Careful What You Wish For

Epilogue

Quartet

Sam

He had a handle on it. He had to. His head still hurt, and sometimes, just sometimes, he got flashes of images that he couldn't explain. But, all in all, he figured that was just okay. But he was worried. They hadn't heard from Castiel in weeks. There'd been no chatter over the hunter lines, other than the normal abnormal stuff. And Kayla was still missing. Sam was trying to drown himself in research, but that never seemed to work for very long. There was so much going on, and yet, everything seemed so quiet.

Sam leaned back from his book just as Bobby poked his head into the study.

"Are ya reading Enoch again, Sam?" When Sam nodded in answer, Bobby eased his way further into the room. "And? Find anything new?"

"Still nothing." Sam sighed, hands placed palm down on the desk. "No idea what happened. No idea where she went. No idea about Cass either."

Bobby put a bottle down on the desk beside Sam's hand. "Nothing but a bunch of dead ends. Maybe there's nothing to find, Sam. Maybe... maybe, it's time we face that she may be gone."

"No." Sam didn't reach for the beer yet, instead, clenching his fists on top of the book. The pain of his fingernails digging into his flesh grounded him into reality, giving his eyes a sharp look as he focused on Bobby. "I won't believe that. She's an innocent, Bobby. I won't let her be dead."

Bobby rubbed the back of his head. "I didn't say nothing about dead, son. I think we saw what Cass was so scared of: A full-powered nephilim without any way to control it."

"So, even if she's out of control, we find her, and we find a way to control her. I'm not abandoning her Bobby. There's nothing you can say to change my mind." Sam squared his shoulders, and reopened the Book of Enoch.

Beside him, Bobby sighed softly. "I wish I had your faith, son. I really do." Bobby clapped Sam on the shoulder, giving the young man a heartfelt squeeze. "I'll leave you to it then."

Sam watched him leave the room, and close the door cautiously behind him. Frustrated, he began rubbing his eyes again. So much of his head was filled with chatter and static, half-there images of torture and hatred, misery and pain, and worse yet, half-heard calls and shouts of his name, drifting to him as though muffled by very thick walls...

Castiel

"Wait! Wait! He's waking up! Get back, give him some room..."

Castiel's head felt like... like that time he'd gone and drank the liquor store. He didn't immediately recognize the voice over him, at least, not until his vision cleared, and he could see once more. Blinking away the blurriness, he focused on a prim-looking red-head, in a dark, three-piece suit. He felt himself scowling before he even realized he was doing it.

"Naomi?" He went to sit up, and his world swam, but her hands were immediately on his shoulders, pushing him back down.

"Easy, Castiel. Easy." Her tone was gentle, and a brief smile flitted over her lips. "You weren't easy to put back together."

"Put... ? I don't understand..." Cass obeyed though, leaning back. The chair was comfortable, a recliner, like the one Bobby had. He ached right down to his very core, a low, dull throbbing pain that he wasn't accustomed to.

"The nephil... When it awoke, it... it... tried to destroy you." Naomi let her hand slide down his shoulder, until she grasped his hand. He tried to study her, while trying to reflect on exactly what had happened. Purgatory had been opened. He'd gotten a handful of souls, before...

"No.." Cass contradicted the blue-eyed angel facing him. "Kayla wouldn't hurt me. She.. she saved me."

"It did not save you, Castiel. It condemned you. It made you open the Door. It made you strike a deal with a demon... it is the cause of all this... the ro-"

Naomi shut up quickly when Castiel suddenly sat up. "Do not try to twist me, little sister..." He knew her: she was a bureaucrat, head of the garrison that oversaw a mortal's admittance into Heaven. "Kayla-" -how hard he stressed her name, assuring himself that the angel could hear - "- saved me."

Naomi took a step back from him. "If that's what you want to call it," she said quietly. She nodded, and two angels that Cass hadn't sensed before, backed away from his chair. "However you want to look at it, Castiel, the fact remains: you awakened it. You will kill it. You know, as well as I, that we can't suffer the nephil to live. When it resurfaces, it will destroy the world, and there will be no coming back from its destruction."

Castiel pushed himself to his feet, rising slowly. "And if I find a way to control it?"

Naomi's vibrant blue eyes met his, somber and thoughtful. "I pray you do, Castiel. For the sake of humanity, I pray you do."

Kayla

Running didn't get her anywhere. Hiding was even worse. No matter where, or how she moved, they found her. They always found her. The whispers. The voices. The cries. Ceaseless and constant, sometimes they sounded distant, trapped in a far-off room, sometimes, they sounded right beside her ear, whispering heinous things into her head. She didn't want to fight them, whenever she thought to raise a hand against them, her head burned with a pain that threatened to drive her mad... if she wasn't there already.

She was so close to giving up. To letting the voices catch up to her, so that she could see what she was up again. See was a relative term. Wherever she was, it was black, pitch dark. If she allowed herself to think about it, it smelled of earth and decay, of moisture, rot and madness. She didn't accept that she was underground, even though all signs pointed to that. Because that would mean that she was trapped, and she refused to believe that.

In the dark, something knocked her to the ground, sending her sprawling on her stomach. She lay there for a few moments, face down in the dirt, waiting for the inevitable.

Pretty littlegirl... come to skin her knees and cry. Darklittle prettygirl, come to crunch the bones of angels.. sup the marrow of demons.. dance in the corpses of humanity... secrets held, secrets given, secrets learned.

"Leave me alone!" Kayla batted at the air with her hands, silencing the layered voices for just long enough. She scrambled back to her feet, and started running again, but the voices followed her, whispering, shouting, screaming, and crying all at once, hundreds of them, layered together into one terrible miasma of sound.

Yummy when they run. Fear. Terror. Hatred. We're so hungry. Feed us. Let us touch you. Trapped. Forgotten. She'll be like us soon enough. Starved. Hungry. Fingers. Hands. Touching. Needing.

DON'T FLEE US!

Kayla hit a wall, and spun, bouncing off the dark edges of the cave, she raced into the darkness, her heart hammering against her chest. There was no way out of here, she couldn't find it. She couldn't see the faces of anyone in her mind; she couldn't calm enough to focus that way. Instead, the cajoling, whispering, whining voices that came at her from all sides, finally got what they wanted. She spun again, and screamed, a visceral sort of primal cry, that came from deep inside. For a moment, the cave grew bright, as Grace illuminated the darkness. The voices cried out in ecstasy, dark shadows within the light reaching for her as she poured her emotions into her voice.

High above, Mount Sinai trembled.

To Be Continued...

Author's Note: Stay tuned for what could be called: "Careful what you wish for: Season 2." Now that I have my alternate universe set up, I can run where I want to with this. My take on what Purgatory is.. plus, more on my interpretation of Nephilim, Angels, and what really got released when that Door was opened. Thanks for reading!