A/N: Forgot to add this to the end of chapter seven. So, I just want to say that Brooke only existing in one universe isn't some Mary-Sue thing. I got the idea of her being weirdly unique because she's an OC, meaning she's not canon to the real story/the TV show. So it didn't make sense to me for her to be included in all these different/alternate universes. This version of events, with her included, is literally an AU, but the show deals so much with alternate realities/universes, that I thought I would just throw a little thing in there about Brooke only existing in this world. I hope all that makes sense. I'm not trying to make her super "special" or something; it just kind of goes with the story for her to only exist in this one place, because I put her there.

Eight

Brooke appeared with Castiel in Bobby's basement. Castiel had not realized that Dean would be standing almost exactly where he was going to teleport in, so he ended up standing about two inches behind the man. Brooke took a couple steps to the side, glancing at Sam and Bobby, who were staring at her and Cass.

"It's not like Cass lives in my ass," Dean was saying. "Dude's busy." He saw that Sam and Bobby were staring awkwardly over his shoulder and spun around, staring at Castiel. "Cass, get outta my ass!" he yelled.

Castiel squinted at Dean, confused. "I was never in… your…"

They stared at each other silently for a moment.

You sure you two aren't secretly gay? Brooke asked the angel, only half-jokingly.

Castiel slowly turned his head to stare at her.

Brooke put her hands up in a surrendering fashion.

Castiel sighed and then turned back to Dean. "Have you made any progress in locating Eve?"

"We were gonna ask you about that," Bobby said.

"No, I've looked," Castiel replied, "but she's hidden from me. She's hidden from all angels."

"Awesome," said Dean, sarcastically.

"You know, what we really need is an inside man," Sam mused.

They all turned to look at him.

"What do you mean?" Dean asked him.

"Something with claws and sympathy," Sam explained.

"Like a friendly monster?"

Sam shrugged.

"Those are in short supply these days, don't you think?"

Sam shrugged again. "Sure, but we've met one or two, right?"

"Maybe…"

"So," Sam concluded, "maybe we can find one."

They spent the next several hours poring over old books, going through their lists of contacts, and muttering amongst themselves. Brooke, personally, had never met a friendly monster, other than, perhaps, Meg. But Meg had been created by Lucifer, not by Eve, so she wouldn't be very helpful in their search.

It was Castiel who came through in the end, whooshing into Bobby's basement with a woman in tow. A vampire, Brooke came to find out. A vampire who wanted nothing to do with Eve, who did not want to be in Bobby's basement. Who did not want to tell them anything, for revealing where Eve was to them all would let Eve know that they were coming. It seemed that Eve and every one of her children were connected telepathically.

The vampire—Lenore—told them, in the end, where to find Eve. But she told them in exchange for something: death. Lenore, who had, apparently, fed on animal blood for years, stayed away from humans, had fed on a sixteen year-old girl not long ago, for Eve sent temptations into the minds of her children, urging them the feed, to kill, to maim. To be monsters, and to do what monsters did. And Lenore had fallen prey to those temptations. Her nest, her family of vampires, had scattered to the winds, also feeding on humans for the first time in many, many years. And so now, Lenore did not want to live anymore, for fear that she would feed on humans again. She had come to hate herself.

Sam and Dean argued with her, telling her they would keep her safe until Eve had been taken care of, but Lenore would not hear it. She wanted only death.

Brooke could feel Castiel's impatience beside her as the three of them continued to argue. All at once, he surged forward to do the deed that the Winchester brothers refused to do. But he had no care for the woman's pain. He placed his hand atop her head, and Brooke could feel his intent, to force his true form through her brain, her head, and set her on fire.

STOP! she cried.

Castiel flinched and whipped his head to look at her, angry that she had interrupted him.

Bobby and the two brothers stared between Brooke and Castiel. Lenore held still in Castiel's grip, waiting for death.

"Painlessly," Brooke ordered the angel, through gritted teeth.

Castiel inhaled and rolled his eyes to the ceiling in irritation, but he switched his grip on Lenore's head, using both hands, and snapped her neck. The vampire was killed instantly.

Sam, Dean, and Bobby all stared at Lenore as her body fell to the floor. "Someone should cut off her head," Castiel said, without feeling. "To make sure she doesn't come back."

Dean stared at Castiel, his face a mask of shock and disgust.

"We needed to move this along," Castiel explained, as if that made everything better.

Brooke shook her head. "What the fuck, Cass?"

Castiel turned to look at her, all power and order and ruthlessness. "I did as you asked," he snapped. "I gave her a painless death."

"Yeah, but you were about to fucking set her head on fire." Brooke stepped over the vampire's body and began to walk upstairs, calling over her shoulder. "Jesus Christ, Castiel." Brooke would still keep his secrets, but that did not mean she had to stand by and let him be needlessly cruel just to save time.

###

"Well," said Dean, as they stood and took in Grants Pass, Oregon, "I was expecting more Zombieland, less Pleasantville."

"Just because it looks quiet don't mean it is," Bobby said. "Especially if she's got a clue we're comin'."

"Yeah, well," Dean replied, glancing at Cass, "if she is here, I'm just glad we've got Smitey McSmiterton on our squad."

Cass, said Brooke, her arms folded over her chest, If you set a nice monster's head on fire I'm gonna stab you with your angel blade. Only smite the bad monsters.

Castiel said nothing, but he gave her a look that was all daggers.

Fuck you, too, she said.

###

They sat in a diner, and were one too many to take a booth. Still, they didn't want anyone overhearing them, so they ended up asking if it was all right to simply take a chair from one of the tables and have someone facing the inside of the booth. Sam ended up being the unlucky one siting in the chair. Brooke and Castiel sat beside each other in a booth, despite the fact that they weren't speaking to each other. Even angry at one another, they were linked in ways that normal people were not, and they had agreed, long ago, that they could be together and not necessarily agree with one another about everything.

They had not found Eve, and Bobby had not had much luck finding information about her or strange happenings in the town on his tablet.

Still feeling that restlessness from earlier, Castiel said, "I'll search the town."

Brooke expected him to fly off… but he simply sat there in the booth. She glanced at him, sending a tendril into his mind to see what was wrong. She felt his frustration.

"Cass, we can still see you," Dean said, after a moment.

Castiel was glancing around, mostly into his lap, trying to concentrate. "Yeah, I'm still here," he replied.

Brooke kept her eye on him, and could tell, mentally, that something was off. Something wasn't working right. She could see his wings, spread wide, phasing through the booth, through the wall of the restaurant, through herself. He was all set to teleport… but couldn't. Whatever magic he used to move around wasn't working.

"Okay, you don't have to wait on us…" Dean muttered, staring at the angel.

Castiel nodded and cleared his throat awkwardly.

On a whim, Brooke grabbed one of Castiel's hands, trying to lend him what little power he could take when he was connected to all of his Grace—including that within her. She felt the Grace in her body charging up as Castiel tried, once again, to teleport, but then all that power fizzled out without doing anything.

"Well, now it just looks like you're pooping," Dean said.

Brooke gave him an exasperated look.

"Something's wrong," Castiel admitted.

"What, are you stuck?"

"I'm blocked. I…" Castiel attempted to perform other angel magic. Brooke, still holding his hand, could feel him sifting through himself, searching for something he could successfully perform. But other than their mental connection, nothing he tried was working. "I'm powerless," he said, staring around at them helplessly.

"You're joking," Dean snapped.

Castiel's mind was spinning, and Brooke could feel his Grace, within him as well as her own body, churning uselessly, like an engine failing to start. "Something in this town is uh… it's affecting me," Castiel said, as he tried again and again to use any of his powers. "I assume it's Eve."

Dean stared at him. "So wait. Mom's making you limp?"

Castiel glared at him. "Figuratively, yes."

"How?"

"I don't know, but she is."

"Oh, well, that's great," Dean said, sarcasm rolling off his tongue. "'Cos without your powers, you're basically just a baby in a trench coat."

Castiel glared at him harder, shaking his head, then turned to stare out the window. His mind was still spinning, and Dean's insult had only fueled his ever-increasing need to be able to do something as simple for him as teleporting out of a diner. His jaw was clenched, nostrils flaring, as memories of being human for a few days over a year ago came flooding into his mind, after he had carved that sigil into his own chest and nearly killed himself. Memories of being hungry, in pain, tired, weak… useless.

"I think you hurt his feelings," Sam muttered to Dean.

Brooke sighed gently and squeezed Castiel's hand under the table, her previous anger at him forgotten. He squeezed back, hard, tethered to her as a lifeline, for he knew that she, above all others, could understand his pain, his fear, at the idea of becoming so utterly useless.

It's only for the moment, Brooke told him. The second we're away from here, or Eve's dead, you'll be back to normal.

He hardly had the means to acknowledge her, so quickly was his mind flitting from thought to thought, from pain to pain.

###

Even split up, Brooke was going to be the third wheel among either of their groups. She went with Castiel and Dean, but when they went to speak to a doctor who had made a report about a patient with a strange illness, she sat in the car and waited. Castiel and Dean returned soon after leaving—sooner than she had expected. The doctor they'd been looking for had left town, and had also left a dead body behind, the body of the young man who had had the strange illness.

The man's name was—had been—Ed. Sam and Bobby, off to see about the missing doctor, met up with Brooke, Dean, and Castiel at Ed's house later on. They were here to speak to Ed's roommates about him, see if they could find out anything strange.

Castiel, however, was the one who discovered the strange thing. He interrupted the conversation between Dean and Bobby. "Does Ed Bright have a brother?"

"No," said Bobby. "Why?"

Castiel motioned towards the window, where a man was standing, looking out. "Then, that's not his twin."

Brooke squinted up at the man in the window, noticing that he was coughing horrendously. The others murmured around her, wondering what it could be, but she kept her eyes on the man. He was having trouble even closing the curtains, his whole body racked by coughs.

Sam and Dean prepared to go into the house to check out whoever the man truly was.

"You three stay here," Sam told Booke, Castiel, and Bobby. "Anything comes out, shoot it."

"Best guess, silver bullets," Dean added.

Brooke tapped her coat pocket, making sure her gun was there. Already loaded. She glanced at Castiel when she felt his twinge of emotional discomfort.

"I'm fairly unpracticed with firearms," he muttered.

Dean looked at him, glanced away, and then patted his arm. "You know who whines? Babies." Then he and Sam walked away, towards the house.

Castiel looked like he wanted to say something, but gave up.

"I got you, Cass," Brooke told him, trying to lighten the mood. "Anything comes after you, I'll shoot it faster than you can spread your wings."

Castiel was still upset, but she could feel a little bit of his usual self shimmer through for a moment. I'd like to see you try, he told her.

She winked at him.

###

The man in the house had not been Ed Bright, despite looking exactly like him. All of his roommates had become infected, and their bodies transformed into look-a-likes of him. And they had all died.

Brooke now stood with the other four at the bar that Ed had gotten sick in. Eve had been there that night—had touched him.

The floor of the bar was littered with dead bodies, bloodied and broken. The five of them wandered around, and soon discovered that these bodies had all been monsters… and not normal monsters, but hybrids. Dean smiled grimly and christened them: Jefferson Starships, "because they're horrible and hard to kill."

Then the cops came for them all. Dean, who had been kneeling on the ground, studying of the creatures, snuck behind the bar and was not taken.

Brooke could feel Castiel's annoyance and absolute indignation at being cuffed by a bunch of humans and made to go anywhere with them. Were he an angel, and not afraid of what would happen to the others, he would have simply made them all sleep, or done worse. He caught Brooke's eye as they were dragged out of the bar, and within his gaze was a silent promise to protect her—to protect them all. But there was anger there, too, his blue eyes fierce and hard, the beginnings of rage stirring within him.

His impatience, so prevalent, recently, was returning.

###

Dean had come, quickly, to their rescue, which was good, since all the cops had actually been Jefferson Starships. Brooke stood with the others, her handcuffs removed, and stared at the halfway-beheaded monster-officers who had arrested them all. They had kept one alive, whom Bobby was now trying to scare into giving up information.

Brooke stood silently and kept her eyes and ears open, waiting for some other monster to pop up from around a corner, or for some poor fool of a human to wander into the police station.

A noise sounded from somewhere deeper inside the station, and Sam and Dean went to check on it. They returned a few minutes later with two young boys. Human boys. The Jefferson Starships had had then handcuffed, gagged, and locked in a cell. Brooke's heart went out to them, and she began to wonder about their parents, immediately. Were they alive? And, if not, what were Sam and Dean and the others going to do with two boys?

In the end, the Winchester brothers decided to drive them to where their uncle lived, fifteen miles outside of town. They'd be gone forty minutes, at most.

Castiel's pissed-off meter immediately spiked upon hearing their plans to leave, even for such a short period of time. "Dean," he said, approaching him. "Can I have a word?"

Brooke rolled her eyes and went to lean against the nearest wall. She did not hear with her ears what they said, but she could tell, based on Castiel's emotional state, that Dean had basically told him to fuck off with his impatience, and that saving two kids was more important than finding Eve right then.

Castiel watched the four boys—the Winchesters and the younger ones—leave. And then he stormed away.

###

Castiel spent the next twenty minutes staring out the window, waiting for Sam and Dean to return, like a puppy waiting for its owner to come home from work. Brooke had tried to speak to him, but he'd ignored her.

"They won't take long," Bobby said. He was also getting annoyed at the way Castiel had been acting.

"You don't know that," the angel replied. "They may find more wayward orphans along the way." Sarcasm dripped from his voice.

Bobby made a face at his back. "Don't get cute," he said.

"Right," Castiel replied, turning to look at him. "Pardon me for highlighting their crippling and dangerous empathetic response with sarcasm." He put air quotes around the last word. "It was a bad idea, letting them go."

Brooke sighed from her corner, glaring at Castiel from across the room.

"Come on," Bobby said. "You don't let Sam and Dean Winchester do squat. They do what they gotta. You know that."

Castiel said nothing.

"Anyway," Bobby continued, "We wanna find Eve, we need coordinates. So, we can either stand here, bellyaching… or we can go poke that pig 'til he squeals." He motioned to the other room, where the one Jefferson Starship that they had not killed was still sitting, tied to the chair. "Thoughts?"

Castiel glanced between Bobby and Brooke, his eyes flicking back to Brooke for a moment as he saw her irritated gaze. He matched her expression for a moment, and then walked out the door.

Bobby looked at Brooke for a moment, too, shrugging and sighing, and then followed the angel.

Brooke remained leaning against the wall, and tilted her head back so that it bumped the wall. Cass, you really need to chill, she admonished. She felt no response from him. Sighing, she pushed off the wall and followed the two of them to go torture the hybrid monster for details about Eve.

It was Castiel who gained the information, telling Bobby and Brooke that he needed only five minutes with the creature. Bobby relented much quicker than Brooke did. Brooke stood there in front of the angel to whom she had pledged her life and her heart and her soul. He had done the same for her, but he was not the same angel who had made those unspoken vows. She stared him down, ignoring the taunts of the Jefferson Starship sitting in the chair.

Castiel, she said, a warning in her voice.

Five minutes, he said, ignoring her tone. Go with Bobby.

She stared at him for a moment longer, her fingers twitchy like she was thinking about punching him in the face.

He did not react to those feelings. Simply looked at her, his expression neutral and uncaring.

She turned and left.

When he came back to them, wiping the blood from his fingers with a cloth, and speaking the address that they needed, Brooke walked up to him. "You… exploded his head off," she said. "What is it with you and… destroying heads off of things?"

He stared at her.

She saw the fresh blood, splattered on his clothes, covering his hands. This goes deeper than wanting to find Eve, or wanting to kill Raphael, she told him. Going back to Heaven for a year changed you.

I have been at war, he replied, slowly, as if she were a stupid child. I do not have time for kindness. I explained, already.

"Yes, you explained!" she snapped, speaking aloud, and grabbed him by the shirt collar. "But you used to feel bad about it! Now you… you've become a robot. Where are you?"

Something inside Castiel snapped. He grabbed her, roughly, by the wrists, and tore her hands away from his clothes. "Here!" he yelled, staring down into her face, his eyes at once wild, but cold. "I am here, like I always have been! I am an angel! I am a soldier! And now I command an army against Raphael! I don't have time to care—not about that thing in there—

—he pointed to the room where the dead hybrid sat—

—and not about you, or your human feelings!"

Brooke felt as if he had slapped her. She stood staring up into his angry, distorted face, feeling on the verge of tears, and then the Grace in her blood flooded her system, roiling and hot. "You don't care about me? ME?" The usual shaking that happened when she grew angry like this did not occur, and the Grace was unable to do its normal job, filling her with its strength. Eve had seen to that. Still, she knew Castiel could feel it, that anger washing over his own mind.

"YOU DON'T GET TO NOT CARE ABOUT ME, CASTIEL!" Brooke screamed, both aloud and in her mind. "I AM YOU."

"All right, that's enough!" Bobby's voice, so small compared to the mental battle being waged in Brooke's mind, somehow broke through to her, and to Castiel. "Knock it off, you two!" he demanded, physically placing his own body between them and shoving them away from each other.

Brooke felt as though a rubber band had just snapped inside her entire body, shifting back into place, painfully. Clearly, Eve's ability to cut off angel powers did not work entirely.

Castiel breathed heavily and stared at her across the chasm that Bobby had created between them. Brooke felt his anger, frustration, sorrow, pain… It rushed through her mind like a whirlwind, and she had trouble remembering which were his emotions and which were hers. She stared at his face, into his eyes, and saw them, suddenly, go flat. He looked away from her—and slammed the mental wall up between them.

Brooke cried out in pain, clutching her head in her hands. She fought to stay upright as her vision blacked out. "Castiel, you dick!" she yelled, but her voice came out as a groan. She fell to her knees, her head spinning uncontrollably, as her mind attempted to rebuild itself without an angel in it. She had forgotten what this feeling was like. Even when Castiel had left for a year, he had not blocked himself from her. Yes, he had been gone, and her mind had been devoid of him. But he had left the channel between them open. He had not slammed the door on her like this in years, and her mind was reeling from it, unable to comprehend being by itself in her head. She felt small, so small, and weak, and human. And her head felt like it was encased in ice.

Vaguely, she was aware of Bobby calling her name, shaking her shoulder, but she could not respond to him. She did not even have the energy to lift her head, to look up into Castiel's eyes and beg to know why he had shut her out. She waited for the spinning to stop, but it never did. In another few moments, she slumped forward onto the ground, passed out.