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See, I'm a big believer in what dies, stays dead.
The first thing it remembers is its purpose: reaper.
The next thing it remembers is falling, stopping, stillness. A vague sense of noise, drifting air currents. A rumble that vibrates through the ground and fades into the distance. A feeling of slow unraveling, as the edges of its physical form begin to spiral out into the air, and then into nothing. Then it was here.
Physical form. Reverse, it thinks.
The reaper concentrates, ripples, and solidifies, remembering the details as it goes: brown skin, dark curls, leather jacket. At critical mass it blinks out and then she is standing on a bridge, mist curling around her legs. She stares down at feet, hands, fingers, flexing absently. She stares up at mountains outlined by a rising sun. She remembers them being dark. Something about midnight.
None of this is making sense, and everything always makes sense for a reaper, but like the rest of her kind, she's always been tough to shake. She lets the confusion settle, lets a memory of a face float into her grasp. Seems like there's someone she needs to see.
The reaper steps between space, selects a lifeline, and pulls.
It isn't until she's standing in the doorway of a darkened room, staring at the figure perched on the edge of a bed, that it occurs to her there shouldn't have been a line to follow in the first place. No soul to be tended when an angel dies, after all, and yet... She lets the confusion settle, sizes up the room. The door is closed and the lights are off, but he's made no pretense at sleeping, sits fully dressed with his hands clasped in his lap. His head is up, gaze latched on the far wall.
"Hey," she says, and he whirls to his feet, shoulders taut, eyes wide, right hand flexing (blade, she remembers, and one hand twitches toward her collarbone) but his hands remain empty.
"Billie."
"You know why I'm here," Billie says, reassured to find that it doesn't sound like a question. Let it settle. Move forward.
"You can't have them. The contract passed to me and I forfeited." It comes out in a rush, and she just looks at him in response. Never thought she'd hear an angel on the verge of babbling. Never thought she'd be here for a lot of things. Her eyes go to his right hand again, then back to his face, the dark shadows under his eyes. Haunted, he looks, and something about that strikes her as funny.
"The contract passed to me," he repeats more slowly. "That only happens if you're -"
"Dead, yeah." Her voice is calm. "Surprise." It's starting to come back now: the bridge, the humans, an ultimatum. Moonlight reflected off the barrel of a gun.
"And the consequences?"
"What about 'em?"
"I believe the word you used was 'cosmic.'"
"Well." Billie shrugs lightly, hands in her pockets. "Blood pacts take either mutual consent, or mutual dissent. Never actually considered somebody might try killing me to claim my dissent. Nice work."
His gaze drops. "It… seemed like the thing to do."
"Mm-hm." But she's sort of lost her train of thought. Killed her for it. She slammed them to the ground. There was the mother, the gun gripped tight, safety clicking off, death so close Billie could damn near taste it on the air. Then, a surge of - something - pain, she guesses, and a split-second understanding of why humans get so afraid. Pain in every particle, back arching, eyes wide, falling…
"I died," Billie says, and this time she does reach up to feel the place where Castiel's blade ripped through her chest. Just smooth skin, but the memory reverberates in her like lightning. "I was dead. But I'm still here." Her hands are shaking, she realizes distantly. She never told them to do that. She feels the wall at her back, solid and reassuring, and forces herself to fold her arms across her chest again.
The angel's face has softened, stance relaxed minutely; Billie tries to ignore his pity. "I know."
"That's not supposed to happen. Dying. Or… not being dead." Her lips quirk into a faint smile. "It's not really our thing."
"I know."
"Winchesters." It's a familiar refrain, and suddenly she feels very old.
He turns the bedside light on and sits back down - this time closer to the headboard, Billie notes, leaving a gap next to him. She comes around the bed to face him but doesn't take the offer, leaning back against the wall instead. It's a good wall. Heavy with history.
"You've been brought back before," she says. He's not shudderingly wrong to look at, the way the Winchesters are, but that's only because he's an angel - she wasn't designed to tend to his kind, can't see much of anything aside from not mine. Billie knows the stories, though. She's done her research.
"Once or twice."
"How?"
Castiel looks away. "I don't know."
His body language is remarkably human; she just waits, and eventually he continues. "I'm pretty sure I know, but I never had the chance to ask him. No. I, I was afraid to ask him. If he'd said no, or if I'd asked why and he'd said… If I'd been wrong. I didn't want to know."
"Any chance he did me too?"
He smiles without much humor. "He works in mysterious ways."
"I'm just a reaper." Just one who stepped up, in the chaos after Heaven closed for business, and again when the boss… disappeared, is how they're mostly putting it these days. Just one who stepped in - did the math and decided that the place to begin repairing this world was probably the men who broke it to start with.
"I'm just an angel."
"I shouldn't be here."
The old bulb flickers a little, painting shadow and light across their faces. "What are you going to do?" he asks. "Restore the natural order?"
It's occurred to her. But she says nothing. She remembers the pain, and the fear, and the… nothing. Nobody to reap a reaper. No soul to be reaped, just death and a slow dissolving into space. Billie knows heaven and hell by reputation, never thought there was much to be envied there; right now, she's not so sure.
"You're still here for a reason," Castiel says.
"I died for a reason."
"You died because I stabbed you. You're still here because someone decided you deserved better."
"I don't deserve anything. Reapers don't deserve anything. We just are."
This smile is more genuine. "I know."
A muffled noise through the wall at her back catches both their attentions. Castiel's gaze locks on that same point from earlier until it's silent again. "He's a restless sleeper. Dean, I mean. I heard his shoes hit the wall, and he started up with that a few minutes later. When he's lying awake, he doesn't make any noise at all." His eyes move to the doorway. "Sam, he spent almost as long in the shower tonight as Dean usually does, although with markedly less singing. He was moving around in his room until well past 3 . I… I don't know Mary well enough. She's asleep now, I think."
They both listen to the silence.
"It's quiet," Castiel says, "but it feels different now. It was a different quiet when they were gone." He sighs ruefully, hands gripping his knees. "Or maybe not. I've gotten very sentimental."
"Never understood the appeal of that."
"No." The angel stills. "Sometimes I don't either."
In the room behind her, Dean shifts in his sleep again.
"They've always known why they're still here," Castiel says softly. "Knew whether it was intended as a gift or a curse. I envy them that sometimes."
"I'm not sure intentions make much difference."
He's quiet for a moment, studying his hands. "If no one shows up to tell you why you're back, you'll have to decide for yourself what your reason is." His eyes harden, and he meets her gaze. "But I'm warning you. I won't let you touch Sam, Dean, or Mary."
Her eyebrows lift. "Honey, your wings are clipped. You can't be everywhere. I can."
"I'm resourceful."
She looks him up and down. "Uh huh." But yes, she does know the stories. "I'm still their reaper," she says at last. "No one else left who wants the gig. They get themselves killed, I'll get a call." She hesitates. "I get a call from a Winchester, I'm not coming."
"And you'll send them where they're meant to go?"
She purses her lips, but there's humor in her eyes. "I'm starting to think it wouldn't make much difference anyway."
"Thank you."
A reaper who doesn't obey the fundamental law. She's not sure what the others will make of that. She's not sure what she's supposed to make of that. But until she gets some answers, or decides there's no answers to be gotten, it probably is a good idea to stay the hell away from this family. Bad enough their wrong-ness is contagious; all she needs now is to find out that it's habit-forming, too.
"Castiel?"
"What?"
"...Thanks."
Billie doesn't wait to hear his reply. She steps between space, selects a lifeline at random, and pulls.