Chapter Text
Bedtime was at 7 o’clock. Cas knew that, and he knew, in a vague sense, when that was meant to be. He could read the numbers on the little digital clock that lit up his room with a pale blue light, but he wasn’t entirely sure what they meant. Not really. 7 o’clock meant it was time for bed. 7 o’clock meant the sky outside was getting dark, and even though he could still hear older kids riding by on their bikes, and the TV downstairs was keeping him awake, he was still tucked snug in his bed with the blankets up to his chin and the glow in the dark stars on his ceiling shining weakly down on him. Or at least, he was supposed to be. Adults, he supposed, didn’t have a good grasp on time, and perhaps that was why they were so intent on him being in bed based on it. There were so many other things he could have been doing that were so much more important than laying in bed waiting for sleep when he wasn’t even remotely tired. And so he defied the clock and it’s arbitrary hours. But he did so quietly.
The trick, he had discovered, was not to move around too much. If he moved too quickly, or made too much noise, his parents would hear and come to check on him. He’d discovered that very early on, before he could even truly remember doing it. What he did remember was the surprise that came with the realization that sound carried. That he had been heard and discovered and the result had been a removal of the toy he most wanted to play with. The noisier toys, therefore, were off limits. The music makers and most definitely Jack in his frustrating box, predictable and boring yet somehow still a source of momentary amusement, were all left untouched. That left him with the simpler toys; the stuffed animals that had been with him, he assumed, forever. He was quite busy lining them up on his windowsill, believing that, at the very least, they should have a chance to see the real stars and not the fake bits of greenish stickers that littered his ceiling without rhyme or reason, when he saw her for the very first time.
The house next door belonged to a man and a woman with no children of their own, or so Cas’s parents had said. When they’d moved in barely a month ago, he had been excited by the prospect of new neighbors who might bring with them someone he could play with or perhaps a dog or friendly cat. The disappointment he’d felt when they came with none of those embellishments had been crushing to his tiny, six year old heart, but he had moved on admirably. Now, he stood still in confusion, a look of concern far beyond his years twisting his features as he gazed down into the yard next door. His view was partially blocked by the limbs of a large tree that grew between their houses, it’s trunk firmly placed on his neighbor’s side of a rather tall privacy fence which they had been quick to build the moment they moved in. Normally, Cas couldn’t see into their yard at all. But, through a small gap between limbs, he could see her: a small girl of about his own age, sitting by herself in the grass. Her back was turned to him, leaving her as little more than a pair of hunched over shoulders and long, slightly tangled brown hair. He felt a slight pang of jealousy as he watched her. He had certainly never been allowed to play outside so late, with the sky getting darker by the minute and the balmy summer air taking on the slight chill of night. Already, small pinpricks of light were rising from the grass as lightening bugs began to rise up into the air, and the mild pang of his jealousy twisted almost painfully in his small chest. Why was she allowed to be outside when he was expected to go to bed?
Cas stood for a moment in consideration, then reached for the edge of his window and gave a mighty shove. The windowpane slid open, but only a few inches. It grated against the frame, giving the slightest squeal of paint on on paint, and Cas froze, listening. He’d made a sound. Slightly panicked, he waited for the sound of his mother’s footsteps coming to check on him. Would it be better or worse if he tried to throw himself into bed? What if she hadn’t heard him yet? Surely the squeak of bed springs would bring her even faster than the small noise his window had made, wouldn’t it? He stood, frozen on the spot for what felt like an eternity, but the only sound he could hear was the racing of his own heart.
Looking back up at his window, Cas huffed in frustration. It was barely open and already too high for him to push further. Dismayed, he looked around his small room for something to help him. Against one wall stood a tiny Fisher Price easel and a bright red chair to match it. Grabbing the chair, Cas lifted it and shuffled across the room, not wanting the sound of dragging chair legs to attract the notice of his parents. Placing it beside the window, he climbed up, and pushed the glass higher. It rattled in its frame, but did not squeak again, for which he was very grateful. He had to speak to the girl, whoever she was. He had to know how she had convinced her parents to let her play when his were so annoyed with him whenever he resisted bedtime. His leg bumped one of his toys, a small, sad eyed dog, and it toppled out of the window, falling all the way to the ground. Quite a long way down… Cas swallowed nervously, and hesitated.
Below him, the girl laughed. It was a quiet sound, one he was familiar with. One that was meant not to attract attention, but had to be voiced all the same. It wasn’t the loud, almost aggressive laugh he was so used to on playgrounds and at daycare. The other children, they always seemed to laugh as if it were more about making noise than expressing their joy, something he’d never been entirely comfortable with. Something he’d never been able to understand. They were laughs for other people. This was a laugh meant for herself. Courage renewed, he clambered onto the windowsill and reached out to grasp the thick branch of the tree where it brushed against the house. Some nights, when the wind blew, the branch would bang against his window enough to frighten him. But tonight the air was cool and the wind was calm, and the branch stayed steady as he climbed out onto it.
The realization came to him, rather belatedly, that he hadn’t entirely thought this through. The ground was so far beneath him and, as Cas scrambled quickly yet carefully towards the comforting bulk of the trunk, he tried not to think about just how far down that actually was. His heart was again racing fast in his chest, but he tried not to listen. Instead, he listened to her. Who was she? He knew she didn’t belong to the neighbors...couldn’t belong to the neighbors. They’d been there for ages now, he surely would have seen her. Or at least he should have seen them carrying in things for her. He’d watched avidly as the movers unloaded furniture and boxes without number, but he hadn’t seen a child’s bed go through those doors. Perhaps he had missed it?
Here, closer to her side of the world, he could see her a bit more clearly. From above, he peered down at her, and saw for the first time what she was doing. She was building, in a way. Little sticks and leaves were piled up in front of her in what could vaguely have been called a building, or perhaps a castle. The latter was supported only by the deep round trench she was industriously digging around her tiny structure, obviously a moat. Her hands were dirty in a way that would have made his own mother shriek with dismay. He wanted to help. He wanted to dig and have dirty hands too. He lost his fear to haste as he began climbing quickly towards the ground.
The ground grew nearer, though he tried not to watch it creeping upwards, fearful he would lose his grip if he wasn’t watching his hands. One foot at a time. One branch at a time. The descent was easier than he expected, the close growing tree limbs forming a natural ladder for him almost all the way to the ground. Almost. Castiel paused, his feet on a wide branch, nearly wide enough for him to stand without support, and looked down. That was it. He was out of tree to climb, and he was still much too far off the ground. Had he been older, or at least a bit taller, it might not have seemed like such a vast distance. As it was, he might as well have been looking into the depths of the Grand Canyon. He looked back up at his window, seemingly just as far away as the ground, and swallowed. He wasn’t sure he could go back up the way he came, but there was nowhere else to go except down. Making up his mind, he lay flat on his stomach on the wide branch, easing his legs over as far as they would go until he dangled over emptiness. Closing his eyes, he let go.
He landed with a small thump that seemed rather anticlimactic, all things considered. His hands stung and, as he sat up to investigate the damage, he saw that they were scraped and dirty from the tree branches, and a long scrape ran down the length of his right arm where he’d made contact with a hidden rock on the ground. He prodded the injury with one dirty finger, wondering if it would be worth the effort to cry. It didn’t hurt a great deal, and causing a fuss would only get him bundled back upstairs to bed.
“Why’d you fall out of the tree?”
Cas jumped, his attention flying from the wound on his arm to the corner of the house where a small, slightly grubby looking little girl stood, watching him. He’d been so intent on deciding just how injured he might be that he’d very nearly forgotten the reason he’d climbed the tree in the first place, and hadn’t even considered how much noise he must have made doing so. He lowered his arm to hide the damage as quickly as he could.
“Didn’t fall,” he said defensively. “I jumped.”
“Looked like you fell.”
Unwilling to justify himself a second time, he stood, grateful when his legs only barely shook. There was a small sting as his pajama pants pulled across his knees and he wondered if perhaps he should have checked them for injury as well. Scrapes aside, however, he seemed to be okay. He watched the girl carefully, taking a small step towards her. As he did so, she took a small step backwards.
Cas glanced back up at his window, surprised again by how far away it seemed from the ground. As far away as the moon, almost. How would he get back up there? He swallowed nervously. He had never been out this late. Never climbed down from the tree. The climb down had cost him some scrapes and bruises, what would it cost to get back up to his room? He couldn’t begin to imagine how he would accomplish that. The task was too large at present so he turned his full attention back to her. “I saw you playing,” he said finally, hoping that might explain things better. In case that didn’t seem like enough of a reason to shimmy down trees he added, “I wanted to play, too.” There was a slight pause, as he moved toward her work. “What are you doing?” The girl merely shook her head, taking another small step backwards, away from him.
“People aren’t supposed to talk to me.” She ducked her head slightly, the curtain her hair falling in stringy locks across her face as she glanced back up at him.
“Why not?”
“I’m a bad thing.”
Cas opened his mouth to argue, to tell her kids weren’t bad things, they couldn’t be. The flat certainty in her voice was confusing. It sounded altogether much to like his mother when she said he had to do something he didn’t want to, merely because it was good for him. Like bedtimes and broccoli, that was how she described herself, this strange girl. He wanted to tell her she was wrong, even though he didn’t know her. He didn’t need to, did he? But he never got the chance.
A sharp sound interrupted him, rusty hinges on a screen door, and the girl jumped backwards. The back door of her house had flown open and the woman Cas knew to be his neighbor came hurtling out of it, faster than he’d ever seen an adult move anywhere except television. She took one look at the two of them, and uttered a high pitched shriek that hurt his ears. He looked around frantically, thinking perhaps he should hide, but she was already moving in their direction. The woman scooped the little girl up to her chest roughly, small limbs sticking out at strange angles as she turned and ran back the way she had come. From behind her emerged a large man, the Daddy of this particular house, Cas supposed. The man stooped and hooked his hands under Cas’s arms, lifting him gently and without a word. The urge to squirm nearly overtook him. He did not like being lifted, particularly by a stranger, and he was almost certainly going to be in a great deal of trouble now. The thought made him shrink in on himself, cowering against the man as he was shifted against his side. They rounded the high privacy fence that divided their yards and walked calmly towards the front door of his house. He could still hear the television program his parents had been watching before he’d climbed out the window what seemed like hours ago.
The moments that followed all blended together a bit for Cas. Shouting was not a frequent occurrence in his house, and the reactions of his parents to his sudden appearance at their door elicited not only the expected anger, but also a great deal of fear that he had not been prepared for. He felt chagrined and, though he was not prone to being a very tearful child, he felt a wetness at his eyes and a lump in his throat born of confusion and embarrassment. He found himself, in what seemed like mere moments, bundled upstairs and back in bed. His hands stung from the quick scrub down he’d gotten, making them feel strangely worse than they had before. His mother had latched the window to avoid any further escape attempts and retired back downstairs. The soft rumble of adult voices was a comfort and a source of anxiety all in one. They were talking about him, he felt certain, but at least they weren’t yelling. It was very dark by the time he became calm enough to lay down, and still they talked. He was just beginning to doze, despite his best efforts, when the door slid open and a slice of light from the hallway roused him. His mother walked into the room, hands primly clasped in front of her, and her eyes on the carpet. She didn’t look up as she sat on the edge of his bed. He didn’t like the strange seriousness about her, and he sat up in bed, fixing her with a perplexed, and perhaps a slightly sulky look.
“Castiel, what you did tonight was very dangerous. You could have been very seriously hurt.” Cas hung his head, looking down at the blue patterned blanket with it’s covering stars and planets. He picked at a loose thread unhappily. His parents had yelled at him, he could have been hurt...this was all so much more serious than he’d thought it would be.
“I just wanted to play with the little girl. How come she gets to play outside when I have to go to bed?” His voice turned petulant and he felt the distinct urge to cry creeping up on him again. He didn’t like the way his mother wouldn’t look at him. He glanced up at her, his expression pleading. Even in the darkness, he could see her face tighten.
“The little girl you saw is very sick. She wasn’t supposed to be out at all, her parents thought she was in bed just like you.” She tried to smile, but it didn’t seem real, and he didn’t trust it.
“She didn’t look sick.”
“Well…” His mother sighed, edging further onto his bed and gathering him up close against her side. He took comfort in the closeness, snuggling in against her warm body and pressing his face against her side. “Sometimes people who are sick don’t look like they are from the outside. Sometimes it’s inside them, and they can look perfectly normal to you or me. I don’t want you sneaking over into their yard anymore, okay? If you see her outside, you come tell me right away so I can tell her parents. We have to look out for her, you and me, okay?” She looked down at him and, this time, her smile seemed more genuine.
Cas thought for a moment, the gravity of the situation sinking in. She needed someone to protect her. Parents were supposed to watch over their children but clearly she needed more than just that. “Okay,” he said, nodding slowly as the weight of this important responsibility settled onto his small shoulders. “I can look out for her.”
“That’s my sweet boy,” she said, giving him a squeeze and leaning down to kiss him on the top of the head. As she pulled away, he clutched at a trailing edge of her sleeve, feeling sheepish, but also a little frantic at the same time.
“I dropped Brown Dog out the window.”
“I’ll get him for you. Now you go to sleep.” She kissed him again, and drifted out into the hall, leaving the door cracked just enough that a sliver of light cut through the room, keeping the darkness at bay.
A minute passed. Perhaps two. He was just beginning to wonder if he would be able to stay awake long enough for his mother to bring the toy back to him or if he would succumb to sleep before she could find it when the window slid open. It was almost noiseless, but not entirely. There was no squeak as when he’d attempted his escape, but the rattle of glass was enough to rouse him. Cas sat up quickly, a mixture of alarm and curiosity chasing away his drowsiness. His mother had locked the window. He’d seen her. A small weight settled on the edge of his bed and, just visible in the light from the door, he could make out the shape of her profile. The girl from the yard. She held something out to him in the dark and he reached for it automatically, his hands closing over Brown Dog’s familiar snout. He drew the toy to his chest and hugged it tight, automatically.
“You dropped him,” she said, unnecessarily.
Cas held the small dog up, squinting at him in the half light, face scrunched up in thought. He was relieved to have Brown Dog back, but the feeling was dwarfed by his surprise. Surprise at her presence. At the strange way she’d entered his room. He studied the large, patched face of his old friend for a long moment and then, without hesitation, he thrust the toy back towards her. “You should keep him. I like Cat better.” Her face fell minutely and he fumbled to right the wrong. “Thank you for getting him.” He leaned forward, wanting her to know he meant it. He was intensely relieved to have Brown Dog back, and grateful, but if she was sick then he wanted to do something nice for her. She should have a friend to watch her since he couldn’t all the time. “He fell down so far. He could have been hurt.” He parroted his mother’s words at her, hoping they were the right ones. Hoping she understood. Her hand closed around one floppy paw, drawing the toy out of his grip, and Cas beamed.
“You fell down, too.”
“I didn’t fall,” he defended himself again, a touch more forcefully this time, now that he was no longer taken by surprise.
“Did you get hurt?”
He hadn’t been hurt, at least not in his opinion, but the sting was still there. He held his arm out in answer, turning it so she could see the long scrape along the outside. She set Brown Dog down and leaned over his arm, not really touching him, merely looking.
“Does it hurt?”
“Didn’t till it got all clean,” he said, a note of sulkiness working its way into his voice. He’d been trying to be so brave, and then soap had gotten involved.
She poked at him and he did his best not to flinch. Her fingertips trailed along the length of the scrape making him wince. A slight tingly sensation went up and down his arm, but it disappeared quickly. It felt a lot like when his arm fell asleep if he laid on it funny, but it faded as he gave it an experimental shake. The scrape was still there, but it didn’t burn as much. She turned over one of his hands and prodded his palm as well, then moved on to the next. By the time she was finished, both his arms felt vaguely numb, but much better than they had before.
“That better?”
“Yes.” It was a simple answer to a simple question about something he hadn’t any hope of understanding. What had she done? He wasn’t sure. He only knew that he felt better. Weariness was settling over him as he watched her, the events of the day quickly beginning to catch up with him and his eyelids began to droop as he watched her. He was up so much later than he normally was. He’d climbed a tree. He’d been yelled at by strange people and his parents. Cas sagged back against his pillows, fingers curling around the edges of his blanket as his eyelids began to droop. He should thank her, he thought. But no thanks came. “What’s your name?”
“Meg.” She didn’t ask for his.
“Are you sick?” His mother had said she was, and that meant she had to be. But she looked fine to him. Nothing wrong with her at all.
“No, I’m not sick.” She picked up Brown Dog again, looking into his shiny plastic eyes for a long moment before nodding. Cas struggled to stay awake, he still had questions after all.
“Then why are you a bad thing?” Already half asleep, he wasn’t sure if he’d asked, or simply thought about asking. He thought he saw her shrug.
“I just am.”
“No.” But he had nothing else left to argue with. His eyes closed and he barely felt it as her weight shifted off the foot of the bed. He dozed, not sure if she had left, and unable to check. A soft bit of fur brushed against his face and he reached automatically to grab whatever it was. Cat. She must have plucked her from the windowsill.
“Can I come back later?” Her voice was barely a whisper, so close she must have been right at the edge of his bed. He wanted to check, but his eyes had other ideas and remained closed. “When you’re alone and we can play, can I come back?”
The ghost of a smile pulled at his face, already slack with sleep as he lost his hold on consciousness. He had just enough in him to nod before he lost the battle and drifted off. He didn’t even hear her close the window behind her as she left.
When Cas woke in the morning, it was to find Brown Dog missing, his window firmly latched, and a long pink patch of skin on his arm where the scrape had been. It wasn’t gone, exactly, but it was so much better, and it didn’t hurt at all now. He hugged Cat to his small chest and waited for his mother to come up and get him for breakfast.