Look Back in Anger, ch. 10
On a sunny day in June Angela and her mother drove back to St. Paul to attend Clair's college graduation ceremony.
The episode with Toby had already been largely forgotten, pushed off the front pages by other crises in other parts of the world. Chris had skipped town just after Heather's funeral. Toby himself was safely resting in a local mental hospital, still oblivious to the rest of the world. The D.A. had decided he was not competent enough to stand trial, so it was likely his stay there would be of some duration.
In spite of everything that had happened Claire had managed to pull things together in the last few months of the academic year. After moving back home she redoubled her efforts at school. In the end she squeaked by with just enough units to graduate. It was a small victory, but both families were happy to take it.
At the ceremony they sat with the Carter family and watched Claire march across the outdoor stage and get her diploma.
Afterwards there was a large public reception for all the graduates on the grassy quad. Angela presented Claire with the bouquet of flowers she'd picked out. Mr. Carter, who assumed she and Jane were distant relatives from somewhere on Jimmy's side of the family, took photograph after photograph. Angela played tag with the two Carter boys.
Finally, while the adults were distracted chatting with the university president and his wife, and the boys were distracted with cake, Angela took Claire by the hand and led her from the reception. They headed for a small grove of trees away from the celebrating families.
"Where are we going?" Claire laughed as the child tugged at her.
"You'll see."
They stopped under a cluster of white pines. Their spreading branches gave them shade and privacy.
Angela carefully positioned Claire. "OK. Stand right there."
"You're freaking out the freaks right now, do you know that?" Claire laughed. "What am I supposed to be looking at?"
Angela pointed her small finger. "There."
Claire sucked in a sharp breath. "Daddy."
He was standing there in the grass, looking at them.
The little girl squeezed Claire's hand in her own. "No, Claire. It's Castiel."
Angela then took a small step forward and held out her other hand. Castiel took it, linking the three together with the child in the middle.
"The two of you never met properly, so I'm going to introduce you now, ok?" Angela looked up at Claire with a hopeful expression.
The older girl could only nod.
"Claire, this is Castiel. Angel of Thursday, Angel of patience and strength, will power and persistence. Cass, this is Claire Novak, Jimmy's daughter. You remember her."
"You were briefly my vessel," the angel said.
His voice was low and rumbling like distant thunder—nothing like the gentle voice Claire remembered from her father.
"Because you said you would save us if I let you in," Claire reminded him. She took a shaky breath. "I was so scared I'd never see my parents again…"
She looked into the angel's blue eyes.
The color was the same, but Jimmy's eyes had always been warm and laughing. These eyes were hard and cold, as if they had seen far too much to ever laugh again.
Angela looked from one to the other, encouraging them silently to continue.
"If Jimmy had died that day he would have gone to Heaven," Castiel told Claire. "Do not doubt that he would have been rewarded for the sacrifice he had already made for me."
"When you were…inside me," Claire swallowed hard, "I couldn't see or hear anything. It was like being drowned, only in light instead of water. My mother has told me my father offered himself to you. To save me. Is that really what happened?"
Castiel was silent for a moment.
"Tell her the truth," Angela urged him. "She should know."
"He did not want you to suffer," the angel explained slowly, as if remembering it for the first time himself.
"He offered himself to me again as my vessel. I told him there would be a great deal of suffering for him, and that if I were ever to release him again he would certainly die. But he insisted. Jimmy Novak was a good man. I could not deny him his request."
Claire smiled tremulously. "Yes, he was, a very good man. I never really realized how good until now."
"Your dad gave up Heaven so you could have a future, Claire," Angela said softly. "That sure sounds like love to me."
Tears began to stream down Claire's cheeks. But still she smiled.
"Is she all right?" Cass asked his daughter.
"Yes. Those are happy tears, not sad ones," she assured him.
Angela smiled at Claire. "You can hug him, if you want. He'll let you."
The idea of putting her arms around something as powerful as an angel was genuinely frightening.
"I can?"
"Sure. I do it all the time."
Claire knew her father was really gone. That what was before her was Jimmy's body, but that Jimmy was somewhere far away now, someplace she could not reach.
But she still could not resist reaching out her arms and gently, carefully, putting them around the angel's shoulders.
Castiel held perfectly still. His body was so hard it was like hugging a statue made of marble.
But for just a split-second Claire thought she got a whiff of Jimmy's aftershave, and that she felt Jimmy's heart beating again her own.
Angela's voice broke the spell.
"We need to get back. Our mom's are going to be looking for us."
Claire let go, and Jimmy was gone.
"It was nice to see you again," Castiel said politely.
Claire almost laughed. "You, too. I guess I'll see you around."
There was a fluttering sound, like giant wings, and the angel was gone.
Claire reached down and took Angela's hand again.
"Let's go, squirt. I've got a lot of packing to do."
The bottle propped up on the stack of two by fours exploded, and Dean Winchester stepped back with a smile.
"See? It's not that hard."
"You just have to breathe," Sam said encouragingly. "Try again."
Claire took a deep breath, pointed the .38 Dean had handed back to her at a bottle, and fired.
Nothing.
"You're dropping your shoulder again," Dean told her.
In July, with the grass growing high and the bees buzzing in the wildflowers, Claire arrived at the cabin.
She was determined to learn everything she could about hunting. Amelia had given her daughter her reluctant blessing.
The story put out around town was that she was the daughter of a friend in town for school. Claire was indeed already enrolled at the local junior college to repeat a couple of classes, hoping to pull up the rather abysmal GPA she had graduated with.
But a whole different type of instruction took place at the cabin when Sam or Dean was home. The rest of the time Claire poured through Bobby's books, soaking up as much information as she could.
With the little house now full to bursting the family had decided to add on two more rooms: one for Angela, and one for Claire. Then Sam and Dean could move into Angela's old room.
A couple of hunters passing through had stuck around to help frame out the addition. But it was up to the Winchesters to get the roof on and the walls closed in, a job that was taking place incrementally during the warm summer days.
"It's not fair! You two are guys; of course you can do this," Claire now complained.
"You were the one who wanted to get in some target practice," Dean reminded her.
"It's not a gender thing," Sam told her. "It's just a skill that needs to be learned. Hey, Jane?" He called.
"What?" The older woman appeared on the back porch. "Isn't break time almost over? It'd be nice if Angela and Claire had their new rooms before the snow flies," she teased.
"C'mere and show Claire how it's done." The older Winchester brother grinned widely. "She doesn't think chicks can shoot."
Jane rolled her eyes. But she stepped out into the yard and took the gun from Claire's hand.
"Move back a bit," she told the young woman gently. "Even a .38 kicks a little."
"Gun safety, right." Claire slid back, chastened. "I keep forgetting."
Jane extended the gun in her right hand, sighting down the barrel. She took a breath, exhaled, and fired.
Another bottled exploded.
"Ah, man!" While the Winchesters cheered Claire ran her hands through her hair in frustration.
She was letting the shaved part grow back. With a little help from a bottle she was also back to being a blonde. Part of being a hunter, the Winchesters had told her, was being able to blend in with the crowd. And nobody with pink hair could blend in.
"And you can do it one-handed, too!" Claire groused to Jane. "That looks way cooler than using two hands."
"You don't learn to fire a gun with one hand until you've learned to fire it with two," Dean said firmly. "We're the teachers; we make the rules. Yoda and Skywalker, remember?"
"Don't let them get to you," Jane consoled. "They just like showing off. And don't forget, my dad was a cop. He started teaching me how to shoot when I was eight. So you'll catch up."
Jane handed the gun to Sam so he could reload it.
"Angela, honey?" She called out. "Don't stay out too late; dinner will be ready soon!"
"Ok, Mom!" A voice called back from somewhere in the distance.
Dean set up a few more bottles, and Sam gave the gun back to Claire.
He placed a large hand on her shoulder.
"Let's try again. And breathe this time."
Angela had taken advantage of the fading sunlight to play in the woods before dinner.
She shimmied up a particularly fine oak tree, and sat on the biggest branch. In the distance she could see the roof of the cabin, and hear the shots as Dean and Sam worked with Claire.
She swung her feet back and forth in contentment. The big city had been interesting, but it was nice to be home.
"Hello."
A man had popped into existence next to her. A naked man.
Angela knew from school what she was supposed to do any time a strange man approached her: yell "stranger danger!" and run away.
But she understood immediately from his fat cheeks and fat tummy what he was. That, and the fact the branch wasn't bowing at all under what must have been his considerable weight, was a dead giveaway.
"You're Cupid, aren't you?" She asked.
He beamed at her. "I'd heard you were smart! Hugs!" He cried happily.
Angela reluctantly allowed herself to be embraced.
"Oooh, it's so nice to have a baby sister!" He crowed as he squeezed her tightly. "We haven't had one of those in eons!"
"You're smooshing me," Angela told him mildly.
"Oh, sorry." He pulled back until they were at arm's length again.
"You don't look anything like the cherubs on our mantelpiece," the child observed. "They're all babies."
"Hey, whatever image makes the humans more comfortable, you know?" Cupid chuckled.
They sat in companionable silence for a moment watching the sun begin its slide behind the mountains.
"So, are you the one that got my parents together?" She asked him. "I'm just curious."
But the cherub shook his head. "Oh, no, that wasn't us. We can't influence one of our brothers. Or a Lazarus, for that matter. No, your parents had to work it out on their own, which is why it took so long. Believe me, if we'd had any say in it you would have been born a lot sooner."
"Oh."
"Anyway, I just popped by to say 'thank you.'"
Angela raised her eyebrows. "For what?"
He chuckled. "For bringing Claire out here, silly. Saves us a lot of work!"
"Um, I'll bite. Why?"
"Because," he drawled, "she needs to get together with Sam. I would have thought that was obvious."
Angela was seldom surprised, but she was now. She tried to picture her serious uncle and fragile Claire as a couple. She just couldn't do it.
"Oh, Mr. Cupid, I don't think that's going to work. He's, like, at least ten years older than she is. That's a lot, in human years. And they don't even know each other."
"Pshaw." The cherub smiled smugly. "We get couples over tougher barriers all the time, believe me. But at least you solved the geographic distance problem for us."
Angela frowned. "I didn't find Claire to make you happy," she told him solemnly. "I found her so that demon wouldn't hurt her. And so she could make peace with what happed to her and to Jimmy."
"Yes, and that last bit's wonderful, too. If she's going to be a happy wife and mother to all those kids she needs to work through all that." Cupid clapped his plump hands. "Now they're in each other's orbit and we just sit back and let nature take its course."
"Claire doesn't want to be a wife and mother right now," Angela corrected. "She wants to be a hunter. And she'll make a good one."
"I didn't say they had to get together right this second," Cupid retorted. "Just eventually. I don't make the rules, sweetie, I just carry them out."
"Well, you're not going to carry them out while I'm around," the child said sternly. "I love them both very much and I don't want you messing with either of them."
The cherub held up his hands. "Who's messing? Like I said, I haven't had to do anything yet."
Angela regarded him seriously. "I could warn them."
"Sure, you could. Or," Cupid wiggled his brows, "is warning them what puts the idea in their heads in the first place?"
Angela thought about this. "Damn," she finally said.
"It is a conundrum, isn't it?" He chirped.
"Now I get why Cass doesn't like you guys."
The cherub patted her cheeks. "Don't be so gloomy, little sister. Everything will work out. It always does. You're proof of that."
"Oh, go away. You're annoying me."
Cupid gave her another squeeze, and then disappeared.
Angela sighed and took a deep breath.
No, she shouldn't say anything.
It was ridiculous, after all.
And nobody would believe it.
Would they?
She climbed down and ran back towards the house in time to find Sam and Dean packing up all their gear.
"Go on inside and wash your hands for dinner," Dean told her over his shoulder as he carried the gun cases inside.
"I will," she promised. She reached out and grabbed Sam's hand.
He grinned down at her. "Hey, short stuff. Find anything good in the woods?"
Angela glanced over at Claire, who was sweeping up broken glass and muttering to herself. Evidently the lesson hadn't gone well.
She looked up into her uncle's green eyes, and smiled.
"Nope," she told him.