Work Text:
Rowena didn’t even touch her and she was already gone. From across the room, the witch had smiled and sung the spell that hit Rose full on in the chest. Rose’s arms splayed backward and her head flew with the whiplash, to only fall back forward and crumple to the ground.
“No!” Dean’s voice crackled throughout the room, as if coming through a radio.
Cas could hear Dean and Sam yelling at Rowena and shooting pointless shotgun shells at her that Rowena deflected with a flick of her wrist.
“It’s not so funny now, daughter of a witch?” She smiled and put her hands on her hips. “I’d imagine she’s not going to be too keen on the lot of you when she wakes up.” Rowena paused, “That is, is there enough of mummy’s magic left inside to wake her up? Or could angel-dearest whip up something for her?” She winked at Castiel. “Ta-ta.” The air around them cracked and the witch disappeared.
Cas moved over towards Rose as quickly as he could. Any thoughts that beat in his head around the tune of revenge softened when he sunk to his knees at her head. She had little cuts all over her face from the fighting that had transpired over the past few days. Little pieces of glass were strewn into her hair. She barely breathed.
He placed his hand over her heart and exhaled all of the golden, heavenly light in his power over her. It was draining, but it was worth it to hear her breathing increase, almost as if she was in the midst of a dream, rather than fighting for her breaths and against whatever Rowena had shot at her.
“Cas,” Dean came up behind him. His feet dragged heavily in the gravel. “What did she do to Rose?”
Cas stopped the healing attempt. His gaze raked over her body, but, try as he might, he couldn’t decipher bruises or breaks. “I don’t know.” There was a stray piece of hair over her face that he moved off of it and behind her ear. The cuts on her face were ingrained into him. Each little droplet of blood made him feel powerless, even as they melted away under his touch. She shouldn’t have come.
“What can we do?” Sam said quietly. “Rowena said that--”
Dean cut him off. “That bitch says a lot of weird stuff.”
“I’m just saying that we can’t rule out that when Rose wakes up, she won’t be Rose anymore.” Sam sounded defeated. “After all that she’s been through.”
Dean turned on his brother, “Don’t talk like that.” Dean was angry, “Don’t talk like that again. She can still get up from this. Look at her, she’s still breathing.”
“That doesn’t mean that she’s still herself.”
Cas gritted his teeth and tried to look at Rose as impassively as he could. This was irrational; he should be able to think clearly, regardless of how hurt she was. “Where did Rowena go?” He sounded colder than usual and the iciness crept into his brain. He was a celestial being and it didn’t come from ‘acting like a bitch’, to quote Gabriel.
“I don’t know. Maybe with Crowley.” Dean looked to Sam. “Wherever she went doesn’t matter. We have to get Rose out of here.” He gestured to the falling church around them, hazardously stepping below a beam.
Cas bent over to pick Rose up in his arms—albeit a little gentler than he would have normally.
“Whoa,” Dean came over with a hand under Rose’s head. His palm felt like fire against Castiel’s. “Are you sure you can do this? You just healed her. Don’t you need a break?”
His temper was on a short leash. “So that she can sit in the back of a car for eight hours? I haven’t failed yet; I’ll take her back to the motel room.”
“Cas, no one thinks that you’ve failed.” Sam cut in. “Why not let us handle it?”
Cas looked down at Rosemary in his arms and moved another hair off of her face. “I can handle it.” She was so tiny, in her humanity, mere carbon and flesh that Castiel had grown accustomed to loving. For so long, the very act of loving her had frightened him, and all of her attention spent on the Winchesters had left him frustrated. They had only been truly together for a short time now. He couldn’t have squandered it all so soon.
“Cas,” Dean stepped forward, but Castiel had already taken Rose far away in a flash.
Cas could picture the Winchesters swearing and bickering after he and Rose vanished. They would probably be right after them on the road. Cas couldn’t help but be a little selfish. Whatever happened to her now was his fault. They would fix it together.
The room was slightly disheveled after they had left it that morning. Since the owner knew they were coming back, Cas didn’t feel like re-checking in. The bed that both of them had slept in was pristine, and he had some trouble rolling back the covers so that he could place her inside. He didn’t need to sleep, but sometimes feeling her breathe next to him while he rested was the nicest feeling he had ever experienced. Of course, what had come beforehand hadn’t been all that bad, either. He tried not to think of how cool her hand had felt skirting up the inside of his thighs before they had made love, or ‘fucked’ as Rose liked to tease him under her breath. Whatever she called it was fine with Cas.
That wasn’t what he should be thinking about now. Cas didn’t even know what she would be like when she woke up, or even if she would regain consciousness at all. There were methods that he could try to help her, and there was African Dream Root if all else failed. But, she wouldn’t have liked any magic to save her. It ‘wasn’t natural’. Something with magic had wronged her when she was younger, but no one, not even Sam—whom she revered—could get it out of her.
He pulled up a chair towards the head of her bed and leaned backwards. There was a blank stretch of wall in front of him. The window next to that was foggy, and in it Cas saw nothing. So, he focused his gaze on the nothingness and stared, while Rosemary slept the afternoon away.
***
Dean called three different times. Of course, Cas picked up each time that he called, but doing so meant walking over to the door where Rose wouldn’t have any chance of hearing. Cas tried to focus on whatever Dean was calling about, but any updates that he could have given him about Rose’s condition was nothing. She hardly moved; she didn’t try to speak or say anything in her sleep. A few mumbles or half a conversation was what they were all used to. If she dreamed of her family, Rose would scream. She screamed in a suffocated, embarrassed way. Even her subconscious tried to hold back whatever the memory was.
“Okay, we’re less than a half an hour away, how’s she doing?” The bravado in his voice made Cas grimace.
“Nothing. She’s--” Cas struggled for the right words. “She’s not doing anything. I’ve never seen her so quiet.”
“Hey, man, don’t worry. I’m sure Rose’ll be fine.” The bravado was gone, replaced with concern for him. “We’ll just wait it out. Garth knows her pretty well; he could probably know something about it.”
Cas felt crushed. “Magic always comes at a price. If Rowena didn’t kill Rose, then what should I be waiting for to happen?”
Dean’s concern didn’t abate. “Cas, listen to me, Sam and I are going to be there as soon as we can.”
He probably said something else, but Cas had pressed whatever off button the phone had because Rose stirred. She shifted her position in the bed, rolling from her back to the side and then over again; and he saw her eyes blink open for a few seconds before falling shut.
“Rose,” He breathed, and walked over to where she lay.
Her eyes were scrunched shut like she was hiding from him. The breaths that whistled in and out of her nose were shallow again. Cas could imagine her heard thudding.
“Rose,” He said again, louder.
She opened her eyes and sat up, propping herself up on her elbows. She surveyed him up and down thoroughly in a way that she hadn’t done since they had first met. “I take it,” Rose said, “That you’re here for Mark, right?”
Cas’ mind was befuddled. He sat down in the chair next to her, and she pulled away. Rose mirrored his motions to a tee. “What are you talking about?”
Rose narrowed her eyes. “Whatever he owes you I can cover. There’s no reason for things to get dicey. I can see you’re a busy bee.” She nodded to a splatter of blood on his shirt. She sat up so that her knees supported her and she swung around her side holster so that Castiel could stare at the gun on her side. “You take a check?”
Rose got to her feet and made a beeline for her purse. It was on their research table with a few of Sam’s dirty clothes strewn over it. She wrinkled her nose and pulled it up by the handle. “Sorry my room’s a mess, we travel with as much crap as Gypsies.” She nodded back at him. “No offense if you’ve got any gypsy blood.” She reached into her back and pulled out her checkbook. “I’ll cut you a check for a hundred now. The rest, if there is any, can be made up by our lawyer.”
“Rose,” Cas tried to smile. “I’m not here for your money.”
She cracked a smirk back at him. “’Dinero’ is all I’m offering you here. If you got a problem with that, this is going to get difficult.”
Cas shook his head. “No, but Rose—why are you acting like this?”
She snorted. “Just ‘cause a girl ain’t interested in you doesn’t mean you get to pull that card out. It’s kind of pathetic.” Rose walked forward and held out the two checks to him. “Just fill in your name and deposit it at the nearest bank for your convenience. Lawyer’s phone number’s on the back of the other one, so take the money and run.” She tried to cross her one arm over her stomach to hold onto her side without him noticing.
Maybe this was some new sort of game. Cas looked down at the checks: her handwriting was just as bad as it had been when they had first met. She had cut him a check for one hundred dollars, good to her word, but she had signed it ‘Colleen Duncan’, her mother’s maiden name.
“‘Colleen Duncan’?” He looked up at her. “Is this some joke? I’m not familiar with this kind of game.”
Her façade of bravery never wavered. “Excuse me? Look, that check is legit. I wouldn’t have put my own John Hancock on it if it wasn’t up to par. Now, you have your money. Leave before they come back.”
He could barely speak. “Who’s coming back? Rose, the boys are on their way over. We’re going to fix this.”
“There’s nothing to fix here.” Her face drew together with concern. “Seriously, if he finds you here, he’s going to be pissed.” She looked up with a tiny smile on her face. “And the little one won’t be too happy either.” She took her hand down from her side and let it rest on her gun.
“Rose, that won’t hurt me.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Sure it won’t. But that’s a funny thing—why’re you calling me ‘Rose’. Nobody does that except my lawyer, come to think of it. But he’s a few French fries short of a Happy Meal at any rate.” Rose nodded at the check in Cas’ hand and pulled her gun out of the holster.
Cas put up a hand. “Rose, what are you doing?” He looked down at the check with the lawyer’s name on it. Scrawled above seven sloppy digits was the name ‘Bobby Singer Jr.’ “Bobby Singer’s dead.”
In a swift movement, Rose drew the gun up to eye level. “Get out.”
The door opened and Sam came walking in, “Cas, how is she?” When he saw Rose hold out her gun, he immediately put his hands up. “Rose, what’s going on?”
Her eyes grew wide with fear and she took a step backward towards the light of the bathroom and Dean came in too, with his hands up as well. “Rose, hey, what’re you doing?”
“Shit.” She glanced down at the table as quickly as she could and her face grew paler. “I should have known this was coming.” She gritted her teeth. “I’m not one for doing things the easy way. And even if you are just a couple of douchebag puppet fucks, you might want to know that.” Her hand stopped shaking, even as the Winchesters took an in sync step towards her.
“Rose, what are you talking about? It’s us.” Sam gestured to Dean and Cas. “You’re hurt. A witch cast a spell at you and you’re not feeling like yourself right now.”
Rose positioned the gun straight at Sam’s heart. “Gosh, I don’t normally get this type of foreplay. Usually your kind just grabs and kills. I’m loving the suspense, but you just cut the crap and kill me already, you black-blooded freaks?”
Recognition drew on Dean’s face. “Rose, what year is it?”
“What?” She spat back at him, so he repeated the question. “Do you want me to say it’s the Year of the Leviathan or something? I guess the year of the rabbit doesn’t have a nice enough ring to it.”
Dean looked over, and Sam smiled. “We’re not Leviathans, Rose. I’m Sam, Sam Winchester, remember?”
Rose scoffed. “Sam Winchester is dead.” She jerked the gun over to Dean. “I suppose that one’s masquerading as Dean?” She smiled when Dean nodded. “Three Leviathans come to do me in. It must be my lucky day. And it’s Sam and Dean Winchester for the coup de grace. That’s just desserts for me, I suppose. Well, Gabe would have found that to be funny.” She finished it with a mumble.
Cas narrowed his eyes. The situation was not odd enough with her flashing back to the time that there had been Leviathans had roamed the earth. It hadn’t been the first time that he had failed the world. At that point, he hadn’t even met his favorite part of it yet.
“We’re not Leviathans!” Sam put up both hands higher. “Don’t do this.”
Her face grew conflicted. “Since when do Leviathans bargain?”
Dean took a step toward her. “Leviathans don’t bargain and they don’t hesitate. Come on. If we were really Leviathans, you’d be dead.”
“Fuck you. Don’t short change my hunting abilities.”
Dean raised an eyebrow. “Okay, wow, didn’t know you have such a foul mouth. Secondly is that you wouldn’t be able to do jack in a room surrounded by three Leviathans and no borax, all alone with no weapons in 2011!”
She snorted and pointed to her gun. It was aimed right at Dean’s heart, so Cas slowly walked in front of it. Rose recoiled but the gun was steady. Something had to jog her memory. He thought back to her favorite movie: “Alright, I’ll make it easier for you—go ahead and shoot. You’ll be doing me a favor.” The Casablanca quote was a long shot, but she did lower the gun.
“What are you?” She looked back at the boys. “Castiel and Dean Winchester have vanished. Sam Winchester’s off the grid too. I—I had heard something like purgatory, but that’s only for monsters. Although, if anyone could have gotten it open, it would have been them,” She grimaced like she knew them. “So, is this a Gabe trick? The fan gets ambushed by the heroes, but now she doesn’t know who they are?”
Dean held up a hand. “Gabe?”
She made a face. “The angel, silly. Geez, he didn’t make you all very bright.” She smiled, a thing young and carefree that Cas hadn’t seen in a while. “That, or Leviathans are getting dumber.” She paused and looked away. “Or I am.”
Different thoughts fought for dominance in his brain, but he couldn’t articulate a single one of them. Dean, who was much more skilled in the art of verbal communication than Castiel, said, “You really don’t remember any of the past few years?”
She didn’t respond, but reached a hand up to her hair. She yanked it out of the ponytail holder than she had it wrapped in, and let the bloody hair drop down to her shoulders. He had taken off her shirt so that she wouldn’t have been too hot, and the skin on her arms looked smooth and soft. Cas felt a hot wave of desire move through him, and he had to steady himself before he could look at her again.
“Rose?” Sam took a tentative step forward.
“This isn’t a trick.” She murmured, putting a hand over onto her side. “And I’m not dead yet.” She put an odd emphasis on ‘yet’ that made Cas uneasy. Then, she turned around to look at them. “Where is she?”
Dean squinted in confusion, “Who?”
She frowned, “Earlier,” she pointed at Sam, “you spoke of a witch. Was there a girl with her?” She held out a flat hand near her collarbone. “She would have been this tall, with dirty blond hair, and,” A little smirk flashed on her face, “you would have found her rude.”
The only person in creation that Rose would have spoken of with such reverence was her sister, a sister that she had told Cas to have been tainted and killed several years in the past. His heart clenched thinking of what she would do when she found out that her sister was dead, and Rose was the cause.
Now Dean frowned, “Why would she have been with the witch?”
Rose paled, “She wasn’t. She wasn’t with the witch?”
Sam shifted his weight and put on his most sympathetic face that he would have used if they would have been on a case. “Rose, your sister died.”
Rose’s hand flashed back to the gun, her eyes wide. “No. No, that can’t be true. There would have been a man with her. Tall, military-type, very serious. He would have been with her.”
Sam shook his head, “Rose, your father died, too. They died a long time ago.”
She shook her head, “No. We’re in Ohio, we’re hunting a ghost. It’s just a standard salt-and-burn, and there wouldn’t be any witches.” She racked a hand through her matted hair. “I need to call her.”
Rose grabbed her phone and began to pound in numbers. When the answering machine clicked on, Cas could barely hear the scorn of the girl at the other end. “Sam, it’s me. Something weird’s going on, I’m going to try your and Sir’s other numbers.”
Sam stiffened when she started with his name and looked even further troubled when she said ‘sir’ with so much reverence, more so than a token of respect should have sounded. Cas wanted to envelop her into his arms and heal the rest of her broken mind, but she was acting so strange, it probably wouldn’t have worked.
Rose proceeded to call her sister and her father on several numbers. Each time that the call would be unsuccessful, she would breathe heavier and move around the room more frantically. Sam tried to stop her from speaking a few times, but Rose would circle her hand around her side and shot him a look that could have melted acid.
“Rose!” Dean finally shouted, “The numbers don’t work.”
She stopped and looked at Dean. Her eyes were dark. “What state are we in?”
“Wyoming.”
Her eyes grew wide again, and she turned the call off. “You…” She rubbed her head with the heel of her hand. “Wyoming,” She made a face of pain that tore at the core of Cas. “Why Wyoming?” She crossed the room, and then turned around when before she had walked past them. Rose shot a glance back at them. “Wyoming.”
Dean started to get aggravated. “Yes, Wyoming. You’ve said that, like, fifteen times already!”
“The entrance to hell is in Wyoming. Why would he take us to Wyoming? There’s nothing here. Bob Elmore manages Wyoming, all of the colt history, all that. If this is past 2012, then the Grand Coven’s business was wrong, and we’re not dead yet…” She said that as if it changed everything. “Sam can’t be dead.”
Sam took a step forward. “Sami’s dead, Rose. She was possessed, and she needed to be put down.”
Rose snorted. “No one has to ‘put down’ anyone anymore. You think he wouldn’t have tried a simple exorcism?” Her tone was pleading. She looked at Sam as if he had all of the answers. “Sami can’t have died. It’s—it’s my job to protect her. She’s only twelve.”
“There was a witch,” Dean said. He looked at Cas for help. “Someone you knew did some sort of spell on her. At least, that’s what we’ve guessed,”
She tilted her head and glanced at Cas, “Who? Which one? There’re hundreds of witches that could have done that.”
Dean shrugged, “We don’t know for sure who did it. You just said that Sami was sick and you had to put her down.”
Rose paled. She staggered backward slightly and sat down on the edge of the now rumpled bed. “I—I did that? Why would I—I would have never hurt her. Oh my God,” With each word, she moved through various emotions that Cas registered ranging from disbelief, to anger, to nothing. Rose stared blankly ahead with a look of nothingness on her face that, to Cas and the Winchesters, appeared to be worse than if she would have started sobbing. Rose never cried, as a rule. She came close to it a couple of times, but she would have never sobbed outright in front of them if she could help it.
“Rose,” Dean glanced nervously at Sam when she didn’t respond. “We’re going to fix this.” He looked over at Cas, and led him out of range of Rose’s hearing. “You need to call Garth. Call Charlie, call anybody,” Fear was laced in the elder Winchester’s eyes. Rose had a special place in Dean’s heart. She had belonged to Dean, long before she had ever looked at Cas. No matter what happened, that didn’t seem to be a force that would go away.
“Rose!”
Cas looked up to see Sam rush to Rose’s side. He knelt in front of her, both hands wrapped around her hands. In her grip was something slender and grey that made Cas’ stomach freeze over. Rose looked at Sam with dead eyes that bore straight through him.
“Hey, look at me. Look at me!” Sam grabbed her face with one hand and forced her to look in his eyes. “You do not get to make that call.” He wrenched the gun out of her lap. Rose didn’t put forth any effort to stop him. Sam said, “You--” Cas had never seen Sam look so angry. The younger Winchester couldn’t even form a coherent sentence. “I would die if you did that to me, you selfish bitch.”
Rose stood up. “I’m going to throw up.” She mumbled, dashing towards the bathroom.
All Cas could think of were razors and suicidality, so he summoned up whatever energy he could to dart in front of her. She put a pasty hand over her mouth and looked at Cas as if he were a wall. “You think that I would…” Now Rose got angry. She retched, but swallowed, trying to keep the bile trapped in her stomach. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.” She retched again, and, this time, Cas didn’t hold her back. Rose got down on her knees in front of the toilet and vomited.
Although it was a disgusting display of the human gastrointestinal tract, Cas was transfixed as she emptied her stomach into the dingy porcelain bowl. He could hear the Winchesters whispering in the other room.
“—and what, she was just going to blow her brains out?” Dean grimaced. “How did you know?”
Sam’s voice shook with anger. “I saw her pull it out onto her lap. She didn’t cock it or anything. Dean, I think she was going to do it.”
Dean wiped his mouth with his hand. “She can’t stay here.”
“But can we really move her in this state? She’ll do anything.”
Cas looked back down at Rose. She was holding out a razor to him in her clenched fist. “Take it.” She hissed. Rose wouldn’t look at him; she merely held the razor with the sharp end pointing at her and the handle in Cas’ direction.
Cas took it from her, and she vomited again. After a few coughs and a watery burp, Rose sat back and flushed the toilet. Tears swam across her pale face, and she cried.
Dean and Sam stopped talking for a second to listen to the new noise. Cas turned around and held out the sweaty razor. “She gave this to me.” His voice sounded strange. Dean looked at him with wide eyes.
“What’s she doing now?”
Cas turned around to look at her again. She had climbed into the shower, fully clothed, and had turned it on. He could feel the iciness of the water from where he stood. Rose did not seem to care. She stood underneath the spray of the water. She appeared to be trying to rinse out the excess vomit from her mouth, and simultaneously freeze whatever passions had consumed her.
Cas felt himself make a face of confusion, “She’s standing underneath the water.”
Rose stretched out her arms and bowed her head underneath the flow of the water. Her clothes were soaked in unequal distributions. Usually, Cas had thought that humans took showers in warm water for cleansing and recreational purposes. What Rose did looked painful.
Sam moved over to where Cas was standing, his face still bent in anger. “Fuck this, that’s painful.” He charged into the bathroom and turned off the cold water. “Jesus, Rose,” Sam said, quieter this time, “you’re freezing.”
Rose stood in the same position, but Castiel could see her shiver. “I’ll get a towel,” He heard himself say. The news that Rose was seconds away from taking her own life made Cas feel sick with fear. He got Rose’s towel as quickly as he could and had it back over to Rose and Sam before either of them had moved much.
Dean moved in on them too; in his hands, he held a rolled ball of Rose’s messy clothes. She looked at them all as if they were practicing a strange human art. When Cas offered her the towel, she took it without a preamble and pressed it to her face. Rose shook more than usual.
“Put on the clothes after you’ve dried off.” Dean mumbled.
Rose’s eyes grew wide. She shook her head.
Sam scoffed, “Don’t be like that. Put them on.”
Rose took the pile from Dean in concession, but shook her head at Sam. “No,” She said, still shivering.
Sam’s bitterness cut at them all, “You can’t be on your own. So put on the clothes, now.”
When Rose looked like she might protest, Cas found himself saying, “Sam and Dean can go over there. I’ll keep you safe.”
Dean looked at Cas, “Dude, really? Don’t you see enough--”
Sam put up a hand. “Gross. Fine, Cas, just have her put them on.” He walked out past Cas, taking Dean by the shoulder, and nudging him out of the way. When he and Dean had moved away a suitable distance, Cas nodded at Rose.
“You can—um—take off your clothes now.”
Rose would have normally giggled at that, or would have at least given him a disturbed look. Whenever he would commit a social error, Cas would know it by her eyes. Now, her eyes were glassy. She seemed to have decided that Castiel no longer existed. She peeled off her soaking jeans, only blushing slightly when she saw Cas’ eyes linger on her damp underwear.
“Oh.” He turned away, and focused his eyes on Rose’s mini reflections in the mirrors surrounding the motel vanity. She undressed neither slowly nor quickly. Whatever speed she was at, it was perfect for Cas to watch the way that her hands brushed over her wet skin. He told himself that watching her was keeping her safe. Keeping charge of humans had always been his charge. Watching them get out of wet clothes was another thing entirely.
“You almost finished?” Dean called out. “We’ve all aged. Poor Cas finally looks a bazillion years old.”
He felt no older. Rose was almost finished, so he felt it safe to turn around to watch her again. She stood barefoot on the floor in a baggy, old Corona Lite tee shirt that he didn’t recognize. She let her one hand cross over her body to rest lightly on her side. Rose didn’t look him in the eye. Her wet clothes were draped over her arms.
Sam and Dean stood up straighter when she came out. Rose glanced tentatively up at them, but she returned her gaze to the soaking clothes in her hands. “What now?” Her tone indicated that she could not care less what they said. When Dean cleared his throat, she looked up at him with bleary eyes.
“Now, you should…” He looked at Sam for help.
Sam’s voice was firmer. “Go to bed.” He pointed to the sloppy bed that she had woken up in an hour beforehand.
Her face became impassive. She laid out the clothes flat on the floor before walking past the Winchesters. Dean looked like he wanted to say something to her: his breath hitched when she walked past him, but Rose paid him no heed. She crawled into bed and pulled the covers up to her waist.
Cas walked to the edge of the bed, almost to the point where his knees hit the mattress. “You can go to sleep.” He tried to communicate safety and normalcy to her in his words, but she didn’t appear to gather any relief from them. Rose glanced at the three of them before sinking low into the covers.
Dean glanced heavily at Cas and motioned for him to follow out the door. Sam had grabbed the chair that Cas had sat in earlier and plopped his laptop on his lap. The screen was blank, as was Sam’s face. Rose’s shoulders appeared to be shaking, and she now lay on her side, turned away from the three of them. Dean cleared his throat and Cas turned around.
“Cas,” Dean closed the door behind him. “We’re going to fix this. Maybe this is temporary.”
Cas’ mind began to ferment. “She was going to kill herself, wasn’t she?” The scene played out slowly in his mind. One minute, he had been looking at Rose, and in the next instance, she had a gun in her lap ready to do the impossible. “Dean, I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this before.” He laid a hand on his rolling stomach.
“Well, that’s nausea for you,” Dean clapped his hands together and looked out at the rain. “Rose—she gave you the razor. That has to count for something.”
“Even so,” He did not eat, so there was nothing for him to vomit. Still, his stomach felt disgusting after watching Rose throw up. He couldn’t help but think: if she would have done it, she would have been dead right now. These would have been his first ten minutes without Rosemary. A world wherein she didn’t exist made him almost dizzy with fear. “She can’t do that.”
“No.” Dean agreed. “We’ll keep her safe.”
The matter of her amnesia weighed on his mind. “Is…her condition a part of Rowena’s spell? Maybe her desire to be dead is a part of it too. You remember, what she said about her mother?”
Dean nodded darkly. “Things like this could run in the family.”
Cas crossed his arms and looked out at the rain. “I’ll go talk to Garth.”
“Do you really think that’ll work? With the baby and everything—maybe involving him would be a mistake.” Dean sounded nervous.
Cas tried to steady his friend, “Garth was with Rose before any of us knew that she existed. He deserves to know, at least,” He paused for a moment. “Wouldn’t he ask the same of us?”
Dean frowned, “Doesn’t mean I have to like it all: her playing house with a bunch of lycanthropes, and a teething one at that. Doesn’t it bother you that Garth treats her like Bess?”
Cas and Rose had discussed the matter at length. If Garth truly started treating Rose like his dead wife, she would have to leave. It wasn’t fair on the baby, but the baby wasn’t biologically hers. Although she had adopted the baby, the little girl would always have a part of her life that Rose couldn’t share.
“If Rose was cognizant that she and the baby would have even a tiny fluctuation in their relationship, she would want Garth to know. It’s not just the four of us, anymore, Dean.” Cas tried to tell himself the words too as he said them to Dean, “Rose didn’t belong to us first.”
***
Sam tried to focus on the task in front of him. This couldn’t concern him any more than a traditional hunt. There was something otherworldly wreaking havoc and a victim. Fine. So, there was a witch, Rowena (he tried to think the name without destroying his keyboard), and there was one victim—Rosemary Kline. Her breath hitched in her sleep and he looked up at her at a ridiculously fast speed, so much so that the laptop teetered on his lap. He snatched at it before it fell off, but he still looked like a dork.
She mumbled something in her sleep and rolled over to where she was facing him. A spray of brown hair concealed her eyes from him, but Sam could assume that they were still closed. She had only said a few words in her sleep thus far: all a litany of ‘sir’s in various tones of voice. Most of the time, she had sounded frightened. Rose had cried out in her sleep invoking the memory of a man long dead.
Dean hadn’t been able to take it. He held Rose’s father is a position of hatred in his mind that had often been vied for by Lucifer himself, amongst other of their nastier opponents. Sam could understand why Rose didn’t hate him, even after all the things that Sir had done to her. It was the reason that he loved his father, the obsessed bastard that he was—he was her dad. And that was that, at least to her, at any rate. She wouldn’t say a word against him. She had just gotten to the point where she could handle Dean saying things that were less than satisfactory against the man.
“I though Dean was the ‘hulk smash’ brother.” She said it quietly. The hair above her face rippled like a curtain caught in a tempest. “Sam was the kind, quieter one.”
Sam smiled bitterly and put the laptop on the bed. “That was a long time ago that you read that.” Her voice sounded alien: coppery and tired. Rose was far too tired for Sam’s liking. All of her pretend bullshit to cover up whatever she had outgrown had been ripped away. She hardly stirred on the mattress. Now that he knew that she was awake, focusing on his work became impossible. “Do you want me to ask you?”
She stuck out a hand and brushed some of the hair off her face. It had dried in odd tangles. “If I remember you, unlike a few hours ago? No, no I don’t.” She pushed herself up off the bed. The T-shirt that she wore hung oddly on her shoulders, and she straightened the fabric. “What’s the date?” Her voice had assumed dead tiredness.
He started and glanced at his watch. “It’s Tuesday. You slept for over twelve hours.”
Rose’s voice was hard. “What month, what day, and what year?”
He repeated what she had probably already assumed, and she accepted it by straightening her shoulders. She should have put her goddamn nose in the air, the way that she walked away from him. She did deign him a quiet ‘thank you’ before walking into the bathroom and closing the door.
“Razor,” He breathed, and had halfway banged down the door before Rose screamed.
“Holy shit, I’m peeing!” Rose held the door closed.
Sam tightened his hand around the handle. “Rose, is there anything in there with you?”
Her voice was fraught with tears again, “No.”
Sam tried to lean the on the door again, but Rose held firm. “Crack the door.”
“No.”
“Rose.”
“I said ‘no’.” Her voice was hard again. She had stopped peeing. “Stand back, I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Rose,” Sam yelled, “Crack the damn door.”
The toilet flushed. There was still an even pressure on the door, so Sam presumed that she hand one of her hands pushed against it. “If you don’t ease off the door, you’re going to break it.”
Sam gritted his teeth. “Let go, Rose.”
Rose sounded tired, “If I tried to hurt myself, I would do it in a way that would render me incapable of barricading you from getting inside. But there’s nothing in here that can hurt me, except for you, but you’re on the other side of the door. Let go, and I’ll come out.”
Sam’s mind reeled. What she said sounded very familiar, but he still wasn’t sure. “Why are you talking like that?” Rose hadn’t been cold and calculating for years.
The pressure on the door lessened. Her voice was calm and even, “I’m going to open the door now.”
Sam found himself agreeing with her and he backed away from the door, with both of his arms still extended, so that he could rush headlong at the door again if she needed him. It creaked as she opened it. He fought back the urge to yank at her wrists to check for blood.
Rose didn’t look at him, and moved over to wash her hands. She used the cold water, which was something that he always found odd. Cold water was cheaper than hot, she had reasoned. You don’t need to heat water if you can, Rose had always said. Dean had thought it was the bat-shit craziest thing that she had ever done.
Her eyes were puffy and rimmed in red. Sam had tried to ignore Rose’s crying, but it even happened while she slept.
She glanced up at him staring, frowned, and looked back down at her hands. “Where’re the others?” The water turned off with a groan from the pipes. She paid it no heed and walked back over to the rest of the room.
Sam forced himself to speak, “Dean and Cas both had to go out. Why?”
“No reason,” She surveyed the room up and down. Her eyes flashed on the exits once before switching over to roam near Sam’s laptop and the rest of their stuff. Sam’s .22 lay on the table. Her face paled and she looked away, back at him. “What are your terms?”
“Terms?” He side-stepped her to go back at sit at the desk.
She wet her lips with her tongue and leaned against the wall next to the bed with her hands flat against the wall. When she didn’t repeat herself, Sam found himself frowning again.
“You mean the rules? What—do you think I’m in charge?” The proposition made him smirk. He was never in charge of Rose for anything. The sobering reminder of the gun that lay on the table brought back the situation to his mind. If he hadn’t stopped her from firing it—
“‘Terms’, ‘rules’, ‘conditions’, etc.” Rose closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall. Sam tried to ignore her shaking. “If you want to wait until the others come back, I can wait.” Her tone was icy.
Sam matched her, “Dean should be back any minute now. He’ll have lunch.”
Rose made a face, but didn’t say anything.
“Are you not going to eat, either?” He snapped. “You don’t have to act like we’re killing you.”
Rose rolled her eyes. “No, you’re doing the opposite.”
Sam broke out in goose bumps. He wanted to pray on every credit that he still had with god to make her okay again. “Don’t talk like that.”
“Fine. Then tell me about the witch who did this. Does she have a name?” Rose was quiet, and Sam didn’t say anything. “You know, telling me about your terms would make this a hell of a lot easier.”
“Do you seriously want rules from me? I’m not the person to tell you what to do every minute of every day.”