Wonderwall

I awoke at 7:30, feeling the weight of Dean’s arms across my middle. I turned slowly to face him, trying my hardest not to move him from me or wake him up. He was snoring lightly, his hair messy from sleep. I went to reach my hand to move a stray piece of hair from Dean’s face, when Sam cleared his throat, causing me to jump and shove myself off of the bed; waking Dean up in the process.

‘Oh, uh, Sammy. You’re up, I didn’t see you there,’ I stuttered, getting up from the floor and flattening my tangly hair.

‘What the-‘ Dean rubbed his eyes, his voice groggy and tired.

Sammy laughed, shaking his head and looking back and forth at Dean and I, ‘You two, I swear.’

I pulled anxiously at the ends of my hair, sitting across Sam at the small wooden table, changing the subject, ‘We should call Cas now, guys.’

‘Yeah, Iris is right. The poor bastard is probably going crazy from boredom without us,’ Dean agreed, stretching and getting up slowly from the bed.

‘Alright, uh, Castiel? We need you down here, we think we found our dad,’ Sam closed his eyes, his forehead crinkling with concentration.

‘What tells you he’s here?’ Cas popped up, appearing behind Sam.

‘Hey, Cas!’ Dean gave him a small pat on the back, walking over to the coffee maker in our room.

‘Hello Dean, Iris, Sam. It’s been a while,’ He looked around at us, nodding.
‘Where’s Dahlia?’ I asked, noticing her absence.

‘She had other matters to attend to, personal complications, but she sends her apologies,’ He looked at me, his head slightly turning, ‘But, anyways, why do you think you’re Dad is here?’

‘Bobby said that Azazel was planning on showing up here, and wherever he is, Dad has to be,’ Sam stated, placing down the newspaper in his hands.

Dean began to speak, Sam and him going back and forth, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything besides how strange Castiel was acting. He had been observing me intensely the second he had appeared at the motel. He looked apprehensive, confused; as if he was seeing me for the first time.

‘You’re Balthazar’s Iris, aren’t you?’ He finally asked, furrowing his eyebrows together and lowering his voice. Sam and Dean stopped their conversation to look over at me, their faces just as confused as mine.

‘What?’

Cas got up from the chair he had been sitting on and began circling me, looking me up and down with intense eyes, ‘You don’t even know, do you?’

‘Know what?’ I rubbed my arms nervously, watching Cas as he surrounded me.

‘Try and remember how you got to Minnesota, Iris, before Dean and Sam had found you,’ His eyes softened, almost as if he had pitied me.

I scoffed, thinking that I would know the answer with ease and yet, after attempting to retrieve the memory, I found nothing. Not even a small detail on how I had got there. I stood rigid and looked at Cas cautiously, ‘I…I cant remember.’

‘Can you remember anything before that? Anything at all?’

I tried again; thinking back as far as my mind would wander. I could see my memories with Dean and Sam clearly, breezing through them with ease. I found a few with my father, but nothing like the amount one should have with their parents and the majority of them were only from my younger years. I remembered the fight I had with him after he had banished us from seeing the Winchesters. I remembered him sending me away to my grandparents, but I couldn’t recall much else. I had thought that I had come to terms with my memories after my near-death experience, and now, I know that I wasn’t even close, What the hell is going on?’ I asked, my voice filled with frustration.

‘It’s called repression, Iris. It’s a power you human’s posses and use whenever you find an experience too traumatic to remember. You push the event away until you’re no longer able to consciously recall it. It’s what you did, to an extent. The amount of knowledge that you had forgotten was way over the limit to which a human is able to do. My brother Balthazar helped you, guided you to safety. That is how you ended up in Minnesota.’

The room became eerily silent, none of us able to respond to the information we had just heard. I could feel Dean staring at me, but I hadn’t the courage to look back at him.

‘What exactly did she forget?’ Dean asked, coming to stand beside me.

Cas sighed, ‘Quite a lot, Dean. A crippling amount of information, to be honest. If you want, Iris, I can show you all you’ve forgotten.’

I looked at Dean, his eyes already glued to me. He nodded slightly, lifting his hand to caress my cheek for a moment in an effort to comfort me. I gave Dean a small smile and stepped forward, ‘Okay, Cas. Show me.’

He nodded, placing his hand onto my forehead and when I opened my eyes, I was in a bathroom.

‘More bubbles, Mommy!’ I heard someone talking and stepped forward, seeing myself in the bathtub. I was small, probably about three or four years of age and was missing almost all of my teeth.

My mom walked in through the door, then, looking exactly like she had in the pictures I had stolen of her. As she got closer, though, I could see the exhaustion on her face, the dark circles bagging up under yellow eyes. It was strange, seeing her in person, but the strangest part about it, the most confusing, was her eyes. I never remembered them being anywhere close to yellow.

She stared at the small me as I splashed around in the tub, laughing and dancing around in the pile of bubbles. I stood up, revealing my pink and purple bathing suit, ‘Look Mommy, look what I can do!’ I went to jump, but slipped on a toy on the bottom of the water, banging my head against the tub.

I looked frantically back and forth from my mother to the bath, waiting for her to spring up and run to my rescue once I didn’t resurface. Instead, she stared blankly at the calm water, as if her daughter wasn’t drowning directly in front of her.

I began to scream at her, hoping to somehow get her attention, but it was no use. There was nothing I could do, and before I could see anymore, I was transported again to a different memory.

I was now in a yard, to what I presumed to be in the front my old house. It was surrounded by cop cars and all of our neighbors lined the streets, watching cautiously I found myself again, but this time I was older, probably around seven. My hair was much longer and I had almost all of my teeth back.

I was screaming for my mom, tears falling rapidly down my small, red face. My father, who was also crying, was holding me down in his arms, restraining me from running towards her. My mother, who still had the same emotionless look on her face from before, was being guided into a white van that read ‘Rolling Hills Mental Facility’ on its side. She was completely calm and got into the car without hesitation, not even glancing back at my dad and I. Everyone watched, one by one, as the cars finally left, my neighbors all returning back into their homes with solemn looks upon their faces. I was still inconsolable, thrashing violently in my dad’s arms, screaming for him to release me. Defeated, he did just that, letting me run after the van that held my mother. I watched as i ran down the block, yelling for her. But it was no use, and the 7 year old me realized that once I had reached the end of the street with no trace of it. My dad sat on the porch, his head hanging low in his hands. It was unusual, seeing my dad so un-glued like he was then. From the memories I had of him, he always seemed so rigid and serious, but now I knew the reason as to why he acted the way I remembered him to be. I watched as I finally made my way back to the house, grabbing my father’s hand and leading him through the front door.

Being transported again, I was now in my teenaged room; the guest quarters at my grandparents house. I was 17, huddling in the far left corner of my room; crying. I watched as my posture stiffened, footsteps approaching my door, my sobbing ceasing in fear.

‘Iris? Where are you, you little shit?’ A drunk man slurred, clumsily opening the door.

I stayed silent, placing my hand over my mouth in an effort to muddle my breathing.

‘Where in the hell,’ He approached me, smiling evilly to himself, ‘Ah, there you are.’ He whipped his hand down, picking me up by my hair and throwing me unto the floor. I was frail and looked as if I hadn’t eaten a decent meal in days. I didn’t fight, though, just laid on the floor as he beat me.

‘You worthless piece of shit!’ My grandfather screamed, kicking the heels of his boots into my stomach.

I watched as I sobbed, begging him to stop, grimacing every time his shoes made contact with me. By this time I was almost motionless, blood leaking from my mouth and nose. He stopped after a few more kicks, leaving me in agony on the soiled wood floor.

I knelt down beside myself and attempted to comfort the 17 year old me, my hand making contact with the air instead of my back. We were both crying uncontrollably now, unable to comfort one another. I wished that there were someway, anyway, that I could take back my decision; that I could refuse Cas’s offer to regain my memory. I didn’t know how there was any possible way to recover after this, to just put all these things behind me like before.

‘If…if there’s anyone up there, anyone at all. Please, please help me. I cant do this anymore, I cant,’ The 17 year old me finally spoke, having to pause for a few moments from the blood clogging up into my throat. I watched as I attempted to get up from the floor, my arms crumbling and causing me to slam back to the floor.

‘Don’t struggle, love. It’ll only make it worse,’ A man appeared, just like Cas, but yet not at all like him. He had emotion, looking down at me with sincerity, his blue eyes filled with pitty.

‘Who…who-‘ I stuttered as he helped me to my feet, placing me gently on my bed.

‘You did call me, did you not? The whole angel thing is simple, sweetheart. You call, we answer,’ He smiled, sitting down beside me, ‘Now lets see what we do about your face,’ I watched him place his hand on my head, instantly healing the cuts and bruises that had covered my body.

‘Now, you need to listen to me very carefully, Iris. I need you to run away, as far as you possibly can, to a place where no one will ever know you’ll be. I’ll take care of everything here, okay? I just need you to follow my instructions exactly.’

I nodded and once Balthazar had disappeared, I packed a bag, threw on a black sweatshirt, and escaped out my window.

The memory then fast-forwarded through me running to the bus station and arriving in a small town in Ohio. It resumed once I was standing in front of my old house, the hood of my sweatshirt tied tight around my face. I walked up beside the memory of me, staring into the bright-lit window directly in front of us. We watched my dad set the dinner table, a large smile spread wide across his face. At first, the sight had made me happy, which was unusual since the path I was going down was quite unpleasant. But, it was then, that I realized why I was being shone this.

A woman, just as happy as my father was, walked into the dining room, a small baby swaddled in her arms. Her greeted her with a kiss and then looked down at the infant in the girls’ arms, making funny faces at it.

‘He…he replaced me,’ I said, tears welling up in her eyes. I stood there for a few moments with the old me before vanishing in the shadows.

The fast-forwarding began again, showing the entire process of how I got to and settled in Minnesota. It had kept going, even through the memoires I had remembered, until I reached the future, my mind snapping back to reality and out of the past. I felt my knees buckles beneath me as I reached the present, and before I could do anything to stop it, I fell onto the cold, floor, my vision going black.