5. "Losing Power Hurts."
Cas comes back when it's time to shove more of the demon cure into my bloodstream. This time, he's learned from his first mistake. After I get a needle full of blood, he leaves, preventing me from getting under his skin. I decide to not waste my breath and talk to myself.
Hour three: More blood. Cas is back long enough for the administration and then leaves before I can catch him.
Hour four: More blood. My inner struggle is becoming more evident now. I don't want to goad Cas anymore. I feel something...remorse, I think, for saying what I had about Claire, and Amelia Novak, and Charlie. I begin to wonder how I could let my brothers and Cas believe that I could control myself as a demon.
Hour five: More of the cure is forced into my arm. Cas looks about as weary as I'm beginning to feel. Any spunk I had early on in me is disappearing, like the more blood I take in, the less fight comes out of my mouth. On top of the blood, my old memories are resurfacing, reminding me that Avery is just a middle name to me. Not an alternate persona to my demon self.
Hour six: Cas injects me with more blood. He's got a tired rhythm going on: administer blood, then leave before I can torment him with words.
His eyes watch me, waiting for me to make a comment. But I don't. In fact, I've given up hours ago on trying to get under his skin. I feel defeated. I feel tired. The darkness in me has quieted itself, almost gone away entirely. I feel the change, even if Cas may not be able to see it.
"You're persistent, I will give you that," I pant, feeling the dull sting in my veins.
"We've still got two more doses to go," he tells me.
"No. N-no more."
"It took a while the last time. Too little dosage, you might revert back."
"Stop this."
"I'm not trusting you until I know you're cured."
He's smart, just like Sam had been about my being a demon.
I notice the change in me. Instead of seeing Cas's true form like I've been seeing, I see only his vessel, the very thing I saw the day I met him. I see how exhausted and ill he is. He's wasting away. The blood is my kryptonite, it seems.
"You don't care that I killed him," Cas mutters at the seventh hour. I groan, rolling my head back, wincing at the familiar pinch of the needle. "You wanted him dead."
"He was giving me sex. Why would I want to gank him?"
"When we faced off, you seemed rather annoyed with him."
"He was being a possessive prick." I cough, beginning to shiver.
"One more to go, and then we're almost finished."
"No—no more."
"You don't get a say in this." Cas reaches to smooth my hair down but stops halfway through. "This has to happen. You'll thank me later."
"I'm never going to thank you," I snarl through gritted teeth. "I'm never going to forgive you for this."
"Once you're back to normal, you'll see things differently. Losing power hurts. You accept the change after a while."
"You speak from experience?" My face twitches. The desire to maul Cas creeps through my veins again. How dare he taunt me like this? "I'll take my angel blade and shove it through your heart, Castiel."
"If I know you as well as I believe, that will never happen. There will never be a day where that will happen."
I scoff weakly. "I'll prove you wrong."
"You'll prove me right."
I wince. That's what Alex had said to me, back when I had been blind and naïve. Back when I hadn't embraced the inevitable. Will the outcome be the same? Will I have to embrace my old human ways again? I don't want to. I can't become weak again.
Weakness is what got me killed. Being human is how I ended up in Hell. Transformed in that hole, flourishing as something otherworldly, something far stronger.
The last hour nearly kills me inside. As I watch Cas prepare the final batch, I start screaming in outrage. All he does is flinch, never feeding into my attention-seeking. When he approaches me with the needle, I give him a look that could make Hell freeze over. He sticks the last batch into my arm.
"I'm going to kill you for this!" I screech.
"Once this is over, you won't." Cas pulls out a small journal, thumbing through the pages. "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus." I start screaming, feeling the burn run through my body. It's like someone made a gas line out of my veins and put a lighter to them. "Hanc animam redintergra, lustra!"
I throw my head back, jolting in the chair so violently that I almost begin to believe I'll break free from it.
"Lustra!"
It's a weird sensation, what I feel. Like I've been cleansed. Like poison has been sucked out of an imaginary wound. As though whatever spell I've been put under, whatever fog, has been lifted.
My body slumps hard against the chair, and I'm sputtering for breath. I close my eyes, feeling the forehead sweat pour down my face. He did it. He cured me. I'm not dead. I didn't die.
"Josette?"
I open my eyes slowly at hearing my name. All I see is ceiling light, and I'm feeling a slight crick in my neck now. Grunting, I pull my head up, looking blearily at the angel before me. I can't see his true form any longer, all I can see is his vessel.
"Come on!" I whine weakly when I get holy water splashed onto me. Well, I assume it's holy water. If it is, it doesn't burn me. It worked.
"I had to be sure," Cas says lowly. "How do you feel?"
"I...I don't know." I sniff. "Let me out now?"
Cas undoes the restraints and pulls me to my feet. All of my limbs feel like lead. I feel as though my strength has been sapped from me from the incantation. My legs don't stay strong for long, they collapse under me. Cas catches me halfway down before my face can kiss the concrete floor.
"I've got you," he murmurs as he sits on the floor, with me in his arms. "I've got you." I lean against him heavily, trembling, feeling his hand smooth down my hair. "You're alright now."
Am I alright, though? I feel off. Powerless. Human. Drained.
"C-can you stand?"
"I don't want to risk it."
Cas scoops me up off the floor. We totter, and I hold onto him as we nearly fall. He stumbles in his steps a bit, but he does regain his footing. "You okay?"
"I'm a bit worn too," he admits. "Let's get you out of here."
Slowly, we leave the bunker dungeon behind and all the events that happened over the past eight hours.
"Where are you taking me, Cas?"
"Someplace familiar."
I realize when we enter a new space that it's my old room. My barely decorated room. "Home sweet home, I guess. You, uh, don't need to tuck me in, I can make it from here."
Cas gently sets me down, a guiding hand on the small of my back. "I'll find you a burner phone to use."
"Mm." I shuffle towards my bed, which, I won't be too surprised if it has dust bunnies snuggled under the covers.
"If you need anything, you know what to do."
I rub my arm, examining the bruising from where Cas jabbed me with a needle eight freaking times. My brows crease. "You're not gonna stay and watch over me?"
"Do you want me to?"
"You don't have to." I shrug. Truthfully, I'm not sure if I want him to. I'm a little fogged up still. I'm still trying to pull apart my emotions and figure out what's going on inside of me.
"Well, I don't want to be up your ass..."
I roll my eyes pathetically. "I'm not sure that I meant that, Cas."
"You sounded pretty convincing."
I wave him away. "Go do what you were doing. I'll be here catching up on the months of sleep that I've missed out on."
"Try and sleep well, Josette."
I clear my throat awkwardly. "Thanks, Cas."
As he leaves my room, I don't bother to change into different clothes. I slip under the covers (who I don't have to share with, no dust bunnies to be found), trying to remember what being in a bed and trying to fall asleep feels like. This bed isn't a downsize from the last one I'd been in, it's about the same.
The big difference: there's no demon beside me. No dark temptation to pull me further into the deep end anymore.
All that animosity towards Cas had evaporated when he had cured me. Like it had just been a phase that I was going through. Now that the darkness is gone in me, I can feel the other tolling emotions clinging to my heart.
My running mind and emotions prevent me from sleeping soundly.
**As much as I'll miss Avery/Demon!Jo, it's good to have Human!Jo back.
If you think the angst is gonna fade *laughs* you're so wrong.
You'll see.**