Title: The Guilt of Still Being

Chapter: Twelve

~~~~~~~~~~

Risa sat on the end of the bed and stared at the bathroom door, her hands clasped in her lap.

He’d been in there too long. Risa listened carefully, fearing the worst. While he’d muttered to himself for awhile, he’d stopped that a bit ago. It was too quiet. She’d seen the straight razor, wondered what idiot had given it to him instead of a safety razor or plain electric razor. She braced herself now to knock and open the door, swallowing hard.

She stepped to it, raising her hand and pulling it back twice before rapping on the door, fear rippling through her body. She dreaded opening the door and finding him bleeding on the floor, either dying or dead already. “Cas?” Risa had to say his name several times before she could make any actual sound. Hand trembling, she reached for the knob, shrieking a little when it turned under her hand and the door opened.

Castiel stood there shirtless, a towel over his shoulder. He was clean shaven, a sight she’d never seen in the time she’d known him. There were a few tiny nicks on his throat and jaw. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to shave with a straight razor? I about slit my own throat three or four times. I think I’ll use a safety razor from here on out or see if I can’t find an electric razor somewhere. Maybe have Gabriel get me one.”

She put both hands over her mouth, then reached out and put them on his chest. “Do you have any idea how scared I’ve been sitting out here after seeing that razor? I thought….” Risa shook her head. “Damn it, Castiel, I thought you’d…” She stepped to the wall and leaned against it. Her legs felt like they might collapse beneath her from relief that he was alive. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again! I was having these visions of opening the door and you lying there on the floor, blood everywhere --”

“I was tempted,” he admitted, leaning on the doorframe and cupping her shoulder with a hand. “One slice, end it all.” His fingers slid up, tucked her hair behind her ear, then caressed her jaw. “But right when I raised the blade to do it, I heard Dean’s voice in my head telling me not to be any more of a stupid SOB than I already have been for the past four years; that despite all the crap issues, I’ve got a good thing here with you. This is a good thing, right, Risa? You and me, here in this place? It is good?”

“Here, we are good.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know if this is the right thing to do. I don’t know that I really know what right is any more, but this feels…right. Gabriel….” Cas put his hand in his jeans pocket. “He said people are fighting because they still see something to live for. He thinks there’s still a chance to save everything and stop Lucifer. Maybe he’s right. And if we fail? The end of the world is already here. Not like we can make things any worse than they already are, right?”

She turned to face him fully, snagged the towel, and wiped away a streak of shaving foam he’d missed. He was beautiful beneath that beard he’d had and Risa drew her fingers along his cheekbones, jaw, chin and down his throat. It was such a different look than she was used to from him. He looked…determined, stronger. No longer merely existing because he had to. If this was a glimpse of the angel he’d been peeking out, he must have been absolutely breathtaking. “You’ve changed. What happened at Gabriel’s office?”

“I’m a soldier, Risa. Somewhere along the way, I think I forgot that. It’s what I was made to be. Gabriel reminded me of that. I’m a soldier and even though I fell, he’s still my brother. He wants to be my brother and friend. He doesn’t care about all the things I’ve done. He accepts me completely. My brother.” He took the towel and tossed it at the bathroom sink. “But it’s not only about what he said there. There’s more to this.”

“Like?”

“I look at you and you’ve got this peace now. You’re working through everything and I want that same sort of peace, too. I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and not hate what I see. I know I can’t be who and what I was. It’s gone. That’s very clear, but maybe….” His tongue wet his lips in a slow sweep. “I don’t know. Maybe I can be a mix of the old and the new, because I don’t want to be that broken man anymore. I don’t have to be that man. I can’t bury my pains, I know where that leads me. Maybe the other way would be better. I’ve never tried it.” Now he slid his other hand into his other pocket and shrugged. “I think I’m ready to try.”

“You’re serious?”

He smiled, an actual smile, and it changed his face completely. There was a beauty in that smile that stunned her. “I am and I’m scared to death right now, too. I’m actually feeling a little nauseated here.”

Raising her hand, she touched her fingertips to his lips before that smile could fade.

“What,” he asked, taking her hands in his. She could feel his hands shaking around hers. He really was scared.

“I think I like this new you.”

“Well, it’s new territory for me. I’m sure it won’t be easy. Never is. Gabriel’s not going to let me go back to drugs and alcohol. He can see it in faster than a blink. He won’t let me wallow in pain.”

“I’m glad. I don’t want you in pain, either.”

The smile slipped away. “Risa, he wants me to help him try to save the world and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mean staying here and cheering for him.”

“Does he have a plan?” She stepped back towards the bed, tugging him with her to the side of it. They sat half facing each other.

“I think so. I’m not certain of the details, but I think it’s probably every bit as iffy as Dean’s plan was, except maybe Lucifer won’t have a trap set.”

She thought about Castiel going with Gabriel to do whatever plan Gabriel had thought up. Likely, he wasn’t coming back from that, but who ever would have thought they’d survive that original mission? They’d beat the odds once. Maybe he could do it twice. “Do you want to go?”

“Honestly, no. But…who else will stand by my brother if I don’t? The rest of our family have shut us both out. We have each other.”

Risa couldn’t argue with that. It sounded to her like the angels were quite a dysfunctional family overall. “Do you think it’ll be soon? Whatever he has planned, I mean.”

“I don’t know. He didn’t think I was ready, whatever that means, so….” He shrugged. “I don’t know. It could be tomorrow or it could be two months from now.” Leaning forward, he kissed her, a slow lingering caress of his lips on hers. “I don’t want to talk about Gabriel’s plan. I want to go out for a few hours and be a couple. Show off my beard-free state.”

“Give me some time to change clothes and let’s go.”

After the scare he’d given her, it was nice to go out somewhere with other people, even if it was only across the base to the bar.

~~~~~~~~~~

The decision to face everything and try to find some peace in the man he’d become left Castiel feeling fragile, like a pane of old glass that could fall from a window at the slightest breeze and shatter into a million pieces. The sensation was uncomfortable, but he rather thought he was becoming used to discomfort. Gabriel’s refusal to let him slip down into old coping habits had forced him to look at things he would have kept buried.

Without altered states of consciousness, all he could do was think and feel. Without those states, even sex was different. He’d found himself feeling closer to Risa in those intimate moments than he ever had.

Not to say he didn’t notice the other women on the base. Of course he did. He simply had no desire to sample them all like he had at the camp. Maybe Gabriel somehow had something to do with that. Or maybe, he’d grown tired of it all. Moving from woman to woman hadn’t filled the gaping hole in him any more than the drugs and alcohol.

Besides, Risa knew him. As they’d told each other, they were connected by all they’d gone through, a part of each other. She understood him.

He held her hand as they walked across the base to the bar and found a table inside. Ellen was there, at a table with Nathan and Jo. Ellen and Nathan’s heads were bent together over something on the table and Jo was sitting back, gaze doing a slow circuit of the room. It looked like she wasn’t even part of the conversation they were having.

Jo’s head turned, eyes widening when she saw him, a slow grin on her lips. She got up from her chair and made her way to their table. “Well,” Jo cleared her throat, “Cas. Aren’t you the clean-shaven hottie tonight? What, uh, what happened to the mountain man look you had going?”

He rested his hand on Risa’s thigh. “It was time for a change.”

“I completely approve.”

“Thank you.”

She joined them for awhile, sitting and talking until Gabriel showed up, then leaving with a tiny mischievous grin on her lips.

Three days later, he found himself outside Dr. Shelbourne’s office, his heart pounding hard and fast in his chest and his hands clammy. The thought of admitting the worst of himself to a stranger nearly sent him running. He closed his eyes. It was helping Risa and even Gabriel believed he’d benefit from a few sessions. It was one session, right? He didn’t have to go back if he didn’t want to.

Inside the office, he studied the room like he had Gabriel’s office, noting the pictures on the wall, the diplomas in plain black document frames, and books. It was a comfortable room, with a soothing, serene air and some of the nervous tension in his shoulders eased.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he told her, sitting in one chair and leaning his forearms on his knees, his hands clasped. “I don’t know the procedure.”

“What would you like to talk about?”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

“Where do I start?”

“Wherever you like.” When he didn’t say anything, she prompted, “Why don’t you tell me one thing about yourself that you feel defines who you are today?”

“Pain. My pain defines me.”

“How so?”

He stared at her. Risa was right about her. She had an exceptionally calm, kind demeanor. “In the before, I was righteous. I had holy convictions and I knew very clearly what was right and wrong.” A good way to say it without saying he’d been an angel. “But in the events that led to the world we have now, I fell from that place, lost a piece of myself, that righteousness I’d had. I became increasingly confused, bewildered, and one hurt snowballed into more. Life is pain, doctor. Sadness, anger, despair. When I lost that piece of me, it was like being physically ripped apart, with a gaping hole remaining.”

“There is pain,” she agreed. “Physical, emotional, spiritual. However, in life there are also balances to that pain. Happiness, joy, love. Name me one balance you can see in your life right now. Anything. A person, place, thing. Anything at all.”

“Gabriel, my brother.”

“Why is he a balance for you?”

“Because he accepts me completely without judgment.”

“Good, Castiel. Can you name me any more and give a why?”

Sighing, he sat back, stretching his legs out, becoming more comfortable in tiny increments. “Risa. She’s seen the very worst, darkest, most horrible part of me and still supports me. She holds me when I cry, soothes me when I’m angry, and I don’t understand why she does that after what I did to her.” He thought a minute more. “There’s Jo. She tells it like it is, makes me take a step back and look at myself. They all understand me in different ways.”

“Good ways?”

“Good and bad. Risa and I…. When we were in that house together, it was dark. I don’t mean a little anger sometimes dark, either. I mean full-on emotional manipulation, physically hurting each other just to have something to excite, to feel.” It was easier to talk about it than he’d thought it would be. “But we understood each other, what we needed from each other, and it’s that same understanding now, only lighter, without the fear and desperation. We have a completely different relationship here. It’s almost like we’re just learning about each other, starting over. There’s a newness to everything between us.”

“How do you feel about what occurred in that house?”

“Can’t I write all of it down or something instead of saying it out loud?”

She nodded. “We can employ a journal as part of this if you’re willing, but talking about it is still a part of the process. The journal isn’t a substitute for sessions, Castiel. It’s an additional technique to aid recovery.”

“Oh.” Sighing, he leaned his head back. The longer he sat, the more comfortable the chair became. “How do I feel? Ashamed of what I did to her. In five months, we tore each other down in a cycle of manipulation and fear. That’s shaming to me now. How could I do that to another person? To Risa.”

“The human mind reacts to solitude in different ways. What the two of you experienced was one of the more extreme ways.”

“Ending in suicide.”

“True, but neither of you did die. You’re here now.”

“I don’t like the man I was there. Nor do I care to be the man I was before that point.”

“What about the man you are here? Do you like him?”

Castiel had to think about that. Did he like who he was here at the base? He was certainly different due to many factors, such as the lack of external coping methods. “Yes and no. I like who I am better, but I still don’t really like myself.”

“It’s a start.”

“I guess. I want to be able to look in the mirror and not cringe.”

“Are you willing to work to become a man you’ll like? It won’t be easy. There may be setbacks, but you have a support structure already in place -- Gabriel, Jo, and Risa. You have the desire for more for yourself than what you are. Are you willing to work with me?”

He did want to be a different man and if working with her would accomplish that goal faster than on his own, then perhaps he should continue. “Yes.”

That fear he’d had when talking to Risa about it welled up again. It was another scary step, yet as Dr. Shelbourne pointed out, he had support. He had people who loved and cared about him to really help him through it.

Already, he felt better.

~~~~~~~~~~

For over a year, Gabriel had been returning to the entrance to heaven, calling for Michael to talk to him. Sometimes, someone even answered him. He’d refused to give up thinking that perhaps if he was persistent, Michael would eventually do something besides sulk.

“Michael.” Gabriel didn’t yell. He didn’t have to. Michael was there and knew he was there, right outside the door. “Come on, Mike. I know you can hear me.”

There was no sound.

“Say something. Quit being such a dick.”

Silence.

“This doesn’t have to be a world-ender. You know that. I’ve got the keys to the cage. We can pop him back in. I’ll do all the work. All you have to do is help me by keeping him distracted. Throw a mountain at him or something, but don’t just sit in heaven sulking because Dean Winchester didn’t say yes on your terms when you wanted him to. Did you really think he was going to jump because you told him to? Did you know anything about him at all?”

He crossed his arms.

“I told you he’d accepted you. Do you remember that? I told you, just in case you hadn’t heard him and you still ignored us. Even when he did accept you on your terms, you’d changed the rules. Nice.”

He cocked his head. There was a noise, he heard it.

“This doesn’t have to be the end-all, be-all of everything. The cage can be reopened. He can be put back in.”

Another noise. Someone was definitely there.

“You’re not even doing that job God left for you. Did you think about that? Have you thought about that? You gave up. You’re leaving a job unfinished that was entrusted to you. You’re disobeying, Michael. And you had the nerve to cut off Castiel’s powers for that same sin?”

He paced there before the door.

“But hey, you want to be a quitter, fine.” He held up his hands. “That’s such a good example to give the others. Excellent leadership skills bro. I bow in awe of your mad skills.”

Behind that door, he could feel the power growing. Definitely Michael standing there listening -- and becoming angry. Good. Anger was better than the apathy that everyone seemed to be sinking into.

“Help me. What would God say to see you right now? Would Daddy be proud of you? Would he pat you on the back and say ‘good job’? Or would he say ‘Michael, what have you done with what I left in your hands?’. How disappointed would he be in you, in all of us?”

He sighed and glanced around him.

“You know what? Never mind. You’re not the brother I remember. What happened to him, Michael? The brother I remember knew what the right thing was. Is this right? Sitting up here while Lucifer destroys all of God’s creations one by one, tossing them around like Tinker toys or Legos? Is it right to let him have free reign, to not even try to stop him?”

Despite his fear of Michael lashing out at him, he forged on, goading now, deliberately poking.

“It’s not right and you know it. So why don’t you suck it up, get over your rejection issues, and do something? I probably won’t win, but I’m going to try, and maybe some day God will come home and it’ll be my back God pats, not yours. Maybe he’ll say, ‘Good job, Gabriel. You tried. When the others turned away, you took a stand for my creations.’ Can you see that, Michael? Maybe Castiel will even be there with me.”

It sounded like a lock clicking open, but the door remained firmly in place.

“How’s that look to you? The angel you cut off for his disobedience thanked for trying to save humanity. Maybe he’ll even see God’s face.”

He shrugged.

“And maybe not. Perhaps God won’t come home at all. What if he does? Are you willing to take that chance? Are you willing to hope that your brand of disobedience won’t be found out? Wouldn’t you rather do something and show that at least you tried?”

Gabriel waited awhile longer. There were no further noises, though the sense of coiled power remained. He’d hate to go to battle without some assistance from Michael. It wasn’t likely that he and Castiel could get the job done. Like he’d told Michael, at least they were trying. Gabriel shook his head.

“We’re heading out to meet him on the field tonight, Michael. If you change your mind…that’s where we’ll be. And if you don’t…goodbye, brother.”

Gabriel slipped back down to the earth and to the base, where Castiel was waiting.

“I told Risa I was meeting you and not to wait up.”

“What else did you tell her?”

“Nothing. I wasn’t sure how.”

“I left an explanation with Jo that will be discovered only if we don’t return. She’s asleep right now. I’ve got my sword. We’ll swing by the camp and pick up yours. Even if you can’t kill him with it, it might wound him enough to distract. The rings are in my pocket. We’re as ready as we’re ever going to be.”

“Is this a suicide mission, Gabriel?”

He looked around them, memorizing the layout of the base, praying silently to himself that they would make it back alive. “Most likely. It’s reckless. Neither of us are probably coming back.” Gabriel turned his gaze to Castiel. “Are you still with me?”

Castiel held out his hand. “I’ll stand with you.”

Gabriel took that hand, gripped it tightly. “Then let’s go shove the bull back in his pen.”

In less than the fraction of a second, they were on their way. Let the battle begin, he thought. Brace yourself, Luci, here we come.