Chapter Text
Cassie sits up, looks at into the blue eyes of the body housing the angel Castiel, and decides throwing hysterics would be inadequate to the situation, so she may as well take a deep breath and stay calm.
“I remember dying,” she says calmly.
“Do you want me to erase that?”
“No. Thank you.” She inhales hot dry air, scented with withering grass, warm stone, the lingering copper of blood, and a hint of brimstone. Her toes and fingers work. Her loose ringlets feel so crisp that she wonder if Castiel, angel of the Lord, restored her from one of Dean’s memories.
“Dean needs you,” Castiel says.
She’s spent a long few weeks or a short eternity being talked over and around by angels holding her hostage, sometimes with that scared, skinny Winchester half-brother needing comfort, sometimes with him holding the knife.
That all ended abruptly with a few minutes of terror here in Stull Cemetery, when Adam-Michael used her as a bargaining chip for the future of the world. She escaped through death to an unspecified eternity of replaying a college visit to the Newseum in D.C. Standing in front of pictures from Selma, she repeated her own gushing about how it must feel to cover world-changing events. The irony isn't lost on her now.
“Do I need Dean?”
“Humans generally seem to need one another.”
Castiel offers her a hand up with surprising gentleness, more in line with his mild-mannered tax accountant persona than with the being of celestial intent. Cassie brushes off her jeans, straightens her shirt, and shakily strides over to the Impala, where Dean and Bobby are deep in conversation, held apart by the surface tension of refusing to hug.
“Which of you is my ride out of here?”
Bobby huffs. “I’ll leave you two to straighten that out.”
“We could go back to Missouri.” Dean leans on his car like it’s a high school parking lot instead of a haunted cemetery. “I could stay. If you want me. Work a regular job. Go to barbecues. Go to football games.”
Her reflection in the Impala’s window shows dirt smudges on her cheeks, edges come unlaid, and enough blood on her favorite cardigan that it won’t be the favorite anymore.
She has material for half a dozen investigative reports, and nobody other than the Weekly World News is likely to publish it.
Dean’s cool cracks. His next words come out in a mumble. “You probably don’t want… I’m not good for much… I got you killed, for chrissake, I get everyone I care about killed…”
She squares her shoulders and raises her chin because if she shows pain or pity right now, she’s going to slosh apart. She needs something right now, and it’s not to go back to Cape Girardeau and pretend there are no monsters in the dark. “Or we could drive to Florida. Get some sun. Sit on the beach. There’s a Seminole legend about some kind of Big Foot in the swamps. We could visit them.”
“I promised Sam I’d try to live an apple-pie life. Retire from hunting.” There’s a quarter-smiling quirk to his lips, though. Cassie didn’t get to be a reporter without spotting tells.
“Who said anything about hunting? The Skunk-Apes are out there living their best lives, and nobody’s interviewed one yet.”