Title: The Guilt of Still Being

Chapter: Eight

~~~~~~~~~~

Jo strode through the building to Jack’s office, wondered briefly where his secretary was, or any office worker for that matter, and went inside his office. Even at lunch hour, there should have been someone around and there were no people that she saw. Strange, but not enough to deter her. Maybe they were in a meeting and as far as she knew, Jack was out running with the troops, which gave her plenty of time to look over those weapons he kept on his wall, trophies of battles he’d won. She had a suspicion about him, one that had been slowly developing, and wanted some proof before she confronted him.

She stood in front of the long wall, gaze searching for the one item that was out of place. A sword. It wasn’t long, but it wasn’t short enough to be a knife exactly. Finding it, she reached up and took it from it’s hooks.

“Put that back.”

Jo nearly dropped it when his voice came from behind her. She turned, heart pounding hard in her chest.

“Return it to the wall,” he ordered in a sharp tone that brooked no disobedience.

She ignored that tone and raised it, studied it carefully. “I’d already guessed you weren’t entirely human, but I almost missed the biggest clue to what you actually are.”

“And that is?”

“This.” She hefted the sword in her hands, then set it aside on his desk. “It’s an angel’s sword. They’re distinctive in look, but only someone who’s seen one would know what it was. I’ve only seen one other.”

“Really.”

“Castiel’s.”

“I’m sure you’re not the only woman he’s shown his sword to.”

Jo rolled her eyes at the crude innuendo. “His angel sword. He was putting it away at the time, wrapping it up and shoving it in a trunk to be forgotten. My point is, you have one. You’re an angel.”

“How do you know that I didn’t take it from an angel after I’d killed him?”

“You didn’t. I mean, if you had, you’d tell that story too, like you do all of the others. I’ve heard about each of these weapons except this one. If you’d bested an angel, you’d be bragging about it, but you’re not, which leads me to conclude you don’t want anyone noticing it. You’re an angel.”

“You think you’re so smart.”

“I know I am. Still, I might not have put it together yet if we hadn’t found Cas and if you hadn’t known he was once an angel without me having told you. I never mentioned that to you, so how did you know?” She shook her head. “But if that’s true…I can’t figure out why you’re still here. Cas said all the angels left. If that was true, you’d be gone.”

He pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes, then snapped his fingers. The sword was back on the wall and he was right in front of her, body brushing hers, pressing her back to the wall. “Do you want the full-on ‘angel of the Lord’ display, with shorted out lights, wind, shaking of the earth, and wings, or would a simple ‘ooh, you’re good’ suffice?”

“I don’t need the display.” She looked down at the floor, biting her lip.

“Sure about that? I’m awesome at display. It’s something of a specialty of mine. I can put together something flashy in a snap, change this room around to something more impressive, really give you something awe inspiring.”

“I’m sure and I’m guessing you’re name isn’t really Jack or Mitchell.”

“Right again. Beauty and brains. Three of three, Jo. One more correct guess gets you a bonus round.”

She looked back up at him. Her heart was pounding fast and hard in her chest. “Was there ever a Jack Mitchell?”

“I created the persona. The name probably existed on someone at some time, but not the man I created.”

“I’m also going to go out on a limb and say that you’re of a higher rank than Castiel was.”

“Ding. Ding.” His brows rose. “Ding. Very good. How’d you reach that conclusion?”

“You apparently still have your powers. Heaven was able to kill the switch to Cas, but…not to you? If that’s true, it makes you among the highest of angels.”

“Which are?”

“Archangels. I know you’re not Michael or Lucifer and from what Dean and Cas both said about Raphael, you’re not him either, which leaves….” She raised her brows, beginning to feel very weird about her relationship with him. “Gabriel.” She swallowed hard. “Gabriel the prankster, the trickster, the one who….”

“You can say it, Jo. Spit it out.”

“You trapped Dean in an attempt to get him to say yes to Michael and let him go. Why did you let him go?”

“Because Dean was beyond me then. You have to understand that I’d been watching Dean for a long time. I’d learned how to get him alone, what strings to pull to get him to act. I snatched him up when he was alone, made a nice, safe cocoon around us, and revealed myself to him for who I am, tried to explain it was really the only option left. Even seeing where things were heading, he wasn’t going to say yes until it was too late. I could have kept him there longer, but at the time, Dean was still sure he could change things. I released him, set him back down from almost the point I’d removed him from and let him get back to his stubborn way. I was right, wasn’t I? He waited too long and I couldn’t convince Michael to heed that cry for help. I tried and failed while Dean’s cries still rang in the heavens.”

“You really are Gabriel.”

“Sure am, toots.” He touched her face with one hand, his fingers gentle, sliding down her body until he reached her hip. He cupped it with his hand, squeezing just a little. “You’re not going to get all weird about us now, are you?”

“I don’t know.” Raising her hands, she rested them on his biceps. “If what Castiel said about your power level is correct, you could have snapped your fingers and I’d do anything and you didn’t. Why?”

“If I wanted mindless adoration, I can create women for that. Don’t get me wrong, it’s always nice to be adored. Sometimes, though, I like to have real human interaction. Keeps me current.”

“Why me?”

“Why not you? I like you, Jo. You’re smart and feisty, one of my favorite combinations in women.”

“Oh. What about your vessel? Does he have a family somewhere?”

“Not in centuries.”

She drew in a slow breath. “Why are you still here? I mean, if Michael commanded all the angels home, why didn’t you go with the rest of them?”

“Because I pissed off Michael and he slammed the door in my face when I went up to have a little chat about matters down here. Mike and Luci are sort of matched in their tempers. I saw Luci too, by the way. He laughed and told me to stay out of it. The fight was between him and Michael and if I got in the way, he’d kill me along with the rest of the humans.” He snorted. “He called me human, Jo. Threatened to kill me because he’s pissed with Michael and Daddy. Lucifer and Michael, both throwing tantrums because they’re not getting what they want, willing to throw any of us under a bus. It’s ridiculous. They both hate humans, yet they’ve both been behaving on very human levels for centuries.” He stepped away from her, releasing her from his embrace. “I’d rather be here, even with the world as bad as Lucifer has made it.”

“If Michael slammed the door in your face….” She crossed her arms. “That means you can’t go home anymore than Cas can.”

“Nope. I am stuck here, too.”

“He’s all the family you have left.”

Jack…Gabriel nodded. “You’re right. He is.”

Jo thought about it a long moment. He had to be feeling regretful, sad, maybe even angry at Michael and Lucifer both. How did he feel about Castiel? The way he’d said ‘he is’ spoke volumes. Cas was family. Maybe not close family, but still family, and Gabriel loved his family. She leaned back against the wall. Castiel was sort of like family to her, too. “So, what are we going to do to make him better? Assuming, of course, that it’s possible.”

Her question appeared to have thrown him. It was the first time she’d ever seen a slight hint of vulnerability in him. From the moment she’d met him, he’d had an abundance confidence, never showing weakness. He showed a glimpse now, a bare ripple of it across his face. “It’s possible,” Gabriel assured her. “It just won’t be easy.” He came back to her, hands grasping her arms, chafing up and down them. “Weirdness all gone?”

Not really, but she’d brazen it out for a couple days. What was there to be weird about, came her inner sarcastic voice. He was an angel and not just any angel, but an archangel. Nothing weird about having a full adult relationship with one that included adult nighttime, one-on-one recreation.

“You don’t have to brazen it out, Jo.”

Putting her hands on his chest, she pushed him back a little. “Did you just read my mind?”

“Slightly.”

“Don’t do that. It’s unfair. It’s like cheating if you can hear my thoughts. I can hardly read yours.”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist about it. I don’t do it all the time.”

“You don’t do it to everyone all the time or me all the time?”

“To you. I only do it when I’m insanely curious as to what you’re thinking. Half the time it’s not what I’d thought you’d be thinking. As much as I can do and know about you, you’re still a mystery to me sometimes. A luscious, sexy mystery.”

Jo relaxed and slid her hands down to his waist. “So what do I call you? Switching back and forth all the time in public and private between Jack and Gabriel is going to get old fast.”

Lifting a hand from her arm, he snapped his fingers. “All done. From Jack Mitchell, to Gabriel Jack Mitchell, who is only called Gabriel by friends and family.”

“You took care of that in a snap?”

“It’s not difficult, Jo.”

“Too bad the snap thing won’t take care of the Apocalypse.”

He nodded. “Believe me, if it would have, I so would have done it already.”

They spent the lunch hour discussing how to handle Castiel and Risa both, forming a general plan that had potential to work well. Jo agreed with him that Risa could be a key piece in Cas’s healing progress. Every time she went to see them, there seemed to be more there between the two, a sense that they’d been deep in a fascinating discussion that her arrival had interrupted.

She liked Risa. For everything that had happened, Jo thought Risa was handling the aftermath rather well, though she supposed time would tell if she honestly was.

~~~~~~~~~~

Gabriel claimed Castiel as family when he was released, giving him a bedroom in his house. No one questioned the decision, or the one for Risa to live in Jo’s house. If they had, Gabriel had likely made them forget, like he made them all forget that Jo rarely actually slept at her own house. Risa was going to have the run of Jo’s house, since Jo only kept a change of clothes there.

The first few nights, Castiel slept all the way through each night without waking. He suspected Gabriel was making him sleep and decided that wasn’t entirely a bad thing, because he wasn’t remembering dreaming. He hated remembering his dreams. Risa seemed to think he didn’t have nightmares often, but he did. His largely centered around Dean these days, where he’d relive every second of that humiliating refusal. Sometimes he dreamed that Lucifer had caught them leaving and tortured them and other times, he dreamed that he was infected and would wake thinking he could feel the virus slipping through his veins.

He wondered when Gabriel was going to say something to him about Dean. Gabriel knew everything, had plucked it all from his mind in seconds. Cas knew he had, so why wasn’t Gabriel confronting him about all of it?

The actual days were spent in slow tours of the base and ignoring all suggestions that he and Risa join the support groups for people who’d been in similar situations to theirs. The groups were varied, addressing the individual issues mostly. There were groups just for women, just for men, and for men and women together, and a group that dealt with the overall issue of being trapped or shut-in with others. Not surprising to him, the group that dealt with the darkest aspects, the emotional and physical repercussions of such situations, was the smallest, with only a few members. There was even a group dedicated to helping people with who they’d been and who they’d become. There was something for everyone.

He looked at all of the literature Gabriel had left for him, reading each pamphlet because Gabriel had asked him too. It seemed there were support groups for every possible thing that could happen, except for the angel to human angle, of course. Still, it did make him feel slightly better, mostly because it indicated he wasn’t alone on many things.

Logically, he’d known he wasn’t, but this was a direct confirmation of that. The groups were there if he needed them.

Castiel didn’t think he did.

He noticed Risa didn’t appear interested in joining any of them either, though she did read through the pamphlets with him.

They spent the days together, walking or talking about things other than their shared five months, avoiding the topic they both knew needed addressing. It was easier not to, to pretend it hadn’t happened. Cas knew the avoidance wouldn’t last, at least for Risa. She was always the one wanting to talk about things. He, however, had become quite the king of avoidance. He could probably avoid discussing any of it for…at least three or four years. That was his record on the underlying issues.

He liked the woman Risa was here. She wasn’t the way she’d been at the camp, nor was she how she’d been at the house. Here, she was halfway between the two and he liked to imagine that this was how she’d been before the Apocalypse had begun. She didn’t talk about her past any more than he talked about his, which was okay. They weren’t those people anymore. Well, he wasn’t the angel he’d been and she wasn’t the human.

Did that matter if they talked about that? Honestly, did their pre-Apocalypse selves have anything to do with who they were today?

~~~~~~~~~~~

“Why do you have a house if you live with Jack Mitchell?” Risa thought the obvious question deserved an answer.

Jo shrugged. “Appearances. The illusion of correct behavior. As far as his superiors are concerned, I’m as pure as driven snow and waiting for marriage to get freaky. Not the case of course, but I can play the good little chaste girlfriend when I have to.”

“Will there be a marriage?”

Amusement slid across her features. “I sincerely doubt it. He’s not what you’d call a…conventional guy.”

“I guess he’d have to be different to do all he’s done here and out there.”

“Different is one word to describe him,” was Jo’s still amused, dry reply. She motioned to the bedroom. “Feel free to use the bed. If for some reason I need to stay here, I’ll just sleep on the couch. The hot water heater thumps about two in the morning, so if it sounds like someone is trying to break in about then, it’s probably that. If it annoys you too much, I’ll have someone come fix it. I haven’t already for the obvious reason.”

Risa sat on the couch. “Does the tv work at all?”

“There’s a base station that runs base programming. News, weather, things like that. Occasionally, there’ll be a talent show or something and they’ll broadcast that. It’s not spectacular, but it’s something, right? The DVD player is hooked up. You can get movies from the central library once we’ve gotten you an id. Have you seen the library yet?”

“Yeah. Cas and I went there yesterday.” They’d spent three hours wandering the stacks, looking at everything from fictions of various genres to history and other subjects.

“Good, good. Have you thought about any of those pamphlets?”

“I looked at them.” She was considering going to one of the support groups, the one that tried to help with the emotional and physical consequences. There weren’t a lot of members and she thought she could handle talking about things in a small group. She’d met with the counselor in charge of it once already, stopping in her office while Cas was still being held on suicide watch. They’d talked only a few minutes, but Risa felt at ease with her. “Maybe I’ll go to one.”

“I think it’d be a good idea. Even if you don’t say anything while you’re there.”

They talked for a little while longer and when Jo left, Risa stretched out on the couch and watched some of the base tv station programming. Jo was right, it was basic stuff. Still, it was something she could stare at and feel like there was a tiny bit of normal back in her life.

~~~~~~~~~~

Castiel woke with a sense that the day was already different somehow from the previous days. He was restless, taking a quick shower before dressing. Going downstairs, he found Jo and Gabriel finishing breakfast. Jo was still in Gabriel’s robe, drinking coffee at the table, her empty plate at her elbow.

“Morning, Cas.”

“Does Ellen know you stay here?”

“Sweetheart, I’m thirty. Not like she has a say where I sleep at night anymore.”

“Oh.” He pulled out a chair and sat, accepting the cup of coffee, Gabriel poured for him.

Sitting himself, Gabriel forked a couple pancakes onto a plate and slid it to him. “Here. Jo makes the best pancakes in the area. Have a couple. You need to fatten up a little. Even the Donner party would throw you back for not having enough meat on your bones.”

It was an exaggeration that made him clench his teeth together in annoyance before picking up his silverware. “I didn’t lose that much weight.”

Jo made a disgusted face. “Eew. I just ate. Can we not talk about cannibalism?”

“Just sayin’.” Gabriel ate his final bite of pancake.

“Not arguing, but still. Tact would be good.”

“I’m the epitome of tact,” Gabriel told her. “You want a less gross topic, I assume.”

“Please. Maybe one relevant.”

“Okay. How’s this for relevant?” He placed one arm on the back of her chair and looked at Castiel. “Dean had it all wrong, you know.”

Cas finished cutting the pancakes and reached for the syrup, ladling it on with a heavy hand. Since becoming human, he’d discovered a sweet tooth, fully understanding Gabriel’s love of sweets. “What was he wrong on?”

“The Colt. It never would have killed Lucifer.”

“It kills anything.”

“Nope, not him.”

“How do you know that?”

Gabriel smiled. “Think about that question. How would I know the Colt wouldn’t kill Lucifer?”

Jo yawned. “Because it doesn’t kill archangels.”

He stared at her, then at Gabriel, and back at her, pointing his fork at Gabriel. “You know who he is?”

“Mmm-hmm.” She drank the last of her coffee and put the cup down. “I figured it out a few days ago.” Her brows rose, that sleepy gaze meeting his. “I’m not stupid, you know. I can add up all the little things that didn’t quite make sense all by my little self.”

“You’re still here.”

“It doesn’t change anything. Not really. Look, I’d already had a suspicion that he wasn’t human. Everyone needs sleep and he didn’t. Couple that with how he’d just appear sometimes and I had suspicions.”

“Neither of those said angel to you at first?”

“The only angel I’d had contact with was you and bluntly? You weren’t exactly in ‘angel of the Lord’ mode by then. I didn’t know. For all I knew, he was some kind of demigod. They do display both those abilities too.”

Gabriel’s laugh at the word ‘demigod’ was highly amused.

“What’s so funny,” Jo asked him.

“Oh, if only you knew.”

“Tell me and I will.”

“Not today. Another time.” He gestured at the doorway into the hall. “Would you give us a few minutes?”

Leaning over, she gave him a kiss and got up from her chair. “You can have a whole day of them. I’ve got to go to work.” She placed a hand on Cas’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. “Later, Cas.”

“Yeah.” He ate slowly.

Gabriel was silent until he’d finished. Once the plates were gone with a snap, he took something from his shirt pocket and held it up. “Do you know what these are, Castiel?”

Sighing, he took them and looked them over. “They’re rings.”

“Not just any rings. Horseman’s rings. Not easy to get. I nearly died getting Famine to give up his and Pestilence? Stubborn and dedicated. Death was willing to negotiate, however. I’m missing one, though. War. I know Dean had it. Any idea where he kept it?”

“In his cabin. At least, that’s where I saw it last, but that was a long time ago.” He didn’t care to revisit that last moment he’d been in Dean’s cabin.

“Okay. You’ll go with me and help me find it.”

Alarm slid through him. “Back to the camp? No.” He shook his head. “No. I can’t --”

They were there then, in a blink. Gabriel hadn’t even needed to touch him to move them both. They were sitting at the table in Dean’s cabin.

Everything was still, layered in dust, the smell musty, the scent of mold heavy. Castiel turned his head. The covers on Dean’s bed were rumpled, his clothes still tossed in one corner. In the center of the table was a fourth of a bottle of whiskey and a glass that was spidery with cracks and filmed with dust.

The window above the bed was open, a dark stain spreading across the pillows and sheets beneath it. That was where the mold smell came from. Rain had gotten in and without anyone to stop it, the mold had grown and spread. At the end of the bed, he saw a shirt he vaguely remembered Risa as having worn a lot.

Pushing back the chair, he stood. “Take me back.”

“Not until we have the ring.”

“I don’t want to be here.” His hands were shaking and he clenched them into fists.

“Why not?”

“I just don’t. You can find the ring easily enough without me.”

Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes…. He could see Gabriel’s intent in his eyes and found his breaths were harder to take now than they’d been back at the base. His throat felt like it was closing up, his heart racing in his chest, and nausea starting a slow flip-flop in his stomach.

“Why don’t you want to be in here, Castiel? When was the last time you were here? Tell me.”

It was an order he disobeyed. “No.”

He remembered it clearly and why not? He relived it in dreams enough. Dean talking to him, searching for clean clothes with a towel wrapped about him, fresh from a shower. He’d been out on a mission earlier that hadn’t gone well, expressing his frustration for that.

-- “It’s like we take one step forward and two back and repeat over and over. Can we ever actually catch a damn break?” --

Cas had sat on the side of the bed watching him, commiserating, understanding the hurt and frustration. He’d been feeling quite a bit of that himself, so he did understand and wanted Dean to know he understood. Dean had sat beside him, not close exactly, but closer than what he usually said was a proper distance. Dean had sighed and raised a hand, running it through his hair in a gesture that seemed weary.

-- Dean’s body was warm still from the hot water, he could feel that heat, see the line of his back was tight with tension. --

He’d reached out then, wanting to give his love and affection for Dean and receive love and affection in return….

-- “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Cas?” --

There had been revulsion in Dean’s eyes when he’d shoved Cas away, scornful words slipping from Dean’s lips. Though he’d tried for nonchalance in the face of that disgust, Dean’s reaction had hurt deeply. He’d only wanted to show his love, to express how he felt….

He hadn’t been back in Dean’s cabin since then, avoiding it successfully, unwilling to recall that look in Dean’s eyes.

Gabriel slapped his hand down on the table. “The last time you were here, Dean spurned your advances. He shoved you away from him, ordered you from this cabin, and even shoved you at the door. He called you names that hurt you, like degenerate, and asked what was wrong with you. He hurt you emotionally, humiliated you, and turned you away.”

He hugged himself, shoulders hunching. “Stop,” he whispered. “I don’t want to remember.”

Dean hadn’t shouted, but his voice had been tight from anger, which was somehow worse than shouting. Shouting Cas could have dealt with, but not the too-calm near whisper.

“How long ago was that? Two and a half years maybe? That’s a long time to avoid a building, Castiel. It’s just a place. Wood, glass, stone, and whatnot.”

“I want to go back.”

“It’s not the place that hurts. It’s the memory of what happened in that place.”

“I hate you, Gabriel,” he spat.

“I know you do, Cas. I know.” He stood from the chair. “Where’s the ring?”

Whirling, he went to the shelves along one wall, grabbed a carved wooden box and opened it. The ring was still there. He closed the box and thrust it at Gabriel. “Here. Take it. Take me back now!”

They returned to the kitchen as Jo walked back into it fully dressed and with her wet hair braided.

“I only have half a shift today….” Stopping beside him, she put a gentle hand on his arm, peering up at him. “Are you okay, Cas?” She touched his cheek. “You’re crying.”

He shoved her hand away and pointed at Gabriel. “Screw you. Screw you, Gabriel.” Cas brushed past Jo and out the door, heading for the one person he knew wouldn’t ask questions: Risa.