Title: The Curse of Bittersweet Kisses
Chapter 5

~~~~~~~~~~

When Jo finally returned and came out to join him, Dean was glad for the company. He was tired of thinking about why Sam’s mind chose Chuck to balance out Lucifer or if there was even a reason for it. Sam was probably right. There was no reason. His mind was just picking people at random.

He was also tired of the memories of his own time in hell seeping back up into his consciousness. Standing in that bathroom stitching up Sam’s hand once more had made him remember a few things he’d like to forget again.

How he’d stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and tried to pretend he didn’t see the horror of hell in his own eyes. How his nightmares still continued and a few times he’d woken and thought maybe he’d never left hell at all. His nightmares had terrified Lisa, though she’d tried to hide it and insist she wasn’t bothered by them. He knew Sam did the same with the mirror because he’d seen him standing staring at his reflection with a vulnerable, frightened expression. He’d seen that searching gaze trying desperately to find the man he’d once been in the man standing there. He’d heard the cries and even screams from the nightmares and heard the words Sam said on waking.

The hallucinations undermined that mantra Sam whispered, but if it helped him get through the day, Dean would chant it with him. God knew he’d kept up a litany of similar phrases for weeks after the angels had raised him.

Dean was letting Sam talk when he wanted to and it was slowly all coming out, again with the unfortunate side-effect of bringing Dean’s own experiences with hell to the surface. He’d love to not have to think on it, but that wasn’t going to happen. To help Sam through this, he was going to have to face his own time in hell and he was dreading it.

He paused in his task. “Get everything you needed?”

“I did, thanks.” Jo brought a six pack over and set it down on the ground. “It didn’t rain here?”

“Nope. Sort of sunny all day.”

“Huh. Maybe I did piss him off. I thought I did. Does Castiel cause weather changes? Have you proved that?”

He leaned back so he wouldn’t hit his head on the inside of the hood and stood, stretching a little to ease the kink developing in his back from keeping that same position too long. “What do you mean ‘maybe you pissed him off’? What happened?”

She crossed her arms. “Oh, his highness showed up as I was eating lunch, tried to bribe me with money, and we had a conversation.”

“Bribe.”

“Yeah, he said that since I’d been a good little wife, I could have my money back. I tried explaining why I want my belongings back and he didn’t quite get the first analogy, so I went with comparing it to him losing the god-like powers.”

“He wasn’t amused,” Dean guessed. Castiel was a bit testy on the subject of his powers.

“Not really. Wanted to know why I wouldn’t respect him. He seems to think raising me from the dead is enough. He didn’t get that either.” She snorted. “For God, he sure doesn’t get some things any better than I remember from when he was an angel.”

He declined to comment on that. Privately, he agreed with that assessment. Reaching down, he popped one beer open and took a drink. The cans were still cold, the brew tasting good going down. “Thanks for this.”

“You’re welcome. I figured if you’d been out here all day, you’d be ready for some refreshment. Sam concurred on both matters. Yes, you’d been out here all day and yes, you’d probably like a beer or two right now.” She took one for herself and after a long drink asked, “Wanna hear something sort of creepy?”

He smiled a little at the humor of her asking that. “We work with creepy every day.”

“Not this kind of creepy.”

“Lay it on me.”

“He watched me shop. Shop. That’s just…. Doesn’t he have better things to do, being God and all?”

“Guess not.” He took another drink and set the can down. “You know you shouldn’t piss him off. He could do any thing at any time.”

“I just wanted to see how he’d react, get a better feel --”

“Well, don’t. You had enough of a feel for how he is now last night. Don’t give him an excuse. Remember what I told you in the bedroom?”

Slowly, she nodded.

“You want him to lobotomize you into doing what he wants? He could. You want him to decide he made a mistake and take you and Ellen away again? He could do that, too…and let me remember you were here and insist I failed to keep you ‘in line’. Think before you poke at him, okay Jo?”

She set her can down. “How do you suggest I start understanding him then?”

“Don’t bother trying. Can’t understand him anymore if we ever could at all.” He went back to work, grateful that her presence kept him from his own dark thoughts.

Jo was quiet for a few minutes, then asked, “So how do I know this is really my body?”

Dean looked up from beneath the hood of the Impala again. She’d moved and was leaning against the side of the car, her arms crossed and gaze fixed on the building beside them. She’d taken his rebuke of her actions with calm acceptance and no real argument. “What do you mean?”

“All my scars are gone, like I never lived before Castiel brought me back.”

He nodded, remembering his own reaction upon realizing his physical scars and the remnants of improperly set bones were gone. He’d felt free physically, but the emotional and spiritual scars had remained, somehow worse than the physical ones he’d ever suffered. “In a way, you’re starting over, reset physically. I don’t know why it’s like that when they raise you, it just is. Me, Sam, you. Ellen, too, I bet.” He let his glance drift down Jo. He’d once made a joke about being ‘re-hymenated’ and wondered for about two seconds if it was true for her. If bones had never been broken and so on, then it could be true.

Then again, maybe there were limits to what was ‘fixed’ upon being raised from the dead. Did he really want to think about Jo’s possible re-hymenation?

The answer was yes, he realized with a jolt. He wanted to know if that was a limit…but short of action, he wasn’t going to find out and action wasn’t in the cards as they were currently laid out. At least not in the cards he and Jo were dealing with. Castiel’s cards were another matter. He had a different deck entirely. It wasn’t the sort of thing to ask Jo in conversation either. He could almost see her amused grin and hear a sassy comeback that indicated that no way in hell was he going to find out any time soon.

The breeze stirred her hair and she reached back with a hand, smoothing it back into place. He caught a whiff of something almost floral on that breeze. Perfume? Had she bought perfume while she was out? This was a light, delicate scent, as far as could get from the musky, sensual scent Lisa had favored. He drew in a greedy breath of that pleasant scent, then blinked and returned his attention to the engine, willing himself to ignore both his speculation on Jo’s physical state and that ghost of perfume he thought he smelled.

“I want my scars back.”

The pronouncement startled him. “Why?” Why would she want that? Why would anyone want that?

“I had a chicken pox scar on my knee. I was about eight when I had them and I was really sick. I even had them in my mouth. Mom got so worried that she took me to the emergency room, but I got over it. I lived, I healed, and I had the scars to show that I’d been through that and survived. The scar was a marker of that memory and I want my scar memories back.”

“The ones I lost were best gone.”

She turned, rested her hands on the car. “Well, I liked my scars. They reminded me of where I’ve been and the lessons I’ve learned.”

He’d never thought about it like that. “You have your actual memories to remind you of that.”

“Sure, but the ones that leave marks…. Those are the ones I never wanted to chance forgetting, especially the more recent ones.”

“Like what?” He looked up again and saw her hand go to her side, to that place that had been ripped open by hellhound claws. There’d been so much blood pouring from her…. If she’d lived through that, the skin along her side would have been puckered with scar tissue.

“I just don’t feel like myself without them. I feel like this body he gave me isn’t really mine, just one that looks like mine.”

“Well, as someone who’s been raised too, I can tell you, it’s yours. Looks like yours, feels like yours…it’s yours, Jo.”

“I guess. Feels weird.” She cleared her throat. “Did you feel weird back then? I mean, almost awkward in yourself, like your soul had to get used to being in a body again?”

Dean gave up on working and came around to stand beside her, leaning against the Impala and studying her. “That’s how you’re feeling?”

“A little. Like there’s a disconnect still going on.” She ran a hand along the Impala’s door. “Maybe I’m imagining it.”

Could that be what he was seeing different? Was her soul not quite settled back in her body yet? Was that even possible?

“When’s Bobby getting back?” It was a blatant attempt to change the subject and he let it happen.

“Not sure. In the next couple days. Could be early or late. Sam and I’ll head out when he’s back. Sam’s looking at a few possible cases --”

Jo shook her head. “Don’t. Don’t tell me. If you do, I’ll want to go, or help somehow and I can’t go out or I risk the displeasure of his royal highness, Castiel, formerly known as an angel of the Lord. I want to help, to know every detail, but with Cas being bat shit crazy and trying to turn me into a Stepford wife for you, I…I can’t. Not until….” She sighed and faced him. It looked like she was squaring her shoulders even. “I really do need to understand him, Dean. Maybe if I understand him, I can figure out something to help us all.”

She was determined to do something and he could understand that, acknowledging it with a nod. “Don’t poke at him too hard,” he cautioned. “Take our word on what you can and avoid dealing with him as much as possible.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“You know what careful means? Because it doesn’t sound like you were too careful earlier today if you got him playing with the weather. Next step after that is him pulling things out of himself and tossing them to the wind.” He snorted. “Spits them out, actually. Opens his mouth and there they come.”

“He’s really done that?”

“Yeah. He throws a tantrum and this…stuff comes out. Looks a little like a demon, but the wrong color and consistency. Gray, not black and either looks like ectoplasm or mist instead of a cloud. Weird stuff. He releases it and just stands there a moment, like he’s admiring it or something.”

“I didn’t see anything like that, just sudden rain. I was careful, but if it makes you feel better, I’ll treat him with really white kid gloves as I poke around. It’ll be fine, Dean. I have an idea how to handle this. When I get it figured out exactly, I’ll share.”

He straightened and wiped his hands on a cloth. “I’m sorry --”

“Don’t. Don’t say that. I don’t want to hear those words from your mouth again.” She moved closer. “I’m sick of hearing you apologize for things you’ve no control over. Geez. Castiel’s a big…whatever he is. He made his own decisions and those just happened to include bringing me and mom back. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

She kept saying it, and Ellen, too, yet he still felt like he should apologize to them.

“What the hell happened to you, Dean?” Raising a hand, she touched his cheek, sweeping her fingers across his cheekbone in a slow caress. “You’re not meek and indecisive, but I keep seeing those things from you and it baffles me how you got this way. You told me some of it, but I get the feeling there’s a lot more to it.”

He grasped her hand in his, bringing it down to their sides. “It happens when the crap piles up and doesn’t stop; when you trust someone who turns around and becomes every bad thing you’ve ever tried to stop; when you have nothing left.”

“You still have Sam.”

“For how long?” He glanced in the direction of the house, lowering his voice. “Castiel broke him, Jo. He tore down a wall that Death put up and ordered us not to scratch. Death was very clear that that wall had to remain in place and it’s gone. Sam’s soul was so broken apart and flayed alive, that it needed a wall. Think about that. I may have felt like I needed one when I returned from hell, but Sam really needed one. A wall and Cas pushed it down without a thought. Sam’s broken and I can feel that I’m starting to lose him. I can’t lose him and it’s gonna happen whether I want it to or not. His mind isn’t something I can fix and Castiel refuses to.”

“You have Bobby, me, and mom.”

“Until Castiel takes you all away, too.”

“What happened to the man I knew who faced the odds and went down swinging with a sarcastic quip and a cocky grin?”

“Honestly?” He’d thought about that himself, wondered just where that part of himself had gone and if he’d ever put in an appearance again.

She nodded. “Honestly.”

“I think that man never really came back from hell. I tried to be him, you know. Tried to pretend I was still okay, and I did pretty well, but I wasn’t, and when you hold things in and push them down, it covers what was there to begin with. I think he’s too buried to ever come back again.”

She squeezed his hand with hers. The understanding in her eyes was almost too overwhelming and Dean pulled away, returning to his work.

Jo remained outside with him, not saying anything more, simply being a comforting presence there with him, company should he wish to talk about anything. He didn’t. Her presence was enough. Shortly before six, Sam came outside and over to them.

“Ellen’s got dinner ready,” he announced. “She says come and get it now or she’ll let us eat it cold.”

A laugh escaped Jo. “I’ve heard that phrase more than a few times. She’s serious, too.” She went towards the house.

Sam waited while Dean put away the tools. “News reports are just coming in. Some taped, most live. Castiel is feeding orphans and giving speeches on the importance of caring for orphans and widows. Keeps quoting the book of James.”

“Huh. James.” Dean should have figured Cas would work his way to that scripture. He’d been picking and choosing which ones he was highlighting to the world. “At least he’s not talking ‘eye for an eye’.”

“This time.” He crossed his arms. “His church website got so overrun all we get is error messages now saying bandwidth has been exceeded.”

“That’ll whip them into a frenzy.” The members of Castiel’s church were every bit as fanatic as some cults he’d had contact with over the years. He almost couldn’t believe how quickly it was growing. They were getting as much publicity lately as Castiel himself.

“Probably.”

It was a relief to go into the house and not have to pretend an intimacy with Jo that he didn’t actually have. Sam and Ellen continued to monitor reports while Jo took off for town. She didn’t tell him what her plans were and he didn’t ask. With the threat of Castiel not imminent, Dean felt suddenly exhausted, the rush of tension exiting his body leaving him a limp mess on the couch and he stared blankly at the news reports on the tv. His eyes closed and the next thing he saw was Jo, shaking him awake and trying to coax him upstairs to bed.

~~~~~~~~~~

Rather than sit at Bobby’s house and brood, Jo went bowling. She’d needed to get away from the atmosphere of the house and be by herself. Bowling was a way to relieve stress and tension and a thing she’d done often growing up in a small town where the entertainment options were the Roadhouse, cruising the half-mile strip of main street, or bowling. The level of tension there at the house was like the morning of Carthage all over again and she wondered as she bowled, if Dean and Sam had thought to step away from it and not do anything related to hunting for an evening. It’d do them both good to take in a movie or do like she was and bowl a few games.

She also wondered if the sensation of being disconnected inside herself was going to go away. Jo thought it was starting to. As hours passed, she was feeling more like herself and less like she was shell-shocked. Ellen was having a harder time with it, so it wasn’t only her experiencing it. Maybe it had something to do with them having been in heaven? Maybe they weren’t supposed to come back and doing so was what was causing it?

Jo sighed. It wasn’t like she’d ever find out, so what use was speculating?

After several games, she headed for the bar she’d once spent time in. It was still there and she nursed a drink while watching the patrons. The tv bolted in the corner played live coverage of Castiel. Finally, she decided she’d been on her own enough and headed back to the house. She found Sam asleep on the floor and Dean asleep on the couch. From the sound of snoring upstairs, she concluded that Ellen was in bed, too.

Jo stepped over to Dean, crouched down, and gently shook him. If Castiel did come back tonight, she didn’t want him to find Dean on the couch instead of where Castiel had planned. “Dean,” she whispered. “Come on. Let’s go up to bed.”

He half opened his eyes, but seemed to grasp what she was saying, letting her maneuver him upstairs and into bed. She got his shoes, socks, and shirts off, but left his jeans on, then went back downstairs to see if she could get Sam onto the couch.

Sam had woken and was just sitting up. “Where were you,” he asked with a yawn.

“Went bowling, had a drink, people watched.” Jo helped him move his blankets and smooth them out.

“Bowling?”

“Fun time.”

“It’s been a long time since Dean and I bowled.”

“Maybe you should go tomorrow night, take a break.”

He stared at her, then smiled. “Take a break? It’s not that easy, Jo.”

“No, but a break can relieve stress, which could ease whatever your hallucinatory triggers are. It might help.”

He stretched out and pulled the blanket up. “You’re a lot like Ellen. You know that?”

“Well, we do have that whole mother-daughter thing going on.” She made sure the blanket covered Sam’s feet. “Good night, Sam.”

“Good night, Jo.”

She was to the stairs when his voice sounded again.

“Is it selfish to admit I’m glad he raised you and Ellen?”

Jo looked back at him. “I think it’s human…and I’m glad we’re here, too.” Turning back to the stairs, she headed up to bed.

~~~~~~~~~~

At six-forty in the morning, Bobby Singer quietly let himself into his house. He knew Dean and Sam were there because the car was out front and from the quiet, he suspected they’d finally started sleeping. With as little sleep as both were getting these days, he didn’t want to interrupt them.

He knew he should have stayed, but the opportunity to get away from Castiel had been too welcome to pass up. He’d needed to think and assess if Castiel was going to remain a threat or if he was the type of threat to lose interest in them again after awhile. Despite thinking about it the entire time he’d been gone, he’d come to no conclusion. Cas had already been type two, the sort who came back, but he could yet lose interest again.

There were frustratingly no real answers.

He stepped towards Sam and wondered where Dean was. Usually, they slept in this room. It occurred to him that the coffee smelled fresh and he set his bag down, moving into his kitchen and stopping.

Ellen Harvelle sat at his kitchen table in pajamas, nursing a cup of coffee. “Hey, Bobby,” she said in a low voice. “Morning.”

He spent nearly a minute wondering if he was hallucinating now before he drew his gun. “Ellen Harvelle is dead. Who are you really and what the hell are you doin’ in my house?”

“It’s a long story and it’s really me.”

“Sam! Wake up and get your ass in here!”

He wanted explanations and he wanted them immediately, but not from her. He wanted Sam and Dean to tell him whatever that long story was.