Title: The Curse of Bittersweet Kisses
Chapter 33
~~~~~~~~~~
After having dealt with Meg, narrowly escaped being killed by Eleanor Visyak, and realized his charade was at an end, the last thing Castiel wanted to do was have a conversation with either Ellen or Jo in private. Ellen, however, had a different idea. He should have known she’d find an opportunity as soon as she was mobile enough.
She was at his cabin door not long after he returned from breakfast, banging on it and pushing past him into the cabin when he opened the door. One of her crutches missed slamming down on his bare toes by about an inch.
“You’d better tell me what you’re up to Castiel, or so help me --”
“Ellen, calm down,” he told her, which wasn’t the thing to say as the fire in her eyes increased.
“You don’t have the right to tell me to calm down,” she snapped. “Start talking.”
“I thought you were watching the baby.”
“Morgan has her. Talk.”
“I’m Jimmy.”
“Bullshit.” The word was spat out. “You’re Castiel. Do you think I don’t see it? Dean and Sam would too if they weren’t distracted by their own problems and I’ll bet you counted on that.”
“I’m Jimmy,” he repeated, attempting to stifle a wince and failing.
She moved forward, close in the way that had always made Dean give him a lecture on personal space. “Don’t make me kick your ass.”
“It’s a complicated situation.”
“Tell the truth and shame the devil,” she replied.
He almost laughed. “I’m both Jimmy and Castiel.” It was technically the truth. Jimmy’s body and Castiel’s being.
Her brows rose, though he could see she was merely amused by the proclamation. She didn’t believe it. “Go on.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want the truth or is that too hard for you to comprehend? Truth means you tell me why you’re pretending to be someone you’re not and why you’re not telling Dean and Sam that you’re you.”
“I said --”
She waved a hand. “I heard. You’re both. Tell me.”
“Ellen, look…. Castiel is trying to atone for his sins. He’s in here and he’s doing everything he can to make a new life and not make the mistakes he made before when he had powers and was --”
“The third person is a nice touch, but I’m not buying it. You’re Castiel.” Hobbling over to the chair, she eased down into it and laid her crutches aside. “Now, you start at the point Jo and I last saw you and go from there. Go slow. We have time.”
There was no putting her off. He tried. She kept returning to the assertion he was Castiel, as tenacious as a bloodhound on a trail. Finally, he sighed and sat down on the floor across from her, about as far as he could get from the reach of her crutches. Slowly, he told her the story, trying to lay out the change inside himself so that she’d understand.
When he was done, she sighed and shook her head. “That’s a fine kettle of fish. You do know you’re digging yourself deeper with every day you call yourself Jimmy, right?”
“I know.” Raising a knee, he wrapped one arm around it. “I just don’t know how to admit to it. I really thought I’d manage a few days, then gather my courage and admit it, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t look Dean in the eye and admit everything. Even now the thought of doing that terrifies me.”
“Don’t wait too long. Dean Winchester isn’t a man you want angry with you.”
“I got that memo a long time ago, Ellen. And….”
“What? What else is there? Tell me.”
He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “Dean does know. He, um, let me know he does in a roundabout way at breakfast.”
“And you didn’t come clean right that second?”
“No.”
Her sigh was long and frustrated. “Castiel, I thought you were supposed to be smart.”
“Fear sort of trumps that, especially since I’m very human at the moment.” He leaned back against the footboard. “I think Jo knows as well.”
“She is my kid. I trained her.”
“I think it’s more than that, Ellen.”
“I knew at a glance,” she pointed out.
“Yes, but I knew I couldn’t hide from you at all. I never tried. I spoke to you as myself right after you arrived when you were sick with fever. Out of all of them, I think you were always actually able to see into me. Dean, he knows me, but you….” He shrugged. “Ellen, you’ve always seen me. You see all of us.”
“Barkeep’s gift.” She slid down a little in the chair.
“Is it?”
“Sure. It’s seeing past the bullshit and knowing who is gonna give you trouble and need tossed out on their ass.”
“Do I need tossed out?”
She studied him and he forced himself to sit there silently while she did. “Not today.”
He tipped his head back. “I’m sorry I did all those things. I am. To you and Jo. To Sam and Dean. To Bobby and Jody. Bobby was included in the threats. He gave you all sanctuary in his house. He was there when I….” He squeezed his eyes shut, took a bracing breath, opened his eyes, and continued. “He was present when I thought I’d become God. I did hurt him as well, only he’s gone and I can’t tell him I’m sorry.”
“Refresh my memory. What’d you do to Jody?”
“Jody lost her job.”
“Did you make that happen?”
“It wasn’t directly me, it was --”
Ellen reached for her crutches and stood. “Don’t do that. Don’t fall into the same sort of trap Dean has for taking the weight of the world on your shoulders. You’re not responsible for everything, Cas. You take responsibility for what’s yours to be responsible for.”
It sounded almost like a riddle and he replied, “Ellen, I am responsible for everything. I thought I was God. I did damage to the entire world on a level I don’t think it can recover from. The ripples of my actions have hurt more people than --”
“Are those people here?”
“No.”
“Then you deal with those that are here. Who did you hurt directly?”
“Sam. Dean. Jo. You.”
“You and me,” she gestured back and forth with a finger. “We’re fine as long as you don’t start going around hurting people again. But just so you know, I will bust your ass if you do.”
“You would forgive me?”
“Not my forgiveness you need. Start going through your list.” She moved towards the door, then stopped, half looking over her shoulder at him. “If I were you, I’d go to Jo and Sam in the next day and get square with them, then take them with you to talk to Dean. They might could slow him down enough to where he’ll listen when you start apologizing.”
“Thank you, Ellen.”
She left without comment.
~~~~~~~~~~
As she and Mindy packed the items Jo wanted to move to the cabin, Morgan studied her. Sam had agreed to have dinner, but she thought it’d be better if it wasn’t just the two of them. He needed more time for that and she was willing to give him time.
“Sam and I are having dinner tonight. Would you and Jimmy like to join us?”
Mindy closed one box. “Seriously?”
“Sure. Sam and Jimmy are friends, right? It’ll be fun.”
She turned, gaze assessing. “And put Sam at ease.” Her surprise must have shown on her face, for Mindy laughed. “Sam hasn’t had a date in months that I know of and he seems a little shy at times. He sticks to himself a lot. You’re not shy, Morgan. Put the two together and I’ll bet you’ve got him all flustered. Makes sense to have friends come. It’s thoughtful and I think he’ll appreciate the gesture.”
When it was time to meet Sam, Morgan found herself nervous. She wished she had makeup to wear, but told herself that Sam had seen her plenty of times already with no makeup and seemed to like how she looked. Makeup was a vanity thing.
He was waiting outside the dining hall, an apprehensive expression on his face. “Morgan, hi. You’re right on time.”
“I try. Shall we go in, or do you want to wait for Jimmy and Mindy?”
“I thought it was just the two of us tonight?”
She smiled. “At first, I thought it should be, but when I really thought about it, I realized you might not be ready for a one-on-one date.”
His lips curved, teeth flashing in a quick grin. “That skittish am I?”
“Like a wild animal,” she teased and stepped back a fraction, beckoning with one hand. “Come on, Sam,” she coaxed. “Come with me….”
A snort of laughter left him. “Alright, let’s go in. They can find us inside.”
They commandeered a table at the back, a small one. She was glad she’d asked Mindy and Jimmy to join them because Sam’s pleasure in seeing them was there in his eyes. Conversation was easy, though it seemed like she and Mindy were the ones doing all the talking.
Finally, Sam spoke up. “What do you miss, Morgan? About the world before?”
“Define ‘before’ for me.”
“Before the PD’s. Before Jo and Ellen showed up for an appointment. Before those sort of things happened.”
She thought about it. “I miss getting a chai tea latte from Panera on the way in to work and sipping it while I go over email and my appointment schedule before opening the office. I miss the friends who died in that town during the months we were trapped by the quarantine. I miss my patients.”
He nodded. “Jimmy? How about you?”
Jimmy blinked. “Um…. I suppose I miss a world that hasn’t already slid halfway into hell.”
Morgan pursed her lips. “You’re not really a cheery kind of guy, are you, Jimmy?”
He glanced at Mindy, then Morgan, and asked, “I’m sorry. Was that the wrong answer?”
“What else,” Sam prodded him. “Something personal to you.”
“Oh.” Jimmy picked at the remains of his dinner. “Then I guess I miss being who I was.”
“Which one?” Sam took a sip of coffee. “I mean, the you with Amelia, the one who sacrificed himself for his daughter, or --”
“Sam.” Morgan couldn’t believe he was asking that. It seemed cruel to her to remind Jimmy of those times.
“It’s okay, Morgan.” Jimmy set his fork down. “It’s a valid question. There are several me’s to choose from. I mean the me who believed in something enough to sacrifice myself for it. I haven’t been him in a long time and I think he was the best version of me.”
There was an odd expression in Sam’s eyes. Morgan didn’t know him well enough to know what it meant. “Maybe he’ll come back,” he suggested and moved on to Mindy. “How about you?”
Mindy slid her tray aside. “Nothing. I miss nothing.”
“Are you serious?” Morgan slid her plate to one side on the tray and reached for her gelatin dessert. A strange thing to say. Didn’t they all miss something?
“Yup. Unbelievable, right?” Her grin was almost mischievous. “There are things I miss a little, but nothing that’s really important to me. I wasn’t a doctor, a hunter, or an angelic vessel. I was average. I worked at Wal-Mart and took classes at the community college in hopes of someday amassing enough credits to get a degree. I don’t miss that life and I’m even a little relieved I don’t have to live it anymore. I have good friends here. A guy I enjoy spending time with. I want to move forward. Circumstances change. A man can go from being rich to poor in a day, so why dwell on the past. There’s a future to shape and we’re the ones who are going to shape it. Kind of exciting in a way.”
“You make the best of what you have when you have it?” Jimmy half turned in his chair to look at her.
Mindy pointed at him. “Bingo.”
“That’s a little deep,” Sam told her.
She laughed. “Nah. I’m not deep. I’m practical. What about you, Sam? What do you miss?”
He studied each of them in turn before shrugging. “Saving people. I know I can still do the research and that part, but what I miss is saving people, being out in the field, and making the world safer. I didn’t know just how much I’d miss it until I couldn’t do it at all. Who here wants me driving a car and handling a gun as I am now?”
No one raised a hand.
“I’m a hunter who can’t hunt. I could do other things with my limited capabilities,” he acknowledged, “but I know now that what I want is to hunt. Damned if I can do it, though. Sucks, doesn’t it? By the time I finally figured out where I belonged and what I wanted, I couldn’t do it anymore.”
“You decided?” Jimmy sat up, crossed his arms, and rested them on the table edge.
“A couple months ago. And it’s not that I miss being out there with Dean, though that’s part of it. I could do the job alone if I was able and had to. If Dean chose not to be a hunter, I know now that I would --”
“If you were able,” Jimmy finished for him.
“In a second.”
Mindy exchanged a glance with Morgan and said, “Well, not to derail an emotional topic and good conversation, but there’s a line of people waiting for seats. Why don’t we take a stroll through camp?”
Morgan was glad to take a late walk through the camp. It was chilly enough that she could stay close to Sam. The smells of wood smoke and cooking food were in the air and she took a deep breath. They’d gone only a few feet when Sam took her hand in his.
~~~~~~~~~~
Sam strolled with Morgan along one of the paths, their fingers linked. There’d been no reason for him to have been nervous. Jo had told him that. Even Dean had told him that. He’d thought Dean might tease him about finally having a date, but he hadn’t. He’d appeared to be too busy giving Beth a bath in the sink to attempt it and Sam was grateful for that. Any teasing may have made him change his mind.
“I thought you said Jimmy used to be married.” Morgan was frowning, watching Jimmy and Mindy ahead of them.
“He was. Had a wife and daughter.”
“Really.” She sounded like she didn’t believe him.
“Why?”
“He acts like he doesn’t know how to behave with a woman.”
One of Dean’s observations. “Mindy’s his second girlfriend here. She knew she wanted him and she pursued him. Maybe he feels guilty. I mean, we weren’t able to find his family. They could still be alive and having a girlfriend with his wife alive would be against his personal beliefs.”
“He was a man of faith?”
“Yeah and it bit him in the ass ever since he said yes to being an angelic vessel. It cost him everything.”
“I see.” She turned her back to them and stopped. “He’s kind of weird, Sam.”
“How so?”
“You don’t see it?”
“See what?” What was she driving at?
Morgan shook her head. “Never mind. It’s not my business.”
“No, tell me.”
She sighed. “He’s…oddly devoted to Dean and to you.”
“We helped him twice to try and have a life back. First with his family and then second when Castiel was made powerless in his body. He has a life here.”
“He looks at you two like you’re his…I don’t know…his salvation.”
“No, he --”
“He does. You have to admit that that’s kind of weird.”
He’d been thinking about the things Dean had said and his own suspicions off and on the past months. Truthfully, he thought Dean was right. Jimmy was really Castiel. Sam had decided to forgive Castiel a few months earlier and while it had been hard at first, he’d managed to reach a level of forgiveness where he didn’t have to say it a hundred times in a row to make it stick for the day.
If Jimmy was Castiel, then he was going to have to face both Sam and Dean and Sam knew that facing Dean would be terrifying for him, even worse than facing Sam. If he was Castiel, he was human, with human limitations and consequences. He already knew Jimmy’s fingerprints hadn’t changed, but it might be prudent to have a doctor’s report that proved he was human for Dean to look at.
It was prudent for another reason for he himself to have a checkup and not because he wanted to have a physical relationship with Morgan. Well, not only for that reason. “I want you to give me a physical.”
For a second, he thought she’d reply with a flirtatious answer, but then her grin faded and a more serious mien took root. “Sam, I’m sure you’re perfectly healthy physically. Probably more so than ninety-nine percent of the people here.”
“Then an exam to make sure won’t hurt.”
“Never hurts to know where you stand,” she agreed with a nod.
“Tomorrow morning?”
“You in a hurry?”
“Let’s just say I want a clean bill of health from the new doctor.”
Interest sparked in her eyes. “Fair enough.”
He glanced down the path. Mindy and Jimmy were almost around the bend. “Give Jimmy one, too.”
“If he asks.”
“He’s asking.”
“Sam --”
“I want you to do every test you can on him and tell me he’s human. Including blood.”
Her eyes seemed to darken, hand gripping his arm and voice lowering. “Wait. You think he’s not human.” It wasn’t a question.
“Not exactly. I think I need to be ready to prove he is.” At least that he was now. Human and without one bit of angelic ability inside him.
“Prove to who?”
“I can’t tell you yet. Can you trust me?”
She released his arm and stepped back. With a sigh, she nodded. “Okay. Jo said I can trust you so I will.” Raising a finger, she pointed it at him. “But you’re going to tell me what this is about later.”
“I think you’ll know when it happens, but if you don’t I’ll tell you.”
“Beats not knowing I guess.”
They parted ways at her cabin a hour later with a series of kisses that made him want to follow her inside. Sam restrained himself. He hoped to take care of his most pressing problem, his mind, before diving in to a real relationship with her.
Back at the cabin, he found Jo and Dean already in their room and the door closed. He could hear them laughing about something and smiled. It was good to hear Dean laugh. He hadn’t laughed like that in forever, not since Jo had been with them the last time.
In the morning, he ate breakfast with Jimmy and talked up having a physical, giving him little chance to refuse. Jimmy watched each thing Morgan did, asking questions that could have driven a less patient woman crazy. She didn’t snap at him once, answering each question with increasingly detailed answers once she realized he was sincerely interested.
With a sigh, Sam sank into a chair.
If he’d really been Jimmy, he wouldn’t have needed to ask questions, because few men got to be that age without at least one doctor visit in their lives.
Jimmy was Castiel and Dean was right.
Sam was a little sad to realize his constant companion had been the same being who’d put him in the position he was in, not to mention that Castiel had felt the need to continue the charade with him. He’d forgiven him, however, and Castiel had been trying to help him these past months. Sam knew that’s what all the activities had been for. Castiel had been trying to keep his mind active and his body moving, an attempt to counteract the drug in his system. He’d become a real friend and Sam decided he’d make sure Castiel got a chance to explain himself before they decided what needed to be done about him.
