Song Remains the Same

Chapter 64: Breakfast at Balthazar's

"I pulled down the heavens just to please you."
- Smashing Pumpkins

One Month Later
Sioux Falls, South Dakota

It had been over a month with no word from Cas. Thirty plus days of wondering, fretting, and laying awake in the dead of night listening for creaking floorboards or soft whispers of wings to alert her to his presence. But there was nothing. Life went on, either way: There had been a hunt with Bobby over in Wyoming three weeks ago and there had been a demon interrogation they put together (trying to see if they could snake-oil Crowley out of Sam's soul—looked like a no), then Alex had spent about a week up North trying to track down Jamie to no avail—the witch either didn't want to be found or was dead.

Other than doing those few tasks, the rest of Alex's life had been books. Sorting books, stacking books, searching through books, carrying books up and down the stairs, going to the library to rent books, making copies of books, scouring the internet for rare or hard to find books... nothing but fucking books. None of which had told of how to get a soul back into a body or how to loose a demon's hold over said soul. Still, Bobby and Alex kept searching. And searching. And searching. After two months of books and no Dean and Sam plus an entire month with no word from Castiel, Alex was both listless and anxious, high-strung and lethargic at the same time.

On a lazy thunderstorm-ridden early July morning, Alex slouched in the attic bed and tried to stay awake as her eyes blinked with increasing slowness. She wore a jacket and her shoes and kept thinking about taking them off, but that would require getting up and moving. No thanks. Bobby was downstairs napping thanks to the monotony of reading and the steady whisper of rain kissed by intermittent grumbles of thunder. The text of the thick volume Alex had propped up on herself kept steadily toppling forward as she kept almost dozing off. The Life on Earth, The Soul, and The Unshakable Bond Between was monotonous and the lull of the rain shower outside was calling Alex to dreams and sleep. Guilt was the only thing that made her refocus. Dean and Sam are out there risking their asses to get Crowley his monsters. Alex widened her eyes forcibly and blinked, willing her body to resist the call of sleep. Concentrate, dammit.

Instead, her mind drifted to how Dean hadn't been calling every day like he was supposed to. He was calling every few days and texting on the days he didn't call. Alex didn't push because even though she'd set that as a term (him calling every day), she heard the emotional exhaustion in her brother's voice when he did call. Truthfully, Alex had no idea if she'd be able to keep this up much longer. Dean needed her. She couldn't even imagine being on the road with apathetic Sam in the passenger seat. That had to be devastating and discouraging on a whole new level. Life was just a frustrating mess right now.

Glancing out the window briefly, Alex mulled over how Cas had told her he was going to post an angel over Bobby's house to watch her comings and goings. She wondered if he actually had, because she'd seen no signs of one at all. Honestly, the only angel she ever wanted near her was Castiel and it made her slightly uncomfortable to think about some unknown one watching. She guessed that she had to trust Cas's judgement on this one.

Please let this damn war be over soon so everything can just be okay again, at least in one part of my life.

There was a thought she kept coming back to, over and over again: that she'd never really known what it meant to truly miss someone until Cas.

She'd missed Sam when he went to college. But that had been different.

She'd wanted to die from missing Dean when he'd gone to Hell. But that, also, was different.