[ Not thinking that she wants to know more, but well into knowing that what she wants was so far out the window months ago, Jo follows Cas' gentle request to lay back down. Uncurling her legs and getting as comfortable as she can on a shoulder without attempting to let go of Cas' hand any more than he seems ever to consider releasing hers. It's an eerie frisson between her shoulders and shoulder blades, wondering how much worse whatever it might be is.
This thing he thinks she needs to see to understand. That Castiel, who always has too many words, has almost none.
She doesn't want to know, doesn't want to see; doesn't look away from Cas' blue, blue eyes, frost-bitten broken, rattled to a deep dark place she hasn't seen even this horrible sickness leech out of him. Something like—a gutting of hope. Which is esoteric even for her to think. But somehow, even as it feels awkward to think, it feels right, too. She squeezes his hand a last time after they both close their eyes, and all of the natural world fades away.
He says I'm sorry, but Jo's mouth only gives the faintest quirk of movement. She doesn't need to be handled softly. She has to know everything they're going to face.
At least that's
her last thought
before everything suddenly changes.
Everything is briefly disorienting all at once. The foreign location, the clarity of her vision, and the shifted perspective it is seen through that very much isn't hers; the angle—from Cas' height?—is wrong. So is the way every bit of the breath left in her chest obliterates, in sync with the sensation shattering through her, as his(/her) gaze lands on Dean.
Dean pinning another tall guy she doesn't know (but feels like she knows; can almost feel the name on the tip of her tongue, even though she's never met him) hand in his dark hair and at his waist, the guys hand around Dean's upper back. Visceral bile and an alarm shrieking somewhere in Jo's consciousness, but there's no way to tear her gaze back, away.
It's not her face. Her body. She's not here.
Because Cas put her there.
In the beginning. Not the end. Not something else he couldn't say. The full-on, whole enchilada, except she isn't even in her own goddamn fucking body. She can't press her toes into the ground, her hands into fists, nails into palms, teeth tight to each other. She can't ground herself into her skin, into physical pain, and ride roughshod of the feelings to keep them in check. She's an echo inside of a moment that has already happened. With nothing to ground herself from the emotional avalanche entire in swing.
(She hates everything about the traction of it already. The helpless, unmoored inability to steady herself. She is not flotsam in a river's rapid.
Except she is now.)
Bile in the throat she doesn't possess, shock in the mind she's inside of, everything a jarring too high note again, and he's not wrong. Cruel, Cas said, and Dean is. Cruelty is lined into the sharp lines of his face. There's some volatile kicking brutally at nothing when he comes up black-eyed and black-faced (more than the skin, warped, emanating into him deep and dark and wrong as can be wrong and goddamn endless) and all those words he throws out first as insultingly dismissive as they are aggressively uninterested.
Cas is far more sensible than she would have been, and she's stuck in the coattails of that martial movement forward. Castiel's refusal to be cowed by it, even as The Thing With Dean's Face never relents against each new set of words rebuffed. And it only makes it more. Cruel. Callous. Crude. There's pain under it. Amorphous, barely manned, leaking through the cracks of his (/her) face, his (/her) words. Cas never was a spectacular liar, but he tries, and she sees how much the demon can see through the faltering attempt, how much it loves tasting the first drops of blood in the water and lunging for more.
Did you fall in love with me as soon as you slapped that handprint on my shoulder, or was it more of a slow build?
—would have been bad enough
Castiel's awareness around her is crashing like someone slammed a bell too hard, and it's coming free from whatever the hell it is that holds them up, and it's coming down hard, all that weight into the construct below, crashing and crunching, taking out every column
but then he belts it in with—
I might have pity-fucked you, but I'd never love you.
The demon vanishes and the memory with it, and suddenly Cas is in front of her, but it's almost like he's too bright. There's the feeling of wanting to puke, mixed with the stolen shiver down Cas' spine and the ghost sensation of stubble scratched along her jawline, lips nearly against her ear. The smug euphoria of triumphant decimation in those dark eyes the second before he vanished left splashed across her vision like the colored spots after looking at a too-bright light.
While Cas stares at her and she can read every inch of his shame and sorrow and fear and desperation on what her reaction will be now too and her brain in still shouting too many things too fast for her mouth to know what to do—I didn't know (how sick you actually are; how you felt) and and no, he's wrong, Dean loves you (but not if he's in— and how the fuck is she supposed to hold—have-it's feels like it's still inside her; Cas' feelings, desolation, shame, panic, confusion, refusal, desperation, shattering) and I'm sorry (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry) and swearing, so much wearing, and vertigo, like gravity's hold on her feet and time's control on seconds moving hasn't quite remastered itself.
But none of them stays, as her eyes keep shifting back and forth, replaying something that happened both too fast and too slow, all of it wrong. ]
no subject
This thing he thinks she needs to see to understand.
That Castiel, who always has too many words, has almost none.
She doesn't want to know, doesn't want to see; doesn't look away from Cas' blue, blue eyes, frost-bitten broken, rattled to a deep dark place she hasn't seen even this horrible sickness leech out of him. Something like—a gutting of hope. Which is esoteric even for her to think. But somehow, even as it feels awkward to think, it feels right, too. She squeezes his hand a last time after they both close their eyes, and all of the natural world fades away.
He says I'm sorry, but Jo's mouth only gives the faintest quirk of movement.
She doesn't need to be handled softly. She has to know everything they're going to face.
At least that's
Everything is briefly disorienting all at once. The foreign location, the clarity of her vision, and the shifted perspective it is seen through that very much isn't hers; the angle—from Cas' height?—is wrong. So is the way every bit of the breath left in her chest obliterates, in sync with the sensation shattering through her, as his(/her) gaze lands on Dean.
Dean pinning another tall guy she doesn't know (but feels like she knows; can almost feel the name on the tip of her tongue, even though she's never met him) hand in his dark hair and at his waist, the guys hand around Dean's upper back. Visceral bile and an alarm shrieking somewhere in Jo's consciousness, but there's no way to tear her gaze back, away.
It's not her face. Her body. She's not here.
Because Cas put her there.
In the beginning. Not the end. Not something else he couldn't say. The full-on, whole enchilada, except she isn't even in her own goddamn fucking body. She can't press her toes into the ground, her hands into fists, nails into palms, teeth tight to each other. She can't ground herself into her skin, into physical pain, and ride roughshod of the feelings to keep them in check. She's an echo inside of a moment that has already happened. With nothing to ground herself from the emotional avalanche entire in swing.
(She hates everything about the traction of it already.
The helpless, unmoored inability to steady herself.
She is not flotsam in a river's rapid.
Except she is now.)
Bile in the throat she doesn't possess, shock in the mind she's inside of, everything a jarring too high note again, and he's not wrong. Cruel, Cas said, and Dean is. Cruelty is lined into the sharp lines of his face. There's some volatile kicking brutally at nothing when he comes up black-eyed and black-faced (more than the skin, warped, emanating into him deep and dark and wrong as can be wrong and goddamn endless) and all those words he throws out first as insultingly dismissive as they are aggressively uninterested.
Cas is far more sensible than she would have been, and she's stuck in the coattails of that martial movement forward. Castiel's refusal to be cowed by it, even as The Thing With Dean's Face never relents against each new set of words rebuffed. And it only makes it more. Cruel. Callous. Crude. There's pain under it. Amorphous, barely manned, leaking through the cracks of his (/her) face, his (/her) words. Cas never was a spectacular liar, but he tries, and she sees how much the demon can see through the faltering attempt, how much it loves tasting the first drops of blood in the water and lunging for more.
Did you fall in love with me as soon as
you slapped that handprint on my shoulder,
or was it more of a slow build?
Castiel's awareness around her is crashing like someone slammed a bell too hard,
and it's coming free from whatever the hell it is that holds them up, and it's coming down hard,
all that weight into the construct below, crashing and crunching, taking out every column
but then he belts it in with—
but I'd never love you.
The demon vanishes and the memory with it, and suddenly Cas is in front of her, but it's almost like he's too bright. There's the feeling of wanting to puke, mixed with the stolen shiver down Cas' spine and the ghost sensation of stubble scratched along her jawline, lips nearly against her ear. The smug euphoria of triumphant decimation in those dark eyes the second before he vanished left splashed across her vision like the colored spots after looking at a too-bright light.
While Cas stares at her and she can read every inch of his shame and sorrow and fear and desperation on what her reaction will be now too and her brain in still shouting too many things too fast for her mouth to know what to do—I didn't know (how sick you actually are; how you felt) and and no, he's wrong, Dean loves you (but not if he's in— and how the fuck is she supposed to hold—have-it's feels like it's still inside her; Cas' feelings, desolation, shame, panic, confusion, refusal, desperation, shattering) and I'm sorry (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry) and swearing, so much wearing, and vertigo, like gravity's hold on her feet and time's control on seconds moving hasn't quite remastered itself.
But none of them stays, as her eyes keep shifting back and forth,
replaying something that happened both too fast and too slow, all of it wrong. ]