_Author's Note_

THIS IS NOT THE LAST CHAPTER! I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT THE LAST CHAPTER!

Okay... you may continue.

_Chapter 22_

"Northern Lights"

_Author's Song Note_

"In My Veins" by Andrew Belle

Cas

"Shhh, it's okay, it's going to be alright," I whispered to Trinity as I clutched her against my chest as she shivered and rocked back and forth. Her regular tears mixed with the blood trickling from her eyes. I had brought her to an abandoned allotment house. The thunder cracked outside and the lightning flashed. She trembled, sobbing in my arms, the colorful glowing of her veins and the heat coming from her chest were the only sources of light besides the electricity filling the cold night sky.

She hadn't said a word since I found her, corpse-like in the mud as the Winchesters drove off. I wish Dean had known what his words would cause. If we couldn't stop it, it might be the end of the world.

I closed my eyes holding back the sorrow within me. "I've got you," I hushed her again, trying to soothe her and calm her down, if at all.

I guess I had to try.

I lifted two fingers up to her forehead and she fell slack against me. But it was as if the sleep only shut her mind off. Her body continued to tremor and shiver and the sweat still fell down her skin. I looked down at her and her eyes wouldn't stop moving beneath her eyelids. Her chin quivered and her teeth chattered. Her fists were frozen, clenched in my trench coat and hand.

A tear escaped from my eye and landed on her cheek. How had it come to this? Why had it come to this? She didn't deserve this.

I picked her up and carried her to the corner in the shadows. I had stopped somewhere and picked up blankets and a pillow and now used them to cover her. I touched her forehead one more time to make sure that if the sleep wore off, I'd be back here to help her, console her, and if I have to, control her.

I stood and looked at her once more before showing up at Bobby's place where the boys had undoubtedly gone back to.

…

Sam

"Dean! We can't just leave her back there!"

"We have to, Sammy!" he yelled as tears continued to fall.

"You love her! I love her! We can't just leave her behind after that!"

"Especially after that, Sam! You saw… what she was, what she did.. you… you saw…" he closed his eyes. But then they flashed back open and his Marks began to glow once more. Then his whole body went slack, his eyes rolling back.

"Dean!" I reached over and tried to grab to steering wheel but the Impala had already veered off the side of the road. By the time I held the wheel I barely stopped us from smashing into a tree.

I leaned over and checked my brother's pulse. It was speeding. "Dean!" I grabbed his face, "Dean!"

He gasped awake and looked around wildly. Then his eyes settled on mine filling with tears, "What have I done, Sammy, what have I done?"

…

"What do you mean she's gone?!" Bobby yelled at me.

"I mean she wasn't who she was supposed to be."

I had forced Dean to go into his room and rest. I had to drive us home because he kept going in and out of consciousness and every time would wake up with a new vision of Trinity dying slowly.

I didn't care what he said, he still very much cared about her.

So I told Bobby everything that happened.

He just sat there, mouth hanging open, pure bewilderment on his face and sadness in his eyes.

"Dean?"

"In his room." I continued to go on about the events from when we left the barn to when we got back to Bobby's.

He took his baseball cap off and rubbed his hand across his balding head. "Sam…" he looked up at me and I looked away because I had tears rimming my eyes from retelling the story. I sniffled and wiped my face.

"Why did you leave?" Cas' voice sounded from behind me. I whipped around and saw him standing there, tiredness hollowing his face, tears making his eyes red, his hair in shambles, and blood streaked, smudged, and stained his tan trench coat and white shirt as well as rainwater.

"Cas?" I was surprised to see him.

"Why, why would you leave her?" he had anger beneath those big, sad, blue eyes.

"Cas, I, we-"

"She's dying!" his voice shook.

"We know," Dean appeared in the threshold on the hallway. In just about the same state as Cas, but instead of the blood, his Marks were irritated.

They just watched each other for a moment.

Dean broke the sad, awkward silence, "Why did you never tell us?" he sounded more hurt than angry now, like he had in the barn.

"Would you have believed me?"

"Of course."

"Fine, would you have let her live when you weren't as attached?" a single tear fell from the corner of his eye.

Dean stood silent. He wanted to say yes, but we all knew that that probably wasn't true. Two tears fell from his.

"You have to listen-"

"No! Cas, I can't listen! Nothing was true, everything was a lie! She was a lie! I fell in love with someone who doesn't exist!" his voice could barely keep the tone.

Cas looked appalled, like he had heard similar words not long ago. "You're wrong, Dean. You're blinded by these negative emotions. And because of that, you might have just ended the world as we know it."

And with that Cas left the three of us alone, silent.

…

Cas

"Trinity? Hey, Trinity?" I tried to wake her up. It had been days.

She wouldn't move until suddenly, her eyes flew open and she looked at me.

"Cas? Wh-" then she looked around, and from her face, remembered everything.

Her eyes began to well with tears and I caught her small face in my hands. "Listen," I said gently, "You have to stay strong for me? Okay?

Her head tilted to the side in agonizing sorrow, "Cas, I-"

"I know. Just, stay with me, alright?"

"It hurts, Cas," she looked down at her chest where the scabbing wound on her chest was and then down to her enflamed Marks. My eyes followed. I took her cold hands in mine. And we sat there in the hazy, early morning light.

Sam

I prayed to Cas every night for the past two weeks.

But tonight was different. Dean had been acting like a normal person would after losing someone, but as the days went by, he began talking less, sitting more, eating less, staring out of the window more. Something was more than wrong.

Cas, please, I, we, need you. I can't help but feel like they're still connected. Please come see him and see if I'm right.

"Sam?"

I flipped around, "Cas," he was even more tired than the last time I saw him, he even looked, sick. "What's wrong, Cas?"

"I don't know," he walked clumsily over to the couch and sat, "I think it has something to do with our blood."

"What?"

"Trinity and I share the same blood, it's part of the reason she is the way she is."

I looked, cautioned, over at the ill angel.

"Why have you been calling?"

"Something's wrong with Dean."

"Show me."

I took him to Dean's room where when I opened it, he still sat at the window, staring out, his eyes droopy, his body shivering every once in awhile. His Marks we enflamed and sending out purplish veins like an infection.

"Trinity's doing the same thing."

My brother didn't even notice our presence.

"Come with me," he grabbed my arm and the next thing I knew, we were in some abandoned house and Trinity sat a bare table staring out of the window. There was a plate with a stale sandwich with one bite out of it.

"Won't she see us?" I asked. Her senses seemed to be heightened.

"She shouldn't," he walked slowly over to her, with heavy breaths and beckoned me over. "She hasn't eaten in a week."

I looked at her more closely and saw her bone sticking out a little more, her skin pale and her face without emotion.

"Cas? How come we could see her wings then, but not now?"

"Dean had started to see them and feel them before hand because of the connection. But I'm assuming since you and Dean share blood and she was strong then, that's why you saw them. She's weak Sam. She's dying."

"What about Dean?"

"I'd assume he is too," his face twisted in pain of the thought of losing both of them, "but he might live," he looked back down at Trinity, "I don't think Trinity will."

I crouched down and looked into the eyes that used to be so full of life and sarcasm. Now they looked lost and defeated.

I touched the side of her face, thinking, what harm could it do if she didn't know we were here."

But her hand shot up and touched the back of mine. "Sam?" Her eyes flicked over to face me, like I was really there. But they were like they had been that night in the barn. I gasped, but she blinked and at the same time that tears fell, her eyes were back to that multicolored hazel.

She looked straight into my eyes, "Sam?"

I recoiled my hand remorsefully, and she looked around hopelessly lost.

Louder, more needing and hoping, "Sam?!"

"Hold on," Cas said to me. He made himself seen to her. She grasped his hands tight.

"Cas, I felt Sam, it was him, I know it was!" she touched her cheek where my hand had been. Tears trickling down her face.

She began to cry harder and Cas embraced her and let her tears wet his shoulder.

He looked at me and his eyes pleaded with mine.

…

"We need to keep in touch," I told him.

"Yes."

"Cas," I said after a moment of silence, "How can we fix this?"

"To be honest, Sam… I'm not sure," worry crept into his voice that was already filled with sadness.

"Why can't we bring them together again?"

"At this point it could make it worse. My theory is that we have to wait until a certain point in time to bring them to one another."

"How could it make it worse, Cas? I mean, isn't this because he left her?"

"Exactly, it might have to be such a deep need for one another to bring them back together fully. I don't know, Sam, but we just have to keep them alive until we do know something," his face looked so depressed.

"I know. And we will."

…

June

Dear Sam,

How's Dean? Because Trinity's getting worse. She never stops shaking, She constantly has a racing heartbeat and the Marks are becoming more and more infected looking. She still won't eat. Sam, I know what you saw, but she's still human no matter what she says. I'm not sure what to do.

Cas

Cas

"Please, Trinity, eat."

"I'm fine, Cas," she glanced at me then stared back out of the window and the raining sky.

"You have to eat something," I pushed the plate towards her again.

"You don't eat, you're fine,"
she was like a petulant child.

"Yes, but you're human."

She then glared at me, more harshly than she ever had, it took me aback. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and leaned against the cold window and opened her eyes. It looked like she wanted to cry, but it was almost as if she didn't have any tears left to let out.

…

July

Dear Cas,

Dean's no better that he was last time I wrote. He barely speaks, he doesn't eat much, but I do get him to take something in at least once a day. His eyes are always red and his breathing slow and deep. What's happening to them, Cas?

Sam

…

I tried once more to give her something, this time just broth, anything to put in her stomach.

"I'm fine, Cas, really," she pushed it away.

"Please Trinity, you need to eat," I lifted it to her cold lips on her hallowing face.

"I said, I'm fine!" Her hand flew up and knocked it away, the hot soup spilling everywhere, the bowl crashed on the hard floor and shattered. She then used her other hand to use her powers, almost like she didn't realize she was using them, and made me fly backward and hit the wall. I slid down and looked back up to her eyes, they were angry and almost wild.

But the next moment, she looked into mine and blinked, shaking her head slightly and eyes welling with whatever tears were left.

"Cas, I'm, I'm so sorry, I'm so so sorry…" she fell off the chair and started trying to pick up the pieces. I stayed frozen against the wall, not knowing what to think.

…

Sam

August

Dear Sam,

She's becoming more violent. But it's like she doesn't mean to. She using the powers she has, almost without realizing it. It's worrying me. I think she's starting to lose control. Sam, I don't know what's going to happen.

Cas

…

"Dean?" I pushed open his ajar door.

I got a questioning hum in reply.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like my insides are on fire and my head in drowning. Wherever she is, she's dying. I can feel it." His voice was hoarse and tired. He was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. He looked like he had back on the shifter hunt when I found him in that room, but worse. Because for all he knew, or felt, he really had killed her.

_Author's Song Note_

"Falling Inside the Black" by Skillet

…

Cas

"What? You gonna kill me without getting the answers, love?" the demon snarled with a smile. The September air blew in a broken window.

I was about to speak again when Trinity held out her hand and flinched and curled her fingers over and over again. The demon began to shake and scream. The black smoke of his essence erupted and spread out through the air in a wave of heat and burning dust.

But she didn't stop. The man in a business suit, tied down to a chair, began to smoke and shriek. His human skin started to bubble and I grasped Trinity's arm and stepped in front of her. Her eyes were cold and merciless, but when I touched her skin, her focus was on me. I started to feel like I was burning from the inside and like I couldn't breathe.

"Trinity," I gasped and fell to my knees.

A line of blood fell from her nose and I reached up and put my hand on her dangling wrist. I squeezed as tight as I could around her Marks and small white scars from the gorgon fight those months back, what seemed like forever ago.

She returned the grasp on my wrist so we were interlocked and she looked down at our hands. I started to feel the fiery pain subside. Her eyes rolled back and she joined me on the ground.

Her head lolled and she tried to focus her eyes, so I grabbed the sides of her face. With heavy breathing, "Trinity, look at me, hey, look at me."

She looked into my eyes and I saw terror flush through them. "Cas, I-" she looked at my slightly steaming skin and chest rising and falling. Panic attacked her face and emotions, she reached up and held my shoulders and arms, "Cas, are you alright, I, I don't, I don't know what happened, Cas, I-" tears streamed down her face and I could hear their saltiness quietly sizzle on her cheeks.

I embraced her and I let her curl up. "I'm fine. I told you, I will follow you until the end."

It didn't seem to help much, because, no doubt, she was terrified of what she was becoming.

I was too.

_Author's Song Note_

"Never Be Alone" by Shawn Mendes

…

"CAS!" I heard her blood-curdling scream echo through the abandoned house. Since last month's exorcising scare she'd just gotten worse. She still wouldn't eat, she made me lock her in a room with nothing most of the time. But I would stay in there, even if that meant she didn't know I was there.

Her muscles would constantly contract and relax, her thinning frame shivering and shaking, sweat poured down her body, bags lodged under her eyes, her veins would protrude and pump against her freezing skin.

"Trinity!" I ran into her room and saw her huddled in the corner facing the wall. I crouched down and turned her around. I gasped and inspected. Her skin was covered in goosebumps, her veins and pupils glowing their galactic aura brighter than ever, the blue, angel part of her eyes shining the electric blue like mine, and the black demon area shining like a endless pit of darkness against the glow of the others. Blood ran down from them and her nose. It was also smeared on her chin and I looked behind her on the wall and it was splattered against the plain, white surface like she had coughed it up.

"I'm dying, Cas!" she sobbed, "I'm dying," she let out painfully.

"No… no, you, you can't…"

"Whatever trace of humanity you saw in me is dying. I'm killing myself from the inside. Don't you see, the human blood is weak compared to what I truly am."

"No," I said sternly. "Your humanity is what makes you strongest. I don't care what powers the others give you, it's this," I swiped the red substance off her skin with two fingers, "this is what makes you you, not this," I lifted her arm to reveal her glowing veins on her wrist. I felt tears behind my eyes, "You have to understand, I can't lose you, Trinity, not now. You have to keep fighting with me. Okay? I promise I'll find a way to fix this." I felt the searing heat, that was a new symptom, coming off of her skin onto mine.

I pulled her in tight and held onto her like it was the last time I could.

…

Sam

"I'm fine, Sammy."

"Shut up, jerk," I mumbled.

I gave him some stew before I closed the curtains keeping out some of the cold November air.

"Bitch," He grumbled back as he sipped the hot liquid.

I don't know how, but he seemed to be getting physically better.

_Author's Song Note_

"Northern Lights" by Jaymes Young

Cas

"Trinity, hey, Trinity, look at me, you're not leaving me now, okay? Look at me, you're not going anyw-" I held Trinity in my arms as she convulsed and screamed.

The heat coming off of her body burnt my skin and the tears racing down her face not only sizzled on her, but also on me, like acid rain. Blood dripped down her cheeks from her eyes and nose and mouth. It was strange how icy her blood was, especially compared to her skin.

She clung onto me with everything she had.

But then like a light switch, with a strong gasp, she fell against my chest, I could feel her hot cheek through my clothes. "No… no, no, no," I rambled.

But then I felt the slightest of movements from her body, her chest still, very slowly, lifted and fell, painfully so.

I kept looking down at her sickly, tired, agonized, and just plain sad face and her eyes fluttered open ever so slightly.

"Cas, you, you have to, to go."

"I'm not leaving you," my tear fell on her sweaty forehead and sizzled.

"You, have, to,"

"I'm, not, leaving you," I repeated again.

After a while of sitting there, rocking her back and forth, she whispered.

"Cas?"

"Yes?" I sniffled, I felt like I knew what she was going to ask.

"Can, can, we go somewhere?"

I wanted to tell her no, that there was no need, that she could go anywhere she wanted soon, just like always.

But I knew better, as much as I tried to deny it and hide the idea.

I knew my Trinity was about to leave me.

Sam

"Sammy?"

"Yeah, Dean?"

"Have you heard from Cas?"

I should tell him, I knew he hadn't seen him since that night in April. It had been almost six months. For a while, he wasn't here enough to comprehend his absence, but now he began to put it together and wonder.

I now wondered too, I hadn't received anything, a letter, a vision, absolutely nothing, since the end of August. And I had no idea where they were or what was happening.

For all I knew, Cas could be dead, Trinity could be dead.

Or she could be something Cas warned me she never wanted to become.

_Author's Song Note_

"Tears of An Angel" by RyanDan

Cas

I held the small, weak girl in my arms, for what I figured would be the last time. Her small, staccato breaths blew out tiny puffs of white clouds in the frosty air.

We were laying down in the middle of a field somewhere in Alaska. All she had asked of me was to take her somewhere where there was nothing but stars.

I took her to a place by the sea where I thought the Northern Lights were the brightest. We laid there as the colors danced across the sky, bobbing in between the bright white stars in the endless black sky.

She would occasionally shake, internally and externally and her breath would hitch, sometimes she'd grab my trench coat. Her small, slim fingers clutched onto the fabric, I'd look down to see frost coming from her fingers in tendrils across the stitching.

I had my arms wrapped tightly around her and pet her wild curls as her breathing slowed. I knew it was coming to an end. Tears silently streamed down my cheeks and I didn't let her see.

I could only think of how amazing this was. How perfect it should be. But then I thought how peaceful this was. And the only good thing about this happening right now, she was leaving in a way she deserved, easy.

No words were spoken as she stared up at the gorgeous sky. But I watched her fragile features follow the streams of light across the expanse of stars, a small smile played on her lips.

It was the first time I had seen her smile in such a very long time.

It was also the last.

Sam

"SAM!"
I ran into his room, "What?! What's wrong?!"

He was holding a hand to his chest and the other to his head.

"Something's wrong… something's-" his eyes rolled back and he fell to the floor.

"Dean!" I shook him, "Dean!"

He gasped awake and jolted up and looked into my eyes, "Two hands… they were, they were being torn apart from each other… one was, one was Marked…"

Cas

Her breaths started to slow so much I kept having to check on her.

I felt her hand holding onto me go slack. My eyes widened and I turned my head down and saw her face, too peaceful, too calm, too still.

"Trinity… Trinity… No, no, no, no, no…" I rolled over and put one arm under her right below her wings and the other pushed her cold hair away from her serene face.

My tears dripped onto her face as I checked her pulse and her heart. I put a palm on her temple and squeezed my eyes shut. I drew her lifeless body up to meet my mine. I gripped her tightly and rocked back and forth, sobbing into her curls, the Aurora Borealis casting colorful shadows into their jet black waves. I clutched the back of her head and held her chilled body against me, my tears freezing my cheeks.

I yelled her name into the vast open space where no one could hear my excruciating grief as she hung in my arms, the heat instantly cooling off, the glowing of her veins dimming to shadows, the Mark on her arm losing its luster and becoming as cold as the wind around us.

My piercing sobs echoed in the open air as I held her never wanting to let go.

Sam

"What do you mean? Wait, was it a vision?"

"I, I don't know, Sammy," sweat beaded down his face.

He looked up into my eyes, "Where's Cas, Sam?" he said more urgently.

Cas

I gently set Trinity's body down on the bed. I stood, still holding her hand, their usual coldness replaced with a vacant cold. I squeezed my eyes and fingers.

My eyelids flicked open and I felt my lip twitch in anger. I looked down at my Trinity once more, stabbing pain coursing through my body.

The next thing I knew I was standing in the middle of Bobby's house.

Sam

There was a loud bang in the living room.

Dean and I stood and grabbed a couple weapons as we crept around the corner.

But we put our guard down when we saw Cas, barely standing, wavering slightly, mouth somewhat parted, eyes glazed over, hair windblown, and trench coat streaked with blood and wetness. His cheeks were crystallized with frozen tears as new ones carved pathways down his face and neck and dripped onto his shirt.

"Cas?" I sat my dagger down and walked over to him, cautioned. Dean stayed where he was, shocked at the sight of the estranged Castiel.

"Hey, what's wrong? What happened?" I asked looking down at the blood stains on his trench coat. "Dean just had a vision, I was-"

"She's dead," he said monotonously.

I staggered where I stood. "W-what?" my breathing picked up.

It took him a moment, but he met my eyes. His were filled with grief and sorrow I'd never seen in their blueness. Tears lined his eyelashes and fell down his cheeks.

"She's dead," he lolled his head to look behind me at my brother who could barely breath, "Trinity's dead."