Careful What You Wish For

Chapter Thirteen

Pleas

There was no way any of this was good. The Mother of All Monsters was dead, burned from the inside out by the ashes of a phoenix, but not after she revealed to the brothers that Crowley was alive. Now Kayla was listening to the three of them bicker back and forth about why this had been kept from them all. After all it had been Castiel who killed Crowley in the first place, and why would he lie. She had begged her way out of the discussion, simply by virtue of not having been around when any of this was going down. She couldn't reveal what she already knew to be truth, or she'd be violating her deal with Crowley.

The thought of that deal made her stomach churn once more. She covered her face with her hands for a moment, and the motion attracted Bobby's attention.

"You okay?"

Mutely, she nodded. When she pulled her hands from her face, she saw all three of them now watching her. She offered Sam and Dean a pale smile, and waved it off slightly. "Just tired, is all. I don't get how you guys just run like this, constantly..."

"Practice, sweetheart," Dean muttered. "Lifetime's worth."

Shooting Dean a sour look, Sam pushed his chair back from the table, and rose to offer a hand to Kayla. "You should get some sleep then. We can handle this. C'mon, I'll walk you up."

The nephil pushed his hand away, shaking her head. "You don't need to do that."

"Yes, he does." Bobby talked right over her protest. "Sam's gonna check the salt we laid down, and make sure we don't have another repeat of you getting snatched right from under our noses."

Glancing around the table, Kayla sighed, and resigned to her escort. He followed her up the stairs, and into Bobby's room. Sam was methodical about checking the windows, gently pushing a few piles of salt back into place where a curtain had disturbed them. Kayla sat on the edge of the bed, watching.

"Sam?" He made a questioning grunt, glancing at her while he worked. "Do you really think that Cass could lie to you?"

"I think he's desperate enough to." Sam said softly, coming over to sit beside her on the bed. "Dean doesn't think so though, but..."

"Aside from you, Cass is his best friend."

"Cass saved him. Brought him back to life. Saved me too. He's done a lot for the two of us. But... I don't know. Something Eve said, something about the way she said it." Sam rubbed his face, then cradled his head in his hands. "I just don't want Dean getting hurt."

Kayla thought she saw motion out of the corner of her eye, and turned to look. Nothing was there in the shadow behind the doorway, but she couldn't help feel like she was being watched. She couldn't think of anything to say, to soothe Sam or his fears, mostly because she was at complete odds. Her side of this argument had been picked for her already.

As soon as her eyes closed, she was in the warm, white room again. Turning around, she looked for Cass, but only found the white expanse. Confused, she drew breath to speak, but suddenly found a room laid out before her. Like the dioramas she had made as a child, this was laid out in complete detail, and it looked familiar. As she stepped up over the lip onto the tiled floor, she recognized the scene. It was the same one that had flashed before her earlier.

Once she knew where she was, the empty set was populated by bodies. Bobby and Dean lying on the floor, smashed tables and glass all around them. Crowley leaning back with his eyes covered; a woman Kayla had never seen before, with a rictus of hatred on her face, stretched forward as though she could stop the central figure. And Castiel, standing before the wall. His fingers were smeared with blood, a slip of paper caught frozen in midair as it fluttered from his hand. Kayla scanned around, looking for Sam, only to spot him at the top of a set of stairs, looking bewildered and confused.

Where was her part in all of this? Where would she be when this all went down? As she was wondering, moving among the frozen tableau, the world started to move, flickering like an old movie projector struggling with the film. A stream of power rocketed from the wall to strike Castiel in the chest, lifting him clear off his feet. The light in the room pulsed, twice; Castiel's voice rose in a scream of pain.

And he exploded. Taking everything, and everyone in the room with him. Bloody gobbets of flesh and stained scraps of cloth drifted down around Kayla, as she stared in mute, numb shock. Lowering her face to her hands, she scrubbed her eyes, tried to scour the memory from her mind. As she lifted her head once more, the tableau had reset. Everyone was back in position. Everything had returned to how it once was. As Kayla began to hyperventilate, the scene flickered and rolled into motion once more...

In the dark hours before dawn, Kayla woke with a start, tears streaming down her face. She had found quickly that she could affect the tableau in her dreamscape. But after nearly thirty tries, she had yet to save all of them. Sitting up in bed, she wrapped her arms around her knees, and tried to figure out what to do about it.

"Castiel?" she whispered to the empty room. "I don't know if you can hear me.. but... we need to talk. Soon."

She waited, but nothing happened. Unfolding herself from the bed, she changed into something a little warmer than her shorts and camisole. She was trying to figure out just how she wanted to handle this, letting her body act on autopilot for a little while. As she padded down the stairs, she could hear Bobby's voice growling at someone. Stopping halfway down, she sat on the stairs, giving herself a good view of what was happening in the study. The three of them, Sam, Dean and Bobby, were torturing and interrogating something confined in a circle. She recognized the circle easily enough, from one of the many books she'd been given to read, and figured they were trying to get Crowley's whereabouts from a demon.

Watching them, her eyes caught a flicker of motion off to their side. But as soon as she looked directly for it, it disappeared. Moving her eyes away again, she became, once more, aware of motion at the edge of her peripheral vision. The longer she didn't look at it, the more resolved into a form it became. Just as soon as she thought, she could get a good look, and she shifted her eyes back, it was gone once more.

Pinching the bridge of her nose, and then rubbing the back of her head, she climbed the stairs once more. This time, she retrieved her sneakers and her jacket, and took a few moments to compose a note for the brothers, assuring them that even though she wasn't there, she was fine. Setting the note down on the center of the bed, where she was sure it would be found, she closed her eyes, and formed the rumpled, unshaven face of Castiel in her mind. For a moment, she encountered resistance, as though he didn't want to be found. But she pushed, and felt the world give way, slipping away from her to reform as somewhere new.

Opening her eyes, she found herself in a park, somewhere where it was autumn. The trees had shed most of their leaves, and the ground was covered in a blanket of muted reds and golds. It didn't take her long to find Cass; he was seated on a stone bench, not far away, with his hands clasped before him and his head bowed. He looked for all the world as though he were praying, and for a split second, Kayla hesitated. She was intruding on an intensely private moment for the angel.

Just as she was about to leave, he lifted his head. Neon blue eyes focused on her, and he rose to his feet in one smooth motion. His mouth opened, lips parting as though he were about to speak. He had asked God for a sign, and looked up to find the nephil standing before him, not ten yards away. There could be no coincidence about that. He took a breath to speak, but she beat him to it.

"We seriously need to talk," she blurted out, coming toward him quickly. "I can't... and there's... We shouldn't... Besides.."

He grabbed her hands as she gesticulated, unable to finish her sentences. It was as though all her agitation and fear just welled up at once, jumbling up her thoughts and forcing words out of her mouth in the wrong order. "Slow down. Sit with me." He guided her gently to the bench and coaxed her to sit down. She'd been through a lot, and her agitation was understandable, but he firmly believed now that God had sent her to him. He needed to hear what she had to say.

He kept her hands still, holding onto them, angling on the bench so that his knee brushed against hers. It seemed to do the trick, calming her and focusing her at the same time. "We can't do this." She stated as soon as she had settled. Cass raised a brow, wondering what had brought on this change. "Cass, it doesn't end well, for anyone."

"How do you know this?" The furrow in his brow was coming back, as he tried to factor this new development into his plans.

"Dreams. I guess." Kayla drew her hands away from him, and began to sink into silence. She wasn't comfortable with any of these developments. Cass could see he was going to lose her support, and he couldn't afford that.

"Dreams, or visions?" As he asked, her eyes darted to meet his for a split second. It was all the confirmation he needed to know. "Why don't you tell me what happens in them, and perhaps together we can discover a way to circumvent the tragedy?"

There came that look once more, the dubious, hesitant glance that told Castiel that there was a much deeper and more fundamental problem at the source. He waited a few moments, and was rewarded for his patience.

Kayla took a long deep breath. "I know you're planning on changing your deal with Crowley." He tried not to let the surprise register on his face, and apparently succeeded, because she forged onward. "Don't change it first... If you change it before the door is open, he brings in a... a woman... a black woman with gold eyes..."

"Raphael." Cass put the name to the vessel immediately. Kayla drew a breath, but stopped herself.

"I thought-" Suddenly, she shook her head, and dismissed the thought. "Nevermind that. But, you have to bluff the door, or something Cass. Because the moment you open it, everyone dies. You, me... the Winchesters... Bobby... the world..."

"You know I can't do that." Castiel spoke gently, as though he were speaking to a child. "You know I have to do this, to open the door." The weight began to settle on his shoulders, as he openly confirmed all he was planning. "Sam suspects that I have not been forthright with them, Dean denies this. Balthazar has already agreed to betray me. All that is left to me is you, Kayla."

"Fat lot of good I am," she turned away, crossing her arms and closing herself off further from him. "A powerless nephil who can hardly handle a gun."

Cass hesitated. He had seen this behavior often enough in the brothers to know that nothing he could say would change her mind. Instead, he felt he had to show her. Unwilling to give her an option, Castiel reached out and grabbed Kayla by the shoulders, forcing her to face him, and look him square in the eye. Although startled, she locked gazes and drew a deep breath. Cass didn't wait. Once her attention was focused, he folded the world, and whisked her away with him.