night to him (receiving a wordless acknowledgement in return) and turned out the lights. She prepared herself for the inevitable nightmares, and rolled over in the bed.

What she got, instead, was a dream that woke her abruptly in the night, but instead of leaving her shaky and ill at ease, it made her want nothing more than to hear a sudden downpour of rain outside her motel room.

Without really thinking about it, she snuck her hand down into her panties—

A gust of wind blew across her face, and Brooke squeezed her eyes shut for a moment as Castiel's sudden appearance blinded her. She cracked her eyes opened again to find him standing at the foot of her bed, wings open wide and clipping through the walls.

"Cass," she whispered.

He did not respond with words, but a loud boom of thunder sounded close by, despite the previously clear skies.

He stared down at her from the foot of the bed, his blue eyes very intense, giving her one of those smiles where the only indication of a smile, at all, was the very slight upturn of one corner of his mouth.

She raised herself up onto her elbows. "You know, all that's missing is an exploded lightbulb and your super messy hair, and you'd look like you did when you showed up in that warehouse to save me. Or in the barn to talk to Dean, for that matter."

Castiel's gaze shifted around the room. He still did not speak, but raised one finger: Wait. He disappeared, and reappeared five seconds later, his hair completely disheveled, as if he'd stuck his finger into a light socket. His tie was pulled away from his neck, hanging at a strange angle across his chest, his shirt collar was pulled down, exposing neck and collarbone.

There was another boom of thunder outside, and a flash of lightning so bright that the entire room lit up for a moment. And in that flash of light stood Castiel, with his arms out wide, his wings unfurled, staring down with eyes like glaciers.

She stared back at him, her heart racing in her chest. "What are you gonna do now?" she asked, the words nearly catching in her throat. "Now you have to say the line. I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition."

Castiel smiled and looked at his feet for a moment, then held her gaze again. "I did not say those words to you."

"No?" she teased. She knew perfectly well he had not said those words to her.

"No," he repeated. "I did not grip you tight and raise you from Hell." He took a step toward the bed and then crawled onto it and moved slowly over the top of her body. "But I can grip you in other ways," he murmured.

She stared into his face, his eyes, inches from her, and suddenly felt a great, mounting tension at her core as he manipulated the Grace inside her body.

In a sudden flash of inspiration—spurred on by this strange, electric sequence of events—she reached out with that part of her that allowed her to control the Grace inside her. But, instead of controlling her own Grace, she reached out and grabbed hold of the Grace inside Castiel's body. She had figured that if she had some control over the Grace inside her, the Grace that was his, that he had given her, then she didn't see why she couldn't manipulate the rest of his Grace.

He gasped when he felt her, and his eyes grew wide. "How…" he began, but the feel of her gripping the part of himself that made him who he was made it difficult for him to even speak.

Do you trust me? she asked, with a smile.

With my life, he said.

And as she threw her head back in the throes of her own climax, she reached deep inside of Castiel and pulled at that part of him, as well.

He called out, louder than he ever had, his eyes glowing, his light going brighter and brighter, the storm outside raging so hard that the whole world was one, constant, roar.

No windows, shattered, but in the morning, one of them was cracked, and the crack looked like a lightning strike, forking in all directions. And Brooke remembered, suddenly, that she controlled Castiel's Grace like that once before, and he had shattered every window and windshield of every car in Bobby's scrapyard within twenty feet of himself.

As the sun slowly rose, and Brooke stared at the crack in the window, she asked, "I am just a human, right?"

Castiel studied her as he lay beside her in the bed. "Everything about you, physically, is utterly human. The only change is that you have the ability to see angels—and demons—for what they are. It is not unheard of. I thought Dean might have the ability to see my true form when I rescued him."

"But if I'm just a human, I shouldn't be able to manipulate your Grace like that," she argued. "It makes no sense."

He touched her face. "It makes perfect sense to me. I don't imagine you could do it with any other angel. You can only do it with me because we are so closely bonded… We… We've become the same in a lot of ways. You've had my Grace inside your body for six years, only expending it once, after Lucifer killed me. When I was resurrected, God had made me a Seraph—stronger than I had been before."

"Which means," Brooke said slowly, "that when you possessed me again, to leave a part of your Grace inside me again, that you left the Grace of a Seraph the second time. Which means it's… stronger Grace."

"Yes," said Castiel, allowing her the time to understand what he was saying.

"So I've… gotten stronger, too?"

"Yes."

Brooke tried to put it all together, but she was fuzzy from good sex and lack of proper sleep.

Castiel smiled indulgently at her, running his fingers through her hair. "The stronger I get, the stronger you get. The stronger the Grace in me, the stronger it is in you. You could control me as much as I can control you, if you wanted to."

Brooke stared at him, and reached out to touch his face. "That's dangerous information," she murmured.

"I trust you," he said. "I know you won't hurt me."

She smirked, slowly. "That's not what I mean." And she reached deep inside of him and pushed against the Grace in his body, brushing feathery tendrils between his legs.

He inhaled slowly, his eyes half-lidded at the feel of her, and he rose in the bed and crawled on top of her.