Cas' Memories

She's hardly the best master. She knows that well enough. If Slate could have picked someone else, he probably would have. And if he could trade her for that girl who came before, then he definitely would.

At first, she didn't care. With her patron vanished back into the stars, Slate was what was left behind. And she hated him for it.

With all the venom in her soul, she hated him. With all the anguish of Cephias' death, caused by the very power she was now forced to wield, she hated him. She hated him until she didn't have it left in her. She ran from her fate until her legs couldn't move anymore.

And then she stopped caring. It didn't matter if she was turned to ash. What difference did it make?

For a few days, she didn't even move. If their patron was going to kill her for her noncompliance, then let it happen.

What made her listen to him? He tried so hard to convince her to go along with him and their patron, and when that failed to elicit even the slightest response, he just tried to get her to move. To eat. To do anything.

Maybe it was when he stopped really trying. When it stopped being about forcing her onto this grand journey. When the cheerful rambling and prodding stopped and he just fluttered up next to her, collapsing onto her snout. "Please. Please don't die."

Maybe even then she felt bad for him. The desperation, completely unlike him, it struck something in her. A chord in her heart she thought had gone silent.

"Fine." With her forelegs shaking she pulled herself up, letting him fall to the grass. "I'll do it."

She told herself that it was only so he would shut up and stop bothering her. So she wouldn't die, because she didn't have a choice otherwise. But maybe she just felt bad for him.

Near-instantaneously, he reverted back to his cheerful self. Which wasn't exactly a win for her. But though she wouldn't say she liked it, a part of her had come to find it comforting. How he always smiled even when she couldn't. How he didn't change.

She doesn't want to concede to even that much. But since they found that fragment, since they set out on this adventure really, he's been acting different. He's scared. He's not himself.

And she doesn't like it. It makes her feel the way she did when he was begging her not to give up. But this time, she can't just sit up and say she'll go along with him after all. It's bigger than her. Bigger than all of them.

She can't be the person he used to have. Maybe if she was, he wouldn't have that look on his face as he stares out the window, the anxiety written behind a gaze empty of life. It's a look she doesn't want to see on him, a look that belongs to her.

Almost without thinking, she lifts a paw, brushing it over his head. He blinks for a moment; she's never reached out to touch him before. But as he looks up at her, a faint smile flickers across his face. And for a moment at least, the unease in it fades.

A glance at the others to make sure they didn't notice and she's quick to drop her paw, fixing her gaze out the window again.

It hurts to care. She won't do it again. She won't admit to herself that she already does.