Cas paused to take in the room. I waited almost patiently.
"Does your angel do the dramatic pause all the time?"
"He's not my—"
"I'm not his—"
"Yeah..."
Dean, Cas, and Sam spoke at the same time.
Dean rolled his eyes. "Cas, just go on."
"The world was supposed to end years ago." He said it pointedly, but no one seemed to understand.
"And?"
"And you stopped the apocalypse, so it didn't. But Earth is meant to end, humanity is meant to cease, so it will keep trying until it follows its natural course."
"Yeah but where does she—"
"You think I'm going to destroy the world?" I felt hot, blood rushed to my face.
"Well, if you are as powerful as you say you are, maybe your purpose is to fulfill the prophecy. It's the only reason I'd create an abomination like..." He caught himself before he finished.
"Maybe I'll just end you how would you like that?"
"Okay, alright. Easy." Dean cautioned, eyeing at me like I was a grenade ready to explode.
"I didn't mean to say it like that." Cas seemed sincere enough, but I still huffed, "Maybe what we'll write on your gravestone." And just for a moment, I thought I caught Sam try to hide something like a smile.
"Eliza, you said?" Cas asked politely.
I scowled at him. "Yeah."
"How old are you?"
"I'm turning twenty."
"What?" Dean said, louder than he probably meant. The three of us turned to look at him. "She's just a kid!"
I glared at him. "If I'm a kid, you're a hundred."
"Yes, she is very young. We're very lucky we found her first or else she might've gotten herself in the wrong hands and then we would've all been doomed."
I squinted my eyes evilly at Cas. "First off, Casablanca, you didn't find me, and I didn't fall into any hands—"
"It's Castiel—"
"Second, I managed to ditch the King of Hell. You think he let me off easy? He took me to a dinner. In Paris. We were in Washington state that night! He bought me a diamond ring and offered me Mars."
"Mars?" Sam repeated.
"Yeah, he said it would become really valuable in a few years. Point is, I am not lucky that I found you, I did that on purpose."
"Crowley didn't tell you what you were?" Cas ignored my little rant.
"He wouldn't tell me unless I swore loyalty to him. I knew enough to know that was the dumbest thing I could do."
"And the rest of your family? Do they know where you are?" Sam asked.
"It was just me and my dad."
"Friends?" Dean asked.
"Yes, I text them every day on my cell phone and update my facebook every so often. Yesterday I saw a movie with them at a movie theater. Tomorrow I have school, but a date afterwards. I will go shopping with my BFFL for a brand new outfit, I hope he likes it." I said it flatly and slowly.
Dean crossed his arms. "That's not funny."
I gave him a quick smile that fell immediately.
"We have to let her stay." Cas informed the two like the decision has been made.
"And he'll take the cure?" I nodded my head at Sam.
Cas squinted his eyes. "What cure?"
"This thing," Sam held out the box so Cas could see. His fiery blue eyes—so alive the whole of Hades would've been sent home with a 'redo' letter, fixed on the box. Finally, they widened in recognition, surprise and curiosity on his face and raised brows.
And then he took the syringe out of the box and started smelling it.
I bit my cheeks to keep from smirking. "What—uh—what are you doing?"
"I'm trying to see if you got all the ingredients right." His eyes flicked to me for a second before returning to the tube in his hands. "Is something amusing?"
"Nothing, I'm sorry." I shook my head, absolutely failing to keep a straight face. "I'm just talking to a man with wings and a halo."
But Dean was—surprise!—supremely pissed at something. "Cas you knew there was a cure?"
I was beginning to realize that when Dean spoke, it wasn't like how the rest of us did. Dean commanded. When he asked Cas the question, it was no inquiry—he was daring Cas to say the answer he didn't want to hear.
Cas seemed to be used to Dean's charged way of expressing himself. Without even looking up from the box, he simply replied: "Yes. But I was not certain if I would be able to gather the ingredients. Most of them were hidden in places that are forbidden by natural law to angels and humans alike." He gave me a side eye then. I looked away. "I was tired of watching you get crushed."
Dean's voice got even louder, and it was threaded with wrath so pressing—it was easy to forget that he was mad on behalf of someone else. "It doesn't matter—you should've told me about this earlier! We would've figured out a way!"
Cas finally looked up, a look of dread on his face. "Dean—" he began pleadingly, but Dean wouldn't have it.
"No, you know what, no. Sam has been suffering a world of hurt because of this thing and I thought we knew shit from Shinola about how or why but apparently you were keeping all the answers from the rest of the class. What, were you waiting for a handwritten invite?"
I made a mental note to never disappoint Dean.
"I couldn't disappoint you again, Dean. I couldn't." Cas glared at Dean, demanding understanding from him. Like he was trying to remind Dean of a long, painful history they both shared. Cas looked away when he muttered, "Not again."
While all the manly angst was going on between the three of them, my mind dozed off to the blood that came after I drained Cas.
Medically speaking, the blood could've been at least six different types of cancer. It also could've been Ebola, or liver infection, or three different types of ulcers. Liver infection could be ruled out, because even though I possess the bitterness and pessimism of an alcoholic—I've yet to drink. I like to think of myself as a law abiding citizen that way. But if I was being realistic—I wasn't going to die of cancer or a spectacularly rare virus.
Dying due to my insides exploding because the angel I swallowed was too astronomically powerful—that was more of my forte.
The three of them bickered on. Cas was still begging for forgiveness.
"I'm sorry. I couldn't take you to cloud nine just to yank you down to the ninth circle of hell. I knew there was a cure but I was positive we wouldn't be able to get to it."
"Is the formula okay?" Dean asked—ordered—ignoring Cas's apology.
"I believe it is." He turned to me curiously, "But how did you get the—"
"Sold my soul," I flashed him a wide grin.
As per way of Dean, the idea made him boil. "Naturally," he enunciated, hinting me a small, sarcastic smile. "Great," Dean said pointedly, returning everyone's attention to him. He took the tube from Cas when he said, "I think Sam's been through enough. And like Wonder Woman put it, thanks but no thanks. Roll up your sleeve."
"Wait!" I interrupted almost a second too late. "Read the fancy stuff first. God, this is a one shot thing—I'm getting dragged to hell for this."
Sam smiled at me uncomfortably. It was strangely adorable, with his tired puffy eyes and messy bed hair. "If this works, I owe you for that." He read the contents of the paper out loud. It sounded alien, like nothing I've ever heard. I figured it was probably a dead language, like Latin or...another dead language.
"Here goes everything," Dean muttered, pressing his thumb against the head of the syringe and squirting out some. The room was so quiet we practically heard the needle prick Sam's skin. His face twisted and froze in the grimace until the stuff was all in. Dean stepped back, eying his brother warily.
"Well?" he breached the silence. His voice said utterly hopeful, but his face was like stone and his eyes were dead.
Sam shrugged, looking like he was thinking hard. "I-I don't know—"
"Read the damn thing first!" I hissed, standing up and almost throwing the paper at Sam. The stupid formula took eight weeks. And my soul! You'd think they'd be more careful.
"Right, right." Sam furrowed his eyebrows, and cleared his throat before picking up the piece of paper again. As if the spell would work better if his voice wasn't scratchy when he read the verse.
After he was finished, he slowly put the paper down. We were all holding our breaths, waiting. Like we were expecting a tiny dwarf man in a flashy suit and a trumpet to loudly announce that Sam Winchester was cured.
When nothing happened, Sam looked up to his brother. Now what?
I understood where Cas was coming from now. Seeing Dean getting crushed was heart wrenching. He didn't look surprised that his brother didn't get better. He looked like he was beating himself up for getting even a little hopeful because he knew all too well that in the end—things just didn't go as planned. They never went as planned.
He didn't move. Just nodded to himself, thinking. He closed his eyes and a bitter smile spread on his face. He let out a humorless laugh. "Sorry, Sammy." He bit his lip and his features scrunched up together in spiteful remorse. The kind that chipped off a piece from your soul. He was so close.
"Dean," Sam's features softened. His eyebrows rose, pleading, begging. "I'm fine. We'll find something else, don't do this to yourself." Please please please, the look on his face said. But Dean wasn't looking at him. Cas's head was bowed to the floor.
"Yeah, I hear ya." It was heartbroken.
I was extremely uncomfortable, to say the least. I waltzed in here like an absolute idiot parading that I had a cure. Then I realized: I was going to go to hell for nothing.
I was wondering whether or not I could possibly talk the demon guards into smuggling some candy into hell when Sam's scream, painful, wretched, awful, filled the room suddenly and all at once.