This Strange Flesh You Found
Okay, I'm impatient. I admit it. Fake link goes to AO3, thanks much to viridian_magpie for the invite. I'll get to posting this here for real (and crossposting it), later. EDIT: Okay! It's below! Just in case anyone was allergic to leaving LJ or something.
Title: This Strange Flesh You Found
Characters/Pairing: Amelia, Claire, Castiel; one Amelia/Castiel scene
Rating: Hard R
Word Count: AO3 says 6669, and I like the way that looks.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Warnings: PTSD, some consent issues
Notes: Title is a slightly mangled line from Joni Mitchell’s “Down to You”, which isn’t a song I usually associate with Supernatural, but Amelia probably likes it well enough.
Tons of thanks to my betas: sistabro and clwright2 for handling my neuroses and random tense switching. All remaining mistakes are my own. And if you see any, please let me know. PM, comment, whatever, drop me a line. Concrit is appreciated.
Summary: There's a stranger in her house. He's wearing her husband's skin, her husband's clothes. It is not her husband. Castiel does his best to keep his promise to Jimmy. Amelia copes.
They moved out from Pontiac that night, only stopping at the house long enough to grab a quick suitcase before heading straight to her mother's. Amelia tries to imagine an explanation she could give her mother on the way, something not mentioning angels or demons that still explains the urgency, the need to get away from her house, but it's surprisingly hard to think. Her thoughts scatter, and all of her concentration is on the shift, clutch, accelerate as she follows the subtle curves of I-55. There's enough work just breathing on her own again, reveling in the pleasure of moving her own limbs.
It ends up not to matter, even with the amount of time it took her to ring the doorbell. All she gets out is 'Jimmy' before a sudden wave of nausea calls her to the first floor bathroom just in time. Her mother is outside with a glass of water with instructions to sip when she's finished, not worry about the cleanup. Amelia breaks down right then and there. Tears pour from her like so much black smoke: unthinking, a bodily response with no more emotion attached than to a blink or a sneeze, until she is empty.
Claire is quiet. She's been quiet, this past year. Amelia doesn't know what to say to rouse her, and after tonight, she doesn't know if she has the strength. They're both bundled up and sent upstairs to sleep in the guest bedroom, sharing the twin bed instead of waiting for the air mattress to be ready.
Amelia wakes up the next morning curled up around Claire, feeling far too hungover for someone who hasn't touched so much as a beer in the past week. She disentangles herself slowly to head down the stairs and finds her mother wiping down some already suspiciously clean framed family portraits.
"How're you feeling, baby girl?" Her mother's tone is timeless, the same one she used when she was seven with a skinned knee, the same one she used ten years ago after her father's funeral. It grounds her, if only for that reason. Her mother's arms around her are another level of comfort.
"I'm fine" Amelia pauses, tries again. "I'm well enough, I'll be okay."
"I called in to work today. After all the excitement last night, I figured it'd be for the best not to leave you two alone." Amelia remembers that she has a job, too - life didn't stop for anyone else when Jimmy knocked on the door. She glances at the wall clock - 9:00 AM. She'd better call in herself. Her mother pulls away, looking Amelia in the eye with the same expression she'd had when she suspected Amelia of losing her virginity to Jason Harrigan.
"What is it?"
"I know this is hard, but I need to know. I thought I saw Jimmy outside last night in the dark. He didn't look like himself. Is there any reason for us to be concerned?"
"Ma, no." Yes, yes, there is. There's demons and angels and they're both equally terrible and horribly real and they can take us, take any of us away in a second, but there's nothing the police, nothing those leather-hard men can do, it's all whims and happenstance.
Her mother's mouth is a straight line. The last thing Amelia wants is the police. "Jimmy's dead." It's close enough to the truth. He'd been shot and left bleeding on the warehouse floor (her finger on the trigger and that vicious little kick). He wasn't coming back.
Her mother's face collapses, all the hot air seeps out and she finds herself in another hug. "Oh, Ames, I'm so sorry. It's probably nothing. It was only for a second, I'm sure I was just seeing things. Don't worry about it-I'm sorry I brought it up."
It should have been a warning. But as hard as she looks out of the corner of her eye, Amelia sees nothing. And there are things to do. Amelia goes back to work, the desk job she'd taken when Jimmy disappeared, one remarkably like the one she'd left when she had Claire over a decade ago. She files reports and has a cube next to a college girl whose main goal in life seems to be not becoming Amelia one day. Starting a new job had helped back then, to meet people who had no idea who Jimmy was, to construct a new personality without him. She’d forgotten what it was like to meet people outside of Jimmy, outside of Claire’s after school programs. She’d felt comfortable, normal, right around them, because none of them knew anything could be wrong.
Now she throws herself into selling the old house, cleaning it up, scrubbing their life away from it. Someone had cleared the bodies and cleaned out the bloodstains while they were gone. Amelia tries not to think about who it could have been. Claire and Amelia spend their weekends looking for something new, imagine themselves behind every breakfast bar, try to guess where the faults in their new life may be hiding. They settle on a bungalow down in Bloomington. It's smaller than their old house, but they have less than they used to.
Castiel arrives on moving day, when all their things are still in cardboard boxes and all their furniture is set up in the wrong rooms. Amelia screams when she sees him standing right inside her threshold, then covers her mouth. All of the movers have left, but there are still people nearby. The last thing she needs is for the new neighbors to hear.
“I need you to leave this house right now.” Amelia’s voice is so low she doesn’t think a normal human would be able to hear her, and she doesn’t quite keep it from wavering. She’s still proud that she got the words out.
"I promised Jimmy I would keep you safe. You need to ward this house," Castiel says. The face is Jimmy's but all the expressions are wrong. She can't read him at all. She's meeting his gaze but her mind is blank. Castiel stares at her for a few moments, stops, and moves forward to release her grip on the box cutter. Amelia hadn't been aware that she'd been holding it.
He begins again, more softly this time, but still insistent. "The end of days are near, and whatever happens, whoever wins, it won’t be good for you. I’ll try to shield you, but you need to take precautions.”
Amelia can’t do anything but stare at him, trying to figure out what the differences are, but it's been too long since she had Jimmy to compare him to. All she can think is that he’s too whole. When she’d left Jimmy, he’d been shuddering, pale, spitting blood. He shouldn’t be like that-Amelia doesn’t want him like that, but that’s how he was, and now there’s no trace of Jimmy or his wounds. Just her husband’s body and that thing inside. She wrenches her eyes away and trains them on a spot above his left shoulder. From behind him, Claire has appeared from her bedroom, half hidden on the staircase and staring at him in wonder. Amelia can't begin to imagine what Claire sees.
Amelia can’t trust him, she instinctively distrusts him, and yet . . . she knows there are other horrors out there. If he wished to destroy her, there is nothing she could do. “Fine. Do it and get out.”
He tells her about the salt and iron, about the power of the Lord's name on her tongue. She picks fights about best places to put the iron nails and not disturb the fine woodwork. Some hysterical part of her mind reminds her that she's saving the moulding from angelic wrath, but she pushes it down, tries to normalize the situation when she can.
There’s a set of devil’s traps underneath the welcome mats. There are salt lines taped down on all the windowsills. There's a stranger in her house. He's wearing her husband's skin, her husband's clothes. It is not her husband. Amelia notices that Castiel does nothing to ward against angels.
They get to Amelia’s bedroom last.
“If there’s anything else you need, I will try to get it for you.” Even the air around Castiel feels awkward, wrong. Like the air realizes there’s something off with what it’s holding. He's moving slowly, deliberately, like he's placating a frightened animal. He is, and Amelia hates him even more for that.
“Give me my husband back.” It’s out of her mouth before she can even think, but she can’t even begin to regret it.
Castiel gives her half of a smile at that, almost Jimmy but not quite. And that is wrong, he’s so much more and less than he should be and Amelia can’t stand it anymore. She doesn’t know why, doesn’t think about it, just grabs the back of her husband’s neck and pulls him down with more force than she’d ever used before, smashes her lips onto his and forces a kiss out of him. As if she could suck the grace from his body and spit it out like venom. Castiel is still not responding at all and this somehow makes it worse. The need drives her further, deeper, and she’s removing his jacket and ripping off his tie. She’s small, not that strong, she’s goading him now, trying to make him break, trying to make him stop her, make him do something. He’s got to have a limit somewhere, but he does nothing. There’s nothing set up in the room besides a naked mattress and box spring, the bedframe still propped up in pieces by the wall, but she pulls them onto it.
When she licks his neck, nips at the inside of his wrists, she thinks this body is not yours. You are an intruder here. She grasps and scratches with precision, using hard-won knowledge from fifteen years of couplings and thinks this body was mine before you took it from me. It’s lust and loneliness and anger and pain and it pushes her on. This is all her, her finger’s on the trigger and she’s pushing down onto him, skirt hiked up and blouse still on, barely wrinkled from the exertion. She works methodically, every thrust a point, rolling her hips and clenching in just that way every single time. The rhythm's the same as it's always been, it's all muscle memory now. Her husband's body still has the same quirks. He is pliant and willing, but makes no move to reciprocate, fingers skidding uselessly along the bare mattress instead of grasping her breast, her thigh. The eyes are dilated and wide and filled with an alien curiosity. She finishes quietly, pushes herself off of him and stands up, holding the wall for support. Castiel rises, clothes suddenly whole once more, and disappears.
There's the sound of a radiator knocking, the faint hum of electricity and an uncomfortable tackiness dripping down her thighs. A wave of disgust hits her along with the musky smell, nausea fighting with self loathing and loss while she steadies herself for the ten foot walk from her bedroom to the shower. She hopes Claire didn't notice anything. Any strange sounds could just be the house settling in.
Amelia is out the first time he calls and she only registers an unknown number on the caller ID. She drops the phone when hears the far-too-deep voice stating that he doesn’t know why they're asking him to say his name. There are more calls later. She deletes the voicemails without listening to them.
But she doesn't warn Claire, doesn't know how. It doesn't take long, maybe the fourth or fifth call, before Amelia hears Claire shouting down the stairwell. “Mom, phone’s ringing, it’s for you.”
“I know, honey. Just let it ring.” Amelia looks up. Claire's got the phone in her hand, is about to accept the call when Amelia snatches the handset away from her. “Don’t.”
“Why not?” Claire is looking at her like she’s crazy now, a deflective smile creeping onto her face.
“Just don’t. It’s better for everyone if you don’t.” And it belatedly hits her that this is not the way to get a thirteen year-old to listen to her.
Sure enough, next time he calls, Claire grabs the phone before Amelia could stop her and answers “Novak residence, this is Claire”, the way that Amelia is constantly trying to get her daughter to answer the phone-only successful this one time. She answers ‘yes’ to a question, almost breathless, mouth working up and down. The dial tone becomes audible from across the room, but Claire just stares at the handset. Amelia takes it from Claire, sets it gingerly back into its cradle and scoops her stiff and wounded daughter into her arms until Claire finally sags.
“I have questions. I’ve got so many questions and I couldn’t believe it was him. But he didn’t even give me a chance to ask,” Claire says into Amelia’s shoulder. She sounds so small.
“He won’t, honey. He won’t.” She doesn’t bother asking if Claire is talking about Jimmy, or Castiel, or both. Amelia doesn’t even think whatever was on the other end of the line has the answers. If he did, there’s no reason to believe he’d tell them anything. He’s not their friend, he’s not her husband or Claire’s father. Just a pretender, a parasite that wants to feed on her family’s blood.
Amelia answers the phone from then on. To protect Claire, if nothing else. At first, it’s only the same two questions. “Are you safe?” and “Have you noticed anything strange?”. As time goes on, things start appearing on the news: towns disappearing, strange discussions of quarantines, floods and plagues of locusts. Castiel explains the mechanics behind each one, what to look for, how to prepare.
Amelia has lived in tornado country all her life. She survived the Cold War, dutifully paid attention when they showed The Day After in school. She’s been through this enough times to know when the disaster prep is just crowd control. Nobody can tape their windows before a tornado hits. A Volvo’s dashboard isn’t going to save anyone from a nuclear blast. It’s all or nothing. The only way to avoid destruction is to not be in the way. This tornado has touched down upon her house once, breaking it apart. It may still happen again.
Still, it's comforting to have some idea of what's going on. She wonders what her neighbors think of all of this, what she would have thought two years ago. Whether Jimmy would have assumed all these horrors were divine will without the angels speaking to him.
That line of thinking is too dangerous, her lungs already constrict in warning, the memory of black smoke filling them up, so she stops, covers up that thought and stores it away.
The voice on the phone becomes more weary over time, then stops calling altogether. It's a tense few weeks before Amelia realizes that the disasters on the news have also stopped. The world didn't end. They might be able to get back to an equilibrium now, a new one. She realizes that she'd been hoping that Jimmy would be returned to her when it was all over, if they all survived. She didn't think she'd been fantasizing about seeing him again, about where to put his things, how to explain it to her mother, but apparently she had because the realization brings a fresh new wave of grief. She powers through it, accepts the tears and anger with a zen equanimity, waits for it to subside. It does, in time.
But it makes it more of a shock to see him again.
Castiel is standing by the pile of catalogs and junk mail when they come in the door, shopping bags filled with school supplies and new clothes. He looks stronger than she would have expected from his last phone calls, far more confident and powerful than that slurred, sarcastic voice. He still looks so wrong to her eyes. It was easier to separate Castiel from Jimmy when she didn't have to look at him. Their last physical encounter flashes through her mind and she gets the urge to push him away, sweep him aside along with the memory.
“What, it’s not over? What are you going to warn us about this time?”
“No. . yes-maybe.” He seems to be as impatient as she is, unhappy with her demands to explain. “You’re safe from the apocalypse for now. There’s other angels after me. They can find me through my vessels. I can’t leave them unprotected.”
"So, you stopped by to explain why you’re not giving Jimmy back?" Amelia huffs. “You obviously know my phone number. I don’t see why this required a housecall.”
"Amelia, Jimmy is gone now." Something about the way he said now makes it clear that he hasn't been gone before, and she flushes, guilt and shame coming back, and it's another struggle to keep her focus on the conversation. A hope she hadn’t even let bud dies once more.
"Then why are you here?"
He turns that gaze on Claire. "No."
Notebooks and math supplies spill out to the floor and Claire is in her arms, stock still and staring. Castiel bristles. Amelia swears that for a second, the lights flicker. "I'm here to keep her safe."
"Stay away from my daughter." Amelia growls at the same time as Claire whines "Mom", forgetting her fear just long enough to be embarrassed.
"I’m not taking her, I won’t harm . . .It will hurt, but only for a second." Claire squeaks as Amelia pulls her tighter. Castiel sighs. "I'll put warding spells on her. No angel will be able to touch her, or find her."
"So she won't work as a vessel if you do this?"
Castiel pauses, looks off to the side as if making a decision. "No one will use her as a vessel, no."
Amelia looks down at Claire, feels the nod against her chest more than she sees it. "Then do it." She releases Claire and Castiel takes her. He raises his hand against her chest and Claire gasps, letting off the same choked-off whimper she'd given when she had her ears pierced a second time. Amelia takes hold of Claire again and Castiel steps back, stares and Claire for a moment, and disappears.
It feels anticlimactic, but the only thing to do is to pick up their shopping bags and get on with their lives, hope that maybe that's really the last of it.
Dana over in compliance keeps on trying to set Amelia up with her brother-in-law. Ian's good looking, the right age, and apparently knows a thing or two about getting out of a messy relationship. He loves kids, even has two of his own, though he doesn't see them all that often. It's been three years, she doesn't have have a reason not to try. It takes a while, but Amelia agrees.
It's odd and awkward, but mostly all right. They make small talk, avoiding any mention of their exes, and strive to find something they have in common besides kids. She hasn't had to date since she was a teenager. She'd forgotten that they'd been so young, she'd been so caught up in herself that she'd missed so many of the complexities. There's what she'd like him to know about her, what she expects of him, what he's telling her, what's he's not telling her, what he would like her to ask, what he would like her to think of him. It's a game, or a puzzle that wishes to be solved. Amelia subtly navigates the conversation, laughing at all the right moments, flattering his intelligence. She could do this more often.
It's been a nice evening, she decides later. Her head is rests on the cool glass of the car window as Ian explains how cities evolved to allow a thirty minute commute throughout history, letting his words about Rome and London and suburban Phoenix wash over her as she concentrates on the passing yellow lines on the black asphalt, until
She's shoved back in to consciousness so fast her phantom lungs stutter, even as those made of blood and muscle breathe slow and deep. Her fingers are on the trigger a second before she turns and motions come hither and there's a vicious little kick, like Claire in the womb, the gun an extension but not part of her. And then there's Jimmy, bleeding and shaking and trying desperately to speak but unable to do anything but take these wet, gasping breaths. Amelia is clawing, screaming without air, trying to grasp and find purchase but she can't, can't even keep her eyes on Jimmy as the demon drags her away, the scene before her blurring from those hunters to Claire, standing there calmly. Then Claire turns around and Amelia has a revelation, a moment of dawning horror coupled with complete surety that this is not her daughter . . .
“Amelia, are you all right?” And she's back in the passenger's seat of a car, safe. Ian glances over at her.
"Yeah, just had too much to drink, I guess." Even though it had only been a few glasses of wine.
Ian stays quiet after that, and Amelia wonders if she might have said something after she'd . . . drifted off. She doesn't have it in her anymore to try and save the mood. It's hard enough to not think about that first night with her and Claire in the car, heading towards her mother’s. That had been just a little further up the road from here. She concentrates on breathing, lets Ian concentrate on driving. There's only a distracted kiss when they arrive at the house, neither one of them pushing for anything more.
She checks her voicemail when she gets in. All the messages are old, but she listens to them anyway.
"How was work?" Amelia takes a second to wonder if she’s dreaming. But no, that’s his voice. The phone number’s different, but she’ll never forget that voice.
"I'm sorry?"
"Is Claire doing well in school?"
"What's this for?" Had demons found her at school? It couldn’t possibly be related to Claire’s grades in trigonometry. She isn’t living an episode of Buffy.
"Dean recently left his long-time girlfriend and her son to hunt again. It's something he asks her whenever he calls; I thought it would be an appropriate way of showing interest in your daughter's well being." Castiel sounds apologetic. Amelia’s charmed despite herself. It’s all she can do not to laugh.
"No, no, it's fine. Yeah. She's doing great. Thanks for asking."
There’s an awkward beat of silence as Amelia tries to figure out if she should tell him anything else. She doesn’t trust him, but what harm could it do? And it’s never been too difficult to get Amelia to brag about her daughter. "She takes pictures," she says. Then, because that’s not enough, “Claire likes looking through a camera lens. Yearbook's been after her to join up, but she's not all that interested in taking pictures at dances. She prefers candids, and just, I don't know, shots of random scenery." Amelia laughs. Castiel only hmms in agreement.
There’s more to it than that. It’s a different way of seeing things. Claire’s explained it to her before. How black and white can reveal features that color hides. Like the world is narrower and more detailed than it appears at first sight. On how capturing an image means that there’s now two versions of that space, in two separate points of time.
It reminds Claire of how the world looked when Castiel stared out through her eyes.
Claire has dug out Jimmy’s old camera, the one he bought back in college with the idea that analog was somehow more authentic than digital. She totes it around with her, talking about lenses and filters and noticing bits of light. Amelia lets her set up a tiny darkroom in the basement by the washing machine with old equipment bought from the ISU art department. Claire disappears down there for hours. She smells of harsh chemicals when she emerges, wrong and inhuman, and Amelia has to remind herself that it’s still her daughter, nothing more.
Amelia remembers full well what everything looked like while she was possessed. Black smoke still appears to cloud her eyes sometimes, when she least expects. She can’t imagine how much different it must have been for Claire to want to revisit that time. She wonders if it was the same for Jimmy when he was still alive, or even now. Wherever he is.
There’s no way she’d tell this to Castiel. Amelia isn’t going to let him know how much of a hold he still has on her family.
A few days later a disposable camera with a picture of Mount Rushmore printed on its cardboard carton shows up on their doorstep. The developed shots are badly framed, many have a motion-blur, but they can still make out a rusted out Cadillac, a penguin's wing and a kite framed against an impossibly blue sky.
Claire assumes it's her friends playing a practical joke. Amelia doesn't correct her.
It's a relief when someone else is more surprised by their reality-defying arrival, for once. Amelia is propped up on the couch with a mug in hand and Wolf Hall on her lap when the Winchester brothers pop in, duffel bag crashing to the floor beside them with an audible thump. Amelia manages to not even spill any of the tea.
"Mrs. Novak?"
"Good evening. Any reason you're in my living room?" Her voice remains steady.
"We don't know-I mean, we didn't plan to be here. Castiel probably, but I don't know why. . . did you move?" The taller one rambles on as they turn around and take in the room, trying to get their bearings straight. Sam. She thinks his name is Sam. He had some other woman's blood dripping from his mouth the last time she saw him. She's lucky that the demon possessing her had the sense to keep its distance.
That line of thinking is unhelpful, so she stops it, concentrates on his question instead. "A few years ago. The last place had some bad memories attached." Amelia deigns to sit up, but lets her unexpected guests stand around awkwardly. Their disorientation is helping to steady her, in a way. This is her domain; she's in control.
"It probably has to do with the shifters lurking in the Goodmans's old place." Claire appears out of the corner of the living room. She’s trying to act confident, and it might have worked if not for the blush that’s forming on her cheeks and the smile that’s threatening to erupt.
"There are shifters nearby?" asks Sam. Claire has their full attention.
Claire pulls out her cellphone, holding it out for the Winchesters to view. "See! Human faces, but their eyes are glowing in the picture. There's been a rash of deaths at ISU, too. Roommates keep on killing each other. It’s started in the dorms but has been spreading out.” She lets loose the smile and goes for a full-out grin, obviously proud to be a help.
"What were you doing out there?" The other one, Dean, finally speaks, taking Claire’s cellphone from her and squinting at the tiny screen.
"Trying to find this location for a shoot me and my friends are planning. It's a retelling of all these fairy tales, only modern and dark. The three little pigs are totally victims of foreclosure."
“Claire,” warns Amelia.
"You weren't trying to hunt it?" asks Sam.
"The pigs? Oh! You mean the shifters. No, I just had my camera . . . " Claire’s smile breaks a little, but she props it up, still pushing along.
Dean frowns. "Yeah, okay. Just stay away. No more sneaking around up there. And don't try to go after that thing yourself!"
Whatever Claire had been hoping to hear, that hadn’t been it. "Yeah, because getting stabbed to death by goo monsters in a marshland is my idea of a fun Friday night. Whatever, I was just trying to give you a heads up, save you some time. I've gotta go-Kyra's picking me up in five." Claire plants a kiss on Amelia's cheek and spares one more glare for the brothers before rushing off.
Amelia calls after her, but it's too late, the screen door has already slammed. She exchanges a knowing look with the shorter one, Dean, the one who had a child and tries to look apologetic.
"Do you mind if I tail her?” asks Dean.
Amelia for a second wonders where his child is now before answering. "Go ahead. But if the police catch you creeping outside a house filled with sixteen year-old girls, I'm not going to cover for you."
"No offense, ma'am, but she wouldn’t be the first teenager we’ve found that got it into her mind to hunt.”
"My daughter has a different view of life or death situations than most teens. I trust her, and I've got a GPS tracker on her phone." Amelia shrugs. “There's a killer on the loose. I reserve the right to be overprotective.”
They decide to head over to the field instead. Amelia allows them to borrow her car-they'd just hotwire one of the neighbors’s, anyway. She carefully avoids the half-hidden memories of how she acquired that knowledge. They return a few short hours later, silver blades still in hand, oblivious to the amount of gore covering them. Amelia insists on a shower before inviting them to dinner.
“Thanks for the shower. And the grub-we don't get home cooked meals too often,” Dean says over a plate of risotto.
“You stopped people from being murdered, I figure the least I can offer is pasta.” She pauses, wondering how far courtesy should stretch. “Be sure to offer my thanks to Castiel, too. For getting you guys here. I hadn’t realized he was still watching the area.”
Sam and Dean stop eating at that, sharing another silent conversation with each other. Sam ends up being the one to ask, "Have you seen Cas recently?"
"In the flesh? No. . . it's been nearly two years, I think. He used to call from time to time, but it's been at least a few months since I've heard from him. Is he missing?”
Her guests glance at each other. "If he does show up, be careful around him. He's not Cas anymore. He's given himself a promotion and isn't always so nice to the people who don't recognize it. He’s not as considerate as he used to be.”
The smile stretches across her face so tightly she's afraid her skin will break. You mean, the kind, considerate person that stole my husband's body? That lead him to his death? It's all she can do to not say it, they're guests, and strangers, dangerous ones at that, but the thought drums so loud in her head that it takes on a physical presence. They might have let the flesh confuse them into thinking that he was human, but she never forgot what he was capable of. She ignores the voice in her head that tells her that’s not entirely true: she’d been kind to him the last few times on the phone, treated him with basic human courtesy. She’s let her guard down. That could be dangerous.
Amelia decides it’s better not to speak her mind. Instead, she says “I’ll be sure to be careful” and goes to hunt through the pantry for some dessert. They must sense something anyway. The rest of the meal is quiet. It's barely twilight when she locks the door behind them. Amelia stops, listens for a second to see if she can sense anyone watching, but there are only cicadas singing in the distance.
Amelia doesn't notice Claire's text until she's already at the door, but it's still a welcome warning.
ANGEL SHOWED UP. LEFT HIM ON COUCH. @ JUSTINES FOR DINNER. <3 U
It's the 'love you' that worries her.
Sure enough, there’s a figure in a trenchcoat sitting on the couch with an untouched glass of icewater melting in front of him. He looks so lost that there's a second where she hopes once more that it might be Jimmy. But no, it's definitely Castiel, with Jimmy's hair strangely tousled and his tie on backwards, body sagged in on itself, as if there is less of him than there used to be.
"Do the wards need a retouch?" Amelia asks lightly.
"I. . .needed someplace to go."
"And the Winchesters?" There's no way her home was the first choice. He's never been welcome here, only known.
"Gone."
"Where?"
There's no answer. Castiel only reaches out and wipes some condensation off the glass in front of him. Where could they have gone to, on Heaven or Hell or a thousand different Earths, where Castiel couldn't follow? Or was he just choosing to keep them lost?
There are stories of what she should do here, ancient ones. The Greeks knew how to treat gods and other wayward travelers, there's Sodom and Gomorrah and a thousand other parables invoking hospitality. But there was also the Winchester's warning to think about, and the fact he's wearing her dead husband's face as if it were his own. They'd all be safer if he'd never come.
She leaves him where he is on the couch without a word and comes back half an hour later with a few bags full of clothing from Target. Nothing fancy, but all the right size. She still remembers that much, at least.
"Fine. You have to wear my husband's body. The least you can do is get out of the damned suit. Pick whatever you want out, I'll take the rest back. And if I want you gone, if Claire wants you gone, you go. I shot up that body once before, hand to God, I’ll shoot it again."
Castiel complies worldlessly, a ghost of a smile appearing as he heads up the stairs.
Claire returns home later that night with red eyes and a blotchy face, but her voice is clear. “Is he staying?”
“Do you want him to?”
“I don't . . .” The answer seems to herald more tears, and Amelia wants to take it all back, shield her from this situation somehow. She would if she could. “I don't want to kick him out.”
“Okay. Then I won't.”
It's a start.
Having Castiel in her home is like allowing a feral animal to pass through. He's comfortable enough, but they keep their distance. He comes by through the front door, politely ringing the doorbell. He does his best to appear as human and powerless as possible, even as he brings souvenirs from far off spaces, and times that are long gone or never existed. He’ll haunt the house for a while, making his presence known mostly as the sounds in the next room, or the collection of Booker prize winners Amelia keeps on meaning to read that migrate in piles onto the coffee table in the rec room. And then he heads off again to parts unknown, for a few days, a week, a few months.
He's quiet in her presence, less so in Claire's. They have a standing date to watch Dancing with the Stars, of all things, whenever Castiel is in town, and she can hear Claire’s high-pitched voice mixed with Castiel’s rasp, even if she can’t make out the words. But there seems to be an expectation between Amelia and Castiel, the long years leaving a ghost of a purpose between them, one Amelia doesn’t know how to banish. He has no reason to warn her of omens and plagues anymore. They’ve never talked about anything else. He talked to Jimmy, never to her.
That Christmas, she brings two pictures for the holiday portrait wall: a more recent one of her and Claire at her mother’s house, and an older one of their family at the Indiana dunes, Claire beaming while being buried in the sand and Jimmy laughing as he continued to pack sand around her shoulders.
"That's your ex-husband?" Jennifer from accounts payable sidles up to her. "I didn't realize that’s who’s been staying with you."
"I'm sorry?"
"I saw him come by your house the other day, I didn't mean to pry or anything-"
"Oh, of course not!" Amelia says, a little too forcefully. Jennifer gives her a look. At least that explains the questions she'd been getting from Dana about if she'd been seeing anyone new.
"I just happened to notice him on my way home. I'm sorry, was it a secret?" She's barely managing to hide her smirk now.
"No, it's his brother. And not a secret," she says. It's a believable enough lie, Amelia judges. Jimmy even had a brother, though they hadn't spoken in years. Only Jennifer's eyebrows shoot up and it occurs to her that hadn't made the story less salacious at all. "We're not-he's just staying in our basement for a while. Been through a rough time recently."
"That's so good of you!" Jennifer doesn't sound like she believes her one whit. Amelia wonders how long it will take before Dana sneaks in a few more questions about her love life. "You must have been so devoted to your husband to keep up with his family that way." She peers closer at the picture "Now that you mention it, I can see the differences between the two of them. They don't look that much alike at all." And Amelia has to stifle a laugh quickly. The picture had been a few short years before the possession. Jimmy’s body hasn't changed since then at all.
Except for becoming Castiel’s.
She's stuck thinking about when things changed on her way home that evening. It's been a while since she saw Castiel and thought of Jimmy. She's gotten used to it all: gifts of exotic fruit and painted glass; setting a third place at the table, empty most days, and carefully avoiding any expectation on whether it would be filled or not; the creaking sound of the floorboards in the early hours of the morning. These habits have built up so slowly.
Everything keeps on changing in the most routine of ways. Her new cubicle mate is an army wife with a six month-old daughter, quiet and disciplined. Claire is applying to colleges now: she's hoping for the School of the Art Institute, while Amelia is silently pulling for Cooper Union. Her book club is reading the new Lorrie Moore collection. Life goes on. There's no sea change, no epiphany that makes it all okay. It’s been an age without surprises, but she doesn’t want surprises anyway.
Castiel is sitting at the kitchen table when she comes in the door. There's still the smell of ozone around him.
“Where did you go?” Amelia asks.
Castiel starts. It takes him a second to respond. Slowly, as if it could be a trick. “Jerusalem. Titan. An autistic man’s dream.”
“Did you find what you wanted there?”
Castiel thinks, then shakes his head. “They used to bring me peace, but I’ve changed since then. I find myself calmer here.” The way he says it, it’s clear that there’s not much peace here, either. Amelia understands. This was never the life she envisioned for herself, but it’s all she has.
It takes him a second, but he seems to realize what he’s said and quickly looks up to gauge her reaction, as if it were a sin for him to find comfort here. Maybe she would have thought it was, once. Now she doesn’t the heart to refuse him.
“Then maybe stay.” As she places her hand over his own, she imagines the last plume of black smoke dissipating and takes her first clear, deep breath in years.
Title: This Strange Flesh You Found
Characters/Pairing: Amelia, Claire, Castiel; one Amelia/Castiel scene
Rating: Hard R
Word Count: AO3 says 6669, and I like the way that looks.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Warnings: PTSD, some consent issues
Notes: Title is a slightly mangled line from Joni Mitchell’s “Down to You”, which isn’t a song I usually associate with Supernatural, but Amelia probably likes it well enough.
Tons of thanks to my betas: sistabro and clwright2 for handling my neuroses and random tense switching. All remaining mistakes are my own. And if you see any, please let me know. PM, comment, whatever, drop me a line. Concrit is appreciated.
Summary: There's a stranger in her house. He's wearing her husband's skin, her husband's clothes. It is not her husband. Castiel does his best to keep his promise to Jimmy. Amelia copes.
They moved out from Pontiac that night, only stopping at the house long enough to grab a quick suitcase before heading straight to her mother's. Amelia tries to imagine an explanation she could give her mother on the way, something not mentioning angels or demons that still explains the urgency, the need to get away from her house, but it's surprisingly hard to think. Her thoughts scatter, and all of her concentration is on the shift, clutch, accelerate as she follows the subtle curves of I-55. There's enough work just breathing on her own again, reveling in the pleasure of moving her own limbs.
It ends up not to matter, even with the amount of time it took her to ring the doorbell. All she gets out is 'Jimmy' before a sudden wave of nausea calls her to the first floor bathroom just in time. Her mother is outside with a glass of water with instructions to sip when she's finished, not worry about the cleanup. Amelia breaks down right then and there. Tears pour from her like so much black smoke: unthinking, a bodily response with no more emotion attached than to a blink or a sneeze, until she is empty.
Claire is quiet. She's been quiet, this past year. Amelia doesn't know what to say to rouse her, and after tonight, she doesn't know if she has the strength. They're both bundled up and sent upstairs to sleep in the guest bedroom, sharing the twin bed instead of waiting for the air mattress to be ready.
Amelia wakes up the next morning curled up around Claire, feeling far too hungover for someone who hasn't touched so much as a beer in the past week. She disentangles herself slowly to head down the stairs and finds her mother wiping down some already suspiciously clean framed family portraits.
"How're you feeling, baby girl?" Her mother's tone is timeless, the same one she used when she was seven with a skinned knee, the same one she used ten years ago after her father's funeral. It grounds her, if only for that reason. Her mother's arms around her are another level of comfort.
"I'm fine" Amelia pauses, tries again. "I'm well enough, I'll be okay."
"I called in to work today. After all the excitement last night, I figured it'd be for the best not to leave you two alone." Amelia remembers that she has a job, too - life didn't stop for anyone else when Jimmy knocked on the door. She glances at the wall clock - 9:00 AM. She'd better call in herself. Her mother pulls away, looking Amelia in the eye with the same expression she'd had when she suspected Amelia of losing her virginity to Jason Harrigan.
"What is it?"
"I know this is hard, but I need to know. I thought I saw Jimmy outside last night in the dark. He didn't look like himself. Is there any reason for us to be concerned?"
"Ma, no." Yes, yes, there is. There's demons and angels and they're both equally terrible and horribly real and they can take us, take any of us away in a second, but there's nothing the police, nothing those leather-hard men can do, it's all whims and happenstance.
Her mother's mouth is a straight line. The last thing Amelia wants is the police. "Jimmy's dead." It's close enough to the truth. He'd been shot and left bleeding on the warehouse floor (her finger on the trigger and that vicious little kick). He wasn't coming back.
Her mother's face collapses, all the hot air seeps out and she finds herself in another hug. "Oh, Ames, I'm so sorry. It's probably nothing. It was only for a second, I'm sure I was just seeing things. Don't worry about it-I'm sorry I brought it up."
It should have been a warning. But as hard as she looks out of the corner of her eye, Amelia sees nothing. And there are things to do. Amelia goes back to work, the desk job she'd taken when Jimmy disappeared, one remarkably like the one she'd left when she had Claire over a decade ago. She files reports and has a cube next to a college girl whose main goal in life seems to be not becoming Amelia one day. Starting a new job had helped back then, to meet people who had no idea who Jimmy was, to construct a new personality without him. She’d forgotten what it was like to meet people outside of Jimmy, outside of Claire’s after school programs. She’d felt comfortable, normal, right around them, because none of them knew anything could be wrong.
Now she throws herself into selling the old house, cleaning it up, scrubbing their life away from it. Someone had cleared the bodies and cleaned out the bloodstains while they were gone. Amelia tries not to think about who it could have been. Claire and Amelia spend their weekends looking for something new, imagine themselves behind every breakfast bar, try to guess where the faults in their new life may be hiding. They settle on a bungalow down in Bloomington. It's smaller than their old house, but they have less than they used to.
Castiel arrives on moving day, when all their things are still in cardboard boxes and all their furniture is set up in the wrong rooms. Amelia screams when she sees him standing right inside her threshold, then covers her mouth. All of the movers have left, but there are still people nearby. The last thing she needs is for the new neighbors to hear.
“I need you to leave this house right now.” Amelia’s voice is so low she doesn’t think a normal human would be able to hear her, and she doesn’t quite keep it from wavering. She’s still proud that she got the words out.
"I promised Jimmy I would keep you safe. You need to ward this house," Castiel says. The face is Jimmy's but all the expressions are wrong. She can't read him at all. She's meeting his gaze but her mind is blank. Castiel stares at her for a few moments, stops, and moves forward to release her grip on the box cutter. Amelia hadn't been aware that she'd been holding it.
He begins again, more softly this time, but still insistent. "The end of days are near, and whatever happens, whoever wins, it won’t be good for you. I’ll try to shield you, but you need to take precautions.”
Amelia can’t do anything but stare at him, trying to figure out what the differences are, but it's been too long since she had Jimmy to compare him to. All she can think is that he’s too whole. When she’d left Jimmy, he’d been shuddering, pale, spitting blood. He shouldn’t be like that-Amelia doesn’t want him like that, but that’s how he was, and now there’s no trace of Jimmy or his wounds. Just her husband’s body and that thing inside. She wrenches her eyes away and trains them on a spot above his left shoulder. From behind him, Claire has appeared from her bedroom, half hidden on the staircase and staring at him in wonder. Amelia can't begin to imagine what Claire sees.
Amelia can’t trust him, she instinctively distrusts him, and yet . . . she knows there are other horrors out there. If he wished to destroy her, there is nothing she could do. “Fine. Do it and get out.”
He tells her about the salt and iron, about the power of the Lord's name on her tongue. She picks fights about best places to put the iron nails and not disturb the fine woodwork. Some hysterical part of her mind reminds her that she's saving the moulding from angelic wrath, but she pushes it down, tries to normalize the situation when she can.
There’s a set of devil’s traps underneath the welcome mats. There are salt lines taped down on all the windowsills. There's a stranger in her house. He's wearing her husband's skin, her husband's clothes. It is not her husband. Amelia notices that Castiel does nothing to ward against angels.
They get to Amelia’s bedroom last.
“If there’s anything else you need, I will try to get it for you.” Even the air around Castiel feels awkward, wrong. Like the air realizes there’s something off with what it’s holding. He's moving slowly, deliberately, like he's placating a frightened animal. He is, and Amelia hates him even more for that.
“Give me my husband back.” It’s out of her mouth before she can even think, but she can’t even begin to regret it.
Castiel gives her half of a smile at that, almost Jimmy but not quite. And that is wrong, he’s so much more and less than he should be and Amelia can’t stand it anymore. She doesn’t know why, doesn’t think about it, just grabs the back of her husband’s neck and pulls him down with more force than she’d ever used before, smashes her lips onto his and forces a kiss out of him. As if she could suck the grace from his body and spit it out like venom. Castiel is still not responding at all and this somehow makes it worse. The need drives her further, deeper, and she’s removing his jacket and ripping off his tie. She’s small, not that strong, she’s goading him now, trying to make him break, trying to make him stop her, make him do something. He’s got to have a limit somewhere, but he does nothing. There’s nothing set up in the room besides a naked mattress and box spring, the bedframe still propped up in pieces by the wall, but she pulls them onto it.
When she licks his neck, nips at the inside of his wrists, she thinks this body is not yours. You are an intruder here. She grasps and scratches with precision, using hard-won knowledge from fifteen years of couplings and thinks this body was mine before you took it from me. It’s lust and loneliness and anger and pain and it pushes her on. This is all her, her finger’s on the trigger and she’s pushing down onto him, skirt hiked up and blouse still on, barely wrinkled from the exertion. She works methodically, every thrust a point, rolling her hips and clenching in just that way every single time. The rhythm's the same as it's always been, it's all muscle memory now. Her husband's body still has the same quirks. He is pliant and willing, but makes no move to reciprocate, fingers skidding uselessly along the bare mattress instead of grasping her breast, her thigh. The eyes are dilated and wide and filled with an alien curiosity. She finishes quietly, pushes herself off of him and stands up, holding the wall for support. Castiel rises, clothes suddenly whole once more, and disappears.
There's the sound of a radiator knocking, the faint hum of electricity and an uncomfortable tackiness dripping down her thighs. A wave of disgust hits her along with the musky smell, nausea fighting with self loathing and loss while she steadies herself for the ten foot walk from her bedroom to the shower. She hopes Claire didn't notice anything. Any strange sounds could just be the house settling in.
Amelia is out the first time he calls and she only registers an unknown number on the caller ID. She drops the phone when hears the far-too-deep voice stating that he doesn’t know why they're asking him to say his name. There are more calls later. She deletes the voicemails without listening to them.
But she doesn't warn Claire, doesn't know how. It doesn't take long, maybe the fourth or fifth call, before Amelia hears Claire shouting down the stairwell. “Mom, phone’s ringing, it’s for you.”
“I know, honey. Just let it ring.” Amelia looks up. Claire's got the phone in her hand, is about to accept the call when Amelia snatches the handset away from her. “Don’t.”
“Why not?” Claire is looking at her like she’s crazy now, a deflective smile creeping onto her face.
“Just don’t. It’s better for everyone if you don’t.” And it belatedly hits her that this is not the way to get a thirteen year-old to listen to her.
Sure enough, next time he calls, Claire grabs the phone before Amelia could stop her and answers “Novak residence, this is Claire”, the way that Amelia is constantly trying to get her daughter to answer the phone-only successful this one time. She answers ‘yes’ to a question, almost breathless, mouth working up and down. The dial tone becomes audible from across the room, but Claire just stares at the handset. Amelia takes it from Claire, sets it gingerly back into its cradle and scoops her stiff and wounded daughter into her arms until Claire finally sags.
“I have questions. I’ve got so many questions and I couldn’t believe it was him. But he didn’t even give me a chance to ask,” Claire says into Amelia’s shoulder. She sounds so small.
“He won’t, honey. He won’t.” She doesn’t bother asking if Claire is talking about Jimmy, or Castiel, or both. Amelia doesn’t even think whatever was on the other end of the line has the answers. If he did, there’s no reason to believe he’d tell them anything. He’s not their friend, he’s not her husband or Claire’s father. Just a pretender, a parasite that wants to feed on her family’s blood.
Amelia answers the phone from then on. To protect Claire, if nothing else. At first, it’s only the same two questions. “Are you safe?” and “Have you noticed anything strange?”. As time goes on, things start appearing on the news: towns disappearing, strange discussions of quarantines, floods and plagues of locusts. Castiel explains the mechanics behind each one, what to look for, how to prepare.
Amelia has lived in tornado country all her life. She survived the Cold War, dutifully paid attention when they showed The Day After in school. She’s been through this enough times to know when the disaster prep is just crowd control. Nobody can tape their windows before a tornado hits. A Volvo’s dashboard isn’t going to save anyone from a nuclear blast. It’s all or nothing. The only way to avoid destruction is to not be in the way. This tornado has touched down upon her house once, breaking it apart. It may still happen again.
Still, it's comforting to have some idea of what's going on. She wonders what her neighbors think of all of this, what she would have thought two years ago. Whether Jimmy would have assumed all these horrors were divine will without the angels speaking to him.
That line of thinking is too dangerous, her lungs already constrict in warning, the memory of black smoke filling them up, so she stops, covers up that thought and stores it away.
The voice on the phone becomes more weary over time, then stops calling altogether. It's a tense few weeks before Amelia realizes that the disasters on the news have also stopped. The world didn't end. They might be able to get back to an equilibrium now, a new one. She realizes that she'd been hoping that Jimmy would be returned to her when it was all over, if they all survived. She didn't think she'd been fantasizing about seeing him again, about where to put his things, how to explain it to her mother, but apparently she had because the realization brings a fresh new wave of grief. She powers through it, accepts the tears and anger with a zen equanimity, waits for it to subside. It does, in time.
But it makes it more of a shock to see him again.
Castiel is standing by the pile of catalogs and junk mail when they come in the door, shopping bags filled with school supplies and new clothes. He looks stronger than she would have expected from his last phone calls, far more confident and powerful than that slurred, sarcastic voice. He still looks so wrong to her eyes. It was easier to separate Castiel from Jimmy when she didn't have to look at him. Their last physical encounter flashes through her mind and she gets the urge to push him away, sweep him aside along with the memory.
“What, it’s not over? What are you going to warn us about this time?”
“No. . yes-maybe.” He seems to be as impatient as she is, unhappy with her demands to explain. “You’re safe from the apocalypse for now. There’s other angels after me. They can find me through my vessels. I can’t leave them unprotected.”
"So, you stopped by to explain why you’re not giving Jimmy back?" Amelia huffs. “You obviously know my phone number. I don’t see why this required a housecall.”
"Amelia, Jimmy is gone now." Something about the way he said now makes it clear that he hasn't been gone before, and she flushes, guilt and shame coming back, and it's another struggle to keep her focus on the conversation. A hope she hadn’t even let bud dies once more.
"Then why are you here?"
He turns that gaze on Claire. "No."
Notebooks and math supplies spill out to the floor and Claire is in her arms, stock still and staring. Castiel bristles. Amelia swears that for a second, the lights flicker. "I'm here to keep her safe."
"Stay away from my daughter." Amelia growls at the same time as Claire whines "Mom", forgetting her fear just long enough to be embarrassed.
"I’m not taking her, I won’t harm . . .It will hurt, but only for a second." Claire squeaks as Amelia pulls her tighter. Castiel sighs. "I'll put warding spells on her. No angel will be able to touch her, or find her."
"So she won't work as a vessel if you do this?"
Castiel pauses, looks off to the side as if making a decision. "No one will use her as a vessel, no."
Amelia looks down at Claire, feels the nod against her chest more than she sees it. "Then do it." She releases Claire and Castiel takes her. He raises his hand against her chest and Claire gasps, letting off the same choked-off whimper she'd given when she had her ears pierced a second time. Amelia takes hold of Claire again and Castiel steps back, stares and Claire for a moment, and disappears.
It feels anticlimactic, but the only thing to do is to pick up their shopping bags and get on with their lives, hope that maybe that's really the last of it.
Dana over in compliance keeps on trying to set Amelia up with her brother-in-law. Ian's good looking, the right age, and apparently knows a thing or two about getting out of a messy relationship. He loves kids, even has two of his own, though he doesn't see them all that often. It's been three years, she doesn't have have a reason not to try. It takes a while, but Amelia agrees.
It's odd and awkward, but mostly all right. They make small talk, avoiding any mention of their exes, and strive to find something they have in common besides kids. She hasn't had to date since she was a teenager. She'd forgotten that they'd been so young, she'd been so caught up in herself that she'd missed so many of the complexities. There's what she'd like him to know about her, what she expects of him, what he's telling her, what's he's not telling her, what he would like her to ask, what he would like her to think of him. It's a game, or a puzzle that wishes to be solved. Amelia subtly navigates the conversation, laughing at all the right moments, flattering his intelligence. She could do this more often.
It's been a nice evening, she decides later. Her head is rests on the cool glass of the car window as Ian explains how cities evolved to allow a thirty minute commute throughout history, letting his words about Rome and London and suburban Phoenix wash over her as she concentrates on the passing yellow lines on the black asphalt, until
She's shoved back in to consciousness so fast her phantom lungs stutter, even as those made of blood and muscle breathe slow and deep. Her fingers are on the trigger a second before she turns and motions come hither and there's a vicious little kick, like Claire in the womb, the gun an extension but not part of her. And then there's Jimmy, bleeding and shaking and trying desperately to speak but unable to do anything but take these wet, gasping breaths. Amelia is clawing, screaming without air, trying to grasp and find purchase but she can't, can't even keep her eyes on Jimmy as the demon drags her away, the scene before her blurring from those hunters to Claire, standing there calmly. Then Claire turns around and Amelia has a revelation, a moment of dawning horror coupled with complete surety that this is not her daughter . . .
“Amelia, are you all right?” And she's back in the passenger's seat of a car, safe. Ian glances over at her.
"Yeah, just had too much to drink, I guess." Even though it had only been a few glasses of wine.
Ian stays quiet after that, and Amelia wonders if she might have said something after she'd . . . drifted off. She doesn't have it in her anymore to try and save the mood. It's hard enough to not think about that first night with her and Claire in the car, heading towards her mother’s. That had been just a little further up the road from here. She concentrates on breathing, lets Ian concentrate on driving. There's only a distracted kiss when they arrive at the house, neither one of them pushing for anything more.
She checks her voicemail when she gets in. All the messages are old, but she listens to them anyway.
"How was work?" Amelia takes a second to wonder if she’s dreaming. But no, that’s his voice. The phone number’s different, but she’ll never forget that voice.
"I'm sorry?"
"Is Claire doing well in school?"
"What's this for?" Had demons found her at school? It couldn’t possibly be related to Claire’s grades in trigonometry. She isn’t living an episode of Buffy.
"Dean recently left his long-time girlfriend and her son to hunt again. It's something he asks her whenever he calls; I thought it would be an appropriate way of showing interest in your daughter's well being." Castiel sounds apologetic. Amelia’s charmed despite herself. It’s all she can do not to laugh.
"No, no, it's fine. Yeah. She's doing great. Thanks for asking."
There’s an awkward beat of silence as Amelia tries to figure out if she should tell him anything else. She doesn’t trust him, but what harm could it do? And it’s never been too difficult to get Amelia to brag about her daughter. "She takes pictures," she says. Then, because that’s not enough, “Claire likes looking through a camera lens. Yearbook's been after her to join up, but she's not all that interested in taking pictures at dances. She prefers candids, and just, I don't know, shots of random scenery." Amelia laughs. Castiel only hmms in agreement.
There’s more to it than that. It’s a different way of seeing things. Claire’s explained it to her before. How black and white can reveal features that color hides. Like the world is narrower and more detailed than it appears at first sight. On how capturing an image means that there’s now two versions of that space, in two separate points of time.
It reminds Claire of how the world looked when Castiel stared out through her eyes.
Claire has dug out Jimmy’s old camera, the one he bought back in college with the idea that analog was somehow more authentic than digital. She totes it around with her, talking about lenses and filters and noticing bits of light. Amelia lets her set up a tiny darkroom in the basement by the washing machine with old equipment bought from the ISU art department. Claire disappears down there for hours. She smells of harsh chemicals when she emerges, wrong and inhuman, and Amelia has to remind herself that it’s still her daughter, nothing more.
Amelia remembers full well what everything looked like while she was possessed. Black smoke still appears to cloud her eyes sometimes, when she least expects. She can’t imagine how much different it must have been for Claire to want to revisit that time. She wonders if it was the same for Jimmy when he was still alive, or even now. Wherever he is.
There’s no way she’d tell this to Castiel. Amelia isn’t going to let him know how much of a hold he still has on her family.
A few days later a disposable camera with a picture of Mount Rushmore printed on its cardboard carton shows up on their doorstep. The developed shots are badly framed, many have a motion-blur, but they can still make out a rusted out Cadillac, a penguin's wing and a kite framed against an impossibly blue sky.
Claire assumes it's her friends playing a practical joke. Amelia doesn't correct her.
It's a relief when someone else is more surprised by their reality-defying arrival, for once. Amelia is propped up on the couch with a mug in hand and Wolf Hall on her lap when the Winchester brothers pop in, duffel bag crashing to the floor beside them with an audible thump. Amelia manages to not even spill any of the tea.
"Mrs. Novak?"
"Good evening. Any reason you're in my living room?" Her voice remains steady.
"We don't know-I mean, we didn't plan to be here. Castiel probably, but I don't know why. . . did you move?" The taller one rambles on as they turn around and take in the room, trying to get their bearings straight. Sam. She thinks his name is Sam. He had some other woman's blood dripping from his mouth the last time she saw him. She's lucky that the demon possessing her had the sense to keep its distance.
That line of thinking is unhelpful, so she stops it, concentrates on his question instead. "A few years ago. The last place had some bad memories attached." Amelia deigns to sit up, but lets her unexpected guests stand around awkwardly. Their disorientation is helping to steady her, in a way. This is her domain; she's in control.
"It probably has to do with the shifters lurking in the Goodmans's old place." Claire appears out of the corner of the living room. She’s trying to act confident, and it might have worked if not for the blush that’s forming on her cheeks and the smile that’s threatening to erupt.
"There are shifters nearby?" asks Sam. Claire has their full attention.
Claire pulls out her cellphone, holding it out for the Winchesters to view. "See! Human faces, but their eyes are glowing in the picture. There's been a rash of deaths at ISU, too. Roommates keep on killing each other. It’s started in the dorms but has been spreading out.” She lets loose the smile and goes for a full-out grin, obviously proud to be a help.
"What were you doing out there?" The other one, Dean, finally speaks, taking Claire’s cellphone from her and squinting at the tiny screen.
"Trying to find this location for a shoot me and my friends are planning. It's a retelling of all these fairy tales, only modern and dark. The three little pigs are totally victims of foreclosure."
“Claire,” warns Amelia.
"You weren't trying to hunt it?" asks Sam.
"The pigs? Oh! You mean the shifters. No, I just had my camera . . . " Claire’s smile breaks a little, but she props it up, still pushing along.
Dean frowns. "Yeah, okay. Just stay away. No more sneaking around up there. And don't try to go after that thing yourself!"
Whatever Claire had been hoping to hear, that hadn’t been it. "Yeah, because getting stabbed to death by goo monsters in a marshland is my idea of a fun Friday night. Whatever, I was just trying to give you a heads up, save you some time. I've gotta go-Kyra's picking me up in five." Claire plants a kiss on Amelia's cheek and spares one more glare for the brothers before rushing off.
Amelia calls after her, but it's too late, the screen door has already slammed. She exchanges a knowing look with the shorter one, Dean, the one who had a child and tries to look apologetic.
"Do you mind if I tail her?” asks Dean.
Amelia for a second wonders where his child is now before answering. "Go ahead. But if the police catch you creeping outside a house filled with sixteen year-old girls, I'm not going to cover for you."
"No offense, ma'am, but she wouldn’t be the first teenager we’ve found that got it into her mind to hunt.”
"My daughter has a different view of life or death situations than most teens. I trust her, and I've got a GPS tracker on her phone." Amelia shrugs. “There's a killer on the loose. I reserve the right to be overprotective.”
They decide to head over to the field instead. Amelia allows them to borrow her car-they'd just hotwire one of the neighbors’s, anyway. She carefully avoids the half-hidden memories of how she acquired that knowledge. They return a few short hours later, silver blades still in hand, oblivious to the amount of gore covering them. Amelia insists on a shower before inviting them to dinner.
“Thanks for the shower. And the grub-we don't get home cooked meals too often,” Dean says over a plate of risotto.
“You stopped people from being murdered, I figure the least I can offer is pasta.” She pauses, wondering how far courtesy should stretch. “Be sure to offer my thanks to Castiel, too. For getting you guys here. I hadn’t realized he was still watching the area.”
Sam and Dean stop eating at that, sharing another silent conversation with each other. Sam ends up being the one to ask, "Have you seen Cas recently?"
"In the flesh? No. . . it's been nearly two years, I think. He used to call from time to time, but it's been at least a few months since I've heard from him. Is he missing?”
Her guests glance at each other. "If he does show up, be careful around him. He's not Cas anymore. He's given himself a promotion and isn't always so nice to the people who don't recognize it. He’s not as considerate as he used to be.”
The smile stretches across her face so tightly she's afraid her skin will break. You mean, the kind, considerate person that stole my husband's body? That lead him to his death? It's all she can do to not say it, they're guests, and strangers, dangerous ones at that, but the thought drums so loud in her head that it takes on a physical presence. They might have let the flesh confuse them into thinking that he was human, but she never forgot what he was capable of. She ignores the voice in her head that tells her that’s not entirely true: she’d been kind to him the last few times on the phone, treated him with basic human courtesy. She’s let her guard down. That could be dangerous.
Amelia decides it’s better not to speak her mind. Instead, she says “I’ll be sure to be careful” and goes to hunt through the pantry for some dessert. They must sense something anyway. The rest of the meal is quiet. It's barely twilight when she locks the door behind them. Amelia stops, listens for a second to see if she can sense anyone watching, but there are only cicadas singing in the distance.
Amelia doesn't notice Claire's text until she's already at the door, but it's still a welcome warning.
ANGEL SHOWED UP. LEFT HIM ON COUCH. @ JUSTINES FOR DINNER. <3 U
It's the 'love you' that worries her.
Sure enough, there’s a figure in a trenchcoat sitting on the couch with an untouched glass of icewater melting in front of him. He looks so lost that there's a second where she hopes once more that it might be Jimmy. But no, it's definitely Castiel, with Jimmy's hair strangely tousled and his tie on backwards, body sagged in on itself, as if there is less of him than there used to be.
"Do the wards need a retouch?" Amelia asks lightly.
"I. . .needed someplace to go."
"And the Winchesters?" There's no way her home was the first choice. He's never been welcome here, only known.
"Gone."
"Where?"
There's no answer. Castiel only reaches out and wipes some condensation off the glass in front of him. Where could they have gone to, on Heaven or Hell or a thousand different Earths, where Castiel couldn't follow? Or was he just choosing to keep them lost?
There are stories of what she should do here, ancient ones. The Greeks knew how to treat gods and other wayward travelers, there's Sodom and Gomorrah and a thousand other parables invoking hospitality. But there was also the Winchester's warning to think about, and the fact he's wearing her dead husband's face as if it were his own. They'd all be safer if he'd never come.
She leaves him where he is on the couch without a word and comes back half an hour later with a few bags full of clothing from Target. Nothing fancy, but all the right size. She still remembers that much, at least.
"Fine. You have to wear my husband's body. The least you can do is get out of the damned suit. Pick whatever you want out, I'll take the rest back. And if I want you gone, if Claire wants you gone, you go. I shot up that body once before, hand to God, I’ll shoot it again."
Castiel complies worldlessly, a ghost of a smile appearing as he heads up the stairs.
Claire returns home later that night with red eyes and a blotchy face, but her voice is clear. “Is he staying?”
“Do you want him to?”
“I don't . . .” The answer seems to herald more tears, and Amelia wants to take it all back, shield her from this situation somehow. She would if she could. “I don't want to kick him out.”
“Okay. Then I won't.”
It's a start.
Having Castiel in her home is like allowing a feral animal to pass through. He's comfortable enough, but they keep their distance. He comes by through the front door, politely ringing the doorbell. He does his best to appear as human and powerless as possible, even as he brings souvenirs from far off spaces, and times that are long gone or never existed. He’ll haunt the house for a while, making his presence known mostly as the sounds in the next room, or the collection of Booker prize winners Amelia keeps on meaning to read that migrate in piles onto the coffee table in the rec room. And then he heads off again to parts unknown, for a few days, a week, a few months.
He's quiet in her presence, less so in Claire's. They have a standing date to watch Dancing with the Stars, of all things, whenever Castiel is in town, and she can hear Claire’s high-pitched voice mixed with Castiel’s rasp, even if she can’t make out the words. But there seems to be an expectation between Amelia and Castiel, the long years leaving a ghost of a purpose between them, one Amelia doesn’t know how to banish. He has no reason to warn her of omens and plagues anymore. They’ve never talked about anything else. He talked to Jimmy, never to her.
That Christmas, she brings two pictures for the holiday portrait wall: a more recent one of her and Claire at her mother’s house, and an older one of their family at the Indiana dunes, Claire beaming while being buried in the sand and Jimmy laughing as he continued to pack sand around her shoulders.
"That's your ex-husband?" Jennifer from accounts payable sidles up to her. "I didn't realize that’s who’s been staying with you."
"I'm sorry?"
"I saw him come by your house the other day, I didn't mean to pry or anything-"
"Oh, of course not!" Amelia says, a little too forcefully. Jennifer gives her a look. At least that explains the questions she'd been getting from Dana about if she'd been seeing anyone new.
"I just happened to notice him on my way home. I'm sorry, was it a secret?" She's barely managing to hide her smirk now.
"No, it's his brother. And not a secret," she says. It's a believable enough lie, Amelia judges. Jimmy even had a brother, though they hadn't spoken in years. Only Jennifer's eyebrows shoot up and it occurs to her that hadn't made the story less salacious at all. "We're not-he's just staying in our basement for a while. Been through a rough time recently."
"That's so good of you!" Jennifer doesn't sound like she believes her one whit. Amelia wonders how long it will take before Dana sneaks in a few more questions about her love life. "You must have been so devoted to your husband to keep up with his family that way." She peers closer at the picture "Now that you mention it, I can see the differences between the two of them. They don't look that much alike at all." And Amelia has to stifle a laugh quickly. The picture had been a few short years before the possession. Jimmy’s body hasn't changed since then at all.
Except for becoming Castiel’s.
She's stuck thinking about when things changed on her way home that evening. It's been a while since she saw Castiel and thought of Jimmy. She's gotten used to it all: gifts of exotic fruit and painted glass; setting a third place at the table, empty most days, and carefully avoiding any expectation on whether it would be filled or not; the creaking sound of the floorboards in the early hours of the morning. These habits have built up so slowly.
Everything keeps on changing in the most routine of ways. Her new cubicle mate is an army wife with a six month-old daughter, quiet and disciplined. Claire is applying to colleges now: she's hoping for the School of the Art Institute, while Amelia is silently pulling for Cooper Union. Her book club is reading the new Lorrie Moore collection. Life goes on. There's no sea change, no epiphany that makes it all okay. It’s been an age without surprises, but she doesn’t want surprises anyway.
Castiel is sitting at the kitchen table when she comes in the door. There's still the smell of ozone around him.
“Where did you go?” Amelia asks.
Castiel starts. It takes him a second to respond. Slowly, as if it could be a trick. “Jerusalem. Titan. An autistic man’s dream.”
“Did you find what you wanted there?”
Castiel thinks, then shakes his head. “They used to bring me peace, but I’ve changed since then. I find myself calmer here.” The way he says it, it’s clear that there’s not much peace here, either. Amelia understands. This was never the life she envisioned for herself, but it’s all she has.
It takes him a second, but he seems to realize what he’s said and quickly looks up to gauge her reaction, as if it were a sin for him to find comfort here. Maybe she would have thought it was, once. Now she doesn’t the heart to refuse him.
“Then maybe stay.” As she places her hand over his own, she imagines the last plume of black smoke dissipating and takes her first clear, deep breath in years.