A/N: The first chapter of this takes place directly after the end of the last book. If you're new here, please go back all the way to the beginning and read Book One, entitled "Touched." If you've been with me since day one, thanks for sticking around so long. TO NOTE: This Epilogue has basically no plot, and I will post whenever I feel like it because of that. This is just supposed to be a lot of fluff and random little slice of life stuff. I AM TAKING SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING PROMPTS/SCENARIOS. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT THINGS YOU'D LIKE ME TO WRITE ABOUT, OR PM ME.
One
Brooke had been giggly for the past hour, despite how different everything was. Dean was still gone after leaving the bunker in a huff, and Sam was still in his room, presumably asleep. All the books that Brooke had removed from the shelves over the past hour regarding any kind of magic or monster lore were empty, and any mystical weapon whose only purpose was to kill monsters had turned into a fake, plastic version of itself. The guns, too, were fake—the kind with the the bright orange plastic at the end of the barrel just to make it super obvious that the gun is a toy.
"You think all guns, like, ever, are fake now?" Brooke wondered, staring down at the weapon in her hand.
"Well, it is Jack," Castiel replied. "Somehow the idea of him making all the guns in the universe fake wouldn't surprise me."
"Man…" she murmured. "Dean won't be happy about that, if it's true."
Castiel sighed. "I don't think Dean is happy right now, period."
She pursed her lips, turning toward him. "He'll come back. He just needs to cool off."
He smiled at her, touching her face. "I know."
She closed her eyes at his touch, suddenly feeling less giggly. She kept expecting to feel their minds reconnect every time he brushed a hand against hers, or touched her cheek, but it never happened. The loss of their telepathy was the worst part of all this, so far. Even worse than not being able to see Castiel, the angel, anymore. Now, he was merely human. Beautiful, handsome, as always. But just a human. Small. Fragile. Breakable. Aging. He was young now, even younger than he'd been an hour ago, since Jack had made them all younger. But now, he would grow old and die. Get sick. His body would break down. His hair would turn grey.
And, somehow, the thought of him getting old and breaking down and dying was not as horrible as being unable to know exactly what he was thinking right then. It was not his light and power that she missed—it was his mind. It was his thoughts and feelings. It was him.
She took a breath and opened her eyes. He was staring down at her with a sad, concerned expression.
"Well," she said, her voice hoarse, "at least you wear your heart on your sleeve."
"I what?" he asked.
She laughed.
…
"Jack thought of everything," Brooke said some time later, as she stared down at Castiel's brand new real papers and ID cards. "Birth certificate, multiple ID cards… Social Security card…" She raised her eyebrows, impressed. "Cass, we gotta find a good place for some of these documents. We gotta be careful with 'em."
Castiel nodded seriously, staring down at a photo of his face on one of his new ID cards.
They'd gone into the bedroom a few minutes before to find all these spread out on the bed and had been going through them since.
"You know what this means," he murmured.
"Yeah," she said. "We won't have to lie or find some way to make you anymore fake IDs."
"True," Castiel replied. "But it also means that Jack's made it infinitely easier to get legally married." He lifted his head and smiled at her.
She returned his smile, and cupped his face in her hands, kissing him. It was a gentle, chaste kiss, and then she deepened it, opening her mouth a little.
Castiel gave a small groan, tangling one hand into her hair as he always did.
"You know," Brooke murmured, pulling away just slightly. "You being human now means sex will feel better, if the last time you were human is anything to go on."
He inhaled slowly, staring down at her with half-lidded eyes.
And then his stomach growled.
She burst into a fit of giggles. "Maybe we should eat first?"
"Right," Castiel said, with wonder in his tone. "I have to eat now. And sleep. And…"
"Poop," she said, helpfully.
He made a face.
She shrugged at him, then led him by the hand out of their bedroom and towards the kitchen. They were almost at the kitchen door when she stopped, gasping.
"What's wrong?" Castiel demanded, immediately, his entire face contorting in worry and fear.
"No, no," Brooke said, quickly, and smiled, and touched his face to reassure him. "It's… God, we have to talk so much now. I'm fine. I just… had an idea."
He tilted his head, curiously.
"Stay here," she ordered. "Or… go sit down in the library or whatever. I'm gonna make you food, and you won't know what I'm making you." She grinned. "Because we can surprise each other now. Because we don't know what the other person is thinking anymore."
His expression lightened, and he smiled a little. "I never thought of that."
She giggled for the umpteenth time that day. "Go, go! And no peeking!" She brandished her pointer finger at him.
His expression became very serious again, and he nodded once. "Yes, ma'am," he said, and turned on his heel, like a soldier, and marched away.
She stared at him as he went, surprised by his response. Surprised. Then she grinned to herself and went into the kitchen.
A few minutes later, she came out and found Cass, smiling at him widely and placing a sandwich and glass of milk down in front of him. "Here," she said, with a flourish.
Castiel stared down at his plate, his eyebrows drawing together.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I'm trying to guess what kind of sandwich it is." He bent forward and sniffed it.
"Cass, you're not an angel anymore," Brooke said, snorting in amusement. "Humans don't do that."
"Humans don't smell their food?" he asked. "What if it smells good?"
"That's different and you know it, you dork. You're trying to do that thing where you smell the molecules, and it's not gonna work anymore."
"Hmm," he said, and picked up the sandwich and bit into it. Immediately, a wide grin spread across his face. "You remembered my favorite."
"Of course I did." She'd made him peanut butter and jelly, his favorite food from the last time he'd been human.
He looked up at her with that grin on his face. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," she said, and bent down and kissed his cheek. "But also, we should probably eat more vegetables from now on… Since, you know, everyone is normal now. We gotta make sure we don't get scurvy or something."
###
Dean did not return that day, but in the grand scheme of things, his whereabouts were not something Brooke was really wondering about. She, Cass, and Sam (once he came back out of his bedroom) spent a few hours making phone calls to every Hunter they knew. Jody, Bobby, Charlie, Claire… Everyone they called all told them the same thing: magic had ceased to exist, and so had monsters. Claire, in fact, had been pissed about it, because she'd been in the middle of stalking a vampire through the woods and when she'd found it, it'd been turned back into a "cowering, sniveling" human.
Of course, this strange human transition didn't quite seem real yet. Not to Brooke, not to anyone. It had been several years since the last time Castiel had been human, and even back then, he'd only been human for six months. Now, he had relearn what it all meant, most of which related to bathroom things. Brooke had jokingly accused him of doing the potty dance a few hours after he'd eaten his sandwich, which had caused him to realize that he did, in fact, need to pee—badly. And then after he peed, he had to be reminded to wash his hands, because that was also a new experience.
The worst part about it for Brooke and Castiel, of course, was the sudden, irreversible loss of their telepathy. They both found themselves thinking things to each other before suddenly remembering that the other person couldn't hear them that way anymore. And, for Brooke, that night was the worst of all the previous hours spent without Castiel in her head.
She and Cass had settled down to sleep, finally, in the small hours of the morning—they'd been too excited and nervous about their new lives to sleep before then—and Brooke suddenly realized that she couldn't sleep. It was too… quiet.
Far, far too quiet.
She'd been ignoring the silence in her head all day; it hadn't been as bad when they'd been busy making all those phone calls, or going through the paperwork that Jack had made for Cass. But now, in the calm of nighttime, the silence seemed to compound on itself, until Brooke found herself clutching her own head and groaning in frustration.
"Brooke?" Castiel asked, quietly, and sat up in the bed. "Are you all right?"
"No," she said, irritated that he didn't simply know what was wrong. Irritated by the fact that he'd sat up and left her back exposed to the cold air. Irritated by the lack of droning Enochian in her head.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
She sighed heavily, over-dramatically, and sat up, too. "The fact that you have to ask me what's wrong is—is what's wrong," she said, sullenly.
He took a deep breath. "I miss you in my head, too."
She fell silent for a few seconds, and then whispered, "I can't sleep. It's too quiet."
Castiel lay back down, patting the pillow so that Brooke lay down, as well. He curled around her body, as he'd done for so many years, and then he began to speak very quietly, his voice a low droning in her ear. He spoke in Enochian, not saying anything of much importance, but that wasn't the point. He spoke slowly, methodically, until Brooke no longer paid attention to the words themselves, but merely the sound of his voice.
She knew what he was doing, and she appreciated it, but… "Are you gonna do this every night for the rest of our lives?" she asked, after a few minutes. Already, she was half-asleep.
"Shh," he hushed her. And, still speaking Enochian, he added, in the formal speech pattern that was common of the language, "If I can do nothing else, let me do this."
She sighed, snuggling against his chest a little more, and fell asleep, and the last thing she heard was the sound of his low, gravelly voice butchering Enochian with his human mouth. Yet, it sounded beautiful.
###
Dean came back the next day, and, though he wasn't drunk just then, he reeked of alcohol. He was still mildly hungover, as well, putting a hand to his head every few minutes, grimacing.
"Dean, we're just normal people now," Sam told him. "You really gotta start taking care of your liver."
"Why?" Dean snapped. "I didn't ask to be made younger. Maybe I'll just die early of liver failure and get it over with."
"Don't say that," Castiel muttered, looking terribly sad at the thought.
Dean glanced at him, but didn't seem to know what to say in the face of, well, Castiel's face.
Brooke sighed quietly at this entire exchange, reaching down to hold her husband's hand. It was at this point, were they still telepathic, that they'd probably have some kind of silent conversation, but now they couldn't do that. This was just one more thing that Brooke was pissed off about being only human. Nevermore could she console Castiel without alerting the room to what she was saying. For lack of anything better to do, she squeezed his hand hard, and he squeezed back, until she imagined that both their hands had gone numb.
…
Dean acted like a petulant child for the next few days, as if the lack of any monsters, the disappearance of Chuck, and the overall betterment of their entire lives was an issue for him. Brooke did her best to ignore and avoid him, like always, but she sometimes found herself overhearing conversations between Sam and Dean, or Castiel and Dean, as the boys tried to help him come back from the brink of whatever was upsetting him so much. However, nothing helped, and their efforts to help only seemed to piss Dean off even more. Eventually, everyone in the bunker simply left the older Winchester to his own devices as he wandered to the kitchen for food or beer and then holed up in his room for hours at a time.
After about a week of this, the four of them—Brooke, Castiel, Sam, and Eileen (who had returned to the bunker once the world had gone normal) met in the library nook to discuss Dean and what they were going to do about him.
"We can't let him drink himself to death," Sam said. "I don't care how pissed off at the world he is. He should be grateful that we're all so young again, and we don't have to fight monsters anymore!"
Castiel pursed his lips, staring at the floor.
"Maybe… he's not angry at the world," Eileen said.
"What do you mean?" Sam asked.
She shrugged. "What if he's mad at himself?"
Brooke nodded. "That sounds like Dean."
"Well, whatever he's mad about, we gotta snap him out of it," Sam muttered. "We've given him enough time."
Cass, do you have anything to add? Brooke asked… and then realized that he could not hear her. Sighing heavily, she repeated her question aloud.
He remained silent for a moment, seeming to give her question some real thought. Finally, he lifted his eyes from the floor and said, "If he is angry at himself… I feel like each of us here has some experience with that, so I feel that each of us could probably find something to say to him. The problem is that I'm not sure which one of us he'll listen to—if any. Sam is probably our best bet, if I had to pick." He looked at Sam, then. "You're brothers; you've known each other your whole lives."
"Yeah, but you're his best friend," Sam argued.
Brooke realized, then, that none of them wanted to be the one to go and talk to Dean in his current state. And it was then that she realized what she had to do. She took a breath and said, "I'll go."
"What?" Cass, Sam, and Eileen all said, at the same time, staring at her.
Brooke opened her mouth to explain her reasoning—
—and all the lights in the bunker went off.
Immediately, her mouth went dry, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck and her arms raising in terror. Her mind was filled with the memory of Chuck destroying their universe, the sound and feel of the bunker collapsing around them in the darkness… and then nothing.
"Cass?" she called out, her voice several octaves higher than normal. I don't wanna die, she thought, and cursed the fact that he could not hear her.
"It's all right," Castiel said, and reached clumsily for her, his hand smacking her arm. But then he took it and drew her to him, and as he gently pressed her cheek to his chest, the flashlight on Sam's phone came on.
He kept it low, to avoid blinding anyone, and they all stared at each other for a moment.
"You think it's… I don't know, Amara? Or something?" Sam asked, swallowing nervously.
"No," Brooke said, vehemently, and hoping—praying—she was right. "Maybe the generators just failed. The world's not shaking and there's no horrible roaring sound like last time."
"Guys?" Dean asked, loudly, his voice bouncing around the bunker walls as he came around the corner.
"We're in here!" Sam called. "We're fine."
"What's up with the lights?" Dean demanded.
"I dunno," his brother replied. "We should check the generators."
Dean grumbled about it the whole time they were walking away, but went with Sam to check things out, nonetheless.
They returned much faster than Brooke thought they would. She, Cass, and Eileen had sat down at one of the library tables with their phones out for light, and they were just about to settle into some kind of conversation, when Sam and Dean shuffled back into the room. The lights were still off.
"What happened?" Brooke asked.
"Uh… We found a note," Sam said.
"A note?" Castiel repeated.
Sam nodded and handed it off to Brooke, who was closest. She shined her phone onto it, and her heart skipped a beat. "It's Jack's handwriting," she breathed, and Castiel touched her arm. She studied his silly scrawl; he'd been born with the ability to read and write, but hadn't lived long enough or written anything down enough times to perfect his handwriting. As a result, it looked like that of a toddler's.
"Brooke," Castiel said, quietly. "What does it say?"
She realized she'd been staring at the paper for far too long, lost in thought, and gave herself a little shake. "Um…" she began, sniffling. Castiel squeezed her arm harder. She cleared her throat, and read aloud:
Dear Sam, Dean, Castiel, Brooke, and Eileen,
I know that you'll find this note soon after I change the world. I made it and left it for you while I was talking to all of you after I became God. I made all of you younger and got rid of all the monsters in the world so that you could have a chance to live your lives in peace—well, relative peace. But I know you won't go and do that if the bunker keeps working forever. So, if you're reading this, it's probably because the bunker's generators have failed. They won't come back on. Ever. No electricity and no running water. Just like I got rid of all the magic books and weapons. Please leave this place and find somewhere better. Happier.
Love,
Jack.
Brooke looked up from the note, her eyes watering from the memory of her son and all he had done for them.
"So, uh, the bunker doesn't work now," Dean said, sounding very put out. "What the hell are we gonna do now?"
"We'll figure something out, Dean," Sam said, quietly.
"Whatever. We're just gonna end up living in the car again. I thought the whole point of the bunker was to make us happier and to give us better lives."
"But… We don't hunt monsters anymore," Eileen said.
"So?"
"So," Castiel spoke up, "this bunker was built by the Men of Letters, to house all the supernatural knowledge they gained… But that's all gone, too. The bunker isn't… necessary anymore. We can… We can go live in… houses. Like normal people."
"We aren't normal," Dean said, loudly, dragging the words out for emphasis. "And, in case you didn't know this, Cass—houses are expensive."
"Dean," Sam murmured, and said nothing else. It was a small warning to his brother to calm down.
"Nah, man!" Dean yelled, turning on his heel to stomp away. "This is bullshit!"
In the darkness of the bunker, lit only by the light from their phones, they watched Dean leave. Again.
Brooke flinched when the giant metal door slammed shut, echoing around the room.
