Song Remains the Same

Chapter 82: Rest in Peace

"If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you are her brother?
Or are you always her brother, even when the other half of the equation is gone?"
- Jodi Picoult

Alex Winchester sagged in Castiel's arms. Unresponsive, silent, dead. Her head lolled to the side and her slack limbs were profanely heavy and limp.

The angel cradled the body of the one he loved close to himself on the floor. With a badly shaking hand, he pushed his fingers to her forehead again even though it was futile and he knew it. "Come back," he begged and commanded all at once in a gaunt whisper that trembled with tears. When nothing happened he got even more desperate and pushed his digits to clammy skin harder. "Come back!"

Silence was his only reply. He gave a soft, cracked sound of dismay... because he already knew she would never come back.

Reality crashed over him yet again and the horror of what he had done left him almost unable to function. As he stared at her through vision that was watery and agonized, he choked on the tightness of his own throat and two shaking fingers brushed against her cheek in a wretchedly tender touch. Her eyes were closed and she looked like she could have been sleeping, not like she had just been senselessly murdered.

...Murdered.

He crumbled all over again.

Father help me, what have I done!

Outside, a storm had whipped up out of nowhere in response to the Seraph's out-of-control grief. Thunder and lightning tore the sky apart, rain poured from the heavens, the ground itself trembled as from an earthquake. Cas felt as though he could never stand up ever again, as though he couldn't even draw another breath because he was so devastated. His heart hammered a sick rhythm, his veins felt like they were melting, his chest ached and panged as if he'd been stabbed repeatedly, his lungs were made out of bricks, his eyes were flooding his face with tears that he didn't know how to stop.

How did I let this happen?

Castiel held Alex's still face in a hand and he saw the constellation of freckles across her beloved, familiar face—he had numbered those freckles many times before. His eyes fell to the full pink lips that had shown him what a kiss was. That mouth had spoken the words 'I love you' to him. Inside, he died. She never should have loved him—not even a little. In his arms, he held the one he had done everything to protect... and she was dead at his hand. This was the one human being in all of creation who meant everything to him. And he had reduced her to nothing. He had committed the most abominable atrocity imaginable. He had killed her.

Her screams echoed in his mind and he was horrified, he hated himself, he despised the monster he had become and wanted to claw his way out of who he was. Alex had been defenseless, he had been rough and thoughtless and angry and she had been crying out in pain at his hand and heavens above, I am the enemy... I am the one who did this!

Dean had been right. The one Alex had needed protection from was himself.

Castiel was gutted all over again. He was worse than the pit of Hell itself, he was more deplorable than anything else in all of existence. As the moment dragged on and he kept realizing over and over again that she was dead because of him, he despaired on every level.

His greatest fear realized. His worst nightmare come true.

Oh, Alex, I'm so sorry! Cas pulled her against himself and buried his face in the curve of her shoulder, supporting the back of her limp head with his hand. If he held her tighter or protested enough, it all might change "I'm so sorry," he gasped. "I—" and he could manage no more words. Castiel shuddered against his great weeping gasps. Outside, the storm's winds were hurricane gale and the rain was a flood across the land. The angel held his mortal love and he hoped beyond hope that her soul claim would begin trying to tear its way out his chest like it had before (because that would tell him that she was still there, that she still had life to her on the eternal level), but nothing happened at all. His heart drummed a steady sick beat and the claim that rested within was nothing but a mere key anymore because the soul associated with the claim had been shattered beyond repair.