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Cas brought the empath in through the front door.
Her pleasant smile didn’t change when she got her first glimpse of the Bunker. Unlike every other human before her, she didn’t seem very surprised or awed by it. Since Cas was not impressed by human architecture, art deco stylings or technology (except for cell phones), he did not find her reaction to be noteworthy.
He’d led her down the stairs and was taking her through the war room on the way to the library when Sam and Dean walked in from the kitchen. She stopped in her tracks and blinked.
And then her reaction became noteworthy.
“Oh HELL no!” she exclaimed as she flinched and backed away from the Winchesters.
“Oh FUCK no!” she declared as she ran back up the stairs.
“Oh God, no,” she whimpered when she found the door blocked by the trenchcoated stranger she only now realized was not quite human.
***
A few minutes later, Cas, Sam and Dean were whisper-shouting in the war room. Their reluctant guest, whose name was Margaret Willis, was seated in the darkened library with a cup of tea that Cas had hastily produced at her request. He’d had to acquire it from a diner some miles away, since neither brother drank tea voluntarily.
“I thought you said she could help,” Dean said to Cas, clearly insulted. He had conveniently forgotten how much he’d been against this idea in the first place.
Sam directed a medium-level glare at Dean. “I think we’re hurting her.” He waved vaguely towards the library, where the woman now had her head down on the table. She was emitting a low-pitched noise that could have been moaning, humming or meditation. Even Cas was not sure which.
“How is she supposed to help if she can’t even stand to be in the same zip code as me?” There was a bitter weariness underlying Dean’s sarcasm that worried Sam.
“You could call or text…” Cas began.
“No! I draw the line at emoticon therapy!”
“Maybe we just… took her by surprise,” Sam offered hurriedly. “Cas, what did you tell her, anyway?”
“I told her that I had a friend that could use her help. She said ‘OK,’ and got in my car. She really did want to help. She was very calm and happy during the drive over here.”
Dean frowned at that. “Cas! You whammied her? Not cool!”
“I did not ‘whammy’ her!”
Sam absently noticed that Cas had been getting better at vocalizing air quotes ever since Dean convinced him the physical quote-y gesture should be deployed sparingly. Or rather never, ever again.
Dean continued, “No woman in her right mind would get into a total stranger’s pimpmobile. No matter how nerdy he looks!”
Cas looked as though he were about to emphatically defend himself. And his car. Sam started to calculate whether he should intervene at this point or wait and see if things got entertaining first.
No one noticed Margaret had entered the room until she said, “Ahem!”
“What the fuck?” Dean just barely stopped himself from drawing his colt.
Sam straightened up and after the initial shock, examined her curiously. It was as if a short, nondescript, vaguely pleasant, brown-haired woman suddenly appeared in their midst. She seemed harmless. Or at least non-threatening. You could never tell.
Because even Cas was surprised. “How did you do that?” he asked.
“My shields are up and my sensors are deactivated. It’s the only way I can speak to you all coherently.” After a pause she added, “Because you guys are really off the charts.” She sighed and massaged her temples. “So, what are my choices? Can I leave?”
“Of course. You are free to go at any time,” Cas said pointedly, looking at Dean.
Dean rolled his eyes and turned his irritation on her. “What were you thinking, getting into his car? He could’ve been a psycho-serial-killer!”
She turned to Dean with equal irritation. “I could tell he wasn’t. His feelings were …,” she struggled to come up with an adequate description. “…Loving…?” she trailed off, not quite satisfied.
“Psycho-serial-killer-rapist, then.”
“No! He was … good. Solidly, profoundly, yet …distantly Good. Although a second ago, he looked sort of pissy.” She frowned. “Was I wrong about him?”
Sam answered with a slight smile. “No, you were right. Everybody gets pissy around Dean – even angels.”
“Angel?” she asked, looking at Cas. He nodded, somewhat abashed, while Sam and Dean shrugged.
There was a long pause. “Ooookay.”
Her gaze settled back on Cas. She frowned slightly. After an even longer silence, her expression smoothed out and grew more intent. It reminded Dean of the kind of annoying stare Cas used to subject him to, back in the day.
Under the empath’s continued scrutiny, Dean noticed that Cas was beginning to show that puzzled look, where he wasn’t sure if something was normal human behavior. Served him right, although at least she wasn’t all up in his grill. He was about to say so out loud when the empath blinked.
There was another pause. “Huh,” she said at the end of it.
They waited for her to say something else.
Instead, she just shook her head as if to clear it.
“Anyway,” she said, “I’m not sure what kind of help you need.” She waved her palm in a circle at both brothers. “I get the impression that whatever’s happening here…”
“Oh, no, I’m not…” Sam began. He pointedly ignored Dean’s “Hah!”
She looked at Sam skeptically. “Even with my shields up, I can tell whatever happens to one of you will impact the other. In fact, the term ‘impact’ is probably an understatement.” She continued, “Whatever this is, it’s tangled and complicated. I would need a lot of background context to even have a hint of where to start.”
She pointed at Dean. “And that one’s so defensive, he’ll attack if I ask him what time it is.”
Dean scowled at her.
“So,” she said, looking at him coolly, “what time is it?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he snapped.
She threw up her hands. “See?”
“If you really do want to know, it’s 2:30,” Sam told her.
She frowned thoughtfully. “P.M., right? Good. I thought I might have lost some time somewhere. This is a really weird hermetically sealed kind of place. I mean, you two just had breakfast, so I thought it was earlier in the day.”
Sam asked, “What made you think it was breakfast?” He was curious. Did it have something to do with her empathic ability?
“I smelled eggs,” she answered. Sam was somewhat disappointed. But then she continued, “Plus the two of you just woke up in the past hour or so. Most biological rhythms, including sleep cycles, are tied to day and night. You guys are way off. I didn’t sense any leftover physical emergency stress, so if it wasn’t a Gilmore Girls binge-watch, I’m guessing research.”
She looked at Sam thoughtfully. “You have that ‘deadline is fast approaching and I’m not prepared’ vibe. Or something…“ Her gaze had sharpened on him now, as if she could tell that wasn’t quite right. Sam was just starting to feel uncomfortable when Dean happened to interrupt.
Dean snorted. “So I’m just some college exam to you, Sammy?”
The empath tore her gaze away from Sam, shook herself slightly and then rolled her eyes at Dean. “No, you are a roiling cloud of superheated radioactive steam that is about to burst out of containment if he can’t figure out a way to cool or neutralize you in time.”
The uncomfortable pause that followed mostly consisted of the brothers avoiding one another’s eyes. She said with a note of embarrassment, “See? I need info or I’ll keep blundering into all their… their issues.”
“Right. Because calling someone a radioactive cloud is ambiguous without context.” Dean paused, then muttered, “You could’ve at least called me a bomb.”
Cas approached Margaret, bringing two fingers up towards her temple. “I can give you most of the information you need…” he began.
“NO!” She ducked away from him. Actually, it was more like a huge involuntary flinch. Somehow, they all felt the NO vibrate through their brains, bones and viscera.
***
Margaret thought that if this were a cartoon, there would be small rocks and dust trickling down from the ceiling right now. She had her eyes closed and her shields were so thick that she might as well have been hermetically sealed in her own bunker.
For a blessed moment, she was alone with herself, no one else’s emotions pressing in on her from all sides. She knew she had overreacted, but in her defensive panic, she had no idea what would get through to an angel. So she had gone for a pretty much full-power “NO.”
After a shaky breath, with her eyes still closed, she lowered her shields infinitesimally and cautiously checked to make sure everyone else in the room was okay. They would be getting over the shock about now.
The angel, as far as she could tell, was only slightly… ruffled and somewhat regretful and worried. The taller brother – Sammy? No, Sam – echoed the feelings of worry and regret in a much more adrenalized and intensely human way. But the grouchy brother – Dean – was fighting a terrifyingly powerful urge to attack her with deadly force. What the hell? His struggle was on such a knife’s edge that she didn’t dare interfere directly. Holy crap. She already knew that he would interpret any ‘touch’ as an attack right now. She didn’t even attempt to analyze what Dean was experiencing. She knew if she tried, she would freeze in terror.
Unfortunately, her usual practice of interacting with strangers in “mirror mode” – reflecting their own feelings back at a near equal intensity – was too dangerous with Dean in the room. And she didn’t dare attempt to project coolness and competency because her grasp on both were non-existent right now. And she knew it was too dangerous to lower her shields because Dean’s state of mind could get them all killed if she accidentally absorbed it and lost control.
So. No special insight, then. Only herself. Only words. Like a regular person. Facing a… berserker. Or The Hulk.
Dammit.
Okay.
She kept her eyes closed so that she would be able to speak more calmly, despite the fact that all of her calmness had fled the building. “I’m sorry about…” she was about to wave her arm to indicate ‘all this,’ but realized she had no idea if a physical movement would trigger Dean. So she continued quietly, “…I don’t… I couldn’t let… I just n-need to filter information in m-my own way.” She realized she had no idea if any sign of trembling or weakness would also trigger Dean. She felt an anxiety spiral begin and took a breath that was supposed to be deep and calming but ended up a shaky gasp instead. Her eyes flashed open as she felt her deferred panic begin in earnest.
The angel was directly in front of her, his gaze intent, his head slightly tilted. She jumped. She couldn’t help it. He didn’t move, though, just watched her… curiously? As she returned his stare, she realized she couldn’t read him.
She couldn’t read him. She was looking into his eyes and he was standing right there, and she couldn’t tell what he was feeling. She wasn’t sure if that was due to the panicky strength of her shielding or because he was… different now. Even more different, rather. More… otherworldly? Inhuman? Angelic? What the hell had she gotten herself into?
But for some reason, despite her panic, she didn’t look away. An inconvenient, irrelevant part of her mind said, “Damn, his eyes are really blue!” She ignored it. Gradually, she felt a measure of calm seep into her that should have taken several minutes to achieve, rather than several seconds. Her panic receded. She made a mental note to analyze the angel’s effect later. Instead, she forced herself to trust him. Or rather to trust in her (pre-existing, inexplicable, unexamined) trust in him.
Okay, the angel’s attention on her indicated that either: 1) he was sure Dean wasn’t about to attack her or 2) that he knew she was potentially dangerous and was taking steps to protect the others from her. So that was two of her fears out of two thousand soothed. Sort of.
She made herself lower her shields a little more so that she could get a better read on Dean. He was going through something she had never encountered before – or at least not at this magnitude. It was … [rage, fear, white-cold-burning-HUNGER] … She recoiled. What the hell –?
Sam was doing his best to talk him down, but Dean’s… tension was still running dangerously high, so for now, her goal was to ease it. Since her abilities were currently on lockdown, she began to toss out words and ideas, hoping they were either interesting or boring or harmless enough to do the job. She didn’t know Dean well enough to be certain. Since the angel was standing right in front of her, she addressed her epic ramble to him.
“I need to construct a-a… framework to help me understand a person – if it’s someone I want to help. Emotions can be confusing and, and overwhelming. But at their most basic level, they’re just biochemistry – just molecules and-and… electrical charges. At that level, everyone’s the same.” She felt herself regaining some semblance of balance as she considered the objective and measurable aspects of emotion. “Our differences only start to pile up when we get to neuronal receptors, transmitters, pathways, feedback loops – until ‘nurture’ finally overwhelms ‘nature’ in significance. Eventually a person’s experience will change the patterns and sequences of neurochemical cascades. There are commonalities and groupings due to genetic, cultural, and familial influences, but eventually, at some point, every person’s emotions become uniquely theirs. When I assemble the framework, I need to include information from both micro and macro directions, as objectively and neutrally as possible, before I can even think of interfering...”
“Where does a soul fit into your ‘framework’”, the angel inquired. His question distracted her and pulled her off balance again. And were those air quotes she heard?
“What? A soul? I don’t know,” she said bluntly. Seriously, those air quotes were kinda mean, coming from him.
She felt the tense atmosphere had shifted slightly and flailed for a way to encourage the change. Out of all the feelings charging through her body, she grabbed a hold of her annoyance and ran with it.
“You know what? Back off!” She scowled a mostly real scowl at the angel. She pointed a finger at his chest and he was so close that she actually touched him. She pulled her finger back quickly, ignoring the part of her mind that was telling her, You just touched an ANGEL. While scolding him. What in the hell are you doing? She forced herself to continue.
“Here I am, explaining my process to you, something I had never told anyone about out loud, and what do I get in return? Air quotes!”
She pointed at his chest again with what was now mostly mock outrage and then literally pressed on by pushing him away with one finger. Yeah, that’s not a metaphor for anything. “And,” she went on, “has anyone ever told you about personal space?”
The dangerous mood had definitely broken. There was a small but genuine laugh from Sam. “At least you didn’t get the quote-y fingers,” he told her.
“You’re welcome,” Dean said in response, although with none of his usual presence. His gaze was still mostly turned inward, but his crisis had passed for now.
She looked back at the angel and gave him an apologetic grimace. She didn’t want to say anything out loud and give the impression that she had been playing them. That would be the worst possible interpretation of her exaggerated rant, but she suspected that Dean had the habit of assuming the worst as a matter of course.
The angel answered her last question gravely. “Yes, Dean has spoken to me about personal space. My apologies.” He stayed exactly where she had pushed him, at her arm’s length and no further. She was not quite comfortable, but he seemed human…-ish again, so she let it go for now.
“Okay, apology accepted. Now,” she turned to Dean. “What. The Hell. Was. That?” Her voice cracked on the last word and she felt near-hysterical from relief. Although Dean was only just beginning to recover from his ordeal, she did not give a shit. “Seriously. What the hell was THAT?”
Dean’s eyes locked on hers and his brows snapped together. “No. First you tell us what the hell your thing was.” His voice was hard and for once her own fear and anger was being reflected back at her. It was a novel experience. She was always the calm one in any encounter. Until now.
Sam physically stepped between them and broke their eye contact. “Everybody gets to show their cards. Okay?”
***
A while later, they were all seated around one of the library’s research tables.
Sam had gotten everyone to agree on some ground rules, ostensibly to get them all on the same page. However, what he had really wanted was for Dean to have more time to pull himself together. Once Dean had caught on to this tactic, he scowled impatiently, although with a small nod of acknowledgement.
Margaret was sitting directly across from them, with Cas seated off to her left. She had agreed to forego her shields so that they would be able to read her reactions without interference. They wanted to determine how dangerous she was.
But neither brother mentioned how far they might go if they decided she was too dangerous to be out there in the wild. Cas trusted her, but they needed to decide for themselves.
Sam noted that she was shifting in her seat with her arms crossed defensively in front of her, obviously uncomfortable. Well, at least she wasn’t running for the hills. So her – what did she call it? – her sensors must be deactivated. Was that a Star Trek reference? He’d have to ask Dean later.
He also realized that she was no longer nondescript. Huh. That had been a neat trick of her shielding. She looked younger, for one thing. In fact, her expression reminded him of nothing so much as a sullen, defensive teenager.
“How old are you, by the way?” he asked.
“I’m twenty-nine,” she answered with prickly suspicion.
Great. Someone else with Dean’s level of arrested development. Sam glanced at Dean, who shot him a look that said Shaddup!, just as if he’d read his mind. Sam suppressed a smile.
Their silent exchange had piqued her interest. He suspected she was no longer thinking about her own discomfort, and was probably adding another data point in confirmation of their codependency. She seemed to find comfort in science.
He knew he was on the right track when she had gathered enough determination to open up and start.
“I, uh, don’t like to be touched…,” she began.
“Yeah, we got that,” Dean said.
Sam turned to him with a You’re not helping! glare. He was trying not to think about various horrific reasons behind her reluctance to be touched. Dean had the decency to look ashamed.
Margaret, meanwhile, had retreated back into teenager-y defensiveness. “I’msorryIsortofoverreacted,” she said too quickly, not quite meeting their eyes.
“’Sort of overreacted?’ Are you kidding me?” Dean burst out before Sam could stop him.
“Look who’s talking!” she shot back without thinking. Then she gasped as she realized she’d just hit him where he was most vulnerable.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly to Dean. Sam thought she looked sincerely contrite. But Dean looked away, not meeting her eyes. Just great. They could both spin uselessly in their separate guilt spirals.
For a moment, her shame seemed to diminish her, made her look small, vulnerable and lost. But she gathered herself enough to continue.
“What I did earlier, that …thing… was kind of a—a universal ‘no,’” she began. “It cuts across all languages and levels of self-righteousness, self-absorption and – and douchiness. But it’s communication, not compulsion. It’s just to make sure that the person on the receiving end understands on a fundamental level that no meant no. What they do with the information is still up to them.”
“There’s a fine line between communication and compulsion if you’re overriding our ‘biochemistry’ like that,” Sam said in a neutral voice.
“No. There’s a chasm of difference. There are millions of signals and … and biochemical transactions that happen whenever you do something as simple as moving your arm. I can’t make people do anything. What I did was like getting your attention. It’s very low level and relatively simple. Depending on the intensity, it could be like snapping my fingers in front of someone’s eyes or slapping them across the face. I usually modulate it to fit the occasion, but I had no idea how it would work on an angel, so I sent it out at full power in all directions.”
“That wasn’t just some slap.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But,” she gestured at Castiel, “I couldn’t place him on any of the spectra of my experience. His feelings are there, but they seem distant or…or muted, maybe muffled. But somehow intense and powerful. The closest comparison I came up with was… sunlight.”
Was she blushing? Sam looked at her more closely. She was.
She focused on some middle distance instead of meeting anybody’s eyes as she continued. “Sunlight can be gentle and warm, but its source is distant and terrifyingly powerful. I was trying to signal something as distant as the metaphorical sun. I – I guess I overshot.”
Under other circumstances, Dean would be mercilessly roasting Cas about his sun-worshipping acolyte. Sam hoped he would get around to it eventually. He wanted to be present when that happened. God help him, but he missed crappy-comedian-Dean.
Margaret’s scientific curiosity finally overcame her embarrassment and she asked Cas, “By the way, how did you perceive it? Was it faint? Deafening?”
Castiel answered seriously, “It was… emphatic. And unnecessary. A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed.”
“So angels take ‘no’ for an answer, then, on a person to person level?”
Dean unexpectedly broke in. “No. Most of them are flying ass-monkeys who have no problem with doing whatever the hell they want. Cas is the exception.” Cas looked as though he was about to object, but kept quiet instead.
Dean looked at her intently. Sam could tell it wasn’t in anger, but he couldn’t tell what his brother was going to say. “Let’s go back to that compulsion thing,” Dean began.
Sam was getting a bad feeling about this.
Dean continued. “You said you couldn’t make someone move because it was too complicated. But compulsion could be the step just before the action. So, could you make someone want to move their arm? Or not want to?”
Sam held his breath, seeing where Dean was headed with this.
“I don’t do that,” she said flatly.
“Can’t or won’t?” Dean asked.
Her jaw clenched before she answered. “Won’t.” Even without her universal “no”, Sam could tell she meant it.
“What if someone asked you to, before, before the fact…,” Dean started.
“Dean!” Sam protested.
“I gotta ask, Sammy.”
She shook her head. “No, too dangerous.”
“But…”
“No! First of all, I don’t do that kind of thing. Second of all, you got triggered by a ‘no’. How can something more complicated possibly turn out better? Third of all, any conflicting compulsion of that magnitude will probably drive you insane. Fourth of all, if I was stuck in your head when you got triggered, it could take me over, too, for all I know. And then whatever-the-hell-that-was would have a whole new arsenal of abilities to play with. Fifth of all, I don’t do that!”
Sam believed her. He looked over at Dean, who was hiding his disappointment in a way that made Sam suspect that he hadn’t let go of this idea yet. He frowned at him, but all Dean did was shrug. It was time to tell her more.
Sam turned to Margaret. She had been watching their exchange with something like fascination. “You two just had a complex discussion using facial expressions, a small head tilt and a micro-shrug. It was a thing of beauty,” she said.
Neither brother could think of any response to that.
She took their silence as an opportunity to say, “Okay, your turn. And I’m putting my shields back up.”
***
Margaret rubbed her forehead, as if that would put the new information she had just received into a more comfortable or at least more believable position. It didn’t work.
So. Demons. The Mark of Cain. The Cain… of… of… Cain and Abel fame. Oh, yeah, and the Knights and King of Hell (Hell?) were somehow involved…?
Castiel, Sam and Dean waited for her to say something.
Finally, she said to Dean “I apologize for not calling you a nuclear bomb earlier.”
“Apology accepted, Mags.” Oh, goody. He’d already shortened her name into one syllable. That didn’t take long.
She lapsed into silence again. She made sure her shields were up as she tried to process everything.
Here’s what she knew for sure: Dean was in deep shit. She had never encountered this kind of shit before. Angels were real—actually, no. She only knew Castiel was real.
Maybe the – the ass-monkeys weren’t real, or weren’t actually angels? And if the existence of angels was in question, then did demons really have to exist? Not to mention Knights and Kings of Hell?
But she knew that Castiel, Sam and Dean believed everything they told her.
So. Did she believe them? She really, really didn’t want to.
But Dean’s problem was real. She already witnessed his intense struggle against this compulsion to kill. No, more than kill. To massacre.
What she hadn’t done was analyze what her senses told her about it. So why the avoidance?
Oh, right. Fear. Completely logical and utter Fear.
She huffed out a breath in determination. Okay, Fear, I’m going to defy you, despite the nagging suspicion that you’re right and rational this time around.
She closed her eyes and pulled out her memory of what she had perceived of Dean’s struggle. Her shields had been up, so she didn’t get the full intensity of what he had been feeling. She was thankful for that. Breathe in, hold, breathe out. Okay.
She remembered his rage. Rage, she understood. She knew the neurotransmitters and glands and biochemistry of it. She knew the blood, breath and muscles it took over. She knew the way it tried to take away a person’s choices until standing down became unthinkable and violence was the only thing left. But rage can be conquered, even without her help. Through will, practice, therapy, meditation, even distraction.
She remembered his fear. She understood fear. But this time it was a secondary emotion, triggered by the prospect of failing to conquer the rage and the, the… power, the wrongn--. No, not simply wrongness. Evil. It was real, true, pee-your-pants-in-fear evil. The kind of thing she couldn’t trace back to molecules and bioelectricity. Did it really come from a freaking mark? How is that even possible? She began to suspect it had to do with Cas’s seemingly random question about how she perceived the soul. She put all that aside for the moment. It was just too much.
She remembered Dean’s hunger. His terrifyingly intense hunger to kill. To indulge in all that rage and power and…and pleasure.
She took a calming breath for herself and tried to think about it from a less paralyzing angle. Okay. Hunger, when you came right down to it, was basically the drive to fill a need. So what need was Dean trying to fill with death and rage and power? She paused. For some reason, she absolved him of needing to be evil. She couldn’t really explain why. She just did.
It would probably be through his hunger that she’d be most able to help him. It was a daunting prospect, but if he could sate or eliminate or conquer the need underneath everything, maybe he would be able to handle the rest.
His hunger was going to be tough to disentangle, though. There would be so many factors. Some of them going all the way back in childhood, no doubt. And she knew he would make it extra difficult. For example, his story of why he got the Mark in the first place was bullshit. She just wasn’t sure if he knew it yet.
But even worse: how much of Dean’s scary, scary hunger was coming from the same place as the evil? From the Mark? How could she even tell? Was it hijacking his brain chemistry like a malignant permanent nicotine patch? Was it another consciousness? Did it whisper or call to him?
She suddenly realized that she was thinking about an evil talking nicotine patch. It sounded like a very disturbing Adult Swim series.
She needed to stop now. This was too much.
But she believed them. Evil talking mark and everything.
Dammit.
So now she needed to think about souls.
***
“I really don’t know how a soul fits into anything,” Margaret confessed helplessly to Castiel.
At least an hour had passed when she had finally emerged from her mental shield-bunker. Long enough, anyway, for a take-out styrofoam cup of tea on the table in front of her to get cold. She also noticed a shiny spot of grease next to it that indicated the recent presence of some junk food. Although she regretted the current absence of said junk food, she was actually impressed that they had remembered to get her something in the first place. Whenever she made her shielding that strong, it took a special effort to notice or even recall her presence.
Sam and Dean were at the other library table with some books, going through their regular daily research routine. So Margaret found herself sitting with Castiel, trying to make some sense of – well, everything.
The world she knew when she woke up this morning had disappeared forever. Now it was filled with angels and demons and souls and fucking talking evil scars.
“Okay, here’s what I do know. I know everyone is unique. And I know almost everyone’s the same. But my framework is not equipped – I don’t have any objective…” She gave up. “Look, to do what I do, I need a way to arrange objective information, so that I can measure changes, set up metrics, indicators that help to differentiate what’s me and not-me if I ever go…spelunking in someone’s mind. It’s the only way I can reasonably ensure we both come out of it ourselves. You know, ‘Yay Science!’”
“Each human soul is unique,” Castiel told her. “Perhaps you are sensitive enough to feel the differences. And I see no reason why a soul could not serve as your base framework with all the other data incorporated into it…” She realized he was settling in for a metaphysical bull session. She needed to stop him. She just couldn’t take in any more information.
“Unh, could we save any further paradigm shifts for another time? I’m still trying to come to terms with evil scars.” She sighed. “In any case, I don’t know how much I can safely help. I’ve never come across supernatural evil before. I don’t know how to deal with it. It scares the crap out of me. I don’t know if anything I do will even have any effect. To top it all off, the fact remains that those two have buried issues. I’ll be setting off landmines left and right and I don’t want to rupture anything between them. It’ll just make things worse.”
“If you would just let me give you a little bit of information…” the angel began.
“No,” she said firmly. “If I received information directly from your mind, I wouldn’t be able to factor out your point of view in a way I can I trust. Frankly, you’re … weird. I have no frame of reference to help me calibrate what’s your personal bias and what’s… celestial sparkle-dust or whatever. I really need to examine each piece of information and decide where it goes. I just do. I’m sorry.”
“Dean is a good man,” Castiel said quietly. “He deserves a chance.” Did she detect a note of pleading? He was so human and inhuman that for some reason she felt like crying. She definitely didn’t have any frame of reference for this. An angel. Pleading. With her.
“We can try the old-fashioned way, by talking,” she began. Castiel looked at her with something like hope. “It’s just that Dean has so many unconscious, and conscious, defenses, it could be months before I figure out what will help – especially for the long term.”
She looked over at Dean. He didn’t even bother to pretend that he wasn’t listening. He seemed uncomfortable, though, as if he was about to object. But something stopped him. Was it guilt? Hope? When she couldn’t tell, she realized that she was exhausted. There was nothing she could do for him tonight.
“But that’s for another day. I need to go home. I need time to think.” She looked over at Dean again, considering. “In the meantime, have you tried breathing exercises? Breathe in through your nose, hold, then breathe slowly out of your mouth?”
Dean snorted. “I can get that kind of advice from watching reruns of Oprah.”
She grinned. “That’s actually where I first heard it. Funny how you knew it was Oprah.” Off his sour look, she added, “But it works. It’s a measure of control and it triggers real physiological changes. Try it if you haven’t already.”
She thought of one more thing to try to help him out before she left to sort out her own information overload. She got up and walked over to the table where he and Sam were working. “Have you named it yet?”
“Named what?”
“Your fucking evil talking scar,” she said, as if it should have been obvious. “Like ‘FETS,’ the acronym for fucking evil talking scar. It actually looks like a backwards ‘F’.”
Dean pulled his arm towards his body protectively. “It already has a name. It’s the fucking Mark of Cain. Why the hell would I give it a nickname?” He sounded outraged, for some reason.
“I dunno. I thought gallows ‘humor’ was your favorite coping mechanism.” She added insult to injury by using quote-y fingers.
Castiel murmured helpfully, “Dean doesn’t believe the air quote gesture is appropriate. Under any circumstances.”
“Oh, it’s entirely ‘appropriate’ when you’re trying to bug the crap out of him,” she countered.
Dean just rolled his eyes. “I liked you better when you were a hysterical tea-drinking schoolmarm.”
Sam chimed in, “’FETS’ isn’t right. The scar doesn’t actually talk.” He paused, then asked Dean, “Or does it?”
“Yeah, it does. It says ‘Kill Sammy’ but I nobly refrain.”
“The FETS has no imagination,” Margaret complained.
“It’s actually a fucking evil mark that doesn’t talk. So ‘FEM’ maybe,” Sam offered with a smile.
“I do not have a fem arm!”
“Ha! You should be so lucky.”
Dean let that one go as he stared thoughtfully into the distance for a moment. Then he smiled rather reluctantly. “Mr. Fuzzles.”
Sam smiled in real delight. “Like Mr. Fizzles’ evil twin?”
“Mr. Fizzles?” Margaret asked in surprise. It sounded so… twee.
Sam smiled ruefully. “Mr. Fizzles is kind of a child therapist sock puppet.”
“That’s…terrifying.”
“You should’ve seen it in action,” Dean said with a shudder.
Margaret tried not to think too hard about equating the Mark with an evil child therapist sock puppet. Maybe she should have kept the nickname suggestion to herself. It was this kind of potential misstep that made her feel the need for more backstory.
It was time for her to leave. She looked around and realized that she hadn’t even brought her purse with her. She really really needed to analyze the “Castiel Effect” as soon as possible so she could defuse it. “Can I catch a ride home with someone? I don’t even know where we are.”
“Dammit Cas!”
“I didn’t ‘whammy’ her!” But he got up to take her home.
She took a last look back at Sam and Dean. The books on their table reminded her of something she had meant to ask earlier.
“Do you have any family journal or history or something in writing that I could look at while I’m home?” Reading was her favorite way of absorbing information. She could infer a lot from just names, places and dates, and even more if the document were handwritten. She could go at her own pace. And most importantly, she could react openly and spontaneously, without worrying about how her reaction was affecting another person. It was exponentially simpler, although admittedly incomplete.
Cas was smiling at her with something approaching human satisfaction. It was so unexpectedly… normal that she barely noticed the alarm from the others. “Have you ever heard of Carver Edlund?” he asked her.
“Oh HELL no!” “SHUT IT, Cas!”
~~ The End ~~