Supernatural Gen Big Bang, All that comes after, Part 2
Title: All that comes after
Summary: Claire Novak is born on a Thursday. So is her father for that matter.
One day an angel comes down from the heaven's above, all light and peace and promise, and takes her father and just walkes away. This is all that comes after.
A story of Claire's journey to accept what happened to her family and maybe move on.
One night, she dreams of a girl she’s never seen yet somehow strangely knows.
Sometimes Claire wonders if the angel, for surely she was an angel, actually came into her dreams to talk to her or if it was just a simple dream. She’s sitting on a swing - a swing, Claire realizes suddenly, she once sat on, long ago, when her father used to take her to this playground and she remembers how she sat on that swing with her eyes closed and how her father used to push and make her feel like she could fly. She walks slowly towards the girl she does not know, yet she’s not afraid. Perhaps it’s because it is a dream and she doesn’t think anything can truly happen to her here, or perhaps it’s because she knows - like she’s always known and always will - that Castiel is just a call away and would protect her even in her dreams (if such a thing was possible, of course.)
She doesn’t know who the girl is, but she can sense this: this is a friend of Castiel.
“Who are you?”
“Anna. Why don’t you have a seat, Claire?”
For a moment Claire considers sitting on the other swing, but it reminds her of her father and how they used to laugh as they played, and it hurts so much. Instead, she sits on the sand in front of Anna almost, she realizes much later, as if she was kneeling in prayer. She wonders, sometimes, if that is how Anna saw it, if Anna had truly been there.
“Why are you in my dream?”
“I wished to speak to you, my child. To make sure you were alright and truly understood all that has happened.”
“But how did you get in here?”
“It is difficult to explain and besides, you need not know this.”
“I still don’t know who you are.”
“I am a friend of Castiel.”
“I know. That doesn’t really tell me anything.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What is happening out there?”
“Bad things, my child, very bad things. But these should not concern you, for nothing will happen to you. Perhaps it would be better if you were to forget all of this has happened.”
For a moment Claire wonders if Anna is actually capable of that, robbing her of her memories. Though she realizes that if she does, it might not hurt this much, she does not want to forget any of it.
“My father is out there.”
“I know.”
“I do not want to forget him or Castiel.”
“I know that, too. Still it might be better.”
“No. It would be worse.”
“You would not know the difference, not really. You are young, very young. You should not know the things you do. It is too much for you and you can’t understand all that has happened and still will happen.”
“Then explain it.”’
“I wouldn’t know how to begin. Besides, it is not my place, nor is there any time to explain anything. Perhaps Castiel is right and you should know all this.”
“Where is he?”
“Can you not tell? Never mind…he…they’re trying to save the world.”
“From what?”
“Nothing that should concern you.”
“If you are only here to talk in riddles and not tell me anything, then why did you bother coming?”
“I came to warn you, Claire Novak, that there are angels out there that might try to harm you and lie to you.”
“Which angels?”
“I know this: never trust an angel named Zachariah. Always believe that he is the worst out there and wants to harm you. Never trust him, no matter what he promises you.”
“Harm me? How?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just remember.”
“Harm me or Castiel?”
“You’re a smart one. But then, I suppose you would be. Both, but mostly him. It would be easier to harm you to get to him, because you are easier to attack. Do not trust him, my child. He does not care for you or anybody.”
Anna puts a hand on her cheek then, and Claire feels safe. It’s almost like she’s back with Castiel - it’s almost the same, almost enough but not quite - where she belongs, protected from everything that would try to harm her. Claire leans into her touch without realizing she’s doing it, wanting to soak in all the love and light of an angel. She can feel her slipping away, disappearing to wherever it is she belongs in this story - but Claire is not ready to be alone again.
“Do not go yet, please, tell me - will I see him again?”
“Your father? Or Castiel?”
“Both. Either.”
“I do not know, I don’t everything. Perhaps, someday, you will. I am sorry for all that has happened to you.”
“Will I see you again?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure we were ever meant to meet. Goodbye Claire.”
“Don’t go! Please, don’t leave me alone.”
“Everything will be alright someday, you’ll see. Just remember what I said.”
Then she’s gone, faded away, gone in the blink of an eye. Claire sits alone in a playground she once played in, wondering if the angel that sat there had been real or not.
She wakes later with a smile on her face and tears in her eyes.
She never sees Anna again.
(She never asks about her either.)
The first time she sees Brian is on her second day in her new high school, in the year she turns sixteen.
He’d been walking down the hallways surrounded by his friends - the whole basketball team as it turned out - and she had only truly noticed him because Sally had pointed him out, determined as she was to make sure Claire knew everything there was to know about everyone in school (or at least the popular kids.) She’d met Sally the day before and from that time on, the other girl would call them best friends - Claire supposes that Sally is right, they spend every moment together after all. But Sally knows nothing about her, and she doesn’t really care to find out, so Claire is not sure how good a friends they really are. Mostly Claire likes her because she talks non-stop - of course, she’s also nice - and she doesn’t see the need for Claire to interrupt her. Claire knows she could if she wanted to, but she doesn’t. (The thing she likes the most about Sally? Even after realizing that she had no father, the other girl never asked about that.)
She hadn’t paid that much attention to Brian that day beyond acknowledging that he was probably the most popular kid in the whole school and, admittedly, quite hot. But Claire knew enough about high school to understand that she wasn’t and never would be popular, and that a guy like Brian would never notice her (not that, at the time, she really wanted him to.) Brian, as it would turn out, had in fact noticed her and liked her and, about three weeks later, had asked her out to the dance. She hadn’t gone. She’d mumbled something about still getting used to the new school and having to help her mom on that day. Brian had smiled and said, “Okay, I’ll ask again later.” And he did, multiple times. She had to admit he was definitely persistent, but she didn’t think they would be staying and she didn’t want to get attached to anyone. Besides how could he begin to understand her?
One night, about two weeks after the dance, she dreamed of the last time she saw her father, lying on the ground, bleeding from a gunshot wound, giving up on eternal peace so she could have a life.
She wakes with the realization that her father would have wanted her to be happy. He would not ha
ve wanted her to live like this. He did not give up everything for her to hide away from the world. (She ignores the pain when she realizes that her father will never see her first boyfriend, he’ll never be there at her graduation and, should she choose to marry, he’ll never dance with her.)
The next time Brian asks her out, she says yes.
The first time they kiss is on their first date, outside the movie theater they’ve just exited.
(Both events happened on a Thursday.)
Their first big argument happens in January - when they’ve been dating for about four months - and it’s, without a doubt, the strangest argument she’s ever had.
It’s about her cellphone or, more precisely, it’s about the numbers on her speed dial. Actually, it’s about the fact that his number is not on her speed dial, nor is it actually in her phone (it’s not like she calls him that often anyway, he’s usually the one to call her so she doesn’t fully understand what the point is.) Brian has gotten into her head - and Claire knows that it comes from Sally, because the other girl also finds this strange and they’ve had multiple disagreements about it - that he should be the number one on her speed dial because he’s her boyfriend and she loves him and Sally should be number two because she’s the best friend. Her cellphone, he feels, should attest to the fact that they are the two most important persons in her life. He tells her that it would all be fine if her mother was number one, but according to him her speed dial makes no sense - and alright, Claire will attest to that one - and since she won’t explain any of it to him it must all mean that she doesn’t actually love him. And then, of course, there’s the fact that she doesn’t even take the time to memorize his number, but since he’s the one to always call her, she’s still not sure what the whole point is.
The thing is, Claire can’t explain it because the truth would make her sound crazy. She’s never been able to think of a convincing lie for it all.
What is she supposed tell him? That the first number on her speed dial belongs to an angel that speaks with the voice of her father - and it’s an extremely long story how she even managed to get the number - and is a number she would never actually dial? After all, she need only call his name for his assistance, but it is extremely comforting to have it. She would never use it because she doesn’t want to hear the voice and know it is not her father. Should she tell him, perhaps, that the next two numbers belong to two brothers who once saved her life and the third to a man named Bobby who, according to Dean Winchester, would help her? How is she supposed to explain that those numbers are on her speed dial in case demons attack and she needs to contact them? That he and Sally are not on her speed dial because she’s afraid of accidentally calling them in a moment of need and dying as a result of it?
He’d call her crazy. He’d laugh with her.
So she says nothing. In the end he gets so angry, that he breaks up with her on the spot.
(Somehow she thinks that the whole thing is completely ridiculous and that if he broke up with her over that, then he must not have truly loved her.)
Sally stops coming around, too.
It doesn’t really surprise her.
She’s always safe, she’s always protected. She knows this.
There is an angel somewhere, after all, that has sworn to protect her. There are times that Claire almost senses him near her - she can always feel him, somewhat. No matter how far he is, that connection never goes away, but at times he feels closer. Once she swears he saves her from falling to her death - or at least from a couple of broken bones - and another time he saves her from some creepy looking dude that had been following her for two blocks. All right, she’ll admit she might have prayed for his assistance with that one. Perhaps that was why most things that others found scary did not scare her.
Because she can still feel her angel, always.
And yet there are times she feels nothing.
Like he’s faded away somehow, disappeared and gone somewhere else, somewhere where she can’t reach him anymore - and she’s afraid of what that means. Because, if it means what she thinks it means, it will break her heart and destroy all she knows. Usually the feeling doesn’t last long, just a little while, but it is long enough to make her feel abandoned again, to make her feel empty. And then, one night - just after gives her her mother’s gift - she wakes feeling almost nothing, like he’s not completely faded away but gone enough that she can no longer feel or reach him. She doesn’t try to, because for the first time she actually fears he won’t come and she thinks that if he doesn’t, it would break her heart because she knows he’s somewhere.
That feeling lasts almost a year.
Then he’s back, suddenly, before he fades completely and this time the feeling of emptiness stays.
She’s alone.
She’s abandoned.
She’s scared.
She’s no longer protected.
She doesn’t tell her mother. She doesn’t want to scare her.
A year and a half later she feels him again, far away, just like always. She can honestly say she’s never been happier.
She still doesn’t call to him.
She has a picture, somewhere, of her and her father on her first day of kindergarten.
She doesn’t actually remember that day but she’s heard the tale a million times. Her mother loved telling it - not her father though - because he had been the one to get lost three times and he had been the one who had cried, not the child who was about to be left at an unfamiliar place. The truth is that while she was growing up, that day had never truly seemed important and that picture had always been lost between all the others. But somehow, in the year after her father left, every picture became important (she supposes that that is somewhat normal.) She’d found it in the back of an album and she’d fallen in love with it, though she’s not truly sure why. She and her father hadn’t known their picture was being taken - maybe that’s why because it wasn’t a pose. She’s pulling away from him, walking towards the school and a new world and he’s holding her hand as if he doesn’t want to let her go - as if he’s afraid he’ll lose her if she lets go. But he had let her go, of course he had, and she had grown and that moment had faded away.
She takes that picture everywhere.
She wonders if he ever remembers it.
She wonders if Castiel does.
At age six she got the chicken pox.
Actually everybody in her class got the damn illness - mostly because the parents of her friend Tommy, who’d moved away the year after that and whom she never actually saw again, thought it would be a good idea to send him to school while he was ill. She’d hated him - not really hate, of course, but the itching was terrible so it was close enough - the whole time she spends in bed. (She did not like being confined to her bed.) Her mother would bring her food and everything she needed and her father would read her any story she wanted to hear - more so than when she wasn’t sick and when he thought she’d fallen asleep - though she hadn’t yet - he’d place a soft kiss on her forehead and whispered he loved her before going to his own room (but always he left the door open in case she needed them.)
Once, when she was seven, she went ‘missing’.
Well not exactly missing, she and Tommy - it was about a week before he’d moved away - and a bunch of other kids from her class were going to a little art school (which was basically twenty kids and a teacher who kept the busy on Wednesday afternoons after school for a while) but that day, for some reason, the teacher hadn’t been there. Her father had already left by then - assuming, which he’d always call himself stupid for, that the teacher was just inside - and so they’d decided just to go to Tommy’s house, which wasn’t that far, and play some games. It never occurred to them that their parents - that her father - would be worried when they returned to the little school and didn’t find them there but they were seven and all that really mattered was that they could play. They’d considered, at first, returning to the school when their parents would pick them up, but they’d forgotten. They’d only been ‘missing’ for about twenty minutes, but according to him it was the longest twenty minutes of his life.
Until that day, she’d never considered that parents could be scared.
One year, for Christmas, she got a green bike (to this day, she has no idea why it was green of all things but she supposes that didn’t really matter. At least it hadn’t been pink. That would have been terrible.)
Her father was the one who taught her how to ride it and she remembers it clearly, remembers how he was the one who was scared, even though he kept saying she was the one who was, and that she was the one who just wanted to ride. Her mother had been worried at least she’d seemed worried, and she had filmed the entire thing (Claire is grateful that the video exists because that means that her father is right there on that tape, though she can’t bring herself to look at it.) She’d ridden around in front of their house while her father kept her balanced by holding the back of her bike. All her ‘classes’ went like that until the day she’d felt she was ready to out on her own. She’d turned to him and said: “I’m ready, daddy, let me go.”
“No, honey. You’re not ready yet.”
“Yes, I am! Yes, I am.”
It was quite clear, even to her, that it was he who wasn’t ready for her to try on her own yet. But in the end he’d relented and let go. She’d ridden away from her parents and she’d felt free.
And her parents, her mother with a video camera in hand, had stood there and watched her go.
She’d stopped and turned back ten seconds later, of course (she wasn’t ready to fly away just yet.)
She would forever remember that Thursday.
Even now, after so many years have passed, they still have that bike, buried somewhere between all the junk they keep moving from town to town. Claire has no idea why they do this. She hasn’t ridden it in years, though and she’s probably too big for it by now. But somehow, she’s comforted by the fact that that stupid green bike is still in her possession.
She thinks she’ll keep it forever.
She’d graduated from High school on yet another Thursday.
A part of her - she won’t deny it - had wished that her father, or at least Castiel, would be amongst the crowd when she received her diploma but he was not there. He’s somewhere though, she can tell - he’d returned from wherever he’d gone a few weeks before that - and she supposes she shouldn’t be so disappointed. aAter all they probably don’t actually know when her graduation is (and it’s not like she took the time to inform them - she keeps thinking about them as a team instead of just one person.) Still, it hurts when she doesn’t see him, even though she hadn’t truly expected to find him there. That night, after the celebrations are done, she is tempted to call for him - because surely she has the right to see her father on the day she graduates from high school even if he is currently an angel? She didn’t - though it was the closest she’d ever come to calling for him. Instead she’d lain in her bed and tried to figure out what she would be doing next.
Her mother wanted her to go to college.
And though she had gotten into some colleges and a part of her really wanted to go, at the same time she didn’t really feel ready yet - and even if she never went to college, she still knew more than most other people unless they’d been angels themselves. The truth was Claire wanted to travel. She wanted to see the places she’d learned about thanks to her angel. She wanted to stand in the places Castiel had once visited and learn everything about the world out there by seeing it. She’d put off telling her mother until after she’d graduated, but she thinks that somehow her mother had always known what she wanted to do and where she wanted to go even before Claire herself did. And though she argued for college she didn’t put up much a fight. Instead, she told Claire that if she wanted to go, she of course could - there was nothing, after all, that could stop her. Amelia knew her daughter would be safe, safer than most other people, because Castiel was somewhere out there ready to protect her in a flash - but that before she went, she should plan her trip carefully.
Claire had decided to go to New York first (mostly because it sounded like the kind of place she should at least see once) and then just go north.
One day, while waiting for her bus to arrive at a bus station, she saw him in her father’s trench coat, completely within her reach again. For a moment, seated on that old bench in the station, she’d considered not going to him. She’d considered staying where she was, but the pull had been too strong - it always was when she was near him. For once he was actually close enough that she could immediately sense that he was Castiel the angel. So, she’d walked to him with more confidence then she’d had the last few times she saw him. It took a moment for him to recognize her -of course it did, she had changed. She had grown from the little girl he had once seen into a teenager alone on the road while he had stayed the same. He had not changed at all but then, Claire figures that the changes in an angel probably wouldn’t be noticeable in his vessel (and it’s strange to think about her father that way but it makes it easier to talk to Castiel.)
This time she’s the first to speak.
“Castiel.”
“Claire Novak.”
He is different again, she can tell, different from the last time she saw him. He is more like he had been when he was with her. Calmer somehow, more at peace. He had a purpose now, something that he needed to do and it grounded him (and no, she really can’t explain how she knows all that, but she’s gotten so used to knowing these things when she’s near him that she never thinks about it.) Still, despite that he also seems sad, like something has happened between then and now, something that has changed him completely (and there is guilt too, hidden by all the other emotions. Claire isn’t sure if it’s guilt because of something he did or because he’s talking to a little girl whose father he stole.)
“Why are you here, Castiel?”
“I am…traveling.”
“Traveling? On a bus?”
“Yes, I must protect something from the other angels. It is harder to be found this way.”
She’s tempted to ask him what is that needs protecting and why it must be protected from the other angels, but something tells her that he won’t answer her. Besides, she doesn’t really think it’s her business. She’s not sure what else to say, though, because even though she still has a million questions she knows by now that she’ll never get any answers. She has accepted that - she accepted most of what had happened years ago and she no longer blamed the angel for anything (if she had ever blamed him at all.)
“Why are you here, Claire Novak?”
“I’m traveling too, trying to see the world.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to.”
Claire wonders, briefly, what everybody around thinks about them. It must look strange, and she wonders, too, if Castiel is somehow making sure again that they don’t see them (she’s not sure if it’s necessary though.) A woman’s voice calls out the passengers of the bus she’s taken, and for a moment she wants to not go. She wants to stay with her angel and bask in his power and his strength and his peace, but she’s learned that she’ll never have that again and something tells her that being around Castiel isn’t truly safe anymore. She knows she must go but she can’t go without knowing one thing. She just doesn’t really know how to ask.
“That’s my bus.”
“You should go, then.”
“I should. Castiel?”
“Yes, Claire Novak?”
“Is my father still with you?”
He doesn’t look shocked, as if he’d been expecting that question ever since they met again. She wonders, briefly, if he would lie to her, if he would tell her what she wanted to hear (or what he thought she wanted to hear) as opposed to the truth. But she thinks he would tell her the truth, if only because she would be able to tell if he lied to her (at least she thinks she would be able to.)
“No, he went to heaven years ago when we were destroyed fighting the Apocalypse. It doesn’t really matter. He is safe now, Claire Novak, safe and at peace where he belongs.”
“Will I see him again?”
“Someday.”
“Thank you, Castiel.”
“For what?”
“For telling me. I have to go.”
She turns to leave, not sure if she should actually say goodbye. She takes a couple of steps before he calls to her.
“Claire Novak… I am sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything.”
She supposes that’s the closest she will ever get to a real apology from an angel, the closest she will get to him acknowledging all that has happened. She realizes in that moment that though she has accepted all that has happened and forgiven him completely, he doesn’t know that.
“It’s okay, Castiel. It’s all okay.”
And then, before she can change her mind, she walks back towards him and hugs him, just like she used to hug her father years ago. He’s slow to respond, but eventually he hugs her back - and she wonders if he’s actually ever been hugged before - and for a moment, when she closes her eyes, she almost feels like she’s a child again in her father’s arm before the world fell apart. But she’s not she’s a teenager in a bus station somewhere in America in the arms of an angel. She lets go after a few seconds and this time, before she leaves, she does tell him goodbye - and there is a part of her that almost feels like she will never see him again and perhaps she won’t. Because this time there is peace, and perhaps that is what Castiel needed from her, peace and forgiveness.
(She was born on a Thursday long ago, and so was her father.)
She boards the bus and sits in the backseat and looks out at the window and sees him standing there, her angel. He doesn’t wave. He doesn’t do anything but stand and stare, but she knows he’s bidding her farewell. The first time she saw Castiel, so many years ago, she hadn’t known he was an angel and she figures that if he had never been inside her she would still not know that the man in a trench coat standing there is so much more than what he appears. She stares out the window at Castiel, and keeps watching as the bus drives away and watches him get smaller and smaller, until eventually he just fades away as if he’d never been there.
It’s the last time she sees him.
It’s also a Thursday.
(It’s probably a coincidence.)
It’s the screams that wake her.
They’re loud and they’re everywhere, they’re screaming in pain, in anger, in fear, in sadness. She can hear them and yet she doesn’t think she really can. She thinks, briefly, as she sits up shaking in her bed, that it’s like being able to sense that other angels are near her. Something bad has happened to the angels and whatever it is, their feelings are so strong she can pick them up as if they’re hers. There are no other people up; nobody else is moving in the hallways of the place she’s sleeping in, which means that she’s the only one who can hear them scream. The night sky is lighting up.
If she didn’t know about the angels, about the reality of heaven, she might have been tempted to believe it was a freak meteor shower. But she knows better. It scares her - it’s difficult to breathe - and she’s shaking and she knows she has to stop but she can’t make herself. She can see them - the angels falling to the earth. She can hear them all around her, but she can no longer sense him. Castiel. He’s gone. (Not gone like the other times, gone like he was somewhere but he was no longer an angel, if such a thing was possible, and as such she could never feel him again.) She’s terrified - not even those demons had scared her like this, this was somewhere deep inside her - the part of her that belonged to Castiel that was screaming, begging, for its angel but the angel could not come back. She screams his name into the night sky - she’s not sure when she made it outside - until her voice is hoarse. But he never comes. He never can. (She knows he can’t, because if he could, he would be there just to make sure she was all right.) She falls to her knees because the screaming and the loneliness and the emptiness and the fear and the sadness are too much. She covers her ears and closes her eyes , willing everything to go away, trying to drown it all out - but she can’t. It’s like it’s all a part of her (and it is, it is.)
She’s not sure how long she sits there.
She was still whispering his name, unable to scream anymore, when she realized that the world had gone silent again. Though she’d wished for it all to stop, she now knew that the silence was so much worse. Because somehow - and she doesn’t know how but she knows it’s bad - the angels have fallen. They have been shattered and the silence means it’s all over. But she knows that some angels must have fallen near her but she could no longer sense them the way she did before, and she knew that meant that whatever had happened was worse than she thought. (Most terrifying of all, she could still not sense Castiel at all, and he had not responded to her calls the first time ever she had called for him -which meant that he could not and that was terrible.)
She did not get up even when the screaming stopped. She stayed on her knees, her eyes closed, her ears covered until she could no longer whisper his name, until her knees and arms ached, until the moment she realized that she was crying (it might have been hours, it could have been minutes, she’s never been sure.) Eventually she opens her eyes, only because she has to, and the night sky is normal again. There are no more angels, no more flames, no more screaming and it’s bad.
There’s an angel (a dead angel) lying a few feet from her.
(She wonders, shaking, if Castiel is laying somewhere like that, dead because of his fall, lost to her forever.)
She doesn’t know him at all.
She cries for him anyway and for all the others and for her angel.
When she gets back up, she’ll call Dean’s number for information. But for now, she’ll mourn the angel that doesn’t have anyone that would miss him.
It’s Thursday, Claire realizes.
(Of course it is.)
Summary: Claire Novak is born on a Thursday. So is her father for that matter.
One day an angel comes down from the heaven's above, all light and peace and promise, and takes her father and just walkes away. This is all that comes after.
A story of Claire's journey to accept what happened to her family and maybe move on.
One night, she dreams of a girl she’s never seen yet somehow strangely knows.
Sometimes Claire wonders if the angel, for surely she was an angel, actually came into her dreams to talk to her or if it was just a simple dream. She’s sitting on a swing - a swing, Claire realizes suddenly, she once sat on, long ago, when her father used to take her to this playground and she remembers how she sat on that swing with her eyes closed and how her father used to push and make her feel like she could fly. She walks slowly towards the girl she does not know, yet she’s not afraid. Perhaps it’s because it is a dream and she doesn’t think anything can truly happen to her here, or perhaps it’s because she knows - like she’s always known and always will - that Castiel is just a call away and would protect her even in her dreams (if such a thing was possible, of course.)
She doesn’t know who the girl is, but she can sense this: this is a friend of Castiel.
“Who are you?”
“Anna. Why don’t you have a seat, Claire?”
For a moment Claire considers sitting on the other swing, but it reminds her of her father and how they used to laugh as they played, and it hurts so much. Instead, she sits on the sand in front of Anna almost, she realizes much later, as if she was kneeling in prayer. She wonders, sometimes, if that is how Anna saw it, if Anna had truly been there.
“Why are you in my dream?”
“I wished to speak to you, my child. To make sure you were alright and truly understood all that has happened.”
“But how did you get in here?”
“It is difficult to explain and besides, you need not know this.”
“I still don’t know who you are.”
“I am a friend of Castiel.”
“I know. That doesn’t really tell me anything.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What is happening out there?”
“Bad things, my child, very bad things. But these should not concern you, for nothing will happen to you. Perhaps it would be better if you were to forget all of this has happened.”
For a moment Claire wonders if Anna is actually capable of that, robbing her of her memories. Though she realizes that if she does, it might not hurt this much, she does not want to forget any of it.
“My father is out there.”
“I know.”
“I do not want to forget him or Castiel.”
“I know that, too. Still it might be better.”
“No. It would be worse.”
“You would not know the difference, not really. You are young, very young. You should not know the things you do. It is too much for you and you can’t understand all that has happened and still will happen.”
“Then explain it.”’
“I wouldn’t know how to begin. Besides, it is not my place, nor is there any time to explain anything. Perhaps Castiel is right and you should know all this.”
“Where is he?”
“Can you not tell? Never mind…he…they’re trying to save the world.”
“From what?”
“Nothing that should concern you.”
“If you are only here to talk in riddles and not tell me anything, then why did you bother coming?”
“I came to warn you, Claire Novak, that there are angels out there that might try to harm you and lie to you.”
“Which angels?”
“I know this: never trust an angel named Zachariah. Always believe that he is the worst out there and wants to harm you. Never trust him, no matter what he promises you.”
“Harm me? How?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just remember.”
“Harm me or Castiel?”
“You’re a smart one. But then, I suppose you would be. Both, but mostly him. It would be easier to harm you to get to him, because you are easier to attack. Do not trust him, my child. He does not care for you or anybody.”
Anna puts a hand on her cheek then, and Claire feels safe. It’s almost like she’s back with Castiel - it’s almost the same, almost enough but not quite - where she belongs, protected from everything that would try to harm her. Claire leans into her touch without realizing she’s doing it, wanting to soak in all the love and light of an angel. She can feel her slipping away, disappearing to wherever it is she belongs in this story - but Claire is not ready to be alone again.
“Do not go yet, please, tell me - will I see him again?”
“Your father? Or Castiel?”
“Both. Either.”
“I do not know, I don’t everything. Perhaps, someday, you will. I am sorry for all that has happened to you.”
“Will I see you again?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure we were ever meant to meet. Goodbye Claire.”
“Don’t go! Please, don’t leave me alone.”
“Everything will be alright someday, you’ll see. Just remember what I said.”
Then she’s gone, faded away, gone in the blink of an eye. Claire sits alone in a playground she once played in, wondering if the angel that sat there had been real or not.
She wakes later with a smile on her face and tears in her eyes.
She never sees Anna again.
(She never asks about her either.)
The first time she sees Brian is on her second day in her new high school, in the year she turns sixteen.
He’d been walking down the hallways surrounded by his friends - the whole basketball team as it turned out - and she had only truly noticed him because Sally had pointed him out, determined as she was to make sure Claire knew everything there was to know about everyone in school (or at least the popular kids.) She’d met Sally the day before and from that time on, the other girl would call them best friends - Claire supposes that Sally is right, they spend every moment together after all. But Sally knows nothing about her, and she doesn’t really care to find out, so Claire is not sure how good a friends they really are. Mostly Claire likes her because she talks non-stop - of course, she’s also nice - and she doesn’t see the need for Claire to interrupt her. Claire knows she could if she wanted to, but she doesn’t. (The thing she likes the most about Sally? Even after realizing that she had no father, the other girl never asked about that.)
She hadn’t paid that much attention to Brian that day beyond acknowledging that he was probably the most popular kid in the whole school and, admittedly, quite hot. But Claire knew enough about high school to understand that she wasn’t and never would be popular, and that a guy like Brian would never notice her (not that, at the time, she really wanted him to.) Brian, as it would turn out, had in fact noticed her and liked her and, about three weeks later, had asked her out to the dance. She hadn’t gone. She’d mumbled something about still getting used to the new school and having to help her mom on that day. Brian had smiled and said, “Okay, I’ll ask again later.” And he did, multiple times. She had to admit he was definitely persistent, but she didn’t think they would be staying and she didn’t want to get attached to anyone. Besides how could he begin to understand her?
One night, about two weeks after the dance, she dreamed of the last time she saw her father, lying on the ground, bleeding from a gunshot wound, giving up on eternal peace so she could have a life.
She wakes with the realization that her father would have wanted her to be happy. He would not ha
ve wanted her to live like this. He did not give up everything for her to hide away from the world. (She ignores the pain when she realizes that her father will never see her first boyfriend, he’ll never be there at her graduation and, should she choose to marry, he’ll never dance with her.)
The next time Brian asks her out, she says yes.
The first time they kiss is on their first date, outside the movie theater they’ve just exited.
(Both events happened on a Thursday.)
Their first big argument happens in January - when they’ve been dating for about four months - and it’s, without a doubt, the strangest argument she’s ever had.
It’s about her cellphone or, more precisely, it’s about the numbers on her speed dial. Actually, it’s about the fact that his number is not on her speed dial, nor is it actually in her phone (it’s not like she calls him that often anyway, he’s usually the one to call her so she doesn’t fully understand what the point is.) Brian has gotten into her head - and Claire knows that it comes from Sally, because the other girl also finds this strange and they’ve had multiple disagreements about it - that he should be the number one on her speed dial because he’s her boyfriend and she loves him and Sally should be number two because she’s the best friend. Her cellphone, he feels, should attest to the fact that they are the two most important persons in her life. He tells her that it would all be fine if her mother was number one, but according to him her speed dial makes no sense - and alright, Claire will attest to that one - and since she won’t explain any of it to him it must all mean that she doesn’t actually love him. And then, of course, there’s the fact that she doesn’t even take the time to memorize his number, but since he’s the one to always call her, she’s still not sure what the whole point is.
The thing is, Claire can’t explain it because the truth would make her sound crazy. She’s never been able to think of a convincing lie for it all.
What is she supposed tell him? That the first number on her speed dial belongs to an angel that speaks with the voice of her father - and it’s an extremely long story how she even managed to get the number - and is a number she would never actually dial? After all, she need only call his name for his assistance, but it is extremely comforting to have it. She would never use it because she doesn’t want to hear the voice and know it is not her father. Should she tell him, perhaps, that the next two numbers belong to two brothers who once saved her life and the third to a man named Bobby who, according to Dean Winchester, would help her? How is she supposed to explain that those numbers are on her speed dial in case demons attack and she needs to contact them? That he and Sally are not on her speed dial because she’s afraid of accidentally calling them in a moment of need and dying as a result of it?
He’d call her crazy. He’d laugh with her.
So she says nothing. In the end he gets so angry, that he breaks up with her on the spot.
(Somehow she thinks that the whole thing is completely ridiculous and that if he broke up with her over that, then he must not have truly loved her.)
Sally stops coming around, too.
It doesn’t really surprise her.
She’s always safe, she’s always protected. She knows this.
There is an angel somewhere, after all, that has sworn to protect her. There are times that Claire almost senses him near her - she can always feel him, somewhat. No matter how far he is, that connection never goes away, but at times he feels closer. Once she swears he saves her from falling to her death - or at least from a couple of broken bones - and another time he saves her from some creepy looking dude that had been following her for two blocks. All right, she’ll admit she might have prayed for his assistance with that one. Perhaps that was why most things that others found scary did not scare her.
Because she can still feel her angel, always.
And yet there are times she feels nothing.
Like he’s faded away somehow, disappeared and gone somewhere else, somewhere where she can’t reach him anymore - and she’s afraid of what that means. Because, if it means what she thinks it means, it will break her heart and destroy all she knows. Usually the feeling doesn’t last long, just a little while, but it is long enough to make her feel abandoned again, to make her feel empty. And then, one night - just after gives her her mother’s gift - she wakes feeling almost nothing, like he’s not completely faded away but gone enough that she can no longer feel or reach him. She doesn’t try to, because for the first time she actually fears he won’t come and she thinks that if he doesn’t, it would break her heart because she knows he’s somewhere.
That feeling lasts almost a year.
Then he’s back, suddenly, before he fades completely and this time the feeling of emptiness stays.
She’s alone.
She’s abandoned.
She’s scared.
She’s no longer protected.
She doesn’t tell her mother. She doesn’t want to scare her.
A year and a half later she feels him again, far away, just like always. She can honestly say she’s never been happier.
She still doesn’t call to him.
She has a picture, somewhere, of her and her father on her first day of kindergarten.
She doesn’t actually remember that day but she’s heard the tale a million times. Her mother loved telling it - not her father though - because he had been the one to get lost three times and he had been the one who had cried, not the child who was about to be left at an unfamiliar place. The truth is that while she was growing up, that day had never truly seemed important and that picture had always been lost between all the others. But somehow, in the year after her father left, every picture became important (she supposes that that is somewhat normal.) She’d found it in the back of an album and she’d fallen in love with it, though she’s not truly sure why. She and her father hadn’t known their picture was being taken - maybe that’s why because it wasn’t a pose. She’s pulling away from him, walking towards the school and a new world and he’s holding her hand as if he doesn’t want to let her go - as if he’s afraid he’ll lose her if she lets go. But he had let her go, of course he had, and she had grown and that moment had faded away.
She takes that picture everywhere.
She wonders if he ever remembers it.
She wonders if Castiel does.
At age six she got the chicken pox.
Actually everybody in her class got the damn illness - mostly because the parents of her friend Tommy, who’d moved away the year after that and whom she never actually saw again, thought it would be a good idea to send him to school while he was ill. She’d hated him - not really hate, of course, but the itching was terrible so it was close enough - the whole time she spends in bed. (She did not like being confined to her bed.) Her mother would bring her food and everything she needed and her father would read her any story she wanted to hear - more so than when she wasn’t sick and when he thought she’d fallen asleep - though she hadn’t yet - he’d place a soft kiss on her forehead and whispered he loved her before going to his own room (but always he left the door open in case she needed them.)
Once, when she was seven, she went ‘missing’.
Well not exactly missing, she and Tommy - it was about a week before he’d moved away - and a bunch of other kids from her class were going to a little art school (which was basically twenty kids and a teacher who kept the busy on Wednesday afternoons after school for a while) but that day, for some reason, the teacher hadn’t been there. Her father had already left by then - assuming, which he’d always call himself stupid for, that the teacher was just inside - and so they’d decided just to go to Tommy’s house, which wasn’t that far, and play some games. It never occurred to them that their parents - that her father - would be worried when they returned to the little school and didn’t find them there but they were seven and all that really mattered was that they could play. They’d considered, at first, returning to the school when their parents would pick them up, but they’d forgotten. They’d only been ‘missing’ for about twenty minutes, but according to him it was the longest twenty minutes of his life.
Until that day, she’d never considered that parents could be scared.
One year, for Christmas, she got a green bike (to this day, she has no idea why it was green of all things but she supposes that didn’t really matter. At least it hadn’t been pink. That would have been terrible.)
Her father was the one who taught her how to ride it and she remembers it clearly, remembers how he was the one who was scared, even though he kept saying she was the one who was, and that she was the one who just wanted to ride. Her mother had been worried at least she’d seemed worried, and she had filmed the entire thing (Claire is grateful that the video exists because that means that her father is right there on that tape, though she can’t bring herself to look at it.) She’d ridden around in front of their house while her father kept her balanced by holding the back of her bike. All her ‘classes’ went like that until the day she’d felt she was ready to out on her own. She’d turned to him and said: “I’m ready, daddy, let me go.”
“No, honey. You’re not ready yet.”
“Yes, I am! Yes, I am.”
It was quite clear, even to her, that it was he who wasn’t ready for her to try on her own yet. But in the end he’d relented and let go. She’d ridden away from her parents and she’d felt free.
And her parents, her mother with a video camera in hand, had stood there and watched her go.
She’d stopped and turned back ten seconds later, of course (she wasn’t ready to fly away just yet.)
She would forever remember that Thursday.
Even now, after so many years have passed, they still have that bike, buried somewhere between all the junk they keep moving from town to town. Claire has no idea why they do this. She hasn’t ridden it in years, though and she’s probably too big for it by now. But somehow, she’s comforted by the fact that that stupid green bike is still in her possession.
She thinks she’ll keep it forever.
She’d graduated from High school on yet another Thursday.
A part of her - she won’t deny it - had wished that her father, or at least Castiel, would be amongst the crowd when she received her diploma but he was not there. He’s somewhere though, she can tell - he’d returned from wherever he’d gone a few weeks before that - and she supposes she shouldn’t be so disappointed. aAter all they probably don’t actually know when her graduation is (and it’s not like she took the time to inform them - she keeps thinking about them as a team instead of just one person.) Still, it hurts when she doesn’t see him, even though she hadn’t truly expected to find him there. That night, after the celebrations are done, she is tempted to call for him - because surely she has the right to see her father on the day she graduates from high school even if he is currently an angel? She didn’t - though it was the closest she’d ever come to calling for him. Instead she’d lain in her bed and tried to figure out what she would be doing next.
Her mother wanted her to go to college.
And though she had gotten into some colleges and a part of her really wanted to go, at the same time she didn’t really feel ready yet - and even if she never went to college, she still knew more than most other people unless they’d been angels themselves. The truth was Claire wanted to travel. She wanted to see the places she’d learned about thanks to her angel. She wanted to stand in the places Castiel had once visited and learn everything about the world out there by seeing it. She’d put off telling her mother until after she’d graduated, but she thinks that somehow her mother had always known what she wanted to do and where she wanted to go even before Claire herself did. And though she argued for college she didn’t put up much a fight. Instead, she told Claire that if she wanted to go, she of course could - there was nothing, after all, that could stop her. Amelia knew her daughter would be safe, safer than most other people, because Castiel was somewhere out there ready to protect her in a flash - but that before she went, she should plan her trip carefully.
Claire had decided to go to New York first (mostly because it sounded like the kind of place she should at least see once) and then just go north.
One day, while waiting for her bus to arrive at a bus station, she saw him in her father’s trench coat, completely within her reach again. For a moment, seated on that old bench in the station, she’d considered not going to him. She’d considered staying where she was, but the pull had been too strong - it always was when she was near him. For once he was actually close enough that she could immediately sense that he was Castiel the angel. So, she’d walked to him with more confidence then she’d had the last few times she saw him. It took a moment for him to recognize her -of course it did, she had changed. She had grown from the little girl he had once seen into a teenager alone on the road while he had stayed the same. He had not changed at all but then, Claire figures that the changes in an angel probably wouldn’t be noticeable in his vessel (and it’s strange to think about her father that way but it makes it easier to talk to Castiel.)
This time she’s the first to speak.
“Castiel.”
“Claire Novak.”
He is different again, she can tell, different from the last time she saw him. He is more like he had been when he was with her. Calmer somehow, more at peace. He had a purpose now, something that he needed to do and it grounded him (and no, she really can’t explain how she knows all that, but she’s gotten so used to knowing these things when she’s near him that she never thinks about it.) Still, despite that he also seems sad, like something has happened between then and now, something that has changed him completely (and there is guilt too, hidden by all the other emotions. Claire isn’t sure if it’s guilt because of something he did or because he’s talking to a little girl whose father he stole.)
“Why are you here, Castiel?”
“I am…traveling.”
“Traveling? On a bus?”
“Yes, I must protect something from the other angels. It is harder to be found this way.”
She’s tempted to ask him what is that needs protecting and why it must be protected from the other angels, but something tells her that he won’t answer her. Besides, she doesn’t really think it’s her business. She’s not sure what else to say, though, because even though she still has a million questions she knows by now that she’ll never get any answers. She has accepted that - she accepted most of what had happened years ago and she no longer blamed the angel for anything (if she had ever blamed him at all.)
“Why are you here, Claire Novak?”
“I’m traveling too, trying to see the world.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to.”
Claire wonders, briefly, what everybody around thinks about them. It must look strange, and she wonders, too, if Castiel is somehow making sure again that they don’t see them (she’s not sure if it’s necessary though.) A woman’s voice calls out the passengers of the bus she’s taken, and for a moment she wants to not go. She wants to stay with her angel and bask in his power and his strength and his peace, but she’s learned that she’ll never have that again and something tells her that being around Castiel isn’t truly safe anymore. She knows she must go but she can’t go without knowing one thing. She just doesn’t really know how to ask.
“That’s my bus.”
“You should go, then.”
“I should. Castiel?”
“Yes, Claire Novak?”
“Is my father still with you?”
He doesn’t look shocked, as if he’d been expecting that question ever since they met again. She wonders, briefly, if he would lie to her, if he would tell her what she wanted to hear (or what he thought she wanted to hear) as opposed to the truth. But she thinks he would tell her the truth, if only because she would be able to tell if he lied to her (at least she thinks she would be able to.)
“No, he went to heaven years ago when we were destroyed fighting the Apocalypse. It doesn’t really matter. He is safe now, Claire Novak, safe and at peace where he belongs.”
“Will I see him again?”
“Someday.”
“Thank you, Castiel.”
“For what?”
“For telling me. I have to go.”
She turns to leave, not sure if she should actually say goodbye. She takes a couple of steps before he calls to her.
“Claire Novak… I am sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything.”
She supposes that’s the closest she will ever get to a real apology from an angel, the closest she will get to him acknowledging all that has happened. She realizes in that moment that though she has accepted all that has happened and forgiven him completely, he doesn’t know that.
“It’s okay, Castiel. It’s all okay.”
And then, before she can change her mind, she walks back towards him and hugs him, just like she used to hug her father years ago. He’s slow to respond, but eventually he hugs her back - and she wonders if he’s actually ever been hugged before - and for a moment, when she closes her eyes, she almost feels like she’s a child again in her father’s arm before the world fell apart. But she’s not she’s a teenager in a bus station somewhere in America in the arms of an angel. She lets go after a few seconds and this time, before she leaves, she does tell him goodbye - and there is a part of her that almost feels like she will never see him again and perhaps she won’t. Because this time there is peace, and perhaps that is what Castiel needed from her, peace and forgiveness.
(She was born on a Thursday long ago, and so was her father.)
She boards the bus and sits in the backseat and looks out at the window and sees him standing there, her angel. He doesn’t wave. He doesn’t do anything but stand and stare, but she knows he’s bidding her farewell. The first time she saw Castiel, so many years ago, she hadn’t known he was an angel and she figures that if he had never been inside her she would still not know that the man in a trench coat standing there is so much more than what he appears. She stares out the window at Castiel, and keeps watching as the bus drives away and watches him get smaller and smaller, until eventually he just fades away as if he’d never been there.
It’s the last time she sees him.
It’s also a Thursday.
(It’s probably a coincidence.)
It’s the screams that wake her.
They’re loud and they’re everywhere, they’re screaming in pain, in anger, in fear, in sadness. She can hear them and yet she doesn’t think she really can. She thinks, briefly, as she sits up shaking in her bed, that it’s like being able to sense that other angels are near her. Something bad has happened to the angels and whatever it is, their feelings are so strong she can pick them up as if they’re hers. There are no other people up; nobody else is moving in the hallways of the place she’s sleeping in, which means that she’s the only one who can hear them scream. The night sky is lighting up.
If she didn’t know about the angels, about the reality of heaven, she might have been tempted to believe it was a freak meteor shower. But she knows better. It scares her - it’s difficult to breathe - and she’s shaking and she knows she has to stop but she can’t make herself. She can see them - the angels falling to the earth. She can hear them all around her, but she can no longer sense him. Castiel. He’s gone. (Not gone like the other times, gone like he was somewhere but he was no longer an angel, if such a thing was possible, and as such she could never feel him again.) She’s terrified - not even those demons had scared her like this, this was somewhere deep inside her - the part of her that belonged to Castiel that was screaming, begging, for its angel but the angel could not come back. She screams his name into the night sky - she’s not sure when she made it outside - until her voice is hoarse. But he never comes. He never can. (She knows he can’t, because if he could, he would be there just to make sure she was all right.) She falls to her knees because the screaming and the loneliness and the emptiness and the fear and the sadness are too much. She covers her ears and closes her eyes , willing everything to go away, trying to drown it all out - but she can’t. It’s like it’s all a part of her (and it is, it is.)
She’s not sure how long she sits there.
She was still whispering his name, unable to scream anymore, when she realized that the world had gone silent again. Though she’d wished for it all to stop, she now knew that the silence was so much worse. Because somehow - and she doesn’t know how but she knows it’s bad - the angels have fallen. They have been shattered and the silence means it’s all over. But she knows that some angels must have fallen near her but she could no longer sense them the way she did before, and she knew that meant that whatever had happened was worse than she thought. (Most terrifying of all, she could still not sense Castiel at all, and he had not responded to her calls the first time ever she had called for him -which meant that he could not and that was terrible.)
She did not get up even when the screaming stopped. She stayed on her knees, her eyes closed, her ears covered until she could no longer whisper his name, until her knees and arms ached, until the moment she realized that she was crying (it might have been hours, it could have been minutes, she’s never been sure.) Eventually she opens her eyes, only because she has to, and the night sky is normal again. There are no more angels, no more flames, no more screaming and it’s bad.
There’s an angel (a dead angel) lying a few feet from her.
(She wonders, shaking, if Castiel is laying somewhere like that, dead because of his fall, lost to her forever.)
She doesn’t know him at all.
She cries for him anyway and for all the others and for her angel.
When she gets back up, she’ll call Dean’s number for information. But for now, she’ll mourn the angel that doesn’t have anyone that would miss him.
It’s Thursday, Claire realizes.
(Of course it is.)