Disclaimer, timeframe, summary: see first chapter.

In the Wake of Angels: Part XII

It seemed a strange goodbye to Dean because before there were four living bodies, four voices in the conversation, and afterwards that wasn't visibly different. It had still changed, though, of course, because Jimmy was gone and Jeanette was present, shaking weakly in Dean's arms, in control of her own muscles for the first time in weeks. The moment her body had become her own again, she'd begun to whimper.

"Did it work?" Dean said quietly. "Are you there, Cas?" Jimmy's body, Jimmy-less now, nodded its head.

"I'm here. Jimmy is gone."

Dean's crouched knees were shaking, and he gently lowered Jeanette to the ground so that he himself could fall backwards to the grass. For a long moment, he sat unmoving with a hand across his eyes. Then finally he summoned the last of his energy and pushed himself back up to a crouch, leaning over Jeanette. "You okay, sweetheart?" he asked gently. She nodded. "Okay. Listen, I know you're scared and I know you've been through a lot, but it's okay. We're gonna take care of you." She nodded again, still either too hurt or too frightened to speak.

Dean stood and stumbled over to Sam, who had also plopped himself down in the grass and was breathing heavily. "How you doin', Sammy?" he asked, the concern even more evident in his voice now.

Sam shook his head. "I can't believe Jimmy's gone," he said quietly.

Dean knelt down beside him, taking him by one shoulder and shaking him slightly. "I know, Sammy, but now's not the time yet," he told him patiently. "How's your mojo? Be honest."

"I'm pretty drained," Sam admitted. "I don't know how many more I could pull off tonight."

"Okay." All business, Dean pushed himself back to his feet once again. "You think those demons will've stayed around to see if their poisoning worked?" he asked, posing the question generally.

"Offhand, I'd say yeah," Sam replied, also on his feet now. He pointed into the trees behind the pub, and Dean followed his line of vision. Something was moving in the shadows, too fast and solid to be rustling tree branches.

"What are they waiting for?" Sam wondered aloud.

"I dunno, but we're not waiting for them," Dean replied. "Stay with her," he told Sam, and pulling his gun he ran at the trees, knowing Cas would follow.

The angel, newly returned to his longer-legged form, caught up quickly. They entered the woods together, staying close, and as Dean's eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw about a dozen demons darting through the trees-- the four who had lived through the blood poisoning, plus some that had either escaped exorcism somehow, or come as reinforcements. Dean didn't care; he was going to kill them all.

But something was off. They were running, but in the same direction as he and Cas were.

"What's going on?" he demanded, but Cas was giving chase.

The faster he ran, the faster the demons scampered ahead, until it was perfectly clear that they were running away from the angel. Despite his strong legs, Dean was having a hard time keeping up. Frustrated, he began shooting, hitting the demons with bullets coated in salt and holy water, picking them off one by one, knocking them to the forest floor. Nearly frantic, they pushed themselves back up and sprinted away again. But Cas, seemingly also growing tired of the chase, waved his arm…

… and the demons collapsed. When Dean caught up they were identically pinned to the ground, writhing in panic, and Cas was looming over them, looking terrifying even to Dean. Cas glanced over at him; a shiver passed through Dean when their eyes met. Then Cas raised his hand again, and a cluster of simultaneous geysers of smoke exploded into the air. The branches around them bent back; it wasn't impossible to think that even the trunks were swaying from the force.

When it was over, the forest was so quiet that Dean was suddenly self-conscious of his own breathing. He waited a moment before speaking, half-spooked, half-reverent. "What the hell was that?" he hissed finally. "That was some damn strong mojo."

"I don't have to hold back to protect my vessel anymore," Cas answered tonelessly. "They knew that. It's why they ran."

"Oh," Dean said blankly, staring at the bodies on the forest floor. They looked more than exorcised or killed; they look like they'd been… freeze dried, like a good amount of the moisture in their bodies had fled with the demon smoke. Their skin was wrinkled and looked as though it would crack under pressure. Dean shivered. He looked over at Cas and was surprised to find him shaking as well.

"You hurt, Cas?" he asked gently.

"No."

Dean put a hand on his arm, trying to offer comfort, but Cas didn't react. "Let's go home," Dean suggested tiredly, dropping his hand, confused and hurt but too exhausted to argue. Cas turned and started back, and once again Dean struggled to keep pace.

When they neared the edge of the forest, though, and heard Sam's voice, Dean broke into a run. "She's lost too much blood!" Sam shouted as they burst from the forest and sprinted to her side. Sam crouched by Jeanette, his big hands wrapped around a gash in her forearm that had been bandaged, as had a dozen others, with strips of Sam's t-shirt. In the light from the single bulb next to Kavanaugh's back door, Dean could see that she had already bled through them. Jeanette was moaning, no longer fully conscious, her short hair tangling as her head lolled from side to side.

"Heal her," Dean snapped at Cas. The angel knelt, putting a hand on the two largest gashes, but a moment later he shook his head.

"There's too much demon blood. I can't reach her."

"What do you mean you can't--" Dean began, but Sam cut him off by struggling to his feet.

"Dean. She needs a hospital. She needs a transfusion. Now," he added, and Dean sprung to life, grabbing Jeanette's small body up in his arms. He sprinted around Kavanaugh's to the front lot where the Impala sat, loyally waiting, gleaming in the moonlight. They all reached the car simultaneously; Sam slid silently into the back seat, helping pull Jeanette out of Dean's arms, accepting her head into his lap. Dean closed the door behind her and turned, but before he could sprint to the driver's seat, he was stopped in his tracks at the sight of Cas already sitting there. Surprising himself, he didn't argue, but wrenched the passenger door open and jumped in.

Cas drove-- no key needed, Dean saw-- as though he'd done it a million times before, guiding the Impala quickly to the highway and taking off at full speed, immediately entering the passing lane. "Do you even know where the hell you're going?" Dean demanded, able to keep quiet no longer. But Cas's reply was calm.

"This is the way to the nearest hospital."

Letting it go, Dean clamored around in his seat to look back at Sam and Jeanette. "How's she doing?" he asked roughly.

"Bad," Sam replied, sounding terrified. "Her heart's racing but I can barely feel a pulse anymore."

"Step on it, Cas," Dean ordered. The Impala accelerated smoothly; they had to be doing at least a hundred.

"Hang in there, Jeanette," Sam murmured, and at the sound of his voice, Dean's stomach lurched uncomfortably.

"How far are we from the hospital?" Dean demanded.

"Another thirteen minutes at this speed," Cas replied.

"Damn it," Dean growled. "She's not gonna make it. Okay, Cas, pull over. Here's what you need to do--"

"Dean."

"You need to take her, and you need to fly her there, you understand? You need to--"

"Dean." Sam's voice was quiet, but was still enough to break through Dean's loud string of imperatives. "Don't bother. Slow down, Cas. She's gone."

"What?" Dean yelped. He turned around again, kneeling backwards on the seat, not willing to believe it.

"Shock," Sam said quietly, almost to himself, as they rolled to a gentle stop in the shoulder of the road. "Blood loss and demon blood and Cas leaving…." Dean reached his hand out desperately, feeling for Jeanette's carotid pulse like he was grasping at a life raft. Sam was right; there was nothing. He looked her body up and down, noticing for the first time that under the bandages both arms were slit open in roughly vertical lines from the wrists to the elbows. The demons had been less careful to preserve the vessel for questioning this time, or maybe had just been feeling more malicious. Jeanette had been drained, a lost cause long ago. She hadn't even had time to say anything. He had kissed her lips and held her hands and yet had never actually gotten to meet her.

"Damn it," Dean growled, sliding back into his seat. "Fuck." His stomach heaved again and he threw open the door, stumbling out into the cool night air and away from the car. His arms wrapped around himself, he stood perfectly still and waited for the ominous nausea to subside. When the breeze blew, he discovered that he was crying by the feeling of the air on his cheeks. He stared listlessly off into the distance, seeing the lights of a city on the horizon, bright and steady as the stars above them. And Dean closed his eyes.

Eventually, he felt a presence behind him and, forcing himself to look, found Cas, his face serene but his hands clenched tightly at his sides. His steely blue eyes bore into Dean like searchlights. And Dean waited, waited for the angel to come to him, put his arms around him and take the pain away. But Cas didn't move and somehow, stupidly, that hurt more than anything else.

***

"Head back to the shooting field, Dean," Sam said quietly, when they reached the exit for their motel. "We need to burn her body."

In the backseat, where he had taken over the duty of sitting with his former vessel, Castiel stared dumbly out the window, seeing nothing. When the car stopped, he climbed out smoothly with the corpse he'd once occupied cradled in his arms, further bloodying his clothes. Dean and Sam set about collecting wood, piling it in a roughly rectangular formation on a patch of field that had next to no grass. Castiel watched them, having moved no more than a step away from the car.

Could this really be the same field in which, mere hours before, he and Dean had been so close-- so close it had hurt, but felt strangely wonderful at the same time? The same field in which Dean had confessed that Castiel made him happy, where Castiel had in turn let go of his composure, embraced his confusion and the very human feeling of attraction? It didn't feel possible, but then, much had happened in half a day. The last time they had entered this field, Castiel had worn the body of a woman. Now, all had changed.

Because, though Castiel mourned for Jimmy, and saluted his bravery, Jimmy had not been the only one to make a sacrifice that day. Yes, the maneuver had allowed them to defeat an entire group of demons, but when Jimmy had given up his life, Castiel had given up Dean. In Jimmy's body, he was a man again, and Dean, Castiel knew-- had personally witnessed on multiple occasions-- liked women.

Absently, he stroked Jeanette's hair with the hand of the arm cradling her shoulders. Inside his mind everything was far too quiet, the once-constant chatter of his fellow angels reduced in recent months to an occasional whisper, and he yearned for the dead girl's 'voice' to once again cut into his thoughts, offering guidance and companionship. He wanted her to tell him what he was feeling, although he already knew-- at least, he believed that the colloquial term was 'heartbroken'. It had always seemed a bit melodramatic, until now; now it really felt as though something had shattered in his chest, and the pieces were stabbing him from the inside out whichever way he moved. But no one spoke to him: not Jeanette, not Jimmy, not Anna or any other angel. He was completely alone.

The combined sadnesses of the night might have been enough to make him weep, were he of a mind to embrace his thriving emotions. He wasn't, though; he was of a mind to purge them from himself entirely, to never feel again, to never feel this… hurt again. So he stood, his face impassive, watching the wood pile grow.

When it was sufficient, Sam came to Castiel and gently pulled Jeanette's body from his grasp. Their burden gone, his arms fell to his sides uselessly. Sam carried the body to Dean, who was waiting with a length of white cloth, and together they wrapped it gently. With the same reverence, they covered the fabric in salt and soaked it with propane, and then Dean placed the body on the pyre and lit it in three places. Flames sprang up and spread quickly, igniting other branches and Jeanette's burial cloth. Within minutes the entire construction was alive with fire. Silently the three of them stared into the flames, watching it spew smoke like a demon being exorcised.

Castiel said a prayer, for Jeanette and for Jimmy, remembering their brief but emotional communication and hoping that somewhere better, somewhere safe, they had both been reunited with their families, perhaps even each other. Long ago he wouldn't have questioned the certainty of this, but nothing seemed certain anymore. He remembered his promise to Jimmy, to reunite him with his family in the afterlife, and realized with a sudden, twisted feeling that he was unsure how to keep it.

After the flames had died down and what remained of Jeanette's bones had been buried, unmarked, in the earth, Castiel swore he could still smell smoke. The air was heavy and stagnant, even inside the car. And he waited, in vain, for Dean to say something-- for anything to happen that could break the tension between them, denser than the air itself. But Dean did nothing, and Castiel knew his place; he had interfered enough already, gotten far too involved in the lives of humans. The most prudent course of action was to remove himself as much as possible, starting at this moment.

So when they returned to the motel, Castiel did not enter the room with Dean and Sam. He considered going to Anna, but knew that there was only one being he really wanted to talk to, and that was impossible. So instead he sat, statue-still on the bench by the parking lot, and stared at the sky, waiting for the sun to rise. He prayed for Dean, that the man would someday, soon, find the same happiness with a human that he'd professed to have found with Castiel himself. Dean deserved that, he knew: Dean deserved only the best of anything. But Castiel didn't pray for himself-- couldn't bring himself to ask God to take away the pain he was feeling. The pain was no one's fault but his own, and he would live through it. And, deeper, at the back of his mind, Castiel secretly suspected that not even God could heal a pain like this. It was the kiss of humanity, his very own Mark of Cain-- he had done wrong, he had fallen in love with a moral, and now no one could end his misery. He would bear it to the end of days.

AN: As the next update will be the last, I just wanted to take the time to thank everyone who is reviewing! It's amazing how after nine years of fanficcing I still get that thrill at seeing a new review in my inbox… yeah, a little sad I know, but oh well. Anyway, as I said, there will be one more chapter to wrap up the interpersonal aspects of Angels, although all the actual supernatural stuff is over. Please review, let me know what I'm doing, and if anyone would be interested in reading any follow-up oneshots? I have none written at the moment but I've really gotten attached to this fic and want to study its implications a bit more than I did in this chapter and the next. Let me know!