6. "I'm Not Okay."
6. "I'm Not Okay."
Cas doesn't leave the bunker, just like I don't. I keep my distance from him, not wanting to burden him with my emotional, post-cure baggage that's dragging me down. I know he's concerned about me, but he doesn't know how to approach the matter. The best thing right now is for me to handle my emotions on my own.
Yeah, okay, because when has that ever worked for anyone?
I find myself a mute zombie around the bunker. Robotically, I eat, not much. I wonder where Sam and Dean are. What they're chasing after this time. I know I've missed a bit of time away from here. There aren't any Styne bodies when I enter the library. It looks as it did before, before the Stynes tried to burn all the "invaluable" research into ash. It feels hollow, just like I do inside.
You let them get away with this, Franco's voice croons in my head. Yes, that bastard's voice has been consuming my thoughts. Now look at you. Back to square one. A fragile little human. How can you call yourself a hunter? I grab at my hair, threatening to rip it out. The voice is part of the reason why I can't sleep. Why I shuffle so zombie-like when my legs move.
When I get a shower, I let the water run as I sit. I let it bead down my tattooed body. Ugh, I'm disgusted with myself. How I let myself change so much. How I became the very thing someone like me hunts. But Cas fixed you. He cured you. You're human again. Yeah, "fixed". He only cured me physically.
Mentally, I should belong in a psych ward.
The running water helps my thoughts consume me. How I became colder as a demon, less attached. How I cared less about saving people and more about hunting things and slaughtering them like cattle. How I had tricked the people I cared about into believing I had control over something that really had control over me all along.
I start rocking back and forth. The path led to so much destruction, so much death. The comradery between my brothers and I didn't seem as strong as it had before I'd died. It'd seemed rifted, stretched too thin. Like it was on the thinnest of ice that was bound to shatter at the smallest feather-light touch.
I think back to the murders at my hand. Those men who were monsters. How easily I had killed them. How easily I let my demon side rule over my actions. I had almost killed Sam. He should have killed me. He should have cured me when we'd had our interrogation in the dungeon. A wasted opportunity.
Claire's mother died. I felt no remorse. Charlie died. I felt nothing. I had been the perfect ammo for that Styne bastard, trying to put her death on me. In a way, it was on me, Charlie's death. The time I used to pick myself up off the floor could have been used to help save her life. Instead, her blood had covered the bathroom walls, her body the sole occupant in that bathtub.
I had turned into a monster, something my brothers should have put down from the moment they knew. But they didn't. They trusted me, and I broke that trust as a result.
You aren't worth saving, Franco's voice hisses over the shower water. Castiel is a fool. You were never worthy of a second chance. You were never the daughter your father wanted you to be. You were never the sister you should have been. You're a failure, Josette. Just a miserable failure, a waste of space that's breathing air.
I want to ignore the words. I don't want to believe them. But I can't help that some part of me believes.
I decide enough is enough, and I cut off the water and grab a towel. I pull it tight around me. I look into the fogged mirror in the bathroom, seeing the murky mirror image of me. I wipe some of the fog away, revealing my old looks. The blonde hair, the naturally kind face. Dad's brown eyes. Her eyes are hardened, pissed.
"Look at you," the mirror hisses. "Worthless. Useless. No wonder Dad hated you. All you do is destroy things. What help are you to the world when all you do is hurt?"
I turn away from the mirror, pinching the bridge of my nose. This has got to stop. I can't handle this. I haven't slept. I've barely eaten. I'm tired. I'm exhausted. I'm...I'm...
Done. I want to say that I'm done. That I'm tired of fighting the thoughts in my brain, repeatedly telling me over and over again that I'm a worthless piece of shit who has no place in this world. But I think of Cas, who's in a room someplace in this bunker, who's watching over me, even if it's from a distance. The small light in the cloud of dark.
He can't fix you. You're broken beyond repair. You're not top priority. You're not to your brothers, you're not to Cas. If you were priority, they'd be waiting on you, hand and feet, making sure you're okay.
I buckle to the floor, trembling, hunched over. I'm sick of this. I'm sick of it. But it won't stop. It won't go away. It won't quiet, the voice telling me that I'm no good in this world.
You should've goaded Castiel into killing you if you want it to stop, Franco's voice says. You nearly got him to kill you before the cure was complete. You missed out on another chance yet again, Josette. Tisk-tisk.
I feel the disappointment tsunami take the air out of my lungs. I feel like I can't breathe, like I'm suffocating. Like someone has my lungs in their hands and is squeezing the life out of them. Wretched sobs bubble out of my throat, so horrible that they scare me.
"Josette?"
I shake my head, holding the towel tighter around my body. I yelp, jumping away from the hands that touch me. "Get away!"
"Josette, what's wrong?" Cas is kneeling on the bathroom floor.
"W-why didn't you do it, Cas?" I blubber.
"Do what?"
"End me? Kill me?" I sniffle. "You had plenty of chances to! Why didn't you just kill me?!"
"Where is this coming from?"
"I—I can't do this, Cas." I cry harder. "I can't."
"Whoa, hey, hey."
"Stop it! Stop!" I screech as Cas pulls me against his chest. I cry into his clothes. "Why didn't you kill me, Cas? Why didn't you?!"
"Shh, shh, shh. Where is this coming from, Josette?"
"I'm not okay, Cas. I'm not okay."
"I understand that," he says cautiously. "But you need to tell me what's going on."
"Why did you save me?" I pick my head up, puffy red eyes demanding an answer. "Huh? Why was I even worth saving? Why did this happen?!"
"Shh."
"My brothers don't care! They've written me off as a lost cause, again. Why haven't you?"
"Because you're not a lost cause, Josette," he says tenderly. "When you left...it hurt. I wanted to come look for you, but we had other matters. And then unfortunate circumstances happened, which have put me here in the bunker." He looks at me worriedly. "You don't believe you're worthy of being saved?"
"Cas, look at what I've done. I let your vessel's wife get murdered, Claire's mother. I let a freak of nature kill Charlie, someone who loved my brothers like they were her own! I have murdered without remorse, without a second thought, without hesitation. I let myself become something that's a remorseless killer. I let a demon manipulate me into thinking that I belonged with him. How is something like that worthy of getting chance after chance of a redo?"
"Well, first of all, never refer to yourself as 'that' ever again," he says plain and simple. "Secondly, we all have a part to play. We're given our roles. Obstacles are placed before us for a reason, so that we can overcome them and grow stronger."
"Why did you chase after me?" I blink through the tears.
"Because I knew, as much as you tried to deny it, that some part of you still existed. Some part of the woman I...I love still existed in you. And she does. She's broken, she's wounded right now. But I know she'll fight through this. If she can survive and free herself from Hell, then this should be a...pie walk."
I cough. "Cake walk, Cas. Cake walk."
"I was close, wasn't I?"
I can't even laugh. But then I replay his words in my head. "You said..."
"I know what I said, Josette. And it's true. And because of that, I have never given up on you, never doubted your strength to find your way back to yourself again. Yes, you're struggling right now. You've been through a lot of trauma recently. The guilt is kicking in, and it's beating you down pretty good."
"Where's the silver lining here, Cas?" I get slightly annoyed. I'm tired of hearing this negative shit thrown into my ears.
"The silver lining is that you don't have to do this on your own. You've got me. You've got a crutch to use, no matter how much you need me. From the moment I decided to find you and bring you back home, I knew the road was going to be tough. But, I didn't believe it was going to be this bad.
"I'm with you, Josette. I'm here, and I swear to you that I am not going to leave you ever again. I've lost you twice, I'm not about losing you a third time."
Hearing the conviction in Cas's words nearly brings me to a fresh set of tears. What he had to have gone through just to find me. How much effort and energy and time he had to use to track me down. I wonder if he had to lie to Sam and Dean about what he was doing. He had to have, Cas said that my brothers don't know about this recon mission.
"I will do everything in my power to help you, Josette," Cas says seriously, looking deep into my eyes. "Whatever you need, I'll give it to you. Just, please, all I ask is that you find the strength that you possess to keep going. To not stop. To not let the emotions throw you over the edge. You're a Winchester, you're one of the strongest bloodlines that I know."
"Are you sure you're confidence isn't misplaced in me, Cas?"
"It's never been, and never has my faith in you, either."
You're a Winchester, you're one of the strongest bloodlines that I know. Call it what you want, Cas's overconfidence or just my sullen mood, but I think he's putting a little too much faith into my currently-fragile state. There can't be something that he knows that I don't. But hey, I've been proven wrong before.
"Let's get you dressed," he says, since he clearly doesn't like things between us remaining silent. "We'll put you to bed."
"You'll, uh," I clear my throat as he gingerly helps me to my feet, "you'll stay, right? Close?"
"If that's what you need, then yes, I will."
I nod slowly. With tender guiding, Cas gets me up off the floor. He doesn't baby me and carry me, I'm able to walk by my own devices. He's polite and stands outside of my room as I change. A memory hits me: when I had known him as "Steve", before I knew what he really was, he hadn't quite understood the concept of being human. I'd seen him totally naked, which had thrown me for a loop.
The memory makes something of a smile try to work its way onto my face.
Once I'm dressed, Cas takes the towel away from me and leaves to put it in the bathroom. I slip under the covers, letting darkness envelop in the room. I see his figure come back into the room. He doesn't get under with me, he lays atop the covers, offering his body as a pillow. I gratefully snuggle into his side, fingers gripping the trench coat layer like it's a security blanket.
"Don't you ever get warm with all those layers?" I mumble into his chest.
"It doesn't bother me. Are you trying to find an excuse to make me strip, Josette?"
"No, I was just wondering. I don't think I've ever seen you with little clothing."
Cas clears his throat awkwardly. "Not true. There have been times where you have seen me with less, or...or nothing."
"You remember that, too?" I pick my head up.
"Of course I remember. I almost thought I gave you incentive to put me back out on the streets."
I chuckle. "But I didn't, and here you are."
"Here I am."
When the silence falls over us, I fall into an easy breathing pattern. Cas traces random patterns on the small of my back. The rhythmic traces help calm my mind.
I find myself sleeping. Only time will tell how effective Cas's help will be.
**Cassette is goals, honestly.
On a more serious note: to anyone who struggles like Josette currently is, please, dears, always keep fighting.
If you are in the fandom, hopefully you know about Jared's campaign about mental illness. If not, please go look it up. It's really inspiring. It's a cause he's really passionate about, and I'm honestly disappointed in myself for not stumbling upon this fandom and his campaign sooner, because the message is so powerful. A lot of us rally behind it, it's hard not to!
Our cast is what makes me feel empowered and proud be part of the Supernatural family.
In the words of his campaign: Always keep fighting. Love yourself first. You are enough <3**
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