DAY 59: CAFETERIA

[touchedgod]

Billy surfaced into wakefulness. Sleep receded like an inky tide, and it didn't say anything to him before it was gone. His dreams had been nothing but the sensation of water, rocking him restlessly in his bottle. There seemed to be an ocean beyond his confines, but he couldn't see it and couldn't reach it. He pawed at the glass, but any progress

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[poorexample]

The apology was accepted with little more than a nod. Dean Winchester had made him accustomed to loud outbursts by now, so it had hardly bothered him.

Oddly enough, Billy went from expressing shock at the state of his food to starting to dig through it like it was a point of interest. If Castiel had been more expressive, he might have raised an eyebrow at that, but instead he only stared. There was more than one maggot buried in that food, and the angel found that the longer he looked at it, the more uneasy his stomach felt. It seemed that he wasn't completely immune to this after all.

In the end, it was far easier to focus on Billy's face -- the way his eyes were shielded behind his glasses and the weary look that showed through nonetheless. It hadn't taken them long to get to the questions that truly mattered about this place, and Castiel glanced off for a moment as he considered the most accurate way to answer.

"Who they are exactly is kept from us, but I was referring to our captors. From what we've been shown, they seem to be some sort of military force, headed by a general called Aguilar." Castiel had seen the man with his own eyes, but he didn't need to divulge that now. "However, they only showed themselves in the past few days. Before that, a man named Landel was the one in charge, and he took a less direct approach. We were all told that we were mental patients and that the lives we recalled were constructs."

That was something that was more of a sore spot now than it had been, due to the fact that he had fallen for that lie over the past day. It wasn't that he had broken down or lost faith, of course. It was something that had been forced upon him, which only made his determination to break through the seal they'd put upon him that much stronger.

[touchedgod]

This was more interesting than the maggots. One larvae was the same as the next (generally speaking, but luckily there were no telepathic entomologists nearby to take issue with his private thoughts) even when it was making a home in your meal.

Billy's mouth twisted with unspoken questions as Castiel picked through his words. It all called back to the ominous intercom and radio messages that he had assumed at the time were not for him. He still didn't want to take ownership of this situation, but he knew it wouldn't help him. Denial had never gotten him anywhere, even when it was the truth. Not being a prophet hadn't stopped him from being one, not in Dane's eyes. Billy's hands lifted to the back of his neck, and he hung his arms there, bringing a sort of reality to the weight he thought he would have gotten rid of after the world was safe. This was insane. This made no sense. This was his life.

"I heard those names last night." He looked back up at Castiel and studied his face. Ideas crept in and out of his mind, adopted and then dismissed. He didn't look particularly divine, sitting here in a strange uniform. He did look a little mad, but so did Billy. Castiel's outrageous claims were supported over and over again, even as the reasonable side of Billy fought with the unreasonable one. He wasn't sure which was which.

"Any idea why we're being held?" he ventured. Billy couldn't think of any remaining reasons someone would want him, unless they were a collector of religious artifacts. Castiel probably had a much greater value, if angels and prophets were like trading cards. He was on one of the big teams, after all.

[poorexample]

Last night? Castiel had to think back for a moment, forced to sort through the haze of memories that didn't feel as if they belonged to him any longer. It was like what Michael had felt, only in reverse, and just that thought was enough to tire him. Still, he could recall hearing the intercom and Aguilar's voice, if nothing else. That was how he and Gabriel had learned about Harrington's whereabouts.

Having woken up in the night himself, Castiel realized how disorienting it was. He was now the first person entrusted to answer Billy's questions unless the man had run into others last night. (As Castiel had with Orihara, he realized, though he had been just as ignorant.) Focusing on that made it simple enough to avoid the fact that he had just spent a day living someone else's life.

As for the next question, Castiel had a good idea of why he was here, but for some of the others he could not begin to guess. Orihara had shown some of his true colors during their conversation yesterday, enough to make it clear that he was not as normal as Castiel had believed. Perhaps Billy was hiding something under the surface as well. Even he, an angel, appeared completely ordinary at first glance.

"That seems to be something they don't want us to understand," he started, recalling how he had asked Aguilar some of these questions to his face and had only received vague replies. "The military's involvement seems to suggest that we are being molded into soldiers, but I imagine they're also researching ways to make us compliant." Castiel could already fight; it was something he'd been made to do. But he would not fight for these people unless forced or controlled. They already seemed to have perfected the ability to trick him into believing he was someone else, so how much longer before they could send them all out to the battlefield as loyal drones? It was not a question he wanted to dwell on for too long.

[touchedgod]

"Soldiers?" The word landed thickly in his psyche. He smiled, but his face was drained of happiness. The association wasn't pleasant anymore, even if it was just the word, not the circumstances, that meant anything to Billy. "If you're right, they're going to be disappointed, because I'm not a soldier."

Dane did the best he could, but Billy's mind was entrenched in different things. Maybe he was a survivor, but he wasn't a career combatant. He stood on his own, and that was it. As soon as he was allowed to, Billy would sit down again, and he'd love it. Not like Dane, who lived to fight. Not because he had enjoyed it, Billy thought, but because he had built his life around an ever-threatened faith. A faith that didn't, and couldn't, care about him. That was what made him a soldier, more than any training, and that was why he had given up everything.

Maybe Billy's kidnappers were late. They went in looking for a massive squid worshipping twice-dead knight, and had to settle for Billy. Or maybe they really liked angels, and made a couple mistakes, such as the two men sitting at this table. Billy still had his money the theory where Simon's calculations had gone way off, though.

"I'm a curator. A scientist." There was an opening to root out more information, and Billy took it. "And you, you're not really a soldier either, are you?"

[poorexample]

By Castiel's estimation, many of the people here weren't soldiers. It wasn't something he was willing to assume just by looking at them (he didn't appear to be one himself, in this form), but there was a certain bearing that one carried if they had a few battles behind them. Billy didn't have that look about him. If anything, he seemed strikingly young.

On the other hand, everyone came across as young to someone who was centuries old.

"I suspect that they have some other use for you, then," he said after a pause. Right as he was going to ask what Billy was if not a soldier, the man provided an answer. A scientist? It wasn't something that Castiel knew much about. He knew all the different ways to summon or bind demons, angels, and everything in between, but science was hardly his territory. On the other hand, it made sense for Aguilar to want a large variety of talents at his disposal.

However, the question that Billy came up with next was almost enough to take Castiel by surprise. Why would he come to such a conclusion? While he'd just been thinking about how Jimmy's vessel didn't make his skills clear, he was somewhat bothered that Billy had assumed as much. He narrowed his eyes for a moment before glancing away. "What gave you that impression?"

[touchedgod]

Billy didn't fidget, but he did acknowledge that he had tread a little too close to something for Castiel's comfort. Something he sort of got, but mostly didn't. It could go in the pile of unknowns that was building up around him, which sooner or later was going to become unreasonable. He needed to find a way to answer some of these questions before he suffocated in ignorance. For instance, what would Billy do for a military effort? Wave a dead phaser around? Wait for the Angel of Memory to get agitated enough to lash out for the sake of its Christ? He hadn't heard it for a while. Maybe it was slowly trekking back to the museum, moving however it did when Billy couldn't see it, an invisible thorn of memory and time. Maybe it was looking for some bottles to occupy.

Regardless of what that angel was doing, this one was getting suspicious. Passionately in character or convinced of the fiction's reality, it didn't really change things. Castiel was understandably edgy that Billy was repeatedly hinting at things he shouldn't know. He threw out his net, and pulled in nothing but further evidence that Castiel was going to be Castiel for the remainder of this conversation.

"You don't exactly act like a soldier," Billy explained away, which was technically true. Castiel did hold himself uniquely, but it wasn't the on-guard creep of a modern soldier. Maybe, he mused, he held himself a little like a knight instead. Tall, stiff, weighed down by armor and wings and honor. "Am I wrong?"

[poorexample]

It wasn't something that Castiel had thought about much before. He was a soldier. That much he knew as an absolute truth. Even after defecting from Heaven, that hadn't changed. He had simply switched the side that he was fighting on. In a way, Dean and Sam were soldiers just as much as he had been, following orders from their father until that father had left them and they had been forced to work on their own.

Perhaps mercenary was the right term, then. But Castiel could only think of himself as one thing.

A scientist like Billy, however, likely thought of a soldier as someone who wore a helmet and carried a gun. One of the uniformed men who kept their eyes on them constantly here; that was his definition and the stick he was measuring by. Castiel did not fit into that image, except perhaps for the stiff posture.

"It depends on your definition," he responded eventually. While Castiel wasn't particularly good at lying, he had perfected the art of evasive answers. "Regardless, they seem to have decided that I can be of use somehow." He didn't quite understand how himself, seeing how they'd taken away everything that made him useful.

[touchedgod]

It was novel that Castiel could avoid committing to anything, and Billy could still know exactly what he was talking about. If he would only stop worrying, Billy could easily see this becoming a fun indulgence. It wasn't exactly admirable, though, that he was being so coy about having all this intimate knowledge, while the subject was so stubbornly oblivious. They were one-sided strangers, so Billy felt a little like a stalker, silently thrilled whenever Castiel made an insinuation about some personal detail. He felt bad, but what could he do about it? Forgetting wasn't an option here.

Unless they were going to ransom him, Billy wasn't sure why someone would need an actor. If they wanted an angel, though... Billy looked at Castiel again, but he appeared the same as he always did. There was no magical intuition granted unto Billy that indicated, yes, this was an angel walking the earth, from your screen and right into the real world. He was frustratingly unremarkable for being so unusual.

"So what do you do for a living then?" Billy crossed his arms on the table. Castiel was unlikely to tell him anything, but Billy wanted to hear him talk. There was a lot he wanted to ask, about the rest of the cast, about the plot, about character motivations and the specifics of how the world worked, but all things considered, he should leave those impulses aside. How kind of Billy to return to indulging in his information monopoly right after scolding himself for it being creepy and abusive.

[poorexample]

A living.

Castiel knew what the concept was, but that didn't make it any less foreign to him. Unlike angels, humans were not born with a purpose built into them, and so they had to find some sort of "career," taking something they were interested in and then using that to earn a livelihood. It wasn't something that came naturally, but rather something they had to learn and discover on their own. In fact, it was that drive to survive against all odds that Castiel found particularly admirable about humans.

Granted, the two humans he knew best hardly fell into that category themselves. What they did wasn't a "living" so much as an obligation due to the fact that they couldn't simply turn away from the knowledge that there were creatures out there disrupting people's lives. In fact, Castiel only had a very limited understanding of how Dean and Sam got the money that they lived on, but it had never seemed that important to him.

Now, though, he was going to have to either evade the question or lie. He wasn't very good at the latter, but he didn't have any easy way out in this case. As things stood, he had two options: he could give Jimmy Novak's answer or Michael Collins'. In the end, he'd rather choose the one that was based in reality over the option that had only been imprinted into his mind.

"I sold ad space for radio stations," he said after a too-long pause, only realizing how ridiculous it sounded after it came out of his mouth.

[touchedgod]

Starting in Billy's brain and then bleeding out onto his face, he smiled. Perhaps the first smile of the day that was unpoliced by grief or shock or frustration. He rested his elbow on the table, and his chin in the connected hand. Some of the stress in his body leaked away. Everything was still washed out, metaphorically grey and dreary, but Billy sucked in a couple of breaths before it got worse again. And it was sure to get worse. From his momentary rise to the peak of his depression, he could see that nothing was going to get better. The world was probably long past self-improvement for Billy, because after you avert the apocalypse there's really nowhere else to go but down again. This was the high point in his life for now.

"Oh?" He tried to sound the right combination of interested (but not too interested) and sincerely convinced of the story. "How's business been? I mean, when last you were out, obviously. Who knows what the fuck the market's doing while you're here." He almost laughed, and almost thought he ought to tell Castiel it was alright, he didn't have to answer his mocking questions. It was just his mood, he didn't mean to be mean.

In lieu of triggering another suspicious and squinty-eyed look, he just waved it off as though saying nevermind, nevermind.

[poorexample]

The smile that took over Billy's features was oddly familiar. It took Castiel a moment or two to place it, but in the end he could have only seen it in one place. That was the kind of smile that Dean gave when he thought something Castiel had said was funny, and usually the reasons for that amusement were beyond him. In this case he had to assume it was because someone selling ad space was far too normal to have gotten them placed here, especially when he'd taken mild offense at not being seen as a soldier before.

His inconsistency had a lot to do with not knowing how he should approach these situations. Did he tell everyone he met who was curious what he was, or did he try to hide under some other sort of persona? Castiel was more eager to be himself than ever after the past day, but he didn't know if it was safe.

Then again, Billy had come across as completely harmless so far. Castiel sighed and shook his head slowly. "Actually, I know nothing about it."

Before he could say more than that, though, or even try to explain, the intercom came on to announce the end of their meal. There hadn't been much point in sitting here when neither of them could eat, but they had at least kept each other company. Castiel was getting slightly better at talking just for the sake of it, and he had also given Billy some helpful information, hopefully without making the man too suspicious.

"It looks like it's time," he said as he stood woodenly from his seat.

[touchedgod]

Billy looked around, and saw the stirring populace begin to file out. He was eager to distance himself from his meal, but couldn't decide if he wanted to get away from Castiel or not. The conversation had been sometimes fun, sometimes viscerally uncomfortable. Probably more for Castiel than for Billy, admittedly. Guilt nipped at the back of his mind again, and he stood. He was grateful for an official excuse to leave, and Castiel probably was as well. Billy wasn't confident that either of them could have managed a socially graceful exit.

"An unforgettable meal." The joke was lame, and fell flat as soon as it hit the air. Billy rearranged his thoughts to focus on more serious things, and cleared his throat of sheepishness. It was difficult to be entirely solemn when speaking to a television character, and he thought his tone was erring on the side of being a prick because of it.

"Thanks for helping me, sorry if I've been acting strange," he said instead, not to Castiel, but just to a man who took the time to talk down his confusion. "I'm not in the best place right now, but it was nice meeting you, Castiel."

Realizing his error, Billy opened his mouth, but had no words to fix it. Instead, he threw up his hands and made a wiggly gesture of hopelessness that even he wasn't entirely sure what the intended meaning was. He rolled his eyes at himself, whatever, doesn't matter, he was already being folded into the crowd. "Shit. I, uh, guess I remembered your name after all. God, sorry, I tried to play along but it's not a good time for it," he laughed over his shoulder, surprised by his own relief. "Take care."

[poorexample]

Honestly, Castiel couldn't see what had been so unforgettable about their interaction, but now clearly wasn't the time to ask. A soldier was already at his side, waiting for him to move away from the other patient. It probably didn't matter, but --

Hearing his name only stood out after Billy admitted that he'd known it all along. Now that Castiel sifted back through their conversation, he realized he had never offered it. Billy had acted as if they'd known each other at first and had then retracted that and asked questions instead. Now he'd come out with his name as if he'd known it the whole time, and suddenly Castiel's suspicion mounted.

This man knew him or at least knew of him, and he apparently hadn't been able to decide if he should be forthcoming with that or not. He also hadn't done a particularly good job of hiding it in the end. And what did he mean, "playing along"? What was this all about?

Castiel almost had to wonder if it was an angel (or a demon) in disguise, but he should have been able to sense that. He could still tell that Ruby was a demon when he looked at her, after all. Billy had read as completely human to him, so...

He felt a tug at his arm and shoved it away instinctively, but the hard look he received from his escort made it clear that he was testing the man's patience. Billy was already gone, and Castiel was more confused now than he'd been at the start of the conversation. He was going to have to track the man down again and get proper answers out of him, but for now all he could do was move with the crowd.