Ten
Brooke's dreams began to change soon after she and the Winchesters had rescued Charlie from the Djinns. She began to have strange, unconventional nightmares, where the monsters were invisible, but she could sense them all the same. She kept running from store to store, down a street, going into one, then another, hiding in the backs of the shops. But the invisible monsters kept chasing her, and she could sense their approach because the floor would shake, like she was being followed by giants.
One night, the dreams changed again. As she tossed and turned, waking constantly, she kept dreaming of some restaurant. The same one, over and over again. She'd sit in a booth, or at a table, drinking coffee, but then the ground would shake, and she'd wake up. But every time she fell asleep again, she was back in the same restaurant, with the same invisible monster (monsters?) chasing her…
Somewhere around noon the next day, she finally gave up on any semblance of real sleep and stumbled into the main room of the bunker, rubbing her eyes, still in pajamas. "Coffee," she grumbled.
Dean eyed her. "You slept past noon. You okay?"
Brooke yawned, shuffling past him, to where the kitchen was. "I just kept having the same dream… over and over," she said. She fumbled with the coffee pot and poured herself a mug.
"What was it?" Dean called from the other room.
Half-asleep, she turned and went back to him. "What was what?"
"The dream you kept having. What was it?"
"I don't…" She paused to take a sip of coffee. "A restaurant. I was being chased by invisible monsters, and I was hiding out in a restaurant. And I kept waking up but every time I went back to sleep, I was back in the same… place…" She shook her head, drinking more coffee. "I don't…" A thought came to her. "Biggerson's?"
Dean raised his eyebrows at her, somewhat amused. "Invisible monsters were chasing you and you kept hiding out in Biggerson's?"
"I guess if I was hoping to confuse them, it would do the trick," Brooke replied. "They all look the same."
"Guys," Sam called, from the table, and Brooke noticed, for the first time, that he was even there. "Got an email from Kevin."
Dean went over to where Sam was sitting, Brooke shuffling after him, sipping more coffee, still half-asleep.
But by the time she was done watching the video that Kevin had sent them… she was wide-awake:
"Sam, Dean… a-and Brooke, if you're there, I guess… I've set up this message with some software and a remote server so it'd send itself to you if I didn't reset it with a command once a week, which means I didn't reset it this week. And there's only one reason I wouldn't, which means if you're watching this then I—then I'm—I'm dead."
The mug of coffee in Brooke's hands began to shake, violently.
"I'm dead, you bastards!" Kevin, in the video, slammed his hands down on the desk, and the camera shook.
Brooke jumped, the coffee in her mug sloshing over onto her hand, but she didn't notice.
"So, screw you, God, and everybody in between! Crowley must have gotten to me, and the one thing I know is that I won't break this time. I'm not sure how I know, but—but I do. I've been uploading all my notes and translations. I'm sending you the links so you can get all of it. You guys are gonna have to try to figure out the rest. I'm sorry." Kevin began to cry. "I know it was my job, but I—but I couldn't… I'm sorry."
The screen went black.
Brooke stood there, breathing shakily.
Dean turned away and she heard books crashing to the floor behind her, as he yelled, "Damn it!"
Sam didn't do anything.
The two of them stood side-by-side for a while, staring at the laptop screen.
"So," Sam's voice broke the silence after what felt like millennia, "you gonna help me go through all of Kevin's notes?"
Brooke nodded silently, noticing, for the first time, the coffee spilled over and down her hands. She put the mug down on the table and wiped the coffee off onto her pajamas, absentmindedly, staining them.
###
A symbol Sam had found in one of Kevin's notes had sent them out to a lodge in Colorado. The symbol represented the Messenger of God… Metatron. Metatron, who had written every word on every tablet. And if they didn't have Kevin anymore, and didn't know who the next prophet was, then going directly to the source seemed like their only option.
When they arrived at the lodge, it was strangely empty. There were staff, but no guests, which Brook and the Winchesters found to be very odd, but they didn't have much time to think about it because Sam's condition was worsening. It had gotten worse during the car ride there, and he'd gone loony the second he'd stepped foot through the door, spouting off about random… crap.
Dean signed them into two rooms (one for the boys, one right next door for Brooke), and Brooke followed Sam around, closely, and made sure he didn't bump into anything or otherwise hurt himself. He began to wander into another room, and she grabbed him by the arm and hauled him back next to Dean.
The clerk behind the desk gave Sam an odd look.
"He has the flu," Dean lied, but the clerk's face didn't change.
…
Dean went out, looking for information about Metatron while Brooke stayed behind and sat on the empty bed in the Winchesters' room, staring at Sam. He slept fitfully, crying out or mumbling, tossing and turning. Eventually, he sat up, half-awake, and went out into the hallway, shoving Brooke aside when she tried to stop him. She didn't think he knew what he was doing, didn't really see her.
She grabbed him by the back of the shirt and pulled him back into his room, but heard movement down the hallway. She peeked out the door and saw lodge staff members carrying boxes and boxes to one of the doors. So many boxes, all sealed. Brooke squinted; she had thought no one else was here…
Sam tried to shove her out of the way of the door again, but Brooke spun around and grabbed his wrists in her hands, holding them together, tightly. He tried to fight her off, but she hissed, "There are still people out there. Just wait."
He didn't seem to hear her, but was too weak, now, even to push her away. But he seemed compelled to see what was in the boxes.
Eventually the men left, and Brooke let go of Sam, who stumbled out the door and into the hallway. He fell down at the boxes and began to tear them open feverishly. Brooke wanted to help, but was almost afraid to—his face was so intense. He got one of the boxes open and tore into it, pulling out… a book.
They both stared at it for a moment.
Books? she thought to herself. Why books? She looked up at the door. Room number 366.
Sam pulled out more books. Everything inside the top box was books. Brooke had to assume that all the boxes were full of books.
She got Sam up off his knees and led him back down the hall towards his room. Why books? Who the hell would want that many book—Metatron. Metatron, the scribe of God. The writer of the Word. Who else would want so many words—
—Sam collapsed on the floor at the entrance of his room.
Brooke let out a yell and knelt beside him, shaking him. He would not wake. She put her hand to his forehead; he was very hot.
She grabbed her cellphone and dialed Dean, simultaneously running out of Sam's room and down the steps. Dean picked up. "Come back to the lodge," Brooke said, panting. "Sam collapsed. Fever." She hung up, and then ran to the clerk behind the desk, shouting, "Ice!"
###
They had submerged Sam, completely, in a bathtub full of ice. His temperature had been 107 and he had been unresponsive, still, when Dean had come back to the lodge. Sam hadn't been too happy about it, but it had saved his life, so Brooke and Dean didn't care if he didn't like it.
Now, they stood before the door: 366. The door that had had all the boxes of books. The boxes were gone, which meant someone was inside…
Inside the room were hundreds and hundreds of books. Stacks of them went to the ceiling so that the room became a maze. The closer Brooke walked to the center of the room, the more some little bell went off in her head, previously unheard, unfelt. Perhaps she'd been too busy worrying about Sam to notice, or perhaps the bell had remained un-rung until now. But it was definitely going off now.
Brooke stumbled into the boys, when they stopped suddenly. She heard the sound of a rifle cock. She stared at the man wielding it, and said, "Oh."
"Who are you?" the man—the angel—asked.
"Metatron?" Dean said. "This is Metatron? This is Metatron?"
Brooke stared at the angel, seeing Dean's point. He was a… short, stumpy little man, with a grating voice. He looked a bit like a fat rat.
"Sit down," came Metatron's voice, from behind them.
All three of them stumbled backward. Brooke and Sam sat on stacks of books; Dean sat in the chair in the middle.
"Who sent you?" Metatron demanded.
"We came on our own," Sam explained, a little loudly, as if he couldn't hear his own voice. "We're the Winchesters."
"I'm Dean, this is Sam," Dean said, and then gestured at Brooke. "That's Brooke. Unrelated."
Metatron stared at them all. "You work for Michael? Or Lucifer?"
"What, you really haven't heard of us?" Sam asked, still yelling. "What kind of angel are you? We—we're the freakin' Winchesters!"
Metatron continued to stare, uncomprehending. Then his eyes flicked to Brooke. "You've been possessed by an angel," he said. "You've got Grace inside you."
Brooke grinned at him, despite the twin barrel of the rifle that was aimed at her face. "They call me the Angel Whore."
Metatron's eyes flicked from her face down to her left arm, where the tattoo of Castiel's Enochian name was displayed across her forearm. His eyebrows drew together in confusion. "Castiel?" he muttered.
###
After Metatron grew some balls and saved Kevin from Crowley, it took a while for Kevin to be strong enough to move from the chair where the angel had placed him. Dean took a turn, talking to Metatron, and when he came back to where the others were, Brooke got up and wandered over to the Scribe of God.
She folded her arms over her chest and stared at him. "You seemed… interested in this," she said, glancing down at her left arm.
Metatron gave her a kind of strange, half-smile. "So, what?" he said. "You were possessed by him and… grew a little over-awed at the power of an angel?"
Brooke snorted. "It's a little more complicated than that," she replied. "It's a long story, and we don't have time for it. But it ends in this." She held up her left hand, wiggling her ring finger at him.
His eyebrows shot up. "You married Castiel? You married an angel?"
Brooke just grinned at him.
"A human married an angel…" he mused, smiling to himself. "I bet the other angels hated both of you for that."
"Why do you think they call me the Angel Whore?"
It was strange, talking to the Scribe of God like this, and Brooke had half a mind to shut the fuck up. She didn't really know why she was telling him her story. She couldn't feel him needling into her mind, forcing her to tell him. Perhaps it was because he was one of the only angels, besides Castiel, who wasn't trying to actively harm them. Sure, he'd aimed a gun at them earlier, but he hadn't known who they were. After he'd found out, he'd saved Kevin from Crowley, and that put him in the good books, as far Brooke was concerned.
"But Castiel is so… boring," Metatron said, breaking her out of her thoughts.
She laughed. "Yeah, he kinda is," she agreed. "He's a… soldier. A warrior. He does what he's told… except he doesn't." She smiled at that. "He never does what he's told. Not exactly."
Metatron smiled out of the corner of his mouth at her. "So, what is it? About him?"
She stared at him, shaking her head. "You really wanna know? You're not tired of cliché romance stories?"
He shrugged, still smiling.
She'd thought he looked a little rat-like earlier, but now he just seemed like an excited child, eager to hear a tale.
Brooke sighed, looking at the ceiling without really seeing it. "I don't know," she admitted. "He was just the first angel I ever saw… He was so… beautiful that I didn't… I couldn't—
"Saw," Metatron repeated. "You could see him?"
"Oh," said Brooke, suddenly realizing the detail she'd left out. "I can see all angels. Your true forms. Without going blind. I can see them through your vessels." She glanced at him. "I can see you, right now."
Metatron gazed her now, almost greedily, his demeanor changing so suddenly that it frightened her a little. "Interesting," he said. "There aren't very many of you, you know. Humans who can see angels for what they are." His eyes raked over her, and she shifted, suddenly wishing she hadn't told him anything at all. "I wonder why God… chose you."
Brooke almost told him about the prophecy, that she was meant to Witness Castiel. She hadn't thought of it in a long time, but it came to the forefront of her brain out of the blue, and she nearly word-vomited it all into his arms.
She stopped herself, forcing a smile, thinking. All those stories that had been given to Metatron for so long. He gave the people long lives in exchange, but she was beginning to wonder if they had any choice when they told him their stories. Did he simply compel them to speak? Could he do that?
He smiled at her and turned away, which gave her the opportunity to escape back to where Kevin and the boys were. A shiver went down her spine.
###
"Cure a demon?" Dean said, as they drove down the road later that night. He was referring to the third Trial, the last stepping stone on the path to closing the Gates of Hell forever. "Okay, ignoring the fact that I have no idea what that actually means, if we do this, you get better, right?" He turned to look at Sam in the passenger seat.
Brooke sat in the back seat, mulling over everything that had happened in the last few hours. The boys continued talking, and she did her best to ignore their conversation.
The Grace in her blood fluttered, suddenly, and without thought, she yelled, "Stop!"
Dean slammed on the brakes and the Impala skidded hard on the road, turning sideways.
Brooke stumbled out of the car and crawled forward on her hands and knees toward the figure in the middle of the road. "Castiel," she cried, and touched his face with her hands, as if to confirm to herself that he was really there.
He panted heavily, his face and hands and clothes covered in blood. "A little help, here," he ground out, holding his stomach as if it pained him. He stared at the Winchesters for a moment, then his eyes met hers and a flood of information washed over her mind as he told her all that happened to him since he'd disappeared the night Meg had died.
At the end of it all, he said, I'm sorry I left you.
She shook her head as she gripped one of his arms. As the three humans hauled the angel to his feet, she thought, I knew you would come back.