Bobby and Death - Burying the Hatchet ((closed RP, Bobby, Death, Castiel, Dean))

[junkyard_hunter]

“Hey Bobby.”

“Cas and the boys ain’t here,” he said shortly, turning away from the door, leaving a slightly awkward looking Death standing there. Great. Now he’d have to try and be civil. He didn’t do things like that well.

“That’s okay. I.. I thought we should talk anyway.” Death followed him inside. He hadn’t thrown her out or slammed the

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[nerdofthelord]

Castiel arrived at Bobby's door not long after Dean had left. He was emphatically not looking forward to this conversation; in some ways, Bobby had become nearly as much of a surrogate father to him as he was to Sam and Dean, and his own culpability in this whole affair weighed heavily on him.

A fading echo of Death's power still lay perceptibly over the area; she'd left this place in a hurry. The memory of her tears, and of how gruff, even harsh Bobby could be when he was perturbed, brought some of the angel's earlier anger boiling up again in spite of his best effort to repress it.

He didn't expect the man to be nice, especially if he was in pain. But he held Bobby in high esteem and would never have treated his Karen with such discourtesy, no matter what she might have said to him; any more than he would Lisa or Jess or Mary, or even that young Sookie girl Sam had spent time with at the party.

It was so typical of the Winchesters and their associates: for all their virtues, sometimes the word respect didn't seem to exist in their collective vocabulary. They'd all been through so much together, and yet all too often they still ordered him around, laughed at him, embarrassed and humiliated and inconvenienced him at every possible opportunity, and now this.

He loved them with the fiercely-burning affection that only an angel could muster, Bobby included; but Heaven help him, he just couldn't take this one lying down.

Despite holding himself in check, his first knock at the door strained the hinges and caused the heavy oak to creak and groan alarmingly.

[junkyard_hunter]

It had taken more than a little of Bobby’s time to finally convince Dean to strike out in search of Death. She deserved an apology along with an explanation, and Bobby was fairly sure he couldn’t look her in the eye after what had passed. Instead, he would stay behind and wait for the inevitable arrival of what would likely be a highly pissed off angel. Not that he could blame Castiel; he had barked at his lady and all but ran her out of the room when she thought she was doing him a kindness. It was misguided and deeply painful, but even he couldn’t question her intent.

He shook his head as the heavy door bowed inward. Well that was hardly an encouraging start. Much like the angel on the other side, Bobby was not looking forward to this conversation. It was going to dredge up more pain than he wanted to deal with. But it was one that couldn’t be put off, and like it or no, he had hurt family and he needed to set that right.

Bobby swung the door open. His expression was guarded, but for all his effort, he couldn’t quite keep the pain from his eyes. Death had hit him with too much in too short an amount of time.

“Cas,” he said cautiously. “You here to talk or to kick my ass?”

[nerdofthelord]

He wasn't blind to Bobby's distress, and he hadn't come here intending to resort to blows. Bobby's offense fell far short of the kind of betrayal that would drive Castiel to launch such a one-sided attack on any human, let alone a friend. He did, however, require that they understood one another.

"If you were in my place," he replied grimly, blue eyes fixed intent and unblinking on the man's face, "if someone had spoken to Karen as you did Death, which would it be?"

[junkyard_hunter]

He took a deep breath before answering slowly. "If I was in your place, and it had been any other man, there wouldn't be a discussion."

Bobby turned away from the door, expecting Castiel to follow, or to spin him around and land one good punch. Hell, it wasn't like he didn't deserve at least one shot for the way he barked at Death. He walked back to where the small glass sphere lay in the center of his desk. The hunter regarded it almost like he expected it to rear up and bite him. "You made the memory for her, Cas. Damnit, you know what Karen meant to me. You coulda warned me," he said, his voice unexpectedly rough.

[nerdofthelord]

"Then be grateful I'm not you," the angel said flatly. "You could have told me from the beginning how badly her presence disturbed you. I would have warned her."

Agitated, he paced back and forth a few times. "Death cares for her charges, Bobby. Lucifer's spell wounded all of you, he forced her to break a sacred trust. She came to me in tears, not because you hurt her but because she'd hurt you, again, and it was the opposite of what she'd intended."

He stopped, opening and closing a fist and shaking his head slightly. "I want very badly to hit you right now. But I don't want to have to piece your skull back together."

[junkyard_hunter]

Bobby had nothing to say to the threat. He stared at that fist for a moment before raising his eyes to the angel, his friend.

"What was I supposed to say when you showed up at my door with that Valentine from her, caught somewhere between terrified and elated? Christ, Cas. You were happy and that's been in damn short supply for us this last year. I held my damn peace. I was workin it out on my own."

And he had been, a little bit at a time. It wasn't easy, but he had been slowly working up to spending more time around her and the boys.

"Cas, I had to kill her. I had to kill my wife. I had to put my gun to her head while she held my fucking hand and told me it was all right!" In one smooth motion, Bobby picked up the orb and flung it against the stone wall. The memory given form was more resilient than it looked, dropping to the floor with only a large crack to show for it.

"Now you tell me if that's a memory you'd want to relive," he growled, his features deeply lined with grief.

[nerdofthelord]

Cas looked away for a moment, deliberately forcing himself to relax and to allow his hand to fall open and stay that way. He couldn't sustain that level of anger for long in the face of his friend's pain. Bobby's friendship meant too much to him to risk losing it over what was essentially a misunderstanding, even one as terrible as this had been.

"No," he said finally. "But I suppose she was hoping if you could see the part that was hidden from you the first time, you'd find it easier to believe that Karen was telling you the truth."

He dropped his gaze to the floor, debating. He hadn't said anything to his friends about what he planned--the reason that he, alone among them, seemed anxious to return to the real world. There was so much he had to do, not only to restore his own home to order but to make it ready for those he loved. Death had thoroughly distracted him from that mission, recently, but he hadn't forgotten or given it up.

Raising his eyes, he said, "Bobby, you sent Karen to a good place. This is not a platitude, it's my personal guarantee. She is safe and whole, and for now, she has your memory to care for her, exactly as you once did.

"But if I have anything to say about it, when your time comes, it won't be some empty memory that you find, endlessly replaying the past. It will be your wife, waiting for you. And as hard as I know it must be for you now, on that day, I promise you, it won't seem like such a long time that you had to wait."

He took a step closer, all the anger and aggression faded into empathy and quiet sincerity. "When Death comes for you--and the others, when it's their turn--she will not come as an enemy. She will be bringing you home. Bringing the family back together, all of it. No more monsters, no serving as pawns to more powerful beings. Ever. I swear to you that I will make this happen, Bobby. I will give you peace, or I'll die trying."

[junkyard_hunter]

Bobby turned towards the desk and leaned heavily on it, his shoulders bowed with the force of his grief. “A good place,” he repeated. “You know the minister said that at her funeral too? I didn’t believe him. Hell, I had known the man twenty years and I thought it was some empty goddamn platitude people offered at funerals. I even slugged him for it.”

“But you?” he raised his eyes to meet is friend’s. “You I believe. God help me, it ain’t easy, but I do. She..” he nearly choked on the words, “she’ll be okay until I get there.”

Castiel’s assurance regarding Heaven was something else entirely. He knew the quiet intensity behind that promise, just as much as he knew Dean’s loud bravado. Cas would find some way to deliver, because just like his best friend, he’d move mountains to save the ones he loved. There was no doubt in Bobby’s mind that given the chance, Cas would realign Heaven for them. The prospect of being reunited like that, with all of his family safe and whole brought tears to his eyes, and the old hunter didn’t fight them, didn’t turn away. It would somehow demean the promise that had just been made to him.

“I know you will, Cas. If anyone can kick their asses back into line, it’d be you.”

He drew in a deep breath. “Damnit, I was wrong. I shouldn’t have kicked your lady out like that. I get what she was tryin to show me. I should’ve appreciated the fact that someone like Death would even have bothered. I’m a damned old fool and I owe you both an apology.”

[nerdofthelord]

Cas nodded a little, relieved beyond measure. As much as it had felt like the final straw, though, this really had very little to do with him. "Then apologize to her...and to your minister, if you ever get the chance...and we'll call it even." He paused. "I'll try harder in the future to consider beforehand how a gesture might be read."

That sort of thing was still difficult for him, sorting out intention from perception, but clearly it was of vital importance. It was apparently nothing but blind luck that he'd somehow managed to get it right several times before committing this blunder. The idea had been Death's, but he ought to understand his friends better by now than to have gone along with it without a second thought.

[junkyard_hunter]

“Yeah. You got it Cas,” Bobby said automatically. He wasn’t sure that Death would be willing to get anywhere within sight of him for a time, but if she did, he’d apologize. The anger and the pain that had so blinded him had drained away, leaving him feeling old and damnably tired. “It ain’t enough to call it even, but it’s a start.”

There was a warm and familiar surge of power just outside the door, followed by a knock. Bobby hadn’t felt the energy of Death’s arrival and moved to open it, “Dean, it’s.. oh.”