Page 59 of Revert
All I could see was the war taking place in the dark, beautiful eyes I was certain I had once dreamed of and spent hoursgazing into—a battle that raged between longing, restraint, and the desperate desire to protect me. But I didn’t want protection, not when my heart was aching with a loneliness I hadn’t even realized had been consuming me until now, an emotion I knew only he could quench.
My hand rose instinctively back to his cheek. This time he didn’t push me away. My heart stirred as his eyes fluttered closed and he leaned against it like someone starved for warmth, as if he couldn’t help himself, regardless of the cost.
“I have to know, Castiel. Please.” There was only one way to know for certain what this new yet familiar feeling was, an emotion that felt impossible and undeniable all at once.
His eyes widened, wonder breaking over his face like dawn. The stillness around us deepened, as though even the ruined garden had gone silent to listen…yet this time he didn’t pull away. Slowly, I rose on my toes and kissed him. Not with hesitation, but in choosing.
For all his resistance, his reaction was instantaneous and desperate, kissing me as if finally being granted breath after years of drowning. His fingers threaded through my hair as if they had always belonged there, his other hand found my waist and held me tightly, as though afraid I might vanish.
The way we kissed was with the familiarity in coming home, as if we’d done this countless times before…even though, for all I remembered, this was our very first. I wrapped my arms around his neck, drawing him closer, anchoring myself in the warmth of him that felt like both an ending and a beginning, fitting together like something long lost, finally restored.
The kiss deepened, both desperate and reverent, an unspoken vow as well as a memory reclaimed. In that moment, time ceased to exist. When we finally pulled apart, I lingered in the hush that followed, my forehead resting gently against his. Our breath mingled in the stillness.
He was the first one to pull back, breath unsteady, his holding mine with a mixture of longing and regret. His hand slipped from my waist with visible reluctance, as if the act of stepping away hurt more than he could admit.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” he said, voice low and strained.
Sudden coldness sliced through the warmth that had just bloomed between us. “Why not?” My voice trembled, a whisper caught between hope and disbelief. He stared off towards the daffodil-shrouded ruins, shoulders rigid with tension, jaw clenched as if to keep from saying more. He turned away, but not before I saw the look in his eyes—not of anger, but fear,pain.
“This was a mistake,” he said tightly. “We have to go back to the distance and the safety it offers. I don’t understand how you could want this when I am the last man to ever deserve you. How can you trust me after the ultimate betrayal?”
The hypothesis I’d only half-formed—buried beneath layers of hope, fear, and desperate denial—suddenly surged to the surface. “You…remember?” My trembling voice barely found shape, as if speaking the words aloud might shatter me.
He turned back to me slowly, his hardened devastation all the confirmation I needed. The ground beneath my certainty gave way.
I had spent so long clinging to the illusion that the man who had killed me and the one standing before me now belonged to two different timelines, that the version of him I had fallen in love with had never struck the fatal blow, sparing me that betrayal.
But in truth they were one and the same—one man, one heart, and one hand wrapped around the hilt of my death.
He closed his eyes briefly, as if he couldn’t bear to hold my gaze, agony carved into every line of his face.
“We can’t do this, Neese…Bernice.” My name trembled on his lips, as if he felt unworthy to speak it. “You have no idea your effect on me…buthedoes, and he will not stand for it.”
“He?” He didn’t need to answer for me to know he referred to the monarch behind every darkness that permeated the kingdom.
“Please,” he continued, desperate now. “You must hate me. It’s the only thing that will protect you. Hate me, push me away, stay out of reach—whatever it takes. Even if I’m not sure I can endure your indifference a moment longer. I miss you so much it’s destroying me.”
I took a step forward, the ache in my chest tightening as I seized a fistful of his shirt. “Did you kill me to get me tohateyou? Do you think my feelings so insignificant that they could be severed that easily?” My voice broke.
“No.” His answer came sharp and immediate. “That’s not why.”
He looked like he wanted to say more—the explanation he was desperate to give clawing its way up his throat—but he swallowed the words back down.
“As much I want to, I can’t tell you any more. Just know…no matter how desperate I am for you, this cannot go any further. Please, Bernice.”
I wanted to scream. To rage. To demand answers. But before I could speak, he leaned forward and pressed the tenderest kiss on my brow. It wasn’t passion or apology—it was grief, a goodbye he couldn’t speak aloud. The way he now looked at me as he pulled away as though I was someone he believed he’d never be allowed to touch again. It stilled me, breaking something in me all over again.
A long silence fell between us. “What do we do?” I asked finally, voice small but steady.
He allowed his hand to fall away. “We do nothing and continue as we always have. We will keep our distance and pretend this conversation never happened.”
The words cut sharper than even the fatal wound to my heart.
“No.” The protest escaped without conscious thought. My fingers wound more tightly into his shirt, keeping him near me. “I can’t do that. It doesn’t matter that I still don’t understand why I have memories from a life I never lived. All I know is I need you. Please, Castiel.”
Perhaps I might have been able to go back to the charade of indifference and pretending before the kiss, but we’d crossed the point of no return, and no amount of time reversal magic could ever take me back to the person I was before this moment.
Castiel’s face twisted in pain. He opened his mouth, as if he might argue, looking like he might reach for me again despite everything he’d just said…but then a sudden rustle shifted in the underbrush. We both froze. His hand dropped instinctively to the hilt at his side as his eyes swept the edge of the clearing, whatever softness that had previously filled his features vanishing beneath a razor-sharp awareness.
