[Chapter] You can't fix what has been broken (1/?)
Title: You can’t fix what has been broken
Author: youaregonecas
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Castiel/Dean + Jess/Sam [Mentioned]
Disclaimer: There will be mentions of depression, minor character death that is written out.
Summary: Castiel Novak has just lost his mother, his father is an absent douche bag and his sister may well be the only one that copes with all of it just fine. When the Winchesters come into town, it doesn't mean anything good, but he doesn't know it yet. He's completely blind to the world of monsters. When his mother rings the bell at five am one morning, Cas has the worst scare he has had in years. Somebody made a contract at the crossroads, and he isn't the one with a countdown.This chapter on AO3
[Chapter 1]
Castiel Novak knew every hallway of their school and could walk them without trouble, even at night. After his mother had passed away, his father, Jimmy, had thrown himself into his job. He spent hours grading papers in his classroom, not wanting to come home to the memories of Amelia. Castiel too didn't want to go home, so his father had told him to stay at school until he was done grading. He was never done.
He roamed the halls when he was feeling sad, felt the familiarity of lockers and empty hallways. He would never have done it if there were students around. Castiel really wasn’t the most popular person out there, but he wasn’t a complete loner. Not until his mother had passed away. It was not like he was being bullied, but school had started to suck more and more for him each and every day.
Claire was such a good sport about it all of it. About her brother being absent and her mother being dead, about all of it. His younger sister had stayed with their grandma for more dinners than he could count, but still, she never complained about it, not once. He for a change, was the one that complained the most, or at least showed the feelings that he kept bottled up. His feelings, they processed as pure anger. Every tear that he should have shed, came out as drunken aggression and fights.
His dad, of course, didn't notice. He knew that Claire did and well, he had told her that it was normal for boys to get angry when they grew up. He had told her the lie without even blinking twice or feeling guilty about it. He guessed that his feelings were too numb to even remotely care about it. Whether that was a side effect of the alcohol or of the grief he felt, he didn’t even know.
He wished that he could just go back to not kidding himself and everybody around him in thinking that he wasn’t angry with his mother for dying. But he couldn’t. He was trapped in this freakshow and there was no way out.
Usually, the hallways were abandoned by five. All classes had long since ended by then and the teachers that didn’t want to stay longer than they needed, had left as well. An occasional teacher could come by, or a concierge, but they all knew the situation and cut the Novak’s some slack.
Today though, they weren’t empty. He wanted them to be empty, but there was a family walking round. He had first seen them looking around when he left his father’s classroom. It had seemed like there was only was person that really wanted to be there, and it had not been the oldest of the boys.
Now, he saw them again as he passed his usual classrooms. They seemed to be having a tour of the place or something, because he saw the head of the school walking with them. Truth be told, he could care less. The oldest boy looked like he was ready to skip each and every day and the youngest boy was bouncing with energy. His big eyes seemed to be taking everything in with the enthusiasm that only a kid could have.
"Castiel! Good to see you here." Fuck.
"Hello headmistress," he said, nodding kindly, or at least, trying.
"Could you give me a hand, if your father has decided to work late anyway? These boys, or at least the oldest one, is starting school tomorrow and I need somebody to show him around. I would do it, but I have a meeting in a few minutes."
"I'm afraid I have to go home," he lied smoothly. "My sister has been waiting for me to go back home to help her with her homework." It was a lie that he had told so often lately that it was easy for him. It saddened him that he had gotten used to lying like that, since he used to be one of the most if he had to get out of something. "I'm very sorry headmistress, I would have loved to show the boys around."
That only left him the option of going out. He didn't want to be caught hanging around in the halls after he told his lie. He could indeed go home for a change, but knew that he couldn't do that without being questioned by his grandmother. He could always tell one more lie.
However, he soon didn't have any other choice than to go home. He would have thought that his sister would go home, but no, of course she was still in the playground at five PM. She supposed to be home at their grandma's at three.
"What are you still doing here, Claire?" he asked her with a smile on his lips. His sister really was one of the only people that he could still stay friendly to, the only people that he could genuinely smile for. "I thought that you would go to grandma's house?"
"I'm waiting," she said, her innocent, twelve year old way. "Somebody came to talk to me, and he promised me he'd come back. He said that he could bring mom back."
"Claire, listen up," he sighed. "Mom isn’t here anymore, she is dead. Whoever that sick fuck was, he cannot bring mom back for the life of him, you copy? He can't bring mom back." He had to bit his lip not to get angry with her. “Are you out of your mind? Do you really think that some random creep would come back? How long have you been sitting here, hours? Goddamn, Claire, I thought that you were smarter than that. Let’s go home, grandma is probably freaking out. Do you have any idea how lucky you are not have dad see you? You would've been toast." He tried his best not to see the hurt expression in his sister's eyes, not to see how she almost hid herself as he stepped into his car and forced her to strap her seatbelt in in the back.
During the whole ride home, he couldn't help but think about what his sister had said. Was it really that easy to have her broken now? He could see what the possibility of having their mother back had done to her. He had seen how she had the slightest of smiles on her face, how she had seemed hopeful for once.
"Are you going to tell grandma?"
"Yes," he said firmly, staring at the road. "You can't do something like that and I will not have you go bad. You're only freaking twelve years old. "
"You are not my father," she said, the silent and almost broken way that only she could manage. "And you never will be, you got that?"
His grandmother wasn’t angry with Claire at all, no; she scolded him for staying out late and not bringing his sister home, like a good brother was supposed to do. She gave him the whole speech; how he was supposed to be there for his sister now that their mother had committed suicide, how is father was already absent, how his sister was already hurting enough.
“You know,” he said to his grandmother before racing up the stairs. “I thought that at least you would get it. How can I go ahead and let her believe that a man would go ahead and come by, telling her that he could bring mom back, when mom doesn’t even want to be back.”