Song Remains the Same

Chapter 77: Mommy Dearest

"I wanted so desperately to tell you to trust me, but I was lying anyway."

- Beth Orton

"Hey. Earth to planet Alex."

Huh? Alex blinked a couple times and realized she had gone still and was staring into space uselessly. In one of her hands she had a hammer and in the other she had an open-ended shotgun shell full of Phoenix ash. Dean was looking at her with an expression that said he was mildly concerned about her space-out but also annoyed by it. "Pay attention," he told her gruffly, frowning as he scrutinized her. He indicated the shell she was holding. "You almost dropped that thing."

She looked and saw, yeah... she almost had. It was drifting to a forty-five degree angle. Correcting it quickly, she reprimanded herself silently. "Sorry," she mumbled, refocusing. She'd been lost in conflict about a certain trench coat wearing angel.

They sat in Bobby's basement at one of the cluttered work tables. In front of them were a variety of tools and gadgets used for the purpose of loading empty shotgun shells. Right now they were using Phoenix ash. There wasn't much of the ash to go around and they had to be careful and try to stretch it as far as it'd go. Alex returned to finishing the shell she was working on. Using the hammer to carefully tap the endpiece into place, she sealed the shell to prevent the ash from spilling out. Then she put that bullet with the other ones they were prepping.

Dean's sidelong glances kept coming, but Alex ignored them. He'd all but dragged her down here for this because he said she needed to quit being a loner. And that maybe she'd gotten out of window-fixing duty but she sure as crap wasn't getting out of shell-stuffing duty. Alex had complied, but not with the best attitude in the world. She had kind of been avoiding much interaction with the family for the past few days because she was so deeply upset. She didn't know how to feel or even what was happening. Her world had basically imploded into a bunch of puzzle pieces she had no idea how to put together.

Dean cleared his throat. "You still feeling weird?"

Alex cut a glance at him. He meant physically, because of the soul touch. Alex selected another empty shell and dodged his studious gaze. "Not really."

It had been a few days since that happened. She had spent those few days recovering from the draining physical effect that the soul touch had put on her... or at least that had been her excuse for avoiding her brothers and uncle. The aftereffects weren't as bad as she had made them out to be—the pain and exhaustion were definitely real, but nothing she couldn't have soldiered through—she'd just needed to withdraw into herself to try and stay emotionally steady. Sam and Dean had been upset that Alex was injured by the soul touch but they'd also been grateful to her for being the reason they made it out of the past. Both of them were still pretty unhappy with Cas for it and hadn't bothered to hide the fact. Dean was especially vocal about it (big surprise, right?). But Alex had made it clear that she had insisted Cas do what he'd done ("I mean, I saved your dumb asses, didn't I? Stop bringing Cas into it.").

Stop bringing Cas into it. Ha. Kind of seemed hypocritical. She couldn't go one waking minute without her thoughts going to him. It was all she could think about, like at obsessive amounts now: Cas showing up in the middle of the night and asking if they had been a mistake. Cas saying he wasn't ready to tell her family about them being married in secret when before he'd been eager to. Cas pulling away from her forcefully and almost shouting at her. Cas rejecting her kiss and touch and then lying about having to leave. None of that was like him. All of it was out of character. The question was why? Why would he behave like that?