Chapter 4: The Problem

Not even two hours later we reached Rick's house, in the middle of a forest, in the middle of nowhere. I got out of the car and felt the soft, wet forest ground underneath my steps. The air surrounding us was clear and wet. In front of us an old wooden house, little inviting, much hunter-like. I heard steps on the rotten wood of the narrow veranda and found a man standing there. He was well built, dark hair, a slight beard, plaid shirt under a sleeveless vest, ragged jeans and heavy boots. He looked like the stereotype all-states-inhabitant hunter in his natural habitat, and did he wear a serious expression at first, it became a mild smile, as he saw you. And I understood him.

You walked towards him and embraced him like an old friend, while Sam only shook his hand. And don't I understand your brother all of the time, in this moment I felt more bonded to him than ever. I on the contrary was just standing behind you a little away, somehow unpleasantly disturbed, somehow insecure, and observed your interaction with him. I don't know what I tried to see or not to see, but I know that I didn't like it. After the usual smalltalk, Rick's gaze suddenly and unhoped-for found me and I downright felt him examining me and was almost able to read his train of thoughts. He made a head motion in my direction, while he was looking into your eyes far too long, and I didn't like how you looked at me then. As if I was embarrassing you, or unpleasing, or too much me.

"That is Cas," you just said, as if I was only that, as if these three words were anywhere near able to hold all I was. I did an unmotivated gesture to greet him, but however didn't look into his eyes. There was something about them that I didn't like. Perhaps they were too dark, perhaps they made me feel like I was of lesser worth, perhaps I didn't want to see his cautious I-don't-know-you disrespect. Or perhaps they just weren't yours.

We all stepped into the house and Rick filled us in on the case. But I barely even listened, I was far too busy watching you two. How you were hanging on his lips, how you smiled, how you never disagreed with him and laughed at every of his jokes. It was ridiculous how much you seemed to worship this man. He was a simple guy, a hunter like any other, and yet, yet you admired him. I didn't know your story, or your shared past, I didn't even know how you two had met. But something told me that Rick was neither simple, nor like any other for you. And that's just why I wondered, why you had never told me about him.

There definitely seemed to be a connection between the two of you and it couldn't be of a family nature, because Sam seemed to be almost as much of a stranger to him as I was. Sam seemed to be interested in him only relating to business. And it made me boil inside, the realization that it wasn't the same with you. First I thought he was just another perverted, weird father figure for you, someone you were looking up to, someone, who still couldn't replace your father, no matter how hard you tried, and however kept trying. But Rick was hardly older than you and as much as you seemed to be loyal to him, you weren't looking up to him. You were on the same rank as him, on the same level.

You just liked him. He was your friend. And you looked so happy in his presence. I had rarely seen you so relaxed and loosened, so casual and free of tension. Carefree, easy-going, cheerful even. Peaceful. Not like usually, tense and in the constant preparedness for attack and defense, not in constant fear. Because that you are. And you're so used to being in danger and in pain and hurt and fear and disaster, that you don't even really register it anymore. Perhaps that's just what makes you seek for people you neither had to protect, nor save. With whom you can be truly carefree and full of peace. And that's exactly what Rick is. Someone, who was capable of protecting himself, someone, who didn't need you. Not someone like me. Because didn't I need your protection any more, it only and alone counted that I needed it in your opinion.

After I had excused myself, I went outside in the fresh air of dawn and for a moment I was standing there in front of the hut, just and singly. Lost and rooted to the ground. I looked to the redly glowing sky, cut in pieces by several branches of the needle trees surrounding me and beautiful. I needed air. Distance. Release from the present. In a haze of surprise and desperation I asked myself what I was even doing here. Here in your life, here near you. Was I nothing more than another burden for you? No one you could be easygoing with? I wish I could have scratched out my eyes, just to not having to see how much I wasn't him. And perhaps I was exaggerating, perhaps this was overreacting. But all I see somehow comes back to you. And all I feel comes from you.

And perhaps I was just that in your eyes. The burden. Another person in your life you had to protect and save. But I wouldn't stop being in danger, that's engraved in my story and my being like the word in stone. And every time I would get hurt would just be another time you would feel like failing me, like disappointing me. But the thing is; you can't save everyone. Especially when someone doesn't want to be saved. And I am this someone. I don't want you to protect me, I don't want you to think I was your responsibility. I want to be someone, who backs you up and doesn't back off, and who helps you to live your life into every detail of its horribleness, and even more, to love it.

I took a deep breath and wandered back to the hut with slow steps. Briefly pausing in the doorway, I heard Rick murmuring something with his deep voice, which sounded like a joke. A joke about me. Because evidently I wasn't more than that to him. And would he know of all my supernaturalness and all the power I'd used to have, he would give me the respect I deserved.

"Because he is a weird guy, okay?" I heard you answer, as my bowel cramped by the joking tone in your voice, when you put me over the edge, "He's a weird, dorky, little guy."

It didn't even hurt me to hear you talk about me like that, because I knew you had already said that about me once. Actually it even made me smile a little bit. After all, you were right. I am weird. And I am dorky. And I fell for you, which, after all, was the reason for my weird dorkyness. I fell for you like the air for wind, like the mountains for the rain, and like humanity for a god. The one comes with the other.

I entered the room and all three of you were looking at me, as if I was interrupting, or as if you were embarrassed. You, at least, seemed to fear that I could have heard you. I put on my best pretend smile and it seemed to work. It should, after all I had learned it from you. In the inside however, I was ashamed of myself. I thought, I should stand up for me, or at least try to have any stand at all. But again I was just the silent observer of the things you did. With a mask in my face, the mask of a loser, the mask that was supposed to disguise my inner unsteadiness. Who I was in this very moment was worse than ever. I was like an incarnate lie on two legs. All I wanted was to be close to you, to be the important person in your life, who you're not embarrassed of, who's not interrupting. Not the idiot, who followed every of your steps, hoping he could conserve the We, failing completely, or at least being horribly in vain at finally doing a step forwards.

The lie in person, about which you neither knew what it was really thinking, nor what it did and accomplished for you day in day out, only to make you be okay. And when you were okay, I had to make you happy, and when you were happy, I had to make you even happier, and when you were even happier, I had to make you carefree, and when that, I had to take all the worry off you, so you, to all that, were also in peace. It was an impossible thing to do and I almost despaired of not knowing what I needed to do to manage all that. It was as if I was wanted and on the run, by you and from you. And every moment I had with you only created a new one, which was still in the future, and in the stars if it would be another day that is okay. Because okay is all I get.

You see? You don't know my mind the way you know my name. You don't know my heart the way you know my face. You only and alone know what I show you, what I tell you. A never ending mission, constantly holding me in the present and at the same time in the future, as if I was stuck in between two worlds that desperately tried to become one. I didn't want to despair, I only finally wanted to be there. It was as if I was forever on my way somewhere and I just wanted to arrive. I wanted a happy ending.

"The problem with happy endings is that they're either not really happy, or not really endings, you know? In real life, some things get better and some things get worse. And then eventually you die."

(John Green, "Turtles All The Way Down")