If the real thing don't do the trick, no
You better make up something quick
You gonna burn, burn, burn, burn, burn it to the wick

Claire Novak’s day actually starts out okay, which is a very rare occurrence. After months spent living on the road, it’s very nice (even if Claire is nowhere ready to admit it) to have someone shout at you that breakfast is ready; to have a friendly fight over whose turn it is to use the shower first. It’s nice to have clean clothes, it’s nice to apply make-up using a proper mirror, in a proper light, instead of standing in front of some broken-down thing in the back of a bar. And it’s also nice to bounce downstairs (well: Claire bounces only on some days, and then only for the first three steps, then she realizes what she’s doing, and starts to walk normally again) and find a kitchen full of people who actually like each other.

By now, Claire is familiar with all of them, and she’s starting to know how to act around them - Jody is useless without her first cup of coffee in the morning, Donna seems bubbly and cheerful but her voice can easily turn to steel, Alex likes to keep to herself, and most of what Krissy says is sarcastic or downright mean (she’s okay, though). The children are all right - just children, really - and there’s other people Claire hasn’t met yet (Aiden and Jo, who are following up on a string of disappearances near Flint).

Today, only Donna and Krissy are having breakfast - homemade pancakes, because this really is a good day for Claire. It’s too early for any of the kids to be up yet, Alex is weird about eating, and Jody -

“Morning. Where is Jody?” asks Claire, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

“Had to stay overnight,” says Donna, placing a glass of orange juice next to Claire’s cup with her usual I’m friendly but drink your vitamins smile. “I’ll drive you to work instead.”

“It’d be easier if -”

“No,” says Donna, and that’s that.

Krissy grins.

“And what are you going to do today?” asks Claire sweetly.

The fact that Claire has a job and Krissy doesn’t is a regular source of squabbling, mostly because Krissy is stuck babysitting, but that is hardly Claire’s fault. Claire had offered to take care of the research part (and her job in the library allows her to do exactly that), and Krissy was supposed to be out hunting (despite Donna’s firm opposition to this plan). It’s not Claire’s fault if Krissy’s friends left her behind for this one hunt, not Claire’s fault if Krissy is now the person who has to stay home with the kids. Sure, Claire could avoid to bring this up ten times a day, but, hey, apart from that, there’s very little she can do.

“Archery lessons,” smiles Krissy. “Too bad you won’t be around - it’d be really good for you to learn something useful.”

“Archery lessons?” asks Donna, alarmed, looking up from her phone.

“We’ll be careful,” says Krissy, and Claire tunes out the argument by thinking about the library - today she’s supposed learn about demonic warding (when her boss isn’t looking) and to draw some posters for Family Day (when she is looking), and she’s not stoked about either activity. That is, she’d be thrilled to find out more about warding, but the book she’s been reading is a French thing Sam translated ages ago (very hastily, and very badly), which means she’s spending more time looking at dictionaries than learning about the actual warding. And as far as her regular job is concerned - Family Day. What a joke.

Still, the thought comes and goes without the usual bitterness. Because, well, it’s still unfair, and it still sucks, all of it - that her parents died, that her father’s body is walking around with someone else breathing inside it - but one thing has changed. Claire can no longer consider Castiel an enemy. And that, of course, makes all the difference. Sometimes, when she can’t sleep and she looks up at the ceiling in the dark room, she tries and fails to be angry at him. She does remember, very well, the rage she used to feel against him, and she still hears his voice in her head (I am not your father), but something has shifted, and all those negative feelings have somehow become - just feelings. A jumbled mess of them, to be sure, but no longer the searing, blinding hurt it was before. And that, for now, will have to be enough.

.:.

Sam turns a corner and collides with a beautiful Korean woman. The documents she’s carrying scatter all over the floor.

“Sorry, let me help you,” says Sam, because he’s always been a nice boy and there’s that split second in which he doesn’t remember that this is actually Hell, and this woman is probably a demon.

And then it comes back to him, mostly because the woman straightens up and blinks at him, and her eyes go black.

“Sam? Sam Winchester?” she asks, awed.

“I -”

Sam glances around. They are alone, but, on the other hand, there’s nothing he can use as a weapon, and he’d have to be insane to attack a demon with his bare hands. Then again, ‘insane’ is not the worst thing he’s ever been called, so -

“Sam, it’s me. Long time no see, man.”

The woman sounds friendly, but she’s also shifting her empty folder from hand to hand, a nervous gesture. Sam looks at her, really looks at her, trying to see past the regular features of her face, the wide eyes and porcelain skin, and there is something familiar there - perhaps the way she moves her mouth?

“Max?”

And now the woman smiles, and it becomes obvious. This is actually Max Miller, and although they met only briefly, Sam has never forgotten about him. Max was the first child like him he’d ever met, and despite the tragedy of that week, the deaths and heartache and the usual, ‘too late, not enough’ feeling curling deep in Sam’s guts, meeting Max had eased a weight from his shoulders. Because, well, it wasn’t just him, then. He hadn’t been targeted - his mother hadn’t died - because Sam was Sam. It went beyond that.

Still, it seems weird to say, Good to see you, because, Hell?

“Why are you -” asks Sam instead, gesturing at Max’s body.

“Oh, this? It’s what happens when - I’m a demon, now.”

“But why -”

“I killed myself, remember? And also killed two people. Turns out they frown upon this sort of thing, upstairs.”

Max sounds cheerful and matter-of-fact, so Sam doesn’t press the point.

“No, I meant, why did you switch bodies?”

“Oh. It’s part of the - I’m not sure I should be telling you about this, actually. It’s just, you have to possess someone before you can turn completely, and then you get to keep them.”

Sam frowns.

“Keep them? That’s a person you’re talking about, Max.”

“She was in coma,” he says, dismissively. “Some people prefer live ones, but the King encourages us to be creative and find loopholes,” he adds, and now he sound like a 12-year-old girl with a crush.

“Isn’t it weird, though? Being a woman?” says Sam, trying to keep the conversation going while he scans the corridor for possible exits - if Max is a Crowley groupie, all the more reason to get out of here, and fast.

“A bit, at first. But I actually I always liked the idea of -” starts Max, with the same enthusiasm, pointing at the shiny high-heels he’s wearing, and then blushes and stops talking. “Anyway. What are you doing here? Does it have something to do with the deaths?”

“The deaths? What deaths?”

Max lowers his voice to a whisper.

“Most demons just - died. Or disappeared, anyway. About six hours ago. Is it something you and your brother would be interested in? Maybe you can help?”

Yes, maybe Sam can help, and maybe being turned into a demon actually fries your brain, because how can Max be so - he’s smiling now, all hopeful, looking up at Sam from that magnificent body (good thing Dean isn’t here, thinks Sam, and then he has to swallow the thought down, because where is Dean?), waiting to hear some magic words, Yes, Max, I’m really concerned about the fact demons are dying, never mind we’ve been trying to go nuclear on the fuckers for a solid decade.

“I’m not sure. Tell me exactly what happened, then.”

.:.

When Claire opens the door, making the bells trill, her eyes go automatically to the last desk near the window - and the man sitting there looks up and waves at her. Claire should go to the office first, say hello to James and Debra, but she doesn’t particularly like them (James is sullen and short-tempered and Debra keeps hinting she doesn’t like the way Claire dresses, which is perfectly decent, thank you very much), so she makes a beeline for the professor’s desk instead.

“Good morning, Claire,” he says, with a smile, and Claire smiles back.

Professor Stanton is an old man, around sixty or so (an older gentleman, as the overly pink-glassed nurse in the youth centre would have said), and Claire is using him. Well: not using him, per se. Not really. It’s just - the last two months have fixed a lot, but not enough. It has all been so damn hard - when the car had stopped in front of the run-down hotel, Claire had been about to make up some excuse and stay inside it. Because, well, she’d told the woman she was going to spend the summer with her aunt and uncle, helping them fix an old hotel they’d just bought, but this - looking at it from the car window, Claire had understood the look of curiosity and surprise (The Reilly’s place? Good luck) - the building was a ruin. Of course, it was still a nice building - sort of a traditional Southern mansion, two storey-high, with a veranda and millions of tall windows and everything, very Scarlett O’Hara, in a way - but it had this 'haunted house' vibe Claire would recognize anywhere. Cracked paint, broken windows up in the attic, walls overgrown with ivy, a lawn gone wild and, somehow worst of all, random cluster of yellow flowers growing in neat little circles here and there. There was no getting around it - the house was creepy. What didn’t help was the sign of the hotel himself. The letters were old and discoloured, and someone (a child) had written over them in chalk a second message, of which only the first (Wayward) and last (Academy) word remained.

And now - now the building is friendlier, but it’s still a reminder that things are not exactly normal (will never be normal again). So, the first time the old man had asked her about herself - Claire had just brought out some dusty old newspapers for him - she’d found herself lying, even if she actually liked him. She’d made up a family, and friends - she’d told him she was living with her brother, because why not, and that she’d been to Europe for the summer (France, Italy, Germany). After a week or so, Claire had wished she could fix it, because the guy was so friendly, and it seemed wrong to lie to him, but by then it was too late. She was having too much fun. He was the one normal thing in her world (a retired school teacher, no pets, a passion for crosswords and cigars), and Claire actually looked forward to their conversations, to being able to be just - just Claire, a kid saving for college, with a dentist father and a mother working for a small newspaper, back in Pontiac. No dead parents, no angels, no demons, no nonsense.

“Good morning, professor.”

“I told you, just call me James.”

Claire smiles. She’s been working here for only two months, and yet this, right here, is already as familiar and comfortable as an old t-shirt.

“Just trying to prove my generation can be polite.”

The man sighs, a bit theatrically.

“I’ve been a teacher for thirty years. I know for a fact that younger people are not capable of politeness.”

“Claire?” calls Debra, from the office. “Are you here?”

“I should go,” frowns Claire, shifting her bag on the other shoulder. “Coffee later?”

“Gladly. I should be finished with these in about -” he looks at the pile of dusty newspapers in front of him, rolls his eyes in a funny, younger man gesture, looks back at her “- twenty years, but maybe I can take a break around ten?”

Claire smiles, and she does her best to ignore the hilt of the knife poking into her bum. Today, she is mostly normal. Not an orphan, and not someone who walks around with knives and books about demonology. Normal.

.:.

The more Sam thinks about it, the less sense it makes. If the Darkness is out to destroy the world, why did it kill all those demons? Because this is clearly the cause of the demons’ disappearance - the one thing Sam is completely certain about. Or maybe those demons are not dead - maybe they were moved to some other place? Maybe the Darkness is gathering an army? But for what purpose, exactly? Why would it leave behind the younger demons? And why, why would it leave behind Crowley, the king of Hell?

Sam is building a mental case file with all of this, because he is, in a way, working. It helps, a lot, to consider this a hunt like any other. He gets, in fact, so caught up with it that he ends up hearing Dean’s voice in his head (Gathering an army of evil, Sam? You been watching that hobbit thing again?), his surroundings out of focus. Which is, of course, a Bad Idea, because he’s still in Hell, and, whatever Max may think, Hell is a bad, bad place, and its king is even worse.

“Almost there,” says Max, his heels clicking briskly in the empty corridor.

He’s promised Sam a way out of here, which is, after all, the best alternative. Because, yes, it's very possible that Dean is in the place as well, but where? Sam has a much better chance at finding him if he manages to get out and contact Cas, because if Dean is back - back where he was last time, Sam has zero possibilities to get him out by himself. Problem, solution. Just another case.

Also, Sam must keep busy, because if he actually allows himself to think about it all - his brother killed Death, he may be back on the rack this very minute and the both of them have actually caused the Apocalypse - then he couldn't - and there’s things he has to do, that’s all. He can fix this. He has to fix this.

“It’s down there,” says Max, and he stops walking so abruptly that Sam walks into him again and has to steady the both of them, his hands ending up on the demon’s chest.

“Uh - I - sorry.”

Max just beams at him. There’s really no trace of the angry, angsty young man Sam met so many years ago, and it’s a bit creepy to see him so happy about his new - condition, but maybe it’s for the best? It certainly helps Sam, a little bit, not to be freaking furious at God and his stupid angels for refusing Max entry to Heaven.

“It’s down there,” Max repeats, pointing behind him. “I am not allowed to go any further, and I am sure you aren’t either, but if you really want to - well.”

“Thanks. I’m not crazy about it, but I think I have it. To, uh, figure it all out, you know?”

“I hope you find something. It’s really scary, not knowing what’s going on. I mean, Baruch, my supervisor, was a sweet guy. Really old, too. Was on the Mayflower, some say. And now he’s just - just gone. The King was really angry,” he adds, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I didn’t see it myself, of course, but they say he thrashed his throne room when he found out. Wasn’t here, see. Maybe that’s why he lived.”

Of course he hadn’t been there. Sam has a pretty good notion of where Crowley had been - spying on Rowena. He’d flat-out said he would kill her, after all, so it makes sense he would lurk around her and Cas, try to find a weakness before she could rally and put together a more powerful spell.

“I’ll do my best to - help him,” says Sam, clapping Max on the shoulder. “Thanks again. Good to see you again.”

“Same here,” Max says, and then remains where he is, fascinated and fretful, as Sam starts walking down the corridor.

At the very end of it, Sam turns, waves at him, then squares his shoulders and turns the corner.

.:.

“So you and that guy are really hitting it off, eh? Old men your type, then?” says Debra suddenly, and Claire does a double-take.

They are working in the main office - Claire is glueing paper sheeps on a large green cardboard, and Debra has been muttering to herself for the last ten minutes, apparently busy with some sort of calculation.

“What do you mean, my type?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean.”

“No, I don’t think I do.”

“Well, I see the way he looks at you. And you’re encouraging him, so -”

Oh my God, just -

“He’s just an old guy. He probably comes here because he feels lonely, or something. There’s no need to be a bitch about it.”

One of the reasons Claire dislikes Debra so much is that she is one of those women who seem to think something is insulting only when it’s directed towards them. Claire has seen plenty of social workers who acted exactly the same. And so, here here it comes - like clockwork - she’s just accused Claire of being a prostitute, basically, but the second Claire bites back Debra acts like she’s been slapped, relaxing back in her chair, crossing her arms in front of her and getting an ugly look in her eyes.

“Right. So you don’t know he started to come in here after you arrived? And that he only comes when you’re working?”

Claire just stares at her - and then darkness falls. Both women turn to the window - it’s as if a very large cloud appeared out of nowhere, except this is no cloud - the whole sky has disappeared - it was day, and now it’s night.

“What the -”

But Claire is already acting. Before Debra even finishes her sentence, Claire walks past her and retrieves her backpack from the floor - she props it on the desk, opens it, and starts to get her weapons out.

“Stop - what are you - James!”

Claire straps on the knives first, then her gun holster. Next, she tries to call Jody, then Donna, but her phone is not working. Pushing Debra out of the way, she tries the landline - Krissy picks up at the first ring.

“Yes?” she barks, and Claire can hear the fear in her voice even if the other girl is trying hard to hide it.

“It’s Claire,” she says. “Is it happening there as well?”

“Yes,” says Krissy, softening up a bit. “Any ideas?”

Claire hears a child (Gracie?) crying in the background.

“Could it be - you know, a normal thing?”

“Well,” starts Krissy, and Claire loses the next sentence, because James steps inside the office, a baseball bat in his hands, followed by a near hysterical Debra - Claire is too quick for him - she turns to face them and points the gun straight at his chest.

“Stay the fuck away from me. Just go home.”

Debra starts yelling, but they both disappear from the office.

“Claire?” calls Krissy’s voice.

“I’m going to call Jody,” says Claire, picking up the receiver again. “See you later.”

“Do you think it’s time for Protocol 5?” asks Krissy, hurriedly, and Claire smiles despite herself.

She and Krissy are too similar to get along, but Krissy wouldn’t ask for her opinion on this if she didn’t think Claire could handle things.

“Better to be safe than sorry,” says Claire, and hangs up.

When she walks out of the room, Claire almost collides with professor Stanton, who’s looking a bit harried and wild-eyed.

“It’s okay,” she says, steadying him, and she wonders what to say next - is there any way she can justify the gun in her hand?

But the professor ignores that - he shakes his head, grabs her arms, and looks down at her.

“Listen to me, Claire. Lucifer has risen. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

And just like that, the world stops making sense. It’s not the sudden darkness, it’s not pointing a gun at actual human beings, it’s not even Protocol 5 - it’s this, right here, the old professor writing a history of Madison, South Dakota, telling her that Lucifer has risen.

“What?”

“You must contact Dean, Claire. Dean Winchester? Call him, and tell him this. Tell him Lucifer is not here yet, but he will be soon.”

“Who are you?”

“It doesn’t matter who I am.”

Professor Stanton closes his eyes, frowns, then he looks at her again, lets her go.

“That woman you live with is five minutes away. You should go meet her.”

As he starts to walk away, Claire darts forward, grabs his sleeve.

“Wait! What about you?”

“I have things to do. I will find you soon, don’t worry.”

“Who are you?” Claire asks again, but now there’s the screech of brakes, and there’s Jody’s car, and Claire can see, barely, Jody behind the wheel, her face completely bloodless.

.:.

The corridor ends in a circular room, sober and normal, the kind of place one would find in a conference centre. The only thing missing is one of those naff motivational posters on the wall - a mountain in the sunset, or something. So Sam isn’t disturbed by the room, on the whole. No, what makes him stop and swear under his breath is the fact that there are five identical doors.

Sam walks towards the first one, passes his fingers on the wood, then, feeling a bit foolish, presses his ear against it.

Nothing.

“I would say I’m not happy to see you, but knowing you died is making my day considerably better.”

Sam whips around.

Crowley is standing twenty feet from him. He’s dressed in his usual black suit, has his hands in his pockets, and he’s smiling at him pleasantly.

“Please, tell me it hurt,” he goes on, in the same, cheerful voice.

“Look, if you’re still angry about me trying to kill you -” starts Sam, and he has no idea about how to finish this sentence - he only knows he has to keep Crowley talking, keep him distracted long enough to try and figure out which door is the right door.

“Of course I’m still angry about that. You betrayed me. You ruined my favourite shirt. Though, I have to say, my demonic wrath about that little episode has been somehow eclipsed by the fact that you and your brother seem to have broken the world. Again.”

Sam stares at him.

“And you’ve managed to destroy most of my subjects with you, as well.”

“So you know what’s going on, then?”

“Well, I’m not telling you,” says Crowley, taking a step forward, and an almost predatory smile appears on his lips when he sees Sam take a step back. “Where is your brother?”

Sam shakes his head, and the expression on Crowley’s face switches to an almost kindness which is even worse.

“It’s you I want to hurt, Sam. Not your brother. You can tell me where he is. In fact, you can tell me now, or I can torture it out of you. Your choice.”

“Okay, that’s cheesy, even for you,” says Sam, and his right hand shift behind his back, finds the door handle -

“I apologize for not meeting my usual standards. I’ve had quite a tiring day.”

“Don’t let me keep you, then.”

Sam grits his teeth, weigh his options again - but really, what alternative does he have? - and then wrenches the door open.

“You utter -” starts Crowley, but the rest of it is lost in chaos and colours as the floor disappears under Sam’s feet and he’s dragged inside whatever lies behind the door.

.:.

Claire would have wanted to stay longer, to figure out where James Stanton had disappeared to, but there had been no discussion, as usual. This is not a democracy - there are lives at stake. That was the first thing Jodi had ever said to her, and the girls considered it the first rule of the Academy. So Claire had pilfered the late fees money from the box, had grabbed her bag and a couple of books on survivalism, and then she’d scuttled outside and into Jodi’s car, without hesitation.

And now they are driving home, and things are downright scary.

“Have you tried calling them?” asks Claire, for the third time.

“Yes, as I told you,” snaps Jodi. “Neither of them is answering.”

She’s driving in a schizophrenic, disjointed way - mostly going very slow, because it’s dark enough that it’s difficult to see more than 200 feet ahead, but then suddenly speeding up, because, well, they’re not safe out here in the open, so the sooner they’re off the road, the better.

“What about Castiel?”

“The angel? I don’t have his number, Claire. And I’d prefer not to summon him - I heard strange stories about what happens when you summon angels. No, I think -” she starts, and then changes tack, “I think the best we can do is hole up and wait for Dean or Sam to call us back. And we’d probably better see what’s going on with Margaret and Laura.”

This last bit makes no sense to Claire - she has no idea who these women are, and she doesn’t care at all.

“What if something happened to them?” she asks, and then immediately regrets the childish question.

Jodi doesn’t know anything, after all, and what does it matter what Jodi thinks? Either Sam, Dean and Castiel are alive, or they aren’t. This is the reality of it, and the fact that Claire can almost taste the sickly lurch of panic in her stomach won’t change things. Not one bit. Which is why it’s stupid to be afraid, and it’s stupid to think about - it’s stupid to dwell on the fact that people can die, because people do, they can stop breathing right in your arms and there is nothing you can do, nothing at all.

“They survived worst.”

Jodi was trying for comforting, but somehow it came out grim and apocalyptic.

Claire turns her head, ostensibly looking out of the window in a bout of teenagery pride, but actually just hiding her face so she can set her jaw and force herself not to cry. Because, really, enough with the crying. She was never one of those girls who would cry over everything, but since her mother died everything sets her off - pickles in her burger, a rude patron at the library, even the freaking laundry (she’s once collapsed to the floor in soundless sobs because her favourite white panties had turned pink). It’s getting really, really old. And there is absolutely no reason to cry now - sure, the weather is scary and cold, and phones aren’t working, so she can’t call Castiel, but still. She’d know if something happened to him, right? She’d feel it, somehow. Because, well, her opinion on the angel and his two companions has sort of u-turned since her mother’s death. Claire has spent hours staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep, replaying in her head every conversation she’s ever had with them - remembering Sam’s easy laugh, and Dean’s earnest smile. Mostly, though, she’s been thinking about Castiel, fancying she has a deeper connection with him, because, well, he was once inside her body, and Claire remembers every second of that. And when Claire closes her eyes and thinks about him - see his face, her father’s face, staring back at her with those unnaturally blue eyes - she doesn’t sense anything wrong. Surely, if Castiel was dead, she would sense something?

The car skittles, comes to a halt.

“Stay here,” Jodi says, and gets out.

Claire crawls to the driver’s side, looks out of the window and sees that a red car crashed against a tree - Jodi is now approaching it carefully, calling out to the driver, but Claire can see that her hand is already on her gun.

She moves back to her side, clicks the gloves compartment open, retrieves Jodi’s second gun and cocks it. Then she takes two deep breaths and waits.

A few moments later, Jodi climbs back into the car, slams the door and closes her hands so tight on the wheels her knuckles turn white.

“Was he dead?” asks Claire.

“We’ll talk about it later. Let’s go home.”

.:.

Dean makes it all of thirty feet before stopping, swearing under his breath and turning around.

Gabriel is still standing next to the Impala, his head down. From this relative distance, Dean can see his wings, halo and weapons even more clearly, but he immediately blinks with another curse, tries to refocus his eyes to cancel out the vision. Not that he’s trying to spare the archangel’s feelings - it’s common sense, really. Spying on the true form of something as powerful as Gabriel has few chances of ending well.

It’s a bit tricky to shut out the wings entirely, though - Dean turns his head this way and that, because it’s like one of those optical illusions - once you’ve seen it, it’s hard to unsee it. Dean frowns, focuses on the rest of it - Gabriel’s honey-coloured hair, the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands are clenched by his sides - holding in sadness? rage? better not to find out - and finally the whole thing clicks into place, and Gabriel is just a man again.

And Dean can’t leave him standing there by himself. He’s just destroyed the world (again) to save his brother - surely he can’t begrudge the archangel a moment of despair after hearing his brothers and sisters have been mutilated and scattered at the four corners of the world.

So Dean walks back. Once he stands in front of Gabriel, he hesitates - rises a hand up, as if to clap the other man on the shoulder, remember this is not a man, nor a friend - thinks better of him, lowers his hand again.

“Come on, let’s go get a beer,” he says instead, a bit gruffly. “I’ll get you a vanilla milkshake, or something. Mr Sweet Tooth.”

Gabriel still doesn’t move. Is he - is he crying? Dean is so not equipped to deal with this -

“Sundae?” he tries, a bit awkwardly. “Candied apple?”

It’s more than unnerving, really. This is an archangel, for fuck’s sake. It’s completely possible that his tears could turn out to be toxic, that his despair could tore down mountains - not that there is much left to destroy, thinks Dean, glancing up at the dark sky above them.

“Okay, well, it’s cold here, and you’re creeping me out. Come on, whatever it is, we’ll fix it.”

And then Gabriel sort of shakes - Dean is reminded of birds ruffling their feathers, which makes no sense, because Gabriel looks like an ordinary human now, just a guy in a suit - and looks at Dean.

“I can’t talk to my brothers,” he says, wonderingly, brokenly. “I know they’re there, but -”

“Can’t you go up to them? Pop in front of the Pearly Gates, have a chat the normal way?”

Gabriel shakes his head, seems to pull himself together.

“No. My task is to stay with you.”

“Great,” says Dean, and then, because he’s goddamn idiot, he goes and adds, “because that’s exactly what I need - someone I can’t trust and who’s apparently too busy moping to do anything else. Just dandy.”

The good thing, if there is a good thing, is that this focuses Gabriel’s attention completely on him again. The archangel straightens up, and his face changes under Dean’s eyes, the utter shock and unbearable sadness melting right off it, as if they never existed at all.

“Who did this?” he asks Dean, taking a step closer. “Who is responsible for the Fall?”

Dean hesitates for a split second, squares his shoulders, stands his ground.

“It was Metatron, all right? He did something, he -”

“You’re lying. Metatron is dead.”

“Yeah, I wish.”

Gabriel’s deceptively pretty eyes are boring into him, and Dean is reminded of why he never liked the guy in the first place - behind the smirk and the we’re all friends together eyerolls, Gabriel is one scary motherfucker. And the fact Dean can now see glimpses of his true form does not make matters better.

“Stop it,” snaps the archangel, and Dean realizes he’s been staring, again - although, to be honest, the red-hot hilt of the sword over Gabriel's shoulder is kinda hard to miss. “And tell the truth, or I will have to punish you.”

“Okay, whoa, don’t get your feathers in a twist. It’s not all bad, you know - I mean, sure, they haven’t got their wings anymore but I hear things are pretty much squared away now -”

“You’re still lying,” says Gabriel, his voice very quiet, very intense, and every hair on Dean’s body stands up. “You know more about this. There is something you’re not telling me. What is it? Who did this to my brothers?”

And Dean makes a mistake - he thinks about Cas, he remembers how easily this motherfucker could toss Cas around - Dean doesn’t know what Cas is doing, he hasn’t tried praying to him after that knee-jerk response, that mental RUN he’d thought at Cas as the black smoke crashed down on the Impala. He doesn’t know why, exactly. Superstition, probably. A silly, childish belief that until he doesn’t know any different, Cas must be alive. Because the fact that Gabriel searched for him and couldn’t find him doesn’t mean, well, anything at all. But if Dean were to pray to him and Cas didn’t call back -

Gabriel crashes down on him like a solid wall, pushing him to the ground, sitting on top of him as he goes for his throat - Dean is shocked and terrified and he hasn’t any breath left in his lungs, but he is well-trained, and he reacts instinctively, going for the knife in his belt - with one quick movement, he brings his arm up and sticks the blade right through Gabriel’s neck.

There is blood. A lot of it. Dean could find the carotid artery in the dark - in fact, he has, many times - and that it’s why he’s ready, and shields his eyes before he gets blinded by the sticky hot mess pouring over his face.

“Nice try,” says Gabriel, steadily.

Then he sort of shakes his shoulders and seems to - to flicker in and out of existence - for half a second, the heavy weight on top of Dean is just gone - and then, before Dean can even understand what’s going on, or react to it, Gabriel is there again, knees on either side of his chest, and the knife lands on the grass.

“Now tell me,” adds the archangel, lowering his face very close to Dean’s, pressing his hands on Dean’s wrists, pinning him down.

“Get off!”

Gabriel smiles and starts to squeeze - he will break his bones in a second, Dean can feel it, but, as it always happens, pain and danger only make him reckless.

“So what happened to all that garbage then?” he snaps, trying to dislodge the archangel. “All that crap about you being on my side? You made a promise, you son of a bitch.”

Gabriel doesn’t give an inch, and Dean grits his teeth.

“You said I’m in charge. Let’s see how much your word is worth, then. Down,” he barks, in the most offensive voice he can muster, and he stares right up at Gabriel’s amber eyes, stares at them so hard that Gabriel’s features sort of slid out of focus, and Dean is almost blinded by the light behind them.

Until Gabriel disappears, that is. And then reappears, just as quickly, standing in front of Dean, looking bored and unruffled.

“Watch yourself,” he says, pleasantly. “Your prophets would have you believe everything can be forgiven. That is not the case.”

Dean tries to ignore him, tries to hide his adrenaline-fuelled relief. Hell of a bluff, that was, he thinks, picking himself up, cleaning the blade of his knife on his jeans.

As he approaches the archangel, warily, Gabriel becomes the Trickster again (the easy smile on his lips, the playful turn of his eyebrows), and Dean can just stare, his fingers tight on the hilt of the knife.

“Now, back to the what really matters - did you say something about candied apples?”