Title: The Guilt of Still Being

Chapter: Seven

~~~~~~~~~~

When Ellen didn’t show up for their weekly mother-daughter breakfast and morning together, Jo knew her mother’s chat with Castiel hadn’t gone well. She headed over to Ellen’s house, all the way across the area marked for civilians from her own tiny house. She knocked on the door and went inside. “Mom? Are you here?”

“I’m in here, Jo.”

“Are you sick?” She stepped down the short hall and into her mother’s bedroom.

“Sick at heart, maybe.” Ellen was still in bed, her demeanor dejected and eyes swollen and red rimmed from tears. “No, I’m not sick.”

“What’s going on?” Jo sat on the bedside. “Talk to me.”

She sighed. “It’s this thing with Castiel.”

“Did he --” Before she could get angry, Ellen shook her head.

“No, no, he didn’t say anything. No need to get all upset. I did most of the talking. Told him I didn’t want to see him around, but that I do forgive him for back then. He didn’t understand, almost like back then when he’d look so scared and lost. You remember that look he had, right? The hurt and confusion in those pretty blue eyes of his…. How can he not understand, Jo?” Tears welled up in her eyes and she wiped them away with a shrug. “I lied to him. Not wanting to see him was a lie, because I do still want to see him. I very much want to see him. Even after everything, I want to go in there, hold him, and tell him it’s all going to be okay.”

Reaching out, Jo pulled her mother into a hug. “I know.”

After a few minutes, Ellen pulled back and shook her head. “What is it about him that does this to me? Reduces me to this? I’m a Harvelle, damn it! I’m not supposed to….” She slumped against the pillows. “I’m stronger than this. Thought I was anyway. One look at him and I’m tearing up again.”

“You didn’t have to go see him yesterday.”

“I know. It was either that or risk falling apart when I saw him on the street or in the bar. Commissary, mess hall…. I thought I’d rather see him on my own terms first.” She slid down a little, tugging the covers up higher. “You met Risa yet?”

“I looked in, but she was sleeping.”

“I went and saw her first. I had to meet her, you know? See what the woman he spent five months alone with was like. I didn’t want to like her. I wanted to walk in there and hate her, but I can’t. She’s so scared, Jo. Even now she’s scared.”

“I don’t blame her. I think I’d be scared too. Having seen the aftermath before of those situations, coming out alive from one would be just as frightening as being caught in one to begin with. Geez, think of all the potential consequences to face.” She raised a finger with each one she listed. “The deep, dark secrets a person shares about himself when he thinks there’s nothing left to live for. The ugly behavior displayed to the other person because of that same thought. ‘What use is there of societal behavioral norms when it’s all ending’ and shit like that. The possible physical consequences for a woman, like pregnancy. Not to mention if cabin fever set in. Extreme cases of that turn ugly. They got through crappy situation after crappy situation only to live when they both thought they were dying. I think terrified is probably a better word for it.”

“She not pregnant.”

“One less thing to be worried and scared over.” She shifted position. “She’s got to be scared to see him again, too, wondering what he’s going to think of her now that they’re in a safer place. Torn maybe? Between liking him and hating him?”

Ellen shook her head. “She doesn’t hate him. I think if she doesn’t love him already, the potential is there.”

“Yeah?”

“I think so.” She crossed her arms. “I know I can’t go back. I can’t do that dance again, but I think…. I think I’ll feel better about him if I know he’s got someone to love him and take care of him. Does that make sense, Jo? Do you know what I mean?”

She thought she did. Ellen could stop worrying about him like she was if she knew there was someone else to worry, that it didn’t have to be her. She could let him go and maybe, finally, begin to heal completely. “Yeah, I think I do.” She smoothed the quilt Ellen used as a bedspread. “So, are you up to getting out of here for awhile? Getting some practice at the range maybe? Shooting things cheers you up, especially when you can beat the pants off of that hunk of doctor Nathan.”

If Ellen had been a bit more over Castiel, Nathan might have made a move on her. He was about her age, and sweet, but he’d quickly gotten the hint that Ellen didn’t want a romance. They’d settled into a friendship largely based on her ability to beat him at any competition that had to do with guns, cards, or darts.

“Thought he was working today.”

“Not until later. He told me to tell you he’d be at the range about nine.” Jo looked at her watch. “If we hurry, we can meet him there.”

Ellen reached out her hand and touched Jo’s cheek. “Have I mentioned lately what a good daughter you are to me and how much I love you?”

“Doesn’t need to be said. I love you, too.”

“Okay, daughter. Get out of my bedroom so I can get dressed.”

“You want me to fix you some toast or something?”

“Something quick.” She tossed the covers aside and sat up. “I can’t let my record of beating Nathan every week slip, can I?”

“I’ll be outside.”

Jo planned to see Risa in the afternoon and see if what her mother said was right. She hoped it was. It’d be nice if it could all work out well until the end of all finally swallowed them up into nothingness.

~~~~~~~~~~

In the morning, Risa was transferred into the ward Castiel was in. She’d had the time to think about those months and now found that she felt out of sorts around him. It was a slight consolation that he kept watching her with the same wary gaze she knew she directed his way.

Risa slid further down in the bed and turned her face away from Castiel, shame for what she’d done with him and allowed him to do rushing over her. All those things they’d done to and with each other….

“Risa.”

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Risa, look at me. Please.”

“I don’t want to,” she whispered.

“Why not?”

Opening her eyes, she did look at him. “Because I don’t like the woman I became in that house with you. We hurt each other, Cas! Physically, emotionally. We should have been banding together and supporting each other and we hurt each other instead.” She was mortified by that now.

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you? Are you sorry about any of what happened between us?”

Slowly, he got out of bed and came to her side, careful of the tubes that connected to monitors on both of them, and the cords on the floor. Taking her hand in his, he rubbed his thumb across the back. “While I’m sorry it got the way it did, I can’t regret how well we know each other now. I can’t regret that deep bond between us, the physical and emotional bond.” He glanced back at the mirror and leaned forward a little, his voice lowering. “I’d never told anyone about what happened with Dean, but I told you. Like it or not, we’re connected.”

The trouble was, Risa did like it still. She wanted to hate him for the past five months and she didn’t. He’d become a part of her. She wondered if that knowledge would tear her apart again in the end. She hoped it wouldn’t. “How are you,” she asked tentatively, squeezing his fingers a little with hers. He reciprocated that squeeze.

“You mean physically?”

“Sure.”

“My stomach, chest, and throat hurt. How I am emotionally is another matter.”

“Tell me about it. I’m feeling a little rocky myself.”

He sat by her hip. “Gabriel won’t let me have anything except Tylenol and not even the good kind with codeine. That stuff I could rock, but apparently I have addictive tendencies and he wants me stone cold sober, which…hurts. It’s hard facing things without a buffer. I don’t much like what I see.”

Addictive tendencies was right. Whoever had diagnosed that had him figured out. “Who’s Gabriel?” She’d thought the doctor that was treating them was named Nathan.

“Oh, right. Sorry.” He glanced away and back. “Jack Mitchell is what he’s calling himself these days. The Mitchell that took the base back? You remember hearing about that? It’s this base, here. His real name is Gabriel.”

“You know him already?”

His snort of laughter was husky. “We were close like family once.”

She struggled to sit up better, and pulled her hand from his, groaning a little with frustration when she couldn’t find the button to raise the head of the bed more.

“Let me get that.” Leaning over, he found it for her and pressed the button. “That good?”

“Thanks.”

Castiel nodded and sat back.

“How far back do you know him?”

“You could say we were raised together.”

“In the same neighborhood?” She was fishing now, eager to learn something more of a past he’d never told her about. He might have admitted feelings for Dean, and action on those feelings, but his past had remained verboten. Besides, she was glad to avoid talking about those five months. She wasn’t ready to actively look at them.

“That’d work to describe it.”

“It’d work or was it?”

Castiel sighed, briefly glanced at the mirror on the wall, and said, “There were a lot of us, Risa. Brothers and sisters. A family once. Gabriel ran away and much later, I left as well. We both defected the ranks because of what we saw happening and I was punished for my disobedience.”

She thought about that, the way he’d said it, the sort of language he’d used. “Were you raised in a cult?”

“A cult?” His brows rose. A second later, amusement crossed his face. “A cult?”

“Yeah. You know. A cult. A compound in the middle of nowhere, lots of rules that don’t make sense, an order of blind obedience and devotion with the threat of punishment or banishment for non-compliance?”

He did laugh then. “A cult. Hmm. I think I’ll take that definition for the moment.”

“What do you mean you’ll take the definition?” He was neither confirming or denying, yet Risa knew she’d hit upon some truth. What part she wasn’t sure. “It does fit with what you said. Cults are notorious for all of that. Invoking a feeling of family, getting members to call each other things like brother and sister. Doing and teaching things that are questionable. Your choice of words says a lot, Cas.”

He sobered. “Not necessarily. I could have chosen those words in an attempt to convey my feelings on that situation, not to accurately describe it.”

“No, no.” She shook her head. “You meant it.”

“Trust me, Risa,” he stood, “it’s not nearly as cut and dried as a cult upbringing.”

“Then clarify for me.”

“Not today. It’s another part of what I should face, but I’m not up to it yet.”

Neither of them, it seemed, was up to facing much of anything today. The friendly moment passed, an awkward silence descending and Risa cleared her throat. He hugged himself, that wary feel to his stare returning. Risa could hear the seconds ticking by on the clock on the wall.

“Now that we’ve discussed me…. How are you feeling?” He stepped back to his own bed and sat on the edge.

“I’m not pregnant,” she blurted out, then felt her face flush.

“Oh.” His gaze turned to her stomach. “Were you worried?”

“Weren’t you? We did sort of stop using protection altogether. I did miss two periods in a row. It was a possibility.”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” he admitted with a tiny frown, attention still on her stomach. “Huh. A possibility.”

Risa had the sudden odd feeling that he hadn’t actually connected sex with pregnancy until right this second. Odd. Very much so because he was a grown man and should have known that. Surely at least one of the women at the camp had had a pregnancy scare with him? She blinked, trying to shove away that sensation of weirdness and failing.

His gaze returned to hers. “Does your arm hurt?”

“Not much. They gave me a shot before bringing me over here and I think maybe my iv has something mixed in it, too.”

“How are you emotionally?”

She licked her lips. “Could we wait awhile to discuss that? I’d rather wait until there’s not a chance of someone overhearing us. Privacy.”

“I agree, actually. We’ll wait.” He sounded relieved.

The conversation drifted from topic to topic, none of them inflammatory, for at the slightest hint of unease, a topic was dropped. In the afternoon, the woman Jo came to visit. She was a pretty blond woman and the appreciative way Castiel studied her curves as she approached them made Risa want to smack him upside the head. He was hardly being subtle.

“Afternoon. Glad to see you both awake.” She stepped between their beds and leaned over Cas, giving him a long hug. He slid his hand slowly up her back and down it.

Risa pursed her lips, feeling a slight pang of jealousy inside her at the ease with which Jo gave that hug.

Jo pulled back. “I was a bit of a bitch yesterday. I’m sorry for that. I brought you something as sort of an apology.” Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out an iPod and earbuds. “I know it gets boring in here pretty fast. Play nice and share it, okay? There’s a set of mini speakers for it out at the nurse’s station. They’ll bring them in if you want. There are some videos, movies, podcasts, audiobooks and a ton of music on it.”

He took it, turned it on and began scrolling. “Thank you.”

“Mind listening to something for a few minutes? I’d like to chat with Risa awhile without you listening in.”

“I could still listen in and you’d never know.”

“As loud as I remember you liking to listen to music on one of those? Sweetheart, we should be able to hear it loud enough to sing along. Pick out something and get listening.”

“You’ve gotten bossier.”

“You like it when I’m bossy.”

“I do, actually. You’re just like your mother.”

They both sobered at that, Castiel turning quickly to the iPod and Jo coming to Risa’s bed. “You look a hundred times better than you did sprawled at the bottom of the stairs passed out.”

“I should hope so. I was hardly at my best right then. I’m healing, I guess.”

“You’ll probably be in here another few days.”

The chat was one of those basic getting to know you things. She decided that Jo was feeling her out for some reason. Probably because of Castiel. Geez, even now it was like he knew all the women and none of the men, though he had admitted to already knowing Gabriel, AKA Jack Mitchell. It had been that way at the camp, too. He’d known every woman by name and something about her, but ask about most of the men and he didn’t have a clue. Some he had, of course, due to his extra-curricular activities, but for the most part, it was the women he’d known.

Periodically, Jo would stop talking, listen at the silence from Castiel’s bed, and make the ‘I’m watching you’ gesture at him, two fingers in a ‘v’ pointed first at her eyes then him. He’d frown, all innocence, and point to the earbuds and mouth ‘I can’t hear you’, before turning the sound back up. It was a bit of comedy that lightened Risa’s mood. She was surprised that she really enjoyed talking to Jo and looked forward to her next visit.

~~~~~~~~~~

Castiel woke to the familiar sound of Risa whimpering. She was having a nightmare. He’d heard the noises many times and this one sounded like a doozy. Tossing aside the covers on his bed, he got up and went to her, glad their beds were fairly close together. Like he had that morning, he maneuvered around the equipment.

Slowly, he eased onto the bed with her, sweeping one hand along her uninjured arm in calming passes. “Shhh…. I’m here, Risa.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. “You’re safe now. I’m here.” He continued the words and gentle, soft touch until her whimpers eased, but didn’t get up.

Being beside her in a small bed was comforting for him and he relaxed in slow degrees, letting sleep pull him back down.

The next time he woke, it was lighter in the room and Risa was awake.

“Nightmare,” she asked.

“You were having one.”

“I don’t remember it.”

“Probably a good thing.” He caressed her face with his fingertips. She looked especially vulnerable in the mornings, her gaze sleepy, and guard definitely down. Castiel liked waking with her as much as he liked sleeping with her -- in both connotations of the phrase ‘sleeping with’.

“Probably,” she agreed. “You didn’t pull out any iv or anything joining me, did you?”

“Nope. Yours was a little tricky to work around, but, uh, I managed. Obviously.”

She brought her hand up to his cheek. “You need to shave.”

“Don’t feel like it. Besides, I don’t think they’ll trust me with scissors or a razor anytime soon after that comment I made earlier about pills.”

It had been a comment he hadn’t really thought about making. He’d said if there were pills right there, he’d take a handful. It was the truth. He’d take any pills if he thought they might dull his pains. What he hadn’t meant was that he’d take another deliberate overdose. He hadn’t said it as proof of intent to harm himself, but that was exactly how it had been taken. He was now on suicide watch, which amused him a little because right now, he didn’t mind being alive and human. He felt the best he had about where he was than he had in a very long time.

“Not one of your smartest moments,” she agreed.

“Ready for another day yet, or sleep awhile longer?”

“Sleep a little longer. Have you noticed that already sleeping feels different here?”

“I did.” Sleep was restful now. Without the need to keep a vigilant eye on things, which they’d still had to do despite the panic room, sleep gave well-needed rest to the body and mind. He settled down with her and slept awhile longer.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Jo was getting curious.

Gabriel supposed it was about time. He’d been less careful around her in recent days, thinking she could handle the truth about him if she did put the pieces together. After all, it was really only one little thing. He was still everything she’d come to know -- except he wasn’t human and his name wasn’t Jack Mitchell. He thought Jo was capable of seeing the big picture and accepting it. After all, she’d been friends with Castiel and known what he was. It was a little step into knowing her lover was an angel, too. She was a strong woman. She could accept it.

He clasped his hands behind his head and put his feet on his desk, crossing his ankles.

It was too bad that Dean had declined his offers of an alliance. He thought that together they could have stopped this tantrum of Lucifer’s. It occurred to him that he should have taken that tactic from the beginning. If he’d offered to help instead of pushing for Dean to accept Michael, perhaps Dean might be alive today. Perhaps things might have been different all the way around.

He recalled the last time he and Dean had met face to face, when he’d revealed who and what he was. He’d taken Dean, put him in a safe environment, and thoroughly failed to convince him to accept Michael. In exasperation for his stubbornness, Gabriel had revealed himself, explained his point of view, and again failed to convince Dean. It hadn’t been too many months after that that Michael had recalled the angels and closed off heaven in a snit, leaving both Gabriel and Castiel on earth.

Michael’s last words to him had been, “You’ve made your bed and so did Castiel. Lie in it.”

Gabriel snorted. What a dick Michael was these days. It hadn’t always been that way. Once, like Lucifer, he’d been beautiful, but again, like Lucifer, events had shaped him into something less than lovely.

And then there was poor Castiel, also shaped by events and quite a few none of his own making.

He’d messed up big time with him. Gabriel could see it now. He’d shirked his brotherly duties, let them fall on Dean Winchester with terrible results. All the while he’d thought Dean was taking care of Castiel, he hadn’t been. He should have looked in on Castiel, not assumed he was okay. He’d thought Dean would treat Cas as one of his own, as family. It had certainly seemed like he would. Instead, he’d let Cas cope on his own. Perhaps Dean had had a reason for that and perhaps not. Perhaps Dean had been too entrenched in his own pains to deal with someone else’s pain. What had happened was done and now Gabriel had to put Castiel back together, which was easier said than done.

He could keep him off the drugs and alcohol. That was easy. It was the emotional problems, the root of his pain, that would be the hard part. Castiel was messed up, far from healthy. Actually, despite the dark aspects, his relationship with Risa was the healthiest he’d had since the beginning with Ellen. Not saying much, really. Still, he was revealing pieces of himself to Risa that he hadn’t to others, like his feelings for Dean and the result of revealing those feelings.

Gabriel thought long and hard on Castiel and how he could reach him. His brother needed him, whether Cas realized it or not.

He’d bring him into his house, give him a warm welcome, make him feel at home. He’d nurture that spark he saw between Risa and Castiel. Human relationships could heal and there was potential there for them to heal parts of each other. In time, he thought Risa could be the final healing balm that smoothed the last aches of becoming human.

But first…. First, Castiel had to face it, a thing he’d yet to actually do. For four years, he’d been mourning the past, wallowing in grief and pain of loss. He had to face it to move on. He’d gone so far down that there was nowhere left to go but up.

Gabriel intended on helping him up. He’d lost the rest of his brothers and sisters. He didn’t want to lose Castiel as well.