A/N: Short chapter, but it felt necessary.

Thirteen

It was the middle of the night when Castiel appeared in Brooke's motel room. She'd had to walk to the nearest one, still without a car, and had waited around all day for Castiel to come to her. When she saw him, standing at the foot of her bed, glowing in the darkness, she got slowly out the bed and went to him. She had not been to sleep, tossing and turning, waiting.

Did you do it? she asked.

Yes.

I don't want to hear about it.

Castiel nodded, his eyes downcast. Metatron wants us to meet him tomorrow, to complete the next trial.

Fine.

Brooke wrapped her arms around him, closing her eyes, feeling the warmth of his body against hers. She could sense the sorrow in him, as well, a deep-rooted depression that had settled itself into his being after he had regained his memories of working with Crowley to open the doors to Purgatory. Since the return of his memories, her had become softer, and sadder, and generally quieter. She, especially, could sense the change in him, because she felt it almost as her own change. Having to kill this Nephilim, this innocent woman, working as a waitress, had only deepened his depression. Castiel was a far cry from the confident, badass "angel of the Lord" he had been when she'd met him.

She, too, felt that she had changed, but could not see her own changes so clearly. Wasn't it always that way, though? You can always see how much someone else has changed, but you have to live with yourself every day, so your own changes are harder to spot.

Your biggest change, Castiel murmured, holding her against his body, gently, is your disillusionment.

With what?

The world. Hunting. Family… Me. Everywhere you look, something or someone has disappointed you. I'm sorry that I've… been a part of that disappointment.

She shook her head. Are you sure you're not talking about your own disillusionment? You came to Earth, originally, with a mission. You were so… determined, and that made you strong. You thought you were infallible. Invincible. Because the mission was… right. But it wasn't right. And then, after we stopped the Apocalypse, what was left? So you went back to Heaven, but everything was in shambles. So you tried to fix it, and… You were just so determined to be on some sort of mission again—to have purpose. And you fucked it all up.

He winced.

She looked up at him. "And I fucked it all up, just as badly as you did. I was so desperate to have you back, that I… I let you do whatever you were gonna do. Because I just wanted you… to love me."

"I know," Castiel said, his voice thick with emotion. "And I used you. I knew you just… wanted to be with me, to be near me. And that sort of blind devotion—I should have told you not to trust me so completely. To speak up if you thought something was wrong. But I never did, because that meant I would have had to admit that I was doing something wrong. And I… I relished your attention." He grimaced, looking away from her, ashamedly. "I'm so sorry," he whispered. "That's not—that's not how a husband should act."

She touched his face, gently pulling his forehead down to touch hers. "I accept your apology. But… we weren't married, then."

He smiled, though there was little joy in it, and caressed her face in his hands. "The rings are only symbolic. I… never thought of our relationship this way, until Daphne gave us the rings, but… if I had to put a date on when I would have considered us married, I would say that it was the day that I gave you part of my Grace. Because, at that point, there was no going back. We became bound, that day. And, from that point on, I should have treated you… with more respect. But I…" He shook his head. "The Apocalypse ended, and what did I do? I gave you my body, and you gave me yours, and then I… discarded you, for a year."

They had never spoken about this, and Brooke began to wonder why it had taken so long.

"And in my absence," Castiel continued, "you… showed even more blind devotion, by branding my name into your skin, tattooing wings onto your back, and… the Angel Whore tattoo. You should never have—I should have been here. Or at least… checked in. And I should have been here for Dean, too. You are my friends, my family, more than any angel has ever been, and I… abandoned you for a year. And when I came back, I just expected you all to… act as if nothing had happened, as if no time had elapsed."

While Brooke appreciated every word that came out of Castiel's mouth, here, now, she worried what this sort of prolonged apology would do to the both of them. There was no point beating each other up about things they couldn't change. "Castiel," she whispered.

He managed to look her in the eyes, for the first time in a few minutes.

"Come to bed, okay? We can be done with all of this."

He nodded and moved away to remove his trench coat.

She went back to the bed and got under the covers, laying down, and watched him as he undressed, watched the light that escaped his body. He undressed slowly, methodically, taking extra care with the tie he hated so much, and with his shoes. And she smiled, for she remembered that night that he had come to her in her motel room and began to undress to lay down with her on the bed, and had yanked violently at his tie, and begun to kick off his shoes with no care for messing them up. And she had scolded him for it, teasingly. But, ever since, he had taken it to heart, and always treated his clothes with a sort of reverence.

He slid under the blankets in his boxers and pulled her close to him.

And she expected to fall asleep. She closed her eyes and began to focus in on the background noise in his mind, that constant, overlapping chant of Enochian. But it had been a strange day and night, and she was feeling a certain kind of emotional closeness to her husband that they had not had time for in a while. He'd been gone, protecting the angel tablet, and even before that, they'd both been manipulated by Naomi, and it was hard to tell what thoughts back then had been real or tampered with. It had all felt real, but now that they knew otherwise, it was strange to look back on anything they had done, wondering how much of it had been due to some kind of mind control.

Castiel had bore the brunt of that, but it had manifested itself in Brooke as horrible PTSD, strange nightmares, and mood swings. She remembered having come back from Purgatory and not speaking to anyone other than Castiel for a few days. She had thought that such behavior was related to her time in Purgatory, but now she was no longer sure. Perhaps Naomi had been trying to silence her—literally. It was a… creepy feeling, if nothing else.

Now, as she lay in the bed with her husband, despite all that had happened that day, and the emotional conversation they had just had, she could not help but feel the need to confirm to the both of them that they were both… real. And that their relationship, as choppy as it sometimes was, as many times as they had disagreed on things, or been forced apart by circumstances of their own making, or by external forces, that they were still married. And that they still loved each other.

Silently, Brooke turned in the bed, and faced her husband. He gazed at her for a few moments, brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, and then slid out of the bed and went to his coat. He reached into a pocket and returned to the bed with a condom—always necessary, lest they create a child that they could not keep.

And as they came together, in the dark, though it was a rather somber affair, it helped to alleviate any lingering feelings of guilt they might have had about each other, how they had treated one another. They shed their sorrows, for a little while, focused on their breathing, the sounds they made, the need for and simultaneous fulfillment of intimacy.

And in the morning they seemed better equipped to face whatever would come next, whatever trial Castiel would have to complete. There was a quietness about both of them, a peace, or, at least, an acceptance of their lives and what living together meant. Castiel teleported them to a diner in the area where Metatron wanted to meet. Brooke ate her breakfast and Castiel drank his coffee—a taste he seemed to have fully acquired—and, though they did not speak much, there were many shared smiles, looks, touches across the table. They relished the morning, knowing that soon they would have to go off and be… other people.