"You're joking right?" I asked hesitantly, holding the cup of coffee Dean had given to me close to my chest. At this point my legs had migrated to resting on the table. "Your friend Castel is an angel," I started.
Sam interjected, "Your friend too," he clarified.
I ignored him. "And he's not answering your weird holy phone calls." I saw Dean nod his head chuckling a little as if this was funny. "We all fight monsters that aren't supposed to exist. I got hurt when we were hunting hellhound which belong to the King of Hell who is our frenemy. Sam is trying to shut the gates of hell, and we have all died at least once." I ran a hand through my hair, for the first time truly realizing that I had bangs. "I was a chew toy for a giant dog," I muttered to myself staring at my foot on the table.
"I know this must be a lot," Sam started. I put my hand stopping him, still holding my coffee to my chest. I took a long sip, realizing that it had gotten cold while we where talking.
"It actually feels true. Like I can almost feel the memories, or like I am looking at them through foggy thick glass or something." I took another sip of the cold coffee, feeling the buzz run through me. "How do I call Cas? I want all the memories back and I want to not use the sticks of pain to move around cause Sweet Mother Mary Mercy they hurt like hell."
"He's not answering Lou, I don't know what you think you can do." Dean started, moving closer to me, as if to think that explaining things made me forget that I was mad at him.
"You can chill Captain, I just want to try." I looked him right in the eye. He stopped moving.
"Captain?" He asked, sounding as if it were meant to be a joke, but his voice forgot to tell his face which he held somber under the bright lights of the white kitchen.
"What? You call me Sunshine all the damn time!" I spat back. I didn't know why he made me so mad. I felt as though yelling at him was second nature though. I looked over at Sam to see if he was surprised by this, he was a little but not too much.
"Yeah, it's different." Dean said.
"Because you can remember the past and I can't?" I counterned.
"Yes!" He yelled back. Then he stormed out of the kitchen all together. I heard a door slam several heart beats later. I looked to Sam he just stared at something in his own cup of coffee.
"Look Lou," he tried, "this is really hard on him." I fixed him with a look that told him that I didn't want to discuss this with him anymore.
"Tell me how to call the angel." I demanded in my sternest voice. He nodded.
"All you do is pray to him specifically, out loud or in your head or whatever, but he hears it all." Sam said. I nodded.
I took another sip of cold coffee and then bowed my head and closed my eyes. "Castel if you can hear this, which Sam says you can, I just, I need your help." I said. I could feel tears coming, but I tried to keep my voice as steady as possible. "I don't remember anything, I'm hurt bad. I just need your help. They tell me that we are friends and well, I hope that we are. If you can't or if we or I did something wrong and that's why you're not answering, I'm really sorry and we will do whatever you want to fix it I swear." I finished, not opening my eyes yet, knowing that Sam was looking at me. Crying. I wasn't a big fan of crying, but I could feel the drops leave trails down my cheeks, drying there.
Then, as in the blink of an eye, a man with blue eyes and messy hair wearing a trench coat appeared. He tilted his head to the side, examinaning me for a second. "Hello Louise."
Sam yelled Dean's name but I couldn't tell for sure if he answered because there was a strange attractive man standing far too close to me, looking at me as if I were a bug under a microscope.
Dean rounded the corner into the kitchen to see Cas about as close as a person could get. "Cas where the hell have you been?" Dean demanded. No one seemed to have a problem with an angel this close to my face. Maybe that's just how he was.
"What happened?" Cas asked. He didn't acknowledge Dean at all, he spoke to me.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "You're an angel?" I asked skeptically. He looked like a man.
Cas finally pulled away from me and I got my own air back. "She doesn't remember me." Cas said to no one in particular.
That was when Dean stepped in. His face was softer than I had ever seen it, or remember seeing it. Even when he smiled or laughed there was this harshness about it. He clapped Cas on the shoulder and took a seat next to me. I stiffened at his closeness. "She has amnesia." Dean explained. "We started the trials and she got hurt by a hell mutt." Dean looked at me as if I were meant to say something, but I didn't know what to say.
"You started the trials?" Cas demanded. His voice sounded dark and frightening, something that couldn't be human.
"Look Cas it's fine, just, fix her head." Dean brushed it off as if it were nothing and somewhere deep down I know that he did this a lot with things that were important.
Cas walked towards me, getting close again. He reached out a hand and I flinched away unsure of what he was going to do. "I'm not going to hurt you Louise." He huffed as if this was beneath him. I nodded slowly. He touched two fingers to my forehead and my headache was gone, there was no pain in my side or my foot. My memory… I couldn't remember anything still. I looked up at him, confused, some of my hair in my eyes. He moved it out of the way.
"Well?" Dean prompted. I cast my eyes to my lap, embarrassed that I still couldn't remember anything.
Cas was the one to talk. "I fixed her physical injuries, but her mental ones… If I break down the wall in her mind all at once, that amount of memory overload will drive her crazy. She needs to remember it little by little, break down the wall slowly." Cas told everyone. I looked up at him.
"Will it ever come back?" I asked softly, unsure if I really wanted an answer. He looked at me with sad eyes.
"That's up to you Louise. You have to live your life, seek out things that trigger memories. I won't lie to you, you've had a life littered with heartache. It might be in your best interest to try to start over. This might be a blessing." Cas offered. I didn't have much time to think before Dean was yelling from the seat next to me.
"Cas! What the hell? This isn't some blessing man, it's a fucking curse. She is…." He trailed off, too angry to continue. "She is not better off." He said with a lethal quietness that made my hair stand on end. Sam was still across from me, he hadn't said a word. I put my coffee on the table and stood.
I waited to make sure Dean was done yelling before I said, "Thanks for fixing me up Cas." Then I walked back the way I had come an hour or so earlier. I heard something break in the kitchen and Dean yell, "Son of a bitch!" but I just kept walking.
I couldn't remember all the turns that we took, and eventually confined myself to the idea that I was lost. I wasn't going to yell of the men again, not after what happened last time. So I started opening door and standing far back from the edge as I did. Most were empty or looked like they haven't been touched in a long time. I opened one door to realize that it was the bathroom. One bathroom. Another door I opened was the showers. There were no stalls, just shower heads attached to the wall, all in a row. Then I opened a door and I felt… happy… and sad, and I didn't know why. It was a room like all the other bedrooms but this one felt like, like a familiar friend went to hug me. It had a different blanket on the bed then the one I woke up in. Instead of a hash brown throw blanket, this was soft and plush and white. There were so many pillows piled onto the bed that only half of it was visible. On the desk was a few knives and a gun, along with a large stack of books and a few pictures in frames. The nightstand had a candle on it and the walls… they were covered in printed out quotes and pictures. This room was lived in. This room felt like I belonged to it.
I walked to the bed, climbing on tentatively so that I didn't mess up the perfection and precariously placed pillows. It was plush, not board stiff like the one I woke up in. There was no doubt in my mind that this was my room.
I moved off the bed to the closet that was in the wall. I pulled open the door to see clothes that looked like they would belong to me. I ran my hand over the clothes, then looked down at the ones I was wearing. I slipped off the sweatpants and my underwear, and unbuttoned the shirt and shucked it off. I pulled out a lacy bralette and some lacy panties. It seemed to be the only things I had. Then i pulled on a long button up and rolled it up at the sleeves. It was a nice blue, like Cas's eyes. Pants seemed like a lot of work at that point. I grabbed a hair tie from the plastic bag on the desk and pulled my blonde hair into a ponytail. Bangs were kind of annoying and I wondered why I had them.
Dean suddenly walked into the room, one hand being run through his hair. He was much taller than me and I was suddenly very aware of the fact that I was not wearing pants. He stopped in his tracks when he saw me, his green eyes growing darker, drinking me in. I saw this flash of a picture in my mind of those same darkening hungry eyes so close to me, leaning over me. There was a beer in my hand and I could almost smell cigarettes. Then it was gone and I was back in the present. "Hey Lou. Looks like you found your room." There was a gruffness to his voice that send a shiver down my spine. He stepped forward and I stepped back until my thighs hit the bed and he was so close I could smell the scotch on his breath.
I tried to keep my breathing steady as I stumbled, "Why are you here Dean?" He looked at me for so long, just into my eyes, not saying anything. He looked like he was looking for something.
"That's my shirt," He said at last. I looked down at myself, my head almost hitting his chest when I tilted it down. I felt heat crawl up my neck as I looked back up into his eyes.
"Well it was in my closet so, sorry. If you want it back I'll change." I tried to keep my voice even and cool as I spoke. I meant to move towards the closet but Dean didn't budge. My shoulder hit his chest and I found very quickly that I was trapped. The only way around him was to get onto the bed.
Dean spoke smoothly, with a gentleness I didn't think the gravel voice could have. "No it's fine. Shirts yours." He then backed up, giving me my oxygen back. I had this sudden sinking feeling, like I had lost all the weight inside of me, all the weight keeping me grounded.
He didn't leave the room though, he just stood there. Suddenly Sam walked into the room. "Hey guys, umm maybe some food will help. Dean will you go make something?" Sam suggested. Dean just nodded and left.
I looked up up up at Sam. "Can I ask you something?" My voice was surprisingly calm and smooth. He looked down at me with the kind of look that almost made me want to punch him in the throat. He looked at me like I was some sad little puppy who needed to be taken in.
"Yeah of course Lou." He stuffed his hands in his pockets.
"You and I are like friends right? Like siblings almost?" He laughed.
"I would say we are friends, but not siblings. Well, I did use to have a thing for you when we were kids." He rubbed the back of neck.
"Oh." I chewed on this piece of information. "Now?" I asked tentatively.
"Now, we are friends. We hunt together. We live together. You're the only one who really likes to research with me." He cracked a smile that was contagious.
"What about Dean?" This was the real question I had wanted to ask.
Sam laughed. "Big brother had always had better luck with the ladies."
I grimished at that. "So Dean and I have umm had you know." I said, more to me than him.
"Oh no!" Sam put his hands up as if he could just stop my mind from turning like that. "This is a really awkward conversation." He paused for a very long time and I decided that I should probably sit on the bed now that I had all my own air back. "You and he never… you never…" I didn't understand what he was saying. He must have seen that on my face because he sighed and kneeled down so he was eye level with me. He took my hands in his. "Lou you're a virgin," he finally breathed.
I pulled my hands away, "Oh!" I felt my cheeks flush. "Right yeah ok." I chewed on the inside of my cheek. "So Dean and I aren't together. I'm not with anyone." I nodded to myself, almost forgetting that Sam was still in the room.
"Well, Dean… he is um… he's a little stuck on you Lou, the old you." I looked at Sam in his puppy dog eyes.
"But the me with no memories?" I asked, scared of the answer.
"I don't think he knows what to do Lou." Sam stood. "You're still one of us, I promise that you are, it just, it's hard for us." I nodded as he left the room. And I was alone. My own air, my own space, my own empty head. I shouldn't have cared whether some guy I didn't know liked me or not, but I couldn't help this ache in my chest that wouldn't go away.
Sam had said that I was still one of them, whatever that meant, but I couldn't shake this feeling that I just didn't belong, that I was some kind of outsider that jumped into a life that didn't belong to me. I felt like an imposter and everyone knew it but me. I couldn't help the silent tears that fell slowly down my cheeks.