re: looking for a game

[learnyourplace]

I do know what you mean by "ridiculously minor." I'm rather hoping you'll give up on this futile search for a game. As far as I'm concerned, these "games" are anything but. Let me go, mundane. That's all I ask.

Comments

[ofthursday]

[Well, this is... Awkward.]

Hello, Rachel.

[learnyourplace]

[Oh, awkward is one way of putting it. Her expression is tight, her demeanor defensive.] Castiel. [She doesn't sound particularly pleased to see him.]

[ofthursday]

[He's not surprised, but after everything, he doesn't have much desire to fight, or much fear of what she might do. And after staring at his sister for a few moments, only one thing comes to mind to say.]

You were right.

[learnyourplace]

[She looks down. She believed in you, Castiel. It seemed like he had been the answer to her prayers.]

I rather wish you'd figured that out before you stabbed me.

[ofthursday]

I was doing what I thought had to be done. And I was acting in self defense.

[She may have been right, ultimately, but she still betrayed him. Even now that's how it feels to him; she had stabbed him first, when he'd been unarmed. They're even in that regard, as far as he's concerned.]

[learnyourplace]

[Sharply:] I was defending all of us. That was not a path we needed to trod. [A pause; she's visibly shaken.] I would have followed you anywhere else, Castiel.

[ofthursday]

So was I. There was no other choice, Rachel; without additional power, whether from Purgatory or elsewhere, I would have led you all to your deaths.

[His own tone is neutral, even, honest. They had no hope of winning as they had been, without the souls. They would have been wiped out one by one.

There had been no right choice, just better wrong ones.

He says nothing in response to her words of her faith in him; he can't, really. He has no answer to them that will make anything better, and the guilt is strangling any words he might have spoken before he can form them.]

[learnyourplace]

I know what the odds were. I fought, too. [She's not looking at him. She did what she thought was right. She attacked, yes, but she needed to act to protect the rest of her family and, in some horribly twisted way, to protect him.] Did you even look for another way? Or did you jump toward the first thing that offered some glimmer of false hope?

[ofthursday]

This plan was the only reason we were able to fight to begin with. Without it, there would have never been the power necessary to make any stand against Raphael, and we would have lost before we'd begun. I was trying to save us all.

[And somewhere, at some point, it had just begun to go all wrong.]

[learnyourplace]

And it unraveled. [There was a bitterness in her voice that didn't only stem from Castiel's actions. Everything had unraveled: home, family, trust. All the things she knew and held onto had fallen by the wayside, stripped away slowly and surely the moment God had abandoned them.

Maybe it had been inevitable.]

[ofthursday]

It did. We won the war, but the cost...

[He feels the same pain she does, the sense of having lost everything, of having your family and home dissolve and abandon you no matter how hard you try to hold it together. No matter what side any of them were on, no matter what they fought for, they had all been lost in the end.]

[learnyourplace]

[Still looking away:] I'm not sure it was worth it. Is this what free will brings us?

[ofthursday]

I don't know.

[And that admission is completely honest, and tired. He doesn't know; he thought he had, he'd been so sure. He'd been so sure God had wanted them to have free will, so they could take a stand, so they could make things better. But there is no better, no matter their choices.]

I'm sorry it ended up this way.

[Everything. Her death, their war, the Leviathan. Nothing went how it should have.]

[learnyourplace]

[She hesitates. She never wanted to hate you, Castiel, and she never wanted to turn on you. It hurts, knowing she felt that she must.]

As am I.

[ofthursday]

[He's quiet, for several seconds.]

It's all over now, regardless. For both of us.