Two
Brooke was on her way to Sam and Dean, having said goodbye to her mother for now—her mother, who had refused to get involved with anything to do with the Winchesters. Probably a smart move. She was driving down the freeway when Dean called her. Dean, who hadn't talked to her in a year. Dean, who had vouched for her when Castiel hadn't wanted to see her.
"Dean," she said, cheerily, when she answered the phone.
"Cass tortured a kid," Dean said, without preamble.
Brooke paused. "He what?"
"Tortured a kid," Dean repeated, with more emphasis. "Had to read his soul. Shoved his hand right inside this kid's chest!"
"Oh my God! Did the kid die?"
"No, no, but…" Dean sighed. "It was… It was bad."
Brooke took a breath. Damn it, Cass, she thought. "I'll… talk to him, if you want me to."
"I don't know; he didn't listen to me."
"I'll try, anyways. I'm almost over to where you guys are."
"Cass left."
"That's fine, I'll stick with you and Sam."
Dean paused. "All right," he said, after a moment, though he sounded confused.
"Cass is busy," Brooke explained. "He's going up and down from Heaven to Earth, and since I can't go with him to Heaven, I'll just… stick with you two."
"Fine," Dean said, sounding agreeable enough.
They hung up.
Cass, I know you can hear when people pray to you, Brooke thought. Could you do me a favor and not torture anymore children? I promised to keep your secrets but I didn't know you'd become such an asshole in the year that you were away.
There was no response from Castiel, no feeling of acknowledgement. Nothing.
Brooke sighed and kept driving.
###
Brooke stood beside Bobby as he began the ritual of calling forth Crowley's son. She had arrived at his house a day before, much to his surprise. After he had been so helpful with the Lamia that she and Sam and Dean had killed, Brooke had decided to pay him a visit. He'd gone off on the boys over the phone, letting them know how ungrateful they both were, and after that, Brooke had decided that Bobby needed her more than the Winchesters did. Or maybe she needed him. They hadn't physically seen each other since the Apocalypse, though they spoke on the phone once every couple of weeks.
Bobby had, at first, been annoyed that she was there. He didn't really want to involve her in his dealings with Crowley, or anything at all to do with demons. But Brooke reminded him that she was a big girl and she could handle herself in a fight, if it came to that, so Bobby had eventually relented and explained what was going on. He was going to trap Crowley and use information that he had gathered from the ghost of Crowley's son against the demon. He'd already called Sam and Dean and had them headed off to Scotland to find the bones of Crowley's body—his original body. Apparently, if you burned the original human bones of a demon, they'd go up in flame just like a ghost. Brooke thought that there was about a hundred ways that such a plan could go wrong, but that was life when you were a Hunter, so she agreed.
When Crowley appeared in the basement, he was just as cheeky as usual. "Ah," he said, raising his eyebrows at Brooke. "The Angel Whore's here." He eyed the tattoo on her arm, the one of Castiel's name in Enochian. "A little obsessed, are we?"
She gave him a tight-lipped smile and moved toward him, staying out of the Devil's Trap. She pulled down the front of her Jeans, just enough to show the area above her bikini line: Angel Whore. "You have no idea," she murmured. She pulled her Jeans back up all the way and moved back over to Bobby, who was looking extremely uncomfortable.
"Was that necessary?" he asked her.
She glanced at him. "No. But I have my own message to send. Now, get on with it."
Bobby gave her A Look, like, Don't tell me what to do. And then he got on with it.
###
The next afternoon, Brooke was on her way to a case, without the Winchester brothers. She knew she had told Castiel that she would stay with them, but staying with them meant actively lying to them about what she did and did not know about Castiel, and she just couldn't make herself okay with it all. She would keep Castiel's stupid secrets, but the more distance she could put between her and having to tell Sam or Dean about them, the better.
Castiel called her as she was thinking about it all. She sighed and answered him. "What?"
"Where are you?" he asked.
"What, no hello?" she snapped. Her feelings, even for Castiel, had been frayed ever since he'd returned. She knew all this bullshit about absorbing the souls of purgatory was going to end badly and she was pissed off at herself that she had sworn secrecy.
"You didn't say hello, either!" Castiel snapped back at her.
Brooke gripped the steering wheel tighter and turned off the road sharply, the tires squealing in protest. In a clipped tone, she told him where she was.
He whooshed into the car a moment later.
"You know," she said, turning to him, "I've got half a mind to tell Sam and Dean about your stupid plan."
Castiel stared her down. "I will make you forget me, and I will never speak to you again, if you decide to tell Sam and Dean anything about my plans."
Brooke's hand shot out and she grabbed one of his own hands. She forcefully curled all but his first two fingers down and pressed them to her own forehead. "You do it, then," she growled at him through clenched teeth. "I fucking dare you." She stared at him just as hard, breathing heavily.
The air was heavily charged. He sat there with his fingers pressed to her forehead for a second, two, three… Eventually, he ripped his hand away. "I don't have time for your emotional outbursts. Raphael is looking for me as we speak. I just came to tell you that Crowley can't die."
She stared at him. "What?" she said, utterly confused at his sudden change of topic.
"Crowley," Castiel repeated. "I'm working with him, remember? He's helping me find a way to access the souls in Purgatory. But Sam and Dean—and Bobby—they've all been bothering him, using summoning rituals. And they're thinking of killing him, despite the deal that he made with Bobby about getting his soul back."
"What the fuck do you want me to do about it?" she demanded. "I can't go tell them, Hey, guys, we should all be nicer to the dickwad demon. In fact, I probably shouldn't be around Sam or Dean at all, since I might accidentally tell them something about you and your stupid plan to absorb forty million souls."
"Twenty million," Castiel corrected her, as if that was the most important part of what she'd said. "Crowley gets half, remember?"
"Oh, yes," Brooke said, sarcastically. "Thank you so much. You're missing my point."
"Fine!" Castiel snapped. "Then stay away from Sam and Dean."
Brooke opened her mouth to yell something at him, and suddenly she was crying. She covered her mouth with one hand and turned away from him, overwhelmed by her own emotions.
She could feel Castiel's mind, his own emotions. It was taking everything in him not to tell her that he didn't have time for this.
She wanted to simultaneously apologize for the sudden waterworks and also smack him in the face for being a dick. Since when do you not make time for me? she asked him in her mind, since she did not trust her voice. I asked you this the first night you saw me after you came back, and I'll ask it again. Have you forgotten who I am? I branded your name into my arm, and the slur that all your brothers and sisters call me above my vagina.
She turned to stare at him. "What the fuck happened to you in Heaven?" she asked, her voice wavering. Of course, there were no true secrets between them, but that didn't mean that she could access and comprehend every one of Castiel's memories at the same time. "Where did you go?" she continued.
"What do you mean where did I go?" he asked, and there was an edge to his voice, but it had also grown softer.
She shook her head at him. "I mean you. The you that I knew a year ago. The you that came to me that last night, shaking in your skin and nervous as all hell. The you that would've given a shit about having to torture a child. The you that could be kind and understanding." She stared into his eyes, shaking. "I don't know you anymore, Castiel. I thought you trusted me with your secrets."
"I don't have the luxury of being kind and understanding right now," Castiel said, and though he was still angry, his voice was calmer. He was really trying to help her understand. "Heaven is at war with itself—civil war. It is me and those who would follow me against Raphael and his own followers. Hundreds of angels have already died." He stared at her, willing her to understand, then he reached out with both hands and grabbed her face.
He poured himself, all he was, into her, begging her to take his emotions, to take his thoughts. "Please," he said, his voice just a whisper. It was the most vulnerable she had had seen him be since he'd come back. "I don't want to be this way—don't you understand? I have to turn off the part of me that loves you. I have to do things that, under normal circumstances, would be unthinkable. I don't have the option of choosing the slower, kinder way. I am at war, and I am leading one side of a rebellion. Leaders don't always get to do the nice thing."
Castiel leaned over the console and pressed his forehead against hers. Please… he said, again, and she could feel all of his pain, the pain that he had been keeping hidden deep within himself for so long. She realized that he had missed her just as much as she had missed him, but he had not been able to show any weakness while in Heaven, or it would have undermined everything he was trying to accomplish.
"If there was a way," he said, slowly, "to take you everywhere, to show you everything—first-hand—I would. But the safest and easiest thing for me to do is to leave you be as much as I can. You understand that Raphael isn't just looking for me. He is looking for you." Castiel pulled back from her to look her in the eyes. "If he finds you, he will kill you, and he will kill your mother, and Bobby, and Sam and Dean, and anyone else you or I hold dear—to get to me." He took a deep, slow breath. "I cannot afford to love you right now, to take time for you, because the longer I am near you, the more danger I put you in."
Brooke closed her eyes. She spoke the words, even though she knew they weren't true: "I'm not helpless, you know."
Castiel nodded, and a trickle of understanding flowed into her mind. He wanted her to know that he knew why she had said it, why she felt the need to say it. "Against an Archangel and all his followers, you are fairly helpless," he said, gently. "You are strong, but not that strong."
Brooke nodded, realizing, truly, that just because Castiel was back… it didn't mean he was back. Their relationship would have to change if they were to survive this war. She pulled his face down to her and kissed him, for the last time in a long time, then she puled away. "Do one thing for me," she said, quietly.
"What?"
"Wrap me in ice, like you did once, when we thought we were going to kill the Devil, back with Ellen and Jo. Shield my heart in ice."
Castiel stared at her for a moment, then nodded. He gripped one shoulder and sent more of himself into her mind. Slowly, he began to weave gossamer strands of ice around her mind and her emotions, protecting them, dulling them. Slowly, she began to feel less human, and more angelic. She began to grow more aware of the Grace in her blood, surging through her. Her bones felt wrapped in steel, her mind gone cold and instinctive, her feelings still there, but distant and muted. She was not soulless, as Sam had become, but she was something similar, much more in tune with the angelic part of her—the Grace that Castiel had given her—than she was with the part of her that was human.
Castiel removed his hand from her shoulder. "The effect will wear off in time," he explained. "I will probably need to reapply it at some point."
Brooke stared at him, blankly, and nodded. "Right," she said.
Castiel looked at her for a moment, as if wanted to say something, and then he vanished.
Brooke stared at the empty seat where he had once sat, and felt the barest whisper of sadness at his leaving. The feeling was a little like a dream that you forget the moment you wake up. She turned and started her car, and drove down the freeway.