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“Get down!”
Charlie seizes Kim by the shoulder and shoves her into the brush. She’s never been particularly quick on the uptake—how she’s managed to survive this long, Charlie will never know—but she goes willingly, one hand scrabbling for the angel blade in her belt. Charlie puts a hand on her gun, finger slowly easing the safety off.
“Angels?”
Charlie shakes her head. “I’ve never seen this reading before.”
She takes a knee and balances the amulet on her thigh. She’d gotten it off of a witch named Rowena years ago, back when it seemed like the tide was turning in their favor. Things have gotten worse since then; she wonders idly sometimes if Rowena wants it back, or if she’s too dead to care. It glows in the presence of angels, but it’s never glowed—
“Gold?”
Charlie raises a finger to her lips and Kim slaps a hand over her mouth. At the sound of footsteps drawing nearer, both women shrink further into the slight covering that the tree can give. Charlie hates winter, and not just for the cold. It gets harder than ever to evade the angels.
“I feel like we’re going in circles.”
A woman’s voice. Charlie frowns as she skims her fingers over the amulet, wondering if it’s malfunctioning. Angels seem to have an inborn sense of direction. Unless one was laying a particularly intricate trap, it wouldn’t ask about something like that.
“We’ve been walking thirty degrees north of west for the last six miles.”
Another voice, this one a man. Young, most likely. Charlie tightens her grip on the amulet. That certainly sounds like an angel. But why the human?
“Maybe she’s just really bad at angelic maps?” Kim mutters under her breath, answering Charlie’s unasked question.
Charlie begins to lift her hand to tell Kim to shush again, but the second it leaves the amulet, it glows that familiar sharp blue. She lifts the gun, but she and Kim aren’t the target.
“Mary!” shouts the man.
An angel lunges forward, blade outstretched. The man ducks, twists, inhumanly fast. When he touches the angel’s forehead, it blasts backwards, strikes the tree, and collapses at its roots.
When Charlie watches Mary stab one angel through another one with its own blade, she falls in love for approximately 2.5 seconds. Another angel breaks through the tree line, and the moment vanishes as he aims his gun for Mary.
“Duck!” Charlie orders, trusting Kim to do it in time.
She shoots the angel over her head. Kim lets out a little squeak, but it’s barely noticeable over the sound of the gunshot.
The clearing goes still.
“Who’s there?” Mary calls.
Charlie decides right then and there that anyone that can stab two angels like that at least deserves a chance to introduce herself. She tugs Kim around the corner and on to the path. Face to face, the woman is prettier than Charlie expected. Softer, somehow.
Her eyes dart to the insignia on Charlie’s jacket. “You’re with the resistance. I’m Mary Winchester, and this is Jack. We’ve been imprisoned by the angels for the last six months. Bobby Singer said if we headed this way, we might find friends.”
Charlie lets out a low whistle. Anyone who can survive being with the angels for six months—well. They’re worth having on your side.
“This is Kim. And I’m Charlie Bradbury.”
Mary smiles. “Like Ray.”
Charlie likes her already.
“You shouldn’t have used the Grace,” Dean says instead of hello.
Cas grits his teeth as he sits on the end of Dean’s bed and tries to pretend that Dean isn’t putting on his headphones in response. No Oh wow, Asmodeus is gone? Serves him right for locking you up for a month. No Sorry for scaring the Grace out of you, Cas. Just blame.
Fantastic. This little conversation is getting off to a fantastic start.
“He was suffering.”
Cas can’t help himself—justification is in his nature. He’s only recently been able to find a little worth in himself again. It’s hard not to fall back into old patterns, as Dean is so effectively proving right now.
He lets out a derisive snort. “Should have let him suffer.”
“As you would let your brother suffer, I’m sure,” Cas snaps. “You most certainly wouldn’t do anything drastic like sell your soul or stuff an angel into him.”
Dean makes a show of turning up the volume on his iPod. Cas yanks it out of hands and presses pause.
“You don’t get to drown this conversation out.”
Something about the iciness of his tone must have convinced Dean to take off his headphones, because he does. That doesn’t mean he looks any more interested in the conversation.
“And you don’t get to make decisions like that! We needed that Grace!”
Cas glares. “First of all, who was it who went running off into a parallel universe literally twenty-four hours ago?
“It was for—”
“If you say ‘the best,’ so help me, Dean—”
“Your own good!
He narrows his eyes. “That’s worse.”
He has a feeling this conversation is no longer about Grace, but he’s not sure what’s going to happen next. Dean scrubs a hand over his face.
“Look. I didn’t want you going into the apocalypse world again. Not with what happened last time.”
Cas refrains from reminding him that he died in their world at the hands of someone from their world, but it’s a close call.
“Dean—”
“Let me finish.”
He plucks at the earpiece of his headphone, knocking it back and forth between his fingers. Cas folds his hands and leans forward a little.
“When I thought you were dead, it—it broke me. Completely. I didn’t want to get out of bed, I didn’t want to eat, I didn’t want work. I prayed to Chuck of all people, even though I didn’t think there was a chance in hell you’d be back this time.”
Cas gets up before he can process what he’s doing. He takes a few deliberate strides in Dean’s direction and stretches out on the bed beside him, back against the headboard, legs touching Dean’s.
“If I lose you again—”
Cas leans over before he can think better of it and presses a kiss to Dean’s forehead. They both sort of freeze there a moment before he draws back.
“You won’t.” Cas gets up, wishing he had the guts to stay. “Now get some sleep. We have an archangel to find in the morning.”