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Castiel couldn’t quite tell what had possessed him to find her.It wasn’t easy. He’d spent more than year locked away in Purgatory and things on earth had changed more than just a bit. Sam and Dean had gone back to their hunting and him… well, away from Heaven and with not much else to do, Castiel set out on a mission to redeem himself.Meg was the first person who popped in his mind. He owed her a debt of gratitude, after all. She’d looked after him when he was ill and she’d aided them in the fight against the Leviathans. She didn’t have to do any of those things, but she had nonetheless and for, he needed to find out where she was.“No, sorry, Cas, we really don’t know,” Sam told him when Castiel expressed his desire to find her. “I couldn’t find her anywhere after the fight against Dick and afterwards, well… I wasn’t exactly keeping my ear to the ground.”Dean groaned and poured himself another shot of whiskey. He didn’t like to be reminded of the fact had retired from the life while his brother was away in Purgatory.“Why do you care to find her anyway?” he asked. “She was a demon bitch and if she doesn’t come around to bother us anymore, I say good riddance.”Castiel clenched his fist tightly. He reminded himself that Dean wouldn’t understand and forced his tone to remain calm.“She was my friend, Dean. She was kind to me.”“Yeah, because it was in her best interest to be.” Dean rolled his eyes. “The way I see it, you don’t owe her a damn thing.”Perhaps he was right. But Castiel still wanted to find out what had become of her, where she’d gone. After all, Crowley was still King of Hell. That wouldn’t be the case if Meg had something to say about it. So where had she gone? Why wasn’t she conspiring against Crowley? Why hadn’t she come back to find him if he was the only ally she had in the world?Was she dead?The thought shook him to the core. No, she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. She was far too smart and resourceful for that.“I’ll find her nonetheless,” he declared.Dean gave him a quizzical look, but ended up shrugging.“Knock yourself out.”Castiel flew away from the seedy motel room where the brothers were staying and began his search.His first thought was that perhaps he could summon her, but after gathering the necessary ingredients and reciting the spell in a deserted house where no one would be bothered if a demon showed up all the sudden.
“Are you sure you need to find her?”

“She was Azazel’s daughter, Lucifer’s lieutenant. She might know a lot of things about what we’re looking for.”

Naomi’s face was hesitant.

“Very well,” she said. “Though working with demons… it’s unclean. Just make sure that the Winchesters don’t find out why you’re looking for her.”
Castiel blinked and looked around the abandoned house where he had settled. He had a strange feeling, as if he was forgetting something important. He double-checked all the spell ingredients and words, but he was certain he had pronounced and done everything correctly.Meg had simply failed to show up and now he had to wonder why that was. Did she simply not care to speak to him again? Or was she being held captive against her will, unable to respond to his call?The third option was that she truly was dead, but he pushed that thought to the back of his head. She couldn’t be, because if she was, that meant he’d failed to protect her after everything she’d done for him.So the next best option was to start, as Dean would put it, to start cracking some skulls.He didn’t have any luck with the first demon that answered his summoning, nor the second. They were “low level employees”, people Crowley would never trust his secrets to. They had never even heard talk about Meg, which meant that Crowley had underestimated her enough not to inform every demon that she was a possible traitor or he simply wasn’t concerned about her being a threat to him anymore.The third demon was a lot more useful.“Alright, alright!” he screamed out as Castiel dragged the tip of his angel blade down his arm. “I’ll tell you. Just stop, please stop!”Castiel wiped his blade clean and stared down at the demon.“I’m listening.”“I don’t know about your friend!” the demon said. Castiel took a step closer to him, the blade in hand, so the demon started speaking faster: “But I do know that Crowley keeps some prisoners in a storage unit!” he shouted before Castiel could start again. “I’ll tell you all about it, but you have to promise to kill me afterwards.”“Why?” Castiel asked, frowning.“Are you kidding me? If Crowley finds out I spilled the beans, nothing you do to me is going be worse than what he’ll do.” The demon grimaced with a mixture of disgust and fear and shook the head of the young man he was possessing. “So please, just…”Castiel gave him his word. The storage unit was in Wichita, Kansas, and it was apparently guarded by two or three demons at all times. He knew about it because he’d taken a turn one time. There were some prisoners stowed away in there, though he didn’t know who they were.“That’s all, I promise!” he said, with terror growing in his eyes. “I don’t know anything else!”“I believe you,” Castiel said.He plunged his blade in the demon’s chest and held it there while his veins glowed orange and he expired with a grunt of pain. He would’ve simply smitten him, but he didn’t want to alert other angels of his presence.Especially not with what he was about to do.
“Should I ask Sam and Dean to come along with me?”

Naomi shook her head.

“You can handle this yourself, Castiel. In any case, they won’t want to participate in the rescuing of a demon, will they?”

“No, but what if Crowley has angelproofed the place?”
“I have reasons to believe that these prisoners might be of some importance to Crowley,” he told the Winchesters. “Perhaps he’ll even be willing to exchange them for the part of the Demon Tablet we’re missing.”He didn’t like having to lie to them, but he was sure that if he told them the truth, they would never agree to come with them. Kevin had discovered enough about the trials to shut the Gates of Hell that the brothers were willing to give it a try, but with half the Tablet missing, they still didn’t have enough information for it.“Or at the very least it’ll piss him off royally,” Dean said, his eyes shining bright at the prospect of annoying Crowley. “Alright, Sam. This ghost can wait. We’re going to Wichita.”The storage unit was exactly where the demon had said, so at least he hadn’t lied about that. Castiel turned out to be right: the outside walls were completely covered in Enochian sigils that prevented him from setting foot in the place.“We’ll go in first, delete some of the sigils and then you can back us up, okay?” Sam said, as he and Dean prepared their demon-killing knife, guns and blades to go inside.“Very well. I’ll wait.”
“You trust them far too much.”

“They are my friends.”

“They’re humans, Castiel.”

“They had proven to be better than the average human.”

“So you trust their criteria?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”
He blinked, the noises form inside the storage unit distracting him. What had he been thinking? Ever since he returned from Purgatory, all his thoughts were somehow scattered. He thought about telling Sam and Dean about this, but he decided against it. They had enough on their plate as it was.Sam stepped outside of the storage unit, blood dripping from Ruby’s knife, and used a can spray to deform the symbols outside of the unit. It was enough for Castiel to be able to teleport himself inside it.“Alright, what are we looking for here?” Dean asked, kicking aside the bodies of the two demons that had been guarding the place.“Anything,” Castiel said, and without a word, he walked past them and started opening the doors.The first two units were empty, but on the third one, they found the mangled bodies of a girl and a man chained up to the wall. Sam searched for pulse in each of their necks, but finally shook his head, signaling they were dead.“Crowley, you sick bastard,” Dean muttered under his breath as he headed for the third one.Neither of them was prepared to see what they’d found there: Linda Tran, heavily bruised and bloodied, also covered in chains. She was alive, though barely as the brothers knelt next to her, calling her name. Linda’s eyes fluttered open.“Boys,” she coughed. “I knew you’d come. I didn’t tell them… where Kevin was…”“Alright, Linda, don’t worry. We got you. Cas!”Castiel didn’t need them to indicate what they expected of him. With a wave of his hand, he healed of Linda’s physical ailments. Her mental and emotional scars… well, those were another thing. She had obviously been through some heavy torture, but she’d refused to give up her son’s whereabouts. That mental fortitude was to be admired. She started crying as Sam and Dean helped her to her feet.“Take her to the car,” Castiel instructed the brothers. “I’ll check the rest of the units.”They left to do just that as Castiel stalked through the hallway, lifting up the doors with a gesture of his hand. The fourth and fifth were empty, but the last one…She was crumpled up on the floor, her face swollen with bruises and her hair bushy and dirty. Castiel walked inside and without thinking it, he placed a hand on her cheek.“Meg,” he called her.Her skin was cold and rough from being covered in dry blood. For a moment or two, she didn’t react and Castiel feared the worst. But she was still inside that tortured body. He could feel her, the same swirling darkness that always accompanied her.After a few seconds, she finally groaned in pain and looked up through tired eyes.“Clarence?” she whispered, her voice hoarse.Castiel pulled from the chains around her wrists and they easily broke under his angelic strength. Meg was too weak to stand on her own, so he simply put an arm around her shoulders and the other underneath her knees.“It’s okay,” he told her. “I’m getting you out of here.”“Oh, aren’t you a knight in shining armor?” she mumbled, as her head lolled against his chest. She weighed less than a feather in his arms.“Cas?” Dean called out, walking inside the storage unit. “Hey, where are you? Cas?”Castiel appeared behind him. He hoped the poor light in the place made it hard for him to see Meg’s blood in his trench coat.“I’m here.”“Oh, good,” Dean said, turning to look at him. “Was there anyone else in the units?”
“Lie.”
“No,” Castiel said, holding Dean’s gaze. “There seems to be no one else here.”“Well… good,” Dean sighed. “We’re taking Linda to the bunker and calling Kevin to let him know she’s with us. You tagging along?”“I’m going to clean up here,” Castiel said. “Burn the bodies to make sure their spirits are laid to rest.”“Alright.” Dean patted him on the shoulder as he headed for the door. “Thanks for the tip, Castiel. Stay on Crowley’s trail for us, will you?”“Of course.”He waited until the roar of the Impala’s engine extinguished itself in the distance and then flew away from there. He could come back later to clean up, but right now, he had a more pressing issue to take care of.Meg looked even smaller and paler, sprawled over the rundown couch in the abandoned house. Her clothes were torn and dirty, revealing several wounds, some fresh, some days old. Castiel wished he’d had time to place her somewhere more comfortable, but he’d had to return to the storage unit quickly before the Winchesters noticed he was gone. In the few minutes it had taken for him to do that, Meg had lost her consciousness once more.He sat next to her and ran his fingers through her face. He had gone through so much trouble to find her and now she was finally there, a strange mix of feelings was swelling up inside of him. She had always been so daring, so defiant and strong it made him choked up to see the harm that Crowley had put her through. And he sworn himself that he would outright smite the King of Hell for this the next time he had the chance.“Meg,” he called her again.Meg shuddered and shifted a little, but she didn’t wake up. Castiel bit his lip, pensively. She was a demon, something fundamentally opposed to what he was. He didn’t mean to cause her any more harm, but the damage she had endured was so extensive…Castiel took a deep breath and placed a hand on her face once more. Softly, as if he was doing something very delicate (and he was, for he didn’t want to smite Meg on accident) he pushed the power of his grace to the surface.A bolt of energy passed between the two, only for a second but searing hot enough that Castiel moved his hand and stepped backwards almost immediately. Meg gasped loudly as she sat up, shaking and looking around with a surprised and scared expression.“Meg,” Castiel called her, approaching her again slowly. “I’m sorry. I just tried to help you…”Meg stared at him, blinking as she did, confused.“Clarence,” she said. She looked around the derelict room. Castiel noticed how the swelling in her face remitted and some of the bruises faded, as if they were days old instead of recent. Meg turned her attention back to him. “Where are we?”“An abandoned house right outside Topeka, Kansas.”Meg stared at him, her lips half-open. She raised a hand and to his surprise, pushed her fingers inside one of the gaping wounds in her arm. She screamed out in pain before Castiel caught her wrist and pulled it away.“What are you doing?” he asked, frowning at her.“Oh.” Meg blinked several times and then slowly, a smirk that was but the shadow of the one Castiel used to know, appeared in her face. “You’re real.”“Of course I am…”Meg’s arms wrapped around his neck something that sounded a lot like choked up sob came out from her throat.“Sorry for doubting it,” she muttered, burying her face in his neck. “It’s just… Crowley can get really creative sometimes.”Castiel wasn’t expecting that reaction from her, but as he lifted up his arms to wrap them around her Meg’s waist, he couldn’t say he particularly mind it all that much.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“These wounds have festered. We’ll have to change the bandages every few days,” Castiel said, as he wrapped them around her wrist.“Why are you so sweet on me, Clarence?” Meg asked.He looked up at her, taking in her beat up features, the softness in her brown eyes that he could have sworn he’d seen before but could barely remember, as if from a dream.Except angels didn’t dream.
“You need to ask her about the Angel Tablet.”

“She’s been hurt too much. Let me give her some time to heal. Let me help her.”

Naomi’s face was distrustful.

“You’re going to care for this abomination?”

“Just until she’s recovered enough to help me retrieve them. It won’t take long.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “And I still don’t know who Clarence is.”“Would it kill you to watch a movie, read a book?”“A movie, no.” Castiel finished wrapping up her wrist and moved on the wounds in her other arm. “But a book with the proper spells, yeah, it could, theoretically, kill me.”She chuckled softly, as if there was something funny about his answer. He didn’t understand it, but he smiled as well.“So, which Cas are you?” she asked. “Original make and model or crazy town?”“I’m just me,” he said and he changed the topic. “How are you feeling?”“Like I have been tortured every day for the better part of a year.”“Can’t you leave this body? Find one that isn’t as… damaged?”“Crowley bound me to it so I couldn’t escape by smoking out. I guess I’m trapped inside runaway girl for good.”Castiel leaned forwards, moving aside a strand of her hair. It used to be dark brown, but now, for some reason, it was bleached blonde. He didn’t know why he did that, except that he’d finished with the visible wounds and he wanted to have an excuse to just… keep touching her, assessing just how hurt she was. She held his gaze in silence, her burrow slightly frowned, as if she too was trying to figure something out about himself.“Is she…?” he started.“No.” Meg shook her head. “It’s just me in here, which is a shame. Would’ve loved to have some company during all those torture sessions. Is there booze in this place?”Castiel instructed her to stay put. He bought new clothes for her in town (jeans and red blouses and a new leather jacket to replace the torn one) and a bottle of whiskey. He also manifested warm water inside the upstairs bath tub so she could wash herself.“Now, this is what I’m talking about,” she said, as she sank her hand in the water to test it out. “You wouldn’t happen to have some shampoo and bath bombs as well, would you?”“I could fly into town and get toiletries for you. It’d take just a moment.”He turned around and was about to do just that when Meg grabbed him by the lapel of his trench coat and made him stop on his tracks.“Or,” she said, standing on her toes so her face was mere inches away from him, “you could stay and help me out of these ugly clothes…”Castiel swallowed loudly. A second before, he hadn’t been too bothered with Meg’s closeness, but now she was looking up at him and her hand was toying with his tie and all his thoughts came crashing around him.“I…”“Your noodle’s back in order, yes? That’s what you said.”“I… yes, my… noodle remembers everything,” he muttered.She quirked an eyebrow.“Everything?”The realization of what she was insinuating finally dawned on him. His eyes travelled to her lips involuntarily. They were still swollen and had a cut on one side and he had to resist the urge to raise his hand and try to heal them.“If… you’re referring to the pizza man… yes, I remember the pizza man. And it’s a good memory.”Meg’s eyes sparkled with the old mischievousness and spunk he used to know. She stepped even closer and Castiel thoughtlessly put his arms around her waist to hold her in place. He could feel the heat radiating from the darkness swelling underneath her.“This is how it goes, isn’t it?” she said, her voice dropping to a soft whisper. “The guy rescues the girl… and then she shows him how thankful she is…”Her hips swayed lightly to one side and Castiel followed her movements without realizing. Every inch of his skin tingled softly and there was a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. Not unpleasant. Just… different to anything he’d experienced before since acquiring a vessel. The closest thing he could compare it to was what he’d experienced the first time he’d kissed Meg, the adrenaline rushing through his veins, the impulse of taking more and more and more from her…“You don’t have to… we don’t have to…” he stammered.“I want to, though.” Meg’s fingers undid his tie and softly started working the buttons of his shirt. “Don’t you?”Castiel swallowed again as her lips find a particularly sensitive spot in his neck.“Yes.”
“Castiel!”

“I need her to trust me.”

“This is… this is blasphemy!”

“It’s necessary. She has to trust me.”
Meg’s mouth was like fire against his. All the thoughts in his mind disappeared at the same time, as if a gust of wind had blown them away and the only thing left was her, her stinging touch, and the bothersome clothes that kept them apart.She slid his trench coat down his shoulders at the same time his hands wandered underneath her shirt, his fingertips feeling up her feverish skin, the roughness of the scabs and scars on them…That gave him pause enough to break away from her kiss.“Meg,” he began, though he wasn’t sure how to ask what he wanted to know.She didn’t seem too bothered, though. She pulled her shirt over her head and let it fall to the ground. Her small breasts and her stomach were covered in long cuts and wounds and when she turned her back on him, Castiel could see the markings of the lashing she’d received all across it. He run a finger up and down one of them, making the demon shiver under his touch.“That… that…” he mumbled, unable to find a word strong enough to describe what Crowley was.“He’s a megalomaniac with a knife,” Meg said. She unzipped her jeans and pulled them down, kicking her boots as well. Her buttocks and legs had also been heavily stabbed, whipped and burned if the scars on them were anything to go by. “I’ve definitely had worse, but it wasn’t pretty.”She stepped into the tub and stood shamelessly naked in front of him. The curve of his hips and the small bush of dark hair between her legs attracted Castiel’s eyes as if they were a magnet. Despite the state of her body, despite the pain she must have been in, a soft smirk appeared in his lips when she noticed him staring.“Come on in, Clarence,” she beckoned him. “The water is warm.”He didn’t need to be told twice. His clothes, particularly his pants, had become suddenly very uncomfortable and he was more than happy to be rid of them and step on the tub with her. He kissed her once more, untangling her hair with his fingers as she placed a hand on the back of his head and pushed him for a fiercer kiss. Her mouth tasted like ashes, the same taste he remembered from years ago when he had let an impulse he couldn’t understand overtake him. So many things have happened since then, and yet that same craving was flooding his senses again, warming up the blood inside him.Having a body with sexual impulses was a strange thing, but Castiel wasn’t sure he’d be feeling the same way if there was anyone but Meg in his arms as they gently settled down in the tub, with Meg finding her way to his lap. She stroke his erection until a moan escaped from his throat.“You ready for this?” she asked, leaving a kiss right underneath his ear.“I…” he whispered, a sudden nervousness breaking through the fog that desire had placed in his mind. “I have never…”Meg shushed him, placing a finger on his lips.“I have.”She spread her legs to straddle his hips and slowly lowered herself over his hardened cock. Castiel grunted, the pleasure he felt peaking as he placed his arms around her once more. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, but Meg wasted no time in letting him know: she grabbed one of his hands and guided it to cover her breast with it.“Touch me, Castiel. Like that. Slow. Yes,” she breathed against his neck.The water sloshed and splashed when she began to move, gently at first, picking up a steadier rhythm with ever moan and every kiss that left over her mouth, over her clavicle, on her breasts… Castiel lost count of how many times he kissed her body and simply got lost into her, in the warmth of the water and the feeling of her wrapped around him.“Meg,” he muttered against her skin as his pleasure grew and began to spill. “You… I’m…”Once more, she showed him exactly what she wanted. She moved his hands down until his fingers found the sweet spot between her legs, to toy with and to press while she bounced faster and faster, frantically. He kissed her once more, drinking in the screams that fell from her mouth, not caring when her teeth sank on his bottom lip right before she threw her head back and let out one last single, long moan.He couldn’t hold back anymore. He closed his eyes and a second later, he was shaking as a ripple went through him, the tension in his stomach releasing all at once.They stayed where they were, holding unto each other breathlessly.“Oh, I needed that,” Meg muttered against his damp hair. “I really needed that.”Castiel closed his eyes.Of course. After being tortured for so long, it was logical Meg would crave something gentler or something to help make her feel in control of her own body again. He happened to be the closest person that could help her achieve that.
“You’re using her as a means to an end, too.”
Castiel left a lazy trail of kisses on her shoulders until Meg shuddered and moved away from him.“Are you okay?” he asked, noticing the way she hugged herself, as if she was suddenly cold.“Yes,” she said, rubbing her shoulders. She threw her head back and let out a long laugh. “It’s just… I feel so clean.”Castiel didn’t understand the joke.  They found a mattress on the floor in one of the rooms. Castiel searched until he found a covered that moths hadn’t eaten away yet and wrapped them both in it so they could lay down together. There was something so intimate, so fascinating about being naked with her like this, not even making love again. He watched her intently as she rested her head against his bicep. The bruises on her face had begun fading, looking as if they were several days old instead of fresh. Still, for a demon, that was very slow. Crowley probably had done something affect her healing abilities as well as binding her to that body.Meg opened her eyes and stared back at him.“Thank you,” she said. “For… getting me out of that place.”“You’re welcome,” he replied. Now that she’d washed the blood from her hair and that it was beginning to dry in formless curls, it looked a lovely shade of golden. He wondered if she was going to keep it or go back to her usual dark brown.“Why did you, though?”Castiel frowned.“What do you mean?”“Well, you must have had a reason to go looking for little old me. There are easier ways to get laid, Castiel.”
“Ask her about the Tablet.”

“Not yet.”
“You’re my friend, Meg. You were kind to me when I was in trouble. I just couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to you.”Meg watched his face closely and then laughed softly again.“You’re a terrible liar, angel.”He frowned.“I’m not lying.”She left a kiss on the edge of his lips.“Of course not,” she said, with a scoff and light roll of her eyes as she settled against once again. “Do you mind if I sleep? It has been kind of an exhausting day.”“Demons don’t… sleep,” Castiel pointed out.“Not typically,” she agreed, her eyes already closed. “This demon, though, just broke out of captivity and had a nice session of sex with you, so…”“You… think it was nice?”“You know, you’re so much cuter when you’re shutting up,” she snapped.“Sorry.”He stayed as still as he could, as Meg’s breathing became deeper and slower. When he was certain she was fast asleep, he moved away very slowly, trying to slide her arm from underneath her head. He was afraid that she’d wake up, but she simply sighed deeply and snuggled underneath the cover.He stared at her, not certain if leaving her there alone was the best idea. But he needed to go back to the storage unit and cover their tracks. He was certain Crowley must have noticed by then that his prisoners were gone.
“That would be very inconvenient for us, if he were to come after her.”

“He won’t,” Castiel promised. “He’ll still be concentrated in protecting the part of the Demon Tablet he has with him and finding the prophet. Which means he’ll go after the Winchesters.”

Naomi intertwined her fingers, with her elbows over her desk, pensively.

“Very likely. They can’t know about this demon, in case Crowley decides to come after them for information.”
Castiel watched the bright fire consuming the bodies inside the storage unit as the first light of dawn began to break. It would still be a while before Crowley or any of his demons realized what had happened there. And it’d be a while still before he went back to find Sam and Dean.He simply didn’t believe that they’d understand what he was doing with Meg.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Meg’s recovery was slow and very painful. She found her spunk and her sharp tongue first of all, but her powers and her health seemed to be very far behind them.“Bastard truly did a number on me,” she’d said, as she picked up at the scabs on her skin, ignoring Castiel’s request to leave them alone. “I’ve never taken this long to get better.”Castiel gently pushed her hands away and insisted on using ointments and oils to help her instead. Sometimes she would outright refusing, accusing Castiel of trying to “baby” her, other times, she’d agreed on the condition that he was naked while he applied them.He was beginning to suspect that was a ploy to get him to have sex with her. It had yet to fail.
“How much longer until you ask what we need to know?”

“Not much. I promise. I just need her to trust me.”

Naomi glared at him, her mouth twisted in an angry line. She was losing his patience with him.

“This is very inappropriate, Castiel, you know it.”

“Yes. Which is why you need me to do it.”

He wasn’t sure his bluff was going to work. He wasn’t sure of anything. Whenever he stood in that office with stark white walls, answering for every one of his actions that were supposed to get him closer to the mission’s goal, he couldn’t help the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. But then, he couldn’t remember what it was whenever he wasn’t there.

Naomi raised her chin at him.

“Be careful, Castiel.”

She didn’t clarify if she meant to be careful with Meg or with the way he addressed her. Either way, he needed each one of the steps he took next to be carefully calculated.
The scars on Meg back formed a map of the pain she had endured. Castiel acquired the custom of tracing them with his fingers or his tongue as they laid together in the long sleepless nights.“Why did he do this?”“He’s Crowley. He hates me. Does he need any other reason?”He’d asked several variations of the same question, always receiving the same evasive answer. And yes, Meg was a formidable foe to have, but Crowley had the power of all the hordes of Hell under his heel. Time there moved differently, which meant Crowley had been King for several centuries at this point, more than enough time to squash any resistance left. Meg, by herself, couldn’t gather enough loyalists to stage an uprising as she’d tried to do before.“The only question is why he hasn’t come looking for me yet.”“Sam and Dean are keeping him… occupied.”“With what?”Castiel was about to tell her about the trials, but at the last second, he decided not to. He knew all of this was temporary, that one way or another it couldn’t last, whether it was because Meg decided to leave and take another swing at Crowley or because the Winchesters finally closed the Gates of Hell and locked away all demons there. He was going to lose her in the end.He didn’t want to think about it, so he changed the topic.“I think maybe he was trying to make an example out of you,” Castiel suggested. “For any other demon who would dare defy his rule.”“Maybe,” Meg agreed.As much as she accused him of being a bad liar, Castiel could sense she wasn’t telling him the full story. But he knew by then that trying to insist would only make Meg close herself up even more.He brought her gifts whenever he had to leave: alcohol and cheap gossip magazines seemed to be her favorite pastime, since they didn’t have electricity that they could use to connect a radio or a TV.“I know this isn’t the most glamorous place,” he apologized to her. “But it’s isolated and it should keep you safe.”Meg shrugged and assured him she had lived in worse slums.“Only thing I would need is a car, if you can get me one.”Castiel frowned at that request.“Why?”“So I could go to the town and get whatever I want,” she clarified. “For when you’re too busy helping out the Winchesters and can’t tend to my every need.”Castiel kept staring at her until she huffed and shook her head.“I’m not going to run away and disappear on you, Castiel. Crowley still wants my head and I’m sure the boys aren’t going to be happy to know I’m back in the picture. Dean specially.”“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Castiel said, though it wouldn’t be a lie to say that it had crossed his mind. “Why do you need a car? You could just… teleport there.”At that point, Meg had stood up from their mattress and started pacing around the room. In the weeks they’d spent together, he’d got used to seeing her naked and to get naked as soon as he came in through the door. Clothes seemed like a troublesome detail, not worth keeping when it was just the two of them alone. He still felt the desire awakening in him when he watched her sometimes, though.Meg stopped her pacing, leaned against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest and muttered something under her breath.“What was that?”“I said I can’t,” she repeated, a little louder. “I’ve tried. It’s just not… working, for some reason.”Castiel frowned, confused.“Do you think maybe Crowley had something to do with it?” he speculated. “Perhaps you’ll be able to teleport again once you’re completely healed.”Meg shook her head.“It’s not just that,” she continued. “I can’t… seem to do anything.”“What do you mean?”Meg looked away from him for a moment. If Castiel didn’t know her better, he would’ve thought she was embarrassed about having to admit all of this to him.“I’m not strong and fast, like I used to be,” she explained. “I can still move things with my mind, but I have to truly focus and it leaves me with a headache that won’t quit. It’s like… everything that made me powerful is gone.”She sounded immensely frustrated and angry about that, as if she couldn’t understand why her powers were fading.“That’s not all. I’m tired all the time. I need to sleep every few hours, and the whiskey makes it all worse.”“You mean, you can get drunk on the whiskey?”Meg clicked her tongue. It certainly seemed like that was the most humiliating thing about all of this.“You can’t tell me it’s because of the damage I’ve endured,” she said. “Nothing could possibly do this to a demon. Not this way.”She sounded extremely certain about that and now that Castiel thought about it, he couldn’t come up with a reason as to why Meg’s nature seemed to be changing so fundamentally. He stood up and moved closer to her, taking her chin in his hand to make her look up at him. He squinted his eyes, trying to see underneath her human skin, underneath the mask she wore to walk among humans.What he saw left him astonished. The darkness that he was used to seeing swirling inside of her was… lighter. Instead of pitch black and wild, her soul looked black grey, like clouds right before a storm. It still spiraled and changed, but the restless activity that always seem to animate her and other demons of her kind had… subsided, somehow. Not too much. Just enough to be noticeable.“Huh,” he muttered.“What?” Meg asked him, urgency in her tone. “What is it?”“You’re… you’re changing,” he explained. “I don’t know what could have caused this, but you’re right. This is far beyond anything Crowley could possibly do.”“I told you!” Meg exclaimed, but the satisfaction of being right only lasted for a moment. “So what, what’s happening to me? And more important, how do we stop it?”“I don’t know,” he admitted. He moved away from her for a moment, hesitating. “Maybe Sam and Dean will be able to provide an answer.”“What, dumb and dumber?” Meg rolled her eyes, but the worry return to her a moment later. “They don’t… they don’t know about… do they?”Castiel started picking up his clothes from the floor.“No. I haven’t told them you’re here and that I… spend time with you. To be honest, I considered it was none of their business.”“Well, you’re not wrong about that. Not to mention I’m not entirely sure Dean wouldn’t put a knife through me for… everything I did to them.”Castiel was inclined to agree. However, as he started putting on their clothes, he kept an eye on Meg. She was looking in the distance, as if she was distracted by some thoughts or the other. When he finished buttoning up his shirt, he walked closer to her and put a hand on her cheek once more. She shivered.“Meg, what are you thinking?”“Nothing.” She stepped away from him. “It doesn’t matter.”Castiel was tempted to tell her that it did, indeed, matter, but he was certain that she was going to keep refusing to tell him the truth. So he simply kissed her on the edge of the lips and assured her that he’d be back soon before he flew away.Linda and Kevin were in the library, arguing loudly about something when Castiel walked in on them.“Mom, I can still keep going! Sam and Dean need to know how to perform the third trial!”“You’re not good to them if you’re dead of exhaustion!” Linda replied. She pushed Kevin down to a chair and placed a platter right in front of him. “Now, you stay there and have some dinner and then I’ll give you back the Tablet.”Kevin grumpily grabbed the spoon from the bowl of soup and started sticking it in his mouth. Despite his protests, it was clear that the young man was starving and that his mother was right: he looked far worse than the last time Castiel had seen him, pale and with his hair sticking up in every direction. The table where he was eating was covered in papers, notebooks and spent up pens no one had bothered to throw away. Castiel suspected there was a method somewhere inside of that chaos, even if Kevin was the only one that could made sense of it.Linda, on her part, seemed to have recovered from the torture Crowley inflicted on her quite well.“Castiel!” she exclaimed when she noticed him standing in the library. She smiled at him kindly as she walked closer to him. “How are you? I haven’t seen you since…” Her voice trailed off and her smile faltered, clearly not wanting to remember the storage unit and what had gone on there.“It’s good to see you have recovered, Linda,” Castiel replied, politely.“Thanks to you. I didn’t have the chance to tell you that after you and the boys got me away from there.”“You’re welcome.” Castiel nodded. “Speaking of…”“Oh, the boys aren’t here,” Linda said, without him needing to add another word. “Something about Crowley being on the move, trying to stop them from finishing the trials.”Her voice dropped an octave, as if she didn’t want Kevin to hear her speaking of these things. The Prophet, however, perked his head up from his dinner.“Hey, Cas, maybe you know something about this!” he said, his eyes lightening up with hope.“The third trial?” Castiel repeated. He approached the boy. “You’ve found out what it is?”“Yes, but it doesn’t make any sense.” Kevin pushed the platter with the half-finished bowl of soup away and picked up one of the notebooks close to him. “Sam is supposed to ‘cure a demon’.”Castiel blinked a couple of times, assimilating that information.“Cure it?” he repeated. “Of what?”“Its demon-ness? I have no idea,” Kevin said. “I was hoping you could tell me.”“Well, demons are human souls that have been twisted beyond recognition by ages of torture,” Castiel replied, choosing his words carefully. “Perhaps that’s what it means, to return the soul to its pristine state…”He went quite. What he had seen underneath Meg’s skin flashed before his eyes once more: how it didn’t look as endlessly dark as before, how it moved more calmly…“Okay, yeah, I’m with you on that.” Kevin grabbed one of the pens lying around and scribbled a note hastily. “But how exactly does someone go about doing that?”“I… I don’t really know,” Castiel admitted. “I have never heard of such a thing.”Kevin put down the pen. The disappointment in his face was clear.“Well, that’s enough chatting!” Linda said, hastily taking the pen and the notebook from Kevin’s hands.“Mom…”“No trials talk during dinner!” she said, waving a finger in front of Kevin’s face to chastise him. “Now, finish your meal and then you can go back to work.”Kevin sighed deeply and pulled the platter closer to him. It seemed like this was a conversation they’d had many times and he knew there was no point in arguing.“If you want us to call you when Sam and Dean come back…” she added, turning to Castiel.“That won’t be necessary, I’ll talk to them at some other time.” He took a step backwards and then hesitated. “If they need my help for anything…”
“You already have a mission to fulfill.”
Castiel blinked. He’d lost his train of thought, but Linda was nodding nonetheless.“I’ll tell them to call you.”Castiel flew back to the house outside of Topeka, but hesitated on the door for a moment.It couldn’t be possible. Could it? He’d attempted to heal Meg’s wounds with his grace, but it seemed to cause her such pain that he’d desisted immediately. But what if he’d started something that he couldn’t take back? What if what was happening to her, the thing that seemed to terrify her so much, was something he’d done to her?What would she do if it was?
“It doesn’t matter. Perhaps this is a good thing for us.”

“In which way?”

“Maybe you can use this to… coerce the truth out of her.”

“She didn’t break under Crowley’s torture. What makes you think that she will break under mine?”

Naomi squinted at him, the fury she felt barely contained.

“I’m losing my patience, Castiel.”
On the other hand, if Meg was cured, if she was no longer a demon… that’d mean that she wouldn’t be locked away with the rest of the demons when Sam completed the trials. She would get to stay on Earth.With him.He definitely had a lot of things to talk about with her, so finally he stepped inside.“Meg?” he called out.She was sitting on their mattress, with her chain laid on her hand. Her damped hair dripped over her shoulders and for some reason, she’d decided to don the clothes Castiel had brought for her. She barely raised her eyes when he walked inside.“How are you feeling?” he asked her, sitting next to her. Meg didn’t answer immediately, nor did she react when he reached out to grab her hand. “Meg?”She slowly turned her face towards him again.“I’ve been lying to you.”The simple confession surprised Castiel. He knew Meg had done far worse things than lying. It was in her nature, after all. But he never figured she’d… outright admit to it.“What do you mean?”“I said I didn’t know why Crowley wasted his time in torturing me instead of simply sending me somewhere hot and forgotten in Hell.” She made a pause, as if she was looking for the right words to say. “That was a lie. There was a reason.”“Which was…?”Meg swallowed, as if what she was about to tell him was hard on her.“He wanted to know about the Angel Tablet.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“When Lucifer was expelled from Heaven, he stole some things that he didn’t think anyone would miss to have some leverage in times to come. The Angel Tablet was one of them. He hid it away in a crypt and it stayed there, for hundreds of years.”Castiel listened to her attentively, quietly nodding to himself. That made sense. If there was a Monster Tablet and a Demon Tablet, there was bound to be an Angel Tablet as well. What were the contents of it, he couldn’t tell. But if Crowley would torture Meg to get it and Linda to find the Prophet that could decipher it, that meant that he considered it valuable enough to go after it.Perhaps even a weapon to be used against angels.
“Which is why we need to get it.”
“And you know where it is.”“I visited the place back in the day with Yellow-Eyes,” Meg admitted. “He… trusted me to keep these secrets, if something were to happen to him.”“Why are you telling me now?”Meg looked down at their interlocked hands and licked her lips.“I… I don’t know,” she said. “I just thought you needed to know.”That sounded… out of character for her. Castiel kept staring at her, watching her close. He didn’t look into her soul again. He already suspected what he was going to find. Instead, he waited patiently until Meg found her voice again.“I have no idea what’s happening to me,” she confessed in the end. “I… feel…”“Feel what?”“Just… feel,” Meg repeated, frustrated. “That’s not supposed to happen, Castiel. I’m a demon. I’m not supposed to… care. I’m not supposed to feel guilt or remorse or…”She left the sentence without ending it, looking at him with a pleading expression in her eyes, as if she was begging him to understand without her saying another word. Castiel put his free hand on her cheek once more and she closed her eyes, softly leaning into his touch.“But you do,” he muttered, marveled at what he was seeing in her. “You do feel those things.”Was it possible? Had he really began to cure her?“Don’t sound so happy about it,” she groaned. “I hate it.”“I imagine you do.” He lifted her hand and softly left a kiss upon her knuckles. Meg sighed and stared at him again. “I know those aren’t pleasant feelings. I…”“You have no idea,” Meg interrupted him, with a growl. “The things I’ve done? The blood on my hands? That can never… I can’t make any of that go away. I don’t like this!” she snapped.Castiel slowly moved closer to her to put an arm around her waist. Immediately Meg climbed and curled up on his lap, hiding her face in his neck.“Why is this happening to me?” she growled.Castiel decided not to share his suspicions with her. Not for the moment, at least.“It’s true, you can’t change the past,” he admitted. “But, Meg… you said it yourself.” She moved away, looking at him with confusion in her expression. Castiel sighed. He didn’t like talking about this, but it was necessary: “I devastated Heaven. My brothers and sisters, they died by the thousands. By my hand. I thought I was doing the right thing at the time and that… that is something I can never take back either. But we’re here now. We have no one to tell us what to do anymore. We can choose to find a new cause and give ourselves to it.”Meg chuckled, recognizing the words as her own.“Don’t you ever miss the Apocalypse?”“No.” Castiel frowned. “Why would I miss the end of times?”“I miss the simplicity of it. We knew who we were, what we were supposed to do. Now, I’m kind of good, which sucks. And you’re kind of bad… which is actually all manners of hot.”She was making a joke, of sorts. Castiel laughed a little as she once again hid her face in his neck. The grazing of his lips against his skin was electric, impossible to resist. His hands tightened their grip around her body, his desire growing once more as they kissed.
“You have to find the Tablet.”

“It can wait. Just a moment more.”

“No, Castiel. You have to get her to take you to it.”

“But…”

“Right now!”
Meg noticed how he paralyzed under her touch.“What is it, Clarence?” she asked.“We should…” Castiel’s mouth was dry. His instincts, his thoughts, his very grace was screaming at him that something was wrong, but he still couldn’t stop the words that came rolling out of his mouth next. “We should retrieve the Tablet. Before Crowley gets his hands on it. Take it to the Prophet.”“Yeah, okay. Great idea.” Meg’s hands wondered down his chest, looking for his buttons. “We can go after we’re done here.”Castiel wanted her to touch him. He wanted to taste her kiss again, get lost in his body once more. In fact, there was nothing more urgent in the world than for him to sink into the mattress and forget about the world for a while, as he had done so many other nights in the past few weeks…
“No!”
“No,” he repeated. He said. His tongue started moving faster than his thoughts, spilling out words in a jumbled string: “Crowley is… he knows the Winchesters are trying to… the trials. He’s getting desperate… try and stop them, so… the sooner we get the Tablet, the sooner…”“Stop. Castiel, stop. You’re not making any sense!” Meg interrupted him. She tilted her head and touch his face, but it was not a lover’s caress she was after. When she moved her fingers again, they were covered in something red and wet. “You’re bleeding.”Castiel touched his upper lip, just to find out she was right.“I…” he mumbled, though he wasn’t sure what he was going to say. But he had no idea what else to say, because he didn’t know where that bleeding was coming from or why it was happening to him. He stared at Meg, hoping she could know this, hoping she could understand.After a while, she simply sighed.“Okay, listen. If it’s that important to you, we can go find the damn thing now.”“Are you… really…?”“Yes. Should be easy enough. Crowley has no way of knowing where it is. No one else is going to follow us there.”Something inside of Castiel gave. As if a knot that had been constricting him suddenly loosened up and let him breathe easy once again.“Thank you.”Meg tilted her head at him.“Are you sure you’re okay, Clarence?”“Yes.” He closed his eyes, trying to put his thoughts in order again. When he opened them again, he knew what he had to do. “Yes, I’m fine. Let’s go.”  The crypt was right outside a small town in Missouri called Lincoln Springs. The place had been destroyed in a flood over a hundred years ago, Meg explained, and rebuilt from the ground up afterwards. A warehouse had been built atop of the crypt some three or four decades before.“By whom?” Castiel asked.The look Meg gave him as they walked down the dilapidated street was enough of an answer to him.“Lucifer said we would need the Tablet after his showdown with Michael, that the angels would be scrambling to reform without his leader afterwards and we could use its power to strike them back,” she explained. “He had everything meticulously planned.”“Except for Sam and Dean,” Castiel pointed out.“I don’t think anyone planned for those two to screw everything up for everybody,” she huffed.Castiel grabbed her by the hand, stopping her in her tracks underneath a dim streetlight. Meg turned to look at him, confused.“I’m glad they did,” he said. “If they hadn’t, you and I never would’ve had the chance to… get to know each other. The way we have now.”Castiel didn’t know why, but he’d had a bad feeling all through the night. And if something did come to happen, if something were to tear them apart at that moment… there were so many things he still wanted to say to her, so many things he still wanted to show her…Meg scoffed, but her lips twitched as if she was holding back a smile.“You’re getting all sentimental on me, Clarence…”He kissed her. That was all he could do right then, the only way he could really let her know everything that was going through his mind, through his head. Meg clung to his neck and opened her mouth, letting him drink in the stinging fire in her. Castiel hadn’t realized until that moment just how important she’d grown to be for him, just how much it’d hurt to lose her.She broke away first.“I…” Castiel started, but she placed a finger over his lips to shush him once more.“Come on,” she said, turning from him and stalking confidently towards the warehouse.“But… I have something to tell you, Meg.”Meg looked at him over her shoulder, a playful smirk in her lips.“You can tell me afterwards. The sooner we’re done here, the sooner we can go home and finish what we started.” And with that, she pushed the warehouse’s door open and disappeared inside it.Castiel stayed back a little, as his mind registered what she’d said. “Home”. He’d never thought about the abandoned house in Topeka as a “home”, more like a temporary refuge, a place where they could rest and recover for a little while. “Home” meant something permanent. “Home” meant something where they could stay forever.He had to tell her about the trials. He had to find a way to keep her with him. He couldn’t keep postponing it.He took a step to follow her inside the warehouse.“Cas, what the hell are you doing?”The voice startled him more than he was willing to admit.“Dean?” he asked, turning around. “What are you doing here?”The hunter stood underneath the same streetlight where Castiel and Meg had kissed each other a moment before. He stared at Castiel with eyes wide open, as if he was suddenly horrified by his friend.“Tell me it’s not true,” Dean demanded, ignoring his question. “Tell me you haven’t been working with Meg!”The accusatory tone in his voice immediately put Castiel on the defensive. Painful memories started coming to light in his mind: of him trapped in a circle of holy fire, of Dean, Sam and Bobby, the people he called his friends, his family, looking at him with a mixture of disgust and disappointment. The same emotions he could see now on Dean as he walked closer to him.“What is wrong with you? Do you have a fetish for demons or something? First Crowley, and now Meg? Do you know what she did to us? Do you even remember she killed Ellen and Jo?”“No.” Castiel took a step backwards, trying in vain to escape his friend’s glare. “It’s not like that, Dean. It’s… it’s complicated…”“Yeah, you always say that,” Dean said, rolling his eyes. “Can’t you see what she’s doing to you? She’s corrupting you, man!”“That’s not…!” Castiel started protesting, but a searing pain went up his arm, making his words dissolve in a grunt of pain. When he looked down, astonishment washed over him, preventing him from saying another word.A large red wound had appeared on the back of his hand, seething with pus and blood. It grew larger even as he looked at it. The same searing pain grew on his cheeks, on his abdomen, on his legs. His vessel was coming to apart, the way it had done when he’d tried to contain the Leviathans inside of him.“What’s happening?” he asked, unable to prevent the terror from showing in his tone. “Who’s doing this to me?”“She is,” Dean said. “Don’t you see it? Maybe you cured her with your grace, but look at what that did to you!”Castiel didn’t have time to wonder how Dean knew about him trying to cure Meg. The terror growing inside him was drowning out all other senses and thoughts. Was he going to die? Was he going to stop being an angel?“You know what you have to do, don’t you?”Dean’s voice was softer and the weight of his hand on Castiel’s shoulder, heavy. Castiel looked up at him, knowing exactly what he was about to say.“No,” he muttered. “Dean, please. No.”“You have to kill her, Cas. It’s the only way to stop her from draining you.”“I love her,” Castiel mumbled. He couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth, but as he said it, he knew deep inside that they were the absolute truth. “I can’t, Dean. I love her.”“She’s a demon, Castiel,” Dean said, severely. “Even if you do love her, do you honestly believe that she could ever love you back?”“No…”Dean grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him violently against the wall of the warehouse. Once again, a part of Castiel had time to wonder how his human friend had been able to perform such a feat before he’d had time to react and stop it. But all his emotions were in turmoil and he just couldn’t stop to think about it when Dean was grabbing him by the lapels and demanding he paid attention to his words.“Listen to me! You have to kill her, Castiel! You know it’s the right thing to do!” His voice dropped again, softer, almost merciful: “If you kill her, it’ll all be forgotten. No one else will know what you did with that abomination.”There was something in Castiel’s hand, something heavy and cold and familiar. When he looked down, he realized that his angel blade had slid from inside the sleeve of his coat to his hand without him noticing.“It’s the right thing to do,” Dean insisted, taking a step backwards. “You know it is.”Castiel raised his blade. For a second, a fraction of a second, he considered sinking in his friend’s chest, scream for Meg, run away with her where no one could find him.But Dean’s words slowly sank inside of him.He was right. Of course he was. Meg was a demon. She could never return his feelings. And once he got the Angel Tablet, she needed to die so no one would know he had it.He lowered the blade.“Atta boy,” Dean congratulated him.“Thank you, Dean,” Castiel muttered.“Go, Castiel. Do it as soon as you have the Tablet.”Castiel wiped his face when he felt something sliding down over his lips. His trench coat came out stained with blood. He had no time to think about this. Meg could have the Angel Tablet by then. He turned his back on him walked inside the warehouse, the blade tightly gripped in his fist. To do what he had to do.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The crypt was pitch black, but Castiel didn’t need any sort of light to look through it. Inside a warehouse, there was a trap door with a set of stairs that descended into the earth. He could hear Meg’s footsteps descending just a few feet in front of him. His conversation with Dean had lasted less than he’d thought.“Hey, Cas!” she called him. “You up there? You coming?”Castiel didn’t think he could speak without his voice breaking, so he simply quickened his pace to catch up with her.Downstairs, the place looked even more like a crypt. He could smell the moss and dust gathered over the years, the dark grey concrete walls meant to withstand time and destruction.In the middle of a room, on a table that was decorated sort of like an altar, there was a large crate. It almost surprised him to see there were no sigils or spells protecting it and for a second, he doubted Meg had told him the truth about it.(She was a demon. Demons lied. She must have been lying when she’d said she was changing. He knew that now. Dean had made him see that).Meg stood with her back turned to him and opened the crate. The hinges creaked and a cloud of dust spread around the room, but neither of them coughed at it. Castiel approached her and looked over her shoulder at the clump of clay that laid inside the crate.“This has to be it,” Meg said, picking it up. “Right? You feel anything around this thing?”“Yes,” Castiel said, though he was more concentrated on staring closely at Meg. “Hand it over, Meg.”She looked up at him, her eyebrow arched in surprise. He supposed his tone had come out too harshly, so he tried to soften it when he spoke again.“I mean, give it to me. I’ll get it to safety.”“Umh… you mean, we will get it to safety, right?” she corrected him, holding the lump closer to her chest.“Yes, that is what I meant. Now, hand it over.”He took a step forwards towards her, at the same time she took a step backwards. He noticed the way her eyes shifted towards the stairs and then down at his hand. She was realizing what was going on, but Castiel still hoped he could get the Angel Tablet to safety before the inevitable end.“Why do you have your blade out, Clarence?”Castiel didn’t bother to answer that question.“Meg, don’t make this harder than it has to.”In the darkness of the crypt, he could see the thoughts going through her head. And the sudden veil of darkness that fell upon her eyes.“Now, when have you known me to make anything easy?”And there was really nothing left to say.Castiel lunged forwards, blade in hand, only for Meg to block his hit with the Tablet. Sparkles flew in every direction as her free hand connected squarely with his jaw, a blow that threw him back more for the shock of it than for its strength.She had been telling the truth. She was weaker, but that didn’t mean that she would go down without a fight.However, even as they distanced themselves to different sides of the crypt, measuring each other up, she seemed to be more on the defensive than anything else.“Why are you doing this?” she asked him. She sounded genuinely confused. “Castiel, what’s got into you?”
“Kill her! Kill her now!”
Castiel teleported closer to her. Meg blocked his hit easily and stepped backwards, swinging at him as he did his best to try to get to her. He didn’t want her to suffer. A quick stab to the heart, and it would be over. He just needed her to be still, but she just wouldn’t…
“No.” He raised his eyes at Naomi. “I don’t… I don’t want to… please, don’t make me hurt her…”

“She has to die, Castiel!” Naomi’s face was a mask of indifference to his pleads. “No one can know about the existence of the Angel Tablet. It could destroy all of us.”
His body moved out of its volition, still attacking as Meg dodged and sent quick punches to his stomach that did very little to deter him.
He wanted to stop. He didn’t want to hurt her. But Naomi kept shouting at him.

“It’s a demon, Castiel. It’s just a demon. You have to end her!”

“No!” Castiel grabbed at his own head, paralyzed with terror, with the realization of how little control he had over himself finally dawning on him. “What have you done to me?!”

“Just relax, Castiel. Let your vessel do what you know deep down is the right thing to do.”

Dean had used those very same words.
He hit Meg on the inside of the arm and with a sharp cry, the Tablet slipped from Meg’s grasp and fell to the ground. The clay broke away, revealing the stone underneath.He barely paid attention to it. He had Meg pinned against the wall. There was a cut on her lip and a growing bruise underneath her eye. (Had he done that?) The edge of his blade was grazing her throat, but her eyes were brown, human, once again.“Clarence, please!” she pleaded. “Please, stop this!”
“Get out of my head!”

“No.” Naomi’s grip was inexorable. “You have to complete your mission, Castiel.”
There were tears in the edge of Meg’s eyes.“Please. If you’re in there. If you can hear me.”
“What have you done to me?”

“What have I done?” Naomi repeated, anger deforming her voice. “I fixed you, Castiel! Look what you did to Heaven! Look what you did to yourself! Consorting with that… that dirty creature!”

“No!” Castiel repeated, backing away from Naomi’s desk. “I won’t hurt her.”

“So you would choose her over us?!”
“Don’t do this,” Meg begged. “I love you.”Castiel’s fingers loosened their grip around the blade’s handle.Meg grabbed him by the shoulders and kneed him directly into the groin. He bent over in pain and she immediately used that opportunity to hit him in the back and get him to fall, sprawled out on the floor. The blade flew out of his hand, but his face was inches away from the Angel Tablet.
“Get up! Finish this, Castiel!” Naomi demanded.
Castiel stretched his hands. His fingertips grazed the sacred stone.A thread of golden light passed from it to him. It didn’t burn or hurt and Castiel closed his eyes, giving himself to it.The last thing he heard was Naomi’s frustrated scream as his mind cleared away from her. He hadn’t noticed until now that he was divided, and the part that had been under her control returned to him, making him full, intact and himself again.He was free.And he had done a terrible thing.Grabbing the Tablet closer, he staggered to his feet.Meg was on the other side of the crypt. There was blood dripping down her left arm while his angel blade glimmered in the right one. She stared at him, with eyes wide open with terror and confusion growing in her.“Meg…” he called out to her, stumbling in her direction.“Don’t come any closer!” she warned him, raising the blade.“Meg… I’m sorry,” he muttered. “It’s… it’s over now. I’m so sorry…”He took another step and Meg moved her hand towards the wall.He barely had time to realize what she’d done. The blood banishing sigil had been hastily scribbled, but it was still clearly distinguishable.“No!” he shouted, but it was too late: Meg slammed the sigil with her open palm.An invisible force pulled from Castiel’s wings, dragging him away at the speed of light. For a moment so brief it would have seen like less than a second to a human, the limits between himself and his vessel blurred and he became nothing but a wavelength, a lightning bolt, an abstract spinning away through space.Then he landed. Once again trapped in the body that’d allowed him to stay on Earth. The body inside which he’d died multiple times. The body that had allowed him to be with Meg in a place that was neither hers nor his.He opened his eyes. The light of dawn was breaking in the distance. He needed a moment to orient himself, but the first thing he knew, was that he was miles away from Lincoln Springs and drained. Even if he flew back there as soon as he recovered from being blasted away, he knew he’d be too late.Meg would have already left.  “So let me get this straight. This Naomi has been controlling you since you returned from Purgatory?”“Yes.”“And you’ve been away playing house with Meg?” Dean sounded mildly scandalized. “Meg?”Castiel remembered the accusatory tone of the Dean he’d encountered outside of the crypt and cringed. The Winchesters had been nowhere near Missouri that night and they’d had to travel for hours to meet him at a nearby Biggerson’s when he’d called them. He didn’t need them to tell him this. He already knew that Dean had been a hallucination sent by Naomi.That didn’t make the memory of what he’d convinced Castiel to do any less painful.“And what happened to the Angel Tablet?” Sam asked, always practical.“I…” Castiel started, but at the last second, he stopped himself, his hand involuntarily travelling to his stomach. He couldn't tell them. Not without jeopardizing everything. “I don’t know. When I went back to the crypt, it was gone. I think Meg might have taken it with her.”The brothers exchanged a quick glance. It was as if they were trying to wrap their heads around everything that Castiel had revealed. Castiel took the moment to watch them closely: Dean looked the same as always, if perhaps a little bit more tired. Sam, though… the trials were taking a clear toll on him. He looked paler than usual and there were dark, deep circles around his eyes. He was trying to keep a brave façade, but it was plain to see that he was in a lot of pain.That was why Castiel hated to ask them what he needed to ask for them.“Can you postpone the end of the trials?” he requested. “Until I find her.”The brothers went quiet again.“Cas…” Dean began.“More coffee?” the waitress interrupted them, with a smile. The minutes it took for her to refill their cups felt eternal to Castiel.“We can’t do that,” Sam said, when the waitress left them alone again. “Crowley’s already suspicious of what we’re trying to do. We need to capture a demon and find a way to cure it soon.”“Yeah, or he’ll bring them all home and won’t let us anywhere near them.” Dean took a sip from his coffee. “I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you. If she really has the Tablet, every angel and demon on the face of the earth is going to be gunning for her.”What Castiel felt at that prospect must have reflected on his face, because Sam muttered: “Dean” in a reproachful tone and shook his head. Dean shrugged, as if what he had said was nothing but a regrettable truth that Castiel was going to need to live with.“I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” Sam announced, shaking his head at his brother, as if he just couldn’t believe how insensitive he was being.The sooner Sam was out of sight, Dean’s face became a mask of pure concern.“We need to finish the trials soon for him too, you know,” he said, lowering his voice as if Sam could hear them. “He won’t tell me, but I know this is affecting him, Cas. And I just can’t…”Castiel nodded. He should’ve known from the beginning that Dean would prioritize his brother’s health over Meg’s disappearance. He could hardly blame him for it. He too would’ve chosen the person he love most, given the circumstances.“I understand,” he said. “I’ll search for her on my own nonetheless.”He left the diner with a flutter of his wings. He’d spent too much time there already and he needed to keep moving if he wanted to avoid detection by Naomi’s garrison.He supposed it was a little more than naïve on his part to hope she’d returned there, but his next stop was the abandoned house in Topeka. He hadn’t noticed just decayed it really was, with its broken windows and the wallpaper peeling off the walls. They were an angel and a demon living there for a little while and they hadn’t needed much. But as he walked down its dusty halls, with a constricting feeling growing in his chest, he couldn’t help but to think that it looked even sadder now, with the covers rumpled on the mattress where they’d made love and Meg’s gossip magazines and empty whiskey bottles abandoned to the side. Like a forgotten testimony of the brief life they’d shared there.He needed to find her again. He needed to tell her…There was a flutter of wings behind him and Castiel turned hastily, the blade slipping easily in his hand.“Calm down, Castiel,” the angel behind him said. “I’m not here to hurt you.”His vessel was that of a short, chubby man with grey hair. He had his hands raised, defensively, and made no attempt to attack Castiel. He wasn’t a soldier, nor an angel he recognized. Castiel hesitantly put down his weapon, but still kept it in his hand, just in case.“Who are you?”“You might know me as the Scribe of God.”“You’re Metatron? The Metatron?” Castiel asked, slightly impressed. This was an angel who had stood in the presence of their Father, who had heard his Words firsthand.“Yes. And Naomi is after me too,” Metatron said, calmly. “So… I have a business proposal for you.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Meg ran.That was something she had always been good at, something she knew how to do well: to run, to get by, to wait. She wasn’t particularly patient, but she knew how to keep her head down and wait for her time when it was necessary.She didn’t know what she could possibly be waiting for this time. She was out of options, out of allies and sooner than she would’ve liked, out of gas as well. The car she had stolen back in Lincoln Springs wasn’t particularly fancy or particularly well kept, but it served her well enough until she could get out of the state. After that, she walked for hours next to the highway, lifting up her thumb every time she heard an engine behind her.She supposed she couldn’t blame so many people passing her by without even paying attention to her. They were probably wondering what the hell a woman who looked like she’d just taken a beating, with no baggage, was doing walking down the highway at that hour of the night. After a while, though, she began to feel immensely frustrated. And tired. And hungry, and thirsty, and pained. Those were feelings she wasn’t used to having, so they only frustrated her even more.By the time a truck finally stopped to pick her up, Meg had had more than enough with all those human feelings. She wanted them to stop, but she had no idea how to reverse what Castiel had done to her. (And it had to be him. She knew that now. He’d been trying to make her weaker to ambush her).“Where to, sweetheart?” the trucker asked her.He had a slimy smile and Meg knew, instinctively, that he would try to put his hands on her within the next ten minutes. She knew the type all too well. She’d killed more than a few in her time. Despite her new weakness, she was sure she could take on this guy. She still had Castiel’s blade hidden inside the sleeve of her jacket.It made her sick to her stomach, though she didn’t know if it came from the idea of the trucker touching her or the idea of her having to kill him. That was also new. She’d never hesitated to take a life for her own gain (and sometimes, just for the fun of it) before.She forced herself to smile at him.“Wherever you’re going, stud,” she said, in a tone that she hoped came out flirty enough to prevent him from kicking her off the truck.He started the engine and in a moment, they were heading down the highway once again.“If you don’t mind me saying, sweetie, you don’t look so hot. Did something bad happened to you?”Meg caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror and cringed. She didn’t look as rundown as she had when Crowley was done with her, but even then it was clear she had been in some kind of fight. There was a bruise on the right side of her face and even though her arm had stopped bleeding hours ago, she was certain that if the light had been a little better, the trucker would have been able to see the bloodstains in her clothes.“My, uh… my boyfriend,” she said, though she hated herself a little to call Castiel that. He’d been less than that and so, so much more. “I thought he was a good guy. Turns out I was wrong.”She didn’t know why she didn’t outright lie.“Oh, I’m sorry,” the man answered and, just as Meg had predicted, he stretched a hand out to put it on her knee. “But you were right to leave him. Seems to me that what you need is a strong, good man to take care of you.”Meg stared out of the window, at the empty fields and the night that was slowly ending above her head, and considered her options. She could threaten the trucker with the blade, she could rebuff his advances and make him angry enough that killing him would be justified. She could just cut the foreplay and kill him, but the idea of more violence after what she’d just been through made her too sick to follow through.No, she decided. The easiest thing would be to just go along with it.She turned to him, smiling once again.“And you think you can be that man, handsome?”He dropped her off at a truck stop and even gave her some money, some wrinkled twenties that amounted to sixty dollars. That was fine. Meg had pickpocketed him while he was distracted and found another fifty in his wallet. She bought herself a cup of coffee, a donut and some aspirins to deal with the pain that just wouldn’t quit. She went to the bathroom to wash herself a little and spent a lot of time staring at herself in the mirror.The face that stared back at her wasn’t hers and no matter how much she tried to look past it, to look at the demon that flesh hid, she’d apparently lost the ability to do so, which would be a problem. How was she going to know if Crowley’s minions were after her?The other option, the option all signs seemed to point to, was that she was a demon no longer, which was disturbing for its own reasons.She didn’t want to know. She left the bathroom, chose one of the sleepy truckers that were knocking back their coffee and flirted with him until he agreed to give her a ride to the next state over.Sometimes she got lucky. There were men who just seemed happy to have her on board and would stop bothering her for one lousy handjob. There were some who stopped by the side of the highway or insisted in paying for a motel room for the night. Even then, they didn’t exactly require her to be an active participant. She could always fake her way through it and they weren’t able to even tell the difference.She laughed one time as the man in question was beginning to put his clothes back on.“What’s so funny?” he asked her, frowning.“Oh, nothing. I just remembered a joke.”She’d been thinking of Crowley and how he’d called her a whore every chance he got. It turned he had been right after all those years. Whatever had happened to the smarmy dick?In any case, Meg wasn’t ashamed of what she had to do to survive. Her body was the only currency she had to trade, and it wasn’t even hers to begin with. It’d belong to some long dead runaway girl from the streets of Los Angeles whose name she couldn’t even remember. She started telling her story to anyone who was interested enough to ask (most weren’t).And as brutal or boring as some of those men could be with their calloused hands and their disregard for her pleasure, she much preferred them to the ones that seemed determined to “save her soul” from “a life of sin”.“God and all his angels are looking out for you,” one of them told her, trying to force a church pamphlet on her hand.“Oh, fuck, I hope not.”“You have to repent and change your ways,” another one said. “Or your immortal soul could end up in hell.”Meg lit up a cigarette and blew the smoke on his face.“Been there, done that.”She hated those self-righteous pricks more than anything else and learnt how to avoid them soon enough. They reminded her of things she’d rather not think about. They reminded her of Castiel and his holy mission and how he’d tried telling her that they were the same for all the destruction they had wrought.They weren’t the same. She might have been a demon, but even then she never would’ve betrayed him.She still carried the scar in her forearm from where she’d cut herself with the blade to draw enough blood for the sigil that had banished him. Despite how much she tried not to, whenever she looked at it, she still thought of him, of the crypt, of how his eyes had looked so empty as they pressed the blade she carried everywhere with her against her neck…Somewhere in Arizona, a couple of months since she’d began running, she stepped out of the shower one morning. The john was finished getting dressed and had the TV on.“… reports of this sudden meteor shower appeared to indicate a worldwide phenomenon…”“Turn that up,” Meg asked him, frowning.“… scientist around the world are baffled, since there was no indication that this would happen…”“Seems like we missed quite the spectacle last night,” the man commented, with a snicker. “But then, we were rather busy.”Meg smirked at him and turned to her bag. She checked that her roll of bills was still where it was the night before and started putting on her new clothes (some she’d bought along the way, some she’d shoplifted when she was low on cash). She hoped he didn’t notice how her hands trembled when she reached for her cigarettes and lit one, but she didn’t need to worry. He was too busy checking her ass, so she had time to reflect on what she should do next.Because that had been no meteor shower. She might not have had a demon’s sight anymore, but she still could distinguished angelic light when she saw it.“You still need that ride to California?” the john asked her.Right, California. That’s where she’d told him she was going.She looked up at the sunny sky above her head. The world seemed unchanged, despite what she knew had happened the night before. There were angels walking among humans now, more than there had been in ages, and who knew if any of those fuckers was going to come looking for her in the hopes she’d tell them where to find Castiel.Because Castiel had something to do with that, she could sense it in her bones.“Actually, I changed my mind about that,” she told the trucker. “Thanks anyway.”It was time to stop running and find a nice spot to hide, somewhere she could blend in without calling too much attention for herself. In the next stop, she found a guy going to Nevada and hitched a ride with him.She decided Sin City suited her just fine. There had always been a lot of demons there, literal and the other kind as well.The first strip club she walked into hired her on the spot and she had to admit, it was a nice change from the slew of truckers that had been too long on the road feeding off on junk food. She got to dance for grooms on their stag-parties and businessmen cheating on their wives and drifters like her who were looking for a good time. Strictly speaking, she wasn’t supposed to sleep with her clients, but all the girls were doing it and management always turned a blind eye, so it was always easy to find a warm bed in a motel room that would have her for the night.She didn’t really need much more. Or so she told herself every noon as she sat down on a Biggerson’s near her club, sipping coffee and scanning the newspapers for something out of place. A missing person’s report could indicate an angel taking on a new vessel. A weird death could mean monsters and hunters snooping around in her part of town. Someone who’d got extremely lucky at a casino the night before could point to a crossroads demon.But the weeks slipped by quietly and Meg was beginning to feel restless. Was no one looking for her? Not the angels, not the Winchesters? Not even Crowley? What was going on?Then again, it could be that she was running for nothing. She had nothing of value, nothing anyone could want. Castiel had taken the Angel Tablet with him when she’d banished him, she wasn’t even a demon anymore. She was just another human, another soul lost in the neon lights of Las Vegas.The other girls at the strip club were always talking about when they were going to stop doing this work.“It’s only until I get a callback.”“It’s only until I finish college.”“It’s only until I get a job that allows me to pay the bills.”“It’s only until…”Meg was waiting for nothing. She had nothing to wish for. She could feel the despair growing on her with each passing day, the aimlessness of everything she did. Azazel was dead. Lucifer was dead. She couldn’t face Crowley in the state she was in. (Who knew if he was alive?)And Castiel had betrayed her.She had no cause to give herself to anymore.“I need a car. I think I might be leaving soon,” she told the girls one night in the dressing room. They weren’t exactly friends and she’d forgotten the name of half of them. But who else was she going to talk to? The johns?“Oh, were are you going?”“I don’t know.” Meg turned off her cigarette and leaned closer to the mirror to apply her make-up. “I’ll decide on the road.”She was getting ready to run again. Because while she was running, she didn’t need to think about how she had nowhere to go, nowhere she should go or should be.But he found her before she could go any further.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It was a Friday night, which meant the club was packed. The music blasted in her ears and the lights moved fast enough that it was impossible to make out the faces in the crowd. Meg wasn’t dancing that night, but she and the other strippers were all busy serving tables and flirting with the clients to keep them entertained between the acts. She was glad that the official uniform for that was a skirt that barely covered her ass and a top that was more a bra than anything else, because at least her skin had the chance to breathe in the heated ambient around her. Her feet would be killing her in the morning though. One of the things she definitely missed about being a demon was the ability to wear heels with no consequences.“Hey, pretty!” one of the patrons beckoned her to the table where he and two other guys were sitting ogling at the girls. Meg put on her best smile.“What can I get you, boys?” she asked as she picked up the empty glasses from the table, leaning over just enough to give them a glimpse of her cleavage. “More of the same?”“Oh, yeah. You can get us whatever you want!”It was not an original pick-up line, by any means, and these guys seemed like they’d had more than a few drinks already. Meg still smiled at them and pretended to be charmed. She was on the clock, they could leave a good tip and even if they didn’t, maybe she could rope one of them into taking her somewhere else later in the night.One of the guys stretched his hands and felt up her ass as she was walking away from the table. His friends celebrated that with hoots and screams, while Meg bit the inside of her cheek not to lose her patience.Maybe she would just steal their wallets instead.She managed to give two more steps when someone grabbed her by the arm. Annoyed, she turned around ready to tell these smartasses that if they didn’t let her do her job, they were not going to have any more drinks and…Her eyes met up a familiar face. He was wearing a red hoodie that looked horrible on him and there was several days’ worth of stubble covering his cheeks and jawline. His eyes looked dark in the changing lights, but she knew that they’d be bright blue in any other circumstance. His voice sounded just as gravelly as always as he called her name:“Meg.”Several thoughts ran through her head at the same time. How had he found her? Why was he there? She had his angel blade hidden inside of her boot. Could she bent over and reach it in time? Did she want to cause a commotion in the middle of the club? Maybe just enough to give herself time to run away…“Meg, please,” he begged taking a step closer to her. “Please, I need to talk to you…”“Security!” Meg shouted, stepping away from him and escaping from his grip.It would be worth nothing if Castiel decided to fight the bouncer, if he really wanted to take her away, if he really didn’t particularly cared about upsetting the humans around, he would’ve already teleported her elsewhere. So she had a chance to maybe get rid of him quickly.“Meg, no!” he pleaded as Meg dropped her platter in the counter and made a beeline for the door. “Please, I just need…!”“This guy is harassing me!” she told the bouncer.The man, who was maybe a head taller than Castiel and whose bulging muscles were visible underneath the black shirt he wore, gave Castiel a stern glare.“Stop that,” he said, softly. “Or I’ll have to kick you out of the club.”“No, you don’t understand!” Meg said before Castiel could protest. She hoped her voice sounded broken and desperate enough that the bouncer would eat her story without asking too many questions: “He’s my ex, I don’t know how he found me!”She wasn’t lying, technically. And this was a story all too common for many of the girls who worked there: jealous boyfriends who had no idea what their girlfriends did for a living showed up there every couple of weeks to cause trouble. So the bouncer had no problem believing her and he didn’t hesitate on what to do next.“Come on, you’re coming with me,” he said, grabbing Castiel by the arm.“Wait, no!” Castiel protested. “Please, I just need five minutes…”“I don’t want to see you ever again!” Meg shouted, stepping away and upping the damsel in distress act. “Why won’t you understand that?”Her words seemed to cut right thought Castiel, who stopped resisting the bouncer to stare at her with wide, confused eyes. Meg tried to ignore the knot in her stomach that look gave her.“You heard the lady,” the bouncer said, dragging closer to the exit. “Leave!”Castiel turned his attention back the bouncer, his hands curling up in tight fists. Meg lowered her hand, ready to grab at the hilt of the blade if it was necessary, but at the last second, the angel’s posture relaxed and he stepped back.“Very well. I’m sorry about the disturbance.”He turned his back and left the club without any other fuzz. The bouncer followed him outside, perhaps to make sure that he had really left.“You okay?” he asked when he came back, putting a hand on Meg’s shoulder.Meg remembered that she was supposed to be upset. It wasn’t that hard to fake.“Yes.” She smiled at him, reassuringly. “Yes. Thank you.”The bouncer smiled back and scratched the back of his bald head, his cheeks turning slightly pink.“Well… just doing my job,” he said, with a humble shrug.“Right.” Meg stepped away. She didn’t want this guy messing in her business more than it was strictly necessary, but he apparently had some sort of fetish for helping women in trouble. “I should get back to mine now.”The rest of the night was a blur. Meg was vaguely aware that she was serving shots, smiling at patrons, going through the motions as if she was on auto-pilot. Her mind was raging, far away from all the flirting and groping thrown in her direction.Castiel was going to be waiting outside for her, she was completely certain of it. The stupid angel never gave up easily. She would have to leave through the backdoor, find a car and get the hell out of town. She kept her few possessions in a locker in a twenty-four hours gym just a few blocks away and an emergency roll of cash with her there in the club with a bag of clothing in the dressing room. She had never gone through the trouble of finding somewhere permanent, because she knew this day was coming: the day when she’d have to run away again.She should have killed Castiel when she had the chance. Why hadn’t she? He was on the ground, apparently stunned after touching the Tablet, she had the blade in her hand. Why hadn’t she taken the chance to kill him?Deep inside her gut, and somewhere in her chest where her heart was, she already knew the answer. But she didn’t want to think about it.Around four in the morning, there were very few clients left, so Meg used the excuse of what’d happened to her to leave early. She dressed up in a more decent jeans and shirt (which she never had to do the nights she left with a john) and moved the blade from her boot to the inside of her jacket. She kept frantically reviewing her plan in her mind and she was so focused on it that she barely heard what one of the other girls told her until she touched her to get her attention.Meg jumped backwards and the girl moved her hand away.“Sorry, Meg,” she said. “It’s just… we heard about the guy that was bothering you. Are you okay?”Meg forced herself to calm the beating of her own heart.“Yes. Yeah, don’t worry about me, uh…” What was this chick’s name? Trixie, Dixie, something? “It’s just… I didn’t expect to see him. Ever.”Why was she telling her this? And why was this girl nodding as if she understood exactly what Meg meant, as if she could have any idea what it was like to spend centuries upon centuries in Hell, being stripped from her humanity, her feelings, her identity until all that was left was anger and destruction? And Meg had thought, for the briefest of moments, for just a fraction, that despite everything she was, despite everything she had done, someone, an angel, no less, could care about her, that he could…“Hey.” Trixie or Dixy or whatshername came closer and put a hand on her shoulder. What was it with all these people touching her today? “It’s okay, Meg. You don’t have to do this alone…”“I’m going home,” Meg announced, brusquely, because the last thing she wanted right now was for this chick to try to start a support group with her or something.“Oh. Yes, of course. Are you going to be okay?“I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”“Meg,” Whatshername called her when she was already on her way out. “We’ll see you tomorrow, right?”“Right. See you,” Meg said, fully aware that, if she had her way, she would be far away from there by the time the sun came up.She kept repeating the plan in her head. Go to the gym. Get the bag. Get a car. Drive… somewhere. Anywhere.And then what? Start banging truckers and random guys again? Keep doing that until she died? Could she die? She had human needs now: she had to eat and sleep and all that jazz, was she aging as well? There was so much she hadn’t stopped to figure out, because had been so busy drifting, running…Those footsteps had been following her for a while. Her heart was beating faster. The blade slid directly into her palm.Castiel stumbled back when the edge of his own blade stopped just mere inches from his throat. At least she hadn’t lost her reflexes, Meg thought bitterly.“I told you to leave me the fuck alone,” she growled menacingly. She hoped the trembling of her hand wasn’t too noticeable. Damn those human emotions, clouding her mind when she needed to be prepared to fight.“I know you did,” Castiel said. He raised both his hands, as if to indicate that he didn’t mean to hurt her, but Meg would fucked if she was going to make the mistake of trusting him again. “But, please. Meg, I’m begging you, just…”“How did you find me?”“I… I have been looking for you. For months. There were a lot of dead ends and I thought…” He stopped and took a deep breath. His eyes glazed over, as if he was about to cry. “I thought I was never going to see you again. You look… you look so beautiful.”Meg realized all of the sudden that she was still wearing the heavy make-up she used at the club. She cut her hair and dyed a darker shade of blonde a while ago, but the roots were probably beginning to show. She didn’t feel beautiful, she felt like a hot mess and the fact that he was there looking at her with something so soft, something so adoring in his eyes wasn’t really helping.No, no, no. She couldn’t let him get to her. Not again.“What do you want, Castiel?”“I…” he started and stopped, as if he had not thought about it that far. He’d been so busy trying to find her, he had no idea what to do now that he was standing right in front of her. “I just… I wanted to know if you were… if you were okay.”“Yeah, I’m peachy,” Meg replied through gritted teeth. “Having the time of my life, actually.”So many things have changed it was almost amazing that Castiel still had trouble understanding sarcasm.“Oh. I’m… I’m sorry,” he mumbled, lowering his eyes. “I’ll… I’ll leave you alone.”He stepped backwards, as if he was about to turn, but all of Meg’s rage, all of her fear, everything that she’d been holding back from so long, came rushing at her. She grabbed him by the arm with her free hand and forced him to look at her again, while she screamed everything she didn’t know she’d been dying to tell him since the crypt.“You bastard! You asshole! Don’t you walk away from me! You… you… you did this to me!” she shouted in his face as her fist crashed against his chest again and again. “You turned me into… into a…”Castiel’s eyes became slightly wider while Meg struggle with her tears and her breath to get the word out.“A human,” he said. “Is it true? You… you’re really cured?”“As if you didn’t know!” she spat. “You can see it, can’t you? You can sense it!”Castiel slowly raised his hand. For a second, Meg thought about stepping back and not letting him touch her, but when his fingertips grazed her skin, she had to concentrate all her force of will into getting her knees to stop trembling, into getting her eyes from not watering.“No,” he whispered calmly. “I can’t. Not anymore.”Meg watched him closely, ready to scream at him again, but… she just couldn’t. Castiel’s wishes and desires had always been clear in his face and now… why would he lie about something like this? It would also explain why he chose not to fight the bouncer or why hadn’t simply flown away with her in tow.“What?” she asked. “How is that possible?”“I’m… I’m graceless,” he explained. There was pain in the lines of his mouth and shame in the way he lowered his eyes. “I’m…”“Human,” Meg repeated. The astonishment was enough to drown out her rage like a stream of hot water drown out a fire. “How is that possible?”“Well… it’s a long story.”  The story started far before their fight in the crypt.“So this chick Naomi was controlling all of your actions?”“No. Not all of them,” he assured her. “Everything I said, everything I did while I was with you… she opposed me every step of the way, but I wouldn’t listen to her. In the end, she… she had to trick me into attacking you.”Meg took a sip of her coffee. They were the only people inside the only diner in miles they had found open at five in the morning and the waitress had a tired and haunted look in her eyes that made Meg suspected the could talk about demons and angels at the top of their lungs and she wouldn’t even be fazed.“And then this guy Metatron tricked you and took your grace to expel all the angels from Heaven.”“Yes. I thought if I closed the Gates of Heaven, Naomi wouldn’t be able to hunt you.” He stopped and gazed into the steaming, dark liquid in front of him. “Of course, I also did it for me. I believed it would be a way to fix what I had done, somehow. But I ended up breaking it even worse. Maybe beyond repair this time.”Meg felt the impulse to tell him he was an idiot, but she couldn’t muster up the anger to do it.“And then Dean kicked you out?”Castiel nodded again, but offered no further explanation. Of all the things he’d told her, that seemed to be the one that hurt him the most. It was as if he expected the other angels to be dicks to him, but not the Winchesters.“Did he at least tell you why?”“No. No matter how many times I asked.”“Asshole.”Castiel didn’t try to contradict her.Meg downed the rest of the scalding coffee, hoping it was something stronger. She figured she was going to need for the question she had to ask next. The question that had been haunting her since it all started.“And what about me? How did… this happen to me?” she asked, gesturing at herself.“I started to suspect it was possible since Kevin deciphered that curing a demon was the last trial to close the Gates of Hell. The Winchesters found a method that worked for them, though they ultimately didn’t go through with it to the very end. When he had the Angel Tablet, Kevin was able to discover… a different one.”He made a pause and stared silently at her.“Well?” Meg urged her.“If an angel ever touches a demon, not with the intention to kill, but to heal, that will dispel the darkness that has tainted their soul,” he recited, as if he had memorized those words, as if they were a spell. “So yes, you were right. I did this to you. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”“You’re sorry?” Meg laughed. “You’re sorry that I’m no longer an abomination from Hell?”“I’m sorry about all the pain that being human might have brought you,” he explained.Meg looked out the window, at the neon lights and the deserted street. It was too late for the night partiers and far too early for the early birds. For a moment or two, it was as if the two of them were the only people in the world.“It is a pain, isn’t it?”“It’s… full of inconveniences,” Castiel complained. “Having to stop every few hours to eat or to rest? Everything itches and… and the urination. I just can’t get used to it.”She couldn’t help it. She laughed. He was right, of course. And she was perhaps the only person in the world who could understand him.Maybe he was the only person in the world who could understand her.That was why it surprised him when he added:“Meg, if you… if you really don’t ever want to see me again, I will respect that. I know I hurt you and I understand if you can’t forgive me. I’ll leave and… you’ll never have to hear from me again. But I needed to tell you all of this. You… you deserve to know the truth.”Meg slowly turned to look at him. She noticed the way he breathed in and how his pupils dilated slightly why looking at her. She wondered if Castiel how found other things about being human that weren’t so inconvenient.“I…” she started. She licked her lips and shook her head. “To be honest, I… I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do anymore, Clarence.”The old familiar nickname rolled out of her tongue before she could stop it.“Well, that’s… that’s just the thing about being human,” Castiel said. “There’s no one to tell you what to do.”Meg sighed deeply. A new day was breaking over Las Vegas’ skyscrapers. She was tired and emotional and fragile, as if the smallest gust of wind could undo her entirely. She hated it, but at the same time, she was thankful for it. Because it was precisely that pain that helped her decide exactly what she needed to ask, what she needed to know.“Why did you come looking for me?”“I don’t know. Like you said, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing anything anymore. And I found myself alone and I missed you so much it hurt.” He stopped. “You said you loved me, once. I remember that.”“Yeah, well… you were about to kill me,” Meg pointed out. “I would’ve said anything to get you off of me.”She stretched her hand over the table to graze his. Castiel startled, but then turned it over and let her intertwine her fingers with his.He looked so tired, with dark circles under his eyes and the stubble shading his face. But his eyes were still soft and infinitely kind and Meg could have sworn that everything that she thought she’d seen in them back when she was a demon were true after all.“I don’t know if I love you now,” she confessed. “But I want you to stay.”The edge of his lips twitched, as if he wasn’t quite sure how to smile.“I will,” he promised.And maybe, for now, that was enough.