Over the course of the next month, they talked almost every day. Sometimes, she would go to the alley off 31st and Industrial, and he wouldn't be there. His jacket would be stuffed behind the Dumpster with a few other paper things, things she knew not to touch, but the man himself would be gone. But she knew that he would come back, so she always did the same thing. She waited.

Once he came back at 4 in the morning. It was raining very lightly and a few birds had decided to annoy their neighbors, and he came smelling strongly of smoke and Chinatown, which pissed her off, but only in an offhand way. She didn't like Chinatown--there were too many loud things--but she liked misty rain, so all she did was kiss his cheek and sit him down gently, offering him a Slim Jim, which he ate. Surprisingly. She'd gotten enough money to stop by a little bodega the previous afternoon, and conversing with the older Peruvian woman in her native dialect was enough favor curried to shave some of her price off. Which was good, because she needed food. Hunger was sneaking up on her, she could tell; it would tap her shoulder and start talking to her in about five hours.

"Cas," she started, quietly, "can you hear me?"

A nod and a soft grunt as he sat. "I'm tired, Bird." He'd taken to calling her that over the last few weeks, after he commented one day on the Dumpster how birdlike her figure was--the graceful slight of her wrists, her jutted-out collarbone like angel wings starkly shown over all her low-cut shirts, her slim frame and slightly boyish build, even the way she ran across the roofs of the nearby buildings. To him it screamed "bird". (He had used the phrasing in a joke about an art student on speed he'd met once on the street.)

She sniffed. Cold was coming. Damn. She had always hated the dampness that surrounded impending November. "I'm tired too, but I brought food."

A hand darted out from under his hoodie and snatched the beef stick before she could say anything more. She was surprised. "Well, look who's hungry?"

With another grunt and a muffled chewing sound from under his hood, he nodded. "Been clean for..." he checked his watch (the $20 plastic digital waterproof Wal-Mart model she had bought him the past week) "...25 hours, 12 minutes, and about 40 seconds. 41, now."

She grinned, despite herself, though the itch behind her eyes was coming back (damn hunger and damp and all the devilish things), and mock-applauded. "That's amazing, Cas! Really, I'm happy for you. Damn. How?"

His face cracked into something like a smile--shy, genuine, pleased, and hiding a flow of rushing emotion. Even though she wasn't fond of his habit of muting feelings (her eyeballs itched far too much around this man she had found), she knew she shouldn't be a hypocrite, should contain her own irritation and be pleased herself for her friend. He started, "Well..." and then erupted semi-volcanically into a wheezing, coughing, hacking fit, all dryness and halfway-stopped inhalations. She refrained from patting his back--first aid volunteering did teach some useful skills, after all--choosing instead to take hold of his shoulder, firmly as she always did, reminding him that the world was real and she was his anchor to it. "C'mon, dude. It's okay. I've gotcha."

A deep inhale and he stuttered out an apology, then continued, "Always gets me like this. I'm okay. Anyway, I was thinking--" he stopped for a moment at the suspicious expression that was plain on her face, and sighed, "--thinking soberly, about how I have a rope now, and how it's not a noose anymore, it's a tether; and it's not strangling me, it's keeping me alive. And I know that you are my rope, and you are worth being on the ground." He stood, with a bit of difficulty (so she wasn't the only one affected by this godforsaken dampness, thank God), and walked a few steps over to the Dumpster before she could say anything. Not as if she could have spoken anyway. This was the most kindness expressed to her in too many years.

Reaching behind the Dumpster, he pulled out a semi-cylindrical object; a metal water bottle, the kind hikers often had, or people at her volunteering center. He saw her confused glance and explained, without preamble, in his usual direct fashion. "These are Dean's ashes. He... got sick. It was kind of a divine punishment, in a way. He had something incurable, purely clinical, and of course it had to be slow, of course they had to make it..." He paused, a miniature infinity, choked on the tears building in his throat. This hurt. Andi's eyes were itching like hell, her temples throbbing, mouth going dry and hot. He swallowed after too many moments, kept going. "Of course he had to suffer, and he was in so much pain, and it hurt so much knowing that I couldn't stop it, I could not do a single thing to fix him. It broke me. It broke both of us, I think, because neither of us had ever imagined for even a second that we would die any other way but together, side by side. So I gave him a proper funeral, and this is what is left of him--in a mortal sense, anyway."

She inhaled, coughed once halfway through (I gotta stop with the cigarettes); inhaled again, more smoothly this time. "Why... why would you share this with me?"

His expression was quizzical, beautifully innocent, like a child who had never deserved all of the hurt given to him. "Because you are my friend, Andria. Isn't that what friends do?"

Dammit. Now she was going to choke on emotion. She nodded, and wordless, took the water bottle he was holding out to her, and started walking. With a small gesture, he followed.

When they reached the wall beneath her fire escape, she hooked the clip of the bottle to the waistband of her jeans and climbed effortlessly, Cas following with less surety. She waited for him at the top. Of course she waited for him. Isn't that what friends do?

And they were holding hands, and the cap was off the water bottle, and above the city's noise and sprawl and life, all they could hear was the soft, feathered brush of ash on metal, and the constant breeze between the buildings was carrying away the past towards the future, and the sea. And the memory of wings that Cas no longer yearned for, that memory carried the love to what the two of them could only believe was beauty and truth and light.

And I watch you go, carried by your strong and satisfied soul,

Painted by the sun in shades of gold.

So journey on, my friend, journey on beyond the sea,

And carry on until you please.